good thing from jp twitter this week is queen of old man yaoi michiru sonoo discovering the term old man yaoi
update: somehow it got impossibly more wholesome
quick translation:
おかえり: welcome home
あ 終わった 終わった: ahhh, it's over! it's done!
コーヒー? お茶?: coffee? tea?
コ~ヒ~ ありがと: coffee, thank you~
ネクタイレア★★ ネクタイ取るレア★★★★: seeing him with a tie on, rarity level ★★, seeing him take a tie off, rarity level ★★★★
にあうな~: it suits him~
also please do follow:
AraigumaSha: sensei's twitter account
marureviere: maru, who does such valuable work highlighting bl manga for an international audience
I thought Old Man Yaoi was like a specific person or entity. Like you walk down to the river, there’s Old Man Consequences, you walk down to the oak tree there’s Old Man Sensibility, and then you walk into the gay club and you’ll never guess who it is
So I just simultaneously did, and possibly didn't lose my job today :)
Very much did in the sense that I literally do not know where my job is at the moment. But, for the time being I haven't been let go because nobody else including the store owner knows where it is either.
So, I don't wanna risk doxxing myself by posting pictures but goddamn am I tempted because this is not a believable event. This is a cartoon problem. For looneytoons.
But yeah, so, I work(ed?) at a kiosk selling boba tea, right? Freestanding kiosk in the mall with full water and electrical hookups and multiple fridges and sinks and a mini kitchen and the works. Fully functional tea shop. Very important to note that it was there last night, The work chat was discussing another issue last night at closing time. I'll get back to this.
It's been showing signs of being on the way out with how business is being handled lately and I've been considering other options, which is probably why I'm not as torn up about this as I should be, but maybe it just hasn't set in yet, but that's not the point. The point is there's been a lot of shit breaking and not being replaced and nobody mentioning anything about it until I walk into work in the morning and have to figure out why shit like the fucking cash register isn't there today. So I'm kinda used to having to ask questions about big things that nobody bothered to update me on. I was out for two weeks recovering from a surgery, so I came to work this morning assuming there'd be some kind of bullshit, yeah?
So, the question I had to ask the chat this morning was:
Not a text I ever thought I'd have to send in sincerity, but there it is. Because what I found instead was a fenced off patch of discolored tiles and a few holes in the floor where my entire place of employment used to be.
And the answer? Nobody knows! It was there last night when the mall closed, and every single trace of the structure and all its contents including drink making supplies and our safe and cashbox was gone when it opened again. And when I say nobody knows, I mean everyone from last night's closers to the actual (former?) owner of the store jad no fucking clue about this until getting that text from me this morning. For once I am actually the first to know. 🎉.
So. I guess I didn't so much lose my job as had it stolen. Not by AI, but good old fashioned hands-on human beings picking it up and carrying it away somehow. All mall security would tell me was that they were instructed not to tell me anything and have us contact our management. Who also don't know anything. And later on I came across some construction workers around the gravesite of the kiosk discussing filling in the holes, asked them about it, and was told that they "weren't at liberty to say".
So, not only is my job gone in the most literal physical sense of the word, but it was taken in some kind of super secret kiosk extraction in the dead of night without any warning or witnesses and nobody is allowed to speak of it. The store owner said she was gonna figure it out 10 hours ago and still no word back.
I don't know what else to say aside from I've been laughing all day and I'm gonna have a hell of a time explaining Schrodinger's Unemployment to the benefits office.
Update that is not an update because I'm basically certain this isn't what actually happened:
My mother in law thinks the FBI took it.
Not any of the other stores around the state. Just the one little kiosk.
Why? Because she loves a conspiracy and is just a little bit extra.
Also because she was around for the massive crackdown on Yakuza-owned businesses in Waikiki (in her homestate) that did actually involve the FBI seizing stores (no confirmation of making kiosks cleanly disappear in the middle of the night though).
Still no word from my job on what's actually going on, but the most likely theory so far is that maybe the kiosk was on lease and got repossessed? The mystery continues
(also shout out to the person who proposed Carmen Sandiego)
According to the owner, based on what she's been able to find out, the kiosk was not removed legally and they're starting a potentially long process of legal action. I hope she gets to sue the shit out of whoever did it but for now at least I know for sure I'm unemployed.
Really hoping for more details in terms of who/why/how, so I'll keep updating if I learn anything.
For now the summary is: An unnamed entity that is most likely mall management (on account of mall security cooperating with them) stole an entire kiosk and all the contents including money and machinery with barely a trace in the middle of the night grinch-style, with zero warning or explanation, and ensured the silence of both security and the construction crew, in an action that was definitely preplanned and illegal, and as far as I know nobody knows its whereabouts.
So now I'm officially out of a job. Because my workplace was literally stolen in the night.
Actually fuck it let's share some photos cause I wouldn't be inclined to believe this myself. It's not like anyone can stalk me at my job now and I'm not gonna have to see any coworkers that might find my tumblr.
Enjoy the unintentionally funniest text I've ever sent in my life
Aaand a close-up:
The last remains of a once Very Much Solid And Immobile Workplace
Ghost who doesn’t know how to flirt like a normal person, instead asks “How much d’you weigh?”
Shadow falling over you, broad enough to swallow the reflection in the mirror behind the machine you were just using at the gym. You look up and find Ghost standing there in a black compression shirt stretched tight across his chest, mask in place even here, eyes flat and unreadable above the fabric. One gloved hand resting on the frame of your machine.
The question lands blunt, no lead up, no softening. Like he’s asking for the time or the weather. Your mouth goes dry. He’s too close, too big, the sheer width of him making the space between you feel airless.
You could tell him to fuck off. Should. But the words stick somewhere behind your teeth, and what comes out instead is a mumbled number, barely loud enough to carry, your eyes dropping to the seam where the mat meets the floor.
He doesn’t react at first. Just tilts his head a fraction, that slow, assessing cock of it Then, low and rough through the mask: “Lighter than I’m used to.”
Confusion flickers across your face but he’s already moving, already loading the bar next to you with plates that match the number you gave him exactly, no hesitation, no adjustment. The barbell settles across the padded support with a dull clank.
You should look away. You don’t.
He lies back on the bench, plants his feet wide, and rolls the bar into place across the jut of his hips. One smooth motion and he drives up, hips snapping high, the loaded bar rising clean with the power of it, his body locking into a straight line from shoulders to knees. The muscles in his thighs flex hard under the fabric of his shorts. Up, hold, lower. Up again. The bar doesn’t even tremble under the weight.
It takes a beat for the meaning to sink in. Heat crawls up your neck, tightens in your chest, but it doesn’t stop there. It drops lower, coils hot and insistent right behind your navel and settles between your legs with a heavy, liquid pulse, cunt clenching around nothing. The reaction is immediate and traitorous, slick gathering hot and fast, soaking into the seam of your leggings, clit throbbing in time with every snap of his hips.
Oh.
(Ghost who doesn’t know how to flirt but somehow it works every time.)
Thinking of you and Johnny stuck in the middle of the summer with no AC, heat thick and syrupy, pressing down until the air feels like it’s been stewing in its own sweat all day.
Fan in the corner just pushes it around in lazy circles, useless. Your shirt clings to the soft swell of your belly, to the undersides of your breasts, dark patches blooming wherever fabric meets skin. Shorts have ridden up, cotton stuck to the backs of your thighs every time you shift. You’re liquid with it, slow ooze of heat between your legs, behind your knees, at the nape of your neck where sweat gathers and drips.
Johnny’s worse. Or better, depending how you look at it. Stripped down to thin grey briefs that do nothing to hide the heavy curve of his cock resting thick along his thigh, the fabric gone dark and clinging where sweat’s soaked through. He’s sprawled on the couch, doesn’t give a single fuck who sees, one leg hooked over the arm, head tipped back, throat working as he drains the last of a bottle of water. When he catches you staring he grins, crooked, boyish, dimples carving deep, teeth flashing sharp.
“Ach, look at ye,” he says. “Starin’ like ye want a taste even while yer meltin’. C’mon, doe. Got an idea.”
He disappears into the kitchen. You hear the freezer door yank open, the sharp crack of ice trays breaking free. When he comes back his big hands are full of cubes already weeping meltwater, dripping between his fingers onto the floorboards in little wet spots. “Floor’s cooler than that couch. On yer back for me.”
You go because the promise of cold is too much, and he guides you down with a palm between your shoulder blades, settling you on the rug over the tiles, floor kissing your overheated skin. He kneels between your spread thighs, one knee braced solid, and holds up a single cube between thumb and forefinger.
“Gonna cool ye down proper,” he murmurs, and the first touch lands at the hollow of your throat.
The shock punches the air from your lungs. Cold, so fucking cold against skin that’s been baking for hours. Drags it slow, deliberate, down the line of your throat, over your collarbones, the cube melting fast, rivulets chasing after it, soaking into the neckline of your shirt until the fabric goes translucent and clings. Your nipples tighten, stiff peaks dragging against the wet cotton, and he sees, grin widening, edges going sharp.
Tugs the shirt down with his free hand, baring your breast, circles the tight bud with the ice until you arch clean off the floor with a whine. Does the other the same, alternating until both nipples are aching, flushed dark, water running in cool trails down your ribs to pool under the small of your back. Makes your thighs twitch wider around his knee, makes the heat between your legs throb harder, slicker.
“Pretty thing,” he says, voice gone low and rough. “All pebbled up and drippin’ already. That for the cold or for me, hen?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer. Just hooks his fingers in your shorts and underwear, drags them down and off. The air feels hotter against your exposed cunt, swollen and slick, and then the ice is there, right against your slit, dragged slow from entrance to clit and back again.
Rips a moan out of you, hips bucking up into the cold, and he holds you down with one broad palm on your belly while he works the shrinking cube in tight circles over your clit until it’s throbbing, until you’re dripping more than just meltwater down the cleft of your arse.
When the cube’s gone he replaces it with his mouth, tongue broad and flat, licking up everything the ice left behind, sucking your clit between his lips with a groan that vibrates straight through you.
Stubble scrapes the soft skin of your inner thighs. His hands keep you spread, thumbs digging into the give of your flesh, and you come like that, thighs clamping around his head while his name fractures on your tongue.
He pulls back with his mouth shiny, that sharp toothed grin still in place, and wipes his chin on the back of his wrist. “Yer turn, doe. Fair’s fair.”
He stretches out beside you on the rug, briefs tented now, the head of his cock straining dark against the fabric, a wet spot blooming where precome’s soaked through.
You push up on shaky arms, grab a fresh cube, and start at his throat, watch his head tip back, Adam’s apple bob as the cold hits. Drag it down over the flat planes of his chest, over the tight peaks of his nipples, feeling them pebble under the ice. He hisses, hips twitching, that thick cock jumping in his briefs.
Lower, following the dark trail of hair down his stomach. You tug the briefs down and his cock springs free, flushed, heavy, the head glistening.
Run the ice right over it, base to tip, and he curses sharp and filthy, hips lifting clean off the floor as the cold hits sensitive flesh. The cube melts fast against his heat, water running down over his balls, and you chase it with your tongue, lapping up the melt, then taking the head into your mouth, sucking slow and wet while another cube rolls over the tight skin of his sac.
He groans, one big hand fisting in your hair. “Fuck- yer mouth, hen. Gonnae make me spill if ye keep that up.”
You hum around him, the vibration making his thighs tense hard, and work the last of the ice lower, rolling it behind his balls until he’s cursing again, hips rolling up into your mouth in short, helpless thrusts.
When you pull off he flips you, settles his weight between your thighs, cock drags hot and heavy through against your cunt, the head catching at your entrance, and he pushes in slow, stretching you open inch by inch until he’s buried, hips flush to yours. The burn is sweet, perfect, and you clutch at his shoulders, nails biting into sweat slick skin as he starts to move- deep, rolling thrusts that grind the base of his cock against your clit with every stroke.
The heat’s still there, thick between your bodies, but he reaches for another cube, holds it right where he’s fucking you, lets it melt against your clit. Cold water mixes with the wet sounds of skin on skin, his cock sliding in and out of your dripping cunt, and your eyes roll back.
“That’s it,” he pants, words slurring with want, dimples flashing even now. “Take it, doe. Take all o’ me. Fuckin’ perfect- made for this, for me.”
You come again around him, walls fluttering and clenching tight, and he follows with a low groan, hips stuttering as he spills deep, hot pulses filling you while the last of the ice melts between you, water cooling the feverish skin.
He doesn’t pull out right away. Just stays buried, softening slow, forehead pressed to yours, breathing you in while sweat and meltwater cool between your bodies. His thumb strokes lazy circles on your hip.
“Still hot, hen?” he asks, voice lazy, teasing, crooked grin tugging at his mouth. “Or did we beat it?”
You laugh, breathless, fingers tracing the sweat at the nape of his neck. “Think we might need another round.”
His grin widens, teeth sharp, already reaching for the tray again, ice cracking in his palm. “Aye. Cannae have my girl overheatin’ on me.”
So, I imagine that Soap is fucking RAMPANT for your pussy.
The first time that you get intimate with each other beyond making out, he immediately moves between your legs and says "ive wanted to know what ye taste like for so fuckin long, lass."
Anyway, he ends up cumming in his pants without any stimulation other than eating your pussy out.
I also imagine that he'll just randomly crave you throughout the day, come up behind you and whisper in your ear "I wanna stuff my tongue in yer cunt, baby."
How about that one time you go clothes shopping together and pick out a pair of tight leggings. As soon as you come out of the changing room, Johnny's eyes dart down to the very very obvious camel toe, and licks his lips.
Next thing you know, he's ushering you into the changing room, shoving the leggings down and bending you over. You can see him drop to his knees in the mirror and use his hands to spread your cheeks before diving in. You have to bite your hand to keep from moaning too loud.
Oh, also, he LOVES a nice healthy bush. If you even mention wanting to shave or wax it, he'll hide your razors and forbaid you from going to the appointment. He nearly sobs when you get away with it anyway.
"You smell so fucking good with the hair, dove. I don't know why in the hell you would want to get rid of it.. you've got such a pretty pussy."
Anyway, I love my pussy drunk Soap.
Forgot to mention, he totally mentions how good you taste and sound when he eats you out to his best mate Ghost.
Warnings: 18+. Unprotected p-in-v. Disgustingly loving sex (sorry). Soft dom!Simon Talks You Through It™️ Creampie. Brief mention of Reader’s insecurities w sex
Note: I’m on Instagram now (kinda), come say hi :-)
Word count: 2.1k
It wasn’t like you hadn’t tried before.
You’d had your fair share of lovers and experienced more than a good deal of fun. With everyone in the past, climax came the same way, every single time: clitoral stimulation, and clitoral stimulation alone.
By this point in your life, you suspected your g-spot was probably just a figment of your imagination, no more real than Atlantis, Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy.
That was, until, you met your boyfriend, Simon.
And things had only been official for a week.
You and him had fooled around a handful of times—made love, as he called it, and kissed and cuddled and occasionally dry-humped until the two of you were both panting, groaning messes—but all of this was new. Simon was still learning you, as you were him.
He finished between your tits. You came on his tongue. He fingered you to the point of tears, and you learned how to touch his sac just right to get him to blow his load in seconds. On this night in particular, you were fucking missionary, and holding hands while you did.
Lovesick puppies, Price would say. Neither one of you seemed able to unglue your lips or unlace your fingers or keep your hips from colliding again and again and again in frantic search of the other’s furthest depths. You were perfectly wrapped up, with no desire to move
Except, you needed to reach down between your bodies to actually get off. That was a minor detail.
You didn’t think the man above you would mind if you moved your touch from his, but then that grip tightened the second you tried pulling away.
