It always goes this way, like a dance, or a game. Anything where there are two sides, never perfectly in unison.

He'll talk low and gravelly in her ear and she'll wonder if the sex voice is intentional, if he knows what it does to her. He'd be embarrassed if she mentioned it, turn self-conscious and try to find a different way to say it.

There are a lot of things he should say. Some like that, some not. She'll take whatever she can get, and what she'll get is more sex voice over the comm link.

She has a hundred accents, gruff and twang and everything in between, but no sex voice. She'll rely on clothes, instead, tonight. The lace blouse, push-up bra blatantly obvious beneath. The close-cropped wig, short little skirt. The tall thin boots with the long thin heels. Dressed to fuck, crammed into the passenger seat of something sporty and European, next to the man she wants to fuck.

It should be so simple.

He'll steal glances during the drive. The curve of her breasts underneath the lace. The long stretch of thigh between boots and skirt. She'll work to catch him at it, and when she inevitably does, she'll look over and give the skirt a little tug.

A communication in the motion.

Sender: That was just for show. Look all you want. And touch, someday.

Receiver: Read you loud and clear, and yes. Someday.

She wants him to look, and she's certain he knows it. Certain he will. Because it always goes this way.

He'll drop her off a block from the club, and maybe watch her walk away. She'll put a little extra swing in her hips, just in case.

Berlin, this week, and they'll meet up eventually in the club. It will be hot, crowded, smoke over the lights. Smoke in her nose, sweat, and sex. His voice in her ear, worse than sight or scent.

She'll complete the mission. Crack, steal, run, fight, whatever it takes. She'll hand him their quarry in the car, take a deep breath and wipe at the sweat on her forehead. He'll tell her good work, at least. Maybe she'll be amazing this time, if the mission proves difficult and he's got that bold look in his eyes.

This is their protocol.

———

The trouble with protocol is in the assumptions.

Assumption number one: Mission will go according to plan.

Assumption number two: Nothing ever happens to make the sender question someday.

Assumption number three: Assumptions one and two will never collide.

———

Berlin is different.

Berlin is where things go wrong, where she drops three men in the club's basement and four more follow her up the stairs. Where Vaughn abandons the sex voice, screams her name over the comm link and grabs her hand at the top of the stairs, and they dart between the club kids until they reach the exit. Where the night air is cold on her face and their car is in flames down the block.

They run at the sight of that, his hand in hers, and she struggles to keep up, slutty boots and documents wrapped around her calves, zipped in just before it all went to hell. The club fades into the background, but there are endless others down the street — more bass and strobes and smoke, lines snaking into the street.

They pass all of this, his hand locking tighter around hers as he swings into an alley, dark and damp, lined with dumpsters. The right sort of place to be executed, she thinks, blood splattered on brick walls. But they sprint through that, onto another main street, feet pounding the ground and a U-Bahn station in sight. They make it there, she thinks, and they're golden.

They make it.

———

Spies, as a general rule, must be frequently sexy and infrequently sexed.

Not all of them. There are a select few, trained in infiltration and seduction.

For the rest, there are low-cut dresses and smooth lines, legs defined by long heels. A champagne flute, or perhaps a martini glass, poised in one hand. The illusion of seduction, just a tease. A promise, never delivered.

And there is the threat of the first group. The one-night stand trained to fuck you senseless and crack your briefcase combination. The wife sent to steal your secrets for years. The ex-lover who lied about everything but emotions.

Intimacy needs trust, and trust needs intimacy.

And if, for example, you are Sydney Bristow, you soon find that protocol bars you from being intimate with the one person you trust completely.

———

Berlin is different.

Berlin is after Alice, after the hospital and the bar and the awkwardness. After he became a paradox, and everything she'd believed about him was rocked to the core. After she'd looked back at all the signs — the longing looks, the things he'd said, his half of the game and the dance — and decided that somehow she'd misread them.

But there were other things, less concrete and more firm at the same time. Among them what he sacrificed for her.

Vengeance. That much seemed clear.

