Thinking about Johnny finally dragging himself back from leave, ache of months in the field sitting heavy in his bones, calcified into the meat of his back, his knees, the hinge of his jaw where he's been grinding his teeth in his sleep. Leave is supposed to fix that. Leave never fixes that.
He gets the key in the lock on the second try, the door gives, and... everything in his brain goes quiet in the wrong way, silence in his nervous system that reclassifies his environment from safe to unknown. He stands there, hand on the knob, and lets his eyes sweep before his feet commit to the threshold.
The air is not carrying the usual expectation of dust and closed window staleness. There is something warm in the air. Something organic. Something that has no reason to be here. (The blanket on the sofa is folded with a neatness his own hands have never once produced. There's foot prints embedded on the plush carpet that do not match the size or weight distribution of his feet. The cabinet above the stove is open a crack and he can see the gap where the canned soup used to be.)
His pulse flattens, goes cold. Konni, Shadow Company, the rotating cast of people who'd like to see what his insides look like on the outside, any one of them patient enough to wait for the window when he's off grid, alone, softened by weeks of nothing.
He palms his gun and clears the flat. Living room, nothing. Kitchen, nothing. Bathroom, nothing, but the towel on the rack is damp and he hasn't been here in six weeks.
By the time he reaches the bedroom door, his pulse has climbed into the place behind his ears where he can hear it ticking. He wraps his fingers around the handle, eases the latch, shoulders through the gap with every nerve ending wired to the expectation of violence-
You, whoever you are, curled into the center of his mattress, unconscious with sleep. You, wearing one of his old SAS shirts, swallowed by the size, the collar slipping wide over one shoulder, hem rucked high across bare thighs. You, with his scent on your skin, in your hair, layered into the slow tide of your breathing like you've been steeping in him for days.
A squatter. A wee homeless squatter who jimmied his lock on some rain-soaked night and found the canned food and the hot water and the bed and thought, yes, this will do, and just... stayed. Ate his food. Slept in his bed. Wore his clothes because they were soft and clean and nobody was coming back for them probably, hopefully.
He exhales through his nose. Runs his tongue along the back of his teeth. The tension in his shoulder doesn't ease, it changes shape, sharpens into something hotter. Months of brutal ops, months of nothing but his own rough hand and freezing showers and shitty memories, and here you are: a soft, warm little intruder, curled up like a present someone gift wrapped and left right on the center of his bed.
You thought the place was empty. You thought you could slip in, take what you needed, and hide here like a scared little mouse. Poor thing.
Johnny braces one knee on the mattress, the bed dipping under his weight, looms over you, caging you in with his much larger frame, breath hot against your neck as he leans down, voice rough and thick against your ear. "Looks like I've got myself a wee squatter."
His hand slides up your thigh, pushing the shirt higher.
"Time to start paying rent, bonnie."