Iconography challenge
Aug. 13th, 2003 04:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zarahemlaTitle: Between past and present tense
Author: Zara Hemla (shutupmulder@yahoo.com)
Fandom: Alias
Disclaimer: JJ! JJ! JJ! Yeah!
Rating: R
Summary: Vaughn and Weiss hurry up and wait.
Here's to all our vice
and our secret double life.
I'll sleep with one eye open,
maybe you'll save my life.
--New Amsterdams. All Our Vice.
It's a hotel room in Turkey. It's a hotel room in
Prague. It's long, desultory flights into nowhere,
seven different time zones, eight, ten, till they all
blur into one place where time is just something you
talk about. It's seven fifteen. It's nine thirty.
It's eleven. It's time to get a new watch.
Planes land. Planes take off. Hours and hours are
spent sitting in planes, watching the ground shift
from sea to land. Playing cards. Listening to
whatever CD Sydney'd scrounged up last. Oh, she had
the worst taste in music. She made him gag with the
Spice Girls, Herman's Hermits, AC/DC, the Carpenters.
They used to share a pair of headphones, he with the
right earpiece and she with the left, heads tethered
together by two feet of rubber-coated wire. He could
turn his head to kiss her and the earpiece wouldn't
even fall out, that's how close they were.
Now he's in constant, frenetic motion, doing more and
more, trying not to think about stopping. Since he
joined the CIA, he's never stopped anywhere. When
they found out he had field agent potential, they
attached him to the LA HQ, but they never let him
stand still. Always, he was out doing something,
solving puzzle after puzzle, whoring his talented
brain out to whoever was willing to write a memo
requesting it. Even now, when Sydney is gone as
though she never existed, Vaughn is sitting in a
plane, flying to Germany for a rendezvous with an
arms and designer drug dealer named Gerhard Schmidt.
Weiss leans forward from the seat behind Vaughn.
"How you doing, buddy?" he asks. "Need anything?
I'm going up front to see what kind of beer they
have."
Vaughn shakes his head mutely and watches as Weiss
hauls himself into the aisle and makes his way to the
front of the plane. Weiss is Vaughn's nursemaid.
His mama. His babysitter. Has been ever since
Vaughn went rogue -- the CIA's word for it, Weiss's
own term had been "fuckin' psycho" -- and began a
search for Sydney that lasted six months, went around
the world twice, and blurred himself so much that
even lying in a rented bed in Shanghai or Moscow, he
would still have an uneasy feeling that he was still
moving.
He and Weiss had fought in person and through phone
calls that entire time. He had wanted Weiss to
siphon departmental resources to him. Weiss hadn't
exactly refused, but he'd balked all the way to the
starting gate. He'd cussed Vaughn out, threatened to
turn him in, arrest him, whatever. But he hadn't
done any of those things. And when Vaughn returned,
scarred and exhausted, Weiss had defended him.
Stupid bastard. Vaughn hates his former partner
mightily. Sometimes they talk like they're friends.
Weiss treats him as though they are. But they barely
speak when they don't have to, and Vaughn hates the
patronising attitude Weiss uses toward him. Fuckin'
psycho? Eric, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
The plane flies on, against gravity. Weiss offers
Vaughn a tiny bottle of gin. Vaughn refuses. Puts
his head down onto the tray in front of him. Weiss
says, "Bud, you don't have to do that. The seats
recline fully." Vaughn tells him to fuck off and
die. Weiss shrugs (Vaughn can hear that, even from
behind him) and subsides.
Half-asleep, Vaughn drifts into a dream. Sydney
calls him Michael, threatens to leave him. She says
she is really his handler, and she is tired of having
to control his every move.
"You couldn't find me, could you?" she says,
frowning. She is wearing a black muscle shirt and a
long silver skirt that foams out behind her. "You
looked and looked, didn't you. You are the worst CIA
agent in the world. You missed all the clues, all
the stones I laid on the board. Fine then. I'm
leaving." And she does that. Vaughn catches hold of
her skirt, only to find that it's a piece of a
Hershey's candy wrapper. Sydney's gone, melted like
chocolate, as elusive as the swallowed bite. Vaughn
wakes up sweat-sticky, half crying, old.
The plane lands in Munich. Weiss, Vaughn, and a team
of geeks and backup take the S-Bahn -- the subway --
to a place called Max-Weber Platz, where they take an
apartment from an older German lady with a pinched
mouth. They set up surveillance easily, the cameras
and microphones sprouting like early daffodils. The
geeks get that look on their face, the one that means
they aren't listening to anything external. And
Vaughn settles down to wait. Again with the waiting.
