Astrid’s Safe Space

Whitaker was going on and on about some story from the street crew, and on a normal day, you would have loved hearing all about it, but right now it was like torture… having to stay put and pretend to be retaining even a single word of what came out of Dennis’ mouth while Jack toyed with you was proving to be quite hard.

Just when Abbot’s digits found the damp spot right against your hole, you caught a glance of your savior… or so at least you thought.

“Mike- " you started, only to correct yourself, “Dr. Robby! You should… you should hear this too.”

If either he or Whitaker noticed how breathy your voice was, none of them reacted.

Dennis’ brows raised in confusion at your words.

“He just— Robby loves stories… like this.”

Poor Dennis was all too eager at the discovery; he didn’t even notice the way Robby’s mouth stretched into a smirk as he glanced between you and Jack, or how he purposely chose not to sit on the free chair next to the blonde, but opted to squeeze himself in the booth next to you.

All of a sudden, your idea seemed very dumb.

There you were, sandwiched in between your two very hot attendings… your two very hot, very secret boyfriends.

If it were for them, they would have told anyone with ears about your relationship, even at work… or especially there.

Both had very adamantly expressed their wish to touch you and kiss you like they loved to do wherever they could, ER included— Jack had expressed said wish also because he claimed to be very tired of watching Langdon or Park or Shang or even Ellis check you out and not be able to do or say anything without coming off as a weirdo. Robby never said it out loud, but he also really despised having to listen to surgeons and patients flirt with you and having to keep quiet.

But you knew it was better this way; it’s not like you didn’t wanna yap to whoever would listen about your two sexy, perfect boyfriends, but you knew the consequences… the rumors and voices that would inevitably start to spread were really not something you needed at this point in life.

Which is why your relationship remained a secret— even if they loved to make it one hard to keep.

Michael took one look at what was happening beneath your skirt, and it took all of thirty seconds before you felt his arm slither behind your back, slowly infiltrating underneath your shirt until his warm hands were caressing your back, spreading shivers down your spine.

Just like that, all your dreams of Mike making Abbot behave shattered with a loud crack in your head.

Dennis was completely oblivious, too excited at the prospect of impressing his attendings with his story… poor guy had no idea neither of them were listening to a word he said.

Both men were stroking you slowly and sultily, the heat and scent of them wrapping your body as you lost yourself in the moment… In the way Jack’s fingers kept teasing you, lightly dragging from your inner thighs to your dampening heat, moving up and down as he ever so softly traced your clit— in the way Michael’s big hand softly traced patterns on your back, soothing your overexcited system just to make your heart pick up all over again whenever it ended up on your side and squeezed just enough to remind you who had the upper hand.

The temperature rose, and you were certain everyone could see the heat on your face as you tried to act normal.

Jack and Robby were thoroughly enjoying watching you squirm and bite down desperate little whimpers at their ministrations, barely containing their grins as they nodded at Dennis’ story.

You were just starting to convince yourself you could survive this when Abbot’s fingers materialized underneath your panties, all of a sudden fully exploring your slick folds without a hint of rush, unhurriedly touching your most intimate spot as if you weren’t fully in public.

Your heart was hammering in your chest, your eyes subtly widening, and then… then Jack took it a step too far.

You heard the gasp come out of your mouth before you even realized Jack’s digits had trailed up to your clit.

For a moment, you forgot to pretend as your thighs squeezed shut and you turned to Jack, eyes and mouth wide in shock. He didn’t even try to hide the wolfish grin on his lips.

“Y/n? What happened?”

It was Whitaker's soft, almost scared voice that had you remembering where you were.

You schooled your features to resemble any sort of calm as you turned back to him with a small, awkward smile.

“O-oh nothing— I just… I think I need some air.”

__  __  __

You were outside for no longer than two minutes when Jack and Robby made their way out of the bar, their eyes immidiately catching you as they began to walk in your direction.

“You guys can’t do that.”

They decided to stand not even an inch away from you, you know… like regular coworkers.

“Do what?” Jack grinned, his voice husky as he leaned closer to you, his mouth ghosting your neck.

“You know what,” you murmured, eyes shifting between the two men.

“You liked it.” Robby intervened, his hand moving some hair from your face and lingering on your cheek.

You shook your head, sending them both a glare that promised death.

Jack couldn’t help but chuckle at that, his voice lowering to a murmur as he whispered to your ear, “The proof of it is coating my fingers right now, sweetheart.”

“No need to lie, baby,” Robby cooed, his thumb tracing your cupid’s bow.

“’S ok, I liked it too,” Jack murmured, moving close enough for you to feel the weight of his erection against your skin.

Your breath got stuck in your throat as a whimper fled your mouth.

Jesus, why did they have to be so frustratingly hot?

“People could see us,” you breathed, desperate eyes finding Robby’s for some sort of help.

He usually was the responsible one, but tonight it seemed he didn’t have a care in the world.

“Let them.” Michael’s voice was hoarse, rough with need and lust.

“W-what’s gotten into you two tonight?”

Jack had stopped reining himself in and fallen to the temptation of littering your pretty neck with kisses.

“This skirt…” he explained with a groan, his hand touching the guilty fabric.

“It’s hard to keep our hands to ourselves when you look like this.” Robby chipped in, his eyes making a point of looking up and down your figure appreciatively, before one of his hands traveled to your ass to cop a feel.

You squeaked in surprise, your panties drenched at this point. “G-guys…”

Your eyes darted to the door, the sane part of your brain remembering where you found yourselves.

“Maybe we’re tired of pretending you aren’t ours,” Robby murmured, thumb caressing your cheek.

“Maybe we just wanna let everyone know who you belong to.” Jack agreed, nicking the skin at your neck to emphasize his words.

You had to bite down a moan before you forced Abbot to look you in the eyes, guiding him by his silver curls.

“Is that what this is about?”

“Maybe.” Jack’s answer was sheepish, his sweet eyes honest and kind.

You smiled at the hopeful look in his eyes, a smile that only widened when you saw the matching spark of candidness in Michael’s iris.

“It’s not like you could finger me in public if people knew about us.” You couldn’t help but chuckle softly.

“Mmmh… not so sure about that,” Jack hummed with a boyish grin, before his lips inevitably found yours.

He kissed you as if he’d been waiting to do it all night… and perhaps it was because that was exactly the case.

He grabbed both sides of your face as he pressed himself against you and infiltrated his tongue inside your mouth to taste all of you.

One of your hands was raking through his curls as you enjoyed his mouth on you, while the other fisted Michael’s shirt.

The second Jack leaned away to get some air, Robby was there instead, murmuring, “Jesus, baby, you’re so hot,” before capturing your lips in a deep, searing kiss.

You went back and forth for a few minutes, making out with them one at a time while the other kissed and caressed every inch of skin they could uncover, until you were all blissfully out of breath.

“So— what do you say?” Michael asked, his brows raised in question.

As much as you wanted to give them what they wanted, to make your relationship public, you still needed to ponder through some things.

“I say… I say we need to go home right now.”

Abbot’s lips pulled into a smirk as he whispered: “We could do it right here… let everyone see.”

You ignored his words as you went on, “And then— then we’ll talk about it.”

The hopeful, joyful shock on both men’s faces was absolutely adorable.

“Yeah?” Jack asked breathlessly, not able to hide a huge smile.

“I like that idea.” Robby nodded, squeezing your side with a quick kiss to your cheek.

The tears are heavy in your eyes, your limbs heavy with fatigue with the loss of adrenaline, the way it slowly leaches away, emptying you so completely until nothing is left except that heaviness, that immobility. 

            It was adrenaline that got you here, that got you out of that house with the patches on the wall, covered up with filler from the times he drove his fist through the wall, the times that scared you but were better because at least it wasn’t you. 

            It was adrenaline that made you flee, tripping over your own feet to escape, leaving everything behind in hishouse, running to the only place you knew you would be safe just after he’d passed out from the sedative you slipped into his beer, the one he didn’t notice, the one it was all too easy to get, your job the only thing he’d let you hold onto. 

            It was adrenaline that gave you the courage after he hit you again and again and again over the years. It was the kind of adrenaline rush that builds up from that slow release of cortisol, the cycle of trauma and fear, your hippocampus ever shrinking, mind focused on only one thing and one thing only: survive. 

            It was adrenaline that got you here now, standing in front of the light blue door, the one you helped Jesse paint with the clouds, your hand steady back then, not the trembling thing it is now. Not the trembling limb it is now, shaking and quivering as you lift it to the wood, press the knuckles against the grain, the divots digging into your skin. 

            It’s not a knock, not even a sound, just the grounding of a broken person on the only thing that has seemed to right at this moment. The only thing that doesn’t make you run on adrenaline alone. 

            The only thing that makes sense. 

            Because here is a place that feels like home, that feels safe even when you’re not. Here is a place where you have only known happiness, have only seen emotions that never seem to hurt. Have never seen the violence of your home, have never heard the anger or the threats that characterize your waking life. 

            Here is the place where everything seems right. Seems fine. Seems better than fine, seems safe. 

            Something your world hasn’t been in so long. 

            It’s why you lift your trembling, quivering, shaking hand from the door and press it back again with more force, the divots leaving marks upon your knuckles. It’s still not quite a knock, but it’s hard to hit something with force when for so long the thing that has been hit, is you. 

            It’s like you know what you’re supposed to do, like you can remember it, but you have gone from being the person you were, to someone who shrinks in the rooms she occupies. You have become someone who whispers and doesn’t knock or have footsteps. Someone who has learned that being quiet is a way to survive. 

            Someone who has learned that to occupy space with life and noise is to welcome hurt. 

            And so, you try again, trying to hit the door with force, enough to make a sound. You try again and again and again, muscles even stiffer from the cold, lips still quivering but eyes finally running dry, the world clearing, your throat still thick from the tears, still that lump of fear and terror. That ever-clenching feeling that has been your constant companion for these past three years. 

            You land one knock successfully, the sound of knuckles on wood sending that electric spark through your core, the one that causes your heart to clench with terror, that base feeling that is your resting pulse. It’s a noise that is loud, that is skin on wood, bringing back the start, the way he used to hit the walls, the doors and praise himself, expecting praise from you too for not hitting you. 

            Praise you gave him because it was better if he scared you rather than hit you. Being scared was survival at a better level, some dignity still there, but scared with the violence as a result and cause was survival without dignity. It was just pure survival. 

            You can hear noise from behind the door, muffled footsteps and then the sound of a deadbolt being thrown, door cracked open and then you see him, Jesse, standing there face creased in worry, in fright and then understanding. 

            You know what he sees, the swelling of your cheek, the bruise like a handprint round your throat from where he choked you. The turtleneck you wore underneath your scrubs covered it, made your coworkers think you were hiding hickeys when all along you have been hiding marks of hatred not love. 

            Marks of pain not pleasure. 

            Marks of fear. 

            “Oh, sweetheart,” he whispers and then he’s stepping aside, gesturing you into the warmth of his home, the place feeling like a safe haven when you cross that threshold, like strength comes back into your limbs simply because he’snever been here. Because his presence doesn’t suffocate you here, those silent and not so silent threats no longer hang over your head, rather peace. 

            Something you haven’t truly known in years. Not since he came into your life. 

            “He—” you don’t get more than that one word out before you dissolve into tears, the pain overwhelming you, numbness from the adrenaline crash gone, pain now returning, overwhelming and choking you in a way so different than the way he did. Now the pain is everywhere and present and it isn’t stopping. It’s just going and going and going, over and over and over. 

            The tears burn, but you can barely process it, so focused on the way it hurts, the way the nausea creeps up your throat, stomach heaving and twisting, rearranging. You can feel Jesse’s arms wrap around you, the way he pulls you against him, your face finding the crook between his neck and shoulder, sobs muffled by his body, but his touch is only basic, only simple, only known on the factual part of your brain. 

            It’s not something you’re feeling. 

            Because all you can feel is pain, all you can see as he guides you to the living room and sits down on the couch, pulling you upon him is him and the rage on his face. The way he looked when he hit you. 

            “It’s okay,” Jesse whispers, his voice pulling you back, pulling you away, to the here and now. To the present. To the fleeing and the freedom. “I’ve got you.” It’s what he always says. Always has. It’s his refrain in these moments, the refrain that always waits for when you flee and go to him. 

            It’s the refrain that hurts because you always end up going back. You always end up believing his excuses, his apologies, returning back even when Jesse’s always been there, steady and constant and present without anger or violence or aggression or dominance. He’s a presence steady and kind and calm. 

            The hand that wipes the blood from the cuts, the hand which applies the bandages and salve and stitches you up. The hand that applies the ice and the ointments. The one who brings you back to full health just to watch it disintegrate again with a single hit, a single slap or punch or slam of you into a wall. 

            But he never wavers, always opens the door and patches you up, holding you against the tears or simply holding you because you can’t stand on your own, not really. And every time he whispers it’s okay, I’ve got you. 

            “He…” you pause and swallow, looking down at the ground of the living room, your vision not just blurry from the tears but from the swelling of your cheek, of your eye. “He slammed…me into—into the wall! And then h-he chokedme, Jesse! He said…” you break off, the tears, the sobs overwhelming you and threatening to drag you back there, back to him instead of here where it’s safe in the circle of Jesse’s arms. 

            “He said what?” Jesse asks you, his voice sending that calming feeling through you, the one that only he can bring forth. That only he has ever been able to bring forth. 

            “He said—I should thank him—for not…” you pause, breath hiccupping as the tears pour faster, eliciting a sob, one that has you lifting your hand to your mouth, trying to muffle it, teeth finding skin, biting down, still trying to be the same silent girl who understands that silence is protection, but Jesse removes your hand with a tender, warm and steady grip, holding it tight in his hand, but tight as in safe not pain. 

            “For not…?” he prompts, always the one able to pull you forwards, pull you from yourself and back to him. The one who can let you work through everything. 

            “Killing me!” you cry and then you bury your head into his chest, his one arm holding you safely upon his lap while the other holds your hand, your other hand curling into the collar of his shirt, cold fingers warming against his chest. 

            “He needs to go to jail, sweetheart,” Jesse says, his normal response, constant response, the begging of a man in pain. 

            “Yeah,” you whisper, the sobs calming down, slowing into slight hiccups while the tears still fall. “Yeah, he does.”

            And Jesse says nothing more, just holds you as the hiccups stop and the tears slow, until your breathing is even and you feel more stable than you ever have before. 

            “Are you going back to him?” he whispers and you lift your head from where it rests, pressed against his chest, your eyes meeting his, the light shade of blue like that of the sky as the clouds drift across in a tinted movie. In those eyes that you hold onto in your worst moments, you can see fear and hurt and hope. 

            And it confuses you because you love him and you have for so long. It’s the image of him that you superimpose over him when he would take you that has kept you sane. It’s the image of him and the kindness in his eyes, the way he’s helped you around the Pitt since you showed up wide-eyed and scared on your first shift as a MS3. It’s the image of him and the way he cares for everyone that has kept the line between the two of you from blurring in your mind. 

            You know the delicate state of yourself, the way sometimes it’s easier to mistake kindness for affection, the way you can convince yourself that he was only hitting you out of love. That you deserved it. You thought it was just your delicate state that made you think there was something there between you and Jesse but something in his eyes make you want to believe that you’re right. 

            “No,” you whisper, watching as the shift in his eyes occurs, that shift to happiness and hope, the gleam its own kind of beast. “Can I borrow your phone?” you ask him and his brows knit together in confusion, in worry. 

            “You can’t call him,” he says and you shake your head, your hands untwining from him, his collar and his hand, instead drifting to your cheeks, wiping away your tears roughly because you can’t stand the feeling of them against your skin. 

            “I need to call Brendon. He said when I was…ready to leave, to call him.” Your brother is your other rock. The one who sets your broken bones off the record, who covers your medical records because he wasn’t going to push you. 

            In fact, his older brother protective routine the first time only drove you deeper into his arms. And Bren swore he’d never do that again, never drive you away with his love, the way he feels. He promised himself and you that he would only help, never push. That you would live your life and he would just be the one to put you back on the path when you needed him too. 

            “Can you put it on speaker?” Jesse asks you, his voice gentle and sweet. Kind in a way that you’re not truly ready for yet need all the same, something inside of you cracking and shattering at the simple request made for your benefit not his own. 

            “Yeah,” you whisper and then his hand is leaving you, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing his phone, holding the device out to you, already unlocked from the glimpse of his face. You take it, clutching it like a lifeline, the back of your mind whispering that you can still call him, can still make things work, but the larger part of you denies it, shuts it down and instead you dial Brendon. 

            It rings once, then twice and then it’s answered, Brendon’s voice spilling out of the speakers. 

            “Jesse?!” his voice is scared, worried and just a bit angry. “Jesse, why the hell are you calling me?! Is something wrong with my sister?! Did that bastard do something even worse?!” In his voice you heard it, the worry, the fear, the anger and the helplessness, what the novels you read call impotence. The inability to take effective action. To do anything at all. 

            “Bren,” you call out, your voice wavering, sounding for all the world like you’re still terrified, still breaking and still crying. And you are. And you wonder when, if ever, it will stop. When, if ever, you’ll feel whole or if he took that away from you completely. 

            “Oh, thank god,” you hear Brendon breathe out, relief heavy in his tone and you can imagine him slumping down, his head pressing against something, body going slack. The way he always does when he’s relieved. “It’s you, Dolphin.”

            “Yeah,” you whisper, a small smile creeping across your face at the nickname, the one you got as a child when Bren became known as the Shark and you were the calm, ever guiding presence that balanced him out, the Dolphin. “It’s me.”

            “Are you okay?” The word okay has so many meanings and none of them seem to truly fit right now, truly fit for you. 

            “I left him. I left everything and I’m here with Jesse. You’re on speakerphone, by the way, Jess wanted to make sure I was calling you and not…not him,” you answer and you hear that sigh of Brendon’s, the one he’s always had, the one that is heavy and calm at the same time. 

            “You’re safe” is all he says, but in those two words are a multitude of emotions, ones that hurt and ones that heal and ones that burn. 

            “I’m safe,” you whisper, sounding for all the word like his echo, the person that you’ve always been, his shadow as children, the one making sure that he stayed out of trouble while he made sure that you were safe. 

            “Hey, Jess?” Bren says and you can feel Jesse shift underneath you, his hands holding tight to you still, his head moving forwards just slightly, attention focusing on the device in your hand, on the voice sounding tinny as it spills from the phone speakers. 

            “What’s up?” You have never quite understood their dynamic, the way they interact, only that it has always centred on you, on the pain and the bruises and the fraying of your mind, of your boundaries. Of yourself. 

            “Can you take care of her tonight? I have an emergency plan that I’ll initiate but I can’t get her out of Pittsburgh tonight. Tomorrow, yes. Tonight, no.”

            “I have to leave?” you ask, voice shattering all over again as something inside of you collapses, crumbles, folds in on itself at the idea of having to leave your home. At having to leave because you refused to give up on a man you thought needed you. A man who thought pain was love and control was everything. 

            “You can’t stay here in the same city as…him,” Brendon spits out the pronoun as if it’s making him sick, his words harsh but the harshness not directed at you, never you. 

            “Will I…will I get to come back?” you ask and Jesse’s arms tighten around you, his grip steadier, something that holds you, anchors you in the here and now where you’re alive, you’re safe. You’re still here.

            “When he’s behind bars,” Bren says and the pause that falls between the three of you is one where they wait for you to speak, to argue, to do what you always do. To fight for yourself but you’re too tired to do that, like every bit of strength has been removed from you, leached away slowly every time he did something. 

            “Fine,” you whisper and your hand twitches on its own, the grip on the phone so tight, nerves acting on their own, reacting to the death grip in a displeased way. “I’m hanging up now, Brenny,” you call out, voice louder than before as if you feel the need to tell him. To remind him. 

            “See you tomorrow,” he says and then the phone beeps, call ended, a heavier kind of exhaustion falling upon your shoulders, the kind of loss and realization and inevitability. The guilt that this is your fault not his. That you were the problem not him. That this is all because of you not him. 

            You hate the guilt, always have. It’s what convinced you to stay, to put aside the instinct for preservation, instead choosing to return to someone who rather hurt you than love you because you were guilty. Because you didn’t want to yet another person who gave up on him.

            You don’t really know how long you and Jesse stay like that, him holding you as you hold onto him, his phone long since dropped onto the couch cushions, your mind blank and body in pain, wires uncrossing, the urge to escape diminishing. You only know that it’s long enough for the sky to shift and change, light shifting to dark, streetlamps flicking on and shining through the living room curtains. 

            You only know that it’s long enough for your breathing to even, breath to return to normal and mind to focus on something other than the pain, on him, Jesse. On the man who you have loved, sometimes you think the only man that you have ever loved. You think of Jesse and you think of him, noticing the line drawn between them, the line separating them that of love and caring. Because you don’t think you ever really loved him—you just didn’t want to be someone who gave up on him. 

            You think he was someone to feel for, to care for but you don’t think love was ever part of the equation, that it never got to form, the way he is that separating factor, lines simply blurring as his hand clenched tighter, control stronger. 

            You wish that younger you had had the fortitude to resist, to push back. 

            But you know it only would have been worse if you had. 

            “Hey,” Jesse whispers, his voice soft and clear and steady, always so steady. “Why don’t we get you cleaned up, okay?” You know what he means: he’ll help you shower, dress and fall asleep, telling you he’s there, always. That you’re safe. 

            And it’s something, it’s enough. Even if you’ve always wanted more. Even if you’ve wondered almost constantly if he would care, if he would touch you and look at you not with disgust but with desire. He hasn’t even touched you in a year except to harm. 

            No sex, no touching. No rape. 

            Blissful, really, but damaging in yet another way. It’s like you’ll never quite escape from the damage and the pain. Like you’ll always be broken, made of jagged edges, not quite glued on right. You wonder if you’re jagged enough to draw blood. 

            “Okay,” you whisper in response to Jesse’s question, the one you’ve let go unanswered as your thoughts swarmed. He helps you stand, the two of you walking in tandem, his arms resting on your waist, a steady hand, someone to catch you if you fall. 

            “Pick your poison,” he says as the two of you cross the threshold into his bedroom, his steady hands leaving you just long enough to do what he always does—reach into his closet and pull two shirts, a Guns & Roses shirt and a Taylor Swift one you bought him. 

            “Taylor,” you answer and he tosses the shirt at you with a small smile, the kind that is bashful and humorous and funny and beautiful and you want to see it forever, but you don’t really deserve that. He turns back, holding a pair of sweats in one hand and a pair of plaid boxers. 

