![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Part 4 of the supervillain fic. More serious conversations, this time with more backstory on Sphinx and Barbara. I just ... keep thinking that this whole thing isn't something that happens fast or can be rushed through. Heh.
Title: Naming Names
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Genghis Khan Music Video - Miike Snow
Characters/Pairings: Michael White (Secret Agent), Sphinx (Supervillain), Barbara (Supervillain's Wife). Michael/Sphinx
Summary: One last serious conversation before Sphinx finally brings his lover home
Wordcount: 2951
Warnings/Notes: Supervillains, backstory, marital problems, new loves
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: Naming Names
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Genghis Khan Music Video - Miike Snow
Characters/Pairings: Michael White (Secret Agent), Sphinx (Supervillain), Barbara (Supervillain's Wife). Michael/Sphinx
Summary: One last serious conversation before Sphinx finally brings his lover home
Wordcount: 2951
Warnings/Notes: Supervillains, backstory, marital problems, new loves
Disclaimer: Not mine
Naming Names
The base was almost fully decommissioned by the time Sphinx actually brought him home. Michael had been ... he hadn't been beginning to doubt, exactly, he knew that kind of thing took time, it wasn't ... He hadn't doubted. It was just that promises had a way of not getting carried through in this business, that was all. It trained a man to expect certain things.
But no. Sphinx wasn't like that. If nothing else, if the man said he'd do something, he followed through. However lethal and/or impossible the thing might be. Or just, in this particular case, however emotional and exhausting and horribly difficult it might be.
"Barbara won't be there," his villain explained, pacing nervously around his office. He kept smoothing one hand back across his head, then bringing it back down and wringing it gently against the other one. He was more nervous than Michael had ever seen him. "She said ... She said she doesn't object, and she's not leaving the kids, but she wants time to think. Away from me. From us. She's going to ... She won't be there. I think she meant to be gone by the time we get home. You probably won't meet her."
"... Oh," Michael said. Rather blankly, but he wasn't sure what reaction he was supposed to have to that. Relief? Was relief acceptable? He didn't want to be difficult, but he also didn't want to get shot. Or face someone whose life he had taken apart. He'd done that a time or two before. It never ended well, and it always made him sick to his stomach. He didn't want to start a ... a possible life with Sphinx that way.
Maybe some of that came through. Some hint of ... worry, or guilt, or blank terror. Sphinx paused in his pacing, those sharp blue eyes coming back to Michael and taking in his expression, and then ... Sphinx came over. He moved to stand in front of Michael's chair and held down both his hands, waiting patiently until Michael took them so that he could brush his thumbs gently across Michael's knuckles. It made a knot come loose in Michael's chest. He didn't know why. It also made tears almost spring to his eyes.
"I know this isn't easy," Sphinx told him quietly. "It's not your fault. Barbara and I ... It's my mess, not yours. I made mistakes, made them years ago, and I ... I let them continue. Because I didn't want to have to change things, because until you came along I had no reason to make the effort. That's my fault, not yours. I'm the one who lied to her, by omission if nothing else, and I'm the one who hurt her. That's my mistake to make right. You don't have to worry about it."
Michael huffed out a little laugh at that. "No offence," he said, glancing sideways, "but most mistakes I've come across in this business tend to be the fatal kind. I think I'm allowed to worry about that, aren't I?"
Sphinx gripped his hands, tugged them up to make Michael look at him. His expression was fierce, intense, when Michael dared it.
“No one will be killing you,” the villain growled determinedly, and then paused to look mildly uncertain and a bit sheepish. “And Barbara and I won’t kill each other either. Probably. She wouldn’t do that to Ellie and Robert. I’m nearly sure she wouldn’t.”
“… Reassuring,” Michael commented dryly, and shook his head at Sphinx’ apologetic grimace. “No, it’s all right. I’m sorry. It’s just the whole … Things like this don’t happen to people like me. I’m an agent, you’re a villain. It’s almost contractually required that things like this don’t work for us. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, that’s all.”
