Chapter Twenty-Nine

Xander glanced at the file in front of him, memorizing all the information inside. It was a simple sting, in and out, no kids on site, but the man he was going after was a vile creature. Kent Jenkins was a seventy-year-old with a history of child abuse that started in his early twenties. How the guy wasn't sitting in a prison cell was beyond him. If anyone should be locked up, it was this man. His criminal history was a mile long and got progressively worse with his age.

Kent was the center of one of the largest photo exchanges STK had ever seen. Where Kent was getting the photos was unknown, but almost nightly he would post several hundred photographs to the dark web, and many of the children were recently missing.

Carter and Matt were digging hard to find his sources, hopefully leading them to the location of the children, but one thing was for sure, they needed to put a stop to what Kent was doing before he gained even more fame in the midst of the dark web and the disgusting creatures who lurked there.

"When you going in?" Bryon asked as he sat down beside Xander.

"Shouldn't you be telling me?" Xander glanced over, wondering what Bryon was up to. None of them ever went in without the rest of the team ready.

"I haven't talked to Carter or Matt. Wasn't sure how close they are."

Bryon twisted the cap on his water bottle.

"I'm guessing tomorrow or the next day." Xander tapped the file with his finger. "The guy is on blood thinners. It could be dangerous."

"You saying you don't think we should go in?" Bryon asked.

"No, I think we should, but I'm going to have to work fast, and with his age and medical issues, there is no telling if he'll recover from this." The thought of the man dying didn't bother Xander, but the team needed to be careful that they didn't get a reputation as murderers. That wasn't what they were about. Deaths happened. They all had had a sting go bad, but they tried hard to keep the death toll down. That wasn't what the team was about.

Bryon nodded. "So, we need to talk."

Xander sighed. He'd been waiting for this. He gave Bryon an exasperated look. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

"You know the rules about dating team members." Bryon stared at him.

Xander rolled his eyes. "We'll be okay. We don't really work together.

It's not like I'm dating Dyson or Kasey. Matt and I exchange information.

Our paths don't cross. I could see worrying about it if I was dating Dyson, but Matt's in the office."

"It's the rules." Bryon tried to sound authoritative.

"So, you're going to quit seeing Becca?"

"Who says—"

"We all know, Bry. Anyone who has eyes sees the way you two look at each other. We know she spends the night here from time to time, and funny how the guest rooms are never used on those nights." Xander wasn't going to be called out for something when Bryon was breaking the same rules.

"It's different," Bryon objected.

At least he wasn't denying it. "How?"

"She isn't here all the time."

"Neither am I."

"But she's…" Bryon shook his head. "You're right. It's not different."

Xander smiled, inwardly enjoying that he had put Bryon in his place.

"What's the issue with Matt and me dating? We keep it professional when we have to. I'm not pulling him off the computers and doing him up against the wall. He doesn't distract me from the stings. If anything, he gets the rough end of the deal having to sit here and wait for me to check in every night I go out. If we want to spend our nights together, what does that hurt the team?"

"I just don't want anyone distracted."

"We're professionals. Most of us have done this for years. We aren't thinking about what we had for dinner or where we're going on our next date when we walk into a sting. We are focused on what we are there to do.

The kids come first, they always have and always will. Every single one of us would give our lives to save the kids. We put our lives on the line each time we go into a sting, or when you guys hack a computer. We all know we could end up in prison for a long time, yet we do it. If I'm not professional enough to stay focused and do the job right, then I don't belong on this team." Xander stood. "You handle this how you want, but I'm not making a choice here. I won't choose the job over Matt or Matt over the job. You

make that call and let me know if I still have a job." He hurried out the door to his car, pissed off that the conversation even had to come up.

By the time he got home, he was still mad. He was sure Bryon wouldn't fire him, but the fact that he was dating Becca, yet thought he could tell everyone else not to date within the team, rubbed him wrong.

"Didn't expect you home so soon." Matt stood in the kitchen, emptying the dishwasher.

