On 3 ... Awwwwww *^_^*

... sorry about the emoticon but this new chapter left me so warm and fuzzy (on the inside) and grinning like an idiot (on the outside), I just couldn't resit.

Thank you!

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Ch. XXV- SNIPER

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"But now the thirst so hideous has left me. I live within a coolness, among calm men, And yet am strange. A something has bereft me Of a seeing, and strangely love returns; And old desires half-known, and hanging sorrows. I seem agaze with wonder. Memory burns. I see a thousand vague and sad tomorrows.
None sees my sadness. No one understands How I must touch her hair with bloody hands."

I finish, mouth dry after only the one short poem, but then it's not the reading that's done it. She's all but in my lap, and down at the end of the bed there's her legs, and her skirt ridden up to show off one knee, and...

I don't remember the room being this warm. Wine hitting me? I hadn't meant to reach for her when I did, either, but her hair is soft under my fingers and her sigh softer...

"That's so sad." Her hand comes up to rest on my shin, and her shoulders are bare, that flimsy little wrap gone, and I could touch... could slide my hand from her hair to her shoulder and touch bare skin.

"Leon Gellert." I say, and I want to say they're not all sad, except the ones I know all are... but with the war, I've come to appreciate war poets in a way I didn't before, and with her, I've come to appreciate The Husband...

I place a hand on her shoulder, but I pull back when she seems to curl in on herself at it.

"Sorry," I say and she says, and she looks up at me with a broken little smile.

"Sorry." I repeat.

"No... Really, I--"

"I didn't mean to startle you."

"It's not that. It's my shoulders..."

"You don't like them?" I dare another touch. They are broad and narrow all at once, delicate and thin in spite of their span, and her skin is so pale, cool and smooth...

"I suppose I just wish they were softer. I always wished I'd had small, round shoulders. They're so much broader than my hips, I feel like I look--"

"You look fine." I promise. Her skin warms up quick enough under my hand. There's a thin little scar that starts at the back of her shoulder and disappears under the strap of her dress, and her breath catches as my finger follows along the line of it. "Like an athletic girl, anyway. Dunno how interested I'd be in one who wasn't about as strong as me."

She sits up, scooting up to sit next to me at the head of the bed, and it's just a shame the flouncy bits of her skirt have covered her knee up again, but the look she gives me is...

That look is everything.

I lean in, put a hand on her waist, and her dress is... slippery, between the slicker, thicker fabric of the body of it and the smooth sheer layer over, the same stuff as her wrap.

"I might have to kiss you." I smile, and I'm close enough to smell the last fading notes of her perfume on the skin, that spiciness that never quite came out on cloth or paper that keeps the lavender from seeming so sleepy on her.

"Oh my... I might have to let you." She smiles back, none of that sadness left, just the soft, sly secrecy. It does things to me I'm not prepared for, how bad I want to learn the curve of it with my own mouth.

I kiss her, I have to kiss her, and she's sweet and yielding as any woman I've ever kissed... Whatever she feels about her hips and her shoulders, when she kisses me back, with one of my hands at each, I can only think she feels lovely.

I break away from her lips, with a sudden self-consciousness as I do, at the idea that the wine and the pasta sauce can't have left my breath very nice, but her throat is there... seems longer and slenderer without the shirt collar and mask and tie.

Up under her ear, there's that whiff of her perfume, and of her, and the taste of her skin is clean as the sweetness of fresh cold water, with a little tiny hint of that same gentle spiciness.

"Oh, darl..." I rest my forehead against her shoulder, breathing deep and feeling shaky. "I could kiss you all night."

"Careful, or I could let you..." There's a brittleness to her laugh, and her grip tightens on my hair, and when I breathe out I can see the neckline of her dress flutter just a little bit.

I nibble along her collarbone, for the soft moan it gets me, and at the back of her shoulder, my fingers slide back under the wide strap of her dress.

I don't know what I want... I want a lot. I want her. I don't want to rush things, but I want her, and it's strange to realize that I honestly don't care what the body in all the frills is, as long as it's hers. It's freeing to feel that, after all the worry, to know her and want her and...

Love her, really. I think I could say that, and feel it's true.

I kiss my way along her shoulder, until her lips are at my ear.

"Gin?" I turn to catch a quick peck from her, and she's got this look for me, soft, so soft, and about as wondering as mine must be.

"This... this is nice." Her hand moves to my cheek. "I like your lips."

"Oh. Erm. I like yours."

I have a loose handful of her dress in my hand, still resting over her hip, but it's enough to draw her skirt up, to put her knee back on display. I let go, though it stays rucked up even when I do, and when she merely leans in towards me, I curve a hand around her calf.

"Mm... dinner tonight was lovely."

"Good. I'm glad. I... The walking around helped me. Cleared my head a lot. I'm not afraid of this, or of you, and..." And I want to stay. I want to spend the night with my arms around her, want to know if the last little bit of her relaxes when she sleeps or if she's wound tight and vigilant even then.

Definitely too far, for tonight. I can't ask her for that.

She beams at me, grabs me in for a quick kiss before blushing into her hand.

"Tuesday, then... Tuesday we'll have a lovely time again?"

"Tuesday." I nod.

Gah! I need Tuesday probably more than those two!

Dear god is it Tuesday yet?

I must agree with anon86, Tuesday will never come fast enough (for both them and us)

... and that kiss was so ... hot (so hot, that it must have fried my brain because I cannot find a better word to discribe it)

>>88 Also you cannot seem to spell "describe". (I'm not saying that to insult! I'm pointing it out as evidence that the kiss was, indeed, HOT.)

>>89 Apparently my brain got fried worst than I thought not only did I loose my vocabulary but also my ability to spell.

Glad you guys are enjoying things!

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Ch.XXVI- SPY

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The stew can only rise so far, with the ingredients I have to start with... there is little promise in tinned beef and vegetables, and even the emergency bit of shopping I did on Sunday can only take it to 'all right'.

Good enough for the team, but for cooking for a date...

Cooking for a date! Just the idea has me giddy in spite of the stew's shortcomings. Between that and the bread, there's a good solid meal, if not a great one, and the team doesn't really grant much importance to my disappearances. I set aside a couple of Thermoses full of stew and one loaf of bread before I bring dinner out to the table, and when I slink off, I don't think any eyebrows are raised. I think they've long since learned I sometimes can't stand company.

I get dinner packed up, slip past the team and to my room so that I can bring along a garment bag with my dressing gown-- I don't dare change into something more 'me' for the trip out, but at least when I get there I can trade some of the suit for something more comfortable. Something less 'Spy'.

The trip out is mercifully uneventful, dusk is falling and I have my watch, and there is something about seeing the warm light of his camper in the distance that makes me feel almost weightless.

I knock, as best I can with dinner and dressing gown encumbering me.

"Arms are a bit full." I call.

He opens the door with a grin. "Come on in, got dishes ready and space cleared for ya."

I let him take the bag carrying both bread and Thermoses, and he kisses my cheek in the process, even with the mask in place.

"There's a fresh loaf of bread and there's a beef stew. Turn around?"

He eyes the garment bag and shrugs, turning to busy himself with dinner.

I take the mask off first, turned to the corner where even without the curtains drawn I wouldn't be seen, and then I shed the top half of my suit, down to the soft undershirt, before wrapping myself in the dressing gown and toeing out of my shoes to slip my trousers off.

"Granted, it is a little forward, coming to dinner dressed like this," I call over my shoulder. "But it didn't seem right to wear all of that."

"I... am not complaining."

The weight of his eyes on me is exciting, not uncomfortable... flattering, even. It traces the small open gaps of the dressing gown and the places where it drapes well, darts between glimpses of collarbone and knee.

I pull my gloves off and set them on the suit before moving to the table. "Shall we?"

"Right. Right. Got you a bowl." He gestures to it, flushing.

"Thank you."

My foot bumps his under the table, and it is by accident, but I am in no real hurry to remedy the moment of contact.

"This is real good."

"Well... it's what I could do with what I had." My turn to go a little red. "I tried to make it something you would enjoy."

"Mm, well it is that."

"Thank you." I duck my head, glance back up at him, and...

And it's sweet, it really is, the way he smiles back at me, the way it's easier than I had feared to have a quiet meal, to relax. And when my hand rests on the table a while, his moves to cover it, and...

It's perfect.

We eat, mostly in silence. Talking can come after, but while there are frequent little glances and his hand spends plenty of time holding mine, his focus is for dinner, and that is flattering as it would be to have it on me. Nice, to have my efforts appreciated so well.

I move to sit beside him after, and it does not exactly escape my attention when he goes for a breath mint.

"May I?"

He nods, passing one over and sliding an arm about my shoulders. "Please. I mean-- Er, just-- If you want one, yeah."

"I am sorry, for the way things went at first."

"So am I. I'm not sorry you wrote me. I'm not sorry I like you."

"No, me also... I am not sorry for that. Maybe we had to hurt a little before we could know each other. If that is the case, then I am not sorry at all."

"I still am, a bit. Said some pretty mean things when I was mad and I didn't know better."

I shrug and lean into him. "Let's talk of something else now. We could waste all evening arguing over who has more to be sorry for, but wouldn't you rather waste it on something more fun?"

"Wouldn't call fun with you a waste." He grins, his hand slipping down to squeeze at my ribs, and he chuckles when I jump and giggle. "Ticklish?"

"Some of the time. When handsome men surprise me."

He turns, his other arm coming up around me, and I relax into the first few kisses, to the slide of his hands up and down my back. I draw back, before I can be too lost to it.

"Gin? Sorry-- I can behave."

"No, it isn't that..." I grab his retreating hands, hold onto them in the little space between us. "I want... I want things to go the same way that you do, I think. I love the way I feel with you, and the way you feel, I just-- I just wanted to remind you, I am not what you bargained for when we started writing, that is all."

"No. Reckon you're more than I bargained for." He moves both my hands to one of his, freeing up the other to cup my chin. "Would still like to make love to you. If that's what you want."

I nod, guiding his hand to the opening vee of my dressing gown. His hands are warm and just a little rough, and he touches me like I'm something precious, like he hasn't seen the things I'm capable of-- hasn't fallen to them himself. There's nothing to do with a man like that but love him a little, and I lean into his touch with a sigh.

He fumbles with the sash of it, hand stroking over my knee on the way, and he looks up at me with something almost like wonder at that, at the sheer stockings, at unbelting the dressing gown to find the soft, thin undershirt and the garters clipped to my panties. His thumb brushes over the front of those, and I moan.

