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Gina's been with the CIA for long enough that she no longer remembers a time when she wasn't continually behaving as though everything she said was going to be recorded live and played back at her during some secret tribunal because of misbehavior. And Gina knew what misbehavior looked like. It usually involved some sort of—secret leak, misuse of resources, misfiling, or worse: fraternization.
They're not supposed to get close, in this life.
It happens anyway. Obviously. No amount of secretive PSAs can hide the camraderie of saving each other's lives (and the country, you know) on the regular. When you're all not-so-secretly fucked up and sworn to oath not to spill a word about what you've seen, understanding each other comes tantamount to anything else.
So yeah, she gets it. Understanding.
She understands Colin in a way that Gina hadn't even understood her brothers, growing up.
How many times has she clinked beers with Colin over the end of a mission? How many times has she been there when Colin just sat listless at his desk and churned through his work with the efficiency of a man running from something else? How many times has she cried in his shoulder over something: stress, the rage of watching something fail at her fingertips, frustration at her orders; everything mounting and mounting until she was a volcano ready to erupt?
Gina's not as young as she likes to think she looks. Definitely younger than the other staff: something she doesn't like to think about, because Nikki really would exile her to storeroom duty if she so much as asked how old she was. And Colin would just laugh it off, but Gina knows he's old enough to have probably been in all sorts of shit.
Not this kind, though.
"Hey, uh… we really shouldn't walk in at the same time."
Gina, who has innocently just been minding her own fucking business coming back from the photocopier stops dead in her tracks. Her ears prick up at the sound of a half-whisper—quiet, but definitely audible enough to be heard if you were observant and if you were there, like Gina was. She flattens herself against the wall stealthily—pretending to mind her own business, now, staring at the printed sheets of paper in her hand—but also definitely listening. Again. Because that was Colin's voice—quiet and solemn, but definitely his voice.
Another voice says something, and she recognizes the timbre as Bill's, but it's too low for her to make out.
"Oh, you're joking?" Colin says. "You're joking. Funny." He sounds exasperated, but also like—surprised. Taken aback. Privately, Gina wonders what he's so surprised about, like Bill hadn't been cracking jokes since day one. But more as of recently—Colin's really been rubbing off on him.
She edges closer. A beat passes.
And Bill says, hushed: "But you're right, we should, uh….step wisely from here on out."
Wait. What?
"Yeah."
"Should I—"
"No, I'll go first."
Shit. Gina slips back into her seat by the time he rounds the corner, but her heart is hammering even as she explains the dead diplomat to a Colin who's listening and taking mental notes—as attentive as ever—but also unruffled like he didn't just have that weird fucking conversation at the door.
Colin asks questions like normal. Makes a snarky joke when Bill walks in late, because Nikki had asked him to show up too, and Gina's aware of all of this but she's looking at Bill a little too intensely because he asks "if I have something on my face."
Yeah, something, Gina thinks, a little hysterical.
Out loud she says: "No—nothing. Sorry, got lost in thought."
Bill blinks, but turns back to say something to Colin. Colin, who for some inconceivable reason, flickers his eyes over Bill's face and down to his—his neck? His tie? His mouth?
Gina can't tell from this angle. It's just a short, abortive movement, like he hadn't meant to do it. Like a twitch or a flinch—like a reflex. Like when the doctor taps your knee with that rubber hammer and you can't help but raise your leg.
She knows Colin is the most honest when he's not being observed (or thinks he isn't, anyway). It's the one fact that has carried with her for the whole ten years she's known him, longer than her stint at Google or that computer science bachelor's she'd attained from Harvard (god, how long ago was that? Gina's thirty-seven. Sometimes it feels like she's a whole lot older).
There's nothing like getting caught in a tell. There's nothing like being caught in the act, Gina knows, because she learnt that from Colin.
She locks eyes with him. And Colin—for a second—freezes, like a helpless deer caught in the bright glowing high-beams of her Jeep. Just for a second. Long enough for Gina to convey everything with a look.
Colin looks back, mouth slightly agape, before he relaxes. A smooth expression ripples across his face before he looks away.
What the fuck, Gina thinks. Incredulous, she tries to catch Nikki's eye, but to no avail. Nikki's busy talking to Zeeb and Zeeb is passing files to Bill and Bill is obliviously talking on and on to Colin, who is staring at him, and pointedly trying to ignore Gina's entire existence as she processes whatever the hell that was.
