salute [h.s]

they say it's your birthday

Birthdays were not a thing that Harry Styles thought much about anymore — not other people's and certainly not his own. There came a point in everyone's twenties where they stopped wanting birthdays and wished instead that time could freeze and preserve the youth and vivacity of being that specific age. Harry had hit that wall somewhere around 24. It was a good year for him. He'd been highest ranking junior agent for a while and Eleanor had just come to him with the offer of starting up a black ops group with Liam who happened to be one of his mates from uni and was some sort of weapons genius now. He'd been on top of the world.

Since then, birthdays had come and gone with very little pomp and circumstance. He hadn't been home for a birthday in at least three years which meant he was usually making delicate deals or running for his life somewhere halfway across the world. It makes it hard to stop and count down the seconds until another year has passed, especially considering that birthdays were sort of just an empty ceremony. He didn't feel any different before and after so why should he make a big deal about it?

It just reminded him that he was getting closer and closer to the average life span of field agents in the SIS. It also reminded him of all the other more important birthdays he was forced to miss. It was better just not to think about it at all.

The only reason that his birthday even came to mind was that the big display of international clocks on the wall of the arrivals terminal was showing the date in big red letters. February 1st. He was 29 today.

He had a brief moment where he thought about that fact and about what it meant. He would be 30 in one short year. Back in uni, he'd thought his life would look a lot different by 30 and there were lots of things he hadn't done yet. Then again, he'd done things he'd never dreamed of. He'd travelled the world. He'd won medals. He'd made some amazing friends. And he had a proper girlfriend — of all the things on that list, that was the one he'd never thought he would have. Something about that made it even sweeter.

That was about the extent of his thoughts on his birthday. There was no use dwelling on it. It wasn't going to change the fact that he'd just spent nearly a day in planes and airports getting home from Osaka, or that he still needed to go back to Vauxhall to do a debriefing, or that he was absolutely exhausted. And anyways, there was only about a half hour left in his birthday. There was no point getting all worked up for nothing.

He'd done his last mission on behalf of the British Army rather than independently out of the SIS so there were not one but three soldiers waiting for him when he walked out into the open area of arrivals at Wattisham airfield. They crowded him immediately upon seeing him exiting the terminal and each saluted him when he approached.

"Sir, it's good to see you safe at home," one of them chirped off as they kept step beside Harry. He could tell that it was a formality and that the soldier didn't care who Harry was or how he felt as long as he cooperated with military procedures and did as he was told. "We have a car waiting to take you back to Vauxhall Cross where your debriefing will take place."

"I figured you would," Harry grumbled back as they walked through the sparse crowd in arrivals. Seeing as it was an army airbase, there were far fewer people waiting around for loved ones but two other flights from various British military outposts were due to arrive that night. Harry glanced around at the wives and husbands waiting for their spouses to come home, children waiting for parents, parents waiting for children. There was a lot of love in the room.

At first he thought he was imagining the red hair sticking out in the crowd, that his eyes were playing tricks because it had been nearly a week and he missed her so much. Then the woman turned and Harry had absolutely no doubt that it was his girlfriend — those were her bright eyes and her rosy cheeks and her wide grin. It was unmistakably Piper and Harry began to laugh as he switched directions and headed straight for her. He ignored the feet scrambling to catch up and the soldiers calling his name and focused on the way Piper's whole body seemed to perk up at the sight of him.