No. 98

Prompt: Any, Any, undercover as a married couple
http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/695597.html?thread=91607597#t91607597

Lucas had know that playing both sides, the Russians against Section D, would have an enormous cost, physical, intellectual, and emotional, but this wasn't an angle he'd predicted. It was one thing for Kachimov to assign Elizabeta as his handler, another to ask him to go undercover with her as his wife.

It was so easy to slip back into old habits, keeping a hand in the small of her back and walking slightly to the left and behind her so he could protect her at a moment's notice. When he'd been returned to England, he'd looked forward to never having to speak Russian again for anything that wasn't mission critical, but when they sat at the table in the café with a samovar between them, drinking fragrant coffee and scanning passers-by for their mark, he asked her about what she was working on, and he told her about the latest book he'd read, and he wasn't transported back to that prison cell where they screamed at him about Sugar Horse and made him feel like he was drowning.

Elizabeta was a kind woman, a gentle woman, and she was friendly, so she was good at making small talk with their mark when the only other open space at the café was at their table. She reached out, slipped her hand into Lucas's, squeezed, and he squeezed back. And then, when it was time to go, she leaned over to kiss him on the cheek, but he turned to her instinctively and her mouth met his, and it was coming home – more than fish and chips, than stepping through the scanner into Section D on the Grid, more than Big Ben and the Tower Bridge and Coronation Street on the telly – and he never wanted to leave.

Once their mark was out of earshot, Elizabeta snatched her hand back, arranged their next meeting time, and left him there with cold coffee and a hollow feeling in his chest.

Lucas stared at the doorway long after she was gone, and then his cell phone buzzed, Ros checking in. Back to work.