WARNING/HEADS UP: Since this takes place during WWII, spy Logan has to hang out with a lot of Nazis, so be prepared for period-appropriate ethnic slurs (i.e. Gypsy instead of Rroma). I don't linger on them, but I don't shy away from them either. I'm Jewish, so I felt like it was irresponsible to do a WWII AU and completely gloss over the Nazi stuff. There won't be anything too graphic though, because this is a sexy spy fic, not a sad Holocaust fic. Think: Inglorious Basterds meets The Americans, with a dash of James Bond.

Brush Pass:

a brief encounter where something passes between agents in a public place

that should never be seen.

LISBON

August, 1944

Perched on the corner of the sprawling Praça dos Restauradores, a wide, central avenue that ran along the perimeter of a small but busy square, the Aveneida Palace Hotel could be easily reached from a large number of adjacent rooftops. The grand, white-washed building was tucked far enough away from the main center of Lisbon to lessen the possibility of collateral damage, but still close enough to offer the shooter enough crowd cover for an easy escape.

They would be spoiled for choice.

Bertolt Pfannmüller was what the OSS liked to refer to as a 'soft target'. He wasn't a person of interest, didn't have the ear of anybody important and would barely have made a blip on the OSS radar, were it not for the serendipitous location of his government desk job.

And that specific desk happened to be on the same office floor as Adolf Ziegler's, Hitler's favorite painter and president of the Chamber of Culture - the division of government responsible for the location and destruction of Entartete Kunst, which could be loosely translated in English as 'degenerate art'.

Logan Echolls dragged his index finger around the rim of his poorly made Gibson, trying his best to clear his mind of the OSS sniper waiting just across the street, perched and ready for action.

He didn't know where he was hidden, and he didn't want to know. There were reasons honeypot operatives (oh, how he hated the nickname) were kept in the dark about their armed counterparts, beyond the obvious teeth-scraping discomfort of knowing that they were walking directly into a possible firefight and putting their lives in the hands of a person they'd never met before. One hesitant step or a stolen glance in the wrong direction could tip off the mark, not just bungling the mission but putting American lives in danger. Most notably, their own.

As the pale, slightly-overweight arts finance minister with modified Kaiser Wilhelm mustache, droned on about the evils of Freud and Jewish mind control, Logan dutifully nodded his head, feigning an intense level of interest not felt since his first time seeing a live woman naked.

He had already been forced to sit through two hours of lectures about the 'interior races' and German Exceptionalism, and his patience was wearing thin. If his unit didn't wrap this up quickly, he might just walk into the line of fire by choice.

But, he couldn't deny the sense of pride he felt in himself, a sensation so foreign to him it was like wearing a stranger's clothes.

It was ironic, he knew, since the entire English-speaking world had practically been showering him with accolades simply for existing. But this - the one accomplishment he actually felt proud of - they could never know about. It would be his alone.

Growing up under the harsh glare of Hollywood Boulevard, everybody knew Logan Echoll's story. From his famous parents' storybook courtship to his father's arrest for murdering Logan's girlfriend, an act that drove his glamorous mother - and several of her most devoted fans - to suicide, every gory detail of Logan's most painful and private moments had been splashed all over the tabloids since the day he'd emerged screaming into the world.

When Logan was 16, his father, Aaron, stopped putting the strap to his back long enough to shove a tin sword into his hand. He said they were going to spend some quality time together, but what he really meant was that the studio wanted to make a sequel to 'The Buccaneer', called 'Son of The Buccaneer'. They thought audiences would love it if the 'son' were played by Aaron's real son. They weren't wrong.

A decade passed quickly, with so much momentum he could barely breathe much less make his own choices. At least, that was before her.

'Some Girls Are' was scheduled to be a 35 day shoot off the coast of the Yucatan, a sexy 'meet-cute' about three society girls on a leisure cruise in Hawaii falling in love with three young sailors stationed at Pearl Harbor. Lilly Kane arrived four days late to set, slightly drunk, and was so damn charming that even the stodgy director couldn't hold a grudge.

Logan was in love, and - by some miracle - he managed to get her to love him back. Luckily for their relationship, audiences seem to love them together too, and they soon became on onscreen team, shooting five movies together over the course of three years.

Pretty soon, his whole world narrowed down to just work and Lilly, and he was a happier man for it. But just as sudden as her appearance was in his life, she was gone. Cut down in her prime by an aging matinee idol, who viewed his own son as both his greatest accomplishment and as the living embodiment of his own mortality.

Logan wasn't sure if his father went to his house with the intent to kill Lilly, but she still ended up face down in a swimming pool like a bad Hollywood cliche. And Logan - being the fiancé - was named the prime suspect.

But being filmed in front of 30 crew members was as rock solid an alibi as one could get, so he was quickly cleared. And, when his mother produced a missing ashtray from Logan's living room that she'd found in the trunk of Aaron's car, covered in what later proved to be Lilly's blood type, an arrest was quickly made.

The papers said his father went mad, claimed he was high on drink or speculated he must've been drugged without his knowledge. America was in shock at what Aaron had become. But Logan knew this who he really was, who he had always been. He has the scars to prove it. And so he did, in court, and the world followed every detail with hungry devastation.

When the verdict came back and his father was acquitted, Logan hid in the back of the kindly sheriff's office and wept.