            “Boxers,” you reply, catching them as he tosses them out to you, his hands on you again as he guides you from the room into his ensuite, his hands gentle but barely there, steady yet as present on your skin as the kiss of a butterfly’s wings. 

            It’s a dream you had when you were still in his bed, still his girl, one of Jesse’s hands being present in a way that is stronger than now. In a way that you would always feel. 

            He helps you undress, quiet and gentle, guiding you through his bathtub’s door, adjusting the water settings, the stream starting at exactly the right temperature. Just like always. 

            Except tonight is not just like always because you have left him. For the first time in your life, you are free. You are you for the first time in a long time. No more of him and the hitting and the beating and the blood and the pain. 

            And even though you could do all of this on your own, sometimes it’s just nice to be the one being cared for, not the caregiver. 

            “I’m glad you left him,” Jesse says as he sinks down upon the stool he has, the one he stays on ever since he found out you had tried to kill yourself once, just to escape the pain. He doesn’t want you to do that even though in his house there really was no risk. You’d never want to stain his tiles red. Just your own. 

            “I am too,” you whisper as you turn under the stream, the curtain drawn between the two of you, the world outside of the shower opaque and sort of crystalized. 

            “Then why’d you stay?” he asks and it’s a question that has haunted you for years, since the first time he hit you and apologized. Since he started hitting walls and even earlier than that when he began to break you down in your mind, destroy the walls you had in place for safety. 

            “Because…” you sigh, turning again to face the stream, the water hitting your face in a pleasant way, as if washinghis touch away. “Because everyone gave up on him and I didn’t want to be another. It wasn’t…it wasn’t an I can fix himkind of thing but rather a I can support him, an I can be the one who stays. And…I don’t know…he made me…” you trail off as you reach for the bottle of shampoo, squirting some into your hand, massaging it into your scalp, body relaxing at the feeling. 

            “He made you what?” You glance through the curtain, noting Jesse’s form is closer than it was before, standing and just outside the curtain. But it doesn’t scare you because you know Jesse, you know that he’s upset but not at you. 

            That was the hardest thing to learn. That people get upset at things other than you, that you do not have to apologize for just existing. 

            “That no one else would ever love me,” you answer, your tone deadpan and flat, emotion long devoid. That sentiment was something he always told you, especially when he found out about Jesse, about your friendship. 

            He taunted you about Jesse, things like “you think he’ll ever love you? Grow up. You’re nothing, I’m the only one whose ever gonna touch you. The only one who slums it.” Things like, “I’m the best you’re ever gonna have so just stop thinking of him. It’ll never happen; I’m the only thing you can get. And that’s only cause I don’t mind you being ugly.”

            You’re numb to those now. You’re numb to a lot of it and that’s what scares you more. That what he did no longer hurts, it just seems normal. 

            “He’s wrong,” Jesse whispers and you can hear pain in his words, pain in the way he speaks, as if something inside of him is breaking. 

            “I know,” you reply, watching as he slumps, tall, lean body relaxing. “He didn’t even love me. Hasn’t wanted me in over a year.” You can’t help the shrug that escapes as you turn around, the spray of the water washing the shampoo from your hair. 

            “Wanted you?” Jesse asks and you sigh, tilting your head back to normal, soap suds swirling around your feet, spinning to the drain as you reach for the curtain, pulling it back just a ways. 

            “Sexually,” you tell him, tone blunt, your eyes meeting his. Those perfect blue ones like a cloudless sky. Like calm. “He hasn’t touched me. We haven’t had sex and he hasn’t…raped me in over a year. Which is a blessing, but you know…not even he wants me.”

            “I do,” Jesse whispers, his face open for a moment before he closes it, neutrality slipping past as he turns, his back to you, gaze drifting to the ground as he turns. 

            “You do what?” you ask, water washing onto and over your back. 

            “Want you,” he whispers and it’s like the world has stopped, gone cold, like the blood in your veins has run dry because this has been the thing that’s haunted you most. How you love someone who can never love you back, has been part of the reason you returned to him because how can you give up on something that exists for a fantasy. 

            But all this time, he’s been here. 

            And it’s like you’ve come alive again because there are moments in life that you can’t come back from and this is one of them. You can never go back like you haven’t heard him want you. 

            And you don’t. 

            You pull the curtain back, your hands covering nothing as he turns back, hands clenched in fists, eyes looking up and away, jaw clenching as if in pain. 

            “You can look,” you whisper. “It’s not anything you haven’t seen before.” The water is still falling, still searing your skin, but it’s like nothing because then he’s looking at you with haunted eyes. 

            “I can’t hurt you,” he whispers. 

            “Then don’t.” And then he’s there, lips against yours in a kiss that is fevered and desperate as his tongue slides into your mouth, stroking along yours, hands falling on your waist, slipping against the skin, water slick in-between. 

            The kiss is one that tastes of forever and impossibility and luck and tenderness. Oh so much tenderness. His hands move from your waist to your ass, gentle as he squeezes it, a gasp leaving your mouth at the sensation and Jesse pulls back, blue eyes looking at yours for reassurance that he didn’t hurt you and then he’s guiding you out of the shower, shutting off the stream and pulling you to his bed. 

            “Do you want to have sex with me?” he asks you, tone clear, words blunt. 

            “Yes,” you tell him, your voice equally clear, for the first time all night it doesn’t shake. And then he lays you on the bed, spreading your legs, pressing kisses against your inner thighs before moving to your centre, to where water mixes with arousal, his tongue flattening against you, stroking from entrance to clit, again and again and again. 

            The feelings he elicits are too much, yet not enough, having never felt this way before, his tongue circling your clit as his one hand joins his mouth, fingers stretching your folds, stimulating every part before carefully, ever so carefully inching in, stretching you, the feeling delicious and strange and beautiful. 

            He flicks his tongue against your clit, a strange feeling spreading through your limbs as your back arches, strange small whimpers leaving your lips as his blue eyes watch you from between your legs, a slight smug glimmer in them as if he knows exactly what you’re feeling. Exactly what he’s doing to you. 

            His facial hair leaves strange scratch feelings that you thought would hurt, but don’t, instead they elicit their own kind of pleasure as he pumps his fingers in and out, a coil inside of you tightening and feeling like it’s wound so tight that it’s soon to snap. Especially when he curls his fingers inside of you, hitting some spot that has you coming apart, the coil snapping, a strange, sticky feeling overwhelming you as his fingers pull out and he rises, popping three fingers into his mouth, sucking your release off his fingers with a small, pleased smile. 

            But even with that coil snapping, you’re still feverish and needy and feel like you need to be filled. Something you’ve never truly felt before and then he’s stripping, his lean, sinewy body on display, cock hard and leaking as he climbs over you, bracketing you in on the bed, his cock just pressing against the outside of your folds as he leans down, pressing a soft kiss against your lips. 

            One sweet and short and tender in a way you’ve never had before. 

            “I love you,” he whispers as he pulls back, pupil-blown blue eyes assessing you, waiting to see you flinch, but instead you reach up, your hands cupping his face as you pull his attention to be solely on you, not the future, not thinking about your reaction, just you.

            “I love you,” you tell him and as you speak, he slips between your folds, never once teasing, just sinking in in one thrust, burying himself up to the hilt, just sitting there for a moment as he presses his lips to yours, his skin fevered as he begins to shift, to move and pull out, entering back in, his lips never once leaving yours. 

            It’s hot and full of desire and sloppy in a way as he thrusts it, lips and tongues and teeth clashing as his hips slam up and into you, tender in its own way, the way the angle changes are designed with your comfort in mind. Only yours. 

            As he thrusts in, the tip of his cock dragging against a particularly sensitive spot, one hand still resting between your legs, toying with your clit, toying with pressure and presence, you let out a small moan, arching up and into him and you can feel his smile against your lips, the kiss still never ending. 

            It doesn’t take long for the two of to become tired, spent and as you come around him and he comes inside of you, in hot and thick ropes, he falls beside you, holding tight to you, pressing a kiss to the top of your forehead as sleep claims you both. 

            And in the morning, when you leave after coffee and breakfast and lazy morning kisses, all you can think is that it’s not hardest to leave Pittsburgh. 

            It’s hardest to leave Jesse. 

            The morning that you left was the hardest one for Jesse because this wasn’t a temporary leave back to someone who hurt you where you’d eventually leave and find him. 

            No, this was a permanent leave, away from him and the abuser. But he’d just had, just held you in his arms and now you were gone. 

            He doesn’t know what’s worse. The fact that he’s loved you all these years since you showed up in the Pitt, arms crossed with a smile, firm but gentle like the dolphin in your nickname or the fact that he knows you’ve loved him all this time too. 

            He doesn’t know what’s worse, watching you leave when he’s never gotten to love you. 

            Or watching you leave when he has. 

            “Shit,” you whisper, the test in your hand glimmering in the light but even distorted by the gleam it’s clear. PREGNANT. It’s not like you don’t know whose it is, only that you’re so far, new phone and contacts placed by Brendan. Which includes him and your parents and no one else. 

            You know he’s right to do that, that you can’t have anything get back to him but it hurts. It hurts because Jesse needs to know and you can’t reach him. 

            May never be able to. 

            “What’s up, Dolphin?” Brendan asks you, the weekly phone call pushed back two weeks by his and your surgical schedules. It’s what people love the most about the Parks—every single one is a surgeon. Your parents both peds surgeons, Brendan an ortho and you, a cardiac surgeon.

            You always joked that it was funny you made a living off of fixing breaking hearts when you’ve never been capable of fixing your own. 

            It’s not funny now. 

            “I need you to tell Jesse something for me,” you say and he sighs.

            “What?”

            “I need you to tell him I’m pregnant and yes, it’s his. The bastard hadn’t sexually touched me in a year,” you say, your sentence clear, a work around for every contrast question he might ask. 

            “I can’t,” he says. “If the bastard found out…I don’t know what he’d do and I’m not ready to find out.”

            “Just you, Dr. Park?” the OB/GYN nurse asks you, voice kind and gentle and you nod, rising unsteadily from the chair, five-month bump hard to handle, yet precious in its own way, this bit of life growing that it’s entirely innocent and loved. 

            Because you do, love this child that is. 

            You love them so much and you haven’t even met them yet. 

            “Yeah,” you answer, sliding your purse up and onto your shoulder. “It’s just me.” That’s the only hard part. 

            Having to do all this alone. 

            Jesse is in pain. 

            It’s not physical, it’s not even something that anyone could see. He just is. It’s like he wakes up every morning with a whole where his heart used to be because you are gone. 

            There are no more sunshine smiles or hellos or see you tomorrows. There’s just emptiness and coldness and the memory of exactly how you used to feel. 

            It hurts a lot. 

            The nursery is a labour of love. It’s something you’ve done entirely on your own since Brendan refuses to travel to visit you, refuses to give any trail to the bastard. He’s paranoid but you don’t blame him. 

            The trial is taking forever, keeps being pushed back and pushed back and he posted bail. And everything just seems to be going in his favour back in Pittsburgh, but you are not there. 

            You are here, in New York, in your home, preparing for your baby. 

            Jesse’s baby. 

            And that’s enough.

            “Shh,” you whisper as you reach into the crib, lifting your daughter’s delicate, small body up and out, settling her into your arms, rocking back and forth, soothing her, her cries quieting. “Mommy’s here, Dawson, it’s okay. I’m not going anywhere, sweetie.”

            Pittsburgh has changed since you’ve been gone. It’s colder and larger than you remember, meaner too. But that just might be because you have a two year old daughter holding tight to your hand as she makes a game of jumping into all the rain puddles, squealing when the water splashes, crying “look Mommy, look!”

            She’s the reason you’re here at the ED, her fever running high, nose running and lungs coughing in a way that scares you. 

            Because you’re entirely helpless. 

            “Let’s see what’s up with little…Dawson Park,” says Dr. Whittaker, the chart before him, eyes narrowing as he reads it, gaze darting to you, eyes widening in realization, puzzle pieces falling into place before him. “The Shark’s niece?” he asks and you nod, your hands clenching so tightly around your purse straps that you can feel the muscles spasming against your skin. 

            But it’s a new feeling, this helpless feeling of being a mother unable to prevent dangers from reaching your child. 

            “You needed a peds specialist,” you hear a familiar voice call and then the curtain is pulled back and your eyes meet the same blue ones that have haunted you since you were an MS3. 

            “Jesse,” you whisper, voice breaking as his eyes dart between you and your daughter, taking in her bright blue eyes and narrow chin, the dark brown curls. The way she looks just like him. 

            “Dolphin?”

            Jesse knows as soon as he sees her, the little girl on the bed with the runny nose, that she’s his daughter. Maybe it’s the curly hair, maybe it’s the bright blue eyes that are so clear, maybe it’s the narrow chin or maybe it’s the feeling he has when he sees her, the one of pain and love and frustration. 

            The feeling he always thought he’d have as a dad. 

            He knows as you say Jesse in that cracking, breaking way that you wanted to tell him, but Brendan probably said no. 

            And he wants to be angry, but he can’t. Because he knows the danger you’ve been in, the danger your ex has caused. He’s seen the man show up at the hospital. Seen him accost Brendan, been accosted himself. 

            He knows it was for protection, but that doesn’t stop the hurt from spreading through him as he looks between the two of you, noticing the way your eyes are tearing up, both from him and the stress of the child on the bed before you. 

            And he knows the hurt will have to wait. 

            “We need to talk,” you whisper and he nods, waving Princess over, watching as you press a shaky kiss against the top of her head, biting your lip as you walk away, always looking back over your shoulder at her as if she’s everything. 

            The only thing keeping you tethered.

            “She’ll be just fine here with me, Dr. Park,” Whittaker says and his assurance does little so he pulls his phone from his scrub pocket and shows you the lockscreen. Jesse’s already seen the photo, met his son and his wife, heard the entire story, but he watches as you take in the photo of the young boy with the bright red hair, smiling and you relent, leaving the room and following as Jesse walks with you to the on-call room, closing it behind the two of you. 

            “She’s my daughter,” he says, the words not a question yet you nod as you sink down onto the couch, your head falling between your knees. 

            “Yeah, her name’s Dawson,” you tell him and he can feel that pain rip through again, that pain of never knowing, of missing out. Of losing. “Dawson Mia Park.”

            “Why…” he pauses, trailing off, trying not to let his anger take hold, trying not to scare you, knowing that anger and abuse are linked for you. 

            “Jess,” you say, lifting your head, your tired eyes meeting his, worry gleaming in them, the look of a mother. “You can get mad. I know that anger is not abuse. I’ve had a shit ton of therapy these past three years. Get mad. It’s fine. This was a shitty thing to do and a shitty way to find out and I’m sorry.”

            “Just why?!” he cries and he knows when the words hit you that you take them the wrong way, taking them as in why did you have the child, not why didn’t you tell me. “Just why didn’t you tell me?!”

            “Because Brendan said no. Said that…the bastard would do something bad if he found out and he wasn’t risking me and Dawson and…in a way…you.” The words land in his heart and he can’t take it anymore because he has spent three years feeling empty and even longer before that missing you. 

            He’s not doing it anymore. 

            Because every time you left him, wandering back to him, he hurt. Because watching you leave always hurts because you’ve never been his. 

            He’s not letting you go anymore. He can’t. And so, he crosses the room, kneeling down before you, his hands finding your face as he pulls you up to him, pressing his lips against yours, the kiss stained with salt from both of your tears. 

            He pulls back, his forehead resting against yours, his hands on your cheeks, your hands on his wrists, the two of you just resting like that for a moment before he whispers, “you don’t have to go it alone anymore.”

            “You’ll be there?” you ask and he pulls back, still holding onto you, one hand slipping down to your neck, his eyes looking deep into yours. 

            “Always.”

            “The nursery is impressive,” Jesse calls and you step in, Dawson on your hip, a smile spreading as you look around the blue room, taking in the depictions of dolphins and sharks and whales you did, the ones that took so long, were so painstaking. The ones that are worth it every time because of the way Dawson lights up, clapping her hands excitedly. “Okay, little one,” Jesse coos, taking Dawson from you and settling her on his narrow hip, “let’s give Momma a break, alright?”

            “I don’t need one,” you tell him and he looks at you, a soft smile on his face, one sad and happy all at the same time. 

            “Let me give you one anyways.”

            “This little one is unfortunately very good at getting what she wants,” Jesse says as Dawson comes running up to you in only the way that a three-year old can, her hands holding a stuffed whale. 

            “What do you mean? What did she do?” you ask and in answer, Jesse pulls a bag from behind his back, one stuffed to full paper capacity with stuffed animals, the sight enough to bring a laugh from you, the kind that rumbles deep in your belly. 

            The kind that delights him, his blue eyes lighting up. 

            And in his gaze, you find everything you’ve never had before: love. 

            “I’m still pissed at you, Brendan,” Jesse says, his tone sweet for the words, for his expression but Dawson rests on your lap, playing with the dragon stuffy Bren brought for her and so he tempers himself. 

            “I know,” Bren says. “But I’m not apologizing. I’d keep that lie a thousand times over if it meant keeping them safe.” 

            “That’s the only reason I let you in our house.”

            “Hey, babe?” Jesse calls out, his voice just a little too high-pitched for your liking. You can hear him moving around downstairs, sounding like he’s shuffling his feet, like he’s nervous. 

            “Give me a sec, okay, hun?” you ask Dawson and she nods, taking the book from your hands, flipping through the pages as though she’s reading even though she can’t yet. 

            “What’s up, Jess?” you call out as you climb down the stairs, one hand on the railing, the other resting on your stomach where your second child flutters, only a couple months along. When you step down, you see Jesse waiting, his cheeks flushed a shade of pink, Bren standing off to one side, phone out as if he’s recording. 

            “Well…that bastard has been denied parole,” he begins and you feel that caving inside of you, that one of relief, of calm and peace. One that hasn’t been there for you since you heard he had applied for parole. 

            “Yay,” you whisper, your one hand flying up to your mouth, the other to your stomach, anchoring yourself here and now. 

            “So…” Jesse sighs and runs a hand through his close-cropped hair. “I know it’s been bothering you and you haven’t really been thinking of anything else, but…babe, it’s been two years of us and I was…” he pauses and you hear Bren sigh, his frustrated one. 

            “He’s asking if you want to marry him, for Christ’s sake!” he yells and Jesse turns to him, nostrils flaring and eyes narrowing. 

            “I can still kick you out of this house, Shark!” he retorts, but you can feel that bubble of peace and calm and luck rising within you because you never thought you’d have this. Never thought you’d be able to have someone who loves you, all of you. His words still lingering all these years later, but now it’s different. 

            Because now you know he was always lying. 

            “Yes!” you yell over the sound of the two of them arguing. “Yes, Jesse! I will marry you.” And then everything stops as he runs to you, scooping you up in his arms and twirling, holding tight to you, pressing kisses against your cheeks, your lips, chin and neck, anywhere he can reach. 

            And as he does, your baby stirs and Dawson runs to you, holding tight to your leg, investigating the commotion. 

            You know in that moment, he meant what he said all those years ago. You’ll never go it alone again. 

            Because you have people who love you. Truly and completely. Always have. 

four times–four!–looking at your lips. 'what's your favorite food? oh, i love that, too.' twice at your chest. 'i, personally, think you're cooler than robby, doc. but don't tell 'im i said that, yeah?' an exaggerated compliment of your earrings. 'y'know, i've been thinking of getting another piercing, but i'm not sure what to get next. whaddaya think, doc?'

oh, give him a fucking break.

this kid has known you for a few days, but is already calling you doc? and who gives a fuck what you think? you have a god damn teddy bear on your top.

"i'm serious, the scrubs are cute. not every day you see an attending wearing colorful stuff like that–"

robby blinks at the call of your name. it's jack, swooping in with long, uneven strides.

see, now that's a good friend. a real one. knowing that robby can't fucking stand you, but that you're still his ex, and the last thing he needs to see is someone flirting with the reason he can no longer sleep at night.

"diaz needs you in chairs."

jack's words are short and sure, attached to a stare that leaves no room for the nurse to even consider negotiating. both you and the nurse hold your breaths at jack and the hands he has stuffed into his pockets.

"oh, uh… y-yeah, 'course," the nurse clears his throat, eye flicking between yourself and jack's unmoving regard. "i'll see ya around, doc."

robby scratches his head when you actually give him a small-smiled, head-tipping goodbye. just touch the guys arm and kiss him away, why don't you? jeez…

knowing your ex-husband is still watching, jack keeps his back to him in a sturdy stand to send you two quick winks. of course, he gets to smirk while you have to force your lips to remain unmoved behind your pen cap.

"go away, please," you mumble, feeling a laugh trying to bubble up out of you. jack just huffs, which makes your facade even harder to maintain. any second, and you'll be breaking.

"'whaddaya think, doc?'" jack manages to dissolve the grin on his face, but leaves an amusing tease just behind the mimic. you bite your pin and hide your face from where robby can see, taking off for somewhere… anywhere else but here.

over at the hub, robby sighs. not in relief, because he isn't–relieved. but jack's little move has stopped the hest burning and itchy skin enough to stop robby's teeth from grinding.

robby hints something to jack before he departs for the night. something about being grateful for a friend like jack, how it's good to know that at least someone here has his back. ever since you returned, it's felt like almost everyone had been on your side, repping your colors; which sucks, but he'll take a team with he and jack any day of the week.

jack nods at the words while patting robby's shoulder, keeping the truth to himself. like you said, robby can think what he wants. jack wasn't playing hero, nor was michael robinavitch a mere thought in his mind after seeing the nurse with the piercings trying to leeean himself into you.

leaning into you is reserved for jack. that's his job. leaning and calling your scrubs cute… 'cause they are.

...AND BEFORE ✦

"hey, uh… doc."

louie's words hesitate out of him. his usual certainties and smiles have a hard time retaining their strength at the sight of your shaky hands and tears in your eyes. by the time you turn around, a few of them have escaped. from the bed, louie frowns at how you don't even try to wipe them away. the chil of the exam room fills with gloom.

for a long moment, the two of you look at one another. more tears fall, but you stay silent. louie takes a breath before speaking, all sobered up by now.

"you can let it out. i won't tell anybody." a true promise. one that wells more tears and catches your breath as you ease back toward the bed with slow steps.

louie gives you whatever time you need to gather your thoughts, the only thing stopping him from reaching for the kleenex the IV trapping his arm with flowing medicine.

