Archive of Our Own

Ives knew she was the one the first moment he set eyes on her file. Didn't even bother taking in any of the details of the other two candidates, just checked basics—name, age, rank at discharge—and shoved the files back across the table toward Hayat. "The woman."

She gave him that look that she did so often, like he was tracking mud on her perfect floors, or smudging her immaculate make-up. The thought had occurred to him to try—the make-up, not the floors. She'd clearly be a firecracker. "Do you wish to perhaps consider—"

"Nope." Ives leaned back in his chair. He couldn't be sure, but he thought the Boss might be hiding a smile behind that thoughtful hand. "Any woman in command in any service is going to be at least twice as competent, experienced and adaptable as a male counterpart, probably more like three times."

Hayat drummed her half-inch fingernails—vibrantly blue, today—against the files, and turned that flat, unimpressed look on the Boss.

Who shrugged one suited shoulder. "You wanted him in on the decision."

As always, on the receiving end of the Boss's strange blend of unnervingly hands-off, if unwavering, support, Ives felt that itch of there being something he didn't know. Easy enough to squash it. He'd never had a commander who actually paid this much heed to the input Ives gave him. That alone would be enough to keep him in this job.

Hayat gathered up the files, her fingers dark against the manila. "I thought it would be a decision, not a foregone conclusion." She gave him a final pointed look across the conference table. "Wheeler. Her name is Wheeler."

"Sure," Ives said, with a bit of a smirk.

Hayat sniffed, and stalked out on her three-inch heels. Ives did his best not to watch, but damn, the woman had some hips. And Ives really needed to get laid, though on the list of things that needed to happen, it was pretty low down.

*

Ives got back from blowing off steam playing five-a-side rugby with blue squad and she was there, propped beside the hangar door, drinking coffee as she watched them slog in from the waterlogged make-do field. Even in civvies, she was all big damn boots and slouching khakis and aviators. Ives reminded himself that even if she was a colossal bitch, she'd be damn good at the job, and that was all they needed. Still, he wished he was meeting her with a little more gravitas and a little less mud on his side. Or at least that he hadn't already hauled his t-shirt off to try and wipe his face clean.

He draped the filthy shirt around his neck, saluted her with the ball, and said, "Ives. I'd offer a hand to shake but—well."

"Well," she repeated, with the faintest curve to her mouth. He didn't know her at all. Didn't know if that was a sneer or her practically grinning. "Wheeler. Obviously."

Obviously. "Good to know you didn't just wander onto base," he commented, before he'd really thought about it. "Hate to have to kill you."

"You could try," she shot back, and did grin—genuinely, and fully, with gleeful teeth and an almost wicked quirk to it.

Shit. He really needed to get laid. He cleared his throat. "Gonna hit the shower. Talk later, yeah." So focused on getting out of there, he was three strides away before he remembered to turn and call back, "Really glad to have you on board."

*

He read her file; no point bothering with that until the candidate had actually passed whatever they'd deemed the most suitable recruitment task. All the boring identification stuff had been redacted, of course. But you could always get an idea about a person from the details. The psych notes and the disciplinary citations and the length and type of time served. Wheeler was six years older than he was, had three years more field experience, and looked unbelievably fed up in the surveillance photos appended to the file. Ives wondered where and when and how they'd been taken.

You could get an even better idea from a casual conversation, though Wheeler initially looked askance at the beer he handed her.

"Not actually in the service any more," he reminded her, waving the cold bottle encouragingly.

He could see her weigh and consider that. "I guess duty officer is less of a concern when you can fuck about with time," she noted, and took the beer.

"Not without its perks," he confirmed.

He ran through the squad—composition, disposition, current strengths and weaknesses, where they needed to get to. She slouched in her chair, one boot braced against the leg of the table, and didn't do any of that nod and mmhmm shit, just asked questions, here and there, that showed she was taking it all in.

"Anyone gives you any grief—" he finished up.

Her lips twisted around her final chug of beer. "Come to you?" she asked, voice flat as tarmac.

"Break their knees," Ives concluded.

She gave that grin again, bright and crooked, and turned away to set the empty beer bottle down.

There was a metallic scrape from the direction of the door. Ives hadn't heard a footstep outside, but he rolled his eyes, and shouted, "I'm in here, you could just knock."

Another faint rasp, and then the door—which locked automatically, all their office quarters did—swung open. Neil beamed beatifically, tucking something-or-other (probably illicit) into his shirt pocket. "Where would the fun be in that? Oh hello." His expression smoothed out into that golden-boy smile. "New arrival. You must be Wheeler."

Ives waved a hand. "Neil, Wheeler; Wheeler, Neil. Neil is—"

"Trouble," Wheeler diagnosed, tilting her head in frank appraisal.

Neil laughed like he was delighted. If Ives had had any doubts, that would have been the end of them. "I think you're going to do fine," he said.

Wheeler snorted. "Oh goody." She stood and stretched, both arms over her head, her t-shirt riding up just enough for a glimpse of skin that Ives absolutely wasn't looking at. They'd technically be more equal rank than in direct chain of command, but still… don't ogle anyone who was going to have your back. Solid advice, in strict service or out of it. "Oh-eight-hundred?" Wheeler asked, heading for the door.

Neil was still smiling at her as she brushed past him. "Some of us do yoga before breakfast. Six-thirty in the rec."

She barked a laugh as she hauled open the door. "Fuck that."

Neil turned his grin on Ives as the door closed behind her. "Oh, I like her."

Ives ignored that. "When have you ever been awake at six-fucking-thirty?"

"Sometimes I'm still awake at six-thirty," Neil objected. He threw himself sideways into the chair Wheeler had vacated, one knee hooked over the arm. "And that guy Heath from accounts can fold himself literally in half." He waggled his eyebrows.

Ives snorted. "Heath. Right."

Neil grinned, entirely unabashed. "And sometimes the Boss goes."

That was more like it. Ives stood up, leaned past to grab Wheeler's empty bottle, and used it to gesture toward the door. "I thought you said those were beyond you."

"I figured out a shortcut." Neil patted at his breast pocket with two fingers, looking about as languid and smug as a cat. "Only came down to try it out, actually, and I thought who better to bestow my attention upon than you."

"Bestow your attention," Ives repeated. "You fucking wanker. I'm having the locks changed. Upgraded. Made Neil-proof."

Neil kicked idly with the foot hanging off the arm of his chair. "Love you too."

Ives grinned right back at him. "The challenge is good for you."

*

Wheeler didn't exactly slide into the Tenet squad structure without leaving a ripple—no one in the history of organised violence ever stepped into a vacant command spot without having to prove something—but she didn't break any knees. She did dislocate one, but when Ives went to check on the owner in the medical facility, the guy—Aranchez—blinked as innocently as he could with one eye thoroughly blackened, and said, "I fell over."

Ives snorted. "Is there going to be a problem there?"

"Is there going to be a problem where?" Aranchez asked.

"Good." Ives rapped his knuckles against the doorframe. "Two days, soldier, then I expect you back."

He assigned Aranchez to blue squad, now Wheeler's. There wasn't a problem there.

Ives was more worried about the female squad members, who were infamous for their margaritas-and-Sex-and-the-City-reruns nights on alternating Mondays. They didn't tend to take no for an answer—even Ives had been dragged along once, he suspected because someone had lost a bet. Whatever. He'd stuck to beer and insisted on an appropriately coloured manicure.

"How?" Ives demanded, when a month had gone by and Wheeler hadn't been reported at either Monday night event. (Ives hadn't been checking, but he had no reason to doubt Neil's information.) He checked the corridor again—still empty—and leaned against the frame of her open door. "How the hell have you dodged margarita Mondays?"

Wheeler looked up at him, but didn't pause in unlacing her boots. "I couldn't very well fucking go, could I?"

Of course she couldn't. She couldn't be seen to be in some sort of gender-based clique with the female squad members, not and expect to be able to arbitrate any disputes that arose within her squad. But still… "How?" Ives demanded again. "They painted my nails Relentlessly Ruby."

That made her stop for a moment, as that crooked grin unfurled like a flag. She heaved her second boot off and tossed it next to the other one, before leaning back in a lazy-kneed sprawl on her couch. The digs here weren't spacious, but as leaders, they at least got two rooms. Wheeler hadn't done a lot of decorating yet—hell, neither had Ives, and he'd been here seven months now—but she had a lush-looking fern-thing overflowing a pot, and something with heart-shaped leaves clambering over a frame propped against the wall.

"I am so sorry I missed that," she drawled. "Do they have pictures? I might have to rethink my policy."

