Seven

 

 

 

Liam stifled the curse that wanted to burst from his lips when he stalked into the living room. 

He appeared to be alone but he knew that he wasn’t, he never was.  Everywhere he went there were eyes on him, had been for almost longer than he could remember.

Absolutely nothing he did wasn’t watched, scrutinized, digested and shared with a room full of people. 

He couldn’t shower without there being a meeting about it.

He couldn’t shit without it being discussed.

He couldn’t jack off without it being analyzed by a dozen people…..or more.

He wasn’t a man anymore, wasn’t human, wasn’t….real.

To them, he was a number.

Agent A4270.

He had no idea what that number meant, although by this time he didn’t really care.

All he cared about was the fact that it kept her safe.

That was all that mattered, not him, nothing about him or his life mattered.  Only her. She was everything to him, the only thing left that tied him to his old life, his only life.  His love’s DNA was running through her veins and because of that he would sacrifice everything to keep her safe, including the man downstairs who used to be his friend.

He tried to still the trembling in his hand as he reached for a crystal tumbler and poured himself a shot of whiskey.

He hadn’t meant to ghost on them, at least not at first.  It’s just that he and Luke were so fucking tired, they needed time to reconnect.  And then….and then…..

He swallowed the whiskey down, relishing the burn followed by the heat that spread throughout his body.  He started to reach for the bottle to pour another when…

“Daddy?” the angelic voice said from behind him.

Liam squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath before he turned to smile, “Hey baby girl.  What are you doing up?”

“I, I had a bad dream.”

Liam’s eyes wandered over the face that looked so much like his Luke’s face: the soft, gray eyes, the golden blonde hair that fell to her shoulders, the full bow lips.  She was Luke’s daughter in every way…and she was his too.

They had come to him when she was six, two years after his husband had been gunned down  while on a mission - a mission that he shouldn’t have even been on, wouldn’t have been on if not for the team losing Hofstetter to cancer a month prior.

Hofstetter had passed, they were a man short on a mission that couldn’t be postponed, so Luke got bumped up in the rotation.

And then he’d been gunned down in the streets of Kabul like a dog.

Gunned down as the team had made their way from one end of the town to other. 

It was supposed to be a cakewalk mission, one of those rare ones where they were just looking to gather information, not a suspect or suspects.  It was supposed to be safe.  He was supposed to have come home.

But he didn’t.

And neither had Sonya six years prior.

Liam, Luke and Sonya had been inseparable since they were five.

And now it was just him.

Well...him and Lily.

Sonya had been the one to recognize that Luke and Liam were attracted to each other before they even did, teasing them when they were seven about the way they looked at each other and how they were always hugging.  ‘You like each other,” she had singsonged as she danced around the yard.

.  And she called them out on it when they were all twelve, telling them ‘would you two just kiss and get it over with?’

They did, right in front of her and it had been a totally defining moment…for all of them.

Liam and Luke had realized that they were definitely gay.

Sonya had realized that she wasn’t anything, that she didn’t care about boys or girls or kissing or anything like that.  All she cared about were video games.

After several more years and some online research, she announced to Liam and Luke that she was asexual and that she was a-ok with that.  It had been another defining moment for all of them.

They’d joined the Army together, all joining the Stryker brigade combat team but with Sonya being forward support infantry in the support battalion while Luke and Liam joined the brigade engineer battalion as part of the Military Intelligence Company.

They kept in touch throughout their first deployment and managed to all get the same time off together.  They spent it at the lake house that Luke had inherited from his parents when they had passed away.  That was where the first kernel of the idea of Sonya being a surrogate for them came about after a long night of drinking.  Sonya had suddenly blurted you two should have a baby!

Luke had snorted, don’t think medical research has caught up enough for that to happen.

Sure, it has, with a surrogate, Sonya said.

Surrogates are hard to come by.  Are you offering? Liam said.

Sure, why not? she said.

Both Luke and Liam had stared at her with their eyes blinking like owls for at least a minute.

You’re not serious, are you? Luke finally whispered.

Sonya had stared down at her hands for a while before she finally whispered, Yeah, I think I am.

Their vacation had ended and they’d all gone back to work but with the seed of a flower now planted in each of their brains…and it was growing.

Luke had researched online.

Liam had sent out inquiries and filled out applications.

And Sonya had found a doctor outside of the military who put her on hormones to increase her egg production.

When Luke and Liam got a few weeks off six months later, they both went to a clinic and jerked off into cups.

Their samples where combined together so neither would know who the actual father was and then it was implanted inside Sonya when she got leave a few weeks later.

She got pregnant with that first try.  Her pregnancy had been a breeze and she delivered Lily with both of them by her side urging her on.

Sonya stuck around for the first month of Lily’s life, insisting that she be Aunt Sonya and never Mom.  Liam who had fully retired, and Luke, who had gone from active duty to reserves, so they could take care of their little girl, had hoped that she would stay around to help them.

But then she walked into the living room one night and showed them her new deployment papers.

Liam’s stomach had plummeted.

He had a bad feeling about it.

He had a bad feeling about all of it.

Four months later, he knew why.

Since they weren’t actual family, Luke and Liam found out through the grapevine that the truck Sonya had been riding in had hit a roadside bomb.  Of the eight people inside, only one had survived.

That survivor was the man currently sitting silently in the wingback chair in the corner of the room, the man who watched everything, the man whose beady eyes stared out from behind scarred skin and he saw….everything.

Lily’s eyes nervously glanced over at Petyr before she took a step closer to Liam.

She knew the man didn’t like having her stay there but Liam had made it crystal clear that the two of them were a package deal.  Where she went, he went.  And even though he knew the man had the power to insist that Liam work alone, or that he could even take Lily away from him and hold her as collateral to ensure that he did what he was told to do, he still capitulated to Liam’s wishes….for now.

“Come on, princess,” he said as he hefted Lily into his arms, “Let’s get you back into bed.”

He started to walk out of the room with her but froze when that voice skittered up his spine like a snake, “I require an update, Murphy.”

Liam clenched his jaw.  He was so done with this shit.  Just when he opened his mouth to say something he knew he’d regret, he felt Lily’s fingers caressing the back of his neck, “It’s okay, Daddy,” she whispered into his ear.

His heart felt like it was going to break in two….

well….fuck that noise. 

His heart was already broken in half.  That had happened the day his husband was killed.  But the sweet angel in his arms somehow managed to keep those two halves beating….barely.

“You’ll have it, Sir.  Two minutes, please?”

His eyes locked with Lily’s and the two of them waited with baited breath for the man’s response.

“Two minutes.”

Liam blew out a breath as Lily dropped her head onto his shoulder.  “Thank you,” he mumbled as he took the stairs two at a time.

This was no life for his little girl.  He had to get her out of here, he had to end this nightmare once and for all.

He just prayed that the man in his basement wasn’t too far gone to figure out that Liam wasn’t trying to hurt him….he was begging Bas for his help.