"i… i love him. i swear i do," your pause your thick-with-tears, quiet voice to swallow, resuming even softer, afraid someone will hear. that he'll hear. "but i don't think that's e-hic-nough f-for him. he won't talk t'me. i can't–i can't, um… get him to just talk to me, he keep saying i can't handle, hic, it. all i wanna do is be there for h-him, be happy with him like he said we would be. b-but if i can't do that, if he won't open up and let me by more th-than some kind of… pastime, then i don't wanna stay–"

your body interrupts itself with a loud gasp for air, and you rush to cover your mouth. more tears. even after you close your eyes, wanting to hide.

the cries into your palm only soften when you feel two hands grip your free one. wet lashes fluttering, your shoulders drop when you see louie clasping your grips together. there's something in his stare, something that tells you he doesn't quite know the same pain but has experienced a different kind that made him feel as broken as you look and sound right now.

"i'm sorry," you whisper out, but louie shakes his head while you wipe at your face.

"no way, doc. no sorry's. we both know you've seen me worse off than this, so it's only right i try to return the favor. here, sit down." louie ignores your sniffled no no no's when he shuffles at little to make room for you to settle just off the edge.

"louie, no. i can't, 'm so sorry. i shouldn't have even–"

the way he's looking at you trails the rest of your sentence into nothing. with knowing eyes and a face that makes you want to cry harder.

it takes you a while nine seconds to surrender, and you perch on the side of his bed. biting the inside of your cheek just as another handful of wet spills over your lash line.

"…you stay in here as long as you need, doc. we'll just tell 'em i got scared'a the needle, and wanted some company."

you release a short laugh after a long sniffle, accepting the hand louie offers up again.

the older man sits there as you work through it.

holding your hand.

watching you.

wondering.

he and his wife weren't perfect by any means. he doesn't expect you and robby to be, either, but the sight of you like this… it's so different from the way he saw you when he'd first spotted your ring… so different from the usual happy, jokey doc he's used to seeing. the one that lights up the hospital, even after a steelers' annual thursday night football loss.

he just… doesn't understand it. dr. robby letting it get like this, to where you're crying to other people about how bad it is. crying to him, ol' louie dang cloverfield.

maybe it's because he'd give anything to see rhonda again, to give her and their child the entire world and then some. but he couldn't imagine letting her feel like you're describing.

you, his best soon-to-be-attending that arrived in his life six years ago. the over achieving, dual residency seeking (emergency and surgery) girl, too smart of your own good intern that did everything to get on his good graces. he pretended that it annoyed him, but his ego got the massage of its life. 

your personality bewitched him. how selfless you are, how you are always there for your friends and coworkers, how you let your fellow residents take charge and show their competency. 

he also loves how you loved him. the way you paid attention to all of his tells and how you were there when he needed. the company was great, and the sex even better. 

but michael being michael, fucked it all up. 

it happened three months ago. three or four days after your eight month anniversary, something you never dared to talk about with him, knowing very well what his reaction would be, robby took you out for dinner. nothing fancy, just that local restaurant the both of you liked going on weekends or on your days off to distress, with good food and silent enough to carry on a conversation without having to shout. and as usual, you went back to yours, rode him like your life depended on it, losing count of how many times he made you come. the last orgasm he gave you, a combination of his tongue and your favourite vibrator, shattered you, turned you into a clingy mess that only wanted to feel the weight of his body on you. 

you had embraced him, hugged him tight as he laid on top of you. with your ear to his chest, you counted his heartbeat. the thrumming inside his chest combined with the way his long, slender fingers softly massaging your scalp relaxed you. 

it relaxed you so much that the three little words you kept locked inside your heart for as long as you could remember, involuntarily came out. “god, i love you.”

his heartbeat probably went over the hundreds, his body stiffed on top of you, and his hands left your hair instantly, helping him get up. 

“mikey, where are yo–“

“i can’t do this.” he interrupted you. 

“what?”

“we should break up.” were the last words he told you before he left your apartment. 

over the next weeks, as expected, the only words you exchanged with him were restrictedly related to the cases you had to present to him. 

what he didn’t expect was how fast you got over him. 

he had noticed that you were happier by the day, noticed how your smile had slowly gotten back to you and how you were hiding a bruise or two under your shirt, just like you did when he was the one to mark you. 

didn’t take long for him to find out the culprit. 

it was just another wednesday. you had arrived with a pep on your step and more talkative than normal, what earned you a “great sex last night, huh?” from santos. all you said was “amazing.”

the day followed on the calmer side, triage was slow for once and barely any traumas were brought in by the EMTs. 

robby made his way to the bathroom, thankful that he didn’t have to hold his pee again. as he was about to reach the bathroom’s door, something caught his eyes. you, with your back against the wall, all smiles as brendon park said something to you. 

he hid behind a wall, cursing himself for acting so childish. but curiosity got the best of him and he had to see who was making you happy now. 

park had lunch box in his hand, awfully pink for a man like him. michael made out the words “you have to eat” coming from the ortho surgeon, as he handed you the lunch box. it made you smile and robby is pretty sure some joke left your lips, because seconds later, the ever so stoic park started laughing. 

that felt like a stab on robby’s heart. 

then, the other man’s fingers traced the side of your neck, pulling your turtle neck down to see the work he did the night before. robby couldn’t see, but he bet it was the hickeys you loved getting so much.

something about ownership and feeling him for days after, you had told him once. 

brendon pulled the fabric up again, apologised to you like he had done something horrible, but promised to do it again. the bubble that embraced the two of you bursted seconds later when park’s pager went off, telling him the OR was finally ready. 

the tender kiss park gave you on your temple was robby’s last straw. 

he angrily made his way to the bathroom, peed, washed his hands so hard they were red after. unconsciously, robby made his way to the break room, only to find you there, happily eating. 

he moved around, found some stale coffee that he refused to drink and set a new one to be made. 

he was still twinkling with the coffee maker, with his back turned to you when he said “park, huh?”

“mhm.” 

“didn’t peg him for your type.” robby said as he turned around, taking a sip of his coffee. 

you smiled at him. “and what exactly is my type, michael?”

me, he thought, but didn’t say it. he shook his head. “park is closed off, brash, he is–“

“he’s a really nice guy when you get to meet him,” you cut him off. “he’s really caring and attentive, never made me feel like i have to hide my feelings. besides, he doesn’t leave me alone when i’m vulnerable after cumming god knows how may times because he isn’t emotionally stunned.”

robby visually grimaced and nodded his head. “got it.”

after that day, robby only talked to you about work. 

something told him he should have gone home, but it was emery’s birthday and she had made a huge deal about him and abbot coming to their usual bar for some celebratory drinks. 

you arrived about twenty minutes after him, with brendon in tow. you have that glow you always get after being well rested after a day off. brendon’s hand is on your waist and you smile when he leans down to whisper something in your ear. 

like you always do, you go around the table, saying your hello’s and hugging your closest friends. robby earns a pat on his shoulder, and that’s more than what you have given him in months. 

the night goes smooth, except for the fact the only free seats for you and park are in front of him, forcing robby to either mingle or see how loving brendon is to you. 

so he sings a song or two on the karaoke with yolanda, trinity and dennis and plays countless rounds of pool and darts with donnie, jack, emery and shen. 

he won’t lie, more often than not, he found himself looking at your direction, looking around to see what you were doing. only to find you laughing with park while victoria and samira told an absurd story, or slow dancing with your new boyfriend in a secluded corner of the bar. 

the last sight of you was ten minutes ago after he caught your irish goodbye. 

robby looks at his watch and sees it is almost eleven. he tells his friends goodbye, tells someone that he has a shift early tomorrow when a voice asked him to stay a bit longer, and wishes emery a happy birthday again. 

the cool breeze hits robby as soon as he is outside of the bar. it is a short distance to his house, only four blocks, and robby decides that walking will do him better. 

he needs to clear his head. 

his walk is cut short the moment he walks by the alley beside the bar. robby hears a moan, a too familiar one, that once called out his name and now stretches out a languid “bren”.

he freezes, debating if he should keep on his merry way or snoop around. but it feels like his legs have its own set of brains and, next thing he knows, he is hiding behind a dumpster watching the way brendon is kneeled between your legs, his wide shoulders being used to support your trembling body up as he eats your pussy like a man starved.

part of him wants to chastise himself, tell him that he is too old for this, that he could go to jail if he got caught, but fuck, you let out another strangled moan, the one he knew it indicated that you were close to falling from the edge, and one thing led to another, and his hands were undoing his zipper and freeing his painfully hard cock from the confines of his pants. 

“bren, baby. please, i’m so–“ you beg and another tortured moan lives your lips. 

brendon obeys your silent order and swiftly gets up, pulls his pants down just enough to free his cock. without a warning, he thrusts inside of you, not giving you time to think twice as he relentlessly assaults your pussy. 

robby spits on his right hand and gives his angry red head the much needed attention it needed. 

the sight is overwhelming to him. you, being ferociously fucked by the head of the ortho department in a dark alley behind a dingy bar, something robby and you had done a time or two before.

you are a mess, no more coherent words leave your lips, only confused babbles and broken moans make their way out as brendon hits your cervix. 

robby’s hand timed its rhythm with you, caressed and pulled his painfully hard erection the same way brendon thrust into you. he was close, knew you were too with how silent you were getting. robby always laughed when you did this, joked that it was your body recharging itself for your release. 

brendon seemed to be close too, his movements were getting erratic, a little less controlled, and his grunts were getting louder. 

your head bobbed to the side, and robby felt his whole body chill, terrified of getting caught. 

“fuck!” you whined, and one, two, three thrusts later, you, brendon and robby came. 

the air around the alley shifted. you and brendon were trapped in your lovers haze while robby’s post nut clarity hit. he wiped his spent on the wall, pulled his pants back up and went on his way back home, begging god and the universe not to get caught. 

robby hadn’t seen you all weekend and was thankful that you barely spoke to him after you arrived for the shift this morning. 

on a rare calm moment, robby goes to the break room for some much needed coffee, only to find you there, doing the same. 

you nod, acknowledging his presence. robby gives you a court one back, and stops by your side to fill out his mug. you nudge him, silently ask him to come down to your height with two fingers. you get closer to him, bringing your lips awfully close to his ear. 

“you know, next time, if you ask nicely enough, you can join us.”

He’s yanking a fresh set of nitriles from the wall as he slices through the trauma-bay after the third page of the day into the ED, face stygian-dark with pure irritation as Robby shoots him an apologetic look. 

“What now?” he bites, tone raw and stripped of all expected politesse. “Better be worth my damn time.” 

It’s been a shitty work day to say the least:

He’s been worn down to the marrow after captaining seven eventful surgeries on his feet, running on auto-pilot and fueled by an empty stomach to match, all while Gloria keeps trying to walk him down the plank and into another tirade of playing nice to your coworkers, because this is the second HR report in a month in regards to this infamous Shark attitude of yours, Dr. Park—

—does a double-take. 

Feels a drop in his gut he hasn’t felt in years. 

A rusty yet familiar thump of his heart, resounding in the proverbial, abyssal deep of Davy Jones' locker.

There, seated upright on the edge of a gurney in Trauma-2, is a scratched up patient hooked into a tangle of IV’s with one arm limp; unconsciously bracing her loose shoulder in what he can clearly diagnose in a beat as a dislocation. A pinched expression adorns her bruised face, where a spot of dried blood has been smudged from brow to hairline.

Park seizes, blindsided. 

Looks like the wind has just been ripped from his sails. 

…You always had that effect on him, hadn’t you?

“Dr. Park,” Robby repeats, confused at the abrupt halt. Tries to decipher the windswept look on the surgeon’s face.

It looks like an ironic combination of having been deep-plunged into the arctic chill of the sea by a rogue wave; and as if he’d just breached a terrible whitecap to take the first breath of fresh air in his life— The permanent frown Park has on his face has given way into something impossibly subdued; something unrepentantly sentimental.

And you must’ve recognised him too, surely, because you’re meeting his blue, stunned gaze with this strangely profound gleam in your wide-eyes: Not malice or fear, but a certain wistfulness— as if you’ve accidentally sailed yourself back into charted waters again.

…Oh, Robby susses, after following Park’s sightline. Casts a wayward glance at Garcia at the other corner of the bay, whose lips have also parted in slow realisation.

Is this the ex?

(As comes with all folklore or tales of a vicious monster is a backstory, after all. And the old word goes that: Park the Shark hadn’t always been this fantastical, beastly asshole of a character— no, he’d been transformed into it after he’d lost his proverbial Heart of the Sea; turned into a spiteful man like some Greek tragedy.

But that’s as far as anyone dare speculate, of course.)

Park finally kickstarts himself into moving; resumes with snapping his gloves into place. Has to actively force himself out of being tidally-locked: You the anchoring moon to his turbulent seas.

The pause is fleeting enough that if nobody had been paying close attention they’d have missed his startled half-step— But regardless, the shift in the air is noticeably different now: a lack of significant ripple in the room; No smooth, prow-of-the-ship momentum as he passes. 

It’s almost as if Park is warily measuring where his place is in here; if he’s allowed to take up your space.

“What the hell happened?” he grits out to Whitaker, voice riding a more specific cadence now than his usual growl of annoyance. It has the rest of the older, more senior staff that are known to him whipping their heads up in curious reaction.

A tone of neither concern nor alarm— No, Park sounded afraid.

You’re still staring at him when he glances at you discreetly. 

Brendon, you nearly greet. He can read it in the flash of your eyes; hear your siren-like voice echoing sweetly in his head. The same instinct to call out the syllables of your name had lurched in him, too— having only barely managed to swallow it back in front of everybody.

“Oh, not her. The priority is in the other roo—” Whitaker begins, throwing a thumb over his shoulder only to get silenced with a pointed glare. 

“Answer my question,” he snarls at him. A glint of canines. 

(If you hadn’t felt like a walking, talking contusion you might’ve found it endearing that he’s this fraught over you; might’ve teased him for lashing out at his coworkers.)

Dr. Robby swiftly rolls the portable X-Ray with Donnie’s help. “Anterior shoulder dislocation,” he presents quickly, letting him reckon the screen. “MVC case. She got clipped while crossing the street by our drunk driver next door over.”

That raises the hairs on the back of Park’s neck. Can’t help but rundown the potential traumatic injuries like a narrative in his head. Drunk driver? comes the seethe under his breath. 

“Who’s got a posterior sternoclavicular displacement, by the way,” Garcia points out curtly, only to be dismissed with a hiss of: Is he stable? Then he can wait, as long as he doesn’t move another damn inch and jams a vessel.

“She cleared for everything else?” he continues, after trenchantly ignoring Garcia’s raised hands in defense.

“We’re waiting on CT to queue her in,” Whitaker says meekly. “But so far she’s perfectly stable.”

Park grunts. An undefinable muscle tics in his jaw. “CT won’t give a shit about a dislocation. Call ‘em up before they have her waiting down here an hour. Tell them I personally requested.”

Your voice is hesitant. “Hold on, is something wrong that I need to be rushed?” 

“No,” he replies reflexively, in surprisingly soothing cadence and sudden unison with Robby.

It has Whitaker wondering if he’s hearing things. Park snaps his mouth shut. 

“Dr. Park here is just concerned. The quicker we get you in for a CT, the quicker we can rule out any potential internal injuries that the X-Ray might not have caught,” Robby continues to clarify, by way of meaning: You’re clearly special to him, since he wants to skip the line for you— and I’m not dumb enough to get in the Shark’s way, thank you very much.

“Will they fix my shoulder before, or…?” Your eyes fall naturally to Park’s. Everyone notices it.

“It would be wise to reduce it right now. Whatever is most comfortable for you,” Robby offers, before turning to shoot an affirming nod at Park as he mumbles, We can take it from here, Shark.

And, well, it’s probably best, isn’t it? Park ought not to stay. Ought to busy himself with more pressing matters and get out of your hair before he endures the anguish of you sending him out yourself for how he’d cut you loose all those years ag— 

“Wait,” you blurt, voice tenuous.

Park stops short.

So does the room: A deadwater stillness, freezing in terrified anticipation.

“If it won’t take too long… Could you be the one to reset my arm?”

A beat.

Whitaker, alarmed, stumbles out an excuse in a heartbeat; ever the one to save the trauma bay from that tension the Orthopods always tend to surround themselves with: an oceanic pressure, a temperamental current. That a case as minor as a displacement is, quite literally, beneath them.

“Oh, uh, rest assured us Emergency Physicians are, are perfectly capable with—”

“The patient is advocating for herself,” Park reminds him stiffly. But the override tumbles out— tumbles, which is enough to earn him a curious look— with less sting than anybody is used to. “Move.”

Instantly, the juniors scuttle away from his shadow like hermits. Observe, astonished, as Park walks— walks, not glides, like a damn human being for once— to settle charily in front of you.

(Gone, it appears, is the fabled Shark of Orthopaedics.)

The scant space between you feels strangely domestic despite the natural tension of the situation. You lock eyes. Hello again, he translates your rapt gaze. 

“Pain meds?”

Robby declares what EMS had administered enroute, and lists the other currently on board. His answer is a beat late; still taken aback by the odd scene unraveling before him. 

“Good. Those will have already kicked in,” Park mumbles now to you, voice low. Grounding. You remember the tender bass of it as if it was just yesterday that you’d last seen each other. “Might still hurt, though.”

(A rare kindness, to those who’ve known the Shark long enough: he’d never been the type to warn his patients unless absolutely necessary.) 

You shoot him a brief smile. “I’m okay,” you murmur— and he has to physically regather himself all over again at the earnest look you’re giving him; at the way you’re saying the words like you used to then: reassuring him, and not the other way around.

He blinks. Reconciles himself back into the role he’d come down here to do, all while trying to stubbornly ignore the way you’re etching him into memory. Memorising the profile of his face and admiring the great lean of him. You made good, you can’t bring yourself to say. I wish I’d been there to see it.

The break-up, looking back, hadn’t been angry— let alone vicious. It’d rolled over as slow as an expecting tide; an ebb and flow of highs and lows. Park and you could both see the coming end in the horizon, wearily washing ashore as the relationship began to sour along with the anchor-drag of stress from his Surgical Residency. 

Then he’d finally brought it up one day— and it’d been mutual. Amicable. Mature enough to not leave each other with lingering hate as your lasting words; not a drop of bad blood. A simple case of right person, wrong time. I want this to be a clean break, Park remembers describing, and the accidental pun had even made you laugh. 

…He’s forgotten how that sounds, after all these years. 

(It’s why he’d calcified into this hollowed shell of a man: brine-bitter and sea-weathered.)

Everyone owlishly watches him work. Clinically efficient, but uncharacteristically gentle as he checks mobility and rotates methodically. Completely bereft of that familiar gnash of jagged teeth he’s fabled for, and more tenderly than they ever thought possible to have come from the boorish leviathan that is Dr. Park the Shark of all people. 

“On three,” he finally warns, upon positioning. 

You nod in readiness, wait for the countdown.

“Three.”

---POP.

“Agh, you motherf—!”

You bite back your yelp back in time. Drop your head forward in a startled choke as Park, instinctively, steadies you firmly against him. 

“Easy,” he draws out, and very nearly tags a fond Honey at the end of it. There’s a tentative smile threatening to surface across his face at the curse you mustered back, borne from a nostalgic memory.

(Again, an anomalous thing to hear from him: since when did he care for verbally comforting his patients?)

Witnessing the proximity is jarringly intimate, but experiencing it is another. Your forehead brushing the flex of his biceps from where you unconsciously followed his pull; Park’s chin and tense jaw ghosting the crown of your lulling head. The signature scent of yours from that same fragrant perfume you still use after all these years that leaves him yearning.

Candidly, he fancies if he turns to look down at your buried face, that he might relive the dusty, waterlogged memories of those early mornings with you, where he’d wake to your warmth; curled languidly in his arms before his lips would press onto your brow for a doting ki—

A relieved, breathless laugh bubbles out of you. Washes over Park like the dizzying warmth of a sea-breeze. Drowns him with a terrible tidal wave of homesickness.

“No countdown?” you narrow, smile half-hearted from the pain that’s dulling down now.

“Didn’t want you bracing,” he mutters, disguising his apology under the pretense of clinical explanation. He has his eyes still attentively fixated on you when he snaps his fingers for somebody to pass the sling. Not wasting a single moment to take you all in as you rear back from him. 

And if the startling sight of Dr. Park the Shark, Orthopaedic Surgeon, doing a task as menial as helping a patient into their sling, isn’t what convinces Garcia she’s in a fever dream— then the chance moment she catches of him tarrying a spindrift-soft, indulgent touch on your wrist is definitely enough.

It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? It means to say, alongside the billion other unbidden thoughts rattling in his head. I’ve missed you dearly. I’m sorry I ended things. I still think of you. For all my mistakes and regrets in my life: losing you has been the greatest.

But just like that the moment ends. Dr. Park slides his grip away and straightens up, and with it returns the commanding presence that orbits around him and has the room deferring to the gravitas instantaneously. (Robby and Garcia know him long enough, however, to note the tightness of his jaw and the softened depth of his frown.)

“Send a Resident up with her. I’ll take her case,” he orders aloud, in a tone that clearly meant: Expedite her CT, or I’ll rip your fucking head off myself.

Garcia purses her lips as he breezes past everybody. Doesn’t even bother with arguing on the potential conflict-of-interest. “You got it, Shark.”

He smothers the urge to stay. Internally tamps down the treacherous yen in his heart; the desire to glance over his shoulder for one final look. Instead he kindles the spark of bristling rage in his marrows again as he moves towards the patient— the drunken bastard— responsible for putting you in harm’s way.

Garcia trawls after him as they make headway to pass through to the next bay over. 

Do you have anybody we can contact? comes Whitaker's distant question to you. Family?

Oh, uh, they’re too far.

Okay. What about any partners, then?

Garcia notices Park slow down considerably. Eyes him hiding it with a deliberate switch of a new set of gloves. 

Ah, no, is your sheepish answer. None at the moment.

Had anybody caught the subtle relax of Park the Shark’s shoulders, they held enough sense not to comment on it.

A man with graying hair pulled a woman into his side- his wife, probably. She tipped her head up, smiling, and kissed his cheek like it was second nature.

Robby looked away.

Maybe, in another life, that could’ve been him. Maybe if he played his cards differently..

He cut the engine of his motorcycle and shoved the keys into his pocket. The heat wrapped around him instantly, thick and suffocating. His leather jacket clung to his back, damp already.

At least Jack couldn’t give him shit about not wearing protection.

He had heard enough about the helmet.

This was supposed to be his sabbatical. Time away from the hospital. Space to breathe.

Not this.

Not driving miles out of his way just to haunt old ghosts.

He was a glutton for punishment.

The old floorboards groaned under his boots as he stepped inside. For a second, it felt like he had walked straight into the past.

