Rated R for one bad word. Definitely not fluffy. For Nell.

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Sometimes she can’t help wondering what it would be like to have a normal life. After all, normality is hard to find in Section One. Domesticity, on the other hand, can be found in the most unlikely places.

She prefers her coffee black, her tea with one sugar and a Glock when they’re out in the field. He loves the beach, misses his son bitterly and is capable of killing a man with a simple flick of his wrist.

He leaves his sweaters on the chair in the corner of her bedroom. She wears them when she’s alone, even on those days when she’s angry at him for toeing the company line and angry at her own hypocrisy. Afterwards, she leaves damp towels draped over the back of his antique chair. He doesn’t give a damn about wet towels, but he knows she’s spoiling for a fight, looking for a distraction from the sour world in which they live. Most of the time, he’s happy to oblige.

There are many secrets they will never tell but just as many that they do. They sleep together whenever they can, desire bleaching away the shadows that stalk them both. Their hands and lips and skin and thoughts mesh in the darkness or the bright daylight, finding escape in pleasure, in the shared misstep of a frantic heartbeat.

The shadows soon return, of course - they always do. So they fight and they fuck and sometimes they let themselves pretend a happy ending is possible. It’s a life so far from perfect as to be dysfunctional but it’s hers and it’s his and - for the moment - it’s theirs. It’s all she has, and most of the time she knows it’s worth the risks they take.

Sometimes, though, she can’t help wondering.

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