the pacific - a bullet down

[augustbird]

Title: A Bullet Down
Fandom: The Pacific
Rating: R
Word Count: 26,905
Characters/Pairing: Ack Ack/Hillbilly
Summary: “I think we’re too good for it to be a coincidence,” Andrew finally answers, “I think someone is intentionally planting faulty intel.” Organized Crime AU.
Written: post-episode 10
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters--they are based off of the actors' portrayals of characters in HBO's The Pacific, not the real people themselves. Absolutely no disrespect is intended.
Author's Note: SO. Funny story, this piece was intended to be a short 2k word piece at maximum. And then ummm, somehow it evolved into ~27k words of ridiculous AU? This fic wouldn't have been possible without several people. spirograph and uniformly put up with me whining about this fic for the entire month it took me to write this and helped push me through crucial plot points as well as being HUGE ENABLERS IN GENERAL. Also, this fic would have been a million times more unintelligible if not for the amazing beta work of jeanquirieplus! I've stared at this thing for like WAY TOO LONG and she just CLEANED EVERYTHING UP AND WAS AMAZING ABOUT IT. SO MUCH LOVE FOR YOU GUYS SERIOUSLY OK. ♥♥♥

Based on this fic: Sammy made some incredible graphics - one, two, three, & four | Gorgeous fanart by Beren


The morning is bright with sunshine even though the temperature still remains at a relatively cool seventy-two. Seven o’clock and there’s his neighbor reaching down for the paper, still clad in his bathrobe with a coffee in one hand. Andrew lifts a hand and waves at him. His neighbor blinks at him before briefly raising the paper at him in acknowledgement. Andrew smiles pleasantly and starts jogging down the street.

He’s barely through his second song when his phone goes off, vibrating insistently enough that he eventually slows down and pulls it out. He had originally planned to run at least two miles this morning before he had to go in to work. He’s barely six blocks from his house.

The text on his phone reads: SOS, HQ ASAP.

He turns around and heads back.

_______

“Turn my back for a few hours and you can’t function without me,” Andrew observes in a mildly amused tone as he steps from the elevator into the open space of the office. He heads immediately for the coffeemaker and is gratified to see that there’s still some left.

“Leyden,” Burgin is standing behind him and offering him a folder, “We’ve warned him a million times not to mouth off to the cops and he just never learns.” Andrew simultaneously takes the folder and pours himself some coffee. It’s the last cup though, and he takes a moment to dump more water into the coffeemaker before he flips the folder open.

“Thank you Romus,” Andrew shoots him a smile and takes the folder into his office. He sets the mug down on his desk and barely has time to sit down when there’s a knock at his open door.

“Bill cornered by the police and the Ravens lost,” Eddie says as he sits down into one of the chairs in front of Andrew’s desk, “I don’t think I’ve had a worse night in a while.”

“I couldn’t watch the last quarter of the game,” Andrew admits, “Too painful.”

“Glad I didn’t have to suffer through it,” Eddie says, “Not that my sister’s speed-dating event was any better.”

“I thought girls were crazy for the musicians?”

“Ha ha,” Eddie says flatly, though there’s a slightly amused curl at the corner of his lips. His eyes drop to the folder and he gestures at it, his voice moving from the previously lighthearted tone into something much more serious, “Read the report yet?”

“Scanned over the front page,” Andrew replies evenly, and the smile slips from his face, eyebrows furrowing slightly, “Charges for trespassing—why was he caught in the first place? The security guard shouldn’t have been there. Who gave us faulty intel?”

“One of Snafu’s sources.”

“Do we have a name?”

Eddie’s eyebrow lifts, and he shakes his head, “You know just as well as I do how difficult it is to get anything out of Shelton.”

There’s a stint of silence. Andrew curls a hand around his mug of coffee and feels a headache coming on. Eddie looks at him and even though his expression is mostly impassive, there’s a sort of concern in his eyes that Andrew can’t miss. He knows how difficult it is each time to pull their team back underground whenever something stupid like this happens and puts them all in risk. He probably knows it more intimately than any of the men here with the possible exception of Andrew himself. Andrew can’t count the number of nights where it’s just been the two of them at the office with cold Chinese takeout and too many discarded plans.

“Okay,” Andrew says eventually, “I’ll go talk to him.”

“The more permanent answer might be to set him up with a therapist,” Eddie says—and it’s the way that he says it that makes Andrew pause. They sometimes joke about their men and they never truly mean half of the things that they say in jest, but this time Eddie’s serious. His eyes are intent on Andrew’s face and there is a set to his jaw.

Andrew pauses again and then he says, “I’ll set something up. I don’t know if Rupertus has allocated anything in our budget.”

“We bring in the budget,” Eddie says and it’s in a tone of voice that’s a little bitter, hint of derision. Andrew knows that he isn’t particularly fond of the decisions made by their superiors—and half the time, he isn’t either—but they don’t have full control over operations. They only have direction over their team of eighty-some odd men.

Andrew jiggles his computer mouse like he’s going to settle in for a day of paperwork before seeming to change his mind. He sets his coffee down on the desk and looks at Eddie, eyebrows furrowing.

“Anyone posted bail for Leyden yet?”

_______

“Gotta be more careful,” Leckie says quietly to Andrew when he leans down to sign the visitor log with his alias of choice. To the casual observer it probably looks like he’s just leaning over the counter to grab a file from the secretary behind the desk but Andrew catches each word. Andrew’s eyes flicker briefly to the secretary, wondering if she’s heard—but she’s still snapping angrily into the phone and running a nail file over her cuticles.

Andrew straightens and she glances at him. He gives her a smile. She seems surprised for a moment but smiles back for just a brief moment and he takes a seat in the lobby and pulls out his phone. He doesn’t have to wait long though, because—

“Allison?” someone calls out not even five minutes later. Andrew looks up and recognizes the officer who’s looking at him with the file tucked under one arm and a cup of coffee in his hand. He stands up and follows the man into the back.

“Messy,” the man says quietly and he barely moves his lips as he speaks. He’s tall with hair cropped somewhat short and a heavy brow and the kind of expression that makes him look like he might be perpetually smiling. Right now, though, his lips have thinned and he’s looking askance at Andrew, “This is what? The third time in four months we’ve had to cover for K?”

“We had faulty intel,” Andrew replies just as quietly—but he knows that it doesn’t excuse them, doesn’t give them any justification for putting any of their men in a position where they might be caught. It doesn’t help that command is pushing his team harder these days—forcing them into a position where they don’t even have time to double check their facts before pushing ahead with a mission.

The officer—Chuckler, Andrew remembers—just shakes his head and opens the door to a small room where Leyden is sitting. As Andrew passes him, he murmurs, “Be careful, Haldane. Next time he backtalks, he might not be so lucky to get us on scene.” He then shifts into staring blankly ahead as Andrew turns his attention to the small man sitting at the table in the middle of the room.

“I didn’t know, Skip,” Leyden sounds like a cross between guilt, fear, and horror and maybe he’s even pleading a little bit, “I honestly didn’t know.”

Andrew gives him a reassuring smile, “Bill, don’t worry about it. Nobody blames you.” He flicks a glance towards where Chuckler is slouching a little boredly against the doorway and Leyden must get the hint to be quiet because he shuts up immediately and takes up staring sullenly at the table instead.

“We’re posting bail for you as soon as the transfer comes through,” Andrew tells Leyden. Leyden lifts his eyes up at that, swallows once and nods.

“Thank you, sir.”

Andrew nods and he resists the urge to lean forward and clap Leyden on the shoulder. First time he had tried, he found himself restrained by two officers who had appeared out of nowhere. He settles for a smile and hopes that it’ll be enough to assuage Leyden’s guilt.

_______

“Third time in four months,” Andrew says as he drops by unannounced to Eddie’s office. Eddie has stacks of paper strewn all around—tiny fragments of code scrawled onto post-its that don’t make any sense to anyone except Eddie himself. Even though he’s technically second in command of this branch, he spends an exorbitant amount of time in front of his computer. Andrew doesn’t mind picking up the slack of leading—he wouldn’t trust anyone else in the world to do a better job of sneaking in and out of supposedly secure databases without leaving a trace.

“Hm?” Eddie’s still staring at his computer screen.

“Third time we’ve messed up in four months,” Andrew elaborates, “Tell me you don’t think that’s weird compared to our previously flawless record. And every single time, it’s because someone from the outside has given us faulty information.”

Eddie finally tears himself away from whatever riveting information is presenting itself on his computer screen. He tilts his head, looks at Andrew and pauses for just a beat.

“What are you thinking, Andy?”

Andrew leans heavily against the doorway and crosses his arms. He bites the inside of his bottom lip and his gaze shifts to a point above Eddie’s shoulder. He looks contemplative for a moment, running past the details of the three failed missions in his mind’s eye. Eddie waits patiently with his hand still hovering in midair above his keyboard.

“I think we’re too good for it to be a coincidence,” Andrew finally answers, “I think someone is intentionally planting faulty intel.”

_______

Nine o’clock isn’t a terrible time to get home. Hell knows he’s gotten home much later.

When he pauses in front of the door to turn the key, he can already hear guitar strumming from inside. He has to smile a little at that—it’s been almost a week since Eddie has made use of his spare key. It’s been months if not a year since Andrew had presented it to him after the neighbors had asked Andrew concernedly about the homeless man sitting on his porch playing the guitar in the late evenings.

“Please tell me you ordered food,” Andrew calls out. The strumming stops and moments later Eddie pads into the hallway in his socks.

“Lamb Shawarma from Falafel King,” Eddie says as he lifts the guitar, “Though it’s probably cold by now. Hey, tell me if this works?”

Eddie fingers a chord on the guitar and strums lightly for a moment before picking out individual notes. Andrew toes off his shoes as he lets the music wash over him—and it’s strange what a soothing effect Eddie’s guitar has on him. It’s like a goddamn Pavlovian response on his behalf—like hearing it lets him shed the worries of the workday and allows him hang up the problems at work like a second coat alongside his first. He’s been conditioned by too many evenings, sunk into his couch, half paying attention to the television on mute while Eddie hums quietly along to the soft melody from his guitar.

“I think you should start out with another chord,” Andrew says honestly as he sets his briefcase down against the wall of the hallway and heads into the kitchen, “The one you’re starting with is too sad.” True to Eddie’s word, there’s a neatly wrapped sandwich on the table for him—and Eddie hasn’t even eaten all of the fries. He pulls the Shawarma out of the tinfoil and half considers heating it up before deciding he really doesn’t care.

Eddie wanders in after him, carefully arranges the guitar so it’s on his back before he seats himself at the table. He folds his hands and his brow furrows slightly as he speaks, “So I looked into the source of the faulty intel.”

Andrew’s eyes immediately snap from his food to Eddie’s face.

“Turns out it wasn’t Snafu’s source after all,” Eddie says, “The intel came straight from command.”

Andrew’s eyes narrow slightly but he swallows his food before speaking, “They’re giving us sloppy information now?”

Eddie shrugs lightly, “Maybe everything’s strained across the board, Skip. We sure as hell didn’t have time to do recon on what they give us.”

Andrew sets his food down on the table and frowns deeply as he runs a hand across the back of his neck. His voice is low and serious as he speaks, “Eddie, I can’t in good conscience send any men out on more missions if what we’re working off of is faulty.”

“Because command would love that,” Eddie agrees in a deadpan. He reaches out and touches Andrew’s arm lightly, “I don’t think we can do much else except file a formal complaint.” His voice is apologetic and it’s not hard to read his face and see that he’s having the same thoughts as Andrew about this entire situation.

But it’s true—there’s not much they can do to question what comes in from command and there’s no questioning operations.

Andrew makes a mental note to file a complaint in the morning but he knows that in reality he doesn’t expect anything to change.

_______

“Operation Peleliu,” Sledge reads from the cover of the booklet that Andrew’s distributing to all of them.

“I didn’t choose the name,” Andrew replies good-naturedly as he hands one to Snafu, “Though it was apparently the site of a campaign in the east during world war two. Someone at command has an interesting sense of humor.”

De L’eau stifles a snort. Snafu’s already flipping through the first few pages, “I thought we didn’t do counterfeit.”

“We don’t,” Andrew answers patiently, “We’re just in charge of making sure this gets across the border and delivering it where it needs to go.”

“Twenty million in pure cash,” Burgin says, lifting an eyebrow, “How many days are we given?”

“Command says that it’s going to take a few days at most.”

Burgin looks down at the booklet and his lips twist like he wants to say something. Andrew has his doubts too—but there’s not much he can do except relay expectations from command and hope for the best.

“Get debriefed,” Andrew finishes, “There’s a plane waiting for you at Newark.”

_______

Andrew hasn’t really indulged in the bar scene since he was in college and visited the pub regularly with his football buddies. He still doesn’t except for the occasional Fridays where Eddie insists on pulling him away from his work—and of course, those few weekdays when Eddie has a gig at some local bar.

All of their men are invited and generally a group of them show up to each one—but Andrew’s the only person who has the dubious honor of being present for every one of them since the beginning. It had been Andrew’s continued encouragement in the first place that had propelled Eddie to sing in front of an actual crowd and it’s been a long time since his first gig.

Eddie’s played at this bar so many times that the bartender knows Andrew by face, knows that he likes whiskey on ice or whatever domestic draft is on tap and always ushers him to a seat that has a good view of what passes off for the stage that night. Andrew always tips well and doesn’t try to talk to him like the other drunks at the bar so it’s not surprising that the bartender likes him. Tonight is a Wednesday but it’s been a long week already so he’s nursing whiskey instead of his usual weekday beer. Command called for the sole purpose of demanding to know why he had filed a formal complaint and he had spent well over twenty minutes getting chewed out by two different superiors about wasting resources and unnecessary bureaucracy and getting increasingly more frustrated.

“Hey Skip,” a voice says to his right. Andrew turns his head to find Sledge taking a seat next to him. He smiles and Sledge smiles back.

“Hillbilly going to come on anytime soon?” he asks, looking towards the stage.

Andrew shrugs slightly. He’s pleasantly buzzed but not yet to the point where his speech is affected, “Whenever they’re ready.”

Sledge nods and drops into silence. Andrew gestures for the bartender to come over and orders a beer—which he sets down in front of Sledge. He glances at Andrew quickly, seems to contemplate the beer for a moment before saying, “thanks,” quietly and pulling it towards him.

Andrew nods and looks at him, “How’re you holding up?”

Sledge quietly contemplates the counter for a moment before he answers—and in the chatter of the bar around them, Andrew almost can’t hear it. “I’m nervous.”

“Why’s that?” Andrew sounds a little puzzled, but his voice doesn’t hold any note of disdain. It’s the voice he uses with all of his men—warm with genuine curiosity, maybe a little surprised that they don’t believe in themselves as much as he believes in them. “You’ve handled volumes like this before.”

“I—” Sledge starts, then pauses like he’s searching for the right words. Andrew has to lean in to hear the quiet words that Sledge is saying, “That wasn’t real though. This—this is actually bringing real physical cash into the country.”

Andrew drops a hand on his shoulder, looking him straight in the eye, “If I didn’t think you were capable of the job, Eugene, I wouldn’t have picked you.”

Sledge shifts slightly as his expression brightens momentarily and he offers a tentative smile and a nod. Andrew is glad to see it—he smiles encouragingly and Sledge murmurs another thanks before wandering away to where his team is seated at a booth.

Andrew has half a mind to join them but then the lights dim and someone has turned on the cheap spotlight to illuminate the single stool next to the microphone. Eddie wanders onto the stage with his guitar and sits on the stool. The way that he glances in the direction of the bar where he knows Andrew is seated is purely reflexive and Andrew doesn’t think much of it.

He cradles the guitar and pulls a few short notes from the strings for a brief moment to quiet the crowd before he leans forward and without any semblance of introduction, starts crooning into the microphone.