Ives lifted an eyebrow. "Are you seriously not telling me?"

Her eyes widened, like he would ever believe she was innocent while she was still grinning like that. "A girl needs her secrets."

"Fucking… how?" Somehow, her refusing to explain made it worse. Ives might have actually thrown his hands up if he hadn't had his arms so tightly crossed. It had always been a useful pose for curbing that sort of instinct. "They got Hayat—"

"She would not have resisted," Wheeler pointed out.

"They got Gabris from legal," Ives continued. "They asked the Boss."

"Did he go?" Fuck, her grin got worse, almost filthily delighted as she leaned forward, like she was soliciting something from him. "What colour did they paint his nails? I'd go for something in dark purple with a nice shimmer."

That was absolutely it; Ives burst out laughing, half a moment before she did too. As the mirth ebbed, she hauled herself up to her feet. "You didn't pick me for this position because I don't know what I'm doing, Ives."

There was absolutely nothing special about the way his name sounded with her voice wrapped around it, it was just that this was the first time he'd heard it. He'd been sir every time before now. He felt like he had to scramble to keep up. "What, did Hayat tell you?"

Wheeler smirked. "No, but you just did." She planted a hand on his chest, above his still-folded arms, and shoved him out of the doorway. "Now fuck off so I can shower."

*

With two squads, two leaders, they'd more than doubled their capacity; they could run their own temporal pincer-movements now, pin and flank in time, bait and ambush, so much more.

It meant training, training and more training. Live-fire, inversion, small and large-scale both. The squads needed to understand and trust their leaders, and their leaders needed to trust and understand each other.

Ives had passed through congratulating himself over choosing Wheeler, and moved into a relief that bordered on the religious. He'd told himself—told Hayat—that any professional would have done. It probably would have. Wheeler was better. She could keep a map of the field—not just in space, but in time—in her head better than anyone he'd ever met. And she had a thoroughness that Ives found almost ridiculously reassuring; he always knew she'd thought it through from all angles. He could trust her judgment.

Not the first time he could say that about a fellow officer, but the instances were vanishingly fucking few.

They got there. Understanding and trusting each other. When Ives was doing the damn duty rotations for the next fortnight (the worst fucking part of command), Wheeler didn't just leave him alone, she kept everyone else out of his hair. And Ives didn't take it to heart when Wheeler was a snippy damn bitch the day after a significant training exercise.

He had asked what that was all about, the third time, when it was obvious this was making a pattern. She'd opened her mouth, that tight look around her eyes, and he'd been resolved to endure the bollocking he was about to receive. But then she'd stopped, pressed her lips together, and finally said, "I'm still figuring out how to do this without the old habits."

Ives knew how that went. They weren't in the service any more. It wasn't quite the same. It was surprising how the smallest things could trip you up.

After the sixth or seventh time—something like that, anyway—he asked if there was anything he could do to help.

She gave a funny little laugh, and didn't quite look at him as she said she'd let him know.

And that had been that. It didn't get any better, but so what? Hayat was a stone-cold bitch (to him, at least) every day of the week and Ives didn't have any problem working with her.

*

Nearly two months after she'd arrived, Wheeler led blue squad as tactical support on a little clusterfuck that Neil and Mahir were surprisingly not making worse. Her first genuine actual field action. Even more remarkably, for that pair, it only involved one minor intervention, and cleaning up a three-car accident and an incident at a local government building.

Ives learned all of that reading the report after the fact. The afternoon they were out, he put red squad through the mud course—twice—and distracted himself by worrying about logistics. The Boss had told him they'd eventually need to field a full troop—though he'd been typically vague on just when eventually was. Ives would like four regular squads—Wheeler had suggested five, to be safe—and while there was little he could actually do about the recruitment, it didn't stop his brain gnawing at the problem like some rodent at the special packet of biscuits you'd brought from home.

He gave up punishing them all, and they played rugby instead. Nothing like a crunching tackle to clear the mind.

It all went fine, of course. Blue squad came back grinning and laughing along with Mahir's jokes, and there was some sort of extra something to the way Wheeler marched in to present her immediate report. The shadow of that crooked grin to her mouth, an extra looseness to her shoulders. Ives might have called it a swagger.

Three injuries, very light, no inversion damage, and everyone was back and debriefed in time for dinner—and, more importantly, in time for the drinking to start. Ives went along, of course, cramming into the rec hall with everyone else, but it was Wheeler's place to pour the first line of shots and lift one in toast.

She accepted a boost up to standing on one of the bar stools, and Ives nearly choked on his beer. She was wearing a genuine dress—nothing fancy, just plain and black, with little sleeves and the skirt swirling around her knees as she shouted, "Shut the fuck up, the lot of you!" over the raucous crowd. Someone wolf-whistled, and Ives shifted to look through the crowd just in time to see him get smacked upside the head by two different people in unison.

"To us," Wheeler proposed, lifting her shot glass with that cocky, crooked grin, and her squad hollered and whistled. She waited for them to simmer down, before adding, "May we make every day look as easy as this one!"

More cheers, arms lifted, and she disappeared back down into the crowd behind them.

Ives stayed for two beers, doing the rounds, showing support, absolutely not getting distracted every time he caught a glimpse of black out of the corner of his eye, and then quietly left so everyone could relax properly without any sort of nominal authority figure having to get involved.

Wheeler wasn't there when he left, and he found himself turning right rather than left—taking the way back to his room that took him past her room. He didn't bother with excuses. There wasn't any reason to check on her; they'd done their debriefing, it was all covered, she was all good. He just wanted to see her. To talk more.

He stood in front of her door, telling himself it'd be much better not to. And then knocked anyway.

There was no answer. Probably, all things considered, a relief.

Around two corners and down a hall, he found her waiting outside his room. Leaning against the wall, still wearing that dress. He guessed it was some sort of wrap thing—not that he knew anything about dresses, but there was a waist sash tied in a bow—and it wasn't short or tight or low-necked or anything actually exciting, but…

Well. Just but.

"Come on in," Ives said. "I have more beer."

"I have a better offer," she countered, producing a bottle of bourbon from behind her back.

"A much better offer," Ives agreed, closing the door behind her again. "Though now you've got me worried."

Wheeler crossed straight to the right cupboard, pulling out a couple of glasses. They'd been all over, the past seven weeks, spending as much time in his room as the offices, planning and arranging and just plain shooting shit. She knew her way around. They were comfortable. "You worry when a woman shows up with the good booze?"

Even more worried, because here, right now, in a dress, she was a woman. Not just a colleague, just a fellow officer, just someone he absolutely couldn't consider the arse of as she bent over to get ice out of the mini freezer. It had been better, when there was no answer to his knock. But now here she was. Here they were.

Ives leaned a shoulder against the wall, and accepted the glass she handed him, two fingers of bourbon sliding satin-smooth around the ice cubes. He held the glass still so she could clink hers against it, meeting his eyes like a challenge. "You did well today," he told her.

"I know," she said, and took a sip, barely wetting her smirk before she was setting the glass down again on the bench, where she was leaning against it, one hip canted.

So if drinking themselves into oblivion wasn't the reason she was here… "What's up?" Ives asked, and took his own sip. The bourbon really was the good stuff, mellow as a favourite bad habit, with a kick like the consequences.

Wheeler smiled that crooked smile, and said, "I told you I'd let you know if—if there was anything you could do to help."

It took him a moment to remember. "With your—" He paused to choose words carefully.

She didn't. "Being a heinous bitch the day after action, yeah."

"I wouldn't say heinous," Ives added quickly, and smiled at her laughter. He hadn't really considered it as day-after-action, he'd thought maybe she was just getting more aches and pains these days, God knew he was. But after-action made sense, everyone had their ways of dealing with the way the energy built and ebbed. Ives had known guys who talked for six hours straight, who slept for thirteen hours straight, who desperately needed a fight, who desperately needed a f— "Oh."

Wheeler lifted an eyebrow, and her bourbon for another sip. "Oh," she repeated, setting the glass back on the counter. Over the other side of the space—small as it was—from him. She wasn't pushing. She was just here, in a dress, telling him this. "It's been a while, so I wasn't sure it would still—hit me quite the same. And I thought maybe I could make do with other options, but that's barely been cutting it so far, and today was genuine action."

Ives was still mentally struggling with the thought of other options. He both desperately did and didn't want to know. But refusing to face the situation only got people killed, so he cleared his throat and said, "Just so I'm absolutely clear here, we are talking about…"

She took pity on him. "My pressing need to get fucked." She traced a finger around the rim of her glass, and at least that meant she wasn't looking right at him. "I used to have… arrangements with various other servicemen of appropriate rank with whom there was no command overlap, but here it's just—" She looked back at him, then. Yeah. It was just him and her.

