"What were you doing?" His tone was drenched in suspicion.
She deliberated whether to lie and stave off the anger she knew the truth would bring or start as she meant...hoped to go on.
"I hacked into your computer to.." The words were barely borne to sound as he pushed her away and himself from the bed. The rage evident in his face as he stood above her. Irina, for her part, languidly moved into a sitting position, returning his gaze. She continued despite his reaction "to set up internet protocols for contact. Nothing else." His eyes were ablaze as he tried to contain himself.
"Irina." Her name forced its way from his mouth, the words that attempted to follow it were shut off by her.
"Jack. Trust me, or don't." His silence screamed at her. "I have to leave soon, meeting in person, we can't always....we needed an alternative."
"You could have discussed it with me first."
"I'm not going to discuss my every move with you and ask for you permission. Jack this will be easier if you don't get mad everytime you disagree with my methods."
She got out of the bed and went to retrieve her clothes from the guest room, her original nighttime destination. She returned fully dressed, his shirt in her hand.
"Sloane is the obvious starting point, and I have some others in mind. I'll be in contact." She avoided his eyes as she tossed his shirt on the bed. Things were difficult enough. They'd sworn they would make this work, they hadn't gotten through the first night unscathed.
He nodded. And acquiesced to her plans. "Everything is on the computer?"
"Yes."
They faced each other. She had to leave. He had to let her. She had his face in her hands before he realised it, pressing her lips to the corner of his mouth, gripping the back of his head with one hand, his fingers with the other. She stepped away and out of reach before he could respond. "I won't fail her. Again. Or you."
He closed his eyes against her words, too desperate to believe them to face them full on, the taste of her lips still seeping into his mouth. His eyelids lifted to an empty room.
She was gone.
So was his shirt.
88 Their work began. Both followed leads either found separately or passed on from the other, she using her contacts and sources that he had no access to, he using CIA resources and some shadier contacts that he'd acquired over the years. Their communication flowed mainly over electronic circuits, a private chat room, and an ftp site. She'd been right in the practicality of the arrangement.
The second time they met in person, in a hotel room in Berlin, the culmination of a ghost chase. Another dead end. They talked and planned and when sleep became the inevitable destination of the night's journey she headed to the bathroom. She emerged wearing the shirt she had appropriated from him the previous night they had shared together. His eyes narrowed at her but with no malice.
"That's mine."
"Not anymore." She grinned at him and they allowed themselves the moment of relaxed companionship in the midst of the pain they had both been living in.
He took his turn in the bathroom before claiming his spot in the bed. If their last time together had been wrought with the isolation of each other's pain, then this was blanketed in the knowledge that at least now they had each other.
She curled into him without asking and he embraced her without comment. Small steps.
The third time was mere minutes in length. It disappointed them both.
The fourth, months after the first, allowed them to work on new intel. They'd been labouring all day, having left the table laden with paper and photographs for brief respites only. Comfortable silence surrounded them. They were a formidable pairing, one didn't need to lead the other down their path of thought, simply showing them the intended route was enough. They were efficient and diligent.
Irina's mind had been driven all day when something that had been just out of focus, became perfectly formed and vocalised itself before she could stop it
"Are we still married?"
Her eyes remained fixed on the page in front of her, fingers pushing her hair behind her ear. Jack was momentarily blindsided by the nonsequitor of the question. He recovered quickly, though he dared not look at her.
"Yes."
"Oh."
He allowed himself some time before offering a further explanation, though she had asked for none. "An annulment...it would have been the equivalent of erasing the fact that it happened. We both have scars enough to prove otherwise. And Sydney."
She nodded in understanding. He looked at her then, his eyes revealing nothing of his desired response as he spoke
"We could divorce." Irina appeared to ponder the idea, her eyes as veiled as his. When she spoke, her voice was drenched in her accent, it curled around her words as a smile curled around her mouth
"You're only after the half of my criminal empire that you'd receive in the settlement. And I'm rather fond of it. No. We'll stay married."
