Chapter 8: "Not a Big Deal"
Sydney absently fiddled with the diamond pendant around her neck as she leaned forward in her airline seat and looked out through the window. When she and Dixon had boarded their flight three hours ago, she'd been thinking about Vaughn and now, as the plane made its descent into L.A., she was still thinking about him. She took a quick glance at her watch and saw that it was 9:15. By the time she made it out of the airport and drove to the warehouse, it would probably be a little after ten. She sighed and wondered how she was going to survive the next hour when she was already so impatient to see Vaughn.
"Syd, looking at your watch isn't going to make the plane land any faster," Dixon chuckled.
She turned to him with a sheepish smile. "Have I been doing that a lot?"
"Let's put it this way . . . if I had ten dollars for every time you looked at your watch since we left Vancouver, I'd have enough money to put both of my kids through college *and* grad school."
She laughed and shook her head. "Sorry. I'm just anxious to get back home."
"Yeah, after what happened last night, I don't blame you."
Sydney nodded and looked back out at the twinkling lights of the city below them. She had spent the entire flight thinking about Vaughn, but she had also spent it trying *not* to think about the previous night's mission. She and Dixon had been sent to attend a gallery opening where their mission was to switch and steal a centuries-old manuscript believed to contain a key code for a section of the Rambaldi book they'd recovered in Argentina. The manuscript was stored in a vault, to which Sydney had gained surprisingly easy access. She found the manuscript, photographed it for her CIA countermission, switched it with an SD-6 fake, and safely made her way out of the vault. She had been on her way to meet back up with Dixon when she passed by the gallery curator's office and ducked inside. She knew she was taking a huge risk by improvising her countermission, but she desperately wanted to give the CIA a head start in deciphering the decoded sections of the Rambaldi book. So instead of waiting to deaddrop the small camera Vaughn had given her, she decided to use the curator's computer to upload the photographs onto the CIA's secure server. Her impulsive act had sparked a small disagreement between her and Vaughn as they communicated via her CIA comm link. He had warned her not to risk getting caught in the curator's office or raising Dixon's suspicions, but she eventually convinced him that the benefit to the CIA far outweighed the risk of either of those things happening. Her instincts had proven correct until she left the curator's office and came face to face with a security guard. She eventually knocked the guard out, but when their altercation was over, she had a four inch knife cut to show for her efforts.
She gently touched her left side and winced slightly. It hurt, but she was so used to coming home with scrapes and bruises from her missions that the pain hardly fazed her anymore. It did, however, make her start thinking about Vaughn all over again. Her spine tingled as she remembered their weekend in Lake Tahoe. The first night that they'd made love, Vaughn had studied every inch of her body, asking her about each of her battle scars and lovingly kissing them "to make sure they're fully healed." She'd returned the favor, "healing" the scar on his shoulder where he'd once been shot on a mission and the scar on his knee, the result of surgery following a hockey injury. Sydney wasn't thrilled about having her body marred by yet another scar, but she couldn't help but smile when she imagined Vaughn's lips kissing the pain away.
She leaned back in her seat and turned her wrist to check her watch again, but caught herself when she saw Dixon's smirking reflection in the window. She giggled and shook her head back at him. Only Vaughn could make her this antsy, she mused. Over the past few months, she'd found herself classifying all her time as either Time Spent with Vaughn or Time Not Spent with Vaughn, and lately she spent all her time without him wishing that she was with him.
Despite their constant desire to spend every waking moment with each other, they had gradually found a way to balance their professional and personal relationships. In an unexpected way, their blossoming personal relationship had actually improved their professional performance as a team. Because he was terrified at the thought of anything happening to her, Vaughn had become meticulous in planning Sydney's countermissions, reviewing them with a fine tooth comb, anticipating anything and everything that could go wrong, and preparing for every contingency. In turn, Sydney approached each new mission with determined zeal, knowing that each countermission brought her another step closer to her ultimate goal. The combination of their hard work and the intel provided by Irina's disks had led to numerous CIA successes in the past few months, a fact which did not go unnoticed by their superiors. Agents Vaughn and Bristow had received several glowing evaluations in their files, and even Jack seemed impressed by the progress they were making.
