John watched as she entered the room. He could see the confusion on Janis' face as she recognized him.

Leaned up against the inset bar, he kept his hands behind his back, hiding them. John didn't think he was shaking but he couldn't afford to look like he was.

True to Janis' form, the woman stood in a stiff, straight posture, a nearly inscrutable look on her face. The first line of defense for someone who was always even better than him at hiding her emotions. He waited for her to speak. John was rewarded when he thought he saw something, some flicker of emotion in those pale gold eyes for a moment before she seemed to recover.

"What did you want to talk about?"

"Occurred to me that I wasn't behaving... correctly the last time we spoke. I'm sorry for raising my voice, for not obeying your commands." He was being honest; he did regret his behavior. One thing he didn't say was that he was a lot less apologetic about his reasons for reacting the way he did.

Her face flushed pink, it was Janis' turn to show genuine emotion. It was annoyance, but it was something that showed on that face for once. Made John feel as though he wasn't a stranger to her. "It wasn't an order. I'm just trying to do what's best—"

John interrupted her, knowing this altruistic refrain that Janis had a habit of parroting by heart. "—for me."

Janis' eyes narrowed. "Not just for you. For XCOM."

XCOM, XCOM, XCOM. He was partial to thinking of the Initiative as a relationship, one that had the habit of taking everything there was in him. If that were the case, then both had their own complicated relationships with the entity. Once upon a time, however, it had felt like a threesome that was strengthened by both the Commander and the Lieutenant's tenacious loyalty. Now he feared that it would only tear him away from the person he needed most.

And could stop a person who needed him as well.

Still, he wanted to be angry at Janis for using the Initiative as a shield for what was obviously a conversation about them, but he knew that he had done the exact same thing himself. Now it seemed it was his turn to feel the pain of having it used against him.

Janis spoke again, her annoyance growing, evident in the tone of her voice. "How'd you get in here?"

"You turned the skeleton key over. All I needed to do was sign the paperwork for the duty change over. Tomorrow everyone'll know that I agreed to take on the duties of Command."

She looked relieved—even happy. It made something feel like it was spasming painfully in John to see, expecting her to look horrified. To be ready to take back her rightful place.

She said, almost breathless, "I'm glad you're listening to reason—"

"In exchange, I need you to sit down and listen to me."

"Come again?"

John felt a grin stretch across his mouth. "Neither of us are leaving until we decide what this," he motioned between them, at the wide space in the room between them. "is."

She had an answer ready. "I'll always care about you. I want to be there for you, answer any questions you might have."

"Uh huh. And what, then?"

"Excuse me?" She seemed genuinely taken aback by the question.

Now John could feel his temper fraying. God fucking damn it, wasn't she the one who once taught him to be up front?

"I'm too damn old to play games, Janie. Sure as hell not getting any more attractive, or more tolerant to waiting any longer than these past two decades." He struggled\, frustrated with himself for his inability to find the right words. "You see, before, I was scared I would fuck up something I care about more than what's healthy..." he trailed off, realizing he almost laid it out, bare. All that time, spent longing, nearly losing his mind. And he was afraid that he was close to going back to that pit of failure.

Before he had been found by Shen, John had been on a death spiral. In all honesty, before she had shown him evidence of a grassroots revival of the Initiative, he had not been more than a handful of days from being discovered for the acts of sabotage that he had been committing against the ADVENT base constructed atop the ruins of XCOM. More importantly than news of XCOM's revival was a message that was delivered via one of Shen's proto-GREMLINs. It was a lead that was more a legend of a prisoner long thought dead, experimented on, trapped in a glass sarcophagus. Like Sleeping Beauty, in some old, stupid fairy tale.

Still, even the chance that she was still alive was more than enough to bring John out from the shadows he had lived in for a decade by that point. Inspired a revenant of the old Earth to believe, desperately, in old made-up stories like a rightful monarch held captive, trapped in a world between life and death for eternity. Waiting, perhaps, for their Prince to arrive.

John knew it was true; he wasn't willing to wait any more, but there was a difference between blurting it out like a teenager and trying to make himself appealing. It was something like sophistication, or at least discipline, a thing that the young John would have been thoroughly incapable of.

Covering his eyes with his hand—only to realize then that he was, indeed, shaking—John said, "Come, sit down." When he didn't hear her moving, he removed his hand, about to start losing his temper in earnest, perhaps bark at her to do what he said. Then he saw how Janis was looking at him.

Yellow eyes wide, mouth softly parted; she was so unspeakably beautiful, that, his anger, what he was about to tell her became caught in his throat. Letting out a steadying breath, John recalled without realizing it advice that she had once given him.

