Chapter Text
Chapter 1
Hair Cut
The bell above the door gave a small, cheerful chime as Simon Riley ducked through the entrance of Curl Up & Dye, because if he didn't duck, the frame caught him across the brow, and he'd learned that lesson twice already.
He straightened to his full six-foot-four and stood for a moment in the doorway, taking up most of it, a solid wall of black. Black jeans worn soft at the knees, black jumper with the sleeves pushed to the elbows, black boots that had seen better decades. The surgical mask sat across the lower half of his face the way it always did in crowds, or shops, or anywhere that required him to exist among civilians who hadn't asked to look at what was left of him. Above the mask, whiskey-colored eyes moved across the salon with the quiet, habitual efficiency of a man who'd spent thirty years cataloguing exits.
There weren't many threats in Curl Up & Dye. Two women under dryers along the left wall, both deep in their phones. A young lad getting a fade in the far chair, headphones in. The smell of product, something floral and something sharper underneath it, bleach or developer. And underneath that, coffee. The place was warm and well-lit, all exposed brick and trailing pothos plants and framed prints that walked the line between barbershop and boutique. Soft music Simon couldn't name. A small chalkboard near the desk that read “Walk-ins Welcome, Chaos Guaranteed” in looping handwriting.
Pulling his jacket off, Simon hung it on the hook by the door. Gary had done well for himself. Simon thought that every time he came in, and every time he didn't say it out loud, because Gary would only grin and say something insufferable.
“There he is.”
Gary Sanderson emerged from the back with a towel over his shoulder and a coffee cup in his hand, and the grin was already there, wide and immediate, the same grin that had gotten them both into trouble on three continents. He was forty-seven now, lean and sharp-jawed, sandy blonde hair close-cropped on the sides and longer on top, because of course it was. The man was a walking advertisement for his own shop. He'd traded combat blacks for a fitted burgundy apron and looked entirely too comfortable about it.
“Thought you'd gone feral,” Gary commented, crossing the floor and gripping Simon's hand, pulling him into a brief, solid clasp of shoulders. “It's been what, two months?”
“Six weeks.”
“Two months.” Gary stepped back and looked him over with the particular assessment of someone whose profession was, quite literally, how people looked. His eyes went straight to the top of Simon's head and stayed there. “Christ, Si.”
Simon had the good grace to say nothing.
The golden curls. And they were curls now, properly, undeniably, with no regimental discipline left to keep them in line. They had gone well past the point of managed. They coiled at his temples and the back of his neck, soft and absurdly incongruous on a man built like a structural beam. He kept them because cutting them himself was a misery and because there was precisely one person on earth he trusted near his head with anything sharp, and that person was currently steering him by the shoulder toward the chair at the end of the row.
“Sit,” Gary insisted, in the tone that meant it wasn't a suggestion.
Simon sat. The chair was good. A proper salon chair. Solid, and it still shifted slightly under his weight. He caught his own reflection in the mirror and looked away from it, a habit so old it was automatic.
Gary was already at the trolley, selecting his clippers with the focus of a man who took this seriously, because he did. He always had. Even in the field, Gary had been the one who gave a damn about the details, the small dignities, the things that kept you human when everything else was trying to make you otherwise.
“You eating?” Gary asked, draping a cape around Simon's shoulders.
“Yes.”
“Sleeping?”
“Some.”
Gary made a sound that wasn't quite disapproval and snapped the cape's fastening at Simon's neck. “Vets centre keeping you busy?”
“Enough.” Simon watched Gary's hands in the mirror, the familiar click of the guard fitting onto the clippers. “Range on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Centre the rest.”
“And you're not going mad.”
“Ah'm sitting in a hair salon voluntarily, Roach.”
Gary laughed, short and genuine, and switched the clippers on. The hum filled the space between them, comfortable and known, and Simon felt the tension in his shoulders drop by some small, measurable degree as Gary's hand settled at the back of his head and the work began.
The curls fell in pale gold increments against the cape. Simon watched them without sentiment. In the mirror, Gary was focused and easy, moving with the unhurried confidence of someone who knew exactly what he was doing, talking intermittently about the shop's new booking system and a supplier who'd sent the wrong toner three weeks running. Simon answered in the places that required answers and let the rest wash over him.
It was, he'd decided some years ago, the closest thing to peace he reliably got.
