Mila

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stamped, more like. Branded. 

Survived. 

And soulmates shared scars. 

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

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

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

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

Better he was alone. 

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

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

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

Idiotic. Determined. Fallibly human.

And taboo. Most saw it as circumventing fate. 

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

But, sometimes, he wondered. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He blamed Soap, then, for tempting fate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Each place had caveats. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was a regular, routine, quiet place. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He would know his own face anywhere. 

He would, apparently, know you anywhere. 

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

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

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

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

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

The hollow hardened into a solid brick of pain. 

Nausea swept into the back of his throat. 

“Are you okay?” 

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

You saw him. 

Simon was not to be seen.

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

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

Not anymore. 

He was a ghost, a shadow, a silent—

The silence unspooled, thin and fragile as unraveling lace. 

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

“Sir?”

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

Instead of answering, he faded back into the hall.

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

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

You hadn’t recognized what he was. 

And he was going to keep it that way. 

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

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

Better yet, through you. 

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

One sure way to free himself was your death. 

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

Simon understood the urge.

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

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

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

It was wrong. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fuuucking hell. 

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

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

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

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

You yawned, eyes still closed. 

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

Ghost backed away, left you to your peace. 

The weight in his chest intensified again.

He hated you for it. 

He went back the next day. 

And the day after that.

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.

Anchor might be a better descriptor. 

Hook was too violent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Absolutely bloody foul. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That used to be more important. 

Now his every thought was asterisked by you. 

Distracted. 

He didn’t do well with it. 

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

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

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

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

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

It was enough to be where you had once been. 

That was as close as he cared to be. 

He fixed the radiator before he closed the door again. 

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He went by Ghost, you learned eventually. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Have I passed?” 

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

“Your test?” 

“Think I’m testin’ you?” 

“You moved my desk.” 

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

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

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

“Should.”

“Maybe.” 

“Especially in the field.” 

“I don’t do field work.” 

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

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

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

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

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

Ghost was strange, slightly off putting. 

You liked him.

Maybe, you thought, he’d come back. 

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Ghost visited regularly after that. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yep. Got something for you, too.” 

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

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

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

“Not recently. Not in a couple days.”

“Good. Let us know if he does, yeah?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s for you. I knitted it.” 

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

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

“Who else would have?” 

He grunted. “You knit?” 

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

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

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

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

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

“What?” 

“Silly.” 

The way he grunted the word made you laugh. 

“Could I ask you something, Ghost?”

“Reckon you just did.” 

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

“Just two.” 

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

“And out of questions.”

You laughed again. 

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

“Where are you from?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You decided not to take offense at being called noise. 

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

“Hungry?” You asked.  

“Tryin’ to see my face?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“From somewhere warm?”

“Warmer than here. Especially in the winter.” 

“Must be nice, that.” 

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

“One you enjoy.” 

“But of course. I like feeling like I’m baking alive.” 

He snorted again.

You ate in silence for a bit. The quiet had become comfortable between you somewhere along the way, silken and gentle. 

When you were scraping the last bit of sauce from the bottom of the container, Ghost said, “Manchester.” 

“Hm?”

“Where I’m from.”

His voice was low; he wasn’t looking at you, eyes trained on the door instead. 

“Manchester,” you repeated, trying to place it on the map of the UK in your mind. “And do you all sound sort of like—“

You were about to say like you have gravel in your mouth but he makes an affected noise, that stiff grunt again. “Are you laughing at me?”

“It’s your fucking accent.”

“My accent?” You asked incredulously. “Have you heard yourself?” 

“Got a thick one, bird.” He imitated your voice. “Manchester.” The sharp rhotic r sound was like a gunshot in his mouth, each letter enunciated to the point of being butchered. 

You scoffed, not bothering to fight your smile. “Takes one to know one, I guess.” 

“Suppose it does.” 

“Fucking Brits,” you said, without any venom. “I can’t do anything right according to you all.” 

He tilted his head, something predatory in it. It made your heart flutter a little. “Who’s tellin’ you you can’t do something?” 

You sighed, long suffering. “My coworkers. Can’t make tea, apparently. I don’t care for it and everyone keeps insisting I just make it wrong.”

“They make it wrong too.” 

You groaned. “Not you too.” 

Ghost rose to take his leave as you snapped the lid back onto the now empty container. 

“I’ll show you how to make a proper cup sometime.” 

You paused, a warm surprise sweeping into your chest, and decided not to linger on this solitary acknowledgement that Ghost would return to your office. “Big fan?” 

“I love tea.” 

It made you laugh. “Of course, English afterall.” 

He nodded, just once, and started toward the door. “Ghost?” You called. 

Ghost turned and you slid another tupperware container across your desk. “For you.” 

He stared at it, for a moment too long, as he always did, like he was telling himself to leave it. “Didn’t have to.” 

“I know.” You nodded at it again and then then ducked behind your computer screens. “I always want to.” 

Ghost moved so silently that you didn’t hear or see him take it, but when you looked up again he and the container at the edge of your desk were gone. 

.

.

.

It should be a good thing. 

You would be gone soon enough, none the wiser of who Ghost was. Of what you were to each other. 

But it didn’t sit well. It was a new thing to nag at the back of his mind, finding your office empty, you becoming a ghost in your own right. He hated the ache in his chest, the thought of you so far away. He could only assume you’d be stationed back in the US.

The thought festered, burrowed. 

“Laswell.”

She jumped, hand going beneath her desk before she spotted Ghost in the corner of  her office. She sighed and closed her eyes, fingertips rubbing her eyes instead. 

“Ghost,” she sighed, “Don’t do that.” 

Simon said your name, and Laswell lowered her hands to look at him. “How long has she got?” 

“What do you mean?”

“Said she’s on loan. I want to know how long.”

Laswell considered him; Ghost waited. He wouldn’t explain himself, and Laswell knew that. 

“Maybe as long as a year.” She tilted back in her chair and asked anyway. “Why?” 

Ghost didn’t answer, slipping back out of her office and down the hall. 

You were still in your office, hunched over the desk, lavender headphones pulled down around your neck. He watched you for a long moment, eyes tracing over scars that belonged to him. It was jarring each time to see pain he experienced threaded over your skin. It made him feel exposed by proxy.

As he watched, you lifted a hand and rubbed your neck with a wince, fingers lingering on the long scar slashed at the base of your throat. The grimace faded from your face and your expression receded into the impassive, blank, focused slate it always settled into as you continued working. 

When he sat down in your office, you just shot him a tired smile and continued working. 

He walked you to your car around midnight. 

“Tell us if you’re here this late again,” he said, not looking at you. 

“Ghost,” you said. “It’s almost enough to make me think you like me.” 

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he answered. 

You just laughed. 

.

.

.

“Tea?” 

You jumped, just as Laswell had, only your hand didn’t go beneath the desk. Nothing there to reach for, he knew, your vulnerability like a beacon, or a stain. 

It would need remedied. 

But first, this. 

It was the sixth time in two weeks that you were at your desk well past when everyone else had gone home.  

“Jesus Christ.” 

“Unfortunately not.” 

You laughed; his shoulders eased. “Ghost,” you said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” You tilted your head. “I’m starting to think you’re spying on me.” 

“What’re you still doing ‘ere?” 

“What are you doing wandering around our wing after hours?” 

Not a line of questioning he was keen on following. That just being near a place you had been earlier in the day was enough to loosen that fucking tether in his chest. That he was worried incessantly about you being alone at night.

“Offerin’ to make you a tea,” he answered. “Obviously.”  

“Obviously,” you echoed. “Of course.” 

“You’re supposed to tell me when you’re stayin’ late.” 

“Ghost,” you said seriously, lifting your brows, “I’m here late again today.” 

“Hilarious, you are.” 

You giggled again. “Are you really offering to make me tea?” 

He nodded. “C’mon then.”

You smiled and shrugged the blanket off your shoulders. He waited while you locked your computer and stood.

Simon allowed you to lead toward the breakroom where he’d observed the many cups of tea you’d politely swallowed from well meaning coworkers, who left it to steep for too long or too short, added too much sugar and milk, or left it totally plain. 

The overhead lights were too bright, a blue-white glare that made you frown and squint. Your nose scrunched up in distaste. There were circles beneath your eyes, exhausted loops that matched his own.  

“So,” you prompted, leaning against the counter, “How does one make a proper cuppa?”

“Not bad,” he said of your accent, lifting the electric kettle from the hook to fill with water. “Little posh.” 

“I’ve been practicing.”

He grunted, and put the kettle on, before rooting through the cabinet above the sink for tea bags. A grim selection awaited him, but he’d make due with what was available.

“Ah, so you boil the water. I was under the impression you could just stick it all in the microwave.” 

He involuntarily made a pained sound. “Fucking hell,” he muttered, “That your usual method?” 

You bit the inside of your cheek, poorly concealing a laugh. “I scandalized a data analyst with that joke.” You cup your chin in your hand, peer up at him from beneath a thick fringe of lashes. “I do know how to boil water, I’ll have you know.”

“Got a head start then.” 

You laughed again, shoulders shaking. Simon watched the corner of your mouth curl, and it eased something in his chest. You were painfully close, the woodsy, floral scent of your perfume curled in the air. Your elbow brushed his. He didn’t know how you could be unaware of the bond at that moment, when being that close to you felt like being lit on fire. He wanted to reach for you so badly that he had to clench his fist closed to avoid it. 

If someone were to ask him to move away from you right then, it would end badly. Bloody. 

The thin, needle sharp connection ached, begged. 

Simon ignored it.  

When you glanced up, he looked away. He could feel your eyes on his face, and didn’t mind the scrutiny in it. He didn’t mind you watching him, and wondered what you saw. 

“I like being able to see your eyes,” you said, just as the kettle clicked off. 

He met your gaze, disarmed by the declaration. Your features had softened, melted into a dangerous fondness. “Why?” 

“You have pretty eyes,” you shrugged. “And it’s hard to see you with the other mask.” You shifted, watching him lift the kettle, pour the hot water into a mug and over the teabag he’d dropped into it. 

“You can tell me to fuck off, if you want,” you began carefully, fingertips drumming nervously against the counter. “Why do you wear it?” 

Simon watched the teabag bob on the surface of the water, thin amber trails unfurling, coloring the water slowly brown. “Five minutes,” he nodded at the tea. “Don’t touch it. None of that dunking shite.” 

“Yes, sir,” you agreed. “Five minutes, no touching.” 

He huffed, and your smile widened. You bumped your shoulder against his. The contact only lasted a second or two, but the relief it provided was so intense that he nearly choked on it. 

The pain, softened by your proximity, returned immediately, crept down into the soft ligaments between his bones. He felt the loss in the roots of his teeth, the middle of his chest; it was like losing his breath in a different way, being suckerpunched in the solar plexus, knocked on his ass.

“To hide my face.” 

“Your identity, you mean.” 

“My identity,” he agreed.

“Why?” 

He released a long, slow breath, and thought about telling you to piss off, maybe even just to see how you’d take it. Were you as good as your word? Would you let the subject drop? 

Instead, he said, “There are a lot of bad people in the world, bird.” 

You pursed your lips, fingers toying with the teabag string, flicking the tab at the end with your nail. There was another question swimming in your eyes, but you let it go unasked, dropping your eyes from his instead. 

“You’ve seen more of them than most,” you said. “I would guess.” 

“Part of the job.” 

Your mouth curled a little, lashes fluttering against your cheek. “Hm. But y’know something? I think I’d know you anywhere,” you said, without a hint of shame or irony. “It’s all in your eyes.” 

Before Simon could respond, you hid a yawn in your sleeve and rubbed your hand over your face, exhaustion layered in thick rings beneath your eyes. “Even if this is gross,” you indicate the tea, “At least it will keep me awake.” 

“I take offense to that.” 

You laughed again. “Hm. Sorry, Lieutenant.” You leaned in, “It smells so nice, so why does it taste like shit?” 

He rolled his eyes. “I’ll make you a coffee if it’s shit.” 

“You’re kind.” This time when you leaned your shoulder against his, you left it there. The empty soreness like a bruise inside his ribs loosened again. For the first time in a while, he was left with the absence of pain.  

When the tea was done steeping, he did yours with a bit of honey. There was no way you’d take it plain and like it, but he drew the line at milk. Especially the blasphemy that was the military issued powdered milk in a canister that sat on the counter. Abso-fucking-lutely not. 

“There you are,” he said, “Cup of tea.” 

“A proper cuppa,” you tried again. It was a little less posh this time. 

He huffed. “Better all the time.” 

“And I have you to thank.” 

Your face creased as you took the cup between your palms, an unreadable expression flitting across your features. Then your mouth twisted to the side, a sure sign you were attempting to keep some emotion or thought in check. 

Your shoulder was still pressed heavily against his. 

“Thanks, Ghost.” 

“”S just tea.” 

You shook your head and lifted the cup, blowing gently on the surface before you took a tiny sip. He watched your face, watched your throat move as you swallowed, the flickering web of your lashes. A step up, at least, from all the shit tea from your coworkers that make your brows tense in an effort to conceal a grimace. “One good thing has come of this,” you said after a moment of contemplation. 

“What’s tha’?” 

“I know how to make tea for you now.” 

“Like it?” 

“I love it.” 

You briefly tilted your head onto his shoulder, then pulled away entirely. The flood of discomfort was worse than before. His muscles spasmed around it in a violent convulsion. “I mean that really.” 

He breathed out, through it. “I don’t take honey.” 

You studied the contents of the cup, tilting it one way and then the other, like something important laid at the bottom of the porcelain well. 

“Noted.” 

Sure enough, the next day, a hot cup was waiting for him, which he drank as you chatted from behind your computer, decidedly, pointedly, giving him the privacy to do so. 

.

.

.

Things settled into a pleasant rhythm. 

A regimented, regular existence that you had long ago learned to embrace. The base became home more than the tiny apartment you rented and spent only enough time to sleep, bathe, and cook in. 

You timed your days to the ebb and flow of the base, to visits to your office, debriefings and conference rooms, the restless energy of so many people in one place moving. You breathed around absences, the pockets of emptiness that sometimes cropped up. The loneliness that felt like an unfillable pit in your stomach. 

People often saw your scars and thought not to bother. Why would fate have marked you so heavily if you weren’t meant to find your pair? The scars meant nothing, really. They were no more significant than anyone else’s. Your chances of running into your soulmate was no higher than someone who had accrued no scars from their bond. 

You were a stopping off point, a bit of fun, but not someone to invest time and effort into, not when the reminder that someone else might come along and render it all moot was so visible, so literally in their face. To look at you was to be reminded of that bond waiting in the wings, for them and for you, and that you could only ever be temporary. 

It made friendships hard too. Some were jealous, others thought there couldn’t be room for anyone else in your life. You were important to no one.

It had been proven to you time and again, and you weren’t sure what kept you hopeful that someone would one day see past it. So when Sergeant Davies stuck his head in your office one Friday afternoon long after Ghost had departed your office for the day, and asked you out, you found yourself saying yes. 

“Would you like to go out sometime?” He asked, hand rubbing the back of his neck. “Just round the pub for drinks?” 

“Oh,” you said. “I—” 

It had been a long time since anyone took interest in you. You’d only talked to him a few times before, but Davies was handsome in a boyish way and sweet and you liked him well enough, you found yourself hesitating for half a second. To your horror, your mind flashed to Ghost, stomach lurching painfully, a knot of tension fisting itself in your chest. 

You looked at his usual chair, empty now, seeing his large frame sprawled there anyway, thighs spread wide, arms crossed over his chest, eyes steady and focused, locked onto you with an intensity and constancy you still weren’t used to.

Heat bloomed in your lungs, crept up your neck. You glanced away, back at Davies waiting at the door. 

“Yeah,” you answered firmly. “Sure.” 

“Brilliant,” he grinned. “How about tonight?” 

Your belly gave another sour squirm that you ignored; it had just been a long time, that was all. “I’m free.” 

“Brilliant,” he said again. “I’ll text you.” 

“Okay.” 

His grin was crooked and self satisfied as he exited your office. 

So you found yourself walking off the base with Davies later that evening. You found yourself laughing and hopeful in a local pub that you hadn’t gotten the chance to explore yet, busy as you were, the base a tide that tugged you back again and again. Like a magnet, you wanted to be there. 

And all of it came to nothing, the moment Davies saw the extent of the scarring when you took him home. It wasn’t just your face, it was your hands and arms and chest and belly. Your whole body was marked, dogeared for someone else. He looked down at you in your bed, his head framed by your ceiling fan and you saw the moment it clicked. The moment it wouldn’t work. 

“Someone out there is really looking for you,” he said. “You’re lucky.” 

“No more than anyone else,” you countered. “You know that’s not how it works.” 

“I know,” he said, pulling on his shirt. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” you said before he kissed your cheek and retreated. 

Still, you didn’t sleep, just laid on your side, half undressed, staring out at a sky that slowly lightened, stars fading, wondering if perhaps your truest fate was to be lonely for your whole life. 

You didn’t hate your scars, or your soulmate. But sometimes you thought it would be easier if you didn’t have one at all. 

.

.

.

Monday. 

There was a knife in Simon’s pocket. 

Not unusual in and of itself, he carried several at all times, slipped into his sleeves and belt and boot. 

The one in his pocket, though, was for you.

A gift, a contingency, and an offer all wrapped in one. 

The knowledge that it was yours was an uncomfortable weight in his chest. It meant admitting he cared enough to procure it, test it, hand it over. 

It wasn’t quite your typical lunch hour, but Ghost was headed to your office anyway. It was sunny, for once, and he expected to find you taking an early break anyway, leaning back in your chair with your headphones on, absorbing the rare rays. 

And, he wanted to be done with it, to stop tapping his pocket repeatedly, checking the blade was still there, like it might have run away. 

Soap had noticed his fidgeting as they all sat through a briefing on intelligence reports with Laswell that morning. Ghost had forced his hand still, exuded a forced calm, but Johnny’s eyes hadn’t turned away. 

When he arrived at your office, deliberately rustling against the doorjamb so as not to startle you, you glanced up and smiled tightly and his plan vanished. 

Something was wrong. The blinds were closed, your office an unusual sea of gray air. Your shoulders were caved inward protectively, your expression wan and closed. Your smile didn’t reach your eyes, your voice was rough when you said, “Hey, Ghost.”  

Simon took his usual seat, watching you type something, decidedly not looking at him. He watched you, the set of your mouth and eyes. He waited for your chatter to begin but it didn't. 

“All right?” 

“Hm?”

“You’re quiet.” 

“Oh, only one of us is allowed to be quiet?” You joked, but it came out a bit brittle, and worn.

There were, he noticed as he looked at you, circles beneath your eyes. “What ‘appened?” 

You looked up again, and shook your head. “I’m just tired.” 

“Try again.” 

Frustration crept into your features. “Who said I want to tell you?” With that, you ducked behind your monitors.

Simon waited, but you did not reemerge. 

He stood, and rounded your desk. You glanced up then, leaning back when you found him so close. “Jesus, Ghost—” 

“Nice weather.” 

“I can see that.” 

“And you aren’t out there sunnin’ yourself? Something horrible must have happened.” 

Your mouth twisted to the side and you glanced away. “I. . .I’m just being dramatic.”

“C’mon, then.” 

You blinked up at him. “Where are we going?” 

He didn’t answer, but you rose anyway when he tilted his head toward the door. Simon snagged the blanket you’d knitted for him months ago from its place along the back of his chair, finally with a proper purpose, and carried it over his arm. 

“Lunch.” 

You grabbed it and followed him down the hall. Simon shouldered open an external door and held it open for you, the scent of your skin, the warm brush of your body so close to his as you ducked under his arm like a beacon, a light he wanted to follow. 

Carefully, you nudged your shoulder against his as you walked. The familiar sharp, sweet pang whenever you brushed too close together settled in his chest. He wondered if you felt it too, if you felt that sickly flutter in your chest, or if his suspicion that he was holding one end of an untethered bond in his hand was right. 

