Chapter: {rain}
Summary: After an angry separation, Vaughn and Sydney's lives come crashing together again.
Category: Sydney/Vaughn angst
Author: Bella (bella_lumina@yahoo.com)
Rating: R
Timeline: AU, takes place after "The Solution."
Thanks: to Souris for the encouragement, and to the reviewers for their kind words.
Disclaimer: Alias is not mine.
{rain}
The sky doesn't open up until they've pulled into the garage under his building. The wind has cleared the path; the rain follows through slowly but surely. Trickle -- trickle -- spatter -- mist -- and then the wind comes again, and then the drizzle grows into bigger drops and bigger drops until it's full-blown rain. She has to park close to the garage entrance because it's after rush hour and everyone is home from work, so when they get out of the car the rain filters in silently, the misty residue clinging to them like sweat. She watches as he braces himself against the door as he lowers his feet to the pavement, and a pang of something -- she's not sure what -- hits her.
His building is extremely nice, which surprises her a little. For some reason she always expected him to live in a modest, small apartment building. But this place is different; he has a doorman and a parking garage and a red awning over the revolving door. She's known him for years, has even been intimate with him, but she knows frustratingly little about the man behind the CIA handler. He punches a code into the garage elevator and they step inside, Sydney carefully pulling his bag behind. He doesn't say anything, and the insistent sound of the rain even breaks through to the silence inside the small space.
"This is really nice," she comments as the elevator doors slide open. The hallway is gilded; the whole place looks old and expensive. "The Agency must pay you better than they pay me."
He snorts, leaning on her arm with a rigidity that betrays reluctance and discomfort. "My salary's no better than yours," he says, and he doesn't elaborate. She wants to ask, but she decides not to.
The hallway feels insulated and a little overbearing. She's almost relieved when he unlocks the door and swings it open, grabbing the frame for support as he walks inside and tosses the keys on the table. Mumbling something, he walks slowly through a doorway and disappears.
His apartment is sparse but not uninviting. She knows that Alice shared the space with him at one time, and her touch in the décor is obvious. The furniture is neutral and comfortable-looking -- the telltale sign of a woman in the past? It matches -- and the photographs on the wall are uniformly black-and-white in thin black frames. Her eyes slide over the pictures as the rain pounds loudly against the large, uncovered windows that take up nearly an entire wall on the south side of the room. Pictures of Vaughn and his family, pictures of Vaughn and his friends; beaming in a mortar board beside his mother on a graduation day; laughing with Weiss, two men she doesn't recognize, and a woman she assumes to be a former girlfriend. Signs of a normal past.
She isn't on the wall; she isn't anywhere in his apartment. Of course you aren't, she chides herself. But it still stirs something unpleasant inside her to know that she has been a friend of his for years and even his lover for a few months and there isn't any trace of her. There can't be. But you're here now, her inner voice hisses. She swallows and turns her attention to the water-streaked windows.
Vaughn makes his way back into the room and sits heavily on one of the over-stuffed couches, exhaling slowly. "The guest room is clean," he says suddenly, and she turns away from the window to look at him. "You can put your things in there."
"Thanks," she replies casually, grabbing her bag. "Where...?"
"Down the hall, second door on the left."
She nods, picking up her bag and following the described path. An open door on the way reveals his bedroom with its neutral walls, neatly made bed, and pile of sports gear shoved together in one corner. Footsteps behind her send her quickly toward the guest room, and she hurries inside.
The windows in the room are small and close to the ceiling, but at least they're there; she suddenly feels the urge to stand and watch the rain. She drops her duffel on the floor, kicks off her shoes, and climbs up on the bed, bouncing unsteadily as she gets used to the feel of the mattress under her feet. Her fingers grasp for the sill, and she peeks over the edge, resting her chin against the wood. The rain streaks down the window in sure, steady rivulets.
"What are you doing?"
She turns so rapidly that she loses her precarious footing and ends up falling not-so-gracefully on her butt on the bed. He coughs and smirks slightly.
"I was watching the rain," she explains softly, pointing at the windows.
He squints his eyes, but then he nods and coughs again. "I just checked the refrigerator, and I don't think I've got anything to eat, so I'm going to run over to the grocery store...."
