Chapter Text
"I wanted...I tried, to leave you a message. To call reception and get them to contact you." Haley had, for the record, but those had been plans made before her life changed. Before her wrists had been seized and she was physically incapable of calling anyone but a lawyer she didn't have, terrified at what was going to happen to her.
"But you didn't."
"I didn't." That, at least, was fair for her to admit.
"I hung around for two days. Got a later flight, almost missed my cousin's wedding. No one believed that I'd acquired and lost a wife in the same amount of time it took everyone else to get blackout drunk and slip a few bills in a strippers thong." Even if his jaw hadn't been clenched, the muscle there working near overtime, the flint that shone in his eyes would tell the story for him. Nathan had been hurt. Still was, for ample reason that she felt more and more the longer those eyes bored into her.
(Haley too, ached, though she had forced the loss to grow numb over the years as a wound she'd only inflicted on herself.)
"I'm sorry about that."
He sighs, but it's deceptively light and whooshes into the glass. It's the first sip of his drink that Nathan has taken, and it seems to take an eternity for him to finish it. Restless, talented looking fingers leave fingerprints on the glass. For the sole purpose of keeping track of him, of not losing him again, Haley has the insane urge to somehow abscond with the squares crystal and lift it from the facets herself.
God, she'd been a spy for too long.
"Digging up the past isn't going to make either of us feel any better." Haley leans off the plush, expensive feeling furniture, smoothing her hands down her skirt. She moves closer to the door of the suite than not, somehow feeling more trapped than had ever been, including when Haley had escaped, by the skin of teeth, from a Russian prison. Now that was an experience she never wanted to relive. "What happened, happened. We can't go back." Lithe fingers tuck a curl of her dark hair behind her ear, her eyes deep and conflicted.
Clear, pure blue just stares at her, narrowing a bit. "But we can move forward?" The ornate clock, perched atop the cream painted fireplace, ticks loudly in the spaces between their sentences. "To where?"
Inwardly, Haley balks. She hadn't thought this far, of what moving forward might be. Of trying not to dwell on the past that dragged, heavier than a ton, between them, would be like. She hadn't wanted any of this. She was here for a mission. A mission, and a mission only .
Not to find her long lost husband.
Not to see the one person who she had terrifiedly knew even in the short time that Haley had known him could've changed everything for her.
Not relive her single greatest regret.
In a quick motion, Nathan downs the rest of his drink, not reacting to her lack of one to her question. He stalks forward, filled with intention so direct and powerful that twin balls of emotion sprout in Haley's stomach, fear and desire. It wasn't that she thought he could hurt her - she knew five ways to get him on the ground and his neck beneath her knee in the breath of time he was taking to get to her - but Haley was afraid of what he held. Of his peculiar gift of being a singular exception to all the walls and protocols she'd had slammed up for years.
Desperately, Haley tries to remember the mission. Tries to remember the sleazy board member, the lives at stake, of her partner who had no idea that to one, unexpectedly important man at the lodge her cover had been blown to high heaven in actual smithereens, and only dimly processes that she's retreating. When the hardy wood of the door, the tiny cold spot of the peephole hitting right between her shoulder blades, processes Haley jolts. And finds herself looking wide eyes at the, now devastatingly HQ, stylishly, carelessly scruffy jaw. The romantic hero slash of the bride of a nose, of that tiny mole right beneath those unforgettable eyes.
(The twenty one year old girl who still lived deep, deep within her wanted to press a kiss to the tiny dark spot on his marbled skin. The twenty eight year old spy murdered the wish immediately.)
There's an assured thump, fingers spread wide as Nathan leans on the door above her, the infuriatingly beautiful sweep of black butterfly eyelashes wiping her mind absolutely clean. "To where ...Haley James Scott."
Something inside her flames high and blinding at the words. No one knew her by that name - no one but him who had made it so, the other other human in the world that knew of her signature on that paper. Of the exchanging of rings she'd left behind and memories that haunted her mind even now, her body a cemetery, robbed of life from the one she'd fallen into and the lack of his hands and presence.
Haley hated his power over her.
Hated his effortless kryptonite ways, the women he could've been with in the years since she'd locked him down for life and left him just as soon afterwards. Hated that he had only grown handsomer, hated that she hadn't been able to see it, hated that this was supposed to be a mission, one in hundreds, and now she was here.
Hated that he was the one man Haley would never be able to have. Not for real, not forever. Not like she'd promised him.
That hatred, however deep, wasn't fathomless enough to stop her.
The breath that Haley lost Nathan gained, pulled into his own lungs as they strained toward each other for a kiss almost in unison, no first move, rather one they took together.
( He tastes true .)
Earthy, molten, talented. Haley didn't know if he'd gotten better, or if a dusty memory she’d clung to for this long simply didn’t compare to the real thing. She finds that she doesn’t care, more than happy to turn her knuckles white on Nathan’s emerald lapel, to throw one arm around his neck and kiss him like this wasn’t horribly inappropriate behavior on her part. Tried to kiss him like this wouldn’t be the last time, though it would, and tried to kiss him like she could stamp the impression and taste of him on her lips for eternity. His hands take up a place on her waist, the shape of them burning through the rigid structure, and strain to hold back. Nathan fails, epically, and his fingers dig in tight enough that Haley scrapes together what brain cells that aren’t drowning in him to concentrate on not letting him see her wince when he presses on an area that only she knows is a purpled bruise the size of a spill of coins.
