a break in the madness

Bound
By elfin

I stare at my own hand, at the dull metal of the gun held there, and follow the narrow barrel to the end, to where the maw is resting snugly against the bowed head of their victim. Our victim. My victim. Tufts of fair hair caress the smooth, brutal edges in the soft autumn breeze as I try not to let the insidious hammering of my heart show in my hand.

He’s been forced to his knees at the edge of this muddy field, hands bound behind his back with chicken wire, filthy rags tied around his eyes and mouth.

How the hell is he even here? He’s supposed to be in the Middle East, supposed to be on the trail of an Al Qaeda cell hell-bent on bringing the fight to London. Supposed to be working with Six for a one-off operation, the kind of sting he lives for.

Like that isn’t dangerous enough.

So why the hell is he here? At the end of a gun that’s going to get us both killed?

There’re four of them with us, another four on the peripheral. I could shoot one of them, maybe even two, but they’re watching me so intently that I’d be dead a second later. Or writhing in pain. And so would our victim.

I have no choice. I have to shoot him. From far enough away not to burn him; close enough to get the shot I need. I have to hurt him. I have to scare him. I’ve never seen him scared, never known him to be. He’s kneeling in front of me, feeling the gun against his scalp, and he’s completely still. He can’t see me, I haven’t spoken. He has no idea who am I. No idea I’m someone who would rather die myself than kill him but would prefer to get us both out of here alive, if that’s even possible.

They’re waiting, getting antsy. This is proof, this is what it’s all been leading up to. I’d hoped for a terrorist, someone the world wouldn’t miss. Of course, they probably think that’s what he is. Has he played his part too well or not well enough? Never known him to underplay a role. But I’ve known him to overplay it, to push his luck to breaking point.

Well, it broke this time, didn’t it, idiot? Now look at us. You kneeling there, a sacrifice to my shining career. You were supposed to be a stranger! It’s taken months to get here and now it’s all blown to hell. Because I can’t do it.

Lifting the gun, pulling back. Some cruel and twisted part of me makes sure he hears the safety click off. Now my hesitation looks like torture and out of the corners of my eyes I see smiles creep over the faces of my so-called colleagues, his captives. His killers. I’m more than they expected.

I don’t know where this malicious streak is coming from and I know if we make it out of this alive his easy acceptance of my apology won’t mean anything.

Time slowly eats away at you. I’m only speeding its progress.

I aim. There needs to be blood, he has to react. I need to get the other weapons aimed away from his head. If I don’t shoot him, if I miss, they will, and they won’t. I don’t think I could cope with seeing the fair head opened up like a cantaloupe, brains and blood spilling into the mud. Not his. I think I’d go down just as fast in the ensuing exchange of bullets.

Bad plan.

I aim.

I fire.

The shot is perfect. It’s deafening and blinding. I see the blood in his hair even before I hear the metal crack of the bullet leaving the gun.

Instinct maybe, or his mind and body firmly believe he has a slug in his brain. He drops.

Then I realise it’s neither. I’ve shot two of the four men in the head, dead centre, before I see him roll and kick out with his feet, toppling the third so his shot goes wild and my next bullet kneecaps him, the one after killing him.

One to go, the one who didn’t have his gun out when this all started, the one who’d been my mentor during my time with these so-called ‘Protesters for Peace’. Craig. I don’t have reason to doubt it’s his real name. He thinks mine’s Michael. He thinks we’re friends, ‘buddies’, sharing secrets and swapping stories about early days on the Rainbow Warrior and living in tunnels under Heathrow.

He’s never even been to sea. And the PfP has as much in common with Green Peace as I have with Craig.

Gun aimed at his temple, I glance down at the man who was supposed to be the victim here. I have scared him. He can’t free his hands although from what I saw God knows he’s tried. His wrists are ribbons of pink skin and red flesh. He’s rubbing his face in the mud trying to get some purchase on the blindfold or the gag, trying to move to disgusting rags from his head. But he’s weaker than I’ve ever seen him and already his efforts are flagging.

Craig, open-mouthed in front of me like he can’t believe I’ve betrayed him, asks me why. I shoot him in the shoulder; drop him to the ground as he clutches at the wound. The other four are on their way, shouting, running. It’s only been a matter of seconds since I fired my first shot at my own colleague. At my friend. My lover.

Who, miraculously, has managed to get back up onto his knees. Who’s desperately trying to stand despite his loosely bound ankles. I grab the mud-caked collar of his coat and drag him to his feet, pulling him, stumbling and protesting, towards the car Craig and I arrived in.

Yanking open the door –Craig never locked it – I shove him inside and instinctively he scrambles as far over as he can, pressing himself into the passenger seat, hard against the other door. I haven’t said a word but he’s trusting me anyway. Probably he knows it’s me. I didn’t kill him when I had the chance and for him that’s the basis for a long-lasting friendship.

Shots start hitting the driver’s door as soon as I’ve closed it and dropping my gun to the dash I reach under the steering column and grab a handful of wires, taking a deep breath as I find the two I need and the engine coughs to life. It’s a pile of shit, a rust bucket too old to still be on the road, but as soon as the handbrake’s off and my foot lands on the accelerator, it moves like a Ferrari.

A Ferrari with no tyres.

I glance over at the man in the passenger seat, the man who has pulled off a move worthy of an Olympic gymnast by getting his legs through the circle of his arms and his hands in front of him. His wrists are bleeding steadily and its one of the scariest things I’ve seen because if I don’t do something soon he’s going to bleed to death.

“Adam.”

I manage to say his name - my voice rough like it hasn’t been used in weeks - just as he tears off the blindfold and the gag. He looks like a wild animal, trapped and caged. Indigo eyes are almost completely black and he’s blinking madly against the glaring sun.

I wish I could stop the car, unbind his wrists because he has to be in agony. But as soon as he’s able and without a word he twists in the seat and reaches for the gun on the dashboard. Settling it between hands that must be torturing him, gripping it with fingers that must be cold and near to useless, he turns and blows out the back window with two shots to take aim at the car bouncing along the dirt-track road behind us.

