In a heartbeat, the connection was made. All it took was a look, a momentary lapse, and I knew. I wasn't sure about him, but I knew down to the very depth of my being, I knew. It was wrong; it was forbidden. We were to be partners only in the business sense. We would work together, face death together, bleed, run, chase, defeat evil together, but not love. It was wrong, it was against the rules, both work and morality. Men don't love men.
See, though, that's the problem, men had always loved men or perhaps that should be humans have always loved humans. When you say it like that, it doesn't sound wrong. As a species, we are all about tactile responses, touching one another, be it in a spiritual or purely in a physical sense.
For a long time, I pondered my fate. I went with women; it was expected. We laughed, we had sex, we did what the world decreed was normal, and all the time, it stuck in my throat sideways. It choked the love out of me. It wasn't fair to thrust this perversion upon him; it was my problem, not his. So, I kept quiet.
I kept playing the games, at times more enthusiastically than at other times. I let him shine because it was all that I could give him. I stayed back, content with our friendship and the occasional feel of his hand on my shoulder or my arm, knowing I'd never feel his touch as anything but easy camaraderie. I lived for that smile and the quick, easy jokes of a few words that eluded others, but reduced us to tears: Poozy cat, blockhead, fiddlesticks… Nothingness to others, and hilarity to us.
I worried when he was in the field alone. I feared for him when the report of an agent down came in, knowing he was never any good at staying out of harm's ways without me around. I ignored the age difference, unwilling to wonder what it would be like to not have him at my side at the end of the day. Would we, as so many other partners had, lose contact as our worlds drifted further apart? I would go to bed and end up staring at the ceiling for hours, pondering these and other questions that nagged at me.
Slowly something shifted; I can't even say what it was or even when it happened. I noticed a change, the way his hand lingered just a second longer than it used to, the way his eyes would search my face, looking for something I didn't dare express verbally.
Then one night, he leaned forward to whisper something in my ear and at the last moment I turned my head and caught his lips. Tentatively at first, then deeper and more joyous as if a dam inside both of us suddenly burst. Our hands were suddenly all over each other, clutching, caressing, fondling. My dreams, my hopes, my love, they all came together in that moment, in that kiss.
He pulled away; his breath was soft on my cheek and I smiled into his eyes as he murmured just one word, my beginning, my end.
"Napoleon?"