Sphinx huffed agreeably. “I do know what you mean,” he said, smiling warmly as he moved over to sit beside Michael instead, perched on the arm of the chair. Michael was vaguely tempted to tug him down, into his lap, but refrained for the moment. “But it can work, you know. We can make it work. Barbara and I did, at least for a while. You and I can manage that much as well, and more. I'm sure of it.”
Michael paused there. Hesitated, because the question he wanted to ask was almost certainly very unwise, and more than a little masochistic as well. But, much like the urge to poke at bullet wounds, it wouldn’t go away. So he asked it.
“Did you love her?” he asked, very carefully. “Do you still? I mean … What you had with her is unusual enough itself. I haven’t met too many married supervillains before. Not the way you two are. Why did you … Did you love her?”
Sphinx paused, an odd expression flickering across his face. He didn’t seem upset, though. He didn’t seem angry to be asked. He mostly seemed confused, in a slightly less violent fashion than he’d been when struggling with his desire for Michael these last few months.
“I don’t know,” the man said at last, soft and distant. “I thought I did. At the time, I mean. But I’ve never … I don’t remember it feeling like this, like you. There wasn’t the same … I don’t remember this heat, this desperation. It wasn’t like that with us. I don’t know what that means. She wasn’t … We wanted something different. The both of us. I think we wanted … to prove that we could have it.”
Michael blinked at him. “Have what?” he asked, curiously and cautiously. There was something strange in Sphinx’ face just then. Something he didn’t know how to read.
Sphinx looked back at him. “A life,” he said, both simply and with a world of very complicated things behind it. “We wanted to prove that people like us could have a life. She used to work for one of the big names in the business. I met her when her employer captured me. She was supposed to … She was meant to kill me. She was very good at that, back then. She terrified everyone who ever met her. I’d been trying to … I hadn’t quite made it as a villain in my own right yet, I was trying to start out, and several of the bigger supervillains back then objected. Her employer was one of them. But then it turned out … that Barbara wasn’t.”
Michael stared at him, at the expressions on his face, fascinated. He probably shouldn’t have been. He should have been worried, terrified, jealous. At the fact that the woman he was helping Sphinx to betray used to kill people for a living, at the deep fondness in Sphinx’ voice, talking about this, about her, and the wistfulness too. It should have made Michael sick with fear and jealousy. But instead he … there was so much he didn’t know about his lover yet. So many things. He knew almost nothing about Sphinx. He didn’t even know if the man’s name was ‘Sphinx’, he realised distantly. It couldn’t be, really. That had to be an alias, a nom-de-guerre. It hadn’t seemed very important before. Names had never been the important part of Michael’s … He’d been thinking ‘relationships’, but he’d never had any, had he? Not like this, not since he’d become an agent. Nothing real. The lack of a name, of knowledge and familiarity, had been habit. He’d been letting it ride, following his training and keeping his distance as an agent without ever even realising it.
He’d been content not to know anything. These past few days, he’d been content not to ask too many questions, and mostly because … because it didn’t feel real yet. Because the other shoe was still to drop. Because relationships like this didn’t work. So he’d been waiting for it not to. He’d been content with only the promise of the thing, because he knew the reality would never arrive.
God. God, a man did get used to living a lie, didn’t he? So much so that he might never even notice.
“You’re not really human, you know,” Sphinx was saying, almost absently to himself. “Actually, I suppose you would. When you work for one of them, you’re just pieces in the game. She wanted something else. I wanted something else. She’d heard enough about me to listen. She rescued me, I helped her kill the bastard. And, well. I suppose it’s easy to love someone who spares your life, and who wants the same things as you. Or think you love them, maybe. I suppose we just thought ... I'm not sure I knew there was anything else."
"... Anything else like what?" Michael asked. He hadn't meant to. He hadn't intended to be so blatant about his need for reassurance. It was only that ... Loving, or thinking you loved, someone who spared your life and wanted the same things as you. That didn't sound familiar at all. And if it hadn't worked for Barbara ...
But Sphinx looked over at him, that shy, amazed smile on his face again, the corners of his eyes crinkling with confused delight. Confusion. They'd both been so bloody confused by it. This thing, whatever it was. This love.