Just his luck. 

Didn’t matter though. 

He ticked his elbow out a little, and after a moment, you pushed your hand against the inside of his arm. His shoulders loosened; his jaw unclenched. The pain in his chest settled. 

The absence of the ache was intense; he was so used to being in near constant pain. 

“So, what are we doing?” 

“Walking.” 

“I can see that.” 

“Why’re you askin’, then, bird?” 

You huffed but didn’t ask anymore questions as he led you down one concrete pathway. 

The sky was a flawless robin’s egg blue, only a wispy, thin line of cloud on the very distant horizon. The distant shouts of drill instructors snapped in the warm summer air. Your shoulders drooped as you walked, eyes fluttering closed for a few seconds at a time as you tilted your face to the sun, inhaling deeply. 

He led you around the last building in a long line of barracks and brought you to a halt. The only thing beyond was a chainlink fence that marked the edge of the base. A faint breeze coated him in the smell of your skin, settled deep in the well of his lungs. He took a breath, watched your lashes flutter. 

Your thumb stroked a pattern against the inside of his arm, lazy and slow. “You’ve got a soft spot for me, Ghost.” 

He didn’t deny it. 

“What are we doing back here?” 

Ghost pulled away from you with some effort and spread the blanket over the grass. He sat on the concrete steps that led to the back door of the unused barracks.

You sat on the blanket, started to open your lunch and then flopped back in the sun instead. “A usual haunt?” 

“Sometimes.” 

“Secret’s safe with me.” 

“Mind if I smoke?” 

“No.” Then, “I won’t look.”  

He grunted in acknowledgement, rolled the bottom of his mask up, carton of cigarettes and lighter pulled from the depths of a trouser pocket. Simon watched the rise and fall of your chest, tracing the latticework of scars over your face. They looked better on you, he decided. Not as noticeable as his own, faded and light, pencil through wax paper instead of the thick groves of his own. 

They glinted a little in the sun, like the scales of an iridescent fish. 

Your eyes remained peacefully closed, soaking up the sun like a long deprived plant. Sweat beaded along your forehead, and when you pushed up your sleeves, Ghost was reminded that all of you matched all of him.

He recognized a burn mark on your forearm that belonged to him, a cut that wrapped halfway around your wrist. He was pretty sure the burn mark was from a mishandled flare, the wrist scar from a rope that had gotten tangled and burned him. 

Simon wanted to reach down and cup the side of your throat, feel the soft, sun warmed skin beneath his fingers. He wondered if your scars felt the same as his own, rough and grooved. 

Probably not, they were imitations, ungenerous sketchings of his own. 

He’d like to map them all against his own, find out if he bore any of yours. He wouldn’t have noticed something small that you might have collected yourself. A childhood fall, a careless burn while cooking. 

He watched the delicate flex of muscle in your forearms. Your shirt was a little askew, more faded marks left like a tracery of veins on your chest and collarbone and shoulder. It was fucking awful, a wrenching feeling in his chest, to know all that had been inflicted on him, had fallen on you too. 

He wondered about the pain again, imagined you writhing with terror and agony and confusion, every gunshot wound and burn and slash he received an echo inside you. Cigarette burns dotting your arms and wrists when you were just a child, months of pain without end when he was captured and tortured and his life was irrevocably changed. 

Simon wanted to ask, needed to know just how much damage he’d inflicted. But the words stuck in his throat. A fear of knowing, if he asked about the pain, maybe he’d hear other things too, how much you must hate him and didn’t know it was the man in front of you your hate should be directed at.

When he stubbed out his cigarette on the heel of his boot and rolled his mask back down, you blinked into the sun and exhaled, long and slow, and then sat up, leaning back on your palms. 

“What ‘appened?” He asked.

Your mouth twitched into your usual, if a bit more sheepish, smile. “You’re like a dog with a bone, you know that?” 

“Affirmative,” he said. 

You rolled your eyes and set up straight, brushing your palms together before reaching for your lunch. “I brought something for you.” 

“Stalling.” 

“Pushy,” you countered, giggling, rummaging around in your bag. Your smile faded as you pulled free one of the usual containers, what looked like lasagne within. He watched the edge of your mouth curl, the scar slitted along one side pulling at your expression. “I went on a date this weekend.” 

Ice slid down his spine, curled in a viscous circle in his gut. “Bad date?” 

“No,” you said, shaking your head adamantly, staring down at the container in your lap. “No, it went really well.” You glanced up at him and then dug in your bag again, passing another one to him along with a fork. “Until he saw my—” You fidgeted with your sleeve and then yanked it down. The other followed suit. “My marks. My scars.” 

“He’s a prick.” 

“No, he wasn’t,” you shook your head. “It’s happened before. They see the extent of it, and it’s like something biological clicks. I’m off limits.” You sat your food to the side and wrapped your arms around your knees. “Even though I’m no more likely to find mine than anyone else.” 

You looked very small, and alone at that moment. 

“I know it’s not my soulmate’s fault,” you said quietly. “I know that. I know that. And I don’t blame them for it. But sometimes I get so lonely I just—I wish—I wish I didn’t have one. Sometimes I wish I could hate them.”

The chill spreads outward.  

It was confirmation enough. If you knew, you would hate him. All that repressed, sentimentalized resentment would come bubbling up the moment you were actually faced with the person who so fundamentally changed the course of your life. 

He looked at his scars winking in the sun on your skin and felt a self hatred so intense it nearly made him flinch. He wished he could crawl out of that grave and kill them all over again, slower, just for this. 

You glanced up and smiled tightly. “But I’m a hopeless romantic, and dramatic. It was just disappointing. I always have hope someone will see past it.” You ran your hand over the blanket and unfolded yourself to finally begin eating. “This helped, though,” you said. “Thank you, Ghost.” You nodded at the food in his hands, averted your gaze again. 

And even though you could easily glance at him, Simon pushed up his mask and popped open the lid of the lasagne still warm between his hands. 

You ate together for the first time, in silence in the sun. You closed your eyes, kept your face pointed up and away, a cool breeze ruffling your shirt sleeves. 

“Have you found yours?” 

Simon looked at you, the edge of your jaw, the soft shadows your lashes cast over your ruined cheek. “Don’t think someone like me is meant for one.” 

You nodded. “Me either.”

.

.

.

He walked you back to your office. 

You felt better, settled, but he sort of just had that affect on you, you were coming to find. 

Ghost smelled like sun and freshly mowed grass and cigarette smoke. His shoulder kept touching yours, something in your chest lurching each time, like a rib bone had come loose and was knocking against your heart and lungs. 

Ghost carried the blanket back, folded it and set it carefully along the back of what had become his chair. 

You sat and turned, expecting to find him already silently gone as was his way. 

Instead, he was very close and depositing something on your desk. 

Matte black, compact, deadly, cold to the touch. 

A folded pocket knife sat at the edge of your desk. Ghost loomed over you, his shadow curling around your edges. 

He slid it toward you, watched you fold your fingers around it. For a long moment, each of you was holding it. “What’s this?” You asked when he released it, gloved fingers sliding across your desk, back to his side.  

“A knife.” 

“Oh, really? I've never seen one before.” 

He rolled his eyes. “It’s for you. I’ll teach you how to use it.” 

“Why?” 

“In case you need to.”

“Is this about me staying late?” 

“No.” He did not elaborate. 

“You know I received firearm training. I can shoot a gun. Isn’t a knife a little—” 

“But you don’t carry a gun.” 

“No,” you agreed. “I don’t.”  

He nodded as though that explained it. “Right.” 

You considered it, flipped it open. Deadly, shiny blade newly sharpened and oiled and well cared for. It was odd to be given a weapon, and yet unsurprising where Ghost was concerned. You glanced up, watched his dark, intense eyes flick over your face. You weren’t sure what he was looking for, but his brows knitted the longer you stared at each other. Concern, weariness.

“Okay.”

His shoulders loosened. “Tomorrow.” 

“Tomorrow,” you agreed. 

.

.

.

If you thought you would receive one lesson in knifework and be done with it, you didn’t know Ghost very well. 

You only ran drills first, as though Ghost were making sure the physical fitness exam you had to pass once a year was up to scratch. You proved again and again that you could run without getting too winded, disassemble, load, and fire a service weapon. When he was satisfied with that, the real training began. 

You practiced with a rubber blade that bruised when stuck into your ribs. He did not go easy on you. You left the gym battered and bruised, sweaty and just a little bit resentful. But you could break a wrist lock hold, grapple and use your body and size to your advantage. The goal he repeatedly told you, was not to turn you into a fighter or a soldier, but give you an opportunity to get away, to run away.  

What kind of danger he imagined you getting into between the base and your apartment you couldn’t begin to imagine. But you enjoyed spending time with him, enjoyed being in the gym. You found yourself laughing when you were repeatedly slammed into the mat, knife wrested from your fingers. It was fun. And, it was good for you, you decided, even if you thought his intense insistence was a tad dramatic. 

Ghost was a bit dramatic about certain things, you were coming to learn.

This was one of them. You were, you thought with warmth, one of the things he was a bit dramatic about. For whatever reason, you’ve been tucked under his wing, into his shadow. 

On the third week of relentlessly brutal training, you arrived at the base gym, empty as it always was, to find him holding a length of rope. 

You eyed it warily and shifted from foot to foot, amused despite the discomfort. “What do you imagine is going to happen to me?” 

Ghost didn’t answer as you set your bag down and pulled off your sweatshirt. The room was warm, close and humid, the scent of left over dregs of soldiers clogging the room for most of the day. The scent of plastic, lemon disinfectant, and sweat is thick on the air, but when you stepped toward Ghost, his familiar comforting smell of tea and cigarettes washed over you in a vacuous, orbital cloud. 

You looked up just as his eyes slid away from you, blond lashes catching the light, skin pink around his eyes. You’d swear it was a blush if you didn’t know better. “Ghost?” 

“Better to be prepared, yeah?” 

“For what?” All the same, you turned with a sigh. 

After a painfully long moment he stepped close and pressed the dark material around your wrists. His body was warm behind yours for that brief moment even without touching you, like the glow of a heat lamp that made the rest of the room feel cold by comparison. 

His gloved fingers were carefully delicate against your skin. It sent sparks skittering up your arms. What would his bare skin feel like against yours? 

Rough, warm. Safe.  

It’s a thought that had curled its roots into your mind the first time you fell to the mat together and you felt his weight against yours, brief and heavy, but comforting somehow. It wasn’t supposed to be, he was playing predator, it should have been panic inducing. 

Stupid, silly. 

If your most recently failed date had shown you anything, it was that feeling anything for anyone that had seen your scars was a failing venture. And Ghost had seen more of them now, than most. Maybe you should start wearing a mask. 

“What’s the goal today?” You asked, feeling a little like you couldn’t breathe. His warmth and scent and the weight of his presence was overwhelming in a way that made you want to curl into him, gladly suffocate. 

“Same as always,” he answered drolly. “To get away.”

“Hm. I keep thinking you’ll challenge me,” you teased.  

“Not a game, bird.” 

“But what am I meant to do? I can’t fight.” 

“Get out of the bindings. Get to the door.” 

“Is that it?” 

You would swear he’s smirking. “Simple enough, aye.” 

It wasn’t easy. 

For the third time in a row, you landed hard on your back. 

Ghost’s weight was heavy against you, before it lifted away. Your sweaty skin stuck to his hoodie.

Your breath comes in hard, deep pants. Your wrists ached and panic had begun to set in. 

“On your feet.” 

Clumsy as a newborn deer, you stumble to your feet. You had to be faster than him, incapacitate him. “You won’t be getting away from me,” he’d said once, “so you’d have a chance.” It was a compliment; one that said you were doing good. 

It didn’t feel like you were doing good now. 

By the sixth time, you felt raw and helpless, wrists caught at an odd angle beneath you. It wasn’t fun; it wasn’t sparring. You couldn’t manage to wriggle out of the bindings and you were useless at anything he’d taught you without your hands. 

“You’re hurting me,” you gasped. 

He released you immediately and the pressure in your wrists eased. It hadn’t been pain, not really, just panic, just exhaustion. 

But you knew instantly that you’d made a mistake, that he would not take it that way. 

“Shit.” 

.

.

.

The window was open and you were not in your office. 

Simon paused in the doorway, noted your bag on the chair in the corner, the patchwork quilt trailing over the arm of your desk chair and spilling onto the floor. His was gone from the chair. You’d been wandering off without him recently. 

He turned and marched back down the hall. An administrative assistant pointed toward the external door. “Getting sun, she said,” he said. “Sir.” 

Ghost nodded and shouldered the door open. He found you behind the barracks, lying on his blanket, staring up at a patchy sky, slices of blue peaking from between low hanging gray clouds. 

When his shadow fell over you, you opened your eyes and squinted up at him. “Ghost, you’re blocking my sun.” 

“Not much sun to speak of.” You grimace and frown at the sky. “You weren’t in your office.” 

“Sorry, should have left a note.” You patted the blanket next to you. “Sit.” 

Simon sat on the concrete steps. “Where’s your lunch?”

“Forgot it.” 

Worry sprouted, blossomed along his veins, ubiquitous as the pain that accompanies it. 

“Canteen,” he said. “Let’s go.” 

“It’s okay—“

“Wasn’t a suggestion.” 

“You’re bossy,” you said but didn’t move, chin tilted up, eyes flitting shut again. “I’ll have a big dinner.” 

He sighed and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, content enough to wait you out and smoke. The clouds continued to gather, putting your beloved sun to rest for the moment. The air grew steadily thicker with humidity. 

“Gonna rain,” he commented. 

You ignored him, eyes squinching closed harder, like you could will the sun to return. He watched you, made himself look at the bruises on your wrists and forearms, he knew there were matching ones on your ribs. They were harmless, just the usual consequence of sparring, but the ones around your wrists—that’s a mistake he won’t soon forget. 

When a fat raindrop landed on your arm, you sat up with a grumble. “Ready now?” He asked, pulling down his mask again. 

“I can see you won’t leave it alone.” 

“Affirmative,” he said. 

You rolled your eyes and started to get to your feet, pausing when he held out a hand to you. You stared for a beat too long before gripping his hand in yours. 

Even through his gloves, it was like being electrocuted. 

You released his hand as soon as you could, eyes skirting his. “Your lead,” you said. “I haven’t had the privilege.” 

He grunted, followed you closely back inside. 

As Simon’s misfortune would have it, Johnny was still in the canteen. 

He lasered in on the pair of you immediately, a grin growing across his face as he approached. “Ach so this is where you’ve been off to LT.”

Ghost herded you into line, a raucous group of new recruits halting their conversation to ogle you before their eyes flicked to his and away, conversation continued at a more subdued level. He shifted closer, between you and them, though you didn’t seem to notice.

“Haven’t been off anywhere,” he grumbled. 

“Who’s this then?” 

You smiled and offered your hand and name. “It’s nice to see that Ghost has bad manners with everyone.” 

“John MacTavish,” Soap said, all charm as he practically bowed. “Call me Soap.”

“Soap,” you giggled. “I’ve seen you in my reports.” 

Soap’s gaze flicked over your face, sharp eyes making the quick calculations that had made Simon hope he wouldn’t be in the canteen. “Are they yours?” 

“Sergeant—,” Ghost said sharply, a warning in his voice. 

But you only laughed and touched your cheek with obvious pride as the line moved up. “No. None of them belong to me. They’re nice though, right?” 

Simon went very still, swore his heart rate slowed. You held out your arm, showed off a sliver flash.

“Very becoming, lass.” 

You smiled again and gestured to your own chin, the side of your head. “Yours?” 

“Aye, all mine.”

“Ah, luck.” 

“Lucky indeed.”

Johnny’s eyes shifted to Simon’s, brows raised, with a look that said he knew. Simon glanced away, gritting his jaw so hard it ached.

 “Am I going to get food poisoning from this?” You asked as a tray was handed over, eying warily what was ostensibly mash, peas and carrots, mystery meat. 

“Probably not,” Johnny answered cheerfully. “Been mostly fine.” 

“Yes, but I think you military people might have tolerance to low levels of poison.” 

“That’s for sure, bonnie.” 

“Bonnie,” you said, giggling. “Are you calling me pretty?” 

Soap covered his heart, balancing his tray with one hand. “You wound me. Simon only keeps us good looking bastards around.”

“Simon,” you said softly, glancing up at him. “I didn’t think anyone knew your name.” 

Ghost didn’t answer for a moment, glaring daggers into the side of Johnny’s head, ignoring the way his heart was clenched so tight it felt like it was in a vise. Simon, his name on your tongue—  

“It’s need to know,” he snapped. 

Your expression folded and you glanced away. “Right, of course. Sorry.”

Simon clenched his jaw so hard it clicked as Johnny shot him a look. “This way, lass,” he said, leading you toward a spot in the corner of the mess. 

“Oh,” you said weakly, “That’s all right. You don’t have to—”

Ghost couldn’t help but notice the anxious look you threw him, the thin line your voice had transformed into. 

Soap wasn’t listening, already talking your ear off, pulling out a chair for you. You smiled and sat and Simon was left to silently watch it unfold. 

.

.

.

“Fuckin’ hell,” Soap muttered when they’d safely returned you to your office where a contingent of lesser analysts awaited you. The corridor leading away from the now closed door seemed impossibly long. “D’ya know how many people would kill to meet their soulmate? You’ve got yours right under your fuckin’ nose and haven’t even told her yer name!” 

“She doesn’t need to know.” 

“Yer name?” 

Ghost leveled Soap with a stare. 

Soap gaped at him. “Steamin’ Jesus. You aren’t plannin’ to tell the lass at all?” 

“Stay out of it, MacTavish.” 

Johnny followed him down the hall, outside into a bleak, gray drizzle. “You know it can kill you?” Simon kept walking. “Simon.” 

He stopped, glanced at Soap with a warning in his eyes. “Do ya?”

“It won’t.”

Johnny continues anyway, urgently. “There’s a pain, they say, under the ribs when—“

“Stay out of it, Sergeant,” Ghost growled, that very pain growing as it always did as he moved further and further away from you. “It’s nothing.” 

“It‘ll corrode,” Johnny said to his retreating back. “She’ll feel it eventually.”

Simon ignored him. 

But he wondered as he walked away, if he died, if you’d feel the corded snap of his life floating away from yours.  

Somehow, being that sort of ghost, didn’t sit well with him. 

.

.

.

Johnny, predictably, did not stay out of it. 

He regularly and reliably began to show up in your office. More than once, he looped Garrick into accompanying him. Ghost had watched as the same realization Soap had snapped into place on Gaz’s face, and knew it was only a matter of time before Price knew too. 

Luckily, they were the only three on the entire base that could make the connection, that had seen his face, so at least it was done with. None of them said anything to him about it, but there were a lot of worried glances being exchanged. 

Ghost felt the edge of his sanity begin to wear thin the longer it went on, not that there was much left of it in the first place.

The disruption, the infiltration, the distraction grated until his insides felt raw with irritation. He hadn’t wanted anyone else to know, not because he was ashamed, but because you were his, and you didn’t deserve to be burdened by that. He would shoulder that horrible belonging for both of you. 

But the way you’d tenderly touched your cheek remains burned into his memory. The soft look in your eye. The gentle way you and Soap always spoke of soulmates whenever they came up, reverent and tender. 

You enjoyed their company, Johnny and Kyle, and seemed all the better for it. It was clear immediately how much you liked both of them. How much you desperately needed friends. 

Ghost was loath to admit there was a seed of jealousy wriggling in his belly. The easy way you got on with them proof enough that a wire had gotten crossed somewhere, that you were more cursed by him than anchored by.

Then, the gifts left at the edge of your desk began to extend to the lads and not just himself, and it felt vaguely as though he were losing a vital piece of himself to it. 

