Puzzles

[wensurprised]

Title: Puzzles
Author: wensurprised
Fandom: Alias
Pairing: Jack/Irena
Written for: melanie_anne
Prompt: Melting Ice, a Bowler Hat
Rating: PG-13ish. Suggestive but not explicit
Spoilers: S2, half set inside The Getaway
Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be.
Author's Notes: If it sounds a little more Sorkin than JJ, my apologies, I've watched S60 far more recently than Alias. Thanks to Prairie for the beta and to her boy for confirming that whiskey is drunk with ice.
Distribution: Bubblefic archive, of course; everyone else, just ask.

“I’d missed this.”
Jack looks up, caught off guard by her comment. The room has been silent for near quarter of an hour, the silence awkward but less uncomfortable than the boarder-line hostile shop talk. The silence is also safer; Jack finds himself hearing Laura in Irena’s voice more often than he’d like.
They’re nowhere: the shoals of files on Briault having revealed nothing incriminating. Jack has been contemplating calling a break.
“Which: The barely civil debates or the frustrating paper shuffling?” He finally asks. She meets his eyes and smiles unexpectedly before answering.
“Both actually. I meant the work, it’s been a while since I had a puzzle to solve, but the arguments bring back memories…”
The room tenses and the moment stretches out beyond comfort. Jack feels his breath go shallow. Irena tucks a curl behind her ear and he could swear her fingers shake. They stare at each other. After a small lifetime, Irena drops her eyes to the desk and starts sifting through the papers again. Jack closes his eyes and swears silently to himself. When he opens them again she is adding a note card to the kaleidoscope already decorating the table top, shifting apart the older cards to accommodate the new-comer.

She slides cards around one another, trying different configurations, placing a card first near this one and then near that.

“I thought you organized those last night.” Jack pressed a kiss into Laura’s hair as he reached over her shoulder to place a mug of coffee in an empty spot in the chaos. She reached for it without looking.
“Reorganizing. Different theme.” Her answer was distracted. “Organizing them lets me see the patterns.” Jack had started to move away when her hand caught his sleeve. “Hang on for a moment, there’s a thing…”
He grinned and skirted the corners of the counter, sipping his own coffee, before taking a seat on a stool opposite her. He liked watching her work, and until she’d finished this sorting her attention was going to be fastened to the cards. Laura was rarely single-minded: she was a natural multi-tasker capable of following a roomful of conversations while serving dinner and keeping track of how many drinks he’d had at the same time. But when she did pull all of her focus into a single task the result was dazzling. Jack suspected he’d fallen in love with her in the library, watching her do research. Classical music filtered in from the living room - something Russian. Laura liked the ballets. Jack reached for the morning paper, careful not to disturb the stacks of files surrounding the cards. It might look like a mess but Jack knew - from having made mistakes in the past - that the constellations of material were usually carefully placed and that mixing or moving them was a good way to earn a dressing down. He flipped to the international news and settled in to wait.
He looked up when he reached the end of the page and found her, cards stacked neatly by her elbow and coffee cup cradled in both hands, gazing at him. She smiled.
“What is it?” he nodded at the notes and cards.
“18th century French poets. Paper. Nothing important. Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
They smiled at each other. He’d been spending nights at her apartment for almost a month, long enough to have developed a morning routine. Their routine revolved around the Times crossword.
“Your turn to start,” Jack handed the paper across the counter and stood to reach the cereal kept above the stove. Laura turned to the right page, folded the paper back around the puzzle and produced a pen. She filled in the first few words, starting at the top of the clues list, before setting the pen down to pull a pair of bowls out of the cupboard below the counter and a pair of spoons from the cutlery drawer. Jack set the cardboard box on the counter and filled in the next few words. Laura tugged the pen out of his hand as she set the bowls down and filled in the center of the puzzle letting him retrieve the milk from the fridge.
“Toast?” she asked as she handed off the pen.
“mm…” he nodded and filled in the bottom left corner. He set the pen down to get bread plates and the honey.
“You said there was a thing?”
“mm…” she nodded, filling in the top right still holding the bread. He took the slices out of her hand and dropped them into the toaster. He looked over her shoulder, pointed at a space and said “ ‘oust’. ” She filled it in and handed him the pen. She poured cereal into a bowl as she circled back to the outside of the counter and perched on her stool again.
“We’ve been invited to a party.”
He looked up at her, question on his eyebrows, and handed her the pen so that he could pour his own breakfast. She filled in an island of white as she answered.
“Well, I’ve been invited. And I’m inviting you as my date.”
He quirked a smile at her and took the pen out of her hand, barely letting her cross the final T in ‘riot’.
“When?”
“Friday.”
“Who?”
“My boss.” She tried to take the pen and he pulled it out of her reach. “Hey!” He grinned and filled in another word before handing it over.
“Finish it. Your boss the crazy woman?”
“Yes.” She paused to fill the last letters in and look over the puzzle to be sure they’d covered it. “They think Oman is spelt with an ‘h’.” She shook her head and handed it to him. “Yes. The crazy woman… it’s going to be one of those dinner parties. You know. The mystery dinner parties.” She trailed off and didn’t look up.
“Mystery dinner parties?”
“Yes. The mystery dinner parties. Everyone has a character and a murder has happened. Or a theft. And you have to solve it during the course of the meal.” She concentrated on her spoon.
“Laura?”
“Yes.”
“Am I going to have to dress up for this dinner party?”
She chewed and swallowed before looking up. “Yes.”
“Laura…” there was a note of warning in his tone.
“Jack...” she matched her tone to his, with a side of sarcasm, and then put her spoon down and rested both elbows on the counter. She didn’t try to sugar coat it. She never did. “It’s set in the jazz years. 1920’s. If you come you’ll be my fiancée, Robert. A business man. Respectable. Southern: from Texas, like me.”
“Southern like you?” Jack questioned.
“I will be a girl named Chloe. Society gal, debutant, rich family. Shallow as a saucer.”
Jack looked at her, head tilted to one side. Laura didn’t ask for things, didn’t make requests. She knew it wasn’t his thing and she wasn’t going to ask him to do it for her. That she’d even invited him was noteworthy. And, to be honest, although he wasn’t the type to dress up for Halloween, let alone a party on any other night of the year, he thought it might be worth it to see his beautiful Russian book-worm attempt to play a socialite from Texas.
He smiled.
“You said Friday?”
Her grin had an edge of triumph in it that he wasn’t entirely sure he understood.
“Friday. 7.”
“Well, I’ll have to see about finding a pin stripped suit, then.”

