Sypnosis: Some time ago, you started a cooking channel on YouTube as a way to relax, have a proper hobby and teach others your favorite recipes as you improved your own culinary skills too. Fame wasn't something you wanted, you were more than happy with your 50k subscribers... Yet you never thought you'd stumble upon one of them.
Chapters:
➻ Prologue...
➻ Chapter I...
➻ Chapter II...
➻ Chapter III... Coming soon.
A/N: Anybody who would like to be part of my taglist or be removed from it can let me know through my asks box or in the comments! Feel comfortable to let me know anytime and I’ll make sure to check all comments. ♡
I've had this idea attached deep into my brain for a long time now, related to James Ratri and the tragedy of imagining him as your secret lover.
Because imagine being married to Mike Ratri, the man who one day would stand among the highest authorities of the clan. You married Mike young, young enough to understand that entering the Ratri family meant entering a world you were never truly supposed to touch.
Mike was never cruel.
That was the complicated part.
He was composed, intelligent, respected by every branch of the family. A man trusted with negotiations, operations, decisions that shaped the balance between worlds. Older than you by decades, already fully formed while you were still becoming yourself.
But he was distant in the way only powerful men can be.
He never felt like a husband. He felt more like a guardian assigned to your life. Someone who provided, observed, corrected when necessary, but never truly reached for you emotionally. Mike liked control, order, predictability. He wanted his household to be calm, elegant, respectable. He wanted harmony more than intimacy.
And then there was James.
Back then, James Ratri was the thirty-fifth leader of the clan. Young for the title, terrifyingly brilliant, raised under expectations heavy enough to crush most people long before adulthood. Peter himself described him as kind, refined, handsome, sincere, almost impossibly noble.
And somehow, beneath all that responsibility, James was still warm.
You met him long before either of you understood what would eventually happen between you. At first he was simply Mike’s nephew. The future head of the clan. Someone untouchable.
But James never treated you like an outsider trying to survive among people born into power. He never spoke down to you. Never reduced you to Mike’s wife. In a family where every interaction felt measured and political, James spoke to you naturally.
That was what ruined the two of you.
Long clan gatherings would end and somehow the two of you always ended up alone. At first it was accidental. Quiet conversations after dinner. Passing remarks in hallways. Brief moments beside open windows while rain hit the gardens outside the estate.
Then those moments became intentional.
A second chance at freedom.
That is why their relationship in this kind of story becomes so devastating once James discovers the truth behind the Promise.
Because canonically, James was raised believing the Ratri clan protected peace between humans and demons through noble sacrifice. Then he discovered Julius Ratri’s hidden confession and realized the entire foundation of that peace had been built on betrayal. Innocent humans, including the descendants of Julius’s own allies, had been abandoned to become cattle for demons.
That revelation destroyed him. Not immediately but quietly.
James began carrying guilt like a second skin. Meetings became longer. His absences more frequent. He started building shelters, coded systems, and escape routes under the name of William Minerva while pretending to continue leading the clan normally.
And through all of it, he kept coming back to you.
Because you were the only thing in his life that still felt human, but James also understood something you hated him for in the end.
Mike’s neutrality protected you because the old man never fully sided with Peter or James.
He remained in the middle where survival was easiest. That neutrality became armor around you and the children. Around your children. Around the life attached to the Ratri name.
James lost that protection the moment he betrayed the clan. And James understood Peter better than anyone else ever could.
That is another tragedy of canon. James never truly hated his younger brother. Even while Peter hunted him, James understood why he did it. Peter loved the clan the same way James once had. The difference was that Peter chose lineage loyalty over morality, while James could no longer survive carrying both.
So when the time finally came, James refused to take you with him.
Not because he did not love you enough.
Because he loved you too much.
Taking you would have destroyed your safety completely. Peter would have hunted you as leverage. The clan would have erased you. Your children with Mike would have inherited the consequences of your disappearance forever.
You hated James for leaving... And worse, you hated him because he was right.
You were only truly safe as Mike Ratri’s wife.
James made sure you knew one thing before he disappeared from your life completely.
Loving you was the one thing he never regretted.
