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He's learned to school his expression into place; however, not even years of duty can mask the curious quirk of his brow. He shifts on the sofa, propping one ankle over the opposite knee. One arm rests on the backrest of the couch, fingers thrumming against the leather.

Your eyes fall onto his other hand, sitting atop his thigh. 

He nods with his chin. "Run tha' by me again?"

You stand barefoot on the carpet. Loose shorts and an old tank top that has stretched out from one too many washes. The nibble of your lip tells him that you're ready to eat your words as soon as he questions them. The same goes for the way you're tormenting the cuticle on your thumb.

But he's interested. Fucking hell, this is the most intrigued he's been in ages.

"Porn?" He inquires the moment you open your mouth to most likely take everything back.

You close your lips with a pop and look at the ceiling, trying to force the heat collected on your cheeks to dissipate—flow southward perhaps, where it's not a bother but a welcome feeling instead.

But then you clear your throat. Straighten your spine. "Yes, porn."

Simon echoes you, enunciating the word. "Porn."

"Porn."

He nods, the corners of his lips curving in a smirk.

"With me?"

You tongue your cheek, eyes sharp. "Did I stutter?"

He pinches the air in front of his face. "A little."

But he must have taken it a step too far, because you're suddenly rolling your eyes and huffing. 

"Right. I shouldn't have asked—" You mutter, turning on your heels.

Simon's got quick hands. One of them reaches forward and grabs your wrist, pulling you in. You stumble between his legs, big thighs now parted for you to stand comfortably before him. 

His eyes soften, then, only because he can tell you've taken pains to summon the courage to ask him such a curious thing.

Simon rests the back of his head against the couch to look up at you. Instead of finding your eyes, however, he sees your profile—stubbornly, you're forcing yourself to look at everything but him.

"M'sorry, alrigh'?" He rumbles. The tip of his finger finds your jaw, and he gently steers you to face him. "Took me off guard is all."

The line between your brows deepens, sudden worry branching through your features. Though when his finger on your jawline turns into a palm cradling your cheek, you sigh, leaning into his hand.

And as your body softens, your tongue loosens, too.

"I just—" You bite your lip, nibbling at the flecks of dry skin. Once again, your eyes dart around, as if the firmness you need is stuck somewhere in the furniture of the house.

He grounds you again, this time with a light tap of his fingers. 

You rub your forehead in frustration. "Ever since they upped the dosage of my meds, I—we—"

You don't need to finish the sentence for him to understand where you're getting at. 

Yes, you haven't fucked in months. He’d wager it’s been at least two, maybe three, and the last thoroughly satisfying fuck he’s had with you goes back to a couple of days prior to that fated doctor’s appointment. It’s not the longest break, and he’s aware. Fucking hell, before he met you, he could’ve gone years without getting his dick wet. He has gone through years of solitude, in fact.

Though it’s you that he misses. Fucking you senseless. Eating you out. It’s the taste of your skin, not the taste of skin itself. It’s the scent that nestles in the creases of your neck, not the smell of sex.

Most people would say that, in such cases, they don’t remember the last time they had sex. Simon, however, does. He remembers it quite vividly, actually. Nothing can erase from his mind the picture you paint when you’re feeling good—when he’s making you feel good.

He misses it. Misses you. He’s human, after all.

But he likes you with that smile. Likes you proper happy. Likes you healthy, hungry, and then sated. Likes you laughing at jokes, at life. Likes the fight that’s suddenly surged within you. The need for control in a life that left you without it. 

He misses it, true, but he likes you alive.

And nothing will ever change his stance on that.

His other hand brushes your thigh with the back of his knuckles.

“Go on,” he murmurs.

“Well, I—I can’t stop this—” You gesture vaguely at your stomach, as if it’s there where it all festers. “—Sense of guilt. I feel guilty, alright? I—I know you’ll say I shouldn’t—”

“Aye, you shouldn’t.”

“—But,” you interject, pointing a finger at him. “I still do.”

“Love,” he insists, but not unkindly. “Won’t fuck you outta guilt, yeah? You gotta want it.”

“I do!” You whine, lightly stomping your foot against the carpet in frustration. “I swear I do! I just—"

You rip your cheek out of his touch. His hand falls to your other thigh, then, no matter how reluctantly, just to give you space.

“I—I don’t think I remember how to feel like I do anymore,” your voice cracks. “I hate it. I hate how I can’t control it anymore.”

Simon falls still. Stays silent, waiting for you to get to the point of your reasoning. No sense in stopping you when, clearly, you’ve been trying so hard to tell him what feelings have been festering inside you.

You take in a steadying breath, smoothing your hands down your shirt. 

“And I thought, you know, maybe porn can help me. Maybe it can make me horny.”

He nods, urging you to go on. His hands on you, slow and grounding, draw mindless shapes.

“But it’s weird to… get ready for it.” You cinch your shoulders. “I don’t want to watch some porn in the bathroom waiting to get wet only to find you after, because—because it literally takes a walk from the loo to the bedroom that it’s just… gone.”

Simon thinks about it. 

It would be odd, he doesn’t deny that. Doesn’t know what you like to watch when he’s deployed. Then, it feels wrong to look at another person while he’s fucking you. Doesn’t care much about other people and those fake moans, or selfish ones and their plastic performances. 

You’ve got a few videos you both took when drunk or when trying to spice it up a little. Perhaps those? 

He knows he’s got one of you that he can’t get tired of. 

You’re lying on your front as he pounds into you, pretty ass wiggling against his crotch whenever he stops. The phone is propped up on the pillow, its back leaning against the headboard. The shot shows your face first, then the curve of your spine. Your ass pressed to the V of his stomach, bouncing round and soft.

He put the phone there, even as you insisted it’d be better if both of you were in the frame. But he was stubborn, asked to have something to look at when he’s away, and he joked about how he’s not a fan of his ugly mug.

“Can’t have a wank an’ look at this mug now, can I.”

Your face, mainly. That’s what he likes to watch. Brows pulled tight, eyes hooded, mouth agape. White paints the knuckle of his hand as it fists your hair, forcing your head back. Then, there’s you. The uncomfortable and jagged curve of your neck, your tendons bulging at the sides, the veins that branch out from your collarbones and find root at your jawline.

Fuck, the sounds you make. Those strained breaths that stroke your vocal cords like you’re an instrument—moans clipped and sharp, rhythmic with the pistoning of his hips. 

Oh, the groan of your first orgasm. The whites of your eyes eating up your pupils. The curve of your mouth, a pained smile that trembles, unsure whether to cry out or laugh blissfully. 

It’s your voice that brings him back. His eyes focus on you once again, redefining the lines of your shape.

He must have stayed quiet for a bit too long, because the worried look on your face starts withering into something even worse, something like rejection.

“We could watch anything,” you provide nervously, rubbing your palms against your thighs. “Your favourites, maybe? Do you have any? I don’t know, you can take the lead on that—on everything, actually. I—I need to—”

With a frustrated sigh, you run a hand down the back of your neck. “I need to feel like you want to fuck me. I—I want to feel like I want to have sex again. I want to be in control of it.”

Your chest heaves. “Please tell me I’m making sense.”

Fucking hell. It would be odd, true, but fuck odd.

Your brows pinch. “It’s okay if you don’t wa—"

“I got an idea.”

“This isn’t what I had in mind,” you blabber breathlessly.

Simon’s fingers are buried inside you. The video is muted because you asked. 

“Met you halfway, didn’t I?”

His phone sits propped against the headboard, the lower margin hidden beneath the hills and curls of the pillowcase. The light is dim in the bedroom, similarly to how it looks on his phone. He’s got you with your stomach pressed against the mattress, just like in that video. The only thing keeping your head from slipping against the bed is his fist, holding firmly onto your locks.

“But I—” You choke when his knuckles brush your clit. “—I don’t like to look at myself.”

Simon cracks his neck, tilting it side to side. 

“S’porn, innit?” 

You groan. “God, Simon—”

“You asked for my favourite,” he rumbles. “There y’go.”

There’s a slow, accommodating fashion in the movements of his hand. Languid strokes given with two fingers, sometimes slipping out to smear your wetness down your slit, brushing featherlight on your clit. 

“But this won’t make me horny,” you whine, though there’s a telltale weakness in your statement that doesn’t manage to mask the lie.

Greedy eyes eat what his mouth still can’t. The sweat collecting on your temples, the slope of your nose and the curve of your mouth—lips pouting, teeth sinking into the flesh to silence yourself. Shy thing. You’ve never been one, but he reckons there’s nothing wrong with a change of pace, every once in a while.

He parts your folds with his fingers and gulps harshly when the thick sound of your wetness reaches his ears. Proved yourself wrong, there.

“Won’t it?”

He’s kneeling on top of you, knees digging into the mattress on either side of your thighs. The video is not what he focuses on, though. He’s got better things to admire. The angles of your shoulder blades, the indents of your muscles as they tense, and the sweet dip of your spine. Where it hollows and where it ends—two tiny dimples crowning the plump of your ass. 

Fuck you’re a painting, aren’t you?

“Look at yourself,” he drawls, forcing your eyes to the screen with a tug of your hair. “Look at how good you were feelin’, mh?”

The little whine that escapes you matches the clench of your pussy around his fingers. Gladly, he realises that you’re not cutting off the blood flow of his hand, but instead you’re opening up to him, feeling much softer than when he first entered you.

For a brief second, his eyes flicker to the screen.

There’s the pretty curl of your lips as you look up at him, subjecting your neck to bend in an uncomfortable arch, though his face is out of frame. You go a little cross-eyed, right there, as your smirk turns into a beautiful smile—all teeth and wrinkled nose. 

The video keeps rolling, and after a heartbeat, you offer your tongue. From the top of the screen, a rope of spit falls and lands directly on it, and he watches as you drink it down. 

The soft bob of your throat, the delighted grin it follows, the mouthed “thank you”.

Simon’s cock sits above your ass. It hangs heavy with blood and gleaming at the tip, aching to be touched. His balls feel painfully tight, and if he ventures and grinds down between your cheeks, he might finish before this thing even starts.

His fingers switch, moving from inside you to lightly tap at your clit. Deliberately slow, circling around your clit to unsheathe it and leave the most sensitive part to his mercy whenever he glides down.

You suck in a breath.

Gentle touches wake up your body, skin rushing with waves of shivers that tiptoe up your spine. 

“Can—can you do that?”

Simon’s pads slide forward, from your clit to the curls on your pelvis, slipping easily with the wetness collected on his pads. Back and forth, until the tautness in your thighs melts away into the sheets underneath.

“Do what, swee’heart?” 

Shyly, you look up. Your neck cranes backwards in a mimicry of that same painful curve he’s witnessed time and time again.

Your lashes flutter up to him. “Can you spit in my mouth like that?”

And it goes straight to his cock.

Don’t need to tell him twice.

The hand in your hair slowly releases its grip, and by the way your moan comes, breathless and aching, he can tell the sting it left must have added to your pleasure. His fingers grasp your jaw, digging into your cheeks. 

Shifting forward, Simon aligns his mouth with yours from above.

“Open up.”

You blink, doe-eyed and bashful. Lick your lips and nibble at the flakes of dry skin, pondering for a moment, before you heed his order and part your mouth for him, letting your tongue loll down your chin.

Simon’s eyes roll back. 

His throat is parched, and he wonders how the fuck he will spit in your mouth when you managed to dry out his tongue with just a look.

Nevertheless, he summons the strength and purses his lips, letting a rope of spit fall slowly onto your tongue.

He watches your nostrils flare in anticipation. Your brows as they flutter when it lands. How you seem to savour it when you swallow. How you find his face again in your stupor, with your eyes smothered under the dark veil of lust.

His cock grows tighter when you smile.

“Thank you,” you mouth, licking your lips as if you might taste more of him again.

Simon’s left breathless as you repeat your own words, and he has to summon all his strength not to spear you with his cock right then and there. He genuinely wants to pace himself, but you look so fucking appetising that he just craves to have a taste. He should give you time to adjust, space to settle—he shouldn’t devour you with his mouth.

He should, should, should. Should be better. Should be softer. Should be—

I need to feel like you want to fuck me.

Simon’s heart comes to an abrupt stop.

He should, should, should—

—give you more. 

Show you how he wants to fuck you, like you asked, instead of going at a slow, far-fetched pace. He was never one to sit down and have a feast patiently. Simon’s hungry, he’s always been. To merely nibble on supper would feel artificial, plainly wrong.

And above everything, Simon wants you. 

He leans down and smashes his lips to yours. 

The sound of clacking teeth almost swallows your gasp, but the surprise is short-lived—promptly replaced with the same kind of hunger, only delivered more tentatively.

His kiss is hungry and unrestrained. His teeth sink into your lip before launching again, smearing spit down your chin. You taste like you. Of mint and sugar. Herbs from the tea you shared, sweet because of the biscuits you dipped in yours, even as he grimaced at the sight. 

It’s the taste of you. The feel of your skin.

The growing warmth of your cheeks as his stubble irritates them, the slick of your tongue as it dances with his.

Your palm lands harshly at the nape of his neck, grasping blindly until it clutches around a handful of hair. Your fingers wander and grab, nails scratching his scalp and sending shivers down his spine. Now that your hand isn’t supporting your weight anymore, you’re using him as leverage—pulling down his head and further smashing his mouth against yours.

Simon’s hand around your throat tightens just slightly.

“Remember tha’?” He purrs, lips to lips. Then, he steers your face to look ahead, where the video keeps rolling.

And you’re so diligent, following his lead. “Yes.” 

“Mh,” he rumbles. “Felt good, didn’t it?”

The swell of your ass grinds against his cock. Simon kisses his teeth, jaw tight in the effort to keep himself sane.

“Yes.”

His offhand reaches down to the base of his cock. Slaps the head against the curve of your ass once, twice.

