The first thing I was aware of was the profound, crushing weight of a limb. Not just any limb. A Clyde-limb. His arm was thrown across my chest, heavy as a sandbag and just as immovable. The second thing was the sound. Not the hum of servers or the crackle of a secure comms line, but the deep, steady, utterly peaceful rhythm of his breathing against the back of my neck.
I cracked an eye open. Sunlight, real and golden, was streaming through the blinds of the safe house, painting stripes across the rumpled white sheets. The digital clock on the nightstand glowed 9:47 a.m. We'd slept for nearly twelve hours.
I lay perfectly still, not wanting to break the spell. The memories of the previous day—the break-in, the tear gas, the heart-stopping fear, the glorious selfie, the quiet intimacy of the shower—all felt like scenes from a particularly intense movie. But this, the weight of his arm, the sound of his sleep, this was the credits rolling. This was the peace after the storm.
His breathing hitched, changed. A soft, sleepy grumble vibrated against my spine. The sandbag-arm tightened, pulling me back more firmly against the solid wall of his chest.
"You awake?" his voice was a gravelly rumble, thick with sleep.
"I am now," I mumbled, my voice still rough. "You're using me as a body pillow."
"You're the right size," he murmured, nuzzling my hair. "Good structural integrity."
I snorted a laugh. Of course. He could find structural integrity in a cuddle.
We lay like that for a long time, drifting in the warm, lazy silence. There were no alarms, no phones buzzing, no imminent threats. There was only us, and the quiet hum of a city going about its normal business far below.
Eventually, my stomach issued a loud, plaintive gurgle.
Clyde's chest shook with silent laughter behind me. "I suppose I should feed the asset."
"The asset would like pancakes," I declared. "With extra syrup. To aid cognitive function for the… debriefing."
He pressed a kiss to my shoulder blade before untangling himself and sliding out of bed. The sight of him, stretching in a pair of soft sleep pants, his torso a landscape of muscle and fading bruises in the morning light, was enough to make my breath catch. He caught me looking and offered a slow, sleepy smile that was more devastating than any grin.
"Pancakes it is," he said, padding out toward the kitchen.
I followed a few minutes later, after using the bathroom and splashing water on my face. The war room was dark and silent, a relic of yesterday's battle. In the kitchen, Clyde was already back in his element, whisking batter in a bowl with a focused intensity usually reserved for disarming bombs.
I hopped up on a stool at the breakfast bar, content to watch the show. He cooked with a quiet confidence that was mesmerizing. The pancakes were perfect, golden-brown circles of fluffy goodness. He stacked them high on a plate, drenched them in syrup, and set them in front of me with a flourish.
"Fuel for debriefing," he said, his eyes twinkling.
We ate in a comfortable silence, the only sound the clink of forks and the occasional happy hum from me. It was perfect. It was normal. Or at least, our new version of it.
After we'd cleaned up—Clyde washing, me drying, our shoulders brushing companionably—we migrated to the vast, white sofa. We didn't turn on the news. We didn't check our emails. We just sat, side-by-side, my feet tucked under his thigh, his arm around my shoulders.
"So," I said, leaning my head against him. "What happens now? With… everything?"
He sighed, a contented sound. "Now? Paperwork. So much paperwork. Testimony. Briefings. The wheels of justice grind slowly, but they grind." He looked down at me. "But for us? Now, we get a vacation."
I blinked. "A vacation?"
"A mandatory, medically advised, post-operational psychological decompression period," he said, reciting what sounded like an official regulation. But his smile was pure, unadulterated mischief. "My CO insists. Something about nearly getting my boyfriend killed multiple times. He's feeling… generous."
The word boyfriend sent a warm, happy shock through my system. It was the first time he'd said it so casually, so definitively.
"A vacation," I repeated, a grin spreading across my face. "Where?"
He shrugged. "Somewhere with no computers. No secure lines. No guns. Maybe a beach. With those little umbrellas in the drinks."
The image of Clyde Adams, a man who could probably build a nuclear reactor out of a coconut and some palm fronds, lounging on a beach with a fruity drink was too much. I started to laugh. "You? With a little umbrella?"
"What?" he asked, feigning offense. "I can be festive. I have a vast and underutilized capacity for festivity."
"I can't wait to see it," I said, still laughing.
He pulled me closer, his laughter rumbling through me. "Good. Because you're stuck with me, Nash. Through debriefings and beach vacations and whatever comes next."
