The Whispered Moments in Time

Maybe you do need a sign, something in you agrees, leaves rusting all around you, like something big has just passed by.

A bear, maybe?

Or a wolf of some sort.

You aren't really willing to slow down and see for yourself, not when it is still so dark and you are this tired.

Stopping on an empty road is stupid, stopping on an empty road in the middle of the night can be deadly which is why you aren't doing it today. No, thank you.

Only the bright orange of hazard lights is the first thing you see rounding the next turn. Still somehow working to alert you to danger, flash of them pulsing like a live thing in the dead of the night.

The next thing you see is the car — slammed into a thick tree, the front of it compressed, glass of the windshield smashed open.

Bloody hell, did someone get sent flying through it during the crash?

It's a bad luck stopping at night on an empty road. But someone apparently had even worse luck today.

The least you can do is check to make sure if anyone needs help. With no service in this neck of the woods, you can either leave them here or take them to get help if they are in any shape to move around.

You sigh, pulling in a park a few feet away from the wreckage. No good deed goes unpunished, but it's not something you can just ignore. Even if you really really want to get to your next stop and sleep finally.

Woods are quiet around you, not rustling with a single leaf when you roll down the window — coward's substitue of gettting out of the car. You really don't want to die with someone in this place, even though worrying about folk legends now seems a bit like a reach.

Cool evening air kisses your cheeks, strokes your head when you peek out, trying to gauge your chances here.

Anxiety sizzles under your skin, slow uneven spread of it through your chest sinking around your heart and pulling it down in a quicksand of fear.

The totalled white Hyundai Sonata flickers at you, mudded and scratched all over the place.

The driver's seat is empty.

Fucking spectacular.

You sit in silence for a few more minutes, tapping on your phone to find it suddenly dead and unresponsive.

Okay. Alright.

So the question now is, how badly do you want to help someone?

You swallow, mouth dry and tight because no one is watching. You could just leave.

You could drive away and contact the sherriff's department when you are passing through whatever small settlement you'll see next. Smart thing to do.

Your fingers flex around the steering wheel, when you groan, softly hitting your forehead against it. Lord, grant some protection to your lost sheep with the set of ethics that might kill her today.

"Evening." Someone's voice suddenly chirps on your left and you jolt, scream dying in your throat when you see the man standing there.

Bloody and torn up all over, his tshirt tight over his chest, eyebags dark under his blue eyes. He smiles at you, braces his forearms on the rolled down window and tilts his head.

Big dog trying to squeeze himself in through the opening.

You don't like dogs.

You aren't sure you like the bloke either.

As if hearing your thoughts, his eyes crinkle, teeth — moist and white flashing when his lips can no longer hide them with a grin this wide. You can feel someone's eyes on the back of your neck, even though the only person on this road is looking right at you.

He's got blood caked above his brow, splash of it darkening his buzeed hair right above the temple. Whatever has happened to him, it must have hurt like hell. Only the stranger doesn't even winces when he absentmindedly scratches at the dried up blood.

"John MacTavish." He introduces himself after another minute of staring, his eyes warm and excited about something. What is he so happy about? "Apologies for the sorry state of me, bonnie. I didnae expect to have a meet cute."

That's probably adrenaline and relief clashing, you think to yourself. He has just gotten in a car crash, seeing a friendly face surely is a reason to be happy.

There is still an insistent feeling at the back of your neck that something is moving closer to you, only you can't turn around and look.

That would mean you have to leave John behind your back.

You stare at the flxing muscle of his forearms and don't want to find out whether his arms are long enough to reach for your throat from where he is standing.

"You've had…a hell of a night." You finally muster up, hand twitching to lock the doors of the car and Johnny hums, nodding, his too wide smile starting to get on your nerves. "Do you need help? A lift, maybe?" You offer before you think it through and his eyes crinkle in the corners.

He is handsome.

Rugged and bloody and weirdly happy, he is handsome in the same way big dog breeds are. Not quite wolf, but something close adjacent. Close enough to hunt and get hunted.

Wonder what hunted him down today, passes through your mind as you stare at the bleeding gash on his temple. A little more and the injury would have taken a chunk out of his skull.

He got really lucky today.

"I'd appreciate it." He nods slowly, his neck either stiff or injured, his eyes blinking every once in a while. Like he is not completely here in this moment, like his head hurts enough to give him a migraine.

You unlock the car doors, nodding at him to sit in your passenger's seat and try not to flinch when he practically drops into it with a grunt, his shoulder clicking when Johnny reaches for the seatbelt.

The drive to the police station is uneventful safe for the unnerving tension of him sitting right beside you, too big for your car, his shoulders hunching when you offer to move his seat to give him some legroom.

"I also have Ibuprofen." You say, before you can think of it and he turns his head to you even slower. Blinks, like he isn't sure he heard you right.

God, he must be really out of it after a crash like that.

"For your head, I mean. It must hurt." You gesture at the blood on his temple and Johnny blinks at you again, before the corners of his lips twitch and slide into a smile so wide you quickly look away.

"Ye're very nice. But I've had it worse." He smiles, instead of thanking you properly, not moves an inch as you reach over him to pull the lever and shove his seat back.

You can feel his eyes on the top of your neck with every tiny hair that goes up, when he suddenly huffs out air. Dry and amused.

Like you are doing something funny.

When you glance up at him, the look in Johnny's eyes is almost enough for you to crawl out of the car and walk on your own legs to the nearest town. You don't do that only because he seems very much in need of urgent medical attention.

You don't do that, because your still dead phone doesn't turn on and the radio is all static too, no way to contact anyone. As much as he makes you uncomfortable, Johnny is probably just high on adrenaline.

Probably nothing weird, you reason and swear that he chuckles again. Only when you look back at him, Johnny tilts his head to the side, eyes curious.

Probably just your imagination. Probably nothing.

"A shame we can't call 999 and get you asessed properly." You mumble under your breath, pressing on the gas to speed up down the road. If police stops you, then maybe you can pawn off Johnny onto them or just gesture at him silently. People ought to cut some slack to a car crash victim on his way to his other possible car crash.

"That's okay." Johnny murmurs, shoulder slumped against the door, eyes soft when you look back at him. He did not say a word about the speed of your driving, didn't complain about occasional hole in the beat up road that shook him a couple times already.

Anxiety pounds on the inside of your chest when he closes his eyes, probably trying to rest. But if there is something you know about bleeding people is that you are not supposed to let them sleep till you get them to the hospital.

"Johnny, look at me." You meant to pat his knee, but probably forget to take into account the length of his legs and how close he is, instead smacking his thigh.

Johnny visibly flinches, eyes flying open — startled and wide, he looks at you like he doesn't know how to react.

"Don't fall asleep till we get you some help, okay?" You try to sound stern, only your voice shakes a little when he just stares at you. God, you really don't want someone to die in your car tonight, you have a reservation at hot springs in fifteen hours. "Just…keep your eyes on me. Please."

Silence stretches between you — thick and tense, his shoulders suddenly sinking down, tension you didn't know was there evaporating.

"F'course, bonnie." Johnny's voice is softer than you expected, warm in a way that makes your cheeks burn because damn him and his handsome face. "I'll keep 'em on you."

You roll up to the urgent care, ready to get out of the car and help him in. Only he stops you, shaking his head slowly.

Smiles at you like it's not a 'goodbye' but a 'see you' and you don't know what to do with the urge to turn back and check your backseat for him without looking like a raging lunatic because the bloke is clearly right there in front of you.

Still, you did all you could to take care of him. Now you should take care of your suddenly dead phone.

Probably just need a new charger, given how quickly your old ones die one by one, capitalism be damned for the lack of warranty and shitty quality.

Luckily there is a place a couple blocks away from the hospital, god bless gas stations and all they do for the travelers and multitude of things that can go wrong during the bloody road trip.

Doesn't take you long to get a new cable from a caffeine-energised cashier, quickly checking it to see your phone powering back to life. Surprisingly with no battery wasted.

The screen shines bright white and absolutely no bars of reception, somehow not able to get any connection even here.

But free wifi gives you a chance to quickly text your friend that you are still alive and had a wild encounter just now.

That's when your car alarm suddenly goes off, making both you and the cashier flinch as you fumble for keys, turning it off.

Weird.

But not looking to push your luck and see if there is anyone who'd like to pick the locks on your car tonight, you say your thanks and wish the cashier good night before the warmth of their space closes behind you with the chime of their doorbell.

Night is cool and quiet, your headphones muffling everything as you turn on the downloaded playlist. No need to stay in one place for too long when you still have a long way to go.

You glance back at the gas station, and shrug off the prickling sensation of eyes on your nape, not finding anyone staring.

You really really need to sleep, you think, starting to walk to your car, your shadow flickering on the pavement under your feet as you walk by the first lamp post, shivers running down your nape to your back.

Unease swallowing your cool head and making you shiver again. You'd love to say that the night is just colder than usually.

That you are just really tired.

Only you can't.

There are steps behind, you suddenly realise.

Music dying in your headphones, the ringing silence coating your nerves till they are sharp and buzzing under your skin.

Someone is there, you think, finding the handle of the flip knife in your pocket. A tiny fucking thing, but better to have a small knife than none at all.

The car is barely a dozen feet away, dark and dead, not a flicker of light or a movement inside. Safe and quiet, it stands alone in the midnight parking lot.

You speed up, killing the music in your headphones, ears straining because the steps, they are right there. Right behind you and they are faster than you are — closing in quickly, your heart pounding in your ears when you turn back, knife gripped.

No one is there.

The tears burn your eyes, throat tight, because this is worse.

Someone was there, you know that someone was there, you could hear them!

You turn back to your car and suck in the breath, head white-clean with panic.

Your car is at the end of the parking lot, your car is a dozen feet away from you.

Your car was a dozen feet away from you.

Not anymore, it isn't. Sitting in the exact same place, but you are just not close to it anymore. Back at the other end of it. Empty and quiet parking lot, no one in sight — not a place to hide.

Unless you count the one under your car, voice in your head chimes in, reminding you about the horror stories and podcasts about abducted people and—

Fuck, this is so unhelpful.

The parking lot is empty, you repeat to yourself. Nothing is there, you checked yourself and you do need to find motel soon to have some fucking sleep before more hallucinations follow.

Only the car feels so far away now. You'll need to cross the entire place before you reach it and it is completely deserted. Light of a lamp post flickers above your head and you take a breath in.

Can't stay in one place for the rest of the night, you need to stop thinking this much and get in the bloody car. Maybe call someone who's not asleep this late in the night to talk to while you drive.

Your shoulders slowly drop down as you take another few breaths. Could have been imagination and good acustics of this place. Nothing really is there, you know there isn't.

If anyone wanted to attack they'd do so while you were calming yourself down, trying not to cry.

Okay, one final stretch and then a short stop to get a treat — something to keep you going till morning or the cheap motel with decent bed.

Whichever comes first, you reason and will your heart to stop sinking in the rippling waters of your mind like a bloody fishing float.

You take the first few steps, checking over the shoulder which feels silly, but something in you still waits for a mysterious person to follow you again. Nothing, just like you checked.

It's okay, you breath in and out, we are just really really tired, right?

After a few more moments of breathing in and out, you squeeze your phone and start walking across the parking lot, keeping your eyes on the car. There is only one pair of footsteps that you can hear.

Crisp, a little heavy, the rubber heel of the boots hitting the pavement, as you walk, trying to distract yourself with the list of things you can get at the nearest gas station. A Red Bull, that's for sure, you think and huff our air.

It comes out with a whoosh, your ankle twisting when you place your foot on the slippery part of the pavement, almost twisting it with a hiss. Pain blooms — sharp and sudden, nearly enough to deafen you when the parking lot falls silent again.

Nearly, you regret immediately, your heart cold and heavy when you pretend to check on your ankle, massaging the aching part. Fingers trembling.

The sound of footsteps stoppped a second after you did.

You don't want to turn back, you try to calm down, blinking quickly, eyes watering which is a luxury you cannot afford right now. Not like this.

