Enemy of My Enemy (Executive Office #2)

by Tal Bauer

And this was what he loved about Jack. Strength wrapped in an effusive optimism, a soul that promised the world would be a better place if you only just held on and never let go. A solid core of unflappability, the center of him rooted in gentle happiness. Jack radiated joy to Ethan’s soul, and he basked in Jack’s grins, his playful personality, like a tree turning its leaves to the sun. His whole life was reoriented toward Jack. Who would have thought his world would be remade by this man with a goofy smile and stunning blue eyes?

“I’m scared to ask.” “We always gotta match the first letter of the code names for the first family. The president is ‘Vigilant.’ So we had to pick a V name for you.” Daniels winked. Ethan glared at Scott. “Victory, Valiant, Venture, hell, even Vegetable.” “Ohh, Vegetable, I like that. But your code name has already been chosen. It’s deployed in the system.” “Goddamn it.” “First gentleman of the United States, code name…Vigor.” “Vigor? Jesus Christ!” “It’s accurate.” Scott shrugged and downed another drag of beer. “Daniels here,” Daniels pretended to speak into his cuff, pantomiming a scene from the detail. “I’ve got BOTUS Vigor inbound for Vigilant. Make sure Vigilant is armed and ready.” Ethan’s cheeks blazed, heat coursing through him from head to toe. “Jesus…”

Faisal stroked his arm. “Habibi—” “We can’t.” Adam intercepted Faisal’s hand and plucked it from his skin. He forced himself not to thread their fingers together. “You know we can’t.” Faisal closed his eyes. “I thought, after Ethiopia—” “Ethiopia didn’t change anything.” Looking down, Adam gripped the balcony railing hard enough to turn his knuckles white. “It was a mistake. What happened then—it was a mistake.” Silence. The taste of peaches lingered on the air, and he remembered kissing Faisal, tasting peach nectar, and hearing his warm voice whisper Arabic against his shoulder. “Loving you will never be a mistake to me,” Faisal finally said. “If you believe our love is a mistake, then that is your burden to bear.” His voice, as always, was soft and gently accented thanks to his private English tutors in Riyadh and his Oxford education. It tore at Adam’s heart, always. The tenderness containing a core of ferocity, a hidden fire that rivaled the sun.

“I want,” he began, clearing his throat when he croaked. “To show the world how much I love you. I don’t want to hide. I don’t want to let other people define this—define us—anymore. I want everyone to see that I am proud to be with you. Proud of who I am. That I’m not ashamed. Not hiding.”

“Did you get my text while you were in Paris?” Adam nodded. He’d saved it on their sat phone, even though that was so many different kinds of dangerous. Too many to count, in fact. But, he reread it six times a day, until his heart bled. ‘As always, I will endlessly pray until I hear your voice again and I know you are safe. May Allah watch over you, azizy.’ Azizy. My darling. He’d rubbed his thumb over the sat phone screen, as if the word weren’t really there, as if he was just making it up in his desperate mind. Faisal’s gaze seared his soul. “Samaya…” Naked yearning poured from him. His lips trembled, seeming to beg for a kiss. Adam shuddered. He couldn’t take this, couldn’t take Faisal’s endearments. Couldn’t take being called Faisal’s bright sky, or his darling. He closed his eyes. He was fighting against himself, wanting to reach out, wanting to pull Faisal close, and struggling not to.

Shaking fingers turned the phone on. Dialed Adam’s number. “Hello?” Half a world away, Adam’s voice crackled through the line, hard and cold, like the strongest steel. Still, Faisal smiled. His head fell back, hitting the wall. “Adam,” he breathed. Coughing stole his voice. “What’s wrong?” The steel in Adam’s voice wavered. “Fuck! Faisal, what’s wrong? What’s happening?” Fire licked over his ceiling, curling through the panels over his head. He watched the flames spread. “I love you, Adam,” he said. “I never stopped loving you. Ever.” “No!” Adam shouted. “No! Not you too!” Panic had replaced Adam’s normal steadiness, and his breaths came harsh and frantic over the line. “Hold on, Faisal! Hold the fuck on!” “Want to hear your voice,” he whispered. “Please. Please, say something to me.” “Fuck!” Adam shouted across the satellite line, his voice falling apart as he gasped. “Faisal,” he moaned. “Faisal, Goddamn it. I love you too. I do. I love you so Goddamn much. I’m such an idiot. Such a fucking idiot—” “Adam,” he breathed. “Adam—”

