Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
ELLIOT
Elliot Shaw woke before the lights came on—years of training his body to surface at exactly the right moment, alert and ready. He lay still, taking stock. Everything functioning. Everything under control.
The barracks pulsed with the steady breathing of men who'd learned to rest without fully letting go. Someone muttered in their sleep, someone else snored without shame.
Across the room, Hale shifted in his bunk.
Elliot's awareness snagged on it before he could stop himself. Through the dim light, he made out Hale's form: one arm thrown over his head, body sprawled across the narrow mattress like he'd never learned to sleep at attention. Even unconscious, he took up space without apology.
He made himself look away and rolled over.
A week in, and he still couldn't figure Hale out.
Confident, but not reckless. Skilled, but not showy.
Elliot had been around enough men who confused confidence with competence to know the difference.
Whether it was genuine or just an exceptionally irritating performance, he was unsure. He was leaning toward both.
Usually, he managed problems with ease: identify the variable, control it, and if you couldn't, outlast it until it stopped mattering.
Except Hale kept inserting himself into Elliot's operational space. Direct eye contact during formation. Bunk talk after lights out. Tracking Elliot’s position during drills like he had eyes in the back of his head.
It was annoying as hell.
That morning, they formed up outside the barracks in the pre-dawn cold. Master Sergeant Chen stood at the front with his clipboard, face expressionless as always.
"Partner assignments," he announced. "Same as day one."
Elliot kept his eyes forward.
"Today's exercise," Chen continued, gesturing toward the armory. "Transport two hundred pounds of equipment from the armory to the command post. Then back. You'll find ammunition crates, radio equipment cases, water containers, all stacked on wooden pallets."
Someone down the line shifted.
"No cart," Chen added, like he'd heard the thought. "No vehicle. You carry it between you. Six hours. Clock starts when you touch the gear."
He stepped back. "Move out."
Elliot turned toward the pallets. Hale fell into step beside him without a word, and Elliot tracked him in his periphery. He snagged the equipment list off the crate, scanned it, and folded it into his pocket.
Hale watched him do it, head tilted slightly. "Any thoughts?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Any you want to share?" Hale's mouth curved.
"No."
That earned him a snort.
Hale grabbed the front edge of the pallet, hands positioned wide. He made a whole show of taking deep breaths and getting ready to squat. "Fine. On three."
"Three," Elliot said, lifting.
Hale's side came up late, the whole thing tilting before he caught up. His eyes snapped to Elliot. "You can’t just skip one and two."
He shrugged. "Details."
Hale shot him a flat look. “Details,” he muttered under his breath like he couldn't believe what he was hearing.
They started moving. The path cut through dense pine, the trees close enough on either side that the light dropped. Within the first fifty meters Elliot could already tell Hale was going to burn them out before lunch. "Slow down," he said.
"We're fine."
"We need to pace this."
The muscles in Hale's neck tensed, but he throttled back without argument. Recalibrated. Matched Elliot's stride.
So there was discipline under the showmanship. Elliot filed that.
The first hour passed with just the scrape of boots, the clatter of gear, and the low bark of instructors correcting form elsewhere. Elliot’s wrists burned. He adjusted his grip, shifting the load to take pressure off his lower back.
He had no intention of testing his limits on a pointless equipment haul. His mother used to say “Tu dois écouter ton corps”—you have to listen to your body. One of the few useful things she’d taught him.
At the perimeter fence, the path narrowed to single file. Hale lowered the pallet without being asked and stepped back. "Your turn to lead."
Elliot passed him and took the front position. They continued without talking, adjusting their grips every few minutes as the weight shifted. The ammunition crates kept sliding, metal scraping against wood with each uneven step.
"Hold," Hale said from behind him.
They set the equipment down. One of the ammo crates had worked itself halfway off the edge, threatening to take two water containers with it.
"I'll get it," Hale said, already moving.
"I'm closer," Elliot said, moving too.
"Jesus. I said I got it." Hale grabbed the ammo crate before Elliot could interfere.
Hale repositioned the water containers; each one landed with a loud, unnecessary thud. Elliot locked down the radio equipment cases, forearms locked, body rigid, refusing to back down.
"You know," Hale said, adjusting the last container, "there’s this saying about there being no I in team.”