When you start walking again, your ears catch the moment, when the foosteps start again. This time falling out of rhythm with yours on purpose.

Whoever they are, they noticed.

You try to swallow the knot, not wanting to run because everyone knows that as soon as you run from the dog — it will chase you and it will bite you and it will get you, because you are never going to be faster than it.

It's not a fucking dog, that much you know for sure, but you squeeze the keys in your pocket, finding the one from your car and do the only thing left.

You start walking fastering, hearing the footsteps behind you hurrying up immediately. Moving quicker than yours, because now they know that you know it too. Now there isn't really a reason to hide.

Forgetting all previous reasoning, you hiss out air and bolt, dashing across the remaining dozen feet, heart pounding, because they follow immediately. Someone's feet hitting the ground faster than it should be possible, closing in on you, phantom presense heating your back when you turn the car alarm off and wrench the doors open.

Fail inside more than anything, slamming the doors shut, right when the steps should have hit the back of your ankles, kicking you down. The car locks click on immediately.

The devastation isn't something you expect when you dare to glance at your window.

The parking lot is empty. No one is standing there next to your car.

You heave in the darkness of your car, heart pounding against your temples, your hands shaking. Someone was there.

Someone was following you and you couldn't see them.

Your brain plays back to the sound of someone running after you, heavy-footed and unnervingly quick, approaching rapidly to force you to either turn back or get caught.

Like a big dog, you think, rubbing your biceps in attempt to soothe the goosebumps rising all over your skin, like a big dog if it walked on two legs and wore some heavy fucking boots.

You take another deep breath, locks still shut on your doors. There is no one there. The parking lot is empty with no places to hide. No one is really there.

But you have heard someone, you think, choking down the strong urge to whimper, because you cannot go mad like that, it can't happen to you.

It had to be your lack of sleep, your imagination, the trick your brain played on you to double the set of footsteps. No one could be there.

"No one was there. It's fine, it's okay, we are fine." You mutter to yourself breathing in and out, fingers trembling when you fish out your phone out of the cup holder, the white-blue light of your skin litting up the space. "I need to fucking sleep before I lose my mind." You continue talking to yourself, because your voice filling the air is better than silence again.

Better than imagining someone crawling their ways up to your car, limbs deformed and too long.

Moving faster than any real being should.

"I just-" You take a deep breath in and adjust the silver amulet swaying on your rearview mirror. Some knick knack you got gifted for 'safe journey', not that it can be of any use, you'd think if your mind didn't go quiet immediately, words dying halfway up to your mouth.

There are eyes in your rearview mirror — crinkling with excitement you left down at the precinct, unblinking and dead in the sharp light of your phone.

You know these eyes, you think, scream bubbling in your throat when you blink and he doesn't disappear.

Sits right behind your driver's seat, leaning a little too close so you'd definitely notice him there.

He is not breathing, something in you cries, you did not hear him, because Johnny hasn't been breathing all this time.

Tears make you half blind and terrified, because you cannot stop looking at him, because if you look away something might happen like that time in the forest.

Because you are locked with him in your car and you don't know how he got in.

"Never left, bonnie." Johnny shares, finally blinking, like he has remembered he needs to do that. "You promised me a lift."

Panic wails in your head like an air raid alert, moans with ambulance sirens, rings with church bells.

"I- I gave you a lift." You choke out, voice cracking in half when he shakes his head slowly. Moving like his body is too stiff for it, like it takes some effort to turn his head freely. "The police station. I gave you a lift there." You try to explain, swallowing a sob because you don't want to die, not like this, you don't want a big man with too dead eyes to make you hurt.

You don't want it to hurt if he does it, but it will, you can see it in his eyes that it will.

Can sense the phantom feeling of a blowtorch brough to the ribs, of dogs biting at the heels and ripping into the meat of the calves, of hands pinching you in all soft places — mean and rough, so you don't black out before it is actually time.

"I didnae want a lift there." He says simply, leather of your seats creaking when he leans closer, props his chin on your seat — right above your shoulder and keeps looking you in the eyes through the rearview mirror.

"Where do you want a lift to?" You ask, gripping the suddenly dead phone in hand, his eyes not blinking at you. He probably forgot to do it. Again.

"I'll tell ye." Johnny responds, tone casual when he turns his head, no longer looking you in the eyes and instead talking right in your ear. His voice feeling the same way pine branches do when they graze your face. "Donnae worry, bonnie. I'm a good passenger."

You don't want to think how you still cannot feel his breath when he is speaking, even with Johnny so close, even with his voice screwing into your ear. There is nothing, no tickle of air against your skin, no shiver induced by the hairs on your skin moving.

It's like having an audio recording talk back to you.

You swallow again and look in the rearview mirror, because the alternative is turning your head to look at him and then it's real. Then he is there, in the backseat of your car.

"Okay." You try to catch his eyes in the reflection and when he lets you, the blood drips off his brow onto his cheek. Slow and viscous, it should never move like that.

"I'll pay for gas." Johnny says, tone almost gentle, like this is your biggest concern right now. The money. "And for whatever else ye need. Like I said, I am a good passenger. Just need ye to be good to me back and that's all." He leans a little closer, resting his arms on the shoulder of your seat. Like a kid asking you to stop at McDonald's on the way home. "Can ye do that for me, bonnie?"

"Yeah." You breathe out, slowly nodding, your chest tight and pounding from inside out, pressure mounting and pressing on your frontal lobe. Will come back to you as a migraine and a halo, punishing for today's exertion. "Yeah, okay, I…I can do that."

You don't really have a choice there.

"Good." Johnny smiles finally and the relief that fills you brings red-hot feeling to your face, blood burning under your skin. Shame curdling your trembling spine into a spiral for you to use when you are going to slide all the way down into a full blown meltdown.

Fawn or die, right? No other way here with someone as big as him.

You slowly shift your eyes on the road, half expecting him to lean over and tear your bloody jagular with his teeth. Getting what he probably came for and leaving you to bleed out.

Probably the same thing happened to the last guy that picked him.

But Johnny doesn't want to kill you.

If he did, he would have done so back in the woods — would have sent your car into the underbrush and watched how you bleed out in a place with no cell reception.

Instead Johnny talks your ear off whenever radio doesn't work and ever since he got into your car it stopped working alltogether, same as your phone.

You stop minding at some point, lazily bickering with him on your way to your airnbnb, because better talk with someone that have the unending buzz above your ear for three hours.

"Do you ever wish to sometimes have a pass to just murder someone and get away with it?" You ask him, parked by the 24 hour gym because the police do not take kindly to people loitering in the middle of the night, even if it is purely to get a very late night ice-cream. But you heard that around this parking you should be okay.

Maybe. If you are lucky.

Johnny sits with his legs on your seats, back leaning on the passenger door on the side across from you so he can watch you eat.

"I donnae ken, bonnie, do I?" He chuckles, rolling his eyes. Steals a fry from your paper bag even though you aren't sure you ever saw him eat it.

'Can eat other things, bonnie', his voice announces inside of your head and you chew quicker. You are going mad and he is at fault. 'Donnae need ice cream when I could just eat the box, bonnie' It adds very unhelpfully as you push another spoonful in your mouth.

God damn his big mouth and honesty bordering on vulgar.

Johnny is ex-military, he tells you, very vague about what it is he used to do there. Although on the very next day he steals the lighter from your glove box and plays with it whenever you fall silent. He either gets bored easily or really likes the flame, you think and when you glance back at him — his eyes are laughing.

Probably both.

"So you never wished you could just kill someone with no consequences?" You press on and he gives you a half hearted shrug. "Not a person you'd come back to haunt out of the goodness of your big heart, Johnny?"

The taunt usually helps to get him to talk, only this time, when you stretch out the vowels of his name, Johnny hums, watching you through the lashes, his fingers interlocked, resting on his lap.

Something in his eyes is not the usual amusement or warning. Something there makes you pretend you are suddenly very hungry and not at all nervous to look at him.

The hoarse chuckle he lets out makes your ears burn.

Bloody hell, he is insufferable.

"And yet ye suffer and persevere." He huffs out, laughing out loud when you stare up at him, looking a lot like a deer in the middle of the path of incoming truck. "Gets written all over yer face when you sulk, bonnie, don't have to be a mind-reader."

"You might as well be one." You grumble under your breath, pretending not to notice his arched brow. Not opening this can of worms either. "Why do you even talk with me if you don't want to answer my questions?"

Your question would be weird for anyone but him, because, Lord, does your passenger like to talk.

And not just to himself, you quickly realised. Johnny loves having debates, says the wrong thing on purpose and watches how you speed through fear of his retaliation to polite attempt to correct him to genuine annoyance you push down to telling him that he doesn't know what the fuck he is even saying.

Doesn't like being called dumb, though, which is something you also very quickly found out. Made a mistake of throwing it his way in a heat of the moment and Johnny's entire face went blank, muscle jumping in his jaw.

"Don't call me that, bonnie. That's not nice." He said, knees suddenly pressing into the back of your driver's seat, pushing you chest first into the steering wheel. Not yet enough to send the two of you into the ditch, but close enough.

"Okay. Got it. Sorry, mate. I'm sorry, won't do that again." You quickly breathed out, grip tightening because if you crash the car in the middle of the night in some dead-dark woods, it's an entirely new can of worms to open.

And you don't want to get stuck with Johnny in this place. Frankly, you wouldn't want to get stuck here even if you were on a tourist bus of 52 people, but no one really is asking you.

"Johnny." He correct you a minute after, pressure of his knees finally getting off of your lower back. Oh, thank you Jesus, for the man has surprising sharp kneecaps. His eyes are unblinking in the rearview window when you glance at him through it, but he is no longer frowning.

Stuck between wanting to talk to you again and driving the point across.

"I'm sorry, Johnny." You repeat, glancing him in the eyes, slowing down as you do. Both your speech and your car in case he actually changes his mind and decides to kill you for being a little mean to him.

"It's okay, bonnie. Ye didnae mean it, right?" He apparently chooses mercy because he slings his arm around the headrest of your seat, his fingers grazing your sweater. "Just got carried away. Happens to me all the time."

You nod quickly, confirming that no, of course, you didn't mean it. You don't want to die gruesomely in the place with nothing around after all.

"I like yer reactions." he shrugs after another moment, snapping you out of it. Tilts his head to his other shoulder, eyes narrowing. "Thinking about something?"

Johnny likes having your eyes on him and doesn't like when your mind wanders somewhere he cannot follow, because to his great displeasure he cannot crawl into your head and cannot open you up without dealing some permanent damage.

"Nothing in particular." You lie and he nods slowly, before swinging his legs off the backseat, suddenly so much closer. Suddenly filling up the space of your car, his face close to you when his palm squeezes the back of your head and smashes your mouth against his.

Grins in your lips, when you yelp and try to pull back.

No way but through, is there, bonnie?

Johnny, licks into your lips — filthy and messy, squeezes your cheeks with his other hand to force your mouth open so he can push his tongue in your mouth. So he can growl into your teeth when you whine, palms pressing against his shoulders. Not distracted now, are you?

He is hungry and blood-hot, he doesn't kiss you like a normal person, instead practically climbing into the front seat to devour your mouth. Nips at your tongue, like a bastard he is when you finally relax.

"Gonna bite harder if ye lie to me again." Johnny murmurs and coos for you open your mouth back.

So he can kiss it better.

I hate him, you think, gripping the steering wheel and his grin in your rearview mirror stretches from ear to ear, when you lick your lips without realising it.

Do you now, bonnie?

Do you really hate him?

"Bonnie." Johnny whines two hours into the drive through the outskirts of a small town you don't even remember the name of. "Bonnie, c'mon, ye can hear me."

"Wish I couldn't." You reply without thinking, eyes dry and aching, your mouth tasting like wet toilet paper and not the fresh kind.

God, you do need that bloody stop and a nightful of sleep.

Johnny's silent for the remaining hour of your aimless wandering until you finally spot a place where you can get a room for the night. Where he is not going to hover over your shoulder every step of the way.

