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Almost Enemies, Almost Lovers
He hated London. The landscapes of concrete against polluted sky. Miles of grey. He hated it from the moment his train left, watching the lush Yorkshire Dales ghost and fade past the window until all the green disappeared. Rain seemed worse in London too, thick sheets of it volleying between the towering buildings, and sparse trees offering no shelter. He’d been there two years now, two years of his gruff northern voice grating against the prim vowels of educated Londoners who raised eyebrows at his attendance to their meetings. Two years of rejecting the nickname they had thrust upon him. Perhaps this operation is one for Yorkie. Good training ground. And he would remind them once again – he wasn’t a novice that needed a training ground and his name was Aaron. Livesy if they were being formal about it. And that his accent wasn’t from Yorkshire. But as he learnt, as the nickname stuck, all northerners sounded the same to them.
Yet, for all the loneliness the city brought him, the job he loved. The job he survived on. His heart, his soul, his life poured into it. It helped – they said on his first day – that outwardly he seemed serious, stoic. People would trust him – they’d said. And trust was the greatest weapon available to them, the biggest destroyer of all.
In this game: once you’ve trusted a spy, you’re already dead.
*
The files landed on the desk in front of him with a smack and out slipped a grainy photograph of a tall man whose hair, even in the monochrome image, was obviously blond and thick.
“One for you, Yorkie,” the chief said, sucking on the hair of his upper lip. He leered over Aaron’s shoulder, his breath smelling bitterly of last night’s whiskey. Since the death of his daughter, the chief’s alcohol consumption had multiplied to a level he could barely tolerate.
Aaron opened up the case notes, sliding the errant photograph back onto the pile, and gave the documents a quick scan. He shrugged. “And?” It looked like another run-around job, more suited to the office girls at their typewriters than someone just edging the inner circle of the secret service. Chasing a dead-end lead, following a man no more deviant than Joe Public.
He knew the Service eyed him with suspicion, each and every member – and for too long he’d wondered if they’d sensed something was off with him but hadn’t worked out what – but he’d anticipated by now he’d have earned more significant missions. He handled a gun well, he could pace the streets and out run most, he could ease his way into conversations with his out-of-town accent – but as for the serious stuff, they kept him away from that.
Perhaps he misunderstood their suspicion. Chances were he was handled at arms’ length, kept away from the sensitive missions, not because they had any idea his ‘otherness’ was about sleeping with men, but because they thought him a traitor. That was their biggest threat these days – a mole. Someone embedded into the depths of the secret service only to be squirreling information straight into the hands of the enemy.
“And?!” The chief sneered at his lack of enthusiasm. He was expected to bounce like a puppy, beg at his feet for jobs and approval. Aaron would never. “And! – this is the job I want you on! Falsified documents, fake passports, false names. Operating currently under the name Jacob Connolly. Seems to be making a name for himself with all the wrong sorts.”
“Soviets?”
“Who else?” The chief stubbed his cigarette out on the ashtray to Aaron’s right. “He’s an informant. Gotta be. And if he’s not….” He pushed his chest out, hands on jutted hips. “Well, it’s no great loss.”
Aaron leafed through the photographs. This Jacob guy didn’t look like their usual sort, the sort willing to betray their own country and risk their life for it. But perhaps that was the point. He looked young, older than Aaron himself, but young enough not to be embittered by national loyalty. He looked innocent. Aaron checked over the vital statistics they had on him – however sketchy and vague – and they had his age estimated in an early-thirties bracket. In the photos he looked younger, a slanted boyish smile, soft floppy hair and eyes that creased at the corners. Aaron never won the jobs that involved charming ladies, caressing state secrets out of their mouths in their beds at night – and perhaps the time he spent lingering over these photos of Jacob told him why. He was never overt, he just never even looked at women.
“So I’m just meant to finish him?” His outward coldness had been another asset to the job, they’d said. Inside, caged, his heart beat fast, fragile.
“Not yet. In due course maybe. No – I want you to follow him, report back on who he talks to, where he spends his time, how long for. We think he’s been making arms deals, making contacts – reporting back.”
Aaron had reached the last photo. A close up of this new target of his. A brilliant, freckled smile.
“D’you want me to make contact with him?”
“No,” said the chief. “Absolutely not. It’s important you blend in so he doesn’t notice you. If he’s already accumulating identities he’s not going to believe whatever alias you come up with. He’ll smell it on you. Don’t talk to him, don’t sit near him. Keep your distance.”
*
Aaron sat in a bar in Westminster, keeping his head down and a pint glass cool under his fingers. It wasn’t a bar he frequented – not for drinking nor for meeting men - but he didn’t mind the solitude of his own company and a newspaper, even if he was working. He’d had a tip off, a call that afternoon, which named the bar as a place Jacob was always seen in. There were whispers that he rented an apartment in one of the wealthiest boroughs at a cost that no one – unless politician or celebrity - could feasibly afford. But judging by the photographs Aaron had seen of him, he wasn’t short of cash – if the Saville Row suits were anything to go buy – however he obtained it.
Aaron’s eyes looped lazily over the newsprint, which had left his fingertips a dull grey. Nuclear Weapon testing. Bomb threats. Photos of Harold Wilson looking thick in the jowls. Aaron had reached the end of his first pint and picked himself up to order another when a small but raucous group pushed through the entrance of the bar, led by Jacob Connolly. Aaron made mental observations of the company he was keeping – visual descriptions, age, nationality – and how many of them there were and then he continued his path to the bar as casually as possible.
Jacob headed straight to the bar, snapping his fingers, and Aaron suddenly felt awkward to be stood there too, alone. Waiting for his drink gave him the opportunity to listen, even if all this Jacob did was order drinks for the entire group and speak to the bartender like he owned the place. He ordered an obscenely priced bottle of champagne and there was a moment where his eyes passed over Aaron like a slow track of light. Aaron felt his skin prickle, his collar sticking to the back of his neck. This wasn’t keeping his distance. He was already breaking the first rules of the mission.
