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They met the first time when Lee was 24, somewhere in Belize at a British training camp. Barney had had enough of jungles to fill the careers of five officers his age but he’d gone along anyway, persuaded into some kind of vague temporary liaison role now he’d been considered for colonel. He thought it was probably about time. He’d worked his ass off for the promotion, though Stonebanks had been mocking him not all that subtly over it for a good six months.
“So, where’s this guy you wanted me to meet?” Barney asked, rubbing one of the silver oak leaves at his collar. A couple of months and he’d finally get his bird to replace them and then he’d be back in the States, back with the Rangers and not standing ankle-deep in mud in an SAS base with a bunch of guys he’d never met before two days ago, most of whom kept looking at him like he’d sprung straight up from hell and not his base back in Georgia. Not that he really cared; a job was a job and he was pretty good at going where he’d been told to go, doing what he’d been told to do. He guessed he’d’ve been a pretty poor soldier if he hadn’t and besides, most of the Brits had turned out to have a pretty good sense of humor once he got past their sideshow trick of eyeballing the American interloper.
“He’s coming,” said the officer in charge, a Brit in a sand-colored beret who made some pretty entertaining lewd jokes when he got drunk enough. Barney had found that out the first night, getting acquainted with the camp’s commanders sometime in the wee small hours long after dinner, once they’d all had time to relax their guard around the new guy. “Look, really. He’s coming.”
“So is Christmas,” Barney said. The CO chuckled, a snicker went around a bunch of nearby NCOs and a few days later he wasn’t surprised to find the name had stuck.
They met the next day, after Lee had finally made it back to camp through the jungle phase of the SAS selection process; turned out one of his teammates had broken his ankle and he’d dragged the guy’s ass back through fifteen miles of jungle once they’d figured out their comms were down. He saw his teammate off to sick bay and then the CO introduced them. He was still calling himself Lee Jackson back then, a lance corporal with the British Army and an SAS wannabe with a whole lot of potential. Barney had always been Barney, but he was still calling himself Rossi then, not Ross. Lieutenant Colonel Rossi, to be precise, and back then he was precise.
They didn’t shake hands. Lee was covered in all of the crap Barney remembered being covered in after his own jungle training, and every jungle mission he’d had after that. There’d been a few, maybe more than he felt like counting.
“You look like hell, soldier,” Barney told him. “You smell even worse.”
“You try dragging a bloke through a jungle for two days, see how pretty you look,” Lee said with an amused smile. “And I’d rather smell like crap than your aftershave.” He paused a beat, for effect, then clicked his heels at attention and tacked on, “Sir.”
That was the moment Barney first decided he liked him; he’d got character, he thought, and if he reined in that smart mouth he’d go a long way.
He reminded him of Stonebanks, back in the day.
---
The second time they met, Lee was a cocksure 27-year-old SAS corporal with a section of his own, the six of them running about like idiots somewhere in southern Iraq. Barney had been out of the Rangers for nearly three years by then; officially he’d retired but that was unofficially just so much bullshit. His CO had needed a scapegoat after some fucked-up op went bad, but he’d made his peace with the whole affair and gotten into a new business, telling himself he’d never wanted a desk job anyway. Of course, what he hadn’t expected was that business to clash with a British hostage rescue, and he hadn’t expected to run into Lee Jackson again, at least not anytime soon.
“Look, I know you’re some big deal ex-colonel,” Lee said, standing there in the dark outside the building both their teams were looking to penetrate, and apparently he remembered Barney too. “But we were here first.”
“That’s what you’re going with?” Barney said. “We were here first?”
“Well, yeah,” Lee said, like that was completely obvious. “‘Cause we were.”
Barney guessed he couldn’t argue with that logic because the SAS boys in their fetching black face paint had been there first. They’d’ve been inside already if Barney and his team hadn’t gotten in the way and they both knew it, which was half the problem as he saw it.
“How about we work together,” Barney said, though he wasn’t totally convinced a joint op stood any chance in hell of working out, maybe especially because the SAS working with a team of mercenaries sounded like the plot of a bad action flick. “You get your hostage, we get ours.”
“And we get paid,” Stonebanks said, somewhere off behind him, and a couple of the others snickered. Barney ignored him, which was sometimes the best thing where Stonebanks and his offbeat sense of humor were concerned.