The best thing about each new CIA victory, however, was that it led to their own private victory celebration. At the joint ops center and at CIA headquarters, Agents Vaughn and Bristow exchanged congratulations and chaste smiles of accomplishment and appreciation for each others' abilities. It was only when they were alone together that they were able to properly celebrate their achievements, and they did so, coming together with feverish passion and taking delight in each others bodies and company. It was during those times that they reminded themselves what they were fighting for and dared to dream of a future together. It was the memory of those times that was making Sydney so impatient to land in L.A.
A short while later, after she'd left Dixon at the airport, Sydney arrived at the warehouse. She felt like breaking into a run to meet Vaughn, but forced herself to remain calm and walk like a normal person. She was powerless, however, to fight the grin that emerged when she reached the gate and saw Vaughn sitting on a crate. As he hopped down from the crate and approached her, her eyes swept appreciatively over his body. He was wearing jeans and a dark green pullover that made his eyes appear even more green than usual. She realized at that moment how much she had missed him, and delighted in the way that his eyes lit up as soon as he saw her. Whenever he smiled at her like that, she felt as if they were the only two people in the world.
Before she could even speak, he placed his hands on the sides of her face and gave her a long, slow kiss. She melted into his embrace and moved her hands over his shoulders and back as the kiss deepened. She was lightheaded when he finally broke the kiss and looked down into her eyes.
"Hi," she said breathlessly.
"Welcome home," he grinned. He pulled her closer to him and held her tightly, letting the sound of her breathing reassure him that she was home and safe. "You did an amazing job in Vancouver," he murmured into her hair.
She pulled her head back slightly and smiled up at him. "Thanks. Have the guys in analysis cracked the code yet?"
"Yeah, they broke it early this evening, so we should have the pages translated in the next day or two. We're gonna have a big head start on Sloane, thanks to you."
"See, I told you it was a good idea to upload the photos," she said triumphantly.
"Yes, you did," he admitted. "Don't worry, I'll be sure to give you all the credit when I write my report."
She giggled. "You'd better. Don't think that I won't get a copy of it to make sure that you did."
"What, you don't trust me?" he asked with mock offense.
She looked into his eyes and almost melted when she saw all the love that was reflected in them. She trusted him with her life, her heart, her everything. "Yeah, I trust you," she said softly. Her fingers grazed his chin, and she pulled him into another kiss, letting her tongue explore his mouth for what seemed like an eternity. She was lost in the feel of his mouth on hers when he slowly ran his hands along her sides. When his right hand pressed just above her left hip, she flinched and inhaled sharply. Vaughn gently pushed her away from him and looked at her closely.
"Syd, what's wrong? Did I hurt you?"
She felt awful when she looked back at him. The beautiful eyes that had burned with love and passion just moments ago were now clouded with concern. She hated to see him worry about her and she briefly considered lying to him, but decided against it.
"Vaughn, I'm fine," she sighed. "I just had a run in with a security guard last night, and you hit a sensitive spot, that's all."
"That's all? It sounded like you were in a lot of pain, Syd." He quickly unbuttoned the lower half of her shirt and pushed it aside. He was prepared to see an ugly purple bruise but gasped when he saw a large white bandage taped to her abdomen instead. "God, what happened to you?"
"Nothing. It's not that big a deal, it just looks -- " He cut her off with a stern look.
"Don't lie to me, Sydney. I could easily pull back the bandage and take a look for myself."
He moved her over to a table, sat her on it, and stood in front of her. She tilted her head back and sighed. She could tell by the serious expression on his face that he wasn't going to let her avoid his questions.
"Like I said, I had a fight with a security guard at the gallery, and he nicked me with a pocket knife."
