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A housing mistake has placed the taskforce in a hotel. The cheapest and tackiest thing they could find, and close by to minimise travel expenses on top of what all of this has already had to have cost. A handful of the smallest rooms they have for the same day while someone working logistics figures out how to undo their fuck-up.
MacTavish hands out the keys in pairs, feeling awfully like a teacher on some mockery of a school trip. They’re taking up most of the space in the lobby, congregating right by the reception desk in camo cargos and military green shirts. One key for every two men, because space is expensive. The rooms might still be better than what the sergeants would get on base, not even mentioning the added privacy.
Really, standards have changed. A more pragmatic person in charge of logistics and they would have been sent to the storage to fetch themselves a tent and pitch it up on the grounds. A bed, four actual walls, and a roof is luxury. Sharing said room with only one man is even more so. Archer’s grin and Scarecrow repeatedly knocking his elbow into Ozone’s side isn’t a good omen.
“The incidentals will be taken out of your own pay checks,” MacTavish warns. He holds the key hostage for an extra second as he glares Archer down.
“Yes, sir,” he says staunchly. The key jingles portentously when MacTavish drops it in his palm.
Being even slightly closer to the pubs in town lightens the men’s spirits either way, snickering and jostling with each other like fucking children. MacTavish doesn’t care what they do on their time off. They’re grown enough to know what will happen if they show up tomorrow hung over.
He watches six of them cram themselves into the tiny lift like sardines in a tin, waving goodbye to the rest relegated to taking the stairs. MacTavish picks up his duffel and nods Riley along.
“Come on.”
It wasn’t ever a question that they would be bunking together. He simply handed out all the other keys until it was just the one left in his hand and waited for the rest to go on ahead until it’s only the two of them climbing up to the fourth floor.
The carpet is a dark crimson pretending at luxury and soft enough to muffle all steps. The single painting of a ship on the wall is so entirely neutral against the beige walls. The lights turn on automatically when they walk down the hall towards their room number.
It’s as barebones as it comes. A bed, a desk, and the bathroom door crammed right next to the entrance. There’s instant coffee left on the table though no machine to make it with and a single coat hanger in the open closet that’s locked around the bar. Every element only added to fulfil the minimum requirements for the star rating and not much else.
MacTavish drops his bag by the wall and Riley rounds the bed to leave his on the opposite side of the room. He peers out the window – not much to see besides the wall of the neighbouring building – before yanking on the curtains to cover it.
“You hungry?” MacTavish asks. It’s between afternoon and evening, too late for lunch yet too early for dinner, but they ought to get something to eat and, left to fend for themselves outside the base, he’d prefer to do it before the evening rush.
“Mm.” Riley hums a vague affirmative. He goes through every piece of furniture. Pokes at the table lamp, checks over the closet, peers into the safe placed at the very bottom of the cupboard, pulls the sheets from where the housekeepers have firmly tucked it in. Nothing odd, strange, or unordinary as far as MacTavish can tell, so he picks up the laminated paper left on the table. House rules on one side and a menu on the other. Laundry service and a spa package right below the alcohol options.
“When’d inflation get this bad?”
MacTavish glances over and finds Riley’s face right beside his, hovering just above his shoulder. On his tip toes to peer at the options. A shot of liquor for twice the cost of a full bottle or a pack of peanuts for ten quid.
“We’ll find something else.”
“You’re paying.” Riley throws a grin at him, growing only more satisfied about it when MacTavish responds with a tired eyeroll.
Riley bounds around the bed again to get to his duffel bag and rifles through it. Hopefully to fetch his wallet, though MacTavish doesn’t have high hopes. He pats over his own pockets to check for his own before changing his jacket out for one that wouldn’t scream army.
He takes the keys and waits by the door, watching Riley ditch the glasses and balaclava for a cloth mask covering his nose and mouth, and a hood the rest of his head. Dressed in all black, he looks rather like some delinquent that would mug him in an alleyway, except for the glimmering blue eyes that turn to MacTavish, squinting with a smile that seems more subconscious, considering how Riley doesn’t immediately try to wipe it from his face. He comes to stand in front of MacTavish in the tiny entryway, hands stuffed into the front pockets of his hoodie and peering up at him in wait.
