"Sark." Her voice snapped him out of his drowsy, silent mulling next to her. They lay apart, not touching, not cuddling. Neither of them had a need for that. "Where's your shower?"
"Down the hall," he turned his head to look at her.
She lay flat on her back, her fingers laced over her lower ribcage, her knees drawn up and her feet flat on the bed. He could see the tiny beads of sweat on her brow, and along her upper lip.
Without another word, she rolled off the bed, collected her clothes and disappeared down the hall. He lay still, hardly believing that he was lying in his sister's house, sweaty and sticky from screwing her.
He scrunched his eyes shut and a gleeful smile overcame him. He actually started laughing out loud a little, this slightly hysterical laugh that he got occasionally when something so ridiculous happened to him that he couldn't even believe it, he who had seen enough ridiculous, unbelievable things in the last 12 years to last most people a lifetime.
Count them, he thought, these things. The entire Rambaldi mess. The idiocy of the CIA. The idiocy of some of his employers. The death of his own father at the hands of his double-agent lover who'd been married to his latest conquest's current husband. At his order.
Sometimes he didn't know whether he thought his life was a ridiculous soap opera, or some kind of cosmic joke.
The smile slowly left him and he lay wondering if he could pull this off.
He did need her help. He needed intel that he knew the CIA had. He needed her to go back. Dear God, had he risked it all with this one indiscretion? What if she wouldn't go back?
Unsinn! Sei nicht so bescheuert! Don't be ridiculous, he told himself. Of course she'd go running back to LA, back to her precious moral boring Vaughn. He didn't understand their dynamic, except that Sydney had obviously found a man she could push about at her whim. Vaughn was malleable, easy.
He hadn't been raised to be a spy.
Yes, Sark thought, this was the difference between Vaughn, and himself. And Sydney.
Spy work, he'd found, was nothing like regular people supposed it was. It was mostly boring, with occasional stretches of excruciating, mind-numbing nothingness. The times you had to make yourself invisible. People didn't really know what that was like—to disappear. Even when people thought they weren't leaving a trail, they did. It was much harder to leave a place without a trace- like you didn't exist.
He read to pass these stretches. Or rode if he could. But mostly read. In fact, he'd forgotten he'd left The English Patient in this bedroom the last time he'd holed up here. He picked up the book from the bedside table and tried to find where he'd left off.
Ah, yes: The desert could not be claimed or owned—it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names long before Canterbury existed, long before battles and treaties quilted Europe and the East. Its caravans, those strange rambling feasts and cultures, nothing left behind, not an ember. All of us, even those with European homes and children in the distance, wished to remove the clothing of our countries.
He lay the book on his chest, open, and thought about it. They were all the same on the inside, so what did it matter what country they came from? How was it that people all over the world did the same things, day in and day out- laughed, married, fucked, died- and countries could still start wars and try to extinguish each other? He didn't understand.
He thought about the first time he'd tried to recruit her, at the technical library, in Moscow, she in her ridiculous military uniform get-up. He was in charge of the operations, after her mother had given herself over to the CIA. Even he hadn't known Irina's endgame, that she was deliberately giving Sydney intel that would make most of his operations useless. He wondered, briefly, about the value Irina had placed on his life, tasking him go on so many missions that she knew would go awry.
"Whatever Arvin Sloane pays you, it can't be enough," he'd said, disengaging the thumb safety and pressing the gun to her temple. "Would you consider coming to work for me, if it meant I'd let you walk out of here?"
She'd turned her head slowly towards him, obviously unafraid that he'd shoot her. "I believe if you took the time to hear a comprehensive offer, you might say yes," he pressed on. He was calling the shots now in the organization. He had discretionary funds to bring on new operatives.
"You're cute," she sneered insincerely, "But I'll pass."
Then she'd yanked her skeleton key out of the access terminal and set off the alarm, which foolishly distracted him and allowed her to knock his gun away from him. They grappled for several seconds, but the gash on his knee from the hatchet she'd thrown into it several weeks before caused him to flinch. She rolled away from him, and the guards were on him. She'd run up the stairs and he'd been taken into custody. One mention of Irina's name had earned him his freedom. She still had friends in high places within the governmenti
"Put some pants on already," her voice cut into his daydream again.
He looked up and saw her standing in the doorway, her long dark hair still dripping wet, but combed into long, straight chunks. She had her clothes back on. What a shame.
"Oh," he said, languid, "I'd supposed you want me to keep them off, considering the vigor with which you'd removed them." He smiled.
She picked up his pants from the floor and threw them at him. "You supposed wrong."
She was all business. Their 15 minutes of sweaty, unapologetic animal sex had focused her back on the task.
I would've been able to finish my briefs for that meeting, she thought, a tad bitterly, if I could've just done that weeks ago.
"Sydney," his voice was soft behind the bathroom door, "How soon are you going back?"
She smoothed a few wisps of hair around the nape of her neck into the French braid she was plaiting her long, unruly hair into. "Don't worry, Sark, you'll get your intel soon enough."
"That's not why I ask," he said.
"Well, what then?"
"I think you might have a look at your stomach."
What?
She pulled her shirt from her jeans and looked at her abdomen in the full length mirror on the back of the door.
There were two tiny rows of jagged lines, between her belly button and…. Well, down there. She traced them lightly with her fingertips. Were those... teeth marks? They were an angry red but quickly tended towards purple in the deeper parts.
With an exasperated howl she threw open the door and yelled, "Why did you do that?"
He looked amused and shrugged innocently. "You didn't seem to mind at the time."
Must. Control. Blood. Pressure. She could feel the hot flush, the blood jump to her face before the feeling of faintness started to wash over her. Do. Not. Faint.
"Oh, Sydney, come off it," he cajoled her, "If you're half as rough with him as you just were with me, he'll think it's an old wound."
Except there haven't been any fresh wounds in a month, you asshole.
"This?" she pointed to her stomach, "Is unacceptable if our… partnership, if I can even call it that, is going to work."
As she turned away from him, she muttered under her breath, "Amateur."
He grabbed her from behind and yanked her close against his body. She was astonished by the strength in the skinny arm he had around the front of her chest. He leaned in to whisper next to her ear, a gesture dangerous in its calmness, "I think you will find, Agent Bristow, that I am anything but."
His confidence reminded her of her mother.
Back downstairs, he gave her the backpack she'd been carrying, her guns and the camera.
"Aren't you forgetting something?" she asked.
"Mmm, do you want a goodbye kiss?"
She didn't even blink as she held up her left hand and flipped him off with her ring finger.
"I believe it is you who is forgetting," he said smoothly, "our agreement. You help me, I give you back your rings."
"You must have an unconscious death wish."
"You must forgive me if I don't feel terribly… ill at ease." He was back to default boredom setting, she observed. "'You burn me, I burn you'--" his smile was nearly impossible to bear—"Wasn't that how it went?"
Fucker.
As quickly as she could collect her things from the bed and breakfast and get the hell of England, she thought, the better.
She pedaled furiously up the road, away from him. Away from whatever craziness he was trying to suck her into with this game.
He was a kid-- God, what was she doing? Desperation made her stupid; it had been the case with Danny, with Vaughn when she'd found out he'd married another woman, and now…
Maybe the problem isn't you, maybe it's them, said a little voice in the back of her head. They want something you can't give them.
She shoved it down, the urge to believe that human connections were useless, and pedaled harder.
Episodes:
i Dead Drop. Season 2, Episode 4. Written by Jesse Alexander.