He lay watching the orange flicker of firelight on the ceiling and sighed happily. Another item struck off the bucket list, though truthfully making love in front of an open fire had been a slight disappointment. The rag rug in front of the fireplace hadn't really been enough to insulate them from the cold of the wooden floorboards (which were damned hard, by the way). Whoever was near the flames broiled while the other froze, and he had managed to hit his butt on the edge of the fieldstone hearth. Once sated they had shifted operations back to the bed, which was only across the room anyway. So here he was, lying warm and lazy under a colourful quilt with a dozing Joss in his arms, watching the flickers on the ceiling.

She stirred slightly. "What that needed was a nice thick bear skin rug."

"Mmm. And some padding on the edge of the hearth." He shifted a little and winced as the graze on his rear rubbed against the sheet.

She snickered. "Kiss better?"

"Sure gives 'kiss my ass' a whole new meaning."

"Actually there are other parts I'd rather kiss right now." She demonstrated. Speech became impossible, or at least irrelevant, for some time.

xxxxx

Afterwards they dozed. The short winter afternoon had given way to full night and the fire was glowing embers. A great wave of lassitude swept over him, and he sighed.

"I think you found your happy place," murmured Joss.

"Mmmm?"

"You just relaxed completely. You hardly ever do that."

He considered. "Yeah, I guess I did. Huh."

"Huh?"

"I just realized something."

A glance from her, well come on, give.

He propped himself up on one elbow so he could see her better. "Back when I was a kid, my Dad came home from Nam, left the military, got a job. He was all fired up, wanted us to be a real family. He took me camping up in the hills. We slept under the stars one night, and then we ended up in a cabin like this one. And I lay awake just like this, watching the flames lighting the room. So yeah, this is a lot like my happy place." He sighed again.

She glanced up at him and frowned. "You've stopped being happy."

"Just thinking of the stuff that came after."

"Maybe you shouldn't. Not right now, anyway."

"No, it's alright." He stopped, feeling surprised. It really was alright. "For the longest time I used that memory when I was working. To slow my heart rate when I needed to aim."

"So it's not really a happy place any more."

"Not that memory, no. But it doesn't matter." He smiled down at her. "I got a new one now." He gathered her into his arms; the smile stretched into a grin and then he simply couldn't help himself. A breathless laugh forced its way out. "I think I'm drunk," he said.

"Funny, I never had you pegged as a happy drunk."

"I'm not. I'm a morose drunk. Then eventually a maudlin drunk, and very shortly afterwards a passed out drunk. So what sort of a drunk are you?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

There was a slightly embarrassed silence.

"What, you've never been drunk?" He eyed her incredulously.

"Nope. I wanted to get drunk once, but it didn't work out."

"This I have got to hear."

She avoided his smirk. "There's nothing to tell. It was back when I was in law school. We'd just had a test, or it was the end of the semester or something, and a bunch of us hit this bar just across from campus. I had decided I wanted to go out and get plastered, just once to see what it was like. But when it came down to it... the place was packed and dark and noisy and smoky, you couldn't make yourself heard and I realized I wasn't having a good time and so I left. End of story."

"Always the good girl, huh?"

Her lip curled and her right hand wandered southwards. "Only sometimes..."

"Hey, no fair!" He caught her hand up and kissed it.

"Actually I think I'm probably an angry drunk, from the times I've come close. More than a couple of drinks aboard, and I get grumpy. That's one of the main reasons I've never let myself get that far, not because I'm an especially good girl."

"I bet you were though. A good girl, I mean."

"Hmm. Only by some standards. How about you, were you a good boy?"

He was silent a long time. "You have to understand, my Dad was hardly around when I was a kid. He'd come home on leave, but then he'd go away again. And every time he left he would get down on one knee in front of me and say, 'John, you look after your mother, you hear?' and then he'd shake my hand, real serious. And then he'd disappear for a month or a year or whatever."

Joss looked up at him.

"So there I was, four, five, seven years old and responsible for my Mom," he continued. "I mean, I know now he didn't really expect me to do anything, it was just one of those things people say to their kids. But pretty soon the kids at school found they could get a real good show out of me if they said anything about my Mom. I got pretty good at fighting." He suddenly wondered what kind of conversations his parents had had during those leaves, after he had gone to bed. Or for that matter after his dad had come home permanently. Had that camping trip, only weeks before his death, been more than just a passing whim of his father's?

