Prayers had felt stifling to him as a child; words learned by rote and murmured along indifferent with a crowd of bowed heads, the same old meaningless rhythms saturating the walls of the little wooden church every Sunday.

Ár n-Athair atá ar neamh,Go naofar d'ainim,Go dtagfadh do ríocht,Go ndéantar do thoil ar an talamhmar a dhéantar ar neamh.

It never meant a damn thing, and it never spared any of them the sharp looks or sharp words or sharp fists they earned for speaking it in their own language. He’d been defiant, once, eyes bright and fists clenched as the prayer started.

Our father,Who art in heaven,Hallowed be thy name,Thy Kingdom come, thy will be doneOn earth as it is in Heaven.

He’d been nine and the words had rung out, jarring, across the collective sigh of prayer, earning him shocked looks and disbelief and giggles from the other children, and a beating.

        (What difference did the language make, he’d asked. It’s the same thing, isn’t it? Why does it matter?)

And later, when he’d outgrown that little town and that lilting language, the little wooden church and the sneers and the being spat at whenever they rode out of town to market, he’d discard that part of himself, too. Joshua became Faraday, and Irish became American, and Catholic became Baptist, and became in turn nothing much at all.He can’t remember the last time he prayed. Can’t remember the last time even wanted to, felt the urge. Closest thing he’s come, these days, is the driven hope low in his belly when the cards are dealt. A silent plea for an ace in his hand.

Because that’s the real question, isn’t it?

Vasquez has a whole organisation full of men who’ll kill for him, or worse. They’ll risk their souls and they’ll risk prison, but how many of them would honest-to-God risk their lives, willingly and in full knowledge?

Of course, there’s always a chance. It’s a dangerous world, and every single one of them know it. But what they’re risking isn’t for Feliciano Vasquez. It’s for the money, it’s for the security, for the drugs, for the power. It’s for all the trappings of this life they’ve sunk themselves into, not for the man himself.

The weight of Faraday’s gun is heavy against his hip.

His team wear shoulder holsters. They allow a certain degree of concealment, with a jacket, an opportunity to hint at the firepower if necessary. They’re accessible, and sensible, and convenient. They look professional. Sure, a few of ‘em probably have at least two more weapons stashed about their person, but the idea is that they look legit. 

Faraday wears his guns at his belt. That’s why they call him a cowboy, and they mean it for an insult, for a mockery. They quit meaning it as one when they see him draw, the speed of it. When they realise that Faraday wears his guns at his belt because they’re closer to those devil-fast fingers and because he’s fond of them, of their weight and power.

Times like this, they feel like lead. When he thinks about curling his finger around the trigger with Vasquez staring back at him, or worse, oblivious, gun aimed at the back of his head, a kill devoid of dignity or mercy or feeling.

    “Inevitably,” he says, and for all the lightness in the words, in his tone, there’s     something behind his eyes that’s resigned to the truth of it. He’s all the way     down the rabbit hole, now. His phone is in pieces and he hasn’t seen Ethel for     weeks, and only last night he’d lain awake, naked and satisfied at his own hand,     and wondered what would happen if he just took Vasquez and disappeared. No     warning, no explanation. Some other city, some other town. Ruin all the work he’s     done and all the work the agency has done before him. Let Vasquez’s people take      the fall. He doesn’t care about them.

Faraday remembers it all.

Jack beneath him, bunched muscle and foaming sweat, hooves tearing up the grass and dirt beneath them as together they eat up the wide, open space strewn with bodies and bullets.

The blood-damp earth singing out the approaching horse behind him. The certainty that had settled in his bones that he’d take a bullet in his back before he reached the brass-and-iron monstrosity tearing through buildings like tissue paper. The heady, hysterical realisation that it’s Vasquez, gun drawn and low over his horse, riding hell for leather to catch up.

The two of them thundering towards Bartholomew Bogue, and not an obligation in sight, just the determination to be something more than the selfish arrogance that stories wrap around him.

Burn of bullet through flesh, Jack screaming underneath him, the sudden pitch towards soft ground. The struggle to rise, the flash of scarlet from the corner of his eye. Vasquez’s fingers still gripped loose around silver pistol. Dark eyes bright with fear and pain and something else, besides. The sizzle of the fuse and the ring of the explosion, the taste of ash and iron on the air.

It’s all there, all still there.

What he doesn’t remember – what he can never remember – is the weight of Vasquez’s body.

[ it is exceedingly life-giving, except when everyone is dyING.

    “ -- not by choice.”

The smile on his face is a weak attempt at pretending he’s unaffected. It’s tired and it’s too-small and he knows for a fact that Vasquez has always been able to see right through him, so why bother with the pretence?

He’d expected to die, that day in Rose Creek. Had even been at peace with it, more or less. His mother had died young, for a fae, and not all that old for a human, so why shouldn’t he be the same? It ought to have worked like that. How could he ever have known that it wouldn’t?

     (How could he have known Vasquez would follow him, with so       much faith? Joshua Faraday is not the kind of person to inspire       faith, or anything like it.)

“I’ll die,” he says, with what for him seems a remarkable acceptance of the fact. “One day. Sooner or later. I’m not immortal, I’m just... playing the long game.” His gaze falls to where his fingers are pulling at a loose thread on the hem of his shirt.

“I saved him,” Faraday confirms. “I had to.”