"Thought you said you had a...?"

"I do."

"Where do you keep it?"

I can't help a giggle at that, and I shrug out of the undershirt first, before unclipping my garters and sliding the panties off carefully.

Even with them gone, as long as I am tucked into place, the hair does a fair job of hiding things, but I go ahead and untuck just the penis, for his benefit. Considering the way he's been affecting me, it is a little bit of a relief. He loses something of his look of consternation, though some of the wonder sticks around as he reaches behind, a couple of fingers sliding up between my legs for a feel.

He is good enough not to focus on it, that is a bigger relief. Once all the parts are accounted for, he is not fixed on my genitals. And to be fair, I do not mind where he does focus, don't mind the first two fingers stroking across the little cavity where the rest is still tucked away, over the bit of sensitive flesh there.

"Soft..." He nuzzles the side of my throat, and if I wasn't lost before that...

No one has ever called me 'soft' before... When I was young enough to be pretty, I was pretty. And then, when I was not, I was still 'pretty', albeit with a wink and a nudge, from men who still assumed I was a man in a dress and should be made love to accordingly.

I have wanted to be soft. I have mourned the lack of softness I was born for, I have invested in lotions and kept as much of my skin out of the sun as possible and dressed to hide the sharp angles nature gave me, I have loved 'soft' and thought I might never really be, never enough for a man who liked softness.

To be soft enough to please him, that I love.

I unbutton his shirt, while he pets at me and sucks marks into my skin, get him undressed without losing too much contact, and my stockings have rolled down without the clip-on garters so that the only thing holding them up is the socks I cover them up with, and then he offers me a hand to get up to where his bed is hidden away and I leave my undershirt behind.

I am not free from the self-conscious streak that I imagine always plagues first times. My chest is too flat, and a work day has left me without any of the things that might lend the illusion of curves, but the skin at least is smooth and hairless, and when his hands start sliding up my ribcage once more, I push them up and in just to guide the skin into a little false cleavage.

His lips follow the line down, and his body rests over mine, close enough to feel the heat of him, and I don't mind being hard against him if he does not mind that I am.

"How do you like to?" He pants, lifting his head, and I can make out a few of the rising little bruises he's been sucking into place.

"Between my legs, just..."

He nods, spitting into his hand and slicking himself up, and oh... Oh, that is nice. Another time, another time for everything else, but if he can get off on just the friction between my thighs, that is where I want him now.

It may be all illusion, but illusion is not so bad, and his breath against my throat is wonderful, his arms around me and the thrust of his hips...

I touch myself, just a little, down between us. Enough to get off just after he does, and even after, he never stops kissing my neck, whispering little things I barely hear and can't make out.

He sighs and lifts his head, bringing his lips to mine. "Mm... was that all right for you?"

I nod, though I can't quite meet his eyes. As lovely as he's been, as wonderful as he is, it's a little hard to look at a man when you've just come across his stomach, I think.

"Ginny? I mean, you finished all right, so...?"

"That's the problem." I admit, looking up at him with a wry smile. "Not a problem, not really. I don't mind sex even with the body I have, except it's so messy, that's all."

"There's plenty of girls who squirt." He shrugs.

"Really?"

"You didn't know?"

"I have never had sex with another woman."

"Oh. Well, some girls go off. I mean, I know it's not the same and all, but if that's the only thing bothering you."

"I don't know." I shake my head. "It's... it's always been the worst part to me, but..."

"Look... Just-- Don't, all right, don't be upset about it? I--" He takes a deep breath. "In the army, I-- When I was in the army, I mean, blokes got real lonely, and we were all of us young then, wasn't anyone who could go that long without somebody, that age, and... I mean, we did things for each other sometimes. I like girls, but I've... Yours isn't the first, y'know, other person's... one of those that I-- So don't think I've got a problem with what you've got, because, I mean, it's yours at least, and I'd rather be with you, and-- I mean--"

I throw my arms around him. It seems like the best way to keep him from trying to explain things he has no words for, and it isn't as though I don't have experience with people I was not compatible with...

"You don't mind a girl with the wrong equipment?" I offer.

"It's your equipment. That's enough for me, I guess. You... you smile at me and you look at me and you touch me like a woman, and you're soft and you're sweet for me, and you let me read you poems, and I reckon that means more to me than the rest. Sowed my wild oats, Gin, I just want something real. The parts don't matter so much."

"You are a strange man..." I smile. "For the first time, I feel like I am a lucky woman."

He grins at me, and it is terribly earnest and begging to be kissed.

"I just want us to be happy." He settles down with his arms around me. "If... if you're not happy with what you've got, I mean... Dunno. Have you ever thought about, y'know, I mean... going to Sweden or wherever and having stuff done?"

I shake my head. "Denmark. Anyway, a couple of years ago they were doing it in America, and it still doesn't matter. I can't."

"As long as you're happy."

"It has nothing to do with happiness. Maybe it would help, maybe with you it wouldn't even matter--"

"It doesn't have to." He promises.

"I can't have surgery. They would put me under... it terrifies me. There is nothing worse, I-- There have been nights I have lain awake because even sleep was horrifying to me. Being unconscious, I... I just couldn't. No surgeries, not for me. I don't like to be unaware of the world around me."

"You're afraid to sleep?"

"Only sometimes. In new places. The first couple of nights in a new base I don't."

"It sounds awful."

"It is. It is the worst fear to have, I think. But I need to know what is happening around me. I couldn't... I couldn't be put under, not even for this."

He strokes my hair and holds me close. "Well, we'll figure something out, then. I want you to have fun--"

"I did. Really. It's just a little awkward after, the first time with someone."

He nods. "All right. Long as you're happy, then. If you're happy, I'm happy, and we'll figure the rest out as we go. You've bloody bewitched me, I want you to know that."

I settle into him with a smile. A shame I can't stay very much longer... but for a little while yet, I'll take what I can. The feeling is more than mutual.

Ch.XXVII- SNIPER

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I'm not sorry, exactly, not to have much room in bed for spreading out. Not with her tucked up in my arms, and except for the line of the old scar, the back of her shoulder is soft and smooth, easy to nuzzle against in that sort of sleepy after-sex place.

"Guess I'm no good at pillow talk." I admit. Not that I've been a quiet lump the whole time, but half the time my mouth's been open I've been tripping over my tongue putting my foot there, feels like.

"As long as you are talking to me, I don't mind." Her arm drapes over mine, around her waist. "You are fine."

"Anything else I can do for you, before you go?"

"Promise to meet me again?"

"Darl, wild horses couldn't keep me. In fact, if you see any wild horses, you tell 'em."

She laughs, and there's a warmth to it, gentle... She rolls over in my arms, and I lose my spot on her shoulder, which is maybe for the best because I'm sure I'd give her beard burn if she let me.

"Saturday afternoon, at the hotel, the same? And if I cannot get the same room, I'll find you before I change and let you know which door to knock on. This time I will bring a book, and you can rest and I can read. And I will show you a couple of things."

"Oh, I definitely like it when you show me a couple things." I snake a hand down to give her arse a quick squeeze. And sure, all right, guess it's not as round or as soft as most girls, but the skin's soft even if it's all firm muscle beneath, and I've got no problems with muscle anyway.

Besides, nice as every curve on a woman is and much as I wouldn't begrudge any man his preference, I'm a leg man first and foremost. If I had to choose, I mean, I think I'd choose legs. There's no wrong choice, but legs...

Well, legs she's got. Long and lean and with a nice bit of shape... maybe other men wouldn't be able to handle her like she is, not the flatter chest and arse and not certain other bits, but you show any man on earth just a picture of those legs, in her stockings and all, if he says they're not the most perfect specimen, he's out of his bloody mind.

I slide my hand down her thigh. The hair there's sparse, and silky, and I can feel about where she must start and stop shaving, where it becomes just smooth, and I am more than happy to feel her up a while longer, to get my nose back in the curve of her neck where it's almost all sweat and no perfume now but sometimes I catch the tiniest bit of lavender in all the sex and musk.

"So soft..." I hook the back of her knee with my hand and draw her flush to me, roll her to her back. "Fuck, if I was a younger man... But I probably shouldn't keep you long enough for another go, it'll be late and you've got to get... aw, can't help thinking about it, though. Saturday, Saturday I'll love you up all over again."

I love the little gasp I get, the softest little half a moan and the hand that snakes around the back of my neck.

"Saturday I will keep you through to Sunday, if you like." She promises, sliding out from under me and out of my bed, and giving me one last long kiss as she does.

I watch her dress, tucking herself back into her underthings first, fixing everything nice and neat and everything about her just the most precisely dainty... After that, she puts the Spy back on over, and even though I know the uniform is cut to fit her body, there's a moment where it all seems grossly oversized, and maybe that's just me seeing it for the costume it is. A moment later, every article fits her like a glove, but the very last mask, the one that's in the way she holds herself, doesn't come back up yet.

I am grateful for that. Even with the suit and gloves and balaclava, she moves like herself a while yet as she packs up the things she'd brought with dinner. When she picks up the robe, I reach a hand out towards her.

"Leave that? I-- I mean... if you've got something else in your room you can wear instead... I thought-- If I hang it up in my closet, you won't have to carry it back and forth all the time, but whenever you wanted to visit me out here during the week, you'd have something to put on."

She reaches out, smiling and taking my hand. "I would like that. I have other things, I can leave this here... I would like that."

I tug her in a step so that I can kiss her hand, even through the glove. Even through the glove, she reacts to it, with a soft smile, with lowered eyelashes.

She finds an empty hanger in my closet. Not much room there, but then, I don't own that much to clutter it up. And no one from the team's ever out here to poke around, so it'll be safe there.

And I like it, just seeing it for a moment hung up next to my clean shirts, knowing it's hers and knowing she can be at home here. I mean, I want her to be at home here.

Hell... I'll have to make the place nicer, if I'm gonna have a lady over more often. I mean, I cleaned up knowing she'd be coming over tonight, but I need to make the place nice. Dishes that match and don't have big chips in them, for starters, maybe a new dishtowel, the old one's kind of ratty... New curtains, I could use new curtains-- just something nice on the inside of the thick ones, at least, because those are good for keeping prying eyes from seeing in, but they're ugly as sin and I just never cared.

Well, come to think of it, wouldn't know how to buy nice ones.

I'll just start with a couple sets of new dishes, then. Start small.

"Sleep well, mon amour." She squeezes my hand and slips away.

"You too." I whisper after her, before she disappears.