Weiss offers him coffee. Vaughn says no. Weiss
offers a Brezen, the local giant pretzel. Vaughn
says no (but barely means it). Weiss retires to the
opposite corner, where he sits on the floor and
speaks German to himself. He is fluent in it, unlike
Vaughn, who has never had the knack of gargling in
the back of his throat. He eyes Weiss. Weiss eyes
him. Then Vaughn stares at his feet until he has
memorised every scuff on his dress shoes.
After what seems like a very long time, the geeks
suddenly perk up, each of them pointing like hunting
dogs. Then they jump up and high-five one another.
"Yes!" says one of them, the leader. His name is
Chester Arthur, like the president. "We got a
meeting place!"
"Is it tonight?" asks Weiss. Vaughn doesn't lift his
head.
"It's tomorrow night, at a club called Vier Prinzen."
"Four princes," mutters Weiss as if to himself.
Vaughn knows that the translation's for his benefit,
and hates Weiss a little more.
"Eleven o'clock. We're gonna get him this time!"
Chester has been on the team of four attempts to
catch Schmidt, each one unsuccessful. If geeks could
be said to have a vendetta, outside of murdering
George Lucas for the travesty that was Episode I,
this might be it.
The geeks hunch down again and Weiss stands up.
Vaughn thinks uncharitably of the weight Eric's
gained the past little while, the trouble he must be
having getting up from the floor. Weiss asks if
Vaughn wants to take the bed. Vaughn tells him to
fuck off and die. Weiss shrugs (Vaughn can see it
this time) and goes into the next room.
Vaughn waits quietly until he hears Weiss's snoring.
Then he stands, walks to the door. None of the geeks
even turn around. So Vaughn goes out the door, down
the stairs, and out into the unfamiliar night.
The street is mostly quiet. Here and there are
sounds: a bicycle bell, a man's voice raised in
roaring song, a door slamming open and closed. All
the shops are dark. Vaughn walks and doesn't care
where he's going.
Eventually he reaches a thoroughfare and a bridge.
To his right, tucked away, a theater is showing
"Rocky Horror Picture Show." The marquee claims to
have been showing the same movie every night at
midnight for 30 years. Vaughn buys a ticket,
fumbling briefly with the unfamiliar money. He goes
in.
He half-expects to hate it, since he hates
everything, but the classic is still a classic. Tim
Curry isn't an aging, sad, portly Englishman here,
but is as vital as blood, lovely and faux-evil.
Vaughn has always meant to take Sydney to Rocky
Horror -- she's never seen it -- and he never got the
time to do it, because a few stolen nights is all
they had before she disappeared like newly washed
glass.
As the movie winds up, he stands and makes his way
down the aisles and out the door. Across the street,
and back to the bridge, where he stares out into the
black water of whatever river runs through this damn
town. He tries his very best to empty his mind of
everything, everything.
It doesn't work. He leaves the bridge with his mind
still whirling, and he wanders again in the general
direction he came from. There are a few bars open
but he doesn't feel much temptation. Getting drunk,
Vaughn has found, solves nothing, and leaves you with
a headache besides.
There is nothing to do for Sydney here, nothing.
This is fucking Germany, and she hadn't been here for
a year before she disappeared, and what would an arms
dealer want with her anyway? No, this is busywork to
keep his mind from clawing out of his skull, and it's
not working. It's not working. Vaughn clenches his
fists in the dark and stalks toward nowhere.
From across the street, he hears Weiss's voice.
"Vaughn!" It's muted but urgent. Then running
footsteps, and Weiss comes panting up behind him.
"Dammit, Vaughn, where have you been?"
Vaughn turns on him. "None of your fucking business!
Maybe I've been selling all our fucking secrets to
the Germans, okay? Just get the hell away from me!"
Weiss grins. "Because the Germans totally want our
secrets. Come on and get some sleep. You must have
an infallible sense of direction, to lead you right
back to the apartment. I would be so lost out there
without a GPS or something." He points back across
the street to where a light shines behind some
curtains. Unwittingly, Vaughn has taken himself
right back to the headquarters. He sighs and follows
Weiss back upstairs.
He only sleeps because he's been trained to it. For
years he trained himself to sleep when he had to.