Andrew doesn’t think he knows a single voice better than he knows Eddie’s. He’s heard it early in the morning when he answers the phone and Eddie’s telling him to drag his ass to work, he’s heard it late at night when he’s fallen asleep on the couch and Eddie’s shaking him and murmuring for him to go to bed. He’s heard it raised in an amused shout, the cold serenity of his fury, he’s heard every variation of weariness dragging through his vowels, the lilt of his accent becoming more and more pronounced with the hollowed out exhaustion on late nights, with the brightness of his anger.

He’s heard Eddie singing a million times, spent the last year and a half falling asleep in his armchair with documents spread out all around and Eddie’s low voice carrying through his dreams like a sentinel. He’s memorized the texture of the baritone, a steady hum through the sweet tune of the guitar and it always amazes Andrew, it always amazes him that Eddie can pull such beautiful music out of wood and resin and metal.

Here in this bar it takes on a strangely magnified quality, echoed back from the corners of the room. But even with a hundred people sitting silently all around him, there is something personal about this moment for Andrew, something strangely intimate in the way that Eddie slides his fingers along the strings. He has his eyes closed as he sings because he loses himself in the music.

Andrew is barely aware of the way that his breathing has grown shallow, the way that he can’t take his eyes off the man center stage and—

When Andrew opens his eyes at the end of the song, he swears that Eddie’s looking straight at him.

Something deep within him shifts.

Or maybe it has always been that way and he has just never known.

It’s there on his mind for a fleeting moment, and then it’s gone.

_______

“You are kidding me,” Eddie says in blatant disbelief as he watches Andrew throw a pair of socks into a duffel bag, “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“I just have a bad feeling about this one,” Andrew says as he pulls out a neatly folded pair of pants and shakes it out so that he can roll it up, “Plus with all of the faulty information—” He glances up at Eddie who opens his mouth, looking vaguely cross and Andrew cuts in before he can speak, “Yes, Eddie, three is the appropriate number to plot a trend—“

“You’re not even making a line graph!” Eddie’s voice doesn’t have to rise in volume for Andrew to hear the exclamation point at the end. There’s a beat and then Eddie’s voice drops back into a calm tone, “Look, you can’t just insert yourself into any mission based on whatever bad feelings you get. There’s still the rest of the team to think about, you can’t just leave HQ and expect everything to run smoothly.”

Andrew smiles—which is an unexpected response and Eddie’s eyes narrow slightly because it means that Andrew has already planned all of this without input from anybody else and Eddie’s bound to hate the results. The pants follow the socks into the duffel bag and Andrew turns to open his briefcase. When he turns back towards Eddie he has a folder in his hand.

Eddie looks at it warily because he knows exactly what it means. His lips thin and he doesn’t reach forward for it. When he lifts his eyes to meet Andrew’s, there’s a set to his jaw and his shoulders are tense with unhappiness, but at least he isn’t arguing any more.

“Congratulations,” Andrew says, “You’ve been promoted.”

Eddie’s arms are crossed over his chest still and he doesn’t reach out for the folder.

“Command says Peleliu will only take a few days,” Andrew says reassuringly, “It’s not like you haven’t done this before.”

“And if we get faulty intel?” There’s nothing in Eddie’s voice to suggest that he’s scared, but Andrew’s known him long enough to know that Eddie doesn’t express fear like other people. He expresses it in hesitance, in the pause before an action and it’s all too clear that he’s nervous now, that he doesn’t want to let anybody down.

Andrew steps forward, still patiently holding the file out. His voice is quiet, “That’s why I’m taking this mission.”

He doesn’t need to give words of encouragement to Eddie, doesn’t need to reassure him that he’ll do a good job, that he’s a good leader. Eddie knows all of that, he knows that Andrew believes in him without having to say it and he does his best to silently live up to all of Andrew’s high expectations.

Eddie steps forward, plucks the folder from his fingertips and nods once.

_______

Ravens won, 24-7. I tivoed the game. is the short email that Andrew receives when he lands in London at some absurd hour in the early morning. He rounds up his team and they make their way to a hotel where Snafu’s too tired to even flirt with the receptionist.

How do you not have a secretary? is the lone email he receives when he opens his eyes in the late morning to turn off his alarm. This time of day is strange for him—the fact that he hasn’t forwarded at least two orders and compiled a set of mission reports before lunch is throwing him off a little. He moves across the room to shake Burgin awake and it’s not long before they’re assembled and going over the plan one last time.

The last email he receives is a five note riff solely based on the G chord in the late afternoon while Andrew is covering the back of one of the buildings where they’re picking up cash with a loaded rifle and an expert eye. He waits for Burgin to extract his team and it isn’t until they’re packed away safely into the car that he allows himself to check his phone. The G chord is the only chord that Andrew knows how to play on the guitar.

It’s oddly comforting to know that Eddie’s thinking of him.

_______

Their first ten million goes smoothly—the five man team gets in and out of the building without a hitch and the six of them make it undetected across the border into Wales. There’s something to be said about Andrew’s friendly smiles and earnest way of speaking—Burgin doesn’t trust himself to speak and the rest of the team is jittery with nerves.

It’s not until they’re settled into their hotel that everything goes wrong.

Andrew’s sitting on the bed and compiling an email on his laptop when Oswalt speaks up from the couch, “Um. sir?” He looks up to see Oswalt scramble forward, staring at the one of the stacks of hundreds in his hands. For some reason, Andrew already knows what Oswalt is going to show him, feels his stomach plummeting as he sets his laptop aside. The rest of the team is staring at them now. Oswalt holds it out and Andrew flicks back the first two bills—

There is a tracker in the cut stack of bills. It blinks innocently at him with a pale green light.

“Fuck,” Andrew says very softly. It’s a rare occurrence when he swears in front of his men but these are unusual circumstances indeed.

“Gloves on. Search all of them,” Andrew says, taking the stack. The men spring into action and the rest of the bills are scattered across the floor.

“Good job Oswalt,” Andrew says as he kneels on the ground and starts flipping through the stacks with the rest of them.

It doesn’t make sense—it doesn’t make sense why money that they’re picking up from a secure source would have markers. It doesn’t make sense because they’re only acting as couriers, because they didn’t steal these—somebody else did—and Andrew has a hard time believing that they would have been sloppy enough pick these up. There is something wrong here, something off about this entire mission.

By the time that they’re done, they’ve lost nearly three hundred thousand. There are over twenty stacks with tracers in them, split amongst the ten bags.

On a whim, Andrew copies down the serial numbers on the trackers and they leave the hotel room early.

_______

He’s less confident about the second pickup. He doesn’t enter with the team and keeps them covered from the outside. He keeps expecting to hear the wail of police sirens, to see anything suspicious at all—but nothing out of the ordinary happens. The pickup goes exactly as promised, smooth and without interruption.

A week ago, Andrew might have welcomed how easy this mission was, might have thought these were the ideal sort of conditions, textbook courier material. But now he can’t help but be suspicious of the silence, the yielding ease of every step along the way.

The team has gone silent and nobody is surprised when the first action that they take once they’re in a secluded space is to search the stacks. They only find two of them—Andrew notes their tracker serials before they toss them away into an alleyway and make their way to their hotel for the night.

Andrew wants to call command, wants to demand to know what’s going on, how they could have missed this, if their client was playing them, but they have no secure lines. He supposes it doesn’t matter—not when they have less than twenty-four hours to get to the airfield and on their way home.

He’s tense the entire rest of the mission and the discomfort bleeds into the demeanor of his men. They are silent and grim-faced but he can’t ask for a more efficient team.

He just needs to get back to the states so that they can get answers.

_______

“I’m sorry sir,” the hostess says, “But we don’t have that airplane anywhere at this airport.”

Andrew has a hard time believing what he’s hearing—but for some reason it doesn’t surprise him as much as it should. He leans forward, gives her a tired smile because he knows it’s useless to channel his frustration at the staff and he makes sure to keep his tone friendly and patient, “Could you check again? It’s a small plane—privately owned.”

She bites her lip and types the code into the computer again before looking at him and shaking her head, “I’m sorry, sir. It really isn’t here.”

Andrew stares at her for just a moment before his lips turn upwards into a smile that he’s entirely not feeling and he says, “Sorry for the inconvenience ma’am,” before he turns and makes his way back to his team.

They are all looking at him expectantly.

“No plane,” Andrew says without preamble. He shifts his bag. He needs to call Eddie.

His team takes it in stride. None of the expressions on their faces change much—maybe they look slightly more grim now. Snafu’s the only one who looks slightly more concerned than the rest and he glancing around uneasily at the rest of them like he’s a little confused as to why nobody’s saying anything.

“Sir,” Snafu finally ventures, keeping his voice low, “Doesn’t this mean we’re stranded?”

Nobody says anything in reply—not until Andrew picks up the bag he dropped earlier and says, “We’ll make do, boys.”

_______

“You couldn’t have picked a more reasonable time to call?” Eddie demands when he picks up the phone on the fourth ring, “Didn’t they teach time zones at Bowdoin?”

“We’re stranded,” Andrew says shortly.

There is silence on the other end for a few moments save for the sound of Eddie’s breathing. And then, very slowly, “C wouldn’t—“

“C did,” Andrew corrects.

There is a rustle of sheets and a creak of mattress and Andrew knows that Eddie’s sitting up now, probably groping for his laptop in the dark, “What happened?”

Andrew presses his fingers to his temple. It’s the closest he’s going to come to acknowledging this impending headache, this seriously fucked up situation that they’ve found themselves in. He wonders who’s listening in on this conversation, if they’ve managed to tag all of their phones, if they’ve rifled through the trail of emails he receives on a daily basis. He wonders if they know what he’s been doing. He wonders how many terabytes of recorded conversation his cell phone company has collected on him.

“I took the boys out shopping,” Andrew says evenly and it strikes him only for a moment how absurd he sounds, “And some of them had managed to sneak in stuff that they really should have paid for by themselves.”

There’s a pause and then Eddie’s voice is serious as he replies, “Did you keep the receipts? I can reimburse you.”

Andrew pulls the list of serial numbers and does a series of conversions in his head, “First receipt. Nineteen fifty. Twenty-three seventy-five—“

He rattles off a list of numbers. He only makes it through two of the numbers before he stops. It’ll have to be enough for Eddie to figure out who’s tailing them.

“Get in contact with C,” he finishes, “We can’t stay here for much longer.”

When Eddie replies, he sounds calm but there is a trace of concern underlying his tone, “I’ll do my best.”

Andrew’s smile is genuine for the first time in days as he says goodbye.

_______

Andrew tries to call command, but unsurprisingly his attempts are blocked. Only a phone on a secure line is allowed to reach a phone in command. Andrew has no idea how they figure out what phones are secure and which aren’t. It’s an inefficient system kept in use supposedly for security reasons. It definitely doesn’t help them out here with no plane to take them home and no plan to somehow push nearly thirty million dollars past security.

Andrew spends most of the following day scoping out the airport and blending in with the shifting crowds in an effort to figure out if there’s any way at all that they can still complete this without the plane that command promised would be there. It’s hard though—they have no cover for the money and nobody that they can pull favors from in this foreign country. They have incredibly limited resources—which is ironic considering their delivery.

“I say we split it up,” Burgin suggests on the morning of the second day that they are there, “Throw them into bank accounts. Get out of here on any flight.”

“They’re probably tracking the bill serials,” Sledge says, “Plus how suspicious would we look, walking into bank with a couple millions in US dollars?”

Snafu leans against the windowsill, blowing smoke out the open window, “How many identities you think we’d have to make to deposit it all without suspicion?”

“They’re probably tracking the bills,” Sledge repeats with a trace of irritation, and he sounds strained, frustrated.

They all are. It’s not good for morale. It’s like they’re running in circles in a tiny cage. Andrew wants to promise them a way out but he needs to find it first.

_______

“C still isn’t returning any of my calls,” Eddie tells him on the fourth day that they’re supposed to be home, “But I called in a favor. Thursday, 7PM, ask for Shirley Decroix.”

Andrew frowns a little. There’s something off about the way that Eddie is speaking, a note of weariness that hadn’t been there the last time they spoke. The plane should be good news but Andrew doesn’t have to be physically present to notice that Eddie’s not smiling.

“What’s wrong?” he asks instead.

There’s a pause and then Eddie laughs low into the phone, except it’s not really a laugh at all. Andrew can imagine Eddie dragging his forearm across his face like he does when he’s tired and he says, “I fucked up.”

Andrew can imagine a million ways in which Eddie could imagine that he somehow fucked up without actually having done so. It’s the problem with him—with them really, if Andrew wants to be honest with himself—this stupid guilt complex that keeps them looking after all these men and the one that keeps them shouldering excessive blame.

“They cornered Burnhardt’s team. One of his boys was on the verge of talking and Burnhardt took him out. They’ve got Burnhardt and his other boy. No bail and likely no way out of a charge.”

“Jesus,” Andrew says, and he hates this distance, hates that he’s not where Eddie is now, “Eddie.”

“I shouldn’t have let them go,” Eddie says and his voice is stronger now with conviction, “As soon as we heard reports about activity in the area, I should have called them back. I shouldn’t have let them stay.”

“You didn’t know,” Andrew says and he doesn’t know if it’s true but he knows Eddie and he’s willing to bet on this guess, “You didn’t know. You didn’t know he’d try to talk.”

Eddie doesn’t say anything into the phone. Andrew has to press on, to fill this dangerous silence, “You weren’t there. You didn’t make that final decision.”

Eddie still doesn’t say anything. Andrew’s eyebrows draw together and he says steadily, “Eddie.”

“Yeah,” the word is said calmly. Andrew wants to reach through the phone, to drop a hand on his back, to settle himself close and offer the press of a shoulder—anything at all to show Eddie that he’s not alone. He doesn’t know what to say, nothing across the phone will be adequate.

“I’ll be home soon,” Andrew finishes lamely, “Shirley Decroix. Seven PM.”

Eddie lets out a quiet laugh but it’s more introspective than anything. “See you Friday, captain.”

_______

Their tiny plane lands sometime after five in the morning. Andrew hefts a bag onto his shoulder and picks one of them up before nodding to his men. He takes the first cab home and tries his best not to nod off in the car. He unlocks the door to find the living room light still on.

Eddie’s here. The thought of someone else in his home when he’s not there should make him paranoid—but it’s Eddie.

He drops the bags and his briefcase, toes off his shoes, and makes his way into the living room. The man is sprawled across the couch, arm flung across his eyes and slow breathing through his nose. His laptop shows the screensaver and there are notes scribbled and spread out across Andrew’s coffee table.

It’s nearly six. He should catch up on what tiny amount of sleep he can get before he gets into work tomorrow morning. They still have the second half of the delivery to make and Andrew’s intent on harassing an answer out of command. It’s one thing to have faulty information, but to cut their escape route is inexcusable.

He takes a seat on the far end of the couch and digs the palms of his hands into his eyes. He’s tired. He turns his head to look at Eddie—the lips pulled into a frown even in sleep, the texture of stubble across his jaw. He wants to lay a hand on Eddie’s arm, wants to run it soothingly across his shoulder until the frown eases away into a peaceful expression.

He doesn’t know when he closes his eyes and he doesn’t know how he ends up falling asleep sitting upright on the couch but when he wakes up, Eddie is shaking his shoulder gently and looking at him with concerned eyes. His mouth shapes words that Andrew can barely make out through the hazy blur of sleep clouding his mind. He feels himself being tugged to his feet and he follows obediently. Eddie pushes him down onto his bed and for half a crazy second, Andrew wants to drag him down too.

But he’s tired from barely any sleep overseas for over a week and his bed is more comfortable than he remembers.

He sleeps.

_______

When he opens his eyes again, sundown is angled through the blinds of his window. He mistakes it momentarily for sunrise but realizes that the wash of light in his room is too red, too deep to be the pale light of sunrise. He lays there for a moment before checking his phone. It’s six-fifty eight

He’s wasted the entire day sleeping. He should have gone and taken his role as branch manager back instead of dropping his responsibilities on Eddie for another day. Eddie’s probably had enough to do this past week without having to shoulder Andrew’s duties on top of his own.

