Work Text:
/Observation – AQL07±∆ƒ4 – Site #312a/
White settled in on the hard wooden bench he had rigged in the converted pigeon coop and shed his usual coat and hat onto a hook he had painstakingly screwed into one of the dry rotted boards behind his head. The wooden coop was small enough to make his nightly surveillance duty uncomfortable, but the late summer heat that baked into the brick lofts under him during the day made the already hot nights sweltering in the enclosed little space. His shirt already clung uncomfortably to his back and sides, especially where his shoulder holster weighed heavily under his left arm and where his band of small throwing knives were secured against the small of his back.
Another miserable night, White thought, and bent to the first task of the evening. Even in a white silk shirt with the sleeves rolled up along his arms and without his hat and coat, he was already beginning to sweat by the time he pried open the hidden compartment under the floorboards. Contained within the small, dusty hiding place were three objects. First, his high-powered binoculars stowed in their moisture proof case, then a small, ragged journal stored in a double set of sealed bags, and finally, a black mechanical pencil with heavy, dark graphite in its metal tube. It was a risk leaving these things here every night, but more of a risk to carry the journal with him when not doing surveillance.
He unbagged the binoculars and journal, tested the pencil on the back inside cover next to several hundred similar marks, and flipped at random to a blank page towards the back of the worn book. He coded and time stamped the top of the page, observed temperature and weather conditions in a small note in the upper left of the page, and then carefully, as he had on every other page in the notebook, drew an upper case B with a vertical line through it, and circled it twice. He then pushed aside the small slat of board in the side of the coop, propped one hand and the notebook on a stack of cinderblocks next to him, the other on his knee with the binoculars in hand and found the set of windows he was interested in, then began to watch.
Black heard his digital watch beep faintly on the hour as he finished the stir-fry he had eaten for dinner. The last of his fresh vegetables and frozen shrimp had gone into the small meal, but cooking for himself meant not having to reheat the food after having done his barrage of poison tests. Fresh vegetables bought from locally grown roof gardens rarely tested for anything worse than what the rain usually contained; and he had given up testing shrimp years ago as their mercury levels had risen so high to hide or deactivate nearly anything else. Placing his dishes along with the cooking pans in the small dishwasher that had come with the apartment, Black glanced out of his windows to notice the sky dimming to dusk beyond the rooflines of the nearby buildings.
He glanced at his watch, realized the chime had been two hours later than he had thought it was and then swore absently to himself. Time to check in for the night. He snatched the satphone from the kitchen table and keyed the coded line for his admin agent.
"Good evening, agent," said the voice on the other end of the line.
"Agent voice check," he said by rote, and responded to the three tone prompts with his code-numbers and his voice print keyword.
"Cleared, agent. No new instructions. Recheck at 1344h local tomorrow. Line clear." The voice vanished and the line went dead.
No new instructions he repeated to himself and sighed. Three months of down time were about to drive him to distraction. No news on any front, no need of his talents anywhere else in the world. So here he sat, miserable, alone, and unneeded even by his own country. His eyes roamed over the apartment, barely even booby trapped by his standards, looking at the room full of rented furniture picked out by HQ to decorate the place as generically as possible. It was someone else's life, someone else's things; someone else who wasn't him lived here.
His eyes landed on one of the few objects in the room that was, by ownership, his. Shoved under one of the dark wood decorative cabinets in the dining area was his faded, battered, and shapeless from abuse leather satchel. He nearly leapt across the room to snatch it up. Maybe this would make him feel better, he thought. Sometimes it did, sometimes it made it worse. But tonight… tonight felt like it might be a good night.
White in the same position he had for hours, pencil moving across the page as he noted Black's movements within his apartment. What he ate, how his mood seemed, what time check in had been with his HQ. It seemed to be another boring night watching his rival sink further and further into a state of depression. These slides were normal for Black when he was on hold, White knew. He himself even went through them when he was on similar inactive orders, like now. But unlike Black, who would sulk and sink further and further as weeks grew into months, White found ways to occupy his time, namely, by surveying his rival's evening or daily habits. He had learned much about how the Black Nation spy coped with this sort of down time, and many other interesting aspects about Black Nation operations, which he had dutifully passed on to his superiors. But with everything he learned about Black, he found more questions as well. But tonight didn't look to be anything of any interest, White thought.