Wordlessly, John moved, sitting down on the black couch that faced her and the door, taking lower ground and leaving himself, instinctually, vulnerable. He looked at her meaningfully, waiting. It was, after all, her turn to make a move. And he started to worry that she would actually disagree with being alone with him.

Then Janis moved, walking around the other couch before she took the seat directly across from him. She surprised him when she finally seemed to lose some of whatever it was that had been shielding her, her body language becoming looser.

She said, "Have you had anything to eat?" When John, confused, shook his head, she almost rolled her eyes and thoughtlessly lifted one of those long legs over the other, propped by the other knee. "I think this is going to be a long conversation. We ought to call the canteen and tell them that we need something to sustain us."

John was taken off guard by the assessment. He had thought that they would be struggling with this conversation before she would agree to talk honestly about their relationship. He didn't know how to take it. Was she getting ready to turn him down, somehow knowing exactly what he was planning to say? Or, could it be possible that she—

With a nod, Janis called someone on her headset, John imagining that who she was talking to was working the canteen. After explaining that she and John were going to be having an impromptu meeting that was expected to last a while, she asked for something to eat, then ordered something on John's behalf. As she said it, she paused, turning to look back at John. "That is what you still like eating, right?" When John nodded, feeling somewhat numb, she continued. "Expecting that as soon as you get done with it. Good." She hung up, overwhelming John under the heavy weight of her gaze. "Hope you can wait fifteen minutes for that."

He had to take a brief moment to let his admiration for the resolute nature of the woman seated across from him, characteristic though it was, leave him, before he could let the air that had been trapped in his chest out. "I want to talk about last night."

Again there was something in her eyes, something that didn't reflect on her features. "How did you feel about it?"

Was she serious, talking to him like this like she was a therapist—or just a superior? Maybe she just needed shaking up; it's why he almost spat out, "Janie, what we did wasn't some team building exercise. We fucked." Fucked. He used words that he too easily recalled her using the night before.

He watched her throat move, constrict as she swallowed. "Yes."

John balanced his upper arms on his knees, leaning forward and purposefully pinning his flighty mentor down with his gaze. "Did you... like it?"

For a second her eyes lost eye contact with him before she met his eyes again. My god, he thought, she'd faced down crises that once made John wonder how she could manage it. Being asked if she liked sex with her Lieutenant left Janis looking like she was being interrogated by a member of ADVENT.

"I'm not sure what you mean."

John felt his hands clench around his knees. "Oh, come on—"

"I'm not evading the question. I just—did I like it? Yes. But I mean, after everything..." Her mouth hung open and there was an understanding between them, which John could feel and read in her eyes. She had admitted it, even if she was trying to bury it like a dirty secret. "But I don't know if it was best for us."

What's best for us. What's best for XCOM. Frankly, at this point, after everything he had sacrificed, John had to wonder how much more he could stand to give up for this place's "own good". Hell, even Janie had, famously, given more than her fair share for a military system that ended up chewing her up and spitting her out.

But she said that she liked it. Liked being with him. And it felt like more than he could comprehend, left him breathless.

He wasn't stupid, or naive. John knew that they had both felt good the night before, saw the wildness in her eyes, pupils blown into large pits encircled by thin, rich rings of gold. He had been willing to do anything she wanted, had been overwhelmingly relieved and excited to find that her needs met his own. What was it that Shen had once teased him by calling the way he felt for Janis? Kismet.

He was starting to smile and the look on her face confirmed that he looked as goofy as he felt. Almost as though she were afraid of what he was thinking, Janis asked, "What—what are you asking for?" Sitting further up, her body language growing stiff, she asked, "You next. What did you think of—" she stopped, as though the words got caught in her throat before she could say them.

He said the thing he had been afraid to say, albeit hidden in another term. "When we made love?" He let that sentence linger between them, watched her face carefully. When her expression revealed nothing, John knew it was his chance. Knew at the very least that she was open to him right now, even if it was just a crack. "I don't know what I was thinking—all of the chances I wasted. Threw away. To hell with what's best for me, I want a reason to live, to be." He drew back against the couch, looked away from her for a second as he willed himself to go through with it.

Janis' still face was betrayed by her eyes, reminding him of gold, molten and heavy, overbright. "What are you asking?"

"I'm not asking for anything. You can tell me to go to hell, but I'm not hopping around it anymore. You saw what I did to get you back." He could feel the heat that had been growing steadily on his neck bloom on his face, his heart pounding so loud that it felt like it was drowning his voice out. "Part of me thought—hoped—that would be enough. For the record, Janie, I don't need to say anything. If none of this is obvious to you, then I don't know what I could even say. But if this isn't what you want..." He trailed off as an old fear, the very same fear that once felt like it chained him, kept him from ever asking this countless times before, rose up. "I don't want to lose what we have. Nothing I feel for you would make me ever not want to stop being friends with you. You're my mentor. My hero. I don't want you to be afraid that opening ourselves up to a new opportunity with destroy what we already have."

