.. its got chicken legssss

You didn’t want to do it, but in this job, comfort was always an option and never a guarantee. It needed to be done. And that meant sacrifices had to be made to the dark altar of your contract with One-Four-One.

But this one just might break you in the process. 

“Are you sure that,” you pause and think over the instructions that Price had just given you—straight from the top of the line. “Are you sure that this is the best way, Sir?” 

The man’s lips are flat, eyes narrowed, he doesn’t like this either—especially if you don’t. John’s a Captain, he tallies out orders and expects people to listen without hesitation; doesn’t express his worry about their safety because that isn’t what this is about at the end of the day. It’s about keeping the good people outside of bases like these alive and breathing.

And right now that hinged on you being dead.

“Berto needs mercenaries,” Price grunts, “and any record of you needs to be wiped before we send you in.”

Vito Berto—head of a crime family that had been picking up traction in recent years, so much so that One-Four-One had to be put on it for covert reconnaissance before any more people ended up dead.

You would be sent in under the cover of an experienced mercenary; one among the ranks that Berto would need for a hostile takeover planned in three months on the Palace of Westminster in London. The House of Parliament. 

Vito was one cocky son of a bitch if he expected no one to get word of this.

Your job was to uncover the exact date, time, and the mission plan before getting out as quickly as possible. In order to do that, the soldier holding your name needed to be dead so nothing could be traced back to you, your task force, or your loved ones. 

And people needed to believe it.

“Can’t the records just be forged, Sir?” You ask, the meeting room dark and pulsing with the cold air from the vents. “What about Gaz and Soap?” Your throat closes for a moment and you speak slightly lower. “Simon?”

Price sighs and crosses his arms, fixing the stance of his feet.

“They’ll deal with it.” Inside of your pockets, your hands twitch. 

He won't. Not inwardly.  

“I…” your jaw clenched. 

Your relationship with Ghost was…strange. You’d both had your fun, of course, and you had a casual air about that sort of thing—it had happened, but nothing more could ever come of it. There was a modicum of soft care with you two; an acknowledgment of partnership in the field and out of it. 

You didn’t have to explain to people that Ghost was closer to you than others. You’d seen his face; that says enough. 

“It needs to look real,” Price explains, tilting his head down to you. “Not only for Laswell's state of mind but yours. I won’t be putting you in without giving you the best chance.” 

“You can’t tell them?”

“Negative. Security measure.” You frown, biting at your lip.

John closes his eyes and shakes his head. A second later a hand is set on your shoulder and the man leans in slightly to reassure you like a relative. You look up into your Captain’s gruff face, seeing the small amount of care he levels into his cerulean irises for you. 

He squeezes your flesh, watching hard.

“We need you for this, Trick.” The nickname was exactly why you were the only one who could do this. 

You were the first choice. No one was better at undercover work.

“How long would I be gone, Price?” Shifting out of the hold, you cross your arms and level him with a dead stare. “How long do they have to live with this lie?”

John grunts. “Less than three months, yeah? But all of it’s up to how long it takes to gather intel. Full black.” 

“Exfil point?” 

“Town five miles from Berto’s estate. Cafe with a red door near the bookstore. Woman inside’ll be your handler.” You turn away to glare at the far wall, hesitant even when you know you shouldn't be. This was your job. 

Brown eyes keep flashing behind your eyes—a skeletal mask that stares with stained glistening blood, blood you yourself feel reflected on your own visage. A shared damning of two people who would never see those great halls of the afterlife. Neither of you are good.

Simon had to understand. 

The Captain sees the shift in your expression.

“You in?” He asks you with a blank look. 

You take a deep breath, chest heavy and heart hurting. “I don’t like it,” your voice is low, monotone. “But, yeah, Sir, I’m in.”

“Good,” the man nods, hooking his thumbs into his belt. “It’ll happen in three days. Be ready.”

You watch him walk out of the room, patting you on the shoulder one last time before the door shuts behind him with a click of finality that pierces your lungs. You clear your throat and swallow down saliva, turning your face away as if ashamed. 

It’s the quiet that gets to you in that moment—the encompassing nothingness. So often you would have moments like these with Simon. Just sitting; not taking. But this silence was so different. 

This was betrayal. 

After you steady the slight tremor in your hands, you scoff and shake your head backing up a step before leaving the room; turning off the lights. 

You walk down the long hallway, feet heavy as your mind runs, and overhead the lights buzz like flies. Eyes stuck to the floor, your shoulders are hunched in with thought and your lids half-closed in a display of obvious inner turmoil. 

The shadow that waits for you, leaning against the wall, you walk past entirely—missing it and not hearing the confused call of your name behind you because of it.

“Trick!” Your hand comes up to itch at your chin, fingers pushing into your flesh. The aggressive Manchester accent slides off of you until large fingers curl into the back collar of your vest rig. 

You breathe in sharply, blinking in surprise as your feet get pulled back a step or two, pace halting as Ghost curls around your body, staring down at you. His brows are narrowed, that mask still on and the bottom fabric twisted in the obvious downward press of his lips.

“Bloody hell is wrong with you, then?” 

Sighing, you scowl and shake him off of you, moving back to allow yourself some air. Did he really have to show up now? Why was he even here, you had to ask yourself. Was he…waiting for you?

“Nothing,” you don’t look at him, speaking low. “Distracted, is all.” 

Ghost crosses his arms slowly, his brows flinching briefly as he makes a sound in the back of his throat. “Meeting go well?” 

“Fine.” He can tell something’s wrong; you know he can—he’s the best at interrogations for a reason. Ghost knows when someone is lying to him. 

You glance at his chest before you begin to open your mouth. 

What could telling him hurt? Just a hint. He’d get it—I know he would. Berto had the nickname ‘The Tanner,’ given to him by his men. When he found out anyone had double-crossed him, he’d take a large breaking knife and separate the thin layers of skin from his victims. Intel suggests he keeps them awake for all of it, stopping when they pass out only to start again when they wake back up. 

If there was any leak in this base…any at all…you wouldn’t be coming back. 

You wouldn’t be coming back to him. 

Simon’s thighs shift.

“Talk to me.” He always speaks like he doesn’t care about the answer, but you’d be a fool this far into your… relationship? To believe that he didn’t. You’d seen Simon panic over your injured body before—it told you enough. 

The easy moments and the side-eyed looks when he thought you didn’t notice or weren’t doing the same to him. 

Your fingers twitch, forcing a smirk that didn’t convince even you. Your heart was telling you to explain it to him, but your brain was firmly set behind iron doors; tongue held back by iron tongs. 

“Personal matters, Simon. Nothing you need to worry about, Big Guy.” He doesn’t look away from your eyes. Brows set in a line and that mask jeering at you; almost mocking. 

The Lieutenant doesn’t answer and your heart is visible from under your gear.

“J-just,” you stutter, face getting hot as you look away. “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, it’s…” 

Trailing off, you rub at the back of your head in a self-soothing motion. 

Simon blinks slowly and you hear a large chest-rattling sigh. He shrugs in that way only he can—a fast jerk of shoulders that looks more like he’s trying to push off a bug than simply trying to move past what you’re saying to him. 

“Doesn’t make a difference,” it does. “Garrick and MacTavish are waitin’ down at the firing range. Best get down there ‘fore one comes looking like a kicked dog.” You can still feel him digging into you. Knives and the suspicion in his tone. 

You don’t want to do this to him. Not after all that you’ve gone through together. 

“Right.” Your feet are moving before he is, planted into the floor and pushing off through the small pinches of electricity in the nerves. Pushing out a hard laugh, you try to send him a light smile. “Did you tell them to be ready to get their arses beat?” 

Simon looks down at you as he walks beside your form in large steps; arms swinging. “Haven’t seen ‘em yet. Waiting for you.” 

If it were possible to shrivel up from guilt, you’d be nothing but bones.

“O-oh,” you huff, but it sounds like all of the air has been expelled from your lungs. “You didn’t have to do that, y’know.”

Simon grunts, accent grating as he stares ahead. “Wanted to.” 

“Good. That’s nice.” You feel like screaming. “Thank you.”

It’s nearly instantaneous how fast his eyes go dark with concern. “You sure that head of yours is on straight, Trick?”

You push open the doors outside and wonder if you even have the ability to answer him; out of everyone, you can’t lie to Simon.

“No,” your lips admit quietly, self-degrading in its own right. 

A hand grabs you by the wrist and before you can slip out, you’re being pulled back into the building and pushed into a side room. 

“Hey!” You shout, eyes flashing as the door is shut behind you. You’re released and the light is immediately turned on. “Simon, what the hell are you doing?” 

“Enough,” he levels, and your arms are clasped so you’re facing his chest, looking up into his serious and hard gaze. “Fuckin’ speak to me.” 

You’re surprised at how insistent he is about this. 

“I’m not telling you anything,” you speak through stutters and he growls in his throat. His hands are like motel lava even under his gloves and above your skin—burning like a brand.

“What happened in that meeting room, Trick?”

“It’s classified,” you say, harder than intended, spitting the words with a hint of desperation. If not for your own safety, then for his, but you know that if he keeps asking then you’ll tell him the truth. 

They were going to stage your death, and they won’t be making it pretty. 

“Fuck classified,” he leans in closer, curling over you. “You’re acting like someone’s bloody taking you hostage.”

“Simon! It’s not—”

“Cut the bullshit!” You growl and try to shove away from him, struggling with glaring eyes that go sharp with the onset of tears. “Somethings got you worried and I wanna know what it is.”

Simon wasn’t the greatest at articulation, but neither were you. 

You knew he was trying to tell you he was concerned. The man was holding you tight, but not hurting you; his face close and his shoulders wide. Along your face his eyes were darting, as if he could peel back your skin and make you explain what Price had told you. 

The Captain had given the Lieutenant a look as he’d seen him waiting for you but had said nothing. That alone had tipped Ghost off to something being wrong. 

But you weren’t having it.

Yanking out of Simon’s hands, you shake your head and put on your worst glare—meeting muddy brown and huffing. 

“Mind your own business, Riley. It’s for your own good.” The man blinks in mute shock, fingers in the air twitching before they fall to his sides.

You speed-walk out of the room before he can speak, lips slightly parted at your strange behavior. 

For his own good? What in the hell did that mean? 

Simon’s jaw clenches, a grunt in his chest as he aggressively rolls his wrist. He turns to follow after. The both of you don’t talk for the rest of the day.

—

Your body shakes along with the helo as it takes off, carrying you away from the scene of gunfire down below. In your earpiece, you hear the loud calls and yelling from your friends. Gaz is calling out to Price to give him permission to move up; the Captain too busy grappling Soap to the ground. 

Ghost is taking cover behind a wall, but he’s not quiet. 

“Trick’s in the damn building!” 

No, I’m not, you want to flick on the line and tell him. Over the three days before this operation you'd barely spoken—in fact, you’d been avoiding all of them fervently by the mass amount of guilt in your stomach. 

In the nights, you hadn’t even slept, and now you’re sure it’ll take even longer too.

Their forms become tinier, and you grasp the roof’s handle as the helo rises farther and farther. 

“Price!” Simon barks. “We have to get her—”

“There’s no time!” John responds, grunting and forcing Johnny down as he spits curses and tries to call your name over the comms. You flinch violently, looking away for a moment. “We’re surrounded!”

