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abvjTitle: One for the History Books
Summary: The number one rule of being a spy? No attachments. Absolutely none whatsoever. Michael is usually very good at this sort of thing.
Rating: R
Author's Notes: 2,494 words. Pre-series. General Season 1 and 2 spoilers. Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wizefics for the 2009 ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
yuletide challenge. It can also be found on Yuletide's archive. All mistakes are mine. These characters, however, are not. Con-crit is welcome and appreciated. Enjoy.
Do you know the number one way of telling an amateur spy from a seasoned one? It’s easy. Just look at the way they deal with the sudden rush of adrenaline running through their veins when they’re getting shot at. An amateur is skittish and sloppy, mind racing a mile a minute and they just don’t know how to deal with bullets dashing by them, the sting of the gunpowder on their hands and they resemble something similar to a sitting duck.
A seasoned spy never really gets used to it either, mind you, it’s just one of those things you come to adjust to along the way. The difference, however, is that when you’ve been doing this as long as I have, you learn how to compartmentalize, how to take in your surroundings and digest what’s going on around you.
Most of all, they know how to aim and make it count.
+
Michael was no stranger to having his life threatened. He was used to it. The feeling of being chased by thugs and lowlifes, having a gun pointed at his back was as common to him as the feel of a 9 MM glock in the palm of his hand.
So imagine his own surprise when he’s surrounded by twenty members of the most elite Irish mob, wielding AK-47’s aimed to kill, and he’s one bullet shy of being out of ammo. His chest tightened, breathing accelerated and his eyes squinted in the darkness of the warehouse, taking in the positions of his opponents. He breathed once, twice, three times before pushing off with his left foot and ran as fast as he could through open territory.
He made it about fifteen feet before he dove to the floor in an effort to avoid being shot.
“Fuck,” he muttered, checking the chamber of his gun once more and banging the back of his head against the tin can he’s leaning against when he realizes that this is could very well be his last fight.
Fire exploded around him, ricocheting off of steel and metal and out of the corner of his eye, Michael saw a flash of white and metal in the darkness. Instinctively, he crawled towards it.
It’s easier than he expected to disarm the man. With an arm around the neck Michael squeezed until the man’s legs give out below him and he helps him fall to the ground without a sound. His own gun back in the waistband of his pants and Michael grabbed the unknown assailants own hand-held piece (probably the only one in the group not yielding a weapon that would give him an edge, go figure) and checked the chamber.
Empty.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
More gunfire, closer now and Michael dove out of the way and into the corner. Three to his left, five to his front, another four to his right and who only knew how many coming at him from behind.
Another thing they teach you? Not to get caught. Do everything in your power not to get caught, because when you are, you are worse than dead. And the company you’ve sworn your life to? Well, let’s just say that they’ll forget you ever existed.
“Here.”
Michael looked up and over and caught the automatic rifle soaring his way with little trouble. To his left there was a woman, ammo strapped over one shoulder, two of her own rifles strapped of the other and another held firmly in her hand.
“Who the hell are you?”
“What does that matter?” She paused to point her gun in the other direction and shot a man dead. To say he was mildly impressed would be an understatement. “Look, do you want to get out of here alive or not?”
Normally he would have thought twice because he had no clue who this chick was and who she was working for. Michael knew well enough not to trust anyone, but he’s all out of options and Michael’s never fancied himself going down in an abandoned warehouse at the hands of a bunch of thugs. In Ireland no less.
Years later he will curse himself for being in indebted to her for this, for starting this thing without even knowing it.
It’s why he said, “Cover me,” without thinking twice.
She did.
+
“Dare I even ask?” Michael was busy, thread between his teeth and needle between his fingers, sewing his skin back together. A bullet had grazed his left shoulder and left a hefty gash and while it didn’t hurt, it wasn’t particularly nice looking. Besides, he’d rather not get any more blood on his Armani than he already had.