“Wanna cum on my cock like that?” He murmurs, reaching down to lick the shell of your ear. You shiver. “Wanna feel like tha’ again?”

You wiggle underneath him, letting out the smallest whine. Shy thing, you. That’s one of the things that has changed. He’s always loved the bite of your teeth, the cut of your tongue. Loved the leash you put on him, how it revealed his need for control for what it truly was—mere, unfettered fear. Shackles he thought were keeping him safe, when they were only locking him up in a cage of his own making.

He recognises that same trait within you, now. Recognises, also, how you’re trying to be rid of it. 

It’s why he’s more than delighted to understand that you're fighting against those chains—forever his clever, clever girl.

He narrowly misses your hand reaching forward to press the buttons on the side of his phone.

Your voice fills the room.

“Oh fuck,” you groan.

Simon’s hand has your hair in a brutal grip, pulling you back until all the phone can record are the angles of your jaw and the sharpness of your collarbones. His chest peeks from above, glistening with sweat and ruddy in blotches.

Your ragged moans are punched out of your lips by the rhythmic snap of his hips. Thrust after thrust framed by the slap of skin and his voice—some raucous, crackling thing that rips from his chest, claws and all.

“Like tha’, pet,” he snarls. “Fuckin’ take it.”

And you nod, sweet thing. You nod dumbly as you smile up at him. Your tits hang and bounce as the raw force of his hold lifts your chest from the bed. One last pull, tight and strong, turns those moans into one sharp yell. 

His grin is unseen but clearly plastered in his tone. “Y’liked that, uh?”

Another tug, another helpless moan. 

“Ah fuck, yer close,” he chuckles. The wet squelches of your pussy ratchet up in volume as he thrusts in, over and over, picking up the pace. “Listen to tha’. Yer gonna cum, love?”

The lower half of his face pops into frame from above, only to land a kiss on the crown of your head.

“Can feel ya getting’ tight.” His lips brush your skin. “Go on, sweet girl.”

Before leaving the grip in your hair. 

“Cum on my fuckin’ cock—"

Your face hits the pillow with a groan that drowns in linen. The phone falls, now recording the ceiling. No one bothers to pick it up again.

“Fuck me,” you heave. “Fuck me like that again, baby.”

Simon has to close his eyes and inhale to get himself back in line.

“Fuckin’ hell.” He kisses his teeth. “C’mere.”

He pulls your head back once again. Kisses you until his lips feel numb. Right beneath him, you keep chanting your plea like he isn’t about to give in already.

“Fuck me, baby,” you mumble to his mouth, on and on without rest. “Please fuck me. I—I want to feel you inside me, please. Please.”

I want to feel like I want to have sex again.

“I want it,” you whimper. “I want you.”

Blood pulses from the base of his cock all the way to the tip. He can feel the shockwaves seizing his limbs when he presses it to your cunt, sliding it up and down your slick until he’s drenched in it.

He kisses your temple. Moves upwards to the back of your head, safely cradling your jaw in his palm.

“Missed it, haven’t ya,” he purrs by your ear. His cock enters an inch. “Feel tha’?”

He’s never been this hard in his life—never been this turned on either. 

You must realise it too. Words fail you, but your voice doesn’t. It crackles through your lips with a moan that shatters on his palm.

“Missed you too, pet.”

He’s barely been inside you, and if he doesn’t truly, really, focus, he’ll ram his cock and come so fucking deep you’ll drip for days.

Suddenly, the thought feels more tempting than wrong. 

“Yer gonna take it, yeah?” He grunts, moving forward with his hips. “Gonna take it like a good fuckin’ girl.”

A pleasing sob. “Please.”

With a groan, Simon gives in.

Not a sound leaves your lips. He can feel them open up against his hand, choking on air, and that is all you yield as he pushes in. The rest tightens into one euphoric knot at the base of his throat, cutting off each intake of air. 

In a swift motion, Simon buries his cock to the hilt, hips flush to your ass. His head collapses against you, mouth to your shoulder, and peppers kisses all over its curve. When he pulls back, the first stroke after months sends his brain into a frenzy. His teeth sink into your neck, growling like the famished beast that he is—

One you tame with your hand in his hair, tightening the grip to settle him.

“Oh my fucking—" Words tumble out of your mouth in a strained whimper. “Fuck it feels so good. Move. Move, please move—”

Simon’s mouth opens against your neck. His tongue licks a path from your thundering heart to the shell of your ear, where he tries to focus. 

It’s the smell of you. The floral of your shampoo and the sourness of sweat. The butter of your face cream and the ginger of perfume.

“I got you, pet,” he croaks, as his heart suddenly ties itself in a knot. “I got you.”

You’re incomparable. Fit like a glove, you do. Adjusting to him in the blink of an eye, already heaving like he stole the air from your lungs—though he’s just started, and considering the desperation of your hands, he reckons you’re far from done, too.

He’s deliberately slow, savouring each second that passes—but sometimes he slips, and thrusts in a little harder. Apologises with his lips down your neck, turning your hiss into the softest sigh. Thumbs your waist with the hand fisting the sheets, also the only thing preventing him from collapsing on top of you. 

You find his fingers and twine them with yours. 

The only sound he hears is the one coming from the video, the screen now flush to the pillow. It fell at some point. He never bothered to check when.

His groans, the slap of skin, your pleas as you come—

“Fuck,” you pant, hissing through your teeth. “Ngh—keep going. God, plea—keep going—”

“Yeah?” His voice purrs. “Fuckin’ feel that—Christ yer dripping.”

Your breath picks up, ricochets in the bedroom as another orgasm stalks closer.

“M’gonna come again—”

“Go on then,” he rumbles. “Do it, love. Cum all over me.”

Abruptly, your fingers reach for his phone and lock it. The echo of your moans is cut short, and so are his grunts. For a second, his tinnitus manages to shroud the lack of sounds.  

But then, there’s the quiet stagger of your breathing that breaches past, poking a hole through the cotton stuffing his ears. The creaking of the bedframe follows. How his movements make the springs moan under his weight. 

The wet of your nose nuzzles his cheek. “I missed you.” 

Your fingers relent the grip in his hair, hand falling down to cup his cheek instead. 

“I missed you.”

It’s said so wistfully that Simon, for a moment, feels entirely out of his depth.

He kisses the shell of your ear before guiding your gaze to point his way. Glossy eyes find him, thinly veiled with gratitude. He almost melts then and there. You got him wrapped around your finger, bow and all.

“I love you,” you say, placing your lips on his. “I love you so much.”

Simon’s chest grows tight.

He can feel those words take hold of his heart. Squeeze it bloody, only to travel southward and tighten around the base of his cock, too. In a stutter, his hips falter, and he has to come to a standstill if he doesn’t want this to end so abruptly.

“Christ,” he mutters, “Yer killing me, pet.”

The smoothness of your teeth brushes his lips as you smile. “Mh. And we don’t want that.”

He buries his nose in the crook of your neck and inhales the flowers, the butter and the herbs. The ginger, the sweat and the biscuits.

“Aye, we don’t,” he sighs.

Your tongue licks a stripe across his mouth. “But I love you.”

Simon groans. “Yer a cheeky fuckin’—”

He pulls back and slams in again, as if to chastise you, but it isn’t received as punishment at all. In fact, it spurs you on—you moan into his mouth and put him under your spell. A chant, continuous, of endless I love yous that peel off the layers that make him.

Simon finally gives in. He’s missed you, too.

He collapses on top of you, punching a gasp from your mouth as your whole body is enveloped by his. His arm snakes under your belly, and you favour him by lifting your hips. The angle has him hit somewhere deeper, and you shatter beneath him. Your throat cracks a groan, soaked by the pillow, and finally, you let go when his fingers find your clit.

“Missed you,” he croaks in your ear. 

His pace picks up. 

“Missed this voice ‘ere.” His mouth latches onto your neck. “Missed yer fuckin’ taste. Missed this fuckin’ cunt.”

Doesn’t care about the strain in his spine and the burn of his calves, not when your moans start growing louder and wetter.

“Fuckin’—” He stutters. “Love ya. Wanna fuck you every day—”

Your slick rolls out of you thick as liquor for each thrust, coating his fingers. Two, at first. Then three, gliding smoothly from side to side over the tight knot of your clit. 

“When yer knackered, when yer cooking, when yer in the fucking shop an’ bend over to pick up some shite—”

“Oh fuck, Simon—keep going—”

“—Fuck, yer made f’me. Naked or not. I always want you. I do.”

“I’m—oh fuck—I’m gonna come—”

And he can fucking feel it. 

“That’s it, pet. Give it to me.”

Your body seizes at first, taut as a bowstring. And then, you bloom. 

Wave after wave, rippling against him with your whole being. Even as cramped as you are, crowded under the weight of him, you fuck him through your ecstasy. Push your ass backwards to ride him for all his worth. 

And Simon is entirely helpless, so entranced by the pulsing of your cunt around his cock that he barely realises how he’s coming, too. It’s all it took, really. To feel you clutch at his hair with your fingers, to have you fight for control—steal it from the tight grip of his hands. 

His teeth sink into the soft flesh of your neck, groaning when his release wrecks him from within. Feels your pulse ratchet up under his tongue, your stutters as they bubble up your throat as you wordlessly beg for him to want you, to love you.

As he silently gives it all to you. All you ask, and more.

Eventually, you fall still. The tightness of your muscles melts. All the effort of your movement turns into mere, occasional twitching as adrenaline leaves your bloodstream.

You’re soft again. Turning your head on the pillow to find him, resting with his cheek right by your side. 

“I missed you,” you say wetly. “I’m sorry.”

Simon brushes his nose against yours. 

He knows how that type of guilt feels—the misplaced one, the one with no reason to be there at all. It festers within your stomach and doesn’t care about the damage it yields, because it’s not how it operates. 

It’s unfounded. Still, he knows words won’t be able to quell the heartache.

But Simon sees what you still can’t. It takes balls to survive a life you don’t want anymore. He knows a thing or two about that. Swam in his own ocean of shit. 

Still, he watched you take control back in your hands. You asked for help and crafted a new life that fits you better and patched the wounds left by the one you once led. You witnessed yourself burst at the seams and decided that it was time to pick up the needle.

That requires an incomparable amount of courage.

Simon knows it well. Still bears the scars to prove it.

“Don’t gotta be,” he whispers. “Proud of ya.”

Your eyes widen. Open the faucet, too. The glittering rim left by your orgasm turns into a river. Tears cascade from the corners of your eyes and branch above the bridge of your nose, down your temple, into your hair.

“For what?” You chuckle dismissively. “Having sex?”

But Simon kisses your nose instead. Offers a lovely smile he hasn’t granted in a while. 

“Yeah,” he concedes, because you need time. “Tha’ too.”

Your giggle is refreshing and genuine, though a bit strangled. He realises only then that you’ve been crushed underneath his weight all this time, so he props himself on his elbows. You sigh, wiggling to turn around in the cramped space between his chest and the bedsheets, until your eyes are aligned with his.

Your lashes are clumped, sticking to one another with dewdrops of happiness. They flutter when you look up at his face.

“Thank you,” you say. “For being here. For being proud of me.”

Always. 

Simon leans down and breathes a kiss on your forehead.

“There ain’t a day that goes by that I’m not.”

Uneven bricks, ochre and grey, cloaked by a pitched roof and tiles laced with moss and ashen lichen. A chimney peeks from the top left, darkened right around the top. There’s a stone path leading from the gravel where you parked your car to the front door—sturdy hardwood thing, painted a deep dark chocolate with bronze trims all around. Wooden fixtures for the windows, worked and etched in that way that makes them look old, but they clearly aren’t. Thick glass, maybe to isolate sounds—as if it’s needed.

This house is as pretty as it is lonely. Lost in the middle of nowhere.

At least you were right about one thing. Not even God would go this far to look after His disciples.

Out of four hours, you spent half driving through unpaved roads, with your car jumping over fat roots and potholes. Got lost once. Almost ended up in a ditch twice.

However, the landscape they led to is gorgeous as few. Worth the money that you’ll surely have to splurge on new shock suspenders.

It’s autumn, so there’s the occasional tree popping golden amongst an emerald ocean extending behind the cottage, farther than the eye can see. In front of the house, there’s a small grove. It rustles with the wind, coos with birds and owls, runs with squirrels and wildlife clawing up the trees. Evergreen bushes with the occasional pop of colour, whether red or pale orange, lean against the trunks. The sun is setting behind it, painting the landscape with the shadows of the fronds and a soft golden glow.

It's quiet, in that way only nature can be.

If you hadn’t been worried down to the bone marrow, you’d have lit a cigarette and smoked it with your ass on the trunk of your car while basking in the last shafts of sunlight of the day.

Alas, you’re not here for sightseeing.

You turn off your car and jump out of the seat. Gently, you stretch your arms; your shoulders pop, your back cracks like a fucking glowstick. Your knees aren’t faring better, clicking when you stand up fully.

With a withering sigh, you walk to the back of the car and open the bonnet. 

There are groceries for a lifetime stacked in there. Four bags from Tesco, two smaller ones from the chemist’s. Pain killers, vitamins, paracetamol, supplements, benzodiazepines, citalopram, escitalopram, and all the fucking prams the pharmacy had to offer. The list was long; you eyed Johnny worriedly when he gave it to you, but knew better than to ask.

You’re tired. Tired beyond measure. You went to work at the crack of dawn and then jumped in the car when you couldn’t take it anymore. Dropped everything, apologised to Kyle for leaving him to fend for himself with the diplomatic envoy, and when Price scrunched his nose disappointedly, you apologised to him as well and promised to do double the job once you were sure he was alright.

Because you hadn’t heard from him in days.

Not a phone call, not a text, not a sign that he was using his phone at all. Not a sign that he was alright, that he was still grumbling about the growing prices of groceries, that he was still nursing a nightcap in the evenings—that he was alive.