"This feeling," his villain said, looking down at his hands, now calmer against each other in his lap. "Warmth. Tingles. Wanting to dance. All the time, you're very annoying that way, even my people can only take so many musical numbers a day. Heat, too. I don't think I ever had that with Barbara. We wanted ... We tried, and it wasn't bad, and then we had Ellie ... She was so perfect, you know. This tiny little screaming bundle of anger and joy. We wanted that, so we kept going, but then Robert came, and those assassins almost found them, and Barbara didn't want any more. Children. I don't ... I don't know whether or not she wanted anything else. I never asked. I don't know ... if it ever occurred to me." He grimaced, looking back up. "I may not be the best of partners. You ... you should probably know that in advance."
Michael didn't laugh. He didn't, Sphinx looked too serious and ashamed for that, but it was a close thing. It would have been mildly hysterical, had he let it out, so it was probably best for the both of them that he hadn't. But really. Sphinx was a supervillain. They were well past the point of less-than-ideal partners here. And Sphinx wasn't ... he hadn't ...
"... You make me want to dance too," Michael said, quietly and a lot more sappily than his dignity would once have allowed, but it was worth it to see shame morph into baffled delight once more on his villain's face. Michael reached out, rested his hand on Sphinx' arm. "You're probably the first person who's ever done that that's been willing to have me as well. Anything else ... anything else we can work out as it comes. All right?"
Sphinx beamed at him, that dazzling, disbelieving smile all over again, and god, god, Michael needed him to stop doing that. It was so hard to think when the man did that. Michael had played the seduction game with a lot of people, even if most of them had been the wrong gender to really hook him, and he'd never ... he'd never seen anyone smile like Sphinx. How the hell was it fair that the supervillain had the most honest and breathtaking smile Michael had ever seen? How was that fair to anybody?
And he needed ... he needed to stop thinking like this, too. He realised that, catching the reserve on the edge of his thoughts, realising that he was trying to distance himself again. What did it matter if it was fair? Sphinx had already caught him, hadn't he? It wasn't like Michael needed a clear head to maintain his ... his objectivity and his ability to sell the man down the river the second the opportunity presented itself. He wasn't going to. He'd made a choice, he wasn't going to go back. He didn't ... he didn't have to think anymore. At least not about this. He didn't have to shove his emotions aside, strangle the hot, aching thing in his chest the better to be able to betray the man. He didn't ... he didn't have to. Not anymore.
That was freedom, wasn't it. That's all it was. Being able to feel, and not having to betray it. Oh god. This thing was going to kill him. This thing was going to kill them both.
Hell of a way to go, though. And there, too, Michael was something of an expert.
"... What's your name?" he asked, an odd, squashed sort of humour in his chest. Sphinx blinked rapidly. Well, it was a bit out of the blue, Michael supposed. Sphinx wasn't a mind-reader. A pretty good interrogator, yes, when he needed to be, but he couldn't read minds. Even if he could have, Michael wasn't sure his own thoughts would have been coherent enough to follow. He grinned crookedly, gathered one of Sphinx' hands into his own. Explained a little, because why not? Why not be honest now, when there was no going back? "It occurs to me that I don't know it, you see. I'm, ah. I'm meeting your children this evening. I'm ... going home with you. And I still don't know your real name."
Sphinx blinked some more, this time in a sort stunned realisation as well. Michael could almost see it, see how the issue hadn't occurred to Sphinx either. He wondered vaguely how long it had taken him and Barbara to learn each other's names. If they even had? Had she been calling him 'Sphinx' all this time too? The thought was almost funny, and rather unbearably sad.
"... It's Reg," Sphinx said at last, almost dazedly. "Reginald. I don't ... I don't really have a surname anymore. We usually just pick an alias. It was ... It was Sphinx Barbara married. I've been Sphinx since Eritrea. When we pulled out, those of us who'd survived Solomon, we regrouped in Egypt. I saw ... and you know, with his gift to me, it seemed appropriate." He grinned vaguely, gestured down across his face. "I just ... I never looked back. But I'm Reg. Under it, I suppose, I'll always be Reg. Just ... Reg Sphinx now, I guess."
