Fic: Perquisites Negotiable | ALIAS/24 | Irina/Nina |rated NC-17
Title: Perquisites Negotiable
Fandoms: ALIAS / 24
Pairing: Irina / Nina
Rating: NC-17
Summary: The sempai-kohai that could have rocked the fake spy world. Slot this meeting just prior to season three for both shows.
Raison d'existence: an extraneous femslash06 submission, written for jaybee65 who asked for Irina/Anybody and Nina/Anybody. In my mind, this fairly cried out for a two birds, one stone scenario. It’s a little long - about 3,500 words - and a little dirty. My apologies if it isn’t your cuppa.
{O}
At one a.m. sharp, someone knocked on the battered apartment door. Irina Derevko drew her gun and went to answer. Through the door viewer, she saw a lone woman standing in the hall. Recalling forwarded photos, she identified her punctual broker.
The broker appeared to be staring at the floor, either lost in some placid trance or deeply bored. Her hands were empty. On her back was a weathered leather rucksack. Irina opened the door and stepped back to allow her guest entry.
Blue eyes shifted to Irina’s face for a beat, long enough to verify her identity. The visitor stood languidly mute as Irina holstered her gun at the small of her back.
“Please,” Irina said, canting her head as invitation.
After a small nod of acknowledgment, the broker stepped inside. She looked around the apartment and found the windows closed and shuttered, all doors to connecting rooms flung wide, all lights on, all cards on the table. Exchanges such as these would never be without stress, but Irina had taken precautions to avoid nervous mistakes.
While the broker surveyed her environs, Irina locked the door and spared her a moment’s appraisal. In her early thirties and of average height, she was likely not strong but still solidly built, wore little makeup and sported a haircut that soundly rejected vanity. Her aesthetic appeal was grounded in the facial symmetry of well-formed bones, a sensuous mouth and doll-sized blue eyes exuding weary charisma.
Moreover, her physical language resounded with a distinct accent: the stillness and silence of a scarred predator, a hunter who has survived the claws of a better beast. Irina was intrigued. Gleaning the woman’s history from dry paper was one thing, but gauging potential was better done in the flesh.
“Place the mechanism on the kitchen table and ready it for inspection,” Irina instructed. She backed into the living room and went to the bar. “I’m having vodka. Can I get you anything?”
“No,” was the instant response. After gingerly settling the rucksack on the table, she looked over and added, “Thank you.”
“You’re certain?” Irina pressed. “Cypress to Vancouver is a long trip.”
“Indeed,” she allowed, “but I slept on the plane.”
She unzipped the pack and removed a cloth-wrapped parcel. As the swaddling rags were peeled away, a peculiar smell filled the kitchen - the odor of metal bathed for centuries in the warm Mediterranean. Irina scented it from across the room and was irresistibly drawn, as always, lured and seduced by the promise of revelation.
The broker watched as Irina Derevko drifted closer, watched the older woman’s dark eyes catch fire as she beheld the crusty wreck that passed for ancient technology. She herself was mystified as to the appeal and perhaps her expression betrayed this.
“It certainly doesn’t look like much, does it?” Irina admitted after quaffing a lusty gulp of vodka. “Yet what we have here, Miss Myers, could sway the fate of our world.”
Nina Myers, while mildly unnerved at being addressed by name, exhibited little curiosity. Determining the future of mankind was heady business, and she doubted this martensitic mess dredged from the sea floor was anything more than a ruined trinket. “Does the item pass muster?” she asked.
Irina set down her drink and reverently trailed her fingers over the cogs and wheels etched with secrets. Her eyes fluttered shut as she assembled the item in the workshop of her mind. Implications of this acquisition soaked through her skin and made her blood sing with vibrations of history, of destiny, of power.
“Yes,” she whispered. A strange radiance stole over her face as she turned to Nina. Again came the ardent voice of one transported by joy, now accompanied by a stare of unfixed nature. “Yes. Thank you.”
It was not in Nina Myers’ temperament to be awestruck by anyone or anything, but somewhere in the labyrinth of her mind was a glimmer of awareness that she was breathing rarefied air. Everyone in their line of work had heard tales of Irina Derevko. She was myth and flesh, priestess and acolyte, siren and slaughterer.
Given her exceptional proximity, Nina took her own accounting. Irina was a remarkably beautiful woman of perhaps fifty years, blessed with the enduring body of a Spartan and a sleek mane of chestnut hair. Ebon eyes projected insight and inquisition, backlit windows on a mind part lexicon, part search engine. Nina figured, given that Derevko was one of those tattooed Rambaldi zealots, a high-functioning form of insanity was also possible.
