High Stakes
Game by glacis, rated PG (Auggie/Jai). Spoilers for all Covert Affairs episodes up to ‘Welcome to the
Occupation’.
~~
If he’d learned anything in the years since
his mother had introduced him to his father, Jai had learned that his pride meant
nothing. Given that he was, by nature, a
proud man, it was a hard lesson, and one he’d had to learn over and over
again. Mostly at his
father’s hand, and the edge of his tongue.
Henry
Wilcox was a bastard, and Jai had never understood what his mother saw in him.
Still,
needs must, and for all Joan had let him down (a trend with the women in his
life, not that he wanted to whine about it), she needed him. Annie needed him, too, and he wouldn’t let
her down. She was still a decent person,
a rarity in their work. So for Annie,
and Joan, he would do this. They needed
him. If only for
access to information about his father.
The bastard.
As he’d
expected, Henry made him beg, though he hadn’t spit his usual quantity of
vitriol before giving in and agreeing to use his contacts to get the team into
the hostage situation in
Liza Hearn.
Sneaking out the back gate.
Now, that
was interesting.
Jai was a
little distracted the rest of the afternoon, but neither Auggie nor Arthur
called him on it. Auggie was too busy
trying to run the op with Arthur breathing down his neck, and Arthur was too
busy mother-henning about Joan being in the field to notice anyone else’s weird
behavior. It was kind of cute in a
way. Jai had never seen Arthur actually
fret. Still, it was a blessing. It gave him some breathing room.
He had to
figure out what to do about this. If his
suspicions were correct, and knowing his bastard of a father the way he did Jai
was sure they were, Henry was committing treason.
To get back at Arthur.
For forcing him out.
What a
petty, bitter little man his father was.
A petty, bitter, extremely dangerous, brilliant strategist of a little
man. Which made Jai think that
his initial impulse, to contact the journalist and squeeze her for information,
might be a very bad idea. He
couldn’t shame her into stopping. As her
reporting proved, she was perfectly willing to commit treason in print every
chance she got. And he couldn’t threaten
her. In a threat situation, the weakest
prey would always run to the biggest predator for protection, and in this
scenario, that wasn’t Jai.
It was
Henry.
Which would tip his hand. His father would be
on to him. Liza would still be running
with Henry’s leaks, and knowing how his father operated, somehow Jai would end
up getting blamed for it.
Besides the
fact that Jai didn’t want to commit treason and betray people he actually
respected, he really didn’t want to go to prison. Honestly, while he could fight with the best
of them, overwhelming numbers could still take him down, and he was too damned
pretty for prison.
Choking off
a laugh, resigned at how close to hysteria his internal debate was skating, Jai
shook off the incipient panic, stopped his brain from gibbering like a trapped
animal, and forced himself to think.
In the
background, he heard an exclamation, and looked up to see the video feed had
fritzed out. Arthur looked like he was
about to jump out of his skin, while Auggie was telling him to trust his
operative. Considering how tense Auggie
was and the growl beneath the words, Jai thought he should take his own
advice. Still, while part of his
attention stayed on the op and did his job, the rest took Auggie’s advice and
ran with it.
Trust the
operative. In this case, who could he
trust? Not Henry, for god’s sake. The man was a viper, and about as paternal as
one. Didn’t snakes eat their young? Anyway, not Henry. Certainly not Liza. Perhaps Joan, though she’d turned on him too
many times for Jai to really trust her, and her first loyalty would of course
be to her husband, leaving Jai vulnerable.
Absolutely not Arthur – Henry was doing this to attack the man, and if
Jai gave him ammunition he could quite easily be caught in the crossfire. Not Annie, though he did trust her, because
she simply didn’t have the contacts, the power, or the experience to help, and
she could just as easily be mowed down… though he had a feeling Joan would be a
lot more protective of her than himself.
Jai had some friends, and a multitude of contacts, but few of them were in
DC, and even fewer could be trusted to not be compromised by his father.
Which left Auggie.
Auggie was
powerful enough within the agency to have some autonomy. He was Arthur’s golden boy, and Joan’s
favorite. He commanded loyalty, and was
himself both experienced and devious.