Same green bar stools. Same busted mechanical bull he had fallen off of one too many times. The pool table looked worse for wear, but it was still standing.

He had told himself he had come for the nostalgia. Maybe a beer or two.

He didn’t believe that now.

The walls by the booths were covered in old photographs- some faded from age. Moments frozen in time.

His eyes roamed over them, searching.

There you were.

Wedged between him and Jack in one of the booths, grinning at something he couldn’t remember anymore.

His chest tightened.

God. He’d aged more than he realized. The last few years had carved into him. And Jack-

Yeah. Of course, Jack still looked the same.

Must be genetic.

“Hey, stranger.”

The voice came from behind him pulling something deep in his chest he had ignored for years.

Robby stilled.

What was he expecting? He was practically begging to run into you. This was your town.

Then he exhaled, slow, and looked over his shoulder.

There you were.

Not a memory or a photo he had stalked on Facebook.

Real.

Older, yeah, but not in a way that took anything. If anything, it settled into you. Made you steadier. Not the wild girl he remembered from a few summers back.

His gaze lingered a second longer than he meant it to.

“...Hey,” he said.

Something in his expression softened, the tension easing just a fraction as he took you in.

“It’s been a while.”

Understatement of the decade.

His eyes flickered briefly to the bar, then back to you. He hadn’t exactly planned to see you. I mean he had hoped but didn’t plan this far.

“I didn’t know you were still around here.”

Then he said, a little more honest and less guarded.

“You look… good.” And he meant it, even if he wasn’t sure he was allowed to.

“I always look good, Robinavitch.” you laughed. Easy, like no time had passed at all.

It caught him off guard.

Not the words. Those sounded exactly like you.

It knocked something loose in him. Something that had been wound up tight for the past ten years.

Robby let out a quiet breath, the corner of his mouth lifting before he could stop it.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “You always do.”

His hand dragged over the back of his neck, a habit he hadn’t managed to break.

“Didn’t think this place would still be standing,” he added, nodding vaguely around the bar.

A deflection.

A bad one.

Because his eyes flickered back to you almost immediately. It was like you were the only part of this place that mattered.

His jaw tightened just slightly, like he caught himself doing it.

He knew you’d catch it too.

‘I was passing through,” he said.

Real estate convincing, Robinavitch.

“...Figured I’d stop in.”

You watch him for a second. Those eyes, he’d never really been able to keep anything from you. Not then. Not now.

Your gaze traced the small changes in his face. The faint lines at the corners of his eyes, the greys in his beard. Still stubborn Michael.

“That’s what you’re going with?”

“Yep.” He cringed at himself.

You held his gaze for a second longer, then huffed out a small laugh, shaking your head.

“You gonna stand there all night or-” you cut yourself off, rolling your eyes lightly and holding an accusing hand up. “You know what? You’re making this awkward.”

You let the silence stretch just long enough to make him uncomfortable. He didn’t know if you felt pity for him or if you just liked making this worse. Probably the latter knowing you.

“Come on. I’ll buy you a drink.”

“They still let you buy here after all your fake ID attempts?”

“Gotta respect the determined.”

Robby shook out his shoulders and let out a breath as soon as you turned your back to him. Be cool. He followed you to the bar and took the stool next to yours.

You ordered two beers. Something with a strange name and worse taste. It didn’t matter though; the cold bottle made his clammy hands cool off.

“What’re you doing here, Michael?” You asked. “Last time I saw you, you were peeling out of here like a bat out of hell. Something about ‘we can’t do this; you’re just a kid.’”

It didn’t sound great when you said it like that. I mean you were just a kid. Jack’s little sister. God that sounds worse. You had been young, he’ll admit. Freshly out of college and about to start vet school with your whole life ahead of you. Robby had been an attending at the time in his 40s. A more than inappropriate age gap between you. You hadn’t ever seemed to care though. He remembers the ways you’d welcome him when he showed up at your family’s front door. In the swimsuit, dripping wet. In the hallway while your brother helped set the table. Fuck, in the laundry room.

Your hand snapping in front of his face pulls him from his thoughts. He jumps slightly then immediately tries to cover it.

“Yeah, I remember,” He murmurs and takes a pull from the cheap beer. Yeasty and bitter, a horrible combination.

“I know Jack didn’t send you. My brother meddles, but he’s not quiet about it.”

You had him there. Jack couldn’t keep a secret to save his life. A part of him always thought Jack knew what he was doing with his best friend's little sister. That didn’t make him feel better about it.

Robby picked at the label on his quickly warming beer can. “I’m on sabbatical. I was driving in a random direction and saw the turn off for the town.”

“Right,” You scoff, not looking the least bit convinced. You take a swig of the beer. Robby’s eyes trace the way your throat moves as you swallow. “You just happened to end up here.”

Robby tears the mushy label into tiny pieces, letting the silence sit where it wanted to.

You take another sip; you eye him over the rim of the bottle this time.

“You always were terrible at lying,” you added, almost lightly.

“Wasn’t trying that hard.”

You hum at that. He always had that undeniable charm when he wanted to, that’s what attracted you to him in the first place. You know, besides the trouble of chasing something you knew you couldn’t have.

You set the bottle down, turning a little more towards him on the stool.

“No,” you said, quieter now. “You never did.”

Robby’s fingers stilled on his pieces of soggy label. You knew how that was going to land, but you had said it anyways.

He chewed on the side of his cheek, like he was mulling over his next words. He tipped his own bottle back and took another drink, buying himself time that didn’t really help. When he lowered it, his doe eyes found yours again- steadier this time, but not untouched.

“You working out here?” he asked.

It wasn’t what he was about to say.

You knew it.

He knew you knew it.

But it was better he didn’t voice it.

“Yeah,” you nodded, turning the bottle slowly between your hands. “Took over the small clinic in town when Doc passed. Mostly farm calls, some emergency stuff when the ranchers get desperate enough.”

He nodded once; this was exactly where he always pictured you. Some small vet clinic in the middle of nowhere. Helping people out. The city life wasn’t really ever your speed.

“You always liked fixing things.”

“Animals don’t argue,” you said, a little dry. “They don’t pretend they’re fine when they’re not. Makes the job easier.”

It landed softer than it sounded. His mouth twitched again, but there wasn’t any humor in it.

“Yeah,” he said. “Can see the appeal.”

Silence settled over you- not empty, just… full.

You tapped your fingers lightly against the wood countertop, thinking, then added:

“Had a colt come in last week. Bad leg. Owner waited too long to bring him in- classic case of rancher stubbornness.”

Robby’s eyes shifted to you, more focused now.

“Did it?”

You shook your head once, rolling your lips together in that way you always did when you were thinking too hard.

“Sounds about right.”

You clicked your tongue and shoved the frustrations away.

“For what?” you asked.

Robby made a low sound in his throat. Like he was pulling the truth from somewhere deep in his chest.

“For… things people think will fix themselves.”

He was skirting around the answer. But it was something.

You watched him for a second, like you were deciding how much he could take before he ran off with his tail tucked between his legs.

“Do they?” you murmur then clear your throat. ‘Do they ever fix themselves?”

His jaw clenched, just slightly.

“No.”

The word sat between you. Uncomfortable and honest. But you both knew it was the truth.

You let out a small breath, leaning back a fraction on the stool.

“Yeah,” you tap the edge of the glass. “Funny how that works.”

You took turns looking at each other. Both thinking the other didn’t know. Until your eyes finally caught. This moment felt different.

Less careful.

More aware.

Like if either of you leaned in a little more, something real might actually come out. You can’t play your strange game of cat and mouse anymore if it came out.

So, neither of you did.

Instead, you nudge your empty bottle with your finger.

‘You want another-”

“Listen-”

Your phone buzzed against the bar.

Then again.

You knew better to ignore a phone call this late. You flipped it over, eyes scanning the screen- your posture shifted instantly. Subtle, but there. Focused and in work mode.

Robby noticed.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

You were already sliding off the stool.

“Yeah,” you nodded, already running through the medications in your med bag. “Just- give me a second.”

You stepped a few feet away, immediately answering.

Robby watched you, his eyebrows crinkling in the middle and his shoulders setting in the way they did before a trauma came in.

Your expression tightened, not in panic. Dialed in.

“How long?” you say into the phone, “No, don’t pull. I’m on my way. Just keep her calm, I’ll be there in twenty.”

You hung up and turned back towards him, already halfway between here and the ranch on the other side of town.

“Sorry,” you said, tucking your phone into you back pocket. “Emergency.”

Robby straightened. “Everything okay?”

“Cows in labor. Not progressing,” you said, like this was something normal he should understand. Because this was normal for you. He was a people doctor not a cow doctor. “If I don’t get out there, we’re gonna lose one or both.”

There was no hesitation. No softness that he was used to with you.

Just clarity.

A purpose.

You weren’t the kid who was trying to find her way anymore.

He watched you, something shifting behind his eyes.

“Right, yeah of course.”

You reached for your keys, then paused- just briefly- looking back at him.

“I-” you stopped yourself, this was a stupid idea, and you knew it. “You want to assist on a calf birth?”

You weren’t expecting him to say yes. Just like you weren’t expecting him to grab his jacket and hop into the passenger seat of your old truck.

The truck rattled to a stop outside an old barn in a wash of dust. You were out before the engine fully died.

“Gloves are in the back,” you called over your shoulder, already moving.

Robby grabbed the bag without thinking, falling into step behind you. The air was different out here. It sat heavy in his lungs. Thick, quiet, sharp, and distinctly animal. In another situation you would have made fun of the way his nose scrunched out. Then said some witty remark about how the smell of cow shit was “money.”

An older man waved from the open barn, worry written all over him.

“We got her in the pen doc, she’s been like this for an hour,” he said, his voice thick with worry. These cows were the ranchers’ livelihoods. A dead cow wasn’t a good cow, and a dead cow meant the families around here were going to be short money in the winter.

“You did the right thing calling,” you cut in, not unkindly, already snapping gloves on. He led you around the side of the barn to a small fenced in pen.

The cow was down on her side, side heaving, a low, strained sound pulling from her every few seconds.

Robby slowed, taking it in.

It was different from the trauma room.

Same urgency.

You dropped to your knees in the dirt beside the animal like it was second nature, one hand coming to rest firm against her flank.

“Hey, mama,” you murmured, “Docs here. I brought a friend too.”

Robby had seen you many times when you were younger- laughing, pushing, pulling him into things he knew better than getting involved in.

He’d never seen this version.

“Okay,” you said more to yourself than anyone else. “Let’s see what we’re working with.”

You glanced back at him briefly.

“Hold the bag open.”

He moved without hesitation. Of course he did. If you said jump, he’d ask how high.

You worked quickly, efficiently- checking, assessing, your movements sure in a way that didn’t leave space for doubt.

“Calves not positioned right,” you said, turning to the rancher. “That’s why she’s not progressing.”

Robby nodded, even though you weren’t talking to him.

“What do you need?”

The question came out automatically.

Like muscle memory.

You didn’t look up. You knew he’d give you whatever you needed at that moment.

“Just stay with me,” you said. “And don’t let her thrash. She’s going to try to move. She’s not like the pregnant woman you see in the ER, her instinct isn’t to let us help her. She’s a bottle-fed baby though, so a little bit of pressure might keep her where we want her.”

He stepped closer, bracing carefully, one hand steadying where you directed.

The cow shifted under him, a sudden jolt of movement that would’ve thrown someone less prepared.

Robby adjusted instantly.

“Good,” you said, quick, focused.

Not praise.

Acknowledgement.

It was like he was a med student again.

His attention snapped back to you.

Your hands were steady. Precise. No wasted movement.

Talking softly to the animal between instructions, like you’d done this a hundred times.

Probably had.

“Easy,” you murmured again, working. “Mikey, wanna catch a calf?”

Hell, yeah he wanted to catch a calf.

“Okay,” you said sharply. You directed him to the hind of the cow. “Grab the hind leg just above the fetlock. You’re going to pull downward on the contractions.”

Robby followed your lead without question, adjusting where you told him, holding where he needed to.

And then it shifted.

The resistance gave.

The calf came free in a rush of motion and sound, hitting the ground with a heavy, living weight.

For a second, everything went still.

Then the calf moved.

Small. Unsteady. Breathing.

The farmer let out a sound that was half relief, half disbelief.

You didn’t celebrate. Not yet.

You were already moving, checking, clearing, making sure everything was right- efficient, calm, completely in control.

Only when you were satisfied did something in your shoulder finally ease.

Robby exhaled, not realizing he’d been holding it.

His gaze stayed on you.

Not the scene.

You.

There was dirt on your hands, your clothes, some strange goo on your shirt- and none of it took away from what he was seeing.

If anything, it made it clearer.

“Damn,” he said quietly.

It slipped out before he could dress it up into something lighter.

You glanced at him, a flicker of something crossing your face.

“Yeah,” you said, like it was just another night. “She’ll be alright. And it's a healthy baby boy.”

Robby felt his cheeks heat, a breath of something like a laugh leaving him.

‘That’s not what I meant.”

You held his gaze for a second longer this time.

You didn’t look away.

Neither did he.

The truck was quieter on the way back.

No rush this time. Just the low hum of the engine and the occasional rattle when you hit a rough patch on the road.

Robby leaned back in the seat, forearms braced on his thighs, hands still faintly stained despite the quick rinse at the pump.

He hadn’t said much since you left the barn.

Your hands rested loose on the wheel, steady. Comfortable in the quiet. Comfortable in yourself.

It wasn’t something he remembered.

Or maybe it was.

Just… not like this. You had always been cute and fun, but you had become this brilliant, beautiful woman.

“You’re good,” he said softly into the quiet of the car.

You glanced at him briefly, then back to the road.

‘Yeah,” you said. “I am.”

Just a fact. That did something to him.

“Wasn’t a compliment,” he added after a second. “Just… an observation.”

You huffed lightly through your nose but didn’t argue it.

“Still counts.”

The corner of his mouth pulled faint.

The road stretched out in front of you. Empty and dark. He watched your hands on the wheel for a second. He checked your finger for a ring. Nope, no ring or tan line. That made him feel a little giddy.

“Didn’t think you’d want to come do the dirty work.” you said after a while.

He shifted in his seat.

‘Would it be wrong if I said I just wanted to spend more time with you?”

“Yes… I’m surprised you stayed.”

“Didn’t seem like the thing you walk out on.”

That was a safe answer after he had emotionally vomited right before.

You let both sit.

“You used to… you would have walked years ago.”

Robby played with the hem of his shirt.

“Yeah,” he said. The truck rolled over a dip in the road, headlights catching the dust in the air. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

There it was. Small. Unprotected.

Your grip on the wheel shifted, not tense, but aware.

“By leaving?” you asked.

He grunted an agreement. “By not staying. There’s a difference.”

That was enough for you to pull the truck off the road and throw it in park. You turn fully in your seat towards him.

“For who?” it was a pointed question.

He didn’t answer immediately. He didn’t have an answer ready this time.

“Both of us,” he settles on. It sounded like something he’d told himself to make himself feel better.

You nod once, slow. Rolling your lips together.

“Yeah,” you grumble. “That’s what you said then too.”

Robby leaned back, dragging a hand over the back of his neck.

“I didn’t think-” he started, then stopped. Reworked it. “I didn’t trust it to not… I don’t know, mess things up for you.”

Your eyes pierce through the side of his face. “Or for you?”

He huffed quietly. Not having an answer.

“There it is.” You threw the truck back into drive and merged back onto the road.

“Both.”

He couldn’t let you think that. He had spent all those years letting you think that. He had spent years letting you be mad. In a way, you had the right to be.

The truck slowed as you neared the edge of town, lights starting to reappear in the distance.

“I didn’t need you to decide that for me,” you drawl. No anger this time. That’s what made his throat catch.

“I know.”

And he did. Now, at least.

You pulled the truck into the deserted parking lot of that old bar, right next to his motorcycle. Neither of you reach for the door, even long after you cut the engine.

“I came back for you.” It slipped out before he could stop it.

No build up.

No deflection.

Robby went still the second it left his mouth. He was waiting for it to hit something. Or break something.

Your body didn’t move, but something in your eyes did.

Not shock.

Not exactly.

Recognition… maybe.

You didn’t answer him or let him take it back.

Didn’t soften it.

Didn’t deflect it either.

You just sat there.

Robby waited.

A second too long.

Long enough for the silence to start getting to his head.

His jaw tightened, something closed off behind his eyes.

“Right,” he muttered, more to himself than to you. He nodded once, like that settled it. Then dug his keys from his pocket. “Should’ve known.”

You turned your head towards him at that, the connections crossing too late- but he was already moving.

The door opened with a dull creak, the night air rushing in as he stepped out of the truck.

“Mikey-”

He didn’t stop.

He didn’t slam the door either- just shut it with a firm click. Like putting space between you could keep things contained in an old metal box.

He dragged a hand over the back of his neck as he crossed the lot, boots crunching against gravel, heading straight for his bike.

Fuck, you should have known he’d read it like that.

Of course, he’d leave before you could-

“Michael, wait.”

You were out of the truck now, door swinging shut behind you as you hurried after him.

He slowed.

Not enough to stop.

You caught up a few steps behind him.

“That’s not-” you started, breath catching slightly. ‘That’s not what that was.”

That got him to stop. He didn’t turn around, but he looked over his shoulder.

‘What?” he asked. Flat. controlled. But not unaffected.

“You not saying anything?” he added. “That’s… new.”

You ran your fingers through your hair, frustrated- not at him. At the timing. At the universe.

“I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know what to say,” you shot back, stepping closer. “There’s a difference.”

He held your gaze now.

Fully turned towards you.

Searching your face like he was trying to decide if he believed that. Using his own words against him.

“Yeah,” he said after a second. “There is.”

But he didn’t move closer. He just stood there. Letting you control how this played out.

Just stood there, looking at you like he was trying to recalibrate something that hadn’t worked in years.

You close the distance instead. Not all the way. Just enough that it changed the air between you.

“That’s not what that was,” you said again. The front of your shirt brushed his.

Robby’s eyes dropped to your mouth for half a second before snapping back up.

“Then what was it?” he asked.

There was less control in it now.

Less distance.

You hesitated.

And he saw it.

He always saw you.

“That’s the problem,” you blurt. “I don’t- I don’t have a clean answer for you.”

A tight laugh echoed from his chest.

“Yeah, that tracks.”

You let out a frustrated breath and reached for him before you could think better of it- your hand catching his. His gaze dropped to where your fingers were wrapped around his.

Too familiar.

Not familiar at all.

“I spent years being mad at you,” your voice was steadier than you felt. “That was easier.”

His eyes lifted back to yours.

“And now?”

You shook your head. “Now, you show up out of nowhere and say something like that and-” you huffed, grip tightening just a fraction. “I don’t know where to put it.”

Robby stepped closer then.

Careful.

He was giving you time to pull away if you wanted to.

You didn’t.

“I didn’t come back to make it harder,” he said.

Your grip on his hand loosened before you let go- only to catch on the front of his shirt instead.

“Feels like you did,” you murmured.

His hand came up, hesitated, then settled lightly at your side. Asking without saying anything.

You didn’t step back. Didn’t step forward either. Just stayed.

You could feel the heat rising from his chest, the steady rise and fall of his breathing. If you tried hard enough you could feel his heart hammering in his chest.

Close enough that it would’ve been easy-

Too easy-

Your eyes flickered up to his.

Then down.

Then back again.

Robby’s breath ghosted over your lips, his forehead dipping forward- stopping just short of you.

He remembered, even now, how to hold that line.

“Tell me to leave,” he whispered.

Your fingers tightened in his shirt instead.

Robby’s breath cough like that was all the permission he was going to get.

He pulled away just a fraction to search your eyes.

Then his hand shifted at your side, firmer now, and he closed the distance.

Your lips met his, and for a moment everything seemed to drop out- the road, the bar behind you, the years between.

The kiss wasn’t soft.

It couldn’t be.

There was too much behind it for that.

Your hand caressed over his chest and across his neck to his jaw, pulling him closer before you could stop yourself, and he responded immediately. He’d been waiting for it.

Like this was muscle memory.

That was the problem.

It felt familiar.

Too familiar.

Like something that hadn’t ever fully let go.

Robby’s grip shifted, almost pulling you in further-

And then he stopped.

Not all at once.

But enough.

The kiss broke slower than it had started, like neither of you were quite committed to ending it.

Your forehead hovered close to his, breathing uneven.

Neither of you spoke.

You didn’t know how to.

Robby placed a kiss on your forehead, savoring the moment.

“Yeah,” he murmured under his breath.

Not regret.

Not satisfaction.

Something in between.

Your fingers let go of his jaw but didn’t drop away completely.

“This doesn’t fix anything,” you said quietly.

He nodded.

“I know.”

Neither of you moved.

Still too close.

Still there.

And somehow… not where you were before.

J. Abbot:

Heard you assisted in child birth last night? Should I be concerned?👀

Tell Dr. DoLittle she owes me money.

The big ones, the important ones, sure. He remembered them all too well, even through the haze of pain and fatigue that often hung thickly around their reception. 

But there were too many to account for. To remember the particulars of each slash and burn and gunshot wound was a losing battle. He’d long since given up on keeping track of them. Little lines on the sides of his fingers, stretchmarks on the backs of his biceps, winged fans of a burn on the side of his thigh, a pale line along the point of his elbow that he might as well have been born with.

There were ones from further back, too. Scars that time and pain had eroded the precision of the memory, but not the feeling. Cigarette burns on his forearms, a necklace of animal teeth on his side, a craggy line across his hip, accompanied by the shadowy memory of hand reaching for him, and not being quick enough to duck out of the way. 

They all meshed together into the hard patchwork of scar and muscle his body had wrought itself into.

Almost none of them could be helped, out of his control, out of his hands.

They were a catalogue of his life, a story traced on his skin.

Stamped, more like. Branded. 

Survived. 

And soulmates shared scars. 

Their hurt was his; his hurt was theirs. Literally or metaphorically, he wasn’t quite sure. Simon had so many, spent so much time in pain, it was impossible to know if any of them didn’t belong to him originally.  

He didn’t like the thought of someone sharing his scars, having felt what he did. Possessive of them and the pain in a strange way. 

It’s ironic, then, that he should be able to find his soulmate more easily than the average unmarred person, and wanted to do nothing of the sort. Simon dismissed the whole thing as drivel a long time ago, anyway. If they did exist, if they weren’t just incredibly rare instances of luck, Simon was sure that he hadn’t been afforded one. 

There was guilt, too, settled somewhere deep inside him, that someone had to endure it alongside him. It was easier to believe he’d been left out of the whole thing. 

