The radio clicked on the moment the digital numbers on Piers' alarm clock radio rolled over to the hour. A country and western song was fiddling softly behind the crooner's southern twang. The sun had broken just a moment before Piers opened his eyes. He was in perfect sync with the sunrise even when he wasn't under obligation to be up so early. He came alive with a yawn and a jutting stretch that imposed his dozing partner's sleep space. She shuffled, trying to pretend she wanted the sleep that was no more in her than it was in him.

"Get up," He commanded softly, flopping onto his back and closing his eyes. When she didn't respond, he rolled toward her, smoothing a caressing hand over the landscape of her body. It was familiar terrain: every curve and bend, every dip and dimple absorbed into his passing fingertips until it settled to cup the shoulder that was nearest to him. He leaned into it and blessed it with a warming kiss.

A smile eased across her face.

"Get up," he grumbled into her ear, taking her lobe in between his teeth. There had been an earring in it last night. She didn't respond.

He pinched the thin sheet covering her form and slithered it down to her waist. When it dared to dive past her hips her hand shot out and stopped it, driving it back up over her shoulder.

"Come on," he coaxed. "I want you to see it."

"Oh, God, Piers," came the muffled reply. "I've seen it all before."

He gave her a playful shove. "Not like this." He threw off the sheet and boldly strode across his bedroom to draw back the curtains in a grand unveiling. Sharp orange sunlight rocketed into the room, forcing him to shield his eyes. Immediately warmed with heat his partner got up on her elbows and squinted over at his silhouetted form against the intruding sun.

"You've really got to consider repositioning your bed."

"Yeah, maybe." He came back over to her and sat down on the bed, bunching the sheet between his legs as he clasped his watch. "So, what did you think?"

He watched her arms encircle him around the waist and lock her fingers in his lap. He felt her kiss in the small of his back. It ticked up his spine and raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

"About what? The sunrise?" She poked her head out from behind him to see his face. "No offense, but I've seen better back in Africa."

Piers shook his head and bent down between his feet to pick up his cargo pants. He found her black boy shorts and offered them to her. When she reached for them he crumpled them up and threw them across the room playfully. It dropped before the menagerie of her things sloping out of boxes throughout his bedroom. He hated to be unkempt. It didn't seem to bother Sheva that she hadn't made the slightest effort toward settling in.

He got a disciplinary smack on the back for that.

"That's for putting down my sunrise." He popped up off the bed just enough to slip his pants up to fasten it.

Sheva rolled up onto her knees, pulling away the remaining sheets tangling her in the bed. He was hand brushing his hair when she appeared next to him, sinuously rolling her leg across his lap to straddle his hips. She pressed her bare chest up against his, enticed by his accelerating heartbeat rippling across her body. She smiled against his lips, crossing her hands behind his head and melting into the arms that fastened her to him.

"Three months. Eight days. Thank you." She cooed.

From their first kiss to present, they had always kissed like lovers. Sheva kissed him every time like she would never see him again. She had drawn him out of a military stoicism with her alluring smile and telling eyes. She had intoxicated him, bared her insecurity without a hitch and lured him into a sense of comfort he had scarcely known before. She made him audacious. She made him possessive and somehow made him feel needed, though she bore a sense of inner strength that he suspected she could remain standing in his absence. Why did she want him?

He cupped her face in his hands and wove his fingers into the hair at the base of her skull. Although he was the sniper he felt locked in the crosshairs of her hazel eyes, alight with anticipation of his intentions. His hands wandered south to settle at her hips. She knew he was getting deployed. He never spoke about his targets or bragged about the successes of his missions. Reading his case files was usually enough to get her distraught even after he had come back. So they never talked about them. She would lay awake most nights staring at the far wall where his uniform was neatly pressed and folded over the walnut valet in the corner. She had been spurning it with scornful looks on her way to the bathroom all week. His preparatory custom only sent slithers of anguish up her spine when she saw it. He would never have to know what she went through anymore.

When the BSAA hailed for her, she honored the privilege. After Kijuju, her emotional trauma had brutalized her tenacity as a field agent. She had been contented to work behind the scenes, mobile within a small radius, a requested last resort. Then Piers Nivans entered her life, brawny, eager, dedicated to a fault perhaps, with his engaging green eyes and stylized brown coiffure: she had seen it for what it was—a deliberate personalization in a world of military issued crew cuts. The hair cuttery, an analogous "fuck you" to conformity seemed so unlike the usually quiet Nivans, who only boasted through his ability. It was enough to peak her interest, she was enough to keep his and before long her nights were plagued with sleeplessness whenever the BSAA heralded him.

Now she was thanking him. He wanted to say something to her too but it wasn't thank you.

"Shev," he sighed, pressing his head against her, his voice lost against her chest.

"Hmm?"

He mumbled something she didn't catch.

"What?" She gave him an encouraging peck on the lips.

He popped his head up to look at her, feeling the courage draining from him slowly. "I said I'll miss you."

She rolled her eyes in good nature despite knowing he had dashed another opportunity to confess the love he only showed and rested her forehead up against his. She took her other hand and lifted his own, rolling the tip of her thumb around his palm until she found his uppermost crease and traced it swiftly with her finger.

She frowned. "Humph."

Piers perked a brow. "What?"

"Short life line," She explained regretfully.