I looked up at him, at this ridiculous, magnificent, terrifyingly competent man who made me pancakes and slayed dragons and used words like 'festivity'. The fear was a distant memory. The uncertainty about the future was gone, replaced by a thrilling, solid certainty.
"I think I can live with that," I said, leaning up to kiss him. It tasted of syrup and coffee and a future so bright it almost hurt to look at.
The dragon was slayed. The world was safe. And I, Troy Nash, forensic accountant, was dating a superhero who made a mean pancake. Life, I decided, was finally, perfectly, absurdly good.
The "mandatory, medically advised, post-operational psychological decompression period"—or as I liked to call it, "Clyde's Forced Fun Time"—began with a level of logistical planning typically reserved for, well, a military operation. For three days, the safe house was a whirlwind of activity. Lawyers came and went, speaking in hushed, serious tones. Clyde's team—Jin, Espinoza, and Cooper—were constant presences, their mood shifting from focused intensity to a kind of boisterous, relieved camaraderie. They treated me like a beloved little brother who had somehow won the world's most dangerous lottery.
Espinoza, it turned out, was a fiend for my leftover Thai food. Cooper had strong opinions on the optimal brewing temperature for coffee and wasn't shy about sharing them. And Jin, the stoic lieutenant, would often just appear at my elbow with a fresh cup of tea, a silent, steady presence of support.
Through it all, Clyde was the calm, commanding center. He handled the debriefs, the paperwork, the calls from his CO, all with an unflappable efficiency. But his attention always circled back to me. A hand on my shoulder as he passed. A plate of food appearing when I got too absorbed in giving a statement to a very serious-looking woman from the Justice Department. A slow, deep kiss in the kitchen that made my toes curl and made Jin politely cough and look at the ceiling.
On the fourth morning, I woke to find Clyde already awake, propped on an elbow, just watching me sleep.
"Creepy," I mumbled, blinking up at him.
"You snore," he informed me, a smile playing on his lips. "It's not loud. It's… rhythmic. Like a tiny, frustrated engine."
I swatted his chest. "I do not."
"You do." He leaned down and kissed me, effectively ending the argument. "Now get up. We have a flight to catch."
"A flight? To where? Your secret island fortress?"
"Better," he said, rolling out of bed with that effortless grace. "Someplace no one would ever think to look for us."
Three hours later, I found out where that was: a small, family-run orchard and farmstead in the rolling hills of Vermont. The air was crisp and smelled of apples and woodsmoke. Our "cabin" was actually a beautifully restored farmhouse with a wide porch and a stone fireplace. There was no security detail, no servers, no war room. There was just… quiet.
Clyde carried our bags inside and did a quick, professional sweep of the rooms before declaring, "Clear. And look." He pointed to a basket on the kitchen table, filled with fresh apples, a loaf of crusty bread, a wheel of cheese, and a bottle of local cider. A note read: 'Welcome! The hens are laying, help yourself to eggs. – Mae & Bob.'
I stared at him. "You brought me to… to a farm."
"No computers," he said, ticking points off on his fingers. "No secure lines. No guns. Check, check, and check." He opened the fridge. It was fully stocked. "And look. Bacon. For sandwiches of sound structural integrity."
I was speechless. This man, who had just days ago been leading a tactical assault on a penthouse, was now utterly in his element in a farmhouse kitchen, inspecting the marbling on a package of locally sourced bacon.
The days that followed were the most surreal and perfect of my life. We slept late. We made breakfast together—Clyde manning the stove with a commander's focus, me on toast duty. We took long walks through the apple orchards, the leaves crunching under our feet. We read books by the fire. We made love in the creaky, four-poster bed in the middle of the afternoon simply because we could.
And we talked. We talked about everything. My childhood, his training. My mother, his team. The mundane and the profound, all woven together in the easy, comfortable silence between us.
One afternoon, we were in the barn, "helping" Bob mend a fence. Mostly, Bob was telling long, rambling stories and Clyde was doing all the actual work, his muscles straining against the soft flannel shirt he'd bought at the general store. I was sitting on an upturned bucket, passing him nails.
Bob paused his story about a particularly stubborn goat from 1987 and squinted at Clyde. "You got good form, son. You ever done manual labor before?"
Clyde didn't even break rhythm with the hammer. "Here and there," he said, a ghost of a smile on his face.
I bit my lip to keep from laughing. Here and there. Like building fortifications in a warzone or something.
Later, as we walked back to the farmhouse, the setting sun painting the sky in shades of orange and purple, I slipped my hand into his. "So. Manual labor. 'Here and there'?"