"Evening," Jacob said, greeting him with a raise of his champagne flute. Aaron imagined the sensation of those bitter bubbles on his lips, the overwhelming spike they give to the nostrils. His experiences of champagne had been on rare, odd occasions. A celebratory toast, an undercover meeting where his airs and graces stuck to the roof of his mouth. He had no problem piecing together clues, tracking down a source, but the game - the act - the laying of the trap, that's where he struggled, perhaps why they were so unwilling to trust him with jobs that needed schmoozing, charming. Not like this Jacob man, whose eyes fixed on him long after his greeting and Aaron’s terse nod had passed. Aaron was compelled to look away and thankful that his beer arrived just in time. He returned to his booth, just catching the faint hint of an Eastern European accent from one of Jacob's party. Jacob's accent itself was surprising to Aaron. He'd expected London, wealthy vowels, BBC English. Or like most of their suspected informants, covering up an accent and identity that wasn't theirs. But over the noise he'd heard a voice, northern and out of place like his own.
He sat and watched Jacob for a while and thumbed through The Times. Jacob held a captivated audience with his conversation, his strong, angularly shadowed jaw animated in the dim bar. Aaron tried to keep his head low, be inconspicuous, but his gaze kept drawing back to Jacob one too many times. He needed a different approach if he was to expose Jacob’s illegal activity, he couldn't just sit here and watch. If Aaron really wanted the respect, the commendation, from the chief he needed to stop being so damn passive.
His time came nearing eleven o’clock when most of Jacob’s party had dwindled. Jacob had swaggered to the bar, tall and commanding, and ordered another round of drinks. Why he couldn’t have ordered from a passing waitress Aaron wasn’t sure, but they were at a close proximity now and he could sense that Jacob was growing suspicious of his presence. There was a hard scorn to his glance but then he’d snatch it away again, smirking to himself – yet something in this display must have distracted him, because when he wandered back to his group, he’d left his wallet on the bar. Aaron seized the moment, downing the last of his drink, and sidled past the countertop of the bar, swiping the wallet and not taking a second look at Jacob.
Still reeling from the adrenaline of the theft, Aaron sat in the driver’s seat of his parked Morris, hands braced around the steering wheel. In the thrill, he couldn’t delay opening up the wallet and thumbing through it for any careless clues that might have been left behind. As he suspected, Jacob wasn’t stupid enough to leave anything revealing inside, but behind a thick wad of notes Aaron did find two addresses – and that was a start.
*
“He’s a spy.” Tracy Shankley hovered around his desk – another northern outcast. She glued herself to him for company. Like Aaron she was eyed with suspicion by her colleagues – in her case, the typist girls and secretaries – but allowed enough trust to be in the building at least. Tracy collected nuggets of gossip like a magpie, scuttling from desk to desk and peering over shoulders to offer her own, unwelcome, opinions.
“What d’you mean, ‘a spy’?” Aaron asked turning round in his seat, away from his desk that had grown in paperwork overnight. Detailed notes on Jacob Connolly, the company he kept, the contents of his wallet – although those particular notes he kept vague as if he hadn’t committed theft at all. The wallet stayed hidden in the glove compartment of his car, warm from the number of times Aaron had handled it. Most men carried their life in their wallets - identity cards, mementos, photographs of the wife and kids – but not men like Jacob. Not men like Aaron either. All he’d found in the wallet, besides the addresses, was a condom, which he’d smirked at and taken for himself.
“I mean he’s one of yous lot,” she said, jabbing her finger at one of the photographs. “He’s got that look about him – suave, charming, handsome…”
Aaron scoffed, returning to his position at the desk and taking a second glance at the photo as if to find contrary evidence to Tracy’s claims. Whether what she said was true – it didn’t make him a spy and certainly not one of them.
The chief of operations strode past, heavy browed and with an aggressive march. He snapped. “Are you ladies going to keep gassing all day? The country is under threat, Livesy, while all you can do is sit and gossip!”
Tracy pulled a face at Aaron and her heels clicked all the way back to her desk. The office shuddered as the chief’s door slammed and Aaron felt it as if someone had moved the ground underneath him. He was going to prove himself and destroy whatever plan Jacob Connolly had – he was going to do it alone.
The first address he'd found in the wallet detailed an apartment in Marylebone. Having made a few phone calls, Aaron found that Jacob rented an apartment in Harley Street above a dental practice, so he drove there and sacrificed an evening for a stake out, sitting and observing patiently. Aaron was grateful for the constant stream of people attending the row of medical specialists as the road was lined with parked cars and his looked inconspicuous. He blended in, hidden behind a newspaper and his gaze flitting between the pavement and its reflection in the wing mirrors. According to the landlord the apartment was rented but not lived in and as Aaron waited outside, the hours dragging on, until dusk darkened and became long after midnight, there were no signs of life at any of the windows or doors. He yawned and decided to allow another thirty minutes just as a vehicle pulled up and dropped off a man outside the entrance of the dentist. Too late for a filling. Even in the dark he could see the figure - a man with a roughly shaped face, stubble and little circular glasses. It was the man Aaron had seen with Jacob, the man with a thick accent.
He had a key to the apartment.
*
Armed with detailed descriptions of the man he had seen outside Jacob Connolly’s rented apartment and a few names of men they had on file who matched his description, Aaron’s knuckles rapped on the chief’s door. His body ached with tiredness and cramp from sitting in a car all night.
The chief barely raised his head when he entered the office.
“Tell me you’ve got news on Connolly,” he said, disinterested and dragging the nib of his pen across a page.
There was no offer to take a seat or share a measure of whiskey. Aaron wasn’t accepted into that world yet, wasn’t sure he’d ever be.
“I’ve found one of his properties-“
“-And?” The chief’s patience was prickly at best.
“And,” - Aaron continued, his jaw tightening as he summoned the courage to push on with his findings - “a man showed up. Austrian, Polish, Soviet…something. Anyway, turns out he’s on our list, or at least it seems like him. Goes by the name Alvek.” Aaron opened up the file in his hands and placed it on the desk.
The chief fixed him with a stare, a grip of cold, inescapable steel. “What are you wasting my time with this for? Jacob Connolly – or whatever his name actually is – is the one you’re after! He’s the threat! Not Alvek.” He pushed the file off the desk, cheeks blistering with rage. “Get the dirt on Connolly and get out of my sight!”