New dishes, and some coasters and a dishtowel that aren't just practical beer adverts, and I won't worry about curtains for now. And Saturday...

And Saturday.

It's really not fair how happy this fic makes me.

I feel all fuzzy when I read this. Cannot wait for Saturday.

Ch.XXVIII- SPY

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This time, I prepare a small 'picnic' supper ahead of time. I get the same room, and arrive with enough time to get ready before there's a knock at the door.

The man, I expected. The chocolates are a surprise.

I usher him in with a hand on his arm, and once the door is locked and bolted, the box of chocolates is tossed to the bed and his hands are on my waist. And considering how we spent Tuesday night, the kiss is surprisingly chaste.

Sweet.

"It's nice to see you." I sigh, leaning against him.

"Me? Ah, nah, you're the sight for sore eyes, luv."

I stand back, feeling my face heat, but happy to give him a look at me even if I can't quite believe it. Me a sight for sore eyes... but I know a lie when I hear one.

The skirt of my dress is... shorter than I like, but then, I am taller than the woman it was made for, and I could only do so much with it.

It's a simple sheath dress, the sort that was all the rage a couple of years back, and the tailoring at the neckline and bust and the peplum at the hips give the illusion of a little more shape than I could honestly claim. I let the hem down as much as I reasonably could, but it still hits rather high above the knee, and of course I had to remove a large part of the back so that it wouldn't be too tight across my shoulders, but when I bought it, I had an apartment and a sewing machine and the time to use both, before I put most of my things in storage to join BLU and let the lease on the apartment go.

I could afford to buy the whole building now, but that's not where I'm going, when this job is up.

"Green's your colour." He offers, his hand skating up the bare skin of my back. "I mean, not that blue's not your colour, reckon it brings out your eyes best, but... I mean, probably I'd think anything was your colour."

"Thank you."

"Does make me wonder how you'd look in red." He murmurs. There's a glint of mischief in it, a note of something almost dirty, and I play with one of his shirt buttons and smile.

"Well, maybe you'll find out."

We move to sit on the bed, his hand resting on my knee, and I don't mind the length of the dress so much, with that...

I'd only packed a couple, once I had the contract. I'd been in such a flurry I barely paid any attention, or I might never have brought it, but then, I put so much work into making it fit me comfortably, and aside from how self-conscious the length of it always made me feel, it is flattering...

"Have you had lunch? I have some things." I cozy up to him, and point out the bottle of wine sitting in the ice bucket, and the bag from the supermarket beside it.

There's a small cooler on the floor, sitting next to the dresser, and he looks over the spread, such as it is, without removing his hand from my leg.

"I could eat." He nods, giving my knee one last squeeze before standing and offering me his hand. "If you want to get us set for food, I'll get that bottle open. Bet you picked a better wine than I did..."

"For this, but I don't think the quality is any better, really. We both got the best Teufort has to offer."

I'd bought paper plates and napkins, since we've no takeaway containers to eat from, and I tear the loaf of fresh bread into large hunks and get the cheese and summer sausage from the cooler.

It's no picnic by the Seine, a hotel room in Teufort, but the company more than makes up for the fact.

Berries would have been nice, but the produce section had little to begin with, and the only decent fruit to be found was bags full of little green apples. Well, I have my knife, it's not exactly trouble to cut a couple into slices, to give the blade a quick clean-off with a handkerchief before cutting slices from the sausage.

"This looks real nice." He hands me the water glass of white wine as I finish. "Very picnic."

"Mm. Just imagine we've some scenery." I laugh, shaking my head.

"Oh? Where are we, then?" He stretches out across his side of the bed and picks up an apple slice, grinning over it at me.

"There--" I point across from the foot of the bed, past the plain beige wall. "Imagine a river. And grass, soft and green, all around our blanket. And here--" I reach back to touch the headboard. "Here is a good shade tree. Here and there, there are other parties, and up a hill, there is a street, and bicyclists. And there are birds, little songbirds. And there are barely any clouds in the sky, but under a tree, it is not too hot."

"Mmm... well, lucky to be out on a day like that, and with a girl who packs a good picnic lunch."

I blush all over again, but it doesn't take very long before we are both relaxing, pointing out imaginary ducks and rowboats on the river and sharing sips of wine.

Full, I scoot over to lean against the headboard, picking up my book from the nightstand, and he moves in close, to rest his head on the pillow, so near to my hip, and to wrap his hand back around my knee.

"I think that's cheating." I cough. "There are no pillows on a picnic."

"Oh. So there aren't." He grins, rolling over and placing his head on my lap. "There. Wouldn't want you to think I was the cheating type."

"No." I stroke his forehead. "Indeed not."

His eyes fall closed, his smile gentle in anticipation, and I take a moment to study the lines of his face in repose.

"My forehead against the glass like the watchman of grief, Sky whose night I have surpassed, Plains so small in my open hands, In their double horizon inert indifferent, My forehead against the glass like the watchman of grief, I look for you beyond all expectation, Beyond even myself, And no longer know loving you so, Which of us two is absent."

"Sad." His hand comes up, the back of his knuckles brush my stomach, just lightly.

"Paul Eluard." I flip the page, and reach back to touch his cheek. "They aren't all."

"Give me one that's not."

"The arc of your eyes makes the rounds of my heart, A circuit of dance and gentleness, Halo of time, cradle nocturnal and sure, And if I no longer know all I have lived, It is because your eyes have not always seen me."

There are two stanzas more, but I choke on the end of the first, and his eyes open, his hand finding mine and squeezing it.

"Hey, hey... thought this one wasn't sad."

"It is not. It is just true."

He breathes in deep and out slow, and kisses the back of my hand warmly. The pages flip themselves, without my hand keeping them in place, to Nous Avons Etonne, but I set the book aside when his lips continue on.

"I was going to show you things." I murmur.

"Oh, that you were..." He turns over, to press his forehead to my belly, to wrap his arm around my waist. "I believe you had a couple things to show me."

Ch.XXIX- SNIPER

---/-/---

She wriggles her way out of my arms with a throaty giggle, her fingers in my hair.

It is a very nice dress, for wriggling-- for that matter, a very nice dress for going through her things in, the bags all on the floor and me with a view of her from behind when she bends over them. I can just barely see the bands of her stockings in the back, when she does, before she can straighten up and tug her skirt back down, and she looks at me like she knows exactly where my eyes have been, but I can't really make myself look sorry for it.

She has a scarf in one hand, a big silk square of emerald green with a navy pattern on it. In the other hand she's got a camera, which she hands me.

"What's this?"

"Up." She gives my shoulder a little push, and takes my place on the bed when I move, knotting the scarf under her chin and arranging herself just so. "You're taking a picture. I will develop it, in my closet, and then I will send it to you in a letter-- I know, the letter is hardly necessary now, but... I will send it in one anyway. And you'll have one, that way. Just..."

She shrugs, her smile unsure. Mine's anything but. I am strictly point-and-shoot, with a camera... don't know a thing about artistry. I know about lenses, a bit, about the technical specs-- at least, on my own-- but not about the things that make a picture art.

I try, with this, snapping pictures of her from different angles, standing on the end of the bed to shoot her from above and then kneeling by the foot to see her from below.

I get her smiling gamely, and blushing and laughing nervously into her hand. I get the miles of her legs, folded demurely to the side.

"Just keep them safe." She takes the camera back, when I guess she decides I've exhausted the possibilities.

"Don't worry. Wouldn't go around showing 'em off to the team." I promise.

"I know you wouldn't." She shakes her head, and I can see the light in her eyes dimming a little and hate it. "Not like your team can know-- Not that they would recognize me, perhaps, just-- They would see--"

I crawl over the bed to wrap an arm around her waist. "I mean, imagine it! I pull out a picture and start waving it around, and the next thing you know, someone'll steal it. 'That Sniper's a lucky rotten bastard', they'll all say, 'look at the legs on her', and the last thing I want's the team passing around pictures of my girl's legs."

She smiles again. Hesitant, but honest. "Do you really have a picture of just my legs?"

"Well... I mean..." I shrug. "I took a lot of pictures! Probably a few. I like your legs."

"Do you really think they would be a photograph worth stealing?" Her smile goes a little slyer.

"Considering what I'd be doing with a picture of your legs, darl?"

"Well... as glad as I am to have all of my pictures kept secret, it is nice to think they are worth bragging about."

"I think all of you is." I nuzzle against her neck. "I do mean for you to send me one with your face in it. But I do like your legs..."

She looks the camera over, then glances back up at me. "There are a couple more shots left before I change the film... How would you like to spend them?"

That sounds a lot like carte blanche, and I swallow. "My choice?"

She nods.

I slide a hand up her thigh, pushing her dress up higher, kissing her neck as I do. "Mm... Ginny... let me?"

"Of course."

A little more kissing, and she relinquishes the camera again, and stays sprawled on the bed when I leave her, her legs on display. I shoot them from the head of the bed, zooming past her waist, to the rucked-up skirt and the garters and the lace bands of the stockings... down to her feet, and there's something about the turn of her ankle, something posed and coy and perfect.

I lean over, running a hand lightly along one leg, dropping a kiss to her knee, and her hand moves to squeeze my thigh as I do.

"I've got one shot left." I murmur, lips still half-pressed to her knee, to the cool, silky stocking and the sweet, warm skin beneath.

"Oh?"

"Lift your hips?"

She does, and I pull the dress up again. It's a garter belt, not the little snap-on bits of elastic she'd kept her stockings up with last time, but a real honest garter belt, black lace... the knickers are high-waisted, up past where I've lifted her dress to, the sort you see on pin-up girls covering just enough to really, really tease you, and...

And hell, I've given her a hand-job and I still look at her in them and see the same silhouette I've seen on any other girl in a pair of silky knickers. A little less in terms of hips and arse, but the same smooth lines at the front, and down between her legs.

I move down to the end of the bed, adjusting those legs as I go, and kneeling over her to take the shot.

I'm sure I could spend every lonely night of the rest of my life with just this picture from her waist down, but I get all of her anyway, for the way she looks at me when I take it. The want in her eyes isn't something put-on for the camera, it's too full of surprise to be anything but honest reaction-- and I mean, I'm sure most days she could fool me, being other people is her bread and butter, but this... this I think has to be real.

The soft 'o' of her mouth, the way her hand's gone to her collarbone, the little shift of her hips from where I'd left them that doesn't spoil my shot at all...

I give her the camera, and she pulls me into a kiss.

"I have another roll." She whispers, and when that leaves me dumbstruck, she adds onto it. "Of film. Get it for me?"

