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The knock came sometime around midnight.
Bex was still awake, of course.
She hadn’t even bothered making it to her bed, she knew that would be a fruitless endeavor after the day she had. So she was sitting on the couch in the dim lamplight, a blanket pulled loosely around her shoulders and a half-empty glass of water on the coffee table. The television was on but muted, flashing lights and colors across the wall that she hadn’t looked at in twenty minutes.
She knew who it was before she even got up. Four steady raps on the door.
“Why do you knock four times?”
“What?” he furrowed his brow, handing her a coffee as he walked inside her apartment one morning before work.
“On the door, I noticed you always knock on the door four times.”
“The things you pick up on-” he shook his head in amused disbelief.
“It just sounds wrong! No one knocks four times, everyone either does three or five knocks…or like twenty if they really need to get in-”
“What can I say?” he shrugged, plopping on the couch, “I’m original.”
“You’re weird.”
“Well, at least you’ll always know it’s me.”
Shane stood there, shoulders hunched slightly against the cold. He was softly panting, trying to warm himself up after what looked like a cold trek here, arms dug into the pockets of his sherpa-lined jean jacket.
His mouth parted when he saw her. Their eyes locked like they always did.
Shane looked down almost immediately and shook his head, as if he was realizing in real time that this was probably a bad idea,
“I’m sorry to wake you up, I know I shouldn’t be here.”
She frowned, challenging him to continue.
“Today was awful.” he looked back up at her, squinting as he chose his words, “And I couldn’t sleep, which you know is like, virtually impossible for me. And I know I should’ve called or just left you alone, I know I’m probably the last person you want to see right now but I was so restless I went for a walk and I just…found myself here.”
He wasn’t completely wrong. He should’ve called, and he probably should’ve left her alone after the day they had. A little space could do them good, they could talk again at work tomorrow, fed, showered and rested.
But him being the last person Bex wanted to see? Never.
She almost said that outloud, but she caught herself and saved the humiliation. There was a wall up now that hadn’t been there before and she had to resist the urge to take the easy way around, leaning on the affection and the attraction and the feelings that were so clearly buzzing around whenever they were within a mile of each other.
No, they had to go through to fix this. Talk, communicate, be honest. It was the only way.
So she stepped back, clearing the way to let him in, remaining wordless.
On the plane ride home, the trio - Bex, Shane, and Hassani - had agreed that everything was alright. Apologies were made and promises of a secretless path forward were toasted-to with a beer somewhere over Nebraska.
Even so, everything felt different now.
Trust was built with drops and lost with buckets, after all. At least, that’s what a psychologist said in one of the books Shane read in his spare time to impress Bex.
Shane wasn’t sure if their proverbial trust bucket had shattered, he honestly wasn’t sure where his uneasiness was coming from most - The shame in withholding the Dulles secret? The anger at them withholding the Lazarus secret? The shock at finding out his long-lost mother is Lazurus? Oh, there was also that minor trauma of being tazed, captured, and almost drilled to death in a fucked up science experiment that was twenty years in the making.
The Marine could handle a lot, but it was that combination that was proving unbearable to reconcile at the moment, and she was his first place of refuge. It was automatic, involuntary.
She was where he wanted to be, even now.
He wasn’t sure what he wanted from her tonight, which, to be fair, put them both at a disadvantage with whatever was going to happen next. Remorse, comfort, sympathy, forgiveness, understanding? Whatever it was, he just knew he couldn’t bear to leave things so weird between them.
Just looking at her made him feel better already, which was pathetic, but true. She was so beautiful it made his heart ache. Her hair was almost air dried from a shower, sweat pants rolled to rest at her hips, baggy hoodie dwarfing her frame.
Bex retreated to the kitchen, leaving Shane silently idling in the living room. She came back and handed him a beer, “You can sit down, you know.”
Twenty-four hours ago he would have done exactly that.
