Fluffy February

He ragdolls as he’s dragged into a vehicle. And what does he see, as his eyes adjust to the light, but his handler. He huffs, steps out of the limp hands still holding him as they start moving.

‘What’s with the abduction?’

The older man gives him a placating look, seemingly pleased at the stride he’s taking this in. He’s not as green as his age suggests, but he knows many agents would have panicked after getting kidnapped moments after calling their liaison to set up a debrief; put up a real fight that would only incriminate them further. Not him, though, he’s good. He turns the offered cigarette down, makes a rolling motion with his fingers to compel an explanation to this treatment.

‘We’ve received information of an agent working opposite you, we had to be careful–’

‘Opposite me? Have I been identified, do they know who I am?’

As annoyed as he’d been by the taken routine, now he’s both grateful for it and way more preoccupied with his cover. He assumes they’re on a diplomatic vehicle; an extraction from here should be straightforward enough but is bound to leave his fiance, arguably the cornerstone of his fake identity, under a cloud of suspicion he’d rather spare him. Not an allegiant thought, all things considered, but one that has overtaken the backdrop of his operations as of late.

‘Our sources don’t believe they have your name; they’re only working off intelligence that points to a double agent in the foreign office, and have introduced their own man. The good news is we’ll stop meeting like this, or at all, until we have more information.’

‘So they’re… what? Social engineering a confession? Keeping tabs on all employees? How long has this been going on!? With our meetings they could be onto me, how long has their man been there?’

Geoff gives a heavy sigh. ‘That’s something we don’t know, our people only signed the secrets act this week, and they’re not in a department where they can ask many questions about the intelligence service without raising eyebrows.’

Otto buries his face in his hands. Aside from the implicit risks he accepted when he went undercover, he’s had smooth sailings until now. He knows his position is precarious, he knows there’s been defections from both sides, he just trusted his specific channels to be secured enough.

‘Is there someone else in the office?’

His handler avoids his eyes, and he feels like screaming loud enough to make the driver crash. He’s chafed at the compartmentalisation, but understands the secrecy could save him if there is someone else, were they to get caught.

‘You said we’ll stop meeting, what does that mean? How will you let me know it’s safe?’

‘Slow down, first things first, we’ve got wind about a new supply of plutonium becoming available, is that why you wanted to meet?’

Otto sighs, counts the strands of hair on his handler’s foppish fringe and paces his breaths. Yes, the nukes take priority. Then, his access, his cover and his life; in that order. For the eleventh time that week, he thinks of how his mother had tried to make a farmer out of him.

‘Yes. A mining company overseas is in the works to sign off on a joint enterprise with a conglomerate that’s a shell of a shell for the ministry of defense. They’ve been given carte blanche to maximise the usable traces through any means necessary, and they seem to have come onto something. They’re keeping it under wraps, so it follows they understand the kind of international upheaval that could bring.’

‘And you have proof?’

The shorter man smiles bitterly, removes the pendant from his neck and opens it to reveal a diminutive camera roll. With all the scrutiny his division has got handling this deal, analog is the way to go.

‘That’s the contract. Bring it up with the UN, the WANO or whoever will listen.’

‘Good work.’ Geoff seems impressed. ‘You got these as secretary of your division, but how do you know they’re close to getting results?’

Otto gives a despondent look that reads I’m fucking the data coordinator for nuclear projects, but changes topics. ‘Where are you gonna drop me off? Because you are, right? I’m not done here.’

‘We’ll let you walk to that bar on sixth avenue. Listen, you’re gonna be invited to a summit in Montenegro in two weeks. That’s where you’ll get further instructions. If there’s any resistance to you going, you’re as good as made.’

Two weeks. He expects to get the formal invitation in the following days. The sooner the better, he’d rather not be in this limbo. He tries not to think about it as he refreshes the protocols for the next fourteen days. The number he’s to call if there’s imminent nuclear action, the numbers he’s to press to convey the message without giving himself away. The contacts he can rely on for a quick retreat, the codes to identify himself.

