#fpa

The wanting hadn’t died when the world did.

At first it had worn hunger’s easy disguise: I miss my mentor. I need my commander.

That version was almost respectable. It let him tell himself he was only grieving the loss of a mind far more exceptional than his own, of a hand on the wheel when everything went to hell.

But under the disguise, it stayed want. Colossal, towering want.

He wanted too many things, all of them big, stupid, and too late.

He wanted to be forgiven for the unforgivable. He wanted Hendricks to look at him and decide the betrayal wasn’t the only story that mattered.

He wanted to be held like this when there wasn’t adrenaline and violence and sex winding around it, when it wasn’t a reward or an aftershock or a prelude to something. He wanted an ordinary kind of closeness – warmth shared because it was cold, a hand on his back because it was kind, Hendricks grumbling about something while still dragging him in closer because that was just how the night went. He wanted to fall asleep with Hendricks’ breath in his ear and wake up without having to find out what it’d cost him. He wanted mornings, too, which was insane. Waking up to the sound of Hendricks bitching about the coffee, or laying out a plan for the day, or reading the news aloud solely so he had somebody to sneer at it with.

He wanted someone to look at him and not just see the crime scene outline of the man he’d been. Not the list of names he couldn’t resurrect and not the shadow in every doorway that said traitor before he’d even opened his mouth. He wanted to be seen as something still in progress instead of a closed file labeled Do Not Resuscitate. He wanted to be seen whole, even if the whole thing was ugly – seen the way Hendricks used to see him, back when Fetch still believed there was a difference between being useful and being worth something.

He wanted stupid little things that had no right belonging to him. Hendricks’ hand in his hair without it being a prelude to a blow. Hendricks’ coat shrugged over his shoulders on cold mornings on purpose. A seat at a table Hendricks was sitting at, not because he’d been summoned, but because he was expected, because he belonged there and there was a glass already poured for him.

And for fuck’s sake, he wanted to be loved in a way that didn’t feel like an error in the universe’s accounting. He wanted love that didn’t immediately summon punishment, not a conditional thing that might be revoked the second he slipped, like the world was waiting to slap his hand away from the table. He wanted to stop feeling like a thief every time warmth reached for him. He wanted the impossible luxury of being wanted back.

He wanted Hendricks to say his name like it was a habit he had no interest in breaking. He wanted to learn where the new lines at the corners of his eyes went when he laughed, not just when he was disappointed. He wanted to be close enough, long enough, that he could tell the difference.

He wanted, selfishly and ferociously, for this not to be a one-night mistake. For Hendricks staying, Hendricks in his bed, Hendricks’ hands on him, not to be some final mercy granted before the axe fell. He wanted more – more time, more chances, more of the sound of that voice in his office, more nights where the worst thing he had to contend with was the way his heart shook itself apart when those green eyes landed on him.

Love, he almost said. That was what he wanted.

The word rose up like a flare in his throat, lighting up everything he’d tried to keep in darkness. It was reckless and huge and so far past stupid it counted as a new category of insanity. It made him feel nineteen again in a body that had no business holding that kind of hope, made him feel like the dumb, devoted boy who used to hover at Hendricks’ elbow and pretend it was something else when really it was just worship.

Love was too big. And too honest. Love was a weapon you handed someone and then stood still for.

And Fetch Phillips did not, under any circumstances, stand still for the blade. Not unless he’d earned or deserved it.

Not unless the person holding it was Eliah Hendricks.

But he could see himself saying it, could see Hendricks’ face doing a terrible thing in response. Scrunching up in pity, maybe, or worse, flattening into that blank professional nothing that meant he was calculating how to tidy this away without wasting resources.

So he bit down, swallowed it like glass.

“Sex,” he blurted.

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