He told you that if there had been another world, another life untouched by the Promise, by the clan, by duty, he would already be somewhere beside you. Somewhere quiet and unnamed. Somewhere neither of you had to hide.
But this world did not allow men like James Ratri to choose happiness.
So he asked you to survive instead.
To stay where you were. To hate him if necessary. To forget him if possible.
And James left knowing the worst part was never Peter hunting him across the shadows of the clan. The worst part was leaving behind the only place he had ever truly been safe.
Your arms, your laughter, your voice whispering his name in quiet rooms no one else knew existed.
So you stayed as Mike Ratri’s wife.
As the elegant young woman seated beside one of the most important men in the family. Safe. Untouched and alive.
And nobody, not even Peter, ever realized that during the collapse of the Promise, during James Ratri’s betrayal of the clan, you had been the only thing keeping the thirty-fifth leader from completely losing himself.
Controversial opinion but I think John Price would be terrible at comforting you.
He's a doer. He sees something that needs fixing and he does it. He hates feeling useless, hates feeling powerless, especially when it comes to the people he cares about. From the second he realises there's something wrong (which is instantly, he's scarily good at reading people) he's all questions. What happened, who did it, why did they do it...he needs all the details, love. He'll sort it, don't you worry.
You have to remind him that he can't murder your boss, or your shitty friends, or the guy who made you spill coffee on your favourite shirt and then yelled at you for it.
(And no, he can't rough them up - "even a little!" - or give them a "warning")
And if he can't fix it himself, he'll resort to giving you orders - this is what you'll do next time, or here's why there won't be a next time, because you're cutting them off immediately. They're no good for you, and you deserve better. You need to understand your worth, you need to stand up for yourself, you need to you need to you need to -
If you weren't already, you'd be in tears by this point, yelling at him to just stop and listen. You don't need advice. You don't need anything fixing. You just need someone to listen to you and comfort you - you just need your partner.
He's stunned into silence. He's never really considered that you might just need him. Soft words and gentle touches were never something he was afforded himself, so he learned to show his care through his actions, by providing for you and caring for you and doing anything, big or small, that could make your life easier. The idea that he could care for you by doing...nothing? By just being there? It was a foreign concept to him.
That being said, once you've gotten it into his head that he doesn't have to do anything, you just need him...his hugs are unbeatable. He will pull you onto his lap and completely envelop you with his arms, draping your favourite blanket over you and rubbing your back gently. If he can't fix the world for you, then he can at least distract you from it, to remind you that in his arms nothing will ever hurt you. That to him, you are the most important thing, and he needs to tell you that with words rather than actions.
He may be terrible at comfort, but with John Price you'll never doubt that you're loved.
summary: you ask John to do the last thing he’d ever want to do
tw: mention of dying in the military
*****
John Price who’s following the nasty footsteps of his family– a long line of men killed in the army, by their blind loyalty to the crown. John Price won't give up his job. John who knows that he’s not breaking the cycle– the curse. He won't suddenly be the first of many John Prices (because, of course they share a name) to see his fifties.
The same John Price who marries you. A non-military sweetheart. At first he thought you found it charming, brave of him to put his life down for the crown and for the world. You let him put a ring on your finger. You let his crew come to your intimate wedding (so intimate that your extended families aren’t invited). You let him disappear from your home for weeks on end, no contact, and welcome him back like it’s perfectly normal.
Then why are you so upset? Why are you standing before John on the morning of his deployment, tears in your eyes begging him, it’s time to retire.
He doesn't get it because it's all he's ever known. All the Prices have been cursed to ever know. You beg him to retire but you don't understand that he can't. That every fiber of his being will cease to exist if there isn't gunfire whizzing by his ear and someone calling him Captain. That John Price is fated to the same end that his father and his father before him and- hell -probably his father before him met. The Prices are simply born to serve.
He tries to help you understand. He gives you his mum's phone number, tells you to call her when you get lonely or worried on deployment. Call your mother? The woman widowed by war?
John cringes. The sun is peeking over the horizon. He needs to go and he tells you that. You crumble. Your hands tremble as they hold onto his chest, padded with layers of clothing and jackets. It's winter, when deployments are always the worst. It's only winter in half the planet, yet somehow John always ends up in the cold.