“Hired someone new, actually,” Gary shared, tilting Simon's head slightly to work along the left side. “Two weeks ago. Doing nails, manicures, gel sets, the whole lot. Booked out already, which is frankly annoying because I thought it'd be a slow build.”
Simon made a sound of vague acknowledgement.
“You'd know him, actually.” Gary's tone shifted, just slightly, taking on a careful neutrality that Simon had long since learned to notice. “From the job.”
Simon's eyes moved to Gary's reflection. “Is that right.”
“Mm.” Gary switched to a smaller attachment, detailing around Simon's ear. “John MacTavish.”
The name landed quietly in the warm air of the salon.
Simon said nothing for a moment. Watched a curl drop.
“Soap,” he said finally.
“That's the one. He goes by John now, mostly.” Gary didn't look up from his work, which meant he was being deliberately casual, which meant he knew exactly what he was doing. “Got his certification recently. Needed something with his hands, you know how he is. I had the space. It made sense.”
It made sense. Simon turned the words over.
Twelve years was a long time. Long enough that the thing he'd never said and never done had presumably calcified into something he didn't need to examine. Long enough.
“He's in Tuesdays and Fridays,” Gary added, brushing loose hair from Simon's shoulder. “In case you were wondering.”
“Ah wasn't.”
Gary smiled at the mirror. Said nothing.
Simon looked at his own reflection and then away again, jaw set beneath the surgical mask, golden curls considerably tidier than they'd been ten minutes ago.
Today was a Thursday.
He told himself that was entirely beside the point.
Gary set the clippers down and picked up the scissors, working through the top with the focused quiet of a man finishing something properly. Simon watched the mirror with the detachment he applied to most things and waited for whatever came next, because Gary Sanderson had never in his life let a silence do its work without eventually filling it.
“Could do a shave, if you want.” Gary offered lightly, reaching for the comb. “Proper one. Blade, hot towel, the lot. You look like you've been growing that out of spite.”
Simon's jaw ticked beneath the mask. He hadn't shaved in ten days. Maybe twelve.
“Busy today,” he declined.
“Didn't mean today.” Gary tilted his head toward the front desk, vaguely, in the direction of the paper diary he kept for reasons no one could explain given that there was allegedly a booking system. “Got space tomorrow. Fourteen hundred, if you wanted to come in after the vets centre.”
There it was.
Simon looked at him in the mirror. Gary looked back, scissors poised, expression carefully pleasant in the way that meant he was working very hard at it.
“That's very convenient,” Simon observed.
“Is it? Just how the diary fell.”
“Roach.”
Gary resumed cutting.
“Ah haven't seen Johnny MacTavish,” Simon considered, keeping his voice level, “since Ah took the promotion and transferred out of the hundred and forty-first. That's twelve years.”
“I know.”
“The man was married.”
“I know that too.”
“Then,” Simon continued, “you know you're wasting your time.”
Gary made a small, noncommittal sound and stepped back to assess the top, tilting his head the way he did when he was considering something that had nothing to do with the haircut. He set the scissors down on the trolley, unclipped the cape with two practiced flicks of his fingers, and gave it a sharp snap outward. The pale gold clippings fell to the floor in a soft cascade. He crossed to the hook on the wall and hung the cape back with the ease of a thousand repetitions, smoothing it flat.
“Divorced,” Gary provided, not looking at him. “Twelve years.”
The words sat in the warm air.
Simon stared at the back of Gary's head.
“Same time you left, near enough,” Gary continued, still facing the wall, adjusting the cape on its hook with entirely unnecessary attention. “Funny how things land, isn't it.” He turned then, and his expression was open and mild and completely without apology. “I'll pencil you in. Fourteen hundred.”
Simon stood from the chair slowly, his full height returning to the room. He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and held Gary's gaze for a long moment.
Gary held it back, pleasant as anything.
“You're insufferable,” Simon accused.
“I'm a small business owner with a loyal client base. Completely different thing.” Gary waved toward the desk. “Cash or card's fine.”
Simon paid. He didn't say anything else about it, because there wasn't anything else to say that Gary hadn't already anticipated and armored himself against. Ten years of civilian life hadn't dulled the man's instincts in the slightest. He'd simply redirected them into something that involved considerably more pothos plants.
He pulled his jacket from the hook near the door and shrugged into it. In the mirror by the entrance, a version of himself looked back, tidier now, the curls disciplined and close at the sides, and he looked at it for half a second longer than usual before he looked away.
“Tomorrow,” Gary called from behind him. “Fourteen hundred. Don't be late, I've got a balayage at half three.”