"Had a fight with Bryon. Faith with her grandma?" Xander came over, wrapping his arms around Matt and kissing him softly.

Living together had been easier than Xander thought it would be.

Having Matt and Faith around hadn't disrupted his life like he thought it might. In fact, it added to it. He loved hearing their laughter and watching them interact with each other. He loved how Faith had made herself at home, even going as far as decorating her new bedroom by helping Matt and him paint her walls with zebra stripes.

Matt didn't know it, but it was one of the ways Faith was learning to stop her panic attacks and recover from her bad dreams. She would count the stripes. It started with just her stuffed animal, but she'd told Xander she needed more, so they'd come up with the idea to paint stripes across her walls. With her love for zebras, Matt never thought anything about it.

"She is. They're having fun. Called about an hour ago." He brushed his fingers down Xander's cheek. "I figured that a fight was coming. I thought Bryon might come to me first." Matt sighed. "What did he say?"

"That we were a distraction to each other and it wasn't good for the team."

"But we don't work together."

"That's what I said, then he said it didn't matter, and I brought up how he's seeing Becca, and that was no different. I think he'll back off now, but I left the choice to him. I told him I wasn't going to stop seeing you, and it was up to him if he kicked me off the team because of it," Xander told him.

"He won't kick you off the team. You, Dyson, and Kasey do all the dirty work none of us want to do. It's not like you're easily replaced. The demand for what we do increases, he can't cut a man from the team and keep up the pace we do." Matt tugged him close. "I'm sorry I've caused problems."

Xander shook his head. "You didn't cause this. Neither one of us expected this to turn in to what it has." He cupped his hand against Matt's

cheek. "There are some things we need to talk about though."

Matt tensed. "You want us to leave, don't you? It's too much having us here?"

Xander shook his head. "No, I don't want you to leave. In fact, I've never enjoyed being home more since you've come to live with me." He kissed Matt softly. "Leave the dishes for later. Let's go sit down." He linked their hands and gently tugged him to the couch.

"What's up? You have me nervous."

"It's about something Faith said to me. I didn't know how to respond."

Xander released Matt's hand and tugged on his beard, trying to think of how to start the conversation.

"Stop that." Matt swatted Xander's hand from his beard. "You do that when you're nervous."

"I do?" Xander laughed. "I never thought about it before." He released his beard and tried to relax with his hands on his lap.

"What did Faith say?" Matt turned to him.

"She asked me if I was going to be her other daddy." Xander reached for his beard, but stopped himself before he gripped it.

Matt's mouth opened, and he made a gargled sound, then shut it again.

His eyes were wide as he shook his head. "Wow, I didn't expect that."

"Yeah, me neither. I told her I cared about you and I would always be part of her life, but that me being her daddy was something that you and I would figure out in the future." Xander gripped his beard again. "Fuck, that sounded wrong. I don't want you to think that I plan on us—"

"No, I understand. You were talking to Faith. You had to say something. I just never expected this from her."

"We can't blame her. Since she came home, she's seen us together and learned to lean on us to get her through the bad days. We can't blame her for wanting it to last. It's just that you and I have never really talked about what we are to each other. It started out as just casual sex, but it's morphed into…." He shrugged. "I don't know what we are now."

Matt stared at him. "What do you want to be?"

Xander ran his hand over his beard, moving it from the bottom back to right under his chin, then sliding his fist down it again. "I don't know. I mean, I'm not the domestic kind of guy. I don't know how to be a family man."

Matt laughed. "What do you think you've been doing for the last few weeks?"

Xander swallowed hard. "I could go to prison at any moment. How can I be a good father when I could get arrested any night I go to work?"

"And I couldn't be? I'm hacking into systems." Matt sighed. "That is the hardest part for me. If I ever got caught, I'd lose Faith."

"We wouldn't let that happen." Xander didn't know how he'd stop it, but he'd take the blame for everything to keep Matt safe. "Besides, you'd probably be offered a job for the government hacking for them instead of serving any time. They love people with minds like yours."