It’s a warm night, and another of Vasquez’s quiet days.

That’s what they call it, when the word goes around. Not tomorrow. Boss is having a quiet day. And all the girls and all the staff take themselves off the premises, all except the perimeter guards, who won’t even think about putting a foot onto the villa’s grounds unless something goes wrong.

And Faraday.

Every time the text goes around, it’s Faraday who ensures that everyone knows. It’s Faraday who reroutes deliveries or cleaners or pool boys. It’s Faraday who secures the peace that Vasquez is looking for. And every time he does, he finds Vasquez, and he says, all yours, boss, and waits to be dismissed.

He never is.

They fuck, usually. They fuck with a singular, determined intensity that lights Faraday’s bones on fire and keeps them smouldering, flames licking up through the layers of duty and loyalty that have built up over the years. Vasquez is burning him to the ground, everything he is, and Faraday hasn’t even realised.

         I’m going to look after you. I need you safe, I need you alive, I need you now. What had started as promises he knew Vasquez was greedy to hear had started to carry the ring of truth to them. They trip from his tongue without having to be formulated, first.

Tonight, something is different.

They recline in the moonlight like they’re basking in the early autumn sun that’s not long since set, passing a joint between themselves. When Faraday tips his head back, the slope of his throat is gilded silver, a pale vulnerability he doesn’t think twice about.

   “You know,” Vasquez says, lazily. “It took a lot to get myself here. Money and    blood and death. I thought I might be satisfied.”

Faraday opens his eyes to find Vasquez’s already fixed on him.

   “You’re not?”

   “Not yet. Not ever, maybe.” A shrug, and idle fingers reach out to walk themselves along Faraday’s collar bone. Faraday watches Vasquez’s face, absorbed in watching his own.

   “What do you want?” he asks, and it should scare him that he wants to be the one to promise Vasquez whatever it is that he answers. Vasquez’s fingers still, warm against warm skin.

   “I want everything,” Vasquez says, with one of his feral-sharp grins, like a coyote in the night. After a moment, Faraday’s own smile spreads across his face, dark and smooth like an oil spill in clear waters. His fingers come up to wrap themselves around the wrist at his chest.

He goes for a drink, afterwards, because his mouth is dry and because he said he would. It’s lucky, really, that his check-in has left him with the same sour irritation a meeting with a soon-to-be-ex wife might. No pretending required.

But one drink turns into four, and a hand of cards, before he slides back into his car and relies on the string of luck that has a couple hundred dollars rolled in his pocket to keep him from getting pulled over. It works.

He’s not paying much attention to Byrne’s report. He knows what happens because he’d sat and heard it all from ‘Ethel’.

     Well. Most of it.

He wrestles to keep his face straight as Byrne smirks his way around the word screaming. He almost fumbles the cigarette he’s bringing to his lips, and brings to bear all his focus on lighting the damn thing. Maybe that way Byrne won’t catch sight of the look darkening his green eyes.

It’s somewhere between a hard, curling jealousy that’s surprised him with the intensity of his heat, and an amused disbelief that Vasquez would put all this effort in -- would pull a woman into the club bathroom and make her scream, just so that someone will tell him. What had he said? I’ll make sure there’s plenty to report back on.

Christ.

“Go home,” he tells Byrne. “I’ll take care of tonight.”

He waits until Byrne is gone, and then he waits sixty seconds more -- agonising, smoking his cigarette like he’s got a grudge against it. And then, he grinds the butt beneath his heel and makes his way deliberately towards Vasquez’s bedroom.

He doesn’t knock. It’s a hell of a risk; he doesn’t give a shit. He just pushes the door open, and leans himself against the doorframe, arms crossed and eyes dark and breath something hot already tying itself around the base of his spine.

He’s screwed six ways to Sunday, and it’s making him jumpy.

Hasn’t been able to sleep, since that monumentally bad decision. Instead, he’d spent his night lying awake and staring up at the darkness, fingers drumming against bare skin too heated to put up with sheets or pyjamas. Leverage. That’s what it had been about. Leverage and a taste of the risk he’s come almost to depend on. He can’t play cards when he’s on an undercover op, especially if it’s deep cover. Ends up just replacing one addiction with another, and maybe that’s why the emptiness of his veins, screaming out for adrenaline, for the next risk, is making him so damn itchy under his skin.

It’s why the next day, when he should put his professional face on and play the bodyguard who’s done his boss a favour, he meets Vasquez’s dark gaze with a smirk and a wink. It’s also why, when his phone buzzes, he starts -- a physical flinch that he ought to know better than to allow. 

He slides it out. It’s from Ethel.

   (Ethel is his handler; a balding fifty-something guy whom Faraday has never seen     crack a smile, despite all his best efforts to test one. He thinks it’s hilarious that his     code-name is Ethel. He’s guessing he’s the only one.)

And the fact that he’s getting called in for a briefing now sends something drumming behind his ribs. He knows for a fact that one of the reasons he’s here is that they couldn’t get a damn thing from their attempts to bug the place. Vasquez is clever, and he’s careful. So surely they can’t know, right?

Wouldn’t be the first time he’d been given a slap on the wrist for acting like an idiot, but generally they don’t pull him out mid-op to do it. He glances up from his phone to find Vasquez watching him, and quirks a brow, sliding his phone back into his pocket.