Elliot kept sobbing, his body trembling. Years of tears, finally let loose.
Against his neck, barely audible, Elliot said, “I love you.”
Hudson stilled; his breathing paused. “What?” He pulled back to look at him, cupping Elliot’s face in his hands. “What did you say?”
Elliot met his eyes. Tears still streamed down his cheeks. Hedidn’t care.
“I love you,” he said again. Clearer this time. Certain. “I’ve loved you for so long.”
Hudson’s fingers moved across Elliot’s cheekbone. “Yeah?” His voice sounded fragile.
“Yes.” Elliot held his gaze. “I’m done pretending otherwise.”
A ragged exhale escaped Hudson. He pulled Elliot back in, holding him so tight he could barely breathe.
“I love you too,” he said into his hair. “God, Elliot. I think I always have.”
Elliot closed his eyes.
They sat like that for a long time, trading the words back and forth between kisses until their legs numbed. Eventually Hudson moved them to the bed. He undressed them both slowly, shifted them horizontal, and pulled the sheet up. Elliot’s head found his shoulder, and Hudson’s arm came around him.
“Reed’s going to be okay,” Hudson said into the dark.
For the first time in as long as he could remember, Elliot didn’t try to solve anything. He just closed his eyes and fell asleep.
Elliot woke to light.
Not the lamp-post stripe—full morning light, bright through the window. He reached for Hudson, but found nothing but cold sheets.
Sitting up, still half-asleep, he scanned the room. His eyes went to the nightstand, clocking a little folded piece of paper. Torn from the corner of a mission brief by the look of it.
Didn’t want to wake you. You needed the sleep. I’ll be in ops. I love you, H.
He stared at the note. At the last words in particular, in Hudson’s boyish, scrawled handwriting, all tilted and cramped. He read them again. And then again.
Then the Reed situation came back to him all at once and he was on his feet. Fully dressed in seconds, pulling on his boots while hopping on one foot. When he reached the door, he turned, went to the nightstand and picked up the note. He read the words one last time and put it in his chest pocket.
Hudson was in the middle of explaining something to Carver with the energy of someone who had been banned from doing anything useful for ten days and was now making up for lost time. His hands moved as he talked, tracing something on the grid. Carver was nodding with a slightly overwhelmed expression on his face, trying hard to keep up.
Elliot stopped in the doorway and watched him.
This man was his. Had been, in some form, for six years. Through Selection, a wedding, a funeral and a helicopter going down. They’d wanted the same things, fought the same fights and spent an extraordinary amount of time pretending otherwise.
And now, they were done.
“No news,” Okafor said, appearing at his shoulder. “But Ferris has a team moving toward the northern ridge. There were signs of recent activity. A fire, possible from last night. Could be nothing.”
“Could be Reed,” Elliot said.
“Could be Reed,” Okafor agreed.
Elliot held onto that.
He crossed the room and stood next to Hudson, listening to him control the room. Judging by his headset, he had gotten himself reinstated overnight.
They worked on their own mission, falling into itwithout much discussion. The same way they did at the very first navigation exercise in the Rockies when they’d finished early and Chen had looked at them like he suspected cheating.
Hudson called positions, Elliot cross-referenced against the latest aerial imagery. They moved through the morning’s operational priorities with efficiency, clearly still knowing how to work together even after six years.