‘About Montenegro,’ his heart beats faster asking this than it had when they’d picked him up. ‘I imagine you’re preparing for an easier extraction, based on what you manage to dig out in the meantime.’

‘So?’

‘I’ll take my fiance with. It’ll make it look less suspicious, and you can take us both if there’s no way I can come back.’

The blonde spymaster levels a look at him, calculating. He’s, as every interrogator worth his salt, aces at saying nothing to hear something. Inevitably, Otto cracks. ‘I think I can make him defect, and with his research…’

‘You know better than to get attached to these people.’

‘I’m not attached, I’m thinking of securing a way to catch us up in this arms race.’

‘Alright! I’ll talk to Lethe. Take him, but you must be ready to ditch him if we’re only ready to take you. Or to see him go as a POW.’

Otto sighs at the codename. He’s never seen the actual spymaster behind the man who’s happy to wear the title and relay the instructions. He doesn’t think Geoff has seen them either, but he’s already pressed his luck enough today to ask. He nods shortly before exiting the car, and walks over to the bar to resume his regular life.

His fiance is already there, toasts him as he watches him walk in with his expected root beer. He’s said he’s not attached, but there’s no way he couldn’t be, sharing a bed with this teetotaling, bluegreen haired, totally apolitic researcher. It’s one of the reasons he’s hoping he can convince him to switch sides; for all he works in solving the gaps in the reaction, he could be doing it for a powerplant or the weapons of armageddon with the same interest.

It’s a very good week after that for Otto. There’s some considerable WANO blowback, but it’s blamed on international hackers rather than an insider leak. He gets the clearance for Montenegro after a couple days of keeping his act together. The more nervous he looks, the more reasons they have to deny him. So he goes into the office late getting coffee for everyone, he volunteers for a lunch run or two, and before he knows it he’s got the tickets on his desk.

He gets off work early to tell Awsten, wanting to spend more time with him. He is in earnest attached, but also prepared for what he must do and, more importantly, missing his hometown. Maybe going to ground won’t be as bad, now that he’s only waiting on Lethe’s word on whether he’ll be able to go with Awsten. They go out for a movie, maybe the last he’ll see in the country, and totally annoy the cabbie kissing in the backseat on the way home.

//

There’s a problem with their luggage. He doesn’t know what gives it away, but he knows it’s on as the employees start picking through the piles of suitcases in a coordinated effort. He pulls Awsten away from the crowd without getting their bags, with a hurried promise of a later explanation. With the unilateral advances in the process of plutonium the international climate has shifted enough that Montenegro isn’t even neutral anymore, but Otto was under orders to go all the same. And he did, and now he’s stranded in a country where he wasn’t thought to require contacts with his clueless fiance who’s insisting they go back for some designer tracksuit he had the bad idea of travelling with.

He regains control of himself, this is not what was planned, and probably the reason Lethe wanted him to travel by himself, but he’s going to make this right. He gives Awsten a look severe enough that he shuts up about his clothes and drags him to an alley.

‘We don’t have time for this, I’m a double agent, you need to let me get in touch with my handler to coordinate an extraction.’

The younger man looks more shocked than hurt. ‘What? What are you saying?’

‘I’ve been passing information about the geopolitical situation along, and anything you’ve let slide about your research. There were plans for extraction here, after I blew the whistle on the plutonium deal, but Montenegro has expelled enough dignitaries since for that to be an option anymore.’

‘So you just agreed to come with a delegation to a country where you’d be way easier to capture?’

Now it’s his turn to be confused. ‘What?’

‘If they’d pulled this back home there’s sure to have been a scandal, here? They could accuse you of anything, and it’d be more of an international issue than say, high treason.’

Aswten looks honestly offended at the situation, so he decides to keep his acknowledgement of the risks he’d weighed against the possibility of a life for them away from all that on mute. He holds his hands firmly. ‘You’re coming with me. As a defector or prisoner is your choice.’

Awsten sighs, gives him a pitying look. ‘How did you get away with it for this long? Who ever approved you for undercover operations?’