"He *nicked* you?" Vaughn asked disbelievingly. He fixed a hard stare on her, and she couldn't help but be impressed by his interrogation technique.
"Okay, it was more than a nick," she admitted. "He cut me and it bled for a while, but when Dixon and I got back to the hotel, he cleaned it and dressed it. It's really not that bad. It's a little sore, but I'm fine. Honest."
"You need to go to a doctor and make sure that it's not infected."
"Vaughn, please -- "
He cut her off again. "Tomorrow, you *will* go see someone in medical services. End of discussion." His voice was firm and she knew better than to argue with him.
"Fine, I'll go see someone, but you're completely overreacting. It's barely a scratch, Vaughn. Geez, if it were up to you, we'd be in the emergency room by now," she teased.
"Sydney, your health is nothing to joke about," he said sharply. "Anyway, I'm sorry that you had to go through that. None of our intel suggested that there would be guards outside the vault. Did SD-6 warn you about guards?"
"Actually, the guard wasn't outside the vault; I ran into him when I was coming out of the curator's office."
"What?" Vaughn asked with disbelief. "So you never would have been cut if you hadn't gone to the curator's office to upload the photos?"
"I guess not," she shrugged, "but what's the big deal?"
"Syd," he said with an exasperated sigh, "the big deal is that you were injured and it was completely avoidable. I knew I shouldn't have let you stop to upload those pictures."
"Shouldn't have *let* me?" Sydney made a face. "Vaughn, you couldn't have stopped me; you weren't even there."
"But I could have stood my ground with you and told you to, under no circumstances, go to the curator's office."
Sydney scoffed. "Yeah, I guess you *could've* told me that, but I wouldn't have listened. It took me like two minutes to get in and out of the office. And, yes, I ran into the guard, but after he cut me, I knocked him out and got away. Vaughn, it was *so* not a big deal, and I can't believe that you're actually upset over this. I've had worse injuries than a knife cut and you know that, so why are you freaking out so much over this?"
"Sydney, it *is* a big deal," he said urgently. "You're lucky that you weren't seriously injured, but you could've been, all because you took an unnecessary risk. I never should have let you do that. It's my job to make your countermissions as simple and safe as possible, and I failed at that when I let you talk me into uploading the photos."
She shook her head. "Vaughn, you're being way too hard on yourself. You didn't fail at anything and the countermission was a success. You said yourself that I did a great job, and now we have a *huge* advantage over SD-6. When you take all of that into account, my injury is so insignificant."
"It's not insignificant to me, Sydney," Vaughn said, his voice soft and pained. "Every time you go away, I spend the whole time praying that nothing will happen to you and last night, something did. I know that you weren't seriously injured, but you could have been."
"But I *wasn't,*" she said firmly. "Look at me. I'm sitting in front of you right now, and I'm fine, Vaughn." She refused to let him blame himself for what happened to her.
Vaughn looked down at the floor and sighed deeply. Sydney was right, her wound was almost superficial and she had experienced far worse. If he had been dealing with any other agent, he wouldn't have given the injury a second thought. But Sydney wasn't any other agent, and he couldn't stand the thought of her getting so much as a scratch while she was out in the field. Over the past few months, he had done an admirable job of separating his personal and professional feelings for her, but now was one of the times when he simply couldn't do that. He knew that the reason he overreacted to her injury was because he loved her so much, and not because her mission could have been compromised.
When he looked back up at her, her brown eyes were warm and sparkling. He could tell that she was amused by his overreaction, but when she looked at him that way, he found it impossible to be upset with her.
"Syd," he said with a frustrated sigh.
"Michael," she smiled as she mimicked his tone. "It's nothing, seriously." She was relieved when he finally let out a small laugh. "Why are you laughing?"
"Because you just called me Michael."
"That *is* your name, isn't it?"
"You never call me Michael, but I like the way it sounds coming from your lips," he smiled.
