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Fish In the Sea
by Nicola
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: #3.01, 'The Two'
In the end, it was she who kissed him — although she could tell he had been psyching up to. Slowly. He was even worse than Vaughn in that respect: she could have been waiting a long time.
And she was sick of waiting.
Sydney liked first kisses. The sex part complicated everything; it was wound up in raw need and slippery slopes into Something Else. But first kisses were still sugared in her mind with the sweet lust of adolescence: all butterflies and giddy rushes.
Vaughn had been sinewy and supple in her arms; matching and anticipating her actions with effortless finesse. Hard to hold on to. Weiss was more solid: a soft wall for her to lean into.
She had missed this kind of contact: the simple comfort of warm breath and soft lips. The touch of a man who couldn't break her. When she had first "returned," the two years of her absence had felt like a blip; a misalignment in her chest. As the time had passed, it had developed into a hard, round pebble of wanting and missing.
When their lips parted and the butterflies dissipated, the pebble in her heart hardened a little. She reached for her glass, and attempted a lop-sided smile over its tequila glow.
"Not such a smart idea, huh?" he said hoarsely, returning her smile.
". . . No."
"You were thinking about him?"
" . . . A little. Were you?"
Eric's expression, dimmed by the half-darkness of her living room, registered only a perfunctory amount of surprise. The words on his lips turned into laughter, and he reached for the bottle.
"You've kissed him before," she continued amiably. For someone so well drilled in compartmentalizing state secrets past the loosening tongue of a drunken floozy, Sydney's inhibitions were still easily lost.
"He's my best friend," Weiss tried, before halting himself with a very Michael-like furrow of his brow. "I love him . . . like a brother."
"And sometimes more," she prompted, suddenly wistful.
"Yes."
She kissed him again, lightly, before breaking their contact.
"So who wins? The forgotten ex-girlfriend, or the forsaken best friend?"
"Lauren Reed wins," he murmured, pulling her back towards him with sudden intensity.
Second kisses weren't so bad either. She wondered where their slippery slope might lead.
October 2003
Muse music: 'Automatic Stop' by The Strokes
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