“Where on earth is he?” Paul frowned as he smoothly manoeuvred through the crowd of party-goers – years of combat training and more recently sparring with Harmony had given him fairly nimble footwork. “He’s six foot three; how does he disappear so easily? I was only gone for a minute.”
He scanned the main banquet room, searching for that well-groomed head of blond hair, found three but not the one he was looking for, and moved on. He knew Adam was perfectly capable of looking after himself, but ever since that night when Adam was drugged and kidnapped practically under his nose, Paul had developed a slight paranoia about losing track of any of his friends while off base with them, especially in a crowded environment like this. It didn’t help that when he wished it Adam could be almost unnoticeable, as if he could switch off his presence like flipping a switch or donned some kind of social camouflage, and your eyes would just slide over him like he wasn’t even there. Paul half-smiled in wry amusement; for him, it was the opposite, and he had to remember to switch his presence on – there was a reason why Special Ops were characterised as the ‘quiet ones at the table in the back’ at military functions.
“It’s probably completely innocent and he’s just slipped off to go snog Karen,” Paul reassured himself as he moved into the next room – a smaller side room with several knots of people chatting over canapés and drinks; he scanned the occupants and moved on. Speaking of Karen, that was something that had surprised him – that someone as quiet and calm as Adam had found love with someone as bright and intense as Karen. Paul liked her but preferred her in moderate doses. She could get a bit much for him in anything more than that. That being said, finding her could be even more difficult – she could pull a better vanishing act than Adam could, to the point she could practically blend into the wallpaper, which made sense with her background.
Paul continued his hunt through the large country club, deftly dodging several attempts to draw him into various conversations, and ducking between some boisterous gents who’d definitely imbibed a bit too much, judging by their loud voices and exaggerated gesturing. He passed through another hall, snagged a pair of champagne glasses from a passing waitress with no intention of drinking from them, to help him politely fend off more invitations to join this group or that – he had to bring a drink to his friend, you see – entered the main foyer and caught a brief glimpse of a blue suit jacket sleeve in the reflection of a floor to ceiling mirror in an elaborate gilt frame.
He turned, tracked the origin of the reflection and spotted the doorway leading out to a small balcony. “Aha.” Paul approached carefully. If Adam was having a quiet moment with Karen, he didn’t want to intrude, but he did want to make sure they were okay.
The cool breeze of night air from the open French doors was a welcome change to the stuffy atmosphere of the building, and it carried with it the sound of a soft conversation. He couldn’t pick out the words over the background chatter, but he did catch enough to identify tones – Adam’s angry, Karen’s reassuring. “Okay, that’s something to intrude on,” Paul decided. It either took serious pushing or hitting some very specific buttons to make Adam angry; considering where they were and why he’d been asked to come, Paul was reasonably sure the latter had happened.
“Is everything all right?” Paul asked out loud as he crossed the threshold and stepped onto the balcony. Adam was standing with his back to the door, leaning against a stone railing and glaring at some point far away. Karen was just beside him, one hand on his arm and frowning.
“There you are! Paul, talk to him,” Karen ordered. She took the champagne glass that Scarlet offered to her and sat on a bench seat beside Adam.
“What happened?” Scarlet asked, glancing around in the vain hope that the source of the offence was around and something he could deal to personally.
“My father happened,” was the short reply from Adam.
“Ah.” Paul put down the second glass, turned to lean against the railing next to Adam so he could watch both the door and Adam’s back, and paused there for a moment, arms crossed over his chest and brows drawn down in a frown as he made his tactical assessment.
Emotionally charged conversations about families and their foibles wasn’t exactly his forte, but for Adam he’d always try. It was why he was here after all, invited along to the birthday celebrations of the Svenson patriarch, along with Karen for some much needed moral support. Adam’s relationship with his father could be kindly described as ‘fraught’; he’d needed backup and Paul had been glad to offer it.
“So I take it that challenging him to a duel at dawn with flintlocks is out of the question?” he finally ventured, testing the waters with a little dry humour.
