A/N: Part 2 was never supposed to happen. But I had such lofty ideas, then Molly and James however, added their own twist. In fact, I think this should be better renamed 'The ways M/J fall into bed, these randy buggers'.
Learning that they got married made me so happy.
You've overwhelmed me with your support and reviews and I can't say thank you enough. So well, I think Molly insisted on having her own tale told, so here goes. There'll be a short addendum to this chapter added in the next day or so and I'll explain why with it.
A side but not quite relevant point: am I the only one who thinks that James looks different in Series 2? Less…chiselled? Um…face-fatter? Hair's shorter? Scruffier? Don't get me wrong here, he's still extremely handsome. Can't put my finger on what but I actually thought I was looking at a different actor when I saw James deliver the bad news to Georgie.
oOo
It's the distant squawk of a nocturnal creature that rouses her from an unintended doze on a broad chest. Panic sets in not too long after as she feels an unfamiliar weight of an arm across her torso, until her head clears sufficiently to kick into remembrance what had just transpired between her and the Captain.
James lifts his arms and she feels the loss keenly as he gently settles her upright and gathers her clothes.
"Quiet, Dawes." His whisper is urgent, yet it reignites a sensual memory that she is now certain will go to her grave with her. He traces an absent finger over her cheek as they both turn to look at the digital clock that casts the far end of his tent in a faint green hue."0200. World enough and time for you to go. Three hours before PT."
"And I thought the day started perfect," she retorts in kind even as she catches the glint in his eyes, eliciting a stifled smirk from him.
She makes a quick move towards the entrance of his tent, but not before she feels the heat of his body behind her and the joyful burden of having his hands lying heavy on her shoulders as he delivers his parting shot.
"Sleep tight, Molly."
Even that has the power to heat her cheeks and make her knees tremble.
Slipping out into the night, she sees Fingers on sentry-duty and the constant shifting of the border guards but she knows their well-trodden paths around the FOB well enough to make some strategic turns before she surreptitiously tiptoes into the medic tent.
A sigh of relief escapes her. It's a thrill that wears off as suddenly as the euphoria of being with Captain James when they both well know they've just entered dangerous ground.
Play it right and no one's the wiser at Brize at their return. Tip that delicate balance and they'd be ruined, his sterling career and her fledgling one absolutely gutted. It's a new dawn, a new day and a whole new game that she ironically gains a fuller understanding of—and of James's constant harping on staying focused on the mission—after last night. Of why he refuses to put a label on them but merely vaguely references the future after this tour using small pieces of real estate in England that she automatically calls a bit shit if only to make him laugh wryly at her verbal challenge.
What now, then? The better part of six months has gone by in a flash and she knows she isn't that same poor, wide-eyed sod who'd stepped into the Hercules wondering what new and scary thing awaited her.
These few months in Afghan have become the best and worst schoolmaster she's never had. In this regimented lifestyle, Molly constantly finds new definitions of conflict and peace and they're hidden in treasure troves in the oddest corners: in a young Afghan girl's tears and joy, in her mother's messy scrawled letter saying things will be shit until she returns and most recently, in a Captain who, to her utmost disbelief, reciprocates the admiration and affection she has for him.
They live worlds apart, in circles that would never have intersected in a million years. But Afghanistan and the Army have worn down the sharp edge of class and social status into blunt, funny objects that have lost their ability to poke deep.
Not for the first time, she wishes he knew without a doubt, how precious he's become to her, how much she, like Two Section would do anything for him, fuelled by a mix of loyalty and the extra bit of her heart that the lads don't have. Yet he'll always be the boss to her somehow, but only because it's a reminder of the twist in luck—or fate—that brought them on this collision course.
She slumps onto her own bedding and dozes off fitfully, her dreams filled with the rasp of day-old stubble and the smooth slide of skin on skin.
oOo
Captain James now joins her on the roof when he can, be it for a minute or several at her usual spot when he isn't tied up in the Ops tent for some meeting or other. The distance between them is always exaggerated—with him sometimes perched on the ladder with a clipboard in hand while she remains on the roof with her own stationery—so it merely seems as though Two Section's medic is merely keeping the Bossman apprised of the day's events from an unusual vantage position.
In the weeks since she'd learned about the ex-wife and the son he'd been reluctant to mention, they've decided on the unspoken rule to start from the beginning. As though they were friends on a blind date on the side of the Olympic Stadium or serendipitous strangers who bumped into each other accidentally on some ridiculously long staircase in Bath where she fears falling down.
That way, they speed date, through random gap-fills of both important and insignificant events of their lives without adhering to any chronological order. That way, she knows he's starting to let her in on the details that make up Charles James without the scrutiny of the lads in question.
Nothing else remotely resembling that night happens. It isn't as though they'd even really seen each other starkers properly in the dark.
In fact, the man who talks to her under the faint light of the stars bears only a physical resemblance to the detached, aloof Captain who bawls them out for PT each day and barks at them constantly on patrol.
She's only part-resentful, part-in awe of the way he cleaves himself so neatly and so effortlessly into compartments—save for that day he'd torn through her after learning about Newport and Smurf—that doctors would have declared him schizophrenic.
The distinct waft of coffee coalesces into a dark shape crossing the dirt path.
But because it had always been tea for her and her family, and unschooled as she is in the flavours of Nespresso, it's yet another posh-boy quirk she's come to associate with him.
"Oi, what's that stink?"