“I can get through!” Bullets wiz through the comms, and you can nearly imagine you are down there—trapped in the house down the way after being shot and injured by hosties. But you’d never been in that house. Never been alone down the way for recon. 

You’d been at the second exfil point. Price knew it. Laswell knew it. 

But Simon had not. 

“Negative, Ghost! Keep where you are, we can get to her later. We need to—” The building you were supposed to be in explodes in a fiery wreck; a great bloom cloud going into the air as the helo shakes from the after-blast. 

You have to turn your face away, shielding your eyes. The pilot calls to see if you’re alright, but you don’t answer. All you can hear is the screams.

“Trick!”

“Simon, get back into bloody cover!” 

“Fucking Hell! Trick, answer me!” It gets too much—the bareness of his panic for you. The panting breath; the running stomp of feet.

You rip the connection from the radio on your vest and place a hand over your mouth, breathing as if you had really been in an inferno like a piece of fodder. 

Simon had already been through so much in his life, and doing this to him as well as the task force was the definition of betrayal of the loyalty you’d cultivated.

Of the love.

Because you did love him—even if you’d never say it to each other. If he found out about what you did, which he would eventually, in one way or another, he’d hate you for the rest of his life. So perhaps you were mourning, as you stare below as the helicopter takes you higher and higher up. Farther away from him. You were mourning what you had, because you knew it would never be the same. 

Simon Riley would never trust you again, and all you had to blame was yourself. 

The tiny tears dribble out of you and fall all the way down to the ground, where the man still screams for you to answer him; John barks orders with a sheen of panic in his eyes from the bare-bones ferality of the Lieutenant. Brown eyes blazed and cities burned in his pupils. 

John had underestimated the bond that the two of you shared. 

And he just might pay the price for it.

—

Getting through selection was far easier than getting through SAS training, Vito Berto seemed to only want mercenaries that had the faintest hint of the ability to hold a smuggled weapon. It made sense because if the people he was planning to send in were well-trained, it would be easier to trace to him—ability equaled a higher level of intelligence. Planning. Resources. 

To fit in, you made sure to miss a few of your shots, even if it made your instinctual perfectionism rise. John would have torn you a new one if you’d missed this many during your selection all those years back. Probably would have asked how a Muppet like you had gotten this far with shite aim like that.

But Berto ate it up like Sunday dinner. Gave you the nickname Cross, actually. Like the crosshair of a scope.

It was safe to say you despised him. 

But the days grew longer and the nights short with all of your running around. You’d found out that your Captain’s timeline was incorrect—the attack wasn’t in three months, it was in two. And while Berto was cocky, he wasn’t reckless. 

He somehow knew there was a breach in the ranks; you could see it by how he looked over the squads in the underground bunker, all of you hidden under rock and stone like prisoners. The man would sneer, eyes filtering back and forth from the perch. 

Sometimes you had to stop yourself from simply taking the shot presented in front of you and deal with the consequences afterward.

Price had been clear: all of the people gathered here needed to be taken care of quickly and quietly—if you snapped, the rest would disappear like roaches. Alive and biding time.

During those two months, the thoughts of Simon wouldn’t leave you. 

Moments that seeped in behind closed eyelids after you’d slunk back into bed, the USBs full of vital intel stashed into the lining of your uniform in a small hidden pocket. His twitching smile and those deep scars along his face; the ones that would never go away. 

In those moments you wondered what it would be like if you had told him how much you cared for his quiet company or his dark humor. The way he would level a hand on the small of your back off duty at the bars as a way to silently shield you from the stares from patrons. 

You’d never be able to tell him now. 

Vito “The Tanner” Berto knew of a leak, and when you came back to the bunker after sending out the multiple USB sticks, the physical files, and the first-hand accounts of what was going on—eager for just a little more to make this betrayal worth it…he was waiting. 

You could only fight off so many others, no matter how subpar the training on their part, before sheer mass overtook ability. Like a house of cards with a bowling ball, you were shoved to the ground surrounded by multiple dead bodies of those you’d taken down with you—writhing and hissing as if a feral animal. 

Restraints were leveled with your wrists; your head pulled back so your nose faced the ceiling. You only stopped struggling when the chilled barrel of a pistol was set under your chin.

Breath stilling, it was hard to understand how, even then, all that was in the front of your mind was Simon. Simon and his brown eyes. Simon and his screams when that building went up in fire and smoke.

“Trick!”

You could still hear the exact pitch and rhythm like it was yesterday.

“Cross,” Berto mutters, gun heavy as it digs into your flesh. Men pant and grapple to keep you back as you sneer and jerk your arms. “I should have known it would be you.” 

“Well,” you growl, teeth bared, “obviously you didn’t.”

A slow smirk runs on his lips. 

“No, but I’ll have to rectify this. I can’t have you getting in the way.” You can only hope that the intel gets out before the end of the second month—if not, then all of this was for nothing. 

Why couldn’t you have left when you had the chance?

“Fucking Hell! Trick, answer me!”

He was why. 

Simon—the source of all of your problems and the only person who could fix them besides yourself. It’s a sick joke really. 

Vito grabs your chin and you huff out a swift breath, heart skipping beats as he burrows his digits tightly into your skin; hard enough to leave marks. He sighs and clicks his tongue and you have to keep back a whimper as his nails create crescents along your jaw. 

“You won’t tell me anything, will you, then?”

“Negative,” you spit, heated. 

He scoffs. “Of course.” 

Berto throws your head back as you try to snap out and bite at his hand, rabid, but the man’s already gone and the mercenaries behind you yank you back like a dog on a leash. Your knees slide along the floor and you rage trying to turn around before the others are forced to shove your face into the ground. There is a distinctive snapping in your nose bridge as the concrete comes up to meet you; the tears come instinctually after—unable to be stopped as you yell in pain. 

Blood floods your nostrils and mouth, making you cough as Vito’s voice echoes in your ringing ears. 

“Let me get my knives.” 

—

They had you chained in some damp back room, the corners riddled with mold spores and the air heavy with condensation. You were tied to the ceiling—feet dangling uselessly below you and the tips of your boots dragging across the floor with a quiet scrape and a creak of metal. 

Above you, on the hook, the chains were tied so ruthlessly that you’d lost circulation to your arms entirely, nothing but an electric buzzing far inside of your bones. Akin to the static of a TV screen in between connections. Your clothes had been shredded by blades—long sections of your flesh underneath, cut away. 

Blood stains most, if not all, of the floor. It drips from your nose; it falls like rain to pool at your feet in rippling crimson. 

Simon had been your partner during required interrogation training and he was far better at it than you. The man could go for hours through the mental strain that was leveled out by other soldiers on him; stoic and silent. It was the way his eyes would blank that told you he could live through far worse—that he already had. You’d had your fair share as well, but never before had you felt as hopeless as this. 

There was a slim chance that anyone would come for you here. Laswell and Price would carry the guilt of it, but you didn’t want them to. 

The blood slips over your lips, and the taste of copper makes you gag; spitting out saliva from your lips. 

It was half your choice, after all. 

You try to slip into a happy memory as the lights fade in and out, the footsteps and mutterings outside the door of little interest anymore.

ironic, that the man with the mask of a dead person brought you comfort when so little could. 

You never got to tell him how much you loved him. A thin smile comes across your lips. 

“Shouldn’t be out here this late,” the man utters as you lay out in the field, arms and legs splayed and twitching when the long grass brushes against them. “Past curfew.”

“Like you aren't out here with me?” You raise an eyebrow, looking up at the stars now that the large base lights have been dimmed. The air is cold, and the breeze makes you shudder through a chill. But you don’t wipe that smile from your lips. “Bit hypocritical, Simon.”

You hear a low grunt. 

“Out ‘ere because you weren’t answering your damn door.” A shadow slips to your side, and the man settles down with a huff on his lips. Simon retired his combat mask for a simple balaclava instead, and he sighed long as he settled his arm on the bent form of his right leg. 

You blink over at him, raising a brow. 

“Looking for me, Ghosty?” 

“Bloody hell, Trick.” You chuckle, shifting your arms to rest on your chest as you look back at the stars far above. 

“Oh, it’s alright, Big Guy.” The man shakes his head. “I won’t tell anyone you’re going soft for me.” 

“I’m not.”

“You definitely are.”

“Trick, I’m tellin’ you to—”

“Shh!” You wave a hand in his direction, silencing him and making him blink at you in deep annoyance and confusion. Ghost’s eyes were narrowed, the black of his face paint gone and smelling like standard issue body wash. 

He must have gotten out of the shower and come to see if you were still awake before making his way outside when you never answered the door. Funny how he knew where you would be.

“Fucking what, then?” He growls, shoulders wide.

You place a finger to your ear, shifting so you’re sitting up on one elbow and facing Simon. On your face, a wide smile lingers, but on his, the dark brows narrow with knowledge of a deceitful event incoming. “Listen.” 

A silence falls, Simon’s ears twitching for something in the long grass or across the field. Nothing. Nothing but the breeze and the way your face glowed as you watched him, eyes glinting with amusement. 

After a long minute or two, he looks at you with utter bewilderment. You lean in closer, poking a finger into his bicep.

“Can you hear it, Simon?” You’re one of the few he lets call him that, though never in public.

He glares. “No.”

You flutter your digits in the air, giggles trapped in your mouth. A whisper hits the Lieutenant’s ears. “Silence.”

“Bugger off,” he hisses as you reel back and belt out laughter, holding your sides and lightly curling into yourself. “You’re worse than Johnny. Jesus.”

“Aww, c’mon!” You let your laughter die down to chuckles, sanctity of night broken, but not so between the two individuals who look at each other with brimming affection none will name. 

“You’re the one that came to find me, remember?” Your tease makes Ghost roll his eyes, looking away across the open area with its wave-like grasses.

“You’re right, then, I did,” Simon grunts, his hand coming up to rub his neck. “Mistake on my part.”

“Jerk,” a soft slap is leveled to his arm and he chuckles deeply. “But you can’t fool me, Ghosty. I know you’ll always come lookin’ for me—I’m too important to you to lose.”

“Keep kiddin’ yourself, Trickster.” He doesn’t say how he would agree with the statement, it was true after all. “I won’t be dragged into your bloody messes.”

He wouldn’t leave you behind to drown in them, even if it was as simple as you sneaking out of your bunk to watch the stars. 

You’d both known each other too long for that.

You smile over at him as he sighs before slipping off his mask, itching at his stubble with hard fingers. The air settles. No comment about it entering in on the see-through waves—there didn’t need to be one. 

“Mhm,” you hum, beaming. “You keep thinking that, Big Guy.”

“Trick!” Your memory shifts, and you sit up immediately. You’d thought you’d just heard…

Eyes dart out over the field, jumping back and forth rapidly. You look to the side, but Simon is gone entirely.

“Simon?” Heart beating, you stand fully up and turn in a fast circle, confusion and fear infecting your mind.

“Trick!” Pain sparks in your body, and you hiss and grab at your clothes. You blink so fast that you half-believe the world is ending.

“S-Simon?!” What was happening? What was hurting so bad? Where did Simon go?

“Trick, fucking wake up!”

Your eyes snap open and you instantaneously feel the burning pain inside of your ribs. 

The ground is underneath you, hard and wet from your own blood as you yowl and cough, air entering your lungs in quick bursts. 

Hands encase your cheeks, shaking your head—keeping you present. 