“Whatever,” Lee said. “You just stay out of our way, old man. None of that Rangers Lead the Way horseshit.”
Barney felt like bringing up how Who Dares Wins was pretty much on a par in terms of witty special forces repartee but kept his mouth firmly shut. They had a job to do and besides, his particular brand of service had screwed him over to say the very least.
It was the first time he’d really seen Lee work and he had to say he was pretty damn impressed. The guys under his command were good when it came down to it and they stopped clowning around, followed orders, turned out to be well trained when both teams went in side by side, over the wall and into the compound. They split up, Lee with Barney and a couple of the guys, Stonebanks with Lee’s 2IC and the rest, guns holstered and knives out, silent.
When the two of them got themselves cut off from the others, when the alarm was raised and they stepped up to fight back to back, it came easy. Lee had a combat knife unsheathed in each hand and the guys heading into the room where they’d gotten pinned down were too close for gunfire so they hacked and slashed and Barney watched as Lee threw one knife, caught a guy in the windpipe and put him down with aplomb.
“Where’d you learn to do that?” Barney said, planting a boot in the middle of a guy’s chest and knocking him onto his ass, following up with a foot to the jaw and a sickly crunch.
“You wanna have this conversation now?” Lee said, yanking the knife out of the dead guy’s trachea and moving on as more guys rushed in.
“You wanna argue? We could be dead in five minutes.”
“The way you’re fighting, maybe.”
Barney chuckled as he kneed a guy in the groin then bounced his head off of a wall. “Smartass.”
“Smartest arse you’ll ever meet.”
Lee pivoted, ducked down, swept one leg around and took another guy down to the floor, followed through with his knife and Barney caught a glimpse of the blood burbling up out of his mouth. Down there on one knee he threw the knife again, buried it to the hilt in a waiting eye socket across the room.
“You SAS guys aren’t trained that way,” Barney said, one arm around another guy’s neck. He pulled, twisted, heard something crack and dropped the body to the floor. “Seriously. Where’d you learn to do that?”
“Sheltered childhood,” Lee replied, maybe serious but probably not, and turned to plant his fist in someone’s face. “Lots of time alone to practice.”
“No wonder you don’t play well with others,” Barney said, hauling himself up off of the floor to watch Lee take care of the last guy still standing.
“Who says I don’t?” Lee slit the guy’s throat as he held him there, one arm pinned behind his back; he let him drop and went down to a crouch to wipe off his knife on the guy’s jacket. “Maybe I just don’t play well with you.”
Barney shrugged, amused. “Looks like you play great with me, Christmas,” he said, and gestured around the room with both arms out wide, gestured to the ten, twelve guys there littering the floor. “Maybe you don’t just play with yourself after all.”
Lee laughed, smiled. “Shut the fuck up and let’s get outta here,” he said, waving him toward the door with the blade of one knife. “I don’t know about you, colonel, but I don’t get paid by the hour.”
The others had grabbed the hostages by the time they joined back up with them and they all got the hell out of there; the two teams’ choppers were waiting side by side and as they lifted off, Barney tossed a half-assed salute in Lee’s direction. Lee gave him the finger with a shit-eating grin and all Barney could do was laugh as they went their separate ways.
Now he was sure he liked him. It was pretty hard not to.
---
The next time, Lee was thirty, a freshly-promoted sergeant playing darts in a pub somewhere off-base outside Hereford along with a bunch of other soldiers out of uniform. He’d shaved his head and he was sporting jeans and a soccer shirt for some team Barney had never even heard of but he still somehow looked exactly the same as he had the last time he’d seen him. Barney bought himself a pint of bitter at the bar and sat down in a corner, watching the darts game develop; turned out Christmas was as good a shot with a dart as he was with a knife and after Barney’s second pint he was already pretty much out of willing opponents.
“No one else?” Lee said. “C’mon, I’ll even do it with my left hand.”
“You’re a shitty hustler, Christmas,” Barney called over in reply. “The idea’s to lure ‘em in, not just smack ‘em down.”
Lee turned, flicked a dart in Barney’s direction with barely a second glance that embedded itself in the back of the bench he was sitting on. Barney barely raised a brow; to be frank, he’d been expecting it. Lee hadn’t disappointed.