She calls out in greeting and nods at the steaming cup that he manages to hold in one hand while he goes up the ladder halfway. "You'd be buggered for sleep, Sir. And you'd need it to face the bleedin' wankers tomorrow."
"Keep mocking me, Dawes," he says and takes a demonstrative sip, "and you'll find yourself on latrine clean. I'd offer you a taste of Nespresso's finest, but seeing as you have something up your arse about coffee—"
"Tetley, Sir. Or Tesco's Original."
"What are you, the Queen? Tea's out of fashion, Dawes."
"You posh tosser."
"Snobby tea drinker."
There's no comeback she can mouth him off for that absolutely ridiculous accusation, so she merely shakes her head at his taking the piss out of her when he can.
As though to knock home the point, the cup makes a pass in front of her nose, which she tries playfully to avoid.
"It's Rosabaya."
The boss suddenly drops his tone, a well-meaning inflection in that four-syllable word as he fiddles first with the handle on the plastic cup that holds his own form of poison, then touches the side of it gently to her hand.
Just like that, the air shifts.
She forgets the warm currents that circles the FOB as the warmth of the cup jolts her into that same prickling awareness of him that nothing else, not even the adrenaline-filled days of patching injured soldiers, had managed to replicate. The instant reminder of their intertwined fingers on the day he'd caught her out after her shower still sends chills down her spine, that moment where he'd ordered her to return to him now etched indelibly in her memory banks.
The light in the boss's eyes changes too, filling with an intensity and a banked heat that parallel the restlessness plaguing her body.
Wordlessly, Molly moves for the ladder, forcing him down first, then forces herself to look past that chiselled face, the half-formed smile and at the rings around his eyes and the mussed hair.
"You're knackered."
He grins wanly and gestures to the coffee. "Got a banging headache, Dawes. Couldn't be arsed to take anything but this."
"Medic tent, now," She blurts out simply for the insane need to channel this burst of excitement elsewhere, then tries to put in as much authority as she could into the order, only to scowl when his grin turns into a smirk. "There'll be something to sort you out right, I'm sure."
But he follows her anyway; that much lassitude he gives when an audience doesn't exist and it serves as a comforting reminder that James is fully cognizant and capable of treating her as an equal if rank is taken away.
The boss swings himself effortlessly onto the cot and watches her intently while she rummages in a drawer for Aspirins. His active, prolonged perusal, so unlike the hard looks he gives the entire platoon on a daily basis, is making her flush.
"The Army was all I wanted. The regulations my only guidance. And they've never failed."
Until now.
Captain James doesn't say that, but Molly hears the vulnerability of the unspoken admission loud and clear. The tinge of regret in it has her straightening in alarm, the capsules abruptly forgotten. But he isn't meeting her eyes, staring instead at the slanted top as though it holds all the answers they badly need.
In all their interactions, he had never been this open with her, not even when he'd finally talked about Rebecca and Sam and the horrific argument that followed thereafter. This hushed confession, inserted in between their moments of levity, sounds like a sinner's prayer and the last, shameful transgression he holds fast to his chest before unburdening them at the altar where dreams come to die.
To start apologising would seem terribly inadequate and dishonest now that he's betrayed this set of hallowed rules that should mean everything to him. Molly tries to do it anyway, but he shakes his head at her tentative effort in keeping the peace.
"Until I met you," he says tentatively. "And I learned that things…can be different."
On her relieved exhale, the clock ticks on again, only to slow once more when he hops off the cot to lean against the table where she'd scattered the first aid supplies to get to the painkillers.
It takes courage to turn and face him after that extraordinary turn of conversation that's left a small amount of moisture gathering at the edge of her eyes. But he's there, as solid as she can ever imagine, looking at her with some kind of muted wonder and disbelief that she can finally see in their close proximity.
"Never took you as a romantic, Boss," she murmurs lightly and places her hands atop his.
He huffs a laugh and stares down at their joined hands, then releases one to trace her knuckles.
"Oh, you ain't seen half of it yet, Private Dawes."
The blasé quip, in the colloquial speak she recognises all too well, does no justice to the look in his eyes.
Molly closes the infinitesimal space between them this time and lifts herself to cup the strong contour of his jaw before touching her lips to his. Time and thought fall away when their lips separate and meet again with a growing urgency fuelled by her urge to burrow past the veneer of absolute control that James wears like a second skin.
The harsh desert winds that swirl around the FOB pick up as he lifts her against him and sits her down on the cot he'd previously occupied, reversing their positions. She tugs insistently at the hem of his shirt first and pulls it over his head, then feels him do the exact thing to hers.
Closing her eyes, she tilts her pelvis upward at his urging, then allows muscle memory to take over and lets desire guide her motions as it does his.
If she half believed in the immutable quality of fate or lady luck as much as he did, it'd be too easy to say the sum of their mistakes—her misspent time before the Army, his broken marriage—has converged on this point in time. Any form of resistance, be it his ironclad will or her foolhardy decisions will prove futile in altering this course laid out for the both of them. But she doesn't quite really buy into that, conscious only of the fact that she's remaking her life and setting it down a path where minefields and rewards lie in wait, the Captain being the only fork in it she hadn't accounted for.
As far as she knows, they're both grounded in the present, drawn together in the unlikeliest of places, stripped bare in places when most of their clothes still stay on as his driving thrusts finally silence the cacophony of white noise in her head.
The moon is high in the clear sky by the time he leaves, the painkillers long forgotten at the table.