The pigeon coop on top of the neighboring building had been a bonus in his research this time. Previously, he had staked out alleyways, empty rooftops, and once even a dumpster, for weeks on end watching Black through rain and heat and snow and sun. Just to give himself something to do rather than be idle. The coop kept out the rain, but was miserably hot, yet it provided a place to store his equipment out of sight. And it overlooked nearly directly the four windows of Black's current apartment perfectly. Kitchen and dining area and front door were mostly visible from hip high up through two windows, while the bathroom was faintly visible through a frosted small window in the center. Beyond it was a single pane of sliding glass that formed the door to what should have been the den according to the floor plan White had gotten for the unit, but was instead converted into a bedroom and TV room by Black. And from his hiding place, which gave him a wonderful downward viewing angle into the below apartment, White watched and noted, letting his mind wander as his hands and eyes worked on automatic.
And then it happened, and White nearly missed it for letting his mind wander. Black moved from passive contemplation to sudden action, snatching something unseen from under or near a piece of furniture that White had deduced was a sideboard in the dining area. This was what White had been waiting for, another clue to a strange set of behaviors he had noticed in his rival agent with increasing frequency. Maybe tonight he would find out what was in whatever it was that Black kept stored near that sideboard.
At first events played out like they had every other night he had seen Black snatch up whatever the object was. Black first seemed cheerful, smiling a distracted smile as he moved through the apartment with the object held just below White's line of sight. Black walked into the bathroom, assumingly deposited the item, walked back into the kitchen, and dropped the heavy, thick curtains over those windows. Then he walked into the bedroom/den, and began laying out the strange sleeping bag like mattress and blanket Black slept in rather than use a normal bed. White had seen those mattresses tossed or hidden or booby trapped at several other apartments, where the real sleeping place vanished during the day only to be rolled out in a corner or closet at night. The bed was unrolled at an angle to the window, facing the glaringly old but large television set which dominated a corner of the room. And then Black would vanish, as he did that night, for somewhere between five to ten minutes, and White was left to wait. He drummed his fingers on the cement blocks and hummed to himself quietly.
Black moved through the apartment making a second check of his few traps and security measures for the night. He pinned in place the explosives charge near the front door, wiring them once more into the fire alarm and burglar chain. He made sure the Kevlar lined shades on the kitchen windows were latched into place at the bottom, and then plugged them into the wall, making them hum faintly with live house current in the wires woven into the fabric. The charcoal covers where all still in place and secured on every air duct in the place except the bedroom ones, which he always checked last. Then he stepped into the small bathroom, stripped out of his uniform shirt and pants, and then his boxers and socks, dropped them all in the hamper for the dry cleaning and laundry services, and slipped into a pair of light cotton pajama pants. They were baggy enough to hide a small pistol in one pocket and kept the two calf knives hidden in their sheaths against his legs.
He untied then brushed out his lanky black hair, giving it short, hurried strokes rather than his usual thorough brushing. He let it fall against his back for a moment before pulling it back into a lose ponytail, realizing he was in need, once more, of a haircut. He would do it before they put him on active again, he though absently, before giving his head a final shake and leaving the bathroom. White would have been interested, but not surprised, to see that there was no mirror in the bathroom.
And there he was, White saw, like clockwork, appearing from the now dark side of the apartment. Turned away from the window, naked to the waist, Black did a series of stretches and flexibility exercises, which let White watch him in detail. And, as he had every night he had the chance, White hurriedly thumbed to a much dog-eared page in the notebook about midway through the pages. On the two facing pages where the rough outline of the front and back of a generic male figure as well as two side views, exposing every surface of the body on the paper. And, sketched in throughout the figure were various marks, and each mark had a note beside it, or a number. Every agent in the White Nation had a page like this in his medical records, and so White had borrowed the practice for his observations of Black. It was a diagram of every scar visible on Black's skin, indicating when, where, and how each had been left behind.
