Title: Wonderful Waste
Author: Brix
Rating: NC-17, to be safe
Spoilers: None a'tall.
Summary: Weiss contemplates his tempestuous relationship with Vaughn. And then they get raunchy. What more can you ask for?
Disclaimer: Don't own them, never will. They all belong to JJ. Imitation is the highest form of compliment.
Author's Note: This needed to be written. It really, really did. I'm a Syd/Vaughn fan all the way, but this just clawed itself out of me. Thanks to Sydney Real for the sharp jab of encouragement and the great "cover art" (ha!). And for not laughing.
Ship: Weiss/Vaughn, implied Syd/Vaughn

WONDERFUL WASTE

I wasn’t expecting the call.

At that point, I had already written him off. Michael Vaughn: Taken Man. File under “Currently Occupied.” There are certain things that you come to expect after knowing someone for so long, and I not only expected but knew that he was in love with Sydney. There was no denying it. Everyone knew the truth.

Everyone but him.

Which is why the ringer caught me off guard. He’s the only one who calls me - because real men don’t talk on the phone. They don’t have deep conversations about the many ways they might die the next day. And they certainly don’t have them at - I squinted at my clock - quarter to four in the morning. I don’t want to talk to him. But I pick up the phone anyway.

“Weiss.” I feel like a real cop when I answer the phone that way. Not a secret tech-ops agent. I feel straight laced. Normal. Beer drinking, Clint Eastwood loving, dog owning normal.

“It’s me.”

Who else would it be? “Mike. Hey.”

He pauses. He’s always unsure of himself, and I can almost see the half-hitched breath he pulls in before he speaks again. “You awake?”

“I am now,” I reply. “Can’t sleep?” In all the conversations we’ve had this late, this is one question he never answers.

“Sydney’s gone again. I’m worried about her, before she left she seemed - ”

I’m groping in the dark for the small lamp next to my bed. “Wait, wait, gone where?” Catching up with him in a conversation is like racing a Mustang on foot. My hand connects with the light switch and the room floods with 60 watt.

You pause again, this time in frustration. “Just gone, Eric. Gone.”

“And she seemed...worried?” I stabbed at a random word as I swung my legs to the floor. Cold tile. I winced as I stood and began to pace my bedroom.

“Distracted.”

I smile and stare out the wide window that takes up one wall of my bedroom. “Probably you.”

“This is serious,” I hear the words bitten back at me, but my grin widens to a smile. He knows I’m right. Sydney is just as in love with him as he is with her. Their feelings for each other are probably what’s kept the girl alive so long. But he isn’t calling me tonight because he’s worried about Sydney’s mission. Or because he needs an extraction team set up. I used to get these pre-dawn calls once a week.

“I thought you weren’t going to call anymore?” I can’t help but let a little mockery slip into the tone. I can hear his frustrated exhale. He’s growing impatient with my nonchalance. Good. Let him. He’s the one who set the rules.

“I didn’t think I’d have to.”

I retrace my steps on the Spanish tile again. “So you just want me to drop everything I’m doing and help you?”

“Oh, ‘cause you’re doing something that’s so important right now?”

“I value my sleep, thank you,” I shoot back at him, cutting off the argument before it can escalate. I pause in my trek, roughly palming sleep out of my eyes. “Where are you?”

“Your living room.”

“What?” I spin toward my closed bedroom door. “How did you get - ”

“I let myself in.”

I’m still staring at the door, wondering what might be on the other side of it. “I never should have taught you to pick locks,” I mutter. I’m really not all that surprised. He usually ended up outside my apartment. But he’d never let himself in before. “Getting a bit comfortable with this arrangement, are we?”

He sounds honestly surprised at the question. Of course he hadn’t considered it. Like he doesn’t consider anything he does. Doesn’t consider the effect it might have on people other than him. Michael Vaughn is a man of action, not a man of consequence. And one day, this was all going to come spiraling down on him. It was going to end in untimely deaths and broken hearts - not the fairy tale ending he wanted with his agent.

But then, he probably knew that. That was why he was standing in my living room. And maybe he did consider the effect he had on other people.

Maybe he knew that showing up in my apartment in the dead of night would be arousing.

I opened my bedroom door and peered cautiously into my dark hallway. I could see the reflection of the moonlight on the kitchen linoleum, but nothing else.

“Eric? Are you there?”

I turned off my phone and threw it somewhere behind me. It landed on the bed with a muffled thump. I took another step forward into the darkness and squinted again. As if this would somehow enable until then unknown powers of sight to surface.

