delga | fic: hard liquor. [3/14] (spooks)

hard liquor. (spooks)
Fiona, Adam, Tja; het./fem.
iii. tick, tock, wind back the clock

“I don’t drink tequila,” she says. Her eyes indicate that this is not for discussion.

He shrugs, “Fair enough. How about vodka?”

Carter worries about this so-called fairy he’s put into the field. He was told – assured – that she could stand the heat. He was told – fucking assured – that she could keep her head and her wits. And yet here she is, pacing and wringing her hands, her teeth worrying over thin lips. She’s beautiful, in a dark, tentative way but he can’t have her falling apart on him.

They’re waiting in a bunker (biding time, holding their breath, crossing fingers and toes and praying over and over and over—) and there’s a bag next to his knees. His bag. His kit, actually, with oils and ointments and the best remedy of all – alcohol.

Fiona is still striding up and down; her shirt is torn. She’s muttering something beneath her breath but he can’t quite make it out. He thinks he’ll go mad if she keeps it up; considers stringing her up like a pendulum by which to beat out the time. Then he remembers the rips in her kaftan (the blood, the scars and the bruises; the teeth marks in the hollow of her neck) and he curses his choice of words.

Not that he said them out loud.

“Look, sit down, would you?”

“In a minute.” She’s monumentally distracted and he can see her falling apart. First it’s her eyes, darting about; next, her hands (and she doesn’t know where to put them, how to hold them, should she fold them or leave them loose?); then come the quakes and it’s like nothing Adam has ever seen before. They begin in her chest (she’s fighting for breath) and move down to her legs, until she’s fractured and broken and sobbing with… with something.

He stands. She looks up.

She’s mad, so very pissed about something. He’s only ever spoken to her through coded messages, only ever seen her from afar so this confrontation is bizarre for him. The surrealism, mixed with the heat and the dust, makes for a heady assault on his mind and he can’t tell whether he kissed her or she kissed him.

But they’re kissing and she is anxious to touch him in a meaningful way. He thinks, this is wrong, tries to hold her back but she pushes him to the wall, holds his head in her hands – forces violent eye contact. “Please,” she hisses, “Please.”

He cannot refuse.

When Fiona (oh, excuse me: ‘Charna’) first sees ‘Hanna’, she feels the heat curling in her stomach. She’d like to think she thought the woman was gypsy-esque but her skin is too much like cinnamon for that and anyway, China doesn’t have gypsies.

It’s almost a dream (he’s certain it was) but as he’s thrusting up away from the surprisingly cold floor, she moans in frustration.

He’d never swear it but he’s certain she gasps Tja as she comes.

Hanna is as Eastern Oriental as they get and holy shit, now this is a whole new game. As soon as Charna enters the room, she can see this enigma gliding across the floor towards her and the men step away, anxious not to displease.

(She thinks, Goddamnit, it’s Moses, come to part the fucking seas).

Well, this was still her con and no red book prodigy was going to take it away from her.

She is startled when Hanna takes her hand, more so when she leans in and brushes her lips (stained bright with plum lipstick) against Charna’s. She is sickened when those lips move to her ear and whisper (so sweetly, so naturally) koshka¹.

Oh, she thinks. Oh this is different.

Their bodies pull apart and Fiona wipes a hand across her mouth, as though sickened by her actions. She’s still straddling his hips but for a moment (one that seems never ending), she’s in another place completely. Then she catches Adam’s eye, sits back on her haunches rather abruptly and backs away, looking for her clothes.

(Adam seems to remember throwing them over there somewhere).

He dresses too, which basically entails him zipping up his jeans and buttoning his shirt (in her desperation, she hadn’t waited for him to disrobe. Instead it was all hands on deck as soon as he was backed up against the wall).

He moves to check the radio frequencies again and now she is silent, immobile. She sits in the corner, chewing her lip and begins, ever so slowly, to rock back and forth, lost in whatever landscape was hidden in her head.

What, Adam thinks, no ‘thank you’?

The first night is endlessly bizarre and Charna’s first thought is that her ruse is up; they’ve come to get her, take her back and pay out her penalty on street corners. She thinks it’s probably time to drop the con; time to get up and get out as quickly as she can. This isn’t going to work in her favour anymore.

Her second thought is: I’m not going anywhere.

Hanna takes her by the hand and the rest of the night is spent with Charna stuck to her side. Only when the festivities are done and Abrahim is preparing to leave does Hanna actually turn to her again.

“Midnight, by the fountains. Be there.”