Simon pushed through the door, ducking the frame from memory, and said nothing.
The bell gave its small, cheerful chime behind him.
Outside, the afternoon was grey and cold and smelled like rain coming. He stood on the pavement for a moment, hands in his pockets, and thought about a man he hadn't let himself think about in twelve years, who had apparently been ten meters away from where he’d just been every Tuesday and Friday for the past two weeks.
Divorced.
He started walking.
What the fuck he was going to do about this appointment, he had no idea. He told himself that for the first four blocks, and by the fifth he'd stopped bothering, because he knew, and Gary knew, and probably the trailing pothos plants knew, that he was going to be there at fourteen hundred, and that was a problem he'd deal with when it became one.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out.
🦗 😊
He put it back without responding.
—
John MacTavish had called it good on a Tuesday.
No ceremony, no fuss, no dramatic final mission to hang the whole thing on. Just paperwork, a handshake from a colonel he'd never much liked, and a box of his kit in the back of his old Civic he'd driven south through rain so thick he'd had to pull over twice. Twenty-five years. Captain. Done.
He'd sat in the carpark of a Tesco Extra outside Preston for forty minutes before he'd gone inside, and he'd stood in the cereal aisle for longer than he'd like to admit because no one was going to tell him where to be next and that had felt, for a moment, like standing at the edge of something with no bottom.
Then he'd bought three kinds of cereal he'd never tried and a bottle of decent whisky and driven to Gary's spare room, and that had been that.
Scotland was there. Scotland would always be there. Five sisters and a mother who'd stopped pretending she wasn't worried about him sometime around year eight, all of them waiting in that particular patient Scottish way that was really just very quiet loudness. He'd go. He would. Just not yet. Not when going felt like the final thing, the period at the end of the sentence, and he wasn't ready to be a sentence that was over.
Gary had offered him the chair two weeks in, when it had become apparent that John was going to rearrange the kitchen cupboards a third time and that this was not good for anyone.
“I need a nail tech,” Gary had said, leaning in the doorway with his coffee, watching John sand down a cabinet hinge that didn't need sanding. ‘You've got the hours and I know for a fact you can do a proper French tip.”
“That was one time,” John had said. “Ah was fifteen.”
“Your Eilidh's wedding photos say otherwise.”
The certificate had taken him forty minutes online and cost him sixty-eight pounds. The kit had cost more but Gary had covered half against future wages. His first client had been a retired schoolteacher named Margaret who'd wanted a gel set in dusty rose and had talked, without pause, for the entire forty-five minutes about her son-in-law's planning permission dispute, and John had listened with genuine interest and done her cuticles with the same focused care he'd applied to things that had mattered considerably more, and at the end she'd tipped him twelve pounds and said “You've got lovely hands for it, pet.”, and he'd thought, well. Aye. Alright then.
It was good work. Easy in the way that meant something different now than it would have meant at twenty-two. He liked the rhythm of it, the small precise movements, the way a client's shoulders dropped somewhere around the fifteen minute mark when they realized he wasn't going to rush them or make them feel stupid for wanting gel instead of acrylic. He liked the chat. Always had. The regiment had found it useful, the way he could talk to anyone, get anyone comfortable, extract information from a hostile situation through sheer relentless friendliness. Now he deployed it in service of finding out whether Margaret's daughter had finally told the son-in-law where to stick his decking plans, which was, he'd decided, a net improvement.
Tuesdays and Fridays. His own chair, his own trolley, a small but aggressive waiting list that Gary found both gratifying and personally offensive.
The hours were fine. More than fine. It was the spaces between them that took some getting used to.
He'd always thought, in the vague and unexamined way of someone who'd kept the thought at a careful distance, that by the time he got here there'd be someone to get here with. Not a specific someone. He'd been careful about specifics. Specifics had a way of becoming things you couldn't stop thinking about, and he'd had enough of that to last him. But someone. A shape in the flat, a voice in the kitchen, a reason to cook a proper meal instead of standing over the hob eating pasta directly from the pot like a man with no one to disappoint.
Funny, that. Funny how you could be forty-two years old and still surprised by the shape of the life you'd ended up with. As if you'd been so busy getting through each bit of it that you'd forgotten to look up and check where you were going.