“Keep it there, lovie. Like holding you like this,” he said.
You enjoyed it, too. It was intimate, and sweet, and with your hands pinned on either side of you, locked securely in his, you felt safe. You just couldn’t finish.
“But I…I need to come,” you whispered against him. You rolled your hips and felt his cock twitch inside you.
Simon grunted, then swallowed. Nodded slowly.
“Yeah. I’ll get you there. Feel this?”
He slid deeper for emphasis.
You didn’t.
You rarely did, or at least not in the way you figured you were supposed to get when something pressed there.
“I think…sort of, yeah,” you hedged your answer.
Don’t bruise his ego, don’t hurt his feelings.
This is all on me, Si, I promise it’s not you.
Cutting in over your thoughts, Simon moved swiftly. Took your hips in his big, strong hands, lifted up, and plunged his cock to the hilt. The girth of him was enough to knock the air out of your lungs, and you felt your walls stretch, sting, and weep sweet liquid warmth around that intrusion. You moaned.
“Better?” The man’s question was simple.
Before you could answer it, he was sliding a pillow underneath your backside. Sawing his long, thick, leaking cock in and out of you, he reached a new spot.
You made a face, feeling good from that but…strange.
Simon snatched your hands up again and planted them beside your head on the mattress. He thrusted steadily. He peppered kisses all over your face and your neck while the bed frame squeaked in time, and you had to dig your heels into his ass to ground yourself.
“Talk to me, baby. Can’t make it better if you don’t.”
“I—I know, I just can’t—”
At the same time, Simon tilted your hips slightly once more, and the tip of his cock kissed something soft and wet and dizzyingly pleasurable inside your body. A loud, embarrassing cry slipped out between your lips.
You wanted to clap a hand over your mouth, hating the way you’d just sounded, but your fingers were stuck to his. Simon grinned down at you, toothy and approving.
“Can’t do what, now, darlin’?”
The warm, bulbous head of his cock had found its mark, and he just kept prodding that spot, like it entertained him to do it. The fingers laced between your own constricted their grip even more, and Simon leaned down to kiss you while his cock carved a mind-numbing path. In between kisses, he praised you.
“That’s my girl. She’s likin’ it now, isn’t she?”
“Feel good when my cock hits that spot?”
“Your pussy’s fuckin’ soakin’ me, baby.”
But still, somehow, it just wasn’t quite enough.
Maybe you’d never found that place after all.
This was where most men gave up—after a few good minutes of fucking when their balls had gotten to be as swollen as stones and their bodies were aching for release, more often than not, they’d go off chasing their own high. That was when you usually started rubbing your clit, or waited for your partner to finish so they could get you off with their tongue or something.
You hated to feel like a burden, and you really despised the thought of being the reason your sweet Simon couldn’t get to orgasm. So you squirmed again.
Straining to reach down, to try and touch yourself, you whimpered, “Si, please, it just—it takes me too long—”
“Good thing we’ve got all night,” Simon replied bluntly.
Then, once again, he twisted your bodies like you were as soft and malleable as putty in his hands, and this time, he hitched one of your legs around his hip, high.
With one slow-rolling thrust and an audibly squelching sound, Simon’s cock stretched your hole to maximum capacity, and then a little more. Your juices leaked down his shaft, aiding the slide, and he stabbed in a few shallow strokes. Probing. Testing the waters, as if he were trying to find something hidden inside you.
You sucked in a breath. Simon’s gaze slid to yours.
“Let’s find that precious spot, lovie. Easy, now.”
Gently coaxing your body open, he drove a slow, measured pace. He split your cunt like it was the easiest thing in the world, delving within your wet, velvety heat to tease every contour and crevice of your pussy. His tip leaked precome. His balls glistened in your arousal and landed with the gentlest plap, plap, plaps while he explored your insides with his member.
It really was as simple as that, nothing more and nothing less than poking around. Having patience.
“S-Si,” you stammered, nose wrinkling slightly.
“What’s’at, baby? Got something to tell me?”
Like a teacher, almost, he pressed for more.
Like his cock was showing you something new about your body but he needed your help to tell him just how and where to find it, Simon took care to be kind. He smoothed a hand over the crown of your head and then cradled the back of it, one massive set of fingers splayed out against your skull and engulfing it wholly.
He still held onto your other hand tight.
Your cunt pulsed. Ached. Fluttered around him.
Stuffed to the brim, you had only to feel, and murmur:
“Higher.”
“Higher?”
“Um, to the…to the left.”
Simon tilted his hips left.
Yes.
That was just it. So close.
Almost…
Or, maybe…
“Maybe it just…isn’t there,” you huffed out, deflating. “Know you’re trying so hard, baby, but I think I can’t—”
Then Simon hit the same spot as before, only higher.
Just like you’d told him: to the left, and then…
“Oh, fuck,” you cursed. “Oh, fuckfuckfuck.”
The grin above you stretched even wider.
“There, lovie?” Simon goaded you on.
“Right there.” You nodded furiously.
A wave of pleasure swept through your limbs, from your core down to the soles of your feet. Your toes curled, and you squeaked, feeling Simon’s cock graze that soft, spongy, sensitive place—except he’d pushed in deeper. The sensation made your eyes roll back.
“Little dove doesn’t mind my pokin’ after all, huh?” Simon’s words were a tease, but you heard a strain in them, too. The second you were caught in the throes of real pleasure, your cunt must’ve clamped like a vice.
“Keep…keep pokin’, Si,” you choked out. “I like it.”
Your lover kept at it—poking from the inside.
The routine almost felt like losing your virginity all over again, together. Simon cradled your head, told you how good you were doing, how sweet you were for him, and you whimpered under his hold. Squirmed and clung to him for dear life, then kissed him feverishly.
Simon’s mouth was hard and hungry, his thrusts deep. His cock throbbed within the wet, clenching confines of your pussy, and he seemed to be going wild at the feeling. With the idea that he was driving you wild, too.
You realized as much when he whispered it to you.
“Could lose my bloody mind when you’re like this—” Another sharp, labored breath. Another shudder passing through his body when your insides squeezed. “—so why didn’t you talk? Ask for what you needed?”
Your voice was small. “Didn’t wanna be a bother.”
Your eyes were locked with Simon’s, and in his irises, you caught a shade of concern. It flared, hot as anything, then mixed with disbelief. Disappointment.
“Don’t be angry, Si, I—” you started, hurried.
“‘M’not.” Simon blinked. But he gritted his teeth, and he withdrew his cock until the head was bumping and teasing between your folds, then he shook his head. “It’s those fuckin’ pricks who should be sorry, yeah?”
The ones that you’d been with before.
You wanted to protest, insist that you were at least partly to blame, but you never got the opportunity.
Simon was back inside you in a blink.
Hitting that same spot again, and again, and again.
He grinned, the tic of a muscle in his jaw telling you that he was less amused this time around, but proud.
Vindicated.
“Well. It’s not like they’re ever gettin’ a chance in between these pretty legs again, are they, lovie?”
You nodded in agreement.
You smiled back at him, only to have that gentle curve falter a little when you felt Simon’s thrusts accelerate.
“Only thing that’s gonna touch this spot other’n my cock is my seed, splatterin’ all over your walls, right?”
When he gave a playful nip to your lower lip and squeezed your hand tighter, you knew that he meant it. The man had plunged so deep inside you that his pubic bone was now grinding against your skin, and the rest of him was buried. His balls, all full and warm and heavy with his release, rested firmly in your cleft.
And the steady, measured strokes of his cock landed with near-surgical precision on the G-spot you’d convinced yourself up until tonight didn’t exist.
Simon beamed. You were overcome with ecstasy.
“This it, lovie? This spot right ‘ere?” he cooed.
His cock bobbed against that gummy and indescribably dizzying place, causing your last moan to morph into something more akin to a shriek.
You nodded your head: “Y-Yes. Yes.”
“Feel good when I hit it?”
“Fucking perfect, Si.”
You sighed when the man bottomed out for what felt like the millionth time, and the pleasure never waned. He felt just as good now as he did when he first got in.
“Yeah? Gonna come on my cock then, pretty girl?”
“Yeah. I’m— I’m so close.”
“Go on then, love.”
And, shortly, you did.
Maybe three, four, five more stabs of his cock to your most precious, intimate place and you were unraveling beneath him, stars bursting in your line of vision. It seemed dramatic to say, but that was really what it came to—your mouth hanging open, eyes wide, gaze peering into Simon’s while he fucked you through the most intense orgasm of your life. You clung to him, and your walls spasmed again and again and again, milking the man’s release in the next few seconds. Simon shuddered and grit his teeth as he unloaded a thick, gooey load inside, dousing that spongy, body-numbing spot and then some. The two of you moaned in unison.
Your body was boneless, your head a hazy mess.
It took several seconds for your conscious mind to come back online fully, and when it did, Simon was leaning in again and planting kisses along your face.
“That’s my girl,” he murmured, breath fanning hot across your skin. “My perfect girl. You did so good.”
You smiled and caught his mouth for a proper kiss.
“Thank you,” you murmured against him.
Then Simon squeezed your hand—the one he’d been holding this entire time. He lifted it gently, like he was afraid too rough of a movement might split you in two.
He turned your wrist and kissed the back of your hand, eyes locked on yours and expression soft while he did.
That's not my name, silly.
You call them by their government name, instead of the pet name you have for them
TF141 x reader headcannons//Imagines
a/n: thank you, anon, for the request. Hope y'all enjoy <3
Captain Johnathan Price
“Old man”
You and Price had been happily married for some time now, and with that shared history came small, deeply ingrained forms of intimacy. Specifically, you almost exclusively referred to him as ‘old man.’ Because he was, in fact, your old man.
Price absolutely adored it. To him, the nickname solidified his position in the relationship, but more importantly, he was a traditional man at heart. The weight of that title felt like more of an ‘I do’ than any gold ring ever could. Because it had become your ultimate default, you almost never used his actual name. Ever.
Well, that was until very specific situations forced you to do otherwise.
You had been happily married for as long as you could remember, yet here you were on the evening of your anniversary, dressed beautifully with a temper hot enough to match. Your poor old man had completely forgotten what today was. In his defense, work had been incredibly tense recently, but having finally secured some rare, precious time at home to relax and enjoy with you, the date had slipped clean through his fingers.
You marched into the sitting room where he was currently strewn lazily across the couch, watching the footy. Your heels clicked sharply against the floor, each step carrying the full, crushing weight of your fury. You stood purposely right in front of the television, blocking his view, your foot tapping as your patience wore incredibly thin at the sight of your far-too-relaxed husband.
“You look stunning, pet. To what do I owe the pleasure?” he teased, his dark eyes far too happy and clueless for your liking.
“Johnathan Price. Get up.”
The words came out cold, clipped, and squeezed through tight lips.
You could visibly see the color drain from the poor man’s face. He nearly hit the roof he sat up so fast, his military reflexes kicking in as his spine went completely rigid. If you weren't so profoundly pissed off, the sight of the legendary Captain Price scrambling like a recruit would have made you laugh.
A violent shiver ran straight down his spine. He knew he was in trouble. Big, catastrophic trouble.
In that exact moment, Johnathan's life flashed before his eyes. He scrambled to use every single ounce of brainpower he possessed to try and figure out what the fuck he had done for you to not only wear a expression of pure, unadulterated fury, but to use his full government name. It was a name he was certain you had only used twice in the entire history of your relationship—the first time being your official wedding vows.
He let out a weak, nervous chuckle, clearing his throat. “…Did I mention you look absolutely stunning, love?” he tried, saying anything in a desperate attempt to buy himself a few more seconds of survival.
But as he took a closer, frantic look at your elegant outfit, his eyes naturally darted past you to the small calendar hanging on the far wall. The date seemed to jump out at him. It hit him like a roaring freight train. Johnathan wanted nothing more in this exact moment than for the ground to open up and swallow him whole.
Before he could even utter a syllable of an apology, you silenced him instantly, thrusting a perfectly manicured finger directly in his face.
“You have exactly one hour to fix this,” you pointed, staring him square in the eye with zero room for negotiation. “And I swear, if you don't, you will regret the day you were born, Johnathan Price. Do I make myself clear?”
Price swallowed hard, looking exactly like a schoolboy who had just been chewed out by his headmistress. “Y-yes, ma’am,” he stammered, the fearsome Captain reduced to pure obedience.
“Good.”
With a sharp flick of your hair and a mean, deliberate sway of your hips, you turned on your heel and walked out of the room.
Never in his life had he seen you this angry, but as he stared at the empty doorway, his heart hammering against his ribs, he realised with a sudden, dark rush of heat that—by God—he desperately wanted to see it happen again.
-
Simon Riley
“Bear”
Being one of the very few people permitted into Simon’s carefully guarded life meant a great deal to you—and secretly, it meant everything to him. Although he had never been the type to be overly or publicly affectionate, ever since your very first date, you had jokingly referred to him as a 'Bear' due to his mammoth, intimidating height. From that night on, the nickname had simply stuck.
It was a lazy Saturday morning, and you and Simon were currently tucked up beneath a mountain of blankets, completely tangled together. Unfortunately for your plans of productivity, Simon possessed zero intention of releasing you from his embrace. He had you completely caged beneath his heavy, solid arms, his massive frame acting like an inescapable anchor as he fully intended to hibernate for just a little longer.
“Bearrr, come on. Time to get up,” you chirped playfully. You kept your voice light, airy, and sweet in a desperate attempt to coax your sleeping giant of a boyfriend back to the waking world.
Simon only let out a low, gravelly grunt in response. Instead of shifting, his grip tightened automatically. One of his massive forearms locked like a steel vice around your waist, while his other thick arm hooked directly over your shoulder, burying your face right into his chest and effectively pulling you into a heavy, affectionate headlock.
“Simon! Simon! Baby, I can't breathe—” you dramatically cried out, your voice muffled against his skin as you feigned succumbing to death by a pair of elite-soldier biceps.
The moment his government name left your lips, he shot wide awake.
In a fraction of a second, the heavy drowsiness vanished. Simon effortlessly loosened his hold only to flip you onto your back against the mattress, pinning your arms to either side of your head. He loomed over you, his massive chest shadowing your frame, his dark, sleepy eyes filled with a mixture of sheer hurt and profound disgust.
“What did you just call me?” he demanded, his voice a low, rough rumble as he sought to confirm his ears had actually heard what they did.
You lay beneath him, utterly trapped, but you couldn't help the bright laugh that bubbled up at his sheer, unadulterated dramatics. “Oh, so that’s what it takes to get you moving, huh, Simon?” you teased, deliberately leaning into the provocation.
He didn't offer a verbal reply. Instead, a dangerous, wicked glint flashed in his eyes. His large hands slid slowly down your sides, finding your waist, and he launched a relentless, targeted tickle attack.
Completely unable to breathe through the sudden onslaught of laughter, your body writhed beneath his hands as you begged for mercy. “Please, Simon! I’m sorry!” you choked out between breathless, echoing laughs.
“Who’s that, dove? Never heard of a Simon,” he murmured evilly, his thick fingers continuing their torturous, playful assault without a single ounce of pity.
“BEAR! BEAR! I’M SORRY, BEAR!” you squealed loudly, your body twisting as you tried in vain to wriggle free from his iron grip.
Only when he finally heard his proper title did the giant relent. He let out a low chuckle, collapsing down onto the mattress right beside you. In an instant, he reeled you right back into his chest, pulling your back against him before raining a heavy trail of open kisses all over your hair, your temple, and the sharp line of your jaw.
“That’s more like it,” Simon grumbled, his voice vibrating deeply against your skin as he buried his face in your neck. “No more of that Simon bullshit from you, miss.”
