“That was only the warmup?!” Ben shouted with what felt like his last breath. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“Hopefully the opposite,” Evan said.

Ben staggered after him to the opposite side of the Merchant City gym, past fit and sweaty men he was already too exhausted to admire. As he walked, he tried to subtly adjust his athletic cup, a foreign-feeling device he’d not worn in years.

His first mistake had been asking Evan whether MI5 had trained him to kill grown men with just his pinky fingers. In response, Evan had sung the praises of Krav Maga, developed for the Israeli Defense Forces, who needed a fighting technique that could be quickly mastered by people of all sizes, genders, and fitness levels.

Ben’s second mistake was saying that that claim sounded like rubbish.

Now here he was, making what was likely his final mistake: letting his boyfriend give him a lesson in “aggressive survival.”

Evan found a clear space on a blue mat near the wall. “We’ll start with the basic fighting stance.” He demonstrated, one foot in front of the other at shoulder width, hands nearly level with his face—the left one out to protect and the right one held back ready to strike. “Don’t be flat-footed. Stay on the balls of your feet.”

“Stay on the balls. Got it.” Ben imitated his stance. “Like this?”

“That’s great.”

“I did it right the first time?”

“It’s not ballroom dancing. There’s no points for precision. Next we’ll do palm strikes.”

Ben followed his movements, smacking the air with the heel of his hand, then pulling back to do it again.

“Keep your balance,” Evan said. “Don’t overextend.” He stepped close and raised Ben’s left hand back into position. “And never, ever drop your guard.”

After Ben gave a few more practice strikes, Evan picked up a blue vinyl pad from a pile beside the wall. He tossed it to Ben. “Hold that by the side handles, up against your chest, nice and straight.”

The pad looked like a punch bag the size and shape of an orthopedic pillow. “Do we hit each other with these?”

Evan laughed. “No, we just hit them.”

Ben took a step back. “You’re going to hit me?”

“Not you, the bag.”

“But I’m holding the bag.”

“Not quite.” He stepped forward and placed Ben’s bag flush against his chest. “Put your feet in fighting stance to help you absorb the impact. Tuck your chin so you don’t get whiplash.”

Whiplash?! Ben lowered the bag. “Are you sure I can—”

“I won’t hit hard. But I will do it right, so you can feel what it’s like.” He stepped closer. “One of the most important things you learn in Krav Maga is that getting hit is not the end of the world.”

“Not for someone like you.” Ben thought of all the times Evan had ended up on his arse during last Saturday’s match.

“Not for anyone.” Evan touched his arm. “It’s in all of us to be strong and fierce. One of the best fighters in my class is a sixty-year-old woman with arthritis. If she can do it…”

“Fine, fine.” Ben raised the bag the way he’d been shown, then set his feet and tucked his chin. “Okay, I’m—”

Evan struck the bag with a “Hunh!”

“Whoa.” Ben tottered back, blinking hard. Then his adrenaline spiked, and he reset his stance. “Do it again.”

“Hunh!” Evan’s blow came harder this time, but Ben held firm. He could feel the momentum, like Evan was trying to hit through him.

After a few more strikes, Evan said, “Got the idea?”

“Oh yeah.” He shoved the bag into Evan’s arms. “Let’s do this.” With his aversion to violence, Ben had been dreading landing an actual hit, but after being on the receiving end, it was all he wanted.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

Ben lashed out, smacking the bag with all the force of a toddler patting a brick wall. “That was shite.”

“It was fine. But move a peedie bit closer to me so I get the full force. And put your hip into it. The strike should come from your whole body, not just your arm. And though it may feel silly at first, it helps to yell.”

Ben tried again, shouting “Hah!” as his hand flashed out. It made a satisfying thwack against the bag. “Wow!” He dropped his arms. “That felt—”

Evan bashed the bag against his chest. Ben toppled backward, sprawling onto the mat.

He stared up at Evan. “I can’t believe you just—”

“A real-life attacker won’t stand there while you celebrate landing a blow. And he’ll do a lot more than put you on your arse.” He reached out a hand to help him up.

Ben rolled away and got to his feet on his own. “If I take a class, will they teach me how to do that to you?”

“If not, then ask for a refund.”

They continued with palm strikes, Evan urging Ben on as he landed blow after blow. Then he taught him four combinations, calling them out by number for Ben to strike.

While they took a hydration break, Ben leaned against the wall, willing his heart to keep beating. “Will I be able to move tomorrow?”

“Sure.” Evan wiped the back of his neck with a towel. “But probably not the day after.”

“It’s worth it, though?”

Evan nodded. “The best thing about Krav Maga is what it does for your confidence. You don’t become fearless, because that’s stupid, but you learn you’re a lot stronger than you think.”

“That’s not saying much, as I think I’m pretty weak.”

