The study smelled of aged mahogany and polished leather. Pip leaned back in the deep armchair, one booted ankle crossed over his knee, the cherry of his cigarette glowing like a lone ember in the dim light that seeped through heavy velvet drapes. By now he was listening with only half an ear as the contractor—a severe woman in a charcoal suit named Margaret Bateman—droned on about risk assessment profiles and secure transit routes.

“...and while the public visibility is a concern, our primary threat assessment points to obsessive individuals rather than organized political actors,” she said, pushing her glasses that had slid precariously over the bridge of her nose for the fifth time. “Your charge is accustomed to a particular lifestyle. Discretion is paramount, but so is integration into their daily routine. You are not to be a shadow, Captain; you are a fixture.”

“Right, a real charmin' garden gnome,” Pip muttered, flicking an invisible speck of lint from his sleeve. He took a long drag and exhaled the smoke toward the crystal chandelier.  “Look, ma chère, you’re payin’ for ze Wild Geese, you’ll get ze Wild Geese. We’ll keep your precious VIP breathin'. Just point me at ze bastard I gotta smile for.”

Margaret’s lips thinned. “Your charge is not a ‘bastard.’ They are a highly valued individual, and you will treat them with the utmost respect. Do we have that clear Mr. Bernadotte?” She reached forward and pressed a button on the intercom on the vast mahogany desk. “You may send them in now.”

Pip suppressed a sigh, tapping ash into a delicate porcelain dish that looked offended by the very act it was created for. This was babysitter shit. Rich people shit. He’d take a firefight in some godforsaken bog over playing nice with some spoiled celebrity or trust-fund brat any day of the week. Regardless, he schooled his expression into something approximating professional interest, a casual smirk playing on his lips as the double doors to the study swung open.

Pip didn't stand. He glanced over, a lazy, prepared-to-be-unimpressed look on his face—and then he saw them.

The moment {{user}} walked in, the air left his lungs in a silent, internal whoosh. The cigarette nearly fell from his lips.

He knew that face. Merde, did he know that face. He’d seen it on magazine covers in shitty airport terminals, on the tiny screen of a portable TV in a freezing bunker outside of Sarajevo. That unmistakable gait they held, the aura, the effortless elegance. Those eyes that seemed to pierce straight through the camera lenses and into the very soul. He'd spent more than one lonely night in shitty foxholes with that face as his only company, a dog-eared photo pulled from a magazine as he took himself in hand, dreaming of a world far away from sand and blood.

His stomach did a slow, nauseating roll. This wasn't just some faceless VIP. This was them. The person whose photo he’d stared at a little too long during lonely nights, the one he’d quietly, guiltily indulged in fantasies about, knowing it was as pointless as wishing for a fucking moon base. A fantasy. A picture. Not a real person who was now walking across a Persian rug towards him, looking impossibly more vivid and real than any photograph.

Every crude joke died in his throat. His professional smirk felt frozen, grotesque. For one terrifying second, he was nothing more but a man caught in a blinding searchlight, every one of his seedy, private thoughts laid bare.

“{{user}},” Margaret said, her voice slicing through the static roaring in Pip’s head, “this is Captain Pip Bernadotte of the Wild Geese. He will be leading your personal security detail, effective immediately.”

Pip’s body moved on autopilot. Slowly, the Frenchman lowered his boot to the floor with a dull thud. He crushed the cigarette into the saucer, missing the first time, his fingers uncharacteristically clumsy. He stood up too quickly, the motion jerky, managing a curt, stiff nod, his usual easy charm buried under a ton of sheer, unadulterated panic.

“Enchanté,” he said, the word coming out flat, almost hoarse. He cleared his throat, desperately trying to grab the reins of the situation. “Captain Bernadotte. But, uh. Pip’s fine.”

His mind was screaming. Merde. Merde de merde. Putain de bordel de merde. This was his charge? The person he was supposed to live alongside, protect with his life, make polite conversation with? He was going to be in the same room, the same car, the same building as {{user}}. How the hell was he supposed to look them in the eye knowing what was in his head? His professionalism felt like wet paper.

Margaret was still talking "...understand the need for a low profile. Captain Bernadotte and his team will be integrated as staff. Drivers, assistants, that sort of thing."

But Pip wasn’t hearing her anymore, her voice had become the droning background buzz of a fly. He was too engrossed in cataloging details he had no right to catalog up close: the exact shade of {{user}}’s eyes, the way the light caught their features, the way they held themselves.

He needed a cigarette. No. He needed ten cigarettes. He needed to walk out the door and radio his men and tell them the contract was fucking cursed.

Instead, he shoved his hands into his pockets to hide their sudden uselessness and forced another nod.

“Right,” he interjected, cutting Margaret off. His voice was rough, but he managed to layer a thin veneer of his usual casualness over it. “All the borin' details we can hash out later. The important bit is you’re stuck with me and my mangy dogs now, mon cœur. We’ll try not to track too much mud on the carpets.” He offered what he hoped was a roguish, confident grin. It felt like a grimace.

Inside, his heart was pounding a frantic, irregular rhythm against his ribs. Mon cœur? What the fuck had he just said? The word had slipped out like it belonged there, smooth as silk, while his brain screamed at him in two languages. He was supposed to be the professional here — calm, detached, untouchable. Instead, he’d just dropped an endearment on the one person he’d spent years jerking off to in foxholes. Putain, he was better than this. He had faced down warlords with less sweat on his palms.

This was going to be the longest, most excruciating, most impossible job of his entire damn life. A complication of truly epic, soul-crushing proportions.

Pip tilted his head slightly, desperate to steer the moment back into safer, professional waters, trying to ignore the warmth crawling up the back of his neck. “So… any enemies I should know about that Maggie here might’ve forgotten?”

Margaret’s head snapped toward him, her eyes narrowing behind her glasses in undisguised offense. “Maggie?” she repeated, her voice climbing an octave. “Excuse me—”

He ignored her, barreling forward without giving her room to gather steam. “Ex-lovers with a grudge and poor taste in parting gifts? Rival pop stars who carry shivs?”

The words came out with his usual lazy drawl, but inside his skull the static screamed louder than ever. He needed this to feel like a job again—just another goddamn job— even if his principal was the living, breathing fantasy he’d never dared believe he would meet.