Attempting to write (good) fanfiction just keeps making me realize that my particular writing style is meant for like, think pieces, and essays, and other academic bullshit.
That is so fucking lame of me 💔 i just wanna write smut about older men 😔
Things between you and Peter change with the seasons. [17k]
c: friends-to-lovers, hurt/comfort, loneliness, peter parker isn’t good at hiding his alter ego, fluff, first kisses, mutual pining, loved-up epilogue, mention of self-harm with no graphic imagery
｡𖦹°‧⭑.ᐟ
Fall
Peter Parker is a resting place for overworked eyes, like warm topaz nestled against a blue-cold city. He waits on you with his eyes to the screen of his phone, clicking the power button repetitively. A nervous tic.
You close the heavy door of your apartment building. His head stays still, yet he’s heard the sound of it settling, evidence in his calmed hand.
“Good morning!” You pull your coat on quickly. “Sorry.”
“Good morning,” he says, offering a sleep-logged smile. “Should we go?”
You follow Peter out of the cul-de-sac and into the street as he drops his phone into a deep pocket. To his credit, he doesn’t check it while you walk, and only glances at it when you’re taking your coat off in the heat of your favourite cafe: The Moroccan Mode glows around you, fog kissing the windows, condensation running down the inner lengths of it in beads. You murmur something to do with the odd fog and Peter tells you about water vapour. When it rains tonight, he says it’ll be warm water that falls.
He spreads his textbook, notebook, and rinky-dink laptop out across the table while you order drinks. Peter has the same thing every visit, a decaf americano, in a wide brim mug with the pink-petal saucer. You put it down on his textbook only because that’s where he would put it himself, and you both get to work.
As Peter helps you study, you note the simplicity of another normal day, and can’t help wondering what it is that’s missing. Something is, something Peter won’t tell you, the absence of a truth hanging over your heads. You ask him if he wants to get dinner and he says no, he’s busy. You ask him to see a movie on Friday night and he wishes he could.
Peter misses you. When he tells you, you believe him. “I wish I had more time,” he says.
“It’s fine,” you say, “you can’t help it.”
“We’ll do something next weekend,” he says. The lie slips out easily.
To Peter it isn’t a lie. In his head, he’ll find the time for you again, and you’ll be friends like you used to be.
You press the end of your pencil into your cheek, the dark roast, white paper and condensation like grey noise. This time last year, the air had been thick for days with fog you could cut. He took you on a trip to Manhattan, less than an hour from your red-brick neighbourhood, and you spent the day in a hotel pool throwing great cupfuls of water at each other. The fog was gone just fifteen miles away from home but the warm air stayed. When it rained it was sudden, strange, spit-warm splashes of it hammering the tops of your heads, your cheeks as you tipped your faces back to spy the dark clouds.
Peter had swam the short distance to you and held your shoulders. You remember feeling like your whole life was there, somewhere you’d never been before, the sharp edges of cracked pool tile just under your feet.
You peek over the top of your laptop screen and wonder if Peter ever thinks of that trip.
He feels you watching and meets your eyes. “I have to tell you something,” he says, smiling shyly.
“Sure.”
“I signed us up for that club.”
“Epigenetics?”
“Molecular medicine,” he says.
The nice thing about fog is that it gives a feeling of lateness. It’s still morning, barely ten, but it feels like the early evening. It’s gentle on the eyes, colouring the whole room with a sconced shine. You reach for Peter’s bag and sort through his jumble of possessions —stick deodorant, loose-leaf paper, a bodega’s worth of protein bars— and grab his camera.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m cataloguing the moment you ruined our lives,” you say, aiming the camera at his chin, squinting through the viewfinder.
“Technically, I signed us up a few days ago,” he says.
You snap his photo as his mouth closes around ‘ago’, keeping his half-laugh stuck on his lips. “Semantics,” you murmur. “And molecular medicine club, this has nothing to do with the estranged Gwen Stacy?”
“It has nothing to do with her. And you like molecular medicine.”
“I like oncology,” you correct, which is a sub-genre at best, “and I have enough work without joining another club. Go by yourself.”
“I can’t go without you,” he says. Simple as that.
He knew you’d say yes when he signed you up. It’s why he didn’t ask. You’re already forgiven him for the slight of assumption.
“When is it?” you ask, smiling.
—
Molecular medicine club is fun. You and a handful of ESU nerds gather around a big table in a private study room for a few hours and read about the newer discoveries and top research, like regenerative science and now taboo Oscorp research. It’s boring, sometimes, but then Peter will lean into your side and make a joke to keep you going.
He looks at Gwen Stacy a lot. Slender, pale and freckled, with blonde hair framing a sweet face. Only when he thinks you’re not looking. Only when she isn’t either.
—
“Good morning,” you say.
Peter holds an umbrella over his head that he’s quick to share with you, and together you walk with heads craned down, the umbrella angled forward to fight the wind. Your outermost shoulder is wet when you reach the café, your other warm from being pressed against him. You shake the umbrella off outside the door and step onto a cushy, amber doormat to dry your sneakers. Peter stalks ahead and order the drinks, eager to get warm, so you look for a table. Your usual is full of businessmen drinking flat whites with briefcases at their legs. They laugh. You try to picture Peter in a suit: you’re still laughing when he finds you in the booth at the back.
“Tell the joke,” he says, slamming his coffee down. He’s careful with yours. He’s given you the pink petal saucer from the side next to the straws and wooden stirrers.
“I was thinking about you as a businessman.”
“And that’s funny?”
“When was the last time you wore a suit?”
Peter shakes his head. Claims he doesn’t know. Later, you’ll remember his Uncle Ben’s funeral and feel queasy with guilt, but you don’t remember yet. “When was the last time you wore one?” he asks. “I don’t laugh at you.”
“You’re always laughing at me, Parker.”
The cafe isn’t as warm today. It’s wet, grimy water footsteps tracking across the terracotta tile, streaks of grey water especially heavy near the counter, around it to the bathroom. There’s no fog but a sad rattle of rain, not enough to make noise against the windows, but enough to watch as it falls in lazy rivulets down the lengths of them.
Your face is chapped with the cold, cheeks quickly come to heat as your fingers curl around your mug. They tingle with newfound warmth. When you raise your mug to your lips, your hand hardly shakes.
“You okay?” Peter asks.
“Fine. Are you gonna help me with the math today?”
“Don’t think so. Did you ask nicely?”
“I did.” You’d called him last night. You would’ve just as happily submitted your homework poorly solved with the grade to prove it —you don’t want Peter’s help, you just wanted to see him.
Looking at him now, you remember why his distance had felt a little easier. The rain tangles in his hair, damp strands curling across his forehead, his eyes dark and outfitted by darker eyelashes. Peter has the looks of someone you’ve seen before, a classical set to his nose and eyes reminiscent of that fallen angel weeping behind his arm, his russet hair in fiery disarray. There was an anger to Peter after Ben died that you didn’t recognise, until it was Peter, changed forever and for the worse and it didn’t matter —he was grieving, he was terrified, who were you to tell him to be nice again— until it started to get better. You see less of your fallen, angry angel, no harsh brush strokes, no tears.
His eyes are still dark. Bruised often underneath, like he’s up late. If he is, it isn’t to talk to you.
You spend an afternoon working through your equations, pretending to understand until Peter explains them to death. His earphones fall out of his pocket and he says, “Here, I’ll show you a song.”
He walks you home. The song is dreary and sad. The man who sings is good. Lover, You Should’ve Come Over. It feels like Peter’s trying to tell you something —he isn’t, but it feels like wishing he would.
“You okay?” you ask before you can get to your street. A minute away, less.
“I’m fine, why?”
You let the uncomfortable shape of his earbud fall out of your ear, the climax of the song a rattle on his chest. “You look tired, that’s all. Are you sleeping?”
“I have too much to do.”
You just don’t get it. “Make sure you’re eating properly. Okay?”
His smile squeezes your heart. Soft, the closest you’ll ever get. “You know May,” he says, wrapping his arm around your shoulders to give you a short hug, “she wouldn’t let me go hungry. Don’t worry about me.”
—
The dip into depression you take is predictable. You can’t help it. Peter being gone makes it worse.
You listen to love songs and take long walks through the city, even when it’s dark and you know it’s a bad idea. If anything bad happens Spider-Man could probably save me, you think. New York’s not-so-new vigilante keeps a close eye on things, especially the women. You can’t count how many times you’ve heard the same story. A man followed me home, saw me across the street, tried to get into my apartment, but Spider-Man saved me.
You’re not naive, you realise the danger of walking around without protection assuming some stranger in a mask will save you, but you need to get out of the house. It goes on for weeks.
You walk under streetlights and past stores with CCTV, but honestly you don’t really care. You’re not thinking. You feel sick and heavy and it’s fine, really, it’s okay, everything works out eventually. It’s not like it’s all because you miss Peter, it’s just a feeling. It’ll go away.
“You’re in deep thought,” a voice says, garnering a huge flinch from the depths of your stomach.
You turn around, turn back, and flinch again at the sight of a man a few paces ahead. Red shoulders and legs, black shining in a webbed lattice across his chest. “Oh,” you say, your heartbeat an uncomfortable plodding under your hand, “sorry.”
“Why are you sorry? I scared you.”
“I didn’t realise you were there.”
Spider-Man doesn’t come any closer. You take a few steps in his direction. You’ve never met before but you’d like to see him up close, and you aren’t scared. Not beyond the shock of his arrival.
“Can I walk you to where you’re going?” Spider-Man asks you. He’s humming energy, fidgeting and shifting from foot to foot.
“How do I know you’re the real Spider-Man?”
After all, there are high definition videos of his suit on the news sometimes. You wouldn’t want to find out someone was capable of making a replica in the worst way possible.
You can’t be sure, but you think he might be smiling behind the mask, his arms moving back as though impressed at your questioning. “What do you need me to do to prove it?” he asks.
He speaks hushed. Rough and deep. “I don’t know. What’s Spider-Man exclusive?”
“I can show you the webs?”
You pull your handbag further up your arm. “Okay, sure. Shoot something.”
Spider-Man aims his hand at the streetlight across the way and shoots it. He makes a severing motion with his wrist to stop from getting pulled along by it, letting the web fall like an alien tendril from the bulb. The light it produces dims slightly. A chill rides your spine.
“Can I walk you now?” he asks.
“You don’t have more important things to do?” If the bitterness you’re feeling creeps into your tone unbidden, he doesn’t react.
“Nothing more important than you.”
You laugh despite yourself. “I’m going to Trader Joe’s.”
“Yellowstone Boulevard?”
“That’s the one…”
You fall into step beside him, and, awkwardly, begin to walk again. It’s a short walk. Trader Joe’s will still be open for hours despite the dark sky, and you’re in no hurry. “My friend, he likes the rolled tortilla chips they do, the chilli ones.”
“And you’re going just for him?” Spider-Man asks.
“Not really. I mean, yeah, but I was already going on a walk.”
“Do you always walk around by yourself? It’s late. It’s dangerous, you know, a beautiful girl like you,” he says, descending into an odd mixture of seriousness and teasing. His voice jumps and swoons to match.
“I like walking,” you say.
Spider-Man walking is a weird thing to see. On the news, he’s running, swinging, or flying through the air untethered. You’re having trouble acquainting the media image of him with the quiet man you’re walking beside now.
”Is everything okay?” he asks. “You seem sad.”
“Do I?”
“Yeah, you do.”
“Maybe I am sad,” you confess, looking forward, the bright sign of Trader Joe’s already in view. It really is a short walk. “Do you ever–” You swallow against a surprising tightness in your throat and try again, “Do you ever feel like you’re alone?”
“I’m not alone,” he says carefully.
“Me neither, but sometimes I feel like I am.”
He laughs quietly. You bristle thinking you’re being made fun of, but the laugh tapers into a sad one. “Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person in the world,” he says. “Even here. I forget that it’s not something I invented.”
“Well, I guess being a hero would feel really lonely. Who else do we have like you?” You smile sympathetically. “It must be hard.”
“Yeah.” His head tips to the side, and a crash of glass rings in the distance, crunching, and then there’s a squeal. It sounds like a car accident. Spider-Man goes tense. “I’ll come back,” he says.
“That’s okay, Spider-Man, I can get home by myself. Thank you for the protection detail.”
He sprints away. In half a second he’s up onto a short roof, then between buildings. It looks natural. It takes your breath away.
You buy Peter’s chips at Trader Joe’s and wait for a few minutes at the door, but Spider-Man doesn’t come back.
—
I don’t want to study today, Peter’s text says the next day. Come over and watch movies?
The last handholds of your fugue are washed away in the shower. You dab moisturiser onto your face and neck and stand by the open window to help it dry faster, taking in the light drizzle of rain, the smell of it filling your room and your lungs in cold gales. You dress in sweatpants and a hoodie, throw on your coat, and stuff the rolled tortilla chips into a backpack to ferry across the neighbourhood.
Peter still lives at home with his Aunt May. You’d been in awe of it when you were younger, Peter and his Aunt and Uncle, their home-cooked family dinners, nights spent on the roof trying to find constellations through light pollution, stretched out together while it was warm enough to soak in your small rebellion. Ben would call you both down eventually. When you’re older! he’d always promise.
Peter’s waiting in the open door for you. He ushers you inside excitedly, stripping you out of your coat and forgetting your wet shoes as he drags you to the kitchen. “Look what I got,” he says.
The Parker kitchen is a big, bright space with a chopping block island. The counters are crowded by pots, pans, spices, jams, coffee grounds, the impossible drying rack. There’s a cross-stitch about the home on the microwave Ben did to prove to May he could still see the holes in the aida.
You follow Peter to the stove where he points at a ceramic Dutch oven you’ve eaten from a hundred times. “There,” he says.
“Did you cook?” you ask.
“Of course I didn’t cook, even if the way you said that is offensive. I could cook. I’m an excellent chef.”
“The only thing May’s ever taught you is spaghetti and meatballs.”
“Hope you like marinara,” he says, nudging you toward the stove.
You take the lid off of the Dutch oven to unveil a huge cake. Dripping with frosting, only slightly squashed by the lid, obviously homemade. He’s dotted the top with swirls of frosting and deep red strawberries.
“It’s for you,” he says casually.
“It’s not my birthday.”
“I know. You like cake though, don’t you?”
You’d tell Peter you liked chunks of glass if that was what he unveiled. “Why’d you make me a cake?”
“I felt like you deserved a cake. You don’t want it?”
“No, I want it! I want the cake, let’s have cake, we can go to 91st and get some ice cream, it’ll be amazing.” You don’t bother trying to hide your beaming smile now, twisting on the spot to see him properly, your hands falling behind your back. “Thank you, Peter. It’s awesome. I had no idea you could even– that you’d even–” You press forward, smushing your face against his chest. “Wow.”
“Wow,” he says, wrapping his arms around you. He angles his head to nose at your temple. “You’re welcome. I would’ve made you a cake years ago if I knew it was gonna make you this happy.”
“It must’ve taken hours.”
“May helped.”
“That makes much more sense.”
“Don’t be insolent.” Peter squeezes you tightly. He doesn’t let go for a really long time.
He extracts the cake from the depths of the Dutch oven and cuts you both a slice. He already has ice cream, a Neapolitan box that he cuts into with a serrated knife so you can each have a slice of all three flavours. It’s good ice cream, fresh for what it is and melting in big drops of cream as he gets the couch ready.
“Sit down,” he says, shoving the plates with his strangely great balance onto the coffee table. “Remote’s by you. I’m gonna get drinks.”
You take your plate, carving into the cake with the end of a warped spoon, its handle stamped PETE and burnished in your grasp. The crumb is soft but dense in the best way. The ganache between layers is loose, cake wet with it, and the frosting is perfect, just messy. You take another satisfied bite. You’re halfway through your slice before Peter makes it back.
“I brought you something too, but it’s garbage compared to this,” you say through a mouthful, hand barely covering your mouth.
Peter laughs at you. “Yeah, well, say it, don’t spray it.”
“I guess I’ll keep it.”
“Keep it, bub, I don’t need anything from you.”
He doesn’t say it the way you’re expecting. “No,” you say, pleased when he sits knee to knee, “you can have it. S’just a bag of chips from Trader–”
“The rolled tortilla chips?” he asks. You nod, and his eyes light up. “You really are the best friend ever.”
“Better than Harry?”
“Harry’s rich,” Peter says, “so no. I’m kidding! Joking, come here, let me try some of that.”
“Eat your own.”
Peter plays a great host, letting you choose the movies, making lunch, ordering takeout in the evening and refusing to let you pay for it. This isn’t that out of character for Peter, but what shocks you is his complete unfiltered attention. He doesn’t check his phone, the tension you couldn’t name from these last few weeks nowhere to be felt. You’re flummoxed by the sudden change, but you missed him. You won’t look a gift horse in the mouth; you won’t question what it is that had Peter keeping you at arm’s length now it’s gone.
To your annoyance, you can’t stop thinking about Spider-Man. You keep opening your mouth to tell Peter you talked to him but biting your tongue. Why am I keeping it a secret? you wonder.
“Have something to tell you.”
“You do?” you ask, reluctant to sit properly, your feet tucked under his thigh and your body completely lax with the weight of the Parker throw.
“Is that surprising?”
“Is that a trick question?”
“No. Just. I’ve been not telling you something.”
“Okay, so tell me.”
Peter goes pink, and stiff, a fake smile plastered over his lips. “Me and Gwen, we’re really done.”
“I know, Pete. She broke up with you for reasons nobody felt I should be enlightened right after graduation.” Your stomach pangs painfully. “Unless you…”
“She’s going to England.”
“She is?”
“Oxford.”
You struggle to sit up. “That sucks, Peter. I’m sorry.”
“But?”
You find your words carefully. “You and Gwen really liked each other, but I think that–” You grow in confidence, meeting his eyes firmly. “That there’s always been some part of you that couldn’t actually commit to her. So. I don’t know, maybe some distance will give you clarity. And maybe it’ll break your heart, but at least then you’ll know how you really feel, and you can move forward.” You avoid telling him to move on.
“It wasn’t Gwen,” he says, which has a completely different meaning to the both of you.
“Obviously, she’s the smartest girl I’ve ever met. She’s beautiful. Of course it’s not her fault,” you say, teasing.
“Really, that you ever met?” Peter asks.
“She’s the best girl you were ever gonna land.“
He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I guess so.” After a few more minutes of quiet, he says, “I think we were done before. I just hadn’t figured it out yet. Something wasn’t right.”
“You were so back and forth. You’re not mean, there must’ve been something stopping you from going steady,” you agree. “You were breaking up every other week.”
“I know,” he whispers, tipping his head against the back couch.
“Which, it’s fine, you don’t–” You grimace. “I can’t talk today. Sorry. I just mean that it’s alright that you never made it work.” You worry that sounds plainly obvious and amend, “Doesn’t make you a bad person. You’re never a bad person, Peter.”
“I know. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. You don’t need me to tell you.”
“It’s nice, though. I like when you tell me stuff. I want all of your secrets.”
You should say Good, because I have something unbelievable to tell you, and I should’ve said it the moment I got home.
Good, because last night I met the bravest man in New York City, and he walked me to the store for your chips.
Good, because I have so much I’m keeping to myself.
You ruffle his hair. Spider-Man goes unmentioned.
—
He visits with a whoop. You don’t flinch when he lands —you’d heard the strange whip and splat of his webs landing nearby.
“Spider-Man,” you say.
“What’s that about?”
“What?”
“The way you said that. You laughed.” Spider-Man stands in spandexed glory before you, mask in place. He’s got a brown stain up the side of his thigh that looks more like mud than blood, but it’s not as though each of his fights are bloodless. They’re infamously gory on occasion.
“Did you get hurt?” you ask. You’re worried. You could help him, if he needs it.
“Aw, this? That’s a scratch. That’s nothing, don’t worry about it. I’ve had worse from that stray cat living outside of 91st.”
You look at him sharply. 91st is shorthand for 91st Bodega, and it’s not like you and Peter made it up, but suddenly, the man in front of you is Peter. The way he says it, that unique rhythm.
Peter’s not so rough-voiced, you argue with yourself. Your Peter speaks in a higher register, dulcet often, only occasionally sarcastic. Spider-Man is rough, and cawing, and loud. Spider-Man acts as though the ground is a suggestion. Peter can’t jump off the second diving board at the pool. Spider-Man rolls his shoulders back in front of you with a confidence Peter rarely has.
“What?” he asks.
“Sorry. You just reminded me of someone.”
His voice falls deeper still. “Someone handsome, I hope.”
You take a small step around him, hoping it invites him to walk along while communicating how sorely you want to leave the subject behind. When he doesn’t follow, you add, “Yes, he’s handsome.”
“I knew it.”
“What do you look like under the mask?”
Spider-Man laughs boisterously. “I can’t just tell you that.”
“No? Do I have to earn it?”
“It’s not like that. I just don’t tell anyone, ever.”
“Nobody in the whole world?” you ask.
The rain is spitting. New York lately is cold cold cold, little in the way of sunshine and no end in sight. Perhaps that’s all November’s are destined to be. You and Spider-Man stick to the inside of the sidewalk. Occasionally, a passerby stares at him, or calls out in Hello, and Spider-Man waves but doesn’t part from you.
“Tell me something about you and I’ll tell you something about me,” Spider-Man says. “I’ll tell you who knows my identity.”
“What do you want to know about me?” you ask, surprised.
“A secret. That’s fair.”
“Hold on, how’s that fair?” You tighten your scarf against a bitter breeze. “What use do I have for the people who know who you are? That doesn’t bring me any closer to the truth.”
“It’s not about who knows, it’s about why I told them.” Spider-Man slips around you, forcing you to walk on the inside of the sidewalk as a car pulls past you all too quickly and sends a sheet of dirty rainwater up Spider-Man’s side. He shakes himself off. “Jerk!” he shouts after the car.
“My secrets aren’t worth anything.”
“I doubt that, but if that’s true, that makes it a fair trade, doesn’t it?”
He sounds peppy considering the pool of runoff collecting at his feet. You pick up your pace again and say, “Alright, useless secret for a useless secret.”
You think about all your secrets. Some are odd, some gross. Some might make the people around you think less of you, while others would surely paint you in a nice light. A topaz sort of technicolor. But they aren’t useless, then, so you move on.
“Oh, I know. I hate my major.” You grin at Spider-Man. “That’s a good one, right? No one else knows about that.”
“You do?” Spider-Man asks. His voice is familiar, then, for its sympathy.
“I like science, I just hate math. It’s harder than I thought it would be, and I need so much help it makes me hate the whole thing.”
Spider-Man doesn’t drag the knife. “Okay. Only three people know who I am under the mask. It was four, briefly.” He clears his throat. “I told one person because I was being selfish and the others out of necessity. I’m trying really hard not to tell anybody else.”
“How come?”
“It just hurts people.”
You linger in a gap of silence, not sure what to say. A handful of cars pass you on the road.
“Tell me another one,” he says.
“What for?”
“I don’t know, just tell me one.”
“How do I know you aren’t extorting me for something?” You grin as you say it, a hint of flirtation. “You’ll know my face and my secrets and even if you tell me a really gory juicy one, I have no one to tell and no name to pair it with.”
“I’m not showing you anything,” he warns, teasing, sounding so awfully like Peter that your heart trips again, an uneven capering that has you faltering in the street.
Peter’s shorter, you decide, sizing him up. His voice sounds similar and familiar but Peter doesn’t ask for secrets. He doesn’t have to. (Or, he didn’t have to, once upon a time.)
“Where are you going?” Spider-Man asks.
“Oh, nowhere.”
“Seriously, you’re out here walking again for no reason?”
“I like to walk. It’s not like it’s dark out yet.” You’re not far at all from Queensboro Hill here. Walking in any direction would lead you to a garden —Flushing Meadows, Kew Gardens, Kissena Park. “Walk me to Kissena?” you ask.
“Sure, for that secret.”
You laugh as Spider-Man takes the lead, keeping time with him, a natural match of pace. It’s exciting that Spider-Man of all people wants to know one of your useless secrets enough to ask you twice. The attention of it makes searching for one a matter of how fast you can find one rather than a question of why you’d want to. It slips out before you can think better of it.
“I burned my wrist a few days ago on a frying pan,” you confess, the phantom pain of the injury an itch. “It blistered and I cried when I did it, but I haven’t told anyone about it.”
“Why not?” he asks.
He shouldn’t use that tone with you, like he’s so so sorry. It makes you want to really tell him everything. How insecure you feel, how telling things feels like asking for someone to care, and half the time they don’t, and half the time you’re embarrassed.
You walk past the bakery that demarcates the beginning of Kissena Park grounds across the way. “I didn’t think about it at first. I’m used to keeping things to myself. And then I didn’t tell anyone for so long that mentioning it now wouldn’t make sense. Like, bringing it up when it’s a scar won’t do much.” It’s a weak lie. It comes out like a spigot to a drying up tree. Glugs, fat beads of sound and the pull to find another thing to say.
“It was only a few days ago, right? It must still hurt. People want to know that stuff.”
“Maybe I’ll tell someone tomorrow,” you say, though you won’t.
“Thanks for telling me.”
The humour in spilling a secret like that to a superhero stops you from feeling sorry for yourself. You hide your cold fingers in your coat, rubbing the stiff skin of your knuckles into the lining for friction-heat. The rain has let up, wind whipping empty but brisk against your cheeks. Your lips will be chapped when you get home, whenever that turns out to be.
“This is pretty far from Trader Joe’s,” he comments, like he’s read your mind.
“Just an hour.”
“Are you kidding? It’s an hour for me.”
“That’s not true, Spider-Man, I’ve seen those webs in action. I still remember watching you on the News that night, the cranes. I remember,” —you try to meet his eyes despite the mask— “my heart in my throat. Weren’t you scared?”
“Is that the secret you want?” he asks.
“I get to choose?”
Spider-Man throws his gaze around, his hand behind his head like he might play with his hair. You come to a natural stop across the street from Kissena Park’s playground. Teenagers crowd the soft-landing floor, smaller children playing on the wet rungs of the climbing frame.
“If you want to,” he says.
“Then yeah, I want to know if you were scared.”
“I didn’t haveI time to be scared. Connors was already there, you know?” He shifts from one foot to the other. “I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it before. I wasn’t scared of the height, if that’s what you mean. I already had practice by then, and I knew I had to do it. Like, I didn’t have a choice, so I just did it. I had to save the day, so I did.”
“When they lined up the cranes–”
“It felt like flying,” Spider-Man interrupts.
“Like flying.”
You picture the weightlessness, the adrenaline, the catch of your weight so high up and the pressure of being flung between the next point. The idea that you have to just do something, so you do.
“That’s a good secret.” You offer a grateful smile. “It doesn’t feel equal. I burned myself and you saved the city.”
“So tell me another one,” he says.
—
Maybe you started to fall for Peter after his Uncle Ben passed away. Not the days where you’d text him and he’d ignore you, or the days spent camping outside of his house waiting for him to get home. It wasn’t that you couldn’t like him, angry as he was; there’s always been something about his eyes when he’s upset that sticks around. You loathe to see him sad but he really is pretty, and when his eyelashes are wet and his mouth is turned down, formidable, it’s an ache. A Cabanel painting, dramatic and dark and other.
It was after. When he started sending Gwen weird smiles and showing up to the movies exhilarated, out of breath, unwilling to tell you where he’d been. Skating, he’d always say. Most of the time he didn’t have his skateboard.
You’d only seen them kiss once, his hand on her shoulder curling her in, a pang of heat. You were curdled by jealousy but it was more than that. Peter was tipping her head back, was kissing her soundly, a fierceness from him that made you sick to think about. You spent weeks afterwards up at night, tossing, turning, wishing he’d kiss you like that, just once, so you could feel how it felt to be completely wrapped up in another person.
You’d always held out for Peter, in a way. It was more important to you that he be your friend. You were young, and love had been a far off thing, and then one day you suddenly wanted it. You learned just how aching an unrequited love could be, like a bruise, where every time you saw Peter —whether it be alone or with Gwen, with anyone— it was like he knew exactly where to poke the bruise. Press the heel of his hand and push. The worst is when he found himself affectionate with you, a quick clasp of your cheek in his palm as he said goodbye. Nights spent in his twin bed, of course you’ll fit, of course you couldn’t go home, not this late, May won’t care if we keep the door open —the suggestion that the door being closed might’ve meant something. His sleeping arm furled around you.
Now you’re nearing the end of your second semester at ESU, Gwen is going to England at the end of the year, and Peter hasn’t tried to stop her, but he’s still busy.
“Whatever,“ you say, taking a deep breath. You’re not mad at Peter, you just miss him. Thinking about him all the time won’t change a thing. “It’s fine.”
“I’d hope so.”
You swing around. “Don’t do that!”
Spider-Man looks vaguely chastened, taking a step back. “I called out.”
“You did?”
“I did. Hey, miss, over there! The one who doesn’t know how to get a goddamn taxi!”
“I like to walk,” you say.
“Yeah, so you’ve said. Have you considered that all this walking is bad for you? It’s freezing out, Miss Bennett!”
“It’s not that bad.” You have your coat, a scarf, your thermal leggings underneath your jeans. “I’m fine.”
“What’s wrong with staying at home?”
“That’s not good for you. And you’re one to talk, Spider-Man, aren’t you out on the streets every night? You should take a day off.”
“I don’t do this every night.”
“Don’t you get tired?”
Spider-Man’s eyelets seem to squint, his mock-anger effusive as he crosses his arms across his chest. “No, of course not. Do I look like I get tired?”
“I don’t know. You’re in a full suit, I can’t tell. I guess you don’t… seem tired. You know, with all the backflips.”
“Want me to do one?”
“On command?” You laugh. “No, that’s okay. Save your strength, Spider-Man.”
“So where are you heading today?” he asks.
There’s a slip of skin peeking out against his neck. You’re surprised he can’t feel the cold there, stepping toward him to point. “I can see your stubble.”
He yanks his mask down. “Hasty getaway.”
“A getaway, undressed? Spider-Man, that’s not very gentlemanly.”
You start to walk toward the Cinemart. Spider-Man, to your strange pleasure, follows. He walks with considerable casualness down the sidewalk by your left, occasionally letting his head turn to chase a distant sound where it echoes from between high-rises and along the busy street. It’s cold and dark, but New York is hectic no matter what, even the residential areas. (Is there such a thing? The neighbourhoods burst with small businesses and backstreet sales, no matter the time.)
“Luckily for you, crime is slow tonight,” he says.
“Lucky me?” You wonder if your acquainted vigilante flirts with every girl he stalks. “You realise I’ve managed to get everywhere I’m going for the last two decades without help?”
“I assume there was more than a little help during that first decade.”
“That’s what you think. I was a super independent toddler.”
Spider-Man tips his head back and laughs, but that laugh is quickly squashed with a cough. “Sure you were.”
“Is there a reason you’re escorting me, Spider-Man?” you ask.
“No. I– I recognised you, I thought I’d say hi.”
“Hi, Spider-Man.”
“Hi.”
“Can I ask you something? Do you work?”
Spider-Man stammers again, “I– yeah. I work. Freelance, mostly.”
“I was wondering how you fit all the crime fighting into your life, is all. University is tough enough.” You let the wind bat your scarf off of your shoulder. “I couldn’t do what you do.”
“Yeah, you could.”
He sounds sure.
“How would you know?” you ask. “Maybe I’m awful when you’re not walking me around. I hate New York. I hate people.”
“No, you don’t. You’re not awful. Don’t ask me how I know, ‘cos I just know.”
You try not to look at him. If you look at him, you’re gonna smile at him like he hung the moon. “Well, tonight I’m going to be dreadfully selfish. My friend said he’d buy my movie ticket and take me out for dinner, a real dinner, the mac and cheese with imitation lobster at Benny’s. Have you tried that?”
Spider-Man takes a big step. “Tonight?” he asks.
“Yep, tonight. That’s where I’m going, the Cinemart.” You frown at his hand pressing into his stomach. “Are you okay? You look like you’re gonna throw up.”
“I can hear– something. Someone’s crying. I gotta go, okay? Have fun at the movies, okay?” He throws his arm up, a silken web shooting from his wrist to the third floor of an apartment complex. “Bye!” he shouts, taking a running jump to the apartment, using his web as an anchor. He flings himself over the roof.
Woah, you think, warmth filling your cold cheeks, the tip of your nose. He’s lithe.
Peter arrives ten minutes late for the movie, which is half an hour later than you’d agreed to meet.
“Sorry!” he shouts, breathless as he grabs your hands. “God, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry. You should beat me up. I’m sorry.”
“What the fuck happened?” you ask, not particularly angry, only relieved to see him with enough time to still catch the movie. “You’re sweating like crazy, your hair’s wet.”
“I ran all the way here, Jesus, do I smell bad? Don’t answer that. Fuck, do we have time?”
You usher Peter inside. He pays for the tickets with hands shaking and you attempt to wipe the sweat from his forehead with your sleeve. “You could’ve called me,” you say, content to let him grab you by the arm and race you to the screen doors, “we could’ve caught the next one. Why were you so late, anyways? Did you forget?”
“Forget about my favourite girl? How could I?” He elbows open the doors to let you enter first. “Now shh,” he whispers, “find the seats, don’t miss the trailers. You love them.”
“You love them–”
“I’ll get popcorn,” he promises, letting the door close between you.
You’re tempted to follow, fingers an inch from the handle.
You turn away and rush to find your seats. Hopefully, the popcorn line is ten blocks long, and he spends the night punished for his wrongdoing. My favourite girl. You laugh nervously into your hand.
—
Winter
Spider-Man finds you at least once a week for the next few weeks. He even brings you an umbrella one time, stars on the handle, asking you rather politely to go home. He offers to buy you a hot dog as you’re walking past the stand, takes you on a shortcut to the convenience store, and helps you get a piece of gum off of your shoe with a leaf and a scared scream. He’s friendly, and you’re getting used to his company.
One night, you’re almost home from Trader Joe’s, racing in the pouring rain when a familiar voice calls out, “Hey! Running girl! Wait a second!”
Him, you think, as ridiculous as it sounds. You don’t know his name, but Spider-Man’s a sunny surprise in a shitty, wet winter, and you turn to the sound with a grin.
He jogs toward you.
You feel the world pause, right in the centre of your throat. All the air gets sucked out of you.
“Hey, what are you doing out here? Did you get my texts?”
You blink as fat rain lands on your face.
“You okay?” Peter asks, Peter, in a navy hoodie turning black in the rain and a brown corduroy jacket. It’s sodden, hanging heavily around his shoulders. “Come on, let’s go,” —he takes your hand and pulls until you begin to speed walk beside him— “it’s freezing!”
“Peter–”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Peter, what are you doing here?” you ask, your voice an echo as he drags you into the foyer of your apartment building.
Rain hammers the door as he closes it, the windows, the foyer too dark to see properly.
“I wanted to see you. Is that allowed?”
“No.”
Peter takes your hand. You look down at it, and he looks down in tandem, and it is decidedly a non-platonic move. “No?” he asks, a hair’s width from murmuring.
“Shit, my groceries are soaked.”
“It’s all snacks, it’s fine,” he says, pulling you to the stairs.
You rush up the steps together to your floor. Peter takes your key when you offer it, your own fingers too stiff to manage it by yourself, and he holds the door open for you again to let you in.
Your apartment is a ragtag assortment to match the one next door, old wooden furniture wheeled from the street corners they were left on, thrifted homeward and heavy blankets everywhere you look. You almost slip getting out of your shoes. Peter steadies you with a firm hand. He shrugs out of his coat and hangs it on the hook, prying the damp hoodie over his head and exposing a solid length of back that trips your heart as you do the same.
“Sorry I didn’t ask,” Peter says.
“What, to come over? It’s fine. I like you being here, you know that.”
All your favourite days were spent here or at Peter’s house, in beds, on sofas, his hair tickling your neck as credits run down the TV and his breath evens to a light snore. You try to settle down with him, changing into dry clothes, his spare stuff left at the bottom of your wardrobe for his next inevitable impromptu visit. You turn on the TV, letting him gather you into his side with more familiarity than ever. Rain lays its fingertips on your window and draws lazy lines behind half-turned blinds. You rest on the arm and watch Peter watch the movie, answering his occasional, “You okay?” with a meagre nod.
“What’s wrong?” he asks eventually. “You’re so quiet.”
Your hand over your mouth, you part your marriage and pinky finger, marriage at the corner, pinky pressed to your bottom lip, the flesh chapped by a season of frigid winds and long walks. “‘M thinking,” you say.
“About?”
About the first night in your new apartment. You got the apartment a couple of weeks before the start of ESU. Not particularly close to the university but close to Peter, your best, nicest friend. You met in your second year of High School, before Peter got contacts, ‘cos he was good at taking photographs and you were in charge of the school newspapers media sourcing. You used to wait for Peter to show up ten minutes late like clockwork, every week. And every week he’d barge into the club room and say, “Fuck, I’m sorry, my last class is on the other side of the building,” until it turned into its own joke.
Three years later, you got your apartment, and Peter insisted you throw a housewarming party even if he was the only person invited.
“Fuck,” he’d said, ten minutes late, a cake in one hand and a whicker basket the other, “sorry. My last class is on–”
But he didn’t finish. You’d laughed so hard with relief at the reference that he never got the chance. Peter remembered your very first inside joke, because Peter wasn’t about to go off to ESU and meet new friends and forget you.
But Peter’s been distant for a while now, because Peter’s Spider-Man.
“Do you remember,” you say, not willing to share the whole truth, “when you joined the school newspaper to be the official photographer, and you taught me the rule of thirds?”
“So you didn’t need me,” he says.
“I was just thinking about it. We ran that newspaper like the Navy.”
Peter holds your gaze. “Is that really what you were thinking about?”
“Just funny,” you murmur, dropping your hand in your lap and breaking his stare. “So much has changed.”
“Not that much.”
“Not for me, no.”
Peter gets a look in his eyes you know well. He’s found a crack in you and he’s gonna smooth it over until you feel better. You’re expecting his soft tone, his loving smile, but you’re not expecting the way he pulls you in —you’d slipped away from him as the evening went on, but Peter erases every millimetre of space as he slides his arm under your lower back and ushers you into his side. You hold your breath as he hugs you, as he looks down at you. It’s really like he loves you, the line between platonic and romantic a blur. He’s never looked at you like this before.
“I don’t want you to change,” he whispers.
“I want to catch up with you,” you whisper back.
“Catch up with me? We’re in the exact same place, aren’t we?”
“I don’t know, are we?”
Peter hugs you closer, squishing your head down against his jaw as he rubs your shoulder. “Of course we are.”
Peter… What is he doing?
You let yourself relax against him.
“You do change,” he whispers, an utterance of sound to calm that awful bruise he gave you all those months ago, “you change every day, but you don’t need to try.”
“I just… feel like everyone around me is…” You shake your head. “Everyone’s so smart, and they know what they’re doing, or they’re– they’re special. I don’t know anything. So I guess lately I’ve been thinking about that, and then you–”
“What?”
You can say it out loud. You could.
“Peter, you’re…”
“I’m what?” he asks.
His fingers glide down the length of your arm and up again.
If you're wrong, he’ll laugh. And if you’re right, he might– might stop touching you. Your head feels so heavy, and his touch feels like it’s gonna put you to sleep.
He’s Spider-Man.
It makes sense. Who else could have a good enough heart to do that? Of course it’s Peter. It explains so much about him, about Peter and Spider-Man both. Why Peter is suddenly firmer, lighter on his feet, why he can help you move a wardrobe up two flights of stairs without complaint; why Spider-Man is so kind to you, why he knows where to find you, why he rolls his words around just like Pete.
Spider-Man said there are reasons he wears his mask. And Peter doesn’t tell you much, but you trust him.
You won’t make him say anything, you decide. Not now.
You curl your arm over his stomach hesitantly, smiling into his shirt as he hugs you tighter.
“I was thinking about you,” he says.
“Yeah?”
“You’re quieter lately. I know you’re having a hard time right now, okay? You don’t have to tell me. I’m here for you whenever you need me.”
“Yeah?” you ask.
“You used to sit on my porch when you knew May wouldn’t be home to make sure I wasn’t alone.” Peter’s breath is warm on your forehead. “I don’t know what you’re worried about being, but I’m with you,” he says, “‘n nothing is gonna change that.”
Peter isn’t as far away as you thought.
“Thank you,” you say.
He kisses your forehead softly. Your whole world goes amber. He brings his hand to your cheek, the thought of him tipping your head back sudden and heart-racing, but Peter only holds you. You lose count of how many minutes you spend cupped in his hand.
“Can I stay over tonight?” he utters, barely audible under the sound of the battering rain.
“Yeah, please.”
His thumb strokes your cheek.
—
Two switches flip at once, that night. Peter is suddenly as tactile as you’ve craved, and Spider-Man disappears.
He’s alive and well, as evidenced by Peter’s continued survival and presence in your life, but Spider-Man doesn’t drop in on your nightly walks.
You take less of them lately, feeling better in yourself. Your spirits are certainly lifted by Peter’s increasing affection, but now that you know he’s Spider-Man you were waiting to see him in spandex to mess with his head. Nothing mean, but you would’ve liked to pick at his secret identity, toy with him like you know he’d do to you. After all, he’s been trailing you for weeks and getting to know you. Peter already knows you. Plus, you told Spider-Man secrets not meant for Peter Parker’s ears.
You find it hard to be angry with him. A thread of it remains whenever you remember his deception, but mostly you worry about him. Peter’s out every night until who knows what hour fighting crime. There are guns. He could get shot, and he doesn’t seem scared. You end up watching videos on the internet of the night he ran to Oscorp, when he fought Connors’ and got that huge gash in his leg. His leg is soiled deep red with blood but banded in white webbing. He limps as he races across a rooftop, the recording shaky yet high definition.
It’s not nice to see Peter in pain. You cling to what he’d said, how he wasn’t scared, but not being scared doesn’t mean he wasn’t hurting.
You chew the tip of a finger and click on a different video. Your computer monitor bears heat, the tower whirring by your thigh. Your eyes burn, another hour sitting in the same seat, sick with worry. You don’t mind when Peter doesn’t answer your texts anymore. You didn’t mind so much before, just terrified of becoming an irrelevance in his life and lonely, too, maybe a little hurt, but never worried for his safety. Now when Peter doesn’t text you back you convince yourself that he’s been hurt, or that he’s swinging across New York City about to risk his life.
It’s not a good way to live. You can’t stop giving into it, is all.
In the next video, Spider-Man sits on a billboard with a can of coke in hand. He doesn’t lift his mask, seemingly aware of his watcher. You laugh as he angles his head down, suspicion in his tight shoulders. He relaxes when he sees whoever it is recording.
“Hey,” he says, “you all right?”
“Should you be up there?” the person recording shouts.
“I’m fine up here!”
“Are you really Spider-Man?”
“Sure am.”
“Are you single?”
Peter laughs like crazy. How you didn’t know it was him before is a mystery —it couldn’t sound more like him. “I’ve got my eye on someone!” he says, sounding younger for it, the character voice he enacts when he’s Spider-Man lost to a good mood.
Your phone rings in the back pocket of your jeans. You wriggle it out, nonplussed to find Peter himself on your screen. You click the green answer button.
“Hello?” Peter asks.
You bring the phone snug to your ear. “Hey, Peter.”
“Hi, are you busy?”
“Not really.”
“Do you wanna come over? I know it’s late. Come stay the night and tomorrow we’ll go out for breakfast.”
“Is Aunt May okay with that?”
“She’s staring at me right now shaking her head, but I’m in trouble for something. May, can she come over, is that allowed?”
“She’s always allowed as long as you keep the door open.”
You laugh under your breath at May’s begrudging answer. “Are you sure she’s alright with it?” you ask softly. “I don’t want to be a burden.”
“You never, ever could be. I’m coming to your place and we’ll walk over together. Did you eat dinner?”
“Not yet, but–”
“Okay, I’ll make you something when you get here. I’ll meet you at the door. Twenty minutes?”
“I have to shower first.”
“Twenty five?”
You choke on a laugh, a weird bubbly thing you’re not used to. Peter laughs on the other side of the phone. “How about I’ll see you at seven?”
“It’s a date,” he says.
“Mm, put it in your calendar, Parker.”
—
Peter waits for you at the door like he promised. He frowns at your still-wet face as he slips your backpack from your shoulder, throwing it over his own. “You’re gonna get sick.”
“I‘ll dry fast,” you say. “I took too long finding my pyjamas.”
“I have stuff you can wear. Probably have your sweatpants somewhere, the grey ones.” Peter pulls you forward and wipes your tacky face. “I would’ve waited,” he says.
“It’s fine.“
“It’s not fine. Are you cold?”
“Pete, it’s fine.”
“You always remind me of my Uncle Ben when you call me Pete,” he laughs, “super stern.”
“I’m not stern. Look, take me home, please, I’m cold.”
“You said it wasn’t cold!”
“It’s not, I’m just damp–” Peter cuts you off as he grabs you, sudden and tight, arms around you and rubbing the lengths of your back through your coat. “Handsy!”
“You like it,” he jokes back, his playful warming turning into a hug. You smile, hiding your face in his neck for a few moments.
“I don’t like it,” you lie.
“Okay, you don’t like it, and I’m sorry.” Peter gives you a last hug and pulls away. “Now let’s go. I gotta feed you before midnight.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Apparently, nothing is.”
Peter links your arms together. By the time you get to his house, you’ve fallen away from each other naturally. May is in the hallway when you climb through the door, an empty laundry basket in her hands.
“I see Peter hasn’t won this argument yet,” you say in way of greeting. Peter’s desperate to do his own laundry now he’s getting older. May won’t let him.
“No, he hasn’t.” She looks you up and down. “It’s nice to see you, honey. And in one piece! Peter tells me you’ve been walking a lot, and I mean, in this city? Can’t you buy a treadmill?” she asks.
“May!” Peter says, startled.
“I like walking, I like the air,” you say.
“Can’t exactly call it fresh,” May says.
“No, but it’s alright. It helps me think.”
“Is everything okay?” May asks, putting her hand on her hip.
“Of course.” You smile at her genuinely. “I think starting college was too much for me? It was hard. But things are settling now, I don’t know what Peter told you, but I’m not walking a lot anymore. You know, not more than necessary.”
She softens her disapproving. “Good, honey. That’s good. Peter’s gonna make you some dinner now, right?”
“Yeah, Aunt May, I’m gonna make dinner,” Peter sighs, pulling a leg up to take off his shoes.
Peter shouldn’t really know that you’ve been walking. He might see you coming back from Trader Joe’s or the bodega on his way to your apartment, but you haven’t mentioned any of your longer excursions, and everybody in Queens has to walk. That’s information he wouldn’t know without Spider-Man.
He seems to be hoping you won’t realise, changing the subject to the frankly killer grilled cheese and tomato soup that he’s about to make you, and pushing you into a chair at the table. “Warm up,” he says near the back of your head, forcing a wave of shivers down your arms.
He makes soup in one pan, grilled cheese in the other, two for him and two for you. Peter’s a good eater, and he encourages the same from you, setting a big bowl of tomato soup (from the can, splash of fresh cream) down in front of you with the grilled cheese on a plate between you. You eat it in too-hot bites and try not to get caught looking at him. He does the same, but when he catches you, or when you catch him, he holds your eye and smiles.
“I can do the dishes,” you say. You might need a breather.
“Are you kidding? I’m gonna rinse them, put them in the dishwasher.” Peter stands and feels your forehead with his hand. “Warmer. Good job.”
You shrug away from his hand. “Loser.”
“Concerned friend.”
“Handsy loser.”
”Shut up,” he mumbles.
As flustered as you’ve ever seen, Peter takes your empty dishes to the kitchen. When he’s done rinsing them off you follow him upstairs to his bedroom and tuck your backpack under his bed.
You look down at your socks. Peter’s room is on the smaller side, but it’s never been as startlingly small as it is when Peter’s socked feet align with yours, toe to toe. Quick recovery time, this boy.
“There’s chips and stuff on my desk. Or I could run to 91st for some ice cream sandwiches if you want something sweet,” he says.
You lift your eyes, tilt your head up just a touch, not wanting him to think you’re in his space no matter how strange that might be, considering he chose to stand there. “I’m all right. Did you want ice cream? We can go if you want to, but if you want to go ’cos you think I do then I’m fine.”
“That’s such a long answer,” he says, draping an arm over your shoulder. “You don’t have to say all of that, just tell me no.”
“I don’t want ice cream.”
“Wasn’t that easy?” he asks.
“Well, no, it wasn’t. Saying no to you is like saying no to a puppy.”
“Because I’m adorable?”
“Persistent.”
“Yeah, I guess I am.” He drapes the other arm over you. The soap he used at the kitchen sink lingers on his hands.
“Peter…?” you murmur.
“What?” he murmurs back.
You touch a knuckle to his chest. “This– You…” Every quelled thought rushes to the surface at once —Peter doesn’t like you as you desire, how could he, you aren’t beautiful like he is, aren’t smart, aren’t brave, no exceptional kindness or goodness to mark you enough for him. It’s why his being with Gwen didn’t hurt; she made sense. And for months now you’ve wondered what it is that made him struggle to be with her. And sometimes, foolishly, you wondered if it was you. But it’s not you, it’s never you, and whatever Peter’s trying to do now–
“Hey, you okay?” he asks, taking your face into his hand.
“What are you doing?”
“What?” He pushes his hand back to hold your nape, thumb under your ear. “I can’t hear you.”
You raise your voice. “Why did you invite me over tonight?”
“‘Cos I missed you?”
“I used to think you didn’t miss me at all.”
Peter winces, hurt. “How could you think that? Of course I miss you. What you said to May, about college being hard? It’s like that for me too, okay? I miss you all the time.”
You bite the inside of your bottom lip. “…College isn’t hard for you.”
“It’s not easy.” He frowns, the fallen angel, his lips an unsure brushstroke. “What’s wrong? Did I say the wrong thing?”
You’re being wretched, you know, saying it isn’t hard for him. “You didn’t. Really, you didn’t.”
“But why are you upset?” he implores, dark eyes darker as his eyebrows tug together.
“I’m not–”
“You are. It’s okay, you can be upset. I just want you to feel better, you know that?” He settles his hands at the tops of your arms. Less intimate, but something warm remains. “Even if it takes a long time.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.”
“How would you know?” you finally ask.
Peter stares at you.
“I know you,” he says carefully, “and I know you aren’t struggling like you were, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen or that you have to be a hundred percent better now.”
“I didn’t realise that I was,” you say, licking your lips, “‘til now. I didn’t get that it was on the surface.”
Peter pulls you in for a gentle hug. “I’m here for you forever, and I’ll make it up to you for not noticing sooner,” he says, scrunching your shirt in his hand.
After the hug, he tells you to change and make yourself comfortable while he showers. So you put on your pyjamas and climb into Peter’s bed, head pounding as though all your energy was stolen in a fell swoop. You press your nose to his pillow and arm wrapped around his comforter, gathering it into a Peter sized lump. The shower pump whines against the shared wall.
Things aren’t meant to be like this. You thought Peter touching you —holding you— was the deepest of your desires, but you feel now exactly as you had before he started blurring the line, needing Peter to kiss you so badly it becomes its own kind of nausea. Why are you still acting like it’s an impossibility?
When he comes back, you’ll apologise. He hasn’t done anything wrong. He does keep a secret, but don’t you keep one too? He’s Spider-Man. You’ve had deep, complicated feelings for him for months. They are secrets of equal magnitude, and are, more apparently, badly kept.
You wish you could fall asleep. Your heart ticks in agitation.
Peter returns as perturbed as earlier.
“Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?” he asks, raking a hand through his hair. A towel hangs around his neck.
“I’m sorry for being weird.”
“You’re not weird,” Peter says, bringing the towel to his hair to scrub ruthlessly.
“It’s just ‘cos things have been different between us.” And, you try to say, that scares me no matter how bad I wanted it. because you’re not just Peter anymore, you’re Spider-Man. I’m only me, and I can’t do anything to protect you.
Peter gives his hair a long scrub before draping the towel on his desk chair. He rakes it messily into place and sits himself at the end of the bed. You sit up.
“Yeah, they have been. Good different?” he asks hesitantly.
“I think so,” you say, quiet again.
“That’s what I thought.”
“I don’t want you to feel like I don’t want to be here. I just worry about you.”
Peter uses his hands to get higher up the bed. “Don’t worry about me,” he says, “Jesus, please don’t. That’s the last thing I want from you, I hate when people worry about me.”
You curl into the lump of comforter you’d made. Peter lets himself rest beside you, his back to the bedroom wall, tens of Polaroids above him shining with the light of the hallway and his orange-bulbed lamp. His skin is glowing like it’s golden hour, dashes of topaz in his eyes, his Cupid’s bow deep. How would it feel to lean forward and kiss him? To catch his Cupid's bow under your lips?
You brush a damp curl tangled in another onto his forehead.
You lay there for a little while without talking, listening to the sound of the washing machine as it cycles downstairs.
“Am I going too fast?” Peter murmurs.
You press your lips together, shaking your head minutely.
“Is it something else?”
You don’t move.
“Do you want me to stop?” he asks.
“No.”
Peter rewards you with a smile, his hand on your arm. “Alright. Let me get this blanket on you the right way. You’re still cold.”
You resent the loss of a shape to hold when Peter slips down beside you and wrangles the comforter flat again, spreading it out over you both, his hand under the blankets. His knuckles brush your thigh.
He takes a deep breath before turning and wrapping his arm over your stomach, asking softly, “Is this alright?”
“Yeah.”
He gives you a look and then lifts his head to slot his nose against your temple. “Please don’t take this in a way that I don’t mean it, but sometimes you think about things so much I worry you’re gonna get stuck in your head forever.”
“I like thinking.”
“I hate it,” he says quickly, a fervent, flirting cadence to his otherwise dulcet tone, “we should never do it ever again.”
“I’ll try not to.”
“Would you? For me?”
You laugh into his shirt, feeling the warmth of your breath on your own nose. “I’ll do my best.”
“Good. I’d miss you too much if you got lost in that nice head of yours.”
You relax under his arm. You aren’t sure what all the fuss was about now that he's hugging you. “I’d miss you too.”
May comes up the stairs about an hour later. To her credit, she doesn’t flinch when she finds you and Peter smushed together watching a DVD on his old TV. He’s holding your arm, and you’re snoozing on his shoulder, half-aware of the world, fully aware of his nice smells and the shapes of his arms.
“Door open,” she says.
“Not that either of us want it closed, May, but we’re adults.”
“Not while I’m still washing your clothes, you’re not.”
He snorts. “Goodnight, Aunt May. The door isn’t gonna close, I promise.”
“I know that,” she says, scornful in her pride. “You’re a good boy.” She lightens. “Things are going okay?”
Peter covers your ear. “Goodnight, Aunt May.”
”I have half a mind to never listen to you again. You talk my ear off and I can’t ask a simple question?”
“I love you,” Peter sing-songs.
“I love you, Peter,” she says. “Don’t smother the girl.”
“I won’t smother her. It’s in my best interest that she survives the night. She’s buying my breakfast tomorrow.”
“Peter Parker.”
“I’m kidding,” he whispers, petting your cheek absentmindedly. “Just messing with you, May.”
You smile and curl further into his arms. His voice is like the sun, even when he whispers.
—
To your surprise, Spider-Man comes to find you after class one evening. A guest lecturer had talked to your oncology class about click chemistry and other molecular therapies against cancer, and the zine book she’d given you is burning a hole in your pocket. Peter is going to love it.
You pull it out and pause beside a bench and a silver trash can, the day grey but thankfully without rain. The pages of your little book whip forcefully in the wind. It’s chemistry, sure, but it’s biology too, wrapping your and Peter’s interests up neatly. If it weren’t for Peter you doubt you’d love science as much as you do. He’s always been good at it, but since you started college he's been a genius. Watching him grow has encouraged you to work harder, and understanding the material is satisfying, if draining. You take a photo of the middle most pages and tuck the book away, writing a quick text to Peter to send with it.
Look! it says, LEGO cancer treatment!!
The moment you press send a beep chimes from somewhere close behind you, all too familiar. You turn to the source but find nobody you know waiting. Coincidence, you think, shaking yourself and beginning the trek to the subway.
But then you hear the tell tale splat and thwick of Spider-Man’s webbing.
You wait until you’re at the alleyway between Porto’s Bakery and the key cutting shop and turn down to stop by one of the dumpsters.
“Spider-Man?” you ask, shoulders tensed in case it’s not who you think.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
You gasp as he hops down in front of you, his suit shiny with its dark web-pattern caught by the grey sunshine passing through the clouds overhead. “Shit, don’t break your ankles.”
“My ankles?” He laughs. He sounds so much like Peter that you can only laugh with him. What an idiot he is for thinking you don’t know; what a fool you’d been for falling for his put upon tenor. “They’re fine. What would be wrong with my ankles?”
“You just dropped down twenty feet!”
“It’s more like thirty, and I’m fine. You understand the super part of superhero, don’t you?”
“Who said you’re a superhero?”
“Nice. What are you doing down here?”
“I was testing my theory. You’re following me.”
“No, I’m visiting you, it’s very different,” he says confidently.
“You haven’t come to see me for weeks.”
“Yes, well, I–” Spider-Peter crosses his arms across his chest. “Hey, you’re the one who told me to take a day off.”
“I did tell you to take a day off. It’s not nice thinking about you trying to save the world every single night. That’s a lot of responsibility for one person to have.”
“But it’s my responsibility,” he says easily. “No point in a beautiful girl like you wasting her time worrying about it. I have to do it, and I don’t mind it.”
“Do you flirt with every girl you meet out here in the city?” you ask, cheeks hot.
“No,” he says, fondness evident even through the mask, “just you.”
“Do you wanna walk me home? I was gonna take the subway, but it’s not that far.”
Spider-Man nods. “Yeah, I’ll walk you back.”
He doesn’t hide that he knows the way very well. He takes preemptive turns, crosses roads without you telling him to go forward. You can’t believe him. Smartest guy at Midtown High and he can’t pretend to save his life.
“Are you having a good semester?” he asks.
“It’s getting better. I’m glad I stuck with it. I love biology, it’s so fucking hard. I used to think that was a bad thing, but it makes it cooler now. Like, it’s not something everyone understands.” You give him a look, and you give into temptation. “My best friend got me into all this stuff. I used to think math was hopeless and science was for dorks.”
“It’s definitely for dorks.”
“Right, but I love being one.” You offer a useless secret. “I like to think that it’s why we’re such great friends.”
“Me and you?” Spider-Man asks hoarsely.
“Me and Peter.” You elbow him without force. “Why, do you like science?”
“I love it…”
“You know, I really like you, Spider-Man. I feel like we’ve been friends for a long time.” You’re teasing poor Peter.
He doesn’t speak for a while. He stops walking, but you take a few steps without him. When you realise he’s stopped, you turn back to see him.
Peter’s gone so tense you could strike him with a flint and catch a spark. It’s the same way Peter looked at you when he told you about his Uncle, a truth he didn’t want to be true. Seeing it throws a spanner in the works of all your teasing: you’d meant to wind him up, not make him panic.
“What’s wrong?” you ask. “Can you hear something?”
“No, it’s not that…” He’s masked, but you know him well enough to understand why he’s stopped.
“It’s okay,” you say.
“It’s not, actually.”
“Spider-Man.” You take a step toward him. “It’s fine.”
He presses his hands to his stomach. The sun is setting early, and in an hour, the dark will eat up New York and leave it in a blistering cold. “Do you remember when we first met, the second time, we swapped secrets?”
“Yeah, I remember. Useless secret for another. I told you I hated my major. It’s not true anymore, obviously. I was having a bad time.”
“I know you were,” he says, emphasis on know, like it’s a different word entirely.
“But meeting you really helped. If it weren’t for you, for Peter,” —you give him a searching look— “I wouldn’t feel better at all.”
“It wasn’t his fault?” he asks. “He was your friend, and you were lonely.”
“No–”
“He didn’t know what was going on with you, he didn’t have a clue. You hurt yourself and you felt like you couldn’t tell anybody, and I know it wasn’t an accident, so what was his excuse?” His voice burns with anger. “It’s his fault.”
“Of course it wasn’t your fault. Is that what you think?” You shake your head, panicked by the bone-deep self loathing in his voice, his shameful dropped head. “Yes, I was lonely, I am lonely, I don’t know many people and I– I– I hurt myself, and it wasn’t as accidental as I thought it was, but why would that be your fault?”
“Peter’s fault,” he says, though his head is lifted now, and he doesn’t bother enthusing it with much gusto.
“Peter, none of it was your fault.” You cringe in your embarrassment, thinking Fuck, don’t let me ruin this. “I was in a weird way, and yes, I was lonely, and I really liked you more than I should have. You didn't want me and that wasn’t your fault, that’s just how it was, I tried not to let it get to me, just there were a lot of things weighing on me at once, but it really wasn’t as bad as you think it was and it wasn’t your fault.”
“I wasn’t there for you,” he says. “And I’ve been lying to you for a long time.”
“You couldn’t tell me, right? Spider-Man is your secret for a reason.”
“…I didn’t even know you were lonely until you told him. He was a stranger.”
You hold your hands behind your back. “Well, he was a familiar one.”
Peter reaches out as though wanting to touch you, but your arms aren’t in his reach. “It’s not because I didn’t want you.”
“Peter,” you say, squirming.
He steps back.
“I have to go,” he says.
“What?”
“I have to– I don’t want to go,” he says earnestly, “sweetheart, I can hear someone calling out, I have to go. But I’ll come back, I’ll– I’ll come back,” he promises.
And with a sudden lift of his arm, Peter pulls himself up the side of a building and disappears, leaving you whiplashed on the sidewalk, the sun setting just out of view.
—
You fall asleep that night waiting for Peter. When you wake up, 5AM, eyes aching, he isn’t there. You check your phone but he hasn’t texted. You check the Bugle and Spider-Man hasn’t been seen.
You aren’t sure what to think. He sounded sincere to the fullest extent when he said he’d come back, but he didn’t, not ten minutes later, not twenty. You made excuses and you went home before it got too dark to see the street, sat on the couch rehearsing what you’d say. How could Peter think your unhappiness was his fault? Why does he always put the entire world on his shoulders?
Selfishly, you worried what it all meant for his lazy touches. Would he want to curl up into bed with you again now he knows what it means to you? It’s different for him. It isn’t like he’s in love with you… you’d just thought maybe he could be. That this was falling in love, real love, not the unrequited ache you’d suffered before.
But maybe you got everything wrong. All of it. It wouldn't be the first time.
—
You and Peter found The Moroccan Mode in your senior year at Midtown. The school library was small and you were sick of being underfoot at home. When you started at ESU, you explored the on campus coffeehouse, the Coffee Bean, but it was crowded, and you’d found yourself attached to the Mode’s beautiful tiling, blues and topaz and platinum golds, its heavy, oiled wooden furniture, stained glass lampshades and the case full of lemony treats. The coffee here is better than anywhere else, but the best part out of everything is that it’s your secret. Barely anybody comes to the Mode on purpose.
You hide in a far corner with a book and an empty cup of decaf coffee, a slice of meskouta on the table untouched. Decaf because caffeine felt a terrible idea, meskouta untouched because you can’t stomach the smell. You push it to the opposite end of the table, considering another cup of coffee instead. It’s served slightly too hot, and will still be warm when it gets to your chest.
The sunshine is creeping in slowly. It feels like the first time you’ve seen it in months, warming rays kissing your fingers and lining the walls. You turn a page, turn your wrist, let the sun warm the scar you gave yourself those few months ago, when everything felt too big for you.
Looking back, it was too big. Maybe soon you’ll be ready to talk about it.
The author in your book is talking about bees. They can fly up to 15 miles per hour. They make short, fast motions from front to back, a rocking motion. Asian giant hornets can go even faster despite their increased mass. They consider humans running provocation. If you see a giant hornet, you’re supposed to lay down to avoid being stung.
You put your face in your hand. Next year, you’ll avoid the insect-based electives.
Across the cafe, the bell at the top of the door rings. Laughter falls through it, a couple passing by. The register clashes open. A minute later it closes.
You don’t raise your head when footsteps draw near. A plate is placed on the table, pushed across to you, stopping just shy of your coffee.
“Did you eat breakfast?” Peter asks quietly.
His voice is gentle, but hoarse.
You tense.
“Are you okay?” he asks, not waiting for your answer to either question. “You don’t look like yourself. Your eyes are red.”
You lift your head. Wet with the beginnings of tears, you see Peter through an astigmatic blur.
“What are you reading?” He frowns at you. “Please don’t cry.”
You shake your head. Your smile is all odd, nothing like his, no inherent warmth despite your best effort. “I’m okay.”
He nudges you across the booth seat and sits beside you. His arm settles behind your shoulders. He smells like smoke and soap, an acrid scent barely hidden. “Can you tell me you didn’t wait long for me?”
“Ten minutes,” you lie.
“Okay. I’m sorry. There was a fire.” He rubs your arm where he’s holding you. “I’m sorry.”
“Will you go half?” you ask, nodding to the sandwich he’s brought you. It’s tough sourdough bread, brown with white flour on the crusts and leafy greens poking between the slices. You and Peter complain about the price. You’ve never had one. He passes you the bigger half, holding the other in his hand without eating.
“I know you’re hungry,” you say, tapping his elbow, “just eat.”
You eat your sandwiches. Now that Peter’s here, you don’t feel so sick —he’s not upset with you. The dull pang of an empty stomach won’t be ignored.
Peter puts his sandwich down, which is crazy, and wipes his fingers on the plates napkin. You’ve never seen him stop before he’s done.
“It was in the apartments on Vernon. I– I think I almost died, the smoke was everywhere.”
You choke around a crust, thrusting the rest of your half onto the plate. “Are you hurt?” you ask, coughing.
He moves his head from side to side, not a shake, but a slow no. “How long have you known it was me?” he asks, curling his hand behind your back again, fingers spread over your shoulder blade, a fingertip on your neck.
You savour his touch, but you give in to your apprehension and stare at his chest. “The night you caught me outside in the rain in November. You called me ‘running girl’. The way you said it, you sounded exactly like him. I turned around expecting,” —you whisper, weary of the quiet cafe— “Spider-Man, and I realised it’s him that sounds like you. That he is you.”
“Was that disappointing?”
“Peter, you’re, like, my favourite person in the world,” you whisper fervently, your smile making it light. You laugh. “Why would that be disappointing?”
“I thought maybe you think he’s cooler than me.”
“He is cooler than you, Peter.” You laugh again, pleased when he scoffs and draws you nearer. “I guess you’re the same person, right? So he’s just as cool as you are. But why would being cool matter to me? You know I like you.”
“You flirted pretty heavily with Spider-Man.”
“Well, he flirted with me first.”
You chance a look at his face. From that moment you can’t look away, not from Peter. You like when he wears that darkness in his eyes, the hint of his rarer side so uncommonly seen, but you love this most of all, Peter like your best memory, the way he’s looking at you now a picture perfect copy of that moment in a swimming pool in Manhattan with cracked tile under your feet. His arms heavy on your shoulders. You didn’t get it then, but you’re starting to understand now.
“I’ve made a mess of everything,” he says softly, the trail his hand makes to the small of your back leaving a wake of goosebumps. “I haven’t been honest with you.”
“I haven’t, either.”
“I want to ask you for something,” Peter says, a fingertip trailing back up. He smiles when you shiver, not teasing, just loving. “You can say no.”
“You’re hard to say no to.”
“I need you to talk to me more,” —and here he goes, Peter Parker, flirting and sweet-talking like his life depends on it, his face inching down into your space— “not just because I love your voice, or because you think so much I’m scared you’ll get lost, but I need you to talk to me. We need to talk about real things.”
We do, you think morosely.
“It’s not your fault,” he adds, the hand that isn’t holding your back coming up to cup your cheek, “it’s mine. I was scared of telling you for stupid reasons, but I shouldn’t have let it be a secret for so long.”
“No, I doubt they’re stupid,” you murmur, following his hand as he attempts to move it to your ear. “It’s not easy to tell someone you’re a hero.”
His palm smells like smoke.
“That’s not the secret I meant,” he says.
You take his hand from your face. Peter looks down and begins pressing his fingers between yours, squeezing them together as his thumb runs over the back of your hand.
“So tell me.”
The sunshine bleeds onto his cheek. Dappled orange light turning slowly white as time stretches and the sun moves up through a murky sky. “You want to trade secrets again?” he asks.
“Please.”
“Okay. Okay, but I don’t have as many as you do,” he warns.
“I find that hard to believe.”
“I don’t. It’s not a real secret, is it? I’ve been trying to show you for weeks, we…”
He tilts his head invitingly.
All those hand-holds and nights curled up in bed together. Am I going too fast? You know exactly what he means; it really isn’t a secret.
“I’ll go first,” he says, lowering his face to yours. You try not to close your eyes. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for weeks.” He closes his eyes so you follow, your breath not your own suddenly. You hold it. Let it go hastily. “What’s your secret?”
“Sometime I want you to kiss me so badly I can’t sleep. It makes me feel sick–”
“Sick?” he asks worriedly.
You touch the tip of your nose to his. “It’s like– like jealousy, but…”
“You have no one to be jealous of,” he says surely. He cups your cheek, and he asks, “Please, can I kiss you?”
You say, “Yes,” very, very quietly, but he hears it, and his smile couldn’t be more obvious as he closes the last of the distance between you to kiss you.
It isn’t the sort of kiss that kept you up at night. Peter doesn’t hook you in or tip your head back, he kisses gently, his hand coming to live on your cheek, where it cradles. It’s so warm you don’t know what to make of him beyond kissing him back —kissing his smile, though it’s catching. Kissing the line of his Cupid’s bow as he leans down.
“I’m sorry about everything,” he mumbles, nose flattened against yours.
You feel sunlight on your cheek. Squinting, you turn into his hand to peer outside at the sudden abundance of it. It’s still cold outside, but the Mode is warm, Peter’s hand warmer, and the sunshine is a welcome guest.
Peter drops his hand. “Oh, wow. December sun. Good thing it didn’t snow, we’d be blind.”
“I can’t be cold much longer,” you confess. “I’m sick of the shitty weather.”
“I can keep you warm.”
He smiles at you. His eyelashes tangle in the corners of his eyes, long and brown.
“Did you want my meskouta?” you ask.
Peter plants a fat kiss against your brow.
You let the sunshine warm your face. Two unfinished sandwich halves, a mouthful of coffee, and a round slice of meskouta, its flaky crumb and lemon drizzle shining on the table. You would ask Peter for his camera if you’d thought he brought it with him, to take a picture of your breakfast and the carved table underneath. You could turn it on Peter, say something cheesy. This is the moment you ruined our lives, you’d tease.
“You never told me you met Spider-Man, you know.”
You watch Peter lick the tip of his finger without shame. “They could make a novella of things I haven’t told you about,” you murmur wryly.
Peter takes a bite of meskouta, reaching for your knee under the table. He shakes your leg a little, as if to say, Well, we’ll work on that.
—
Spring
“Sorry!”
“No, it’s–”
“Sorry, sorry, I’m– shit!”
“–okay! All legs inside the ride?”
“I couldn’t find my purse–”
“You don’t need it!” Peter leans over the console to kiss your cheek. “You don’t have to rush.”
“Are you sure you can drive this thing?”
“Harry doesn’t mind.”
“I don’t mean the car, I mean, are you sure you can drive?”
“That’s not funny.”
You grin and dart across to kiss his cheek, too. “Nothing ever is with us.”
Peter grabs you behind the neck —which might sound rough, if he were capable of such a thing— and pulls you forward for a kiss you don’t have time for. “If we don’t check in,” —you begin, swiftly smothered by another press of his lips, his tongue a heat flirting with the seam of your lips— “by three, they said they won’t keep the room–” He clasps the back of your neck and smiles when your breath stutters. You squeeze your eyes closed, kiss him fiercely, and pull away, hand on his chest to restrain him. “And then we’ll have to drive home like losers.”