Maybe she's hallucinating. She resolves to put it out of her mind once and for all by asking.
Asking does not help.
"I would never join the FBI," Colin says, wrinkling his nose in disgust. "Why are you asking?"
Gina knows how he feels about FBI. Colin knows Gina knows how he feels about FBI. This is not news to either of them.
She's staring him down across his desk while he plays with the files spread across his oft-unused keyboard (usually he does his work at home or just does it at the most random hour. Colin would never do his paperwork while everybody's at the office, it makes him paranoid) and he's pretending like she doesn't know. She's staring at him. He is not looking back. Are you serious, Gina tries to convey with her mind.
Either Colin's not listening or he's truly not as telepathic as she'd once thought he was.
"Okay," she finally says. "What about Bill, then?"
"What about Bill?" Colin echoes, a little blankly.
"You know," she says, vaguely. Oh, god, this is already shaping up to be the second worst conversation she's ever had to have in the office and she's had plenty of bad ones. Are you fucking our FBI liaison, Colin Glass, she tries to convey with her mind. Again, Colin's not listening. He's too busy twirling a pen between his fingers slowly and looking at her like she's kind of gone and lost it. Gina resents the implication. If anything, she should be asking him that.
"I'm afraid I don't follow."
She looks at him. He's raising an eyebrow at her in that nonplussed way he does, lip twitching—oh my god. "Colin. Are you and—Bill—?"
Colin's a smart boy. He could probably figure it out, but he's busy staring at her like she's gone and started speaking in Spanish. Colin, as far as Gina is aware, speaks about seven languages fluently and can code-switch at the drop of a hat, so she's not sure where the confusion is coming from.
"I'm not sure what you're saying but I don't know if I like it," is all he says, finally, when the moment grows too pregnant for either of them to ignore. He puts the pen down and Gina considers the possibility that maybe she has finally gone cuckoo, howling-to-the-nuthouse, snapped-from-the-ptsd batshit crazy. Colin opens his mouth to say something else but Gina never gets to hear it because a hand drops on his shoulder, startling him.
Gina looks up. The suited arm which is attached to the hand that is currently resting on Colin's shoulder belongs to Bill Goodman. Because of course it does. It's rendering Colin mute. It's also rendering Gina—a lot of things.
"Hey, partner," Bill says. "Ready to go?"
Colin blinks. A beat passes. Gina sees it when that inscrutable expression flashes across his face, like a flash of sun on an otherwise cloudless and Godless day before it disappears behind that steely mask Colin wears like armor. Oh my god.
Gina was raised a good Catholic girl. She deserves a miracle. Deliver me from this, she prays, and does the Ave Maria once and a half times in her head before Colin opens his mouth to respond.
"Sure, partner," he says, drawling the words out in that impassably British accent—the one he uses when he's trying to play up how ridiculous he finds the American-ism, but Bill doesn't seem to notice. He just smiles—like that overly sunshiney, too-bright, will-blind-your-ass smile—and takes his hand off Colin's shoulder as Colin stands up to leave.
"Sorry, Gina, we'll have to do this another time," Colin says. He doesn't sound very sorry. "If it's really pressing just email me, or shoot me another impossibly cryptic message."
"No, that's fine," Gina says. She watches as Colin flashes a smile at her and turns to go—shoulder to shoulder with Bill, who's eyeing her with something akin to curiosity. When they walk off, Gina catches the brief snatch of his question: "What was that?"
"Nothing," Colin mutters back, and then they disappear out the door. Out to do more crime-solving, she bets.
Is anyone else seeing this shit, she wonders. She looks around the office. Most of the other analysts are buried deep in their own work. Nikki's not in her own office. Zeeb, on the other side of her desk, has two redbulls open (ah, it's a bad one, Gina makes a mental note to bring him some water later) and is busy soldering something on his side of the partition.
She wheels her way over. Zeeb doesn't even look up.
"Zeeb," she whispers. No response. "Zeeb!"
"Argh," he says, and then does finally look up. There's bags under his eyes. Yikes. Gina winces—poor guy, stuck at the office while she gets to sleep off her 48hr shift.
"Okay, you know what, maybe you should go home," Gina says. "I'll—"
"No, Nikki wants me on it," Zeeb says with a sigh. "What did you want?"
She glances around. No one's paying attention. "Have you been paying attention to Colin and Bill, lately?"
"No? Why?"
She mulls this over for a second. How does she put it in a way that won't break Zeeb's innocent, motherboard-loving, sleep-deprived little heart? "I think they're breaking the fraternizing rule."
