Author's note on chapter ratings: This chapter is rated NC-17. If that is not your thing, or if you should not be reading it, please skip it. The remaining chapters will return to an R rating.

The door shocks him a little as it slams shut behind them, likely the doing of her foot. Ever-mindful, she reaches behind him and clunks the deadbolt into place. Safe sex, but more importantly, secure sex. That's being responsible, kids.

Their first kiss tonight was a soft, quiet thing. Surprisingly sweet, given history. Inside, she forces them around a harsh corner. Lips are violent, punishing, ferocious, as she snakes a hand up his neck, tracing fingers through the short hair there, holding his head close. More fierce than passionate at this point. He knows enough to know this may or may not change.

Her height is wrong, he thinks. She shouldn't be this short — bare feet short. Then he recalls the missing heels, and something resembling a leather sandal skids across the linoleum by the door. Bare feet, then, or maybe halfway there. Never one to waste time, Christine Watkins.

She takes another step — presses closer to him, if that is possible, supplies the full drunken heat of her body. Usually  — and he bases usually on ancient facts — she tires of this quickly. Moves on to other things. Today, she is more willing to let him try to slow things, to pull away from her searching tongue, shift the focus to grazing her lips.

After a bit of this, however, she snaps back. For a second, he thinks there is regret. That the truce is not enough. It shouldn't be enough, but here we fucking are. No, the space is simply so she can trail a crooked line of kisses down his neck. Less than accurate, less than perfect, still more than enough to heighten arousal. Goodbye, point of no return.

He hasn't consumed as much as her, but still enough to scoff, perhaps, at things he may regret later. She is a straight enough shooter, even now, that there will be no changing of decisions, potential for regrets. It will only make her more creative.

Creative, as in the way her fingers and their little nubs of nails scrape down his throat, struggle and finally succeed with his already loosened tie. They tug now at his collar, widen it, create more room for her tongue. It finds the center of his collarbone, seems to recall that this is a particularly sensitive spot for him, rolling in slow circles, forcing a groan.

Old maneuver, new context. A way to spill secrets, or so his mind conjures. Designed to make you tell her everything you know about secret government programs and software plans. In his case specifically, it is designed to rush all sensation south, burning and swelling and longing for the crook of her hips. Maybe this was inevitable anyway.

She tires of this eventually, and returns to his lips. Bites the lower one, either out of spite, or because she knows it will increase the pressure in his groin. It does, and the only thing to do in response is up the ante.

He slides his hands from the small of her back to her the curve of her ass, draws her closer still, makes her feel him — not that it is anything new — and they begin the old, slow waltz to the couch: step, kiss, step, skin, step.

One hand stays in place as they move, but the other slips elastic from her hair, lets it flow across her shoulders. Soft and smooth, and he slides his fingers through it, scrunches at sections, tangles it a bit. She still uses the same shampoo, vaguely minty.

"I'm going to get it cut. It bugs me," she whispers, snapping from his lips.

"Don't. It's beautiful."

"You don't have a say." She returns to his lips; they return to the waltz, short shifty footsteps to the couch, barely ten feet from the door, but yet so far.

He wants — he wants so many things, now that these possibilities have so suddenly been reopened. Mostly, he wants her beneath him, arching into him, matching heat to heat. For now, he focuses on more immediate things. Black t-shirts, for example. His fingers slide beneath the seams, up her sides, over the ridges of prominent ribs.

"You're too skinny." He grabs at the seams, rolls it all over shoulders, over the perfect-imperfect hair, and it makes a tiny parachute before it floats to the floor.

"I'm working on it. These things take time." She smiles around his mouth and glances down at his suit; quick nimble fingers at the front of his jacket until that task is done and it is sliding from his shoulders to join her shirt.

"You're not armed?" Incredulous at this.

"No. You are?" She steps away, just a bit. Reaches down around her knee and slides dark blue denim up to reveal an ankle holster. Definitely armed.

"Don't you think that's a little irresponsible, given your plans tonight?"

"It's not loaded. Clip's in my purse." Her purse is somewhere by the door, haphazard on the floor next to her keys. A surprise, the gun, but yet not a surprise. Like the strand of hair taped across the bottom of her door, the countless other telltales they will likely disrupt by the end of the night. He wonders if they are merely habit, or if her actions abroad really warrant them.