She didn't have to say the rest. Taking up with any of the squad members, even just the equivalent of a battlefield fuck-buddy, would play havoc with perceived impartiality. "And the nerds wouldn't get it."

Her smile quirked. "I don't want to deal with a goddamn civilian," she agreed. "Not for this."

"Sorry not to have provided more variety in consideration of your needs," Ives said, his mouth running away while his brain was still stopped dead at the whole concept of this.

She laughed, and said, "You'll do."

Which didn't help his train of thought at all. They were going to do this. Ives could barely hear all the reasons it was a bad idea over the rush of blood in his ears. "Rules," he managed to remember. "Up front and clear. You set them."

"Right." Wheeler leaned back, licked her lips, and the idea that he wasn't the only one wildly distracted here was honestly excruciating. She held up a finger. "One. This isn't—a fling we're having. No handholding or stolen moments or flirting." She said it with enough vehemence that Ives wondered what trouble she'd had in the past. "This isn't a relationship, it's—"

"Extended debriefing," he supplied before he could think better of it.

She burst out laughing, so he did as well. She was still grinning as she held up a second finger. "Two. No kissing. It's just… less confusing. Three, don't get huffy, I'm sure you're clean, I'm sure I'm clean, I'm on the pill, but still, it's going to be safe sex, all right?"

Part of Ives felt like this clinical outlining should be ruining anything like a mood. The rest of him was too wildly turned on to care. It had been a really long time. "All right."

"All right?" she repeated, waggling those three raised fingers.

"All of it," Ives confirmed, setting his drink aside and not even noticing where. "Fine. Do you, ah—" That third item might present a problem; it hadn't exactly been on his radar in this job.

But she dropped her hand into a hidden pocket of the dress, and whisked out a little foil packet. He came two steps closer, like she was offering it to him, and when he paused, she reached out and snagged her fingers between the buttons of his shirt, pulling him closer again.

His hands landed heavy on her hips. She was warm through the dress, curved beneath his palms, his hands moving without him thinking about it, smoothing up her sides, trailing his thumbs along the undersides of her breasts. Ives couldn't take his eyes off her mouth—the stretch and slant and hook of her downright smug smirk.

"Thanks for the thought," she said, her ribs moving beneath his hands, "but I really don't need the warm-up."

"Honey," he said, surprised he could manage words at all, "it's not for you."

She laughed, and pulled him closer by the waist of his jeans, copping a feel even as she started to unbuckle his belt. "You seem to be doing fine. And rule four: never call me that again."

He could take constructive criticism when it came with a hand down the front of his trousers. Ives grabbed her hips tightly, and his self-control even tighter, so he didn't just grind into her hand.

Wheeler moved fast and efficiently, and he wasn't complaining. She had his pants down and the condom rolling onto him while he was still getting over her whisking her knickers off. Ives helped her up to perch on the counter and slid into her as smoothly and easily as though they'd been born to fit together like this.

"Oh fuck yes," she muttered, hooking a foot around the back of his thigh. They were stilted and out of rhythm for a moment or three, fumbling and frantic, and then things started to fall into place. His hands on her hips, her nails digging through his shirt into the meat of his shoulder. She hadn't been lying about the warm-up; her breath was already coming in little hitching moans. She'd come to his room, with the dress and the bourbon and already simmering, negotiating the rules with him as her blood hammered at her.

And fuck it was hot. Just as well she was already keyed up, because Ives wasn't going to last long. Not with her growling, "harder," and squeezing him tight and he wanted to kiss her, wanted badly to taste those little noises in her mouth. Buried his face in her neck instead, licked at the hot skin, felt her start to shudder against him, blessedly, beautifully, and let himself go too.

They sagged together, Wheeler leaning back against the wall as Ives braced himself against the counter. "That—" she started, and then huffed a little breath of laughter. "Yes, that. Thanks." She was flushed and sated, a faint sheen of sweat prickling at her hairline. All the tension gone from her body, limbs loose.

Best not to look. Best to concentrate on tidying up, such as it was. Deal with the condom, haul his trousers back up, pick up her black lacy knickers from where they'd fallen. She stepped back into them without any hint of self-consciousness, and downed the rest of her bourbon, setting the empty glass back on the counter. "Sleep well," she offered, with an easy grin.

"I will," Ives noted, and she laughed before she pulled the door shut behind her.

He did sleep well, deep and easy and dreamless, for the first time in over a year.

*

He also slept in, grabbing breakfast on the go and still winding up late as he strode down the corridor to the office he now shared with Wheeler. He just about collided in the doorway with Neil and Mahir, exiting at some speed, along with something small and brightly coloured that bounced off the wall.

"Morning, Ives," Mahir shouted, as he too bounced off the wall and shoved past.

"Later, Ives," Neil added, jostling after him.

"What are you—?" Ives demanded, turning to frown at them even as he stepped into the open doorway of the office and glanced inside.

Wheeler beamed at him, from behind the most enormous nerf gun he'd ever seen. "They brought me a gift!"

Her delight was infectious—or maybe he just immediately saw the same wondrous potential that she had. Either way, wicked glee burst immediately up through his veins. Ives didn't say a word, just held out a hand toward her, and her grin grew somehow wider as she tossed him the gun.

Neil and Mahir—being both far better at conceiving of mayhem than operational paranoia, but consider this a learning experience—had paused to loiter halfway down the corridor. Perhaps they'd been hoping she might shoot Ives as well. Now, as Ives swung the massive but ludicrously weightless bulk of the gun up to his shoulder, they realised their mistake too late.

Ives hit Mahir twice—head and shoulder—and Neil only once, but it was right in the arse and the resulting yelp was almost as satisfying as the bark of laughter from inside the office. He looked back inside, gun still raised, and Wheeler's grin didn't so much as twitch, but her eyebrows went up. It was a look that just about screamed, Care to try your luck, punk?

He sort of wanted to. But she'd laid out rules, and even if she might not consider whatever came next flirting, Ives was uncomfortably aware that he really, really would.

He lowered the gun, and tossed it back across the office; she caught it one-handed. "Wasn't that nice of them," she said, and sniggered. "Let me guess; they're good boys really?"

"No," Ives said, "they really aren't."

And that was that. Back to work.

*

At the party after blue squad's second run out in the field, Ives found himself even more distracted than last time. Could barely follow a conversation for trying to see if she was still here. She was wearing the dress again. Every time he saw it, he remembered how it had felt, rucked up over her hips, slipping beneath his grip as he'd fucked her on his counter.

Didn't have the excuse that it had been a while. It had barely been ten days. He just wanted to do it again. Wasn't entirely sure if they were going to. He'd thought… she'd said an arrangement, right? He thought, but he wasn't sure.

Until he finally left the party (having forced himself to talk to everyone he should, as commander) and found Wheeler waiting outside his room again. "I still have the bourbon," he managed to say, opening the door for her.

She shoved him through it, kicked it closed behind her, hands already on his belt buckle. "Fuck the bourbon," she stated, and hummed approvingly as he got his hands under her skirt.

She wasn't even wearing underwear this time. She bent over the table, braced a hand against the wall, and he ran his hands over her as he fucked her; over her, over the dress, as she pushed back against him, muttering, "Come on, fuck, yes, like that."

*

The third time, two weeks later, was on the Magne Viking, first time really putting it to field use. They fucked on his bunk, possibly because there was little room in the cabin for anything else. Ives was laid out flat and possibly only naked because he'd been halfway there when she arrived anyway. Wheeler had kicked her camo pants into a corner somewhere, but was still wearing her t-shirt, the fabric stretched taut by her bracing against the bulkhead. Her breasts fit perfectly in his hands, and when he ran his thumbs over her nipples, she swore and ground harder against him, until she was panting and shaking apart and dragging him with her.

She nearly ended up on the floor, trying to untangle and extract herself afterwards. Ives caught and steadied her, both of them loose and laughing. "Ow, fuck," she muttered, grimacing through her grin. "My knees. Maybe I'm getting too old for this."

Ives snorted. "You could still kick my arse."

"And don't you forget it," she murmured, and went hunting for her trousers.

*

Ives had been propped against the corridor wall for a solid minute, at least, before Neil noticed he was there and looked up from whatever the hell complicated technical thing he was doing with the lock. Or maybe he was just pretending that was when he'd noticed, because the first thing he said was, "This one is a bitch."