"Still, it scares me, but I don't want to stop. We do too much good."

Xander nodded. "We do."

Matt rubbed his hands down his pant legs. "You sound like you don't want anything long-term between us. If that's true, then it's okay, but you're right, for Faith's sake, we should figure out what we are doing. It's not fair for her to hope that—"

"I don't know what I want. She freaked me out when she asked, and my first thought was to panic and a million reasons why we wouldn't work went through my mind. I mean, she said she didn't want to move, she liked living here, and I actually thought about giving you the house and getting a new place for me to avoid thinking of us having a future. But then I had a couple of days to think about it, and I realized, we already are pretty much doing the married thing. We might not have said the words, signed the paper, but in every way that matters, we act married. So that forced me to think about my feelings, which is something I've never been good at. I've always stayed away from relationships. Until you, I'd meet someone, spend a night or even a few hours at their place, and move on. Until you, I never had another man in my bed." Xander stood, needing to think. He started to pace the living room. "But now, the thought of you and Faith not being here, the thought of being here alone, I don't like it."

Matt nodded.

Xander leaned against the wall, staring at Matt. "What I feel doesn't matter. What do you feel? What do you want?"

Matt sat silent for a moment, and Xander was sure he wasn't going to like whatever Matt was going to say. He braced himself for the worst.

"When I lost Jill, I never thought I'd want to be serious with anyone again. My focus was on being everything Faith needed. I was so worried

about being there for her, that I forgot that I had needs too. It was after Faith was taken, when you suddenly appeared in my life, that I realized I needed someone there. I needed someone to lean on, to help get me through the bad days, to make me laugh. Then she came home, and I thought I'd be okay, but I needed you more then. I didn't know how to react to her, but you, you have a way with Faith that I'll never understand. When I couldn't be enough for her, you were."

Xander stepped forward, kneeling in front of Matt. He really needed to tell Matt about his past, but now wasn't the time. "You are always enough for her. Don't you ever think differently."

"I might have been, but you made it easier, you connect with her in a way I can't. You and her share something that I don't have with her. You make her smile when I can't. It wasn't until you started talking to her that she'd sleep alone. She started opening up more. She would sit alone with you and not anyone else." Matt smiled weakly. "It's a good thing. It might be hard at times for me to understand, but you are what Faith needs, just as much as you're what I need."

Xander braced his hands on Matt's leg. "So, we have to make a choice here."

Matt nodded. "I don't want you to feel pressured because Faith wants us together."

"I know, but that's kind of impossible. I have to think about what her reaction would be if we ended things. How it might hurt her."

Matt looked up. "It would hurt me."

Xander leaned in, resting his forehead on Matt's shoulder. "It would hurt me too."

Matt wrapped his arms around Xander's head, kissing the top of it. "So, are you saying you want to work for a future? I'm not saying you have to be Faith's daddy now, I don't think any of us are ready for that yet, but can we make what we have a little more official?"

Xander lifted his head. "I'd like that. Maybe you can quit house hunting and we can make living together permanent?"

"Are you sure?"

Xander laughed. "Don't make me think about it because I'll panic, but yes, it's what I want, even if my mind keeps telling me it's not. I can't imagine living here now without the two of you."

"If you change your mind, panic, or whatever, you'll say something? I never want you to feel trapped."

"The same with you."

"Fair enough." Matt reached over and gripped Xander's beard in his fist. "I know I should have said this to begin with, but I guess, like you, I was scared, but I do love you."

Xander smiled, closing his eyes as he got used to the way the words felt. When he opened his eyes and looked into Matt's, he was sure of his response. "I love you too." He pulled Matt to him, holding him tight.

After several silent moment's Matt pulled back. "So, Faith is gone for a few more hours, and there's still several rooms in the house we haven't broken in yet." He wiggled his eyebrows.

Xander didn't have to be asked twice. With his arms around Matt's waist, he pulled him forward, figuring the living room was the perfect place to start.

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