Better he was alone. 

The likelihood of finding that person was slim. It almost never happened. Eight or so billion people swanning around the planet would do that. A one in eight billion chance. 

A grand, cosmic joke. The unfairness of it drove some people crazy, drove them to do insane things to increase a probability that couldn’t be altered—to know that person probably existed somewhere and yet know that they would probably never run across them.

A trend of self harm cropped up online every few years, healed over self inflected wounds posted in forums of people seeking their other, fated, half. The presumption being that they were being desperately searched for in turn.  

Idiotic. Determined. Fallibly human.

And taboo. Most saw it as circumventing fate. 

Violently frantic for the thing Ghost had been unwillingly given. A way to find them, or, at least, easily identify them. And he never would. 

But, sometimes, he wondered. 

He tried to picture the imprint of a person somewhere out in the world wearing his wounds, suffering his losses. The thought would circle his brainstem in an unrelenting loop, a bright fish whispering around the perimeter of its bowl before it dissipated in lieu of something more pressing. 

It was always there, though, waiting to be grappled with again. 

He always came up blank. Nothing but a shadow in his mind where a person should be. Fitting, typical.  

It was a cruelty he couldn’t imagine, somehow. Someone being fatefully, inescapably afflicted with him. 

Simon didn’t want a soulmate anyway, and he was sure, if they existed, that they didn’t want him either. 

If there was someone out there, someone wandering around with his scars on their skin, he was certain they hated him already. 

He didn’t particularly believe in fate; life had taught him not to. He believed in himself, his capabilities, planning and contingencies. And Simon didn’t relish the thought of something he couldn’t control, someone holding the other end of his corded, deformed soul, like a leash they could tighten and use to yank him to his knees. Compromised, vulnerable. 

It wouldn’t happen; the margin for discovery was so small it was practically nonexistent. 

He blamed Soap, then, for tempting fate.

Ghost listened to Johnny yammer on, the sound of his voice louder than usual in the rattling dark belly of the transport plane home. The glow of green light, the roar of engines, the jangle of gear. 

It was an irritating, and sometimes endearing, quirk of Johnny’s that he couldn’t stop talking in the post-op cortisol and adrenaline drop, his words a smeared haze of jumbled thoughts spoken aloud for hours afterward.

The notion of a soulmate was at the front of Soap’s mind, not for the first time. He’d always seemed to enjoy the idea of it, and find some comfort in it, particularly after a close call. There was someone waiting for him, somewhere, after all, it couldn’t all come to nothing yet.   

Simon glanced out the window, watched the sea below morph into land. 

A yellow network of light winked below, a sea of reverse stars swimming in the black.

“Lucky that way, Lt,” Johnny declared with finality, finally winding down, sounding exhausted. “Findin’ ‘em will be easier.” 

Ghost glanced over, the first time in nearly an hour that he’d acknowledged the conversation beyond a hum and a nod. “What do you mean?” 

Soap gestured to his scarred chin, then his temple. “Know ‘em straight away, wouldn’t I?”  

Simon’s own thoughts spoken out loud; his hopes to never see his own scars reflected back at him turned on its head. 

Johnny made it sound like a good thing, instead of the nightmare it was. 

No, he thought for the nth time in his life, not that, not for him. 

But he’d always had an extraordinary knack for beating the odds. 

.

.

.

The base was a constant flurry of activity, a relentlessly buzzing hive of people. There were very few places that skirted away from the general chaos of life on a military base, but Simon had catalogued them all—the field behind the barracks when drills were not being run, the concrete service walkways beneath the base, crowded with spiderwebs and dust, the cool, sterile medical wing, and, the orderly administration offices. 

Each place had caveats. 

The service walkways were the most reliably quiet, but Simon hated being underground, hated the claustrophobia of it, like some part of him would always be clawing at black earth, and so usually avoided it. 

Soap had found him smoking behind the barracks once and now regularly joined Simon there. 

The medical wing could be crowded and frenzied, depending on the day. 

The administration offices were practically serene in comparison. Neat file folders, tidy desks, windows that let in the watery, gray English sun. Square offices with their doors propped open, conference rooms bathed in the light of glowing intel reports, data convergences, and map overlays, uniform gray walls and floors. 

The admin wing only occasionally spasmed into restless activity if an emergency op was underway or about to be, and if that happened, Ghost was usually already swept up in it himself, probably already long gone. 

A spare office stuffed away at the end of the hall with the name plate removed technically belonged to him. A mostly unused space he sometimes finished reports in but, more often than not, sat empty. 

He preferred to haunt the corridors, observe the more peaceful, inner workings of the military, breathing in the quiet air for five minutes at a time. It gave his perpetually over taxed nervous system, his forever-in-fight-or-flight-mode body, to relax, if even it was only an increment or two. The lightning was softer, the constant bark of orders and drills, the snap of gunfire, the general loudness of the rest of the place, was muted and far away.

Simon knew of all of the staff and their precuilarities—names, ages, birthdates, minor feuds among each other, immediate family members, previous posts, favorite foods, habits, complaints about the building’s irregular temperatures and the pervasive scent of diesel. It wasn’t information he necessarily collected on purpose. Gleaned over years of half heard conversations, glimpses of photos on desks. They, like the medical staff, didn’t often change, not like the revolving door of soldiers and operators. 

It was a regular, routine, quiet place. 

So it would be difficult for even the most oblivious person not to notice when the familiar order of the place was interrupted. 

Soft, dandelion light flooded the hall from a doorway that had always before been shut tight.

The scent of an unfamiliar perfume lingered in the hall in a feathery streak, oakmoss and lavender. It settled hard in his lungs, made his footsteps slow slightly, caution prickling at the back of his neck. 

The click of ceramic being sat on wood, the soft shuffle of files, tapping of computer keys emanated from within the now open office. The faintest notes of bubblegum pop floated by, at odds with the chill, still air. 

Inside, you were hidden behind two massive computer monitors, the very top of a pair of lilac headphones just visible over the rim. Plants in colorful painted terracotta pots lined the window to your left absorbing what they could of pale winter light, a thick blanket was thrown over the back of a chair in the corner, a jumble of bright, hand crocheted squares. A brass floor lamp with a circular shade sat behind your desk and drooped forward like the antenna of a giant radio, or a bug, casting a delicate halo of light around you like a protective ward. 

There was something. . .lambent that emanated around the room, that had nothing to do with the ridiculous lamp. 

Simon hovered in the doorway, in the shadow of the dim hall, just to get a glimpse of your face. Start a mental file on you, begin his careful catalog. Something to match the color and light to. 

It was a surprise to you both, then, when you glanced up and caught him at it. 

You stood hastily, headphones sliding down your neck when the cord jerked taut, the tinny sound of pop echoing loudly from them until you slammed your fingers down onto the keyboard and silence descended abruptly. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t see you there. Can I help you with something?” 

Simon could only stare at you, a curl of dread snaking its way between his ribs. 

Johnny was right, then, he would know his own scars anywhere. 

He would know his own face anywhere. 

He would, apparently, know you anywhere. 

Your face was a faded mapping of his own, the same scarring traced with a lighter hand. The same crack over your lips, a line drawn across your cheek, a faded check through your brow, the bridge of your nose bisected, the outline of webbed burn scars crosshatched at the edge of your jaw and shoulder. A jagged, thick line crossed your throat. 

Despite his legacy marring your face, you were pretty. Beautiful, even, with curious, cautious eyes, one side of your mouth pulled up into a half grin that tugged at the line across your cheek and somehow didn’t ruin the brightness of it. 

You were watching him watch you with a tentative gaze, brows drawing slowly together the longer he stood there staring at you, breathing around the newly minted cavern under his lungs. 

His eyes met yours again, and as soon as the realization settled in, something clicked violently into place inside his chest, like a missing rib bone had suddenly slotted into the cage around his heart. 

Pain bloomed hot and tight across his chest, so acute he covered his side, expecting to find a knife inexplicably lodged there. He grunted mutely. The discomfort receded as quickly as it had come, leaving behind a vast hollow just beneath his breast bone. Cavernous, lurching, undone. 

The hollow hardened into a solid brick of pain. 

Nausea swept into the back of his throat. 

“Are you okay?” 

He was frozen in the direct line of fire. Your eyes swept over him, fingers curling around a folder on the edge of your desk which you thumbed nervously. You began to lift your other hand, an aborted half movement toward your face that you dropped at the last second. But you didn’t avert your gaze. You looked past the mask, past him, and into his eyes. 

You saw him. 

Simon was not to be seen.

Ghost didn’t get caught, didn’t freeze. 

Didn’t feel like an animal trapped in a cage, pinned and weak and panicked. 

Not anymore. 

He was a ghost, a shadow, a silent—

The silence unspooled, thin and fragile as unraveling lace. 

Your smile widened, a slow, confident thing that stretched across your face crookedly, pulled at your scarred skin as you tilted your head. It was, maybe, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. 

“Sir?”

Amusement threaded your voice; a laugh curled like a sleeping animal in your throat. 

Instead of answering, he faded back into the hall.

As he retreated an uncertain realization prodded at the back of his mind. One wonderful contingency. 

You had not felt the shift, the world turning horribly on its axis, the pain that radiated hot as a wildfire. 

You hadn’t recognized what he was. 

And he was going to keep it that way. 

.

.

.

It felt like there was a hook in his chest, slipped right between his ribs, a constant painful tearing that landed him again and again outside your office door. Like he was a fish on a line, and you held the reel in your fist, totally oblivious to it. 

He didn’t love you, that’s not how the soulmate bond worked. You were tied together, for some reason, though that reason remained to be seen. Resentment was all he felt, a burning desire to chew his leg out of this trap, to grip the line that bound you and run a knife through it. 

Better yet, through you. 

Sever the tie as cleanly as a blade through an artery. 

One sure way to free himself was your death. 

It was unusual, but it happened—headlines of a soulmate killing their pair because they couldn’t tolerate the connection. It was taboo, considering how rare the bond was. The link suffocated them, instead of comforting them. 

Simon understood the urge.

He thought of your office, the way your back was angled half toward the door, how easily he could slip in and slice your throat open. He had seen and done worse, but the thought of you lying in a pool of blood, let alone at his hands, was so abhorrent and wrong that he doubled over as an acute, sharp pain pinched between his ribs, like someone wriggling their fingers between the bars to claw at his insides. 

Which irritated him. Things like that didn’t bother him, not anymore. At the very least, he was better at handling discomfort than this. 

It did start him thinking about someone else doing it, though. Slipping quietly into your office and nudging a knife between your ribs, pressing a silenced pistol against your temple, Ghost left to find your cold corpse. 

It was wrong. 

He could feel your life wrapped around his fingers, tangled in little ribbons around his wrists. A pulsing, glowing, bright thing.  

The resentment doubled because he should not care. He didn’t know you, trust you; your death should mean nothing. You should mean nothing.  

Still, he found himself walking the administration wing again the following day, even though the sun was out and it’d be nice to sit behind the barracks and smoke and listen to Johnny rattle on about something or the other when he inevitably showed up. 

Your door was open again, gold light spilling into the corridor, the low flutter of too loud music in your headphones accompanying it. 

Simon would never admit it to himself, but he also needed to know that he could remain hidden from you. The shock of your eyes finding his still hadn’t left him. It had never happened before—not on an op, not about the base, not out among civilians. He blended in, he remained invisible, but you saw him, sensed him, and he needed to know if that was something he had to adjust to. Planning was survival, and you were an unknown factor he needed a method for handling.  

Simon stepped close to your door, out of the beam of light. 

Your office was bathed in soft, cream light but not from your antenna bug lamp. 

Your back was fully turned toward the door, face tilted into the scarce winter sun streaming in the window as you leaned back in your chair. Your eyes were closed, headphones over your ears as he suspected they were. 

Fuuucking hell. 

Couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, back toward the entry point of the room. 

Your life hung there, trusting, fragile as spun crystal. 

He waited, but you didn’t turn, didn’t seem to know he was there. Something in his shoulders uncoiled, tension slowly replaced with an odd sense of calm. The pain in his chest eased for the first time in twenty-four hours, fading to a tender ache. 

Your lunch, half eaten, laid abandoned on your desk. The blanket that had been on the chair in the corner was swaddled around your shoulders. 

You yawned, eyes still closed. 

He waited for you to sense him, glance up, but you seemed unaware of him. He wouldn’t admit it then, but he half hoped you would. 

Ghost backed away, left you to your peace. 

The weight in his chest intensified again.

He hated you for it. 

He went back the next day. 

And the day after that.

.

.

.

Anchor might be a better descriptor. 

Hook was too violent.

Simon knew what it felt like to have a hook between his ribs, and this feeling was not that. 

He was satisfied, after weeks of observation as late winter turned to a wet spring, that you did not have a preternatural sense of his presence. In the process, he learned other things. 

You hated the cold, and your office always seemed to be chillier than you would prefer, blanket perpetually tucked around your shoulders. He watched you fiddle with the radiator one morning, bottom lip caught between your teeth, sigh, and resign yourself to it. He waited for you to complain to your coworkers like everyone else did, to call maintenance to fix it, but you didn’t. 

You liked to sit in the sun, however you could, squinting against the glare of it against your computer screens just to have it on your skin. 

You hunched over your desk, and clearly had pain in your neck and back because of it. 

You often stayed later on base than many of the staff and walked out of the building alone late at night. 

You didn’t drink tea, but politely accepted the tea several different coworkers made for you with the very good intention of showing you a proper cup. You drank every drop as you chatted with them, even though you clearly detested it. It didn’t show, but Simon could tell. He didn’t like that he could, that it was instinctual and nothing else. 

They were also plying you with shit tea, of course you weren’t going to like it. He watched as one bloke let it steep for a full fifteen minutes and then presented you with what must have been the bitterest lukewarm tea to ever pass through the base. An older secretary took the opposite approach and handed you a cup of barely brewed tea with approximately four tablespoons of sugar in. 

Absolutely bloody foul. 

Horrific crimes committed in your name, and you swallowed them with a smile. 

And you smiled a lot. From the tiniest twitch of your lips when you were alone, to a grin so big he could see all your teeth, that your eyes squinched closed. 

You nearly always had headphones on—wired earbuds dangling from the collar of your shirt as you walked down the hall, or over ear headphones looped around your neck at your desk, usually pop, occasionally 70s rock or alternative spitting from the speakers. 

You talked a lot, and your voice carried. One of those truisms about Americans, you could be heard long before you were seen even if you weren’t being particularly loud. He didn’t need to be close to hear you, and he found himself thinking one afternoon good. It would be easier to keep track of you. 

He liked your voice, anyway, liked your laugh, liked to hear you say English phrases in that accent of yours that made them sound ridiculous. 

You could likely give Soap a run for a world record of useless chatter. Anyone who walked into your office was subject to your stream of consciousness if they lingered long enough. 

Lonely, he might have called it. But you were new, to the base, and to the country. Your only connections were those you were attempting to craft with stuffy intelligence officers who sometimes seemed to regard you as below them. 

He found his thoughts drifting to the sound of your voice once he’d left you for the day, replaying things he’d heard you say in the period of observation he allowed himself, like the tune of a lullaby. It calmed him. 

The resentment in his chest festered like a badly healed wound. You were nothing but a distraction, a thorn stabbed into his side, stealing his focus from nearly everything that was more important. 

That used to be more important. 

Now his every thought was asterisked by you. 

Distracted. 

He didn’t do well with it. 

He didn’t like that he could feel the newly rended hole in his chest corroding and throbbing when he wasn’t near you, suffocating him. He’d felt worse in his life, so he could mostly ignore it. 

Simon decided that the nature of the bond was at least neutral. You were not a threat.  

He was tired, anyway, of constantly thinking about your back to the door, your headphones playing too loudly. 

After you left one evening in mid spring, he moved your desk. 

Simon sat in your dark office for longer than he should have, letting the pain ease out of his chest. 

It was enough to be where you had once been. 

That was as close as he cared to be. 

He fixed the radiator before he closed the door again. 

.

.

. 

He went by Ghost, you learned eventually. 

His was a redacted, blacked out name in the files on your computer, so Ghost seemed less a name than a description. You briefly scanned the ops he had been on. It was a horrifyingly long list, most of them totally classified or excised beyond comprehensibility. And those were only the missions you could see, likely his involvement in many ops had been scrubbed entirely. 

It was clear that he was good at his job, though it left you to wonder what he had been doing in the administration wing of the base, let alone peering into your office like a silent wraith. 

It should have been terrifying to find him looming in your doorway. His massive frame had blotted out the corridor behind him. Mostly in black, a skull mask covering his face. You hadn’t been able to see his eyes in the low lighting. But you had only felt curiosity, apprehension, a delicate wrenching in your gut. 

Something that a different person might liken to butterflies. Absolutely absurd, but nonetheless true. 

Fear, afterward, of course, that you’d missed some kind of order or request. 

It had also been a while since someone stared so openly at you, since you’d felt the urge to duck your head, obscure the scars littered across your skin. You never had before, and you wouldn’t have started then. You wore them proudly. Most bore their soulmate’s scars better than their own, and you were no exception. 

It had become a rarity, really, in recent years that anyone spared you more than a glance. Being surrounded by military personnel who had seen worse, might have had worse on their own skin, meant you didn’t stand out.

When you mentioned the incident to Laswell, worried that some kind of disciplinary report, during your first month at this post no less, was headed your way, she had only shook her head. “That’s just Ghost. He probably didn’t say anything. You get used to it.” 

The base, especially among the operators, was filled with odd personalities with even odder quirks, so you decided not to question it. You had only nodded, and said, “Okay.” 

Laswell had smiled. “You’ll do well here.” 

You suspected you were being watched in the weeks following the incident, though you couldn’t say why at first. The suspicion was confirmed when you arrived one blissfully sunny spring morning to find your office warm and your desk moved. Your other furniture was rearranged neatly around it. You rounded it, dropping your bag as you went, half expecting to find a note. 

There was nothing, and you started to rotate it back, a bit irritated, when you paused and sat. The new angle gave you a clear view of the door and window. The sun hit your face without causing a glare on your screens. The monitors had been lowered ever so slightly so you could easily see over them.

You left your desk in its new position. It was better that way. 

Ghost appeared in your office that afternoon as suddenly as he had left it. 

You sensed that he’d been there for a long time when you finally noticed him in the doorway, that you were only seeing him because he wanted you to.

You smiled and turned away from a report. A welcome reprieve for your strained eyes and hunched back. 

“Hi. Something I can help you with, Lieutenant?” 

This time, he stepped into your office, grasped your offer with both hands. 

The room seemed to shrink and adjust to his size. He was more massive than you remembered, in height and breadth. His eyes didn’t leave yours, a deep blackened honey brown half hidden by skull. Neither of you looked away.

“Have I passed?” 

His head tilted ever so slightly. When he spoke his voice was like an iron rod shoved down your spine. Deep and jagged and rough, it settled between your ribs, in the pit of your stomach. “Passed?” 

“Your test?” 

“Think I’m testin’ you?” 

“You moved my desk.” 

He didn’t answer for a long moment, still not dropping your gaze. The silence lasted so long you began to think he wouldn’t answer at all. “Practically had your back to the door,” he said eventually, as though that explained it. 

It conjured the image of Ghost creeping around the base in the dead of night to adjust offices into more tactical configurations and you had to bite the inside of your cheek to keep the giggle in your throat from bubbling out.   

You nodded and then shrugged instead. “I guess I don’t think about things like that.” 

“Should.”

“Maybe.” 

“Especially in the field.” 

“I don’t do field work.” 

He nodded slowly and finally took his eyes off yours, glancing around the room again. When his lashes caught the light, you saw that they were a light blond. 

“Welcome to sit,” you offered, taking up a pen and a pad of yellow paper. “Ghost.”  

He didn’t sit, but he didn't leave either. When he remained mute and motionless, you looked back at your report and continued working, resigned to the new addition to your office. 

Minutes passed in silence, with only the scratch of your pencil over paper, the tapping of computer keys, for company. 

All at once, the room sighed, and when you looked up, he was gone. 

Ghost was strange, slightly off putting. 

You liked him.

Maybe, you thought, he’d come back. 

.

.

.

Ghost visited regularly after that. 

Sometimes he simply stood at the door and watched you work. 

His boots were so silent that you often didn’t know he was there until he was leaving again. It felt as though he often melted into nothing but shadow, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable feeling. 

You didn’t feel watched, so much as observed, minded.

But the lengthy silences began to wear thin, so you started talking to him.  

Talked at him, more like, about anything that came to mind. 

The shit weather and how cold you always were. Recounted phone calls with your sister and noted things you’d seen on your commute. You told him of your slightly creepy neighbor who would follow you occasionally down high street when you did your weekly shopping trip, but that was probably harmless.

You were sure he wasn’t actually listening, his eyes focused somewhere in the middle distance as he stood statuesque in the middle of your office.  

The visits were occasionally broken up by operations that could last days or weeks, once up to a month. Time passed either way, but you found it passed more easily when you could reliably count on a visit from Ghost. Hearing his voice in staticky communications wasn’t the same. A blinking green dot on a map that you tracked just a little more closely than the others. 

Ghost sat down for the first time toward the middle of a particularly miserable and cold spring afternoon. He sighed as he did, the only sign of any feeling. Almost a resignation in the soft cut of it. 

You didn’t comment on it, just chatted as you usually did, buoyed in a way that you could not explain. 

He started to bring you coffee, done up to your preference, always when you were hitting the midday lag. 

In exchange, you left offerings at the edge of your desk. Baked goods, protein bars, chips, sweets— which disappeared when you looked away from him. You noted what went first so you could invest in it. Chocolate went more frequently. 

But Ghost, whether he was listening or not, made you feel less alone. The ache of loneliness in your heart eased, and maybe that said more about you than him. 

If he was around, he usually slipped in while you ate lunch. He didn’t eat with you, the mask never moved, but you began cooking extra in the evenings, leaving tupperware containers at the edge of your desk in addition to brownies wrapped in waxpaper, chocolate chip cookies sprinkled with sea salt. “Don’t have to,” he always said. 

“Want to,” you answered, and then received the empty, clean container from the day before as though it were an offering.

Your office always smelled like tobacco and tea for hours after he left, a comforting combination that you began to wish you could bottle. 

He didn’t appear one day at his usual allotted, precise time. You figured something came up or he finally got tired of you, but he turned up instead late in the afternoon.  

“Sorry,” he said as he sat, without explanation, a paper cup of coffee steaming at the edge of your desk like it appeared there by his will alone.  

“Oh,” you answered. “You didn’t have to—“

“Did,” he said simply. “‘ave you eaten?”