"That was the idea," Ives pointed out, and came down the hall to his own office.

Neil detached whatever it was from the lock mechanism—which beeped at him reproachfully—and hauled himself up off his knees. He watched with some strange combination of sulk and voyeurism as Ives laid a hand on the lock pad and thumbed the right button. "Does it matter which finger you use?" Neil asked.

"I don't think I'm supposed to help," Ives pointed out, as the lock clicked cheerfully to green and the door swung open.

"Does it?" Neil demanded. Always blithe and imperturbable about the work. Ives could admit it was a strength, when he wasn't dying to thump the twerp.

"Read the manual," he suggested. He didn't bother holding the door for Neil, and Neil didn't bother waiting for an invitation before following him inside.

"I have read the manual," Neil said. "But they aren't always an accurate representation of how the mechanism behaves in the wild."

"In the wild?" Ives repeated, shooting him a look. "They aren't fucking bison and you aren't a leopard."

But he'd lost Neil's attention, the lanky git cocking his head at the other side of the room, where Wheeler's desk was a cheerful chaos of piles of paper and scattered soft drink cans and two different sorts of potted fern.

Ives knew that look on Neil's face, that considering softness of focus and almost coy regard. "Oi," Ives snapped, and again, louder, until Neil stopped and looked at him, quizzically. "Whatever it is, no."

To Neil's credit, he only tried the wide-eyed innocent look for half a moment, and that was probably just reflex. Next, he went for wheedling. "Come on," he said, very reasonable, perching on the corner of Ives' desk he kept clear because otherwise Neil just knocked things off. "She shot us with the gun we gave her. We can't let that go unanswered."

"I shot you with the gun you gave her," Ives pointed out.

Neil waved a dismissive hand. "Yeah, but you're an arse. And she enabled you. We just want to—"

"No." Probably he should have let Neil talk, find out what he had in mind, all the better to head him off, but the problem with Neil is that he'd have half a dozen even stupider ideas before he'd finished explaining the first one, so there was nothing like certainty to be had.

"Huh." Neil turned that considering look on him, and Ives just stared back, entirely unconcerned, until Neil said, "You're soft on her."

What? "What?" Ives snorted, and thanked the army for a career's training in keeping an entirely impassive face while listening to—and uttering—all sorts of completely ridiculous and sometimes damningly accurate bullshit. "She's my 2IC, you nitwit. I'm not helping you prank her." Though he did let himself smirk a bit as he added, "Take her on by yourself, if you like."

Neil mulled over that for a moment. "I heard she broke Aranchez's knees."

Ives looked down, shifting papers from one pile to another, to hide his smile. "Dislocated. And only one."

"I'm going to get through that lock," Neil declared. "Sooner or later, you'll see. I won't be fucking defeated." And that was the end of that.

*

After the first proper field temporal pincer movement, Ives was kept late at a lengthy debrief with the Boss—who was evincing his first signs of being an over-controlling commander late in the game, almost like he was nervous about this. Ives didn't see why he had to take it out on the squad. Their part in the whole business was perfectly fucking straightforward, and they had plenty of experience now running operations like this, both forward and backward, so doing both at once honestly wasn't that big a deal.

But hey, the Boss needed his hand held, so Ives stayed and held it, and didn't make it to the showers until everyone else had been and gone and left only echoes behind.

Nearly everyone.

Wheeler came in while he was under the spray. He wiped water out of his eyes as she shot a bolt on the door he hadn't even realised was there, and whisked her towel off, leaving it on the hook next to his. He looked his fill, in the few steps it took for her to cross the room. He rarely got a chance, everything hurried and heated, and little glimpses here and there couldn't compare.

"I thought you might have found a better offer," he said.

He half expected her to just grab first for the part of his anatomy most obviously enthusiastic about her arrival, but instead she pressed in close, wound her arms around his waist, and bit at his shoulder. He hissed—at the exhilarating slip of pain, at the drum of water against shoulders when he stepped back. She chuckled, and reached past him to turn off the spray, her skin smearing on his and fuck, he was basically entirely hard already. This was getting Pavlovian, but Ives couldn't be bothered being embarrassed.

Not when she was murmuring, "I thought you were going to take all damn night," and wrapping a hand around him.

She'd even brought a condom—always prepared—so he just picked her up and fucked her against the wall of the shower.

Wheeler hissed at the cold tiles, but just shifted her hips to take him deeper and laughed, a breathless sound he almost felt more than he heard. "Fuck, I can't remember when I was last manhandled."

Fair. She was short, but nothing like petite. Made of muscle and callus and scar. He still might not have been able to manage this by himself, but she squeezed tight with her knees and reached up with one hand to hold onto the shower head. Their noises echoed off hard surfaces all around, bouncing back at unexpected angles—her moans, his uneven breathing, the slap of skin.

Ives had never in his life done something like this, somewhere like this. The service had demanded everything from him but this—sex—had been the one thing that stayed at home. He didn't know where the boundaries were any more. Had she done this—Wheeler, gasping and slipping against him—or had Tenet itself driven a truck through any semblance of normality in his life, and she was just the inevitable result?

He curled his grip around her thighs, hefted her higher, fucked her harder. And didn't care.

*

They weren't a big squad, even now, even with the Boss still adding more numbers. They weren't seeing big actions. They'd drilled and trained and worked hard before they ever took a step through a turnstile. They had solid medic support and the sort of supply logistics that made Ives laugh if he thought about it and the Boss had made it clear that his first priority was the safety of their people.

But still, inevitably, they lost someone.

The hell of it was, it wasn't even that frantic an action, just a stupid lucky shot. They were already on the withdrawal, and everything went like clockwork thereafter, but too late; Gillies was dead on arrival.

No one felt much like the usual festivities after that, though they all still gathered with booze. Ives did his duties, detailed a couple of the more sensible ones to keep an eye on things, and went back looking for Wheeler. Following a medic's directions, he found her standing over Gillies' tidied-up body, glaring like she could order him back on his feet.

"Hey," Ives said from the door, and she glared at him instead. He'd had worse. "I heard the Boss saying he was calling the psychs back in. You want—"

"Fuck no," she interrupted, but at least she broke her stance. Dragged a hand over her face. "Fuck," she said again.

He could say, it's not your fault, but she knew that, to the extent that it was even true. Of course it wasn't her fault. Of course it was. It was his fault too, and not, all at the same time. He'd been here before, and so had she. None of that made it easier.

"You still got that bourbon?" she asked.

*

Of course he still had that bourbon.

Ives didn't stint the pour for either of them, took the bottle with him over to his couch—the plain grey thing the room came with. Wheeler had got cushions for hers, he'd noticed that last week when he was standing in her doorway, arguing with her about the proper names for baked goods. Green and purple cushions. He'd never seen the point in cushions—had shoved the additions of girlfriend after girlfriend off his couch so he could just sit the hell down—but now he looked around his room and it seemed kind of… drab. Generic.

Wheeler threw herself down on the other end of the couch, curling her bare feet up under her. It might have looked girlish; she mostly just looked grumpy. Scowled into her bourbon, and said, "I can't decide if it's better or worse that there's no one to inform. His family already thinks he's fucking dead. If he had any."

None of that sort of information in the files they had access to. No identifying information. Nothing that might make a target of any of them, if it found its way to the wrong future. "He had us," Ives pointed out. Knocked his head against the back of the couch. "We'll have a thing." He'd always hated the word funeral.

She tilted on the couch, looking at him. "There's been one before?"

"Before you joined," he confirmed. "A few, actually. We're getting better at this."

Another time she'd make a joke—of course they were getting better, she was here now—and his wish for it right now was an ache. To see her mouth get that crooked slant. To have her make him laugh. Instead, Wheeler said, "What's your worst ever?"

She wasn't asking about Tenet. He shouldn't tell her. However hard he tried—however anonymous military action was across the world—there'd be something in there that might give him away. The policy was there for a reason. It was a good reason.

But tonight, here, he needed to share this with her. And with the way she reached for the bottle—topped up both their glasses—he didn't think either of them would be remembering details in the morning. So he told her. And she told him. The worst, and the others. The deaths that might actually have been finding peace, and the deaths so long avoided, and the deaths that made you scream obscenities at a night sky that didn't care, just went on being the most beautiful fucking thing you'd ever seen.

"How," Wheeler said, with the slow care of the quite drunk, "do we see so much fucking desert in the armed forces?" She was slumped on the couch, her legs hooked over Ives' knees, her hair coming out of its combat braid all around her flushed face, and when she started laughing, so did he, hand resting on her bare foot, his finally empty glass set aside.