Then, you stopped coming to the gym. You were gone, office dark, before he could walk you to your car. You went on another date. 

He didn’t know what to do with any of it.

One Tuesday at the end of July you were in your office, but Soap was there before him, tearing into a packet of crisps, lounging in Simon’s chair, patchwork quilt flattened beneath him in a heap. It was hot, and humid, a fan in the corner working overtime, window propped open.

You were happily listening to Johnny explain the ins and outs of football. A match was playing on your computer screen which you’d turned back so both of you could see. 

Your eyes found Simon’s when he paused in the doorway, and you waved him inside, an unsure smile twitching at the corners of your mouth. “Hi, Ghost. Do you keep up with soccer, too?” 

A groan from Soap. “Bloody Americans.” 

“Sorry, sorry. You keep up with footie too, mate?” 

“Horrendous,” Ghost said flatly.

Your smile faltered then brightened again. It didn’t quite reach your eyes. “You should hear my Scottish accent. Soap said I offended every one of his ancestors.” 

“Aye and you did lass,” he said solemnly. “Yeh—” 

“Sergeant,” Ghost interrupted loudly. “Aren’t you due for PT?”  

“Ach, right,” he muttered, getting to his feet, “Thanks for the reminder, LT.” 

“Oh, Soap,” you said, “Hold on.” You rummaged beneath your desk for a long moment, then passed him a brown paper bag full of cookies. “Your favorite, as requested.” 

“You sweet on me or something, bon?”

You rolled your eyes and said, “Out of my office.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

Ghost took Soap’s vacated seat, watched you avoid looking at him as you moved things needlessly around your desk, twisted your monitor back around and muted the match. 

The silence was suffocating. 

“All right?” 

You froze, then shuffled the papers together and slid them to a corner of your desk. “I wanted to apologize.” Your voice hitched a little. 

He blinked, taken aback. He didn’t like that you could surprise him. “For what?” 

You bit your lip, fidgeted again. “Your name, I guess. You didn’t want me to know.” Your mouth twisted to the side. “And your team bothering you here—” 

“You’re apologizing for Soap?” 

Your brow furrowed. “Well I encourage it—”

“No.” 

“No?” You shook your head, “and that day in the gym—” You opened and closed your hands anxiously. “I think I upset you.” 

He stared across the room, toward your big, sunny window, all those little potted plants that have flourished through the summer months. Your bug lamp seemed to droop in the heat, sad and watchful. He’d hurt you, and you’d taken the blame. Something horrible lurched in his belly, heavy and unforgiving. “Didn’t. I should have been more careful.” 

“Right,” you said carefully. “So if it’s not that, why are you—” 

He shrugged, watched one of the emerald leaves sway in the warm breeze. “I like you to myself,” he admitted. “Not the best at sharing.”  

“Oh,” you said, voice tender. “Oh.” 

“Mm.” 

“I’ll make space.” 

He didn’t quite understand what you meant by that, but he liked the way it sounded. Space for him. 

“You’ll come to the gym later, yeah?” 

“Yes.” 

“Good.” He stood, deposited your knife, which he’d snagged early in the morning to clean and sharpen, back onto your desk, along with the new box of tea because he noticed you were out the night before. “And don’t tell bloody Soap.” 

“Aye, LT.” 

He chuckled. “Take care of that.” 

“Teach me how?” 

He nodded. 

“Thanks for the tea. I used the last bag yesterday afternoon.” 

“I know.” 

Your smile was soft, your fingers touched his. He breathed a little easier. 

“‘Course you do.” 

.

.

.

Simon couldn’t stop thinking about pain. 

His body functioned at a constant low level of pain, had for years. Maybe it had his whole life, so he tended not to notice it. But the ache you caused had only seemed to grow over time, tendrils spreading to the furthest reaches of his body, the tips of his fingers, the backs of his knees, places he didn’t think could hold pain. 

The intensity increased too, until he could no longer ignore it. It was like a whine, like a child begging to be seen to. 

He kept thinking of your voice, too, dreaming of it. You’re hurting me. Panic ridden, laced with fear.

You said he didn’t, after,  but he didn’t relish the thought of the possibility. Accidentally hurting you, hurting you on purpose. He thought of his mother, doing her best with a brutal man. He was afraid of unknowingly stepping into a cycle, to find himself standing above you one day, drunk, mean, angry. 

You’re hurting me.  

It echoed like a heartbeat. Inevitable. 

You might collect his scars, but he would not add to them with his own hands. He’d rather die; he’d rather be burned alive; he’d rather crawl out of a grave a hundred times over. 

He was afraid of it. Afraid that every terrible aspect of this bond between you could only bring you pain. 

His father loomed in the recesses of his mind, all the violent men he’d ever known, every bloody fist. Simon’s scalp ached, the memories swam behind his eyes. Long nights, wild animals, dead girls. 

There was one person who had a preoccupation with soulmates who was likely to know, who badgered him regularly about eroding the bond, about bond tears and pain. Simon could know, once and for all, if he was the cause of the indirect pain, at least. His own imposed on you, pushed into your skin like a punishment. He could cross that off his long list of sins. 

Johnny, when Simon finally tracked him down, was sat in the armory cleaning a rifle. He watched over his Sergeant's shoulder for a long moment. The methodical movement soothed him, brought his heartrate down a little. 

“Johnny.” 

Soap jumped and glanced around. “Spooky fucker. Should put a bell on ye—” 

“Does she feel it?”

“What—”

He exhaled long and slow. “My pain. If I’m shot tomorrow, would she feel it?”

Soap glanced around, brows raised. “Ye don’t know?” 

“Say I don’t.” 

“No, the lass doesn’t feel it.” Soap turned his wrist, pointed to a scar that was lighter than some of the others, a pale tracery that slipped from the inside of his elbow to mid forearm. “Not mine. Watched it fade in one mornin’. Didn’t feel a thing.” 

Ghost looks at the scar, and Soap lets him. “Tha’ why you haven’t—”

“No.” 

“Why?” 

“Deserves better.” 

Johnny nodded, continued cleaning the rifle. “Thing is, LT. She doesn’t. That’s the point.” 

Well, at least he only had to worry about becoming his father. 

Fucking perfect. 

.

.

.

Two months deployment.  

The pain in Simon’s chest was agonizing, a constant fire. He couldn’t sleep, pain meds did nothing for it. 

He could only wait it out, wait until he was back on base and hope you were in your office, that the solace of your presence in that warm yellow light would be waiting for him. The pain would recede. He needed a plan, though. Clearly it wasn’t fucking viable to just let it go on. It was too distracting and only getting worse. It was no longer something he could ignore. 

Maybe, he didn’t really want to.

Maybe, Johnny was right. 

He half convinced himself that the lancing ache was so bad because you’d been posted somewhere else the last two months and you were further away than ever. Your office would be empty. This was just an agony he would have to learn to live with. 

Finally, though, they were going home. Intel secure. One last building to sweep. Empty. A loaded silence that made the back of his neck prickle. 

Not as empty as they thought. 

Soap steps quickly into the last room ahead of him, gaze sweeping from one side to another before he lowered his weapon and stepped forward. 

Ghost followed quickly, lowered his gun when he saw what Johnny had. Civilians. One curled around the other, sobbing so hard she made no noise. 

When she lifted her face, Simon sucked in a startled breath. She looked like you, only without his scars. There was a mark slowly bleeding into place on her temple, one that matched the gunshot wound of the woman beneath her. 

The wail that suddenly pierced the air was distraught, horrible, a lurch and a bang. 

Soap was there, kneeling, looking for wounds that Ghost knew didn’t exist. Horror froze him for the second time in his life, your face swimming behind his eyes. 

“I thought you said they couldn’t feel it,” he barked. 

“What?” 

“Soulmates.” 

Soap looked at the pair with fresh eyes. 

“They can’t, LT,” Soap said without glancing at him. “It’s no’ that. It’s just—” 

Grief. The unbearable snapping of a fated cord. The tether in his own chest pulsed, ached. He thought of it breaking cleanly in two, as though it never existed, your light snuffed out, leaving him in total darkness again. 

It wasn’t pain she was feeling, it was the absence. 

“Ghost,” Johnny said sharply and Simon finally snapped out of it, went to his side. 

It wasn't worth it, he thought. None of this could be fucking worth it. He was left with the sinking sense that all he could ever do was hurt you. 

All the same, he felt an urgency to go home. To return to your side. To feel your pulse under his fingers. 

Just to be sure. 

It took them a long time to get her to leave the body. 

.

.

.

Task Force 141 was deployed for nearly two months. 

September and October passed slowly, in starts and fits that seemed to drag. 

You developed a pain in your side, a stitch from taking it too hard in the gym you assumed. But nothing seemed to help it. The pang became a prick became a small misery that the base medical staff couldn’t pinpoint the origins of. 

You missed Ghost, and Kyle and Johnny, tolerated the terrible tea your coworkers made for you, went on another series of failed dates, and finally became friends with your cross-hall apartment neighbor. Months of baked goods and hellos finally coming to fruition. Pieces of a life were falling together. 

Finally, they were coming home. You left your offer that night with the assurance that they were uninjured, that Ghost, and likely Soap, would be in your office by noon the next day. 

But Simon still managed to reappear as he always did, silently and without warning. A shadow crossed your back as you were locking your office near midnight, a hand grazed your back. You followed the series of steps you’d been taught months ago. Foot back, elbow out, knife in hand, open, turn—

Your wrist was caught by the flat of his palm, fingers of the opposite hand yanking it from your grip.  

You blinked and breathed out heavily, relieved. The tight tenderness in your side leveled off for the first time in a month. “Ghost,” you murmured, lowering your now empty hand, “You aren’t supposed to be back until tomorrow morning.” 

“That disappointed to see me?” 

No. Never. But he was still in full tactical gear. The skin around his eyes was still layered with eyeblack, exhaustion and an acid tension rolling off him in a thick wave. His gaze was heavy, but steady, assessing you in turn. He smelled like diesel and cigarettes and gun powder. You lifted your chin. “Surprised to see you. Glad to see you.” 

He only flipped the knife around and held it out to you. “Nice work.” 

You smiled as you took the blade and stored it again. “You’re making me paranoid, I think.” 

“Good. Paranoid keeps you alive.” 

His eyes flicked over you, looking long and hard, though for what you couldn’t be sure. He stepped closer, until you were forced back against the door. He towered over you, corralled you back against the cool wood. Soft, dark eyes like wells of ink in the shadow of the hood pulled over his head, searched long enough that you began to worry something was wrong. 

You reached out and rested your hand on his forearm. His body was so taut you could feel the tremble of exhausted, overwrought muscle. “Ghost,” you said gently, carefully. “Are you okay?” 

He inhaled deeply, so hard and fast it sounded pained. 

He looked at you again, eyes sliding over you slowly, like he was orienting himself, finding steady ground on which to stand. 

“Why don’t you cover ‘em?”

Your belly clenched. “Cover what?” you queried, silently begging him not to ask that question. 

“Scars.” 

You went still, looking down at your skin. You had rolled up your sleeves earlier in the evening when furious typing had required it. They glinted silver in the low light of the hall. Pretty and delicate as dragon scales. 

It wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before. 

Still, you fought the urge to cross your arms. You hated when he stared at them. 

“Why would I?” You rubbed your wrist. “I don’t want to. They belong to my soulmate.”

He glanced away from you, his jaw tight beneath the mask. “You actually believe in that shite?” His voice was harsh, aggressive in a way he had never spoken to you before. “It’s a bloody children’s tale.”  

You bristled, felt something hard and mean well behind your breastbone in a tight knot. The pain that had been kicking you in the ribs lately reared again, made you wince and cover your side. “Well,” you snapped, gesturing to yourself with your free hand, “these aren’t mine, so I guess I have to.”  

He scoffed and you felt your heart lurch, hurt settling in your gut, twisting an invisible knife that much deeper. You tried to side step him but he didn’t move, a terrible, solid wall of muscle and—anger? Irritation? You couldn’t tell. “What the fuck do you care? Maybe you’re ashamed of yours,” you said roughly, “But not all of us are.” 

His brows furrowed and he shook his head again. “Oh, come off it.” 

“What?” 

“You’re tellin’ me that if you came face to face with the bastard that did this to you, you wouldn’t hate him?” 

Indignation burned a righteous path up your throat. “You don’t get to do that,” you said lowly. 

“You didn’t deny it,” he said. “You would.” 

“No,” you interrupted vehemently, swallowing around the word like gravel in your throat. “No, of course I wouldn’t. It wasn’t done to me, it—” 

But Simon was determined, his mind set. 

“He hurt you, changed the course of your bloody life, whether you want to admit it or not. You’ll hate him for it, love.” 

“For something he went through?” You asked incredulously, defensively. “Do you know how scared I was?” 

Ghost’s eyes went blank, his stare suddenly flat and far away. His gaze drifted from yours, the weight of flinty amber lifted. “Of him,” he said viciously, like something terrible he’d always known had been confirmed. 

“No,” you snarled again, not sure why Ghost was fighting you, not sure why he cared about your scars suddenly. “You aren’t listening. For him.” Your ribs ached, your breath came in short bursts. He was too close, the clashing sensations of safety and agitation calcifying the tension between you into a solid, immutable wall. 

You inhaled shakily through the sudden distress. Your lungs hitched and spasmed before you could suck in a proper breath, feeling faint, glad for the wall behind you. 

He blinked, looked down at you again. “Hey—” 

“I was so scared I would lose him before I ever got to meet him. Ever since I was a kid I’ve had scars. Cigarette burns and scratches, bite marks. I used to hope he was older than me, so it wouldn’t have meant that he—so that he wouldn’t have been—” Agitation rises like a tide, all the nights you’d sat awake watching scars bleed into your skin. Your parents had been unable to look at you in the morning, wondering what the future held for you. What kind of person that child would grow up to be. 

The same fear Simon seemed to be holding onto so tightly. 

You stumbled over his concern, something prickling at the base of your neck. 

“Once,” you continued shakily, “they just kept showing up, day after day, for months. I didn’t know what was happening and there was nothing I could do. I thought he was going to die and I couldn’t help him. I was so worried and all I could do was watch.” 

You met his eyes, saw something so raw and wretched there that you flinched back, closed your eyes, breath caught. 

You aren’t sure when you transitioned to using he instead of they. 

It suddenly didn’t feel like you were talking about someone you hadn’t met yet. 

You thought of how strangely intense he was about you. How you had felt so strongly about him immediately. How the only bit of his skin you’ve ever seen has been around his eyes; the delicate veins at his wrists.

You thought of him making you tea and teaching you to defend yourself. You thought of him walking you to your car and pulling you into sunny days. You thought of all the cups of coffee and boxes of tea, the gentle way he handled the blanket you made him from cheap cotton like it was spun gold. 

You thought of Johnny asking after your scars the first time you met him. How not long after you’d been personally introduced to the rest of the 141 for no discernable reason. How they checked on you. How they were probably the only people that knew what Ghost’s face looked like. 

“No,” you whispered, pieces of a terrible puzzle sliding together in your mind. 

You opened your eyes.  

“Ghost?” you asked softly, tentatively lifting your hand. 

He jerked back. “Don’t do that,” he warned.  

You stepped closer, knowing you were playing with fire, that he might burn you, lash out like a dog with its leg in a trap. 

But if he was yours—

If he was yours, you would not be the one to inflict more hurt on him. 

He did not want this, he did not want you, that much was clear. 

You closed your hand and let it fall, pushed your fist against your heart instead. “I see you,” you said gently. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” 

“You don’t understand,” he rasped.  

“You survived.” You backed away. “That’s enough. To know you’re okay.” 

The empty spot in your chest ached, seemed to grow tendrils that wrapped around your heart. A bond so close and not latched. Because you haven’t seen him. He has to let you in.

“When you’re ready. If you’re ever ready. I'm here.”

He finally returned his gaze to yours. 

“Did it hurt?” 

“Did what hurt?” You tilted your head but he didn’t answer, just stared at you with big, moon dark eyes, brows pinched inward, eyeblack creating a tiny white line there. “Oh, you wouldn’t know, I guess.” You shook your head, “No I was just scared. Just worried. It didn’t hurt. You’ve never hurt me.” 

He moved so quickly and silently that you jumped when his hand curled around your wrist. Light enough that you could pull away if you wanted.  

“You don’t have to. You never have to. I don’t want to take anything else from you.” 

Ghost hesitated, his chest rising and falling quickly. “Do I have any of yours?” The question was quiet, almost reverent.  

You nodded, “‘Course you do. I fell out of a tree when I was a kid. Gave me a nasty scar on the back of my elbow. I landed on a rock.” 

His eyes flicked away, like he was trying to imagine it. You twisted your arm, showed him the thick line of scar there, totally different than the lighter version of his on your skin. “See? You’ll have that one in the same spot but lighter. Maybe not even visible, since you’re so pale.” 

Your breath caught when he stepped closer, the pain in your chest was so intense it made breathing difficult.

“It’s not fair to you.” 

“What isn’t?” 

“To bloody leave it. Hurts, yeah?” 

You didn’t admit to the spasming in your chest; it wouldn’t help anything. “When have you ever cared about fair?” 

He made a pained sound. “Don’t.” 

“I’m okay. I don’t need anything from you. I don’t want anything from you.”

“You’re supposed to need things from me.”  

He peeled his gloves off, tucked them into his back pocket. The hall was still and silent aside from your combined ragged breathing. It sounded like you’d been running a marathon. “Ghost—” 

“Simon,” he said. “Please, call me Simon.” 

You closed your eyes, felt his hands graze your collarbone, your throat, before anchoring on your jaw, tilting your face up. “Look at me, sweet’eart.” 

“I can’t.” Your voice trembled, tears clogging your throat. 

“Can.” 

Very gently, he leaned down and pushed his forehead against yours. 

You shuddered and swallowed and stepped closer. Simon curled his arms around you, pulled you into his chest. He was so broad and tall, you felt swaddled against him, warm and secure. His scent wrapped around you like ribbons holding you together. “No point dragging it on, yeah? No point you being in pain.” 

“How long?” 

“The whole time,” he admitted after a moment. His voice rumbled against your cheek. It felt like home. “First time I saw you.” 

“You have had this pain for almost a whole year—” 

“Not your fault,” he interrupted, one massive hand sliding down your spine. “Not your fault.” 

You huffed, hooked your fingers beneath his tac vest. “I’m sorry anyway.” You pulled back, felt his arms tighten around you for a moment. He didn’t want to let you go. “Is there anything you need to take care of? Reports or debriefing or something?” 

“No.” 

“Would. . . would you want to come to mine—” 

He reached under your arm and plucked your keys out of the lock before you could finish, guiding you down the hall, his hand never leaving your skin. 

You had never seen Simon outside the base, you realized suddenly, and everything felt vastly more fragile. It also felt as though that hollow pulse in your chest would tear if you were asked to walk away at that moment, something real and physical would tear and drop out of you, an irreparable part of your soul. 

You weren’t sure how you drove home, Ghost huge in your passenger seat, your hands shaking each time he shifted his grip on you. 

In your apartment, you hesitated, not sure where you belonged in your own space anymore. Simon looked strange in your tiny living room, among soft blankets and years of collected books and knicknacks. An all consuming shadow. You wondered if this would end like all those dates, just another failure, another loss. 

When you started to step toward the lamp, Simon’s fingers curled around your wrist to keep you by his side. “No.” 

“Just turning on the lamp.” 

He released you.

As you stepped away, a hollow pulse in your chest retched with pain that made you gasp and clutch the edge of the sofa. It felt real, like something was breaking, jagged edges clawing at the inside of your skin. You wondered what Ghost’s self imposed distance might have done to the bond. There were stories, albeit few, of corrosion. The bond literally rusting out, slowly poisoning the soulmate and their pair. 

“Come ‘ere,” he muttered. “Sit down.”