She points to her handbag, I all but trip over my own feet to get it.

I don't get the camera back, once she's changed it.

Well, turnabout's fair play and all, and I kind of like thinking she wants to keep my picture as well. I really like to think she might want one for more than pure sentiment, when she ruffles my hair and unbuttons my shirt before snapping another.

She slips out of the dress, and there's... a girdle, or a corset, or something, that pushes her chest up, makes the skin into that approximation of cleavage. It doesn't seem to change her shape beyond that, and I don't think it needs to, but it's soft and lacy, and I do appreciate that... it goes with the rest, and it doesn't have to change her shape any to be nice, as underthings go.

She hasn't used up the roll, and she lets me take a picture of her as she is, with the dress and scarf gone, in just her underthings. Takes the camera back to snap a few more as I get undressed, including one of me just about falling over as I wrestle with my trousers, and I can't imagine when undressing became so difficult, always used to be able to take my trousers off before.

After she sets the camera aside for good, she guides my hands back to her.

"I am yours."

"Well, good. I'm yours." My thumb rubs at the little strip of pale skin between the panties and the top. After a moment of contemplation, I slide my hand down over the front of the knickers, 'til I can feel heat through the fabric of them, can feel a sort of firmness.

I unhook the garter belt and slide the knickers down, and...

And I'm not really sure what to call it. Dunno if there's a word she likes, something better than 'cock' for what she has. It's hard, or partway there, springing free when I get the panties off, and I hook the stockings right back to the garter belt once those are gone.

The hotel bed affords me room to move around and more light than my bunk gets, an actual view of her instead of blind feeling around, and even having fooled around with a couple men as well as women, she is something different.

"Does it hurt? I mean, the whole... process, down there, is it--?"

"No. Not at all. Anyway... for work, I usually don't, not so much."

The skin is loose, where I imagine her balls ought to have been-- again, probably she wouldn't call them that, what on earth does a woman call everything when she's got the wrong parts for it?

I can settle for not calling any of it anything. Unless she ever decides to stop me and give me a vocabulary lesson, I can settle for not having words for it all.

"D'you have condoms? Jeeze, that's not anything to ask a lady, is it? I've never sucked one of these off before, didn't think it would be very romantic if you came and it went down the wrong pipe. Choking, not attractive."

"You... You want to, for me?"

I nod. "You like it, yeah?"

"It feels good." She shrugs, and there's a little discomfort and a little glee, all balled up together. "I... I just... You know, the men I've been with before... It feels good, it's just... They all liked doing that, with men, and you..."

"Like doing it with women. Er, well, reckon I will." I nuzzle at the hair, at the base of it, warm and firm, with soft skin... the dark pink flush of it.

It's weird, how I can see something so... I mean, so inarguably male as feminine just it being hers, but it's the pinkness and the softness that stand out to me with it.

And I mean, probably it helps that hers is smaller, maybe it'd be weird if she was bigger than me, but it's fine, and if I can get the hang of this, if we can do it regular, I wouldn't always need the condom.

She has one, has to shove it in my face to get my attention as I'm carried away nuzzling a path up to the edge of the garter belt and back down, and I make sure to taste her skin while I'm getting it opened. I don't want her thinking I wouldn't like the taste or the smell of her, I like the smell of her just fine.

I mean, maybe she wouldn't worry, I haven't been shy about tasting her, either. But I don't want her worrying.

It's a little awkward at first, the matter of the first blowjob, and I'm not wild about the taste of the condom, but it's all worth it for her hands in my hair and the soft gasps and whimpers, and just the knowing I'm pleasing her.

After, I get rid of the condom, and press a kiss to the spot just below the lacy edge of the garter belt.

Just hanging there soft, there's nothing about her body that seems remotely threatening. No feeling that sucking her off a moment before ought to say anything about me that I don't want said. It's more than I've done for any bloke I've ever fooled around with, but Genevieve, Ginny, she's not a bloke. And I've got nothing but pride for being able to satisfy a woman any way a woman can be satisfied.

I sit up, and look down at her, the soft smile she aims my way, and one pale little hand curled over her heart.

"You're cute, you know that?" I pick her hand up and give it a squeeze.

She squeezes back. "I didn't. Thank you."

"Well, you are."

"You will let me return the favor?" She tugs my hand to her lips, nibbles at my thumb just a little and the swipe of her tongue... well, that'd be enough to set me on fire under any circumstance.

"Yeah." I nod. "I'll let you do any little thing you like."

I am still waiting for this fic. please don't be over.

Definitely not over-- just on a bit of a Christmas hiatus, sorry!

---/-/---

Ch.XXX- SPY

---/-/---

After a shower, where everything is free to... descend, during the whole bathing process, we fall back into bed together, and I urge him to a spot down at the foot of the bed, bringing my knees up and apart.

"If you were ever curious, this is how I do it." I take a deep breath and reach down, and I haven't had to really take things slowly in a long time, I am an old hand at this, but for him, I do.

He watches, eyes wide and jaw slack. I don't know whether to be flattered or merely self-conscious, but he watches, as I perform the little sleight of hand required, the little juggling sliding push, and then the balls at least are up inside, and the sac only hangs there like a sad deflated balloon for a moment, before it's spread softly to the sides of the last tucked-back bit of me, a mock vulva. I can feel the first twitch of interest, the price to pay for slowing down the process. Play with it long enough and it never wants to behave...

"And you say it doesn't hurt?" He asks, his fingertips just barely at my thigh. "Doing that?"

"No. The only danger is in taking too long, it can be... stimulating, if you haven't just taken care of things. Hand me my panties, cher?"

He does, though he does it slowly. It is a relief to slide back into them, the tightness offers a level of support, something to keep me in place until the slight thrum of arousal is a mere memory.

His hands slide over the smooth fabric, once they're on, up my hips to my waist. My hair is damp on the pillow, and there are drops of water still clinging to the dark, crisp curls spread across his chest, when he follows me down to the mattress, his body naked over mine, his smile soft.

I am hardly sure which is more intimate, between the closeness of our bodies and the closeness of our smiles...

"This was fun. This, the pictures and everything." He nuzzles my cheek, his lips brush my skin, I wrap myself around him feeling it is only natural, only natural to surround him any way that I can. "And you'll send me some?"

"I will."

He reaches, with one long arm, to rummage around the rest of my discarded things for garter belt and stockings. "Did you want these?"

"I don't normally sleep in them." I arch an eyebrow, and he blushes.

"Early for sleep, though, isn't it?"

"Fetishist." I tease, and point my toe to the ceiling. "But I will wear them, if you like them. And we can have a little something more to eat."

He rolls the first stocking onto my leg, slow and reverent, before fumbling me into the garter belt to hook it into place. His hands skim back down my stockinged leg, he folds them together around my ankle.

It is wonderful, so wonderful-- not just to be touched, not just to be looked at with longing, but to be held so neatly, to have any part of me encased in those hands, with the long, thick fingers and the broad palm, and more dexterity than hands so large could be expected to have, my hands are much smaller and dexterity is their life's work.

They would be fine hands on their own merit, any woman should think so. Rough skin and careful gentleness, the skill... the size and the warmth of them! The way they work so beautifully and the way they show the marks of a life of work, and the way they treat a girl, with the same soft, practiced, loving ease they treat a rifle with.

On me, though... I am transformed. All the changes I have been barred from making-- worse, the ones I would never have been able to make!-- those hands make for me, touching me instead of merely touching my body.

And... it is nice, to be worshiped.

The second stocking is pulled on, and he rubs his cheek against my knee, draping my leg up over his shoulder, making love to it, his lips grazing my inner thigh.

I have never had a part of my body I could love unconditionally, before this. Not since childhood, when there was no reason to think about my body at all. When I grew, when my skeleton solidified itself into the framework of a man, when I found myself with too much shoulder, too much nose, too little flesh, this creature of angles... I had no strong quarrel with my legs, not compared to the rest of me. My calves at least have a little muscle-- it may not be the curves I most wanted, but still, there is some curve to a calf-- and if they are not delicate, exactly, if they are not feminine, they are at least slender legs... it is something.

I feel rather good about my legs now, with the way he appreciates them. I only get to shave them properly on the weekend... on a base full of men, there is no good way to do the job, but I had enough time before he arrived to take care of that before dressing.

It's... nice. Almost a ritual, with the way I so rarely have the luxury. A secret, out of necessity, but secrets are fine things to have for a spy, anyway. And now, someone who some secrets can be shared with, in little ways. Someone to touch me, and kiss me, and smile. Someone to wake me up to loving myself.

There are things I could do, after the war, that would improve the life I have, even if there are still things I could never go through with. I always hoped... I always hoped, when I retired with enough money, I could live my own life. I read about hormone therapy, and only this year about electrolysis-- for anyone! No longer a 'secret of the Hollywood starlets', apparently, but something I could have done, in places all over the world!-- and I thought, once I am free to, I will do these things, and I'll love myself then.

It is something of a revelation, this idea that I need not wait to love myself.

"Someday I could take you away from all this." He sighs, his lips still half-pressed to my thigh, his mouth stretched open to one side. "Even just for a little bit. Haven't really got any time off, except for the weekends, and that's no time to get someplace nice, but my contract's up come next August. I could whisk you off anyplace then. A weekend at some chalet in the mountains, or a high-rise hotel somewhere where you can't sleep for all the lights outside your window, or anything."

"I am free in the spring. Suppose... suppose that we write, when that happens." I relax, my leg slipping from his shoulder, my hands reaching to beckon him up to my arms. "And then when you are free as well, next August, we will go somewhere together."

"All right. Well, plenty of time 'til spring." He nudges his way up my chest with little kisses, rolling us onto our sides as he scoots up to claim a pillow for himself. "So until then, weekend 'picnics' right here?"

"I would like that. And there is always your van. Any time that it is my night to cook, I might drop by with a little something."

"Like that." He nods. "Like that."

He pulls himself away, before we can grow too cozy, too sleepy, and brings leftovers back to bed, to feed me bites, and to be fed.

"Thank you. For making me feel more comfortable in my own skin." I sigh, tracing his lower lip with one finger.

"It's nice skin." He shrugs.

"I need that sometimes."

"Yeah, well... reckon we all do, sometimes."

I feel like I'm repeating myself but ... I really did enjoy this last chapters.

Thank you! Well, I fly home tomorrow, and my schedule will get much more regular once I'm settled back in.

---/-/---

Ch. XXXI- SNIPER

---/-/---

[/i]again, for the weekend. I always did hate pictures of myself, before. I like the ones you took.