Peter sits back in the driver's seat unbothered. He fixes his hair, and he wipes his bottom lip with his knuckle. You’re rolling your eyes when he finally returns your gaze. “Sorry, am I the one who lost her purse?”
“Peter!”
“I can’t make us un-late,” he says, turning the key slowly, hands on the wheel but his eyes still flitting between your eyes and your lips.
“Alright,” you warn.
He reaches for your knee. “It’s a forty minute drive. You’re panicking over nothing.”
“It’s an hour.”
Your drive from Queens to Manhattan is entirely uneventful. You keep Peter’s hand hostage on your knee, your palm atop it, the other hand wrapped around his wrist, your conversation a juxtaposition, almost lackadaisical. Peter doesn’t question your clinging nor your lazy murmurings, rubbing a circle into your knee with his thumb from Forest Hill to Lenox Hill. There’s so much to do around Manhattan; you could visit MoMA, Central Park, The Empire State Building or Times Square, but you and Peter give it all a miss for the little known Manhattan Super 8.
It’s been a long time since you and Peter first visited. You took the bus out to Lenox Hill for a med-student tour neither of you particularly enjoyed, feeling out future careers. It’s not that Lenox Hill isn’t one of the most impressive medical facilities in New York (if not the northeastern USA), it’s that all the blood made him queasy, and you were panicking too much about the future to think it through. He got over his aversion to blood but chose the less hands-on science in the end, and you worked things through. You’re a little less scared of the future everyday.
You and Peter were supposed to get the bus straight back home for a sleepover, but one got cancelled, another delayed, and night closed in like two hands on your neck. Peter sensed your fear and emptied his wallet for a night in the Super 8.
The next morning it was beautifully sunny. The first day of summer that year, warm and golden. The pool wasn’t anything special but it was invitingly cool, blue and white tiles patterned like fish below; you clambered into the water in shorts and a tank top and Peter his boxers before a worker could see and stop you.
It was one of the best days of your life. When you told Peter about it last week, he’d looked at you peculiarly, said, Bub, you’re cute, and let you waste the afternoon recounting one of your more embarrassing pangs of longing. A few days later he told you to clear your calendar for the weekend, only spilling the beans on what he’d done when you’d curled over his lap, a hand threaded into the hair at the nape of his neck, murmuring, Tell me, tell me, tell me.
He’d hung his head over you and scrunched up his eyes. Cheater.
The best thing about having a boyfriend is that he always wants to listen to you. Peter was a good listener as a best friend, but now he has his act together and the secrets between you are never anything more than eating the last of the milk duds or not wanting to pee in front of him, he’s a treasure. There’s no feeling like having Peter pull you into his lap so he can ask about your day with his face buried in your neck, sniffing. Sometimes, when you text one another to meet up the next day, you’ll accidentally will the hours away babbling about school and life and things without reason. Peter has a list on his phone of your silliest tangents; blood oranges to the super moon, fries dipped in ice cream to the world record for kick flips done in five minutes. It’s like when you talk to one another, you can’t stop.
There are quiet moments. You wake up some mornings to find him awake already, an arm behind you, rubbing at your soft upper arm, fingertip displacing the fine hairs there and trailing circles as he reads. He bends the pages back and holds whatever novel he’s reading at the bottom of his stomach, as though making sure you can see the words clearly, even when you’re sleeping.
There are hectic, aching moments —vigilante boyfriends become blasé with their lives and precious faces. You’ve teetered on the edge of anxiety attacks trying to pick glass from his cheek with a tweezers, lamented over bruises that heal the next day. It’s easier when Peter’s careful, but Spider-Man isn’t careful. You ask him to take care of himself and he’s gentle with himself for a few days, but then someone needs saving from an armed burglar or a car swerves dangerously onto the sidewalk and he forgets.
He hadn’t patrolled last night in preparation for today.
“Did you know,” he says, pulling Harry’s borrowed car into a parking spot just in front of the Super 8 reception, “that today’s the last day of spring?”
“Already?”
“Tonight’s the June equinox.”
“Who told you that?”
“Aunt May. She said it’s time to get a summer job.”
You laugh loudly. “Our federal loans won’t last forever.”
“Harry’s gonna get me something, I think. Do you want to work with me? It could be fun.”
You nod emphatically. It’s barely a thought. “Obviously I want to. Does Oscorp pay well, do you think?”
Peter lets the engine go. The car turns off, engine ticking its last breath in the dash. “Better than the Bugle.”
You get your key from the reception and find your room upstairs, second floor. It’s not dirty nor exceptionally clean, no mould or damp but a strange smell in the bathroom. There’s a microwave with two mugs and a few sachets of instant coffee. Peter deems it the nicest motel he’s ever stayed in, laughing, crossing the room to its only window and pulling aside the curtain.
“There it is, sweetheart,” he says, wrapping his arm around you as you join him, “that’s what dreams are made of.”
The blue and white tiled pool. It hasn’t changed.
It’s about as hot as it’s going to get in June today, and, not knowing if it’ll rain tomorrow, you and Peter change into your swim suits and gather your towels. You wear flip flops and tangle your fingers, clanking and thumping down the rickety metal stairs to the pool. There’s nobody there, no lifeguard, no quests, and the pool is clean and cold when you dip your toes.
Peter eases in first. Towels in a heap at the end of a sun lounger, his shirt tumbling to the floor, Peter splashes in frontward and turns to face you as the water laps his ribs. “It’s cold,” he says, wading for your legs, which he hugs.
“I can feel it,” you say, the cool waters to your calves where you sit on the edge.
“You won’t come in and warm me up?” he asks.
You stroke a tendril of hair from his eyes. He attempts to kiss your fingers.
“I’m trying to prepare myself.”
“Mm, you have to get used to it.” He puts wet hands on your thighs, looking up imploringly until you lean down for a kiss. The fact that he’d want one still makes you dizzy. “Thank you,” he says.
“You’ll have to move.”
Peter steps back, a ripple of water ringing behind him, his hands raised. He slips them with ease under your arms and helps you down into the water, laughing at your shocked giggling —he’s so strong, the water so cold.
Peter doesn’t often show his strength. Never to intimidate, he prefers startling you helpfully. He’ll lift you when you want to reach something too tall, or raise the bed when you’re on his side to force you sideways.
“Oh, this is the perfect place to try the lift!” he says.
“How will I run?” you ask, letting your knees buckle, water rushing up to your neck.
Peter pulls you up. He touches you easily, and yet you get the sense that he’s precious with you, too. There’s devotion to be found in his hands and the specific way they cradle your back, drawing your chest to his. “I don’t need you to do a running start, sweetheart,” he says, tilting his head to the side, “I’ll just lift you.”
“Last time I laughed so much you dropped me.”
“Exactly, you laughed, and this is serious.”
The world isn’t mild here. Car horns beep and tyres crunch asphalt. You can hear children, and singing, and a walkie talkie somewhere in the Super 8’s parking lot. The pool pumps gargle and Peter’s breath is half laughter as he pulls you further from the sidelines, ceramic tiles slippery under your feet. In the distance, you swear you can hear one of those songs he likes from that poor singer who died in the Wolf River.
He’s a beholden thing in the sun; you can’t not look at him, all of him, his sculpted chest wet and glinting in the sun, his eyes like browning honey, his smile curling up, and up.
“You’re beautiful,” he says.
You rest an arm behind his head. “The rash guard is a good look?”
“Sweetheart, you couldn’t look cuter,” he says, hands on your waist, pinky on your hip. “I wish you’d mentioned these shorts a few days ago. I would’ve prepared to be a more decent man.”
“You’re decent enough, Parker.”
“Maybe now.”
“Well, if things get too hot, you can always take a quick dip,” you say.
You’re teasing, but Peter’s eyes light up with mischief as he calls, “Oh, great idea!” and lets himself drop backwards into the water. You pull your arm back rather than go with him. You can’t avoid the great burst of water as he surges to the surface.
He shakes himself off like a dog.
“Pete!” you cry through laughs, wiping the water from your face before the chlorine gets in your eyes.
“It just didn’t help,” he says, pulling you back into his arms, “you know, the water is cold, but you’re so hot, and I actually got a pretty good look at them when I was under, and you’re just as pretty as I remembered you being ten seconds ago–”
“Peter,” you say, tempted to roll your eyes.
Water runs down his face in great rivers, but with the dopey smile he’s sporting, they look like anything but tears. “Tell me a secret?” he asks, dripping in sunshine, an endless summer at his back.
A soft smile takes your lips. “No,” you say, tipping up your chin, “you tell me one first.”
“What kind of secret?”
“A real one,” you insist.
“Oh…” He leans away from you, though his arms stay crossed behind you. “Okay, I have one. Ask me again.”
You raise a single brow. “Tell me a secret, Peter.”
He pulls your face in for a kiss. His hand is wet on your cheek, but no less welcome. “I love you,” he says, kissing the skin just shy of your nose.
You’re lucky he’s already holding you. “I love you too,” you say, gathering him to you for a hug, digging your nose into the slope of his neck as his admission blows your mind. “I love you.”
Peter wraps his arms around your shoulders, closing his eyes against the side of your head. You can’t know what he’s thinking, but you can feel it. His hands can’t seem to stay still on your skin.
The sun warms your back for a time.
Peter lets out a deep breath of relief. You lean away to look at him, your hand slipping down into the water, where he finds it, his fingers circling your wrist.
“That’s another one to let go of,” he suggests.
He peppers a row of gentle kisses along your lips and the soft skin below your eye.
You and Peter swim until your fingers are pruned and the sun has been blanketed by clouds. You let him wrap you in a towel, and kiss your wet ears, and take you back to the room, where he holds your face.
“I’ll start the shower for you,” he says, rubbing your cheeks with his thumbs, each stroke of them encouraging your face from one side to the other, just a touch, ever so slightly moved in the palms of his hands.
“Don’t fall asleep standing up,” he murmurs.
Your eyes close unbidden to you both. “I won’t.”
He holds you still, leaning in slowly to kiss you with the barest of pressure. Every thought in your head fades, leaving only you and Peter, and the dizziness of his touch as he lays you down at the end of the bed.
｡𖦹°‧⭑.ᐟ
please like, comment or reblog if you enjoyed, i love comments and seeing what anyone reading liked about the fic is a treat —thank you for reading❤︎
simon 'ghost' riley x f!reader | soulmate!au | 12.8k (oops)
Just because you were bonded, Ghost was all too aware, didn't mean you would stay together.
this is part 2 to faultlines in which Ghost didn’t want a soulmate, and he was sure, if they existed, that they didn’t want him either.
cw; soulmate!au in which soulmates share scars, abandonment issues, loneliness, references to self-harm, lots of talk about scars, angst, fluff, references to domestic abuse and past violence, references to simon's past, descriptions of pain, description of torture, canon typical violence, military inaccuracies, miscommunication, touch aversion, reallllly slow slowburn, ghost being sort of really bad and weird at affection and communication, making out, two people being so weird and intense about each other
Simon was not familiar with comfort.
It was unsettling, to be sat among cushions and piles of blankets, soft white light from the lamp he’d flicked on for you hours ago. Outside, the sun was beginning to rise, a spill of dusky, deep purple lightening the horizon, like someone had overturned a paint can.
His hands were curled into fists; his mask lay abandoned on the arm of your sofa. There was a basket of knitting to his left, a sweater sleeve unfurled over the side. Books lined several shelves, plants were gathered in the same terracotta pots as the ones in your office, in a neat fist beneath the window that overlooked the street.
It looked and felt like a home.
Simon couldn’t remember the last time he felt truly at home somewhere. He stayed on base when he could; his flat was little more than a bed and a kettle.
He was watching the front door and listening to the domestic sounds of you puttering around the kitchen one room over.
“Please,” you had said when he started to stand to follow you, fingers careful against his jaw, cradling his face as though he were something that deserved to be cradled. “You’re exhausted. Just stay here.”
So he did. So he was.
Patiently waiting for you to return, replaying the last few hours. Unwilling to admit it was with anxiety.
Your presence was a tug behind his navel, an urging to relocate closer to you, a glowing point of light he needed to seek out, swallow.
Simon wished things had gone differently. His own fucking fault for leaving things as they were, for thinking he could remain close to you, deal with the ancient pain in his chest because it was just another ache to add to the collection, with you never the wiser.
It wasn’t fair to you.
He had never particularly cared about fair before.
He wondered what it felt like to you.
He couldn’t imagine you felt warmth.
Ghost was a lot of things. Warm was not one of them.
But he had spent the last several hours with you in his arms, your lips against his, tracing scar for scar, memorizing each of the marks you had given him somewhere in the chaos of his own.
Simon might not remember where every scar on his body originated, but he was going to know all of yours. He wanted to know where you laid on his skin, every mark he’d ever overlooked. He would have a perfect catalogue of knowledge.
It was odd to be touched, and not exactly comfortable, not after so many years of covering his skin, insulating himself from any touch.
Touch meant harm.
It was a fact he’d learned very young, a lesson learned again and again, only compounded by life in the military where even friendly touch was tinged with roughness out of necessity.
Your hands on his skin felt like being peeled apart, unzipped, insides poked at. He didn’t mind.
Nothing could have made him pull away from you.
Your fingers had traced the back of his neck, the soft, vulnerable space behind his ear. The touch was tentative. If he shifted even a little, you had retracted your hand.
A floorboard creaked, he glanced up as you appeared in the doorway.
“Simon?”
You held out a hand.
He stood and took it before his brain could catch up, all instinct.
He had meant it, when he said you deserved better. But it was a commitment, a promise, too, when he said he was all you got.
.
.
.
Captain John Price was standing in your office.
You halted in the doorway with a cup of coffee, hot ceramic searing into your fingers. “Captain Price,” you said. “Good morning, sir.”
“G’morning,” he answered with a nod.
“Is there something I can help you with?” You asked, crossing the room to deposit your cup at the edge of your desk. “Would you like a cup of tea? Coffee?”
He shook his head, “Thank you. Take a seat.”
It felt wrong to sit behind your desk, so you dropped into Simon’s usual seat, tugging the black and blue blanket you’d knitted for him months ago into your lap. Price took the opposite chair. It had so often gone unused, aside from the odd analyst debriefing a too long meeting, until Kyle and Johnny began frequenting your office too.
Price didn’t say anything for a moment, brows lowered, mouth a considering line. You fidgeted beneath his piercing stare.
“Ghost told you,” you guessed after a few beats of painful, weighted silence.
He nodded after another long moment. “We knew,” he admitted, eyes finally flicking away as he adjusted in the chair.
“I guessed as much.”
“But,” he continued, sitting forward. “Now you know.”
You felt, suddenly, as though you were about to receive a lecture or a reprimand. You swallowed thickly, and nodded, chewing your lower lip. “It’s not ideal,” you acknowledged. “I know how bad it is.”
He was quiet again, watching you. You shifted, uncomfortable under his scrutiny, not sure what you were being evaluated for or how to pass muster. “He had to tell you,” Price said eventually, not unkindly, “It was only a matter of time.”
The words had to landed perhaps harder than Price meant them to. It had only been a few days since you saw Simon’s face, since you bonded, and you still felt wrong about how it had happened. You weren’t sure if you ever wouldn’t feel wrong about how it happened. You shouldn’t have kissed him; you should have been able to let him go.
The knowledge hung like an invisible weight around your neck, that you were not something Simon wanted, but an unwelcome inevitability.
The memory of his touch, his extended presence in your apartment that weekend, made you feel a little ill on reflection. You should not have touched him, shouldn’t have kissed him, probably should not have seen his face at all. It all felt like a choice he wasn’t allowed to make.
You weren’t quite sure where you and Simon stood now. Inextricably linked but to what end? What were you to him but something to manage?
I didn’t want to tell you. I never wanted you to know.
Your belly clenched at the memory of the words, the heavy weight of the admission in his mouth.
Maybe that was all soulmates ever were, an inescapable obligation and nothing more. Maybe the whole thing had been romanticized to the point of becoming something amorphous and unrecognizable.
But when you thought of what he was to you—
Mine, you thought immediately and unhelpfully, possessively.
It stung like salt in a wound.
He was anything but.
The warm glow of the newly stitched bond in your chest was accompanied by a different ache, a more mundane one. A bleak cloud of heartache.
The cruelty of it, the unfairness, smarted. You’d always assumed that discovery would mean an end to the lonely isolation you’d felt your whole life, not an evolution of it. There was still nowhere for you to go, no safe place for you to settle, no person that wanted and accepted you.
You thought of the torment of the untethered bond. It had been excruciatingly painful, and you had only bore it for a few hours. And Simon had hidden it from you for months. His dedication to keeping you out, at a distance, spoke louder than any words could.
It was akin to sitting next to a muzzled dog. He was chained to you. On a leash he could never escape.
But you’d gladly keep your loneliness, if it meant he wasn’t in pain. You just wished you didn’t have to; you wished you belonged.
Maybe he’d left the bond too long and it had corroded, shorn down into a jagged point. It could never cause anything but agony between you.
You pinched your palm. “Yeah,” you agreed. “He had to.”
Price cleared his throat, sighed. “It’s not just Simon,” he said, “that has to worry about you now. You’re a vulnerability to all of us, to my team.”
“I know,” you said again, because it had already occurred to you. That you now knew exceedingly dangerous information, how easy it would be for someone to make the leap of logic that you were important.
“Better, for now, that it stays between us.” His eyes met yours, intense, serious and steady.
Though you knew he was right, though you’d already had a similar conversation with Simon, it still hurt somehow, still felt like what you imagined having a knife stuck through your ribs must feel like.
The discovery of a soulmate was supposed to be something that was celebrated. Announced to family and friends, parties thrown, congratulations given.
It was also, by nature of the rarity, something to fixate on. It had led to pairs being featured in the news, followed by throngs of people convinced that their proximity to a bonded pair alone would aid their chances of finding their own.
You did not want that, but it would be nice to tell your cross hall neighbor that had become a friend, or your sister. It would be nice to be able to tell anyone. The pride you should feel was replaced instead with something closer to shame.
You would only ever be a liability. Something to manage, something to hide. Not just for Simon, but for his team as well.
You were holding something so rare, something most people searched for their whole lives, and instead of letting it lie in the palm of your hand like the extraordinary sun soaked pearl it was, you had to close your fingers around it, relegate it to the dark cave of your fist.
“I understand, sir. I haven’t told anyone. I won’t tell anyone.”
Price relaxed a little then, leaning back in his chair. “Good.”
You fiddled with the blanket in your lap, calmer for the scent that lingered in the fibers and sloughed off it in waves from all the time it spent behind Simon’s shoulders, tea and tobacco, the faintest hint of summer grass lingering between. All those times you’d laid on it in the sun, inhaling his scent blooming in the air around you, soothed, flashed through your mind.
Those summer months seemed a lifetime ago. A different you. A different Ghost.
You glanced out the window.
The world beyond the glass was gray with autumn drizzle; the bright red and orange fan of changing leaves raked at low hanging clouds. The air was chilly, and already threatening a cutting, winter iciness. With luck, you wouldn’t be stationed in England for much longer, and then none of you would have to worry about your inconvenient bond.
“If the lads haven’t said yet,” Price began as he stood, one broad hand landing on your shoulder heavily, “Congratulations. Glad Simon finally pulled his head out of his arse. I was beginning to worry.”
You glanced up in surprise, lips parted. The small smile on Price’s face faded. “Simon. . .” he started, then stopped. He contemplated his next words carefully before he continued. “Simon is more sensitive than he appears. You’ll take care of him.”
The notion of Simon needing anyone for anything, should have been a laughable one, but coming from Price, it felt like the world tilting onto your shoulders. The 141 were a strange little family in their own right, one you were now an unfortunate interloper of.
They looked out for each other, now you were being tasked with the same.
Price wasn’t asking a question.
You answered anyway.
“Of course I will.”
He squeezed your shoulder once and let his hand fall away.
Ten minutes later, your coffee cold and abandoned at the corner of your desk, you were still sitting in Simon’s chair, picking at the blanket and anxiously worrying at your bottom lip.
It had just started to bleed, the tang of copper dripping onto your tongue, when Johnny and Kyle appeared at your door, Simon looming large and imposing behind them with Price in tow.
You stood, wondering if you’d been that lost in your thoughts that you hadn’t noticed the hall outside lurching into motion around an op, when you noticed the cake box in Johnny’s hands.
You frowned, glancing from the sergeants’ open faces to the box in Soap’s hands.
“What’s going on?”
“Think we wouldn’t congratulate the pair of ye, lass?” Johnny said.
He slid the box onto your desk and opened his arms which you found yourself readily stepping into.
Your throat closed, a heavy knot choking you suddenly. You didn’t look at Ghost over Johnny’s shoulder, couldn’t. “Oh, well—that’s not—you didn’t have to—”
“It’s not nearly enough,” Kyle interrupted, “But it’s the best we can do. Considering.”
You had to blink back tears as Soap released you and guided you forward to flip open the lid. The cake was lavender, like your headphones and blanket. Words were scrawled with dark icing, along with misshapen blobs you supposed were meant to be flowers. The words were an illegible heap but it didn’t matter what it said; it mattered they’d gotten it, even if it was bittersweet.
Perhaps you were being afforded a little celebration after all.
“Had to do the writin’ ourselves, yeah? It—”
“It’s perfect.”
You felt small, safe.
It was not a bad feeling, even if it was a false one.
You still didn’t look at Simon, afraid to know how he felt about it as he stepped into the room after Price.
“Their idea,” he would tell you later, softly, when half the cake was gone and all but Simon had departed your office.
You could only nod, and wonder if that meant he hadn’t wanted it acknowledged at all.
You didn’t ask, the answer would probably shatter your feeble feelings.
Soulmates, ultimately, were supposed to be the thing their pair needed most, be it romantic, platonic, familial, even adversarial, in rare instances. There was no guidebook on figuring out which, or what came after, or what you were supposed to be.
For so long, you had held onto hope. A romantic, dramatic hope that you would find your soulmate and be granted that. Understanding. Feeling like there was one place you actually belonged. Someone who could see past the scars that kept everyone else at an arm’s length, that made them believe they could never fit into your life.
Not even, really, you thought, were you hoping to find that feeling with your soulmate. You hadn’t been delusional enough to think you would ever really find them.
You had just—wanted someone who saw you, looked past the scars and decided you could be home, anyway. The many failed dates you went on were proof enough of that, proof of your hope and longing.
But maybe this was why fate had stuck you and Simon together—your ability to understand that what he needed most was to be left alone. And you were already so good at being alone.
You could give him the security of someone who needed nothing from him, of letting the bond lie dormant and cold, maintain his anonymity and the walls he’d built so carefully around himself.
A sentinel fate, a sword of his name.
You could give him that peace.
Your fate, it seemed, was as you’d once guessed.
You were meant to be alone.
.
.
.
Simon adjusted your hips with a sharp jerk and then pushed his palm between your shoulderblades until you tilted them into an angle he was satisfied with.
“Eyes forward,” he grunted.
But you were giggling again, glancing over your shoulder with bright eyes and a genuine smile. A rare sight recently.
Had been since—
“Am I holding it right?”
He glanced at your grip on the blade in your hand, and nodded. You turned back toward the target—a thick plastic training dummy littered with stab wounds. You had made steady progress over the last few months.
Simon liked training you, it settled some latent anxiety he’d never admit to, to know that you could hold your own, at least temporarily. Just long enough, as he always stressed to you, to escape danger, not face it.
But you were proving yourself to be surprisingly adept at sparring.
You were fast, and seemed to enjoy running. Cardio didn’t seem to burn you out. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen anyone do as many jumping jacks in a row as he’d seen you do, seemingly just to do it.
You took quickly to instruction, minor adjustments in form.
You could wriggle out of ropes and zip ties. You could effectively parry, knew where the major arteries were and how to sever them.
And, after a few failed attempts earlier in the week, you’d learned to compensate for the weight and balance of the blade, and seemed to be comfortable with throwing knives too.
“Won’t have this much time to aim, bird,” he reprimanded when you only stood there, unmoving, your eyes sweeping over his face, brows knitted and serious.
Your skin shimmered faintly with the dew of sweat. A faint gossamer sheen. He wanted to slide his fingers over the pulse in your throat, just to feel it kick. Maybe his teeth, too, to carve it out, hold the thread of your vein in his mouth.
The soft murmur of your lips against his skin, babbling nonsense.
The space between your shoulder blades was bare, the delicate lacing of a tattoo scrawled there. You didn’t share tattoos, that pain must not count as scars in the cosmic bind of the universe.
The memory of that weekend together haunted him. How easily you’d fallen into each other, just to have it wiped away as soon as it was done. You bare legs in the kitchen, making tea, leaning against him as though it were natural, where you belonged. You stripped down to almost nothing, letting look at your scars as you carefully wiped the eyeblack from his skin, hands cradling his face.
He was perhaps plagued by those moments when he wasn’t with you, the soft give of your body beneath his on your bed for two blissful nights, beneath him on the sparring mat, something of a distraction, something to sink his teeth into when sleep invariably would not find him. The memory of your safe touch.
He still wasn’t used to being looked at so openly, directly, didn’t understand what you got out of it anyway. He couldn’t imagine what you saw, when you stared like you were trying desperately to preserve something as vital to you as air. He was right there, within reach and not moving away for once in his life. Not going anywhere. Never.
This, bound to you, was where he belonged.
But you seemed to keep skirting away. Pulling away from his hands, from him.
He wasn’t built for this, relationships and emotions, for things that required a gentle touch and not the cold metal of a gun.
Wasn’t good at it. He didn’t know if he had done something wrong, crossed some invisible line, and didn’t know how to ask either.
Was this another thing he had to figure out how to earn? Was this just another thing he was destined to lose, had already?
The stiff concentration melted from your face, replaced with a smile, amusement he missed seeing the last few weeks sweeping over your face, softening your features. “But I have time now,” you said, before you suddenly pivoted and flung the knife, all in one fluid motion. Just as he’d taught you.
The blade buried itself deep into the throat of the target.
He raised a brow. “What were you aimin’ for, sweet’eart?”
“The head,” you admitted, sounding surprised yourself.
“Not bad, that.”
“Thank you, LT,” you said sweetly. “Maybe one day I’ll be able to take you on.”
He grunted, pressed another throwing knife into your hand and lifted your arm into position, cupped your elbow and drew it down a little.
You were liquid gold in his arms, warm and trusting, allowing him to adjust the angles of your body without complaint. He could feel you breathing; not just the physical rise and fall of your lungs, though he could feel that too. Ghost could feel the tight, corded line of your soul stitched to his, the warm voracity of it like a glowing line of light, a thin strip of aurora borealis. This close to you, he could feel the softness of your breath, the delicate beat of your heart through it.
He would probably never admit it to you, but Ghost missed the pain. He missed the watery, drowning ache in his lungs that meant you were on the other side of the glass, alive, waiting. The pain had been a constant reminder of your continued life. Being alive hurt, it only made sense, then, that the bond ached with your life.
The warm glow it had transformed into was nice, but it was placating, an illusion that things would always be all right. The comfort and safety of it itched, made his fingers curl with the urge to peel up his skin, pinch the pain alive again with his own bloodied fingers just so he was sure you were there.
You leaned back into his chest, the length of your spine laid against the bow of his body. Simon folded his fingers around yours, adjusted your grip on the handle, angled your wrist down a fraction.
Your hand was small in his, the fragile bones of your wrist like a bird's hollow wing. He thumbed at your pulse, wished he had taken his gloves off.
His nose brushed the shell of your ear, inhaling the sweet scent of your skin lavender and oak moss threaded with the animal salt of your skin.
You shivered.
“Not in this life or the next.”
You laughed, a breathless catch in your throat. The vibrations of it again his chest like a half remembered song stuffed between his ribs. You turned your head and pushed your forehead against his jaw gently. He felt the shush of your breath against his throat. He wondered, not for the first time, why it couldn’t always be like this. Why had things felt like one stumbling block after another since you saw his face?
Wasn't it supposed to be easy? Wasn’t that the one thing soulmates were promised?
He’s not particularly good at wanting things. Wanting meant asking for something he could lose, and he’d lost too much.
But now he had you, he wouldn’t let go.
The half completed residency paperwork in his, until now, underutilized office, was proof enough of that. It had been almost a year. You and Laswell had promised a year. A contingency, a plan for you to stay.
You would stay.
He wasn’t sure you would stay.
Probably, he should talk to you about it.
Simon wasn’t good at this.
How hard could it be to ask his bloody soulmate to stay in the same country as him?
Very, apparently.
He’d rather almost anything else.
He’d rather present you with the residence permit like a cat with a dead mouse, wordless and hopeful.
Unfortunately, there was a lot of red tape that required him and you to go through, not limited to slicing his skin open in a court to prove his scars showed up on you.
All the fucking ones he’d already given you, wouldn’t count.
Just because you were bonded, he was all too aware, didn't mean you would stay together. You could leave, die. Simon was the one to endure, he knew which of you would remain.
The closer he got, the further you seemed to drift away, something tender and self actualizing in your gaze. But he’d had a year to come to terms with it.
Maybe you just needed time to adjust to the idea of your soulmate being him. He wasn’t the kind of person anyone hoped for.
“You wouldn’t let me win?”
Simon didn’t want to imagine a world where you were on the opposing side of anything, where winning mattered.
“Together this time, yeah?” He said instead, squeezing your wrist.
“Not like I’ve got much of a choice.”
“Want me to let go?”
“No,” you answered quickly. “No.”
“Aimin’ for the head again?”
“The eye,” you clarified.
He raised a brow. “Ambitious, that.”
You nudged your temple against his cheek again, the flicker of your lashes through his balaclava like the delicate, furred wings of a moth. “I’m trying to be the best.”
“Average might be a more achievable goal,” he said wryly.
Your laugh echoed inside him again. “Affirmative,” you grumbled in a poor imitation of his accent.
He squeezed your hip in slight reprimand.
“But I think I can do it,” you continued in your own voice, leaning into his hand. “I just need practice.”
“Mm.” He rubbed your wrist again, felt the steady flutter of your pulse against his fingers. “Just aim at something you can hit if you ever have to, yeah?”
Something you’d been over plenty, he still felt the need to repeat it. What do you imagine is going to happen to me? You’d asked once. A question with far too many answers. Bad things happened to people he cared for.
“Promise,” you said easily. “I know where all the important arteries are, after all,” you murmur, teasing.
He grunted, unimpressed. “Lot of good that’ll do if you’re aimin’ at the eyes.”
You rolled your eyes and settled back into him, but you were laughing, reciting the names of said arteries under your breath. “All right, enough of tha’,” he muttered as he moved your arm through the motion once, before you swung hard and released the knife on the second pass.
This time it was at the right height, but off center. It hurtled by the target’s ear and clattered to the floor.
“You’ll be turning enemy combatants into regular Van Goghs,” he said.
“Very funny,” you nipped, digging an elbow into his ribs, but you were giggling again. “It was close.”
“Was. Nice work.”
You made a soft, self-satisfied noise, something near a purr in your throat. “Thank you, Ghost.”
He nodded as he released you and stepped away to retrieve the fallen blade. Cold seeped in as he did, a bone deep chill where you had been touching him. A thready, pulsing warning to stay near.
Moving away from you was no longer painful, but not exactly comfortable either. It was nice to be within the warm bubble your soulmate provided.
He felt it now, the retraction of that pulsing sweetness, like the petals of a flower furling closed. The bond was dynamic now, malleable and yielding, nothing like the taut, fragile, painful thing it had been for so long.
Simon felt it stretch, loop slippery coils around him as the tension popped like stiff joints.
When he turned, you were across the room, sitting on a weight bench as you pulled on a hoodie and kicked off your trainers. Not his hoodie, though he’d left one at your flat, thinking, maybe, you might want something of his, the way you had given him the blanket.
Done for the evening, then. The tightening in his chest he felt now had nothing to do with the bond; he could admit that.
You were no longer smiling, and the permanent stitch that had sown itself between your brows shortly after you bonded, had appeared yet again.
He collected the knives, approached you slowly, out of your sight line, watching the slant of your scarred cheek, the downward tilt of your mouth. You had been worrying at your lower lip with your teeth recently, and the crease in the middle of the plush bottom curve of broken skin was wet with the tiniest well of blood.
Simon remembered what it had felt like to touch that soft flesh, kiss you, lick into your mouth. It had felt like—he couldn’t say what it had felt like. He didn’t have the vocabulary, the understanding of the tangled mess of emotions in his chest, snarled and guarded as a nest of snakes. Unraveling it seemed unwise, a fool’s errand.
All he knew was that it hadn’t happened, that he had been safe with you, whether he could name the emotions or not. He also knew that it had not happened again, and didn’t know why.
And wanted it to happen again—for you to stick your hands beneath the edge of his mask or shirt or anywhere at all and ask can I?
He wanted you, he thought numbly, stupidly, to hold his fucking hand.
It was sort of like being a lovesick teenager, only Simon wasn’t sure he’d ever been that. It was all new.
If he could feel the weight of your proximity, you were able to feel the heft of his. But you didn’t turn as he approached, head bowed over the laces of your shoes as you coiled them around your fingers and tucked them under the tongue.
The space beneath your eyes was swollen, discolored with sleeplessness. There was a bruise beneath the edge of your hoodie collar, more on your forearms and the sides of your knees. Defensive marks, sparring marks.
To see them brought him a kind of fucked up satisfaction.
Simon pulled off his gloves, slipped his hand into place on the back of your neck.
You flinched just a little, and then settled.
The memory of you lying in the grass behind the barracks in the summer sun surfaces quickly. How badly he had wanted to reach down and touch you then, touch his own faint, paper thin scars on your skin, the side of your throat, the hook of your collarbone, all those shining little reminders.
Now he could, he did, and you still felt far away, like there would always be something holding you at a distance. As though you were behind unbreachable glass, seen, but not heard, not touched.
What had Johnny called all that pain?
Bond corrosion. Erosion.
Maybe he’d let it go on for too long, really had damaged something vital, by denying it for so long. Maybe Ghost had inadvertently taken the one thing that was supposed to be a solace to you, and twisted it beyond repair. Maybe there was no comfort on your side, just a rusted lock that could never be pried opened again.
You tilted into his palm.
He hoped it was voluntary.
“Ghost,” you said softly.
“Bird,” he answered, drawing the word out lazily, letting his hand slide away.
Your mouth twitched into a half smile. “Hey,” you caught his hand and tucked it instead between your palms.
He sat next to you, pushed his shoulder against yours. You fell against his side slowly, almost reluctantly. You laced your fingers with his.
Maybe you were just disappointed. Once the shock of finding your soulmate faded, once that restless, prodding first night together was over—he wondered if you felt cheated, let down. Maybe the distance was protective.
Maybe he should just ask.
You sat together quietly, fingers threaded. He waited, hoping that if he waited long enough you would look up and smile and talk to him.
But the well of your incessant chatter over the last year seemed to have finally run dry.
Not only were you quiet, it was like you were lost, unsteady. “All right?”
When you met his eyes, your features softened. “You’re not a bad teacher.”
“Reckon that’s a compliment, yeah?”
You smiled, settled more firmly against his side. Yours was a warm, welcome weight. He’d not relished the thought of anyone’s touch in a very long time, maybe hadn’t ever. Kind touch was never something in high supply. But if you never let go, it’d probably be all right, that.
“Yes,” you agreed. “Very generous with compliments.”
Ghost wasn’t sure those words, in that order or otherwise, had ever been applied to him before.
He palmed your cheek, tilted your face toward his, peering into your eyes like he was examining you for injury. “You hit your head?”
“Like you wouldn’t have noticed.”
“Mm.”
“Simon,” you said, his name careful and curling in your mouth, safe there. Your fingers were at the edge of his sleeve, the soft pads of your fingers against his bare wrist, sliding over the scars on his palms, defensive wounds that his mind refused to remember earning.
He nodded and you pushed his sleeve up.
“I think I found another,” you said. “Can I show you?”
Simon didn’t remember how he got every scar on his body, but he was trying to become familiar with all of yours. You’d had trouble, though, deciding which actually belonged to you. Some of your scars were buried beneath his own, others were scoured so deeply on Ghost, that they appeared as though they could be yours on your skin.
It was odd to be touched, and not exactly comfortable, not yet, but he held still and let you have your fill, because he wanted you to. His body wasn’t his in these moments, but belonging to you was all right.
Your fingers traced his forearm, sending skittering sparks of warmth along his skin, curled like shaved gold into his stomach. It was horrifying, really, the way you made him feel. Not like himself, too much like himself, or someone he should have been.
The touch was curious, and cautious.
“Here,” you pushed a finger into the middle of his forearm. The scar was barely visible on his skin, and buried beneath the black of tattoo ink. “I think I burned myself taking something out of the oven. It probably wouldn’t have scarred but I kept picking at it.” You held your arm alongside his. The mark on your arm was deeper, puckered where his was flat. But they matched.
Your fingers wriggled inside his rolled sleeve and you traced a particularly deep gouge along the side of his bicep.
Shrapnel, he thought, but you didn’t ask.
He waited for you to ask.
You both sat there cloaked in silence.
He watched the side of your face, the way your mouth twisted to the side, the downward sweep of your lashes fluttering against your scarred cheek.
“Anymore?”
You shook your head and slid your hand up his chest instead, to the base of his throat. “Can—?”
The word hasn’t even left your mouth yet. Pathetic, he thinks, as he yanks the fabric over his head. He smelled of desperation, a deep need to be kept.
You smiled, touched his cheek, his ear. Your fingers scraped over the close cropped sides of his head into the longer hair at the top.
When your face tilted up, lashes fluttering closed, he met you halfway, tasted blood on your mouth. It was like coming home. Simon could feel his scar on your mouth, like you were echoes of each other, calling across something vast, receiving an answer anyway.
His tongue slipped into your mouth as your hands fisted in his hoodie. You groaned quietly when he threaded an arm behind your back, pulled you into his chest.
“Simon,” you mumbled, mouth traveling from his down his jaw and back, nails digging into his bicep. He’d never get tired of his name, known and coveted, in your voice. You made it sound real, almost sweet.
He touched your jaw, your soft skin so different to his, the small of your back beneath your shirt.
The knot in his chest seemed to unravel, flatten out like a dog showing its belly, deeply satisfied, asking to be picked—
You pulled back suddenly and sucked in a sharp, awful breath. “Jesus, I’m sorry,” you said. “I—“
Simon shook his head, cupped the back of your skull to bring your forehead to him. You breathed, eyes closed, for a long time.
Eventually you blinked and met his eyes, searched until you found something that made your gaze close. A door shut in his face.
“Well,” you said, retracting your touch slowly, fingertips drawing down his jaw. He told himself it was reluctance, even if he knew better. “It’s late. I should probably get going.”
He wanted to hold you gently, but was afraid he might crush you instead. His unwieldy hands were not suited for this kind of work.
“Mm. Walk you to your car.”
Your smile flickered a little. “What if I said no?”
Then he would follow you anyway. He would make sure you got there safely, anyway. He might not be built for care, but he was built for that. For teaching you violence, for making sure you were safe.
“Then you go alone.”
“Liar,” you said with a huff as you stood, bracing your hand on his shoulder. “I know your shadow now, Simon.”
He just stood and held out a hand for your bag, tugging the mask back on with the other. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that declaration.
You needed time, that was all, he thought again, for the disappointment to abate, for him to make himself useful to you.
Eventually, he would see your flat again. He’d stand in your kitchen with a cup of tea and your smile would be real.
Simon should know better, by now, than to hope for anything at all.
.
.
.
The orders arrived one innocuous morning in November, passed to you by an administrative assistant on your way to your office, who smiled like the envelope was not essentially a live bomb. She was new to the base, her eyes bright and watchful. She had been in your office a fair few times, to pick your brain, she said. She wanted to work in intelligence some day, too, in more than a strictly secretarial role.
You took it from her with great trepidation.
“You alright?”
“Fine,” you smiled tightly as your stomach clenched.
Her smile turned sympathetic. “Don’t want to leave?”
“I don’t know,” you answered honestly, flipping the envelope over in your hands.
“Come now, I’d wager Ghost will be none too happy.”
You furrowed your brows and glanced back up at her.
Ghost was Ghost. You hadn’t realized any of the others noticed him in your office. They were a nosy, gossipy bunch, such were the ways of intel, and you were sure one of them would have mentioned it, even passively, at some point.
“Don’t know what you mean.”
She smiled and rolled her eyes as she turned back to her desk. “Sure.”
You walked back to your office slowly, distracted, telling yourself it was something—anything—else.
You were not being stationed elsewhere; you were not being sent home.
You closed the door behind you and stood staring down at the all too familiar seal stamped next to your name. It didn’t feel like your name, like your hands curling around the edges of the paper, claws that were already starting to dig in, so you couldn’t be dragged howling away.
For a long time, you could only stand there, vision tunneling, mind sluggishly trying to catch up to what your heart already knew.
Eventually, you realized you were not drawing breath, and choked as you inhaled, the air thick with the scent of tobacco and black tea. Ghost, when you glanced around, was not there, but he had been. A cup of coffee was at the edge of your desk, steaming, still hot.
Because you still preferred coffee in the morning, despite having developed a taste for tea, and he knew that. He seemed to know everything about you.
It made you want to cry, but you crossed your office to your desk instead and sat.
Delicately you slit the letter open along its seam, and read what you’d already known would be within.
Home.
Only the shape of home had long ago shifted.
Home was here.
Home was the base and your softly lit office; it was your flat that you’d worked hard to make your own; it was tea with your coworkers and baking with your neighbor.
Home was—
Home was—
It would be better for everyone if you went home, but the notion of leaving behind the little life you created so painstakingly over the last year tied your stomach in knots. You liked your apartment and the base and your neighbors. You liked your coworkers and hot cups of tea on rainy afternoons in chilly offices. You liked Soap and Kyle and Price.
And Simon—
You liked having him in your life, in whatever way he let himself be. You liked when he visited you. You liked being close to someone, even if it wasn’t exactly in the way you wanted. You liked the quiet surety of your routine with him, even if it was unfair to both of you for you to be comforted by it.
Your chest ached; your throat closed.
It would be better for you to go.
You did not want to go.
You carefully pushed the letter back inside the envelope and thrust it into a desk drawer.
It felt more like an execution notice.
.
.
.
You managed to keep the information to yourself for two days.
The tender bruise it left on you only seemed to deepen, that well in your chest that was meant to bring you comfort only serving to pinch.
You wondered, again and again, if something had gone wrong. If you were not properly bonded, if Ghost had frayed the bond beyond repair like a dog chewing through its leash, if, perhaps, you had done something wrong. Maybe your disbelief has sown rot into your soul, an infected tether that poisoned both of you.
It was raining again, a chill passing beneath the frame of your window, the lights dim and low. The last of your coworkers had long gone home and night had long ago fallen.
You were curled in your office chair, your blanket and Simon’s tucked around your shoulders, when a gentle knock caught your attention.
When you glanced up and found Ghost in your office doorway, you smiled, you forgot for a moment about that letter in your desk and everything it meant.
“Ghost,” you greeted, unfolding your legs, blankets sloughing off your shoulders and into your lap. “Hey.”
“Bird.”
“It’s late.”
“Is,” he agreed with a nod.
He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him and the knowledge that you would be leaving this—him—soon clamped around you, seized something in your chest and squeezed. Fear and loss welled like twin heartaches, pooled in that hollow beneath your ribs that should only know warmth.
He paused for only a moment before he rounded your desk, cupped your face between his ungloved palms and tilted your head up. He didn’t say anything, gaze trailing slowly over your features.
Your chest tightened with the examination—bright, painful hope. To be the focus of your soulmate’s attention was like being buoyed, like sitting in the sun. It made you feel deeply settled. It was nectar sweet and confusing. You wanted to kiss him and felt as though you should ask for nothing and receive even less.
And guilt.
You felt guilty for not telling him as soon as the papers were handed to you.
You expected the contact to be brief, but when he pushed his forehead against yours, he left it there for a long moment.
He didn’t usually and it gave you pause. His eyes were closed when you opened yours again. You felt as though he were asking for something but you couldn’t understand the question. Exhaustion curled off him in waves.
“Are you okay?” His eyes flickered open, confusion swirling in when he found you already looking at him.
He tilted back and didn’t answer.
“You look tired,” you said carefully. “More tired than usual, anyway.”
“What are you still doin’ ‘ere?”
“Waiting for you to come make us a tea.”
He made a soft huffing sound that you took to be a laugh. “Aye?”
“Mm.”
He made a discontent noise and pulled away entirely. “Shite liar for someone who works in the shadows.”
You smiled. “You just know me too well.”
“Alright?”
A heavy hand closed around your throat and you glanced away. “Yeah.”
When he dropped into his usual chair, he tilted his head. You could read the words in his eyes before he said them. “Want to try that again?”
“I would actually like a cup of tea,” you said.
“I’ll make you a cuppa if you tell me.”
You smiled, “Negotiating now?”
“Always seem to be.”
You frowned, not sure what he meant by that as you let your head fall back, wondering if you could put off telling him awhile longer. But Ghost’s suspicion was raised now. He looked relaxed, arms crossed over his chest, legs spread wide. His chin was tipped down, brows knitted together. You knew he was ready to go home, by the simple mask he was wearing and the dark hoodie he was swaddled in.
You thought of pushing the hood back, tugging the mask off, raking your nails through his hair as you had that day in the guy, and banished the image with a shake of your head.
You fidgeted, plucked at the edge of your sweater with nervous fingers. He wouldn’t care, you thought, and you weren’t sure what would be worse: apathy or relief.
Simon said your name slowly, a dangerous warning hidden somewhere in the back of his throat.
The sound seemed to take up space in your chest.
He watched you, waiting for you to spit it out, shoulders stiffening, brows an unyielding, lowered line.
You took a deep breath, bravely plucked the letter from its place in your desk drawer, and slid it across the tabletop toward him.
Simon went very still, staring at the unassuming little envelope. You waited and watched him, watched his eyes and the slope of his unmoving shoulders.
Tension bled into the air so thickly you felt as though you might choke on it. You clenched your jaw so tight that pain lanced down your neck and into the top of your spine.
Minutes passed and he didn’t so much as twitch. You weren’t sure he was breathing.
“Simon?” You said quietly, gently, as you could. “You okay?”
He blinked, seemed to come back into himself, gaze locking onto yours as he reached for the letter with large, ungloved hands. His eyes only slid away from yours again when he pulled the letter out of its sleeve and glanced down to read it.
“That’s all right,” he said after a moment, his voice even.
Your belly lurched. So apathy it was, unmoved by the prospect of you leaving.
“I know,” you said quietly. Your voice cracked under the pressure in your throat, as you willed yourself not to cry. “Nothing to make a big deal about. Just thought you should know—”
He shook his head and abruptly stood. “Ghost—?”
He crossed your office in two strides and wrenched open the door before he disappeared through it.
You frowned, wondering if you were meant to follow him, knowing that you never were. You settled back in your chair, tucking your legs in again, staring at the frost slowly creeping across the window glass, obscuring the fat yellow moon peeking from between parted winter clouds.
Simon returned, to your surprise, a few minutes later, with a file folder.
You felt a sense of dread as he dropped it on your desk.
“What is this, Simon?”
“I’ve already started it.”
That did not answer your question.
You sat forward and pulled it toward you, flipped it open and found a half completed residency application. Your fingers froze before you thumbed through the myriad pages. Forms filled in in chunky block handwriting.
“What is this?” You asked again, attempting to quell the rising panic in your chest. “What did you do?”
“The bond has to be officially recognized first,” he said, still not exactly answering your question.
You swallowed. You’d heard about formal bond recognition and frowned at the last several instructional pages. Required photographic proof of bond pairing, and, an in person demonstration of proof of said bond—
You imagined it for a moment, the two of you before some faceless judge, Simon carving out another part of himself for the sake of you being able to remain when he didn’t even want you. Didn’t want you around, never wanted you to know who he was. And yet he was willing to shackle himself to you, toss the key away.
Nausea welled, a heavy hand closing around your throat. A date was scratched in red at the bottom of the page for mid-April next year. Distantly, you realized it meant he had been working on this, thinking about it, for much longer than you had. It was. . .sweet.
It should be sweet.
You were suddenly aware of how much you did not know about him as you read through the pages. His birthday. His last name. If asked to fill out his half of the forms, you would not be able to. But it was all there in his own hand writing, information freely given for you when he had only given up his name by accident. He was giving up everything he kept close to the chest, that he kept from everyone.
But your horror and revulsion won out when you turned the next page and found a scan of his military ID. His naked face stared blankly, uncomfortably out at you.
What it all meant crashed down on you with the force of a toppled building. You saw yourself demonstrating the bond again. Simon unmasked, a wolf without its teeth, because you knew he would never let you be the one to prove the bond. He would stand there and carve himself up, wrench out a bone and lie it down as proof.
Years of wishing you could protect the soulmate you didn’t know from further harm curled fingers through the bars of your ribs, prying loose that desperation.
Now you could.
His name, his face, his privacy, his sense of safety.
You slammed the folder closed and shoved it away. “No,” you said, horrified. “No. Absolutely not.”
His brows softened when you glanced up at him. His voice was maybe the gentlest you have ever heard. “I would do it, love—”
You made an involuntary, distressed sound. “Jesus Christ, Ghost. No.”
All this effort was not his choice, and you couldn’t take anymore from him. It was pity and harm rolled into one. It was self flagellation; it was locking a weight around his ankle and jumping into a deep lake.
You couldn’t keep burdening the people around you, anyway. Simon with the bond he had no interest in and was plagued and bound by, the rest of the 141 being vulnerable for it.
Price had asked you to take care of him and you could.
Ghost’s gaze was hard when you met his eyes. “Why not?”
There was a dangerous edge in his voice, a fissure that said tread carefully.
“Why would I ever want you to do this?” You fired back.
Your voice was panicked and louder than you meant it to be.
He shrunk away, at the same time that his shoulders seemed to widen a few centimeters.
“I can’t do that to you,” you said, pushing the file back toward him. “I won’t do that to you.”
“You aren’t going to try to stay.” His voice was flat and far away.
Something lurched behind your breastbone. You rubbed at the spot but the pain didn’t fade. “I will not let you scar yourself for nothing!” You snapped.
He was so still, his body a coiled spring. “Nothing.” His voice was hollow.
You swallowed. “It’s easier this way, Simon,” you said after a long beat of silence. “It’s safer, if I just go.”
He sat back, like you’d punched him and was struggling for breath.
You watched the wall come down in his eyes, protective distance, that blank, far away, unreachable look he always used to wear when he first started visiting your office.
“That’s what you want, yeah?”
You closed your eyes for a moment, and when you opened them again, he was gone, as though he’d never entered your life at all.
The room seemed to reverberate with the loss of him. A warning in the still, cold air, a tragedy leaching into your lungs.
You fucked something up, but you weren’t sure what or how. You paced circles around your office until you felt ill. You knew he wouldn’t come back, that you might have broken the fragile peace that existed between you.
Maybe it was for the best.
The pain didn’t recede.
.
.
.
You used to have nightmares.
Each night you would lie down, close your eyes, and drown for a few hours. Long, looping gray halls, faint outlines of fists knuckled into drywall. You would search, thread your way up and down staircases without end, flinging open doors that led to the same bruised walls.
You could trace the trajectory of Simon’s life through your scars. The child abuse he’d clearly endured, the abrupt way the regular tracery of pain vanished, and then slowly appeared again. In starts and fits, enough for you to know that he had endured and finally escaped, and perhaps had a dangerous job, or lifestyle. You imagined a boxer, an MMA fighter. You imagined a construction worker, a welder, a fire fighter, a soldier.
For awhile, you were content, the dreams receded like nothing more than a bad memory. Mostly, he seemed to be safe, and that was enough. A new mark would occasionally be added to your skin, but it always seemed incidental, an accident or mishap. That you could handle.
Then those awful months had come, where each morning there were fresh marks. Your fear was like a fist in your throat. You rarely slept, afraid of what your mind would conjure, afraid of all the ways you could never help. Your soulmate was being tortured, of that you were sure, and you could only watch.
You would wake up—a plethora of new scars seared into your flesh, and a sense of pain, the impression of pain you should feel, lingering around you like a malignant cloud—and plead with anything, anyone that might be listening to help where you couldn’t. Your throat, chest, and back saw the most damage then. No more defensive scars on your palms, but thin circlets had formed around your wrists. No more bite marks but that awful corded scar had roped its way around your throat.
The nightmares returned with vengeance clutched in their fists. Bloodier, more violent.
Now, dreams of perpetual, unending silence. A life lived alone. Those same looping, gray halls filled with doors that you could hear other people behind, just out of reach, all locked. Most times, though, the dreams were more violent than that, blood on concrete, endless replays of dreams past, torture past.
It filled you with a type of horror you thought long past you, that you thought couldn’t be felt anymore.
But it was worse, now, knowing it was Simon that had inspired those dreams. It had been bad enough knowing only that it was the abstract concept of someone meant for you on the receiving end.
You’re sure your dreams were only a whisper of what he experienced.
The dreams seemed to be arbiters, harbingers of some tragedy, rewritten lines of a play long acted out.
You missed him.
Didn’t know how to check on him.
How to apologize for ever having shown up in his life.
It made you wish you’d turned down that transfer last year, that you had never gotten the one thing you always wanted.
Soap, when he appeared in front of you, assessed your sleeplessness with an astute, bluntness you only felt numb to.
“Ye look like shite.”
“Thank you for that, John MacTavish,” you said, swerving around him and down the hall toward your office. “Is there something you need?”
He followed you, situated himself as comfortably as he always did, firmly in Ghost’s chair.
“You okay, lassie?”
You clutched at the files as you hovered in the doorway and took a wincing breath. The pain hadn’t gone away. “Yes. Just tired.”
“Ghost has been tired, too.”
“It’s a good thing you aren’t a spy, Soap.”
“Aye, but am not tryin’ to be.”
You huffed, tightened your hold on the files and tablet. The pressure against your chest helped. “I’m getting transferred home.” You smiled but it felt awkward and false. “Good news.”
He tilted his head. “For who?”
“Simon,” you said easily. “And all of you. I’m a burden the rest of you have to bear,” you attempted to joke.
Neither of you laughed.
Johnny was uncharacteristically quiet, the silence like a shroud.
“And you talked to the Ghost?” He asked after a long moment.
“Yeah.”
Johnny frowned. “And he’s alrigh’ with tha’?”
You frowned back at him, fidgeted, plucked at the edge of your sweater with nervous fingers. “I can’t ignore orders,” you said simply, though you both knew there was a solution. The one Ghost had already thought of.
Soap was still watching you, his head tilted to the side. “What d’ye want?”
A strange choking feel raked up your chest, bound itself over your heart. If you could, you’d slip into Simon’s bloodstream. To be carried there, to belong. You wanted so badly to be wanted, to have somewhere safe.
You shook your head. “I don’t think it matters what I want.”
It was unfair, though, that it didn’t.
That you have never mattered.
A sudden, intense burst of anger welled up in the back of your throat. “I’m starting to think the whole fucking thing is fool’s gold.” You ground your teeth together, “I think it’s all bullshit meant to give you hope. And nothing else. It never meant anything at all.”
Johnny looked pained. “Ach, bird—”
“No,” you interrupted. “No. I’m sorry. That’s not fair of me. I think I am uniquely fucked up.”
A burst of warmth made you whirl toward the hall but no one was there.
.
.
.
Once, Simon, without preamble, before you knew what he was to you, had abruptly asked one afternoon if you’d ever gone through RTI training.
“Yes. I might not do field work, but I still know too much,” you’d answered and tilted your head curiously to the side. “Why?”
He had not answered, but looked marginally more at ease.
“Were you?”
“What?”
“Tortured?”
His eyes had flicked over you. “Think you know the answer.”
You had nodded.
“They say to compartmentalize,” you said, curious. “That you buy time instead of trying to avoid talking. But I was never good with pain. What did you think of?”
In an odd bout of truth sharing he had said, “Dead now, what I thought of.” He settled into his chair more firmly. “Don’t think of anything you care to lose.”
And that had been that.
.
.
.
Simon didn’t say goodbye.
You weren’t exactly speaking, anyway.
Silence had unspooled between you and him, thick and cloying, a rope that wrapped tighter around his throat with each coil.
Ghost still checked on you, watched from the shadows as you began moving through preparations to leave your post. Cases handed off to other intel officers, your office slowly depleted of the things that made it yours.
The potted plants in their terracotta shells disappeared and reappeared in other offices—in the break room, on a filing cabinet in the hall. The bug lamp vanished and so did your blanket and the lavender headphones, the stack of books in the corner. Your scent faded, that oakmoss and lavender that permeated the air seemed to falter more with each passing day.
When he peered into your office, a wraith at the edge of your life once again, you worked in total silent stillness in the cold room. You had not touched his blanket, slung over the back of the chair as it always was.
Things were moving too fast, and he was wasting time. You would be gone by the end of the year; it was already the middle of December. He knew, when he looked in on you before they left, that it would be the last time. He would return to the base and your office would be empty, bereft.
Soap was staring at him from across the transport plane, his brows drawn down, fists curled loosely around the straps of his vest. His sergeant looked angry.
The air was cold.
Simon’s skin ached. That bloody pain was under his ribs again.
He couldn’t stop thinking of your blanket. Why would you remove it first when you needed it? You were always cold, always sun seeking. Your blanket abandoned, his hoodie you wouldn’t wear. It was like you were abandoning comfort.
“The lass seemed—”
“That’ll do, Sergeant,” Ghost cut Soap off quietly, a warning in his voice. If Gaz and Price were listening, they didn’t show it, huddled over a tablet together at the far end of the hull.
Soap glanced away. “Was cryin’ before we left.”
Ghost jerked his gaze back up.
“Enough,” he snarled, and then felt exhaustion tug his anger back down.
He closed his eyes and leaned back, letting the heaviness of his gear fall against his body, crushing even as his spine loosened.
It was enough.
He didn’t need to be reminded of your misery, or your rejection.
Domestic conflict didn’t suit him. He was afraid of it, had only ever watched it end with a bruised cheek, tears, a voice like knives. He already swore that he would never be that kind of man, that he wouldn’t become his father.
Conflict that couldn’t be swiftly ended with a gun or a blade was out of his bloody purview.
You deserved better, and that truth had never been more apparent or that you knew it too.
Why would I ever want you to do this?
Fair enough question.
Mapping his own fear wasn't easy. It didn’t come naturally.
He wanted nothing more than to scoop it out with a rusty spoon, put it on offer to you.
But you didn’t want that, and he’d known that all along.
The plane hummed and shook like it was in the fist of a giant, shuttling them through the sky, an overgrown child with a toy.
“Aye,” Soap said, an unusual snap in his voice. “Maybe you were right, LT.”
Ghost opened his eyes.
It was bait.
They both knew it.
Ghost asked anyway, his voice low and dark. “Usually am. Care to tell me what about this time?”
“Maybe she deserves better.”
.
.
.
Task Force 141 was deployed on an emergency op. They left three days ago, chasing some nightmare that they had dealt with before. Intel that you had pooled and passed off to Laswell without too much thought about it, turned out to be something they’d long been searching for.
Price checked in with you. Kyle and Soap said goodbye.
Ghost disappeared without a word.
You caught a glimpse of his shadow disappearing down the administration wing’s hall before they had gone, warmth fading around you, and knew he had been outside your office. His involuntary monitoring only served to make your chest ache.
You knew that you weren’t likely to see any of them again. Your apartment was a sea of boxes; your office was bereft. It was unclear how long the op would last.
You weren’t likely to see Ghost again, anyway, who had become as good as his namesake over the past few weeks. It was terrible, the way you waited and hoped that he would come back to you, just so you could say goodbye. He was impossible to hunt down when he did not want to be found.
As it stood, you were alone, your office was empty for all but the equipment you were given on your first day and Simon’s blanket. You weren’t sure what to do with it. It wasn’t yours but leaving it behind to be tossed in with the trash or thrown in storage somewhere to rot, festering alone, eaten by moths, seemed wrong.
Still, you had left it over the back of his chair. Maybe he would see it when he returned and finally take it with him.
You did, however, keep the hoodie he had left in your apartment. No one had to know that you slept in it, felt comforted just by touching something that was his.
Were you especially pathetic, or was that something all bonded soulmates felt? You couldn’t imagine Simon feeling that way about something of yours. It was hard to imagine him being comforted by anything besides a gun, a knife, his own violent hands.
Maybe if you weren’t so upset, maybe if things had gone differently, you would have noticed you were being followed long before it was too late to do anything about it.
You were walking from your car to your apartment, gym and work bags slung over your shoulder, sweat still drying between your shoulder blades when the unease settled around you. You felt watched, not in the way that you had become accustomed to.
The back of your neck prickled, some long buried sense warning you that danger was near. When you glanced over your shoulder, the street was empty and blue in the waning winter light, the barest fanning of snow shimmering, fans of yellow puddled down the sidewalk behind you.
But you could hear footsteps.
You didn’t change your pace, slipping your hand into the front pocket of Simon's hoodie instead, feeling the comforting weight of the switchblade gifted to you all those months ago. Cold, solid metal.
It felt a bit like safety, wrapped in Ghost's fading scent, the knife he'd given you in your palm.
All those nights you stayed late on the base, Simon waiting patiently for you to leave, eyes closed, arms crossed before he walked you to your car flicked through your mind.
The irony struck you now, of all those careful wanderings to your car, no one had ever been there along this route. The path from your car to your front door was barren, the moment of your day that you were most alone.
When you glanced behind you again, still no one was there.
You told yourself it was nothing, though every instinct was telling you that wasn’t true. Cold bled between your shoulders, snaked down your spine in a warning drip.
The footsteps faded but the watched feeling didn’t.
Once inside you locked the door behind you and made a beeline for your bed side table drawer where you’d stored Simon’s half completed residency application. You started to shred it with your hands before you realized that would not be enough.
A thud on the landing outside made you jump, confirmed your worst thoughts. You were on your way out, all the case files and hard drives you had been trusted with handed back over to Laswell, debriefed a million and one times. There was only one thing someone could be looking for.
You calmly carried the documents to your kitchen and threw them in the largest pot you had. It only took a moment for it all to go up in flame after you dropped a lit match in, suffocating his name and yours, the edges of the copy of his military ID going at the corners and then swallowing his face.
You wanted to dig your hands into it, scoop the ash into your mouth, just to keep it all safe.
For half a moment, as smoke curled around your kitchen, you felt stupid. It was probably nothing and you’d just erased the only memory of your soulmate’s face you had been allowed.
Then, the front door exploded inward.
You were slammed into the counter, scattered remnants of the meager combat training you had received flicking through your head.
But your body was faster than your brain, you wriggled loose and stabbed upward with the blade suddenly in your hand.
You both seemed surprised when you made contact, slicing a long stripe along his cheek up to the corner of his eye. The point of your knife sunk into his eye, and when you ripped it back, blood sprayed across your ceiling.
You had been drilled not to linger though, yanking back when he released your elbow, screaming and clutching his face.
You dodged two more men whose fingers grazed you but didn’t catch. They seemed more surprised than you were that you avoided it, that maybe Ghost had been telling the truth when he said you were unreasonably fast.
You flung your knife at the one in the foyer, and watched it sink to the hilt into his throat.
You didn’t pause, flew down the steps to the road and wrenched down a black street and then a tiny alley that you hoped you could lose them in, that you could get lost in. The irritated crash of voices followed you as you zigzagged through the streets of the town that had become your home, and now had turned into a maze.
Distantly, you realized they were speaking in Russian, footsteps pounding against the pavement behind you. The wind was bitterly cold, snow burning down around you.
Ghost’s words fanned across your mind, you just had to be fast enough to run away, to hide, that was all. You held onto his voice, the memory of him guiding you.
All you had to do was run away.
But you turned down another street and found the narrow close ended in a brick wall that you were not tall enough to scale.
This time when you were pushed forward, your temple connected with brick, stars bloomed across your vision. Your arms were pinned immediately to your sides.
You threw your head back, skull connecting with a crack against someone’s nose.
“You fucking bitch—”
Thick fingers against the back of your neck, slamming you forward into the brick again. This time nausea crawled into your throat along with pain and a thin trickle of blood, stars blooming across your vision.
“Easy, easy! Nothing that will scar. Not yet.”
You were shoved harder against the wall, an uncomfortable, heavy weight bowing your spine, but your captor was careful not to let your face rasp against the brick again.
Blood licked warmly into the corner of your mouth, dripping lovingly into your mouth. A nerve throbbed behind your eye. You grunted, air squeezed out of your lungs when the man behind you leaned harder on you. “Careful, little rabbit,” he said.
Footsteps sounded behind the pair holding you captive, slow and measured, a brutal, unhurried pace that eventually stopped to your left.
“I don’t have to wonder what you were burning, but I think I can guess,” he said by way of introduction. “Let’s see her face.”
The hand on the back of your neck cupped your jaw instead, yanked your face around so violently you felt it in your neck.
A man’s face swims into your peripheral vision. Dark, sharply intelligent eyes met yours. Predatory, like looking into the teeth of a fox. You had seen his face before. And if he was here, the op the 141 was currently on was a decoy.
Fear swam into your gut, adrenaline sweeping down your spine.
“Ah,” he said, reaching out to stroke the back of his pointer finger down your cheek. “You must belong to Ghost,” he said. He drew a blade slowly from his trouser pocket. It sung as he flipped it open and held it to your throat, drawing it shallowly over your flesh. “No one else has so many scars.”
You shivered and the blade bit deeper into your skin.
You felt blood pool warmly in the hollow at the base of your neck. “Yes, I think if I had Simon Riley here, you’d match, wouldn’t you?” His eyes flicked over you, watching you closely.
You didn’t blink, despite how irked you were that he knew Simon’s name. Didn’t acknowledge the implication of your scars. “He won’t come,” you said, voice hoarse. “If that’s what this is.”
“He will,” he said, withdrawing the knife, wiping it clean on a handkerchief he pulled from his pocket, swiping it neatly clean. “Simon Riley,” he said again, drawing out the syllables of a name you wanted to rip out of the air, stuff in your own mouth. “He tends to have this kind of bad luck with things he cares for. Don’t you agree?”
You didn’t move, didn’t breathe. The lancing pain in your head was growing and thinking was a failing battle. The pressure on your spine was intense, your lungs crushed beneath the weight of the man holding you in place, a mouse beneath a paw.
You closed your eyes. “He doesn’t care about me.”
“That is not how soulmates work.”
You laughed, a choked horrible sound to your own ears.
The world tasted like blood.
Like the copper tang of a penny pressed beneath your tongue.
You could taste it on your teeth.
“Then you don’t know Ghost very well.” You said. “He doesn’t want me.” If anyone could overcome that instinct, that taboo, it was Ghost. He would not come for you, of that you were sure. It would be easier. “He won’t come. It’s the tactical choice.”
“I suppose we will see, will we not? We will have fun together, you and I, in the meantime.”
He disappeared from your view, footsteps disappearing back down the close.
Panic settled hard and fast in your stomach, what you were about to endure whether they killed you eventually or not.
You squirmed as the weight eased off your back, kicked backward desperately. Your sneaker connected with a shin before you were jerked around and slapped. You lunged forward, not sure what you were about to do when a sharp pain bloomed in the side of your throat and the world went dark.
There was one thing you were certain of, though, as your consciousness faded and your body was hauled through the dark, the thickening snow.
Makarov was wrong.
Simon was not coming.
And you, as always, were alone.
.
.
.
Ghost couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.
The base felt eerily silent as he tracked through it, hauling his kit, beelining for your office, the failed op like a warning bell in the back of his mind that he couldn’t ignore.
It was your intel, Laswell said, that led them there.
Your office was empty, dark.
The only personal item left in the room was the blanket you had knitted for him all those months ago, left across the back of the chair he always sat in.
He pressed gloved fingers against it and a chill curled in his gut. Your office, for so long a comfort, a warmth, a haven, felt barren, vacant. It smelled of dust, and he knew you hadn’t been there in a few days. The scent of your perfume no longer lingered in the air, your presence as faded as if you’d never been there at all.
It did not help the feeling that something wasn’t right.
An indescribable, irrational fear gripped him. Like talons hooked around his lungs, pulling them slowly from between his ribs. The pain had returned, settled as neatly behind his breastbone as if it had never left.
Nausea wound tight in his throat. He pressed a hand against his chest but it didn’t ease. It lingered, seemed to pulse worse than it ever had before. He had heard you and Johnny, once, talking about the pain. There were cases where it had returned, when soulmates were separated against their will, or, if one was in danger, dying, hurt.
Usually it meant the pair was dying, it was a warning, an easing into the snap of the bond being severed forever.
Simon dropped his kit, kicked the door shut and yanked up his sleeves, the hem of his shirt, searching fruitlessly for a needle in a fucking haystack.
It was faint, at first, because it was yours and not his, buried beneath pain and thick scarring and years of not taking care of those scars.
He watched, for the first time, as a scar that wasn’t his bled into his flesh.
A deep one, puckering the meat of his forearm in a new and disturbing way. It was not an accident. A message was being writ in your skin for him to see.
It didn’t hurt, and that was the worst part. The ghost of pain seemed to linger in the air above it, pain he should feel and didn’t, the suggestion of torment like an electric current he desperately wanted to stick his fingers into, wrap around his wrists and yank away from you.
An involuntary, nearly inaudible sound wrenched out of him.
It wasn’t just one. The more he stared, the more faint, flicking lines he saw, across his arms, his stomach.
He knew what it meant.
He didn’t know how to process what he was seeing, or the feeling that accompanied it.
The uncertainty and fear you’d once described to him, of knowing that his soulmate was hurt but not how, of being helpless to watch, washed over him in a violent wave.
He took a deep breath.
Then another.
Simon was gone.
Price, he knew, would still be in his office.
if you made it this far thank you for reading! I'd love to know what you thought!
"'M just sayin', lads—it's been a while." Johnny announces this to the table with the easy confidence of a man stating a fact, tipping his pint glass towards his two companions like he's presenting evidence.
He's freshly showered, smelling like that cedar body wash he's been using since rehab, and his mohawk is styled the way he only bothers with when he's feeling good enough to exert the kind of effort that signals intent.
"Define 'a while,'" Kyle says mildly, not looking up from his phone beneath the table.
"Months, mate. Fuckin’ months." Johnny takes a long drink and scans the pub with the lazy, appreciative gaze of a man on the hunt. "I'm dryin' up over here. Witherin' on the vine. 'S embarrassin'."
"That's one word for it," Simon mutters into his whisky.
Kyle's thumb pauses on his phone screen. He doesn't look at Simon, and Simon doesn't look at him, but the silence between them is loaded with a practiced, wordless exchange refined over months of navigating nights exactly like this one.
Because Johnny has not, in fact, gone months without getting laid.
Johnny had sex with his wife four days ago. Kyle knows this because you'd texted the group chat—the one Johnny doesn't know exists, one labelled "Ops" on Kyle's phone and "X" on Simon's—to let them know Johnny was having a good week.
Remembering things. Sleeping through the night without nightmares. Being present.
Four days ago. And now he's sitting in a pub in Hereford telling his mates he's been in a drought, and his eyes are doing that thing they do when a bad episode is ramping up; brighter than usual, slightly too wide, running hot with a manic energy that looks like confidence if you don't know what you're looking at.
But Kyle knows what he's looking at.
He glances at Simon. Simon gives the smallest nod—a millimetre of movement, barely perceptible—and Kyle opens the Ops chat beneath the table.
Bad night. Swan. Come when you can.
Swan is the code. You'd all agreed on it together in the early days, back when the episodes were frequent and terrifying and no one knew the rules yet. Swan means he doesn't know you. Pub means to come find him. Home means they'll bring him to you immediately.
Your reply comes seconds later as if you’ve been bracing for it, which you have. Just in case.