“Oi!” the landlady said, and Lee flashed her an apologetic grin over his shoulder before he turned back to Barney; from the way the woman shrugged it off and went back to serving at the bar, Barney figured she’d probably seen a hell of a lot worse from the hordes of soldiers around town.
“And what do you know about darts, yank?” Lee asked.
Barney pulled the dart out of the woodwork and took a stroll on over. “Let’s find out,” he said, taking the rest of the darts from Lee’s hand.
They played a game and Barney got in a round of drinks for Lee and the rest of the guys who sat there heckling as they played in spite of their free pints. Barney pulled off his jacket to a chorus of look, lads, he’s getting serious! and Lee chuckled as Barney’s next shot was half an inch off target, bouncing sadly off the board’s wiring. He lost. He hadn’t expected to win and that was A-OK because winning had never really been the point.
“Better luck next time, colonel,” Lee said, over his shoulder as he retrieved the darts from the board. “I’m disappointed. Thought you’d give me a run for my money.”
“How about you call me Barney,” Barney said, ignoring the pseudo-insult and picking his backpack up off of the floor. He unzipped the main pocket and pulled out two sets of knives in sheaths with belt loops and thigh straps, slapped them down on the bar with a bump. “And how about we try these.” He pulled a fifty pound note from his wallet and slid it over the bar as the landlady eyed the knives dubiously. “For the damage,” he said, because damage was more or less inevitable.
Lee laughed as he picked up one of the sheaths, as he pulled a knife out of it and weighed it in his hand. “If you can’t beat me with a dart, you can’t beat me with a knife,” he said. “Barney.” Then he turned and he threw and the knife went in unsurprisingly straight through the bullseye, straight into the wooden post that the dartboard was hanging from. He retrieved the knife with a couple of stiff pulls, came back over and held it out to Barney.
“Nah, you keep ‘em,” Barney said, holding up his hands. “You win.”
“And it’s not even my birthday.”
“Think of it like an offer.”
“A job offer?”
“Yeah.”
Lee tapped the knife against his chin then slid it back into the sheath, took one in each hand and nodded a kind of thanks that Barney shrugged off straight away. And it maybe looked like Lee was going to actually consider the idea for a moment, but then he shook his head.
“Look, I’m not a merc,” he said.
“Neither was I,” Barney pointed out. “I was a full bird colonel in the US Army.”
“And now you’re not.”
Barney shrugged. “Yeah, now I’m not,” he said. “Now I’m something else.”
“Yeah, but I’m not a merc,” Lee repeated.
“At least have a drink before you turn me down.”
So they had a drink, at the table in the corner. They had another after that, talking, voices getting louder till they needed to get lower because there were ops and people and places they had in common and Barney guessed it didn’t matter anymore if he talked about them; he was still loyal to the job in his own way but he wasn’t that loyal. They had another drink and then three more and they were still laughing at each other and the story Lee was telling about climbing Pen y Fan hungover wearing his girlfriend’s underwear because it’d looked like his briefs with the lights off when the pub closed and they made it outside together to go find a taxi. Lee’s arm went around Barney’s shoulders as they headed out the door like they were old friends and not just pretty bare acquaintances. Barney didn’t object, maybe not just because they were keeping each other upright.
“I probably shouldn’t go back to base pissed as a newt,” Lee said, paying no attention to the way the driver was eyeing the knives he was carrying like he’d just picked up a serial killer. “If you were my CO, wouldn’t you kick my arse for coming in like this?”
Barney tended to agree so they ended up in Barney’s shitty hotel room with Lee laughing at him because a Travelodge wasn’t impressing anyone; it sure as hell didn’t look like it was going to persuade him to quit the SAS and hitch himself to that cheap-ass star, as much as Barney protested the hotel was just his partner’s way of being a dick to him from several hundred miles away. He was pretty sure Stonebanks was irritated that he’d decided to make an job offer to a guy he hadn’t met and the room was his way of showing him how irritated he was, short of setting his revolver in Jell-O or dying his beret a particularly lurid shade of purple. But Barney had a bottle of mid-range whiskey up in his room and they drank some more and they talked some more and somewhere in the middle of it Barney stopped working on the sales pitch so it wasn’t like he had anyone to impress when they stood up and staggered together and Lee kissed him messily, fingers in his hair.
“Didn’t read this wrong, did I?” Lee said, pulling back, but the cocky grin on his face said he knew he hadn’t. “I mean, it’s not like you came all the way here just to give me a present and chat me up.” He put his hands to his face in mock-surprise. “Oh, wait.”