The gun strapped to her leg is a logistical problem to be worked out later, ignored currently. For now, there is the bra, black mesh and satin. Her nipples are obvious beneath — his doing, he believes, although the room feels cold. The saving grace of the old apartment building: overactive central air, a necessity on many days. Chilly on his neck now, marking the wet path of her mouth.

He draws fingertips up to the base of her neck, and slowly scrapes down, reveling in the way she arches against his hands, the heat of smooth skin. Over collarbone, over bra, over the nubs in the middle, halfway down her stomach.

This is where he halts the usual descent. On her left side is a somewhat jagged set of old stitches, long, red and ugly; zig-zag scabs on their way to healing, things beneath them that still need time. He skips these altogether, suggests instead a few more steps toward the couch. She complies, hands roaming his back, lips wherever they find reason to be.

The ugly thing on her stomach is there — a thought but not a thought — as habit leads them to the middle of the plaid. Still plaid, a brief thought, ironic before his attention must shift, as he pushes her onto the weak cushions. Harder than he had intended — but it has, in fact, been a long time — and he wants the simple warmth of her presence almost as much as he needs to be inside of her.

She leans up into his neck, curling into his body, but there is no plan for kissing here. Pain, instead, radiating from stomach, eyes, mouth. "Fuck." She bites her bottom lip and flashes it all through her eyes, but only briefly. "Son of a bitch."

Perhaps this is too much, he thinks. Perhaps pushing an impossible situation will not make it possible.

"God, Chris, I'm sorry." His hand scramble about her sides, search for a hold so he can relieve the weight on her. "You okay?"

"Otvjazhis'." Vaughn's Russian is limited, but he knows this one. Fuck off.

She contracts into him for a second before straightening, now with a plan. A sharp turn of her shoulder, a hand into his elbow, a knee at his side — he will analyze it in the future and still not understand the maneuver — and suddenly he is falling. The floor is the same as before, ancient beige carpeting, and a shock to his back, but not to any part of her.

Some small remainder of him is still soft — not yet tense or aroused — and she uses it to cushion her fall, rests on his chest for a second, takes another deep breath, then rises, confident. Chris, back in control.

The aggressor even more than before, she rises above him, balancing on knees and hands, and brushes her lips patiently across his neck, still a cool customer as an involuntary groan ruins his half-assed poker face.

She pushes up further at this, kneeling over him, the heat between her legs heavy on his stomach. The pace is hers and too damn slow as she leans in, hands on either side of his head, to tease his lips and then draw back.

She smirks now, laying a hand just below his neck, fingers curved in a gesture that is more of a threat of the future than a move of contemporary pleasure. The smirk deepens, the heat between her legs more substantial, somehow, as she slits her tongue between her teeth, vague and pink. Teasing, challenging him, as her right hand begins a slow descent down his chest.

Skilled fingers, splayed wide — tense, accurate, specifically strong — each nailless tip tracing one line of the pinstripes in his shirt, horribly slow down his stomach. She rocks back on her heels, slips her feet backward until she comes to a halt, straddling his thighs.

The fingers stop where pinstripes dead-end into belt buckle. Ice eyes darken, and lips curve just a little as her focus narrows and her hand tightens around the buckle. "Let's not forget — " she pulls back, and the leather tightens against his back " — this fucking hurts." She noses toward the ugly thing on her stomach, strange and red against pale in their only light, the street lamp dim in the windows behind her.

He is certain he will not forget it again.

The strap remains taut for a second longer. Damn, Chris, pull a little harder and you just might —

She halts his thoughts with another angry glare, eyes flashing icy-hot now, and she snaps her fingers in release, flinging them out, before returning to the buckle. Caressing the leather for a second, then sliding lower. What she encounters there is no surprise — obvious against her thighs for a long time, and briefly just below her battered stomach on the couch. She smiles nonetheless, runs her fingers across him for a few moments, forcing a moan.

Her eyes are heavy, drunk, staring hard into his, when she removes her hand. Makes him groan again at the absence, and flicks her fingers through the leather of the belt. Strong fingers again, sliding it from the buckle, slicing the whole thing with a whizzing sound from his pants. She reaches back next for shoes and socks, flying beyond his feet and thud-thud on the floor.