Pride and love almost swallow me. He won’t stop, won’t give in to the pain or the fear. Not until we’re safe, until the bad guys are dead or unable to come after us any further.

I drive, keeping the car as steady and straight as possible on this surface-less excuse for a road.

He only fires two bullets. Then I hear the hammer hit metal and his soft swearing. But already it’s enough. There’s the sound of screaming metal and an almighty crash as the driver behind us loses control for whatever reason – blown tyre, blown engine, blown brain – and the car veers off into a telephone pole.

I don’t stop. Not yet. Not until I hear his painful voice tell me they’re dead, it’s okay. And impossibly I realise he’s comforting me.

I let the car slide to a stop, the engine still rumbling unhealthy around us. I turn, take the gun from his hands and carefully unwind the wire from around his wrists. He flinches and I hear the pain as sharp breaths between his teeth. The blood on him is scarlet in contrast to the stark white of his skin.

I do a quick strip, shrug my jacket back on and rip my denim shirt into long pieces, carefully using them to bandage his wrists, pulling the material tight to stop the flow that’s already turned the blue to red. His dark eyes close and he settles back against the passenger seat.

“No. Adam.” Reaching for him I cradle his head in my hand and press a kiss to his mud-covered, cold, clammy forehead. “Don’t sleep. Stay awake, stay with me.”

“Tired,” is his verbal response, but he opens his eyes again.

“I know. I’ll get you to a hospital but you have to stay awake. Tell me how you got here. Why aren’t you in Basra?”

I drive, hearing his voice burbling in the background, not listening to the words. I check the petrol gauge and thank a god I don’t believe in for Craig’s paranoia about the threats of another fuel crisis last week. I wish I wasn’t so deep undercover, that my only method of communication with the grid isn’t back at the pokey flat they put me up in. Adam – Super Spy - rarely goes in deep with any form of safety net. Harry’s insistence on a separate mobile phone is usually countered with it accidentally drowning in the nearest available body of water. Once that was a toilet in a hotel in Milan.

He’s still talking and I’m not really listening. Because I think I can hear something I don’t want to be hearing. I think I can hear a helicopter and I’m certain it isn’t one of ours.

It says something for his state of body and mind that he doesn’t hear it until it’s almost on top of us. Until a small explosion just behind us throws the car off course and it’s all I can do to hold it straight on what’s currently passing for a road.

I glance at him and see this look in his eyes I’ve never seen before. Muted terror. And I know it’s not for the serious threat behind us but the certainty that we’re not going to make it to a hospital any time soon. He thinks he’s going to die. He takes more and worse risks than any of us and yet the idea of death – not by a well-placed bullet but slowly, knowing and feeling every second that ticks away – is the thing that scares him most.

I want to keep driving, want to hand him the gun back and have him blow the fuel tank on the whirly bird shooting at us. But we’re out of bullets and he’s too far gone anyway. His eyes are unfocused, his concentration shot to hell. We thought there were no more bad guys in our immediate future. We were wrong.

The fields have given way to woodland on one side of the track and I spot a clearing, yanking the wheel hard to make the turning before it’s gone. The car only takes us so far. The clearing’s small and I can’t drive through trees. We both dive out, rolling on impact with the ground, assisted by the force of heat and energy as a shot from the chopper hits the car’s fuel tank.

“Adam!”

I make it round to the other side of the clearing, feel the fierce heat on my face as the fire burns intensely. But it’s buying us a few minutes to get clear of the wreck and into the closely spaced trees. He must have untied his ankles in the car because he’s running, albeit unsteadily and with none of his usual power. His ankles can’t have been tied with the same stuff as his wrists or he wouldn’t even be managing the stumbling pace he is now. I have no idea what reserves he has, where he’s drawing them from. Maybe simple determination not to die out here – not to slowly bleed to death in a grave of decaying leaves, hunted by men who have already done enough to kill him.

I don’t know how long we run for, how far we get. My mind’s losing its grip as Adam’s reserves are depleted and eventually he takes a stride and falls forward.

I’ve kept him in front of me so I can’t leave him behind and when he goes, I go too. Down onto my knees beside him, one arm across his back as he momentarily rests on all fours before his wrists give way and he collapses, rolling his knees out from under him to protect his face from the scrub on the ground.

Lying on his back, hands cradling one another against his chest. Pupils unequally dilated, too dark, too blurred in blackened sockets, he looks up at me. “Go,” he tells me through split and bleeding lips. “Go, Tom!”

I shake my head. Not a chance. “No. I’m not leaving you.”

“Don’t be an idiot! One of us has to get out of here alive.” I can see what it’s costing him to talk, the price even of staying conscious. If I go, if I do what I should do, would he try to crawl to safety or would he just curl up and die? It’s the first time I’ve ever known there be any doubt. I don’t like not knowing.

“I’m not leaving you.”

Rolling his eyes he knows I’m not shifting. We both go or we both die. No other choice here. Somehow he gets to his knees and one supporting arm around his waist gets him back to his feet. I can feel him shaking, his whole body going into shock. The scrape on his head where I shot the bullet past him is still wet with blood – deeper than I’d planned.

“Sorry about shooting you,” I tell him as we start again through the woods, slower this time, one of his bloodied arms around me, locking us together.

“Don’t.”

There’s no humour and no blame. It’s just ‘don’t do this now’. He can’t deal with it right now, can’t even think about it and I know that. I’m just scared of what will happen when he does start to deal with it. He thought he was a dead man – bullet in the head – feeling the pain before his world ended.

I frightened him. I had to. But it’s not like making him jump. It’ll undo everything he is if he lets it.

Up ahead I can see something that looks like a cabin. It’s the first place they’ll look if they come on foot, if they’re still looking for us. The helicopter noise died away after the car exploded. But in a place like that there might be a shotgun or a rifle, anything would do. Adam needs water too, and first aid. And a hospital.