Barney laughed. “Smartass,” he said, and shoved in him the chest, just hard enough that Lee bounced down on his back on the bed with a big, drunk smile plastered all over his face. “That mouth’s gonna get you into trouble.”
“I hope so,” Lee said, as he pulled off his shirt.
Barney liked him. He kind of wondered why, but he knew he did.
---
When Lee called Barney and said he wanted in, he was 36. Barney said he wasn’t sure he even had a team anymore or that he wanted one. Lee said he didn’t care, he was coming over anyway.
They met in a bar in New York, a dive with a sticky floor and sticky tables and a bad band playing so loud Barney couldn’t hear himself think but that seemed fine somehow. They sat shoulder to shoulder in a cracked pleather booth in the back behind a crowd of emo kids and they drank a couple of beers, not speaking, pretty much not even looking at each other but that was fine, too. Then they left and they walked around sometime past midnight and even the farce of an attempted mugging they got into didn’t raise their spirits all that high.
“Really?” Lee said, as the guy popped out of an alley with a gun, a meth head with a twitch like a cheap stereotype.
“Gimme your money,” the guy said, waving the gun. “And your watches. Right now, move!”
“Really?”
“I guess so,” Barney said and shrugged; Lee moved quickly, jabbed the guy in the throat with his elbow and tossed the gun into a nearby dumpster.
Lee shook his head and they walked on, said something about welcome to New York and they eventually caught a cab and went back to Lee’s hotel, some middle of the road place with chintzy bedspreads and prints of paintings of flowers on the walls that made Barney roll his eyes at the incongruity of it, Lee sitting there at the table with its little flower centerpiece with his knives all spread out on it. Barney sat down opposite.
Stonebanks had fucked him over and it smarted, it stung because he hadn’t seen it coming, and he guessed it would sting for a good long time to come. And so he’d killed him because what else could he do except kill him, and then Doc had gotten caught, and the rest of the damn team was dead, and it was all just such a unilateral, comprehensive shambles. He was a shambles and Lee wasn’t much better; his whole team had died somewhere in Afghanistan, unofficial, and the way Barney’s contacts told it the British brass were trying hard to pin the blame on Lee. Barney knew how that went. He could sympathize.
They’d met once a year every year for five years before that night, bars across the world wherever Lee had decided to take his leave that time. It was Miami the first year where Lee got sunburned and whined about it till Barney rubbed him down with lotion and then he still whined about it after, somewhere in the Caribbean the year after that where they fished off of the back of a boat like either of them even liked fishing or knew how to fish then drank cocktails all night till they couldn’t stand up.
They did Moscow the year after that, freezing their asses off in the middle of winter; Rome next, cameras around their necks like typical tourists though they’d both been there before and weren’t huge on ancient history; London last, eight months before that night, two nights in a hotel Barney could afford and Lee couldn’t on his lowly Army salary but neither one of them mentioned the money at all. Barney had started to look forward to it somewhere along the way, screwing around with Lee for a couple of nights roughly once a year that they fit in between jobs, the whole thing familiar, fun, trading insults about how Barney was getting older or Lee was getting balder and then winding up in naked in bed, Lee making fun of Barney’s new tattoos as they compared new scars and traded stories, then did something else instead. It was easy. It was how it’d been with Stonebanks back in the day.
That night in New York, they went to bed but didn’t fuck; Barney turned off the lights and they slept, pretending not to notice each other’s problems sleeping, keeping their distance under the sheets. In the morning, they started the business of putting the new team together and they both had a few ideas, guys they’d worked with before, solid guys they thought they could probably depend on. It was going to work, Barney told himself. If he kept his distance, it wouldn’t be like the first time around. It wouldn’t be like Stonebanks; he’d make sure of that. There’d be no regrets, only lessons learned.
When they left the country, Lee’s fake US passport called him Lee Christmas and Barney couldn’t help but smile at that despite himself.
He wished like hell he didn’t like him as much as he did.
---
The first time Lee almost died on Barney’s watch, he was 38.