Before he can even ask what that’s supposed to mean, the taller man is pulling his hand back, tearing the clasp off his carry-on and pressing the needle underneath into Otto’s wrist. Fuck, this is how they get him. ‘I’m sure you thought I was your decoy.’ Awsten’s voice is more amused than anything, distant. ‘But you don’t know why I’m here…’

He wakes up in a backseat, and his heart aches remembering their last days before his intelligence activities caught up to him. He realises he’s not tied up, and is sitting up more bewildered by the moment. Awsten is driving away from the city, if the sparse homes they speed past are any signal. He’s got the radio on and looks honestly happier than he’s been in a while.

‘Where are we going?’

‘The Adriatic. International waters, where I’ll call Wigington and give him a proper rinse for sending an agent that’d so readily reveal his latest hits.’ He sighs. ’After arranging safe passage, of course.’

‘What?'

’I’m Lethe. And you were my best bet for passing information along, before our latest batch of defectors put the heat on you. Or so I thought.’

Otto pales. ‘Sir, I only said all that…’

‘Because you deduced we were on the same side, Sherlock?’

The smile he gets through the rearview mirror is the definition of ironic. He shakes his head. ‘Because I wanted us to be. I blew my own cover and revealed sensitive information, and I got attached.’

Awsten turns around, slows the car looking for all hell like he didn’t consider that through all the time they spent pretending to be a couple. He returns his eyes to the road, frowns in concentration before he’s nodding to himself.

He’s laying down. On a bed? The ground? His own grave? He can’t tell anymore than he can know how long he’s been there. He’s not really alive, but he suspects he’s yet to die. Is this what the instants between the sun scorching the planet and the heat death of his own systems are supposed to feel like? He feels thirsty, which probably tracks.

He’s become immune to the images dancing behind what he knows now to be his eyelids as he’s come to understand the world hasn’t ended. Or, at least, not everyone else’s world. As for himself; he’s had to accept his failure, his memories and impending death. Jessica, Lynn and the ghost of his baby all blur into one, to reemerge from the void whole and suffer through their fates once more. And he sees himself running through hallways decorated with crucifixes, or down a hill trying to avoid barbed wire and the sick alike, or just away from the compound, shielding something in his arms he thinks wasn’t really there.

It’s the hyacinths that break through, at first. Haunted by the images of his mangled hands and the smell of dirt and wood mixed with his blood, the sweet draft makes him remember this isn’t real. His body feels heavy, the sheet under him too hot. He thinks he hears a monitor beep for a moment before his overworked brain is taking over again. He regains consciousness of himself, never for too long, and as the scent becomes fainter as time slips through, he assumes he’s in a hospital.

Slowly, he starts hearing voices around him. Feeling hands on his body, the rough strokes of a sponge, and then it’s back to nightmare world. To his own past. Only the flowers clue him in as to the passage of time, overpowering the smell of disinfectant for a day or two, and fading steadily until they’re replaced again. He wonders vaguely who’s sending them to a widower and an orphan. A hushed argument stops that train of thought, and he finds himself straining to make the words out, but he gets a headache and misses most of it.

Light hurts, when he's finally able to lift his lids enough for it to enter his pupils. He manages a frustrated noise at the effort that takes, and tries to focus his vision. He’s got company, and they don’t look like doctors. Blurry enough, no whitecoats or scrubs. He blinks, blond and brunet frozen in place, and is this just another layer of his dreams?

As if to gainsay it, they’re moving in an instant. The dark haired man dashes forward to shine his phone light into his eyes, knocking something over with a crash and a swear, as the other runs out of the room yelling for a nurse. It’s very medical then, something gets pulled from his mouth and he’s still thirsty. He can talk, though, as he must. He’s got no idea what’s the date or even the president, but he knows who he is. He’s told he’s in a hospital, and gets so overworked explaining why, he gets a sedative and sinks back into the maze that’s his mind.

‘He’s not awake.’

‘I said waking up, not awake.’

‘Hush, I just saw his eyelids twitch!’