All that night together, I felt so lovely, with the way you gazed at me. I thought I would feel so silly, and I thought it would be so painful, to develop the film and to have to look at myself, and instead I think of you and everything is fine and beautiful.

I cannot wait to be with you again. Write me back? I know you hardly need to now, but do?

Big kisses,
Genevieve (for you, 'Ginny') [/i]

My fingers shake a little, drawing the photos out of the envelope, wondering which she'd picked.

There's the one, of just her legs, long and pale with her skirt bunched up at the top and her garters showing. Under them, the sheets are rucked up from rolling around in bed with our picnic, there's a knowing coyness in the way one knee turns in to rest over the other...

The other picture she'd sent, her sitting at the head of the bed with her skirt mostly in-place, and those legs folded to the side all demure, and she's hiding a soft little smile-- an embarrassed laugh?-- in her hand. I'd caught her, between trying to smile for the camera and looking back to it sidelong, in the moment where she'd been in her own world, flustered and glad and girlish.

As much as I appreciate the legs alone, this one... this one would probably be my favourite, for how unguarded she is in it. Snapped between careful poses, a moment of her as she is in secret.

I mean, reckon they're all that. She only ever is in secret. But this...

I tack the photos up over my pillow, hidden behind an old picture postcard of home. Where I can take them out to look over in private, and thrill in the dirty secret of having them up, technically having them right up on my wall.

Still alone and in bed, I wriggle out of my trousers, and out of my shorts, and lying back, I experiment.

I'd seen how she'd done it, tucking everything into place, and... I mean, I suppose I don't need to, to understand her well as any man can understand a woman, but I want to know a little more what she goes through.

It's weird, takes a little feeling around to get done, and she had a point, playing the balls into place tends to get the old fella's attention.

Well, that part's not important-- I mean, that's the part everyone does once when he's twelve or so and hasn't seen the real thing since birth and won't again another four or five years yet. You tuck it back between your thighs and look in the long mirror on the bathroom door and panic when your dad or your mum knocks to ask what's taking you so long.

General you, of course, everyone... I mean, everyone, yeah? Everyone does it just the once, and more than a few more than just the once.

It's the bollocks bit I had no idea about, before she showed me, the thing I was curious about. Don't think I'd do it again or anything, don't think I need to, but at least playing around a bit's enough to satisfy me it doesn't hurt or anything. It goes easy enough-- awkward, but easy-- to make me think it can't be doing her any damage, at least.

I reach back for the photos, taking myself in hand. Not fair to myself, after all, getting hard and leaving it standing.

I remember the feel of those legs through her stockings, under my hands, my cheek, my lips. The silkiness, and the bones in her knee, and the firm curve of her calf fitting into my hand...

I imagine another visit like the last, another afternoon in her hotel bed, with her stockings and her garters and her skirt pushed up like that. Imagine pushing it up and up, over her arse, that tight, muscled little handful... up to reveal no knickers under the garter belt, not like this last weekend.

That stops me, just for a moment. A little mental 'and then what, smart guy?'

And then the skin, the loose skin that I now understand a little better-- how is it so soft and hairless? She can't shave there, can she?-- Then that, under my lips, my tongue. Hot, velvet skin, just like teasing a girl open the first time, it wouldn't feel so different from that, only too dry.

I mean, eventually she'd get hard and it would be... it would be less like going down on other girls. In my imagination, though, I can give myself time... can picture being able to hold her cock down at least, long enough to nibble my fill at the skin to either side, to run my tongue along and under.

Will I really miss going down-- I mean, going down on, well... I mean, all the usual bits? Maybe. I like it. But I kind of liked sucking her off, too. It's not the same, but she looked at me like I hung the damn moon for it, and that...

She'd look at me like that, with her fingers in my hair. And I'd tell her, I'd tell her how bad I want her, how keen I've been for so long, to have my head down between those thighs, and...

Yeah. Yeah, and she'd gasp and moan, soft, shuddery moans, breathy. Throaty. Her fingers in my hair and her dress all mussed and her legs in those silky stockings over my shoulders...

Her arse? I mean, that's... Would she? I've never actually asked a girl. Did it once, her idea then, after I'd torn the damn condom fumbling to get the packet open with my teeth, so I reckon I know some girls will. And that's the option, isn't it? For anything more than rubbing off against her and trading blowjobs. And rubbing off against her was fun, and I'd never say no to getting sucked off, and sucking her off was a little fun, too, but it's not the same as eating a girl out, sucking her off...

Would that be the arse, too?

Well, no harm in asking her. Wouldn't be the same, no, but next time I could ask her, what else does she like.

My thoughts have wandered a little too far from the sexy pictures, into abstract questions about the future, erection flagging a little, but it's easy enough to get myself back on track.

She'd ask me to fuck her-- she wouldn't say 'fuck', not when she asks, yeah, no, she'd say 'make love', but there'd be an inflection to it, be a little suggestion and a bottle of oil and a condom, and her legs opening for me, still thrown up over my shoulders.

Of course, I'd say, of course I would.

She'd say 'fuck' then. With me in her, she'd say 'fuck', or whatever 'fuck' is in French. With her fingers in my hair and little sounds she can't help making, and her throat slender and white and arched back under my lips, and I remember from the one time it was tight, and she'd be, she'd be wonderful.

And I'd touch her, of course I'd touch her, anywhere she asked me to I would, and I'd get her off, and unzip her dress after, stains on the front from her and dripped down onto the back from me, and light her cigarette, and she'd cross her legs and she'd look at me, her hair sweaty and her throat marked up and both of us a mess, both of us...

I wipe my hand on my shirt-- the shirt already done for, after all-- and put the picture back behind the postcard, before shrugging the shirt off and dropping it down off the bunk.

I light my own cigarette, which is not half so satisfying as lighting hers, but on a Wednesday night, there you have it, yeah?

Twisting around, I take the postcard down again, to press my lips briefly to the other photograph, the one of her sitting there in her dress, with that little shy laugh.

"Goodnight, darling." I sigh, settling back down. "Won't be long."

It'll seem that way, but it won't be long.

When did I develop a leg fetish?

DAMN YOU AAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNE!! NOT AGAIN! I'm still trying to get past sex with gloves!

But in all seriousness, I can't wait for more. I don't think it's possible to hate anything you write. I really don't.

This isn't the right place but I didn't know how else to ask: Anne have you ever written an amnesia fic? I've tried finding all the stories you have posted but has there been an amnesia-theme one?

why do i have a bad feeling about those photos? :(

>>101
Hahaha, my evil work is done!

>>102
I don't think I have ever written an amnesia fic for TF2... which is weird, because I really, really, really love amnesia fics.

>>103
Probably because usually that's the sort of thing that leads to horrible things happening. This time, though, I had not planned on the photos being found and leading to problems. If that's any consolation. I'm not so kind to them often...

---/-/---

Ch. XXXII- SPY

---/-/---

Dear Ginny,

Thanks, for writing again, with the photographs. I had a lot of fun taking them, and I wouldn't mind getting the rest, maybe just one or two at a time, if there are more that developed all right, but I liked finding the ones you picked.

I don't know how you did it, but you got my favourite one in there. I can picture the face you're making, and don't, I'm talking about the one with all of you. But it might be fair to say the leg one is my second favourite, so I guess you can make that face at me a little bit, I am just a red-blooded man, after all.

I don't reckon I have to go into much detail about that. Enough to say I enjoyed getting them, and I enjoyed thinking about you, and I thought about you a lot.

I fold the letter carefully and place it on the hotel dresser when I hear him knock-- I'd read it through twice, twice and a half.

With the limitations faced, with my wardrobe, I'm wearing the dress I wore for our first date again. I've been wondering if I couldn't find something in town worth owning, something not too intimate, the kind of thing I could claim I was buying for some imaginary sister's birthday... but then, I doubt Teufort has that much to offer, and there's nowhere else within a day's drive of the dustbowl base to look around in.

I have wine in the ice bucket, and bread and cheese again, and when I answer the door, he has a pink box from the bakery and two bags from the market.

"I see I am in for a treat!" I laugh, taking the box and setting it on the dresser, beside the chilling wine.

One of the two bags has picnic ware-- paper plates and plastic forks-- and cold chicken. The other he sets down, smiling merrily at me, and reaches into carefully.

"Well, I hope it's all right, at least." He pulls out a little succulent in a terracotta pot, with thick teardrop-shaped leaves and bright yellow flowers. "You could keep in indoors, and it wouldn't draw much attention that way, and I know it's not a garden-- doesn't take much care even, just watering-- but it's... it's something."

"It's wonderful." I sigh, taking it. "It's perfect."

No, not a garden, but it is a plant, one I could have on my vanity to brighten the place, and not just a little potted cactus even, it flowers.

"It's edible." He offers. "Er, not that I'd suggest it. I mean, that one's a bit small anyway, to go making a salad of. Seeds do a good seedcake, though, and the leaves'll treat snakebites in a pinch, or beestings."

He blushes a little, and I take his arm and lean up to kiss his cheek.

"I didn't mean to carry on--"

"No, I am happy you did. I like that you know things. It makes you interesting, you know? A man after my own heart, as if you did not already own it."

"I just wanted you to have something. Stuck out here wilting in the desert, I wanted you to have something."

"Well. Now I do." I tug him to the bed, settle him there before giving the plant in its pot a place of honor on the dresser.

I bring the wine back to the bed, and he gets pieces cut off of the chicken, and pieces of cheese sliced, bread torn into hunks and each hunk torn down into something that could be made into a sandwich.

I find myself more and more living for the weekends, for the opportunity to be myself, not only by myself. It makes the slights of everyday life easier to take, to have the weekend to hold onto, or if we're lucky, a stolen weeknight, if not a whole one.

It makes the bouts of self-loathing easier to put a stop to, to remember the way he has touched me and kissed me and looked at me.

Between hearty bites, he paints me the picture, this time. Another river, wide and green and silty, drifting lazily past our place on a hill, and trees all up and down the banks, dripping with leaves.

"Birds, of course. Perching in the clumps of reeds and looking for fish. Sun flashing on their feathers. And the bright glint of scales, little snakes and lizards going down to the water, for fish and for beetles. Closer you get to the water, the more it all hums with life, and we've got a blanket on a soft hummock to watch it all."

"Very nice." I nod, settling up close to his side.

"Custard slice?" He disengages, long enough to get the pink box, before winding up with his arm back around me.