On that salient point, Nina blinked her way free of Irina’s eye lock and asked for her money. “Eight-fifty, commission included. You have the account number,” she stated.
“Of course.” Irina took up her vodka again and drained the glass, tilted it toward Nina and backed it with a dazzling smile. “Have one drink with me. This just became a celebration.”
Nina lifted her wrist to consult Tag-Heuer regarding her schedule. She had three hours before wheels up toward Switzerland and nowhere to go until then. “After we confirm the transfer,” she said. “I’ll take bourbon, rocks. Three fingers.”
Irina paused on her way to the bar. Her eyebrow lifted slightly. “Three?”
The sliver of perceived flirtation lodged under her skin and, for the first time in a long while, Nina Myers twitched out a smile. “At minimum.”
{O} {O}
Ten minutes, then twenty, then half an hour gone, Nina finally accepted that she wasn’t leaving until she had word that her plane was prepping for takeoff. She was on the sofa, shoes off and legs curled under, working on her second bourbon. Her constitution was such that she wasn’t worried about getting drunk, but she was beginning to feel intoxication of a different sort. The spider-like Irina had trapped her, she was sure, and was cocooning her in silken threads spun from coincidence and folklore and charm.
The woman was proselytizing Rambaldi as if Nina were a heretic in danger of losing her mortal soul should she not renounce her ways and embrace the vision of some moldy schizophrenic Italian charlatan. It was all bullshit, she was absolutely certain, but she was riveted and had no trouble appearing to hang on Irina’s every word. Grand delusions aside, the woman was goddamned magnetic.
Irina could tell that, regarding matters esoteric, she was being humored. She knew the value of an operative like Myers, one so cunning and resourceful she extorted her freedom from the American President himself. She wanted this wily raptor in her menagerie, but even after buffeting her with a diamond hailstorm of possibilities, Irina sensed she hadn’t made a dent. This woman was not looking to embrace an ideology, or seeking asylum in the safety of a group - Nina Myers was a greedy, thrill-seeking nihilist. Courting her with the promise of enlightenment proved fruitless, so Irina opted to switch tactics.
Myers - like every career criminal - had a lack, an unmet requirement burning hidden and secret. If she could find that wound and somehow promise to heal or at least balm it… but such an exploration would take time, always in short supply. Irina fell silent for a few moments, sipped her drink, and started afresh by leaning sideways on the couch, closer to her intended. She wasn’t about to burn the clock with futile guessing. “What will it take?” she asked.
Nina knit her brows, jarred by the ninety-degree turn toward candor. “I’m sorry?”
Irina fixed her eyes on Nina, pulled her focus. Her voice was soft and dark, her words a nest of black down.
“If I have not yet made myself clear, I’ll state the obvious: I want you. I accept that, as of now, you don’t believe in anything. I can change that. Let your plane leave for Lausanne. Stay here tonight, with me. By the second sunset, you’ll find yourself in the heart of a Serengeti volcano. I’ll walk you into an underground cathedral of fire lit crystal and show you a five hundred year old miracle… if you’ll let me. Tell me what it will take to gain what passes for your allegiance. Tell me what you need.”
Resolutely aware of her talents, Nina was not flattered by the interest, and she sensed a hook buried in the sleepover invite. Irina’s request made her uneasy only because she did not know how to answer. There were a few basic things she needed to guarantee her continued existence: freedom and money and violence and adrenaline and sex and chaos and Jack Bauer’s head on a plate. Most of those things she had already provided for herself. Beyond that short list which comprised the base of her own Maslowian pyramid, she couldn’t say what she needed. Self-analysis was not a priority.
There was a defensive void in her, she knew, an empty chasm separating body from soul like a castle moat. She suspected that Irina Derevko was asking what it would take to bridge that gap, to draw together all the fragments of Nina Myers and bind the cohesive whole to Irina herself, if not to her fervent cause.
“If I gave you an answer right now, it would be a lie,” Nina admitted. “I don’t have an endgame beyond getting rich and vanishing. I don’t have an agenda beyond staying alive, staying in the game. It’s difficult… I can’t tell you what I need.”
Irina nodded, content with the verity of that response. “So tell me what you want.”
Nina barely stifled a lecherous grin, then covered with a joke. “What every girl wants - to rule the world.”
The older woman wore a knowing smirk. “It’s overrated.”
“Which? The ruling or the world?”
“Both.”
“Ahh. So, why the mystery walk? If you’re not on some global domination trip, then I guess I don’t see the point of…” Nina paused, flicked her hand toward the artifact. “All that stuff.”