‘Because he is waking up.’

He lifts a hand hoping to stop the back and forth as his eyes open and adjust to the light. After a couple more fleeting wakeful episodes where he’d drawn circles and looked at picture cards for doctors, this is a welcome enough change. Two men in regular clothes, looking cautiously at him.

‘I heard they gave you the neurological a-ok!’

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Waylon, this is Miles. As he said, we’re glad you’re on the path to recovery.’

Blake doesn’t feel like he is. His body feels all wrong, and his mind isn’t doing much better. He gets his glasses and wrings his hands, reminding himself he’s in a hospital, he’s safe and he’s, apparently, on the path to recovery. He counts his breath, inhales the scent of the flowers he guesses on his nightstand and settles himself.

‘Who… what are you doing here?’

‘What happened to you… we survived it too. Waylon had some morphogenic therapy, and I’ve been the swarm.’

‘What?’

‘We think the radio towers that caused you to crash were a variant of that, that the whiteouts from your recordings are a signal of sorts, akin to the images I saw after…’

Blake stops listening. The man’s got a nice voice, and it’s easy to zone out to the sound of it. There’s sunrays streaming in through the windows and he doesn’t mind Miles hovering nervously around his bed. Waylon cuts himself off, and he only then realises he’s crying. Miles moves to dry his face with his own bedsheets, and he sighs at that. Looking concerned, the men say their goodbyes shortly after and he doesn’t have the wherewithal to ask them to stay, doesn’t know why would he want them to. He remains with his memories and his loss, and wonders still who is he to them.

He’s awake when they come back, and not expecting it. He’s despondently playing with a tiny hyacinth, markedly ignoring the broth that makes for the main meal of the day, when they come in. They’re holding hands, and seemingly cowed.

‘I’m sorry I talked so much last time.’

Blake nods, takes a deep breath of the disinfectant, the flowers, his food, and cologne he recognises. That makes him remember. ‘You were here before. Before I woke up.’

It’s Miles who answers, stepping forward with a look of concentration. ‘When we heard about what- when we heard about you, we wanted to know you’d be alright.’

‘You don’t even know me.’

‘Yet I don’t see anyone else here.’

‘Miles!’ The blond sounds more hurt than Blake himself is. ‘We know you didn’t deserve what happened to you. And healing is hard, but we know it can be done.’

‘We know you’re brave. You dragged yourself out of a hell you didn’t ask for, you were only trying to get justice for that Jane Doe.’

‘He’s a journalist too.’ Waylon leans into Miles sounding fond and vaguely guilty. ‘He knows what that means.’

Blake closes his eyes for a moment. The openness of his visitors is disarming, the cautious concern in their faces seems alien. ‘I don’t know what that means.’

Miles looks like he’s going to protest, but Waylon says he should expect a visit from occupational therapy soon and drags Miles out. Passingly, Blake wonders how would they know that, being that he’s got no healthcare proxy, but doesn’t care much for the answer. Later that day, he’s indeed visited by the therapist. Going through the exercises, he thinks back to the discharge plan his case worker had reviewed with him earlier, and how he’d planned on moving to the middle of nowhere and sleeping with a shotgun under the bed until he moves it into his mouth. Somehow, after talking to the journalist and his friend it seems a bit bleak. Not that he should care, he probably shouldn’t get used to their presence.

Against all odds, they visit again the next day. And the next. And he starts to get used to them, despite himself. They don’t stay for long, but he enjoys their chats. Waylon will ask a question, he’ll volunteer a short answer, and Miles will talk in paragraphs about whether he agrees or disagrees. Or Miles will ask, and then Waylon will change topics from his reply three or four times, keeping it lighthearted.

It’s a few days later when Miles apologises for his comment about his dead family, but Blake only distantly registers as he sees him change the flowers on the vase next to him. Miles’ movements become slower under his attention, until he’s turning with a nervous look.

‘Did you want another kind? I’ve been arguing with Waylon for weeks in favour of irises.’

‘Do you like irises? I said they’re too earthy, but it’s really up to you.’