"No, you're not," she says sternly, awkwardly maneuvering off the bed and standing. She brushes the hair out of her face and brushes off her jeans. "I'll go ... wait. I guess we'd better both go. Are you feeling up to it?"
He shrugs. "I can stay here by myself."
"Ah, no, you can't. Were you not listening at all when the doctor was talking to you?"
"Sydney, seriously. Like they're going to know."
"I'll know."
He sighs. "Are you going to be like this the entire time?"
"Yes," she says confidently.
"Because, you know, you never really had a problem with disobeying orders before...."
She winces. "That's pretty harsh."
"I don't think it's unwarranted," he says coolly.
She closes her eyes and shakes her head. "Go take a nap or something. You're cranky. I'll order a pizza. I need to call Francie anyway."
He just stares at her for a moment, then nods and turns, heading back to his room. She rolls her neck, wincing as the bones crack and pop, then picks up her bag and dumps the contents onto the bed. Five minutes later her clothes are tucked away in the dresser and her shampoo and conditioner are resting next to his in the single bathroom. She ducks into his room before heading to the telephone; he's breathing in time with the falling rain outside.
She finds a cordless phone in the kitchen and perches on a barstool before dialing her own phone number. Leaning against the countertop in front of her -- a nice, shining granite countertop -- she waits for a familiar voice or a familiar message to speak to her.
"Hello?"
It's Will. She swallows around the sudden lump in her throat; while she has said a few words to Francie lately, she hasn't spoken to Will at all since the confrontation in her living room. "Will. It's Sydney."
A pause. "Can I help you with something?"
Too stilted. Too formal. It's like he isn't sure how to react to her, but then, she doesn't know how to react to him, either. "Is Francie there?"
"Hang on." There's a shuffling noise on the other end of the line, then some murmuring.
"Sydney?" Francie asks.
"I wanted to let you know that I won't be home for a while," she begins, then winces. Not the wording she had planned.
"Oh," Francie says flatly. "I guess I'm not supposed to ask why."
"You can ask why," Sydney replies quietly, propping her head up with her free hand. "My friend that was shot ... I'm staying with him for a while, until he can stay on his own."
"Okay."
"Okay, then ... I might drop by now and then to pick things up."
"Okay." She hears mumbling in the background: Will. She can't make out what he's saying, but it's probably sarcastic, and her cheeks burn when she decides it's probably about her.
"So, I'll see you later, then."
"That's fine," Francie replies crisply, and then the line goes dead.
I will not cry, she decides. When she cries, it's an awful, disgusting, embarrassing cry, full-on tears and saliva and snot. She hates crying, and she especially hates crying around other people. It's humiliating; it makes her feel like she's three years old. She thinks that it's funny that she used to not mind bawling in front of Vaughn; now, she cringes at the idea that he might come in and see her sobbing.
A few deep breaths and a count of ten later, she's rooting through the kitchen drawers, looking for a telephone book. She hits pay-dirt -- the take-out drawer, full of menus from what seems to be every restaurant in the greater Los Angeles area -- and shuffles through the brightly-colored pamphlets until she finds a pizza place that she likes. The woman who answers the phone has a Korean accent, and she chirps excitedly when Sydney gives the order in the woman's native language.
She yawns as she traipses back to the living room and nearly trips over an ottoman in the process. The couch is inviting, and when she sits, she discovers that it's one of those couches that gives just enough under a person's weight. She kicks off her shoes, grabs the remote from the coffee table, and curls up to watch television. As she's surfing the channels -- all five million of them on his satellite dish -- she's surprised to see him sit down on the other end of the couch.
He stares straight ahead as she looks over at him. "You were sleeping, weren't you?"
"For maybe twenty minutes. I slept for three weeks in the hospital," he points out. "I'm not used to sleeping this much."
"You can consider this a vacation, then, learn how to sleep until noon again."
"I never could do that," he muses quietly. "I think the Dodgers are playing."
She gives him a look. "Point being...?"
"You don't like baseball?"
"No," she admits. "It takes too long. I'm not that patient."
"You know, I've noticed that."
She tosses him the remote and yawns, curling around one of the couch cushions. "Go ahead." She rubs her face against the arm of the couch. "I ordered a pizza."