“I’ll be your second,” Karen offered, saluting both men with her champagne glass. “Not that I’m saying you’d miss, but protocol and all.”
That got a small huff of amusement but little else, as Adam continued to glare out into the night at the lights of the not-too-distant city of Boston.
“What did he say?” Paul asked directly, deciding to abandon efforts to tease the answer out of him.
“One of his business friends asked him when I was going to join the family firm,” Adam began to explain, bitterness twisting his expression. “He didn’t know I was listening. He said: ‘well, once he’s gotten this hero nonsense out of his system, I expect he’ll be along in the next five years. Blood is thicker than water after all’. He knows I’m in Spectrum, but he doesn’t seem to realise that the bullet proofing in our uniforms isn’t just for show.” Adam drew in a deep breath, his hands clenching on the patio railing. “It was harder than I thought it would be to not call him out right then and there in front of everyone, and list off all the times we’ve saved the world with our ‘hero nonsense’.”
Paul had to privately admit that that sounded very tempting. If there was one thing that set off both of them, it was being disrespected – insults, abuse, anything like that they could shrug off, but being disrespected and belittled would get between the chinks in their armour every single time. It wasn’t like just anyone could do their job, and to have the years of work, constant training, and the pain, blood and lives they’d bought a lot of their victories dismissed as ‘nonsense’ was enough to sorely tempt him to do something impolitic.
“I’m surprised a man as presumably well-educated as your father got the saying so wrong,” Paul observed instead, earning a curious glance from Adam. “It’s ‘the blood of the covenant is stronger than the waters of the womb’. Covenants were a sacred, unbreakable agreement between people, sealed with a blood sacrifice of an animal or the blood of the parties involved, depending on the culture and the time.”
“I’ve heard people interpreting it as ‘your found family or chosen bonds are stronger than ones that only happen because of birth,’” Karen added in, standing and setting down her barely touched glass so she could slip her arms around Adam and hug him from behind. “If we’re thinking of the traditional meaning, I’d say you two would have bled on each other more than enough to satisfy any blood sacrifice,” she continued, looking between them. “All you captains probably have, by now.”
Adam made a non-committal noise in response, but his shoulders dropped slightly and he brought one hand up to rest gently on the arms that Karen had clasped around his waist.
“A different saying I rather like is ‘the best revenge is a life well-lived’.” Paul nodded towards the brightly lit interior of the building. “You have nothing to prove to your father or his rich friends. Everything you’ve needed to prove has already been proved to the people whose opinions matter to you – Colonel White, us, Karen, the other Angels, everyone else in Spectrum who knows and respects you because of who you are and what you’ve achieved. Your father only respects what he understands, and he can’t see past the end of his nose, because he doesn’t think there’s anything worth his attention past that point. You’ve got a bigger horizon than he does and I think on some level, he knows and resents that. Why else would he want to clip your wings and yank you down to a life where he’s already established himself as superior?”
“It’s his loss.” Karen shrugged. “Every time he does something like that, he’s cutting off his own nose to spite his face.” She smirked as a thought occurred to her. “We could be really petty, you know. We could go back in there, give him our well wishes, but sadly we have to go as we have some ‘hero nonsense’ to attend to, then sweep out and leave him spluttering.”
“Don’t tempt me.” Adam chuckled softly.
Paul relaxed a little, glad to see Adam’s black mood finally lifting. “Seriously though, Adam, if you want, we can go,” he offered. “It’s not that late. I know a nice little bistro in the area, we can get something decent to eat and stroll around town. Or,” he amended, “I can go back to the hotel and you two lovebirds can stroll around town and actually enjoy some of your time off.”
“And leave you on your own, pining and forlorn, after all that talk of blood covenants and found family?” Adam finally teased back. “Let’s do that – half an hour here, there’s a couple of people I actually do want to say hi to. Then go to the hotel, get out of these monkey suits and go to that bistro.”