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-6-
The thing was, he’d been planning to fuck Six after that first mission. Billy knew a fellow adrenaline junkie when he saw them in action. Even if Six wasn’t into blokes, he was pretty confident he’d be able to bring him around. It had worked for all the guys in the Skyrunners, after all.
And then… yeah.
He’d had some plans simmering in the back of his head for the others as well. Two was an icy stunner, Three could have been a model, and Five had the kind of walk that said he’d fuck like a battering ram. And One, Billy would fuck just to have the whole set.
Seeing Six go down like that kind of cooled Billy’s libido. One said they weren’t a family. Well, Billy hadn’t been thinking about it like that, obviously, but yeah. He figured, no attachments was probably the best way to go.
His last crew hadn’t even shown up for his fucking funeral. Why pretend like this would be any different?
-7-
“What’s your name, man?”
“Don’t tell him—”
“I’m Blaine. I just saved your life. What’s your name?”
The flight on the ghost plane to Turgistan took thirteen hours. It wasn’t hard to nod toward a quiet supply room out of sight and get Blaine to follow. Camille definitely noticed, but she didn’t say anything.
“What’s up?” Blaine said in a low voice. He glanced back in case they were being watched.
Billy took advantage of his distraction to step in close. “You saved my life.”
Blaine looked him in the eye, suddenly sincere. “You’d do the same for me.”
“I’ll do you one better.”
He kissed him.
A moment of soft lips, of Blaine’s heat pressed up against his front, and then a clang filled the room as Billy found himself thrown back against a wall.
“What the hell?” said Blaine, still not talking loudly. He didn’t seem angry, just confused.
“Come on, you never gave a fellow soldier a hand? Quick bit’a fun before a mission?”
Blaine’s jaw tightened. “No, I didn’t.”
“You never wanted to?”
Blaine hesitated, and Billy knew he had him, the way he knew how to flip his body through the air, the way he knew when he could land a jump. He pushed off the wall, pushed Blaine until their positions were flipped.
Then he went down on his knees.
“A mouth’s a mouth,” he said, grinning up at Blaine in exhilaration. “And a bloke knows what a bloke likes.”
Blaine hesitated, and Billy leaned in to kiss the growing bulge in Blaine’s combat pants.
He heard a cut-off groan above him, and then strong hands slid into his hand.
“A mouth’s a mouth, huh?” Blaine murmured. “A’ight daredevil, show me what you got.”
It was Billy’s pleasure.
-1-
Billy was the only one who stayed on base most of the time. The others flew off to Alexandria, Rio, Los Angeles, and came back with tans and new guns and bite marks.
He didn’t mind it, much. It was usually only for a week or so in between mission-planning, and he liked having the time alone. Out here in the middle of nowhere, it let him think.
He was streaming EastEnders on the plane, which had the best AC, when One got back from one of his trips. He was carrying a big box and he walked straight to the front of the plane without even looking at Billy. That was pretty unusual. One liked to talk, even if he didn’t like saying anything important, so Billy hit pause and followed him.
“What’s that?” he asked about the crate.
“Whiskey.”
One flipped the lid to the floor of the cockpit with a clatter. He withdrew a bottle of Jack Daniels, cracked the top, and took a long pull straight from the bottle.
Aside from the concerning alcoholic tendencies there, the American alcohol at least explained what was going on. One was always moody when he came back from one of his mysterious trips to America.
Not usually this bad, though.
Billy leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms, while One dropped into the pilot’s seat and kicked his feet up on the dash. He took another swig, staring out the windshield at nothing.
“You alright?”
“Do I look alright?”
“No.”
“Then why would you ask?” Another drink.
“Cause if you want to talk, you can talk to me.”
One leaned over the arm of the chair in order to glare at Billy straight-on. “Did I somehow give you the impression that I want to talk about things? Because if I did, that’s on me. I’ve been trying my fucking hardest to give the exact opposite impression, so I’d really like to know where I went wrong.”
Billy shrugged, and then went and sat down in the co-pilot’s seat.
“Can I have some?”
“Get your own bottle.”
He did.
A while later, the sun had started going down. They were facing southeast, so the worst of the glare wasn’t facing them. Billy looked out at the darkening sky and sighed.
One was rambling about—Jesus, the Cleavers again, seriously?—and Billy’s field of vision was swimming a bit, so he interrupted.
“Why haven’t you told us your name?”
One went silent. After a minute, Billy noticed, and turned to look at him. One was glaring out at the desert again.
“Look, I know you’re really attached to this whole ghost thing. But. I think it’s alright as long as we’re all ghosts to them. The rest of the world. We don’t have to be ghosts to each other, do we?”
One didn’t react, so he went on.
“I like this crew, right? I think you were right. We did a good thing for the world, a really, really good thing. I’m not gonna walk away from this. I’m in it. I think the others are too. So what are you afraid of?”
Billy waited, and finally, One started laughing. Billy flopped back in the co-pilot’s seat, because fuck One if he couldn’t take a goddamn minute of sincerity, seriously.
“I’m afraid…” One cackled. “I’m afraid of exactly that. Exactly that. You don’t want to leave!”
Billy looked back over at One’s red face. “The hell are you talking about?”
“You don’t want to leave. You’re attached. To the others. They’re gonna die, Four. Didn’t you learn the first time? They’re gonna die because that’s what this job is. We’re all ghosts. We go where other people won’t, and do things they refuse to do, and we die for it. Those people you don’t want to leave? They’re toast. Might as well write ‘em off now.”
“No, fuck you, fuck you!” Billy said, stumbling to his feet. “You don’t fuckin’ know that.”
One glared up at him. “We got nine numbers on that wall, kid. We’ve taken down one of ‘em, and we lost one guy doin’ it. Statistically speaking, by the time we take ‘em all out, this team’s gonna consist of at least two numbers in the late teens.”