The woman tossed him a tiny bottle of rum and he twisted the cap off with his free hand.
“Like I said, what does it matter?”
Grimacing, he pushed the dull needle through his skin and dragged the thread along with it.
“It actually, uh, matters a whole lot.”
His statement was met with silence and he continues pushing the needle in and out of skin. Instinctively, his shoulders tensed when there was rustling of fabric from across the room, the sound of feet against the tile of the bathroom floor.
Without fail, Michael always knew when he was about to get played. When someone was about to turn on him. So when he reached for the gun at his side, it was a mere reflex, but proved to be the best decision because as soon as his fingers wrapped around the handle, the sound of a gun cocking near his head echoed throughout the air.
So here they were, his gun pointed at her with his free arm, hers pointed at him, and he barely knew this woman, but he knew enough to know that she was slightly trigger happy.
“Who are you?”
“Who are you?”
The woman smiled. “I asked you first.”
“What? Are we five? Listen lady, I don’t know who you are or who sent you after me, but if you believe that I’ll think twice before putting a bullet in your head you’ve got another thing coming.”
“What? You think I won’t do the same? You know what I know? I know you waltzed on in here like you owned the place and ruined a sting that I’ve spent the last sixteen months working on. I know that I saved your scrawny little ass back there --”
“Sixteen months? What the hell were you waiting for? A written invitation?”
The woman’s index finger tightened on the trigger. Michael didn’t falter.
“Spy, right? I can always smell the air of cockiness coming from a mile away.”
Michael made a show out of sniffing the air. “Let me guess. IRA?”
“A girl never spills her secrets on the first date.”
It said everything that they lower their guns at the same exact time.
+
Naturally, they fuck first and talk later.
It was angry and vicious; all give and take, push and shove. She was rough, biting, pulling, fingers digging into skin. He matched her bit for bit, his hands on her thighs so tight she carried marks for a week. Fingers dug under the waistband of her pants, unbuttoning and pulling down, and he was methodical, perfect. Her panties next, fingers between her legs, digging deep and she arched into him.
“Can we just get on with the fucking already?” She said, voice raspy and thick, and he blamed the smile that reached his lips on how thick her Irish accent was with his mouth between her legs.
Drawing a line with his tongue from thigh to the under curve of her breast, Michael paused just slightly when his lips were right above hers.
“Impatient much?”
She bent her legs at the knees, hands reaching down to settle between them. “This,” she began, pulling his bottom lip between her teeth, “is what we like to call a sure thing.”
Her hands on his cock, guiding him home without any further preamble and Michael kissed her hard and deep, the taste of blood fresh on his lips as he reached down, grabbing her thighs and pushing them up higher around his waist.
Nails dug into the skin of his shoulders, and his mouth moved to hers and they continued their dance with hips meeting hips in a frantic pace, swallowing each other’s moans in the process. Fingers trailed over flesh and bone, scars and muscle like they’ve been doing this all their lives.
“I was just kidding you know,” she said, slightly out of breath as she grabbed at his shoulder, pushing him onto his back. He let her, his not so stitched wound already pulled apart at the seams, and his hands found her hips immediately. Thighs on either side of his and her teeth found his ear and pulled. “You’re ass is actually quite nice. “
Michael laughed and mused to himself as she moved wantonly above him that she was the most perfect specimen of a woman he had ever encountered.
+
The number two rule of being a spy? No attachments. None whosoever, no how, no way.
Which, conveniently, wasno problem. It’s in his nature to keep everything and everyone at arm’s length – always had been – so when she leaned in close and started tracing shapes into his skin (not hearts or some shit like that, thank god) Michael started getting antsy and can’t tell if she w anted to fuck again or talk.
“Where’d you get this one?” her fingers traced a scar near the jut of his hipbone.
“Nine inch butcher knife. They thought it would be fun to play with my insides.”
