fic: Equivocation, Covert Affairs, Annie Walker/Liza Hearn, PG-13
Title: Equivocation
Author: Lyssie
Recipient: Voleuse
Fandom(s): Covert Affairs
Pairing: Annie Walker/Liza Hearn
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1800
Warnings: adult situations, light blink-and-miss-it bondage
Summary: Liza Hearn isn't playing any games, or so she tells herself.
Disclaimer: Not mine
Notes: I think I've broken my ability to write porn and/or smut, so while there's the occasional bit where sex is referenced/implied, there's nothing hugely overt? Hence the PG-13 rating.
They never go back to Annie's.
-
Liza had a thing for little corner bars--the kind of place where you walked in, and everyone knew your name. Strangers were always noted (considered an unknown quantity), and gossip flowed around the room about people she didn't know (and probably never would). She liked to sit and just listen. Sometimes, there were ideas she could use, other times it was just soothing.
It was snowing outside, the sort of crap that stuck to everything and made pretty picture postcards. Liza was half-sold on hating snow, but then she'd remember winter as a kid, making snow angels and snow-women, snowball fights, snow forts. Hands and fingers so cold she couldn't feel them anymore, and hot cocoa with tiny marshmallows and cinnamon.
The tiny corner bars always had that one window which looked out into the street where the snow was grey slush instead of white fluff.
"Sorry I'm late."
The woman who slid onto the bar stool next to Liza flashed her an engaging smile. It was almost impish.
"Annie Walker." Liza said, tipping her glass towards the blonde.
"Tequila, neat." Waving a hand with a practiced air, Annie took her time before she leaned towards Liza a little, and said, "Liza Hearn. You should have had my drink waiting for me."
Laughing would have been pointless. Liza tilted away from Annie and glanced out the window again, "How's the snow?"
"Slushy," Annie made an impatient noise and downed her tequila, waving for a second as she twisted around on the stool and looked back out the window. "I think I miss the sun in Cancun."
"Not one for playing in the snow with your nieces?" Liza found it a point in her favor that she'd learned that much about Annie. The woman was close-mouthed at the best of times. Her family was generally off-limits.
"Generational bonding activities seem more like your style," shot back Annie with an amused tone in her voice.
Liza sipped her beer, admiring the woody flavor to it. She would have preferred something a little more upscale, but there was something about drinking to fit the establishment that appealed to her. When she was in a club, it would be martinis or drinks with umbrellas.
With a happy little noise, Annie clinked her second shot against her first and swirled a finger into it. "I could do this all night, how about you?"
"I'm not one for all-nighters, drinks or otherwise," Liza said with a wrinkle of her nose. Setting her glass down, she wiggled a little, trying to get comfortable on the stool.
Finding a comfortable stool was always hard in a bar like this.
Conversation swirled around them, one woman talking with her hands about Drew and his friend Greg, and how they'd caught someone named Bobby doing something that made her audience laugh before she managed to actually articulate it. Liza slid a glance towards them, making her own guesses as to the joke.
If there was one.
-
"I love how the fourth estate lives," Annie said, her voice muffled by the pillow she'd burrowed into.
Next to her, Liza chuckled a little, toes digging into the fabric of her sheets. "It's nothing much."
"Don't be ridiculous--" Annie turned, propping up on an elbow as she blinked prettily at Liza. "You've got your own place."
"You make it sound like I'm rich--"
"I know," sitting up with a quick movement, Annie waved her pillow, "Let's run away to Vermont--I could be your trophy wife."
For a moment, Liza thought of it with some degree of seriousness. Then she grabbed the pillow from Annie and proceeded to hit her with it. "You drank too much last night."
"I did--" Annie agreed with a yelp, hands reaching for the pillow, "I went off with some strange woman--"
Liza let her take the pillow and rolled off the bed, standing and stretching with a spine-popping roll of her shoulders. "You say that as though you don't do it every night."