I have no idea what on earth that is... does one-- can one!-- slice custard? But there's a mille-feuille in the box, sized just about right for two, so that answers that question.

We leave the paper plates out of the equation entirely, each of us digging into the box with our own plastic fork, the box balanced half on his thigh and half on mine and his arm always around my shoulders-- and encompassed by the length of his arm, by his big, warm hand, my shoulders do not seem so ungainly, really...

He feeds me a bite, the custard dripping off the edge of the fork, and his thumb brushes it up from my lip.

I catch his hand, licking it up and watching the way his eyes darken and his breath quickens.

"Could I ask you something?" He mumbles the words out, quick and quiet.

I nod, letting his hand go, letting it slip down to nudge the box further down our laps, fingers grazing my inner thigh and creeping higher.

His face is red, and his mouth opens and snaps shut twice before he leans in to whisper in my ear.

I cannot tell you how delightfully cute your sniper is! Can't wait for the next installment!

My, my ... there no telling I much I'm loving this fic.


... there's this one thing bugging me a little ("bugging" being such a big word) ... but, any way, I'm just surprised that Scout, being the chatter box that he is, didn't go bother Sniper and ask about his date ... or anybody else for that matter, because there's no way Scout would keep that little bit of news for himself.


... that being said I'll return under my rock until the next instalment.

>>106
Ah yes... no, one cannot reasonably expect the Scout to keep his mouth shut-- but I haven't really focused on Sniper's interaction with the team in a while... it'll be a couple chapters from this one where Scout's big mouth does come into play.

---/-/---

Ch. XXXIII- SNIPER

---/-/---

"Oh-- no..." She blushes, draws back a tiny bit, but her hand comes up to my cheek and she smiles at me when my face falls. "Not tonight, but another time. I... That sort of thing takes some forethought on my part, cheri. You really wanted to?"

I shrug, face hot-- must be blushing harder than she is.

"Well... I've never before, but I thought... I mean, I'd like to, is what I think, if it'd be--"

If it would be good for her, yes, absolutely I'd stick my tongue in her arse, and maybe I'd enjoy the hell out of doing it. I don't know how you say a thing like that, I barely managed to ask it-- or... offer it, maybe.

"Next weekend." She tugs me down, kisses me, warm and slow with just a hint of teeth. "I'll make sure I'm ready... oh, but tonight... tonight... I am still yours tonight, of course."

"Course..."

I touch her, as much as I was sure I could, with that delicate dress again, covered in almost-weightless lace and silk you could read through. I feel dangerously clumsy faced with how fragile her frippery seems. It seems so easy to tear in a fit of eagerness.

I pull away instead, to clear the remains of another picnic from the bed, and she undresses while I do. I turn around to find her kneeling on the bed in black hold-ups and lace-and-nylon knickers.

"I thought it might go easier for you, if I wasn't struggling with a garter belt."

Or worse, the ones that hook onto her knickers and can't do a thing once those are gone. I mean, I like the garters-- absolutely, do I like the garters!-- but the hold-ups... well, hold up.

Might not slip down no matter what we do.

I move to ease her down onto her back, one hand sliding up into her hair-- short, yes, but soft and silky, somehow everything about her has a way of making me think of silk-- and the other sliding down to her calf.

"Well, there's other stuff I've been thinking about doing to you." I murmur, and she sighs under me and gets my shirt open, while I coax little sounds out of her nuzzling at her ear and throat. Free to nip at her knowing no one will ever see if I go past little pink hour-long marks and into weekend hickey territory.

"I can't wait."

I can't either, not hardly, but I let her finish getting my buttons undone before pulling off her.

"You're gorgeous."

It still comes out surprised, not like it ought to be a surprise every time, but she smiles up at me like she knows all about the grip she has on my heart, and she looks up at me like I'm her knight in shining armor, all at once-- all that, even with the way we started, I mean the way we started in the real world. Or the unreal world, reckon the letters were the real world where she's concerned, and not the war.

And besides that, the half-smirk and half-wonderment of her smile which ought to be enough for any man to call a woman gorgeous, besides that there's the little violet-red mark at her throat and the way her hand rests over her heart and the just-so curve of slender, white fingers. Manicured, but not false or fussy, just neatly shaped with a little clear shine. Clean, a practical length... feminine, but the kind of feminine that wouldn't get completely destroyed working in a garden-- or disassembling and cleaning a handgun, which is what she gets to do more often.

And her lashes, thick and dark around wide pupils. And her lips, parted, wet... And her breath, that quick little hitch I feel in my own chest when I look at her, coming right back to me in the birdlike rise and fall of hers.

The skin and the muscle seem paper-thin and white over her breastbone, over her ribs, as though she's too dainty for her own skeleton-- not the kind of skinny that looks like she's starving, just... wrong-sized to herself. Awkward delicacy. Nothing, of course, like any woman I've been with before, but I've come to find a beauty in it.

The high-waisted knickers... kneeling between her legs and looking down at her, it's so easy to just reach down, to nudge the elastic a little bit, past her navel, and there's a softness to her stomach, flat as it is, all but concave when she rests on her back, though when she stands it's not really...

I tug them down more, and she lifts her hips to let me, down to where the brown curls just peek out. A teasing little touch, and she rolls her hips up again and I can only oblige by pulling the knickers further down.

I lift her legs straight up, to get them the rest of the way off-- and, I admit, just for the chance to feel them up a little more, to kiss the back of one knee and make her squeal.

She lets her legs fall open wide, when I let them go again, and I get down between, to hold her cock-- and I still haven't been able to ask if there's a word she likes better, how do you ask a thing like that?

I just want to keep it in place a little longer, though I can feel it filling out a little more. The fantasy I'd been indulging in since I got her photos in the mail floods my brain, and it's so much better to have the real thing. My imagination's pretty good, but it's so much better to have the real thing...

The skin, that would have been her balls and sort of isn't, that skin is soft... the texture of it's different, sure, but soft skin's soft skin when you come down to it, and the taste of her is clean musk, the scent of soap from her last shower overpowered now by arousal...

I go over her with long, slow licks, like I've been imagining, before sucking a fold of skin in between my lips, and under my hand, she's firm and hot, can feel the pulse if I pay attention to it, but I can still hold her down, run my tongue along the topside of her cock as well.

My other hand's stroking along her thigh, she's got her legs up over my shoulders and one hand in my hair, and the noises she makes trying to keep her voice down are beautiful, desperate and sweet...

I let her spring free, frees my hand up for her other thigh.

"Just warn me when you're close?"

"Oui."

Damn but somehow everything sounds sexier in french. Or maybe that's just what comes of being in bed with a french woman...

I still wouldn't call myself skilled when it comes to blowjobs-- There wasn't a lot of that, when I was in the army. At least, I didn't see much of that. I would've, except it'd have been queer to offer. Funny the kind of rules we accepted, what was and wasn't 'queer', when we were all trading sexual favours with other men to begin with... Anyway, enthusiasm makes up for some inexperience, I hope, because I am definitely keen to please her. I like the scent of her and the taste of her skin, I like the way she's soft and hard at once and the way she loves having me. Feel like a million bucks the way she loves having me.

I'm licking, not sucking, when she tugs at my hair-- and my hips buck into the mattress so hard I think I could wear a hole in it if she kept it up-- and says something I figure means 'close'. I wind up with most of it across my cheek, and I almost take some up the nose, but I get to taste her without worrying I'll choke on it.

Different, from what I'm used to, but I couldn't say I didn't like it. Not more, not less, just different, and I'd lick up two, three times as much for the look she gives me when our eyes meet. Do it as many times a night as she could get it up.

"Fantastique." She slides her leg against my shoulder, and I grind against the mattress a little more before I pull myself up and get my jeans and shorts off. "Oh, do let me get a look at you."

I let her. What else could I do? Painfully hard, but I don't touch myself, don't ask her to rush it. Almost ready to come just the way she looks at me, and she pulls me down to lie on top of her, wipes my cheek with her hand and kisses the corner of my mouth, and lets me kiss her back even though the taste of her's still thick on my tongue.

Might not have tried it, if I'd been thinking clearly, except she wriggles around and scoots up the bed and pushes me down into position until I'm not grinding against her groin or her hip, but her thigh and the silky top of the hold-up stocking.

I'd be ashamed, what with the knowing smile she gives me and the sound that comes out of me, but it was her idea after all, and I've been with girls who'd indulge my fondness for their legs, sure, but never one who had more than one pair of nice stockings-- or if she did, she never spent more than one night on me, had a few of those-- and never, never one who indulged me with this.

"Maybe I should have sent you one of these instead of a handkerchief." She whispers in my ear. "You like having something silky against your cock? How about wrapped around it?"

I grunt and buck against her, and it's definitely undignified, sure, but it's good... the thought of being given any part of her trousseau and encouraged to wank off into it, that's...

I mean, of course I come, of course I do. The idea she wants me to bring myself off thinking of her, the idea of her underthings at all, but the stockings, her legs... the hand still tight in my hair and her breath on my ear, of course I come.

After... After, she's breathtaking, the stockings still held up, but one of them stained and sticky, her half-untucked and stretching and sighing...

"Have I mentioned being in love with you?" I ask, reaching out to snare her thigh, to drag her back to me.

"I am not sure." She smiles down at me and drapes herself across my chest. "You had best mention it now to make certain."

"I'm so in love with you, darl." I run a hand up her back.

"Good. Moi aussi, je t'aime... Je t'adore."

I conk out for the night under her. When I wake up, we're both under a blanket, her hand over my heart and her pillow smushed up by my shoulder.

Huuurrrrryyyyy~ I need another update. This is fantastic.

Normally, since this chapter is so very, very, very short, I would want to post the next one as well, but unfortunately I've got next to no time tonight, so my apologies, but it feels like a quicker and littler bit of fic than usual tonight!

---/-/---

Ch. XXXIV- SPY

---/-/---

I mailed another letter, another couple of photographs. My own, of him, I keep tucked in my hidden scrapbook, I've made a ritual over the almost two weeks of having them, of looking over them every night.

His smile, his blush, his hands, his chest, the crest of one hipbone over unbuttoned jeans sliding down... Triggering memories of the scent of his sweat and the sound of his voice. Reading poetry to each other, laughing, whispering sweet nothings...

I don't go after him on the field, I think it's easier that way. Not to say I don't still go up to his nest, just for a brief peek at him. It's nice, seeing him at work, all focus and concentration and steady, steady hands. But it's too dangerous to drop my guard, to be myself with him when someone else could come upon us. And I really don't think I can bear going back to being someone else, it didn't work.