His seven-fifteen on Friday mornings was a woman named Priya who got a full set every three weeks without fail or so he had been informed. She’d asked how he was settling in, and he said “Grand, getting there”, and she'd nodded and said “it takes a while, doesn't it, the whole civilian thing.”, and he'd looked at her and she'd said, “My husband, twelve years RAF”, and he'd said, “Ah”, and they'd understood each other perfectly without having to say anything else, which was its own kind of relief.
Thursday afternoon, John was in the back, restocking the UV lamp and reorganizing his gel colors by family because the previous arrangement had started to bother him, when he heard the bell above the door.
John didn't look up. Gary's chair was occupied. Two women under the dryers, one Gary’s, one belonged to another stylist who worked here, the usual Thursday hum of the place. He set a bottle of deep burgundy next to the wine reds and reached for the next one.
He heard Gary say “There he is.”, warm and immediate, and heard the low murmur of a response that he didn't quite catch, and something about the register of it moved through him sideways, the way certain sounds did, the way a specific frequency could arrive in your chest before your brain had caught up with it.
For a moment he went still. Bottle in hand.
Then he set it down, carefully, and told himself it was nothing, because he'd been telling himself that for twelve years and he was very good at it, and he turned back to the colors and kept going.
From the sound, the weight settling on the chair was considerable. Heard Gary's clippers click to life.
John finished the reds. Started on the nudes.
No way he was looking through the doorway. There was no reason to look through the doorway. He had a seven o'clock tonight, a full set for a hen party attendee named Chloe who wanted rhinestones, and he needed to check his rhinestone stock, and that was what he was going to do. He didn't normally do Thursday but she'd asked nicely and he had nothing going on to say no for.
He looked through the doorway.
The mirror at Gary's station gave him a clean sightline, and for one unguarded moment before he could stop it he had the whole picture at once. The size of him. The surgical mask. The golden hair, longer than John remembered, curled soft at the temples in a way that would have gotten him absolutely eviscerated twelve years ago and which John was now going to have to simply not think about. The eyes moving over the room with that cataloguing stillness, that he'd known across a dozen countries and several situations that didn't bear revisiting.
Simon Riley was six-foot-four and built like something that had been assembled for a specific and serious purpose, and he was sitting in Gary's salon chair getting his hair cut, and John MacTavish had not thought about him in twelve years.
Well, that was a lie. More like since yesterday, but close enough.
He stepped back from the doorway.
Picked up the rhinestone case.
Set it back down.
He was forty-two years old and a retired captain and he had done things that would make most people's hair go white, and he was not going to stand in the back of a nail salon having feelings about a man he hadn't spoken to since before smartphones were a thing people took for granted.
John picked the rhinestone case back up. Opened it. Counted the clear ones, because Chloe would want clear ones as a base and he should have at least forty.
From the front of the salon he heard Gary say something about a booking system and then something about a new hire, in a tone that John had heard before and which meant, with absolute certainty, that Gary Sanderson was doing something deliberate and was enjoying it enormously.
John closed his eyes briefly.
“You'd know him, actually.”
He mouthed a word that would have made Margaret the retired schoolteacher reconsider her tip. He was gonna fucking kill Gary.
Focusing on the container in hand, he counted the rhinestones. He had fifty-three clear ones. That was fine. That was plenty. He was going to stay in the back and finish the reorganization and then check the rhinestones and then perhaps clean the UV lamp, which didn't need cleaning, and he was going to do all of that until Gary's fourteen hundred left the building, and then he was going to have a very direct conversation with Gary about what constituted acceptable behavior between people who were supposed to be friends.
The clippers hummed. The dryers hummed. The music played something he didn't know.
Definitely didn't look through the doorway again.
He was almost proud of himself for that.
The bell chimed again as the door opened and closed, and then Gary's footsteps coming toward the back, unhurried and cheerful, and he picked up a bottle of gel at random and made a show of examining the label.
Gary appeared in the doorway, apron on, towel over his shoulder, and the expression on his face was the single most self-satisfied thing John had ever seen on a human being, and he had once watched Gary successfully bluff his way through a checkpoint using only a forged permission slip and a story about a dental conference.
“Not a word,” John said.
“Didn't say anything.”
“Gary.”
“I'm just getting a coffee.” Gary moved to the small machine on the counter, entirely at ease, and pressed the button. “Lovely bloke, Simon. You'd like him. Very quiet. Excellent tipper.”
“Ah kin who Simon Fucking Riley is.”
“Course you do.” The machine hissed. Gary reached for a mug. “He's coming in tomorrow. Fourteen hundred. Shave.”