If I found a needle and thread I could put a couple of field stitches in his wrists but the scars wouldn’t look too pretty…. I’ve been spending far too much time around him. People think I’m the smart one when it comes to dress, they wouldn’t believe how much effort Adam puts into turning out the way he does, how much preening he manages every morning, every night, every time he steps out of the house. He always looks the part. Not sure what scars around his wrists are going to do for that. Depends on the role I guess.

And I can’t believe I’m worrying about how it’ll look for a single second when he’s dying.

The cabin’s locked but that’s the least of our worries. Adam barely makes it inside, sliding down to the dark brown rug in front of the door after I’ve closed and bolted it.

There are three rooms – kitchen, functional bathroom and open-plan living/bedroom. I was right about the motives of the owner too. There are four rifles in a small gun-cabinet mounted on the wall to the right of the dark, open fireplace. Smashing the glass I grab up the bullets and two of the guns, loading one and putting it next to Adam where he’s still sitting; head back, eyes closed.

Crouching down I shake his shoulder and he groans softly in pain but doesn’t look at me.

”Don’t sleep,” I hiss, and he tells me to fuck off. I can’t help but smile.

Loading the second gun I take it with me to check the kitchen. Filling a glass with water I hunt around, making a mess of the place until I find a first aid kit – a good one, well stocked. Even a new pack of needles and some black thread.

Taking it all back into the living room I kneel next to Adam and check his head wound. The bleeding’s stopped and it’s drying. Still, it may turn out to be the most damaging injury he’s got and I try not to think about that again.

Unwrapping the blood-soaked strips of my shirt from his wrists is messy. I tied them tight in the car and it looks to have stopped the bleeding but now I’ve taken them off it starts again. If he’d gone through an artery he’d be dead already but it’s not much comfort.

I don’t tell him what I’m doing as I take a needle from the packet and the plastic tape from around the small reel of thin thread. I get half the water down his throat with some considerable effort and dip a swab of cotton wool in what remains, cleaning his wrists. They were bound back to back so the worst of the lacerations are at the sides where he’s gone down to the bone.

The first prick of the fine, short needle doesn’t make much of an impression through the haze of pain but as I pull on the wound it gets his attention. He makes an agonised sound, lifts his head as he tries to pull his hand away but I hold it tight, gripping hard enough to hurt him. When he sees what I’m doing he stops fighting me, tears leaking from his eyes.

I work on putting a couple of intricate neat stitches in his skin to minimise on scarring.

Adam’s unravelling attention wonders to the first aid kit, and clumsily he reaches across for something. Part of me wants to yell at him to just sit still but it’s overridden as always by the very persuasive part of me that loves him and I look to see what he’s pawing the kit for.

He’s spotted a pack of Codeine tablets and I can’t blame him for wanting to get his hands on them. I take the pack out from under his fingers and he swears at me brightly.

“Did they give you anything?” I ask him, trying to sound like a spy protecting his ward more than an over-protective lover trying to keep his partner alive.

He looks at me and I know he has no idea what I’m asking him.

“Injections? Hypodermics? Drugs, Adam?”

Realisation passes over his creased features and he shakes his head once, slowly. I’m sure the headache’s bouncing around his skull like a metal ball. “Give me the fucking painkillers, Tom,” and the sound of those determined words makes me want to hug him. Popping two out of the foil I put them one by one in his mouth and he swallows them dry. Then I get back to my stitching.

They’re going to make him even drowsier but he couldn’t have fought the pain for too much longer. It was going to overwhelm him and no amount of shouting from me would have kept him conscious. This way he’s at least got a chance to blot it all out and concentrate on the dire situation we’ve got ourselves into.

~

(Back in London, on the grid:

Juliet, furious. “Three month’s work, Harry, and he blew it!”

Harry, incredulous. “You’d rather he’d have put a bullet through Adam Carter’s skull?”

Juliet, hesitant. “Well… no. But Carter would willingly die for his country.”

Harry, shocked. “It doesn’t mean his country gets to shoot him in the head!”)

~

When I’ve closed up his wrists as best I can, I bandage them. Then I go checking for other injuries. He protests of course, telling me it isn’t the time or place and besides, he doesn’t really feel like it right now.

I tell him to shut up and he allows the quick, abrupt examination. His chest looks like a map of the Middle East in purple, blue and black. He’s got a couple of broken ribs. His left shoulder looks like someone stamped on it in size eleven boots but apart from the vivid external and no doubt severe internal bruising it seems okay. But I’m no doctor.

He stops me when my fingers lift the zipper on his filthy jeans. For a moment my heart’s in my throat but he stops the thought from forming fully.

“Not that. Just… no sanitation… for the last twenty-four hours.”

Message received and understood. Carefully I help him to his feet. It’s not far to the bathroom but he has to concentrate on each step just to get his feet one in front of the other. I offer a hand or two but he shoos me out so I wait just outside the door, rifle in hand, listening for noises outside the cabin. It’s been a good twenty minutes and no one’s come. Maybe they think we’re dead, shattered in the explosion.

That’s just fine with me.

After he’s finished pissing on the porcelain I hear water in the sink. He can barely stand on his own two feet and he’s bathing. Adam can’t do dirt for too long. He spent two days in the back of a truck once, a railroad out of Istanbul. The first thing he did when he got to the embassy was take a shower and change into his usual shirt, jacket and jeans combo. Not that he was in them very long. He didn’t even know I was waiting for him until he stepped into the hotel room after an hour’s debriefing - blissfully short thanks to Harry Pearce waiting in the wings.

Of course, Harry didn’t know I was waiting either.

Second thing Adam needs when he comes out from a dangerous undercover operation is a hard fuck. Top or bottom depends on how it went, what the personal cost was that time around. I’m different. I don’t need him naked immediately. I just need to see him, touch him, hear his voice to know I’m alive.