A skeletal mask littered with droplets of human fluid stares down at you, and behind it, panicked brown eyes slash through your psyche in the small moment between agony and confusion. 

Simon?

“Holy hell.” It’s that same Manchester accent. The same scrape of vocal cords. “Alright, Sweetheart. Keep those eyes open—keep ‘em on me, yeah?” 

What was going on? You try to open your mouth to say something but all of it is lead. Were your ribs broken? How? And why was Simon’s bottom covering pushed up to his nose; his lips stained with blood? 

The man frantically goes to press into his radio.

“This is Bravo 0-7,” he breathes, and you whimper as your throat gets clogged with congealed saliva and blood. You cough violently, gagging, and Ghost quickly turns you on your side to help you expel it. His hand is hard on your shoulder. 

“I say again, this is Bravo 0-7!” Those browns never leave you, shocked and serious. “Price, I’ve got ‘er. It’s not good; had to revive but I don’t know how long she’s got.”

Revive? You’re spacing in and out, limp, and trying to breathe. 

Simon tears open his medical pouch and begins wrapping tourniquets—packing the wounds with gauze until you can get proper medical treatment on the helo back to base. 

“Bloody…” he trails, Price barking an order over the connection to bring you out; the firefight was moving to the East to give him an opening to sneak back out. “C’mon, Trick.”

Everything swims; you want to go back to that field—those stars. 

Simon was here? Truly? The thought was hard to understand in your state. 

“S-Sim—” Your voice gurgles, and you can’t feel your legs. You had to tell him. Tell him the good and the bad; all of it.

“Don’t talk,” he growls, moving you as your body seizes in a state of static shock. “I’m getting you out of ‘ere.” You’re lifted up in one grand movement, Simon grunting as he shifts you carefully into a bridal hold. “Then you’re going to explain this to me when you’re squared. Won’t take no for an answer.” 

You could feel the anger sizzling off of him even half-conscious. The mixing emotions that convulsed into a mess of adrenaline and desperation. Forcing your eyes to stay open, you blink up at him as he glances down at you at the same time, just before he exits the door he had broken down. 

The visible skin of his lips and chin tighten; going down with the twitch of with a serious frown. Something flutters behind his eyes as he stares before glancing away and clearing his throat. 

“Eyes on me, Trickster. Don’t you dare close ‘em.” You grimace as he begins jogging, heavy boots echoing along the empty corridor as the sounds of gunfire and pandemonium sound off from the other side of the bunker. 

It was hard to push back the black at the sides of your vision; already it was seeping back in. Ghost holds you tight, unwilling to even let you slip an inch from his grip as the lights above swirl, brightening and dimming. 

“Oi!” You’re jostled, and you snap back to it, tensing as your wounds flex and pull. Simon glares. “What’d I just say?”

Your weakly poisoned grimace makes his lips twitch up. 

“Good.” 

There’s the sudden flick of a safety being clicked off, and the Lieutenant halts in a jerking of feet and a ruffle of canvas.

“I’ve heard about a Ghost making his rounds, hm?” Berto stands at the end of the hall, pistol held in front of him. “I saw an apparition disappearing to find one of its own. No worries. She’ll be a ghost, too, soon enough. Perhaps I’ll have to put you both to rest together.” 

The voice makes you go panicked, remembering the tear of flesh and the sharp blades slicing your skin away, chunks that peeled, and the long stripes of flexible tendons. Your lungs fight for breath, your head weakly slapping into Simon’s neck after an attempt to move your body. Limbs shake and battle nerves; the fabric of your brain.

Your blood stains the man’s gear all the way down the front. It’s dripping to the floor, down his arms and off his elbows. You’re bathing him in it—a full-body baptism of betrayal. 

“Berto,” Ghost says, accent casual despite the gun leveled at him. The name is drawn out. “Apologies, but I’m taking back what’s mine.” He tilts his head. “Scratch that, I’m not apologizing for getting back on a Bastard like you, eh? Pity I can’t hang you up like a hog, I’m proper good with a blade too, but as you can see, I’m on a crunch.” 

Vito’s face goes confused, skin scrunching. “What—”

The bang of a bullet being discharged echoes down the way. The clatter of a great expulsion of air from lungs. Stumbling. Gargles. 

The slam of a body to the ground. 

Smoke spreads up from under the clutch of your knees, where Ghost holds the abyssal body of an M19 forward, his finger lightly on the trigger before he shifts it back in well-practiced discipline. 

“Slag,” he spits. 

Simon hikes you farther into him, lending over his available body heat as you shiver. He presses his face into the top of your head, sighing in relief before starting his pace again. The man’s lips brush your flesh as your lids flutter. 

“Still with me?” You whine into his neck, fingers twitching. “I know it hurts, Love. I know. Easy with it.” 

It didn’t just hurt, it burned. Buried like the nine layers of Hell. 

He keeps whispering to you, slinking around corners and stepping into shadows. By the time he makes it outside with you, the chill of the air on the bottom of his face he didn’t even bother to re-cover, you’re tapering on the edge of oblivion again. 

Teetering like a porcelain doll on the end of the high shelf. 

“Bravo 0-6, leaving the bunker now, I need that MedEvac prepped and ready to go,” Simon speaks quickly, not wasting a single instant. 

John’s voice wafts through. “Copy, 0-7. Helo is comin’ in, be ready it’s going to get hot!” 

“Affirm. Keep it frosty down ‘ere.” There’s a low chuckle and the swift wizz of bullets. 

“Get our Trickster back in one piece, Ghost.” Simon hears the buzzing of helicopter blades in the night, a slick form descending from the dark clouds not moments later. He turns away from the flurry of air, walking hurriedly backward so the air doesn’t aggravate you. 

“Trick,” Ghost calls to you above the noise, hearing the hurried feet of medics coming out to take you from him. Your face is scrunched and you burrow into him. “I’m handing you over!” 

You try to open your eyes enough to convey your unease at that. You have to tell him. You have to explain why you had to do it. The guilt is eating you; gnawing with red teeth and gripping with devil’s claws. You have to explain that you love him even if he hates you now. 

Medics grapple you away, and you are in pain, lips peeling back to gasp sharply, thrashing. 

No!

“Fuck,” Ghost growls, pulling you away from the men as they ask him what in the bloody hell he’s doing. He doesn’t even know—all he knows is that he’s pissed at you for what you did, but never in a million years did that mean he wanted to see you in pain. 

Simon can’t lie, when he was told you were alive, the universe had held its breath. A miracle. A ruse. But alive. Alive and trapped. 

“Stop it!” He yells, caging you into him. “I’m here! I’m right here, Trickster!” 

You’re already too gone for it, not recognizing the metal of the helo as you’re settled on your back, the loud slam of the door. Fingers pull and prob as you hiss and snap, suffocating. 

Ghost holds down your shoulders, his eyes right above yours—but you’re not looking. The helo takes off

“Bloody hell,” Simon yells. “Look at me!” 

You don’t know what compels you to do so, but your eyes open just the slightest bit wider. Brown melts into your pupils, taking you in and reminding you of chilled summer nights. Simon. You pant but stop struggling. 

The medics jump into action, ripping away the remains of your shirt and pants so they can get to the wounds; assess the damage done. 

“That’s it,” Simon sighs long, swallowing. “That’s a girl. There we go, Sunshine.” 

You blink, face peeled as everything swirls far more aggressively this time. 

“Listen to me, Trick. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere, you understand. You said I’d always find you, yeah?” Hands grab your cheeks. “Well, I fucking did, eh? I found you. We’re gonna fix you up, Sweetheart. It’ll all be gone by morning.” You stutter down a breath, ragged throat stretching.

“Let ‘em fix you up—”

“I love you.” 

It all fades to black, but all you remember is the sweep of horror that spreads behind the man’s eyes.

—

“You went back,” Price’s arms are crossed, and he stares at you as your fingers play with the sheets of the hospital bed. “Why?”

You sigh and rub at your face.

“Trick.”

“I felt like I needed to,” you give away, twitching your fingers out in an expression of nonchalantness. “I felt…” Your voice trailed off into a growl. “Bad.”

“Feelings aren’t a part of this, Trickster, you bloody know that,” John hisses, leaning his head closer as you glare silently. “If you’d left when you could, none of this would have fucking happened.” 

“I feel bad, Price!” You break, snapping. “I fucking know! But I-I thought if I just got a bit more intel, then this would have been worth it.” Taking a deep breath you shake your head and rub at your face, all of the bandages and stitches pulling tight. “It’s eating at me. I can’t…I can’t just act like what I lied about can be forgotten.” 

You shrug as the man listens silently, monitors beeping and the small buzz of the overhead lights. 

“Soap barely looks at me—Gaz gave me that fucking pity smile and it makes me want to scream.”

“They’ll get over it.” The Captain repeats what he said months prior firmly. “They know the Op was top priority, they’ll grow up and be back to fucking around in days.”

You scoff, muttering in a dejected tone. “He won’t.”

John is still, fixing his feet from under him as he rolls his nose and looks away slowly. 

Simon hadn’t come to visit once in the time you’d been here in the ward—four days. That fact alone makes you restless. You don’t remember what you said to him, if you said anything. But you knew that he wasn’t going to be going out of his way to be near you anymore. 

You’d taken a grenade to the relationship you’d built. Toy building blocks are scattered. 

“Simon’s…Simon,” Price ends on. You groan and itch at the IV in your hand. “He cares about you more than anyone, yeah? He just needs time. Wasn’t himself after the set-up.”

“I’ve been told,” Gaz had informed you about the Lieutenant's self-isolation after your ‘death’. The snappy orders—deathly glares. He’d gone back to the ruthless man he was in the field and instead of being directed at his enemies, it was directed at them.

Kyle explained how he’d argued with Price about how he could have gotten to you, before abruptly falling silent and stalking away as if a flip had been switched. Snake eyes and clenched fists. 

They’d heard him in the gym late at night, reaming on the punching bags. They didn’t think he slept more than three hours per day if the red lines in his eyes were anything to go by.

And then they were told that you were alive but captured, and he’d gotten worse.

You’d nearly started sobbing when the Sergeant had told you all of that.

“I betrayed his trust, Price,” you level. “I…I never wanted to do that to him. Ever. Not Simon.”

A shadow passes by the door just as the Captain grunts. “That’s the job.”

“That’s not the job I signed up for when I got into this. We don’t lie to our own.”

“‘We get dirty, the world—’” You cut him off.

“Yeah, yeah, ‘stays clean’.” Your eyes level with his. “I can do the dirty work, John, you know that. Infiltration and undercover work is what I’m good at.” The man nods slightly. “But if you ask me to betray One-Four-One’s trust again, I’m out.”

Blue eyes blink in shock, but you don’t let him speak.

“Find someone else to get fake blown up in a building. I can’t get his fucking screams out of my head.” John watches you silently, eyes narrowed. 

You meet that gaze head-on, not backing down from this.

The Captain shakes his head a minute later. “Bloody made for each other,” he mutters under his breath, grunting. Another shadow slips past going the opposite direction, probably a nurse.

Without another word John turns and exits the room, tossing a hand behind his head casually in a way to say goodbye.

You huff and roll your eyes, heat on your cheeks. 

The day wains, and you let the nurses come in to do their checkups and replace the IV. As the curtains are pulled back into place, supper sits heavy in your stomach. 