She went to use his bathroom, and Ives tidied up, went into his bedroom to plug his phone in on the bedside table. Figured this was the end of the evening, and was satisfied all the same for finally having seen her smile and heard her laugh.

Then she met him in the doorway, stepping close. Her eyes were bright and clear, her hair damp around her face where she'd splashed water, pushed it back. Her hands settled heavy on his hips, and he started to give way, to let her walk him back towards the bed. But she hesitated. Said, "I don't know if you still…"

He could keep his honest answer behind his teeth. He couldn't keep his hands from her, touching those damp wisps of hair, cradling her cheek and jaw. Needed to say something before he did something even stupider. "I wasn't sure if you'd still want…"

Neither of them doing very well at finishing a sentence, it seemed. Wheeler gave a little wincing laugh. "More than ever, actually. Terrible, isn't it?"

"No," he said quickly. "No, it's—"

"Say life-affirming," she growled, "and I will fucking deck you."

He was laughing as she shoved him back on the bed, and she was grinning as they both wrestled out of their trousers. But by the time she'd got him ready and climbed on top of him, levity had faded. She fucked him slowly, intensely, almost grim with focus, building like a storm, until all he could do was hold on—fingers digging into her hips, slipping down her thighs—until she groaned and shuddered.

She collapsed against his chest afterwards, curled up, fists hiding her face and her shoulders still trembling. "Dammit," she mumbled, the word barely a puff of breath against his skin. "Dammit, dammit, dammit."

Ives said nothing, just wrapped his arms around her and held her there. When she relaxed a little, he tipped them both sideways, waiting for her to take that deep breath, like she was dragging will into her instead of air. Waiting for her to say, right, I'll see you tomorrow. Waiting for her to leave.

Her breathing grew slow and even, and when Ives leaned back enough to check, she was asleep.

He eased away as gently as he could, and she grizzled, snuggling into the pillow instead. He flipped an edge of the blanket over her, and went to clean up, almost tripping over her discarded trousers on the way out.

When he got back, she'd snuggled in even deeper, the blanket pulled up around her ear, hair all over the place, one little patch of eye and cheek and nose all that was visible. It was hilarious. It was driving him crazy.

He wanted her here, he admitted. But he wanted her here because she wanted to be here.

But when he smoothed a hand up her back, shook her gently by the shoulder, said her name quietly, and then more loudly… she just shrugged the blanket tighter up around her ear and growled sleepily, "Fuck off."

Ives sat back on the edge of the bed, and laughed long but quietly to himself.

And then he slid in under the blanket next to her, and went to sleep as well.

*

Movement in the bed woke him up—battlefield wakefulness, straight out of oblivion in an instant—and that in turn woke her up the same way, and then both of them were sitting up in bed, taking in the situation between one blink and the next.

"Shit," Wheeler said, lifting a hand to rub at her face. "Sorry. I should—"

"You're fine," Ives responded, swinging his legs out of bed. "Glass of water, while I'm going?"

She grunted an affirmative. The hangover headache was just starting to unfurl at the back of Ives' head. The clock said it was just past three. When he came back with two glasses of water, Wheeler was still sitting in bed, just shifted to leaning against the wall, so Ives sat next to her, and pulled the blanket up over his lap as well. They were both still naked, but he wasn't going to mention it if she didn't.

"What's that one from?" she asked between gulps of water, prodding at the white twist of scar on his side.

Ives looked down at it, considered the answer he usually gave—IED, terse and good for quelling nonsense from the ranks—and went with honesty instead. "Horsing around in barracks. Got tackled through a door."

She sniggered, stretched to set her empty glass on the side table, and flipped back the blanket to point at a snarl of scar on the inside of her knee. "Fell into a dumpster trying to help a mate prank her ex." She leaned back against the wall again, while they both laughed, and looked at him. "Do you miss it?"

"What?" he asked, and waved a hand vaguely. "All the rest of… everything?" Everything outside Tenet. The life he'd had. Wheeler nodded. Ives thought about it, finishing his water and setting the glass aside. Did he miss it? Training exercises and paperwork and politics and not much else besides. "I miss my family," he admitted. "Both my sisters have kids and watching them grow up on Facebook isn't quite the same." Though, to be entirely honest, he probably saw more of them that way than he'd managed in actual person. "You?"

"I do not miss my family," Wheeler said with wry emphasis. "My brother's always been an asshole and my parents moved to one of those places in Florida, you know where it's all—actually, you probably don't." He shrugged; she grinned. "Anyway, all my old college mates were like, married with kids and pets, and I—didn't want that. But I couldn't really go proper career, I'd pissed off too many people—"

"No, really?" Ives said, entirely deadpan, right up until she punched him in the shoulder and he started laughing. He tipped over, and it was just easier to get comfortable lying down than bother sitting up again.

She huffed, but slumped down as well, lying next to him and grinning at the ceiling as she said, "Anyway, it was kinda a relief when this came along. Which sounds fucking sad when I say it out loud. Yes please, nuke my life." She pulled a face.

"No, I know what you mean," he said, shifting in the bed. They jostled, shoulders and knees. "It's just easier when life and the job come together." She was right, though, it felt sad when he said it out loud. True, though. He cleared his throat, and added, "Bonus that it's something that matters."

"Yeah, that's satisfying," she agreed, entirely sincere, before an amused note crept into her voice as she added, "Even if it does lead to some interesting arrangements."

When Ives looked sidelong at her, she was watching him, grinning. It was maybe half past three, and dark, and she was still here, so what the hell, he went ahead and asked, "What would you have done if I'd said no?"

She shrugged. "Kept being a heinous bitch to you," she joked, and her grin widened. "Is this you angling to hear that you're a better option than a vibrator and a poster of Hugh Jackman?"

Yes. Maybe. He didn't know what it was. "Hugh Jackman? That's your type?"

"That's everyone's type," she declared loftily, rolling to face him. Her knee nudged at his thigh; he didn't shift away. She was still watching him, and he felt like if he looked away, he might miss something important. "A good fuck is more than just the orgasm. It's another body, another person. It's doing it together. It's the warmth. The touch." She lay a hand on his shoulder, smoothed it lightly across his chest. Her eyes had dropped, watching where she was touching him. Her thumb brushed over his nipple, and he laid a hand atop hers. One corner of her mouth twitched up. "It's the hands," she said.

"The hands, huh," he repeated, and skimmed his up her arm, over her shoulder, down her back as he rolled over to face her. Flattened his palm over her spine, spread his fingers to touch as much of her as he could. He couldn't stop watching her, so close that he could see the flutter of her eyelashes, the press of her lips together, the little tilt of her neck.

He'd never seen her like this, with the sensation just starting to bloom in her. She'd always shown up ready to go, urgent and demanding. And he wasn't complaining, not at all, but with her arching under his touch like this, he felt downright desperate himself.

Ives rolled her over onto her back, flipping the blanket off both of them, and she blinked up at him, saying, "What are you—oh."

Oh, as he slid down, between her knees, ran his hands over her thighs and pressed his mouth for a moment to the inside of her hip, almost too fervent to be called a kiss. "Can I?" he asked, looking up the length of her body.

"Fuck yes," she answered, the words all breath, and her knees shifting further apart.

He started gentle, almost teasing, running his hands over her thighs, her hips, her stomach. She gave a little sigh at the first serious touch of his tongue, and fuck but he was turned on right now. He'd always liked doing this, liked that it was something he could give when so much of being a normal boyfriend seemed wildly out of his reach. (Like being emotionally available; being physically available, some of the time.) But he also just liked it, the intimacy and the immediacy, liked to hear her breath hitch, feel her thighs twitch and her hips tilt, liked the taste. Wheeler writhed under his mouth; he had to hold onto her hips, hold her steady, and she moaned, a noise that had his hips grinding down, the friction against the rumpled sheets nothing like satisfying compared to what she was clearly feeling.

She arched up off the bed as she came, with a guttural moan sticky as molasses. Ives pulled back, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, so hard he could barely see straight and wondering wildly if there was the faintest chance she might be induced to return the favour.

He could barely make sense of her wriggling down the bed, gripping his neck, pulling at his shoulder, saying, "Come here. Come here. Get the hell inside me already."

His body was moving while Ives himself was still figuring it out—pushing her back again, crawling up over her. "I don't have—" he started.

"I don't care," she snapped. "Please fuck me." And for all the words, it sounded far more an order than a plea.

