CHAPTER 27 THE CHRISTMAS FREQUENCY #3
He didn't need to explain. He didn't need to cite the code of The “City of Two.” The refusal was written in the way he carried himself—a man whose life was built on a foundation of singular, unyielding commitments.
"I know," John said, his voice dropping into a low, resonant hum. He looked at Alex with a mixture of frustration and pure, unadulterated respect.
"But I keep trying to hear you tell me no. It’s your integrity, Alex.
Every time you hold that line, it makes my heart stop.
I’ve spent my career around people who trade their values for a better deal.
Then I meet a man who won’t even move his coffee without a debate, and it... it changes the math."
Alex didn't look away. He accepted the weight of the compliment, his chest feeling a little less like a prison and more like a fortress.
John turned his gaze toward the fireplace, the orange light reflecting in his green eyes. The silence was a shared, comfortable tenderness.
"So," John said, his voice clearing as he shifted back to the present.
"I got you a Christmas present. BUT you didn't get me anything. You failed the first mission." He leaned back, a playful challenge in his eyes.
"That is true. I did fail my first mission, not something that happens very often," Alex admitted, a rare, relaxed smile touching his lips.
"If you had," John asked, crossing his arms over his chest,
"What would you have gotten me?"
Alex looked down at his coffee, tracing the rim of the mug.
"Well, given that I'm a poor Navy officer and you're on a high-powered attorney salary, I couldn't afford much. It would probably be something I made myself."
"Oh," John replied, his eyebrows shooting up.
"You do arts and crafts now? You’re just the Renaissance man, aren't you?"
Alex chuckled, the sound low and warm.
"No. I meant it would be something deeply personal and meaningful to us... as a couple, as you said."
John didn't miss the beat. He stepped into the opening immediately.
"So, I do have a chance? Of still being part of a couple with you?"
Alex shook his head, though the amusement stayed in his eyes.
"You’re exhausting, John. If I actually had to pick? I’d probably just get you some dirt. Or a rock."
The laughter that followed was easy and unscripted, a temporary breach that made the firelight seem just a bit brighter.
"I'm making a request for time," John said, looking back at him with an honest, stripped-back intensity.
"Don't leave here for an hour. Just stay. I know you have the Yard and the man you measure the world by. But just for sixty minutes, can I have your company? No Scotch, no sailboats, no loopholes. Just two guys sitting by a fire on a cold morning."
Alex looked at his watch, then back at John. Alex knew that every minute spent here was a minute further away from the safety of the room. But he also knew that the shadow was waiting for him back in 2204, and the silence there would be absolute.
"Sixty minutes," Alex agreed, his voice steady. He reached over and moved his coffee cup back—not to the original spot, but somewhere in the middle.
"But if you move that cup again, Counselor, I’m charging you with contempt of court."
John laughed, that deep, grounding sound that made everything feel like a lighter suit of armor to wear. "Deal..."
The sixty minutes didn’t belong to the Navy. They belonged to two men sitting by a fire, shedding their professional skins piece by piece.
Alex found himself drifting away from the technical jargon of the SCIF.
He talked about Oklahoma—the red dirt, the sprawling horizon that never felt like a cage, and the quiet weight of expectation that had followed him since he was a boy.
He admitted, for the first time, that he had turned down Yale for the Academy.
He described the moment he chose the military over the ivory tower, seeking a structure he thought would define him.
John threw his head back and let out a booming laugh that made the fire flare in the hearth.
"You’ve got to be kidding me, Alex. I’m a Yale Law grad. I spent three years in those gothic shadows trying to figure out how to break the rules, and you turned it down to come here and live by three thousand of them?"
John leaned in, the irony of their meeting bridging the gap between them.
He talked about growing up in California—the easy, golden rhythm of the West Coast and the jarring, humid reality of the East. He described the "adjustment period" of being a first-year attorney in a town that felt like it was built of brick and bureaucracy.
"Every day is a trial," John admitted, his green eyes reflecting the orange embers.
"Not in court, but just figuring out who I am in this town. It’s a lot of long nights and cold coffee. But then... then I find a man like you sitting by a fire, and the East Coast doesn't feel quite so gray."
For that hour, the shadow was replaced by a shared history.
Outside, the sun finally crested the brick chimneys of Annapolis.
The crystalline frost on the windowpane began to weep, turning from jagged white patterns into clear, slow-moving drops of water that blurred the world outside.
The ice was melting, if only for a moment.