“Lose the knives.”
The smile falls from Riley’s eyes. He tilts his head down to look at MacTavish with his brows knitted. A stray lock of hair falls to his forehead, suddenly drawing all of MacTavish’s attention. The teeth of the key dig into MacTavish’s palm when he clenches his fist.
“And how am I supposed to protect you like that?”
“By keeping the ones that aren’t obvious.” He throws a pointed look to Riley’s waistband. The knife hidden there is small, but Riley can draw it within a blink.
“I suppose,” Riley relents. Plays it up with a glare, before he takes removes the sheathes from either thigh. Yet he keeps the straps, pulled a little too tight so they cinch the fabric. “Try not to get into trouble then.”
As if Riley won’t be the one to get them into trouble. But he’d rather not mention it, in case Riley might take it as a challenge.
Mostly weaponless, MacTavish opens the door to leave, and promptly runs into room service.
MacTavish flinches back, yet Riley walks into his back and knocks him forwards again. He catches himself with a hand on the doorframe, and Riley stumbles against his side, so they crowd in the doorway, face to face with the woman wrestling the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner.
“Oh, you scared me!” She lifts her hand to her heart. “I didn’t realise these rooms were occupied.”
“We just arrived,” MacTavish answers faintly.
It’s unexpected, at this hour, to be cleaning rooms, but maybe the cheap places do it differently. Her cart is laden with supplies smelling distinctly of disinfectant, and the vacuum cleaner hose is knotted around itself at her feet.
“Of course, of course, I’m sorry,” she rattles off apologies. Her accent makes the words blend together until they’re nearly indistinguishable, a harsh juxtaposition to the gentle old lady look she has going on otherwise. “I am sorry, I don’t want to intrude. I really didn’t mean to get in your way.”
Yet she doesn’t move out of their way either, but shoves the misbehaving vacuum cleaner into her cart with a fierce grunt and then turns to both of them again.
“Are you a couple?”
MacTavish isn’t quite sure what expression he’s making, but he feels his brows lifting to his hairline. More pressingly, he feels his cheeks heating up with something awfully reminiscent of a flush.
“No— No, we aren’t—”
“Don’t worry,” she smiles at him, then throws a wink at Riley, who is still pressed to MacTavish’s side, crammed shoulder to shoulder in the doorway. “My granddaughter is like that too. She brought her partner home to meet us. They’re one of those— What’s it called?” She snaps her fingers repeatedly, staring at MacTavish like he might have the faintest clue what she’s talking about. “Like the computer thing, you know?”
“Nonbinary?” Riley offers.
“Aye, that’s the one!” Her fingers snap again to point at Riley. “That’s it, aye, and they really are cute together—”
MacTavish can barely parse her words through the static filling his brain. She rattles off a whole story to Riley who is nodding along, while MacTavish is still trying to process that they’ve been ambushed before they even managed to leave their room.
Their room with one bed. He finally understands her insistence. It’s big enough to fit them both, far more comfortable than most places they’ve slept. But then again, he assumes most civilians prefer to have two twins rather than a double to share.
“It’s really not like that—” MacTavish tries to excuse.
“Young couples are always so cute,” she continues on like she doesn’t even hear him.
“We aren’t— We’re not—”
“And it’s adorable—” The heartfelt smile she gives them is entirely out of place in the middle of a hotel corridor.
“Really—”
“Oh, you two should see yourself—”
“We were just leaving, actually,” Riley cuts in. She perks up at that, dragging the cart an inch along with a loud rattle. The vacuum cleaner nozzle scrapes against the ground.
“Of course, I’ll get right out of your way.” She takes a step towards the next room, but then turns back again to continue in a stage whisper). “But do go to the Swan Park. It’s a rather romantic place.”
“Cheers,” Riley says, and for him she finally steps aside enough to let them out.