The words sobered Annie up, and she looked at Liza from among the rumpled bedclothes.
It was an image Liza sometimes thought of taking a picture of, storing it for when she was so old she didn't clearly remember this sort of thing. She could title it Young Woman in Lust Among Blue Sheets, if the idea wasn't too pretentious.
"Maybe I like strange women."
"Then you're in the wrong place," suggested Liza, her eyebrows raising before she turned away. It might be a Saturday, but they both had work to attend to.
-
The thirst for knowledge had always driven Liza. When she was twelve, she'd taken Harriet the Spy as her hero and tucked a notebook in her pocket for questions and answers. Sometimes, there were revealing rumors, other times nothing but lists of fallacies that the broadcast news glossed over.
Annie Walker was in the business of helping those lies stay in circulation.
"You work for the Smithsonian," Liza had said once, scorn in her voice, "but do you really like art?"
"Oh, I love it," enthused Annie in response. And she'd spent nearly fifteen minutes talking about pre-Columbian and impressionistic delusions of grandeur. It was almost enough to put Liza off of the entire idea of her.
They didn't talk about art after that. It wasn't that Liza had no interest in it, but that she simply saw no reason to help Annie's little cover identity.
Liza had always known she liked women. In high school, she'd done the normal thing: crushed on the football players and mocked the nerds until she was a nerd herself, buried in the newspaper, writing editorials and 'hard' articles on the school board's misappropriation of student-raised funding.
That had earned her the anger of the adults, and the pride of her parents.
A little knowledge was a heady thing, and being able to use it to expose the man behind the curtain was even better. Liking women was a different category to itself, though, and Liza was careful about that.
Discretion was the better part of valor.
-
"I shouldn't have stayed the night," Annie was babbling, one shoe on, the other still in her hand. Her hose had a ladder in it, but she was ignoring that. "I told my sister--"
"Does it matter what you told her? You're a woman grown, Annie."
The smile on Annie's lips twisted a little. "There's so much I can't tell her, Liza. Sometimes, I just--never mind, is there coffee?"
"Did you make any?"
They both laughed, then.
-
Liza knew exactly whom had initiated the entire thing, and she held no illusions. "I'm only going to say this once," she murmured, dragging her lips across Annie's neck, "if you're here to get my sources, don't bother."
"I'm not," Annie replied quietly, her fingertips stroking against Liza's scalp.
There was no point in trusting that assertion, but Liza didn't mind the lie. Not for the moment, at least. She smiled a little sadly when she kissed Annie's mouth again.
-
"Do you cover war zones often?"
Liza ignored Annie's question as she hunkered down even further. Dirt was beginning to sift down onto them from the damaged roof above. Somewhere out there, separatists and rebels were fighting, according to reports. Liza wasn't really all for guts and glory, but covering actual news as opposed to entertainment gossip was a step up that she'd fought for.
The assignment hadn't included Annie Walker, but she'd still turned up. Liza thought that her superiors were trying to use Annie as a pawn, but neither of them was playing the game. Annie, because she was naive and Liza because there was no point.
Giving up her sources would put her back on the glitz and glamour beat faster than she could spell Lady Gaga.
"It's my first," she lied, pushing up a little to peer out the window of the bunker.
People milled in the street, the brightness of the day searing their after-images into Liza's brain long after she'd stopped watching them. She swallowed, then snapped out. "Camera, now."
Smoke and sand floated through the air, the cries from the injured providing a counterpoint as Liza moved out into the open. Heat baked into her shoulders as she fought for the best images, then ended up forgetting her camera to grasp Annie's hand as they stepped over the curb and into the rubble-strewn street.
"Neither of us should be here, we're in the way," Annie sounded as though she were repeating herself.