You wanted to see Simon. 

You knew it wouldn’t go well, and wouldn’t be the goody-goody outcome you prayed for…but you felt wrong without apologizing in person. It went against your morals, and already those were incredibly skewed. Maybe he’d yell, or even ignore you as if you weren’t there.

Simon wasn’t above not speaking to people he didn’t like.

You had to try.

When all was dark, you shuffled out of the hospital bed and fought the weakness of your legs. Shaking like a leaf, you walked around with only your tied gown, unapologetic of the slit down the back showing flashes of your bra and underwear. 

It wouldn’t be anything the Lieutenant hadn’t seen before.

Walking through the silence, you sigh and stand outside of his door; dread in your heart and seeping from the pulled stitches of your wounds. Your bare feet on the tile make you shiver. 

Lifting up a fist, you hesitate. 

Your hand hovers over the wood, sliding forward before you pull it back to you. Closing your eyes tight, you clench your jaw once and take a deep breath.

Knock-knock-knock. Knock-knock.

The sequence was your call sign. If you knocked like that, he would know it was you—whereas Simon's own was just a single slam of the side of his fist.

The only real problem now was that he wasn’t answering.

You stare dumbly at the barrier, blinking like a fool. It takes you longer than you’d like to admit to understand the realization that he wasn’t ignoring you—he just wasn’t in his room. 

Taking a step back, you rub the back of your neck in exasperation and hurry to the nearest exit.

“Of course,” you breathe. You know exactly where he is at a time like this.

The field holds a standing shadow, a ghost of issued fatigues with a thick jacket against the chill that leaves you shivering. Simon stares out over the training grounds with his hands in his pockets, balaclava pulled all the way down to hide him from you. 

You come to a slow halt behind him and stare. 

It’s not long before the man gunts, turning his head back from over his shoulder to look at you blankly. He knew you were there.

The eye contact stays for a long, long while—until you’re hypnotized in the shades of brown and amber and the large build that seems to broaden because of your appearance.

“I’m here to apologize.” You say it breathlessly. “I’m not asking you to hear me out, but I have to let you know I regret doing it. Price said that it was time-sensitive and I—”

Stopping yourself, you look away. It sounded too much like an excuse, you hissed to yourself. At the end of the day, it was still your acceptance that pushed the pawn forward. 

“I’m sorry, Simon,” you breathe. “I betrayed your trust.”

His eyes are piercing you, but you still can’t look at him. The man slightly turns your way. His voice was monotone and grunting out like a dog.

“You think I couldn’t handle it?” Your heart starts, and you’re shaking your head instantly.

“No.” You explain quickly—honestly. “It’s that…I didn’t want you to.” 

You hear his lips take in a quiet breath. Simon rolls his shoulders before looking away from you. Nothing could have prepared you for what came next.

“You said you loved me.” Your body freezes, jaw going slack as your face drops. You don’t speak, mute as if the air in your lungs has been stolen.

You had done…what?

All of your tricks couldn’t get you out of this one.

“I,” you force a fake laugh, hands beginning to shake. “I, what? No, I’m sure that’s not what I said. A-are you sure it wasn’t, like, an ‘I appreciate you’ or maybe a…a,” your voice catches. “A whole ‘I’m fond of you’ sort of thing…? Hm?”

Simon takes a step forward and you take one back. This was worse than torture, you decided. The pain in your pulling stitches and re-set nose was welcome here.

“Trick,” Ghost utters, and you stare hard at his neck, humming. “Stop talking.”

“Copy,” you whisper quickly, shoulders falling. 

He’s so close you can feel his body heat melting into you, and you want nothing more than to touch him. Simon’s hand comes up to your chin, and he angles it up as you stop breathing, lips parted.

“I heard you in the med ward talkin’ to Price. Was outside the door the ‘ole time.” The shadow. 

He tilts your head to the side to stare at the medical tape over the slashes in your skin. The scars won’t bother you—you had plenty of others to show as well. But Simon was…studying you. Assessing. 

His eyes blink slowly with those long pale lashes, and they slide up to you as he leans in close to your ear. Still, you stand comatose.

“You put me through a fucking heap ‘o hurt, Love.” You stare over his shoulder, not speaking, not moving. 

Simon leans back and lets go of your chin, brushing a finger over your nose and the puffy skin there.

“Never do that again.” It’s final, how he says it. But the layers of depth are plain to hear. Simon speaks low and even—gaze trapping yours like a curse. 

You know he won’t talk about the things you’ve heard. The aggression or the late-night gym trips. You’ve known him for years, and know his brain like the back of your hand.

Shivering, you nod once, content with not answering verbally to break the sanctity of the moment. Seeing Simon like this made you ease your fears. You clear your throat to push back the stuffiness.

“Thought you held grudges, Big Guy?” Nearly not heard, you mutter and pick at where the IV needle is supposed to be. 

A hand catches yours and stops you from making it bleed.

“Do,” Ghost grumbles, turning your hand over and moving his face closer until you feel his breath. “Just not with my Bird.” 

His balaclava is suddenly up to his nose, and those lips that had been covered in your blood previously situated themselves perfectly to yours. 

You gasp, arm outstretched beside you in shock. 

You’d kissed him before, but this felt different. More intimate. Simon’s arms slip around your waist, and you retaliate by locking your shaking arms behind his back, feeling the gentle passes of his lips. 

Mouth to mouth, you breathe each other in as if grasping for the other’s soul in desperation. A desperation that tells you how much the beast of a man around you was terrified of your death and the body he had to carry into the helo—of the lengths he would go to stave death from touching your tender flesh. 

No, only he was allowed to do that, and he was a reaper in his own right.

A small death that infected you at every breath puffing into your mouth, every whine and whimper he could draw like water to swallow down as ambrosia. Nectar of the Gods, and it was right there in his arms. Back. Alive. 

To be alive in the summer field of this old military base was to accept that death, and into it, hope that the few moments you had together truly made a difference. 

Simon would hold you there—and when that was done, wrap you in his jacket and carry your battered body back inside; watching your swollen lips and the wide eyes as they gaze back at him. 

Because he could hate you all he wanted for this, for the lies, for the way you made him care…but the both of you would still be alive to do so.

He guessed that was all that mattered.

TAGS:

Your face does something that stops his heart. It opens. That’s the only word for it. You step inside and your expression unfolds, and the love that moves across your features is so naked, so undefended, that he feels it land in his chest like a bullet he didn’t know was coming.

You’re looking at Price. You’re happy. 

The dog in his ribs whimpers, tucks its tail between its legs.

You take another step, already smiling, mouth shaping around a word that hasn’t arrived yet, and then your eyes track past Price’s shoulder to the woman tucked against him. To the proprietary ease of her posture. To the hand she’s resting on his forearm like it belongs there.

Laswell is talking, her voice cutting through the noise, ”…how did Price propose then? Go on, tell us…”

Ghost’s jaw locks. He knows what’s coming before it lands. He can see the trajectory, the inevitability of it, the way something thrown, arcs before it drops.

The woman beside Price, his fiancée- Jesus Christ- lifts her hand again and the ring catches the light. “He did it in the garden,” she says, laughing. “With this ridiculous bouquet- ”

The change is immediate. Seismic.

Your face doesn’t crumble. It empties. All that light, that unguarded joy, just…drains. Like watching a glass tip and spill in slow motion, inevitable and obscene. Your eyebrows pull together, confusion first, then something sharper. Your lips part but nothing comes out.

He watches you see the ring and you go so still he could mark the exact second your nervous system shuts down everything that isn’t critical.

Freeze response. Textbook.

Your head shakes. Just once. A tiny movement, barely there, the kind of denial that happens below conscious thought. No. This isn’t real. I’m seeing it wrong.

But you’re not.

The table erupts in warm, affectionate chaos. Someone claps. Someone else catcalls. Price ducks his head with that sheepish grin he gets, the one that says aw shucks while his ego preens.

Ghost doesn’t move. Can’t. His body has turned to stone.

Because he’s watching you die standing up.

Your hand comes up to your chest, slow, uncertain, like you’re checking for a wound you can’t quite feel yet. Your mouth shapes a word he can’t hear. Could be no. Could be please. Could be nothing at all, just your body trying to make sound while your brain goes to static.

You’re shaking your head again, sharper now, faster, and he knows that gesture too. He’s seen it in mirrors at night when sleep won’t come and the past gets loud. This can’t be happening. I’m wrong. I misunderstood.

But you didn’t.

He sees the exact moment it locks into place. When the confusion hardens into certainty and the certainty detonates. Your shoulders curl inward like you’ve taken a hit. Your breath catches, he sees it in the hitch of your chest, the way your lips press bloodless.

Your eyes sweep the table one more time. Desperate. Searching for an exit that doesn’t exist, some explanation that will reorganize the world back into something that makes sense.

There isn’t one.

Price is laughing. He’s laughing, hand on his fiancée’s knee, looking every inch a man who’s chosen well and knows it. He doesn’t see you. Doesn’t feel the weight of your gaze, the freight of your devastation landing on him like ash.

He has no idea you’re there.

The dog in Ghost’s chest bares its teeth. His hands curl into fists beneath the table, slow and deliberate, nails biting into his palms to keep the rest of him locked down. The want to move, to stand, to cross the room, to step between you and this, is so violent it tastes sour.

But he doesn’t. Can’t. Not here. Not now. Not without a plan.

You step backward. It’s not a decision, just a body trying to escape a trap. The bell jingles again, thinner this time, and you’re gone.

Just like that.

The door swings shut and you’re erased. The table doesn’t notice. Price doesn’t notice. The noise swells back into the gap you left, laughter and clinking glasses and someone ordering another round, and the world continues like you were never there at all.

Ghost stares at the door. His pulse is a hammer. His breathing is too controlled, the kind of controlled that comes before violence, and he has to force his hands to unclench one finger at a time.

He thinks about you walking out into the cold with your chest caved in and no one to catch you. He thinks about the text you probably sent hours ago- have a good night, be safe- still sitting in Price’s phone, unread or ignored. He thinks about you going home to an empty flat that still smells like him, still has his coffee mug in the sink, still holds the shape of a life you thought you were building.

He thinks about the way you looked at Price before you saw the ring. Like he was the sun and you’d been cold your whole life.

The woman beside Price leans in, pressing a kiss to his jaw, and Ghost has to look away before the leash snaps.

“You alright, mate?” Soap’s voice, closer than expected.

Ghost blinks. Turns his head a fraction. His face is a mask. Always is. “Fine.”

Soap’s eyes narrow, because Soap is a pain in the arse who notices things, but he doesn’t push. Just claps Ghost on the shoulder and turns back to the conversation.

Ghost doesn’t hear another word.

He’s already making lists. Cataloging. Planning.

He waits exactly forty seven seconds after you vanish into the night. Enough time for the door to stop swinging, for the laughter inside to swallow your absence whole, for his own pulse to settle into a low drum.

“Smoke,” he says to the table, the word a flat stone dropped into the river of noise. It’s not a request. His chair scrapes back, a sound like a bone resetting.

Soap glances up, eyes sharp, but Ghost is already turning, a wall of shadow detaching itself from the light. He doesn’t look at Price. Doesn’t dare. The image of your emptying face is branded behind his eyelids, and if he looks at the man now, the leash will snap. He pushes through the door, and the cold air slaps him.