He would have walked straight in, collapsed onto the couch like he owned the place, and spent the entire night trying to make her laugh over takeout and some terrible true crime documentary they would mercilessly make fun of. Then, he would walk home and daydream about the next time they could do it all over again.
Now it felt like they were strangers.
Worse, actually. It felt like being strangers with the person you thought was your person.
“Right, sorry.” he said, sitting on one edge of the couch, her the other.
She studied him for a second. He looked restless. Exhausted, wired. His hair was still a little damp from the misty rain outside, dark curls clinging to his forehead. His cheeks were flushed a dull red, which at this point were probably less about the lingering effects of the weather and more about his nerves.
Shane always looked impossibly good to her, but especially now—there was something about the seriousness in his expression, the weight of everything he’d just been through, that only added to him. Like she was seeing new layers of him in real time, and somehow it made him even more magnetic.
She could have stared at him forever, which was a ridiculous thought—mortifying, even. And the second she caught herself wondering if his five o’clock shadow had gotten more pronounced in the three hours since she’d last seen him, she knew she needed to get a grip and finally just say something.
“You didn’t wake me up.” she admitted, softly, “I couldn’t sleep either.”
“Bad day, too?” he asked with a slight smile.
She didn’t find that funny. “You almost died. I almost had to watch you die. And it’s all my fault.”
Of course that’s where she started. Not the secrets, not the fight—him. Always him. That was the Bex he knew.
He shook his head, “It’s not your fault.”
“If I had just—” She cut herself off, shaking her head like she could physically stop the thought. “I just keep replaying it. Seeing you in that chair and I—”
Her voice faltered.
“I’m just really glad you’re okay.”
“Really? You seemed pretty mad when you untied me.” he made another attempt at a light joke.
Too soon again, perhaps, but it was worth a shot.
She tilted her head, finally a small crack of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. She scoffed out an explanation, “I was mad. At you, at myself, at the situation. But mostly I was terrified. I don’t know what I would’ve done if something happened to you.”
“I’m alright,” he said, truthfully—at least in the physical sense. “I knew you guys would find me.”
“We couldn’t,” Bex admitted.
He frowned.
“We searched the entire house. Every room, every wall. We ran out of places to look.” She swallowed. “And I got so desperate I ended up… calling your mother.”
Shane’s eyes widened.
“What?”
“Lazarus knew about the hidden basement behind the bookshelf. That’s how we got down there.”
“How did you get that out of her?”
“I lied.”
His brow furrowed, confusion flashing across his face, so she clarified,
“I told her I knew she cared about you as much as I did.”
Bex tapped her fingers absently against the glass bottle. The liquid courage of its contents hadn’t quite kicked in after a few sips, but the object itself was proving helpful to ground herself.
“I know ‘a mother’s love’ and all that,” she said quietly. “However much someone like her is even capable of love.”
Then she looked up at him. Her eyes were tired, glassy, but steady.
“But I also know it’s impossible for anyone to care about you more than I do.”
Everything in him stilled. The room, the noise, the weight of the day, it all seemed to drop out from under him in an instant.
It was, without question, the most beautiful thing anyone had ever said to him.
For a second, he just looked at her.
Under the spell of loving her, he saw it all: the way her voice had softened, the way her guard had slipped just enough to let that truth through. The way she didn’t take it back, didn’t qualify it, didn’t try to hide from it.
She meant it. He knew she did.
He might not have the most experience at this kind of thing but he saw the way she looked at him. The intensity, the care, it was helplessly written all over her face, all the time.
It should have been simple. It should’ve been enough, after all this was everything he had wanted to hear from her. But the hurt was still there, sitting stubborn and sharp beneath it all, built up from thirty years of having no one to trust.
Because if she felt that way, if she really felt that way…
His jaw tightened slightly, the conflict flickering across his face.
“Then how could you not tell me?” he asked, finally getting to the root of it.
His voice dropped, quieter now—but fraying at the edges, almost pleading.
“When you knew…” He swallowed. “How could you not tell me?”
