the name's Han

That's an exaggeration—he'd tell you so himself later, with that easy grin and a dismissive wave—but in the moment, lying on a stretcher with a piece of shrapnel the size of a two-pence coin lodged in his left shoulder and a look on his face like he's more annoyed than injured, it certainly seems like a contender.

"Don't move," you tell him, snapping on a fresh pair of gloves as the medivac shudders and banks.

"Wasn't planning on it," he replies through gritted teeth, and then, because apparently, he's incapable of not being charming even while slowly bleeding out.

"You always this bossy, or am I special?"

"Just for the ones who are too stupid to duck."

He laughs a short, startled bark that immediately turns into a groan when the movement jostles his shoulder too much, so you press your palm flat against his chest and push him back down firmly.

"Don't bloody move, Sergeant."

He groans in pain and obeys. "Yes, ma'am."

Then his eyes find yours; warm, hazelnut brown, and sharp with pain but alert, and he holds your gaze for a beat longer than necessary until you look away first.

And you start working on his wound, cleaning it with a gentleness that you usually have no time to spare.

That's how it starts.

The friendship builds the way military friendships do, namely in proximity and repetition, in shared meals and overlapping schedules and the intimacy of being two people who exist in the same small ecosystem of a forward operating base.

You're not 141—not technically.

You're attached to the medical unit that supports their operations, one of a handful of combat medics who rotate through depending on the mission profile. But somehow, Kyle Garrick's name keeps appearing on the ops you're assigned to, and somehow, he keeps finding his way to your table in the mess until the space next to you becomes his space without anyone deciding it should be.

He brings you tea. Not regularly or performatively, but on the mornings after bad nights, the kind where you've been elbow-deep in someone's chest cavity for hours and the adrenaline crash leaves you hollowed out and shaking at four a.m. And he doesn't say anything about it. Just appears with two mugs, sits down, and talks about something mundane like football scores, a podcast he's been listening to, and the ongoing sad saga of Soap trying to grow a moustache, until the tremor in your hands eases and you can hold the mug without spilling.

You learn Kyle in fragments.

He's from London—Battersea, specifically, which he brings up with a particular local pride. That he reads more than anyone else on the team and never talks about it unless you ask, and that he can cook, properly cook, not just the sad bachelor reheating that passes for cuisine among most of the men on base. And that he calls his mum every Sunday without fail, even from a FOB in the middle of nowhere, even if the connection is shit and they spend half the call saying, “You're breaking up,” at each other.

However, the fact that he looks at you differently than he looks at anyone else, that he keeps to himself.

But you notice it anyway, the way you notice a change in a patient's vitals before any machine can tell you—gradually, then all at once.

How his eyes track you across a room; how his voice shifts when he talks to you—softer, lower, a register reserved exclusively for your frequency, and the way his hand lands on the small of your back when you're walking through a crowded corridor and stays there a beat too long, warm through your shirt. And neither of you mentions it.

Then again, you don't mention a lot of things.

The rule is established on a Tuesday night in a shipping container that serves as a break room, four months into whatever this is.

You're sitting on the floor with your back against a supply crate, sharing a bag of crisps and a companionable silence. Kyle is beside you; close enough that his shoulder presses against yours and you can feel the warmth radiating off his body while you're watching him read something on his phone.

The blue light catches the profile of his face, and the thought that surfaces in your chest is so sudden and so clear that it knocks the breath out of you momentarily.

I could love you so easily it terrifies me.

Kyle looks up, catches your expression, and whatever you let slip onto your face in that unguarded second makes something in his eyes shift and crack open. He turns towards you, and you can practically see the words forming on his lips, can feel the entire trajectory of what's about to happen.

"Don't."

He stops, closes his mouth. Your heart stutters.

"Don't say it, Kyle."

Silence follows. Not uncomfortable or confused. Kyle knows exactly what you're asking. His jaw works, his eyes search your face, and you watch him weigh the cost of obedience against the cost of defiance.

"Why?" he asks eventually.