She closed her eyes, a moment that felt like it stretched through an eternity. Finally, Janis opened her eyes, revealing—nothing—of what she was thinking. John was growing afraid of what she would do, then she said, "I want—want to know that you're sure. Like," she had opened her eyes wide, was taking her turn at pinning John with her eyes. "really, one hundred percent sure."

John almost said something angry, potentially destructive. It was as if something that his Grandma once would have called a "better angel" had a tight rein on his growing hair trigger. That, and a fear of losing this chance, what felt like his final chance.

So, making sure to say his words—carefully—and ready to stop Janis from interrupting him, John said, "I spent more time than you could imagine, sure about this. I breathe, I reaffirm that this is what I want, then I exhale. I know," he stopped, holding up a hand to stop her before she could indeed try to interrupt, waiting until she closed her mouth. "that you worry about... what I think of you." He almost closed his eyes before he said the rest, knew that no amount of mental preparation would prepare him for what he knew he had to say. "Personally, I never cared if you were male, female, whatever." Finally something occurred to him to say, something that made him have to fight to suppress a laugh. "A Sectoid. You can be a Sectoid and I'd still want to do this with you!" Finally he discovered that he couldn't stop the laugh that bubbled out of him.

It just felt so good. Even without her telling him anything, John realized that it felt like some burden he had been carrying on top of his heart had been thrown off. It felt like he could breathe, he could laugh. He added, "Okay, maybe not if you were a Sectoid."

When she didn't laugh back, John started to feel uneasy.

Janis seemed to be deep in thought, eyebrows furrowing. Finally, she asked, "How long have you felt like this?"

The smile faded from John's face. Regaining his control, he said, "No, you don't get to push everything you want out of me until I'm empty." Even I know that's not healthy. "Tell me how you feel."

She shook her head and let out an exasperated sigh. "I don't think you really know what you're asking for. Don't know why, honestly, it's like you don't understand the situation we're in."

"And what situation is that?"

Her voice rose a few octaves, passion clear in her eyes, her face. "You need to raise XCOM from its ashes." Finally, the first show of real, genuine emotion, a vulnerability, in too many minutes. "And it might be stupid. It might not be anything to worry about, but I can't get over something."

John leaned back in the sofa, one thought above all others clear in his mind. She's not saying she hates the idea of us as a concept. Honestly, it sounded like she was grasping at straws. But, why? Is there something about me she doesn't like?

Throwing his arm over the back of the sofa, he asked, "What's the problem?"

Janis' eyes almost crossed. "Problem? More like problems." Before he could ask exactly what she meant, Janis, finally breaking the almost eerie calmness that formed a mask over her emotions, said, "Let's start with morale. I'm worried that us... doing..." she hesitated, her face growing pinker with each moment that passed. "Anyway, what it'll mean for both of us in the Initiative. If being in a..." she trailed off, her face growing redder by the moment before she stuttered out, "with you, what it could do to us. Especially if it doesn't work out."

Before she could get to another god-damned point, John added, "Personally, I've lived long enough wondering what could be. I'd rather get to the possibilities and deal with the aftermath—after." Still, he should have known that this was what it would be like, trying to get this woman to agree to go out with him. Knowing her, she was stressing variables that would be years in the future, in spite of how she came off to others sometimes as a carefree person.

Janis blinked, then said, "I am..." It was obvious, she was struggling to say something, but it didn't want to leave her mouth. "I don't know if I want to make that kind of commitment."

The words left John's mouth before he could censor them, wonder if he was being too cruel. But by that point, John was past caring about being nice. "You know what?" He laughed, a chuckle that had no humor in it. "If you just feel nothing for me, then you can just—stay in here." He started to get up, meaning to leave. Starting to try to make himself believe that he would forget about this day, maybe not tomorrow, but someday.

He was so angry, mostly at himself, that it felt like his emotions were filling his ears till he could hear his heart beating an enraged rhythm in his chest, felt like it was engulfing his head, cannibalizing his thoughts until they were a bright, ADVENT red.

John had reached the door and had actually thrown it open when he was stopped by someone in the doorway, whose hand was raised to knock. Both men made eye contact before John felt someone pulling him back in the room from behind. He might have made a noise—a yelp—as he watched a hand that was not his own reach out next to him, slamming the door shut. His hand was already reaching for the handle of his knife, mentally ready, always to redeem himself for his lack of ability to save someone from an intruder's grasp.

