Sark woke at 7, when the shaft of sunlight hit his face around the edge of the heavy hotel drapes. He yawned and stretched, his aching shoulder still sore, and he thought about what he had to do today.
Not really much of anything, he decided. Her ring had probably reached Vaughn by now, though he wasn't sure how that would play out. Either it would go his way, or they would surprise him and stick by one another.
He suspected Irina hoped his plan would backfire, that Sydney and Vaughn would be able to reconcile the fact that she had willingly cheated with him. To him it was curious, the notion of marital fidelity. Like any two people could possibly satisfy every need the other might have, indefinitely. Forever.
He hoped, in a cruel, Schadenfreude kind of way, that it went his way. He didn't like to lose.
Schadenfreude. It was such a good word. The Germans—he loved how their language was like Legos, how they stuck together three and four individual words to make meaning of one giant conglomerate.
Schaden- damages, pain, suffering. Freude- pleasure, enjoyment. Schaden ist die schönste Freude, wasn't that the phrase?
It was like the Germans were linguistically programmed to understand S&M.
He chuckled when he thought it, and then the phone rang. So. She was home from Berlin.
"Hello," he said, just in case it wasn't her.
"Fuck you." That was all she said, and hung up.
He placed the receiver back on the base and smiled.
The phone rang again.
"What?" he asked this time, sure it was her ringing him again.
"You are an even bigger bastard than I thought," she started, and he could hear that she was on her cell phone. "I was stupid to fuck you, but you're even stupider to fuck up your end of our deal."
"Sydney," he said mildly, "I really have no idea what you're talking about."
"Don't be coy," her voice had some static in it, "I was getting your intel, you didn't need to send the ring to him."
He was silent, considering this. She was right, but… this was way more fun.
"I take it my package arrived safely."
"Arrrgh!" she growled, and hung up on him again.
Sark threw back the covers and decided to get dressed. She might show up at the hotel, and though he liked to be naked, it wasn't the best way to meet someone who was likely to try to kill you.
He rapped, as he turned the shower on:
Pulled around tugged and shoved as people we could expose those as rogue and evil to the sound of siren or the mayday, they say, come follow me, but to be frank I did it my way.
She drove without really seeing where she was even going, aimlessly, first to the playground where they'd rendezvoused at midnight, past the park where she ran when she was working as a double for the CIA, and wound up in downtown at the hotel.
She didn't know what to do, whether she should kill him or not. Part of her wasn't sure why she was so angry—because he had told her mom? Because he'd double crossed her? For wrecking whatever semblance of normal life she'd been able to forge with Vaughn?
She parked her car in the garage and went inside the lobby. She didn't want to go up to his room. If they were alone, she would kill him, without question. Hotels didn't care who you were.
She strode confidently, the Bristow strut, to the front desk and looked the clerk in the eye. "Hi there," she said sweetly, "I need your help. I understand an old friend is staying here, and I'm supposed to meet him, but I'm afraid I've forgotten his room number."
The clerk looked at her and smiled. So this was the "old friend" of the young blonde Englishman. She wasn't old, nor did she appear to be just a friend. Not bad, not bad at all, his eyes wandered to her breasts under her suit jacket.
"I'll let him know you're here," he smiled slyly, knowing she had seen him undressing her with his eyes.
He turned away to dial the switchboard and Sydney blushed, just a little. She was still slightly embarrassed when someone flirted overtly with her.
"He says he'll meet you in the restaurant in 10 minutes, miss," the clerk told her. "Have a… nice day."
She thanked him and tried not to walk any differently, even though she knew he was looking at her legs as she walked away.
She settled into one of the upholstered chairs in the restaurant, and stared at the menu without really seeing the words. It was a one-page laminate sheet, and it all looked very expensive. Maybe the Agency could pick this up as well.
The tables had heavy cream-colored cloths on them, the kind that just brushed the edge of the carpet by your feet. She slipped her feet out of her heels and rubbed her toes in the carpet, through her nylons.
Why did she bother to dress up for work, she thought idly, everyone seemed to be able to see right through her façade of a Nice Government Worker. That she was one sick puppy, a woman who didn't want babies and who liked to have her husband slap her around.
There were white peonies in a vase on the bar, and the light from a window refracted in the water, making little rainbows on the carpet. Not that the carpet was anything special. Kind of a mauve, with little cream dots. Hotel carpet.