Without needing to look at the page, his fingers moving across the page's deep pencil lines in time with his eyes, White took his inventory of the marks on Black's exposed back first. The knife wounds, most cleanly stitched and faded with age, where the hardest to count. Then the one entrance and one exit bullet wound scars, one of which was less than an inch long line of cleanly healed surgical staples. There were also any number of other minor healed traumas, several large shrapnel marks, and a vibrant white patch as big as a spread hand paler than the rest of Black's pallid body just above the small of his back and under several other scars. That last had taken White several months to track down the cause of after he had first seen it years ago, and it still made him wince thinking about it. It was probably Black's oldest scar of the business, from his days in training; at least it was confirmed that the four other trainees who had been suspected as causing the accident were dead.
Then Black faced the window, and watched the street below for a few moments, and let White finish the inventory of his chest scars as Black had a last cigarette of the day. The knots of scar tissue around his wrists and the bent trigger finger on the left hand were both White's fault, as were an innumerable number of the other scars that marked the enemy agent from forearms to waistband and beyond. One exit and one entrance wound, corresponding to the two on his back, a number of burns, two cleaver cuts and two deep stab wounds on the lower belly which were all White's doing again. And then last on the inventory a ragged, ugly scar, yellow and thickened with extra tissue towards its nexus and deep red and recessed into the flesh at its ends, which stretched from collarbone across his heart to his left side rounded out the list. All confirmed.
That last item still bothered White, not because of the obviously painful and horrible injury that had caused it, but rather, because of the question its notation asked at him every time. As with all the others, there was a date it had appeared, but a blank where there should have been an indication of what caused it. Instead, below that was a string of code that told him the following in his own handwriting: unknown cause, unknown weapon, badly healed, still tender, believed self treated, no hospital record or medical record associated. And then, beside that, very lightly, was written "My .22?" That scar nagged at White enough that, once more, it had distracted him.
Black was finishing preparations, snuffing out the cigarette in an ashtray, and turning to his left. White cursed, expecting Black to do as he always did, and drop the full-length curtain on this side as he had on the kitchen side. But Black paused, and looked out, seeming to think for a moment, and then left the window uncovered. If White could have danced for joy inside the coop, he would have. Tonight, he though, tonight I will see!
Why he left the window uncovered, he wasn't sure. It left him vulnerable, easily watched, and more easily killed. But so much about what he was about to do made so little sense to him any more, not that it ever had from the start. He walked to the place he had set the black leather case and picked it up, setting it down on his sleeping mat before he himself sat down. His back was to the window, turned slightly to the side to face the corner where the TV stood, though he could see out of the glass thanks to a mirror he had positioned on the above wall. He opened the case, removed two A5 sized envelops, a pair of black leather gloves, and a DVD case, unmarked. He pulled the gloves on, flexing his fingers inside them, then carefully opened and began to spread the contents of the two envelops on the cover in front of his folded legs.
It was probably a good thing, White realized, that his brain was several seconds behind his hand and eyes in terms of recording and processing information. Else, none of what he saw would have made it onto the paper of his notebook. Black had opened the black leather case as if he was opening a familiar object. The two envelopes that Black removed were old, but well preserved, one however was newer than the other. The DVD case was interesting, in particular, unmarked but unsealed. The gloves were like any of a thousand pair that he had seen Black use over the years, and were much like the white ones that White wore for similar reasons or jobs, and White almost ignored them until he saw Black put them on before opening the simple packets.
And then White saw the stack of photographs that Black lifted with care from the older of the two envelops and begin spreading on his bed. He could see the first few from his normal position, looking down slightly onto the floor just in front of Black's folded legs and bare feet. The rest stared up at him from the mirror on the wall above.
They were all, to a one, of White. White tried to swallow, and only found parchment where his throat should be.
These were Black's only possessions that were, in truth, his: roughly fifty photos, taken over a series of years, by himself primarily, of his rival. The first few looked like normal surveillance photos, taken with a grainy, poor quality camera at a long distance. They were usually at strange angles, but they each showed White's face. That was why he had kept them, or made copies of them, from the files. Why had he done it, then? He didn't even think it had occurred to him to ask why.