He stood and asked “Can I get you more coffee?”

Irena looks up from her cards. “I’ll take water.”
Jack nods, picking up his own mug and moving to the door of the cell, hitting the call button to be let out. At the door he turns. “Ice? Something to eat?”
Irena looks up again, surprise registering on her face. “That would be nice, thank you.”
He nods again and walks out in strides longer than necessary, putting distance between himself and the intimacy of the room. He’s not sure, still, why he asked her for help. It’s true, what she’d said. The CIA has floors of people with expertise in this kind of analysis. But they’re strangers. He’d solved puzzles with Laura for years, and - for all that he wants them to be separate people - Irena is Laura and Laura is Irena, and - whether he likes it or not - his comfort with Laura, his ease in working with Laura, it translates.
And he, like her, has missed it. He’s missed the puzzles. He’s missed the companionship.
He shakes his head as he turns a corner, squares his shoulders against the memories and the past-tense. The woman he’d been married to had been a lie. She’d been a mask. Remembering her is unavoidable, remembering his time with her is expected. But thinking that he’ll find anything in Irena to replace her is wishful thinking and weak. He asked her because she is brilliant. Because she knows the players and the moves better than anyone, having been part of the game up until she inexplicably turned herself in. He asked her because she’s the best for the job. That’s all.

He reaches up to straighten his tie, fingers brushing the silk.

