She's dozing when he comes home, her feet up on the sofa, and starts awake at the sound of the door, shaking off an odd guilty feeling. Two flights, Hong Kong and back again, and hours of debriefing. How long has it been since Michael slept?
It's as if she drew him to her by thinking his name: there he is in the doorway grinning across the room at her. "Hey," he says. "You waited up.".
She looks--she can't help it--for some sign of ambivalence, a hint that he'd rather be elsewhere, but Michael's smile is entirely guileless. This is only one of the things she loves about him. "The Director rang and said you'd be late, and I thought..." She pushes the throw away and swings her feet to the floor. By the time she's standing, he's there, his arms around her.
"The Director, hunh?" he whispers into her hair. "The prodigal son really does get the star treatment."
"Was it difficult?" she asks, before she remembers that it might be tactless.
"It was strange. Like someone else's life, something I'd read about once. I missed you." His forehead is wrinkled with sincerity: he wants her to believe him, and so, she decides, she will. The simple alchemy of marriage, far more mysterious than anything she works on.
"You were only gone two days," she chides, then relents. "I missed you too." The motions are so familiar, her head tilting up, their lips meeting, her hands already under the sweater he's wearing. Every inch of his skin is known to her. She can feel his response in their kiss, feels the same urgency in herself as a yearning: to hold him, protect him, keep him safe.
He has to stop kissing her when he unbuttons her blouse: he has to see what he's doing.
"You aren't tired," she says.
"Never too tired for this." He grins, then. "Say 'knackered,' instead."
She rolls her eyes but repeats it. "Knackered."
"I'm knackered," he declares. He sounds like Dick Van Dyke imitating Jamie Oliver: it's still the funniest thing she's ever heard. "Darling," and now it's Dick Van Dyke imitiating Jamie Oliver imitating the Queen, "I'm knackered. Let's go to bed."
They're still laughing as they stumble up the stairs.
End
email me livejournal comment alias fanfiction main fanfiction index
Wriiten before the opening of Season 3. There's a certain hubris involved in writing characters before they've even appeared on screen, I know, but I couldn't help it. I had a feeling that JJ was doing his best to help this kerfuffle along, and my response to being played is to play back. In any case, Alias remains the intellectual property of JJ Abrams, Bad Robot, and ABC. No copyright infringement intended, and no profit made. Original story elements my own.