-
Snow fell with a silent, muffled sound that drenched even the sound of the distant traffic with nothingness. Liza stood in the window, watching Annie dress in the reflection, her mind filled with the minutiae of her day. There was a meeting to get through and then two phone calls to contacts at the White House about the latest rumors swirling around the President's current intentions. Lunch probably figured in there, along with tracking down the thread of intel from a source who wanted to throw wide the doors on some of the intelligentsia community and their online practices.
"I'm going to be gone all week." Annie offered, hands pulling her hair back.
Liza let one corner of her mouth turn up, "Should I keep an eye out for reports of your activities in the middle east?"
"Montana," suggested Annie wryly.
As though anyone would use Montana for CIA training activities. Liza had a line that told her Annie's little vacation would probably be in the southwest. "Buy me something," she said impulsively.
"I'll get the kitschiest, most ridiculous knick-knack I can find."
Liza smiled at that.
-
Ugly pink snowglobes with Montana written on them weren't really Liza's thing, but she couldn't quite bring herself to throw it out when it arrived in the mail.
There was a note.
Warned you. I'm going to be a week later than I thought.
No apology, but they didn't do those, anyway.
Liza shoved the globe on top of the fridge, under the cabinet, and then promptly forgot about it.
-
The problem with missing Annie was that Liza's brain tended to not work properly for those few minutes they were back in each other's company. She should be asking leading questions, pressing for secrets and lies. Instead she had her hands under Annie's shirt and her tongue in her mouth, and the vibrant urge to hear Annie make that noise she managed when she was desperate and Liza's hands were holding her down.
"Let go," she finally whispered, dragging her teeth down Annie's throat, absently cataloging the line of bruises and the half-healed mark on her shoulder.
Annie, post-sex, snuggled.
It wasn't a bad thing, but Liza twitched away soon enough, propping herself on an elbow and watching the rain fall outside of her window as Annie shifted a little.
"You should tie me up next time," Annie murmured. Her eyes glinted with something dark when she tilted her head to meet Liza's gaze.
Liza reached out and stroked her thumb across Annie's kiss-swollen mouth. "We'll see."
-
Going back to Annie's would be complicated. Liza preferred things simple.
-f-
Author: Lyssie
Recipient: Voleuse
Fandom(s): Covert Affairs
Pairing: Annie Walker/Liza Hearn
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1800
Warnings: adult situations, light blink-and-miss-it bondage
Summary: Liza Hearn isn't playing any games, or so she tells herself.
Disclaimer: Not mine
Notes: I think I've broken my ability to write porn and/or smut, so while there's the occasional bit where sex is referenced/implied, there's nothing hugely overt? Hence the PG-13 rating.
They never go back to Annie's.
-
Liza had a thing for little corner bars--the kind of place where you walked in, and everyone knew your name. Strangers were always noted (considered an unknown quantity), and gossip flowed around the room about people she didn't know (and probably never would). She liked to sit and just listen. Sometimes, there were ideas she could use, other times it was just soothing.
It was snowing outside, the sort of crap that stuck to everything and made pretty picture postcards. Liza was half-sold on hating snow, but then she'd remember winter as a kid, making snow angels and snow-women, snowball fights, snow forts. Hands and fingers so cold she couldn't feel them anymore, and hot cocoa with tiny marshmallows and cinnamon.
The tiny corner bars always had that one window which looked out into the street where the snow was grey slush instead of white fluff.
"Sorry I'm late."
The woman who slid onto the bar stool next to Liza flashed her an engaging smile. It was almost impish.
"Annie Walker." Liza said, tipping her glass towards the blonde.
"Tequila, neat." Waving a hand with a practiced air, Annie took her time before she leaned towards Liza a little, and said, "Liza Hearn. You should have had my drink waiting for me."
Laughing would have been pointless. Liza tilted away from Annie and glanced out the window again, "How's the snow?"
"Slushy," Annie made an impatient noise and downed her tequila, waving for a second as she twisted around on the stool and looked back out the window. "I think I miss the sun in Cancun."