“Yep. Got something for you, too.” 

He settled back. “Neighbor still botherin’ you?” 

You blinked in surprise, the slightly creepy neighbor had not spoken to you in a few days. “Oh. . .I—You were listening.”

He tilted his head. “‘Course I was, bird.” He leveled you with a look. “So?”

“Not recently. Not in a couple days.”

“Good. Let us know if he does, yeah?”

Then he sat back and waited, shoulders relaxed as though attending a sermon, but content with silence anyway. 

When you glanced up from a report a while later, for clarification on a mission detail that he happened to be on, his eyes were closed. 

It felt akin to having a wolf willingly curl up in your lap, blood wet maw dripping peacefully onto the floor.

.

.

.

When you turned from watering your plants one innocuous spring day, you found Ghost entering your office with a different mask on. A soft black balaclava. You could see his eyes and brows, the bridge of his nose and the thin, bruised skin beneath his eyes.

You froze and then smiled at him, tried hard not to stare. His eyes were always pretty but now you felt you could actually see him. Blond brows and lashes, his irises were lighter, amber honey in the yellow light of your bug lamp, as Ghost had called it one afternoon without a shred of humor. 

It was raining, and the dim light made the small space cozier than usual. The patchwork blanket was around your shoulders, a ward against the chill bleeding beneath the window. 

In his usual chair, you’d laid a gift. 

He pointed to the blanket you had carefully folded there earlier. 

“It’s for you. I knitted it.” 

He froze, hand half extended toward it. You swept past him around your desk again, inundated with the scent of black tea and cigarettes as you went. His was alternating black and dark blue squares to your brightly colored purple and teal. “Just in case you were cold. You’re always so buttoned up after all,” you joked. “And you fixed my radiator this winter. So it’s a thank you, too.”

Ghost only moved it to the back of the chair. You hadn’t expected him to take it, really, but his gloved fingers lingered on it for a moment, rubbing the fabric gently. “How d’you know it was me that fixed it?” 

“Who else would have?” 

He grunted. “You knit?” 

“When I can’t sleep,” you answered. “Keeps my hands and brain busy.”

His brows furrowed, and seeing even that small movement felt like seeing him naked, like seeing something he didn’t want you to. You averted your eyes, heat crawling up your neck. 

“Can’t sleep?” His fingers slid off the blanket and he sat.

You shrugged. “Must seem silly to you. You see it with your own eyes. But some of the reports. . . stick with me.” 

Ghost considered this for a long moment. “It’s not.” 

“What?” 

“Silly.” 

The way he grunted the word made you laugh. 

“Could I ask you something, Ghost?”

“Reckon you just did.” 

You rolled your eyes. “Am I allotted only one question?” 

“Just two.” 

It was. . . funny. You giggled and shrugged. “Guess I’m shit out of luck.” 

“And out of questions.”

You laughed again. 

He surprised you by laughing too. If a low, graveled grunt counted as a laugh. You certainly counted it, a cache of swollen pride bubbling in your stomach. “Go on, then.” 

“Where are you from?” 

The levity vanished. His brows lowered. “Why?” 

You shrugged. “Just curious. I’m not good with all the accents yet. Just can’t place you.” 

He relaxed back into the chair again, but didn't answer. 

The pinch of his brows, the tense line of his jaw, remained, his expression considering as he tilted his head back. 

“Why do you come here?” You asked instead. 

This question he answered readily. “It’s quiet.” 

“That’s one way to tell me to shut up.” 

He blinked and lowered his chin to meet your eyes. “Not the kind of noise I mean.” 

You decided not to take offense at being called noise. 

You snorted and reached beneath your desk, taking some pride in the fact that Ghost did not tense anymore than usual when you did, withdrawing your lunch. 

“Hungry?” You asked.  

“Tryin’ to see my face?” 

You smiled. “Never,” you answered, “Not sure I want to see what you’re hiding under there.” 

The rain tapped against the window as you popped the thermal lid off.  

“Why are you here?” He asked as you folded your legs beneath you on the chair and tucked the blanket around them. Ghost rose without asking and twisted the knob of the radiator beneath the window a bit higher.

You waved your fork, indicating the office. “Fairly positive I work here. But perhaps base security is more lax than I thought.” 

He sighed, a long suffering sound. “England, smartarse.” 

You smile and dig your fork into last night’s spaghetti bolognese. The steam caressed your face in a warm puff as you lifted a bite. “I’m on loan to Laswell.” 

“On loan?” He asked as he settled back into the chair, broad shoulders pressed to the wall behind him, against the blanket. It slid over his elbow a little, curled over his forearm. He didn’t move it. 

When you lifted your gaze to his, his stare was piercing, brows lowered, furrowed. You imagined he must be frowning.  

“Temporary replacement for whoever used to be in this office,” you explained. “She needed someone quickly, who she could trust.” 

Ghost folded his arms across his chest, something more tense than usual in the movement. “How long are you on loan for, then?” 

You shrugged, twisted your fork into the noodles. “It’s unclear. So, for now, indefinitely.” You smiled, “Hopefully not through another winter, though, I don’t think I’m cut out for the rain and cold.”

His shoulders eased, but only marginally. If it weren’t for all the hours he’d passed in your office, you weren’t sure you would have caught it at all. 

“From somewhere warm?”

“Warmer than here. Especially in the winter.” 

“Must be nice, that.” 

“Has its perks. But the summer is its own kind of hell.” 

“One you enjoy.” 

“But of course. I like feeling like I’m baking alive.” 

He snorted again.

You ate in silence for a bit. The quiet had become comfortable between you somewhere along the way, silken and gentle. 

When you were scraping the last bit of sauce from the bottom of the container, Ghost said, “Manchester.” 

“Hm?”

“Where I’m from.”

His voice was low; he wasn’t looking at you, eyes trained on the door instead. 

“Manchester,” you repeated, trying to place it on the map of the UK in your mind. “And do you all sound sort of like—“

You were about to say like you have gravel in your mouth but he makes an affected noise, that stiff grunt again. “Are you laughing at me?”

“It’s your fucking accent.”

“My accent?” You asked incredulously. “Have you heard yourself?” 

“Got a thick one, bird.” He imitated your voice. “Manchester.” The sharp rhotic r sound was like a gunshot in his mouth, each letter enunciated to the point of being butchered. 

You scoffed, not bothering to fight your smile. “Takes one to know one, I guess.” 

“Suppose it does.” 

“Fucking Brits,” you said, without any venom. “I can’t do anything right according to you all.” 

He tilted his head, something predatory in it. It made your heart flutter a little. “Who’s tellin’ you you can’t do something?” 

You sighed, long suffering. “My coworkers. Can’t make tea, apparently. I don’t care for it and everyone keeps insisting I just make it wrong.”

“They make it wrong too.” 

You groaned. “Not you too.” 

Ghost rose to take his leave as you snapped the lid back onto the now empty container. 

“I’ll show you how to make a proper cup sometime.” 

You paused, a warm surprise sweeping into your chest, and decided not to linger on this solitary acknowledgement that Ghost would return to your office. “Big fan?” 

“I love tea.” 

It made you laugh. “Of course, English afterall.” 

He nodded, just once, and started toward the door. “Ghost?” You called. 

Ghost turned and you slid another tupperware container across your desk. “For you.” 

He stared at it, for a moment too long, as he always did, like he was telling himself to leave it. “Didn’t have to.” 

“I know.” You nodded at it again and then then ducked behind your computer screens. “I always want to.” 

Ghost moved so silently that you didn’t hear or see him take it, but when you looked up again he and the container at the edge of your desk were gone. 

.

.

.

It should be a good thing. 

You would be gone soon enough, none the wiser of who Ghost was. Of what you were to each other. 

But it didn’t sit well. It was a new thing to nag at the back of his mind, finding your office empty, you becoming a ghost in your own right. He hated the ache in his chest, the thought of you so far away. He could only assume you’d be stationed back in the US.

The thought festered, burrowed. 

“Laswell.”

She jumped, hand going beneath her desk before she spotted Ghost in the corner of  her office. She sighed and closed her eyes, fingertips rubbing her eyes instead. 

“Ghost,” she sighed, “Don’t do that.” 

Simon said your name, and Laswell lowered her hands to look at him. “How long has she got?” 

“What do you mean?”

“Said she’s on loan. I want to know how long.”

Laswell considered him; Ghost waited. He wouldn’t explain himself, and Laswell knew that. 

“Maybe as long as a year.” She tilted back in her chair and asked anyway. “Why?” 

Ghost didn’t answer, slipping back out of her office and down the hall. 

You were still in your office, hunched over the desk, lavender headphones pulled down around your neck. He watched you for a long moment, eyes tracing over scars that belonged to him. It was jarring each time to see pain he experienced threaded over your skin. It made him feel exposed by proxy.

As he watched, you lifted a hand and rubbed your neck with a wince, fingers lingering on the long scar slashed at the base of your throat. The grimace faded from your face and your expression receded into the impassive, blank, focused slate it always settled into as you continued working. 

When he sat down in your office, you just shot him a tired smile and continued working. 

He walked you to your car around midnight. 

“Tell us if you’re here this late again,” he said, not looking at you. 

“Ghost,” you said. “It’s almost enough to make me think you like me.” 

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he answered. 

You just laughed. 

.

.

.

“Tea?” 

You jumped, just as Laswell had, only your hand didn’t go beneath the desk. Nothing there to reach for, he knew, your vulnerability like a beacon, or a stain. 

It would need remedied. 

But first, this. 

It was the sixth time in two weeks that you were at your desk well past when everyone else had gone home.  

“Jesus Christ.” 

“Unfortunately not.” 

You laughed; his shoulders eased. “Ghost,” you said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” You tilted your head. “I’m starting to think you’re spying on me.” 

“What’re you still doing ‘ere?” 

“What are you doing wandering around our wing after hours?” 

Not a line of questioning he was keen on following. That just being near a place you had been earlier in the day was enough to loosen that fucking tether in his chest. That he was worried incessantly about you being alone at night.

“Offerin’ to make you a tea,” he answered. “Obviously.”  

“Obviously,” you echoed. “Of course.” 

“You’re supposed to tell me when you’re stayin’ late.” 

“Ghost,” you said seriously, lifting your brows, “I’m here late again today.” 

“Hilarious, you are.” 

You giggled again. “Are you really offering to make me tea?” 

He nodded. “C’mon then.”

You smiled and shrugged the blanket off your shoulders. He waited while you locked your computer and stood.

Simon allowed you to lead toward the breakroom where he’d observed the many cups of tea you’d politely swallowed from well meaning coworkers, who left it to steep for too long or too short, added too much sugar and milk, or left it totally plain. 

The overhead lights were too bright, a blue-white glare that made you frown and squint. Your nose scrunched up in distaste. There were circles beneath your eyes, exhausted loops that matched his own.  

“So,” you prompted, leaning against the counter, “How does one make a proper cuppa?”

“Not bad,” he said of your accent, lifting the electric kettle from the hook to fill with water. “Little posh.” 

“I’ve been practicing.”

He grunted, and put the kettle on, before rooting through the cabinet above the sink for tea bags. A grim selection awaited him, but he’d make due with what was available.

“Ah, so you boil the water. I was under the impression you could just stick it all in the microwave.” 

He involuntarily made a pained sound. “Fucking hell,” he muttered, “That your usual method?” 

You bit the inside of your cheek, poorly concealing a laugh. “I scandalized a data analyst with that joke.” You cup your chin in your hand, peer up at him from beneath a thick fringe of lashes. “I do know how to boil water, I’ll have you know.”

“Got a head start then.” 

You laughed again, shoulders shaking. Simon watched the corner of your mouth curl, and it eased something in his chest. You were painfully close, the woodsy, floral scent of your perfume curled in the air. Your elbow brushed his. He didn’t know how you could be unaware of the bond at that moment, when being that close to you felt like being lit on fire. He wanted to reach for you so badly that he had to clench his fist closed to avoid it. 

If someone were to ask him to move away from you right then, it would end badly. Bloody. 

The thin, needle sharp connection ached, begged. 

Simon ignored it.  

When you glanced up, he looked away. He could feel your eyes on his face, and didn’t mind the scrutiny in it. He didn’t mind you watching him, and wondered what you saw. 

“I like being able to see your eyes,” you said, just as the kettle clicked off. 

He met your gaze, disarmed by the declaration. Your features had softened, melted into a dangerous fondness. “Why?” 

“You have pretty eyes,” you shrugged. “And it’s hard to see you with the other mask.” You shifted, watching him lift the kettle, pour the hot water into a mug and over the teabag he’d dropped into it. 

“You can tell me to fuck off, if you want,” you began carefully, fingertips drumming nervously against the counter. “Why do you wear it?” 

Simon watched the teabag bob on the surface of the water, thin amber trails unfurling, coloring the water slowly brown. “Five minutes,” he nodded at the tea. “Don’t touch it. None of that dunking shite.” 

“Yes, sir,” you agreed. “Five minutes, no touching.” 

He huffed, and your smile widened. You bumped your shoulder against his. The contact only lasted a second or two, but the relief it provided was so intense that he nearly choked on it. 

The pain, softened by your proximity, returned immediately, crept down into the soft ligaments between his bones. He felt the loss in the roots of his teeth, the middle of his chest; it was like losing his breath in a different way, being suckerpunched in the solar plexus, knocked on his ass.

“To hide my face.” 

“Your identity, you mean.” 

“My identity,” he agreed.

“Why?” 

He released a long, slow breath, and thought about telling you to piss off, maybe even just to see how you’d take it. Were you as good as your word? Would you let the subject drop? 

Instead, he said, “There are a lot of bad people in the world, bird.” 

You pursed your lips, fingers toying with the teabag string, flicking the tab at the end with your nail. There was another question swimming in your eyes, but you let it go unasked, dropping your eyes from his instead. 

“You’ve seen more of them than most,” you said. “I would guess.” 

“Part of the job.” 

Your mouth curled a little, lashes fluttering against your cheek. “Hm. But y’know something? I think I’d know you anywhere,” you said, without a hint of shame or irony. “It’s all in your eyes.” 

Before Simon could respond, you hid a yawn in your sleeve and rubbed your hand over your face, exhaustion layered in thick rings beneath your eyes. “Even if this is gross,” you indicate the tea, “At least it will keep me awake.” 

“I take offense to that.” 

You laughed again. “Hm. Sorry, Lieutenant.” You leaned in, “It smells so nice, so why does it taste like shit?” 

He rolled his eyes. “I’ll make you a coffee if it’s shit.” 

“You’re kind.” This time when you leaned your shoulder against his, you left it there. The empty soreness like a bruise inside his ribs loosened again. For the first time in a while, he was left with the absence of pain.  

When the tea was done steeping, he did yours with a bit of honey. There was no way you’d take it plain and like it, but he drew the line at milk. Especially the blasphemy that was the military issued powdered milk in a canister that sat on the counter. Abso-fucking-lutely not. 

“There you are,” he said, “Cup of tea.” 

“A proper cuppa,” you tried again. It was a little less posh this time. 

He huffed. “Better all the time.” 

“And I have you to thank.” 

Your face creased as you took the cup between your palms, an unreadable expression flitting across your features. Then your mouth twisted to the side, a sure sign you were attempting to keep some emotion or thought in check. 

Your shoulder was still pressed heavily against his. 

“Thanks, Ghost.” 

“”S just tea.” 

You shook your head and lifted the cup, blowing gently on the surface before you took a tiny sip. He watched your face, watched your throat move as you swallowed, the flickering web of your lashes. A step up, at least, from all the shit tea from your coworkers that make your brows tense in an effort to conceal a grimace. “One good thing has come of this,” you said after a moment of contemplation. 

“What’s tha’?” 

“I know how to make tea for you now.” 

“Like it?” 

“I love it.” 

You briefly tilted your head onto his shoulder, then pulled away entirely. The flood of discomfort was worse than before. His muscles spasmed around it in a violent convulsion. “I mean that really.” 

He breathed out, through it. “I don’t take honey.” 

You studied the contents of the cup, tilting it one way and then the other, like something important laid at the bottom of the porcelain well. 

“Noted.” 

Sure enough, the next day, a hot cup was waiting for him, which he drank as you chatted from behind your computer, decidedly, pointedly, giving him the privacy to do so. 

.

.

.

Things settled into a pleasant rhythm. 

A regimented, regular existence that you had long ago learned to embrace. The base became home more than the tiny apartment you rented and spent only enough time to sleep, bathe, and cook in. 

You timed your days to the ebb and flow of the base, to visits to your office, debriefings and conference rooms, the restless energy of so many people in one place moving. You breathed around absences, the pockets of emptiness that sometimes cropped up. The loneliness that felt like an unfillable pit in your stomach. 

People often saw your scars and thought not to bother. Why would fate have marked you so heavily if you weren’t meant to find your pair? The scars meant nothing, really. They were no more significant than anyone else’s. Your chances of running into your soulmate was no higher than someone who had accrued no scars from their bond. 

You were a stopping off point, a bit of fun, but not someone to invest time and effort into, not when the reminder that someone else might come along and render it all moot was so visible, so literally in their face. To look at you was to be reminded of that bond waiting in the wings, for them and for you, and that you could only ever be temporary. 

It made friendships hard too. Some were jealous, others thought there couldn’t be room for anyone else in your life. You were important to no one.

It had been proven to you time and again, and you weren’t sure what kept you hopeful that someone would one day see past it. So when Sergeant Davies stuck his head in your office one Friday afternoon long after Ghost had departed your office for the day, and asked you out, you found yourself saying yes. 

“Would you like to go out sometime?” He asked, hand rubbing the back of his neck. “Just round the pub for drinks?” 

“Oh,” you said. “I—” 

It had been a long time since anyone took interest in you. You’d only talked to him a few times before, but Davies was handsome in a boyish way and sweet and you liked him well enough, you found yourself hesitating for half a second. To your horror, your mind flashed to Ghost, stomach lurching painfully, a knot of tension fisting itself in your chest. 

You looked at his usual chair, empty now, seeing his large frame sprawled there anyway, thighs spread wide, arms crossed over his chest, eyes steady and focused, locked onto you with an intensity and constancy you still weren’t used to.

Heat bloomed in your lungs, crept up your neck. You glanced away, back at Davies waiting at the door. 

“Yeah,” you answered firmly. “Sure.” 

“Brilliant,” he grinned. “How about tonight?” 

Your belly gave another sour squirm that you ignored; it had just been a long time, that was all. “I’m free.” 

“Brilliant,” he said again. “I’ll text you.” 

“Okay.” 

His grin was crooked and self satisfied as he exited your office. 

So you found yourself walking off the base with Davies later that evening. You found yourself laughing and hopeful in a local pub that you hadn’t gotten the chance to explore yet, busy as you were, the base a tide that tugged you back again and again. Like a magnet, you wanted to be there. 

And all of it came to nothing, the moment Davies saw the extent of the scarring when you took him home. It wasn’t just your face, it was your hands and arms and chest and belly. Your whole body was marked, dogeared for someone else. He looked down at you in your bed, his head framed by your ceiling fan and you saw the moment it clicked. The moment it wouldn’t work. 

“Someone out there is really looking for you,” he said. “You’re lucky.” 

“No more than anyone else,” you countered. “You know that’s not how it works.” 

“I know,” he said, pulling on his shirt. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” you said before he kissed your cheek and retreated. 

Still, you didn’t sleep, just laid on your side, half undressed, staring out at a sky that slowly lightened, stars fading, wondering if perhaps your truest fate was to be lonely for your whole life. 

You didn’t hate your scars, or your soulmate. But sometimes you thought it would be easier if you didn’t have one at all. 

.

.

.

Monday. 

There was a knife in Simon’s pocket. 

Not unusual in and of itself, he carried several at all times, slipped into his sleeves and belt and boot. 

The one in his pocket, though, was for you.

A gift, a contingency, and an offer all wrapped in one. 

The knowledge that it was yours was an uncomfortable weight in his chest. It meant admitting he cared enough to procure it, test it, hand it over. 

It wasn’t quite your typical lunch hour, but Ghost was headed to your office anyway. It was sunny, for once, and he expected to find you taking an early break anyway, leaning back in your chair with your headphones on, absorbing the rare rays. 

And, he wanted to be done with it, to stop tapping his pocket repeatedly, checking the blade was still there, like it might have run away. 

Soap had noticed his fidgeting as they all sat through a briefing on intelligence reports with Laswell that morning. Ghost had forced his hand still, exuded a forced calm, but Johnny’s eyes hadn’t turned away. 

When he arrived at your office, deliberately rustling against the doorjamb so as not to startle you, you glanced up and smiled tightly and his plan vanished. 

Something was wrong. The blinds were closed, your office an unusual sea of gray air. Your shoulders were caved inward protectively, your expression wan and closed. Your smile didn’t reach your eyes, your voice was rough when you said, “Hey, Ghost.”  

Simon took his usual seat, watching you type something, decidedly not looking at him. He watched you, the set of your mouth and eyes. He waited for your chatter to begin but it didn't. 

“All right?” 

“Hm?”

“You’re quiet.” 

“Oh, only one of us is allowed to be quiet?” You joked, but it came out a bit brittle, and worn.

There were, he noticed as he looked at you, circles beneath your eyes. “What ‘appened?” 

You looked up again, and shook your head. “I’m just tired.” 

“Try again.” 

Frustration crept into your features. “Who said I want to tell you?” With that, you ducked behind your monitors.

Simon waited, but you did not reemerge. 

He stood, and rounded your desk. You glanced up then, leaning back when you found him so close. “Jesus, Ghost—” 

“Nice weather.” 

“I can see that.” 

“And you aren’t out there sunnin’ yourself? Something horrible must have happened.” 

Your mouth twisted to the side and you glanced away. “I. . .I’m just being dramatic.”

“C’mon, then.” 

You blinked up at him. “Where are we going?” 

He didn’t answer, but you rose anyway when he tilted his head toward the door. Simon snagged the blanket you’d knitted for him months ago from its place along the back of his chair, finally with a proper purpose, and carried it over his arm. 

“Lunch.” 

You grabbed it and followed him down the hall. Simon shouldered open an external door and held it open for you, the scent of your skin, the warm brush of your body so close to his as you ducked under his arm like a beacon, a light he wanted to follow. 

Carefully, you nudged your shoulder against his as you walked. The familiar sharp, sweet pang whenever you brushed too close together settled in his chest. He wondered if you felt it too, if you felt that sickly flutter in your chest, or if his suspicion that he was holding one end of an untethered bond in his hand was right. 

Just his luck. 

Didn’t matter though. 

