In the meantime, he tinkered. Well, continued to tinker. He’d ordered the collector’s Rolex watch a month prior, still laboring under the absurd impression he was just very fond of his friend. Now he was just putting the finishing touches on it. As he settled the facing back into place, his tablet pinged an alert. Sighing, he rubbed a thumb over the name engraved on the back before putting it back in its box. Time to go have a chat.
He stood from his chair, box tucked under his arm, and pulled the door open to find Dufault on the other side, expression torn. Trust the blond menace to reappear when he’d finally resolved to hunt him down.
“I was just going to look for you,” he began. Arthur thrust a box in his direction, already turning to leave. “Oh no you don’t.” He tugged him back by the collar, pulling him into the office and shoving him bodily onto the couch, sitting down besides him.
“Now then, I’ve got something for you as well. Shall we exchange gifts properly?”
He smiled thinly. “Yeah, fine, make a big deal of it why don’t you.”
Syler tore at the ribbon on the parcel, littering the floor with little bits of shredded paper, and slipped the cover off of the thin box. Inside, he found a monogrammed cashmere scarf and matching hat, nestled below a set of fingerless knitted gloves. He fingered the soft gray material gently.
Arthur cleared his throat awkwardly. “You always look cold when you leave and you complain that gloves get in the way of using your touchscreens, so...”
“Thank you.” He smiled softly, turning to face him. “Open yours.”
“I know when I’m holding a watch case, Perrin,” Arthur quipped, teasing tone coming back as he lifted the lid.
“Yes, but this is a special watch.”
“It’s a very expensive watch.”
“Mmhm, and it opens locks. Automatically, in fact. Magnetic unscrambler, just press here.” Syler slid his hand over Arthur’s, showing him the knob.
Arthur’s eyebrows went up, amused despite himself, recalling their first assignment together. “Does it now?”
“I don’t give watches to Francesca,” he continued, turning their hands and the watch over. Arthur traced a thumb over the engraving of his first name, smiling gently.
“You don’t say.”
“I also haven’t assigned her a specialty car, but maybe don’t tell her that.”
“Sonya’s mine then?”
“You did finish her.” Arthur’s grin grew as he clipped the new watch into place, turning to Syler’s gift box. He pulled out the hat, tucking it neatly over Syler’s riotous dark curls before wrapping the scarf snugly around his neck. “We’re indoors, Arthur.”
The other man practically beamed. “We could be outdoors though! Shall we take Sonya out for a little test drive, sweetheart?”
“Oh, why not.”
---
“New suit?” he inquired, bumping his shoulder up against Syler as they stepped into the parking garage. He ran his eyes over the other man unabashedly, drinking in the sight of him after a miserable week hiding away to lick his wounds. Injured pride was a helluva thing.
Syler fingered the dark green lapels of his coat, new gloves peeking out from the cuffs and wrapping around to his first knuckle, a handsome contrast against his fair skin. “Gerald commissioned it for me as an apology for stealing away the rest of my clothes for alterations. Or possibly that was just an excuse. Either way, it felt appropriately festive.”
Arthur hummed, hands tucked into his pockets as he waited for Syler to retrieve the keys to Sonya. “And what are you doing with your long holiday, Mr. Perrin?”
Syler snorted. “Working.” He tossed Arthur the keys from the lock box, turning to escort him to his new girl. “I’m the on-site lead until the 30th.”
“Jesus, how’d you draw that short straw?”
“I volunteered. We can’t afford to be without a senior security staffer right now and they deserve time with their loved ones.”
“And you don’t?”
“You people are my loved ones, Arthur.”
Arthur stopped abruptly at the admission, breathless. He grinned, a small private thing. If he couldn’t have anything more than that, he realized, he’d still be satisfied. He adored the man beside him. He pressed a hand to the small of Syler’s black, delighting in the faint shiver it elicited, and guided him to the passenger side door. “Let’s go for a ride, sweetheart.”