He flips to a sports channel. "Yeah?"
"Uh-huh. I spoke Korean to the take-out woman. She got so excited...."
He's silent for a moment, focusing on the baseball game. When the pitcher strikes the batter out to end the inning, he asks, "When will it be here?"
The cushions muffle her voice. "Any minute."
She's asleep by the time it arrives, and she doesn't wake until the game is long over and the barely-touched pizza box is stuffed in the fridge. He's snoring lightly in one of the big, overstuffed chairs near the couch, his chin almost touching his chest. She stretches and rises stiffly, padding across the rug to gently shake him on the shoulder.
He awakens slowly, just as she remembers, blinking the sleep from his eyes and squinting up at her. "Come on," she says in a gravelly voice, "it's ten-thirty. You'll hurt for days if you sleep in that chair much longer."
He nods mutely, gripping the chair arms and wincing slightly as the action puts pressure on his chest. She grabs his right arm before he can sink back into the chair.
"Careful...."
He grunts in response, leaning on her as she walks with him to his room. "Need help?"
"No." He gives her a strange look, and then closes the door of his room behind him.
She sighs, rolling her neck as she heads back into the living room to turn off the lights and the television. The soles of her bare feet slap against the wooden floor as she walks around the room, reaching under lampshades to silence the glaring bulbs. The rain still persists, but softer now, and she sighs in the darkness before heading to the bathroom to wash her face before bed.
Four-thirty in the morning, and she's suddenly awake and she doesn't know why. She twists fitfully in the strange bed, the disheveled sheets pulling painfully against her skin as she rolls onto her back.
"No!"
She sits up suddenly, the cool blue light of darkness floating through the windows and tracing strange shapes on the floor, the bed, her face. Her t-shirt is damp with perspiration; her hair is sticking to her face. Her heart races as she listens, her ears honed in on the sound of that tortured cry.
The apartment is silent. The rain has stopped. She listens for fifteen minutes, and then she falls asleep before she can even lie down, her body languidly lowering itself to the mattress. She sleeps until morning, until the sun struggles over the horizon and splashes weak light over her face. The scent of freshly-brewed coffee wafts into the room, and she rubs her eyes, trudging out of bed and into the kitchen.
He's sitting at the kitchen table, holding a mug in one hand and the international news in the other. She pours herself a cup and sits across from him, studying him until he finally looks up and levels her with his gaze. "What?"
"Why do you even bother reading that?"
He frowns, and she elaborates, "You know it's full of watered-down news anyway. The stuff that actually happens never gets reported."
"The stuff you do?" he asks mildly, taking a long drink.
She shrugs. "The stuff you do, too."
"Used to do," he says, wincing as he sets the cup down on the wooden table. "Now this is as close to the news as I'm going to get for a while."
She decides against saying the typical, "Oh, don't worry, you'll be back at your desk again soon," because she knows it could be months. She also knows that he would see right through her. So she simply intones, "True."
He clears his throat. "I need to go to the grocery store. We've got cold pizza and coffee and that's pretty much it."
"Yeah," she agrees softly. "I'm going to take a shower, and then we can go."
He opens his mouth to protest, but she holds up a hand. "Let's not start ... we've already been through this."
Silence falls for a moment, and then he nods. "Okay."
First she has to get over the strange sensation of being in Vaughn's shower (though, she reminds herself, it's not like she's never been in a shower with him before, so why should it be strange to be in his shower by herself? But she knows why), and then she has to deal with the awkwardness that accompanies them when they go to the grocery store. It isn't just because they're in some impossible rut in their relationship that they may never pass, but because they have never been in public together in Los Angeles before the past day.
She drives to the store, and he does not touch her when he gets out of the car or while they're in the store. He stumbles once, but instead of reaching for her hurriedly outstretched arms, he grabs a shelf, nearly pulling down a stack of canned pears. The blonde woman behind them in the checkout line smiles at Vaughn, and he smiles back.
On the silent drive home she finally accepts that there probably isn't any hope for them at all.
He cooks -- she can't -- while she sits in the living room, dwelling on how very pathetic she really is. She has lost the few friends she had, and now she is gambling her emotions on a relationship that she's already exploited and ruined once. What kind of idiot is she, to think that Vaughn would forgive her for what she's done?