“I wanted to tell you, even though Hassani thought-”
“I’m not talking about Hassani, or Morales, or the mission or even freaking national security, Bex.” he interrupted her, “I’m talking about you and me. I thought we were different. I thought we had something different where you would tell me something like that, no matter what….”
He could feel it sitting right there, the truth of what she was to him, how much deeper this went, but saying it out loud felt like opening himself up to another disaster in a day full of them, so he just let it linger away.
“We do, we are.” she assured him, almost desperate, and he wanted to believe her so much it hurt.
“I mean, do you know how humiliating it is?” he went on, quieter now. “To have everyone in on something that’s about your life… except you?”
He shook his head, already pushing through it.
“And I know I don’t really have a leg to stand on, keeping the Dulles stuff from you guys. I know that. You have every right to be pissed about that. But at least that was just me, and I told you about the audio file and that I was looking for my birth mother.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, dragging his hands over his face like he could wipe the feeling away.
When he looked back up, after a semi-therapeutic groan, something had shifted.
“I think it’s less about the secret,” he said slowly, each word weighted, “And more about… being left out. Feeling like I’m all alone, like there’s no one in my corner—like I’ve been my whole damn life.”
Bex’s expression cracked.
“I guess I thought…” he continued, softer now, almost embarrassed to admit this, “With you I’d finally let someone in enough where I’d never be left out again.”
“God, Shane…” she exhaled, barely more than a breath, her heart in pieces right in front of him.
She didn’t have an excuse, but she had an explanation,
“The night we got Cyrus, it was just you and me at the bar, do you remember that? I was going to tell you that night, I swear. But then you started talking about how you were done with trying to find your mother, you were proud of the life you made, the people you’d surrounded yourself with-”
She paused, “The way you saw the world, even after everything, the way you still found something good in it—it blew me away. It even made your dumb ‘just turn the light on’ analogy make sense, and I looked at you, and you were so alive, so unburdened, so… happy. And I just… I couldn’t be the one to make that come crashing down. You’re too special.”
He remembered that night. Mostly because of their flirting over his youthful glow, but still, he did remember it.
“I meant all that.” he stated, tone softened, “But I still deserved to know. You can’t protect me from everything, Bex.”
“I know,” she whispered, letting her gaze fall. Her shoulders slumped, the weight of it all on her. “And I’m so, so sorry, Shane.”
“I’ve overcome a lot, and I’ll overcome this, too…once I wrap my mind around it all, ‘cause it is fucking crazy.” he assured her with a smile. He noticed her face, swollen with tears and he reached over, delicately tilting up her chin so she had no choice but to look at him,
“And I’ll still be the same Shane. I’ve still got plenty of dumb analogies in me, don’t worry.”
She let out a shaky laugh, tears spilling down her cheeks. She swatted his hand away playfully, but the warmth in her eyes gave her away. “You better,” she said.
And just like that the wall came crumbling down. It didn’t stand a chance with them.
She reached over to hug him.
It was instinct more than anything else, an unthinking movement, like how she’d grab his arm during turbulence on the plane or shove his shoulder when he said something stupid during a briefing. But the second her arms wrapped around him, the moment stretched into something heavier than habit.
Shane froze for half a heartbeat before returning it.
He pulled her in tight. His chin rested lightly against the top of her head, his hand spread across the back of her shoulder like he was steadying himself. The irony was not lost on him that the last time they were this close, he had given her the very jacket he had on.
He made a mental note to wear this jacket every day from now on.
They muffled quiet, hapless ‘I’m so sorrys’ into each other's shoulders. Bex could feel his breathing finally slowing and she closed her eyes. She memorized his heartbeat, never taking that beautiful sound for granted again.
The rain tapped quietly against the windows, the muted television still flickering shadows across the room, and here they were, locked in this moment. It felt strange and intimate all at once.
Eventually Shane pulled back just enough to look at her. He reached to move a stray curl out of her eyes, mouth parted slightly, as if he wanted to say something. Nothing seemed profound enough for this moment, though, if that made sense. But he had to try.