---
They enjoyed an entirely too short half hour of testing Sonya’s top speeds before Syler regretfully informed him that he needed to get back to the branch. They’d have to leave an assessment of her off road capabilities for another day, though she did handle magnificently on fresh snow.
“Does Mother Boothman not allow you out past dark yet?” He quipped. Hazel eyes rolled. His heart clenched a bit. Business as usual, really.
“I’m telling her you said that,” he promised. “Shift change over is at four o’clock. I need to be there.”
“Please tell me you’re not sleeping at the agency all week,” he begged.
“Fine,” he answered, tone flat, “I won’t.”
As they pulled back into the parking lot, Arthur forewent the vehicle’s assigned parking stall and stopped at the elevator. The younger man shot him a puzzled look. “You’re not running off to take her bouldering or something else I wouldn’t approve of now, are you?”
“Cross my heart,” he grinned.
“Your eyes are doing that twinkling thing again. You know, the one that promises trouble.”
“Would I do anything to cause you trouble, darling?”
“Every moment of our acquaintance, Dufault. Every last one.”
In lieu of answering, Arthur reached over to tuck the fringe of his scarf back into place in his jacket. He tried desperately not to flatter himself into believing his handler was blushing. That road was paved with nothing but heartbreak as he should well know by now. Syler shook his head, stepping out of the car. “I promise I’ll bring her back in one piece before the night is out.”
Syler fixed him with a look. “I’m holding you to that.” He made his way into the elevator, shooting more than one speculative glance over his shoulder until the doors closed.
Arthur let his easy demeanor drop, sighing. An entire week manning the office. Christ, that was almost as depressing as his own plans to get drunk and wallow alone at home. He knew he shouldn’t, he really did, but he was already considering where he could requisition a small Christmas tree for Syler’s office on such short notice. He was setting himself up to be disappointed all over again, and he’d only have his own bleeding heart to blame for it. Still…
‘You people are my loved ones.’
Oh, what the hell.
---
Syler sequestered himself in the data labs upon returning to the branch and assuming shift lead control for the duration of the holidays, alone but for a handful of technicians and junior officers handling comms. He left his jacket, hat, and scarf in his office on his way, but kept the gloves. So sue him, his hands really were always cold and just maybe he enjoyed looking at the monogrammed gold embroidery on the inner wrist.
He knew he hadn’t broadcasted his exact intentions clearly enough to Arthur in the hour they’d been together, but it was a start. He was, despite it all, still inherently nervous about these sorts of things. Besides, he thought, flicking a strand of hair out of his eyes idly, it’s not like the other man was going to want to spend his Christmas holiday locked up in the office with him. He probably had plans like other normal, well adjusted people. He’d ask him on a proper date after New Years.
That settled, he pushed his glasses back up his nose and pulled up the logs on the ongoing Pyrona debacle. Eventually, he figured, he’d stare at it long enough to find something useful to go on. There was something just on the edge of his consciousness, an important clue he was overlooking that would shed some light on the entire mess, but he just couldn’t pin it down.
When
it had only been one hacker with a particularly ballsy encryption algorithm, he’d been impressed. Now that he was looking at a small group of hackers seemingly sprung from the ether who utilized the same protocols in seamless tandem, he was baffled. Even his own hand picked team struggled to keep up and they were each experienced professionals, notorious in their own right long before they’d come to the agency. Unknown entities like this didn’t just appear out of thin air and this particular group was improving with every hack, right up until the moment they went radio silent.
“If you frown any harder, your face will get stuck like that.”
Syler startled back to reality, spinning to find Arthur leaned casually in the lab doorway. He glanced at the clock overhead reading just after eight p.m. “Is the car still in one piece then?”
“Not a scratch. Come on, dinner time.”
Syler blinked. “Don’t you have other plans?”
“Just you,” he announced, and lord help him but Syler melted a bit, logging out of the system and heading for the door without argument, following obediently along back to his office. He came to an abrupt halt when he exited the hallway.