“Tom?” The door’s open, he’s leaning heavily on the frame looking like those two simple acts have wiped him out completely. “We got time to rest?”

It must kill him to ask.

And it kills me to say it. “You can’t sleep.”

All the fight’s gone from him except for the part of him fighting the Codeine, the part he desperately wants to give in to. “I need to.”

I check my watch, amazed it’s still working. “Okay. An hour. Then I’ll wake you and we’ll go.”

He nods and heads for the bed. Or at least I think that’s where he’s heading for. His path is erratic and it’s only a couple of steps before I’m at his side and I’m helping him over there. He’s asleep the moment his head settles on the pillow – lying on his back because his usual sleeping position is too painful thanks to the fractured ribs and gunshot wound to his head.

Fetching the second rifle from in front of the door where he left it, I settle on the other side of the bed with both guns.

There’s more bruising coming out on this side of his face, marks around his neck. Scare tactics.

During training they teach you how to break a man’s neck – it’s a trick Adam learnt better than the rest of us. But then, he tends to be a sucker for the more dangerous assignments and he did come to us from Six. I actually thought he might calm down after Harry poached him from across the river. I was wrong.

The night after he got Joyce to commit suicide for my sake, he took Danny, Zoë and I to this amazing little French restaurant south of the river. I don’t remember ever being so grateful to anyone before. He’d saved my life and my soul.

Didn’t know, didn’t guess, that he would want my body and my heart too.

Zoë and Danny left before Adam and I; took a cab home. We stayed on for a while, the staff cleaning up around us, drinking the most expensive whiskey they had – something they’d brought up from the cellar. When they did eventually kick us out we walked along the river for a while, talking about everything, nothing in particular. Then he invited me back to his place. I don’t remember there being anything suggestive in his asking. I assumed we were going to carry on drinking.

But in the cab he started telling me quietly how distracting my voice on the other end of the wire had been, how he’d been thinking of what it would sound like saying other words, words meant to coax an orgasm rather than a suicide. I remember listening to him, dick twitching, hearing the hints of class in an otherwise perfect North-East London accent.

And once we reached his house I remember staring at him in the dim light of the spots in his lounge, thinking how beautiful he was and wondering how I’d missed it before.

He told me then that he wanted me, told me if I didn’t want him that was fine. We could have a drink, I could sleep on the sofa, he’d never come on to me again.

I asked him how big his bed was and with this filthy grin he replied, “Big enough for four.”

That first night was fantastic. He’s infinitely adaptable; curious, adventurous and confident.

It was months before we worked out that our days and nights together were more than convenient fucks. Half-eaten takeaways left to go cold as we shagged on the sofa, half-finished bottles turning to vinegar as we pounded one another into the mattress

So I had to change. Oddly he’s a one-lover guy. I’ve always been faithful to women, never to men. Adam wouldn’t have that. After all, the thought of anyone else having him makes me insanely jealous, so I can’t really complain when he’s the same with me.

He’s a surprise, an enigma. He shows one face to the grid, another seven or eight to his enemies, and one to me and only me. I see him smile, I see him laugh. I see his head dropped back and body arched in orgasm. I would never have guessed, when we first met in the back of the van outside the safe house, when he got in my face about being conned by Joyce and I tried to get my hands around his neck, how much he would quickly mean to me, how precious his life would become.

I was losing the plot when I met him. All he did was hand me a new script.

~

(Back in London, Ruth puts her head around the door of Harry’s office.

"Harry?" He looks up from the screen on his desk and gives her a tired smile, hoping she has news on the whereabouts of his two top men. But she only has more bad news. "The crew of the helicopter... they're Six."

~

"What the hell do you think you're playing at?" Harry explodes into Oliver Mace's office. It's been a while since they've locked swords but he's overstepped a line very close to Harry's heart.

Mace sits back, legs crossed, foot bouncing under the mahogany desk. He taps the stainless steel pen once against his front teeth and doesn't pretend not to know what Pearce is talking about. "Solving a problem you don't even know exists," he explains calmly, as if that justifies the attempted murder of two MI5 agents. Two who are also close to Harry's heart.

"What are you talking about?"

Mace gestures at the chair opposite him and reaches into the top drawer of his desk as Harry reluctantly sits. Mace tosses three black and white, A4 photographs onto the surface in front of him and Harry scoops them up, stares at them expecting some rabid or explicit material but seeing only surveillance shots of Adam Carter and Tom Quinn. In the first they're outside Thames House sharing a rare cigarette. In the second they're approaching what looks like Tom's apartment building, hands in pockets, talking. In the third they're standing on some random street corner, maybe waiting to cross a busy London road.

Harry's expression turns into a half-smile and he throws the photographs back. "My agents are allowed to socialise with one another," he defends them half-heartedly, not feeling he really needs to.

Mace's mouth twitches. "They're doing more than socialising with each other. They're sleeping together."

Harry actually laughs. Throws his head back and laughs. "Are you out of your mind? Adam and Tom?" He shakes his head at Mace's deliberate nod. "On what are you basing this insane theory?"

"Behaviour."

"Behaviour? No witnesses? No surveillance shots?" Anger replaces the humour. "Who gave you permission to put two of my people under surveillance?"

"I don't need anyone's permission, Harry."

"You could be endangering them. You did endanger them!" His head snaps up, eyes torn from the black and whites in the centre of the desk. "You blew Adam’s cover! You had their car blown up! You might have killed them for... what? For this? On suspicion of extra-curricula activities?!"

"They're a security risk."

Pushing his chair back, scraping the polished wooden floor and enjoying the wince that pulls Mace's features taut, Harry leans on the mahogany. "You're a security risk. Pull your surveillance. I don't care if they're up each other's arses every night. If you endanger theirs or any of my agents' lives one more time I'll make sure they know enough to concentrate all of their not inconsiderable talents on bringing you down."

He leaves the room, slamming the heavy door behind them. But for a long time he stands in the corridors of power and worries over what Mace said and whether there's any truth behind it.)