He blinks at her, slow. "Like. HR?"
"Yeah, like HR." She puts as much emphasis into those three words as she can, begging him to get it.
"…Oh, shit."
And then the soldering iron that Zeeb was holding drops from his hand. It burns a small scorch mark into the green mat he's put under whatever contraption's guts he's splayed out like the entrails of an animal.
"Aw, man," Zeeb says. He sounds apathetic. Like he hadn't just received the revelation of the Word of God. "Damn. That was a new one."
Gina watches the remnants of the solder trickle out onto his desk, and privately mourns the moment.
"You'll get them next time, buddy," she says, patting his shoulder. "Next time."
Bill brings coffee for Colin in the mornings. Exactly the way he likes it. Gina's never noticed before, but as she's standing in the breakroom waiting for her own swill to be poured forth from the only machine they have (that's probably older than her); she watches as Colin looks up from the small roundtable—the one Kevin had insisted on them getting, because we're all agents, we deserve better, his exact words—and smiles at Bill when he hands him a small black disposable cup.
"Maybe you are useful for something, Agent Goodman," Colin croons after his first sip.
Bill ducks his head, but he's smiling a small, pleased smile. His cheeks are pink.
This shit is getting egregious. Gina takes her coffee and leaves before she hurls right into her morning Reuben.
"There's something there," Gina says, blankly.
Nikki hums. She's scrawling something onto a tablet. Gina would—with any other person—take offense, but Nikki's fantastic at acting like she doesn't care about something when she actually does and is listening as raptly as Gina hopes she is.
Gina's sprawled out in one of the chairs inside Nikki's office. Pointedly ignoring her own tablet sitting in her lap. "I mean, this is like, bad, right? HR bad? Secret tribunal bad? Everyone loses their jobs bad?"
"I truly don't think it matters," Nikki says, calmly. "They are very discreet."
"Discreet is not the word I would use to describe what they've been doing," Gina says, with feeling. Last night she'd watched in mild horror as Colin'd gotten into the passenger seat of Bill's car—they're carpooling now? Colin has a perfectly good bike at home, does Bill know that—and waved at her as they'd driven off. "Besides, isn't Bill engaged?"
"You'd have to ask him to find out."
Gina kneads her forehead. Last week she'd watched as Bill dragged Colin around the corner after some frantic hushed-whisper-argument at Colin's desk and into the men's bathroom, which she really does not want to imagine. Really. She's happy for them, but at the workplace? At the office where they do their God-given work? In the bathroom??
"I don't know if I want to," she says.
"Hm."
"Like, what if he's just stringing Colin along? This weird FBI-partner thing can't last forever, right?"
"Hmm."
"And Colin looks less worried these days, and Bill laughs a lot at whatever he says, so I guess there's no trouble in paradise but—like, I worry. You know?"
"Gina," Nikki says. She finally, finally puts the tablet down. She's smiling that half-smile, the soft genuine one that Gina has seen directed at her a total of fifteen times in her entire career. "It's sweet that you're worrying about him. But I think Colin's doing just fine."
Gina bites her lip. She's basically shoved her entire life into the CIA—Colin and her, they were both workaholics, practically had to be forced home with their cubicle keys taken out of their hands before they became overworked and overcaffeinated and useless. Nikki's words, not hers. So much of Gina's life is now black tape across clean white file.
Colin's file is almost entirely blacked out.
But she knew him like she knew what he drank (malt and scotch and Galliano, and frankensteined Long Islands because that's what she drank and he liked to drink with her so he'd order the same thing), she knew what he did when he couldn't sleep (work and work and work until his eyes turned bloodshot and dry), and she knew what rare hobbies he enjoyed. Like the soft red scarf he'd knitted for her. Like the hockey jersey displayed on his living room wall. Like the way he'd come over sometimes to play foosball with Kevin and her, or pool, or even karaoke at the bar.
And she knew he could take care of himself. More than anything. He'd never leave anyone behind. He hadn't left her behind. Or Bill.
Gina saw the way he'd looked at Bill that night, with the fucking ticking radioactive nuke, the fucking way he'd been terrified and taken his gun back—covered in Bill's blood—and held it like you would a newborn baby. A bloody thing nestled in his too-big hands. He'd looked at it and then at Bill and Gina had—even through their bittersweet victory—realized that this wasn't just a fun thing anymore for Colin.