It's his presence Thursday afternoon that stays me from taking out the Engineer's nest, though I lurk near enough by to take my shot at the sentry once he's gone. I didn't think I would be waiting long-- a quick stop at the dispenser and he would be going back up to his own spot. It's the Engineer who stops him, the damnable Texan in a chatty mood.

"Meant to ask you how it was going."

"... Going fine."

"With your lady-friend, I mean. Scout told us a couple weeks past you were seeing someone, was gonna wait on you to say something about her, but..."

"Dunno what you want me to say." He chuckles, nervous, hand rubbing at the back of his neck.

"Well, you still seeing her?"

"Yeah."

"Serious?"

"Yeah." He smiles. "Pretty serious. I-- I don't like saying too much to the guys... I mean, I'm not gonna go introducing the Scout to my girl, you know? I mean, he's a good kid and all, or he could be, but this isn't the kind of place you bring a girl home to, is it? And... Dunno. I wanted to keep it quiet-like."

"Guess I can understand that. But just between you and me... she pretty?"

My heart lodges itself in my throat. I'm not, and I know I'm not, and I suppose I expect him to lie, or at least to waffle on the point. I mean, no one tells their friends the girl they're seeing isn't pretty, after all. It's one thing for him to say I am gorgeous and mean it in bed, everything looks rosier in bed, but...

"She has... the bluest eyes." He says, and there's a ghost of the smile he gives me when it's just us, that drifts off somewhere. "And the longest legs. And between those two, there's not much you could say about a lady, not if you wanted to be gentlemanly, but... well, I mean, that's enough, isn't it? And... You ever have a girl smile at you, and that's just it? Just... it?"

"Reckon I know the kind of smile you're talking about." The Engineer laughs, nudging his hardhat back on his head and wiping at his forehead.

I could run up and stab him anytime, of course, but it doesn't seem right to, when the two of them are talking together, and... and I have just been talked about so nicely. I am so rarely in less of a mood to kill a man than overhearing that has put me... at least, not during the work week.

I still have my job to do, of course. I cannot discount every potential target for being a friend of my lover. But I can wait until he's not there to see it, I can do that much.

The sentry first, and as always, it gives the Engineer the chance to take a swing or a shot at me-- a shot, this time, that almost misses me.

My aim is truer, but when you're up against a man with a shotgun, aim is relative, and I limp away with my side torn up and bleeding.

I don't make it to one of the first aid kits scattering the field, not before collapsing, but I come to with my hand on one and no idea how much time has passed. The sounds of the battle are... fairly consistent, and my ears are still ringing anyway.

I can piece together the sequence of events-- a teammate might have called for the Medic, or they might have left me to die and respawn, depending. There's only one man who would have moved me to safety...

I will have to thank him this weekend.

"...the damnable Texan in a chatty mood."

You have no idea how you made my day, not only did I get to see Sniper interacting with his team (ok, one member of his team) but also I get to see Spy at work (agaist said member of the team) ... and how did you know that Engie's one of my favourite character?

...ok, it was only to see him die soon after he appeared, but hey, that's part of the game ...

... anyway, I felt really spoil by this chapter ... even if you think it's a bit short compare to your usual, there's no need to apologize.

While I cannot talk for the others, I wasn't left with the impression that something was missing or that it was incomplete in any way.


Captcha : Flattery ... how did they know ??

I check back every day multiple times a day in hopes that you'll have updated. I look forward to the next installment very much.

Annnnnd I thought that was an update. Whoever forgot to sage...I loathe thee.

Sorry, all! I've been down with the flu for a few days and haven't really been around... mostly I've been asleep. Appreciate the thoughtful comments, and my apologies for the unexpected wait!

---/-/---

Ch. XXXV- SNIPER

---/-/---

"You will at least do me the courtesy of making your lie amusing."

I look up from my locker in the resupply room, to see the Spy lounging against the far wall.

"You just respawn?"

"I did. I was... distracted, by a rather interesting sight on the battlefield. Their soldier took me out."

"Yeah? Didn't know there were any interesting sights on the battlefield anymore."

"No. Neither did I. And then I saw you moving the BLU Spy to safety. Curious."

"... Owed h-him one." I cough, trying to cover the near slip. "I've been out of it and he said if it wasn't going to be a good fight even, he'd leave me to their Sniper, and... That's all. Owed him one."

"I see." He lights a cigarette, sucking on it a moment, eyes narrowed. "I see."

"You're not gonna see it again."

"Funny, how that is different from 'it's not going to happen again'." He wrinkles his nose. "You've seen what happens when you make friends with the enemy out here, bushman..."

"We're not 'friends'." I say. That much is technically true enough, I even manage to chuckle at it.

"Merely a friendly warning."

He disappears, at that. I go through the rest of the day with my chest in a vise, thinking about what he must be imagining. He didn't believe me one bit when I said it was just a favour owed, and the next most innocent thing won't be innocent enough...

It's a relief to get back to my camper at the end of the night, and a better one when she appears with a gentle knock. I've already got the curtains shut tight, and she shrugs out of her 'Spy' things and into her robe before saying anything, and before I can figure out what to say.

Her arms come up around my neck, and I lean my cheek against the shiny, smooth fabric of her sleeve with a sigh.

"Unwell, cher?"

"Little bit, yeah. It's... complicated, that's all. I mean, we always knew life was gonna be, didn't we?"

"I wanted to thank you, for earlier." She smiles, her hand moves to my cheek...

I cover it with mine, frowning. "Don't thank me just yet."

"Oh-- You weren't--"

"Seen?"

She bites her lip.

"Was, yeah. Just by our Spy, and he came 'round to give me a warning. Do the whole cryptic-and-spooky thing a bit. Said I owed you one for taking it easy on me when I was off my game. He doesn't believe me, but then, if I told him the truth he wouldn't believe me, either. So there's that."

"All right. No more helping each other. It will be fine, mon amour, I am only on the field a little longer..." She leans into me, and I let that calm me down some. It was a good point. Once BLU sent a new spy onto the field, things would go back to normal until I finished out my contract with RED, and we'd meet back up again, start a real life.

I move to sit on the bench, grabbing my pillow for her.

"Well. We're alone now. So if you wanted any help with anything, I could give it." I smile.

She takes the seat next to me, fixing the pillow and sitting sideways, wedging herself into the corner and drawing up her knees, her stocking feet in my lap. I wrap a hand around one and give her a squeeze.

"Nice, just having you here for a bit."

"Mm." She leans past me to grab a book off the table, before settling back into her space and flipping it open. "I could ask you... for a little foot rub?"

"Happy to, darl."

She lets out a soft little sigh and picks out poems, reading to me as I work at her feet, trying to figure out where I'd want the most attention and relief after a long day on my own. Sure, the rhythm of the verse is interrupted with the occasional little moan that way, but I'm hardly a man to complain about such a thing, am I?

"I should go, and we both should sleep." She says sadly, when her feet have been massaged about as thoroughly as feet can be, and her voice is a little scratchy from reading aloud so long. "This weekend we will meet again, mon amour, I will see you then."

She stands, with another pleased sigh as she flexes her feet on the ground.

"Better?"

"Much." She kisses my cheek. "Sweet dreams."

"Tell you what, I'll meet you there, too. Then they will be."

"Oh, a charmer now, are you?"

"You're the first woman to accuse me of that."

I get another kiss, and return it with interest, and she dresses. It's not as nice as getting her undressed, but I still see little glimpses of lingerie and skin in between the robe coming off and the suit going on.

If I dream of her, I don't remember it, but the Spy doesn't say anything to me at breakfast, and I make it through the day without doing anything else he deems suspicious.

I think a lot about her upcoming retirement from the field. When I do the same, do I really plan to retire-retire? Does she? What would we do with ourselves all day?

Well, I mean, in between the obvious.

I guess starting that garden, of course there's that. Might even get her to come camping with me. I don't know about real retirement, but I might like a good, long holiday before I take any other jobs, at least.

We can write to each other once she's got a real address, even when she sent the photos it was through the service, but once she jets off to Paris or whatnot, we wouldn't be doing that... Still, 'Dustbowl, Sniper, Care of RED', sure she could get the information to send letters through them, and nothing suspicious about me getting mail from a woman with a name, not once she's not with BLU any longer. And it won't be a long time, between her leaving them and me doing the same here.

I don't even half feel like panicking by the time the day's out. Haven't noticed our own Spy looking at me funny, nor anybody else. The worst that happens is Scout asking me about a ride into town on the weekend and does my lady have a friend he could meet.

Damn kid's an early riser, so there's no sneaking out before he's awake, but when Saturday morning rolls around, it's not such a great hardship to drive him out to his flat in Teufort.

"So, about your girlfriend-- I'm thinking, she's gotta know someone who would want to go on a double date with alla this!"

"Dunno. Haven't met any of her friends. Unless she's friends with the hotel staff."

"You dog, Snipes, way to go! Wait-- we're talking about you getting laid, right?"

"Well, a gentleman wouldn't say..." I shrug, smirking.

"Yeah. A guy who throws his own piss at people, that's real 'a gentleman' of you. Look, just ask her, right? And--"

"Mate, you're not meeting her."

"Oh. I getcha. You don't want her running off with me. Okay, okay, I respect that."

"Exactly." I roll my eyes and pull up in front of his building. "Girls around here still too... intimidated, to talk to you?"

"... Yeah."

"Ah, buck up, Sporto, you'll catch one." I chuckle, waving him off.

I figure I ought to hit the grocery for... something. I don't expect to see her there, though I guess it shouldn't be that strange. I mean, she's shopped for our little hotel picnics, too, so...

"Fancy seeing you here." I smile, keeping my tone casual. "Picking up wine? Got a hot date?"

She returns the smile with one of her own, breaking through the mask of the Spy ever so briefly.

"Oh, maybe I do."

"Well. Interesting. So do I."

I look at her basket and mentally tick things off my own list. Bread and wine taken care of, and bloody hell, for once they actually got strawberries out in the desert? Must be the season for them someplace, then...

I grab cheese and a package of sliced turkey that's not yet beyond its expiration date-- though I've learned to check in this dump. With another glance at the berries in her basket, I get whipped cream. Might as well, yeah?

We keep pace with each other through the tiny store, playing with the veneer of one-upmanship that's expected of us in public.

"And what kind of woman would be seen with a filthy bushman like you?" She says, her smirk related more to the whipped cream I'd just grabbed than to the words.

"Oh, she wouldn't be seen in public with me. Likes to trap me in bed all day." I wink.