When his palm cupped your elbow, the world became softer. Like purr instead of a shriek. He guided you onto the sofa. 

Your hands shook when he released you, making quick work of the lamp. The room flooded with soft yellow light. He glanced around. Art on the walls, forest green rug over hardwood floor, molding you had painted a delicate gold. You felt embarrassed of it all suddenly. 

“God,” you muttered. He didn’t seem to feel the pain at all, which made your chest ache in a different way and guilt pool heavily between your bones for it. You didn’t want him to be in pain, but you felt as though you were breathing water, choking on your own lungs. “How have you dealt with this?” 

“Worse now,” he said, though you felt it was his version of a kind untruth. 

He sat next to you, reached for you, then faltered, unsure. You closed the space, folded your fingers between his. The scars made a fucked up little mirror when you looked down at your hands. They matched exactly. “I’m sorry.” 

Simon didn’t answer, but stayed close to you, letting you hold his hand. Even the smallest amount of space between you seemed to burn, a brazier that flared hot and demanded attention. But it was better; just having his bare hand in yours helped. 

“Nothin’ t’be sorry for.” He said after a few minutes of uneven breathing, eyes trained on your hands, thumb running over the back of your fingers. 

“You don’t want me.” 

It wasn’t a question. 

He glanced up, something razor sharp in his eyes. You flinched a little, but his hand tightened on yours. 

“You don’t have to—We don’t have to bond,” you tripped over the last word. “It’s okay.” 

“Obviously it’s not, bird.” 

Your heart sunk and you glanced away. A one in eight billion chance was sitting under your nose for months, and he wanted nothing to do with you. He was being forced into it.

“I’m sorry,” you murmured again. “Ghost, I’m—”

“Simon,” he corrected.  

“Simon,” you echoed. 

He curled his hands around your wrists, lifted your palms to the bottom of his mask. He let your hands settle at the base of his throat, eyes never leaving yours. “I didn’t want you,” he said plainly. “I never wanted you to know.” 

You swallowed and nodded. “I’m s—” 

“No.”

You closed your mouth with a click of your jaw. You don’t expect a speech and he doesn’t give you one. “You deserve better,” he said. “But I’m all you get.” 

His knee touched yours. Your faces were tilted together, so close that the only thing you could see were the soft depths of his eyes reflecting the gold light.

It didn’t feel close enough. 

You wished it were all different. 

That he didn’t feel forced, that you were what he wanted. 

“I deserve you. Isn’t that the point?” 

He watched you for a long moment, an unreadable expression on his face, then nodded. 

“Go on, then.” 

Your throat felt tight as you tugged the mask upwards, heart lurching when you recognized the same scar on your throat on his. You pushed the fabric over his chin and mouth, up until you could pull it over his head. 

You looked at him, the same scar over his mouth, along his cheek, the bridge of his nose was nicked, the outline of burn scarring crossed the edge of his jaw and neck. When you looked past that, you saw him. Crooked nose, thick, furrowed brows, dark eyes you’d loved for a long time cast darker by the black around them, light eyelashes and hair, longer on top and curling. 

Something seemed to. . .snap then. A warmth broke between you, filled that awful, dark, pained well in your chest. It hurt, but the pain was brief, like stitches done by a seasoned medic. 

Breathing was easier. You could feel the pulse of him without the threat of imminent pain. It was a warm, comforting, safe thing in your lungs. You inhaled, attempted to stand, to give him a bit of space. “Should be able to separate now. Shall we test it—” 

You didn’t get a chance to move away, tugged suddenly from your seat and into his lap. You fell heavily against his chest, wrapped tightly in his arms, foreheads slanted together. 

“No,” he said, sounding, for the first time since you’ve known him, breathless. “No.” 

“I don’t want to.” 

“Good.” 

“Can I touch you?” 

“Can do anything you like to me, bird.” 

You stroked the side of his throat, felt him shiver. “Well, I won’t. Not anything.” 

He made a content noise of agreement. 

You touched his jaw, his cheek, the tail of his brow, the faded check through it that you’d never noticed matched your own. His arms tightened around you in increments until the pressure forced you to take shallow breaths. “You’re beautiful.” 

“Lookin’ in a mirror, are you?” 

“Sort of,” you answered. “A little.” 

His hands shifted, anchored on your hips, and pushed you back a little. 

Disappointment that it was over so soon pinched at your throat but you backed off, attempting to slide from his lap. His hand caught at your hip. “Stop trying to bloody move.” 

“What—” 

He was only taking off the vest, which probably should have been left at the base. It dropped heavily to the floor as he pulled you against his chest. It was warmer, softer like that, thick muscle coiled beneath your cheek when you rested it against his shoulder, heartbeat hard against yours.  

“No more pain?” 

“None.” 

“Good.” 

You pushed your face against his throat, felt him tense and then uncoil. One large hand cupped the back of your neck, holding you there. You brushed your lips against his pulse point, felt a scarred flutter against your mouth, a muted grunt.

“You’re all I want,” you admitted quietly. “I think I knew. I think everyone knew. I’m sorry,” you finally said, “that I’m not who you need.”  

His hand squeezes your neck and then he’s pushing you down against the cushions, pressing one massive thigh between your legs, hauling you closer like it could never be close enough. The space between your bodies would always be too large, because you couldn’t climb into his chest, nest among his veins. 

It would have to do then, his hand tilting your jaw up, his eyes searching yours as you part your lips. 

“You are, sweet’eart,” he said simply, mouth brushing yours before he kissed you properly. 

He tasted of black tea; his eyeblack rubs off on your temples. 

Already, he was leaving pieces of himself behind with you to mark safe.

“Simon,” you murmured against his mouth. Just to say it, just to be rewarded with a shudder.

The kiss slipped into something more desperate, your hands felt the skin of his back, your own scar on his elbow, and you thought, maybe, you could become what he needed.  

You chewed on your lower lip as you crossed the lawn towards him, a heat swirling in your belly that had nothing to do with the July weather. It had been so long since you’d been with someone, let alone interested in anyone, that you almost didn’t recognize what the feeling was. Watching the way Brett expertly flipped the burgers on the grill with a flick of his wrist, his forearm muscles bulging, you knew exactly what you wanted.

You wanted to fuck Brett Richards.

You weaved through the crowd of people who had gathered for Edgewaters annual Fourth of July barbecue and came up to stand next to your dad’s best friend, who was delightfully alone.

“Hi,” You said, clasping your hands behind your back to avoid accidentally reaching out and touching his bicep like your fingers were itching to do. “I haven’t seen you in Edgewater before.” Brett gave you a friendly smile as he closed the grill and your knees shook at how handsome he looked when he smiled, with wrinkles in the corner of his eyes. You wanted to kiss his crows feet.

“I just got here a few weeks go.”

“Oh, me too! I just moved back.” You commented, giving him a beautiful smile back. You saw how his eyes flickered down to your mouth for just a moment and your heart soared in triumph.

“Why’d you move away?” Brett asked, mirroring your stance with his hands behind his back as he turned to face you fully. You knew that stance well, it was one firefighters did when they were standing at attention. You licked your lips as your eyes raked over his chest and broad shoulders before you replied.

“For school.” You said, your eyes moving back to his face and seeing amusement in his features. He caught you staring and you didn’t mind one bit. “But I came back because my grandmother is recovering from hip surgery and she needs some help. My job is remote so I can be here with her.” Another small smile crept onto Brett’s face as he nodded at your explanation. You could tell he was impressed by your decision to drop everything and return home to help your family.

“And you’re a firefighter?” You asked playfully, your eyes shining with mischief as Brett chuckled.

“What gave it away?”

“Oh, just your arms and your hands.” You said with an innocent shrug. Brett narrowed his eyes a fraction, thrown by your answer. He was sure you’d point out the t-shirt he was wearing with the fire department logo on it.

“My arms and hands?” He asked, tilting his head towards you in confusion. You nodded and held out your hand for him to give you his. He gave you a quizzical look but complied, unclasping his hands to give you his arm. You stepped unnecessarily close as you took his hand in both of yours, turning it over as you spoke.

“You clearly work with your hands, you have callouses and tiny scars,” You ran the tip of your finger over the palm of his hand, following the lines like you were telling his fortune. His fingers twitched like they wanted to grab your hand but they stayed flat for you.

“And your muscles show lots of strength,” Your fingers trailed across his wrist and up his forearm, sliding over the corded muscles under his skin. “Probably from swinging an axe and you’re too clean shaven to be a lumberjack.” You looked up at him then and saw his face was flushed a shade of pink it hadn’t been before. You bit your bottom lip and tilted your head at him.

“Am I right?” You watched Brett swallow, the muscles of his throat working as he stared at you with darkened eyes. He nodded, his eyes locked on your lips. You smiled and stepped back, hoping he’d chase you, which he did until a voice broke through the crowd.

“Oh you two met already!” Your mom appeared next to you, giving you a quick side hug as she beamed at her husbands old friend. “Your dad will be so pleased you recognized Brett, honey.” She said to you, completely oblivious to the charged energy between her daughter and her husbands best friend.

Brett stood there slack jawed as you conversed with your mom. He’d spent the last few minutes basking in the attention you gave him, his eyes greedily looking at the tops of your breasts peaking out of the neckline of your summer dress and imagining sliding his hands up your thighs and under the skirt of the dress. But you weren’t some random young woman flirting with him at the barbecue, you were his best friends daughter! He suddenly felt like a dirty old man, lusting after you like that.

You didn’t seem to mind, casting Brett glance that told him you wanted to eat him alive. His cock jumped at the look in your eyes, his imagination running wild with all the positions he could fuck you in.

Your mom broke Brett’s train of thought when she had to bid farewell suddenly to go help with some dispute at the raffle table. Alone with you once again, Brett tried to deflect.

“If you’re waiting on a burger they’re almost done.”

“That’s not what I’m hungry for.” You commented, your words heavy with innuendo.

“You’re playing with fire kid.” Brett warned, trying to hold onto his last shred of morality.

“Good thing that’s your specialty Deputy Chief Richards.” You said with a flirtatious smile.

“We can’t.” Brett whispered back.

“Why not?”

“Your dad-”

“Will never know.” You cut him off, squashing his worry. “C’mon Brett, you’re not gonna leave me all cold and alone tonight, are you?” You asked coyly, batting your eyelashes at him. Brett swallowed thickly, half his brain shouting this was a bad idea and the other half chanting ‘do it!’ again and again.

That half of his brain and his cock won out and soon he was leaving the function about two steps behind you. Your dad stopped you both, none the wiser to what was about to happen, and you lied to him effortlessly when he asked where you were going.

“Brett offered to come over and fix that leaking pipe my landlord has been ignoring.”

“Thanks for helping Brett!” Your dad commended his friend as he slapped him on the back while you all walked to Brett’s truck before your dad started heading back to the party. “I know you’ll take good care of my girl.”

And take ‘good care’ he did, alllllll night long.

“Fuck, fuck, you feel so good baby.” Brett groaned as his cock thrust into you over and over, his hips slapping against yours as he pressed you into your mattress. You moaned in response, your legs wrapped around him as you clung to his body for dear life. The room was hot and humid, partially from the July heat and partially from the marathon sex you were having with Brett. Your bodies were covered in a sheen of sweat, your breaths hot and quick as Brett fucked you.

He knew this was wrong, you were his best friends daughter. Hell, his own daughter was only a few years older than you. But Brett couldn’t deny how good this felt, plunging his cock deep inside you, watching your face scrunch up at the pleasure he gave you. He wanted to get lost inside you, forever nestled between your perfect thighs.

“You’re doing so good baby, takin’ me so well.” Brett grunted, his forehead pressed against yours as his hot breath fanned over your face. Your nails dragged down his back as you whined, your pleasure nearing its peak.

“You gonna come?” You nodded frantically in response, a whimpered ‘mm hm’ sounding from your throat.

“Yeah, yeah, come on my cock baby. Be good for me kid, come on my cock like the good girl you are.“ Brett cooed softly, sending you over the edge. You came, your back arching as much as it could under his weight as you screamed his name. Brett fucked you through it, not letting up for a second. As your pussy fluttered with aftershocks around his cock, Brett muttered praises against your skin.

“Good job kid, you did so well. ‘M so proud of you.” Your pussy clamped down on his cock at his praising words as another whine was pulled from your throat. Your whole body shifted on the mattress from the force of Brett’s thrusts as he chased his own orgasm, the bed creaking in rhythm.

“Look at me baby.” He ordered. “Eyes on me when I come in you.” Your whole body grew hot at his words and you forced your eyes open so he could stare at you.

“Yeah, yeah, just like that. So good for me. Fuck, I’m gonna come."

"Please Brett," You begged, your ankles locking across his ass and pulling him impossibly closer.

"Yes, oh fuck yes, oh fuck baby I’m gonna come! I'm gonna come!” Brett panted, his hips slamming into yours frantically as he came, his hot cum spilling inside you. Brett sighed contently as his hips slowed to a stop, his cock buried fully inside you before he collapsed on top of you, his weight like a comforting blanket. He pressed his face into the crook of your neck, heaving breaths against your skin, hot and fast. Your hands rubbed over his back as you tried to catch your breath too, your whole body tired and satisfied from the sex. It had been a long while since someone ravished you like this, you were practically floating.

“You’re amazing baby.” Brett sighed happily and you giggled with the little energy you had left.

“Worth it then?” You asked. Brett peppered kisses over your neck, trailing upwards to your lips. He kissed you soundly, his tongue sliding over yours.

“Very worth it. And if I’m already going to Hell, I might as well have some fun.” Brett kissed back down your jaw, pulling himself back until he was slipping out of you along with gush of his cum. Brett kissed down between your breasts, his intended destination clear. Your hands found their way to his grey curls and followed his head down between your legs as Brett showed you just how much he liked you all night long.

dividers by @ cursed-carmine

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He was nursing a bourbon he’d probably make last the entire night and he was half-listening to Langdon tell some story, his leg stretched out into the aisle, and he hadn’t seen you yet. You had a second. You could have turned around and texted Dana some bullshit excuse of getting the full eight hours and walked back to the parking lot to go home to your dog and half your bed.

You never did, though. You told yourself afterward it was because the leaving would’ve told the table something. But the truer thing, the one you didn’t want to look at directly, was that an evening without Jack had started to feel like a room with the bulb burned out. You’d gotten that bad. 

“There she is,” Dana said, twisting around in the booth, already sliding to make room. “Sit. I saved you the good side. It doesn’t wobble.”

You sat, and the good side put you diagonal from Jack, close enough that his stretched-out leg was a fact you had to arrange your own legs around under the table. He hadn’t acknowledged you yet. He was letting Langdon finish; Jack always let people finish, it was something that made patients trust him and made you, toward the end, want to put a plate through the wall because he’d let you get to the bottom of sentences you’d have killed to be interrupted out of.

But you watched the back of his neck change as his shoulders went from loose to aware. When he turned, his eyes found yours like a bad number on a monitor, faster than he could’ve chosen. For half-a-second, before his face caught up, he looked so completely undefended. Then it was gone and he looked at you like you were weather he'd been told about. 

“Huh,” he breathed, picking his bourbon back up. “They let your department fraternize with the help now, or are you slumming?”

“Dana kidnapped me.” You reached over and took the lime off his rim. He’d never once in his life used it—he hated citrus in bourbon—and only got it because Marlene behind the bar had been putting it in each time. Jack had decided somewhere around your wedding that debating her on it was more than what the lime was worth. 

You bit it and set the rind into his napkin where it went, where it had always gone. 

His eyes tracked you as you did it without any comment. The better half of five years of the lime and he’d never once said anything, only bought you the garnish on his own drink. 

“How was your floor?” you asked.

“Slow.” He turned the glass a quarter-turn on the table, an old tell, the thing his hands did when he was trying very hard to keep his words scarce. “Knock on something.” 

“But I like watching you suffer,” you drawled. 

He huffed at that. “I know.”

That was it. He was good at letting things sit, it was the worst of his habits, the way he could absorb a thing you said and just hold it instead of returning it. Half your sentences to him used to end in a silence you'd eventually have to fill yourself. You'd forgotten how much work it was. You'd forgotten you used to do all the talking and call it conversation.

“You got Kevin this week?” Dana asked from beside you. 

Jack, without a beat of hesitation, said, “She’s got Kilo this week.”

Javadi, the new and curious med student in the ER, looked between both of you with furrowed brows. “Sorry. Kevin or Kilo? Is that—are those two dogs?”

“One dog,” you said.

“Yup. One dog,” Jack agreed.

“Then why—” Javadi started.

“His name’s Kilo,” Jack said.

“No, his name’s Kevin.”

Javadi’s head went between you as though she was watching a tennis match. The table laughed because they’d heard this a hundred times and it never stopped being funny to them; the divorced two doing their oldest bit, the one argument that had outlived the marriage that spawned it.

“His papers say Kilo,” Jack said in Javadi’s direction.

Robby, who’d been completely invested in his own drink, said, “And your papers say divorced.”

“And we very much are, thank you,” you said, picking it up before the laugh had finished.

Jack stayed silent then. Robby, he’d have something for. But this was you saying it, easy and completely certain in front of everyone. The leg that had been stretched into your space this entire night drew back slowly, a small retreat nobody at the table except you could’ve felt. He turned the glass a quarter-turn. 

You’d done it on purpose. You’d felt the whole night immediately tilting into the warm dangerous fiction of it and you’d reached for the one sentence that would shut it, and you’d swung it at the only person who’d actually feel the blade. 

The facts of your divorce were no concern to anyone but the two of you at the table, but you could feel Jack flinch inwardly by the announcement that blanketed it all; that you now lived in separate homes, that the dog was scheduled like a custody hearing; that the word ‘we’ had a tense and it was past. None of it was news. He’d signed the same papers you had in the same flat conference room, with the same pen the mediator kept clicking until you'd wanted to scream. He knew the facts better than anyone. And still you'd watched him wince when you said it out loud.

He'd built a whole life on the difference between a thing being true and a thing being spoken; it was how he ran a trauma bay, how he told a family the worst news in the world in a voice that never broke, how he'd ended your marriage without ever once saying the words that would've made it real, just withdrawing by degrees until you were the one who had to say them for him. He'd made you do that too. He made you do all the saying. And now you'd said this, and he was sitting there absorbing it the way he absorbed everything, quietly, like he'd decided long ago that taking it without a sound was the least of what he had coming.

“Just fucking do it, Jack.”

And he did—finally, finally—push into you with a single long stroke that dragged a sound out of both of you, his coming out through his teeth, and yours into the pillow. His forehead came down between your shoulder blades. He stayed there for a second, breathing, one hand splayed wide over your hip and the other braced into the mattress beside your hips. His weight settled onto the left leg the way it always settled, a decision his body stopped having to make years ago. You could feel him shaking with the effort of not moving yet, of dragging it out, because he always did this, he always made you ask twice. 

“Christ,” he breathed into your spine. “You feel—” he started, and let the words die as his teeth gently pressed into the bone at the top of your shoulder. It was then he started to move.

He fucked like he did everything else with his hands; he was methodical, attentive, and so devastingly present. He went in believing there was always a correct rhythm, and he intended to find it just to ruin you with it. He’d learned by repetition until it stopped requiring thought, until he could play you without looking, and the worst part—the one you’d never say out loud—was that it worked. It always worked. He knew the exact angle that made you stop being a person with opinions about him. 

That long stroke dragged slow on the way out and snapped deep on the way back in, and your whole body misfired around him whether you’d given it permission to or not.

His palm slid up from your hip to flatten between your shoulder blades and pressed, folding you down into the mattress, taking the choice out of your spine. And the new angle had you gasping into the sheets because he’d done it on purpose; he always did everything on purpose, and now he was hitting that place that made your fingers curl and your thighs shake and a thin embarrassing whine climb out you that you’d have died before making it sober. 