"We'll stay married." He nodded his assent. They returned to the papers in front of them. Neither upset by the outcome.
That night when she crawled into bed she lay on her back, close to him but not in the position she had taken to claiming as her own. When he reached for her to settle her into him, she hissed as her right side made contact with the mattress beneath. She'd been stiffer in her movements during the evening but he'd let it pass until then.
"What's wrong?" his concern evident in his voice.
She waved it off "Nothing, just a little bump." She attempted to lay on her side to placate him but pain wrenched through her body and found purchase on her face.
"Let me see."
"No. I'm fine." Irina pulled back, turning her face from his. Jack removed the covers from her and reached for the end of his/her shirt.
"Jack..." She tried to ward him off with her tone but was complete in her failure.
"Irina, if you're injured then I need to know about it, now let me see." She spoke no more. He edged the shirt up her body, stopping short of her breasts. The bump manifested itself in the form of ugly bruising around her ribcage, trailing down her side. "A bump? What the hell happened?"
"I had a disagreement with a contact."
"Does he still possess all of his limbs?"
"Yes. Though not all are currently working." He ran his fingertips over the offending marks that insulted her skin, convincing himself that he was checking for further injury. His mouth on the angriest mark belied the sincerity of the belief, longer then a kiss, shorter then a caress. She hissed for a different reason.
He tugged the shirt back down and curled her onto her left side, fitting his body in behind hers. "Sleep. And in the morning we'll have a discussion on the differences between little bumps and violent injuries."
She turned her head enough that their noses rubbed, her eyes finding his. "Dangerous times." He draped his arm around her, mindful of her wounds, their mouths a whisper apart.
"Dangerous times." He echoed her. She bumped their noses again before turning back.
Sleep claimed them both.
The fifth time they met, they almost killed each other. Opposite sides of some nameless hotel room in Taipei, they'd drawn lines in the sand and were throwing insults at each other from across them. Months of frustration and fruitless investigation were grating on both of them. They were lashing out and feeding off each other's fury. An argument spawned from nothing had grown monstrous.
He hurled the fact that the NSC was becoming suspicious of him at her, accused her of recklessness, of endangering them both. She charged him with blaming her for everything that went wrong, of being too quick to suspect her of trespass. They were shouting and vicious without conscience. She swore at him in Russian, he back in English.
They sliced from each other to fill in missing parts of themselves. The end result solved nothing. They were just mangled pieces of each other. Desperation to land the ending blow consumed him. He reached into his arsenal and dragged out the one weapon he knew he could wound her with. With all of his might he heaved Laura at her and with all of hers she slapped his face. The absolute stillness that followed the sound that resulted from her hand and his cheek forced them both to step back. She held herself against the shake that tried to seize her body. He walked out.
Left alone she crumpled to the bed and tried to regain control of herself. She was spent of everything she had and was loathed to change into her usual shirt. She screamed in her mind that she didn't need anything from him. She succumbed to sleep.
He returned later. Shattered from both of their actions. He took in the image before him. She was fully dressed and sleeping uneasily on the covers. He was hit with the memory of finding her on the couch the first night she came to him after Sydney's death, of the vulnerability that had been seeping from her that night and found that it was nothing compared to how lost she looked in her sleep at that moment. And he had caused it. Jack pulled a chair up to the side of the bed, the movement was enough to wake her, though she didn't open her eyes. "We can't keep doing this. We won't survive each other."
"What do we do?"
"There were times that I hated her. Laura. She was all you saw when you looked at me. You'd make love to my body and promise her the world. You didn't even know my name. I wanted you to." She sat up and forced herself to look at him. Her eyes cold, she'd revealed too much and couldn't reclaim it, she dared him to use it against her.
"I know it now." He declined her challenge. "You're right. We can't keep doing this." He leaned forward and pressed his mouth to hers.
