Summary: Having a boyfriend is complicated. Having a boyfriend and being a spy is even harder. Having a boyfriend who's life has been completely different than yours has its benefits and disadvantages but as long as you understand and love each other it all works out.
Disclaimer: The drabble is from my own imagination but the character's are not.
Zach
Cammie/Zach
Romance/Friendship/A li'l bit o' angst
I watched as Zach and Cal did their little man hug and saw the care free smile that I loved so much flash onto Zach's face. It was moments like this when I could almost imagine him as a 5-year-old, digging holes in the dirt around the playground, making friends in less than two minutes, trading baseball cards…
And yet there were other times when I saw the mistrust he had towards the Langley administration. The way his smile was forced when he talked to the director and the way he hesitated for the slightest moment when the head of our department assigned him to a mission that required backup. I saw the surprise on his face every time the agency came through for him. The amazement when his friends refused to leave him behind and the uncomfortable look on his face whenever family was mentioned.
It was times like that when I remembered that he was scarred.
He didn't have a carefree childhood, he had always had to be on-edge and he had been trained, as I had, from the day he was born. The difference was that I was trained by people who loved and cared about me. I was trained for my own good, for defense. He was trained to be an asset, to attack, to kill.
Things like that didn't just go away without leaving a mark. I noted the way he did a sweep of the room less than a second after the benevolent smile appeared on his lips. He turned back to Calvin but the moment of innocence was gone and I couldn't get it back no matter how much I wanted to.
I had learned to cherish the split seconds when I saw him at ease.
He was confident in his ability as a spy. He knew he was good, he knew that he was valuable to the agency and that they wouldn't let him get killed without a fight because his skills and dangerous connections were valuable but he wasn't confident in the way I thought he was when I first met him. His confidence rested in the world of espionage but it didn't go beyond that. It was his job to save himself, it had been since he was young. If the best option Langley had, technicality wise, was to leave Zach out to dry I knew he thought that they would do it.
I knew that he thought we would do that.
What Zach didn't see was who he was to his friends, to me. He didn't see that people really cared about him.
He was better at handling the life of espionage than I was, there's no point denying it. He can distance himself in a way that I can't. He doesn't get emotionally attached to anyone or anything during a mission. I still remember when I first met him. He seemed so cocky and confident. He loved to beat me and prove how macho he was. But now I know that's not all he is. Even though he could turn it off on command, Zach still had a heart. If he didn't, he wouldn't care what people thought. If he didn't, he would have turned out just like his mom.
He had the skills to be an assassin. He could shoot better than anyone I had ever seen. His reflexes were amazing. He knew everything you could know about rifles, he could shoot the wheels of a car moving sixty miles per hour like it was a stationary target that he had been setting up to hit for three hours.
He could have turned out differently. There was a part of him, a dangerous part. It wasn't always apparent but it was always there. He was disciplined, every move was calculated, but I still recognized the parts of him that could easily have led him to the bloodier side of our business. Like when a bomb went off and his face remained unchanged. He wasn't shook up the next day; it was as though he had been expecting it.
I knew he wasn't a murderer but I knew that he could have been an assassin. I thanked my lucky stars that he had somehow avoided that path but I knew that he had it in him. There was a part of him, no matter how small…He could have turned out differently and sometimes I wondered why he didn't.
When it was just the two of us I was reminded. The way he ever so carefully moved my hair out of my face. The way his fingers gently grazed over my bare waist. The way his lips softly brushed across my cheek and his arms cradled me.
Zach came with baggage. He had more scars than I probably knew. But he had a heart and even though he hid it and tried to ignore the fact that he had feelings, everyone around him saw it plain as day. That was why we loved him, why we would rather die with him than leave him alone in the desert to be killed by a foreign agency. I didn't care how good a spy Zach was. I didn't care whether he could lift a cow or a feather.
I knew he was more than that, I knew that he had more to give than his work with Langley.
I just wished he could see it too.
He didn't have to try and impress me with his strength, he already had by not following the path that most people thought he couldn't deviate from without dying.
He didn't have to risk his life to show me he cared.
I already knew.
One day, I swore to myself, Zach would have a family.
One day, I would make him feel at ease enough to let his guard down for more than an eighth of a second.
One day, Zach would know that I loved him.
And one day, he would realize the real reasons why.
A/N: I know it's been forever but here's another Zach/Cammie one-shot. I have two more one-shots in the works, one Zach/Cammie one not, and I'll post those probably during winter break since I'll finally have a break. I'm taking AP's this year and they take up an insane amount of time so sorry about that.
I've only read this over a few times so if there are any mistakes feel free to point them out. I'll edit it and re-post it a little later.
Thanks to last updates REVIEWers! Jazz-shoes, lovelymemories, topXsecret, bookbabe68, and Lemonn-Limee! You guys are amazing and you cheer me up whenever my day sucks so please stick with me through the long drags between updates and REVIEW if you have ten seconds to spare.
Question: My Zach/Cammie one-shot that I'm in the middle of gets a little more racy than what I normally right. Care/Don't care? Tell me and I'll post it seperately if anyone cares.
Also, for any of my fellow Harry Potter lovers, I have a next generation James SP/OC out there so read it if you're bored or are looking for a new story or just feel like reading it :)
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