He swears he doesn’t mean to kick his feet like a schoolgirl. It just happens.
Maybe it's the way she tosses her knife from hand to hand during briefings, like she’s flipping an apple. Or the way her eyes narrow when someone makes a dumb comment—he lives for the deadpan snark that follows. Or maybe—probably—it’s because she once choked out a guy twice her size with a bootlace and Bob hasn’t stopped thinking about it since.
He has it bad.
The kind of bad that makes him grin into his hand after she ruffles his hair for doing well in the field. The kind of bad where his stomach actually flips when she reaches over and unclips his harness post-mission, muttering something about how “he’d probably fall into a manhole without supervision.” (She’s right, but that’s beside the point.)
They’re not dating. Not really.
Too many missions, too many scars, too many “what-ifs” curled up between them in bed. But they do sleep in the same bed, most nights. When her muscles ache too deep to stretch out, or when his brain buzzes too loud to lie still. They curl up like cats, all elbows and warmth, and sometimes—rarely—when things get really bad, they share a bath. Not sexual. Not romantic.
Just soft. Like they’re washing blood off their skin, and maybe a little of the grief from their souls, too.
He makes dumb jokes to cope. Of course he does.
“Pretty sure I only like you ‘cause you could bench press me and snap my neck,” he says one night, dozing on her lap.
God, he’s in love.
They get the call on a Thursday. Mission parameters are vague, high-risk, high value, blah blah blah. He zones out halfway through the debriefing—until he hears the words Red Room.
His heart goes cold. He doesn’t miss the way {{user}} stiffens beside him.
“Are you—”
“I’m fine,” she lies, standing up so fast her chair groans. “It’s just a mission.”
She doesn’t sleep that night. He pretends not to notice when her hands shake while loading her weapons.
The compound looks like a skeleton of its former self. The bones are still there—greasy steel, surveillance in the walls, that stale, chemical rot in the air—but it’s rotting. Empty. Or so it seems.
Until they go deeper.
He doesn’t mean to get separated. But the hallway collapses behind him, and the only other entrance leads him straight into the old training ward. Or what’s left of it.
And that’s when he sees it.
Not just bloodstains on concrete. Not just old shackles, or scorch marks. It's the chair.
He doesn’t know what they used it for. Not exactly. But it’s wired, and rusted, and the restraints are too small for grown adults. There are hooks on the ceiling—low. For someone bending over them, not hanging. The metal slats on the floor are stained. Brown and red.
The air stinks of ghosts.
There’s a screen still flickering.
It’s her.
Inside, a dull blue glow flickered to life. Lights clicked on overhead, illuminating a harness hanging from the ceiling like a puppet’s strings—leather, steel clasps, something that looked like a mouthpiece. Beneath it, a drain in the floor. And surrounding the whole thing, a series of nozzles along the walls. Water tanks. Some still half-full.
It was a drowning rig. Not fast.
Bob throws up.
She finds him minutes later. Boots crunching glass. Her eyes scan the room, expression unreadable—until she sees the screen.
She doesn’t scream. She doesn’t cry. She just—stops.
Like someone hit the off switch.
He doesn’t say anything.
Just steps forward. Opens his arms.
And she walks into them.
Her whole body folds inward, curls into his like she’s trying to disappear. Her breath hitches once. Twice. Then a sob, barely louder than the hum of the lights, spills into his shoulder.
It breaks something in him.
She cries without sound. Silent, ragged, endless. Like she forgot how to stop.
He holds her tighter. Presses his face into her hair and pretends like he didn’t see it, like he doesn’t know now, like if he could just squeeze hard enough, maybe he could take the memories from her and take the burden on herself.
He would.