Chapter Text
Electricity was a valuable thing out in the field, and no one wanted to use their resources for something as small as a kettle. All the portable generators were at full capacity setting up their comms and coordinating how to join forces with the troops that were regularly stationed there. The army tended to view intelligence work with a dim eye, but in this case the orders came from the top.
It gave them some leeway in extraction - nothing so dramatic as fleeing under cover of night or through civilian airways. Just the drudgery of reports and putting up with being the bottom of the heap as far as priorities went. Getting a cot for each body was still up in the air, much less something as polite as a warm drink.
But after the shitshow that the job had turned into, caffeine was non-negotiable.
Ben pushed the tarp that was serving as both wall and ceiling aside, heading over to where Alex was sitting on top of one of the crates they'd liberated from the target. There were probably important, valuable things inside but they'd survived one coup and rough transport and at best guess, two millennia before this. Serving as a chair for an exhausted teenager was no issue.
Alex didn’t even seem aware that he had company. It was a bad sign for an agent, but perfectly understandable for a kid that had been pushing himself harder than most adults in the field.
Even after the artefacts had been extracted, Ben and Alex both had spent too much time trying to smooth things over with the local contacts.
Ben had been suspicious - most of who they talked with had far too much money and too much influence for a group stuck in a war-torn country. It made sense why outside actors would be interested - oil in the ground and smoke in the air meant that others could come in to ‘help’.
Humanitarian aid meant money to the region but also the money to the terrorists. It was a delicate balance to strike.
Thankfully he wasn't exactly a stranger to the environment and his deployment with the RAF, as mundane as it had been, had still required far more lessons in local culture, dealing with sand, and slipshod diplomacy than Alex had probably received.
Ben trod closer, wondering if his impromptu partner had actually managed to fall asleep with his eyes glazed over. The squeak of thick rubber soles on dry sand jolted the kid awake.
"Coffee?" Ben asked.
Alex looked up at him, blinking owlishly. There were dark circles under his eyes, and a tremor to his hands. What the kid probably needed, in all honesty, was more sleep. But Ben couldn't provide that.
"I like tea," Alex said, sounding confused. "And I don't think we have any of either?"
"Miracle of modern technology," Ben replied. He fished the packet of instant coffee out of his pocket and flicked open his canteen. The water was warm and tasted faintly of metal and iodine - the coffee could only be an improvement, no matter how bad it ended up being. "Besides, you don't drink it for the taste."
Alex nodded, watching Ben shake the bottle back and forth with fascination.
Ben wondered again just where the kid came from. He'd thought that their paths were done crossing over a year ago, when they'd wrapped up that mess in Australia. Hadn't heard anything since then, either officially or through the grapevine.
Child soldiers, especially on the side you were fighting for, tended to grab attention.
Seeing him turn up in the sandbox to help with the extraction of their target and to pass something, Ben still wasn't sure what, to the agent in charge, had been a nasty kick in the teeth. If he were still hanging out with this type of crowd, it seemed likely he wasn't doing much else with his life.
Ben would know.
"Here. It'll wake you up some."
Alex took a deep swig and immediately grimaced. "Is it really supposed to taste like that?"
"Probably."
The next sip was much more cautious, but from the way Alex's fingers were gripping the bottle, it was what he needed.
"Thanks."
Ben shrugged, and gestured for him to pass it back. Alex wasn't the only one who was dog-tired after this.
"I always bring some when I know work is taking me to interesting places and I can afford it."
Alex shook his head, dark brown hair spitting out grains of sand with the force of his disagreement.
"No. I mean, yes, the coffee is nice but... thanks for being here, too. I'm sorry."
Ben shoved down the urge to frown, busied himself with drinking his own share of the sludge. It tasted fine to him.
It was almost a guarantee that whatever the kid was talking about was going to turn into a mess.
"It's not like I had much of a choice, since I was here before you landed."
Alex eyed him. He looked like whatever he was about to say was worse on his tongue than the coffee had been. "Yeah, but in general. Last time we worked together you got shot, and I thought that meant you'd be left alone. I didn't mean to get you pulled into this."
Ben almost wanted to laugh. Out of everything that could come out of Alex's mouth, this was the most ridiculous. Teenage arrogance.
"You didn't get me pulled into anything, I joined up at sixteen.” Maybe that would help knock him back to reality. Instead he got a wry smile.
“Looks like I still have a year to go.”
His mind took a moment to piece that together, unable to stop himself from snapping when he reached the inevitable conclusion. “What.”
“What?” Alex returned innocently.
When they’d first met Ben had pegged Alex at around sixteen if he was generous , the same age he’d been when he had enlisted.
Too young for Selection but not too young to hold a rifle.
“How old are you?”
He arched an eyebrow. “Classified.”
Ben hated that word. Had hated it in the RAF too but it was worse now that it was being used against him by a kid . In a war zone.
“You don’t get to pull rank on me.”