He’d told himself there wouldn’t be another Stonebanks and he’d meant it, no more getting close, getting too close, no more losing sight of the bigger picture in a messy secret relationship like theirs had always been, not even messy because of the irregular sex though maybe that was part of it, screwing around high on post-job adrenaline till maybe it got twisted into feeling like something more than it was. The problem was, as Lee lay there bleeding in the plane afterwards, that somewhere in the past two years he’d gone and lost objectivity all over again and he wasn’t even sleeping with the guy, not anymore, had promised himself he wouldn’t. He wondered if he’d ever really had objectivity at all, since the first time they’d met.
Lee got himself stitched up and laughed it off but an inch either way and he’d’ve been dead and cold and buried. And Barney knew he’d fucked up but by then it was far too late already because when he got moody in the cockpit later, after, Lee just told him act your age, then said okay, that’s taking it too far. How about you act my age. Barney chuckled and that was the end of that. Objectivity could go to hell and they’d be friends and leave it at that. It wasn’t like either of them was looking for a long-term relationship anyway, least of all with another guy. Barney knew he wasn’t looking for a girl but maybe Lee was.
The second time Lee almost died was a year later, sometime just after his next birthday, a near miss that Lee laughed off when they got back to the plane but Barney was kicking himself - not for the near miss itself but for his own damn reaction after the fact. He’d wanted to shove him up against the nearest wall after he’d put the shooter down with a bullet in his brain, he’d wanted to shove his hand down the front of Lee’s muddy, sweaty pants, wanted to fuck him right up against the wall right there before they were even really safe and that was everything he’d told himself he’d never do again. No more screwing around with guys on the team. No more getting attached, no more getting involved. He was already involved.
Lee got together with Lacy a few months later and then the shit kicked off in Vilena and then they were out in eastern Europe kicking Vilain’s ass and then it was Stonebanks, it was Stonebanks and it was Romania, Azmenistan, guns and tanks and explosives and a building turning to rubble and they flew home afterwards, Lee up there in the copilot’s seat just like he always was, or like he always should’ve been though Barney had maybe thought different for a while. But Stonebanks was really dead this time, he was really gone, and maybe Lee didn’t say it but he was still pissed Barney had ever decided to leave him behind, like the jackass who’d betrayed him however many years ago it’d been by then was more still somehow important to Barney than he was.
He was apparently pissed enough that when Barney got home from the bar and the cringeworthy karaoke and public displays of tattoos his door was wide open and Lee was sitting on his couch, looking grouchy as hell.
“You could’ve knocked,” Barney said, taking a seat on the couch. He guessed he was glad Lee had picked the lock and not just kicked the door in.
“”I’d’ve been knocking a while,” Lee said, raising his brows at him. “You weren’t here, you arse.”
“You could’ve waited.”
“I got impatient.”
“So what else is new?”
Lee shook his head and looked away. “So, you’re gonna act like nothing happened.”
Barney shrugged. “I was gonna try,” he said.
They sat in silence for a minute and then another, not looking at each other, Barney staring into space as he rubbed one hand with the other, played with his lucky ring, and then Lee moved, tugged at his own shirtsleeve, cursed under his breath then just pulled the whole thing off instead and tossed it onto the floor. He pointed at the tattoo, the neat print spelling out Expendable over his skin.
“You were there when I got this,” he said.
“Yeah,” Barney agreed. He had been, making fun of the way Lee bitched as the letters got inked in. Barney had a whole lot of tattoos so maybe it’d stopped bothering him but Lee wasn’t exactly covered in them. They weren’t his style.
“It means something,” Lee said. “But it doesn’t mean you get to ditch me whenever it suits your maudlin fucking worldview.”
Barney sighed. “I know,” he said.
“And Doc says the way you are with me’s like how you were before, with Stonebanks.”
Barney did something pretty much like wincing. “Yeah,” he said.
“You know I’m not him.”
Barney dropped his head into his hands and he laughed kinda bitterly but Lee moved, did it slowly like maybe he was trying to give Barney time to stop him but then he straddled Barney’s thighs, one knee planted on the couch either side. His fingers went around Barney’s wrists and Barney looked at him, rueful, maybe ashamed, who knew. Lee wasn’t Stonebanks. Lee couldn’t’ve hidden anything from him if he’d tried but the important fact there was he hadn’t tried and probably never would. Lee got jealous every time they got someone new on the team. Lee got scowly when they worked separately. Everyone knew the copilot’s seat was Lee’s or he’d bitch and moan till he got it back. Lee was an open book.