He shrugged, a playful glint in his eye. "A fence post is a fence post. The principles are the same. Assess the problem. Apply the correct force. Achieve the objective."
"And what's the objective here?" I asked, squeezing his hand.
He stopped walking and turned to face me, the dying sun setting his hair on fire. He looked more relaxed than I'd ever seen him. The tension around his eyes was gone. He was just a devastatingly handsome man on a farm, holding my hand.
"The objective," he said, his voice soft but sure, "is this. Right here. You. Me. The quiet." He leaned in and kissed me, a slow, sweet kiss that tasted of fresh air and apple cider. "The objective is peace, Troy. And we've earned it."
As we stood there, wrapped in the twilight and each other, I knew he was right. The dragons were slayed, for now. The numbers were quiet. And my world, which had once been so small and ordered, was now terrifyingly, wonderfully, expanded to include orchards and farmhouses and the steadfast, surprising heart of the man beside me. It was a future I never could have calculated. And I wouldn't have it any other way.
The Vermont air was so clean it felt like a new taste on my tongue. The only sounds were the distant, contented clucking of Mae's hens, the rustle of wind through the golden-leaved trees, and the steady, rhythmic thwack of Clyde splitting firewood out behind the farmhouse. He'd found the axe and a pile of logs and had apparently decided our "decompression" required a cord of perfectly quartered firewood.
I was sitting on the porch steps, wrapped in one of his oversized flannel shirts, a mug of steaming coffee in my hands, just watching him. It was a spectacle. The man split wood with the same terrifying efficiency he did everything else. Each swing was economical, precise, and devastatingly effective. The logs didn't so much split as politely agree to become two smaller pieces.
He paused, wiping his brow with the back of his arm, and caught me staring. A slow, easy grin spread across his face. "What? Never seen a man split wood before?"
"Not like that," I said, taking a sip of coffee. "Most people just… hit it. You make it look like a martial art. 'The Way of the Splitting Maul'."
He leaned on the axe handle, his chest rising and falling steadily. "It's all in the hips. And the follow-through. Poor form leads to wasted energy and a bad back." He said it with the gravity of a man discussing geopolitical strategy.
"I'll take your word for it," I laughed. "Just promise you won't start assessing the 'structural integrity' of the resulting firewood."
"Too late," he said, his eyes twinkling. He held up a piece. "See the grain on this one? Excellent. It'll burn clean and even." He tossed it onto the growing pile with a satisfied nod.
This was our life now. Absurd, peaceful, and utterly perfect. After he'd amassed a small mountain of kindling that would have made a lumberjack weep with envy, he cleaned up and joined me on the steps, his body heat a welcome warmth against the autumn chill.
"So," he said, bumping his shoulder against mine. "What's the agenda for today, Mr. Nash? More intense relaxation? Perhaps some aggressive napping?"
I leaned into him. "I was thinking we could go into town. That general store had a pretty impressive selection of jams. We could do a taste test. Really analyze the mouthfeel, the berry-to-sugar ratio…"
He nodded, his expression deadly serious. "A critical mission. Reconnaissance on local preserves. I'll drive."
The drive into the tiny town was a journey back in time. We parked his rented truck—a sensible, anonymous SUV—and ambled down the main street. Clyde, in his jeans, boots, and flannel, looked like he'd been born here. I, in my city-boy sweater and slightly too-clean jeans, stuck out like a sore thumb.
The general store was a wonderland of practical items and local kitsch. We were debating the merits of raspberry versus blackberry jam when an elderly woman with kind eyes and a spectacularly knotted sweater approached us.
"You must be the fellas staying out at Mae's place," she said, her voice like dry leaves. "I'm Agnes. I live down the road."
"Yes, ma'am," Clyde said, instantly polite, his posture straightening just a fraction. "I'm Clyde. This is Troy."
Agnes's eyes twinkled as she looked between us. "Well, it's about time Mae got some nice young men in that house. Usually it's just city folk with too many children and not enough sense." She peered at Clyde. "You've got good hands. I saw you splitting wood yesterday. Knew what you were about."
Clyde looked genuinely pleased. "Thank you, ma'am."
She then turned her sharp gaze on me. "And you. You're the quiet one. The thinker." She pointed a bony finger at my head. "I can see the gears turning. You're not from around here."
"No, ma'am," I admitted. "Washington, D.C."
"Hmph. Big city. All noise." She leaned closer. "You keep him," she said, nodding toward Clyde. "A man who can split wood like that and looks at you the way he does? That's a keeper." She patted my arm and shuffled away before I could form a response.