“It is forbidden!” Prince Abdul, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, heir apparent to the kingdom and next in line for the throne, hissed at Adam. “Faisal told me it was finished! That you had left him!” Adam cringed. “It was. It is,” he said quickly. “But he’s hurt—” “And you think you have some kind of right to see my nephew?” Prince Abdul’s dark eyes blazed. “After what you did! Wallah! You will stay away from him!” “I love him,” Adam breathed, the tough exterior he was trying to cling to shattering. His face twisted, and he gasped again. A year’s worth of anguish, of burying his feelings, of bullying his own heart into cold dejection, exploded and a sob strangled his voice. “I love him!”

“I am dreaming,” Faisal repeated. “The one I love wouldn’t be here. He wouldn’t come to me. He’s too afraid of our love.” Damn it all. Four steps took him to the side of Faisal’s bed. Faisal’s bleary eyes tracked him and went wide when Adam dropped to his knees at Faisal’s bedside and took his hand in both of his own. “I’m here. I’m here, Faisal. This isn’t a dream.” His breath trembled as he whispered, “When God designed your features and joined your brows/Paved my way, then trapped me with your gestures & bows/United the knots of my doing and of my budding heart/Fate convinced me to be enslaved to thee.”

“I, uhh—” Jack swallowed, and he edged around his desk, not looking at Ethan. “I need to be with my wife.” He swallowed a tiny whimper. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “But I need to help her. She’s my wife. And I abandoned her once already. I can’t—” A weight pressed against Ethan’s thigh, hanging in his pocket. A small box, and within it, a fragile hope. He’d dreamed that one day Jack would call him his, that he would be Jack’s “my husband.” The glaciers moving over his soul slipped into his heart, covering all the spaces where Jack had lived, where he’d breathed life and love and bright laughter into Ethan. His heart closed, a block of solid ice clenched tight in his chest. It felt worse than death. Like dying would be an improvement. “I understand. I won’t interfere,” he whispered. “I won’t cause any problems.”

Scott was in front of him, suddenly, his face haggard and wan. Crow’s feet lined with dried mud and hair that stuck up every which way. “Ethan?” He shook his head, slow jerks back and forth that built until his body was shaking, and he couldn’t hold Scott’s gaze any longer. “It’s over,” he grunted, staring down at Scott’s ruined dress shoes and his mud-splattered suit pants. “We’re over.”

And then it all came out, Ethan’s legs buckling like he didn’t have bones, and he crashed to the deck on his knees. His hands rose, covering his face as he pitched forward, a soundless scream caught in the hollows of his chest. Scott went to the deck with him and pulled Ethan against his filthy shirt. His arms wrapped around Ethan’s shoulders, holding him tight as Ethan screamed into Scott’s chest, wailed into his friend’s body. A nuke had gone off in his chest, in the center of his heart, and he was dying. He knew he was dying.

“The White House doesn’t comment on the personal lives—” “No, no, no!” Gus interrupted Jack. “We don’t do that shit anymore, remember? We changed our tone and we can’t go back now.” “What do you want me to say? What the hell do you want me to say about this, when I don’t even know what the fuck is going on?” “You want my advice?” Gus’s voice rose with Jack’s until they were both shouting. “Dump Reichenbach for good! Stick with your wife! Play up the rescuer angle and how devoted you are to her. The public loves hero stories, and you’ll poll a hell of a lot better with your hero wife back from being held captive, and probably tortured for years, on your arm instead of her being tossed aside for a piece of dick.”

A sob choked his throat, and his mouth gaped wide as he tried to breathe. Instead he screamed, a raw, guttural bellow, and slid down the door, collapsing to his ass, boneless and breathless. Pitching forward, Jack let loose the sobs that wracked his body and soul. His bones were made of shame, his veins filled with sorrows and regret. His heart had turned to a void, an empty ache, a sucking black hole of misery and anguish. What kind of a person, what kind of a man, was he? Everything he’d done in his whole life had come undone. His peace with Russia, destroyed, and his friend Sergey gone. His presidency in tatters amid a country ripping apart. A madman loose in the world, toppling governments. His dead wife, alive. The man he loved to the depths of his soul, gone.

