Chapter 6: Awry
Sydney slammed the door to the safe house, the chilly night air blowing errant bits of snow into the shoddy living room. On the other side of the door, Vaughn fought down his rising anger and calmly opened it back up, walking in behind her.
The only sign that she'd even been here was the string of tactical gear leading to the small bathroom of the one bedroom house. Following the wet spots where she'd walked, he lifted up the vest, jacket, and holster, looking up when the door to the bathroom opened. Rather than seeing her face he was hit with two gigantic boots, one slamming into his thigh as the other nailed his injured arm.
He growled, pushing down the anger once more as he saw the door close once more, the water running as she poured herself a bath.
He shivered, thinking that a bath was probably a good idea. Unfortunately, he knew he wasn't going to get a chance any time soon. Removing his own gear, he walked into the kitchen after kicking off his boots toward the door. Rummaging through the cabinets, he managed to find a can of coffee, two small startled mice and a box of tea with the end chewed open.
Grabbing both the tin and the box, he began his search for a pot to boil water in. After successfully making the worst cup of coffee ever, he poured it out with a grimace, grabbing two unscathed tea bags and setting the kettle over the burner.
Hearing the water drain, he grabbed her large backpack off of the couch, moving over to the door. He hesitated before knocking, but decided that she'd be more upset if she had to ask him for her clothes. And – knowing the mood she was in – she's probably parade around naked before asking him for help with something.
'Not that that's a bad thing,' his mind swayed, Michael grinning as he tapped on the door. "Syd?"
"Go to hell."
"Sydney, I've got your clothes – they're by the door," he growled at her gruffly, dropping the bag to the floor and heading back to the kitchen.
The whistle blew and he poured two hot cups over the bags of tea, holding one in each hand as his fingers began to thaw out. He didn't look when the door opened, content to just sit and clutch the two steaming mugs as she snatched up her backpack and pulled it into the steaming bathroom.
He shook his head, bouncing up and down on the couch lightly as he tried to determine how comfy it would be to sleep on for the night.
"That's your bed," she growled between the bedroom and the bathroom, a rosy glow to her cheeks from the heat of the bath she'd taken.
"Yep," he spoke to himself, sipping the scalding beverage, wincing at the temperature but deeming it better than the coffee before taking another sip.
He briefly glanced up at her when she walked into the room, a small ball of guilt lying in his stomach, but he stressed the term 'small'.
"I made you some tea."
Silence.
"It'll warm you up."
Silence.
"Did you save me any hot water?"
"Not on your life." She pulled out the laptop from its protective case and opened it up, the giant hoodie familiar to Vaughn's eyes as he realized it was his own, seeing a pair of his boxers peeking out from the band of his rolled up pajama pants.
"You're mad at me but you'll still wear my clothes?" he joked, seeing the death glare she tossed him, knowing that if looks really could kill he'd be six feet under by now. "Sydney, I'm sorry."
"No, you're not," she growled, beginning to type up her report on the mission earlier that day.
"You know what? No – I'm not. I'm not sorry I decided to hit the kill switch because it saved your life." His anger was beginning to bubble to the surface, and he instantly knew he'd said the wrong thing.
"You erased it…all of it. How could you have done that, Vaughn."
"Syd, I had to," he reached out to touch her, pulling back when the glare returned.
Sydney went back to ignoring him and he determined that it was a lost cause. Standing and scooting her tea toward her, he made his way to the bathroom.
Closing the door, he quickly noticed the open and used First Aid kit sitting on the counter. He'd known she'd been hurt, but she didn't mention where. "Typical Bristow," he grumbled, pulling the black sweater over his head, the equally dark shirt coming with it. The shirt stuck to his wound, the laceration probably deep enough to require stitches, but there was no way he was telling the angry woman in the living room that.
He decided to clean it out during his shower, the black and gray cargo pants hitting the floor next to hers, his boxers and socks landing in the same pile. Naked, he lifted the clothes up and opened the bathroom door, walking across the hall into the bedroom and dumping them into the corner.
"The gear is in the room," he stated, walking back into the bathroom with a grin, knowing that her eyes had followed him on his nude trek down the hall.
Jumping back into the bathroom, he flipped on the hot water knob, his hand waiting patiently for the warm water to kick on. Unfortunately, that moment never came, and he settled for a luke-warm, more cold than anything, shower.
Shivering more when he got out than when he went in, he grabbed the one towel, finding it soaked after Sydney's hot-water-stealing stint a few minutes earlier. Toweling off with the cold terrycloth, he looked around for his clothes and remembered that they were still in his pack. Which, if he remembered correctly, should be in the living room.