Back now to his stomach. He tries — fails — not to react when she struggles a bit with the button, pushing in for leverage. Fuck, Chris, you're going to kill me.

The image comes unbidden as she moves, agonizingly slow, through the zipper. Floats around his mind even as he tries to push it away. Her hands work around his waist now, slip below the charcoal, encourage him to arch his hips so she can slip off his pants.

Boxers, blue cotton, and not a second thought about them this morning, but a lot has changed since then. "You are so damn boring," she says, a dark grin in the shadows, and then his pants flop on the floor, joining shoes and socks. One hand returns to his stomach, passes elastic, dips beneath the boxers. Nubby fingertips trace the length of him, increasing pressure and oh god.

It is the specificity of her skill that forces the image to the forefront.

Stalin—Lenin—Kruschev—Marx—some nameless bald Russian programmer with a red vodka nose. Chris, with her lips wrapped around his dick, head bobbing up and down, glossy hair shimmying back and forth. The things she did to you, but different. Tell me all your secrets. Chris on her back, completely and utterly not her, lying there and just taking it as he rams his Cold War cock into her. Her body, his secrets.

It makes no sense, and it will not go away.

The room feels colder. He scrunches his eyelids together, tries to erase it, shoo it away. And still, it will not stop. Desire is still there, he is still groaning at the feel of her hand on him. But anger swirls in now, mixes with the cold of the room, shifts everything around in his body.

Her body, his secrets. "Stop." She doesn't, holds her focus steady, pressure increasing, confusing the swirl.

"I said stop it." A demand this time. He moves his hand to her arm, not sure if he has the willpower to follow through, but she saves him by removing her fingers and sliding her hand back to his stomach.

He is not spared when she speaks. "What the hell is wrong with you?" Angry, ice eyes flashing, like she already has a pretty good idea.

What the hell is wrong with me? No answer to that, for her or himself. Instead, he slides his legs from beneath her, moves so that they kneel, facing each other.

"Whore. That's it, isn't it? You're the one that fucking said it." She is inches from his face, breath hot, vodka, and angry. "You let things get this far, and now you can't get past it. Zadnica." Asshole.

Her face is flushed, everything about her a little wild in the faint light. "What do you want me to say?" she hisses. "What can I possibly say that would reconcile things for you? You want me to say I enjoyed it? I didn't. You want me to tell you I thought of you the whole damn time? I did. But you know and I know there's nothing I can say that's going to help you get past this. So if you can't, get the hell out of here."

He doesn't. "I want to stay, I just — "

"I know what you just. I know you. Don't think I don't know what's going on in here." She traces her fingertips across his temple, slow and delicate. Then her eyes freeze over, and she swings back with the same hand, cracks it across his check.

"Fuck you." He should have known he would not get through this without more penance for old words.

He does not give her the satisfaction of touching his cheek. It stings, smarts, prickles — she is still strong, especially when provoked — but the pain begins to correct the swirl. Just force it from your mind. He takes the image and pushes it to the same place he hid the old words for all those years.

He bores into the ice eyes. "One more try."

"I think you've had enough second chances for the night."

The only way to survive this is to take the offensive, and so he does. Surprises himself a bit, but between the alcohol and old familiarity, it becomes easy. One hand slides up her neck, back into the hair, fingers looping, locking. She sighs — not audible, but he knows she does — and he pulls her lips back to his.

They will try again and again, he thinks, and eventually, perhaps, they will get it right. Because they are out of options, and they have plenty of time.

Maybe even this time. She relaxes a bit, begins on the buttons of his shirt. He slips his free hand across the smooth warmth of her back, finds the back of her bra, and starts on stubborn hooks. His task is successful first, and he slips it from her shoulders, focused as he releases her breasts.

Tentatively — because he knows another slap is not out of the question, not yet — he moves his hands to her shoulders, slides them to her breasts to reassess those old curves, and nothing there is a surprise. He plays hard over the nipples, finally drawing a gasp as she loses track of the middle of his shirt.

"What's that about a second chance?" Thumbs only this time, he grazes her.