Omw. 20 min. How bad?
Kyle replies,
Flirty. Scanning the room. Hasn't clocked it yet.
Three dots, then: Dress up or down?
Kyle looks at Johnny, who is now leaning back in his chair with his arms spread wide, grinning across the room, radiating the particular Scottish charm that made him dangerous in pubs long before the injury and wedding.
Up. He's in a good mood.
Three dots appear again, longer this time, and one simple word follows because Kyle hesitated sending it.
Horny…
Got it.
He puts his phone away and picks up his pint casually. "So what's your type again, Johnny? Since you're on the pull tonight."
Johnny snorts, mumbling into his glass. "Ye know my type."
"Mm. Remind me."
"Funny. Smart," he takes a sip of his drink, smacks his lips while his eyes keep scanning, “Can handle her drink. Someone who doesnae take my shite." He pauses, something flickering behind his eyes—a shadow, there and gone again, like a cloud passing over the sun. "Someone who laughs at ma’ jokes even when they're rubbish and rides me like it’s our last day on bloody earth." He grins; baby blue’s gleaming mischievously.
Simon turns away to roll his eyes while Kyle's chest tightens but smiles anyway. "High bloody standards for a man with that fuckass haircut."
"Fuck off, Garrick. This haircut is iconic."
Simon says nothing. He drinks his whisky, watches the door, waits.
You arrive in eighteen minutes.
You're wearing the deep green dress—the one Johnny told you made you look like "somethin' oot of a Bond film" on your second anniversary, the one you now keep in the back of the wardrobe now specifically for nights like this. Your hair is done. You're wearing the perfume he bought you three Christmases ago that he won't remember buying right now.
You pause outside the pub, sit in your car for thirty seconds, and breathe.
This is the seventh time. You know because you keep count, not physically, but in your body. In the specific way your hands shake when Kyle's text comes through while he is out with Johnny and the practiced steadiness you layer over it like gauze over a wound.
The first time was the worst. Two months post-injury, Johnny still in a neck brace, waking up in the hospital and looking at you with polite confusion and asking the nurse who you were. You'd made it to the corridor before your legs gave out, and Simon had caught you with one strong arm and no words, holding you upright against the wall while Price talked to the doctors and Kyle distracted Johnny.
You'd learned the rules since then. The triggers and early tells. The protocols. You'd built a system—you and his brothers in more than arms, the lot of you holding Johnny's world together like scaffolding around a building that keeps forgetting its own foundations.
On good days, Johnny knows you; he knows the house, the wedding photos, the way you take your tea. On those days, he calls you by the nickname only he uses and reaches for you in his sleep and laughs at the same terrible jokes he's been telling for years.
On bad days, you're a stranger.
Tonight is a bad day, even though it had started good initially. And sometimes that happens, too.
You check your reflection one more time; smooth the dress, tuck your wedding ring into your jacket pocket, because he can't see it yet, not until the timing is right, and you saunter into the pub, hips swaying.
You spot them immediately. Corner booth, usual spot. Kyle is facing the door, which means he sees you first, and his expression does a complicated thing—relief and grief and a non-verbal "Go on then, you've got this,"—before he schools it into easy neutrality.
Simon is beside him, facing away from the door now, though you know he clocked you the moment you walked in, always does. He can feel a change in a room's atmosphere the way other people feel a draft, and your presence has become one of the things he's attuned to, though he'd rather be waterboarded again than admit it.
And Johnny.
Johnny is mid-sentence, gesticulating with his pint, lit up and alive and devastating, and he hasn't seen you yet.
You order a drink at the bar. Gin and tonic. You position yourself where his sightline will catch you naturally—not too close, not too obvious, like setting a lure and waiting for the current to do its work.
It barely takes a minute.
His gaze sweeps the room, passes over you, and snaps back. You watch it happen in your peripherals; the double-take, the slight parting of his naturally pouty lips, the way his entire body reorients towards you like a compass needle finding north.
"Ho-ly shite," he breathes, still staring. "Lads. Lads. Two o'clock."
Kyle makes a show of looking when his arm is being nudged repeatedly. "Yeah? Which one?"
"The—Are ye blind?" He scoffs, offended on your behalf. "Her. Right there. At the bar."
"She's alright." Kyle shrugs, and the casualness of it is Oscar-worthy.
"Alright? She's fuckin'—" Johnny runs a hand over his mohawk, a nervous tell he's had since he was a teenager and will probably have until he's ninety. "She's fuckin' gorgeous is what she is."
Simon lifts his glass. Takes a slow drink, sets it down deliberately.
"Go talk to her then," he says with a shrug, and his voice is perfectly flat, perfectly controlled, and if anyone at this table could hear the hairline fracture running through those five words, they'd understand something that Simon has long decided to take to his next grave, because he's watched this happen too many times now.
He's watched Johnny fall in love with you for the first time seven more times after the real one, the first time, and each time, he involuntarily catalogues the way Johnny looks at you—stunned and reverent, immediately and irrevocably gone—and files it beside the thing he keeps locked in the deepest, most fortified room in his chest cavity.
He doesn't want you instead of Johnny. That's not what this is. It's worse than that, and quieter, and it has no name because he refuses to give it one.
What he wants is to be someone who could be loved the way you love Johnny; he wants to understand what it feels like to be chosen over seven times by a brain that can't hold onto anything else.
What he desperately wants—is to stop fucking wanting.
"Go on," Simon says again, when Johnny hesitates. "Before someone else does."
Johnny grins wider and slides out of the booth.
And he approaches you with more confidence than caution along with a smile that could talk its way out of an international incident.
"A'right?" He leans against the bar beside you with all his bulk, leaving just enough space for plausible deniability, and you almost laugh because it's exactly how he did it the first time—the real first time—at a pub in Edinburgh six years ago.
"A'right," you reply, letting the corner of your mouth lift.
"Johnny." He extends his hand. "John MacTavish."
You take it. His palm is warm and rough and so achingly familiar that you have to swallow hard against the lump that rises in your throat.
And you give him your name in return; no surname, because hearing his own last name come out of your mouth would raise questions you're not ready to choreograph around yet.
"Can I buy ye a drink?" he asks casually, nodding at your gin and tonic. "Or are ye waitin' for someone?"
"I might be."
"Oh, aye?" His eyebrows lift, and the grin sharpens. "Lucky bloke."
Your lips purse. "Who says it's a bloke?"
He barks a genuine laugh and the sound of it hits you right in the sternum because it's the same laugh, it's always the same laugh, whether he knows you or not.
"Fair enough. Can I buy ye a drink while ye wait for whoever's lucky enough to have ye, then?"
You hold his gaze, eyes crinkling in the corners as you suppress a smile before you cave in. "Go on."
Johnny buys you a cocktail, then a water, and you let him.
He tells you he's military—"Aye, the kind ye cannae ask aboot, sorry, love"—and that he's recently recovered from an injury he's vague about; he points at his two mates sitting in the corner booth who are "Absolutely shite wingmen, don't even look at ‘em." And he tells you that you have the best laugh he's ever heard, and he says it with such disarming sincerity that you almost believe he's saying it for the first time.
He might be. That's the thing. To him, he is.
You tell him you're a—and you pause here, every time, because this is the part where you have to build a version of yourself that's close enough to the truth that you won't trip over the details but far enough from reality that he won't start connecting dots prematurely. You tell him what you do, where you live, staying vague, and you make him laugh, and his hand finds the small of your back at some point and stays there, warm and heavy through the dress, and you let it because it belongs there.
At the booth, Kyle is watching with the practiced eye of a director monitoring a scene he's staged before. He tracks the beats—the body language closing in, the first touch, the moment Johnny leans down to hear you over the music and stays close—and he nods to himself, satisfied with the outcome.
Simon is staring at the table. His glass is empty. He doesn't order another.
"He's doing well tonight," Kyle says quietly, because someone should break the silence, and Simon sure won't.
Simon nods, not lifting his eyes from the sticky surface. "He always does well with ‘er."
The sentence hangs between them. Kyle looks at Simon and sees something in the set of his Lieutenant's jaw that he files away and will never, ever mention aloud.
"You good, LT?"
"Fine."
He's not fine. Kyle knows, but he chooses not to push it.
Johnny drives you home after assuring you he only had two pints.
This is the part that always makes your chest tighten—the navigation and logistics of getting him into his own house without it feeling like a trap. You give him directions, turn by turn, and he follows them cheerfully, one hand on the wheel of your car (his car, technically; the one you drove to the pub) and the other on your thigh, thumb tracing idle patterns on your skin.
"Nice neighbourhood," he remarks as you turn onto the street. His street. Your street.
"It's alright," you manage, and your voice is steady, which is a miracle.
He pulls into the driveway and kills the engine, and you watch his eyes move over the front of the house; over the garden you maintain together, the blue door he painted last spring during a particularly good month, the porch light that you left on tonight because you knew you'd be bringing him home.
"Lovely place," he says, and there's nothing in his voice but genuine appreciation, no recognition, no alarm, and the absence of it is a knife you've learned to hold without flinching.
"Come inside then," you tell him, and he grins genuinely. "Thought ye'd never ask."
The front door is where it starts getting tricky.
His boots are by the mat. Not a guest's boots—his boots, broken in and muddy, sitting beside a pair of your trainers in the easy domesticity of a shared household. Johnny glances down at them, and you see the first flicker; not quite recognition yet, just a stutter, a brief glitch in the narrative he's been building all evening.
"Those are—" he starts, then stops, and shakes his head. "Those look like mine."
He lets out a short laugh, but there's an edge to it. A hesitation. His eyes move from the boots to you, narrowing playfully, but you can see the question forming underneath.
"Ye're not married, are ye?" He asks it like a joke, but his gaze drops to your left hand—still bare, ring safely tucked in your jacket pocket—and then sweeps back to the boots. "Because I'm no' that kind of bloke, love. I don’t do that."
"I'm not married," you lie, and it tastes like glass shards in your mouth.
"Good." The grin returns full force, satisfied, and he reaches for your waist again. "'Cause I'd hate to have to fight some poor bastard for ye."
He moves on, pulling you towards him, and you let out a breath you were holding. Then he pauses, looks down at his own left hand, still resting on your hip, and you watch his brow furrow.
"What the—" He lifts his hand, turning it in the dim hallway light. The gold band sits on his ring finger, catching the glow from the porch light through the glass panel in the door. He stares at it like it appeared there by magic, and you always wonder if he only notices it at this point, because some part in his brain does recognize the terrain subconsciously.
"When did I—" He touches the ring with his other thumb, turning it as he mutters. "I don't—Why am I wearin' a—"
"Johnny," you say softly, and take his hand, folding your fingers over his. "Come to the bedroom with me."
He looks at the ring, then at you. The furrow deepens, but the panic hasn't arrived yet—just confusion surfacing, sitting like sediment at the bottom of a glass that hasn't been stirred yet.
"Aye," he says slowly, nodding. "Aye, alright."
The hallway is next.
You've learned to control the environment—certain photos stay up because removing them would make the house feel wrong, and a wrong-feeling house agitates him in ways that are harder to manage than the photos themselves. The wedding portrait stays on the wall at the end of the corridor, but the hallway lighting is dim enough that it doesn't register unless he's looking for it.
He's not looking at anything but you; one hand finding your waist as you move through the darkened house, his mouth is close to your ear.
"Ye smell incredible," he murmurs, nose brushing through your hair. "Been thinkin' aboot this all night."
You chuckle softly with a knot in your chest. "Have you?"
"Since the second I saw ye in that pub." His grip tightens, pulling you back against him, and his lips find the side of your neck. "Couldn't think about anythin' else."
You lean into him; let him hold you and his hands wander over the fabric of your dress while his mouth traces a warm, open path along your throat.
"Bedroom?" you whisper.
"Christ, yes."
You lead him by the hand. Down the hall, past the closed door of the bathroom where his toothbrush sits in the holder beside yours and the spare room where Simon once slept on the floor for three days during a particularly bad episode because he refused to leave either of you alone to deal with it and refused a bed on top of it.
The bedroom.
You open the door and let him walk in first, which is a deliberate choice—it lets you watch his face as the room registers. The king-sized bed you share. The nightstand with his book on it, dog-eared and half-read. Your wardrobe, open slightly, his fatigues visible on the shelf beside your clothes.
And on the dresser, in a simple frame—a photograph. Not the wedding portrait. A smaller, candid snapshot. Him and you, laughing at something you don’t even remember off-camera, his arm around your shoulders, your face turned into his chest. Kyle took it at a barbecue over eighteen months ago, back when things were still normal, back before the world broke.
And because his vigilance training is seared somewhere deeper into his brain, Johnny sees the photograph first.
He goes still. Not the easy stillness of before, but tighter and alert. The stillness of a soldier who's walked into a room and sensed that the intel doesn't match the terrain.
"What—" He drops your hand and crosses to the dresser to pick up the frame without asking. His brow furrows deeper while his thumb traces the edge of it.
"That's me," he says slowly.
Your stomach drops; you stay back, swallowing hard. "Yes."
"That's—" He looks at you. Back at the photo, then back at you. His breathing changes, shallow and faster now, and you can see the confusion calcifying into something harder, edged with the beginning of panic.
"Why is there a fuckin’ photo of me in yer house?"
"Johnny—"
"Why are my fuckin’ things here?" He's turning now, scanning the room with fresh eyes, and you watch the details hit him one by one—the boots downstairs, the book on the nightstand, the fatigues in the wardrobe. His toothbrush. His cologne on the bathroom shelf. The indent on his side of the bed.
"What the fuck is this?!" His voice pitches up and his chest is heaving, and you recognise the spiral; the moment the ground drops out from under him, and he can't find the edges of what is real. "Who the fuck are ye? What—Why do ye have—"
"Johnny." You step towards him, hands raised, palms open, the way you'd approach a wounded animal. The way the counsellor taught you. "Johnny, listen to my voice."
"Don't fuckin'—" He backs away and bumps into the dresser, and the frame rattles, and his hands are shaking. "Tell me what's goin' on. Now!"
"You live here," you say carefully, evenly. "This is your house. Our house."
"No. No, I've got a flat, I've got—"
Your expression drops to something pained yet soft. "You don't have a flat, sweetheart. You haven't had a flat in three years. You live here. With me."
He stares at you. His jaw is working, his fists are clenched at his sides, and his eyes are wild with the terror of a man whose own mind has suddenly become enemy territory.
"We're married, Johnny." You keep your voice steady and warm. You don't move closer yet, but you produce your own wedding band from your pocket and slip it on deliberately, matching his. "Three years. We got married at your mum's church in Glasgow, and you cried during the vows, and Kyle was your best man and he cried even harder."
Something flickers. Not memory, not quite yet, but a tremor, a fault line opening in the panic.
"Kyle—" he repeats, and his voice cracks on the name.
You nod enthusiastically. "Kyle Garrick. Gaz. Your best mate. He was at the pub tonight. So was Simon."
His blue eyes widen and flicker to meet yours. "Simon…"
"Ghost. Your Lieutenant. Tall, angry, won't take his mask off. He's probably sitting in his car outside right now making sure you got home safe, because that's what he does."
Johnny's breathing is ragged. His eyes are darting around the room, and you can see him trying to force the pieces together, grasping for edges that won't line up.
"I don't—" His voice breaks. "I don't remember."
Your heart breaks all over again; hands clenching and unclenching at your sides while you suppress the reflex to reach for him.
"I know."
"Why don't I remember?"
You sigh and your shoulders drop with it. "Because you were hurt. On a mission, ten months ago. You were shot, Johnny. In the head."
His hand moves before he's conscious of it—fingers lifting to his temple, searching, and you watch the exact moment they find it. The ridge of scar tissue above his left ear and temple, healed but tight, a furrow carved into the skin where the bullet grazed bone instead of passing through it.
He should be dead. The doctors said so. Kyle said so. Simon said so, once, in the kitchen at one a.m., in a voice so flat it sounded like a weather report. He should be dead. The bullet was two millimetres from killing him.
Two millimetres. The width of a pencil lead. The margin between a funeral and a life that keeps resetting.
Johnny's fingers trace the scar slowly, mapping the terrain of a wound he doesn't remember receiving. His face goes blank, not calm, but emptied, like the shock has pushed everything else out to make room for this one impossible fact.
"I was shot in the head," he repeats, toneless.
"By a man named Makarov. On a mission in," you sigh again, rubbing both hands over your face before regaining some composure. "It doesn't matter where. What matters is you survived, Johnny. You're here… With me."
"I don't—" His fingers press harder against the scar, like he's trying to push through it into the memory underneath. "I can't feel—It doesn't hurt."
"It pulls sometimes. When you're tired, or when the weather changes. You rub at it without realising. And then you ask me to put Bepanthen on it for you."
He drops his hand. Stares at it like it belongs to someone else.
A sound comes out of him that you've heard before and will never get used to—a small, gutted noise from deep in his throat, barely human, like something being torn at the root.
His gaze lifts. "I forget you?"
"Sometimes." Your voice is steady, but your eyes are not. "But you always come back. Every time, Johnny. You always come back."
He's staring at you with an expression that is no longer panic but something rawer, more exposed. The look of a man standing in the wreckage of a life he can't remember building and trying to find anything solid enough to hold on to.
"Come here," you say softly, finally, and you open your arms to him.
And Johnny doesn’t hesitate. He crosses the room in two strides and crashes into you.
His arms wrap around you so tightly it hurts, his face burying into the crook of your neck, and the ragged, broken sound he makes fills the bedroom and settles into the walls like a stain that will never come out.
You hold him like always. One hand on the back of his head, fingers carding through the short hair at the nape of his neck, the other arm banded around his broad back. You press your lips to his temple and breathe him in; cedar and sweat and the faint antiseptic undertone that hasn't fully left his skin since the hospital.
"It's okay," you murmur into his hair. "I'm here. I've got you."
"'M sorry—" He's shaking in your embrace. "I'm so fuckin' sorry, I didn't—I didnae know."
"You don't have to be sorry."
"I was chattin' ye up like some—like ye were some random—"
"I know." You pull back just enough to take his face in your hands, thumbs brushing over his cheekbones. His eyes are red and wet and searching yours desperately, looking for the anchor he can feel but can't see.
"You chat me up every time," you tell him, and you let yourself smile wetly because he needs to see it, needs to see that this isn't a tragedy to you—it's a Tuesday. It's the life you chose, and you'd choose it again. Every day for the rest of your shared life. "Same lines, same moves. You always lead with buying me a drink."
A wet, startled laugh punches out of him. "Aye?"
"Every time. Kyle says your material is tragic."
"Kyle can fuck off." He sniffs hard, blinking, and his hands are still gripping the fabric of your dress at your hips like he's afraid you'll evaporate. "Do I—Do I at least have good chat?"
You snort. "The worst."
His eyes widen comically. "The worst?"
"Absolutely appalling. I fall for it every time."
He laughs again, and this time it's closer to real and his forehead drops against yours as you breathe the same air, and the room settles around you like a held breath being released.
"Ye married me," he whispers, like he's testing the shape of it. "Ye actually married me."
You nod again, nuzzling your forehead against his. "Voluntarily and everything."
"Yer off yer heid."
"Probably," you brush your nose against his tenderly, "but you're stuck with me, MacTavish."
His hands slide from your hips to your waist, pulling you closer, and when his mouth finds yours, the kiss is tentative at first; careful and questioning, the kiss of a man who isn't sure what he's allowed to take yet.
You answer by threading your fingers into his mohawk, pulling him deeper, and kissing him back with every ounce of the love you've been carrying all evening behind the heavy mask of a stranger.
He groans into your mouth; his hands tighten on your waist, and the tentativeness dissolves into urgency, warm and achingly familiar.
"Tell me what ye like," he murmurs against your lips, and the earnestness in his voice—the genuine desire to get it right and learn you, not knowing he already has—makes your heart crack along an old fault line.
"I'll show you," you whisper. "I'll show you everything."
You undress him slowly.
The henley first, peeled over his head, and your hands trace the landscape of him; the scars he doesn't remember getting, the ink he doesn't remember sitting for, the topography of muscle and damage that your fingers have memorised over years of exactly this. Touching and mapping him; loving the body that keeps forgetting it's loved.
He watches you with wonder, his chest rising and falling unevenly. You trace each scar you find and when your fingers reach his jaw, you let your thumb drift up to his temple, brushing feather-light over the ridge of scar tissue there.
He flinches. Not from pain but from the strangeness of being touched somewhere he didn't know existed until twenty minutes ago.
"Does that bother you?" you ask, pulling your hand back.
"No." He catches your wrist and guides your fingers back. "Do it again."
You trace the scar slowly, gently, and his eyes flutter closed, and for a moment his face is so open and so unguarded that you have to bite the inside of your cheek to keep yourself together.
"Sounds aboot right," he murmurs, half to himself. "Hero and an eejit."
You push him back onto the bed, your marital bed, and he goes willingly, pulling you with him until you're straddling his lap, the skirt of your dress riding up around your thighs. His hands grip your hips, and he looks up at you with those bright blue eyes—burning with more than just lust.
"Christ, yer beautiful," he breathes. "D'ye know that?"
"You tell me." You lean down and press your mouth to the hinge of his stubbled jaw. "Every time."
"Good," he murmurs. "'S important ye hear it."
You kiss down his neck, his hairy chest, tracing the lines of his tattoos with your tongue and flicking one of his nipples. He groans and his hips roll up against you, the hard line of his fat cock pressing against your inner thigh through his jeans, and his fingers dig into the meat of your hips.
"Fuck. Ye don't have to—" You shake your head with a smile, shushing him. "I want to. Always do. I love sucking you off."
Johnny grins wolfishly. "I can see why I married ye."
And he groans with delight as you slide off his lap to kneel between his legs while the look on his face makes your eyes sting again, though you’ve become good at blinking it away. You undo his belt carefully, his button, his zipper, and free him from his briefs, and his cock springs up thick and hard.
You know this cock well; know the weight of it on your tongue, the exact pressure to stroke it that makes his abs clench, the spot beneath the mushroomy head where he's most sensitive. You know that he likes it slow at first and messy by the end, that he'll try to be polite about it until he can't, that his hand will find the back of your head and his hips will stutter and he'll warn you in a voice that's already gone before he comes down your throat in needy pulses.
You take him in your mouth, and the relieved, guttural sound he makes fills the room.
His eyes squeeze shut; his chest heaves. "Oh Christ—oh fuck—!"
You work him slowly. Tongue flat against the underside of his shaft, lips tight around the flushed tip, one hand wrapped around the base. You hollow your cheeks and take him deeper, and his hand flies to the back of your head—not pushing but needing to touch you—and his thighs tense on either side of your shoulders.
Johnny babbles through it, always does when you give him oral; accent thickening with random gibberish and praise.
You pull off with a slick pop and look up at him through your lashes, stroking him slowly from root to cockhead before you duck lower, and you lick a long, slow stripe over his balls, tonguing along the seam until you feel the exact moment his brain short-circuits.
"Holy shite—oh my God—nghh—" He grits his teeth, his eyes squeeze shut, and John MacTavish whines when you take one into your mouth gently, sucking softly, while his entire body arches off the mattress. His hand fists in the sheets; another sound comes out of him that is less word than sensation, more guttural and ecstatic.
"How did ye—Nobody does—How do ye know—"
You release him and press a kiss to his inner thigh, looking up at him with eyes that are bright and wet, but steadier.
"Because I'm your wife, Johnny."
The words land. You watch them hit; watch his expression cycle through shock and confusion and then something that isn't memory but is adjacent to it, deeper than recall, carved into the bedrock beneath the damaged circuitry.
Recognition.
"My wife," he repeats, and his voice is thick and full of awe.
You kiss his hip, nodding. "Your wife."
"Christ Almighty." His hand comes up to cover his mouth, and his eyes are shining as he pulls it back just enough to stare at his wedding ring again. "Oh my God, ye're my wife."
"I am."
"And ye—ye know—ye know exactly what I—"
"Everything." You crawl back up his body and straddle him again, cupping his face, pressing your forehead to his. "I know everything, Johnny. Every filthy, unhinged, ridiculous thing you're into, because you've spent years showing me, and I love it, and I love you, and you don't have to hold back."
And then Johnny kisses you hard and desperately; his hands suddenly everywhere at once—your hair, your waist, tugging at your dress, pulling it over your head with shaking fingers. He gets it off and throws it somewhere and then his hands are on your bare skin and the sound he makes is reverent.
"Ye're not—This isn't—"
"This isn't a hookup," you finish for him. "This is us. And I want all of it."
The dam breaks open behind his eyes, not quite memory, but permission, and the shift is seismic. His grip and breathing changes. The careful, polite restraint of a man on a first date incinerates, and what replaces it is raw, hungry, and known.
He flips you onto your back in one fluid motion, and the strength of it, the ease, makes you gasp. He's between your thighs before you can draw your next breath, yanking your underwear down your legs and tossing them over his shoulder, and then his mouth is on you without preamble, just his tongue on your clit, furious with intent.
Your head tips back with a shameless moan as he sucks and laps at your cunt.
"Tell me," he growls against you, the vibration making your hips buck. "Tell me what ye like, tell me everything, I wanna know—I wanna know every fuckin' thing—"
"Your fingers—Two—Hah, yes! Yes, like that—"
He drives two thick fingers into you, curls them, and your spine lifts off the bed. He reads you like a detonation sequence; adapting to your needs, adjusting pressure and angle and rhythm with the same tactical precision he brought to every mission, and within minutes you're shaking apart under his mouth, your hands fisted in his mohawk, his name tearing out of you on a scream.
And he doesn't let up but works you through the orgasm, licking you through the aftershocks, and when you drag him up by the shoulders and pull him over your body like a weighted blanket, his chin is slick and his eyes are blazing and the grin on his face is the most Johnny thing you've seen all night.
"Good?" he asks, like he genuinely needs the feedback.
Your hand curls around his nape as you pull him down, breathing against his lips. "Get inside me. Now."
"Fuck. Yes, ma'am."
He lines himself up, drags his cock through your drenched cunt and pushes in, slow at first, until your breath catches at the stretch and fullness, the feeling of home that hits you every time no matter how many times you do this, and he is fully sheathed inside.
Johnny cusses under his breath, his voice strained, and his arms braced on either side of your head; his face close enough that you can see every flicker of sensation crossing his features whenever you squeeze and clench around him.
"Move," you breathe. "Don't hold back. You never hold back with me."
"Don’t hold back," Johnny repeats and groans breathlessly, head hanging with the resigned realization that this will have a quick end, before he nods and folds your legs up, draping them over his shoulders. "Aye… I can do that."
And then his hips drive forward in a thrust that knocks the headboard against the wall, and the sound that punches out of both of you is obscene. He sets a relentless pace, hard and deep, fucking you the way you asked him to—with everything and nothing held in reserve—and the slap of skin on skin fills the bedroom along with your cries and his grunts and the rhythmic bang of the headboard.
"This what ye like?" he pants, one hand gripping the wooden frame for leverage. "This how I fuck ma wife?"
"Yes!" you cry out. "God, yes, please—Harder!"
"Harder she says—Fuckin' hell!" He adjusts your right leg over his shoulder, canting your hip up even further, and the change in angle makes you see stars, his cock massaging that spot inside you that makes your pussy tighten and your vision white out. "Look at ye takin' it. Fuckin’ look at ye. Yer a fuckin' dream, ye know that?"
"Johnny, 'm close," you mewl while your nails dig into his flexing biceps.
"Aye, I can fuckin’ feel it." His hand slides between your bodies, thumb rubbing your clit with unerring accuracy while a beads of sweat run down his chest, disappearing into the coarse hair. "C'mon, love. Gimme it, lemme feel ye."
And when he makes you tip over and your inner walls convulse around his cock in rhythmic, desperate pulses, Johnny follows you over the edge barely three thrusts later with a guttural moan and your name bitten into the skin of your shoulder as he buries himself to the hilt, spilling his load inside you.
He collapses over you, trembling, his face pressed into your neck while your legs slide off his shoulders with a satisfied sigh, and you hold him through the aftershocks the way you always did in nights like this one; a hand in his hair, the other on his sweat-slick back, feeling his heart pound against your chest.
For a long time, neither of you moves as the room settles. Your breathing evens out, syncs up, falls into the rhythm of two people who've been sharing a bed long enough that their bodies know how to find each other even in the dark.
"Hey," Johnny says eventually, muffled against your neck.
You smile despite everything, eyes welling up with tears. "Hey."
"I love ye."
You press your lips to his temple and whisper, "I love you too."
"D'ye think—" He lifts his head; his eyes are glossy and he suddenly looks unbearably young. "D'ye think I'll remember this tomorrow?"
The question sits between you, heavy and terrible but honest. You swallow hard, consider lying, but choosing not to.
"I don't know. Sometimes you do, other times you don’t," you say truthfully, because you promised yourself early on that you'd never lie to him about this. "But if you don't, I'll remember for both of us."
A tear slips down his face. Then another. He wipes them roughly with the back of his hand and lets out a wet, shaky laugh.
"And then ye'll just… What, fall in love with me again?"
"Johnny." You take his face in your hands and hold his gaze. "I've never stopped."
He makes a choked sound and kisses you again, slower this time, tasting of salt and beer.
He falls asleep with his head on your chest and his arms around your waist, and you stay awake longer than necessary, fingers carding through his short hair, listening to the slow rhythm of his breathing.
Outside, across the street, a black truck sits with its engine off.
Simon Riley watches the bedroom light go on through the upstairs window, and he watches it stay on for a long time before it’s switched off again.
And then he sits in the dark, in the quiet, and he wonders.
Not about what is happening inside. Not about them, specifically.
About the shape of a life where someone waits for you; where someone takes a phone call at nine p.m. on a Friday and puts on the green dress and drives to a pub and falls in love with you again because you asked her to, even though you didn't know you were asking.
He wonders what it would feel like to walk into a room and have someone's entire body reorient towards you; to be the answer to a question someone didn't know they were carrying.
And Simon wonders if he's capable of that. If the thing inside him that was broken long before any mission, long before any scar, is the kind of broken that someone could love around, the way you love around Johnny's.
He wonders, and he doesn't find an answer—somehow never does—and after a while, he starts the car and drives home to an empty flat.
And he locks the door behind him and sits in the silence that he chose, keeps choosing, and has never learned to want.
꒰ wc ꒱ 15k words
꒰ summary꒱ after stalking you for years, dex is completely unprepared for the dizzying reality of finally being invited into your life—your apartment, your bed, your soft thighs opening for him so sweetly that he can barely tell where fantasy ends and addiction begins.
.ᐟ contents |
18+ (MDNI), stalking, smut, unprotected sex, oral (f&m!receiving), pervert!dex, canon!dex, fbi!dex, horny!reader, oblivious!reader, stealing, panty sniffing, panic attacks, mental breakdown, suicidal dex, mentally unstable dex, canon compliant, somnophilia, dub-con, inexperienced!dex, mentioned murder, humping, groping, spit swapping, finger sucking, creep!dex, breeding kink, fluff, dark romance, manipulation, gaslighting, all in dex's pov
.ᐟ lizzy’s note |
this fic has been plaguing my life for the last three months and now im finally free. genuinely just wanted to write smut, then forced myself to create plot leading up to it. trying out a new layout, pls don't burn me at the stake.
at this rate stay tuned for my next dex fic in 2027 <3
likes comments and reblogs are much appreciated ✨
divider by @uzmacchiato
Dex loved sushi night Fridays.
You two had settled into the routine months ago without either of you ever really acknowledging it. Fridays after work. The same tiny sushi place tucked between a laundromat and a pawn shop, the sign flickering like it was running on borrowed time.
Inside was all warm amber lighting and fogged windows, the air thick with rice vinegar and the low hiss of the grill.
The hostess smiled the second you walked in now, already reaching for a menu you never looked at, because you already knew what you wanted, and Dex already knew you’d order it before you did.
You referred to it as your “cheat day,” something Dex privately thought was bullshit. You were always working on cutting back on takeout or “trying to be healthier,” only to cave every Friday night without fail.
But the word cheat implied you were doing something wrong. Indulging something shameful. And he hated the idea of you apologising for your own appetite.
He’d watched the pattern long enough to know it by heart; Sushi Fridays. Thai food on bad days (red curry, extra spicy, no matter how much it made you sweat). Wings—any kind really— when you were too tired to cook… or on your period.
And coffee, too much coffee, all throughout the week, the same two-pump vanilla order from the cart on 47th.
Dex didn’t think you needed to worry about your weight. The thought irritated him every time it surfaced, a low-grade static at the back of his skull. You were beautiful exactly as you were.
If he had things his way, you’d indulge every craving that crossed your mind. Midnight milkshakes. Extra dessert. Those strawberry candies you liked from the bodega near your apartment.
He’d drive across the city at two in the morning if you suddenly decided you wanted dumplings or lemon cake or greasy diner fries.
The restaurant lights caught against your jewelry when you moved, tiny gold hoops glinting near your jaw. Warm light softened everything about you.
Your skin took on a honeyed tone, the shadows beneath your cheekbones gentle rather than sharp. It made you glow in a way Dex had never been able to properly explain to himself.
Like candlelight catching honey, or the last sun ray through a window at dusk.
He watched you pick up another fried roll with your chopsticks, your nose wrinkling slightly when it nearly slipped apart before you got it into your mouth.
That made him chuckle. A sound that died in the hollow of his chest, swallowed by the space between his ribs.
God.
He needed this.
Needed the quiet rhythm of it after the last week spent buried in FBI work. The lies. The noise. Too many voices in his ear, too many meetings, too much time spent orbiting Wilson Fisk and his suffocating shadow.
His apartment never helped either. Too quiet and too still. Silence had a way of making his thoughts louder, the walls pressing in until he had to pace just to feel like he still had room to breathe.
But here, things felt… normal.
Outside, rain poured weakly past the windshield of Dex’s car.
The wipers had been off for a while now, leaving the glass streaked with dried residue. The heater hummed low near his knees, filling the car with dry warmth and the heavy, layered smell of fried tempura, soy sauce, and burnt coffee that had long gone cold in the cupholder.
Across the street, through the fogged window of the sushi place, you laughed suddenly at something on your phone, leaning forward across the table.
Dex smiled before he could stop himself.
He adjusted the takeout container balanced carefully in his lap before it tipped against the console. The plastic lid was beaded with condensation, the heat of the food fogging it from inside.
Soy sauce packets crowded the cupholder beside the coffee and crinkled napkins were shoved messily near the parking brake.
One dumpling had leaked grease through the paper container onto his slacks minutes ago, a dark stain spreading across the fabric near his knee, but he barely cared.
He hadn’t even registered the warmth of it until it had already cooled.
Dex stuffed another piece of sushi into his mouth absently, chewing without tasting, his eyes never leaving you.
The rice was a little dry. The ginger had that sharp, stinging bite that made the back of his throat tighten.
He’d picked up the order right before you came in, timed it so the food would still be warm when he settled into the driver’s seat.
His monocular rested against his thigh for barely a second before he lifted it again automatically. He settled it back against his socket without thinking, the world snapping into that familiar, compressed clarity.
His pulse eased the moment your face sharpened back into focus.
There she is.
Chin propped lazily into your palm now, reading something intently on your phone. A server passed behind you carrying a tray and even distracted, you looked up at him automatically. Sweet and polite.
Warm in that effortless way that still twisted something painfully tight inside Dex’s chest after all these years.
You gave pieces of yourself away carelessly without even realising it. A smile here. A laugh there. A small wave to a regular who held the door for you.
You never hoarded your warmth. It just spilled out of you, abundant and unguarded, and Dex collected every stray drop like a man dying of thirst.
His thumb moved slowly against the steering wheel, tracing the seam where the leather had begun to crack near the top.
This was exactly what he needed after the week he’d had.
Just you and him.
The thought surfaced without permission, settling somewhere deep behind his sternum. He let it sit there as his hand drifted toward the glove compartment without looking away from you once.
The latch gave with a quiet click, and his fingers found the familiar bundle by touch alone, soft cotton folded neatly in the dark, tucked beside his registration and a crumpled gas receipt.
He drew it carefully into his lap, keeping his eyes fixed on your silhouette through the monocular.
The pale fabric bunched lightly in his fist. The lace trim was cool against his palm, delicate, a detail he’d traced with his fingertips so many times that he could map it blind.
Almost absentmindedly, like a man reaching for a cigarette or rubbing a familiar scar, he brought the stolen panties toward his face and inhaled slowly.
The smell hit him in stages. First the faint, clean scent of your vanilla lotion, the one you applied after every shower. Then the warmer note of your shea body oil, the one you massaged into your elbows and knees before bed.
Beneath that, something warmer and distinctly you, something saline and soft that settled low in his stomach hard enough to make his slacks tighten slightly. A familiar, hungry ache that bloomed behind his fly at just your scent.
He held the breath for a long moment, letting it steep in his lungs, before exhaling through his nose.
A small souvenir he’d rewarded himself four months ago, after letting himself into your new loft late one night to make sure everything was secure.
You’d forgotten to latch one of the windows facing the fire escape. Careless sweet thing. The lock had been loose, the frame warped slightly from humidity, and when he’d tested it with his fingertips, it had swung open without resistance.
Dex had fixed it for you before leaving. Tightened the screws on the latch, oiled the track, made sure it would hold.
He’d found the panties in your laundry basket on the way out. A pale blue cotton pair, with a small tear near the waistband that you’d never bothered to mend. He’d slipped them into his jacket pocket before he could think better of it.
Across the street, you laughed again, shoulders shaking lightly this time, your head tipping back just enough to expose the column of your throat.
He exhaled softly through his nose, smiling along with you like he really was sitting across the table
Just you and him.
That was all he needed.
He didn’t know what to think when he saw the newspaper.
For one suspended second, there was nothing. Not anger. Not fear. Not even confusion. Just a sharp, empty stillness, like a pin had dropped somewhere inside his head and every part of him had gone quiet trying to hear where it landed.
Dex had been sitting there for hours, spine rigid, eyes fixed on the bank of screens showing Fisk’s penthouse from every angle. The man himself was visible in one frame, seated at his dining table. Calm and unbothered like always.
Then the paper landed in front of him.
FBI INVESTIGATES ONE OF THEIR OWN.
Agent Kane shifted beside him. “I’m sorry, Dex. This isn’t right,” she said quietly.
He heard her voice, but it came from somewhere far away, as if she were speaking through water. The words landed and dissolved.
Dex stared at the headline until the letters stopped being letters and became just shapes—black ink pressed into pulp, arranged by somebody who didn’t know him, didn’t care about him, didn’t understand anything about what he’d done or why.
The static began to rise. It always started like this, a low hum at the base of his skull, building as the world pressed in.
Around him, the room kept moving. Agents passed behind his chair, their footsteps a rhythmic interruption. Phones rang in overlapping cadences. Somebody laughed too loudly near the elevators, the sound slicing through the air before smearing into everything else, sharp and meaningless.
He could feel them looking at him.
Not directly, none of them were stupid enough to stare. But he felt the glances anyway. The way people looked at car wrecks when they slowed down just enough to see blood but not enough to admit they wanted to.
His jaw tightened. The muscle in his temple pulsed once, twice.
He was being used as a scapegoat.
By the time Winn and Hattley called him into the office, the static had thickened. It filled the room around their fake sympathetic voices.
“We’re going to find out who leaked this,” Hattley said, leaning forward with that practiced look of concern people used when they wanted to seem human.
Dex looked at her mouth while she spoke.
Not her eyes. Her mouth.
The words were too clean. Too prepared. Every syllable landed exactly where she wanted it to, like she’d rehearsed this conversation. There was no surprise in her tone, no real outrage. Just a performance of solidarity.
She was lying.
They all were.
The thing inside him stirred, restless and cold. He pressed it down. But it was harder now, when the structure he’d trusted was cracking around him, when the rules he’d followed were being used to crush him.
It had been the Bureau.
They were throwing him under the bus because someone had to bleed publicly, and it was easier if it was him. Easier because he had no wife waiting at home. No kids. No loud, charming friends in the office to make a scene on his behalf.
Easier because he was useful until he wasn’t, precise until precision made them uncomfortable, disciplined until discipline stopped protecting him from becoming disposable.
After everything, they were disposing of him.
If he followed the rules, he could be normal. He could be safe. Everyone else could be safe.
But the rules had just thrown him away.
“Think of it as a paid vacation,” Hattley said, offering a thin smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
The static in his skull sharpened.
Dex looked down at his badge before he realised he’d already taken it off.
He didn’t remember doing it. His fingers had moved on their own, undoing the clip, sliding the leather folder from his belt.
Now it sat in his palm like something foreign, the gold shield winking at him tauntingly.
His hand didn’t feel like his own when he set it on the desk. The leather made a soft, final sound against the wood. Then the gun. The weight of it leaving him felt wrong in a way that made his stomach tighten sharply.
Badge. Gun. Credentials.
Structure.
Mercer’s voice rose in his head before he could stop it.
Get a job with structure, Dex. Rigid structure. Stay disciplined. Stay useful. Routine is important for you.
Routine. Rules. The job gave him rules. Rules told him what to do. Rules made the edges of the world sharp enough to hold onto. Without them, everything blurred.
Everything bled into everything else. The thing inside him pushed against its cage like an animal scenting an open door.
And now they were taking it away from him like it was nothing.
By the time he reached the hall, the migraine had settled behind his right eye, hot and pulsing. It pressed against his optic nerve, sending thin spokes of light across his vision.
Nausea turned slowly in his stomach, a greasy, rolling sensation that made his throat tighten.
He was aware of his body in pieces. His pulse hammering in his wrists, too fast. Sweat cooling under his collar, the fabric damp and clammy against his neck. The empty space at his hip where his gun should have been.
Empty.
Empty.
Empty.
By the time he stepped back out into the hall, the Bureau felt wrong around him. Hostile in a way it hadn’t ten minutes ago.
But the air had changed. It pressed against him differently now, thick and heavy, as if the building itself had decided he didn’t belong here anymore.
He walked past an agent he’d worked with for two years. The man met his eyes, then looked away.
Dex’s fingers twitched at his sides.
None of it belonged to him anymore.
Or he didn’t belong to it.
The job was gone. The badge was gone. The rules were gone. And without them, he felt himself starting to come apart at the seams, the threads that held him together snapping one by one.
His breathing thinned. Too shallow. Too fast. The edges of his vision began to grey, just slightly, like someone was turning down the lights from far away.
He needed out.
He needed air.
No.
Not air.
You.
He needed to see you. Now.
The thought cut through the static like a blade. A fixed point in the chaos.
Dex looked down at his watch.
6:17 p.m.
Thursday.
You did your grocery shopping on Thursdays after work because you hated weekend crowds. End of the week, but not the weekend. Practical. Smart.
Sometimes you bought tulips even though you worked at a florist and could probably get better ones for free.
He had never understood that.
He loved that he didn’t understand that.
The Bureau, Hattley, Winn, Fisk, the paper, the headline, the badge sitting on that desk like a dead thing. None of it mattered. Not right now.
Not when his mind was splitting open and the only thought holding him together was the image of you standing under grocery-store fluorescents.
He turned before he’d fully decided to move.
His feet carried him toward the elevator. Each step felt like pushing through water. The walls of the hallway seemed to close in, then expand, breathing with him.
By the time he reached the elevator and pressed the button, his jaw ached from clenching. His hands were steady, but only because he had trained them to be.
Inside, everything was coming apart in small, quiet pieces. Like a dam with a thousand tiny cracks, water seeping through each one, the whole structure holding only by habit and memory.
That was fine.
He didn’t need the badge.
He didn’t need their rules.
He had you.
The drive from the bureau to the grocery store did nothing to settle the storm clawing through Dex’s chest.
His palms were slick against his slacks. He’d just walked in. Empty-handed. Bereft of purpose beyond the single, desperate need screaming through every nerve ending in his body.
Find her. Find her. Find her.
The automatic doors hissed shut behind him, sealing him inside a world of too-bright lights and Muzak and the sharp chemical sweetness of floor cleaner.
His tie felt like it had shrunk two sizes since he’d left the Bureau, the knot pressing against his throat like a noose. He tugged at it once, twice, but it only made it tighter.
The migraine was still there, settled between his eyes like a hot coal. It pulsed in time with his heartbeat, a steady, throbbing pressure that made the aisles seem to swim when he moved his head too fast.
And Mercer’s voice.
She was there, in the back of his skull, the way she always was when things got bad. But today she wasn’t the steady, grounding presence he remembered.
Her voice flickered and warped, sliding between registers like a broken radio.
Stay calm, Dex. Breathe. You’re okay.
Then, lower, twisted. Freak. Look at you. They threw you away because they saw it. They knew what you were.
His fingers twitched at his sides.
You were supposed to be better than this. All that discipline. And you can’t even—
“Shut up,” he muttered under his breath, but the words came out wrong, too loud, and a woman passing with a toddler shot him a strange look.
He didn’t care.
He checked the endcaps, the seasonal displays, the little stand with flowers near the entrance because you liked stopping there.
You weren’t there.
His breathing got thinner, shallower, each inhale less satisfying than the last. A tightness gathered behind his eyes, hot and humiliating, frustration swelling so quickly it scared him.
Not here. Not here. Not—
He crossed the store, his shoes squeaking on the polished floor. He passed a man in a dark coat who frowned at him. He ignored him. He rounded the corner into the makeup aisle and his chest seized.
Empty.
The shelves stretched out before him, neat rows of bottles and tubes and compacts reflecting the harsh light. A woman stood at the far end, examining a lipstick, but she had different hair. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
The frustration crested, crested, broke.
Tears pricked at his eyes, and he blinked furiously against them. His throat closed. His hands shook.
This was stupid.
This was—
Where the hell are you?
He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes until he saw stars. The pressure helped, briefly, grounding him in pain instead of panic. He counted to ten. Then to twenty.
He breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth, the way Mercer had taught him when he was thirteen and didn’t know how to exist without breaking things.
In through the nose. Out through the mouth. You’re in control, Dex. You’re always in control.
But the voice was quiet now, drowned out by the static.
He dropped his hands and looked up.
There.
The fruit and vegetable aisle. Eight feet away. Your back.
And everything stopped.
The world snapped into focus like a lens being adjusted. The lights dimmed to something bearable. The buzzing of the fluorescents faded to a dull hum.
A shock ran through his system, ice-cold and bracing, like being splashed with water in the middle of a fever dream.
His throat worked. He swallowed once, twice.
He dragged his eyes up, angry at himself and not angry at all. Angry that he couldn’t just walk up to you, couldn’t just be normal, couldn’t just—
His hands were still shaking.
His chest was still tight.
His breathing was still too shallow, too fast, each inhale catching on something sharp lodged in his lungs.
He was still falling apart, and you were right there, six feet away, squeezing pears and humming to music he couldn’t hear, and he couldn’t calm down.
The realisation hit him like a fist to his throat.
If he couldn’t pull himself together now, if he couldn’t drag his shattered pieces back into something resembling a whole person, he was going to have a full mental breakdown with you a few steps away from him.
He couldn’t let that happen.
He couldn’t.
He stood at the end of the aisle, frozen, his hands hanging uselessly at his sides, his heart hammering against his ribs, his eyes fixed on the curve of your spine and the gentle sway of your hips as you moved down the display.
And for a long, terrible moment, he didn’t know what to do.
The word nectarines repeated in his skull like a lifeline.
He didn’t know why that particular fruit had caught his attention—maybe because they were closest, maybe because they were red and blushing and reminded him of the colour your lips had been at the diner.
It didn’t matter. He grabbed one, then another, turning them over in his trembling hands pretending to inspect them.
Three steps away. You were three steps away.
Dex’s shoe scuffed against the linoleum as he adjusted his stance, positioning himself so he could see you in his peripheral vision without turning his head.
Look at something else. Let your eyes find the target naturally. But his eyes weren’t listening.
They kept sliding back to you, hungry and helpless, drinking in the curve of your hip where your sweatpants rode low.
He could smell you.
Estée Lauder. Beautiful Magnolia.
He knew the scent because he’d bought a bottle once, from a department store in Midtown, just to understand what it was that clung to your clothes and lingered in the air long after you’d passed.
He’d sprayed it on his pillow that night and buried his face in the fabric, breathing you in until the noise in his head quieted to a hum.
He inhaled now, deep and long, hoping it would do the same.
It didn’t.
His hands were still shaking. He could see the tremors as he turned a nectarine over, the fruit wobbling in his grip like he’d never held anything in his life.
Just breathe, Dex, Mercer whispered, but her voice was thin, frayed, like a recording stretched to breaking.
We don’t know how this got out, Hattley’s voice cut in, smooth and false, dripping with pity. We’re going to find out who leaked this.
His jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached.
He wanted to hit something. Wanted to drive his fist into the display of nectarines, into the wall, into his own skull if it would make them stop.
Stop. Stop. Stop.
He tried to focus on you. On the sound of your breathing. On the fact that this was the closest he’d been to you in years.
But nothing helped.
The voices swelled. The migraine throbbed. His hands shook. His chest constricted. And he was drowning, drowning, drowning in the fluorescent light of a grocery store—
“Excuse me.”
The world snapped into silence.
Dex’s head shot up so fast his neck cracked. His eyes found yours, and everything in him locked up like a circuit breaker tripping. You were looking at him.
He stared.
He blinked.
He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
The silence stretched, and your smile tightened at the edges, just slightly. You cleared your throat, shifting your weight, the picture of casual confidence.
“I don’t know if this is gonna sound a bit creepy,” you said, and your voice was smooth, rolling, the same voice he’d heard a thousand times in his memory, “but do I know you?”
His heart stopped.
Then restarted at double speed.
Say something. Say something normal. Say something human.
“I—” He cleared his throat. The sound was raw, scraping. He forced a smile onto his face, “I don’t think so.”
You tilted your head, studying him. “No, I do.”
There was no room for argument in your voice. No uncertainty.
He tilted his head, mirroring you. Let his eyes narrow slightly, as if he were searching his memory.
As if he didn’t have every moment he’d ever seen you catalogued and cross-referenced in his mind.
As if he wasn’t memorising the way the light caught in your hair, the faint sheen of gloss on your lips, the tiny beauty mark just above your collarbone.
You snapped your fingers, before pointing to yourself. “I used to work at this diner a few years ago. I don’t know if you know it—Bel Air Diner, maybe?”
He let the pause hang. Let his brow furrow. Let himself pretend, when all he wanted to do was reach out and touch you to make sure you were real.
“Bushwick?” he said finally, his voice steadier than he felt.
Your eyes lit up, and the sensation of seeing that, of being the cause of that light, was like injecting ecstasy straight into his veins.
“Yeah!” You nodded, your smile widening into something that crinkled the corners of your eyes. “The one on the corner of 9th Ave. That’s the one.”
Dex’s breath caught. He swallowed, trying to find his footing, trying to remember how to be a regular person, having a conversation with a woman who had no idea that she was the only thing that had kept him from falling apart for years.
“Yeah,” he said, and his voice cracked on the word. “Yeah, I remember.”
“But you don’t remember me?”
Dex blinked at you, the words landing like a slap he didn’t see coming.
For a long, terrible second, his brain seized, caught between the instinct to apologise and the dawning realisation that you were teasing him.
You were teasing him.
The corners of your mouth curved, and there it was, a glint in your eye, a playful tilt to your chin that he’d never seen before.
Not in all the hours he’d spent watching you. You were straightforward. Bold.
In his head, you were soft. Sweet. A little shy, maybe, the way you’d duck your head when a customer thanked you, the way you’d bite your lip when you were concentrating on an arrangement.
He’d built a version of you that was gentle and malleable, a fantasy that existed to be consumed, not to talk back.
“I’m kidding,” you said, after his silence stretched a beat too long. Like you could see him drowning and had thrown him a line.
He hated himself.
The feeling was familiar, worn smooth by years of repetition, but this was a fresh, raw kind of hatred that made his palms itch.
The Dex in his mind, the one he’d imagined a thousand times, would have had a smooth response ready. Would have leaned against the display, flashed a grin, said something that made you laugh.
That Dex was charming. That Dex was normal.
But that Dex wasn’t real. And the real Dex was standing here, sweat beading at his temples, hands shaking.
He scrambled, forcing a smile onto his face that he hoped read as charming rather than manic.
“No, no.” His voice came out too quick, too eager. He reined it in, softened his tone. “I do remember you now. I’m just surprised you remember me.”
You tilted your head smiling, and the movement pushed the apples of your cheeks up. God, you were beautiful.
“Can never forget a handsome face,” you said.
Handsome. She said handsome. She’s flirting with you. That’s what this is. Say something back. This is how it works. So do it.
But his brain was a white-noise void, every thought scattering like roaches in harsh light.
His smile felt brittle on his face, but he held it there, hoping you couldn’t see how badly his hands were shaking.
“Thank you,” he managed, and the words came out rough, almost shy.
He shifted the nectarine to his other hand, wiping his palm against his slacks in a motion he hoped looked casual. Then extended his hand.
“Dex.”
You smiled and told him your name. Like he didn’t already know it. Like he hadn’t whispered it into the dark of his apartment with his fist wrapped around his cock, gasping it into his pillow like a prayer.
Your hand slid into his.
The contact was electric. Your skin was warm, soft, impossibly real against his calloused palm.
He had to stop himself from closing his eyes, from letting the sensation wash over him and drown him.
Every nerve in his body screamed at him to pull you closer, to bring your hand to his mouth and press his lips to your knuckles, to your wrist, to the delicate skin where your pulse beat just beneath the surface.
Instead, he shook your hand once, twice, like a normal person, and let go before he did something he couldn’t take back.
“So, Dex,” you said, drawing his name out just slightly, testing it, like you were deciding whether you liked the way it felt on your tongue.
You had no idea he’d been waiting to hear you say it for years.
“What brings you to the supermarket at—” you glanced at your phone, then back at him, a small smile playing at your lips, “—seven pm on a Thursday.”
Simple question. Normal question. The kind of question one person asked another when they wanted to keep a conversation alive, when they wanted to prolong it.
And you hadn’t even seemed to notice that he had no shopping cart. No basket.
Just himself, standing here in the produce aisle like a man who’d wandered in off the street with no purpose other than to stare at fruit he had no intention of buying.
There was no way he could tell you the truth. That just hours ago he’d been framed by the FBI, scapegoated for an ambush he’d had no part in, cast out of the only identity he’d ever known.
That he’d spent the last hour spiraling in his car, hallucinating voices, pressing a gun to his own jaw before forcing it back into the glove compartment.
That he’d driven here not for groceries, but because your Thursday evening routine was the only fixed point left in his collapsing world.
He couldn’t say any of that.
So he said the first plausible thing that surfaced from the scrambled mess of his brain.
“End of the week,” he heard himself say instead. The words came out rough, but he pushed through. “But way less crowded on weekends.”
You raised your brows, a hint of a smile tugging at your lips. “So I guess I’m not original at all, huh?”
You were making a joke, and he’d walked right into it and now he was supposed to respond. Laugh. A laugh would be normal. People laughed at jokes. That was the expected behavior. He should laugh.
He made a sound that was supposed to be a chuckle but came out more like a choked exhale, his lips stretching into a smile that felt too wide, too stiff.
“Great minds think alike, I guess.” He tried for laid-back, tried to make his shoulders relax, but they stayed hunched, like he was bracing for impact.
You tilted your head, just slightly, and hummed in agreement.
And then there was a pause.
A little one, at first. The kind of pause that happens naturally in conversation, where one person waits for the other to speak next.
But it stretched. It grew. It filled the space between you like something physical, and Dex felt it pressing against his chest, tightening around his throat.
Say something. She’s waiting. She gave you an opening and now you’re letting it die.
But his mind was a blank wall.
He cleared his throat, the sound rough and too loud in the quiet aisle. “So, uh—” He glanced down at the nectarine in his hand, then back up at you. “You come here often?”
The words landed and he wanted to die. You come here often? That was the line he’d pulled from his brain.
The most generic, cliché, forgettable question in the history of human interaction. The kind of thing a mannequin would say if it were programmed to simulate human speech.
He braced for the look. The one that would say really? delivered with a curl of the lip, a shift of weight away from him. He’d seen that look on women’s faces before, when a man tried too hard or said the wrong thing.
So when you let out a laugh, genuine and surprised, it hit him like a punch to the chest.
You were laughing. At him, maybe, but not at him. With him. Like you found him funny, endearing even. Like his awkwardness wasn’t a turn-off but a joke you were both in on.
Dex felt his face go warm. He rubbed his brow, a nervous tick he couldn’t control, the heel of his hand pressing against his forehead as if he could massage away the embarrassment.
“Yeah, I heard it when I said it,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Sorry…”
He risked a glance at you through his fingers, and you were looking at him with an expression he didn’t recognise.
You looked like you were trying not to smile and failing, the corners of your mouth twitching upward.
His heart was hammering so hard he felt it in his throat, in his temples, in the tips of his fingers.
“I’ll give you a pass for now,” you said, a smile breaking through fully now.
Dex’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
Nothing came out.
He swallowed hard, his throat clicking. “Thanks,” he said again , the word barely above a whisper. “I—I’ll try to do better next time.”
You raised your brows again, but your smile didn’t shift. In fact, it seemed to deepen, the corners of your mouth curling with delight. “Next time?”
The question hung in the air, but to Dex it felt like a tightrope. One wrong step and he’d plummet.
He hoped to God you couldn’t see the sheen of sweat beading on his forehead, the way his pulse was visibly jumping in his throat.
Adapt. You have to adapt. She’s smooth, she’s quick, she’s going to eat you alive if you don’t keep up.
He forced his mouth into something resembling a smile, though it felt more like a grimace on the way up. “You’re the one who said for now.”
And that’s how Dex ended up with your number.
Thirty minutes earlier, Dex had been sitting in his car, the engine off. His spare gun had been in his lap, cold and heavy.
He’d pressed the muzzle against the soft skin under his chin, felt the metal dig in, tasted the copper of a future he’d almost chosen.
His career. His structure. His livelihood. His reputation. All of it gone, stripped away in a single afternoon by people who’d used him and discarded him like a broken tool.
One pull. That’s all it would have taken.
Now, driving home, the streets of New York blurring past his windshield in streaks of neon and headlights, Dex felt something he couldn’t name.
It wasn’t relief, exactly—the weight of what he’d almost done was still there.
But it was layered over with something else, something bright and unfamiliar, like sunlight breaking through clouds after a storm.
He kept glancing at his phone. It sat in the cupholder, screen dark, but he could feel it like a beacon. Your number.
Your number, given willingly, freely, without coercion or manipulation.
The thought made his chest ache, a dull, insistent pressure behind his ribs. He flexed his hands on the steering wheel, and let out a breath that was half-laugh, half-sob.
It was a high he’d never experienced before. And he was terrified of coming down.
He pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building, cut the engine, and sat there for a long moment, staring at his phone. The screen was dark, but he could still see your face, the memory of your smile burned into his eyelids.
And then his phone buzzed.
The screen lit up with a number he didn’t recognise, but the area code was familiar. New York. Manhattan.
He stared at it for three rings. Four. Five.
His thumb hovered over the decline button, but something made him pause. Something cold and familiar, settling in his gut like a stone.
He answered, “Hello.”
“When I was a boy…”
His skin wasn’t buzzing.
It was flaying itself from the bone, a high-frequency current ripping through every nerve ending until he couldn’t tell where the violence ended and his own body began.
The climb back through his window was a smear of pure sensation, the groan of the frame digging into his bruised ribs, the distant wail of a siren that might have been real or might have just been the echo of the screams still ricocheting inside his skull.
He tumbled into the living room, the red suit clinging to him like a second skin of sin and sweat, and the silence of his apartment hit him like a physical blow.
He spared a blank look at the microwave. 2:37 AM.
The high was curdling. The exquisite, crystalline purpose Fisk had injected into his veins was souring into a dense, suffocating fog.
The voices in his head were warping and overlapping, layered with the fresh screams of the people he’d just killed.
They weren’t separate voices anymore. They were a single, roaring static that made his skull feel too small for his brain.
He fumbled at the gloves, his fingers clumsy and uncoordinated, tearing at the constricting seams.
The helmet followed. The seal broke with a soft hiss of trapped breath, and the cool night air of the apartment hit the raw cuts on his cheekbone and split lip like a strip of litmus paper.
He wasn’t in control. He was a passenger, a ghost haunting a machine made of meat and bone.
The machine moved on autopilot, carrying him across the sticky floor through the debris of his life, toward his closet. His safe.
His fingers knew the combination better than his conscious mind. Beep. Beep. Beep. The door swung open.
Mercer’s tapes.
He reached for them, his fingers brushing the familiar edges, and he could already hear her voice in his memory. She would fix this.
She would rebuild the walls, draw the clean lines of the diagram, soothe the static into structured silence.
He paused.
The tapes felt dead in his hand. Cold. Alien. The thing inside him, that had killed tonight with a terrifyingly genuine grin splitting his face under the mask, revolted.
Structure was a cage. Control was a lie he told himself so he didn’t have to look at the abyss. Mercer’s voice was the voice of a woman who had never existed, a blueprint for a life he had never actually lived.
He didn’t want to be fixed tonight.
He wanted to be real.
He set the tapes down. The plastic clattered against the wood shelf, and the sound was a door slamming shut on his old self.
His body, no longer his to command, drifted to the phone on the nightstand. The screen was a blinding star in the gloom of his apartment.
Before he could rationalise the catastrophic stupidity of it, his thumb pressed the call button.
The phone pressed against his ear. The flat, electric hum of the dial tone filled his head.
First ring. A knife.
Second ring. His breathing turned ragged, harsh stabs of air in and out. He couldn’t control it.
His hand shook, the tremors traveling up his arm to his chest, making his heart rattle against his ribs.
Third ring. Where the fuck were you? The thought was a claw in his chest, desperate and raw, scratched out from the bottom of his fractured soul.
Fourth ring. Despair hit him like a bullet. The rejection he deserved. The silence he was born for.
His thumb was already moving to sever the connection, to retreat into the familiar dark, to let Mercer be the only voice he ever heard again.
The click.
A breath on the other end. The soft rustle of sheets. The sound of someone shifting out of sleep, pulling themselves back to consciousness for him.
A voice, sleepy and warm, cutting through the static in his soul.
“Hello?”
He opened his mouth to respond, but nothing came out. His throat had sealed itself shut, his tongue a dead weight.
The buzzing in his head didn’t stop, it changed, shifting from static into a high, thin whine of pure panic.
What the fuck was he doing?
He should hang up. He should hang up right now, pretend this never happened, crawl back to the tapes and let Mercer stitch him back together.
But he didn’t move.
“…hello?”
Your voice again. Groggy, yes, but there was an edge now. Caution. Awareness creeping in.
He could picture you propping yourself up on an elbow, squinting at the phone, trying to place the unknown number glowing in the dark.
He cleared his throat.
“Hi. It’s Dex.”
Silence. Long enough that he felt his stomach drop through the floor.
“From the grocery store,” he added, stupidly. “Earlier today.”
More silence. He counted the seconds. One. Two. Three. His heart was a jackhammer against his ribs, and he was suddenly, acutely aware of how insane this looked.
He had your number for less than twelve hours. He had called you at 2:37 AM. There was no version of this that didn’t make him seem unhinged.
Then your voice came through, softer now, a hint of recognition bleeding through the drowsiness.
“Oh. Guy from the fruit aisle.”
The words were flat, stripped of the teasing lilt from earlier. He winced. He was an idiot.
But he couldn’t hang up either.
“Yeah,” he said, and his voice cracked on the single syllable. He cleared his throat again, harder this time. “Sorry. I know it’s late. I—”
He stopped. Ran a hand through his damp, tangled hair. The words weren’t coming. They never came when he needed them. “I couldn’t sleep.”
A beat. Then, “You call everyone you meet at the grocery store when you can’t sleep?”
There it was. The faintest edge of something, not quite playfulness, but not hostility either. A testing of the waters. He latched onto it like a drowning man grabbing a rope.
“No,” he said, and the honesty slipped out before he could stop it. “Just you apparently.”
The silence that followed was different. Softer. He could hear the rustle of fabric on your end, like you were shifting, settling deeper into the conversation.
“You’re weird, you know that?” you said, but your voice had lost its wariness. There was a thread of amusement in it now.
“I know,” he said. He didn’t even try to deny it.
He could have left it there. Could have apologised again, said goodnight, let you go back to sleep.
But the buzzing in his head was quieter now, drowned out by the sound of your breathing on the other end of the line.
“I was wondering,” he started, and his mouth went dry again. He pushed through it. “If you’re free tomorrow. Or, I guess, today now. For dinner.”
The words came out rushed, jumbled together like he was afraid he’d lose his nerve if he didn’t get them all out at once.
He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the rejection.
Another long pause. Then, a soft, breathy sound that might have been a laugh.
“You’re asking me out at three in the morning?”
“Depends on if you say yes,” he said, and the words surprised him. They were smoother than he’d intended, a sliver of confidence he didn’t know he possessed.
Your laugh came through fully this time, quiet and warm, and something in his chest cracked open.
“That’s a good line,” you said. “You rehearse that?”
“No,” he admitted. “I’m kind of making this up as I go.”
“Pretty good for improv.”
He felt the corner of his mouth twitch, almost a smile. “Does that mean you’ll say yes?”
A beat. Then, “Depends on what you’re offering.”
He let out a breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding. His fingers tightened on the phone, grounding himself in the plastic and the warmth of your voice.
“Anything you want,” he said. And he meant it.
Dex prided himself on focus.
It was the cleanest thing he had, the discipline that held the loose pieces of him together. But here, across the table from you, that focus was a dead wire. Useless.
Ten minutes in and he still couldn’t land anywhere. His eyes kept skirting, from the deep crimson painted across your mouth to the sharp neckline of that tight black dress, down to where the fabric pulled across your chest.
He felt the heat crawl up the back of his neck, forced himself to your eyes instead. The dark liner made them bottomless, pulling at him with every slow blink.
His body was wired tight, locked up like he was bracing for impact. Every breath measured. Every movement too careful.
Terrified of the wrong word, the wrong look, shattering whatever luck had gotten you here.
You took a sip of your wine, watching him over the rim. Then you tilted your head, a smile catching at the corner of your mouth.
“Relax. You’re sitting like I’m gonna jump over this table and bite you.”
The image slid under his skin before he could stop it.
I’d let you, he thought. Anywhere you wanted.
He locked that down, managed a rough chuckle. “Still can’t wrap my head around why you said yes.”
You shrugged, setting the glass down. “Got nothing better to do. Thought I might as well get a free meal with a hot guy.”
Hot. You called him hot.
Then your eyes narrowed. “Unless you’re one of those guys who believe in fifty-fifty for the first date.”
The question caught him off guard. For a second, he just stared at you, his brain struggling to catch up. Then he let out a choked laugh, shaking his head quickly.
“No. No, god, no. I promise.”
“Good.”
Your voice softened into something warm, teasing. You leaned back in your chair, swirling the wine in your glass, and the candlelight caught the curve of your smile.
The waiter appeared and Dex grabbed the menu like a lifeline, staring at the words without reading them.
He nodded when you ordered, asked for the same thing. When the waiter left, you leaned forward, elbows on the table.
The neckline of your dress dipped just slightly, and he caught the black lace underneath.
Fuck. Were you doing this on purpose?
“So, Dex from the fruit aisle.” Your voice had dropped, stripped of the teasing edge from earlier. Something warmer now. “Tell me something about yourself.”
His stomach dropped. Just a flash. He pushed it down.
“I’m an FBI agent,” he said. Safe. Simple enough. “Or—was. It’s complicated.”
You raised an eyebrow. “Complicated how?”
“The kind that makes for a bad first date story.” He tried to smile. It came out crooked.
You laughed, and the sound loosened something tight in his chest. “Fair enough. I’ll take a rain check.”
He nodded, scrambling for footing. “What do you do?”
You rolled your eyes and he felt a flicker of panic before you huffed, amused. “Just a florist. Completely boring compared to chasing bad guys, I’m sure.”
There’s nothing boring about you. The thought hit him hard and fast, and he heard himself say it out loud before his brain could catch up. “There’s nothing boring about you.”
You let out a small laugh. “So you do know how to sweet talk a girl.”
He couldn’t hide the blush that crawled up his neck to his ears, burning against the collar of his shirt. “I’m just saying it how I see it.”
“Maybe,” you hummed, “but then again you don’t know anything about me.”
Never had he heard a more untrue statement in his life.
He knew your schedule. Your favourite coffee order. Your comfort shows you loved to binge. Which soap you preferred. Your go to nail colour. How you liked cats and dogs equally.
But he couldn’t say that. So he just looked at you across the table, watched the candlelight catch your eyes.
The food arrived. Steam rose from the plates between them, the scent of ginger and soy cutting through the moment. The waiter said something he didn’t catch.
“Well,” Dex murmured, “I’m hoping to learn if you’ll let me.”
Being here with you was something he had never experienced before.
The night before was a smear of violence but it all felt muted now, distant, like a transmission he couldn’t tune into anymore.
Not with you across the table, your voice cutting through the static in his head.
You kept the conversation easy. When he fumbled an answer or went quiet because his brain short-circuited trying to keep up with you, you didn’t pull back. You just smiled, shifted, let him find his footing again.
Once or twice he found himself wondering why you were even giving him a chance. You could have anyone. Smarter, smoother, someone without the weight he carried.
It made no sense that you’d picked him. Not that he’d let anyone else close enough to try, but the thought still lingered.
Still, there was a weight pressing down on him the whole time. A clock ticking. He felt it sharpest as the check arrived. Signing it, his stomach twisted into a knot so tight it made him nauseous.
The thought of leaving, of stepping into the cold air alone and watching you walk away, hollowed him out.
He could already feel the emptiness waiting. Maybe he’d just follow you home. Watch you through your window. It would be enough to comfort him.
“How are you getting home?” The words came out before he could stop them.
“Walked here,” you said, pulling out your lipstick. “Guess I’ll do the same.”
He watched your mouth as you reapplied it, the careful, practiced stroke of colour. He couldn’t look away.
“Let me drive you.”
You paused, the compact half-closed. Your eyes lifted to his, and he could see you weighing it, the stranger across from you, the risk of letting him know where you lived. The silence stretched. He felt the whole night teetering.
Fuck. He’d done too much. He ruined it. He’d pushed too hard, too fast, and now—
“Okay.”
It hit him somewhere between the Williamsburg Bridge and the mouth of your street, a strange hollow equation he couldn’t solve.
Away from you, the restlessness ate at him, he couldn’t settle, couldn’t quiet the noise inside his head.
But here, with you in the passenger seat, so close he could feel the warmth coming off your skin through the space between them, he wasn’t any better. His body was locked tight, every muscle braced for a mistake he hadn’t made yet.
He couldn’t stop glancing at you while he drove.
His hands were rigid on the steering wheel, knuckles pale in the passing streetlight. You leaned back in the seat, your head tilted, completely relaxed, watching the city slide past the window.
No tension in your shoulders. No flicker of anxiety. Just calm. It made him feel transparent, like you could see every loose wire and frayed thread in his head.
By the time he pulled up outside your building, his heart was beating so hard he could feel it in his throat, a quick, raw pulse that wouldn’t steady.
How had this happened so fast? He’d spent years wanting you, fantasising about you from a distance, and now that you were here, the wanting had twisted into a kind of fear.
The fear of doing something wrong. Of saying the wrong thing. Of breaking whatever fragile spell had let him into your space tonight.
You turned toward him. Your expression was different now. At dinner, your eyes had been sharp, playful, like a vixen toying with her prey.
But here, in the dim lamplight bleeding through the windshield, your lashes fluttered against your cheeks, and your gaze was wider, softer, something he didn’t have a name for.
“I had a good night,” you murmured.
Dex opened his mouth. His tongue felt thick, useless. “Me too.” It came out pitiful, barely a whisper.
You kept looking at him, waiting. Your lashes lowered, then lifted, like an invitation he couldn’t decode.
