“What is it that Dave Malkoff always says:I’m kidding on the square. It means?—”
“I know what it means,” Jules countered. “And it’s Lindsey Jenkins who says it. It means you’re kidding but you’re not really kidding.” He paused. “Please don’t be evenhalfserious about?—”
“Do you remember meeting Alyssa?” Sam interrupted.
Jules blinked because his question seemed to come from out of the blue, but really, it was all connected. And they had time. They’d get there, and this was the best way.
Jules sighed as he realized that Sam was waiting for him to answer. So he squinted a little and sighed again. “Only vaguely,” he admitted. “She was one of the newbies to the DC office. I read her bio before I met her: A recruit, right out of the Navy, former officer—sharpshooter—and I remember thinking she’s gonna have the biggest stick up her butt and I should probably stay far,farfrom that magic. But then she walked in and she was, you know, Black. So I thought,Hmmm.Maybe she’s an ally. But then things got insanely busy. I was working on... a case that I still can’t talk about, and... I was undercover. I bleached my hair, like Spike from Buffy, which was fun. At the time. I was so young. And she was kinda background, like, I was aware of her in the office, but... Her desk was in the corner, as if she wanted to keep her back to the wall, and I remember thinkingSmart move, Ms. Locke.I think we had maybe four conversations, in passing. You know,There’s a fresh pot of coffee, if you want some. God, yes, thanks,kind of stuff. And then I heard—and it was confirmed—that she was going through partners. Just constantly hashtag nope, and I saw who she’d been trial-teamed with—complete walking bags of dicks—and IthoughtThat would be a hard pass from me, too, Ms. Locke.And then I was done with the case and back in the office fulltime and... she asked to be partnered with me. Who the hell requestsme? With the hair, I looked maybe seventeen and, well... Anyway, we met for coffee, and I think that was the first time I looked into her eyes. You know,reallylooked. And I remember thinking,Yes, please.”
Sam hadn’t heard any of that before, and it made him smile.Yes, please. Yeah. He’d had a variation ofYes, please,too when he’d first met Alyssa’s eyes, only his had been sung in twelve-part harmony by a choir of angels. Of course, then he’d opened up his mouth and the idiotic words that fell out screwed things up for him, royally, for years.
“Idoremember my first time meetingyou,” Jules kept going with his reminiscing. “In DC, back when the K-stani ambassador got taken hostage in the bathroom at the embassy...? You had a suite with John Nilsson at the hotel across the street, and your room became an impromptu operation HQ. The senior chief was running the show—Stan Wolchonok. And Ken Karmody was there doing his mad scientist computer hacker thing. And IthinkMike Muldoon was there, too...? Anyway, you come out of the shower and at least you have a towel around your waist, but all these people are huddled in your room, setting up surveillance, which had to be an annoying surprise. Of course you let us know that. I think it was just me—and Alyssa—from the Bureau at that point. Yeah, Max showed up later with Commander Paoletti. Anyway, you put on a pair of shorts and just kinda stopped there, like you were dressed enough. And Alyssa—she always seemed so unflappable—was seriously flapped. I remember thinking,Hmmm, who mightthishandsome young fellow be?And when she asked you to put on a shirt, you got testy for reasons I honestly couldn’t comprehend. All,It’s myroom, I don’t need to wear a shirt if I don’t want to.” He did a damn fine imitation of Sam’s Texas accent. “And I believe thatIsaid?—”
“I don’t have any trouble with it.” Sam said it with Jules.
“At which point, you stomped away and pulled on a shirt,” Jules continued with a laugh. Figures he’d remember that. It had not been Sam’s finest hour. “Because,Oh, the horror of the creeping gay agenda!”
“I was stupidly young then, too,” Sam said.
“I’m pretty sure I never said I wasstupidlyyoung,” Jules pointed out. “You know, it took me a while to figure out that you weren’t a completely lost cause. But when I finally did... I tamed you.”
“Oh, was that what that was?” Sam laughed a little. But yeah, he kinda had to agree. Jules had been exceedingly patient and kind in the early days of their friendship, as he’d gently led Sam away from his juvenile, middle-school-indoctrinated stupid-ass taught-by-his-ignorant-elders homophobia.
Now they sat at Jules’s and Robin’s kitchen table, all these years later, gazing at each other, both aware as hell at how far they’d come—how farhe’dcome—from where they’d started.
“Gonna be fun working with you,” Sam said now, mostly because he knew it would make Jules smile, imagining older Sam time-traveling back to whisper in younger Sam’s shirtless ear:You’re gonna say these words to Jules Cassidy in the future—and mean them with all your heart.“But we kinda went on a little tangent there. I was talking about Alyssa. You know, it took me years to figure out why the hell she was so... well, I thought of it as cold. Distant. But really that was just her trying not to let her anger leak out. Can’t be a Black woman in the Navy or the FBI and be angry all the time, like she rightfully was, forced to deal with all those... bags ofdicks. Took me a while to see it. Why she was angry—whyIshould be angry, too. Life may not be fair, but it should bejust. Freedom and justice for all—how do you say those words and then defineallas the opposite of all? You, you and you, but not you. Or you. What the fuck?”
Jules was watching him with the patience in his eyes that Sam had seen there often over the years.
Sam laughed a little. “Well,youknow.”
“I do,” Jules agreed.
“Our oath of loyalty,” Sam said, leaning in a little for emphasis, “remains to the U.S. Constitution and the American flag we proudly fly—that hasn’t changed. But our republic, for which that flag stands, is the one that you and Alyssa dream of, that you’ve fought so hard to create, even as we watch these motherfuckers try to tear it all down.”
“I get it,” Jules said.
“Do you?” Sam wasn’t sure so he said it point-blank. “You haven’t surrendered, even though right now it feels in your heart like you have. But you’re still here.We’restill here—me and Lys, we’re standing right here beside you. We’re fighting the good fight. Only now, when we get called in to help—and you know we will—you and me and Alyssa too. But now, because you work for Troubleshooters instead of whatever it is that the Bureau’s gonna become, you get to saynoto the assignments that help the fucking Nazis.”
Jules laughed at that. “That is averygood point.”
Sam lifted the glass that held the last few inches of the beer he’d had with his lunch. “To Alyssa’s republic, which we stan.”
Jules laughed again at that, as Sam knew he would, raising his own barely touched glass. “One nation under one god or many gods or no god—player’s choice...”
“Indivisible,” Sam said.
“With liberty and justice for abso-fucking-lutely all.” Jules intentionally used Sam’s favorite word, finishing their version of a loyalty oath. Or maybe it was an anti-insanity oath.
They both drank then, gazes locked in silent understanding. And Sam knew that his words had helped at least a little, but the coming waves of awfulness were going to be unbelievably rough. So he said the only other thing he could say that might help. “I love you.”
Jules nodded and even laughed a little again, no doubt thinking of long-ago, shirtless Sam. “I love you, too.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Jules: Age Seventeen
Connecticut
