Chapter Text
Lloyd didn't feel at all stereotypical as he sprawled across the backboard of a king-sized bed in a hotel room in Paris. Pinning a cigarette between two fingers, he stared out at the waters of the Seine, the grey paving stones, and the misty morning below. Taking a deep drag on the cigarette, he tipped back his head and blew lazily at the crystal chandelier dangling smack over the center of the bed, shaking his head with a faint smile. Five and a half months in working as a CIA operative, and he still couldn't say whether he liked it. Sometimes it all felt...boring. Fly here, meet this person, kill this person. Sure, working for Denny sounded a hell of a lot better than working for his predecessor, Old Donald Fitzroy. His friend from Harvard had pulled some strings with his new power and so far had served up missions to Lloyd in exotic parts of the globe, each relatively cushy – even Lloyd could admit that – and not even that hard.
But this wasn't the first time Lloyd had been to Paris. His family had been globetrotting on cruises and the like since he was a toddler, the perks of being born into one of the East Coast's old money dynasties. For some agents, it might be the thrill of their lives to jet into Beijing, escape across a few borders to India, then debrief somewhere on an island in Indonesia. For Lloyd, it was already getting routine. And forget the people who said he was too brutal to be in this line of work. Wasn't brutal exactly what one was supposed to be when one was sent to kill people the CIA wanted dead? Wasn't Lloyd allowed to make his job just a little more interesting while extracting information he had been sent to extract anyway?
He suspected it had been his former operations partner who had ratted him out for...experimenting with a little torture on the side during his last mission. The two of them hadn't been partners for more than a couple weeks before that one had tattled to Denny like the dickless low-brow he was. Denny had given him to the HR department in short order and set Lloyd up with a new arrival, someone he described to Lloyd with a smirk as, "Just your type."
Lloyd's eyes drifted back from the scene beyond the open balcony doors, creeping back inside and roving over the long, bare back of a woman sleeping pressed up to his side. Her face was to the wall, so all Lloyd could see of Sasha Lewellyn, CIA operative, was the gentle ridged line of her lean vertebrae under dewey freckled skin beneath a shag of coiled brown curls. Even in sleep, the powerful muscles of her arms and back were apparent; Lloyd's eyes lingered on an ugly five-inch scab striping the area just above her left kidney, a remnant of their previous mission. Sasha wasn't shy about taking the hits to get their mission done. She was vicious, whip-smart – had the low-burning patience to wait for a mark to lean just the right way around a corner so that when her bullet hit them, they would fall without a sound. She had what Lloyd could only call an uncanny sense that told her exactly when on a mission to swing her arm across Lloyd's chest and halt his trigger finger before he blew their cover. Reporting back to Denny after their trial outing together, Lloyd had joked to Denny that Sasha didn't pull her weight on the mission. It was a compliment. Standing back-to-back, Lloyd's partner rose only to about his fourth rib. She had used every inch of her wiry, wily self to finish the mission, leaping across building tops, hefting bits of rubble, scrabbling into small spaces before emerging to spring into a firing pose and hit her target with perfect aim. Lloyd had done what he had had to do for the mission, but Sasha had definitely pulled far more than her weight. Because he and Denny had been friends since the cradle, Lloyd could then admit with only a small amount of pride lost that Denny had been right about Sasha. He had been right even more than he had probably meant to be right.
Lloyd didn't guess it was typical for operative partners to fall into bed as a matter of course – just look at the beer bellies and ugly mugs amongst the old-timers. He had felt Sasha working on him just as much as he had been working on her to get the two of them into bed, though, and that was unique. Lloyd usually didn't have to do more than wink at a woman to get what he wanted, and what he wanted wasn't the woman herself. But he found himself wanting Sasha. Constantly. The shape of her beneath their tactical gear, the smell of her hair as they waited in a dark corner for a target to appear, the sound of her voice over comms describing something with a bit of that godawful sexy accent – Sasha made missions interesting.
Lloyd didn't think Denny would have played the sort of mind games with him like planning for this to happen with her. But maybe he did. Sasha's accent was American, with an occasional Croatian lilt from her grandparents – who were, as it turned out, minor royalty. Sasha said it like it was nothing, which was how Lloyd knew it was true. If growing up around his and Denny's families had taught him nothing else, he could recognize an honest statement from a humble brag. But Sasha was from what his parents would have called the right type. Old money – old royal European breeding. She had broken away from home and summer balls with her grandparents to become an elegant assassin. And here she was, his mission partner. Maybe Denny had planned it all. Maybe he had seen Lloyd falling for her a mile away. Lloyd mused that one probably had to have a mind like that if he wanted to hold all the guns in the CIA.