Vengeance was him, a year ago, that damn tape recorder in the bloodmobile. Back then it was all about justice, maybe even revenge, about his own wrecked childhood and his own pain. He had pushed all that aside for her, talked to her mother, told her to do the same. Set aside his goals in light of hers.

A sacrifice, a substantial one, and surely that meant he loved her, even if he couldn't say it. All the other things were just more proof, more evidence.

She had been so sure. She had been so wrong.

———

The sound of her boot heels clicking rapid-fire over concrete reverberates throughout the U-Bahn station. They run, past a trio of leather-clad twentysomethings, into the closing doors of a bright yellow subway car, and she relaxes when it starts to move. Collapses into a nearby seat, breathing hard, toes on fire.

He sits beside her. "Sydney, you're bleeding," voice concerned, fingertips light on her arm, just below the gash there. Courtesy the third man, who'd knifed her while she was finishing off the second.

"It's nothing," and fuck you while we're at it.

"It doesn't look like nothing." He pulls his hand back. "There's a safehouse a few stops down from here. We'll go there and get you cleaned up."

"I told you, it's nothing. I've had much worse." Taipei comes to mind, but she doesn't mention it. It reminds her of the risks she's taken for him, her own sacrifices. All for something she doubts now.

"Well, we've got to go somewhere and regroup," he says.

He's right, she knows, and it means they'll go to the safehouse and he'll be all bandages and worried eyes. She glares out the train-car window and crosses her legs, right over left, calf brushing against his, skirt inching further up her thighs.

Surely, that does something to him, even now.

———

We base trust on history.

We build it on knowledge of actions in the past, on proof time and time again.

We start with first impressions, and add to them events, words, actions, emotions.

We build a body of evidence, add to it the feelings in our heads, in our hearts.

The conclusion is trust. The trouble with trust is that there are events we never see, words we never hear.

And if, for example, you are Sydney Bristow, the unseen and the unheard might shock you. Change you.

Make you send a stronger signal. Force clearer reception.

———

The safehouse is two blocks away from the metro stop, the street dark, lonely and deteriorating. Many of the buildings are gutted and abandoned, most of the rest have broken windows and swirls of graffiti. She reminds herself to walk the part, puts the swing back in her hips, struggling not to hobble on the crumbling concrete. He would notice if she did — offer her his arm, ask if she's okay, more concerned eyes. Welcome, not so long ago, but now she wants to be independent. Doesn't want to need him. Doesn't want to want him.

He stops outside a small, narrow building, plaster chipping away to reveal brick. The ground floor is a television repair shop that may or may not be open for business tomorrow, their destination the apartment above it. She follows him up a narrow set of wooden stairs, stands beside him outside the door as he fumbles through his pockets and eventually produces a key.

"Universal key," he says. "Works on all our places in Germany that haven't been converted to keypad, theoretically."

It works on this place, at least, and the musty couch a few feet beyond the door is a welcome sight. She clomps across the wooden floor, sits and rips at the zippers of the boots. The documents go on the end table beside her, protected from sweat and blisters by a layer of plastic.

Vaughn walks behind the couch, toward the kitchen, as she drops the boots in a heap next to her feet. He returns, old metal first aid kit in hand, and sits on the opposite end of the couch as she sinks back into the thin cushion and longs to be home, clean, in her own bed or bathtub.

"Why don't you go get yourself cleaned up?" he suggests, pointing to two doors behind him. "Bathroom and bedroom, I think. There should be spare clothes in the bedroom."

She stands, pads across the cold floor in her bare, sore feet. Bloody and short the stiletto heels, she doesn't feel very attractive.

Doesn't feel like forcing the issue.

———

This is the job for little girls who like to play dress-up. Turn sequins, glitter and gauze into princesses and magic fairies.

In the adult version, dress-up is leather, vinyl, mesh, and she becomes club kid, streetwalker, vixen. She plays a part, and plays it well, if she wants to live.

Rome. Taipei. Helsinki. Paris. London. Berlin.

She'd thought Vaughn liked to play the part. She'd thought he looked past the disguises and saw Sydney Bristow.

She'd thought he wanted them both, Sydney and the vixen.

