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elementof_riskAnd I breathe you into my heart and pray for the strength to stand today
'Cause I love you, whether it's wrong or right
And though I can't be with you tonight
You know my heart is by your side
I don't want to run away but I can't take it, I don't understand
If I'm not made for you then why does my heart tell me that I am
Is there any way that I could stay in your arms?
The hotel room is cold, frigid almost, as if there can only be two extremes of temperature--the blazing heat outside that makes stepping out the door like stepping into a crematory furnace, or this arctic chill that pervades everything, making the water impossible to heat and leaving the sheets on the stiff side. The controls on the wall do little to turn the air conditioning down, though he's noticed that the lobby is a slightly warmer place to linger, and so he does, waiting for the target from there despite the openness of the location and the presence, he is sure, of cameras. Part of him wants his presence known, like some sort of challenge tossed down. Come and find me. Catch me if you can. Did you think I would just lie down for you?
Even as the thoughts swirl around in his head, tightening in his chest and catching in his throat, though, he thinks of her. Of the moment it comes up on the screen, the moment it finally catches up to them, and he is not just her lover but now her assignment. Perhaps it won't be this assassination, or the orchestrating of that coup. Perhaps it won't be for weeks, months. He doubts it will be so long as years. Michael's had a hard on for his blood ever since letting him walk away in Hong Kong. And the question lingers: what will she do?
He almost wants to push it, to test it, to carry something off with such flair that they cannot help but sit up and notice, and she cannot help but have to react somehow. He wants to see her eyes when they meet his, knowing what she never asks because she can't ignore it.
And, then, he wants her to stay.
The miles stretch between them, separating them by borders and timezones and oceans, and he is sure he feels every single one of them. But moments like this, feeling the metal of his gun pressing into him through his shirt, fingers lightly brushing the detonator in his pen primed for a simultaneous attack on both person and resources, he feels the gap between their positions is far greater than any physical distance. That one he can cross, close. When his bed feels empty and his lips ache for the taste of her and his body yearns to close all the gaps until he cannot tell where she ends and he begins, he can go to the airport, catch a plane, and be in her arms again within a day at most. It hurts, almost physically, to roll over and not find her there, and how quickly he's come to want her beside him is near frightening. But the other distance is the one that tears at him more, twisting in his gut and making him feel a sort of dread he is unaccustomed to. He is what he is. He does not know how to be anything else, and the one time he tried it nearly killed him. She is what she is, and for all that they can understand each other because of it, the ideological distance is one that he does not think they can cross. They can pretend it does not matter, moan about the physical distance, meet with passion and need and heat whenever they close that gap, joining with reckless abandon and pushing the rest aside.
But one day it will matter. One day one of them will have to choose. And though he is not a man to feel fear, the thought of the choice almost terrifies him.