The man was was patient with him, wrapped an arm around Logan more easily than his own father ever had. He told Logan that Lilly's death wasnt his fault, that Logan couldn't have predicted what would happen that night, any more than he had reason to suspect she would be killed any other night he might have been working. That it was true, didn't make it any less a cold comfort.

By the time Lynn Echolls jumped from the walkway of the Coronado Bridge, Logan had run out of tears.

So, a month later, when Uncle Sam came knocking, and offered Logan the opportunity to save lives in the real world the way he did onscreen, he jumped at the opportunity. Little did he know it would mean playing his most challenging role yet: the absolute worst version of himself imaginable.

A female hand roughly dipped down the back of Logan's trousers, fastening a shirt made of a thick, girdle-like material between his legs.

Normally, he'd never find a reason to complain about a woman palming his groin, but Mac - the oddly-named, 'technology cobbler' sent to kit him out - was being more than a little rough, and it wasn't in the good way.

"Buy a girl a drink first, will ya?" He inhaled at the pinch of the snaps, trying his best not to shrink away from her grasping, icy-cold fingers.

"Aww, am I making you blush?" She straightened the waist of his pants like a mother hen, then folded her arms across her chest and took a long, appraising look at him. "Thought you were supposed to be some kind of lothario?"

"I take it you're not a fan?" He raised an eyebrow, vaguely amused. It wasn't often his charms had no effect on a woman. "More the bookish type, are you?"

"More like…the sewing circle type." She paused, waiting for a reaction that never came.

He's not sure what she was expecting him to say. Half the women in Hollywood were closet lesbians. "Some of my best friends are seamstresses."

Mac smiled faintly and pressed her fingers to the front of his chest to test out the tensile strength of the vest. "Don't go getting brazen with this. It's not a flak jacket, it's only thick enough to protect you from a blade….and a dull one at that." She stood back up and considered her work, index finger tapping against her bottom lip in thought. "The jacket should probably still fit, but you're going to look thinner under your clothes."

"My producers will thank you for that." He stretched his pecs to test the tension of the garment, it didn't have a lot of give. "How do you women wear girdles?"

"We women don't all wear girdles. Some of us enjoy the act of breathing unemcumbered." She handed him a crisp, white dress shirt, and left him to do up his own buttons.

He fumbled with the first few, a symptom of his frayed nerves, then took a deep breath and fastened the rest through sense memory.

"Well, we can just forget about the mic." Mac scrubbed a frustrated hand through her bobbed hair and frowned. "The hot spots Weevil made around the the bar should pick up most of your conversation, but you're going to have to speak up. Big Daddy is not going to be pleased."

"If six seasons of Summer stock taught me anything, it's how to project my voice." He offered up his thousand watt smile. If that didn't lift her mood, he was out of tricks.

She stared flatly at him for a moment before one corner of her mouth picked up very slightly as she popped a pair of radio frequency cuff links into his sleeves. "They said you were funny."

He pulled on a light weight dinner jacket and ran his hands over the lapels to brush off the lint. "Well, dad did say to always leave 'em laughing. Of course, he turned out to be a murderer, so…guess not everybody got the joke."

Mac produced a gold rectangular cigarette case from a fabric bag and slipped it into the interior breast pocket of Logan's jacket, then rapped the metal covering his heart. "Last guy who thought he was funny - an Agent we called Piz - took two to the chest in Düseldorf. Those rabbi walks-into-a-bar jokes don't really play around those parts the way you'd think."

Logan shrugged, determined not to show any fear. "Not everybody's got my timing."

"I'm glad to hear you've got good timing, because you're gonna need it." She pulled a cube-shaped box from her bag and opened it, facing him. "This is something we call a digital watch. It has a jump-hour mechanism that flips the cards to the exact minute - you may have seen something like it at some train stations? It takes away a lot of the guesswork as far as operations go, because we're all synced up." She flashed a matching watch on her wrist. "Helps avoid nasty surprises, like being accidentally shot in the head if you walk outside a minute too late."

A chill ran though Logan's body, despite the extra layers he was wearing. "You said you were starting me off small, that this was a starter mission."

"The mark is not SS. That's small as far as we're concerned. Big Daddy usually doesn't get out of bed for anything less than a black shirt."

Logan wrinkled his nose as she closed the band of the watch around his wrist. "Weevil? Piz? Big Daddy? I feel like I'm trapped in a bad Southern Gothic play. Are we really married to the name 'Big Daddy', or…?"

Mac laughed, for the first time that afternoon, finally breaking the tension in the air. "Agent V will get a kick out of that one. He actually is her dad and he's been trying to make that nickname happen since she was a kid. She thinks it's an abuse of power but Agent K calls the shots so we're kind of stuck with it as long as he finds it funny...even if he's the only one who does. Which he is."

"Then I'd like to be called Admiral Moneybags."

"Code names are no joke, Logan, we use them because we have to. If you get caught, we don't need the whole unit getting burned."

"I would die before I would give up names," he said, feeling irrationally angry at the implication. He'd run across a lot of resistance when he first been approached by the OSS about joining, but assumed he'd won the naysayers over. Why would they put a guy into the field whom they felt they couldn't trust? "I'm no snitch."