"Then after Dad died there was just the two of us. I... didn't react well. I must have put Mom through hell. The fights got worse, and finally the day came when she stood up in court and told the judge that I was eighteen years old, she couldn't control me and that in her opinion I needed to be scared straight. So the judge told me I could either have a two month sentence or join the army. I joined up. God knows why they even accepted me, maybe they were impressed with my grades. They were pretty good for a juvenile delinquent."

"I've seen how losing a father can affect kids," said Joss thoughtfully. "A teacher friend of mine told me once that the little girls get sad, and the little boys get angry. Taylor went through a patch like that, anyway."

"Angry, yeah. That was me alright. At least the army taught me how to use the anger."

"Channel it into aggression, huh? Good for the army, maybe not so good for you."

He shrugged. "The army wasn't the problem. I loved it, it was something I was good at. It was what came after that..." His voice trailed off. Joss put a hand up and pulled his face down towards hers. Soft lips, the clean taste of her, that insane pleasure as her tongue explored his mouth. His arms tightened around her, and he kissed her back for a long time until at last they came up for air.

"Sorry, you just looked so, so... dark there for a moment." Joss eyed him with concern.

"Sorry? I'm not at all sorry. Have I ever told you what a great kisser you are?"

"John, remember I met Mark Snow. He played me like a, like a-"

"Like a thing that gets played a lot?" he said sweetly.

She swatted at him. "Oh, shut up. As I was saying, he was a master manipulator. If he was a representative sample of the Agency I'm amazed you got out with your sanity intact. Assuming you did, of course," she added quickly. He pulled a face.

"The trouble is, they start out sounding reasonable," he replied. "There are bad guys out there. Someone has to protect the innocents from them, and to do that you can't always fight fair. But actually Mark wasn't the worst of them, not by any means."

"Stanton?" Joss asked quietly.

"Kara," Reese agreed. "Kara was never interested in protecting innocents. She just liked killing. I never could work out whether she began that way and the Agency simply found a really good tool, or whether she was changed into a monster by the work. I think about myself starting out all idealistic, wanting to protect, serve my country, what do you know, I come across Kara, and then I'm like some stupid baby bird that thinks a sock puppet is its mommy, she's tough and hard and I have to be tougher and harder, dear God I did terrible things, evil things because she told me it was what had to be done, said I might as well enjoy it and I tried to, I even tried to like what I was doing -" The torrent of words ceased as Joss pulled him into her arms like a lifesaver with a drowning man.

He came back to himself later, lying with his head pillowed on her chest. He turned his face towards her. The neat scar running vertically between her breasts was a dusky pink, fading to white. He kissed it. "Did I ever mention how glad I am they saved you?"

"Oh, I'm a medical miracle, John." One corner of her mouth quirked up.

"You're every kind of miracle, Joss." He paused. How to express what he needed to say? The words wouldn't come, but seeing her lying there, so open, so giving... he shook his head at himself.

"What?" asked Joss. "You look frustrated."

"I wanted to tell you what you mean to me. But I can't find the words. I need to be a poet."

"You could make up a limerick. Hey, they're poems!"

He frowned at her. "No, I'm serious. It's like when I'm with you nothing matters, nothing can hurt me any more. You take all the bad stuff and simply swallow it up."

"I'm touched, John. I really am." Her eyes were very gentle.

"You see Jessica, she was my princess. There was nothing I wouldn't do for her. I wanted to lay the world at her feet, I never wanted to let anything hurt her. But I was going into a war zone, and you don't take a princess to a place like that. So I had to leave her behind. You, you're different. It's like I couldn't leave you behind even if I wanted to." He was silent a moment. "Flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone," he said softly.

xxxxx

It was late the next morning, and pale winter sunshine fell across the rag rug. Reese lay quietly watching as Joss moved around the kitchen cleaning up after breakfast. Quick deft movements, the way the light caught the black silk of her hair... his eyes narrowed in sheer pleasure at the sight of her. On the night stand his phone trilled and he picked it up. UNKNOWN CALLER. He sighed and answered. All good things must come to an end.

"I'm truly sorry to disturb you," Finch sounded contrite. "But we have another number."

The End.

Thanks for reading this far!

John, Joss and the others have more adventures in "Modus Vivendi".