She hooked her knees around him, hauled him closer, and he slid inside her with a shudder for how good it felt. Everything about her—the press of her legs, the tilt of her hips, the scrape of her fingers down his back—urged him fast and hard and now, and he was more than eager to obey. She gasped, "Fuck," against his neck, gave a high and tight little moan. Her head fell back a little, her open mouth dragging over his cheek, and he wanted to kiss her so badly he had to turn away, bury his face in her shoulder instead. Open mouth against her skin, sucking blood to the surface as he drove into her with everything he had, and she came again, fingers digging into the back of his neck, gasping his name.

And he was gone.

They collapsed, panting, side by side amidst the sheets skewed all over the place. Wheeler's fingers drifted over his skin, smearing sweat, and she shifted. "I'd better go clean up," she said, hauling herself out of bed. She picked up her clothes on the way towards the bathroom.

Cleaning up wasn't something she usually did. Then again, they usually used a condom.

Ives lay there a moment longer, desperately hoping they hadn't broken everything, faintly wondering if it might be better if they had. Then he rolled out of bed and found his own trousers.

Wheeler came out of the bathroom fully dressed, save for the boots that she grabbed from beside the couch Ives was sitting on. "I should get going," she noted. "Fewer folk around now."

Ives just nodded. She was right. Scuttlebutt wouldn't help either of them do their jobs. "I ordered late roll call tomorrow." They could all use the rest, and the psych support would have cleared their schedules.

Wheeler gave him a brief smile, even as she turned to the door. "I figured. It's the right call. G'night."

She was gone a moment later. The room seemed weirdly empty in her absence. Ives told himself he should go back to bed and eventually he even did.

*

After the wake, the Boss—standing in the back, visibly present but not intruding on the squad's grief—caught Ives' eye and nodded toward a side door. It took Ives another ten minutes to sort through everyone who needed him right then, but when he slipped out onto the terrace, the Boss was still there, tucking away a smart phone into the pocket of his tailored suit.

"We've got more recruits incoming," the Boss said, no greeting or preamble. "Though we're collecting them elsewhere, putting them through basic. Won't bring them in until you're in a better state to receive them."

No time for that sort of nicety in any army anywhere, but here time was on their side. "Just a few days, then the distraction will be welcome." Ives paused, hesitated, hated his hesitation. "Command structure will be starting to stretch, with more numbers."

They needed more squad leaders. He didn't want more squad leaders. If there were more squad leaders, would Wheeler find one of them a better option?

The Boss shook his head. "I don't want to recruit more at that level. Can you deepen the structure? Sub-squads, promote from the ranks?"

"Sure," Ives said, hating his own relief. This job had been easier when it involved less feelings. Easier, but a whole lot less fun. He cleared his throat. "How are we doing on numbers, after this new batch?"

He kept asking the question, and the Boss kept not really answering. "Getting closer. We're on track."

Ives had been prone to just let it wash over him—he didn't need to know, not really—but now it prickled at him. "What are we working towards?" he demanded, and at the lift of the Boss's eyebrows, he went ahead and asked the question that really gnawed at him. "What do you know?"

The Boss smiled, but he seemed less pleased than just tired. "Too much." He lifted a hand, and Ives shut his mouth again. "The future's an oncoming train, Ives. How do you think you're going to prepare for that?"

Not the sort of question anyone tended to ask in the army. Part of him wanted to make demands, but would the information change anything? Either the Boss knew only vague portents, in which case the standard rules of as many resources of as high quality as possible still applied. Or the Boss knew exactly what they had—knew because he knew—in which case second-guessing wouldn't get anyone anywhere.

How were they going to prepare for that? Ives shrugged. "Enjoy what's left?" he suggested, for lack of anything better.

The Boss almost looked surprised. "Enjoy what's left," he repeated.

And then the door opened, and Hayat called for both of them.

*

Wheeler chewed over the command structure suggestion—as she literally chewed over handful after handful of some hideous American puffed-rice-and-toxic-flavour-powder snack, crunching away like she was trying to render everyone in the vicinity deaf.

Hey, he mocked her nuclear-waste-packing-bead snacks, and she mocked his PG Tips. This wasn't NATO.

"Internal promotions can carry unexpected bullshit," she pointed out, though with a tilt to her head that suggested she was just reminding him of something he already knew.

He did. "I was thinking you pick from your squad to serve under me, and I pick for you."

She grinned, her lips vaguely orange from powdered MSG. "A chance for me to lumber you with my dead weight, I like it."

"We don't have dead weight," Ives declared, which he was honestly fairly certain about, given everything that had happened to get these people here. "And I trust you."

Wheeler waggled her eyebrows at him, and kicked back in her chair, one booted foot up against the edge of her desk as she sucked crumbs off her thumb. "Aranchez," she stated.

Ives blinked. "The guy whose knee you dislocated?"

She smiled, as though at a fond memory. "I'll have another name for you by the end of the day. Don't send me anyone else I'll have to break a piece of, yeah?"

He didn't think that was going to be a problem. It wasn't a big enough base for word of Wheeler to not get around at double-speed.

Ives had a moment, watching her peg the screwed-up empty snackbag off the wall and into the bin, of wondering what the last six months would have been like if he'd chosen one of Hayat's other candidates. Probably fine. They'd probably all been hard-working, canny, capable options.

And the Boss had been there. The Boss hadn't nudged the decision any particular way. Which suggested she'd been the right one, for the future he knew.

Like Ives needed another reason not to rock the boat.

"Hey." Fingers snapped in front of his face, nailbeds faintly orange. Ives grabbed her wrist by reflex; she twisted free, and grinned. "I said: double team run through from fourteen-hundred, right?"

"Right," Ives agreed. "See you then."

*

They ran another mission where everything went beautifully except that they ended up securing another Turnstile and that was approximately Ives' least favourite thing save a team fatality. Less trauma, more paperwork.

He was still wrestling with it when the office door pinged green and Wheeler came in. She was carrying a beer and wearing that dress again and she said, "They're missing you down there," as she nudged the door closed with her hip.

It clicked shut behind her, the light turning to red, and he wasn't paying a single bit of attention, because she came around his desk like she was clearing territory, planted a foot on his chair and shoved him back. "They're missing?" he asked, like his heart hadn't started to race at the sight of her legs, didn't kick up a notch as she perched on the edge of the desk.

She grinned, like she knew exactly what he was thinking. "I'm missing." She set her beer down, well out of accidental flailing reach. "The paperwork can wait."

She did mark his place, close the files, set it all aside to clear enough of a space that she could sit properly on the edge, lean back, brace herself on her hands as he fucked her right there on the desk. Terrible idea, absolutely terrible—how was he ever going to get work done here ever again without thinking of her teeth in her bottom lip, her whining gasp as she arched her neck, the curve of her hips in his hands, the—

The lock on the door pinging green and opening silently.

In the two-inch gap, Neil's jubilant triumph turned abruptly to shock. Ives had no idea what his own face was doing, and at that moment Wheeler—with her back to the door, and her eyes closed, and her attention elsewhere—gasped, and grabbed tighter at his neck, burying her face in his shoulder, and Ives closed his eyes, focused on her, focused on this, focused on them.

When he blinked his eyes open again, the door was closed, the lock red.

*

Ives made himself stay and finish the paperwork—burning through it at double speed—before he went looking for Neil.

No sign of him amidst the dregs of the post-action unwinding, where Ives had to exchange high-fives and accolades with the tipsy remnants of the celebration. No one in his portion of the officespace, where Hayat stuck her head out of her office to give Ives a frown, and said, "No, he wandered off a little while ago, probably causing trouble." No answer at his door when Ives hammered, hammered again, called, "Neil, we need to talk."

The next door opened, and Mahir peered around the frame. Ives gave him a level look. Mahir said, "I only have instructions on what to do if he fails to return."

Ives sighed. "Fails to return from busting into my office."

Mahir eyed him. "I won't ransom him, if you've captured him. He knew the risks going in."

Ives deserved some sort of official recognition for the patience he was maintaining here. "Where is he?"

"Oh." Mahir shrugged. "If you don't know, I'm stumped."

As Ives stalked out of this entire portion of the compound—should have known better than to come in here voluntarily—he spotted a familiar silhouette and backtracked to stick his head into what turned out to be a little kitchen space he hadn't even known was there.

The Boss looked up from where he was reading Le Monde at the counter. "Need something?" he asked.

"Just looking for Neil."

The Boss lifted an eyebrow, and gestured around a room small enough that it required no extra searching. "Can't help you."

"He likes to be where you are," Ives said, because he was feeling far less than charitable right now. The microwave went ping! and he added, "I'll let you get that," and fled.