“Most of that confidence has nothing to do with actual fighting,” Evan continued, ignoring Ben’s self-insult. “When I’m out on the pitch and a opponent’s fan calls me names, I take comfort knowing I could put them on their knees in about five seconds, bleeding from at least two orifices.”

“Oh.” Ben was almost ashamed at the thrill that coursed through him. Almost.

Evan tossed the towel aside. “Ready for punches?”

Ben made a fist. “Promise I’ll still be able to give hand jobs after?”

“Not if you do that.” He unfolded Ben’s hand, then refolded it with his thumb on the outside instead of the inside. “There, now you won’t break your thumb.”

Ben examined his newly configured fist. It felt awkward and small and incapable of damage. “We don’t use gloves?”

“Some people use them to keep their knuckles from getting bruised or cut. I’ll wrap my hands for a long session with the bag, but mostly I like to train the way I’d fight in real life, blocking out the pain as I go.”

Ben rolled his eyes. “Great.”

They began again. Now the bag felt like it contained bricks instead of padding. Ben kept going, trying not to wince, vowing to invest in the thickest pair of gloves he could find.

After that, Evan taught him how to break free of a choke hold from the front, an exercise they did in slow motion so no one’s balls got kicked.

“Almost finished,” Evan said. “That means it’s time for an adversity drill.”

Ben clapped his hands. “Sounds fun!” he said, meaning the opposite.

“You’ll do continuous straight punches on the bag.” Evan held it up to his chest. “When I say, ‘down,’ you drop to the floor and do press-ups.”

“More press-ups?” They’d started with those at the beginning of the session, and Ben had barely managed three.

“Then when I say, ‘up,’ you jump up and start punching again. We’ll do this a few times until I say ‘stop.’”

“That sounds like torture.”

“It’ll feel like it, too. But the point isn’t to make you miserable.” Evan lowered the bag. “You need to learn to fight exhausted. A real-life attacker won’t stop just because you’re tired.”

“But if I’m attacked in real life, won’t I be too jacked up on adrenaline to get tired? Like those mothers lifting cars to save their babies?”

“You canna depend on that,” Evan said. “Instinct will tell you to stop when it gets hard. It’ll tell you to stay down when you’re hit, to curl into a ball and beg them to stop.”

Ben’s gut twisted at the image.

“Training helps you override instinct,” Evan said. “It rewires your brain through repetition. You do this here in the gym where it’s safe, and something inside you changes.”

Curious, Ben raised his fists and set his feet. “Let’s do this.”

Evan raised the bag. “Go!”

Ben struck, again and again, knuckles aching. Evan urged him on as he flailed, each punch getting slower and weaker.

“You’re doing it, Ben. You’re fucking brilliant. Now down!”

“Ugh…” Ben sank to the mat. With Evan’s encouragement, he did two more press-ups before being told to get up and start punching again.

Strangely, his blows landed harder this time, though he could barely feel his arms. Streams of sweat stung his eyes.

“Keep your guard up, Ben. And let’s hear your voice.”

“Hah! Huh! Fuh!” Ben could feel spittle mixing with sweat on his chin, but he didn’t care.

“Down!”

He dropped again without wasting a single breath on whingeing. When Evan ordered him up the second time, Ben staggered a bit.

“All right?” Evan asked. “If you’re dizzy, we’ll stop.”

“Not…dizzy.” Ben hit the bag again, harder than ever. “Just…” He couldn’t even find the word. He wanted to stop, needed to stop, every cell in his body was begging him to stop…

And then it happened. Something inside him shifted into survival mode.

I don’t stop. I can’t stop. If I stop, I die.

Panting hard, he pressed forward, driving Evan back toward the wall. His cries became a stew of syllables raining down on the bag with his fists.

Can’t stop until he’s down. Can’t stop until it’s over, even if it takes a hundred years.

“Time!”

Evan’s command reached Ben’s brain a millisecond too late. This time, his fist connected with something that was definitely not a bag.

“Och!” Evan turned away, holding his face.

Ben leapt back, fists raised, pulse pounding in his ears. “Did you say ‘time’?”

“Aye.” Evan’s voice was muffled by his hands.

“Did I just punch you?” He moved forward—cautiously, in case it was a trick.

“A bit.” Evan turned to him, wiping his nose. Blood streaked the back of his hand.

“Oh my God, I broke your face!” He would never forgive himself for ruining such a thing of beauty.

Evan laughed a little. “It’s not broken. I started to dodge when I realized you weren’t stopping. Thank God for reflexes.” He pinched his nose and tilted his head back. “How’d that feel?”

“You were right.” Ben handed him one of the towels, then used the other to wipe what seemed like an inch-deep layer of sweat from his own face. “It was terrible. It was wonderful. It was…like nothing I’ve ever felt before.”