Does not help much, because when you come back in the morning, refreshed and mostly on your feet yet again, Johnny's cold fingers on your nape nearly give you a bloody heart attack.

Bastard laughs when you flinch, noses at your neck — his tongue following in a way that makes the hungry heat between your legs pulsate, some sick part of you itching for him to bite down, so you can finally get a proof of his teeth.

"Will you tell me where you want to go so I can drop you off?" You ask after a beat and he huffs out air, licks your nape to taste the shower gel he can smell and salt of your skin, practically purring with satisfaction.

"No." Johnny says, easy and gleeful, all too happy to make your life harder. "But ye can drive around the place and see if anything work for me, bonnie. Maybe ye'll get the spot right and I'll leave ye for good."

Wouldn't that be something?

You don't want to bring Johnny back to your apartment or even to your city, given his ability to follow you through your travels, completely disregarding whatever flimsy protection the silver amulet was supposed to give.

In any case, other than rest you didn't have much plans and since he does not plan to leave, you might as well take some time to explore the surrounding settlements, no matter how small or boring.

You came for the views, did you not?

Views, my ass, you think grimly, standing near your car in the middle of the night, gas station cheerfully-shiny behind your back.

Johnny is a nocturnal creature, you found out quickly and he does not fancy exploring the lakes or whatever else nature has to offer, instead egging you on to take him for a joyride as soon as the sun sets.

So here you are now. No one but you and that reefer that pulled up just a few minutes after you — it's driver watching you a little too intently.

You have been eyeing him for the last couple minutes, praying that it's just paranoia, that you are just tired or that the guy is just sleep deprived.

He is a big man with heavy eyes, when he passes you for the first time, glancing at your car.

He is smiling in a way that makes your heart drop somewhere down in your feet when he finally approaches, covers the exit with his frame and angles himself toward you.

"You are a sight for sore eyes. Passin' through or visitin' anyone? I could help with the routing if you're lost. God knows it's easy 'round these parts." He laughs, expecting your tension to ease, only it doesn't happen.

You don't like strangers and you don't like when the trap you against your car while you are just trying to load up on some bloody gas.

"I'm quite busy, sorry, we are leaving soon. Appreciate the offer, though."

It's a common bloody occurrence, because you travel alone, because you look like an easy catch, because you don't like making a fuss and maybe, this sort of men notice it from afar.

Only the man crowds you, smiles knowing that you have nowhere to run and no one to turn to. He has seen that you got out of the car alone, that you paid for gas all on your own, that your front passenger seat is empty.

It's a chance and probably there aren't that many of those around these parts, you think grimly, familiar terror of "freeze, just stay still, just keep smiling, just play dead" circles your brain like filthy water the drain.

"Don't see anyone with you, love. C'mon, you could give me a little help…" He makes a gesture with his fist and you have to swallow the scream that never comes out anyway. What's the reason to make a sound when there is not a person to hear your tree getting sawed down?

What's the point if it just makes them angry and makes them mean and makes you cry?

"Bird said she's busy, you daft cunt." Your saviour isn't a knight in shining armour, not even a human when he sneers his words out, somehow so much bigger than you remember.

Johnny is a dark monstrous thing when he drags the truck driver away from you, his grip breaking the guy's shoulder because the anguished wailing cuts through the midnight air, making you flinch.

You didn't know a human being could sound like that. You didn't want to know that they could.

But the uncomfortable sticky feeling is still inside of your chest, settles in your urge to pull the collar of your t-shirt higher, makes your skin itch with the vulnerable 'i need to cover up' that you squish immediately. You didn't do anything wrong.

You have nothing to be ashamed of.

But Johnny catches the look on your face, stares for a long moment before his face morphs into something horrifying — skin wax-stiff and eyes dead, he smiles like the creature of nightmares.

His hands too long, his legs unnaturally twisting when he smashes the man down on the wet asphalt.

Johnny is a monster that you don't know and never wanted to see, because anger presses him down on all fours, his human body twisting to move with terrifying speed when he is no longer bipedal.

He crawls to the wheezing terrified truck driver and you don't make a sound, because whatever he is, you don't want him to remember that you are still there.

Johnny smashes the man's skull against the pavement — once and hard, before he closes his maw of a mouth on his nape and drags the unconsious bloke under the truck parked nearby.

He does not get off of all fours, his wrists turned in the opposite direction as his palms wetly plap on the pavement when he scurries in the dark with his…evidently, dinner.

You can't see him but still feel his eyes on you. The familiar prickle at the back of your neck, the tears burning your waterline because you cannot get in a car with that.

You won't, you'd rather just stay on the sidewalk on this empty gas station and sob your soul out into the instant ramen or whatever they have to offer.

Johnny re-emerges in twenty minutes, seemingly calm, even though one of his legs is still twisted at an angle that should not be possible.

You try your best not to look at his left arm, knuckles of which brush the pavement.

Nope, see no evil, perceive no evil, acknowledge no evil.

His eyes crinkle when he sees you anxiously loitering, obviously waiting for him to come back, and without thinking much — he sways forward — noses at your jaw and cheeks, huffs out air in your ear, smiling when you shiver, trying to shake off the tickling feeling.

"Could've left without me, bonnie." He says, smile widening when you blink at him, terror easing its clutches on you when he laughs, warm and hoarse. "Didnae think about it, did ye? I'm flattered. Come on, get in the car, I cleaned the trash up." Johnny adds conversationally and when he grins at you, his teeth are bloody.

You swallow the urge to retch, bile rolling up to your throat and nod quickly.

You know that he knows how much it unnerves you.

You know it amuses him.

But alongside revulsion there is a strange sort of relief. The comfort in knowledge that no one is coming back to leer at you. No one is going to be touching you tonight, you won't need to fight anyone.

Johnny took care of it, voice in your head echoes and you swallow, pulling the pump nozzle out and putting it back. Your hands trembling as you screw your gas cap back on, trying not to think too much about anything.

Johnny has saved you.

The rest…the rest doesn't matter.

He is happy and chatty the rest of the drive to your airnbnb, stretches out in the backseat talking to you about tours he did in various parts of the world.

When you risk another glance back at him — his limbs are back to normal. He looks like a person again.

He looks like Johnny again.

Chuckles when you breathe out a sigh of relief, sinking back into your driver's seat.

Squearmish much, are we, bonnie?

"What happens if we don't get to where you wanna be dropped off?" you ask him later, watching Johnny's legs stretched out on the backseat.

He is still sitting right behind you, back resting on the passenger door.

Your passenger is silent for an uncharacteristic minute, before you hear him move — stretching his stiff neck, vertebrae popping in the silence of your car.

"Then death will not part us, bonnie." He says after another minute, slowly, like it's a joke he thought about for a while now and finally got a chance to tell. You can hear the glee of anticipation coursing in his tone. Waiting for your reaction. "But there's no rush. None at all, I've got all the time in the world." Johnny adds, casually and peeks from behind of your driver's seat so you can see his excitement and not just hear it. "So ye take yer time."

You sigh, more shuddering out a breath than letting it out. You need to figure out where he wants you to drop off or he will stay forever and you don't think you need this big wolfhhound of a man in your backseat.

"What happens if the car's gone? Like, totalled in the crash or anything?" You ask him before you have the chance to really think whether you should and Johnny is silent for an uncomfortably long moment. You expected his smile to melt off his face or for his eyes to harden or something else to happen, that would indicate his displeasure.

Instead he just seems glad that you asked.

"Ye'll need to ride something, bonnie. A bus, a cab, hitching a ride from a friend or a stranger. Hell, even the elevator. I'm your passenger. I'll follow." He shares, bracing his forearms on the knees to lean forward so you can see his big head better. So the scent of wet soil and blood hits you in the stomach.

Bastard, he knows how much you dislike the smell. Does it on purpose anyway.

He can in fact follow you to the bus, you checked exactly one time, finding his hulking carcass of a body right next to you as soon as you took a ride. His paw of a hand squeezed your thigh in warning.

Riding up dangerously close to your crotch to give you a hint.

Johnny has no shame and Johnny knows that people won't look his way twice unless he wants them too — he has all the opportunities world has to offer to indulge in public sex or groping if he feels like it.

Gives you a chance to think if you really want to try out what is going to happen when he isn't just kissing you with the hunger of a starved stray dog, but unzips your jeans too, getting you into his lap.

Bus is gonna bounce a little, bonnie. It's a rough drive. Sure you are up for it?

You are decisively not up for it so you get off on the next stop, his coarse thumb rubbing the sweat at your nape.

See? Nice and easy. No need to make it any harder for yourself.

"Can you even drive?" You ask him suddenly days later, still not rid off your passenger, still driving around the region to see if he finally decides to leave.

No such luck so far, but Johnny pauses, tilting his head to you before his eyes even follow, still stuck to a dark underbush on the side of the road.

You can see the moment his brain catches up to your question, smile spreading on his face slowl and imminent. Too happy.

"Aye." Johnny nods, easy and ready, long fingers playing with the stray thread poking out of your ripped jeans, his touch dancing close to the naked skin of your thigh. "Would ye like to be my passenger, bonnie?"

You don't want to investigate the ripple that goes through your chest, anxiety rising its head, intoxicating urge to just give in without a thought curling around your temples and filling your mouth with saliva.

You could use a second driver. You could use some rest.

"What happens if I let you drive?" You ask, casting a sideways glance at him, feeling the motion of his fingers acutely.

"We'd be each other's passengers." He shares innocently. That sounds child-like, almost sweet, but something in the phrasing of it makes you pause.

"What does it mean, Johnny?" You try press on but he just huffs out air in your ear, his fingers suddenly working at your belt. "What are you even—", gets swallowed when he tucks his paw of a hand in your pants, pushes in — the fold your belly now pressed against his wrist — his palm cupping your mound shamelessly.

Makes sure you can't push your thighs back together and can't hit the breaks, not when his finger strokes the inseam of your pussy almost affectionately.

"Ye worry a lot, bonnie." He hums, his eyes staring at you through the rearview mirror when you glance up and swallow, throat working audibly in the quiet of the car. "I can take care of ye. I will if ye let me."

It is painfully obvious what he means by that when his hand moves up and instead of leaving your cunt alone, he just slides his whole palm in your underwear. Nudges your lips open with his knuckles — the heat of you sending a shiver through Johnny, sweet ache unrolling in his stomach.

The fat of your pussy cushions his fingers, makes his vision swim with the urge to send the car in a nearest ditch and then take his time licking every scrap and wound clean. Licking you clean, head squeezed by your thighs.

Could fuck you nice and hard on the site of the car wreck, could make your head empty and your electronics dead, could keep you happy and his.

But that can wait. Maybe he'll do it later, when he knows you'll survive the collision.

"Eyes on the road." Johnny murmurs, words the coarse wool that makes you sweat, something in his tone choking down the resistance on the tip of your tongue.

Okay, whatever. He can do what he wants, like always.

"You are insane." You breath out, air coming out with a hiss when he chuckles, stroking you up and down. Dips the pad of his finger against your hole to retreat with a disappointed sigh.

He'll need to get you wetter for that.

"Ye like it." Johnny states, even if it sounds like a question, his attempt to fish for praise would have been cute if he didn't stroke your clit when he did. "And ye like me." He adds, dragging his middle finger around it, noses at the side of your neck. Curls himself around the back of your driver's seat like a hungry barnacle. "Do ye like me, bonnie?" Is breathed out in your skin, hot and humid, hot and needy — his voice creaking with want. "Tell me ye like me."

You don't respond immediately, too focused on not letting your eyes close when he strokes your clit again, making your knees twitch.

"Tell me, bonnie." Johnny insists, pressing down harder and you almost let go of the steering wheel. "C'mon, say it. Do ye like Johnny, hm? I want to hear it."

Your mouth is dry and numb, face burning because you just want to stop this bloody drive and you want to grind on his hand and you want him to shut up and never answer a single other question when he asks them in that voice.

"Yeah." Is more of a breath than an answer, but Johnny is close enough to feel your heartbeat — he catches it immediately and makes a low gleeful sound. Halfway to the giggle, his nose grazing the column of your throat. "I like you, Johnny." You add quickly, chest heaving because he is everywhere — touching and stroking, nuzzling into you like a big dog he is.