———

The bathroom looks and smells as old as the rest of the building, and the water in the sink runs brown for a good minute before it clears up. She decides the old, stained bathtub is not going to pass as a substitute for her own, and does her best with a damp washcloth. Careful around the cut on her arm, rougher over her face, until the black ringing her eyes is mostly gone.

She changes next, old clothes and wig tossed in a pile on the floor, replaced by the sweatpants and t-shirt she found in the bedroom closet. The t-shirt almost fits, still baggy over her bare breasts. But the pants are too big, even after she rolls the waistband, and they ride low on her hips, below the thin black straps of her panties. He'll see them, and there's nothing she can do, and she wants him to see them.

She feels like forcing the issue again.

He is waiting with the first aid kit when she walks back out to the tiny front room, but he's been up and about. There's a kettle on the stove, blue flames high beneath it, and his gun rests on top of the documents, her boots in a neat line on the floor next to the end table.

Silently, he skims his fingers down her shoulder, fingers curling around the sleeve of her t-shirt, rolling it up. It is just loose enough, she thinks, that with the right angle, he could see her breast through the sleeve. She wonders if he was looking. If that means anything, anymore.

He is painstakingly focused as he dabs at it with an antiseptic wipe. Careful as he covers it with ointment and then a gauze pad. He runs medical tape over all of that, and she leans in, nose close to his, breath on his face, to inspect his progress.

"Thank you," she whispers, before he can back away.

That rattles him, she thinks; it has to, although she's never absolutely sure anymore.

"I, ah, called our situation in," he says. "We're to stay here tonight and then dead drop the documents tomorrow morning. We'll call cabs and take our scheduled flights out."

"Okay."

The tea kettle whistles, and she stands, walks into the kitchen. Wonders again if he watches her. If he likes the glimpse of black cotton at her hips, her hair hanging loose, now, around her shoulders.

Maybe he likes none of it, she thinks. Maybe he wouldn't want to dance with her in the club, her hands on his ass, pulling his hips into hers. Maybe he wouldn't want to fuck her up against a faux-marble pillar in the U-Bahn station, short little skirt hiked up around her waist and slutty boots locked around his body.

Maybe he only likes Alice in her long wool coat and her turtleneck, frosted hair and whining voice. That would explain a lot.

The cabinet next to the stove holds tea bags in a rusting tin and little else. She counts a few dusty cans of soup, vegetables, and the omnipresent Spam. The leftover remnants of what might have been a hub of activity fifteen or twenty years ago, back when this was East Berlin.

"They don't keep this place very well stocked," he says, walking in behind her and standing beside the refrigerator. "We could throw some soup on, if you want."

"I'm not hungry." She is starving.

———

This is the job where a friend is as dangerous as a lover.

Regardless of allegiances, the lover learns bedroom secrets. The right places for a touch, a caress, a kiss. Fast or slow. Rough or gentle.

The friend learns other secrets, just as important. Memories. Hopes. Dreams. Fears.

She'd been lucky. She'd found a friend with a security clearance. She'd found a friend she trusted.

———

She pours some of the water from the kettle into a chipped mug from the cabinet and adds a tea bag from the tin. He watches all of this, stark-still by the refrigerator, never offering to help, never asking if she'd please make him a cup. Maybe, she thinks, he put the water on to make it look like he wanted tea. Maybe he really hates the stuff.

Fuck that, she thinks. Fuck all of it. Words she thinks but never says. There are too many of those, she decides.

Mug in hand, she brushes past him, close enough for a few seconds of good solid contact, and returns to the couch. He follows, still silent, and she wishes this were two months ago, when she could have savored the time alone with him, oblivious.

She sits at one end of the couch, knees tucked and feet on the center cushion; he takes the other end, angled toward her. The first sip of tea burns her tongue, and she leans over to set it on the floor, angled precariously on the uneven boards.

This would be easier in the old clothes, the boots and the skirt and the bra, makeup still heavy on her face. It would be easier with a man she didn't know and didn't want. When she pulls herself upright, back into his surprisingly steady gaze, she has little more than a vague notion that she needs to do something, that this is her chance. That it might be her only chance, ever.