"Damn… fucking night!" he cursed quietly, wrapping the towel around his waist and walking into the living.
"Where's my bag?" he asked, looking around the room and not spotting the item anywhere.
"Probably with the Jeep."
"You didn't grab it?" he asked, incredulously.
"Why would I have?" she asked, her voice monotone, her eyes not bothering to look up from the screen.
"Because you said, 'I'm gonna get the stuff from the Jeep', that's why!" he shouted, his hand still clutching at the towel, his body shaking as the beads of water dried on his cool skin.
"No, I said I was gonna grab my stuff."
"Sydney, goddammit!" he shouted, slamming his hand into the wall, cursing again when the pain reverberated, letting him know that it was his injured arm. The blood had been thinned by the dripping water, now looking like it was running in rivulets down his arm and dripping off the ends of his fingers. "Everything I had with me was in that bag!"
"Should've grabbed it," she snapped, her anger not letting up as she continued to type away on the small keyboard.
He closed his eyes tight until he saw stars as he willed his temper to not convince him to strangle the woman he loved, stalking back into the bedroom. Unwrapping the towel and setting it against his arm he finding one of her hair-ties on the top of her pile of clothes. Grabbing it and stretching it almost past its limit, he secured the towel around his arm, looking at the pile of clothes on the bed.
Picking up his sweater, shirt, and pants, he could feel how damp they were. Running six miles from shouting guards as well a walking another ten to reach the safe house – all while blinding and sticky snow blew into their faces – ensured that the clothing wouldn't be wearable until they dried.
He shivered again, lifting her stuff up and setting it on the dresser as opposed to just dumping them onto the floor. She was notoriously stubborn, he knew that, but right now her anger was taking control of her emotions.
And he was still naked and wet.
Hauling the large downy quilt off of the bed, he wrapped himself up and gathered all of their wet clothes, carrying them into the living room, trying desperately not to trip over the long hanging blanket around his legs.
She ignored him, and though her anger was still there, she did feel sort of bad that she'd deliberately left his bag behind. Still, her anger was enough and she was determined to hold onto the resentment for as long as she could.
He started a fire, rigging up the pokers and a few skinny sticks into a clothesline of some sort, draping their clothes in front of the heat before sitting down in front of the fire himself.
"I'm sorry I hit the kill switch, Syd," he started.
"No, you're not," she replied frostily.
"I am now since it made you leave my clothes sixteen miles away in an unoccupied Jeep," he retorted, tossing her a wry grin, seeing the glare she tossed over the tilted screen of the laptop. Hurt and anger shone equally in her eyes, and he turned back toward the flames, sticking his hands out to warm them up.
"It wasn't the easiest thing for me to do, Sydney."
"Seemed like it was," she retorted.
"She killed my father…and we had all the answers at our fingertips. Every contact she had during her time with the KGB, all of it. All of her reports," he whispered, his eyes lost in the tangle of fire before him.
She stopped typing to look over at his back as he sat in front of the heat wrapped in that ridiculous blanket. Though she was still furious at him, the icy wall she'd set up was beginning to melt away.
"But the intelligence would have told us exactly where she was. We could've gotten her," she stated, closing the computer and setting it on the table beside her empty teacup.
"I know," his voice was still quiet.
"Then isn't that worth the risk? It's worth everything, Vaughn!" her voice was watery and frustrated, tears slipping over her lids as she wiped angrily at them, folding her hands in her warm lap.
He shook his head, his mind slipping back into his memories. "I have this…this memory of my father," he paused, letting the words reach her ears. "He…he took me to my first hockey game. I was so nervous, I almost wet my pants. I was…eight years old and had been practicing all my life for this one game. He'd shown me everything he knew, and I was so excited to finally play."
"First face off, this giant kid slammed into me and I landed flat on my ass. After remembering who and where I was, I got up and looked over at my dad, and he was…beaming. He was actually happy that I'd gotten knocked down, and I couldn't understand; I didn't know what would make him enjoy watching me fail."
He stopped for a moment, his eyes still focused intently on the dancing flames, watching them sway around each other intricately before dying out near the top of the fireplace.
"So, toward the end of the game, with him shouting at me – coaching me through everything, I got a hold of the puck and decided I was gonna go for it. I could hear him yelling at me to stop, but I didn't. I shot it straight into the goal, Syd; almost caught the net on fire, and as everyone on the team cheered for me, I got a good look at my father's face. He was furious."
"Why?" she squeaked from the couch, his voice soothing her, smoothing away her anger and replacing it with guilt. Guilt over something she hadn't done, but guilt nonetheless.