“Mmm,” she sounded out, voice sending vibrations through him. “I have one of those,” a soft whisper in his ear and her hand found his and she led it to her backside, right below her ribs where a six inch scar laid. Michael traced it briefly before her hand pushed his lower.
Michael’s other hand traveled to her front without thinking, over her stomach, where a large patch of scarred skin laid. “This?” he asked, because he couldn’t seem to help himself around this woman he barely knew.
The distinct melody of the same two repeating words played over and over in his head: no attachment, no attachment
“Bomb backfired. I was less than five feet away. Threw me fifty feet.”
“Ouch.”
Her smile was wide and beautiful as she leaned in close, her lips brushing against his softly. “Only mistake I’ve ever made,” she whispered and it’s such a far cry from what they were a half an hour ago and Michael is desperate to change that.
A hand fisted in her hair, the other on her ass, pushing her closer and he kissed her deep, moving into and above her.
Pulling away, she leaned back to smile up at him and his lips find the skin between her neck and collarbone.
“This one?” she asked, fingers trailing above a scar on his upper arm, right above his freshly stitched wound.
“Bullet wound. Dug it out with my bare hands.”
Laughing, she leaned forward to kiss him again.
“I think I’m going to like you.”
+
Hours later and she had his shirt on, blood stain covering most of the left sleeve and a bruise the size on Michael’s hand on her right thigh. Michael was in her tiny bathroom, thread and needle in hand again.
“You really did screw me over last night, you know.”
“I’d say I’m sorry about it, but I’m not.”
“I figured as much.”
She tossed him another bottle of alcohol and he twisted the cap off with his teeth and spits it onto the floor.
“They’re going to be moving their location up north since they’ve been compromised. There will probably be some reorganizing, too. I’d bet my last dollar McGuirk is going to be found floating in the river by the end of the next week.”
Michael poured a little bit of alcohol over the open wound and winced just slightly. Thread the needle. Took a swig from the bottle. It was something akin to a routine for him, the act of putting himself back together.
“I know,” she replied, crossing the room in her bare feet, eyes rolling. “This isn’t my first, what do you yanks like to call ‘em? Rodeo? Here,” she promptly took the thread and needle out of his fingers and perched herself firmly in his lap. “Let me do it.”
It said something, Michael thought, that he was still here, in a shack of an apartment in the worst part of Dublin, with a girl whose name he didn’t even know in his lap. It wasn’t that Michael didn’t do this, he did – when the situation arose he would take what was being offered no questions asked – it was just that before it had always been more of the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am scenario than anything else and he hardly ever stuck around to see daylight the next morning.
More than anything this was a risk and Michael knew it. He wasn’t an idiot. But there was something about the way she looked, gun in hand, pulling hand grenades out of her back pockets that had stuck.
Michael had always preferred the strong, independent types over the damsel in distress, anyway. It was less hassle.
It didn’t matter either way now. In less than five hours he’d be on a flight to the nearest base on his way to be debriefed and ready for his next mission.
In the end, he would settle for this being a story he could tell if he ever made it home to Miami and just happened to be sitting around at the bar one night and somebody dared to ask, what the hell have you been up to, Westen? Just another cover story to throw into the mix for all those friends he didn’t have.
She pushed the needle through his skin without a pause and he took another swig of the alcohol.
Florence Nightingale she was most definitely not.
“Hey,” she smiled and laughed, and she was so close he can smell the distinct scent of her shampoo, of them and sex lingering on her skin. “I never said I was good at this.”
“No, I guess you didn’t.” She finished promptly, tossing the bloody needle and thread to the side and leaned back to admire her handy work. “You’re going to have a gorgeous scar.”
Her fingers reached out to trace the outline of the stitches, but she stopped herself. When she looked up again, she’s smiling.
“I’m Fiona by the way,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Michael,” he replied with a smirk, his hands reaching down to find her waist, pulling her as close as possible.
No attachment. No attachment his mind reeled over and over like a mantra as she leaned in.
For the first time in his life, it doesn’t exactly stick.