Laura’s face appeared over his shoulder in the mirror, reaching around him to bat his fingers away and neaten the knot.
“I like this tie.”
“Laura, you bought this tie.”
“And it looks perfect with this suit…”
“…Which you picked out for me.”
“I have excellent taste in men’s clothing.”
Jack laughed and captured her hands where they were brushing down the shoulders of the suit in question. Ducking under an arm he turned to face her, still holding both hands. He ran an appreciative glance up her body from the kitten heels, past the knee length hem of the cocktail dress, to rest on her upswept hair.
“And I have excellent taste in women. You look lovely.” She smiled and ducked her head. After a moment, she tugged a hand free and tried to tuck a curl back, momentarily forgetting that it was all pinned up.
“Thank you for coming with me, Jack. I know that the dressing up isn’t quite your thing.”
“Hush.” He pulled her into a hug and shushed into her hair. “I have no objections to dressing in such a classic style. In fact…” He let her go and paced across to the closet. After a moment of rustling in the top shelf he turned with his hands held behind his back. She was already smiling, anticipating a joke.
“And what exactly have you found hidden away in the back of the closet?”
With comic gravity Jack produced a bowler hat in his left hand and executed a neat flourish as he donned it, running his fingers along the brim and looking up at her from under lowered brows. Continuing with a professional magician’s sense of timing, he stepped to the left and displayed his right hand, empty, fingers spread wide. Finally he clapped both hands together and then cracked them apart, as if opening an imaginary book, to display a monocle and watch fob lying in his cupped palms, tarnished gold chains clinking softly. Laura laughed aloud.
“Where on earth…” She didn’t finish the question - saving Jack the trouble of lying about his trip to the wardrobe room at Credit Dauphin - , instead shaking her head and murmuring “trust you,” as she plucked the jewelry from his fingers and fastened them into the button holes and pockets of his waistcoat. Finishing the job and placing a hand on his chest she grinned up at him. “Come on, David Copperfield, we’re going to be late.”
She turned and gathered up her coat and purse from the bed. Jack followed her out into the front hall, switching off the light as they left the room. At the front door he rested a hand on her shoulder and stopped her.
“Ah-ah. Ladies do not open doors for themselves.” He stepped in front of her and reached for the door knob with a mocking half-bow. The sound of Laura’s laugh echoed through the apartment.

The door swung open quietly under Jack’s touch.

Irena looks up as Jack enters and sets a bottle of water and a glass full of ice by her elbow. Mindful of her stacks and piles, he carefully places a tray of cafeteria-produced snacks in the center of the table and selects a pastry to munch on before taking his seat. He looks up. She is still watching him.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“The CIA cafeteria makes cinnamon-raisin cookies?”
Jack looks at the tray, the items on which he hadn’t so much chosen as grabbed.
“Apparently.”
Irena tilts her head in a vague quizzical motion, as if trying to decide if the answer is terse or merely brusque. Jack purses his lips into something that might have been a smile or might have been a grimace. She comes to a decision or finds what she’s looking for or simply stops being interested and turns to crack the seal on her water and pour it into the glass.
“I haven’t drunk out of anything but plastic in months.” she murmurs.
Jack is startled.
“Keeping glass off the meal trays is a suicide watch precaution.”
She shrugs.
“They don’t know why I’m here. I suspect they’re keeping to the most restrictive procedures they have on file. Just in case.” The short laugh that follows is a mockery of the CIA and their rule-book ways. In spite of himself, Jack is offended on the agency’s behalf.
“No one knows why you’re here.” There is a steely pause. Jack isn’t sure that she’ll reply. A few more seconds tick past and then Irena sets her glass down and leans forward on her elbows. Jack is momentarily distracted by the stark lines of her collarbones.
“I was reminded that I have a family. I’m here because I could be.” She meets his eyes levelly as she says it, and for all of his years with her, Jack still can’t decide whether he’s being told the truth, part of the truth, or a fantastic piece of fiction. He’s tempted to turn it into a fight. To tell her that she lost her family a long time ago, that she never had one to begin with. He’s tempted to throw her abandonment in her face. He thinks about finally bringing up every suspicion he has about her true reasons for subjecting herself to a 10 by 15 foot cell in the suspected terrorist wing of an agency she not only hates but looks down on.
He couldn’t say why he chooses not to.
But he could definitely tell you that it’s not because at that moment she looks just like Laura.
Jack, instead, flips open a file and deliberately lets the silence wash over the room. A moment later Irena does the same.
Half an hour passes before Irena clears her throat. Jack looks up.
“Briault, he lived and worked in Paris?” Jack nods.
“But he was working for an international crime syndicate. He had to have been traveling. Why don’t we have any records of him traveling?” Jack blinks. He hadn’t noticed the absence.
“I don’t know. Perhaps… I only asked for records specifically on Briault. The company may have habitually had him travel under an alias?”
“Possible. Although they should still be in his files.” Jack manages not to take the slur against the CIA records personally this time.
“I’ll call upstairs and find out.” Jack stands again, walks to the door and pushes the call button.