John set the gel bottle down. Turned. Looked at Gary with the full weight of everything he was choosing not to say.
Gary picked up his coffee and met the look with the serenity of a man who had nothing to lose and knew it.
“He didn't ask after you,” Gary added, in the tone of someone offering a very specific comfort. “Just so you know. Didn't ask a single thing.”
John said nothing.
“Funny, that,” Gary said.
He took his coffee and walked back out to the floor, and John stood in the back room with his rhinestones and his reorganized gel colors and the particular feeling of twelve years of careful distance becoming, very suddenly, a much smaller number.
Tomorrow. Fourteen hundred.
He looked at the UV lamp.
He cleaned it anyway.
--
Chloe’s rhinestones had taken two hours and the woman had been delighted, which should have been enough to carry John through the rest of the evening, but it wasn’t. He’d cleaned his station twice, reorganized the polish display that didn’t need reorganizing, and stayed until the light through the front windows had gone flat and grey and finally dark.
Gary had left at six, citing dinner plans John knew for a fact didn’t exist, and had given him a look on the way out that John had chosen not to acknowledge.
By eight pm, the shop was locked, the lights off except for the one in the back that stayed on all night, and John stood on the pavement with his keys in his hand and sinking feeling that he’d spent the last four hours trying to clean his way out of a problem that had nothing to do with cleanliness.
His car was parked two streets over, a ten-year-old Civic that had seen better days but started reliably, which was all he needed from it. He got in, shut the door, and sat in the dark for a moment, hands on the wheel.
Then he pulled out his phone and scrolled to the name he wanted and hit call.
It rang twice.
“John.” Kyle Garrick’s voice came through warm and immediate, the slight delay on the line that meant distance, real distance, the kind measured in time zones. “It’s late there, innit?”
“Aye,” John confirmed, and heard his own voice come out rougher than he’d intended. “You busy?”
“Never too busy for you, mate. Hang on.” The sound of movement, a door closing, the quality of the space changing. “Right. What’s happened?”
John looked at the dark street in front of him, the orange glow of the streetlights, the closed shopfronts.
“Gary’s a bastard,” he complained.
“We established that in twenty-two. Has something changed?”
“He’s hired me. At the salon.”
“I know. You told me. Two weeks ago. You were pleased about it.”
“Aye, well.” John leaned back in the seat, tipped his head against the rest. “Turns out the bastard’s got a client he dinnae think to mention.”
Another pause, longer this time. In the background, John could hear something that might have been wind, or water, the kind of quiet that only existed in places that had committed to it.
“Go on,” Kyle invited.
“Simon Riley.”
The silence that followed was the kind that had weight to it.
“Ah,” Kyle said finally.
“Ah,” John repeated. “Aye. Ah. The man Ah was tits over ass in love with. The fucker came in today for a haircut and Gary’s got him booked tomorrow for a shave, fourteen hundred, same time Ah’m in, and the smug fucker dinnae even pretend it was an accident.”
“Gary’s Simon’s best mate,” Kyle reminded John, in the tone of someone offering information he knew wasn’t news. “Has been since Gary joined up. What, twenty-eight years? Thirty?”
“Ah know that.”
“Only person closer to Simon than me and Price, and we’re neck and neck for second.”
“Ah know that too,” John grumbled, hearing his voice rise. “Which is why Ah know this is a setup, Kyle, the man’s setting me up, and Ah cannae.” He stopped. Started again. “Simon Riley. In the shop. After twelve fucking years. The man has some nerve.”
“Does he.”
“Aye, he does. Shows up like nothing’s happened, like he dinnae.” John stopped again, the words piling up behind his teeth. “The fucker broke my heart.”
He heard it as he said it, how it sounded, and he closed his eyes.
Kyle was quiet for a moment. “You didn’t tell him that at the time.”
“Ah couldnae tell him that at the time.”
“No,” Kyle agreed. “You couldn’t.”
John opened his eyes, stared at the ceiling of the car. “And now Gary’s gone and. Christ, Kyle, what the hell am Ah supposed to do? The man left.”
“He took a promotion,” Kyle recalled, calm and even. “It was a good move. You advance when you can. That’s the job.”
“He left me.”
“John.”
“He left me,” John repeated, and hated how it sounded, how small, how much like the truth. “He knew. He had to ’ve known, Kyle, and he took the promotion and transferred out and that was it. Done. Dinnae even.” He stopped, swallowed. “Not even a fucking phone call.”
