Title: Mark Whom I Kiss
Author: Rez

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Love is whatever you can still betray...
Spoilers: Missing scene, 3.17, 'The Frame'
Disclaimer: Not mine; no money.

Email: [email protected]

 

 

 

"Why the stupid cow needs him all to herself, I’ll never know." Bored, petulant little girl. She moved restlessly beside him, one cheek against a pillow, sprawled and sweaty. She’d worked hard to distract him, or maybe herself. He ran an indulgent finger down one bare arm.

"The Bristows aren’t especially broad-minded, you see."

"She’s a Derevko.” Lauren said. "She’s got the supply, she makes the demands. Like her mother," she added smoothly, and his hand stilled. "Or so I’ve heard."

Patience is the current policy. She was reasonably competent at the little noir fantasies they dreamed up for her, a thwarted princess with a baby-doll overbite, who bleached her pubic stripe and thought herself depraved. Not like her mother at all, as they’d recently learned.

He went back to tracing the bruises coming up over earlier marks left by her husband. Agent Vaughn might well be the sort to take pride in how they lingered.

"You shouldn’t listen to gossip, love. Although I suppose you’d know. But really, this isn’t Sydney’s problem, is it? It’s yours."

She exhaled sharply. "Please. I’m not stupid. Michael was expendable enough to sacrifice for the Lisenker operation." Which you bungled, said the lilt in her voice. "Nor did I hesitate to act."

A small inaccuracy. He’d read Zisman’s report.

"And now," as she kicked one foot impatiently free of the bedclothes, "we’ve lost our keyhole on the Select Committee on Intelligence, thanks to your little panic about my husband. Who would have begged me to reconcile in due course. I pulled the Agency file on Doren, by the way."

So American: the best defense, etc. But this was bravado, chatter to deflect and cover.

 
"You botched that one, too, didn’t you—Julian? She’d gone native and you knew it."

He slid his hand up her spine, up under the blonde tangle, let his fingers rest against the nape of her neck.

"And you haven’t," he said, soft-voiced.

She hadn’t mentioned her father at all, not directly. She rolled over, pushed up on her elbows to look at him, sweetly built as a teen-aged girl, though she could easily give him five years. He felt a little twitch of renewed interest.

"Don’t be stupid," she replied casually.

It wouldn’t do to underestimate her, of course. He smiled in reply and leaned over, pressing her back against the pillows. Her soft grunt invited an answering laugh as she rolled over again and pushed her tight little boy’s ass back against him.

"Little pig," he murmured, shoving a knee between her scissored legs.

"Shut up," she said, but her voice was pleased.


*


"You know Cole’s an overgrown choirboy." She uncurled, reached back to work the knots out of her hair.

"He wouldn’t fuck you, then?"

She rolled her eyes at him. "We could remove him. It wouldn't be difficult."

True, finding that shambling brute in the place that should have been his—. But that was Irina. Whom he would deal with, in time. Lauren evidently thought him a fool, which was understandable; he’d played the part long enough. Impatience bit him, a familiar sting.

"McKenas Cole was training insurgents in East Africa while you were still screwing the sixth-form games-mistress," he said.

"That’s right." she replied, "And Mother was screwing him." Her sidelong glance caught him frozen, for an instant. Christ Jesus, the girl was a Derevko after all.

"That’s how I know he’s doable," Lauren added. "Mother was very involved in humanitarian causes that year."

"And you think she’d approve." He knew what Jack Bristow—just for example—would do with that tidbit. Like a shark scenting blood, he'd shred Yelena Derevko before she even knew he was there. And wouldn’t that be... elegant.

Lauren swung her legs to the floor, flicked him a glance over her shoulder. "You could ask her, next time she wants a little—briefing."

They’d made a mess of the sheets. He abhorred the perfume she was wearing. He wanted a shower, a quiet sleep, things back in their proper alignment. He disliked finding that Lauren was more acute than he’d thought, that she’d guessed well enough to hit that protected place: anything that touched Irina, anything at all, he’d not even begun to show her what he could do—

On the other hand, a neat, well-balanced quid pro quo: Lauren Reed had just suggested that she hated her mother enough to violate cause and covenant. In a style to which he’d become very accustomed, over the years.

He pulled her backward for a last, lazy kiss, tasting himself in her mouth, noting her carefully modulated response to his touch. It should be simple, correlating Olivia Reed’s visits to Uganda with Cole’s presence there.

He’d need to revisit his projection of Lauren’s tenure in the partnership. They really had more in common than he’d first thought.


*


"How was she?" Yelena asked, apparently more interested in the swirl of ice in her highball glass than in the recent salvage operation they’d barely pulled off, or its aftermath. He hadn’t wanted to risk a meeting so soon after Reed’s death, but she’d insisted.

He was close enough to smell saddle-leather and warm woman’s skin. She’d made him sit on the couch, her hip brushing his shoulder as she took up a casual perch on the arm.

"She’ll do," he said blandly, looking up at her face. There was very little resemblance, really.

Perhaps the riding kit was meant to interest him. She’d be temporarily concerned to keep him happy, surely aware that her daughter’s status was precarious. She hadn’t, however, offered him a drink.

He reached, crowding her with his shoulder, and took the glass out of her hand. He let his tongue flicker over the lipstick mark on the rim and then drank, watching her eyes narrow appreciatively.

"No wonder Irina liked you," she said, and her mouth didn’t curve like Irina’s, her smile didn’t make something in him want to die, but nothing ever had, since—then, and he’d make bloody, bloody certain nothing ever would.

Yelena got up and took the drink away from him. He rose to meet her, let his hands slide down the curve of her hips, playing along, because the day would come when he’d see Irina again. He’d have a lot to tell her, and he meant to make it count.


[End]

April 7, 2004

A/N: Thanks to Auburn for reading and for the Spy Wednesday challenge for fic on the theme of betrayal. The summary quote is from John le Carré’s A Perfect Spy.