“Perhaps there is no point. Perhaps there is no grail, only quest,” Irina answered with the dulcet ring of truth. “Regardless, I can’t seem to stop. My sin is Eve’s sin - I want to know. I want to touch the numinous with my own hands.”
Though Nina could not empathize, she sensed genuine passion and purpose in this woman and was disconcerted by her own response. She felt… covetous.
Silence fell naturally, as if by mutual consent. They synchronously drained their glasses and set them aside. All the while their eyes continued a game of catch and release. To wait much longer invited entropy, followed by polite parting and the regret of squandered potential. Irina knew they were done talking, knew of only a few ways to keep this from ending before she got the answer she wanted. She also knew that sometimes, on the dark rides, you have to hit the starter particularly hard.
“If you still want to go to Lausanne, I will arrange it in the morning. Stay the night,” Irina suggested again. This time, her sultry tone murdered misinterpretation and imbued the final three words with challenge.
Nina Myers had made many mistakes in her life, but her errors were largely those of poor judgment and not of indecision or inaction. In keeping with this pattern, she processed Irina’s invitation to sex the Medusa and took reckless advantage. In one continuous move, she uncurled her legs, slid across the sofa and straddled Irina’s lap.
Her hands converged on that lovely, storied face. She traced lines around mouth and eyes, smoothed her thumbs across sculpted brows and sunk her fingers deep into thick, silken hair. She cupped her hands behind Irina’s skull and slowly pressed their mouths together once, twice, then gave a lazy lick to her full bottom lip. Irina’s mouth remained still, her eyes open.
Nina edged back a few inches and whispered, “For this to work, I’m gonna need you to kiss me back.”
The admission of need compelled Irina’s sly grin. “Not so very difficult after all.”
Caught off guard by the simple ploy, Nina cast her eyes down and shook her head. She reminded herself that this was merely a headhunting gambit and not a romantic seduction. For a few scarlet moments, she waited in silence. Mercifully, Irina’s hands came to life and lighted on her hips, slid beneath her shirt, skimmed up her back and deftly snapped open her bra.
“Nice,” Nina mused. “But it’ll take more than - ”
“Shh. The sales pitch is over,” Irina lied.
She rose up and smothered Nina’s mouth while her left hand slid around front to palm a full breast. The kiss was so hard and full and committed that Nina’s mouth instantly watered. Irina’s hand squeezed her tit, plucked and rolled her nipple with such vigor the stimulation was borderline painful. She felt Irina push forward and lean her back against her right hand, then they were turning and descending and she found herself supine on the couch with Irina’s full weight pinning her down.
The unbroken kiss deepened, evolved into push-me pull-you, a wet little microcosmic war. Irina’s left hand switched partners and mauled Nina’s other breast while the right swept down over the flat field of her stomach and nimbly opened the button and zipper of her jeans. Nina couldn’t restrain her soft snort of amusement. She tasted Irina’s salty smile against the tip of her tongue. She raised her hips as that strong hand hooked her pants, her thong, and pushed them both down until she was bare and open.
Those adept fingers snaked into her strip of curls and announced their presence with a firm tug. Nina twitched and moaned into Irina’s mouth as four fingers split apart, roved over her outer lips and rejoined as a single, woven unit to press at her entrance. She had needs to express, but no way to make words; Irina had taken her mouth and evidently wasn’t giving it back until she was done with it. She settled for bucking her hips instead, painting the tips of Irina’s fingers and feeling the tantalizing brush of a firm thumb against sparkling nerves.
Nina felt censure rumbling through Irina’s throat, felt punishing teeth nip and clasp her lips with pressure just short of bloodletting. She got the message, eased herself back, and was immediately rewarded with additional punishment. Irina loosened her bite and the probing, confident kiss resumed, yet was perceptibly gentled. At the same time, she dragged her nails through wet hot dark… then again, softer… again, softer still, the spiteful touch of a lover’s ghost.
Torture was not a new experience for Nina, but this method was particularly depraved and she was not bearing up well. She was nearly ready to kill, ready to end the preeminent kiss of her life and make a demand when, finally, Irina pushed inside all at once and drove her thumb against Nina’s swollen clit. The younger woman gasped as she was stretched and filled, but soon groaned her satisfaction and thrust up to meet unyielding strokes. Soon, she was forced down again as Irina repositioned her legs and backed her pumping hand with a thigh to find a new, stronger rhythm.
Slick, firm, and relentless while minutes burned past, that augmented hand pushed harder still as pulses flared around grasping fingers. At the onset of tightening, Irina finally released her mouth and bit down hard on Nina’s throat, ringed her captive nipple with fingernails and dug in tight. This extra dash of brutality salted her lover’s pleasure with the necessary amount of pain, striking flint on flint until Nina’s climax ignited, blazed up her spine and blew her apart. She screamed once, rose up sharp and blind and dying, and trembled into silence.