She held her hands up in a mea culpa. "That wasn't an attack on your character. This is war. There are no gentleman's agreements when it comes to outing spies. And, let me tell you, these Nazis are some nasty pieces of work. They've gotten very creative with their interrogation techniques. With enough time, they can get anybody talking. Better you can't tell what you don't know."

His brow furrowed at her words. She made sense, and he was glad it wasn't a specific lack of trust in him that kept him in the dark, but on some level it still stung. "Good lot that rule will do to protect me. Everybody already knows who I am. I'm going in naked."

"True. But, we couldn't get a meeting with any of these people before you fell into our laps. It's lucky for the OSS that the SS are such star fuckers." Mac's eyes lingered on him for a while, her expression slowly softening into a look of fraternal affection. "Your sacrifice has not gone unnoticed."

The way Mac eschewed sentimentality, earning a comment like that from her felt bigger than a ticker tape parade.

"I'm just doing my part for the war effort, same as every other able-bodied man." Logan caught his image in the mirrored closet door and let out a shuddered breath. He reminded himself that he was wearing a costume and that this was a just role, exactly the same as every other one he'd played before. "It's just strange not to know the scope of the mission - this feels like shooting scenes from a script out of order without knowing the whole plot of the film."

"Even I don't know the entire mission," she said, touching her own chest for emphasis. "Think of us as an Olympic relay team. You don't look behind you when you're running fast or you could trip yourself up. Just look ahead. Pass the baton. Trust your team. That's how you win a race."

"You're saying you really don't know anything?" He cocked his head, eyebrow raised in disbelief.

"I'm saying we all know exactly as much as we need to know to do the job we've been hired to do - and no more. Every operation is 'eyes only'. It's safer that way for everybody." She straightened his collar and took a step back to take in his final look. "We're all just cogs in one great big machine."

"I'm a cog?"

"You? No, Admiral Moneybags. You're the grease that gets this whole contraption moving."

With its soaring, arched ceilings and mirrored walls, the opulent lobby bar at the Aveneida was still an impressive sight, even with the supply shortages. And though the establishment hadn't been able to keep the standard of upkeep it had been previously famous for, nobody ever complained. Any expectation of luxury vanished with the elimination of the French Zone Libre. People just considered it an indulgence not to be speaking German.

By the stroke of noon the house was usually packed, but Wednesdays were lighter than most. Crowded enough not to draw suspicion, but clear enough for the room to be controlled.

Pfannmüller was still talking a wide streak, now prattling on about the Aryan beauty of Lauren Bacall in a thick Sudetenland accent. "Have you ever met her?"

"Once or twice." Logan amused himself with the knowledge that at this time last year he'd actually been a guest at the woman's Passover seder.

For most people who still had their humanity intact, this would be a difficult task, keeping a straight face while dining with the enemy. But Logan had spent his entire life suffering the company of loathesome individuals.

He'd endured two decades living with an abject sociopath, only to be thrust unwillingly into the grasping hands of the Hollywood Studio system. With that experience under his belt, having drinks with a Nazi felt just like any other lazy afternoon.

"Obrigado, Señhor Echolls." The person who had been serving them, a barman with a glaring lack of hair and an even more obvious lack of bartending knowledge, placed a small silver tray containing the bill in front of Logan. "It is an honor to have you here with us today."

The bald man caught his eye and subtly glanced at the price written at the bottom, before turning away to polish a nearby section of the hammered copper with a brown chenille rag.

1,49 Escudos

The number was underlined, with an erroneous comma.

Logan had already figured the barkeep to be a plant, due to his spectacular inbility to mix drinks, so that had to mean the number on the bill was the time he needed to have the Nazi outside in front of the building's entrance. Mac told him the signal would be fairly obvious.

He checked his wrist watch: 1:41pm

The OSS clearly wasn't too concerned about giving their operatives much lead time. He'd have to wrap this up quickly.

As he reached for his wallet to settle the bill, Pfannmüller lifted the slip of paper off the tray and glanced quickly at it. "149? You ordered Gibsons. That nincompoop brought you two martinis."

Logan tried to take the bill back, but the other man held it defiantly to his chest. "Well, he charged us for two martinis, so I suppose that's fair."

"No." Pfannmüller let his free hand fall to the bar with a loud slap. "The service was dreadful. We should be compensated."

The clock above the bar read 1:43pm.

The bartender's hand tightened on the rag as he continued to clean, the only indication he'd been listening in. Logan would have to think of something fast if he was going to make the rendezvous on time.

He took a deep breath and forced a laugh. "You honestly expect them to know the difference between a Gibson and a martini? They're barely a civilized people."

Pfannmüller released the scrap of paper onto the plate as his ruddy face split into an unsettling smile. "You are quite right, Herr Echolls. We should not expect what is not within their abilities. It's only sets one up for disappointment, ja?"

"That's right." Logan repressed the urge to hail another drink to wash the rising bile from his throat. "Besides, it's not like I can't afford the price difference. In fact, if you'd allow me the honor?" He pulled some change from his pocket and tossed it on the tray with an arrogant flourish. "Good company is worth a bit of a surcharge."

"Danke schöen." Pfannmüller nodded his appreciation at the crass show of wealth. "You know, Der Führer was happy to hear that a man with your notoriety and stature was a vocal supporter of the the Nazi arts council."

They walked amicably past both gilded fixtures and gilded women toward the front of the room.