Except he remembers that Eddie had pulled him here this morning, wonders for an uncertain moment if Eddie’s dry palm had really slid along the line of his jaw, if he had really lingered for a moment with his hand on Andrew’s neck, just looking down at him with that unreadable expression he sometimes got.

He looks at his phone again. Seven exact. He gets up and drags a hand across the back of his neck, thinking about a shower. He dials Eddie’s phone instead.

“Ravens are losing,” Eddie says by way of greeting.

“You’re not at home,” Andrew replies, and it doesn’t even occur to him that he dropped the my in front of home.

“I’m checking the scores online,” Eddie elaborates.

“You didn’t have to cover for me today.”

Andrew can practically see the shrug that rolls across Eddie’s shoulders, “You looked tired.”

“Your laptop was on when I got home,” Andrew counters.

“You looked like you needed sleep,” Eddie replies blandly and Andrew can see that he’s going nowhere with this argument.

“How are things?” Andrew asks, “Should I come in?”

There is a pause and Andrew hears Eddie clicking away on the keyboard. He can maybe see the amused smile that touches the corner of Eddie’s lips and he’s glad to hear the touch of humor returning to Eddie’s voice, “You know Andy, we work better with you here but it’s not like we can’t function at all without you.”

“Okay,” Andrew relents, and then, “When are you leaving?”

“Soon,” Eddie sounds a little distracted now, like he’s starting to pay more attention to his computer than the phone. Andrew’s gotten used to it, “I’ll pick up Chinese on the way back.”

_______

Eddie had told him that command wouldn’t pick up his call. He shouldn’t be as surprised at the sudden lack of communication as he is.

He’s sent three emails a day for the last two days over the intranet and has yet to receive a single answer. When a secretary picks up his call, she tells him to hold while they transfer him and the call always gets dropped. When he calls back and inquires about the dropped calls, the receptionist always apologizes and tells him that they’re experiencing high call volume.

Meanwhile, the orders continue to pour in.

“I got it,” Eddie says one morning as he steps into Andrew’s doorway, “It took me an entire two weeks to hack, but I got it.”

“This sounds like good news,” Andrew observes, setting the phone down on what’s another dropped call, “What’d you find?”

“You were tagged with FBI tracers. Custom made for the branch in New York three months ago.”

Andrew feels the world tilting on its axis a little bit, like some new information is slowly starting to slot into place and he’s too scared to shove it all the way in. “They’re not bank,” he says carefully.

“Someone in the FBI knew exactly what you were up to. Someone was aiming to track you.”

Andrew’s jaw tightens.

Team K has picked up on the habit of reconning every mission before sending the teams out. It takes twice as long but the amount of faulty intel they’ve managed to root out consists of well over fifteen percent of what they’re given by now and Andrew thinks it’s well worth the extra time for the extra security.

Peleliu was a fairly large project. It didn’t make sense why command wouldn’t at least mention FBI suspicion in their briefing if they had suspected anything at all. It was always better to err on the side of caution.

“What are you thinking?” Eddie murmurs quietly, eyes intent on Andrew’s face.

Andrew thinks carefully about his words, but realizes that his suspicions don’t change. “I think there’s something going on with command.”

_______

Eddie’s away at some event his sister is putting on so Andrew decides to devote the entire night to figuring out what to do about the Burnhardt situation. He’s already visited the prison where both Burnhardt and Jacobson are being kept. Leckie’s already informed him that there’s no way in hell Burnhardt is going to be released on any sort of bail—but Jacobson might have a chance to reduce his charges from accomplice to trespassing and obstruction of justice if they play their cards right.

They’ve lost a man. When the eyewitnesses listed on the case file are police, it’s a goddamn lost cause.

Andrew has music playing but he’s paranoid enough to be able to hone in immediately on the sound of something scraping into his keyhole. He thinks for a moment that it could be an old enemy coming to pay him a visit and he’s already reaching down for the beretta he keeps in his briefcase when the door unlocks and—

“I thought you were supposed to be at your sister’s thing?” Andrew asks relaxing immediately before tensing up and subtly trying to collect the copies of police reports that Leckie sent him. He turns off the music too.

“There’s only so many times that I can tell a girl that I work as a computer engineer just to watch her deflate,” Eddie replies, “And whenever I tell them that I’m a musician, I feel like a huge tool.”

“You’re actually a musician though,” Andrew says as Eddie goes into the kitchen. A few moments later, he’s setting a beer onto the coffee table in front of Andrew and he has one for himself. Eddie opens his beer, picks up the remote control for the television, and weighs it in his hand momentarily before he speaks.

“You don’t need to do that.” His voice is quiet.

There is a brief pause before Andrew replies, “Do what?”

“Put away the Burnhardt files.” Eddie’s voice is completely steady.

Andrew studies Eddie’s profile silently. His mouth is set in a slightly grim line, and from the way that his head is tilted, his brow casts his eyes into shadow. Andrew lets out a breath and flips open the folder he haphazardly threw the papers into without any semblance of order.

“Do you need help?” Eddie asks as he takes a seat on the couch next to Andrew.

“There’s not much we can do,” Andrew says.

Eddie picks up the first sheet of paper. It’s the witness report that one of the policemen turned in. He stares at it blankly for a while.

Andrew wants to say something, wants to tell Eddie again that it’s not his fault but it feels like he’s said it so many times that the words just aren’t having any effect any longer. He can’t just keep repeating them and hoping that Eddie will come to his senses—Eddie has to do that by himself.

They’ve lost other men before—they haven’t always been careful enough. Someone slips up, someone takes a moment too long, someone makes a bad judgment and takes an erroneous risk—someone gets caught, someone gets killed. There’s always this stretch of guilt after every single one of the lost men. What if they could had prepared them better, what if they missed something during their preliminary scan of every mission brief? What if they could have picked a better day, better escape routes, better conditions?

Burnhardt left behind a widowed mother. Jacobson has a wife and a child on the way.

“I didn’t join this to fuck up,” Eddie says conversationally. His voice is deceptively light but Andrew can hear the surge of anger underlying the tone of his voice. “I didn’t take this rank so I could let others fuck up.”

Eddie’s given a hundred different reasons why he’s stayed—the pay, the training that it’s given him, the way that it keeps his skills sharp both on and off the computer, the fucking empowerment that shouldering a sniper rifle or picking up a glock gives him. He’s told a thousand different stories about his early days—days when he did more than fill out paperwork and send directives, days when the most exciting part of his day wasn’t hacking into private databases on occasion. He stretches them out, exaggerates the characters into wild caricatures of the veteran badass, the nervous rookie—and the men love them, they love to listen to them—and most importantly, they love him.

Because both he and Eddie have the same real reasons for staying—because Jacobson has a wife and they need to get him back to his family, because Burnhardt gave his life protecting the secret of this organization and they need to show the same devotion by providing for his mother. Because Burgin has a fiancé named Florence at home and he talks about her with a brightness in his eyes, because Oswalt talks about one day getting enough saved up so that he can go back to college and learn how to become a brain surgeon. Because they love these men with a fierce sort of pride, because these men are just in desperate times making bad decisions in a world that’s screwed them over every other way—because they don’t trust anybody else to prepare them, to lead them into danger and then out again.

Andrew fits his hand into the crook of Eddie’s shoulder, fingers splaying against the back of his neck and his thumb stroking the delicate skin behind Eddie’s ear. He doesn’t say anything at all because there’s nothing worth saying by now. He knows acutely how Eddie feels and he goddamn hurts for him.

Eddie closes his eyes and lets him.

_______

There’s a knock on his office door. Andrew raises his eyes.

“Hillbilly told me that you were trying to get hold of command?” Burgin asks as he leans against the doorframe.

“To little success,” Andrew admits.

“William Rupertus,” Burgin says, “He’s holding a charity event for his wife’s cancer foundation in a week. It’s very exclusive though, there’s only a limited number of plates available to the public.”

Andrew stares at Burgin for a moment before grinning widely, “When do plate bids go up?”

_______

It’s still raining when Andrew gets back from his Saturday morning run, the cold raindrops running down the back of his neck and blooming wetness across the back of his thin cotton shirt. He passes one of his neighbors jogging with her dog on the way back and gives her a friendly smile. She acknowledges him with a smile and the boxer drags her on with his tongue lolling.

He unlocks the front door and spends a few moments dripping on the hardwood in his entryway, staring at the open door of his patio. He can see drops of water on the screen door and the hardwood in front of the door from this angle, from where the wind has streaked raindrops in through the mesh.

He would be alarmed but he can also hear bluegrass playing from the guest room that Eddie’s basically claimed as his own for the past year. He has shirts in the closet and complicated looking computer bits all over the desk. Andrew’s gotten past the point of joking about demanding rent by now—it’s just a space that Eddie can use to crash if he doesn’t feel like making the extra hour commute out of the city to his own apartment.

And he should really be used to this, used to these sudden changes in his house without getting paranoid—but he’s been through years of close misses from more than one angry character from his past who have tried to assault him in his own home. It doesn’t hurt to be extra vigilant and he’s never gotten rid of the reflexive paranoia.

He arranges his sneakers by the door and pulls off his wet socks. The shirt is shed next and he wanders into the hallway towards his own bedroom.

Eddie is sitting on the floor of Andrew’s room, intently measuring wires against each other. Both the cable and the phone outlet have been unscrewed and are hanging out of the wall. He doesn’t even look up when Andrew enters.

“What are you doing?” Andrew asks after a beat, flinging the wet shirt into the hamper.

“I thought I got you free cable ages ago!” Eddie says and it’s an exclamation like he really is distraught by this fact, “Why didn’t you say anything? You’ve been throwing money away for years.”

Andrew’s in the midst of opening a dresser drawer for another shirt, “I didn’t think it was that big of a deal.”

Eddie looks at him expressionlessly (though it looks like maybe he’s trying to hide a smile) and he shakes his head. Andrew lifts both of his hands in surrender.

“I’m installing a secure fiber optics network in your house,” Eddie answers for real this time, “I should have done it ages ago but I’ve been busy. I’d like to wire your entire house though, so it might take a few weeks.”

Andrew pulls a shirt on. He doesn’t really know why Eddie would think there’s a need for a secure network in his home but he’s not really the expert, “Okay.”

He sits on his bed and watches Eddie work instead of thinking about the briefings he’s brought home to comb through over the weekend. Eddie’s movements are quick and efficient—he dismantles parts easily and brings in new components without hesitation like he’s memorized all of these schematics, like he can see the wires behind the drywall without breaking anything open. It’s Eddie in one of his various natural elements and Andrew’s long gotten over anything resembling jealousy and now he just admires the other man for his obvious talent.

“I’m going to make breakfast,” Andrew says after a long while, “Scrambled eggs?”

“Sure,” Eddie replies and Andrew leaves the room.

_______

“Hey Skip?”

Andrew turns his attention from his computer screen to the man standing in his doorway. Leyden looks a little worried as he shifts his weight nervously from foot to foot. He offers a pale imitation of a smile and he asks, “Say, do you know if there’ve been any orders recently about tracking team K? Evaluation stuff?”

Andrew’s brow furrows as his expression turns into one of confusion, “What makes you ask that?”

Leyden suddenly looks more uncomfortable than he already did, his eyes widening the slightest bit like he’s legitimately surprised at the news. “There’s been a car following me around for the last couple of days.”

Andrew tenses and he just knows. It has to be FBI.

“Make? Model? Plate?”

“I think it’s a Ford Taurus,” Leyden offers hesitantly, “I don’t know the plate—I thought it was ours.”

“Get the plate.”

Leyden nods and half turns, like he’s about to leave. He pauses midway, though, and turns back around to look at Andrew, “Do you know who it is, Skip?”

Andrew has to choose his answer carefully—it’s a balance between being truthful to his men and not causing undue panic. So far only he and Eddie know anything about the sudden FBI interest in their case—but say the word FBI and they’d have the uneasy men scrambling to get themselves out of there and leaving the loyal men stranded in their wake.

“I think I might have an idea but I need to be sure,” he says, “But if my guess is right, you need to be careful, Bill. Everyone will need to be on high alert.”

Leyden swallows and for a moment he looks like he’d like to ask for more information, but instead he nods and exits.

_______

The last Friday of each month is burning day and it’s something like a ritual. The entire office turns out all of the papers that they’ve collected in the last month, determine what missions are still in progress and stack the of the outdated documents in boxes to be burned. Considering there’s only six or so dedicated staff members working in the office, it’s an ordeal that takes the entire day.

By nightfall, the others have left and Eddie silently helps Andrew load the boxes into the trunk of his car. It’s an extended ritual for the two of them—to drive the papers out to a secluded part of the shoreline and pile them up on the sand and douse them with gasoline. It’s easier on a calm day when the breeze doesn’t scatter their papers all over the beach.

Eddie lights the match and glances up at Andrew. In the reflection of the flame, his eyes are pale halos around the darkness of his pupil. The match drops and Andrew feels the flare of heat expanding rapidly as the gasoline catches on fire in an instant. The gasoline is an easy burn and it takes longer for the paper to catch—but when it does, it does merrily, paper crackling with the intense heat and curling into flame.

Andrew watches it silently for a long while, looks at the sparks it throws against the cool night air, the smell of smoke wreathing into his clothes and permeating his hair. It’s some sick perversion of the bonfires he remembers from his childhood in Massachusetts in a time and place when what he could imagine didn’t begin to measure up to how complicated his life has become. He hadn’t always carried a gun in his briefcase, didn’t always shoulder the impending dread of federal agents one day knocking on his door.

He looks at Eddie instead, the soft shadows that the fire creates on his face, the wearily contemplative stare of a man who’s been doing this for far too long. It’s ironic because neither of them have even hit their thirties and yet they feel decades older. They’ve had so many years shaved off of their lives and sometimes this all feels unreal, like one day they will wake up and realize that they’ve dreamt the last seven years of their life—that Eddie’s back in the Corps and Andrew’s been at Bowdoin all along with years to go before he even thinks about raising a gun against another person.

Eddie raises his eyes, looks at Andrew. Andrew doesn’t look away, keeps his eyes intent on Eddie’s face. He quirks an eyebrow, shoves his hands into the pockets of his trousers and smiles a little, “You’re quiet.”

A spark of ember lifts from the burning papers and spirals slowly into the air. Andrew’s eye is caught by it as he says, “I’m thinking of Maine.”

He lapses into silence. Eddie doesn’t pick up the frayed thought, doesn’t wind it together with his own words until a long moment afterwards.

“I saved up an entire year to buy my first guitar,” he says and the words carry through the haze of the fire like Andrew’s listening to him through a dream, “She was a piece of junk—a beat up thing that I found on sale at the thrift store. I had to save up another three months to buy a new set of strings. She was constantly out of tune and I had work hard to draw out any tune. But I learned how to play on her.”

The fire leaps and Andrew feels like he’s half a world away.

“I was happy,” Eddie says softly and it must mean something, some message that Eddie is trying to convey.

“And now?” Andrew’s voice is louder than he expected. Eddie slants him a look and he has a fond smile on his face, like he’s amused.

“I like this,” Eddie says plainly and it’s simultaneously the simplest and most complicated thing that Andrew’s ever heard. His lips are curved into a smile and it’s a little crooked on his face and Andrew thinks for a moment that he’s a little too close to the fire, that he’s going to get burned. But he doesn’t move and he stops thinking and he hasn’t felt contentment like this for a long time.

_______

Andrew hasn’t worn a tuxedo since he attended the wedding of one of his old college buddies—and that seems years ago. He’s twenty-seven—it’s about the time that his friends should all be getting married, but he hasn’t received an invitation in a while. It comes with the job, the disconnection he’s tried to put between the man he used to be and the man he is now. He doesn’t know how many aliases he’s used in the time since then.

He’s not sure how well the tuxedo fits him now—he used to be bulkier as a halfback on the football team at Bowdoin. He’s thinned out a little—no longer needs the mass he used to have in order to block players on the field—and it’s a little big on him. He doesn’t look like he’s swimming in it or anything though and he’s not vain enough to send it to a tailor. It’ll have to do for the evening.