He used to tell you.

They don’t get it—Johnny, Kyle, Price. They don’t know about the texts, the calls, the photos, the messages sent in the middle of the night, the ones left just shy of dawn, just to wish each other a good day.

Your little secret, that. Your little something soft, developed in the ruthlessness of your job. Something amicable and familiar stuck in between the horrors of cold-blooded murder, of dead bodies scattered in your lives, and endless stacks of paperwork. 

You’d send him pictures of your pale tea—too much milk, if you asked him. Of your pies baked during downtime, of the Christmas decorations you’d hang on the ceiling. He’d send you those of birds landing on the hood of his car, cats he’d find along his walk that would nuzzle his calf.

SR: Don’t know why.

LT: they think you’re snow white

LT: because you’re pale and you have the sweetest big brown eyes

SR: Wouldn’t say sweet.

LT: in fact i said sweetest :)

SR: Flattery won’t work on your lieutenant.

LT: ha! but im a lieutenant too. you can’t pull rank on me

SR: I’m your L.T. 

SR: You’re my second lieutenant. Under my command.

LT: technicalities

SR: You’re L.T. too

SR: L.Too

SR: L2

L2: oi

SR: Haha

L2: rude

SR: Alright, L2.

They don’t get it.

SR: Sleeping?

L2: are you keeping tabs on me?

SR: You’d be surprised.

L2: won’t ask

SR: Shouldn’t.

L2: Fancy a chat?

And your phone would ring.

“L2,” he’d greet.

“Not funny anymore.” But it was.

“Reckon it’s bloody hilarious.”

“Been too long. It’s losing its charm.”

“Charm?” He’d breathe a laugh. Almost. “Right, then—El.”

Midnight, midday, seven AM, four AM, six PM. On and off the job. Christmases and birthdays and Easters and early Sundays and late-night Mondays—

His touch, secretive and fleeting. Warm hands on the hollow of your spine as he walks by, fingers tightening the straps of your vest, adjusting the holsters on your thighs. Watchful eyes chasing your shadow in the crowd, following your fingers as they deftly work through cables and buttons. Burning holes on the back of your hands as you aptly defuse an IED. His huff of relief, his palm warm on your shoulders. A pat, a caress.

“Good job, L2.”

“Fuck off with that,” you’d laugh. “Spooky fucker.”

“That’s my El.”

They don’t get it.

Or maybe they do. 

Price wrinkled his nose, but didn’t stop you. Kyle took over your shift. Johnny gave you the means to reach him.

Maybe they saw it—your eyes softening whenever he walked into a room, his shoulders unravelling whenever your voice crackled over comms. Two peas in a pod, birds of a feather. The moon and the fucking sun. Lieutenant Riley and his 2nd lieutenant. 

LT and L2. Ghost and El.

On the seventh day of no contact, you couldn’t take it anymore. You raided Tesco, you begged Johnny to give you his address (and thankfully, he was just as worried as you were—you’d have hated pulling rank on him), and he secretly passed you Simon’s medical file so you could pop by the chemist too.

Now, you find yourself properly hauling your own weight in groceries along the stone path leading to his cottage. You drop them with a grunt in front of his door. 

On your side, his car is parked. Second-hand. Onyx black. Bird shit on the roof, windows grainy with soil and opaqued with rain tracks. 

Unused for a while. Normal, in a way. It’s not like he can drive in that state. For any amenities, a nurse would come by, provided by the SAS. Sometimes he’d open and be cordial enough. Sometimes he would just tell them to leave groceries and whatnot at the door.

The nurse told Price it had been days since Simon even answered his phone calls, never mind open the door. Price told the team, but not you. Kyle passed you the intel with the same secrecy as a mole working for the enemy.

Gooseflesh crawls up your spine as you look at the weathered bronze of the doorknob. There’s no doorbell that you can see.

You knock.

“Lieutenant.”

Nothing.

The wind grazes your ears, ruffles the fronds as it intersects with the leaves. You dry the pearls of sweat on your forehead with the back of your hand, and knock again.

“L.T.,” you say, trying to sound chirpy. “Special delivery!”

Silence.

You lean to the side and try to peek through an overgrown bush into one of the windows, but the curtains are drawn shut. You bring your thumb to your lips and nibble at a cuticle.

Knock.

“Lieutenant!” Again. Worry seeps through the cracks. “It’s me! It’s lieutenant—”

You chew on your name. It dies on your tongue.

“It’s L2!” You yell instead. “It’s El!”

Blood beads on your thumbnail, bitten short. 

Knock knock.

“Please open the door?” You venture. Your heart pounds in your ears. “I’m so fucking—so fucking tired and worried.”

Knock knock knock.

“Where the fuck do you live anyway, uh?” You sniffle. Your nose stings. “Was right, wasn’t I? You are fucking Snow White.”

Nothing.

Loudest silence you’ve ever heard.

You hate it. You want to fill it with more knocks, with more yells, with the sound of his footsteps, with the gravel of his voice, the crackle through comms, the clicking of his ankle when he rests his weight on it for too long, the burn of his cigarette in the coldest nights, the breath of a laugh he wants to swallow but doesn’t manage.

“Lieu—” You gulp. “Simon? Please.”

On the far right, there’s a bench whose greyish paint is chipping away. Old wood rots in the centre because of rain and constant humidity. Even though you sat in that godforsaken car for the past four hours and some, you feel your knees buckling the more you keep standing. 

So, you carry yourself over there. Drop down. The bench creaks. As predicted, it’s wet and it seeps through your jeans. You sigh.

“Alright,” you slam your palm on the wood. 

“I’m gonna sleep right—” Thud. “Fucking—” Thud. “Here, then.”

There’s no sound.

You look at the groceries.

“I brought you food!” You go on, “And if you don’t open the door I’m gonna eat it. Everything. Even your stupid chocolate biscuits—I’m gonna gobble them up in one sitting.”

The milk will go bad if you don’t put it in a fridge. The ice cream will melt. 

“The bourbon too,” you yell. “Gonna drink it all. Gonna get comatose on your stupid bench in this—in this fucking fairy grove you live in.”

The fruit will start softening. The meat will start rotting and smelling. And flies will run to it, conquer it, eat it raw, and lay their eggs inside. Their buzz will drive you insane, and you’ll lose your mind on this bench, in the middle of nowhere.

“And I’m gonna sleep here until you open that fucking door, you hear me?” Your voice cracks. “And I’m gonna get sick and—and it’ll be your fault, because you didn’t open the bloody door.”

You wonder whether you’d smell the same thing if you broke it down. If the buzz would be heavier, more persistent. If it would be something else driving you insane.

The image flashes bright and real. Smells like you have it within reach, before you, hanging from a chandelier, drowning in a crimson bathtub, or melting on the bed, stomach filled with pills and nothing else.

Your heart plummets at your feet. You feel claustrophobic, boxed in a square of cement that pushes in your shoulders and compresses your chest.

“Simon!” You yell, voice cracking. Droplets stain your jeans. It’s not raining. “You fucking cunt open the fucking door!”

Elbows on your knees, you drop your head in your hands. You’re so tired. You don’t even know if you can drive back home, especially now that the sun is setting. You’d gladly sleep in your car—fuck, you’d sleep on this bench if it meant finding him at the door the next morning, looking all cranky and grumbling about the mess you made.

All you can do is plead quietly, a breathy prayer you hope he can hear, even if only whispered.

“Please open the fucking door, please open the fucking door—"

Are you strong enough to break it down? You’re special forces, but you’re not a battering ram. You don’t have the tools that would help—you didn’t think you were gonna need them. 

Stupid.

Are you brave enough to open the door? To find what’s inside? Should you call the police? An ambulance?

The thought makes you retch. You cover your mouth and bite on your palm.

“This fucking idiot—” You whisper. Swallow thick. Your throat stings as bile rises. “I swear to God you selfish bastard, you better not. You better fucking not, Simon, I will—”

“Which bourbon?”

Your head snaps.

His shoulders, wide and hunched, fill the doorway, open enough for you to see him entirely. A grey shirt hangs loose around his torso. He’s got his hands stuffed in the pockets of his joggers, but there’s a strain in his arms. Corded and rigid, tied in a way that shows in his neck, too.

A scar runs thick down the side of his head, starting from the centre of his forehead and tipping at the shell of his ear, following a curved line clearly left by a surgeon. Bulbous near his temple, where the flesh was too soft and took longer to heal. 

Darkness blossoms under his eyes, swollen and sunken at the same time; puffy with sleep, hollow with tiredness. He’s paler than usual, his cheeks are gaunt, and he’s so much fucking thinner.

But he’s alive.

His chest rises. His blood runs.

You blink.

A tear threatens to stream down your cheek, but you anticipate it, drying its path with the back of your hand. Your bones soften, muscles unclenched. Clumsily, you take a trembling breath, and it feels like it’s the first time you’ve ever done it.

“I-I don’t know,” you stutter. “Don’t drink the stuff. Asked the clerk for his favourite and he just—just tossed it in there.”

“Mh.”

His eyes look for the bottle amongst the mountain of food and drinks stuffed in the bags. 

“You better like it.” You sniffle and nod at the bags. “Fifty-five quid just for that thing.”

He snorts. Sighs. “Good enough then.”

You exchange looks.

Then, he nods his head inside.

“Help me out?” He drawls.

Dizzy, you nod. Your legs tingle as if they’ve just been awakened, your stomach rumbles like you haven’t eaten in days. The world turns upside down—relief so visceral and thick you feel like it’s drowning you.

You stumble to the doorway. Your guts squeeze and thrash. You might throw up, but you don’t, swallowing the tightening feeling clawing up your throat.

You stuff the smaller pharmacy bags inside the Tesco ones.

Simon leans in too, taking his hands out of his pockets.

You hadn’t seen the aftermath yet.

He’s missing the last two fingers on his left hand. Surgery scars run along the back of both, slicing the tattoo on his forearm in a cobweb of thick, ruddy lines. That is, where the flesh isn’t rubbery and burnt, convoluted as if yearning to weld itself back together in the aftermath of being torn apart. 

They shake—fiercely, like he’s experiencing an earthquake inside his body; unfolding before your eyes, shattering his bones.

You look at them. Transfixed. At the mangled flesh sewn back together, at the tremble that runs through his veins and tips at his nails. The strain of his muscles clawing up his arms, taut to the point of pain—like he’s putting all his effort to keep them still, to exert control over them.

Control he lost.

When you lift your eyes again, you meet his face.

Stone cold. Dreadfully frigid.

“The bags are heavy,” you croak.

“Carried worse,” he replies flatly, and his hands curl around the handles of two.

His fingers tighten, knuckles painted white. Nails bite his palms, but he perseveres. Swallows a groan of pain that rumbles in his throat and lifts the groceries off the floor. 

The plastic bags crackle like a gale is blowing furiously through them. The glass of the bottles clinks. You see, as he walks inside, the tension in his gait: forcing his legs to cooperate, to work by themselves, as he focuses exclusively on the stability of his hands.

Without looking back, he leaves the door open for you to follow.

You stand frozen stock still, arms down your sides, and eyes brimming with guilt.

Carried worse, he said.

Carried you, months ago, when the bomb went off.

Six Months Earlier

Intel’s rarely faulty when the source is the police themselves.

Granted, even in these cases, one should always take statistics into consideration: a mole, a diversion, the original source. However, things sometimes are so obvious that statistics fall flat.

Because in front of you, right now, there’s a big, fat bomb. No doubt about it.

A squared box, half as tall as you. It’s raggedly painted black, as if someone decided to spray the colour on the metal slabs at the last minute. Rust gathers at each corner, likely due to the humidity building up in this underground tunnel, which is also chipping away at the paint and leaving ruddy streaks scattered down the sides.

It’s not much different from the ones you’ve dispensed of already, at least at first sight. There’s no timer, not a visible one at least. Though from the looks of it, you don’t think this one is timed at all. If you’re fortunate, it needs to be manually detonated on site. Worst-case scenario, it can be set off remotely.

Thank fuck you’re wearing sturdy PPE, then.

With a huff, you flop on your knees before it. There’s a soft puff as the pressure pushes air out of your suit—a big, cumbersome thing that safely cradles you from head to toe. 

“Captain,” you call through comms. “You sure it’s off, yeah?”

The static preceding his voice buzzes softly through your ear, before John’s usual rasp fills the helmet shielding your head.

“Local bomb squad’s had a look already,” he says. “Said it’s old.”

Though the bomb in front of you looks untouched by the deft hands of a demolition specialist. You wonder how they concluded that the device is too old to be active, since there doesn’t seem to be a sign that it has been studied at all.

“Doesn’t look like they did anything, though,” you offer.

John grunts. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”

“Right.”

His voice rumbles even through the distortion of the radio. “Just passing it on, L2. They want us to check it before they move it.”

You roll your eyes at the nickname. You knew it would stick—Simon’s convincing like that—though it is the first time John actually uses it.

You let it slide.

“And why’s that?”

“Signed by Konni.”

You tilt your head and easily spot the mark of Konni group sprayed on one side, dried red paint drawing a path downwards from where it dripped.

“Always nice to see an old friend, isn’t it?”

“Keep us updated, yeah?”

“On it.”

You squeeze your eyes through the visor of your helmet, focusing on possible entry points. Each breath you take is measured and quiet as you clear your mind to steady yourself.

“Alrigh’?”

Though considering the questioning drawl coming from beside you, you’d wager the suit is amplifying not only your voice, but also the heaviness of your panting. 

It’s fucking hot in this thing.

“You shouldn’t be here.” You give him a sidelong glance. He’s not wearing an EOD, only his usual uniform with an added clunky helmet, a bulletproof vest, and his stupid skull mask. “Especially not naked like that.”

“Naked, uh?” He snorts. “Better get a good look, then.”

You bite down a smile and return your eyes to your job. “Captain, the lieutenant is padding around in his birthday suit.”

