Title: Hole In The World
Author: Agent Otter
Rating: PG
Summary: There are, believe it or not, consequences to disobeying that many orders. Syd and Vaughn are just going to have to live with them.
Spoilers: Vague references to "Endgame", but I wouldn't say there's anything terribly spoilerish here.
Disclaimer: Ah, if only any of it were mine. I'd do such wonderous things with the costumes and lack thereof.
Author's note: I've been trying REALLY hard to write some fluff for all those at SD-1 who've been requesting it. This isn't really what I was going for, but I think it's about as fluffy as you're going to get from me. On the up side, I also think it's a series, so you can expect more. You know, if you want it. Or even if you don't. Also, it may eventually turn into pointless smut, so uh... hooray for that, right?

"Where you used to be, there's a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling into at night. I miss you like hell." - Edna St. Vincent Millay

The house smelled like fresh paint, disrupted dust and the sharp lemon of antisceptic cleaner. Vaughn sighed, and the odor of the place filled his nostrils and clung to his tongue. It tasted like starting over.

The place was furnished, and the movers had left his few boxes of personal effects in a neat pile in the living room. He already knew the layout of the house; it was easily three times as big as the little place he'd had in LA, and felt about ten times as empty. He felt no need to explore the space; no desire to know where the floor squeaked, or how to coax open the balcony doors when the humidity made the wood frame swell. Instead, he set his laptop case on the shining surface of the little dining room table, slung his suit jacket over the back of one of the chairs, and pulled his cellular phone from his pocket. He knew the number by heart, but it was already set to the first button on his speed-dial, and the sound of the ringing on the line trilled out steady counter-rhythm to the rain pelting the roof.

"Hello?" There was static in her voice, and over twenty-six hundred miles of distance.

"Hey."

"Hi." He could hear her smile, and he could picture her fingers reaching up to self-consciously tuck her hair behind her ear. "How's Virginia?"

He couldn't hold in the sigh that had been fighting to escape all day, so he let it puff out, running a hand through his hair, slick with moisture from the storm outside. He'd gotten wetter than he should have; it had taken him an extra moment to find the right key and fit it to an unfamiliar lock. "Rainy," he finally answered. "With a side order of sleet. How's LA?"

"At the moment? A little chilly. And windy. But the afternoon was a beautiful seventy-two degrees."

He smiled, too, and hoped she could hear it in his voice, even from twenty-six hundred miles and change. "Stop gloating."

"Gloat? Me? Never. So how's the new place?"

He glanced around -- drab furniture, bare walls, stack of boxes -- and slumped into one of the dining room chairs, one arm slung over the back as he stared, unseeing, out the balcony doors. "Empty," he finally breathed.

This time she was the one to sigh, and he could hear the soft clink of the spoon in her teacup. "I was sitting at my desk today," she said, "and I was feeling awful -- I didn't sleep well -- and I thought, 'It's okay, I can just look over there at Vaughn and everything will be okay,' and I looked over at your desk, and there was one of the new recruits from Langley sitting there. I decided that I hate him."

Vaughn smiled, but it faded quickly. "Hey, don't blame the guy. It's not his fault he isn't me. Not everybody possesses my rugged good looks, you know?"

Her snort was decidedly un-ladylike, but it was very much Sydney. "'Rugged'? Maybe I should send you a dictionary as a housewarming present."

"Not rugged, huh? What would you call me, then?" The rain intensified against the roof and he squeezed his eyes shut, picturing her curled up on her couch, phone wedged between her ear and shoulder and a steaming cup of tea in her hands.

"Beautiful," she said. "Handsome. Wonderful. There are other adjectives to describe you, but I'd need a thesaurus to really hit them all."

He laughed, and used his free hand to attempt to rub the tension from the back of his neck. "I love you," he muttered to the phone, letting his voice carry down the line.

"I know," was her answer. "Tell me about the new job."

He stood, pacing into the kitchen. The house had come fully equipped by the Agency, complete with furniture, flatware, and electronic counter-measures, but it didn't extend to food. His cupboards were empty. "It's counter-terrorism stuff," he said. He searched the drawers for a phone book and found it in the last drawer he checked. "They've got me tracking incredibly far-fetched leads on arms dealers and mercenaries in eastern Europe."

"Sounds interesting."

"It's not. I haven't pushed so much paperwork since my first week out of the Farm. Tell your father if he's trying to break me, it's working."

"Hey, you can't put it all on my dad," she replied, with mock indignation. "I believe it was Kendall who had you reassigned. Something about 'placing personal agendas ahead of the Agency's interests'? I'm surprised it took them this long to discipline us, honestly."

"Oh yeah," he scoffed. "So says the woman who wasn't disciplined at all after our little trip to Russia. It sure pays to have parents in high places. You keep your assignment and I end up across the country. And I just know that your father requested the most boring assignment possible for me. There's no way Kendall's that cruel. No, this was the act of a man who knows very well that I'm sleeping with his daughter."

"Don't think I'm not being punished," she countered. "I think my dad just knows how to hit me where it counts. But it'll be fine." The assurance sounded like a reflex, and he wasn't sure she entirely believed herself. "You'll be back in LA before you know it. When you get back, we'll both take the day off. We'll spend the morning in bed, and the afternoon at the beach, and I'll take you out to dinner at that little Italian place in Old Town Pasadena that you like so much."