“And your solution is to not use anyone’s names?” Billy challenged. “Fat lot of good that’ll do!”
The cockpit was silent except for Billy’s breathing. He wiped away some water from his eyes and saw One watching him, looking surprised and something else. He didn’t like whatever it was, so he went and held onto the co-pilot’s chair and faced the darkness outside instead.
“You know… you’re right,” One said from behind him.
Billy didn’t respond. He felt a hand on his shoulder and he shrugged it off.
“Billy.”
He let One turn him around, and they were inches apart. Billy’s heavy breathing nearly made their chests touch. There was suddenly a tension between them, one that One could definitely feel, too, if the way he looked down at Billy’s lips and then back up to his eyes was any indication.
One stepped back, breaking the moment of connection. Billy’s hand shot out to twist in his shirt and haul him back in.
“Billy—”
“What’s your name?”
One hesitated.
“What’s your fuckin’ name?!” Billy shouted in One’s face.
One kissed him instead of answering. Billy grabbed his head and help him there, pouring his anger and fear into it. One’s hands found his shirt and dragged it up. Billy broke the kiss long enough to get it over his head and then dragged One back in.
Some time later, when he was naked and straddling One in the pilot’s chair, One whispered something he couldn’t hear.
“What?”
One turned his head away, eyes screwed shut. “It’s… Daniel. Everyone called me Danny.”
Billy stopped moving until One opened his eyes to glare up at him, gripping his hips tight.
“Nah, you look like a One.”
“...Are you saying I look like piss?”
“I guess so, yeah.”
One could be annoying when he laughed, but it turned out it was fucking hilarious to watch him come while laughing.
-2 and 3-
One got himself stabbed in Bern. The crew had a good laugh about it, because of all places, One would nearly bite it in Switzerland. It was bad enough that he had to go to the hospital, Blaine accompanying him for security and Amelia tagging along because she insisted.
Billy thought it was sweet. He said this aloud to Javi, and got a big grin for it.
“Yes, very sweet. And while they spend the night in the Krankenhaus, we spend the night in five-star hotel, right my dear?”
Camille was cleaning her guns in the corner of the cramped backup van they’d used for this mission. She didn’t look up from her work, but she did give Javi a tiny smile.
Billy drove them around the city, following Javi’s intermittently incorrect directions as he spun his phone around, trying to read Google Maps in German. Camille finally ran out of patience and took the phone from him, and they made it to the hotel three minutes later.
“I got us most of the way,” Javier insisted.
Camille rolled her eyes. Billy laughed.
They checked in under the latest fake identities and headed upstairs. It was nearly midnight, but Billy was still wide awake. He couldn’t imagine going to sleep right now, but Bern wasn’t exactly London for nightlife.
Javi and Camille apparently felt the same, because Billy turned to complain just as they wrapped around each other and started snogging like it was going out of style.
“Oh, wow,” Billy said before he could stop himself.
Camille somehow lifted herself up Javi’s body and wrapped her legs around his waist from the power of her core alone, and he didn’t even fucking stumble.
Suddenly, Billy’s issue of being too awake turned into a much more specific issue of a single part of his body being extremely awake.
The elevator dinged that they were nearing their floor, and Camille hopped down, setting her hair back to rights with a single twitch of her head. She once again looked perfectly calm and composed.
Javier, on the other hand, was grinning in the most obvious way. “Gonna have a party tonight, the two of us,” he bragged to Billy.
“Why not break open the room bars and make it for three?” Billy asked without thinking.
His crewmates turned to face him, then glanced at each other. Billy realized, in that moment, that he’d just proposed a threesome to a former hitman and a former spook, and gulped.
A dangerous smile spread across Camille’s face. “Why not?” she said to Billy, just as the doors opened, and slunk out.
Billy watched, entranced, as she walked down the hallway like it was a catwalk, and Javi clapped him on the shoulder and shook his whole body.
“We will have a great time tonight,” he assured Billy, and then he hooked Billy behind the neck and hauled him in for a heavy and nearly overwhelming kiss.
In that moment Billy remembered his original appraisal of how Javi would fuck, and decided that, even if this turned out to be a mistake, he wouldn’t have a single regret.
-5-
After they took down the second of One’s big wall of bad guys, the team took a month off, officially. Unofficially, Billy spent a week in Atlantic City with Blaine, and then he and Amelia flew down to Australia together. He knew Javi and Camille were in the Caribbean, though he didn’t know if it was for vacation or if they were pulling some sort of job on the side. Maybe that was vacation for them.
Australia was beautiful. So, so hot, and bright all the time. Nothing like London, nothing like the Ukraine, nothing like the only other time Billy went on vacation with his mum to Scotland.
And Amelia loved it. She wore flowing sundresses and big hats and she tanned heavily while Billy slathered on sunblock and burned anyway. And then she laughed at him and he felt like he was on top of the world.
They went climbing together, because Billy wanted to show her how on top of the world felt. She wasn't experienced, but she was strong and she listened to him and learned quick. The sun down there burned a deep gold that made Amelia look like she was on fire. Billy nearly missed two handholds because he got caught up in watching her instead.
They hiked up the last few meters side by side, the path narrow enough that their arms were brushing. The top was more of a plateau than a peak, and when they reached it they walked around for a few minutes, taking in the view for miles around.
They sat, drank water, stretched their sore muscles, talked about random things, laughed. They went silent again, taking it all in. Billy’d never had someone he could just be with that way, where they could both enjoy the same thing together and it felt like sharing something even in silence.
Amelia took his hand. She looked nervous, but Billy just smiled and squeezed her hand back. He still didn’t say anything. He didn't have to.
They'd have all the time in the world.