"I just thought someone should look out for him for once," is all she says.
Nikki reaches across the desk and takes Gina's cold hand in between hers. "I know."
So. Fine. Maybe it's not such a big deal. Gina's not sure why she took so long to get with the program. But it's here now and it's not leaving, so she shuts up and lets Colin and Bill be all clandestine and secretive like they're not literally the most obvious fucks in existence.
Bill never wears a ring. Colin smiles a whole lot more. One time she dropped into conversation and casually—very casually, as to not freak out the lovebirds—whether Bill's still got a girl at home.
Next to her, Colin stiffens. Bill stares at her over the lunchtable—his own Nutrigrain untouched—and Gina gamely meets it head on, because she has to know.
"Oh, no," is all he says. "Work keeps me busy."
"You don't seem very broken up about your engagement," Gina remarks.
Colin is a statue. Bill makes a so-so gesture and his brow scrunches into a frown—okay, that's cute, Gina can kind of see why Colin's so moony all the time—and shrugs. "It just didn't work out. I just found… other things to keep me busy, that's all."
"Oh?" Colin asks.
Yeah, fucking oh, Gina thinks. Oh?
Bill looks down at his dry cereal blocks. Why he likes those, Gina will never understand—but men are incomprehensible creatures. "It's just not something that was in the cards, so."
"Understandable," Colin says, shooting Gina a look to drop it. Gina does drop it, but only because she feels like she's slightly gone mad, too.
She wonders if Bill owns a mirror. Does he go home at night and never realize he's wearing that heart-eyed look when he looks at Colin? Does Colin have eyes? Do either of them realize that they are horrifically unsubtle? For Christ's sake, Gina thinks, looking around the breakroom. It might just be the three of them in here but there are glass walls. Anybody could see this. Anybody could look in right now and look at Bill Goodman giving the most unsubtle moon-eyed cow-faced soft look at Colin Glass and she wouldn't be able to stop it. It would be undeniable. Every tribunal in the States would declare her a witness and she wouldn't be able to say anything because what on earth do you say to that?
"I think I'm going to eat at my desk," Gina says, and scoops her entire lunchbox up and leaves.
Colin brings Bill a sweater one morning. A soft, worn, white thing that looks lived in.
"You left this at my place," he says, tossing it at him. Bill catches it one-handed and a smile blooms over his entire face—like a flower being exposed to the sun after years of living in darkness. A slow, delighted thing.
"Thanks," Bill says, all teeth.
Gina wonders if she could maybe retire early. Thirty-eight is a good year, right?
In the end, it takes one little slip of the tongue. Just one.
Colin's arguing with Bill over something. Of course. This is par for the course.
"Jesus," she mutters, into her brand of swill she calls coffee. This is another thing she has in common with Colin—they both drink garbage, but Colin has his nice fancy FBI boyfriend to bring him lattes that Bill, apparently, brews himself. Because of course. Yeah, why wouldn't he, Colin?
Gina kind of wants to murder him with her mind. Especially when Colin gets right in Bill's face and Bill doesn't even flinch. Especially when Bill's eyes flicker down to Colin's lips in front of the bullpen and everyone and God herself.
Nikki sighs like she's just tired of them both. Gina can relate.
"You know that's bullshit," Bill says, half-laughing. "That would not fly in any jurisdiction."
"Yeah, for your grown cop games, maybe," Colin says. What the hell does that even mean? Either he's just saying words or Gina needs to clean her ears out. Is this foreplay for them?
Oh god, it's totally foreplay, she thinks, watching the interaction with despair.
Zeeb doesn't even look up from what he's doing, watching lines of code scroll on his Macbook. Gina thinks he should upgrade to Linux but Zeeb's been hanging around Kevin's techbro ass too much; it's a fucking incurable disease, Apple consumerism. She kind of envies him his level of unbothered indifference—if she could tune out this mating dance, she also would.
Fifteen Ave Marias and she still can't scrub Bill's doe-eyed look from her brain.
"I'm just saying," Bill raises his arms, as if in deference—and Gina does not miss the way that Colin's eyes flick up and down as if assessing—"You really want to go off the books here and risk inciting the Embassy's wrath?"
"The Embassy can kiss my ass," Colin says. His register has dropped two more octaves. This is embarrassing. Gina feels like she's watching her brother try to charm a girl to prom for the first time. She feels like she's just caught her brother in bed with a girl and she has to hide it from their mama before he gets his ass beat.
