Chapter 36 #2
“You were fucking bossy even then,” Shaun murmured, his fingers moving to the scar on Zenko’s neck.
“You were the one taking orders, babe.”
“Worked, didn’t it?” Shaun’s thumb stopped against the scar, and Zenko felt his chest tighten at the look in his eyes. “You got me out.”
“Yeah.” Zenko caught Shaun’s hand and brought it down between them until he could press the palm flat against his chest again. “I thought I was saving your ass.”
“You did.”
“Turns out you saved mine too.” Zenko held Shaun’s gaze, refusing to let his guy brush the words aside or turn them into something easier to carry.
“You spent all that time thinking you didn’t fucking exist because somebody made damn sure the paperwork said you didn’t, but you existed to me from the second I saw you in that cave.
You were real from the second you blinked those baby blues at me, when you grabbed my belt, and you were real every damn second after that. ”
Shaun stared at him, his eyes suspiciously bright, and Zenko swallowed against the pressure building in his own throat because if the bastard started crying, there was a decent chance he was going to fucking lose it too.
“You’re here.” Zenko tightened his fingers around Shaun’s. “I’m in your bed, and my shit is all over your bathroom. Somehow your fucking shoes still migrate into every room of this house, and you keep moving my coffee mug even though I’ve told you at least fifty fucking times where it belongs.”
“It belongs where I put it.”
“That is not the fucking point.”
Shaun laughed, but the sound broke in the middle, and Zenko leaned down and kissed him before either of them could make too much out of it.
Shaun’s arms came around his neck immediately, holding him close as the kiss shifted from tender to hungry, and he let the heat build between them without needing to rush it anywhere.
He slid one hand beneath Shaun’s back and pulled their bodies closer, taking the soft curse against his mouth as Shaun’s legs tightened around him.
“Zen.”
“Right here, babe.” He kissed his way along Shaun’s jaw and down his throat, lingering over the places he knew would make Shaun’s fingers tighten against his shoulders.
He knew this body now too, every scar and old injury, where Shaun carried tension after a bad mission, and how his breathing changed when Zenko touched him somewhere that felt too good for words.
Shaun’s hands eventually stilled against his back, and when Zenko lifted his head, those eyes were waiting for him again.
They were the same stunning blue eyes that had caught his attention in a Syrian cave when Shaun had been battered and exhausted, and he had known absolutely nothing about the man staring back at him except that leaving him behind had never been an option.
He knew him now.
There would probably always be things Shaun couldn’t tell him, the same way there were parts of his own life that belonged to places and missions neither of them would ever discuss over breakfast. He didn’t need every secret Shaun had ever carried to know the man holding him now, because he knew the things that mattered.
Shaun would be at his six when the world went to hell, and he would still be there when the shooting stopped. At night, when they finally let their guard down enough to sleep, his guy would eventually reach across the mattress and put his hand over Zenko’s heart.
“I love you.” The words came easily now, which still surprised the hell out of him, considering how much effort he had once spent trying to convince himself that whatever existed between them could be contained.
Shaun’s expression softened as his fingers curled around the back of his neck. “I love you too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
Shaun narrowed his eyes at him. “That’s all I get?”
Zenko grinned because there was his guy again, dragging them back before things got too fucking emotional. “What the hell else do you want?”
“I don’t know. Flowers might be nice. Poetry. Maybe one of those really long declarations where you tell me how beautiful I am and how you can’t possibly live without me.”
“You’re getting my cock and breakfast.”
Shaun burst out laughing, the sound filling the bedroom until Zenko couldn’t help laughing with him, and he kissed the bastard because he could.
There had been a time when the idea of mornings like this would have seemed fucking impossible, yet here he was in Shaun’s house in California with his shit in the bathroom, groceries in the kitchen, and a motorcycle waiting outside.
Their weapons were secured where they could reach them if they needed to, and either of their phones could ring at any second and drag them back into the world neither of them had completely left behind.
He was okay with that. He had never needed the operator part of himself to disappear so he could have Shaun, and Shaun had never asked him to become someone else to make room for what existed between them.
They had found a way to build something around the lives they already had, and somewhere in the middle of all the dangerous shit, he had ended up with something he hadn’t realized he wanted until it was already his.
Shaun pushed at his shoulder and gave him a pointed look. “You promised me breakfast.”
“I promised you my cock and breakfast.”
“You did not specify an order.”
Zenko stared down at him. “You seriously want to argue semantics while I’m naked on top of you?”
“Yes.” Shaun’s mouth curved as he slid both hands down Zenko’s back. “I feel like this is exactly the right time to establish clear expectations.”
“Of course you fucking do.”
Shaun grinned and pulled him down, and Zenko went willingly because there wasn’t anywhere else he wanted to be.
There had been a time when everything he needed could fit inside a go-bag, when home had been wherever he dropped his gear long enough to sleep before somebody told him where he was going next.
He had spent most of his adult life measuring success by getting the mission done and bringing his people home afterward, and he still believed in that last one with everything he had.
Shaun’s house had become home somewhere along the way.
It had Shaun’s laughter in it and his coffee mug in whatever fucking cupboard Shaun had decided it belonged in.
It had boots abandoned where Zenko would trip over them and arguments about groceries that could apparently turn into gunfights because their lives were fucking ridiculous.
It had quiet mornings when Shaun curled around him in his sleep and pressed a hand against Zenko’s chest as though he needed the reassurance of feeling the heart beneath it still beating.
Zenko understood that need better than he wanted to admit. Some nights he woke and reached for Shaun too.
He lowered his mouth to Shaun’s and kissed him slowly, letting himself feel the steady rise and fall of Shaun’s chest against his own while his guy’s arms tightened around him.
For all the things both of them had survived, this might have been the part he valued most, the simple reality that neither of them had to wonder anymore whether the other man was somewhere out there alone.
Shaun curled his fingers around the back of Zenko’s neck, holding him close until their foreheads touched. “Don’t let go.”
The words took him straight back to the cave where they had started, and Zenko closed his eyes as the memory came without the pain this time. His arms tightened around his guy. “Never, babe.”
Later tonight, his team would start arriving, which meant Zenko had several hours to finish what he’d started in the garage before Noble got there.
The water balloons still needed filling, and Shaun had no fucking idea what he intended to do with the paint or the truly irresponsible amount of glitter currently hidden behind his toolbox.
If everything went according to plan, it was going to stay that way until it was far too late for any of those assholes to do a damn thing about it.
They were operators from two of the world’s most covert teams, but somewhere along the way, they had discovered that when the battle stopped, their hearts really did take over.