Johnny collects the slick from your hole, brings it back up to your clit so that the next time he strokes it, your mouth falls open. Breathing stopping somewhere up your throat.

"And ye're gonna let me drive, aye?" He purrs in your ear, his fingers holding you open so he can touch you exactly how he wants, pulling out the first whimper. "Ye'd be my passenger and ye'd let me drive, so I can take care of ye. Right, bonnie?" Johnny breathes out, drags his tongue up your neck and laughs when the car swivels on the road, because you were dangerously close to let go of the steering wheel. "Just say it, bonnie."

The heat drags through your body like a way, your thighs twitching to close when he finally sinks his fingers into you. Always so greedy with everything he wants to take from you.

Because you pick him up and the world isn't as dark anymore. You pick him up and he has company again. You pick him up and you give and give and give.

You run from the biggest dog in the world so it can chase you, because you like when he does that. You have to like it, bonnie, Johnny knows you must like it.

"I- okay." You breathe out when his fingers curl inside of you, his thumb rubbing your clit again. Faster this time, feeling the way you clamp down on him and soaking every bit of it in. "I'll let you drive, Johnny. Next time we stop, I'll let you drive."

"Thank ye, m'eudail." He breathes out, moving closer, his frame filling up all the space in your rearview mirror, his eyes adoring and slightly apologetic. "I promise I'll kiss it better, okay?"

You don't have the time to ask what did he mean by that, because Johnny works his fingers deeper into you and bites at your nape, Johnny wraps his other arm around you to keep you against the driver's seat.

You don't notice the intention until Johnny's forearm suddely presses against your throat, hard and immovable, his voice soothing when you thrash, fingers of his right hand sinking in your hole. Mean and greedy, eager to touch you all over while you are still burning hot and angry.

"You…arsehole-" You choke out, vision swimming, cold terror thumping in your head, diluting the heat of his touch when Johnny's teeth graze your cheek, shy of biting a chunk out of you.

He smooches you, happy and giddy, eyes crinkling in the same way they did on the late night gas stop when he killed a truck driver.

"Easy, m'eudail, easy." He coos, like you are a stubborn horse, like he is not being a fucking maniac when his thumb strokes your clit and the pressure on your throat gets heavier, constricting your airways. "Let me take care of ye. I promise I can be good." Johnny strokes your clit again, his grin widening when you spasm around his fingers, cumming.

Only his forearm tightens around your throat, sends your brain into a frenzied overdrive because you can't breath at all now, you can't talk and can't scream, your hips buckling against his hand, vision quickly darkening.

It's not nice to die like that, Johnny knows it. But the orgasm should have taken the edge off of your terror and the pain of crushed windpipe.

But you will be good as new when you come back.

You see, bonnie, being a passenger means that you will always need someone else to take you places. Someone else to take the lion's share of work and nowadays it gets harder and harder to get anyone to pick him up.

Much less like him the way you do.

But if you can take turns, then it changes everything. You can get as many vacations as you need and he can finally see the lads again.

You two can always stay together, Johnny thinks wistfully, one hand of the steering wheel — the road unrolling in front of the burning gaze of car's headlights. Good thing you hit the brakes when you were losing consciousness, instead of sending the car into a tree.

Would be a real hassle to find a new driver for two passengers instead of just one.

Johnny glances at your slumped body in the passenger seat, cheeks aching with the force of his smile. It has been such a long time since he had companions and you know, for what it's worth, he has always been romantic.

And even if he wasn't very lucky in life, ending up shot and tossed out of the moving car — he sure as hell scored with you, when you tried to make him ache less. When you gave a dead man Ibuprofen and took him to the hospital, lamenting about the blood and the pain and the shock.

Aye, I got really really lucky with this meet up on an empty road, Johnny thinks, palm warm on your cool nape, thumb smearing the sweat at the base of your hairline.

Meanwhile, the rest of his team is still as geared up as their Captain—all waiting for orders or further instructions, scattered around the room and listening with bated breath while Price grows more agitated with each shaky exhale he can hear coming from you.

You're currently sitting on one of the tables, boot-clad feet dangling off the edge as you stare at the ceiling, right into the fluorescent lights above, ignoring the way your eyes begin to sting from their brightness.

You've been putting on a brave face since getting stabbed with the needle a few hours ago and you've kept the façade up since hopping off the helo back on base, but it's getting harder to mask the panic rising inside you as your body starts to feel funny.

You swipe the back of your gloved hand over your sweaty forehead, catching the cold perspiration on your feverish skin with the rough fabric, and out of your peripherals, you notice the way your teammates' heads snap in your direction—different-coloured pairs of eyes assessing you with worry, concern, and a hint of curiosity.

Soap and Gaz are standing to your left and right respectively, sneaking glances at you whenever you shift on your spot, while the Lieutenant is still as a marble statue a little offside, arms crossed over his bulky tac vest.

Laswell begins to explain calmly, clutching a thick folder to her chest.

"We're still waiting on anything concrete, John, but the research papers your team managed to extract have offered a great insight on that—whatever that bioweapon is."

Bioweapon.

Your eyes widen as you sit up straight, the word making your heart race and your skin crawl with fear. Both Soap and Gaz take a step closer—two strong pairs of arms outstretched and ready to catch you if you faint.

"Nothing concrete yet?" Price snaps incredulously. "Goddammit, Kate!"

"Easy there, John—" Laswell says firmly, unbothered by his tone as she takes a step towards the captain and gestures at the two scientists watching the scene unfold with wide eyes from behind their laptops.

"They said she won't die. The amount of injection was too low… apparently."

Apparently?!

You inhale sharply and open your mouth to announce your imminent panic, but you're interrupted when one of the scientists speaks up first.

"That is correct, sir. She won't die."

Professor Doctor Boswel, as the name badge on his white lab coat states, chimes in. Price stops pacing at once, though his sharp eyes scream you better start explaining now, or one of you will be made responsible for this.

"Bringing the syringe back to base was the decisive factor. Our team at the lab is still working to decipher and translate the medical reports and research papers your team recovered, but we can confirm that this bioweapon is most likely a toxin."

A low murmur of various curses goes through the briefing room as you try to ignore the odd tingles in your limbs—like they're going numb from sitting in a bad position for too long—and process the doctor's words instead.

"You're saying I've been poisoned, doc?" You butt in crudely, letting out a humourless laugh as you begin fidgeting with your hands, clenching and unclenching them to get rid of those tingles while a cold drop of sweat trickles down your left temple and is swiftly wiped away by Soap's gloved thumb.

"Fuckin’ hell, lass. Ye dinnae look too good," Soap mutters under his breath, exchanging a concerned glance with Gaz, who then looks to the captain for guidance with a serious frown.

When Gaz turns around abruptly, you get a whiff of his scent, and you're ashamed to admit to yourself that you inhale it deeply—musk and sweat and gunpowder smoke, a hint of his fancy body wash lingering underneath all the grime. A perfect concoction of what is entirely Gaz.

It's intoxicating. Mouth-watering.

And absolutely inappropriate, because he's one of your best friends and a comrade.

What the hell is happening?

Of all the injuries and wounds you've already acquired during missions and deployments, this must be the fucking worst. You'd rather get shot or stabbed than sit here, feel strange as hell and be ogled like a failed science experiment.

Price's eyes flicker to Ghost, who hasn't said a word since sitting you down on the table with a gruff order to stay seated, and then to his three sergeants, lingering on you heavily before he turns back.

"What kind of bloody toxin?"

"It seems to be some sort of aphrodisiac, but… uh, well—about fifty times worse than that."

The other scientist, Professor Doctor Adebayo, answers tentatively, as if explaining it out loud makes him uncomfortable.

"The reports say it turns men—"

Dr. Adebayo hesitates, clearing his throat and looking between Laswell and Captain Price, until the latter lets out an exasperated sigh.

"Turns them what, doc?"

It's Laswell who says it eventually, "Turns them aggressive, John. Feral with lust, as ridiculous as that might sound."

The CIA agent finally looks in your direction before approaching you slowly while Dr. Adebayo seems to heave a sigh of relief as soon as she takes over.

"A high dose of it can be used to lower one's inhibition levels to a point where even the most honourable man would resort to sexual assault to ease his urges."

Her factual yet grim explanation makes the tension inside the briefing room spike tenfold. Every man present tenses up, visibly uncomfortable—Ghost especially, who's practically vibrating with strain.

Using a toxin like that—a bioweapon—on soldiers in the field could lead to even more and worse war crimes, and everyone here is aware of that.

"Wait—what? What the fuck?" Gaz utters, bristling next to you while you grip the edge of the table, gritting your teeth as the tingles intensify and wreck through your body in waves that leave you shuddering with each one.

"'Scuse me, what now?" You scoff. "Does that mean I'm gonna turn into a fuckin' nympho any second?"

Multiple pairs of eyes snap towards you at your choice of words. Some look intense and laced with worry. Price scolds you with one glance. Others look mildly amused—the latter being Soap, who lets out a snort but tries to cover it up with a fake cough into his fist.

Laswell surveys you intently, though her voice softens when she addresses you directly.

"How are you feeling, Sergeant? Are you in pain? Nauseous?"

A beat of silence follows. Your eyes flutter briefly as you meet Kate's blue gaze, and you exhale a long breath through your nostrils before you answer curtly.

"I feel weird."

You feel like you're about to get your period, but you keep that information to yourself for now and try not to wrap your arms around yourself self-soothingly.

Your lower abdomen is starting to tighten and cramp. Your gut twists like you just chugged a steaming bowl of soup and your limbs keep tingling—from your toes to your fingertips, and up to the tip of your nose. Tiny vibrations along with hot and cold flushes that make you quake and squirm in your seat on the table.

Kate squints at you, though she doesn't press further.

"What kind of effect will this stuff have on her?" Price enquires gruffly, more level-headed this time, his gaze shifting from the two scientists over to you and then back.

Meanwhile, as you crank your sore neck from left to right to get a good crack in, your eyes catch sight of Soap's muscular forearms and—to your horror—they linger.

The sleeves of his combat fatigues are rolled up to his elbows, exposing dark coarse hair and thick veins and that damn SAS insignia tattoo.

You want to trace the black lines with your tongue and imagine the salt of his skin on your parched taste buds.

And your eyes widen when a sudden rush of mind-numbing, pulsating heat makes you squeeze your thighs together as you clench your jaw to keep the lewd sound bubbling up in your throat from escaping.

Soap shoots you a quizzical look, one eyebrow raising as you avert your eyes from him swiftly, heat crawling up your neck and prickling beneath your skin.

"Fuck," you breathe, doubling over with a groan as the muscles in your thighs and lower abdomen begin to cramp up painfully while you can practically feel your pussy start convulsing around nothing, leaking with arousal and soaking into your underwear.

In a matter of seconds, your team—Ghost included, like a solid wall of quiet reassurance—are by your side, keeping you upright, asking questions, though their deep, accented voices are muffled as your quickening heartbeat begins to thud in your ears.

Their every touch seems to burn through the thick layers of your kit.

"Kate—Kate," Price is by her side in a few long strides, ducking his head to get on eye-level with her as he points at the two scientists accusingly, though Kate is already on her smartphone, contacting the lab again.

Price huffs like an angry bull trying to protect his herd as he turns his attention back to Dr. Boswel and Dr. Adebayo, who seem to be in a frenzied discussion, watching the way you're cramping and writhing.

"What the fuck is happening to her?" He barks at them, demanding an answer yesterday.

"It's—it's the toxin," Dr. Boswel stammers obviously, blinking up at Captain Price from behind his glasses. "She didn't get the full dose, but it's still—" He pauses, eyes flickering nervously under the captain's glare. "—bad."

Another gut-wrenching moan from you echoes through the briefing room as you squirm in Gaz's embrace, and Price must restrain himself from directing his wrath towards the two men in front of him—it's not their fault, after all.

It's his.