She snorts. "I would still put money on my date being better."

"I'd take that bet."

"I think you would lose."

"I think I would win."

The checkout girl is quivering when we both reach the line at the same time. There's a sign at her station about how all mercs must comport themselves in a civilized manner if they want service, but she's not about to call attention to it.

I wave Ginny ahead. I figure it's my only chance to fall back and grab something that could be a surprise, and I pick up the least unappealing chocolates in the place, and a small bag of ice.

With the ice, I can give her some time to get to the room and get set up, get changed, and I don't have to worry about the cheese and turkey going.

Wonder how long it takes a lady to change... Well, the kind of change she's making, anyway. Surely not as long as comedians would have me believe, at least.

Oh, I smell trouble! And truly hope we will get it, too.

Ch.XXXVI- SPY

---/-/


We put off discussing serious things, things like my opposite number and his possible suspicions, until after a thoroughly enjoyable-- if messy-- picnic, and an enjoyably thorough shower.

Lying in bed, naked save the drape of a damp towel, I am loathe to bring serious things up, but it is important.

"What do you think?" I sigh.

"Think he's an arse. But he didn't say anything else about it, and... hell, if we keep it a one-time thing, then it's a one time thing, isn't it?"

"Bien sur. Will you, then?"

"Just shoot you next time?"

I nod, and he blows out a long breath, resting his chin on my arm.

"You know I will. Course I will. Don't like it, but it's all we can do. Even if it doesn't feel right anymore."

"I can do for you, the same. If I ever have to." I promise. If just the idea makes it more fair, more palatable. It is less likely-- I will never see him suffer through a scope, after all, and if I avoid the places I think I will see him... Still, I can promise.

"I'll come up with something more if I have to."

"I trust you to."

He chuckles and shakes his head. "Well, maybe you shouldn't do that. Betting you're the quick thinker between us."

"You are a smart man, mon amour."

"Maybe. But not when it comes to lying. Still, I'll do what I can."

"Do you still want what you asked for, last weekend?" I play with his hair, still a little wet, hoping to distract him. I know, I know, it is important, but I cannot stand to see the man frown so.

He perks up at that, his hand trailing up my thigh, pushing the towel higher. I throw it off and roll onto my stomach, making myself comfortable and spreading my legs wide for him.

He nuzzles at the nape of my neck, I feel his tongue there first, and his hands at my shoulders, a light massage and a series of lazy, wet kisses that trails down my spine, until I'm melted onto the bed, my legs as open for him as legs can get, the pit of my stomach tingling and warm.

Finally, his hands are on my ass, calluses rough and attentions gentle, pressing... massaging... spreading...

"You'll have to kick me in the ribs or something if I mess this up." He laughs, nervous, breath warm.

"You'll be fine."

"Just never done it before." His hands slip down to squeeze my upper thighs, just a moment, before spreading the cheeks of my ass apart for him.

I don't know how much is physical and how much is mental, but it is an electric jolt through me at the first hesitant pass of his tongue.

Of course at least some is physical. It's a sensitive spot, after all, and the tongue is strong and slick and supple as any part of the body gets. But then there is the thrill of taboo, and beyond that, the knowledge that he was the one to ask me for this, that he has considered the intimate taste of me to be a pleasure.

It must be very different from what he's used to, with other women, but I don't let that thought spoil it for me, if it does not deter him. Not when he clutches at me and licks his way into me with little grunting moans, as though I really have done him a favor.

I am moaning, myself, muffling them into my pillow as best I can, but he does set me afire, in the loveliest way, and I am hard against the mattress...

He pulls away, dragging his tongue along my skin and sucking a love bite onto one cheek.

"Good?" He pants.

"Very." I sigh.

"If I kept going, could you get off like this?"

"... No. But I like it."

"Oh. Thank God." He laughs, and crawls up to press his forehead to my shoulder. "'Cause my tongue'll cramp up if I keep at it much longer, and I didn't think you were close enough. You wanna roll over?"

"Actually, there is a jar of Vaseline in the nightstand... if you want to fuck me. That, I could come... I wanted to be ready, if you asked. I would like it, very much."

"Roll over." He whispers, though he moves to get it.

I do, and let him drape my legs up over his shoulders. Which I expect is half the point for him, the way he turns his head to kiss the back of my knee, in a manner so indecent I might blush, if he hadn't just had his tongue up my ass.

I watch him slick his cock up instead. Somehow less obscene than watching his tongue tease me still.

"You need some of this?" He offers, reaching down, one slick finger pushing into where his tongue had been.

"A little, a little..."

"I've gotcha..." He nuzzles my calf, his hand wraps around neatly and he stretches his neck to nose at my ankle, to kiss his way back down from there to my knee once more, as his fingers open me up for him.

It wipes the rest of the world from my mind, to have him sink into me, to hear him groan and to watch his face, flushed and sweaty, as he pours his focus into me alone as well.

I have been fucked before, and often enough. I have never been made love to before him.

While one hand stays on my leg-- to keep me in place would be only a poor excuse-- the other slides up my belly to my chest, teases at one nipple and then the other with brief little pinches, with tiny circles made by the rough pad of one finger. And here and there, my own sex is caressed, in between other attentions. I like the wandering, the way I can never quite anticipate perfectly what that one hand will do.

He brings me off first, I have had enough foreplay, and after he comes, after he pulls out, he collapses beside me to pull me close.

I am too happy to cuddle up to him, to push away serious thoughts a little longer in his arms.

"So that was fun." He says, breath still coming a little hard.

"It was." I agree.

"Sorry about before. I mean, about getting whipped cream all over your nice dress."

"That is all right. The dry cleaners think I have a sister. When I am in a suit and the dress is on a hanger, it does not look like it fits me." I shrug. "Besides... that was fun, too."

"Think there's more in the can. If I get a second wind, I'm gonna... think of something with that." He chuckles.

I laugh, turning to hide my face against his chest, to breathe in the scent of his sweat. "If you get a second wind, you think of whatever you want to."

I am so eager for a new post! I can't wait.

[116]

I cried... because of you.

>>117 you weren't the only one. Though I must admit, I'm worried this fic has died, and maybe seeing these posts will magically revive anne.

Anne, please continue. We love you and this fic. Pretty please with cherries and sprinkles and a balloonicorn on top.

I must say I prefer the MvM one. I really hope that fic isn't dead.

Anne... Pls

Well, by way of her tumblr, she apologizes for the delay, and informs us life decided to happen. And she is trying to work her way back into writing. So, at least she isn't dead.

>>120 you made my soul weep.

I just foud this on Anne's Tumblr

http://annethecatdetective.tumblr.com/post/44214841955/some-ending-of-base-around-the-corner
(I’m just putting this on tumblr because I literally have no idea how I was supposed to get from where the fic is now to the ending… but I have been all blocked up for FAR TOO LONG not to at least try to offer some kind of fluffy resolution. I’m just sorry there’s not more in between stuff…)

I actually really liked this.

I didn't even come for the porn. The plot and character interactions made me read all the way through.

I'm really sad to see this end; I'm really gonna miss Geneviève and her Sniper. While I did read most of your stories featuring Spy and Sniper, these two are the one that spoke to me the most. There’s character like that that are hard to say good bye to, especially when their story his only really beginning.

Speaking of story, I feel like I'm missing a part of their story between the "last" night at the hotel and the reunion. There’s too much of a time skip between the two and, well let’s be honest, I find this somewhat disappointing. Oh, Anne you have no idea how much I hate myself right now for saying that.

But if you would have used a smaller time skip, say Spy’s end of contract a few letters then ‘The End’, it’s would have made the pill go down smoother. Boy, do I feel bad right now, telling you of my disappointments especially after such a great story. But I cannot blame you for having writer’s block.

I really hope that one day you’ll choose to revisit the story and fill in some of the gaps.

What a shame. I was looking forward to read some drama caused by the RED Spy.

Oh Anne, the end made my heart just swell. You amaze me every time I read your work. I'm sorry that life is getting in the way of good things for you. Be well, please, and continue writing such masterpieces.

From Anne's Tumblr

http://annethecatdetective.tumblr.com/post/44780857304/request-fill-for-cosmic ((Can you write something about Genevieve’s support group that she mentioned?))

for some reason, genevieve is my favorite incarnation of the spy i've ever seen. she's like femspy without all the ridiculous trappings that usually come with femclasses. and i usually like to see femclasses paired with other femclasses, but something about her and straight sniper really works

basically i'm trying to say i'm rly glad you're continuing with genevieve stories even tho the main storyline is wrapped up

I prefer men staying men.

Anon 129)

I don't always hate when people forget to sage, but when I do it's usually because someone's commented something really irrelevant and trans-phobic.

@LipstickandKnives

I beg your pardon? I did not forget to sage, in case you're accusing me for that. I'm also not trans-phobic. My best friend is a trans-guy. Please fetch your brain from the cloakroom before posting your BS ^^

I like Anne's style of writing. She is very talented, but I prefer fics where people don't twist the characters too much (especially when it comes to fem!s in ANY way). I was never able to see the Spy in this fic as I read it.

I hope to read more man/man from Anne again soon.

- anon129

@ Anon 129:

To be fair, when I read your comment, I ALSO thought you were being transphobic. Without any context, I thought you were saying, "I prefer when people assigned male at birth stick to that assignment regardless of how they might feel about it." You could have said, "I prefer the Spy staying (blankety blank character trait)", but instead your reply hinged on gender, in a thread dealing with trans issues. Being that you have a trans friend (that's always a sticky wicket: the 'I have a friend that falls into this oppressed minority and therefore can NEVER be offensive!' argument) I would think you would be more sensitive to the kinds of dialogues that open up when trans issues are discussed.

I'm not accusing you of anything other than poor wording, initially, because how exactly was I, and commenter #130, for that matter, to read into your comment?

.....

Anne, I hope you feel up to connecting where this story broke off, here, and where it wrapped up, on the tumblr, someday. I was looking forward to the DRAMAs. YES.

Look what I found on Anne's Tumblr, more stories featuring Geneviève and her Sniper

http://annethecatdetective.tumblr.com/post/48915280547/getting-in-a-quick-request-because-i-have-this-au-on-my ((That story with Genevieve was so sweet. Could you write something with Sniper meeting her friends?))

http://annethecatdetective.tumblr.com/post/48917734096/other-genevieve-fic-bit ((set some years down the road, not a crossover of AUs (though not explicitly not one either, I guess). This one does involve family disownership issues for a side character, so fair warning on that, but ends well after some strife.))