"Apparently, when I'd broken away with the puck, I'd cross the white line that marked the edge of the playing area. We played on this gigantic lake, but only a part of it got thick enough to actually hold weight without breaking, and that's where we set up the hockey lines and nets."
"When I'd crossed the line, I'd gone into a spot where the ice began to crack. I didn't see it crack, but my dad did. After the goal, he flew across the ice and grabbed my arm, almost throwing me into the truck before driving away. Still, I didn't know I'd done anything wrong. He spent the entire twenty-minute drive yelling at me for not listening – not following his rules."
"He grounded me from playing hockey until he got back from his business trip. I was so mad at him that when we got home, I jumped out of the truck and told him, 'I hope you don't come back!' Later that night, when he came up to tuck me in, he told me why he'd yelled – why I was in trouble."
"He said it wasn't that he was angry, he was just scared. He was proud of me for getting my first goal, but I'd broken the rules to get it, and that was wrong. If I'd fallen through the ice, all my hockey gear would have pulled me down to where his arms couldn't reach me and I'd drown. That's why he'd yelled at me to let the puck go and not take the shot."
"But, being an eight year old boy, I ignored him – told him to go away. He left that night for his trip and never came home."
Tears fell freely from her eyes as she understood now that it wasn't just herself that had been robbed of righting the wrong that was her mother, by getting Irina Derevko back into custody…Vaughn had the same sense of loss going through his veins. The same betrayal - more so perhaps.
"Sydney, you didn't have anything to do with that woman's betrayal, you know that. And…and I don't blame you for what she did to my family – what she did to me. But the lesson I learned from my father that day on the ice isn't one I'm just gonna forget. Yes, we had the goal in sight, and yes, we probably could have gotten away with it, but I will never once put a piece of information before your life. Never," he affirmed, looking over at her splotchy face and leaking eyes.
"It wasn't worth it, Syd; she isn't worth it. Not to me."
Silence filled the room for quite some time, with the only sound the comforting crackle of the fire. Sydney hadn't said anything after Vaughn's compelling story, but her feelings of guilt and remorse wouldn't dissipate. Not just for the things that her mother had done, but for the fact that she'd been so awful to Michael in the last few hours.
The fact that he loved her so much that he'd forego catching the woman who killed his father showed more than his level of integrity.
The fact that she'd been selfish enough to leave his only bag of clothes back at their Jeep showed a little something about her as well, and she stood quietly before making her way into the bedroom. Changing out of Vaughn's typical sleeping outfit, one that she'd packed because his clothing was comfier than her own, she changed into her own pajamas, slipping on an extra long sleeved sweatshirt to fight of the bite of the chilly air.
He turned when she walked back into the room, his hands in the process of checking on the dryness of the clothes beside him. Despite the blanket and the fire, he was freezing. The floor wasn't adequate at all, and his backside and legs were nearly numb from absorbing the coolness from the wooden planks. Looking down, he realized quickly that he wasn't sitting on the wool carpet.
"Here," she spoke, catching his attention. He looked up at her outstretched hands, his neatly folded pajama pants and hoodie waiting in her arms. He tossed her a lopsided grin, standing, and taking the clothes – something resembling an awkward peace offering between the two. Dropping the blanket to the floor, he nearly jumped into his clothing, warm from Sydney's body.
"Thanks," he murmured, seeing her begin to turn away, her eyes looking down at the laptop. He caught her arm, pulling her back up before him. "It can wait," he almost ordered, his arms wrapping around her back and shoulders, her body instantly relaxing and molding against his.
"I'm so sorry, Vaughn, I was such a jerk," she mumbled into his shoulder, her hands rubbing at his back as she felt the cool skin of his neck against her cheek. "C'mon, let's sit by the fire," she pulled away, setting a kiss to his cold nose, reaching down and lifting the blanket up.
"As long as we get to sit on the rug this time," he grumbled, tugging it over and flopping down, Sydney wrapping the blanket around him and perching neatly into his lap.
Vaughn wrapped his arms around her upper body, pulling the blanket around them both. He set his lips against her cheek, resting his chin on her shoulder. She tilted her head down, each mind muddled with their own thoughts as they watched the fire burn.
"You know, we should probably get some sleep," he mumbled, yawning into her ear before nipping gently at the lobe.
She chuckled, closing her eyes as his hands encompassed hers, pulling him tighter around her. "I don't think that you've got sleep on your mind."
