Chapter Text
Ray never set out to be a spy. Technically, he still wasn’t a real one. He was an intelligence asset who had been cleared for fieldwork in cases that required advanced technical prowess. Which, when translated, meant he was only brought along when the mission needed someone that could talk science. He was primarily a head of technology in the CIA’s gadgetry division. He’d been the proud mind behind such important mechanisms as the camera pin, the focused laser disruptor, and the miniaturized voice recorder. In his technical work, Ray was considered to be one of the US’s most important resources. But in the field, he’d be lucky to not be considered a liability.
That night, he was supposed to be posing as the date of Sara Lance. The CIA had put her in touch with him after her investigation into a Soviet company had led her to one of their ex-employees. He’d been fired as an alleged whistleblower and fled the iron curtain with a packet of information Sara was incredibly interested in. Unfortunately, she’d only been able to contact the doctor by posing as an American scientist looking to recruit him for his works in aeronautics. And so, the CIA had sent her Ray, the nerdiest smooth-talker in the whole agency.
They’d met up only hours before in a sketchy hotel to debrief on the situation. She’d tossed him a tux and told him to get dressed as she went over the details. Sara was a very no-nonsense kind of woman, but she was much more understanding of his minimal skill set than some of the other agents he’d teamed up with. Sara, for one, actually made an effort to make sure he knew the plan and assured him she’d be there if anything went south. It was kind of nice to be paired with someone that Ray didn’t feel would leave him to the wolves if it meant completing the mission. But having an expert assassin on his side didn’t mean the job wasn’t going to be any less dangerous.
Sara had secured them invitations to a socialite party in Paris, and at the door, she introduced themselves as Camille Martín and Robert Mansfield. She had strutted into the ballroom in her fashionable French cocktail dress practically dragging Ray behind her like some kind of art piece. Instead of keeping to themselves as Ray would have preferred, Sara made a point to go up to random groups of party-goers and mingle with them for as long as they would have her. His French was a bit rough, but he knew she was introducing him as the new boy-toy she’d picked up at university. The guest would laugh and he would pull out his best smile before Sara grabbed their attention again.
Together, they bounced around the room for over an hour before Ray got distracted. He’d been surveying the room, searching for their target, when he spotted a figure standing back by the bar. They were leaning against a pole, partially concealed by the fracturing caused by the crystals of the chandelier. The glare of the light made it hard to get a good look at them, but Ray was almost certain they were looking back at him. He was about to mention them to Sara when she abruptly pulled him back into the crowd.
“That’s our guy,” she whispered behind her expert smile.
“The one by the bar?” he asked, glancing back over to the figure, who had already disappeared.
“No, the one in the corner,” she hissed, nodding her head in the opposite direction.
Ray followed her motion and indeed saw a frazzled looking man standing around a cocktail table.
“Just stick to the plan,” Sara reminded him before letting go of his arm, “I’ll be right there if anything goes wrong.”
Before he could even nod, Sara slipped into the crowd, leaving him alone as he approached the subject. He stuck out pretty badly, his salt and pepper suit contrasting sharply by the height of French fashion, but his unfriendly scowl protected him from any social interaction and caused Ray to gulp just a bit. Taking a deep breath, Ray straightened his bowtie and stumbled over to the table.
“Dr. Kravets?” he asked, trying to appear as friendly and non-threatening as he could. “My name is Dr. Mansfield. We’ve been exchanging letters.”
The man looked up at him skeptically. Even if the doctor hadn’t exactly dressed for a formal event, Ray was the one that felt more out of place. There was an edge to the way he was looking at him, and when he spoke, his distrust was thicker than his accent.
“You were supposed to say the password.”
Sweat was already beading on the back of Ray’s neck. He’d forgotten about the password.
“My apologies, Dr. Kravets,” he tried to recover, relying on his smile to reassure the man in case his words failed him again. “It’s just the winds from the east had got me all out of sorts today.”
Upon hearing the phrase, the Ukrainian gave him one last, sharp look before relaxing his shoulders. He messed with the collar of his jacket and grumbled as he looked around the room, “This is too public an area. What kind of secret meeting happens at a cocktail party?”
“One that provides a lot of witnesses in case something were to happen,” Ray assured the man, repeating the words Sara had said to him just a few hours before, “Plus, who would think of a ballroom as a good place to exchange one's scientific findings?”
The doctor was not amused. A part of Ray’s head was telling him he wasn’t playing this character right, that he should be more cold and authoritative like what Kravets would have expected. But that didn’t feel right to Ray. He didn’t want to bully this guy into giving him what he wanted. If the reports were to be believed, the doctor had experienced enough of that from his own country.
“The Soviets have been on my tail since Budapest,” the doctor complained, swishing his amber-filled glass. “They’re worried I will sell their secrets to the American pigs.”