You couldn't help but roll your eyes at your incredibly dramatic boyfriend, but a soft, helpless smile spread across your face nonetheless. You loved every single unmasked, ridiculous piece of him. And, just as he wanted, you ended up spending the entire remainder of your Saturday tucked safely away from the world, being perfectly lazy and cozy in bed.
-
Soap “John Mactavish”
“Love”
You were heavily pregnant with your first child, and for the most part, the experience had been a complete dream come true. Johnny had miraculously managed to secure extended leave for these last few months, and he had been a constant, unwavering presence.
He was right there beside you for every prenatal class, eagerly sprinted out for midnight snack runs to satisfy your weirdest cravings, and would readily stand behind you to lift the heavy weight of your belly just to relieve the pressure on your aching spine. He was, without a doubt, the perfect partner.
On this particular evening, you were sitting on a stool at the kitchen breakfast bar. Johnny had insisted on cooking dinner from scratch, promising a hot, relaxing bath afterward to soothe your exhausted body.
“Nearly ready, lass. Hope you and the wee bump are hungry,” he teased playfully, glancing over his shoulder with a bright grin. He was a sight to behold, wearing a kitchen apron over his broad shoulders as he busied himself prepping the plates.
“Thanks, love. I’d be completely lost without you,” you beamed, smiling dotingly at him as he put the final touches on his culinary creation. You absentmindedly rubbed your stomach, noting that the baby was kicking quite a bit today. You didn't think much of it, given how incredibly close you were to your official due date.
But it was in that exact, unsuspecting moment that you felt it.
Your water had broken.
You could barely see your toes past the massive curve of your belly as it was, but as you looked down, a sudden, violent surge of panic shot through your entire body. The once-dry kitchen tile beneath your stool was completely soaked.
“U-uh… Johnny?” you called out shakily, your voice tight.
Johnny, who was still fully animated and yapping away as he plated up the food, let out a distracted chuckle. He didn't even turn around, completely misreading your panicked tone for a bit of banter. “Johnny? Aye, what’s with the formalities all of a sudden, lass? Usually I get a 'love' or a 'darling' when there's food on the line.”
“Johnny, listen to me—” you tried again, your breath catching as a sharp wave of adrenaline hit you.
“Who you calling Johnny, lass?” he teased, playfully shaking the spatula in the air, his back still turned. “You only use my proper name when I’m in the doghouse, and I know for a fact I’ve been an absolute angel today—”
“For fuck's sake, John!” you screeched.
The full government name cut through the kitchen like a flashbang.
The spatula fell silent. Johnny whipped around instantly, his blue eyes wide with a mixture of total bewilderment and sudden concern. He had never heard that specific, lethal tone leave your mouth before, and the sheer gravity of John completely shattered his playful mood.
“My water broke,” you said, staring right at him.
The legendary, highly decorated SAS sergeant stood completely frozen. He had a spatula gripped in one hand and a dinner plate in the other, utterly paralyzed like a deer in the headlights. In this exact moment, he did not look like an elite soldier trained to think critically under high-pressure, life-or-death scenarios. He looked like a man whose brain had just completely short-circuited.
“Johnny!” you screeched again, snapping him out of his trance as you began taking heavy, rhythmic breaths to regulate your racing heart. “I am about to have your child right here on our kitchen floor! I highly suggest you get us to the car or call an ambulance—whichever one is faster!”
“Y-yes! Right! Okay!”
With his military reflexes finally overriding his sheer panic, Johnny dropped the spatula into the sink, his training kicking into overdrive. He shifted into pure logistics mode, scrambling to grab the pre-packed hospital bag, your coat, and the car keys, his movements a blur of chaotic efficiency as he helped you stand and guided you toward the door.
Just as you reached the hallway, preparing to brace yourself for the drive, you reached out and grabbed his hand tightly, pulling his knuckles to your lips to give them a soft kiss. “Thanks, love.”
The familiar, gentle pet name acted like a tether, instantly dragging him back to reality. A massive wave of relief washed over his face, a bright, fiercely protective grin breaking through his nerves as he squeezed your hand back. He was ready.
-
Kyle ‘Gaz’ Garrick
“Handsome”
Gaz came home from what you could only imagine was a brutal, exhausting deployment. He hadn't been himself since the moment he walked through the front door, clamming up every single time you tried to reach out to him. You knew it was part of the territory; being a military wife—especially to an SAS soldier—was never going to be a walk in the park.
Still, he had barely muttered more than five words to you over these last few days. He ate in silence, went to bed in silence, and ran off to God-knows-where during the day in a desperate attempt to clear his mind. You had tried your absolute best to give him space, but you were rapidly reaching your limit. You couldn't watch him drown in his own head anymore.
You woke up in the dead of night yet again to the sight of him sitting rigidly on the edge of the bed, staring blankly at the floor, totally stuck in his own skull.
Sitting up, you clicked your bedside lamp on, the soft golden glow cutting through the dark room. You shifted over and instinctively wrapped your arms around his broad, tense shoulders, placing a soft, lingering kiss against his skin.
“You okay, handsome?” you softly asked.
He brushed off your concern exactly as he had been doing all week, pulling away from your touch with a tired sigh. “I’m fine, love. Just tired. Don't worry about it,” he muttered. It was his usual defense mechanism—his way of telling you to go back to sleep because he didn't want to talk.
But you were completely fed up. Fed up with being pushed aside, and fed up with being kept in the dark when all you wanted was to remind him that he didn't have to carry the weight of the world alone. Not anymore.
Rejecting the dismissal, you climbed out of bed, marched all the way over to his side, and plopped down on your knees directly in front of him on the floor. You took his rough, calloused hands in yours, forcing him to look down.
“Look at me, Kyle. It’s me.”
Hearing his actual name—not his callsign, and not a soft distraction—caused his tired, shadowed eyes to meet yours. It was only for a brief, fleeting moment, but it was all the confirmation you needed to know that your husband was still in there.
“Kyle, look at me,” you whispered again.
As you spoke, warm tears began to well up in your eyes. When his gaze finally locked onto yours this time, it was filled with so much raw, unspoken pain that you couldn't help but let those tears fall, weeping silently right in front of him.
The sight of your tears seemed to shatter whatever walls he had left.
Slowly, his broad shoulders completely relaxed, the rigid military tension finally bleeding out of his body. He leaned forward, pressing his forehead down against yours in a silent, powerful gesture that let you know he was finally ready to let his guard down.
“God, I missed you,” he whispered, his voice cracking from the overwhelming release of pure emotion.
Before you could reply, he hooked his arms under you, effortlessly pulling you up off the cold floor and onto his lap. He wrapped his arms around you in a fierce, crushing grip, burying his face into the crook of your neck.
“I missed you too, handsome. More than you could ever know,” you sweetly cooed back through your tears, wrapping your own arms securely around his neck and pressing a gentle, reassuring kiss to the side of his head.
You didn't know exactly what had happened to him over there, but in this moment, the details didn't matter. All that mattered was that your husband was finally safe in your arms, letting his walls crumble so you could help him heal.
coworker!simon x cybersecurity!reader hcs (mdni, 18+)
coworker!simon who likes to pretend he’s going into the tech lounge for a cup of coffee (he prefers tea) when really he just wants to see if you’re in there taking a break.
“u techies ain’t doin anythin all day?” is what you hear as bootstraps come into your line of sight. you raise a brow and look up at him from where you’re brewing a fresh cup of coffee. “don’t you soldiers have your own break room to bother people in??” you uttered with barely hidden distaste. he was glad for his mask covering that small smirk-your attitude went straight to his dick. “this place ‘as got the good coffee” he looks down at you, his voice gravelly in your ears. “soap said u hate coffee.” you call him out with a slow sip from the mug. he mentally curses the scott. “must be confused.”
coworker!simon who enjoys teasing you even though the man barely utters more than 5 words per conversation most of the time. he just loooves being in your space, not even to make fun of you, but just to see what you’re up to.
“whaddya even do when there’s no missions on schedule aye?” he comes up behind you and asks in that low scratchy accent you only hear in the mornings..hot. but that doesn’t matter. “do you always bother people who are trying to work” you grumble out as your eyes focus on the code at hand, fingers typing rapidly. he lets out a gruff …laugh? you’re not entirely sure. “too pretty to be wasting your time behind that screen.” you freeze, he doesn’t compliment you usually, just the annoying comment here and there. “well i enjoy my job.” “yeah?” you could hear the smirk in his voice. “what if i convinced you to look away from that g’damn screen. this weekend. dinner?” you tilted your head, a smug look crossing your face as you look up at him. he raised a brow, waiting.he’d never let on, but fuck was he nervous. “sure.” one short word from you lit him up.
coworker!simon who loomed gravely outside your comparatively cute and dainty house as he waited for you to open the door. you did, in a number that did crazy shit to his heart ..and dick.
“knew you’d look even more beautiful when you’re not behind that desk.” his mask was off, wanted to be real with you-not ghost but simon. you smiled slightly and stepped out. “thank you simon.” his following grin should indicate how the date went. a fancy restaurant followed by a dinner full of laughs, longing looks, and simon trying his fucking best to hide how much he wanted you. safe to say it went well on both sides.
coworker!simon who really really liked you. and he may not be great with words and that sappy bullshit but his mouth did wonders on its own.
he currently had tremendous amounts of blood rushing south in this moment. why? cus you were sitting on his face currently gripping the headboard for dear life as he dug his tongue deeper in your pussy. “si-simon wait” you breathed rapidly, knot forming fast in your stomach. he shook his head, groaning as he bucked his hips up into the air desperate for his own release. but he was too focused on you. “cum for me pretty, i wanna taste it.” he slurred into your flesh as he ate like you both didn’t just have dinner. “soo sweet” he panted. your high reached its peak and u tried to get off but he didn’t let you, fingers plunging in as you came hard, shivering and whimpering his name.
“oh my god..” you covered your face as the high wore off and you looked at the mess on his face “simon im so-“ he cut you off immediately “nah none of that. fuckin loved it, yeah?” he grinned, handsome face covered in you “never knew nerds could squirt” “don’t ruin this for yourself.” you bite back, covering his mouth while he smirks. little did you know he came in his pants a moment ago, all because of you.
art is not my strong suit but this is my best recreation of what i saw when i opened the window. i have to emphasize that she was supermodel levels of gorgeous
author's note: This has been in my drafts for one and a half years man. Never say never 💀 And thank you so much for 10k, lovelies! 🤍 xx
The ad is three lines long.
You agonise over it for a week—drafting and redrafting on the back of a grocery receipt at the kitchen table while your husband is on deployment, crossing out words and rewriting them until the paper is soft and furred at the edges from erasing.
Three lines. That's all the local paper allows for the personals section, which is a relic from another era that you didn't even know still existed until you were flipping through the classifieds looking for a vintage bookshelf and your eyes snagged on the column header.
SEEKING CONNECTION
You'd laughed at first. Then you'd read a few. Then you'd read them all, sitting cross-legged on the sofa with your tea going cold in your hands, and something small and sharp turning over in your chest.
The ad you eventually submit reads:
Married woman, mid 30s, seeks interesting conversation and perhaps more with a like-minded gentleman. Discretion essential. If you enjoy good food, dry wit, and don't mind a woman who can out-drink you — I'd love to hear from you. Reply to Box 64.
You pay for four weeks in advance and feel sick the entire drive home.
Because here's the thing about being married to Captain John Price.
You love him desperately and completely, in a way that has settled into your bones over the better part of a decade and become indistinguishable from the architecture of who you are.
Adore the way he smells—stale cigar smoke and sandalwood and old gun oil, a combination that should be repulsive and instead makes you want to bury your face in his neck and stay there. Love his hands, broad and scarred and capable of violence you'll never fully understand, and how gentle they are when they cup your jaw or fix the clasp of your necklace.
And you melt for the rumble of his voice on the phone at two in the morning when he calls from whatever godforsaken corner of the world he's operating in, tired and tight-lipped but always, always asking about you first.
You love him, and he loves you, and it hasn't been enough for a long time.
Not because the love ran out, because he did.
John Price gives everything to his work. Every deployment bleeds into the next. The gaps between homecomings stretch longer—three weeks become five, five become eight, eight becomes ‘I don't know yet, love, I'll let you know when I know’.
And when he does come home, he's there but not there; hollow-eyed and distracted, reaching for his phone at dinner, falling asleep on the sofa before nine, making love to you the first night with a desperate urgency that fades by the third morning into perfunctory kisses on the forehead and an apologetic mumble about an early briefing.
Someday, you stopped asking when he'd be home six months ago; stopped leaving the porch light on four months ago, and you stopped wearing the nice knickers three months ago because what was the point again.
Two months ago, you realised you'd gone an entire week without hearing his voice and hadn't noticed until Thursday.
That's when the panic set in. Not the sharp, clean kind, but the slow, creeping kind. The one that makes you lie awake at three a.m. staring at the ceiling and wondering if this is it, if this is what the rest of your life looks like. A nice house in Hereford with a well-maintained garden and a husband who exists primarily as a name on a bank account and a voice on the other end of an increasingly rare phone call.
You don't want to leave him. The thought alone makes you nauseous.
You just want someone to see you again.
John finds the newspaper three days after he gets home from a six-week deployment in eastern Syria.
He's not snooping; he's looking for the TV remote, which has migrated into the crack between the sofa cushions again, and his hand closes around the folded section of newsprint wedged beside it. He pulls it out, intending to toss it on the coffee table, and his eyes catch the circle of biro ink around one of the small ads in the personals column.
John reads it, and then again.
Then he sits down very slowly, the remote forgotten, and stares at the far wall for a long time, connecting puzzle pieces like his life depends on it, which it very well does apparently.
Married woman, mid 30s. His wife is in her thirties.
Dry wit. His wife is the driest, sharpest-tongued woman he's ever met. It's one of the first things he fell in love with—the way she could dismantle a man's ego with a single raised eyebrow and a well-timed "Bless your heart, love".
Can out-drink you. He's watched his wife put away Whisky Sours at the SAS Christmas do with a composure that made seasoned operators look like lightweights.
Discretion essential.
John sets the newspaper down on his knee. His jaw works and his eyes don't leave the wall.
And he doesn't confront you.
Not over dinner nor in bed that night when you roll towards him and press a kiss to his shoulder—a habit you've kept even through the worst of the distance, even when you're angry with him, even when he doesn't deserve it.
Instead, he waits, and he replies to Box 64.
The letter that arrives for you a week later is postmarked locally. Plain envelope, no return address. Inside, a single sheet of paper, handwritten in a bold, slanted script you don't recognise.
I enjoy good food, better whisky, and I've never met a woman who can out-drink me, but I'd enjoy watching you try. Friday, 8pm, O’Malley’s on St. George's Lane. I'll be the one who looks like he doesn't belong in a place that posh. — J
Your hands are shaking when you finish reading it, and you have to sit down at the kitchen table and press your palms flat against the wood to steady yourself.
You could throw it away. No. You should throw it away. This was a mistake—a stupid, reckless, selfish mistake born out of loneliness and too much wine and that ugly, gnawing ache in your chest that flares up every time John leaves.
But John has left again. Three days at home, then a call from Kate Laswell, then a bag packed and a kiss on your forehead and a quick ‘Be back soon, love’ and the sound of the front door closing and the silence that rushes in to fill the space he used to occupy.
You read the letter once more.
I'll be the one who looks like he doesn't belong in a place that posh.
Something warm and reckless curls in your stomach, and you hate yourself for it, and you fold the letter into the pocket of your cardigan and carry it around for three days before you decide you’re going.
Friday night. O’Malley’s.