Price’s voice crackles through the comms in your ear. By his tone, you can practically see the tight set of his jaw and the roll of his eyes.

“Ghost, either wear the EOD or leave the premises, for fuck’s sake. Don’t fancy scraping you off the walls.”

Simon gently kicks the side of your boot. “Rat.”

You turn your head around just enough to stick out your tongue at him.

“I asked the second lieutenant a question an’ she ain’t answered yet,” he drawls with his usual dispassionate tone. “Permission to kick her off the team?”

“You won’t hear a single fuckin’ word she says if you’re ground meat, Simon,” Price’s voice rasps. “Wear the bloody PPE and then we’ll talk.”

Static replaces John’s orders as communication cuts off on his part.

Only then does Simon pitch in.

“I asked you a question.”

You sigh, but it’s neither weary nor exasperated. 

“Yeah, I’m alright,” you huff, already tinkering with your toolbox. “Why aren’t you wearing the gear?”

“I’m in good hands.”

“Thanks, I’m immensely flattered,” you quip. “Please go wear it now.”

“Thought it was too old to still be active.”

You don’t have time to roll your eyes, because as soon as he mutters his thoughts, you notice a familiar indented square in one of the panels. A carefully hidden entry point that, once popped open, will show you the intricacies inside the device. It’s like spotting an oasis in the desert.

You reach for a flat tip in your toolbox at your knees. Carefully, you wedge it in the embrasure.

It only takes a few tries, and it unhinges seamlessly. Metal clinks as you gently place the lid on the ground.

There’s no need for you to look his way—his presence is like a heavy blanket wrapped around your shoulders. A shadow sewn to your own. 

“I won’t support your suicidal tendencies, so please, for the love of Christ, listen to the engineer—” you point at yourself with the screwdriver, “—and go wear the bloody bomb suit.”

Simon stays silent for a handful of seconds, only filled with the tinkering of metal of your tools.

“Worried ‘bout me, are ya?”

You huff. No use pretending, when he can see right through you. “Plenty.”

“Good heart.”

“Chop chop, Riley.”

“Aye aye, El.”

With a gentle squeeze of your shoulder, Simon turns on his heel. His footsteps become distant until the soft thud finally vanishes behind the creaky door that first led you down here, slamming shut behind you.

You don’t turn around, too focused on studying the wires wrapped around each other in the panel you just opened. There’s an entire bundle crossing the opening diagonally and so shrouding most of the circuit board in the back. They’re held together by a couple of cable ties that look awfully cheap, like the rest of the device.

“Weird,” you mumble to yourself.

“What is?” John pitches in.

You flinch, not expecting an answer to your musings.

“Uhm, uh—” You shake your head to recollect yourself. “The bomb—it looks quite cheap. Not their usual MO.”

John hums. “Could be one of Konni’s earliest works. Disposal said it’s old, innit?”

“Yeah,” you huff. “I don’t trust a single word those fuckers said.”

“Right,” he grunts, though you recognise that hint of agreement in it. “Do what you can with it. Keep me updated.”

“Roger that, captain.”

Back on track. First thing to do is get rid of those ties to isolate the cables. 

You work quietly for a while, removing your gloves to minimise errors while doing such minute movements. The flush cutters are sturdy but the blades are small, and the thickness of the cable ties is stupidly non-existent. You want to avoid cutting things you shouldn’t.

However, you can’t quite ease the knot of doubt forming in your guts.

This device has literally nothing preventing you from disposing of it. Everything is poorly put together. The control centre was placed under a thin slab of metal, which you simply popped off using the flat tip of a screwdriver. There are corner store-level cable ties keeping together a bundle of wires. Each cable isn’t isolated, but either overlaps with others or knots on itself.

This is amateurish.

And you know, with utmost certainty, that Konni isn’t. The same Konni group that blew up an entire airport wouldn’t DIY a bomb and spray paint their signature on a slab of metal like a mere local gang of criminals.

Unless—

“El? You with us?”

Simon’s voice snaps you out of it. He sounds muffled and echoey, as if he’s speaking from behind a glass. You recognise that distortion: he put on the bomb suit.

Relief floods through you.

You shake your head to clear your mind. Sweat collects on your forehead. You feel each drop brewing on your skin, only to then slowly make its way to your brow, then your eye.

Your fingers close around the cutters, and the first tie snaps off.

Then, you squeeze your eyes to get rid of the burn.

“Yeah,” you huff. “They should invent more comfortable suits for us in demo. It’s fucking sweltering in here.”

Price’s voice crackles once more. “We’ll hire a fashion designer.”

Simon snorts.

“Look at you, captain,” you croon. “Providing jobs for the youth.”

You’re sure he’s rolling his eyes. “Do yours or you’ll lose it.”

But you know it’s an empty threat. Jokes tossed around to defuse the tension as you defuse your bomb. High stress situations require ways to destress in order to keep your mind clear and at ease, even as your life is on the line.

“Aye aye.”

And from then on, silence lingers, only interrupted by Simon shifting his weight on his feet behind you. The crinkle of the suit folding as he moves, the tap of his fingers against the pack he must be holding in his hands. There’s the occasional clink of metal when you drop a tool in its box, or the snap of plastic as yet another tie comes off. 

And finally, you manage to isolate the cables from one another. Carefully you pinch one between two fingers and shift it to the side, only so you can have a broader vision of the circuit board in the back.

It’s entirely dead. Singed in places, the lights are off, no sounds fill your ears unless it's the ones you’ve already recognised as familiar. The blasting cap has an old serial number on it, different from the most recent ones you came across. The base was once attached to a couple of red cables that have been cut from their root.

You exhale, emptying your lungs in a single, long breath.

“It’s dead.”

John huffs through comms. “Thank Christ, eh. Sending Garrick over. ETA 20.”

But you stay put, staring holes through the jungle of wires that intersect and crisscross like vines in front of you, draped on the circuit board.

Simon shifts from behind you and comes to crouch by your side. The same puff of air exhales from his suit. You turn your head to look at him, though with the helmet it’s hard to have a good view of his face.

He’s taken off the skull mask to favour the protective gear placed around his head. His eyes aren’t poised on the bomb, though; they’re on your face. He must pick up on something there that doesn’t reassure him, because he knows you better than he should.

“Hang on, Price,” he rumbles.

You stall for a moment.

It’s only a hunch that spurs you to negate certainty. You’re special forces, an engineer—sixth sense isn’t enough to support evidence.

But Simon believes in it. He trusts that tiny spark he sees in your eye, the tautness of your fingers as they curl into fists atop your knees. You hear him sniff, shift on his knees to get closer. 

“El?” He whispers, perhaps not wanting the radio to pick up on it.

Your stomach lurches.

“I mean—” You gesture vaguely at the device. “It looks dead. The circuit board is gone, and the wires have been cut from the detonator. Some of this shit could be older than me—"

John cuts through your conversation. He sounds irritated, and in turn, it irritates you, too. 

“Get to the point.”

You stare at the dead circuit board. The main piece of this puzzle. It doesn’t take an engineer like you to recognise that it’s long gone, but in a very peculiar way that you don’t know how to explain without sounding like a lunatic, it looks too long gone.

You smack your lips. “Something’s wrong. It feels—”

“Don’t care how it feels, lieutenant. Is it dead or not?” 

“Listen, John, I’m not here to fucking play—"

“Need to have another look at it, boss,” Simon cuts in. “Give us a minute, will ya?” 

“Roger.”

You sigh. You wish you could scratch your forehead. Your scalp stings as sweat collects on it. Each tiny, uncomfortable thing happening to you is amplified, including the knot in your guts. 

“I hate him with passion each time he acts like—”

“He can still hear ya.”

“Good.”

If John can actually still hear you, he doesn’t voice it. Thankfully, you think, because if he pitches in again with some more of his caustic sarcasm, you might just say things before your mind can properly filter them.

You take a couple of seconds to recollect your thoughts, guiding your eyes to study the device. It’s composed of rusted metal plates welded together and protecting the bomb inside. You’d need a plasma cutter to breach the plate, but the heat could set the thing off if it’s live. In fact, there are no entry points aside from a small, squared panel that you’ve opened with unexpected ease. 

Considering how the rest of the thing is protected, however, it feels out of place. Conveniently put there for you to declare that the device is gone, when it actually isn’t. 

A hunch isn’t enough to negate evidence, that is true, but it’s there, and you won’t allow it to gnaw at your guts.

Easy is never the right answer, not with Makarov.

“Pass me the snake cam.”

You hold your hand out to Simon, palm up, without sparing him a glance. 

Your ears pick up on sounds even if you’re entirely wrapped in protective gear, even if your heart pounds madly up your throat. A zipper being opened, a cable as it unfolds. His hands are warm when they place the cold wire in your palm, steady when they close your fingers around it.

“Get it in,” he says. “I’ll hook it up.”

In the corner of your eye, pale hands reach inside the pack at his knees to pull out a pad. It blinks to life as he taps his fingers on it.

Gently, you insert the tip of the snake cam into the opened panel, carefully steering the camera underneath the knotted bundle of cables and behind the seemingly dead circuit board. 

“Got anything?” You ask Simon.

“Too dark.”

“Turn on the flash.”

The pace of your heart matches the rapid tap of fingertips running across the pad. In a blink, a soft glow fills the darkness behind the board. 

Simon hums.

“Got something.”

You inhale sharply. Your eyes flicker around, sifting through your thoughts as if you can see them, rushing unrestrained with endless possibilities. You squeeze them shut, clearing out the sting of sweat as it builds up on your brow and fogs up your sight.

“Fuck. Let’s switch.”

Simon shifts until he’s kneeling behind you. The rustle of his suit precedes his arms as they come around your head, carefully taking the cable from your fingers. 

“Got it.”

Ever so slowly, you remove your hands, shuffling on your knees and ducking your head to leave the shelter of his body. With no minimal effort, considering the weight of your blast suit, you manage to stumble to where he once sat, grabbing the pad he left lying on the ground.

As he said, there’s something. The flash clearly highlights a darkened silhouette, bulky and squared, but the quality of the camera doesn’t allow you to make out much more of it.

Only one thing stands out.

A light.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Thought so,” he spits. “Fucking Makarov.”

You don’t have time to curse him as well, though you quietly share the sentiment.

“John.”

Like lightning, his voice crackles in your ear. “Send over.”

“We got something.”

“Details.”

“In a sec. Stay on.”

You look at Simon. He’s perfectly still, not a tremble in his fingers, exactly as you’d expected. He’d make an incredible demo specialist, though you know he’s an even better sniper.

“Gentle, Simon,” you murmur. “Need you to go south.”

He follows your orders, sliding the cable down inside the box.

“Gentle,” you repeat. “Slower.”

And without a single word, he heeds you. Trusts you. Lets the camera cover each corner, bit by bit, moving his muscles imperceptibly as he snakes the camera through the jungle of wires.

Now closer to the device, you can better make out its details on the screen. It’s not old nor rusted, not singed nor dead. It sits attached to one side of the box, each cable perfectly isolated and running on sinuous curves around the circuit board. One that blinks red, then green, then red again—beating like a heart, shifting its colours inside the darkness. 

Stacks of white rubber are slathered around it, bulky and thick. You curse under your breath.

“C4.”

Simon clicks his tongue. “Christ.”

“John, tell the local authorities to clear out the area now,” you order steadily. “Add that they’re a bunch of lazy cunts, too.”

“Will do.” Then, quietly, “good work, lieutenant. Stay safe, both of you.”

“Roger.”

The static on the radio goes dead. There’s only your heart pounding in your ears, falling in rhythm with the switch of colours on the screen.

Red, green. Red, green.

Simon’s voice reaches out to you. “See a blasting cap?” 

“Yeah.” You tongue your cheek. “South. Then move to the right.”

He follows suit, once again trusting you entirely. As the camera moves, you try to take stock of each tiny detail you can make out. The quality is poor, but you’re starting to have a general idea of what you’re working with. The serial number stamped on the blasting cap matches those of more recent detonators, causing the theory of the local bomb squad to completely crumble.

Red, green. Red, green. 

While you can’t make out the logo on the circuit board, you recognize the finish immediately: factory-made, not cobbled together in some basement workshop. New. Polished clean. A pale square chip mounted against the green lacquer of the board.

Red, green. Red, red, green.

You blink. 

“Stop.”

Simon falls still.

Red, green. Red, red, green.

There. Blinking in the shadows, off to the side.

“Right. Go to the right. Quick.”

Simon doesn’t put up a fight, though you can see the uncomfortable shift of his knees. Imperceptible and yet conveying the same nervousness festering in your eyes as they fly across the screen. He is quick with his hands to find the source of the light.

It ticks, ticks, ticks.

“Shit—Simon, drop it!”

And if the clock is right, it will tick only for two minutes more.

“Drop that shit and run!”

Simon bolts on his feet, awfully quick considering the bomb suit clinging to him. You hadn’t accounted for that. Fuck, you hadn’t accounted for any of this.

You told him to wear it. You put that extra weight on him. He would’ve been out of the place and far away enough to be safe if you hadn’t insisted, if you’d let the overwhelmingly stupid trust he had in you to win, for once.

“Fuck—” You drop the pad and stand up. Your knees buckle under the cumbersome weight of your suit and the sudden dread gripping your stomach.

“It’s timed, John!” You bellow. Your yell echoes inside the EOD helmet, ringing in your own ears. “We’re leaving—no time to defuse it. Less than two minutes and it goes off!”

An old, singed circuit board as a decoy to mask the real bomb ticking away just beneath its surface. Only a demolition specialist like those in the UKFS would’ve thought of venturing further inside the device. 

Makarov knew it. 

He knew the local authorities would have called the anti-terrorism unit as soon as they saw the Konni group mark. Makes sense that he signed the device so clearly, like a fucking amateur.

He wanted John’s team there. 