~

I don’t touch him. He sleeps lightly when he’s in the field. The drugs might have taken him deeper but I don’t want to wake him until I have to. So I just watch him, sleeping, half-dead.

My fingers play at the edges of his hair, still as he moves, turns his face towards me.

And suddenly he’s awake, eyes wide, reacting to the same sound that's got me diving off the bed and dragging him with me. The wall of the cabin behind us explodes in a shower of wooden splinters at the same time as we hit the floor. I roll off him, not wanting to put my entire body weight on his chest, and catch the rapid blinking of his eyes. Usually Adam moves from asleep to awake in the time it takes to open his eyes. But he lost that edge hours ago and now he's running on empty.

I know how every muscle must be protesting, how much he must be hurting and how desperately his system wants to shutdown. Still, when his gaze focuses on me it silently asks me what the fuck we do next.

I hand him one of the rifles I’ve brought with me off the bed and he takes it, checks it, cocks it.

“Any idea how many of them were with you?”

But he shakes his head. “Sorry. Blindfold.”

Another round of fire, aimed at the same place. And I wonder if we’re really surrounded or if it’s a bluff. If there are thirty men out there or just three. I don’t know if either of us is up to fighting our way out of this, but Adam won’t survive another round with the bad guys.

With a harsh crack, the door flies open.

Instinct makes me drop to my back - a rifle aimed at your crotch by a man with more adrenaline in his system than blood will always hone response times. But somehow, before the two men who appear in the wrecked doorway can even get an idea of our position, he's shot them both - one kill shot in the forehead and the first guy drops instantly. One slightly off-target and he gets the second guy in the throat. But it has the same effect more or less - it's just messier.

I dig two shells out from the stash in my pocket and hand them to him. He reloads with the speed of a born hunter but not fast enough to stop a third man leaping over the bodies of his colleagues and taking aim. I put a single shell in his head and he goes down.

The noise fades and all I can hear is our combined breathing and my heart hammering against my ribcage like it wants to get out. I take a moment, glance at Adam, check he's okay, and realise what a sight we must make. Half-sitting, half-lying on the floor next to the wood-strewn bed, covered in blood and splinters and sweat, rifles aimed at the door.

We're both listening through 360 degrees, just in case they decide to come in another way. But I figure the attack on the sidewall was a diversion - no one could come through the gaping hole without being torn to shreds on the splintered frame.

Once the cabin stops protesting at the abuse, and the man with the rifle shot in the neck actually dies, silence descends and I know I was right; three attackers, not thirty.

Still it's twenty minutes before we lower our guard and the guns. Adam hoists himself upright until he's sitting with his back against the bed and I move up next to him, eyes still on the door, still wary just in case they're waiting for us to come out as patiently as we're waiting for them to come in.

"I don't think there's anyone else," Adam tells me eventually, letting his certainly aching head slide to my shoulder. With a soft breath I tip my head to rest against his.

“How did you wind up in that field?” I ask him softly. He told me in the car but we both know I wasn't listening, was trying to concentrate on keeping us on the road and out of the line of fire.

“It was a trap. They told me to make contact in London. Someone was waiting for me. I have a horrible feeling…. I think it was Six.”

I think the codeine’s gone to his head. “No.”

“I think someone sold me out. Maybe Mace getting his revenge.”

It’s too much – it’s not possible. Adam’s allegiances might have swapped to our side of the river but he’s still a British agent. We’re all on the same side. Mace wanted Adam back months ago, Harry refused – seeing the obvious advantage he was gaining, seeing the fear in Mace’s eyes the first time he saw Adam on the grid. Did Mace fear Adam enough to arrange his death? His death by my hand.

Did they really believe I’d shoot him? Was I supposed to? The thought makes me feel queasy. We have enough to worry about without our own people ganging up on us.

"Think Harry knows where we are?"

"No. He'd have come for us." Adam's unfailing faith in our boss is a constant surprise. "We need to get out of here. There must be a track to this place from the road."

It makes me wonder what the owners of this once lovely cabin are going to say when they see the mess the British Security Services have made of it. I should leave a contact number, we should fix it up.

"We always leave a trail of destruction." I feel Adam's soft chuckle. He knows it, and he loves it. He sees it as revenge on the country he serves, the job that’s wreaked enough destruction on his life he feels he needs to get even in some small, insignificant way. It's just a cabin. We're human and we've experienced more personal havoc than the deconstructed wall behind us.

He falls quiet and glancing at him I see his eyes have closed. He's right, we can't stay here. Inwardly I promise him as much uninterrupted sleep as he needs when we're home safe. I nudge him.

"Come on. Time to move."

I help him to his feet and he finds his balance, still clutching the reloaded rifle. He sways as he dusts splinters of wood from his filthy shirt and torn trousers. Then he looks at me and I can see pain shining in his eyes. There's nothing I can say, no point in empty sympathy, he knows the situation we're in just as well as I do.

Outside the autumn sun's shining through the trees and it looks peaceful, beautiful actually. We start to walk, Adam somehow keeping up with whatever pace I set.

"It's a nice day," he comments after a long silence, and I wonder if the second pair of codeine tablets he insisted on swallowing before we left were really such a great idea.

But still I'm happy to agree, happy to go with anything he says because his eyes are red slits and the taut set of his face speaks volumes about the state he's in.

I turn to smile at him, hoping he'll return it, and I see them. Two men standing not ten feet from us, automatics raised and aimed so casually I realise they’re no longer seeing us as threats. I wonder if we still are.

I don't know how Adam knows, what he sees in my face at that moment, but without hesitation and in a movement more fluid than them or I would have believed him capable of now, Adam turns, raises the rifle and fires twice. Both men drop like Punch and Judy, strings cut.

"No more!" Stupid to think they were alone. "One move, either of you, and you're both dead." The voice comes from directly behind us. "Drop the rifles. Slowly."

