Five Things Wrong
Rating: PG-13ish for language
Pairing: Vaughn/Weiss
Disclaimer: I don’t own them. Imitation is the highest form of compliment.
Spoilers: Pre-show. No Sydney Bristow, No Lauren Reed, and certainly no plot to speak of.
Feedback: Flowers need water and writers need feedback. Be kind, water a writer today. shadesofbrixton@yahoo.com
Archive: Take it anywhere, but drop me a line so I know where it goes.
Author’s Notes: Written for the Weiss Ficathon (June 28), for fatema. I am a procrastinating whore, so this is unbetaed. Any mistakes are purely my own. Her only requirements were to have it be Weiss/Vaughn, and to have it be funny. Much harder than I expected...I've never had to *try* to be funny before. Damn.
Summary: Vaughn and Weiss train as partners after Weiss’ recruitment. Now with 30% more Haladki!
Five Things Wrong
Weiss took a balancing breath, rested his head against the cool, rough granite, and closed his eyes. His fingers clutched neatly in the rock, expertly finding their holds, and the security wire that pinned him to the cliff was taut around his form.
He opened his eyes again, the rock foremost in his vision, and without turning his head at all, said: “How do we get ourselves into these situations?”
Vaughn shifted awkwardly, shoving Weiss against the rock face with his hips. “I’m not really sure.”
“Stop pushing at me,” Weiss growled, the hopelessness of the situation boiling in his skin.
“If I can…just…” Vaughn shifted again and Weiss’ cheek grated into the stone. “Damn. Sorry, Weiss.”
They were now spooned, Weiss’ back to Vaughn’s front, Vaughn clutching at the shorter man’s forearms for his not-so-dear-now-that-he’d-fouled-up life.
“The next time your security wire breaks, just let go, okay?” Weiss grumbled. “You’re a better friend in a casket than you are right now.”
Vaughn didn’t dignify him with a response. Instead, he began tugging on Weiss’ safety line.
“Hey!” Weiss batted at his gloved hand. “Excuse me, we need that.”
Vaughn’s hand retracted out of Weiss’ field of vision. “I thought we could just…you know, pull ourselves up.”
Weiss’ limbs gave an involuntary spasm and set the climbing gear to clinking. “Pull ourselves up? Do you even come to the training sessions anymore? Jesus, Mike…” he shook his head. “I could have pulled myself up. The two of us, together…no. Not going to happen.”
“So what am I supposed to do?” Vaughn sounded like a tiny child denied a shiny bit of plastic. “Sit here until we rot off the rope?”
“There’s an idea,” Weiss muttered to the cliff. Then, louder: “Look, I can’t move because of your graceful weight – ” he tried to push back to demonstrate but only got a back-full of Vaughn’s mass. “So look around. See if there’s any place you could…um…hang.”
“Hang?” Vaughn said warily.
“While I climb up, and then throw the rope down to you,” Weiss explained. “Were those small enough words?”
Vaughn pushed his weight away from the other man, craning his neck.. “Even if we do find a spot, you expect me to just hold on?”
“I’m a fast climber,” Weiss said dryly. “Have you found a spot or not?”
A moment of silence while Vaughn scanned the rock with his eyes. Weiss could feel the tension building in his shoulders, the pain in his lungs, and tried not to think about the steady pressure of the illusion of safety presented behind him.
“There. To our left. See it there?” Vaughn’s voice had regained it’s clipped, businesslike tone. Weiss shifted his head as best he could to follow the pointed finger.
“Swing on my count,” Weiss told him, and prepared to drag them bodily along the rock face. With a count to three and a “now” through clenched teeth, they made their way a foot closer to the crevice.
“Again?” Vaughn suggested, and Weiss gave a sharp nod. “One, two – fuckshit.” Vaughn lost grip with one hand and went scrabbling down Weiss’ torso. Weiss had the distinct feeling he was about to have his pants pulled off.
A moment of silence, while Weiss swore blue murder into the rock.
Vaughn still had one hand hooked into the back harness of Weiss’ wire gear, and the other one had hooked onto his belt. Weiss could feel the man sigh.
“Weiss,” Vaughn called timidly. “Eric. I’m going to let go.”