He knew those bastards wouldn’t be arsed to check further. Why would they take on the burden when they could leave it in the good hands of better-trained professionals.

Call the big guns and then call it a day.

“Run. Don’t look back and run, both of you.”

He doesn’t need to tell you twice. You’re already panting, forcing your legs to move against the strain put onto them by the suit—not protection anymore, but a cage. Your knees don’t bend as they should, your feet struggle to hold you up. The sting in your eyes, the heart in your ears. 

Simon’s ahead of you as you trudge behind him. But he’s faster, stronger—able to carry the added kilograms of his blast suit as if it’s only a mere annoyance to him.

Though he must hear you—or rather, he must feel the lack of you by his side. 

He halts in his steps and looks behind to find you.

“Fuck—faster, El!”

“I know!” You’d like to yell at him to shut the fuck up, but that would be a waste of precious breath that you need to focus on using to run.

“Go!” Your voice cracks. “Fucking run, Riley!”

Though he’s been standing still for so long that you’re now by his side. 

You stagger past him, grabbing his hand to tug him with you—though that’s one arduous thing, rooted on the ground as he is.

“We got one minute at most—run ahead for fuck’s sake!”

It’s like you can hear it, now—each ticking breath exhaled by the device behind you. You wonder if it had always been there, signalling his presence as you knelt next to it, but you were acting too cocky to notice it.

Your fault. Your fault. Your fault—

Your rushing thoughts recede to a trickle the moment you feel Simon’s hand slipping away from yours. As it does, he takes your own heart with him, as you feel it skip a beat inside your chest.

The momentum of your run makes it hard to stop, and you almost stumble on your own feet as the weight of the suit drags you forward. Thankful for a wall next to your side, you slam your palm against it to avoid falling face-first into the ground.

Though when you turn, it’s your stomach that touches it.

Simon’s already pulled at the quick-release cord hanging from the front of his jacket. 

“What—”

The contraption strapped around his torso unlatches from the back. While he struggles with it, he’s impressively steady as he rips at the sleeves to take it off, shimmying his shoulders out of it with ease—chest plate and all, until everything falls on the floor at his feet.

Initially, your eyes widen in shock. Then, your face morphs into a mask of unadulterated rage. 

“Are you fucking mad?!”

But he’s taking his helmet off, too. The thud of it as it hits the ground is deafening, echoing ominously in the otherwise quiet underground tunnel you’re stuck in.

“Simon what the fuck!”

“Come ‘ere an’ shut yer mouth.” 

He charges forward, running much faster as most of the extra weight that was hindering him now lies uselessly on the floor. He bends at the waist, using gravity to his advantage, and reaches towards you with his arms.

You don’t have time to think as breath is knocked out of you. His arm wedges between your legs, and the world turns upside down. Darkness and grey bricks swivel and roll before your eyes as the air catches in your lungs. 

Your stomach curves around his shoulders. He holds your leg with one arm, curled around your knee, and your opposite sleeve with his offhand. 

He stumbles at first, trying to find his balance.

“Simon—” 

“Keep still.”

And then, he runs.

There’s a rasp in his breathing that makes it sound as if his chest is being crushed. The gravel of debris crunches under his boots, stomping heavily down the tunnel. Each sound is amplified, but you’re unsure of what is real and what isn’t. 

He trembles. Groans fiercely for each step he takes, baring his teeth as if to scare an invisible monster ahead of him.

“I’m slowing you down!” You yell, hoping the chaos won’t mask your voice too much. “Put me down! I—I have the bomb suit on, I’m going to be fine!”

Though that’s a lie. He knows it, and you do as well. If the tunnel collapses, no miracle can bring you back. 

But at least your head would be protected, giving you a chance. Your chest, too. Your legs. A minuscule, tiny possibility to have a minute more to breathe as you wait for Search and Rescue.

A chance he doesn’t have, not with half of his suit now lying uselessly on the floor.

However, Simon doesn’t answer, just runs. Runs and runs and runs, towards the exit at the end of the tunnel. It’s close, maybe another handful of meters, and yet now it feels like an endless chasm ready to suck you in.

A black hole hidden underground. 

You don’t know how much time you have left before the bomb goes off. Your breathing picks up, hand reaching around to fist his shirt around his collar to make him please, please listen.

“Please Simon, please!”

His eyes are fixed ahead, feet as quick as can be considering the weight he’s carrying—yours, his own, the suits. He stumbles, pace naturally slowing down due to the effort, but it doesn’t deter him. Hits walls with his shoulders, slams your helmet and your boots against corners, but he never stops.

He just looks ahead, drunk on adrenaline and ignoring the unfathomable strain he’s putting on his body.

Your eyes sting with panic and tears. His face is red with exertion and lucid with sweat as it beads on his forehead. Then his run turns into a stagger, trembling legs forcing themselves ahead.

Simon bursts through the door. Your helmet knocks against it.

At the same time, the tunnel’s darkness turns blinding white.

You knew Simon didn’t notice it. Or maybe he did and just didn’t care. But you noticed. God, you noticed.

Especially at the pub near base.

You worked there most evenings, weaving through crowded tables with cheap trays balanced on one hand, apron dusted with flour from the kitchen because the cook kept dragging you back there to help plate when things got busy. It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t important.

You were just… you. A waitress.

And Simon Riley was him.

Lieutenant. Decorated soldier. Feared. Respected. The kind of man people whispered about before he even entered a room.

The kind of man who looked absurd sitting in your tiny apartment kitchen at two in the morning drinking tea from a chipped mug while your socks slid across the floor.

You still didn’t understand why he stayed.

“You’re staring again.” Simon muttered one night from your couch.

You blinked, pulled from your thoughts. “Sorry.”

He watched you from beneath heavy lashes. “What’s goin’ on in that head?”

“Nothin’.”

A lie. Simon always knew when you lied.

He sat forward slowly, elbows on his knees. “C’mere.”

You obeyed automatically, crossing the small apartment until he tugged you between his legs. His hands settled on your hips, warm and heavy even through your clothes.

“You’ve been distant all week..” he said quietly. “Talk.”

You tried to shrug it off. “I’m tired.”

“Try again.”

Your chest tightened.

You hated this part. Hated saying things out loud because they sounded even stupider once they existed in the air.

Simon waited patiently.

That made it worse.

“I just…” You laughed weakly, avoiding his eyes. “I don’t get it.”

“Get what?”

“This.”

One of his brows twitched.

“You.” Your voice got quieter. “Us.”

Simon stared at you like he genuinely didn’t understand the question.

Which was insane.

“You could have anyone.” you murmured. “Anyone, Simon.”

His grip on your hips tightened slightly.

“And you’re with…” You gestured vaguely to yourself with a self-conscious smile that hurt more than it should’ve. “Me.”

Silence.

Not angry silence.

Not cold silence.

The dangerous kind — the kind where Simon got very, very still.

“You think I’m too good for you?” he asked finally.

Your face heated immediately. “When you say it like that it sounds—”

“Answer me.”

You swallowed.

“A little.”

Simon leaned back against the couch slowly, eyes never leaving yours. There was something awful in them suddenly. Something wounded.

Like you’d hurt him.

“You think I come here because I settled?”

“No—”

“You think I look at you and see someone lesser than me?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you think it.”

You looked away.

That was answer enough.

Simon exhaled hard through his nose, jaw tightening beneath faint stubble.

“Christ.”

Your stomach dropped. “I’m sorry.”

That made his head snap up instantly.

“There you go again.”

“What?”

“Apologizin’ for existing.”

You opened your mouth, then closed it.

Simon’s hands slid from your hips up to your arms, gentler this time.

“You know what I see when I look at you?” he asked quietly.

You shook your head.

“I see someone good.”

You almost laughed at that.

But Simon continued before you could.

“I see someone who remembers how I take my tea. Someone who works ten-hour shifts and still manages to smile at strangers.” His thumbs brushed absentmindedly against your sleeves. “Someone who treats people kindly even when they don’t deserve it.”

His eyes softened.

“You look at me and see the rank. The size. The scary reputation.” A humorless huff escaped him. “You don’t see what I see.”

“And what’s that?”

“A soldier.”

You frowned immediately. “Simon, I’m literally a waitress.”

“Aye.” He nodded once. “And every day you deal with rude customers, drunk men, shitty management, sore feet, exhaustion, bills…” His gaze locked onto yours. “And you keep goin’.”

Your throat tightened unexpectedly.

“You think strength only looks like violence,” Simon murmured. “Like guns and combat and knowin’ how to kill.”

One hand came up to cradle your jaw carefully.

“But I’ve seen men in the military weaker than you.”

Your eyes burned.

“Simon…”

“I mean it.” His voice dropped lower now, rough around the edges. “You walk through life soft. Do you understand how bloody difficult that is?”

That finally broke you a little.

Because Simon said it like softness was something sacred.

Something rare.

You looked down quickly, embarrassed by the sudden sting behind your eyes.

“I’m not special.”

Simon’s expression twisted like the sentence physically hurt him.

He stood abruptly, forcing you to tilt your head back to keep looking at him. Big hands framed your face completely.

“Don’t do that.” he said sharply.

You startled.

“Don’t tear yourself apart in front of me.” His voice cracked slightly around the edges now. “Not when I love every part.”

The room went silent.

Simon wasn’t good at saying things like that. He showed love easier than he spoke it. Through quiet touches. Waiting outside your work after late shifts. Fixing things around your apartment without being asked. Standing between you and the world like a wall.

But this?

This was raw… and terrifyingly honest.

His forehead pressed against yours.

“I don’t need someone impressive.” he whispered. “I need you.”

Your chest ached so badly it almost hurt to breathe.

“You make my life quiet.”

One of his hands slid into your hair carefully.

“You make me feel human again.”

Your eyes finally spilled over.

Simon caught the tears immediately with his thumb, looking almost angry at them.

“Don’t cry.”

“You’re being too nice.” you whispered shakily.

A small, disbelieving laugh left him.

“Too nice..” he repeated. “That’s what did it?”

You laughed weakly through tears.

Simon stared at you for a long moment before pulling you against his chest so suddenly you nearly stumbled.

His arms wrapped around you tight. Protective. Certain. Like there had never been a question.

“You are not lucky to have me.” he murmured into your hair.

His grip tightened.

“We’re lucky to have each other.”

୨୧⋅┈∘┈⋅⋅┈∘┈⋅୨୧⋅┈∘┈⋅⋅┈∘┈⋅୨୧ ⋅┈∘┈⋅⋅┈∘┈⋅ ୨୧

It flares within you then, the flames which blaze your cheeks, the air too hot as your nostrils flare. His name is sharper on your tongue, like a knife piercing through his reality. Jutting his chin up from the bug under his shoe to look at you.

Maybe you were stupid to think you'd find some amount of remorse or guilt, or his lip trembling with the fade of adrenaline.

What you really find is indifference. Back of his hand wiping under his nose although there's no blood, only the sweat of his fury. He's mostly unscathed save for the faint bruise on his cheek when he hit the floor too hard.

He opens his mouth and his teeth are pink.

"Why?" Your nose is burning, vision going blurry.

"Cunt got what 'e deserved."

Iron floods your own mouth, biting your tongue so hard. Better to hurt like that than because of this—because of him. Your finger punches into his chest despite it, a shaky breath as you look at him.

"Fuck. You."

It's all it takes to have the sting be unbearable, to turn on your heel and charge down the pavement, boots heavy with every step, arms wrapped around your chest to keep your jacket tight around you.

Eyes on the road ahead until he's grabbing your arm, reeling you back into him, forcing you to stop even as you try to shake him off once and twice.

"Oi," his voice is raspy. Tired. Always tired, isn't he? Always one thing or another and never you.

Your neck snaps around so hard it hurts. Biting out, "what?"

"I'm talkin' to you."

"I don't care!" You're in the deep end, thrashing in the water, voice cracking, betraying you.

His jaw tightens and he scratches a thumb over his brow. Blood cracking over his knuckles, faintly hissing as he flexes them after. How many times have you cleaned them up? Kept your peace? Never asked any questions about why, only let him curl into your breast in the aftermath, sinking your fingers into his hair.

"Don't."

"Don't what? Don't ignore me? You're an excellent example, yourself, aren't you?"

"He touched you–"

"And I told you to leave it!"

"He was in the wrong–"

"And so were you!" You jerk away from where his hand lingers over you, too familiar to the one you'd rejected from the man now sprawled on the floor at the other end of the road.

Simon's flexing those knuckles over and over again. As though considering something, or making a point. He sighs, but then quieter, almost dangerously: "Do ya expect me to just allow tha'?"

"Yes." Your nod only spurs on more tears. "Yes, I do, Simon. Because you have no idea– No clue, at all, about what it's like! I don't need you to fight him."

His hand brushes over your jaw gently, where you try to turn away it only follows, grounds your gaze back to his.

"I don't need you to fight anyone. That's not what I want and you know it–"

"Do I?"

"Stop," you cry. "Just stop."

There's a pause where the wet roll of tyres on the concrete is all you hear, where the amber of his irises glow with regret. No matter how delayed it is. And you shouldn't want his touch right now, not with the salt on your tongue, the mess of mascara you know must be underneath your eyes.

His thumb brushes up over your cheekbone.

"I wouldn' do it for just anyone."

You grit your teeth. "You're not listening to what I'm saying."

"Hard ta when you look like tha'."

"You cunt," you spit, shoving at his chest. He reels you back into him immediately. "Fuck you."

"Kno' you want to."

You're about to bite him when his teeth crash against yours. Hard and unforgiving, your lower lip pinched between sharp canines. And it doesn't take long for you to melt into it—going against your instinct. Knowing you'll hate yourself in the morning.

Heavy hand at the back of your head he keeps you tethered to his mouth, tongue exploring, tasting bitter beer and metal. As though you've bitten your own lip.

"I hate you," you breathe.