Kyle was quiet. John could picture him, standing in whatever room he’d gone to, probably the one that faced the forest, the one with the window seat that got the morning light. Four years in Finland with Price, the two of them playing at retirement in a cabin that was nicer than anything either of them had grown up in. They’d asked John to come, right after he’d signed the papers. Said they had the room. Said he could stay as long as he wanted, no questions, no expectations.
He’d said no. He’d had his reasons.
“You were married,” Kyle reminded him finally. “When Simon left. You were married, John.”
“Aye, and Ah left,” John tried to defend himself, the words coming fast now, hot and sharp. “Ah left the fucker because Ah wanted Simon. Ah wanted him and he knew it and he left anyway, so what the hell was the point, Kyle? What the hell was the fucking point?”
“Did you tell him that?”
John said nothing.
“Did you,” Kyle asked again, patient and relentless, “tell Simon Riley that you wanted him? At any point?”
“Ah couldnae.”
“Because you were married.”
“Aye.”
“And Simon’s not a home wrecker.”
John let his head fall forward, pressed his forehead to the steering wheel. “No. He’s not.”
“So he left,” Kyle stated. “Took the promotion. Did the right thing, from where he was standing. And you left your marriage, but by then he was gone, and you didn’t go after him.”
“What was Ah supposed to do? Show up at his new posting and what, Kyle? Tell him Ah’d blown up my whole life on the off chance he felt the same?”
“That’s generally how it works, yeah.”
“You’re a bastard too.” John made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh.
“I’m honest.” A pause. “You’re scared.”
“Ah’m not.”
“You’re terrified,” Kyle observed, not unkindly. “You’ve been terrified for twelve years. And now Gary’s gone and put you in the same room with the man and you’ve got no more excuses, and that’s what this is about.”
John sat up, looked out at the street. A car passed, headlights washing over the windscreen and then gone.
“What if he doesnnae.” he stopped. “What if it was just me?”
“Then you’ll know,” Kyle said. “And you’ll move on. But John, mate, listen to me. I’ve known Simon Riley for nearly twenty years. Worked with him longer than that. The man doesn’t do anything by halves, and he doesn’t do anything he doesn’t mean. If he’s coming back tomorrow, it’s not because Gary asked him nice.”
John’s hand tightened on the phone.
“He dinnae ask after me,” he complained, hoping to Christ that it didn’t sound like there was a sob in his voice at that. “Gary said. Simon dinnae ask a single thing.”
“Course he didn’t,” Kyle dismissed. “That’s not how Simon works. The man would rather chew glass than admit he wants something. You know that.”
John did know that.
He sat in the dark of his car and thought about a man he’d tried very hard not to think about for twelve years, who’d looked at him once across a briefing room and then kept looking, careful and deliberate, until John had looked back and understood that something was happening that neither of them were going to say out loud.
He thought about the way Simon moved, economical and sure. The way he listened, that made you feel like the only person in the room. The way he’d smiled, once, at something John had said, and John had seen it in his eyes before the mask had hidden the rest, and he’d thought oh, oh no, and then he’d gone home to a flat he shared with someone else and pretended he hadn’t thought it at all.
“What do Ah do?” he asked quietly.
“You show up,” Kyle suggested. “Fourteen hundred. You do his nails, or whatever Gary’s got you doing. You talk to him. You’re good at that. Better than anyone I know.”
“And if…”
“John.” Kyle’s voice was firm now, the voice that had talked John through three missions that had gone sideways and one that had gone completely to hell. “You’ve spent twelve years not knowing. You want to spend twelve more?”
John closed his eyes.
“No,” he sighed.
“Right then.” The sound of Kyle moving, settling. “You’ll be fine. And if you’re not, you call me after, and Price and I will get on a plane and come sort Gary out for you.”
“Aye?” Despite himself, John smiled.
“Absolutely. Price has opinions about meddling. Very strong opinions. He’ll give Gary a lecture. It’ll be devastating.”
“Thanks, Kyle.”
“Anytime, mate. I mean that.”
John believed him. Kyle Garrick had never said a thing he didn’t mean, which was one of the many reasons John trusted him with things he didn’t trust most people with.
They rang off, and John sat in the car for another few minutes, watching his breath fog the windscreen in small clouds. Then he started the engine, pulled out into the empty street, and drove home to the flat he still shared with Gary and his wife. Beautiful lass for putting up with Gary’s shit. They said he was welcome as long as he wanted, which was sweet. He’d look for a place of his own, once he got a feel for what he would bring in doing manicures.