In the end, Barney just wrapped his arms tight around Lee’s waist and pressed his face against his bare chest.
“Getting soppy in your old age?” Lee said, but let him do it. He didn’t push him away.
Barney knew he’d never liked anyone the way he liked Lee Christmas, not even Stonebanks and somehow that was saying something. When he looked up at Lee, he was pretty sure he knew it too.
---
Barney was 65 years old when he first thought about retirement. Lee told him to stop being a drama queen and so he stayed on instead.
Lee started spending more time with him after that, between jobs. He wasn’t subtle about it so Barney just guessed he was between girlfriends or something but he kept turning up with a six pack of beer and suggesting they drink or a new gun and suggesting they hit the range and Barney gave in because it wasn’t like spending time with Lee was some kind of tragedy. Lee suggested they join a gym next, somewhere that did boxing and MMA, and he didn’t let it go though Barney already had a gym membership and it wasn’t like they lived anywhere near each other so it wasn’t even like it was going to be convenient. But, dutifully, Barney gave in. He figured he was nothing if not a good friend.
“The jumped-up receptionist says I’m fine but I can’t bring my dad,” Lee said, leaning on the front desk, looking amused. “They’ve got a strict no old guys policy.”
Barney might’ve let it drop except the guy behind the desk looked about twelve with the IQ of a Dachshund and Christmas would never let him live it down.
“I’m not his dad, kid,” Barney said, strolling over. “And I’ve forgotten more about fighting than you’ll ever know.”
“Y’know, he was a Ranger,” Lee said, casually, like he was trying to needle the guy.
“Yeah, him and everyone else who comes through the door,” the kid said. “Next you’ll wanna tell me you were a SEAL.”
“He’s British,” Barney pointed out. “He was SAS.”
“Yeah? And who gives a shit about the British?”
Barney and Lee shared a look that said they both knew how this was going to end. Barney wouldn’t have been surprised if Lee had planned it all along.
“He does,” Barney said.
“I do,” Lee said. “But he’ll fight you over it.”
The kid at the desk smirked. “What, the old guy?”
“He beats you, you let us in.”
Twenty minutes later, they both had memberships. The kid had a black eye and a limp.
They wound up in the gym maybe three days a week after that, Lee dragging Barney’s ass down there like it was going out of style. They lifted weights, punched bags, but Barney found he preferred it when they got into the ring and though he’d been something of a boxer in his younger days it was that MMA shit the kids were all into that he liked, maybe just because he was sparring with Lee. They’d both had special forces training back in the day and they’d both had to use it over the years but it was something different when they weren’t actually trying to kill each other. It was something completely different.
After a couple of weeks he could tell when Lee was gonna throw a punch because of the way his weight shifted on his feet even when he tried to hide it and Barney was dredging up every last ounce of his former boxing glory to get a hit in because damn, Lee was fast. A couple of weeks after that, they were pretty much drawing a crowd of the other gym members every time they fought, and afterwards they showered and they taped each other up and over the weeks, fighting barefoot and shirtless in shorts in the ring or spotting each other as they lifted weights, Barney started to realize he knew Lee’s body better than he knew his own. He’d barely changed at all since that first night back in England; he’d gotten older and he had more scars, more lines on his face, but he was pretty much exactly the same. He almost wished he’d changed.
They started going out at night then they started staying in and watching sports neither of them cared about instead while Barney cleaned guns and Lee sharpened knives and they ruined Barney’s dining table but he found he didn’t care, just bought a new one for them to wreck together. And then one day at the gym Lee twisted his wrist punching Barney in the jaw and afterwards they sat in the locker room and Barney unwound the tape from Lee’s hand once their gloves were off, felt the bones in his wrist with his fingers and when they looked at each other there was something in it that Barney had been trying to deny for years. There was a moment and it could’ve gone either way, he could’ve kissed him, he could’ve shrugged it off and smiled and laughed like it was all a joke somehow and Lee might’ve even let him get away with it; he took the third option instead, let go of Lee’s wrist and stood but couldn’t make himself act like what had happened hadn’t happened. He didn’t even try to.