Ray frowned at his choice of words but decided to let it go for the sake of the bigger question. “Is that not what you’re doing, Dr. Kravets?”
“I do not want my people to be hurt in the pursuit of some ideological war with the West,” he told him, the edge to his voice becoming very blunt. He practically spat out the last word like a curse. “So if I have to sell my soul to ensure their safety, that is what I will do.”
Ray was taken back by the doctor’s disdain. He knew the Soviets weren't exactly fans of his country, but he thought they could at least be civil. Ray knew he wasn't skilled enough to hide his reaction from the doctor, but he nodded all the same. “I understand... but I hope you know we're working so that nobody else has to get hurt.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he scoffed. The doctor then pulled a file out of his jacket and paused to take one last look at it. For a moment, Ray thought he was having second thoughts, but then Kravets physically threw it away from him. Apparently, happy to be rid of them. “This is the first piece I agreed to bring. I will provide you with the second piece after we are safely in America.”
Ray nodded, shakily picking up the folder and slipping it into his dress jacket. The moment the file was secure against his chest, Sara appeared back on his arm.
“Hey, sweetie,” she cooed with a too-big smile on her face. “Here’s where you ran off to.”
She reached up, almost like she was going to kiss him behind the ear, but at the last minute dodged to his ear to whisper sharply, “There is a bogey floating on your 4. I’ll take the target and you go out the back. Rendezvous at the safe house.”
As quickly as she came, Sara turned her attention toward Dr. Kravets and got him to walk with her back into the crowd. Startled by how quickly the situation had turned, Ray wasted no time cutting a beeline toward the door behind the bar. To do that, he had to skirt around the dance floor to avoid having to wind between the dancers. It was at that point in the night where everyone was well-intoxicated and in a frenzy worthy of the end of the world. The jazz band was intensely thumping away, and their high energy was only feeding into the anxious buzz in Ray’s gut.
He was only two feet away from the bar when all of his panicked momentum caused him to collide with a drunken guest. The glass of champagne that had been in her hand immediately spilled all over both of them as she recoiled off of his much larger body. He had knocked her a couple of steps back into the bar, but she hardly seemed phased as her dark eyes lazily looked up at him.
“Excuse me,” she said, heavily-accented French coming out of painted lips. She stumbled a bit as she inspected her now empty glass. When she saw it was empty, she abandoned it on the counter and let out a drunken giggle. “I seemed to have lost my footing.”
She kept giggling as she took a stumbling step away from the bar and toward him. Suddenly more concerned by this woman’s apparent level of intoxication than his own safety, Ray watched her take another step and trip over her heel. Thinking fast, he quickly grabbed her by the elbows and guided most of her momentum on to him. With her now clinging to his chest, he could feel her laugh into his coat and wrap her arms around his waist. Carefully, he shuffled them both back over to the bar and had to pry her off of him limb-by-limb. She was still giggling wildly as he helped her onto a stool and set her to lean against the bar so she wouldn’t fall off.
“Are you okay?” he asked both worried and frankly very flustered, “Do you have any friends I can go find for you?”
“Oh, an American!” she shouted, switching to a loud English, “I’ve never met an American before.”
“Yes, you have a beautiful country,” he replied, trying to quiet her down while also attempting to back away again.
“You’re a beautiful,” she replied before laughing at her own mistake. But just as she finished laughed, her face suddenly became serious. “I’ve always wanted to kiss an American.”
And just like that, she used the added height the bar stool gave her to leap up and plant one right on him. Ray stumbled back, both from shock and from the blunt force of this woman practically launching herself at him. Her arms were around his neck in an instant, keeping her lips glued to his for longer than he would have thought possible in her condition. He practically had to throw her off of him before she let their lips come apart.
“Wow, okay,” he gasped, head spinning.
She sat back down in her chair laughing again. Her drunken giggles were becoming uncomfortably loud, and the air was growing hotter by the second. He couldn’t catch his breath and had to lean against the bar. He felt confused and embarrassed by having such a strong reaction to this woman’s advances. Sure, he’d been taken off guard, and she was incredibly beautiful, but that didn’t explain why his heart would be beating so uncomfortably fast. Or why he still couldn’t breathe right.
“You okay there, Boy Scout?” the woman laughed bouncing in her seat. “I didn’t give it to you too good, did I?”
“No, no,” he assured her even though his eyes suddenly slipped out of focus, “I just need a moment to—“
And then he crashed down on top of her. His muscles had completely given out and his vision was starting to tunnel. The party around him began to fly out further away, and he couldn’t quite tell where he had landed. Somewhere, he could hear the woman laughing again, but for some reason, she sounded far soberer.
“Sorry, Boy Scout. Maybe next time.”