I know, even before I hear the rustling of disturbed leaves all around us, that we're surrounded. I'm starting to think we're both dead anyway, and maybe we should take as many of them with us as we can. Who are they all? I can't believe Adam's right about Six. They wouldn't do this - they couldn't. Giving the bad guys a helping hand is one thing, amassing a small army just to chase two of Five's spooks through a wood is nuts.

"On your knees, hands behind your heads."

I glance at Adam and it's clear he's out of ideas just as I am. If we're going to pull off a miracle here we need to pick our moment. So we do as we're told and he tries not to show how much lifting his arms hurts his ribs.

I remember I didn't leave a contact number for the owners of the cabin we destroyed, and I feel insanely guilty for that.

A guy comes up behind us and I half-expect a crack across the head with the butt of his gun but instead I get to hear the man beside me howl; a rough sound of agony. Looking up and back I see the twisted grin on the face of the guy who has Adam's bandaged wrists in his hand and is squeezing them, rubbing the raw wounds against the rough gauze.

I bite into my bottom lip to stop myself from saying something that would probably earn us both a bullet in the head.

He's released and it's all he can do to remain upright now. I want to do something, say something, ease the pain that's got him sweating and trembling. But there's nothing, and with the realisation that we're not going to make it comes this cold, sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

A strange thought enters my head. Have I ever actually said, 'I love you'? Too late now - no way I'm giving these guys ammunition like that. But if we do make it I promise myself that one indulgence. And I'll get the words out of Adam too, even if it kills me.

Two guys come around from behind us and I recognise Craig. He grins at me but stays back, automatic aimed from two metres at Adam's head. They're PfP. I hadn't realised how much my initiation meant to them. They must have had something big planned for me because by the looks of it I've disappointed a lot of people.

We're back where we started.

The guy who was getting his kicks torturing Adam comes closer, dragging the barrel of his gun through Adam's matted hair, pressing the sharp edges into the scrape my earlier bullet caused. He flinches but this time doesn't give the guy the pleasure of sound.

He comes to a stop in front of me. "You were supposed to shoot him, Michael. Why didn't you?" He raises the weapon, points it directly at my forehead. I don't budge. "He's MI5. He's a secret fucking agent who thought he could infiltrate us, bring us down from the inside." As he speaks he swings the gun in a neat arc between us, taking aim at Adam's temple without looking away from me. "I thought you were stronger than that? Thought you had the guts."

They don't know who I am! Maybe I can talk us out of this.

"They're not a threat to us," I say coolly. "I won't shoot an unarmed man in cold blood just for the hell of it. I thought we stood for peace."

Wrong move. His expression becomes a sneer. "You won't shoot an MI5 agent but you're happy to gun down nine of us to save his life?” Touché. “Who are you, Michael?"

"One of you."

The kick to my stomach shouldn't come as such a surprise but it's a couple of seconds before my lungs stop screaming and manage to pull in air. A few seconds more before I can see anything other than white dots.

"No, you’re not! Who are you? Are you one of them? MI5?" His voice rises in volume. "Are you a fucking spy too, Michael?"

The two shots are almost simultaneous. He fires, but in between one breath and another, someone fires at him.

The woods explode into a fire fight but I can't move. I can't even pick up the gun the guy's dropped.

Beside me, Adam topples over almost in slow motion, blood seeping from the wound in the top of his shoulder, close to the base of his neck. I stare at him. I think he's dead.

I don't know how long it is before I move.

Somehow Harry's here, kneeling in blood-soaked leaves, hand pressed to Adam's shoulder, red seeping between his fingers, screaming into a mobile for an air ambulance. For a minute or two it's like watching everything from inside a bubble. Then the bubble bursts, and the noise and the shouting is overwhelming but I can hear Adam's laboured breaths as he struggles to gasp in enough air to stay alive.

Harry's got his coat off, covering Adam with it. I'm only wearing my jacket but I tear it off anyway, wadding up the thick material, amazed I can't feel the cold air on my bare skin. Harry takes it from me, keeps it pressed to Adam's shoulder, but we both know that's not where the real damage is. We both know enough. Adam has minutes, no more. Where the hell is that helicopter?

~

twelve hours later

The coffee in this place sucks. Adam's out of theatre and in recovery. Looks a mess, according to Harry who told the nurses and the surgeon that it was a matter of national security for him to see his agent right there and then.

The angle of the bullet meant it passed through Adam’s lung, collapsing it and leaving a path of tissue disruption before exiting out of his back. It was a miracle it missed his spine and his heart.

He's covered in tubes, Harry says, and on a ventilator. But the surgeon's apparently confident he'll make a complete recovery. They'll be moving him to the High Dependency Unit within the hour. Harry's arranged for me to see him then, just for a couple of minutes.

A nurse spoke to me - asked me who stitched his wrists back together. When I told her that was me, she asked if I'd ever considered nursing. Ruth says she was flirting with me. I didn't notice.

Harry's gone back to the grid for a while but he's promised he'll be back later. I have no idea what time it is. It's dark outside the small window of the small room we're waiting in. It's raining too - pelting against the glass, droplets chasing paths into other droplets. I let it mesmerise me.

Ruth approaches me, that odd little smile on her face, and I know she's going to say something to try to cheer me up.

"You should have asked for her phone number."

"I'm sleeping with Adam." Did I just say that aloud?

By the falling expression on her face, I did. Shit.

Shit. My only option is damage limitation and I'm too bone-tired, too worried, too sick from the cold emptiness the adrenaline has left in its wake.

I don't say anything, just turn back to the window and watch the rain.

"Tom?"

Her voice is so gentle and I can't believe there are tears in my eyes. Every time I close them, every time I blink, I see Adam topple, face-down in the leaves, blood spilling over his shoulder and throat. And me, unable to move, unable to do anything but stare helplessly.

I thought I was better than that.

She puts her hand on my arm and we stand there for a long time, listening to nature wreak havoc outside.

I've no idea how long it is before I hear a name I recognise called in a different voice and a doctor is standing in the doorway. "Tom Stock?"