Even with Sydney, beside her, cocooned in her, he
still slept like the dead. She often teased him that
a bomb could go off and he'd never wake up, not till
St. Peter whacked him on the head with his big book.
Ha ha, Sydney, very funny. Nothing keeps her from
his dreams.
In the morning, Vaughn refuses everything but coffee.
It tamps down his minimal hunger and makes everything
look less annoying. A little less. Vaughn bites his
tongue to keep from complaining about everything:
the chill in the air (in July!), how none of the
geeks take a shower, the long boring hours that
stretch ahead of him.
He and Weiss avoid one another. Upon waking up,
Weiss had offered him a towel for the shower, and
Vaughn had taken it because there was nothing else.
Weiss had grinned, but as he'd turned away, Vaughn
had caught a muttered phrase about stupid stubborn
bastards.
Well, he supposed he was one. He had to spend all
his energy keeping back the anger that threatened to
make him into a vigilante, into an alter ego that
even he wouldn't be able to condone. Sydney wouldn't
want him giving up his job, his friends, everything
for her . . . but would she? Probably not. She
wouldn't do something like that for him: Jack
Bristow wouldn't let her. And that was very
sensible. So why did Vaughn feel like strapping on
his nine and walking all over the world if he had to?
The hours pass, as they always do, but Vaughn is
restless and cold. He pulls the blankets from the
bed around him and stares out the window. It almost
achieves what he'd failed at last night -- he drops
into a semi-trance as the cars whoosh by and
pedestrians, oblivious to Vaughn, carry on with their
lives.
Eventually he dresses in a black dress shirt and dark
blue vinyl pants. He slicks his hair back. Puts on
some eyeliner. Straps a pistol to the small of his
back. He and Weiss leave for the club. Weiss is
dressed similarly, except he is too fat for vinyl so
he wears pleather. Two subway stops and a short walk
later, the two of them end up at the entrance of Vier
Prinzen. The line is quite long, full of chattering
German girls on their cell phones and other languages
too. Vaughn recognizes Russian and Italian as he
puts his head up and saunters to the front of the
line.
He stands by the velvet rope and eyes the bouncer.
The interior of the club flashes and ambient noise
filters through the door.
The bouncer eyes him appreciatively. Vaughn, used to
it, smiles sweetly.
"Heard this was the best club in town, y'all," he
says in his version of a Southern accent. It's not
very good, but this guy won't know it. "I'm only
here for tonight, and I'd love to see." He shoves a
hand in his pocket, making sure his shirt gapes open
where it's unbuttoned.
The German, being a sucker for the romance of the
American South, as all Europeans are, grapples for
the hook and pulls the rope aside. Vaughn hooks his
arm through Eric's and begins tugging him inside.
The bouncer frowns.
"He is with you?"
"He's my sugar pie," says Vaughn, and presses a quick
kiss on Weiss's extremely startled mouth. "Isn't he
adorable?" Weiss, to his credit, puts his hand on
Vaughn's ass and grins widely.
The bouncer's smile falters a bit as he eyes Eric's
extremely tight pants. "Ja, buddy. Sure." He nods,
and they enter. Vaughn drops Weiss's arm.
"Mike," says Weiss, "not that I don't appreciate your
facility, but don't do that again without warning
me." He rubs his hand across his mouth.
"Shut up," says Vaughn, and pushes ahead into the
very crowded club.
They oil their way through the crowd and finally find
the door marked "Kein Eintragung." In spite of the
order, however, no one is guarding the door. There
is a number pad that Weiss makes short work of, using
a decoder shaped like a credit card, while Vaughn
dances with a tall girl in a red dress.
Behind the door is a short hallway, well lit, and a
succession of doors. Weiss fumbles in his pocket and
brings out something small and shaped like a thin
laser pointer. He shines the red light on the first
door and whispers, "This it?"
The microphone relays back to the geeks, the laser
relays heat signatures, and the geeks whisper back to
Weiss that there's no one behind that door. Or at
least Vaughn assumes so, because Weiss cocks his head
and they move on.
After polling all the doors quickly, he frowns for a
moment and flips the light off.
"This one," he says briefly, indicating the third
door, not looking at Vaughn. He knocks loudly.
It opens and a burly, bearded face peers out. "Was
ist los, Kerl?" he asks. Vaughn, German-less, only
smiles.
"Brauchen Sie Kaffee?" asks Weiss glibly. "Für
Seine Konferenz?"