MacTavish scurries after him towards the stairwell, the horrifying sound of the vacuum cleaner turning on sending them off. He nearly trips over his own feet going down the steps, his whole body all of a sudden awkward and clumsy. Riley glances at him to give him what he assumes to be a smile, like sharing a joke, except MacTavish’s heart is fluttering a little too wildly in his chest.
The chippy they end up at must not be very popular. But they chose it simply for the fact that it’s the first place they came across after deciding on a direction to walk in. It doesn’t exactly look fresh, with a bold oversized font for the menu on laminated paper, and shitty pop playing from a single tinny speaker. But it smells like everything one would need to cheat on a diet, and considering that they’re avoiding the sanctioned food at the mess hall today, this would be apt.
The air tastes of grease and salt. Next to the bold menu, a comparatively miniature sign announces that their card reader doesn’t work.
“I don’t have cash,” Riley excuses, though he isn’t even trying to make it sound like an excuse. Simply looks at MacTavish expectantly, innocently shrugging his shoulders, and lets him step forwards to order and pay, yet the moment the single employee sets the plastic takeout box on the counter, Riley is rushing forwards to snag it up.
“Forks are over there.” He lazily points towards the opposite end of the counter, where Riley has already snatched two. “Tourists?”
“Uh, yeah,” MacTavish replies. It’s easier than explaining the real thing. “Sure.”
“Den’s that way.” He points. MacTavish pauses with the second box halfway lifted off the counter to frown at him. The outside of the plastic has already gathered a layer of condensation on it from the warmth inside.
“Den?”
“Club.”
MacTavish frowns at him, and gently shakes his head. “Not interested in drinking.”
And the man frowns right back. Looks him up and down like that’s an argument in and of itself. But he relents easily, nods and backs off. “Course, yeah.”
His eyes flick over MacTavish’s shoulder, but it’s just Riley standing there, holding one of the plastic forks out to him. He’s opened his own takeout box though he won’t eat it here, and probably won’t even touch it until they get some distance away. The impatient look in Riley’s eyes is enough for MacTavish to get a move on.
After a rushed breakfast to ensure everything back on home base was taken care of, running through last minute errands and checking the final details, a skipped lunch due to transport, and no opportunity for a snack with the whole housing fiasco, the fish and chips are scarfed down in minutes.
It’s greasy, oversalted, and perhaps the best thing he could imagine eating right now. He didn’t even realise how hungry he was until the first bite.
Though it’s barely anything compared to how Riley eats it. He mauls the fish with the plastic fork, swallows half the thing in a moment, the takeout box held up right to his face like to minimise the distance between it and his mouth, as if he hasn’t been fed in days.
MacTavish could make an issue of it, always being the one relegated to paying – whether it’s a food stand or a cafeteria or a vending machine – but the potential argument dies on his tongue when he sees how hungry Riley always looks. He’s not actually starving, MacTavish knows. And Riley never complains about it. But he shouldn’t have to. Some quid here or there is nothing if MacTavish can see the pleased way Riley looks afterwards, having dumped the plastic boxes in a bin along the way and sauntering along ahead of him.
They’re not taking the path directly back to the hotel but wandering down the streets vaguely in that direction. The air is warm, the weather mild, and in a rare showing, the sun is out to paint the sky in gentle blues.
What seems to be the main street stretches out ahead of them, busy and loud like the entire population of this town has decided to gather here. Riley is a step ahead and veers sharply to the side before they come close to treading down it. He dips towards a smaller street branching off just before, to avoid the crowds clogging up the streetside restaurants where the path widens to accommodate them. The entire road is littered with outside seating and umbrellas, music playing from one of the restaurants – or multiple, so it all blends together into one single indistinguishable beat.
One of these places is probably the pub the rest of their team went to, though that’s very little motivation to join the noise. The opposite, actually, since MacTavish would rather take the path back with just Riley by his side. It’s one of those rare moments where there’s nothing else going on, no pressure and no threats but just a bustling town around them, where they can hide in a small alleyway, shuttered away in their own little corner of the world.