Nathan is too good.
(Haley is being very bad.)
Consequences fly out of her mind, released from her overactive, top achieving spy level mind by the key of his lips on hers, and for the first time in what feels like forever Haley is completely present in the moment. With him, and in this. He kisses her into the door so hard that the side of her hair pin is pressed uncomfortably in her dark chocolate bun, that the rise and fall of her chest, struggles to gain a sensible rhythm and loses the battle along with his, broad and strong against hers. Haley mimes a biting at his mouth, teeth snapping closed on air, a scant whisper from his lips, and something more akin to a growl than anything else rumbles from under that expensive suit and spills into her mouth with a renewed hunger in his kiss.
(She couldn’t tell you how long that moment was suspended between them, the falling snow outside and the tiny circle of orange from his bedside lamp. They seem stuck in one place, unable to know how far is allowed and how far is safe, and Haley desperately tries to gather up every part of it for a memory to keep her warm when she eventually had to cool after his heat.)
It isn’t until Nathan’s hands travel slightly downward, probably aiming for her ass, but in reality too close to where the butt of her gun might get caught in his hand, that awareness jolts through her atoms once again. Knowledge of where she is, of her mission, of what she should absolutely not be doing sends a freeze through every vein of hers that Nathan had set aflame and Haley balls her hands up on his chest and pushes him near violently away.
He goes, if with a stumble and after a moment of hesitancy and removability that flits so brief Haley, hours later, will think she dreamed it. Both look as if they have run marathons - her lips kissed thoroughly and raw to the rush of her tongue against it, he with a light stain left on his mouth from her lipstick. Nathan presses the back of his hand to his mouth, and when it comes away the shape of her lips is a sensual ghost on his skin.
“I can’t do this. Not - not right now.” Haley shakes her head, draws her hands hurriedly down her neck to try and calm down her body and the long slumbering things Nathan’s touch had awakened in her. “But maybe…” Her mind works fast, scolding her for the risk she’d taken in its complete shut down at his lips on hers. “We can meet for breakfast.”
A scoff, or something ugly like it, tumbles from that mouth right afterwards. “And will you leave me a note this time? Or are you just going to vanish like last time?” Something in Nathan’s eyes flashes, warring with the arousal that still lingers, a simmering anger Haley at once didn’t know how she felt about. It was as if all that had built between them on that disgustingly innocent looking and now stained with them had to find a place to go after Haley had stopped them, morphing into something Nathan didn’t seem to be happy about revealing but was equally unable to stop.
“Nathan.”
Everything stops. Pauses a little. Haley had said his name for the first time, odd and hurting on her tongue but still tasty, just like the man who held it. She knows it, and so does he, from the slight change. She can’t say where that change comes from, but she sees it. The words ‘ I promise ’ tremble somewhere between her throat and her lips, but they won’t come.
They feel wrong, considering that the last time she’d said them Haley clearly hadn’t held up her end of the bargain.
To have and to hold, always and forever.
Not Haley’s first lie. Hadn’t been her last, either, but it had been her worst.
(It was the only one she’d wanted to be the truth.)
“I’ll leave a note. This time, I will.” Haley darts forward, quicker than could be expected on her spindly heels over the thick carpet, but presses the unsaid words into his mouth instead. She’s gone before he can grasp a hold of her, pulling open the door. The moment develops like a still image in her mind - him, bright eyed and looking almost as if punched in the gut, holding his opposite hand gingerly where a near imperceptible golden glow tried to make itself known under his shirtsleeve, betrayal and a whisper of hope speaking from every one of the many inches he was made up of - and then the door snicks behind her.
She hurries back down the hallway, jabs the elevator button with a finger that Haley will refuse to admit is shaking, and lets out a noise of relief when fortune favors her for once that night and the doors ding open. Feeling almost as if she was holding her breath, the dark haired woman lacks the courage to turn around until the doors are closed, grabbing for the elevator rail and trying to get air back into her lungs. Haley sags a little, feeling as if every nerve she had been so overloaded they’d fizzled out and left her grey.
Haley presses the little gold section of her bracelet with her fingertip so hard that her skin turns white from the pressure, a small click leaping into existence three too long heartbeats later. There’s something that sounds unpleasantly like rustling sheets, before Clay’s voice sounds in her ear, not a little pissed hiding under a humor born of her never telling him what she was about to. “ What, was there a problem with room service? ”
Nearly too late, she realizes that she hasn’t pressed the button to her own floor. Haley does so, and then struggles out the words. “My covers have been blown. I need to be extracted. As soon as possible. You’re gonna have to handle this one on your own.”
“ Haley, do you need backup? ” Clay had switched to serious so fast that it was always a shock to hear it, scary calm and silver plated.
“No. No, I’m okay, but I need to be out of here in an hour. Two tops.”
“ Okay. Get packed, I’ll meet you .”
“See you soon.”
He falls silent, but Haley knows that Clay left the link open in case she should need him sooner rather than later. It's that relief, of her partner at work having her back unconditionally, that she uses to keep her legs moving and her back ramrod straight.
As she packs and the
always
sears into her spine, a living tattoo frustrated and alone, Haley tries desperately to convince herself that she’s doing the right thing.