The next few where with a better camera and a long, sharp telephoto lens, but still had the look of being taken through windows, or from a rooftop. And each again showed White's face. The last two were of White sleeping in two different hotel rooms, taken from a roof just outside, and marked a changed in the pattern. After those, the photos became even clearer, losing the look of a telephoto first, then the blur which glass between photographer and subject gave an image: White sleeping, or unconscious, or sometimes standing in his own bathroom, looking at his reflection in the mirror.
Black had gotten braver, and better, at breaking into White's various hideaways, sneaking in only to take at times a single picture before leaving. They were all in black and white, some in the fine grain of low speed film, taken in low light, others crystal clear. More and more, they became of White sleeping in his own bed, or a hotel bed, or on a couch.
Black touched each face with a gloved fingertip, remembering taking each one.
At first, White couldn't comprehend what he was watching. Of course Black had photographs of him taken during surveillance. But what was he doing? And then he saw the others, the ones first of him sleeping taken through windows, and then the ones where it was obvious that whoever had taken the photograph had been in the room with him while he slept. Gooseflesh stood on his arms and neck. Black could have killed him, any of those times, he thought, and then, another part of his brain revolted in panic.
It was the part of his brain that still watched normal television and laughed, that read newspapers more than as cover, and that really enjoyed a good trashy novel. It was the part of him that he refused to let die, the part that wasn't, and would never be, a spy. And right now, it was having a very loud freak out at discovering that his rival had these pictures of him. Black had been coming into his bedroom, past all of his traps and alarms, and taking pictures of him in his sleep like some creepy stalker following an actress. It was disgusting.
No, not really, said the rest of his brain, now shut up and watch. I want to know what's in the other one and on the DVD. Yet he still tasted, for a moment, his dinner in the back of his throat.
Black scooped up all but four of the photographs, and stuffed them carefully back into their cover. The four he left were his favorites of that set. Two were White sleeping on his back, wrapped in sheets and obviously dressed under them, the other two were of White in various stages of undress, curled almost so his knees touched his chest, uncovered. He set them aside, and pulled out the second set.
These were more of the same, each different, but each showing White asleep. Some were just of his face, very close, while others showed a whole bed or bedroom. One or two focused on a hand, or a foot, but nearly all had an image of a face, no matter their setting. And again, he did the same as he had with the others, laying them out, touching the faces, picking out his favorites and setting them aside.
He savored each one before putting it away or setting it aside. The closed eyes, tousled short silver hair, and pale features: the unguarded face of his enemy. Black felt the weight draining out of his shoulders as he did this ritual, and felt the knots untie themselves from his back and stomach. His rival, unguarded, sleeping, unaware, at his mercy; yet never had it been about the power of his position over White in those moments. It had been just to see White like that, like he never saw him at any other time. Getting these photos had been as dangerous to him as it could have been to White had Black had other intentions. Those moments were precious to him.
He put all but his selected favorites for tonight away, and stood with the DVD case in his hand. He turned on the TV and DVD player, slid the DVD out of its case, and pushed it in slowly. It had only been as his collection had grown, and as his skills at getting them had improved, that he had begun to realize another aspect of why he was doing this.
White had stopped writing perhaps an hour ago. He had no awareness of how much time had passed as he sat, watching his rival and his strange ritual, with a mixture of disgust and horror overlaying deep curiosity. He recognized most of the places the pictures where from, a parade of bedrooms across the nations, and was horrified time after time to know that Black had stood there, next to him, while he slept, and taken them. How long had Black watched him those times? Had he ever done anything else? White's mind raced to remember anything strange he could remember. His mind was too much of a blur to fix onto any one thing.
Then finally, there were only seven photographs on the bed: four from the first, which were all years old, and three from the second batch, all much newer. With his binoculars focused, White scanned each one, realizing roughly where and when they had been taken. One a year ago, one less than six months ago, and one, he could tell by the new white scar over one of his own bushy light colored brows, was less than a month old. That one particularly disturbed him, or at least, that part of his mind that was now yammering in terror like a caged rabid primate somewhere in his skull.
It was a mostly full body shot, taken from just above his sleeping body, showing him nearly entirely nude and uncovered from the sheets of his current bed at his current apartment. He remembered the night vividly. It had been a broiling, humid night, and White had been unable to stand his clothes or sheets, let alone the coop outside of Black's windows. He had fallen asleep only after enough Jack to blur his mind silly, and must have tossed his covers off in the night. And that perverted Black Nation bastard had stood over him like that. It made him want nothing more than a week of burning hot showers and every bar of soap he could lay hands on.