Because if you say it, I'll have to fucking feel it and it will distract me and I can't fucking allow that. I can't do my fucking job if I'm worrying about whether you're coming back to me. Because I've watched women lose men in this line of work and I've seen what it fucking does to them and I can't. I fucking can't, Kyle.

Your face stays neutral and then you don't say any of that; you merely look at him, and despite your charade, he reads it on your face the way he is trained to read hidden clues.

"Okay," he breathes and his shoulders slump some, but you have to ignore it.

And that's it. Okay.

He goes back to his phone. His shoulder stays pressed against yours. The bag of crisps sits between you, and after a minute, his hand dips in and retrieves one, and the crunch of it in the silence is so absurdly normal that you almost laugh.

Kyle never says it.

He doesn't need to, because it's in every cup of tea, every quiet walk, every time his eyes find you across a crowded room and stay. It's said in the space he keeps beside him that is always yours; in the way he says your name and makes it sound like the answer to a question he's been carrying for years.

Kyle looks at you like you're the sun, and he never says a word, and you keep pretending you’re not the one burning.

The op goes sideways at 0344 hrs, and you're not even supposed to be this close to the action.

The medical station is set up two hundred metres back from the primary assault position, behind a concrete barrier wall that provides decent cover and a clear line to the extraction point.

You've done this before—dozens of times, probably more. All the waiting, the radio chatter, the controlled calm of a medical team standing by while operators do what operators do.

Then the radio crackles with a voice you don't recognise, young and tight with panic, calling for a medic, and you're moving before the call sign finishes.

The rookie's name is Leon. Lance Corporal. Twenty-two, maybe twenty-three; you don't ask, because asking how old they are makes it worse when it goes bad. He's lying on his side behind a low wall, and there's blood—too much blood, dark and arterial, soaking through his fatigues and pooling beneath him on the packed dirt.

You drop to your knees beside him, and your hands are already moving; pulling your gloves on and shears out, eyes flickering and assessing while your voice does the thing it always does, shifting into that calm, steady register that has nothing to do with how you feel and everything to do with what he needs.

"Leon, I'm here. You're alright. I've got you."

"Hey—h-hey, Doc—" He's talking. Talking is good. It means conscious, means his airway is free, and that means precious time. His voice is thin and reedy, in shock, but he's trying to grin, and the sight of it—this young man, someone’s boy, grinning up at you with blood on his teeth—makes something behind your sternum compress.

"Y're pretty," he slurs. "Has anyone—has anyone told y-you that?"

You pull your gloves on, snapping them in place. "Save it, Casanova. I need you to stay still."

"'M just saying—" He coughs, winces, keeps going because they always keep going. "If I'd known the medic was this fit,” he tries to lift his hand to gesture, but drops it with a guttural groan, “I would've—would've gotten shot sooner."

"Hilarious. Now don't move."

You're cutting his fatigues open, working fast, locating the source of the bleeding. Lower abdomen, right side, bad but not the worst you've seen. And when his hand suddenly does come up, it’s to catch your wrist in a weak grip.

He’s trembling, but insistent.

"C-careful," he sputters, and his eyes, so wide and glassy, scared beneath the bravado, flicker down to his chest. "Careful with—be careful with my heart."

You pause to look at him.

His hand releases your wrist and pats clumsily at his breast until it finds his chest pocket, just above the body armour line, and you can see the edge of it poking out. A photograph. A Polaroid, slightly bent and stained, tucked against his chest like a talisman.

"My girl," he mumbles, and his grin softens into something private and unbearably young. "That's—that's m-my girl in there. Don't let it—Don't get blood on it, aye? She'll—she'll kill me—"

Your hands don't stop. They never truly stop. You reach into his pocket with two fingers, extract the Polaroid, and tuck it safely into your own vest without looking at it, because if you look at it, you'll see a face, and if you see a face, you'll think about someone waiting at home for a phone call, and if you think about that it will stay with you.

"Safe with me," you assure him, and your voice doesn't waver, because it can't.

