This was written as an exercise to help me focus on the different ways Tom and Sloan view their sexual/romantic relationship. It came out a bit different than I originally intended, but I like it. Hope you do, too!
Tom and Sloan are not my own characters, they are the property of Warner Bros. And no copyright infringement is intended here.
************
So they finally got their dinner - a couple of hours late, but worth the wait. She hoped. Anyway, it was time to test her theory. After all what was the point of being an anthropologist if you couldn't sort out something as basic as courtship rituals.
As they got up, she started clearing the table.
"Here, let me help." Tom picked up his own plate and the salad bowl.
"Thanks." Sloan said. She smiled at him and followed him into the kitchen area to set the dishes in the sink.
She watched him walk in front of her, graceful, in control. Always in control. Even when they made love she felt that he never truly let go. It was always wonderful, but sometimes she felt almost as if he had choreographed every stroke and kiss. She wondered what it would take to drive him wild.
Tom started rinsing the dishes and placing them in the dishwasher.
"Hey, just leave them. We'll do them tomorrow." Sloan turned the water off and gently took Tom's plate out of his hands brushing his fingers lightly. She placed them, damp, in the sink and then leaned across the sink for a towel to dry her hands. Tom stepped back out of her way but he was still close enough that she could feel the heat of his body as she held her stretch over the counter just a heartbeat longer than absolutely necessary, lowering her head slightly, know that with her hair pulled up he would have a clear view of the nape of her neck. And he liked her neck. He watched it. Stroked it sometimes after they'd made love.
It felt a little awkward, although it was not that different, she supposed, from the time in the motel when she had used turning out the light as an excuse to bush up against him with her breasts. The big difference was she'd been completely certain that would work.
She stood up and turned to face Tom, smiling, and hoping she wasn't blushing. Then she saw his eyes and knew that she had definitely hit on something, she just wasn't sure what.
He was fixed on her.
His eyes had lost their color and were open wide, staring at her - at her throat. He stood taut as if ready to spring. His breathing came just slightly faster and somehow his face had changed, too, it was all planes and angles now, as if a layer of humanity had been stripped from him.
She'd seen this face once before: the night he had come to campus to kill her. For a split second she was back there, running down the halls, trying doors that were locked, running outside desperate for escape to the point that standing in front of a bus was preferable to facing the hunter that was coming up behind her.
But here she faced him.
The towel slipped, forgotten, from her fingers, but it hardly had time to fall as Tom whipped out his hand and caught it in mid-air. Sloan jerked back, banging sharply into the kitchen counter behind her. Trapped.
***
Tom had thought he was prepared for the evening.
When he and Sloan had first met he'd relied on his training to interpret Sloan's emotions and actions. What Lewis and the Chameleon Program had taught him about human relationships had all been aimed at manipulating the target towards whatever the goal of the mission was, and it of course relied on the fact that the chameleon had no feelings for the target. With Sloan he'd made some mistakes and misinterpreted things at first, been a little slow on the uptake, as Ed had teased him once. But that had gradually changed.
He had learned Sloan's emotions, like learning a foreign language: silky grayness that meant she wanted to be quiet and think, the rippling clear thoughts she projected whenever she was working on a new project, her warm, encompassing love and the slick heat of desire. Carefully, building on his training without entirely trusting it, he explored responses to these feelings. He made mental note of what pleased her and discarded what did not, unconsciously falling back into the training routine of the Program, where one worked hard to please trainers that did not necessarily set out explicit standards.
So tonight when he had felt her desire rising, he had not been concerned. He enjoyed the heat and felt it answered within himself. They would make love tonight, after dinner, he thought. Perhaps on the couch or the pillows in front of the fireplace? Would she like that?
He had been in perfect control until they'd gone in the kitchen. When she stretched across him to pick up the towel he'd known she didn't really want him to step back. It was a game she was playing and he had smiled taking only a half step back so that he could enjoy how she brushed up against him while still being able to see the play of muscles across her back, shoulders, ... neck.
Her hair was up and her top cut low in the back and just off the shoulder. Tom felt Sloan's mood change subtly, the desire still strong, but laced through now with an offering, a risk of self-esteem, a wish to be found pleasing. He sensed these things from her and saw the arch of her neck below him and suddenly had a primal urge to possess.
This female.
He wanted her.
Instincts he'd never felt so strongly before were telling him to take what she offered, to pull her up by her neck and satisfy both their desires. He flashed on images of the two of them kissing, biting, mating...
She stood up smiling, but froze as soon as she saw his face.
What do I look like? What does she see? He reached for her presence and felt the terror, desperation, the need to escape. And he knew then exactly what she saw. He remembered each part of the pattern of emotions that he had followed that night through the Whitney campus. Amazed when she had run in front of a bus to force it to stop, banged on the door until the driver had let her on so that she could escape the hunter. Escape him.
And now she stood here before him, backed up against the sink as far as she could go, and she was terrified.
Tom closed his eyes and focused on distancing himself from his desires, blocking everything, even Sloan for a moment, in order to bring himself back into control.
"Tom?"
He opened his eyes and saw that she had moved closer to him. She had not run or reached for something to defend herself. She stood with her hands open and held a little out to her sides, and he recognized that she had fallen into the same stance that he had used on her earlier in parking lot. A posture that advertised her lack of threat. He dropped his shielding and found that her fear had been replaced by concern and ... guilt?
"I'm sorry." She said quietly. "I know I don't have to be afraid of you. It's just... the look on your face... it reminded me of-"
"I know." He reached out and she came willingly into his arms. He closed his eyes again, still wanting her too much. "But that's who I am, Sloan. That's what I am."