Summary: The number one rule of being a spy? No attachments. Absolutely none whatsoever. Michael is usually very good at this sort of thing.
Rating: R
Author's Notes: 2,494 words. Pre-series. General Season 1 and 2 spoilers. Written for
wizefics for the 2009 yuletide challenge. It can also be found on Yuletide's archive. All mistakes are mine. These characters, however, are not. Con-crit is welcome and appreciated. Enjoy. Do you know the number one way of telling an amateur spy from a seasoned one? It’s easy. Just look at the way they deal with the sudden rush of adrenaline running through their veins when they’re getting shot at. An amateur is skittish and sloppy, mind racing a mile a minute and they just don’t know how to deal with bullets dashing by them, the sting of the gunpowder on their hands and they resemble something similar to a sitting duck.
A seasoned spy never really gets used to it either, mind you, it’s just one of those things you come to adjust to along the way. The difference, however, is that when you’ve been doing this as long as I have, you learn how to compartmentalize, how to take in your surroundings and digest what’s going on around you.
Most of all, they know how to aim and make it count.
+
Michael was no stranger to having his life threatened. He was used to it. The feeling of being chased by thugs and lowlifes, having a gun pointed at his back was as common to him as the feel of a 9 MM glock in the palm of his hand.
So imagine his own surprise when he’s surrounded by twenty members of the most elite Irish mob, wielding AK-47’s aimed to kill, and he’s one bullet shy of being out of ammo. His chest tightened, breathing accelerated and his eyes squinted in the darkness of the warehouse, taking in the positions of his opponents. He breathed once, twice, three times before pushing off with his left foot and ran as fast as he could through open territory.
He made it about fifteen feet before he dove to the floor in an effort to avoid being shot.
“Fuck,” he muttered, checking the chamber of his gun once more and banging the back of his head against the tin can he’s leaning against when he realizes that this is could very well be his last fight.
Fire exploded around him, ricocheting off of steel and metal and out of the corner of his eye, Michael saw a flash of white and metal in the darkness. Instinctively, he crawled towards it.
It’s easier than he expected to disarm the man. With an arm around the neck Michael squeezed until the man’s legs give out below him and he helps him fall to the ground without a sound. His own gun back in the waistband of his pants and Michael grabbed the unknown assailants own hand-held piece (probably the only one in the group not yielding a weapon that would give him an edge, go figure) and checked the chamber.
Empty.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
More gunfire, closer now and Michael dove out of the way and into the corner. Three to his left, five to his front, another four to his right and who only knew how many coming at him from behind.
Another thing they teach you? Not to get caught. Do everything in your power not to get caught, because when you are, you are worse than dead. And the company you’ve sworn your life to? Well, let’s just say that they’ll forget you ever existed.
“Here.”
Michael looked up and over and caught the automatic rifle soaring his way with little trouble. To his left there was a woman, ammo strapped over one shoulder, two of her own rifles strapped of the other and another held firmly in her hand.
“Who the hell are you?”
“What does that matter?” She paused to point her gun in the other direction and shot a man dead. To say he was mildly impressed would be an understatement. “Look, do you want to get out of here alive or not?”
Normally he would have thought twice because he had no clue who this chick was and who she was working for. Michael knew well enough not to trust anyone, but he’s all out of options and Michael’s never fancied himself going down in an abandoned warehouse at the hands of a bunch of thugs. In Ireland no less.
Years later he will curse himself for being in indebted to her for this, for starting this thing without even knowing it.
It’s why he said, “Cover me,” without thinking twice.
She did.
+
“Dare I even ask?” Michael was busy, thread between his teeth and needle between his fingers, sewing his skin back together. A bullet had grazed his left shoulder and left a hefty gash and while it didn’t hurt, it wasn’t particularly nice looking. Besides, he’d rather not get any more blood on his Armani than he already had.
The woman tossed him a tiny bottle of rum and he twisted the cap off with his free hand.