You arrive twenty minutes early because you're a control freak in crisis, and you take the farthest booth in the corner because your back needs to be against a wall and your eyes need to be on the door—a habit you picked up from your husband without realising it.
You order a gin and tonic to give your hands something to do, and you check your reflection in the blank screen of your phone for the third time. You look good, like you tried again—not the kind of effort you make for John when he comes home, all desperate and over-polished, but a quieter kind; wearing your favourite dress with subtle makeup and your hair done the way you like it, not the way you think someone else wants to see it.
You look like your old self, and that's terrifying, because the whole point of tonight was supposed to be about being someone else.
When your wedding ring catches the light as you reach for your drink, and you stare at it for a long moment, the slim gold band John slid onto your finger nine years ago with steady hands and unsteady eyes, and you don't take it off.
You should, but you can’t, and you did say you’re married.
Eight o'clock comes and goes. Five past, then ten. You're about to convince yourself you've been stood up, which would be both a relief and a humiliation, when the pub door opens and a man walks in, and every nerve ending in your body fires at once.
Because the man standing in the doorway, scanning the room with those sharp, assessing eyes, is your husband.
John is wearing civvies. Dark jeans, a black henley pushed up to his elbows, boots that have seen better days.
He looks like he came straight from the base, which he probably did. His hair is freshly cut but his beard is full, and there is a tiredness around his eyes that you can read from across the room, the same bone-deep fatigue he carries home from every deployment and tries to hide and fails.
He spots you and your stomach plummets.
Meanwhile, his expression doesn't change; not a flicker. He holds your gaze across the crowded pub, and then he walks towards you with the kind of unhurried, deliberate stride that you've seen him use in exactly two contexts.
When he's approaching a superior officer, and when he's about to do something that no one in the room is going to enjoy.
Your heart is hammering so hard you can feel it in your teeth. Your hand tightens around your glass until your knuckles ache, and every instinct in your body is screaming at you to run to the bathroom, to the car park, to another country, but your legs won't cooperate, because Captain John Price is walking towards you and you have never in your life been able to move when he's looking at you like that.
He reaches the booth, stops, and looks down at you. And a beat of terrible, electric silence follows.
Then he smiles, though not the tight, exhausted smile he gives you at the front door when he's been gone for weeks, but something warmer, something almost boyish, and then he slides into the seat across from you, settling in with an ease that makes your blood run cold.
"You must be Box 64," he says casually, calm, like he's meeting a stranger for the first time, which is insane, because he is your husband and he is sitting across from you at a pub where you came to meet another man and he knows. He fucking knows.
"John—"
"John," he repeats, tasting the name like he's hearing it for the first time. Then he extends his hand across the table. "That's right. Pleasure to meet you."
You stare at his outstretched hand, then at his face, and back at his hand.
"John, I can explain—"
"Nothing to explain." He keeps his hand where it is, steady and patient. His eyes don't leave yours. "I'm J. You're Box 64. We're here to have a drink and see if we get on. That was the arrangement, wasn't it? What your ad said?"
Your mouth opens and something inside you dies a little, along with the words in your throat; anything but one.
"John."
"You gonna leave me hanging, love? Already?" He nods at his hand, one eyebrow raised, and there is something in his expression—beneath the calm and the performance—that you can't quite read.
It's not anger, not even hurt. Something closer to resolve, like he's made a decision about tonight and he intends to see it through, and nothing you say is going to alter the trajectory.
You take his hand, shake it weakly.
His fingers close around yours, warm and rough, and he gives one firm shake before releasing you. Then he flags down the barmaid, orders a whisky neat, and turns back to you with that same easy, unreadable smile.
"So. Tell me about yourself."
You stare at him owlishly.
"I—I don't—" You can feel heat crawling up your neck, your throat tightening with the precursor to tears. "John, please, can we just—"
"Tell me," he says again, and his voice is gentle, but his eyes are steel. "What do you do? Where are you from? What made you put that ad in the paper?"
The last question lands like another slap, even though his tone doesn't change. You swallow hard, your fingers wrap around your glass for something to anchor to.
He waits for you to answer; patient as a sniper in a ghillie suit.
"I'm—" You exhale shakily. "I'm from here. I live in Hereford. I'm—" Your voice threatens to crack, and you bite the inside of your cheek until it steadies. "I'm a teacher."
"A teacher." John nods, like this is new information and not something he's known for the better part of a decade. "What age?"
"Year four."
"Year four. That's—what, eight? Nine?" He takes a sip of his whisky. The barmaid left it quietly and shot you a look like she sensed the tension. "Brave woman. I've faced insurgents with less fight in them than a nine-year-old with a grudge."
The laugh that escapes you is wet and startled and completely involuntary, and John's eyes soften for a fraction of a second before the mask slides back into place.
"What about you?" you ask carefully, because two can play this game, and if he's going to make you sit through this surreal performance, you might as well commit. Your voice is still unsteady, but there's a spark of something underneath the fear—defiance, maybe, or the stubbornness that made you put the ad in the paper in the first place. "What do you do?"
"Military," he answers briskly, which is what he always says at parties and barbecues when civilians ask, offering nothing further.
"What branch?"
"The kind that doesn't let me talk about it." He leans back in his seat, one arm resting along the back of the booth leisurely and looks at you with an expression that's half amusement, half something hungrier. "I travel a lot. Gone more than I'm home unfortunately."
"That must be hard," you reply, and you mean it in a raw way that has nothing to do with the roleplay and everything to do with the long years of lonely nights and unanswered phone calls sitting between you.
John hears it and you watch it land. A brief tightening around his eyes, a muscle jumping in his jaw before he takes another slow drink.
"It is," he says quietly. "Harder on the people who wait, I'd imagine."
Your breath catches. You look down at the table, at your ring, at the condensation pooling around the base of your glass.
"Yeah," you whisper. "It is."
The silence that follows is different from the others. Not tense or loaded. Just heavy, in the way that true things are heavy, settling between you like something solid.
Then John clears his throat. "Another round?"
You nod, not trusting your voice, and he waves the barmaid over again.
The second drink loosens something.
Maybe it's the gin, perhaps the sheer absurdity of the situation, but somewhere between your second and third drink, the fear recedes enough for you to actually talk.
And John—your husband, who has spent the better part of a year giving you monosyllabic answers over dinner and falling asleep during films—is talking back.
He's always been charming. It's how he got you in the first place, at a mate's wedding eleven years ago, when he cornered you at the bar and spent forty-five minutes making you laugh so hard you snorted champagne up your nose. Though you'd forgotten what it looks like when he aims it at you with intent.
John asks about your students and listens to the answers. He asks about the book you're currently reading and offers an opinion on it that tells you he's been paying more attention to your nightstand than you thought. He tells you stories from deployment that are carefully scrubbed of classified details but still make you laugh; the kind of stories he used to tell you when you were dating. Absurd, self-deprecating, designed to make you think he's funnier than he is.
He is funny. You'd forgotten that, too.
"You've got a nice laugh," he says at one point, swirling his whisky, and the way he says it, like an observation, like he's hearing it for the first time, makes your stomach flip.
"Don't flatter me, J." The letter feels strange in your mouth, this thin fiction stretched over the truth of him. "I'll think you're after something."
"Maybe I am." He holds your gaze and doesn't smile. "That a problem, love?"
Your mouth goes dry.
Three drinks in, you're leaning across the table towards each other, and his hand is resting on the tabletop close enough to yours that your little fingers are almost touching, and you're telling him about the time one of your Year Fours brought a live frog to class in his lunchbox and it escaped during maths, and John is laughing—really laughing, with his head tipped back and his eyes creased—and for a vertiginous moment, you manage to forget.
You forget that this is a performance; that your husband is sitting across from you pretending to be a stranger because you put an ad in the newspaper looking for someone else. Everything except the sound of his laugh and the warmth in his eyes and the way he's looking at you like you're the most interesting person in the room, which is how he used to look at you all the time, before the deployments ate him alive and left you with the husk.
Then his eyes drop to your left hand, and the warmth doesn't leave his expression, but something sharper slides in alongside it, like the glint of a blade edge, and then he reaches across the table and takes your hand, turning it over in his.
His thumb presses against the band of your wedding ring, holding it there.
"You know," he says, and his voice is still easy, still conversational, but there's a new undercurrent to it that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, "if you were really going to go through with this little adventure of yours—"
He taps the ring once with his thumb, clicks his tongue.
"—you probably should've taken this off first."
The blood drains from your face. The pleasant haze of gin and good conversation evaporates in an instant, replaced by a cold, lurching clarity.
"John—"
"Bit of a deterrent, love. Even when you mentioned it in the ad." He's still holding your hand, still running his thumb over the ring, and his expression is unreadable—not angry, not hurt, just steady, the way he looks when he's holding a position and waiting for something to break. "Any bloke worth his salt would've clocked that you're not really in it five minutes in."
Your eyes are stinging. "I wasn't going to—I would never have—"
"I know." He replies simply and releases your hand. "I know you wouldn't."
The lump in your throat is enormous and razor-edged, and you have to look away at anything that isn't his face, because if you keep looking at him, you're going to cry in the middle of this pub and he will never, ever let you live it down.
"I'm sorry," you manage, barely a whisper. "John, I'm so sorry, I didn't—I was just—"
"Don't."
You look back at him. He's leaning forward now, strong forearms on the table, and the mask is gone. All of it, the J performance, the first-date charm, the controlled amusement. And underneath is just your husband. Looking at you with an expression that is not anger, that has never been anger, that is something far worse.
Guilt.
"I should've been home more," he murmurs; too honest for a pub on a Friday night. "I should've—" He stops, his jaw clenches before he tries again. "I should've given you a proper life. A family. A husband who's actually fucking present. And I didn't, and you—"
He gestures vaguely at the booth, the pub, the entire premise of the evening.
"—you shouldn't have had to do this to get my attention."
The first tear slips down your face before you can catch it. You swipe at it furiously with the back of your hand before the barmaid, who has become somewhat intrigued by whatever is happening at your table, can clock it.
"I wasn't trying to get your attention," you lie, and you both know it's a lie, and his mouth twitches; not quite a smile, something more tender and much more broken.
"Yeah, you were." He reaches across the table again and takes your hand, properly this time, threading his fingers through yours and squeezing. "And it worked."
You let out a breath that's half laugh, half sob, and squeeze back.
For a long moment, neither of you speaks. The pub buzzes around you. Glasses clinking, conversations flowing, some '80s song you can't name playing from the speakers. And you sit in the middle of it, holding hands across a sticky table, and the nine years of silence and distance and loving each other badly feel, for the first time, like something that could be survived.
"I need the loo," you announce eventually, because your mascara is probably wrecked and you need thirty seconds of privacy to pull yourself together before you dissolve entirely.
John releases your hand with a nod. "Take your time, love."
You slide out of the booth on legs that feel slightly unsteady with gin and adrenaline, and make your way to the back of the pub, past the bar and down the short corridor to the ladies'.
It's a single-stall bathroom. Small, clean enough, a lock on the door that you click shut behind you before bracing your hands on the edge of the sink and staring at your reflection in the mirror above it.
Your eyes are bright and glassy. Your mascara is, as predicted, smudged. You look wrecked and flushed and alive in a way you haven't in months, and you hate that it took this—a dating ad and a Friday night charade—to put that look on your face.
You run the tap and press your cool, damp fingers against your closed eyelids. Breathe. You can do this. You can go back out there, finish your drinks, go home with your husband, and figure out the rest in the morning like adults who have been married for nearly a decade and know how to have a difficult conversation.
You're drying your hands when the lock clicks.
You freeze. Your eyes snap to the door in the mirror's reflection as it opens, and John slips inside and closes it behind him with a soft, definitive click of the lock.
The bathroom shrinks to nothing.
He fills the space. Not just physically, though he does that too, broad shoulders and solid frame taking up far too much of the small room, but atmospherically. The air changes when he's this close, gets heavier and becomes charged, like the pressure drop before a storm front.
"John, what are you—"
He moves. One step, then two, and then his big hand is flat against your lower back and he's pressing you forward, gently but firmly, until your hips meet the edge of the sink and your palms catch the porcelain on either side.
His body moulds against your back. Chest to spine, hips to arse. One hand sliding from your lower back to your waist, gripping and anchoring, while his other forearm braces against the wall beside the mirror.
You can see him in the reflection; towering behind you, head dipped, mouth hovering at the shell of your ear, and your breath stutters at the look on his face.
"Gonna make you remember why you married me, darling," he mutters into your ear, and his breath is hot and damp on the side of your neck, sending a shiver cascading down your spine. His hand tightens on your waist, pulling your arse back against the hard line of his cock already straining behind his zipper.
"John—"
"Shh." His lips graze the spot beneath your ear. No kiss but a warning. "You wanted to be seen, love. I see you."
His hand slides from your waist to the hem of your dress and drags it up slowly, bunching the fabric around your hips until you're exposed from the waist down. The cool air of the bathroom hits your bare thighs and makes you gasp.
"John, we can't—We're in a pub—!"
"Should've thought about that before you went looking for a date, shouldn't you?" His voice is rough and threaded with something dark and tender at the same time, and his fingers hook into the waistband of your knickers, tugging them down your thighs in one smooth motion. They pool around your ankles, and he doesn't bother removing them fully—just leaves them there, tangled between your heels.
"Anyone could—"
"Door's locked." His hand trails up the inside of your thigh, calloused fingers dragging against the soft skin, and you bite your lip to keep the sound that wants to escape inside. "And you're going to be quiet for me, aren't you, hm?"
You hear his belt buckle. The clink of metal, the drag of leather through belt loops, then the rasp of his zip, and your hands grip the sink so hard your arms tremble, because the sound alone is enough to make your pussy clench around nothing in anticipation.
"Nearly a decade of marriage," he murmurs against the back of your neck, and his free hand slides between your thighs from behind, two thick fingers dragging through your supple folds, finding you already embarrassingly wet. He lets out a low, dark sound of approval that vibrates against your skin. "And I let you forget."
His fingers circle your clit once and your hips buck back against him involuntarily.
"That's on me," he continues, his voice dropping to that gravelly register that makes your toes curl in your pumps. "My fault. My fucking failure. Not yours."
He presses one thick finger inside you, then two, stretching you open with a slow, curling thrust that makes your breath hitch and your walls clench around him. He groans quietly and his forehead drops against the back of your head.
"'M finally gonna put our baby in you," he declares, and the words are rough and raw and utterly certain, a promise sealed against your skin. "Should've done it years ago. Should've given you that. Should've given you everything."
He withdraws his fingers and you whimper at the loss with a needy, desperate sound that you'd be mortified by in any other context, and then you feel the blunt, plump head of his cock pressing against your entrance and every other thought in your head goes static.
"John—" you mewl. John pushes in slowly.
He stretches you open around him with a fullness that borders on too much, and the sound that tears from your throat is muffled only because you clamp your hand over your own mouth.
More than a decade and his fat cock is still enough to make you go stupid.
"Fuck," John breathes, his hips flush against your arse, buried to the root, and his grip on your waist is bruising. He doesn't move yet just holds there, letting you feel every inch of him, letting your body adjust around the thick, throbbing weight of his cock.
Then he starts to move, and it's not the perfunctory, tired sex you've been having for the past year. The kind where he finishes quickly and rolls over and you stare at the ceiling and pretend you came.
This is John Price. The real one, the one you fell in love with. The one who backed you against the wall of your old flat on your third date and made you see God by eating you out through your knickers before he'd even taken anything else off.
He fucks you deep and deliberate, one hand gripping your hip while the other wraps around the front of your throat lightly; his fingers curled against your pulse point, feeling the frantic beat of your heart against his palm.
"Look at yourself," he orders, and your eyes—which had screwed shut at some point—fly open to meet his in the mirror. Pupils blown.