The chief was wrong, Aaron felt it burning in his gut. He depended on his instincts, they were solid, they were the crutch of his decisions, the reason he’d landed a role in MI6. There was something different about the blond man he’d sat in the bar watching, something lurking underneath that bravado. What he’d seen in him wasn’t betrayal, wasn’t the darkness he was supposed to think festered inside him. He might have a false name and false papers – but weren’t they all duplicitous, tightrope walking between private and public lives? Maybe this man was no different.
*
He hadn’t been with a man since Ed. Not properly. Not for lazy mornings and watching football games on the television and competitive, flirty games of darts in pubs where the landlord didn’t care about them and their private business. He hadn’t felt hands and lips and skin on his for a long, lonely time. Work filled him to the brim, blocked out the space in between. Or at best, covered the emptiness, - like a flimsy gauze, like a plaster over an open wound. He was patched up, the volume of his longing turned to its minimum level.
Under a warm, amber glow of light, he sat, hands around a drink in his favourite pub. It wasn’t anything like The Woolpack at home, where his mother worked. It wasn’t homely or filled with familiar faces, round wrinkled expressions – it was strangers. Men mostly, his age and a little older. He’d met Ed here, been oblivious to his light touch, his subtle conversation – but Ed had been persistent and hadn’t drifted until a kiss sealed the deal.
All the men that night blurred in front of him, faces and bodies vague and unremarkable. A guy nodded at him and lit up a cigarette and it took him a while to realise he was offering him one from the pack – trying to edge into a conversation. But Aaron’s mind had drifted, floated along the river and to a different bar, a different seat, different company. He thought about the chief’s insistence. He thought about Tracy’s words. Suave, charming, handsome. He thought of three more: arrogant, devious, dangerous. Danger was a turn on, risk was his drug. Of course it was – why else the move to London, the job?
The air of the pub had clogged with smoke and he needed air, he needed the whipping wind on his face to clear his head. He’d buried his head in notes about this Jacob Connolly and still he was no closer. He didn’t even know his real name.
Aaron paced the streets, his pulse quickening, his face reddening with every puff. He felt Jacob’s wallet burn in his pocket. That was his connection – that was the path that could lead him to answers. He slowed, changing his speed to a brisk jog and felt a presence behind him, a pause and shuffle of feet and then…nothing. Aaron turned his head expecting to see a figure a few steps behind, but there was no one. He couldn’t have imagined it. Without calling out, he reversed his route, flipping his gaze from side to side, hands braced and ready for an altercation. Had someone been following him?
After a maddening, paranoid silence, he realised he was alone.
*
“What am I supposed to do with this?” Jacob said, elbow slanted against the top of the bar. His smile quirked, creasing his eyes as he ran his finger over the stitching of his wallet.
“Well it is yours, in’it?” Aaron said, sliding it closer. “Your name inside. You must have left it behind here.” There was a cursive, scrawled signature on the back of the second address – the second address Aaron was yet to visit but had its location printed on his memory.
“Oh yeah?” he said, his mouth moving to the side. Aaron was his plaything, a little amusement away from the company that waited for him at his table. “And you waited – what – a week to give it back to me?” He pushed his hands inside his pockets, his shoulders spread and his height making Aaron feel a little dizzy, like watching clouds skid behind a tower block.
“Yeah, well, I’ve been busy.”
Jacob peeled two notes from inside the wallet. “Well I appreciate it. And thanks - for not taking it to the station. Don’t think I’d ever have seen it again if you had.” He offered the money out, his eyes startlingly blue.
Aaron refused, knowing all too well why Jacob didn’t want his wallet handed into the police, why they’d never find him. “Jacob Connolly” – blue eyed and blond hair and smart mouthed, he didn’t exist.
He retracted his hand when he saw Aaron’s refusal. “No? Let me buy you a drink, then,” Jacob said in voice so rich and quiet Aaron had to remind himself which bar they were in. Jacob held a note in the direction of the woman behind the bar and nodded towards his table, telling her to make Martinis for the lot.
“I’m not staying,” Aaron said, backing off, aware that this territory bordered on friendly rather than investigative. He wasn’t asking questions and getting answers, he was letting Jacob suss him out. He was telling him too much just by yielding to conversation
“No, come over,” he said, pocketing his change. “Where are you from, anyway? The accent? Manchester?”
“Thereabouts, yeah.”
Jacob smiled again, satisfied with his being right. The youth it brought to his face was disarming and Aaron swerved his gaze down and away, despite Jacob trying to pull on the thread of conversation and reel him into more. Was he investigating in his own way, or simply curious? Charming?
One of the women from his group appeared beside him, curling beads around her finger and her other hand occupied with a drink. She leant her body against Jacob, who hadn’t noticed her arrival until the contact, his gaze had been fixed on Aaron long after the words had dried up. Aaron took his cue to leave, feeling odd at the afterimage he was left thinking about – the woman’s hand on Jacob’s waist.
For days he reanalysed the conversation over and over, trying to dislodge the repetitive sensation of liking Jacob, of finding warmth in a man reviled, known for being cold and ruthless and false. Wasn’t he the same – a cold, ruthless liar? They all were when they needed to be. But then he’d fall back into familiar patterns of thought, trying not to be swayed by the bold, handsome impression he had of Jacob. Traitors commit atrocities and their schemes are worse than imaginable, potentially devastating – Jacob could be one of them. Killers are capable of smiles too.
Aaron knew if he was ever going to learn the truth of who and what Jacob was capable of, he needed to visit the second address and wait. The chief pressed at him daily, demanding to know why he hadn’t come up with the goods, why Jacob wasn’t being tried already. When the chief was around, Aaron felt him like a dark mass in the room, chilling him to the bone. He couldn’t help but wonder if this case was so urgent, why the chief hadn’t made it his – why was he so insistent of Connolly’s guilt and Aaron’s need to destroy him. Where had this vendetta come from? Suspicions and whispers of informants had never disturbed his brittle calm before. But Jacob Connolly had them both rattled, in different ways and Aaron still couldn’t shake this persistent idea that he was being followed.
Aaron found the second address on Montpelier Square overlooking an oblong of a green park. He didn’t keep the car as close this time, and risked numbly cold fingertips by sitting on a park bench long into the night with a paper to keep him company again. At home if he’d sat alone in a dark park reading, he’d have attracted all the wrong sorts of attention, but here he was anonymous and undisturbed – the few perks of such a big city.
