Disclaimer: I don't own the situations or characters portrayed herein. I'm just playing with them for a while.
Do You Take This Spy? Part 4
There had to be a conspiracy against them. There just had to be.
He had made a reservation, and they said he had the reservation.
He had called to confirm the reservation, and they said he had the reservation.
They showed up at the desk as Mr. and Mrs. Stetson (he could have danced about it) and the bored clerk informed him that there was no such reservation.
Was this the part of the dream where reality started interfering, and he did everything he could to put off waking just a little longer?
Somewhere behind the clerk an alarm or buzzer sounded, and Lee sighed. Any moment now he would wake up to an empty bed and another day at the agency.
But the clerk only turned around and picked up the phone, and another clerk came out of the back room to help them find their reservation.
"We have a queen room and one with two twin beds available," she said, apologetically.
"We'll take the queen room," his wife said firmly, and he grinned at the complete reversal of all the other times they'd checked into a hotel.
It has to be a conspiracy, he thought again, watching the maid tidy up. He had not realized it was possible for a human being to move so slowly. She crossed from one side of the room to the other, painfully slowly, and he looked sideways at Amanda, hoping she was as impatient as he was.
She was stretching her neck, studiously avoiding looking at him. As the maid got out chocolates for the pillows, his wife (how he loved calling her that!) turned toward him and banged her head against his shoulder in sheer frustration.
"I know, I know," he whispered. Would this woman never leave?
Amanda made the mistake of looking up at him, and he lost himself in her eyes. He was drawn to her, irresistibly, and bent his head to kiss her. Unfortunately, as he got closer, so did the maid.
They separated, again, and he closed his eyes against the rising irritation and ground his teeth together.
He hadn't been this impatient in a very long time. It had been a completely different time, a different place, a different Lee. A woman he had only just met had been telling him she hadn't brought him the little package that he was so desperate to find.
He sighed. Somehow the last four years suddenly seemed like the blink of an eye. He could wait a few more seconds.
The maid stepped back to admire her handiwork. His hand, traitorously honest, flew out from fixing his tie, giving her a gesture that said Get out of here.
She turned her back on them at last and shuffled out of the room, and even before the door closed behind her, he had taken his wife in his arms and kissed her.
This time, there was no need for restraint. Propriety, a constant in their relationship for so long, was a distant memory. He did not need to hold back. He did not need to think straight. He did not need to be circumspect and professional. They did not need to stop things before they went too far.
She was his wife. He was her husband. He could finally kiss her like he had been wanting to for years.
"Wow," she said dreamily, looking wonderfully unfocused, when he pulled back from her a second or a year or even a century later — it was hard to tell.
Joy flooded through him, for their marriage and their future, and without even thinking, he picked her up, bridal-style, in his arms.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, in surprise and delight, and he realized that this was a first for her, too — he'd never once carried her like this while she was conscious.