"Cheers, Doc." His eyes are drifting. "You're—You're proper lovely, y’know that? My mum would—my mum—"

"Stay with me, Corporal. Eyes open. On me."

You work efficiently; packing the wound, applying pressure, calling for the stretcher team, and relaying vitals in the clipped shorthand of someone who has done this too many times. All while Leon keeps talking about his girlfriend, his mum, and the puppy he's going to get when he's out, and you let him, because the talking means he's alive and the noise means you don't have to think.

You hand him off to the stretcher team eleven minutes after you reached him. He'll live. The wound is ugly but the bleed is controlled and he'll make it to the surgical team and he'll live, and you stand up and your gloves are soaked and there's blood on your knees and the Polaroid is still in your vest pocket, pressed against your chest.

Be careful with my heart.

You walk behind the barrier wall. You make it four steps before your legs give out.

It's not the blood. You can handle the blood. It's not the fear, you manage the fear, that's the job.

It's the fucking Polaroid.

It's this kid—this stupid, brave, terrified kid—lying in the dirt with his insides trying to escape and his only concern being a photograph of a girl who's probably sitting in a flat somewhere right now, watching telly, not knowing, not feeling it yet, the way she will when the call comes, the way she'll carry it for the rest of her life even though he'll live, because now she'll know how close she came to a world without him in it.

And you think about Kyle.

The looks you share and rules you’ve set; the metaphorical photograph you've been carrying in your own chest pocket.

What if it was him on that stretcher? What if it was his blood on your gloves?

What if the last thing he said to you was your name and he never got to say the rest because you told him not to?

Your breath hitches while your vision blurs. And your hands, usually so steady and reliable, are trembling so badly you must press them flat against the concrete wall to keep them still.

"Hey."

You flinch at Kyle's sudden voice behind you. He must have come to find you first after falling back with his comrades. Always seeking you out, even in the middle of a warzone.

You hear his boots on the gravel, the careful approach, and you know without turning around that his face will be open and concerned, and you cannot look at it right now.

"Don't."

The word comes out sharp, like a warning shot fired from a position that's already been overrun.

His footsteps stop.

"Don't—come closer. Don't—I'm fine, Kyle, I'm—"

Your voice breaks on his name, shatters like glass in your mouth, and the silence that follows is awful and filled with everything you've been refusing to say for months.

Kyle doesn't come closer, but he doesn't leave, either. You can hear his long exhale as he waits at a distance of three feet behind you.

And you press your forehead against the concrete wall, not crying but swallowing against the lump in your throat, because if you start you know you won't be able to stop.

Instead, you breathe, counting, pulling yourself together because this is hardly the place. And then you straighten up, strip off your soiled gloves, stuff them in the waste bag at your hip, and walk past him without meeting his eyes.

"I'm fine," you say again.

Kyle doesn't answer, but you feel his gaze on your back all the way to the medical station, infuriatingly warm and steady.

Two days later, they’re stateside again.

It's half-nine in the evening and Kyle is sitting on his sofa in his flat, wearing grey joggers and a t-shirt, not doing any of the things he normally does to decompress after deployment. He's just sitting, one arm along the back of the sofa, staring at nothing, turning a thought repeatedly in his head like a stone in his palm.

The radio is on. It's always on nowadays. The flat is too quiet without it, the silence too close to the kind of silence you sit in on a rooftop at two a.m. waiting for a target to emerge. It’s set on some station that plays a mix of old soul and R&B that he doesn't actively listen to but lets wash over him like white noise.

His phone buzzes with a message from Soap.

kid's stable. docs say full recovery. told him you said cheers.

And Kyle types back: Good. Thanks.

Three dots. Soap is typing. Kyle watches them pulse.

you alright mate?

Yeah. Why?

didnt seem alright on the flight back. neither did she.

Kyle stares at the screen while the cursor keeps blinking in the empty reply field.

whats going on between you 2?

