Not Unlike Pleasure
5
Irina kisses him while Sloane waits for them in the next cabin of the plane. She uses her weight to push him into the seat. He lets her, he always lets her; and when she scratches his back under his shirt he moans into her mouth.
He can feel his skin tearing under her sharp nails - a small trickle of blood, and a part of his mind protests because he really likes this shirt. But he doesn't voice his protest, another thing he never does when it comes to Irina.
He wonders if her daughter kisses like her, and he pictures Sydney above him, smiling with lips red from blood. It doesn't really fit. Sydney is strong and hard but she isn't bitter, and so he pushes his thoughts away when Irina's taste starts to fill his mouth. Sydney is not here, but Irina is and her hands are all over his body.
He tells himself he missed her.
4
Caplan looks at him as if he wants to pray and doesn't know the words. He knows this look, has seen it many times before, but somehow this is different.
Different because he has to kill this man and he doesn't want to. He can't remember the last time he felt like this. It must have been years ago and he almost lets go of his gun because this is all wrong.
Caplan had asked about him, had asked about his motivations and no one before has ever done that. And he hasn't thought about it for a very long time. He almost forgot.
The gun feels suddenly cold in his hand, dead steel. He walks over to Caplan, removing the disk from the laptop. Caplan looks up at him, something like fear written on his face, and he leans down, his hands grabbing the other man roughly.
He kisses him, his tongue a punch, his teeth swords and knives. It's the only `thank you' he can utter and then he's gone, the sound of running behind him urging him on.
3
He kisses Allison and he thinks he kisses a ghost. She feels different now and it might be because she was dead. It might be because she's still dead and he wonders if she misses Tippin.
The scars look at home on her shoulders but he doesn't tell Allison. He lies at her like he usually does and she's already far away from him minutes after he made her come.
Same old game, but it's the only game in town and he's happy she's back. He doesn't love her, but he cares about her sometimes and that's more than his partners and assets usually get.
And when he falls asleep beside her, he lets go of the gun under his pillow. He knows she lets go of her knife.
2 + 1
Lauren reminds him of Sydney sometimes, and that's when he pins her down and his hands push her into the mattress. She laughs at this and writhes below him and moans when he pushes inside her. He knows that she's not always with him then, knows that she dreams that another man would take her like this. He never calls her Sydney and she never calls him Michael, so it's alright with him.
Sometimes he thinks of her husband, he imagines how Vaughn fucks her and lets her crawl on top of him. Lauren looks down at him, her eyes gleaming and her hands hard. (In those moments) she doesn't look like Sydney at all.
When he tortures Vaughn, he thinks of Lauren and the way her hands stroked over his throat once while she rode him. The way she suddenly pushed and he choked and moaned and she laughed out loud. He kisses Lauren when Vaughn loses consciousness, kisses her and scratches over her hips with one hand while the other gets lost in her hair.
He walks over to Vaughn with his wife's taste in his mouth and looks at the almost broken man, trying to see what others see. There's nothing now, but he thinks he can see potential whispering under Vaughn's features, a chance of rage and violence. He smirks at Lauren and kisses Vaughn softly. She laughs behind him. - Their little secret. When Vaughn sighs into his mouth, he doesn't care who the man dreams about.
0
Sydney almost kisses him with Lauren's face, but she slips out of his reach before it happens and pulls him against the iron bars with another kind of passion. It hurts but he still feels laughter rising through his body, laughter and a moan; and he considers telling her that Lauren made him come like this once.
He doesn't, and he plays the part of the surprised villain although he had known it was her. He knows Lauren and he knows Sydney. The way Sydney tilted her head gave her away the moment she was thrown into the cell.
He still tells her what she wants to know, simply because he knows that it would be the best way to get out of the cell in the long run. He doesn't like it in there: it's wasting time, and he can't stand that. Lauren is strong and skilled and she might have a chance outside while he has no chance at all between steel and unbreakable glass.
When Sydney storms out of her cell, he knows she'll be after Lauren and for a moment he feels sorry. He wishes Lauren luck and settles down in one corner of the cell, his body still one painful mess from the treatment he received from Vaughn. Lauren and him changed them, they turned Vaughn's potential into reality and freed the giant of Sydney's anger.
He wonders, briefly, if Sydney would have kissed him like Irina now. Bitter and bloody. Then he realizes suddenly that he stopped caring.