She hurries into the kitchen, where he is deliberately measuring cooking oil into a measuring cup. He looks up, startled, then turns his attention back to his task. "Something the matter?" he asks coolly.
"I left you," she states, her hands shaking.
He swallows and puts the bottle on the countertop before looking at her. "Yes," he says, meeting her eyes. "You left me."
"You woke up, and I wasn't in bed with you anymore."
"Why are you rehashing this? We both know what happened," he says angrily, crossing his arms over his chest.
"I didn't plan it."
He shakes his head, smiling ironically, and leans against the counter. "You didn't, did you?"
"I didn't."
"Well, it was awfully convenient, then...."
"It was convenient. But I didn't plan it. I didn't know that you had found her until we were in Paris."
"So, what, you got up to get a glass of water, and you tripped over my briefcase, and the directions happened to fall out, and you happened to read them, and you happened to leave?"
She fidgets. "I shouldn't have brought this up."
"No, you shouldn't have. But I'm curious now. What kind of excuse are you trying to feed me?"
"I was in love with you. I'm in love with you."
"Don't do that. That isn't fair."
She can see his bare skin glowing in the blue light of the Paris night, the sheets tangled around his slim hips as he sleeps. "I heard you talking to Devlin on the telephone."
"You were in the shower," he says, staring at her.
"I wasn't in the shower," she replies, swallowing around the lump in her throat. "I was listening."
"Why would you do something like that?" he asks with a hint of his former naiveté drenched in absolute anger.
"I don't know."
"Sydney ... like hell...." He breathes in and out slowly, moving to the table and sitting down.
She almost hears his raspy breathing as he moves over her, kisses her neck. "Because I could tell you were keeping something from me."
He glares at her. "You don't get to know everything."
"Don't you understand how frustrating that could be? You get to know everything -- everything -- about me, and I only had the right to certain pieces...."
"It was part of the job. It may have been frustrating, but you had to understand that it was part of your job."
She looks at him, and then turns her face away. "I heard you, and I promised myself that I wasn't going to do anything."
"Which proves that you have great willpower, Syd."
Syd. Her heart leaps at the nickname. "What would you have done if our roles were reversed? What if you could have made up for lost time with your father."
His eyes blaze. "What do you think I was doing in the first place?" he asks quietly. "I had my chance to avenge my father. You took that away from me."
She watches him silently, hearing the echoes of his conversation with Devlin ringing in her ears. "Derevko is confirmed in Paris ... operation launches at three o'clock local time ... no, I'm not going ... I'm staying here. They can handle it without me. No, I won't tell her...." She sees her own hands rifling through his briefcase behind the locked bathroom door while he slept, sees her fingers unlocking the door and disappearing into the night.
"You weren't even going to go," she says suddenly, pointedly, sitting carefully in a chair opposite him. "Were you too afraid?"
He raises an eyebrow. "Someone had to keep you occupied," he replies lightly, leveling her with a look that makes her uncomfortable.
Occupied. She folds her arms on the table in front of her. They'd had a lot of sex that night, if that's what he calls keeping her "occupied." "Hm," she says humorlessly, resting her head on her arms. She wants to say, "Well, you certainly did a wonderful job of keeping me away from them, didn't you?" but she doesn't.
A buzzer goes off in the kitchen, and he stiffly stands to go tend to the food. They eat in silence, and then he states quietly that he's tired, so he's going to bed. She nods, and stays up until after midnight watching infomercials on television.
At three, she wakes, her pillow pushing her neck into a strange alignment that hurts like hell. She shifts, stretching, and--
"No!"
She sits up.
"No! God, no...."
Scrambling out of bed, she nearly takes the covers with her as she runs out the door and into his room. His door is open, and he's thrashing on his bed. Part of his bandage is peeling away, and she hurries to calm him. Somehow she's on his bed, and he's wrapping around her the way he always used to, and she's stroking his slick back and shhhh-ing him softly and pushing away the sweaty sheets. The medical tape refuses to stick to his clammy skin, so she reaches over him to grab a new roll, feeling him rub his face against her hair as she fixes the dressing.
"There you go ... there you go."
