Something must have warned him.
When the door opened, Malcolm was lying in Holly's bed, not asleep but probably not really awake, looking out towards the window with its view of a snow-shrouded Pen Hill. He was wearing some fluffy light blue all-in-one thing that – at a guess – was Holly's; certainly Jay couldn't imagine it being his own.
Considering that the second before he'd probably been drowsing, his reactions were quicker than a cat. He flung himself around in the bed, kicking the quilt away; his whole demeanor showed he was braced for an attack.
"It's just breakfast," said Jay mildly, showing him the tray. "You left in too much of a hurry to catch any yesterday."
Color rushed into Malcolm's cheeks. "It seemed like the best thing to do at the time," he answered after a moment, very warily.
"I can understand why you might think so." He set the tray down briefly on the dressing-table, carefully pushing aside the cut-crystal vase with a posy of Christmas roses in it. "Personally, though, I think talking the thing over before you left might have been more – courteous."
"It wasn't about bloody courtesy."
"I gathered that." He picked up one of the bowls of porridge, walked across and placed it on the nightstand, suffocating the urge to throw it at his lover's head after the scare he'd had. "Eat this while it's warm, or Holly will kick your ass." He glanced at the unmistakably feminine one-piece. "I hate to mention it, Mal, but it doesn't suit you," he said drily.
"After– after– bloody hell, are we reduced to talking about fucking porridge now?"
"No, we're reduced to eating fucking porridge, because Holly was good enough to make it for us. And after that we're going to have the talk we should have had yesterday morning, and I swear to god if you try to run out on me again I'll break both your damned legs." This was said with absolute calm, but its effect was far from placating; Malcolm glared at him.
"I'd like to see you try!"
"It can be arranged. Believe me." He returned to the tray, picked up a spoon and tossed it over. "That might come in useful."
Ignoring the predictable suggestion of where he might like to stick his bloody spoon, he sat down in the chair by the dressing table and began to eat his own porridge. Like the tea, it wasn't something he ever ate except when he was here, but there was no doubt that it was delicious; the tartness of the raspberries countered the sweetness of the honey, and the porridge itself was filling and warming. Although he didn't look in that direction, he was aware that Malcolm had subsided back down into the duvet and, after glowering for a moment, had also started to eat his breakfast. At least he hadn't used it as a missile, which had always been a possibility.
"Toast?" he asked mildly, hearing the spoon scrape up the last of the milky lees.
"Thanks." It was growled, but it seemed to be meant as some kind of a peace-offering, and he accepted it as such. There were two smaller plates under the one loaded with toast; he pulled one out and placed two slices on it. There didn't seem to be anything by way of preserves, so he suspected Mal didn't care much for jam any more than he did himself.
Once again he carried the food to the bed, but this time he didn't set it down on the nightstand and retreat. Instead, he set his free hand lightly on the curve of Malcolm's neck, and left it there for a moment.
The Englishman froze, his gaze fixed on the window.
"In some ways I've wished ever since that I hadn't said anything," Jay said quietly. "In others, I think it needed to be said." He went back to his chair, sat down and ate a piece of toast, and drank half of his mug of tea before he continued. "I've always valued honesty more than anything else, in any kind of relationship. If I'd gone on saying nothing, not telling you how I felt about you – it would have been a lie. A lie of omission, but still a lie. And I don't know how you feel about it, but to me, what we have is worth more than that. So much more."
"It was easier before," Malcolm said in a strained voice, looking down into what remained of his own tea, which he'd hardly touched even though he'd been staring into it for the last five minutes.
"I'm sure it was. But I did tell you that I wasn't expecting anything from you in return."
A snort. "A statement like that's a bit like dumping a phase rifle on the table during a casual conversation and saying 'Oh, just ignore that, it doesn't matter really.'"
"I'm not saying it didn't matter," Jay replied patiently. "You think I go around telling someone I love them just to make goddamn conversation? I said it because it was true. I do love you."
Holly had been exceptionally wise in pouring their tea into stout earthenware mugs rather than the pretty floral ones she also owned, because next moment Malcolm's slammed back onto the nightstand so hard that it was a minor miracle it didn't break in half. "Don't say that!"
"Why? Because it scares you?"
"BECAUSE IT'S NOT FUCKING TRUE!" he screamed. With shaking hands he began stripping off the one-piece. "This is what you're in love with," he snarled, flinging it across the room; Jay caught it in reflex. "The outside. The manufactured product!"
With an effort Jay kept his attention from the sculpted, naked body now revealed in the pearly snow-light through the window. A crazy quip that he'd never before been accused of harboring feelings for an item of fluffy nightwear before popped into his head, but he left it unuttered; of all the ways he could react to this situation, making a joke would be the very worst.