"Even when I say it sarcastically like I just did?" she laughed.
"Yeah, even then. Where did that come from, all of a sudden?"
"I wanted you to stop worrying about me, and I could tell that the person giving me such a hard time was Michael, my concerned boyfriend, and not Agent Vaughn, who *knows* that what happened was not a big deal. Right?"
He gave her a sheepish smile. "Yes, you're right. Syd, I know that it's just a cut and that it's nothing to be overly concerned about, but the thought of anything ever happening to you . . . you're the most important person in my life."
The emotion in his voice almost broke Sydney's heart. She knew that Vaughn worried about her constantly, but she hadn't realized until now how difficult it must be for him to let her go on mission after dangerous mission. She placed her hands on his chest and looked him in the eye.
"Hey," she said softly, "I would never ask you to stop worrying about me, because first of all, I know that you wouldn't, and second, I love that you're so protective of me. I promise that I'll be more careful in the future. I promise."
"I'm going to hold you to that promise, Sydney. And you're still going to medical services tomorrow -- no arguments," he said when she opened her mouth to protest.
"Okay," she nodded. She gave him a sweet smile and pulled him closer to her. "Are we done arguing?"
"For the moment," he laughed.
"So is it safe to ask you to kiss me now?"
"Well, I wouldn't say that. There's *always* danger involved when I kiss you."
"What danger?" she asked as he kissed her neck.
"The danger that I may not *stop* kissing you," he murmured as his lips moved to her throat. "The danger that I might not be satisfied with just a kiss, and the danger that I might be tempted to do more than just kiss you . . ."
"That's the best kind of danger," she smiled. Once he began kissing her in earnest, her pain was all but forgotten until he drew his head back and looked at her. His eyes were intense and focused, but she could see the playfulness lurking behind them. "What?"
"Say my name again," he said with a sexy smile. She would do absolutely anything for him when he smiled at her like that.
"Michael," she whispered as she pulled him back into another kiss.
TBC . . .
Sydney absently fiddled with the diamond pendant around her neck as she leaned forward in her airline seat and looked out through the window. When she and Dixon had boarded their flight three hours ago, she'd been thinking about Vaughn and now, as the plane made its descent into L.A., she was still thinking about him. She took a quick glance at her watch and saw that it was 9:15. By the time she made it out of the airport and drove to the warehouse, it would probably be a little after ten. She sighed and wondered how she was going to survive the next hour when she was already so impatient to see Vaughn.
"Syd, looking at your watch isn't going to make the plane land any faster," Dixon chuckled.
She turned to him with a sheepish smile. "Have I been doing that a lot?"
"Let's put it this way . . . if I had ten dollars for every time you looked at your watch since we left Vancouver, I'd have enough money to put both of my kids through college *and* grad school."
She laughed and shook her head. "Sorry. I'm just anxious to get back home."
"Yeah, after what happened last night, I don't blame you."
Sydney nodded and looked back out at the twinkling lights of the city below them. She had spent the entire flight thinking about Vaughn, but she had also spent it trying *not* to think about the previous night's mission. She and Dixon had been sent to attend a gallery opening where their mission was to switch and steal a centuries-old manuscript believed to contain a key code for a section of the Rambaldi book they'd recovered in Argentina. The manuscript was stored in a vault, to which Sydney had gained surprisingly easy access. She found the manuscript, photographed it for her CIA countermission, switched it with an SD-6 fake, and safely made her way out of the vault. She had been on her way to meet back up with Dixon when she passed by the gallery curator's office and ducked inside. She knew she was taking a huge risk by improvising her countermission, but she desperately wanted to give the CIA a head start in deciphering the decoded sections of the Rambaldi book. So instead of waiting to deaddrop the small camera Vaughn had given her, she decided to use the curator's computer to upload the photographs onto the CIA's secure server. Her impulsive act had sparked a small disagreement between her and Vaughn as they communicated via her CIA comm link. He had warned her not to risk getting caught in the curator's office or raising Dixon's suspicions, but she eventually convinced him that the benefit to the CIA far outweighed the risk of either of those things happening. Her instincts had proven correct until she left the curator's office and came face to face with a security guard. She eventually knocked the guard out, but when their altercation was over, she had a four inch knife cut to show for her efforts.