Weiss wanted to pound his face against the rock. “Fine, Vaughn. Fine. Let go.”
And then he felt approximately 170 lbs lighter.
There was a sharp crack below him, and with a sigh, Weiss began to rappel down the side of the cliff.
When he got to the bottom, Vaughn was waiting for him, moaning about his hurt back and the wind knocked out of him. Weiss leaned over him, the blue mat squashing awkwardly under his feet and ruining his menacing posture. “I hope you’re happy,” Weiss said wryly.
Kendall was waiting for them on the side of the mat. “Full marks for improvisation,” he said in a scientific tone. “Failure to complete the mission will cost you. Report back in two days, we’ll run it through again.”
Weiss was struggling out of the wire harness. “Maybe you could check the gear? I have a feeling Vaughn’s weight calibrations are off. Could be he’s shy about his girlish figure.” He cast a glare in Vaughn’s direction, who was currently struggling to get up off the mat. “Might want to add a few picks to the climb-pack, too. I could’ve used one up there.”
Kendall grunted his assent, scribbled a note on his clipboard, and then turned away to call out “Deluhy and Findler! On deck!”
Weiss dragged himself toward the locker room of the CIA gym, wincing as the muscles in his shoulders made themselves known. Vaughn trotted after him, full of energy, and slapped him between his wing bones.
“Tired?” Vaughn’s voice suggested he was anything but.
“Oh, no, I’m ready to get right back up there,” Weiss said flatly. “Because I didn’t just support your body weight for the better part of an hour, and end up failing the training anyway. No, that was just fine.” He slammed his locker open and went digging for a towel. “Haladki’s never going to let us hear the end of this.”
Vaughn leaned up against the cool steel of the lockers. “Weiss? You’re not really mad at me, are you?”
Weiss spared him a glance before turning away for the showers.
“Eric?” Vaughn peeled himself off the row of lockers.
“I’ll see you at home,” Weiss clipped him off before he disappeared into the steam.
* * *
The blue wire connected smoothly with the bomb’s base, and the malleable plastic explosive nested nicely in between a digital timer and a second bundle of wires – one that Weiss had saved for the last thirty seconds, because he knew they would be the easier part of the operation. For now, he was trying to splice the remaining wire of his jacked remote control into the bomb’s communication sequence.
With a pair of eyebrow tweezers.
He still had five minutes. It was plenty of time. He’d done it in less time than that, with worse equipment. Upside down. Underwater. Strapped to a helicopter. In sub-zero temperatures, with his fingers freezing off.
This was the first time he’d had to do it blindfolded.
“Okay, now you’ve got to take the green thingy – ”
“Can’t see colors,” Weiss barked.
“In your left hand!” Vaughn sounded exhausted. “Twine it with the final bit of…there, yes, that’s it.”
Weiss felt a brief surge through his fingertips and knew that he’d completed the connection successfully. He listened to the touch-tone beeps as Vaughn restructured the battery flow in the bomb. All that was left was to deactivate the weapon itself.
“What’s our time?”
“Two minutes,” Vaughn told him, setting the remote on the ground next to them. “Alright, get your hands around the cylinder. Feel that groove there? That’s where you want to place the tip of the tweezers, nice and ca – CAREFUL – ” Weiss froze and held his breath, afraid that a single tremor would displace the weapon.
Vaughn’s voice was quiet and tight when he spoke again. “Lay the tweezers into the groove. Slowly. Like a game of Operation, remember? Don’t touch the sides.”
Weiss slipped the metal into the groove, and didn’t exhale until he felt Vaughn relax next to him.
“Good. And forty-five seconds left, so we’ll lift out the cylinder.” They both quieted while Weiss brought it out with a clunk, and traced the wires that connected it back to its base with one sure and light hand.
“Good. Now all you have to do is reconnect the circuit, and we’ll be able to deactivate it.”
“Tell me when I’ve hit the orange wire,” Weiss told him, and heard Vaughn shift forward slightly to get a better view.
And then heard a distinctive beep.
And Vaughn’s sharp intake of breath.
Weiss pulled his hands out of the device. Swallowed, once. “Vaughn,” he said. “Tell me. Tell me that wasn’t the remote control you just kneeled on.”
Vaughn pulled back. “Um.”