Jack felt the exact second your control went and he leaned into it, hips grinding deep and unhurried, holding you right there on the edge of too-much like he was reading everything under your skin. 

“That’s it,” he drawled out, his voice low and even, the bastard, like he had all night, like he wasn’t already wrecked behind the voice. “Yeah, I’ve got you.” And he did. He had you exactly where he wanted you and you let him, because no one had ever taken you apart this precisely, this patiently, like your falling apart was the only thing on his list and he intended to do it right.

The dog tags swung forward and dragged close across your back when he leaned over you, then warm when they settled against your skin, and you thought—stupidly, with the part of your brain that should’ve been offline—that you used to fall asleep listening to that chain shift when he breathed. You thought there had been a version of this where afterward he stayed. You shoved that thought down. You arched your back into him instead and he made a punched-out noise, low in his chest, his grip going tight on you to leave the marks.

“Slow down,” he muttered more to himself than you, but he didn’t. His hips stuttered out of their careful rhythm because this was the one place his composure failed; it was the one place where the sealed-up, gallows humor, watching-you-over-the-glass version of him came apart at the seams. 

You’d figured this out over the months. This was the only place Jack was honest. He’d never say the things across a table, in daylight, with his clothes on. But here, with his cock buried inside of you and his composure shot, the truth leaked out of him in fragments he wouldn’t be accountable for later. 

“Missed this,” he got out, ragged, his mouth at the back of your neck now, words pressed into your hairline like he could bury them in there. “Missed you, fuck. You’ve got no idea, sweetheart, the things I—” 

“Don’t.” You didn’t want it. You wanted it so badly your chest ached and that was exactly why you didn’t want it, because you knew what it was worth in the morning, which was nothing, which was a text about whether you’d remembered to walk Kevin. “Jack. Don’t talk. You can’t—” You let out a gasp as he pressed his hips completely flush against yours, chasing you to the hilt, as if he could physically expel the words out of you. “Can’t fuck me into being with you again.”

You felt him falter at the words, just for a beat, the rhythm catching like you’d reached back and put a hand flat on his sternum. He slowed, dragged himself almost all the way out and held there, trembling, his whole weight coming down over your back so his mouth was now at your ear and you could feel everything against the shell of it.

“I know,” he said, words ragged. “I know I can’t. Doesn’t mean I can’t try.”

His hand moved around the dip of your waist, and he pulled out of you slow, the loss making you bite down on a sound. Then he was rolling you, one palm flat and insistent on your hip, turning you under him onto your back like it was the easiest thing in the world.

“No—” You got an arm up, forearm against your own eyes, because you knew what he wanted, and you weren’t going to give it to him. The face, the looking. From behind, you could keep it what it was; turned over, you’d have to be there for it. “Jack, leave it. I don’t—”

“Hey.” He held your wrist, thumb working into the soft inside of it where your pulse was going stupid. “C’mon. Move the arm.”

“No.”

“You won’t even—” He let out a low laugh, disbelieving, almost wounded. “You’ll let me do every other thing but you won’t even look at me?”

“That’s different.”

“Yeah.” He went quiet for a moment, and his hand slid up the inside of your thigh, holding you open, patient as anything. He knew exactly what the looking was and exactly why you were hiding from it, and he was going to wait you out. “I know it is. Move the arm anyway.”

He braced over you on his arm, the other hand drawing slow idle circles high on your thigh, his cock notched against you and not pushing in, just there, the threat and promise of him, while he looked down at the arm over your face. You could feel him watching.

So you did move the arm, mostly just to spite him by giving him exactly what he wanted. His face was right there—jaw tight, eyes gone dark and fixed on you like you were the only lit thing in the room—and the second you met it, the slight smugness melted clean down the middle and there was just the wanting underneath, naked and his.

“Thank god,” he breathed before pushing back into you. His eyes tracked your face scrunch up at the familiar—too familiar—pleasure like he’d been starving for exactly this. His hand left your jaw and found your knee, hooking it up higher over his hip. He’d always known your left hip sat wrong, that this was the angle that didn’t ache after; the same way you knew, without ever being told, to take the weight off his right side, the two of you arranging yourselves around each other the way you always had. “Knew you were in there somewhere.”

“Don’t get sentimental, Jack” you said, breathless. “You’ll pull something.”

He huffed a laugh against your jaw. Your hand had gone to his left shoulder and you pressed your thumb into the knot that always sat under the blade after a long shift, working it slow while he moved in you. He groaned low and helpless at the unexpected mercy of it.

“Mouthy,” he managed to say. “Even now.”

“You’re so—so insufferable.”

His mouth found the corner of yours and his hand slid up your ribs so his thumb could catch the underside of your breast exactly where he knew; your back came up off the mattress for him. “You married me anyway. What’s that say about you?”

You got your fingers to his hair and scratched once at the base of his skull, the thing that used to put him to sleep in under five minutes, something you’d done about a thousand times in a bed you no longer shared. You watched his eyes go briefly unfocused with how much his body remembered it meant being safe. You hated that you’d done it. 

The easy heat in him went somewhere graver, and his hand came up to cover yours where it rested in his hair. He pinned it there, keeping the touch on him, like he couldn’t bear for you to take it back.

“Why’d you—” His hips stuttered. “Why’d you have to go, huh?”

“Don’t,” you said quickly, and your hand came out of his hair—you made it come down, fighting the pin of his fingers—and you planted your palm against his chest to put an inch back between the two of you. “Don’t talk. Just—shut up. Jack, shut up and—”

He took in a breath, lips still parted like he wanted to talk. You’d expected it. Jack was fabulous at saying everything important while inside you or when he was halfway asleep.

“Yeah.” He nodded shakily. “Yeah. Okay.”

He got an arm under the small of your back and hauled you up into him, and the next stroke was just deep and selfish, like he’d stopped trying to make his point and now was only trying to get somewhere. The slow ruinous tenderness burned off into something with no thought left in it, and your body surged up to meet it—God—yes, this, you could do, this didn’t ask you for anything you’d sworn off. This was just the white-hot animal fact of him and you could be all the way in without losing a single thing. 

“There,” he ground out, forehead dropped to yours, both of you breathing into the same inch of air. “There—fuck—there you go.”

Your mind went black. That was the mercy of getting it like this; the part of you that counted the times he’d said your name, that totted up what the morning had cost, went quiet, drowned clean in the simple overwhelming good of him. You grabbed at his back and pulled him in past where there was room and made a strangled noise.

His hand found yours where it was fisted in the sheet and laced through it, knuckles white, pinning it down beside your head—needing the anchor—and you gripped back just as hard. The bed was loud. Neither of you cared. You'd gone past the place where you could have stopped even if the smarter version of you had walked in and ordered it, both of you just chasing the finish now with a kind of grim mutual desperation, like if you got it done fast enough you wouldn't have to deal with what it was.

“Close,” you breathed. “Jack, I’m close—” 

“I know. C’mon, let me feel it—” His hand let go of yours and dropped between you, fingers finding you without a second of searching, the muscle-memory of you deathly absolute. “Been thinking about this all night.” 

He worked you up to the edge with his face buried in your throat and his hips snapping. The whole thing finally cresting into something neither of you could've talked through if you'd tried.

You went over first, the peak tearing through you with your nails dug into his back and your spine bowed clean off the mattress. He fucked you through every second of it, hips ramming, dragging it up past the point you could stand. And right at the end of yours his rhythm broke and went erratic, deep and grinding and graceless, and you felt the exact moment it caught him.

His arms hooked tighter under the small of your back and hauled you up into him so there was nowhere for him to go but deeper, like the thought of any distance between the two of you right now was a thing he couldn’t tolerate. Your legs wrapped around the backs of his thighs anyway, your heel pressed into the base of his spine.

“Gonna—” His voice came out shredded, into your throat. “Sweetheart, I’m gonna—fuck—”

With a low broken sound, his whole weight crushed down and his hips gave those last helpless grinding pushes, burying himself to the hilt, spilling into you with his face shoved into your neck and his hand fisted in your hair. He continued moving even then, small, greedy rolls of his hips, working himself deeper through the aftershocks, wringing every second out. 

“God.” He shuddered out the word against your pulse, hips still flush, seated as deep as he could get. His arms came around you completely—there wasn’t any inch he wasn’t holding—and he stayed there long after he finished, unwilling to give up the last of it. Greedy even now, especially now. Jack would take every second he was handed and a few he wasn’t.

His heart slammed against your ribs. His breath dragged itself slowly back down. For a moment, you let him have it. You let him stay heavy on and inside you, and you stared at the ceiling. 

After a minute—because that’s all you could grant him, a mere sixty seconds—you put your palm flat on his chest, over the spot where the dog tags had settled cold against his skin, and you pushed.

He came up on his forearms and he looked down at you. That was the hundredth mistake of the night, letting him be that close to your face with the lights of the street coming through the blinds in stripes across him. He looked at you the way he looked at you in the one place he ever did, like you were something he'd been allowed to hold and was already being asked to set back down, and the wanting in it was so total and so useless that you had to look at his collarbone instead.

Then his fingers came up to your chin, tilting your head up gently to meet his eyes again. “I wish you weren’t so cruel to me in front of people.” he said, voice coming out so rough. 

You knew exactly which part of the night he was talking about. He’d carried it the whole way here—through the parking lot, through the drive, through all of this, your body still humming with him—and he’d held onto it the entire time, only to let it out now because now was the only time he could.

“It’s not cruel if it’s true,” you said. “Nobody thought it was cruel.”

“No, nobody thought anything.” He caressed your jaw just slightly, and you stilled under the grazing touch. “I still felt it.” 

Maybe it was the hour, or the drinks still thinning in you, or just the unbearable fact of him looking at you. Regardless of what it was, the lid you kept on the old thing slipped, and you didn't get it back down in time.

“Don’t talk to me about cruelty, Jack,” you said quietly, holding his eyes even though you could feel your own burn. You could do it for once, because he was the one that looked like he needed a collarbone to fix his gaze on. “It was your cruelty that did this.”

His thumb stopped at your jaw. And then, instead of the stillness you’d expected, his hand slid back into your hair and his arm came around you and he pulled you in, the whole weight of him bearing down. His face went into your neck. 

You froze under him, suddenly hating him all over again for making this harder and harder each time.

“Go home,,” you said, and it came out lower than you’d wanted it to.

He let out a shaky breath against your skin. “I’d like to stay with you for one night. If you asked.” 

Your hands came up to his shoulders. You gently pushed. “I’m asking you to go.”

He came up off you slow, by degrees, and the cold rushed into every place he’d just been. He never argued; he only gave you offers where with the condition of you having to ask welded into them. He sat up on the edge of the bed with his back to you and reached for his shirt off the floor.

People at the hospital had a word for you and it was ‘difficult.’ You’d made peace with it years ago. What you didn’t have a word for was the tired. You’d been tired before; this had a different grain to it, bone-level and sitting-behind-your eyes. Twice this week the floor had gone soft and far away when you stood up too fast. You’d put a hand on the counter and waited it out and told no one.

You hadn't eaten, either. The granola bar was still in your bag. So when you stood up from the workstation to walk the corrected units down yourself, the room didn't gray at the edges this time. It dropped. The whole thing tilted bright then dim, your hand reached for the counter and missed it by an inch, and the next clear thing was the floor being closer than it should be and a hand hard around your arm.

“Okay—I’ve got you. Sit.” Dana, you recognized. Of course it was Dana; she had a sixth sense for the exact second a person stopped standing upright. She steered you down to a chair before you’d finished falling. “Head down. Between the knees. You’ve told a hundred people to do this—do it.”

“I’m fine,” you said, voice coming out depleted. “I just got up too—”

“Yeah, you’ve been getting up fast a couple times this week.” " Her hand was on the back of your neck, two fingers at your pulse, and she wasn't looking at your face, she was looking at her watch, counting, and the professionalism of it—the way she'd switched you from colleague to patient without asking your permission—made something cold go through you. “When’d you eat, hon?”

“I ate.”

“When?” When you stayed silent, she said, “That’s what I thought.”

She straightened up and you heard her turn. “Hey! Somebody grab Robby. No, he’s not—just grab him.” She turned back to you, and gentler than you wanted, in a way that told you exactly how bad you looked, she said, “We’re gonna put you in a room. Don’t make a face. We’re gonna put you in a room, run some fluids, check a couple things. If it’s nothing—thank god—then it’s nothing, and you can be insufferable about it for weeks. But you went down, sweetheart, and I’m not arguing with you about it.”

You wanted to argue; you wanted to refuse the chair and go back to work instead of occupying a bed at work. But you were so tired. You were tired, and some animal part of you had already known that for two weeks and had been waiting, with a patience that frightened you, for someone to make you stop.

So you let Dana walk you to the room. You let her pull the curtain. You sat on the edge of the gurney in a department you'd worked in for over a decade and let a colleague put a line in your arm, and you stared at the corner of the blood pressure cuff and did not let yourself think the one thought that had started, very quietly, somewhere underneath the tired, to assemble itself, and would not finish assembling until Robby came in twenty minutes later with your labs and a look on his face you couldn't read, and asked you, carefully, like a man stepping onto ice, when your last period was.

You’d seen him tell a people about death with more steadiness than he was managing right now, standing at the foot of your gurney with a tablet he wasn't looking at, asking you about your cycle like the answer was already on the screen and he was just giving you the courtesy of arriving at it yourself.

“Why?” you asked flatly.

“Just humor me. Tell me.”

You told him and he had no reaction, and that was how you knew. Robby’s face had gone completely neutral.

“Okay,” he said, setting the tablet down. “Your labs came back. Everything’s—the anemia’s mild. That’s the lightheadedness and not-eating. We’ll sort that out.” He paused, took a breath in, and the cold thing that had gone through you on the floor came back and sat down in your chest and stayed. “Your hCG’s elevated.”

You felt your body run cold then.

“That’s the pregnancy hormone,” he said gently. He was a teacher before anything, and that reflex was still on, even with you.

“I know what hCG is, Robby,” you said, the words coming out sharp, voice cracking the last word in half. You saw him nod sharply as he decided to ignore it. “I—I know what it is.”

“It’s early,” he said. “Numbers are consistent with early, which means you’ve got time. That’s what I’m saying. You’ve got time to think about whatever you need to think about.” He was being so careful. “I didn’t put it into anything yet. I wanted to talk to you first.”

Early. You’ve got time. 

He picked the tablet up—done being a doctor about it now, the official part handled—and leaned a hip against the counter, and his voice changed, going off-duty.

“Hey,” he said. “Congratulations.”

You nodded, your mind already distant. 

“You gonna tell Jack?”

Your mind sharpened. For a second, you genuinely didn’t understand the sentence. Your brain refused it wholly, turned it over to look for the trick. There was no way Robby knew—there was no way anybody knew—because you’d been so careful, the whole thing happened in the dark precisely so it wouldn’t seep into the light, so nobody could say a sentence like that. Your stomach dropped through the gurney.

“Huh?” 

Robby looked at you, then shrugged. “I just figured, because you two still talk. He’d want to know. Big life thing.” Then, he added softer, misreading your face completely, “I guess it’s really over between the two of you then?”

You felt your breath hitch in your throat. That was what people would think when it got out, that the door has finally shut. They’d think you were getting clear, a baby with somebody new means the Jack-of-it-all was finally done, mercifully done. That you’d moved on and met someone, that you were building a thing past the divorce you survived. This was supposed to be proof of it. The sad civilized arrangement nobody named, ended at last by a life you were starting without him.

Robby had it exactly backwards and he had no way to know it. It was the furthest thing from over. It was likely the most permanent thing that had ever happened to you, and it had Jack’s name and only Jack’s name. The thing Robby believed to be your way out was the thing that could mean there’d never be a way out. Not anymore, if you chose to have this child. Not ever. You’d be tied to Jack Abbot. A year and a half of getting clear by inches.

You realized Robby was still standing there and that he’d asked you something. He was waiting for an answer you didn’t have the throat for.

“Can you give me a minute?” Your voice came out hoarse. “Just—a minute. Please. And don’t put it into anything yet. Just—don’t let anyone know.”

Robby nodded, probably thinking you needed a beat to let the good news settle, to feel something private and large before the world got its hands on it. “Course. I’ll hold the room, keep people out. Take your time.” 

His hand found your shoulder on the way past, squeezing, and then the curtain rings scraped along the rod and he was gone. 

It all came up at once, fast and without warning. Your hand was flat on the edge of the gurney and you watched it shake, and you made it stop. You could always make your hands stop. What you couldn’t do was make the rest of it stop. The rest of it was the thought you wouldn't think of, thinking itself anyway, and the worst part was the voice it came in, your own, flat, professional, the one you used to walk a frightened patient through their options without ever letting it shake. You could end it. It's early. Numbers consistent with early. You knew exactly how early early was. You knew the window, the way you knew the shelf life of a unit of platelets down to the day. You knew how clean it was, how legal, how completely nobody's business but your own. There was a door. Right now, there was still a door.

There was a door. There was, right now, still a door; it was the realest door, the one that actually led all the way out that would let you walk back into the life where you got clear of Jack Abbot for good and never had to share a child or a custody calendar or a name with him. He would give you Kevin, you knew that. Over would mean over, for good, where in five years you’d be a woman the hospital remembered being married once, to the ER’s night shift attending, you know the one.

You could take that door. It was yours to take. Nobody even had to know. 

You sat in the small bright room and made yourself look directly at the door and waited to feel the relief of it, yet it didn’t come. What came instead, rising up under the grief like a second tide, worse than the first, was a thing you had no word for and no right to and could not, would not, look at straight on, was that it was Jack’s.

You wished you could see it as a curse, and somewhere in the last thirty seconds it had turned over in you and come up as something else; a small, traitorous, and warm thing. It was the exact warmth that had locked your ankles around him, the same warmth that had opened the door for him every night. A piece of him you could get to keep, that no amount of divorce could put back in its box. The one version of forever you two were going to get. And a part of you, a part you despised with everything you had, wanted it. More than the baby in the abstract. His, specifically and unforgivably. 

You put your hand over your mouth as you felt it all come up, and you cried—the real way, the way you hadn’t since the lawyer’s office. You cried a cry that came up from the root and shook you apart, alone, in a place where you worked, with only a curtain covering you. 

You couldn’t have heard the shift change happen on the other side of the curtain. The hospital had kept turning around your little curtained box, that somewhere out there it had ticked over into evening and the day people were handing the floor to the night people. You hadn’t heard any of it. 

You hadn’t heard Dana catch him at the board, and she would have—you know she would have tried—put a hand flat on his chest the second she saw which way he was moving. You only heard the curtain rings scrape against the rod. 

You looked up—ruined, mid-breath, your hand still pressed over your own mouth with your face holding an expression no one had ever seen you do. And there was Jack with one hand still fisted in the curtain he'd thrown back, stopped dead in the gap of it.

He’d come in braced, almost with the same register he came in when there was a level 1 trauma, except this one was a case of lightheadedness. His sleeves were shoved to his elbow, jaw already set, and he’d walked in expecting to find blood or something else equal to that, a thing he’d be able to clean up and fix. He had a hand half-raised for it, and it stayed there, hovering, for it had nothing to fix. 

You knew his face better than your own; there’d never once been a thing he could’ve kept from you, not even when it felt like he was hardly your husband, especially then. You watched the readiness dissipate off of Jack’s face, watched the doctor leave him by degrees until what was left standing was just Jack. 

Just Jack had no protocol for this; there was nothing he’d been taught to do with his face when you were crying because you didn’t cry.

He of all people knew so. He’d sat at a conference table with you while a mediator clicked a pen and you signed your name with a hand that was too steady. He’d carried his own boxes down to the truck while you watched from the upstairs window, dry-eyed, because tears would have made it all real and you refused—out of spite, out of the last thing you had—to make it real where he could see. 

His mouth opened, and his throat worked around words, any word. When he finally spoke, it was just your name, and it came out cracked down the middle, like a plea and a prayer. 