He ticked his elbow out a little, and after a moment, you pushed your hand against the inside of his arm. His shoulders loosened; his jaw unclenched. The pain in his chest settled. 

The absence of the ache was intense; he was so used to being in near constant pain. 

“So, what are we doing?” 

“Walking.” 

“I can see that.” 

“Why’re you askin’, then, bird?” 

You huffed but didn’t ask anymore questions as he led you down one concrete pathway. 

The sky was a flawless robin’s egg blue, only a wispy, thin line of cloud on the very distant horizon. The distant shouts of drill instructors snapped in the warm summer air. Your shoulders drooped as you walked, eyes fluttering closed for a few seconds at a time as you tilted your face to the sun, inhaling deeply. 

He led you around the last building in a long line of barracks and brought you to a halt. The only thing beyond was a chainlink fence that marked the edge of the base. A faint breeze coated him in the smell of your skin, settled deep in the well of his lungs. He took a breath, watched your lashes flutter. 

Your thumb stroked a pattern against the inside of his arm, lazy and slow. “You’ve got a soft spot for me, Ghost.” 

He didn’t deny it. 

“What are we doing back here?” 

Ghost pulled away from you with some effort and spread the blanket over the grass. He sat on the concrete steps that led to the back door of the unused barracks.

You sat on the blanket, started to open your lunch and then flopped back in the sun instead. “A usual haunt?” 

“Sometimes.” 

“Secret’s safe with me.” 

“Mind if I smoke?” 

“No.” Then, “I won’t look.”  

He grunted in acknowledgement, rolled the bottom of his mask up, carton of cigarettes and lighter pulled from the depths of a trouser pocket. Simon watched the rise and fall of your chest, tracing the latticework of scars over your face. They looked better on you, he decided. Not as noticeable as his own, faded and light, pencil through wax paper instead of the thick groves of his own. 

They glinted a little in the sun, like the scales of an iridescent fish. 

Your eyes remained peacefully closed, soaking up the sun like a long deprived plant. Sweat beaded along your forehead, and when you pushed up your sleeves, Ghost was reminded that all of you matched all of him.

He recognized a burn mark on your forearm that belonged to him, a cut that wrapped halfway around your wrist. He was pretty sure the burn mark was from a mishandled flare, the wrist scar from a rope that had gotten tangled and burned him. 

Simon wanted to reach down and cup the side of your throat, feel the soft, sun warmed skin beneath his fingers. He wondered if your scars felt the same as his own, rough and grooved. 

Probably not, they were imitations, ungenerous sketchings of his own. 

He’d like to map them all against his own, find out if he bore any of yours. He wouldn’t have noticed something small that you might have collected yourself. A childhood fall, a careless burn while cooking. 

He watched the delicate flex of muscle in your forearms. Your shirt was a little askew, more faded marks left like a tracery of veins on your chest and collarbone and shoulder. It was fucking awful, a wrenching feeling in his chest, to know all that had been inflicted on him, had fallen on you too. 

He wondered about the pain again, imagined you writhing with terror and agony and confusion, every gunshot wound and burn and slash he received an echo inside you. Cigarette burns dotting your arms and wrists when you were just a child, months of pain without end when he was captured and tortured and his life was irrevocably changed. 

Simon wanted to ask, needed to know just how much damage he’d inflicted. But the words stuck in his throat. A fear of knowing, if he asked about the pain, maybe he’d hear other things too, how much you must hate him and didn’t know it was the man in front of you your hate should be directed at.

When he stubbed out his cigarette on the heel of his boot and rolled his mask back down, you blinked into the sun and exhaled, long and slow, and then sat up, leaning back on your palms. 

“What ‘appened?” He asked.

Your mouth twitched into your usual, if a bit more sheepish, smile. “You’re like a dog with a bone, you know that?” 

“Affirmative,” he said. 

You rolled your eyes and set up straight, brushing your palms together before reaching for your lunch. “I brought something for you.” 

“Stalling.” 

“Pushy,” you countered, giggling, rummaging around in your bag. Your smile faded as you pulled free one of the usual containers, what looked like lasagne within. He watched the edge of your mouth curl, the scar slitted along one side pulling at your expression. “I went on a date this weekend.” 

Ice slid down his spine, curled in a viscous circle in his gut. “Bad date?” 

“No,” you said, shaking your head adamantly, staring down at the container in your lap. “No, it went really well.” You glanced up at him and then dug in your bag again, passing another one to him along with a fork. “Until he saw my—” You fidgeted with your sleeve and then yanked it down. The other followed suit. “My marks. My scars.” 

“He’s a prick.” 

“No, he wasn’t,” you shook your head. “It’s happened before. They see the extent of it, and it’s like something biological clicks. I’m off limits.” You sat your food to the side and wrapped your arms around your knees. “Even though I’m no more likely to find mine than anyone else.” 

You looked very small, and alone at that moment. 

“I know it’s not my soulmate’s fault,” you said quietly. “I know that. I know that. And I don’t blame them for it. But sometimes I get so lonely I just—I wish—I wish I didn’t have one. Sometimes I wish I could hate them.”

The chill spreads outward.  

It was confirmation enough. If you knew, you would hate him. All that repressed, sentimentalized resentment would come bubbling up the moment you were actually faced with the person who so fundamentally changed the course of your life. 

He looked at his scars winking in the sun on your skin and felt a self hatred so intense it nearly made him flinch. He wished he could crawl out of that grave and kill them all over again, slower, just for this. 

You glanced up and smiled tightly. “But I’m a hopeless romantic, and dramatic. It was just disappointing. I always have hope someone will see past it.” You ran your hand over the blanket and unfolded yourself to finally begin eating. “This helped, though,” you said. “Thank you, Ghost.” You nodded at the food in his hands, averted your gaze again. 

And even though you could easily glance at him, Simon pushed up his mask and popped open the lid of the lasagne still warm between his hands. 

You ate together for the first time, in silence in the sun. You closed your eyes, kept your face pointed up and away, a cool breeze ruffling your shirt sleeves. 

“Have you found yours?” 

Simon looked at you, the edge of your jaw, the soft shadows your lashes cast over your ruined cheek. “Don’t think someone like me is meant for one.” 

You nodded. “Me either.”

.

.

.

He walked you back to your office. 

You felt better, settled, but he sort of just had that affect on you, you were coming to find. 

Ghost smelled like sun and freshly mowed grass and cigarette smoke. His shoulder kept touching yours, something in your chest lurching each time, like a rib bone had come loose and was knocking against your heart and lungs. 

Ghost carried the blanket back, folded it and set it carefully along the back of what had become his chair. 

You sat and turned, expecting to find him already silently gone as was his way. 

Instead, he was very close and depositing something on your desk. 

Matte black, compact, deadly, cold to the touch. 

A folded pocket knife sat at the edge of your desk. Ghost loomed over you, his shadow curling around your edges. 

He slid it toward you, watched you fold your fingers around it. For a long moment, each of you was holding it. “What’s this?” You asked when he released it, gloved fingers sliding across your desk, back to his side.  

“A knife.” 

“Oh, really? I've never seen one before.” 

He rolled his eyes. “It’s for you. I’ll teach you how to use it.” 

“Why?” 

“In case you need to.”

“Is this about me staying late?” 

“No.” He did not elaborate. 

“You know I received firearm training. I can shoot a gun. Isn’t a knife a little—” 

“But you don’t carry a gun.” 

“No,” you agreed. “I don’t.”  

He nodded as though that explained it. “Right.” 

You considered it, flipped it open. Deadly, shiny blade newly sharpened and oiled and well cared for. It was odd to be given a weapon, and yet unsurprising where Ghost was concerned. You glanced up, watched his dark, intense eyes flick over your face. You weren’t sure what he was looking for, but his brows knitted the longer you stared at each other. Concern, weariness.

“Okay.”

His shoulders loosened. “Tomorrow.” 

“Tomorrow,” you agreed. 

.

.

.

If you thought you would receive one lesson in knifework and be done with it, you didn’t know Ghost very well. 

You only ran drills first, as though Ghost were making sure the physical fitness exam you had to pass once a year was up to scratch. You proved again and again that you could run without getting too winded, disassemble, load, and fire a service weapon. When he was satisfied with that, the real training began. 

You practiced with a rubber blade that bruised when stuck into your ribs. He did not go easy on you. You left the gym battered and bruised, sweaty and just a little bit resentful. But you could break a wrist lock hold, grapple and use your body and size to your advantage. The goal he repeatedly told you, was not to turn you into a fighter or a soldier, but give you an opportunity to get away, to run away.  

What kind of danger he imagined you getting into between the base and your apartment you couldn’t begin to imagine. But you enjoyed spending time with him, enjoyed being in the gym. You found yourself laughing when you were repeatedly slammed into the mat, knife wrested from your fingers. It was fun. And, it was good for you, you decided, even if you thought his intense insistence was a tad dramatic. 

Ghost was a bit dramatic about certain things, you were coming to learn.

This was one of them. You were, you thought with warmth, one of the things he was a bit dramatic about. For whatever reason, you’ve been tucked under his wing, into his shadow. 

On the third week of relentlessly brutal training, you arrived at the base gym, empty as it always was, to find him holding a length of rope. 

You eyed it warily and shifted from foot to foot, amused despite the discomfort. “What do you imagine is going to happen to me?” 

Ghost didn’t answer as you set your bag down and pulled off your sweatshirt. The room was warm, close and humid, the scent of left over dregs of soldiers clogging the room for most of the day. The scent of plastic, lemon disinfectant, and sweat is thick on the air, but when you stepped toward Ghost, his familiar comforting smell of tea and cigarettes washed over you in a vacuous, orbital cloud. 

You looked up just as his eyes slid away from you, blond lashes catching the light, skin pink around his eyes. You’d swear it was a blush if you didn’t know better. “Ghost?” 

“Better to be prepared, yeah?” 

“For what?” All the same, you turned with a sigh. 

After a painfully long moment he stepped close and pressed the dark material around your wrists. His body was warm behind yours for that brief moment even without touching you, like the glow of a heat lamp that made the rest of the room feel cold by comparison. 

His gloved fingers were carefully delicate against your skin. It sent sparks skittering up your arms. What would his bare skin feel like against yours? 

Rough, warm. Safe.  

It’s a thought that had curled its roots into your mind the first time you fell to the mat together and you felt his weight against yours, brief and heavy, but comforting somehow. It wasn’t supposed to be, he was playing predator, it should have been panic inducing. 

Stupid, silly. 

If your most recently failed date had shown you anything, it was that feeling anything for anyone that had seen your scars was a failing venture. And Ghost had seen more of them now, than most. Maybe you should start wearing a mask. 

“What’s the goal today?” You asked, feeling a little like you couldn’t breathe. His warmth and scent and the weight of his presence was overwhelming in a way that made you want to curl into him, gladly suffocate. 

“Same as always,” he answered drolly. “To get away.”

“Hm. I keep thinking you’ll challenge me,” you teased.  

“Not a game, bird.” 

“But what am I meant to do? I can’t fight.” 

“Get out of the bindings. Get to the door.” 

“Is that it?” 

You would swear he’s smirking. “Simple enough, aye.” 

It wasn’t easy. 

For the third time in a row, you landed hard on your back. 

Ghost’s weight was heavy against you, before it lifted away. Your sweaty skin stuck to his hoodie.

Your breath comes in hard, deep pants. Your wrists ached and panic had begun to set in. 

“On your feet.” 

Clumsy as a newborn deer, you stumble to your feet. You had to be faster than him, incapacitate him. “You won’t be getting away from me,” he’d said once, “so you’d have a chance.” It was a compliment; one that said you were doing good. 

It didn’t feel like you were doing good now. 

By the sixth time, you felt raw and helpless, wrists caught at an odd angle beneath you. It wasn’t fun; it wasn’t sparring. You couldn’t manage to wriggle out of the bindings and you were useless at anything he’d taught you without your hands. 

“You’re hurting me,” you gasped. 

He released you immediately and the pressure in your wrists eased. It hadn’t been pain, not really, just panic, just exhaustion. 

But you knew instantly that you’d made a mistake, that he would not take it that way. 

“Shit.” 

.

.

.

The window was open and you were not in your office. 

Simon paused in the doorway, noted your bag on the chair in the corner, the patchwork quilt trailing over the arm of your desk chair and spilling onto the floor. His was gone from the chair. You’d been wandering off without him recently. 

He turned and marched back down the hall. An administrative assistant pointed toward the external door. “Getting sun, she said,” he said. “Sir.” 

Ghost nodded and shouldered the door open. He found you behind the barracks, lying on his blanket, staring up at a patchy sky, slices of blue peaking from between low hanging gray clouds. 

When his shadow fell over you, you opened your eyes and squinted up at him. “Ghost, you’re blocking my sun.” 

“Not much sun to speak of.” You grimace and frown at the sky. “You weren’t in your office.” 

“Sorry, should have left a note.” You patted the blanket next to you. “Sit.” 

Simon sat on the concrete steps. “Where’s your lunch?”

“Forgot it.” 

Worry sprouted, blossomed along his veins, ubiquitous as the pain that accompanies it. 

“Canteen,” he said. “Let’s go.” 

“It’s okay—“

“Wasn’t a suggestion.” 

“You’re bossy,” you said but didn’t move, chin tilted up, eyes flitting shut again. “I’ll have a big dinner.” 

He sighed and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, content enough to wait you out and smoke. The clouds continued to gather, putting your beloved sun to rest for the moment. The air grew steadily thicker with humidity. 

“Gonna rain,” he commented. 

You ignored him, eyes squinching closed harder, like you could will the sun to return. He watched you, made himself look at the bruises on your wrists and forearms, he knew there were matching ones on your ribs. They were harmless, just the usual consequence of sparring, but the ones around your wrists—that’s a mistake he won’t soon forget. 

When a fat raindrop landed on your arm, you sat up with a grumble. “Ready now?” He asked, pulling down his mask again. 

“I can see you won’t leave it alone.” 

“Affirmative,” he said. 

You rolled your eyes and started to get to your feet, pausing when he held out a hand to you. You stared for a beat too long before gripping his hand in yours. 

Even through his gloves, it was like being electrocuted. 

You released his hand as soon as you could, eyes skirting his. “Your lead,” you said. “I haven’t had the privilege.” 

He grunted, followed you closely back inside. 

As Simon’s misfortune would have it, Johnny was still in the canteen. 

He lasered in on the pair of you immediately, a grin growing across his face as he approached. “Ach so this is where you’ve been off to LT.”

Ghost herded you into line, a raucous group of new recruits halting their conversation to ogle you before their eyes flicked to his and away, conversation continued at a more subdued level. He shifted closer, between you and them, though you didn’t seem to notice.

“Haven’t been off anywhere,” he grumbled. 

“Who’s this then?” 

You smiled and offered your hand and name. “It’s nice to see that Ghost has bad manners with everyone.” 

“John MacTavish,” Soap said, all charm as he practically bowed. “Call me Soap.”

“Soap,” you giggled. “I’ve seen you in my reports.” 

Soap’s gaze flicked over your face, sharp eyes making the quick calculations that had made Simon hope he wouldn’t be in the canteen. “Are they yours?” 

“Sergeant—,” Ghost said sharply, a warning in his voice. 

But you only laughed and touched your cheek with obvious pride as the line moved up. “No. None of them belong to me. They’re nice though, right?” 

Simon went very still, swore his heart rate slowed. You held out your arm, showed off a sliver flash.

“Very becoming, lass.” 

You smiled again and gestured to your own chin, the side of your head. “Yours?” 

“Aye, all mine.”

“Ah, luck.” 

“Lucky indeed.”

Johnny’s eyes shifted to Simon’s, brows raised, with a look that said he knew. Simon glanced away, gritting his jaw so hard it ached.

 “Am I going to get food poisoning from this?” You asked as a tray was handed over, eying warily what was ostensibly mash, peas and carrots, mystery meat. 

“Probably not,” Johnny answered cheerfully. “Been mostly fine.” 

“Yes, but I think you military people might have tolerance to low levels of poison.” 

“That’s for sure, bonnie.” 

“Bonnie,” you said, giggling. “Are you calling me pretty?” 

Soap covered his heart, balancing his tray with one hand. “You wound me. Simon only keeps us good looking bastards around.”

“Simon,” you said softly, glancing up at him. “I didn’t think anyone knew your name.” 

Ghost didn’t answer for a moment, glaring daggers into the side of Johnny’s head, ignoring the way his heart was clenched so tight it felt like it was in a vise. Simon, his name on your tongue—  

“It’s need to know,” he snapped. 

Your expression folded and you glanced away. “Right, of course. Sorry.”

Simon clenched his jaw so hard it clicked as Johnny shot him a look. “This way, lass,” he said, leading you toward a spot in the corner of the mess. 

“Oh,” you said weakly, “That’s all right. You don’t have to—”

Ghost couldn’t help but notice the anxious look you threw him, the thin line your voice had transformed into. 

Soap wasn’t listening, already talking your ear off, pulling out a chair for you. You smiled and sat and Simon was left to silently watch it unfold. 

.

.

.

“Fuckin’ hell,” Soap muttered when they’d safely returned you to your office where a contingent of lesser analysts awaited you. The corridor leading away from the now closed door seemed impossibly long. “D’ya know how many people would kill to meet their soulmate? You’ve got yours right under your fuckin’ nose and haven’t even told her yer name!” 

“She doesn’t need to know.” 

“Yer name?” 

Ghost leveled Soap with a stare. 

Soap gaped at him. “Steamin’ Jesus. You aren’t plannin’ to tell the lass at all?” 

“Stay out of it, MacTavish.” 

Johnny followed him down the hall, outside into a bleak, gray drizzle. “You know it can kill you?” Simon kept walking. “Simon.” 

He stopped, glanced at Soap with a warning in his eyes. “Do ya?”

“It won’t.”

Johnny continues anyway, urgently. “There’s a pain, they say, under the ribs when—“

“Stay out of it, Sergeant,” Ghost growled, that very pain growing as it always did as he moved further and further away from you. “It’s nothing.” 

“It‘ll corrode,” Johnny said to his retreating back. “She’ll feel it eventually.”

Simon ignored him. 

But he wondered as he walked away, if he died, if you’d feel the corded snap of his life floating away from yours.  

Somehow, being that sort of ghost, didn’t sit well with him. 

.

.

.

Johnny, predictably, did not stay out of it. 

He regularly and reliably began to show up in your office. More than once, he looped Garrick into accompanying him. Ghost had watched as the same realization Soap had snapped into place on Gaz’s face, and knew it was only a matter of time before Price knew too. 

Luckily, they were the only three on the entire base that could make the connection, that had seen his face, so at least it was done with. None of them said anything to him about it, but there were a lot of worried glances being exchanged. 

Ghost felt the edge of his sanity begin to wear thin the longer it went on, not that there was much left of it in the first place.

The disruption, the infiltration, the distraction grated until his insides felt raw with irritation. He hadn’t wanted anyone else to know, not because he was ashamed, but because you were his, and you didn’t deserve to be burdened by that. He would shoulder that horrible belonging for both of you. 

But the way you’d tenderly touched your cheek remains burned into his memory. The soft look in your eye. The gentle way you and Soap always spoke of soulmates whenever they came up, reverent and tender. 

You enjoyed their company, Johnny and Kyle, and seemed all the better for it. It was clear immediately how much you liked both of them. How much you desperately needed friends. 

Ghost was loath to admit there was a seed of jealousy wriggling in his belly. The easy way you got on with them proof enough that a wire had gotten crossed somewhere, that you were more cursed by him than anchored by.

Then, the gifts left at the edge of your desk began to extend to the lads and not just himself, and it felt vaguely as though he were losing a vital piece of himself to it. 

Then, you stopped coming to the gym. You were gone, office dark, before he could walk you to your car. You went on another date. 

He didn’t know what to do with any of it.

One Tuesday at the end of July you were in your office, but Soap was there before him, tearing into a packet of crisps, lounging in Simon’s chair, patchwork quilt flattened beneath him in a heap. It was hot, and humid, a fan in the corner working overtime, window propped open.

You were happily listening to Johnny explain the ins and outs of football. A match was playing on your computer screen which you’d turned back so both of you could see. 

Your eyes found Simon’s when he paused in the doorway, and you waved him inside, an unsure smile twitching at the corners of your mouth. “Hi, Ghost. Do you keep up with soccer, too?” 

A groan from Soap. “Bloody Americans.” 

“Sorry, sorry. You keep up with footie too, mate?” 

“Horrendous,” Ghost said flatly.

Your smile faltered then brightened again. It didn’t quite reach your eyes. “You should hear my Scottish accent. Soap said I offended every one of his ancestors.” 

“Aye and you did lass,” he said solemnly. “Yeh—” 

“Sergeant,” Ghost interrupted loudly. “Aren’t you due for PT?”  

“Ach, right,” he muttered, getting to his feet, “Thanks for the reminder, LT.” 

“Oh, Soap,” you said, “Hold on.” You rummaged beneath your desk for a long moment, then passed him a brown paper bag full of cookies. “Your favorite, as requested.” 

“You sweet on me or something, bon?”

You rolled your eyes and said, “Out of my office.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

Ghost took Soap’s vacated seat, watched you avoid looking at him as you moved things needlessly around your desk, twisted your monitor back around and muted the match. 

The silence was suffocating. 

“All right?” 

You froze, then shuffled the papers together and slid them to a corner of your desk. “I wanted to apologize.” Your voice hitched a little. 

He blinked, taken aback. He didn’t like that you could surprise him. “For what?” 

You bit your lip, fidgeted again. “Your name, I guess. You didn’t want me to know.” Your mouth twisted to the side. “And your team bothering you here—” 

“You’re apologizing for Soap?” 

Your brow furrowed. “Well I encourage it—”

“No.” 

“No?” You shook your head, “and that day in the gym—” You opened and closed your hands anxiously. “I think I upset you.” 

He stared across the room, toward your big, sunny window, all those little potted plants that have flourished through the summer months. Your bug lamp seemed to droop in the heat, sad and watchful. He’d hurt you, and you’d taken the blame. Something horrible lurched in his belly, heavy and unforgiving. “Didn’t. I should have been more careful.” 

“Right,” you said carefully. “So if it’s not that, why are you—” 

He shrugged, watched one of the emerald leaves sway in the warm breeze. “I like you to myself,” he admitted. “Not the best at sharing.”  

“Oh,” you said, voice tender. “Oh.” 

“Mm.” 

“I’ll make space.” 

He didn’t quite understand what you meant by that, but he liked the way it sounded. Space for him. 

“You’ll come to the gym later, yeah?” 

