AUTHOR: bulletproof (bulletproof_android @ yahoo.com)
RATING: R
SUMMARY: Until one of us makes the other one come true.
SPOILERS: Post-ATY experimental goop. consider yourself warned.
DISTRIBUTION: My archives. O-17 if it qualifies. Otherwise, ask and you shall receive.
DISCLAIMER: Characters owned by JJ Abrams, etc. Song by Something for Kate. There are also allusions to 'Folded Paper Boats' by SFK and 'Where I End and You Begin' by Radiohead.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: You've kinda gotta watch the thread jumps in this one. There are four: Three Aliases that never were (see Celli) and a quasi-summary. Hopefully you'll get what I mean later.
It always begins the same way that it ends; their reality constructs them, shapes and moulds the way they want but cannot have, and nothing they do can change that. They live by a hard and fast formula of attraction and inhibition, rules to a game that they did not choose, but that they must abide by regardless.
Only now the rules have changed, the game has changed; a crack in the universe is possibility spelled another way.
Possibility, she is whispering, and Sydney is trying not to let her thoughts get carried away by her mother's words, Vaughn is trying, is trying to muster up some form of contempt towards the woman that killed his father, but cannot. Possibility, he is thinking instead. Sydney.
It wouldn't be so hard, wouldn't be so much of a sacrifice; her life is a lie and his life is nothing without her. It could be so easy: play Irina's little game, roll the Rambaldi dice, and on the other side, any future that they could imagine, every wish that they never dared make.
They are sitting back to back and their wrists are tied together behind them. He is thinking that this, this is so far from warehouses and cloaked eyes, from wants but cannot have. He remembers grabbing her hand in the darkness and noise of the club, can still feel its smoothness beyond the thick plastic of their restraints. Can feel her, breath in and breath out undulating against his back and it's not fair, he thinks, that the closest he's ever been to her is when they're bound together by restraints. He wants her, this much he knows, this much he conveys when...
...his eyes linger sadly, longingly on her as she leaves, as they carry intent and purpose that can never be translated into words and actions. "Be careful, Syd," he always says and neither his hands nor his voice will hold her to stay. He is trying to let her go every time he says goodbye, trying to let go of this hold she has over him and she knows it, she knows it, but it doesn't mean he's doing a very good job and it doesn't mean she can't help but long for him all the more because of it. It is torture, it is fact, and it all starts again...
...when his mouth leaves hers and trails along her thrumming pulse, his tongue soothing and enflaming all at once. "Sydney," he whispers, insistent, needy and sure. Desperately needing her touch and oh-so-sure she will give it to him if he caresses her just there. She gasps and grasps at the bunched muscles of his back, and yes, she thinks, she could live on his touch alone. His eyes dance and his mouth curves...
...with a shy smile. They don't know each other, not really. All that they know is that both have a penchant for pounding the pavement just as daylight kisses the sky, painting it pink and cream and gold and Los Angeles has never looked so beautiful. They bump into each other sometimes, at the water fountain, by the bench as they stretch tensed muscle and they smile at each other because there is a strange kind of solidarity in this and hey, she thinks, maybe he is kinda cute...
...for a lecturer. She sends Francie a mental note, thanking her roommate for dragging her kicking and screaming to this French class. Who was she to know the fringe benefits of learning another language? She finds herself mesmerised by his voice, paying more attention to the way his lips move over this week's irregular verbs than the actual words themselves. This of course is a marked improvement from her attention in other classes. Normally Sydney Bristow is in attendance but her mind is gone, and she will be in...
...San Sebastien, Munich, Lyon, and he will be a million miles and an ocean away, his voice in her ear, his voice pitched low and intense and god, she can almost feel his lips brushing against her ear as he whispers these things to her. "Careful Syd, this thing's wired with enough C4 to level the building." She knows this, he knows this, and the only thing he is really saying to her now is 'Please come home to me, Sydney.' She clips the wire and...
...the tempo changes, he slows, stills almost, his mouth hovering over her heated skin, his hands feathering, ghostly over her and she rises to meet him (now), forcing the contact (nownownownownow). She feels his smile as it forms around her collarbone. She is impatient and he loves it. She writhes in between their sheets, twisting and turning until...
...something tangles them together. Literally. He has come to the park with a dog today, a Labrador, and he's finding difficulty in controlling it. "Donovan!" She hears him yell behind her before the mutt brushes by her with alarming speed, sending his owner crashing into her from behind. Donovan comes bounding back to see what all the commotion is about. He licks excitedly at Sydney's face and Michael has to pull him away forcefully, "Sorry about that. He hasn't been for a walk in a while, I guess, so I've been having a hard time...
"...with the grammar. Your vocab is excellent, it's just stringing the words together that's giving you trouble and it kinda showed on the last two quizzes. Look, is there anything I can help you with? Maybe I'm not explaining it right. I can go over it again with you if you like, when you have the time-" "How 'bout right now?" Sydney blurts out before she can stop herself and he can only smile at his student's obvious enthusiasm. They take the lesson to the coffee house, laughing and chatting all the way and somewhere along the line, Sydney notices that some things are actually starting to connect. They arrange to meet again...
...in the warehouse, her voice coming in hitched sobs over the phone line. His jacket will be on and he will be out the door before he has the chance to give a second thought to the company he keeps on his couch and Alice or Suzie or whoever it is this month will have left his apartment by the time he gets back home. He speeds through suburban streets with a single-mindedness that borders on obsessive: She needs him, she needs him, and that's all he needs to know...
...right now, his kisses hot and open-mouthed against her stomach, following a path lower, lower (god, yes), lower until she arches off the bed and screams out his name. He coaxes her, unrelenting, again and again to the edges of bliss before tumbling her over and building her up once more. She is shaking when he finally lets up, calming her with gentle touches and soft words. "Sydney...