Her hands slipped from Irina’s hair, arms fell limp above her head; only the gradual subsidence of melting spasms evidenced that she was not dead. Irina kissed her neck, stroked her breasts and belly, and carefully withdrew her fingers. She braced her upper body on her elbows and watched as Nina took in a slow breath, composed herself, and finally opened her eyes to the amused Russian.
“You come like a plane crash,” Irina told her.
“You fuck like one,” Nina retorted, feeling qualified to make the comparison.
Irina snickered, sending jets of cool air across the dental impression in Nina’s neck. “Stay the night,” she offered for the third time.
Clearly a spoken answer was required, so the swiftness of Nina’s decision-making abilities came to the fore. “You’ll foot the bill for my blown charter? And secure a replacement?”
“I will. If that’s what you want.”
After a moment’s thought came a nod of consent. “Yeah, okay. The Swiss are patient.”
{O} {O} {O}
Dawn found them awake and entwined on a damp, wrecked bed. One of Irina’s legs strapped across Nina’s back, both hands knotted in her unruly hair. Flexing and grinding against lips and tongue and fingers, Irina climbed toward her fifth summit of the morning. Somewhere around the third ascent, she had begun to question just who was auditioning for whom. Myers’ stamina and ingenuity were certainly impressive, but nothing felt calculated or staged. Once she got started the woman was positively gone, submerged in animal instinct, and Irina found this delirious hunger nothing short of gorgeous. She pulled Nina’s face tight against her cunt, whistled softly, and released into her mouth.
Even then, Irina was studying the woman’s patterns for custom and consistency. Again, she was delighted as Nina’s lovely post-coital fractal fell into place. Wide, cleansing licks. Tender mouthing of pearl and shaft. Lips trailing up stomach and over breasts, covering and sucking her nipples. The gradual rise into a wet kiss of temporary reprieve.
Only the coda of kisses remained a constant. The ingredients of her lovemaking differed each time - pioneering hands, a fearless tongue soaked in bourbon, a smooth ride along a lean thigh, the vise grip of thumb and forefinger - as if she had myriad appetites to satisfy. She left no part of Irina’s body intact, repeatedly tumbling the older woman into pleasured disarray, leaving her smashed and beaming and comprehensively fucked. To Irina, such thoroughness was a virtue prized in both lovers and colleagues. The prospect of Myers filling only one of those roles had become an unattractive compromise.
She tugged at Nina’s hair to pry their aching mouths apart, and threw a question into her startled face. “Have you decided?”
Nina closed her eyes, furrowed her brow and muttered, “Fuck.”
“No. Lausanne or Mt. Meru. Answer me.”
Silent and slow, Nina pulled away and rolled off the bed. She rooted through their scattered clothes, found a disposable cell phone and keyed in a series of numbers. For nearly two minutes she stood wordless and naked in the middle of the room, letting Irina’s eyes scrape her skin off while she interpreted the codespeak on her voicemail. Her face remained impassive as she ended the call, but her shoulders dropped a fraction. Irina noticed.
“You can’t go,” she said.
With a shake of her head, Nina confirmed it. “Someone called in a marker.”
“Will it take long?”
“It shouldn’t. Cash for commodities, simple exchange.”
“Beware unforeseen complications,” Irina murmured. With arms braced against the headboard, she arched into a stretch-yawn to accentuate the absurd glories of her body.
Nina smiled as she drifted toward the bed. “Now you tell me.”
Irina smiled back and reached for her hand, knit their fingers together. “I am not refused, merely delayed. Correct?”
“Correct.”
“Negotiations will resume at a later date.”
“Okay.” Nina climbed onto the bed, then onto Irina.
“Tell me where you’re going.” It was too affectionate for a demand, too firm for a request, and ineffably Derevko.
Nina took her other hand, pinned both to the pillows and lowered her breast toward a waiting mouth. “Mexico,” she revealed, perhaps imprudently. “For loads of money.”
Irina salved the marred pink nipple with a soothing lick. “I’ve never found gran fortuna in Mexico.”
“I’ll be careful,” Nina promised. At that moment, maybe she even meant it.
“Sometimes careful isn’t good enough. Be ruthless… and pray for luck,” Irina advised. She probed those feral blue eyes until she found it again - that bloodless calm, that untouchable, bestial quality that first drew her professional attention, then provoked her personal greed.
The quiet was such that Nina heard the second hand of her watch sweeping time off the dial.
“I don’t pray,” she said.
END