Chapter Text
Chapter 1
They were sitting in the explorer, watching a skip's mistresses house after a tip that the skip had been continuing his regular visits even after missing his court date. It was boring but both men were quiet. One was alert and vigilant in his zone, a predator waiting for his prey and he could wait all afternoon with the same focused attention if necessary. The explorer was a cushy place to wait. He could have been just as patient and a lot less comfortable lying in the grass or underbrush somewhere.
The other man was vigilant and just as quiet but on that day, he couldn't find his zone. Every time he sank towards that timeless place, his alertness waned and he snapped himself back into focus. It was more difficult than usual. His reason for sleep deprivation this time was well worth the difficulty but knowing it was for a good cause didn't lessen the impact on him. He needed a full night's sleep soon and he didn't want to make the sacrifice necessary to achieve it.
Finally, one man broke the silence between them. "When was the last time you slept?"
"Last night."
"Bullshit. You haven't looked well rested in the last two weeks."
"I sleep lightly for short periods. I wake up every time a spider sneezes. I hear every faint sound and wake up reaching for a weapon." His muscles tensed just thinking about it and he forced them to relax again.
"Nightmares again?" he asked, voice a little gruff with sympathy. Both men kept their eyes firmly focused on their surroundings. Some conversations were easier to have without looking at each other.
"No." His tone closed down that line of questioning. He resented being questioned at all but the person questioning him was one of the few who deserved answers. Their lives sometimes depended on their alertness.
"When was the last time you had good sleep then?"
"I caught a nap yesterday afternoon on seven."
"And before that?"
"Couple of days." He'd gone longer without sleep. "Been staying at Steph's apartment."
"Shit man. That's not safe."
Ranger's sleep deprived mind couldn't be sure whether his partner meant that it wasn't safe to sleep at Stephanie's apartment or that it wasn't safe to consistently attempt to function on so little sleep. They were trained to do it but sometimes delayed reflexes could mean death and going without sleep when it wasn't necessary was foolish, a rookie mistake. He had broken in to Stephanie's many times to watch her sleep before this. Even spent a few nights sleeping in her apartment over the years but one night of battlefield alert sleep surrounded by nights of good rest wasn't a big deal. Weeks of that kind of sleep was essentially an experiment in extended sleep deprivation and he knew it wasn't his best idea. Ranger stayed silent.
His friend continued to push. "Why isn't she staying at Haywood with you instead of you attempting to sleep in that death trap apartment?"
"Do you think I haven't tried to convince her?" He stopped, took a deep breath, and counted to ten. Lack of sleep was fraying his control and making him susceptible to his emotions. When he was sure he would not meet his partner's concern with undeserved defensive anger, he tried again in a calmer voice. "She's not comfortable with everyone in the control room or with access to the logs knowing where she's been and what she's been doing."
They were silent for a few moments, both trying to find a way around the curly haired brunette's stubbornness. Ranger broke the silence this time. "There he is."
They slipped out of the explorer, closing the doors softly in the exact same instant. They stalked their prey with the ease of long practice, fanning out so the larger man could cut off any attempt at retreat, their boots silent on the pavement. The skip was focused on his mistress's house and the fun he intended to have. He didn't notice them approaching until they were beside him.
"Bond enforcement," one informed the skip quietly. The skip reached for his gun but he wasn't anywhere near fast enough. He took a fist to the chin and dropped like a stone. Ranger used his foot to roll the skip over and cuffed his hands behind his back. The rough handling woke the skip. Then they each took one of the skip's arms and led him to the explorer where they shackled him in place for the ride.
The trip to the police station was silent. They wouldn't air their business in front of a stranger or give the skip ammunition to use against them. After they dropped him off and collected the body receipt, they headed back to Haywood. They maintained their silence until they were parked in the garage.
"I'll do the report. You go on up and get a few hours sleep."
Ranger met his partner's knowing eyes for a moment and nodded. Everything that only he could do could wait a few hours.
"Tonight you need to tell her what's been going on with you. You can't keep doing this. You stay here, with or without her, or I'll come guard the apartment. Either way, she needs to understand. She deserves to know the truth about what you sleeping there is doing to you."
Ranger knew that tone. He was the boss now on paper but there wouldn't be any way to convince his friend to let him continue to risk himself this way. That's what partner's did, stood beside you, behind you, or if necessary, in front of you. Their eyes held in a silent battle of wills but eventually, Ranger nodded his agreement and trudged up the stairs for his nap.
***
Chapter 2
This chapter is Stephanie's POV.