They exchange a look like they’re honestly worried they’ve fucked up with the flower choice, like it’s a real problem. ‘I don’t know?’

‘I’ve got bulbs coming, you’ll be the judge then.’

‘I like the hyacinths.’

He listens in as they devolve into a discussion of soil nutrition and bulbs versus seeds, visuals and sunlight, and he can’t really believe these men have been through the hell he survived, but is happy for the chatter. When his physical therapist arrives, he can’t help himself.

‘Please, come back. I mean, if you’re in the area and…’

‘Really?’ Waylon looks surprised, whilst Miles pumps his fist behind him. ‘We’ll come back, I’m just glad we’re not exhausting you.’

‘Yeah, how else are we gonna teach Way about the s tier blooms?’

They’re shooed off the room quickly, and Blake gets to his feet before the therapist asks him to, ready to regain his stamina and control. Where he’d let her make small talk on their previous appointments, now he asks about whatever’s transpired since his hospitalisation and what did Miles mean about the engine. He gets small answers, but she must bring it up with his care team, since when he gets dinner it comes along with a number of newspapers.

He reads first his own story, savaged from the recordings found in the camera that miraculously survived his ordeal. The reconstructions of the belief system that lead to the mass suicide in the grounds he was found, delirious and dehydrated. Then, he reads about the asylum, and the crimes perpetrated inside through leaked documents and the notes of the men that refused to die with the truth and are trying to get him with the program.

He doesn’t understand it entirely, pesters his nurses until once takes pity on him and shows him some takes from the recordings they’d got as they each picked their way through a hell comparable to the one he survived. His heartbeats pick up, trying to find a connection between the energised journalist he’d met and the broken, bloodied body lying on the underground facility; the soft spoken blond and the crazed man in inmate overalls that had crashed a jeep into a police station. He can find similarities; he’s seen Waylon limp slightly, for example, which he attributes to the state of his calf when he’d exited the vehicle rambling about the swarm and Jeremy and the bodies strung from the ceiling.

He sees them in a different light when they next enter his room. They’re laden with flowers, which only makes his newfound knowledge more bewildering. Blake gets out of bed, helps them set the vases down, and has to reckon it’s a miracle they’re here and taking an interest in his healing. He’s thankful beyond words they weren’t decapitated or burnt alive or cannibalised… and he finds it in him to be glad he’s alive himself. When he tries to put this into words he finds his throat won’t let him, and he’s sitting back down, overwhelmed, tressing his hair. He’s crying, and he’s annoyed that he is.

‘I’m sorry about the irises, okay? I’ll compost them when we get back’

He looks up at Miles, who’s looking somewhere between joking and earnest, but it’s Waylon who speaks in a whisper. ‘I think he knows, now.’

He knows, of course he knows, and how were they able to downplay it like that? The swarm and an engine, when they witnessed that level of human degeneracy? When they could have died a hundred times to expose the abuse of people that held a negative importance towards the systems that should have protected them? When Miles got shot so many times, so close to safety… next thing he knows he’s standing up to hold the shorter man by the shoulders, as if he’s expecting him to be an apparition, pulling him closer as he shakes.

‘You were dead, you were dead! You could have run, but had to go back for those bastards in the tanks, and you could have died!’

‘Stop, you’ll remind him of the scene I made when I saw that, and then you’ll have to shut him up.’

Waylon’s voice is between snippy and curious as he eyes him with caution. Blake thinks back to their handholding and the familiarity between them, and blushes as he releases a bewildered Miles. But now it’s Waylon’s naked body he remembers; ready to be cut in half and he’s pulling him into an uncoordinated hug as he babbles about that, and Blair’s attempts on his life; and the blond’s ramrod posture relaxes as he pats Blake’s back dubiously before pulling away.

‘We weren’t sure about sharing the details yet, but I suppose you were bound to find out.’

‘It’s good you did. It sucked for us as it sucked for you, but now you know we get to come back from all that.’