The sight of it is obscene. Your dress bunched around your waist, his thick forearm braced beside the mirror, tendons flexing, his body curved over yours, and the slow, powerful roll of his hips driving into you from behind with a rhythm that's making the mirror rattle against the wall.
"That's my wife," he grunts, and his reflection's eyes are fierce and fixed on yours. "Mine. Not some fucking stranger's from a newspaper ad."
You can't speak, only feel his cock dragging against your walls, his hand on your throat, his chest solid and warm and present against your back for the first time in what feels like forever.
He picks up the pace; harder and deeper thrusts, the wet slap of skin on skin echoing in the small bathroom while his ragged breath puffs against your ear. And then his rough hand leaves your throat to reach between your legs, flicking your clit and rubbing tight, fast circles that make you bite down on your own fist to keep from screaming.
"Quiet," he reminds you, and the bastard sounds smug. "You want the whole pub to know what I'm doing to you in here? Huh? Want them to know ‘m fucking my wife?"
You shake your head frantically; cunt fluttering and squeezing his shaft, because dirty talk from John Price is its own kind of sweet torture.
"Then cum for me quietly, love. Right now."
A few more hard, precise thrusts with his cock dragging inside your quivering cunt, massaging that spot that keeps swelling inside you, and you shatter.
The orgasm rips through you so violently that your knees give out, and the only things keeping you upright are the sink under your hands and John's arm locked around your waist. You clamp your teeth into the heel of your palm and muffle the cry that wants to tear out of you, your walls clenching and fluttering around his cock in rhythmic, milking pulses.
"Christ—fuck—" John's hips stutter, his rhythm breaks, and he buries himself deep—so deep—and holds, his cock kicking and pulsing inside you as he cums with a low, guttural groan pressed into the curve of your neck.
He spills himself empty inside you, balls throbbing with each little jerk of his hips. Hot and thick, deliberate this time. No condom, no pulling out this time, and the significance of that isn't lost on either of you. His hips roll lazily through the aftershocks, working every precious drop into your messy cunt, and his hand slides from your waist to your lower belly, pressing flat.
"There," he murmurs, and his voice is wrecked and satisfied, unbearably tender. "That's where it belongs."
You're shaking. Your entire body is trembling, your legs are useless, and there are tears streaming silently down your face that have nothing to do with pain.
He stays inside you for a long moment; breathing, his lips pressed against the nape of your neck, beard scraping your skin, his hand warm on your lower stomach. Then he pulls out slowly, carefully, and you feel his cum start to leak from you immediately, warm and slick against your inner thighs.
He reaches down, picks your knickers up from around your ankles, and slides them back up your legs with an almost clinical efficiency. When they're settled back into place, he pats your arse once, light and proprietary, and tugs your dress back down.
"There we go," he says, like he's just helped you with your coat. "Good as new."
You let out a sound that's somewhere between a laugh and a sob, your forehead dropping against the mirror.
"How about a 'thank you,' love," he adds while he tugs his softening cock back into his jeans, and when you lift your head and catch his eyes in the reflection, the smug satisfaction on his face is so thoroughly, infuriatingly Price that you want to slap him and kiss him simultaneously, "for stuffing your pretty cunt full of my cum, hm?"
"John."
"Mm." He presses a kiss to your temple, achingly gentle after everything he just did to you, and reaches past you to turn on the tap. He wets his hand and wipes beneath your eyes with his thumb, cleaning up the mascara.
"Ready to leave, love?" he asks, straightening up and buckling his belt with the same unhurried ease he does everything. "Or would you like another drink before your husband takes you home?"
Your legs are still shaking, his cum is slowly but surely soaking into your knickers, and your heart is so full it might crack your ribs.
"N-No," you manage, small and hoarse. "I'd like to go home now, John."
He looks at you, really looks. And there is nothing left of the J performance, not the Captain Price mask, just John, your husband. The man who drove to a pub on a Friday night not to punish you but to remind you both of what you'd almost let slip away.
"That's my girl," he replies softly.
He unlocks the bathroom door, checks the corridor, and guides you out with his hand on the small of your back. You walk through the pub on shaking legs, past the booth where your half-finished drinks are still sitting, past the barmaid who gives you both a knowing look that you pretend not to see.
The night air hits you like cold water when you step outside, and you suck in a breath that fills your lungs properly for the first time in hours.
John pulls his car keys from his pocket, presses the fob, and opens the passenger door for you without a word. You climb in. He closes the door, rounds the bonnet, and slides into the driver's seat.
Neither of you speaks on the drive home. His hand rests on your thigh, squeezing gently every other minute, and your hand rests on top of his, your fingers tracing the ridges of his calloused knuckles and the band of his own wedding ring, which he has never, not once in nine years, taken off.
When he pulls into the driveway, the porch light is off. You haven't left it on in months.
John kills the engine. Sits for a moment, looking at the dark house.
Then he turns to you, and his voice is quieter now, stripped of the previous smugness, the heat, the performance. Just the raw thing underneath.
"I will do better."
No grand speech or a promise wrapped in flowers and apologies and all the things you've heard before and stopped believing. It's four words, plain and blunt and offered without decoration, and they land heavier than anything else he's said tonight.
You reach across the centre console and take his face in both hands, and you kiss him slowly, like you have time, because you're going to make time.
"I know," you whisper against his mouth.
And when you get inside, John turns the porch light on.
You get injected with an unknown toxin and now your loyal teammates are determined to help ease your suffering.
— pairing: Task Force 141 × fem!141!Reader
— cw: 18+ | sex pollen; dubcon/fuck or die; dd:dne; medical & military inaccuracies; pining; hurt/comfort; angst; fluff; cum and orgasms as the antidote; wc: 12k+
author's note: This has been in my drafts for two years 💀 And she would've said yes to all of them.
"We need some answers, Kate. Now." Captain Price's voice booms inside the spacious briefing room.
He's practically pacing in front of the desk like some anxious K-9, arms folded over his plate carrier as he keeps his sharp eyes trained on Laswell and the two scientists sitting behind their laptops, staring at their respective screens.
Meanwhile, the rest of his team is still as geared up as their Captain—all waiting for orders or further instructions, scattered around the room and listening with bated breath while Price grows more agitated with each shaky exhale he can hear coming from you.
You're currently sitting on one of the tables, boot-clad feet dangling off the edge as you stare at the ceiling, right into the fluorescent lights above, ignoring the way your eyes begin to sting from their brightness.
You've been putting on a brave face since getting stabbed with the needle a few hours ago and you've kept the façade up since hopping off the helo back on base, but it's getting harder to mask the panic rising inside you as your body starts to feel funny.
You swipe the back of your gloved hand over your sweaty forehead, catching the cold perspiration on your feverish skin with the rough fabric, and out of your peripherals, you notice the way your teammates' heads snap in your direction—different-coloured pairs of eyes assessing you with worry, concern, and a hint of curiosity.
Soap and Gaz are standing to your left and right respectively, sneaking glances at you whenever you shift on your spot, while the Lieutenant is still as a marble statue a little offside, arms crossed over his bulky tac vest.
Laswell begins to explain calmly, clutching a thick folder to her chest.
"We're still waiting on anything concrete, John, but the research papers your team managed to extract have offered a great insight on that—whatever that bioweapon is."
Bioweapon.
Your eyes widen as you sit up straight, the word making your heart race and your skin crawl with fear. Both Soap and Gaz take a step closer—two strong pairs of arms outstretched and ready to catch you if you faint.
"Easy there, John—" Laswell says firmly, unbothered by his tone as she takes a step towards the captain and gestures at the two scientists watching the scene unfold with wide eyes from behind their laptops.
"They said she won't die. The amount of injection was too low… apparently."
Apparently?!
You inhale sharply and open your mouth to announce your imminent panic, but you're interrupted when one of the scientists speaks up first.
"That is correct, sir. She won't die."
Professor Doctor Boswel, as the name badge on his white lab coat states, chimes in. Price stops pacing at once, though his sharp eyes scream you better start explaining now, or one of you will be made responsible for this.
"Bringing the syringe back to base was the decisive factor. Our team at the lab is still working to decipher and translate the medical reports and research papers your team recovered, but we can confirm that this bioweapon is most likely a toxin."
A low murmur of various curses goes through the briefing room as you try to ignore the odd tingles in your limbs—like they're going numb from sitting in a bad position for too long—and process the doctor's words instead.
"You're saying I've been poisoned, doc?" You butt in crudely, letting out a humourless laugh as you begin fidgeting with your hands, clenching and unclenching them to get rid of those tingles while a cold drop of sweat trickles down your left temple and is swiftly wiped away by Soap's gloved thumb.
"Fuckin’ hell, lass. Ye dinnae look too good," Soap mutters under his breath, exchanging a concerned glance with Gaz, who then looks to the captain for guidance with a serious frown.
When Gaz turns around abruptly, you get a whiff of his scent, and you're ashamed to admit to yourself that you inhale it deeply—musk and sweat and gunpowder smoke, a hint of his fancy body wash lingering underneath all the grime. A perfect concoction of what is entirely Gaz.
It's intoxicating. Mouth-watering.
And absolutely inappropriate, because he's one of your best friends and a comrade.
What the hell is happening?
Of all the injuries and wounds you've already acquired during missions and deployments, this must be the fucking worst. You'd rather get shot or stabbed than sit here, feel strange as hell and be ogled like a failed science experiment.
Price's eyes flicker to Ghost, who hasn't said a word since sitting you down on the table with a gruff order to stay seated, and then to his three sergeants, lingering on you heavily before he turns back.
"What kind of bloody toxin?"
"It seems to be some sort of aphrodisiac, but… uh, well—about fifty times worse than that."
The other scientist, Professor Doctor Adebayo, answers tentatively, as if explaining it out loud makes him uncomfortable.
"The reports say it turns men—"
Dr. Adebayo hesitates, clearing his throat and looking between Laswell and Captain Price, until the latter lets out an exasperated sigh.
"Turns them what, doc?"
It's Laswell who says it eventually, "Turns them aggressive, John. Feral with lust, as ridiculous as that might sound."
The CIA agent finally looks in your direction before approaching you slowly while Dr. Adebayo seems to heave a sigh of relief as soon as she takes over.
"A high dose of it can be used to lower one's inhibition levels to a point where even the most honourable man would resort to sexual assault to ease his urges."
Her factual yet grim explanation makes the tension inside the briefing room spike tenfold. Every man present tenses up, visibly uncomfortable—Ghost especially, who's practically vibrating with strain.
Using a toxin like that—a bioweapon—on soldiers in the field could lead to even more and worse war crimes, and everyone here is aware of that.
"Wait—what? What the fuck?" Gaz utters, bristling next to you while you grip the edge of the table, gritting your teeth as the tingles intensify and wreck through your body in waves that leave you shuddering with each one.
"'Scuse me, what now?" You scoff. "Does that mean I'm gonna turn into a fuckin' nympho any second?"
Multiple pairs of eyes snap towards you at your choice of words. Some look intense and laced with worry. Price scolds you with one glance. Others look mildly amused—the latter being Soap, who lets out a snort but tries to cover it up with a fake cough into his fist.
Laswell surveys you intently, though her voice softens when she addresses you directly.
"How are you feeling, Sergeant? Are you in pain? Nauseous?"
A beat of silence follows. Your eyes flutter briefly as you meet Kate's blue gaze, and you exhale a long breath through your nostrils before you answer curtly.
"I feel weird."
You feel like you're about to get your period, but you keep that information to yourself for now and try not to wrap your arms around yourself self-soothingly.
Your lower abdomen is starting to tighten and cramp. Your gut twists like you just chugged a steaming bowl of soup and your limbs keep tingling—from your toes to your fingertips, and up to the tip of your nose. Tiny vibrations along with hot and cold flushes that make you quake and squirm in your seat on the table.
Kate squints at you, though she doesn't press further.
"What kind of effect will this stuff have on her?" Price enquires gruffly, more level-headed this time, his gaze shifting from the two scientists over to you and then back.
Meanwhile, as you crank your sore neck from left to right to get a good crack in, your eyes catch sight of Soap's muscular forearms and—to your horror—they linger.
The sleeves of his combat fatigues are rolled up to his elbows, exposing dark coarse hair and thick veins and that damn SAS insignia tattoo.
You want to trace the black lines with your tongue and imagine the salt of his skin on your parched taste buds.
And your eyes widen when a sudden rush of mind-numbing, pulsating heat makes you squeeze your thighs together as you clench your jaw to keep the lewd sound bubbling up in your throat from escaping.
Soap shoots you a quizzical look, one eyebrow raising as you avert your eyes from him swiftly, heat crawling up your neck and prickling beneath your skin.
"Fuck," you breathe, doubling over with a groan as the muscles in your thighs and lower abdomen begin to cramp up painfully while you can practically feel your pussy start convulsing around nothing, leaking with arousal and soaking into your underwear.
In a matter of seconds, your team—Ghost included, like a solid wall of quiet reassurance—are by your side, keeping you upright, asking questions, though their deep, accented voices are muffled as your quickening heartbeat begins to thud in your ears.
Their every touch seems to burn through the thick layers of your kit.
"Kate—Kate," Price is by her side in a few long strides, ducking his head to get on eye-level with her as he points at the two scientists accusingly, though Kate is already on her smartphone, contacting the lab again.
Price huffs like an angry bull trying to protect his herd as he turns his attention back to Dr. Boswel and Dr. Adebayo, who seem to be in a frenzied discussion, watching the way you're cramping and writhing.
"What the fuck is happening to her?" He barks at them, demanding an answer yesterday.
"It's—it's the toxin," Dr. Boswel stammers obviously, blinking up at Captain Price from behind his glasses. "She didn't get the full dose, but it's still—" He pauses, eyes flickering nervously under the captain's glare. "—bad."
Another gut-wrenching moan from you echoes through the briefing room as you squirm in Gaz's embrace, and Price must restrain himself from directing his wrath towards the two men in front of him—it's not their fault, after all.
It's his.
"Oxytocin might help… neutralize the toxin in her body," Dr. Adebayo remarks, clicking his pen nervously as he stares at his laptop screen before meeting Dr. Boswel's eyes, who is waiting for an elucidation.
"The hormone," Dr. Adebayo clears his throat again, clearly uncomfortable, "—not the drug." He clarifies, clicking his pen a few more times.
Laswell lowers her phone and shares a look with Price, holding an entire conversation with one long, meaningful glance, the one learned and perfected over more than a decade of working together, when Gaz's voice breaks through the chaos, calling for attention.
"Cap'n! What do we do?!"
You're not brought back to the barracks but Captain Price's private quarters.
Your squad makes sure to keep you out of sight in your condition; away from prying eyes while Ghost sneaks through the shadows with your quivering form cradled against his chest, carrying you bridal style like you're something fragile, something vulnerable he must protect.
Once safely inside the captain's flat, the curtains are drawn before your heavy gear is stripped from you, all while you don't even bother paying attention to who is grabbing or holding you at this point.
All that matters is someone touching you.
Your brain is mush, reduced to your most simple and carnal desires. No shame nor worry about the needy noises you're making whenever one of their big, strong hands strips another layer of clothing.
"Shit, I think she has a fever," Gaz mutters, cupping your face with both hands as he investigates your hazy, unfocused eyes while you let out another pathetic whimper. "She's completely out of it."
"Get her into the guest bedroom. Down the hall, first door on the left," Price orders gruffly, trying to keep his eyes from wandering up and down the length of your trembling, half-naked body.
"I'll call the senior consultant."
Ghost grumbles a low curse under his breath when your hand brushes over the front of his crotch—by accident or voluntarily this time, he doesn't dare imagine—and leaves the guest bedroom while Gaz and Soap manoeuvre you onto the king-sized bed.