"Oh my god," Gina mutters. "How has no one figured you guys are dating yet?"
Everyone freezes. Gina freezes. Colin slowly, slowly turns his head—so slow she could hear all the bones in his neck creak. Bill's mouth drops open.
Ah, fuck, she thinks. That wasn't an inside thought.
"What?" Colin asks.
"Uh," Gina says, intelligently. Fuck. "Aren't you…guys dating?"
No one speaks for about a good fifteen seconds. Gina feels the tumbleweeds roll across the floor of the bullpen, the way that Colin has absolutely fucking frozen. The silence swells and swells and swells until she feels like she could fucking burst with it, could scream and shatter it like glass; is about to open her mouth and say something, anything, to break the uncomfortable tension before Bill—Bill—beats her to it.
"We're not dating," he says, looking lost. His eyes flicker to Colin—once, twice—before skittering away. He takes a slightly small half-step to the side, out of Colin's personal bubble (even though Gina reckons it's probably still too close to be normal). "What?"
Gina can't help it—she laughs. Snorts, really. What, are they going steady or some other bullshit? Is she not supposed to know?
But Bill doesn't laugh. Colin doesn't laugh.
"Oh my god," she says. "You're serious."
"Gina," Nikki says, placatingly. Like she does when she's trying to calm a spooked animal or talking Gina down from one of her rage-induced rants. Just like when she gets just a touch too passionate about something.
"No fucking way," Gina says, disbelievingly. "Nikki. Nikki."
"I know, Gina," Nikki says, all soothing. She puts an arm around Gina's shoulders, eases the cup she's whiteknuckling away from her hand and puts it down on her desk. "Don't worry. We know."
"What's she talking about," Bill says. That lost-lamb look hasn't left his face.
"Nothing," Colin snaps, a little tight. Bill reels. "Just—don't worry about it."
Gina stares. Colin's neck is filling up with that tell-tale flush, the one he wears when he's really fucking embarrassed about something—and she feels almost bad, for a second, because if he really didn't know then he wouldn't be embarrassed and she's just kind of outed him in front of everyone—but she remembers the torture that has going on for a month.
Seriously. What have they been doing if not hiding a secret—illicit, mind you—relationship from the entire office? Making flower crowns? Sharing friendship bracelets?
"Colin." Bill puts a hand on Colin's arm—and Colin flinches like he's been burned.
Oh my god, Gina thinks, with mounting hysteria.
"You two," Nikki says, very evenly, "can discuss this elsewhere. I'm putting an end to the meeting. Gina, my office. Everyone else, back to work."
"Discuss what," Colin tries to say, but he hasn't shaken Bill off. He still hasn't shaken Bill off. And Bill's looking at him with far too much fucking tenderness in that gaze for this not to go poorly, like a car wreck in motion, like a train about to be derailed off the bridge and into the water below.
Gina's throat feels tight. She watches as Bill quietly takes Colin's elbow and whispers something to him, leading him out of the bullpen and into one of the meeting rooms that they use for more private conversations—because they're soundproof. Gina herself has taken many a nap in those rooms before.
And Colin follows obediently like a man going to the gallows, or a lamb to the slaughter.
"Oh my god," she says, because that feels like the most appropriate thing to say.
"They'll sort it out," Nikki states, sure and unshakeable as always. But she still lets Gina have her quiet freakout moment in her office—because she knows Gina that well—and lets her have the afternoon off, so who's really winning here.
But when Gina leaves the office, she sees how Bill's desk is organized and his computer turned off—a sign how he's also left early—and the bullpen is devoid of Colin anywhere.
And she—despite herself—smiles.
Gina really hopes that Colin's not getting his ass beat. She does not want to picture it.
"Congratulations," Gina says, when she returns to the office a day or two later to find Colin sprawled at his desk—collar unbuttoned, neck looking as though as he'd been mauled.
"Yes, well," Colin says. He's pink in the face. But he passes something over to her.
She picks it up. It's a $500 gift card to their local bowling alley slash bar that Colin knows she likes to go to when she's feeling too stressed about work. Drinks are upwards of thirty dollars there. Gina forgives him on the spot.
"I thought we should go and have ourselves a, ah, girls' night," he says.
You absolute softie, Gina thinks. She does not say that out loud. She knows Colin well enough by now—this is the olive branch, a way for her to waltz on in to the side he keeps to himself. "Only if you tell me all about Bill."
Colin smiles. It's wide—unrestrained, unguarded. "Deal."