"Was he now? That certainly is flattering to hear." Logan wordlessly signaled to the maitre'd that they were ready for their coats. "I think it's important to spread the right message to the world, especially in such uncertain times."

"Well, he is a very big fan of your work," Pfannmüller continued, "particularly der, um, Säbelrassler?" He mimed a sword fight and chuckled at his own antics.

"The Swashbuckler?" Logan suggested, trying hard not to be disgusted by the idea of Hitler enjoying anything he might have done to entertain people.

"Ja! He has seen all of the sequels." Pfannmüller received his coat from the small Portuguese woman working the coat room, without making eye contact or speaking to her. "If you are ever in Berlin, we can organize a subversive book burning in your honor. Perhaps Kafka or Heinrich Heine? Unfortunately, we burned most of the extremist artwork in 1938 and the rest we've sold off in Swiss auctions to pay for the war effort. As I always say, if the Swiss want to be neutral, then let Dali corrupt their people as they pad our coffers."

Logan had heard rumors of bonfires being built with priceless kindling - Picasso, Miro, Van Gogh, Chagall - but this was the first time he'd gotten verbal confirmation of it. His mother, a dedicated art buff, would've wept at the news. "A book burning? That sounds like something I might enjoy."

"Wünderbar!" Pfannmüller beamed a shark-like grin.

Logan was beginning to see what Mac had meant when she described the Nazis as being a 'bottomless cesspool of weird'.

The coat check woman handed Logan his belted canvas trench, along with a wide smile.

"Obrigado." Logan nodded, returning the smile, which earned him a slight eyebrow raise from the Nazi standing in front of him. If ingrained manners were the thing that got Logan killed one day, at least he could say he went out with class.

Logan glanced at his watch just as the minute box flipped to 1:48pm , then extended his arm, guiding the other man through the rotating doors and onto the sidewalk in front of the building.

If the guy hadn't called gypsies vermin; if he hadn't claimed that jazz was a secret political plot by New York Jews to overthrow German culture; if he hadn't praised the burning of priceless pieces of artwork simply because they encouraged free thought and personal expression, then this could be just another stroll down the promenade.

But unfortunately for Pfannmüller, he was a dedicated worker toward bringing about the ideals of the Nazi cause and had made the fatal mistake of accepting a lunch invitation from a man who had a strong stomach for vengeance and a keen desire to see men who preyed on the blood of innocent people get their cummupance.

After what his father did to Lilly, Logan had no mercy for violent bullies. Every moment they spent free on the streets was another life put in danger.

Steeling himself for the deed, Logan took a deep breath and smoothed his hands down the front of his coat. He lifted the ends of his sash belt and tied them into a double knot, pulling the second loop hard.

That was the signal - one knot - and it was the difference between this man living or dying.

Logan followed Pfannmüller quickly, pushing through the glass turnstile, taking the first steps into his strange, new life like Alice down the rabbit hole.

A gust of wind blinded Logan momentarily as he caught his bearings. He could do this. He would do this. He'd help the government kill as many murderers as it took if it would help save lives. He may have been too late to save Lilly, but he'd never be late again.

His hand shook as he looked at his watch, he was exactly on time. 1:49pm.

Logan pulled the gold cigarette case from his left, breast pocket and silently angled it in Pfannmüller's direction, offering the man a final cigarette.

"No, thank you. I don't smoke," Pfannmüller held his palm up, politely refusing.

"Probably better that way." Logan pressed a cigarette between his lips and let it hang there for a moment, then replaced the case and pulled a pack of matches from his hip pocket. "My doctor is convinced these things will kill you." He rolled a single match between two fingers, then scraped his thumb nail against the phosphorous end and ignited it on the first try.

At that moment, a bullet tore through the skull of the man standing next to him, spattering Logan's trench coat with blood like an expressionist painting.

Pfannmüller probably would've organized a party to watch it burn.

Logan let the wind take the match, then fell to his knees next to the body and did his best approximation of Munch's 'Scream', as one hand lifted the dead man's wallet and keys from his suit pocket.

By the time Logan reached Adega Machado in the Alfama section of old Lisbon, he was convinced he'd need to be airlifted out of the area.

The brightly-painted buildings that lined the narrow streets of the quaint but disheveled neighborhood lurched inward due to a catastrophic earthquake that hit the city hundreds of years ago, contributing to a constant sense of vertigo. And those streets were made impossibly dizzier by a messy layout that Logan could only compare to a drunk city planner throwing a handful of pulling taffy on the floor and using it as the basis for urban development.

To make matters worse, it was poorly lit. Economic cutbacks from the war meant the very few electric lamps that did exist were almost never turned on. And so, Logan was just happy to have found the restaurant at all before the armistice.

Luckily, he could hear the place before he could see it, the rueful melody of an acoustic guitar drifting down the alleyway, accompanied by a melancholic moan that weaved its way in and out of the chords with no particular reason or direction. Like following the Pied Piper, he tracked the music to its source.

Whatever he found at the other end had better include a well-stocked bar.

After his statement to the police and an hour-long shower scrubbing the blood off his hands, Logan had spent the rest of the evening roaming the streets to clear his head. He may not have been the one to pull the trigger, but he was partially responsible for killing a man that afternoon. And despite what the newspapers had speculated about him after Lilly's death, the idea of murdering somebody didn't sit well with him, no more than the average man.