"No ya don't."

And the retort dies on your tongue there. Managing to glance away from where he's got your faces pressed together. A wet kiss pressed at your jawline, then just below your ear.

Honestly, he’s tired of being in charge.

Responsibilities drown him when he’s wearing the uniform. He’s called left and right by sergeants who need his supervision. Runs up and down the hallways of HQ to do Price’s bidding. Takes the stairs two, three at a time, ditching the elevator to favour speed. His quads burn because he’s way too old for this shit. His chest aches because he smokes way too much and he should quit. 

He’s tired. So, so tired. 

And while you’re positively gorgeous, taking the whole of his cock as you lie down, you’re even better when you’re sitting on top of him.

A preference of his.

Sunlight’s still dim, not intrusive. It sits there, just behind the drawn curtains, flickering past whenever the breeze brushes through the window, left ajar.

And it loves you, just like he does. 

Caresses your skin, plays with your features. When it’s this gentle, the sun highlights the parts of you he likes the most. Granted, it’s hard to pinpoint what he loves best when the entirety of you is his favourite sight.

But there are pieces of you that come out exclusively during this time of day, when the sun is just shy of rising. When you’re naked, specifically, with his cock sunk inside you and your thighs spread wide to accommodate him.

The goosebumps down your arms, for example. With no blanket sheltering you from the cold and without his arms caging you to his chest, even the softest of breezes can make them rise. 

Fuck, he loves to look at your skin as it wakes up. And he could watch you for days like this, bathed in gentle sunlight and stretched wide.

But it isn’t only how you look that strikes him. It’s how you act.

He’s the breathless one when you straddle him. The one whose lashes flutter when you sink fully, rolling your hips until the tip of his cock touches deepest. It’s his brow that glistens with sweat, his jaw that works to keep his mouth closed; otherwise, his words would come faster than his thoughts.

Though you’re catching sounds right out of his lips—hook, line, and sinker.

“Look at you,” you croon, settling your palms on his chest. 

Your biceps press against your tits as you lean forward, peering down at him. His eyes fall on the way they bounce, plump and still slick with his spit—his mouth having been on them just minutes before. Then, your face: glossy lips, hooded eyes, sharp and attentive. 

His silence doesn’t go unnoticed. The tight line of his mouth makes you frown, and you roll your hips once, twice, until he’s forced to open it just to breathe. There, you catch his lower lip with your thumb, fingers curled under his chin.

“Mh,” you hum, voice velvety and low. “Like this, uh?”

And you do it again, stretching yourself wider until your pussy is flush at the base of him.

“You like it when you’re deep, yeah?”

By then, Simon can barely catch up. 

“Yeah,” is all he mutters.

Through his lashes, he can see the smirk that blooms on your cheeks, like you could eat him up whenever he speaks so reverently.

You lift your hips. 

“Again,” you demand.

And sink down on him.

“F-fuck,” he croaks. “Yes. Yes. Do tha’ again.”

You do, leaving him just a speck of choice. Making him believe that he has one at all.

With a smile, you grind yourself down. Though he can see it falter when the curls on his pelvis scratch your clit. So, you do it again, and again, and again. Until your lip is trapped between your teeth. Until your eyes are rolling to the back of your head. 

“God, you’re so big,” you breathe, spoken so quietly he wonders if you’re talking to him at all. “Splitting me open, baby.”

His eyes flicker to where you two join. The curls growing below his navel glisten with the wetness dripping from you. Your folds split in half where you’re impaling yourself on him, the knot of your clit grinding down hard each time you surge forward.

Fuck, he has to look away if he wants this to last.

“Fuckin’ hell yer killin’ me,” he croaks, eyes hooded and breath hoarse when he finds your face again.

Simon takes the lead there, if only briefly, sucking on your thumb that’s still resting against his mouth.

Breath is punched out of you, stumped as you blink yourself out of your bliss to return your focus on him. The look of complete surprise and adoration blossoming on your face might be enough to make him cum then and there.

How he loves to make you proud of him.

You push your thumb deeper, working your other fingers to grasp his jaw instead of his chin. Tight grip, forcing his eyes on your face.

A smile dimples your cheek, tender and still cheeky. “The lengths you go so I don’t hear you, uh?”

His skin is ablaze, heat stemming from all the places you touch. Chest blotched red, cheeks flushed pink. Diligently, he sucks on your thumb, welcoming it in the cradle of his mouth. He hums around it, with his lips pursed around the last knuckle.

Then, he pulls his head back, knocking it against the pillow, and releases your thumb with a pop.

The smirk he gives you is lazy and subdued, stretching just below the press of your finger. 

“Mh. Caught red-handed.”

You don’t hesitate to smear his spit all over his mouth and chin.

“Can’t give me those pretty noises, Si?”

You roll your hips. His grin falters.

You click your lips. “Like to be quiet, don’t you?”

“Y’know I ain’t much of a talker,” he quips through gritted teeth.

Then, you’re lifting yourself off of him languidly. His nostrils flare, tongue tied and swallowing a groan down his throat.

“Mh,” you chuckle breathlessly. “But I bet I can make you sing.” 

You sink again. Roll your hips, over and over, until the crown of his cock is entirely engulfed by you, somewhere so hot he thinks his skin might melt off. God forbid you rip yourself off of him now, of all times. He uses his hands on your hips to keep you firmly placed there, slotting his fingers in the crease between your thighs and your hipbones.

He’ll apologise later for the eventual claw marks left on your ass.

“Jesus, bird,” he curses, rolling his eyes to the back of his head. “Won’t last long if you keep tha’ up.”

Your hand holds his head steady, wrapped around his jaw. But then, you shift. 

Dainty fingers slide down the column of his throat, barely brushing the skin. He thinks you might go further down and start touching yourself—nothing better than to feel you clench around him as he finishes inside you. 

He’s left speechless when your hand curls around his neck instead. 

Your fingers press against the sides of his throat, palm flat against his windpipe, but exercising barely any pressure. Though he feels that, anyway—a tightness that rapidly wraps around his jaw and runs upward. His cheeks grow red, heat brimming just under the surface of his skin. 

Simon is completely disarmed. Utterly at your mercy.

“F-Fuck—”

“Yeah?” You grin. “You like that, don’t you?”

“Shit,” he croaks. 

The air in his lungs is rarefied, so much so that each word pains him to speak. And still, he does, unable to control his tongue.

“Fuck, sweethea—oh shit.”

It’s then that your pace picks up. Your ass slams against his thighs, hips working tirelessly to milk him for all he’s worth. Until the room only echoes the slap of skin on skin, the wetness of sex, the shortness of his breath. Until there’s only the smell of sex, cloying and sharp, imbuing those rare gasps of air he can take in.

“Yes, you do.”

His body feels so good that it’s shocked in place, with only his nails digging into the fat of your hips and his toes curling by the edge of the bed. He feels like he’s floating, even as your hands weigh him like a chain around his neck. 

Simon’s brain is fogged, his thoughts misty and scattered. Doesn’t know what his mouth is babbling, only feels its movements, totally out of his control—because you have it. You hold the reins. You guide him through this otherworldly bliss, cooing and tutting each time he manages to rasp a sigh. 

His vision is hazy, fighting against the lack of oxygen. How ironic that it only took the softest of hands to make a sniper’s sharp eyes tremble.

“Fuckin’ hell.” A breath, staggered and worn. “Fuck I love ya. God yer—”

The shape of you, fuzzy and soft, tilts her head. “Oh, what’s that?”

“—perfect.” He croaks. “Yer perfect.”

The plump lines of your mouth curl in a smile, ever so gentle. 

“Then cum for me, Simon,” you whisper.

Briefly, you release the hold on his throat. It only lasts a couple of reluctant seconds that he uses to gather some air to fill his lungs with. Though the natural relief coursing through his body has goosebumps rise along his skin, making his cock twitch inside you.

Then, you’re closing in your fingers again, and Simon groans.

You haven’t stopped for a single moment, not even to catch a breath yourself. You keep fucking him undeterred, and with how wet you feel and sound, he’s sure all it’d take is a brush of his fingers on your clit for you to shatter. 

But you seem to have other ideas in mind, as his own floats in between reality and heaven.

“Show me how much you love me.” You pant. “Cum for me.”

He’s lost sight of you now—eyes rolled behind hooded eyelids. He can barely feel anything anymore that isn’t the waves of unbearable heat and pleasure that ripple from his thighs up to his throat—where your fingers grow tight, tight, tighter.

“Fuck—” He mouths, breathy and quiet, losing control of his tongue. “Fuck I love ya. Love y—”

“Then cum, baby,” you bark like it’s a command, slamming your hips down. “Come on. Fill me up—”

The groan that rips from his chest crackles, breaks on his tongue. His orgasm is earth-shattering, seizes his body, and only his hips react as they uselessly rut upwards to meet your ceaseless grinding. Dark spots in his vision, tinnitus in his ear—loud, cottoned by the clouds he’s still floating upon.

Only then do you release the hold on his neck.

Simon splutters, coughs. The pitch in his ears ratchets up, ricochets in his skull. There’s a fierce tremble in his hands as they abandon your thighs, exhausted as they fall onto the mattress. 

There are bruises left by his fingertips on your skin, cuts marked by his nails. He’ll kiss you there, then, when he remembers how to breathe correctly.

His breathing is staggered, broken into tiny puffs of air that meddle with his vocal cords. It’s why each breath takes the shape of his voice—whimpers, cries, moans. Some softer, some louder. Some lower, others more shrill.

Simon can barely hear them as he comes down from his high, almost slamming onto the mattress from the heaven he’d inhabited for a while.

He looks at you like you’re insane. He looks at you like maybe he hasn’t left that heaven at all. 

“Yer mad,” he wheezes in awe, taking pleasure in the sharp aches in his chest. “Fuck I love you.”

Your hips come to a slow, measured pace. Your hand finds his cheek. Nose to nose, lips to lips. 

“I told you I’d make you sing.”

He chokes on his beer. The can creaks under his fingers, bends. To hide the pitiful coughs and save his face, he pulls the balaclava over his mouth.

Your statement is clinical, as if you’re listing the tactical equipment needed for the next op. Plate carriers, chest rigs, back panels, a fuck to kill some time, thigh holsters, magazine pouches.

“’Scuse me?” 

You roll your head idly, turning your focus to him. You’ve got a dullness in your eyes, that hazy veil of alcohol and boredom, but somehow you still manage to slither under his mask. Your thumb draws slow lines on the condensation built on your can of beer, the corners of your lips quirk boldly—satisfied, in a way, to have left him speechless.

“Sometimes, two consenting adults can find ways to be close to one another in order to share—”

“Yeah, I got tha’,” he blurts, suddenly irritated. Then, with a resigned sigh, “Fuckin’ hell yer definitely somethin’.”

You snort. "Ah, ya love it."

Three divots indent the can of beer, welcoming his fingers, still contracted enough to push into the tin. His eyes turn ahead, staring at a crack in the wall.

“So?”

“Can’t believe yer even askin’.”

You chuckle. “Oh piss off, you’re a grown man—”

“Not bitin’.”

“Just see it as a Christmas celebration.”

“Fuckin’ hell—”

“A feast.”

“Oi. Pack it in, will ya?”

You bite down a smile. “You can keep the mask on.”

Fuck’s sake.

There is a plethora of reasons why he should tell you no, starting from mere regulations—but he’s broken plenty of those plenty of times, hence they weigh very little on his decision. He does, however, still care about harmony in the team, and while you might not be directly involved in it, you still have your own role in the task force.

On the other hand, he’s bored, and you’re hot. If he had a third hand, he’d add that the thought of fucking you stupid came to mind a couple of times. Maybe three, or four, or five—

And isn’t he just a man—even if dead inside and whatnot?

It’s fucking Christmas after all, for fuck’s sake.

“My room, 22 hundred.” He orders as he stands. A long finger points your way. “Not a fuckin’ second late, y’ hear?”

Your smile is surprised, genuine, and he swears, almost quivering.

“Yes, sir.”

Ah, now he’s heard that plenty.

Always yes, sir, always bowing your head, lending a hand. A pawn in a game whose work turned undeniably inestimable, and now you bear the crown—queen of the chessboard. You’re always clad in that perfect uniform, steamed flat with no wrinkles in sight. Always with your straight back, with your hand palming your knuckles behind your back.

But fuck him—he’s never thought he’d get the chance to see you like this.

Skin of velvet, sweat embroidered like pearls. If he touches your chest, right there in between your breasts, he’d feel your heartbeat. Thunderous, crazed.

And what strikes him is that he can. He can touch you, he can explore you, and you’d let him—perhaps you’d even enjoy it, judging by how much you’re enjoying everything else about him, fuck if he knows why.

Undeterred by the battlefield on his body, thighs spread like butter, open wide to welcome the girth of his hips. Your palm finds his stomach for balance, as his own finds your breast. He thumbs your nipple, watches you drag your slit along his shaft, flattened to his belly. Pearls of precum bead the crown of his cock—it weeps for you, waits to have you.

How long has he waited? Weeks, months. He’s watched you march across HQ with a confidence about you, enough to make heads turn—or at least, his sure did.

Every. Fucking. Time.

From the moment Price introduced you, you had him smitten. How you stared into his eyes, burning holes into the hollows of his mask—the fear he was so used to seeing billow from others, completely torn asunder within you. Not even the hard shell of that skull could keep you out: you had him on his knees from the first word you spoke, from the first yes, sir.

Metaphorically, sure.

Physically, too, since he found himself fisting his cock at the thought of you mere hours later. An orgasm so strong it knocked him off his feet, ropes of cum painting the toilet seat of the bathroom where he hid.

Fucking hell, he didn’t know he still had it in him.

It’s the confidence, he thinks. How you never cower, how you meet the harsh looks of less talented peers with sharp eyes and just a hint of a cheeky smirk—I did it, you fucking cunts. Those who think they deserve your spot in one of the most elite task forces in the bloody army just because they have a cock and you don’t.