Pouring over the idea of Sasha, Lloyd took a gentler pull on his cigarette and blew a soft cloud of smoke against her back. Ribbons of her muscles moved, her hair dragged as she tilted her face towards him, and she groaned. "Fine. See if I let you sleep in the next time you run thirty miles in tactical gear, then get hit by a car."
Lloyd's eyes creased in a gentle way as he looked down at her. Sasha could have told him to fuck off and he knew he wouldn't have liked her any less. She didn't melt for him. He switched his cigarette to his opposite hand, running his fingers pensively up the divots of her vertebrae as she yawned and settled back against her pillow. To her, he smirked, "See if you can sleep with all the noise downstairs."
"Oh, wasn't that upstairs?" Sasha yawned, moving with his hand to sit up and lean against his chest. Out of the corner of his eye, her hand snaked up and tugged the cigarette from his hand. With a flick of her wrist, the still-smoking cylinder flipped over the balcony railing. "Your friend got you a post-op room in the place to be on Valentine's Day."
Lloyd grinned. "Didn't he, though?" He swiftly trapped her hand in his, bringing it to his lips and kissing it slowly. Sasha sighed and tucked the ringlets of her head beneath his chin, pulling his other arm around her and nestling against his sternum as if to go back to sleep. She was warm, sleepy, beautifully delicious, and Lloyd couldn't stop himself from pressing kisses along the lines of her corded neck. Near her ear, he murmured, "We don't have to be anywhere today, do we?"
Sasha's lips turned upward. She moved to face him, sliding her arms about his neck to bring him closer and leaning in. "Mission completed? No. No one needs to hear from us until at least after the weekend." She kissed Lloyd slowly, her breath spilling across his face and tickling his chest where his heart was already humming. "I think we deserve some time off."
Lloyd couldn't have agreed more. He was just about to follow Sasha down into the covers when suddenly – his phone rang. Lloyd knew who would be calling him this morning – he had thought they had chickened out when they had missed their planned time earlier. It wasn't Denny. It was something that, like Sasha, could be a very interesting and very un-boring career. Lloyd was still considering, but he thought he wanted it. As Lloyd hesitated, one hand entwined with Sasha's and the other unconsciously spread in the direction of his phone, she shot him an irritated look. "Would you like me to leave you to your call, then?"
"If you could." Lloyd didn't say it with as much sarcasm as he had planned. His gut felt vaguely cold as Sasha rolled smoothly off the mattress and stalked into the bathroom. He took the call, looking at the bathroom door the whole time and wondering why he felt guilty. He rang off as soon as he could – the opportunity did indeed sound very appetizing – and sat in silence for a moment to think. Remembering Sasha in the bathroom, Lloyd coaxed in a stage-whisper, "Hey! Come on out."
Sasha's voice was chilly through the wooden barrier. "You've time for me now?" Before Lloyd could come up with a comeback, the bathroom door slid open and Sasha stood before him in a long sweater-dress, her brown ringlets fashionably mussed and something about her still looking as if she had just emerged from a rather erotically restless night. Lloyd read the message loud and clear: she had heard every word on the phone. Probably had tapped it. He wouldn't have cared if not for the fact that something about Sasha was definitely borderline angry, or at least frustrated. Crossing the room to him, she demanded, "What was that?"
Lloyd came clean – nothing to do about it. "A call." A glare from Sasha made him grin. "Fine, a call about a job."
"Don't you have a job?" she shot back.
"Yeah, but it gets..." Lloyd rolled his neck and shrugged, "boring."
Sasha shook her head in one sharp twist of her neck and exhaled a huff of air. Disgusted. "You're thinking about turning mercenary."
Now Lloyd cocked his head back at her, not getting where all the drama was suddenly coming from. "Yes. So sue me. What's the matter?"
Sasha gave Lloyd a long look, her light brown eyes taking on a smoldering sort of look in the scattered light of the half-light outside. Deliberately, she sat on the side of the bed, flipped back her hair, and crawled slowly towards Lloyd. The sight was simultaneously unsettling and tantalizing, Lloyd thought, as if a very sensuous shark was swimming for him with a mouth of teeth open wide. Sasha reached Lloyd and took the lapels of his collared shirt between her hands, her ringlets hanging down and touching his cheekbones. "Listen. I want my man on the straight and narrow." Lloyd felt a rush of liquid fire barrel from his toes to his chest and wondered if he was breaking a sweat. He had the wherewithal to mentally curse Denny just once before Sasha was on his face, kissing him with just enough skin contact to make him shake. In a flash of insight, Lloyd realized that he would do exactly whatever it was that Sasha wanted him to do. He would. Absolutely anything.
Mustering up a wide smile amidst her kisses, Lloyd rasped, "But who says I'm on the straight and narrow right now?"
Sasha laughed against his lips. "I do." Then she dragged him down with her, and Lloyd decided the mercenary business was worth ditching.
For now.