Playful banter between two lovers leads Vaughn to make some revelations about an unexpected childhood memory. A fluffy S/V piece with a hint of angst, written before season 3.
A/N: I had been living in the UK for a few months, and I was desperately trying to make my mind remember how to speak English one evening, when this story unexpectedly came out. The French sentences Vaughn says are things I honestly wouldn't have been able to say in English right there and then… Thanks to Kira for beta-reading this fic when it was written the first time around – even if I did ignore a lot of your advice due to pure French stubbornness, your help was greatly appreciated!
Kitchen Disaster
"Alors, c'est quoi, ta pire expérience culinaire ?" asked a sleepy Michael Vaughn to his girlfriend Sydney Bristow. Both of them were lying peacefully in Vaughn's bed, comfortably nestled against each other, Vaughn's arm resting around Sydney's shoulder.
It was the very first night they had spent in his flat. Sydney couldn't figure out why they had onlygone toher house before, really. She had discovered the place only the previous evening, because it had been closer to the beach than hers and that they had really needed a change of clothes. She smiled drowsily as she remembered their make-out session on the sand, and how they had been surprised by the tide.
And now, here they were, in his bedroom at last; and Vaughn was asking her about… her worst cooking memory? And in French, too… She eventually raised her chin from its comfortable spot on his chest to get a better look at him.
"Now, where does that question come from?"
He smiled mischievously. "Well, I was thinking about our first night in your place, and…"
"Alright, alright!" surrendered Sydney. They had got… distracted during the 'reheating' part of their dinner that night, and Vaughn had quite enjoyed teasing her about it ever since. But she was not going to let him win this one. "Why don't you tell me about yours, instead?"
He laughed. "Ma pire expérience culinaire? Are you sure you really want to know?"
She wondered if Vaughn was aware that he had been using two languages in as many sentences. Probably not, she decided as she looked into his shining green eyes.
"Alright," he complied. "But before everything, you have to know, it was not my idea, and it was not my fault…"
"Of course not."
"Bien sûr que non." She saw that cute frown she loved so much appear on his forehead. "Was I speaking French or English?"
So his speaking French was unconscious. This told Sydney two things: one, French was definitely Vaughn's first language; and two, she loved it when he got all mixed up…
"You were speaking both at once."
"Oh." That 'oh' sounded French too.
"But please, don't let those trivial linguistics considerations keep you from telling your story," Sydney mocked him tenderly. "Go right ahead, Vaughn…"
He looked at her smirk quizzically for a moment, then he gave her a 'you understand French anyway' shrug. " It was my second year in college in the US, and I'd just gotten my very first fake I.D. …"
"Ooh…"
"If you are going to interrupt all the time, I might as well save some time and embarrassment by shutting up now all ready…" Vaughn was smiling.
Sydney kissed his lower lip, then the upper one, and stopped just as he was trying to invite her tongue in his mouth. "See what you might get if you finish that embarrassing college-boy story?"
"Ça a l'air intéressant," Vaughn answered, his eyes half-closed. "Okay, je continue alors." That cute little frown again, and he opened his eyes to look at Sydney seriously. "French is my mother tongue," he explained, apparently compelled to justify himself.
"I'd gathered that." Syd gave him a warm and reassuring smile.
"Sometimes English really feels like a foreign language."
"Are you thinking in French right now?"
A pause. "Tu me fais tourner la tête. J'arrive vraiment pas me concentrer sur l'anglais…"
Her brown eyes looked at him questioningly. "I do what to you? My French is not that good, Vaughn…"
"Je sais," he sighed. "Back to English, donc."
Sydney stared at him and burst out laughing. His accent had just been terrible. "Stick to French, Vaughn, if that's what you really want."
"Je veux rien du tout. Et c'est pas ma faute!"
Whoever had said French spoken in bed was sexy must have never been in such a situation. Or maybe they just didn't understand the language. Vaughn's words couldn't have sounded less sexy. 'I don't want nothing, and it's not my fault'?! Sydney couldn't stop laughing.