But, he would still get up tomorrow and do the same thing again if he had to, conscience be damned. It's what he signed up for.

However, he was about to the meet the person directly responsible for Pfannmüller's death and maybe that would put things in perspective for him? Mac told him he would rendezvous and debrief with another agent over dinner at 2100 hours. The agent would be dressed in something yellow.

He wasn't expecting a woman, much less a girl who looked like a teen playing dress up in her mommy's closet. But she was the only one in the restaurant still sitting by herself - bare legs crossed at the knee, wearing a canary-colored sundress and matching yellow cardigan - it had to be her.

Logan assumed she was legal (if only just), but it still didn't sit right with him. The OSS had a flexible morality when it came to a lot of things, but they weren't child-peddlers. Either way, the home office was going to being getting an earful about it later. Just because the girl knew how to shoot straight didn't mean it was right for her to be taking care of hits.

His only hope was that she was professional enough not to bother him all night with questions about his films. The promise of equanimity was one for the reasons he'd enlisted in the first place.

As he ambled warily toward the table, closing the distance between them, he caught a an amused glint in her eye, as if she could almost hear what he was thinking about her and found his discomfort cute. She was patronizing him. Maybe she wasn't so young after all?

He took a closer look. She wasn't wearing much makeup, and her golden-brown hair was pinned simply at the sides, falling into natural waves that cascaded just past her shoulders, like Ava Gardner. He was used to seeing more artifice on women, especially the broads in his hometown. Perhaps, that's what threw him?

He reached for his Stetson at the same time she leaned forward and nudged the empty chair across from her with the ball of her foot. "Darling, you're late!"

The hostess turned with an outstretched hand and relieved him of his hat, then snapped her fingers, summoning a passing busboy who took immediately lifted it from her hands.

The woman in yellow stood up to greet Logan as he approached the table and something in her expression - something knowing - stopped him dead in his tracks.

And that was it.

Much like the day Lilly Kane sauntered onto his beachside set with bloodshot eyes and a cheeky grin, Logan knew this moment was important.

The agent was a contradiction; she had the face of a babe, and though her bright blue eyes were vibrant and full of fire, they had lived a thousand different lifetimes, much like his own.

Logan swallowed dryly and forced a smile. "Just trying to be fashionable."

"Don't tell me you forgot your coat again? Honestly, he'd lose his head if it weren't attached," she said, looking on him fondly before sharing a laugh with the hostess. Her hands fell onto his biceps for leverage as she lifted herself onto her toes to press a kiss onto each of his cheeks, lips softer and warmer than they looked.

"This is why man need wife," the hostess said, playing along cordially.

The agents fingers slipped over the curves of his arms and grasped at his hands, sending a warm jolt through him at the feeling of her touch. "Is that the reason, Logan?"

"I can think of a few others," he said, enjoying the sound of his name on her lips, and without thinking, leaned forward and bussed his mouth lightly against hers, a hint of a kiss.

Her eyes widened at his brazenness, but she quickly recovered. "….and yet, you're still late to meet me."

Okay, she was actually angry about this. What did she expect him to do? Show up to dinner looking like a grisly attempt at pointillism? He needed to shower and didn't realize he'd need five hours lead time and a sack of breadcrumbs to find the joint.

In reality, he'd probably had plenty of time to get there for their meeting, but something about actually seeing the person who helped him commit murder made it feel all the more real.

Logan shrugged and shot her a poor facsimile of an apologetic smile. "Sorry Pookie. Traffic was just murder."

Pookie. That was his parole word. It was supremely embarrassing to say out loud, but it was definitely not something that would generally come up in normal conversation.

A slight adjustment in her expression told him she registered the code.

"Murder, huh?" Her fingers tightened around his and she leaned in conspiratorially. "I hope you brought me something good to make up for your tardiness, Buster."

Buster. That was hers. They were a match.

"I always do." He produced a small gift-wrapped box from his sport coat pocket - the 'take', a copy of the dead man's office key and identification papers inside - and placed it in the center of her hands. "Am I forgiven?"

Her eyelashes fluttered as she examined the ornate box, before glancing up, forehead wrinkled. "Gift-wrapped? You really shouldn't have."

"Oh, I don't know. Civility may have fallen by the wayside, but I still subscribe to the William of Wyndham's belief that manners make the the man."

Her lips parted in an aborted laugh as she quickly secured the box into a straw totebag. "Then, I will save this to open later when I can thank you privately, because I have manners, too."

The hostess looked between them, features pinched in confusion, then walked around them and silently dropped two menus on the burgundy tablecloth. "I come back later, señhor?"

"That depends on how hungry my lovely wife is?" He held the chair out for his dinner companion before taking a seat himself.

"Your lovely wife is always very hungry." The agent shook out her fabric napkin and placed it on her lap. "And not very picky. Unlike some people. Would you like a Gibson, darling, or are you okay with the wine I ordered?"

Logan lifted a questioning brow. He knew the bar had been bugged, but he never really thought about who might be listening on the other end.

"Maybe you'll get it exactly how you want it, this time?" She smiled, and - Jesus Christ - she had the most perfect set of natural teeth he'd ever seen.

The hostess pulled a small spiral notebook and pencil from her apron. "You tell me."

The agent was obviously referring to his drink order at the Aveneida Hotel, which he'd sent back after the bartender - who turned out to be another agent, named Weevil - made it wrong.