I stood there, holding a jar of blackberry jam, my face heating. Clyde was trying and failing to hide a smirk.
"What was that?" I whispered, mortified and delighted.
"That, Nash," he said, taking the jam from me and placing it in our basket, "was a tactical assessment from a superior officer. You heard the woman. I'm a keeper."
We paid for our jams and a few other provisions and were walking back to the truck when we passed a small, rustic diner. The smell of frying burgers and coffee was irresistible.
"Lunch?" Clyde asked.
We slid into a worn vinyl booth. The menus were sticky, the coffee was strong enough to strip paint, and it was perfect. We were halfway through our burgers—Clyde's was a double with everything, mine was a slightly more sensible single—when the bell on the door jingled.
A man walked in, tall and broad-shouldered, with a familiar swagger. He had the same look as Clyde—the alert eyes, the easy way of moving that spoke of controlled power. He scanned the room, his gaze landing on our booth, and a wide grin split his face.
"Well, I'll be damned. Adams? Is that you?"
Clyde looked up, and a genuine smile of surprise and pleasure lit up his face. "Miller? What the hell are you doing in Vermont?"
The man—Miller—strode over and clapped Clyde on the shoulder. "Visiting my sister. What's your excuse? Last I heard, you were…" He trailed off, his eyes flicking to me, then back to Clyde, understanding dawning. "Oh. Oh, I see. This is a 'do not disturb' mission." His grin widened.
Clyde rolled his eyes but didn't deny it. "Miller, this is Troy. Troy, this is Gunnery Sergeant Miller. We went through BUD/S together. He cried during hell week."
Miller laughed, a loud, booming sound that turned heads in the diner. "Lies! I had something in my eye!" He slid into the booth next to me, forcing me to scoot over. "So, you're the reason this old warhorse is playing farmer. I gotta say, it's a good look on him. Less… murdery."
I wasn't sure what to say. "Um. Thanks?"
For the next twenty minutes, I was treated to a series of increasingly embarrassing stories about a younger, even more intense Clyde. There was the time he'd tried to "repurpose" a training exercise to source better coffee for the barracks. The time he'd argued with a master chief about the tactical advantages of a properly made omelet.
"…and he won!" Miller finished, wiping a tear of laughter from his eye. "The Master Chief actually let him cook for the whole class! The eggs were damn good, too."
Clyde just shook his head, but he was smiling. It was a side of him I'd never seen—the camaraderie, the shared history. It was beautiful.
Eventually, Miller had to leave. He clapped Clyde on the shoulder again and shook my hand. "You take care of him, Troy. He's one of the good ones."
"I plan to," I said, and I meant it with every fiber of my being.
After he left, the diner felt quiet again. Clyde was looking at me, a soft, unreadable expression on his face.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing," he said, reaching across the table and taking my hand. His thumb stroked over my knuckles. "Just… this. I like this."
"The sticky table?"
"All of it," he said, his voice low. "The jam. The wood. Agnes's intel report. Miller's stories. You." He squeezed my hand. "I really like you, Troy Nash."
My heart did a full, joyful somersault in my chest. Outside the diner window, the Vermont hills were blazing with color. Inside, my world was warm, and safe, and perfect.
"The feeling," I said, squeezing his hand back, "is incredibly mutual."
The Vermont chill had begun to bite in earnest, but inside the farmhouse, it was all warmth and golden light. A fire crackled merrily in the hearth, the product of Clyde's perfectly split, "structurally sound" wood. The scent of pine and woodsmoke mingled with the rich aroma of a stew that had been simmering all afternoon—another of Clyde's surprisingly domestic talents.
I was curled on the ridiculously comfortable sofa, buried under a quilt Mae had left for us, a book open but unread on my lap. I was too content to focus. Clyde was in the kitchen, humming tunelessly as he whisked together a batch of cornbread. The sight was so domestic, so at odds with the man who could field-strip an assault rifle in the dark, that a fresh wave of fondness washed over me.
"You know," I called out, "for a hardened military operative, you're ridiculously good at homemaking."
He didn't look up from his batter. "A secure base of operations is essential for mission success. That includes adequate sustenance and a controlled climate." He poured the batter into a cast-iron skillet with a satisfying sizzle. "Also, I like cornbread."
I laughed, snuggling deeper into the quilt. "That's your real motivation, isn't it? Not world peace, but baked goods."