"Oxytocin might help… neutralize the toxin in her body," Dr. Adebayo remarks, clicking his pen nervously as he stares at his laptop screen before meeting Dr. Boswel's eyes, who is waiting for an elucidation.

"The hormone," Dr. Adebayo clears his throat again, clearly uncomfortable, "—not the drug." He clarifies, clicking his pen a few more times.

Laswell lowers her phone and shares a look with Price, holding an entire conversation with one long, meaningful glance, the one learned and perfected over more than a decade of working together, when Gaz's voice breaks through the chaos, calling for attention.

"Cap'n! What do we do?!"

You're not brought back to the barracks but Captain Price's private quarters.

Your squad makes sure to keep you out of sight in your condition; away from prying eyes while Ghost sneaks through the shadows with your quivering form cradled against his chest, carrying you bridal style like you're something fragile, something vulnerable he must protect.

Once safely inside the captain's flat, the curtains are drawn before your heavy gear is stripped from you, all while you don't even bother paying attention to who is grabbing or holding you at this point.

All that matters is someone touching you.

Your brain is mush, reduced to your most simple and carnal desires. No shame nor worry about the needy noises you're making whenever one of their big, strong hands strips another layer of clothing.

"Shit, I think she has a fever," Gaz mutters, cupping your face with both hands as he investigates your hazy, unfocused eyes while you let out another pathetic whimper. "She's completely out of it."

"Get her into the guest bedroom. Down the hall, first door on the left," Price orders gruffly, trying to keep his eyes from wandering up and down the length of your trembling, half-naked body.

"I'll call the senior consultant."

Ghost grumbles a low curse under his breath when your hand brushes over the front of his crotch—by accident or voluntarily this time, he doesn't dare imagine—and leaves the guest bedroom while Gaz and Soap manoeuvre you onto the king-sized bed.

Meanwhile, you don't care about the effect your uncharacteristic behaviour has on your teammates and superiors.

Whenever they try to make you drink or take an easy bite of food—whether it's a chewy protein bar or an overripe banana, because Price has no proper groceries at his place—you twist in whoever's embrace you're in, turning your scrunched-up face away like a petulant toddler.

"I don't wanna," you whine and hiccup, protesting each time Gaz tries to lift the rim of the water bottle to your lips, your speech now slightly slurred, glossy eyes averting their gaze as you breathe shallowly, squirming while Soap keeps you propped up with your back resting against his chest on the bed.

Gaz, who has been trying again to make you drink a sip of water for the past twenty minutes, looks back at his Lieutenant and Captain helplessly.

"Doc said we need to keep her hydrated," Price announces, rubbing his bare hand over his tired face. "Keep flushing that bloody poison outta her system and—"

Suddenly, Ghost's deep, gravelly voice interrupts the captain's speech with a harsh bite to it. "Johnny."

Soap, who has been trying his best to ignore the way you keep grinding your arse against his crotch in this position, ducks his head at the sharp and sudden warning.

"What? 'M not doin' anythin'," he grunts before sucking in a sharp breath as his cock keeps stirring and twitching in his combat trousers, "Fuck, lass, please—"

Soap tries to keep you from moving; his ungloved hands get a firm hold of your hips, but you're practically panting and mewling in his lap, making it harder for him not to crumble under the pressure building up in his dick.

Then Gaz is swift to pluck you out of the Scot's embrace with a disdainful frown, like you're some toy that was stolen from him.

"Don't be a fuckin' perv, Soap," Gaz snaps, cradling you into his arms, where you immediately begin pawing at his black compression shirt, determined to get your palms under it and on his bare skin.

"She can't consent!"

It's Price who approaches the bed then, while Ghost stays leaning against the doorframe, keeping a keen eye on the situation.

"Enough! Both of you," Price barks, eyes flashing before his shoulders drop with a rough sigh. He pinches the bridge of his nose. "Doc said it might help if—"

John stops mid-sentence, clenching his strong jaw. He can't believe what he is about to say, and he crosses his arms over his chest again, feigning control while he internally braces himself for his next words.

"Those doctors said it might help if she… climaxes."

His words hang in the air like a thick fog that no one can quite see through nor think in, and everyone seems to be holding their breath while you finally manage to tug Gaz's shirt out of his waistband, making him cuss under his breath when you go on to lick a long, wet stripe over his exposed abs like some feral lioness, utterly hungry for a taste.

"Shit—Babygirl, no, d-don't—" Gaz stammers helplessly while a rush of heat goes straight to his neck and cock simultaneously, overwhelmingly so.

He pushes you away by your shoulders—and hates himself for how reluctant he is at it—and he winces when your blunt nails claw into his bulging biceps, digging into his skin even through his shirt with another whimper.

"Please, Kyle… Let me—" you mewl, batting your eyelashes up at him. "It—It fuckin’ hurts."

Soap pushes his fists into his eye sockets, heaving a deep breath that turns into a frustrated groan. "Steamin' Jesus, lass, ye’re fuckin’ killin' us here."

"Take a bloody walk, MacTavish," Price orders, pointing his thumb at the door over his shoulder, and while Soap climbs off the mattress, grumbling to himself with an obvious erection pressing against the seam of his zipper, Price addresses Gaz.

"And you, Garrick, take—" He hesitates again, balling his hands into fists at his sides, trying to keep his own body in check at the sight and sounds of you, before he nudges his chin towards the door of the bathroom.

"Take her to the shower to get the fever down and… help her."

The captain's last words are nothing more than a strained grumble.

Gaz gapes at his superior. Soap freezes in his steps at the end of the bed, openly gawking and blinking like he didn't just hear right. Ghost visibly stiffens and shifts his stance, still leaning against the doorframe of the guest bedroom. No one can see the way he grits his teeth so hard he might chip a tooth behind his balaclava.

"But sir—"

Price shakes his head; brows set in a stern frown as he holds Gaz's widened gaze.

"She'd want you to take care of her if she could actually consent to it. And that's an order, Sergeant."

Ghost wants to disagree, but keeps his mouth shut and exhales a sharp huff of contempt instead.

The rest of the men try to distract themselves around Captain Price's flat while Gaz takes you to the en-suite bathroom like he was ordered to.

Not asked, ordered to.

He keeps repeating that in his head as he walks you towards the bathroom door with his arm around your waist, your body listing into his side like you've forgotten how to hold yourself upright. His jaw is set so tight his molars ache.

He's been ordered to do a lot of things in his career. Clear rooms. Hold positions under fire. Drag wounded men through mud while rounds cracked overhead. He's followed every order without hesitation, because that's what good soldiers do—they trust the chain of command and they execute.

This doesn't feel like any of those things.

He keeps the bathroom door unlocked—just in case you faint and he needs help—and lets out a huff when you fling yourself into his body suddenly and the air is knocked from his lungs.

"Easy," he pleads with you while his head dips down, and he inhales your familiar scent before he can stop himself. Sweat and the remnants of whatever lotion you put on this morning underneath your gear before the mission, something warm and sweet that he's caught whiffs of a hundred times before in passing and never let himself think about for longer than a second.

"Easy there, love," he tries again, his trembling hands wrapping around your midriff tentatively.

Gaz hates these circumstances. Hates how the mission ended in such a bloody mess. Hates how excited he is to undress you to your underwear, and he despises that this is how he'll get to have you for the first time.

This is not how he'd imagined it.

He never imagined it. Not in any concrete, detailed way. Not like he'd planned it in his head, step by step—the restaurant he'd take you to first, somewhere nice but not so nice you'd take the piss out of him for it. The way he'd tell you after the second drink, maybe the third, that he'd been thinking about you. Casually. Like it hadn't been eating him alive for months.

He hadn't planned any of that.

Fucking liar.

You make a sound against his chest, somewhere between a sob and a moan, and your fingers twist into the wet fabric of his compression shirt, tugging weakly.

"Kyle… Kyle, I need—"

"I know," he murmurs, and his voice comes out rougher than he intends. "I know, love. C'mon."

He manoeuvres you towards the shower, reaching past you to turn the dial to lukewarm. The water sputters, then hisses to life against the tile, and steam begins to curl at the edges of the glass.

You're still in your underwear—plain, standard issue, nothing designed to be sexy—and it doesn't matter, because the sight of you trembling and desperate in front of him with water beginning to mist across your skin is doing things to his head that no amount of mental discipline can counter.

He starts to dismantle his assault rifle in his head.

Upper receiver. Charging handle. Bolt carrier group.

You stumble into the shower cabin and he follows, still fully clothed. The water hits his chest and soaks through his compression shirt in seconds, plastering the fabric to his skin, and the cold shock of it helps. Briefly.

Bolt. Firing pin. Cam pin.

"C'mon, Babygirl," he coos at you as he turns your quivering body in his embrace until your back is flush against his chest. One arm wraps tightly below your breasts, forearm pushing up against the swell of them through the soaked fabric of your bra, and he tries, and fails miserably, not to take a long look over your shoulder.

Buffer tube. Buffer spring. Buffer.

You melt against his body and his cock throbs in his combat trousers, straining against his briefs uncomfortably. The water is doing nothing for the heat radiating off your skin. If anything, you're burning hotter, pressing back into him with small, involuntary rolls of your hips that make his breath stutter.

Lower receiver. Trigger assembly. Trigger—

"Please," you whimper, and his entire train of thought derails.

Your head lolls back against his shoulder, exposing the column of your throat, and he can see the way your pulse hammers beneath the surface, rapid and frantic. Your hips buck against his hand when he finally—finally—lets it trail down over your lower belly, his calloused fingers dragging across the wet skin, feeling the muscles jump and twitch beneath his touch.

"Yes—yes—yes—" you chant breathlessly, and your hips cant forward, chasing his hand with a desperation that makes something crack open in his chest.

Fuck—fuck—fuck—fuck.

He cups your pussy through your knickers and the heat of you against his palm nearly makes his knees buckle. He can feel you through the thin, soaked fabric and he's not sure if the wetness is from the shower stream or if it's all you.

His chest is heaving when he finally gathers enough courage to dip his long fingers beneath the waistband of your underwear. His jaw clenches and his mind grasps desperately for the drills again—clear left, clear right, move to the next room, check your corners—anything to stay anchored while you let out a moan that echoes off the tile walls and punches straight through him.

You're so wet, so swollen, it's obscene. His fingers slide through your folds with zero resistance and the groan that rips from deep within his chest is involuntary, guttural, ashamed. He can feel your arousal ooze from your entrance, slick and hot, and he can already tell how tight you'd feel clenching around his fingers, how you'd—

No. He's not going there.

"Fuck," he curses under his breath, more to himself than to you. "I'm only doin' this for you, Babygirl. This is only about you."

He says it like a prayer. Like if he repeats it enough, it'll be true.

His fingers press on your clit, pulsing and twitching already, and he starts rubbing small, firm circles over it, adjusting the pressure when your breath hitches or your thighs clamp around his wrist. He reads your body like he reads a room. Methodically, attentive, and cataloguing every reaction.

You writhe and squirm in his tight grip, your nails digging into the arm he has banded around your ribs, and every sound you make, every whimper, and stuttered gasp of his name, chips away at the wall he's trying to keep standing between following an order and wanting this.

"M-more, Kyle, please!"

Gaz curses himself, but he gives you more.

Two fingers pressing into you, slow and careful despite every instinct screaming at him to give you what you're begging for. You clench around him immediately, hot and tight and silky, and his cock kicks in his trousers so hard he must bite the inside of his cheek to keep from groaning.

He curls his fingers, searching for the spot that makes your thighs shake, and when he finds it, you keen so loudly the sound bounces off every hard surface in the small bathroom.

"That's it," he murmurs against your temple, his lips brushing your skin without quite kissing. "That's it, love. Let go for me."

He's not sure when he started talking to you like this. Somewhere between the first touch and the second, the clinical detachment he'd been clinging to crumbled and something else took its place—something tender and fierce and terrifyingly honest.

Your first orgasm hits you hard enough to make your entire body seize in his arms, your back arching away from his chest as a strangled cry tears from your throat. He holds you through it, fingers still working, still pressing and giving, because even as the tremors wrack through you and your legs give out, he can feel your body already winding up again, the toxin refusing to let you rest.