Vaughn shut her up with a burning kiss and hugged her close to him. "Quand tu ris, j'ai envie de toi…"
Oh. Or maybe whoever had said that knew exactly what they were talking about. 'Whenever you laugh, I feel like making love to you…'
He kissed her shoulder. Up to her neck. And behind her ear. Sydney felt her toes curl up, and had no desire to laugh at his strange speech anymore. She sighed.
"Et quand tu soupires comme ça, j'ai vraiment très, très envie de toi."
He shifted so that Sydney lay on top of him, and she could feel the truth of his words. She loved the idea conveyed by those five words. J'ai envie de toi. It sounded so much more loving and considerate than 'I want you' ever would. She wanted him to hear those words, too…
"Moi aussi j'ai envie de toi. Vaughn…"
She moaned his name as his hands kept moving on her body, teasing and loving.
Once they were done and Sydney was resting between his arms again, she enquired: "I didn't get to hear the end of your story yet…"
"Quelle histoire? Oh !" He smiled, kissed her forehead, and sat up in the bed. "Why don't I show you instead?"
She blinked a few times. "Hum, do you want me to remind you the exact meaning of the word 'pire'? It does mean worst, doesn't it?"
Vaughn ignored her mild protest and dragged her out of bed by the hand. "I love your accent in French, by the way," he said absently while leading her into the kitchen.
"Vaughn, not the kitchen; we're naked!"
"Maybe that's the whole point…didn't you think about that?" He smiled at Sydney teasingly, and maneuvered her so that she was trapped between his hips and the kitchen counter.
"Vaughn, you don't want to do that…"
He raised his eyebrows at her, and at that moment, Sydney hated him. Why wouldn't Vaughn see she was feeling uncomfortable with being naked in his kitchen? She didn't know who could have a spare key! What if Weiss, or his mother, decided to pop by and found them like that?
She squirmed and tried to push him away gently, then decided to catch his eyes and make him understand with a look before she tried more firmly.
That's when she saw the storm in his eyes.
She stopped fighting him. "Michael?"
"We were at my grand mom's; my cousins and I. It was the summer holidays and Laurence had invited a friend over." The words were tumbling out of his mouth. "She was fourteen," his voice broke, "and my cousin Claude was eighteen, and he wouldn't let her go…"
"Michael, look at me." He was looking through her, and she wondered where all this had come from and what she could do to help him.
"… and then she grabbed the knife, and…"
He buried his face into the crook of her neck. Sydney tried to forget about how uncomfortable she felt, and focused on holding onto his shivering form. "What happened, then?"
She stroked the tiny hairs at the base of his neck in an attempt to soothe him.
"There was so much blood, Syd… He had seen her hand and he'd turned it around and there was so, so much blood…"
She kept stroking his hair and slowly, his shivers subsided. Vaughn kept his face buried against her as he mumbled "I had intended to tell you a story of burnt rice and fire alarm that remained unheard due to an incredibly high amount of alcohol ingested. The firemen came into the house and couldn't believe I hadn't heard the bells and woken up."
Sydney let out a laugh and held onto him more tightly. "Keep that story for another time, then. Though it may be less funny now that I know the end…"
He sighed and hugged her tighter.
"And what about that other story you were telling?" she asked carefully. "How did it end?"
Vaughn sighed again. "Claude got out of jail last month. Parole. I'm not sure why I'm telling you all that, you sure don't want to know…"
"Shush. It's alright. If it's been disturbing you, or if you need to speak about it, then of course I want to know."
Sydney pushed him away a bit so she could take his face between her hands and look into his eyes.
"If you ever need to talk, about anything, don't hesitate. Just tell me."
Vaughn opened his mouth as if to protest, then he closed it and nodded docilely.
"Now let's get back to bed, I'm freezing out here."
He let her lead him all the way back to the bedroom and under the duvet.
Ten minutes later, as they were cuddling, he muttered as if disappointed: "Shall I understand that you are not an adventurous one, then?"
"What?" She blinked, not understanding what he was talking about.
"Well, no sex in the kitchen means no sex in the corridor, no sex in the elevator…"
Sydney silenced him with a kiss. "Come on, Vaughn. Let's try the bathroom."
--The end!