Title: A New Flame
Timeframe: Late Season Three, after Remnants
Author: Edes
Disclaimer: These characters don't belong to me
Summary for Part 5: Let's get it on! I mean "started", er…
Rating for this chapter: R
A/N: Feedback welcome and appreciated!!! If you read it, I'd love to hear about it. Even if you think it stinks.
Part Five: The thrill of relief
[Sark]
Sark repelled down the face of the apartment building. There were other ways to gain entry, naturally, but this one definitely won for style.
The moonlight glinted off of the metal in his equipment, and he was glad he had remembered to cover his light hair with a close-fitting navy knit hat. Not that he would have forgotten. Sark's malevolence was strangely tidy: anything worth doing was worth doing right. He knew it was going to be a full moon, which was more than he can say for the Covenant flunky who had planned this whole op.
He wasn't even sure which incompetent imposter had given the original orders. Only that he had been detoured from the Bristow project to go extract three agents who had blundered their way into unconsciousness in the middle of the day. It wasn't good for Sark's employers to display weakness: a ring of carrion was always circling. No one—from international alliances to humble murderers for hire—would wait long to exploit the Covenant if it stumbled. Sark smiled grimly at the thought. But fantasizing about the Covenant's downfall didn't change the fact that he was on clean-up duty now.
Sark had been in Chicago, negotiating the sale of a suddenly precious commodity. Sark was pleased: the spectacular decimation of most of his cache at the hands of Sydney Bristow had only served to inflate the price of Sark's one remaining specimen. A good trade, in the end. His grateful customer had even commandeered Sark a private jet, with the use of a very polite masseuse. The trip to Madison had passed quickly.
Sark stopped at the window. As part of a crime scene, it was left open. Cops are so predictable. He would have set an alarm. To be fair, few knew the value of the object inside. His intel indicated that even the girl didn't know. Irina has done her work carefully, as always.
His black boots balanced on the shredded sill as he unclipped his harness. He dropped into the room, landing quietly, like a hunting cat.
All he had to do was wait for her to come back. This is going to be easy.
[Leah]
Leah could hear Will's heart beating beneath her ear. She was curled up against his chest; she could fit entirely inside his embrace. Sometimes it's good to be small. He was so warm.
He hadn't tried anything. He seemed to know she just needed him there, to remind her that she hadn't lost everything today. She still had the concern of another human being. We are in this together.
Maybe she should tell him. Tell him that she heard Laura's voice in the vacuum of her mind. Had been hearing it so long that she assumed it was her own. That she was afraid. That she didn't know what Laura wanted. Not Laura. Irina.
His voice, husky with lack of sleep, interrupted her thoughts. "Leah?"
"Yes, Will?" His name sounded so natural to her. Which was funny, because she thought Jonah had fit him, too. She supposed he just made sense to her.
"Have you ever thought you knew someone—really thought you knew them, y'know, and then found out that you didn't at all?" Is he talking about Syd's friend, Francie?
Will went on, "And it's like they had a whole different galaxy in their head, even though they were standing right next to you?"
Leah breathed in. That's exactly how I felt with Bradley. "Yeah…I have. The man who painted those paintings over my bed…I always thought that if—if I could just understand him, if I could see who has really was, I could give him what he needed. I could save him from himself."
Leah squeezed a mirthless chuckle from her lungs. Bitterness salted her voice. "I was working on a painting of him when he—when he killed himself. I'm not good at painting the world the way it is. I always get confused with what I think it ought to be. I realized my vision of him was all wrong. But I figured it out only when it was too late to help him."
Will was silent. Maybe I offended him. She lifted her head to look into his eyes. She saw tears. They were like a vice around her chest, squeezing away her breath.
"Leah," he breathed. Again, "Leah."
"Shh…shhh my darling…" She kissed his eyelids. She couldn't watch him cry. "It's OK…shhh…"
Her hands smoothed his hair, stroked his back. Leah had just meant to sooth, but she found her mouth on his, and he was returning the kiss. His tongue was hot and foreign, but it sent sparks through her body.
Knowledge that she was still here, still alive after all these hours of peril, suffused her senses. Leah quaked with a thrilling relief and found it was almost the same as desire. In fact, there hardly seemed to be a difference at all…
She pushed her hands under his shirt and heard a soft sound in his throat. We still have to be quiet. Damn. She took the shirt off anyway, pressing her finger to his lips to keep him from making noise.
Will pulled back slightly to chuckle at her management of him. His eyes flashed with humor. "Is that how this is going to be?"
Apparently, it was. Not that she heard him complaining when she removed her own top, loosened her rainbow spattered pants and shimmied them off. Or when she guided his hands over her slim body. Or when she—painstakingly slowly—inched his pants down, stroking and massaging his tired muscles. Muscles that, only hours ago, had forced open a chance for them to survive.
She let him return the favor. Will's hands were a revelation on her back, her shoulders, her thighs and calves. He kneaded her skin with his thumbs gingerly at first, but with more pressure and heat as she encouraged him. Leah noticed she was the one making sounds, now.
But as good as the massage was, Leah had to admit that it only got better from there.
[Will]
Will brushed the top of Leah's head rhythmically with his fingers as she slept. The moon had begun to set, but it was still bright out. Tomorrow, maybe, they would call the CIA, see where they should go from here. We seem safe enough for now.
Will couldn't believe the depth of his calm.
After the first fight with Allison he'd been sure he wouldn't date for a very long time. Truth be told, between her and Sydney, Will had expected to die a bachelor. He knew it was pathetic, but he had only dated three women seriously—and none longer than a year—in the eight years he had known Sydney Bristow.
Wait a second. I didn't count both Francie and Allison. That makes four, at least.
Will lifted a side of his mouth sardonic reflection. That might be the first joke I've ever made about it. Never mind that Leah wasn't awake to share it with him. He could tell her jokes enough tomorrow, and all the days after that.
Will felt like a cooling salve had been spread on his mind. He was not going to die a bachelor in cold Wisconsin. Miles away from a newspaper of any importance. Miles away from his mother and sister, who both thought he was dead. He knew that wasn't going to work for him anymore. Can't imagine why he ever thought it was going to.
He was, for the first time in at least two years, a free man.
Will was still savoring the luscious relief of freedom when he felt Leah begin to stir in his arms. It looked like she was having a nightmare. Her eyelids fluttered, and her mouth worked silently. He looked down on her in concern, considered waking her.
"No…" she muttered gruffly. "No…"
That's it. Will shook Leah slightly. "Baby…Leah, wake up. It's just a dream, baby…"
Leah's eyes jostled open, and she stared blindly at him. The irises of her eyes were huge, like they would be in fear, or arousal. They gave her stare an otherworldly quality.
Despite himself, Will recoiled. "Leah?"
Leah blinked rapidly, but her eyes remained dark. She sat up suddenly at looked directly at him.
"I'm sorry, Will." Then she elbowed him precisely, clinically, in the left temple.
As his consciousness faded, he thought he saw her run away, leaping from boat to boat with preternatural speed. She was headed straight for their apartment building.
End of Part Five
A/N: OK, you got this far. Why not tell me about it? It will fuel the next installment, I promise!
Also, I'm trying to make this not an AU, but I might be bending timeframes a little to my purposes. Please forgive. JJ and crew keep our characters' schedules packed: it's hard to borrow them for too long.