“You know, when I was down there… I wasn’t thinking about Lazarus or the case or any of that.”
Her expression shifted. Their faces, still inches away from each other.
He looked down and then back up at her so intensely it scared both of them.
Her breath caught slightly.
Some lines between them had already been crossed tonight—truth for truth, apology for apology. But this felt like a different kind of step.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
His face was so close to hers she could feel it, the heat from his skin pressing like confirmation against her own.
“I kept thinking about the fact that the last conversation we had… it was awful,” he said, voice low, rough around the edges. “And that if something actually happened to me, that’s how it would’ve ended.”
She swallowed, the words hitting her harder than she expected. “I was thinking the same thing,” she admitted. “That’s… that’s where my little speech to Dr. Fairfax came from.”
A faint smirk tugged at the corner of his lips and he turned his head curiously, “I thought you were buying me time to break out?”
“Oh, I was,” she said, trying to laugh, but it came out breathless. They were always in-sync in the field, it was one of the first things that endeared him to her.
“But I could’ve been saying anything. I could’ve recited the Pledge of Allegiance just to confuse him. But if our plan didn’t work…” Her voice trailed off, growing serious, her eyes locking on his.
“I wanted my last words to you to be something I really meant…”
Kind, generous, humble, caring.
He was, and so much more. She wanted to tell him everything else she felt about him, but maybe later, because right now her mind had one track - and it went from his eyes to his lips and back again, heart hammering so hard it was almost painful.
There were other ways to communicate, after all.
“...but I left out some things.”
“Yeah?” Shane asked, voice stifled with the thick tension that was seemingly contagious, “Like what?”
Bex leaned in slowly, giving him the chance to pull back in case today had messed with her head so severely that she had completely misread everything.
He didn't.
He brushed his lips against hers, tentative as he made his move, then deeper as she melted into him. The kiss was soft, full of relief and longing and all the things they had kept unspoken for too long.
Simply put, it was magic.
When they finally broke apart, foreheads resting together, they breathlessly stared at each other for a second, both wearing the same look -mischievous, relieved, a little stunned- that said Holllllly shit.
There would be time to figure out what came next—the professional lines they’d just crossed, the personal ones they’d been circling for months, there had to be.
But right now, neither of them seemed all that concerned.
Right now, that kiss said it all.
“Maybe today wasn’t so bad after all.” He smiled, tired but full of warmth, like a kid drowsily content amongst all his toys as Christmas came to a close.
Bex laughed, biting her lip in agreement, combing her hand through his curly hair. It was something she had fantasized about basically since she met him, and now that the door was open she wasn’t sure if she’d ever stop.
“You think you’ll be able to sleep now?” She teased him.
He frowned, considering the question, “I don’t know, let’s find out.”
Shane’s arm curled around her shoulder, pulling them back to rest against the couch quickly. Bex giggled in surprise, blissfully under his spell, “Shane!”
She rested her head against his chest once they settled into the cushions and each other, listening to the steady rhythm of him, letting herself finally exhale.
“Yeah, you know, I think this’ll do,” he murmured, nuzzling closer.
“Goodnight, SleepMan,” she said, voice soft and content, wrapping her arm over his chest, tucking her hand in the cavity of his shirt and jacket to feel the warmth of the Sherpa-lining.
“SleepMan.” He playfully mocked her newest nickname for him under his breath. His low tone was just laced with a yawn which made her heart swell in affection for the man, her man, who could fall asleep anywhere.
Her eyelids grew heavy, the warmth of his body lulling her toward sleep as well. He kissed the top of her head once, softly, sealing the moment, and she felt the last edges of tension from the day ease away, disarmed and safe in his aura.
Shane’s arm tightened slightly around her one last time, as if testing the legitimacy of this reality, and she squeezed back, a subconscious kind of code, signaling affirmations of a future where he was never left out again.
I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I’m with you.
He let himself drift, calm and dreamless. He was holding his dream, after all. It would be the best sleep of his life.