"Shh, shh, I've got you," he breathes, adjusting his grip to take your full weight when your knees buckle entirely. "I've got you."

You cum again two minutes later, and then again after that, and again, and Gaz loses count somewhere around the fifth or sixth time, when his fingers are cramping and his arm is trembling from holding you upright and the water has long since turned cold.

Each time, he thinks it'll be enough, and each time, your body coils tight again within minutes, the toxin driving you right back to the edge with a cruelty that makes him want to put his fist through the tile.

He doesn’t want to imagine what a full dose would have done to you. To anyone.

When you tell him that you're hurting—repeatedly, begging him to make you cum in that desperate, broken tone of yours—the young Sergeant is sure something dies inside him on the spot.

"Kyle—Kyle, I need more, I need you to—please—Fuck, please!"

He knows what you're asking for. You're grinding back against his cock, which has been rock-hard and aching for what feels like hours, and every roll of your hips sends a jolt of white-hot arousal through him that he must physically brace against.

"I can't," he grits out, and it takes everything in him. "Christ. I can't do that to you. Not like this."

"Please—"

"No, Babygirl." His voice cracks on the word, and he presses his forehead against the back of your head, squeezing his eyes shut. "Not like this."

He drops to his knees instead.

The tile is hard and unforgiving under his kneecaps and the now cold water from the shower hits the back of his neck, but he barely registers any of it as he turns you to face him and hooks one of your legs over his shoulder.

He looks up at you once—your hazy, unfocused eyes, the way your chest heaves, the water running in rivulets down your body—and then he leans forward and drags his tongue through your folds in one long, broad stroke.

The sound you make is devastating.

Your hands fly to his head, fingers scrabbling for purchase on his wet hair, and your hips jerk forward so violently he must grip your thigh to keep you steady. He groans against you, he can't help it, and the vibration makes you cry out again, blunt nails raking over his scalp.

Gaz eats you like he's starving for it, because the truth he can't say out loud is that he is.

He's thought about this. Dreamed about it. Wanked to the idea of it in the dark of his bunk with his fist shoved against his mouth to keep quiet. And now he's here, on his knees in his Captain's shower with cold water running down his back and your taste flooding his mouth, and it's everything and nothing like what he imagined because you're not choosing this—you're not choosing him—and that knowledge sits in his chest like a brick.

But he doesn't stop.

Gaz licks and sucks and fucks you with his tongue until his jaw aches and your thighs are shaking so badly you can barely stand, even with his hands gripping your hips. He makes you cum on his mouth twice, then thrice, pressing his face into you each time your body locks up, working you through it with relentless, single-minded focus because if he stops to think about what this means, about what happens after, he'll fall apart.

When he finally pulls back, his lips are swollen, his chin is slick and his cock is so hard it genuinely hurts. You're still whimpering, still reaching for him, still not done, and the toxin is still pumping through your veins with no sign of stopping.

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and exhales a shaky breath, pressing his forehead against your hip.

"I need—" His voice is wrecked. He swallows hard, then tries again. "I need a minute."

Not because he's tired, or his fingers are cramped and his jaw is sore and his knees are bruised from the tile. No.

But if he stays on his knees in front of you for one more second, he's going to give you what you're begging for, and he will never forgive himself for it.

He stands on unsteady legs, turns the shower off, and reaches for the towel hanging on the rack outside the cabin. His hands are shaking as he wraps it around, and you cling to it loosely, swaying on your feet.

"C'mon," he says, guiding you towards the door with one hand on the small of your back. His voice has steadied, but his eyes haven't. "Let's get you dried off."

You're protesting. He's cursing under his breath. There's shuffling, a stumble, and then he grabs the door handle and swings it open—

And Soap nearly falls backwards into the bathroom.

"Soap!"

The Scotsman catches himself on the doorway, one hand gripping the frame as he glances over his shoulder with a look that's not even remotely sheepish enough for a man who was clearly pressing his ear to the door thirty seconds ago.

Gaz is still wearing his clothes, though they're completely drenched—his compression shirt is a second skin, his combat trousers heavy with water, boots squelching on the tile. He's holding you by the forearm as you stand next to him, loose towel wrapped around your body, still trembling, still making those small, desperate sounds in the back of your throat.

"The fuck, mate? Did you eavesdrop on us?"

Soap shrugs as he straightens up, adjusting his stance in a way that's clearly meant to disguise the state of his trousers. "Was jus' checkin' on ye."

"Checking on—" Gaz's jaw works, nostrils flaring. He wants to snap, wants to shove Soap back into the hallway and slam the door, but he's running on fumes and you're leaning into him again, your face pressed against his soaked chest, mumbling incoherently.

"She needs—" Gaz starts, then stops. Looks down at you, back up at Soap. Something heavy passes between the two men, unspoken but understood.

"She needs more than I can give her right now," he finishes quietly, and the admission costs him more than any of them will ever know.

Soap's expression shifts. The boyish smirk drops, replaced by something sobered, and he gives Gaz a short nod—the kind they exchange in the field when one of them is spent and the other takes point.

"A'right," Soap answers, surprisingly steady, rolling his broad shoulders. "Ah’ve got 'er."

Gaz transfers you into Soap's waiting arms with a gentleness that borders on reverent—one hand on the back of your head, the other guiding your shoulders—and he doesn't let go until he's sure Soap has you secure.

Then he walks past them both, water dripping from every inch of him, and doesn't look back.

He makes it to the kitchen before his hands start shaking badly enough that he has to brace them flat on the counter. He stands there, head bowed, water pooling on the linoleum beneath him, and breathes.

Ghost is leaning against the opposite wall with his arms crossed, and he doesn't say a word.

There is no need to.

Soap carries you back to the bed like you weigh nothing to him; one arm under your knees, the other around your back, the towel slipping loose and neither of you caring, and he lays you down with a surprising gentleness that contradicts every tightly coiled muscle in his body.

He's been hard since the briefing room, balls throbbing uncomfortably. Over two hours of it. The kind of persistent, throbbing ache that sits low in his gut and pulses in time with his heartbeat, and he's been dealing with it the way he deals with most discomfort.

By ignoring it aggressively and hoping it fucks off on its own.

It has not fucked off unfortunately. Truth be told, he’d be worried about himself if it did.

"Right then," he mutters, kneeling on the mattress beside you as he cracks his neck and rolls his shoulders again like he's about to breach a door. "Let's sort ye out, hen."

And that's the thing about Johnny MacTavish—he doesn't agonise. Not the way Gaz does, all quiet guilt and moral calculus. Soap's moral framework is simpler, blunter, built from different materials. You're his teammate, you're hurting, and he can help. Everything else is noise.

That doesn't mean he's unaffected; doesn't mean his hands aren't shaking when he settles between your legs and pushes the towel fully away from your body, or that his breath doesn't hitch hard enough to hear when he gets his first proper look at you fully naked, spread out on the white sheets with your chest heaving and your thighs trembling and your eyes half-lidded, glassy, barely tracking him.

Christ, you're beautiful.

He's thought about this. Fuck. Of course he has. He's not a bloody monk, and you're you.

He's thought about it in the gym when you spot him on the bench press and your face hovers above his, upside down and grinning. He's thought about it on long transports when you fall asleep against his shoulder and he stays perfectly still for hours so you won't wake up. Or when you laugh at his shite jokes that no one else finds funny, when you steal chips off his plate in the mess, when you call him Johnny instead of Soap and don't even notice you've done it.

He's thought about it a lot.

But not like this.

"You with me?" he asks, tapping your cheek lightly with two fingers. Your eyes roll towards him, struggling to focus, and you make a sound that's part whimper, part plea.

Close enough.

"A'right, sweetheart. I've got ye."

He doesn't ease into it the way Gaz did. Where Gaz was methodical, with careful touches, measured pressure, and constant checking, Soap is instinct. He reads you through vibration and sound, adjusts on the fly, follows the frequency of your moans like he's tuning into a signal.

He dips his head between your thighs and licks into you without preamble, broad and hot and greedy, and the noise that tears out of you rattles something loose in his chest.

"Fuck—tha's it," he groans against you, the vibration making your hips jolt, and his big hands grip the backs of your thighs to keep you spread open and steady. "Tha's my bonnie girl."

He's not quiet about it, either. Soap eats pussy the way he does most things. With enthusiasm, commitment, and absolutely zero self-consciousness. Wet, filthy sounds fill the bedroom, punctuated by his own groans and your increasingly incoherent cries, and he doesn't give a single shit that the door is open, and his team can hear every obscene noise he's wringing out of you.

Let them hear.

His tongue works over your clit in fast, tight circles, then broad, flat strokes, alternating rhythm and pressure every time he feels your thighs start to shake. When you try to close your legs, he pins them open with his forearms. When you try to squirm away—overstimulated, oversensitive, too much and not enough at the same time—he follows relentlessly, dragging you back by the hips with a growl that rumbles against your soaked flesh.

"Nuh-uh. Stay still f'me."

He makes you cum with his mouth in under five minutes and then doesn't stop.

Your fingers twist into the sheets, into his mohawk, clawing at his scalp as your back arches off the mattress and a wrecked sob punches out of your lungs. Soap groans in response, the sound reverential, like your pleasure is a hymn and he's on his knees in church.

He keeps going. Lapping at you through the aftershocks, sucking your clit between his lips until you're keening, pressing his tongue inside you just to feel you clench around it, and when you cum again with his name breaking apart on your lips—Johnny, Johnny, fuck yes, Johnny—he nearly blacks out from how hard his cock throbs in response.

His hips have started moving on their own. Small, involuntary rolls against the mattress, his aching cock grinding against the sheets through his combat trousers, and he knows he should fucking stop, should pull his hips back, should focus on you and not the desperate friction building between his body and the bed.

But he doesn't stop.

He is physically incapable.

You taste like honey and salt and something almost medicinal underneath—the toxin, probably, working its way out of your system through your sweat and your slick—and he's drunk on it. Drunk on the way you say his name, how your thighs tremble against the sides of his head, drunk on the wet sounds of his tongue on your cunt and the way you keep pulling his face closer, harder, more.

"God—fuck—lass, ye taste so fuckin' good—"

He's rutting against the mattress in earnest now, his hips snapping in sharp, desperate little thrusts, and the friction is nowhere near enough and exactly too much at the same time.

The sheets are going to be ruined. He doesn't care. Can't. He’s a weak man, and his entire world has narrowed to the taste of you on his tongue and the ache in his junk and the way your body keeps arching into him like he's the only thing keeping you alive.

"Please—please, Johnny, I need—I can't—"

"I know, hen, I know—" he pants against your inner thigh, pressing a biting kiss there that makes you yelp, "—jus' one more, c'mon, give me one more, aye?"

He flickers his tongue, seals his mouth over your clit and sucks, hard, and you shatter. Your thighs clamp around his head, your hands fist in his hair so tightly it stings, and the scream that rips from your throat is ragged and raw and so fucking beautiful that he comes.

Inside his combat pants.

His hips stutter against the mattress and a guttural, muffled groan vibrates against your pussy as his cock pulses and spills, hot and wet, soaking through his briefs and into his trousers. His arms shake, his vision whites out for a second, and he has to press his forehead against your inner thigh and just breathe through it, chest heaving, while you whimper above him, still trembling from your own orgasm.

He pulls back slowly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and the reality of what just happened settles over him like a cloth soaked in ice water. He stares down at himself, at the damp patch darkening the front of his trousers, and lets out a long, defeated exhale.

"MacTavish."

Ghost's voice comes from the doorway; flat and sharp, dripping with contempt.

Soap closes his eyes, disappointed in himself, exhaling through his nose. "Aye. I know."

"You know?" Price's voice joins Ghost's, closer, much heavier. The captain is standing just inside the bedroom now, arms folded, jaw set. He looks at Soap the way a father looks at a teenage son caught doing something monumentally stupid.

"Get yourself sorted. Now."