“Arthur, why is there a tree in the middle of my desk?”
His agent shrugged casually. “Because it’s Christmas and there was no space for it on the floor. You can even plant it after New Years. I left it in the pot.”
“You got us a tree. Oh my lord, you got us a tree.”
“We can decorate it after dinner, yeah?” And with that, he pulled him into his office.
---
Things were as they always were, Syler reflected later that night. Arthur’s head in his lap, his hand quietly carding through blond hair, the other man fast asleep. Only this time, there was a three foot tall pine twinkling softly on his desk, meticulously dotted with red and silver bobbles and topped with a star made out of computer circuitry.
Twenty-Three
If Syler thought Dufault was the end of it, he was sorely mistaken. The other man had vanished sometime before Syler woke up, but the Colonel stopped by with his wife Madeline the following afternoon, laden down with food for the staffers still on call.
“It’s not as though we have children of our own, S,” he’d announced cheerfully. “Can’t leave you all alone to babysit the younglings.”
Daniel Thompson’s wife reminded him as strongly of the Director now as she had on the one other occasion he’d meet her, silver-haired and sharp. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they were friends. She was former CIA herself, retired a year prior to his recruitment, and Boothman’s previous Executive Deputy.
“He was fretting over you being here all alone,” she confided to him privately, both watching as he carried bags into Syler’s office. “Something about you having a fight with your boyfriend.”
The pitch of his groan was frankly embarrassing, drowned out only by the Colonel’s exclamation. “Syler, you got a tree!” The man poked his head back out of the office. “I love the fiber optic wires on top most.”
“Arthur’s doing,” he admitted. Truly, what a joy it was to finally experience nosy family at the holidays.
“Ah,” Daniel said, “so you’re not fighting anymore. Good. I was worried.” Beside him, Madeline rolled her eyes.
“We weren’t really fighting.”
“Well he certainly wasn’t coming around anymore.”
“Daniel,” Madeline cut in, “you’re embarrassing him. Spectacularly.”
Thompson waved her off with a flourish, apparently not seeing her point. “Oh, you had to be here, Maddie. The two of them were dancing around each other for months. It reminded me of the two of us.”
Madeline grinned, wicked. “You hopelessly following me around, trying to woo me with increasingly absurd gadgets in lieu of actually asking me on a date?”
“Were you a field agent?” Oh, that explained a lot. And also, “I am not the one following anyone around hopelessly, for the record.”
“The tree is in his office, not Dufault’s,” she helpfully pointed out, apparently in his defense.
“He gave him his own car for field work!”
“You made me a diamond encrusted tennis bracelet capable of cutting through steel doors. And poison lipstick.” Alright, Syler conceded, nosy family might actually be an entertaining experience. He leaned casually against the command desk, grinning.
Daniel huffed, begging askance at Syler, who chuckled mercilessly. “All I’m saying is that it’s very nice to see the next generation doing so well together. And besides, I won’t have to worry about you being taken care of when I’m gone. Always nice to have a lethal bodyguard for a partner.”
“Oh, you would know,” Madeline chimed in sarcastically, toying with what, Syler realized, was in fact a diamond encrusted tennis bracelet. Oh for fucks sake.
“I am so incredibly done with this conversation,” Syler concluded, actively not considering that he’d given Arthur a diamond encrusted watch. “Can we eat?”
---
Arthur reappeared sometime after the Thompson’s had left, a small dolly filled with boxes behind him. Apparently, there was to be more decorating of the bullpen at large. He smiled every time the other man toyed with his watch, utterly unable to help himself.
---
Christmas Day dawned early, Syler coming to on the sofa in his office at the smell of freshly brewed coffee somewhere in the vicinity. He blinked his eyes open slowly, room lit only by the tree on his desk, and found Arthur crouched near his feet.
“Merry Christmas, Syler.”
He smiled helplessly back at him. “Good morning.”
“I brought breakfast.”
“Of course you did, you delightful man.”
