White picket fences, green backyards, American pie. (Everything she’d thought she’d wanted, once upon a time, but now twisted and gnarled and fake.)
When Mary reaches out and touches him, he jolts a little, just the smallest infinitesimal flinch which she’ll recognise because she knows him and his tics and movements; otherwise, he’s usually too still and quiet, too good at mastering his reactions.
A skittish wild animal, simultaneously spooked yet soothed by that touch.
“It’s taken care of,” Jon says, without elaborating on what it is. Mary already knows. The assignment they’d received earlier via dead drop, taking out some physicist, a professional rival to Russia’s own science programme. He wasn’t entirely sure what had landed that quiet, inoffensive bespectacled man on the hitlist or what sort of work he did. He didn’t ask questions. That wasn’t part of the job.
“We’ll have to clean the car,” he says, still ticking through the to-do list as if on autopilot. “And I think I got nicked.”
Not a bad injury, not enough to lay him out, but he’s felt a twinge of pain and part of his shirt sticking uncomfortably warm and wet to his skin the whole drive back. On his shoulder, where he couldn’t get to it easily.
no subject
When Mary reaches out and touches him, he jolts a little, just the smallest infinitesimal flinch which she’ll recognise because she knows him and his tics and movements; otherwise, he’s usually too still and quiet, too good at mastering his reactions.
A skittish wild animal, simultaneously spooked yet soothed by that touch.
“It’s taken care of,” Jon says, without elaborating on what it is. Mary already knows. The assignment they’d received earlier via dead drop, taking out some physicist, a professional rival to Russia’s own science programme. He wasn’t entirely sure what had landed that quiet, inoffensive bespectacled man on the hitlist or what sort of work he did. He didn’t ask questions. That wasn’t part of the job.
“We’ll have to clean the car,” he says, still ticking through the to-do list as if on autopilot. “And I think I got nicked.”
Not a bad injury, not enough to lay him out, but he’s felt a twinge of pain and part of his shirt sticking uncomfortably warm and wet to his skin the whole drive back. On his shoulder, where he couldn’t get to it easily.