Riley takes point, leading them down a narrow street lined by flats on either side. Little local boutiques are on the ground floor, barely any customers at this time. Flowers and hanging plants dangle in the light wind, falling from the banisters of the flats above.
“Where are we going?” This isn’t the way back to the hotel, MacTavish knows that much, yet he follows Riley all the same. It’s natural to fall into step, side by side where MacTavish keeps track of their right flank and Riley of their left.
“Just exploring.” Riley shrugs. He glances at MacTavish, a brow raised under his hood. “Don’t you like drawing buildings?”
The instinctive no gets trapped in MacTavish’s throat. He balks, foot stuttering on the next step. Fortunately Riley isn’t looking at him anymore but peering into one of the shops – a bakery with cake slices on the display shelf but the lights shut off for closing – so he can’t see how MacTavish’s face suddenly heats up.
The fact that he’s flustered simply makes him more so. He didn’t realise Riley had noticed that. He jots things down in his journal sometimes, but he didn’t think it was that obvious that it’s drawings just as much as actual notes. Quick sketches of the places he’s been – or the nice ones, at least. Something pleasant to look back on, in theory, though he hasn’t flipped backwards in his journal more than to recheck details from previous missions.
“What,” Riley starts, his tone dipping into playfully mocking, “this isn’t nice enough to make the cut?”
“No, no— It is,” MacTavish rushes to rectify his frown. “It’s nice.”
He looks up at the clock tower ahead of them, poking into the sky with a tall hipped roof and giant gothic clock hands. And although he can look at it and figure out exactly how to surround it for a siege and where to place charges to take the whole thing down, he can appreciate the intricacies of its design.
They take another turn and happen across what can’t be anything but the nightlife area, emphasised by a tacky poster of a strip club and everything. It’s lit up neon despite it still being light out, the bright lights flashing intermittently, so it’s hard to tell whether it’s supposed to draw attention to the light fixture’s generous cleavage or if it’s just broken.
“Think this is the club he was referring to?” MacTavish nods his head towards the sign.
“Think it was that one, actually.” Riley points to a doorway at the other side of the street. A few steps leading down to a door under an awning, the whole entrance distinctly not feminine.
Looking at it, MacTavish gets the impression that the chippy guy got some accidental, unmeant impression from them.
“Still not interested,” he answers Riley’s quirked brow.
“C’mon,” Riley is smiling under the mask. His cheeks lift with it until the corners of his eyes crinkle. “You’d fit right in.”
“How would I fit in?”
Riley motions to him with a vague wave of his hand, totally uncaring of MacTavish’s frown. It keeps him going, if anything, more reason to keep teasing him.
“You have that look to you.” Riley looks him up and down, blatantly. It shouldn’t make MacTavish feel as self-conscious as it does.
“What look?”
“Well, the obliviousness isn’t helping, but otherwise…” Riley trails off, with his gaze drawing up from MacTavish’s legs to his chest, slowly like it’s a drudge. There’s a glint in them that isn’t wholly the mischievousness MacTavish has come to expect from him.
“We’re not going to the club,” MacTavish shuts it down. The words come out firmer than he meant, and only after they leave his mouth does he catch the insistent we, when really he doesn’t have any say over Riley’s plans for the night. Yet—
“Sure, we aren’t,” Riley agrees easily. “Let’s look for something else for you to draw, then.”
And he bounds ahead like he hasn’t left MacTavish a confused mix of emotions, his chest tight from— from frustration, that Riley would suggest he’d be interested. Because he isn’t. It’s not his scene. It’d be more Riley’s scene, if MacTavish didn’t know him better.
But maybe he doesn’t know him better. In dim light and with Riley’s eyes glimmering at him like that, the straps pulled around his thighs might look obscene. MacTavish knows what kind of a body that hoodie hides. His skin would glow under the flashing spotlights.
He hurries a few steps forwards to catch up with Riley again. He has to run through the last minute again to discern where they left off.
“I don’t have time to draw,” he counters, far too late and a little stilted. Yet he follows Riley anyway, farther and farther from their hotel.
