the world is on fire

She's still smiling when she drifts awake.  Every inch of her body feels like she ran a marathon.  She's thirsty and achy and absolutely sated.  The morning sun filters through the curtains and she turns her head just enough to watch him sleeping.

There must be a giant space comet hurtling right for them, or the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.  Either way, she doesn't care.  She could stay like this forever, she thinks.  It's ridiculous how happy she is right now. 

Absolutely ridiculous.

Fiona convinced him to come back to the island for the jacuzzi if nothing else.  Mostly she just wanted to get out of that stuffy little room where they kept stepping on each other all day.

She hasn't slept well since he got injured.  She's beginning to realise just how much she relies on him to wear her out so she can sleep.  She goes running before dawn, and stops to watch the sun come up, sitting on the few feet of dunes looking out over eastern approach to the island. 

Her thoughts run to all ends of the world and back again.  Trying not to think about his younger self and his bride (You can't hurt my son.) (He was taken...  we found his body the next day).  Trying not to think about Ramon.  The heroin use still haunts her.  And his casual admission the other day in the kitchen had cut a little deeper than she'd thought at first. Not 'I miss touching you.'  No, just 'I miss sex.'  Like anybody in the world would do.  (How can you love two people at once?) And trying not think about Michael and how even when she reaches out to him, they fight. (He'll kill you, Fi.) 

If only it was so simple.

She thinks she should go back in soon.  He'll be missing her.  In just another few minutes.  The sunrise is really breath taking.

[ after this ]

He sleeps for a couple of hours and when he wakes up, his mental inventory tells him that a) the painkillers that doctor gave him must be still doing their job and b) the injury doesn't feel so...tight. A glance at it confirms the feeling, the swelling has gone down considerably.

'What happened?' he mumbles, a little disorientated.

She's dozing beside him, awake in an instant when she feels him shift.

"Healer.  No need for surgeon, now.  How's it feel?"

[ cont'd from here ]

She lets herself back into the bar, one last long look over her shoulder.   The ache in her chest is a cold lead weight.  Lack of sleep and the adrenaline crash make every joint in her body complain. 

For a moment, she considers going back to Miami.  But Michael is still fixated on Carla and has no time to deal with her little bit of self-inflicted hell.

She can't go back to the Victoria Cays yet.  She can't face him, not after having made such a scene.  (Pathetic display of emotion, Fiona.  What kind of operative are you?)  She just wants a shower and a little bit of sleep.  She said far too much to his younger self, and she's certain she's going to catch hell for it.

It doesn't matter.  They had a good time, and ultimately, nothing has changed.  He knows about Random.  He knows he has his whole life ahead of him.

She's just a blip on the radar.

By the time she gets to her room, she feels like hammered shit.  She loops the chain around her knuckles a few time, remembering how close he held her at the end.   She's made it this far on her knees.  What's a little farther?

The house in the Bahamas is still lacking in a few things, so she'd come back to make a pick up.  She's ticking off a list in her head when she sees him in the hallway, wandering like he's looking for something.  His knuckles are bloody, his eye half swollen shut, and he has one hand curled around his mid section, holding broken ribs no doubt.  He's got a bottle of tequila in one hand, but it's still mostly full. 

She can't just let it be.  She can never just let it be.

She stops in the middle of the hall, weight cocked on one hip, her honey dark voice a playful drawl.

"Hey gorgeous."

The bike alone had been enough incentive for her to find him something unique for his birthday, but it was the diamonds and rubies that had set the bar impossibly high.

No matter.   Just meant she had to get creative. 

The idea hit her when she was laying on the beach in the Caribbean inlet.  Barry did a little research for her, found a mark with a suitable piece of property.  The rest was all research and a little bit of practice at the poker table. 

Anthony De La Vina, big time real estate trader, small time gambler, owned a sweet little piece of property in the Bahamas.  Victoria Point Cays were two islands, totalling eight acres of paradise, with a private dock, and gorgeous little villa.  She got herself invited over for a party one weekend, just so she could give the place the hard once over.  It was exactly what she was looking for.

Well, okay, she did have to make some phone calls, and pressure Señor De La Vina's bookies into calling his markers, and making the man's life a living hell for a few weeks, but y'know, she enjoys her work.  When she had him desperate enough for cash, that's when she moved in for the kill.

Enrique planted the seed with a carefully dropped rumour, telling De La Vina all about the dashing European heiress known for losing millions at the card tables in Monaco, and how she was coming to Nassau for the weekend.   If he could only get into the high stakes game she was setting up, then he could get his life back.

She used the forged letters of credit to get a line with the house, and for the first hour or so, she lost most of it, knowing there was no way in hell he was going to walk away from the table.  She hadn't expected his best friend to join them, and the man seemed a lot more grounded than the mark. There was a tense moment when De La Vina's looked like he was going to listen to the man's advice, but the problem solved itself when he followed her to the loo.

Really, he'd get over it.  He'd walk with a limp for the rest of his life, but he'd get over it.

So she'd managed to stage a stunning comeback and win all her money back, and then all of his stake as well.  De La Vina was to the point of grovelling, and she thought about letting him off the hook -- for about half a second.    She asked if he had anything else to wager.  Something unique.  Something that no one else had.

Well, of course he did.  He had the Victoria Point Cays. 