No sign of Neil in any of various common areas that Ives detoured past on his eventual way back to his room. He didn't really think he'd find him, not if Neil didn't want to be found—and clearly, he didn't. Normally, if he'd done something that he expected to have Ives in a temper, he'd send Mahir as intermediary. If he told anyone the particulars of this scenario…

Well, that would be bad. It was bad already.

Ives sighed, and thumped open the door to his room, and nearly yelped as the shadows inside shifted and one of them said, "I'm sorry."

"Fucking hell, Neil," he sighed, as his pulse gallopped away and he managed to find a light switch, kicking the door shut behind him. Neil flinched a bit away from the light—how long had he been sitting here in the dark? "How long have you been here?"

He was hunched up at one end of the couch, looking all gangly-nerd in a way he really hadn't since he'd first shown up, years ago. Ives felt an echo of his own first kneejerk reaction on meeting Neil—what the hell had anyone been thinking, recruiting this?

He'd been wrong. Neil was an asset. Mind like a greased eel and the sort of interfering fingers that could get anything open. Now including the door to Ives' office.

"I came straight here," Neil said, which just about made Ives laugh—all the time he'd been chasing around the entire bloody compound—except for the rest of it. "I didn't—"

"Don't say you didn't see anything," Ives interrupted, pre-emptively weary. "That situation wasn't really open to misinterpretation."

Neil's smile was tight, acknowledging the point. "I didn't," he repeated, "realise you two really were a thing. Sorry about that crack I made about—"

"We're not," Ives interrupted again, but he needed to get that clear.

Neil blinked at him. "Apparently that situation was open to misinterpretation," he said, with both voice and eyebrows wavering higher, like he was understanding less and less as this conversation went on.

Given that Neil was usually the chief architect of chaos around here, Ives should probably have been feeling some sort of smug irony here. He just felt exhausted. He wished this conversation could just be over without him having to navigate the minefield between here and there, but wishing had never got anyone anywhere. "Bourbon?" Ives offered, before remembering that he and Wheeler had finished it off a fortnight and more ago. He rubbed a hand over his face, and corrected, "I have beer."

"No you don't," Neil shot back, entirely reflex, because he was a tosser with opinions about real fucking ale. He winced, and said, "Yeah, thanks."

Ives got a bottle for each of them, just some local cheap beer that wasn't that bad, however much Neil wrinkled up his nose at the first mouthful.

They sat down at the table, and Neil sighed and said, "I feel like my line here is, I'm not going to tell anyone, but that's stupid, right, because we're all grown adults here, not teenagers. Don't—" He added in a quelling tone, lifting his beer again. "—say you have your doubts about Mahir."

Ives honestly hadn't been about to, which showed how rattled he was. "It's complicated. It's just an arrangement."

With his usual fine attention to uncomfortable detail, Neil pounced. "Is it just a thing, or is it complicated? Wait, an arrangement? You're, what, fuckbuddies? That's a thing people actually do?" He seemed delighted by this revelation.

"People who aren't irritating nerds," Ives shot back, but his heart wasn't in it. He ran his thumb over the condensation already beading on his beer bottle, scraped at the label with his thumbnail. He didn't want to have this conversation. He didn't want to lie. Didn't want to say, it's just convenience. Didn't want to say, it would be fine if it stopped.

"Ives."

Didn't have to say any of that, because when he looked up, Neil was watching him without a trace of amusement now, nothing in those eyes but sympathy. Easy to forget, when he was being such a prancing prat, that the git was actually blisteringly observant. Able to find and manipulate every tumbler in a lock. Able to turn over a person almost as easily.

Neil looked at him, and said, "You have to tell her."

"No." Ives just about sighed the word, closed his eyes, rubbing at his forehead.

So he missed the first part of Neil standing up, just heard the chirp of the chair legs and the spark of whimsy in his voice as Neil said, "If you're being a pansy, I can just go and—"

"No." Much sharper this time, Ives on his feet and around the table, blocking the way out, so fast that Neil jerked back a step and bumped into the cabinets. His hands up, eyebrows up, the teasing smirk startled off his face. "I'm not being coy," Ives said, gentler, his own hands up like some sort of reassurance. "We have rules. She set them. I can't break them."

He knew that had been the wrong thing to say even before Neil's eyes lit up. "Of course you can!" Of course he'd say that about breaking anything. "Situations change. If we've learned anything in this organisation surely it's being flexible."

"Neil—"

But Neil's eyebrows were turning mutinous. "She deserves to know how you really feel."

Ives sighed. He couldn't even derive any entertainment out of Neil having said something so outstandingly melodramatic. Not right now. "She deserves," he countered quietly, "to be able to do her job without worrying that her superior officer might send her into a dodgy situation because he's feeling a bit jilted."

"What?" Neil yelped. "You would never—"

"She deserves," Ives kept talking, louder, over the top of him, "not to have to weigh that possibility when faced with that superior officer telling her he'd like to change the nature of the arrangement she put in place."

Neil subsided, staring at him with enormous eyes. Ives didn't know how he looked. Sad? Wounded? Reproachful? Neil said, in a small voice, "You're not really her superior officer."

"Close enough." Ives reached across the table for his beer. "I shouldn't have got involved in the first place."

Neil considered him. "So why did you?"

Ives thought about that, taking a long swig of his beer. Because she looked damn good in that dress. Because she asked, and if he'd said no she might have found someone else to ask. Because she had been so cranky before they started the arrangement. Because…

"Before I got pulled into all this," Ives said, waving his beer bottle around—all this, the things they were about here. "I did as many active deployments as they'd let me, and even when I wasn't overseas, it was training and paperwork and exercises and—" He shook his head. "The only thing I had that wasn't the forces was my family, and I was barely enough of a person to take to visit them. So when he came knocking—" They both knew who he was, in that context. "—I thought, maybe that will give me something. Make it mean something. And it's helped. It's nice, to have a purpose."

"Nice," Neil echoed faintly.

Ives considered the end of this little story, and decided he still wanted to say it. "But she was the first thing in I don't know how long that I actually wanted enough to do something about it."

Sure, he'd thought about Hayat—her hips and her haughtiness—but it had never seemed worth even starting to attempt. He'd made the connections that he needed to in order to do the job well, and he'd enjoyed being with these people, and it had been nice, all of it. Nicer than the life before, that had gradually bled to grey.

He'd liked Wheeler, long before she ever put on that dress. And having her around had felt like the sun coming up, finally. He'd gone to her room, that first night. He'd knocked on the door. She hadn't been there, because she'd been waiting for him, at his room. But he'd actually knocked.

"I think," Neil said carefully, "that you deserve for her to know that."

"I think if you tell her," Ives said, flat and serious, "I will break your fingers."

Neil's hands closed into fists—not aggressive, but protective of those highly skilled and sensitive fingers. He looked a bit bullish, and a bit shocked. "I won't," he promised.

"Good." Ives drained the last of his beer, and pitched the bottle into the rubbish bin. "Oh, hey. Congratulations on getting through that lock."

"I had an epiphany." One corner of Neil's mouth twitched up; couldn't keep him down for long. "I told you I'd get through it. Sooner or later. I always figure out a way."

Ives snorted. "You're a genius. So you can lock that one on your way out." He jerked a thumb to the outer door, as he headed for his bedroom.

He paused when Neil called his name again; he looked back to get a shrug and an, "I'm sorry."

"I'm not." Ives could even manage a smile. He'd made it to the other side of the minefield. Thank fuck. "Life could be a lot worse. Good night, Neil."

*

They rearranged the command structure, promoted the new squad leaders, made stern speeches about how this was a trial arrangement, stressed the need for these four to prove themselves capable of the new roles, blah blah blah.

Then it was running through a whole lot of training exercises, separate squads, Ives getting to know his two new juniors in a whole new way. The other one—Gratton—was almost boringly competent. Aranchez had a bit of swagger and unthinking charisma, an easy laugh and a talent for being irritating. Ives could see why Wheeler picked his knee to make a point with.

Ives liked him, didn't want to, couldn't afford to have an opinion either way, was being fucking stupid about this. He couldn't help wondering if the new command structure did, actually, put these two at a level where they might be suitable candidates for Wheeler's post-actions needs. He couldn't help wondering—shouldn't, told himself it's explicitly none of his damn business, couldn't help it regardless—whether she chose Aranchez so quickly, so easily, so certainly, with that in mind.

Maybe it would be better if she did. Maybe this wasn't something he could sustain. Not without breaking the rules. And he couldn't do that.