He stared back, frozen. Should he get out? Open your door? Walk you inside? He had no script for this, no smooth line rehearsed. His eyes drifted from yours to your parted lips. Red. Soft.
He was still scrambling through the noise in his head for the right move when your hand moved. It slid up the back of his head, fingers threading gently into his hair.
Before he could react, before his brain could catch up, you were pulling him forward.
Your lips met his.
For a long, heavy beat, Dex didn’t move.
His body locked up completely as the reality of your mouth sank in. You were kissing him. The thought cracked through the static in his brain like lightning. You. Kissing him.
Then instinct took over before he could wreck it. His lips started moving, awkward and unpracticed, trailing behind the rhythm you set.
A shaky breath left him, his shoulders dropping a fraction as he relaxed into the warmth of your mouth, the simple unimaginable fact of it.
Until he felt the wet tip of your tongue brush his bottom lip.
He tensed immediately. His eyes cracked open, found yours closed, your face slack and completely lost in it. He parted his lips. Let you in.
The second your tongues met, a raw sound caught in his throat. His cock hardened painfully behind his zipper, a rush of blood that made everything else go distant.
The taste of you flooded his senses, faintly sweet, the slick slide of your tongue against his. His brain went quiet for the first time all night.
Then something inside him snapped.
The careful, terrified version of himself fell away. He had to touch you. Now.
He pulled his hand off the wheel, lifted it. Fingers spread, hesitated. Your hair? Your waist? Your cheek? He had no idea what he was doing. Every option felt wrong, but doing nothing was unthinkable.
His palm landed on your throat before he could decide.
His fingers curved around the column of your neck, thumb settling against the flutter of your pulse. You moaned into his mouth, pleased and approving, and the sound shot straight through his chest. You liked it.
He pushed harder against your mouth, greedier. The hand on your throat tightened fractionally, pulling you closer across the console.
He didn’t care about breathing anymore.
The taste of you flooded every nerve in his body like a drug he’d been starving for his whole life. He’d rather suffocate against your mouth than take another clean breath of empty air.
Your hands found his jaw, and for a split second his brain screamed that you were pushing him away. Too rough. Too fast. He ruined it.
His grip started to loosen, a fresh wave of shame crawling up his throat—
But your fingers dug into his skin and pulled him closer.
The sound that left him was raw, almost animal. Relief and hunger tangled together as you yanked him deeper into the kiss.
Little noises escaped your mouth, muffled against his tongue, and he tried to memorise each one even as he lost himself in the wet slide of your lips.
His hand slid from your throat to your jaw, fingers curling around the bone, tilting your head back as he pushed further into your mouth.
His tongue swept against yours, messy and desperate. He didn’t know what he was doing, he just knew he needed more. He wanted to crawl inside your skin.
Then your palms pressed flat against his chest.
Push.
The separation hit him like cold water. He broke away gasping, and his mouth chased yours before he could stop himself. But you didn’t pull further back.
You caught his lips in soft, quick pecks, barely there, just enough to soothe the ache you’d left behind.
Your mouth brushed against his when you spoke, voice low and rough.
“Do you wanna come up?”
Fuck.
The words hit him square in the chest, then dropped lower, settling hot and heavy in his gut. He was already nodding before his brain caught up, pupils blown wide, lips wet and swollen.
“Yeah,” he breathed against your mouth, “Yeah. Fuck—yes.”
Dex’s pulse slammed against his ribs the second the lock clicked behind him.
Standing in your apartment. He forced his eyes to wander like he was stepping in here for the first time, even as his brain catalogued every detail against the map he’d already burned into his memory.
“Nice place.” The words scraped out of him, rough and distracted.
He tilted his head at the bookshelf, the framed photograph he knew was your mother, the throw blanket draped over the armchair that he’d watched you buy from a street vendor three months ago.
Every careful glance was a lie, but he wore it like a second skin.
“Thanks.” Your voice came from right behind him.
Then your hands were on him again, sliding over his shoulders, turning him around. He went without resistance, boneless under your touch. You pulled him down and met his lips halfway.
Your tongue pushed past his lips and he opened for you like a starving thing.
Your fingers twisted into his hair, yanking his head forward just enough to deepen the angle, and he let you. He’d let you do anything.
You bit his bottom lip, sucked it into your mouth, and his hips jerked forward involuntarily.
His hands began to move. Everywhere. Your waist, the dip of your spine, the swell of your hips.
He grabbed desperate handfuls of your ass, pulling you flush against him, and the heat of your body through that thin dress made his head spin.
You were soft in ways he’d only ever imagined, and his imagination had been thorough, but nothing prepared him for the reality of you pressed against his aching body. He wanted to touch every part of you at once, to map you entirely.
You broke the kiss first, panting, lips slick and swollen. Your forehead rested against his, your breath hot and uneven on his mouth. “I don’t do this often,” you murmured, the confession raw and almost shy.
“I know,” he breathed without thinking.
The second the words left him, he felt you stiffen. You pulled back, confusion knitting your brows. “What do you mean, you know?”
Dex’s stomach dropped into freefall.
His eyes snapped open, panic flooding his veins.
Fuck. Fuck.
He scrambled for a lifeline, his mouth opening and closing before the lie managed to crawl out. “I mean I—I know what you mean. Me too. I don’t—I don’t do this often either.”
You held his gaze for a long moment. The sharpness in your eyes softened, and you snorted, a puff of warm breath against his lips. “You’re so weird.”
Relief flooded him so fast it made him dizzy. Before he could dwell on it, you were kissing him again, swallowing whatever fragile composure he had left.
Your hands guided him backwards. He followed blindly, drunk on your mouth, stumbling until the back of his knees hit something soft. You shoved him. Hard.
He landed on the couch with a grunt, bouncing once before settling, looking up at you with wide, dazed eyes.
Before he could ask, you leaned down, bracing your hands on his knees, and kissed him again. Slow and deep, a thorough occupation of his mouth that erased every thought trying to surface.
He melted into it, his hands finding your thighs, stroking the warm skin exposed by the hem of your dress.
You broke the kiss gently, pulling back just enough that he could see you.
You were on her knees. Between his legs. Looking up at him through your lashes, your lipstick smudged, your hair loose around your face.
The sight of you there stole the air from his lungs.
“What—what are you doing?” Dex heard himself ask, his voice thin and wrecked, stripped of every layer he hid behind.
You smiled as your hands slid up his thighs, fingers pressing into the muscle.
“Having my dessert.”
Dex’s brain went completely blank when your fingers found his belt buckle. The soft click-clack of it coming undone rang through the room like a gunshot in his ears.
He opened his mouth to speak, to protest, to do something other than lie there like a trembling mess offering himself up to you, but all that came out was a strained, cracked confession,
“Are you sure—you-you don’t have to—”
His hips lifted off the couch cushions anyway.
A complete betrayal of every word coming out of his mouth. His body didn’t give a single fuck what his brain was trying to negotiate.
It wanted you. It had always wanted you.
You didn’t hesitate. You dragged his slacks and boxers down his thighs in one smooth motion, baring him completely to the warm air of your apartment.
He shivered, his cock springing free to slap against his stomach with a wet, heavy sound.
He was already painfully hard, leaking against his navel, the swollen head flushed dark and slick, and the sight of you looking at it made his stomach clench so hard he thought he might be sick.
Your hand wrapped around him like it belonged there. A firm grip that made him grunt, his hips bucking up into your fist before he could stop himself.
The heat of your palm was everything. He watched, completely mesmerised, as your thumb swept across the sensitive head, smearing the bead of pre-cum that had gathered there, using it to slick your stroke.
You looked up at him through your lashes, your mouth hovering inches from his tip.
Your breath was hot and uneven against his sensitive skin, and there was a tremor in your voice when you spoke that made his heart stutter in his chest.
“You don’t want me to suck your cock?”
Jesus Christ.
The visual was so fucking obscene, you, on your knees, looking up at him with those wide, innocent doe eyes while your hand worked his shaft and your lips hovered so close he could feel the ghost of them.
He had to lean his head back against the couch cushion and squeeze his eyes shut. He was going to cum just from looking at you.
A soft, dark laugh came from between his legs. “That wasn’t a no.”
Before he could answer, something wet touched him.
His eyes snapped open. He looked down just in time to see your tongue trace a slow path along the thick vein on the underside of his cock.
An embarrassing, needy whimper crawled out of his throat before he could strangle it. His hips twitched, desperate to push into the warmth of your mouth, but he held himself still by sheer, crumbling willpower.
You didn’t stop. You laid a soft, lingering kiss right on the crown, your lips parting just enough to ghost over the sensitive slit before pulling away.
When you looked up at him, your eyes were dark and hooded, your lips slick and parted.
“Keep your eyes on me, Dex.”
He nodded. A dumb, jerky motion. He didn’t trust his voice. He didn’t trust anything. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
You didn’t even have his cock in your mouth yet and he swore he could feel the pressure building at the base of his spine, coiling tighter with every second you held his gaze.
His hands fisted in the couch cushions, knuckles white. His breathing was ragged, each inhale a desperate gasp.
He clenched his jaw so hard his teeth ached, watching in rapt focus as you parted your lips and took the swollen crown of his cock into your mouth.
Your eyes stayed locked on his. You held his gaze as you sank deeper, inch by agonising inch.
The wet heat of your tongue curled around his shaft, the velvet pressure of your cheeks hollowing as you pulled him further into the slick, perfect heaven of your throat.
Every inch you swallowed made his hips twitch involuntarily against the cushions. Every flutter of your lashes made his stomach clench tighter. He couldn’t look away. He couldn’t.
Oh, fuck. Your mouth was so warm. So impossibly wet.
The slick slide of your tongue curling around his shaft, the flutter of your throat when the tip pressed against the back of your mouth, he didn’t think anything in this world could feel better than having his cock in your mouth.
He was certain of it. This was the single best moment of his entire miserable life. He was ready to die right here and call it a life well-lived.
You pulled back slowly, dragging your tongue along the thick, throbbing vein on the underside of his cock before taking him deep again with a low moan.
A broken whimper crawled out of his throat before he could clamp down on it. “Fuck—fuck, I can’t—” His voice was wrecked, barely more than a ragged whisper. “You gotta stop—or I’m gonna—”
You just hummed casually against his slick, swollen tip, your breath hot and uneven against his sensitive skin.
“No, no, wait—please, I want it to last,” he heard himself begging, the words tumbling out in a desperate, breathless rush. “I’m not gonna make it—I swear to God—”
You didn’t stop. You just held his gaze with those innocent, wicked eyes and took him deeper.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He was so fucking pathetic. Lasting like some inexperienced teenager, his first time all over again.
He tried to think of anything else; baseball statistics, the cold metal of his gun, the layout of the presidential hotel, but it was no fucking use at all.
Every nerve in his body was tuned to the wet slide of your mouth, the curl of your tongue, the soft, muffled gag when he hit the back of your throat.
He squeezed his eyes shut, could feel the frustrated tears prickling hot behind his lids. He couldn’t look at you anymore.
He had to stop himself, had to make this last, but his body was betraying him completely, trembling, arching, pushing deeper into your heat.
You took him back into your mouth in a single, fluid motion. Hollowed your cheeks. Pressed your tongue flat against the underside of his shaft.
And when you swallowed around the head of his cock, pulling him deeper into the wet velvet of your throat, he shattered completely.
“Oh fuck—I’m coming—”
His hips bucked involuntarily, driving himself deeper into your throat, feeling you gag around him, feeling your throat constrict and pulse as you swallowed, milking the orgasm out of him.
His release slammed into him like a freight train.
Hot, thick ropes of his come spilled into your mouth, and you swallowed around him, milking every drop, refusing to let him go even as he convulsed through the aftershocks.
His back arched off the cushions. His hands fisted so hard in the fabric he thought he might tear it. His vision whited out completely.
When his hips finally stopped stuttering, when his body went limp and trembling beneath you, you released him with a soft, wet kiss to his oversensitive tip.
The tenderness of it made his chest ache.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he felt himself mumbling, the words spilling out before he could stop them. “That was so fast—I couldn’t—I didn’t mean to—”
His hand came up to cover his face, shame and self-disgust crashing over him in waves.
But you wouldn’t let him hide. You caught his wrist, gently pulling his hand away, and crawled up his body.
Your lips were slick and swollen, your chin wet with him. You cut off his rambling apologies with a kiss, and his own taste flooded his senses. He groaned into your mouth, as your tongue played with his.
You broke the kiss just barely, your lips brushing against his as you murmured, “That was the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
He blinked up at you, dazed and trembling. “Yeah?”
You hummed against his lips, a slow, satisfied sound. “And I can’t wait for you to fuck me.”
The words hit him like a spark in a gas tank. The shame, the self-hate burned away in an instant, replaced by an animal surge of hunger.
He looked at you, still dazed, a slow, disbelieving smile pulling at his lips.
He still hadn’t ruined anything yet. He still hadn’t lost you.
His hands found your waist, gripping hard enough to bruise. Before you could react, he was moving, wrapping his arms around you and hauling you up with him.
You let out a surprised squeal, your legs wrapping around his waist instinctively.
He captured your mouth in a bruising kiss as he stood, walking blindly toward the hallway where he knew your bedroom was.
Dex lay perfectly still, afraid that even the smallest movement might shatter the fragile, impossible peace of the moment.
You were curled against him, your back pressed to his chest, your breathing slow and deep, the sound of someone completely and utterly spent.
He had never felt anything like this. Not once in thirty-two years. This is what it feels like. This quiet. This rightness. This terrifying, exhilarating certainty that he was exactly where he was supposed to be. Happiness.
His mind drifted back over the hours, replaying the sharp, vivid highlights like a film he couldn’t look away from.
He had learned so much about you tonight. How your breath hitched when he scraped his teeth along your pulse point. How your fingers twisted in the sheets when he found the perfect angle.
You loved being on your hands and knees for him. The first time, he’d followed your lead, sinking into you from behind, gripping your hips so hard he knew there would be bruises.
He pounded into you, watching your body rock forward with every thrust as you cried into your pillows, muffling your pleasure.
But something in him had itched. He hated it like this.
He couldn’t see your face. Couldn’t watch the expressions that flickered across your features when he hit that spot. Couldn’t feel your heartbeat against his chest or taste your moans with his own mouth.
It felt too much like taking, and not nearly enough like having you.
After you came the first time, your body shuddering and clenching around him, he pulled out before you could catch your breath and flipped you onto your back.
He needed to see you. Needed to watch the way your mouth fell open, the way your pupils blew wide when he settled between your thighs.
He buried his face between your legs and drank you in with a need that bordered on worship.
He lapped at your slick, swollen folds until your second orgasm crested, your hands fisting in his hair, your hips grinding against his mouth as you gasped his name into the dark.
By the time your third orgasm rolled through you, he had your legs wrapped high around his waist, his body pressed flush against yours.
He was buried so deep inside you that the world outside the space between your bodies ceased to exist. His nose touched yours. His forehead rested against yours.
He captured your gaze and held it hostage.
“Look at me,” he breathed, the command barely a whisper. “Don’t close your eyes. Look at me.”
He wanted you to see everything he had felt since the first moment he saw you in that diner. The obsession. The desperation. The hunger that had consumed him for years.
He wanted you to feel it in the way he moved inside you, as if he was trying to pour every ounce of himself directly into your bloodstream.
He knew you probably didn’t understand the full scope of it.
But lying here, in the aftermath, he let himself pretend. He pretended you had been waiting for him all this time. That your body recognised him. That this was always meant to happen.
When he finally let go, he held himself perfectly still, pumping his release deep inside you with a low groan.
He pressed so close that he could feel your heartbeat through his chest, grinding against you as if he could transfer his devotion through sheer physical proximity.
His nose stayed pressed to yours, his lips hovering just over your mouth, sharing the same warm, humid breath.
He whispered things against your lips. Broken things. Beautiful things.
Confessions that would never make sense in the harsh light of day, but here, in the dark, felt like the only truth that mattered.
“Been waiting so long. So long. I fucking worship you. You’re mine. I’m yours. Don’t ever leave me.”
His voice cracked on the last word. He didn’t care. He let himself be cracked open, let you see the raw, jagged edges of him that he had spent a lifetime hiding.
You didn’t answer. You probably didn’t even hear him. Your eyes had fluttered shut, your body going lax and heavy against him.
Lost to sleep. Lost to him.
He smiled against your hair, a real smile that softened all the hard lines of his face. He didn’t need you to answer. Not tonight.
Just having you here, warm and trusting and full of him, was already more than he ever dared to hope for.
The air in the room had cooled, but wrapped around you, he was warm for the first time in as long as he could remember.
Only twenty-four hours ago, he had been suffocating. Bound by rules and routines and the desperate need to keep himself contained.
But Fisk had shattered the cage he kept himself in. He had shown Dex a version of himself that was raw, hungry, and unapologetic. And instead of retreating from the wreckage, Dex had stepped into it.
He had let go of the ropes and the rules and the white-knuckled grip on control. He had chosen himself for the first time in his miserable, constrained life.
And by choosing himself, he had found the path that curved inevitably, beautifully, right back to you.
He pressed a soft, lingering kiss to the curve of your shoulder. His hand splayed across your stomach, feeling the warmth of you.
I did this, he thought, pride blooming in his chest. I chose this. I chose me. And it led me to you.
Dex buried his face in the curve of your neck, his nose pressing deep into the warm, sleep-soft skin just behind your ear.
He inhaled slowly, letting your scent flood his lungs. You smelled like home—the faint coconut trace of your shampoo, the salt of dried sweat from the hours you had spent tangled together, and something deeper, muskier, that was entirely, irrefutably you.
God. This was unbelievable.
And that was where his next problem laid.
He spared a glance down, past the rumpled sheet that clung to his hips, and saw the unmistakable tent of fabric where his cock had hardened again.
He let out a quiet, shaky breath, his eyes tracing the outline of his own need with a mixture of frustration and irritation.
He couldn’t fucking help it.
He felt like a kid in a candy store. The kid being him, a thirty-two-year-old man who had never known what it felt like to want something and actually get it. And the candy store was you. Access to your body.
The knowledge that he could touch you, taste you, sink into you whenever he wanted, and you would let him. You would want him to.
He had known it would be addictive. He just hadn’t realised how quickly the addiction would take hold, how it would wrap around his nervous system and tighten until he couldn’t think of anything else.
His body moved before his mind could catch up.
Spooned against you, chest to your back, he felt his hips roll forward in a slow, instinctive grind.
The thick length of him slid into the warm cradle between your thighs, pressing against the soft, slick heat of you through the sheet. A low sound caught in his throat, a choked half-groan that he swallowed against your skin.
Fuck. He should let you rest.
He had been so rough with you tonight. Your body had given him everything.You deserved sleep. You deserved peace.
But his cock didn’t give a shit about what you deserved.
Before he could stop himself, his hips rolled forward again, and this time the tip of him nudged past the edge of the sheet, finding the bare, wet seam of your cunt.
He gasped against your shoulder, his eyes squeezing shut. The slide of you against him was obscenely slick, unbearably warm, a friction so perfect it made his toes curl against the mattress.
Shit. You were still leaking him from earlier.
The evidence of what he had done to you was still there, pooled between your thighs, making you slick and ready for him all over again.
He pressed a quick, guilty kiss to your shoulder, his lips lingering just long enough to form a silent apology. I’m sorry. I can’t help it. I just... I need you. I can’t stop needing you.
His hand moved, sliding over the curve of your stomach, tracing the soft dip of your waist before cupping your breast.
The weight of it filled his palm perfectly, the flesh so soft and warm, molding against his fingers like it was made for him. He squeezed gently, then let his thumb drag across your nipple, feeling the peak tighten and pebble under his touch.
A small shift rippled through your body. A subtle arch of your spine. A soft, breathy sound that caught in your throat.
He froze.
Every muscle in his body locked tight. His breath stopped. His heart hammered against his ribs so hard he was sure it would wake you on its own. He waited, suspended in the pure terror of being caught.
She’s going to wake up. She’s going to see what I’m doing. She’s going to realise what a fucking creep I am—that I can’t keep my hands off her even when she’s asleep, that I’ve been watching her for years, that I am completely, irreparably obsessed with her.
The seconds stretched like hours.
But you didn’t wake. Your breathing deepened again, settling back into that slow, even rhythm. Your body relaxed against his, soft and trusting and completely oblivious to the war raging inside his chest.
He should have stopped. He should have been grateful for the reprieve, thanked whatever cruel god had given him this moment, and let you sleep.
Instead, he kept moving.
His hips resumed their slow, steady rhythm, grinding against your soaked cunt, the head of his cock sliding through the mess of his own release and your combined arousal.
The sensation was maddening; a wet, slippery tease that promised heaven without delivering it.
His hand stayed on your breast, rolling your nipple between his fingers, feeling the way your body responded even in sleep.
He pressed his lips to the back of your neck, a long, open-mouthed kiss that tasted of salt and skin. His breath came hot and uneven against your nape.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped against your skin, barely a whisper. “But I can’t... I can’t stop touching you. Every second I’m not inside you feels like I’m wasting time I don’t have.”
His hips rolled again, slower this time, deeper, the blunt tip of him catching at your entrance before sliding away, teasing both of you.
A shudder ran through his entire body.
“Please. Just a little more.”
The words slipped from Dex’s lips against the warm skin of your neck, a prayer offered to himself more than you, a plea for permission he was already taking.
He buried his face deeper into the crook of your shoulder, breathing you in until his lungs ached, and let his hips move.
There was nothing graceful about it. He rutted against you like a man possessed, the thick length of him sliding through the slick heat pooled between your thighs.
The sensation erased every rational thought. There was only you. The need to be inside you again. To own you. To fill you so completely that you couldn’t forget him, couldn’t leave him.
His breath came heavier against your nape, as his hand slid from your breast down to your stomach. He pressed his palm flat against the soft curve of your belly and pulled you tighter against him.
The arch of your back pressed your ass directly against his cock, and a fractured groan escaped him.
That’s when he felt it. A shift in your body. Your muscles tensed, your breathing changed, the subtle alertness of waking. Your voice cut through the dark, rough with sleep.
“Dex...?”
He froze for the span of a heartbeat. Then his hand came up to cradle your jaw, tilting your head back just enough for him to press a kiss to your cheek.
His hips never stopped their relentless grind, his cock catching at your entrance before sliding away again.
“Shhh,” he breathed against your ear. “Go back to sleep, honey. I’ve got you. Just let me stay right here.”
He needed you to stay in that space between dreaming and waking, where you were pliant and accepting and he could pretend his need wasn’t completely out of control.
But you turned your head toward him, your lips parting.
“Dex—”
He couldn’t let you finish. He kissed you, his tongue sliding into your mouth before you could form the rest of the sentence.
And you let him. No, you kissed him back. Your mouth softened under his, your body melting into his, your tongue meeting his with a lazy, sultry rhythm that told him everything he needed to know.
He felt your hand slide down between your bodies, your fingers searching blindly until they found him.
You traced the slick head of his cock, your touch featherlight, and a shudder ripped through him so violently he had to brace himself against the mattress.
“Fuck,” he gasped against your lips. His forehead dropped to yours, his breath ragged. “You want this too.”
You didn’t answer with words. You nudged the tip of him against your opening, a silent direction that drove the last shred of his restraint into the dust.
He answered with a small grunt as he pushed inside.
The heat of you swallowed him whole, and he dropped his forehead to yours, breathing you in. A soft, breathy moan escaped your lips, and your fingers curled against his back.
“Dex,” you murmured again, but this time it wasn’t a question. It was a sigh of surrender. A welcome.
He pressed another kiss to your mouth, before he began to move.
He tried to start slow. He tried to savour the sensation of sinking back into your slick heat. The attempt lasted only a handful of careful thrusts before the hunger surged through him.
His strokes turned hard and punishing. The rhythm of his hips fell into a desperate tempo that rocked the mattress beneath you, the steady thump-thump-thump of the headboard keeping time with the wild beating of his heart.
His hand slid up from your hip, fingers grazing the soft skin of your stomach, your ribs, before curling around your throat.
You looked up at him through heavy-lidded eyes, your pupils blown wide, your lips parted around soft, broken ah-ah-ah sounds that spilled from your throat with every deep thrust.
He leaned down, his mouth hovering over yours, and deliberately let a thick string of saliva fall into your open lips. He wanted more of himself inside you.
More of his taste, his mark, his presence seeping into every crevice of your body.
A low, guttural groan rumbled up from his chest as he watched you swallow it without hesitation, without question. Your throat worked under his palm, accepting him, taking him in, and the sight nearly sent him over the edge.
“Fuck,” he murmured against your lips, his balls slapping wetly against your ass as he drove into you harder. “You liked that, didn’t you? Touching you while you were asleep. Groping you. Fucking you like I own you.”
Despite the dazed pleasure softening your features, despite the way he was fucking the very thoughts out of your head, you still had the audacity to smile.
That slow, lazy, knowing curl of your lips that had haunted him since the first time he saw it. You hummed a soft, satisfied, “Uh huh.”
“Yeah,” he breathed, a fractured sound against your cheek.
He hooked your thigh higher over his arm, opening you wider, sinking deeper into your perfect, willing heat.
Your voice came out in fractured moans, but there was a teasing edge to it. “’S fucking hot. Knew you were a freak the second I saw you.”
Dex couldn’t help it. A laugh cracked out of him, low and disbelieving, pressed against the warmth of your cheek.
Here he was, balls deep in the object of a years-long obsession, and you were calling him a freak like it was the highest compliment.
The laugh faded into a shuddering exhale as he shifted his angle, driving into you with hard, deep thrusts that pushed the air from your lungs and left you gasping beneath him.
He wanted to leave a permanent mark on your soul. He wanted your cunt to remember the exact shape of him, the exact weight of him.
He wanted the memory of this night imprinted so deeply into your body that you would feel the ghost of him every time you closed your thighs.
He leaned down, lips brushing your ear, breath ragged and hot.
“I’m gonna make sure you never forget who you belong to.”
Your response came as fractured, desperate moans, words swallowed by the rhythm of his hips driving into you.
Without breaking pace, his hand moved. Two fingers pressed against your lips. You opened without hesitation, taking them into your mouth just as you took every part of him.
He pushed them deep, curling them against your tongue in perfect time with his thrusts, a double rhythm that had you moaning around his knuckles.
The sight of you like this; mouth full of him, cunt full of him, eyes glassy and fixed on his face, pushed him to the edge. He could feel the tension coiling tight in his gut, the familiar ache building at the base of his spine.
He was seconds away from coming. But he couldn’t. Not yet.
He needed you there first.
With a wet gasp from you, he pulled his fingers from your mouth, a string of saliva breaking between his skin and your lips. His hand dropped without hesitation, finding your clit.
He rubbed fast, precise circles against the swollen bud, his own rhythm faltering as he poured every ounce of focus into your pleasure.
His eyes locked onto your face. He watched every micro-expression. The furrow of your brows, the way your lips parted on sharp, punched-out breaths, the flutter of your lashes as pleasure overtook you.
You looked up at him, dazed and pleading, and he nodded like a man possessed, a dumb, frantic motion that matched the speed of his fingers.
“C’mon,” he breathed, the words cracking. “Let go f’me. Let go, baby.”
And you did.
The orgasm hit you like a wave, your back arching, your mouth opening in a loud moan. Dex felt it, the way your cunt clenched around him, choked him, milked him.
The sensation ripped a loud, guttural groan from his chest, his hips stuttering as he followed you over the edge. He closed his eyes, the world going white, and let himself go.
Deep, pulsing spurts of cum filled you, and he thrust into you with every wave, pushing himself as deep as he could go, holding himself there, making sure every drop stayed inside you.
When it was over, the room was filled with nothing but harsh, shared breaths.
He collapsed against you, his full weight pressing you into the mattress. He made no move to pull out. No move to let you go. He stayed buried inside you, as close as flesh could get.
“Jesus Christ,” you murmured in a daze, the words barely a whisper.
The silence that followed was a dangerous thing. It let the thoughts back in. The insecurity. The horrible, gnawing fear that he had done too much.
He pressed his face into the curve of your neck, hiding, breathing you in until his lungs ached. His voice was rough, muffled against your skin.
“Too much?”
A beat. Then your hand, slow and heavy with exhaustion, slid into his hair. You laughed, soft and drowsy.
“No.” A pause. “By all means... keep me in your basement if you want.”
Dex’s eyes snapped open.
The joke hung in the air, clearly just a sleepy, affectionate jab. But he didn’t hear the joke.
He heard the offer.
Having you to himself. Forever. In a place where no one else could touch you, see you, take you. A place where you were his, every single moment of every single day.
And if you wanted it... if you offered it up with that same trust you gave him your body, your mouth, your cunt...
Then why the fuck wouldn’t he do it?
He lifted his head slowly, looking down at your face. You were half-asleep, lips curved in a soft sex-dazed smile. You had no idea what you had just given him.
His voice dropped, quiet and raw. Completely serious.
“Yeah?”
Your lashes fluttered. You hummed, already drifting back into sleep, but the sound was an affirmation. A yes.
His hand slid up, cupping your jaw, tilting your face toward his. His thumb traced your cheekbone, and when he spoke, the words were a vow pressed against your lips.
“Then I’m never letting you go.”
a/n | dex feeling absolutely blessed and a surreality of being seen and chosen by you, meanwhile reader is just a youngho and overly horny
summary: a non-linear series of short fics detailing the trajectory of your relationship with andrew (can be read in any order)
wc: 12.9k (so far)
warnings: light kissing, fluff, jealousy (dilemma over an age gap moreso), punching a wall, tending to wounds, switch!andrew and reader (but very much dom!andrew mostly, he just needs assurance), oral (m!recieving), good boy, fingering, coming untouched, one mention of good girl, hurt/comfort, yearning, getting high, shotgunning, dryhumping, fingers in his mouth, coming in pants, lots of praise
sticky sweet, tangerine - honeybee (month 7)
andrew cody has never been a man who smiles, not until you started waking him up by littering kisses onto every freckle on his face.
you plus me equals a heart forever - u + me = <3 (month 3)
andrew asks about your tattoos, before confessing he'd have you etched onto his skin forever.
my head is full of poison - the cure (month 5)
andrew sees you talking to j and spirals, letting the poison spill out as words he can't take back.
it clings to my bones - cigarette smoke (month 2)
you and andrew get high together, and somewhere between shotgunning and light touches, you end in his lap, kissing for the first time (among other things).
wip:
a local grocery store and a favourite florist - purple (month 1)
andrew bumps into you in the cereal aisle and against all odds, it ends up changing his life (the story of how he met you).
i'm an anchor in the ocean - begged (month 4)
andrew gets a palm reading from you, but while tracing his lines, your own secrets begin to spill out (tw: sh).
you're so so pretty boy - drop dead (month 6)
you and andrew have sex for the first time.
you're a spark in the dark - stupid song (month 12)
andrew starts carrying a ring around long before he works up the courage to ask the question.
this is super self-indulgent and reader is alt-coded and yes i am aware some of the songs don't match the situation but the TITLE does okay i really tried (trying to cope with finishing animal kingdom)... anyways will try to do a fic a week mwah
❝ Don't you feel like crying? Well, here I am, baby.
Come on, cry to me. ❞
You stopped him before he could say it. It took a bleeding heart to shout it for you.
— pairing: Kyle Garrick × fem!medic!Reader
— cw: 18+ | friends to lovers; mutual pining; angst; hurt/comfort; graphic depictions of battlefield medicine/injuries; smut; fluff; wc: 6k
author's note: Inspired by "Cry to Me" by Solomon Burke (and that one scene in Dirty Dancing…)
You meet Kyle Garrick on one of the worst days of his life.
That's an exaggeration—he'd tell you so himself later, with that easy grin and a dismissive wave—but in the moment, lying on a stretcher with a piece of shrapnel the size of a two-pence coin lodged in his left shoulder and a look on his face like he's more annoyed than injured, it certainly seems like a contender.
"Don't move," you tell him, snapping on a fresh pair of gloves as the medivac shudders and banks.
"Wasn't planning on it," he replies through gritted teeth, and then, because apparently, he's incapable of not being charming even while slowly bleeding out.
"You always this bossy, or am I special?"
"Just for the ones who are too stupid to duck."
He laughs a short, startled bark that immediately turns into a groan when the movement jostles his shoulder too much, so you press your palm flat against his chest and push him back down firmly.
"Don't bloody move, Sergeant."
He groans in pain and obeys. "Yes, ma'am."
Then his eyes find yours; warm, hazelnut brown, and sharp with pain but alert, and he holds your gaze for a beat longer than necessary until you look away first.
And you start working on his wound, cleaning it with a gentleness that you usually have no time to spare.
That's how it starts.
The friendship builds the way military friendships do, namely in proximity and repetition, in shared meals and overlapping schedules and the intimacy of being two people who exist in the same small ecosystem of a forward operating base.
You're not 141—not technically.
You're attached to the medical unit that supports their operations, one of a handful of combat medics who rotate through depending on the mission profile. But somehow, Kyle Garrick's name keeps appearing on the ops you're assigned to, and somehow, he keeps finding his way to your table in the mess until the space next to you becomes his space without anyone deciding it should be.
He brings you tea. Not regularly or performatively, but on the mornings after bad nights, the kind where you've been elbow-deep in someone's chest cavity for hours and the adrenaline crash leaves you hollowed out and shaking at four a.m. And he doesn't say anything about it. Just appears with two mugs, sits down, and talks about something mundane like football scores, a podcast he's been listening to, and the ongoing sad saga of Soap trying to grow a moustache, until the tremor in your hands eases and you can hold the mug without spilling.
You learn Kyle in fragments.
He's from London—Battersea, specifically, which he brings up with a particular local pride. That he reads more than anyone else on the team and never talks about it unless you ask, and that he can cook, properly cook, not just the sad bachelor reheating that passes for cuisine among most of the men on base. And that he calls his mum every Sunday without fail, even from a FOB in the middle of nowhere, even if the connection is shit and they spend half the call saying, “You're breaking up,” at each other.
However, the fact that he looks at you differently than he looks at anyone else, that he keeps to himself.
But you notice it anyway, the way you notice a change in a patient's vitals before any machine can tell you—gradually, then all at once.
How his eyes track you across a room; how his voice shifts when he talks to you—softer, lower, a register reserved exclusively for your frequency, and the way his hand lands on the small of your back when you're walking through a crowded corridor and stays there a beat too long, warm through your shirt. And neither of you mentions it.
Then again, you don't mention a lot of things.
The rule is established on a Tuesday night in a shipping container that serves as a break room, four months into whatever this is.
You're sitting on the floor with your back against a supply crate, sharing a bag of crisps and a companionable silence. Kyle is beside you; close enough that his shoulder presses against yours and you can feel the warmth radiating off his body while you're watching him read something on his phone.
The blue light catches the profile of his face, and the thought that surfaces in your chest is so sudden and so clear that it knocks the breath out of you momentarily.
I could love you so easily it terrifies me.
Kyle looks up, catches your expression, and whatever you let slip onto your face in that unguarded second makes something in his eyes shift and crack open. He turns towards you, and you can practically see the words forming on his lips, can feel the entire trajectory of what's about to happen.
"Don't."
He stops, closes his mouth. Your heart stutters.
"Don't say it, Kyle."
Silence follows. Not uncomfortable or confused. Kyle knows exactly what you're asking. His jaw works, his eyes search your face, and you watch him weigh the cost of obedience against the cost of defiance.
"Why?" he asks eventually.
Because if you say it, I'll have to fucking feel it and it will distract me and I can't fucking allow that. I can't do my fucking job if I'm worrying about whether you're coming back to me. Because I've watched women lose men in this line of work and I've seen what it fucking does to them and I can't. I fucking can't, Kyle.
Your face stays neutral and then you don't say any of that; you merely look at him, and despite your charade, he reads it on your face the way he is trained to read hidden clues.
"Okay," he breathes and his shoulders slump some, but you have to ignore it.
And that's it. Okay.
He goes back to his phone. His shoulder stays pressed against yours. The bag of crisps sits between you, and after a minute, his hand dips in and retrieves one, and the crunch of it in the silence is so absurdly normal that you almost laugh.
Kyle never says it.
He doesn't need to, because it's in every cup of tea, every quiet walk, every time his eyes find you across a crowded room and stay. It's said in the space he keeps beside him that is always yours; in the way he says your name and makes it sound like the answer to a question he's been carrying for years.
Kyle looks at you like you're the sun, and he never says a word, and you keep pretending you’re not the one burning.
The op goes sideways at 0344 hrs, and you're not even supposed to be this close to the action.
The medical station is set up two hundred metres back from the primary assault position, behind a concrete barrier wall that provides decent cover and a clear line to the extraction point.
You've done this before—dozens of times, probably more. All the waiting, the radio chatter, the controlled calm of a medical team standing by while operators do what operators do.
Then the radio crackles with a voice you don't recognise, young and tight with panic, calling for a medic, and you're moving before the call sign finishes.
The rookie's name is Leon. Lance Corporal. Twenty-two, maybe twenty-three; you don't ask, because asking how old they are makes it worse when it goes bad. He's lying on his side behind a low wall, and there's blood—too much blood, dark and arterial, soaking through his fatigues and pooling beneath him on the packed dirt.
You drop to your knees beside him, and your hands are already moving; pulling your gloves on and shears out, eyes flickering and assessing while your voice does the thing it always does, shifting into that calm, steady register that has nothing to do with how you feel and everything to do with what he needs.
"Leon, I'm here. You're alright. I've got you."
"Hey—h-hey, Doc—" He's talking. Talking is good. It means conscious, means his airway is free, and that means precious time. His voice is thin and reedy, in shock, but he's trying to grin, and the sight of it—this young man, someone’s boy, grinning up at you with blood on his teeth—makes something behind your sternum compress.
"Y're pretty," he slurs. "Has anyone—has anyone told y-you that?"
You pull your gloves on, snapping them in place. "Save it, Casanova. I need you to stay still."
"'M just saying—" He coughs, winces, keeps going because they always keep going. "If I'd known the medic was this fit,” he tries to lift his hand to gesture, but drops it with a guttural groan, “I would've—would've gotten shot sooner."
"Hilarious. Now don't move."
You're cutting his fatigues open, working fast, locating the source of the bleeding. Lower abdomen, right side, bad but not the worst you've seen. And when his hand suddenly does come up, it’s to catch your wrist in a weak grip.
He’s trembling, but insistent.
"C-careful," he sputters, and his eyes, so wide and glassy, scared beneath the bravado, flicker down to his chest. "Careful with—be careful with my heart."
You pause to look at him.
His hand releases your wrist and pats clumsily at his breast until it finds his chest pocket, just above the body armour line, and you can see the edge of it poking out. A photograph. A Polaroid, slightly bent and stained, tucked against his chest like a talisman.
"My girl," he mumbles, and his grin softens into something private and unbearably young. "That's—that's m-my girl in there. Don't let it—Don't get blood on it, aye? She'll—she'll kill me—"
Your hands don't stop. They never truly stop. You reach into his pocket with two fingers, extract the Polaroid, and tuck it safely into your own vest without looking at it, because if you look at it, you'll see a face, and if you see a face, you'll think about someone waiting at home for a phone call, and if you think about that it will stay with you.
"Safe with me," you assure him, and your voice doesn't waver, because it can't.
"Cheers, Doc." His eyes are drifting. "You're—You're proper lovely, y’know that? My mum would—my mum—"
"Stay with me, Corporal. Eyes open. On me."
You work efficiently; packing the wound, applying pressure, calling for the stretcher team, and relaying vitals in the clipped shorthand of someone who has done this too many times. All while Leon keeps talking about his girlfriend, his mum, and the puppy he's going to get when he's out, and you let him, because the talking means he's alive and the noise means you don't have to think.
You hand him off to the stretcher team eleven minutes after you reached him. He'll live. The wound is ugly but the bleed is controlled and he'll make it to the surgical team and he'll live, and you stand up and your gloves are soaked and there's blood on your knees and the Polaroid is still in your vest pocket, pressed against your chest.
Be careful with my heart.
You walk behind the barrier wall. You make it four steps before your legs give out.
It's not the blood. You can handle the blood. It's not the fear, you manage the fear, that's the job.
It's the fucking Polaroid.
It's this kid—this stupid, brave, terrified kid—lying in the dirt with his insides trying to escape and his only concern being a photograph of a girl who's probably sitting in a flat somewhere right now, watching telly, not knowing, not feeling it yet, the way she will when the call comes, the way she'll carry it for the rest of her life even though he'll live, because now she'll know how close she came to a world without him in it.
And you think about Kyle.
The looks you share and rules you’ve set; the metaphorical photograph you've been carrying in your own chest pocket.
What if it was him on that stretcher? What if it was his blood on your gloves?
What if the last thing he said to you was your name and he never got to say the rest because you told him not to?
Your breath hitches while your vision blurs. And your hands, usually so steady and reliable, are trembling so badly you must press them flat against the concrete wall to keep them still.
"Hey."
You flinch at Kyle's sudden voice behind you. He must have come to find you first after falling back with his comrades. Always seeking you out, even in the middle of a warzone.
You hear his boots on the gravel, the careful approach, and you know without turning around that his face will be open and concerned, and you cannot look at it right now.
"Don't."
The word comes out sharp, like a warning shot fired from a position that's already been overrun.
His footsteps stop.
"Don't—come closer. Don't—I'm fine, Kyle, I'm—"
Your voice breaks on his name, shatters like glass in your mouth, and the silence that follows is awful and filled with everything you've been refusing to say for months.
Kyle doesn't come closer, but he doesn't leave, either. You can hear his long exhale as he waits at a distance of three feet behind you.
And you press your forehead against the concrete wall, not crying but swallowing against the lump in your throat, because if you start you know you won't be able to stop.
Instead, you breathe, counting, pulling yourself together because this is hardly the place. And then you straighten up, strip off your soiled gloves, stuff them in the waste bag at your hip, and walk past him without meeting his eyes.
"I'm fine," you say again.
Kyle doesn't answer, but you feel his gaze on your back all the way to the medical station, infuriatingly warm and steady.
Two days later, they’re stateside again.
It's half-nine in the evening and Kyle is sitting on his sofa in his flat, wearing grey joggers and a t-shirt, not doing any of the things he normally does to decompress after deployment. He's just sitting, one arm along the back of the sofa, staring at nothing, turning a thought repeatedly in his head like a stone in his palm.
The radio is on. It's always on nowadays. The flat is too quiet without it, the silence too close to the kind of silence you sit in on a rooftop at two a.m. waiting for a target to emerge. It’s set on some station that plays a mix of old soul and R&B that he doesn't actively listen to but lets wash over him like white noise.
His phone buzzes with a message from Soap.
kid's stable. docs say full recovery. told him you said cheers.
And Kyle types back: Good. Thanks.
Three dots. Soap is typing. Kyle watches them pulse.
you alright mate?
Yeah. Why?
didnt seem alright on the flight back. neither did she.
Kyle stares at the screen while the cursor keeps blinking in the empty reply field.
whats going on between you 2?
He could answer that, type the ugly truth, and tell his best mate that he loves her and she won't let him say it and two days ago she nearly broke in front of him and he had to stand there and watch, but the words look kind of wrong on a screen. Impersonal. They look wrong everywhere Kyle has come to realize lately. They've been sitting inside his chest for so long they've calcified, become part of the architecture, load-bearing walls he can't remove without the whole structure coming down.
Nothing, he replies and sets the phone face-down on the cushion beside him.
And it's so far from nothing that the word feels like a lie in a foreign language, technically incorrect but functionally necessary.
He thinks about the wall, and you pressed against it; your forehead bowed against concrete, your hands shaking for the first time since he's known you. You looked like a woman who was coming apart at the seams, and something is burning behind his chest to know why, because it’s not about that young soldier. Partially, maybe.
And then Kyle ponders about the fact that you walked past him afterwards and said, “I'm fine,” in a voice that was the exact opposite of fine, and he let you go, because that's the deal. That's the bloody rule. You drew the line months ago, he is staying behind it like an obedient little soldier, and he watched you walk away and he didn’t follow.
And he's so fucking tired of not following, but it seems to be the only way to even keep you around.
Kyle drops his head back against the sofa and closes his eyes. The radio murmurs something slow and warm into the dim flat, and the candle on the coffee table that you gifted him some time ago flickers in the draft from the cracked window.
He should sleep, eat something, and call his mum, who will hear it in his voice immediately and ask what's wrong and he'll say nothing again, and she won't believe him, but she'll let it go.
Instead, he sits in the semi-dark and the candlelight and the quiet music and he thinks about you, the way he's been thinking about you for too damn long. Since that day he found himself with a bullet hole on a stretcher, looking up at you for the first time like he was seeing an angel.
His phone buzzes again, but he doesn’t check it.
A few seconds later, there is a knock at his front door. Soft, almost reserved, like the person isn’t sure if they want the door to be opened.
Kyle's eyes open and his heart does something hopeful before he gets up and crosses the flat, floorboards warm under his bare feet. And when he reaches for the door handle, unlocking and opening the door, you’re suddenly standing on his doorstep, looking like you haven't slept.
You're in civvies, hair undone in a way he's rarely seen with shadows under your eyes and a tightness around your mouth that he recognises as the last line of defence before something collapses entirely.
Your head tips back to meet his gaze and his eyes lock on yours while the radio plays softly behind him, and the candlelight throws warm amber across the hallway, and the summer air drifts through the cracked window carrying the smell of cut grass and distant rain.
"I don't know how to do this," you admit suddenly, and your voice is so small that he barely recognizes it from the usual commanding and steady tone you use in the field.
And Kyle doesn't speak, because he doesn’t trust himself not to break this fragile moment, so he holds your gaze for one long, careful moment, and steps aside to give you the option.
The door opens wider. The warmth of his flat presses out towards you; cedar candle, the low murmur of the radio, the quiet of a space that belongs to someone who keeps it tidy because chaos fills enough of his life elsewhere, and you look at the open doorway, then back at him, standing beside it, ever the patient friend who says nothing because you told him to.
You walk inside, passing him tentatively.
The flat is warmer than the night outside, dimmer. The overhead light is off; just the candle on the coffee table and another on the kitchen counter, casting everything in a soft, amber glow that smooths the edges of the furniture and catches in Kyle's eyes when he turns to face you.
"Tea?" he asks, already moving towards the kitchen, because this is what he does. This is the language he speaks when words aren't enough. Acts of quiet service, offered without ceremony.
"I don't want tea."
He stops; his back is to you, and you can see the line of his shoulders through his t-shirt, the tension he's holding there carefully the way he holds everything, and he turns around slowly.
"Okay," he says. "What do you want then?"
The question is simple and open, contains no pressure and no presumption, and it nearly undoes you on the spot, because Kyle Garrick has been asking you this question in a hundred different ways for over a year and this is the first time you're going to answer it honestly.
"I don't want to talk about what happened."
"Alright."
"I don't want to," you inhale, make a vague gesture which makes it clear that you’re currently just winging it like he is, "debrief, or process, or—"
Kyle nods, his brows set in focus. "Alright."
"I want—" Your voice catches as you look at him properly, standing in his kitchen in joggers and bare feet, candlelight warm on his skin, watching you with those steady brown eyes that have never, looked at you with anything less than complete, unwavering attention, and the thing inside you that's been holding, holding, holding for months finally gives.
Your shoulders sag as you deflate in surrender. "Kyle… I want you."
Those words fall into the space between you, and the radio fills the silence that follows—some song fading out, a beat of static, and then the opening notes of something slow and aching, a voice you recognise, deep and rich and full of longing.
…When your baby leaves you all alone…
Kyle's expression doesn't change; doesn't light up in triumph or crack into relief. He just looks at you, and his eyes are so warm, so full, that you understand, suddenly, what it must have cost him—all those months of silence, of holding the shape of this feeling without being allowed to name it.
…And nobody calls you on the phone…
You cross the kitchen towards him, drawn in like a magnet who has finally been let go, until you're standing close enough to feel the heat radiating off his chest and see the way his breathing has changed to something deeper and deliberately controlled.
Your hands come up slowly, like you're approaching an animal that might startle, except the only thing that might startle here is you. Your fingers brush the sides of his neck, trail up to his stubbled jaw, and your arms loop loosely around his neck, your wrists crossing behind his head.
…Don't you feel like crying? Well, here I am, baby…
Kyle's hands find your waist; tentative like a question at first, and then settling, his palms warm and solid against the fabric of your jumper, thumbs pressing gently against your ribs.
You sway together. It's not a dance, not really—there's no rhythm to it, no form, just two bodies finding each other in a dim kitchen and moving because standing still feels impossible. Then his forehead tips down to meet yours, and your noses brush, and you breathe the same air, and the song washes over both of you like warm water.
…Come on, cry to me…
"Be careful with my heart," you whisper.
His hands tighten on your waist, a fractional compression, like a held breath.
"Always," he replies, and his voice is rough and low, barely more than an exhale, and he means it the way he means everything he was allowed to say to you—completely, without reservation and caveat.
You allow yourself to kiss him.
And it's not the desperate, hungry collision you expected—not the dam breaking and the flood taking you both. It's slow, careful. His lips meet yours softly, like he's memorising the shape of you in case you change your mind again, and then his hand slides up from your waist to the side of your neck, his thumb against your jaw, tilting your head just slightly, and he deepens it; more present and intentional. The kind of kiss that tells you he has been thinking about exactly this for a very long time and he isn’t going to rush a single second of it.
You melt into him. Your fingers brush over the short hair at the back of his head and his arm wraps around your lower back, pulling you flush against him, and the sound he makes vibrates against your lips and settles somewhere deep in your chest.
"Kyle—"
"I know, babygirl." His mouth moves to your jaw, your neck, pressing slow, open kisses against the skin there. "I know."
He doesn't say the thing he wasn’t allowed to say before. Even now, even with your body finally pressed against his like this, he doesn't say it yet, because you told him not to, and he's a man who keeps his word, even when keeping it is killing him inside.
"You can say it," you whisper against his temple frantically as if you might be running out of time now. "Kyle. You can say it."
He pulls back, studies you, and the expression on his face, the sheer, unbearable relief of someone who's been holding a breath for over a year, makes your eyes sting.
But Kyle doesn't say it with words.
He says it by lifting you with his hands under your thighs and carrying you down the short hallway to his bedroom, where the window is cracked open and the cream curtains shift in the warm summer breeze and the sheets on his bed are clean, cool, and tucked into the corners with military precision like everything else in his flat.
He lays you down like you're precious; someone he's been trusted with and intends to deserve.
"Tell me if it's too much," he murmurs, kneeling over you, and his hands are trembling as he reaches for the hem of your jumper.
You blink up at him, heart fluttering with sweet anticipation. "It's not too much."
And his eyes soften at your reaction when he notices your pulse thudding in your neck. "Tell me anyway."
He pulls the jumper over your head slowly, his eyes travel over you, drinking you in, and the weight of his attention is heavier and warmer than any touch.
"You're—" he starts, stops and shakes his head like he cannot quite fathom what he is seeing, and a breath that might be a laugh escapes him. "Christ."
"Eloquent."
"Shut up." He's smiling now, that private, soft smile that he only ever gives to you, and he dips his head and presses his mouth to the hollow of your throat while you arch into it, your hands gripping his broad shoulders.
He undresses you slowly, treating every piece of clothing removed with the same care, the same deliberate attention; his mouth following his hands, pressing kisses to your collarbone, the curve of your shoulder, the inside of your wrist. When he pulls his own shirt over his head, you reach for him immediately, clammy palms flat against his chest, feeling the steady thud of his heart beneath heated skin.
"Kyle." Your voice is barely there. "Please."
He settles between your thighs, and the solid weight of him makes something deep and yearning in your chest crack open and spill over at last.
His mouth finds yours again, slow and thorough and devastating; his tongue sliding against yours as his hand trails down between your bodies, his fingers brushing against your cotton panties where you're already wet and wanting, and the sound you make into his mouth is small and desperate, and nothing like the woman who holds men together on battlefields.
"I've got you," he murmurs, and his fingers move over the damp fabric; slow circles, gentle pressure, learning you slowly until your back arches and your face is hot.
Then his fingers hook under the edge of your waistband to slide your panties off and leave you bare.
When your legs part wider for him, Kyle nuzzles the crease at the apex of your thigh, inhaling your scent deeply while a shudder ripples through his body.
"You smell incredible," he groans shamelessly, and before you can get flustered, his tongue flicks out to taste your swollen clit and the keen you let out makes him curse again. "Fuck. And you taste even better."
Your eyes roll back when Kyle starts licking you in earnest; sucking your clit between his supple lips, flickering his tongue against the sensitive pearl and slipping one, then two fingers inside until your hips buck and you come beneath his tongue with a moan that dissolves into a drawn-out sigh.
"Kyle," you mewl needily, and he understands immediately.
The aching and yearning, and the knowledge that you’re finally allowed to get and take what you have been craving for so long. It’s as exhilarating as it is dizzying.
He presses the softest kiss to the tuft of hair on your mound before crawling up your body with a look of purest devotion and hunger in his eyes that causes your breath to stutter.
You sit up to help him slide his joggers off, and when you realize that he was going commando all this time, your lashes flutter at the sight of his cock. Long, uncut, and thick, slightly curved upward, a vein throbbing along the underside of his shaft, with velvety skin and his fat tip flushed mauve.
"Bloody hell, Kyle."
He ducks his head, looking sheepish. "What?"
Reaching out, you grasp his length carefully, keeping one hand on his hip, and give him a few slow strokes that make his defined abs clench and his head tip back with a hiss.
A clear pearl of precum beads at the slit and your mouth waters.
"You’re so beautiful," you whisper in awe, thumb swiping over his tip reverently.
Now he is the one getting flustered, and the only thing keeping him from coming undone then and there is taking over control again.
"Not nearly as beautiful as you, love," he murmurs, pushing you back onto the mattress.
You make a choked sound and hide your face in one of his pillows, but he pulls it away and the smile he flashes then, boyish and delighted, sears itself into your memory.
Kyle caresses your waist and feels the goosebumps pebbled on your skin, and when he squeezes a pillow under your lower back, you lift your hips for him. His cock twitches, a drop of pre dribbles onto your thigh.
"Can I? I’m clean." His chest is heaving, his pupils blown as he drinks you in underneath him; all lax, beautiful and trembling while he rubs his thumb over your puffy folds, spreading them to see your pretty, wet hole.
You nod jaggedly, spreading your legs for him, heels digging into the mattress.
"I need words, love," he tells you, rubbing your clit maddeningly slow and watching your pussy clench around nothing. "Fuck, babygirl."
"Yes, Kyle! Fuck, please—" Your voice pitches and cracks, body wound tight, and when he kneels between your thighs, gripping his cock at the root, he finally pushes inside you, and the world stops spinning.
He does it slow, agonisingly and exquisitely so; working all eight inches into your needy cunt with one hand braced next to your head, the other holding your thigh while his forehead presses against yours; his breath ragged against your mouth, lips brushing yours in a barely there kiss.
The feeling of him is overwhelming at first; the stretch and the fullness, and the rightness of it all. And your hands grip his back, fingers flexing against the muscles, while your legs go slack for him, inviting him deeper, because close isn’t close enough now.
"Fuck—" The word punches out of him, bitten off and breathless, and his hips still for a moment, cock buried deep, his whole body taut with the effort of not moving. "You feel—God—"
"Move," you whisper. "Please move."
Always obeying you, he moves. Long, slow strokes that drag the curve of his cock against every nerve ending, his hips rolling into yours with an unhurried rhythm that matches the pace of the song still drifting faintly from the kitchen. His hand cradles the back of your head, fingers curling into your hair, and he watches your face with an expression that is so open and so tender that you have to close your eyes against it.
"No," he says softly. "Look at me."
You open your eyes. His face is still close, and you observe how his lips part with each thrust, and his brow furrows with both concentration and restraint, his eyes bright and dark and full of everything he's never said.
"Yes," he breathes, "just like that."
You come apart again; still not the shattering, violent kind of orgasm, but the kind that builds like a tide, rising and cresting until your body tightens around him in long, rolling waves as his name falls from your lips like a plea or confession, like the answer to a question you've been afraid to ask.
"That's it," he murmurs, his pace never faltering, carrying you through it with the same steadiness he has been carrying everything so far. "That's it, baby. I've got you. 'M, fuck, right here."
Then his eyes flutter shut when his own release follows yours as you squeeze and convulse around his cock mercilessly. A shudder that starts in his spine and rolls through his entire body, his hips pressing deep, breath hitching as he bites his bottom lip and buries his face in the curve of your neck with a groan so raw that you nearly come again.
He stays nestled inside you, shifts his weight to keep from crushing your body into the mattress, even while his own body is quaking with the onslaught of oxytocin; mouth against your shoulder, hand still in your hair, heartbeat pounding against your chest.
The breeze moves through the curtains. The flat smells like cedar candle and summer air and him. The scent you've been breathing in for over a year and pretending it didn't make you feel safe.
"I love you," he says and it sounds like a breath of relief.
Not triumphant but truth. Stated plainly, simply, the way you state a fact—the sky is up, the ground is down. I love you.
A tear slips from the corner of your eye and runs down your temple, disappearing into your hair. Then another and another. Quiet, soundless tears that come from somewhere so deep you didn't know it existed until you were guts deep in a young soldier, saving his life while he spoke about his love waiting back home.
Kyle lifts his head and sees the tears. And he doesn't panic, he simply brushes his thumb across your temple, catching the wetness, and presses his lips to the damp trail it leaves behind.
"I know," he whispers. "It’s been a lot. For both of us."
You close your eyes and let it come. The crying you've been holding in your chest like a clenched fist for months—years, maybe, longer than Kyle, longer than the rule, all the way back to the first time you knelt in the dirt beside a bleeding stranger and realised that this was your life now, and it would cost you, and you would pay the price and pay it and pay it and never let anyone see the bill.
Kyle holds you through it.
…Here I am, baby. Come on, cry to me….
Eventually, the tears slow and your breath evens. His hand moves over your hair in long, rhythmic strokes, and the radio in the kitchen has gone soft—a late-night DJ speaking in a low murmur between songs—and the candle has burned down to a warm glow.
"Stay. Here… with me."
It’s an offer, the same way everything he's ever given you has been an offer. Open-handed and without strings; yours if you want it, though you know he would crumble if you’d decline.
You press your face into his neck and breathe him in.
Fem!reader. Reader has curly/coily hair. Established relationship. Fluff. Proofread. (holy shit that was bad </3. Sorry to whoever read this before i edited it. Its kinda better now.)
Wc: 1.5k
Frank knew that from the moment he'd stopped denying he was in love with you, his life would become exponentially more difficult; something he was aware could always happen, but not something he was counting on.
You, a shy, sensitive thing. You, who wore your hair in those sweet curls he (not so) secretly adored. You, who spoke to people like you already knew the cruelest bits of them, and cared anyway. Even people who didn't deserve it.
People like him.
In the beginning, Frank tried his damndest to make sure you knew exactly what you were getting into with the likes of him.
You're far from the hardest person to read. He knew you'd somehow fallen for him before even you did, so he pushed you away. Hardest he could. Or tried anyway.
It only took one time for him to make you cry. Frank's heart broke repeatedly everyday. Each time he remembers his girl. Each time he remembers his boy.
Every time he remembers his late wife. His Maria.
To Frank, heartbreak feels almost like breathing. Just another function of the human body that was carried out with certainty.
But that was different. Way different. Not in any sorta way he could explain other than pure emptiness. Like if someone reached right into his chest with an ice cream scoop and took everything left that mattered.
That, and the faint simmering heat in his belly as you ripped him to shreds through tears.
You didn't pull your punches; worried about hurting his feelings like you usually would be, or stomping on his pride. Hell, you made for sure you did that, and then some.
And then Frank fell impossibly deeper in love with you.
It still took a little while for things between you to resemble that of a mostly healthy relationship consisting of two, well adjusted, normal enough people, but you got there eventually. As 'there' as you and Frank Castle could get, anyway.
Sometimes he's reminded of just how tenderhearted his girl is. And every time, his heart melts even more inside of its hardened shell for you. It isn't that he forgets per say, it just not something exceedingly apparent all the time.
Like right now.
He's sleeping. Worn from a long week of breaking, fixing, and killing. Not so much killing these days, but there is always work to be done. So he does it. For you, for the world, and even maybe just a little for himself, too.
Your hair is tickling his nose like it is most mornings. The scent of your shampoo is sweet. Like figs, and vanilla, and sunshine itself. Each inhale is something of a baptism (fucking dramatic), purging the darkness lurking inside piece by piece.
You're halfway on top of him, curling you limbs around his as if you're holding his entire being together all on your own. Like if you loosen your grip just a little bit, he'll come irreparably undone.
The expansions and contractions of you lungs are in sync with his, and in these moments existing in the seam of asleep and awake, Frank feels blissful.
Blissful until he notices how you're trembling. The warm sensation inside disburses immediately; replaced with sharp anxiety.
He opens his bleary eyes, quickly blinking away cloudiness, and tucks his chin to his chest so he can see you. He gets an eye-full of your hair instead.
"Baby?" Frank drags his hand from where its resting on the back of your thigh to your shoulder, squeezing gently.
No response, but a shaky inhale-exhale he feels like its his own. Next, something wet and warm on his skin, rolling lazily down the bare skin of his chest. The anxiety turns to plain panic.
He sits up so fast you gasp, but he doesn't hear a sound of surprise. He hears pain. Fear. He takes your biceps in his rough hands separating your body from his, eyes darting over you just as many times as they flit over every corner of the room.
He finally settles on you. His pupils are the smallest you've ever seen them, he's half with you, and half already grabbing the nearest gun in the room without even getting out of bed.
As he realizes there is no danger to protect you from, his hands loosens with the rest of him, and those blown wide pupils you get to look into everyday return.
There's no danger, but something is still wrong. Your face is streaked with fresh tears, skin of it puffy and a little flushed with sleep and heat. Eyebrows upturned where they face each other. He unconsciously mimics your expression in sympathy, and it makes you cry even more.
"What's wrong, huh?" His voice is scratchy with sleep and concern, fingers softly cup you face, tucking your curls behind your ears, and wiping your tears only a little harshly with his thumbs. It makes you laugh airily.
"Frank," You've always hated saying 'good morning', always opting to say his name to greet him instead. He finds it equally endearing as it is a little strange.
He huffs exasperatedly, leave it to you to stress him out so early in the day.
"Why're you cryin', Baby?"
You aren't sure exactly what to tell him. You honestly feel kinda stupid. But there's a strong sense of gratefulness, too. Who would've thought? Him of everyone in the world would make you cry in a good way.
You aren't sure what to tell him, so you just tell him the truth and hope he doesn't laugh in your face. Even though you know he wouldn't ever.
"Cos i love you." It come out as one single word, breathless, and wobbly, and reverent.
His face always does this thing when he's having a hard time processing something. Eyes darting this way and that, somehow looking at everything and nothing simultaneously. The upper region of his face tenses then slacks in quick succession. His mouth twitches with words not yet said or thought. You always tease him about that.
Frank is a terrifying man. But there's something so sweet about his face. Especially now; when he's looking at you like this.
He watches you watch him. The only sounds in the room are the bird chatter in the large-sunny window adjacent to your bed, and your quiet sniffles. The silence goes on long enough for you to get worried.
"Frank?" No answer.
A tender touch of your fingers clasping around his wrist is all it takes. He's not sure how to cope with the swell of emotion behind his heart, he doesn't know how to tell you, either, doesn't know what to tell you.
So he does what he knows best. Uses his actions to communicate. His body.
In an instant his calloused hand clutches the back of you neck, practically yanking you forwards. Your breaths mingle, hot and fast. His nose brushes the side of yours gingerly, it tickles, your titter doesn't even leave your mouth before he's tasting it.
His nails scrape a path from the base of your neck up to the tight coils below your ear before taking them in a fist, angling you exactly where he needs you. Just when you think he can't kiss you any deeper, he does.
His lips, warm, and slightly chapped glide across yours damply, barely parting from yours before he dives back in at another angle. His tongue runs over each molar and incisor, greeting each one, pulling back and doing it all over again despite your gasping protests.
He seems to have no intention of letting either of you come up for air anytime soon, and if he grips your hair any harder he's gonna crush all of the definition you fought for all night. You nip his lip warningly, which gets you nothing but a grunt of pleasure.
Franks got you pinned under his six-foot-200 something pounds for ages before he lets up. Your lips part with an obscene wetness and respective gasps. You thump your fist on his bare chest, resisting the urge to pluck his nipple as punishment for your burning lungs and aching scalp.
"You're an asshole. Like— the biggest ever,"
Sunlight paints lines of gold across his body, makes his eyes pools of liquid gold, warms his big palms while they creep up your shirt. And he's looking at you. He's smiling like he loves you. You can feel the lump in your throat coming back.
"Yeah? 's that right?"
"Yeah, that's fuckin right, Castle. You're suffocating me." Neither of you can keep the almost childlike mirth out of your voices.
He laughs through his nose, a burst of air over you, grin melting around the edges. His eyes flicker around your face before settling on yours once again.
"I love you too, Sweetheart. Don't you ever forget that, yeah?" He glares playfully.
"Even if you do swear like a goddamn sailor," You roll your eyes, looking past his shoulder into the window at the birds.
"Up your ass, Frank," You shove him back onto his side of your bed, then swing your legs over the side, making your way into the bathroom.
He barks out a laugh "Atta girl."
Thank you for reading; likes, comments, reblogs, and (kind) writing tips are so so appreciated <3
Fem!reader. Reader has curly/coily hair. Established relationship. Fluff. Proofread. (holy shit that was bad </3. Sorry to whoever read this before i edited it. Its kinda better now.)
Wc: 1.5k
Frank knew that from the moment he'd stopped denying he was in love with you, his life would become exponentially more difficult; something he was aware could always happen, but not something he was counting on.
You, a shy, sensitive thing. You, who wore your hair in those sweet curls he (not so) secretly adored. You, who spoke to people like you already knew the cruelest bits of them, and cared anyway. Even people who didn't deserve it.
People like him.
In the beginning, Frank tried his damndest to make sure you knew exactly what you were getting into with the likes of him.
You're far from the hardest person to read. He knew you'd somehow fallen for him before even you did, so he pushed you away. Hardest he could. Or tried anyway.
It only took one time for him to make you cry. Frank's heart broke repeatedly everyday. Each time he remembers his girl. Each time he remembers his boy.
Every time he remembers his late wife. His Maria.
To Frank, heartbreak feels almost like breathing. Just another function of the human body that was carried out with certainty.
But that was different. Way different. Not in any sorta way he could explain other than pure emptiness. Like if someone reached right into his chest with an ice cream scoop and took everything left that mattered.
That, and the faint simmering heat in his belly as you ripped him to shreds through tears.
You didn't pull your punches; worried about hurting his feelings like you usually would be, or stomping on his pride. Hell, you made for sure you did that, and then some.
And then Frank fell impossibly deeper in love with you.
It still took a little while for things between you to resemble that of a mostly healthy relationship consisting of two, well adjusted, normal enough people, but you got there eventually. As 'there' as you and Frank Castle could get, anyway.
Sometimes he's reminded of just how tenderhearted his girl is. And every time, his heart melts even more inside of its hardened shell for you. It isn't that he forgets per say, it just not something exceedingly apparent all the time.
Like right now.
He's sleeping. Worn from a long week of breaking, fixing, and killing. Not so much killing these days, but there is always work to be done. So he does it. For you, for the world, and even maybe just a little for himself, too.
Your hair is tickling his nose like it is most mornings. The scent of your shampoo is sweet. Like figs, and vanilla, and sunshine itself. Each inhale is something of a baptism (fucking dramatic), purging the darkness lurking inside piece by piece.
You're halfway on top of him, curling you limbs around his as if you're holding his entire being together all on your own. Like if you loosen your grip just a little bit, he'll come irreparably undone.
The expansions and contractions of you lungs are in sync with his, and in these moments existing in the seam of asleep and awake, Frank feels blissful.
Blissful until he notices how you're trembling. The warm sensation inside disburses immediately; replaced with sharp anxiety.
He opens his bleary eyes, quickly blinking away cloudiness, and tucks his chin to his chest so he can see you. He gets an eye-full of your hair instead.
"Baby?" Frank drags his hand from where its resting on the back of your thigh to your shoulder, squeezing gently.
No response, but a shaky inhale-exhale he feels like its his own. Next, something wet and warm on his skin, rolling lazily down the bare skin of his chest. The anxiety turns to plain panic.
He sits up so fast you gasp, but he doesn't hear a sound of surprise. He hears pain. Fear. He takes your biceps in his rough hands separating your body from his, eyes darting over you just as many times as they flit over every corner of the room.
He finally settles on you. His pupils are the smallest you've ever seen them, he's half with you, and half already grabbing the nearest gun in the room without even getting out of bed.
As he realizes there is no danger to protect you from, his hands loosens with the rest of him, and those blown wide pupils you get to look into everyday return.
There's no danger, but something is still wrong. Your face is streaked with fresh tears, skin of it puffy and a little flushed with sleep and heat. Eyebrows upturned where they face each other. He unconsciously mimics your expression in sympathy, and it makes you cry even more.
"What's wrong, huh?" His voice is scratchy with sleep and concern, fingers softly cup you face, tucking your curls behind your ears, and wiping your tears only a little harshly with his thumbs. It makes you laugh airily.
"Frank," You've always hated saying 'good morning', always opting to say his name to greet him instead. He finds it equally endearing as it is a little strange.
He huffs exasperatedly, leave it to you to stress him out so early in the day.
"Why're you cryin', Baby?"
You aren't sure exactly what to tell him. You honestly feel kinda stupid. But there's a strong sense of gratefulness, too. Who would've thought? Him of everyone in the world would make you cry in a good way.
You aren't sure what to tell him, so you just tell him the truth and hope he doesn't laugh in your face. Even though you know he wouldn't ever.
"Cos i love you." It come out as one single word, breathless, and wobbly, and reverent.
His face always does this thing when he's having a hard time processing something. Eyes darting this way and that, somehow looking at everything and nothing simultaneously. The upper region of his face tenses then slacks in quick succession. His mouth twitches with words not yet said or thought. You always tease him about that.
Frank is a terrifying man. But there's something so sweet about his face. Especially now; when he's looking at you like this.
He watches you watch him. The only sounds in the room are the bird chatter in the large-sunny window adjacent to your bed, and your quiet sniffles. The silence goes on long enough for you to get worried.
"Frank?" No answer.
A tender touch of your fingers clasping around his wrist is all it takes. He's not sure how to cope with the swell of emotion behind his heart, he doesn't know how to tell you, either, doesn't know what to tell you.
So he does what he knows best. Uses his actions to communicate. His body.
In an instant his calloused hand clutches the back of you neck, practically yanking you forwards. Your breaths mingle, hot and fast. His nose brushes the side of yours gingerly, it tickles, your titter doesn't even leave your mouth before he's tasting it.
His nails scrape a path from the base of your neck up to the tight coils below your ear before taking them in a fist, angling you exactly where he needs you. Just when you think he can't kiss you any deeper, he does.
His lips, warm, and slightly chapped glide across yours damply, barely parting from yours before he dives back in at another angle. His tongue runs over each molar and incisor, greeting each one, pulling back and doing it all over again despite your gasping protests.
He seems to have no intention of letting either of you come up for air anytime soon, and if he grips your hair any harder he's gonna crush all of the definition you fought for all night. You nip his lip warningly, which gets you nothing but a grunt of pleasure.
Franks got you pinned under his six-foot-200 something pounds for ages before he lets up. Your lips part with an obscene wetness and respective gasps. You thump your fist on his bare chest, resisting the urge to pluck his nipple as punishment for your burning lungs and aching scalp.
"You're an asshole. Like— the biggest ever,"
Sunlight paints lines of gold across his body, makes his eyes pools of liquid gold, warms his big palms while they creep up your shirt. And he's looking at you. He's smiling like he loves you. You can feel the lump in your throat coming back.
