Characters: Ian Rider, Helen Rider, Alex Rider, OFC.
Synopsis: The question always has a way of taking him by surprise, but somewhere around the time Ian turns thirty people stop asking, or perhaps there is simply no one left to ask. Aroace Ian Rider fic.
A/N: This story was written for week 3 of Spyfest After Dark, for the prompt Coming Home.
Just a bit of additional context for those who didn't know: Gay people were banned from working for MI6 until 1991. If we set Alex's story in the early 2000s, that means Ian would certainly have been working for MI6 while that policy was still in place.
for the lonely hearts
It's a question that has followed him for years now, in one form or another.
"Do you ever wish it were real?" Elaine asks him.
They are having dinner in the Ritz in Vienna, heads bent close together in a mimicry of flirtation while surreptitiously keeping an eye on the men two tables over.
"What do you mean?"
"This," she lifts her hand, showing him the ring. Diamond, of course. They are pretending to be newly-weds. "Being married, having a partner."
"Married to you?" Ian teases. "Every day."
Elaine rolls her eyes, batting his shoulder like he just said something flirtatious. "Don't joke, you know what I mean."
Ian takes a sip of his champagne, casting another glance at the other table.
"I can't say I think about it much," he says honestly.
"Well I have. I tried dating for a while after our last mission together. But you know how it is. Few men want a girlfriend who is away for weeks at a time, sometimes with little notice."
Ian nods, although he has never tried himself. Dating has always been something that happened to other people. But he knows the isolation that comes from doing the job they do, the secrets they have to keep and the lies they have to tell.
He can imagine it's hard to date someone and not be able to tell them about your job.
"One-night stands are fine in the short term, but sometimes I just think it would be nice to come home to someone, you know?"
At that moment, one of the businessmen they have been keeping an eye on gets up, snarling an insult in German and throwing a glass of water at the man sitting opposite him. The dining room devolves into chaos, and Ian and Elaine use the distraction to plant one of Smithers' bugs on the man's briefcase before slipping out unnoticed, their conversation forgotten.
Ian finds himself thinking of it again later that week, seated on a plane behind two men who are careful to hide the way they are holding hands as the plane takes off.
It's not that people in MI6 don't have families. Alan Blunt is married, although he doesn't wear a wedding band and Ian always struggles to picture the spymaster doing something mundane like eating breakfast at home on Sunday or even attending his own wedding ceremony.
And John married Helen while he was in the service. They had met before, of course, but Ian still marvels sometimes at how they managed to make it work. Then again, John and Helen were some of the least romantic people Ian knew. Perhaps the key is finding someone equally pragmatic about what marriage will be like with a secret agent, and loving each other enough to take the bad with the good.
Not that Ian has ever really had much of an interest in relationships or marriage. Or even one-night-stands. He'd much rather fill his days with missions, good wine and books and perhaps listening to classical music.
The best part about MI6 is that for the most part, people don't question it. Ian makes sure his file reads 'evident interest in women' early on and after that no one bats an eye when he shows no interest in dating beyond the occasional joke at work.
Helen was one of the few people who ever asked him about it. She could be as perceptive as John sometimes when it came to reading people, although hers was a warmer, more empathic type of insight.
"Has there ever been someone in your life, Ian? A girlfriend or even just a girl you fancied?"
The question always had a way of taking him by surprise. "Not much opportunity to date in this job."
"What about before, at Cambridge?"
Ian shrugged, trying to hide how uncomfortable he is with this line of questioning. "Not really my thing."
Helen was silent for a long moment then, stroking the curve of her belly. When she spoke again it was quiet, choosing her words with care.
"I know from John that the agency doesn't really accept those kind of relationships, that you could lose your job, but you know that John and I would never judge you for it—"
"It's not like that," Ian interrupted her, and she fell silent, looking at him quizzically. "I'm just…" He shrugged, unable to explain it. "Not really interested."
Silence fell between them as Helen considered this.
"John did tell me as much," she murmured in the end, and it shouldn't have surprised Ian that his brother had figured it out despite neither of them ever talking about it.
"Don't be a stranger, Ian," Helen continued, before he could ask what else John had said about him. "I know it's different with John away, but please do visit when you're in town. I'd like to see you."