And then a voice in White's mind said something that stopped him cold. If you really hate it so much, why haven't you pulled your gun and shot the cocky bastard in the head yet? It's a close shot, the voice said, you could make it easily, even with your handgun. He could be dead, those pictures destroyed, and no one would ever need to know why you finally killed him out right. That not only shut up the screaming ball of terror in his mind, but most of his other thoughts as well.
And then he had the answer: he had to know what was going to happen next, even if it was worse than what he had already seen. And part of him, the same part that made him watch Black every night like this, wanted to know the answer to why Black was doing this.
His eyes tried to get his minds attention again, and it took a moment to realize consciously that Black had put the DVD in the player and sat back down with his pictures and the remote. Black hit a button on the remote, and the television flared to light in the dimly lit room. And then an image filled the screen, out of focus and blurry at first, then focusing with the lazy inattentiveness of an automatic focus in low light.
White dropped his binoculars.
Black sat back and watched the image resolve itself. He had watched this DVD hundreds of times, but every time he forced himself to watch every moment of it, rather than skip ahead to the part he wanted. White's sleeping face resolved itself in the infrared video image, green and slightly indistinct in the image. He breathed slowly, in and out, peacefully. Black caught himself matching breathing with the sleeping face the video had recorded. This had been his first time trying this, his first time bringing more than just the camera, about two years ago. He had sat for nearly twenty minutes, transfixed, as he filmed the sleeping White. At first, it had been a rush and he though the video would have given him that same rush again once he watched it. But the night he had watched it after the fact, it had only made him frustrated and angry.
This was an edited down set of shots from that first 20 minutes, the ones that showed White moving, or a different angle, or stirring in his sleep. But it still gave him that same feeling of emptiness. He wanted the feeling of being in the room again with White asleep, of being there in the flesh. This only made him feel alone. But he still watched it, as he held up each of his seven chosen photographs in turn, looking at them, then the sleeping White agent's face on the screen.
The second sequence of shots was much the same as the first, though this time in a different city, in a hotel somewhere. Again, edited down, it was still nearly unbearable to watch for him. But he forced himself; he always did, to wait through these minutes. He took the time to shift positions, to sit on his knees rather than with legs crossed under him as he had been, and to take a sip from the water bottle next to his bed. He could feel his breath becoming shallower, he knew it was coming. Soon.
White had scrambled to catch his binoculars before they fell, catching them inches off the floor. His heart pounded in his chest as he brought them back to his eyes, only to have confirmed for him the images that now played across Black's television. Black had filmed him sleeping! He felt anger where previously he had felt disgust. That bastard spy had stood in his room, filming him, watching him sleep. He could tell what he was watching was edited down from a much longer piece of video, no two pieces at least, he saw, as the scene shifted. How long? How many times? His mind raced as he watched Black watch him sleep. But all he was doing was watching, passively sitting with his pictures, watching White sleep in still image and on the screen.
And then he saw Black shift, saw him set the pictures to the side, and his whole back tense as if something were coming. The gloved hands fidgeted, moved as if trying to keep from doing something they shouldn't be. And then the scene on the screen changed. White still slept, but this time, he clearly recognized the setting. It had been his hideaway two before his current, when he had been on a mission in the north. He had been tracking Black and several other Black Nation agents. There had been a number of close calls, and each night, he had come back, exhausted, and slept the often-deep sleep of painkillers and alcohol. And even then, Black had stood over him, watching.
But something was different with this piece, both in Black's body language and the video. It was unedited, and Black was fully focused on it, as Black's hands were slowly touching first his own arms, then his shoulders, then running gloved fingertips over the muscles of his shoulders and chest. Black's body shivered at his own touch. White felt sick, even though he had suspected it was all about this. He wanted to shoot Black, the disgusting pervert, down like a sick animal.
But his gun hand stayed on his knee, and his other on the binoculars, watching.