He feared another night of inactivity, of staring at a closed front door until his vision misted but it wasn’t long after ten when a figure in a woollen grey coat approached the building. The door was wrenched open before the figure even had a chance to knock and Jacob appeared out of the doorway, silhouetted by the hallway glow. He didn’t even glance around, just grabbed the stranger by the lapels of his coat, pressing his face up close and venomous. Aaron couldn’t hear the words he screamed in the strangers face and even looking through binoculars he couldn’t lip read fast enough. Jacob shoved the man backwards and watched him fall to his knees and scuttle away, as he stood proudly like he was top of the food chain. Aaron felt sweat budding at his forehead, the first flicker of Jacob’s threat growing to a full flame.
He waited for Jacob to head back inside and then took the opposite exit out of the park, walking briskly back to his car, the adrenaline making a jetstream in his path. He was a few streets away, metres from his vehicle and his pace on the pavement pounding away into his heart when he felt the all too familiar chill of someone behind him. A voice called out in the dark.
“I know who you are,” the voice said. They were alone on the street and Aaron’s car keys pressed into his palm, metal digging into flesh. Had he followed him all this way? “I know why you’re here.”
Aaron turned, swallowing down the rush of fear quivering in his throat. Jacob faced him, his fist still clenched from the altercation, his shirt with three buttons loose. His jaw tensed, Aaron saw a similar tic in Jacob’s cheek, both of them hard shells pressurised with secrets and lies.
“Oh really? Do you?” Aaron said, lifting his head, trying to feel taller, trying to block out the tectonic shifting of his feelings, his impressions of this man. Maybe he was the biggest fool for trusting his gut.
Jacob approached, eyes wild with the night and Aaron was weightless, his mind suspended, dangled away from his doubts and thoughts – just living in the moment. He lived, he breathed, he trained on rational thought and logic. He should be protecting himself – with fists or a gun – but his hands gripped, just as Jacob’s raised and gripped him. Their bodies ducked and swerved, a shuffle of feet on the ground with neither willing to let go, to release, until Jacob had thrown Aaron’s body against the car and all Aaron could feel in one sharp movement is the coldness of the metal against his back and the solid, shocking press of Jacob’s firm lips against his.
Aaron was prisoned by the crush of their bodies together and the heat of Jacob’s breath on his face. Their hands grabbed each other, a wrestle of pulling and pushing, bound and locked at the mouth. Jacob’s hands clasped at his face, thumbs digging into the stubbled roundness of his cheeks and driving the kiss deeper and hungrier until all Aaron heard was the man’s breathless, yearning moans against his own private need.
When they broke and Aaron could gather enough sense to peel his eyes open, he saw Jacob leant over him and lit in gold from the streetlight, his shadows long and threatening.
“You think you know me,” he said. “But you’ve got no idea who I am.”
Their noses bumped as Aaron pushed up on his feet and pinned Jacob's mouth with his once more. It was as if he'd been chasing this all along, this thrill. The kiss capsized him, pushing him onto a forbidden path but he relented, giving into each shuddering breath that Jacob's mouth teased out of him. He wanted this more than he thought possible. He hadn't known how much until he'd been kissed.
The walk back to the apartment was a storm. He wouldn’t have been able to retell the journey if he’d been asked. He caged his reason and logic away, submitting entirely to the pull that lead him to follow Jacob, lead him to the hallway of his apartment, lead him to the shove and grunt of their bodies against the wall, skin simmering and clothes shedding. They were almost strangers, almost lovers, almost enemies, naked from the waist up and staring hungrily into each other's eyes. Aaron lurched forward to kiss him again, pawing at his full, inviting mouth. He'd never wanted anything this much; he'd finally found something outside of the Secret Service to give pulse to his veins. Jacob caught his wrist and ran his hands down the tense width of his shoulders.
"Aaron..." he said, the name sounding new and surprising on his tongue. Aaron wanted to kiss it out of him, make his name heard in all the best ways. He didn't ask how Jacob knew his name, just stared, lulled into the hypnotic movement of his lips. Jacob had more to say. "Robert," he continued. "My name's Robert."
The mission had been lost and squandered somewhere along the other street where Aaron's body repelled his own stomach in favour of the thick heat of lust. A real name was no use to him now, although he liked the feel of it in his mouth. and if it was another cover, another lie, then it felt nothing like one. It rocked around his head until Robert, this half-stranger with a new name, loosened Aaron's trousers and dragged him up the first two steps of the staircase until he could work his own feet enough to climb the rest.
Robert's bedroom was the opposite of his own. Aaron’s was the mirror to his anonymity, to his faceless, soulless living, he had blank empty walls and no more furniture than a bed, wardrobe, desk and chair. He had little to his name and belongings that he had no sentimentality to. He could leave in a hurry and leave nothing of worth behind. Robert had framed paintings and bookcases and suits and leather shoes.
Aaron’s eye was caught by the state of the art record player and he was momentarily dazed by the identity and wealth boxed up in the spacious room until he heard the soft puddle of clothes and saw Robert naked before him.
“Aaron…Aaron…Aaron,” he said, voice wrapping him up in velvet tendrils. He licked his lip and pulled his palms down the flank of Aaron’s waist until his underwear could be peeled down over his hips. “I wanna know one thing…” Robert’s words were lost, were eaten up by a kiss and the clash of their bare bodies together. Somewhere in Robert’s confidence was a man weakened by his own desire and Aaron had never known a man with such a vicious reputation look so undone, so vulnerable. They were one – all feverish kisses and hot touch – until they were beside each other, horizontal on the bed.
He saw Robert reach for him on the bed, he saw a flash of skin and movement and then as Robert’s hand touched the head of his cock he lost all sight and his neck craned, bent double on the pillow. He hadn’t been touched with a desperate, expert hand in so long. It felt too rare and precious to close his eyes to so Aaron held his lids open in sheer will and placed his hand on Robert’s thigh, kneading the warm, buzzing muscles for more of his attention. Robert gave it and more. Lazy kisses across the pillow, deep and noisy and alive, his teeth making Aaron’s top lip plump. He ran his hands up Robert’s chest, his movement stuttered and growing hungry as Robert’s grip tightened and released the shaft of his cock. Aaron’s pleading circled around his head and hovered amongst his panting breaths and it only seem to make Robert smile more, work him faster – harder.