I fumbled trying to juggle my purse, bag from Victoria's Secret, and get my door unlocked. I swear, some of the Merry Men could unlock my door with lock picks and their magic hands faster than I could get it open with my key.
I dropped the shopping bag and purse on my bed before fishing out my phone to send Ranger a text message. There wasn't an immediate response so he must have been busy with a take down. I had been taking up a lot of his time lately and something wasn't right.
Something had been nagging at me since he started sleeping here every night after sex. Joe rarely spent the night, even if we were on again. We were most definitely off again now, hopefully permanently this time. I would rather have whatever scraps Ranger was willing to give to me than have Joe trying to shove me into his mold of who to be. Something was wrong with Ranger though. I wondered if there was a big job that was giving him trouble or if he was about to go back in the wind or if he was rethinking us. I was beginning to suspect that seeing me in any capacity was bad for him.
A few nights ago, we had ordered pizza. While we were waiting, I had snuggled in beside Ranger on the couch, both of us watching a movie and he dozed off. For me to take an impromptu nap wasn't unusual but for Batman, it was weird. Then when the pizza boy had knocked on the door, Ranger jumped up, nearly knocking me to the floor, and drew his gun. I'm not sure he was even completely awake. It took a few second's after he was standing before he approached the door to assess the threat presented by the knock. None, of course. Stalkers and bad guys just let themselves it. They don't knock.
Last night, he totally disassembled the hamster wheel at midnight and greased it until it twirled silently. When I asked him why, he said, "Babe. It's loud." But the hamster wheel was never really loud, you could barely hear it from the bedroom.
This morning, his alarm had gone off and even as I groggily opened my eyes to say good bye, he turned it off and lay still for a few minutes longer, as if gathering the strength or willpower to get up. I did that a lot. In him, it worried me.
After a few more minutes of no return text message, I got in the shower. I hadn't done any rolling in garbage today and my current POS car was still mostly in one piece, except the passenger side mirror now sitting in the passenger seat but I never really used that one anyway. I washed with Ranger's shower gel, shaved everything that needed shaved, dried off, and used lotion.
As I was getting dressed in the shorts and tank top from Victoria Secret that covered everything essential and still managed to leave absolutely nothing to imagination, my phone beeped, signaling an incoming text.
Something definitely was wrong. He had been coming here every night, sometimes picking up food, sometimes ordering it in, sometimes bringing Ella's meals with him. Ranger's sheets and Ella's food were a tempting combination but everyone would know where I had been and what I had been doing if I slept there. I just couldn't. And there would be questions. Someone would notice if my car wasn't here at night and they'd tell someone else and it would get back to my mother. I'd never here the end of it. Maybe he was getting tired of me.
I assured him by text, giving him an out. I didn't know exactly what this was between us but I didn't want him to think I was needy or clingy or that he was obligated to be here. I pulled a pair of lounge pants over the shorts, just in case we were going to fight tonight.
That meant even less in a text message. At least with facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language to go on I could have had a chance of guessing what he meant. Suddenly, I wasn't hungry at all. What was I going to do if he didn't want to be with me anymore? The last few weeks had been the best of my life.
I picked out a movie and settled in to wait and see what Batman would do. I was maybe a third of the way in when I heard the locks tumble. A rush of happiness and warmth went from my heart straight to my doodah. Ranger was here! I could smell Pino's meatball sub as he opened the door. I threw myself into his arms, not even letting him put the Pino's bag down before claiming a hug. He looked better rested than he had when he left this morning but still looked tired.
Ranger reached behind him to lock the door and settled on the couch. I grabbed a soda for me and a bottled water for him from the refrigerator. I ate my meatball sub. He picked at his salad, eating mostly the grilled chicken from the top and only a little bit of the green stuff. He wasn't watching the movie or even really cuddling with me. He was just sitting there with his head tilted back, eyes closed. Whatever he had wanted me to come to Haywood to tell me must be bad. He never got like this, even when there were crazies after me.
I knew before we started this thing, whatever it is, that he didn't do relationships. I thought I was okay with that but seeing him sitting there, using my sleep avoidance technique to avoid talking, I was terrified that the fragile thing between us would break. He was tired of me. The novelty had worn off. And I knew suddenly that I wouldn't be able to let him go easily. Tears filled my eyes and I bolted for the bathroom.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him stand, hand near his gun. "Babe?" he asked. I just closed the bathroom door and turned the practically useless lock. "What's wrong?" he pushed, sounding like he stood just outside the door. None of them were very good at dealing with my tears. They shouldn't have to deal with my emotional crap. No wonder he was sick of me already.
