“Yes, love?” he murmured, lips pressed just above the shell of his ear.
“Give me your cufflinks. We’re blowing this damned place up.”
“Mm, you say the most attractive things.”
Thirty-Four
The Director eyed all of them with an expression that was equal parts dismay and exasperation. Syler dragged a hand self-consciously through his hair, although nothing short of a miracle and three showers was going to salvage the slightly fried curls. His barber was going to throw a fit. Arthur sat silently beside him, entirely too experienced with Jeanette’s displeasure for it to have any impact. And then, of course—
“I see you brought a friend home.”
Emily beamed, tossing the Director a jaunty wave. “Emily Larson, pleasure to meet you. That one promised me a job, but I get the impression that you’re the one who has final say over hiring decisions.”
Boothman snorted. “I’m tempted to give you his.”
“She can have it. I don’t want it anymore. Demote me to the mailroom for all I care.” It was an act of sheer willpower to keep his eyes open at this point. The adrenaline crash was hitting him with all the force of a semi-truck.
“A major D.C. convention center has extensive structural damage following a localized EMP bomb detonating, a nearby hotel required repairs in the thousands after a shoot out, a portion of the warehouse district caught on fire during what was, apparently, an intentional pyrotechnics display on your part, and that’s all without getting into the truly spectacular body count across all three locations.” She paused to fix him with a glare. “I’m not sure you’re qualified for the mailroom.”
“Oh lay off, Jeanette,” Arthur muttered. “We got the job done.”
The Director sighed. “I have to at least pretend I’m punishing you or I’ll never hear the end of it from the sharks across the Potomac. They get exceptionally snippy when things blow up in their own backyard, to hell with the reason for that being their own inability to help take down a cyber terrorist.”
“We’ll take a week of paid leave, thanks.”
“That’ll do. Perrin, we’re clear to remove the additional firewall encryption around our system, correct?”
“Hm?” Syler perked up, jolted out of his graceless slump at the sound of his name. “Yeah, yeah, should be fine. Byron, or whatever the fuck his name actually was, is dead. The system is blown to kingdom come—which, for the record, you should absolutely tell them was unavoidable and not intentional. No one’s eighty year old grandmother should be allowed to get their hands on any remnant of that equipment, let alone the morons in the FBI. They’d only hurt themselves with it.”
“They’d try to replicate and weaponize it for their own uses.”
“I repeat,” he muttered, stifling a yawn. “They’d hurt themselves.” He narrowed his eyes in Jeanette’s direction, appraising. “I’m not building you one either. Even from scratch, the entire premise behind something with the potential to out maneuver its creator and unlimited capacity for growth is the security threat, not the solution.”
Jeanette rolled her eyes. “Please don’t insult my intelligence like that, Perrin. You two can spend the week finalizing your report. Now get out of my office.” She pointed at Emily. “You stay.”
Syler patted her on the shoulder consolingly as he got up and stumbled to the door, half supported by his grip on his agent’s elbow. “Remember that you wanted this,” he called as Arthur pulled the door shut behind them.
The blond wrapped an arm around his shoulders, pulling him in tightly. Syler went along with it, perfectly happy to go wherever the man took them so long as it involved a bed and three uninterrupted centuries of sleep. They got about half a step through the antechamber doors before he was tackled around the middle by the force of nature that was Maria.
“Syler!” She squeezed him firmly, releasing him only long enough to do the same to Arthur. “Are you both alright?!”
Syler grinned weakly at her, stifling another yawn. His entire senior team and the Colonel were laying in wait out in the hallway. Bless this strange little family of his. “Yeah, but I’m about to pass out, so…”
“I’m taking him home,” Arthur interrupted. “Good night everyone. Thanks for checking in.”
Syler lost time from there, dead to the world the moment Arthur poured him into Lucy’s passenger seat and belted him in. Arthur smiled, leaning down to brush a hand through his hair. His handler reeked of smoke and gun powder and Arthur still couldn’t recall a time he’d been more lovely. He really was absolutely and irrevocably out of his mind for this man. Slipping out of his jacket, he leaned forward to drape it over the younger man, pressing a kiss to his temple as he did.
Syler roused himself briefly when they pulled into the basement garage of Arthur’s three story townhouse. Well, roused himself in so much as he clung onto Arthur and let himself be lugged indoors, murmuring nonsense into his shoulder about intervention planning. The blond smiled indulgently, trundling him upstairs to the bedroom where the other man immediately buried himself into the duvet. Chuckling, Arthur went to work pulling him out of his clothes and setting aside his glasses on the nightstand, tucking him in when he finished. A quick shower later and he was joining him in bed, pressing up against his back and drawing him in tight to his chest, nodding off in record time to the soft snuffles of his beloved engineer.
Thirty-Five
Syler groaned his way back into wakefulness sometime late the next morning—or possibly two mornings later, if the absolute full body ache was anything to go off of. Christ he hurt. What the fuck did he even do? Snuffling, he hauled the blankets up tighter over himself and curled into a ball, heart set on going back to sleep and dealing with everything later.
It was right about then he realized he wasn’t in his own bed.
“What the shit?” He sat up with an alarmed grumbling, raking a hand
