salute [h.s]

and i'll be all right as long as you are

the five times that an accident caused undue pain and kisses and cuddling made the best medicine

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1.

"Which way?"

"Give me a second," Piper shouted back, short for breath. She was running faster than she was really capable of trying to keep up with Harry in front of her. At the same time, she was trying to get a GPS program started up on the shoddy tablet that the Spanish Secret Service had supplied them with at the start of the mission. It just kept spitting out command prompts in Spanish, a language she only had a small grasp on.

"We don't have a second!" Harry looked over his shoulder at her, his face drawn and stern.

"Keep your bloody pants on," Piper snapped. Shouting wasn't going to get them anywhere.

She banged on the screen of the tablet, willing it to come to life and she practically jumped for joy when it began to draw out a recognizable schematic map of the area. It registered her and Harry as static dots as it loaded, the signals of their earpieces being picked up by the satellite, and then showed the members of the Alvarez cartel that were coming from behind and from a street on the left. Piper scanned the map for a safe place to stop.

"Right, Two!" she called out when Harry was close to the intersection. He veered left a bit so he could make the sharp turn without slowing down. Just as he disappeared from sight, the navigation compass came up on the top of the map and Piper realized her mistake. It was showing the image upside down.

"No, no!" she yelled at the top of her lungs as she approached the intersection herself. "No, left. Two, go left!"

When she skidded to a stop in the intersection of the two small streets, she realized that her yelling had been for nothing. Harry was quite aware of the fact that he'd gone the wrong way, judging by the way he was bolting back toward the intersection, at least ten men gaining speed as they ran from the other direction. When he caught sight of her standing still in the intersection, he began waving his free hand frantically, shouting "Go, go, go!"

Piper's feet were stuck in place and she watched with wide eyes as the mob hurtled toward them. She caught sight of movement as one of them lifted a gun. "Two! Duck!"

Harry didn't hesitate a second and it was good that his instincts were so lined up with hers or else the two bullets that whizzed over his shoulder would have been planted right in his heart. He stumbled a bit as he struggled to gain his balance and then began waving frantically to Piper. "For Christ's sake, go!"

Piper took a half turn, her feet already following Harry's directions and by the time he was level with her, she was running at a good speed. Just not good enough for Harry who took her hand in his and yanked her along behind him. They ran as fast as their feet could carry them for a long time, neither of them worried about where they were going as much as just going.