Soap doesn't argue. He climbs off the bed on unsteady legs, not meeting anyone's eyes, and adjusts his trousers with a grimace as he shuffles past Ghost in the doorway.

Ghost doesn't move to let him pass. Makes him squeeze by, shoulder to shoulder, just to make it uncomfortable.

"Disgusting," Ghost mutters, low enough that only Soap hears it.

"Fuck off, LT," Soap mutters back, and there's no heat in it. Just shame.

You don't notice the shift at first.

One moment there are hands and mouths on you, voices and pressure and friction. The next, everything is quieter. Stiller. The mattress dips on one side and stays dipped, a solid weight settling beside you but not on you, not against you, not close enough to touch.

You whine at the loss of contact, of heat, of anything, and reach blindly for whoever is there.

A large hand catches your wrist. Gentle and firm, holding it in place.

"Don't."

One word. Low and gravelly, scraped raw like it was dragged over broken glass and wire mesh on its way out of his throat.

Ghost.

He's sitting on the edge of the bed with his back straight and his boots still on, because taking his boots off would mean he's staying, and staying would mean—he doesn't finish the thought.

Price asked him to sit with you while Gaz and Soap pulled themselves together. Asked this time, not ordered, because Price knows that ordering Ghost to do something he doesn't want to do is about as effective as ordering the tide to turn. Ghost agreed with a single nod, and now here he is, and every muscle in his body is locked so tight he might snap a tendon.

You're lying on your side, curled in on yourself, wearing nothing but your sodden underwear again and the ghost of everyone else's touch on your skin. The towel is long gone. Your body is still trembling, still feverish, still caught in the grip of the toxin, and the soft, pained sounds you keep making are doing things to him that he absolutely cannot allow.

He's hard. Has been since you doubled over and moaned and he had to watch your body betray you in front of everyone. His cock is straining against his trousers, thick and heavy and insistent.

Ghost pretends it isn’t. He's very good at pretending things don't exist.

"Simon…"

His jaw clenches beneath the balaclava. You rarely use his first name—none of them do—and hearing it now, in that voice, breathy and desperate and small, is a kind of cruelty he wasn't prepared for.

"You need to drink something," he murmurs, and reaches for the water bottle on the nightstand without looking at you.

"Don't want—"

"Wasn't bloody askin’."

He unscrews the cap and turns to you, and the mistake—the critical, tactical, unforgivable mistake—is that he looks at your face next.

Your eyes are glassy and wet, your lips parted around shallow little breaths, and you're looking up at him like he's the only solid thing in a world that's been spinning for hours.

Not with lust—not the way you looked at Gaz and Soap—but with something quieter. Something that reaches past the toxin and grabs hold of something deeper.

Trust.

You trust him. Even now, reduced to your basest instincts, your intoxicated, unhinged brain still recognises him as safe.

Something fractures behind his ribs, and he shuts it down immediately, brutally, the way he shuts down everything that threatens to breach the walls.

"Sit up," he orders, and his voice is soft yet steady even if the rest of him isn't. He slides one hand behind your head—just his palm, just enough to support your neck—and lifts the bottle to your lips.

You drink. Slowly, reluctantly, with small sips that dribble down your chin, but you drink. He holds the bottle still and watches the column of your throat move with each swallow, and when a drop of water runs from the corner of your mouth and trails down your neck, dark eyes track it all the way to your collarbone before catching himself and looking away.

"More," he says curtly, bringing the bottle back.

You manage a few more sips before turning your head away with a pitiful sound, and he lets you, setting the bottle aside. His hand lingers on the back of your head a moment too long—his thumb brushing once against the nape of your neck—before he pulls it back like he's been burned.

You reach for him again. Fingers closing around the fabric of his sleeve, tugging weakly.

"Stay. Please. Don't—Don't go."

"'M not goin’ anywhere." The words come out before he can vet them, gruff and low, and he immediately resents himself for saying them so quickly, so easily, like a confession slipped out under duress.

He lets you hold onto his sleeve. That much he can allow. That much won't cross a line he cannot uncross.

You shift closer, seeking warmth, and your body curls towards him until your forehead is pressed against his thigh. He goes completely rigid, every muscle locking and nerve firing, and his hands hover in the air on either side of you, not touching, not pulling away, suspended in the unbearable middle ground of a man who wants desperately but won't take.

Another small whimper from you. Not desire this time but pain. The cramps rolling through your body in waves, the toxin still doing its vicious work even after everything Gaz and Soap wrung from you. You're shaking, and not just from arousal. You're exhausted. Dehydrated. Your body is at war with itself.

Ghost is not a gentle man. He knows this about himself the way he knows his blood type and his boot size. It's a fact, unalterable, built into the architecture. He doesn't comfort. He doesn't soothe. He handles.

But.

His hand comes down on the back of your head, and it stays.

Heavy and warm through the leather of his glove. Not stroking just resting, a solid weight against your skull, and you let out a breath that sounds like it's been trapped in your lungs for hours.

You stop shaking. Not entirely. The tremors are still there, running through you in small aftershocks, but the worst of it eases under the steady pressure of his palm, like he's an anchor and you've been drifting.

"Ghost?" Your voice is small, barely a whisper.

"Yeah."

"It hurts."

He closes his eyes behind the mask. His hand presses down just slightly—a fraction more weight, a fraction more warmth—and his throat works around words that don't come.

He knows it hurts. He knows Gaz and Soap's efforts weren't enough. He knows what the doctors said—what Price said—and he knows what would fix it, and he can't.

Not because he doesn't want to. Because he wants it too fucking much.

Simon Riley is not a man who trusts himself with things he wants.

Wanting, in his experience, is the first step towards destroying, and he has destroyed enough for one lifetime. Touching you now the way his body is screaming at him to would not be careful or measured or controlled or gentle.

It would be all consuming, and he would take too much, and he would never be able to look you in the eyes again.

So he sits on the edge of the bed with his boots on and his cock aching and his hand on the back of your head, and he holds himself perfectly, agonisingly still. Just a solid shadow in a bedroom.

You press your face harder against his thigh and he lets you. Your fingers tighten on his sleeve and he lets you. Your breath evens out incrementally but still too fast, still too shallow, though calmer now, and he lets that happen too, guarding it like a perimeter, daring anything to disturb it.

He doesn't know how long you stay like that. Long enough for the light under the curtains to shift and for his leg to go numb beneath the pressure of your head. Long enough for Gaz to appear in the doorway, freshly changed into borrowed civvies, and stop dead at the sight of them.

Ghost meets his eyes over the top of your head. His expression is unreadable behind the mask, but his hand doesn't move from your hair, and that says more than his face ever could.

Gaz nods once and backs out without a word.

In the kitchen, Price is pouring two fingers of whisky into a tumbler and staring at the far wall like it owes him money. Soap is sitting at the table in a pair of Price's joggers, his soiled trousers balled up in a plastic bag at his feet, looking like a scolded dog.

"She's calmer," Gaz says quietly as he enters, and both men look up. "Ghost's with her."

Price takes a long drink. Sets the glass down. Rubs a hand over his beard.

"It's not enough, is it."

It's not a question and Gaz doesn't answer it.

"She's still in pain. She keeps—" He stops and swallows thickly. "She keeps asking. Saying she’s in pain."

The captain stares at the whisky in his glass. The silence stretches, tense and heavy, pressing in on the walls of the small kitchen.

"She needs more than fingers and a mouth," Soap says bluntly, because someone fucking has to, and delicacy has never been his strong suit. Gaz shoots him a look, but Soap holds it, unapologetic.

"He's right," Price agrees suddenly, and the words taste like bile. He pushes away from the counter and stands to his full height, shoulders squared, and for a moment he looks every inch the officer. Burdened, resolute, carrying a decision he'll second-guess for the rest of his life.

"Gentlemen's agreement," he says. His voice is low, steady, absolute. "What happens tonight stays in this flat. No one treats her differently when this is over. No one brings it up unless she does. No one holds it over anyone, including himself."

He looks at each of them in turn—Gaz, then Soap—and holds until he gets a nod from both.

"And we tell Ghost."

Ghost doesn't agree.

He listens to the terms of the gentlemen's agreement from the doorway of the kitchen, arms crossed, stance wide, radiating the kind of stillness that makes lesser men instinctively check their exits. When Price finishes, Ghost holds the silence for a long, loaded beat.

And then: "No."

Price doesn't flinch. "No to which part?"

"All of it. My part." Ghost's voice is flat and final, stripped of everything except the decision itself. "I'll stay with her. I won't fuck her."

Soap opens his mouth—probably to say something spectacularly unhelpful—and Gaz kicks him under the table without looking.

Price studies his Lieutenant for a moment. Then he nods once, heavy with an understanding that doesn't need to be spoken.

"Fair enough." He rolls his sleeves up to his forearms. The mechanical motion of a man preparing for something he cannot delegate. "I'll go first."

No one dares to argue.

Unlike Soap, Price closes the guest bedroom door behind him and stands there for a moment with his hand still on the knob, just breathing. It smells of sex and pheromones, but wrong.

The room is dim. Someone turned off the overhead and left only the bedside lamp, casting everything in low amber light that softens the edges of the furniture and the shape of you on the bed. You're curled on your side, knees drawn up, one hand clutching the pillow beneath your head. The sheets are wrecked; damp and twisted, pulled loose from two corners, and your skin glistens with a thin sheen of sweat.

You look small.

That's the thing that hits him first and hits him hardest.

You're one of his soldiers. He's seen you clear buildings, haul wounded men twice your size to extraction, take a round to the vest and get back up swearing. You are not small. You have never been small or fragile.

But you look it now, trembling and fever-damp and reduced to a version of yourself that he never should have had to witness, and the weight of that sits on his shoulders like a ruck full of stones.

He crosses the room in a few strides and sits on the edge of the mattress. The frame groans under his weight.

"Sergeant."

You stir, your head lifting, and your eyes find his face. They're glassy and unfocused, but there's a flicker of recognition—Captain—before it's swallowed by the next wave rolling through your body. You let out a sound that's half sob, half moan, your thighs pressing together, and your hand reaches out blindly until your fingers catch the fabric of his shirt.

"It hurts," you whisper. "Still hurts. Why does it still—"

"I know." He catches your wrist, holds it. His thumb presses against your pulse point to check, and it’s rapid, thready, way too fast for simply lying on a bed. "I'm going to help you."

He says it the way he says we're moving on that compound at 0300 or I need eyes on that ridgeline. Leaving no room for ambiguity, because if he allows ambiguity into this room, he'll start thinking about what he's doing, and if he starts thinking, he'll stop, and if he stops.

You'll keep hurting. Under his command.

He stands long enough to strip his shirt over his head and remove his belt, and then he's back on the bed, propped against the headboard with you between his legs, your back against his bare chest; coarse salt and pepper hair rasping against your tacky skin. One arm wraps around your midsection, heavy and secure, anchoring you.

"Easy," he murmurs against the top of your head. "I've got you, love."

His free hand trails down your stomach, and your muscles jump and twitch beneath his rough palm. He catalogues every reaction. The hitch in your breathing, the way your hips tilt up to meet him, the small, desperate noise you make when his fingers dip below your navel. The same way he catalogues threat patterns and exit routes.

This is a mission. He is completing the objective. He is taking care of his wounded soldier.

He keeps telling himself that as he peels your underwear down your thighs and off, tossing them aside. As he runs his hand up the inside of your thigh and feels you shake. As he finally cups you and discovers just how wet and swollen you are, dripping on his fingers, he has to close his eyes and clench his jaw against the visceral punch of arousal that knocks through him.

This is the job. You gave the order. See it through.

He works you with his fingers first, because he needs to know what you can take. Two thick fingers pressing into you slowly, carefully, and the sounds you make guts him.

"That's it." His voice is lower now, rougher. "There you go, sweetheart."

He doesn't call his soldiers sweetheart. He has never, in twenty-odd years of service, called anyone under his command sweetheart. The word falls out of him like a loose round, and he can't take it back.