He was perfectly within his right, since any bartender worth their salt would know that Gibsons are made with onions, not olives. Weevil should have done his research, coordinated ahead what Logan was going to drink. Pfannmüller would have been suspicious if a man like Logan hadn't noticed or commented on the wrong cocktail. "Is it really 'picky' to want a bartender to bring you what you ordered?"

"When there are soldiers eating spam rations in the Pacific theater, I think you can probably let one or two miniature onions slide, no?" She leaned forward, lips pursed for a rebuttal.

"There was a jar of onions sitting on the bar in front of me within reach, and considering how much they charge for a lousy Gibson there, you'd think they'd manage to include the only ingredient that actually makes it a Gibson rather than a martini." Logan glanced at the hostess, who lowered her pad, uneasily.

"Everybody's got to make sacrifices during wartime, Logan. For some, it's shoes or heat during the winter, for others, it's - you know - martini onions. I guess." She gestured to him and smirked.

"Not a martini, sweetheart, a Gibson. That's rather the point I'm trying to make, isn't it?" He smirked right back at her, sure to add the smug tilt to his lips that used to make Lilly want to throttle him. "But we all must do our part, I suppose."

"I come back for your order when you're ready…" The hostess shifted nervously in place.

"No, don't!" They both shouted at the same time, startling the woman.

"I go." She flashed a weak smile, then practically sprinted for the kitchen.

Logan watched the poor woman's retreating form and then razed his date with an accusatory glare. "Has anybody ever told you how great you are at staying inconspicuous? Seriously, you're a regular Nora Charles."

He noticed the open bottle of wine on their table, poured out a glass for himself and refilled hers.

"Is that supposed to make you Nick? Because I'm pretty sure he's probably man enough to drink his gin without cocktail onions." She rolled her eyes, lifting her glass to her lips, then leaned forward in her chair as if spoiling for a fight.

"That's seriously your barometer for masculinity?" His face scrunched up, wondering how the hell they ended up in this conversation.

She pressed her fingertips to her lips in thought. "Well, I mean, can you lift heavy objects? There's also that."

Logan stared at her in disbelief before throwing his napkin at her chest - which she somehow managed to catch mid-air despite being doubled over in laughter. "Where the hell did the company dig you up? Lemme guess - Mars? No wait! Neptune!"

Her jaw dropped abruptly and she shook her head, as if pulling herself from a reverie. "You are not what I was expecting, Logan Echolls."

"What were you expecting? A dilettante?" He hadn't meant to sound so defensive, but nearly everybody he'd met insinuated the same thing, and those who hadn't, probably had never seen his movies. He couldn't really blame them, he would have probably made the same assumptions were he in their shoes, but he was tired of being prejudged. "Look, I signed up for this shitshow, and I wouldn't have done it if I weren't prepared to get my hands a little dirty."

"If you think this is getting your hands dirty, then you're greener than I thought." The agent paused, as if she were about to say something else, but then took a sip of wine instead. "I know why you were late tonight. You probably spent hours wandering around the city, maybe halfway down the bottle, wondering if you'd done the right thing today, questioning if you were still a good person?"

"Wrong. I was never a good person," he said, a little too quickly, then drained the rest of his glass in one go. He refilled it with a shaky hand, the crimson wine sloshed over the lip of the goblet onto the white tablecloth beneath.

Her head tipped to the side as she stared at his face, expression unmoved. "Telling yourself that isn't going to make this job any easier, and it's definitely not going to make it true. You wouldn't be sitting here, if it were."

"Aww, is this concern? I'm flattered," his lips quirked into a smile, "but honestly, if you're trying to scare me—"

"—are you scared?" Her voice sounded a little too breathless for this spiel to only be about warning a rookie agent. But, he had his own demons to chase, she was welcome to hers.

"Am I scared?" Logan chuckled a little self-consciously, shrinking back slightly from the heat of her radiant stare. "I was practically born on the other side of the Rubicon, sweetheart. I wouldn't even know what it feels like not be just a little bit frightened by life."

The faint strains of a Spanish guitar started to play, accompanied by the mournful wail of a once-beautiful, middle-aged Fado singer, her face glazed over, seized by the spirit of the song.

He stared intently at the other agent, feeling not a little victorious by his ability to shock her into silence.

The woman sat up straighter and leveled him with furrowed concern. "To have experienced so much fear that you become numb to it is a double-edged sword, Logan, I honestly - well, I don't know whether I'm sorry for you or if I'm jealous."

That she would feel either of those things made him physically ill.

"Oh my God. Don't - don't—" he grimaced, then instinctively reached across the small table with his right hand, tentatively brushing the inside of her wrist with his fingertips. "Just - let's get really really lit tonight. Okay? Can we do that? I'll even drink my gin straight as an oblation to the war effort. Please? Can we please do that?"

When she tilted her chin up, the look of determination in her eyes made his breath catch in his chest. He wasn't sure yet what she wanted from him, but it was obvious she did want .

"Well, aren't you just the goddamn hero?" She quipped, her tone only halfway joking.

"That's me." He took a chance, letting his fingers slide gently across her hand, waiting tentatively for a response. "They'll be writing paeans about me back home by the end of the war."

"Dirty limericks count as paeans, now?" She smiled without looking up from where their hands met - his unspoken offer still unanswered - and slowly molded her palm to his.