Weiss balled his fists in his lap. “Tell me you didn’t just blow up Manhattan, Vaughn.”
“I didn’t…I didn’t just blow up Manhattan?” Vaughn’s voice was meek, and Weiss could see the wince even with the blindfold on.
“I see,” he said quietly.
Footsteps passed them noisily, which stopped, and turned. “Nice work, fellas,” Haladki’s voice cut through the black of his vision, sharp, arcing red. “Say goodbye to New York.” With a snicker, the man continued on his way to his own work station, where he had no doubt finished his assignment in double time.
Weiss was proud of himself. He didn’t even sigh as he pulled the blindfold off.
Vaughn was looking over his own shoulder, watching Haladki’s vanishing back with a scowl. His knee was still planted in the slightly crushed remote. He looked back at Weiss, his angry expression immediately washed over with apology, and Weiss held up one finger before he could even speak.
“Don’t,” he warned his partner. “Just…don’t.”
“But I – ”
“Ah.” Weiss reinstated the rigid index finger. “No. Don’t.”
Vaughn’s shoulders crumpled, and Weiss pushed himself out of his crouch. “This…” he stopped himself for a moment. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” And then he turned heel and left, before he did something he thought he might regret, like hitting the man in the face with the imitation C4.
On the other hand, he might not regret it that much.
* * *
Dust from the wall beneath the window left a sharp, grey line down the outside left thigh of Weiss’ black uniform pants. The pockets bulged with extra ammunition, trinkets he might need during the mission, and the yo-yo that he was convinced would bring him the good luck he needed.
If not, he was thinking he might well just throw the damn thing out.
Sliding his thigh along in the dust, he managed to move silently up to the window without too much discomfort. He let the scope of his weapon sweep steadily through his field of vision. The idea was to account for each grid space in a methodical and scientific manner – that way an agent could be sure of where he had scoped, and what areas still needed to be examined. That way, no one could ever sneak up on you from right under your nose.
That was the idea, anyway. Weiss was still having problems with it.
From the crackle in his ear, Vaughn had remedied their problem with the microphones. His steady voice continued to read the coordinates of the laser scope.
“A notch to the left there, Weiss,” Vaughn recommended, and Weiss refocused and Vaughn made a noise of approval.
“Looks like we’ve got someone coming through the entry way to – there. Grid check 61-20-89.”
Weiss swung his scope an inch to the left and watched the digital numbers in the viewcase shutter forward and back to the ones Vaughn had suggested.
“Bingo,” Vaughn said. “Now give me grid check 50-33-71.”
The barrel of the gun went an inch up, and Weiss risked a look through his scope. And there, clear as daylight, were the kidnapper and the hostage. His finger tightened in anticipation on the trigger.
“On my mark,” Vaughn warned him.
A moment of silence where Weiss could feel a bead of sweat dribble down his temple.
“Mark,” Vaughn said decisively, and Weiss pulled the trigger.
The sound of impact.
And the dummy hostage’s head was spattered with dark purple paint.
A round of crackled applause and laughter met Weiss’ left ear as he pulled himself out of his position.
“Nice work!” Deluhy yelled into the microphone. “You shot the hostage!”
* * *
Home was a two bedroom flat in what his mother referred to as “the bad part of the city.” But as far as Weiss could tell, his mother called the entire city “the bad part of the city,” since she had stopped going out of doors in 1994. Weiss’ father said it was just fine, with rent control and working water, and really, what else did he need? Which was always followed up with a question as to when he would be visiting again, because they weren’t going to live for ever, did he know, and the last time they had seen him could always be the last time they had seen him, and did he really want that on his conscience?
Weiss sighed and hit the delete button in the middle of the message his mother had left him.
“That’s not very nice of you,” Vaughn scolded him from the couch, a Detroit Red Wings home game on mute behind him. Vaughn’s eyes followed the motion of the players with disturbing acuity. Weiss wished he could get the man to show that much focus during their training.
As if Vaughn had heard his friend’s thoughts, he tore his gaze away from the game and pinned Weiss with that same gaze. Weiss fought the heat he could feel rising in his face. “Hey,” Vaughn said quietly.
“Hey,” Weiss replied, breaking his end of their eye contact to examine the grooves he’d made in the floor from dragging the chairs around so much.