She gently touched her left side and winced slightly. It hurt, but she was so used to coming home with scrapes and bruises from her missions that the pain hardly fazed her anymore. It did, however, make her start thinking about Vaughn all over again. Her spine tingled as she remembered their weekend in Lake Tahoe. The first night that they'd made love, Vaughn had studied every inch of her body, asking her about each of her battle scars and lovingly kissing them "to make sure they're fully healed." She'd returned the favor, "healing" the scar on his shoulder where he'd once been shot on a mission and the scar on his knee, the result of surgery following a hockey injury. Sydney wasn't thrilled about having her body marred by yet another scar, but she couldn't help but smile when she imagined Vaughn's lips kissing the pain away.
She leaned back in her seat and turned her wrist to check her watch again, but caught herself when she saw Dixon's smirking reflection in the window. She giggled and shook her head back at him. Only Vaughn could make her this antsy, she mused. Over the past few months, she'd found herself classifying all her time as either Time Spent with Vaughn or Time Not Spent with Vaughn, and lately she spent all her time without him wishing that she was with him.
Despite their constant desire to spend every waking moment with each other, they had gradually found a way to balance their professional and personal relationships. In an unexpected way, their blossoming personal relationship had actually improved their professional performance as a team. Because he was terrified at the thought of anything happening to her, Vaughn had become meticulous in planning Sydney's countermissions, reviewing them with a fine tooth comb, anticipating anything and everything that could go wrong, and preparing for every contingency. In turn, Sydney approached each new mission with determined zeal, knowing that each countermission brought her another step closer to her ultimate goal. The combination of their hard work and the intel provided by Irina's disks had led to numerous CIA successes in the past few months, a fact which did not go unnoticed by their superiors. Agents Vaughn and Bristow had received several glowing evaluations in their files, and even Jack seemed impressed by the progress they were making.
The best thing about each new CIA victory, however, was that it led to their own private victory celebration. At the joint ops center and at CIA headquarters, Agents Vaughn and Bristow exchanged congratulations and chaste smiles of accomplishment and appreciation for each others' abilities. It was only when they were alone together that they were able to properly celebrate their achievements, and they did so, coming together with feverish passion and taking delight in each others bodies and company. It was during those times that they reminded themselves what they were fighting for and dared to dream of a future together. It was the memory of those times that was making Sydney so impatient to land in L.A.
A short while later, after she'd left Dixon at the airport, Sydney arrived at the warehouse. She felt like breaking into a run to meet Vaughn, but forced herself to remain calm and walk like a normal person. She was powerless, however, to fight the grin that emerged when she reached the gate and saw Vaughn sitting on a crate. As he hopped down from the crate and approached her, her eyes swept appreciatively over his body. He was wearing jeans and a dark green pullover that made his eyes appear even more green than usual. She realized at that moment how much she had missed him, and delighted in the way that his eyes lit up as soon as he saw her. Whenever he smiled at her like that, she felt as if they were the only two people in the world.
Before she could even speak, he placed his hands on the sides of her face and gave her a long, slow kiss. She melted into his embrace and moved her hands over his shoulders and back as the kiss deepened. She was lightheaded when he finally broke the kiss and looked down into her eyes.
"Hi," she said breathlessly.
"Welcome home," he grinned. He pulled her closer to him and held her tightly, letting the sound of her breathing reassure him that she was home and safe. "You did an amazing job in Vancouver," he murmured into her hair.
She pulled her head back slightly and smiled up at him. "Thanks. Have the guys in analysis cracked the code yet?"