"Not one for playing in the snow with your nieces?" Liza found it a point in her favor that she'd learned that much about Annie. The woman was close-mouthed at the best of times. Her family was generally off-limits.
"Generational bonding activities seem more like your style," shot back Annie with an amused tone in her voice.
Liza sipped her beer, admiring the woody flavor to it. She would have preferred something a little more upscale, but there was something about drinking to fit the establishment that appealed to her. When she was in a club, it would be martinis or drinks with umbrellas.
With a happy little noise, Annie clinked her second shot against her first and swirled a finger into it. "I could do this all night, how about you?"
"I'm not one for all-nighters, drinks or otherwise," Liza said with a wrinkle of her nose. Setting her glass down, she wiggled a little, trying to get comfortable on the stool.
Finding a comfortable stool was always hard in a bar like this.
Conversation swirled around them, one woman talking with her hands about Drew and his friend Greg, and how they'd caught someone named Bobby doing something that made her audience laugh before she managed to actually articulate it. Liza slid a glance towards them, making her own guesses as to the joke.
If there was one.
-
"I love how the fourth estate lives," Annie said, her voice muffled by the pillow she'd burrowed into.
Next to her, Liza chuckled a little, toes digging into the fabric of her sheets. "It's nothing much."
"Don't be ridiculous--" Annie turned, propping up on an elbow as she blinked prettily at Liza. "You've got your own place."
"You make it sound like I'm rich--"
"I know," sitting up with a quick movement, Annie waved her pillow, "Let's run away to Vermont--I could be your trophy wife."
For a moment, Liza thought of it with some degree of seriousness. Then she grabbed the pillow from Annie and proceeded to hit her with it. "You drank too much last night."
"I did--" Annie agreed with a yelp, hands reaching for the pillow, "I went off with some strange woman--"
Liza let her take the pillow and rolled off the bed, standing and stretching with a spine-popping roll of her shoulders. "You say that as though you don't do it every night."
The words sobered Annie up, and she looked at Liza from among the rumpled bedclothes.
It was an image Liza sometimes thought of taking a picture of, storing it for when she was so old she didn't clearly remember this sort of thing. She could title it Young Woman in Lust Among Blue Sheets, if the idea wasn't too pretentious.
"Maybe I like strange women."
"Then you're in the wrong place," suggested Liza, her eyebrows raising before she turned away. It might be a Saturday, but they both had work to attend to.
-
The thirst for knowledge had always driven Liza. When she was twelve, she'd taken Harriet the Spy as her hero and tucked a notebook in her pocket for questions and answers. Sometimes, there were revealing rumors, other times nothing but lists of fallacies that the broadcast news glossed over.
Annie Walker was in the business of helping those lies stay in circulation.
"You work for the Smithsonian," Liza had said once, scorn in her voice, "but do you really like art?"
"Oh, I love it," enthused Annie in response. And she'd spent nearly fifteen minutes talking about pre-Columbian and impressionistic delusions of grandeur. It was almost enough to put Liza off of the entire idea of her.
They didn't talk about art after that. It wasn't that Liza had no interest in it, but that she simply saw no reason to help Annie's little cover identity.
Liza had always known she liked women. In high school, she'd done the normal thing: crushed on the football players and mocked the nerds until she was a nerd herself, buried in the newspaper, writing editorials and 'hard' articles on the school board's misappropriation of student-raised funding.
That had earned her the anger of the adults, and the pride of her parents.
A little knowledge was a heady thing, and being able to use it to expose the man behind the curtain was even better. Liking women was a different category to itself, though, and Liza was careful about that.
Discretion was the better part of valor.
-
"I shouldn't have stayed the night," Annie was babbling, one shoe on, the other still in her hand. Her hose had a ladder in it, but she was ignoring that. "I told my sister--"
"Does it matter what you told her? You're a woman grown, Annie."
The smile on Annie's lips twisted a little. "There's so much I can't tell her, Liza. Sometimes, I just--never mind, is there coffee?"