Aaron’s eyelids had dropped to give him half sight, a blurred angelic vision of Robert with the bedside lamp’s glow spreading across his shoulders and shining his hair. But if the worst was true – he was in bed with the devil. Robert pushed his lips against Aaron’s ear and repositioned himself, his hand stripping Aaron’s cock over and over. He had no mercy.
“Fuck,” Aaron said, strained, his tongue pushed against the roof of his mouth – holding down the pin of his body’s grenade.
“Come,” Robert said into his ear, full of desire and a demon licking at his smile. A laugh flickered up from his gut. “Go on.”
He drew Aaron’s bottom lip into his mouth and climbed on top to finish him. He dragged his other fist across his own cock and rippled, vocally, with the sensation and paused on Aaron, leaving him to writhe alone in his own frustration. In his delirium Aaron half-wondered if this was the extent of Robert’s crimes, if this was how he tortured, how he punished. If Aaron was all part of his fun.
He didn’t care. Aaron stretched out on the bed and looked up at the man leaning over him, the man making him scratch his own face and twist his body to be relieved of this blissful tension he’d created.
“That’s half the fun, isn’t it?” Robert said, sensing his thoughts. He slid their bodies together and then lowered his head, licked across Aaron’s nipple. “The chase.” He ran a tormenting finger under Aarons’ cock and they both heard the sharp grunt it produced.
“You tell me,” Aaron said, biting his way through gritted teeth.
“You think you know me…” Robert said, interrupting the next part of his sentence with a kiss. “But I know you. Aaron. Livesy. Who you are. What you do.”
Aaron swallowed, combing through his endless cover stories but finding that all he could do was blink and then claw at Robert’s shoulder as his palm doubled the friction to his cock. He wanted to shrug off Robert’s accusations, roll his eyes and blankly deny him. But they both knew now, Aaron would deny him nothing. He came across Robert’s hand, making their bodies slick and prickling Aaron’s skin with fresh sweat.
Robert wiped his hand on the bedsheet and spread out beside Aaron, supine, with his hand propped behind his head. They bathed in silence.
“So,” he said, leaving Aaron to recover. “Was it as good as you imagined?”
Aaron scoffed, suddenly feeling very self-conscious. Robert leant up on his elbow, expression torn in two by his smugness.
“How do you know my name?” Aaron said softly, watching his arrogance shatter. The atmosphere shifted, although sex and sweat were still a part of them.
“I asked around,” Robert said.
“And you’ve been following me.” It all began to piece together.
Robert’s face stiffened and he sat up in bed, looping the sheet around his lap. “Once or twice.” He turned and stared straight at Aaron, making him feel even more exposed. “And what about you? Following me to bars? Sitting outside my apartment. Stealing my wallet?”
“Prove it.”
“I don’t need to,” Robert said and clambered over the bed until he towered over Aaron again, legs pinning him either side. He pressed his full, petulant lips against the warm crook of Aaron’s neck, where the stubble thinned to bare skin and he grunted, with smooth licks down to Aaron’s collar bone, passing over the tight pulse of his throat. His head lifted, mouth slack, and his hands skimmed over Aaron’s stripped torso.
There wasn’t the nerve in Aaron to tell him what he wanted - he’d learnt to put a bullet in a man’s brain without a blink, but open up, show someone inside his head? That was even more forbidden than this was. He placed his hands on the back of Robert’s neck, fingers threading his hair. An unspoken moment of tenderness growing from a barbed conversation brimming with tensions.
Robert’s eyes gleamed roguishly and his tongue brushed out to wet his lips before he spoke. The mood had altered again. The chase continued. “Aren’t you taught to resist?”
“Aren’t you?” Aaron said, sniping back.
Aaron’s hands stilled and then he craned his neck upwards, pushing his mouth against Robert’s and felt his tongue glide against the side of his own in one slick moan, bodies arching to meet. When Robert released him and their mouths broke, Aaron fell backwards, his spine hitting the mattress - the breath smacked out of him - and too delirious to move as Robert continued his trajectory south, inch by naked inch. Robert had made him hard again already.
He pawed at Robert’s head, his neck, managing through his blurred vision to witness the strong line of Robert’s jaw against his inner thigh. Robert’s lips, unimaginably pink, fluttered against the underside of Aaron’s cock and at the glimpse of his tongue, Aaron surrendered all sight again, throwing a hand across his face and convulsed, fist clutching the bed sheets.
The blond halo of hair ducking low imprinted on his retinas and Aaron gave into the sounds that made a prison-break escape from his chest. He bit his lips raw as Robert sucked and played him with light fingertips. He’d never felt so utterly under someone else’s spell. He saw his own searing pleasure reflected in the lust-white shine of Robert’s eyes.
*
Robert put a record on and returned to bed, laying with his legs apart, exposed, with a sheet draped over his cock in a half-hearted attempt at modesty. His mouth tasted of cum when Aaron kissed it. Aaron watched as he shook a hand through his hair and then reached across him and pulled out a drawer from the cabinet. Cigarettes, lighter, condom, lube. It was a step by step process.
“So we’re making a night of it,” Aaron said, gaze flicking between the drawer contents and Robert.
“Not got a problem with that?” Robert asked, before running his finger along Aaron’s jaw. It made Aaron freeze in the memory of Robert grunting about the sensation of his stubble rubbing against the hair on his thighs when he’d returned the blow job. He’d liked it.
“No,” Aaron said. They’d already crossed the line. There was no going back.
“This is nothing to do with work,” Robert said, voice melting the air between his mouth and Aaron’s. It was as if he could read Aaron’s mind.
Aaron opened the condom, giving him something to look at other than Robert. He was too attached already. That was the real danger - not submitting to sex. Meaningless sex with the enemy was part of the game to most of the agents. A fuck was a simple price to pay for answers, for a name or a location, for a secret.
“And tomorrow?”