“Eric?” I could hear his voice, still soothing its way into the phone, a tinge of concern laced with pleading.

The hallway spat me out into a slightly less dark living room, where my fish tank illuminated Mike in a slightly green hued glow. He was just hanging up his cell, finally affronted with a dial tone. He holstered the phone and offered me a sheepish smile. I nodded at him and then crossed the room to my front door.

“What did you do to it?” I asked skeptically, examining the lock.

“There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“I bet you killed it.”

“The lock is fine,” he sounded exasperated.

“You break it, you buy it, buddy,” I warned him as I turned away from the door. “Now get the hell out of here.”

“What?” He sputtered, taken aback.

I waved a dismissive hand. “Sorry. Just kidding. But you did say you wouldn’t be calling anymore.”

“I’m sorry,” he offered.

I shook my head. “No you’re not.”

He extended a hand in explanation. “Look, Eric, I...” He drifted, his brow creasing in consternation.

I love it when he does that.

“Don’t, okay?” I ask him, all jokes gone from my voice. “Look. There’s something you need to accept here. If you’re going to come here again, if you’re going to start this again, I need to know exactly how far this is going to go. I need to know whether or not I’m going to get hurt again.”

“You know I would never hurt you,” he offers. Hallmark movie of the week.

“You already did,” I reply. “But we’re partners. And I can deal with that. And I love you like a brother Michael, you know that. That’s why I put up with this. But you need to know that when that sun rises,” I point out the window that looks down on a dead street, “this is over. No games.”

He nods slowly. “No games.”

“You’re in love with Sydney,” I supply. “But I will not be a replacement for her. You will not be calling me every time she goes out of town. Every time you think she’s dead. Do we understand each other?”

He watches me tamely as I tirade across my living room. Then he speaks up. “Are you quite finished?”

“Yeah,” I admit, running a hand through my sleep-crazed hair. The truth is, Mike could call me up any time, day or night, the living room of my apartment or the broom closet at Langley, and get exactly what he wanted from me. And the worst part is, he knows it. He knows my protests are just for show. He knows exactly how badly I want him, and he knows that I know his secrets.

I am not a threat to him, and that is why he is here tonight. I am safe. I am predictable. I am his best friend.

I sigh, and glance up at the ceiling, studying the watery shadows cast by my goldfish. He is following my every movement, expectantly, setting his own teeth on edge. I reprimand myself for feeling flattered. He is the only man I have ever met who can induce his own foreplay.

He was probably ready before he even called me.

Turning back to him, I level him with a glare and a pointed finger, and stalk into his personal space. “Just tonight,” I say defiantly. I say it every night. And every night he agrees, with that smartass smile and sharp, pacifying nod.

And then he’s reaching for me, one hand reaching to pull my hand in closer and I can feel his burning fingertips against my scalp and it makes my insides scream with impatience, pooling heat in a pattern that I’ve always thought would be interesting to see though an infrared screening.

It has been twelve days.

His mouth meets mind and it’s like lava...rough and hot and scalding all the way down my throat. He likes to pretends he’s learned new things, and I let him, and somehow in the middle of unbuckling his pants and getting hands on skin we’ve backed up against my kitchen nook and he’s bumped into it, littering the surface with a knocked over jar of writing utensils that dig into my arms as I lean backward.

I have utterly destroyed his shirt. And I feel like a voyeur with the fish watching and family members staring down from my mantle. We slip and stumble to the floor; he bangs his head against the surface and we pause - barely - to laugh and roll. It’s gritty, and I try to remember the last time I had the place cleaned. But the hard floor feels good and real and at that moment, there is no CIA, there is no late night call and most of all, there is no Sydney Bristow.

Things are moving more quickly, because it’s been over a week. Mike works on a weekly rotation pattern, with his desperation building tenfold every day he avoids this past the seven day mark. Since I’ve known him, twenty days is the longest he’s ever made it. He hisses as skin meets skin and mutters incoherencies and encouragement into my shoulder and I wrap my fingers in his hair. I love the way it feels. I love the way he feels.

He has an amazing mouth. It’s the same sensation as watching a magician remove a cloth from a table without disturbing the setting, from the china plates down to the shrimp forks. And then I’m falling into sensation and I know that synchronous thought is going to be leaving soon. Very, very soon.

Moans - mine or his? - dig and burrow through my brain and I can feel myself arching in ways that will make my back pop in the morning when I try and stretch. He will stay the night, tonight, and I know we will make it to the bed. Eventually.

I know he’s very good at what he does. Getting under my skin.

I know he’s going to call again.

But most of all, I know that I’m always going to let him in.



end