He handed her back the pieces that he had ripped from her earlier. She ran her fingers over his mouth, returning what she had taken from him.
"We move forward now or we'll die in our past."
"Forward. Irina."
Jack swore for the forth time in under a minute. The codes he was trying were failing at every pass to get through the computer system. Irina, seated on the floor sifting through pages of intel and photographs, couldn't help the smile that tugged at her mouth in response to his language. He very rarely swore and it had always amused her when he did so, no matter the circumstance.
"Jack, your swearing is offending my delicate sensibilities." His fingers paused over the keys as he appraised her "And your sociopathic criminal tendencies offend mine." She bit down hard on her lip to stifle the laugh that was pounding against her teeth for freedom.
"Liar."
"The codes aren't working. I can't get past the firewall."
"Let me see." She pulled herself up from the floor, moving to him, batting his hands from the laptop. He made no move to give up his seat so she deposited herself in his lap, paying him no more heed then she would have the chair, her focus now on the screen in front of her. His hands found her thighs, keeping her in place. Irina continued typing but shifted enough to let him know that she was aware of him and not asking him to withdraw.
Minutes passed. She turned her face to his, her gaze flicking between his eyes and mouth. "I have it, but it will take some time before access is available." A hand moved to squeeze her inner thigh, her lips placed a tiny kiss on his bottom lip. Eyes open. She was ready. The computer beeped and she turned back. Jack pushed her up gently and slipped out from under her. He wasn't. His head was heavy with exhaustion and though he had started them on a new path he was still cautious of what lay ahead.
"Rest."
"I'm not a child Irina, I don't need to be sent to bed."
"When I have access to the files, I'll get started on what we need. You haven't slept. You're no good to me like this." She fired off a grin that he shot back with a scowl. But he relented all the same. "An hour, nothing more." He deposited himself on the bed.
As much as she knew she should be focused on the work in front of her, that it could lead to the people behind Sydney's death, her eyes kept flicking to the man asleep before her. An hour had passed. It was time to wake him. She stood at the end of the bed regarding him. In sleep he managed to look somewhat at peace. She could tell from his face that sleep was eluding him more often then not and she hated to call him back from it. She also hated being pushed away and decided on some pushing of her own.
Irina kneeled on the bed by his feet, determining her plan of attack. She crawled up his body slowly, arms on either side of his body, her legs tangling with his. As her face moved above his, Jack's eyes flew open, his hands grasping her hips. "Irina, what..."
"Shhhhh." She kissed him softly, never breaking her gaze.
"Irina" his voice was wearier this time and before she could protest he'd moved them into a seating position, her hands gripping his shoulders to keep from falling backwards. She dragged her legs up and around his waist, blocking his escape.
"As much as I was hoping that you'd be using your mouth for other endeavours, talk to me." And suddenly he had nothing to say. What could he say that she didn't already know, that she didn't already mirror? That they needed to find Sydney's murderers? That they had to stay focused? That they shouldn't be sidetracked by whatever was between them? They'd been working tirelessly and without redemption and his wife was currently sitting in his lap with her hair falling around her face....
He closed the distance between them, his mouth slanting over hers, his arms reaching to pull her closer. She responded in kind, surprise at his actions quashed by desire. She sucked his bottom lip into her mouth, showing none of the delicacy that she had earlier as she bit into it. His hands snaked under her shirt, fingers pushing into her skin, gripping her as his mouth opened to hers. Stroke for stroke their tongues matched, her fingers lost in his hair. Both lost of their senses. She pulled back and allowed him to remove her shirt before replacing her previous fierceness with gentle kisses. It was heady and blinding and she pushed hard into his lap. She swallowed the moan that escaped from his mouth.
The computer beeped. Their join at the mouths was replaced with one of the foreheads as they rested against each other, regaining their balance. "We've been waiting for that." Computer or kiss, she couldn't tell but she nodded and moved off to the side so that he could stand, he squeezed her hand, signalling his lack of regret.
But it was time to work again.