The face frowns slightly. "Einen Moment, bitte." He
turns his head for a moment, presumably to poll for
coffee, and Weiss kicks the door into him.
He goes down like a sack of cement. The door
splinters inward and Weiss follows it, screaming like
a banshee. "Freeze! Fucking freeze!"
Vaughn draws his gun and goes in and to the side,
rolling to avoid fire. But there isn't any. There
is no Gerhard Schmidt. There is a girl in a black
sheath, standing open-mouthed by a window. A dark
Asian man sitting inscrutably at the table. And a
flapping curtain, letting in the chill breeze from
the open window.
Weiss is already at the window. He peers out of it,
leaving Vaughn to take care of the other two. "Damn
it! He must have gone out the window. It's only
five feet to the street. I can't see him." He slams
his gun against the window frame in frustration.
Vaughn is more than frustrated. He is choked with
anger. It rolls off him in waves. He cannot
breathe. Before he can think, he's got the Asian guy
up against the wall with an arm at his throat.
"Where is Schmidt?" he says through his teeth. The
man splutters, feebly clawing at Vaughn's arm, unable
either to breathe or speak. Vaughn doesn't care. He
doesn't want the guy to talk, because if he doesn't
talk, then Vaughn can kill him. And oh, at that
moment, how he wants to kill.
"He doesn't speak English," says the girl in the
sheath. Her voice is cold, contemptuous, and
British. "I'm his interpreter. Stupid American
pig."
That cuts through eventually, but not before Asian
guy has slumped unconscious and Eric has tugged him
off the man.
"Mike, you really are a fucking psycho," he says.
"They are gonna lock your ass up."
"They should," says the girl. "But they probably
love how he gets the job done." Vaughn looks up at
her, breathing hard through his nose.
"Lady, I'm not above throttling you."
"Piss off," she says, and saunters to the door.
"Incompetent prettyboy git. Keep looking out the
window, why don't you? Morons. Schmidt never even
came to this meeting. Your information is wrong and
you choked a man who knows the President personally.
Plays golf with George, Sr. They're gonna fire your
ass and you'll end up in Bumfuck, Ohio, selling shoes
at the Footlocker." She opens the door and leaves,
laughing softly to herself. Vaughn and Weiss look at
one another, speechless.
Then Weiss bursts out laughing too. He laughs so
hard he has to sit down on the floor and hold his
sides. Vaughn watches him, disbelieving, until his
own mouth starts to twitch.
"Oh man," gasps Eric. "She sure . . . told . . .
you."
"She could at least let me sell at the makeup counter
at Nordstrom," says Vaughn. "I'm at least that
pretty." He is laughing now too. He extends an arm
to help Weiss up and they lean on one another, going
out the door into the club and past the bouncer,
laughing and staggering. No one stops them. Vaughn
hears the bouncer say "Stockbesoffenen Amerikaner" in
a lofty voice to the rest of the line.
"He thinks we're drunk," giggles Weiss. It just
makes them laugh harder. They have to sit on the
curb and catch their breaths.
"This job is never what you expect it to be." Vaughn
struggles up and helps Weiss stagger down the street
to the subway stop. Once they are sitting in the
brightly lit car, Weiss stops smiling and stares out
the window into the black rail tunnels.
Finally as they stand up to get off the train, he
turns to Vaughn and says sincerely, "I know I'm a bad
substitute, even if I speak German. Won't you ever
be okay without her?"
Vaughn pauses, steps from lit car into lit station,
feels black blood run through him.
"I'm suffocating," he says.
--end--
Notes:
--This is the opposite of most of my fics, which start
out suddenly and end with long, long paragraphs.
Whaddaya know.
--The German dialogue goes something like this. The
guy asks Weiss, "What's up, man?" and Weiss says, "Do
you need coffee for your conference?" The man says,
"Just a minute, please." Not really integral to the
plot.
--The theater that plays Rocky Horror existed when I
lived in Munich: it had played the movie at midnight
for something like 21 years. It was one of two movie
theaters at the time that played films in English. I
spent a lot of time there.
--The river that Vaughn stares into is the Isar.
Author: Zara Hemla (shutupmulder@yahoo.com)
Fandom: Alias
Disclaimer: JJ! JJ! JJ! Yeah!
Rating: R
Summary: Vaughn and Weiss hurry up and wait.
Here's to all our vice
and our secret double life.
