(To be clear, the thing that was causing all the confusion was not the prospect of having sex with a beautiful model, but the procedure for completing the assignment. Michael was no James Bond, in more ways than one. That was fact. And sure, the mission was dead simple, but that was why you messed up sometimes, wasn't it? The simplicity deceived you, and because you weren't careful—since you didn't think you needed to be—you ended up faltering at one point or another. Michael wouldn't let that happen to him. He was so close...)

Beavoduer approached the bed slowly, which Michael found odd, only because she was so pumped and ready to go a long time ago. Had her eagerness subsided? Or had she fallen to Michael's romantic charm? Either way, her leisurely stroll to the bed gave Michael the chance to feel around his pockets for the sleeping agent. As she drew closer, he pulled it out and injected her with it (the sleeping agent, that is). She fell gracefully onto the side of the bed, and Michael pushed her toward the center, so she wouldn't fall off. Needless to say, he felt weird doing it. It wasn't every day you'd have to position a naked and unconscious female on a bed, moving her legs and arms this way and that. He shifted her into what he figured was a comfortable sleeping posture. Then he hacked onto her computer and retrieved the codes, just as he was supposed to. There. It was done. Mission accomplished.

As he was leaving he felt a twinge of guilt about abandoning her like this. All naked and unconscious. Then he remembered what the guys at op-tech had said: the sleeping agent would induce sleep as well as memory loss. That made him feel better—she wouldn't remember him or the club or the back room or the condom shopping. Sure, she would probably wonder why she was naked. But then again, Michael thought, it wasn't too improbable that she was the type to fall asleep like so. He grabbed the box of condoms off the night stand—to make sure he didn't leave any evidence that would jog her memory—and made his way to the plane.

* * * * * *                  

"What took you so long?" Sydney snapped at Vaughn as he boarded the plane.

She hadn't meant to be so bitchy, but Nysmith had depleted her patience supply, including the reserves, and she had been waiting on this damn plane for too damn long.

"Sorry. It took longer than I expected. There were a few detours."

He handed her the disk, and she popped it into her laptop. They were in the back of a cargo plane, so he took a seat on the floor across from her crate, which she used to create a chair out of the only elevated surface.

* * * * * *                              

He wanted to say something to her—she was just sitting there, minding her laptop—but he didn't know what to say. They were on a mission, and small talk wouldn't be entirely appropriate, mostly because she seemed to be so focused on her computer. He had to bring up a related topic. But he couldn't ask her how her mission went; they had been in the air for thirty minutes, and bringing up that topic now would be like going up to someone on a Thursday and asking them how their weekend was.

"So did we get anything?" he asked. She looked up at him. "The disks. Did we get any intel?"

"I don't know. I'm still working on the decryption." She offered a smile, and returned to her computer.

* * * * * *

Sydney didn't know why she was ignoring him. She was still hung over from this mood that Nysmith had put her in, and as a result she was done—absolutely finished—with being patient. So why was she pretending to work on her laptop? Why was she not doing anything? All Vaughn was doing was looking around, taking in the view of the cargo plane, which was nothing but a panorama of black.

STEP THREE: THE JUST-FUCKING-DO-IT STAGE.

She slammed her laptop shut, threw it to the side, and looked directly at Vaughn.

* * * * * *

Sydney had closed her laptop and was looking directly at him. Her eyes upon his eyes. Was he missing something? Or was he misinterpreting this? Perhaps what he saw as a sexy look of seduction was actually a very intense celebratory eye dance that she was doing because she had just retrieved the intel. That had to be it, because Sydney had never made anything even slightly resembling a move this whole time. Why would this be any different? Michael was about to congratulate her on her computing wizardry when she unexpectedly stood up. She moved closer, and kneeled down, her face oh-so-close to his. And then she kissed him.

* * * * * *

It had gotten physical fairly quickly, meaning they were horizontal and rolling around in no time. Michael knew where this was leading, and how fast they would get there. So he knew what he had to do right now; he just wasn't sure if he should do it.

The condoms were there, in his back pocket, and he wanted pull them out. But he didn't want Sydney to get the wrong idea and think that he came prepared—or worse, think that he had brought them for Beavoduer. There was no way around it, except for the truth, and the truth sounded like more of a lie than any lie he could think of.

Maybe he could slip it on without her noticing. Oh, but that would be ridiculous—as if Sydney wasn't a spy, as if she wasn't capable of noticing things. The other option would be to not use one, just this one time. But he couldn't do that; he had to be safe—and not because he believed Sydney was carrying any diseases. It was just that he didn't know about her preferred method of birth control (pills?), which was normal enough, because when had they ever needed to discuss something like that? Never. Except now. But now was not the best time to talk; now was the best time to just do it.

"What's this?" Sydney asked, referring to the bulge of his back pocket, the area of his ass that she was groping.

"Oh. That's..."

She yanked the box from his pocket.

"That was from... um... Beavoduer got..."

She put a finger to his mouth, the universal signal to shut up. She pulled out a condom. And Sydney, ever the multi-tasking expert, began unwrapping it while working on his zipper.

She wasted no time (which was understandable, because there was no time to waste), and before Michael knew it, they were using the back of the cargo jet much in the same manner LL Cool J used the back seat of his jeep.

They were doing it on the floor, with a single beam of light overhead. He knew what this looked like—the stage adaptation of Sydney's Wild Ride—but he didn't care. All he knew was that this was not something to be included in the debrief.