But It was pitiful; all of John's training and he tripped like a newborn giraffe, almost had to be steadied by his unexpected captor. Adrenaline fueled him, his hand shaking with the need to fill one of them with the combat knife. His heart was beating a barbaric rhythm in his chest even as he realized who it was that must have grabbed him.

When he was maneuvered around to face her, John wanted to tell Janis that there was someone outside, but was stopped by her, wrapping an arm around his back, pressing him to her.

"Hey, let's not be hasty," Whatever John was going to say felt like it was smothered by the weight of the bright intensity he saw in her feral eyes. "You can't just show up into my life again, all grizzled and hate-fuck and expect me to deal with trying to learn how to properly be wooed by my ex-protegee while recovering from surgery and post traumatic stress disorder." She breathed warm, misting breath onto his face as she took in a deep, steadying breath. "Oh, and trying to figure out where I stand with my old family, here." Before he could properly react, or even take a breath, Janis leaned over and kissed him.

John struggled, then got his arms around her, pulled the leggy bombshell on him. Worked on kissing her back like how he had wanted to all damn day, with some added, vengeful, horny intensity thrown in for good measure. He didn't know how long they spent like that, only that they were interrupted with he heard an almost tentative knock on the door behind him.

Groaning, John wrenched away for a moment, donkey kicking the door behind him with his booted foot and heard a satisfying smash in the metal. He didn't have any time to worry about who it was that had been knocking at the door, or really even if he would start feeling an answering pain from the kick in his foot, as Janis grabbed onto either side of his face, roughly, and started kissing him so hard he was surprised she wasn't trying to gnaw his face off.

One of them pulled the other back to the couches—he really wasn't sure which—and as Janis started to pull his sweater off, John had to stop her, grabbing ahold of her hands gently.

Out of breath, the dark haired woman looked at him, her own anger burning in her jackal eyes. "What the fuck are you doing?"

She looks like she wants to rip my hands off for disobeying her. And it was hard to tell if he had ever been as turned on as he was in that moment with her lust-created rage burning at him. John took in his own steadying breath before he said, "Just—thought I should warn you. Not in the mood for... gentle." he swallowed, felt his heart beating heavy in his chest. All of that sudden fight he felt in his blood that her sneaking up on him had not left, instead it seemed to be pooling in his groin until he felt like he was going to explode. "To be honest, I'm not gonna be too playful if we—I'm just gonna be... hate fucky."

He wanted to close his eyes and scream himself hoarse for how fucked up and weird he must have sounded.

To his complete shock, Janis gestured affirmatively, nodding, before she said, "Haven't tried that yet with you. Better fuck me good if you're gonna try to warn me."

John was lying face up on his ex-Commanding Officer's bed, naked and with his head lolling off the bottom edge. The pillows were long forgotten about, had been sometimes props for knees or something for Janis to bite into when the man who was seemingly passed out on the bed had been throughly fucking her. They had been thrown off at some point and the blankets were completely rumpled and yanked loose from the heavy shifting on the mattress. The fitted sheet was almost loose, all but one edge clinging to the bed for dear life. All in all, by Janis' appraisal, the bed had never looked better or more inviting.

The bed's owner was laying on the closest couch, legs dangling over the arm rest. Janis couldn't think about what would be considered improper about the current situation or what was approved protocol. She was too busy with laying on her back, half dreading when she would try to sit up, naked and covered in sweat, both hers and John's. Oh, and there was the indelicate nature of what felt like a vast amount of moisture, not of her own creation, that filled her cunt like she was a goblet. Christ the leather on the couch was going to punish her more than anyone ever threatening her for screwing a co-worker ever could, and she dreaded the trail she was going to leave on the ground as she walked.

Really, though, she loved fucking her ex-protegee so much that she was half certain at some point that hell would rise up an swallow her whole for corrupting a man so strong and pure in his dedication as John was.

She wasn't sure if the man was asleep—or even if she had managed to kill him—but she hoarsely called out, "If you're tryin'... trying to get me to agree to be the Commander again by playing to my most crippling, unacknowledged weakness... of muscular daddies... then you're going to be disappointed." She trailed off with a weak, semi-hysterical giggle.

John, half-surprising her, answered back, "You have a fetish you didn't... tell me about?" He was close to slurring his words, sounded like he could barely get them out of his mouth. Still, he said, "You know, I meant it when I said... said that..." He almost sounded like he was drowsing off, before he said, "I've had a crush on you for forever. Pre-op, I mean, even."

Janis had to swallow back a hard ball of emotion that formed in her throat. She was answering that unexpected admittance, asking, "Have a preference, though?" When he didn't answer at first, she tried to sit up, struggling with her wet noodle of a body from where John had left heron the couch. She was unsuccessful in sitting back up, finally admitting defeat as she just tried to stop from passing out.