I'll sleep with one eye open,
maybe you'll save my life.
--New Amsterdams. All Our Vice.
It's a hotel room in Turkey. It's a hotel room in
Prague. It's long, desultory flights into nowhere,
seven different time zones, eight, ten, till they all
blur into one place where time is just something you
talk about. It's seven fifteen. It's nine thirty.
It's eleven. It's time to get a new watch.
Planes land. Planes take off. Hours and hours are
spent sitting in planes, watching the ground shift
from sea to land. Playing cards. Listening to
whatever CD Sydney'd scrounged up last. Oh, she had
the worst taste in music. She made him gag with the
Spice Girls, Herman's Hermits, AC/DC, the Carpenters.
They used to share a pair of headphones, he with the
right earpiece and she with the left, heads tethered
together by two feet of rubber-coated wire. He could
turn his head to kiss her and the earpiece wouldn't
even fall out, that's how close they were.
Now he's in constant, frenetic motion, doing more and
more, trying not to think about stopping. Since he
joined the CIA, he's never stopped anywhere. When
they found out he had field agent potential, they
attached him to the LA HQ, but they never let him
stand still. Always, he was out doing something,
solving puzzle after puzzle, whoring his talented
brain out to whoever was willing to write a memo
requesting it. Even now, when Sydney is gone as
though she never existed, Vaughn is sitting in a
plane, flying to Germany for a rendezvous with an
arms and designer drug dealer named Gerhard Schmidt.
Weiss leans forward from the seat behind Vaughn.
"How you doing, buddy?" he asks. "Need anything?
I'm going up front to see what kind of beer they
have."
Vaughn shakes his head mutely and watches as Weiss
hauls himself into the aisle and makes his way to the
front of the plane. Weiss is Vaughn's nursemaid.
His mama. His babysitter. Has been ever since
Vaughn went rogue -- the CIA's word for it, Weiss's
own term had been "fuckin' psycho" -- and began a
search for Sydney that lasted six months, went around
the world twice, and blurred himself so much that
even lying in a rented bed in Shanghai or Moscow, he
would still have an uneasy feeling that he was still
moving.
He and Weiss had fought in person and through phone
calls that entire time. He had wanted Weiss to
siphon departmental resources to him. Weiss hadn't
exactly refused, but he'd balked all the way to the
starting gate. He'd cussed Vaughn out, threatened to
turn him in, arrest him, whatever. But he hadn't
done any of those things. And when Vaughn returned,
scarred and exhausted, Weiss had defended him.
Stupid bastard. Vaughn hates his former partner
mightily. Sometimes they talk like they're friends.
Weiss treats him as though they are. But they barely
speak when they don't have to, and Vaughn hates the
patronising attitude Weiss uses toward him. Fuckin'
psycho? Eric, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
The plane flies on, against gravity. Weiss offers
Vaughn a tiny bottle of gin. Vaughn refuses. Puts
his head down onto the tray in front of him. Weiss
says, "Bud, you don't have to do that. The seats
recline fully." Vaughn tells him to fuck off and
die. Weiss shrugs (Vaughn can hear that, even from
behind him) and subsides.
Half-asleep, Vaughn drifts into a dream. Sydney
calls him Michael, threatens to leave him. She says
she is really his handler, and she is tired of having
to control his every move.
"You couldn't find me, could you?" she says,
frowning. She is wearing a black muscle shirt and a
long silver skirt that foams out behind her. "You
looked and looked, didn't you. You are the worst CIA
agent in the world. You missed all the clues, all
the stones I laid on the board. Fine then. I'm
leaving." And she does that. Vaughn catches hold of
her skirt, only to find that it's a piece of a
Hershey's candy wrapper. Sydney's gone, melted like
chocolate, as elusive as the swallowed bite. Vaughn
wakes up sweat-sticky, half crying, old.
The plane lands in Munich. Weiss, Vaughn, and a team
of geeks and backup take the S-Bahn -- the subway --
to a place called Max-Weber Platz, where they take an
apartment from an older German lady with a pinched
mouth. They set up surveillance easily, the cameras
and microphones sprouting like early daffodils. The
geeks get that look on their face, the one that means
they aren't listening to anything external. And
Vaughn settles down to wait. Again with the waiting.