He could answer that, type the ugly truth, and tell his best mate that he loves her and she won't let him say it and two days ago she nearly broke in front of him and he had to stand there and watch, but the words look kind of wrong on a screen. Impersonal. They look wrong everywhere Kyle has come to realize lately. They've been sitting inside his chest for so long they've calcified, become part of the architecture, load-bearing walls he can't remove without the whole structure coming down.

Nothing, he replies and sets the phone face-down on the cushion beside him.

And it's so far from nothing that the word feels like a lie in a foreign language, technically incorrect but functionally necessary.

He thinks about the wall, and you pressed against it; your forehead bowed against concrete, your hands shaking for the first time since he's known you. You looked like a woman who was coming apart at the seams, and something is burning behind his chest to know why, because it’s not about that young soldier. Partially, maybe.

And then Kyle ponders about the fact that you walked past him afterwards and said, “I'm fine,” in a voice that was the exact opposite of fine, and he let you go, because that's the deal. That's the bloody rule. You drew the line months ago, he is staying behind it like an obedient little soldier, and he watched you walk away and he didn’t follow.

And he's so fucking tired of not following, but it seems to be the only way to even keep you around.

Kyle drops his head back against the sofa and closes his eyes. The radio murmurs something slow and warm into the dim flat, and the candle on the coffee table that you gifted him some time ago flickers in the draft from the cracked window.

He should sleep, eat something, and call his mum, who will hear it in his voice immediately and ask what's wrong and he'll say nothing again, and she won't believe him, but she'll let it go.

Instead, he sits in the semi-dark and the candlelight and the quiet music and he thinks about you, the way he's been thinking about you for too damn long. Since that day he found himself with a bullet hole on a stretcher, looking up at you for the first time like he was seeing an angel.

His phone buzzes again, but he doesn’t check it.

A few seconds later, there is a knock at his front door. Soft, almost reserved, like the person isn’t sure if they want the door to be opened.

Kyle's eyes open and his heart does something hopeful before he gets up and crosses the flat, floorboards warm under his bare feet. And when he reaches for the door handle, unlocking and opening the door, you’re suddenly standing on his doorstep, looking like you haven't slept.

You're in civvies, hair undone in a way he's rarely seen with shadows under your eyes and a tightness around your mouth that he recognises as the last line of defence before something collapses entirely.

Your head tips back to meet his gaze and his eyes lock on yours while the radio plays softly behind him, and the candlelight throws warm amber across the hallway, and the summer air drifts through the cracked window carrying the smell of cut grass and distant rain.

"I don't know how to do this," you admit suddenly, and your voice is so small that he barely recognizes it from the usual commanding and steady tone you use in the field.

And Kyle doesn't speak, because he doesn’t trust himself not to break this fragile moment, so he holds your gaze for one long, careful moment, and steps aside to give you the option.

The door opens wider. The warmth of his flat presses out towards you; cedar candle, the low murmur of the radio, the quiet of a space that belongs to someone who keeps it tidy because chaos fills enough of his life elsewhere, and you look at the open doorway, then back at him, standing beside it, ever the patient friend who says nothing because you told him to.

You walk inside, passing him tentatively.

The flat is warmer than the night outside, dimmer. The overhead light is off; just the candle on the coffee table and another on the kitchen counter, casting everything in a soft, amber glow that smooths the edges of the furniture and catches in Kyle's eyes when he turns to face you.

"Tea?" he asks, already moving towards the kitchen, because this is what he does. This is the language he speaks when words aren't enough. Acts of quiet service, offered without ceremony.

"I don't want tea."

He stops; his back is to you, and you can see the line of his shoulders through his t-shirt, the tension he's holding there carefully the way he holds everything, and he turns around slowly.

"Okay," he says. "What do you want then?"

The question is simple and open, contains no pressure and no presumption, and it nearly undoes you on the spot, because Kyle Garrick has been asking you this question in a hundred different ways for over a year and this is the first time you're going to answer it honestly.

"I don't want to talk about what happened."

"Alright."

