Chapter Text
“Be ready,” Twilight commanded.
Bond crouched, prepared to jump —
With detached curiosity, Twilight observed Franky’s brow breaking into a cold sweat. They’d done enough of these by now that Franky ought to be unaffected. That he wasn’t indicated Twilight should probably change tactics.
“Why are we even doing these anymore?” Franky began to whine. “Bond gets it right every ti—“
“Now!”
Bond leapt, teeth closing around Franky’s protected arm. And stayed that way. Until Twilight said, “Release.”
He extended a hand to help Franky back to his feet. The man had the disposition of a damp newspaper in the face of repeat stressors. Twilight had realised it two sessions ago (two days ago) and had decided Franky needed some training of his own. Reaching into his pocket, Twilight produced Bond’s favourite ball. When Bond consented by way of a frisky tail wag, Twilight threw the ball as far as possible within the admittedly limited confines of the dog park. Just because Bond saw fetch as play didn’t mean Twilight couldn’t incorporate some discreet stamina training. It also meant he could say certain things without hurting Bond’s feelings — a consideration he’d never imagined necessary but here he was.
Finally turning back to Franky, Twilight said, “Bond’s training requires upkeep,” lie , “He’s prone to losing his skills if he isn’t regularly drilled,” another lie, sorry Bond, “And last time Bond went for the assailant’s foot. An unacceptable target,” lie lie lie.
Still, Franky seemed to begrudgingly accept this. Twilight was grateful Bond was still out of earshot; he actually took very well to his training. And now Twilight knew about his abilities, discrepancies in his behaviour tended to make sense with a little investigation. Or careful questioning of Anya.
Not always though; the dog was particularly intelligent, and — this detail was what Twilight actually struggled to accept — Bond had an imagination. Not as complex as a human’s of course, but an imagination nonetheless. And one overly informed by Anya, Twilight thought ruefully. He was trying to counterbalance that influence, at least somewhat.
“Well, whatever,” Franky finally grumbled. “Just next time use someone else. Like Yor. Didn’t you say she lifted the entire sofa off the floor with one arm to vacuum under it? While Anya was napping on it?! She wouldn’t even notice Bond hanging off of her arm!”
Franky was probably right. There was just one problem. The real reason Twilight was in the park drilling Bond unnecessarily and covertly training Franky very necessarily, was that Twilight was enacting what he’d called The Avoidance Protocol. And was consequently avoiding his wife.
Events leading to the formulation and deployment of The Avoidance Protocol also occurred two days previous, approximately three-and-a-half hours before Twilight cajoled Franky into training with Bond.
Loid and Yor were walking Bond — unusual though not unheard of. Most often it was one or the other of them, frequently with Anya, sometimes all three together, rarely just them two. Anya was working on a project at Becky’s, and Yor had offered to join Loid when he said he’d walk Bond.
Twilight’s first mistake: agreeing.
He should have instead asked Yor if she wouldn’t mind walking Bond herself. He had other demands on his attention, including a pressing side mission.
He hadn’t done that though. He’d found himself smiling, nodding, helping her into her coat.
Then they’d walked side by side. His second mistake.
To casual observers, there would be nothing untoward about a husband strolling beside his wife as they took their dog for a walk. To casual observers, that their hands would brush, brush again, and again, would seem utterly ordinary.
To trained and informed observers, such as himself, he’d have kept front-of-mind that Yor was not, in actuality, his wife. That though they may have more alignment of goals and needs and practices than he’d originally realised or could possibly have conceived of, they were still together under mutual convenience. (And a care of Anya which ought not be separate from their respective missions but Twilight had come to terms with the fact that it was.) He’d also have reminded himself of a growing… Tension… Between him and his wife as of late. (Were he reading such as a report, he’d reprimand the author for obfuscating the truth of the situation and endangering the mission: the truth was the tension had been there since very near the start.) Said tension took the form of, for instance, a deliberate brushing of hands. Other indicators would confirm an analysis naming it “adolescent”: blushing. An inordinate amount of blushing. Tongue-tied conversations. Each catching the other observing them. Noting the way her hair fell, or her eyes shone, or her smile brightened, or her laughter was a little too quick or too long or too bright, or the way her voice warmed in a slightly breathless sort of way when she spoke to him. Further noting what elicited those responses and trying to do so more often. Admiring her patience. Her determination. Her multifold strengths. The sweet and measured way she spoke with Anya; the considered and earnest way she spoke with him. The way she thought about things, so dramatically different to his own framing even when they arrived at the same conclusion. How she articulated those thoughts. Even when, sometimes, she missed connections, or when, sometimes, he was left tilting his head in confusion. Her near constant smile and the shape of her sense of humour. Enjoying, simply, her company, in whatsoever form it took. Somehow he felt more settled when she was near, as if Yor were surrounded by an ease which she happily shared with him. Barring when she was in the kitchen. Although even then… even then, he dreaded her cooking less, even when it left him cooped up in the bathroom for over an hour. That final being the most damning and compelling piece of evidence leading to —
Mistake the third: not noticing (read: denying to himself) an inconvenient and obstructive reality. He had a crush on his wife.
