salute [h.s]

chapter 13 - anonymous attacker & hurt hips

Piper's phone rang in her pocket and she had to juggle her purse, her gym bag, and her Starbucks refresher so she could fish it out of her pocket. She considered rejecting the call when she saw her mum's name flash across the screen, because she was just so tired and she didn't want to deal with her mum right now, but she'd been avoiding her for days so she figured she had to answer it.

"Hello, mum."

"Hiya, Pips darling. I hope I didn't wake you up."

For God's sake, it was only 10:30. What kind of loser did her mother think she was?

"You didn't wake me, mum," Piper sighed, hiking her gym bag farther up her shoulder and wincing at the burning tug in her deltoids. "I'm actually still on my way home from work."

"From work? Why aren't you at home yet?"

Why wasn't she at home yet? Maybe it was because she had been working her arse off all fucking day and everything had still managed to go to shit. Despite nothing actually being her fault, she'd had to clean up the whole mess.

It had been a hard enough week to start with because Harry was over in the Democratic Republic of Congo, chasing after some mercenary there. As if the political state of that country wasn't worrisome enough, they had tried to close the borders and Harry had very nearly been kept from coming home. He eventually got home Monday and was quickly sequestered by airport officials for Ebola watch, despite the fact that there had been no cases in the DRC in months. She had gotten to speak with him once but other than that it had been pretty radio silent.

She hated to admit it but she missed him. She missed the crap out of him.

Around four this afternoon (four fucking days later), she had gotten a text from him saying they were finally letting him go, and that he was being debriefed. He promised to come by afterward and give her a ride home from work. That had not happened because Piper had been called in to assist on an agent extraction in Turkey which had gone so fucking wrong it was unbelievable. The person who was leading the extraction got their agent shot and Piper had to take over and help the CI who had been with him bring their agent back to safety. It had been the most stressful thing she'd ever done in her life, and that included trying to get Harry out of Moscow alive.

It was nearing ten by the time they finished and all Piper wanted was to go home. Harry had left her a text letting her know he had come by but she had been busy. That's it. No 'how are you doing', no 'are you okay', not even him inviting himself over for a little roll in the sheets. Sometimes, being in a relationship with an agent (if you could even call what they had a relationship) was really annoying.

On top of all that bullshit, she hurt. She had let Harry convince her that starting up a workout plan might be a good idea, which had been all fine and dandy. Her and Harry went for runs in the morning, which she was actually getting better at to the point where she didn't want to vomit by the end of it, and he had also started teaching her some self-defence. That part was really cool – Harry knew some wicked fighting techniques and Piper had felt like the queen of the world the first time she'd managed to pin him. Thinking back, he might have let her pin him. Actually, he probably did. But it was still fucking awesome.

Not so awesome? Mr. Liam Payne. Right now, she was so furious with him that she considered giving him a hard kick to the balls the next time she saw him. The reason that all her muscles were screaming right now was most definitely him and he deserved punishment for how much pain she was in.

Harry, being the blessedly ignorant man he was, had thought that Piper would want to keep training while he was out of the country. She would have much rather spent the extra time catching up on old episodes of Outlander. Apparently not, because Liam had shown up in T branch when Harry usually swung around, claiming that he was going to help her out with her training.