"I don't want to," you inhale, make a vague gesture which makes it clear that you’re currently just winging it like he is, "debrief, or process, or—"

Kyle nods, his brows set in focus. "Alright."

"I want—" Your voice catches as you look at him properly, standing in his kitchen in joggers and bare feet, candlelight warm on his skin, watching you with those steady brown eyes that have never, looked at you with anything less than complete, unwavering attention, and the thing inside you that's been holding, holding, holding for months finally gives.

Your shoulders sag as you deflate in surrender. "Kyle… I want you."

Those words fall into the space between you, and the radio fills the silence that follows—some song fading out, a beat of static, and then the opening notes of something slow and aching, a voice you recognise, deep and rich and full of longing.

…When your baby leaves you all alone…

Kyle's expression doesn't change; doesn't light up in triumph or crack into relief. He just looks at you, and his eyes are so warm, so full, that you understand, suddenly, what it must have cost him—all those months of silence, of holding the shape of this feeling without being allowed to name it.

…And nobody calls you on the phone…

You cross the kitchen towards him, drawn in like a magnet who has finally been let go, until you're standing close enough to feel the heat radiating off his chest and see the way his breathing has changed to something deeper and deliberately controlled.

Your hands come up slowly, like you're approaching an animal that might startle, except the only thing that might startle here is you. Your fingers brush the sides of his neck, trail up to his stubbled jaw, and your arms loop loosely around his neck, your wrists crossing behind his head.

…Don't you feel like crying? Well, here I am, baby…

Kyle's hands find your waist; tentative like a question at first, and then settling, his palms warm and solid against the fabric of your jumper, thumbs pressing gently against your ribs.

You sway together. It's not a dance, not really—there's no rhythm to it, no form, just two bodies finding each other in a dim kitchen and moving because standing still feels impossible. Then his forehead tips down to meet yours, and your noses brush, and you breathe the same air, and the song washes over both of you like warm water.

…Come on, cry to me…

"Be careful with my heart," you whisper.

His hands tighten on your waist, a fractional compression, like a held breath.

"Always," he replies, and his voice is rough and low, barely more than an exhale, and he means it the way he means everything he was allowed to say to you—completely, without reservation and caveat.

You allow yourself to kiss him.

And it's not the desperate, hungry collision you expected—not the dam breaking and the flood taking you both. It's slow, careful. His lips meet yours softly, like he's memorising the shape of you in case you change your mind again, and then his hand slides up from your waist to the side of your neck, his thumb against your jaw, tilting your head just slightly, and he deepens it; more present and intentional. The kind of kiss that tells you he has been thinking about exactly this for a very long time and he isn’t going to rush a single second of it.

You melt into him. Your fingers brush over the short hair at the back of his head and his arm wraps around your lower back, pulling you flush against him, and the sound he makes vibrates against your lips and settles somewhere deep in your chest.

"Kyle—"

"I know, babygirl." His mouth moves to your jaw, your neck, pressing slow, open kisses against the skin there. "I know."

He doesn't say the thing he wasn’t allowed to say before. Even now, even with your body finally pressed against his like this, he doesn't say it yet, because you told him not to, and he's a man who keeps his word, even when keeping it is killing him inside.

"You can say it," you whisper against his temple frantically as if you might be running out of time now. "Kyle. You can say it."

He pulls back, studies you, and the expression on his face, the sheer, unbearable relief of someone who's been holding a breath for over a year, makes your eyes sting.

But Kyle doesn't say it with words.

He says it by lifting you with his hands under your thighs and carrying you down the short hallway to his bedroom, where the window is cracked open and the cream curtains shift in the warm summer breeze and the sheets on his bed are clean, cool, and tucked into the corners with military precision like everything else in his flat.

He lays you down like you're precious; someone he's been trusted with and intends to deserve.

"Tell me if it's too much," he murmurs, kneeling over you, and his hands are trembling as he reaches for the hem of your jumper.

You blink up at him, heart fluttering with sweet anticipation. "It's not too much."

And his eyes soften at your reaction when he notices your pulse thudding in your neck. "Tell me anyway."