John finally replied, "I see pros and cons in both. Wish I got to do this with you before you got the operation. Would have liked the contrast."

"In what sense?"

John paused, then answered, "Both, I guess. Between our bodies... also remembering what it would have been like—fucking my S.O." Unexpectedly, John let out a dry, genuine chuckle. "Used to imagine I'd probably be the sub, but I would have liked it the other way, sometimes."

Janis almost laughed. She finally found the strength to sit up, pulling her skin away as gently as she could from the material sticking to her flesh. She looked at the man, realized that his eyes were closed so he looked like he was asleep. Almost to confirm that she hadn't been imagining his confessions, she said, "I never thought you were such a slut. Guess I thought too well of you." Trying to sound as serious as she could, she ruined it by breaking into a peal of laughter. When she looked back at him, she saw that she was being watched by a pair of upside-down, doe-brown eyes.

Something in his voice, when he spoke, told Janis that the jokes had ended between them. "Would you have ever imagined me like this?"

Janis sucked in her chapped lips, wetting them with a flick of her tongue. "Like when?"

John cocked one of his brows at her, the look far less intimidating coming from an upside-down, naked, man. "Back when we worked together at the base."

"You mean the original XCOM?"

John's lips tightened into a frown that should have been ridiculous in the situation. "I mean back when you used to order me to run laps for misbehavior."

He meant back when he was young Johnny Bradford, Bambi to her. And specifically, when he was a raw cadet and had been thoroughly off limits in any stretch of the imagination.

Janis sat up further and willed herself into a state of semi sobriety before she said, "John, that wouldn't of been cradle robbing, it would've been highway robbery."

Finally a grin, truly wicked, spread across the man's face. "I know, right?" She—must—have been imagining it, but John sounded horny as he said it. Which was unimaginable, given the fact that what they had done had surely taken a decade off of the man's life.

"Just to be clear here: you're saying you wanted to fuck me when I had a fully operational set of G.I Joe parts?"

"A lot more than that," the man admitted. "Used to be fun, thinking of you breaking into the barracks, pinning me to the bed."

"Jesus."

John, sounding like he was reanimating, added, "Would have made this guy's twenties and most of his thirties if you'd pushed me into an alcove and made out with me. Out of nowhere." He weakly flung his arm for emphasis.

Janis thought that the breath had drained out of her lungs, like she was back in an ADVENT lab with a needle in her chest. Hell, this turn of events left her semi wondering if this was a planted experience in her head. A dangerous-looking man telling her that he's lusted after her for, what, most of the time she'd known him? Insanity.

She sat up, drawing a leg close to her so she could hug it. Finally, she asked, "How long've you felt like this?"

The joy on John's face wore away. He coughed, then struggled get up himself. She was starting to wonder if he'd answer her when, with his back turned towards her, he said, "I dunno. I think it took a month or so after meeting you."

Christ, what would that have made him? Was he even twenty when she met him? She was shocked by the confession and felt something like pity, unexpected, color her now too obvious memories. "Johnny—"

John held his hand out to stop her, then turned, looked at her with warm brown eyes. "If I could make sense of human emotion, I would be selling all the answers to why someone would obsess over someone else for the better part of their life. Unrequited—something like that." Slowly, he turned around, fully nude and sitting on the edge of her bed. "You don't need to say anything. I can tell—you didn't feel that way about me." He waved his hand towards her. "That's fine. 'long as I'm what you want, now." Janis ducked her head and to her horror, John seemed to see something in her expression. He almost smiled and, in a cajoling voice, he asked, "What is it?"

"What's what?" She tried to wipe the look off of her face.

"That." He pointed at her, was now grinning. "You look—" he stopped, and in a laughing, accusing voice, he said, "that's a shit eating look on your face."

Janis couldn't look at him as she said it. "I—may have entertained the thought—a thought or two."

John straightened himself on the bed and craned forward. "Since?"

Janis felt like a criminal admitting to a crime after hours spent in an interrogation room. "I liked the way you looked at me, when I was all... femme. But, I mean, even when you were, I think the term is "young, dumb full of..."" She faked a cough, looked away. "The thought crossed my mind, I mean, for a bit I thought you did have a thing for me. I was kind of waiting for you to blurt it out to me." She turned her head towards the couch, which she wished she could bury her suddenly very warm face against. She muttered out, "Or pin me against my desk."