He closed his eyes again, palm down on the kitchen counter and let his arm take his weight, head dipping toward the floor. "You're killing me."

"Sorry." Her sigh was frustrated. "This is going to be harder than I made it out to be, isn't it?"

He let his eyes open and half-heartedly resumed his search in the phone book for restaurants that delivered. "'It's only six months,' she said. 'You'll be back before you know it,' she said. 'I'll be here when you get back,' she said. I'm on to your game, Bristow. You've got another man there with you right now, don't you?"

"Don't be silly. I told him not to come by until after ten."

He laughed, abandoning the phone book on the kitchen counter and toeing off his shoes, kicking them carelessly into the dining room. When he padded through toward the bedroom, his feet sank pleasantly into the thick carpet. "I was seriously thinking today that I ought to just quit the CIA and move back to LA. My new supervising agent is even worse than Kendall."

"We talked about that already," she said, and this time he could hear the frown in her voice. "You love this stuff. You can't quit the Agency. Not for me."

"Who said anything about you? I think it's obvious that the Kings are dying to get me on their ice."

She laughed, and he soaked up the sound as he loosened his tie. "So what are you doing right now?" she asked.

"Taking off my tie."

If the raising of an eyebrow could make a sound, he was fairly certain he could hear it across the phone line.

"Oh, really?"

"Mmm-hmm. What're you doing?" He inspected the closet and found a tie rack waiting for him. He resolved to find out who was responsible for stocking his new home and send them a thank-you note. Maybe a fruit basket.

"Thinking about you taking off your tie. What are you doing now?" Her voice was a little deeper than it had been. He was suddenly finding it a little more difficult to breathe.

"Unbuttoning my shirt. Feels like it's getting a little warmer in here."

"I was just thinking the same thing. Are you wearing the shoulder holster today?"

He clucked his tongue a little as he untucked his wrinkled dress shirt, and said, "Agent Bristow, I think you've done enough negotiation to know that you can't have everything without giving a little. What're you wearing?"

His line was, admittedly, a little more corny. She actually laughed at him, but she admitted, "My gray pajama bottoms, and that black tanktop I wear to bed."

"The really snug one?"

"Yeah. Holster?"

"No, sorry. Just the belt clip today. But I'll wear it tomorrow and think of you, if you'll wear the black underwear for me."

She laughed, and he bit his lip, trying to ride out the wave of wanting that was cutting off his oxygen supply. "Deal," she answered. "But for the moment, I'd rather you just continue what you were doing."

"What's that?"

"It sounded a lot like you were getting naked."

He smiled and shrugged his shirt off one shoulder, then switched the phone to his other hand so he could do the same on the other side. "Caught me," he said. "I wish you were here. I wish I was there. Whichever."

"I wish I was there, too. It seems like a real waste to have you stripping down and me not there to watch it."

His shirt hit the floor with a quiet rustle. "If you were here, I wouldn't be the only one losing clothing right now."

"That sounded a lot like a threat, Agent Vaughn."

"A promise," he assured her. "Hold on, you might appreciate this part." He moved the phone down to his waist, holding it close to his belt as he unbuckled it as noisily as possible with the other hand. When he brought the phone back to his ear, he could hear her breathing. "Liked that, huh?"

"You're a cruel man, Vaughn." There was a breathy quality to her voice that made him smile with satisfaction.

"But you love me anyway."

"Yeah. I do."

"Hold on a second," he told her, and he tossed the phone onto the bed just long enough to strip off his t-shirt. "Okay, I'm back."

"You were just taking off your undershirt, weren't you?"

"Yeah. We're going to be taking a lot of cold showers in the next six months, aren't we?"

"Yeah. I wonder if I can convince my dad to pull some strings to have them bring you back here."

"At this point, I wouldn't say no. This house is cold, and I'm talking about more than the temperature." He let out a grunt of frustration as he shucked off his pants and lay back on the bed. "God, I miss you. And I just saw you yesterday. How am I going to survive six months?"

"You're stronger than you let on," she said. "We'll make it. But you've had a long day... get some sleep, okay? I'll call you tomorrow. I love you."

He nodded wearily, as if she could see him, and answered, "Okay. I love you, too. More than I can possibly tell you." He hung up with a heavy sigh, got up only long enough to flick off all the lights in the house, and then shuffled his way back to bed and under the covers.

The next day, he returned home from work to find a FedEx box on his doorstep; it was heavy, and when he opened the box, a dictionary slid out. He smiled and flipped the book open to the R's, where he found a sticky note next to 'rugged' that said, 'See also: beautiful, handsome, wonderful.' The definitions for those words were marked with cryptic marks in pen, precise little dots. It took him a minute and a half to decode the message, which read, 'I miss waking up with you in the morning. I adore you. S.'

The phone was already in his hand when it rang, and he was still smiling when he answered.

the end... for now

So uh... feedback me. Dammit. I have several ideas for future installments, and basically all of them smuttier than this one. I'll probably have a new part ready before you know what hit ya. :)