"Yeah, they broke it early this evening, so we should have the pages translated in the next day or two. We're gonna have a big head start on Sloane, thanks to you."
"See, I told you it was a good idea to upload the photos," she said triumphantly.
"Yes, you did," he admitted. "Don't worry, I'll be sure to give you all the credit when I write my report."
She giggled. "You'd better. Don't think that I won't get a copy of it to make sure that you did."
"What, you don't trust me?" he asked with mock offense.
She looked into his eyes and almost melted when she saw all the love that was reflected in them. She trusted him with her life, her heart, her everything. "Yeah, I trust you," she said softly. Her fingers grazed his chin, and she pulled him into another kiss, letting her tongue explore his mouth for what seemed like an eternity. She was lost in the feel of his mouth on hers when he slowly ran his hands along her sides. When his right hand pressed just above her left hip, she flinched and inhaled sharply. Vaughn gently pushed her away from him and looked at her closely.
"Syd, what's wrong? Did I hurt you?"
She felt awful when she looked back at him. The beautiful eyes that had burned with love and passion just moments ago were now clouded with concern. She hated to see him worry about her and she briefly considered lying to him, but decided against it.
"Vaughn, I'm fine," she sighed. "I just had a run in with a security guard last night, and you hit a sensitive spot, that's all."
"That's all? It sounded like you were in a lot of pain, Syd." He quickly unbuttoned the lower half of her shirt and pushed it aside. He was prepared to see an ugly purple bruise but gasped when he saw a large white bandage taped to her abdomen instead. "God, what happened to you?"
"Nothing. It's not that big a deal, it just looks -- " He cut her off with a stern look.
"Don't lie to me, Sydney. I could easily pull back the bandage and take a look for myself."
He moved her over to a table, sat her on it, and stood in front of her. She tilted her head back and sighed. She could tell by the serious expression on his face that he wasn't going to let her avoid his questions.
"Like I said, I had a fight with a security guard at the gallery, and he nicked me with a pocket knife."
"He *nicked* you?" Vaughn asked disbelievingly. He fixed a hard stare on her, and she couldn't help but be impressed by his interrogation technique.
"Okay, it was more than a nick," she admitted. "He cut me and it bled for a while, but when Dixon and I got back to the hotel, he cleaned it and dressed it. It's really not that bad. It's a little sore, but I'm fine. Honest."
"You need to go to a doctor and make sure that it's not infected."
"Vaughn, please -- "
He cut her off again. "Tomorrow, you *will* go see someone in medical services. End of discussion." His voice was firm and she knew better than to argue with him.
"Fine, I'll go see someone, but you're completely overreacting. It's barely a scratch, Vaughn. Geez, if it were up to you, we'd be in the emergency room by now," she teased.
"Sydney, your health is nothing to joke about," he said sharply. "Anyway, I'm sorry that you had to go through that. None of our intel suggested that there would be guards outside the vault. Did SD-6 warn you about guards?"
"Actually, the guard wasn't outside the vault; I ran into him when I was coming out of the curator's office."
"What?" Vaughn asked with disbelief. "So you never would have been cut if you hadn't gone to the curator's office to upload the photos?"
"I guess not," she shrugged, "but what's the big deal?"
"Syd," he said with an exasperated sigh, "the big deal is that you were injured and it was completely avoidable. I knew I shouldn't have let you stop to upload those pictures."
"Shouldn't have *let* me?" Sydney made a face. "Vaughn, you couldn't have stopped me; you weren't even there."
"But I could have stood my ground with you and told you to, under no circumstances, go to the curator's office."
Sydney scoffed. "Yeah, I guess you *could've* told me that, but I wouldn't have listened. It took me like two minutes to get in and out of the office. And, yes, I ran into the guard, but after he cut me, I knocked him out and got away. Vaughn, it was *so* not a big deal, and I can't believe that you're actually upset over this. I've had worse injuries than a knife cut and you know that, so why are you freaking out so much over this?"