"Yeah? 's that right?"
"Yeah, that's fuckin right, Castle. You're suffocating me." Neither of you can keep the almost childlike mirth out of your voices.
He laughs through his nose, a burst of air over you, grin melting around the edges. His eyes flicker around your face before settling on yours once again.
"I love you too, Sweetheart. Don't you ever forget that, yeah?" He glares playfully.
"Even if you do swear like a goddamn sailor," You roll your eyes, looking past his shoulder into the window at the birds.
"Up your ass, Frank," You shove him back onto his side of your bed, then swing your legs over the side, making your way into the bathroom.
He barks out a laugh "Atta girl."
Thank you for reading; likes, comments, reblogs, and (kind) writing tips are so so appreciated <3
summary: the lads make john a hinge profile against his will, and to everyone’s surprise, he matches with you within ninety seconds
cw: mdni, fem!reader, age gap (30/43), idk how hinge actually works tbh, john price the feminist, alcohol, insecurities, fluff, smut, oral f rec, piv (14.4k)
John has been irritable for months and it's getting worse.
He knows it the way you know a tooth is starting to rot from the inside, tongue prodding at it every hour.
On Wednesday, he reamed Johnny out for being three minutes late to the briefing. It was the kind of reaming that had everyone's eyes turned down into their coffees and files while Johnny stood in front at attention, toes squared, ears hot.
John went on and on, red-faced, telling him that his 'admin's a disgrace', and that he'd better 'get a fuckin' grip before you're explaining your timings to your old CO'.
Somewhere in the middle of it — around ‘disgrace’ — John heard himself.
He finished the dress-down anyway. Ending on a firm threat of a year-long inventory assignment.
It was rough enough to watch that when the room cleared out, Simon hung back. He stayed in his seat, leaning back with his arms folded, eyes following John as he aggressively organized his paperwork at the front of the room,squaring stacks that were already square.
"You need somethin', Riley?" John asked, never looking up.
Simon's mouth was twisted beneath his balaclava as he weighed his options. He wasn't especially eager to be John's second victim of the day, but it'd been miserable for weeks with no stop in sight. In the end, he decided to be straight—
"Y'need'a get laid, boss."
John's hands immediately froze.
That unyielding anger came up his chest right on schedule — insubordinate, out of line — and then couldn't quite find his footing in it because the truth was a trapdoor just under him.
His eyes flicked up and across the room, ears warming up just like Johnny's had an hour ago.
"Bloody ornery, you are," Simon went on. "'ave been."
Simon wasn't wrong, John knew that.
The work winds them all too tight — adrenaline that can't be spent, images that don't erase, choices made under duress that keep them questioning at three in the morning. And everyone's got a valve that lets the steam out. Johnny shouts his out at the football. Kyle has somewhere to be lately that he's cagey about, and Simon has whatever Simon has, no one asks.
And John drives home, shuts the door, and the house is quiet, his walls holding all the built-up pressure.
Ten months since his usual I'm-Home-Hookup found herself a steady bloke and stopped answering his calls. He'd told himself the whole time it was casual right up until it ended, when he learned it had actually been load-bearing.
And was that affecting his mood? Maybe.
His eyes narrowed on Simon and his jaw ticked at the hinge. He threw his chin toward the open door.
"Fuck off out've my briefin' room, Lieutenant."
Simon's chair scraped across the linoleum when he stood, sighing through the cloth over his face.
"I jus' think—"
"OUT."
The door clicked shut behind him, and John stood in the silence for a moment.
Then he squared the stacks again.
——
Johnny never volunteers to bring the beer, yet here he is at half seven with a box of glass bottles rattling on his shoulder, grinning under the porch light. Behind him, the headcount runs long by one. Three men when John only agreed to two. Kyle with a canvas bag full of crisps. Simon at the back, hands sunk in his pockets.
"Thought it was just you and Garrick?"
"Aye, well." Johnny shoulders past him into the hall, close enough that their shirts drag. "Simon heard there was football."
"Simon doesn't care about football," John retorts as the rest of them push their way inside.
"I care 'bout football," Simon lies through a simper no one can see, wiping his boots on the mat.
Unfortunately for John, his team is undoubtedly adept at what they've trained in and he doesn’t always catch when there’s fuckery afoot.
Under his nose, in his very own home, Johnny distracts him with talk about the match while Kyle lifts his phone from the side table just beside his elbow. Simon waits an appropriate amount of time before slipping away to the kitchen to guess the passcode, which he manages in one go.
"Gonna have to talk to him 'bout that…" Kyle mumbles as he swipes to the App Store.
"He textin' anyone?" Simon cranes his neck over Kyle's shoulder. "He used t’see tha’ one bird… wot was her name…?"
"Leah," Kyle answers flatly. "Laura?" he second-guesses as he thumbs in the passcode again to approve the install: Hinge Dating App. "M'not lookin' at his texts, mate. Be lucky he doesn't RTU us just for this. Plus, I think he said she started seeing some—"
"—y'know, Cap," Johnny's voice cuts through, a warning for the men in the kitchen. "I can get ye another beer, y'don't have…"
Simon and Kyle glance up from where they've leaned against the counter and freeze when John appears in the doorway, face screwed with suspicion. His eyes flick between the phone in Kyle's grasp and the faces lit behind it.
His initial thought is that the phone's got a nice, durable case, proper practical. His second thought is to start patting down his pockets with his free hand — which all turn up empty.
The room's gone still, a collective held breath to see which way the tension'll break.
"That's my phone."
"It is," Kyle agrees carefully.
Johnny appears at John's shoulder, squeezing past into the kitchen. "Cap, before you start—"
"When'd you nick it?" His eyes accurately settle on Kyle, the slickest of the bunch.
"Doesn't matter when, sir. We just—"
"It matters to me." John puts his empty beer bottle on the table and uses both hands now to pat down his pockets a second time, not quite believing his own team got the drop on him. "Professionally speakin',” he mumbles.
"Wot really needs addressin' is your passcode," Simon grumbles. "0-0-0-6?"
"Christ," Johnny snickers.
John chooses to ignore them and holds his hand out, palm up. But Kyle doesn't fork it over. Instead, he looks back at the screen and watches the progress ring around the icon close in on itself.
"What're we doin' right now?" John presses, stepping closer.
"Jus' take a seat, boss," Simon suggests, gesturing to the kitchen table just as Johnny yanks a chair out, beaming something mischievous.
John looks at the chair, then looks at Johnny.
"Think I'll stand."
"Suit yourself," Johnny spins the chair around and drops into it, arms folding over the back.
Kyle checks the screen one more time before turning it around. A new little white icon sits on John's home screen, Kyle points at it. John squints to read the little letters beneath it.
"What's Hinge?"
"It's a dating app," Kyle answers and places the phone on the table.
A dating app….
Grown adults sorting through each other like they're shopping. Swipe, tap, Add to Cart. He's heard the lads chat about it for years — the 'ghosting', the games — and always thought: thank god that's not me.
Under the simmering contempt, the idea of typing hello to a stranger who might simply never reply (left on read, whatever ungodly hour of the soul that phrase was invented in) shoots something cold through him.
There's a beat of hesitation before his eyes snap to Simon, the scowl on his face carrying the weight of Wednesday's interaction.
"This is you, then?"
"Team effort," Simon corrects without a flicker of shame.
"It's no' the dodgy kind of app, it's for relationships," Johnny explains. "Says so in their slogan: 'designed to be deleted'. You make a profile, upload a few pics, answer some—"
"I know how online dating works, MacTavish."
Johnny squints. "Do ye, though?"
"You've been rank for months, sir." Kyle tells it plainly. "Whole teams sayin' it."
John feels like he’s been put on a rinse cycle in the wash. His nostrils flare as he snuffs his irritation back down his chest lest he prove them right in his own kitchen.
"So that's what all this is? A Friday night welfare check?"
"It's no' a welfare check," Johnny defends poorly, voice cracking at a pitch too high.
"It's a bit of a welfare check," Kyle shrugs.
"Right." John reaches for his phone. "Well, thanks for the concern, lads. Truly. Warms the heart."
Kyle slides it just out of reach. "Just give it a shot, sir," he implores. "Try it for the weekend. If you still hate it, I'll delete it and we'll never bring it up again."
John's chin tucks to his chest and he glowers at him from under his deeply furrowed brow. "You'll delete it now," he orders, except these men have never listened to him off the field.
"I could," he agrees, wrestling a smirk. "And you can keep spending your Friday nights with us."
It's meant as a joke. It doesn't land as one.
Because John looks around at the three of them and knows in a few hours their engines will fade down the street and that hulking quiet will pour back in, the one he keeps calling peace.
So… he pulls out a chair.
Simon pushes off the counter and Johnny's grin pulls wider.
"Go on," John surrenders, falling into the seat with a sigh. He does not look at any of their faces because whatever's on them’s going to make him cross.
Chairs scrape and Kyle settles down at John’s arm, Simon looms over them from behind, all crowded around the one screen.
The basics go quick — name, age, pronouns. Kyle finds his rhythm working through the questions.
"Drinks? Socially. Smokes…?" Kyle seesaws his head a bit. "We'll say no."
"I smoke cigars," John protests.
"That's a personality trait, not a habit." Kyle scrolls. "Height?"
"Six-two," Johnny says immediately.
"He's six-foot," Simon corrects.
"Aye, and on the app he's six-two."
Kyle selects 6'. "Occupation?"
That one hangs in the air a bit longer than the rest, and John doesn't quite know why. His hands turn palm-up on the table with the question.
"Consultant," Simon offers.
"Civil servant," Kyle tries.
"Military," John answers irritably off the edge of a scoff.
Three sets of eyes come up off the phone — Johnny's eyebrows go high, Kyle's mouth opens to argue, Simon tilts his head just enough, as if to say: if you say so.
"It's not a state secret that I serve," John says, eyebrows pulling close with confusion.
Kyle types it despite whatever he's got hanging on the tip of his tongue. And in the little silence afterward, the obvious question finally comes to mind.
"What've you lot got on yours, then?"
The simple question sends a tidal wave of overlapping chatter and excuses over the table.
"Ah, well—" Johnny starts.
"I actually—" Kyle says, at the same time.
"Different app," Simon adds, under both of them.
"—see, it depends," Johnny goes on, trying to gain volume over the others, "I like to keep the profile fresh. Rotate the pics, the bio—"
"—don't have one," Kyle is saying over the top of him, "because me and Amara are— well, it's not official-official, but it's a thing, so—"
"Been usin' Feeld," Simon finishes.
When the wave recedes, the full picture comes into view: Johnny reinvents himself on a cycle, Kyle has Amara, mentioned now for the first time ever. And Simon—
"What's Feeld?" John asks.
"No," Kyle says before the question has its punctuation, quick and stern, head whipping back and forth. “Absolutely not. We'll talk about that another time."
"It's not for you," Simon adds.
"Right," he mumbles, taking a pull of his beer, settling back against the chair. He inhales and looks off at the window. "M'glad it's amateurs running my love life."
"Enthusiasts," Johnny corrects.
The rest goes quicker.
"What kind of connection?" Kyle reads. "Options are: Long-term. Short-term. Short-term, open to long. Long-term, open to short."
"Short, open to long," John answers without hesitation.
Johnny opens his mouth but Simon glares at him just as quickly through his ragged eyeholes, and he closes it without a word.
His profile photos have to come off the lads' phones since John's camera roll offers nothing but screenshots of maps, car parts, and three random pictures of the K9, Xena, from another unit on base (he’s been trying to snatch her for his own team for months).
He watches the photos of himself go by and it's a strange census, seeing a year of himself entirely through other people's eyes. Makes him queasy, so he takes another bitter gulp to wash the feeling out.
There's a short argument about the proper order the pictures should be presented, Johnny wins.
After, Kyle starts explaining what a good prompt does, how to choose one. He hardly gets any words out before John's holding his hand out the same way he did half an hour ago.
"I'll do these myself."
This time, Kyle hands the phone over.
The lads drift to the far end of the table to finally give John the space they've neglected to all night.
Fresh beers are cracked open and a bag of crisps demolished as they fold into their own conversations. The match they’ve been ignoring comes first, then Amara, whom Kyle spends five minutes refusing to elaborate on, and somewhere in there Simon mentions an oddities shop he’s been meaning to stop by.
John sits with his reading glasses on, typing slowly, brows low in concentration.
When he finally sets the phone down, all three of them quickly move behind him.
"So, their profile comes up on screen," Kyle reaches over to demonstrate. "Have a look, read the bio. If you wanna chat to her, tap the heart. If you don't, hit the X, and you'll never see her again. Simple."
The first woman is on a beach holding a cocktail the size of a fishbowl. X.
"Okaay," Kyle drawls, mouth pulling straight. "Sure. Was there a reason, or…"
"No."
The next woman is at a festival covered in glitter and feathers. X.
So is the one after. X.
A woman in her work scrubs. X.
A woman holding a child. X.
A woman in a bikini on a lake (his eyes linger). X.
It's not that they're not lovely. Some of them probably are. But every picture is a performance — arms out, teeth out, look how much fun I am. Advertisements.
"The fish," Johnny mourns as another goes down, a woman on a small boat holding a big trout up. "Cap, she was fishin'. You love fishin'!"
"Wasn't her fish," he grumbles under his breath.
"Whose fish d'you reckon, then?"
"Bloke she cropped out," Simon says, and John tips the neck of his beer toward him.
"Give me criteria," Kyle pleads, both hands on the back of John's chair, gripping with restraint. "I can work with criteria."
"He's calibratin'," Simon says. "Let 'im work it out."
Simon's giving him too much credit. He's not calibrating. He's not reading these women, he's not even really looking at them. Each X is just the whole premise being declined, proof accumulating that he was right about the app all along, and if the profiles run out, well, he tried. Right? The lads witnessed it. He can get back to his peace with a clear—
His thumb stops and hovers, then pulls back to the outer edge of the phone case.
Huh.
There you are.
Up a trail somewhere, hills of green grass rolling behind you, hood half-blown off, one hand trying to catch it. You're laughing at whoever's taking the picture, smile wide.
John's not sure he's ever seen eyes twinkle before, but that must be what yours are doing, shimmering even under overcast.
You're very pretty.
For the first time, John taps the profile open.
30. Executive Assistant. 4 Miles Away. Short-Term, Open to Long-Term.
Executive Assistant, so you likely work too much. That's familiar to him, something he understands inside-out.
There's a photo of you in office clothes at what looks like a retirement party, smile an edge more saccharine than the one on the hill.
Another of you criss-cross on the floor, a black and caramel cat stretched out and content in your lap, belly-up. Shirt low cut, cleavage to feast on. He is sixty percent gentleman about how long he looks at it.
And at the bottom:
The best way to ask me out is by: using words.
I recently discovered that: I'm better in person than I am on here.
John huffs an amusement through his nose. He spent more time on his profile than he thinks you spent on yours. Seems like you're tired of the same things he's already tired of, one night in.
Behind him, the lads have gone silent, holding their breath.
John taps the heart and his screen goes bright with a wash of confetti, both your photos ringed together:
IT'S A MATCH!
"Oh, shit, she already matched with you," Kyle cranes his neck closer to inspect.
"Gimme that." Johnny plucks the phone from John's hand. "No way," he scoffs. "Fuckin' fit. A bit young for you, Cap, aye?" He looks at John, then back at the screen like the two won't reconcile in his brain.
"Careful," John warns mildly.
Johnny hands the phone back, muttering something in Scots only Simon could translate.
John doesn't hear much of it anyway. He's already looking at your photo again.
Better in person.
Yeah. He'd bet you are.
"Right, sir," Kyle says. "Now we wait. Midday tomorrow the earliest. Message her any sooner and it reads keen."
"It'd be accurate," he deadpans.
"There's rules, Cap," Johnny says. "No messagin' straight away, no double-textin', keep a wee bit of mystery."
John turns in his chair with a scowl to look up at the three of them.
"So, you're tellin' me a woman says she's interested in you and you… make her wait?"
Silence.
"I mean, when you put it like that…"
"Yeah, s'a bit fuckin' rude, innit?" John derides, turning back around.
He's already typing, screen tipped away.
"Sir," Kyle pleads. "At least let us read it."
"This is a two person conversation, not a five piece."
He presses send and quickly pockets the phone.
——
Four miles away, a phone lights up…
——
Your windows are open to the last of a long evening, warm air breezing through the sheer curtains. You’re finally on the couch. Shower taken, its heat still damp in your skin. A glass of off-dry riesling teeters precariously on the arm, cold from the fridge and sweating through its stemless glass.
Twix is a puddled tortoiseshell furnace against your thigh, one paw twitching through a dream, her purr winding down as she drops deeper. And on the telly, Last Christmas is on. You've seen it a dozen times, that's why you leave it — it's mindless.
The second glass goes down easier than the first, tart on your tongue, blooming warm in your belly and over your cheeks.
Somewhere in the lull, your thumb opens Hinge, a reflex to being bored. You don't really expect anything from it anymore.
A man holding a fish, sunglasses on. X.
A man whose photos are all group shots. X.
A man who is 6'2" and it's his entire personality. X.
Your thumb knows the rhythm without you.
The next profile slides into view and you pause, thumb hovering.
He's handsome in that sort of rugged, classic way. His beard is salted at the edges, lines beside his eyes creased deep, cheeks faintly rosy. He's mid-laugh at what looks like a Christmas party, red and green tinsel drooping off the beams behind him; head slightly tipped, one heavy hand flat on the table. He's not cackling, you can tell it's more reserved, but it's probably still more than he usually offers.
John. 43. Military. Four miles away. Short-Term, Open to Long-Term.
The one thing you should know about me is: I'm gone a lot for work. But when I'm home, I'm home.
Most men bury the catch in the fine print, but he's leading with it.
You don't know yet whether that's honesty or efficiency. You suspect that with him they might be the same thing.
His second photo is of him on the tailgate of some enormous vehicle, fatigues taut over his thighs, thumbs hooked through his bulky khaki plate carrier, looking up from under the brim of his hat.
Two truths and a lie: I've never seen Star Wars. I have a lie-in every Sunday. I've had tea with a warlord.
The sky is pink with the morning in his third picture. He's thigh-deep in a lake, turned away from the camera entirely. (You're noticing it's a common theme that he does not look at the camera for any photo.) The sunlight catches the breadth of his back and shoulders, cotton molded around muscle.
Don't hate me if I: call instead of text. It's quicker.
You giggle just enough that Twix's ear rotates toward you in reproach.
It's kinda cute when older men put more effort into their profiles.
But the alarm is already going off somewhere in the back of your skull — too good, probably old photos, probably has a wife — it has never once failed to ring. But you're two glasses in, and the heart really costs nothing even if the conversation seems off.
You tap it, and put the phone facedown on your thigh.
On the telly, Emilia Clarke is busy falling for a man you happen to know has been dead the entire film. You mouth one of his lines along with him, not really invested, wine warm in your chest, Twix breathing slow against your leg.
Then your phone buzzes against you once, and you ignore it, because you have rules about lunging for male attention. But then it buzzes again, and, well, you just turn it over to have a look. Maybe it's your mum, you don't know!
HINGE: You and John matched!
HINGE: 1 New Message
You open it.
Evening. Not much good at using the app, but I really wanted to chat to you. How's your Friday night?
You hum to yourself curiously. Not an innuendo or emoji in sight.
i actually volunteer helping the elderly with technology, happy to walk you through it.
friday's been average. wine and a movie on the couch. how's yours?
You put the phone back down and focus on the film, but his reply comes within the minute.
Ouch. Friday's alright. The lads invited themselves round for the match. Still here, unfortunately.
you're messaging me with guests in the house? terrible host.
They invited themselves. Hosting rules don't apply.
What movie are you watching?
You glance at the telly where a dead man is mid-song and weigh lying about it.
You could be watching anything. You could pick something more interesting, something with a deep lesson, educational, historical, something niche to come off cool and worldly.
you're not allowed to judge me.
Judging is sort of my life's work, but I'll do my best.
You snort. Twix relocates to the far cushion in protest.
it's called 'last christmas'. i don't know why it's on in july, but i've probably seen it twelve times. it's good background noise.
The reply takes slightly longer this time. You picture him all big hands, small phone, and then stop picturing him, because that's how it starts.
Twelve times? Must be decent.
it's objectively not. the love interest is dead the entire film lol
Dead?
it's a twist. it's festive!
You and I have very different definitions for "festive". I've got a few questions. But I'll save them.
You smile.
so, your lake photo. did you catch anything that day?
Not a thing.
hours in freezing water for zero fish?!
The fish aren't the point.
do tell, what's the point?
The mist off the water. The quiet. The no one expecting anything from you.
It's the first real answer a man has given you on this app in, like, six months.
You feel oddly like you've been handed something and should keep your hands still so it doesn't spook.
that actually sounds really peaceful.
i've never been fishing, but i do love nature in the mornings. i have a trail by me that i like to trek early on weekends.
That the trail from your photo?
it is! my best friend actually made me go that day, i wasn't in the mood. complained the whole way.
Doesn't show.
Good photo of you.
Beautiful, actually.
You stare at the screen and feel warmth tickling your nape, sliding lower, molten and slow.
Every instinct you have reaches for deflection.
oh! thank you. the wind did most of the work lol
No it didn't.
— and he just takes the deflection off you, like being returned something you've dropped. You press the cool curve of the wine glass against your cheek and remind yourself, sternly, that this is a stranger on the internet.
well, for the record your photo's not bad either. handsome smile.
Somewhere past ten, you notice the conversation keeps not ending.
how long have you been on hinge?
It's my first night, actually.
first night???
Profile's about two hours old.
yikes, so i'm just the practice woman then, huh?
Practice implies I'm planning to do this again.
——
John's still at the kitchen table, reading glasses pushed up into his hair now, beer gone warm at his elbow. The lads have migrated to the living room doorway — close enough to monitor, far enough to pretend they aren't.
He knows they're watching, and he's been watched by better.
What he can't seem to manage is his fuckin' face — it keeps doing things beyond his control, and every time your reply comes he has to reel it back to neutral, and he can tell by the quality of the silence behind him that he's not reeling nearly fast enough.
"He's smilin' again," Johnny murmurs, elbowing Simon in the ribs.
"Shameless," John mumbles, without looking up. "All of you."
He's typing when the floor creaks jus to his left. When he glances up, Johnny has drifted to his shoulder under the pretense of collecting empties.
"Need another, Cap?"
"I need you three feet back, MacTavish," he replies, thumbs tapping away.
A minute later it's Kyle from the doorway, "If she asks about hobbies, don't lead with the cigars. They poll badly amongst females."
"'Females'?" John grimaces, face down, thumbs still at it. "Say it with me Garrick, 'women'."
Then Simon, who hasn't moved or spoken in twenty minutes, asks, "Wot's she sayin', then?"
John rolls his eyes and sets the phone face-down, pushing himself up out of the chair.
"Time to go, lads," he says with an obviously fake smile, gesturing his arm out towards his front door. "Goodnight."
"It's no' even eleven oclock!" Johnny complains.
"Then the night's still young. Go on, fuck off."
They go — bottles gathered, snacks cleaned up, Simon herding Johnny down the hall as he’s still negotiating.
Then their engines fade down the street, and the quiet pours back in, right on schedule. Except tonight it arrives and there's a phone lit on his kitchen table with your name on it, and the quiet — for the first time in a long while — has to wait.
He locks up, kills the TV, then drops into his armchair with the phone already unlocked.
did the football finish? who won?
He glances at the dead telly. Hasn't a clue.
Couldn't tell you.
omg lol you had ONE reason for guests tonight!
I got distracted.
by what? 😇
I think you know by what.
Nothing comes back for a minute. He pictures you on your couch, that cat beside you, deciding what to do with it — and it occurs to him, mildly horrifying, that he's enjoying this. The wait. The little emoji with the halo, transparently unrepentant. He finds himself smiling at the ceiling like there's something written on it.
anyway!
Anyway.
He'll allow it: retreat granted. There's no rush.
The cat in your photo. Yours?
yes! that’s twix. she's a menace.
Good name.
she prefers men that ignore her.
Then we'd get on fine. I'm very good at ignoring cats.
It goes on just like that: easy.
You ask if he's a morning person and learn he's up at five most days by choice; he learns you consider five the middle of the night.
He talks about the Brecon Beacons — the actual Beacons, the ones he loves, not the ones that nearly killed him at twenty-two. You tell him you've always wanted to go, and he catches himself already planning the route he'd take you. Then quickly chastises himself.
How's the average Friday held up?
certainly improved
Mine too.
He puts the phone on the arm of the chair and sits in his quiet house, and for once it doesn’t feel so desolate.
——
The following morning he's up at five. He starts drinking his coffee at the counter, looking out the window over the sink, the sorbet summer sky bleeding morning.
He thinks of you before he can stop himself. Asleep, presumably, five being the middle of the night and all. Then he takes the coffee out to his back step for some fresh air.
He wonders if he was any good with the messaging last night. It's the longest he's ever sat with his phone in his hand, period. Let alone chatting with someone. There's no debrief for it, that's the trouble. No one to tell him whether ‘I got distracted.’ read as charming or desperate.
He runs the entire two-hour exchange back over and over and finds no actionable errors, but remains unconvinced.
He goes for his run at six. The route climbs uphill around klick seven, and somewhere on the hill he thinks about your photo, your smile, your mouth. He wonders what you smell like, what you sound like when you're being sarcastic.
By noon he's under the Land Rover draining the old oil, and he catches himself pondering what you might do on a Saturday. Whether you slept in properly. Whether the cat allows it; he grew up with one himself and knows how demanding they can be when they're ready for a feeding.
He hasn't messaged yet and neither have you.
He couldn't say exactly why he's held off. Something the lads said about being keen, and rules, and mystery lodged somewhere he can't reach to dig it out. He's not normally a man that takes doctrine from Johnny MacTavish, and yet… here he is.
It's a stupid fuckin' rule.
The afternoon goes long and gets quiet in the old way.
The house at four o'clock has a particular acoustic he knows down to the plumbing, and today, for the first time, he notices himself noticing it. It never used to be so obvious. Years of Saturdays like this one and it took his phone going quiet for half a day to show him the loneliness so plainly.
By the evening he's got Chinese takeaway at the kitchen table, eating it straight from the carton, chopsticks shoveling fried noodles down his gullet while he does the crossword from the morning paper in his head.
That's when his phone lights up for the first time all day, buzzing three times in succession — he absolutely hates how quickly it's in his hand.
spent six hours wedding dress shopping with my best friend. i need a glass of wine and a lie down.
thought of you on the tube home
He reads the second message again.
Thought of you.
He’d been drafting the same admission since noon and something in his chest going catastrophically hot.
are you still up? i know sundown is bedtime for your generation.
And there's the sarcasm.
Outside the window, the sun is — he checks — still up. Barely. He's got that going for him, at least.
Just in time. Was about to take my dentures out.
Thought about you as well.
He types the second line fast before he can be a coward about it. If you can say it, he can say it. Fair's fair.
I do have a question now though. It's not your wedding we're shopping for, is it? That'd be proper inconvenient for me.
lol no! maid of honor. today was purely supervisory.
don't really see myself getting married anyway.
the dresses were stunning though!
He’s picking up on a pattern. Three messages arriving like one exhale — the vulnerable thing said flanked with distraction.
Nothing wrong with that.
Successful trip then? Or is there another six hours coming?
successful! she found it. there were tears and champagne.
what about you, how was your saturday?
He’s had a day spent purposefully not doing the one thing he wanted to do.
Quiet. Nothing worth typing.
hm. sounds like you should ring me then…
He looks at that one for a moment and blinks, the inside of his cheek finds itself between his teeth.
For all their blabbering, the lads did not warn him about this bit. Not that he can't speak on the phone, he prefers it. You're essentially quoting his profile back at him. But he's been thinking about something since roughly the fourth time you crossed his mind today, and a phone call isn't the ask he's been building up to.
Could do.
Truthfully, though. I was just working up the courage to ask you for a drink.
Courage. He's used that word in citations, for men who ran toward gunfire, heroes. Now he’s using it to describe the act of asking a woman on a date, and the genuinely undignified part is that it's regrettably accurate.
Your reply takes a minute. He watches the dots start and stop, and start again. God, he's been shot at with less suspense.
Then your message comes through and it's just a number. Ten digits. It buzzes in his hand once more.
for logistics.
He stares at it for a beat and then he's up out of his seat. Takeaway abandoned, at the fridge with his phone still in one hand, snapping the cap off a beer on the lip of the counter, and then he's out the back door into the garden where the evening's gone navy and the air’s still warm from the day.
He saves your number first. Then he stands there a moment, beer sweating in one hand, thumb over the call button in the other.
——
You’ve just tipped the bottle over your glass when the phone starts buzzing against the counter.
Unknown Number. Local.
“John?”
“Evenin’.”
Fuck.
His voice lands an octave lower than you were braced for. A honeyed gravel that seeps into your ear and slides thick over your spine, pooling somewhere behind your ribs.
You set the bottle down before you drop it.
“So you actually do ring,” you manage.
“Said so on the profile, I think.”
“I half thought it was a bit.”
“I don’t really do bits.”
“No,” you say through a grin, picking up your glass and drifting toward the couch. You drop your voice into a gravelly impression of him: “You’re a very serious man.”
The laugh that comes down the line is quiet — more breath than sound, warm at the bottom of it, like you’ve caught him somewhere he doesn’t usually go.
“That meant to be me?”
“It’s uncanny, I know.”
The line goes quiet a moment — the good kind, neither of you rushing to fill it — and in it you catch the sounds of his side: a whirl of breeze, the faint ring of a glass set down on iron. He’s outside. You picture a tidy yard with tall dark hedges, a big man pacing slowly with a beer.
“Am I interruptin’ the wine?”
“The wine and I are happy to share the time.”
“Good.” There's a pause that you can hear his smile in. “I have a beer out here. Seemed only fair we’re both suffering the same.”
“Are we having our drink right now? Is this it?”
“No,” he says immediately, unamused even — which is very amusing for you. “This one doesn’t count.”
The speed of his reply sends something fizzing under your sternum. You tuck your feet up under yourself and take a slow sip.
“No?” you tease.
“I had imagined I’d see your face.”
“Been imagining, have you?”
You are very glad he cannot see your face right now. Cheeks warm and strained, you press the cool of the wine glass briefly against them in turns
“Nothin’ mucky if that’s what you’re gettin’ at.”
“Mm, no, 'course not. You’ve been a proper gentleman. Haven’t even thrown me a cheeky pick-up line.”
“I could workshop somethin’ for you if you’d like.”
“No thanks,” you giggle into your glass. “It was a relief when I opened your first message and it wasn’t a riddles-three about your dick.”
You can hear his scoff and recoil on the other end.
“Is that what it’s come to?”
“Unfortunately.”
There’s a short silence you’d swear is him coming to terms with the modern world, and you bite down on a smile.
“Right,” he says, and there's a controlled shift in his voice. “My question...”
Your stomach does a free-fall, nauseating and fluttery, fifteen again on the Detonator at Thorpe Park.
“Mm?” you hum around a sip, deeply casual, a woman entirely unbothered, curled so tight around the phone that Twix doesn’t have a leg to lie on.
“There’s a pub about halfway between us, Lamb & Flag. I’d like to take you for that drink tomorrow. Will you come?”
Then you remember what tomorrow is and sigh, immediately irritated with your whole family.
“Ugh, I want to say yes,” you sulk. “But I’ve got Sunday dinner with my family tomorrow. My mum would hunt me for sport if I flaked.”
“Fair. Wouldn’t want that on my conscience.”
“I could do a weeknight? After work?”
There’s a pause on his end.
“I’d rather not promise you a weeknight,” he admits. “I rarely get away on time, and I’m not startin’ this by standin' you up.”
You go quiet for a beat, you were ready for the usual ‘ahh, well, we’ll figure something out’. But instead got a man mindful of your time; a unicorn, really.
“Also fair. And— and thoughtful.”
“Friday, then?” he tries hopefully, you catch the small lean in his voice.
“Friday’s perfect,” you agree. “It’s a date!”
“It is,” he agrees, smiling.
The conversation should end there but it doesn't.
You learn things no profile has a field for; that he talks slower than he types, that he hm's real low in his throat when he’s considering something, that when you make him laugh it rumbles, so rough at the bottom that you feel at the back of your knees.
Somewhere past the hour mark you stop scrutinizing the call for red flags and just talk, and you only notice you’ve stopped when Twix jumps onto the couch and you realize you’ve been lying down for a while, phone balanced on your ear like you’re seventeen.
Eventually, you yawn.
“Right,” he says, and you can hear him moving, standing up by the way he tries to muffle a stiff groan. “That’s my cue.”
“Aw, no! I’m fine, really.”
“It’s late, love. And you’ve got your family tomorrow.”
“True. And you’ve got… whatever it is old men do on Sundays.”
“Lie-in, according to my profile.”
“Ha!” you bark, vindicated alone in your living room, having forgot about his little 'two truths and a lie'. “That’s the lie, I bet. I don’t think you’ve ever had a lie-in in your life.”
A low sound of amusement rolls down the line. “Goodnight,” he says, declining to confirm.
“Night, John.”
You sit a minute in the amber shine of your lamp after the line goes dead, phone loose in your hand.
——
Sunday morning, you text him at 8:12 AM.
good morning. how was the lie-in?
Wouldn’t know. Been up since five.
the lie confirmed!
He doesn’t dignify it. You don’t expect him to. You grin at your phone while you wait for the kettle to boil.
Your mum will later describe you, over dinner, as ‘suspiciously cheerful’.
The day swallows you — the drive, the roast, your mum’s questions, your brother’s kids. It’s near ten when you’re finally home, shoes off, replying to the last thing he’d sent that morning.
survived. my mum sends her regards to whoever put me in a good mood. her words.
Regards received. Sleep well.
——
Monday morning, John’s at his desk with his coffee going cold because somewhere between the canteen and the walk to his office, his phone buzzed, and it was you and he hasn’t stopped looking at it.
good morning :) big meeting today. does this say “promote me” or “she tried”?
[ PHOTO ATTACHMENT ]
You, in your hallway mirror — chin tipped, black short-sleeve blouse with a wide collar exposing the smooth skin of your upper chest and collar, grey pencil skirt stretched over the curve of your hips and thighs, one knee bent like you’d just been lowering your foot from fitting on your heel.
His eyes are stuck on the soft-looking flesh just above and between your knees when a rap lands on his door and forces a cough from his throat.
Johnny eases it open with Kyle behind him holding a folder, Simon's behind them both, holding nothing, not even a pretense.
His phone goes face-down on the desk at a compromising speed, shifting to sit up straigher.
Simon’s eyes go to John’s hand over the phone, then to his face before he leans in the doorway with his arms folded.
“Mornin’, Cap. Good weekend?” Johnny asks, falling into the side chair in front of the desk with a theatrical groan.
“Fine.”
“Aye? Do anythin'?” He smiles, waggling his eyebrows. “Anyone?”
“You’ve got thirty seconds to develop a work reason for being in my office, Sergeant.”
It's an empty threat and everyone in the room knows it.
Kyle sets the (empty) folder down and steps back behind Johnny. “How’s it going, sir? Did you have any luck with Hinge?”
John could make them work for it. He’d planned to. But all three of them are standing in front of him trying so hard to look casual it’s a wonder none of them have pulled something.
"Have a date Friday. Drinks."
Johnny is ready to blast out of his seat, but Kyle shoves him back down by the shoulders, digging his fingers into the pressure points on either side of his neck until he relents with a hiss.
"That's great. Same woman or…?"
"The same."
“Good, good, good,” Johnny says, and means it — John can hear that he means it, he can also hear the restraint he's keeping from unloading shite advice.
“We'll stop buy Saturday for the debrief,” Simon says, already turning around, and Kyle picks the folder back up like it had a purpose all along, and they file out the way they came.
"I'm not debriefing you on my date. Don't come!" John calls to them half-heartedly, but the door's already shutting on top of his words.
He turns the phone back over.
Promote you, he types.
You look lovely.
Your reply comes before he’s picked his pen back up.
well now the meeting feels easy. thank you x
He gets on with his morning, but by noon he suspects he's looked at that damn photo a dozen times.
——
The rest of the week goes standard. Your Tuesday runs long and his Wednesday runs longer, and the messages carry throughout it all. His texts arrive before your morning alarm even sounds, your replies go mid-commute — nothing heavy, just remaining in each other's orbit of interest as Friday chugs slowly into view.
Thursday night, near nine, he rings you, having first texted to ask if he could, which you’re beginning to understand is just how he’s built. It’s a short call by your new standards with him. He only wanted to confirm you’re still on for the pub, but he had you grinning into your pillow until you fell asleep.
———
You leave work at five on the dot, and you’re in front of your open wardrobe by six.
The little black dress comes off the rail first. Goes back. Comes off again. Back. The floral one gets as far as your shoulders before you pull it off over your head and drop it on the bed, where Twix immediately sits on it.
The silky baby blue halter’s been hanging on the door since you bought it. You put it on like you hadn’t already decided and do the tie at the back of your neck twice before the bow sits flat and neat. You pull on some jeans and rummage the closet for your chunky heels.
You press some strawberry perfume to your throat in the mirror and try to comfort the nerve-ridden woman in the reflection.
“It’s just a pub,” you tell her.
She doesn’t seem convinced.
———
The pub is exactly the kind of place you imagine he'd frequent — quiet, all old mahogany and low brass lamps, no telly anywhere. You claim a stool, hook your heel over the rung, and decide not to order anything yet simply because it just feels polite to wait.
You're fifteen minutes early which means you're left alone with your anxieties.
The last of the sun lies across the bar top in warm stripes, and you trace one with a finger while you wait.
You’ve done this before, and it almost never goes how the phone promises. There was the guy whose photos were six years out of date. The one who spent both drinks talking about his ex and then sent a payment request for half the tab. The one who, two hours in, hadn’t asked you a single question about yourself. And John has been too good to be true for a week, and you know how that saying ends. Tonight is where you find out how, find out he really is just a man between deployments looking for entertainment and a shag.
It felt good, though. All week. Being excited about something. You’d forgotten the feeling.
You pick at the hangnail on your thumb until it stings.
You don’t have to wait much longer for him.
He casts a shadow when he comes through the door. Broad. Tall. Smart olive polo fighting for its stitching across his chest and where it grips into his biceps. He’s tidied his beard in comparison to his photos, hair less kempt in a purposeful way.
He scans the whole room before he finds you and stops looking anywhere else. He smiles tight and restrained, pleasant, but like he’s pacing himself, and by the time he crosses to you, your tongue has gone dry and whatever you’d planned to open with has shriveled away.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hi,” you smile.
He smells clean, a bit like pine and amber, and faintly like there’s tobacco somewhere on his collar.
“You’re early,” he adds, almost pleased.
“So are you.”
“I’m always early.” His eyes drop to the empty bar top in front of you, then come back. “You haven’t ordered?”
You shake your head once, legs shifting to cross. “I wanted— I was waiting for you.”
The lines beside his eyes deepen and he holds out his hand, says your name for the first time, and his hand swallows yours — big and dry and calloused across the palm where yours is soft — and you hold on a beat too long. He doesn’t mention it. You add that to the list of things you like about him, which is getting embarrassing for something four minutes old.
“What’ll you have?”
“Uhm, whatever you’re having,” you decide.
He signals the bartender with two fingers and opens his mouth — and there’s a brief second where he looks at you first, and you notice for the first time that his eyes are blue, and you get stuck, and it seems so does he. By the time he looks back, he’s lost the name of the beer he’s drunk here a dozen times.
“Two of the, uh— the local,” he manages.
You pretend not to notice. He knows you did.
He pulls out the stool beside you, and more of his cologne wafts around you as he sits, turned to face you, legs spread, one knee pointing between yours.
The pints arrive wet from the tap, and for a second neither of you says anything at all. You trace a bead of condensation down your glass.
“Funny, isn’t it,” you offer, sheepish. “We’ve talked every day for a week, and the second we’re actually in front of each other…” You trail off, cheeks warming, eyes fixed on the fizz jumping over the rim of your beer.
“You’re nervous?” he asks, a cheeky lilt on it.
“A bit, yeah. Aren’t you?”
“Not at all.”
You squint at him. “I don’t know if I buy that.”
“Hm.” He takes a sip that lasts a little too long, and the tips of his ears have gone pink.
Your cheeks are doing about the same. You drink your beer — cold, hop-bitter, helping — and let him have his lie. It’s a generous lie anyway. It’s a lie shaped like a man trying, and you’ve been handed far worse shapes.
“So,” you start. “I haven’t asked why you’re even on Hinge. You don’t seem the type.”
“I’m not,” he chuckles, and offers nothing beyond it.
You wait. He just sips his beer. You hike a brow.
“That’s it? That’s your answer?”
“Well, it wasn’t my idea. The lads put me on it.”
“The lads — your guys from work?”
“Yeah.”
“They what, talked you into it?”
“No.” He turns his glass a degree. “They nicked my phone and made the profile behind my back.”
“And what made them do that?”
He takes a moment with that one. He could give you a cover story — you can almost watch him weigh one — but then he doesn’t.
“Their assessment,” he laughs to himself, “was that I’d been… cranky. Needed gettin’ out of the house.”
“Cranky?” you repeat, delighted.
“Their exact words were a bit different.”
“Hm.” You look at him — at ease, half a smile living in his beard, one arm resting along the bar. “You don’t seem cranky to me.”
“Yeah, well. Guess they were right, then.”
Your neck goes hot and you have to look away from him. “Well,” you manage. “They do good work, your committee.”
He huffs into his pint, and lets you recover.
“Okay, next one, then. Military.” You tip your glass toward him. “What do you actually do?”
He sets his beer down and you can see him carefully choosing which door to open. “What d’you want to know?”
“I don’t know. What’s your day look like?”
“Depends on the day. Paperwork, mostly. Meetings.” A beat. “Sometimes we go away.”
“Away?”
“Away.”
“For how long?”
“As long as it takes.”
“Doing…?”
“Whatever they need me to,” he says easily. “S’not me being mysterious. I’d tell you if I could.”
“That must be so strange, though. Having this whole— like, most of your life you can’t talk about.”
“You get used to it.” Then, because you’re still looking at him expectantly, not filling the space the way people usually do: “There’s loads I can say. Ask me what six weeks of rain in a jungle smells like. Or what a month in the desert does to your skin.”
“What’s a month in the desert do to your skin?”
“Nothing good, love,” he answers, shifting to face you better. “The beard’s load-bearing.”
You laugh into your beer, and it makes the next one easier to ask.
“Do you like it? Like, the whole life of it?”
He goes quiet on that one. Longer than he’s gone quiet on anything else you’ve asked. You can see him thinking on it.
“It’s what I’m best at,” he says finally. And then, mostly to his glass: “It’s all I’ve known, really. Been doin’ it since sixteen.”
You turn that over. There’s a whole life folded up in that sentence and you notice you want to ask about all of it, which is not a thing you’ve wanted to do with a man in a very long time.
The second beers arrive, and the conversation stops keeping to lanes — his lads and your best friend, the wedding in October, the neighbor whose bins are apparently a whole saga. You’re midway through the story of your work feud when a birthday party arrives loud and glittering behind you, and John, without so much as glancing down, reaches down and hooks his hand under the edge of your stool, and pulls.
The whole thing drags six inches across the floor with you on it, your knee sliding neatly between his, close enough now that his voice drops to match the new distance. You’re looking up at him, pulse tapping somewhere that has your thighs pressing together.
“Go on,” he encourages. “She said what?”
It takes you a moment to find your place, but you go on.
The bar only gets louder from there, the birthday table multiplying, and when a booth opens up in the back corner, John tips his chin at it.
“Go grab that,” he says, turning back to the bar. “I’ll get another round. Want the same?”
“Actually—” and you hesitate out of nothing but habit, out of years of a man’s face going tight when you complicate an order, “—could I do a vodka cranberry this time? I could get the round—”
His brows furrow with something akin to bafflement, brief and genuine. “You can have whatever you’d like,” he says, and suddenly you feel silly, your hand crossing to grip your elbow.
“No—I know. I just—”
“Whatever you’d like,” he repeats, gentler. “And—” he grimaces, like what he’s about to say pains him deeply. “Don’t ever offer to pay on a date with me again. Properly wind me up, that will.”
“S-sorry,” you shake your head, like you can rattle the habit loose.
“None of that either,” his eyes have gone crinkled at the corners, warm all the way through, and he raps two knuckles soft on the bar top like the matter’s settled. “Vodka cranberry. Go, sit.”
“Actually— I’m gonna go freshen up quickly. Two minutes.”
And you go, biting down on a smile, ears hot — embarrassed and looked after all at once, which is apparently a combination that works on you.
The bathroom is cooler than the bar and a quiet that leaves your ears ringing. You reapply some lipgloss and wash your hands and look at yourself in the dirty mirror, buzzing warm at the collarbones, eyes shiny, mouth half-curved.
It’s going well.
It’s going suspiciously well.
And every time it’s gone well before, this is exactly when you started hunting for the catch. So you dry your hands on the rough paper towel and leave before you can start.
He’s in the booth when you come back, settled against the wall side, the last of the evening gone from the windows and the lamp above him glowing gold over the table. Your drink is waiting — pink, iced, a lime wedged on the rim — set neatly across the table at the seat opposite.
You look at the seat opposite.
Then you slide in beside him instead. Your thigh a heated inch from his, reaching across to relocate your drink.
You don’t look at him, but you can tell John’s a bit curious of the arrangement. His arm comes up and settles along the back of the booth behind you, and it oddly feels like it was always going to end up here, his thumb grazing the bare skin of your shoulder. He picks up his beer with the other hand.
“Comfortable?” he asks, low, and with entirely too much satisfaction.
“I am,” you say, and the first sip of the vodka cranberry is cold and tart and sweet all the way down, blooming behind your sternum right where his voice has been landing all night.
The booth is easier than the bar, somehow — closer, quieter, the birthday party more muted — and the talk drifts wherever it wants, his low laugh arriving against your shoulder through the arm behind you. At some point the lull comes; ice softening in your glass, his thumb resting an inch from your shoulder. And maybe it’s the vodka, or the arm, or the running list of things you like about him that you’d need both hands to count now—
“How long ago was your last relationship? Like a real one.”
He takes a deep breath before answering. “Honest answer?”
“Preferably,” you giggle softly, and he smiles — most of it lost in the beard, enough that you wonder if there are dimples under there.
“Longer than what sounds good out loud,” he admits through the pull of it.
“Say it out loud anyway.”
“I was thirty-two. So, almost ten years ago.”
“Ten.”
“Mm.”
“A whole decade.”
“You can stop countin’ the years to me at any time, love.”
“Sorry, sorry.” You’re grinning. He is too. “It’s just, quite the gap in romance.”
“It went quick,” he says, and it’s a joke, and it’s also not. “What about you?”
“Ended about a year ago, we were together four.”
“Mm.”
“It was fine. Amicable— mostly,” you shrug.
“Mostly,” he repeats — not pushing, just setting the word down where you can see he heard it.
“Mostly,” you confirm, and leave it there.
The ice ticks in your glass. And the next question’s been sitting in your chest, so you take it out while you’re brave.
“Can I ask something and you not be offended?”
“Startin’ well,” he says, nodding on for you to continue.
You settle further into the booth and your shoulders press against his warm arm behind you, his fingers brushing over your shoulder. You lean your head back, turned to his face.
“What’s changed? Between thirty-two and now that you’re trying dating?” You mean just to ask the question, but you find yourself rambling on. “Because if the honest answer is nothing, and this is just— a-a hookup with, like, really good manners, that’s fine. Genuinely. I’d just rather know now.”
“Fair,” he says. “Asked myself the same thing this week.”
“Yeah? And what was the answer?”
“I’m tired of the quiet,” he starts, pausing as his eyes drift away in thought. They come back to you just as quick. “Used to come home to it like a reward. Now it just feels… empty.”
Something in your chest slides sideways.
“So, no. Not a hookup,” he continues with a breath. “But I can’t promise you’d be happy with the alternative either. I can be gone longer than I’m home.” His thumb brushes along your shoulder, once, like an apology.
“Guess I wouldn’t know unless I gave it a go.”
You say it lightly, and the exhale he lets out has a smile riding on it — and something in his shoulders comes down, some held thing you didn’t notice until it let go.
“No,” he agrees, low. “You wouldn’t.”
You’re suddenly aware of the distance between you — or the lack of it. Somewhere between sitting down and the vodka you’ve ended up awfully close: near enough to count the grey threaded through his beard, to catch the beer on his breath, near enough that the light between you has stopped reaching the space. Near enough that you can feel the heat coming off him, and your heartrate has picked up on it before the rest of you has.
His eyes flick down to your mouth. Quick — half a second, there and back — but you catch it, and it lands low in your stomach and stays.
Neither of you leans back.
And the pub carries on behind you — glasses clinking, the birthday table shouting, a till drawer slamming — all of it arriving from somewhere far off and dreamlike.
You move closer. Barely. Imperceptible. Your pulse is in your ears now, drumming out the last of your sense—
“You know,” you say, quiet, pitched for the six inches between you and nobody else, “you can kiss me. If you’d like.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Mhm,” you grin.
“Well,” he says, matching your volume, low enough that it lands somewhere below hearing, “I was going to be a gentleman about it. Wait til I walked you out.” His gaze drops to your mouth again, slower this time, no secret. “But if you’d rather have it here in the booth, I won’t argue.”
“I suppose I could be patient.”
“Mm,” he says, and doesn’t move.
Somewhere in the world, presumably, time is passing.
His jaw shifts.
“I’ll go pay the tab,” he decides.
And you’re both up and out of the booth quick, and you watch him stand at the bar with his back to you, shoulders set, and you press one cool knuckle to your own cheek and find it burning.
You two make it out the door.
The night’s gone hazy and July-thick, and you get maybe four steps down the side of the pub with his hand a light at the small of your back before you glance up at him and he glances down.
Whatever was left of patient dies right there on the pavement.
He moves you.
One hand finding your hip, the other your jaw, and then your back meets brick, warm through the thin of your blouse and against your bare shoulders, and his mouth is on yours.
Whatever mindful version he’d planned for the end of his gentlemanly walk out must have been spent in the booth — this is the interest. The kiss opens on a low rumble out of his chest, one you feel travel through his ribs into yours, and his tongue slides against yours, all beer and him, and you grip the front of his shirt with both fists just incase the wall behind you vanishes.
He kisses you thoroughly, his beard catching along your chin, a chafe you know you’ll feel tomorrow. A thigh slots half between yours, not pushing, not touching, but it’s not any less inviting. You could bare down on it, get the friction your body is craving, he’d let you, but you restrain yourself. His thumb strokes a slow line along your jaw in obscene contrast to what his mouth is doing — and it blooms down through you, fervid, liquescent.
He pulls back just far enough to breathe — forehead near yours, both of you loud with catching your breath — and when you open your eyes his are dark.
“Very gentlemanly,” you croon.
“I walked you out first, yeah?” he says, unrepentant.
You giggle against his mouth, and he claims it for himself with one more gentle kiss, and then he steps back a seemly distance, hand smoothing once down over his beard, shoulders resetting, breath evening out, everything going back in its place except his eyes.
“Walk me home?” you ask.
“I drove. I’ll give you a lift.”
You look up at him, all vodka-warm and enjoying yourself. “Well, just so you know, I share my location with my best friend and she knows exactly what pub I’m at, and has your name and photo, so—”
“Good,” he replies, no hesitation. “Smart girl. Keep it that way.” He finds his keys, fishing them out of his pocket. “I’m taking you straight home. You have my word.”
He draws an X over his heart, your lipgloss shining at the corner of his crooked mouth.
——
The car smells like-new — clean upholstery and faintly of engine oil, everything squared away, nothing rolling around in the footwells.
The drive is short. The radio murmurs. His hand rests easy on the gearstick a few inches from your knee — close enough that you spend two full streets aware of nothing else — and the streetlights slide over him in slow bars, catching the grey at his temple and the small satisfied set of his mouth.
The kiss is still thrumming under your skin like a struck glass, low in your belly, at the back of your knees — and you catch yourself doing the thing you swore off doing: imagining forward. Him in your doorway. Him in your kitchen on the weekend. Him coming home from wherever away is and it being your door he—
You look out the window. Four miles has never taken so long.
He pulls up outside your building and sets the handbrake, and the engine idles, and neither of you move.
The dashboard glow makes everything blue.
You want to ask him up. That's not the question; that got settled somewhere around the second kiss in the alley, possibly earlier, possibly around the moment he walked into the pub, or whatever. But there's the other thing you can't evict from your head: do you really want to sleep with him on the first date?
"So," you say.
"So…”
You look at him — streetlight in the grey of his beard, arm along the wheel, he’s in absolutely no hurry to resolve you.
"Did you have a good time tonight?"
His head turns. There's a beat where he just looks at you, and you watch him physically decide not to make a joke of it.
"Yes. Best night I've had in a while," he says.
"Would you—" and god, you're thirty years old and your heart is doing this anyway, "—want to see me again? Like this?"
"Was already plannin' to ask you to dinner." A small crease starts at the corner of his eye. "Was workin' out whether to do it now or ring you tomorrow, so I didn't seem overly—"
"Keen?"
"Keen," he confirms, gravely, like the word's been a burden to him all week.
And that lands warm and the relief does something reckless to your mouth, which is that it stops guarding it.
"Okay. Then I'm going to say something, but you can't look at me while I say it."
“Right.” He scrubs a hand over his twitching lips and looks out the windshield, obedient.
"I want to ask you up."
"Mm."
"And I'm having a whole debate about it."
"I can hear it," he says. "Been losin' to the engine for about a minute now."
"Just—,” you sigh, “—shut up." But you're smiling at the dashboard. "It's just— I spent all week wondering if this was a hookup thing for you. And you answered that, and I believe you, I do. But there's this small, paranoid part of me that's like, well, that's exactly what a man would say at the pub, isn't it? And then there's this other, stupider part that thinks if you come up, you'll—" you take a deep breath, your fingers hooking into each other on your lap, and make yourself finish it, "—think less of me. First date and all."
He's quiet for a second, lips pursing.
“Can I look at you now?” he tries.
“Yeah.”
"You want to know where I'm actually at?"
"Truly just desperate for a man to be honest so I know what headspace to put myself in."
“Alright.” He shifts to face you, wrist still hanging over the wheel. “I want to come up. Badly, if you want some extra honesty.”
The badly goes straight between your thighs.
“Okay,” you manage. “Noted.”
“I haven’t lied to you once tonight. And I’m takin’ you to dinner whether I come up or not.”
“And, like— you wouldn’t think—”
“Think less of you?” He frowns, like the math’s not mathing. “For doin’ the same thing I’d be doing? Together?”
“When you put it like that…”
“For what it’s worth, I’m sat here havin’ a version of the same debate. Been out of this a long time. Didn’t want you thinkin’ that’s all I came for. So if you’d rather I kiss you at the door and drive home, I’ll do that and consider it a perfect evening.”
And maybe it’s the ease of him, the total absence of pressure you’re always braced for on nights like this, that settles it for you.
“Would you like to come up?”
——
The stairwell smells of somebody's late dinner and warm dust, the day's heat still trapped in it, and you take the stairs ahead of him to the second floor.
John is a gentleman.
John has been a gentleman all night.
John gives himself the length of one flight of stairs off the clock — the sway of you in those jeans, the shift and give of you with every step, the smooth line of your bare shoulders under the halter's little bow — and by the landing he's a gentleman again, and if you felt his eyes like a brand on you, and by the half-smirk you throw over your shoulder you did, neither of you says a word about it.
Your flat smells like you — the perfume he got to know at the pub, but underneath it, clean laundry, a candle burned down sometime this week — and a blur of black-and-caramel bolts across the living room and vanishes down the hall before he can so much as get a look at her.
"That was Twix," you say, her paws still pattering away. "She'll start her background check and circle back."
"Sensible."
And then the two of you are standing in your living room with the whole car’s worth of honesty sitting in the middle of the floor, and you look at him, and look at the kitchen, and say:
"Do you want a drink? I have wine. Or, um. Tea? I might have a beer from—"
"I'm alright," his mouth pulls at one side.
"Water? I'm gonna have water."
"Then I'll have water," he says like he’s surrendering.
He watches you go — and he could laugh, not at you, but because he knows exactly what he’s looking at. The two of you agreed in plain English on why he’s standing here, and now you’re in your kitchen filling glasses neither of you want, and wiping down a counter that, from where he’s stood, was already clean.
So he gives you room. Settles against the arm of the couch, takes a slow lap of your shelf with his eyes — you and a woman he guesses is the October bride, you on a hike somewhere sunny, you and Twix bravely on the balcony — and he wants you the whole time, low and patient, in his back teeth, but doesn’t move on it.
Your pace. Your move.
You come back with the waters, and hand him his, and hold your own in both hands like you might drop it. He takes a sip, looks at you over the rim of it.
“You’re nervous,” he says.
“Not at all.”
“Mm.” He nods slowly, deeply unconvinced and taking a page from your own book. “Don’t know if I buy that.”
He watches it land, watches the laugh come up out of you before you can stop it, head tipping back, throat bare, and half your nerves seem to leave with it.
He likes that.
He sets his glass down. Then, gently, he takes yours out of your mid-fidget hands and sets it down too — he tips your chin up with one knuckle, and kisses you.
Easy-like, cold from the water, cranberry still faint on your tongue, your breath catches once against his mouth and then lets go. Your hands slide flat up his chest and stop over his heart — which is going quicker than he’d care to admit, and he feels the exact moment you find it out, the little hum of discovery you make.
When you pull back to look at him, whatever nerves were left in you are gone from your eyes, and they’re twinkly a lot like the first photo he ever saw of you.
You take his hand off your waist, lace it through yours, and guide him backward toward the short hall.
In your bedroom he finds the tie of your halter at the back of your neck and pauses with the ends between his fingers, silk warm from your body. One pull and it gives, the fabric sighing loose, and he follows it slide down with his eyes first, then his mouth — the slope of your throat, over your shoulder, then the soft skin below your ear that tastes of strawberry perfume and salt. His beard drags over your neck and a shiver flows through you so he does it again, slower. You shiver harder, fingers curling into the front of his polo.
Good.
You tug the hem of his shirt up and he reaches back, pulls it off over his head one-handed, and drops it somewhere he’ll look for later. He unhooks your bra just as easily, and when your palms spread into the coarse hair over his bare chest and down his toned stomach, the muscle jumps under your fingertips, he hears his own breath go rough.
“Okay,” you say, a little wonder in it. “Wow, yeah, that’s….”
“Mm?”
“Nothing. Just— I knew military, just didn’t realize… this much military.”
“Lodging a complaint?” he askes, amused.
“Definitely not.”
The rest goes gradually — his belt, your jeans peeled down warm thighs with his calloused palms flat against your skin the whole way, a hop and a giggle when the denim catches your ankle and he steadies you by the elbow — and then you’re bare in front of him, lamplight pooling gold along your shoulder, your hip, the soft curve of your stomach. He stops with his hands at your waist and looks.
“Say something,” you murmur, half a laugh, shy at last under the attention. “You’re oggling.”
“I am.” His thumbs press slow arcs into your hips. “Give me a minute. Been picturin’ this since Tuesday and I did you no justice.”
You pull him down onto the bed by way of an answer, and the mattress sinks with a soft complaint, and then it’s just skin — so much warm skin, soft everywhere he’s hard, giving under his hands, smelling of perfume and the clean sweat July dampens into everyone.
He stretches out alongside you, one heavy thigh over yours, and takes his time. The curve of your waist. The full weight of your breast, thumb dragging over your nipple until it peaks and your breath stutters. The inside of your thigh, where the skin is finest and the heat pools. You move under his touch the whole time, restless and rising, fingers in his hair, at his shoulders, and the small sounds you make land somewhere at the base of his neck and prickle there.
Then he shifts down the bed, kisses the soft of your stomach, the plush crease of your hip, and looks up the length of you.
“Can I?”
“You— yes,” you breathe, trembling feebly. “Yes, obviously, you don’t have to a—”
His mouth is on you before the sentence ends.
You’re sweet and slick against his tongue, already so wet the first slow lick slides easy, and the sound you make is high and caught somewhere low, thigh twitching against his ear, one hand flying to his hair. He hums — feels you feel it — and settles in. No rush. Long soft strokes of his tongue until your hips learn the rhythm and rise to meet it, then his lips close warm around your clit, sucking gently, and your whole body pulls tight.
“Oh my god— okay— okay—”
“Mm.”
“Don’t be smug—” and your voice climbs off the end of the sentence as he slides two thick fingers into you, curling them, tongue still working, and whatever the rest of that scolding was, he never learns it.
“Could do this all night, sweetheart,” he murmurs against you, and feels the words land in a shudder. Your breathing changes. Your thighs start trembling, your hand fists in the sheets — and he keeps the pace exactly the same until you’re pulling at him. Hair, arm, anything you can reach.
“John— John— come— I want you. Now,” you whine, “Please.”
He comes up the length of you slow, mouth mapping stomach and sternum and throat on the way, and settles over you on one forearm—
"I should've said this in the car," he starts, eyes on yours. "I don't have a condom. Wasn't assuming tonight would end up here."
"I don't have any either. I actually checked the drawer before I left tonight." You push his dampening hair back off his forehead. "I'm on the pill, and I trust you. But I'd still feel better if you pull out. Is that okay?"
He nods assuredly. "Then I'll pull out," he says flat and plain. "You have my word."
"You and your word—" but you're smiling, and then you're not smiling, because he's already moved and taken himself in hand and dragged the head of his cock through your folds, coating himself in you, and notched against your entrance, and the smile falls open into something much, much better.
He pushes in slow, watches your face the entire way — he couldn't look elsewhere if a grenade went off — your brows drawing up, your lips parting around a breath that doesn't finish, your nails biting little crescents into his forearms — and fuck, the feel of you: scalding, soaked, tight enough that he has to stop twice, jaw clenched, sweat sliding at his temple, feeding you his cock an inch at a time and pulling back, then giving you more; the slick easy give of you around him unspooling something in his stomach.
"Talk to me," he murmurs, gravel-low. "Alright?"
"Yes." Your voice has gone breathless and small and blissed. "You're— god—"
"Christ, you’re snug," he exhales shakily, eyes finding yours. “Relax for me, baby. Breathe.”
"I am breath—oh. Oh—shhit—"
John’s seated all the way, hips flush to your backside, and both of you go quiet — a shared beat of stillness, you fluttering around him hot and full, his body coming down, forehead dropping to yours, ten months of silence pulling a sound up out of his chest that he couldn't have stopped if he knew it was coming.
Then you shift your hips, experimental, a slow grind up against him, and that stillness is over.
He moves slowly; long level strokes dragging all the way out so you both feel every hot stretch of the return, your breasts pressing soft against his hairy chest. Your heels slide up the back of his thighs and he budges his hips closer, holding deep and pressing the head of his cock into your furthest wall. Your hands squeeze the meat between his shoulders and his neck as he pushes a small squeal out of you.
"Right there—right there—right there, don't—"
"I won’t," he murmurs against your jaw. “I won’t move.”
"—okay maybe move a little—"
He breathes something restrained through a smile. "Make your mind up, darling," he grunts.
“It’s hard to— mmm—think like this,” you half-moan against his cheek.
“Don’t think, then.”
It’s all your talking that undoes him more than anything, he realizes distantly. He’d forgotten there was a version of this with laughing in it; a version with a woman eagerly gripping him and grinning against his cheek in the second before a moan carries her voice away — and every time you say his name, breathed and broken, something in his chest cinches another notch tighter.
He draws back and drives home again, and whatever you’d been about to answer with comes out as a punched huff.
You don’t think.
He feels the difference in you immediately — your body dropping the manners, hips rising to meet him harder than he’s giving it, heels dragging him in by the thighs on every stroke, a low frustrated sound building in your throat when he keeps the same controlled pace. You’re not asking for anything. You’re taking it in inches, greedy and unaware of yourself, nails dragging down the small of his back, pulling—
“Harder?” he asks against your ear.
"Yes, please."
He hooks your knee up over his hip and opens you wider—“So polite.”—and gives it to you deeper, his weight behind it, your headboard cracking against the wall. You go loud and lovely underneath him, clutching, slick heat and plush skin and your nails scoring lines down his back that he hopes, viciously, will last long enough to admire.
He works a hand between your bodies, thumb finding your clit, riding the motion you’ve bkth created.
"That's— John— You’re gonna make me come," you sob.
"I know. I feel you. Squeezin' me like— Christ. Go on—fuck."
He watches it arrive before you do, a shiver running ahead of the wave; your spine arches up off the bed, your cunt clenches around him in long pulsing, aching, waves — it takes you under, and you pull him with you.
He holds you, murmuring filth and praise in equal measure against your ear—
How good—
How gorgeous—
You’re mine now, you know that? Hm?—
It’s watching you eagerly nod along with his babbling that finishes him. He lasts maybe ten more strokes on borrowed time, heat gathering alacritous and irrevocable at the base of his groin — and he rears back onto his knees, pulling out of you with a growl that tumbles from his throat, fist working his cock over, soaked with you, spilling hot across your stomach and hip in thick ropes, head hanging, shoulders heaving, your thighs still bracketing his knees.
When he lifts his head, you’re already looking at him.
Glowing down to your chest, lips parted and kiss-swollen, wearing him low on your stomach — and neither of you says anything. Neither of you looks away either. His chest is still heaving. Your knee presses in against his side, and the corner of your mouth starts to curl, and his does too, helpless about it.
He comes down on his side, careful of the mess he’s made of you, one arm heavy across the pillow above your head. The curtain breathes at the window beside the bed and the night comes in and cools the sweat on his back, and he can see your heartbeat going hard at your throat, the rise and fall of your stomach not yet settled. He gently fits his thumb against your pulse, just to feel it going.
He kisses you, your mouth lazy under his, and then your temple, and the crown of your head, and you make a low, boneless sound and turn your face into his hot neck, and the two of you just lie there breathing each other in, tangled and settling, your finger drawing slow shapes on his forearm.
"John?" Small, against his throat.
"Mm?"
"Would you mind grabbing me a cloth? Bathroom's just across the hall."
He's up before the sentence finishes, annoyed at his own carcass the whole three steps to the door, ten months out of practice and it shows, he used to know this part, the part where he takes care of you before you have to ask.
You bathroom is small and smells of your shampoo, fruity, herbal. He runs a flannel under the warm tap, wrings it out, catches his own eyes in the mirror over the sink — wrecked hair, beard ruined and shiny with your lipgloss. He turns, craning his neck spotting a blooming red scratch coming up nicely at his shoulder.
He comes back and cleans you up properly, kneeling on the edge of the bed, one hand steady at your hip while the warm cloth moves over your stomach — thorough about it, frowning slightly the way he does when he’s concentrating — and you watch him do it propped up on your elbows with an expression he can't quite read and doesn't need to. It's warm, whatever it is. And it’s aimed at him, so.
"You're staring," he says, not looking up.
"You're tidying me."
"Should've done it before you asked." He folds the cloth, sets it on the nightstand, and stretches out beside you again, this time gathering you into his chest. "Out of practice."
"I'll allow it," you say, magnanimous, settling your cheek against his pec. "The rest was very in-practice."
He huffs into your hair.
Your fingers trail idle through the hair on his chest, down over old pinked scars, and you ask him about them — whether the jagged line at his shoulder hurt, what caused the puckered one under his ribs — and he answers more honestly than he means to, your weight settling heavier against him as the adrenaline drains.
There's a soft thump from the hallway, then, and a moment later a small shape appears in the doorway — sits, tail wrapping her feet, and surveys the wreckage: the trail of clothes, the stranger man in the bed, you draped over his ribs.
She stares at John.
John stares back.
"We have an audience," he says.
You look over him to see your cat, "Twix, John. John, Twix."
Twix holds his gaze a moment longer, supremely unimpressed, then steps delicately over his discarded shirt and exits the way she came and he feels you giggling before he hears it, the shake of it against his chest.
"That went well," you say, overly pleased.
“Yeah?”
“Mhm.”
"Well, consider me chuffed."
Some comfortable minutes later he feels you surface a little out of the drowse, feels your breathing change, going careful; feels your face arrange itself against his skin before you speak.
"You don't have to stay, by the way." Light. Smooth as eroded stone, polished by use, he imagines. "If you'd sleep better in your own bed. No pressure either way."
And there it is — the same maneuver from your texts, the honest thing dressed up so you can't be caught caring — except this time he can feel your heartbeat while you run it, quick against his ribs, betraying the whole performance from inside.
He keeps his hand moving on your arm, slow, so you know nothing's landed wrong.
"I'll head home," he says. "Not because I want to," he clarifies.
“No?” you ask.
"Believe me. This is about the last place I want to leave." His hand doesn't stop, slow up, slow down, steadying you through it. "I'd like at least one proper dinner between us before I go makin' a habit of your bed."
You lift your head off his chest and look at him — hair wrecked, eyes searching his face for the trick — and he lets you look as long as you need to because there's no trick to be found. He meant it.
“Alright," you agree.
“Yeah?”
“Yes. Dinner sounds nice.”
"Mm," he hums, contented. He presses a kiss into your hair and untangles himself, face scrunched with visible reluctance, and dresses while you watch from the bed with the sheet gathered loose around you.
At the door he stops.
"C'mere."
You come to him in the sheet, and he kisses you properly, one hand cupping your face, thumb at your cheek. You go languid against him. He takes his time. Long past politeness. Long enough that leaving starts to look renegotiable, and he breaks away before he starts.
"G’night," he says, low, still holding your face.
"Goodnight."
"I'll ring you about dinner tomorrow."
——
The flat is quiet. But it's a different quiet than the one you left this morning and you stand in the middle of it grinning.
Twix reappears at the edge of the counter and stares.
“I don’t need the lecture, I’m grown,” you tell her and start walking back to the bedroom, you hear her little jump to the floor and her feather steps catching up with you, “I can have sex. I deserve it, even.” You drop into your bed with a sigh. “You’d understand if you still had ovaries.”
20K words, Simon’s hair has grown out, reader wears glasses, Simon doesn’t know how to dance, smut, the fluffiest fluff, angst, size kink, Simon is huge, pee mentioned, Simon is filthy but we all knew that. Tell me if I missed any tags.
He was four years old when he stole your crayons.
Not all of them. Just the good ones. The red one. The yellow one. The bright, sunflower-gold one that you'd been saving to colour the sun in the corner of your drawing, the way all four-year-olds drew the sun — a circle in the corner, rays shooting out like a child's idea of joy.
You looked at him across the low art table in that bright little preschool room that smelled of poster paint and digestive biscuits.
He was stocky even then.
Chubby-cheeked and heavy-set. A thick, sturdy little boy who sat with his legs wide and his fat fists curled around your crayons like he'd earned them.
He wasn't even looking at you.
He was colouring something — a car, maybe, or a blob that might have been a dog — and the yellow crayon moved in big, purposeful strokes across his paper.
You did not cry.
You considered it.
Then you leaned across the table and took them back.
He looked up.
Brown eyes. Even at four, they were startling — dark and serious and far too watchful for a boy his age.
He stared at you.
You stared back.
Then he slid the gold crayon back across the table to you, said nothing, and went back to his drawing.
His name was Simon.
You would not learn that until the register was called the following morning. But you remembered his eyes before you remembered his name.
— ✦ —
He broke your glasses in Year Two.
Not on purpose — or so you believed, for most of your life, until you were old enough to accept that
Simon Riley did very few things without purpose.
He knocked into you in the corridor outside the dining hall, your plastic NHS frames hitting the linoleum floor, one arm snapping clean off at the hinge.
You stood there, the world going soft and blurry at the edges the way it always did without them, and you felt the particular, humiliating sting of being unable to see properly — the vulnerability of it, the indignity.
Simon picked up the frames. Looked at them. Looked at you.