"Hello, Sydney," his voice behind her made her jump. He slipped into the chair across from her before she could even turn, and he smiled at her. A real smile, with his eyes and everything.
"How about you cut the crap," she said, her voice steely. "And tell me what you're really up to."
His Kenneth Cole-shod foot bumped her bare toes under the table and she jerked so hard her knee hit the underside of the table.
He only closed his eyes in response, and kept smiling. He couldn't have looked more amused.
"I'm not up to anything," he replied finally. "Whatever would make you think that?"
She stared at him. He was in dress clothes, grey slacks and a white button down, but it was unbuttoned two holes at the collar, and she could see the little dip at the top of his chest, where his collarbones were knit together. Supersternal notch, her brain repeated from memory.
"I felt you were being a little… circuitous in your investigation of Mr. Wells," he offered. "I had hoped I might be on his trail by now."
"You told my mother that we slept together."
"Yes."
"Why."
He shrugged, and looked at the silverware, adjusted the knife's handle so that it was exactly equidistant from the spoon along its entire length. "We've always been close, she and I. You told your father about our deal."
"Yes," she spat, "Our deal. How about we talk about that. About how you were not to send my rings to my husband—my husband—unless I didn't deliver your intel? You knew I was working on it, you sonuvabitch, and you did it anyway. You know, some people," and by 'people' she meant Vaughn, not herself, "Have feelings. Have… connections to other people that are genuine, ones that aren't based on lies and deceit."
"Really?" he said, bored. "You speak as if you know something about that. Please, tell me what that's like. Because I apparently don't know."
She gritted her teeth together so hard her molars made a squeaking sound. He was so right about her. Who did she have a connection to? Not to Vaughn—not anymore. Her very mother was… a fiction.
"Sydney, be serious," he said, and he reached under the table to grab her bare foot. She stared at him, frozen. The same stare from the night in his rental car, three days ago. She didn't resist as he placed her foot on his leg, under the table cloth, and ran his thumb over the inside of her arch, through her stockings.
She was so prim on the outside. He loved it, just a little bit, how she dressed up to go to work. He'd waited outside their house, to see her come out in the morning, gorgeous in her utter lack of awareness that he was tracking her. Skirts, blouses, suit jackets. Her work wardrobe was largely dark colors, occasionally punctuated by a light-colored blouse, but nothing outrageous. She didn't wear a lot of color. Her ears weren't pierced, and she didn't wear any jewelry on her hands aside from her wedding bands.
He noticed that she had on the diamond band.
Her dark, straight hair was in a pony tail, but there were a few feathers that were hanging out loose around her face.
"Let go of my foot," she fairly growled at him, but he wasn't really holding it tightly.
"Why don't you get up and walk away," he teased, "You're not tied down this time."
She willed herself to move, to wrench her foot away from his grasp, away from the steady, even pressure of his thumb against the bottom of her foot—she was very ticklish, but she wasn't laughing.
She simply couldn't move.
Just then the waiter walked up and said, "Will you folks be ordering anything today?"
"No, thanks," she said, and she couldn't meet the man's eyes. She could feel her eyelids, so heavy they felt like she couldn't blink or she wouldn't be able to open them again, ever. Like driving home from the airport after she'd been with him in England. Like the first time she and Vaughn had been able to go home together after the CIA had brought down the Alliance.
Like right now in this hotel restaurant with Sark deliberately coming on to her even after he'd wrecked her marriage.
"Ok," the waiter shrugged and walked away. He and the bartender exchanged glances. This wasn't that weird to them. There were a lot of high class escorts in the area.
"I think you're hungry," Sark said quietly, pointedly, "I know I am."
She nodded and stood up, slipping her feet into her shoes while holding onto the back of her chair. She was sick. Completely sick. And she didn't care.
They walked, without touching, to the elevator. Sark hesitated for a minute before pressing the button, like he couldn't remember what floor the room was on. Oh, yeah. Four.
They didn't look at each other, but Sydney couldn't resist tracing her pinky down the side of his hand where it hung at his side between them. He had very firm hands, she recalled thickly. Her nipples were so hard under her blouse, in her bra, that it hurt a little when she shifted and the cloth moved over them.
He put his hand over hers and squeezed his fingers between hers, which she didn't bend to close over his.
She and Irina had the same, freakishly long masculine hands, he noticed as he turned and slipped her engagement ring off her left hand.
Ding.