Weiss offers him coffee. Vaughn says no. Weiss
offers a Brezen, the local giant pretzel. Vaughn
says no (but barely means it). Weiss retires to the
opposite corner, where he sits on the floor and
speaks German to himself. He is fluent in it, unlike
Vaughn, who has never had the knack of gargling in
the back of his throat. He eyes Weiss. Weiss eyes
him. Then Vaughn stares at his feet until he has
memorised every scuff on his dress shoes.
After what seems like a very long time, the geeks
suddenly perk up, each of them pointing like hunting
dogs. Then they jump up and high-five one another.
"Yes!" says one of them, the leader. His name is
Chester Arthur, like the president. "We got a
meeting place!"
"Is it tonight?" asks Weiss. Vaughn doesn't lift his
head.
"It's tomorrow night, at a club called Vier Prinzen."
"Four princes," mutters Weiss as if to himself.
Vaughn knows that the translation's for his benefit,
and hates Weiss a little more.
"Eleven o'clock. We're gonna get him this time!"
Chester has been on the team of four attempts to
catch Schmidt, each one unsuccessful. If geeks could
be said to have a vendetta, outside of murdering
George Lucas for the travesty that was Episode I,
this might be it.
The geeks hunch down again and Weiss stands up.
Vaughn thinks uncharitably of the weight Eric's
gained the past little while, the trouble he must be
having getting up from the floor. Weiss asks if
Vaughn wants to take the bed. Vaughn tells him to
fuck off and die. Weiss shrugs (Vaughn can see it
this time) and goes into the next room.
Vaughn waits quietly until he hears Weiss's snoring.
Then he stands, walks to the door. None of the geeks
even turn around. So Vaughn goes out the door, down
the stairs, and out into the unfamiliar night.
The street is mostly quiet. Here and there are
sounds: a bicycle bell, a man's voice raised in
roaring song, a door slamming open and closed. All
the shops are dark. Vaughn walks and doesn't care
where he's going.
Eventually he reaches a thoroughfare and a bridge.
To his right, tucked away, a theater is showing
"Rocky Horror Picture Show." The marquee claims to
have been showing the same movie every night at
midnight for 30 years. Vaughn buys a ticket,
fumbling briefly with the unfamiliar money. He goes
in.
He half-expects to hate it, since he hates
everything, but the classic is still a classic. Tim
Curry isn't an aging, sad, portly Englishman here,
but is as vital as blood, lovely and faux-evil.
Vaughn has always meant to take Sydney to Rocky
Horror -- she's never seen it -- and he never got the
time to do it, because a few stolen nights is all
they had before she disappeared like newly washed
glass.
As the movie winds up, he stands and makes his way
down the aisles and out the door. Across the street,
and back to the bridge, where he stares out into the
black water of whatever river runs through this damn
town. He tries his very best to empty his mind of
everything, everything.
It doesn't work. He leaves the bridge with his mind
still whirling, and he wanders again in the general
direction he came from. There are a few bars open
but he doesn't feel much temptation. Getting drunk,
Vaughn has found, solves nothing, and leaves you with
a headache besides.
There is nothing to do for Sydney here, nothing.
This is fucking Germany, and she hadn't been here for
a year before she disappeared, and what would an arms
dealer want with her anyway? No, this is busywork to
keep his mind from clawing out of his skull, and it's
not working. It's not working. Vaughn clenches his
fists in the dark and stalks toward nowhere.
From across the street, he hears Weiss's voice.
"Vaughn!" It's muted but urgent. Then running
footsteps, and Weiss comes panting up behind him.
"Dammit, Vaughn, where have you been?"
Vaughn turns on him. "None of your fucking business!
Maybe I've been selling all our fucking secrets to
the Germans, okay? Just get the hell away from me!"
Weiss grins. "Because the Germans totally want our
secrets. Come on and get some sleep. You must have
an infallible sense of direction, to lead you right
back to the apartment. I would be so lost out there
without a GPS or something." He points back across
the street to where a light shines behind some
curtains. Unwittingly, Vaughn has taken himself
right back to the headquarters. He sighs and follows
Weiss back upstairs.
He only sleeps because he's been trained to it. For
years he trained himself to sleep when he had to.
Even with Sydney, beside her, cocooned in her, he
still slept like the dead. She often teased him that
a bomb could go off and he'd never wake up, not till
St. Peter whacked him on the head with his big book.
Ha ha, Sydney, very funny. Nothing keeps her from
his dreams.
In the morning, Vaughn refuses everything but coffee.