He huffed out this little laugh, as if only just now realising this himself, and Michael felt something squeeze in his chest. This wave of ... of something, some swamping, desperate fondness, a need to protect and kill for and keep safe. He'd never felt anything like it. He'd never wanted, never loved quite like this. Not once. Not ever. Only this man.
He licked his lips, eyes bright and voice heavy with that feeling, and tugged Sphinx' hand towards his chest. "Pleased to meet you, Reg Sphinx," he said, feeling his face crinkle with his smile. "I'm Michael White. And yes, despite what you may have thought, it is my birth name. It's ... It's been a pleasure to fall in love with you so far."
Sphinx, Reg, stared at him. Just for a second. Then this smile crossed his face, this great, savage thing, and he reached up with his spare hand to catch the back of Michael's neck, to hold it gently and guide Michael in to rest their foreheads against each other. The gold across his eyebrow was surprisingly warm, if still cooler than his skin. His hand against the nape of Michael's neck felt like the most perfect thing in the world.
"The pleasure's been mine, Mr White," his villain growled happily. "The pleasure's been all mine. I can't wait to have you home. I can't wait to show you ... They'll love you. Ellie and Robert. I know they'll love you. You have a knack for making people do that."
Which Michael wasn't at all sure about, his stomach lurching slightly at the thought, the terror of it, but he ignored that for now. Same as he ignored the new and niggling knowledge that Mrs Barbara Sphinx had apparently been an assassin of some note once upon a time. He shoved those aside, for once pushing away practical concerns in favour of the feeling throbbing in his chest, and leaned in to press a kiss to the tip of his villain's golden nose. The corner of his mouth. The centre of it. Michael leaned in and, for once in his life, let emotion have control.
"Do you mind if we tango for a bit?" he asked roughly, when he leaned back to find his villain blinking up at him, his face soft and his eyes half-lidded. Michael swallowed, the hot feeling in his heart swooping southward, and tried a dazed, savage grin of his own. "I want to ... to work out some nerves, and maybe work up something else. Do you mind?"
Sphinx took a second to parse that, still half lost in the kiss, and then he laughed. Bright and soft and happy. "I'd dance with you from here to eternity, Michael," he said, with complete confidence and sincerity. "You lead on. I'll follow."
Which was the inverse of the rest of their new life, Michael thought with some humour, but that hardly mattered either.
Because lead or follow, from this point on, they were taking their steps together.
A/N: Reginald. From Wikipedia: "This Germanic name is composed of two elements: the first ragin, meaning "advice", "counsel", "decision"; the second element is wald, meaning "rule", "ruler"." Also he just seemed like a Reg. Heh.
The base was almost fully decommissioned by the time Sphinx actually brought him home. Michael had been ... he hadn't been beginning to doubt, exactly, he knew that kind of thing took time, it wasn't ... He hadn't doubted. It was just that promises had a way of not getting carried through in this business, that was all. It trained a man to expect certain things.
But no. Sphinx wasn't like that. If nothing else, if the man said he'd do something, he followed through. However lethal and/or impossible the thing might be. Or just, in this particular case, however emotional and exhausting and horribly difficult it might be.
"Barbara won't be there," his villain explained, pacing nervously around his office. He kept smoothing one hand back across his head, then bringing it back down and wringing it gently against the other one. He was more nervous than Michael had ever seen him. "She said ... She said she doesn't object, and she's not leaving the kids, but she wants time to think. Away from me. From us. She's going to ... She won't be there. I think she meant to be gone by the time we get home. You probably won't meet her."
"... Oh," Michael said. Rather blankly, but he wasn't sure what reaction he was supposed to have to that. Relief? Was relief acceptable? He didn't want to be difficult, but he also didn't want to get shot. Or face someone whose life he had taken apart. He'd done that a time or two before. It never ended well, and it always made him sick to his stomach. He didn't want to start a ... a possible life with Sphinx that way.
Maybe some of that came through. Some hint of ... worry, or guilt, or blank terror. Sphinx paused in his pacing, those sharp blue eyes coming back to Michael and taking in his expression, and then ... Sphinx came over. He moved to stand in front of Michael's chair and held down both his hands, waiting patiently until Michael took them so that he could brush his thumbs gently across Michael's knuckles. It made a knot come loose in Michael's chest. He didn't know why. It also made tears almost spring to his eyes.