He mumbles something in response and holds her tighter, and for a moment she's back in all the hotel rooms they shared in Europe, moving under him and over him until neither of them can breathe. His labored breath against her neck pulls her back to reality, and she tries to move away. There's no way they can do this....
But he doesn't let her leave his bed or his grasp -- she supposes he's still half-asleep and more than a little groggy -- so she lies carefully beside him and holds him until morning. They're both confused and more than a little embarrassed when they wake, but neither says a word about it. She supposes he's just as unsure of what to say as she.
Twenty-four hours later, after he shouts into the night again, she's once more sleeping beside him. It happens again the next night, and the next.
And two weeks pass by, and then a month, and it gets to the point where she doesn't even go to her own room anymore, just crawls into his bed and sleeps next to him. They haven't spoken about Paris or their feelings or their anger since the night in the kitchen, and she's not sure if the subject has died or is simply boiling silently, waiting to bubble over.
She needs a haircut; she trimmed his for him over the bathroom sink a week before. He calls Weiss to come over and watch the game, and she takes the opportunity to head to the salon. She knows it's going to be a bad day because her regular hairstylist is on maternity leave and a girl with a green streak in her hair is the only stylist available. Sydney agrees, praying that she doesn't end up looking like one of her mission personas, and sits in the chair. The girl chews gum and gabs with the stylist at the next chair while she trims Sydney's split ends.
"Did you know it's supposed to start raining again this afternoon?" the other stylist, a tall blonde woman, remarks.
The green-haired girl sighs. "My boyfriend was supposed to take me to the beach later. Guess that's shot." She pauses, carefully measuring Sydney's hair with her fingers. "When Tom convinced me to move here, he said it almost never rained. I'm from Seattle. I can't stand any more rain."
The blonde woman shrugs. "The weatherman on channel six doesn't get it either, apparently. Hell, I could do that job, as well as they're predicting the future anymore."
Weather, Sydney wants to correct, because she's proof that nobody, not even dead mystics, can predict the future.
The green-haired girl manages to cut Sydney's hair without hacking strange designs into it, so Sydney pays at the counter, watching ominous dark clouds drift over the horizon and running her fingers through her new, shorter hair. She stops by and picks up some fresh vegetables from her favorite bodega before driving back to Vaughn's; the sky opens up just as she pulls into the parking garage.
She unlocks the door quietly, and steps into the living room, stopping short when she hears their voices wafting in from the kitchen. "So she isn't leaving yet?"
"She can't. The insurance company says six weeks, and it's only been four."
"Maybe she'll stay seven."
A pause. "She'll leave after six."
She wants to cry. Weiss's deep voice continues. "You can't really think that she's only here because the insurance company says so."
"That's exactly why she's here."
"Mike."
"Eric," he says with a slightly annoyed tone. "She's staying to help. It's a favor. She's ... I think she's trying to apologize."
Weiss snorts. "This is a little more than an apology."
She wonders what Weiss would say if he knew that she and Vaughn were sleeping beside each other at night, that when he woke up shouting and incoherent, they slept with arms wrapped around each other.
"Listen, whatever you want to think," he replies, and she decides that it's as good a time as any to make her presence known.
She ducks into the kitchen with her bag of groceries, smiling slightly at both of them. "Hey."
Vaughn nods, and Weiss replies, "Hi."
"I bought groceries. It's raining again," she remarks mildly.
Vaughn's looking at her. "You got your hair cut."
"That's why I went out," she replies with a quick glance in his direction.
"No, but I can tell the difference," he amends, watching her expression. "I just usually don't notice those kinds of things."
"You knew to look for it," she points out.
He shrugs. "I guess that's true."
Weiss clears his throat. "I'm going to go. It's my parents' anniversary, and I need to make an appearance."
Vaughn picks up a glass from the countertop and takes a quick drink. "See you later."
Weiss nods. "Sydney."
"Bye," she replies softly, giving him a small smile. Weiss doesn't like her all that much, and she knows this; she always tries to be extra-nice to him, as if it will change things.
She hears the door close behind Weiss, and she shifts nervously. "I brought vegetables. The bodega had great produce."
He gives her a weak smile. "Thanks."