At first she didn't know if John had heard that last bit, but he almost seemed to roar. "That's because I did have a thing for you!" He laughed, almost falling backwards as he held onto his mouth, only partially successful as he stopped the chronic laughter that shook his chest. Finally he let go of his mouth, and as Janis looked at him she saw that his eyes were filled with tears from laughter, he said, "If I knew you felt that way, we could have had a much more fruitful use of our leisure time together. And... what would you have done, if I had pushed you against a desk?"

Janis, now thoroughly embarrassed by the situation and not entirely sure why, covered her face with her hands. "Now we're talking about more reasons why they would have discharged me. Corrupting the youth, just—add that."

"Can't corrupt what was already there to begin with." He waited a moment, waiting until Janis pulled her hand away from her face, then said, "So now I have to figure out how to get you to accept the role of Commander."

The sleepy, sated smile that had been forming on Janis' mouth stilled. Glancing away, Janis sighed, then said, "Christ above, I really need that ice cream now."

"Janie—"

Janis held a hand out and stood up, wincing from the sudden pull caused by the leather on her skin. Sucking in her teeth to stop from letting out an anguished cry, she turned around, headed for the mini-fridge. Each shoeless step on the ground felt like a sobering wake up from the bubble of fantasy both had created and indulged in, aided in no small bit by how she had to consciously grip her thighs shut to stop the torrent of the crude evidence of her time spent with the man she had no place fucking from coming out. Still, she doubted anyone would ever openly disapprove of this, even if it was a relationship that they were going to continue would be in not-exactly secret. Her mind kept going back to that fucking betting pool they set up for them. That, and the fact that if someone had a serious problem with it, they would be risking not having any Commander for the Initiative.

Not entirely comforting; Janis hadn't been bluffing before they had had sex that she was concerned about what a relationship would mean for not only them but for XCOM. But thinking about what this would mean to John was in itself a fear she had not imagined two nights of sex would lead to her worrying over.

Goddamn it.

Even as she pulled the fridge open and grabbed not one but two containers of ice cream, she realized that she didn't want to think about reality, at least for a while longer. Turning around with two spoons in one hand and the stacked containers of ice cream in the other, Janis plastered a fake smile on her face.

John, who was sitting on the edge of her bed, took one look at her face and asked, "What's wrong?"

Janis felt her smile straining at her lips. "What? Nothing."

Another one of those eyebrow cocks. He kept dutifully quiet, until the moment that Janis tried to pass him his ice cream. He took a hold of her wrist as she tried to pull back, then pulled until she was sitting on the bed on her knees, the ice cream sitting next to them, forgotten. At first she thought he was going to kiss her—or fuck her—but then his hand came up behind the nape of her neck and he steadied his gaze directly onto hers.

He spoke softly, each word sounding as though it was snagging against the rough edges of his voice. "You're doing that weird smile you make when you're scared about something. Funny, you don't even seem scared, even when a mission's going bad." He almost hesitated, then asked, "Is the thought of being with me this stressful? I'm not a kid anymore—some dude in his twenties. You do know I'm older than you now, right?"

Janis knew she couldn't evade the questions any more. Not after what they had done together. She answered honestly, felt the tension caused by the fake cheer to leech out of her with each word she spoke. "It all scares me, Johnny. I don't think I've been this shook by anything in my life."

Something like unease seemed to draw tight on John's face. "Why? I'm here for you." He shifted on the bed, coming closer to her. He was pressing her against him, until Janis was grateful to bury her face in his thick shoulder. "We can do this together. Just like always."

Smelling him with her eyes closed, Janis admitted what she had been ashamed to say aloud. "No, I can't ever go back to that." She didn't realize that sorrow had snuck its way into her until she found that she had to fight back a whimpering cry. She couldn't stop the tears that started to flow down her face, wetting his warm skin. "I can't be trusted. I failed you, all of you."

John was silent, and Janis was grateful for the feel of his hand, now running through her hair. And when he spoke, she could feel the vibrations through her body, against his frame. "I would never trust anyone at the helm besides you. If we couldn't find you—save you—I was resigned to the end of the world. No," he corrected himself. "I would have killed myself first." He let out a sound, it was almost like a dry chuckle, but it was empty of anything happy. "Fast, a bullet, or slow, liquor."

Janis pulled away from him, staring down at him as anger filled her, replacing her shame, her sorrow. "No. You're too valuable. You're meant to take this from me, do what I failed to do two decades ago."

She was almost surprised to see the not-yet fallen tears in his eyes, tears that seemed to Janis like they had been needing to fall for far too long. John took in a breath of air, then said, "You don't understand. I'm the useless one. I need you. I need you."

At first Janis wanted to tell him that he didn't need her like some good luck charm, then she felt herself say, "I can be here for you. Can be anything you need." It didn't shock her to realize that she meant what she said, found the thought of aiding John and taking him in this bed whenever they were allowed a moment alone was more than pleasant to imagine. It was a future that was too amazing to believe.