The rest was history really.  She made him sign the deed over before the last card was turned, and one might think it was fitting that the Queen of Diamonds did him in.

Pesky details managed, she signed the deed over to a holding company in the name of Ramon Salazar.

The second part of the present was even harder to attain.  She had to beg and cajole and plead and whine and generally be a royal pain in the ass until Bar agreed, with some stiff stipulations attached.

The Key would only open a door to the main house on the island, and if he ever set foot on the mainland through that Door, both Key and Door would stop working.  Forever.  The Bar would never let him through again, and he'd be stranded in her world.  She had no illusions that Bar wasn't kidding.    It didn't mean he couldn't visit the mainland through her Door, so long as she opened it for him.

She printed out the pictures she'd taken, and had it all put together in a nice little portfolio with the Deed. 

She spent good long time just staring at it, wondering if he'd like it.  And wondering what Michael would say.

Ramon~

I don't normally sit down to write letters, but I had some things I just wanted to get down.  I know I'm not good at expressing myself in person.   My emotions get all tangled up and the words just don't come out right.

I'm confused.  I don't understand what you want from me.

In the beginning, I thought you just wanted a good time.  A party girl.  It's why I said no for a long time.  I don't do party girl outside of assignments.  But the very first time we talked, you asked me how you could get me to trust you.  I told you, either it happened or it didn't.  I didn't trust you.  I have a hard time trusting anyone.  You of all people should understand that.

For the longest time, I thought the only reason you respected me was because you were afraid of what I'd do if you didn't.  (I think I threatened you with grievous bodily harm if you so much as looked at me wrong, but I do that to all the guys who think I'm just another pretty face.)

But then we went out.  And you kissed me in the median of the freeway.  You didn't grope, you didn't take advantage the first time you got me alone (I half expected you to), you didn't do anything but treat me like a lady.  You didn't assume I was arm candy.  You looked me in the eye and you talked to me, not to my tits.  And that kiss...

You scared the hell out of me.  Because I wanted you.  I wanted more of that attention, more of that -- fuck.  More of you.

From the beginning, the things coming out of your mouth and the things you were doing with your hands were in two different languages.  You'd talk about  sex, like it was just a mechanical thing.  'Ride it, suck it, put it in.'  Like that bit of flesh wasn't attached to the rest of you.  But it felt like the first lie, because when you touched me, when you kissed me....

See, I can't even put it into words.  I just don't know how.  I've had plenty of men.  After Michael left, the first time, I went through a string of them, trying them all out for size.  And you just --

Just the way you look at me messes me up more than anything.  It's hard to think straight when I think about that look.

That day when I took you to the warehouse.  I just needed cheering up.   Do you remember that day?  I do.  I remember being wrapped around you, I remember having you deep inside me.  I remember you holding me while I shook.  I remember you making love to me in that cramped little bed.  You got under my skin that day.  In ways I never thought possible.  Every time you touched me that day, it felt like love in your hands.

And every time since then. 

And in the stables, where you told me you thought I couldn't love you because of how I felt about Michael, I thought my heart couldn't hurt anymore.  I'd already dared to let myself believe and you -- I know, you're probably not even reading this anymore. 

Just let me tell you this one thing:  I have never felt more loved in my life than I did that moment in the stables when you put your arms around me and kissed me.  

I love you.  I don't care if you don't say it back.  I feel it when you touch me.  I see it in your eyes.

I know how you feel about me.

Words don't really matter.

Sleep and Fiona had a longstanding tenuous relationship. Usually she was lucky to get six hours, and a late afternoon catnap. She'd slept better in the last few months than she had in the last decade, and she knew the reason why.

She comes awake slowly, easing up through the layers of sleep like a swimmer rising to the surface of a still, serene lake. She becomes aware of his scent first, breathing him in. Musk, with hints of tobacco and whiskey. His hand rests in the small of her back, and even in his sleep, he's kept her close. She's moulded to his side, her head resting on his shoulder, her arm around his waist, her knee draped over his thigh.

She takes a long slow breath, contracting gently around him, as if she's afraid he might get away.

Fiona bought charcoal, steaks, beer, and the stuff to make mojitos. She showered and picked out her favourite sunflower yellow sundress.

Of course, she had to jury rig a barbecue, using one of her neighbor's huge terracotta flower pots. (The evidence of said crime was at the bottom of the crevasse beneath the bridge.). And of course the wind is blowing just the wrong way so the smoke is filling up the house, but her solution is to open another window, get a crossbreeze going. There's some down low and dirty blues blasting from the living room.

She's standing over the makeshift grill (oven rack balanced precariously on top of the pot of flaming coals, steaks sizzling, and the bone dry balcony cowering and saying prayers that a stray ember doesn't send up the whole flat), sipping a beer, hair up off her neck, poking at the meat with a wicked looking knife.

Welcome back, Ramon.

He pulls back to give her room to open the door but you can bet everything you have that his hands are on her ass the second she turns to put the key in the lock.

'Hurry up.'

He doesn't have to tell her twice.  She doesn't even close the door behind them, just pulls him through.  She's a whirlwind in his arms.  Her hands go around his neck and next thing he knows, her legs are wrapped around his waist as she kisses him, fierce and tender all in the same breath.