He spots you immediately, halfway down the block, a small, hunched silhouette moving like a leaf caught in a drain’s current. Not running. Drifting. Defeated already.

He follows. Not close. He keeps a buffer of shadow and pavement between you, a man who knows how to tail a mark without becoming a presence. Your hand is pressed to your sternum, as if holding your heart in place. He matches his stride to the limp rhythm of yours, a silent, stalking guardian.

You find the bus shelter. A cage of damp metal and streaked glass. You sink onto the bench, folding in on yourself, and he watches from the mouth of an alley, a statue in a bomber jacket. You don’t cry. You just sit, staring at nothing, while the city peels its glowing advertisements around you. You look like the ghost of your own life.

The dog in his ribs whines, pressing against the cage of bone.

He moves then, not toward you directly, but at an angle, as if his destination just happens to be the same slice of wet pavement. His boots are quiet on the concrete. 

He stops a polite ten feet away, leaning against the shelter’s side, his broad back to the brick. He doesn’t look at you. He digs into his pocket, pulls out a crumpled pack, taps one free.

The scratch of the lighter is loud in the damp quiet. The first drag burns, sharp and familiar. He exhales a plume of smoke that the wind carries away instantly.

Only then does he turn his head, just enough to see you in his periphery. You’re watching the coal of his cigarette, a tiny, dying star in the gloom.

“Rough night?” he asks, his voice a low rasp, sandpaper over gravel. It’s not really a question.

You flinch, just a little, as if remembering you’re not alone in the universe. You look at him, your eyes huge and liquid in the reflected streetlight. You don’t answer.

He taps another cigarette from the pack, holds it out between two fingers. An offering. A bridge. “Looks like y’need it more than I do.”

A beat of hesitation. Then your hand, pale and trembling slightly, reaches out. Your fingers brush his as you take it. Cold skin. A static shock jumping the gap.

He leans in with the lighter, cupping the flame against the wind. In its sudden, intimate glow, he sees everything: the salt tracks you haven’t wiped, the bruised look under your eyes, the way your lips are bitten raw.

You inhale, cough a little, then settle. The smoke leaves your mouth in a shaky sigh. “Thanks.”

He grunts, shifts his weight, goes back to looking at the street. “Man trouble,” he states. Another non question.

A wet, humorless sound escapes you. It’s almost a laugh. “Something like that.” You take another drag, your voice softening to a whisper the wind almost steals. “Found out my boyfriend is engaged. To someone else. Tonight. In there.” You jerk your chin back toward the pub, a world away.

He lets the silence sit. Lets the words curdle in the air between you. You stare at the glowing end of your cigarette. “It’s like… you know when you’re a kid, and you’re always the last one picked? For everything? You think, maybe as an adult, it’ll be different. That someone will finally… choose you.” Your voice cracks on the last word. “Turns out, you can be chosen for the team and still not be on the roster.”

The metaphor is perfect. It lands in his chest. 

He thinks of the dossier in his mind, the quiet life you’ve built, the way Price talked about you like a precious, secret thing. A thing he kept in a drawer.

“What are you gonna do about it?” Ghost asks. His tone is neutral, like he’s asking for the time.

You laugh again, a hollow, broken sound. “Nothing. I’m not… I’m a coward. I’ll probably just… go home. Delete his number. Try to forget how stupid I was.” You say it like you’re reciting a punishment you deserve.

The dog snarls. Coward. He shoves it down, muzzles it. The word doesn’t fit you. What he saw in your face wasn’t cowardice. It was annihilation.

“Could do nothing,” he muses, taking a slow drag. “Clean. Easy. Lets him win.”

You look at him, curious now through the pain.

“Could also key his car,” he continues, voice still that low, casual rumble. “Sugar in the gas tank. Classic. Practical. A nuisance.”

A startled, wet sniff from you. Not quite a laugh, but close.

“Could tell his fiancé,” he offers, watching a taxi splash through a puddle. “Post the evidence online. Burn both his worlds down in the same match.” He says it with no malice, just the calm assessment of a strategist.

“That’s… violent,” you whisper.

“Is it?” He finally turns his head fully to look at you. In the half light, his eyes are dark pits, but his expression is oddly still. “He made a promise to her. He made a home with you. He’s living in the lie. You’d just be turning on the lights.”

You hold his gaze for a long moment, then look away, shaking your head. “I couldn’t.”

He shrugs, a massive, slow movement. “Then there’s the fun option.”

“Fun?”

“Send him a wedding gift. From the two of you. Something tasteful, but personal. A set of knives with your initials engraved. A photo album of your best moments. Let him explain that to her on the morning of.” He says it so deadpan, so utterly serious, that it takes you a second.

Then you make a sound, a choked, surprised giggle that bubbles up through the tears and the hurt. It’s raw and real and it hooks something deep in his gut, yanking hard. The dog in his ribs doesn’t just sit up; it rolls over, exposes its belly. The feeling is terrifying and warm.

“You’re terrible,” you say, but you’re smiling, just a little. A fragile, broken thing, but a smile.

“I’ve been told,” he murmurs, and the corner of his own mouth- usually a grim, flat line- ticks upward for a millisecond. A rare event.

You finish your cigarette, stubbing it out on the wet metal bench. “I should… go. Try to walk this off.” You stand, unsteady.

He nods, straightening from the wall. “Keep the pack.” He holds out the crumpled box. “Might need another.”

You hesitate, then take it. Your fingers don’t brush this time. “Thank you. For the smoke. And the… talk. And the terrible, terrible ideas.”

“Any time.” The words are gravel in his mouth. He means them more than you can know.

You offer one last, wan smile, then turn, shoving the cigarette pack into your coat pocket. He watches you walk away, your shoulders a little less hunched, your steps a little more certain. You don’t look back.

He stays until you turn the corner and are swallowed by the night; only then does he pull out his phone. The screen illuminates his impassive face. A simple mapping app opens. A single, pulsing red dot appears, moving slowly away from him. South. Toward the river- your aunt’s house, he’ll later find out.

He’d palmed the wafer thin tracker while lighting your cigarette, slipping it into the cellophane of the pack with a sleight of hand born of a thousand darker operations. It’s not about trust. It’s about logistics, about needing to know where you are, filling in the empty blanks in the dossier in his mind, starting out with where you live and what your name is. 

It’s a plan beginning to breathe.

He drops his own cigarette, grinds it under his heel, and melts back into the shadows from which he came. The pub, Price, the laughter- it’s all background noise now. His focus is on the glowing dot, on the woman carrying his silence in her pocket, walking home to a ruin that is no longer hers alone.

***

The information comes to him in clean, orderly packets, filed away in the silent vault of his mind. He learned your street, your flat number, the fact your window faced a brick wall but you kept a pot of resilient herbs on the sill anyway. He learned your name- something that made the dog in his ribs wag its tail when he imagined attaching the name Riley to it. He learned your work schedule, the grocery store you preferred, the route you took on evening walks when the silence in the flat grew too thick to breathe.

Every new detail was a treasure offered to the dog in his ribs. You hum when you cooks. Tail thump. You rereads the same fantasy novels when you’re sad. A happy whine. You still haven't changed the locks. A low, protective growl that vibrated through his sternum. The dossier grew, rich and textured, a map of a life built in quiet corners. The lead in his chest grew taut, a constant, physical pull in your direction.

For six weeks, he maintained the perimeter. He was a shadow in a parked car three streets over, a silhouette in a opposite building’s window at dawn, a presence felt but never seen. He watched you move through the world with that careful, apologetic grace, your loneliness a scent he could now trace on the wind. The dog paced, impatient, nails clicking against the bone of his resolve. Close enough to watch, but not to touch. 

The rule was beginning to chafe.

The break came on a Tuesday, damp and grey. The dog tugged, hard and insistent, a final, definitive yank on the leash. Enough.

He planned it like a mission: minimal variables, clear objective. The cafe you visited every Tuesday after your therapy appointment (he knew about that, too). He arrived first, chose a table with a clear view of the door and a solid wall at his back. He held a newspaper he didn’t read, a prop in a play with an audience of one.

His stomach flipped with nerves when you entered, shaking rain from your hair, that same slight hesitation at the threshold. Your eyes scanned the room, passed over him, then snapped back, and his heart ricocheted off his rib cage. A flicker of recognition, then confusion. The man from the bus shelter. The one with the terrible ideas and the quiet voice.

He let a moment pass, then looked up as if sensing a gaze. He gave a small, neutral nod- I see you, but I won’t intrude- and returned to his paper. The choice was yours, even if his throat suddenly felt dry and his palms sweaty.

He felt the moment you decided. A soft inhale, then the shuffle of your boots on the tile. You appeared at the edge of his table, holding your mug like a shield.

“Hi,” you said, your voice a little rusty from disuse. “Um. From the… the rainy night.”

He lowered the paper slowly. “Right.” He gestured to the empty chair opposite him with his chin. “Join me. If you like.”

You did, lowering yourself into the seat as if it might collapse, and something loosened under his skin. A few minutes of brittle silence passed, filled by the hiss of the espresso machine and the murmur of other lives.

“So,” he began, stirring his black coffee with a deliberate slowness so you wouldn’t see the way his fingers trembled. “Did you ever key the car?”

The question was so blunt, so devoid of social preamble, that it startled a genuine laugh from you. It was a better sound than he’d imagined. Clearer. “No. No keying.”

“Sugar?”

“No sugar.”

“Photo album?”

You shook your head, a real smile touching your lips. “I’m afraid I went with the coward’s option. Nothing. Radio silence.” You looked into your tea. “Deleted everything. Pretended he was a ghost.”

He’s the ghost, Ghost thought, the irony a bitter pill. I’m the one who’s real. “Clean break,” he said instead. “Sensible.”

“It feels less sensible and more… pathetic.” You sighed, wrapping your hands around the warm mug. “I just couldn’t face it. The drama. The confrontation. Seeing him… with her.” You glanced up at him, your big, careful eyes searching his. “Does that make me weak?”

“No.” The answer was immediate, absolute. “It makes you someone who’s had to swallow too many broken things already. Your throat gets sore.” He’d meant to say something less revealing, but the truth slipped out, sandpapered raw.

You stared at him, and for a terrifying second, he thought he’d shown too much of the dog’s teeth. But then your shoulders relaxed, just a fraction. As if he’d named a pain you thought was yours alone.

He steered the conversation then, with the subtle skill of a man used to directing focus away from himself. He asked about your job, the parts you liked. He asked about your hobbies. He asked what you were reading.

And you, trained by a lifetime of being the listener, kept trying to hand the spotlight back. “What about you? What do you do?” you’d ask.

“Contract work. Boring,” he’d deflect. “Tell me about the book. The dog in the story- is it loyal?”

“You travel a lot?” you’d probe later.

“Here and there. You said you walk by the river… is it better in the morning or at night?”

He was a wall, gently but firmly reflecting every question back to you. It was a novel experience. You’d start a sentence, pause, expecting to be interrupted, to be tuned out. He’d just wait, his gaze steady and patient, until you found the words again. He watched you slowly unfold, like one of the flowers he’d seen you buy from a market vendor (he knew about that, too). Tentative, colorful, surprising yourself.

You talked about your fear of large parties, your secret love for terrible baking shows, the way you wanted to learn how to fix a dripping tap but didn’t know where to start. Ordinary things. Sacred things. The dog in his chest was lying on its back, paws in the air, utterly disarmed.