“We pretend it never happened. I wouldn’t want to jeopardise your mission, just like you don’t want to jeopardise mine. Agreed?”
Aaron swallowed, thoughts clarifying in his head. Robert didn’t realise he was Aaron’s target. Aaron nodded, his words choked up and Robert took the condom from him and wrestled him into position. He grinned, bearing down on him. And Aaron knew, as Robert hovered over him, pulling his knees apart, that he wasn’t going to tell a soul what Jacob Connolly’s real name was. He’d already jeopardised the mission.
*
“We need to call it off,” Aaron said the next day, standing uninvited in the chief’s office doorway. Aaron’s voice was rough and gravelled, dressed in the clothes from the night before. It hadn’t gone unnoticed in the office, the girls’ attention suddenly piqued. “This investigation into Connolly. It’s going nowhere.”
The chief straightened in his chair and spluttered. “Excuse me? When did you get the authority to say what leads we abandon?”
Aaron wasn’t giving in. He stiffened his posture, hands deep in his pockets, brow tight. “He’s a dead end. He’s all talk, new money. That’s all. I’ve been following him long enough to know.”
“You think you know the man well enough after sitting in a few bars watching him drink?” The chief scoffed and Aaron could feel himself burn up under his clothes. He could still smell Robert on him, could remember what it felt like with Robert inside him. The chief stood and the bulk of him appeared imposing, threatening as he squared up to Aaron. “You might think you’re one of the big boys now, Yorkie. But you’ve got a long way to go.”
Aaron was gripped by resentment, the muscles in his legs trembling in their need to run, to kick out in frustration.
“Connolly has contacts higher up the chain. Not just small fry like Alvek. Bigger. And you’re going to keep getting dirt on him until we can lead him into a trap, that way he’ll have no choice but surrender what he knows.” The chief looked almost giddy, his eyes small and beady as Aaron stood, struggling to keep upright, pounding with nausea and keeping Robert’s name locked in his chest.
*
Aaron couldn’t concentrate on the mission, couldn’t let himself be professional and dig into Robert’s history – even off record for his own sanity. Curiosity should have made him want to know more about the man he’d spent the night with but part of him was too afraid to know the truth, too fearful that he might have been played all along. It felt so real and worst of all, Aaron trusted him.
He’d passed through his haunts in Westminster and hovered around his apartments, cringing at his own transparency. He didn’t know whether he was a spy or a teenage girl. He found himself ignoring the chief’s wishes and investigating Alvek instead. It gave him something to focus on outside of his mind drifting back into unrelenting thoughts about Robert. He couldn’t let himself believe Robert was the one they were after.
He came across Alvek in a different bar on the other side of the city and spent an hour watching him, observing too the men he sat beside and shared drinks with. Being inconspicuous gave him a buzz, even more so because Robert wasn’t here – increasing Aaron’s faith and trust in him just that little more. He could focus on Alvek’s movements but he’d be lying if he said his thoughts didn’t keep returning to Robert, wondering where he was. Even though they’d agreed to keep their encounter as a one-off, Aaron was left with a lingering disappointment clamping around his chest. The sex had been impossibly good, the kind he would always return to as a blueprint of perfect sex whenever he needed to get off. Robert owned his pleasure that night, so in tune with Aaron’s body it was as if he’d made him, connected up his nervous system, wired body and brain. He’d left Robert’s bed a different man.
For all its risks, the night had been unforgettable. He wanted more of it, so much more that it pushed at his skull shifting everything he thought he was. He could give up everything for his country, for the Secret Service, that was the way he was made. He’d moved away from home, family and friends. Lied to everyone about what he did and where he worked. He was prepared to direct his life into that one sole focus. Until Robert. Now he’d squander all of that for another night in his bed, as shallow and empty as that sounded. But it hadn’t been just sex – no matter what they’d said under the sheets – it had felt different as soon as their mouths touched. He knew what he was getting into but he hadn’t been able to stop himself falling.
Once Alvek had left the bar, Aaron gave it thirty minutes and slipped on his coat, diving straight into the night air. He wasn’t forty paces before he heard footsteps racing up behind him. The gun under his jacket, strapped to his chest, glowed with heat.
“Aaron!” Robert’s voice, hushed, snapped at him and dread weighted Aaron’s body, stomach dropping. What was Robert doing in the same area as Alvek? The relief he had felt at Robert not being with Alvek in the bar drained away and he was left coping with this new numb chill.
He turned, swallowing hard, wondering how long Robert had been following him. Had he been hiding out in the bar, too cautious to make contact with Alvek knowing Aaron was there?
“You’ve got to stop following Alvek.” Robert said, planting both hands on his shoulders. Robert’s vocalising of the name sent a shiver slicing down Aaron’s spine.
“What?!”
“You’re putting everyone in danger.”
Robert dragged him down a side street so heavily shadowed that Aaron could barely make out his features. It didn’t scare him – if Robert had wanted him dead he’d have done it by now – but the adrenaline made his skin prickle. He watched Robert, face contoured in navy and grey, pinch the bridge of his nose and shudder through a deep exhale, wondering what to say next, while he festered in his own confused silence.
“I’ve not told you everything,” he said, his voice heavy like he’d forgotten how to swallow.
“You’ve not told me anything, actually.” Aaron backed away, words spikey. Did he have any right to feel betrayed? Even if he didn’t, he still felt it, in sharp, swiping stabs.
Robert hissed at him through gritted teeth. “Listen. Listen. We both know how this works. The risks involved – I couldn’t tell you everything that night.” There was a sudden daring in him and he reached out and touched Aaron’s upper arms with a tenderness that made Aaron even more confused. “I’m on your side,” he said. “It’s an undercover job. I’ve been trying to get close to Alvek, earn his trust and if you’re there too watching, he’s going to get suspicious. It’s going to blow everything I’ve been working for.” He bent his head lower to match Aaron’s height. “I’m MI6. The same as you.”
Aaron shook his head. “You can’t be. I’d know. We’d all fucking know.” He didn’t know who he was being played by and the mystery of it was building and building a wall of noise in his head so loud he didn’t know what to think.
“I swear on my life,” Robert said. “We’re on the same side.”
“We all swear on our lives,” Aaron said, bitterly. “Our lives are worthless.”
