fic: hard liquor. [1/14] (spooks)

[delga]

hard liquor. (spooks)
Fiona, Adam, Tja; het./fem.
i. a chicken is not a bird

“She’s dead.”

Two words. Subject, verb. A perfect phrase. Two words.

And the world is shot to hell.





Fiona drinks vodka as though it is flavoured water and it’s something that never ceases to fascinate Adam. Her fingers grip the shot and the liquid is gone before she even takes a breath. She seems to enjoy torturing herself in this way; building up her alcohol consumption until all she wants to do is throw-up. And throw up she will, hunched over a bowl, emptying her guts in some sort of cleansing ritual.

But tonight is different. Tonight, it seems, his wife doesn’t care what she’s drinking, as long as it burns her throat. He knows she was talking to Danny earlier, knows that she’d had the younger spook out on the prowl for some information. Whatever the shit it was, Fiona was performing some sort of physical regression and he wasn’t sure he could handle it. She was mean drunk, (an alcoholic, if you must) and Carter wasn’t in the mood for needy sex. He wasn’t in the mood to play the sideshow.

Not that he should worry.

After the third drink, Fiona’s had enough and she’s getting up. Adam moves to follow her but she stops him with a hand on his chest, her lips on his for the briefest of moments and a word in his ear: “No.”

He looks at her, “Fi—”

“No.”

And then she’s gone.





In Adam’s mind, Fiona begins at Damascus.

Pity he’s wrong; he was always a sweet one.





She’s already at Thames House, working, when he arrives. She’s not close to being hung over, so wherever the hell she disappeared to the night before, it wasn’t another bar.

She looks at him with a smile; Adam’s confused but he smiles back anyway. It’s time to make amends, he figures and he gets her a cup of coffee before helping her go over the regular surveillance routes.

There’s something about her that strikes him as peculiar but he’s having a hard time figuring it out, what with her knees touching his, her eyes flicking out from beneath her lashes – coy and sweetness.

Harry calls her to the office and she walks away from him. Something is not right.





Damascus, actually, was her sixth deep cover operation and the first in which she’d met Adam Carter. She was used to being thrown around, good at playing the newbie. Adam was an easy catch but there was one good thing about him (one thing worth the trouble).

He reminded her of another lover.

So she stayed with him, converted (again) and came back to London. She became ‘Fiona Carter’. She dazzled and dazed and the Carters became one of those pairs – you know, those teams of married couples, those effervescent pairs that everyone talks about (Oh, it’s the Carters – you know they’re married?) in an admiring way, as though you can’t fuck and talk at the same time.

Because the only thing they’re good at, Fiona knows, is fucking.





He’s so tight-fisted, she thinks, lording over her in his ‘master’ pose. He’s all, “Help her; get her out; that’s my wife!” (As though people didn’t know that already) and all the way through, an old memory flashes through her mind.

“A chicken isn’t a bird…”

She wants to slap him one; tell him to get a grip. But she doesn’t, of course: she plays the dutiful wife, pretends she’s nervous too (Don’t forget to flush the loo) and moves to Thames House without questioning the decision, ever.





Moscow was always cold, she thinks and she wonders at her inability to retain heat in the British winter. Moscow used to freeze her over but she’d still stand out on the corner, smoking and laughing (her eyes flicking out from beneath her lashes) and she’d call out to the passing men. Buy me a drink; I’ll make it worth your while. They never did, of course, but she’d call out anyway.

She’d let it snow on her for three hours before admitting that she was cold.





Tonight he wants something a little more substantial. They go from talking about cobalt blue (the man prefers subtext: bastard, never could play it straight) to the newest films in the box office whilst slumping over a booth in the local bar. Adam makes some joke about birthdays and divorces but she’s only half listening. Mostly she’s scanning the bar, looking for entertainment.

Buy me a drink.

There’s a man at the bar, looking directly at her and Fiona sits up a little, fingers the necklace bound around her neck. He’s a target, a perfect red spot, she thinks. Adam’s muttering about the weather now (Try living in Moscow, fool) but her target is running his finger over the rim of a shot glass. It’s only then that she sees what he’s drinking (only then that the images come quickly together, skipping and jumping and knotting) and she starts suddenly – tequila.

(The taste is in her mouth and it lines her throat like burnt silk. She takes one, then another, then three more and she knows she’d better not stop because if she stops her mind will fall apart and she’ll lose the bet).

Adam looks at his wife, wonders what could be the matter now. He sees the direction of her gaze and turns to look—

Her nails dig into his knee. She kisses him. She can taste the lager on his lips.

I‘ll make it worth your while.

“Let’s go home.”





There are two things that she’ll always put hand in hand: tequila and deep red skies. Forget the snow, forget the vodka – forget Moscow, even. It doesn’t matter as long as those two things make sense.

Tequila. Red skies.

It’s a sort of paradise for her. (Would be even more if the red skies weren’t her bloodshot eyes and the tequila not her anaesthetic). She remembers it with pain – that’s another thing she always associated with the colour red – but savours it in her mouth, that sharp spicy taste, running to puncture her flesh and bring her closer to the edge.

A chicken is not a bird…

Cobalt blue? Yemen? He can’t even begin to know torture.



end. [1/14]

spooks and its associated characters and plots do not belong to me; I am merely borrowing them. tja is an original character. with thanks to my betas raynedanser, wliberation, and tigertrapped, the latter of whom is responsible for my trying to write something on this scale. She is a true inspiration.