The cafe emptied and refilled around you. The light through the window shifted from grey to a pale, watery gold. You were mid-sentence, explaining why you preferred pencils to pens, when you glanced at the clock on the wall and gasped.

“Oh my god. It’s been three hours.” You looked at him, mortified. “I’ve been talking for three hours. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He meant it. They were the three most peaceful hours of his life. A silent, sun dappled clearing in the middle of a war zone. “I wasn’t keeping track.”

“I should… I should let you go.” You began gathering your things, flustered.

He saw the opening, a door about to swing shut. The dog whimpered. Now.

“Before you do,” he said, his voice deliberately even, unconcerned. “Might be good to have a number. In case you ever decide to pursue one of those terrible ideas. Or… need a second opinion on a dripping tap.”

You froze, your hands on your scarf. You looked at him- really looked- searching for the angle, the hunter’s glint you were so accustomed to. You found only steady, calm patience. A wall, yes, but one you could lean against.

A slow, shy smile bloomed on your face. It was the most beautiful weapon he’d ever been struck by. “Okay,” you said softly.

He handed you his phone and watched you type in your number. Your name appeared on the screen, that soft beautiful name, now in his official possession. The leash in his chest went slack with a profound, almost painful relief.

He saved it, then sent a quick, generic text to your phone so you’d have his. Your pocket buzzed. The connection was made. A live wire, humming between you.

“I should…” you said again, standing.

He stood with you, a courtesy that made you blink. “Take care of yourself,” he said.

“You too. And… thank you. For the company.”

He nodded, watching you walk out into the fading afternoon light. You didn’t hunch your shoulders. You didn’t look at the ground. You held your head a little higher.

He sat back down, alone at the table, and allowed himself one deep, shuddering breath. In the quiet of his ribs, the dog was ecstatic, spinning in happy, frantic circles. He placed a mental hand on its head, not to chastise, but to soothe.

Easy, he thought, a silent command to the wild joy within him. Patience. We have her number now. We have time.

Some of those students become closer to the teachers. What was once a student-teacher relationship blossom into friendships. Despite how much Nemuri and Hizashi tease Aizawa about adopting all of his students, they’re both just as bad. Nemuri alone has been named God Mom to no less than 8 former students' children and Hizashi is honorary uncle to 12.

Aizawa has always extended an open door policy at school, which for some of his former students, translates into an open door policy for his home. They come to him with wounds that need patched, or a place to crash for the night if exhaustion after a long patrol makes it unsafe to travel further than his front door. A few times, he’s had to work them through panic attacks or episodes of self doubt after a particularly bad fight. Usually if he sees on the news one of his former students involved in an attack where civilians are killed, he preemptively sets out what he knows will bring that particular student comfort before they even stumble to his front door.

Every once in a blue moon, some of his former students (who are all little shits, he swears) will come knocking with no other purpose than to check up on him bother him. They’ll breeze past him once he opens the door, bags of groceries or piles of take out in hand. They’ll mumble a half hearted “I was in the neighborhood” not convincingly at all and set about guilt tripping persuading Aizawa to eat a proper meal with them (because you don’t spend three years with Aizawa as your teacher without learning he’s horrible at caring for himself).

You’re one of them. Despite having been in the first class Aizawa had ever taught as a teacher, you still reach out constantly show up several times a month, the same excuse falling from your lips as you slip past him and into his apartment with a cheeky grin. Aizawa always grumbles as you replenish his fridge with actual food instead of jelly packets before cleaning up parts of his apartment all the while cooking him dinner, filling the air with polite talk and the smell of food that never fails to make his stomach rumble.

So he isn’t surprised when you knock on his door one evening even though you were just over two nights ago. He is surprised when he opens the door to find you standing there with nothing but a file in your hands, face flushed, and gaze averted.

“Y/N,” he grunts, eyebrow raised.

“Uh. F-fancy seeing you here.” Your eyes dart everywhere but his face. This was not the cool confident person that he knew. Your shoulders are dragged up to your ears, the folder held in front of you like a shield, while you shift your weight back and forth on the balls of your feet.

“I live here,” Aizawa responds.

“Right! Right…” you trail off, before blurting. “I need your help and you’re the only one I could think of!”

He looks at you, taking in your uncharacteristic stance, before sighing and moving to the side, holding the door open for you to come in.

After the both of you are settled at the dining room table, cups of fresh coffee steaming in your hands, he clears his throat. “You needed help?”

You jump slightly and bite your bottom lip, before sliding the folder over towards him. He picks it up and begins to flip through it, eyes raking the pages as his eyebrows begin to steadily climb his forehead. “The Commission wants me to go undercover in a sex trafficking ring. There’s been a recent uprising in human trafficking and the ring they want me to go undercover in has a massive influence in Japan. At least 27% of all trafficking happens due to them and another 36% happens through connections with them.” Aizawa grunts, reading through the same information that you were providing verbally.

“This operation has been in the works for years now and my part in the mission could destabilize the human trafficking in Japan and provide us with some breathing room to put some contingency plans in place for the next trafficking ring that pops up.” You tap the side of the mug with your perfectly manicured fingers.

Aizawa let out a breath. “That’s a lot. Jesus kid. Congratulations.”

An operation like that would rocket you into the top 100 easily, if not the top 50.

You hum in reply, a bouncing leg joining the rhythmic tapping of the mug in what he recognizes as a nervous tic. You’ve never been one to be nervous so immediately his concern and curiosity is piqued. His eyes slid to your face over the top of the folder calculating.

“What do you need my help with then?” He asks. If they wanted to bring him in for information or as a hero on the case, why send you and not someone from the Commision? Before he can start processing this enigma, you reach over, pulling the folder from his hands and flip through to the back, taking out a section of the folder once you find what you’re looking for. You slid it to him.

He takes it into his hands, looking down at it briefly to read the information, and then raises his gaze to meet yours.

“Your undercover identity?”

You nod. “They want me to go in as one of the victims. It would be easier and less time consuming than trying to infiltrate as a villain. But sources think they’re subduing them with drugs to make it easier to hold and transport the victims as well as prevent them from fighting back. With my Quirk, I’ll be able to infiltrate easily and find their base or bases of operation without being inhibited. We’re confident they’re bouncing the victims around several locations to make it harder to track. While I’m in, I can tag the locations for a future raid so the heroes can hit them all at once and minimize the chance of escape or loss of life.”

Your Quirk neutralized drugs, poisons, and other toxins on yourself and other people. You were primarily a rescue hero that took care of things like toxic spills, gas leaks, and exposures. He recalls one time a child who suddenly got their Quirk (a simple but powerful ability to change the structure of molecules at will) and wound up turning the air in a grocery store to carbon monoxide, poisoning everyone inside. While emergency workers and other heroes wore gas masks, you simply waltzed inside and gave the scared kid a dose of Quirk suppressants to temporarily nullify his power until he saw a Quirk counselor and learned to control it. All the while you sat there with him in your arms agreeing with him that space was very cool, not at all affected by the deadly gas while you went about ventilating the place. Aizawa could see why the Commission reached out to you for this assignment versus someone else with more experience in infiltration.

“And where do I come in?” He asks again.

“Sensei… I’ll be going in as a victim. I’ll be undercover for a while. Best guess is several weeks, worst is several months. I’m under no illusion that I’ll be able to walk away with my…,” you purse your lips. “… dignity still intact. I’m… not ok with it per say… but I’m willing to do it to save lives. Besides, I've already been set up with mandatory therapy before and afterwards.”

“Y/N… that’s a lot.” Aizawa’s eyebrows furrow together in concern.

You nod your head. “Yeah. But I’m the only one. I can neutralize the drugs and leave me in the right state of mind. Not to mention that bacteria and viruses count as a toxin to my Quirk so I’m at no risk for picking up anything. And I’ve already started on long term birth control. Nobody else can fill these parameters.”

He got that. It sucked, but he got it. “So when do you leave,” he asks, sliding the paper back to you, which you tuck neatly back into the folder.

“In two weeks.” His eyes widen and he sat up straight.

“So soon??”

You look up at him, something simmering beneath your gaze. “For you maybe. This has been in the works for a long time now on my end. I’m only telling you for two reasons. I… uh… got permission to explain it to you.”

His eyes narrow. “Why?”

“The first is to ask you to look after my cat, obviously.” You give him a cheeky grin. He nods, well used to former students asking him of this when missions took longer than a day to be completed.

“And the second thing?”

You avert your gaze again, back to fiddling with the mug in your hands. “Sensei… do you remember the night of the typhoon nearly a year ago?”

He nods, heat rising to his ears. Of course he remembered. How could he forget?

You showed up on his doorstep halfway through a typhoon that hit Japan and effectively shut everything down. The only people out were emergency workers and pro heroes that could handle the rampaging storm and assist in relocation of citizens who’s homes had been destroyed or help them towards hospitals.

He had pulled you inside, soaked to the bone, and helped you dry off while grumbling about how illogical it was for you to be out in this. Despite offering you a change of his dry clothes, you were still freezing, so he got to work on setting up the heater for you. It ran for four minutes before the electricity in his building cut out.

He debated for exactly ten seconds before pulling you into his bed with him, limbs tangled together, while he attempted to rub feelings back into your skin.

All the while, he was hyper aware of how you had taken off your underwear, leaving your breasts squished against his chest, while your legs were tangled together. He fought against the growing erection in his pants, diligently thinking about everything that would turn him off like the statistics of cats that die in shelters year round.

Your shivers die off slowly which leads to your eyes flickering up at him, gaze too wide, lips parted into a soft sigh. “Aizawa-sensei…”

And then he was taking your lips into a slow deep kiss, lips parting slightly. He drew your bottom lip between his teeth, mouth slanted across yours. One arm snaked behind the small of your back tugging you closer, while the other trailed under your shirt, fingers lightly caressing your skin in a way that had you arching, as he settled his fingers under the curve of your breast teasingly.

You sighed under his touch, as he deepened the kiss, tongue darting out. He moved, positioning himself over top of you between your legs. The hand that was behind your back was suddenly cupping your face in a way that seemed to sear your flesh in its intimacy. His other hand cupped your breast, fingers dragging along your hardened nipple in a way that had you moaning, pushing up into him, pelvis grinding into his hard on in a way that made him see stars.

His hands trailed down to your hips, tugging at the waistline, and just as you lifted his hips to give him access, the lights flashed back on, freezing Aizawa in place.

Shame flooded every ounce of his body. Here he was, taking advantage of you when you needed his help. What kind of pro hero was he? What kind of teacher? What kind of friend-?

“I-“ he started, eyes dancing around to avoid look at your flushed face. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

He untangled himself from your limbs, unable to fully look at you through his guilt. Before you could even say anything, he was gone.

The next morning you were gone too. You stayed away for several weeks, the longest amount of time for you, to the point where he had convinced himself he had ruined that relationship you had with him. He hated himself for it. Sure, he had thought about you in that way before. Sure, he had had dreams of you before (starting after Nemuri teased him, saying you were always acting like Aizawa’s wife so when was he gonna make it official?) that spilled over into fantasies when he touched himself or even when he entertained other women. But he had never let himself act on those thoughts because he was respectful and responsible. And he didn’t want to risk driving you away. Until now.

