(The Meaning Of) Restoration
"Whoever is unjust, let him be unjust still.
Whoever is righteous, let him be righteous still.
Whoever is filthy, let him be filthy still.
Listen to the words long written down,
When the man comes around."
--Johnny Cash, "When the Man Comes Around."
This beats the hell out of the hospital bed, the IV, and the slow and painful reconstruction of tissue, organ, skin and bone. Lauren stretches out, topless, against the crisp cotton sheets, a natural linen-y color, twisting her wrists around the wrought iron bedframe and gazing around the room with intense satisfaction.
Michael had always promised to take her somewhere like this, hot, wet, and steamy. She imagines he dreamt of a room something like this, gauzy curtains fluttering slightly from the breeze stirred up by four fans, two half-empty wineglasses almost touching, and the remnants of dark chocolate blanketed by gold foil, demurely rumpled clothes on the floor. A pair of eyeglasses and a camera sits atop the television, next to three or four candles, wax dripping over the glass screen. A glance at the clock let her know it was already noon; they'd been up late last night.
Lauren stretches out further, whimpering slightly at the pleasant ache in her arms and spine. She could die like this, though most certainly she didn't want to try that any time soon. And as one of the French doors click open with a tray of berries leading, Lauren's very certain she didn't want to die at all.
"Miss Reed," Sydney says, her eyes sparkling with mischief as she pads in, barefoot, wearing only a flimsy vintage t-shirt (circa 2004) and a dainty set of pink bikini-cut knickers. "Your brunch in bed."
Lauren sets the tray on the bed as Sydney picks up the remote and hit a button. A honky-tonk guitar starts up as Johnny Cash blares from the speakers.
"You know, darling," Lauren says, offering Sydney a blackberry from the tip of her index finger, which she accepts sensually, her tongue flickering out and curling around the fruit, eyes half-closed, "Your sense of humor, while always enjoyable, is deeply inappropriate."
Sydney smiles at her, picking up a few berries to suck off her fingers. "It makes me feel like that character from A Midsummer's Night's Dream. What was his name? Squeeze a few drops into the lover's eyes and she'll become besotted, even against the rational evidence?"
"Puck," Lauren says, watching hungrily as Sydney devours each piece of fruit before offering a strawberry to Lauren, pushing her back against the pillows as Lauren finishes and draws in half of the other woman's thumb and biting down before pulling back. "Though your facts are skewed. Puck made lovers fall in love with other people. He didn't alter appearances."
Toothy smile against lips stained berry-pink. "Nick Bottom," Sydney points out, her breasts seeming to swell as she moves the tray from between her and Lauren, and for a moment, Lauren watches the little blue pendant hanging from her lover's neck like a starflower. "Though I take your point."
She takes a piece of watermelon from the bowl and touches it to each of Lauren's eyelids before kissing each of them daintily and moving down to her mouth, taking the kiss from it even while Lauren's hands surge up under the t-shirt, over hardening nipples as the other woman holds herself up on her elbows.
When Lauren's eyes open, the pendant is clear through and through, and the woman hovering over her is most certainly not Sydney Bristow. "Better?" she asks, pulling back to the breakfast tray and taking a bite of toast with marmalade. Behind them, Johnny Cash's guitar is met with a raucous piano as he exhorts them to reach out and touch faith.
"Depends on what you're asking me to compare to," Lauren teases Lilah. "Certainly, no matter what trashy little glamour you cloak yourself in; Sydney Bristow doesn't kiss like you. She'd be scandalized."
Lilah laughs, the marmalade smudged against her upper lip, begging to be licked off. "Because it's you, because it's a girl, or because nice CIA double agents might kill, but they don't fuck?" she asks, fingering her pendant unconsciously before trailing her fingers up her neck.
"Oh," and Lauren stretches again, "All three."
When she then falls forward, right atop Lilah, she manages to catch both of Lilah's upper arms, one thigh right between long, suntanned legs. Her mouth hovers bare millimeters above Lilah's, and the other woman strains to catch Lauren's lips.
"What game do you want to play?" Lauren asks, pinning Lilah against wrought iron and pushing her hips tight against the writhing ones beneath her. "You seem to find a new one every day, and it makes me wonder. Did Auntie Katya and Wolfram and Hart restore you to play? Or scheme for your own agenda?"
Lilah's expression is defiant as she rocks up, meeting the seam of Lauren's short pants hard and sending a shock of pleasure up her spine. "You can't restore what was never there," she says, trying to turn her head away. "If they were looking for loyalty and stupidity masquerading as virtue, they should have just built you a Sydney-bot for you to work out all your issues on, Mrs. Vaughn."
Lauren recoils just long enough to realize that her lost sense of right and wrong and good and evil is still her vulnerable point. That part of her wants to believe she isn't the one who fucked Sark, betrayed the NSA and the CIA and her husband, that she isn't a triple agent with her own agenda. And Lilah preys on weakness like it's fine wine.
As if there's something to be ashamed over here, that it is some kind of sin to arch her back, push her breasts forward and grind downward against Lilah's slightly lifted thigh, to enjoy that light exhalation when she lets Lilah's arms go to settle one around that sleek throat. Sydney Bristow might find it dirty and bad and wrong, and Michael...damnable, puritan Michael...might avert his eyes and adjust his pants at his arousal. But Lauren was never Sydney nor Michael and the sudden pain that is Lilah's fingernails raking over her bare back don't make her squeamish.