I ran some cold water on a washcloth, lay it over my eyes, and tried to get my tears under control. I heard the lock click and the door open. I felt his presence standing near me. He tugged the washcloth away from me gently.
"Stephanie." Uh-oh. My full name never meant anything good. "I can't help if you don't tell me what's wrong."
"You don't want to be here. Just go." I tried to keep my voice even but failed. This goodbye would tear me apart. It had always been so easy with Joe but my feelings for Ranger were much different.
Ranger used a finger under my chin to force me to meet his eyes. I wished that my esp would work, just once and I could see what was on his mind. "Babe. I don't know where you get this stuff. That's not true at all. If I didn't want to be here, I'd be asleep already at Haywood."
"Then what's going on? Please just talk to me," I pleaded, my eyes filling with tears.
"Alright Babe." He led me back out to the couch, paused the movie, and settled us down with my head tucked in the special spot on his shoulder and his arms around me. It didn't feel like goodbye at all. It felt like he never wanted to let me go.
His phone buzzed and he fished it from a cargo pocket to look at it before setting it on the coffee table.
"Talk Batman," I demanded but before he could answer, the locks on my door tumbled. After days of jumping and overreacting to any noise, he just tightened his arms around me. The text must have been one of the Merry Men saying he was on his way up.
Chapter 3
Still Stephanie POV
He came in and locked the door behind him, standing and looking down at us for a moment with serious eyes. “Are we headed back to Haywood or are we staying here tonight?”
“Staying here,” I responded instantly. Then I processed exactly what he had said and frowned. “We? That better be the royal we.”
“Nope. You want Ranger here so now you’ve got me too. It will be fun, promise.”
My first mental image was of seeing those two hard bodies pressed together, touching each other. Sexy as hell. And I’m positive the rush of moisture ruined the tiny shorts I was wearing as went on to picture a Stephanie sandwich made by those two men. Wait, part of me asserted, I’m supposed to love Ranger and not want anyone else. Then I considered that it would probably involve butt stuff. And the proper burg housewife I was supposed to grow up to be whispered, ‘what would your mother say?’ Only that last thought was enough to cool down my hormones and even as they cooled off, a rebellious piece whispered, ‘Do you really want to be that?’
“This isn’t some sort of kinky sex thing is it?” I asked out loud suspiciously.
“Babe.” I looked up at Ranger and wondered how much of those thoughts he had caught. From his wolf grin, if his esp had caught any of that, it didn’t bother him. He had mentioned before that he was sick and had done things that would shock me. I wondered about that. I didn’t know if I was brave enough to actually ask.
“Not tonight bombshell. Bossman is exhausted and I have a headache from all of the paperwork this afternoon.” I had forgotten all about him but now I studied his face, trying to decide if he was serious or just teasing me. His blank face didn’t give me any clues as he met my eyes for a moment but when he studied Ranger I saw a flicker of concern, and maybe a bit of the same look Ranger gave me. It was gone before I could be sure, tucked away behind the mask, but I suspected it was love, even if it wasn’t the kind that came with a ring.
“Did you guys talk at all?” he asked. Ranger met his eyes and gave a slight fraction of a head shake.
“She thinks I don’t want to be here,” Ranger told him. “I assured her that if I didn’t want to be with her, I wouldn’t be here.”
“He wouldn’t be here Steph if you weren’t here,” the other man assured me. “This place has locks a kindergartener could pick, no guards, not even an alarm system.”
“Is there a stalker or crazy I don’t know about?”
“There are always stalkers and crazies Steph. Yours are at least local amateurs who have a personal thing going and want to play with you a bit before killing you so they give you plenty of warning. Ranger’s are more likely to be professional and just might sneak in to kill him.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” I asked Ranger.
“I was fine. Am fine. I can take care of us. Don’t need the guards and the alarms.”
“And that’s why you’re not getting any sleep, right? Because you’re busy staying alert enough to guard both of you all damn night long and can’t relax for a moment.”
“You don’t trust me?” I asked Ranger.
“Babe. You sleep like the dead. You wouldn’t hear a threat approach. You’ve slept through nighttime visits before, people coming close enough to kill you. It’s adorable, that you’re so trusting and able to relax but I can’t.”
“He’s got to let himself sleep deeply sometime, Bombshell. It’s not personal. He trusts you. He just needs to make sure you’re safe and he can’t sleep here and do that so he doesn’t sleep well.”
“He sleeps,” I protested. “The third or fourth night he stayed here, I got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night and was crawling back into bed before he woke up.”
“And I bet he hasn’t had a solid night sleep since then. You’re putting him at risk. You’re putting me at risk.”
“You?”