So when you showed up a few weeks later, arms full of groceries, breezing in and acting like nothing had happened, he nearly collapsed in relief. And then proceeded to follow your lead and never talk of it again, even if it meant the fantasies became more frequent and intense.

“Of course I remember.” He shifts in his seat, this time averting his gaze. This was the first time you had brought it up.

You brought the mug to your lips and drank deeply from it, before settling it back down between your two hands. “You asked me why I was out in such a storm and I never answered you, but the truth is, that was the day I officially learned of everything this assignment detailed. And because of that I… I wanted to see you immediately. Enough to risk the wrath of Mother Nature herself.”

“Why,” he murmurs.

Fingers tap the side of the mug again as your eyes shifts. “I knew what I would eventually have to do. But the truth is…I came here that night with ulterior motives. Because I haven’t… done that kind of thing before. You were the furthest I’ve ever gone with anyone, that is. And I was willing to go further. Of course your guilt complex and morals had to get in the way of that.” You give him a cheeky grin, before the smile falters. “And in the end I was too embarrassed and too much of a coward to explain that to you at the time. What you must have thought of me… I became convinced you were disgusted and believed I was indecent. Therapy has helped me overcome the idea that salacious desires are wrong, but I grew up in an area where we were taught carnal wants were misguided and bad. So you can imagine the internal war I was waging with myself.”

A blush stains your cheeks as you become interested in the whorl design of the wooden table.

“I’ve never thought that way about you,” Aizawa says in a way that leaves no room for argument.

You smile softly up at him. “I know. You’re much too kind.”

He looks away at that, unable to find the words to say to counter your statement. He swallows hard, his mouth too dry. “So you‘ve never….”

“Had, uh.” You clear your throat. “Sex. I’ve never had sex. With anyone. There’s only ever been one person. That I’ve been interested in, that is. But I’ve never gone further than holding hands. And kissing. But mostly just holding hands. After that night, I tried to find someone else… but I could never go through with it.”

“I still don’t understand what that has to do with your mission…” he trails off suddenly, as he connects the dots.

Oh.

Oooh.

He swallows hard again and straightens in his seat. He gets it now. But he needs to hear you say it.

You bit your lip, continually tapping at the mug with your fingers. “I don’t want my first time to be with some sleazy guy in a dingy back alley room. I want it to be with someone meaningful, someone I trust. Someone I respect and admire and care for deeply.”

“And who is that,” he says, voice lower than normal.

“You,” you whisper, tapping at the mug like it’s your lifeline.

He could feel his restraint failing him and his knuckles turn white with the effort to not… do something, anything. “Y/N… do you know what you’re asking?”

Your eyes find his obsidian ones. “Of course. It’s always been you. It wasn’t until that day, when I became aware of all that my assignment truly entailed, and I knew I needed to be with someone else first so I had that memory not be tarnished by this mission… that’s when I understood then that I’ve liked you for a very long time, when I realized I could think of no one else but you to go to. That there was no one else I wanted but you and that I’ve subconsciously been wanting you this whole time and why I’ve never entertained another man in my bed even after overcoming my views on sex or had relationships that lasted longer than a few dates. It has always been you.”

There’s a blush glowing on his cheeks. He falls quiet and the silence lasts for so long, that with nothing but the sound of a clock ticking in another room and the frantic tapping of your fingers, your mind begins to wander in panic and you slowly begin to doubt, wondering if maybe you’re asking your former sensei too much. You had thought after that kiss that maybe he felt the same way as you, but perhaps you’ve just been deluding yourself this whole time. The silence eats at you and your stomach turns, causing you to swallow and clear your throat. You need to speak now, to salvage this before it’s too late. “If this is crossing a line… if this is crossing a boundary, I understand. I recognize I’m asking a lot of you.” You try not to let the disappointment in your voice show.

You start to stand, draining the last of the now-cold coffee from the mug in an effort to not cry in disappointment in front of him. “Ah. Sorry to ask this of you. I know it’s inappropriate, and I can only hope this doesn’t change things between us. I’ll… uh, get going then. I’ll be back with my cat before I leave. I’ll be bringing her supplies, and some actual food for you too. It’ll be a lot this time- think of it as a prepayment for cat-sitting before I’m able to actually pay you properly. That being said, please clean out your fridge before I come over. I think I saw yogurt in there that expired two months ago, the other-“

“Where are you gonna go,” Aizawa’s voice cuts off your nervous rambling. “If I don’t…”

He trails off, but you know what he’s trying to convey. You shrug in reply, placing the mug in the cupboard after washing it and head back towards the front door. “I don’t know? The bar probably. Any random college kid would take me up on my offer-“

A heavy hand wraps itself around your wrist and yanks, spinning you around and slamming you against the wall. It takes you a second to realize Aizawa’s body is hovering over yours, hands on either side of your head caging you inside. You blink up at him and oh… you recognize that look. He’s angry. Why is he angry?

“A college kid.” He drawls, unimpressed.

You shrug at him again. “It’s my only option and they’ll be better than some sleazy guy in a dingy back alley- ”

He moves closer and your voice dies a swift death in your throat as you can feel his body heat through your clothes. You stare down at his chest, not willing to meet his eyes, suddenly finding your mouth too dry and your palms too sweaty with nerves. A finger snakes under your chin and forces your head up to look at him. Your eyes dart to the side, unable to find the courage to look him in the face.

“Y/N… look at me.” He murmurs. “Please.”

The desperation in his voice when he says please is what causes you to look at him and you something dark in his gaze. The hand under your chin slides to the back of your neck, causing your skin to prickle.

“What kind of teacher would I be if I didn’t help out one of my students when they need me,” He says and it’s enough to cause you to almost laugh and or collapse in relief. “Especially when it’s you.”

He dips his head, kissing you desperate and hungry, pulling you into his arms with a frantic sense of urgency. His kiss is sloppy and needy, nothing like the slow kiss you two shared a year ago. He hands slide down, gripping your thighs and pulls, wrapping your legs around his waist. You gasp into his mouth and his tongue almost immediately pushes past your lips with a swirl.

You kiss back with a feverish frenzy as he walks the two of you back towards his bedroom. His hand snakes up through your clothes, snapping off your bra, and drags it and your shirt off. You break the kiss long enough for him to pull your clothes over your head and toss them somewhere off to the side.

“Especially when it’s me?” You question, panting against his lips.

He draws back, eyes still dark. “Me too. It's always been you, to me.” He echoes your words from earlier and deposits you into his bed, climbing over top of you, while he drags his own shirt off.

Your mouth waters as you take him in. You always knew that Aizawa was fit, as a pro hero he had to be, but his baggy clothes really do hide how ripped he is. He bends his head, teeth dragging along the pulse point on your neck, latching on to the heated skin.

“Tell me if it’s too much and you want to stop. I won’t do anything you don’t want to do. Promise me, you’ll tell me.” He rumbles in your ear.

“I trust you,” you tell him.

“Promise me.” He demands soft but deliberate.

“I promise.” You answer him.

His hands slip down to your waistband, unbuttoning and unzipping your pants, while his teeth nip and suck open-mouthed kisses on your clavicle causing you to shudder. You moan, leaning into his touch, and dear God, nothing has happened yet but you’ve never been so turned on before in your life. Your head rushes at the surge of adrenaline that hums beneath the surface of your skin.

He drags his lips up to your ear. “Lift your hips for me.” You oblige, allowing him to grasp your pants and underwear and rake them down over your ass and thighs. He sits up, peeling them from your legs, and tosses them aside. You stare up at him, body flushed, and eyes wide, suddenly self conscious of the way he’s dragging his eyes over your figure admiring every single inch. You’ve never felt so exposed.

He must sense that because he leans over again, capturing your lips into his, distracting you from your embarrassment while he explores your mouth. He breaks the kiss, scraping his teeth along your jaw, down your neck, and across your chest. He nips and sucks at your breasts in a way that has you aching and rocking your hips to drag against the growing bulge in his pants.

He moans, gradually working his way down your stomach, biting at your hips, before he settles between your legs. Teeth and lips leave marks at the sensitive skin on your inner thighs that cause you to pant and tremble under his touch.

“Tell me if you want to stop.” He says again, looking up at you. You can do nothing but nod weakly at him, breath erratic, heart pounding in your ear drums. Every single nerve in your body feels on fire.

He smirks at your disheveled appearance, before he dips his head and licks a stripe at your glistening cunt. “Oh!” Your voice sounds so surprised, hands flying to his hair immediately, hips bucking up to meet his mouth. Your fingers have never made you feel like that. You need more.

He licks and sucks at your mound, going slow and hard in a way that has your entire body quivering beneath him. You whine, muscles straining, as electricity and heat swirl through your entire body making your toes curl. Every motion he makes with his mouth is molten pleasure seeping through every vein in your body. Just when you think he can’t get any better, he moves in a different way, and the crest of euphoria drags you up and up and up leaving you delirious and intoxicated from the feeling of teetering on the edge.

“Fuck, Aizawa.” You moan, head tipped back, as your fingers dig into his scalp to find purchase, anything to hold on to as he strings your body along hard. He can tell you’re getting close already, and slips a finger in your cunt, pumping it slowly, before dragging another one in. He curls them, finding the bundle of nerves that has you lifting off the bed chasing the pleasure you desperately crave. You fold into him, wailing as you cum, spasming around his digits so tightly, his cock throbs with want and need. He doesn’t stop sucking and fucking his fingers into you until your wails turn to sobs, thrashing in his iron grip as he drags your orgasm along for as long as possible.

You collapse back on the bed, huffing, body twitching as you come down from the high. Aizawa pulls himself up, dragging his pants off in one motion. “Good girl.” He coos, and oh- doesn’t his words just send sparks of pleasure shooting up your spine? Aizawa’s praise always did make you preen.

“That was better than anything I’ve ever imagined.” You breathe.

He pauses and slowly a smirk spreads across his face. “Better than anything you’ve imagined?”

“Yes.” You pant. “Do you think I haven’t touched myself to thoughts of you?”

Aizawa leans over you again, dragging your knees up to your chest, and settles himself between your legs, his cock bumping against your slick folds. He hovers, leaving a few centimeters between the two of you, and looks you deeply in the eyes.

“Still not too late to back out and go have your first time with someone else,” he mutters, wanting to hear you consent one last time before you never get this moment back. This is the last time you can ever claim to be a virgin and he needs to know you’re ok with him taking this from you. It makes you fall for him more to know that despite him not caring about concepts of virginity, he’s still taking this seriously because you do care about it.

You shake your head. “Only you. I want- no I need it to be you. It’s always been you.”

“Ok.” He breathes out through his nose. “I’m going to go slow. We can stop at any time. Tell me if you want to stop.”

“Aizawa, please,” you whine, aching with need.

“Tell me.”

“I will.”

And then he’s entering you, breaching your entrance leaving you both gasping and moaning. The self restraint on him is admirable as he thrusts into you shallowly and slowly, inching his way in bit by bit, ignoring the primal urge to just slam into you so rough and fast that it has you screaming. He wants to do so many other things, wants you in so many other positions, wants to whisper so many filthy things in your ear; but he doesn’t want to scare you away. He’s patient, he has to be, if he wants you to come back for more.

Even though he worked you open, you're tight, so impossibly tight, that he has to grit his teeth against your neck and fight against how much your silky walls are sucking him in too fast and too soon.