“Funny.” Elliot didn’t smile.
“I mean. You could trust me to handle some of this.”
Elliot stared at him. Hale stared back, eyebrows raised, as if it was a dare.
The crates were stable now. That was what mattered.
"Good?" Hale asked, challenge still in his voice.
"Good."
They lifted again and kept moving. Elliot didn't acknowledge that Hale's restacking had improved the load distribution. No way in hell would he give him the satisfaction. He would never hear the end of it.
Surrounded by nothing but frozen ground, snow-covered pines, and the peaks cutting hard lines against the sky, they worked on, the hours blurring together. After a long stretch of silence, Hale eventually broke it. "So what's your deal?"
Elliot glanced at him. "My deal?"
"Yeah. You know—where you're from, what made you sign up for this nightmare, what’s your favorite color. The usual small talk."
"I don't do small talk."
"I'm getting that. But we're stuck together for at least another"—he checked his watch—"three hours. Might as well make it interesting."
"Or we could just focus on the work."
Hale laughed, but not in a particularly pleasant way. "You're really committed to this silent type thing, aren't you?"
Elliot didn't answer, which was apparently answer enough.
They worked for another thirty minutes before Hale glanced over at him again. “I'm starting to think you don't like me."
This guy was fucking relentless.
"I don't know you well enough to not like you." Elliot kept his eyes on the path ahead.
"Is that supposed to be reassuring?"
"No. Just stating facts."
Hale gave him a lopsided smile and shook his head. "Okay, man. Fine."
The break from Hale's barrage of questions only lasted minutes before he ran his mouth again—observations about the inefficiency of the routes, speculation about what the instructors were actually measuring. Jokes Elliot honestly didn’t get.
Elliot didn't shut it down entirely, which was tactically questionable, but shutting Hale down felt like more effort than just... letting him talk.
By the time they reached the training grounds, Elliot had catalogued three ways Hale adjusted his stride to match the terrain and two ways he compensated for fatigue without making it obvious.
None of it was accidental or sloppy.
By midafternoon they were pulled aside with two others and reassigned without explanation. "Kitchen," Sergeant Barnes said, already walking away.
Hale stared after him with knitted brows like he’d been demoted.
Elliot committed the sulky expression to memory.
The kitchen was industrial, fluorescent-lit, and aggressively warm after hours in the cold. The smell of overcooked food and steam from the sinks hit him the second he stepped in, settling in the back of his throat.
They were handed aprons—white, starched, and suspiciously stained. Elliot tied his without comment, while Hale fumbled with the strings like he'd never seen an apron before in his life.
"This is so not my scene," Hale muttered.
Shaking his head, Elliot turned toward the sinks to work. Chopping, hauling bins that were heavier than they appeared, washing dishes in sinks that never seemed to empty. None of it was difficult in isolation, but together, after everything else today, it felt like punishment.
Hale, predictably, made a production out of it. Not enough to get reprimanded, but enough to entertain himself. Exaggerated sighs. A running commentary under his breath about culinary injustice.
Elliot was aware of Hale beside him—broad shoulders taking up room even when he wasn't moving. Every time Hale reached for something, he caught the shift of muscle under his shirt, and had to step aside to avoid their arms brushing.
The kitchen was too small. That was the problem.
"You cook?" Hale asked, elbow-deep in suds.
"Yes."
"Huh." Hale scrubbed at a pan. "Interesting."
Elliot glanced at him. "Why is that interesting?"
"My mom used to say cooking tells you a lot about a person." He laughed, short and dismissive. "Probably bullshit though."
Elliot returned to scrubbing, hands moving automatically. He’d had enough of Hale’s small talk for one day.
When they were finally dismissed, the sky outside had already darkened. Elliot peeled off the apron and handed it back without comment. His hands were aching, stomach growling, shoulders tight with the kind of tension that didn’t come from physical work alone.
He kept his eyes forward as they filed out and trudged back to the barracks.
That night, Elliot lay awake long past midnight.
His thoughts kept circling back to Hale. That easy confidence. His short blond hair, curling at the tips. The stupid grin on his face. And then later, in the kitchen, the way his forearms had looked wet and soapy, hands moving through dishwater.
Elliot had stared at those hands for too long before looking away. Then, two minutes later, he’d glanced back.
Putain.