"...Sydney," he says again, testing the weight of it in his mouth, "that's a pretty name." He is flirting, and it's been a while, but she thinks she's flirting right back. She smiles coquettishly as Michael offers to buy her a coffee from the small cart at the edge of the park. It's the least he can do for running her over. God, she can still feel the gentleness of his touch as he'd checked her for scratches and bruises, feel the intensity of his gaze as his eyes had swept over her. They begin walking in step and she finds out that Michael had picked up the dog from the pound yesterday because Donovan had looked so lonely. She has to bite her tongue from remarking that he looked lonely and would he mind if she tried to fix that? Instead she smiles and bends to ruffle the dog's ears, the action bringing them closer together...
...until he is reading over her shoulder and his breath is brushing cool against her bare neck. Her mouth moves fluently over the words as she reads them off the page, only stuttering slightly whenever he exhales. "Très bien," he says and she turns to smile at him but stops mid-motion when she notices how close their lips are to touching. Suddenly they are caught in an awkward moment of awareness: that this is more than idle fantasizing, that this is real, that it could happen, and that they could both be in a lot of trouble if it ever did. They jump apart quickly and start babbling about anything and everything that comes to mind to get them out of this situation...
...quickly spiralling out of control. She grabs his hand and swings them, hard left, into a hall that leads them back to the party. She shucks the jacket off his shoulders, rips the wig off her head and presses him, bodily, against a wall in the darkened periphery of the club; impresses the body memory of her into him and his adrenaline kicks up a notch. He picks up the game, runs his hands up and down her bare back...
...and urges her under him. She goes willingly, hooking her calf around the back of his thigh in the process and pulling him flush against her. She smiles at him, warm and disarming, and he takes a second to marvel at the fact that she is here in his arms; that she is his and that nothing can ever change that. He takes her hand and brings it to his mouth, placing a kiss over the simple gold band that adorns her ring finger. She seeks his gaze and finds...
...a myriad of blues and greens staring back at her in mirth. "You're going to spill that." He says, nodding at her tilted coffee cup, and she hastens to right it. "I'd have to buy you another one." She smiles at him, and asks him coyly, "Would that be so bad?" He smiles right back and god, if she'd thought his eyes had been captivating before, they paled in comparison to the heat with which he gazes at her now. "No," he replies, and they both know where this is headed. "Give me your number." She bites her lip as she retrieves the pen and paper...
...from her desk, handing in her exam sheet to him, deftly avoiding skin-to-skin contact. She starts to walk out of the hall when she is halted by his voice, "Sydney, can I speak with you for a second?" The rest of the class streams out of the room, and she turns to face him, his expression tense, her stance equally so. "I'm sorry if I...if I've made you uncomfortable in the last few weeks, and I just wanted to assure you that it won't happen again next-" She cuts him off, "I'm not taking French next semester." Her face twists and she cannot, cannot say goodbye to him, so she just turns on her heel and leaves him there, dazed by this...
...turn of events. "Noah and I," she starts, and god he's come to hate that name, "we might be...he's asked me to leave with him." His answer is immediate, "No. Sydney you can't..." She can and this is what scares him the most. "I know," she says, "I know, but don't you just sometimes wish..." And yes, god, there are times when all he wants to do is to throw her in his car and to run like hell. All he wants is to take her name and his name and to throw it all away, just so he can feel the kiss of the sun on his face as he takes her hand and walks down a public street...but there are protocols that must be followed. There are certain ways for this to go down so that she can still be Sydney Bristow and he Michael Vaughn at the end of it all. "Sydney," he entreats, his eyes pleading with her...
...his eyes hot and liquid on her and she is falling into him so far and so fast that she doesn't know where he ends and she begins. She nods slightly against his shoulder, pushes up and against him until he is in and out of her, until he is within, without and through her, and all she knows is his name coming hard and harsh from her lips. She exhales slowly, trying to gather herself before...
...she picks up the phone. It's been two days since she gave him her number and she's been edgy ever since. She presses her ear to the receiver and his voice comes to her scratchy over the phone lines, "I was trying to play it cool." A breath and then, "I failed." She smiles, "I'm glad." They begin to plan their next meeting (tomorrow morning, a jog maybe, and then breakfast) and the next (there's a hockey game on Saturday, the Kings are in town) and the next (there's a new bar near the university...
...and it's not usually his kind of thing, but he finds himself here coming more and more often. He finds himself thinking of a girl who walked out of his class without a backwards glance more and more often, and he doesn't really know what to make of that. Then suddenly, as if conjured by thought, she slips into the bar stool next to his, introduces herself as 'Sydney' and asks if he comes here often. He is a little stunned at first but then he catches her eye, pleading with him to run with this, pleading him to leave last semester behind and to start anew with her. He smiles and slides his hand into hers...
...slipping their joined hands out of the hole she has managed to widen in their restraints. They make short work of the plastic ties at their feet and she grabs his hand, her deliberation of Irina's offer over, her decision made.
"Your name is Michael Vaughn and I am Sydney Bristow, and we are getting out of this together."
They run faster and further than they've ever been through a labyrinth of tunnels and halls, his heart pounding in his chest, her grip on his hand never lessening, until they are free of the building and the rendezvous point comes into sight.
"I want to be in love with you," she tells him later as they are taking off, her father and Will in the opposite corner as the plane takes them back to LA, "I want to know how this story ends."
He nods and she folds herself into his body, and this, he realises, is real, her head on his shoulder, his arm around her waist. This is the closest he's been to her, ever, and there are no restraints, no smoke and no mirrors, and it might not be ideal, it might not be perfect, but it's theirs and he wouldn't have it any other way.
END
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