This is spying. Isn't it FUN?

[neverwrongagent]

Brody attending the meeting Walker had so casually mentioned turned into a three ring circus. More than one person involved was convinced the whole thing was a wild goose chase, including Carrie occasionally. If she hadn't seen Walker as up close and personal as she had when they were first rescued, she could have been convinced. Maybe sending Brody to a regular meeting for returning vets who were also Muslim was just a kind of fuck you from a man who felt he'd been betrayed by a brother soldier. Or it could be something much more sinister. The problem was, no one could really figure out what that sinister was supposed to be. Carrie continued to maintain that Brody had no idea what was going on.

The questions Brody faced right after the meeting ranged from if he knew any of the people there already to how was he planning to overthrow the US government. When the questions headed that way a majority of the time, Carrie called foul and got Brody out of there. With full understanding of the irony involved, they had decided that the cover that would work best with his family was that he was working with other vets on integrating back into the world. Carrie would have felt a lot worse about that if it was just being used to cover up them fucking around. She still felt pretty shitty about it given how much stress it was putting on him.

They took their own cars back to her place. She got there before him and immediately opened a fresh bottle of wine, leaving a full glass on the counter for him, then she went upstairs to change into something decidedly less official looking.

Comments

[posterboymarine]

He followed her with a smile, happy to listen to her talk about her past. It helped make her even more real for him, someone he could hold on to if he needed to. Which was something he foresaw needing in the near future, especially if he separated, either from his wife or the Marines.

[neverwrongagent]

She hit a point where she knew she was rambling, but she kept going for a while because he seemed to like it. Finally she paused, then exhaled deeply. "I'm nowhere near this interesting, I know. You're being remarkably tolerant."

[posterboymarine]

He flashed her a huge grin. "Don't underestimate how interesting you are to me. If I didn't think so, I'd have never followed you to that rooftop."

[neverwrongagent]

She laughed at that. He'd followed her for a completely different kind of interesting than her childhood stories. "You sure have stuck around longer than....anyone." She went up on her toes to kiss him. "And overcome worse obstacles to achieve that."

[posterboymarine]

"Must mean something." He kept her close and kissed her again. "Keep talking."

[neverwrongagent]

She was running out of the kind of safe, homey stories the setting seemed to require. Pretty soon she'd be hitting her teen years which were more problematic. She thought for a long moment, then laughed. "First time I ever kissed a boy was out here. He was staying at--" She turned in his arms and pointed at a cabin only barely visible down by the shore. "That one."

[posterboymarine]

"Ah. Young love. So immediate." He was teasing her, trying to get her to keep talking. She had read his file, so she knew almost everything about him already. But he only knew what she told him. So he talking was important to him.

[neverwrongagent]

Immediate had been a word for it. Transitory was another good word for it as she'd never seen him again after that. She closed her eyes for a long moment. "He was tall, taller than me or Maggie even though he was a year younger. Dark brown hair that he wore longer than Dad approved of." Which was funny given how anti-establishment her old man was. "He was terrified of me until I kissed him, then he couldn't get enough of me."

[posterboymarine]

Brody kissed her and smirked. "I can understand that."

[neverwrongagent]

She rolled her eyes at him. "You're just as bad." She reached around and pinched his ass. "I got pretty tired of him after a week or so. He couldn't kiss for shit." Which was not a problem Brody had.

[posterboymarine]

"Well, I've lasted more than a week, so I guess I've got him beat." He kissed her again. "So, you were a rowdy teenager, then?"

[neverwrongagent]

Now she rolled her eyes and her shoulders as if he'd said something completely ridiculous. "I was the picture of studious propriety, never doing anything to raise a single eyebrow." She glanced up at him to see if he was buying a word of it.

[posterboymarine]

He wasn't buying a word of it. She was too impulsive for her to have ever been the calm teenager. Ever. "Of course, babe."

[neverwrongagent]

She sighed deeply and gave up. "I snuck in late so many nights that Dad had a special light installed so I wouldn't hurt myself climbing in my window." Maggie had been so pissed by that, thinking their father should actually do something mad like discipline his wild child.

[posterboymarine]

He laughed. "That seems much more likely, yes."

He took her hand and encouraged her to start moving again. She talked more when they we walking.

[neverwrongagent]

"Maggie's the good girl. Does everything that's expected, that's reasonable." She shook her head. "I'm the one that dared trains and left home to see the world." For all that, she was easily her father's favorite. That had as much to do with sharing some brain chemistry as anything. "I thought I'd never get tired of the rush, but that's not true."

[posterboymarine]

He lifted an eyebrow at that. "So you are tired of the rush?"

[neverwrongagent]

She stopped for a second, looking down at their hands, then up at him. "No. I mean, I'm not ready to hang it up or anything, but things weigh on me more." She exhaled again, shrugging. "I could just be growing up."

So said the woman gleefully screwing her asset.

[posterboymarine]

"I heard being an adult was overrated. I've been trying to turn my grown-up card in for a while now." He sneaked a kiss, then got them walking again.

[neverwrongagent]

She groaned softly. "Completely overrated. That's why we ran away to the woods with a picnic. Much better." Not that they wouldn't go back, they would. They'd do what they needed to. It was the only way to figure out how to be together for real. She licked her lips, realizing that she didn't know exactly what he had in mind or that, no matter how clear she was about wanting him.

[posterboymarine]

He nodded. "It was a brilliant idea." He still wasn't ready to have the rest of that conversation, because it couldn't end well just yet. There needed to be more options for him.

[neverwrongagent]

"I even packed cookies." She turned so she could watch him as she walked backwards. "And, believe it or not, little things of pudding. Because I could."

[posterboymarine]

He had to stop walking so he wouldn't trip over something while he laughed. Then he had to try and stop laughing so he could breath. It probably wasn't as funny as it was in his head, but he was past the point of being able to control it.

[neverwrongagent]

It wasn't that it was so funny, she knew, but that it was so carefree and silly. If they were going to give up on adulthood, pudding in the woods was clearly the way to go. "Should I point out it's butterscotch?" Because butterscotch was way funnier than chocolate or vanilla.

There was only one good way to have him stop laughing and get his breathing back under control, but she was laughing with him so it was a little hard to co-ordinate. She had to get both hands on his cheeks so she could steady either of them enough that she could kiss him.

[posterboymarine]

The fact that it was butterscotch made it worse. He was sucking air hard when she kissed him and he nearly jerked hard away from her to get air. Then he started to relax into the kiss, pulling himself back together, again with her help.