---
And so it went, with periodic visits from Arthur every day of his holiday rotation, and a few more from the people who’d taken him in as family. Maria and Miranda slipped in the day after Christmas, shooing him home for a few hours of sleep in a proper bed. Jason appeared the following night, swearing he was only there to check in on a project – at ten p.m., and ‘honestly, boss, you should go home for a bit, I need a break from the ruckus at mine anyway, in-laws are the worst.’ Boothman, apparently thinking herself hilarious, sent a posthumous Christmas gift in the form of a bottle of tequila wrapped in a bow with a memo expressly forbidding him from hacking into Interpol.
And, of course, there was Francesca, who slipped in on the evening of the 29th, shooing Arthur to find them a proper dinner.
“Have you told him yet?”
“As soon as I’m off call,” he promised.
“Good.”
---
He handed the comm over to Maria Wednesday night, somewhat eager to sleep in his own bed again. The petite woman blocked his exit out of the office before he could make a break for it, unfortunately.
“So, Francesca says you’re going to have a proper chat with Arthur now?”
He huffed. “It’s patently unfair to corner me when I’m literally carrying a tree that weighs as much as you do, Maria.”
“You gave him a watch, boss. A diamond watch. A Colonel Thompson Special grade of gifted gadgetry. You have achieved the rank of a legend. Please, for the love of all that’s good, don’t you dare quit on us now.”
“You are all,” he espoused, “entirely too invested in my love life.”
“Someone has to be. Bring him to the New Years party tomorrow or I’ll flay you alive.”
Twenty-Four
Syler, in the way only a human disaster can manage, proceeded to go home and sleep for a solid sixteen hours, waking up shortly after five in the evening. He blinked groggily, entirely one with his mattress, so thoroughly tangled in his sheets that he tripped twice trying to get up. It wasn’t until he caught sight of the pine tree sitting accusingly on his kitchen table that he realized he was supposed to be somewhere in an hour.
“Oh shit.”
And also that he was supposed to notify Arthur of his required presence at said locatio
n.
“Fucking shit.”
He darted back to his room, fumbling wildly for his phone, managing to jam it in the space between the headboard and the wall in the ensuing struggle. God help him, he really did need a keeper. Finally retrieving the blasted thing, he swiped open the lock screen, a handful of missed texts from Maria telling him in increasingly vivid detail all he needed to know about how screwed he was if he didn’t actually show up to the agency New Years Eve party with his agent in tow.
Disregarding her ire momentarily, he pressed call on Dufault’s contact tab, phone pressed tight to his ear, suddenly nervous. His nerves didn’t improve as the phone continued to ring. And ring. And eventually go to voicemail. He tried again with similar results. Shit.
Giving up on that, he opened a blank text message and typed out the time and address for the bar the covert affairs division had rented out for the night, freezing on what else to include. God, why was he such an awkward mess? He was a thirty year old man, for heaven’s sake. He finally sent it as it was, assuming the other man wouldn’t need an in-depth explanation on why he was wanted at an agency party. Honestly, there was every possibility he was already aware it was taking place.
He flopped back on his bed with a frustrated groan, although that reprieve only lasted as long as it took to see the time. He had to be at the bar in forty-five minutes, Arthur or no Arthur.
---
Syler stepped out of his cab and up to the bar an hour later, grateful he’d elected not to drive. Parking was non-existent tonight, to put it mildly. He tugged self-consciously on his jumper and smoothed down the scarf Arthur had given him. He’d even made an attempt at taming his hair, for all that he couldn’t hope to replicate anything resembling a fashionable style. Arthur hadn’t opened his message, so it was probably going to be a useless effort anyway.
He made a beeline for the bar, ordering a whiskey neat and downing it before Maria could catch sight of him. He could face his death valiantly, but only if he didn’t have to be sober for it. He’d just collected his second, ready to actually taste this one, when a hand settled on his shoulder.
Covert Affairs: Partnership : A Covert Affairs Romance (Book One) Page 12