All four of them did fine in the new positions, so they went ahead and made the structure formal. At Wheeler's suggestion they even got the Boss involved, had a little ceremony, gave a nice stamp of officialness. And then, of course, there had to be a bit of a party, and that was probably a good idea as well. They needed to learn how to be leaders off-duty as well as on.

Wheeler didn't wear the dress, but she was in her non-uniform khakis, a white t-shirt, her favourite pair of big damn boots. She looked good like this, comfortable and laughing with her squad.

Whatever came next, Ives was still very glad he'd chosen her. Glad she was here.

She found him later, out on the terrace, where the sun had almost completely set and it was starting to get cold. "What, you taken up smoking, lurking out here?" she asked, with a grin as she came across to join him.

"Just seeing what happens if I'm not there," he said, with a glance back inside. Actually, they didn't seem inclined to get too rowdy. Enthusiastic and celebratory, yes. But they were still acting like trained professionals.

"You're proud of them," she accused, as she propped an elbow on the railing. Her grin widened. "As you should be. You've done damn good work here."

"We've done," he corrected, and looked away, seeing how much was left in his beer. Turned out he'd finished it already; he set the bottle aside.

She hummed consideringly beside him. "Guess so. This isn't what I was expecting. For all the grandstanding, I was expecting something more mercenary, y'know?"

"Yeah." Ives did. He'd expected something similar. Hoped for better, sure, but he'd grown so accustomed to ignoring his own hopes. "I'm glad you joined."

"Me too." Wheeler looked at him sidelong, and before he could even start figuring out why, she was looking away again. Saying, "I was going out for my run yesterday morning and I met the Boss coming back. I don't know what the hell time he even gets up."

"I don't know that he sleeps," Ives chimed in, with a faint smile that matched the curve of her lips. They'd both had commanders before who built their own legends, and others who were just plain odd. Ives still wasn't sure where the Boss fit, but it didn't matter when he looked after them like he did.

"We chatted about how things were going," Wheeler continued, the last light from the setting sun catching the curve of her smile as she looked out over the railing again. "And then he—got philosophical on me."

"He does that," Ives noted. He'd stood on this very terrace, with the Boss saying, The future's an oncoming train.

As though she was somehow reading his memories, Wheeler said, "He talked about enjoying what we have now. Making the most of it. He made some good points. So I think—" And her tone was so casual that it made Ives's shoulders tense up. "—it might be that we should—um. Review the rules. Of the arrangement."

Ives tried to remember if he'd ever, in all these months, heard her ever say "um" before. It beat the hell out of thinking about the sinking certainty that he'd been right. She was going to move on with Aranchez. Or maybe juggle them both. That might actually be worse. He looked out into the last dying streaks of the sun's light, and said, "Sure."

She looked back at him, that smirk caught in the corner of her mouth. "What, that fast? Sure, whatever you say, ma'am."

He smiled back, couldn't help it. "They're your rules," he pointed out.

Wheeler nodded, and drew a slow breath. "Well. Whatever comes next, I was thinking maybe it could be our rules." That sat between them for a moment, Ives barely understanding what he had heard, until she ran her tongue quick over her lips, looked away again. "The Boss mentioned this thing, about figuring out what's important. What you have to do, and what you want to do. How we need both. And I want—I want to know what you want."

She was looking at him again—straight at him, her gaze heavy in the dusk now that the sun was gone. Standing there, watching him, waiting to hear what he had to say when she'd just cast aside all the safety scaffolding she'd put in place.

"I think you're the bravest person I've ever met," Ives said.

She snorted. "Shut the hell up," she scoffed, and shoved at his shoulder.

He caught her wrist, and held it. Stopped her tilting away, like maybe she was going to. Maybe not. Maybe he just wanted to be touching her. Maybe that gave him enough bravery-by-contact to look back at her and be honest. "I want to kiss you more than I've wanted anything in a long time."

Wheeler had her back to the light spilling out from the party. He could barely see her smirk, but he knew it was there. Could hear it in her voice when she said, "Maybe you should do something about that, then."

So he did. It felt unreal—he'd spent so long denying this, been so certain, until just a few minutes ago, that it was absolutely never happening. Ives wanted to swoop in, to kiss her before reality caught up to them and slammed the doors of possibility shut. But he made himself take it slow. Savour each moment—the feel of her cheek against his palm, the angle he had to lean at to reach her, the warmth of her breath against his cheek in the moment before his lips found hers. He kissed her soft, and slow, and shallow, as her hand curled around his neck.

Her sigh followed him as he leaned back again. "Not bad," she murmured, rich and amused, and Ives wanted to laugh for sheer joy. This was happening—really happening—and even if everything went pear-shaped sooner or later, it would be all right, they'd make sure of it, they could do that. Her hand slipped against his neck, fingers tangling in the collar of his shirt. "Not bad at all. But I was thinking more like this."

She pulled him sharply back to her, and kissed him hard and hungry. Want flooded through Ives, left him dizzy and clutching her closer. He remembered her talking about his hands, so he spread his fingers over her back, smoothed down her spine, just her t-shirt between his skin and hers, and he could kiss her as she shuddered. Could grin against her mouth as she hooked a leg around his, the heavy thump of her big damn boot against the back of his knee. Wheeler bit at his bottom lip, and—

"Say cheese!" declared a bright and cheery English accent, and Ives looked up into the flash of a phone camera. As he blinked furiously, Neil cackled and disappeared back into the party.

Ives tensed to give chase, and Wheeler said, "Hey." She hauled at his collar until he ducked low enough that she could get her mouth next to his ear. "You have better plans for this evening," she stated, crisp and clear, "than chasing the nerd all over the base." To emphasise a point on which he needed no further convincing, she bit his earlobe.

So Ives picked her up—bodily, both hands at her waist, and then hefting her up to hook under her arse—as she gave a little yelp, and then laughed. Wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist and kissed him long and deep and thoroughly.

Much better plans. They had much better plans.

But he couldn't actually carry her out of here like this—they had to go back through the party, and there was embarking on this… whatever it was going to be, and then there was inviting that level of disrespect from the rest of the squad. So Ives let her go, and she slithered back down to the ground, in a tangle of limbs and teeth and tongues.

"Anyway," Wheeler murmured, as they pried apart, "we know where he lives."

She laughed her wicked laugh, and Ives remembered very little about taking leave of the party, for how much he was anticipating getting back to his room.

*

They went back to her room actually—at Wheeler's insistence—and didn't make it past the living room. They'd fucked a dozen times already, and more athletically, but this time, when she clutched at his shoulders and moaned, he could kiss her. And he did. He did and he came still kissing her.

Afterwards, they sprawled on the couch, still half dressed and utterly replete. Ives looked muzzily at her verdant potplants, at the big framed photo of the Grand Canyon she had hanging on the wall. "I should get cushions," he said, shoving one of hers under his head.

"Sure," Wheeler said, voice muffled by the way her face was mashed against his shoulder. He really liked the way that sounded, the way it felt with her voice buzzing his bones. "You do that." She wriggled against him, jabbing an elbow into his side, and he couldn't stop grinning.

*

Neil came into his room whistling and reading through a bundle of paperwork, and then stopped dead.

"What?" Ives said, from where he was halfway through a beer at the little table. "You think you're the only one who can finesse a lock?"

It was almost fun watching Neil's face go blank as he flipped through all the available options and likely consequences. He stayed absolutely still, papers in hand. "Wheeler's covering the corridor, I assume."

Ives just drank more of the beer. He'd give the nerd this: his wanky craft ale really was quite tasty.

Neil shuffled the papers together, and wedged them under his arm, holding up both empty hands in surrender. "I've already deleted the photo," he declared. "You can check my phone if you want. I only needed it to claim a win."

A win. "On a bet. With Mahir?" When Neil hesitated for a moment, eyes cutting sidelong, Ives realised, "With the Boss?" And that led to the next realisation. "You set him up to talk with her."

Neil's hands were still up, but with that smile he looked nothing like innocent. "I kept my promise; I didn't tell her. And I told you—" His smile widened. "I always figure out a way."

Ives shook his head, and polished off the last of the beer. At least the cheeky sod was on their side, he supposed. At least they knew where he lived. "Well, don't worry. Your punishment won't be arduous."

Neil winced. "Punishment?"

Ives smiled at him; Neil didn't seem at all reassured. "You're coming shopping with me. For cushions."

"Cushions," Neil repeated, like he had no idea what he was hearing.

"Cushions," Ives confirmed. "And maybe even curtains. And I guess, if you're lucky, more nerf guns."

The future was an oncoming train. He might as well have a life in the meantime. Better late than never.