Chapter 179. The Confession Revisited

Dawn in the mountains was a slow, colourless leaching of night. Grey light seeped into the room, revealing the stark lines of the furniture, the immense fur rug like a fallen beast on the stone floor. It revealed the two of them, still entwined on the vast bed, a tangle of limbs and shared warmth in the austere space.

Sabatine woke first, not with a start, but with a gradual, heavy awareness. The nightmare’s chill was a distant memory, overlaid by the profound, grounding heat of Anton’s body against his. Anton was still asleep, his face relaxed, his breathing deep and even. In sleep, the lines of strain and betrayal were smoothed away. He looked younger, softer. Vulnerable.

Sabatine didn’t move. He studied him, this man who had become the axis of his world. He traced with his eyes the dark sweep of lashes against his cheek, the strong line of his nose, the vulnerable curve of his mouth. He remembered the taste of that mouth in the elevator, the desperate heat of it. He remembered the cold fury in the boardroom, the shattered despair in the bunker, the unwavering grip in the dark.

He remembered Anton’s voice, raw with a truth that had shattered Sabatine’s every defence: “I love you, Sabatine Stalker.”

The love in Sabatine’s own chest was no longer a silent, terrifying secret. It was a living, breathing entity, as real and demanding as the man beside him. It had been forged in fire and lies, tempered in betrayal, and solidified in this cold mountain refuge. It wasn’t a quiet affection. It was a roar. It was a tectonic shift.

And it terrified him.

Not because he doubted it. But because of what it meant. To love Anton Rogers was to accept a target on your own back, permanently. It was to tether your survival to others in a world that had proven viciously eager to tear them apart. It was to make himself vulnerable in a way his training, his very life, had taught him was a fatal error.

But the greater terror, the one that had chased him in his dream, was different. It was the fear that loving Anton would be the thing that destroyed Sabatine himself. Not a bullet or a bomb, but the sheer, annihilating force of it. To love this completely was to risk a loss so totally it would unmoor him from reality. He was a man built on control, on solitude as a survival mechanism. This love demanded surrender. It was a demolition of the self he knew.

Anton’s eyelids fluttered. Blue eyes, still hazy with sleep, focused on Sabatine’s face. A slow, soft smile touched his lips, a private sunrise. “You’re thinking too loud,” he murmured, his voice sleep-roughened.

Sabatine didn’t smile back. The weight of the confession was a stone on his tongue. He had to give it voice. Now, in the cold, clear light of the mountain morning, with no lies between them.

“Anton,” he began, his own voice sounding strange.

Anton’s smile faded. He saw the seriousness in Sabatine’s eyes. He shifted, propping himself up on an elbow, his gaze intent. “What is it?”

Sabatine took a shaky breath. He looked away, at the immense, indifferent peaks outside the window, gathering courage. “That night. When you told me… what you felt.” He forced himself to meet Anton’s eyes. “I feel it too.”

He saw the hope blaze in Anton’s gaze, fierce and bright. But Sabatine pressed on, needing to say it all, to lay the fear bare beside the love.

“I love you,” he whispered, the words feeling both monumental and utterly insufficient. “I’m in love with you. It’s not… it’s not a choice. It just is. Like gravity.”

Anton’s breath caught. He reached out, his hand cupping Sabatine’s cheek. “Sabe…”

“But I’m afraid,” Sabatine rushed on, the words tumbling out now, raw and unfiltered. “I’m not afraid of the world coming for you. I’ll stand against all of it. I’m afraid that loving you… that this…” he gestured weakly between them, “…will destroy me. The me that I know. The one who survives by being alone, by being hard. This love… It's so big. It requires a different person. A person I don’t know how to be. And I’m scared that in trying to be him, I’ll break. That I’ll fail you. That the fear of losing you will become a poison that ruins what we have.”

He was laid bare, more vulnerable than he’d ever been on any operating table or in any interrogation room. He was confessing that the very thing he wanted most was the thing he feared would be his end.

Anton listened, his expression shifting from joy to a deep, pained understanding. He didn’t dismiss the fear. He didn’t offer easy reassurance. He absorbed it, his thumb stroking Sabatine’s cheekbone.

When Sabatine fell silent, trembling with the effort, Anton was quiet for a long moment. The only sound was the eternal wind.

“You think I’m not afraid?” Anton asked softly. “You think I don’t lie awake and fear that my love for you is a catastrophic liability? That my need for you is a weakness my enemies can exploit? That in pulling you into my world, I’ve sentenced you to a life under siege?” He shook his head, his eyes burning with a fierce, tender light. “I am terrified, Sabatine. Every day.”

He leaned closer, his forehead touching Sabatine’s. “But my fear isn’t that love will destroy me. My fear is of a world where I didn’t have the courage to love you. Where I chose the safe, empty fortress over the dangerous, living heart.” He pulled back just enough to look into Sabatine’s eyes. “You talk about the you that survives by being alone. That man was already broken. He was a ghost. A brilliant, honourable ghost, but a ghost nonetheless. I don’t want that man. I want a man who is brave enough to be broken open. By love. By me.”

His hand slid to the back of Sabatine’s neck, holding him firmly. “You say loving me might destroy you. Then we won’t let it. We’ll destroy the fear instead. Not by ignoring it, but by facing it. Together. We’ll weaponize it. We’ll use this love as our intelligence—the one thing our enemies can’t predict, can’t quantify, can’t corrupt. They think love is a weakness. Let’s prove them wrong. Let’s make it our fortress.”

He kissed him then. Not a kiss of passion, but of covenant. It was firm, lingering, a seal on the promise. When he broke away, his voice was a low, unwavering vow. “I love you. And I am not asking you to stop being the survivor, the strategist, the soldier. I’m asking you to let those parts of you defend this one, new, precious thing. To let me be the thing you fight for, not just the person you fight beside.”

The confession, revisited, was now complete. Sabatine had offered his love and his deepest fear. Anton had accepted both and reframed the war. The enemy wasn’t the love; it was the fear of it. And they would fight that enemy as they fought all others—together, with ruthless strategy and unwavering loyalty.

Sabatine felt something slot into place inside him, a final, calming click. The terror didn’t vanish, but it was compartmentalized. Labelled: Primary Threat - Fear of Vulnerability. Counter-Strategy: Shared Defense. The operative in him could work with that.

He pulled Anton to him, kissing him back with a fervour that was both surrender and a new kind of strength. It was a kiss that said I’m in. All the way. With everything I have, even the broken parts.

When they parted, the grey light in the room seemed warmer. The mountain fortress felt less like a tomb and more like a command post for a new campaign.

“Okay,” Sabatine said, his voice steadier now. “Then we destroy the fear.”

Anton smiled, a real, radiant smile that reached his eyes. “Welcome to the most important mission of our lives, partner.”

And as they lay there, wrapped in each other and the new understanding, Sabatine knew Anton was right. The man who survived alone was gone. In his place was a man who loved, and was loved, and was therefore both more vulnerable and infinitely stronger than he had ever been before. The confession was no longer a terrifying secret. It was their battle standard.

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