"I think to some extent we're all products … of our upbringing, our environment…" he started cautiously.
"What the fuck, you think I'm trying to give you a psychology lesson?" Malcolm dropped his head into his hands and took several heaving breaths. "OK. OK. You want to know…."
With a sound that was midway between a gasp and a whimper, he straightened up. The movement of his in-crooked fingers down his face as he did so was unnervingly suggestive of someone tearing off a mask, and indeed the man who now stared back across the room at Jay seemed – by some uncanny alchemy – to be a stranger wearing Malcolm Reed's face.
"You checked my history of course," this stranger said, leaning back against the pillows with a lazy grin that was utterly without humor. "You didn't find anything. I know you didn't. Even Captain Archer doesn't know about me." His right hand described a graceful arc, encompassing himself. "Meet Covert Operations Agent Jaguar – one of Section 31's finest. Saboteur, assassin and whore on demand!"
"Holly told me a while ago you used to work in Covert Ops." Jay's voice was very quiet. "She swore me to secrecy and told me that was how you two met. But Section 31? I thought it would have been MI6 or something like that."
The grin became feral. "Oh come now, Major, let's not be shy; MI6 is the respectable end of the business. Rather too good for the likes of me. No, Section 31 it was, Starfleet's Dirty Tricks Brigade. Run by quiet men in back rooms who smooth bumpy roads for the wheels of progress to travel along up in the sunshine. Men who hire the experts who'll get things done, things that need to be done, things that the 'good people' have the luxury of holding their hands up in horror at. Men who turn the needs of the many into the sins of the few."
He laughed, a splintered, joyless sound. His eyes were frozen chips of glee and anguish. "Give me my orders, Major, and I'll carry them out, yes sir, no questions asked!
"Want someone murdered? They're dead – men, women, children, pet dogs, goldfish and all, fuck it, doesn't matter, they're dead. Want someone's darling daughter fucked on film? I'll give you multiple orgasms and a dozen copies of the recording. Want a diplomat taken out? Order the funeral. Want a building destroyed? Just give me the postcode. Want a computer system with twenty layers of encryption hacked into? All part of the service.
"That's how I came to meet Holly. That's part of her job: reassembling people when they fall apart. Healing the destroyers. Putting them back together again – in some kind of working order, so they can go back to the job.
"But don't you dare condemn her for that!" he spat, pointing a warning finger. "Don't you even fucking think about it!"
"My only concern as regards Holly would be for her safety," said Jay levelly. "But I'm sure she's already aware of the risks inherent in work like that."
Internally he was appalled by the transformation from the quiet, self-controlled Englishman who was the Tactical Officer aboard Enterprise. Still, he made himself hold the glittering gaze without flinching.
"Still think you love me now, do you?" Jaguar jeered into the silence.
Without answering, Jay stood up and walked to the window, where he stood looking out. The dale was blanketed in white, a monochrome world of cold. The only speck of brightness was in the garden of a distant farmhouse, where some optimist had hung out a yellow towel, presumably hoping it might dry before the snow came; it hung as stiff as cardboard, each peg doubtless topped by a tiny crown of white.
Holly had put out stuff for the birds on the covered table in the garden below. A few early risers were already in attendance. They were British birds, so he didn't know what they were, except for a robin that flew away to scold in the skeletal apple tree with its burden of mistletoe. A couple of brilliantly blue and yellow little guys swung and argued on balls of fat and seeds, whirring to and fro indignantly; he seemed to remember Holly calling them bluetits.
Just then, a shower of snow shaken from the rose-arch over the garden gate caught his eye. Right at the top a small falcon had landed. It scrambled for balance as the bare stem it had landed on gave beneath its weight, speckled wings half-outspread, its curved beak open.
A predator, alone in a world without mercy.
The small birds fled from the bird table. The falcon shifted on the stem and then took off again, arrowing off across the lane and over the field beyond, hungry and deadly.
Sometimes, when you have too much to feel, the mind disconnects. When he came back to himself, Malcolm was out of the bed and getting dressed. He'd donned a pair of tracksuit bottoms and was now putting on his socks, his movements silent and economical. He didn't look up.
Healing the destroyers. Putting them back together again.
Malcolm had done what he'd been ordered to do, become the person he'd had to be in order to carry out acts he despised. And the process had broken him apart – proof indisputable that at heart he was an honorable man plunged into a world without honor, where he'd done what he must to survive. Jay crossed the room with long strides, pulled him to his feet and threw his arms around him.
The body against his was rigid, resisting. "For god's sake, don't–" Malcolm's voice cracked. "Don't love me out of pity, don't–"
"Shut the fuck up!" With a single shove he threw him back onto the bed, following him down. And there he went on to prove that what was between them was still strong, still real, still passionate, fighting down the resistance until it crumbled into joy.