Meanwhile, you don't care about the effect your uncharacteristic behaviour has on your teammates and superiors.
Whenever they try to make you drink or take an easy bite of food—whether it's a chewy protein bar or an overripe banana, because Price has no proper groceries at his place—you twist in whoever's embrace you're in, turning your scrunched-up face away like a petulant toddler.
"I don't wanna," you whine and hiccup, protesting each time Gaz tries to lift the rim of the water bottle to your lips, your speech now slightly slurred, glossy eyes averting their gaze as you breathe shallowly, squirming while Soap keeps you propped up with your back resting against his chest on the bed.
Gaz, who has been trying again to make you drink a sip of water for the past twenty minutes, looks back at his Lieutenant and Captain helplessly.
"Doc said we need to keep her hydrated," Price announces, rubbing his bare hand over his tired face. "Keep flushing that bloody poison outta her system and—"
Suddenly, Ghost's deep, gravelly voice interrupts the captain's speech with a harsh bite to it. "Johnny."
Soap, who has been trying his best to ignore the way you keep grinding your arse against his crotch in this position, ducks his head at the sharp and sudden warning.
"What? 'M not doin' anythin'," he grunts before sucking in a sharp breath as his cock keeps stirring and twitching in his combat trousers, "Fuck, lass, please—"
Soap tries to keep you from moving; his ungloved hands get a firm hold of your hips, but you're practically panting and mewling in his lap, making it harder for him not to crumble under the pressure building up in his dick.
Then Gaz is swift to pluck you out of the Scot's embrace with a disdainful frown, like you're some toy that was stolen from him.
"Don't be a fuckin' perv, Soap," Gaz snaps, cradling you into his arms, where you immediately begin pawing at his black compression shirt, determined to get your palms under it and on his bare skin.
"She can't consent!"
It's Price who approaches the bed then, while Ghost stays leaning against the doorframe, keeping a keen eye on the situation.
"Enough! Both of you," Price barks, eyes flashing before his shoulders drop with a rough sigh. He pinches the bridge of his nose. "Doc said it might help if—"
John stops mid-sentence, clenching his strong jaw. He can't believe what he is about to say, and he crosses his arms over his chest again, feigning control while he internally braces himself for his next words.
"Those doctors said it might help if she… climaxes."
His words hang in the air like a thick fog that no one can quite see through nor think in, and everyone seems to be holding their breath while you finally manage to tug Gaz's shirt out of his waistband, making him cuss under his breath when you go on to lick a long, wet stripe over his exposed abs like some feral lioness, utterly hungry for a taste.
"Shit—Babygirl, no, d-don't—" Gaz stammers helplessly while a rush of heat goes straight to his neck and cock simultaneously, overwhelmingly so.
He pushes you away by your shoulders—and hates himself for how reluctant he is at it—and he winces when your blunt nails claw into his bulging biceps, digging into his skin even through his shirt with another whimper.
"Please, Kyle… Let me—" you mewl, batting your eyelashes up at him. "It—It fuckin’ hurts."
Soap pushes his fists into his eye sockets, heaving a deep breath that turns into a frustrated groan. "Steamin' Jesus, lass, ye’re fuckin’ killin' us here."
"Take a bloody walk, MacTavish," Price orders, pointing his thumb at the door over his shoulder, and while Soap climbs off the mattress, grumbling to himself with an obvious erection pressing against the seam of his zipper, Price addresses Gaz.
"And you, Garrick, take—" He hesitates again, balling his hands into fists at his sides, trying to keep his own body in check at the sight and sounds of you, before he nudges his chin towards the door of the bathroom.
"Take her to the shower to get the fever down and… help her."
The captain's last words are nothing more than a strained grumble.
Gaz gapes at his superior. Soap freezes in his steps at the end of the bed, openly gawking and blinking like he didn't just hear right. Ghost visibly stiffens and shifts his stance, still leaning against the doorframe of the guest bedroom. No one can see the way he grits his teeth so hard he might chip a tooth behind his balaclava.
"But sir—"
Price shakes his head; brows set in a stern frown as he holds Gaz's widened gaze.
"She'd want you to take care of her if she could actually consent to it. And that's an order, Sergeant."
Ghost wants to disagree, but keeps his mouth shut and exhales a sharp huff of contempt instead.
The rest of the men try to distract themselves around Captain Price's flat while Gaz takes you to the en-suite bathroom like he was ordered to.
Not asked, ordered to.
He keeps repeating that in his head as he walks you towards the bathroom door with his arm around your waist, your body listing into his side like you've forgotten how to hold yourself upright. His jaw is set so tight his molars ache.
He's been ordered to do a lot of things in his career. Clear rooms. Hold positions under fire. Drag wounded men through mud while rounds cracked overhead. He's followed every order without hesitation, because that's what good soldiers do—they trust the chain of command and they execute.
This doesn't feel like any of those things.
He keeps the bathroom door unlocked—just in case you faint and he needs help—and lets out a huff when you fling yourself into his body suddenly and the air is knocked from his lungs.
"Easy," he pleads with you while his head dips down, and he inhales your familiar scent before he can stop himself. Sweat and the remnants of whatever lotion you put on this morning underneath your gear before the mission, something warm and sweet that he's caught whiffs of a hundred times before in passing and never let himself think about for longer than a second.
"Easy there, love," he tries again, his trembling hands wrapping around your midriff tentatively.
Gaz hates these circumstances. Hates how the mission ended in such a bloody mess. Hates how excited he is to undress you to your underwear, and he despises that this is how he'll get to have you for the first time.
This is not how he'd imagined it.
He never imagined it. Not in any concrete, detailed way. Not like he'd planned it in his head, step by step—the restaurant he'd take you to first, somewhere nice but not so nice you'd take the piss out of him for it. The way he'd tell you after the second drink, maybe the third, that he'd been thinking about you. Casually. Like it hadn't been eating him alive for months.
He hadn't planned any of that.
Fucking liar.
You make a sound against his chest, somewhere between a sob and a moan, and your fingers twist into the wet fabric of his compression shirt, tugging weakly.
"Kyle… Kyle, I need—"
"I know," he murmurs, and his voice comes out rougher than he intends. "I know, love. C'mon."
He manoeuvres you towards the shower, reaching past you to turn the dial to lukewarm. The water sputters, then hisses to life against the tile, and steam begins to curl at the edges of the glass.
You're still in your underwear—plain, standard issue, nothing designed to be sexy—and it doesn't matter, because the sight of you trembling and desperate in front of him with water beginning to mist across your skin is doing things to his head that no amount of mental discipline can counter.
He starts to dismantle his assault rifle in his head.
You stumble into the shower cabin and he follows, still fully clothed. The water hits his chest and soaks through his compression shirt in seconds, plastering the fabric to his skin, and the cold shock of it helps. Briefly.
Bolt. Firing pin. Cam pin.
"C'mon, Babygirl," he coos at you as he turns your quivering body in his embrace until your back is flush against his chest. One arm wraps tightly below your breasts, forearm pushing up against the swell of them through the soaked fabric of your bra, and he tries, and fails miserably, not to take a long look over your shoulder.
Buffer tube. Buffer spring. Buffer.
You melt against his body and his cock throbs in his combat trousers, straining against his briefs uncomfortably. The water is doing nothing for the heat radiating off your skin. If anything, you're burning hotter, pressing back into him with small, involuntary rolls of your hips that make his breath stutter.
Lower receiver. Trigger assembly. Trigger—
"Please," you whimper, and his entire train of thought derails.
Your head lolls back against his shoulder, exposing the column of your throat, and he can see the way your pulse hammers beneath the surface, rapid and frantic. Your hips buck against his hand when he finally—finally—lets it trail down over your lower belly, his calloused fingers dragging across the wet skin, feeling the muscles jump and twitch beneath his touch.
"Yes—yes—yes—" you chant breathlessly, and your hips cant forward, chasing his hand with a desperation that makes something crack open in his chest.
Fuck—fuck—fuck—fuck.
He cups your pussy through your knickers and the heat of you against his palm nearly makes his knees buckle. He can feel you through the thin, soaked fabric and he's not sure if the wetness is from the shower stream or if it's all you.
His chest is heaving when he finally gathers enough courage to dip his long fingers beneath the waistband of your underwear. His jaw clenches and his mind grasps desperately for the drills again—clear left, clear right, move to the next room, check your corners—anything to stay anchored while you let out a moan that echoes off the tile walls and punches straight through him.
You're so wet, so swollen, it's obscene. His fingers slide through your folds with zero resistance and the groan that rips from deep within his chest is involuntary, guttural, ashamed. He can feel your arousal ooze from your entrance, slick and hot, and he can already tell how tight you'd feel clenching around his fingers, how you'd—
No. He's not going there.
"Fuck," he curses under his breath, more to himself than to you. "I'm only doin' this for you, Babygirl. This is only about you."
He says it like a prayer. Like if he repeats it enough, it'll be true.
His fingers press on your clit, pulsing and twitching already, and he starts rubbing small, firm circles over it, adjusting the pressure when your breath hitches or your thighs clamp around his wrist. He reads your body like he reads a room. Methodically, attentive, and cataloguing every reaction.
You writhe and squirm in his tight grip, your nails digging into the arm he has banded around your ribs, and every sound you make, every whimper, and stuttered gasp of his name, chips away at the wall he's trying to keep standing between following an order and wanting this.
"M-more, Kyle, please!"
Gaz curses himself, but he gives you more.
Two fingers pressing into you, slow and careful despite every instinct screaming at him to give you what you're begging for. You clench around him immediately, hot and tight and silky, and his cock kicks in his trousers so hard he must bite the inside of his cheek to keep from groaning.
He curls his fingers, searching for the spot that makes your thighs shake, and when he finds it, you keen so loudly the sound bounces off every hard surface in the small bathroom.
"That's it," he murmurs against your temple, his lips brushing your skin without quite kissing. "That's it, love. Let go for me."
He's not sure when he started talking to you like this. Somewhere between the first touch and the second, the clinical detachment he'd been clinging to crumbled and something else took its place—something tender and fierce and terrifyingly honest.
Your first orgasm hits you hard enough to make your entire body seize in his arms, your back arching away from his chest as a strangled cry tears from your throat. He holds you through it, fingers still working, still pressing and giving, because even as the tremors wrack through you and your legs give out, he can feel your body already winding up again, the toxin refusing to let you rest.
"Shh, shh, I've got you," he breathes, adjusting his grip to take your full weight when your knees buckle entirely. "I've got you."
You cum again two minutes later, and then again after that, and again, and Gaz loses count somewhere around the fifth or sixth time, when his fingers are cramping and his arm is trembling from holding you upright and the water has long since turned cold.
Each time, he thinks it'll be enough, and each time, your body coils tight again within minutes, the toxin driving you right back to the edge with a cruelty that makes him want to put his fist through the tile.
He doesn’t want to imagine what a full dose would have done to you. To anyone.
When you tell him that you're hurting—repeatedly, begging him to make you cum in that desperate, broken tone of yours—the young Sergeant is sure something dies inside him on the spot.
"Kyle—Kyle, I need more, I need you to—please—Fuck, please!"
He knows what you're asking for. You're grinding back against his cock, which has been rock-hard and aching for what feels like hours, and every roll of your hips sends a jolt of white-hot arousal through him that he must physically brace against.
"I can't," he grits out, and it takes everything in him. "Christ. I can't do that to you. Not like this."
"Please—"
"No, Babygirl." His voice cracks on the word, and he presses his forehead against the back of your head, squeezing his eyes shut. "Not like this."
He drops to his knees instead.
The tile is hard and unforgiving under his kneecaps and the now cold water from the shower hits the back of his neck, but he barely registers any of it as he turns you to face him and hooks one of your legs over his shoulder.
He looks up at you once—your hazy, unfocused eyes, the way your chest heaves, the water running in rivulets down your body—and then he leans forward and drags his tongue through your folds in one long, broad stroke.
The sound you make is devastating.
Your hands fly to his head, fingers scrabbling for purchase on his wet hair, and your hips jerk forward so violently he must grip your thigh to keep you steady. He groans against you, he can't help it, and the vibration makes you cry out again, blunt nails raking over his scalp.
Gaz eats you like he's starving for it, because the truth he can't say out loud is that he is.
He's thought about this. Dreamed about it. Wanked to the idea of it in the dark of his bunk with his fist shoved against his mouth to keep quiet. And now he's here, on his knees in his Captain's shower with cold water running down his back and your taste flooding his mouth, and it's everything and nothing like what he imagined because you're not choosing this—you're not choosing him—and that knowledge sits in his chest like a brick.
But he doesn't stop.
Gaz licks and sucks and fucks you with his tongue until his jaw aches and your thighs are shaking so badly you can barely stand, even with his hands gripping your hips. He makes you cum on his mouth twice, then thrice, pressing his face into you each time your body locks up, working you through it with relentless, single-minded focus because if he stops to think about what this means, about what happens after, he'll fall apart.
When he finally pulls back, his lips are swollen, his chin is slick and his cock is so hard it genuinely hurts. You're still whimpering, still reaching for him, still not done, and the toxin is still pumping through your veins with no sign of stopping.
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and exhales a shaky breath, pressing his forehead against your hip.
"I need—" His voice is wrecked. He swallows hard, then tries again. "I need a minute."
Not because he's tired, or his fingers are cramped and his jaw is sore and his knees are bruised from the tile. No.
But if he stays on his knees in front of you for one more second, he's going to give you what you're begging for, and he will never forgive himself for it.
He stands on unsteady legs, turns the shower off, and reaches for the towel hanging on the rack outside the cabin. His hands are shaking as he wraps it around, and you cling to it loosely, swaying on your feet.
"C'mon," he says, guiding you towards the door with one hand on the small of your back. His voice has steadied, but his eyes haven't. "Let's get you dried off."
You're protesting. He's cursing under his breath. There's shuffling, a stumble, and then he grabs the door handle and swings it open—
And Soap nearly falls backwards into the bathroom.
"Soap!"
The Scotsman catches himself on the doorway, one hand gripping the frame as he glances over his shoulder with a look that's not even remotely sheepish enough for a man who was clearly pressing his ear to the door thirty seconds ago.
Gaz is still wearing his clothes, though they're completely drenched—his compression shirt is a second skin, his combat trousers heavy with water, boots squelching on the tile. He's holding you by the forearm as you stand next to him, loose towel wrapped around your body, still trembling, still making those small, desperate sounds in the back of your throat.
"The fuck, mate? Did you eavesdrop on us?"
Soap shrugs as he straightens up, adjusting his stance in a way that's clearly meant to disguise the state of his trousers. "Was jus' checkin' on ye."
"Checking on—" Gaz's jaw works, nostrils flaring. He wants to snap, wants to shove Soap back into the hallway and slam the door, but he's running on fumes and you're leaning into him again, your face pressed against his soaked chest, mumbling incoherently.
"She needs—" Gaz starts, then stops. Looks down at you, back up at Soap. Something heavy passes between the two men, unspoken but understood.
"She needs more than I can give her right now," he finishes quietly, and the admission costs him more than any of them will ever know.
Soap's expression shifts. The boyish smirk drops, replaced by something sobered, and he gives Gaz a short nod—the kind they exchange in the field when one of them is spent and the other takes point.
"A'right," Soap answers, surprisingly steady, rolling his broad shoulders. "Ah’ve got 'er."
Gaz transfers you into Soap's waiting arms with a gentleness that borders on reverent—one hand on the back of your head, the other guiding your shoulders—and he doesn't let go until he's sure Soap has you secure.