The discordant buzz filters to their ears through the walls.

The doorbell was answered by Laura’s boss who was wearing, draped around her neck, a big-bird yellow feather boa. It took every ounce of sobriety earned from his years as a spy for Jack to keep his countenance. Pleasantries were exchanged and Laura gave the woman the flowers they’d brought. They were led into the house which was decorated in a surprisingly tasteful style, given that the woman they were following presumably had designed it. The dining room and living area were open to one another and, seated or standing in groups about the rooms, dressed in costumes of varying degrees of elaborate, people mixed and mingled to the accompaniment of the strains of low jazz.
Their hostess explained that although the game hadn’t technically begun yet, since they were still waiting on one or two more guests, everyone was already in character. The doorbell rang again and the woman glided away in her cloud of faux sunshine.
“Your boss is crazy.”
“I’m aware.”
They smiled at each other. A pair of guests, decked out in glittering finery approached them and introduced themselves as Mr. and Mrs. Jordach, financiers, don’t you know, out of New York, just in town for the festivities, you understand, and didn’t they think the party was shaping up to be simply smashing? Jack found himself struggling to hide a smile again. And then his mirth merged into jaw-dropped awe as Laura followed their introduction with her own. She’d shifted. She’d been Laura a second ago, and then, in a heartbeat of a moment that would haunt Jack for years, and come back to plague him a decade later, she wasn’t. She was the affected, shallow debutante Chloe that had been described on the invitation, carefree and careless. Voice, attitude, posture. The change was complete. Laura had disappeared and Jack had to stop himself from offering a hand to introduce himself to her.
The Jordaches were headed for the bar. Chloe told them that she and her darling fiancée would be along in just a moment. She pulled Mrs. Jordach in for air kisses and twiddled her fingers with the most obnoxious kittenish air imaginable at Mr. Jordach as they headed off across the room. And then she was Laura again, turning to him with a grin spread across her lips.
“We’re going to win.”
Jack looked into her eyes, sparkling with delight. If he’d known. If he’d only known. If he’d guessed. If he’d put two and two together and made it as far as four. But he couldn’t have, he didn’t have enough of the pieces, didn’t have enough of the clues. Instead he tipped his head back, laughed, and privately resolved to go looking for a ring that weekend. For the moment, he pulled off the bowler that he hadn’t removed at the door, placed it gently over her hair and ran his fingers down her earlobes. Leaning close, he drawled, as Robert, “Ah think you might jest be about right at that, my Chloe.”
Their hostess reentered the room with, presumably, the ringers of the doorbell, who it turned out were also the last of the guests. With all the players present, the hostess called for the music to be lowered and started to thank everyone for coming and explain how the evening was going to work. Jack, standing just behind Laura, found his attention wandering.

His eyes traced her form, settling on the intense eager look in her eyes as she began to see the outlines of the puzzle.

The travel documents have been located and delivered - Jack is planning to have an angry word with whomever had not included them in the original set. Irena has been sorting them since. Jack doesn’t think they’re going into piles by destination, perhaps by length of visit? He can’t tell. No use asking, though. She’ll let him in on the system when she’s ready. He tries to concentrate on the financial data he’s been tracking for the past 20 minutes. He feels like something’s missing, but can’t put his finger on what exactly. And every time he gets close to it, his mind veers off course.
He’s replaying their conversation. Reminded she had a family. He can’t decide whether he’s more annoyed by the fact that she glossed over nearly shooting Sydney in the course of the “reminder” or by the implication that she’d forgotten them. Forgotten him.
He glances up, hoping that she won’t notice his distraction. She’s lost in her puzzle and Jack sees Laura sorting cards at the kitchen counter in the woman across from him. He sees the woman grabbing for a pen so that she can fill in the last squares of a crossword. He sees the bright eyed grin on the face of an actress so impenetrable and competitive that he never knew where the game that he lost began.
Suddenly Irena looks up. Maybe she’d felt his stare. They’re caught again. Jack worries irrationally that she can hear his thoughts; that she knows that he’s still, after all these years, after all the betrayal, unable to keep her separated from Laura. She breathes slowly in and deliberately out and doesn’t break the contact. It occurs to him to wonder, for the first time, whether she ever has the same problem. She’d been aware, when she married him, who he really was, but all the same, she’d only known Jack-at-home-Jack. He didn’t have separate names, but as surely as Laura and Irena are different people, Jack has always been different people at home and at work. For the first time Jack wonders if Irena struggles to remember that the man who has been visiting and interviewing and threatening her is not the man she was married to; that the man she married was as much a lie and mask as Laura was. He wonders what exactly she meant when she said she’d missed ‘this.’
He wonders if Irena occasionally wishes she could just be Laura, like he occasionally wishes he could just be the version of himself that doesn’t have to worry about French criminals being assassinated for their positions.
They’ve been staring at each other for too long. Irena blinks and looks away. Jack, though, is still thinking. He clears his throat.
“Here because you could be?”
Irena looks back at him and then reaches for her water. She sips it, runs her fingers along the solid, cold glass. Her smile is wry and wistful as she meets his gaze.
“Because I could be.”