“I’ve been an agent longer than you,” Alex said. Some of the spark had dimmed, pure exhaustion taking its toll, but he still met Ben’s eyes straight on. It was the same grit that had gotten them through this job.
“How much longer?” His voice sounded hollow even to himself. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer but he had to ask.
“Classified.” The glint of defiance was still there but Ben didn’t have any patience for it right now. Instead, he shook his head, and took a long drink to try and cover the bitter line of his mouth.
He had thought he had been ahead of his peers, pushing himself out of the house at sixteen and swearing his oaths to Queen and Country. Had gone to school, earned a degree and then had a rifle shoved back into his hands. MI6 had been a pipe dream for something after a long career in the SAS.
Then they had been stuck with a kid. A teen.
So soon off his own tour in Kabul, a teenager in Selection had left a bad taste in his mouth. Spending time with the kids in town who had gathered near their gates and tried to hock battered bootleg DVDs had been some of the highlights of the tour. Ben had even let them pickpocket him on occasion - he made more than enough money to part with some.
He’d been glad that they were keeping the kids out of the fight as much as possible. It had felt like the one solidly good thing they’d done out there, and coming back to see cheeks still rimmed with puppy fat at Beacons had been a hard pill to swallow. Australia was harder.
The middle of a war was the worst yet.
“What about school?” Ben asked, trying to sound casual and absolutely sure that he was failing.
Alex scowled at that. “A lot of people seem concerned about my education all of a sudden.” Something in his eyes said there was context to that statement that Ben wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“It’s a good thing to have. Especially if you plan on staying with Six.”
“Maybe you should take your own advice.” Alex’s tone was waspish.
Ben just raised his brows, taking an obnoxiously loud slurp of coffee just to make a point. “I did. I graduated with honors, too.”
“In what ?”
“Applied psychology,” he said, dry as the world around them. He was tired from a rough job and from seeing Alex in the field at all. Having his degree questioned wasn’t something he enjoyed under the best of circumstances - and that had happened enough. ‘Daniels’ was something of a rising star in the department, plucked out of Selection once he’d started to fall behind the rest during endurance.
“Glad to see you putting that to good use. Shouldn’t you be holed up in an office somewhere, picking apart people’s thoughts?”
“I’m picking apart yours and I’m not all that impressed.” It was supposed to be a gentle tease but given the arched eyebrow he received in return, it hadn’t come out that way. Feeling just a touch of guilt, Ben returned the coffee without making Alex ask.
Whatever his feelings about being told to return to school, Alex took back the drink gratefully enough.
“You mean... you’re not stirred by my lovely company,” he asked, swirling the canteen and Ben repressed a groan.
“Humor is not a good defense mechanism. Especially puns.”
“I’m told I’ll grow out of it if I don’t get killed first. ” He shrugged casually, like it wasn’t alarmingly possible given they’d just been ducking grenades hours earlier.
“Jesus.” Ben was used to that kind of humor from his old unit mates but from a kid… “Bit dark.”
“That’s the coffee. I’m just bitter, thanks, Doc,” Alex snarked, rolling his eyes.
“I’m not a doctor,” Ben pointed out.
“Maybe you should go back to school then. Get out of the sandpit and into a nice cozy office, with all the hand-pressed coffee you could ask for.”
Alright so maybe Alex wasn’t all that over getting some free advice.
“We could see each other on campus,” Ben offered, as an olive branch.
“Doubt it. Odds are better that we’ll see each other in the field again.”
Ben couldn’t exactly say he was wrong. He’d been active with MI6 for what? Two years now and he’d seen the kid twice, not counting Selection. Their meetings had largely been put to chance. It wasn’t as if they had been partners or that their mission objectives had been the same. But at Vauxhall they didn’t believe in coincidences. Maybe Alex had picked up on that faster than he had?
“It’s a small world.” He shrugged. “Only so many of us in the field.”
“Seven billion, wouldn’t say it’s that small.” A pause. “Have you run into anyone other than me?”
Alright so Alex was definitely more paranoid. At his age, doing the work he had seen him up against in Australia and now here… he couldn’t exactly blame him. “No. Doesn’t mean it won’t happen, though.”
Alex shrugged. “Yeah, well, next time try to bring something better,” he nodded to the canteen.
“I’ll keep it in mind, maybe if we wind up in London together, we can grab the good stuff.”
“I’ll grab a coke,” he said flatly, looking thoroughly unimpressed.
“You haven’t even had real coffee,” said Ben, a little offended on behalf of his vice of choice.
“So you admit it?”
Well damn. Kid had him there. “Sure, I’ll even buy.“
Alex nodded, pulling a smile onto his face that almost made the exhaustion vanish.
He must have recognized the comment for what it was: not only an end to the conversation when both of them were close to dead on their feet, but a barely-there promise to stay in touch this time around. Ben couldn’t say that he was exactly happy that the kid was still involved - seeing him again had meant revising his guess about Alex’s age down a few years - but the least he could do was try and be a helping hand.
Offering advice and shitty coffee, as needed.