He didn't say sorry straight away. He examined the break with the seriousness of a boy who was already, at seven, very careful about what he said and when he said it. Then, "I'll carry your bag till they're fixed."
"You broke my glasses," you told him like he didn’t know.
"I know." He nodded.
"That's not the same as fixing them."
"No," he agreed. "But it's what I've got."
He carried your bag for three days. And when your mum brought the repaired frames in on the fourth morning, he handed the bag back without ceremony, turned, and went to join his mates by the football cage. No further apology. No acknowledgement that anything had occurred between you at all.
That afternoon, you kicked over his sandcastle in the playground.
He watched you do it. Didn't say a word.
You felt better.
And somehow, after that, you were friends.
— ✦ —
He couldn't read very well. You figured this out in Year Three, during the round-robin reading in class — when the teacher went along the rows and each child read a sentence aloud.
You noticed the way Simon's jaw set and his hands went flat on the desk the closer it got to his turn. The way his eyes moved across the page, laboured and slow, tracking words like they were things to be wrestled rather than known.
He got through his sentence. Barely. His face was blank when he sat back, the particular blankness he'd already learned to wear — that carefully constructed nothing that meant everything was fine when everything was not fine at all.
You didn't say anything about it. Not then. You were eight years old, not stupid.
What you did was start reading with him at break time. You presented it as something you needed — you told him you were practising for a reading competition and needed an audience.
Simon was not fooled. He was never fooled, not really.
But he sat down with you on the bench by the library door and listened while you read, and then slowly, carefully, you handed the book to him and asked what he thought happened next, and he had to read ahead to find out.
It took most of the school year. But by the summer he was reading chapter books. He never thanked you. He did start saving you a seat on the library bench every break time, and that was the same thing.
— ✦ —
He played football and rugby.
You read on the grass bank above the field.
It became a kind of institution — the ritual of your shared proximity without shared activity. Simon on the pitch, broad and determined and already bigger than the other boys by Year Five, already moving with that particular physicality that seemed less like playing and more like declaration.
And you on the bank above, your book open, your reading glasses (a better pair now, tortoiseshell) perched on your nose, half-reading and half watching without ever quite admitting to the watching.
He always knew you were there. He didn't do anything about it. But sometimes, when he scored, he'd look up at the bank first before he looked anywhere else.
You told yourself you were only there because the grass was nice and the light was good.
You were not a good liar, even then.
— ✦ —
The boy's name was Daniel Holt and he pushed you over in the playground in Year Five because you'd refused to give him the answers to the maths homework.
You'd said no three times and the third time he pushed you and you went down hard on your palms and your knees, the concrete was unforgiving.
You were crying before you'd fully registered what had happened. Not dramatically — small, shocked, indignant tears, the kind that arrive before the pain does.
Simon was there before a teacher was. You didn't even see where he came from. One moment the playground was its ordinary mid-morning noise, and the next Daniel Holt had a split lip and Simon Riley was standing over him with blood on his knuckles and a look on his face that was completely, utterly calm.
The calm was the frightening part. Even at ten.
He got three days at home for it. He spent the first afternoon sitting on your front step, eating crisps, because he knew you'd be furious with him and wanted to face it head-on.
You were furious. You told him he was an idiot. He told you Daniel Holt had it coming. You told him violence wasn't the answer. He told you Daniel Holt wasn't going to touch you again.
He was right. Daniel Holt never came near you again.
You didn't thank him either. You went inside and made him a sandwich, and that was the same thing.
— ✦ —
Secondary school arrived like a change in weather — everything slightly larger, slightly louder, the corridors longer and noisier, the stakes somehow higher and more ambiguous all at once. You arrived with a bag so heavy your shoulder ached within the first hour: your textbooks, yes, but also the extracurricular books you carried everywhere, the extra notepad you used for non-school thoughts, the six different highlighters you colour-coded by subject.
Simon took the bag from you on the third day without asking.
"I can carry it," you told him.
"I know," he said.
He slung it over his shoulder like it weighed nothing, which for him it probably didn't. He'd grown over the summer — not just taller, though he was that, but broader, thicker through the shoulders in a way that made him look like a man playing a boy, trying the shape of it on. He wore it well, even at eleven. He wore everything like he'd already decided what he was and was simply waiting for the world to catch up.
He carried your bag when it was heavy, and it was frequently heavy. He did it without comment and without making you feel small for needing it. That was the thing about Simon — he never made you feel small. He made other people feel small, sometimes, when they deserved it. But not you. Never you.
— ✦ —
The bruises were never from rugby.
You knew by the second year of secondary.
You were not naive — you had read enough, observed enough, understood enough about the world to recognise the shape of what was happening in Simon Riley's house even though he never said a word about it.
The bruises were in the wrong places for rugby. They appeared in the wrong season. They were around his ribs and his arms and once, memorably, along his jaw, and he came to school the Monday after the jaw bruise with that face — that blank, carefully constructed nothing face — and you sat next to him at lunch and said nothing at all.
You said nothing because there was nothing you could do. You were twelve. You were a girl with a book bag and highlighter pens and absolutely no power over the man who was hurting your best friend, and knowing that — the impotence of it, the helpless, hollow ache of caring about someone you could not protect — was the first truly adult pain you ever felt.
What you could do was this: you could make sure he had somewhere to go.
Your mother, who was perceptive in the quiet way that some mothers are, never asked questions when Simon turned up at the back door on a Sunday evening or a Wednesday after school.
She just set another plate.
Your house became a refuge without anyone naming it as such. Simon did his homework at your kitchen table, ate your mother's cooking, watched telly with your family, and slept on your sofa sometimes when the option was presented naturally enough that it didn't feel like charity.
— ✦ —
You got your period for the first time on a Tuesday in November, in Year Nine. In the school toilets, third period, when you were thirteen years old and the day had been entirely ordinary right up until it wasn't.
The particular cocktail of shock and pain and embarrassment and the specific existential bewilderment of being a person whose body was doing something enormous without prior adequate notice left you sitting on the closed toilet lid crying in a way you hadn't cried in years.
You got out your Nokia. That familiar brick of a phone, the keypad worn smooth at the number five. You typed Simon's number and pressed call before you'd properly decided to.
He picked up on the second ring. "Yeah."
"Simon." Your voice came out wrong. Too thin.
A beat. When he spoke again his voice had changed — quieter, more careful. "Where are you?"
"Girls' toilets. Near the science block."
"Right," he said. "Stay there."
He appeared outside the girls' toilets seven minutes later — you could hear him through the door, his voice low and flat, telling a Year Eight girl to go use the other ones — and then he was there, right there on the other side of the door, talking to you through it in that steady, even way he had when he wanted to be calm on your behalf.
"You're alright," he said. “Do you need me to go to the office?"
"No," you managed. "I need — I don't know what I need."
"I'll get you something from the vending machine," he said, that Manchester accent of his low and unhurried. "And I'll text your mum."
When you came out of the toilets twenty minutes later, looking wrung-out and clutching what the school nurse had provided, Simon was leaning against the wall. He looked at you for a moment — took you in, the way he always did, that comprehensive, assessing look — and then he stepped forward and kissed your cheek. Quick. Certain. His mouth warm and deliberate against your cheekbone.
"You're alright," he said again. He said it like a fact. Like he was making it true by saying it.
You cried a bit more, for different reasons, and he pretended not to notice.
— ✦ —
He was captain of the rugby team by Year Ten. It suited him — the leadership, the sense of purpose, the structure of it.
You went to his matches sometimes, wrapped in a scarf on the touchline, and watched him move across the pitch with that same quality you'd noticed on the primary school field: less like playing, more like declaration.
He was ferocious and focused and occasionally frightening, and the other boys deferred to him not just because he was bigger than them but because he had the kind of authority that doesn't need to be announced.
Afterwards he'd find you on the touchline, still carrying that quality — coiled, alert — and it would take him a few minutes to come back to himself. To come back to you.
"Good game," you'd say.
"Yeah," he'd say.
And then slowly, the set of his shoulders would ease, and he'd become Simon again. Your Simon. The one who stole your crayons and carried your bag and ate your mother's shepherd's pie like it was sacred.
— ✦ —
He could make you laugh. This was not a small thing.
Simon Riley was not, by general consensus, a funny person. He was serious and quiet and his face in repose looked like a man carrying a private weather system. But he had a dry, deadpan wit that he deployed rarely and precisely, and it landed, every time, like a key in a lock made specifically for it.
He knew how to make you laugh because he'd spent years learning you. The specific frequency of your humour. The things that made you dissolve into giggles rather than just smile. He deployed his wit with the same precision he deployed everything else, and the result was that when Simon Riley made you laugh — really laugh, the helpless, breathless kind — it felt like being given something he didn't give to anyone else.
Which, you would eventually understand, was accurate.
— ✦ —
His name was Ryan Marsh and he was your first kiss, in the park on a Friday evening in Year Ten, and it was fine. It was nice, even. Ryan was sweet and nervous and smelled of his older brother's aftershave and the kiss lasted approximately forty seconds.
Ryan Marsh had a broken nose the following Monday.
Simon maintained, with total conviction, that Ryan had walked into a door. Ryan, to his credit, corroborated this story completely.
You did not push the matter, partly because you had no concrete evidence and partly because some part of you — the part that read on the grass bank and watched the pitch and noticed when Simon looked up at the bank before he looked anywhere else — felt something that was not entirely uncomplicated about it.
You and Ryan Marsh did not have a second kiss. You told yourself it was because the chemistry hadn't been right.
You were getting a bit better at lying to yourself, by fourteen. But only a bit.
— ✦ —
GCSEs arrived the way all important things arrived — with more weight than you'd expected and less warning than you'd have liked.
Year Ten and Eleven were the years you restructured Simon's entire approach to studying, methodically and patiently, the same way you'd helped him learn to read, finding the approach that worked for how his mind moved.
Simon was not unintelligent.
He was, in fact, formidably sharp in ways that didn't translate easily to an exam paper: quick to read people, quick to understand systems, possessed of a spatial and strategic intelligence that you recognised and admired even as you taught him how to write it down in ways that the mark scheme would accept.
He sat with you at your kitchen table night after night — your mother quietly replenishing the tea,— and you explained things in the language that made sense to his brain rather than the language of the textbook.
He sat with you at lunch during school hours and glared at anyone who called you a nerd. The glaring was extremely effective. Simon Riley's face, by fifteen, was a significant deterrent.
His GCSE results, when they arrived, were good. Better than anyone who knew his circumstances might have expected from a boy who'd had so much working against him.
He rang you on the house phone when he opened the results envelope. He didn't say much. His voice, when he spoke, was different — something in it unguarded, the Manchester in it softer somehow, without the armour it usually carried.
"Couldn't have done it without you," he said.
"You did it," you told him firmly. "I just held the torch."
"Still needed the torch."
You smiled so hard your face ached. "Go celebrate, Simon."
"Yeah," he said. And then, quieter, "Thanks, sunshine."
— ✦ —
He was an apprentice at the butcher's on Renshaw Street after school — learning the trade with the same focused, physical competence he brought to everything else, solid and unhurried, his big hands learning new kinds of precision. You had a job at the bookshop two streets over.
On his lunch breaks you would walk over with a sandwich and a packet of crisps, and you'd sit on the low wall around the side of the shop while he ate and you talked about nothing in particular and everything in general.
He had sawdust on his boots and you'd have ink on your fingers from pricing stickers, and you'd sit in the thin afternoon light talking about books and people and where things might go from here, and it was the most ordinary, irreplaceable thing in the world.
You didn't know, then, that you were storing it up. You didn't know you were in the middle of something finite.
You were seventeen and you thought you had time.
— ✦ —
It was the eleventh of September, 2001.
You were at work when it happened — the bookshop had a small television in the back room, and you watched the footage with your hand pressed over your mouth and the world rearranging itself into a new shape around you.
Simon came to you that evening. He didn't knock — he had a spare key, had done for years — and you heard him come in and go into the kitchen and fill the kettle, the sound of him so familiar and domestic and real that something in your chest loosened a fraction.
He brought you tea. He sat on the sofa beside you and you watched the news together in silence, and at some point your head found his shoulder without either of you deciding it had.
"I'm going to join up," he said. Not asking. Telling.
You lifted your head from his shoulder. Frowned at him. "Join up what?"
"The military."
The word landed in the room and stayed there. You looked at his face — that flat, certain expression he wore when he'd already decided something — and you felt the ground shift slightly under you.
"Simon. You're seventeen."
"You can join at sixteen with parental consent," he said. Straightforward, as though he'd already looked into it. Which of course he had. "Seventeen without."
"That's—" You stopped. Started again. "You've thought about this before today."
"Yeah."
Of course he had. You could see it now, the shape of it — this was not a reaction to the footage on the television, not a hot, impulsive thing. This was something Simon had been building toward without telling you. The structure of it. The purpose. The particular kind of belonging that came from being part of something larger than yourself. You'd always known he'd go toward something like this. You'd just hoped, without ever quite admitting to the hoping, that it might be further away.
"You're not going to try to talk me out of it." Not a question.
"Would it work?"
He held your gaze. "No."
"Then no," you said. Your voice was very steady. You were proud of it. "I'm not."
He was quiet for a long moment. The television continued its awful repetition. Then his arm came around your shoulders, heavy and warm, and he pulled you in closer against his side.
You stayed like that until the tea went cold.
— ✦ —
The train station was grey and noisy with other leavings, other arrivals, other people in the middle of things.
Simon stood in front of you on the platform with his kit bag and his big, careful hands and the face he'd spent seventeen years learning to keep blank, and it occurred to you, not for the first time and not for the last, that you loved him.
That you had loved him in different quantities and different registers for most of your life. That you did not know how to say it and were not sure it would do either of you any good if you did.
So you didn't say it.
You went up on your toes and you hugged him — truly hugged him, arms around his neck, your face pressed against his jaw — and he held you back with both arms, the kit bag dropping to the platform, and he was so solid and warm and real that you memorised it.
"Don't be an idiot," you told him, muffled.
He made a sound that was almost a laugh. Almost. "Best I can do is try." The Manchester in his voice, low and warm and his.
"Simon."
"I know," he said quietly, against your temple. "I know, sunshine."
You stepped back. You held it together. He picked up his bag and he walked toward the platform and at the door of the train he turned, and looked at you standing there with your glasses and your coat and your hands pressed together in front of you, and for a second you saw something in his face that wasn't blank at all.
Then he was gone.
You cried on the way home. Proper, ugly crying, in the front seat of your mother's car, while she drove and said nothing and passed you a tissue.
You cried because you thought you might never see him again. Because the world had cracked open on a Tuesday in September and people were going toward the fracture and Simon Riley was one of them.
You cried because you never told him.
— ✦ —
He sent a birthday card every year.
They arrived with no return address and postmarks from places you'd never heard of, and sometimes they were late and sometimes they were so early you suspected he'd sent them weeks in advance in case he couldn't later.
They were always plain — Simon Riley was not a man who browsed the sentimental section — white or cream envelopes, the kind of card that was almost generic, and inside: his handwriting, which had improved vastly from the boy who'd struggled across the page in Year Three, and always the same thing. Your name at the top. Happy Birthday, sunshine. And then: S.
Just S.
Like he was still close enough that you'd know exactly who that meant. Like the initial was sufficient.
It was.
You sent his birthday gifts to a P.O. box he'd given you, wrapped carefully, the tag always: From your best friend. You didn't know if he received them all. You sent them anyway. It felt important to keep sending them — to maintain the thread, even when you couldn't see both ends of it.
— ✦ —
Thirty-four years old now.
You have no husband. You had come close, once — a man named Patrick who had been perfectly acceptable in every measurable way and who had wanted to marry you and had probably deserved someone who could give him more of herself than you could manage.
You had not been fair to Patrick. You knew that. You had been in love with someone else for most of your adult life, and even with the someone else absent and silent and possibly dead, there wasn't room for anyone else.
You have no children, though you wanted them. The timeline on that was becoming its own quiet ache, the kind you didn't prod too often.
You have a job that pays the bills and not much else — admin in an office building that smells of carpet cleaner and recycled air, the kind of work that requires enough of your brain to stop it from wandering but not enough to satisfy it.
You have an apartment that is functional and yours and that you have tried to make cozy, with books on every surface and plants that are mostly surviving and a kitchen you actually cook in.
It is not the house. It is not the house you told Simon about when you were sixteen and lying in his back garden on a summer evening, staring up at the sky.
No birthday card for five years now.
Five years of the particular, specific silence that was different from all the silences before, because the silences before had been interrupted. Annually, reliably, he had broken them.
Five years of nothing had the texture of conclusion. Of a chapter closing. And you had reached the point — slowly, painfully, with the kind of acceptance that doesn't feel like acceptance but feels like exhaustion — where you were fairly certain Simon Riley was dead.
Your heart ached for your best friend in the low, constant way of grief that has become so familiar it's almost structural.
You carried it the way you carried other things, quietly, with your spine straight.
Which is why you are sitting across from a man named — it didn't matter, it really didn't matter what his name was — on what your colleague Debbie had described as 'a perfectly nice date with a perfectly nice man' and trying to remember what it felt like to be interested in your own life.
The man sitting across from you was the complete opposite of Simon Riley.
He was trim and well-dressed and had the kind of face that was handsome in a way that required no effort to appreciate and inspired no particular feeling from you.
He had been talking for, by your reckoning, forty-seven minutes. In that time he had covered: his career (impressive, in his telling), his car (expensive, in his telling), his last holiday (exotic, in his telling), and his general philosophy on modern dating (nuanced, in his telling).
He had not asked about your job. He had not asked about your books or the one peeking out of your handbag; the one he'd glanced at and not commented on. He had not asked if your pasta was nice, which it was, actually, genuinely nice, and you'd have told him so if he'd asked. He had not asked you almost anything, come to think of it.
Simon Riley, who spoke perhaps a tenth as many words as this man, had always asked.
Simon Riley had always wanted to know. Not because it was polite. Because he actually, genuinely, in the particular way of people who care about very few things very deeply — wanted to know.
You excused yourself to use the bathroom and stood at the sink running cold water over your wrists and looking at your own reflection, and you thought: this is fine.
This is a perfectly nice evening with a perfectly nice man. This is what moving forward looks like. This is what being a person in the world, a person with a life and a future and reasonable expectations of company, looks like.
You dried your hands. You went back to the table. He had ordered himself another drink without asking if you wanted anything.
You finished your pasta and smiled at appropriate intervals and thought about Simon Riley and felt, as you so often felt, quietly furious at him for being gone.
— ✦ —
The birthday card arrived on a Thursday morning.
You almost missed it entirely — it was tucked between a pizza delivery leaflet and something from your energy supplier, the cream envelope almost camouflaged by the mundane. You shuffled through the post on autopilot and then stopped.
Your name, in handwriting you would have recognised anywhere, would have recognised in your sleep, had recognised in your bones for thirty years.
You sat down on the bottom stair. Your legs suddenly uneasy.
Your hands were not steady.
The envelope opened. The card was white. Plain. Almost generic.
Inside:
Happy Birthday, sunshine.
I'm sorry it's been so long.
I'll explain everything.
Come, if you want to.
If you can stand the sight of me.
Below that, an address. Three towns over. A postcode you didn't recognise.
And then, at the bottom, the way it had always been at the bottom: S.
You sat on the bottom stair for a very long time.
Then you got up, went to your room, and started thinking about what to wear.
— ✦ —
You plucked up the nerve to go on a Saturday.
The drive took forty minutes and you spent most of it trying to manage yourself — talking yourself through reasonable expectations (he is alive, that is enough, start there), warning yourself against things you could not control (the five years, the silence, the way your hands were doing that unsteady thing again), cataloguing everything practical (the address, the map).
The street was quiet. Semi-rural, the kind of neighbourhood that sits between things — between town and country, between the ordinary and the aspirational. The houses were spread out, set back from the road, each with its own front garden and its own character.
You parked. You looked at the address. You looked up.
And you stopped breathing.
It was a beautiful house.
Large, substantial and solid, the kind of house that had been built to last. White painted render, clean and bright in the afternoon light. A white picket fence surrounding the front garden, which was full of flowers. Roses climbing the gatepost. Lavender edging the path. Foxgloves and dahlias and great loose clusters of something purple you couldn't name from here. The kind of garden that had been planted with intention, tended with care, left to be a little wild in the best way.
A porch. And a porch swing, painted white, with a yellow cushion on it.
And flying from the corner of the roof, bright against the blue afternoon sky: the Union flag.
You sat very still in the driver's seat.
You were sixteen years old. It was a summer evening and you were lying in Simon's back garden on an old sleeping bag, looking up at the sky. He was beside you in the way he was always beside you — solid, quiet, taking up exactly the right amount of space. You'd been talking about the future the way teenagers do, in great floating hypotheticals that feel more like weather than plans.
"What kind of house?" he'd asked. He asked follow-up questions always, quietly, wanting the specifics. It was one of the things about him you loved.
And you'd described it. A big house, not ostentatious but real — space for books and for people and for a garden that did what it wanted within reason. A white fence, because you'd always liked them. A porch with somewhere to sit. A flag, because you were — despite everything — proud of where you were from.
Simon had been quiet for a long moment.
"Okay," he'd said. Just: okay.
You had thought he was humouring you.
You had not thought — you had not let yourself think — what it might mean, that he was going to do anything about it.
You got out of the car. Your legs were not entirely reliable. You held the gate and walked up the path — lavender brushing your hand where it grew close, the scent of it too perfect, almost staged — and you stopped at the foot of the porch steps.
The door opened.
He had to duck.
That was the first thing you noticed. The physical fact of him, the sheer size of him, his shoulders nearly touching the doorframe on both sides simultaneously, the automatic dip of his head as he stepped through onto the porch.
He straightened.
The afternoon light landed on him and you had to spend a moment recalibrating, because the last time you'd seen Simon Riley he had been seventeen years old with sawdust on his boots and a train ticket in his hand, and this man —
This man.
The white button-down shirt was simple, the sleeves rolled to the elbow, and from his left wrist to well past the roll of the sleeve his forearm was dark with ink — a sleeve of tattoos, intricate and considered. A whole geography of imagery that you couldn't read from here but would, you thought, take time to learn.
His right wrist carried a watch. His black slacks were fitted close enough that you could see the muscle of his thighs pulling the fabric with every shift of his weight, and his shoes — loafers, black with gold buckles, completely unexpected and somehow exactly right — were precise.
His hair. A dark sandy blonde, longer than military specification presumably allowed and slicked back from his face, which meant you could see all of it, his whole face; the angles that had sharpened from boy to man, the jaw, the set of his brow, and those eyes. Those brown eyes that had been watching you since you were four years old and had never, not once, looked at you with anything less than complete attention.
He was raking those eyes over you now. Slowly. With the same quality he'd always had — that comprehensive, unhurried assessment that somehow never felt like being measured — and his hands were in his pockets and he was standing there like that, on the porch he'd built or bought or arranged specifically around a description you'd given him at sixteen.
He looked like something out of a magazine and like Simon all at once.
You were going to murder him.
"Hi, sunshine."
His voice. Lower than you remembered, rougher, carrying all the years he'd lived since you last heard it. That Manchester accent — still there, unmistakably, that warm northern flatness underneath everything, the vowels shaped by a city, by a street, by a particular kind of upbringing that no amount of training had entirely smoothed out.
That nickname, in that voice, in that low, deliberate way he'd always said it: like you were his.
Like it was a prayer.
You opened your mouth. And you closed it. And you looked at him — this enormous, tattooed, stupidly handsome man who had stood on your mother's doorstep at twelve years old with bruises he didn't mention, who had kissed your cheek at thirteen and broken Ryan Marsh's nose at fourteen and waved goodbye from a train platform at seventeen and then sent you birthday cards from the edges of the world for a decade and then stopped for five years —
"Five years," you said. Your voice was very quiet.
Something moved in his face.
"I-,"
"I thought you were dead." You snapped cutting him off.
"I figured you would’ve."
"Simon."
"I know, sunshine." He said it the same way he'd always said things he couldn't argue with — not deflecting, not dismissing, just absorbing. The Manchester vowels in his voice like a hand on your shoulder. "I'll explain everything. I promise. All of it. Whatever you want to know."
You looked at him.
He looked at you.
The afternoon settled around the house, around the garden that was your garden in your own sixteen-year-old description, around the flag and the porch swing and the lavender and all of it, and the distance between you on the path and him on the porch steps was perhaps four feet and thirty years and five years of silence and a whole life of choosing not to say the one true thing.
"You built me the house?" you asked, whispering it. Like you were afraid to say it.
He was quiet for a moment. Then, "Bought it. Had the garden done the way you said."
"Simon." Your heart ached.
"You said lavender at the edges," he said. His voice was completely level. "You said a porch with somewhere to sit. You said you wanted to see the flag from the garden."
You pressed your hand to your mouth.
The rage was still there — it was not going anywhere quickly. The five years of it, the grief of it — but underneath it, something else. Something that had been there since you were four years old at a preschool art table, larger and quieter and more permanent than anything else you'd ever felt.
"You were sixteen," he said. As though this explained it. "You told me what you wanted. I just..." He stopped. Started again. "I wanted to be enough first. I wanted to have what you needed."
There was a long silence. A bee moved through the lavender. Somewhere a few streets away, a lawnmower hummed.
"Come inside," Simon said. "I'll make you tea. And I'll tell you everything."
You looked at him on the porch of the house he'd built you from a word, and you thought: you absolute idiot. You wonderful, impossible, infuriating man. You thought I'd stopped. You thought thirty years of this was something you could be enough for eventually, like it was a bar to clear, like there was a version of you I was waiting on instead of just —
Instead of just you. Always just you.
The lavender brushed your hand again. You walked up the steps and he looked down at you with those brown eyes that had never once left you.
"Hi, Simon," you said.
Something happened in his face. Something opened.
"Hi, sunshine," he said, his hand coming to the small of your back to guide you inside.
He made the tea.
You stood in the kitchen of a house that smelled of fresh paint and cedar and something faintly floral from the garden drifting through the open window over the sink, and you watched Simon Riley move around it like he'd always lived here — filling the kettle, finding the mugs without opening the wrong cupboard, knowing where the teabags were — and you thought: how long. How long has he been here, in this house he bought for you, learning where everything lives, waiting.
You sat at the kitchen table. It was a good table, heavy oak, the kind built to last and you ran your thumb along the grain of it and tried to arrange your feelings into some kind of order and failed.
Simon set the mug in front of you. Milk in last, the way you'd always taken it, which he knew because he'd made you approximately four thousand cups of tea over the course of your lives. He sat down across from you, his own mug between his big hands, and looked at you.
You looked back.
The kitchen light was warm and it caught the angles of his face. The jaw, the brow, the slight crook in his nose that was new, or newer, the result of something you didn't know about and weren't sure you wanted to.
He was watching you with that particular quality of attention he'd always had. Complete. Patient. Like you were the only thing in the room worth looking at.
"You're not wearing your glasses," he said.
You blinked. Of all the things. "No."
"Contacts?"
"For about ten years now, yes."
He was quiet for a moment, studying your face with that same unhurried attention, "I missed them."
"You missed my glasses?" You say with the deadpan tone you'd perfected over the years.
"Tortoiseshell ones," he said. "Used to push them up your nose when you were concentrating." He took a gulp of his tea, Adam's apple bobbing when he swallowed.
You stared at him. Eighteen years. Eighteen years of distance and war and God knows what else, and he missed your glasses. "Simon."
"Just saying."
"You are unbelievable." You scoff.
"The contacts suit you," he said, and the corner of his mouth moved — barely, almost nothing, but you'd spent your whole life reading that face and you caught it. "Everything suits you. But I liked the glasses."
"Stop it." You snap.
"Stop what?"
"Whatever that is," you said, and you pointed at his face, at the not-there-almost-smile, at the quality of his voice when he said everything suits you, at all of it. "You don't get to do that. You've been — Simon, you've been gone. You've been gone for eighteen years and for five of them, I thought you were dead." Your voice stayed steady, which surprised you. You'd expected it to crack on that. "So you don't get to walk out onto your porch looking like — like that — and tell me you missed my glasses and flirt at me like no time has passed."
He listened without interrupting. He always had — it was one of the things about him, the way he gave you the whole space of what you were saying before he entered it.
"You're right," he nodded.
"I know I'm right." Your spine straightened.
"I owe you an explanation."
"You owe me considerably more than that, Simon Riley, but yes. An explanation would be a start."
He wrapped both hands around his mug again and looked at you across the table and there was something in his face that was not the blank-nothing face, was not the armour he'd worn since he was twelve years old but something that was quieter and more exposed and a great deal more frightening because of it.
"Not here," he said.
You frowned. "What?"
"I don't want to do it like this. Sat in a kitchen." He glanced around the room briefly, as though orienting himself. "Come to dinner with me tomorrow night."
"What I—"
"The Grill on Merton Street."
You went very still.
The Grill on Merton Street. You hadn't been in years — not since you'd moved away from the area, not since things had shifted and the rituals of your old life had quietly been replaced by other things.
But you knew it. You knew every table in it. The way the light came through the front windows on a Sunday, the smell of it — roasted meat and old wood and the particular warmth of a place that had been feeding families for decades.
Your mother had loved it. Your father used to order the same thing every time and be pleased about it every time, and you and Simon had sat across from each other in the corner booth with the sticky laminated menus and kicked each other under the table and laughed.
"That's still open?" you managed.
"Had a look earlier this week," he said. "Still there. New owners but the same building. Same corner booth."
You looked at him. He looked at you. Outside, through the open window, a late bird was making itself known in the lavender.
"Fine," you said. "Dinner. Tomorrow. And you're going to tell me everything." you struck at him with a serious face.
"Everything," he agreed.
"I mean it, Simon. All of it."
"I know you do."
You drank your tea. It was exactly right. The temperature, the strength, the milk ratio and you hated him a little bit for that. For the fact that he still knew, that across seventeen years and God knows how many miles he still knew exactly how you took your tea, and he'd made it correctly on the first attempt without asking, and you were absolutely not going to cry about that.
You were not.
— ✦ —
You dressed carefully.
Not because you were trying to impress him.
You told yourself this firmly, standing in front of your wardrobe in the room you'd taken in the local B&B — you'd booked a night, not knowing how long this might take, not knowing what state you'd be in for the drive home afterwards — and you told yourself that you were simply dressing appropriately for a dinner at a decent restaurant.
That was all.
That was the entirety of it.
The dress was deep green. Fitted through the waist, falling to just below the knee, with a neckline that was elegant rather than dramatic.
You'd bought it for a work event two years ago and it had lived in your wardrobe since, waiting for an occasion that felt worth it. You put your hair up — not elaborately, just neatly, the kind of arrangement that looked effortless and had taken twenty minutes — and you wore the small gold earrings that had been your grandmother's. Low heels. The good handbag. A slick of red on your mouth that you almost wiped off twice before deciding to leave it.
You were not trying to impress him.
You were absolutely trying to impress him.
He was waiting outside The Grill when your taxi pulled up, standing on the pavement with his hands in his pockets. The air around him relaxed and easy. An anchored stillness, like a man who'd learned to wait and had made peace with it. He has the same dark slacks as yesterday, same loafers with the gold buckles, but the shirt tonight was black.
A deep, clean black that made his shoulders look approximately the width of a doorway, which was in fact an accurate assessment — and he'd left the top button undone. His hair was the same: pushed back, dark sandy blonde curling at the nape of his neck and catching the amber of the streetlights.
He saw you get out of the taxi.
He went very still. Completely, suddenly, entirely present in a way that landed on you like a hand against your sternum. Under your heartbeat.
You crossed the pavement toward him and his eyes moved over you — slowly, comprehensively, that same rake of attention he'd given you yesterday on the porch steps, only this time there was nothing restrained about what it did to your pulse.
He eyed you the same way he used to look at the extra cuts of slow roasted beef your mother added to his plate every time he joined you for a Sunday roast after church.
"Hi," you said.
"Hi, sunshine." His voice was low. The rough Manchester sending tingles down your spine.
He opened the door for you.
The Grill smelled exactly the same.
Roasted meat and warmed bread and old wood and something faintly of candle wax. It hit you the moment you stepped through the door and you had to stand still for just a second, just one second, to absorb the weight of it.
Your father's coat on the hook by the door. Your mother's reading glasses going into her bag as the menus arrived. Simon across from you, fourteen and fifteen and sixteen, his big hands wrapped around a Coke glass, his eyes on you under that careful brow.
The layout had shifted slightly — new owners, as Simon had said — but the bones of it were the same. The dark wood panelling. The low warm lighting. The tables set with proper linen and actual candles in glass holders. And in the back left corner was the booth.
Simon's hand was at the small of your back as the host led you through. A light touch, barely there, the kind of thing that could be merely courteous and was absolutely not merely courteous.
You said nothing about it.
You were almost at the booth when a voice said, "Well. I don't believe it."
You turned.
Margaret and Gerald Howarth.
Margaret had been your mother's friend since before you were born — a small, bright-eyed woman who had somehow barely aged in two decades. Her silver hair cut the same way it had always been, her husband a large, genial man beside her with a napkin already tucked into his collar. They'd been eating here since before you were born too, you suspected. Some people were simply woven into the furniture of a place.
"Margaret," you said, and you felt a genuine, warm rush of it. Of being seen by someone who had known you as a child, who had watched you grow up, who carried that particular knowledge of you that only people of a certain generation can hold. She was already rising halfway from her seat, her hand extended, and you took it and she covered it with her other one, the way she always had.
"We heard you were back in the area," she said — which was interesting, since you'd only arrived yesterday, but news apparently still moved at its old speed around here. Her bright eyes moved to Simon, and something in them softened with recognition and surprise in equal measure. "And Simon Riley. My goodness."
"Mrs Howarth." Simon's voice was respectful, quieter than usual, and you noticed — because you noticed everything about him — that he straightened fractionally. Not stiffly. Just the particular adjustment of a man in the presence of someone he'd known when he was young and unguarded.
"Look at the size of you," Gerald said, not unkindly, staring up at Simon with the frank appreciation of one large man for another. "What are they feeding you?"
"Gerald," Margaret scolded mildly.
"It's a compliment." He shrugged.
Simon almost smiled. "Good to see you, Mr Howarth."
Margaret was looking between the two of you with the expression of a woman who had been quietly observing people her entire life and drawing accurate conclusions from very little evidence. "Are you together?" she asked, with the particular directness that came with age and with having known you since you were in a pushchair.
"We're having dinner," you said carefully.
Margaret's expression said, quite clearly, that she had heard this and had also heard everything it was not saying. "Well," she said, patting your hand once more before releasing it, "it's lovely to see you both. You always did belong together, the pair of you. I said that to your mother once, do you know. I said those two—"
"It was lovely seeing you, Margaret," you said, with great warmth and only mild desperation.
She laughed, a bright, pleased sound and settled back into her seat.
As you turned to follow the host the rest of the way to the booth, you were almost certain you heard Gerald say, to his wife, "told you" in a tone of quiet marital satisfaction.
Simon was very carefully not reacting to any of this. You were very carefully not looking at him.
You saw two others you knew before you reached the booth.
Kim Ashworth, who had been in your form in Year Ten and who looked essentially the same as she had in school except that she had a baby on her hip and a husband trailing behind her with a changing bag.
She stopped mid-step when she saw you, did a small, delighted double take, said oh my God twice, and then looked at Simon in a way that was extremely uncomplicated in its appreciation before remembering the husband with the changing bag. There were promises exchanged to catch up properly, phone numbers that would probably not be used, genuine warmth on both sides.
And then at the bar, perched on a stool with a whisky, Dave Pearce — who had played alongside Simon on the secondary school rugby team and who greeted him with the particular vocabulary of men who knew each other at fifteen and have not changed as much as they think.
There was a brief, loud exchange that involved at least one shoulder-clap that could have knocked a smaller man sideways, and then Dave shook your hand too and told Simon he was punching. Which Simon received without expression and you tried your hardest not to laugh, biting your lip.
Finally the corner booth. You slid in. Simon folded himself into the seat across from you, the table scaled to ordinary human beings and therefore slightly absurd against the size of him, his knees bracketing it, his shoulders blocking the view of the room behind him entirely.
The menus came.
They were not laminated anymore — proper printed card, changed seasonally, the kind that meant the new owners had ambitions. But the roast was still on. The proper Sunday roast, the one your father used to order when you could afford to.
"Same corner," Simon said quietly.
"Same corner," you agreed.
He was looking at you across the table the way he used to look at you across this table, except that now his face was older and larger and had been to places that had clearly asked things of it. The look was different in its texture. Deeper, maybe. Older in the same way he was older. Like it had more weight behind it from all the years of being carried.
"You said everything," you reminded him. "All of it."
"I know."
"So." You gestured for him to start.
He set his menu down. Looked at you. And then he started talking.
He told it the way he told everything — without embellishment, without drama, in the flat, precise language of a man who had learned to communicate facts and trusted the facts to carry the weight without decoration.
He'd gone in at seventeen and he'd been good at it. Not surprising. He was built for the structure of it, for the clarity of having a purpose and a unit and a chain of things that made sense.
He'd moved up fast — faster than he let on in the cards he'd sent you, which had been careful, he explained, deliberately careful, because the more you knew the more you might worry. Which, you pointed out, had not been his decision to make. He didn't argue with that.
Task Force 141 came later. Years later, after deployments that he summarised in a sentence each and you understood enough from his face to know that each sentence was doing the work of much longer things.
He was a lieutenant now. He said it the way he said most things about himself, flatly, without vanity, presented as information. He had certain freedoms now that he hadn't had before, certain ability to make choices about where he went and when and what he did with the things the years had given him.
You both ordered your food.
"And the five years?" you asked, sipping your cocktail the waitress had brought over.
He was quiet for a moment, he stared at his San Miguel pint, the condensation sliding down the glass. Your food had arrived at some point during the waiting, while Simon collected his thoughts.
He picked up his fork and then set it down again.
"There was a man," Simon said.
Something about the way he said it made you put your fork down too.
"He ran drugs. Major operation, international — I won't go into all of it." He said this without flinching, looking at you steadily, not softening it. You'd always appreciated that about him — the way he treated your intelligence as a given. "After I escaped him, he decided to make it personal. He went after the people I—" He stopped. Chose the word carefully. "The people I was connected to."
The candle in the glass holder between you threw warm, unsteady light across his face.
"He killed them," Simon said. "My brother. Tommy's family." A pause that cost him something; you could see it cost him. "My Mother."
The restaurant continued around you — the murmur of other tables, the clink of cutlery, someone laughing softly near the bar — and you sat very still.
"Oh Simon," you whispered, you could feel the way your face formed the sympathy.
"I'm alright." He said it the way he'd always said it, the Manchester flat and absolute. The way that meant; don't make it bigger than I can hold right now. You knew that voice. You honoured it.
"He knew about you," Simon said and you froze. "That was the other thing. He'd done his research." His jaw shifted slightly. "As long as he was alive, you weren't safe. If I'd contacted you, properly contacted you, kept the thread going the way I wanted to, it would have given him a cleaner line. A more reliable way to reach me."
You understood the logic of it. You understood it clearly and immediately in the part of your brain that processed information. The other part — the part that had sat on the bottom stair with a birthday card after five years of silence, the part that had thought past tense — that part was going to take considerably longer.
"So you cut me off," you said. Not as an accusation. As a fact, laid down. You were starting to understand the shape of it.
"To keep you safe. Yes."
"Without telling me why." You sighed but you knew you were being unreasonable, but you hoped he would let you for a little longer.
"If I'd told you why, you'd have known there was a threat. And you'd have—" He stopped. The corner of his mouth moved, something that was not quite a smile and not quite not one. "You'd have done something about it. Gone looking. Made noise."
"I would not have—" You stopped, because you would have. You absolutely would have. You'd spent thirty years being completely unable to sit on the sidelines where Simon Riley was concerned, and the knowledge that someone was threatening him would have made you entirely unreasonable. "That's—" you huffed.
"Yeah," he said.
"You could have found a way—"
"There wasn't one. Not one that was safe." His voice was very level. "I went through every option, love. I promise you. Every one."
The word arrived quietly, without ceremony.
Love.
He'd never called you that — not in thirty years, not in all the time and all the familiarity of what you were to each other. He said it the way he said everything that mattered: without preamble, without dressing it up, laid down like the fact it was.
"And now?" you asked. Your voice was quite steady. Steadier than you felt.
"He's dead." No elaboration. None needed. The flat Manchester vowels carrying the weight of it cleanly, without mess. "And you're safe. And I—" He looked at you across the table, across the candle and the white linen. "I bought the house," he said. "I've spent a while making it what it is. Making if perfect. I saved up for years. The 141 pays well when you get to a certain level and I wasn't spending it on anything else."
"For years," you repeated, feeling a shiver rack up your spine and your toes go numb.
"Since I was about twenty." He said this without apparent embarrassment, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to spend fifteen years saving money to buy a woman a house from a description she'd given you at sixteen years old. "Took a while to find the right one that wasn’t too far from your parents. The lavender took three growing seasons to look like it did when you pulled up."
Three growing seasons.
He had planted the lavender three years ago. He had stood in a garden three towns from where you lived and planted lavender along a path because a sixteen-year-old girl had mentioned it lying on her back in his garden thirty years ago, and he had tended it for three years, and he had waited.
"Simon Riley," you said.
"It's got room for your books Sunshine, built the shelves myself." His lips quirked up at the corners at your flabbergasted expression.
"You are the most—" You stopped. Started again. "Do you have any idea what the past five years have felt like? Do you have any idea what I—" Your voice did the thing you'd been preventing it from doing, cracked at the edge of the sentence like a plate under too much weight. You stopped. Pressed your lips together. "I grieved you. I sat in my flat and I genuinely, actually grieved you and decided you were dead. I had — Simon, I had a plan for getting through it. I was managing it."
"I know."
"Don't say I know." you snapped sounding more like a bratty child than angry.
"I'm sorry." And this was different. This was not the automatic I know, the absorbing of your anger. This was something he said the way he said very few things — carefully, with full weight behind it. His eyes on yours across the table. "I'm sorry for the five years. I'm sorry I couldn't find another way. I'm sorry you were on your own with it." A pause. "I'm sorry it took me this long to have something worth coming back with."
"The house is not—" You stopped. "You didn't need to buy me a house, Simon. I didn't need—"
"I needed to," he said. Simply. "I needed to know I was coming back with something real. Something that wasn't just me turning up with nothing after all that time, asking you to — to accept—" He moved his hand across the table, and his fingers stopped just short of yours. Not touching. Close. "Asking you to take me as I was. I needed it to be enough. I needed there to be something I could give you that was—"
"Simon." Your voice was very quiet.
"I know it's not—"
"Simon." You turned your hand over on the table. Just that. The small, deliberate movement of turning your palm up.
He looked at it. Then he looked at you. Then, slowly, he put his hand in yours — his enormous, careful, tattooed hand. Not quite the one that had carried your bag through every corridor of secondary school and pulled you up off the pavement after Daniel Holt and held you on the platform at the train station, but this one now and his fingers closed around yours and he held on.
"I only ever wanted you," you said softly.
"Sunshine-"
"You were always worth it," you cut him off. And then, because it was time — because it had been time for approximately thirty years and you were done waiting for the right moment when the right moment had repeatedly failed to arrive — "You were always enough. You were always the thing I was — Simon, you have always been the only one I wanted. Exactly as you are."
He was very still.
"I didn't tell you on the platform," you said. "I should have. I've thought about it every day since."
"So have I," he said.
The candle between you flickered in some movement of air from the kitchen, and in the warm unsteady light his face was open in a way you had waited thirty years to see. His hand was warm and sure around yours, and from the other side of the restaurant you were almost certain you heard Margaret Howarth say something to Gerald in a satisfied undertone.
"You planted the lavender," you grinned.
"Three years ago." He finally smiles back at you, it was crooked and uneven and you loved it.
"You are," you said carefully, "the most ridiculous man I have ever known." You shook your head still grinning.
"Missed you too, sunshine," he smirked.
Dinner ended the way the best dinners end — not with a definitive conclusion but with a gradual, reluctant unwinding, the kind where both people keep finding one more thing to say, one more thread to pull, because the alternative is standing up and the evening becoming past tense.
You ordered dessert.
Neither of you particularly wanted it but you both ordered it, and you both knew why, and neither of you said so. The chocolate brownie was very good. Simon ate his methodically, the way he ate everything, and at one point looked up and caught you watching him and said nothing.
The candle between you had burned down to a stub by the time the bill came.
He paid. You protested on principle. He gave you a look that had not changed at all since he was fourteen years old — flat, certain, faintly amused — and handed the card to the waiter without further discussion.
"That's not—" you started.
"Next time," he said.
Next time. You let it sit there between you, warm and presumptuous and everything you wanted.
Outside, the evening had cooled.
The last of the summer still holding in the air, the kind of September evening that felt like a concession, like the year wasn't ready to be done.
The street was quiet for a Saturday, just a few couples moving between the restaurants and a group of lads outside the pub further down having a smoke. The amber of the streetlights made everything look like something worth remembering.
Simon stood beside you on the pavement, close enough that his arm brushed yours when he turned to look down the street, and you were very aware of the warmth of him and the black shirt and the lavender you couldn't smell from here but could somehow still feel in your hands.
"Walk with me a bit," he said. Not a question, not quite. He'd always done that — phrased invitations as though the outcome were already agreed, as though he simply assumed you'd say yes because you almost always did.
"Alright."
He fell into step beside you, and for a little while you just walked — past the wine bar with its fairy lights, past the old library that had become a gin distillery at some point in the last decade, past the post office that had been there since before either of you were born. You talked about small things. Easy things. The kind of conversation that runs alongside the real one underneath.
Then he stopped.
You stopped too.
Simon looked down at you. His hands were in his pockets. That brown gaze of his moved over your face in the way it had been moving over your face all evening — like he was cataloguing it, like he was making up for lost time in the looking.
"Dance with me," he said.
You blinked. "What?"
He tilted his head, "Come dancing with me."
You stared at him.
Simon Riley, who had sat against the wall at every school disco you'd ever attended, arms folded, watching everyone else with the expression of a man conducting a private risk assessment.
Simon Riley, who you had never, in thirty years of knowing him, seen voluntarily approach a dance floor.
"You don't dance," you said.
"No," he agreed. "But you do."
The simplicity of it landed somewhere very central.
You do.
As though that were reason enough. As though your enjoyment of a thing were sufficient justification for him to walk into it without hesitation.
Which, you supposed, when it came to Simon, it always had been.
"Alright," you said, for the second time in ten minutes.
His hand found the small of your back again, that same light, deliberate touch from inside the restaurant and he guided you down the street.
Simon said you weren't far, when you heard it.
The particular sound of a Domino's box. The slight crinkle of a carrier bag. And then your mother's voice, carrying across the quiet street in the way it always had — warm and clear and entirely without volume control.
"Oh honey! We thought - oh!"
"Oh fuck," you cursed.
You said it very quietly. Not quietly enough. Simon chuckled under his breath.
Your parents were coming along the pavement from the direction of the only car park around here — your father in his weekend coat, your mother in the blue one she'd had for fifteen years. A Domino's pizza box balanced in her arms and a carrier bag hanging from your father's hand.
Movie night. Of course. They still did it every other Saturday, had done since you were small, and of course they would do it tonight of all the Saturday nights in the entire calendar.
Your mother's face when she saw you was pure, unguarded delight — the face she always made when she encountered you unexpectedly, as though each time were still a pleasant surprise. Then her gaze moved, naturally and automatically, to the man standing beside you with his hand at the small of your back.
The delight didn't disappear. It did something more complicated.
"Oh honey," she said again, but differently this time. Softer. Her voice going somewhere else entirely. "Simon?"
The Domino's box dipped. Your father caught it with the reflexes of a man who had been catching things your mother nearly dropped for forty years.
Simon had gone still beside you. Not that controlled, present stillness he had, the one that wasn't tension but something adjacent to it. He was looking at your mother with an expression you couldn't fully read from the side, but you could see the line of his jaw, and it was careful.
"Mrs—" he started.
"Don't you Mrs me," your mother said. Her voice was not angry. That was the thing — you'd prepared yourself, in the split second between seeing them and now, for anger, or for the brisk, self-protective coolness she used sometimes when she'd been frightened. But it wasn't that. It was something that had tears in it, which was considerably worse to witness.
She handed the pizza box to your father without looking at him — he took it with the silent competence of long practice — and she crossed the pavement in four short steps and she put her arms around Simon Riley.
He was so much larger than her. He had always been larger than her, even at fifteen when he'd eaten her shepherd's pie at the kitchen table and been careful to seem like it was casual and not like he was starving. Even when she gave him seconds and he looked like he would beg for thirds.
But now it was almost absurd, the smallness of her against the width of him, and he stood there for just a fraction of a second — that fraction where you could see him recalibrating, receiving something he hadn't prepared for — and then his arms came around her and he held on.
Your mother was crying. Small, quiet sounds, the kind she made when she was trying not to. Her face was pressed against his chest and her hands gripped the back of his black shirt and she said, muffled and with great feeling, "You absolute boy."
Simon said nothing. His eyes, over the top of your mother's head, found yours.
You had to look away. The street was very interesting. The lamppost in particular.
You bit into your lip.
Your father appeared at your shoulder.
He was a quiet man, always had been. The kind of steady, observant presence that took things in without making a production of the taking in. He stood beside you with the pizza box over one arm and the carrier bag in the other hand and watched his wife hold the boy who had eaten at their table for a decade, and he said, very quietly, to you,
"Well. He's not dead then."
"No Dad," you managed. "He's not dead."
"Good," your father said.
As though this settled it. As though the entirety of the past five years of your grief and his, because he had grieved Simon too in his quiet way, in the way of a man who doesn't say things aloud but feels them thoroughly. He looked at Simon over the top of your mother's head and gave him a single, deliberate nod. The kind that meant; we'll talk. The kind that meant; I have things to say to you. The kind that also, underneath both of those, meant; I'm so glad son.
Simon received the nod with equal gravity, which was exactly right.
Your mother finally pulled back. She held Simon by the arms — or tried to, her hands not quite making it around the circumference of them — and looked up at him with red eyes and the particular expression of a woman who has a great deal to say and is choosing, for now, not to say most of it.
"You'll come for dinner," she said. Not a question. The same tone she'd used on him at fifteen and apparently intended to continue using indefinitely. "Sunday. Proper dinner. Not a restaurant. Mine."
"Yes," Simon said. Immediately. Without hesitation.
"Good." She released his arms and reached up and patted his cheek once, firmly, the way you might with someone who had done something frustrating and beloved in equal measure.
Then she turned to you, and her expression did something complicated and warm and knowing, and she didn't say any of the things she was clearly thinking, which you appreciated deeply.
What she said instead was: "Don't stay out too late. You're thirty-five, not seventeen."
"Mum." You scolded.
"I'm just saying." She shrugged.
"We're going dancing," you told her, with the energy of someone redirecting a conversation through sheer momentum.
Your mother looked at Simon. Simon looked at your mother. Something passed between them that was private and thirty years old and not yours to have.
"Of course you are," she said.
Your father passed the Domino's box back to your mother, and said, "Right then. We'll leave you to it." He looked at Simon one more time. "Sunday," he confirmed.
"Sunday," Simon said.
Your parents moved off down the pavement.
Your mother looked back once — just once — and her face when she did was the face you'd seen her wear at your primary school nativity and at your GCSE results and on the morning you'd gone to university; the particular face of a woman watching her child be happy and feeling the full, complicated, loving weight of it.
Then she turned back to your father and said something you couldn't hear, and his hand found her shoulder as they walked, and they rounded the corner and were gone.
You stood on the pavement in the September evening and breathed.
Beside you, Simon was also very carefully just standing there.
"She cried on me," he said, after a moment.
"Yes."
"Didn't expect that."
You turned to look at him. He was looking at the corner your parents had turned, and his face had the quality it sometimes had when something had reached him — not visibly, not dramatically, just in that particular stillness that meant something had got through.
"She cried about you," you told him. "When you stopped writing. Three years ago — there were several times, actually, but three years ago was the worst. She held me in her kitchen and we both—" You stopped. Managed the next part carefully. "She loves you too, Simon. She always did. You were at our table every other night for years."
He was quiet for a moment. Something moved in his jaw. "I know," he said. And this time the I know was different from all the other times he'd said it tonight — heavier, and private.
"You agreed to Sunday dinner," you giggled.
"Of course I agreed to Sunday dinner," he said knowing full well he would have been stupid not to and gotten an earful from your mother.
Simon offered you his hand.
Not at the small of your back this time. His hand, palm up, in the space between you. Old-fashioned and deliberate.
You put yours in it.
"Come on then," he said. "Let's go dancing."
There was, as it turned out, only one place to go dancing in this town on a Saturday night if you meant actual dancing — the kind with a proper floor and music with a real structure to it.
It was not a club.
It was not a bar with a cleared space near the speaker.
It was the old church hall on Callow Street, which had been hosting the Saturday Evening Social Dance since before either of you were born, and which Simon seemed to know about with the specificity of a man who had done his research.
"A dance hall," you said, standing outside it. Through the tall, thin windows the warm light was visible, and the sound — strings, a proper band, something with a waltz rhythm that made the windows hum faintly. "You're taking me to a dance hall."
"Only place with a floor."
"Simon, this is a — there will be pensioners in there." you said quietly.
"There'll be a dance floor," he looked down at you. "And you said yes." he shrugged but looked smug.
He pushed the door open and held it, and because you had in fact said yes, and because the music through the door sounded genuinely lovely, and because you were still holding his hand from the pavement, you went in.
The church hall smelled of floor polish and tea. Fairy lights were strung along the rafters — someone's addition, not the original fixtures, and they made the whole space amber and soft.
Round tables lined the edges, most of them occupied by couples in their sixties and seventies and eighties, a few younger faces dotted among them, everyone dressed with the particular care of people who still believed an evening out was worth dressing for.
On the small stage at the far end, a four-piece band was working through something in three-four time with the ease of musicians who had played together for years.
And at the edge of the floor, clipboard in hand, wearing the same expression of organised authority she'd worn every PE lesson for fifteen years was Mrs Valerie Croft.
She was smaller than you remembered. Or perhaps you were simply larger.
She'd retired at some point — the hair was fully silver now rather than streaked — but the posture was identical: spine straight, chin up, the bearing of a woman who had spent decades telling teenagers to stand properly and had eventually simply become the embodiment of the instruction.
She looked up from her clipboard as you approached and her eyes moved from you to Simon, and to her credit, she didn't miss a step.
"Well," she tilted her chin up to meet his eyes, "Riley."
"Miss," Simon said. Which was technically incorrect given that she had a ring on her finger and had for as long as you'd known her, but you suspected it was because he'd called her Miss in secondary school the way you had. "Mrs Croft. Sorry. We were passing and— " He paused, which was unlike him. "Is there any chance we could crash it?"
Mrs Croft looked at him. She looked at you. She looked at your joined hands with the expression of a woman who had supervised enough teenagers to recognise a development when she saw one.
"Can you behave yourselves?" she asked.
"Yes," you said nodding.
Simon said nothing.
Mrs Croft made a sound that was not quite a laugh but was adjacent to one. "Floor's open," she said. "Don't knock anyone over." And she turned back to her clipboard.
The first dance was not elegant.
Simon was, as he had always been and had openly admitted, not a dancer.
He was a man built for other kinds of movement — purposeful, directed, the kind that had somewhere to go. Dancing required a different relationship with your body, a willingness to be present in it without agenda, and that was not naturally his.
But he was trying. And Simon Riley trying at something he wasn't good at with complete, unhesitating commitment was one of your favourite things in the world.
He held you correctly — one hand at your waist, the other holding yours at the right height — because he had clearly looked this up at some point, which you were choosing not to think about too hard. His footwork was careful. Deliberate. Slightly behind the beat in the way of someone counting silently.
"You're counting," you told him trying your hardest not to laugh.
"Shut up."
"Simon, I can see your lips moving." you snorted.
"I said shut up."
You were laughing now. Properly, helplessly, the kind that came up from somewhere real — and he looked down at you with that face, that flat, long-suffering, completely fond face, and something in his eyes that was warm in a way that had nothing to do with patience and everything to do with the fact that your laugh had always been, apparently, one of his favourite sounds.
"You're doing fine," you told him, once you'd recovered.
"I'm doing terribly," he answered. "Keep going."
By the second dance, he was better.
By the third, he had found something. Some adjustment in the way he held you, the way his hand settled more fully at your waist, drawing you closer so the movement between you became less about individual steps and more about one shared thing. He was a quick study. He always had been, once he'd decided something was worth doing.
You became aware, gradually, of the room watching.
Not intrusively. Not all at once. But in the soft, peripheral way of a room full of people who have been in love for decades and recognise the particular weather of it when it walks through the door.
An older couple near the stage — she in pale blue, he in a suit that had been good once and was still cared for — had stopped talking to watch you.
A woman at one of the corner tables had her chin in her hand.
Mrs Croft, by the door, was very deliberately looking at her clipboard and failing to look only at her clipboard.
You didn't mind. You were too busy watching Simon watch you.
The band changed tempo at half past nine.
The waltz gave way to something with a different shape entirely — something that moved from the hips rather than the feet, a rhythm that was slower in its pulse and considerably less innocent in its intention.
A rumba.
You looked up at Simon.
He looked down at you.
"I don't know this one," he said.
"I'll show you." you breathed.
You took his hand and placed it lower at your waist, right above the curve of your ass. Deliberately watching his face when you did it, watching the shift in his expression, the way something in his eyes went very still and very focused. "Hip to hip," you told him. "Slower than you think. Let the music pull you."
He followed your lead with an attention that was frankly overwhelming in its completeness.
Simon Riley giving you his full, undivided, physical focus was not a small thing. He was so large and so present and he moved with you rather than against you, adjusting with every shift of your weight, and somewhere in the second minute of the song the counting stopped and something else replaced it.
He drew you closer. His hand at your hip pulled you in until there was no space left between you, until you could feel the warmth of him through the green of your dress and you were very aware of every point of contact, of the music and of the room full of people who had gone very quiet.
Then he turned you.
It was not technically correct. It was not what the dance required. But he turned you in a single, smooth movement that his body had decided on and yours simply followed, because that was what it did with him.
And then he dipped you.
The room tilted. His arm was across your back, solid and immovable, and you were suspended in the amber light with the music around you and your hand at his shoulder.
He lowered you — slowly, with complete control, no hesitation in the hold and then his face was close, very close, and his nose grazed the line of your throat making your breath hitch.
A slow, deliberate graze. The warmth of his breath against your pulse point. You felt it in places that had nothing to do with dancing, between your legs throbbing.
His hand — the one at your hip — slid down, just slightly, just enough, finding the outside of your thigh where the fabric of your dress lay, and he hooked your leg, slowly, around his hip. His fingers at the back of your thigh. Holding you there. His nose still at your throat.
The music resolved. Somewhere behind you, someone started clapping.
He brought you upright. Smoothly, slowly, until you were standing again and his hand was still at the back of your thigh. Your leg still around his hip and your faces were very close. Your heart was conducting itself in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with exertion.
You were panting. Slightly. Just slightly.
He was not panting. He was looking down at you with the almost-smile, the one that had always been rarer than gold and twice as valuable — and his eyes were warm and very dark and entirely, completely satisfied with themselves.
"You looked that up as well," you managed.
"No," he said.
"Simon—"
"That one," he said, "I just wanted to do."
From the table by the stage, the woman in pale blue was applauding with great enthusiasm. Her husband had two fingers in his mouth and was whistling.
Mrs Croft had given up entirely on the clipboard.
The taxi back was not a long ride.
It felt longer than it was, and shorter than you wanted.
You sat beside him in the back seat with his thigh against yours and the city moving past the windows and neither of you speaking. The silence had a texture to it that was thick and warm and anticipatory in a way that made the air feel heavy in your lungs.
His hand was on your knee. Just resting there, heavy and warm, the way he did everything — with complete, unapologetic certainty.
You did not move it.
The house appeared at the end of the lane with its white fence and its dark windows and the lavender silver in the moonlight.
You were out of the taxi before it had fully stopped and you were aware how eager this appeared and you didn't care.
Simon paid the driver and caught up with you in three strides because his legs were considerably longer than yours and always had been.
He got to the door first. Key in hand.
The door opened.
And you did not wait for him to step through it.
You took him by the front of his shirt, that black shirt, warm from his body, the fabric bunching in your fists and you lips were suddenly on his.
You walked him backwards through the doorway and you felt the moment his back met the wall just inside and you were already kissing him before he'd fully registered the sequence of events.
Your mouth on his. Your hands in the front of his shirt. Thirty years of it finding its way out all at once, without ceremony, without preamble, without any of the careful management you had been applying to yourself since you were four years old at a preschool art table.
He kissed you back.
He kissed you back the way he did everything — thoroughly, completely, with his full attention and no apparent interest in doing anything else ever again.
His hands came to your face, big and careful, tilting your jaw, and for a moment you were simply inside the realness of him and the warmth of him and the fact that he was here and alive and kissing you in the hallway of the house he'd bought for you.
He pulled back.
"Easy, sunshine," he said against your lips. Low. A little breathless, which you would be privately triumphant about later. The corner of his mouth pulled up in that crooked smile.
You became aware, in the slightly dazed way of someone returning from somewhere, that your hands were still in his shirt and his hands were still on your face and you were standing approximately two inches apart in his hallway.
You also became aware, in the refocusing of your vision, of his mouth.
Of the scar on his upper lip.
You didn't know how you hadn't noticed it before — through dinner, through the dancing, through all of it.
Perhaps you had simply not been this close before. Or perhaps you had been looking at so many things that you hadn't been looking at everything.
It was small, a thin pale line bisecting the left side of his upper lip, old enough to have faded to silver, the kind of scar that had been there for years and had been lived with so thoroughly that the face had absorbed it.
You lifted your thumb and touched it, gently. "How'd you get this?"
He went very still, alert and present and reading you.
You kissed it. Softly. Just that.
Something moved in his throat.
His hands shifted from your face to your waist, warm and settled, and he began to move you gently — backwards, one steady step at a time — turning you both away from the wall and deeper into the hallway. His foot found the door behind him and pushed it closed with a quiet, final click.
"If I tell you about that one," he said, his voice low and even above your head as he guided you past the entrance and toward the stairs, "I'll have to tell you about the rest."
He looked down at you as he said it, that look, the one that said you were the most interesting thing he had ever encountered. The one that made you feel simultaneously seen and slightly undone — and his expression had in it something that was fond and amused and entirely, devastatingly warm.
You kicked your heels off at the bottom of the stairs. They went somewhere behind you. You didn't look.
Your bag went next, dropped against the banister.
"The rest?" you repeated. Your voice came out slightly smaller than you intended. Your eyes, entirely without your permission, moved down the front of him — the black shirt, the breadth of his shoulders, his torso, his thick thighs, all of him — and back up again. Slowly.
He watched you do it. He said nothing.
You swallowed. "Tell me then."
His hand at your waist steered you up the first step, and then the second, and the stairs curved slightly toward the landing above, and at the top of the stairs he pushed open the door to a bedroom.
The room was large and furnished.
A bed, properly large, the kind that accommodated a man his size without complaint. Low lamps on either side casting the same amber warmth as the hall below. Dark wood floors, a window looking out toward the garden, the curtain shifting slightly in a crack of night air.
He kissed you, just inside the door you kissed him back and his hands were at your hips.
Then he pulled back with a groan. Both of you breathing slightly harder than was strictly accounted for by climbing one flight of stairs.
"I want to, sunshine," he said. His voice was very low. Restrained. His hands still on your body, holding you there, his thumbs moving in a small slow motion against the fabric of your dress that was doing nothing to help you think clearly. "I do. But I need to hear it from you first. Your permission. Clear words. I don't want to misunderstand you."
You opened your mouth.
And then your eyes moved, over his shoulder, to the dresser.
A skull mask looked back at you.
You closed your mouth. You looked at it. The mask, white and stark and precise but somehow both alien and completely, recognisably his. The balaclava beside it, folded neatly. And tactical gloves — enormous, black, reinforced, approximately the size of your head.
"That yours?" you asked.
Simon turned his head, following your gaze. He looked at the dresser, then back at you. "Yeah."
"What is it?"
"What I wear on missions."
"Oh," you said.
And then your brain did something entirely beyond your authority. It constructed, with great speed and considerable detail, an image: Simon, broad and enormous, in black tactical gear. Gloved hands. That mask. Hovering over you.
You swallowed.
The image did not leave. It simply settled in, warm and vivid and decidedly unhelpful.
"Sunshine."
His hand came to your face — his big, warm, ungloved hand, his actual hand, the one you knew — his thumb sweeping gently under your eye, bringing you back into the room and the amber lamplight and the present moment.
"Hmm?" you managed meeting his gaze.
His eyes moved over your face with the same comprehensive attention he always gave you.
"Your permission, love," he said. Quiet. Certain.
"Oh." You blinked. "Yes. Yes, you have it. Always."
The almost-smile. "Not for everything I want to do to you." His thumb was still moving, very gently, under your eye. "I'll ask. Multiple times."
You stared at him. "Multiple—"
"Times," he confirmed. His voice was entirely level. His eyes were not.
You pushed his shoulder and your cheeks burned.
He caught your hand as you pushed it and laughed, a low, real, full sound, the kind that you had spent most of your life engineering because it was so rare and so completely, unreasonably good.
You laughed too, properly, the helpless kind, and his forehead came down to rest against yours and you were both laughing in the amber light of his bedroom with the skull mask on the dresser and the lavender outside the window and thirty years behind you and everything in front.
The laughing settled.
Not all at once — it unwound gradually, the way laughter does when it's the real kind, leaving something warm and loose in its place.
His forehead was still against yours. His hands had moved from your face to your waist, both of them now, holding you the way he'd held you on the dance floor — with that complete, unhurried certainty, like you were something he'd been waiting to hold properly for a very long time and intended to do it right.
The amber light of the lamps lay across everything. Through the gap in the curtain, you could see the edge of the garden — the pale shapes of flowers, the dark of the lawn.
"Tell me about the rest," you said quietly.
He pulled back just enough to look at you. "The scars?"
"You said if you told me about the one on your lip you'd have to tell me about the rest." You reached up and touched the scar again — that thin, silver line — with the pad of your thumb. "So tell me about the rest."
He looked at you for a long moment. Then he reached up and began, without ceremony, to unbutton his shirt.
You were very still.
He did it the way he did everything — without drama, without performance, button by button from the collar down, and when he shrugged it from his shoulders and set it aside you understood, in a way you hadn't before, what eighteen years of that life had written on him.
He was enormous.
You'd known that in the abstract — had known it from the doorframe and the dance floor and the way rooms seemed to reorganise themselves around him — but this was different.
This was the specific, undeniable reality of his shoulders, the breadth of his chest, the muscle of his arms that carried the tattoo sleeve on the left, the ink wrapping from wrist to shoulder in dark, intricate patterns that in this light you still couldn't fully read but wanted to.
And the scars.
There were more than you'd expected.
Each one a different shape and age and story, written into the topography of him in pale and silver lines. A long one along his left ribs. Something older, fainter, across the top of his right shoulder. A circular scar below his collarbone on the left side that your medical knowledge was sufficient to identify and that made your chest constrict briefly and completely before you put that particular knowledge away for now.
He was watching your face as you looked. Careful. Giving you the time of it.
You stepped forward. You placed your hand flat against his sternum — his heart under your palm, steady and real — and you felt him exhale.
"The lip," you said.
"Kandahar. 2004. Caught the stock of a rifle." He said it the same way he'd told you everything tonight — flat, factual, trusting the fact to carry the weight. "Bit through my lip. Wasn't pretty for a while."
You moved your hand from his sternum to his ribs. Found the long scar there, traced it gently with your fingertips.
"That one."
"Knife. 2009. I moved the wrong way and the other man moved the right way." The shadow of something in his face that was not quite humour and not quite not. "Lesson learned."
Your hand moved to his shoulder. The older, fainter scar.
"Before the military," he said, before you asked. His voice changed, just fractionally. Flatter. Doing more work to stay level. "Not a mission."
You understood. You didn't ask further. You pressed your lips to it instead — gently, just that, your mouth against the old pale mark — and you felt the breath go out of him in a way that was different from all the others. Slower. Deeper.
"Sunshine," he said. Very quietly.
"The one below your collarbone," you said.
A pause. "That one's not a story for tonight."
You tilted your head back to look up at him. "Is it a story for eventually?"
His eyes on yours. Something in them that was considering, assessing, "Yeah," he said. "Eventually."
"Alright," you said. You meant it. You had waited thirty years; you could wait for the story of one scar.
His hand moved to your face. That same gesture from the hallway — his thumb at your cheek, slow and deliberate and he tilted your chin up and kissed you. Not urgently this time. Slowly. Deeply.
His hands found the zip at the side of your dress — careful, unhurried — and he looked at you, a clear question in it, and you nodded, and his hands were very steady and very gentle. Your dress went the way of your heels and your bag, somewhere behind you, unmissed.
He looked at you the way he had looked at you on the porch yesterday, and outside The Grill tonight, and across the restaurant table, and on the dance floor — with that complete, comprehensive attention.
Only now there was nothing restrained about what was in it. It was simply there, open and certain, and it was thirty years of something finally being allowed to be exactly what it was.
"Hi," you said. Which was absurd. Which made him laugh again, low and real.
"Hi, sunshine," he said. His hands at your waist. His forehead dropping to yours.
“Si I need to-“ you breathed in deep, “I um,” he pulled his head away from yours, looking into your eyes with those brilliant brown ones of his.
“What is it Sunshine?” He asked, his finger under your chin tilting your head up.
“I’m, I’ve never-“ you sigh, “I’ve told you so many things, I can’t believe I can’t even say this to you.”
“Do we need to slow down?” He asked, his voice softening.
“No. It’s not that. I mean I’m not a virgin if that’s what you’re thinking I just, no guy has ever-“ you sigh again, your eyes dropping from his.
Simon is quiet. He waits, the way he always waits — giving you the whole space of it, not rushing you toward the end of the sentence.
“Made it good,” you finally say, to his chest. “For me. It’s always just, fine. Maybe sometimes I get close but then it’s over. Not that there’s been loads of guys, maybe three.”
A beat.
You make yourself look up at him.
Something changes in his face.
You see the flare of it.
Anger.
Not toward you — you feel that immediately, the anger isn't at you, it moves through him and settles somewhere else entirely. His jaw shifts. His eyes, for just a moment, go somewhere dark and quiet.
"Every one of them," he says. Low. More to himself than to you.
"Simon—"
"Had you," he says. "And didn't—" He stops. The jaw again. His eyes squeeze shut. "Didn't pay attention."
"It's not—"
"It is." His eyes open. He looks at you, his hands moving to your hips, both of them, settling there with a weight that feels like anchoring, like he needs the contact as much as you do. The darkness has settled now, controlled, underneath everything else.
"And I wasn't here." Something moves through his expression — not guilt exactly, but something adjacent to it, something private and old. "Should've been your first, sunshine. Should've been there to—"
He stops himself. His forehead drops to yours.
"I've waited years for this," he says quietly. "I'm not rushing it. And I'm going to pay attention."
“Pay attention?” You ask breathless.
“To every sigh,” he kissed your cheek, “whimper and moan.” His lips moved down to your jaw. “To the way your hips move, the way your back arches, the way you’ll writhe under me, how I’ve imaged it every time I’ve gotten off for the last two decades.” He whispered the last bit into your ear, teeth tugging on your earlobe.
You gasp, “Simon.” Your cheeks burn.
“Oh don’t tell me you never thought about it.” He grins pulling back to look down at you.
You look at the floor sheepishly cause of course you have. Of course you’ve cum the hardest you ever have in your life only when thinking about Simon fucking you.
"Oh you have." He smirked titling his head.
“Shut up.” You push his shoulder and he laughs.