She chops the cherry tomatoes and romaine lettuce she picked up and tosses a salad while he cooks pasta. They eat in relative silence, making quiet comments occasionally, but mostly eating without speaking. She finally speaks while they're washing the dishes.
"You think I'm doing you a favor?"
He stops washing a dish for a moment, then continues without looking up. "You're getting a little too familiar with the eavesdropping thing."
"I didn't mean to. I'd just walked in."
He nods. "Yeah, I think you're doing this because you feel guilty." He shrugs. "I can't really fault you for that, but it's not necessary."
"To feel guilty?" she asks incredulously.
"To try to make up for Paris," he clarifies, putting a dish in the drying rack.
She nods. "I'm doing this because you needed someone."
He's silent for a moment. "You're doing this to ease your conscience."
"You're never going to let this go."
He puts down the dishrag and turns to her. "I'm not good at forgiving people. I'm very good at keeping grudges."
She snorts. "That's a little immature."
"Well, you know, I learned early how to harbor a little ill-will," he says, "even if I wasn't sure who I was angry with."
She's quiet. "I can't say I'm sorry again. I can't do it."
"You don't need to."
"I need to know that you don't hate me."
His facial expression is carefully schooled. "I don't hate you."
She gestures vaguely. "I feel pathetic. I feel worthless and pathetic because I did come here to make up for what I did. But that wasn't the only reason ... I came here because I had a stupid idea that you'd be able to forgive me and we'd go back to the way things were before."
"Sydney, we can't--"
"I know that," she replies, feeling tears well up in her eyes. "Why do you think I feel so stupid? I look around this place, and I'm not anywhere. You and I were together for months, and I'm not anywhere." She takes a deep breath. "I'll leave as soon as the insurance agent says it's okay."
He moves to start washing again, but stops. "Sydney, you don't know how much I want to be able to forgive you...."
"Then why can't you?" she explodes.
He swallows. "Because I don't know how." He leans against the counter. "My world is completely different from yours. My father won't come back from the dead. I won't ever be able to let go of that."
"I didn't choose this life."
"You haven't helped yourself out any," he shoots back. He sighs slowly. "I don't hate you."
She just nods, hurrying out of the room as she feels tears start to drip down her cheeks.
He sits in the living room and watches television while she stares out her bedroom window at the pounding rain. Later, he darkens the door of her room. "Aren't you...?"
She looks at him, feeling something between them that hasn't been there for months. She steps down onto the floor and nods. "Yeah. In a second."
He's lying on his side, his eyelids drooping sleepily when she crawls under the covers next to him. She buries her face in the pillow and tries to close her eyes. After a few moments she drifts off, but the rain wakes her again after a quarter of an hour. He's still awake, staring at the ceiling.
"Vaughn...?"
He turns to look at her. "I don't hate you, but I'll bet you're quite capable of hating me now."
She shakes her head. "You have every right...."
He runs his hands through his hair nervously. "I've been cruel to you, and I'm sorry."
"It's okay--"
"--it's not okay. That isn't who I am."
She holds her breath while she waits for his next words, then damns the whole thing to hell when he doesn't speak. Rising carefully, she brushes her lips against his ever so slightly.
He looks at her, completely caught off-guard, and then he shocks her when he pulls her face to his and kisses her thoroughly. She responds, shifting closer to him and molding his shoulders with her hands. The rain hammers insistently against the windows as she opens her mouth to him, their tongues tangling hotly.
They pull apart, breath mingling in the small space between them, and explore, re-learning what they've forgotten about each other. Her hands travel all over his body, finally following the trail of dark hair down his abdomen under his boxers to his cock, running her fingers lightly against the shaft. His eyes meet hers, and she curves her hand around him, rubbing the pad of her thumb against the head, feeling a tiny bead of moisture seep out.
His fingers on her wrist stop her movements, and he pulls away, breathing heavily.
"I can't -- we can't," he says suddenly, sitting up and trying to catch his breath. "Not like this...."
She moves away silently and nods, wrapping her arms tightly around herself and hurrying to her own room, calling, "Goodnight," over her shoulder. Her voice cracks, and she manages to shut the door behind her before her sobs escape, mingling with the rain outside her window.
Posted: June 27, 2002
Next installment: {light}