The place was quiet, so he ducked into his room.
--
It was well after dark. Quiet. Too quiet. Simon was settled in his oversized armchair, fireplace going, casting a dim light over his living room. He’d bought the place a couple years ago. Nice. Hadn’t had the heart to go back to Manchester. Too many long buried memories. At least here, with the vets centre, he had something useful to do in his spare time. Between that and range days where he volunteered to supervise, it kept him out of too much trouble.
Hadn’t bothered with dinner. Fucking Gary. It was great. He hired Johnny. Guy needed something out of the army, and what the hell. Nice, low key. Could get himself oriented to the outside. Fuck, what was he now, forty-two. Still young enough to start another career if he wanted. Who the fuck knew what his mental hyperactive firebug wanted now.
Fucker could have arranged his appointments on days that he never knew Johnny was there. Could have. No. Instead, he’s going to play fucking matchmaker and just out and schedule them together. Simon didn’t know whether to take him out back and kick the shit out of him or to buy him a pint and kiss him square on the mouth. Bloody hell.
He knew how bad Simon had had it for that little maniacal gremlin. He knew it.
Fucker was married. Anything less and Ghost would have happily eliminated the competition. Brought his feral hobgoblin the man’s heart, if that’s what he wanted. But no. He was married. Those were vows. Promises, forever. They meant something.
At least they did to Simon.
Fuck.
His phone rang.
Simon looked at it where it sat on the arm of the chair, the screen lighting up the dim room. Price. Course it was.
He let it ring twice more before he picked up.
“What.”
“You’re going tomorrow.” Not a question. Price’s voice came through steady and certain, the same voice that had given orders for thirty years and saw no reason to stop now.
“Gary called you.” Simon closed his eyes.
“MacTavish called Kyle. You know who told me about your appointment tomorrow at fourteen hundred.” A pause. “I know perfectly fucking well you’re thinking about not going.”
“Ah didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. I know you, Simon. You’re sitting there in that chair, in the dark, convincing yourself it’s an old wound and there’s no point picking at it. That you don’t want to be disappointed again.”
Simon said nothing, which was answer enough.
“You’re going,” Price repeated.
“We’re not in the army anymore, John.” Simon opened his eyes, stared at the fire. “You can’t order me to do fuck all.”
“No. Suppose I can’t.” Price laughed, short and genuine. “But I’m telling you anyway, as your mate, that if you don’t show up tomorrow you’re the biggest fucking coward I’ve ever met, and I’ve met some proper ones.”
“Cheers.”
“You’re welcome.” The sound of movement, a door closing. Price settling in somewhere. “Listen to me. That man has been in love with you for twelve years. Longer, probably. Since before he had the sense to know what to do about it.”
“He was married.”
“He was. And he left. You know when he left, Simon?”
Simon’s jaw tightened under the mask he’d forgotten he was still wearing. He reached up, pulled it down, let it hang around his neck.
“Week after you transferred out,” Price continued. “Filed the papers. Whole thing was done in six months. Kyle said he was a fucking mess about it. Wouldn’t talk about it, wouldn’t explain it, just said it was done and that was that.”
“That’s not…”
“Not your fault? No. It’s not. But it’s not a coincidence either.” Price’s voice gentled slightly, the way it did when he was saying something he meant. “The man wanted you. Probably still does. But he’s forty-two years old and he’s been scared of his own shadow since the day I met him, at least when it comes to this sort of thing.”
“He’s not scared of anything.”
“He’s terrified of you,” Price corrected. “Terrified you don’t feel the same. Terrified he fucked it twelve years ago and there’s no coming back from it. Kyle said he was a wreck on the phone. Proper wreck. Said you didn’t even ask after him.”
“Course Ah didn’t.”
“Why not?”
Simon looked at the fire. “Because if Ah asked, Gary would’ve known Ah cared. And if he knew Ah cared, he’d do exactly what he’s fucking done, which is this.”
Price was quiet for a moment. “You do care.”
“Didn’t say Ah didn’t.”
“So go tomorrow. Show up. Let the man do your nails or whatever the hell Gary’s got him doing. Talk to him. You’re not twenty-five anymore, Simon. Neither of you are. You’ve got no time to waste on being careful.”
Simon’s hand curled into a fist against the arm of the chair. “And if it’s just me? If Ah’ve spent twelve years thinking about something that was never there?”