“I kinda suck, lately.”
Weiss felt his mouth tug up into a grin. “Yeah. You kinda do.”
“I can make it up to you.” The sound of shifting on the couch.
Weiss looked up. Vaughn had stood up, his hands buried in his pockets. “Oh yeah?” Weiss challenged.
A smile cracked Vaughn’s face. “Yeah. You know our assignment this week? The disguises project?”
“Yeah?” Weiss heard the familiar drop of wary incredulity filter back into his voice.
Vaughn bent to pick up a plastic bag with the local drug store’s emblem printed on the side. “I bought stuff,” he said, and his grin widened as the things inside rattled around.
* * *
Weiss jostled forward and sloshed his burnt coffee onto his shoes as Haladki punched him in the arm. “Man, am I loving the Smurf look on you.” Weiss schooled his expression perfectly blank while the weaseling bastard plucked at his cerulean blue hair. “This has got to be a professional job. It’s just…well, it’s fantastic, is what it is! Honestly! How could anyone have – ”
“Haladki,” Weiss growled, his voice so low it almost didn’t register.
The man shut up for a moment, pulled his gaze away from the blue mop on Weiss’ head, and looked him the eye. “Yes, Agent Weiss?” His voice was mockingly earnest.
“If you don’t shut up,” he said to the man, their gazes locked, “I will kill you.”
Haladki smirked broadly and made the motion of zippering his mouth shut before he sauntered away.
“Honestly, it’s not that bad,” Vaughn said, flicking bits of doughnut off his hands as he stepped up. But he quickly averted his gaze when Weiss whipped his head around in disbelief at the words. “Okay, maybe it’s…not what we were expecting…”
“I certainly hope it’s not what you were expecting,” Weiss demanded.
“And you’re getting it dyed tomorrow afternoon. Back to your normal color.”
“For which you are footing the bill.”
Vaughn winced. “Yeah. But look, we’ve been reassigned.”
Weiss chewed on the inside of his mouth for a moment, burying the tirade that so very dearly wanted to come out. “Which means we failed the disguise project. Without even doing anything.”
“Well, I think they thought the blue hair was – ”
“Shut up,” Weiss cut him off. “What’s the assignment?”
Vaughn grinned, and waved some files in his face. “Polygraph.”
Which was how Weiss found himself, an hour later, hooked up to a machine trailing nodes all over his body. Vaughn sat across from him with the files, scanning through at random, and smirking much more than anyone ever should.
“Okay,” he said. “We’re supposed to start easy. We start out with things that you can answer truthfully, and then you try to slip in a lie without the detector noticing.”
“Right,” Weiss said. “Start, then.”
“What is your date of birth?” Vaughn asked him, his eyes on the slowly undulating needles that would record his answer.
“April 17, 1968.” The needles wavered slightly, and Vaughn made a sound of approval.
“Where were you born?”
“Bon Seche Hospital, Los Angeles.”
The needle wavered slightly, but stayed nearly in its place.
“Have you ever traveled outside the United States?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Germany, in high school. Rome. Port Douglas, in Australia.”
The needle steadied.
“You’re good at this,” Vaughn said.
“I haven’t lied yet,” Weiss replied, both their eyes latched on the needle to see its response.
Vaughn cleared his throat and turned back to the file.
“Alright, let’s get more personal, then. Current marital status?”
“Single,” Weiss clipped.
Vaughn peeked up at him over the file. “Seeing anyone special?”
“No.” The needle bobbed slightly, but didn’t spike.
Vaughn noticed.
“Weiss, you’re getting nervous.”
Weiss scowled at the traitorous needle. “Ask a question.”
Vaughn abandoned the file. “What’s your favorite thing about this person?”
“That’s not a relevant question,” Weiss snapped.
“You didn’t answer,” Vaughn noticed, rubbing one hand at his stubble.
Weiss hissed out through his teeth. “His idiocy.”
The needle spiked.
“Whoop, that’s a lie right there,” Vaughn said cheerily, not even looking at the polygraph. “Try again. His sense of humor? His dashing good looks? His prowess in the bedroom?” He was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees.