He had no idea. It made you sob slightly louder than you would’ve liked, the realization that he was standing there gutted with fear for you, scared past the edge of himself, and he did not know. Jack could not have known that he was the answer, that you were the answer. If he’d asked you what had happened, the whole truth would have been his name and your own; it would have been the thing you’d done together in the dark a couple dozen times and called nothing. 

“I hate you,” you said, because the only thing you’d been capable of doing was throwing up a wall, driving him out with your own two hands. And it didn’t work, because the words had come out between sobs, wet and wrong, the cruelty falling apart on the way out. 

He didn’t argue it. He never argued the ones he thought were true. He just took it the same way he’d taken every other blow you’d ever landed, without ever lifting a hand to stop it, as though he’d decided a long time ago this was the least of what he had coming.

Still, something moved through him when the words hit, a flinch, a wince that started behind his eyes and pulled his whole face down with it. 

He came the rest of the way to you anyway, and your hand came up between you—far from a hit, there was nothing left in your arm to make one, just the heel of your palm landing against his chest, more sob turned outward than strike. It pushed against nothing. Jack didn’t even rock with it. And then your fingers were curling into the fabric over his sternum instead, gripping when you’d wanted to shove, the same failure of your hands as two weeks ago; pushing him away and hauling him in, your body unable to decide which.

“You—” Another blow, glancing off his chest. “Why did we have—”

“Okay.” He let you continue, letting the first ones land, face stricken and bewildered as he absorbed the blows for a crime he couldn’t name. “Okay. Okay, hey—”

You drew back, and when your hand closed in again, his own came up and closed around your wrist. You could’ve pulled free—he’d left you room for it—but you let him keep holding it there against his chest where you’d been striking him.

“What happened,” he said, words coming out quietly, not even a question. “Whatever it is. Talk to me. What happened?”

He started to move into you, closing the space between you by inches, his other hand coming up to your face, your shoulder, somewhere, anywhere, his whole self trying to fold into your orbit the way it always had. “Just tell me,” he said, closer now, voice dropped lower, into a register it stayed it when it was only the two of you. “Let me—”

“No.” You twisted your wrist in his hand and turned your face away from the one coming toward it. “You can’t just—I won’t let you—”

His forehead had dropped down to hover over your temple, the warmth of him crowding into every place you’d been trying to wall off. “I’m not. I’m not doing anything. I’m just here—let me be here.”

Here. He’d said the word so softly, with so much surety, like it was a small thing to ask, like it had been a place he’d ever once been. The wall you'd been holding with both hands didn't come down so much as it went out from under you, the way the floor had two weeks ago, all at once and without your permission.

You stopped twisting away. You felt him feel the fight going out of your wrist under his fingers and felt the new alertness move through him.

“You want to be here,” you said into his chest, where your fists were still knotted in his shirt, the words coming out muffled aimed at the fabric. Then, through a disbelieving laugh devoid of any humor, you said, “You want to be here?”

“Yeah,” he breathed out. “Yeah. I’m here.”

“Fucking—” The laugh that tore out of you was anything but one. “Congratulations, then.” Your forehead pressed down hard against his sternum, your eyes squeezed shut, because you couldn’t say it and knew you were going to anyway. At least you wouldn’t have to watch. “Fuck—You’re gonna be a father.”

Everything that had been moving stopped all at once; the hand at your jaw, the thumb that had been working slow along your wrist, the whole restless warmth of him trying to fold into you went motionless. For a second, he didn’t even breathe.

You forced yourself to look up. You wanted, somewhere mean and small and ten years old, to see it touch Jack. You wanted to finally watch something get all the way through. 

You got it, and it was worse than you’d let yourself imagine.

The first thing that fell of was the part that told you he was ready to fix this, fix you. It fell clean off, his brows furrowing in worry, a tell that looked too tiny for something this large. 

For a second—less than that, before he could pull the reins on it—something that had no business being there moved under the fear. You knew it because you’d felt the exact same thing only a few minutes ago, alone, the warm traitorous thing rising up under the grief. It was there, on his face—unguarded, naked, wanting—and you watched him catch it. You watched his whole face wilt as he understood, in real time, that he wasn't allowed to feel it, that the wanting was obscene standing next to your wreckage, and you watched him put it away. He got it back behind the wall fast, the way he got everything back behind the wall.

Only his hands gave him up. The one at your jaw had started to shake.

He let out a choked sound, like he was trying to lift the words out of his chest but they kept getting stuck halfway. 

“You’re—” He stopped himself and swallowed, not being able to get the back half of a sentence out of his own throat. “We’re—?”

“Yeah.”

His fingers around your wrist pulled it closer to his chest, as if he could press it through his body and into wherever the words wouldn’t come from. 

Your little girl doesn’t immediately start crying, but her confusion is obvious. She doesn’t understand why she’s been denied playtime. 

Your heart sinks when she drops her leaf, and it burns when the boy snatches the bucket away from where she almost stepped on it, because she steps back with her hands near her mouth. 

“Maybe wear a less dumb shirt, and you can play.”

Jack shoots up from the bench and is walking towards Chubby before you can even think of how to calm yourself. 

His walk towards the boy is even more crooked with the anger you’re sure is building beneath his pale, freckled skin, and even though you can’t see his face as he makes his way over, you think you can guess it’s made up of something broken and unblinking. That has to be true when Chubby’s face starts to fold in on itself with a wobbling chin. 

“Hey, where the hell did you learn to talk to other people like that—”

The boy startles at Jack’s gruff question, but it’s broken by your daughter running toward him. 

“Dada.”

Her name for him comes out high-pitched and wounded. 

…Whatever’s flaring in his chest and muscles must be as violent as whatever’s flaring in yours. He pulls her up before her cry sounds out. She climbs him as he does, wrapping herself around his neck with the panicked-laced movements of her arms. She buries her face in the side of his neck. 

He can feel how hot her cheeks are, how hard her heart is beating. 

He swallows.

“Hey,” The gruffness of his voice drops into softness. Sometimes he feels like he’s only capable of that with you and her. Sometimes Robby, if he needs it. “Hey. I got you. That was bad. He shouldn’t have talked to you like that, but Dada’s got you.” 

She shakes her head against him, like she’s just learned the whole world is bad now and Dada can only hold her. He can’t do anything to change that. 

He’d break the iPad that he knows the little bastard has if he could. 

“He say no.”

She sniffles with tears staining Jack as he walks back to you. You catch his jaw tightening impossibly…tight. 

“I heard, Chubs.”

“He say I’m baby.”

He rubs a broad hand up and down her back slowly. Very slowly. He learned a long time ago that Chubby only cries harder if he tries to rush her out of it. She’s a little like you, that way. 

“...You’re not a baby.”

But fuck—she is. She’ll always be his baby. But that’s probably not what she needs to hear right now, not when she pulls back just enough to look at him with her three-and-a-half-year-old eyes, devastated and wet. 

“I’m little.”

…Jesus fucking Christ. 

“Yeah, you’re little.” He agrees carefully. “That’s different, though. That kid doesn’t get to decide what’s dumb. He’s five. Five-year-olds are idiots.”

Chubby’s lip quivers as you meet them to stroke her arm. 

“Jack….”

He’s right, that boy’s an idiot for bullying your daughter for something she has been delighted about, but you’re, like, pretty sure you and he shouldn’t talk like that in front of her. 

“He mean, Dada.”

“Yeah. He was, and you can cry because he was. That’s fine, but don’t let some rude little punk tell you what you are.”

You smile despite your flurry of feelings when Chubby blinks at him. You kiss her tiny bicep. 

“Dada is saying that one boy being mean doesn’t mean he’s right.”

Chubby looks at you. “He not right, Mommy?”

“No, pretty. He’s not right.”

You watch her think about that for a hot second, pulling on Jack’s collar. 

“He bad boy?”

Jack’s mouth twitches. 

“Yeah. Little bit. But when they are, you’ll always have Mommy and me to help you, okay?”

Chubby nods slowly, and after…the day settles around her clinginess for the Dada who comforted her in a way that makes you fall apart. Just a little. You have to keep going for more moments like this. 

You walk beside them while Jack carries her around the playground, just giving her time. Every other minute, she peeks out at the other children playing before pressing herself closer. 

Jack doesn’t rush her. He has no reason to make his baby get brave before she’s ready to.

Why the hell would he when he’ll be there for the kid—

“Dada?”

“...Yeah, baby?”

“You stay here?”

He blinks, and his face turns soft, maybe not to anyone’s notice but the woman who gave him this little heart-killer in the first place. 

“Always.”

"...This is unbelievable. Sleepy. Our daughter's fuckin---where did she learn to do this?"

You're about to laugh in Jack's face, but you don't think he'll take well to that, so you just shrug.

"You mean where did a toddler learn how to say no?"

"You wiped my kiss off. Don't do that. Dada doesn't like that."

Dada's wounded.

Chubby shrugs the way you do before she grabs his nose, smiling with all the teeth that's grown in so far.

"I wipped off!"

Unfortunately for Jack, his wounded reaction teaches Chubby that wiping off his kisses gets a reaction, and because she's, you know, your kid and Jack's karma, she's the smartest baby in the world in figuring out how to weaponize his suffering.

Sometimes she accepts Jack's kissies, sometimes she'll giggle and kiss him back. Other times, Jack feels like he's her paparazzi and she's merely tolerating her dada's affections.

But Jack lives in fear of the wipe that comes every now and again.

It escalates after bath time when you're waiting patiently for Chubby to pick out a bedtime story, and he's pretending not to hover. When he realizes how miserably he's failing he comes over and leans in.

Chubby cups both of his cheeks in her little hands, and he's unbearably, handsomely smug alreadly. You smile softly at what you're looking at, and you only smile wider when she gives him a peck on the nose.

He kisses her cheek in return.

"No, what the—why the hell did you do that?"

Without any hesitation, his toddler daughter wipes his kiss off.

And sorry, Jack, but you can't help but chortle something ugly when his head tilts low with the bob of his throat, the lines of his face furrowing into something gruffly hurt and horrified.

“Chubs. You kissed me first.”

Chubby giggles, kissing his nose again.

“This is mixed messaging. You're sending me mixed signals. Do you hate me or not?"

"She doesn't hate you, Jack. She's just being crazy."

And you, because you just love to side with the monster, put a kiss to her head.

Jack waits, waits, waits for a wipe that never comes. He's stuck looking at you and the mini version of you smiling at him.

"Oh, fuck you both."

But Chubby's just loving him like a toddler loves her parents, which means unpredictably, right? There isn't much tact to a toddler's affections, and that's why she's suddenly decided Jack's deserves one kiss when he's asleep after a shift.

Tiny feet toddle to him, and the little, little girl they belong to climbs the couch with all her strength. She studies his sleeping face, leaning closer.

"Mwah, Dada."

She simply presses a small kiss against his chin, but how awful is it for her that Jack's actually mostly asleep, and that he's able to catch her sneaky affection?

"What happened to hating Dada?"

Chubby gasps. The little criminal is caught, and the word caught is at its most literal when he hugs her tight to his chest.

Chubby's laugh come in shrieks.

"I'm collecting payment now."

Her shrieks come higher as Jack attacks her cheeks with scratchy kisses.

"Dadaaaa! Mommy, help!"

"You okay, Jack?"

Jack shrugs, shifting Chubby in his lap. It’s a children’s book---"

"Da...beeee."

She smacks the book again. His hands grip its spine.

Da can mean any of a number of things. It's usually reserved for Jack, but it's an interchangeable demand, really. She uses da when she wants something opened or given to her. But if you know your daughter as well as you think you do, you're sure it's her demand for Jack to read the damn book right now.

"Alright, alright. I'm picking up the pace. Here we go."

Jack opens the book. The first page is the paper bear standing in a nursery, holding his arms out to his cub.

"Daddy’s arms are big and strong."

His voice comes out low and steady, a little raspy from the long day and the way Chubby keeps curling her toes against his forearm. But that's just your guess.

"They hold me when the day feels long."

You slow in your folding when Jack clears his throat and turns the page quickly. The next picture is worse for him.

The dad bear is carrying the cub through a storm, holding an umbrella over her. She's smiling, and her papa is looking down like the only thing that matters is that she's dry.

Jack stares at it.

Well. Fuck the bear.

Chubby whines, impatient. "Mmmm."

"I’m getting there. Be patient. See? When the thunder rolls and the skies turn gray..."

Jack swallows.

"Daddy keeps the fear away."

...He needs to check the thermostat again. It's too hot in here. He'd open the window if it wasn't a safety risk. He'll just have to be warm while getting jumped by a ten-dollar book from Target.

Daddy keeps the fear away. Ha. What a stupid fucking lie to put in a baby book.

He doesn't keep the fear away. He installs too many cameras and gets mad that there are still blind spots. There shouldn't be. But Dad doesn't keep the fear away. He's full of it, just like he's full of his own shit.

"Jack, keep going."

"I'm letting her process the material."

Jack's chubby excuse shifts in his lap, rubbing her cheek against his shirt. Her hand finds his thumb as she fusses, cause she has processed nothing but the fact that his voice has stopped.

Jack turns the page. It's a bedtime scene of the bear and cub in a rocking chair, not unlike him and Chubby in the glider right now.

This is so fucking cruel. You're cruel. He reads the line in his head.

Daddy’s voice is low and deep. It sings me safely into sleep.

No. No, that’s not—

Jack sighs heavy. Chubby tips her head back against his chest, her eyes just as heavy with sleep.

"Daddy's voice is..."

...He can't.

"Daddy's voice is low and deep. It..."

The rest doesn't come. He hates this book. He hates the stupid papa bear. He hates that his breathing turns shallows enough that you stop what you're doing.

"Hey, you don't have to finish it."

"I can read a damn book for infants. It's just..."

"I know you can, doc."

God. He'd rather have kiddo argue. Your faith in him is more murderous than the little doubt you have.

He looks down at the daughter you've given him again. She blinks slower. He forces his voice back into place.

“It...it sings me…”

No. His voice is all the worst parts of him trying for protection, but it's been cruel, and it's snapped. It's made you flinch. His voice is the thing she'll copy, if he isn’t careful.

You cross the nursery and put warmth on his shoulder by settling your hand there.

"Let me?"

There's no point in not letting you, is there? He hands you the book, his movement is stiff.

You sit on the arm of the glider, one hand coming to rest on the back of Chubby's head. She blinks up at you. You smile. Jack tries to disappear into the chair while still holding the weight of your little girl.

"Mommy's got you. Daddy’s voice is low and deep. It sings me safely into sleep."

Your voice is soft and pretty, and that's why neither of you understands why her little face trembles into a whine, the one that always comes before her wail. Jack, for a moment, thinks she's just tired.

Yeah, me too.

"Oh, sweetheart--"

But Chubby turns in Jack's lap towards him, twisting clumsily as she grabs at his shirt.

"Daaaaaa!"

Your and Jack's eyes meet when she fusses harder.

"Daaaaaa! Da...BEE-DA!"

"...I think she wants Dada, right now, Jackie."

Apparently. Not the softer, perfect voice. She wants awkward pauses and his stupid-as-hell commentary? Why?

Because she knows you're perfect and wants you sometimes as much as she knows Jack as himself and wants him all the same?

Why?

Jack takes the book back, and his hands are not steady when he does. You slide off the arm of the glider, kneeling beside it instead, resting your cheek against his knee.

Chubby settles the second the book is back in his hand, though she keeps one fist locked in his shirt to make sure he doesn’t attempt book abandonment again.

...Two girls he doesn't deserve, loving him anyway. What else is he supposed to do but do whatever they want? Least he can do.

Jack clears his throat.

"Alright, I’ve got it. It sings me safely into sleep."

Chubby relaxes, just like that. He stares down at the top of her head before turning the page.

It shows the papa bear kissing the cub's forehead with a moon in the window. It's too sentimental, aggressively so. And no, he's not just thinking that cause looking at it makes him feel like his organs out falling out through his sternum.

"Daddy’s hug is where I stay…"

His voice catches again. You kiss his shin.

"In dreams until the morning day."

He almost gets through it in a way where he's confident enough to make a promise. I'll be here forever. But..he knows better. He's seen too many parents leave without meaning to. How many families have been ruined by a heart suddenly stopping or a car running a red light? He can't promise anything.

He presses his lips to her head.

"I'll be here for as long as I can be. That'll be enough mornings."

note: he has me in a chokehold ever since I watched the show… also!!! first time writing about Garrett, might do it again next time. reblogs and comments are very much appreciated!

Ever since Garrett packed his bags for Briar U and threw everything he had into college hockey, you two barely saw each other anymore. The daily routines you shared back home gave way to late-night texts, random phone calls, or FaceTime sessions that kept you connected as you both built entirely separate lives. You had your own things going on with your own circles, your own relationships, and your own sex lives with other people, but there was an obvious spark between you that never went away. It was clear to anyone who saw you together that the distance hadn’t changed the foundation between you because you knew each other better than anyone else did after years of growing up side by side.

You knew his biggest fears, along with the dreams he never told anyone about, and he knew yours right down to the exact way your bodies functioned or reacted under pressure. You remembered how his body felt during those private nights, and he knew your body just as well since you crossed that line together years ago to become each other’s first. Being so far away from Garrett made you miss him terribly all the time, so you agreed the exact moment his father asked you to tag along to watch one of his college hockey games. You didn’t know Phil was bringing his new girlfriend along since you truly believed he was just traveling to support his son, but you really should’ve known better with a man like him.

You absolutely hated how Phil Graham treated his son, but you still tried your best to tolerate his presence because he always treated you nicely. His father also made you promise to keep the whole trip a complete secret, which you happily did because you wanted to surprise Garrett. What you didn’t know, and Garrett didn’t know either, was that Phil planned to use this exact day to announce he was marrying a woman his son barely even recognized. You only learned about it today because you asked nosy questions of Cindy. You also had no idea that Phil had already shown up unannounced at the hockey house earlier that morning to corner Garrett before the match. They got into a heated conversation over it, and the unexpected confrontation completely messed with Garrett’s head right before the game.

Sitting next to Phil and his girlfriend in the stands made it clear why Garrett looked so betrayed and hurt when he glanced up at you. You didn’t quite understand his reaction at first, but it clicked when you watched him play badly as he missed passes he usually nailed. He kept his eyes on your section while he stumbled through his game, and his expression showed he felt like you took his father’s side by showing up with them. Garrett eventually lost his temper on the ice, so the referee kicked him straight out of the game. He walked off the rink looking completely wrecked, while you immediately jumped up from your seat to run after him through the crowded arena. “Garrett,” you called out while you pushed past a group of fans to follow him down the corridor.

He didn’t even look back as he stormed down the hallway. “Garrett, please wait a second,” you tried again, but he kept walking away past the random people staring at you both. “Garrett Graham!” you yelled out loud so he could actually hear you over the loud fans. He finally stopped walking before he turned around to face you with a completely pissed expression. “What do you want from me right now?” he snapped back at you with an annoyed look. “I can’t just let you walk off like that after everything I just saw out there,” you replied right away as you tried to catch your breath. You stepped even closer to him to place your hands right on his covered arms. You looked right into his eyes while you let out a long breath through your nose.

“You have every single right to be completely furious right now,” you said while your fingers gripped his gear gently to anchor him. “But you can’t let him ruin your performance out on the ice,” you added because you needed him to snap out of it. “Are you really going to let his sudden drama control how you play your game?” you asked while you watched his expression carefully. “I don’t want him to win by messing with your head,” you explained as you rubbed your palms against his sleeves. “I came all the way out here for you,” you reminded him while your voice dropped to a softer tone. “I didn’t come to force you to come to the wedding,” you said to make sure he understood your loyalty. Garrett leaned forward immediately to rest his forehead against your shoulder as if he was searching for any kind of comfort from your presence.