“If he doesn’t sleep at night, his body will try to catch sleep at other times. His reflexes slow down. His thoughts can’t be as sharp. A body needs sleep. And we need to be at the top of our game or we get dead. I count on him to have my back. He can’t do that well when he’s napping.”
I looked up at Ranger’s face, hoping to see whether it was really that bad. Was I really putting people at risk by insisting we stay here? His eyes were closed, his breathing even. I turned back to the other man, raising both eyebrows, “So how is he sleeping now then.”
“I’m here and awake. It’s safe to sleep.”
“Are you going to stay then?” I asked him.
“Wherever, whenever, however you two need me. I’ll grab myself a bottle of water and we’ll watch your movie. You don’t look ready to sleep yet.”
"Ranger can sleep like that? My couch is pretty uncomfortable."
"Trust me, he's slept in worse places."
"There's advil in the bathroom medicine cabinet if you need some."
"I already took something. Just need to wait for it to work."
He cleared the remainder of dinner off of the coffee table and tossed a piece of something from Ranger's salad into Rex's cage. I could see from the couch that Rex was running full speed but couldn't hear even the faint quiet sounds the wheel used to make. I kinda missed the background noise when I was alone in my apartment but it was nice to be able to watch a movie without that as background sound.
When he finished up his cleaning, he helped himself to a caffeinated soda instead of bottled water. When he came into the living room, I couldn't figure out where he was going to sit. The couch was really the only easy place to see the TV from and we pretty much had it filled up. Ranger had his head on the couch arm, with his back propped at a reclining angle by pillows and his legs stretched out across the couch, nearly to the end. I was halfway on top of him with my side wedged between him and the couch back and one of my legs bent and laying across his thighs.
He came straight to the couch and lifted up our legs, sliding underneath them and letting them rest on his lap. Ranger grumbled slightly but didn't protest and seemed to fall right back into a deeper sleep with no trouble.
"Do you have sleep issues like this?" I asked. I realized as I said it that he probably wouldn't tell me. These guys valued their privacy. Even Ranger hadn't mentioned it as a problem until he couldn't function anymore.
"Most men who see active duty learn it to some extent. Waking up quickly and ready to fight can save your life in the field. In some cases it's safer to deal with the sleep deprivation than the dangers of sleeping. Sleeping is one of the most dangerous things you can do. When you come back, part of acclimatizing to civilian life is learning not to wake up ready to kill. Blunting your reflexes to some degree. The same things that save you in the field can be dangerous to your friends and family here. Most can go back. Some can't. Those of us who still might get sent out on an occasional mission though, we can't afford to even try to shift back to normal yet. We still need the skills. Me and the rest of the core team, pretty much everyone with an apartment in the building still go in the wind occasionally or has kept the edge for other reasons. That's why we all live in a fortress together. So we can sleep well."
That was more personal sharing and more talking in general than I had ever heard from one of the Merry Men. He reached out for the remote control and pressed the play button for the movie. Apparently he had used up all of his words. We watched the movie and he seemed to be paying attention to it but he ran his hands up Ranger's legs and my leg on top of his from foot to knee over and over, like petting a dog. He probably had no idea what those little touches were doing to me.
By the time the movie was over, it was nearly ten. He extracted himself from under our legs and helped me climb off of the couch over Ranger, holding me against him for a moment to steady me when I almost fell off of the couch. He smelled good. Not like Bulgari and Ranger but his own scent, and like cookies. I wondered what shower gel he used and if this was a Merry Man who maybe liked sweets as much as I did.
All of the movement must have woken Ranger. He was studying us. No groggy wake up time for him. "Bedtime?" he asked.
"Yeah," I agreed.
We took turns in the bathroom. Ranger put on a pair of boxers he had left here and I stripped off the lounge pants and slid under the covers with Ranger while his guard for the night used the bathroom. He came out and positioned the chair in the corner closer to the bed so he could prop his feet up on it.
"You're not going to sleep on the couch?" I asked.
"I'm not really going to catch much sleep at all. This will be fine."
The way I slept with Ranger, practically plastering myself to him, there was room for another person on the bed. A little flicker of a smile on his face made me suspect I had spoken that thought out loud.
He and Ranger locked eyes for a moment and Ranger gave a tiny nod and shifted so instead of the middle of the bed, we were more to one side. At my back, there was enough room for someone to lay down. He lay on top of the covers, his chest against my back and his arm thrown over me and Ranger, snuggled in except for his hips, which he kept well back from mine. It was strange to be between two men like that but it also felt really safe. I could feel him, still a tense and alert at my back as I drifted off to sleep.