The fourth and fatal mistake: missing (read: ignoring) the clear signs that his wife had a crush on him back.
Two days ago, they walked Bond. It was idle, nice. There was conversation and there was companionable silence and then there was standing under the shade cover of the trees as Bond gambolled with two other dogs he’d made friends with.
It was a warm late spring day, though the occasional gust of wind was brisk. Yor had shivered. Loid had offered her his jacket — after all, that’s what a good, normal husband would do. Yor accepted, turning to him, her usual smile inviting in her eyes meeting his. Her fingers brushed his as he passed the jacket to her. Their hands lingered. The wind changed. Yor’s breath grew shallow, her lips parted, her expression shifted. Something in Loid’s chest shifted in response, he swallowed, licked his lips.
In the last forty-eight hours, Loid had thought of the next moment more often than Twilight appreciated, as neither of them knew exactly what happened or exactly who moved first. It was perturbing. The only immutable reality was that, all of a sudden, Twilight was kissing Yor.
It was tentative.
It was sweet.
It was lingering.
It was not mission critical.
Twilight had lost track of time —
In those seconds? Minutes? There was nothing but Yor’s soft lips and her hand clutched increasingly tightly around his. The way she gasped a little for breath, and the way he’d instinctively moved closer to her when she did. The way the constant stream of calculations and analysis quieted to be replaced with replete details of Yor and kissing Yor and what kissing Yor was like and how Yor made him fe— the way her free hand slipped into his hair, and her hip filled his free palm, and when he ran his tongue along the seam of her lips in quiet question, she welcomed him in (she tasted of coffee and a little sugar from the morning omlet they had shared in Anya’s absence) and he let her lick into his mouth, her soft moan pulling one from his throat and igniting a foreign spark in his abdomen, a flare of heat, kindling, unfamiliar in so many ways what ought to be well known to him through countless honeytrap missions and yet, and yet his heart stuttered, and Yor pressed full against him, his hand sliding from her hip to circle her waist, her breasts cradling their hands still trapped between them, firm stomach and thighs his fingers itched to discover, with the deepening of the kiss with the rising heat —
Then the tut-tutting of the neighbourhood dog park prudish gossip. As effective as sudden light into the dark of an infiltration mission, he and Yor sprang apart. That he’d been caught off-guard by anyone and in public was unacceptable, but to add insult to injury, it was the less adroit neighbourhood gossip who had interrupted them. The one who Twilight ensured he avoided entirely or drew from only the most indifferent of attentions, whilst still cataloguing everything he said out of a weather eye for intel — though most of it was, unsurprisingly and necessarily, trite. Everyone knew Miss Schneider down the lane had cheated in the cookery contest — her entrant recipe had been featured in the Spring issue of Bertha D Seption Living two years ago; none were surprised when Mr Sandleton left his wife for the gentleman baker across the square and departed for Frons. Only the pettiest mind took avid interest in such things.
Such things like the pleasant, benign, handsome doctor and his unfailingly polite, kind, beautiful public servant wife kissing like teenagers in the first bloom of — no, don’t go there, Twilight. Kissing in the neighbourhood dog park like a pair of teenagers.
Even as he managed to charm from the gossip a grudging understanding… Even as he thought he may even have managed to render the whole thing so quotidian as to become banal… Even as Yor was the reddest he’d ever seen her, stuttering unintelligibly beside him (he’d been passingly grateful she hadn’t kicked, slapped or punched him across the park; that would have been significantly harder to charm away…) Even as he accomplished that, he was recalibrating, adjusting, making plans to ameliorate what had just happened for the sake of the mission.
And if avoiding his wife seemed an asinine and juvenile outcome of said planning
…
Mm.
Well.
…
It was.
It… It simply was. Reflecting on matters later with his aching hand resting in a bowl of ice water, he couldn’t even excuse himself for it. He had tried for some sort of justification fitting within mission parameters but each argument somehow turned into Handler scoffing at him in his mind’s eye: a humiliation he was unwilling to undergo unless absolutely unavoidable.
The only thing which thus far rendered The Avoidance Protocol a workable stopgap was that Twilight was fairly certain his wife was avoiding him, too.