He let out a long and shaky breath against your neck while his body weight leaned into you completely. “I thought you took his side,” he mumbled while his shoulder pads bumped against your chest. “I’m always on your side,” you promised back as you held him tight. He pressed a quick kiss against your neck before he leaned back slightly. “I know,” he muttered while his hands slid down to your sides. “I just got completely pissed off seeing you sitting right next to him,” he admitted because the sight had blindsided him completely. “I’m sorry you had to look at that,” you replied while you shook your head. “Stop apologizing to me,” he told you right away. He slid his large hands straight down to your waist before he squeezed the skin tightly through your top.

“I missed you so much,” he whispered as he tilted his head closer. “Well, you really need to get back out to the rink right now,” you reminded him while you patted his bulky chest protector. “Not even time for a quick make-out session?” he asked with a small smirk on his face. “I might forgive you for keeping secrets if you give me that,” he joked, because he wanted to lighten the mood between you both. “You don’t have anything to forgive me for,” you countered while you smiled back at him. He trailed his lips along your jawline before he brushed his mouth against your own. “Don’t you miss me just as much?” he whispered against your skin while he looked for a reaction. “Oh, please, you get enough attention from women every single day,” you said while you rolled your eyes at his question.

“Are you actually jealous of them?” he asked while he grinned to tease you. You decided to shut him up by grabbing his face to pull him into a deep kiss. You bit down on his lower lip while he sucked on your tongue to deepen the contact. Your mouths moved against each other as he swiped his tongue over your teeth while you gripped his jersey. He moaned into your mouth as he sucked your bottom lip between his own lips. You kept licking into his mouth while he pushed his tongue against yours to taste you. “Mmmh-” he groaned against your skin before he broke the kiss to breathe. He went to press another kiss to your lips, but you caught his shoulders and shoved him back. “Stop it, you have to get back out there,” you said while you nudged him toward the door.

“We really need to end this before it turns into something else,” you added because you knew you would not be able to stop once you started. “This is not like you at all,” you remarked while you adjusted his jersey. “You know you are the only one who makes me lose my mind,” he told you while he stared at you. He let out a long breath, but he finally gave a nod of his head. He leaned in one last time to press his mouth against yours for a quick kiss. “Promise me that you will spend time with me later tonight?” he asked while he brushed his thumb against your cheek. “I promise,” you said as you watched him step toward the doorway. He turned around to give you a last look before he headed back toward the rink. You waited in the storage room until his footsteps faded away so you could catch your breath again.

You walked back out toward the arena, but you refused to head back to the seats next to Phil. You instead found a spot in the tunnel entrance where you could see the rink without anyone spotting you in the crowd. You occupied the side as the players returned for the final period of the game. It surprised you to see Garrett skate back onto the ice, since the coach had clearly decided to keep him in the lineup despite his earlier meltdown. He kept his eyes forward as he skated past the bench. You waited back in the dark tunnel so you could watch him the whole time. “Don’t mess this up, Garrett,” you whispered to yourself while you watched him take his position. He didn’t see you standing there in the entryway, but he seemed to have his head back in the game.

You leaned against the side as the buzzer sounded to start the last period, and you needed to see how he would finish this. Garrett took over the game. Tucker zipped up the wing while Dean and Logan guarded the zone and stopped the other team from getting close to the net. They kept the puck moving and made easy passes to each other. Garrett battled for the puck in the corner and dodged a defender to face the goal. He found a gap and fired a shot that went past the goalie. The game ended, and the buzzer sounded to signal their win. Garrett threw his stick to the side as his teammates mobbed him on the ice. They slapped backs and hooted while the fans went wild. He caught your eye for a second and gave a quick nod before he skated toward the bench to join the line.

You walked away from the tunnel to head toward the exit and meet him once he finished with your arms wrapped around him. He gripped you tight right back, and he tucked his face into your shoulder. You squeezed him and said how great he played out there before you mentioned that Phil walked out halfway through the match. He stiffened up against you before he could even reply. “I don’t care about him today,” Garrett muttered into your skin while his breathing warmed your neck. You patted his back, and you feel the sweat from his jersey and his gear. “Okay, okay,” you teased him as the sound of distant chatter from the arena faded down the corridor. “You’re a sweaty mess. Go wash up,” you told him, and you tried to nudge him toward the direction of the locker room.

“I will,” Garrett murmured, and he squeezed your waist one last time to keep you close. “Give me a second, I just want to hold you,” he admitted as he leaned his full weight against you. He kept his arms around you for another moment before he stepped back and grabbed your hand to pull you along with him. You walked together down the corridor while he guided you right toward the locker room area. “Wait out here,” Garrett said as he stopped you right by the door to keep you away from the naked players inside. He disappeared through the entrance without another word to grab something. You stood by the wall for only a few seconds, and you could hear the muffled noise of the team from inside the room. Garrett pushed the door open again and stepped back into the hallway with his keychain in hand.

“Take these,” Garrett murmured as he dropped the car key into your palm. “Go wait by the car,” he added while his thumb brushed over your knuckles. “Give me fifteen minutes,” he promised before he turned back around. You nodded, and he finally went inside to change after you headed out to the parking lot. You waited for Garrett in the parking lot until he finished changing, and then he drove the two of you back to the off-campus rental house. The driveway was empty because Logan, Dean, and Tucker hadn’t made it back from the rink yet. Garrett unlocked the front door and walked you inside the quiet house without stopping in the living room. “Let’s go upstairs,” Garrett murmured while he guided you toward the steps.

You followed him up the staircase because you knew the other boys would be home soon. He pushed his bedroom door open and led you inside before he closed it behind you. The rest of the house was completely silent while he dropped his duffel bag on the floor. “We have the place to ourselves for a bit,” you reminded him as you leaned back against his desk. Garrett walked over to you and wrapped his arms around your waist. “Good, I don’t want any interruptions,” Garrett muttered while he pressed his face into the side of your neck. “Are you feeling needy?” you teased him while you tilted your head to give him more space. He let out a rough grunt against your skin before he kissed your neck.

“Yeah,” Garrett muttered while his arms tightened around your waist. “I really need you right now,” he admitted as he breathed out against your skin. You slid your hands right under his shirt while he held you close. You felt his hard muscles before you lifted the fabric up to check his body because you knew he always had a few bruises after his games. Several fresh darkening marks covered his body because he had taken a hard beating from playing and training. “You got beat up out there,” you murmured as you looked down at the marks. “It’s nothing,” Garrett grunted while he looked down at your fingers.

“I’ve had worse,” he told you as he guided your hands higher under his clothes. You let him cover your fingers and guide them over his skin while you let out a small chuckle. “Really?” you asked him as you looked up at his face. “You can’t even let me do it on my own?” You teased him because he wanted control. Garrett just rolled his eyes, but he didn’t let go right away. “Can’t I just hold your hands for a few seconds?” he questioned you while he gripped your fingers a little tighter. He let go of you after a moment and grabbed the hem of his top to pull it over his head. He tossed the shirt somewhere across the bedroom floor and stepped closer to you.

You leaned forward and started pressing kisses against his shoulder before you moved your lips down to his chest. You dropped lower to press more kisses onto his flat stomach while Garrett tangled his fingers into your hair to play with the strands. You dropped down onto your knees in front of him and reached out to grasp the waistband of his pants. Garrett looked down at you while his hands gripped your shoulders to handle his balance. “I can get those, baby,” Garrett murmured while he tried to nudge your fingers away from the button. You ignored his hand and continued working on the zipper because you wanted to take care of him.

“Let me do it,” you insisted as you looked up to meet his eyes. “I want to make it up to you for earlier,” you told him while you unfastened the button. Garrett let out a sigh and let his hands slide down to your neck. “You don’t have to make up for anything,” Garrett told you while his thumbs stroked your jawline. You pull the zipper down and open the fabric to reveal his underwear. “I know I don’t,” you replied as you reached inside to tug the material out of your way. “But I want to,” you whispered before you pulled his pants down past his hips. “You know I’d rather focus on you first,” Garrett reminded you while his fingers twitched against your neck. You looked up at him from your knees and gripped the fabric of his pants that already pulled down to anchor yourself.

“Fine,” you murmured as you tilted your head back to study his expression. “Just a taste then?” you asked him while you offered a small smirk to challenge his resolve. Garrett let out a quick laugh because the idea of you stopping early seemed entirely impossible to him. “Yeah, right,” Garrett scoffed while he shook his head at your suggestion. “Like you’re actually going to stop at just a taste,” he teased you while he looked down at your hands. You rolled your eyes at his comment and hooked your fingers into the waistband of his boxers without waiting for permission. You tugged the material down past his hips and watched his hard cock spring free instantly in the space between you.

You wrapped your fingers around the shaft and stroked him slowly while you stared right up into his eyes to gauge his reaction. Garrett let out a small grunt and tangled his fingers into your hair again. “Seriously,” Garrett said, and his grip tightened on your head while he tried to control his breathing. “I really wanted to take care of you right now,” he muttered as he watched your hand move on his length. You leaned forward before you gave the tip of his cock a few light licks, and you cleaned off the wet drop of pre-cum waiting there. “You’re already leaking for me,” you murmured against his length as you looked up to catch his expression. Garrett let out a quiet groan and gently gripped his fingers through your hair to show his approval.

“Yeah, well,” Garrett admitted while his breathing hitched slightly. “You’re the one down on your knees,” he pointed out to justify his reaction. You wrapped your lips around the head after those first few licks and swirled your tongue over the sensitive tip. You slowly slid your mouth further down the shaft to take him halfway while your hand took over to stroke the rest of his length. “What the- yes…” Garrett gasped out while his cock twitched against your lips. He didn’t force your head down or push his hips forward because he wanted to let you guide the movement. “That feels so good,” Garrett whispered while his hand felt gentle on your head. Giving head wasn’t always an enjoyable experience for everyone, because some guys were careless, but you tolerated it for Garrett.

He was always perfectly clean and gentle about it, while constantly showering you with sweet praise. His latest comment made you feel a bit cocky, so you took more of his thick length into your mouth until the tip touched the back of your throat. Garrett noticed it immediately because he knew your limits by heart, and he gave a firm tug on your hair to lift your face before you could gag. “Whoa, slow down,” Garrett murmured while his thumb wiped a wet line from the corner of your lips. “You don’t need to swallow all of me at once,” he added as he gave you a small smile. You just gave him a playful look before you slid your mouth right back over his wet cock to continue. You started bobbing your head up and down the shaft to find a pace while your hand kept rubbing the base.

“Mmf-” Garrett breathed out as the other hand caressed along your cheek. He kept his grip on your hair softly to guide your movements without forcing himself against your face. “You’re doing so good for me,” Garrett whispered, and his hips jerk when you swirl your tongue around his cock. You continued bobbing your head to take his wet shaft into your mouth, but Garrett firmly nudged your forehead away to remind you of what you two had talked about. “That’s enough,” Garrett muttered while he stepped back to slip his cock out of your lips completely. “You said just a taste,” he says with a smirk to keep your promise. You let out a stubborn grunt and slapped his thigh because you wanted to keep going.

Garrett laughed and kicked his pooled clothes away to strip down completely before you stood up to meet him. He reached out and grabbed the hem of your top to pull it up over your head. “You know I don’t want to wait any longer,” Garrett whispered while he tossed your clothes somewhere onto the floor. The sound of the front door slamming downstairs can be heard throughout the room, and it shows that the other guys have arrived. “Oh, they’re probably fucking by now!” Dean shouted near the stairs to tease the two of you. You feel your neck heating up the blunt comment, but you’re glad the bedroom door is locked. “That’s embarrassing,” you murmured as you looked toward the doorway.

“Do you think they’re going to try and listen?” you asked him while you crossed your arms over your chest. Garrett shook his head and gripped your waist to get your attention back. “No,” Garrett told you while he leaned down to kiss your shoulder. “Well, I hope not,” he amended as he guided you toward the mattress. You stopped him before he could guide you onto the mattress, and you grabbed the waistband of your bottoms to slide them down to the floor. Garrett let out a sound of approval while he walked over to his drawer to grab a condom. You let out a small chuckle at the sight, and your hands were already reaching behind your back to unclasp your bra. “I’m literally clean and on birth control,” you reminded him as you slipped the straps off your shoulders.

Garrett turned back around with the plastic wrapper in his hand while he looked over your bare body. “So you just go without protection with other guys?” Garrett questioned you while he raised an eyebrow. “Of course not. What the fuck,” you replied instantly because the idea annoyed you for few second. Garrett took a step closer while he watched you hook your fingers into your panties. “Then why do you want to do it without one with me?” Garrett asked you while he kept his eyes on your face. “Because we always do it without,” you pointed out as you tugged the fabric down. Garrett let out a laugh and reached out to grasp your waist. “Smartass,” Garrett muttered while he stepped right into your space. “I just want to make sure you’re safe,” he explained to justify his caution.

You stepped out of your underwear and gave him a playful look to keep teasing him. “So are you saying you’re not safe?” you challenged him while you slid your hands onto his chest. “Of course I am,” Garrett countered before he leaned his head closer to yours to capture your lips. “You know what?” Garrett murmured while he tossed the unopened condom wrapper back into his drawer. “You want me to cum inside your cunt?” Garrett asked you as he guided you down onto the mattress. “Is that what you want?” he questioned while he helped you settle right into the middle of the bed until you felt completely comfortable. You lay back against his pillows while he crawled over your legs to hover over your body.

“So no one is going to interrupt us?” you asked him because you wanted to be entirely sure before things went any further. “They’re all downstairs,” Garrett promised you while he leaned down to look into your eyes. “Dean and Logan are probably playing video games on the couch,” he added to reassure you. “Tucker is probably cooking dinner in the kitchen,” he finished while his hands slid to your hips. “No party tonight?” you questioned him with an arched eyebrow in disbelief. “Since you guys won the game?” you asked because it seemed impossible for the team to be quiet after a victory. “Nah,” Garrett replied while he shook his head with a small smirk. “Tomorrow,” he told you as he leaned down closer to your face.

“The guys are just too tired tonight,” he claimed to explain the lack of noise. You knew that was highly unlikely because the team never passed up a chance to celebrate a big win. You suspected Garrett had made a secret deal with his roommates to keep them downstairs for the evening. “What exactly did you do?” you asked him while you looked up at his face to get the truth. Garrett just smirked because he wanted to keep his secret. “Open wider, baby,” Garrett murmured while he tapped the inside of your thigh to guide you. You moved your legs further apart because you couldn’t help but obey his request. He guided the thick head of his cock right against your wet folds and started rubbing it back and forth to distract you from asking any more questions.

You tried to start another question because you wanted a real answer. “But Garrett-” you began before your words cut off. He responded by grinding his length directly between your slick folds until the tip swiped over your sensitive clit. You let out a frustrated whine because the brief contact left you desperate for more. “I swear,” Garrett promised while he looked down at your reaction. “They won’t come upstairs until we go downstairs,” he added to reassure you. He slapped his hard cock directly against your wet cunt right after he finished speaking and gripped your hip with a tight hand to hold you against the bed. You let out a frustrated whine because he kept rubbing his tip against your clit instead of sliding inside your wet cunt.

“Are you sure they’re going downstairs?” you asked him while you tried to tilt your head up to hear anything from the hallway. “Garrett, I can’t do this if they’re going to walk up here,” you insisted because the thoughts wouldn’t leave your mind. Garrett let out a sigh and ground his length between your folds to pull you away from your thoughts. “They’re not coming up, baby,” Garrett murmured while his breathy voice sounded a little distracted by the sight of your body. “Stop worrying about them,” he told you as he swiped his thumb over your jaw. “But what if Dean tries to-” you started to ask before his body pressed closer. Garrett cut you off by sliding the head of his cock into your aching hole before he pulled it to rub it into your clit again.

“Fu-fuck- please,” you moaned out while your hips rolled up against him in desperation. “Please, what?” Garrett asked you while he watched your body squirm beneath him. You bucked your hips against him to show him your desperate need because speaking felt too difficult right now. “Mhm… Shit,” Garrett cursed quietly while his throat bobbed after swallowing. “You like that?” he questioned you as he kept his length nestled right at the entrance of your cunt. “I do,” you whimpered while your eyelashes fluttered from the heat between your legs. “Can you just-” you tried to finish your sentence, but you couldn’t find the right words because your brain is slowly stopping from functioning. Garrett let out a laugh and leaned down to press a kiss against your cheek.

“Focus on me,” Garrett said while his fingers tightened on your hip. “Come on,” he coaxed as he popped the tip in and out of your wet entrance, which made a wet sound every time he did it. “Feels good, doesn’t it?” he whispered while he gave you another torturous grind right up against your sensitive clit to make your cunt ache even more. You nodded to answer that it felt amazing, and he finally positioned the tip directly at your entrance. “They won’t hear a single thing,” Garrett assured you while he leaned down closer to your ear. “But let’s try to be quiet anyway, okay?” he whispered to ensure you two kept things private. You nodded again and bit your lower lip while he began sliding slowly inside your cunt. You let out a muffled whimper as he pushed deeper until his full length filled you completely.

“Nghh-” you breathed out while you adjusted to his thick size. Garrett caught your lips in a deep kiss and slid one hand down to squeeze your chest. He flicked your nipple with his thumb to distract you from his size before he pulled away from the kiss to start moving his hips. “You’re so tight, baby,” Garrett grunted while he began to thrust slowly. You wrapped your hands into his curls to hold onto him while he continued thrusting into you. Garrett planted his palms flat on the mattress beside your head to support his weight. “You’re taking me so beautifully, baby,” Garrett murmured while he stared straight down into your face. He watched your reactions closely to see how each movement affected your body.

Your eyes rolled back slightly because the pleasure made it difficult to keep them open. Your teeth bit into your lower lip to suppress your voice while you took his length. “N-nffh-” you whined through your closed mouth, but a few desperate sounds escaped despite your best efforts to keep quiet. Garrett let out a deep groan and picked up his pace just a little. “Look at me,” Garrett whispered, and he leaned down closer to your face. You forced your eyes open to meet his gaze because you wanted to look at him. “You feel so perfect,” Garrett muttered as he kept thrusting deep into your cunt. Your hand gripped his hair tighter to handle the feeling, and you swallowed another loud moan. You kept one hand tangled in his curls while your other hand slid down his nape to trace the dark letters of the tattoo across his upper back.

Your fingertips brushed over his skin before they moved up to play with the thin gold chain of his necklace. “Your back looks so hot like this,” you whispered while his hips kept up the slow pace inside your pussy. “Will never get enough touching it,” you added because you remembered when he asked for your advice before getting it done. Garrett let out an exhale and thrust his length deeper. “Mmh, you really think so?” Garrett asked you while a small grin tugged at his lips. He looked cocky after hearing the praise you gave him, but a little shyness quickly took it back. Garrett leaned down further to hide his face and nuzzled his nose directly into the crook of your shoulder. “You know how much this chain means to me,” Garrett murmured against your skin while his chest pressed against yours.

“A-aah- uh-uh…” You whined out, and he shoved his length deeper until the tip touches your sweet spot. Garrett gripped your hip firmer to support himself while he kept his face hidden against your neck. “I like it when you touch it,” he confessed before he dragged his cock entirely out just to push right back inside. Garrett gave your neck a bite before he pulled his face away to look down at you. The gold chain dangled close to your lips, so you opened your mouth to tease him by biting the necklace. You let out a small chuckle against the chain, but it turned into a whine when Garrett suddenly pulled his cock almost all the way out of your cunt. He left just the tip inside your entrance to torture you, and he refused to thrust back in.

You ground your hips upward in a desperate attempt to force him deeper because you needed him deeper. Garrett responded by pinning your hip against the mattress to stop you from doing that before he thrust all the way in. “D-don’t do that,” you whine out while you shake your head against the pillow. “When- when I’m... I feel like I’m close,” you gasped out to finish your complaint. Garrett looked at your face while his chest heaved a little. “Yeah?” Garrett murmured while he gave you a small smirk to tease you. “You’re getting that close for me?” he asked before his hand traveled down to the back of your leg. He slowly lifted your knee to rest it over his shoulder to adjust the position. Garrett started thrusting faster and deeper into you without teasing you this time.

He used his free hand to reach down between your bodies so he could rub your clit while he buried himself inside you. You wrapped your hand around his neck not to choke him, but you did it just to feel his necklace against your palm. “Oh god, G-Garrett,” you gasped out as his tip kept finding your spot with every thrust. “Just like that, baby,” Garrett murmured while he never looked away from your face to watch your reactions. The feeling of his cock stretching you out and the way his fingers were rubbing your clit made you clench around him. Your clit pulsed against his fingers while your walls continued to squeeze him to the point you felt his cock throb inside you. “M-mmph- I can’t,” you whimpered, and you rolled your hips into his hand to get more pleasure.

“You’re doing so good for me,” Garrett whispered as he kept up the fast pace. You pulled him closer by his shoulders until his forehead was pressing against yours. You kept your eyes closed while you told him how you felt. “Mmn, I’m close…” You whispered while his cock slid deep into your cunt. “R-right there-” you gasped as he kept up the pace. Garrett groaned against your lips before he gave you a peck. “I know, baby,” Garrett murmured before he moved faster. He rubbed your clit with his fingers while he kept fucking you. Garrett gives your lips another kiss before he whispers praises against your mouth. “You’re so perfect for me,” Garrett murmured as his hips touch against your thighs the moment he thrusts back in.

He talked you through it while keeping up the pace. “I missed you so much,” Garrett confessed when he pushed his cock all the way inside your cunt. “I- I know…” You gasped against his lips before you squeezed his length. It only takes a few thrusts until you finally cum around his thick cock while Garrett doesn’t stop his movements to chase his own orgasm. The tightness of your walls made him grunt out loud, but it’s easier to thrust now after you finish around his cock. “Fu-fuh- fuck,” Garrett groaned while he kept going, and he watched the way your body bounced against the mattress with every thrust. He was now raised on his knees, with your leg hooked over his shoulder. Garrett looked down between your bodies to watch the way his cock disappeared inside you and the way it looked coated with your cum.

“I’m right behind you, baby,” Garrett panted out as he sped up his movements. “Do you want it inside you?” he asked you, but it’s obvious that his focus is on watching your cunt squeeze his shaft. “M-mmf, yes, please,” you whimpered, and you wanted him to fill you up completely. Garrett let out a breath and buried himself all the way to the base to give you everything. Garrett reached his free hand up to pinch your nipple while he kept thrusting to chase his orgasm. He played with the peak between his fingers as his pace slowed down for a few moments. “Never done this without a condom with anyone else,” Garrett panted out while he stared down at you. “I only want to fill you up,” he whispered before he pushed deeper into your cunt.

His confession made you bite your lip and smirk while you reached up to grab his waist to hold him against you. “Sh-shit, fill me up then,” you whimpered while you squeezed your pussy around his shaft. Garrett let out a grunt and gave you a few more thrusts to finish. His hips stop moving against yours as his cum fills your cunt completely. “God- g-god, you’re perfect,” Garrett breathed out while his cock twitched inside you. He gave you a few more thrusts to get his cum deeper inside before he pulled out and put your leg down. He watched the fluid leak out of your cunt while you felt heat bloom across your cheeks. You tried to close your thighs together to hide it, but he blocked your movement with his hand.

“Look at how pretty you look right now,” he murmured while he kept your legs parted. “Don’t look, Garrett,” you whispered as you avoided eye contact. Garrett sat down beside you on the mattress and caressed your cheek with his thumb. “I can’t help it when you’re this beautiful,” He said before he leaned down to kiss your forehead. Garrett kept his mouth against your forehead while he breathed out. “Some of your clothes from your last visit are in my closet,” he whispered as his fingers brushed through your hair. You tilted your head back to see his face. “Even the customized jersey with your last name and number?” you asked because he had gifted that specific shirt to you for your visits to Briar U.

Garrett nodded while his thumb stroked your jaw. “It’s there, and it’s already washed since you used it the last time we did this in my room,” Garrett replied with a grin. He nudged your nose with his own to tease you. “Even those tight little cotton shorts you paired it with are in the drawer,” Garrett added while your face grew warm. He leaned down to press a kiss to your lips. “You look so hot with Graham on your back,” Garrett murmured against your mouth before he smiled. “I’ll get them for you,” he said before he stood up from the mattress. He walked over to the dresser while being completely naked to grab the clothes. You chuckled while you watched him search the drawers. “No underwear?” you asked after he tossed the shirt and the shorts over.

Garrett looked back with a smirk on his face. “Don’t wear one,” he replied, and you rolled your eyes. You sat up on the bed and with the blanket covering your body. “So we’re not going to shower?” you added to annoy him. Garrett grabbed a fresh pair of boxers for himself along with a box of tissues from the nightstand. “Later, before bed,” Garrett answered as he slipped his boxers on. “Yeah?” you teased while he walked back to your side. Garrett climbed onto the mattress to get closer to you. “Later, baby. Aren’t you hungry?” Garrett asked while he set the tissues down to clean you up. You adjusted the blanket against your chest. “I am,” you admitted as your stomach rumbled. Garrett nodded his head toward the door.

“I feel like Tucker cooked something,” Garrett said before he reached out to tend to you. Garrett reached out to take the blanket away from your body before he opened your legs wider. He looked down at the mess dripping from your cunt while he pulled a few tissues out of the box. “I could just eat you clean instead,” Garrett murmured with a grin. You let out a scoff because you knew exactly what he wanted. “You wouldn’t stop there. You’d just want to make me cum again,” you pointed out as you grabbed your own handful of tissues. You used them to wipe the sweat away from your chest before you slid the jersey over your head. Garrett chuckled at your comment before he started wiping the cum from your inner thighs and your ass.

He focused on cleaning your cunt gently while you finished pulling the top over your stomach. “You know me too well, baby,” Garrett said as he threw the dirty tissues away. You stood up from the bed right after and pulled on the tiny cotton shorts. You walked back over to where Garrett sat so you could put your hands on his shoulders to reach his upper back. Your fingertips traced the letters of the tattoo inked across his skin while your other hand played with the curls at his nape. “You look amazing in that jersey,” Garrett murmured while his hands slid down to touch your waist and hips. He stood up from the mattress and took your hand to lead you to the door before he unlocked it to walk out into the hallway.

You only took a few steps toward the stairs before Dean looked up from the couch downstairs. “Finally, we can actually go upstairs now,” Dean called out to tease you both. Tucker laughed while Logan shook his head right beside him. “We thought you two were never going to come out of there,” Tucker added, and Garrett squeezed your fingers to ignore them. “There’s some pesto on the stove if you guys want it,” Tucker called out from the couch. Garrett led you toward the kitchen while he kept his fingers locked with yours. “Thanks, man,” Garrett answered, and you also mouthed a thank-you to Tucker. Garrett guided you straight to the counter and reached into the cabinet for a single bowl for the two of you to share.

He poured some pasta inside before he grabbed a fork to twirl a few noodles together. “Taste this,” Garrett murmured as he held the food up to your lips. You bit into the noodles, and the savory flavor filled your mouth. “Look at them, having pasta after sex,” Dean shouted from the living room while Logan snorted at the joke. Garrett raised his middle finger to the guys without looking back. “Ignore them,” Garrett muttered as he watched you chew on it. You took the fork from his hand right after you swallowed it. Garrett leaned his hip against the counter, and he never looked away from you. You twirled another bite of noodles and pressed it against his lips to make him eat before you leaned close to his ear to whisper, “Pasta after sex.”

⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀ twenty-twenty-six © addie / musingsofheaven.

⠀⠀⠀

Your stomach drops, and you’re like Jack in letting the fear overtake you enough that you almost forget you’re at the cash register. 

“Cute baby.”

The cashier smiles at you. Your hands tighten on the stroller. “Thank you.”

“She’s got perfect cheeks.”

“Yes, she does.” It’s true, and as her mother, you have every right to talk about her perfect, fat cheeks until the sun explodes.

“I'm very proud of them.”

But you’re too busy trying to convince yourself that you’re a little crazy. It’s a small store. People are allowed to buy only one thing, and awkward moments where your glance catches someone else’s happen all the time. 

By the time you look back to where the stranger was checking out, he’s gone. By the time you get to the parking lot, you’ve convinced yourself that you are ridiculous. Your nervous system has just been heightened by the beauty of motherhood.

There’s a beauty in that, even if it’s the reason you’ve been googling ‘is my baby choking or discovering she has saliva?’ recently. You have to find the silver linings. 

You load the bags and buckle Chubby in. You get behind the wheel. 

Your stomach turns when you see the man in denim near the cart return area, and you don’t think it’s your fear clocking that he’s watching you. 

But you don’t…you don’t panic. You see no need to peel out or to call Jack, because that would mean him asking a million questions that could turn a relatively good day cold.

If you were to even just slightly mention being uncomfortable because a weird man has decided to stare at you, he’d probably abandon his shift, and that would mean probably abandoning a patient. Poor, hypothetical patient. 

Calling or texting him your worries wouldn’t do anything but give a gruff n’ tough fear to a beautiful, thick, freckled body.

Yeah, let’s make it about it being for Jack’s sake instead of yours. That’s much easier. 

The park’s for kids, but it really does calm you down. Compare that to Chubby, who might excite herself in the swings so much that it’s not going to be hard to put her down for her nap later.

You press your mouth into the warm, sweet smell of your daughter’s hair. Inhaling all her sweetness is enough to cancel the sourness crawling along your nerves, and you’re just so, so enamoured by the squeaky-bellied laughs she gives every time you push her.

You hope it’ll always be this easy to entertain her.

“Are you having fun, my little tax deduction?”

Chubby kicks both feet, and your smile drops when you see that one is only socked. 

“Where did your shoe go?”

Just as she grins suspiciously proud with her gums, you look past the swing set to see a car you’re not supposed to recognize.

You don’t know why you do. It’s not like recognition in the way of seeing something you’ve seen 1,000 times before.

It’s an older, dark car. You don’t know how long it’s been parked. It gives you nothing as you watch it for ten to fifteen seconds. The windshield’s reflecting a blur, you’re not even sure if there’s anyone inside. 

..But you’re sure you’re recognizing it in the way of recognizing something you’ve just seen. 

You’re scaring yourself, but pretending it’s nothing won’t stop you from being scared. Time to go home. 

The thought comes with Jack’s voice, except Jackie would never tell you you’re scaring yourself. You take Chubby out of the swing, cooing when she fusses and not giving a damn about finding her shoes. Her dad would buy her every pair if she wanted. 

“Sorry, sweetheart. We gotta go.”

You drive home while checking the rearview mirror more times than you can count, but even as every dark car becomes that one, you’re selfish in the safety you feel as you walk through the door, past the plants you keep forgetting to water.

At least Jack keeps watering them without comment. He’s against plant murder. You can only try to be.

The camera Jack installed when Chubby was born watches you go inside. You remember rolling your eyes when he kept lecturing you on home invasions and the statistically unlikely but not impossible chance of some “freaky fuck” trying to get near you while he’s not home. 

You’re certainly not rolling them now, are you?

You lock the door. Then the deadbolt. Then the chain. You set your chubby baby down in her playpen, and you can’t even give a shit about the way your hands tremble once you’re not holding her.

Your phone buzzes. It’s Jack. 

You home?

You text back.

yes ❤️all good. Chubs kept kicking off her shoes in public and i think she's taken to trying to do the same with her socks

The dots appear immediately.

Send proof of life.

You laugh despite the day. You're home. You're safe. The both of you are safe.

You enter the playpen to take a picture of Chubby on her back, both fists around her bare foot. She looks innocent, like she's never committed the crime of wasting shoes in her life.

You send it. Jack answers immediately. Duh.

Sockless and disgraceful. That's my girl. You okay?

...You know what? For the sake of you both, you can take to half-truths.

yeah, just tired.

Eat something.

You smile faintly and look down to find your daughter has managed to take off her other sock.

You hunch over to kiss her baby belly.

"I think your dada's teaching me how to be a worry wart, are you gonna grow up to be a worry wart---"

A knock on the door interrupts your tease.

You nearly drop your phone as Chubby startles. After she decides to not care, she blinks up at you with mild interest. You do not move.

The knock comes again.

"Ma'am?"

It's the voice of a man through the door.

Your blood goes as frozen as you are.

...He sounds polite.

"...Yes?"

You try putting on your nurse voice, but it's cracked.

"Sorry to bother you, but I think you dropped something. At the park. Your baby dropped something. I didn't want you to lose it."

You slap your hand to your mouth.

Oh. What the fuck? What the actual hell?

You think you might black out, everything within your line of sight stretches and blurs with the beat of your heart harsh against your bones.

"...What is it?"

"A shoe."

At that, your heart just might lurch out of you and turn you into a screaming mess.

"I---thank you," You can hear yourself becoming smaller, even though you want to ask him if he followed you all the fucking way home to give you your daughter's shoe. "You can leave it where you now."

Being harmless might make this situation easier. Maybe not. Maybe you should scream at him to leave. Maybe you should call the police.

But you don't know how many windows are locked, and making him angry might make him want to figure it out.

“I don’t want it to blow away. It's pretty windy. I can hand it to you.”

“It won’t. Please, leave.”

Leave, weirdass! Leave---

You almost drop your phone when it buzzes again. Again.

What’s going on?

Your thumb hovers over the keyboard as the man knocks again.

“You there?”

You type fast.

Nothing

...Jack's reply comes so impossibly quickly that it feels more like his fingers pinching the back of your neck than an actual text.

Nothing is the man at the door?

You freeze. Again.

Move away from the door. Now.

...You had forgotten that he'd be able to see everything through the app on his phone, the one linked to all the cameras around the house. He can see the man.

He can see your lie.

And you practically jump when you hear his voice come through the speaker outside. It's low, rough in the gravel of his beautiful throat. Too calm.

“Step away from the door and leave.”

You can hear a scuffle outside, maybe the man shuffling back as he gives a nervous laugh.

"I'm just returning something. She dropped---"

"No."

Jack's decided not to yell or get loud, which is worse. You hate the voice he uses when he doesn't want to ask people for compliance more than once. It's usually with residents. Or drunk patients.

It's funnier with them.

You can hear scraping against the porch.

“Look, man, I was just trying to help.”

“You followed my wife to my house? How else would you have my daughter's shoe?”

“I didn’t follow her.”

The man sounds genuine, at least. Like, he actually believes that. You imagine Jack at the hospital, his shoulders high and tight, and face emptied out to let rage in. He's watching the camera feed, the man with Chubby's little shoe in his hand.

...But Jack, seeing that, calling him out on that, tells you he does have her shoe. Isn't that a perfect excuse to stalk you for miles?

“...You’re on camera, fucker. Leave."

Jack's voice puts the chill in you. Chubby starts fussing.

You back away from the door and hurry to the playpen, scooping her up. She's offended by the suddenness and tells you that with another fuss, but she just presses her warm cheek against your collarbone.

Not afraid like you, thank God.

Your phone rings. Jack's name flashes on the screen. You answer instantly.

"Jack—"

"Bedroom. Lock the door."

"Jack, I’m sorry—"

His voice is now in your ear. You can hear his clipped breath.

"Bedroom. Lock it. Take the baby."

"I have her."

You hear him swallow.

"Good. Good girl. Go."

You move down the hall with Chubby clutched to your chest. She grabs a fistful of your shirt and chews on the neckline.

You get into the bedroom and scramble to lock the door.

"I'm in the bedroom, it's locked. Is he gone?"

You can hear movement on Jack's end now, the sound of the Pitt before a demand leaves him, away from the phone and controlled.

"Robby. Take my rooms." A pause, a muffle. "No, I’m not asking. I'm supposed to be leaving here, anyway."

A muffled, distant voice sounds out. Robby, probably. The sound of footsteps, Jack's, are what become the forefront of noise.

"There’s a man at my house. I have to go."

"Jack, I’m locked in. He’s probably gone. You can't just leave. I'll call the police if you want---"

Jack's voice drops when he decides he's having none of your excuses.

"You lied to me."

You feel your spit caught in your throat. Chubby nuzzles.

"You were scared, and you lied to me."

"I didn’t want you to---"

"What?" ...He's snapping. "To know? React like anyone would? Come home? Keep you alive? Pick one."

Your throat might close up on you. It makes for the rushing silence that sits between you and him, just until you hear him inhale.

"Sorry, I’m sorry. I’m not---kid, I’m not mad at you. I'm just out of my fucking mind."

His apology comes out angry, really. Ironic. Like he can still find ways to be mad at himself in this situation.

"I saw him at the store, then I thought--I thought I saw his car at the park. But I didn't know. I didn't want to be dramatic---"

"You saw him at the store. And at the park. And you came home?"

...Jack might as well be swallowing the knives in the kitchen with how he sounds. You stutter things that are barely words, bouncing Chubby.

"I didn’t know what else to do, Jack."

I did. But I didn't want to deal with this on top of everything else.

"You call me!"

"I didn’t want you to scare me more!"

That's your and Jack's talent. Escalating. You regret your words when the lines go quiet.

When Jack's voice returns, it sounds stripped. It's quiet, and you'd rather he'd yell like he just did.

"Yeah. Okay. That makes sense."

"...Did I hurt you?"

There's a breath with a hmph. That's an answer enough. You hold in your breath, only letting it go against Chubby's hair.

"You did. And that doesn’t matter right now. Stay where you are. I'm going to hang up to call the police. I'll be there soon, Sleepy."

Jack hangs up. You start crying then, and your baby lifts her head and stares at you with confusion, even more offended than before.

You don't know how long you cry, but you're finished when Jack's truck tears into the driveway. He gets home before the police do. The distance between here and the Pitt...him getting home so quickly shouldn't be possible.

But shouldn't be one to not believe in him.

The front door opens, and you think it's okay to disobey his demand and leave the bedroom.

You find him pale with a jaw locked down so hard that you want to tease him and tell him that he's going to eat his lip. He looks at you, then at Chubby, then at every window in the room.

Chubby lights up.

"Da bah bahhhhh!"

He crosses the room, and you want this to be something you can tease later so badly, even though you're sputtering and reaching for him, because he looks like he could be called Dr. Violence right about now. Violence got himself a medical degree and scrubs and beautiful, silver hair.

Dr. Violence. Papa Bear. Jackie.

"Jack."

His arms come around you and your baby. One hand cradles the back of your head as you instantly fall into his stern, stoic body. He holds you too tightly. Never too tightly. Never tight enough.

"I’m sorry I lied."

He slips his fingers to your neck, squeezing there with the rough tumble of his voice against your skin.

"Don’t apologize yet. I’m deciding how mad I’m allowed to be without becoming fucked about this.”

Call the progress, baby. He's trying.

You pull back just enough to look at him.

"You’re shaking."

"I watched a man stand on my porch with our daughter’s shoe in his hand. It's there. I can't touch it. I need to...I need to check the locks. The police should be here soon."

"Jack...let's just...let's just talk about this---"

"I need to check the locks. And the windows. And I'm getting more cameras tomorrow. And motion lights. I don't know why I didn't get motion lights before. That fucking...that fucking bastard. You don’t know what it was like seeing him there and knowing you told me nothing. Knowing there was a whole day of you being afraid that I wasn’t inside. I wasn’t there. I didn’t know. I didn’t---"

"Jack, let's get you sitting down---"

"You’re not going anywhere alone for a while."

...You should've guessed that's what would be the answer to this at some point. You swallow, voice softening carefully.

"We can talk about that."

Jack blinks. He rubs your neck. He only looks slightly helpless when he glances at Chubby.

He kisses her perfect, tubby cheek.