“All the more important it’s pretty then, right?”
MacTavish sighs, but it’s more for the show of it than any real complaint. He plays his role of exasperation and suppresses an endeared smile so that Riley can throw him a smirk as he keeps nodding him along. Towards the park, this time, where he leads them through an iron-wrought entryway and follows the sound of falling water towards the centre.
The path circles around a fountain, trimmed with grey bricks and swans stacked on top of each other in the middle, water sprouting over their heads. It trickles down their beaks and wings flapped out as if ready to take flight, where it falls into the pool, the bottom sparkling with the copper of stray coins.
“I think this is the place the janitor suggested. Draw this,” Riley tells him. Insists, really, with the way he’s looking at MacTavish, as if the entire purpose of this trip was to find a subject for him.
He sighs, rolls his eyes, yet memorises the shape of the fountain nevertheless, the trees in the background, the benches in the shade, the untrimmed hedges that border the park.
“With the ice cream cart?” he asks.
“Obviously.” Riley scoffs. “Lose the romance otherwise.”
He’s reciting the janitor’s words back. Jokingly, MacTavish thinks, but he isn’t entirely sure. His heart has already had a workout today, suddenly beating so hard like he’s been sprinting. It happens most of the times when Riley looks at him like this, says things like this, leans into his side to knock his shoulder against MacTavish’s.
MacTavish follows it with a half-joke of his own. “Aye? You want the ice cream too?”
Yet Riley pauses, suddenly caught off guard that MacTavish is responding in kind. “I don’t know you to do things half-arsed.”
The retort comes a beat too late. MacTavish is left wondering what his face is doing, since he feels his cheeks aching, though he’s sure that he isn’t smiling.
“Never.”
Riley lets out a breath of laughter. He turns his face away, letting his eyes sweep over the entire scene again to cover up the way he always gets shy when his smile turns genuine. MacTavish catches the side-profile of it more often than not, and every time he memorises anew how his jaw shifts under the mask, how his cheeks lift up, his nose wrinkling when he truly smiles. A faint pink creeps up his cheekbones, just above the line of the mask. It would be easy to excuse away as from the cold, if the day still weren’t warm and the trees weren’t shielding them from any wind.
“Alright,” Riley turns when he’s managed his expression back under control, “let’s go.”
MacTavish grabs his arm before he can take another step. Riley raises a brow at him, but doesn’t fight it when MacTavish tugs him in the opposite direction. His firm is lax, turning even more so as they circle around the fountain, but Riley keeps by his side so MacTavish’s hand doesn’t fall where it’s loosely clasped around his forearm.
“Sit.” MacTavish lets him go at the opposite side of the swans, where the water falling from their beaks splashes nearly against the stone trim. Riley sways in place when he lets him go, as if suddenly unbalanced, peering up at him.
“I was joking,” he argues weakly.
“I wasn’t.”
MacTavish holds his bewildered stare. Watches the pink creep up, spreading to the bridge of his nose. Wordlessly, Riley drops to sit on the edge of the fountain. His wide eyes follow as MacTavish steps away.
“The strawberry, please.” He arrived just in time before the stand closes up, and is the last person to get something out of the tub. She scoops the last of the strawberry ice cream from the bottom, where the edges are half melted and the bottom frozen into ice.
“In a cup,” he rushes to add before she can reach for a cone. “And with the wafers and— whatever those are.”
He points vaguely in the direction of the toppings, a collection of sweet, sugary, and colourful. She pokes a pair of cinnamon sticks into the ice cream, and a thin wafer right in the middle.
She holds the cup out to him with an overly teasing smile. “For the boyfriend.”
MacTavish pauses reaching for it. Only now, blatantly held in front of his face, he realises the wafer is heart-shaped and looks awfully cliché on the pink ice cream. He looks over his shoulder to follow her gaze to Riley, scuffing his boot on the pavement. He doesn’t have any time to retort before the cup is shoved into his hand.
“He’s not—” he stutters out, but she’s still glancing between him and Riley like that, so he swallows the words. They get lodged in his throat. “Thanks.”