"I know this isn't easy," Sphinx told him quietly. "It's not your fault. Barbara and I ... It's my mess, not yours. I made mistakes, made them years ago, and I ... I let them continue. Because I didn't want to have to change things, because until you came along I had no reason to make the effort. That's my fault, not yours. I'm the one who lied to her, by omission if nothing else, and I'm the one who hurt her. That's my mistake to make right. You don't have to worry about it."
Michael huffed out a little laugh at that. "No offence," he said, glancing sideways, "but most mistakes I've come across in this business tend to be the fatal kind. I think I'm allowed to worry about that, aren't I?"
Sphinx gripped his hands, tugged them up to make Michael look at him. His expression was fierce, intense, when Michael dared it.
“No one will be killing you,” the villain growled determinedly, and then paused to look mildly uncertain and a bit sheepish. “And Barbara and I won’t kill each other either. Probably. She wouldn’t do that to Ellie and Robert. I’m nearly sure she wouldn’t.”
“… Reassuring,” Michael commented dryly, and shook his head at Sphinx’ apologetic grimace. “No, it’s all right. I’m sorry. It’s just the whole … Things like this don’t happen to people like me. I’m an agent, you’re a villain. It’s almost contractually required that things like this don’t work for us. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, that’s all.”
Sphinx huffed agreeably. “I do know what you mean,” he said, smiling warmly as he moved over to sit beside Michael instead, perched on the arm of the chair. Michael was vaguely tempted to tug him down, into his lap, but refrained for the moment. “But it can work, you know. We can make it work. Barbara and I did, at least for a while. You and I can manage that much as well, and more. I'm sure of it.”
Michael paused there. Hesitated, because the question he wanted to ask was almost certainly very unwise, and more than a little masochistic as well. But, much like the urge to poke at bullet wounds, it wouldn’t go away. So he asked it.
“Did you love her?” he asked, very carefully. “Do you still? I mean … What you had with her is unusual enough itself. I haven’t met too many married supervillains before. Not the way you two are. Why did you … Did you love her?”
Sphinx paused, an odd expression flickering across his face. He didn’t seem upset, though. He didn’t seem angry to be asked. He mostly seemed confused, in a slightly less violent fashion than he’d been when struggling with his desire for Michael these last few months.
“I don’t know,” the man said at last, soft and distant. “I thought I did. At the time, I mean. But I’ve never … I don’t remember it feeling like this, like you. There wasn’t the same … I don’t remember this heat, this desperation. It wasn’t like that with us. I don’t know what that means. She wasn’t … We wanted something different. The both of us. I think we wanted … to prove that we could have it.”
Michael blinked at him. “Have what?” he asked, curiously and cautiously. There was something strange in Sphinx’ face just then. Something he didn’t know how to read.
Sphinx looked back at him. “A life,” he said, both simply and with a world of very complicated things behind it. “We wanted to prove that people like us could have a life. She used to work for one of the big names in the business. I met her when her employer captured me. She was supposed to … She was meant to kill me. She was very good at that, back then. She terrified everyone who ever met her. I’d been trying to … I hadn’t quite made it as a villain in my own right yet, I was trying to start out, and several of the bigger supervillains back then objected. Her employer was one of them. But then it turned out … that Barbara wasn’t.”
Michael stared at him, at the expressions on his face, fascinated. He probably shouldn’t have been. He should have been worried, terrified, jealous. At the fact that the woman he was helping Sphinx to betray used to kill people for a living, at the deep fondness in Sphinx’ voice, talking about this, about her, and the wistfulness too. It should have made Michael sick with fear and jealousy. But instead he … there was so much he didn’t know about his lover yet. So many things. He knew almost nothing about Sphinx. He didn’t even know if the man’s name was ‘Sphinx’, he realised distantly. It couldn’t be, really. That had to be an alias, a nom-de-guerre. It hadn’t seemed very important before. Names had never been the important part of Michael’s … He’d been thinking ‘relationships’, but he’d never had any, had he? Not like this, not since he’d become an agent. Nothing real. The lack of a name, of knowledge and familiarity, had been habit. He’d been letting it ride, following his training and keeping his distance as an agent without ever even realising it.
