[MI] Spring Fever
Mar. 26th, 2008 02:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elementof_riskIt's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! ~Mark Twain
[ooc: Set the afternoon before this.]
Julian leaned on the small footbridge, part of the perfectly landscaped Huntington Library gardens, absently tossing bits of his sandwich to the ducks gathered in the water below him. He was frowning behind his sunglasses, waiting to meet his contact and finalize the details of the job. Cloned phone or not, he was not going to use it to dial hers. He couldn't be in the city without thinking of her, though, wondering what she would do if she heard his voice on the other end.
Probably put a trace on it immediately, signal Vaughn and try and have him arrested within the hour. Calling from anywhere in the same state would be ridiculous, let alone the same county. No, a small voice said sharply, calling at all would be ridiculous. The last time he'd seen her, after all, he'd tortured her at his employer's behest. Not the most auspicious way to move a relationship forward. Not that there was a relationship. There was Lydia and Bob, who might have had a chance had they been real people, and then there was Julian and Rachel, who were likely the most ridiculously improbable two people in the universe to have anything resembling the word "relationship."
Lydia and Bob could talk, could share their lives as engineer and businessman, could laugh over drinks and tease each other playfully in bed after. They didn't have to worry about things like secrets and lines drawn and crossed and endgames and espionage. Lydia didn't have to worry that her coworkers would question her loyalty for seeing Bob, and Bob didn't have to worry about Lydia's coworkers torturing him, or worse, killing yet a third one of his lovers.
Julian and Rachel would have to always be guarded, always lie, even as they were more honest, just for being them. They knew where the other stood, but where they stood was so far apart that their differences were likely irreconcilable. In her eyes, he was a terrorist. In his eyes, she worked for the very people he had spent the majority of his adult life trying to stay one step ahead of. He'd blown up her last office. Her people had shot him, broken several bones in his body, and put him in a cell for two years. Moments in hallways, or glances as he walked away after chivalrously turning down his fee couldn't matter, could they?
The memory of the way she tasted shouldn't linger on his lips nearly two years later. He shouldn't think of how she'd felt against him, or the way her smile lit up her eyes. The way the roses were starting to bud shouldn't make him want to share that with her, because he couldn't think of anyone else in his life he could. It was impossible. It was insane. It was dangerous and foolhardy and more risky than anything he'd done since...since he'd let a girl he didn't know into his hotel room and left her alone in there with his computer, his plane tickets and his passport, however fake.
The ducks were quacking for bread when he'd shredded and tossed it all without thinking. His contact was late. The scent of the roses from the special exhibit filled the whole bloody garden. And his hands nearly itched to slide over her skin just one more time, if only to prove to himself that it was just her unavailability that held him, not her in all actuality. It was his curse to want what he couldn't have, and losing Lauren, Sloane and Irina had left him adrift and lonely working freelance for people without any real vision, no matter how he'd sworn he was done with vision once and for all. That's all it was, he told himself, resolutely leaving his cell phone where it was.
Just a memory on a pretty spring day, and an ache of loneliness. He'd go out tonight, find a bar, find a girl, let her take him home, and this impulse would be gone by morning. He'd do the job and leave L.A. and head to Rome or Paris or Tokyo and not look back. It was the best idea all around. Anything else was just setting himself up for heartache and rejection.
But for just a moment, he closed his eyes, and he let the ache take over, and he wondered, "what if?"
[ooc: Set the afternoon before this.]
Julian leaned on the small footbridge, part of the perfectly landscaped Huntington Library gardens, absently tossing bits of his sandwich to the ducks gathered in the water below him. He was frowning behind his sunglasses, waiting to meet his contact and finalize the details of the job. Cloned phone or not, he was not going to use it to dial hers. He couldn't be in the city without thinking of her, though, wondering what she would do if she heard his voice on the other end.
Probably put a trace on it immediately, signal Vaughn and try and have him arrested within the hour. Calling from anywhere in the same state would be ridiculous, let alone the same county. No, a small voice said sharply, calling at all would be ridiculous. The last time he'd seen her, after all, he'd tortured her at his employer's behest. Not the most auspicious way to move a relationship forward. Not that there was a relationship. There was Lydia and Bob, who might have had a chance had they been real people, and then there was Julian and Rachel, who were likely the most ridiculously improbable two people in the universe to have anything resembling the word "relationship."
Lydia and Bob could talk, could share their lives as engineer and businessman, could laugh over drinks and tease each other playfully in bed after. They didn't have to worry about things like secrets and lines drawn and crossed and endgames and espionage. Lydia didn't have to worry that her coworkers would question her loyalty for seeing Bob, and Bob didn't have to worry about Lydia's coworkers torturing him, or worse, killing yet a third one of his lovers.
Julian and Rachel would have to always be guarded, always lie, even as they were more honest, just for being them. They knew where the other stood, but where they stood was so far apart that their differences were likely irreconcilable. In her eyes, he was a terrorist. In his eyes, she worked for the very people he had spent the majority of his adult life trying to stay one step ahead of. He'd blown up her last office. Her people had shot him, broken several bones in his body, and put him in a cell for two years. Moments in hallways, or glances as he walked away after chivalrously turning down his fee couldn't matter, could they?
The memory of the way she tasted shouldn't linger on his lips nearly two years later. He shouldn't think of how she'd felt against him, or the way her smile lit up her eyes. The way the roses were starting to bud shouldn't make him want to share that with her, because he couldn't think of anyone else in his life he could. It was impossible. It was insane. It was dangerous and foolhardy and more risky than anything he'd done since...since he'd let a girl he didn't know into his hotel room and left her alone in there with his computer, his plane tickets and his passport, however fake.
The ducks were quacking for bread when he'd shredded and tossed it all without thinking. His contact was late. The scent of the roses from the special exhibit filled the whole bloody garden. And his hands nearly itched to slide over her skin just one more time, if only to prove to himself that it was just her unavailability that held him, not her in all actuality. It was his curse to want what he couldn't have, and losing Lauren, Sloane and Irina had left him adrift and lonely working freelance for people without any real vision, no matter how he'd sworn he was done with vision once and for all. That's all it was, he told himself, resolutely leaving his cell phone where it was.
Just a memory on a pretty spring day, and an ache of loneliness. He'd go out tonight, find a bar, find a girl, let her take him home, and this impulse would be gone by morning. He'd do the job and leave L.A. and head to Rome or Paris or Tokyo and not look back. It was the best idea all around. Anything else was just setting himself up for heartache and rejection.
But for just a moment, he closed his eyes, and he let the ache take over, and he wondered, "what if?"