She recalls his hands on her arm, and yes, that's a good place to start, good as any. Subtle, hand on her own shoulder and moving down, index finger light over the bandage, down to the border between gauze and skin. She stares into him and traces that line, light and slow.

He swallows, and looks down at the floor.

Do you love me? And if so, why Alice? But no, not yet. Instead, she asks, "What do you think happened back there, at the club?"

"I don't know. I don't think it was SD-6 or Sark. Probably a third party. K-Directorate, maybe."

"They've been quiet lately." Her feet slide sideways on the couch cushion, her knees further apart, and he wouldn't have to move far, she thinks, to put his body between her thighs. Surely he must notice this. Surely he must consider it.

He leans away from her, back pressing deep into the cushion, and her thoughts are triumphant until she remembers that she could have garnered this reaction any time. And that, she thinks, is exactly the problem. "Yeah, they have. The Agency was hoping to see them dissolve."

"Not K-Directorate. Not that easily. They're not as big as the Alliance, but they're still too substantial to just go away." She makes no movement this time; the subject hits too hard for her to think of anything seductive. And it is the center of everything, anyway. "Vaughn, do you think we'll see the end, of the Alliance?" And if so, will you be there waiting for me?

"I — yes." His hand goes up to his face, rubs his eyes. He's nervous now, she thinks, and the questions aren't going to get any easier. "But I don't think it will come as fast as either of us would like."

"Oh." She shifts her hips, just slightly, slides a little further down into the couch, and the proximity, she thinks, is almost too much for her, regardless of whether it's affecting him. "Sometimes I get the impression everyone at the Agency thinks I'm going to be doing this until I'm old and gray. I mean, it's such a monumental task — "

"Sydney," he cuts her off, tone sharp. Of course he does. "Don't think that. Don't you ever think that. You are going to do it, someday. You are going to take them down."

"But someday could be years from now, Vaughn."

"You don't know that, Sydney." She's all but forgotten seduction; he's no longer intimidated, and he leans closer to convince her. "Hell, I bet people sat in this very safehouse 15 years ago and thought the end was never going to come, and it was really just around the corner."

She can feel her throat growing raw, tears forming in her eyes. Damn him for knowing exactly what to say. Damn her for not handling this the way she wanted to. He moves now, but not where she wants him. Instead, he pushes her legs aside and shifts toward the center of the couch. She sits up, unsure and waiting for his next move, until he reaches out, pulling her into an embrace. Damn him for being him.

This wasn't part of forcing the issue. But it is the issue. He is there, and he'll stay there as long as she needs him, arms around her, one hand stroking her hair. Ordinarily, she would lay her head down on his shoulder and cry, let it all out and be glad he was here to comfort her.

But that wouldn't be forcing the issue.

She turns her head, reaches up to wrap her hand around his neck, pull him closer. He all but falls into her mouth, hands flailing and eventually landing on the cushion beside her. For one brief moment, his lips are motionless, shocked and awkward against hers, and oh god, she thinks, maybe she really has read him entirely wrong. But then he's opening his mouth to her like it's instinctive, like it's something he's wanted to do for a long time.

This is part of what she's wanted all night, all year, his mouth hot, lips insistent, body pressed against hers. But she wants it all, and now she's closer to an answer for the most important question. Which is the lie?

She pulls away, breathing hard, feels the anger begin to well in her spine.

"How can you kiss me like that and believe it's going to end, and still be with her?"

———

Operations are built around risks. Around probabilities, and odds, and the likelihood of things going wrong versus right.

They are planned, strategized, built around a foundation of intelligence, strategy, game theory.

Kissing him was a risk, but it pays off. Gives her back some of the truth.

Makes her think maybe her reception hasn't been so bad all along.

———

"What?" He pulls away from her, scrambles backward, back to his side of the couch.

"You know what."

"No, Sydney, I don't." He does, she thinks. He's stalling and he's frightened and she half expects him to get up off the couch and dart out the door to wander the Berlin night until their taxis come.

"Alice," she says. "I want you to explain Alice."

"I've tried to explain Alice, and you won't let me," he says, voice just a little louder, now, suddenly more frustrated than frightened.