He’d been content not to know anything. These past few days, he’d been content not to ask too many questions, and mostly because … because it didn’t feel real yet. Because the other shoe was still to drop. Because relationships like this didn’t work. So he’d been waiting for it not to. He’d been content with only the promise of the thing, because he knew the reality would never arrive.
God. God, a man did get used to living a lie, didn’t he? So much so that he might never even notice.
“You’re not really human, you know,” Sphinx was saying, almost absently to himself. “Actually, I suppose you would. When you work for one of them, you’re just pieces in the game. She wanted something else. I wanted something else. She’d heard enough about me to listen. She rescued me, I helped her kill the bastard. And, well. I suppose it’s easy to love someone who spares your life, and who wants the same things as you. Or think you love them, maybe. I suppose we just thought ... I'm not sure I knew there was anything else."
"... Anything else like what?" Michael asked. He hadn't meant to. He hadn't intended to be so blatant about his need for reassurance. It was only that ... Loving, or thinking you loved, someone who spared your life and wanted the same things as you. That didn't sound familiar at all. And if it hadn't worked for Barbara ...
But Sphinx looked over at him, that shy, amazed smile on his face again, the corners of his eyes crinkling with confused delight. Confusion. They'd both been so bloody confused by it. This thing, whatever it was. This love.
"This feeling," his villain said, looking down at his hands, now calmer against each other in his lap. "Warmth. Tingles. Wanting to dance. All the time, you're very annoying that way, even my people can only take so many musical numbers a day. Heat, too. I don't think I ever had that with Barbara. We wanted ... We tried, and it wasn't bad, and then we had Ellie ... She was so perfect, you know. This tiny little screaming bundle of anger and joy. We wanted that, so we kept going, but then Robert came, and those assassins almost found them, and Barbara didn't want any more. Children. I don't ... I don't know whether or not she wanted anything else. I never asked. I don't know ... if it ever occurred to me." He grimaced, looking back up. "I may not be the best of partners. You ... you should probably know that in advance."
Michael didn't laugh. He didn't, Sphinx looked too serious and ashamed for that, but it was a close thing. It would have been mildly hysterical, had he let it out, so it was probably best for the both of them that he hadn't. But really. Sphinx was a supervillain. They were well past the point of less-than-ideal partners here. And Sphinx wasn't ... he hadn't ...
"... You make me want to dance too," Michael said, quietly and a lot more sappily than his dignity would once have allowed, but it was worth it to see shame morph into baffled delight once more on his villain's face. Michael reached out, rested his hand on Sphinx' arm. "You're probably the first person who's ever done that that's been willing to have me as well. Anything else ... anything else we can work out as it comes. All right?"
Sphinx beamed at him, that dazzling, disbelieving smile all over again, and god, god, Michael needed him to stop doing that. It was so hard to think when the man did that. Michael had played the seduction game with a lot of people, even if most of them had been the wrong gender to really hook him, and he'd never ... he'd never seen anyone smile like Sphinx. How the hell was it fair that the supervillain had the most honest and breathtaking smile Michael had ever seen? How was that fair to anybody?
And he needed ... he needed to stop thinking like this, too. He realised that, catching the reserve on the edge of his thoughts, realising that he was trying to distance himself again. What did it matter if it was fair? Sphinx had already caught him, hadn't he? It wasn't like Michael needed a clear head to maintain his ... his objectivity and his ability to sell the man down the river the second the opportunity presented itself. He wasn't going to. He'd made a choice, he wasn't going to go back. He didn't ... he didn't have to think anymore. At least not about this. He didn't have to shove his emotions aside, strangle the hot, aching thing in his chest the better to be able to betray the man. He didn't ... he didn't have to. Not anymore.
That was freedom, wasn't it. That's all it was. Being able to feel, and not having to betray it. Oh god. This thing was going to kill him. This thing was going to kill them both.
Hell of a way to go, though. And there, too, Michael was something of an expert.