“Like I said, what does it matter?”
Grimacing, he pushed the dull needle through his skin and dragged the thread along with it.
“It actually, uh, matters a whole lot.”
His statement was met with silence and he continues pushing the needle in and out of skin. Instinctively, his shoulders tensed when there was rustling of fabric from across the room, the sound of feet against the tile of the bathroom floor.
Without fail, Michael always knew when he was about to get played. When someone was about to turn on him. So when he reached for the gun at his side, it was a mere reflex, but proved to be the best decision because as soon as his fingers wrapped around the handle, the sound of a gun cocking near his head echoed throughout the air.
So here they were, his gun pointed at her with his free arm, hers pointed at him, and he barely knew this woman, but he knew enough to know that she was slightly trigger happy.
“Who are you?”
“Who are you?”
The woman smiled. “I asked you first.”
“What? Are we five? Listen lady, I don’t know who you are or who sent you after me, but if you believe that I’ll think twice before putting a bullet in your head you’ve got another thing coming.”
“What? You think I won’t do the same? You know what I know? I know you waltzed on in here like you owned the place and ruined a sting that I’ve spent the last sixteen months working on. I know that I saved your scrawny little ass back there --”
“Sixteen months? What the hell were you waiting for? A written invitation?”
The woman’s index finger tightened on the trigger. Michael didn’t falter.
“Spy, right? I can always smell the air of cockiness coming from a mile away.”
Michael made a show out of sniffing the air. “Let me guess. IRA?”
“A girl never spills her secrets on the first date.”
It said everything that they lower their guns at the same exact time.
+
Naturally, they fuck first and talk later.
It was angry and vicious; all give and take, push and shove. She was rough, biting, pulling, fingers digging into skin. He matched her bit for bit, his hands on her thighs so tight she carried marks for a week. Fingers dug under the waistband of her pants, unbuttoning and pulling down, and he was methodical, perfect. Her panties next, fingers between her legs, digging deep and she arched into him.
“Can we just get on with the fucking already?” She said, voice raspy and thick, and he blamed the smile that reached his lips on how thick her Irish accent was with his mouth between her legs.
Drawing a line with his tongue from thigh to the under curve of her breast, Michael paused just slightly when his lips were right above hers.
“Impatient much?”
She bent her legs at the knees, hands reaching down to settle between them. “This,” she began, pulling his bottom lip between her teeth, “is what we like to call a sure thing.”
Her hands on his cock, guiding him home without any further preamble and Michael kissed her hard and deep, the taste of blood fresh on his lips as he reached down, grabbing her thighs and pushing them up higher around his waist.
Nails dug into the skin of his shoulders, and his mouth moved to hers and they continued their dance with hips meeting hips in a frantic pace, swallowing each other’s moans in the process. Fingers trailed over flesh and bone, scars and muscle like they’ve been doing this all their lives.
“I was just kidding you know,” she said, slightly out of breath as she grabbed at his shoulder, pushing him onto his back. He let her, his not so stitched wound already pulled apart at the seams, and his hands found her hips immediately. Thighs on either side of his and her teeth found his ear and pulled. “You’re ass is actually quite nice. “
Michael laughed and mused to himself as she moved wantonly above him that she was the most perfect specimen of a woman he had ever encountered.
+
The number two rule of being a spy? No attachments. None whosoever, no how, no way.
Which, conveniently, wasno problem. It’s in his nature to keep everything and everyone at arm’s length – always had been – so when she leaned in close and started tracing shapes into his skin (not hearts or some shit like that, thank god) Michael started getting antsy and can’t tell if she w anted to fuck again or talk.
“Where’d you get this one?” her fingers traced a scar near the jut of his hipbone.
“Nine inch butcher knife. They thought it would be fun to play with my insides.”
“Mmm,” she sounded out, voice sending vibrations through him. “I have one of those,” a soft whisper in his ear and her hand found his and she led it to her backside, right below her ribs where a six inch scar laid. Michael traced it briefly before her hand pushed his lower.