It’s a little strange because he doesn’t feel like himself in this suit—but the man in the mirror has a confident quirk to his lips anyway and that’s all that really matters. He lines up the edges of the bowtie and frowns at it. It’s been a long time since he’s had to tie a bowtie. It’s strange that he remembers how to do a double Windsor and not this.

“Having trouble?”

Eddie has a bowl of pasta in his hands—drizzled over with olive oil and pesto because he likes it better than red sauce. It only serves to remind Andrew how hungry he is and how unlikely it is that he’s actually going to be eating at the charity ball. He hates schmoozing and all of the superficial small talk—he’s done more than his fair share of it in pandering to the select clientele early on in his career.

“When was the last time you tied one of these?” Andrew asks with a raised eyebrow.

“You’re obviously failing at it,” Eddie replies as he sets the bowl aside and steps in front of Andrew. His fingers slip briefly on the silk of the bowtie and his eyebrows draw together as he concentrates. Andrew tries not to shift his weight too much, tries to stay still as he looks at Eddie’s face, the fleeting touch of fingers on his neck and there is this inexplicable feeling that draws forward from the depths of his mind, something that’s too strong to be friendly affection by itself. He has the strangest urge to catch Eddie’s wrist, to hold him there, to have this moment suspended in time.

Eddie loops the fabric and tightens it against Andrew’s neck. He steps back and surveys his own handiwork a moment before his lips tilt up in something that resembles a smirk, “Must be getting senile in your old age, Haldane.”

Andrew doesn’t respond for a moment, can’t bring himself to breathe past this sudden choking need to pull Eddie forward again or to step forward and invade Eddie’s space. It’s unsettling but maybe not as unexpected as it could be. There must be something in his eyes because Eddie’s smirk falters and his voice comes out concerned, “Andy?”

Andrew snaps out of it because he has an objective to focus on, a mission to complete and this—all of this—is distracting and self-indulgent and completely unnecessary. He eases into a smile and looks at himself in the mirror, touching at the bowtie where Eddie’s fingers had been moments before.

“Not bad, Jones.”

_______

Andrew has spent the last hour prying himself away from the other attendees at the conference as kindly as possible and without coming off as too impolite. They’ve mastered the art of small talk to a much higher extent than he has, peppering their conversation with inane remarks about Baltimore, the weather, and once in a while making a general statement about scientific research or asking in a hesitant and roundabout way which one of his relatives or friends suffered from cancer. It’s not their fault and he’d be in a much more pliant mood if he weren’t on the lookout for the ever elusive William Rupertus whom he’s not even sure is attending the function. He has yet to glimpse the man for even a moment.

He could also be on the lookout for a second man—Chesty Puller—who’s also rumored to be part of command, but he hasn’t shown up either and Andrew will just have to stick out the entirety of the dinner feeling slightly awkward and out of place. There’s a subtle division between old money and new money here—a bit more arrogance in the curl of their smile that the former retains—but Andrew doesn’t come from any sort of money at all. It serves to set him apart even more.

It’s nearly eight thirty when he excuses himself from a conversation about homeopathic remedies for pain with a pair of charming ladies. It’s a well needed breather—he doesn’t think he can take much more of listening to them talk about their favorite yoga positions and it’s not difficult to see that they’re trying to flirt with him in a vaguely adulterous and forward manner. Maybe he should be more receptive but he has a specific goal to accomplish tonight.

He doesn’t really need to use the restroom but he heads in that direction anyway, anywhere to ease the permanently polite and bemused smile from his face. He spends a moment looking at the bathroom door, then sharply veers away from it and starts walking through the hallways with no particular destination in mind. He needs space to clear his head, to figure out what to do next if neither Rupertus or Puller show. It’s impossible to get into command without a written invitation—he’s tried more than once on previous occasions. Breaking into command wouldn’t be out of the question but it’d take weeks to plan and they need changes now.

It’s a little startling how he’s actually legitimately considering the advantages of simply breaking into command and hoping to find answers. It’s startling because he remembers swearing loyalty to them what seems like a lifetime ago and he’s been following their orders without question ever since.

He climbs the stairs and walks down a second hallway. He’s about to open the doors to the stairwell on the opposite end when he hears distinct voices from the other side of the door, “—it was your problem that you lost them in Wales. Christ Rodriguez, your problem is that you keep on underestimating them.”

Andrew stares at the door with his heart going a mile a minute in his chest. That voice—he hasn’t heard it frequently—but he’s fairly sure that it’s Rupertus hissing at someone behind the door. Rupertus talking about what sounds like their aborted mission.

“I have a dinner to conduct,” Rupertus says lowly, “We can talk about this later.”

Andrew backs away from the door and hurries down the hall to the other side.

This—maybe this was exactly the answer that he needed without even having spoken to anybody at all. This is the confirmation of his fears that he never wanted—he had been holding onto the hope that perhaps it had all just boiled down to poor research and poor planning. Incompetence would have been far easier to handle than the reality of intentional misdirection.

He straightens his shoulders, replaces the smile on his face and returns to the banquet room feeling sick to his stomach.

_______

At dinner, Rupertus raises his glass in a toast.

“To all of you wonderful supporters, willing to give your time and funds to a wonderful cause,” he says with a smile, “Because you are doing the right thing. We are all doing the right thing.”

Andrew doesn’t smile and he barely lifts his glass because all he can think of is you liar.

_______

It takes twenty minutes of polite small talk, watching Rupertus in his peripheral vision for any moment where he might be able to jump in, before he finally sees an opportunity. Rupertus is walking away from the crowd and Andrew quietly excuses himself rather rudely and backs away. Within a minute, he’s hurrying up behind Rupertus and calling out, “Sir.”

Rupertus pauses midstep but doesn’t turn around. Andrew catches up and it’s not until he’s alongside the man that Rupertus finally turns his head to look at him.

“Haldane, sir,” Andrew introduces himself, “We’ve talked before.”

Rupertus’s smile is thin and a trace uncomfortable, but his voice is warm, “Of course. Captain of K. To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”

“Sir,” Andrew says, “I’ve been wondering about certain information that you’ve been sending our team.”

Rupertus doesn’t move, doesn’t even blink. “What information might that be, captain?”

“Recently we’ve been getting faulty intel in the majority of our briefings. I’ve been hoping to draw it to your attention but command keeps dropping all of my calls,” Andrew’s smile is both brief and wry, “Another issue I’ve been hoping to draw your attention to.”

There is a distinct pause and slowly, the other man’s face changes from a thin smile to a politely puzzled expression, “I haven’t heard about any of these issues until now. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.”

Andrew doesn’t know what to say—he had been expecting more questions, exact dates, locations, specifics as to why he was questioning command. This—this simple acquiescence is throwing him off.

“Rest assured captain, I will be looking into these matters personally,” the thin smile is back.

Andrew doesn’t believe him for a single second.

A silence stretches between the two of them. Rupertus raises an eyebrow and when he speaks again, it’s with a hint of irritation, “Is there anything else you wanted to address, captain?”

Andrew looks him in the face and shakes his head, “No, thank you.”

_______

Andrew wakes up to the sound of drilling.

He lays in bed for another moment, stares at the ceiling and hopes that it’s Eddie and not someone trying to unscrew the doorknob of his front door. He rolls over and looks at the clock. Nearly eight. Time to get up.

Eddie’s in the living room cheerfully attacking his drywall with a drill when Andrew walks out of the hallway. He’s drilled a series of holes and he’s pulling out wires from the wall. Andrew stares a minute, opens his mouth to ask exactly what it is that Eddie’s doing, then decides that he isn’t nearly awake enough to have a coherent conversation about the state of his walls and any possible resulting depreciation of the value of his house, and shuts it again.

“Good morning,” Eddie says brightly.

“You want some breakfast?” Andrew asks, digging to palm of his hand into his eyes in effort to wake himself up. He doesn’t bother waiting for a reply as he steps into the kitchen and opens the fridge, “Was trying to get in contact with you last night but you didn’t pick up.”

“Oh yeah, sorry about that,” Eddie calls from the living room and he actually does sound apologetic, “Sister set me up on a blind date with one of her friends without telling me. I felt bad about canceling so I just went with it.”

Andrew shuts the fridge and moves to lean against the doorway between the kitchen and living room with an amused expression, “And how did that turn out for you?”

There’s a moment when Eddie shoots Andrew a look that he can’t exactly decipher, something sharp that isn’t quite as self deprecating or amused as Andrew would have expected—but it passes almost instantaneously and Andrew wonders idly for a moment if he had just imagined it. “She was pretty. Nice. Had a good sense of humor. Not my type though.”

“Makes me wonder what exactly your type is,” Andrew comments. Eddie’s been on more dates in the last month than Andrew’s been on in the last year, thanks to his sister. He’s brought back more than a few entertaining stories, girls who spend entire evenings talking about themselves, shallow girls from the upper east side who haven’t figured out how to fit in elsewhere, and career driven women who don’t know how to tone it down.

But now there’s a lengthened pause, like Eddie’s actually thinking about the half rhetorical question. He smiles a little blandly at the wall and Andrew can only see half of his face from his angle. “Andy, who the hell am I kidding?”

Andrew’s eyebrows rise slowly. The outburst is somewhat uncharacteristic of Eddie’s cautious optimism. He doesn’t have to ask for an explanation though because Eddie turns his head fully so that he’s looking at Andrew and he says very simply, “I don’t think I’m ever going to have another steady relationship for the rest of my life.”

Andrew doesn’t know what he was expecting, but it certainly hadn’t been that.

“My family still thinks I’m a computer engineer. My sister thinks that the most exciting part of my day is when I finish troubleshooting code and get to run the full program,” Eddie’s voice is calm but it’s clear he’s agitated from the way that he straightens from his crouch, starts shifting through the things on Andrew’s shelves because he doesn’t trust himself enough to work on the delicate wiring without messing something up, “So tell me, Andy, what the hell do I tell my future wife when I come home after midnight with bloodstains on my sleeves?”

She doesn’t have to know, Andrew wants to say, but he can’t force his mouth to shape the words—but it’s just as well because Eddie knows him too well and he doesn’t even have to say the words, can express everything he needs to in the way that his eyebrows are drawn together, in the line of his frown.

“This is a part of me—I’ve killed people, Andy. I help smuggle hundreds of illegal things across the border, I don’t hesitate in cracking restricted databases and exploiting the information I find,” the words are expelled on a breath, like he’s in a rush to get them out—say it and get it over with—and he breathes in before he finishes his thought, “And I can’t think of a single person who would be fine with being misled like that. I couldn’t mislead them like that.”

Andrew doesn’t know what to say—maybe because he’s had similar thoughts on too many occasions, maybe because he’s come to the same conclusion, maybe because he’s sometimes terrified too that this job is taking him over completely, that it’s starting to slowly define who he is.

And Eddie, Eddie just looks at him and Andrew can see the longing in his eyes for just one unguarded moment before he looks back at the sports memorabilia Andrew’s collected in his living room over the years and says, “Anyways, I, um—“

He clears his throat, and it’s an uncharacteristically awkward transition, “What’d you find yesterday?”

Andrew doesn’t want to leave it at that, doesn’t want to step away from something that’s obviously weighing heavily on Eddie’s mind without some form of conclusion—but he’s run out of easy advice and he doesn’t know what he can possibly tell Eddie to make this better.

He steps into the living room and he frowns slightly. He’s considerably more awake and the day is starting out more solemn than he anticipated. He wants to drop a hand onto Eddie’s shoulder, but maybe he’s already missed the window for that.

Instead, he says, “I need you to run a fairly common last name.”

Eddie’s wandering hands lift one of Andrew’s old Bowdoin trophies off its position on the shelf and he looks back at Andrew, “FBI?”

“I think Rupertus is working with them,” Andrew answers grimly, “Heard him talking to someone about failing to intercept something in Wales.”

“Your mission,” Eddie concludes—and it’s almost as if they hadn’t talked about anything else at all earlier—the way that Eddie’s eyes slide out of focus over Andrew’s right shoulder and his thoughts seem to be running a million miles an hour. He slowly sets the trophy back onto the shelf—pauses a moment and then looks back at it.

“When I talked to him afterwards—“

“Shhh,” Eddie suddenly interrupts, eyebrows drawing together as he picks the trophy back up. Andrew looks confusedly at him for a moment—and then a sinking recognition drops into the pit of his stomach when Eddie peels off what looks like a tiny black tab from the back of the trophy. Eddie raises his eyes wordlessly to meet Andrew’s and it’s only a moment before Andrew nods and signals that he’ll sweep the bedrooms.

Twenty minutes later, Andrew’s found another microphone hidden behind the mirror on his closet door. It makes him panic, that somebody had managed to break into his home undetected, that he’s going soft enough to the point where he hasn’t been able to catch on. There’s nothing in Eddie’s room, nothing on the back of the pictures hanging in the hallway. He even checks the bathroom, sweeping his fingers right into the corners, before concluding that there’s nothing actually there.

Eddie has two microphones including the one he found behind the trophy. There’s a total of three black tabs sitting on the kitchen table when Andrew sets his down. They look like flat buttons, all lined up in a row.

“The good news is that these aren’t wireless so they’d have to come back here and pick them up again,” Eddie tells him, though it’s hardly delivered with any cheer, “The bad news is that someone is trying to listen in on you and we don’t know if they’ve bugged you with another set earlier.”

“The bad news is that someone broke into my house without my noticing,” Andrew replies darkly.

“It wasn’t me,” Eddie says automatically and apparently it’s enough to draw a bark of humorless laughter from Andrew.

“Of course it wasn’t you,” Andrew murmurs, picking up one of the flat devices and turning it over in his hands, “If it had been, you’d have done a much better job.”

Eddie’s reply is a halfheartedly wry grin that only lifts one corner of his lips.

Andrew drops the microphone back onto the table and suddenly his lips are quirking into a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, “Let’s find out who.”

_______

“How does the new lineup look?”

Andrew tears his eyes away from where some commentator has written a rather bleak piece on the future of the Orioles and meets the vaguely amused stare of a particular double-agent who doesn’t seem to be on duty today. He smiles easily and folds the newspaper away as he stands up.

“Not so good apparently,” he picks up his coffee and jerks his head at the counter, “Thanks for meeting me. Can I get you something?”

“I’ve never turned down free coffee,” Leckie agrees and they get into line behind a pair of girls who are eyeing the muffins with poorly disguised desire. Andrew almost wants to buy them a damn pastry but he thinks better of it when he realizes that their order mostly consists of words like nonfat and soy. They probably wouldn’t appreciate his enabling.

“You guys have been pretty quiet,” Leckie observes as the barista hands him a black coffee with a dimpled smile. Andrew drops the change into the tip jar and starts towards the door. Leckie follows behind and it isn’t until they’re out on the street that any more words are exchanged.

“How’s your job going?” Andrew asks without preamble.

Leckie sends him a sideways look like he’s not exactly sure what Andrew’s trying to get at, but he smiles a little wryly anyways and tightens his hands around the paper cup, “You know, status quo.”

“Forgive me if this isn’t how you operate, but has command been sending you any faulty information recently?”

Leckie runs a hand across the back of his head, his eyebrows furrowing the slightest bit, “We don’t get much information from command. Our standing orders are mostly to keep our head down and to keep our men out of hot water.” He throws a sharp glance at Andrew, “You sure it’s command slipping up and not just you guys?”

The question isn’t accusatory—it’s born out of curiosity and Andrew doesn’t find himself taking offense to it. He shakes his head and they stop at a traffic light, “We’ve been running recon on all briefings before sending teams out. You hear anything from your division?”

Leckie doesn’t say anything for a moment and takes a sip of his coffee as they start crossing the street. When he does speak again, he’s adopted a thoughtful tone, “We’ve seen more of our boys than I’d like. And there’s—” he stops himself mid-sentence and turns his eyes towards Andrew, “I hope you know that what you’re trying to imply is pretty serious.”

Andrew meets his eyes and his answering smile is grim.