Charna feels indignation, but she goes anyway.

Hanna is not Hanna, this much Charna has guessed, but apart from that, there’s little else to know. She has carried herself from the land of the rising sun and by some mass of coincidence, she has come to Jerusalem, come to play a con.

Charna hadn’t anticipated Hanna’s existence. Hanna, it seemed, had considered hers.

After the night at the fountains (falling back into the water, squealing with erotic delight) there were other occasions. As Hanna got closer to Abrahim Sharif, Charna got closer to Hanna. There were scars on this woman’s body, beautifully horrid lines that marked years of running and hiding and deceit. But she would look at Charna (brush the dark strands back from her head) and murmur softly, my little Slavic princess and then kiss her until they ran dry of breath and Charna wouldn’t care. This isn’t love, she’d tell herself, waiting for it to be true. This isn’t love.

They come out of Damascus barely alive.

Fiona looks at Adam once before the paramedics take her away.

She seems so sad.

And then they are caught.

Charna knows that no perfect existence exists for her but she wonders if Hanna’s magic could sustain them like immortals. She has been in Israel for nine months now (longer than she’d ever wanted to be) but time is without consequence whilst she is embraced in this devilish tryst.

Hanna laughs at her (always laughing, always smiling. Charna wonders if the woman knows the meaning of grief), holds her wrists above her head before lowering those lips to the round of Charna’s right breast, the nipple hard against the soft, wet flesh of Hanna’s tongue. Charna squirms and the more frantic she becomes, the slower Hanna moves, nipping and suckling, pulling gently at the skin with her teeth. Charna’s legs traverse this goddess’ body (drawing along the cuts in her skin, curving around her hip, over the smooth buttocks, between those supine legs) and crawl up between her thighs, stroking the tender skin.

Hanna lets go of Charna’s hands to hold her head and kisses her ravenously; Charna’s hands move immediately to Hanna’s hips, her fingers circling them once, twice before following the trail of her feet and pushing into the slick, moist folds. Hanna’s muscles contract instinctively, and oh it’s so tight and hot and right as Hanna moans into her open mouth and twists her pelvis just so…

Enter Abrahim Sharif.

The outrage is immediate and devastating but Hanna doesn’t show perturbance. Instead, she rolls away from Charna’s distinctly clothe-less body and laughs louder, looking at Sharif without care. She is laid out across the bed; her body is swathed in sweat (her muscles gleam; her scars seem like divinations carved into her skin) and Charna sees in her something of the sublime. Tyger, tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night…² Hanna looks at Sharif and sees nothing but a man. Charna looks at Sharif and sees power, jealousy and the sting of betrayal.

(This is when time distorts, twisting her memory; breaking it).

They run. By some intricate intervention of god, Hanna overpowers Sharif before he even considers moving. One minute she’s on the bed, next she has him pinned to the ground, a knife (from where, Charna will never discover) jutted against his throat.

“Breathe,” she hisses, “I dare you.”

Then she snaps his neck.

When Charna leaves Jerusalem, the heat is her hunter. She can barely stand, barely breathe, and there is sand everywhere.

But then there is Hanna.

They run like fugitives, sleeping where they can, hiding where they can. Hanna is too good at this, Charna thinks, she knows too much about this life. But Hanna’s body is Charna’s temple, and Hanna’s lips are Charna’s salvation, so Hanna runs and Charna follows.

“So, what’s your name, malyshka?”³

“Charna.”

Hanna laughs. “Don’t lie to me; I see the Slav in you.”

(Charna wonders, not for the first time, if Hanna is here to drag her back to Russia)

After Damascus, Adam Carter looks for Fiona. He offers her tequila, she declines. He offers her vodka and she drinks it down like water, drowning in something imperceptible.

He decides then and there that this is a woman who needs saving.

This is a woman he will marry (even if it takes him to the grave).

“So what’s your name?”

“I don’t have one. What’s yours?”

‘Hanna’ pauses, weighing up the options. (Oh, thinks Charna, this woman is Helen incarnate). She looks at Charna, looks at her hard as though her eyes could see beneath the flesh and into the mind. She looks and she thinks. At last she speaks.

“Antja.” ⁴

Pause.

“You are my detka⁵, my little Annie.” She smiles. “You are Anouska.”

end. [3/14]

[1] Russian for ‘darling’
[2] The Tyger by William Blake
[3] Russian for ‘little one’
[4] From Antje, the low German/Dutch form of Anna
[5] Russian for ‘dear child’