"Did you make any?"
They both laughed, then.
-
Liza knew exactly whom had initiated the entire thing, and she held no illusions. "I'm only going to say this once," she murmured, dragging her lips across Annie's neck, "if you're here to get my sources, don't bother."
"I'm not," Annie replied quietly, her fingertips stroking against Liza's scalp.
There was no point in trusting that assertion, but Liza didn't mind the lie. Not for the moment, at least. She smiled a little sadly when she kissed Annie's mouth again.
-
"Do you cover war zones often?"
Liza ignored Annie's question as she hunkered down even further. Dirt was beginning to sift down onto them from the damaged roof above. Somewhere out there, separatists and rebels were fighting, according to reports. Liza wasn't really all for guts and glory, but covering actual news as opposed to entertainment gossip was a step up that she'd fought for.
The assignment hadn't included Annie Walker, but she'd still turned up. Liza thought that her superiors were trying to use Annie as a pawn, but neither of them was playing the game. Annie, because she was naive and Liza because there was no point.
Giving up her sources would put her back on the glitz and glamour beat faster than she could spell Lady Gaga.
"It's my first," she lied, pushing up a little to peer out the window of the bunker.
People milled in the street, the brightness of the day searing their after-images into Liza's brain long after she'd stopped watching them. She swallowed, then snapped out. "Camera, now."
Smoke and sand floated through the air, the cries from the injured providing a counterpoint as Liza moved out into the open. Heat baked into her shoulders as she fought for the best images, then ended up forgetting her camera to grasp Annie's hand as they stepped over the curb and into the rubble-strewn street.
"Neither of us should be here, we're in the way," Annie sounded as though she were repeating herself.
-
Snow fell with a silent, muffled sound that drenched even the sound of the distant traffic with nothingness. Liza stood in the window, watching Annie dress in the reflection, her mind filled with the minutiae of her day. There was a meeting to get through and then two phone calls to contacts at the White House about the latest rumors swirling around the President's current intentions. Lunch probably figured in there, along with tracking down the thread of intel from a source who wanted to throw wide the doors on some of the intelligentsia community and their online practices.
"I'm going to be gone all week." Annie offered, hands pulling her hair back.
Liza let one corner of her mouth turn up, "Should I keep an eye out for reports of your activities in the middle east?"
"Montana," suggested Annie wryly.
As though anyone would use Montana for CIA training activities. Liza had a line that told her Annie's little vacation would probably be in the southwest. "Buy me something," she said impulsively.
"I'll get the kitschiest, most ridiculous knick-knack I can find."
Liza smiled at that.
-
Ugly pink snowglobes with Montana written on them weren't really Liza's thing, but she couldn't quite bring herself to throw it out when it arrived in the mail.
There was a note.
Warned you. I'm going to be a week later than I thought.
No apology, but they didn't do those, anyway.
Liza shoved the globe on top of the fridge, under the cabinet, and then promptly forgot about it.
-
The problem with missing Annie was that Liza's brain tended to not work properly for those few minutes they were back in each other's company. She should be asking leading questions, pressing for secrets and lies. Instead she had her hands under Annie's shirt and her tongue in her mouth, and the vibrant urge to hear Annie make that noise she managed when she was desperate and Liza's hands were holding her down.
"Let go," she finally whispered, dragging her teeth down Annie's throat, absently cataloging the line of bruises and the half-healed mark on her shoulder.
Annie, post-sex, snuggled.
It wasn't a bad thing, but Liza twitched away soon enough, propping herself on an elbow and watching the rain fall outside of her window as Annie shifted a little.
"You should tie me up next time," Annie murmured. Her eyes glinted with something dark when she tilted her head to meet Liza's gaze.
Liza reached out and stroked her thumb across Annie's kiss-swollen mouth. "We'll see."
-
Going back to Annie's would be complicated. Liza preferred things simple.
-f-