He walked away but Lee caught him, shoved him up against a row of lockers by his shoulders and cursed under his breath, maybe at his twisted wrist, maybe at something else. He got in Barney’s face, serious for once, angry, one arm going up and barring tight over Barney’s throat till it was hard to breathe and he had the idea that was the point as Lee watched him struggle to take his next breath, holding him there, and Barney didn’t even try to get away. He probably would’ve let Lee choke him unconscious and maybe Lee would’ve done it but the door opened and someone walked in and Lee stepped away, tense but pretty much like nothing had happened otherwise. But something had happened. Barney wasn’t sure if he should have been worried by it or turned on and settled somewhere disconcertingly halfway between the two.
Lee bandaged his own wrist and once they’d pulled on their street clothes Barney led the way out in silence, but once they’d tossed their gym bags into the back seat of Lee’s SUV and hopped up into the front, Lee leaned over and pressed his mouth hotly to the side of Barney’s neck, fingers threading into his shower-damp hair and pulling tight. He moved, pressed a hard kiss to Barney’s jaw where there’d be a bruise in the morning from the fight, found his mouth in the end and Barney let him. He didn’t want not to.
“Do I have to remind you I’m not Stonebanks?” Lee said, pulling back just far enough to speak, his eyes still closed as he slid one hand down between Barney’s thighs.
“Do I have to remind you you date girls these days?” Barney replied.
“I’m pretty sure I’ve been dating you for fifteen years,” Lee said, eyes flickering open just for a second, and then he kissed him again, hard and deep, rubbing at the crotch of Barney’s jeans with the heel of his hand. He was already hard. It was broad daylight and they were sitting in Lee’s car in the parking lot of a gym, but he was hard and Lee pulled back and started the engine with a flick of his injured wrist that made him curse.
He kicked Barney out of the car outside his building, gave him a look Barney was almost glad he couldn’t read and then put his foot on the gas and left him there. They didn’t speak for a week.
Eight days later, they got back in from some godforsaken desert out in the Middle East and once the others were gone, heading for showers then a night out drinking, Barney came out of the cockpit and there was Lee, running his hand over the tags still hanging there in the main cabin. He yanked sharply and pulled one down, clipped the ball chain back together once he’d done that and then stood there, studying the tag in his hand while Barney watched him do it. Then, in a fit of pique or something else, he reached into his shirt and pulled off his own tag, tossed it down at Barney’s feet with a clink of metal on metal. When he looped the other tag around his neck instead, Barney knew whose it was.
Lee turned to him, came in close and pulled the revolver from the holster at the small of Barney’s back. He looked Barney straight in the eye and he lifted the gun, took a few steps back and pointed it straight at his chest.
“Who do you think I am?” Lee said. He strode in closer again after a long moment’s silence, pressed the muzzle of the gun up to center of Barney’s chest and walked him back with it, up against the side of the plane. He stepped in closer, ran the gun up, pressed it in under Barney’s jaw and forced his head back as his pulse quickened. “What do you think I’m gonna do?”
Barney didn’t have to think; he knew.
He knocked the gun from Lee’s hand and there was a scuffle after, not really a fight, just a couple of punches that didn’t quite land, shoving, tripping till they were down in a heap on the floor and Barney wound up on top of him and he knew, knew without a second’s hesitation that Lee hadn’t been going to pull the trigger. The idea of it was nuts, after all, but he got the point and he shifted to take the tag around Lee’s neck in his hand, running his thumb over the name there on it. They printed the team’s tags in-house, didn’t use their service tags, just one name and their blood group just in case; Stonebanks was stamped there in worn, raised letters. Barney pulled it off of him, tossed it aside.
“You’re not him,” Barney said. That had been Lee’s point all along.
They did it right then and there in the plane, half-clothed and down on their knees, Barney thanking various deities for kneepads as he shoved Lee’s pants down over his hips. The place was usually full of all sorts of crap they might’ve been able to use for lube but they spent a couple of breathless, desperate minutes searching for something like morons till they came up with a tub of something slick that resembled a beauty product and Barney pushed into him with a groan of relief. Lee came up off of his hands onto just his wide-spread knees and leaned back against Barney’s chest; Barney’s arm went around Lee’s waist as he moved in him slowly, one hand going down between his thighs to stroke him in time. Lee pulled off his shirt and so did Barney so they were skin on skin against each other except maybe for the issue of their pants that they’d just shoved down far enough to be out of the way; Barney yanked off his own tags to get them out of the way and somehow it was hotter like that, without ID, just the two of them. One of Lee’s hands closed over Barney’s and made him stroke faster. It didn’t last long after that.