Aaron shoved him hard his arms flailed for balance. He had no right to feel this hurt, but the sensation of it was too strong to ignore. He fought with himself, torn, and then took a step forward. He pushed a flat hand against Robert’s chest, half pushing him away for air, but also needing to touch him as if this would somehow confirm his words. Parts of him desired to lash out, to shove him against the brickwork and beat the truth out of him. The work had kept him steely but inside he was still the lad who reacted like touch-paper.
His head bowed, still shaking back and forth. “They said you were the target…”
Robert backed away, his grip dropped. “Me?”
“I was told to follow you. That you were an informant. You were the dangerous one. And now I don’t know what the truth is.”
Robert closed the gap between them and Aaron’s heart throbbed so fiercely he could taste it. Robert’s body had blocked out almost all the light and although his eyes had adjusted, to him Robert was just sound – breaths and pulse – and scent – skin and cologne.
“I’m not. I promise you,” he said. “It’s Alvek.” Robert held his face, even though Aaron was unwelcome to it, rigid. “Aaron, come on. You know I’m telling the truth. Your instincts are telling you that.”
His head raised to meet Robert’s gaze, even though all he could see was the smallest pinprick of light in them.
“We’re the same,” he said again. “Double lives. And I know deep down you believe me.”
“Even if I did…” Aaron said, a grit in his tone and beginning a threat he had no idea how to continue.
Robert stood straighter, taller, reeling off a list of facts. “Robert Jacob Sugden. Born 22nd April 1946. Beckindale, North Yorkshire. Father was Jack Sugden, farmer and –“
Aaron interrupted. “Why are you telling me this?”
“To prove to you who I really am. So you’ll trust me.”
“It could all be lies,” Aaron said, not giving in and tearing his gaze away. He didn’t want to look at the man he might have betrayed the whole country for. “You used me. You slept with me so I’d trust you.”
“You know that’s not true,” Robert said, then softer, running his hands down Aaron’s chest. “Look at me. You know it wasn’t about that. You know it. You felt it.”
Aaron wouldn’t look at him still and he could sense Robert burning up with frustration.
“I told you my name!” he said with exasperation. “My real name. Why?!” He was rhetorical, trying anything to get Aaron’s attention. “I mean, now I know I was your target I can’t believe I was so stupid to tell you my real name. For all I know you could have been fucking me to get me to talk! But I told you, it just felt right to tell you. You and I spend every day lying. Every day. But there you were…and I just told you the truth. I wanted something real.”
“I haven’t told anyone your name,” Aaron said, warmer. His chin edged up a little so if he strained his eyes he could see the outline of Robert’s mouth.
“I know and I’m glad. That would have really fucked things up for my mission.”
“Mine’s over,” Aaron said, finally braving full eye contact with Robert.
“Fine. Hand me over if that’s what you want.” Robert steeled himself, ready for a surrender.
His head shook. “It’s not.” The knot in his throat clenched and dissolved when he swallowed and slipped his hands – in glass-like caution – onto Robert’s waist. “I do,” he said. “I do trust you.”
Aaron let Robert sink into him, their lips touching – delicate and paper light. His fingers squeezed, white and firm against the lapels of Robert’s jacket and paused to wet his lips and returned again, mouth reaffirming his loyalty, this unexplainable trust.
*
Aaron took Robert back to his flat – a final confirmation that he had faith in Robert’s words – and gave shrugged, nonchalant apologies in advance for the state of the place. He gave Robert the impression in his gruff warning that he didn’t care but having spent the night in Robert’s lavish place it was difficult not to feel a brief flush of shame.
“I’m not here to see your flat,” he said in the hallway after another apology and his rebuff was paired with devilish, sparkling eyes. The kisses were slower this time, loaded - in their soft mouthed exploration – with a new transparency about who they were and what they wanted. They knew each other now, not just intimately – not just in touches and skin and private, pleading moans – but a shared emptiness, duplicitous masks and soulless living. Loneliness.
Aaron kissed across Robert’s freckled collar bone, his mouth swerving in reflex when Robert’s fingers played ticklishly on his back. How quickly he’d learnt – where Aaron was sensitive, where he responded favourably and where he didn’t. Aaron broke away with a fleeting smile and kissed up Robert’s neck, his whole body purring with Robert’s fingernails scratching lightly over his scalp and then scissoring through his hair.
He was going to have to stop thinking about it – he was going to have to push it out. He couldn’t lull himself into the belief that they could continue this. He couldn’t let himself acknowledge that he’d already fallen in love with Robert. Loving anyone was impossible in this job – too difficult, too dangerous.
Robert kissed him playfully, from one corner of his mouth to the other, and pulled Aaron’s leg around his body, brushing the hair on his thigh upwards. They were meshed together, interlocked.
The damage was done; Aaron loved him.
*
It was approaching four in the morning and not a minute of their time together had been used in sleep. They’d talked, in sluggish anecdotes and exhausted life stories. History muttered into the pillow from mouths overripe from kissing and bodies tingling with overexerted muscles. Robert’s hair was ravaged front and back, arms slung out selfishly absorbing most of the space. His mouth tasted hot and salty and Aaron kept leaning in for more.
“They don’t warn you about the loneliness,” Robert said. Aaron’s body was foetal, his neck curved right down. Robert’s words murmured over the nape of it, his lips full and mushed against Aaron’s skin.
“I thought I’d be fine. I thought I was better on my own.” Aaron spoke, even though sleep tugged at him, but he still felt Robert inhale and hold it.
“And now?”
Aaron moved until they were face to face. He held a kiss to Robert’s lips.
*
The next time Aaron saw the chief, it wasn’t at the headquarters, it wasn’t where he was supposed to be. He’d brushed aside Robert’s reservations about giving him a lift home in the morning and did it anyway after coffee and toast and shy, adoring glances. If they’d seen him that morning, fragile and soft they’d never have believed he was trained to be cold and ruthless, that he got by on lies and secrets, that he’d killed for his country. But he saw the chief after he’d dropped Robert off, saw his car pulling up and crawling the road outside Robert’s apartment. Aaron kept himself hidden and was forced to drive away before he was unnoticed but felt sick right until they were reunited at work. Tracy had told him that the chief was out of the office on a private matter and Aaron’s whole body shuddered with the memory of the chief’s words coming back to him – he was going to set a trap for Robert.