He’d proven willing to run operations off the books, and capable in
completing them.
Plus, he’d
been sleeping with Liza Hearn.
Jai doubted
Auggie knew that others were aware of his game.
Jai only knew because he’d been following Annie one day, wanting to see
if she knew more about the leak than she was saying, before he got to know her
better, and realized she wouldn’t play that way. Liza had slipped out the back of Auggie’s
building much as she’d done at his father’s, and Annie had confronted
Auggie. From the ensuing eavesdropping,
Jai had figured out that Auggie was running a raven on Liza, trying to seduce
her into giving up her source.
Hadn’t worked out. Liza was a little
sneakier than that. Jai had to admit,
from the little surveillance he’d managed to slip past Auggie, it looked like
the sex was damned good.
He was
pretty sure Liza wasn’t with his father for the sex, which left the
information.
And left Jai with Auggie.
Jai could
appeal to his loyalty to Joan and Arthur to make sure the information got where
it was supposed to go, and blackmail him with Liza to keep his own name out of
it. Auggie could infer that the
information came straight from the source.
It would enhance Auggie’s reputation for information-gathering,
neutralize Henry the traitor, gag the leak via Liza, and keep Jai himself far
from the fallout from the inevitable explosion.
A good game.
Now he just had to run it, and win.
The stakes were too high to fail.
The tense
atmosphere around him broke as word came through that the hostages were out,
their team was safe, and the extraction team had them in hand. He smiled along with the rest, and watched
Auggie through his lashes as Arthur bounced out the door muttering something
about dinner and a speech.
This
approach would require a bit of finesse.
Taking a
blunted pencil and a thick piece of paper, he began to poke dots in a specific
pattern. He’d learned Braille years
before, dealing with some of his mother’s patients, and brushed up on it when
Auggie joined the agency. He’d known it
would come in handy eventually, and so it had.
A few
moments later, he walked by Auggie’s desk.
“Good work today,” he offered quietly.
Auggie gave him a slightly quizzical look, and Jai brushed his wrist,
leaving the scrap of paper behind.
Auggie stilled, so minutely one wouldn’t notice if not watching for it,
as Jai was. A slight movement of
fingertips, then the paper was crumpled in Auggie’s fist, and he nodded once.
They were
on.
That night,
after beer at the local watering hole, Auggie didn’t go home with yet another
cute clueless coed. Jai showed up an
hour after he got to his apartment.
It would
have been sooner, but he had an itch between his shoulder blades. There was a strong possibility his father had
figured out that Jai had seen the journalist leave. Of course, it could be any number of other
people, or hostiles, or even bored streetwalkers, but Jai preferred his
paranoia. He liked survival.
Still, he
had to show, since he’d asked for the meet.
Auggie met him at the door, and Jai came in without a word.
Unidirectional
mikes could be in play. Yes, he was
paranoid. He’d stripped clean, then checked every piece of clothing in the bathroom at the
bar before he’d left. He wasn’t bugged,
but he couldn’t say the same for anything or anyone else.
“Beer?”
Auggie asked nonchalantly.
Jai knew
the man was completely blind but that didn’t stop the impression he had that he
was being watched. Judged. Close to found wanting, but he had a few
minutes to redeem himself. He sighed. “Sure.”
The corner
of Auggie’s mouth tipped into a smirk.
Jai found himself grinning.
Something about Auggie either infuriated him or made him laugh, often at
the same time. As the other man came
close to hand him the bottle, Jai turned his face away from the window and
whispered, “I was followed,” without moving his lips.
Auggie clinked the top of his bottle to Jai’s, and took a long
swallow. As he lowered the bottle, he
used it to obscure his mouth as he answered, “Hostile?”
“My
father,” Jai muttered back.
“So that’d
be a yes, then,” Auggie said.
Jai nodded
and hummed agreement. Auggie reached for
a folder on the counter and pulled it over in front of them, flipping it open
and tilting his head toward Jai. Taking
his cue, Jai lowered his face toward the paper and continued to speak softly.
“When I
went to ask him to pull strings for us yesterday, I saw Liza Hearn leaving his
house.”
Auggie went completely still again. “The leak.” It wasn’t
a question.