The slowly melting ice cubes clink and jingle like chimes against the edges of the glass.

“Here’s to the next Agatha Christy.” Jack raised his glass and Laura met it with her own and returned the grin. She was still wearing the hat.
“Thank you, thank you.” She laughed and they shared a moment, sipping whiskey on her living room settee, listening to the jazz Laura had put on the moment they’d stumbled through the door. Jack had been surprised to find she had any.
They had won, in the end. Although, and Jack had to admit it, it had mostly been Laura’s doing. The plot line of the supposed theft was too outlandish for Jack’s logical mind to encompass. He might also have been slightly distracted. Maybe. Laura had harbored a cat-that-ate-the-canary smile since the dessert course when she’d announced her revelation to the assembled, slightly tipsy guests and officially won. Her dramatic account of the crime and her just over the top delivery had kept the audience in fits and no one had begrudged her the prize. Jack had discovered that among her colleagues Laura was apparently considered quite friendly and extroverted; Jack had always thought her shy. It had been an evening for discovering layers in Laura, for seeing sides of her he hadn’t before.
“You’re different, with them.” Laura lifted her eyebrows in question as she turned. ‘You’re… brighter. Or louder or something.” She shrugged.
“They’re English Lit people. They relate better to the dramatic and outspoken.” Jack nodded and accepted the explanation. Laura was a logical creature and more than capable of figuring out what someone else needed, and, as he’d discovered that evening, apparently quite up to the acting required.
“You were a little different tonight too.” Laura said with a smile on her lips, peering up at him from under still-painted eyelashes. Jack ducked his head to hide his own grin. “You almost started a fist fight with Jordach.” Jack barked a laugh.
“I didn’t get any where near hitting him!” he protested.
“Oh really?”
“Although I may have thought about it. Once.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He was trying to look down the front of your dress! And he wasn’t even particularly subtle about it!”
“He was drunk, Jack.”
“I knew that.” Laura laughed.
“Well, I’m glad you didn’t hit him. Larry works in the office next to mine. It’d have been a little awkward. Not to mention, you know, embarrassing. For you. Losing a fist fight with a good looking, younger man…”
“Losing?” Jack sputtered in indignation before noticing the gleam in her eyes that said she was baiting him. He wrinkled his nose and leaned in close to mock glare into her eyes. “Alright: for that?” he surged forward and caught her about the waist with one arm and, holding her in place, tipped his drink, ice and all, down the back of her dress.
She shrieked and arched her back, but the ice was trapped and the arching only held it tighter to her skin. She squirmed in his grasp, laughing, and somehow managed to maneuver her arm so that she could spill her own drink, ice and all, over his head. The ice and cold alcohol soaked his hair and rained down his face and he had to let go of her with one arm to scrub a hand across his eyes. With his grip loosened, Laura wiggled out of his arms and tried to make a run for it. Jack caught her before she’d made it out of the living room, and trapped her against the doorway.
“That stings, woman.”
“Serves you right, the whiskey’s going to leave a mark on this dress.”
Looking down at her, breathing heavily and still laughing, trapped in his arms, Jack couldn’t think of a single thing he’d rather be doing than chasing her, soaked in whiskey to the melody of a soaring trumpet and a string base. He dipped his head and kissed her. He pulled her closer and ignored the slight gasp of protest as he tried to envelope all of her: Chloe and the odd, bright professor personality and the introverted, OCD card-sorter. It was a few minutes before Laura pulled away, ducked her head to lean into his chest, and laughed. When she looked up again, her face wrapped in a smile, she giggled. Actually giggled. Jack wasn’t sure he’d ever heard her giggle.
“What?” Jack enjoyed the way her smile made her eyes crinkle.
“You’ve got…” she trailed off and rose onto her toes to delicately lick his cheek from hollow to temple. His brow creased in confusion until the world came back into focus and he realized they were still both dripping whiskey onto the carpet. His laughter was low and intimate. He leaned her back against the wall and bent to murmur into her ear.
“It could take awhile, cleaning up like that.” Her answering laugh was as low as his. She looked up and smirked, quirking an eyebrow and tossing her head in the direction of the bedroom.
“Shower?”
He smiled and dropped his lips to hers again. A second later he scooped his arms around her and hauled her into a lift. They lurched towards the bathroom, Laura working at his tie and all the buttons she could reach from her position. They undressed each other as the water warmed, clothes landing unheeded in messy piles and stacks on the tiled floor, whiskey dripping into the cracks. The bowler hat landed somewhere in the corner. Laura had a shower-tub combo, surprising for a small apartment. She’d told him once that it had been one of her requirements when she was looking for a place. She wasn’t the type to keep much in it, though - not a lot of bottles or knickknacks. No candles in sight. Just the necessities lined neatly along the edge. Jack liked that there wasn’t much to knock over. He lifted her in and followed her. They really needn’t have waited for the water to heat up.