Or maybe it’s your voice. Steady, charged, roaring like thunder. Orders, answers, remarks. Wit sharp enough to cut. Cut him you do, because there are times in which he’s the one rendered speechless, when he’s so used to it being the other way around.

It’s how you got him here, that tongue of yours.

He wonders what it can do also. What else do you have in store?

It’s the mystery shrouding you. A girl from a small town of a handful of souls, charging like a mad horse through ranks and throngs of men, until she’s finally seen and her work appreciated. 

It’s the stubbornness, maybe. What brought you here, in Hereford, being heard without the need of raising your voice. Fighting smarter, rising higher.

Straddling his hips, cheeks puffed, shaky limbs.

Where’s that confidence gone now, uh? Where’s that voice of yours?

Not even a mewl, a cry. Quiet like the dead, breathless like one too.

Your nipple turns puffy the more he rolls it between his fingers. Pinching, pulling, thinking how good it would taste if he were to bite it. Gently, just a graze of his teeth—watch you squirm and pant. Maybe it’s what you need, a little push to make you speak. Would you beg? Would you ask, kindly? Or would you match the same fire—bite harder, enough to draw blood?

God, the possibilities of you. 

Doe eyes stare at the head of his cock and widen each time it disappears between the folds of your cunt. You’re so wet that you’re dripping on him, biting down your lip whenever the strokes catch your clit.

And if you keep stroking yourself like that, he’s surely going to cum on his stomach before the fun even begins. While the view is different from the usual one, definitely more pleasing, it’s a fuck you offered and a fuck he’s accepted to have.

Lord help him if he’s not getting one.

“Gonna keep yer word?” He drawls.

Wide eyes snap to him. It’s like he brought you back to this world while you were lost in another one.

You cock your head. “Got somewhere to be?”

Ah, there’s that tongue.

He’s got one too.

“Got someone to fuck.”

You stiffen, back straighter and hips stalling. It’s just a second in which he sees you wither, and it feels like his own chest might cave in. But before you can make him interject, you’re lifting yourself off of him and gliding your hand around his cock.

Simon’s head collapses on the pillow as his lips give in to a breathless fuck. 

"Arrogant as usual, I see," you snark. "Didn’t know we were in a rush."

He blinks his eyes open. 

That cheek of yours is often welcome, but right now all his blood is collected down below, and his head is not in the best state. All he wants is to get his cock wet as you offered—call it a primordial need, awakening the most embarrassingly prehistoric chunk of his brain.

His hand curls around your wrist and snatches it away from him. 

“Be good and let me do my thing, now.”

You’re wide-eyed and speechless again. Simon doesn’t know if he likes you more when you’ve got that bite, or when you lack one—you sure are a sight like this, though.

You gulp. “Yes, sir.”

Fucking hell.

His nostrils flare, cock twitching against his stomach. The head bobs, trying to get your attention, but he has it directed to his face instead. Piercing inside the eyehole of his mask, as if you could see his expression underneath.

He softens it just in case, but your active compliance and that sweet, sweet Yes, sir, have him fighting to keep his eye from twitching and his cock from coming.

He breathes. Guides your hand to rest on his belly again. Then, his own travels downwards, until the tips of his fingers skim the knot of your clit.

And God, don’t they glide smoothly.

You’re so wet that it has Simon bite down on his cheek. The moan catching down your throat and the muscles tightening your stomach are what does him in, iron flooding his tongue.

He draws slow circles around your clit, teasing its hood instead of directly touching it to avoid overstimulation. As much as he wants to see you mewl and keen above him, you already look way too agitated, and his current goal isn’t to make you cum, but to make you relax.

“Yer a good listener, righ’?” He rasps. “Know y’are. Seen ya out there.”

Your head bobs in a nod, jaw slack and eyes hooded.

“Words, pet.”

“Mh—” You gulp. “Yes.”

Simon’s lips twitch. “Yes, what?”

Between pants, you murmur it—fucking sweet.

“Yes, sir.”

“Fuck—” He curses himself—not you, never you. Not when you look like this. “That’s it. Listen to me.”

Two fingers line your slit, leaving your clit unattended. Downwards, they find your hole. The tip of his middle finger circles it, and when he prods inside, he can feel you pulse around it.

“Relax,” he breathes. “Take it easy. We’ll do it like ye said—no rush.”

But when he tries to stick two of them inside, you lift your hips away.

And fucking Christ, are you hard to read. 

“Alrigh’?” He asks with a sigh.

You look like he’s caught you red-handed doing something illegal. Your mouth parts to speak, but for the first few tries, it babbles nothing but heavy breaths.

“Yeah—yeah, I am,” you clear your throat. “Why?”

Now that’s a weird fucking question, if you ask him.

“Yer runnin’ away,” he states flatly. “That’s why. If you want me t’ stop, say so.”

You stiffen, there.

“No, no—” Out of breath. “God no—I asked this, for fuck’s sake. I want it. I do.”

Simon is glad you offered to let him keep the mask on, because he cannot, for the life of him, control the baffled expression on his face.

“Don’t look like it, love.”

You puff. “I do. I just,” you rub your chest in discomfort. “Wasn’t expecting your fingers is all.”

He cocks his brow. “No fingers, then?”

“No, I mean—”

“You were the one moanin’ we were rushin’,” he says. “Figured I’d put you in a good mood so you’d stop whinin’.”

You splutter. “Put me in a good mood?!”

He rolls his eyes. “Oh, fuckin’ hell—it’s a figure o’ speech.”

“Oh wow, didn’t know you were a poet, Riley. Forgive me—”

Ah, bite him. Keep fucking biting and he’ll bite you too.

“You wanna fuck or not?” He interrupts.

Your mouth closes, and you sigh. “Yes.”

“Then do as I say an’ shut it,” he bites. Will you?

You gulp, searching his eyes.

“Yes, sir.”

No. You won’t. Uncharacteristic of you, in a way that has his stomach drop. Though he catches it easily, because when you say those words so pliantly he forgets how to use his own head to think.

His hand settles on the crease of your hips and guides you down. The tips of his fingers prod against your entrance again, as you lay your weight on the top of his thighs.

“Sink on ‘em,” he murmurs. “Go on.”

Your breathing trembles, but you follow his order and slide down until he’s got two of them wrapped to the first knuckle. And fucking hell, you’re tight. 

“Relax, pet,” he whispers. “S’gotta feel good, alrigh’? Not gonna hurt ya, jus’ need to stretch ya out.”

You nod dumbly, closing your eyes and exhaling, taking another knuckle of him. You’re scorching hot, and Simon salivates at the thought of having his cock in there, later.

And you keep going, down and down, until he’s got his palm flattened to your pussy. You’re still stiff around him, but he blames it on the fact that you two have just finished quarrelling like an old couple, and that isn’t exactly the nicest flavour of foreplay.

He helps.

His fingers move gently at first, pressing against the front of your walls. He watches you squirm and then soften when he does it a second time. Then a third has you choke on a cry, a fourth has you keel over him, holding yourself up with your hands on his chest.

Bent over like that, eventually your hips start grinding on his palm, and your breathing stutters whenever your clit rubs against the heel of his hand.

“There we go,” he murmurs, throat dry. “That’s it. Knew y’could listen.”

His cock twitches on his stomach for each breathy moan you allow to escape. You sound so unbelievably broken that he wonders what you’ll do when he’s fucking that attitude out of you, even if it’s nowhere to be seen now.

He knows it’s there. He’d bet his fucking left kidney on it making an appearance in a handful of minutes.

His hand is soaked. He keeps his eyes on the bounce of your tits as he grinds his teeth to dust to stave off an orgasm that might as well hit him with just a glance to your face, pent up as he is.

Your movements become more erratic. His forearm is sore and tired of holding you up, but he’ll be damned if he loses sight of your orgasm just as it’s about to strike.

“Fuck—fuck,” you pant, squeezing your eyes closed.

Simon bites down on his tongue.

“Atta girl,” he drawls slowly. “Go on—follow tha’.”

“Shit,” you heave, right before he watches you shatter.

You collapse on him, sandwiching his cock between your stomach and his. Your face is nestled in the crook of his neck, and the only thing Simon can see like this is the delicious curve of your spine tipping at your ass, as your hips roll to chase his hand.

Granted, it’s a hassle to keep it in place, so instead, he pulls out of you and lets his fingers glide over your clit to prolong your ecstasy. 

With your face so close, he can hear every pitch of your voice. When it rises and when it catches in your throat. He can feel every time you choke on a breath and every damp puff you release on the bare skin of his neck.

Fucking hell. 

His hands find your hips. A yelp is all you manage before he has you on your back, the breadth of him snug between your thighs. His cock slides smoothly between your folds, and because he wants to hear more of that voice, he snakes his thumb to your clit.

It still throbs under the pad of his finger.

You go rigid beneath him, neck corded and teeth bared. He hears you, finally. Not those little mewls or choked-up breaths. You crack a loud groan that bullies itself inside his head and settles there, perpetually etched.

He travels lower, gently wrapping his fingers around his cock to prep it for you, using the wetness soaking his palm. You look fucked out already, fluttering lashes and spit-slick lips.

He finds his fingers properly fisting the pillow next to your head to keep himself sane.

“Now tha’ wasn’t hard, was it?” He quips.

“Fuck,” a pant. “Off.”

Ah, his left kidney is safe.

Simon slaps your clit a few times with the head of his cock in retaliation, pleased to see the twitch of your eye for each hit, before aligning himself with you.

“Mh,” he chuckles lowly. “I like it when ya bite.”

Your hands tremble as they grip his shoulders, but the sudden warmth enveloping him is enough to turn his thoughts into syrup and briefly forget about it.

“Nice an’ easy,” he croaks, mostly to you but also to himself. Then, breathlessly, “Fuck, yer wet.”

It’s been a while—months, maybe, in which the only warmth that’s ever held him was the callous one of his hands. And sure, his memories of a good fuck might be murky, but he doesn’t remember it being so breathtakingly tight.

And to think he did all that just to turn you softer.

“Fuckin’ Christ,” he cracks. His forehead drops to the slope of your neck, the fabric of the balaclava absorbing the dampness collected there. “Yer tight, princess—”

“Don’t—” You choke, sounding like you haven’t been breathing right. “Don’t call me that.”

Simon would laugh and remark about it. He’d definitely call you princess again, just to get a rise out of you—see that fire he’s so used to. That defiance he swears by.

But he’s drunk already. Doesn’t think he can quite follow through with his plan on having the spitfire ride him until dawn—he’s lucky if he lasts a couple minutes more, with how bloody tight you’re squeezing him.

“Can ya relax, pet?” He huffs, sliding another inch inside. 

Your reply is not made of words, but instead it translates into your pussy tightening even more. This time, it’s no pleasure at all—it’s actually hurting him too, but he bets it might be even worse for you, so he tries to be accommodating even though it feels like you’re going to melt the skin off his cock. 

“Need you to—Jesus,” he huffs. “Need ya to open up. Tell me what ya need—”

Your breath is shallow, and he can taste each stutter when he nuzzles your neck. Then, his mouth finds your ear, sighs heavily against it as he dreams of having a taste, but he’s got the mask in the way.

“Need feedback, sarge,” he whispers. “Gotta give me somethin’ t’ work with.”

“Jesusfuckingchristfuck—” curses tumble under your breath, irked and winded. “Right. Right. Okay. Yes. Like that. Just—sl-slower.”

Definitely not the feedback he was expecting, but feedback, nonetheless. Still, a somewhat concerning one, so he lifts his head to meet your face. He finds you crisscrossed with wrinkles: the curl of your nose, the divot between your brows, your mouth tightened in a knot.

“Fuck, you alrigh’?” He feels compelled to ask again. This time, there’s less frustration in it and more of a genuine concern.

Your eyes blink open. They worry, in a way he can’t quite pinpoint, but it’s like he’s breached a space that’s been exclusively yours for a long time. He knows that feeling.

He’s not the only one sauntering around base with a mask, apparently. 

And as you saw right through his, that first day, he’s seeing right through yours now, for the first time. He’s known you for a bloody long time, and he’s seeing it only now for the first fucking time.

Everything clicks, slowly, and the concern progressively growing on your face is the last missing piece of the puzzle you’ve been all night.

“Listen,” he heaves, gulping down a stone in his throat. All his strength now focuses on keeping his voice as gentle as a bastard like him can manage. “Are ya—is this—”

The mask cracks, lashes fluttering anxiously. Then, it hardens again. The frown he's so used to see, the stern line of your lips. Anger blossoms—a veil to hide the apprehension lying underneath.

“Oh, fucking hell—” You groan and push him off of you.

He watches you wither as you clam up on his bed, bringing your knees to your chest and burying your face in there—a wall he's not sure how to climb.

For a moment, it’s quiet. Really quiet. That silence that strangles windpipes and crushes down chests. Simon is usually a lover of those; he thrives in that environment, but he’d hate for them to shatter you.

He thought you unbreakable, and he wants to keep it that way.

He sits up, throwing his legs off the bed. The sharp inhale you take has him wondering if you’re worried he’ll leave. He’s pondered it for a second, sure, but just because you’re wrapped in a cocoon of your own, and maybe you need space to metabolise the events. Plus, he really isn’t the best fit for situations like these, since he can barely deal with his own feelings—doesn’t know how to put up with other people’s, too.

He never even bothered learning, before today.

But then he’s reminded that this is his room. And there’s an annoying hunch inside his chest hooking at his ribs, telling him that he couldn’t leave you like this if he tried.

“Fuckin’ hell,” he sighs, thumbing the middle of his brow through the mask. “Ya could’ve told me, I woulda—”

“You’d what,” you snap, lifting your head. 

He tongues his cheek. Decides that facing fire with fire, tonight, wouldn’t lead to the best outcome.