Then he walks past them both, water dripping from every inch of him, and doesn't look back.
He makes it to the kitchen before his hands start shaking badly enough that he has to brace them flat on the counter. He stands there, head bowed, water pooling on the linoleum beneath him, and breathes.
Ghost is leaning against the opposite wall with his arms crossed, and he doesn't say a word.
There is no need to.
Soap carries you back to the bed like you weigh nothing to him; one arm under your knees, the other around your back, the towel slipping loose and neither of you caring, and he lays you down with a surprising gentleness that contradicts every tightly coiled muscle in his body.
He's been hard since the briefing room, balls throbbing uncomfortably. Over two hours of it. The kind of persistent, throbbing ache that sits low in his gut and pulses in time with his heartbeat, and he's been dealing with it the way he deals with most discomfort.
By ignoring it aggressively and hoping it fucks off on its own.
It has not fucked off unfortunately. Truth be told, he’d be worried about himself if it did.
"Right then," he mutters, kneeling on the mattress beside you as he cracks his neck and rolls his shoulders again like he's about to breach a door. "Let's sort ye out, hen."
And that's the thing about Johnny MacTavish—he doesn't agonise. Not the way Gaz does, all quiet guilt and moral calculus. Soap's moral framework is simpler, blunter, built from different materials. You're his teammate, you're hurting, and he can help. Everything else is noise.
That doesn't mean he's unaffected; doesn't mean his hands aren't shaking when he settles between your legs and pushes the towel fully away from your body, or that his breath doesn't hitch hard enough to hear when he gets his first proper look at you fully naked, spread out on the white sheets with your chest heaving and your thighs trembling and your eyes half-lidded, glassy, barely tracking him.
Christ, you're beautiful.
He's thought about this. Fuck. Of course he has. He's not a bloody monk, and you're you.
He's thought about it in the gym when you spot him on the bench press and your face hovers above his, upside down and grinning. He's thought about it on long transports when you fall asleep against his shoulder and he stays perfectly still for hours so you won't wake up. Or when you laugh at his shite jokes that no one else finds funny, when you steal chips off his plate in the mess, when you call him Johnny instead of Soap and don't even notice you've done it.
He's thought about it a lot.
But not like this.
"You with me?" he asks, tapping your cheek lightly with two fingers. Your eyes roll towards him, struggling to focus, and you make a sound that's part whimper, part plea.
Close enough.
"A'right, sweetheart. I've got ye."
He doesn't ease into it the way Gaz did. Where Gaz was methodical, with careful touches, measured pressure, and constant checking, Soap is instinct. He reads you through vibration and sound, adjusts on the fly, follows the frequency of your moans like he's tuning into a signal.
He dips his head between your thighs and licks into you without preamble, broad and hot and greedy, and the noise that tears out of you rattles something loose in his chest.
"Fuck—tha's it," he groans against you, the vibration making your hips jolt, and his big hands grip the backs of your thighs to keep you spread open and steady. "Tha's my bonnie girl."
He's not quiet about it, either. Soap eats pussy the way he does most things. With enthusiasm, commitment, and absolutely zero self-consciousness. Wet, filthy sounds fill the bedroom, punctuated by his own groans and your increasingly incoherent cries, and he doesn't give a single shit that the door is open, and his team can hear every obscene noise he's wringing out of you.
Let them hear.
His tongue works over your clit in fast, tight circles, then broad, flat strokes, alternating rhythm and pressure every time he feels your thighs start to shake. When you try to close your legs, he pins them open with his forearms. When you try to squirm away—overstimulated, oversensitive, too much and not enough at the same time—he follows relentlessly, dragging you back by the hips with a growl that rumbles against your soaked flesh.
"Nuh-uh. Stay still f'me."
He makes you cum with his mouth in under five minutes and then doesn't stop.
Your fingers twist into the sheets, into his mohawk, clawing at his scalp as your back arches off the mattress and a wrecked sob punches out of your lungs. Soap groans in response, the sound reverential, like your pleasure is a hymn and he's on his knees in church.
He keeps going. Lapping at you through the aftershocks, sucking your clit between his lips until you're keening, pressing his tongue inside you just to feel you clench around it, and when you cum again with his name breaking apart on your lips—Johnny, Johnny, fuck yes, Johnny—he nearly blacks out from how hard his cock throbs in response.
His hips have started moving on their own. Small, involuntary rolls against the mattress, his aching cock grinding against the sheets through his combat trousers, and he knows he should fucking stop, should pull his hips back, should focus on you and not the desperate friction building between his body and the bed.
But he doesn't stop.
He is physically incapable.
You taste like honey and salt and something almost medicinal underneath—the toxin, probably, working its way out of your system through your sweat and your slick—and he's drunk on it. Drunk on the way you say his name, how your thighs tremble against the sides of his head, drunk on the wet sounds of his tongue on your cunt and the way you keep pulling his face closer, harder, more.
"God—fuck—lass, ye taste so fuckin' good—"
He's rutting against the mattress in earnest now, his hips snapping in sharp, desperate little thrusts, and the friction is nowhere near enough and exactly too much at the same time.
The sheets are going to be ruined. He doesn't care. Can't. He’s a weak man, and his entire world has narrowed to the taste of you on his tongue and the ache in his junk and the way your body keeps arching into him like he's the only thing keeping you alive.
"Please—please, Johnny, I need—I can't—"
"I know, hen, I know—" he pants against your inner thigh, pressing a biting kiss there that makes you yelp, "—jus' one more, c'mon, give me one more, aye?"
He flickers his tongue, seals his mouth over your clit and sucks, hard, and you shatter. Your thighs clamp around his head, your hands fist in his hair so tightly it stings, and the scream that rips from your throat is ragged and raw and so fucking beautiful that he comes.
Inside his combat pants.
His hips stutter against the mattress and a guttural, muffled groan vibrates against your pussy as his cock pulses and spills, hot and wet, soaking through his briefs and into his trousers. His arms shake, his vision whites out for a second, and he has to press his forehead against your inner thigh and just breathe through it, chest heaving, while you whimper above him, still trembling from your own orgasm.
He pulls back slowly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and the reality of what just happened settles over him like a cloth soaked in ice water. He stares down at himself, at the damp patch darkening the front of his trousers, and lets out a long, defeated exhale.
"MacTavish."
Ghost's voice comes from the doorway; flat and sharp, dripping with contempt.
Soap closes his eyes, disappointed in himself, exhaling through his nose. "Aye. I know."
"You know?" Price's voice joins Ghost's, closer, much heavier. The captain is standing just inside the bedroom now, arms folded, jaw set. He looks at Soap the way a father looks at a teenage son caught doing something monumentally stupid.
"Get yourself sorted. Now."
Soap doesn't argue. He climbs off the bed on unsteady legs, not meeting anyone's eyes, and adjusts his trousers with a grimace as he shuffles past Ghost in the doorway.
Ghost doesn't move to let him pass. Makes him squeeze by, shoulder to shoulder, just to make it uncomfortable.
"Disgusting," Ghost mutters, low enough that only Soap hears it.
"Fuck off, LT," Soap mutters back, and there's no heat in it. Just shame.
You don't notice the shift at first.
One moment there are hands and mouths on you, voices and pressure and friction. The next, everything is quieter. Stiller. The mattress dips on one side and stays dipped, a solid weight settling beside you but not on you, not against you, not close enough to touch.
You whine at the loss of contact, of heat, of anything, and reach blindly for whoever is there.
A large hand catches your wrist. Gentle and firm, holding it in place.
"Don't."
One word. Low and gravelly, scraped raw like it was dragged over broken glass and wire mesh on its way out of his throat.
Ghost.
He's sitting on the edge of the bed with his back straight and his boots still on, because taking his boots off would mean he's staying, and staying would mean—he doesn't finish the thought.
Price asked him to sit with you while Gaz and Soap pulled themselves together. Asked this time, not ordered, because Price knows that ordering Ghost to do something he doesn't want to do is about as effective as ordering the tide to turn. Ghost agreed with a single nod, and now here he is, and every muscle in his body is locked so tight he might snap a tendon.
You're lying on your side, curled in on yourself, wearing nothing but your sodden underwear again and the ghost of everyone else's touch on your skin. The towel is long gone. Your body is still trembling, still feverish, still caught in the grip of the toxin, and the soft, pained sounds you keep making are doing things to him that he absolutely cannot allow.
He's hard. Has been since you doubled over and moaned and he had to watch your body betray you in front of everyone. His cock is straining against his trousers, thick and heavy and insistent.
Ghost pretends it isn’t. He's very good at pretending things don't exist.
"Simon…"
His jaw clenches beneath the balaclava. You rarely use his first name—none of them do—and hearing it now, in that voice, breathy and desperate and small, is a kind of cruelty he wasn't prepared for.
"You need to drink something," he murmurs, and reaches for the water bottle on the nightstand without looking at you.
"Don't want—"
"Wasn't bloody askin’."
He unscrews the cap and turns to you, and the mistake—the critical, tactical, unforgivable mistake—is that he looks at your face next.
Your eyes are glassy and wet, your lips parted around shallow little breaths, and you're looking up at him like he's the only solid thing in a world that's been spinning for hours.
Not with lust—not the way you looked at Gaz and Soap—but with something quieter. Something that reaches past the toxin and grabs hold of something deeper.
Trust.
You trust him. Even now, reduced to your basest instincts, your intoxicated, unhinged brain still recognises him as safe.
Something fractures behind his ribs, and he shuts it down immediately, brutally, the way he shuts down everything that threatens to breach the walls.
"Sit up," he orders, and his voice is soft yet steady even if the rest of him isn't. He slides one hand behind your head—just his palm, just enough to support your neck—and lifts the bottle to your lips.
You drink. Slowly, reluctantly, with small sips that dribble down your chin, but you drink. He holds the bottle still and watches the column of your throat move with each swallow, and when a drop of water runs from the corner of your mouth and trails down your neck, dark eyes track it all the way to your collarbone before catching himself and looking away.
"More," he says curtly, bringing the bottle back.
You manage a few more sips before turning your head away with a pitiful sound, and he lets you, setting the bottle aside. His hand lingers on the back of your head a moment too long—his thumb brushing once against the nape of your neck—before he pulls it back like he's been burned.
You reach for him again. Fingers closing around the fabric of his sleeve, tugging weakly.
"Stay. Please. Don't—Don't go."
"'M not goin’ anywhere." The words come out before he can vet them, gruff and low, and he immediately resents himself for saying them so quickly, so easily, like a confession slipped out under duress.
He lets you hold onto his sleeve. That much he can allow. That much won't cross a line he cannot uncross.
You shift closer, seeking warmth, and your body curls towards him until your forehead is pressed against his thigh. He goes completely rigid, every muscle locking and nerve firing, and his hands hover in the air on either side of you, not touching, not pulling away, suspended in the unbearable middle ground of a man who wants desperately but won't take.
Another small whimper from you. Not desire this time but pain. The cramps rolling through your body in waves, the toxin still doing its vicious work even after everything Gaz and Soap wrung from you. You're shaking, and not just from arousal. You're exhausted. Dehydrated. Your body is at war with itself.
Ghost is not a gentle man. He knows this about himself the way he knows his blood type and his boot size. It's a fact, unalterable, built into the architecture. He doesn't comfort. He doesn't soothe. He handles.
But.
His hand comes down on the back of your head, and it stays.
Heavy and warm through the leather of his glove. Not stroking just resting, a solid weight against your skull, and you let out a breath that sounds like it's been trapped in your lungs for hours.
You stop shaking. Not entirely. The tremors are still there, running through you in small aftershocks, but the worst of it eases under the steady pressure of his palm, like he's an anchor and you've been drifting.
"Ghost?" Your voice is small, barely a whisper.
"Yeah."
"It hurts."
He closes his eyes behind the mask. His hand presses down just slightly—a fraction more weight, a fraction more warmth—and his throat works around words that don't come.
He knows it hurts. He knows Gaz and Soap's efforts weren't enough. He knows what the doctors said—what Price said—and he knows what would fix it, and he can't.
Not because he doesn't want to. Because he wants it too fucking much.
Simon Riley is not a man who trusts himself with things he wants.
Wanting, in his experience, is the first step towards destroying, and he has destroyed enough for one lifetime. Touching you now the way his body is screaming at him to would not be careful or measured or controlled or gentle.
It would be all consuming, and he would take too much, and he would never be able to look you in the eyes again.
So he sits on the edge of the bed with his boots on and his cock aching and his hand on the back of your head, and he holds himself perfectly, agonisingly still. Just a solid shadow in a bedroom.
You press your face harder against his thigh and he lets you. Your fingers tighten on his sleeve and he lets you. Your breath evens out incrementally but still too fast, still too shallow, though calmer now, and he lets that happen too, guarding it like a perimeter, daring anything to disturb it.
He doesn't know how long you stay like that. Long enough for the light under the curtains to shift and for his leg to go numb beneath the pressure of your head. Long enough for Gaz to appear in the doorway, freshly changed into borrowed civvies, and stop dead at the sight of them.
Ghost meets his eyes over the top of your head. His expression is unreadable behind the mask, but his hand doesn't move from your hair, and that says more than his face ever could.
Gaz nods once and backs out without a word.
In the kitchen, Price is pouring two fingers of whisky into a tumbler and staring at the far wall like it owes him money. Soap is sitting at the table in a pair of Price's joggers, his soiled trousers balled up in a plastic bag at his feet, looking like a scolded dog.
"She's calmer," Gaz says quietly as he enters, and both men look up. "Ghost's with her."
Price takes a long drink. Sets the glass down. Rubs a hand over his beard.
"It's not enough, is it."
It's not a question and Gaz doesn't answer it.
"She's still in pain. She keeps—" He stops and swallows thickly. "She keeps asking. Saying she’s in pain."
The captain stares at the whisky in his glass. The silence stretches, tense and heavy, pressing in on the walls of the small kitchen.
"She needs more than fingers and a mouth," Soap says bluntly, because someone fucking has to, and delicacy has never been his strong suit. Gaz shoots him a look, but Soap holds it, unapologetic.
"He's right," Price agrees suddenly, and the words taste like bile. He pushes away from the counter and stands to his full height, shoulders squared, and for a moment he looks every inch the officer. Burdened, resolute, carrying a decision he'll second-guess for the rest of his life.
"Gentlemen's agreement," he says. His voice is low, steady, absolute. "What happens tonight stays in this flat. No one treats her differently when this is over. No one brings it up unless she does. No one holds it over anyone, including himself."
He looks at each of them in turn—Gaz, then Soap—and holds until he gets a nod from both.
"And we tell Ghost."
Ghost doesn't agree.
He listens to the terms of the gentlemen's agreement from the doorway of the kitchen, arms crossed, stance wide, radiating the kind of stillness that makes lesser men instinctively check their exits. When Price finishes, Ghost holds the silence for a long, loaded beat.
And then: "No."
Price doesn't flinch. "No to which part?"
"All of it. My part." Ghost's voice is flat and final, stripped of everything except the decision itself. "I'll stay with her. I won't fuck her."
Soap opens his mouth—probably to say something spectacularly unhelpful—and Gaz kicks him under the table without looking.
Price studies his Lieutenant for a moment. Then he nods once, heavy with an understanding that doesn't need to be spoken.
"Fair enough." He rolls his sleeves up to his forearms. The mechanical motion of a man preparing for something he cannot delegate. "I'll go first."
No one dares to argue.
Unlike Soap, Price closes the guest bedroom door behind him and stands there for a moment with his hand still on the knob, just breathing. It smells of sex and pheromones, but wrong.