Blake looks from Miles to Waylon, floored by the simplicity of the statement. By his own willingness to believe it. It seems to hold some water. Yes; what he’d seen in the nurse’s phone totally qualified as sucking, more comparable to his own odyssey than he thought possible. And yes, here they both were, alive and happy to argue about scrambled eggs versus poached, to share touches that aren’t menacing, to try and reach out to a basketcase like him.

‘How do you do it?’

‘We just try. And we want you to try.'

‘With us.’ Now it’s Waylon blushing, and it’s not a bad look. ‘Unless you’ve got other plans after discharge.’

‘No. No, if you’ll let me.’

They share a smile as they nod, and Blake can’t remember the last time he felt hopeful. They start an argument about whether he’s too tall for a futon, and whether it makes sense to get furniture for their rental when they’ll be moving as soon as Blake is done with his outpatient follow ups, and how Waylon’s plants are already gonna take up half a U-Haul, and all he can think is these men moved in the middle of what must be a media frenzy to comfort a stranger. Had hushed conversations in the room as he laid dying for all they knew, with no other visitors. He’s distracted as Waylon shows him a picture of a low table shaped like a rubik’s cube.

‘Foul, right? The kind of thing you’d be glad if the movers break?’

‘We’re the movers, you philistine.’

You smile at him, the laugh wrinkles at the corners of your eyes curling upward. “Thanks. It’s freezing in here.”

He shakes his head, faking the confidence he knows he lacks when he’s around you. “No problem.” 

The two of you sit there, waiting for the lecture hall to open up for your next class. Connor’s mouth drops open to speak again, to say something that he’s wanted to for so long, but he stops and relapses back into that self-doubt that keeps its strangled hold on him. 

He’s lost count of the number of times he’s found himself here, so close to you and yet so far. He’s lost count of how many times he’s had the chance to be honest, to admit how he feels about you. 

But does he really know how he feels? It can’t be real, he tells himself. He tries to convince himself (again) that he doesn’t know what he feels about you. He’s been in love before, had girlfriends, and had plenty of just friends that are girls. Yet this feels different. And it’s confusing as hell.

Connor’s heart beats hard in his chest, suddenly aware of how close your body is to his. Surely you can hear, maybe even feel, the pounding rhythm within him that only your presence can create.

He catches your eyes blinking up at him, giving him the slightest bit of hope that maybe…just maybe you feel the same towards him. 

But a wave of college students flows into the corridor, breaking his thoughts and the hope of what could be…maybe.

You’re both unaware of how close your faces had leaned into each other, only noticing as you both pull back slightly. Maybe in another life, in another corner of the universe, some version of you and Connor exists like it should exist here. 

He presses his lips together, his trademark sign of defeat. 

You suddenly grab his hand, clasping your fingers tightly around his, a small smile painted on your lips as his hopeful blue eyes fall back on you. 

And Connor feels the universe inside his soul, because maybe…this could be.

. . .

You make a face, pouting that he would even consider the idea of you not having faith in him. “That’s not true, Connor,” you quickly correct him as you find a simple cobalt blue glass cylinder. 

Connor chuckles, shaking his head with that famous smirk crawling up the side of his face. “It’s alright, lass. I’m a guy, and that’s what guys do.”

“Not you.”

For all his faults and all the stereotypical guy things he does, Connor has proven to be a true gentleman. From always walking on your outside as you trek down the sidewalk together, opening the car door for you, or even just how his hand touches the small of your back…Connor could very well be the hero from those romantic movies of the 1950s. 

But your hero has visible tattoos, a gruff Irish brogue, and a smoking habit that would make Humphrey Bogart jealous. And you wouldn’t have it any other way.

You fluff the sunflowers into the vase now filled with water. “You’re different,” you start, admiring the simple arrangement on your kitchen table. “You listen. You pay attention.” You graze a finger over some of the petals, and then bring your eyes back up to meet Connor’s. “You know me. I’ve never had that before.” A smile breaks your face, and you laugh a little, realizing you’ve never received flowers from a guy — ever.