He hears you whimper and that has him freezing, eyes snapping to your face. Your eyes are shut tight, hands squeezing around his biceps, as you let out shuddering breaths.

Just as he’s about to ask if you’re ok, you open your eyes and look at him with so much adoration that has him feeling raw and exposed, choking on emotions that threaten to squeeze his throat shut. He sucks in a breath through his teeth when you reach up, curling your arms around his head and pull his face down to yours, whining. “Don’t stop. Oh please don’t stop.”

His mouth smashes against yours, wanting and needy, as you gasp against his lips, your begs tasting delicious on his tongue as he rolls his hips again, sliding the last few inches in. His forehead falls to yours as he moans in your mouth, stilling flush against your pelvis to give you a moment to adjust, stretched out and impossibly full. You feel so hot and warm, gripping him so firmly, that Aizawa rapidly recalculates his worldview, and comes to the conclusion that this is what pure happiness feels like, this is nirvana. He never wants this moment to end, wants to live in this brief period of time forever, buried to the hilt in your pussy that feels like the Gods personally formed it just for him and his cock.

He looks at you, brushing your sweat slicked hair out of his face and returns to the look of veneration. “You’re so perfect, so beautiful. You’re doing so good. Look at how well you took me.” He praises causing your cunt to squeeze him.

His eyes, more awake and alert than you’ve ever seen them, flutter for the briefest of moments at the increased pressure, before he looks at you again. “I’m going to move now, ok?”

You nod and so he starts with a slow and steady pace. You shake beneath him, back arched, chin tilted as fireworks explode behind your eyelids. He watches your face, adjusting his position or depth or speed anytime the look of pleasure starts to turn into a grimace. He wants this to be as good for you as it is for him, doesn’t want to be the cause for any discomfort or pain. Your pants are mixed with moans and you bring the back of your hand to your mouth to muffle the sounds. In any other circumstance, he would pull your hand away and demand you let him hear every sweet noise you make. But he doesn’t want to overwhelm you, so for just this one time, he lets you cover your mouth, to provide an ounce of comfort.

“Aizawa, I-“ you whine.

“I know, kitten. I know.” His chest rumbles. “That’s my good girl. You’re doing so well. Fuck, you feel amazing.” He can feel how wetter you’re getting with each passing thrust, how much more you’re squeezing him to the point where it’s almost painful to not just fuck into you with a fervor.

The growing pleasure is almost uncomfortable for you. You’ve gotten yourself off on your fingers before, but this is a whole new level. Everything is blurring together, swallowing you whole, drowning out every thought until there’s nothing left but Aizawa.

The growing pressure is agony, making you sob, hot tears splashing down your cheeks that he quickly kisses away, as the tension pulls tighter and tighter. You don’t know how much longer it can last, you’re sure the next second, the next thrust is the one that sends you over the edge, but it never does. It builds and builds and builds, the desperation leaving you trembling under his touch, babbling incoherently, lips slicked with drool, fingernails digging into his flesh as each roll of his hips brings you to a new high.

Your senses are heightened and dulled at the same time. You can feel his hands wandering your body, exploring the valley of your breasts, feather light on your navel, and bruising on your hips. His mouth kisses and licks and sucks and bites every bit of skin he can reach. He praises you in words that sound too distant, too far away, too soft to be heard over the roar of blood in your ears. It feels incredible. It feels like too much. It makes your head swim.

“Please, Aizawa, please, I need- I need.” You blubber, willing to offer up your soul to this man for the relief you so frantically chase.

His tempo changes as he moves a hand between your folds, fingers finding your clit. “I wanna spoil you so much more kitten, but I’m not gonna last much longer. Cum for me. I wanna feel you cum on my cock.” He circles his finger once, twice, three times and the thread inside you snaps, finally tumbling you over that edge.

Your arms wrap around his neck as waves of euphoria crash into you, gripping him like a lifeline as your mind threatens to smother you in it. He groans into your neck, hips thrusting erratically, as your walls clench around him, milking the cum from his dick. You’ve never felt so good before. Your body buzzes, head on cloud nine, toes curling, as he rocks a few more thrusts into you to prolong your orgasm. Your whole body sings, amplified by lightning that flutters in your cunt.

Your senses return as the pleasure ebbs away. You’re hot and sweaty, muscles aching and sore, tangled in Aizawa’s arms while he lays beside you (how did you not notice him move?) and strokes your hair. He mutters praises in your ear telling you what a good job you did and he’s so proud, while he peppers your face with feather light kisses.

“How are you feeling,” he asks when he can see your eyes clear and awareness flood back in.

“Amazing, actually. I had no idea I could feel that way. I can see why people like doing it so much.” You smile up at him drunk on the happiness while he peppers a kiss to your forehead and runs his hands up and down your shoulder.

“Good.” He hums, before sitting up on the edge of the bed. He looks at you with soft eyes and reaches out, smoothing your hair down once more. “Stay here and relax, kitten. I’ll be right back with water and something to clean you up with, okay?”

He grabs his pants and pulls them on as he stands before leaving the room. You watch him disappear around the corner and a tenseness you hadn’t known was bound in your shoulders suddenly loosens. This was better than you ever imagined. You feel so fulfilled, so happy, so so in love.

But…

You also feel…heavy? Satisfied and overwhelmingly happy to the point where it makes you giddy.

But you’re still heavy.

The feeling is enough to cause your chest to convulse suddenly from the weight, pulling a sob from your throat that you hastily try to stifle by shoving your fist into your mouth. Something in you breaks unexpectedly and despite fighting to swallow the wails, you collapse in on yourself, white hot tears rolling down your face as you gasp, gulping down spasming breaths, never quite able to pull enough air into your lungs. Dark spots break out in your vision as you try and fail to stop this emotional storm that rolls over you. Why? Aizawa is everything you ever wanted, and you’ve been dreaming of this moment for so long. It’s always been him. So why?? Why does it feel like your heart is breaking?

A hand suddenly slides under your shoulders and knees, pulling you into a broad chest, arm wrapping around your body in a way that makes you feel so safe and protected. Aizawa runs his hand up and down your back, making soothing noises as he works you through your panic attack. A blanket appears in your peripheral, wrapping around your body, tucking you into his large frame. Your sobs start to subside, leaving you with little shuddering breaths.

“I-I’m sorry.” you hiccup, looking up at him apprehensive, worried he’s going to think you’re ridiculous for crying after you two just had sex. There’s no such judgement on his face though, just concern and worry.

“You have nothing to be sorry about.” He assures you, reaching to his side to produce a bottle of water that he hands you. You drink from it, draining the whole thing in nearly one go, not realizing just how thirsty you were until then. The few seconds the action grants you, allows you to relax against him, suddenly so exhausted from all the emotions you’ve felt since you knocked on his door.

“I- I have no idea why I started crying.”

“Well, what are you feeling,” he asked, tucking your head under his chin. “Talk to me. Maybe we can find the answer together.”

You looked down at your hands, flexing them around the bottle. “I- I feel…” you trailed off, unsure on how to put it into words. “I’m so overjoyed that it’s making me giddy. I’m exhausted from everything that happened but I’m so blissful that I can feel an energy buzzing under my skin despite that. I want to smile so hard it hurts. It’s always been you, probably since the first time I saw you walk through the doors of homeroom all those years ago and expel five people on the first day because they weren’t taking hero work seriously. You were only a couple years older than me, and yet already so confident and sure of yourself. It drew me in like a moth to a flame. I knew deep down, in that moment I would follow you to the ends of the earth. Everything you did was so breathtaking and it always pushed me to be better, to be the kind of person that could someday stand next to someone on your level. I wanted you to be proud of me. It’s why, even when I graduated, even when I debuted as a hero and became established in the pro hero world, even when I was no longer the naive child that wore rose tinted glasses about the world around us, I still came over whenever I could, because I still chased after you, still wanted you. I was captivated- enamored by you even back then. It was love at first sight, I just… didn’t realize it at the time.”

You smile softly, lost in thought. “And now that we’ve done this, I finally feel like I’ve gotten my dream. This is the happiest moment of my life. But…” the smile falters as you drag your hand to your chest. “Right here. It feels so heavy.”

Aizawa hums. “Well first, I’m happy you see me that way. It means a lot to me, truly. Second? I’ve always been proud of you. I’ve always thought you had potential. I didn’t expel you because I saw that, right from the beginning. I always knew you would make a fantastic pro hero, it was illogical to think otherwise. And I’ve always admired you. No matter what happened, you always remained kind and compassionate. I watched you calm down a terrified little boy who developed a scary new Quirk and accidentally hurt everyone around him, by only talking to him. Any other pro hero would have knocked him out, but you sat with him while his parents were treated by doctors and enthusiastically talked to him about rocket ships and astronauts. I guarantee that kid has never forgotten your patience and understanding in that moment. And even though it’s been almost a decade since you graduated, you still continue to show up to check on me. You still talk to the other teachers at UA regularly which means a lot to them. And every time one of your former classmates or teachers winds up injured in a fight, you show up. You say you were drawn to me like a moth to a flame but I don’t think you give yourself enough credit to how truly radiant you are. I think I fell for you a couple years after you graduated when you knocked on Mic’s door, lying horribly about being in the neighborhood, bringing him take out for no other reason than you found out he was injured in a fight and was concerned he wasn’t taking care of himself properly. That type of kindness is rare in this world.”

He takes a deep breath and loops a finger under your chin so you look at him, see the raw emotion in his eyes. “And I’m honored that you trusted me enough to want your first time to be with me. I didn’t take it lightly and I never will.”

Tears begin to mist in your eyes. Your throat squeezes and your nose burns. Oh… now you understand why you feel so heavy. Why you cried hysterically earlier. “It’s not fair.”

Confusion flits across his face but you let out a shuddering breath. “I’ve wanted you for so long and now that I have you, it’s almost time to go. It doesn’t feel fair. Suddenly, I wish I didn’t have this Quirk, that I wasn’t best suited for this mission. I want to be selfish and stay here with you.”

Aizawa is quiet for a moment, because what can he even say to that? To make this situation better. “I’ll be here. I’ll wait. For however long you take. I’ll be right here waiting for you when you come back.”

“I might come back changed.”

“I’m expecting it.” He already knew. At minimum he was expecting PTSD. It’s why the Commission already started you on therapy. This is the part of hero work that nobody talks about and scares him when he looks at new students. He seems them in situations- on missions like this- and it terrifies him to the bone. He would rather expel them than send them out unready for the reality, expecting big flashy fights on TV, only to find themselves mentally broken when faced with scenarios like this.

“It might be a while before I want you to touch me again, when I come back.” You point out.

“I’ll wait until you’re ready. I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do.” He assured you.

Your eyes flicked up to him. “Why?”

He studied your face. “Only for you. I’ll wait forever if I have to, because you’re worth the wait. It’s always been you.”

You let out a chuckled sob and lean up, kissing him with bittersweet emotions, full of longing and regret. You memorized the way his lips fit against yours, the feel of his hands on your skin. You want this day to be the moment you thought about during your mission, to push you to keep going when you want to give up. Coming back to him is your new goal and you grasp it firmly in your heart, stubbornly refusing to let it go. He’s the reason you became a hero, the reason you kept going when the mantle was too much to bear sometimes. And now, right now, wrapped in his arms, you try to convey with your kiss that he’s the reason you’ll come back.