Your sopping hole clenches around his fingers and his cock, already hard and straining against the front of his trousers, jerks so violently he must bite back a groan. He curls his fingers inside you, finds the swollen spot that makes your spine arch and your breath stutter, and works it with a patient, devastating precision.

You cum and gush on his fingers with a broken cry, your body locking up in his arms, and the aftershocks roll through you in long, shuddering waves that he holds you through without a word.

It's still not enough. He knows it won't be for a while longer.

Price reaches for the condom on the nightstand—Gaz found them in Price's bathroom cabinet, a half-empty box, almost expired, shoved behind the toiletries like an afterthought—and tears the foil with his teeth while you keen and squirm against him, already spiralling back up.

He undoes his trousers and pushes them down just enough to free himself, because keeping them on feels like maintaining some essential boundary, some last scrap of separation between Captain Price doing what needs to be done and John wanting what he shouldn't want.

Rolling the condom on is a particular exercise in self-control. His cock is thick, flushed dark when his foreskin slides back, weeping pre at the tip, and every brush of his own fingers against the oversensitive skin makes his abs clench.

He lifts you with ease, one hand on your hip, the other gripping himself, and positions you above his lap.

"Sergeant," he grunts through gritted teeth, "look at me."

Your head lolls back against his shoulder, eyes half-open, and you meet his gaze as best you can. He searches for something in your expression—recognition, maybe awareness, you—and finds enough of it to quiet the loudest of the voices screaming in his head.

"If it's too much, y’tell me. That's a bloody order."

You nod hazily. He doesn't know if you actually processed the words, but he needed to say them. Needed that on the record, if only between himself and God.

He lowers you onto him slowly.

The sound that comes out of him is not one he's ever made before.

You're scorching hot and soaked. Your body takes him inch by inch, clenching and fluttering around him as gravity and his guiding hand ease you down, and by the time you're fully seated in his lap, he's seeing stars and his fingers have left dents in the flesh of your hip.

"Fuck," he breathes, and the word is ragged at the edges, torn from somewhere deeper than his chest.

You moan shamelessly, and the relief in the sound nearly undoes him. Like something that's been wound unbearably tight has finally been given slack. Your body relaxes against his, tension draining from your muscles for the first time in hours, and the change is so visible, so immediate, that it almost justifies this.

Almost.

He starts to move. Rolling his hips up into you, slow and deep, both hands gripping your waist to control the pace. He keeps it measured; long and deliberate strokes that drag against your inner walls and make you whimper with each one, because if he lets himself go, if he fucks you the way his body is begging him to, he'll lose himself entirely.

And he hates—Christ, he hates—how fucking good you feel.

He hates the way you fit around him like you were made for it, and the way your head falls back against his shoulder, how your lips part and you breathe his name—not his rank, not Captain, but John—and the sound of it rushes through him hot and electric and wrong. Hates the wet, obscene sound of your body taking him repeatedly; that his hips are moving faster now, snapping up into you with a force that makes the headboard knock against the wall.

Hates that he doesn't want to stop.

Your eyes squeeze shut, your head tips back as you cry out. "John—John—oh god—"

His arm tightens around your ribs, crushing you back against his chest, and his mouth finds the curve of your shoulder—not kissing, just pressing there, teeth grazing skin, breathing you in. His other hand slides down between your thighs and rubs tight circles on your clit in counterpoint to each thrust, and you come apart so violently in his arms that he has to hold you through it with every ounce of strength he has.

You clench around him like a vice and he follows you over the edge with a bitten-off groan, his hips stuttering, his cock pulsing deep inside you as the orgasm tears through him with a ferocity that whites out his vision.

For a few suspended seconds, there's nothing left. No rank, no mission, no guilt. Just the pounding of his heart and the aftershocks rippling through both your bodies and the impossible, terrible warmth of you around him.

Then reality seeps back in, cold and unforgiving, and Captain John Price opens his eyes and begins the long process of hating himself for every second of the last twenty minutes.

He pulls out carefully, disposes of the condom, and fixes his trousers. When he leans you back against the pillows, your eyes are already glazing over again, your body winding up for more, and the sight of it makes something weary and furious crack behind his chest cavity

He cups your jaw, tilting your face up. "Stay with me, Sergeant. Stay with me."

You whimper, and your hips shift restlessly against the sheets.

Price stands and walks to the door on legs that feel like they belong to someone else.

"Garrick. You're up."

Gaz and Soap take you in turns after that, and it's different this time.

Where the first round was clinical in its own way—Gaz with his careful guilt, Soap with his missionary zeal, Price bearing the weight of command—this his round is rawer.

The boundaries have been breached, and the gentlemen's agreement hangs over the room like a ceasefire that everyone knows is temporary.

Gaz is gentler than Price was. He lays you on your back and settles between your thighs with a tenderness that borders on devotion, pressing his forehead against yours as he pushes inside you.

He goes slow and gentle, and whispers things against your temple that no one else can hear, private things meant only for the space between your mouth and his.

"I've got you," he murmurs repeatedly. "I've got you, Babygirl, I'm right here. I will be here."

He comes inside the condom with a shudder and your name bitten into the skin of your shoulder, and when he pulls out and rolls onto his back beside you, he stares at the ceiling for a long time without blinking, tears prickling at the corners of his eyes.

Soap goes after. He's not gentle—can't be, doesn't know how to be, not with the way you claw at his back and wrap your legs around his waist and beg him harder, please, harder—but he's present.

He hooks your knee over his broad shoulders and fucks you deep, watching your face with a focused intensity that's almost clinical in its own right, cataloguing every reaction, every gasp, adjusting angle and depth and rhythm like he's zeroing a scope.

"Tha's it, sweetheart, take it—fuck, yer so—fuck—"

The condoms run out after Soap's first round.

Gaz discovers this when he reaches for the box on the nightstand and finds it empty, and the look on his face—the quiet oh, shit—would be funny in any other context.

"Cap'n," he calls, voice strained. "We've got a problem."

Price, who has been standing in the hallway staring at nothing, appears in the doorway. Gaz holds up the empty box. Price closes his eyes.

"Then pull out," the captain says flatly. "That's an order."

It should be simple, and it’s anything but.

Gaz tries. He genuinely, sincerely tries, but you're clenching around him so tightly and making those sounds, those desperate and wrecked, grateful sounds, and when your orgasm hits and your walls contract around his cock in rhythmic, milking pulses, his hips stutter and he buries himself to the hilt and spills inside you with a choked groan before his brain even registers what his body has done.

"Shit—shit, I'm sorry, I—fuck—"

He pulls out too late, watches his cum leak from you onto the sheets, and drops his head against your sternum with a devastated exhale.

Soap doesn't even pretend he's going to manage it.

"'M not gonna be able to pull out," he announces with a frankness that makes Gaz want to strangle him. "Jus' bein' honest, Cap."

"You'll pull out or I'll pull you out myself, MacTavish."

And yet Soap does not, in fact, pull out in time.

Price has to physically haul him back by the shoulder, and even then, Soap's cock jerks and pulses as it slips free, painting your inner thighs and lower belly with hot, thick ropes of cum while the Scotsman lets out a string of Gaelic curses that would make his mother disown him.

The room smells like multiple people fucking and sweating and something medicinal—the toxin, working its way out of your pores at last—and you're finally, finally, starting to slow down.

The desperate edge has dulled. Your whimpers are quieter now, tired rather than urgent, and your body has stopped arching off the bed every few minutes.

You're still reaching, though. Still searching for contact, for warmth, for a body against yours.

Ghost enters the room without being asked.

He's stripped down to his black t-shirt and trousers. The balaclava is still on, but his gloves are off, and the sight of his bare, scarred hands is somehow more intimate than anything else that's happened in this room tonight.

He doesn't look at the other men or acknowledge the state of the sheets or the smell or the heavy, post-coital guilt saturating the air.

He simply moves to the bed, sits down, and gathers you against his chest with a practised efficiency that suggests he's been rehearsing this moment in his head for the last two hours.

You go willingly. Boneless, exhausted, trembling with the last dregs of the toxin and the cumulative aftermath of more orgasms than your body was designed to handle in one night. Your face presses into the crook of his neck, your fingers curl loosely in the front of his shirt, and you let out a breath that sounds like surrender.

Ghost pulls the duvet up over both of you. One arm settles around your back securely. His other hand comes up to cradle the back of your head, fingers curling into your hair, and he holds you against him like he's shielding you from blast radius.

"Go to sleep," he says quietly. An order and a request and a plea all compressed into three words.

You make a small, incoherent sound against his throat.

"I know." His hand moves over your hair, slowly and gentle. "Sleep."

Price watches from the doorway for a moment. Then he pulls the door halfway closed and leaves the Lieutenant to his vigil.

In the kitchen, the captain pours himself another whisky—three fingers this time—and drinks it standing up, staring at the drawn curtains. Gaz is in the shower. Soap is sprawled on the sofa in the living room, one arm over his eyes, dead to the world.

Price's phone buzzes. Laswell.

How is she?

He stares at the screen for a long time. Types and deletes three different responses before finally settling on one.

Handled. Debrief in the morning.

He sets the phone face-down on the counter and finishes his drink.

Hours later, you wake up slowly, like surfacing from deep water.

The first thing you register is warmth. A wall of it, solid and breathing, pressed against your back. An arm draped over your waist, heavy with sleep. Fingers loosely tangled in yours against your sternum.

The second thing you register is that you are naked, sore in places you don't want to think about, and your mouth tastes like the inside of a boot.

The third thing is the balaclava.

You can feel it, the knitted fabric against the back of your neck, and the slow, even exhale of breath warming your skin through the cloth. The chest behind you rises and falls in the deep, steady rhythm of genuine sleep, which means the Lieutenant trusts this room enough to have let himself go under.

Which means something, though you're too foggy to figure out what.

You shift slightly, testing your body. Everything aches. Your thighs, your hips, your abs, your jaw for some reason, and there's a deep, bone-level exhaustion settled into your muscles that reminds you of the tail end of a bad flu.

The cramps are gone, though. The tingling, the feverish heat, the desperate, clawing need—all of it has receded, leaving behind a hollow, wrung-out emptiness.

And memory. Fragments of it. Arriving in pieces like delayed radio transmissions.

Kyle's hands shaking as he touched you. I'm only doin' this for you, babygirl. Johnny's mouth on you, hot and relentless. The sound he made against your thighs.

The shower. The water. Voices.

John.

Your eyes open wide and your body goes rigid, and the arm around your waist tightens reflexively. Ghost pulling you closer in his sleep, an unconscious response to a perceived threat, even though the threat is just you waking up and remembering.

You lie very still.

The flat is quiet. Early morning light edges around the curtains, pale and grey, and somewhere in the distance, you can hear the muffled sounds of the base waking up—vehicles, a distant shout, the rhythmic thud of boots on tarmac.

You don't move, don't speak. You stare at the wall and breathe and try to organise the wreckage in your head into something you can process.

Behind you, Ghost's breathing changes. Shifts from deep and even to something shallower, more aware. His arm tenses around you, a brief contraction of muscle, there and gone, and you know the exact moment he wakes up, because his entire body goes perfectly, absolutely still.

Neither of you says a word.

His hand is still tangled with yours against your bare chest. His thumb rests against your knuckle. But he doesn't pull away.

The silence stretches. Not uncomfortable, exactly. Heavy. Full of things that need to be said and won't be. Not now, certainly not yet, and maybe not ever. And there is a fragile, terrified understanding that what happened in this room changed the molecular structure of something that can never be unchanged.

Finally, after what feels like an hour but is probably two minutes, Ghost speaks.

"How do you feel?"

You consider the question. Really consider it, not the reflexive I'm fine that sits on your tongue out of habit.

"Like shit," you answer honestly. Your voice is wrecked, raspy, and it hurts to talk.

Then, so quietly you almost miss it, he answers, "Yeah."

His thumb moves once. A single, slow stroke across your knuckle.

Then he lets go of your hand, carefully disentangles himself from around you, and gets up without another word. You hear his boots being pulled back on. The soft click of the door.

You lie in the bed that smells like all four of them and none of yourself, and you stare at the wall, and you breathe.