“—been gentler,” he finishes.

You snort in a self-deprecating way that could rival his own.

“Oh, fuck off, Riley,” you sniffle. “You wouldn’t be here at all if I told you, that’s what.”

Your eyes dart around the room, trying to fixate on something that isn’t his face and his nakedness, or yours.

“How would I even ask something like that, uh?” You scoff. “Hi lieutenant, would you have sex with me since I never had it with anyone before—"

You sigh, burying your face in your hands. "Jesus Christ, I can’t believe I fucking said it out loud—God—This can't get any worse—"

You run your hand below your nose, placing your cheek on your knee while facing the opposite way. He watches you deflate, fold inwards, as if you could curl up even further within yourself.

“Just—This is already embarrassing as is,” you sigh. “Please give me a minute and then I’ll leave.”

That's what takes him aback. Maybe you are so focused on your work that you’ve become blind to everything else. He can’t blame you for it; this job chews you up and spits you out if you’re not careful.

But to think he’d have turned you down, as if this could’ve been a turn off at all, is pure insanity.

His eyes soften, though. So does his voice.

“Yer mad.”

Your breathing stutters. He can’t see your face, but the other tells are easy to recognise: attention perked, convictions shattered.

He scoots forward, resting a hand on your shin. Thankfully, you don’t flinch from his touch. It rises upwards, clasping your knee. Then, his thumb brushes the skin there, as he takes stock of the tremble rippling up your legs in the throes of your agitation. 

However, even as you refuse to look at him, you’re still soft as butter.

He parts your legs, spreading you open again.

It catches you off guard enough to grant him the sight of your face.

There’s that doe look again, not at all like the sharp eyes he’s used to seeing whenever you strut around HQ. It makes his stomach churn.

Fuck, you’re trouble, turning him soft like that.

“M’gonna ask again,” he murmurs. “Wan’ me to stop?”

Your throat bobs. A flickering gaze searches for a hidden agenda on his face, but the mask is in the way, and that seems to trouble you—unable, as of now, to slither underneath it in that effortless way that is so characteristically you.

Two of his fingers hook at the hem of the balaclava cinching his neck, and he pulls it up and off. It falls on the floor, next to your clothes.

Not the first time you’ve seen his ugly mug, but it still has your eyes widening, and those angry wrinkles soften. One vulnerability in front of the other.

“No," you breathe.

He licks his teeth. Bites down the corner of his mouth.

Slowly, he moves closer, guiding you to lie down again. His palm cups the back of your head, as if to protect it from touching the pillows. As if that’s needed at all, but he’s got this worm in his brain yelling to keep you as comfortable as can be.

“Can ya listen, sarge?” He asks, dropping his face to yours until your noses touch.

His offhand wraps around his cock, stroking the embarrassing amount of precum down his shaft. Each touch translates into ache, but he swallows the grunts to favour you.

You nod softly, still with wide open eyes and lip tucked between your teeth—so fucking appetising that he wants to eat you whole.

“Mh.” The corner of his lips quirks. “Words.”

That has your nose curl. A glimpse of the you he knows cracking the shell you’re hiding in.

“Yes, sir.”

He groans. “Fuckin’ love it when ya say it like tha’.”

Then, he kisses you. 

He’s fucked more than he’s kissed.

In fact, he’s even more hesitant than you were moments before, all tucked within yourself. But you take the lead here. Your fingers find the back of his head, threading through the hair all mussed up by the balaclava.

Soft tongue dancing with his, that’s what else it can do. Malleable lips meshing with his own, scarred and thin, hardened by years spent barely using them—whether to kiss, speak, or smile.

You got him doing all that in one evening.

“Alrigh’?” He asks into your mouth.

“Yeah,” you whisper. “Alrigh’. You?”

“Peachy. Wanna ‘ave a chat?”

You breathe a laugh. “You’re fucking impossible.”

And he follows suit. Glad you’ve relented, even if just a little.

He aligns himself with you again, nudging the head of his cock to your entrance.

“We’re gonna go slow, yeah?” He whispers, taking hold of your jaw to redirect your focus to his eyes. “Slow ‘n easy. S'not gonna hurt—won't let it. But you gotta relax f'me—can ya do tha', pet?”

Your head shifts on the pillow, cocked sideways. You’ve got this glow on you now, one that ripens your cheeks and blossoms in the loveliest of smiles. Your hand cups the side of his face, thumb brushing his cheekbone—ridges and bumps of pockmarks and scars with more gruesome stories to tell.

Yeah. Yeah, you’re fucking trouble, alright.

“Got it, lieutenant.”

This time, as he slowly enters you again, he brushes his lips down your jaw.

You mould for him, throwing your head back and drowning it in the pillow. He goes down, meeting the smooth skin of your neck. Just pecks at first, left on the line of your throat. But when your nails dig into his back just a tad harshly, his mouth opens.

“Yer alrigh’,” he murmurs. “Doin’ good. Relax f’me.”

You don’t reply, but instead take in slow, deep breaths.

“Like tha’,” he whispers, sliding another inch. “Just like tha’.”

He can feel you softening around him, growing wetter for each word he breathes. His voice must help you, or his guidance does at least, so he murmurs it right into you.

Easy, he says. Deep breaths.

He kisses your throat. Feels each inhale that flows, each exhale you yield. Listening, complying. As if every intake of air is a sweet, silent yes, sir.

It takes him a minute, filled with your stutters and the rumble of his voice, and then you’re completely wrapped around him. Heels digging in the back of his thighs, arms coiled around his neck, cock snug inside of you.

Your teeth sink into the muscle of his shoulder when he finally bottoms out.

He likes it, when you bite. 

“Fuck,” you croak.

He lifts his head and meets your eyes. “Breathe,” he drawls, slow and steady.

You heed him. He watches your chest fill, gooseflesh rising up your stomach, pebbling your nipples. Your eyes are closed, now, as you focus on welcoming the girth of him, so unfamiliar, inside you.

He takes that time to study you. The focused wrinkle between your brows, the oval of your mouth as you push out air, the tip of your nose as you take in more of it.

It lights something warm inside him, the tiniest flame. It grows brighter when it hits him, that no one else has ever seen you like this. That no one, out there, knows this side of you. That they only know the confident sergeant who never takes no for an answer, who grits her teeth and spits orders when the respect she deserves is not given.

That they don’t know how much more of you there is to discover.

And call him selfish if you like, but he hopes they’ll never find out.

“You broken?” He murmurs after a moment.

You crack your eyes open. “Not broken. Stuffed.”

“Aye, that’s the point o’ it.”

Your lips pull in a smile. “Oh, so that’s it? That’s the whole deal? Pretty disappointing if you ask me.”

He snorts. “Glad t’ see you still got it in ya.”

That has you laughing, however soft. It glows on your face, put those wrinkles back, but they’re of different shapes. He reaches for them, pressing a kiss to the corner of your mouth.

Then, his hips pull back. The stroke of your pussy has him see stars, but he tries to focus on you instead. Your smile falters, and your chuckle wanes, lodged in the middle of your throat.

“Oh,” is all you say. 

It’s enough for him, as he pushes back in.

“Oh,” you croak. “Oh f-fuck—”

His voice cracks, too. “Not all tha’, mh?”

No remarks to his joke, no little quip of your own. Just the roll of your eyes, the scratch of your moans, the cut of your nails as they pierce his shoulder blades.

He fucks you slowly at first, kissing the skin of your neck and rising upwards. His belly fills with each breath you yield into his mouth, but instead of feeling sated, his hunger for you only grows.

He snakes his arm underneath the hollow of your spine. Your back arches as he lifts you, the plush of your tits pushing against the coarse hair running up his chest.

And Christ, you’re soft. It’s undoing him.

“You close?” He asks, breathless—hopeful, too. 

Because his cock has been aching for a while now, like everything else about him, and if he doesn’t come soon, he’ll lose a marble or two—of the few he’s got left, that is.

“N-no, but—” A whimper breaks your sentence. “—don’t stop, please don’t stop, don’t stop—”

Asking him like that will most likely achieve the opposite effect. You're unaware, though, it’s why you repeat it over and over—a litany that rises in pitch and cracks at the edges.

“Swee’heart,” he reasons quietly. “M'not made o’ plastic—won’t last much lon—”

“Then cum inside just don’t stop—”

Jesus Christ.

“Fuckin’ hell,” he croaks. “Yer gonna kill me.”

Simon fucks you at that same pace even though his body yearns to ram into you until you’re babbling nonsense. But you seem to love it, this tenderness—maybe it’s what you seek, to have a soft place to fall onto.

And who is he to deny you, really, when you’re pleading like that?

He wishes he had it in him to go on for longer, if not for your sake, then for his, because he craves to feel your cunt tightening around his cock as it did on his fingers—but he’s so close that he can barely put two coherent words together.

“Fuckin’ hell,” he grunts. “Fuck, pet—”

You catch the back of his head and swiftly guide his lips to yours.

Simon cums as you kiss him, messy and wet, and Christ, enough to triple the intensity of his ecstasy.

He ruts his hips with deep, slow thrusts that have a trembling quality to them. He never pulls out, preferring the warmth of you to milk him dry for all it’s worth. And just like he ate up your moans, you’re now drinking in his, as he comes down from his own high.

He stays buried inside you as he catches his breath, with your nails gently raking the indent of his spine. Perhaps he’s putting too much weight on you, but you haven’t whispered a single thing yet, so he decides to be selfish and bask in the warmth you exude, in the softness of your body.

Then, a kiss to his temple forces him to recollect his bearings.

“Merry Christmas,” you whisper.

Simon huffs into your neck, exchanging the gesture with his lips on your shoulder.

“Aye.” He shakes his head with mirth. “Happy fuckin’ holidays.”

Your chest bubbles with a laugh so soft he can feel it thrum against his skin before he actually hears it. It prompts him to lift himself up enough to catch it with his eyes, too.

Your smile finds him. A soft curve that drips with thankfulness.

“Alrigh’?” He breathes.

“Alright,” you nod.

His forehead drops to yours. You’re both sticky with sweat, but none of you tries to move away. Silence fills the room once again. It has a different taste.

He’s not used to this. He leaves when it’s over, yet now he doesn’t know how. He likes it—this quiet, this comfort he suddenly found with you.

And there's that mouth of yours, now running up the side of his neck. The clicks of your kisses rising upwards, the sting of your teeth as they drag down his lobe. Your tongue drawing the outline of the shell of his ear, breath wanton and hot against his skin.

Your voice, a whisper. “I wanna cum again."

No ifs or buts. Just blurted out with the same bluntness you used to ask him to fuck you that evening. He’s still got his cock inside you, still has your cum and his own mixing in a mess between your legs, and you’re asking for more.

Oh, it's still you alright.

Confident, proud, inevitable. Never one to back down—it’s how you got him here, after all.

“Jesus—” He chuckles quietly, “Yer definitely somethin’.”

You tut playfully. “Ya love it.”

And what if, uh?

“Right—love it,” he huffs sarcastically—thought the knot in his throat says otherwise. “A Christmas miracle, tha’.”

Then, he props himself on his knees.

He watches your eyes fall on where you two join, and he follows the trajectory. Wetness wraps around the base of him, glistening in the dim light. His hips experimentally push inside, and the crown of his cock burns at the friction—definitely not ready for a second round.

But then he looks at you. Soft teeth sink into your lip as if the sight of him buried inside you makes you hungry.

He’s the one to blame for that. He made you hungry, it’s only fair that he satiates the ache.

“You sure ‘bout this, yeah?”

You look at him. Eyes heavy with lust and challenge. His throat goes dry. 

A nod.

He kisses his teeth. “Wha’ did I say?”

It’s then that your mouth curls. A wicked smile framed by sharp eyes. There’s no mask to burn holes into, now, so instead you’re effortlessly slithering under his skin.

There you are.

“Oh, you like it, don’t you?” 

His eyes narrow. “Yer gettin’ too comfortable.”

“Says the one buried in my guts.”

He clicks his tongue.

Simon matches your energy, hooking his elbows under your knees. Palms to your thighs, ass lifted off the bed. You’re locked in place; there’s nowhere you can go if he doesn’t release you first—and you don’t seem to mind.

Actually, you encourage him, slipping two fingers into your mouth and heading for your clit. Slow circles that have him hypnotised, before your voice brings his focus back on your face.

“Will you fuck me again?” You bat your lashes. “Please, Sir?”

Simon releases a long, resigned sigh from his nose

“Oh, yer trouble,” he breathes. “Yer trouble alrigh'.”

Your thoughts slide to a halt when you feel his hand cup your boob. Is he—

“Jason?” you try again, weakly. The man was using your boob as a stress ball.

“Five more minutes, sweetheart,” he mumbles and squeezes again. The thin fabric of your shirt does nothing to keep the heat of his touch away.

“Oh, um…” Your cheeks burn.

He lets out another sleepy sigh and mumbles something under his breath. Something that sounds far too much like, “You’re so good to me, baby.”

You close your eyes. He’s definitely having a wet dream.

Muffling a tiny giggle, you shift slightly, trying to wiggle out of his hold. Instead, his grip tightens, keeping you pressed down to the sheets.

He moves then, trying to get even closer, his hard on pressing against your thigh and making him whine.

“Oh my god.” Mouth to the ceiling, a giddy smile on your face.

You reach out to play with his hair. Pausing for a moment, you wonder what he’d do if you tugged on it.

Naturally, you do just that. A tiny groan leaves him, his hips grinding against your thigh. You feel his lips against the curve of your neck, just resting there.

“You’re gonna be so mortified when you wake up,” you mumble, combing his hair back lovingly.

A tiny, soft sigh escapes him, and suddenly you don’t want to wake him.

So you let him sleep, occasionally pressing a kiss to his forehead while he whines and grinds his hard and aching dick against your thigh.

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