She Will Persist

32

Axel

Humans are social creatures.

We can't help it. It's a biological survival instinct to crave a sense of belonging with your own kind. Even after getting abandoned, tortured or demeaned, we look for something —someone— to help us. To care for us. To love us. To heal us. Forgiving is perhaps the most a person can give. Persisting is perhaps the greatest power we hold.

Being completely happy wasn't something any of us were very used to. Before now it had simply been short lasting happiness, always overpowered by the order to complete a mission, or remembering how long ago it was that we were last happy.

For some of us it had been years. Which made right now so special.

Once she sank down into the couch beside me I draped my arm around her shoulders. "Hey," I murmured.

"Hi," she replied, leaning over to kiss me on the cheek.

"How're you feeling?" I asked her softly.

Adira didn't answer right away. Instead she drew her knees up onto the couch with us and rested them in my lap. "I'm okay."

I really didn't want to push her, because I knew she hated even when Cal did it, but her headache had been pretty bad. She left training today because of it, insisting that I didn't have to come, but obviously I was still concerned. So, I braced myself and asked:  "Are you sure?"

She flicked her stunning blue eyes up at me to give me the inevitable look I knew was coming. "Yes."

"Just checking."

She leaned into me more and buried her face in my shirt. Then she made a noise that sounded like a sentence, expect it was very muffled by my cotton t-shirt.

"That's comprehensive," I laughed.

She picked her head up, and some light blonde flyaways wound around her face. "You showered," she commented.

"Well yeah," I said, "you were at training for the first part —you know how hard Owen was working us. I was sweating my ass off. You're welcome." She reached a hand up and ruffled the still-damp tufts of hair on the top of my head. "You know the drill, give it a few hours and I'm back to smelling like how you want me to smell," I assured her.

She rolled her eyes.

I took her hand out my hair and threaded our fingers together. "Did you sleep last night at all?"

She looked down at our interwoven fingers and ran her other hand over where my knuckles encoated hers. "Not really. You definitely did."

"Well I'm sorry I value sleep," I defended myself.

She smiled at me. "You could fall asleep anywhere, anytime."

I rolled my eyes. She was right. We came back two days ago from a mission in London, where we had been for about three weeks, so we were still getting used to the Denver time difference again. For the past three months, any missions that Zach sent us on were usually just the two of us. Occasionally there was a group, but two agents, especially two who could pretend to be a believable, inconspicuous, undercover couple, were a lot more suitable for missions.

"What did we do for the rest of training?" She asked.

"That fucking obstacle course."

She grinned. "Damn. I really like beating your ass at that, I'm sorry I missed it."

I shrugged and brought our merged fingers up to my lips to kiss her hand. "Same."

She giggled and watched me pepper her knuckles with soft kisses. "You're such a boy."