The room is dim. Someone turned off the overhead and left only the bedside lamp, casting everything in low amber light that softens the edges of the furniture and the shape of you on the bed. You're curled on your side, knees drawn up, one hand clutching the pillow beneath your head. The sheets are wrecked; damp and twisted, pulled loose from two corners, and your skin glistens with a thin sheen of sweat.
You look small.
That's the thing that hits him first and hits him hardest.
You're one of his soldiers. He's seen you clear buildings, haul wounded men twice your size to extraction, take a round to the vest and get back up swearing. You are not small. You have never been small or fragile.
But you look it now, trembling and fever-damp and reduced to a version of yourself that he never should have had to witness, and the weight of that sits on his shoulders like a ruck full of stones.
He crosses the room in a few strides and sits on the edge of the mattress. The frame groans under his weight.
"Sergeant."
You stir, your head lifting, and your eyes find his face. They're glassy and unfocused, but there's a flicker of recognition—Captain—before it's swallowed by the next wave rolling through your body. You let out a sound that's half sob, half moan, your thighs pressing together, and your hand reaches out blindly until your fingers catch the fabric of his shirt.
"It hurts," you whisper. "Still hurts. Why does it still—"
"I know." He catches your wrist, holds it. His thumb presses against your pulse point to check, and it’s rapid, thready, way too fast for simply lying on a bed. "I'm going to help you."
He says it the way he says we're moving on that compound at 0300 or I need eyes on that ridgeline. Leaving no room for ambiguity, because if he allows ambiguity into this room, he'll start thinking about what he's doing, and if he starts thinking, he'll stop, and if he stops.
You'll keep hurting. Under his command.
He stands long enough to strip his shirt over his head and remove his belt, and then he's back on the bed, propped against the headboard with you between his legs, your back against his bare chest; coarse salt and pepper hair rasping against your tacky skin. One arm wraps around your midsection, heavy and secure, anchoring you.
"Easy," he murmurs against the top of your head. "I've got you, love."
His free hand trails down your stomach, and your muscles jump and twitch beneath his rough palm. He catalogues every reaction. The hitch in your breathing, the way your hips tilt up to meet him, the small, desperate noise you make when his fingers dip below your navel. The same way he catalogues threat patterns and exit routes.
This is a mission. He is completing the objective. He is taking care of his wounded soldier.
He keeps telling himself that as he peels your underwear down your thighs and off, tossing them aside. As he runs his hand up the inside of your thigh and feels you shake. As he finally cups you and discovers just how wet and swollen you are, dripping on his fingers, he has to close his eyes and clench his jaw against the visceral punch of arousal that knocks through him.
This is the job. You gave the order. See it through.
He works you with his fingers first, because he needs to know what you can take. Two thick fingers pressing into you slowly, carefully, and the sounds you make guts him.
"That's it." His voice is lower now, rougher. "There you go, sweetheart."
He doesn't call his soldiers sweetheart. He has never, in twenty-odd years of service, called anyone under his command sweetheart. The word falls out of him like a loose round, and he can't take it back.
Your sopping hole clenches around his fingers and his cock, already hard and straining against the front of his trousers, jerks so violently he must bite back a groan. He curls his fingers inside you, finds the swollen spot that makes your spine arch and your breath stutter, and works it with a patient, devastating precision.
You cum and gush on his fingers with a broken cry, your body locking up in his arms, and the aftershocks roll through you in long, shuddering waves that he holds you through without a word.
It's still not enough. He knows it won't be for a while longer.
Price reaches for the condom on the nightstand—Gaz found them in Price's bathroom cabinet, a half-empty box, almost expired, shoved behind the toiletries like an afterthought—and tears the foil with his teeth while you keen and squirm against him, already spiralling back up.
He undoes his trousers and pushes them down just enough to free himself, because keeping them on feels like maintaining some essential boundary, some last scrap of separation between Captain Price doing what needs to be done and John wanting what he shouldn't want.
Rolling the condom on is a particular exercise in self-control. His cock is thick, flushed dark when his foreskin slides back, weeping pre at the tip, and every brush of his own fingers against the oversensitive skin makes his abs clench.
He lifts you with ease, one hand on your hip, the other gripping himself, and positions you above his lap.
"Sergeant," he grunts through gritted teeth, "look at me."
Your head lolls back against his shoulder, eyes half-open, and you meet his gaze as best you can. He searches for something in your expression—recognition, maybe awareness, you—and finds enough of it to quiet the loudest of the voices screaming in his head.
"If it's too much, y’tell me. That's a bloody order."
You nod hazily. He doesn't know if you actually processed the words, but he needed to say them. Needed that on the record, if only between himself and God.
He lowers you onto him slowly.
The sound that comes out of him is not one he's ever made before.
You're scorching hot and soaked. Your body takes him inch by inch, clenching and fluttering around him as gravity and his guiding hand ease you down, and by the time you're fully seated in his lap, he's seeing stars and his fingers have left dents in the flesh of your hip.
"Fuck," he breathes, and the word is ragged at the edges, torn from somewhere deeper than his chest.
You moan shamelessly, and the relief in the sound nearly undoes him. Like something that's been wound unbearably tight has finally been given slack. Your body relaxes against his, tension draining from your muscles for the first time in hours, and the change is so visible, so immediate, that it almost justifies this.
Almost.
He starts to move. Rolling his hips up into you, slow and deep, both hands gripping your waist to control the pace. He keeps it measured; long and deliberate strokes that drag against your inner walls and make you whimper with each one, because if he lets himself go, if he fucks you the way his body is begging him to, he'll lose himself entirely.
And he hates—Christ, he hates—how fucking good you feel.
He hates the way you fit around him like you were made for it, and the way your head falls back against his shoulder, how your lips part and you breathe his name—not his rank, not Captain, but John—and the sound of it rushes through him hot and electric and wrong. Hates the wet, obscene sound of your body taking him repeatedly; that his hips are moving faster now, snapping up into you with a force that makes the headboard knock against the wall.
Hates that he doesn't want to stop.
Your eyes squeeze shut, your head tips back as you cry out. "John—John—oh god—"
His arm tightens around your ribs, crushing you back against his chest, and his mouth finds the curve of your shoulder—not kissing, just pressing there, teeth grazing skin, breathing you in. His other hand slides down between your thighs and rubs tight circles on your clit in counterpoint to each thrust, and you come apart so violently in his arms that he has to hold you through it with every ounce of strength he has.
You clench around him like a vice and he follows you over the edge with a bitten-off groan, his hips stuttering, his cock pulsing deep inside you as the orgasm tears through him with a ferocity that whites out his vision.
For a few suspended seconds, there's nothing left. No rank, no mission, no guilt. Just the pounding of his heart and the aftershocks rippling through both your bodies and the impossible, terrible warmth of you around him.
Then reality seeps back in, cold and unforgiving, and Captain John Price opens his eyes and begins the long process of hating himself for every second of the last twenty minutes.
He pulls out carefully, disposes of the condom, and fixes his trousers. When he leans you back against the pillows, your eyes are already glazing over again, your body winding up for more, and the sight of it makes something weary and furious crack behind his chest cavity
He cups your jaw, tilting your face up. "Stay with me, Sergeant. Stay with me."
You whimper, and your hips shift restlessly against the sheets.
Price stands and walks to the door on legs that feel like they belong to someone else.
"Garrick. You're up."
Gaz and Soap take you in turns after that, and it's different this time.
Where the first round was clinical in its own way—Gaz with his careful guilt, Soap with his missionary zeal, Price bearing the weight of command—this his round is rawer.
The boundaries have been breached, and the gentlemen's agreement hangs over the room like a ceasefire that everyone knows is temporary.
Gaz is gentler than Price was. He lays you on your back and settles between your thighs with a tenderness that borders on devotion, pressing his forehead against yours as he pushes inside you.
He goes slow and gentle, and whispers things against your temple that no one else can hear, private things meant only for the space between your mouth and his.
"I've got you," he murmurs repeatedly. "I've got you, Babygirl, I'm right here. I will be here."
He comes inside the condom with a shudder and your name bitten into the skin of your shoulder, and when he pulls out and rolls onto his back beside you, he stares at the ceiling for a long time without blinking, tears prickling at the corners of his eyes.
Soap goes after. He's not gentle—can't be, doesn't know how to be, not with the way you claw at his back and wrap your legs around his waist and beg him harder, please, harder—but he's present.
He hooks your knee over his broad shoulders and fucks you deep, watching your face with a focused intensity that's almost clinical in its own right, cataloguing every reaction, every gasp, adjusting angle and depth and rhythm like he's zeroing a scope.
"Tha's it, sweetheart, take it—fuck, yer so—fuck—"
The condoms run out after Soap's first round.
Gaz discovers this when he reaches for the box on the nightstand and finds it empty, and the look on his face—the quiet oh, shit—would be funny in any other context.
"Cap'n," he calls, voice strained. "We've got a problem."
Price, who has been standing in the hallway staring at nothing, appears in the doorway. Gaz holds up the empty box. Price closes his eyes.
"Then pull out," the captain says flatly. "That's an order."
It should be simple, and it’s anything but.
Gaz tries. He genuinely, sincerely tries, but you're clenching around him so tightly and making those sounds, those desperate and wrecked, grateful sounds, and when your orgasm hits and your walls contract around his cock in rhythmic, milking pulses, his hips stutter and he buries himself to the hilt and spills inside you with a choked groan before his brain even registers what his body has done.
"Shit—shit, I'm sorry, I—fuck—"
He pulls out too late, watches his cum leak from you onto the sheets, and drops his head against your sternum with a devastated exhale.
Soap doesn't even pretend he's going to manage it.
"'M not gonna be able to pull out," he announces with a frankness that makes Gaz want to strangle him. "Jus' bein' honest, Cap."
"You'll pull out or I'll pull you out myself, MacTavish."
And yet Soap does not, in fact, pull out in time.
Price has to physically haul him back by the shoulder, and even then, Soap's cock jerks and pulses as it slips free, painting your inner thighs and lower belly with hot, thick ropes of cum while the Scotsman lets out a string of Gaelic curses that would make his mother disown him.
The room smells like multiple people fucking and sweating and something medicinal—the toxin, working its way out of your pores at last—and you're finally, finally, starting to slow down.
The desperate edge has dulled. Your whimpers are quieter now, tired rather than urgent, and your body has stopped arching off the bed every few minutes.
You're still reaching, though. Still searching for contact, for warmth, for a body against yours.
Ghost enters the room without being asked.
He's stripped down to his black t-shirt and trousers. The balaclava is still on, but his gloves are off, and the sight of his bare, scarred hands is somehow more intimate than anything else that's happened in this room tonight.
He doesn't look at the other men or acknowledge the state of the sheets or the smell or the heavy, post-coital guilt saturating the air.
He simply moves to the bed, sits down, and gathers you against his chest with a practised efficiency that suggests he's been rehearsing this moment in his head for the last two hours.
You go willingly. Boneless, exhausted, trembling with the last dregs of the toxin and the cumulative aftermath of more orgasms than your body was designed to handle in one night. Your face presses into the crook of his neck, your fingers curl loosely in the front of his shirt, and you let out a breath that sounds like surrender.
Ghost pulls the duvet up over both of you. One arm settles around your back securely. His other hand comes up to cradle the back of your head, fingers curling into your hair, and he holds you against him like he's shielding you from blast radius.
"Go to sleep," he says quietly. An order and a request and a plea all compressed into three words.
You make a small, incoherent sound against his throat.
"I know." His hand moves over your hair, slowly and gentle. "Sleep."
Price watches from the doorway for a moment. Then he pulls the door halfway closed and leaves the Lieutenant to his vigil.
In the kitchen, the captain pours himself another whisky—three fingers this time—and drinks it standing up, staring at the drawn curtains. Gaz is in the shower. Soap is sprawled on the sofa in the living room, one arm over his eyes, dead to the world.
Price's phone buzzes. Laswell.
How is she?
He stares at the screen for a long time. Types and deletes three different responses before finally settling on one.
Handled. Debrief in the morning.
He sets the phone face-down on the counter and finishes his drink.
Hours later, you wake up slowly, like surfacing from deep water.
The first thing you register is warmth. A wall of it, solid and breathing, pressed against your back. An arm draped over your waist, heavy with sleep. Fingers loosely tangled in yours against your sternum.
The second thing you register is that you are naked, sore in places you don't want to think about, and your mouth tastes like the inside of a boot.
The third thing is the balaclava.
You can feel it, the knitted fabric against the back of your neck, and the slow, even exhale of breath warming your skin through the cloth. The chest behind you rises and falls in the deep, steady rhythm of genuine sleep, which means the Lieutenant trusts this room enough to have let himself go under.
Which means something, though you're too foggy to figure out what.
You shift slightly, testing your body. Everything aches. Your thighs, your hips, your abs, your jaw for some reason, and there's a deep, bone-level exhaustion settled into your muscles that reminds you of the tail end of a bad flu.
The cramps are gone, though. The tingling, the feverish heat, the desperate, clawing need—all of it has receded, leaving behind a hollow, wrung-out emptiness.
And memory. Fragments of it. Arriving in pieces like delayed radio transmissions.
Kyle's hands shaking as he touched you. I'm only doin' this for you, babygirl. Johnny's mouth on you, hot and relentless. The sound he made against your thighs.
The shower. The water. Voices.
John.
Your eyes open wide and your body goes rigid, and the arm around your waist tightens reflexively. Ghost pulling you closer in his sleep, an unconscious response to a perceived threat, even though the threat is just you waking up and remembering.
You lie very still.
The flat is quiet. Early morning light edges around the curtains, pale and grey, and somewhere in the distance, you can hear the muffled sounds of the base waking up—vehicles, a distant shout, the rhythmic thud of boots on tarmac.
You don't move, don't speak. You stare at the wall and breathe and try to organise the wreckage in your head into something you can process.
Behind you, Ghost's breathing changes. Shifts from deep and even to something shallower, more aware. His arm tenses around you, a brief contraction of muscle, there and gone, and you know the exact moment he wakes up, because his entire body goes perfectly, absolutely still.
Neither of you says a word.
His hand is still tangled with yours against your bare chest. His thumb rests against your knuckle. But he doesn't pull away.
The silence stretches. Not uncomfortable, exactly. Heavy. Full of things that need to be said and won't be. Not now, certainly not yet, and maybe not ever. And there is a fragile, terrified understanding that what happened in this room changed the molecular structure of something that can never be unchanged.
Finally, after what feels like an hour but is probably two minutes, Ghost speaks.
"How do you feel?"
You consider the question. Really consider it, not the reflexive I'm fine that sits on your tongue out of habit.
"Like shit," you answer honestly. Your voice is wrecked, raspy, and it hurts to talk.
Then, so quietly you almost miss it, he answers, "Yeah."
His thumb moves once. A single, slow stroke across your knuckle.
Then he lets go of your hand, carefully disentangles himself from around you, and gets up without another word. You hear his boots being pulled back on. The soft click of the door.
You lie in the bed that smells like all four of them and none of yourself, and you stare at the wall, and you breathe.
i'm so gone for the idea that the first time that you tell john, "i love you," is during sex. maybe missionary, but i'm thinking during pronebone—when john's pressing all his weight onto you, gripping you by the back of your neck, rutting and humping like he's trying to impregnate you then and there (not yet, but soon; that's a promise). you are so drunk in your pleasure, all drooly and whiny, that the words just spill from kiss-swollen lips.
i love you, you hiccup. john stops just for a second before a litany of his own confession drop from his maw, unstopping and unwavering like now that the dam's been unlatched, everything just begins to pour out ceaselessly.
i love you too, baby, i love you so much. the light of my life, huh? look at you, such a pretty thing for me. want daddy to kiss here, this deep? yeah? oh sweetheart, such a lovely puppy for me.
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