He's right, she knows. She's been afraid of the explanation, afraid she's misinterpreted everything and it would only serve as proof. Not anymore. "I'm letting you now. I want you to now."

His eyes drop to his lap. "I had to do it."

"Had to do what, Vaughn?"

"I had to try to be normal. Not even had to, Sydney. Have to," he says. "I had a lot of history with Alice. I had a chance at a normal relationship."

Past tense isn't something she's been aware of. "Had to?"

"It — it was obvious pretty quick that it wasn't going to work out. But her father was sick, and then me, with the virus." He pauses. "I couldn't — I wasn't just going to leave her with all of that going on. I've known Alice for a long time. I do care about her."

She runs her index finger over her lips this time, thinks about how unbelievably good it felt to kiss him. Thinks maybe she should have let that run its course and then started this line of questioning. "You haven't answered all of my question."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I want to know where I fit into all of this."

He looks into his lap again, absently running his fingers around his own mouth. "You can't fit anywhere, Sydney. There are rules."

This is it, she thinks. This is the paradox and the contradiction, and it's utterly pointless. "You break the rules all the time."

"Those rules are there for your protection. Those rules exist for your safety."

She stands, takes a few steps away from the couch. "That's bullshit, Vaughn," she says, spinning to face him. She stalks back to the couch, places her hands on his shoulders, leans in until her mouth is only inches from his. "If you feel the way I think you do, if you think the end is possible, then why do you feel like you have to be in some other relationship? Why won't you wait for me? Waiting isn't breaking the rules."

He tilts his head back, as far as it will go. "I can't wait for you, Sydney, because I can't love you."

She should try to push this, should ease her body into his lap, kiss him again and see where it all goes. But the anger flames within her, and she rises, pushing off on his shoulders. Fuck him, and fuck this. Fuck all of this and her crazy life too.

"You can't choose who you love, Vaughn."

———

If it were only about the sex, she would have tried this long ago.

Admitted to herself that he stirred things in her that hadn't been stirred in a long time. Fucked him in the warehouse, or his car, or some by-the-hour motel. Ignored protocol for a night, got it the hell out of her system, requested a new handler and that would have been that.

The trouble with Vaughn is he could be both. Friend and lover. Dangerous, on so many levels.

Because she can see him existing where the two intersect.

That place, she thinks, might be love.

———

She strides across the floor toward the kitchen, heavy steps rattling her forgotten tea. Their first night together, and they'll spend the rest of it in silence, she thinks. Some of that soup sounds good now; she's still hungry, and there aren't any better distractions. No restaurant, no Rome, no Barcelona, just condensed chicken and stars in some forgotten safehouse in Berlin.

Some small, rational part of her thinks Vaughn is right. She recalls her father scolding her, reminding her of the last time she broke the rules. This is safer for her, safer for him, and so what if it pains you to look at him and think of him with someone else?

No, she tells herself. Absolutely not. Acknowledging it isn't breaking the rules. Waiting isn't breaking the rules.

She pulls the can out of the cabinet, blows the dust off of the top. The can opener is in the third drawer she tries, and she lays it with a clank on the countertop, then starts on the cabinets, searching for a suitable pot.

She never finds it.

The floorboards creak beneath his feet, and she's aware of his approach long before he reaches the kitchen. She wants to whirl around, face him, ask him what the hell he could possibly have to say now, but she stands her ground, curls her fingers around the edge of the countertop, and waits.

He stands behind her, breath hot on her neck, for so long — too long, too damn long — that she's nearly ready to give in. And then, finally, he moves, and it's decisive. His hand locks around her shoulder, spinning her around until she can see him, and his face is a surprise — so pained she realizes she hasn't read anything wrong at all. He runs trembling fingers along her jaw, then leans in to kiss her. Long, slow, deliberate, his hand sliding up her neck, fingers raking through her hair, mouth searching hers with a surprising intensity.

Both hands, on both of her shoulders now, pushing her backwards, sideways. He pulls away when her back hits the refrigerator, hard, and something inside rattles, crashes, breaks.