John steadied his gaze on her, then he took ahold of her hands in one of his, grasped so tight it almost hurt. "Then—I need you to command me. I want to help you save us. Save me."

Janis was trapped in those eyes as easily as if he had ambushed her. It all felt like, became, much, much more than two people struggling to figure out how they could fit their ragged edges together. She knew then that everything he said was true, that her worth to him was beyond even a romantic need. It was disconcerting, to see that unwavering, zealous loyalty, a look that should have only belonged in the eyes of a cult member gazing on their messiah.

Janis should have been disturbed by it, scared. What had she come to mean for a man who had done so much, and increasingly, she realized, it was all for her?

Janis felt herself lowering on her knees, sweeping closer to him, her hands cupping either side of his strong jaw. She kissed him, as though as a means of anchoring herself to something real, something to steady her mind. She knew, somehow, that this man's desire for her would surely kill him. He was the one who needed an anchor, something to hold him to reality—

His lips were firm and surprisingly generous, a surprise in a man who looked like the last thing that could have been a part of him, and it was an erotic, irresistible pull. As their mouths opened up to kiss more deeply, Janis felt the control she had over her knees become lost.

It turned out that the thought of being worshiped was exactly what she wanted.

It both scared and invigorated Janis. Before she knew it, the kiss that she had planned to tie herself and the man that had tossed her mind into a chaos had transformed into John pulling her to him forcefully, open-mouthed kissing until they were nothing more than two people who desperately wanted each other. Wordlessly, it was transitioning into fucking, especially with no clear head to steer them into sanity.

By the time it occurred to Janis that their conversation was more important than having sex again, John was laying beneath her, with Janis sitting on his waist.

She was going to say something and stand up, she really was. As Janis tried to formulate what she wanted to say, she felt John reach forward and start to run his hands against her hips. She closed her eyes, realized that she was tired—only it wasn't her body. To the contrary, her body felt like it was on fire, sitting atop a man she had no right exploiting the affection of.

Janis was tired of fighting her own wants, her libido.

A life time ago she had been a sort of weirdo play boy, and now her old voraciousness with sex was coming back to haunt her. Didn't help that fantasies were swirling, heavy like clouds leaden with rain and thick pressure, drawn in by the confessions of the man lying beneath her. It had felt good, amazing to explore the side of herself that she had never gotten a chance to feel before, with her old Second in Command making Janis feel full of him like she was his own form of intoxication.

A wicked thought crossed her mind as she felt John's choppy breathing, saw how his irises had disappeared, swallowed whole by an engulfing darkness.

Biting her bottom lip, Janis said, "You've been a bad boy Bambi—" she stopped herself, then changed it to, "Central."

John's full mouth fell open and it sounded as though a gasp or a moan emerged as a throaty choke.

"Fantasizing about your S.O. Disobeying direct orders."

John finally spoke, and Janis knew that she had him in her complete control from the sober, almost tense voice he spoke to her in. "What're you gonna do?" If not for that slight tremble of anticipation, he might have sold it, that he wasn't on the edge of his own control.

She smiled, one that he had never seen before on her face. "You want to play with my emotions, make me stay in this room with you like a hostage?" She could feel it, the way John's breathing sped up, until it felt like his stomach was hitting her abdomen like he was fighting to breathe.

She leaned forward, her hands finding his wrists, attached to hands that gripped the rumpled mess of the comforter as though for dear life. Gently but forcefully, Janis wrapped her fingers around his wrists, pulled up, until she forced his hands above his head, kept them trapped there. When she looked down into his eyes, she saw that John was staring up at her unblinkingly, lush honey brown irises stuck on her. He looked stoned, yet at the same time she thought she could see a part of his consciousness that Janis had never before seen in his eyes, bright and very much aware. His mouth was softly parted and his words slipped out as though irresistible.

"What are you going to do to me..." He paused, and natural though the refrain was, Janis could see that in his mind he was still struggling over some final barrier in the moments before he conquered it. "Commander?"

About to answer him as naturally as though this was something they had always done—were meant to do—Janis instinctively shuddered. As she moved, she felt John's swollen cock press against her ass. "F-fu—I'm going to need you to make sure that if I pass out on top of you, I don't fall off the bed."

Sometime later both laid in the bed, which had been nearly decimated of everything that made it anything more than a mattress, with Janis' head laying on John's chest. She liked hearing his breathing, feeling his too human chest rising and falling as he took in air. Liked a lot more the fact that he seemed to take pleasure in her laying on him as well, had an arm drawn loosely against her shoulders.