He pulls the jumper over your head slowly, his eyes travel over you, drinking you in, and the weight of his attention is heavier and warmer than any touch.

"You're—" he starts, stops and shakes his head like he cannot quite fathom what he is seeing, and a breath that might be a laugh escapes him. "Christ."

"Eloquent."

"Shut up." He's smiling now, that private, soft smile that he only ever gives to you, and he dips his head and presses his mouth to the hollow of your throat while you arch into it, your hands gripping his broad shoulders.

He undresses you slowly, treating every piece of clothing removed with the same care, the same deliberate attention; his mouth following his hands, pressing kisses to your collarbone, the curve of your shoulder, the inside of your wrist. When he pulls his own shirt over his head, you reach for him immediately, clammy palms flat against his chest, feeling the steady thud of his heart beneath heated skin.

"Kyle." Your voice is barely there. "Please."

He settles between your thighs, and the solid weight of him makes something deep and yearning in your chest crack open and spill over at last.

His mouth finds yours again, slow and thorough and devastating; his tongue sliding against yours as his hand trails down between your bodies, his fingers brushing against your cotton panties where you're already wet and wanting, and the sound you make into his mouth is small and desperate, and nothing like the woman who holds men together on battlefields.

"I've got you," he murmurs, and his fingers move over the damp fabric; slow circles, gentle pressure, learning you slowly until your back arches and your face is hot.

Then his fingers hook under the edge of your waistband to slide your panties off and leave you bare.

When your legs part wider for him, Kyle nuzzles the crease at the apex of your thigh, inhaling your scent deeply while a shudder ripples through his body.

"You smell incredible," he groans shamelessly, and before you can get flustered, his tongue flicks out to taste your swollen clit and the keen you let out makes him curse again. "Fuck. And you taste even better."

Your eyes roll back when Kyle starts licking you in earnest; sucking your clit between his supple lips, flickering his tongue against the sensitive pearl and slipping one, then two fingers inside until your hips buck and you come beneath his tongue with a moan that dissolves into a drawn-out sigh.

"Kyle," you mewl needily, and he understands immediately.

The aching and yearning, and the knowledge that you’re finally allowed to get and take what you have been craving for so long. It’s as exhilarating as it is dizzying.

He presses the softest kiss to the tuft of hair on your mound before crawling up your body with a look of purest devotion and hunger in his eyes that causes your breath to stutter.

You sit up to help him slide his joggers off, and when you realize that he was going commando all this time, your lashes flutter at the sight of his cock. Long, uncut, and thick, slightly curved upward, a vein throbbing along the underside of his shaft, with velvety skin and his fat tip flushed mauve.

"Bloody hell, Kyle."

He ducks his head, looking sheepish. "What?"

Reaching out, you grasp his length carefully, keeping one hand on his hip, and give him a few slow strokes that make his defined abs clench and his head tip back with a hiss.

A clear pearl of precum beads at the slit and your mouth waters.

"You’re so beautiful," you whisper in awe, thumb swiping over his tip reverently.

Now he is the one getting flustered, and the only thing keeping him from coming undone then and there is taking over control again.

"Not nearly as beautiful as you, love," he murmurs, pushing you back onto the mattress.

You make a choked sound and hide your face in one of his pillows, but he pulls it away and the smile he flashes then, boyish and delighted, sears itself into your memory.

Kyle caresses your waist and feels the goosebumps pebbled on your skin, and when he squeezes a pillow under your lower back, you lift your hips for him. His cock twitches, a drop of pre dribbles onto your thigh.

"Can I? I’m clean." His chest is heaving, his pupils blown as he drinks you in underneath him; all lax, beautiful and trembling while he rubs his thumb over your puffy folds, spreading them to see your pretty, wet hole.

You nod jaggedly, spreading your legs for him, heels digging into the mattress.

"I need words, love," he tells you, rubbing your clit maddeningly slow and watching your pussy clench around nothing. "Fuck, babygirl."