"I can't love you," he whispers, hand on the door beside her head, mouth still so close to hers. "I can't love you, but I think I do."

She considers telling him he's forgiven. But it wouldn't be the truth, and she's not sure if or when it will be. I understand, perhaps, but she's not sure about that, either. The only things she's certain of are how badly she wants him and how much she needs his words to be true.

In the end she says nothing, and he kisses her again anyway, mouth heavy on hers, pressing her head into the cold, curved metal. She reaches out, places her hands on his hips, pulling him closer until his cock is hard against her stomach and she can't help but wonder just how long he's been like that.

"This can only be tonight," he says. "Fuck, Sydney. It shouldn't even be tonight. This is dangerous. So dangerous."

"Only tonight," she whispers. "And then we wait." You will wait, won't you? This isn't just lies on top of lies until you go back home to Alice, is it?

"Then we wait," he says, firm, hands slipping over her ribs, fingers toying with the cotton straps on her hips. His lips work a wet trail over her chin; she stifles a moan when he reaches her neck and slips his hands below the waistband of her sweatpants, hot on her skin, moving over her ass. He sucks at the base of her throat.

"Vaughn." She can't stifle it this time, and she doesn't want to.

She wraps her fingers around the edge of his t-shirt, pulls it up, over his head. His skin is damp with sweat, and she is overcome by the need to touch him, to run her hands over his back, bend her neck to kiss his shoulder.

He stops that with his hands, sliding back up to her waist. Thumbs, hooked around her sweatpants, so baggy they crumple quickly down to her ankles once they've cleared her hips. She steps out of them, kicks them somewhere to the side of the refrigerator, and becomes acutely aware of her own pulse, pounding around her head, her neck.

"Fuck, Sydney. You have no idea..." He places one hand on her chin, pulls it back upright and kisses her mouth again. The other hand between them, caressing her bare thigh, halfway to her knee and working its way back up, deliberate, excruciating.

"No idea of what?" she gasps.

"No idea of — anything," he whispers. Somehow, it seems to make sense. Somehow, so many more things make sense now.

Slow, horribly slow, his fingertips light up her legs, his lips on hers and a damn good kiss almost an afterthought, although not so many minutes ago it would have been everything. But finally he is there, hand between her thighs, and she throws her head back. It slams against the metal, hard enough that she'll have a bump later, and he abandons the kiss, fingers in slow circles over damp cotton.

She imagines herself turning into liquid. Melting all over the old wood floor, seeping through the floorboards, into the shop below. Dripping out onto the street, running through the stones, out into the night, flowing back through the U-Bahn and the club.

She moans, and it's not a sound she can ever remember hearing from her own throat. Certainly not one he's heard, but it only seems to encourage him, his hand pushing her panties aside, touch so raw she has to curl her toes, suck in a short breath.

His thumb circles her clitoris once, twice, three times, and this, she thinks, feels too impossibly fucking good to be real. She braces herself against the refrigerator, watches his eyes, staring hard and dark into her as he slides his fingers inside her, and even though she's been wet and ready and she's wanted this all night, it's all a little more than she had anticipated.

It's hard to breathe, and she's certain her knees are going to give out, but she doesn't ask him to stop, and she doesn't want him to, and he seems to know this. She wants him to push her, to do this the way she'd thought he wanted to, to make her teeter on the brink of unbearable, impossible.

Her orgasm hits her hard and fast and sudden, a jolt through her body that has her shaking against the refrigerator, so wildly there's more rattling and crashing inside. Her knees buckle, and she feels herself slumping downward, but in the moment she thinks she could lie in a heap on the floor all night and not give a fuck. He stops her descent before she gets there, arms around her waist, pulling her close.

She'd always thought he would be patient.

Eventually, she pulls away, just a bit, enough to test her shaky legs. She smiles, weak, and tests her voice. "There's a bed in the bedroom."

He grins, but his eyes are needy. "Funny how that works," low and gravelly; the sex voice. Almost enough in itself to make her ready again.