Logan sagged with relief. In Hollywood, shitting where you ate was practically part of a star's contract rider, but none of the background extras were capable of killing him from 500 feet away.

He lifted her wrist to his mouth - enjoying the weight of her capable hand in his - and feathered his lips against her pulse point. Her fingers still smelled of gunpowder. "Anybody ever tell you you're a giant pain in the ass?"

She exhaled harshly and leaned into his hold. "Only everybody who's ever met me."

His lips parted, teeth grazed the thin skin over her blue veins and she giggled at the contact but didn't pull away. "So, what's your story?" He asked, with a cursory glance.

"When I was 19, a modeling scout discovered me at a San Diego strip mall selling ice cream cones for five cents a pop, down by the boardwalk." She scooted forward in her chair, and as she continued to speak, he could almost hear the smile in her voice. "Of course, I was too short to model, but central casting at Metro signed me up right away, and wouldn't you know it? My first job, I'm hired as a featured player on a shitty remake of Zorro. And that's when I saw him - Logan Echolls."

Her free hand framed his name in the air, and he let out a disgusted groan at her antics.

She continued, breathlessly. "I didn't think he'd notice me, but there was this one scene where he swashed when he should have buckled, and he fell directly on top of me. A meet cute, just like in one of his movies. We were married one month later. And now we're honeymooning in romantic Lisbon during the height of a brutal war. Couldn't you just die?"

Mouth agape, Logan was rendered completely speechless.

She slowly traced the gold band on his left hand with the tip of her index finger - the one that Mac had given him to wear this evening - and grinned, the very picture of innocence. "Well, you did ask for my story."

With a low scrape against the stone floor, his inched his chair closer. He leaned over, bridging the scant distance between them to whisper in her ear. "I didn't mean your cover story and you know it. Smartass."

She threw her head back and laughed, flashing those perfect teeth again. "You know the rules, Logan. I can't tell you anything personal about me, for both our safety."

His bottom lip pouted. "That hardly seems fair. You know everything there is to know about me. The entire world does. I'm at a disadvantage. Can't you at least answer some general questions?"

She rolled her head along her neck, clearly stalling for time, then finally dropped it to the side with a sigh. "Fine. But you know I'm not going to answer anything that's going to compromise national security, so don't bother."

"I wouldn't dream of it." His heart sped up, excited by the prospect of knowing this mysterious woman a little better. "So…is there a Mr. Secret Agent?"

Her brow pinched, seemingly puzzled by his line of questioning. "He'd have to be a pretty understanding guy to be okay with this lifestyle, don't you think?"

Logan look at her hand in his and gently twisted the matching gold band on her finger. "That's not a no."

"No," she huffed out a laugh. "Who the hell would want to get mixed up with me?"

He shrugged - the answer a green light as far as he was concerned - and took a chance, bringing her fingers to his mouth, pressing each one separately to his lips.

"Next question," he murmured against her skin when he was finished. "How'd a marginally nice girl like you end up in this line of work?"

"Marginally nice?" She gave him a flat look, then lightly kicked him under the table, losing her shoe in the process. But, before she could pull her leg back, he caught her foot between his thighs. Her breath hitched but expression remained stoic, not a trace of a blush.

He swiped the pad of his thumb against her arch experimentally, just to watch her squirm.

She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, composure strained, but still didn't break. "Let's just say I followed in my father's footsteps."

A shock of recognition rang through him. "Big Daddy!"

"Could you not?" Her face pulled a disgusted moue. "We're about to eat."

He smiled, triumphantly, and pointed at her. "You're Agent V."

"And you're Captain Moneybags," she teased, pressing her toes against his groin in retaliation. It wasn't sharp enough to hurt him, but the delicious friction she caused was almost harder to bear.

He was clearly overmatched.

"Admiral, actually. I earned that promotion, fair and square." He said, breathing through the contact, in an effort to tamp down his arousal.

"I'll bet you did," she purred, as she gently began to knead him to hardness with the ball of her foot.

Logan had no idea where this was going; if this was a game a sexual chicken, if she was toying with him or if this would actually lead to anything else.

But for the first time ever, he didn't even care what the outcome was.

Everything in his life before Lilly's death had been micromanaged and focus tested, and everything after had been one long free fall into a dark abyss. This - this controlled chaos - was something he could get on board with.

Her head pitched to the side, contemplating him for a moment. "I've been meaning to tell you, you were…professional. Earlier today. I was pleasantly surprised."

He couldn't deny her praise felt good. She didn't appear to be the kind of person who gave it away carelessly. "Did you think I was going to buy the farm out there?"

"If we're being frank…" without pausing what she was up to under the table, she casually took a sip of wine from her glass, "I thought that might've been the whole point of you coming here."

His heart stuttered at her words. If he was being honest with himself, that thought may have crossed his mind in his worst moments, but it didn't ring true. Not anymore.

He stilled her foot with his hand. "You thought I came here to kill myself?" He asked, barely over a whisper, as if voicing it would lend it more credibility.

She had the decency to look somewhat embarrassed by her accusation, but she still stood by it. "You were halfway done with the job, yourself, by the time you were recommended to the agency. Drunk and disorderly, fighting in public, driving while intoxicated…"

He released her foot and reached for her face instead, angling her chin up to meet his gaze. His fingers ghosted her jaw, barely touching, as if she were a ripe peach he was afraid he might bruise. "Look, I don't know who recommended me and I don't know why, but it was a lifeline, okay? I didn't take the job to end my life, I took it to save it."