"And you..." Lauren punctuates the word with a hard squeeze to Lilah's windpipe, "Need to learn how to give up control occasionally."
Before Lilah can get in a snide comment, Lauren has her by the waist and pulls her flat on the mattress, the tray sliding toward the edge of the bed before Lauren, pinning Lilah with her weight, catches it with one hand, spotting a small pitcher of cream that was clearly meant to go along with the almost empty bowl of fruit. She grasps it and pushes the tray to the floor, reveling in the crash of pottery and the shiver that runs down Lilah.
"I..." and Lilah gasps raggedly as Lauren pours a thin stream of cream over her collarbone and proceeds to nibble, suck, and lick each and every droplet away, lapping at the hollow of her throat.
"What? They brought you back for me, didn't they?" Lauren asks, sitting up to straddle Lilah and setting the pitcher nearby so that she can tear Lilah's shirt in half. "To teach me how to be cruel and hot and how to prey on need and weakness like they were candy."
She slides her flat fingers and palm under the glamour-creating pendant, pressing down on the windpipe and Lilah moans, clutching at the sheet. "I don't know," she says. "Don't care."
"Oh, you know they did," Lauren replies, lifting the pitcher as she presses down harder on Lilah's throat. "All they think you're good for is high-class call girl work. They put this chain around your neck so you can be whoever I need you to be. Sydney, Michael, Sark...show me how to handle them. To get me addicted to manipulating them into my bed. And you agreed."
"Who wouldn't agree?" Lilah asks, eyes heavy-lidded with honesty and lust. "So little for so much..."
Lauren pulls upward and the necklace breaks. Lilah whimpers, and for a moment, Lauren expects her to melt away, to become a mousy little nobody, or worse. There are so many things that can be taken away when enchantments are broken.
"I want you," Lauren says, pouring another shot of cream over the curve of one of Lilah's breast to suck it away, tasting milk and sweat and warm skin and hearing Lilah's heartbeat, fast and getting faster. "Do you think they thought it would happen like that?"
"Don't care," Lilah says, surging up to try to kiss Lauren. "Never did. Means to an end."
"And that's getting good and fucked before plotting to take over the world, isn't it?" Lauren asks, setting her hand on Lilah's chest and pushing her down again.
"Yes," Lilah says, eyes crackling with ambition and it's got Lauren throbbing and absolutely soaked. She's not going to shag the pretty little messenger boy, the turncoat pawn, not this time. Lauren wants power, and Lilah radiates power in every gesture and expression.
And oh, Lilah wants everything she thinks she has coming to her and more, all of her pretty things and power restored, and then some, and when Lauren's mouth crushes into Lilah's, Lilah's tongue worms it way into Lauren's, whole body writhing and giving as Lauren rocks against her, digging her fingers into the curves as they kiss and Lauren keeps kissing her, mouth and jaw and down her throat.
Sweat-slick skin under her just begging to be touched, tasted, and tormented, Lauren can't help but feel a tight, hot pleasure at how well things are working out. Lilah's biting into her bottom lip, eyes half-shut and hair falling over her face. It doesn't matter if Lilah's letting herself be fucked because she knows Lauren's wet and aching at having power, that she's leading Lauren further down some dark and twisted path, because it's a game, it's all tests and games and Lauren knows games. Lauren likes this game, likes hearing Lilah moan when Lauren's teeth drift over her stomach.
She works one finger over wet knickers, resting her chin on Lilah's stomach. "Feel good?" Lauren asks.
"Mmmm..." and her legs are falling open, one hand compulsively stroking her throat, the other resting on her forehead as she shakes it, back and forth as Lauren's fingers rub against the fabric. "Hot...God..."
"Oh, it's so good, darling," Lauren says, laying a kiss on the top of her hip. "Look at you..."
Lilah's hips lift and Lauren rids them of the offending knickers with one pull, remembering to rid herself of her own, and yes, it's so good, rubbing her hand back and forth against her cunt.
"Ohhh, like that..." and Lauren works one finger inside and the moaning just gets louder.
The moaning and the screaming pounds against Lauren's ears as she opens those legs even further, settling her head between them and sucking, licking, rubbing at the slick-hot-wet flesh, aware of how her own clit's throbbing and her pulse is racing. Riding the rolling, bucking jerks of Lilah's hips. Gripping those thighs so hard that Lauren knows there'd be bruises later.
Finally, Lilah arches up off the mattress, screaming her head off as she comes hard, spasming and panting, one hand still on her own throat as she sobs and cries her way down as Lauren brushes up her body. Her lips are swollen and blood-stained from biting down, and those big blue-green eyes are glazed and half-cognizant.
"Good?" Lauren asks, kissing Lilah and enjoying the feel of Lilah tugging her lower lip into her mouth and nipping.
"No complaints," Lilah says, reaching for Lauren, blinking rapidly as she throws her leg over Lauren and flips them over. "You definitely know how to make a girl scream."
"What'll you give me for that?" Lauren asks as Lilah's finger pinch into her nipples, rolling them back and forth.
"What do you want?" Lilah asks guilelessly. "Tell me what to do."
Another surge of lust, triangulated between her breasts and the apex of her thighs. Lauren moans, only to have her cry swallowed by Lilah's mouth as her skin heated up again. This is most certainly her demon lover, restored to life and all its pleasures.
Lauren most definitely approves.