“I’m just asking you to think about it,” he says. He jerks his head towards the other side of the street, “I’ve got to get back to work.”

Leckie nods once and Andrew starts walking away. He’s barely taken three steps before he hears the other man call, “Haldane.”

He turns around. Leckie’s looking at him with something like a tiny smile curling at the corner of his lips, “How do you know I won’t run straight to command with your suspicions?”

Andrew hesitates, shifts his weight slightly, but he smiles in response, “Something tells me I can trust you.”

_______

Bzzt bzzt. Bzzt bzzt.

He’s forgotten to set his phone on ring but the vibrations still cut through his sleep and drag him into consciousness. He gropes for the phone and tries to clear the fog of sleep from his mind when he answers.

Five minutes later, he’s wide awake and pacing a tight line in front of his desk, punching a number into his cell phone that he knows by muscle memory.

“I’ll buy you a clock for Christmas,” is the greeting that he gets after three rings.

“Eddie,” Andrew says, “Oswalt’s been arrested.”

A slow exhale and when Eddie speaks again, he sounds much more alert, “I’ll meet you at the office in an hour.”

_______

Andrew has been sitting behind his desk and staring at his computer for almost twenty minutes when the elevator doors open to admit one characteristically composed man carrying two large coffees in a cardboard carton. The screensaver is waving the windows flag at him by now, bouncing around the screen at a sedate pace when Eddie enters his office, lifts one of the coffees out of the carton, and sets it down in front of him.

“Actually, I think we better do this in my office,” Eddie says and turns. Andrew lifts the coffee off his desk and follows without saying a word.

“How did they get to Oswalt?” Eddie asks as he flips on the light. They’re in the office at some ludicrous hour in the morning and the sun won’t rise for at least another hour. It’s still dark out, especially now that winter’s starting to approach.

“Someone identified him out of a lineup.”

“How did he get into that lineup in the first place? We gave him a strong alibi last week.” Eddie’s computer hums to life as he sits down behind his desk and clears a space in the mess of paperwork for his coffee.

“It was the client he delivered the money to after Peleliu. Alibi didn’t account for the extended stay,” Andrew’s voice is steady and his eyes snap into focus as he looks at Eddie, “If those were FBI trackers, Eddie, I’m having trouble believing that the client’s only intentions involved getting the money.”

Eddie leans forward and his expression is somewhat grim. “You think that the client’s working with the FBI,” Eddie concludes easily. There is a momentary pause as Eddie types in his password—and then he looks back up, “Best course of action?”

“Suspend all missions and lie low until we can figure this out.” It sounds like Andrew’s been thinking about it for a while.

Eddie leans back, letting out a low whistle, “Command won’t like that.” He raises his eyebrows and grins slightly, “I agree.”

“Priority number one,” Andrew recites and the corners of his lips tilt up somewhat in a smile, “Nobody gets caught.”

“We should retain a core team,” Eddie suggests, “I think recon is going to take more than just the two of us.”

“Burgin, Sledge, Shelton, De L’eau,” Andrew lists after a moment of thought, “If the Peleliu team has the greatest chance of being singled out, I want them to know exactly what they’re up against.”

“I’ll call them in,” Eddie agrees, “You want to send out the notice to the rest of the men or shall I?”

“I will,” Andrew rises from his chair and takes a long sip of the coffee before turning towards the door. He’s halfway out and turning towards his own office when he makes the full turn to look back at Eddie.

“You should stay at my place,” Andrew says, and it’s more of a request than an offer. Eddie doesn’t respond and for a moment he looks like he’s about to protest when Andrew adds, “It’s closer to the office—there’s no point in you driving all the way home. Save some time, sleep more.”

Eddie’s expression seems to soften somewhat, and the smile that he gives Andrew in response is almost a touch shy, “Alright Andy.”

Andrew pauses in the doorway, feeling strangely self conscious for a moment before he nods and smiles back. He turns towards his office—and pauses again with a glance over his shoulder, “Still looking for Rodriguez.”

“Way ahead of you,” Eddie replies, looking at his computer.

_______

Burgin’s the first to arrive. He quietly makes himself a pot of coffee, ceramic mug clinking against the counter and the deep gurgle of the coffeemaker interrupting the relative silence of the office. If it weren’t for the low voices he can hear from Eddie’s office and the fact that the lights are on, Burgin might have figured that there was nobody else at the office at all. He pours himself a cup of coffee and proceeds to his desk where he sits silently, stirring in a single packet of sugar.

Sledge is the next to show up, jacket slung over his arm and a serious expression on his face. He looks from Burgin towards the half closed door of Eddie’s office and murmurs a greeting before wandering into the kitchen for his own cup of coffee. Snafu and De L’eau are the last to appear and Burgin catches the last snippet off their conversation in the way that Snafu says with his brand of confidence, “Seriously, think about the last mission we did together, Jay.”

It’s only a moment from when the elevator doors slip shut to when both Eddie and Andrew emerge from the office—must have a sixth sense for these kinds of things—and the four of them straighten almost instinctively. Andrew gives them a genial smile and he gestures for them to take whatever seats they can find.

“Gentlemen, I’m sure you’re wondering why I’ve called you in despite calling a halt to operations for this entire team,” Andrew says as soon as they’ve gathered in something resembling a semicircle. Eddie takes a seat on a desk behind him and he can almost feel the curious gazes of their assembled team sweep towards him in attempt to read his expression, looking for any clues at all. “Earlier today we learned that Oswalt was arrested.”

The news draws an involuntary noise from Sledge, who suddenly looks a little stricken, eyebrows drawing together in a worried expression. The two of them had been assigned to the same team when they had been rookies almost a year ago.

Andrew continues speaking, his voice low and calm, “He was arrested after being identified by his Peleliu client.” (Snafu sends De L’eau a triumphant glance) “I bring this to your attention now because the alibi that command provided for us during the Peleliu mission only extended to our original timeline and doesn’t account for our extended stay in Wales. Out of all of the men in Team K, we are currently in the most danger to be pulled for suspicious activity.”

A stretch of uneasy silence greets his words as they sink in. And then Burgin speaks up—something that sounds suspiciously like resignation already coloring the tone of his voice, “Sir, if you could please clarify this danger? Should we be concerned that our respective deliveries are also likely to sell us out?”

“In the last five months, we have had four arrests and approximately fifteen close calls. That’s four arrests and fifteen close calls more than we’ve ever had in the last five years of operation. We’ve been receiving a suspiciously high volume of inaccurate information,” Andrew pauses only a moment before continuing on, “We were tagged with FBI trackers during Peleliu.”

“FBI?” De L’eau asks reflexively, looking seriously concerned.

“For the last few weeks, I’ve been uncovering information that suggests that the FBI might have been running interference recently and trying to catch us in the act,” Andrew replies and his voice has taken on a deeper gravity, “Some of this evidence points to the suggestion that some of the supervisors we’ve trusted thus far have been working with FBI agents.”

Their expressions range from shock to disgust—and it’s a testament to how much they respect Andrew, the way that they seem to trust his word over their loyalty to the organization. Andrew relays to them the little information that he has in its entirety. The longer he speaks, the grimmer their expressions get, falling away from surprise and into anger.

“Command has very limited information about us,” Andrew adds, in effort to preemptively answer potential questions, “Nobody in command has a full roster of each team. Only Jones and I know the full payroll of Team K. We do not know the identities of anybody in our sister teams. Security was specifically designed this way so that if one part of the organization collapsed, the damage would be contained.”

“It’s why the FBI hasn’t made a move yet,” Eddie picks up the train of thought, exactly where Andrew had left off. Five pairs of eyes swing towards him and he smiles a little wryly, “It’s why they keep trying to trip us up instead of coming in with brute force, even though they must know some of our names.” His eyes meet Andrew’s for a moment before he’s looking back at their team, “They don’t know who we are. They’re trying to draw out as many of us as possible before slamming down on us.”

“Christ,” Snafu mutters, his expression surly, “The fuck can we do? I mean, captain says they’ve already infiltrated command.”

“Easy,” Andrew smiles, and it’s a little disarming for the circumstances, “We take out the FBI affiliated players.”

_______

Every time Andrew drives home, he can’t help but feel a knot of nervousness in his stomach, a gnawing uncertainty that he’s going to turn the corner at the end of the street and find his home swarmed with police cars. He already knows that this isn’t his permanent plan—coming back for a few hours of sleep every night and then leaving again—he already knows that he’s going to have to sell this house or at the very least turn it into an investment while he moves elsewhere. Somehow, someone out there had managed to link at least two of his identities together and the thought makes him extremely uneasy.

But the thought of leaving this house—the first house he ever bought—is a little depressing. He’s been here for a couple of years and he likes the quiet that this neighborhood affords, likes his neighbors. It’ll be hard to say goodbye when the time eventually comes.

Pulling up into the driveway, he glances over at Eddie who has been staring out the window silently for most of the ride. It’s nearly one o’clock in the morning and Andrew nearly had to drag Eddie away from his computer. Andrew cuts off the headlights in the garage and everything is thrown into darkness, lit solely by the dim light of the door opener overhead.

“You ever wonder what the hell you’d be doing if you weren’t here?” Eddie asks finally, sliding his eyes towards Andrew.

Andrew pulls the keys out of ignition and sits with his hands in his lap. He shrugs slightly—hasn’t given the question much thought recently but the answer has been the same for the past few years, “Coaching a football team somewhere maybe. It’s what I wanted to do before I came here.”

Eddie smiles a little at that, he’s heard the answer before and maybe it’s a little predictable that it hasn’t changed. The truth is—it’s hard to think of something so wide and abstract as another life that they could have had, of what alternate versions of them might have been doing if they hadn’t been dragged so deep into the complex mess of their lives now. It would have been easier, Andrew thinks—but he wouldn’t have been the same person that he is now. He would have been softer, probably—more tolerant of bullshit. Maybe he would have set aside enough of his life to be in a committed relationship—maybe he’d already be married. Maybe he’d talk to his family more, maybe he’d make monthly trips up to the textile mill—

He would have never met Eddie. The overhead light cuts out just as Andrew turns his head to look at the other man—and he’s left staring at the faint outline of a profile in the darkness. It doesn’t matter though—his mind’s eye is more than capable enough of filling in the details of Eddie’s face—the perpetual weariness drawing dark circles under his eyes, the roughness of stubble sweeping down his jawline, the clean line of his nose. He has this sudden overwhelming urge to reach out, map the skin of Eddie’s cheek with his hand—and maybe it’s the delusion of sleep deprivation that allows him to reach out and touch Eddie’s chin with his fingertips, that allows him to trace the underside of that jawline, catching every inch of stubbled skin on the pads of his fingers—

In the silence, Andrew can only hear their shared breathing—almost in sync—and the rush of blood in his ears. His fingertips move down the line of Eddie’s neck and it’s fucking crazy, the way that Eddie tilts his head back almost imperceptibly, the way that he’s just letting Andrew touch him like this, lets him put a finger on the pulse in his neck. Andrew’s eyes flick up to Eddie’s face—sees the way that his head is turned just the slightest bit towards him, the way that his eyes catch the dim light from the square of open garage door behind them. His lips are parted and he’s staring at Andrew with the most intense expression that Andrew’s ever seen—something raw and overwhelming in his eyes. There’s not even a question written in the tilt of his eyebrows—only implicit trust written in the tilt of his jaw and Andrew suddenly can’t fucking breathe because this—this is crazy—

Something is slowly slotting into place and Andrew—Andrew has this crazy idea of leaning forward and pressing his lips where his fingers are now, to feel the strong pulse beat against his tongue. He has this crazy idea and it scares him, makes his eyes widen the slightest bit and he draws his hand away, hears Eddie let out something like a shaky breath. When Andrew looks again, Eddie has lowered his chin and there’s something unreadable in his eyes, something guarded and searching and Andrew wonders if he should have.

“If I’m ever caught in a situation where I have absolutely no chance of escape,” Eddie says and it’s strangely loud in this tiny car, “I would rather die than be caught.”

Andrew doesn’t know what to make of the words—if Eddie wants him to read deeper or if he’s just merely continuing a conversation that Andrew didn’t know they were having in the first place.

“If I do,” Eddie says and it’s little more than a whisper, “Promise me you won’t tell my family about this. About what I do.”

“Eddie,” Andrew says and it comes out a little strangled because he never wants to be in that situation, doesn’t want to contemplate a world without Eddie in it—

Eddie reaches forward and he brushes his fingertips along Andrew’s cheekbone, right below his left eye and Andrew feels his eyelids slipping shut, finds himself leaning into the touch and—

It’s gone and Eddie is opening the car door and the car light comes on, washing the back of his eyelids in red. Andrew opens his eyes and Eddie’s smiling at him a little sadly as he gets out of the car. The moment is broken and Andrew’s left grasping onto the frayed ends of a conversation that they didn’t have, all these unspoken words hanging heavily about them.

Andrew remembers to breathe.

_______

The coffeeshop is closed so Andrew sits in his car, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel. He doesn’t have to wait long before the passenger side door opens and Leckie slips into the car seat next to him with a brief and perfunctory smile. Andrew turns the key in ignition and turns off the radio.

“I’ve been in contact with my team,” Leckie says as they pull off the side of the street, “Turns out they’ve been experiencing some of the same things you mentioned.”

Andrew pulls into the left lane and glances over at Leckie, “What are they doing about it?”

“Cutting back on the missions they take. Double checking the intel they get,” Leckie looks out the window once before looking back at Andrew, “Who do you think they are?”

There’s a stretch of silence as Andrew contemplates whether or not to share everything that he knows—but the moment passes and his reply is flat, “FBI.”

Leckie looks down at his hands and actually laughs—it’s a humorless sound that Andrew is all too familiar with these days. “Last month I would’ve thought you were crazy, Haldane.”

Andrew just gives him a long sidelong glance. Leckie’s leg jostles a little as he continues, “I know PD isn’t looking for you guys. But a month and a half ago, someone from the FBI was transferred to our unit. He’s supposedly working on a reopened case—“ Leckie pauses, glancing at Andrew, “He’s asked Chuckler some weird questions. Sometimes I think he knows.”

Andrew makes a left turn and there’s a pause before he speaks, “What are you going to do?”

“Status quo,” Leckie says with a wry smile, “Can’t be drawing attention to myself then, can I? What about you?”

“We’ve suspended all missions. We’re trying to figure out how to take out the players.”

Leckie taps on the window, “You can drop me off here.”

Andrew slows down and pulls over to the side of the road. Leckie opens the door but he doesn’t get out just yet, “I’ll keep an eye open. I’ll let you know if we find anything.”

Andrew smiles, “I appreciate it.”

Leckie returns the smile and shuts the door. Andrew looks at his rearview mirror and is about to pull out of the spot when there’s a knock on the passenger side window. Leckie’s standing there, knuckles pressed against the glass and Andrew rolls down the window.

“Hey,” Leckie starts and it looks like he wants to say something else before thinking better of it and ending up with a nod and a smile instead, “Good luck.”

Andrew nods, “You too.”

_______

The office is strangely quiet without the constant bustle of men stopping by to pick up new briefings or the usual office crew trash talking sports teams in the lounge. Their one remaining team has been split up and sent out to different parts of the city to gather information from their street sources, sister branches and other organizations that might have pertinent intel—leaving Andrew and Eddie at the office to pick away at firewalls and deal with the backlog of missions respectively.

“I’ve got a present for you,” Andrew announces with a grin as he steps into Eddie’s office.

“Oh yeah?” Eddie answers without taking his eyes off his computer screen, “I’ve got a present for you too. Or maybe it’s more along the lines of bad news—“ the last few words trail off as he raises his eyes and notes the soft bag that Andrew is swinging off his shoulder, “—is that my guitar?”

“Sounds like my present is better,” Andrew observes with raised eyebrows and a grin as he maneuvers behind the desk, “I was in the area so I thought I’d swing by your place since you haven’t had the chance to go back.”

Eddie gives him an unreadable look, like he doesn’t entirely believe that Andrew was simply in the area but they both know that they don’t have much time to waste—so he’s probably justified in giving Andrew the benefit of the doubt. He takes the offered bag and unzips along the side—and there’s a moment where his eyes soften and his lips quirk up as he sees the familiar beige of his guitar and he lets out slow breath like he’s coming home at last—or maybe it’s the guitar coming home to him. Either way, the sight of it makes the detour worth it, makes Andrew want to grin in response.

“Hope I’m not going to have to replace any broken windows,” Eddie says with a smile as he runs his hand over the gloss of the wood.

“I haven’t forgotten how to pick a lock, Eddie,” Andrew replies in an exasperatedly amused voice.

“Dunno, you could be going senile in your old age,” Eddie hedges with a grin.

“I’d be more worried about your mental health, seeing as you’re the same age as me,” Andrew replies with something resembling a smirk—though it’s short lived because the tone of his voice drops into seriousness as he nods at the computer screen, “You said you had something?”

Eddie zips the guitar back up and the smile disappears from his face as he rolls his chair back to the desk. He types in a series of passwords and then he straightens to his feet, gesturing for Andrew to sit down in his chair. “I sent feelers out to some of my sources and got this back today. I’m not sure how much we can trust this information is, but it seems to check out alright.”

Andrew takes a seat and looks at the documents on screen.

_______

He isn’t sure what impresses him more—the tenacity of the FBI operatives that have been trying to keep tabs on them for years or the fact that their branch has avoided detection for so long. There is a list of almost twenty other branches that have already been shut down, all tentatively tied to the overarching organization called command.

He isn’t sure what worries him more—the realization that there is no recovering from this or that he had been blind for so long and had never noticed the imminent danger.

It takes him a full twenty minutes to reach the end of the last document. Eddie is sitting on the other side of his desk, turning a guitar pick over and over again in his fingers, watching Andrew and waiting for him to finish.

Andrew doesn’t speak for a long moment—and then his voice sounds strange, even to him, “We need to recall the team.”

_______

By the time that De L’eau and Burgin show up, the sun is setting behind the silhouetted skyline, casting a red glow across the entire sky. It’s strangely appropriate—Andrew thinks as he presses his forehead against the glass window in Eddie’s office—it feels like a final blazing goodbye. He doesn’t look forward to calling all of his men tomorrow, telling them that they no longer have a steady source of income, that it’s over and finished, that they need to lie low for some time.

Eddie’s sitting on his chair, picking out slow melancholy notes on the guitar when Burgin knocks hesitantly on the open door. Andrew turns immediately, hands folded behind his back as he angles a smile at the man.

“Are Sledge and Shelton back?” Eddie asks, resting his palm against the strings of his guitar.

“Didn’t see them on the way up, sir,” Burgin answers.

“Sir, is there something wrong?” De L’eau asks nervously, looking between Eddie and Andrew.

Andrew exchanges a glance with Eddie—as if trying to assess whether or not they want to chance the rumor mill before sending out an official notice. But it’s only a moment’s pause before Andrew looks back at De L’eau and says quietly, “We’re disbanding, Jay.”

There’s a short stretch of silence—and then, “This team, sir?”

“The entirety of this branch,” Andrew corrects.

It’s a long silence after that, both Burgin and De L’eau staring at him—then glancing to Eddie for confirmation. Their expressions pass between surprise and confusion before finally turning to stoic with a hint of resignation.

“We had a good run,” Andrew says—and it’s not so much reassurance as it’s a murmured platitude, meant more for himself than for the rest of them.

_______

Nine o’clock and neither Sledge nor Snafu have showed up to the office. It’s been nearly three hours since they sent out the recall text and three hours without a reply—no short phone call, not even a text.

Andrew has a great deal of confidence that his men are capable of getting in and out without a hitch—that they’re some of the best in the world in getting done what they need to do. But three hours is a bit much without contact and a gut instinct is telling him that there’s something wrong.

It’s closer to nine fifteen when Andrew finally gives in and picks up the phone. Two rings and—

“I was wondering when you’d be calling. Ack Ack, is it?” it’s an unfamiliar voice that speaks on the other side and Andrew feels his stomach plummet.

“Where are they?” Andrew demands, ignoring the question.

“We are very hospitable, you don’t need to worry about that,” the voice says and Andrew honestly can’t tell if the warmth in his voice is real or mocking though he’d be willing to bet on the latter, “Although, if I were honest, I’d probably come around to pick them up as soon as possible.”

“Where are you?”

“Your boys wandered into the wrong neighborhood, Ack Ack,” the voice says boredly, “I think you know exactly where they might be.” There’s a click and Andrew is left listening to dead air.

He sets the phone down and thinks about the layout of the city, thinks about all of the places that the men of his team knows better than to wander into. He thinks about the sources that Snafu primarily knows—and it doesn’t take long before Andrew can make a good guess as to where they might be kept—a nondescript part of a shopping complex once rumored to be the headquarters for a rival organization before Andrew’s team monopolized the jobs in the area. It’s been years since he’s heard anything from the organization and it startles him to hear from them again—

“Something the matter, Andy?” Eddie’s voice cuts into his thoughts, palm against the doorframe of his office as he leans in with a concerned expression.

“Sledge and Snafu got captured,” Andrew says and it surprises him how utterly calm his voice is. This is the last situation that he’d ever want—it screams trap at him from every side. Coupled with the knowledge that the FBI has been tracking them for years, suddenly it doesn’t seem so strange that a rival organization might just reappear out of nowhere. Eddie looks grim and Andrew adds, “We need to extract them.”

“That’s at least a three person job,” Eddie says carefully and he’s looking at Andrew’s face and his hand tightens the slightest bit around the doorjamb. Andrew knows what he’s thinking—he’s coming to all the same conclusions as Andrew is, that there’s something wrong here, that this is too much of an impossible coincidence.

“Are Burgin and De L’eau still around?”

_______

Burgin’s face hardens when he gets wind of their newest task. De L’eau lets out a breath and runs a hand through his hair, lips pressed into a thin line.

“Nobody gets left behind,” Burgin recites and the smile he offers is weak, “What’s the plan, sir?”

_______

There are four doors leading out of the building—a door within an open garage door in the back, two emergency exit side doors, and—of course—the front door. De L’eau bids them good luck as they file out of the car, and then he pulls around the back to wait. Andrew resists the urge to check that his guns are still in place. It’s been a long time since he’s consistently done missions though—almost a year and a half since he took the top position of this branch and been bogged down with paperwork rather than ammunition. But he hasn’t forgotten how to trust in the weight of steel, how to analyze a room, and trust in his instincts.

The front door is unlocked. Andrew pushes it open just as Eddie aims a gun into the newly opened space—and there’s a chuckle from inside as the light flicks on.

“There’s no need for violence, Ack Ack. And Hillbilly, isn’t it?”

Burgin throws Andrew an anxious glance but Andrew gestures for him to stay put. There isn’t a need to reveal all of their forces just yet.

It’s Andrew who steps into the doorway, spreading his hands to show his disarmed state as he takes slow steps into the building. He keeps his eyes trained on the man of Asian descent who is standing in the middle of the room but his attention is on his peripheral vision, scanning the room for good escape routes.

“Where are my men?” Andrew demands steadily. Eddie steps forward with him, gun lowered but ready to whip up at any moment. He steps behind Andrew, shifting from Andrew’s left side to his right, keeping his eyes on the man as well. Andrew understands—he sees the door to their right as well.

“They’re not hurt,” the man says, “But really, I was hoping that maybe we could have a talk.”

“I don’t believe you. I want to see them with my own eyes,” Andrew replies sharply, “And then maybe after we could have a talk.”

There’s a pause as the man stares at Andrew. For a moment his lip curls slightly in what looks like a sneer, but he pulls out a phone and punches in a number. During the moment that his eyes are averted, Andrew takes a good look around the room. Through the window he can see the street. If he had to make an estimate, there’s another room between this one and the garage. One of the emergency exits must be in that room.

Two men emerge from the door to the right with Sledge and Snafu in tow. Snafu looks furious, struggling against the hold that the man has on him—but there’s not much that he can do with his hands locked in position behind his back. Sledge looks more composed but there’s an anger in his eyes that flash into shame when he sees Andrew.

“See?” the man says, “Unhurt. Now if we could just discuss some employment issues, Ack Ack.”

There are cars coming down the street through the window, headlights flashing as they bump towards the building.

At the same moment that Andrew sees them, he hears Burgin’s voice behind him, “Sir!”

Andrew can see that the cars are unmarked passing under the light of the streetlamp but he’s willing to bet he knows exactly who they are and exactly who lead them here. He reaches into his jacket at the same time that the man whips out a gun—but he doesn’t even get the chance to train it on Andrew because he lets out a cry of pain and clutches at his shoulder. Eddie steps ahead of Andrew with his arm straight and trained on the man who tries to turn his gun on Andrew again—

Another gunshot and there’s red pouring out of the man’s right hand. To his credit, he doesn’t scream—but he does drop the gun and Andrew doesn’t waste another moment as he pulls his gun on the men who have let go of his team and are going for their own guns. It’s been a long time since Andrew’s looked in someone’s eyes and pulled the trigger—but it’s either these men or the six of them and—

Nobody gets caught.

Two shots, one after the other and the two men go down with perfect circles between their eyebrows. He hears Burgin shut the front door and the click of the lock is strangely magnified in the sudden silence following their gunshots. Sledge struggles with the door to the right for only a brief moment and somehow manages to get it open as Eddie yells, “Go, go, go!”

“They could be around back—careful!” Andrew shouts—and it’s the last thing that anyone says because suddenly their world is shattering glass as bullets follow one another through the windows. Andrew hurries through the door and overtakes Sledge for the lead position—finger still steady on the trigger of his gun. There’s nobody else back here—just the decrepit remains of gutted computers and forgotten papers scattered across the dusty floor. They don’t have time to linger though—no doubt FBI is three seconds from bursting in through the front doors—and they make it to the garage almost too easily.

De L’eau has the van pulled up inside and Andrew is ecstatic for his foresight as he slams the door open and helps the two bound men in. Burgin hefts himself in and—

Eddie hasn’t come through the door yet. Andrew feels his insides suddenly turn to ice and everything seems to be moving a hundred times slower as he strides towards the door—

“What are you doing?” it’s Burgin’s voice, stretched out and low—

A thousand images flash through his mind—of Eddie’s body stretched out amongst the glitter of glass, the loosened curl of his fingers around the handle of his gun, the brightness of life gone out of blue eyes and he can’t, he can’t fucking breathe. There isn’t—he can’t be—Andrew needs—

No. No, no no, nononononono.

Except then Eddie lurches through the door and slams it shut after himself and reality snaps back to Andrew with a rush of relief. He gives Andrew something like a smile and his voice is steady as he leans on Andrew’s shaking shoulder, “Let’s go Andy.”

_______

It isn’t until an entire two minutes into De L’eau’s attempts at shaking the cars that followed them out of the parking lot, after they’ve cut both Sledge and Snafu free, that they compose themselves enough to notice that there’s something wrong. Andrew should have noticed before—maybe it’s the high of adrenaline or the anxiety of the chase that overlooked it.

It doesn’t help that Eddie presents an air of utter serenity—that he doesn’t even reach to undo his jacket until—

“Sir,” Burgin’s voice is a little strangled, “You’re bleeding,”

Andrew’s head whips around just as Eddie shakily unbuttons the jacket—and oh Jesus Christ, there is darkness spreading across his torso—a deep red flashing in the passing light of the streetlamps—

“You’re shot,” Andrew says blankly.

Eddie’s face doesn’t change as he undoes the buttons on the dress shirt, peels the wet redness away from his stomach and Andrew’s head is spinning. It’s hard to see anything in the mess of blood on Eddie’s skin and it seems impossible to find an entry wound. Eddie’s breathing is a little wet but strangely still calm as he touches an area right under his ribcage and winces.

“Hold pressure,” Andrew hears himself saying calmly but it’s a goddamn miracle that he can do anything but sit in a stupor and stare at the life that’s leaking away from Eddie’s stomach, “Someone hold pressure. Jay, do you know how to get to Stern’s?”

“Yes sir,” De L’eau says and his voice is pitched strangely, like he’s expressing the panic that Andrew’s not allowing himself to feel. Eddie wads up his jacket and presses it against his stomach with shaking fingers. He looks up at Andrew and he attempts to give a reassuring smile—but it lasts for a flicker of a second before he’s clenching his jaw against the pain.

“Eddie,” Andrew says and his eyes are locked on Eddie’s face, for every momentary expression, “You okay?” He doesn’t understand how he’s still capable of forming words and forcing them out beyond the panic that’s constricting his throat, the panic that grips the back of his mind. But he needs to say something, needs to anchor Eddie here, needs to make sure that he won’t slip away and give in—

“I’ve—” Eddie starts, but he cuts himself off and he settles with gritted teeth and a nod instead.

Andrew has to call Stern, he needs to tell the man to prep his table—but he can’t keep his eyes off of Eddie, like if he looks away, the man will vanish in smoke. It’s stupid and illogical but maybe as long as he keeps looking at Eddie, as long as he keeps his eyes locked on Eddie’s face, he can keep him here. He hears Sledge’s voice to his right say something but everything is starting to become disjointed and disembodied, everything except Eddie and this cold feeling clawing at his insides—like he had been the one to feel the bullet ricochet through soft tissue instead, fragments embedding into his ribcage and—

“Stern’s ready,” Sledge says and the words somehow filter through and he wants to thank god that he has such a good team—but he can’t force his jaw to unhinge and there is a terror crushing his throat with a vice grip on his voice.

Eddie keeps his eyes open, keeps looking at Andrew. The corners of his lips try to turn upwards like he’s trying to reassure him.

_______

Stern’s house is set in an unobtrusive neighborhood. The van is gone—De L’eau, Sledge, and Snafu are off to retrieve their cars from the office—but not without picking up a few extra license plates from Stern’s attic. There’s a sterile surgery room in his basement—testament to the number of times the men of Team K who have been shot and survived to tell the story.

Andrew sits at the kitchen table with his hands folded in front of him and he’s shaping words of prayer—even if nothing escapes his lips. It’s been a long time since he’s last bowed his head and thanked god for everything that he’s been given and an even longer time since he’s said his daily prayers—but he still has enough faith to hope that god is still listening, that god’s willing to forgive him for his sins and inattention and to look out for Eddie. It’s a purely selfish want and Andrew chokes on the words that he can’t say because—

He’s killed two people today, he remembers. Quick deaths, bullets splintering straight through their cerebral cortex, bouncing against the back of their skulls and cutting such a rough swatch through soft grey-white tissue.

He’s killed two people today, he’s going to hell a hundred times over, and he’s still begging for Eddie’s life.

“You don’t have to worry about Jones, sir.”

Andrew’s head snaps up. Burgin is standing at the entryway between kitchen and living room. “He’s damn strong, sir. He’ll pull through. Plus I’ve seen guys go in with worse and get stitched back up by Stern. He’s a good surgeon.”

Andrew tries to smile but it takes a long moment for it to appear, “Thank you Romus.”

Burgin pauses, like he’s not entirely sure that Andrew is even vaguely convinced but instead he nods and takes a seat across from Andrew.

They lapse into a silence and wait.

_______

It’s nearly three in the morning when Stern emerges from the basement. Andrew stands expectantly the moment that he hears the footsteps at the top of the stairs, the scrape of the door against carpet and Burgin shoots him a glance before turning in his seat to watch the doctor step into the kitchen.

“Four inches up and to the left—he would have been shot in the heart,” Stern tells them, “A rib caught most of it but splinters of the bullet still tore his liver up pretty good.”

Andrew’s jaw tenses, his gaze slips out of focus a little like he’s already imagining the worst—

“He’ll make a full recovery in a few weeks,” Stern adds with a smile, “He probably shouldn’t go out on any missions in the meantime though.”

“Not a problem,” Andrew says and it’s in a rush, like he’s been building up all these words he couldn’t say for hours. He stands up and the smile he gives Stern is fully relieved, “Thank you.”

Stern smiles back tiredly and he gestures over his shoulder, “I don’t know if he’s awake but you can go and debrief him or whatever you need to do. Just take it easy on him.”

Andrew doesn’t need to be told twice—his hands find his pockets and he walks around the table and down the hallway. He hears Burgin’s chair scrape as he stands up and he’s probably asking Stern a question. Andrew can only catch the tone of the low murmur as he starts down the stairs.

The basement is well lit, though it’s much too small to resemble anything like a hospital. Stern’s wife gives him a tired smile as she steps out of the surgery room carrying a sharps container and tilts her head towards the end of the hall, “We think it’s better he doesn’t try to climb the stairs tonight.”

“Thanks,” Andrew gives her a smile and brushes past her.

Eddie looks pale even against the clean white linen of the sheets in the hastily converted room. There are still weights in the corner and a monitoring machine is fighting for space with a stationary bicycle—but Andrew doesn’t seem to notice them with the way that his eyes are fixed on Eddie’s face.

Four inches from losing him entirely.

There isn’t a chair in the room so Andrew steps closer to the bed, watching the way that Eddie’s nose flares the slightest bit with each breath, the almost imperceptible rise and fall of his chest, the flicker of movement under his eyelids—anything to tell him that Eddie is still here, anything to wash away the memory of so much blood on his skin. And with the man now in front of him, it’s hard to keep a tight leash on his thoughts, hard to keep himself so carefully restrained like he needs to be in front of all his men, to set the right example—

He remembers Eddie’s sister with her flowing hair and giggly exuberance and the way that she looked at Eddie with the sort of adoration reserved only for big brothers. He remembers Eddie with a mug of warm coffee in his hands breathing fog against the glass of his windowpane and writing encrypted messages. He remembers the spike of adrenaline with the clatter of gunfire roaring in his ears and a single whisper carrying out over the noise got your back—

He remembers his mother’s voice saying I think he’s a great friend for you, Andy, he remembers—

He remembers Eddie patiently adjusting his clumsy fingers on a guitar and saying this is a G chord, remembers the way that Eddie’s voice reverberates through a room of people but he’s looking at Andrew, always at Andrew—

Remembers—

There’s a tightness in his throat, something that squeezes it and makes it painful. He drops to a kneel and keeps looking at Eddie’s face, keeps trying to collect himself, pick back up all the shaken pieces of himself and put them back into their proper places like a mental jigsaw—but it’s hard when he keeps thinking about blue eyes and amused grins—about Eddie sleeping on his couch, Eddie’s clothes in the closet of his guest room, the holes that Eddie’s drilled in his wall and—

It’s more than that; all of these tiny physical things are just extensions of a work in progress for months if not years and—

Eddie’s face is getting blurry but Andrew is smiling because this isn’t the end—because this is just the start.

“Andy,” Eddie murmurs and it’s on a low drawl and his eyes open the slightest bit. Andrew can’t bring himself to say anything, just smiles wider. Eddie turns his head towards Andrew—can’t turn his entire body because there are still stitches running up his torso. He smiles a bit when he sees Andrew’s face, and then it falters. His hand slowly reaches up and he brushes his thumb along Andy’s cheek and it rests there, the pads of his fingers light against Andrew’s temple, the side of his face. The opiates weigh his tongue down and his accent is more pronounced than usual as he slowly forms words in a wondrous tone, “Why’re you crying?”

Andrew reaches up and fits his hand around Eddie’s wrist. He gently pulls it away from his face, folds his other hand over it and presses the knuckles to his lips.

“You’re okay.”

_______

Stern insists that Eddie stay under surveillance for at least two nights—which means that Andrew has to tell the branch that they’re disbanded and deal with the aftermath by himself. There’s also the problem of figuring out what the hell he’s going to do after everything settles down. He’s not sure if the alternate identities he’s been using for the last five years have held strong, if he’s going to be able to stay in the US without the fear of eventually getting found out. Maybe it’ll be a fear that will haunt him for the rest of his life, regardless of where he goes or what alias he assumes.

There was an unfamiliar car parked on his driveway the one time he had attempted to go home—so he had immediately backtracked and gotten a hotel room within walking distance from the office. He’ll have to call the real estate agency and the moving company as soon as he sorts out what he’s going to do, where he’s going to go. It’s strange for him to realize that spending the rest of his life in Edinburgh is closer to reality than going back to Lawrence.

By the time it’s sunset again, Andrew turns his chair around to stare out the window. He likely won’t see this city again, will likely be half a world away by the end of this month. He knows this city better than half the places he’s lived, better than his childhood home, knows the sidestreets and the open spaces—fire escapes where it’s safe to sit for a few moments and catch his breath—perfect underhangs to conceal a car. The city has opened her arms and welcomed him in and it’s strange to think that this is an end, that he’ll have to say goodbye.

An alert on his phone beeps at him and he leans forward to adjust the blinds so that the light forms slanted lines of brightness against the ground.

_______

Andrew’s the last to arrive. Stern lets him in with a smile and a nod and he can hear voices drifting from the living room.

“Hey Lucky, this looks just like you.”

Andrew steps into the living room just in time to see Chuckler lift a book of dog breeds. Leckie looks at it critically and the corners of his lips lift in a grin, “Shar pei, very nice. Thanks buddy.”

Eddie’s seated on a couch across from them, looking considerably better than when Andrew had seen him last that morning. He glances up as Andrew enters the room and immediately he smiles. The sight of it hits Andrew—he’s spent so long not understanding what it meant that the full implications of it now makes something stir in the pit of his stomach, makes him want to grin and never stop.

“Haldane,” Leckie greets and Andrew gets control of himself, lets his grin dim into a friendly smile as he turns to look at the other man.

“Leckie,” Andrew replies evenly, nodding as he takes a seat, “Thought it’d be appropriate to let you know what’s been going on.”

“Heard you guys disbanded,” Chuckler says, setting the dog book back down on the coffee table where he had found it. His lips quirk into a smile as he leans against the back of the couch, practically sprawling out, “That true?”

“Disbanded officially yesterday morning,” Andrew confirms.

“There’s no way that command approved that,” Chuckler says—but it’s in an appreciative tone. Andrew wonders how long Chuckler might have been having doubts of his own, when or if he and Leckie had ever started discussing the possibilities in low voices behind closed doors.

It takes almost half an hour to go over everything that they’ve discovered—to relay everything that had been in the document that Eddie had received, to outline and confirm everything that they had suspected all along. Neither Chuckler nor Leckie speak, though Chuckler’s easy smile disappears within the first few minutes and Leckie’s frown gets deeper and deeper. Eddie doesn’t say much, just watches Andrew speak and absently fingers the sliver of loose bandage peeking out from the hem of his shirt.

There is a long silence after Andrew finishes speaking.

And then, “You’re trying to wipe all evidence of your team?”

Andrew nods with a halfhearted smile—he still has papers to burn and loose ends to tie up, and a final protocol to write for his men. Leckie and Chuckler exchange a glance.

“It may be harder than you originally thought,” Leckie finally says, leaning forward on his knees, “Chuckler and I—sometimes we get old after action reports from command.”

“Reports dated from years ago,” Chuckler adds.

There’s another silence as the full implications of the words sink in.

“There’s a database at command headquarters with every single report you’ve ever written then,” Leckie says, “And if the FBI somehow manages to get access to it, you’re going down regardless of how well you think you can hide.”

Andrew turns his head to look at Eddie. Eddie’s jaw is tense and he’s staring at Leckie with a serious expression, “It’s on the intranet, isn’t it?”

“We only ever get paper copies of reports that we have to burn,” Chuckler says, “So yeah, it looks like it.”

_______

Eddie shrugs away from Andrew’s hands when Andrew tries to help him. He gives Andrew an amused look and says, “I’m fine Andrew, I’ve had worse,” which is probably blatantly untrue because Andrew doesn’t ever remember Eddie getting shot in the chest before. But he lets Eddie get into the car by himself and tries his best to ignore the wince of pain that crosses over Eddie’s face whenever he thinks Andrew isn’t paying attention, the way that his jaw is perpetually tight except when he speaks which is very little.

The hotel room where Andrew is staying has a king sized bed—something that the receptionist automatically gave him when he checked in a day ago. He’ll hand it over to Eddie—come back down and get a room of his own once Eddie’s situated. It’s not until they’re standing in the elevator that Eddie turns towards Andrew and speaks, “We don’t even know the layout of the building.”

“All we need is a computer on the network, right?”

The elevator dings and the door opens. Eddie’s jaw tightens and he steps out of the elevator in front of Andrew, “I’m thinking, with something like that, if the FBI hasn’t already found it then it’s probably stored on the harddrive of a disconnected computer.” Their footsteps are muffled by the carpet of the hallway and Andrew looks at the numbers on the doors as Eddie continues on, “If what you say is true, if Rupertus is really working with the FBI, then access to this harddrive must be really restricted. Maybe it’s set only to let the top personnel in.”

Andrew finds the door, slides the card in. Eddie slips past him into the room and he automatically closes it after the two of them, “There has to be a way in. No security is impenetrable.”

Eddie grins a little—turns around to look at him and he says, “I’m coming with you.”

Andrew stares—his eyes flick to the outline of the bandages under Eddie’s shirt and his mind can’t even comprehend the insanity of that comment, “No you’re not.”

“There is no way you can get past the security scans without me—I’ve seen you try to pull apart machines—”

“You were just shot two days ago—”

“And I’m fine! If you’re worried about me slowing you down—”

“You are not coming on this—”

“You can’t do this without—”

“I’m pulling rank!” Andrew shouts and it’s the first time that he’s ever raised his voice at Eddie. His eyes are wide and his heart is beating erratically in his chest, dragging his breathing along with it. Eddie stares at him, shocked into silence—but it’s not long before the surprise in his eyes shifts into hurt and anger.

“Alright,” Eddie says quietly, and his voice practically drops into a spit, “Sir.”

There’s a long pause, during which they stare at each other. A hundred thoughts are whirling through Andrew’s mind, and there’s a squeeze of panic still constricting his lungs, a sense of need clawing its way through fragments of images: Eddie staring down at the blood on his stomach, dark red illuminated only by flashes of golden streetlight. There’s the selfishness again, the selfishness making him say these ugly words in such an angry tone because—

It’s three steps forward and Eddie doesn’t move, just looks at him and the wariness in his eyes is melting away into something unreadable because he must see this—must see this rawness written all over Andrew’s face. Andrew’s fingers ghost over Eddie’s hip and he tries to keep his eyes on Eddie’s face—but it’s too much and he finds them slipping shut. His words are a breath against the side of Eddie’s face, “I can’t Eddie—I can’t.”

A thousand splinters of glass arranged around a lifeless body—he remembers the image and even if it’s never been true, it hurts.

There is a hand cupping his jaw, a shaky breath against his ear, and he hears himself saying, “I can’t lose you.”

The fingers card through his hair and Andrew turns his head blindly, presses a kiss at the corner of Eddie’s lips. Eddie’s hand stills for only a moment, and then he is pulling Andrew closer, carefully angling his head to brush his lips against Andrew’s—the briefest of touches like he’s testing this. Andrew lets his lips part, reaches up to keep Eddie close with a hand against his shoulderblade, murmurs, “Eddie,” and the syllables come out disjointed, a little broken.

Eddie catches the last of the word, catches Andrew in a kiss. It feels like the last piece of understanding is sliding into place, feels like coming home. He opens his mouth, spanning his hands along Eddie’s back and presses closer, letting Eddie cautiously lick his way in.

It’s not until Eddie inhales sharply that he pulls away with a flash of concern—and Eddie laughs, curls his fingers against the side of Andrew’s jaw. “Jesus Christ Andy, I’m not that fucking delicate.”

And then he’s leaning forward again thumb sweeping over the arch of Andrew’s cheekbone and his voice is quiet as he says, “I need to come with you, Andy.” Andrew can feel the words vibrate through the thin fabric of Eddie’s shirt, “I’ve got your back, remember?”

_______

Eddie’s breathing is familiar in rhythm though Andrew has never had the chance before to splay his hand gently against Eddie’s chest, feel the steady draw of air into his lungs, the mesh of bandage under his palm. He knows that he should sleep another hour before getting up, needs to conserve energy for the long day of planning and frustration ahead of him—but he can’t stop looking at Eddie’s face, the curve of his neck, the wing of his collarbone, can’t help but reach out and slowly trace them with his fingertips. His fingers are light as he starts in the hollow of Eddie’s throat, follows the arch of bone upwards, across his shoulder and then down his arm. Eddie stirs slightly but doesn’t wake—Andrew lowers his eyes to the faint outline of stitches forming tiny bumps underneath the white gauze and he runs his fingers lightly over the length of a rib.

When he looks up again, Eddie’s eyes are open and he’s got the beginnings of smile curling at his lips. Andrew shifts closer and Eddie’s fingers drop almost hesitantly on Andrew’s hip like he isn’t sure if he’s really allowed to do this. Andrew hums and settles his palm against the curve of Eddie’s ribcage, soft skin under his hands and it’s strange to him now, that he hasn’t spent months contemplating the warmth of Eddie’s body under his hands.

“G’morning,” Eddie mumbles and he’s smiling fully now in the dim predawn light, blue eyes gleaming faintly. His thumb rubs a lazy circle over Andrew’s hipbone and Andrew’s suddenly intent on Eddie’s face, his breathing dropping shallowly for a moment. There’s a question in Eddie’s eyes as he sweeps his thumb out in a wider arc and Andrew shifts closer again. It must be the right answer because Eddie exhales, trails his fingertips lightly over Andrew’s stomach, slips his hand past the elastic of Andrew’s boxers and wraps his hand around Andrew’s cock.

It’s been a long time since anyone else has touched him—he’s spent months if not almost a year worrying too much about his men and not enough about his own future. His cock jumps almost shamefully quickly against Eddie’s palm and his laugh is muffled against Eddie’s neck, a huff of heated air and vibration that elicits a grin from Eddie. He starts with a drag of his fist down Andrew’s cock, opens his hand and smears the pre-come on the palm of his hand, and ends with a swipe of his thumb across the slit of Andrew’s cock, leaving Andrew choking on a fuck, Eddie— that comes out as a strangled mess of unintelligible syllables.

Andrew can feel the curve of Eddie’s grin against the side of his face, his steady breathing fluttering past the shell of Andrew’s ear, the pace he keeps in the slide of his palm against Andrew’s cock, the firm pressure in the circle of his fist. Everything is narrowing down to this, to the rush of blood in his ears drumming out his quickened heartbeat, to the press of Eddie’s lips against his temple, and his eyes squeezing shut as pleasure drags slow through his body, pulling him slowly to the brink when Eddie’s hand slows and Andrew’s breath leaves him in a hiss of a whine.

There is a moment when everything is still except for Andrew’s hitched breathing. And then—Eddie’s tongue is hot and wet against the shell of his ear and he’s jerking his hand down roughly, pressing hard against the base of his cock and drawing all the way to the head in one smooth movement—and it’s too much. Andrew eyes open wide and it’s a rush of pleasure washing over him. He comes against Eddie’s wrist, lips moving wordlessly against the line of Eddie’s jaw. Eddie’s fingers slide along Andrew’s cock a few last times, the head of his spent cock slipping through the mess on his wrist and Andrew shudders.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” Eddie confesses in a low whisper into Andrew’s ear. He wipes his hand against the sheets before tangling his fingers in Andrew’s hair, turning his head until their lips fit against each other. Andrew breathes, presses his hand to the back of Eddie’s neck and kisses him. It takes a few moments for him to gather himself together again—and then he reaches for Eddie.

Eddie grabs his wrist, breaking away with an amused grin. He pulls it up, staring at Andrew’s expression of vague confusion as he drops a kiss on it, a flash of teeth against dark skin in the slowly growing light. “I don’t know if the stitches are going to cooperate today.” A pause as he licks along the outline of a vein on Andrew’s wrist, and Jesus Christ if it isn’t the hottest thing that Andrew’s ever seen. “But you can make it up to me later.”

Andrew swallows dryly and feels his lips curl into a grin.

_______

Maybe it’s dangerous bringing Leckie and Chuckler back to their branch headquarters—but they’re essentially an ex-branch by now. The only two offices that are still occupied belong to Eddie and Andrew. The few cubicles in the main room are mere skeletons of desks and chairs—Andrew had personally gutted the computers with a magnet and set the packed phones in the hallway leading to the elevator. It had never been a big space anyway—the office crew had been a tiny portion of the entire branch.

They’re in the conference room now, Chuckler’s gone to pick up dinner and Leckie’s listlessly drawing circles onto a piece of scrap paper. Andrew can see the weariness in the slump of Eddie’s shoulders but there’s still the light of determination in his eyes. Since their branch has halted all operations, it wouldn’t be long before command came sweeping in and demanded to know what was going on. They have to strike fast and get out, before either command or the FBI could formulate a proper plan to take them down.

Command headquarters take up the entire fifth and sixth floor of an office building in the middle of the city. It makes escape routes difficult—falling from five stories onto the hard concrete that surrounds the building is a fast guarantee to broken legs. There are few points of access and the only blueprints they’ve managed to find from city records are likely to be inaccurate. If they’re expecting the worst, it’s likely that command has renovated the entirety of the two floors.

“Vents,” Eddie had said within thirty seconds of staring at the blueprint.

And Chuckler had immediately turned to Leckie, “I feel like I’m part of some low budget action film.”

The following hours were dedicated to tracing the best routes in, how to get out—and they haven’t even covered possible security barring their way yet. They have to sweep thousands of square feet and it’s difficult to figure out where the vents are going to lead them, where the computer might most likely be stored, and what the most effective search pattern might be. Usually they have sources on the inside to get better information—but there’s no time now to establish new relationships.

“This is the textbook example of a mission you don’t want,” Leckie says, sweeping the filled scrap paper away from him and looking at the blueprints again, “Information based on pure speculation, outdated blueprints, nobody on the inside to distract or cover for you—I’d put the chances of success at under twenty percent.”

“I don’t think we have much choice,” Andrew says grimly.

“I think I’d say I’m pretty lucky not to be dead,” Eddie’s lip are lifted in a grin but it’s not one that he’s feeling—Andrew can tell by the way that it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Let’s hope that some of it carries over. Or that getting shot was getting rid of all that bad karma and now I only have good karma left.”

_______

The plan that they eventually decide on isn’t perfect but it’s hopefully adequate enough that they’ll get the job done without getting killed in the process. It’d be better if they could wait for the weekend and smooth out some of their reliance on speculation, but Saturday is an entire four days away and they simply don’t have the time.

“I’ll just slow you down,” Eddie says, looking entirely displeased with the fact that he can’t feasibly join them, “You’ll have to bug the system so I can overwrite the security protocol remotely. There’s no way they won’t notice the override in the log the next morning so you only have one chance to get the right computer or get as many of the suspects as possible.”

He rises from his chair and jerks his head towards the door, “I’ll grab one of the bugs and show you guys what to do.”

Andrew nods and Eddie disappears into the darkness of the unlit room beyond the conference room. Leckie taps his fingers against the ceramic of his mug as Chuckler leans back and surveys the blueprints, “This isn’t a one person job.”

“You need a sentry,” Leckie agrees.

Andrew looks from Chuckler to Leckie, lifts a hand to the back of his neck, “My team—”

"No,” Leckie interrupts, giving Andrew a half smile and gesturing between himself and Chuckler, “One of us.”

“We’re invested in this too,” Chuckler says and his voice is low and serious, “If the same thing’s happening to our team, no doubt it’s only a matter of time before we go down too. Plus, you don’t have to debrief us.”

“When was the last leave you took?” Leckie asks, clearly addressing Chuckler.

“Last week’s Mallory case. You took sick leave today, yeah?”

“Looks like I’ll still have a fever tomorrow then,” Leckie agrees and he turns back towards Andrew with a nod just as Eddie reenters the room, “Got your back, Haldane.”

“This is a bug,” Eddie says without missing a beat as if he had never wandered out of the room at all. He sets a phone sized object onto the table, several wires extending out into tiny clamps, “It’s custom made and incredibly expensive so if you break it—” he pauses a moment and looks at them significantly before lifting an eyebrow, “Don’t break it.”

He tosses something at Andrew—who catches it and opens his hand to recognize a camera headset.

“I’ve only done this twice,” Eddie tells them, “Remote access is tricky because signals can get scrambled on their way out or in. You need an absolutely clear frequency. I’ll try to stay close to the building.”

“Plus,” Eddie’s head tilts and his smile is wry, “To be blunt, it’s damn hard because none of you know your way well enough around electronics.”

“We should cover all of the protocol tomorrow morning,” Andrew says, glancing at his watch. It’s nearly two.

In twenty four hours time, they would hopefully be taking computers apart at command.

“Break,” Chuckler agrees with a grin.

_______

By the time that Andrew steps out of the shower, Eddie’s already asleep.

It’s a strange moment for him, dripping on the hotel carpet at the end of the bed, looking at Eddie’s face in the light of the lamp. He knows he should get dressed, should turn off the light and go to sleep—but there’s something keeping him here with his hand scrunched into the towel around his waist, looking at Eddie.

By all means, this shift from best friend into—it’s strange to think of the word, even though he’s had so many girlfriends and once almost had a fiancée—lover should startle him. Maybe it should terrify him—he’s never seriously contemplated the possibility of a relationship with a man on a conscious level. But it’s Eddie—Eddie who slipped into his life so easily that the fact that they had been strangers once seems even more extraordinary than what they are now.

He turns around, pulls on a thin shirt and his boxers, and runs the towel over his head. He doesn’t have time to be questioning this—and honestly, it’s unnecessary. He doesn’t want to think too far in the future, doesn’t want to analyze his past—all he knows is that being here, waking up next to Eddie is what he wants right now.

Whatever happens tomorrow, he knows that he’ll still be glad that he can crawl into bed next to Eddie and fit his hand against the curve of Eddie’s side, today.

_______

“Christ, you weren’t kidding about the lasers,” Leckie mutters from behind Andrew.

“I think we should actually appreciate them—” Andrew replies, as he digs in his bag for the mirrors, “They are meant to protect against anyone discovering us.”

“Right,” Leckie agrees wryly, “And now they’re protecting against us so I’m not feeling too appreciative today. Careful.”

“I’m going to have to agree with Leckie on this one,” Eddie says with a tiny hiss of static into his ear. Andrew smiles despite himself.

It’s not the first time Andrew has set mirrors or navigated air ducts. Far from it, really—but it doesn’t loosen the nervous knot in his stomach. His set is expert though—perfectly perpendicular to the path of the laser as he cuts a path through the barely visible beams.

He counts the number of vents that they pass on both sides. They crawl silently for a long while and then Leckie murmurs, “This vent on the left.” It’s a good reaffirmation that Andrew’s navigating correctly.

_______

It takes the two of them exactly a minute and a half to silently crawl out of the vent and disable the two security cameras blinking at them from the corners of the hallway. It takes almost four minutes for Andrew to unscrew the electronic scanner and to pop the box out of the wall. Leckie keeps his flashlight on the box, glancing over his shoulder at the silent elevators everyone once in a while.

“Pull it out a bit more,” Eddie instructs, “Keep it still.”

Andrew does as he’s told, tilts the angle of the camera whenever Eddie asks him to. It’s a more laborious process than he had originally anticipated and it takes a full twenty minutes before the bug is hooked up correctly. Andrew holds the device in place, listens to the clicking of Eddie’s keyboard, and waits. Leckie sweeps the flashlight in front of them, illuminating the empty hallway.

“Okay,” Eddie says after a long moment, “You’re in. You can take the wires off.”

_______

“So,” Leckie says while they’re waiting for Eddie to finish rifling through the security program on the computer, “What are you going to do after this?”

Screen after screen flashes up on the computer, casting the darkened room in a flickering light. Andrew can hear Eddie murmuring to himself and typing on his laptop. Andrew’s in the midst of unscrewing the grating over the vent in this room, just in case they need to get out fast. Mostly it’s to keep himself occupied.

“Not really sure,” he answers after a moment, “Maybe I’ll head out west and spend a few years on the other coast, just until everything dies down. Then maybe I’ll go back home to Massachusetts.”

The typing slows for only a moment and but it picks back up again. Andrew doesn’t know if it’s due to his answer or if Eddie’s just struck a particularly difficult access point in the program.

“Are you staying here?” Andrew asks as he sets the grate aside.

“Probably, if this is really it,” Leckie answers, “If my branch can shut down as quickly as yours.” His smile is a little crooked in the dark, barely visible in the reflection of the flashlight against the wall, “I never thought I’d actually like being an officer.”

Andrew doesn’t have the chance to answer before Eddie speaks again over the headset, “I have three potential high security rooms.

He looks at Leckie, “He found three rooms.”

Leckie nods, “I’ll stay with the bug. You be careful.”

_______

The first one is an office—high backed leather chair cutting a dark silhouette against the street below filtering in through the full windows. There’s a sleek laptop on the wide desk that takes up the majority of the space in the room. Andrew’s careful not to touch anything else as he slips it into the bag.

_______

The second is an ammunition storage closet. Andrew spends a full minute staring at the sleek barrels of rifles, disassembled scopes, and handguns before he shuts the door.

_______

The third is a sparse room with no windows and only a desk and a computer. The only cord leading into the computer is the outlet plug. There are no USB cords, no Ethernet cables. Andrew can’t help but grin. “I think I found it.”

“See you on the outside, captain,” Eddie says and Andrew can hear the responding smile in his voice.

_______

“Andy,” Eddie says as Andrew’s picking up the last of the mirrors and on his way out to the seventh floor, “How do you feel about Oregon? I can pull some strings there.”

“I haven’t put much thought into it,” Andrew says. Leckie doesn’t even glance back at the sudden words, just keeps crawling.

“I like Oregon,” Eddie says, “Maybe I can find a legitimate job there.”

Something warm flares in Andrew’s chest and he smiles into the darkness.

_______

“This is it,” Eddie says, swinging the monitor around to show Andrew and Leckie.

“Records for the last twelve years,” Leckie whistles, leaning forward to take a closer look at the dozens of folders, separated by year and region.

“I never knew we were this extensive,” Andrew admits.

Eddie quirks an eyebrow at him with a bemused smile, “Not quite a we any more.” He types a command into the computer and they watch as the files are deleted, “I cleaned out the network while you were searching for the rooms. If there’s anything left, it’s paper only.”

“Burning day was two weeks ago,” Andrew muses, “I’ve been keeping names out of my reports recently.”

Leckie glances at him, “Let’s hope our team leader had the same foresight.”

Andrew feels a sudden pang of guilt, “If I could stay around and help, you know I would.”

“No,” Leckie half smiles, part reassuring and part amiable, “Command’s going to be out looking for you once they figure out you disbanded K. You’ll be their first suspect for the break-in.”

He pauses and rises to his feet, “And if the case ever reaches PD, you’ll be the first suspect there too.”

“I’m counting on you to keep me out of jail,” Andrew agrees with a good-humored smile.

Leckie nods and looks from Andrew to Eddie. He flips a salute, one last smile and he says, “Good luck.”

_______

It’s the last he’ll ever see of the office. He’s carried the last of the paperwork out to the trunk of his car in the remaining boxes.

Eddie looks pained as he picks up the magnet and drags it across the circuit boards he pulled out of his computer.

“I had so many programs on there,” he tells Andrew, and it sounds like he’s mourning the loss of a good friend. Andrew leans forward and brushes a kiss against the corner of his lips.

In the end, Eddie only carries his guitar out of the office and they don’t look back.

_______

Eddie’s unwrapped the gauze because it’s itchy and he’s healed enough to the point that he can move without ripping open the five inch incision Stern made across the lower length of his ribcage. It’ll turn into a pale scar one day—but now it’s still faintly red and in the process of healing. Andrew’s careful to avoid it as he drags his tongue down Eddie’s chest, tracing over older scars. Andrew knows the stories behind the scatter of burns near his hip, the shallow slice of a poisoned knife against his side—all jobs gone wrong somehow, things to remind them that they’re still only human with human flaws and human mistakes. But he doesn’t know the story behind these others, the pucker of scar tissue on Eddie’s thigh, a cut almost concealed under his collarbone—and it’s these that he lingers on, mapping first with fingers then with lips.

Eddie has his hands in Andrew’s hair, eyes half lidded and lips slack, making the tiniest noises as Andrew swirls his tongue around his navel. Andrew can feel the line of Eddie’s cock rutting against his chest, pre-come drawing a line across his sternum as he shifts down, drops open-mouthed kisses where his thumbs pressed into Eddie’s hipbones. Eddie shifts so that he’s sitting up, leaning on his elbows and looking down at Andrew. Andrew breathes—thinks about the number of times that he’s received a blowjob and it’s a disorienting experience to be suddenly thinking about how to give one—

But it’s Eddie grinning down at him, Eddie whom he’s trusted for years to watch his back, Eddie, the only man whom he’d ever trust to lead his men—Eddie with his easy grins and understanding and it’s not hard to imagine him laughing now, with his bright eyes and happy smile. Andrew presses his lips to the side of Eddie’s cock, hears the sharp inhale above him and he drags his tongue along the length.

He’s unpracticed and his technique is clumsy—but he can feel Eddie’s thighs tense and he adjusts accordingly, presses the pad of his tongue against the head of Eddie’s cock, keeps his lips tight and slides forward. It’s a strange weight in his mouth. Eddie tastes like musk and salt and it’s unfamiliar but his breathing is getting erratic and it’s almost heady, the way that he can make Eddie’s fingers whiten against the sheets and gasp out a low Andy.

It’s encouraging and he takes more of Eddie into his mouth, sucking hard—and he’s rewarded by a loud, “Fuck!” and he has to make an effort to keep pressure, to not grin around Eddie’s cock. He pulls back and there’s a sharp hiss when his teeth briefly catch—but he smoothes his tongue over it and looks up at Eddie through his lashes, promising silently to do better next time. Eddie shudders and Andrew can tell that he’s trying his hardest to restrain himself, fighting against the primal urge to fuck Andrew’s mouth.

Andrew draws his tongue around the tip of Eddie’s dick, and sucks, closes his fist around the base of Eddie’s cock and reaches behind to stroke him. Eddie lets out a low noise and Andrew makes an effort to keep his eyes on Eddie’s face. He has this sudden, inexplicable need to see Eddie—calm, collected Eddie—come apart and to be the one to do that to him. Eddie stares back down at him, his lips parted and it’s a fucking shame that Andrew can’t kiss him while his lips are wrapped around Eddie’s cock.

It doesn’t take long before Andrew feels the telltale tensing—the way that Eddie’s head is tilting back just the slightest bit and his breathing quickens. He breathes out low on an, “Andy,” that sounds almost reverent—and a warm liquid hits the roof of Andrew’s mouth, coating his tongue. It’s a strange taste and he can’t help but spit it out in his hand. Eddie laughs at him, drags him up and kisses him.

“Andy,” Eddie says again with a grin curving against Andrew’s lips and it’s all that Andrew needs to hear—

Because this is Eddie, the man he’s fairly sure he’s fallen in love with a long time ago and never noticed until now.

_______

It’s cold, especially now with the frigid waves perpetually sweeping in and crashing against the shore. They maintain their distance though, away from the spray of foam and debris, and they keep to the rocky sands. Eddie’s dug a hole and Andrew’s set the boxes inside. The wind whips up the ocean into a frenzy—but settles down when Andrew lights a match as if it senses what he’s trying to do.

The gasoline soaked papers catch fire easily and it’s not long before their former life is going up in flames, flames dancing merrily on lines of text and scribbles of code. The wind picks up after a moment, scattering ashes along burnt sand.

Eddie steps closer with the fire reflected in his eyes. Andrew looks at him.

There’s a calm smile on his face as he slips his hand into Andrew’s.