Black moved slowly, pacing himself to some well-known meter that White, as of yet, did not know. He slid long fingered gloved hands over his own skin, but only touching has chest and arms and back. How long had this video run? How long had Black stood there, watching that night? This video was the raw original, unedited. And it was just, at first, White sleeping. And then Black shifted his weight forward, rising to lift his weight forward from sitting to half kneeling. He slid his hands down along each hip and slowly slid the band of his pajama pants down, revealing the two pale globes of his ass directly to White's view.
And despite himself, White glanced up at the mirror on the wall behind Black, and saw Black now with his pants to his knees, fully exposed in the warm light of his bedroom, cock nearly fully erect. White watched with a numb sense of horror and curiosity as his rival's reflection reached a gloved hand down to touch himself hesitantly. It first cupped his clean-shaven balls, lightly stroking and tugging at them, then the exposed curve of his erection. And still, on the screen, White watched his own face sleep as he saw his enemy, his rival, slowly begin to jerk himself off to the image.
He had been paying so much attention to the one hand, White had not seen Black reach into the case and pull out a fourth item. But his instincts screamed GUN before his mind saw Black clear the chamber and drop the unloaded magazine onto the floor with one hand, a trick he had seen Black do in combat before. Clear gun, he realized. Why did Black have an unloaded gun in the bag? And something in his mind nudged at him, trying to put pieces together that he was still too stunned to even be conscious of.
Then he saw his sleeping face on the screen contort, and his body shift. The camera backed away at first, then returned to where it had been when he had not awakened totally. White realized, painfully, that he had been dreaming. He watched Black for a reaction to the change. The gun's tip was tracing a line down the left side of his body, very near the gruesome scar while Black's left hand slowly worked his cock in its' grip. Of course, White thought in a distracted way, he's left-handed, he shoots left handed at least; but then, what was he doing, touching himself like that with an unloaded gun in his wrong hand? He could see but not hear Black moan and shudder slightly as White's recorded image stirred again. And something in White's brain poked at him again, trying to make connections but failing to get his attention.
And then White saw his own image shudder in its sleep, face contorting with pleasure, and cry out soundlessly. His own lips, without meaning too, mouthed the same words: Black, yes, please. And everything clicked into place as he saw the video loop through that moment once more, and Black shuddered violently as one hand dug the tip of the gun against the ruin of flesh near his heart, and the other stroked violently as his rival came into the black leather of the glove. The image looped through that horrible moment once more.
White had been having the same dream for years, ever since he had been brutalized and left nearly dead by a Black Nation agent who had not been Black. He never told the HQ shrinks about it, never even really admitted it to himself. But he knew it was there, and he knew when he woke from it he would be covered in his own cum and crying. In the dream it had been Black who had first beaten him to submission and then, without the sadistic pleasure of the man who had actually done it, been bent over the table of the interrogation room and fucked repeatedly. In the dream he didn't scream and beg to be killed, in the dream he didn't offer to tell everything he knew if only he would stop, and in the dream, when he came, it was with Black's gloved hand wrapped around his cock, his own burred deep inside of him, not from being pushed against a wall as he was raped over and over again, the skin torn from his chest and balls by the friction against unpainted cinderblock.
Black couldn't know what he dreamed about or why, could he? White felt terror and shame rise up in him, clouding out the anger. And then his eyes caught the screen again, and he remembered that night in crystal detail. He had woken from the dream to more than his own voice. A startled gasp from near his bed hit his still sleeping mind, and he had had the gun in his hand before his eyes were open. Then there was enough of a pause to identify the target, and he fired twice in the direction of the Black agent near his bed. Then the shape was gone, with only a splatter of blood and the impact mark of the second slug in the wall behind where the figure had stood to know he had hit with only one shot. And he had been too ashamed, too scared, standing there with his body damp with his own cum, to chase after the wounded agent. He had managed to lose the gun, a .22, on a mission only a few weeks later. It now rested in Black's hand, pressed on the scar from the digging he must have done himself to remove the slug from so close to his heart.
And still, White didn't know why Black had done all of this. And then Black, barely moving, dropped the gun, grabbed the remote, and pointed it back, over his naked shoulder, almost directly at the coop. He pressed a button, and the coop began to fill with knockout gas.
White coughed fitfully, and just as darkness sucked the consciousness from his mind, he thought, you bastard, you got me.
/End Observation