It comes out too gruff, and he scurries away from there the first moment he can. Although it’s not that far, the edge of the fountain where Riley is sitting, right in her line of sight where MacTavish can still feel her looking at them.
Riley looks up at MacTavish approaching. And then perks up at the sight of the ice cream. He visibly lights up when MacTavish sets it in his open palms. He sits beside Riley, unsure what to feel – the sight of the blatant cinnamon dusting on the sticks and the sweetness of the strawberry makes his chest ache, yet the sight of Riley looking at it makes his chest ache in a distinctly different, pleasant way.
Riley turns his back towards the ice cream lady as he pulls his mask down. Which means he’s fully facing MacTavish when he takes the first bite, half of the scoop balanced on a tiny plastic spoon and swallowed in a blink.
“If you’re going to have a sugar rush—”
“Just because you faint at the first sight of sugar,” Riley counters before he can even finish, “doesn’t mean I don’t tolerate it.”
And MacTavish can’t argue with that. Not when Riley is eagerly licking at the plastic spoon, tiny kitten licks to preserve the treat for as long as he can. His tongue tinged pink when it swipes over his lips, and he eats the cinnamon stick in twice as many bites as it should be eaten. He doesn’t make a single comment on the heart wafer, but eats around it, as if preserving it. Looking at it just leaves MacTavish feeling more on edge, yet Riley acts like he hasn’t even noticed it. He wouldn’t comment on it, because there’s nothing to comment on. It’s not a big deal. It doesn’t mean anything. A stupid notion.
MacTavish overwrites the picture to memorise for drawing later. He’s going to make time for this, he’s decided. The good places – and this is one of them. Riley with the ice cream, with the fountain as a backdrop, his eyes bright and cheeks as pink as the strawberry, the corners of his mouth curled up even as he’s eating.
“Do you want some?” Riley offers suddenly, a spoonful of ice cream hovering towards MacTavish. MacTavish looks at it dubiously when Riley keeps edging it closer.
“No.”
“Oh.” He sticks the spoon into his own mouth. Then lowers his eyes and speaks to the cup. “You were just looking, so—”
“No, I was—” MacTavish quickly amends, eyes flitting about with no goal. There’s no good excuse in sight. “I was just looking.”
“We can go,” Riley offers. He stands before MacTavish can pull him back down, already inching backwards like they’re in a hurry. “I can eat on the go.”
MacTavish follows him, more reluctant than he’d like to admit. He takes another look at the fountain, and another at Riley’s face, because eating on the go means he swallows the rest of the ice cream in three steps, shoves the wafer into his mouth, and then pulls the mask back up. He dumps the cup in the bin next to the exit of the park, where the high fence marks the end of the grassy field and the high apartment buildings block out the evening sun. MacTavish keeps glancing over as if expecting to see Riley licking his lips of the remnants of the ice cream under his mask.
The sun is properly setting once they make it back to the hotel. The golden hour casts the lobby in warm yellows, turning all the colours soft so it harmonises with the gentle jazz playing from the speakers.
The lift dings as it arrives. Momentarily, both MacTavish and the couple inside look surprised at each other. The doors click as they slide fully open. MacTavish eases a step back.
“We can take the stairs.”
“No, it’s alright! There’s room!” The woman steps right against the back wall, and her partner squeezes in beside her. The lift isn’t that small for it to be a necessity, and they’re making a bigger deal out of this than it needs to be, but then they wave MacTavish and Riley to step in.
MacTavish exchanges a brief look with Riley before he actually follows him. The doors slide shut at his back. It makes the lift feel smaller on the inside.
“Are you celebrating too?” the woman asks. She’s twirling a ring around her finger, leaning into her husband’s side.
“What?”
“We’re here for a weekend away from the kids,” she explains, and doesn’t seem at all bothered by MacTavish’s confused frown. “And, well, you look…” She motions to them. “You look nice together.”