“You’ll take a class, then?”

Ben considered the idea. It was one thing to be awkward and incompetent in front of someone he trusted, and another thing to embarrass himself amidst an entire class of strangers. But he wanted more of this feeling, more of doing something really fucking hard and coming out the other side in one piece.

“Sign me up.”

Evan lay in the semi-darkness of his bedroom, listening to Ben’s breath as it slowly transformed from panting to sighing. Finally it culminated in a laugh so rich and warm, Evan wanted to crawl inside it and wrap it around himself.

“That was…” Ben laughed again. “Never mind. Words fail.”

“Luckily we don’t need words.”

“But they’re so fun.” Ben skated a finger down the center of Evan’s breastbone. “Tell me a secret.”

Evan smiled at the request. This was a classic spy technique, getting people to say things they shouldn’t while drowsing in the hazy aftermath of sex, during those moments when life felt safe.

“I don’t tell secrets, I keep them,” he murmured. “It’s not just my job, it’s my nature.”

Ben gave another soft laugh against Evan’s shoulder, his breath caressing bare skin. “You already told me the biggest secret, about what you do for a living.”

Evan twined his leg with Ben’s, wishing the mere fact of his job really was his biggest secret. “And yet here you are, wanting more.”

“I am.” Ben’s hand began to wander beneath the duvet. “Always.”

“You want to ken something shameful or just embarrassing?”

“Hmmm…neither. Tell me something wonderful.”

Evan thought for a moment. “This secret’s about you.”

“Ooh, so it’s wonderful by default.”

“The night we met at Fergus and John’s wedding, mind on how it snowed and we all had to stay over at Andrew’s castle?”

“Yes! That was such a fun surprise. Although probably not for you. Sorry, go on.”

“Well, I woke at half past six when the grooms left. I heard them in the hallway, and they sounded so…” Perfect. “Couldn’t sleep after that, so I dressed and left my room.” He remembered Dunleven’s eerie stillness, how the castle’s thick carpet had swallowed his footsteps, how the enormous stained-glass window over the grand staircase had turned black, its patterns obscured by the darkness outside. “I went to your room.”

Ben gasped. “Really?”

“I didn’t break in and watch you sleep or anything creepy like that. I just stood outside your door, working up the courage to knock.”

“No courage needed. I would’ve let you in, in a heartbeat. In half a heartbeat.” He snuggled closer. “Imagine us fucking in a castle—and on those million-count linen sheets, my God.”

Evan had imagined it many times. Ben would have opened the door, his hair sleep-mussed, still wearing his dress shirt. In some versions of this fantasy the shirt was buttoned halfway and in others completely undone, but in every version it was off before they reached the bed.

“Why did you decide not to knock?” Ben asked.

“Lots of reasons. One, I wasn’t sure you’d let me in. I reckoned by that time someone—probably Liam—would have told you what I’d done to Fergus. Reason number two: I liked you enough to want to know you better before we started winching.”

“Aw, that’s pure sweet.”

“But in the end, it came down to protocol. I couldn’t risk being intimate with someone I’d just met.” He turned his head to look at Ben’s face in the mini-humidifier’s soft blue light. “The rules are there to protect us both. People like me canna afford to be…” He searched for a word that wouldn’t sound paranoid.

“Spontaneous?”

“Foolish.”

The corners of Ben’s mouth twitched down for a moment, then up again. “But us being together now’s not foolish, right?”

“No, it’s very wise.” Evan kissed Ben’s forehead, inhaling the scent of his hair.

“Do you think things happen for a reason?”

Evan pulled back to look at him. “You mean like a master plan by God or the universe?”

Ben gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Sure.”

“No. I think people tell themselves that to feel better when something bad happens.” He turned onto his back. “I remember when I was a bairn, the day of the Dunblane school shooting, there was this woman on the news. Her son was a pupil there and would’ve been in the gymnasium when…” Evan closed his eyes. “But he’d stayed home ill that day. She was crying, saying God must have spared him for a reason. I was only six at the time, but I thought she was full of it because it meant God killed those other kids for a reason. Now I look back and wonder how her words must have sounded to the grieving parents.”

Ben was silent for a moment. “That was a bleaker answer than I was looking for, but okay.”

“I’m sorry. It’s how my mind works.”

“I get it.” Ben slid a hand over Evan’s chest, his touch soothing now instead of possessive. “Must be depressing to spend all day focused on aspiring terrorists.”

“It does put a dark veil between me and the world. I try to lift that veil when I’m away from the job, but sometimes…”

“It’s too heavy?”

“Aye. It’s hard to walk out of that office and magically forget everything I know about all the people who want to kill us. But I don’t feel depressed. I just feel determined to stop it.”