Panting, Doc glared over Noah’s body at Adam. He gestured to the mess, to their failed mission. “So, he recites poetry to you by candlelight and you fuck up his jet and bring him dead bodies?” Adam laid back, exhausted, on the jet’s ruined carpet as the plane took off, the weight of the lift pushing him against the deck.

A loud, metallic plink sounded, something heavy hitting the surface. When Ethan pulled back, Adam’s eyes went wide. He hadn’t seen the chain around Ethan’s neck, or the two rings nestled against his chest. Dark, with tiny diamonds glittering around both rings. The shine had dulled, but they were unmistakable. “Holy shit. You—” He swallowed. He didn’t know what to say. Ethan reached up, rubbing the rings between his fingers. “Funny how fast things change, huh? Never even got a chance to ask.”

“If you love Faisal. Really love him. Don’t let anything stop you two. Don’t let anything get in the way. You never know how much time you have together.”

“Why are you wearing his sweatshirt?” “Because it’s the closest I can get to him right now. I’m falling apart, and I need him―” “You can’t just use him like that, call him whenever you feel like you need him—” “Damn it, Scott!” Jack shouted, his hands fisted in his hair. He spun, gasping, and glared. “Damn it, I’m not trying to use him! I’m trying to bring him home! I just told Leslie that I couldn’t be with her because I’m in love with Ethan! And, because he’s it! He’s the one for me! I want to grow old with him. Spend forever with him. I want everything with Ethan!”

Turning away, Scott cursed and kicked the hospital room’s garbage can. Black plastic flew, smashing into the wall, and paper towels fluttered to the linoleum. “You’re not fucking going alone,” he snapped. “If you are actually going through with this batshit insane idea, then you’re not going alone. Ethan would fucking kill me.” He scowled at Elizabeth. “Madam President. Permission to accompany this Goddamn idiot?” “Absolutely. And.” A tiny smile curled the corner of her lip. “I can make this whole thing a secret National Security Presidential Directive. Which means you have a new assignment, Agent Collard. Starting immediately.”

Slowly, Jack settled down on the concrete beside Ethan’s cot. Ethan had always seemed larger than life, a fierce fighter, sleek and powerful on the outside and hiding quiet depths and a sun-bright core within. Now, lying on the cot, he seemed small, almost boyish, and his battered face made Jack’s stomach curl. He reached for Ethan, cupping his cheek. “I love you,” he breathed. “Know that. No matter what. I love you. And I’ll do anything for this love, Ethan. Anything.”

“I don’t want to admit it, but… Jack is right. This is the one thing Madigan won’t ever see coming. We have to think more like him. Act more like him. And this is the first step.” Fury still crackled in Ethan’s veins. It was too dangerous, far too dangerous, and no matter how much he wanted Jack by his side again, this was not the way he’d imagined it. “He held his own in Sochi and he did good getting over here.” Scott was trying to placate him. “You did good with him at Rowley. He’s a good shot.” Ethan scowled. “Kept a cool head, too. Let me tell you about the human smugglers who duct-taped him and shoved him in a box.”

“Flying and talking?” Sergey arched an eyebrow. “This sounds terrible. Sounds even worse than driving and talking!” “For reporting back what I find.” Sergey fingered the plastic casing. “You will be blown out of the sky as soon as you take off. Moroshkin will track your plane. You will be dead in minutes.”

“You changed the world, Jack! You changed the whole world, and my world, and now—” He stopped talking, abruptly swallowing his words. Shuddering, he tried again. “Sasha—” Jack’s eyes found Ethan’s. So he finally knew. “He loves you.” Sergey shuddered again, curling in on himself and then flying apart, his hands raking through his thin blond hair. “Why?” he hissed. “I’ve never been with a man! Only women!” His gaze narrowed, and he turned on Jack. “Do you remember women, Jack? Big, beautiful breasts bouncing in your face? Soft curves? Their heat, God, swallowing you?” “That’s enough.” Scott shouldered Sergey, bumping him off his laser-focused course toward Jack. Ethan hovered at Jack’s shoulder. “Yes, I do remember. But I’m not in love with a woman, Sergey. I’m in love with Ethan. And it’s his body that I desire. His shoulders. His legs. I can’t get enough of his thighs. His rock solid chest. And yes, his chest hair. And his big, fat cock,” Jack finished, staring Sergey down. “He’s the one I love, and he’s who I want.” Sergey’s face twisted, and for a moment, Jack was certain he was going to puke. “Why did he not say anything? He said nothing! This whole time!” Silence.