Water sluiced over backs and breasts.
Feet slipped on the ceramic of the tub floor.
Droplets splashed and sprayed.
Low laughter filtered out though the open door to mix with the forgotten jazz.
Fingers tangled in wet curls.
Lips followed streamlets down curves of skin.
The water ran ‘til it turned cold.

One of them would discover bruises in the morning and smile at the memories.
One of them would wake up feeling just a little sore and not mind at all.

Afterwards, propped on one arm and watching Laura fall asleep - the amount of space she managed to take up when she slept still made him smile - Jack considered asking then, asking her to marry him. He decided not to, he had a mission scheduled for the next week and he didn’t want to propose and run. But he was who he was and she was who she was. He leaned over and ran his tongue around her ear.
“Laura, I’m thinking about asking you to marry me. Have an answer ready, okay?”
She levered open an eyelid and a smile flittered across her features. “Thanks for the warning.” The eye drooped shut again. He smiled at her.

A puzzle of a woman, he thought.

Jack lets himself stare, shielded by the tv screen and the closed circuit cameras. Irena is sleeping, or perhaps just lying still with her eyes shut. Her limbs are splayed out as far as the cell bed will allow.
It seems that they still work well together. By the end of that day they’d solved the mystery, or as much of it as was possible given the combined restrictions of Briault’s status of ‘deceased’ and Ms. Kane’s status of ‘in Alliance interrogation.’ They’d managed to keep the moments of startling intimacy to a minimum. When Jack had gone in to tell her how it had gone, however, he’d found himself wishing they hadn’t worked quite so efficiently.
He’s watching the screen for a reason. A flunky enters the camera’s field of vision with a tray. Breakfast. Irena comes awake with the same fluid ease and instant lucidity that Jack remembers from mornings in Laura’s apartment. He’d always wondered about it. The flunky is buzzed into the cell and Irena compliantly remains seated on the bed until he has placed it on her table and backed out of the room, but her attention is more focused than normal. The flunky is clearly unnerved by it. Jack smiles. He has had a word with the gentlemen in charge of Irena’s confinement.
The door closed and barred, Irena gets to her feet and crosses the room with a quiet smile whispering across her face. She wraps her fingers around the ceramic coffee mug and closes her eyes for a moment. When she opens them she is looking directly at the camera and she toasts Jack, unseen, and nods before sitting down and picking up the pen and Sunday Times crossword placed on the edge of the tray.
Jack sucks in a quick breath, looks up and down the hallway to ensure no one is watching, and then straightens his tie before turning and walking away.