“She’s had a glass too much,” her husband says, though doesn’t seem in any hurry to rectify her assumption. She simply laughs about it, looking between MacTavish and Riley as if they could ever fit in to an anniversary celebration, away from the kids, his sister housesitting, having to constantly send updates to his mother despite her insistence to enjoy the vacation.
The lift dinging cuts his train of thought short.
“Our stop,” he excuses, and leads Riley to step out first, a hand on the small of his back. It’s just a stupid, inconsequential, meaningless assumption that leaves his mind when the lift closes again and deafens the woman’s soft giggling.
It doesn’t leave him. The implication of her words burrows into his brain and doesn’t leave when they’re settling in. It doesn’t leave when he’s doing a last check of the room, drawing the curtains shut with just a small gap in the middle because Riley needs to be able to see outside. It doesn’t leave when he’s going to the bathroom, pre-emptively setting Riley’s boots properly by the wall before he trips over them in the morning.
It doesn’t leave when he’s lying down in bed, under the same covers as Riley, and tracing the shape of his face in the dark. His eyes are closed, lashes dark over his cheekbones, the bridge of his nose highlighted from the faint light coming from the window, lips slightly parted, and face turned into the pillow. Not asleep yet, but trying to.
“We don’t look like a couple, do we?” MacTavish asks.
Riley slowly blinks his eyes open to look at him, his expression too lazy to tease or frown. “What? You mean them in the lift?” MacTavish does, and doesn’t either. He doesn’t elaborate, and Riley sighs and nuzzles his face into the pillow again. “Just a coincidence, isn’t it.”
Once is a happenstance, twice a coincidence, the saying goes. And thrice— It feels like MacTavish’s heart has barely got a break this day, fluttering in his ribcage even now when he’s supposed to be sleeping. Yet he’s staring at Riley, eyes wide like he’s never been more awake, his thoughts overactive.
“Aye,” he agrees faintly. “A coincidence.”
Riley hums, like it’s that simple to put an end to the conversation, an end to the thought. He turns, fists the blanket in his hand and brings it up to his chin, curling his legs towards his chest. The mattress dips as he shifts and curls up, and it makes MacTavish tilt just slightly towards him. Riley lets out a deep breath he feels fanning out in the air between them. The fluttering in his chest isn’t calming down.
“Stop frowning,” Riley mutters. “I can’t sleep when you frown.”
It makes MacTavish frown deeper. Then consciously ease it away, though Riley’s eyes are closed and he shouldn’t be able to tell anyway.
“I’m not frowning.” In the dark, still feigning sleep, he sees Riley lifting a single brow. MacTavish catches himself before that makes him frown again. He huffs. “Just go to sleep. Stop wriggling.”
“I’m cold.”
Riley is wearing a long-sleeved shirt, the material so thick it’s almost a jumper, with the sleeves pulled down to his palms. Half of the blanket is wrapped around him, tucked under his side and swaddled around his legs. Yet he dips his head down into the bend of his arm shoved under the pillow, and curls his legs even farther up.
“Christ, just come here.”
MacTavish throws an arm around him and pulls him close. He suppresses a flinch when Riley presses cold feet against his legs, and quells another frown when he feels the temperature of Riley’s hands against his chest. Riley’s sigh fans out over his clavicle. Slow and peaceful, warm. MacTavish adjusts Riley in his hold to make sure he won’t be able to hear the frantic beat of his heart, and focuses instead on tucking the blanket under Riley’s side again so none of the heat will escape.
Riley adjusts to fit against the shape of him, tucked in his arms, and, after what feels like no more than minutes, his breathing evens out.
MacTavish stays wide awake for what feels like hours. The thought still doesn’t leave him. The scenes of the day have imprinted themselves into his mind, they replay themselves over and over without MacTavish’s permission.
They don’t look like a couple. They’re just all wrong, making wrong assumptions, drawing faulty conclusions, because there’s no way that they look like a couple.
It’s just a coincidence that MacTavish’s heart finally calms when he has Riley in his arms, held tight enough he doesn’t have room to squirm around anymore, held close and warm and safe.
Just a coincidence that keeps repeating itself.