"Sydney, it *is* a big deal," he said urgently. "You're lucky that you weren't seriously injured, but you could've been, all because you took an unnecessary risk. I never should have let you do that. It's my job to make your countermissions as simple and safe as possible, and I failed at that when I let you talk me into uploading the photos."
She shook her head. "Vaughn, you're being way too hard on yourself. You didn't fail at anything and the countermission was a success. You said yourself that I did a great job, and now we have a *huge* advantage over SD-6. When you take all of that into account, my injury is so insignificant."
"It's not insignificant to me, Sydney," Vaughn said, his voice soft and pained. "Every time you go away, I spend the whole time praying that nothing will happen to you and last night, something did. I know that you weren't seriously injured, but you could have been."
"But I *wasn't,*" she said firmly. "Look at me. I'm sitting in front of you right now, and I'm fine, Vaughn." She refused to let him blame himself for what happened to her.
Vaughn looked down at the floor and sighed deeply. Sydney was right, her wound was almost superficial and she had experienced far worse. If he had been dealing with any other agent, he wouldn't have given the injury a second thought. But Sydney wasn't any other agent, and he couldn't stand the thought of her getting so much as a scratch while she was out in the field. Over the past few months, he had done an admirable job of separating his personal and professional feelings for her, but now was one of the times when he simply couldn't do that. He knew that the reason he overreacted to her injury was because he loved her so much, and not because her mission could have been compromised.
When he looked back up at her, her brown eyes were warm and sparkling. He could tell that she was amused by his overreaction, but when she looked at him that way, he found it impossible to be upset with her.
"Syd," he said with a frustrated sigh.
"Michael," she smiled as she mimicked his tone. "It's nothing, seriously." She was relieved when he finally let out a small laugh. "Why are you laughing?"
"Because you just called me Michael."
"That *is* your name, isn't it?"
"You never call me Michael, but I like the way it sounds coming from your lips," he smiled.
"Even when I say it sarcastically like I just did?" she laughed.
"Yeah, even then. Where did that come from, all of a sudden?"
"I wanted you to stop worrying about me, and I could tell that the person giving me such a hard time was Michael, my concerned boyfriend, and not Agent Vaughn, who *knows* that what happened was not a big deal. Right?"
He gave her a sheepish smile. "Yes, you're right. Syd, I know that it's just a cut and that it's nothing to be overly concerned about, but the thought of anything ever happening to you . . . you're the most important person in my life."
The emotion in his voice almost broke Sydney's heart. She knew that Vaughn worried about her constantly, but she hadn't realized until now how difficult it must be for him to let her go on mission after dangerous mission. She placed her hands on his chest and looked him in the eye.
"Hey," she said softly, "I would never ask you to stop worrying about me, because first of all, I know that you wouldn't, and second, I love that you're so protective of me. I promise that I'll be more careful in the future. I promise."
"I'm going to hold you to that promise, Sydney. And you're still going to medical services tomorrow -- no arguments," he said when she opened her mouth to protest.
"Okay," she nodded. She gave him a sweet smile and pulled him closer to her. "Are we done arguing?"
"For the moment," he laughed.
"So is it safe to ask you to kiss me now?"
"Well, I wouldn't say that. There's *always* danger involved when I kiss you."
"What danger?" she asked as he kissed her neck.
"The danger that I may not *stop* kissing you," he murmured as his lips moved to her throat. "The danger that I might not be satisfied with just a kiss, and the danger that I might be tempted to do more than just kiss you . . ."
"That's the best kind of danger," she smiled. Once he began kissing her in earnest, her pain was all but forgotten until he drew his head back and looked at her. His eyes were intense and focused, but she could see the playfulness lurking behind them. "What?"
"Say my name again," he said with a sexy smile. She would do absolutely anything for him when he smiled at her like that.
"Michael," she whispered as she pulled him back into another kiss.
TBC . . .