"A man's got to have priorities," he said, sliding the skillet into the oven. He wiped his hands on a towel and came to join me on the sofa, effortlessly lifting my feet and settling them in his lap before I could protest. His hands began to massage my soles through my wool socks. It was shockingly intimate and unbelievably relaxing.
"So," he said, his thumbs working a magic that made me want to purr. "We've debriefed. We've decompressed. We've even been vetted and approved by the local intelligence network." He nodded toward the window, in the general direction of Agnes's house.
"We have," I agreed, my eyes fluttering closed.
"Which means it's time to discuss the future," he said, his voice casual, but his hands stilled on my feet.
My eyes snapped open. The future. The thing that had been hovering, unspoken, at the edges of our perfect little bubble. The thing that meant leaving this sanctuary and going back to the real world. A knot of anxiety tightened in my stomach.
He saw it on my face. His expression softened. "Hey. None of that." He gave my foot a gentle squeeze. "I'm not talking about going back to the chaos. I'm talking about… what comes next. For us."
He shifted, turning to face me more fully, his expression serious but open. "My assignment with you… it's technically over. The immediate threat is neutralized. The case is with the prosecutors."
The knot tightened. This was it. The 'thanks for the memories, it's been real' speech. I tried to pull my feet back, but he held them fast.
"Which means," he continued, his gaze holding mine, "I'm no longer your bodyguard. There's no protocol, no chain of command, no operational reason for me to be here."
My heart sank. I looked down at my socks, at his large, capable hands holding them. "Right. I understand."
"No, Troy, look at me." His voice was gentle but firm. I forced myself to meet his eyes. "I'm trying to ask you something. Now that I'm not here because I have to be… I'm here because I want to be. And I'd like to keep being here. With you. If you'll have me."
The words hung in the air, simple and profound. The knot in my stomach didn't just loosen; it vaporized. "What… what does that look like?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
He shrugged, a small, hopeful smile touching his lips. "Whatever we want it to. My lease is up next month. Your townhouse has a… new ventilation feature in the office." He winced slightly. "Maybe we find a new place. Somewhere with a bigger kitchen. A garden, maybe. You can grow… accountant things. I don't know. Spreadsheets? I'll build you a shed with excellent structural integrity."
A laugh bubbled out of me, relief and joy making me lightheaded. "A spreadsheet shed?"
"The best," he promised, his smile widening. "And in return, you can continue to be brilliant and beautiful and occasionally need rescuing from your ex-boyfriends and their terrible gift ideas."
I pulled my feet from his lap and launched myself at him, wrapping my arms around his neck. He caught me easily, his arms encircling me, holding me tight against his chest.
"Is that a yes?" he murmured into my hair.
"Yes," I said, my voice muffled against his shirt. "Yes, to the garden. Yes, to the structurally sound shed. Yes, to all of it."
He held me for a long moment, just breathing me in. Then he pulled back slightly, his hands coming up to frame my face. His eyes were shining with a happiness so pure it stole my breath.
"Good," he whispered, and then he kissed me. It was a kiss full of promise and hope and a future so bright I could almost see it. It tasted of woodsmoke and cornbread and home.
A sharp, acrid smell suddenly cut through the romantic moment.
Clyde broke the kiss, his nose wrinkling. "Is something burning?"
"The cornbread!" I yelped.
He swore colorfully and launched himself off the sofa, darting into the kitchen and yanking the smoking skillet from the oven. He waved a towel, dispelling the smoke, and peered at the blackened, crispy disk that had once been our dinner.
He looked from the ruined cornbread to me, standing in the doorway, and a slow grin spread across his soot-smudged face. "Well," he said, tossing the towel onto the counter. "Our first domestic disaster. We're officially a couple."
I walked over and wrapped my arms around his waist, resting my head on his back. I could feel his laughter rumbling through him. "I think we'll survive," I said.
He turned in my arms, pulling me close. "I know we will," he said, his voice certain. "We've survived worse."
Outside, the cold Vermont night settled in. But inside, surrounded by the smell of smoke and the warmth of the man I loved, I knew he was right. We had a future to build. And it was going to be perfectly, wonderfully, ours.
The smell of charred cornbread eventually dissipated, replaced by the scent of toasted cheese sandwiches Clyde had whipped up with a shrug and the comment, "Improvisation is a key survival skill." We ate them at the farmhouse's rustic table, our knees knocking together underneath, and it was better than any five-star meal.
The following days took on a new, golden quality. The "what if" was gone, replaced by the solid, thrilling certainty of "what next." We were no longer just hiding out; we were planning. Our conversations shifted from the past tense to the future.