It tamps down his minimal hunger and makes everything
look less annoying. A little less. Vaughn bites his
tongue to keep from complaining about everything:
the chill in the air (in July!), how none of the
geeks take a shower, the long boring hours that
stretch ahead of him.
He and Weiss avoid one another. Upon waking up,
Weiss had offered him a towel for the shower, and
Vaughn had taken it because there was nothing else.
Weiss had grinned, but as he'd turned away, Vaughn
had caught a muttered phrase about stupid stubborn
bastards.
Well, he supposed he was one. He had to spend all
his energy keeping back the anger that threatened to
make him into a vigilante, into an alter ego that
even he wouldn't be able to condone. Sydney wouldn't
want him giving up his job, his friends, everything
for her . . . but would she? Probably not. She
wouldn't do something like that for him: Jack
Bristow wouldn't let her. And that was very
sensible. So why did Vaughn feel like strapping on
his nine and walking all over the world if he had to?
The hours pass, as they always do, but Vaughn is
restless and cold. He pulls the blankets from the
bed around him and stares out the window. It almost
achieves what he'd failed at last night -- he drops
into a semi-trance as the cars whoosh by and
pedestrians, oblivious to Vaughn, carry on with their
lives.
Eventually he dresses in a black dress shirt and dark
blue vinyl pants. He slicks his hair back. Puts on
some eyeliner. Straps a pistol to the small of his
back. He and Weiss leave for the club. Weiss is
dressed similarly, except he is too fat for vinyl so
he wears pleather. Two subway stops and a short walk
later, the two of them end up at the entrance of Vier
Prinzen. The line is quite long, full of chattering
German girls on their cell phones and other languages
too. Vaughn recognizes Russian and Italian as he
puts his head up and saunters to the front of the
line.
He stands by the velvet rope and eyes the bouncer.
The interior of the club flashes and ambient noise
filters through the door.
The bouncer eyes him appreciatively. Vaughn, used to
it, smiles sweetly.
"Heard this was the best club in town, y'all," he
says in his version of a Southern accent. It's not
very good, but this guy won't know it. "I'm only
here for tonight, and I'd love to see." He shoves a
hand in his pocket, making sure his shirt gapes open
where it's unbuttoned.
The German, being a sucker for the romance of the
American South, as all Europeans are, grapples for
the hook and pulls the rope aside. Vaughn hooks his
arm through Eric's and begins tugging him inside.
The bouncer frowns.
"He is with you?"
"He's my sugar pie," says Vaughn, and presses a quick
kiss on Weiss's extremely startled mouth. "Isn't he
adorable?" Weiss, to his credit, puts his hand on
Vaughn's ass and grins widely.
The bouncer's smile falters a bit as he eyes Eric's
extremely tight pants. "Ja, buddy. Sure." He nods,
and they enter. Vaughn drops Weiss's arm.
"Mike," says Weiss, "not that I don't appreciate your
facility, but don't do that again without warning
me." He rubs his hand across his mouth.
"Shut up," says Vaughn, and pushes ahead into the
very crowded club.
They oil their way through the crowd and finally find
the door marked "Kein Eintragung." In spite of the
order, however, no one is guarding the door. There
is a number pad that Weiss makes short work of, using
a decoder shaped like a credit card, while Vaughn
dances with a tall girl in a red dress.
Behind the door is a short hallway, well lit, and a
succession of doors. Weiss fumbles in his pocket and
brings out something small and shaped like a thin
laser pointer. He shines the red light on the first
door and whispers, "This it?"
The microphone relays back to the geeks, the laser
relays heat signatures, and the geeks whisper back to
Weiss that there's no one behind that door. Or at
least Vaughn assumes so, because Weiss cocks his head
and they move on.
After polling all the doors quickly, he frowns for a
moment and flips the light off.
"This one," he says briefly, indicating the third
door, not looking at Vaughn. He knocks loudly.
It opens and a burly, bearded face peers out. "Was
ist los, Kerl?" he asks. Vaughn, German-less, only
smiles.
"Brauchen Sie Kaffee?" asks Weiss glibly. "Für
Seine Konferenz?"
The face frowns slightly. "Einen Moment, bitte." He
turns his head for a moment, presumably to poll for
coffee, and Weiss kicks the door into him.
He goes down like a sack of cement. The door
splinters inward and Weiss follows it, screaming like
a banshee. "Freeze! Fucking freeze!"