She had brought up a shower earlier, and this time Janis had been certain that he had finally given into sleep. When she tried to move, however, she felt John's arm tighten on her. She understood that it was not time for them to leave the position she was in yet. Anyway, she enjoyed the smell of John's body post-post coitus, the subtle smell of her own body that clung to his chest.

Sleep was something they would have to figure out eventually and even the warmth that felt like it formed a halo around their bodies, resulting from the physical labor of explicit love, would not protect them all night from the harsh air of the ship's life systems on their naked bodies.

Surprising her, John spoke, his voice resonating from where her ear was pressed against his torso. "Well, I have to hand it to you. You were right about us needing food after we were done. It has been a long night."

Janis let out a long chuckle. It took her a stupidly long time to recall it, as if the recent memory were in her current state like a moth that her slow fingers couldn't clasp around. She asked, "Who was that at the door when you tried to leave?"

She felt John shrug. "I don't know—didn't have the time to ask him what he wanted. I was a little—distracted."

Her libido finally tamed, it left her mind free to understand things in a calm, doped manner. "Oh my god. That was Terrance from the canteen, with that food I ordered."

He didn't seem to react at first, then John started to chuckle before it turned into a full blown laugh. It made Janis have to get up, watching John laugh so hard that he had to cover his face, his whole body shaking with it. It was a revelation. As much as she cared about him, there was a feeling that she had lost the man that she had started to fall for before she had been stolen two decades before. Up till that moment, Janis had succumbed to a process of what felt like falling heavy for a man who was very different from the man he had once been.

Seeing him laugh in that slightly high pitched, wheezing way of his, made her feel like she had been having really good sex with a close friend she thought she had lost as well as this very serious man who spoke with a world of experience in his throat.

It was the moment she lost any chance she may have had at leaving these nights somewhere in the back of her mind for the good of XCOM—even for the good of John.

When he finished laughing, John pulled his hand away from his face and looked at Janis. The laughter in his eyes dissipated as he looked at her, his mouth uncurling from the absolutely beautiful smile that he had been wearing. "Janie, anything wrong?" He started to look uneasy, shifting his gaze away from her. "We can get something else to eat—"

Janis forced herself to relax, willing herself to smile even though she felt like her heart was racing. This was scary, but the thought that she could not shake from her mind felt more exhilarating than anything ever had been. "No, nothing. Tell the truth, I don't think I could walk more than five feet in the state I'm in. Think I just wanna pass out, preferably soon."

That smile reappeared on John's face, making that weird tingling feeling return to her chest. "That's alright with me," He said. He started to move, dragging his way up to the head of the bed, where he flopped his head onto a rumpled pillow with a satisfied sigh.

What a comfort, to be with a man, albeit an extraordinary man, but a Human male nevertheless. The kind who fucked like someone who never got sick of it and who loved the feel of her body against his in the afterglow.

As Janis crawled her way after him, she thought, There's no way this isn't going to be the man I spend the rest of my life with. As impossible as it seemed in their situation.

As they were dropping asleep, something occurred to Janis to say. She didn't know if John was asleep yet, but she felt compelled to say it to him. Something that was long overdue in needing to be said, especially in the wake of John being brave, stepping out of his comfort zone for her so often recently.

"You once asked me what I saw in a person like you. I just... I never got a chance to say it, because I thought it was obvious. That I would've never needed a reason to be your friend, let alone..." She trailed off, half-wishing that John was asleep so that he didn't have to listen to her stammer. Still, Janis found a thread of what she wanted to say. "I guess, I never forgot about you because you've always looked vulnerable. You have this gentleness to you that I lost a long time ago. You have... such a beautiful soul. I should be so lucky, that you'd want me even after all this time. Even after everything, you came for me. It's like we were meant to be together, like the part of myself that my father took from me reappeared in my life the moment I looked into your eyes for the first time. Knew I was going to have to stop you from losing that... softness. Like I was a slave to it, being pulled to you—" Janis stopped herself, her mouth fallen open before she said, "No, you're like a beacon, or, or the sun, breaking over a long, really dark, night."

And, as quickly as she had started, Janis stopped. She had admired John for his emotional bravery, but now she understood how good, relieving it was, to get something off of your mind. Before she could think to ask, to see if John were awake, Janis felt her grip on consciousness fade.

She didn't believe that John had been awake, had found it comforting to think that he had not heard her. But even as she fell into a heavy sleep, John's eyes were open, his freshly awakened mind trying to piece together what she told him.

He was wondering if he could get over his woman seeing him as weak, vulnerable. Tried to wrap his mind around the thought that it could be okay for him to not have an iron grip on everything, a notion that felt impossible after he had spent so long denying that he had anything soft left inside of him that could be hurt. But, if it was vulnerability in him that she prized...