"I always did wonder." She pressed her cheek into his palm, warm and solid, a satisfied look in her eyes.

Unable to handle the tension, Logan shot her a lopsided grin. "Or…maybe I just have a lot of anger I need to work out and figured I could do it better here without getting arrested?"

"Would you like to? Work that anger out?" She slowly licked her lips and he followed the motion with his eyes. "With me?"

Without breaking contact, Logan pulled a few coins out of his pocket and tossed them in the center of the table. "How about you, Pookie? Got some anger in there that needs working out?"

"Keep calling me Pookie," she grabbed his hand eagerly and pulled herself up, "and I will be furious."

Logan had done some strange shit in his time - some of it even when he was sober - but fucking a stranger in a dirty, dark alley of a sketchy neighborhood mere hours after murdering a man…that was a new one.

But then again, none of this was real. This wasn't actually him. It was just another role he was hired to play.

At least, that's what he planned to tell himself when the hangover wore off.

His trousers were around his ankles, bare ass exposed to the chilly Autumn air as he pressed into her from behind, stifling a groan into her hair.

The movie studio used to market him as 'the bad boy you could bring home to your mother'. Only half of that sentiment was true. They'd greased his way out of many sticky situations that would've ruined his career, and he'd paid for those ill-advised stunts with years of indentured servitude.

But this wasn't Hollywood, it wasn't even the real world. This place was just a fever dream frozen in time, like a Dali clock melting into the sand.

The night Lilly died - Logan's failure to save her life - it nearly killed him too. And the irony didn't escape him, that murdering a man today had been the only thing that was able to bring him back to life again.

A year of drugs, booze, sex and reckless fighting couldn't make him feel an ounce of what he'd felt today, as the nameless brunette in the yellow dress had led him by the hand into a nearby alley.

And if being with Lilly taught him anything, it had been to take first and ask questions later when it came to what was being given freely by a dangerous woman.

"Harder," the agent panted, hand slapping a patch of peeling, blue paint on the wall next to her head, where she had been bracing her arms. "Sometime today, would be good."

"You really are a sweet talker, aren't you?" Logan bent his knees and bracketed one hand over hers, then wrapped the other around her tiny waist, tugging her onto his lap until she bottomed out again.

"Shit! Yes, just like that." Her staccato breath echoed down the quiet street they were on, which was way too residential for Logan's comfort.

"Shush, you," he whispered into the shell of her ear, thrusting into her again. "I should've figured even fucking you wouldn't get you to shut up."

"If I thought fucking you was going to get me to stop making noise, then I would never have left the table with you." She bounced down on his cock, knocking the wind out of him - probably on purpose - then turned her head and huffed out a laugh. "I'm sorry, is my responsiveness distracting you?"

Her back tensed as he pressed into her again, a strangled exhale working its way from her throat. It was the most beautiful sound he'd heard in months.

He knew nothing about her, other than that she had a perfect smile, was good with a gun, and had a spot just below her ear on the side of her neck that made her squeal like a bunny whenever he licked it.

So he licked it again.

"Maybe some of us don't want to get arrested for being lewd and lascivious in public?"

She snorted. "You're worried about getting arrested for public exposure? I mean, considering what we got up to earlier—"

He cut her off with a thrust, and redoubled his efforts. "You're seriously making me rethink my personal policy on 'wet work'."

She tipped her head back and chuckled hoarsely against his cheek. "Maybe you should. You seem comfortable working wet."

Logan slid his hand down the satin expanse of her bare shoulder, then brought his palm to her mouth to keep her from saying anything else.

A surprised noise vibrated against his chest, but his pelvis rocked hard into her body before she could protest.

Short puffs of air against made him think she might be struggling to breathe, but when he tried to drop his hand, she quickly cupped it with her own and held it there, shaking her head.

She looked directly at him and his stomach quivered at the sight of her - face flushed and well kissed, eyes so dilated they shone black in the dim light of the street lamp, chestnut hair at the base of her neck curling with sweat.

Logan buried his face in the side of her neck and edged his teeth along the side of her tendon tongue pressing down firmly against her jumping pulse. Her life was in his hands, and he could end it with a simple bite. He'd made the same choice earlier today and he could make it again now.

She turned her face toward him and they made eye contact, then let her head fall back against his shoulder, almost daring him to do it.

With his other hand now free, he slipped it under her dress and let his fingertips graze above her entrance, pinching lightly. His cock pumping into her, slick and fast, velvet over steel. And as his arm tired and fell away, he noticed his palm was completely wet and had to breathe through the urge to come. "Shit. Shit. Shit."

"God!" Her face twisted up as she clenched hard around him, head still resting on his shoulder as she groaned against his jugular.

He barely had time to pull out of her before he followed over the edge.

A/N: So, that happened. As some of you know, I'm really insecure about writing smut, so this is an exercise in masochism for me. Hopefully, you're up for another chapter of it, because one is coming soon...and it's only getting dirtier from here.

There are some characters who aren't listed but WILL appear. I don't want to ruin the surprise.

My goal is to finish this by the end of December, because I'm starting grad school in January, so cross fingers!

What do you think so far? I'd love to hear from you.