Michael’s other hand traveled to her front without thinking, over her stomach, where a large patch of scarred skin laid. “This?” he asked, because he couldn’t seem to help himself around this woman he barely knew.
The distinct melody of the same two repeating words played over and over in his head: no attachment, no attachment
“Bomb backfired. I was less than five feet away. Threw me fifty feet.”
“Ouch.”
Her smile was wide and beautiful as she leaned in close, her lips brushing against his softly. “Only mistake I’ve ever made,” she whispered and it’s such a far cry from what they were a half an hour ago and Michael is desperate to change that.
A hand fisted in her hair, the other on her ass, pushing her closer and he kissed her deep, moving into and above her.
Pulling away, she leaned back to smile up at him and his lips find the skin between her neck and collarbone.
“This one?” she asked, fingers trailing above a scar on his upper arm, right above his freshly stitched wound.
“Bullet wound. Dug it out with my bare hands.”
Laughing, she leaned forward to kiss him again.
“I think I’m going to like you.”
+
Hours later and she had his shirt on, blood stain covering most of the left sleeve and a bruise the size on Michael’s hand on her right thigh. Michael was in her tiny bathroom, thread and needle in hand again.
“You really did screw me over last night, you know.”
“I’d say I’m sorry about it, but I’m not.”
“I figured as much.”
She tossed him another bottle of alcohol and he twisted the cap off with his teeth and spits it onto the floor.
“They’re going to be moving their location up north since they’ve been compromised. There will probably be some reorganizing, too. I’d bet my last dollar McGuirk is going to be found floating in the river by the end of the next week.”
Michael poured a little bit of alcohol over the open wound and winced just slightly. Thread the needle. Took a swig from the bottle. It was something akin to a routine for him, the act of putting himself back together.
“I know,” she replied, crossing the room in her bare feet, eyes rolling. “This isn’t my first, what do you yanks like to call ‘em? Rodeo? Here,” she promptly took the thread and needle out of his fingers and perched herself firmly in his lap. “Let me do it.”
It said something, Michael thought, that he was still here, in a shack of an apartment in the worst part of Dublin, with a girl whose name he didn’t even know in his lap. It wasn’t that Michael didn’t do this, he did – when the situation arose he would take what was being offered no questions asked – it was just that before it had always been more of the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am scenario than anything else and he hardly ever stuck around to see daylight the next morning.
More than anything this was a risk and Michael knew it. He wasn’t an idiot. But there was something about the way she looked, gun in hand, pulling hand grenades out of her back pockets that had stuck.
Michael had always preferred the strong, independent types over the damsel in distress, anyway. It was less hassle.
It didn’t matter either way now. In less than five hours he’d be on a flight to the nearest base on his way to be debriefed and ready for his next mission.
In the end, he would settle for this being a story he could tell if he ever made it home to Miami and just happened to be sitting around at the bar one night and somebody dared to ask, what the hell have you been up to, Westen? Just another cover story to throw into the mix for all those friends he didn’t have.
She pushed the needle through his skin without a pause and he took another swig of the alcohol.
Florence Nightingale she was most definitely not.
“Hey,” she smiled and laughed, and she was so close he can smell the distinct scent of her shampoo, of them and sex lingering on her skin. “I never said I was good at this.”
“No, I guess you didn’t.” She finished promptly, tossing the bloody needle and thread to the side and leaned back to admire her handy work. “You’re going to have a gorgeous scar.”
Her fingers reached out to trace the outline of the stitches, but she stopped herself. When she looked up again, she’s smiling.
“I’m Fiona by the way,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Michael,” he replied with a smirk, his hands reaching down to find her waist, pulling her as close as possible.
No attachment. No attachment his mind reeled over and over like a mantra as she leaned in.
For the first time in his life, it doesn’t exactly stick.