Weiss wanted to die. He could picture the ground opening and swallowing him whole. He wondered if the chair he was in was perhaps a special CIA chair, one that had the ability to kill whoever sat in it. Sleeper technology could never be underrated. Finally, he grit his teeth and answered: “His memory.”
The needle didn’t move.
Vaughn hesitated. “I…what? Why?”
Weiss met his confused expression with the sharpest glower he owned. “He forgot that this conversation is recorded and monitored.”
“I…”
Weiss pulled the nodes off his temples with a quick pop, and began undoing the belt that connected his arm to the intelligence of the machine.
Vaughn was looking helplessly at the direct feed cable that had logged the entire conversation and its results. “I’m…”
Weiss didn’t stick around to see how the sentence ended.
* * *
His couch.
His haven.
No one else’s.
Well. Maybe someone else’s. Someone who he was currently considering changing the locks on, to prevent any couch-stealing.
Except for the splitting headache that lanced through his brain. Calling the locksmith was definitely too difficult a task to undertake while nursing a hangover on the couch. He cracked an eye, surveying the amount of light in the room and trying to figure out what time it was without turning his head to look at the clock. Head turning was another facet of life he wasn’t prepared to attempt quite yet.
“I’m not on the couch,” was his first intelligent observation.
“No, you’re not,” came the amused reply.
“Locksmith,” Weiss mourned. Too late.
“What?” Vaughn hovered into his field of vision. “Here. Take these. Drink this.”
Weiss willingly consumed the alien substances (one of which may have been water, but he really didn’t care), and he grimaced as Vaughn helped him sit up.
“Nasty date you had last night with our alcohol,” he said with a smile in his voice.
“I hate you,” Weiss said.
“Mmm. Hate you too. Come on, get up.” Vaughn tugged on the underside of one arm, and together they staggered him out into the kitchen.
“You outed us to the entire department,” Weiss said in a tone that suggested he had forgotten, until that very moment, why the man hauling him was such a complete and utter bastard. “Go away.”
“No,” Vaughn said as he settled Weiss on a red-vinyl covered stool in the kitchen.
“And we failed the assignment,” Weiss said.
Vaughn cleared his throat. “Actually…”
Weiss tried not to move his head too quickly. “Actually what? Actually we didn’t fail? Actually how is that possible?”
Vaughn was rubbing at the curled hair on the nape of his neck. “You passed with flying colors. Since, um, you were lying during the entire second half of the interview. And you left because you were angry with me for fouling up the rest of the projects.”
Weiss blinked.
Vaughn smiled ruefully.
“You lied,” Weiss managed to connect the dots after a moment. “You lied!”
“I can do one thing right,” Vaughn said sheepishly.
“You’re brilliant!” Weiss proclaimed, and yanked Vaughn into a hearty kiss.
“Ugh,” Vaughn said as he pulled away. “Lovely breath you have there.”
“I did lie,” Weiss said deviously, tugging on Vaughn’s shirt.
“Whoa, excuse me,” Vaughn put his hands between them, trying to fend off the approaching man. “That has got to be the nastiest breath I have ever tasted. What were you drinking?”
Weiss snaked around Vaughn’s flailing arms and managed to sneak off another kiss before Vaughn’s laugh interrupted them. “What did you lie about, then, exactly?”
“My favorite thing about him,” Weiss said, and grinned. He broke off his train of thought for a moment. “You’re brilliant. I can’t believe you lied. I can’t believe you lied well enough that they believed you.”
Vaughn tugged his newly-darkened hair. “Excuse me, I believe we were discussing your favorite thing about me.”
Weiss invaded his body space, and grinned as beguilingly as he could for the early hour.
“My favorite thing about him,” Weiss said again. “Is this.”
Vaughn grinned stupidly. “Oh. Well. This. I like this, too.”
“Good.” Weiss shut him up for a moment before Vaughn’s hands found his chest and pushed.
Vaughn leveled him with a stern glance. “Seriously, though. You taste like road kill.”
Weiss freed himself from the tangle of arms and kitchen table. “Fine. Today’s schedule: Listerine, solo, shower, which you will take part in, and discussion, which you will also take part in.”
“Discussion?” Vaughn prompted.
Weiss paused in his trip to the bathroom and smiled for what felt like the first time in weeks. “Yes. About anything else you might be able to do right.”
END