Am I? "Yes."

"You can see Mr Swift now."

Who? Oh. Yes. Suddenly I'm remembering the farce of Danny's funeral and I wonder what the official cover story is for Adam. Nothing would be good enough, nothing would suit him better than 'MI5 secret agent', and that thought at least brings a smile temporarily to my face.

They make me wear a white gown and a mask over my nose and mouth. In the HDU they’re calling him 'Adam'. It's a relief. It's also vital.

I stand beside the bed and stare down at him, lying there, white against the white sheets. Flat on his back, breathing tube in his throat, one large dressing covering his left shoulder and the side of his neck. No one's mentioned the exit wound, I suppose it's dressed too and I try not to think about the skin graft it'll likely take to heal it completely. They've cleaned up the flesh wound on his scalp. His wrists are bandaged, there’s an IV in the back of his hand and a mint-green plastic bracelet halfway up his arm. It’s lying. It says, 'Adam Swift'.

There are wires snaking out from under the sheets and on a near-by monitor green lines dancing in time to his heartbeat. There are narrow tubes - one from the side of the bed, halfway down - I know what that is. Another closer to the top of the bed, dripping a thick, yellow/red liquid into a bag on a white plastic stand. A drain. Thank God he's unconscious. Please, don't let him wake up like this.

I reach out, avoid the bruising on his face, touch the hair at his temple, still matted with soil and blood.

"We'll wash him later," a nurse tells me kindly. I smile my thanks at her and find myself blinking more tears from my eyes. She sees and comes to stand with me.

She rubs my arm, offering me comfort that seems too far away to grasp. "Why don't you sit with him for a while? Talk to him. He might hear you."

She finds me a chair and I sit down, taking a deep breath and feeling calmer now I know I can stay for a while. I take his fingers in my shaking hand and hold them carefully. I don't know what to say - there's not much I can say. I should find out what the cover story is for him, in case anyone asks. How did he get a bullet through a lung? What happened to his wrists? Why haven't the police been called?

But no one asks anything, so I sit and wait in silence for him to heal.

~

two weeks later

The fingers tucked between my hands start to wriggle and I lift my head from the edge of the mattress to see bright, indigo eyes watching me with wry interest.

"Not a word," I warn him and he smiles. "Need anything?"

"To get out of here."

Not a chance, Adam, not yet. "Sorry. You have two more holes than usual - they need to heal."

They're doing a skin graft tomorrow and he's not relishing the prospect. He's painfully aware that the donor patch on his thigh is going to hurt worse than the exit wound in his back does.

He's the most impatient person in the world at the best of times. He won't sit still in a briefing when there’s a clear and present danger. All he has in here is Sky News and me. He's not happy.

But despite his bitching he looks exhausted. And as I watch him he closes his eyes again and drifts off. He’s been like this for a couple of days, since they moved him from the HDU to this private room in the private wing. He’s still wired up, tubes still draining various bodily fluids from him while other tubes drip them into him. But he was off the ventilator after seventy-two hours and they’re pleased with his fast recovery. Of course it’s fast, he wants out of here.

The door opens quietly and I’m not surprised to see Harry. He checks on Adam, approaching the bed without a word and watching him for a minute or so. One day I’ll ask Adam what it is between them, why Harry worships the ground he moves on, hangs on his every word. What is it in their past that links them? I’ve never asked. I’m scared of asking about Adam’s past, scared of what I’ll hear.

Then Harry turns to me and nods towards the door. I let Adam’s fingers in my hand - hidden by my arms - slide to the bed with some reluctance and rise, following our boss out into the quiet corridor.

“Let’s get some coffee,” he suggests. But it’s not really a suggestion, it’s an order, and I follow with a glance back through the small glass window in the door.

The canteen here has better coffee than the one in the general hospital. It’s good, strong, and I’m finding myself thankful that Harry came.

Still tastes good even when he wordlessly pushes three black and white photographs across the table.

I can’t believe what I’m seeing. They’re of Adam and I. Basic level surveillance, nothing incriminating. But I’m stunned. And furious.

“We’ve been under surveillance?!” I explode, glad we’re the only ones in there.

“It wasn’t Five, Tom, it was Six. Mace.” He pauses, and I know what’s coming next. Six were behind the set-up. Adam was right. Six were the ones who ensured he was the man kneeling at the edge of that damn field with my gun pointed at his head.

Bastards. “Bastards!”

“Is there something going on between you and Adam?”

The question catches me off-guard. Okay, so I didn’t know what was coming next. Is this why Six have been running surveillance?!

I won’t lie. “Yes.”

“What?”

How the hell do I describe it? It’s more than sex but it’s not a marriage. I guess it’s monogamous but only because Adam insists it is. It makes me smile.

“Tom?”

“It’s a relationship,” I tell him vaguely.

He sits back in his chair, expression disapproving. “How long?”

I have no idea. “Since Herman Joyce.” How long ago was that? A year? Two? How long have we been together? Time doesn’t really have the same meaning for us. We spend weeks, on occasions months, apart, off on cases, national and international, staying apart for security reasons, for safety reasons. We work days, nights, double, triple, quadruple shifts. We grab whatever time we can together and when we do we make the most of it.

“Why do you care, Harry?” I can tell by the look on his face that he does. “At least he doesn’t need vetting.” He doesn’t smile. “You always say relationships work better if it’s between people in the service.”

“Not necessarily on the same team.” His words are clipped.

“Why does it make a difference? We’re both professionals. We can handle ourselves.”

He’s still frowning. And there’s something in his eyes, something in the twitch of his lips. And it hits me. It’s not because we’re in his team. It’s because it’s Adam. His golden boy. That look in his eyes is accusation – I’ve corrupted his precious import!

For a moment a perverse part of my mind wonders if he’s imaging us, my hands on Adam’s body, my lips on his neck, his mouth on me.

What is it with these two?