Especially since last week’s BVP meeting. Evan had been floored by the number of attendees and their reaction to Gunnar, who’d become a right-wing folk hero after his “martyrdom by Mace” at the Value Our Britishness rally.

The more he learned about their leader, David Wallace, the more Evan thought him capable of the attempted framing of Muslims for the planned wedding attacks. David told Evan that Jordan’s “cockamamie wedding scheme” had given him an idea for something “more visionary.”

“Big people are watching us, Gunnar,” David had said. “And they like what they see.”

Here in Evan’s bed, Ben’s gentle squeeze brought him back to the moment. “You can’t stop all the bad things happening.”

“I know.” Evan heard his own defensive tone. “I know,” he repeated, more softly. “It’s part of our training to accept that fact.”

“Wasn’t it some IRA guy who said, ‘The authorities have to be lucky every time. We only have to be lucky once’?”

“And when we prevent an attack, the public never find out. But they always notice when we’ve screwed up.”

“How does that not drive you round the bend?”

“We just do our best and hope our best is enough. And remember that we canna stop terrible things unless we see them. So it’s the price we pay. One of the prices.”

Ben shifted his head on Evan’s shoulder. “At the risk of fawning, I feel safer knowing there are people like you looking out for me.” He pressed his lips to Evan’s collarbone. “You’re a good man.”

Something flipped over inside him. “I’m not a good man.” He touched his fingertips to Ben’s cheek. “But you make me feel like something close.”

Ben just smiled for a moment, then said, “When I asked if you thought things happened for a reason, I was referring to us meeting. It wasn’t likely, was it?”

“You mean because what sort of saddo attends his ex’s wedding?”

“I mean it was unlikely I’d be there. I wasn’t advertising my services at the time. I only knew Fergus and John because I was mates with Robert McKenzie, and I only knew him cos we met on Grindr.”

“Was that really unlikely, though? Your flats are a few streets apart.”

“I was likely to find him,” Ben said, “but not to choose him.” He turned onto his back. “See, he’d used a pecs pic for his profile. I never chat those guys because the chest is rarely theirs. In his case the pic was highly authentic—you’ve seen him, right?”

“Yes, he’s fair fit.”

“My point is, I only chat lads whose profiles show their faces. But for some reason I chatted him, and the rest is history. You and I are together because I broke my cardinal rule for the sake of Robert’s pecs.”

“Wow.” Evan pondered how much less happy he’d be if Ben had swiped left. “While I don’t think everything happens for some divine-destiny reason, I do believe you can make a reason.”

“Like give it your own meaning?”

“Aye, and not just in your head. When something bad happens, you’ve got a choice. You can let it destroy you, or you can survive and maybe one day lead someone else out of the darkness.” He thought of Lord Andrew. “And then maybe your survival made their survival possible too.”

“Oh, like in It’s a Wonderful Life. If George Bailey had never been born, his brother would’ve died in the ice and never grown up to save those sailors.”

“What? Who?”

“That American Christmas film. A guy’s about to top himself when a scruffy-looking angel appears and shows him how terrible the world would’ve been if he’d never been born. Although one could argue that if George hadn’t trash-talked his wee brother into sledding down that hill, the poor wean wouldn’t have fallen through the ice in the first place. Also, I think it would’ve made more sense for the angel to show George the world after his hypothetical suicide. If he’d gone into the future instead of the past, you know?”

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

Ben tittered. “Never mind. I prefer your version of ‘everything happens for a reason.’ It makes me feel less like a chess piece.” He reached over and touched Evan’s forearm. “Also? I’m glad you survived.”

Evan started. “Survived what?”

“You tell me.” Ben’s eyes were gentle and his tone undemanding. “If you can.”

“I can’t.” Evan pushed away the memory. Now wasn’t the time to get lost in the past, not with such a perfect present right here.

He turned on his side and pressed his body against Ben’s, chest to toes. “I can tell you a different secret.”

Ben snuggled closer. “Go on…”

“Here it is.” He slid his hand down Ben’s back, tracing the now-familiar arc of his spine. “Walking away from your door that night was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”

“Was it?” Ben’s voice curled with coyness. “Why?”

“Because I wanted you.” Evan kissed him, imagining it was the first time, that Ben had just opened the door of his castle suite and drawn him close without so much as a hello. “I wanted to drown myself in you. You were new and sweet and I knew you’d make me forget.”

Ben gave a little moan and kissed him back, drawing his thigh over Evan’s hip. “But this is better than drowning, yeah? Better than forgetting?”

“Miles better.”

It was true. Whatever had guided each step in their journeys before the wedding at Dunleven—be it God or the universe or simple blind luck—Evan was grateful to it.

But since that night, he and Ben had made it happen themselves. They’d extinguished the lights above their lives’ diverging paths until they could see only this one, and could walk it only by each other’s side.