"Yes, Kyle! Fuck, please—" Your voice pitches and cracks, body wound tight, and when he kneels between your thighs, gripping his cock at the root, he finally pushes inside you, and the world stops spinning.

He does it slow, agonisingly and exquisitely so; working all eight inches into your needy cunt with one hand braced next to your head, the other holding your thigh while his forehead presses against yours; his breath ragged against your mouth, lips brushing yours in a barely there kiss.

The feeling of him is overwhelming at first; the stretch and the fullness, and the rightness of it all. And your hands grip his back, fingers flexing against the muscles, while your legs go slack for him, inviting him deeper, because close isn’t close enough now.

"Fuck—" The word punches out of him, bitten off and breathless, and his hips still for a moment, cock buried deep, his whole body taut with the effort of not moving. "You feel—God—"

"Move," you whisper. "Please move."

Always obeying you, he moves. Long, slow strokes that drag the curve of his cock against every nerve ending, his hips rolling into yours with an unhurried rhythm that matches the pace of the song still drifting faintly from the kitchen. His hand cradles the back of your head, fingers curling into your hair, and he watches your face with an expression that is so open and so tender that you have to close your eyes against it.

"No," he says softly. "Look at me."

You open your eyes. His face is still close, and you observe how his lips part with each thrust, and his brow furrows with both concentration and restraint, his eyes bright and dark and full of everything he's never said.

"Yes," he breathes, "just like that."

You come apart again; still not the shattering, violent kind of orgasm, but the kind that builds like a tide, rising and cresting until your body tightens around him in long, rolling waves as his name falls from your lips like a plea or confession, like the answer to a question you've been afraid to ask.

"That's it," he murmurs, his pace never faltering, carrying you through it with the same steadiness he has been carrying everything so far. "That's it, baby. I've got you. 'M, fuck, right here."

Then his eyes flutter shut when his own release follows yours as you squeeze and convulse around his cock mercilessly. A shudder that starts in his spine and rolls through his entire body, his hips pressing deep, breath hitching as he bites his bottom lip and buries his face in the curve of your neck with a groan so raw that you nearly come again.

He stays nestled inside you, shifts his weight to keep from crushing your body into the mattress, even while his own body is quaking with the onslaught of oxytocin; mouth against your shoulder, hand still in your hair, heartbeat pounding against your chest.

The breeze moves through the curtains. The flat smells like cedar candle and summer air and him. The scent you've been breathing in for over a year and pretending it didn't make you feel safe.

"I love you," he says and it sounds like a breath of relief.

Not triumphant but truth. Stated plainly, simply, the way you state a fact—the sky is up, the ground is down. I love you.

A tear slips from the corner of your eye and runs down your temple, disappearing into your hair. Then another and another. Quiet, soundless tears that come from somewhere so deep you didn't know it existed until you were guts deep in a young soldier, saving his life while he spoke about his love waiting back home.

Kyle lifts his head and sees the tears. And he doesn't panic, he simply brushes his thumb across your temple, catching the wetness, and presses his lips to the damp trail it leaves behind.

"I know," he whispers. "It’s been a lot. For both of us."

You close your eyes and let it come. The crying you've been holding in your chest like a clenched fist for months—years, maybe, longer than Kyle, longer than the rule, all the way back to the first time you knelt in the dirt beside a bleeding stranger and realised that this was your life now, and it would cost you, and you would pay the price and pay it and pay it and never let anyone see the bill.

Kyle holds you through it.

…Here I am, baby. Come on, cry to me….

Eventually, the tears slow and your breath evens. His hand moves over your hair in long, rhythmic strokes, and the radio in the kitchen has gone soft—a late-night DJ speaking in a low murmur between songs—and the candle has burned down to a warm glow.

"Stay. Here… with me."

It’s an offer, the same way everything he's ever given you has been an offer. Open-handed and without strings; yours if you want it, though you know he would crumble if you’d decline.

You press your face into his neck and breathe him in.

in an urn with a letter and a velvet box?