His thoughts pull him away from you, your heat, from the damp warmth of your breath to the molten tears streaking your face.
Please, John, you said, for me.
Give it up, for me.
Give up, for me.
Give up.
He leaves you for base. You whose picture John looks at a little more than usual during this deployment, and Simon Riley, who notices.
Simon Riley who sits next to John during his night watch. He pulls two cigarettes from his pocket and hands one to John, lighting it without a word. They’re in Siberia, of course. John’s been crying, but the bitter cold dries his tears before they can leave his eyes.
"Pretty bird," Simon says, gesturing his hand to the picture in John's hand. John's thumb brushes over the curve of your cheek. "Lovely bird."
John's fingers twitch, ready to refold the picture. Simon notices and places a calm hand on John's wrist.
"She's making me retire," John blurts.
"That true?" Simon muses, taking a drag like he knows it’s not. Frankly, he does know. John’s his longest friend, and Simon can read him like a book. "I didn't know that was possible, giving you orders.”
“Neither did I.”
Simon puts a hand on his shoulder, “Why don’t you head in? I’ll take watch.”
John goes inside wordlessly. He heads to the bathroom and in the mirror he sees the face of his father. He’s always looked scarily like his old man, down to their idiotic facial hair. John grew it out like him in his twenties, when he was finally able to grow more than pubescent scrap. Now, with a fuller beard and duller eyes, he’s more similar to his father than young John ever thought possible. His father— a man who never had the privilege of going gray. Sure, he died a few years older than John is now, but he was never exactly old. Dead at 42. John's got... 5 years left by that count. 5 more years fighting, five more years with you.
John shaves it off. He leaves his stache, but that’s about it. He doesn’t want to see the old John Price, put six feet under before his boy— his namesake —graduated primary school. His hand shakes while he shaves. He should stop. The knife he’s elected to use is too sharp to risk a case of unsteady hands, but John needs it off. And off it goes. The skin beneath the beard is paler than the rest of his face. It’d take much longer for that to go away.
Someone pounds on the door of the bathroom. “Captain,” Johnny, “I know you’re takin’ a shite, but could you hurry up?”
John chuckles softly, “Fuck off, MacTavish.”
John shuts the toilet lid with his boot and takes a seat on it. He shoves a hand in the chest pocket of his coat, to the pen with a piece of paper stuck in the clip. John carefully unfolds the paper.
You’ve been kissing each other for the past thirty minutes as you sit on his thick thighs, having your hands interwined against his chest, each time, you push them closer to him.
“Why do you never stay the night?” His tone almost soothing.
John stares deeply into your eyes before speaking, it’s only the two of you. Nobody else.
You’re not stupid, you know he’s asking you a serious question – but it’s one you don’t want to answer, it’s not one you want to acknowledge.
“Because you snore.” You reply, moving your body closer to his, a small play of wrestling between your bodies. John puts no resistance, allowing you to get as close as you want.
He’s aware of what you’re doing.
“‘m serious, y/n.” Each hand of his tightens the grip you have on the other, keeping both of your hands pressed against his chest. – “Why do you never stay the night with me?”
“Why? You need someone to keep an eye on you in your sleep now? I thought you were the tough one.” – “I like my bed better, it doesn’t smell like gunpowder–” Before you can even finish, he cuts you off.
“Y/n.” Is all he needs to say.
And his audacity almost makes you frown.
“Because if I stay, you’ll start thinking this is something more than it is. And it’s not.” Your grip loosens, he notices the way your body starts to pull away.
He knows, he does.
But still calls out your avoidance.
“You don’t get to push this on me just ‘cause I broke unwritten rules. We both know it’s more than nothing.” – John gets defensive.
And you just get defensive too.
“You think just because you’ve changed your mind, I have to change mine? That’s not how this works, Jonathan.”
this is so important because not only is it the first brief mention of prices “old comrades” but it shows how they have almost been testing gaz to see if he would be on the same level/willing to do black unsanctioned operations (completely under the radar and not using any military resources.) I really love the little clicks price has when talking.