She moans, then whispers. "Granted."

He watches as the anger leaves her, replaced by arousal in her eyes and shoulders — loose, lolling beneath his hands as he returns to her mouth. Finally, she finishes with the shirt, forcing his arms to his sides to pull it off, breaking the kiss for the undershirt.

She traces the muscles of his back and he is quick at her lips, her neck, before moving on. Finds a breast with his mouth, but only briefly, because he does not have her patience in these things, and there are more important places tonight. It is still enough to make her moan, dig her fingers into his back, and he wonders if she will leave bruises.

Careful, and oh-so-gentle, to avoid repeating his earlier error, he pushes at her shoulder, coaxes her back, controlling her descent until she lies on the floor on a puddle of hair. He borrows her old position, leans over her chest. Delicate in where he places his hands, careful in finding balance. No more pain. No more hurt.

Lips trail down her stomach now. Wet kisses, goosebumps against the cold, until he reaches the ugly spot. He pulls back there, aiming to barely brush the pink that surrounds red bumps. But it seems he should do something here — a need to acknowledge that it is, in fact, there, a distinct difference from the last time they did this. She flinches when he reaches it, but says nothing. Kiss it and make it feel better. Whoever came up with that bullshit? He gingerly works past the pink, avoiding the red altogether. "I want to know about this, sometime."

"Okay." She is hoarse now, no volume whatsoever, and maybe this is too much for either of them at this point. He presses on anyway, reaches the top of her jeans, actions there forcing her to hollow out her stomach, her sucked-in breath audible. And I want to take you out for beer and cheeseburgers, he thinks, but does not voice it. He is still unsure of things beyond now.

His hands are quick with the button and zipper, because there is patience, and then there is patience, and he has run out of the latter. Amazing, he thinks, that they have even made it this far. There have been times, after a stumble home from the same bar, when they stopped with her back against the door and finished it there and it was damned good if you asked him.

Details are important in their occupation, and he has not forgotten the gun strapped to her leg. He slips down, slides the column of denim up and snitches at the velcro until it is free. This goes on the floor with a little more caution than the clothes before he moves back to her leg, slips his hand up her calf until the denim becomes too tight to continue — somewhere around her knee. Which is fine with him — the point of this maneuver merely to remind her that he can threaten, too.

At the top of her jeans again, and swift when he slides them from her hips, concerned when they bunch at her knees. For a second, he fears he will have to roll them back up, back to her ankles and waste more time pulling them off that way. Then the bunch dissipates and they slip from her feet, join the rest of the clothes somewhere behind them.

What is left is extraordinarily complex, given the scant material it has to work with. Mesh and floral embroidery in the small triangle sided by thin black strings. A firm reminder — as if he needed one — of why she calls him boring. Dark curls visible through the mesh, but he has enough patience remaining to take his time in reaching them. Lingers, instead, around her ankles for awhile before starting, touch light, up her legs.

She tenses a bit when he passes her knee, muscles still long, lean, and not the disturbing softness of her stomach. But not what they should be — too much time in hospital beds, he assumes. It strikes him as something he should have learned about before reaching this point; he decides he will ask about them when — if — they have that talk.

Silent for now, and he moves up slowly instead — patience, damn it, patience — fingers dragging, brushing, until he reaches the mesh and slides his hand between her thighs. Things there are what he expected, but he pushes it aside and tests her anyway, watching her face carefully. It earns an anticipated reaction, eyes closed and chin tilted back before she whispers, "Fuck. You can have as many second chances as you want."

He only needs this one. Fingers loop through the strings now, pull to drag that last little scrap from her. He halts, then, at her feet, takes a moment to stare at the gaunt legs, visible ribs, ugly thing on her stomach. Nothing like what he imagines out of Sydney Bristow. Nothing like the woman he knows Christine Watkins used to be. She has advantages over both of them — she is here, and she is real. He decides that is enough.

And then she runs out of patience. Sits up to face him and slides her hands rough along his back, dipping below the seams of the boring blue boxers, suggesting it is time for them to go, sliding further and damn Chris.

"I want you in me. Now."

He is not one to mess with a demand like that, especially not with this woman on this night. But first there are uncertainties to be dealt with. "How?"