Then Harry lets out a deep breath and sits forward. “All right. But Mace isn’t happy.”

“Maybe he’s jealous.”

The ghost of a smirk makes me smile, but it soon fades. “The helicopter that attacked you out there – that was Six.”

Suddenly the cold, sick feeling in my stomach is back. Attacked by our own. “Why?”

“I think Oliver Mace is scared of Adam. Could be that Adam has something on him, or perhaps he believes his own spin – that Adam’s a loose canon who could go off in the wrong direction at any second. But whatever the reason, he tried to kill you both. Maybe he even tipped the PfP off, blew Adam’s cover.”

I can’t quite believe that Mace would try to kill us both. That he would deliberately finger Adam as an MI5 agent. They might have put a bullet in his head there and then instead of using him as initiation for me. I wouldn’t have known. Or maybe I would; walked into the basement of their HQ one night and found my lover’s body dumped in a corner.

God.

“Tom.” Harry’s voice as always anchors me at the end of some heavy, invisible chain. “He’s going to be all right. And now Mace knows we know. He won’t try anything else. Even he’s not that stupid.”

There’s a doctor with Adam when we get back to his room. I can see the back of the man’s head through the glass.

I turn to Harry, turn to ask him how much more sick leave I can get away with before they need me back.

But the words stick in my throat.

Because I catch Adam’s voice, Adam’s words through the thin wooden door and so does Harry.

“Why are you doing this?”

On closer inspection, not many doctors consult their patients while holding guns to their heads.

“You’d shoot an unarmed man in a hospital bed? What kind of coward are you?”

That’s not the way to beg for your life, Adam.

If I open the door he could fire. He’s close enough for the bullet to go wild and still cut a path through Adam’s skull.

I catch sight of the fire alarm at the same time as Harry and in the next second, he’s broken the glass, the siren’s wailing and the guy with the gun has turned his attention to the door for the briefest of moments….

All I need.

He doesn’t know what’s hit him until his arm’s twisted up behind his back, my foot’s on his neck pressing his face into the floor and Harry is clicking the safety back into place on his weapon.

I look up at Adam at the same time Harry asks him if he’s okay. He nods, mutters his patented, “yeah,” but he woke up with a gun in his face and he’s shaken.

It’s a few minutes before three of our men escort Mace’s assassin out of the room. Harry’s off too, wanting the interrogation for himself.

I drop into the chair next to the bed and Adam reaches for my hand. “Listen. Do me a favour? Stay for a while?”

I thread my fingers between his. “Sure.” No more coffee breaks. But when he goes down to theatre tomorrow morning for the skin graft, I’m going to pay Mace a visit.

This ends. Now.

~

two weeks later

He looks lost in his own home.

Five weeks in hospital. I don’t think he’s been incapacitated for that long before. Ever. Now he’s home he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He’s not allowed back to work for another month, although he’s already told Harry he’ll be on the grid tomorrow morning.

He’s standing by the lounge window, staring out at the quiet London street his terrace house is on. When I move behind him, wrap my arms around his waist, I do it very gently. I don’t know if I’m welcome right now – he’s been in too much pain, been too inactive. He’s been going slowly crazy in hospital. Now he’s out and I don’t know what he needs from me, if anything at all.

It’s a relief, more than a relief, when he sinks back into me, drops his head to my shoulder and closes his eyes.

“Take me to bed, Tom.”

He doesn’t need to ask twice.

Every fibre in me is aching for him, for the way he arches under me, reaches for kisses and melts under touches, the way he gives himself over to me completely; testament to his need to just feel alive.

If my energy can feed him that’s fine by me.

I undress him slowly, ghosting caresses over every fading bruise, careful not to put any pressure on his shoulder, chest or back. I let him lead; let him show me what’s okay and what’s not. I watch his face for signs of pain and try to put only pleasure there.

It’s been a while and I have to open him with a couple of gelled fingers, sliding into him, stroking out of him, watching his mouth open, listening to the sounds he makes, quintessentially erotic. His fingers grip my arms hard enough to leave marks that’ll be visible for days but I don’t care. Whatever he wants.

Stroking my hand across his right shoulder, around the base of his throat, spreading my fingers out over pale, hairless skin. Leaning down I kiss him and his tongue climbs into my mouth, reaching for me just as the rest of him is doing.

Impatiently he lifts his left leg up over my shoulder and reaching between us I push the head of my dick into his body. He tries to lift himself, impale himself and it only causes him pain from the wound on his back.

“Easy.” It’s the first time I’ve held him back in bed but he’s hurting himself. Raking my fingers through his hair I balance on one hand and press deeper into him. “Easy.”

I’m all the way in and he relaxes back on the sheets, letting the tension drain from him, letting me do the work. I pull out of him slowly and slide back in just the same. He’s rock hard against my sweat-slick stomach but I leave him for now. I know how much he loves this. It’s the sweetest agony, enough to climb the heights but not enough to reach the climax. Drives him nuts but he still craves it.

I hold back for as long as I can, clinching kisses, committing every nuance of his ecstasy to memory. I drop my head to lap the beads of sweat from the hollow of his throat and I hear him tell me he loves me. I look up, hold his blue-shot eyes with mine and say it back to him, meaning it more than I ever have in the past. When I say it to Adam it has a different meaning.

Only when he reaches for himself, only when he’s right on the edge and needs that final push to take him over, do I meet his fingers on the silky steel of his erection. Together we find his climax, and hearing him, feeling the thick fluid hot on my skin, I thrust once, deep into him, and let go.

I’m careful not to collapse on top of him like usual. I let him climb over me, settle where he’s comfortable and then find uninjured places to put my hands so I’m touching him.

He falls asleep without a word and it’s probably the first real sleep he’s had in a couple of months.

Must be.

Because when I wake fifteen hours later he hasn’t moved.

It’s tomorrow already. Harry must be wondering where his overly keen, top spy is.

Naked and in bed with me, Harry, snoring in my arms. So deal with that.

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