It wasn’t until three days later that Barney realized he was wearing Lee’s tags instead of his own. They shared a blood group so they didn’t bother switching back, though it wouldn’t exactly have been some kind of arduous chore.
It wasn’t just a question of liking anymore. He didn’t need to say it; Lee understood.
---
When Lee brought up retirement, it was Barney’s 66th birthday.
They were in the bar that night, sitting at a table while the others played pool and a loud and truly shitty band played there up on the stage almost as loud as C4. Lee brought out a cupcake and a candle that he stuck into the middle of it and then lit with Barney’s lighter that he’d swiped from his hip pocket.
“Make a wish,” Lee yelled across the table, so Barney blew out the candle and did just that. Lee shuffled closer and leaned in to talk over the music.
“I’m thinking about retirement,” he said.
“Says the guy who talked me out of it.”
“I might’ve been hasty.” He pulled the candle out of the cupcake and swiped some of the icing with his thumb, licked it off and then stole Barney’s beer to take a swig of that, too. “I met someone.”
“Yeah?”
Lee smirked. “Yeah,” he said, passing back the beer. “He’s a grouchy old bastard but I think he’ll do.”
They went back to Barney’s place after, the way they’d been doing for weeks, got naked while Lee picked fault with all of Barney’s tattoos and then Lee straddled Barney’s hips and rode him slow and hard till neither of them could muster the words to talk anymore. They gave themselves a cursory wipe down afterwards and then turned out the lights; Barney guessed he might as well ask Lee to move in so he did that in the morning, over coffee Lee had finally started fixing the way Barney liked it after years of getting it wrong on purpose. He liked to think that meant something but Lee was still just as much of an ass in every other way as he always had been. Barney guessed it worked out that he found it oddly endearing.
“You might’ve noticed I’m more or less living here already,” Lee said with an amused smile when Barney asked, and Barney guessed that meant yes because he didn’t leave. Maybe they’d even get around to telling the team in the end, once they figured out how exactly they felt about that because it wasn’t like either one of them was really out and proud. Still, Barney guessed they’d had plenty of time to come to terms; they’d known each other on and off for twenty years. If that wasn’t a long-term relationship then he didn’t know what was.
They didn’t retire, of course, at least not the whole way, not in the start. They went part-time; Barney set up the jobs, the two of them did the recon and then they sent in the rest of the team when the time came for running and shooting and high explosives. They scouted new talent together, bought in new weapons, took care of logistics, kept their hand in over the months that followed but then months turned to years and Barney stepped back from field work altogether. He let the younger guys take care of that part, names he taught Lee to press into tags on the machine they kept over at Tool’s. Maybe he missed it but he didn’t miss it half as much as he’d expected.
They still went to the range twice a week, still went to the gym and kept in shape, ate in the steakhouse down the street and drank in the bar with the bad karaoke and half the team. Barney was pushing 70 and Lee was still there needling him with a smile the whole time; he wasn’t sure what he’d expected retirement to be but he was pretty sure he hadn’t seen Lee Christmas there with him, writing bad rhymes in birthday cards every year and insisting they go out for Valentine’s because it creeped people out and he found that hilarious. They hadn’t managed to get sick of each other and Barney sure as hell hadn’t seen that coming, but it wasn’t a disappointment.
Lee turned 50 and Barney felt old and Lee just laughed but Barney was serious about it. He couldn’t move the way he’d used to, couldn’t fight the way he’d used to, got tired quicker and was pretty sure he needed a hearing aid from all the damn explosions over the years, though he guessed at least he was still a great shot. He still had that if nothing else.
“You never thought I was too old for you?” Barney said, as they lay there in bed, birthday festivities all done.
“What, because you were going grey before I was even born?” Lee thought it through in theatrical style, stroking his chin, and then raised his eyebrows at him. “I hate to be the one to break this to you but your age was never some great mysterious secret. I’ve always known you’re old.” He got in closer, nipped at Barney’s earlobe with his teeth and made him snicker lowly. “Besides, ask me if I give a toss.”
He stopped counting their ages after that because in the end it had turned out Lee liked him just as much as he liked Lee and somehow all the other bullshit in their lives just ceased to matter.
And maybe, just maybe, he had regrets. But meeting Lee Christmas wasn’t one of them.