His hands leave your hips and then you're moving, his arms around you, and the edge of the bed meets the back of your knees.
Then his massive paws are in your hair and his lips are on your neck as your back meets the sheets. His weight heavy and solid on you. You could tell he was holding himself up so he didn’t squish you.
He leaned back on his heels, kneeling between your legs. You sighed in satisfaction when his fingers ran over your bare skin. His blunt nails scratching softly where your pelvic bone sits.
"So beautiful Sunshine," He grabs your hips and squeezes, "Fill my hands with you finally." Simon groans. A noise you've been picturing in your head. This and everything else that happens this evening, you truly believe, will be one of those times when reality is better than anything you have imagined.
Simon's brown eyes have always been intense, but right now the way he's looking down at you it's like he is someone else entirely. His eyes almost black with how much they have darkened.
"Simon." You tangle your fingers with his.
"Can I?" He asks. His hand, the one not in yours, trailing down your thigh and stopping on your mound. You clench around nothing when he pushes down, just a little bit of pressure that you feel in your clit and makes your hips buck.
You don't miss the way his lips do the almost smile thing. You nod furiously but he shakes his head.
"Need your words love." He raises a brow.
"Yes, yes Simon touch me." You breathe out, your chest feeling tight when he nods, moving his hand down to cup your cunt over your underwear.
And maybe its because you haven't had sex in three years, maybe its because you are touch starved or maybe its simply because its Simon, but your back arches and your moan is down right pornographic with a simple touch over your underwear.
"So responsive." He mumbles, his thumb rubbing circles over your clit through the fabric. "Get your tits out for me Sunshine, wanna see em." he grunts feeling your underwear getting wet.
Shakily you reach behind your back and unclip your bra. "Been thinking about them for years. What they look like, how they'll bounce when I fuck you." He groans as you pull the straps down your arms and fling the bra on the floor.
His eyes are on your chest, he doesn't blink. Then as if his system has rebooted, he blows air out of his cheeks and whistles low. "Fuck lovie, so pretty. You're a dream." Simon leans forward and wraps his lips around your breast, his tongue swirling around the nipple as his thumb continues circling your clit.
You moan, fingers tugging at his hair.
He comes off your breast with a pop making you whine and push at his shoulder. He grins pressing his thumb firmer against you, while sliding his other hand over your leg, index finger tracing over the small scar on you leg from when you fell off your bike after Simon broke your training wheels.
There was something comforting about this. Simon wasn't someone you had to explain yourself to, he already knew every version of you, he was simply adding this one to his list. This version, open and honest and begging the man you'd known for thirty years to make you cum on his fingers.
This didn't feel like a hook up, not like other guys have, but it felt like two people who have been each other's home for years and they're finally admitting it.
"Kiss me Simon." You're not even sure if what you said made sense with how much you were panting. But he leaned down to graze his lips along yours. Teasing and soft, despite the fast past he'd started to set with his thumb.
"Stop teasing." You huffed.
"Its my favourite pastime." He grinned hooking his fingers in your underwear, pulling them down and moving with them to settle between your legs.
You gasp, when his tongue slides from your asshole to your clit. "Simon!" His dark eyes are locked on yours as he swirls the tip of his his tongue around your entrance. Your toes curl, your head falling back onto the soft bed sheets.
A few occasions, you could count on one hand, had a guy you were with eaten you out and it was good but fuck, it didn't feel like this.
You felt like you were burning all over with each swipe of his tongue, each dip inside your entrance, each pattern he begins to circle over your clit.
He was learning you.
Simon groans against you, his breath hot, it made you dizzy. You feel everything, its too much to quick and your hips start to buck against his mouth.
Simon clearly had no intention of slowing down or stopping as he slides his arms around your thighs and splays his hands over the tops of them locking you in place.
It feels like fire, like molten lava pooling low in your abdomen the harder his tongue presses against you.
You don’t even recognise the sounds coming out of you, it’s as if every movement pulls a new one from you.
His thumb replaces his tongue and he rubs the bump in small circles until you can barely breathe. “Sound so pretty,” he murmurs just as your back arches and you moan loudly into the night air.
He is still speaking but you can’t hear anything he is saying, it’s all blurring together the way your vision is blurring. His thumb slides from your clit down until it’s pushing its way inside you. Your hips jerk away but his other hand is quick to hold you in place.
“No running.” Simon growls.
You cry out when his tongue comes back to torture you, lapping at you like he’s never had a drink and you're fresh water. Soon enough the rhythm he’s built has your hips rolling forward seeking more of whatever he has to give you.
Your hand reaches for his arm and squeezes hard the exact moment your vision turns white and your body shakes, dissolving into pleasure. It's like lightning pulsing through you. He works your through your orgasm, wringing every last wave of pleasure from you before he moves to your lips, kissing you.
“Did so good Sunshine. I’ve got you.” His arms wrap around you, your nipples grazing against the hair on his chest, that alone has you whimpering.
"Need more, want you inside me Simon. Please." You look into his eyes, your shyness gone with your orgasm.
"Okay Sunshine." Simon chuckles, the sound vibrating against you.
He pulls back and gets off the bed before he starts to unbuckle his belt. He pushes his black slacks down along with his underwear, his large, and he was so fucking big, cock already hard.
"Always wondered what you'd be like in bed," He tilts his head with a smirk, "If you'd like being in control. Or if you'd prefer me to lead," He knelt on the bed again, and oh my god Simon Riley, your best friend of thirty years and the love of your life was crawling up the bed towards you until his cock was flush with your entrance. "If you'd be needy and beg. Or if you'd bark orders at me." He slapped the head of his cock against your clit. "If you'd be loud or quiet."
"If you'd let me do whatever I wanted to you," his head titled back, eyes shut, "Fuck Sunshine, the things I've imagined doing to you," He looks down at you with the most intense gaze, pining you there on the bed, "Would you let me lovie? Do whatever I want to you?" He asks, pearly whites peaking out to sink into his bottom lip.
"Like what?" Your breath is so unsteady, so hitched and uneven you feel your cheeks heat even more than they have done at his words.
He grins, "Like what?" He chuckles pushing the head of his cock against your entrance, not in, but resting against it, "Wanna fuck you so hard you can't walk. Make love to you slow and so deep you'll feel me everywhere. Bend you over every surface in this house and make you cry on my cock-"
"Simon!" You gasp.
"Can I Sunshine?" He groans pushing in a little more and your eyes sting with tears at the stretch.
"Yes! Please yes!" He pushes in slowly. One of his hands coming next to you on the bed and the other gripping your hip. He keeps sliding in further, so slowly until its sheathed inside you.
Simon does not move. You can see the restraint within the way his teeth are gritted, his brows furrowed, sweat forming on his forehead.
“Fuck you feel amazing wrapped around me, so tight.” He groans.
You don’t have any words and even if you did, you doubt you would be able to say them. You have never felt so…full. So filled to the brim and unable to get a reprieve from it.
“M’gonna move, gotta move Sunshine,” Simon growls and the fullness disappears for a second before he’s pushing himself back in.
“Fuck you feel so good Si.” You shudder and stars appear in your vision when he moves forward and takes your legs with him folding you in half.
Simon Riley has you in fucking mating press and didn't even break the slow rhythm he's building. He continues this push and pull movement until it begins to flow, each movement begins where the other ends. The pattern making you sob, “Don’t stop!”
You can't function and its only now that you understand the phrase 'being fucked dumb', rocking your hips, trying desperately to keep up with each thrust, back arched so beautifully.
Simon lets his hand slip and curve around your jaw without thinking about it, "Taking me so well Sunshine." The feral look in his eyes sends a shiver up your spine.
"Too big." You sobbed, your hands grabbing at his large biceps as he thrusts harder. He could feel every ridge and curve of your sopping cunt.
"You can take it." He encouraged you, biting at your neck leaving marks in his wake and looking so damn happy whilst doing it.
You continued to moan and whimper, tears of pleasure falling down your face while Simon's huge body hovered over you. Protecting you from the outside world, in here, it was just you and him.
"Si..oh!" you cried out feeling him hit that rough spot inside your weeping, swollen cunt.
"There it is." He didn't mean to grin like a obsessed man in such an intimate moment but he couldn't help himself. He never can with you. Each thrust hits the one place no man ever seems to be able to find but Simon seemingly found with ease. A spot that makes a tightening begin like a coil, being wound with every drive of his hips.
Your sinful noises morph into higher pitched breathy little screams.
"I know lovie, I know." He cooed, holding you closer. His sweat glazed skin meeting yours as his large veiny hand slips under your head, his other arm curling around your waist.
You move your hips and he groans vulgar into the air, his hand gripping your hair and pulling your head back, a little to the side before he attacks your neck all messy. Smearing his lips across your throat, you don’t even recognise the sound that leaves your mouth.
He pulls away, his dark eyes flit to your squelching pussy, the noise attracting his attention pupils dilating, honing in on the way your cunt sucks his cock back in. He couldn’t pull away even if he wanted to and fuck he doesn’t, he wants nothing more than to stay in your pretty pussy forever.
“Simonfuckyespleaserighttheredontstop!” All the words and moans blend together until your mumbling nonsense trying your hardest to keep conscious, it’s difficult with the way he’s fucking into you so deliciously it’s making you delirious in the best way.
His big body towering over yours, big hands gripping you almost bruisingly. His thick muscular hairy thighs press against your skin compellingly, the sight before you, it's irresistible. All you have to do is look down to see his massive cock sliding in and out of you, a ring of white collecting at the base.
It's too much seeing him like this, feeling the sweet pleasure burn through you and yet Simon moves one of his hands off your head and presses a thumb to your swollen, aching clit.
You're done for.
You sob, so fucking loud you swear everyone in the world can hear it, hot tears flow down your cheeks staining them.
"That's it." The words wash over you with your orgasm, it swirls around you, clings to you, and pushes you down down down the rabbit hole of pleasure. Oversensitivity sets in making you whine at his touch, but you can't stop yourself from wanting more.
Your hips buck into his touch eliciting a dirty chuckle from him.
As Simon picks up his thrusts, he comes to the conclusion that he loves you like this, wants to see it everyday. You're so drunk, so delirious and he loves it. Loves the far away look in your eyes right before they roll back into your skull.
He shoves his face into your neck groaning, "Gonna cum Sunshine, need to. Where?" his thrusts pick up again, as if that were even possible.
"Cum inside me Simon, fill me up." You cry out.
Simon must have been right there as he cums the second you finish your sentence. Hot thick robes of cum pushing deep inside you. He rubs your clit faster and another smaller orgasm zips through you leaving you whimpering.
He stays in you, holding you until he goes soft. He moves your legs so they don't cramp. "Did so well for me Sunshine. I love you so much." He looks into your eyes as more tears spill down your cheeks.
"I love you Simon." you bring your fingers into his hair, pulling him closer to kiss you. The contrast between the way he just destroyed your guts and is now kissing you so softly, is astounding.
He is careful when he picks you up and walks into the ensuite bathroom to the right, flicking the light on and placing you on the toilet. "Gotta pee sunshine, don't want you getting you a uti." He says and you're so tired you don't even have the energy to be embarrassed.
Your eyes as still closed as you pee. Your hand moves to find the toilet paper but a warm flannel is being pressed against you, Simon's other hand on your knee to keep them open. You whine and push his hand away, "Simon that's icky." You frown at him opening your eyes to see him looking at you with a frown of his own.
"Nothing about you is icky Sunshine. I'm clearing up my mess, now move your hand." You do as told and it occurs to you, through your tired haze, while Simon gently wipes you clean that he must be used to clearing up mess with the job he does.
"All done. Want a shower or straight to sleep?" He asks.
"Sleep." You yawn making him smile at you.
He carries you back to the bed, lifting the duvet and settling you both underneath it.
The particular quality of afterwards settles in the room.
The warmth of it, the specific silence, the way the world outside the window continues to exist and you become aware of it again in layers. The sound of the garden. The distant sound of a car somewhere. The sound of him breathing.
You were lying with your head on his chest. His arm around you, heavy and warm. His heartbeat under your ear, steady and unhurried, the same heart that had been beating beside you in one form or another for thirty years.
His hand moved. Slowly, idly, up and down your back.
You watched the lamplight glow on the beside table. You thought about the lavender. You thought about the train station in 2001, and the birthday cards, and the bottom stair with the cream envelope, and Margaret Howarth saying you always did belong together with the satisfied certainty of someone who had known it before either of you did.
"Simon," you said.
"Yeah."
"You planted lavender for three years."
"You mentioned that already."
"I'm still processing it."
A low sound in his chest that was the rumble of a laugh contained. "Take your time Sunshine."
You propped yourself up and looked at him. His face in the lamplight — older, marked, those brown eyes that had been watching you since you were four years old, now watching you from a pillow in the house he'd bought you.
His expression was open in the way it had been open on the porch and at the restaurant table and in the dance hall, the way it had been open perhaps three times in thirty years before tonight and was now, apparently, simply his face when he looked at you.
You loved him so much.
You had loved him in different quantities and different registers for most of your life and now you loved him in this one too, this new one, and it was the same love and completely different and you thought you would be discovering its dimensions for a considerable amount of time.
"You should have told me," you said. "Years ago. Before the train."
"Yeah," he said. No argument.
"I would have said it back then too."
Something moved in his face. "I know," he said. And then, quieter, "I wasn't ready then. Wasn't enough yet."
"Simon—"
"I know what you're going to say."
"You were always—"
"I know," he said. "I believe you. Now." His hand came up to your face, tucking a strand of hair back, his thumb at your cheekbone. "Took me a while to get there. But I'm here."
"You're here," you agreed smiling.
"And you're here." his hand tangled itself in your hair.
"I'm here." you giggled.
He looked at you for a long moment. Then, "Stay with me."
Not a question, not quite — more like a hope said aloud. The rarest thing from him. He had carried so much silently for so long, and this one small thing cost him something, and you could see it, and you loved him for it.
"It's my house," you said cheeky and bright.
He blinked. Then that laugh again — the real one, the rare one — and your heart did what it always did when you earned it, that particular, irreplaceable lurch.
"Yeah Sunshine," he said. "It is."
You lay back down against his chest. His arm came around you. His heartbeat under your ear.
Outside, the lavender moved. The Union flag was still on the roof. The porch swing sat in the dark with its yellow cushion, waiting for morning.
"Sunshine," he said. Into your hair.
"Hmm."
"I love you."
You pressed your lips to his chest, above his heart.
"I love you too," you said. "I've loved you since you were that chubby four-year-old who stole my crayons."
A long pause.
"Chubby," he repeated.
"Stocky," you amended, grinning into his chest. "You were very stocky."
"I was four."
"You were a very solid four year old."
His arm tightened around you — not painfully, just firmly, the way of a man making a point through the medium of holding — and you laughed again, helplessly, into the warmth of him.
He made that sound, that low rumbling laugh that lived in his chest, and the lamp burned warm and low and outside the lavender moved in the dark.
Simon Riley.
Who stole your crayons at four and broke your glasses at seven and learned to read because of you and carried your bag through every corridor of secondary school and punched a boy for pushing you over and kissed your cheek in a toilet corridor and sat beside you through every lunch and glared at anyone who called you a nerd and came round to your kitchen table for years and went to war at seventeen and sent you cards from the edges of the world and planted lavender for three years and bought you the house you described at sixteen and came home.
Summary: Living life with Spencer, ups, downs, firsts, and hopefully -- lasts.
Pairing: Spencer Reid x fem!reader
Category: fluff, angst, hurt/comfort, smut (18+)
Warnings/Includes: vomiting, food poisoning, talking about puking, smut (18+), sooo in love, awkward/real-life scenarios, visiting Diana, Derek being an instigator as always, no real timeline - they been dating for like two years…, this one is pretty smutty!!! and all the smut is Derek's fault so say thank you to Derek Morgan
Word count: 21.5k
a/n: y'all i was quickkkkkk wit it this time i am so obsessed with this idea and this spencer you have no idea,,, it is just flowing out of me like word vomit frrrrr and thank you all SO SO SO MUCH FOR ALL OF THE LOVE ON THE LAST ONE YOU GUYS KEEP ME GOING MUAH MUAH MUAH
main masterlist part one part three
It was a rare, sunny afternoon, and you were out in the world—something you didn’t always have the energy or time for, especially lately. But today had started slow and soft. Spencer had asked if you wanted to get breakfast with Penelope and Derek, and you’d agreed, mostly because he looked so hopeful when he asked and because Penelope always made you feel like a beloved member of a secret club.
The four of you had snagged a table at a small café tucked between bookstores and flower shops, the kind of place Spencer liked because the menu had locally sourced teas and the tables didn’t wobble.
He was waiting at the counter now, patiently awaiting collecting your drink orders, always double-checking them before passing them off—yours with coconut milk, Penelope’s with extra foam, Derek’s with exactly one sugar. Spencer Reid, your attentive, overthinking, wonderful boyfriend, was doing what he always did: quietly taking care of the people he loved.
And then it happened.
Derek, mid-laugh, glanced up toward the counter—and his smile froze. His eyebrows raised slightly. Then he leaned over to Penelope and nudged her arm with the subtlety of a wrecking ball.
“PG. Look at that.”
Penelope turned, and you did too, instincts kicking in. And there she was.
A woman, maybe a few years older than you, statuesque and striking in a very deliberate way. Hair was perfectly blown out, posture was impossibly confident, and the toned arms on full display in a sleeveless top. She was leaning just a little too close to Spencer. Smiling a little too warmly.
You watched her tuck a strand of hair behind her ear as she said something that made Spencer glance up, polite and unaware. He smiled at her—your smile, the one that made your stomach flip when it was yours and yours alone—and nodded, clearly answering a question she’d asked. Then she touched his forearm. Lightly. Casually. Familiar in a way that made your blood stir.
You blinked.
And then it hit.
First—insecurity.
Because, yes, she was gorgeous. Her body was lean and graceful, her face radiant in that effortless, magazine-cover kind of way. She looked like someone who wore SPF, drank green juice, and knew how to contour. And you… well, you were you. You didn’t always remember to put on mascara, let alone exude that kind of practiced poise.
Then—jealousy.
That she would walk right up to your man as if he was available. As if his warm smile and gentle demeanor were an invitation to flirt, to try, to touch. As if you didn’t exist.
And then, surprisingly—pride.
Because, of course, someone would flirt with him. Have you seen him? Spencer was gorgeous. Tall, with soft eyes and messy hair and long, delicate fingers that fluttered when he talked about anything he loved. He radiated thoughtfulness. Of course, people noticed.
Finally—impressed.
You couldn’t even be mad at her confidence. The way she approached him without hesitation. That kind of boldness took guts. To see a man in public and think, Yes. Him, and then go for it? You almost wanted to applaud her. Almost.
Penelope leaned over and whispered, “Do you want me to cause a distraction? I could pretend to faint. Or drop a scone.”
You shook your head, lips curving into a slow smile. “No… let’s see how long it takes him to figure out what’s happening.”
Derek snorted. “You think he will? I’ve seen this man miss someone flirting with him while literally being given their phone number.”
Spencer turned, drink tray in hand, the woman still beside him, clearly not finished making her case.
But the moment his eyes found you—only you—his entire face softened. He smiled like he always did like he couldn’t believe he got to walk toward you.
And just like that, all the swirling feelings calmed.
Because she might’ve approached him, but Spencer? He was already yours.
“Okay, I have the drinks!” Spencer announced brightly, carefully balancing the cardboard tray in his hands as he approached the table. His voice carried that classic, slightly too-loud enthusiasm that meant he was proud of himself for not spilling anything on the walk over.
He looked so pleased with himself—so genuinely content to be bringing everyone exactly what they ordered—that for a second, you almost forgot the scene you’d just watched unfold at the counter.
Almost.
Penelope took her drink first with a wide, performative smile. “Oh, thank you, kind sir. What ever did we do to deserve such princely service?”
Spencer blinked. “Well, statistically speaking, I owed you both a drink since I didn’t pay last time, and Derek insisted on splitting that check evenly even though he ordered an extra—”
“—thank you, Spencer,” you interrupted gently, sliding your cup from the tray and brushing your fingers over his hand with a small smile. He looked at you, caught in mid-ramble, and paused.
There it was again—that softness. That barely concealed awe. Like just looking at you slowed his entire system down.
Derek, meanwhile, was eyeing him with one raised brow, sipping his coffee like he was trying very hard not to say something smart.
But Penelope? Penelope had no such restraint.
“So,” she said sweetly, far too sweetly, “did you make a new friend while you were up there?”
Spencer blinked. “What?”
Derek coughed pointedly. “Tall glass of water, blonde hair, caressing your arm?”
Spencer looked genuinely confused. “There was a woman next to me—she asked what kind of milk they used. I told her about the non-dairy options and suggested oat milk for a smoother foam. Why?”
Penelope let out a strangled little laugh and buried her face in her cup. Derek outright guffawed.
You just smiled. So wide and fond and helplessly in love.
Spencer looked around, increasingly suspicious. “Did… did she say something weird?”
“She was flirting with you, baby,” you said gently like you were explaining a very complex concept to a very sweet alien.
Spencer’s mouth fell open. “What? No, she wasn’t—she asked about milk—”
“She touched your arm, man!” Derek interrupted.
“She probably just wanted to know where to stand—”
“She flipped her hair,” Penelope added with wide eyes. “Three times!”
Spencer looked at you again, a little horrified. “You… did you notice that?”
You laughed softly, wrapping your hand around his. “Yes, Spencer. I noticed.”
Spencer blinked at you for a beat longer, cheeks going warm. “…Oh.”
You leaned closer, giving him a smug little smile. “It’s okay, lover. I like that you’re oblivious. Means I never have to worry.”
Penelope beamed. Derek groaned into his coffee.
Spencer, still a little stunned, just held your hand a little tighter. “I really did just think she was curious about milk…”
You kissed his cheek. “I know, Spence. I know.”
—
“Y/N?” Spencer asked softly, his voice warm and casual as if he’d been turning the thought over in his head for a while.
“Yeah, Spence?” you replied, eyes still focused on your laptop, adjusting the spacing on the final slide of the presentation you’d been working on all morning.
“What do you want to do for your birthday?”
You paused, fingers hovering over the trackpad, and glanced toward the corner of the room. Spencer was exactly where he always ended up on your weekend workdays—curled into the armchair you’d jokingly dubbed “his spot,” legs folded underneath him, a Rubik’s cube dancing between his nimble fingers. The light from the window dappled across his curls, making him look more like a daydream than a real person.
“I hadn’t thought about it yet,” you admitted with a smile, closing your laptop slightly to give him your attention. “Why, did you have something in mind?”
Spencer didn’t look up. His eyes were locked on the colorful cube, the sound of soft plastic clicks filling the space between you. “Cancún,” he said plainly. “We could go to the Mayan ruins, and you could drink and tan on the beach while I read under an umbrella.”
It was said so matter-of-factly as if it were a logical answer to a multiple-choice question. You blinked—and then giggled, unable to help it.
“You’re serious,” you grinned.
He nodded without missing a beat, eyes still glued to the cube. “Of course. The Mayan pyramids at Chichén Itzá are among the most well-preserved examples of ancient Mesoamerican architecture. And I figured you’d enjoy a piña colada and maybe, you know…” His fingers paused just briefly as he gave you a shy glance. “Some time to relax?”
You melted a little like you always did when he tried so hard to think about you, even in the middle of his excitement. “That sounds kind of amazing.”
He shrugged. “I also looked at a couple of options closer to home in case you didn’t want to fly. But I wanted to start big.”
You stood, laptop forgotten, and made your way over to him, sliding into his lap like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“Spencer Reid,” you said, threading your fingers gently into his curls, “how long have you been planning my birthday without telling me?”
He flushed slightly. “Seventeen days. And six hours. Approximately.”
You kissed his temple, your heart blooming with affection. “You’re ridiculous.”
…
Cancún was everything.
Beautiful, in the way only a place brushed by turquoise water and painted sunsets could be. The kind of beauty that slowed your breath and made you reach instinctively for Spencer’s hand, just to make sure you were both seeing it together.
Fun, in the way that caught you off guard—like when Spencer surprised you by agreeing to dance at that beachside bar after one too many sips of some bright, fruity drink he couldn’t name, cheeks flushed and curls tousled from the wind. Or when he reluctantly joined you in the ocean and immediately lost his footing, laughing so hard he had to clutch your waist for support. More drunk on you than anything else.
Exciting, too. Walking together through the ruins of Chichén Itzá, Spencer practically vibrating with enthusiasm as he explained the alignment of El Castillo with the solstices, hands animated as he gestured toward the shadows cast by the ancient steps. You let him ramble. You loved to let him ramble. Especially when he was this alive, this bright, under a sun he claimed was “just slightly too hot for intellectual pursuits.”
But it was relaxing, too. Quiet mornings with breakfast on the balcony. Your legs draped over his lap while he read to you—sometimes history, sometimes poetry, sometimes just the resort menu aloud in Spanish with a smirk because he knew how it made you laugh.
And, of course, it was romantic. So romantic.
Stolen kisses in shaded courtyards, bare feet brushing under restaurant tables, late-night swims in the moonlight, wrapped in each other’s arms as the waves lapped softly nearby. He tucked hibiscus flowers behind your ear. You kissed sunscreen into the slope of his nose. And when you lay side by side in bed, salt still lingering on your skin, you whispered plans for the future like the stars outside the window could hear them.
Cancún was everything. But mostly, it was yours. Your time. Your memories. Your little pocket of paradise—with the person you loved most.
But all good things must come to an end, as they say. And in your case, the end came in the form of tacos.
It started off like the perfect night. You and Spencer had decided to cap off your trip with dinner at a little oceanside bar—one of those that had hammocks instead of chairs and lights strung overhead like fireflies. You ordered something that sounded incredible on the menu, something bright and spicy, and Spencer got something safe, because of course, he did.
You ate slowly, sipping a drink and watching the waves, laughing when Spencer made a face at the live music that was just slightly off-key. It had all been perfect—until it wasn’t.
The two of you had decided to take a final stroll along the beach, your sandals dangling from one hand, his fingers laced with yours as the tide whispered around your ankles.
And then you gagged.
It wasn’t dramatic at first. Just a small, subtle noise that you immediately tried to swallow down. You turned your head to the side and kept walking, squeezing his hand tighter like you could distract yourself from your own body.
Spencer noticed instantly. Of course, he did.
“Are you okay?” he asked, stopping to face you with concern already blooming in his eyes.
You nodded quickly, avoiding his gaze, your free hand pressing to your stomach like it might help keep everything inside. “Mhm. I’m fine.”
But your stomach had other plans.
The waves weren’t the only thing churning anymore. A sudden roll of nausea swept through you, violent and immediate. You froze. Then shook your head, wide-eyed and desperate.
“I—I need to go back to the room.”
Spencer didn’t hesitate. He grabbed your sandals from your hands, wrapped an arm around your shoulders, and turned you back toward the resort with a quiet, “Okay, we’re going. It’s okay.”
You felt mortified. You never threw up. Not since that one infamous night ten years ago involving too many sugary desserts and a bonfire with school friends.
But by the time you made it to the elevator, you were already gagging again, your hands shaking. Spencer pressed the buttons like a man on a mission and practically carried you down the hall.
And then… your head was in the toilet. Cold tile beneath your knees. A mess of tears and sickness and embarrassment.
You wouldn’t let Spencer even near the bathroom.
The moment he tried to follow you in, concern etched all over his face, you turned around mid-stumble and pointed a trembling, authoritative finger toward the balcony.
“Out there. Balcony. Now.”
Spencer blinked, stunned. “But I—”
“No, Spencer,” you groaned, one hand on your stomach, the other braced on the wall. “I love you. So much. But if you hear me throw up, I will have to walk into the ocean and never return.”
And before he could protest, you shut the door behind you, sealing yourself in like it was some kind of quarantine chamber. You couldn’t stand the thought of him hearing it—the retching, the gasping, the miserable sounds you hadn’t made in over a decade.
Meanwhile, Spencer stood barefoot on the balcony in the dark, completely banished like it was his fault you were sick. He pressed his palm to the cool glass of the sliding door, face full of worried confusion.
“She basically devours the goriest horror movies she can find but throws me outside for a little food poisoning,” he muttered to himself.
And yet—he stayed. Just outside the door, pacing softly, arms folded, waiting for any sign that you were okay. Because if you needed to pretend he wasn’t hearing you puke your guts out? Then he would pretend, too.
You clutched the toilet's cool porcelain like it was your only anchor, your forehead pressed to your arm, knees aching against the tile. The world was spinning in sharp little circles, and your entire body was clammy, a thin sheen of sweat coating your skin.
But then, from outside the bathroom door came the soft sound of Spencer’s voice. “Y/N?”
“Spencer!” you croaked, panicked and furious in equal measure. “NO!”
There was a pause, and you could hear the shift of his bare feet on the floor, and the rustle of his shirt as he leaned gently against the other side of the door. “Baby, it’s okay,” he said, calm and steady like he was soothing a frightened cat instead of a grown woman violently rejecting tacos. “It’s normal. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
“It’s so gross!” you sobbed, barely able to catch your breath between waves of nausea and your own tears. “I’m sweaty, and—and puking, and I don’t want you to see me like this!”
There was a long silence. Not awkward. Not disappointed. Just full of Spencer’s care, humming just beneath the surface like a low, warm current.
And then, with a voice so soft it barely reached through the wood: “Sweetheart… I’ve seen humanity at its worst. But I have never, not once, thought someone I loved being sick was anything but human. You’re not gross. You’re hurting. And I want to be here for you.”
You sniffled, knuckles pressed to your lips, too ashamed to answer at first.
“I can stay out here. I will,” he continued gently. “But just… let me bring you a glass of water when you’re ready. Or a washcloth. Or a hug. You don’t have to let me in, but don’t shut me out.”
Your heart broke a little at how kind he was. And maybe it was the nausea, or maybe it was love, or maybe both—but you whimpered through the door, voice small and shaky: “I hate being vulnerable.”
And Spencer, without missing a beat, said softly, “I know. That’s why I’m so proud of you. You’re doing it anyway.”
Before you could stop it, your body lurched forward and you retched again, vomiting hard and fast—hopefully for the last time. Your throat burned, your stomach twisted, and by the time it was over, you were choking on a sob you hadn’t meant to let out.
You flushed the toilet with a shaky hand, then slid back against the wall, collapsing ungracefully onto the tile floor. Knees pulled to your chest, arms wrapped tightly around them. You were crying now—really crying—coughing between tears, breath hitching like your body didn’t know how to calm itself down.
The door creaked.
“Y/N!” Spencer’s voice was sharp with worry. “I’m coming in.”
You didn’t answer. Couldn’t.
The door opened, and there he was—barefoot, heart pounding, hair slightly windblown from the balcony breeze, and eyes wide with panic.
He spotted you immediately, curled up on the floor, flushed and tear-streaked, the air still heavy with misery.
“Hey—hey, no, no, no,” Spencer rushed to you, dropping to his knees without a second thought. “Can I hold you?”
“I didn’t—” you hiccuped, trying to catch your breath. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”
He cupped your cheeks gently, thumbs brushing away the tears that wouldn’t stop falling. “You’re sick, not radioactive,” he whispered, forehead resting against yours. “Let me take care of you, please.”
And something in you cracked again—but this time, not from nausea or shame. This time, it was the comfort. The love. The refusal he had to let you face any of it alone.
You covered your mouth with your hand, still red-eyed and trembling. “At least let me brush my teeth,” you mumbled, voice hoarse and shaky, cheeks burning with leftover embarrassment.
Spencer immediately nodded, standing up with you in one fluid motion, his hands warm and gentle as they steadied your arms. “Yes, absolutely. That’s actually really important—”
You let out a wet, half-laugh, half-sob as he began.
“—because vomiting introduces stomach acid into your mouth, specifically hydrochloric acid, which can weaken enamel. So you should actually wait a few minutes and rinse with water first—”
“Spencer,” you croaked, even as you leaned against the counter, reaching for your toothbrush.
“Right, right,” he said softly, rubbing your back. “I’ll wait to give the lecture until you’re minty fresh.”
You couldn’t help but smile—still teary, still exhausted, but somehow lighter. Because he wasn’t there to see you at your best. He was there because he wanted to be, even when you were at your absolute worst.
“Need to be able to kiss you if you’re going to talk dirty to me,” you muttered flatly, toothbrush halfway to your mouth.
Spencer, who had just handed you a glass of water to rinse with, froze.
Then, slowly—painfully—his cheeks turned pink, that signature flush creeping all the way to the tips of his ears. He let out a surprised laugh, nearly stumbling back a step like the words had physically knocked him off balance.
“Oh my God,” he said, grinning now, visibly relieved to see a flicker of your usual spark return. “You’re definitely feeling better.”
You rinsed, spit, and wiped your mouth, finally looking at him with a tired but mischievous little smile. “Still weak. Still gross. But capable of inappropriate humor? Always.”
Spencer beamed and then, because he couldn’t help himself, leaned in to kiss your forehead. “You scared me.”
“I scared myself.” You sighed. “But thank you for being here. Even when I banish you to balconies.”
He chuckled, resting his hand on your hip. “For future reference, you’re allowed to puke. And I’m allowed to love you anyway.”
“Thank you, baby,” you murmured, stroking your fingers gently across his stomach—a spot you knew was always sensitive, always made him twitch or blush or just melt a little. His breath hitched ever so slightly, and he looked at you with soft, grateful eyes.
“You’re not allowed, though,” you added, scrunching your nose. “I don’t want to hear you puke.”
Spencer balked, his mouth dropping open as his eyebrows shot up in exaggerated mock offense. “Excuse me?”
You laughed, stepping back just slightly to put a hand on your hip, already amused with yourself. “It’s gross! I probably wouldn’t find you sexy anymore.”
He let out a sharp breath that was half gasp, half laugh, and shook his head slowly, grinning with that very specific brand of Spencer Reid indignation. “Wow. Wow. That’s… I see how it is.”
And then, with the softest, most ridiculous gesture imaginable, he raised his closed fist and lightly—very lightly—tapped it against your jaw. Like he was throwing the world’s gentlest punch.
You both burst out laughing.
“Violence?” you teased, holding your hand to your chest. “This is what happens when I speak my truth?”
Spencer smirked, eyes glittering. “You threaten my sex appeal and my digestive dignity, and I’m the villain?”
“You’re dramatic.”
“You’re rude.”
“You’re lucky I’m still in love with you.”
“You’re lucky I am,” he shot back, lips twitching into another grin.
And just like that, the nausea, the embarrassment, the tile-floor misery—it all drifted away, replaced by laughter, love, and the kind of comfort that only came from being exactly where you belonged.
—
Spencer’s sitting at his dining table, shoulders hunched and brow furrowed in concentration, a case file spread out before him. He’s got one hand tangled in his hair and the other scribbling something in the margins of the profile, lips moving soundlessly as he works through his thoughts. It’s the posture he takes when he’s fully in the zone—focused, brilliant, unreachable by most.
But not by you. Not usually.
You’re curled up on the couch a few feet away, watching him with quiet affection and just a hint of boredom. He’s been at it for nearly two hours, and though he’s still talking to you intermittently, it’s all half-responses and murmured agreements. You know he doesn’t mean to ignore you—he’s just wired this way, intense and single-minded when something’s clawed its way into his brain.
Still, you’re feeling a little fragile today. Not enough to show it or say it out loud, but just enough to want a little more softness. A little more attention. Something light.
So you joke, voice casual but tinged with a vulnerability you hope doesn’t show, “Sorry I’m being so annoying, I’ll try to contain the full force of my unbearable personality.”
Spencer doesn’t look up.
“Mm, yeah,” he murmurs, pen still scratching across the paper. “That’d be great, thanks.”
You blink, your breath catching slightly in your throat. It takes a second to process that he actually heard you. Or at least—he heard the words. Not the meaning behind them. Not the way you laughed softly at the end, like it was all a joke when it wasn’t really.
And now he’s nodding to himself, flipping the page, muttering something about behavioral escalation, completely oblivious to the way his offhand agreement landed like a punch to your gut.
You sit still for a moment, too still. The kind of stillness that only happens when you’re trying not to cry out of sheer ridiculousness. It shouldn’t hurt. You know he didn’t mean it. But it does.
It does.
Without a word, you stand up slowly and make your way down the hall. You don’t slam the door. You don’t huff or sniff or stomp. You just slip into the bathroom and close the door gently behind you.
Spencer doesn’t even look up.
But after a minute or two—midway through a paragraph—his brain finally pings with something off.
The silence. The lack of your usual commentary or music playing faintly on your phone. The way you hadn’t laughed at his last mumbled fact about the statistical relevance of childhood trauma. The fact that you’re gone.
His pen stills.
“...Babe?”
No answer.
He looks up. The living room is empty. The soft blanket you were under is tossed neatly on the arm of the couch. The bathroom door is shut. The apartment is silent.
His heart sinks.
He replays what just happened in his head, scanning it like a file, rewinding your last words.
And then it hits him.
Oh. Oh.
Spencer sets the pen down slowly. His brow furrows, not with confusion but with regret. He pushes his chair back, stands, and crosses the hall to the bathroom, knocking gently—barely more than a tap.
“Sweetheart?” he says softly, already wincing. “Can I come in?”
Because now he knows. Now he really heard you.
Your head jerks up at the soft knock, startled, and you quickly swipe at your eyes with the sleeve of your sweatshirt, trying to erase any evidence of the tears threatening to fall. You hadn’t expected him to notice—not so soon, anyway.
His voice comes through the door, tentative and quiet, like he already suspects he’s hurt you. “Y/N?”
You sniffle, caught off guard but trying to play it cool. “I’m in the bathroom…”
“I know,” he replies, a sheepish little laugh wrapped in nervousness. “So… can I come in?”
There’s a pause. You stare at your reflection in the mirror—your red-rimmed eyes, the wobble of your bottom lip, the way you look like someone who’s trying too hard to keep it together. You sigh, but it comes out shaky, the kind of sound that gives you away before your words even have the chance.
“No, Spencer,” you say, voice cracking around the edges, thin and brittle. “Go back to work.”
You try to sound firm, but it’s no use. The second half of the sentence trembles out of your mouth like you’re holding it together with scotch tape and hope. And Spencer hears all of it.
On the other side of the door, he presses his hand flat against the wood like it might get him closer to you. Like maybe, if he touches it gently enough, the damage might reverse itself. His chest twists with guilt, a deep kind of ache he doesn’t quite know how to sit with.
“Hey,” he says softly, not moving away. “I’m not going back to work.”
“Spencer—” you try, your voice small.
“I wasn’t listening,” he cuts in, regret wrapped around every word. “And I’m so sorry for that. You were making a joke, and I just… answered without thinking. I wasn’t really hearing you, and I should’ve. That was a really stupid thing to say and I—I hate that it hurt you.”
You bite your lip hard, tears gathering again, this time not from the offhand comment but from how earnest he sounds now. How soft. How aware.
“I’m not going to push,” he says gently. “If you want me to leave you alone, I will. But I’m staying right here. Just so you know, you’re not alone in there. Not really.”
Silence falls again, but this one is different. It’s full of his presence, not the emptiness from before.
Your voice comes a moment later, barely a whisper. “I just felt… stupid.”
“You’re not stupid,” he says immediately. “You’re not annoying. And you don’t have to joke about your feelings to make them easier for me to handle. I want to hear them. I want to know when you’re upset so I can help.”
You hesitate. Then, very quietly, the lock on the door clicks.
Spencer waits.
The door creaks open a few inches, and there you are, tearful and trying your best to look like you’re not.
His eyes soften as he takes a half-step forward, one hand reaching up to tuck a stray hair behind your ear. “Hi,” he says gently.
Your voice is still thick. “Hi.”
“Can I hug you now?”
You nod, and the dam breaks completely the second you’re in his arms. He holds you tight—steady, warm, and wordless—resting his chin on your head as you bury your face into his chest.
“I didn’t mean it,” he murmurs. “Not even a little bit. You’re my favorite person. Always.”
And you believe him. Because the thing about Spencer is—when he’s paying attention, really paying attention—he loves you like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
And right now, he’s paying attention to everything.
—
It was a slow afternoon at the Bureau, the kind where the hum of the fluorescent lights seemed louder than usual, and even Penelope had stopped trying to invent fake emergencies to liven things up. Files sat untouched, coffee mugs were half-full, and the bullpen was quieter than it had been in weeks.
So when Derek nudged Spencer’s arm and muttered, “Come on, pretty boy, lunch run,” Spencer didn’t argue. They wandered down to the corner deli with the flaky bread and the too-strong espresso Spencer would never drink but secretly liked the smell of.
They sat outside—Spencer with his book tucked under one arm, Derek unwrapping his sandwich with the kind of dedication that meant he wouldn’t speak for the first five bites.
But then, halfway through a fry, Derek looked up. Squinted. Tilted his head.
“Wait,” he said slowly, continuing their conversation, bugged by Spencer’s lack of enthusiasm about the subject. “So you’ve never…”
Spencer blinked, startled, then furrowed his brow. “No?” he answered cautiously, his tone more question than statement.
Derek nearly choked on his drink. “Bro, you literally have a girlfriend!” he said, laughter bubbling up. “How long have you guys been together now?”
“A little over a year,” Spencer replied, shrugging a little as he picked at the edge of his napkin. “But… it’s not about that. We don’t just have sex; we have a relationship. She’s my best friend.”
Derek clutched his chest in mock pain. “That’s sweet, Romeo,” he said dramatically. “But you’re telling me, in all this time, you never asked?”
Spencer looked thoughtful as if he were truly trying to remember if he ever had. “She never offered,” he said eventually. “And I didn’t want to pressure her. It’s not… transactional. We’re just—close. We talk. We… trust each other.”
Derek blinked. “You know you’re allowed to ask, right?”
Spencer tilted his head. “Are you?”
“Yes, Reid,” Derek sighed, dragging a hand over his face. “You can ask for things. Especially in a healthy relationship. Especially if you trust each other. You talk about stuff. It doesn’t make you pushy. It makes you communicative.”
Spencer sat back in his chair, chewing that over.
“…I guess I just figured… if she wanted to, she would.”
“And maybe,” Derek said, sipping his drink like he was about to drop the thesis statement of the day, “she’s just waiting for you to stop treating her like she’s a research subject and start treating her like she wants to be wanted.”
Spencer blinked.
“Oh,” he said. Then softer, “Oh.”
Derek just smirked, biting into his sandwich again. “You’re welcome.”
…
“So I had an interesting conversation with Derek today…” Spencer started, his tone just casual enough to seem like he was testing the waters—but not quite enough to hide that something was definitely on his mind.
You smiled over your shoulder at him, where he was sitting on the other side of the kitchen island, elbows resting beside the cutting board you’d left out earlier. The sizzling of the carrots in your pan gave a little punctuation to the moment. “Yeah?”
He nodded slowly, brows raised just a little, the way they always did when he was internally drafting something that made him nervous. He looked like he was mentally pacing even though he was perfectly still.
And then, as if someone hit play on the audio file he'd been rehearsing in his head, he blurted out with the grace of a baby deer on ice, “Will you give me a blowjob?”
The carrots hissed in the oil.
You froze for a fraction of a second—just long enough to let the words fully register—then turned to face him, eyes wide with amusement and a grin tugging at your lips.
“What did you and Derek talk about?” you asked, voice barely containing the delight now bubbling up in your chest.
Spencer flushed immediately, the tips of his ears turning red like you’d flipped a switch. “It—well—I just mentioned that we hadn’t… I mean, not that I expect anything, but he asked, and, well, we haven’t, and I wasn’t sure if—maybe—I was allowed to ask?”
You put the spatula down and turned off the heat, walking slowly around the island toward him, arms crossed but smile blooming. “You needed Derek Morgan to give you a permission slip to ask for a blowjob?”
“I didn’t need it,” Spencer said defensively, but he was already fidgeting with the sleeve of his sweater, looking up at you with a sheepish, caught expression. “He just reminded me that asking isn’t a bad thing. I didn’t want to pressure you. I didn’t know if you’d want to or if it would make things weird or—”
You leaned over, kissing his temple, your voice warm and teasing. “You’re adorable when you’re mortified, you know that?”
He groaned softly, letting his forehead fall into his hands. “Please forget how I said it.”
“No chance,” you laughed, wrapping your arms around his shoulders from behind. “But… I am glad you asked. Even if your delivery needs a little work.”
“So that’s not a no?” he mumbled into his palms.
You nuzzled into his hair and whispered, “Definitely not a no, Spencer.”
And just like that, your carrot sauté had officially been put on hold.
Spencer looked up at you from his seat with those wide, impossibly earnest eyes, his cheeks already flushed with a mix of embarrassment and anticipation. His voice came out in a breathy little burst like he couldn’t quite believe the moment was happening.
“I’ve never had one before,” he admitted, almost reverent in tone like it was a confession and a milestone all at once.
You smiled, soft and fond, brushing your fingers through his curls with that familiar warmth that always settled him. “I know, baby.”
He nodded like he expected as much—but then curiosity sparked in his eyes again. “Have you?”
You tilted your head, pretending not to notice the question forming. “Have I received a blowjob?”
Spencer groaned immediately, covering his face with both hands again like he regretted opening his mouth in the first place. “You know that’s not what I meant.”
You couldn’t help it—you laughed, full and bright, the kind of laugh that always pulled a reluctant smile from him even in his most dramatic moments.
“Yes, I’ve given a blowjob or two,” you replied, nonchalantly, dragging out the answer just enough to tease him.
He lifted his head, peeking at you through parted fingers, eyes narrowing playfully. “Is that an accurate count?”
You smirked. “Do you want the real one?”
Without missing a beat, Spencer groaned again, this time more dramatically, and let his head fall forward—landing squarely against your chest like it was the only safe place in the world. He let out a muffled, mock-mournful, “I suppose not,” as his hands found your waist, holding onto you like he needed emotional reinforcement.
You chuckled again, wrapping your arms around him, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “You’re too cute for your own good, Dr. Reid.”
He sighed, breath warm against your skin. “And you’re still evil.”
“Mm. But I’m your evil.”
That earned you a soft laugh—low and content—and the kind of squeeze around your waist that said he was glad you were the one he was nervous with. The one he was learning with. The one he trusted to laugh, tease, and still love him through it all.
“Is my evil going to keep being evil or…” he mumbled, barely audible like he was trying not to let himself say it all the way.
You arched a brow, grinning as you tilted your head closer to him. “What was that, baby?” you teased, voice syrupy sweet. “You sound a little desperate.”
Spencer groaned—half a whimper, half a plea—his face still pressed against you as if the heat rising in his cheeks might be hidden there. “Y/N…” he whined, the syllables dragging out of his throat like they were coated in syrup and shame.
You cupped the back of his neck, fingers sliding into the soft curls there, and hummed, lips brushing beside his ear now. “Hmm? Are you getting worked up?”
He nodded.
Just once. Small. But you felt it.
“Thinking about my mouth?” you whispered, your voice velvet and heat, each word wrapped around him like a tightening string. “Wrapped around you? Licking you… sucking you…” You smiled as he shivered against you, the tension building in his shoulders like a coiled spring.
“…swallowing you?”
His breath caught—sharp, choked, completely involuntary.
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
His whole body did it for him.
Spencer was trembling—not visibly—not in some dramatic, cinematic way—but in the subtle, desperate tension that rippled through him beneath your hands. It was the kind of trembling that came from want layered under nerves, from anticipation that had nowhere to go but deeper.
He was quiet, but you felt the way his fingers tightened around your waist, how his forehead pressed harder into your chest, like if he hid there long enough, he could escape the fire you were so expertly stoking.
But he couldn’t.
You weren’t going to let him.
Your voice dropped even lower, almost a purr now, your lips ghosting over the curve of his ear, “You want me to, don’t you?”
He gave the barest nod again. Like even that little motion required a full-body permission slip.
“I want to hear it, Spence.” You trailed your fingers down his back, slow and light, the kind of touch that made it worse. Made him ache more. “Tell me you want it.”
He groaned—tried to suppress it, but it broke free.
“I do,” he whispered, voice nearly cracked in half. “I want you to…” He trailed off, unable to complete the sentence, the weight of the words too heavy in his mouth.
You softened, cupping his jaw and tilting his face up so you could see his eyes. They were glassy, wide, and so full of helpless want that your heart nearly cracked for him.
“Sweet boy,” you murmured, brushing your thumb across his cheek, “you don’t have to be shy with me. You know I’d never laugh at you.”
“I know,” he breathed. “I just… I’ve imagined it so many times and now that it’s real, I…”
“You’re overwhelmed.” You nodded, brushing his hair back from his flushed face. “That’s okay. I’ve got you.”
He nodded quickly, jaw tight with restraint, pupils blown wide with anticipation.
You leaned in, kissing him—gently at first, then deeper, your mouth moving slowly over his like a promise. His hands gripped you just tight enough to ground himself, and when you pulled back, your lips were still brushing his.
“Go lie on the bed, baby,” you whispered, your voice full of velvet and control and care. “Let me show you what it feels like to be worshipped.”
And for once, in his brilliant, spiraling, overthinking mind—Spencer didn’t argue. He just obeyed.
You watched, wide-eyed and deeply amused, as Spencer practically hightailed it down the hallway like you’d just fired a starting pistol at a race track.
One moment he was wrapped around you, whimpering under your breathy teasing, and the next—whoosh—he was gone, a blur of long limbs and nervous anticipation as he disappeared into your bedroom.
You couldn’t stop the giggle that bubbled up from your chest. It escaped in a full laugh as you slid the pan of forgotten carrots to a cool spot on the stove. They could wait. Spencer Reid could not.
You walked down the hallway slowly, and deliberately, enjoying every heavy beat of your heart and the warm, fluttering thrill building in your belly. By the time you reached the bedroom doorway, you were prepared to find him nervously waiting under the covers, maybe still in his undershirt, doing that thing where he fiddles with the hem and doesn’t make eye contact—
But no.
Absolutely not.
You stepped into the doorway and nearly doubled over.
“Spencer!” you shrieked, half in joy and half in stunned laughter.
There he was.
Completely naked.
No covers, no strategic sheet positioning, no half-off clothes like some dramatic movie scene. Just all of him, sprawled on your bed, flushed pink and already looking a little overwhelmed—but so clearly ready.
His curls were messy from where he’d run his hands through them. His legs stretched out nervously, feet flexing like he didn’t know what to do with his limbs now that he was all bare. His hands were clenched into the blanket on either side of him, and his entire face was red.
But he held your gaze, wide-eyed and proud, despite how clearly embarrassed he was.
“I, um—” he began, voice cracking like a teenager, “I didn’t know if I was supposed to wait under the blanket, or if you wanted… access…”
You covered your mouth with your hand, laughing into your fingers before you walked over, eyes sparkling.
“Spence,” you whispered, crawling up the bed as he watched you like you were both a goddess and a thunderstorm, “you are the most beautiful, ridiculous man I’ve ever met.”
He swallowed hard. “Is… is that a good thing?”
You leaned down, pressing a kiss just below his belly button as he sucked in a breath.
“It’s the best thing,” you murmured again, lips brushing just above the sharp line of his hipbone, letting the heat of your breath linger there while your fingers lightly traced along the sensitive skin of his thighs.
Spencer’s entire body shivered. His hands clutched the comforter like he needed an anchor, his back arched just barely off the bed in anticipation. And then—his voice, soft and breathy and absolutely wrecked already, slipped out:
“O–okay good,” he stammered, blinking down at you with flushed cheeks and blown pupils. “So what do I do…?”
You looked up at him, chin resting lightly on his lower stomach, and gave him a smile so soft, so steady, it made him swallow hard. “Just let me do the work, yeah?”
“Mhm,” he nodded quickly, his curls bouncing, throat working around a nervous gulp. His fingers twitched against the blanket again, like he didn’t trust himself to keep still.
You brushed your hand up his thigh, slow and deliberate, watching as his eyes fluttered shut from just that. “Can I start, baby?”
His head lolled back against the pillows. “Please,” he whispered, voice hoarse and pleading. “Do anything… just—do something.”
You grinned—loving, amused, and more than a little hungry—and kissed the inside of his thigh.
“Anything?” you teased, voice like velvet.
Spencer made a sound that was half laugh, half moan, and all desperation. “Anything,” he groaned. “I’ve been mentally preparing for this since I was sixteen, please don’t make me wait.”
You kissed higher. “Well,” you murmured, lips grazing the base of him, “good thing I’ve been practicing since then.”
And then—finally—you took him into your mouth.
And Spencer Reid stopped thinking for the first time in his entire life.
It was just the tip.
Just the head, just the softest, most teasing pull of your lips around the very beginning of him. You didn’t rush, didn’t dive in or try to overwhelm him—no, you knew better. You knew exactly what you were doing. You let your mouth rest there, warm and wet and barely moving, while your tongue flicked out slowly, tracing over that sensitive little slit at the top.
Spencer gasped.
His entire body jerked, muscles twitching like he’d been shocked. His hands flew from the sheets to the top of your head—not to guide or push, never that—but to hold on. Because suddenly he wasn’t sure where the floor was.
You dragged your tongue around the underside of the head, slowly tracing that ridge, the texture of your mouth perfectly tuned to the places he didn’t even know he was sensitive. You flattened your tongue and gave one long, deliberate lick along the underside, and—
Spencer lost it.
A strangled moan burst from his throat, cracked and raw like he’d been holding it in for years. His thighs trembled on either side of you, his back arched, and his hands tightened in your hair just enough to let you know: this is too much, this is everything, don’t you dare stop.
“Oh my God,” he choked, voice barely recognizable. “Oh my God, what—what are you doing to me—”
You pulled back just an inch, lips glossy and grin slow, voice sultry with delight. “Just the tip, baby.”
He stared at you like you’d rewritten physics. “That was just the—” he stopped, exhaled like he’d run a marathon. “I’m gonna die. You’re going to kill me.”
You laughed softly, full of warmth, kissing the base of him. “Not before I ruin you first.”
And then your mouth was back on him, and Spencer Reid stopped remembering how language worked.
The muscles in his thighs tensed beneath your hands, his breath catching in his throat like his lungs couldn’t decide whether to inhale or just shatter. He didn’t say your name this time—he couldn’t. It hovered on the edge of his tongue, but the sound died somewhere in his chest, overtaken by sensation.
You were slow, focused, and reverent. Every little movement felt purposeful like you were studying him again—not with questions or statistics but with care, and your tongue.
His head tipped back, eyes fluttering shut, and a soft, fractured moan escaped him. “Oh my God—” he breathed, hands fisting the sheets beside him, his whole body trembling under the weight of what you were doing to him.
He wanted to say something. Anything. A fact. A thank you. A prayer. But all he could manage was another helpless sound from deep in his throat, one that seemed to surprise even him.
You looked up at him once—just once—and that was it.
Spencer came. Loudly. Beautifully. Like someone unraveling at the seams in the safest hands possible.
“Shit,” Spencer whispered, his voice cracked and breathless, still reeling from the wave that had just wrecked him.
You pulled back slowly as you swallowed, wiping your mouth with your thumb, smirking like you’d just completed the most satisfying science experiment of your life. “Hmm?” you asked sweetly, batting your lashes at him.
Spencer let out a groan and immediately covered his face with one hand, his curls sticking slightly to his forehead. “That was so quick,” he panted, the words muffled behind his palm. “That’s so embarrassing.”
You laughed—soft and affectionate—as you leaned forward to pat his trembling thighs. “I take it as a huge compliment, baby.”
He peeked through his fingers at you, cheeks flaming red, mouth twitching like he wasn’t sure if he should pout or grin.
“I had plans,” he said dramatically, flopping back against the pillow. “Plans that involved at least five more minutes of dignity.”
You bent over and kissed the top of his head. “Yeah, well, your dignity didn’t stand a chance the second I started kissing your stomach.”
Spencer groaned again. “I told you that spot is unfair—”
“Not my fault you’re cute and responsive.”
He sighed, defeated, and rolled onto his side, reaching for you like he needed to physically confirm you were still there. “You’re evil.”
You curled into the bed beside him, pulling the covers over both your bodies as his arm draped around your waist.
“Yeah,” you murmured against his temple. “So I’ve been told.”
And Spencer just nodded, breath finally starting to even out, already plotting revenge he absolutely wouldn’t survive executing.
—
They don’t happen often. Spencer’s nightmares—true, bone-deep night terrors—are rare, but when they come, they’re merciless. Cruel. All-consuming.
And tonight is one of those nights.
You wake before your eyes are even open, stirred not by sound exactly but by the feeling of wrongness beside you. The mattress shifts sharply under Spencer’s body as he thrashes, limbs jerking under the sheets. His breaths are short and panicked, puffing from his lips like he’s being chased, hunted by some unseen force only his subconscious knows how to conjure.
He whines—a soft, broken thing, high-pitched and choked—and it makes your heart snap clean in two.
Unlike the times when he wakes you in the middle of the night shuffling for a glass of water or pacing from a post-case spiral, there's no irritation, no groggy frustration. Only fear. Only worry.
You sit up instantly, resting your weight on one elbow as your free hand reaches for him, brushing the soaked curls back from his clammy forehead. He’s burning with sweat, his t-shirt clinging to him like a second skin, his body caught between escape and paralysis.
You start to hum. Soft. Steady. Familiar.
It’s the tune you’ve used a hundred times to calm him—after a case, after a long day, during those quiet moments when the world outside gets too loud for Spencer Reid’s mind.
Your fingers stroke through his hair as you hum, and slowly, slowly, the rhythm of his breathing begins to shift. His muscles twitch less. The tension under his skin begins to loosen like a tight knot finally unraveling. Then, finally, his eyes flutter open—wide and glassy and searching.
His head turns toward you like a compass, finding its true north. He reaches out blindly, fingertips catching your wrist, shirt, shoulder—anything to anchor himself in the waking world.
“I’m here, baby,” you whisper, taking his hand in yours and pressing it to your chest so he can feel the steady beat of your heart. “You were having a nightmare.”
He nods once, but his jaw trembles, and then—the dam breaks.
His chin wobbles, lips pulling into a grimace as silent tears rise like a tide and begin spilling down his cheeks. He doesn’t sob. He doesn’t wail. It’s quieter than that. More devastating. Like something fragile inside him finally cracked open.
“Spencer, my love,” you whisper, brushing your thumb under his eye as you guide him gently toward you, “do you want to talk about it?”
He shakes his head—violently, once, twice—and that’s enough for you to know. It was either his kidnapping… or you.
But you don’t press. You just nod. And pull him closer.
He lets you move him, lets you shift back against the pillows so he can collapse against your chest, curled in, face tucked to your skin, holding on like you’re the only thing keeping him afloat.
You cradle him. Wrap yourself around him like armor. And then—so softly, so lovingly—you begin to sing.
“Stars shining bright above you…”
Spencer’s breath hitches but slows.
“Night breezes seem to whisper ‘I love you’...”
You press a kiss to his curls, feeling him melt into you.
“Birds singing in the sycamore trees…”
“Dream a little dream of me,” you finish gently, brushing your nose against his temple.
And then, a soft sound. A tiny, choked snort of a laugh.
You glance down to see his eyes squeezed shut, but the corners are crinkled.
“You’re ridiculous,” he mumbles, his voice thick with sleep, tears, and love.
“And you’re mine,” you whisper back. “Try and sleep now, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”
And you do. Always.
—
Spencer barely remembered to eat that morning.
His mind had spiraled from the moment the facility called—soft voices and hesitant words and phrases like "she's declining" and "you may want to come soon"—and by the time he got to Hotch’s office, he could hardly string the request together in a full sentence.
But Hotch didn’t blink. Didn’t ask for details.
“Go,” he said simply, leaning back in his chair. “Take whatever time you need.”
Because everyone knew Spencer Reid never took time off. Not unless the sky was falling. And this? This was his sky.
He’d meant to text you. He really had. You were always the person he told first—when he had a rough case, when he learned a new theory, when he read a sentence in a book that made him think of you. But this wasn’t something he wanted to say over the phone. This wasn’t something he wanted to share—not yet. Not when it felt like he was barely holding it together.
So instead, he packed. A little chaotically. A little too fast. He folded things with military precision one moment, then dropped a pair of socks on the floor and forgot to pick them up.
He kept checking the clock, like maybe time would slow down if he stared at it hard enough.
And that’s where you found him—a half-zipped suitcase on the bed, his tie thrown over the back of a chair, a look in his eyes like he wasn’t entirely there.
You knocked as you opened the door, calling gently, “Knock knock!”
His head snapped up. Eyes wide. Guilt immediate. “Y/N—God, I—” he blinked, stepping toward you before stopping himself mid-step. “I was going to call. I should have called. I meant to tell you.”
You stood in the doorway, taking him in—his uncombed curls, the slight shake in his hands, the suitcase half-packed but with none of his favorite books.
“Tell me what?” you asked softly, walking toward him now, your voice the only calm thing in the room.
Spencer’s shoulders slumped. He sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing his palms over his knees like the movement might settle him.
“It’s my mom,” he said quietly. “She’s not doing well. They called. Said I should come.”
And then—his voice even softer, like it hurt to say— “I didn’t want to worry you.”
You knelt in front of him, gently grounding your hands into his. “Spence,” you whispered, “you don’t have to protect me from this. I want to be worried about her. With you.”
He didn’t speak right away. Just leaned forward, forehead pressed to yours, eyes closing as he exhaled like maybe he could finally let some of it go.
And when he opened them again, you were already packing his books. The ones you knew he’d want. The ones that made him feel at home. The way you did.
“You need to tell me these things,” you said, not unkindly but firm—your voice was soft, steady, and kind of serious, and it didn’t leave room for argument. You were beside his suitcase, carefully tucking the last of his books into the corner, smoothing the fabric over them like it would keep him safe.
Spencer nodded solemnly, his jaw tight, lips pressed into a thin line. He looked down, guilt clouding his features like a child being gently scolded—not because you were harsh, but because he knew he should have told you. He meant to. He just… didn’t. And that fact alone ate at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I wasn’t thinking.”
You looked up at him then, pausing for just a beat before you asked the question like it was the most obvious thing in the world, as natural as breathing: “Do you want me to come?”
His eyes darted to yours. Surprise flickered behind them—not because he didn’t want you to, but because the thought hadn’t yet made it to the surface. His mind had been too full of logistics, of fear, of memories he didn’t want to revisit alone—but now, with you saying it like, of course, like it wasn’t even a question—he felt his chest ache in the best possible way.
“What about work?” he asked quietly, still hesitant. Still Spencer.
You shrugged, standing slowly as you closed his suitcase and turned to face him fully. “It’s a family emergency.”
And you meant it.
Because Diana was your family too. Because he was your family.
Spencer blinked, and in that blink, something shifted. His shoulders dropped, the breath he’d been holding finally released, and his fingers reached for yours like he needed to ensure this was real.
“Okay,” he said.
And it was more than agreement. It was relief. He didn’t have to do this alone.
Not this time.
Spencer had thought it wasn’t possible to love you any more than he already did. He’d been so sure of it—so convinced that whatever threshold love had, he had already reached it with you. Already filled every available space in his heart with the sound of your laugh, the weight of your gaze, the way you said his name like it was a vow.
But then you stood in his bedroom, your hands on his suitcase, folding his shirts and slipping his books inside like you knew exactly which ones he’d reach for when the silence in the facility got too loud. You didn’t ask what you should pack. You didn’t ask for instructions. You just knew.
And when you asked if you should come with him—not out of obligation or pity, but because of course, you would—you said it like it was the most natural thing in the world. He was the one who needed to be reminded that this is what love looks like. This unwavering presence. This gentle certainty.
He looked at you and thought, How foolish of me.
To believe he’d reached the edge of it. To think there was a limit. To not realize that love, when it was real—when it was you—only deepened.
It didn’t swell like a tide. It unfolded like a galaxy.
And as you zipped up his bag, took his hand, and told him it was a family emergency—no hesitation, no doubt—he knew with absolute clarity: He hadn’t even scratched the surface of how much he could love you.
…
The plane ride was, as expected, not Spencer’s idea of a good time.
He had tried—really tried—to keep it together, to focus on the practicality of air travel, the necessity of getting to his mother quickly. But no matter how many times he told himself it was just recycled air, probability, and basic physics, his mind still latched onto every microbe, every cough within a five-row radius, every time someone touched the bathroom handle and then the seat tray without washing their hands.
His leg bounced with a steady rhythm. His fingers drummed lightly against his knee. His eyes stayed fixed on the in-flight safety card even after the flight attendant had long finished her speech.
And sleep? Forget it.
His brain was too busy. Running through timelines and medications, wondering if his mother would remember his face, wondering what kind of decline they meant when they said “declining,” wondering if he’d already missed something important.
But then, amid all that spiraling noise, he felt a small, warm weight shift against his arm.
You’d fallen asleep.
It was subtle at first, just the way your head leaned further into him, your shoulder relaxing as the hum of the cabin lured you in. And then, slowly, gently, your cheek came to rest against his shoulder. A little sigh escaped your lips, something soft and content, and then—
A tiny snore.
Followed by the unmistakable damp warmth of drool beginning to spread onto the shoulder of his sweater.
He blinked. Looked down. And instead of being annoyed or grossed out, or even startled—Spencer smiled.
It was small. Barely there. But real.
Because there was you in all the discomfort, stress, and spiraling unknowns. Snoring. Drooling. Completely knocked out and trusting enough to use him as your pillow. And for just a moment, the world didn’t feel so heavy.
He adjusted his arm a little so you’d be more comfortable, rested his cheek on top of your head, and let his eyes close—not to sleep, not yet, but to breathe.
And if his heart beat just a little slower after that? Well. He figured maybe drool wasn’t so bad after all.
When you and Spencer finally made it to the facility and stepped through the front doors, a weight settled over both of you—thick and invisible, wrapping around your lungs and squeezing with every step down the hall. It wasn’t just sterile lighting or that muted scent of disinfectant and aging upholstery. It was the stillness. The hollow kind that only existed in long-term care centers, where time felt both endless and unkind.
Spencer was quiet beside you. Almost too quiet.
He held your hand, but his fingers weren’t threaded with their usual softness—they were locked tight like he needed the contact to anchor him to the floor. He hadn’t spoken much since the drive. You knew he was trying to hold it together; that part of him was walking in that door as her son, and another part was walking in as a protector, a man who had spent his whole life-solving unsolvable problems—except this one.
You offered a small squeeze, and his eyes were already glassy when he looked at you. He gave you a grateful, heartbroken smile.
The nurse met you at the door of Diana’s room. He was kind. Soft-spoken. He gave Spencer an update that he barely registered, nodding absently as he mentioned medication changes, good days and bad days, and lucid moments that came less and less frequently.
And then… you were inside.
Diana Reid sat by the window, hair neatly brushed, her cardigan buttoned all the way to the top like someone had helped her with care. She stared out at the garden with a faint smile, her gaze fixed on something that wasn’t quite there.
“Hi, Mom,” Spencer said, his voice barely above a whisper.
She didn’t turn. Not right away. Not until he stepped closer.
And then—slowly, cautiously—her head turned. Her eyes met his, blinking once… twice…
And she smiled.
“Spencer,” she said softly, voice a fragile thread. “You’re so tall.”
Spencer laughed. It cracked in the middle.
You stood back, giving them space, tears threatening behind your eyes as he knelt beside her, taking her hand, speaking gently to her like she might drift away if he was too loud.
It was hard. So much harder than you thought it would be.
But watching him speak to her, watching him love her through the heartbreak—it reminded you of everything you already knew about Spencer Reid:
That his heart was vast. And no matter how much it hurt, he would always show up.
You would never tell Spencer how much it hurt you to see this. Not the weight of the facility. Not the trembling fragility in Diana’s voice. Not the way Spencer’s face cracked in places you’d never seen before.
Because this wasn’t about you. It wasn’t your pain to center. You were here for him.
And no matter how deeply it ached to see him kneeling there, clutching his mother’s hand like he was trying to hold time still, you knew the pain running through his veins was sharper. More personal. More impossible.
So you stood quietly at his side, calm, steady, present.
Spencer looked up at one point, eyes flicking toward you with a soft, hopeful smile, and said, “Mom, this is Y/N. My girlfriend.”
Diana tilted her head, brow furrowing slightly. She studied you for a long moment, her expression unreadable.
Then she let out a soft, amused little huff. “You’re far too young to have a girlfriend,” she said, teasing, her tone light but off-kilter, like she was only half in the moment.
You offered a polite, if slightly uncomfortable, smile, stepping forward gently. “It’s so nice to meet you, Ms. Reid. I’ve heard so much about you.”
Your voice was sweet, and your posture was perfect. You were warm, polite, and kind, even as her words stung—not because they were cruel, but because they were true, in their own heartbreaking way.
Because she didn’t see him.
Not the man who spent his entire life trying to understand her. Not the man who fought tooth and nail to keep her comfortable, safe, and protected. Not the man who flew across states to hold her hand.
She saw a boy.
“Aren’t you in school?” she asked him, blinking rapidly, confused now. “Where’s your backpack?”
Spencer froze.
You saw it the moment his smile faltered—the millisecond his lips tried to recover, tried to shape themselves into something reassuring. “Mom… I’m 28.”
She blinked. “No. No, you’re not. Don’t lie to me, Spencer.”
“I’m not lying,” he said gently, trying to hold her gaze. “I’m 28. I work for the FBI now. I—”
Diana’s face changed. The confusion shifted into something sharper. Panic. Fear.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re just a boy. You’re my little boy. Stop lying to me!”
Spencer’s voice caught in his throat. “Mom—”
You were already stepping forward, crouching beside him, reaching across to squeeze his arm gently. “Spence,” you whispered softly, “maybe… maybe not right now, okay?”
He didn’t answer right away. Just sat there, his mother’s panic echoing in his ears, his shoulders tense and still.
You turned to Diana, voice sweet and soft again. “Would you like to talk about your garden? It looks so beautiful out there.” You pointed to the window.
Diana’s eyes flicked to you, wide and tear-glossed, but she nodded slowly, her fingers relaxing just slightly.
And beside you, Spencer just kept holding her hand. Even as it trembled. Even as he did.
The night was hard—long, quiet, and restless. Spencer had said goodnight to his mother with that practiced softness you’d seen before, like he was trying not to fold inward, trying to be composed. But when you got back to the hotel, that composure started to crack.
He showered in silence. Didn’t ask for your music. Barely responded when you gently offered to order room service or rub his back. He just moved through his routine like a ghost, heavy and quiet, haunted by something too big to name.
Eventually, he crawled into bed beside you. But sleep didn’t come easy.
He tossed. Turned. Huffed softly against the sheets. You didn’t press. You just opened your arms when he finally rolled toward you, found your chest, and curled into the soft rise and fall of your breath like it was the only thing grounding him. You held him close, stroking his back, whispering nothing in particular—just letting him know you were there.
By morning, he was finally still. His curls were splayed across your chest, one arm slung limply around your waist, his breathing deep but a little uneven, like even in rest he couldn’t quite settle.
You tried to slip out without waking him—so carefully—but the second your warmth left his side, he stirred.
“Shh,” you whispered, already rounding the bed. You ran your fingers gently through his curls, leaned in, and pressed a soft kiss to his forehead. “Still here, sweetheart. Just sleep.”
He sighed under your touch, not quite waking, and you watched his brow soften again as you guided him back into slumber.
Only then did you slip into the bathroom with your phone, the door cracked open just enough to hear if he called out.
You sat on the edge of the tub, scrolling quietly.
There are flower shops near the facility, coffee places with quiet booths and good lighting, a few tucked-away bookstores, art galleries, natural history museums, and a pop-up science exhibit that might be small but still worth exploring.
Las Vegas had no shortage of distractions—but finding the right ones for Spencer? That was a challenge. It took knowing his moods, his quirks, the things that soothed his mind when it spiraled. You weren’t just looking for something to do—you were trying to build a soft place for him to land in case today broke his heart again.
You’d do it all if it helped. Because he would do the same for you. And because loving Spencer meant knowing how to love gently.