“Then you’ll know. And you’ll move on. But Simon.” Price paused, and when he spoke again his voice carried the weight of someone who’d known Simon Riley longer than almost anyone living. “I watched that man look at you like you hung the fucking moon. Every briefing, every training exercise, every time you were in the same room. He looked at you like you were the only thing worth looking at, and you looked back the same way, and the both of you were too fucking stubborn or too fucking scared to do anything about it.”
“He was married.”
“And you’re a good man who doesn’t fuck with that. I know. He knows it too. That’s why he didn’t say anything. That’s why you didn’t say anything. But he’s not married now, and you’re both out, and Gary’s handed you a chance on a fucking platter.” Price’s voice turned firm. “Don’t waste it.”
Simon sat in the dark and let the words settle.
“He’s a chickenshit,” Price added after a moment, almost conversationally. “Always has been. Brave as they come in the field, but put him in front of something real, something that matters, and he’ll find seventeen ways to talk himself out of it. Kyle said he spent twenty minutes on the phone trying to convince himself you didn’t care. Twenty minutes.”
“Yeah?” Despite himself, Simon felt his mouth twitch.
“Absolute mess. Going on about how you left and didn’t call and how he’d blown up his marriage for nothing.” Price paused. “For you, Simon. He blew up his marriage for you, and you weren’t even there to see it, because you’d done the right thing and fucked off.”
“Christ.”
“So if anyone’s going to get you past this, if anyone’s going to actually give you lot a chance at being anything, it’s got to be you. Because he’s not going to do it. He’s going to show up tomorrow and do your nails and make small talk and never say a single fucking thing that matters, because that’s what he does. That’s what he’s always done.”
Simon closed his eyes. Thought about a man who talked to everyone, who could charm information out of a hostile in three languages, who’d never once said the thing that mattered most.
“Fourteen hundred,” Price said. “You’re going.”
“Yeah,” Simon agreed quietly. “Yeah, alright.”
“Good man.” The sound of satisfaction in Price’s voice was audible. “Call me after. Let me know how it goes.”
“You’re a meddling bastard.”
“I’m retired. I’ve got fuck all to do with my time.” Price paused. “Kyle sends his regards. Says if you fuck this up he’s going to come down there and sort you out himself.”
“Tell him to get in line.”
Price laughed. “Will do. Go on then. Get some sleep. You’ll want to be sharp tomorrow.”
They rang off, and Simon sat in the dark with his phone in his hand and the fire burning low, and thought about a man with blue eyes and a smile that could light up a room, who talked too much and moved too fast and who’d looked at him once like he was something worth having.
Fourteen hundred.
He was going to show up. He was going to sit in that chair. He was going to let John MacTavish do whatever the hell Gary had him scheduled to do.
And then he was going to open his fucking mouth and say something that mattered.
Twelve years was long enough.
He pulled the mask back up, stood from the chair, and went to find something to eat, because if he was going to do this, he was going to do it properly, and that meant not passing out from low blood sugar in the middle of Gary’s salon like some kind of Victorian maiden.
The kitchen was dark. He switched on the light and opened the fridge and stared at the contents with the vague recognition that he’d been meaning to go shopping for a week and hadn’t.
There was a jar of pickles. Some cheese that might be alright. Half a loaf of bread.
He made a sandwich. Ate it standing at the counter. Thought about what the fuck he was going to say.
Hello, Johnny. It’s been twelve years. Ah’ve thought about you every day since Ah left and Ah’m in love with you. Fancy a pint?
Christ.
He finished the sandwich. Made another one. Ate that too.
The clock on the microwave read 22:47.
Fifteen hours.
He was going to need to sleep. He was going to need to shower. He was going to need to figure out what the fuck you wore to a thing like this, which was a thought so absurd he almost laughed.
He’d worn the same five variations of the same outfit for thirty years. Black, black, and more black. It had worked fine.
He looked down at himself. Black jeans. Black jumper. Black socks.
Yeah. That’d do.
He cleaned up the kitchen, switched off the light, and headed to the bedroom that was too big and too empty and had been both of those things for longer than he wanted to think about.
Tomorrow.
Fourteen hundred.
He was going to show up.
And then he was going to find out if twelve years of careful distance had been the biggest mistake of his life, or if there was still something there worth having.
He thought about blue eyes and a smile that could light up a room.
He thought he knew which one it was going to be.
He hoped to Christ he was right.