He slowly walks over to you, caressing his fingers along your cheek before lightly stroking them into your hair. “And ye know I’m not going anywhere, yeah?”

You nod, biting your lip before Connor bends down and kisses you. His hands hold your face, and you breathe in his scent of coffee and cigarettes mixed with sunflowers. You can feel him smiling against your mouth as he hums, “I love ye, lass.”

Your heart skips a beat, because you’ve never had that before either. He really is the hero of those romantic movies…

And you’ll always think of him whenever you see sunflowers.

. . .

You watch him crank the wrench around a pipe joint underneath your leaky sink. You can’t help but stare at the way his arms flex, the sheer concentration in his narrowed blue eyes as he loosens the faulty piece of piping. You’re quick to hand him the small plastic bucket to catch the water that had settled in the pipe, refusing to flush out once he had turned the water line off. Murphy, unfortunately, still gets wet, though, as his dark gray t-shirt shows a few splatter marks across the right side of his chest. He waits for the water to stop dripping into the bucket, then pulls the curved pipe section off completely, setting it beside him. 

You take the bucket of water and dump the rest down the shower drain, hoping that it doesn’t go on to leak into someone else’s apartment. Though, you wouldn’t be surprised if it did—shit like that happens all the time. At least this time, this problem is fixable and within your control. Or rather within Murphy’s control, since he knows more about plumbing issues than you do. 

Once the new pipe section is installed, Murphy crawls out from underneath, turning the water line back on before he slides out of the cramped space completely. He stands up and twists the cold tap to run the water. After a couple of spurts and burps, water flows out of the faucet like normal, but then Murphy leans down to check his handy work. 

You fight a smile as you stare at his blue jeans pulled tight against his backside. And then you fight the disappointed pout as he stands up again, a proud grin stretching across his grease-stained face. “Lookit, lass! It’s fixed!” He looks and sounds like a little kid, and now you can’t stop the smile forming on your lips. Murphy’s brow furrows slightly. “What?”

Stifling a giggle, you lick your thumb and reach up on his cheek, rubbing away the streak of grease he had inadvertently painted on himself when he wiped the back of his hand on his face. “Sorry, you just got a little schmutz there.”

Murphy chuckles, blushing under your touch. And even as the grime disappears off his skin, you keep rubbing your thumb over his cheek. His smile fades, but his gaze intensifies, mirroring the heat now flushing your face. 

You’re not sure who leans in first—all you know is that the moment your lips crash against Murphy’s, you never want the kiss to break.

. . .

Connor holds your face as your tongues dance around each other. All this time, you somehow already knew what he’d taste like. You already know him better than you know yourself. 

Either he pulls you into him or you lean in willingly, doesn’t matter really. All that matters is that your body is pressed into his, finally. You grab at his back, lightly digging your nails into his shoulder blades as he tangles his fingers into your hair.

You’re the only thing he wants. And you said you wouldn’t cry about it. 

Still, you feel the salt sting your closed eyes, not out of heartbreak, but out of relief that you never have to hold this feeling in ever again. 

He lifts you up effortlessly, and you wrap your legs around him as he carries you to the bed. You continue stealing kisses as he cautiously lowers you. And Connor leans back, almost losing his balance until he arches back toward you, dragging his lips up your neck and back to your mouth. You sweep the hem of his t-shirt up his back, your fingers tracing his spine until you pull his shirt up over his head, revealing his tanned sculpted torso. 

His grin accents his face as he notices you staring at his body, forcing you to flick your eyes back up to his. You have only a moment, a brief fleeting moment before he captures your lips again. His tattooed hand holds your face again, while his other hand trails down your side and to your hip as you instinctively lay back. You pull him with you, his heat radiating above you as you crave to feel everything. 

Your lashes flutter open, met with his own blinking over those damn blue eyes. A nervous smile curls his lips briefly, and his gaze holds you in place like always. You blush from the memory of Connor looking at you across the room for the first time—somehow, even then, you knew you loved him. 

And this is the last time you’ll ever wonder if he loves you too.

. . .