Vaughn draws his gun and goes in and to the side,
rolling to avoid fire. But there isn't any. There
is no Gerhard Schmidt. There is a girl in a black
sheath, standing open-mouthed by a window. A dark
Asian man sitting inscrutably at the table. And a
flapping curtain, letting in the chill breeze from
the open window.
Weiss is already at the window. He peers out of it,
leaving Vaughn to take care of the other two. "Damn
it! He must have gone out the window. It's only
five feet to the street. I can't see him." He slams
his gun against the window frame in frustration.
Vaughn is more than frustrated. He is choked with
anger. It rolls off him in waves. He cannot
breathe. Before he can think, he's got the Asian guy
up against the wall with an arm at his throat.
"Where is Schmidt?" he says through his teeth. The
man splutters, feebly clawing at Vaughn's arm, unable
either to breathe or speak. Vaughn doesn't care. He
doesn't want the guy to talk, because if he doesn't
talk, then Vaughn can kill him. And oh, at that
moment, how he wants to kill.
"He doesn't speak English," says the girl in the
sheath. Her voice is cold, contemptuous, and
British. "I'm his interpreter. Stupid American
pig."
That cuts through eventually, but not before Asian
guy has slumped unconscious and Eric has tugged him
off the man.
"Mike, you really are a fucking psycho," he says.
"They are gonna lock your ass up."
"They should," says the girl. "But they probably
love how he gets the job done." Vaughn looks up at
her, breathing hard through his nose.
"Lady, I'm not above throttling you."
"Piss off," she says, and saunters to the door.
"Incompetent prettyboy git. Keep looking out the
window, why don't you? Morons. Schmidt never even
came to this meeting. Your information is wrong and
you choked a man who knows the President personally.
Plays golf with George, Sr. They're gonna fire your
ass and you'll end up in Bumfuck, Ohio, selling shoes
at the Footlocker." She opens the door and leaves,
laughing softly to herself. Vaughn and Weiss look at
one another, speechless.
Then Weiss bursts out laughing too. He laughs so
hard he has to sit down on the floor and hold his
sides. Vaughn watches him, disbelieving, until his
own mouth starts to twitch.
"Oh man," gasps Eric. "She sure . . . told . . .
you."
"She could at least let me sell at the makeup counter
at Nordstrom," says Vaughn. "I'm at least that
pretty." He is laughing now too. He extends an arm
to help Weiss up and they lean on one another, going
out the door into the club and past the bouncer,
laughing and staggering. No one stops them. Vaughn
hears the bouncer say "Stockbesoffenen Amerikaner" in
a lofty voice to the rest of the line.
"He thinks we're drunk," giggles Weiss. It just
makes them laugh harder. They have to sit on the
curb and catch their breaths.
"This job is never what you expect it to be." Vaughn
struggles up and helps Weiss stagger down the street
to the subway stop. Once they are sitting in the
brightly lit car, Weiss stops smiling and stares out
the window into the black rail tunnels.
Finally as they stand up to get off the train, he
turns to Vaughn and says sincerely, "I know I'm a bad
substitute, even if I speak German. Won't you ever
be okay without her?"
Vaughn pauses, steps from lit car into lit station,
feels black blood run through him.
"I'm suffocating," he says.
--end--
Notes:
--This is the opposite of most of my fics, which start
out suddenly and end with long, long paragraphs.
Whaddaya know.
--The German dialogue goes something like this. The
guy asks Weiss, "What's up, man?" and Weiss says, "Do
you need coffee for your conference?" The man says,
"Just a minute, please." Not really integral to the
plot.
--The theater that plays Rocky Horror existed when I
lived in Munich: it had played the movie at midnight
for something like 21 years. It was one of two movie
theaters at the time that played films in English. I
spent a lot of time there.
--The river that Vaughn stares into is the Isar.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2003-08-12 09:30 am (UTC)Vaughn is whiny, yes, but it worked for me. Maybe that's because I usually find him boring, and anything that has him reacting in a strong manner to something gets points, but I liked the way he is in this. Also liked the way he dreams about Sydney.
Loved your Dixon fic, btw.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-08-13 09:03 am (UTC)Thanks for the comment about "Knock the Smile." I love that fic dearly. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2003-08-13 10:01 am (UTC)My favorite fic pastime is to write/envision dialogue where Irina snarks at him. Which is another way of saying I agree. It does help that he's pretty.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-08-14 01:59 pm (UTC)So thanks.