"We'll need an office for you," Clyde mused one afternoon as we walked through the dormant pumpkin patch behind the house. "Somewhere with good light. And a door I can close when you get too deep in the zone and forget to eat."
"And you'll need a workshop," I countered, nudging him with my shoulder. "For all your… projects of structural significance. Maybe with a reinforced door, so the rest of the neighborhood is safe from your relentless competence."
He grinned, slinging an arm around my shoulders. "Deal."
We drove into the bigger town a few valleys over to use a library computer—our one concession to the outside world. While I checked in with O'Malley (a brief, satisfying call where he called me a "goddamn national treasure" and told me to take all the time I needed), Clyde was hunched over another terminal, his brow furrowed in concentration.
"What are you doing?" I asked, leaning over his shoulder.
He minimized the screen quickly, but not before I caught a glimpse of real estate listings. "Nothing. Just… browsing."
I raised an eyebrow. "Browsing? For what? A new tactical coffee maker?"
"Maybe," he said, evasive, but a faint blush crept up his neck. It was adorable. The man who could stare down a armed mercenary without blinking was flustered by me catching him looking at houses.
The mystery was solved two days later. We were packing up our few belongings, the farmhouse feeling already like a cherished memory, when Clyde's phone buzzed. He had a short, quiet conversation, mostly "uh-huh" and "we'll be there."
He turned to me, looking uncharacteristically nervous. "We have a detour before we head back to D.C."
"A detour? To where? Is everything okay?"
"Everything's fine," he said, taking my hand. "Just… humor me."
An hour's drive later, we pulled up to a charming, slightly quirky Craftsman-style house on a quiet, tree-lined street in a small Virginia town just outside the city. It had a wide porch, a mossy brick path, and a giant, gnarled oak tree in the front yard. It was… a home. A real one.
A perky real estate agent was waiting on the porch. "Mr. Adams? Right on time!"
I shot Clyde a look. "Mr. Adams?"
He just shrugged, a sheepish grin on his face. "I used an alias."
The inside was even better. Hardwood floors, a fireplace, a kitchen with sunlight streaming in and—I noted with a thrill—enough counter space for Clyde to conduct his culinary operations. There were two bedrooms upstairs. One was clearly meant to be a master. The other, smaller one, had built-in bookshelves and a window seat overlooking the backyard.
"This could be an office," Clyde said, his voice casual as he ran a hand along the bookshelves. "Good light. And look." He pointed to the door. "It closes. To prevent distractions."
I was speechless. I walked to the window. The backyard was a decent size, bordered by mature trees. "You could build a shed there," I said, my voice thick with emotion. "A very… structurally sound one."
He came to stand behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and resting his chin on my shoulder. "I was thinking the same thing."
We toured the rest of the house in a daze. It was perfect. It was us. It was everything I didn't even know I'd wanted.
Back on the porch, the real estate agent beamed. "So? What do you think?"
Clyde looked at me, his question clear in his eyes.
"I think," I said, my heart so full I thought it might burst, "that we'd like to make an offer."
The drive back to D.C. was a blur of excited plans and comfortable silence. We held hands the whole way. We didn't go back to my shot-up townhouse. We went to his apartment, which already felt less like a barracks and more like a waystation on the path to our real life.
The first night back, we ordered pizza and ate it on his floor, surrounded by takeout boxes, because his table was covered in the paperwork for the house offer.
"It's going to be weird," I said, leaning back against the sofa. "Not having someone try to kill me every other week. What will we even do with all the free time?"
Clyde finished his slice and wiped his hands. "I'm sure we'll think of something." His voice was a low, promising rumble. He crawled over to me, a predator's glint in his eye, and pinned me to the floor with his body. "I have a few ideas," he murmured, nuzzling my neck.
"Do they involve structural integrity?" I asked, laughing as his lips found a particularly sensitive spot.
"The highest possible level," he promised.
Later, as we lay tangled together in his bed, the hum of the city a familiar soundtrack outside, I knew. The chaos wasn't over forever. There would be other cases, other threats. Clyde would still have deployments. I would still get lost in my numbers.
But the core of it, the unshakable foundation, was right here. It was in the offer on a house with a porch and a future. It was in the man sleeping beside me, who could slay dragons and bake cornbread with equal skill. It was in the quiet certainty that whatever came next, we would face it together.
I curled into his side, listening to the steady beat of his heart, and smiled into the dark. My life was no longer a spreadsheet. It was a wild, unpredictable, and beautifully balanced equation. And I finally had the perfect partner to solve it with.