Title: Love Corrupted
Author: Tamara
Email: tamara@bitchenvy.com
Rating: R -sexual content and angst, angst, angst.
Summary: Staying when your heart's not in it anymore.
Disclaimer: Sydney and Vaughn don't belong to me. They are the sole property of JJ Abrahms. I do claim the wife, though. I have yet to come up with a name for her. If I name her at all.
Distribution: Want it, let me know.
A/N: There was only supposed to be one story, Love Gone Wrong, which is the situation from Syd's view. But then Vaughn wanted to tell his side of the story, and it's not a happy one. I don't do happy endings. I have a rep to protect.

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Odd as it sounded, it was at times like these, her legs wrapped around his waist, her hands clutching at his shoulders, nails digging into his skin, the coppery scent of his blood mingling with the musky aroma of sex in the air, when he wished he'd never met her. At times like these, her moans echoing in the stillness of the room, the feel of her clenching around him, when he thinks that having her back was the worst thing that ever happened to him.

Just when he was moving on, making a new life, loving someone else, happy for the first time in forever, Sydney Bristow came back from the dead and ruined his life.

And he could only blame himself.

If he hadn't answered the phone that night, four weeks after she reappeared, if he had simply rolled over, pulled his wife into his arms, and ignored the ringing that had never signaled anything but problems, Sydney's or the CIA's, he would have been content to live his life. Instead, he met Sydney at the park, gave in to all the of the pain and confusion he'd been feeling since the moment Kendall called him, one short hour after making love to his wife, to tell him that Sydney had been found, and made the biggest mistake of his life.

He was pulled from his thoughts as Sydney cried out, her body tensing beneath him for a moment before going boneless as pleasure coursed through her. He followed her a moment later, then pulled out and away from her, ending their liaison as abruptly as it had begun. A quick glance at the clock showed that they had just over a half an hour to get dressed and get to the plane waiting to take them back to Los Angeles. Without a word, he got up from the bed and walked into the bathroom, slamming the door closed behind him.

Even though four inches of wood separated them, he could still feel Sydney's stare through the door, feel the questions she longed to ask but dared not voice. Two years ago, she would have followed him into the bathroom, stepped into the shower with him and the two of them would have made love, the warm water raining down on them, the light mist of steam cocooning them in their own little world. Two years ago, it was the way they spent many a morning, arriving late to work more often than not. Two years ago, following him would have never been an option because, two years ago, at five minutes to eleven on a Friday night, he never would have left the bed.

It was amazing the difference two years made.

He finished showering and dressing in record time, wanting nothing more than to be away from Sydney, away from the seedy hotel room, away from all the reminders of all the things he shouldn't be doing. He wanted to go home, kiss his wife hello, pat Donovan on the head. He wanted to curl up on the couch with the woman he married, watch television, ask her about her day. He wanted to take her to their room, to their bed, show her how much she meant to him, let her know with his lips and his tongue and his hands how much he loved her, how happy he was to have her in his life.

He wanted to be able to do all that, all that and so much more, without knowing that none of it meant a damn because he is a liar, an adulterer, the kind of man he had been so sure he would never be. If he loved his wife, really loved her, he wouldn't spend his nights fucking Sydney in the back rooms of nightclubs in the twilight hours of the morning. If he really loved his wife, loved her like he claimed when he stood up before a hundred of their closest friends and family and vowed to honor and cherish her, love her and forsake all others, he wouldn't have spent the last hour making Sydney come in a motel room half way around the world. And if he really loved Sydney, he never would have settled for midnight trysts, for being with her sometimes but not always. If he loved Sydney, loved her like she was the most important thing in the world to him, he would never spend the moments afterward wishing he was anywhere else but with her.

If he had loved Sydney before, when he walked into that room in Hong Kong and saw her sitting there, real and alive and within reach, he knew, without a doubt, that he doesn't love her now.

Because if he really loved her, he would let her go.