"... What's your name?" he asked, an odd, squashed sort of humour in his chest. Sphinx blinked rapidly. Well, it was a bit out of the blue, Michael supposed. Sphinx wasn't a mind-reader. A pretty good interrogator, yes, when he needed to be, but he couldn't read minds. Even if he could have, Michael wasn't sure his own thoughts would have been coherent enough to follow. He grinned crookedly, gathered one of Sphinx' hands into his own. Explained a little, because why not? Why not be honest now, when there was no going back? "It occurs to me that I don't know it, you see. I'm, ah. I'm meeting your children this evening. I'm ... going home with you. And I still don't know your real name."
Sphinx blinked some more, this time in a sort stunned realisation as well. Michael could almost see it, see how the issue hadn't occurred to Sphinx either. He wondered vaguely how long it had taken him and Barbara to learn each other's names. If they even had? Had she been calling him 'Sphinx' all this time too? The thought was almost funny, and rather unbearably sad.
"... It's Reg," Sphinx said at last, almost dazedly. "Reginald. I don't ... I don't really have a surname anymore. We usually just pick an alias. It was ... It was Sphinx Barbara married. I've been Sphinx since Eritrea. When we pulled out, those of us who'd survived Solomon, we regrouped in Egypt. I saw ... and you know, with his gift to me, it seemed appropriate." He grinned vaguely, gestured down across his face. "I just ... I never looked back. But I'm Reg. Under it, I suppose, I'll always be Reg. Just ... Reg Sphinx now, I guess."
He huffed out this little laugh, as if only just now realising this himself, and Michael felt something squeeze in his chest. This wave of ... of something, some swamping, desperate fondness, a need to protect and kill for and keep safe. He'd never felt anything like it. He'd never wanted, never loved quite like this. Not once. Not ever. Only this man.
He licked his lips, eyes bright and voice heavy with that feeling, and tugged Sphinx' hand towards his chest. "Pleased to meet you, Reg Sphinx," he said, feeling his face crinkle with his smile. "I'm Michael White. And yes, despite what you may have thought, it is my birth name. It's ... It's been a pleasure to fall in love with you so far."
Sphinx, Reg, stared at him. Just for a second. Then this smile crossed his face, this great, savage thing, and he reached up with his spare hand to catch the back of Michael's neck, to hold it gently and guide Michael in to rest their foreheads against each other. The gold across his eyebrow was surprisingly warm, if still cooler than his skin. His hand against the nape of Michael's neck felt like the most perfect thing in the world.
"The pleasure's been mine, Mr White," his villain growled happily. "The pleasure's been all mine. I can't wait to have you home. I can't wait to show you ... They'll love you. Ellie and Robert. I know they'll love you. You have a knack for making people do that."
Which Michael wasn't at all sure about, his stomach lurching slightly at the thought, the terror of it, but he ignored that for now. Same as he ignored the new and niggling knowledge that Mrs Barbara Sphinx had apparently been an assassin of some note once upon a time. He shoved those aside, for once pushing away practical concerns in favour of the feeling throbbing in his chest, and leaned in to press a kiss to the tip of his villain's golden nose. The corner of his mouth. The centre of it. Michael leaned in and, for once in his life, let emotion have control.
"Do you mind if we tango for a bit?" he asked roughly, when he leaned back to find his villain blinking up at him, his face soft and his eyes half-lidded. Michael swallowed, the hot feeling in his heart swooping southward, and tried a dazed, savage grin of his own. "I want to ... to work out some nerves, and maybe work up something else. Do you mind?"
Sphinx took a second to parse that, still half lost in the kiss, and then he laughed. Bright and soft and happy. "I'd dance with you from here to eternity, Michael," he said, with complete confidence and sincerity. "You lead on. I'll follow."
Which was the inverse of the rest of their new life, Michael thought with some humour, but that hardly mattered either.
Because lead or follow, from this point on, they were taking their steps together.
A/N: Reginald. From Wikipedia: "This Germanic name is composed of two elements: the first ragin, meaning "advice", "counsel", "decision"; the second element is wald, meaning "rule", "ruler"." Also he just seemed like a Reg. Heh.
Tags: