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There is nothing but sand here, billions upon billions upon billions of dusty grains, in every joint, every crevasse. The days are long, the sun burning heavily down, flaking skin and cracking lips, what precious moisture they had melting instead into the hot, dry air. In photographs of Earth, the sand gleamed white against blue water, silky-smooth, falling through gaps between fingers. Here, the sand is anything but, orange-red and coarse, harsh and bitter, working its way into the seams between armour plates and eroding from the inside-out. Here, in the night, the sky blots from sunset into a starless inky-black, and the blue desert yawns endlessly into the horizon.
It’s on one late afternoon, the grinding end to a day slow and blistering like any other, that the intruder comes, all suave and nonchalant in his shining white armour, stepping back into her life and expecting her not to shoot.
Wyoming smiles, says her name, and though the meeting starts with guns being pointed, it spirals all too quickly elsewhere.
The sun sets, and C.T. feels the firm chest under her hands in total darkness. Her hands are warm where they brush against him, and suddenly, even in the freezing night, everything is too stifled, too intense.
‘Did you miss me, dear?’ He murmurs, breath tickling her nape, and the mocking lie is so blatant she can’t even find it in herself to be angry outright. ‘You, out here...’ He – he was everything she hated, from a world she had left behind. How dare he find her here, in this alcove she'd fought tooth and claw for? Defeated the elements themselves, stood against the winds and crawled forward, hand over hand, on their wretched, God-forsaken mission. And here he was, a relic from the past, unchanged by time and circumstance, chasing a whim from long ago.
Then again, she had never pretended that it was anything resembling love. For him, she doesn’t know if it had ever been love in the first place (and she doesn't know if after all these years, he's realised it yet). Whatever it may be, out in the desert, longing for someone else, anyone else, just for human contact – it works well for them.
‘No.’ She says, and then kisses him with as much aggression as she can muster, all teeth and edge and bitterness. Wyoming smiles against her, and breaks apart to press small nips and kisses along her darkened, sunburnt skin, and for all that she pretends him to be anyone other than who he is, there’s no one she despises purely as a person quite as much as him. And, well, it’s much easier to fall out of love than into love.
She wakes up the next morning, tangled in sheets and covered in sweat. The sun is blazing from the sky yet again, the heat radiating in from every crack in the walls.
Next to her, he shifts and turns on his side, disgruntled, mussed up, sticky and salty. His eyes flutter open, and he smiles.
‘Don’t happen to have air conditioning here, do you?’ Wyoming says.
C.T. replies, ‘What are you doing here?’
He looks at her from under half-lidded eyes, and answers without skipping a beat: ‘Would you believe me if I told you I looked for you?’
Her silence is enough for him, and his wistful half-smile is enough for her. He lies back again into the pillow and lays an arm over his eyes.
They'd be out of each other’s lives again before the grueling day was up. If there's one thing digging has taught her, it's that there’s no place for relics of the past. Only cold words and guarded expressions. She wouldn’t miss him – couldn’t, really. And she hated him for it, if Agent Connecticut had ever needed another reason to hate Freelancer Wyoming.
I looked for you, she hears him saying. More than the Director. More than Washington. I kept looking. Followed her, to her world of gritting sand and searing heat, and found her here, wind-worn, armour burning from the inside-out.
She hears him stirring again, shuffling. She doesn't move, only stays stock-still as he rises from the low bed and walks over on bare feet, wrapping his arms around her from behind and pressing a kiss against her neck.
The sun bears down on her tiny, stuffy room, burning through the windows and walls, heat pooling in the corners. The sheets on her simple mattress, tangled and sweat-stained; she doesn't have the water to waste washing them. Their respective armour lays on makeshift tarp rugs, separated from the erosive sand, just barely, tendrils of grains crawling at the folds.
'I missed you, Connecticut.' Wyoming whispers against her skin, breath as hot and dry as the desert.
She's not as kind as to dignify him with a response.