It had warmed Ian's heart, to know he was welcomed and even wanted. It felt like family, the way Ian had always imagined family was like for other people. He had promised Helen he would visit, and he had, four or five more times, whenever he was back from missions.
But Helen died with John on a cold April morning and Ian, twenty-nine and one of special operations' finest agents, was left an uncle to an orphaned nephew.
There weren't many people left to ask him, after that.
It wasn't always like this. Ian had been popular enough in school, friends with most of the boys in his class. But that had been boarding school, where it was easy to keep up friendships simply by spending all day together.
His time at university was filled with sports and other extracurriculars and after he'd followed John into the army and then the secret service, the rest of his twenties passed in an adrenaline-fuelled haze. By the time Ian is twenty-nine and running missions every other week, he doesn't have a single real friend left.
It's not that he doesn't get along with people or that he's particularly lonely. He's on good terms with the people at work.
He has gone for drinks a few times with John Crawley and once or twice with Elaine or some of the other field agents. Never with Mrs Jones–you don't really go to the pub with the woman who will one day send you off on a mission you won't be coming back from.
But those evenings with MI6 agents always had a certain tension, filled with secrets they can't talk about in public and too-sharp smiles from people who have worn disguises for too long and have seen too much danger to fit back into the normal world. Professional liars, all of them.
It's the nature of the job, for the most part. Being a spy isn't something you can do nine-to-five or leave at the office when you go home. You carry it with you, seeing danger and intrigue where other people just look away.
Ian has been in this job for a long time now and has been in the field for most of that—it's forever a part of him. And he can't forget about the fact that his brother and sister-in-law were killed because someone caught up with them after John's mission.
Some days, Ian looks at Alex, bright and innocent and unaware of the dangers of the world his father and uncle lived in and thinks just in case. It's not much, but karate lessons at least give Alex something of an edge should he end up following in his or John's footsteps.
He went on desk duty for those first few months as Alex's guardian, trying to figure out how to make sense of the new reality he'd found himself in. But while Ian can analyse reports well enough, he is made for field work. He has neither the patience, nor the temperament to work in an office all day.
When an assignment lands on his desk four months in, asking him to go to Paris to investigate an arts dealer who seems too good to be true, he doesn't turn it down.
He is very careful, that first time. He makes sure the nanny will look after Alex and knows who to contact in case of an emergency. And he updates his will. MI6 Special Operations may not always offer the highest life expectancy for its special agents, but they always took care of their own should the worst happen. The bank will arrange the funeral and make sure Alex is taken care of until he's old enough to look after him himself.
The mission is a success. The arts dealer turns out to be selling extremely well-made fakes, and planning to make off with a few of the British Museum's pieces when no one is looking. Ian ends up sneaking down a corridor filled with hidden sensors and alarms to get the evidence they need, and he hasn't felt as alive in months.
When he gets back home after, he sits with Alex on his lap as he looks through the few pictures of John and Helen he has, and finds something heavy lifted from his chest by the experience.
Elaine's words still ring in Ian's head as he opens the front door at a quarter to eight that morning.
"Sometimes I just think it would be nice to come home to someone, you know?"
Ian has no interest in getting married, but this is a sentiment he can understand all too well. He remembers the emptiness of his flat each time he returned from an assignment, the milk gone off and the old takeaway boxes he'd had to throw away. The flat hadn't really felt like home to him then, just a place to rest up in between missions.
There is a noise at the top of the stairs, then a cry and the sounds of rushed footsteps.
"Ian! You're home already!"
Alex, eleven years old and seeming to grow taller every week, runs down the stairs to meet him. He is already wearing his school uniform, and Ian knows they won't have long before Alex has to leave for school. He can hear sounds coming from the kitchen where Jack must be making breakfast.
"How was your conference?" Alex asks, beaming up at him.
Ian smiles and ruffles his hair. "It was good. Vienna is beautiful, I will have to take you to see it someday. Why don't I tell you about it over breakfast?"
He steers Alex towards the kitchen as Alex starts to tell Ian about what happened in his absence, and lets the familiar sounds and smells of home wash over him.
A/N: Please let me know if you enjoyed it!