It felt personal, it felt like the chief had a vendetta. He’d been pushing and pushing for Aaron to keep watching ‘Jacob’ not seeming to care that Alvek was the biggest threat and he was within reach. Aaron headed to the restricted access area of the archive and locked himself in – he didn’t want to alert any of the other agents as to who he was looking up, he didn’t want to give Robert’s name away. He didn’t trust any of them with it.
He poured through file after file, looking through old lists of names – people they’d interviewed, archived tape recordings, criminal records, incident reports. He left the files for current and previous agents until last, knowing he needed someone to open the locks for him. In the end he managed to sweet talk Tracy into doing it, fumbling over himself in an awkward flirtation.
“You’re an angel,” he said. “Maybe we could…go for a drink sometime?”
“Oh look at you Mr Mysterious!” she said, a slight squeal as she opened up the cabinet for him. “And there was me thinking you must be taken!”
He managed to get rid of her quickly and then rifled through the files. Every agent who had been in MI6 in the last twenty years had a file in here. Aaron went straight for the S folders and felt the ground slip away when had his hands on Robert’s file. It was empty. The contents had been removed and someone had made a vague stab at blanking out his name on the front, although the number 02682 remained. Aaron touched his balmy forehead and gripped onto the cabinet to combat his dizziness. He snatched the chief’s folder from the back and threw it onto the desk, scanning his way through it as fast as his eyes could move.
Then he found his answer, the report’s words were jumping off the page in his rush. The chief – Brian Addyman – had six months compassionate leave in 1970 after the death of his daughter Katie. An official report was attached detailing her death. Four years ago, two years before Aaron moved to London, the chief’s daughter was caught in an explosion that MI6 had been trying to shut down. The agents who had failed to stop the bomber in time were moved from Addyman’s command as he was unable to work with them, blaming them for Katie’s death. An update to the report showed that of the two agents involved, only one was still in active service for the MI6. Agent 02682. Robert Sugden.
Feeling his body swaying, Aaron operated on sheer flight mode. He pushed the folders back in the drawer and locked it up, heading back to his desk. He pressed his head in his hands, palms digging into his eyes. He knew he had to think carefully about his next moves before Robert was in any danger. Collecting himself with a few deep breaths, he pushed his way – uninvited into the chief’s office.
“We need to talk,” he said, pushing the door shut with his weight.
“I hope it’s good news.”
“Jacob Connolly,” Aaron said, crossing his arms over his chest. “He’s one of us. Undercover.”
He saw for the first time, a change in Brian’s face, a sharpness – a coldness – even under his glassy alcoholic gaze. Aaron watched him scoff and turn the page of a document he was reading.
“And?” Brian looked up, stoic faced. “I don’t care what side he’s on.”
“I know why you want rid of him, Brian,” Aaron said, trying to block the tremble out of his voice.
The chief stood abruptly, sending the chair shattering to the ground. “I told you, Livesy – he’s trouble. He’s better off dead.”
Aaron could feel the muscles in his face quiver, his nostrils flaring. He held his hands to his side, fists clenched. “Him being dead won’t bring Katie back.”
Brian gripped Aaron’s shoulders and pulled him away from the door, throwing him against the wall with a violent scream. Aaron pushed him off, leaving him to stumble.
“It’s too late.”
Aaron was bloodless, shaking his head. “What have you done?”
*
He was sure a journey had never taken as long as this one felt. Aaron drove to Robert’s apartment, taking every back road he knew, but in the end he had to abandon the car and run. His legs were powered by machines. He’d always been a fast runner, running for his life, running for freedom but as he sprinted, he resented every muscle in his body for slowing him down. Passers-by stopped to look at him, sprung out of his path to avoid collision. He stopped for no one, pushing people out of the way and knocking an elderly woman off her feet.
By the time he reached Montpelier Place he could hardly feel his feet, but he pushed himself, feeling his lungs buckling. He called Robert’s name over and over as he approached the doorway. The door was ajar and he felt his heart stop and stammer. He pressed his hand just above the letter box and pushed it open – his skin was white hold in nerves.
As he took the first steps into the apartment he heard the gun shots.
He didn’t breathe, his body folded in on himself. He knew the sound of the gun – it wasn’t their standard, it was more powerful than that – the gun that had fired was the hitman’s. Aaron felt tears escaping him as he climbed the stairs, hand retrieving his own gun and ready to kill the fucker who’d killed Robert. He spied a limp body at the top of the stairs and a sound left him, sharp and animal. He couldn’t stand.
Then distant and dreamlike he heard his name shouted.
“Aaron!” Robert emerged at the top of the stairs, shirt ripped and bloody, the gunman’s weapon in his hand. He dropped it on the floor like it was hot and raced down the stairs until all that separated them was one step. “It’s okay,” he said breathlessly. “I’m ok. This guy came in and…”
“I know,” Aaron said, blinking and trying to regain his breath. “It was a set up. Addyman. Brian Addyman – he’s been after you all along. He used me to make it look authentic…I don’t know…” He realised, when Robert’s hands rested on him that he was crying and out of breath, struggling to make sense of the sequence of events.
Robert nodded gravely, he knew what this would all be about – he remembered clearly what happened with Katie. They couldn’t stop it in time.
He pressed his mouth against the side of Aaron’s head.
“We need to get out of here,” Aaron said, looking at Robert with wide eyed panic. “He’ll be after both of us.”
“He knows you came here?”
“I wasn’t going to let you die.”
Robert pulls Aaron against him, landing a full kiss on his mouth. The need in it, the end of solitary existence. There weren’t any lies, any secrets, between them. They weren’t pretending to be other men with other lives, living in their own emptiness. They knew each other, they trusted each other.
Robert made the kiss last a little longer, pressed his weight into Aaron a little firmer and rested their foreheads together. Their missions would end, someone else would take on Alvek, Addyman would lose his life to drink, other agents would replace them. They’d be wiped from history, hunted for a while and then forgotten about. Another cover up at MI6. They’d be free from it. They’d be together.
“Let’s leave,” Robert said. “Just you and me. We can go anywhere.”