A simple question, a few facets of meaning. How do you want it? How would you like it? How is it going to be least painful? How can we not hurt the ugly spot? Lead the way, Chris. No more pain.

Her wordless answer is to move her hands and shove at his shoulder until he is flat on his back, head just in front of the window. It occurs to him as she finishes the boxers that perhaps he should have suggested they move back to the couch — that there are positions there more conducive to her current needs. He will be sore tomorrow, he decides, but not as sore as Chris, who hasn't done much of anything doctor-recommended tonight.

"Well, I see some of us haven't changed much." She smiles, genuine, and starts to move closer. Then slight panic on her face, logic beyond liquor and arousal. "Shit."

"You aren't still on the Pill?"

"I am, but all my test results haven't come back yet. For your sake, we should — "

He doesn't hear the rest, too busy with the images flooding back into his consciousness. Working too hard at forcing them back out. Fuck, Chris, can't anything about this be simple?

She does not sense that he is lost, busy instead fumbling for the cuff of his pants and yanking them toward her. Pulling at the fabric until she finds the back pocket and then his wallet. Hands searching the folds until she finds an internal compartment, pulls out what she knows, from their early days, will be there. Her search gives him enough time to chase away the image. Stare instead at the dim light from the window, illuminating her focus, face all old beauty at this point.

"How old is this?"

A little indignant at that. "Shit, Chris. It hasn't been that long."

"Good." A feeble half-smirk, a way to gloss over her most recent admission, but her eyes betray its falseness. "Wouldn't want you out of practice."

She has to work hard at breaking the seal, no useful nails for that sort of thing. Cursing, English and Russian, and an apologetic look to him — I know, I know, I'm killing us both here. But eventually it is out, and the strong fingers slipping it down on him, lingering to make up for the unfortunate intermission.

She sucks in a breath and shuts her eyes for a moment as her stomach touches his, heat ruined by pain.

"You going to be okay?"

"Probably not," she grimaces, forces it into a smile for his benefit. "But don't let that stop you."

"Let me know if it hurts too much." And what will you do if it hurts too much? She disrupts that thought with insistent hands, guiding him to her.

A thought, sharp before he starts. You can't go back. You can't go home. But you can go somewhere else.

The angle might be seven years old, but he retrieves it quickly from memory. This process was slow, even then, because they do not fit perfectly. She is a little too tight, him a little too large, together a bit too complex — in this as well as everything — and a union requires careful positioning. The advantage of all this, he knows, is that they know how to get it right. And when they do, the friction is exquisite.

For now, though, he is cautious, mindful of any changes to the concentration on her face, slipping in slowly. Until finally, she has drawn in the length of him, with no pain visible.

From this point, there are unwritten rules. Slow at first, even though they are both out of patience. Always because you're supposed to draw it out, and now because of the ugly thing. He snakes a hand around her back, gives her support as they start, easily into a mutual pace.

Her hands move to the floor beside him, and she braces herself slightly, pushing up to end the chafing of her stomach against his — far enough that her breasts no longer press against him, not so far that her hair doesn't sway around his face. He takes this as an invitation to thrust harder, pushing until he can feel her start to rumble within.

"Michael." And then a moan. "I missed thisyou." And she breaks. The rumbling reaches the surface, her head flies back — one word, "oh," but it says a lot to him, damned important — and she shudders around him, collapsing into his chest. It takes a moment of agonizing nothing for her to recover, move past the pain in her eyes.

Guilt now, and he wonders if maybe he is a sick fuck for having sex with a woman who just took a bullet in a spot not far from the tip of his cock. The same woman he called a whore seven years ago and hasn't seen since. But none of this was intended; they got here together somehow, and there is still that matter of not being done.

Then she kisses him, fully tender now, and it is all okay as she restarts the motion of her hips. Everything is old beautiful now, his only image her swaying above him.

I. Need. Faster. And she knows. Slides a hand beneath him, uses it for leverage, stability, and gives him just a little more. Then he is gone too, rigid beneath her and exploding inside her. He cries out her name, and it is the only word his incoherent mind can produce for a moment. It moves on, as does everything. Moves on, and sometimes comes back together, after seven years.

Nothing about anything is perfect.

It is more than enough.