“Yes.” 

“Good.” He stood, deposited your knife, which he’d snagged early in the morning to clean and sharpen, back onto your desk, along with the new box of tea because he noticed you were out the night before. “And don’t tell bloody Soap.” 

“Aye, LT.” 

He chuckled. “Take care of that.” 

“Teach me how?” 

He nodded. 

“Thanks for the tea. I used the last bag yesterday afternoon.” 

“I know.” 

Your smile was soft, your fingers touched his. He breathed a little easier. 

“‘Course you do.” 

.

.

.

Simon couldn’t stop thinking about pain. 

His body functioned at a constant low level of pain, had for years. Maybe it had his whole life, so he tended not to notice it. But the ache you caused had only seemed to grow over time, tendrils spreading to the furthest reaches of his body, the tips of his fingers, the backs of his knees, places he didn’t think could hold pain. 

The intensity increased too, until he could no longer ignore it. It was like a whine, like a child begging to be seen to. 

He kept thinking of your voice, too, dreaming of it. You’re hurting me. Panic ridden, laced with fear.

You said he didn’t, after,  but he didn’t relish the thought of the possibility. Accidentally hurting you, hurting you on purpose. He thought of his mother, doing her best with a brutal man. He was afraid of unknowingly stepping into a cycle, to find himself standing above you one day, drunk, mean, angry. 

You’re hurting me.  

It echoed like a heartbeat. Inevitable. 

You might collect his scars, but he would not add to them with his own hands. He’d rather die; he’d rather be burned alive; he’d rather crawl out of a grave a hundred times over. 

He was afraid of it. Afraid that every terrible aspect of this bond between you could only bring you pain. 

His father loomed in the recesses of his mind, all the violent men he’d ever known, every bloody fist. Simon’s scalp ached, the memories swam behind his eyes. Long nights, wild animals, dead girls. 

There was one person who had a preoccupation with soulmates who was likely to know, who badgered him regularly about eroding the bond, about bond tears and pain. Simon could know, once and for all, if he was the cause of the indirect pain, at least. His own imposed on you, pushed into your skin like a punishment. He could cross that off his long list of sins. 

Johnny, when Simon finally tracked him down, was sat in the armory cleaning a rifle. He watched over his Sergeant's shoulder for a long moment. The methodical movement soothed him, brought his heartrate down a little. 

“Johnny.” 

Soap jumped and glanced around. “Spooky fucker. Should put a bell on ye—” 

“Does she feel it?”

“What—”

He exhaled long and slow. “My pain. If I’m shot tomorrow, would she feel it?”

Soap glanced around, brows raised. “Ye don’t know?” 

“Say I don’t.” 

“No, the lass doesn’t feel it.” Soap turned his wrist, pointed to a scar that was lighter than some of the others, a pale tracery that slipped from the inside of his elbow to mid forearm. “Not mine. Watched it fade in one mornin’. Didn’t feel a thing.” 

Ghost looks at the scar, and Soap lets him. “Tha’ why you haven’t—”

“No.” 

“Why?” 

“Deserves better.” 

Johnny nodded, continued cleaning the rifle. “Thing is, LT. She doesn’t. That’s the point.” 

Well, at least he only had to worry about becoming his father. 

Fucking perfect. 

.

.

.

Two months deployment.  

The pain in Simon’s chest was agonizing, a constant fire. He couldn’t sleep, pain meds did nothing for it. 

He could only wait it out, wait until he was back on base and hope you were in your office, that the solace of your presence in that warm yellow light would be waiting for him. The pain would recede. He needed a plan, though. Clearly it wasn’t fucking viable to just let it go on. It was too distracting and only getting worse. It was no longer something he could ignore. 

Maybe, he didn’t really want to.

Maybe, Johnny was right. 

He half convinced himself that the lancing ache was so bad because you’d been posted somewhere else the last two months and you were further away than ever. Your office would be empty. This was just an agony he would have to learn to live with. 

Finally, though, they were going home. Intel secure. One last building to sweep. Empty. A loaded silence that made the back of his neck prickle. 

Not as empty as they thought. 

Soap steps quickly into the last room ahead of him, gaze sweeping from one side to another before he lowered his weapon and stepped forward. 

Ghost followed quickly, lowered his gun when he saw what Johnny had. Civilians. One curled around the other, sobbing so hard she made no noise. 

When she lifted her face, Simon sucked in a startled breath. She looked like you, only without his scars. There was a mark slowly bleeding into place on her temple, one that matched the gunshot wound of the woman beneath her. 

The wail that suddenly pierced the air was distraught, horrible, a lurch and a bang. 

Soap was there, kneeling, looking for wounds that Ghost knew didn’t exist. Horror froze him for the second time in his life, your face swimming behind his eyes. 

“I thought you said they couldn’t feel it,” he barked. 

“What?” 

“Soulmates.” 

Soap looked at the pair with fresh eyes. 

“They can’t, LT,” Soap said without glancing at him. “It’s no’ that. It’s just—” 

Grief. The unbearable snapping of a fated cord. The tether in his own chest pulsed, ached. He thought of it breaking cleanly in two, as though it never existed, your light snuffed out, leaving him in total darkness again. 

It wasn’t pain she was feeling, it was the absence. 

“Ghost,” Johnny said sharply and Simon finally snapped out of it, went to his side. 

It wasn't worth it, he thought. None of this could be fucking worth it. He was left with the sinking sense that all he could ever do was hurt you. 

All the same, he felt an urgency to go home. To return to your side. To feel your pulse under his fingers. 

Just to be sure. 

It took them a long time to get her to leave the body. 

.

.

.

Task Force 141 was deployed for nearly two months. 

September and October passed slowly, in starts and fits that seemed to drag. 

You developed a pain in your side, a stitch from taking it too hard in the gym you assumed. But nothing seemed to help it. The pang became a prick became a small misery that the base medical staff couldn’t pinpoint the origins of. 

You missed Ghost, and Kyle and Johnny, tolerated the terrible tea your coworkers made for you, went on another series of failed dates, and finally became friends with your cross-hall apartment neighbor. Months of baked goods and hellos finally coming to fruition. Pieces of a life were falling together. 

Finally, they were coming home. You left your offer that night with the assurance that they were uninjured, that Ghost, and likely Soap, would be in your office by noon the next day. 

But Simon still managed to reappear as he always did, silently and without warning. A shadow crossed your back as you were locking your office near midnight, a hand grazed your back. You followed the series of steps you’d been taught months ago. Foot back, elbow out, knife in hand, open, turn—

Your wrist was caught by the flat of his palm, fingers of the opposite hand yanking it from your grip.  

You blinked and breathed out heavily, relieved. The tight tenderness in your side leveled off for the first time in a month. “Ghost,” you murmured, lowering your now empty hand, “You aren’t supposed to be back until tomorrow morning.” 

“That disappointed to see me?” 

No. Never. But he was still in full tactical gear. The skin around his eyes was still layered with eyeblack, exhaustion and an acid tension rolling off him in a thick wave. His gaze was heavy, but steady, assessing you in turn. He smelled like diesel and cigarettes and gun powder. You lifted your chin. “Surprised to see you. Glad to see you.” 

He only flipped the knife around and held it out to you. “Nice work.” 

You smiled as you took the blade and stored it again. “You’re making me paranoid, I think.” 

“Good. Paranoid keeps you alive.” 

His eyes flicked over you, looking long and hard, though for what you couldn’t be sure. He stepped closer, until you were forced back against the door. He towered over you, corralled you back against the cool wood. Soft, dark eyes like wells of ink in the shadow of the hood pulled over his head, searched long enough that you began to worry something was wrong. 

You reached out and rested your hand on his forearm. His body was so taut you could feel the tremble of exhausted, overwrought muscle. “Ghost,” you said gently, carefully. “Are you okay?” 

He inhaled deeply, so hard and fast it sounded pained. 

He looked at you again, eyes sliding over you slowly, like he was orienting himself, finding steady ground on which to stand. 

“Why don’t you cover ‘em?”

Your belly clenched. “Cover what?” you queried, silently begging him not to ask that question. 

“Scars.” 

You went still, looking down at your skin. You had rolled up your sleeves earlier in the evening when furious typing had required it. They glinted silver in the low light of the hall. Pretty and delicate as dragon scales. 

It wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before. 

Still, you fought the urge to cross your arms. You hated when he stared at them. 

“Why would I?” You rubbed your wrist. “I don’t want to. They belong to my soulmate.”

He glanced away from you, his jaw tight beneath the mask. “You actually believe in that shite?” His voice was harsh, aggressive in a way he had never spoken to you before. “It’s a bloody children’s tale.”  

You bristled, felt something hard and mean well behind your breastbone in a tight knot. The pain that had been kicking you in the ribs lately reared again, made you wince and cover your side. “Well,” you snapped, gesturing to yourself with your free hand, “these aren’t mine, so I guess I have to.”  

He scoffed and you felt your heart lurch, hurt settling in your gut, twisting an invisible knife that much deeper. You tried to side step him but he didn’t move, a terrible, solid wall of muscle and—anger? Irritation? You couldn’t tell. “What the fuck do you care? Maybe you’re ashamed of yours,” you said roughly, “But not all of us are.” 

His brows furrowed and he shook his head again. “Oh, come off it.” 

“What?” 

“You’re tellin’ me that if you came face to face with the bastard that did this to you, you wouldn’t hate him?” 

Indignation burned a righteous path up your throat. “You don’t get to do that,” you said lowly. 

“You didn’t deny it,” he said. “You would.” 

“No,” you interrupted vehemently, swallowing around the word like gravel in your throat. “No, of course I wouldn’t. It wasn’t done to me, it—” 

But Simon was determined, his mind set. 

“He hurt you, changed the course of your bloody life, whether you want to admit it or not. You’ll hate him for it, love.” 

“For something he went through?” You asked incredulously, defensively. “Do you know how scared I was?” 

Ghost’s eyes went blank, his stare suddenly flat and far away. His gaze drifted from yours, the weight of flinty amber lifted. “Of him,” he said viciously, like something terrible he’d always known had been confirmed. 

“No,” you snarled again, not sure why Ghost was fighting you, not sure why he cared about your scars suddenly. “You aren’t listening. For him.” Your ribs ached, your breath came in short bursts. He was too close, the clashing sensations of safety and agitation calcifying the tension between you into a solid, immutable wall. 

You inhaled shakily through the sudden distress. Your lungs hitched and spasmed before you could suck in a proper breath, feeling faint, glad for the wall behind you. 

He blinked, looked down at you again. “Hey—” 

“I was so scared I would lose him before I ever got to meet him. Ever since I was a kid I’ve had scars. Cigarette burns and scratches, bite marks. I used to hope he was older than me, so it wouldn’t have meant that he—so that he wouldn’t have been—” Agitation rises like a tide, all the nights you’d sat awake watching scars bleed into your skin. Your parents had been unable to look at you in the morning, wondering what the future held for you. What kind of person that child would grow up to be. 

The same fear Simon seemed to be holding onto so tightly. 

You stumbled over his concern, something prickling at the base of your neck. 

“Once,” you continued shakily, “they just kept showing up, day after day, for months. I didn’t know what was happening and there was nothing I could do. I thought he was going to die and I couldn’t help him. I was so worried and all I could do was watch.” 

You met his eyes, saw something so raw and wretched there that you flinched back, closed your eyes, breath caught. 

You aren’t sure when you transitioned to using he instead of they. 

It suddenly didn’t feel like you were talking about someone you hadn’t met yet. 

You thought of how strangely intense he was about you. How you had felt so strongly about him immediately. How the only bit of his skin you’ve ever seen has been around his eyes; the delicate veins at his wrists.

You thought of him making you tea and teaching you to defend yourself. You thought of him walking you to your car and pulling you into sunny days. You thought of all the cups of coffee and boxes of tea, the gentle way he handled the blanket you made him from cheap cotton like it was spun gold. 

You thought of Johnny asking after your scars the first time you met him. How not long after you’d been personally introduced to the rest of the 141 for no discernable reason. How they checked on you. How they were probably the only people that knew what Ghost’s face looked like. 

“No,” you whispered, pieces of a terrible puzzle sliding together in your mind. 

You opened your eyes.  

“Ghost?” you asked softly, tentatively lifting your hand. 

He jerked back. “Don’t do that,” he warned.  

You stepped closer, knowing you were playing with fire, that he might burn you, lash out like a dog with its leg in a trap. 

But if he was yours—

If he was yours, you would not be the one to inflict more hurt on him. 

He did not want this, he did not want you, that much was clear. 

You closed your hand and let it fall, pushed your fist against your heart instead. “I see you,” you said gently. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” 

“You don’t understand,” he rasped.  

“You survived.” You backed away. “That’s enough. To know you’re okay.” 

The empty spot in your chest ached, seemed to grow tendrils that wrapped around your heart. A bond so close and not latched. Because you haven’t seen him. He has to let you in.

“When you’re ready. If you’re ever ready. I'm here.”

He finally returned his gaze to yours. 

“Did it hurt?” 

“Did what hurt?” You tilted your head but he didn’t answer, just stared at you with big, moon dark eyes, brows pinched inward, eyeblack creating a tiny white line there. “Oh, you wouldn’t know, I guess.” You shook your head, “No I was just scared. Just worried. It didn’t hurt. You’ve never hurt me.” 

He moved so quickly and silently that you jumped when his hand curled around your wrist. Light enough that you could pull away if you wanted.  

“You don’t have to. You never have to. I don’t want to take anything else from you.” 

Ghost hesitated, his chest rising and falling quickly. “Do I have any of yours?” The question was quiet, almost reverent.  

You nodded, “‘Course you do. I fell out of a tree when I was a kid. Gave me a nasty scar on the back of my elbow. I landed on a rock.” 

His eyes flicked away, like he was trying to imagine it. You twisted your arm, showed him the thick line of scar there, totally different than the lighter version of his on your skin. “See? You’ll have that one in the same spot but lighter. Maybe not even visible, since you’re so pale.” 

Your breath caught when he stepped closer, the pain in your chest was so intense it made breathing difficult.

“It’s not fair to you.” 

“What isn’t?” 

“To bloody leave it. Hurts, yeah?” 

You didn’t admit to the spasming in your chest; it wouldn’t help anything. “When have you ever cared about fair?” 

He made a pained sound. “Don’t.” 

“I’m okay. I don’t need anything from you. I don’t want anything from you.”

“You’re supposed to need things from me.”  

He peeled his gloves off, tucked them into his back pocket. The hall was still and silent aside from your combined ragged breathing. It sounded like you’d been running a marathon. “Ghost—” 

“Simon,” he said. “Please, call me Simon.” 

You closed your eyes, felt his hands graze your collarbone, your throat, before anchoring on your jaw, tilting your face up. “Look at me, sweet’eart.” 

“I can’t.” Your voice trembled, tears clogging your throat. 

“Can.” 

Very gently, he leaned down and pushed his forehead against yours. 

You shuddered and swallowed and stepped closer. Simon curled his arms around you, pulled you into his chest. He was so broad and tall, you felt swaddled against him, warm and secure. His scent wrapped around you like ribbons holding you together. “No point dragging it on, yeah? No point you being in pain.” 

“How long?” 

“The whole time,” he admitted after a moment. His voice rumbled against your cheek. It felt like home. “First time I saw you.” 

“You have had this pain for almost a whole year—” 

“Not your fault,” he interrupted, one massive hand sliding down your spine. “Not your fault.” 

You huffed, hooked your fingers beneath his tac vest. “I’m sorry anyway.” You pulled back, felt his arms tighten around you for a moment. He didn’t want to let you go. “Is there anything you need to take care of? Reports or debriefing or something?” 

“No.” 

“Would. . . would you want to come to mine—” 

He reached under your arm and plucked your keys out of the lock before you could finish, guiding you down the hall, his hand never leaving your skin. 

You had never seen Simon outside the base, you realized suddenly, and everything felt vastly more fragile. It also felt as though that hollow pulse in your chest would tear if you were asked to walk away at that moment, something real and physical would tear and drop out of you, an irreparable part of your soul. 

You weren’t sure how you drove home, Ghost huge in your passenger seat, your hands shaking each time he shifted his grip on you. 

In your apartment, you hesitated, not sure where you belonged in your own space anymore. Simon looked strange in your tiny living room, among soft blankets and years of collected books and knicknacks. An all consuming shadow. You wondered if this would end like all those dates, just another failure, another loss. 

When you started to step toward the lamp, Simon’s fingers curled around your wrist to keep you by his side. “No.” 

“Just turning on the lamp.” 

He released you.

As you stepped away, a hollow pulse in your chest retched with pain that made you gasp and clutch the edge of the sofa. It felt real, like something was breaking, jagged edges clawing at the inside of your skin. You wondered what Ghost’s self imposed distance might have done to the bond. There were stories, albeit few, of corrosion. The bond literally rusting out, slowly poisoning the soulmate and their pair. 

“Come ‘ere,” he muttered. “Sit down.”

When his palm cupped your elbow, the world became softer. Like purr instead of a shriek. He guided you onto the sofa. 

Your hands shook when he released you, making quick work of the lamp. The room flooded with soft yellow light. He glanced around. Art on the walls, forest green rug over hardwood floor, molding you had painted a delicate gold. You felt embarrassed of it all suddenly. 

“God,” you muttered. He didn’t seem to feel the pain at all, which made your chest ache in a different way and guilt pool heavily between your bones for it. You didn’t want him to be in pain, but you felt as though you were breathing water, choking on your own lungs. “How have you dealt with this?” 

“Worse now,” he said, though you felt it was his version of a kind untruth. 

He sat next to you, reached for you, then faltered, unsure. You closed the space, folded your fingers between his. The scars made a fucked up little mirror when you looked down at your hands. They matched exactly. “I’m sorry.” 

Simon didn’t answer, but stayed close to you, letting you hold his hand. Even the smallest amount of space between you seemed to burn, a brazier that flared hot and demanded attention. But it was better; just having his bare hand in yours helped. 

“Nothin’ t’be sorry for.” He said after a few minutes of uneven breathing, eyes trained on your hands, thumb running over the back of your fingers. 

“You don’t want me.” 

It wasn’t a question. 

He glanced up, something razor sharp in his eyes. You flinched a little, but his hand tightened on yours. 

“You don’t have to—We don’t have to bond,” you tripped over the last word. “It’s okay.” 

“Obviously it’s not, bird.” 

Your heart sunk and you glanced away. A one in eight billion chance was sitting under your nose for months, and he wanted nothing to do with you. He was being forced into it.

“I’m sorry,” you murmured again. “Ghost, I’m—”

“Simon,” he corrected.  

“Simon,” you echoed. 

He curled his hands around your wrists, lifted your palms to the bottom of his mask. He let your hands settle at the base of his throat, eyes never leaving yours. “I didn’t want you,” he said plainly. “I never wanted you to know.” 

You swallowed and nodded. “I’m s—” 

“No.”

You closed your mouth with a click of your jaw. You don’t expect a speech and he doesn’t give you one. “You deserve better,” he said. “But I’m all you get.” 

His knee touched yours. Your faces were tilted together, so close that the only thing you could see were the soft depths of his eyes reflecting the gold light.

It didn’t feel close enough. 

You wished it were all different. 

That he didn’t feel forced, that you were what he wanted. 

“I deserve you. Isn’t that the point?” 

He watched you for a long moment, an unreadable expression on his face, then nodded. 

“Go on, then.” 

Your throat felt tight as you tugged the mask upwards, heart lurching when you recognized the same scar on your throat on his. You pushed the fabric over his chin and mouth, up until you could pull it over his head. 

You looked at him, the same scar over his mouth, along his cheek, the bridge of his nose was nicked, the outline of burn scarring crossed the edge of his jaw and neck. When you looked past that, you saw him. Crooked nose, thick, furrowed brows, dark eyes you’d loved for a long time cast darker by the black around them, light eyelashes and hair, longer on top and curling. 

Something seemed to. . .snap then. A warmth broke between you, filled that awful, dark, pained well in your chest. It hurt, but the pain was brief, like stitches done by a seasoned medic. 

Breathing was easier. You could feel the pulse of him without the threat of imminent pain. It was a warm, comforting, safe thing in your lungs. You inhaled, attempted to stand, to give him a bit of space. “Should be able to separate now. Shall we test it—” 

You didn’t get a chance to move away, tugged suddenly from your seat and into his lap. You fell heavily against his chest, wrapped tightly in his arms, foreheads slanted together. 

“No,” he said, sounding, for the first time since you’ve known him, breathless. “No.” 

“I don’t want to.” 

“Good.” 

“Can I touch you?” 

“Can do anything you like to me, bird.” 

You stroked the side of his throat, felt him shiver. “Well, I won’t. Not anything.” 

He made a content noise of agreement. 

You touched his jaw, his cheek, the tail of his brow, the faded check through it that you’d never noticed matched your own. His arms tightened around you in increments until the pressure forced you to take shallow breaths. “You’re beautiful.” 

“Lookin’ in a mirror, are you?” 

“Sort of,” you answered. “A little.” 

His hands shifted, anchored on your hips, and pushed you back a little. 

Disappointment that it was over so soon pinched at your throat but you backed off, attempting to slide from his lap. His hand caught at your hip. “Stop trying to bloody move.” 

“What—” 

He was only taking off the vest, which probably should have been left at the base. It dropped heavily to the floor as he pulled you against his chest. It was warmer, softer like that, thick muscle coiled beneath your cheek when you rested it against his shoulder, heartbeat hard against yours.  

“No more pain?” 

“None.” 

“Good.” 

You pushed your face against his throat, felt him tense and then uncoil. One large hand cupped the back of your neck, holding you there. You brushed your lips against his pulse point, felt a scarred flutter against your mouth, a muted grunt.

“You’re all I want,” you admitted quietly. “I think I knew. I think everyone knew. I’m sorry,” you finally said, “that I’m not who you need.”  

His hand squeezes your neck and then he’s pushing you down against the cushions, pressing one massive thigh between your legs, hauling you closer like it could never be close enough. The space between your bodies would always be too large, because you couldn’t climb into his chest, nest among his veins. 

It would have to do then, his hand tilting your jaw up, his eyes searching yours as you part your lips. 

“You are, sweet’eart,” he said simply, mouth brushing yours before he kissed you properly. 

He tasted of black tea; his eyeblack rubs off on your temples. 

Already, he was leaving pieces of himself behind with you to mark safe.

“Simon,” you murmured against his mouth. Just to say it, just to be rewarded with a shudder.

The kiss slipped into something more desperate, your hands felt the skin of his back, your own scar on his elbow, and you thought, maybe, you could become what he needed.