Their path toward the bedroom is crooked, haphazard, lips and hands everywhere, marked by the clothes that come off along the way. His shoes and socks, and her hands on his calves. Her t-shirt, and his thumbs on her nipples. His belt, and her hands down his bare chest, stomach, stroking him through the fabric of his pants, when he nearly bites down on her tongue. She smiles against his lips and thinks about taking as much as she can while she can.

He all but pushes her through the last few steps toward the ancient bed, but she spins him at the last moment, makes sure he lands first, the bed creaking under their weight.

She tells herself to remember these things, for when she cannot have them:

His fingers, tangling in her hair as he pulls her head down for another kiss. His cheek, throat, shoulder under her fingertips. Her bare chest on his, the warmth of his skin. The way he shifts beneath her and the heat pools in her stomach and she thinks she wants him inside her more than she's wanted anything, ever.

There's barely space for her hands between them, sliding down his stomach, working at the button and then the zipper of his pants. Definitely not room to remove them, but he lifts his knee beside her and she lets them roll, the bed squealing until he is on top of her, easing his own pants and boxers off of his hips, struggling out of the legs.

And she must remember this as well. His cock, hard against her thigh. His weight on top of her, real and reassuring. His hands, everywhere.

She rolls her head back, sideways, but he straightens it with a hand on her chin, kisses her again, and then slides off of her. The hand on her chin moves down her throat, fingers splayed wide and firm, between her breasts and over her trembling stomach, wrapped around the edge of her underpants and dragging them off. He has to push himself upright to get them past her knees, and she rises to meet him when they're over her ankles and gone.

She likes the way his bare skin feels against hers, likes the way it looks in the dim light from the street lamp, shining in through the curtainless window. She wonders if anyone is outside on the crumbling street, watching them kneeling there on the bare mattress. Watching them kiss again, long and slow. Watching her hands slide up his thighs and her back arch under his fingertips and the deep breath she takes before she continues.

His cock jumps in her hand and he can't make it past the first syllable of her name, the rest an unintelligible groan. She smiles, just a little, just to herself, at his short, uneven breaths, eyes rolling back as she runs her hand up the length of him. And this was how she thought it would go, this was what she thought she'd do to him, his hips wiggling slightly under her touch and his hand on her wrist when she's nearly pushed him too far.

He's back flat on the bed with little more than a tap on his chest, stomach hot and smooth under her hands as she straddles him. He grasps the back of her thighs, helps her rock up and forward, but she is strong, doesn't need the help. Strong enough to stop there, one hand on his cock, body poised and ready, and look down at him. Wonder if she forgives him. Wonder if she understands why.

He whispers her name and oh god that's why and she sinks down quickly, gasps when she realizes how deep he goes. One of his hands slides up to her stomach, the other stays anchored on her thigh and he's waiting, she realizes, waiting for her body to adjust to the impossibly perfect feel of him inside of her.

Surely he must know she's been ready for this all night. But she starts slow anyway, thinks she should drive him crazy like the vixen in the tall boots and the short skirt And she could, oh yes she could, because he's bucking beneath her hands and there's an expression on his face closer to pure need than anything else.

She likes the way it looks on him, likes being right about all of this. But she needs this hard and fast and real just as much as he does. Maybe more. Because she's been in charge of this night and it's been out of control, and somehow, she thinks, that's appropriate.

She lets herself go, lets him go, pounding into her. So hard and so fast it must be proof. It must. And the bed creaks and scrapes on the floorboards and someday someday someday this will all be in a better place and they will go slow and do it right.

If she remembers one moment, it must be this:

His grip on her leg suddenly tighter, a burst of heat inside her and his eyes closed, ecstasy on his face as he comes. "Sydney," a strong whisper, another voice entirely. His eyes, snapping open to watch her, as the hand on her stomach drifts lower and pushes her that last little bit over the edge. Not as spectacular as the first time, but better, somehow, more important, with him inside her.

Exhausted, suddenly, and without a reason to stay upright, she lowers her quaking body onto his. Lies there, head on his shoulder, both of them gasping for air, one chest heaving against the other.

She turns her head, and looks into his eyes, and what she sees there is surely someday.

———

She tells herself this won't change everything.

This is the trouble with the truth.

Sometimes, it's easier to lie. Even to ourselves.