salute [h.s]

the one in the gym

*

*

If there was one thing that Piper hated, it was advanced field training. Not because she was in it — good lord, she'd die before she signed up for advanced field training. Liam's training was bad enough without having to do it in front of other people. She'd just die if anyone had to witness her training. She distinctly remembered one training session where Liam flipped her to the mat so hard that the strap broke on her sports bra. And considering she'd forgone a shirt, Liam certainly got an eyeful before he finally covered his eyes, stammering out apologies (and just like that, the count of One Direction members who had seen her tits was up to 4).

No, the reason she hated advanced training was because this was the third time Harry had been assigned to run it. And maybe on the outside, that wasn't such a bad thing. It showed that he was a respected member of the organization if they trusted him to teach agents advanced field techniques and it certainly earned him the respect of all of the agents he was training. All of that was wonderful really.

The thing Piper hated was that it was so time consuming. He was up at dawn so he could take his agents out for a run and then he was busy with them all day, usually out of town at some training site. When he finally got home, she was already asleep and then he was back at it the next morning. She hadn't seen Harry in over a week because the whole lot of them had gone on some stupid weekend camping expedition for "team building" and "camaraderie" and other equally ridiculous concepts. When Piper had done T branch training and orientation, they'd all sat around the breakroom and did stupid ice breakers all day. Now that she thought about it, maybe that's why she hardly knew anyone in T branch.

But that was besides the point. The important point here was that she was seriously missing her boyfriend and she was tired of going to bed alone and waking up the same way the next morning. She needed to come up with some plan to get some time in with him or she was going to go crazy. Even just catching a glimpse of him would be enough, a quick chat — something.

"Would it be petty if I tried to make him jealous?" Piper had asked Eleanor over breakfast one morning after Harry had left at the crack of dawn again. "Wear something hot to bed but don't let him touch?"

"Don't do that," Eleanor said with a disapproving shake of her head as she sipped her tea. Piper felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment, thinking Eleanor was reprimanding her. "If you really want to rile him up, you should just show up at the gym. Wear something that makes your bum look good and tease him a little in front of his trainees. That will get his attention."

"El, you naughty girl," Piper said with a snort of a laugh. "And here I thought you were Miss. Sophisticated."

"I am Miss. Sophisticated," Eleanor countered as she took a very dignified sip of her tea. Piper laughed when Eleanor's lips stretched into a cheeky smirk. "But I hate this training too. I have two field missions sitting in Harry's inbox because he's doing these stupid MI6 training sessions. He told me as much on the phone — that he was too busy for my assignments, like I don't sign his bloody pay cheques. That boy deserves a bit of tormenting I think."