“I’ve no
doubts. I can’t be the one to tell
them. He’ll find some way to turn it
back on me, scapegoat me.”
The smirk
grew harder. “Paranoid
much?”
“A lifetime
of experience,” Jai shot back, then quieted his
voice. “I don’t trust anyone to have my
back with this.”
Auggie
flipped a page over, continuing the pretense that they were working, then
asked, “Why me?”
“You’re
already pursuing leads. This will give
you something to report back.”
Auggie
tilted his head back, looking somewhat in Jai’s direction. “What do you mean by that?”
Jai gave
his own smirk. “Liza’s sloppy. Last time she left you she was still
buttoning up her blouse. And she left a
purple thong behind.”
The
stillness was suddenly predatory. Jai
swallowed dryly and quickly added, “I’m just saying you have a believable
source for my information, without getting me involved.”
Silently,
he added a plea for Auggie not to kill him, but he had enough pride left not to
whimper that out loud. For God’s sake,
he was a grown man, a trained operative, and not shabby at hand to hand… but he
didn’t want Auggie mad at him. That
would be unhealthy.
Auggie
relaxed a fraction, and Jai relaxed in turn.
“You’re already involved, Jai,” he said quietly. “And nobody’s going to believe you came to my
apartment to look at files. They’re
going to start digging, and the whole sting will be blown before it can even
begin.”
Jai took a
steadying breath, then asked, “What, then?”
“We need to
bring this to Joan.”
Shaking his
head, Jai moved closer, murmuring, “No, no, she’ll throw me to the dogs. You know she will. I won’t be bait for this. Between Arthur and my father there won’t be
enough left of me to bury.”
“Okay,”
Auggie said gently, folding his fingers over Jai’s arm in a firm hold, as if he
thought Jai would bolt. “We’ll give
Henry another reason for you being here.”
His tone changed abruptly to a command voice, though it remained
quiet. “Follow my lead.”
Jai turned
to him to ask what he meant, and Auggie kissed him.
Even as his
eyes closed and his mouth opened, Jai thought, This
isn’t what I expected.
Auggie’s
mouth was hot and agile, and Jai kicked his brain into gear enough to
respond. It was a good strategy, when he
thought about it. Give the watcher a red
herring, and if the watcher belonged to his father, distract him with thoughts
of blackmail that had nothing to do with Arthur (or treason) and had no basis
in fact, rendering it moot if it was ever brought into play. Then Auggie’s tongue did a little slide and
push against his own that derailed his train of thought.
Holy hell,
but Auggie was a good kisser. Jai,
however, was no slouch, and now that he was in the game, he gave as good as he got.
Jai had the
advantage of sight, but that didn’t help when his eyes were closed, while
Auggie had the advantage of familiar territory, and used every bit of it. Without missing a beat or disengaging from
the kiss, Auggie moved them both over to the couch, and lowered them down,
lying full-length on Jai. It should have
felt confining.
Not
arousing.
So much for expectations.
Doing his
damnedest to ignore his erection rising between them, Jai finally got his mouth
back, and whispered, “what??” in Auggie’s ear. Only to be completely distracted by the fact
that his wasn’t the only erection in play.
A hot
breath in his own ear nearly made him yelp, then he
focused on Auggie’s words. “Gotta have a reason to meet. It’s simple.
You find out what you can, bring it to me, I
bring it to Joan, who takes it to Arthur.
Anybody asks, I got it from Liza.”
“What about
this?” Jai asked in return, then broke off a moan as
Auggie sucked on the side of his throat.
A nip, a lick, and an answer.
“Cover,”
Auggie said distinctly, then unzipped Jai’s trousers.
A strangled
yell, several moans, a mangled shirt, and all too quickly his first sexual
experience with a man was complete.
Auggie looked smug.
It went
well with the hickey Jai left on his collarbone.
“That’ll
work,” Jai gasped, and kissed him again.
The next
hour passed in pillow talk, which in actuality was a coded conversation setting
up the sting. It would be a complex,
dangerous game they played, but the stakes were worth it. And the op, itself, would be a lot more fun
than he’d anticipated.
Plus, honestly? Jai was looking forward to the
expression on Joan’s face when she found out.
~~
END