When they finally crashed over the edge together, it was with a kind of surrender that neither of them had truly allowed before.
After, tangled and breathless, Eli lay half draped over Marsh’s chest, fingers drawing lazy shapes over his skin.Marsh drawing lazy patterns against Eli’s back.
The silence stretched comfortably between them until Marsh exhaled slowly.
“You scared the hell out of me,” Marsh whispered.
“You scared me right back,” Eli replied.
Marsh smirked but it didn’t reach his eyes.“I had this moment ...when I saw that bastard’s hand on your face, when I knew he’d hit you.Something in me—snapped.I wasn’t a soldier then.I wasn’t even a man.I was something else.A storm.And I would’ve destroyed anything that got between us.”
Eli kissed the edge of his jaw, lips gentle.“You didn’t destroy.You saved.”
Marsh cupped Eli’s cheek.“It’s changed me.Being with you, loving you.It’s grounded me.Gave me purpose beyond the mission.Made me want things I never thought I could have.”
Eli nuzzled into the touch.“And now you have them.”
They laughed softly together before Marsh grew serious again.
“Promise me something,” he said.
“Anything.”
“That no matter what comes next, we always meet it together.That we always hold the line.”He heard the emotion in his own voice.
Eli’s voice was firm.“I promise.”
They fell into silence again, but it was the comfortable kind, saturated with everything they didn’t need to say.Marsh let his fingertips dance lightly along Eli’s spine, tracing each vertebra with reverence.
“You know,” Eli said after a while, “there were moments in that lab where I could barely breathe.Watching you all fighting, risking your lives, waiting for someone to answer comms—every second felt like a lifetime.”
Marsh looked down at him, eyes dark with emotion.“I know.I felt it, too.”
Eli pressed an open mouth kiss against Marsh’s chest that had his heart beating just that little bit faster.“I knew when the Colonel took me, that you would come for me.You always do.”
Marsh rolled them gently, so Eli was beneath him, not to reignite the fire between them—though it simmered always—but just to see him, all of him, in the golden spill of moonlight.“That’s what love is, isn’t it?Showing up.Especially when it hurts.Especially when it’s hard.”
Eli pulled him down into a slow, lingering kiss.“Then we’ve got the real thing.”
And for a while longer, they didn’t speak.They simply lay together, bodies entwined, hearts thudding the same steady rhythm.Marsh pressed a kiss to Eli’s temple.
“Whatever comes next,” he murmured, more to himself than to Eli, “I’m ready for it.Because I’ve got you.”
Eli’s hand found his and squeezed.“Always.”
They drifted toward sleep, wrapped in warmth and each other.
Marsh closed his eyes and whispered into the stillness, “Hold the line.”
And Eli, already halfway to dreaming, whispered it back.
“Hold the line.”
Together.