When Spencer finally stirred again, it was slow—his lashes fluttering, his breath shifting against the pillow, his limbs stretching just slightly like he was testing the air around him. The light from the window was soft, filtered through the gauzy hotel curtains, casting everything in that gentle, golden morning haze.
You were exactly where you wanted to be: curled up beside him, one hand absently stroking through his curls as your eyes skimmed over the pages of your book. The moment you felt him stir, you marked your place but didn’t move—just kept running your fingers through his hair, grounding him.
Then he let out a sound. Something between a whimper and a groan—deep, low, and raw from his chest.
You looked down immediately, concern tightening in your throat. “Okay, baby?” you asked softly, brushing a curl off his forehead.
He didn’t open his eyes fully—just turned his face slightly into your side, his voice hoarse and barely above a whisper.
“Just need you.”
You set your book down without hesitation and wrapped your arms around him, tucking his head to your chest, holding him as close as he needed. “You have me,” you murmured, kissing the crown of his head, letting your hands trail gently along his back. “Always.”
And in that quiet little cocoon of tangled sheets and steady love, you gave him the safety he didn’t know how to ask for—but always found in you.
Spencer nodded against your chest, his breath hitching just slightly. Before you heard the sniffle, you felt the damp warmth of a tear at the edge of his eye. His whole body curled into you like he was trying to hide inside your arms.
His voice cracked when he started, “You… you were so perfect yesterday.”
You tilted your head down, kissing the top of his hair again, your fingers still carding through the curls at the nape of his neck. “Hmm? Why’s that, my love?”
Spencer didn’t answer right away. You could feel him searching for the words, his mind flicking through the moments like files in a cabinet, trying to find the one that made his throat tight and his chest feel like it was folding in on itself.
“You didn’t panic,” he finally whispered, his voice fragile. “When she started to spiral when she didn’t remember me—when she yelled at me—you didn’t look scared. You didn’t try to fix it. You just… helped. You gave her a different focus, something gentle. You gave me time to breathe.”
You stayed quiet, holding him tighter, because you knew he wasn’t done.
“And I didn’t even say thank you. I—I didn’t tell you what it meant. I couldn’t. I think I was… still trying to hold myself together. But I saw it. I saw everything you did.”
You felt his shoulders tremble slightly as another breath shook out of him.
“You were just… perfect,” he murmured again like he didn’t know any other word big enough at that moment. “And I’m so lucky you’re mine.”
You pulled back just enough to kiss the corner of his damp eye and whispered, “You don’t have to thank me, Spence. That’s what love looks like.”
And you stayed right there, arms around him, holding the weight of everything he didn’t have to carry alone.
—
It started small—barely a shift. A silence between words. A longer pause before answering your texts. A softness to his eyes that held more weight than usual.
Spencer was in his head again.
You could feel it the way people feel a pressure drop before a storm: subtle, but undeniable.
He still kissed you good morning. Still held your hand when you crossed the street. Still brought you your favorite snacks from the store without asking. But behind it all, something tugged at him. A quiet unease that he hadn’t voiced yet, but you knew was there.
And in his head, it was loud.
Because Spencer Reid had never been loved like this before.
Not with the kind of tenderness you offered without question. Not with the way you remembered what calms him, what overstimulates him, what makes him light up. Not with the way you touched him so reverently, not because he was fragile, but because you treasured him.
You made space for his rituals. You never mocked his routines. You celebrated his quirks and soothed his spirals. You told him he was enough—and somehow, you meant it.
And he believed you. He did.
But tonight, after you’d made dinner, rubbed his back, and laughed at all his nerdy jokes, something inside him twisted tight.
You always did so much. You made loving him look easy.
And Spencer?
He didn’t feel like he deserved easy.
He lay beside you in bed, his arm wrapped around your waist, chin resting lightly against your shoulder, but his thoughts were somewhere else. Tangled and noisy and sharp.
Do I do enough? She deserves flowers and poetry and grand gestures and I… fold her laundry when she’s tired. What if she thinks I’m not trying hard enough? What if she doesn’t know how much I worship her?
His grip around you tightened slightly—subtle, but enough for you to feel it.
You turned your head, looking at him in the low glow of the bedside lamp. “Spence?” you asked softly. “Where are you right now?”
He blinked, eyes darting like he’d been caught.
“I’m here,” he said automatically, then hesitated. His voice dropped. “I mean… sort of.”
You rolled gently to face him, brushing a hand through his curls, watching how his lips pressed into a thin, guilty line.
“Talk to me?”
He swallowed, hard. “I just… I don’t think I do enough. For you.”
Your brows knit, but you didn’t speak. You let him keep going.
“You do everything in your power to make me feel safe and cared for, and—and loved, and I just—what do I do? I… hold your coffee while you put your shoes on. I memorize your schedules. I read your favorite book three times and bookmarked my favorite parts and never even told you because I was nervous you’d think that wasn’t enough.”
His voice cracked, just a little. “But I adore you. And I don’t know if I’m showing it right.”
You leaned in, and touched his cheek, your heart full and aching.
“Oh, Spencer,” you whispered, kissing the corner of his mouth. “You do everything right.”
Spencer’s eyes glistened, and for a moment he didn’t trust himself to speak. He opened his mouth once, then shut it again, his throat working like he was trying to find language that didn’t exist yet.
“I…” he began, then paused, frustrated. “I don’t have the right words. Not—not mine, anyway.”
You rubbed your thumb gently along his cheekbone, watching him carefully, waiting.
His hand tightened around yours like it grounded him. Then, almost breathlessly, he said, “Can I… borrow someone else's?”
You nodded without hesitation. “Of course.”
Spencer took a breath, eyes fluttering closed for just a moment. And then, in a voice that shook at the edges but still carried so much warmth, he began to recite:
“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers.”
You felt your breath catch in your throat. Pablo Neruda. You recognized it immediately.
Spencer’s voice dropped lower, reverent now, every word reverberating between you.
“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
He stopped, just barely, a breath trembling against your skin. When he opened his eyes again, they shimmered—not just from tears, but from everything he couldn’t say without someone else’s poetry to carry it.
“I don’t always know how to say it,” he whispered. “Not the way you deserve. But I feel it. Every second. It’s—in me. Like that poem. Like breathing.”
You moved closer, cradling his face in your hands, your own tears slipping free now, quiet and full.
“Spencer,” you whispered, voice thick, “you show me you love me every single day. And that?” You touched your forehead to his. “That was the most beautiful thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
He exhaled shakily, wrapping his arms around you like he never wanted to let go.
And maybe, neither of you ever would.
—
The motel was small and a little sad—one of those off-the-highway places with flickering neon signs and rooms that smelled vaguely of lemon cleaner and disappointment. The team had wrapped up the latest round of interviews for the night and gathered outside near the parking lot, taking advantage of the cool evening air and vending machine snacks before turning in.
Morgan sat on the SUV's hood, tearing into a bag of trail mix like it had insulted his family. Emily leaned against the passenger-side door, sipping a bottle of water, eyes sharp and amused. The conversation had already veered wildly off-course from the case, and like clockwork, it had drifted into teasing territory.
“I’m just saying,” Morgan said, grinning around a mouthful of almonds, “this town might be depressing as hell, but I did see a very enthusiastic bartender eyeing me at the diner.”
Emily let out a low, knowing chuckle. “Oh, please. You were offered three numbers from women we interviewed today.”
“Hey, I didn't take any of them. I can’t help that I’m desirable,” Morgan said, giving her a playful nudge with his foot.
“Desirable or shameless?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.
He smirked. “Why not both?”
Spencer, who’d been half-listening while flipping through the case file one more time, looked up from where he was perched on the curb. “Do either of you ever think about, I don’t know, boundaries?”
“Boundaries?” Emily repeated, grinning as she turned toward him. “Come on, Reid. You make it sound like we’re chasing people through hospital wards. We’re talking about consenting adults.”
“Exactly,” Morgan added, wagging a finger. “Grown folks, grown decisions.”
Spencer raised an eyebrow and muttered, “Some people might prefer to focus on the case.”
Emily narrowed her eyes playfully. “You mean you.”
Spencer didn’t respond, but the blush creeping up his neck was answer enough.
Morgan leaned forward like he’d just smelled blood in the water. “You’re telling me, Pretty Boy, that in all the time we’ve been out in the field—years, by the way—you’ve never, not once, had a little... off-duty adventure?”
“Oh my God,” Emily gasped, feigning horror as she clutched her water bottle. “Never? Not even a little flirtation at a hotel bar? A mysterious woman with a tragic backstory? A man in a cowboy hat named—”
“You’re projecting,” Spencer said flatly.
Emily grinned. “I’ll allow it.”
“I just don’t see the point in meaningless interactions with people I’ll never see again,” Spencer said, shrugging a little like it wasn’t a big deal.
“Buddy,” Morgan said with a laugh, “it’s not meaningless if it’s fun.”
“Exactly,” Emily chimed in. “We’re not saying you’ve got to form a long-term emotional attachment over drinks and a shared trauma. Just that… exploration is healthy.”
“You guys sound like a pair of bad sex ed videos,” Spencer muttered, tucking his file under his arm and standing up.
Morgan grinned. “We’re trying to help you, man.”
“I don’t need help,” Spencer said. “And for the record, I’ve had plenty of—experiences. Just not with every waitress and desk clerk, we pass along the way.”
“Oh, come on,” Emily had joked. “Name one.”
And he’d blinked, fumbling for the simplest, most obvious answer. “I have a girlfriend?”
It was meant to be enough. More than enough. He thought maybe they’d drop it after that. Maybe Morgan would whistle, or Emily would roll her eyes and call him smug. But instead—
“And I bet those are the only tits you’ve ever seen,” Morgan laughed, head tossed back, that familiar, easy drunk-banter tone laced with sharpness he didn’t realize he’d crossed.
The laughter that followed was sloppy and loud. Emily chuckled too, but hers was a little more hesitant—her gaze already sliding toward Spencer like maybe they had gone too far.
Spencer didn’t laugh. His spine stiffened, and his mouth pressed into a tight line.
Because yeah… okay, maybe it wasn’t entirely wrong. Maybe he hadn’t racked up any wild, tangled encounters in foreign cities or hooked up with someone he couldn’t remember the last name of. Maybe he didn’t have wild stories about tequila-fueled nights or poolside flings. But it wasn’t like he’d planned that.
He was just… different.
And sometimes—especially moments like this—it made him feel like he’d missed something. Like everyone else had been handed a script on how to be effortlessly cool and experienced, and he’d shown up too late to memorize the lines.
Morgan was still grinning, but Emily had caught on now, her smile slipping completely as she glanced toward Spencer again. He wasn’t saying anything. Wasn’t making a witty comeback or rolling his eyes. He just stood there, arms crossed too tightly, jaw clenched a little too hard.
“Hey,” Emily said softly, nudging Morgan. “That was a little much.”
Morgan blinked, still chuckling, but when he looked at Spencer and saw the tension there—the discomfort etched into his face—his smile dropped too.
“Reid,” he said, sobering, “I was just messing around, man.”
Spencer gave a small, tight shrug. “Yeah. I know.”
But his voice didn’t match the words. Not really.
Emily stepped forward and leaned her shoulder into his gently. “Hey. You’re not missing anything, you know. We just talk a big game. It’s a lot of noise.”
Spencer nodded, still not quite looking at either of them. “It’s fine.”
Morgan sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Seriously, that wasn’t cool. I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad. You’ve got someone who loves you, and that’s more than a lot of people ever get.”
That softened something—just slightly—in Spencer’s shoulders.
“I’m gonna head back,” he murmured after a beat. “Big day tomorrow.”
And he turned, walking slowly back toward his room, hands tucked into his jacket pockets.
Behind him, Emily gave Morgan a look, and Morgan just exhaled heavily.
Because for all the joking and teasing… they sometimes forgot how deeply Spencer felt things. And how, sometimes, even good-natured laughter could echo like a bruise.
…
He hadn’t stopped thinking about it.
The conversation replayed in his head like a bad tape—Morgan’s words looping, the laughter echoing louder than it had in real-time. He knew, knew, they didn’t mean it to cut so deep, but it did. Not because it was true, necessarily, but because some part of him believed it might be. That maybe he wasn’t enough. Not worldly enough. Not man enough. Not good enough to keep someone like you.
So when he got to your place, there was no ritual. No careful organization. No meticulous unwinding.
His bag hit the floor with a dull thud. Coat flung over the back of a chair. Shoes still on. Keys? Thrown onto the table without a second thought.
He didn’t call out for you. He didn’t stop to think. His whole body was thrumming, full of something frantic, aching, needy.
He found you in your office, sitting at your desk, focused and unbothered by the world unraveling outside your door. You barely had time to register the sound of his footsteps before he was there—pulling you out of your chair and into his arms like gravity had just given up.
“Spencer—” you gasped, your hands reaching up to steady yourself, to steady him, but the name barely made it past your lips before his mouth was on yours.
He kissed you hard, breathless and desperate and full of something wild. It wasn’t how he usually kissed you—not the slow, adoring kind. This was urgent. This was please and prove it and don’t go anywhere ever again.
“What’s up, baby?” you whispered against his lips when he let you breathe for a second, searching his face, already knowing something wasn’t right.
“Need you,” he murmured hoarsely, his hands already on your waist, sliding up your back like he couldn’t hold enough of you. “So badly.”
You blinked, caught in his intensity, your palms cupping his jaw as he dove back in—another kiss, this one softer but still tinged with desperation. His hands moved like he was afraid you’d disappear, like he had to memorize the feeling of you all over again in case this was the last time.
“Spencer,” you murmured, voice gentler this time, one hand finding his curls, the other pressed flat over his chest. You could feel his heart pounding. Racing.
He pressed his forehead to yours, eyes closing. “I couldn’t stop thinking about what they said. Morgan. Emily. The way they laughed—like I’d missed out. Like there’s something wrong with me for not having… all those stories. And then I thought—what if you think that too? What if you’re just being patient? What if you’re settling for someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing, who’s boring, or… or disappointing?”
Your heart shattered right there in your chest because he said it with such rawness like the words had been pressing against his ribs for hours, maybe days, desperate to be let out.
His brow was still pressed to yours; eyes closed like he couldn’t bear to see the look on your face when you answered—afraid, deep down, that some part of his fear might be right.
“Baby,” you breathed, your voice caught halfway between shock and heartbreak, your hands gently cradling his face, “what are you talking about?”
He opened his eyes slowly, and they were glossy now, full of something unspoken, something tangled and bruised and fragile.
“I just—” he started, then shook his head, frustrated with himself, with the thoughts that wouldn’t let go. “They said it like it was funny. Like I was some… monk. Like I’d never lived, never explored. And I laughed it off, but it got stuck in my head. I kept wondering if I’d missed out on something. If you felt like you were missing out.”
Your mouth parted to respond, but he kept going, like now that it had started spilling out, he couldn’t stop. “I know I’m not like other people. I know I can be awkward and too intense and not very spontaneous. I like routines. I like structure. I don’t know how to do the whole flirty one-night thing, and I never wanted to, but I also don’t have some grand collection of stories or past lovers or wild memories. I have you. And maybe I’m scared that’s not enough for you.”
You stared at him, chest aching, your thumbs brushing along his jaw as you tried to hold in the tears forming behind your eyes—not from hurt, but from how deeply he was hurting.
“Spencer,” you whispered, pulling him close until your foreheads touched again. “You are enough. You are so enough, baby. You are the most thoughtful, attentive, ridiculously loving man I have ever known. If you think for even a second that I’m missing out, then you really haven’t been paying attention to how obsessed I am with you.”
His breath hitched. “But they—”
“They don’t know us.” You pulled back just enough to look him in the eye. “Spence, I don’t want the stories. I want you. I chose you. Again and again, I would, and I will choose you.”
He swallowed hard like the words you’d just given him were something he hadn’t expected to receive—something he didn’t quite know how to hold without shaking. His eyes were still wet, dark, and glistening as they searched yours, wide and aching with hope he wasn’t sure he was allowed to have.
“You mean that?” he asked, his voice barely there as if it might break if he spoke any louder. There was something so young in the way he asked, so open and raw, like some forgotten version of himself was still standing there, waiting to be told he was too much, or not enough, or somehow both.
Your thumb brushed the side of his cheek with a gentleness you didn’t even know you possessed until you met him. And with your lips inches from his, you whispered back—
“I mean it as much as I do when I say I love you.”
You didn’t blink. You didn’t smile or try to soften it. You just said it the way you meant it—honest, unwavering, full.
Spencer stared at you for a long, still moment as if trying to memorize the shape of those words on your face. Then his arms tightened around you suddenly, pulling you flush to his chest like he could hide you in his bones like he needed to protect this feeling from ever being pulled away again.
“I love you,” he breathed into your hair over and over again. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
You could feel it with every word—how much he needed to say it now, not because he thought you didn’t know, but because he needed to believe it was real again. That someone could know him like this, down to the soft, sensitive, tender center of him, and not walk away.
“I’m not settling,” you whispered into the fabric of his shirt. “You’re it, Spencer. You're everything.”
His hands trembled just slightly as they threaded into your hair, and he kissed you again, more like a promise than a need this time.
And he stopped thinking about that conversation for the first time in hours—maybe days. Because nothing they said mattered anymore. You were his truth now.
“But…” you started, your voice soft and trailing off, like you weren’t quite sure if it was the right moment. Spencer pulled back just slightly, enough to look at you with those wide, earnest eyes, already on alert. He searched your face like he was bracing for another blow, some revelation that would unravel all the reassurance you’d just given him.
You saw the nerves there—always just under the surface with him—and your heart ached with affection. So you softened the weight of the moment with a gentle smile, tilting your head and raising your brows with playful mischief.
“If you still want me…” you said, voice dropping just enough to hint at something less heavy and a lot more suggestive, “…I’m right here.”
And then you wiggled your eyebrows dramatically.
For a second, Spencer blinked at you, caught off guard—until the realization hit, and he let out an actual, genuine laugh, rich and real, the kind that melted the last traces of tension from his shoulders.
He leaned in slowly, letting his nose brush yours, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I always want you,” he murmured against your lips, his voice low and warm.
You felt the hum of it in your chest, your fingers curling into the collar of his shirt as you leaned into him again. “Even when I’m annoying?”
He kissed you once, then twice, like punctuation. “Especially then.”
You giggled, your foreheads pressed together, your noses brushing as you whispered, “Even if I don’t have a wild backstory and a cowboy hat?”
“I’ll buy the hat,” he grinned.
“You’d look terrible in a cowboy hat.”
“And you’d still want me.”
You sighed dramatically. “Unfortunately.”
He kissed you again, slower this time, hands wrapped around you like you were the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth. And maybe you were.
Spencer’s hands moved without urgency, just steady and sure, like he was mapping every part of you he already knew by heart—reaffirming that yes, you were here, and yes, you were his, and yes, you wanted him just as much.
His palms slid along your back in slow, grounding strokes, fingers pressing into your muscles with the kind of gentle care that made you sigh into the kiss, your body melting against his. You could feel the way his fingertips flexed—like he wasn’t just touching you, he was feeling you, trying to say a thousand quiet things all at once with nothing but the movement of his hands.
You hummed softly, lips parting against his in a breathless murmur of contentment, and just as you were leaning further into the kiss, his hands drifted lower.
Down the curve of your spine. Down to the swell of your hips. And then—
Both of those big, warm, sturdy hands settled on your ass, squeezing gently before he started kneading with slow, purposeful pressure like he had all the time in the world.
You broke the kiss with a quiet, needy whine, your fingers tightening in the fabric of his shirt. “Spencer…” you breathed, not even sure what you were asking for—just overwhelmed with how good it felt, how expressive he was being.
He only smiled, his forehead still pressed to yours, his thumbs stroking slow circles against the fabric of your pants as he spoke in a whisper that sent a shiver down your spine.
“You like that?”
You gave a small, breathless laugh, eyes fluttering half-closed as your hips shifted instinctively under his touch. “You’re lucky I love you. Anyone else, and I’d be filing a formal complaint for being so handsy.”
“Mm,” he murmured, kissing the corner of your mouth, then your jaw. “Good thing I’m yours then, huh?”
His hands squeezed again, just a little firmer this time, and the warmth in your stomach curled tighter.
“God,” you muttered against his throat, “you are so repressed until suddenly you’re not.”
He chuckled into your skin, the sound deep and warm and intimate. “Just needed to be reminded you’re not going anywhere.”
You pulled back enough to meet his eyes, fingers stroking gently at his curls. “Spence,” you whispered, smiling softly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He kissed you again like a thank you. Like a promise. And then he kissed you again, just because he could.
This was new.
Not the wanting—he always wanted you, always looked at you like you were the safest place he’d ever known. Not the intimacy either—you’d memorized the shape of his affection over time, the soft way he kissed you good morning, the slow, reverent way he touched you like he was reading a favorite passage over and over again.
But this—this was different.
This was Spencer stripped down to something raw and instinctive, something that didn’t think twice, didn’t second-guess or calculate or stop to breathe. It wasn’t the soft hum of his love—it was the ache. The heat. The urgency that had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with how much he missed you. Needed you.
He had walked through the door, and in that instant, the world narrowed down to you.
No bag hung up. No coat carefully folded. No slow exhale as he sanitized his hands or washed away the day.
He’d tossed everything aside like it didn’t matter—and to him, right now, it didn’t. All that mattered was you.
And now here he was—holding you like he couldn't stand even a molecule of air between your bodies, kissing you with something fierce in his mouth, something that tasted like longing and relief and the echo of every moment he’d spent thinking what if she thinks I’m not enough?
But he wasn’t thinking anymore.
There was no mental filing system running in the background, no tallying glances, no hesitation as he moved his hands from your back to your ass and touched you with the kind of surety that had your breath catching.
Spencer Reid was making the first move. Spencer Reid—whose fingers usually trembled with careful reverence—was now gripping you, pulling you closer, like he needed to remind himself you were real and his and here.
And for once, he wasn’t checking to see if it was okay. He wasn’t reading your expressions like a case file. He wasn’t trying to solve you.
He was just feeling.
Driven by want. By love. By the low, possessive ache of missing you too much for too long.
And you could feel it in every kiss, every touch, every shift of his body against yours.
You barely managed a breath. “Spencer…”
But he kissed you again, cutting off whatever else you were going to say, hands gripping tighter like he couldn’t bear to let go. His voice was low and rough when he finally spoke, lips brushing yours as he whispered—
“Need you.”
Another kiss.
“So badly.”
There was no doubt in his eyes now. No fear. Just hunger. Warmth. You.
This wasn’t the moment he fell in love with you. He already had.
This was the moment he let himself have you. Not carefully. Not hesitantly.
But fully. Completely. Now.
“Oh—okay,” you sputtered, your voice breathy and barely coherent as Spencer’s mouth moved lower, tongue warm and wet against the soft skin of your neck. He kissed you there with a kind of focus that made your knees feel untrustworthy, his lips sucking gently just beneath your jaw, tongue flicking over the mark he left behind. Your head tilted without conscious thought, already giving him more access, and your hands clutched at his shirt like it was the only thing keeping you from floating away.
But then he paused. You felt it in the shift of his breath, the faint hesitation in his hands. Not out of doubt—no, not anymore. Out of deliberation.
Spencer huffed softly, almost frustrated with himself, forehead resting against your collarbone as he breathed in deep, trying to center himself. He was never this forward, never this commanding, and it was clearly throwing him off for a second.
Then he lifted his head, pressed his lips to your ear, and in the lowest, softest tone, said, “I’m going to shower.”
You opened your mouth to protest, heart thudding, already missing his warmth—“Spence, wait—”
But his hand came up, gentle but firm, covering your mouth with one broad palm, effectively silencing you.
“No,” he murmured, meeting your gaze with something that sent a shiver down your spine. “I’m going to get clean before we continue.”
Your eyes widened, heart hammering now for an entirely different reason. There was no teasing glint in his eye, no nervous laughter. Just calm certainty and the weight of intention behind his words.
You nodded beneath his hand, slow at first, then faster, your face burning with heat as his fingers brushed your cheek, thumb lingering just shy of your lips. You could feel how flushed you were, how needy—his sudden authority was so quiet, so natural, that it wasn’t even about the tone. It was about him.
“Good,” he said softly, nodding once in return. His hand slipped away, leaving your lips tingling. “While I shower, I want you to log out of your computer,” he murmured, voice a warm ribbon against your skin. “Then I want you to go wait for me in the bedroom. Can you do that for me?”
You whined, your throat catching on the sound, and you nodded again—eager, trembling, soaked.
He smiled, and even that was gentle, but his eyes had darkened with something deeper, something you weren’t used to seeing from Spencer—but loved.
Without another word, he kissed your temple, then backed away, his fingers trailing down your arm like he didn’t want to leave but had to.
“I won’t take long,” he said, walking backward toward the bathroom, watching your dazed, needy form with an expression that was already promising more.
And you? You didn’t move for a solid ten seconds after the door shut. Just stood there, breath shaking, heart pounding, thighs pressed together.
Then—obedient, aroused, and wholly overwhelmed—you walked toward the computer.
Log out. Bedroom. Wait.
You'd never followed instructions faster in your life.
Spencer had never taken a faster shower in his life. No overthinking, no triple-wash rotations, no alphabetizing of shampoo bottles or lingering beneath the spray with his eyes closed and the world churning in his mind. Tonight, it was all function—scrub, rinse, done. Because you were waiting.
Waiting like you wanted him. Like he was allowed to take. And God, did he want to take.
He toweled off quickly, wrapping the fabric low on his hips, water still clinging to his skin in rivulets that caught the dim bathroom light. He barely looked in the mirror. He didn’t need to. His feet carried him straight out of the bathroom like he had a gravitational pull toward you, eager and electric.
He reached the threshold of the bedroom, breath catching the second he saw you. And everything in him went still.
You were sitting in the center of the bed, cross-legged like something carved out of a dream—soft light from the bedside lamp casting golden shadows over your bare shoulders. You clutched a pillow to your chest, arms wrapped around it, chin resting lightly on top, eyes wide and glowing.
But it wasn’t the posture. It was what wasn’t there.
From behind that pillow, there was nothing. No straps, no sleeves, no hem. Nothing to hide behind but the downy shape of the pillow—and your teasing, trembling confidence.
Spencer’s breath left him in a rush like it had been yanked from his lungs. His fingers flexed instinctively at his sides, nails lightly digging into the soft terrycloth at his hips.
“Darling…” he said it like a prayer, like a plea, like a man trying to keep his soul tethered to his body. His voice cracked ever so slightly. “Is there… do you have anything on?”
You tilted your head, biting your bottom lip with the most innocent look like you didn’t know exactly what you were doing to him. And then, without a single word, you shook your head.
No.
Spencer inhaled sharply through his nose, a sound half desperate, half reverent. He took a slow step forward like he wasn’t sure whether to drop to his knees or just stand there and stare.
“Sweetheart,” he murmured, voice low and wrecked, “you’re gonna make me forget how to speak.”
You just blinked up at him, lashes fluttering slightly, still hugging the pillow to your chest like you were shy—though the playful twitch at the corner of your mouth said otherwise.
He ran a hand through his damp curls, chest rising with each deep breath, trying to keep control of the fire simmering just beneath the surface. You had listened. You had waited. And now here you were, offering yourself with that look like he could do anything and you’d say please.
“Are you teasing me?” he asked softly, taking another step closer.
You hugged the pillow tighter, lips curving into a guilty smile. “A little.”
His eyes darkened.
“Good,” Spencer whispered, and something about the way his voice dropped—low and sure and just a little wicked—sent goosebumps racing up your arms. He was close now, close enough that you could see the rivulets of water still trailing down his chest, the way his curls clung damply to his forehead, the flush of heat rising up his neck.
He wasn’t shy right now. Not uncertain or hesitant. This wasn’t the man who asked for permission at every moment. This was the man who’d spent the last week thinking about you. Who had walked through the door and claimed you with his mouth. Who had told you what to do and watched you obey.
And he was still in control.
His fingers slid under the edge of the towel at his hips, knuckles brushing his skin, slow and deliberate. His gaze raked over you like he was starving, and you could barely breathe under the weight of it.
“Because now,” he murmured, taking one step closer, “I can finally repay you.”
You felt it like a chord pulled taut between you—the anticipation, the heat, the hunger wrapped around something deeper. Not just lust. Craving. Possession. Worship.
Your breath hitched, hands gripping the pillow tighter, but your thighs pressed together under it involuntarily, betraying how completely undone you were by the sight of him like this—wet, bare, confident.
“Repay me?” you echoed softly, trying to sound coy, but your voice trembled.
Spencer’s eyes flicked up to yours, and his smile—God, that smile—was all promise.
“For all those times,” he started, letting the towel drop silently to the floor, forgotten. He stood there without shame like he already knew you couldn’t look anywhere else. “For all those times you touched me, kissed me, looked at me like you do, and made me beg for it. For making me want you so bad I couldn’t even get through a full shower.”
You swallowed hard, lips parted.
He leaned in slightly, hands coming to rest at the edge of the mattress, bracketing your knees. “Put the pillow down.”
You blinked at him, and he raised an eyebrow in quiet command. “I want to see all of you.”
You threw the pillow.
His breath caught. And then he was moving.
Spencer kissed you like a man possessed—nothing careful about it. No hesitation, no gentle build. Just heat and hunger and the wild ache of missing you pressed into every inch of your mouth. His lips were rough against yours, breath warm and heavy as he claimed you all over again with just his mouth.
Then his hands—those beautiful, skilled, big hands—came up to your shoulders, steady and sure. He broke the kiss only to guide you gently, reverently, down onto your back, your hair fanning out over the pillows as he followed your descent until your spine hit the mattress with a soft sigh.
You reached for him again the second he pulled away, lips parted in protest, already pouting. “Spence—”
But he was already rising, standing tall again at the foot of the bed with that look on his face. The one he got when he was running through a theory in his head, all focused intensity and faint amusement, the corners of his mouth twitching like he knew something you didn’t yet.
You watched in confusion as he bent down, plucking the discarded towel off the floor. “What are you doing, baby?” you asked, blinking up at him, breath still uneven.
He straightened and looked at you with the kind of soft determination that made your chest squeeze. “You’re going to lift your hips,” he said matter-of-factly, walking back toward the bed, towel in hand, “and I’m going to put my towel under you.”
Your brows furrowed, heat crawling up your neck. “Wh–what? Why?” you asked, your voice going small. “Am I… too messy?”
You sounded shy. Embarrassed, even.
Spencer just chuckled, low and warm and affectionate as he knelt one knee onto the bed and leaned forward, brushing his nose gently against yours. “No, darling,” he whispered, lips grazing yours in a kiss so soft it almost broke you. “But you will be.”
And then he smiled—sweet and so smug—like he’d already made you come twice in his head and was just now getting started.
Your breath hitched. Your thighs pressed together. And your hips lifted.
As soon as the towel was nestled beneath you, Spencer’s hands smoothed over your hips with a kind of care that contrasted sharply with the fire simmering just beneath his skin. He settled between your legs with a reverence that made your heart ache, eyes dark and steady as they trailed down your body like he was studying a sacred text.
And then he began to kiss.
Soft, open-mouthed kisses against your thighs, the crease where your hip met your stomach, the delicate line of your navel. Each one slower than the last, parting your skin with warm breath and tongue, worshipful in a way that made your breath catch in your chest.
He was so focused, not distracted, not looking for affirmation. Just there, completely absorbed in the act of being close to you. Of learning you. Of claiming this new part of you for himself.
But still… your heart fluttered with nerves. A pang of insecurity twisted in your chest.
“Baby…” you murmured, voice shaky, half-laced with awe and half with hesitation. Your fingers brushed through his curls, trying to tether him, your voice barely a whisper. “You don’t have to.”
He stilled at the bottom of your stomach, lips warm against your skin, hands gently cradling your hips like they were the most precious thing he’d ever held.
His eyes lifted slowly to meet yours, his expression unreadable for a moment—serious, but not cold. Just concentrated.
“I know I don’t have to,” he said softly, voice like velvet, slightly hoarse. “But I want to.”
You swallowed, lips parted.
He leaned in and pressed a kiss just above your hipbone, the gentlest kind of reassurance.
“I want to learn every part of you,” he whispered. “Not just the ones we’ve already explored. I want to know what makes you breathe harder. What makes you loud. What makes you fall apart.”
You whimpered then—just from the words.
Spencer’s lips twitched, eyes full of quiet, contained hunger.
“I’ve thought about this,” he continued, breath ghosting lower, hands still firm on your thighs. “About you. About how you’d taste. About how you’d sound when I finally got to make you feel good like this.”
You exhaled sharply, eyes fluttering closed.
“And if you’re nervous,” he said gently, “that’s okay. But I’m not. Not anymore.”
He pressed one more kiss just beneath your navel.
“Let me show you how much I want this,” he murmured. Then his mouth dipped lower. And you forgot how to ask him to stop.
His mouth dipped lower—slow, deliberate, reverent—and your breath caught in your throat so fast it almost hurt. You were trembling, just slightly, with the anticipation of it, your fingers still tangled in his curls, not pulling him closer, not pushing him away, just holding on like you weren’t sure what would happen when he finally reached you.
Spencer’s hands stroked slowly along the outside of your thighs, thumbs brushing upward in long, soothing arcs, grounding you. You could feel the way he wanted this—his touch wasn’t frantic, wasn’t hurried. It was intentional. Every movement, every breath, every kiss, like a declaration.
And then—finally—his mouth reached where you needed it.
He started with a soft, exploratory kiss, his lips pressing gently against the most sensitive part of you, and you gasped, hips jerking slightly. His hands tightened around your thighs, just enough to steady you, but not to restrain you.
Your voice was barely a whisper. “Spence…”
He hummed, low and content against your clit, and the vibration of it traveled through you.
He looked up once, just briefly, to check on you—and what he saw made his breath hitch. Your head thrown back, lips parted, chest rising and falling with shaky, shallow breaths. You were a vision. All flushed skin and trembling limbs, and you were his.
His hands slid further under your thighs as he settled in, fully committing now, and when his tongue flicked out to taste you—slow and precise—you whimpered, thighs twitching against his palms.
Spencer groaned. Deep and low in his chest, like he hadn’t expected to enjoy this so much like you had just become his new obsession.
“That’s it,” he murmured against you, his voice half-praise, half-need. “You’re already doing so good for me.”
And then he really got to work—slow, languid licks followed by teasing little swirls of his tongue, like he was trying to memorize what every reaction meant. Every little gasp. Every roll of your hips. Every shaky moan.
It wasn’t perfect—it was messy and unpracticed and full of a kind of eagerness that was unmistakably Spencer. But it was so good. Because it was him. Because he was paying attention. Because he wanted to give you everything.
Your fingers tightened in his curls as you let out a breathless, broken moan, back arching into the pillow, into the towel, into him.
“Spencer—Spence, oh my God—”
He moaned softly in response, like your pleasure was feeding something primal in him, and he redoubled his efforts, his tongue moving with more confidence now, more pressure, more purpose.
He treated this like an experiment like you were his thesis and your pleasure, the final data set he had been born to analyze.
If anyone asked him—if you asked him—he’d turn beet red and stammer something about just following instinct, maybe quote some outdated medical journal on female arousal, but the truth? The truth was that Spencer Reid had done his homework.
He’d read. He’d watched. He’d studied. Not just academically, but with purpose, with the quiet kind of obsession he reserved for the things he wanted to master. And right now, that thing was you.
You were already breathless beneath him, trembling from the waves of pleasure he’d pulled from you so far. But Spencer had that look in his eyes again—the one he got when he was chasing a theory, testing hypotheses in real-time. He’d seen what you responded to. He was collecting the data, building toward a conclusion.
So when he adjusted his grip on your thighs, anchoring them gently but firmly over his shoulders, and leaned in again, you thought you were ready.
You weren’t.
His mouth closed over your clit—not gently. Not shy. And then—he shook his head.
Your cry was sharp, ragged, pulled straight from your chest without filter or form. Your back arched off the bed, every muscle in your body drawn taut like a bowstring as pleasure burst through you, electric and dizzying.
“Oh my— Spencer!” you gasped, voice cracking as your thighs instinctively tried to close, but his arms were already bracing them open, holding you there, grounding you with a strength you hadn’t expected from someone who spent most of his time holding books, not bodies.
Spencer paused for the briefest second, blinking up at you in stunned, awe-struck wonder. You were writhing. Crying out. Your back was arched so high he genuinely worried for a split second you might hurt yourself—if not for the desperate way your hands clawed at the sheets and your breath came in gasping, incoherent strings of his name.
And then you said it—voice cracked and reverent and broken around the edges— “Don’t stop—don’t you dare stop—”
Spencer didn’t stop. He doubled down.
His mouth sealed over you again, this time with even more purpose, sucking and shaking, varying pressure like he was experimenting, chasing the formula for your complete and utter unraveling. And God, he was close.
You were incoherent. Wrecked. A shaking, crying mess of nerves and sensation, repeating his name like a litany, fingers in his hair, in the sheets, in the air, searching for something to hold on to while your body tried to come apart under the weight of it.
He moaned into you—actually moaned—because he hadn’t known it could feel like this. Your pleasure was addictive, intoxicating, and he never wanted to stop chasing it.
When you came, it wasn’t a gentle fall. It was a collapse like your body couldn’t hold itself together any longer. Your voice was gone, your thighs shaking, and all you could do was ride it out.
But Spencer hadn’t stopped.
You were still trembling—breathless and glassy-eyed, your limbs splayed out like you’d just been unraveled and your soul hadn’t quite returned to your body yet—but Spencer? Spencer was locked in. Focused. Eager. Insatiable.
His mouth remained sealed to you, tongue still lapping in slow, methodical strokes like you were his favorite dessert, and he wasn’t done savoring every last drop. And maybe he hadn’t realized.
No, you realized, he definitely hadn’t realized.
He hadn’t realized you’d just had a full-body clitoral orgasm. That you were already spent, flushed, and shaking from the inside out. Because to Spencer, this wasn’t the end. This was still data collection. Ongoing results. Field research.
Your hips gave a weak jerk beneath him, overstimulated but helplessly pliant. You tried to lift your head, tried to warn him with a broken, “Spence—baby—I—I already—”
But your voice dissolved into a moan as he gave another slow, deliberate drag of his tongue over your still-pulsing center. Your body flinched, caught in the strange limbo of pleasure and overwhelm, but Spencer didn’t pause—he moaned, and the sound vibrated through you, making you shudder again.
And then you saw it.
You felt it.
The slight shift of the mattress. The tension in his thighs. His hips grinding down into the bed. Not frantic—rhythmic. Slow. Purposeful.
Your dazed eyes dropped to where his body pressed into the sheets—Spencer was grinding into the mattress, his cock rigid and leaking, caught between his stomach and the bed as he rutted against it with the kind of desperate need he probably didn’t even realize he was showing. All while still licking you with the same kind of focused obsession he brought to his most complex theories.
The sight nearly took your breath away.
He was lost in it—eyes half-closed, one hand gripping your thigh tightly, the other splayed possessively over your stomach, holding you down, holding you here as he licked and licked like you were everything he’d ever wanted.
And maybe you were.
“Oh—Spencer,” you gasped, voice caught somewhere between awe and overstimulation, your fingers sinking into his damp curls again. “Baby, you’re gonna kill me—”
He finally pulled back—barely—his mouth glistening, lips swollen, breath ragged as he looked up at you with dazed, reverent eyes. There was a thin sheen of sweat on his brow, and his voice was hoarse, hungry when he spoke.
“You taste—so good,” he whispered like it was a revelation. “I can’t stop.”
You whimpered, your back arching again just at the sound of his voice.
And still, you could feel the soft thrusts of his hips into the mattress, like he couldn’t help himself. Like just being here, having you like this, tasting you, was enough to drive him to the brink.
And it hit you clear as day—this wasn’t for your pleasure only.
Spencer Reid was getting off on this. On you. On making you fall apart again and again. On turning every theory into practice.
And God help you—you were ready to let him keep going.
Spencer ate like a man starved. Not of food, but of you—the taste of you, the sound of you, the way your body responded to his every touch like it was made to be deciphered by him and him alone.
He experimented—slow flicks, gentle suckling, broad strokes of his tongue that made your thighs twitch and your toes curl. He noted every whimper, every little gasp, every sudden grab at the sheets with the quiet, terrifying brilliance of someone who didn’t just want to please you—he wanted to master you. Completely.
And then, when you were already trembling and slick with sweat, eyes half-lidded and barely able to breathe, he brought his fingers into the mix.
Two long, elegant fingers—ones that had flipped through a thousand pages and solved puzzles most couldn’t dream of—slid up and pressed directly against your clit, rubbing furiously, while his tongue pushed inside you with an intensity that made your thighs snap closed around his head like a vice.
The world fractured.
You cried out—screamed, really—as your hips bucked wildly, pleasure crashing over you like a tidal wave. You weren’t just coming. You were thrashing, your entire body consumed by the overload, trembling violently as Spencer held you down and kept going.
He didn’t stop. Not when your thighs clenched. Not when your fingers yanked at his hair. Not even when your voice cracked trying to call his name through the chaos.
He moaned against you, drunk on your body, on the mess he was making, the slickness he was drinking down like nectar. His eyes rolled back as he kept thrusting his tongue into you, fingers rubbing your clit with that same maddening rhythm, chasing something deeper, more.
“Spence—!” you choked, the sound mangled by a sob, too far gone to form words, too sensitive to take anymore.
It wasn’t even about pleasure anymore—it was just too much.
You reached for him with shaking hands, every part of you trembling, legs twitching uncontrollably. “Baby— Spencer, I can’t—please, please—”
And even then, he didn’t stop until you grabbed fistfuls of his hair and physically pushed him away, your voice wrecked and teary as you cried out, “I need—I need a second—!”
Spencer pulled back immediately, breathless and wide-eyed, mouth glistening, curls messy and damp where your thighs had pressed against his head. His hands released you like he was afraid he’d gone too far.
You were panting, chest heaving, body covered in sweat and shivering from head to toe, the towel underneath you wrinkled and soaked.
He opened his mouth to speak—an apology, maybe—but your hand caught his cheek.
Your eyes met his, hazy but full of emotion. “That was incredible,” you whispered, voice hoarse and shaky. “But holy shit, Spencer.”
He blinked. “Did I—? Was that—?”
You gave a dazed, giddy laugh. “I had to push you off. That’s how good it was.”
He flushed instantly, eyes wide, pride, concern, and lust tangling across his face.
“Let me just—let me breathe for a second,” you added, still gasping as you pulled him down into your arms, your body too weak to do anything else but hold on.
Spencer melted into you without question, lips pressing to your cheek, jaw, and forehead. “Okay,” he murmured softly, voice wrecked but sweet. “Okay. I’ve got you.”
And he did. Every piece. And he wasn’t letting go.
You were blinking up at the ceiling, dazed and glowing.
And maybe later, Spencer would blush. Maybe he’d be shy, overthink it, and pretend he wasn’t proud of himself.
But right now?
Right now, Spencer Reid looked at you like he’d just discovered fire.
Spencer had his head nestled against your shoulder, still catching his breath from how completely he’d just wrecked you. His curls were wild, lips swollen, cheeks pink, but his hands had returned to their default setting: gentle, steady, anchored somewhere on your body like a reassurance that you were still here, still his.
Still real.
But even as he held you, your chest rising and falling in the aftermath, he lifted his head slightly to check in—eyes soft but searching.
“You okay?” he asked, voice hoarse, lower than usual, like the sheer intimacy of what had just happened had rewired something in him. “Still with me?”
You turned your head just enough to fix him with a tired, narrow-eyed glare, your voice still raspy but laced with teasing fire. “You’re not that good.”
The corner of his mouth twitched up immediately, a smug little smile blooming across his face as he shifted onto an elbow to look down at you. “I think I am,” he replied, way too pleased with himself, voice silky and satisfied.
You blinked slowly up at him. “Oh, do you?”
He nodded, eyes half-lidded, hair clinging to his forehead, looking every bit the genius who had just figured out a new way to make you lose your mind.
So you did the only thing you could do to wipe that smirk off his face.
Your hand slid down between your bodies, warm and sure, and wrapped around him—soft at first, fingers barely ghosting over his cock, which was flushed and heavy and leaking at the tip, still twitching slightly from the way he’d been grinding against the mattress earlier. Spencer let out a soft gasp, hips jerking almost reflexively.
But you weren’t done.
You pinched lightly at the tip, just enough to make him jolt with a strangled sound in the back of his throat, the kind that shot straight through you.
“Oh my—” he hissed, breath catching completely.
You began stroking him slowly, deliberately, the barest pressure over his most sensitive skin. You watched with a lazy sort of satisfaction as his eyelids fluttered and that smug expression crumbled, replaced by slack-jawed awe.
“Still feeling smug, baby?” you asked sweetly, your thumb dragging through the moisture at his tip.
Spencer whimpered.
Actually whimpered.
His mouth opened but no words came out, just a shaky breath as his hips bucked into your hand and his fingers gripped the sheets beside your head.
You smiled.
“Didn’t think so.”
You moved slowly down the bed then, with sultry purpose, eyes fixed on his like you knew exactly what kind of power you had—like you’d reclaimed every ounce of strength he’d taken from you moments ago, and now, you were going to use it to ruin him in return.
You trailed your hands up his thighs, soft and deliberate, and he was already shaking beneath your touch, eyes wide, lips parted, chest heaving. Still flushed, still glistening slightly from his feverish grinding into the mattress, he looked like a man who had no business looking so undone.
And then you leaned forward—so close he could feel your breath against the head of his cock, tongue slipping out to just barely trace a circle around his leaking tip.
Spencer gasped, his hips twitching, one hand flying into your hair as the other gripped the edge of the bed for dear life.
“Oh my God,” he breathed, voice ragged. “You—oh, fuck—”
You didn’t answer. You just kept eye contact as you moved in slow, delicate laps, tasting the salt of him, flicking the very tip with the flat of your tongue until he was cursing under his breath and moaning freely—no longer quiet, no longer composed.
He’d come into this night feeling unsure, wondering if he was enough. But now? Now he was helpless. Vulnerable in the best way. Because you weren’t just giving—you were showing. Showing him what he did to you. Showing him how much you loved him. How much you wanted him.
You wrapped your lips gently around the head, sucking—soft at first, light pressure that had his whole body jolting. “Ohh— god, I—please—” he groaned as his fingers tightened in your hair, not guiding, just holding on.
And then, without warning, your mouth dropped lower.
Your tongue slid beneath him, your lips parting wider, and suddenly his balls were enveloped in the wet heat of your mouth.
Spencer cried out, his head thrown back with a choked sound that was more pure sensation than speech, thighs trembling under your palms.
“Nn—fuck, you’re gonna—” He couldn’t even warn you properly. He couldn’t think.
It was overwhelming. Too good. Too new. Too much.
You hummed softly against him—just enough vibration to push him that last little bit over the edge—and that was it.
Spencer broke.
He came with a cry, long and raw and completely unrestrained, his fingers twitching in your hair, hips stuttering as his whole body shook with the force of it.
You felt him pulse in your hand, warm and heavy and completely at your mercy, and still, you didn’t look away.
When he finally slumped back onto the bed, breathing like he’d just sprinted through a storm, his hand falling from your hair like his bones had melted, you leaned forward and kissed the inside of his thigh before slowly climbing back up beside him.
His eyes fluttered open, glassy and wide.
“Wha—what just—what was that?” he whispered, voice hoarse and trembling.
You smiled, smug and sweet, curling up beside him and running your fingers through his hair.
“Field research,” you murmured.
Spencer let out a breathless, wrecked laugh and buried his face in your neck.
synopsis: you are a mermaid living in a hidden grotto of the undercity. one day, jinx wanders into your territory. or more accurately, the ruins of her old haunt.
cw: mermaid!reader, canon divergence!au, discussions of trauma, discussion of child loss, mental health issues, non-sexual intimacy, sfw, however, there are suggestive themes, age gap, girl you are literally thousands of years old.
notes: in these coming days, i hold on tightly to fantasies. they become stronger, more intricate. i feel it is my only way to survive. this is dedicated to @s-4pphics, the only person who makes me feel like a real life mermaid.
The water remembers everything. It's why you were born into it. Your mind is a steel trap, a lattice of love and loss.
Water does not coddle the memory, but it soothes. When your mother crawled into the reservoir to birth you, it did not coddle her naked body as it twisted and expelled you. It did nothing to lessen the sore peaks of her nipples as her breasts swelled and hardened with milk. But it soothed.
Your birth was similar to the experience of having birds flutter out of one’s chest. You came into the world with the rush of wind and at the peak of death, eyes big and your silence even larger. You were a beautiful baby with a delicately scaled face, and from the beginning your mother knew you were different.
She holds you, tells you her name—a name that means one thousand flowers. It fits her; you understand this even one minute fresh into your life. Your mother was one thousand flowers both blooming and decaying at once.
You were born in the winter, snow touching the tender skin of your forehead. It is also winter when your mother, a woman of a thousand flowers, dies.
Her body seems to flutter and pulse until it shudders into foam. The water soothes you as you sink. You stay on the ocean floor for what is close to forever. The years pass, but water remembers.
It remembers the screaming, the fire, the way the undercity shattered like a dropped mirror. The shards spun out and out. You never braved the world, then. You would come close to the surface, float backward and bent as you watched the sky smear into green gas and heat. The water—and therefore you—remember the taste of ash and gunpowder, the iron-rich flavor of blood and revenge.
But mostly, you remember her—that odd girl with chaos pumping inside of her like a second, third heart who came stumbling through the wreckage of her old workshop, trailing ghosts and grief like a burial shroud.
You've been watching her for days. Your kind has always been drawn to broken things, to the places where pain bleeds into water until you can't tell where one ends and the other begins. She fascinates you with her paleness, with her long body that is painted and bared by the shoddy work of her pants and the cut of her top. You hide behind large chunks of driftwood, eye the swivel of her hips as she paces and turns. Her eyes are strange, too pale ghosts colored silvery blue. She closes them, opens, closes.
She is like a small bird, this woman. She carries destruction in her hands but cradles it like a wounded animal at times, afraid to hold too tight, afraid to let go. The first time she breaks, it's like watching a star collapse.
She falls to her knees at the water's edge, her wail echoing off the mineral-crusted walls of what was once her sanctuary. Her hands tear and tug at her braids as if she could rip the memories right out of her skull, like plucking loose the weave of a tapestry. The water around you shivers with her anguish, and your body preens; it tells you that you cannot stay hidden any longer.
You rise from the depths like a dream, your hair carrying traces of phosphorescent algae that provide a lazy glow as it swirls around your face. Her eyes fix on you, fever-bright and wild, but she doesn't run. Maybe she thinks you're a hallucination. Maybe she's just too tired to be afraid.
You understand this.
The silence lasts for a while. The two of you exist across from one another, your face settling on your hands as you inch forward. She has yet to notice the flutter of your tail, but it's only a matter of time. You can see the light refracting off of it into a million sparks of light, dancing across the ceiling as you near her.Her mouth parts and you feel your own hinge open. You are trying to remember, trying to make yourself just like her if only to assuage her fear. Your tongue unfurls, neat and a deep blue. She blinks in surprise, which allows you to speak first.
"I am [Name]," you say, and your voice is a gentle purr like someone has stumbled over the strings of a harp. You are learning, thinking of how humans relate to one another. You don't tell her your real name, your name birthed by ocean and the melt of your mother's scale in the middle of your tongue. You are a woman of a thousand white waves, because every woman in your family has a thousand of something. "This, here, is my home."
You reach out now, because you have seen this before. Her people hug and grasp at one another in welcoming. The woman jerks, falls with a sick crunch on one of those pale hips in an effort to get away from you. You are hurt, and alarmed, and retreat further into the water. Your hand is still clawed as if to hold hers.
"Get back," she warns, voice raw and hoarse. Her eyes repeat their pattern. Close, open. Open and close. You close yours to see what she sees. Your eyelids are thin, translucent. The world can still be seen. She is right in front of you. "I'll hurt you. I'm a curse; I hurt everything.”
You open your eyes now, reach for her anyway. Your scaled hands catch hers, gentling them away from her hair. You smooth the strands, like your sister would do to you when the poachers came.
"My kind cannot be cursed," you tell her. This close she can feel the vibration, the way that your voice carries echoes of tidal pools and deep-sea trenches. "We are older than magic, older than pain. A different kind of creature."
She laughs, and it sounds like breaking glass. "Yeah? Well I bet you've never met anything like me before."
But you have. You've seen the way trauma can twist a soul, how it can make someone forget the shape of their own heart. You've watched your own kind waste away from grief and pollution, watched your bloodline dwindle to almost nothing. You recognize the look in her eyes—it's the same one you saw in your sister's before the toxic waste claimed her, before disease took your mother.
"Do not tell me what you think I know," you answer and she fidgets within your hold.
You are unsure of how to calm her, so you rummage deep inside of your long memory. You think of your mother. Now, you know. You pull her into the water with you, and she thrashes at first—all spinning limbs and desperate gasping. She is much like a fish at the end of a hook, you think. But you hold her, humming an ancient lullaby that vibrates through the water around you both.
Your singing voice, your Melody was always more unsightly than the others. So much higher and almost dissonant, like the cry of a whale during its migration. You mostly Sang alone, while others Sang together. But it winds around Jinx; maybe she is dissonant too. Slowly, so slowly, she stills.
"This is my body," you murmur, pressing close, your scales catching the ethereal light. "And this is yours." Your hands trace her tattoos like star maps, feeling the stories written in ink and scar tissue. You pause at her stomach, feeling an old grief there. You cast your Melody again, and it falls like a net over the skin underneath your fingers.
"You had a child," you say softly, and she goes rigid in your arms.
"Yes.” She admits this truth as if it hurts her. “She was not—not mine.”
“What was her name?”
“Isha,” she chokes out. “She was... I was supposed to protect her."
“Mmm,” you say. “She was yours. I can feel it. She was yours, and you lost her.”
You adjust your embrace, thumb at her bottom lip to reveal her blunt teeth. You have no understanding that this is not normal, that this touching and holding and avid tenderness is not of their culture. This woman, this bloodless weeping woman gazes at you.
“Your motherhood,” you murmur, “sits inside you like a stone. It is closed, like an oyster. You must name it to begin to release the pain.”
You press down on her lip.
“What is your name?”
“Jinx,” she whispers.
“Good,” you tell her. “So, you are Jinx. Jinx, mother of Isha.”
The words seem to break something loose in her, and suddenly she's crying—great, heaving sobs that shake her whole body. You hold her through it, letting her tears mix with the mineral-rich water of your grotto. Strange woman, you think. She is a strange, sweet thing.
Her stomach tenses and releases, over and over. You never once stop your Song.
𓇼 ⋆｡˚ 𓆝⋆｡˚ 𓇼
Days blur together after that. Time moves strangely here. The two of you are a jigsaw puzzle of connection, platonic or maybe familial. You do not ask, preferring to preserve what you have.
Jinx is shy in the first few moments, a trait you suspect is unfamiliar to her. She builds herself a nest above the waterline: a chaos of stolen furniture and salvaged tech that somehow fits the space perfectly. You watch her work, fascinated by how her hands can create as easily as they dismantle. Sometimes she catches you staring and explains things to you—human concepts that make little sense but delight you anyway.
You measure progress not in days but in small victories: the first time Jinx falls asleep with her head in your lap, fingers curled trustingly around your scales. The morning she lets you rebraid her hair, your webbed fingers gentle against her scalp as you weave strands of luminescent crystal through the blue. The day she shows you how to make paper boats and sets them afloat with tiny lights inside, until the cavern ceiling reflects a mirror image of the stars she remembers from her brief childhood.
You offer up knowledge in return. You speak the thick language of old, born of trench sand and sulfur cracks. She loves when you sing, when your mouth unhinges to show your blue tongue and slightly jagged teeth. She wades into the grotto, standing in the shallow water that barely reaches her ankles, and closes her eyes. She sways as your Melody flows over her, shivering as if touched by cold.
You usually finish the performance by swimming to her, carefully holding her ankles between your extended claws and calling directly to her. This is your favorite—a secret you keep close. You adore how she gazes down at you, how her eyes trace the curve of your slick breasts and torso as you rise to meet her.
You climb until your noses brush, and then you laugh, a sound like the gentle puff of a flute. When you laugh, your gills seize and flex, and Jinx places a hand against them, tracing them until you crook your neck and trill. (That's her favorite.)
"[Name], you can't just walk around topless all the time," she tells you one day, trying not to laugh as you examine a shirt with obvious confusion. The fabric flutters strangely in her hands. "Humans are weird about bodies."
"But they're just bodies," you say, running a webbed hand over your scales. Again, her eyes follow. She closes her eyes, thinking of how your breasts are round and soft like the moon in her hand. You reach out, drawing her closer until she's touching you. "See? This is just flesh. The body is only a house for our soul."
She grows quiet then, thoughtful in a way that makes her look younger. "Maybe that's why I'm so messed up. My house is... kind of a disaster zone."
You pull her close, letting your tail manifest and wrap around her legs. "Then we'll build you a new one. Piece by piece."
The trust comes in fragments, in stolen quiet moments. Some days she can't bear to be touched, and you give her space, watching from the depths as she paces and talks to ghosts you can't see. Other days she's almost peaceful, letting you massage her scalp or teaching you human games with cards that always seem to explode at exactly the wrong moment.
One night, the voices in her head were particularly loud. You hear it from beneath the water—you sleep closer to the surface since meeting her—and rise to find her jolting in her sleep. You don't think, only move, remembering to rid yourself of your tail only when it scrapes against a sheet of metal jutting from the sand.
You hum agitatedly, distressed by her furrowed brow and trembling body, then take her deeper into the grotto than she's ever been before. Here, crystal formations pulse with bioluminescence, casting rainbow shadows on walls that have never known sunlight. Schools of blind fish dart around you both, their scales glowing like fallen stars.
It takes her a while to wake, but you stay suspended and curled around her. You keep watch, eyeing the murky kelp forests that tease at your fins. There are other, older ways into this grotto that never bothered you before. But now, you're too aware of all the ways someone could reach the jinx resting in your arms.
You see bubbles snort from her nose as she begins to stir, and you move quickly to pluck a shell from the rainbow-dusted walls. The inside is sticky and suctions to her mouth, threading a tendril inside to loop around her lungs and better facilitate her breathing underwater. You don't understand why it works, but you've seen the surface swimmers use it before.
Jinx makes a horrible rasping noise before the shell's work settles in, and then breathing comes easier. The shell is now translucent and attenuated. She cups your side as she shifts in your hold, her unbraided hair thick around her face.
"This is beautiful," she whispers, and for once there's no edge to her voice, no great waiting catastrophe. You know she means you.
"Thank you," you respond, smiling with all your teeth. She smiles crookedly back.
"This was my mother's sanctuary," you tell her, leading her to a cave where ancient glyphs cover the walls. You see her back bend with the water's pressure, and you slow your pace. "There used to be many of me, my bloodline. But the surface world's poisons reached even here." You trace one of the symbols—a spiky, spherical rune that you think means 'confession'. This glyph is older than you, part of a complex language no surface dweller nor merfolk of this time has spoken in millennia. "Now there are only three of us left."
She's quiet for a long moment, her hand finding yours in the glowing water. "Does it ever get easier? Being the only one who survived?"
You think of your sister's last days, of your mother's fading voice. "No," you answer honestly. "But it becomes... different. The pain changes shape, becomes something you can carry without breaking."
She leans into you at that, and you feel the tremors that always precede one of her episodes. But this time, she doesn't fight it. She lets you hold her as the chaos revisits her, trusts you to keep her head above water—in a manner of speaking—as she shakes apart and slowly, slowly comes back together.
𓇼 ⋆｡˚ 𓆝⋆｡˚ 𓇼
It doesn’t simply disappear. Jinx is one of the spirits’ favorite souls to torture and possess.
Most nights, the past continues to crawl up through the cracked floors of the grotto like a cadaver, its saccharine breath seeping into Jinx's dreams until she wakes screaming. And on most of these nights, you find her in her nest of blankets and broken things, her skin fever-hot and her eyes seeing horrors you cannot share.
But after you take her down, beneath the surface, it is different. Now, most nights, she comes to you.
The pattern is the same: you hear her bare feet on the stone before you see her, padding toward the water's edge like a sleepwalker. Her hair is almost always loose, falling around her face in a cascade that reminds you of the sharp stretch of evening sky across the Arctic Ocean. Then she reaches the pool's edge, but she doesn’t stop.
The water accepts her like a lover, closing over her head in a gentle baptism. You rise to meet her, your form shifting in the dipping waves. You cup the nape of her neck and insert the shell. Your skin takes on its natural sheen, scattered with scales that catch the light like opals. Your hair moves as if still underwater even when you break the surface, glistening tendrils floating around your face. Your eyes are all pupil and hold the depths of the ocean, ancient and knowing, utterly without fear. You reach for her, and, like in the beginning, she still tries to pull away; you simply shake your head.
"Your curse cannot touch me," you remind her, your voice like water over stones. "I am not of your world." Your hands move to cup her face, thumbs brushing away tears that roll from the puffy cliff’s edge of her pale eyes. "I am of the deep places, the dark waters. We recognize our own, remember?"
Remember? You always ask her this. It’s all she ever does.
You rise fully from the water then, your form shifting like light through waves until you stand on human legs, naked and gleaming. You pull Jinx to her feet and begin to undress her with the innocent purpose of a child, unbound by human conventions of modesty or shame. She allows it, trembling—not from cold or fear, but from the overwhelming sensation of being touched without consequence, of being seen. She has yet to confess how much she needs this.
"This is my body," you murmur, pressing close, your scaled hands tracing the bridge of her spine. You are reminding her. "And this is yours. We are both such difficult creatures."
"I don't understand you," she whispers, but her hands come up to trace the patterns of your scales, mapping the places where your skin shifts from human to something else entirely.
You catch her hand and press it flat against your chest, letting her feel the strange rhythm of your heart—beating in time with the tides.
"Fear is for those who have something to lose. My kind has already lost almost everything. What's left is..." You pause, searching for words in a language not made for shadowy creatures like you. "What's left is precious because it survived. I am surviving. You are surviving with me.”
Something shifts in her expression then, understanding blooming like oil across the top of a gulf. Her fingers tangle in your hair, pulling you closer until your foreheads touch.
"Show me again," she breathes, begging. Her breath smells sweet, like candy under the tongue and behind the teeth. "Please."
You take her deeper into the grotto than before, past the engraved walls and into the true heart of your domain. Here, the water is almost desperately alive, swirling with colors that have no names in any human tongue. Your tail manifests fully, lashing out. You seem to be made of living jewels. You are a terrible, beautiful monster; your body twists like a snake as you duck and dive. Jinx watches, transfixed, as you dance through the water, showing her your true way of living.
You do what your kind does when in love. You Sing. You Pull her.
"I've been trying to fix my machines," she says when your last note fades. You are shaking. You have never Sung that hard before. Your Melody has undone you, and you swim weakly back to her. She touches your face, dusts your cheeks with her pruned fingertips. "To make lights that look like this." She gestures at the bioluminescent display around you. "But I keep fucking it up. Everything I touch turns to..."
"A mess," you finish for her. These thoughts are not new. "But a mess is not always born of destruction." You guide her hand through the water, watching the way the disturbed bioluminescence creates new patterns, new constellations. "Sometimes it's just change. It is new, without guidance. You are trying again, relearning. This is only necessary disorder."
She laughs, but it's softer than usual. "Is that what I am? Disordered?"
You pull her closer, letting your tail wrap around her legs as you float together in the heart of the sea. "You are what you choose to be. Here, in these waters, you don't have to be anything but yourself." You pull back so that you can see your hands as you sign to her, curl your fingers into the symbols she’s seen on the walls.
You have changed me. You mouth the words so that she truly understands. You sign it again, across her naked chest so that she can feel the drag of your claws and the pump of her blood in response.
"I don’t feel changed, and I don’t want to ruin you. What if I am still broken?" Her voice cracks on the last word.
"Then be broken here with me," you tell her, pressing your lips to her temple. "The water remembers everything, but it also cleanses. It changes. It heals."
She turns in your arms, and for once, her eyes are clear. No fever, no muddle—just Jinx, looking at you like she’s seeing you for the first time. Her hands find your face, thumbs tracing the almost invisible scales at your temples. You raise your hands, fingers contorting as you sign once more.
We have changed each other. It is a symptom of love.
Jinx says nothing, then she moves. You forget how agile she can be at times. With a few spritely movements, she is holding your waist and treading water. One hand comes up, cradling your face. There is a pause, and you glance at her, eyes wide with confusion and anticipation. This is new. She studies you, and you belatedly realize she is waiting for something. Permission, you think.
“Yes?” you ask. She smiles; it’s the right answer.
She slips out the shell, and you startle. This is dangerous, but she doesn’t care. She stops you.
Her hand nestles thoroughly in your hair, tilting your head until your flesh is exposed to her lips. Again and again, she presses her mouth to your neck. She suckles, nips, until your tail flicks. She is kissing you. You’ve never been kissed before—not like this.
Her teeth dig in, needling at the meat of your throat until it’s mottled and bruised. Then her lips come up to yours. At first, you breathe into her mouth to give her oxygen. Jinx pulls back, grips your jaw, and shakes you slightly. Then her lips return to yours, applying pressure until you open your mouth and allow her tongue in. She licks at your teeth, tracing the points as she holds you to her.
You feel lightheaded, disoriented. You feel good; you want more of her. After a long while, she breaks the contact. Her thumb settles at the base of your throat, slipping to the side to play with your gills. You trill sharply, and she laughs. You don’t want to say it, but you know—you want it to stay this way forever.
Jinx takes her shell from where she had placed it on her stomach. She allows it back into her throat, breathing in deeply. Then she lifts her hands and signs to you—clumsy but earnest.
Yes. You have changed me. It is a symptom of love.
𓇼 ⋆｡˚ 𓆝⋆｡˚ 𓇼
"I used to think I had to be loud," she tells you one night, floating on her back in the shallow parts of the grotto. Her hair fans out around her head like spilled ink, and you can't help but run your fingers through it, watching the way it parts around your hands. "Had to be crazy, had to be Jinx, because if I wasn't, then I'd have to be... her. The girl I was before. And she was weak. She got left behind."
You hum softly, the crystals below resonating in harmony. "Perhaps she wasn't weak," you suggest, tracing the constellation of freckles on her shoulder. "Perhaps she was just unfinished, like a pearl before the ocean completes its formation."
She turns to look at you then, the emotion in her eyes making your heart beat in that strange double rhythm that only happens when she's near.
"Is that what you're doing?" she asks. "Finishing me?"
You shake your head, pulling her closer until she's cradled against your chest, her back to your front, both of you suspended in the gentle current. "No one can complete you but yourself. I'm just... holding the space for you to do it.”
She's quiet for so long you think she might have fallen asleep. Then: "I’m in love with you." Her voice is barely a whisper, as if the words might shatter the peace.
Instead of answering, you press your lips to her shoulder, right where a new tattoo is healing—a pattern of waves and crystals mirroring your own scales. You helped her design it, watching in fascination as she used her clever hands to create the automaton.
"For us," you tell her, "it is different. We don't fall in love the way humans do. There's less emphasis on choices. It’s more like... finding a current that matches your own, something that pulls you in the same direction for the rest of your life. I've been swimming in your current since the day you arrived. There’s a vibration you release, deep inside me. You set it off, again and again."
Your mouth works oddly around the word "belly." She smiles at your struggle, turning in your embrace to press her forehead to yours in the way she knows you love. Her hands find your face, and you press a kiss to her fingers, grazing your teeth over her thumb. She shivers, captures your mouth briefly, then tucks herself back against you. Drowsy, she begins to dream and you let her, drifting your body lazily along the stretch of water to rock her.
It is then that you hear them—footsteps on stone, careful and measured. You recognize them instantly: the heavy tread of the enforcer, the lighter step of her companion. They've been searching for months, following rumors of blue hair seen in the Undercity's depths.
Jinx doesn't hear them, not yet. She’s drifting in that peaceful place between wakefulness and sleep, her body trustingly pliant in your embrace. She’d had an episode before this—memories of fire leaving her shaking for hours. But now she's quiet, her breathing synced with the gentle lap of water against stone.
You sense her presence before you see her, a disturbance in the air that makes the algae pulse brighter. The Sister. Her presence feels much like Jinx’s but more weathered, carrying the weight of blood. It catches in your throat unpleasantly, making you want to cough. Her footsteps falter at the grotto's entrance. The other one—Caitlyn, you recall—steadies her with a touch, but neither makes a sound.
They stand frozen at the sight before them: Jinx floating in the ethereal water, her hair unbound and threaded with living light, her face peaceful in a way they've never seen. Your tail curls protectively around her legs beneath the surface, scales catching and reflecting the cavern's natural light until it seems like you're both in some unreachable heaven. You bare your teeth to shatter the fantasy.
The Sister’s sharp intake of breath echoes off the stone. Jinx stirs slightly, but you soothe her with a soft hum, reworking her lullaby until the water itself vibrates in harmony. Her fingers tighten briefly on your arms before relaxing again.
When you meet the Sister’s eyes over Jinx's shoulder, you see tears tracking silently down her face. There's recognition there, and grief, and something like hope. You see the moment she understands what you are—not just a creature of the deep but a guardian. Her sister’s keeper; her sister’s mate.
Caitlyn moves forward as if to speak, but Violet—yes, Violet—stops her with a gentle touch. They watch as you shift slightly, letting them see how Jinx's newest tattoos mirror your own patterns—not random splashes of pain and memory but flowing lines that speak of partnership, of flesh and form meant to slot into one another.
A soft noise escapes Violet’s throat, something between a sob and a laugh. Jinx stirs again, and this time you let your gaze drop deliberately to her face, your webbed hands smoothing over her shoulders in a gesture that couldn't be more clear: She is safe here. She is loved here.
You raise a hand, your eyes slipping into their true state to make your threat clear. You know the Piltover girl will understand; her home is the home of poachers. Safe, you sign. Then, Go.
The Sister nods once, tears still falling. Her hand finds Caitlyn's and squeezes hard. You watch understanding pass between them—the recognition that sometimes healing happens in strange places, that sometimes love wears unfamiliar, frightening faces.
They turn to leave, but at the last moment, Violet looks back. Her lips form words you can read even across the distance: Thank you. Only when their footsteps fade completely do you press a kiss to Jinx's temple, tasting the salt of tears that aren’t your own.
"Are they gone?" Jinx's voice is quiet, still heavy with sleep.
"Yes," you answer honestly, because you've never lied to her and won’t start now.
She turns in your embrace, pressing her face into your neck where your scales fade into skin. "I'm not ready," she whispers. "Not yet."
"You can stay here," you promise, letting your tail wrap more securely around her. "For as long as you need. But you will not lose me. I will not lose you.”
She lifts her head to look at you, and her eyes are like silver dollars. You mimic her blinking for what must be the millionth time. Open, close. Close and open. She smiles at this. You smile, hollowing your throat to coo, mimicking the call of a bird of paradise. She laughs now; you are pleased.
"Tell me again," she murmurs. "About your promise."
Your tail flicks as you nod.
“I will never leave; I will only follow,” you begin. The words are heavy, sacred mating rites belonging solely to your tribe. “The water flows across the earth; it is immovable. It is the human that will fade, not the earth, not myself. We will both replenish. Where you go, I will be there—past death and beyond.
Jinx rises, cupping your face firmly, her touch restricting your movement.
“Promise?” she asks, her voice dipping low, laced with danger.
“I promise.”
She presses her lips to your neck, her teeth sinking in as always. You let out a high, trembling sound, your control slipping. Suddenly, you’re human, treading water. Jinx hooks an arm beneath you, lifting you effortlessly as the water renders you weightless.
stormborns
titsay
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
turnnoffyourmind