He grinned, his lips trailing down from her ear to her throat, an occasional bite or suck taking place here and there. She sighed, his hands leaving hers to grip her waist, pulling her backside into his groin. Relaxing his hold, his cold hands pushed up the hem of her two shirts before settling over her stomach and ribs. She squeaked, trying to get away from his ice-like fingers, but they held strong.
"Your hands are freezing," she grumbled, tilting her head to the side to grant him better access to the column of her neck. He dove in, his tongue laving any love bites he left behind as a series of small purple marks trailed down from her ear to her collarbone.
"You're not leaving anything behind that my dad will see, will you?" she asked with a grin, his mouth popping away from her shoulder as he ignored her question, pushing his lips against hers. His tongue invaded quickly, dueling with it as they sighed, each breathing in the others exhale.
They devoured each others lips, tongues dueling for dominance as his hands inched their way up her shirt until his fingers were cupping her breasts, the peaks fitting perfectly in his palms. She arched her back against his chest, their mouths coming apart as she pressed kisses to the side of his jaw and neck.
He half lifted her up, half pushed her away before tilting her body down until she was sprawled out on the fuzzy wool rug before him. Stretching out beside her, he dragged the blanket up over their warming bodies, his mouth going back to the hollow of her throat. He dipped his tongue into the small depression, her groan making his erection throb against the cotton of his sweatpants, the friction only adding to his excitement.
Her fingers tugged at his hair, pulling his head back up to hers where she met him with a wet kiss, her tongue tracing his as she pressed her hips up against his waist. Given their situation, she chuckled against his lips, causing him to pull back with a half-grin, propping his torso up with one arm as the other traced a line from her shoulder to nipple, flicking the bud through the two layers of shirts she had on.
"What's so funny?"
"I was just thinkin'," she smiled, her hands sneaking up underneath the large sweatshirt to trace his twitching abs. "Kinda funny that on a mission - we end up having sex on a rug in front of the fire. Seems too romantic to me," she grinned, seeing him shake his head and swoop in for another kiss, silencing the conversation.
Eventually, after their clothes had been removed, Vaughn perched himself above her, locking his elbows into place as his hand tangled with her splayed hair beside her head. Aligning himself with her silken entrance, he pushed himself in to the hilt, dropping his head down to place a smacking kiss against her gasping mouth before pulling back to look down at her.
Removing completely from her body, the crown of his erection bouncing up against her clit, he positioned himself once more and slid home. His thrusts went from slow to fast, never quite giving her a chance to complete an orgasm, despite the fact that she begged him over and over to let her come.
He couldn't keep his eyes closed, even when she tried to throw him off with an occasional squeeze from her inner muscles. Watching her face contort in pleasure; hearing the pants and feeling her breath against his chest; that coupled with the fact that in his perched, less intimate, position he got an ample view of her body during their coupling.
Her breasts bounced with each thrust, and her legs were now bare from where the blanket had fallen down from their waists, covering only Vaughn's calves and feet. The occasional pop from the fire increased the sizzling heat between them as his eyes took in every inch of alabaster skin beneath him. He felt the churning low in his stomach, and from the squeaking and mewling sounds coming from Sydney's throat, she'd been close for some time. Dipping down, he licked across her upper lip where a drop of sweat was beading, the saline taste invigorating on his tongue. She met him, her once stationary hands against his stomach and chest now yanked him down to fully cover her body, one hand resting on his back between his shoulder blades as the other cupped the back of his neck, pulling at the hairs.
He groaned, the sound being swallowed between their panting mouths, willing his hips to move faster and faster until he'd reached his limit. His hot semen exploding against her walls, her own body crashing around his as he breathed in her cry, his arms holding her tight against his chest. Their mouths never parted, though their kisses became mere brushing of lips, the occasional tongue darting out as the sweat from their bodies cooled and they shivered simultaneously. Pulling out and away from her, she grumbled at the loss of contact, hearing him laugh before finally opening her eyes.
"Where you goin'?" her sultry voice asked, the purple haze in her eyes making his stomach drop with desire, despite their recent climaxes.
He didn't answer, merely reached back and found the quilt, pulling it over his back before wrapping his arms underneath her and dragging her up against his chest. After swaddling them both, he stood on shaking legs and carried her to the bedroom, depositing his bundle onto the bed, diving in after her.
"Michael…I'm sorry for the way I acted. I was being a selfish jerk," she whispered, feeling his arms mold her body into his, her head coming to rest on his shoulder with a sigh.
"Hey, don't worry about it. I'll just have to get you back,"
"Oh really" she asking with a lift of her head, intrigued.
"Yep. I foresee bondage, Sydney. Lots of bondage,"
…