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John Price

“Come here. Stop running.”

You giggle as John scoops you up, falling onto the sofa with you in his arms. Playfully pushing at him, you squirm, attempting to escape, to force him to chase you. John knows this, which is why his arms lock, forcing the two of you into a spooning position.

Perhaps escape is impossible. Once John pins you down, it’s over. You face the back cushions. Even if you did manage to escape John, you’d have to launch yourself over him, and that’ll give him an opportunity to nab you again. You stop fussing, allowing John to think he’s won, that’s he in control.

You know better.

“That’s it. Good,” he murmurs, settling in as if he’s relaxed except his hold on you tells a different story.

You deliberately rub your ass against his crotch until you feel a hardness that isn’t coming from his jeans.

“Stop,” he mutters. “Won’t work.”

Sure, John. Like you ever refuse.

Adding a breathy moan, you repeat the movement, and John’s hands shift to your hips. The man can’t resist, using his hold on you to meet your grinding with light thrusts. John’s breathing increases, and you know you have him.

Kyle "Gaz" Garrick

The air stinks of sex. You and Kyle are sticky with drying sweat, breathing heavier than normal, a bit strung out on the rough, passion sex you just had. Kyle’s at your back, one arm thrown over your side, his hand splayed wide just below your breast. He shifts toward you, cradling you against him, your bodies melting together as you cuddle.

“I missed you,” he murmurs, kissing your throat, your ear, your head.

“That why you pounced on me when you walked in the door?” you ask with a smile, eyelids drifting shut, the space between your thighs sticky with Kyle’s cum.

Kyle’s hand drifts up, squeezes, fingers playfully pinching your nipple. “Don’t even need to ask.”

You make a hmph sound, relaxing into him as he gently explores your body, touching everywhere, eventually finding his mess on your thighs. Kyle slips a hand under your thigh and lifts your leg enough that your ankle falls over his shin, leaving you open but not stretched. Fingers part your pussy, tease your clit, trace lines through the cum.

“Kyle,” you whimper as he returns to your clit, circling.

His cock replaces his fingers, hips rocking, shaft rubbing against your pussy.

John "Soap" MacTavish

On the edge of sleep, curled up on your side, a warm presence at your back draws you away from dreamland. Turning into the embrace, you seek Johnny, knowing it’s him by his cologne.

“None of that, lass,” he coos softly, halting your movement, returning you to your previous position. “Come here.”

Surrendering to him, you ease back onto your side, sighing happily as his large, muscled arms sweep over and under you, drawing you flush against him. Johnny’s face nuzzles your neck. He inhales deeply, his exhale almost a moan. Through your clothes, you feel his hardness pressing into your ass.

A big spoon, yet a horny one.

Reaching back, you slot your hand between your bodies, palming his erection. Johnny hiss between his teeth, lightly nipping at your throat.

“Thought we were having a cuddle,” he laughs, lips tracing up to your ear, tongue and teeth teasing.

“It’s never just a cuddle with you, Johnny,” you reply, slipping your hand beneath the band of his briefs, finding him hard and throbbing. You draw him out, open your legs a little, push back to rub the head of his cock against your pussy. “This what you want?”

“Fuck, yes.”

Simon "Ghost" Riley

A small whimper escapes you as Simon turns you onto your side, keeping you close, his hard cock inside you. The man isn’t thrusting, though you’re begging him, pleading him to fuck you. Simon isn’t having any of it. He’d rather your pussy keep his dick warm, every orgasm he gives you slickening the friction, every spasm squeezing. The man is a tease but most of all, cruel. Cruel, for doing this, for making you wait, for stringing sex out until you’re a blubbering mess and only then will he properly fuck you.

“Simon,” you moan. “Please. Fuck, please.”

Acting as big spoon, Simon tucks you against his body, cuddling even while his hand moves between your legs, a small handheld vibrator in his fist, swirling the damn thing over your clit. Your thighs shudder, your pussy clenches, and Simon ups the speed, holding the vibrator hard against your clit until the orgasm punches you in the stomach.

Even as you shake and your toes curl, Simon holds position, acting as big spoon, like this isn’t torture but a cute snuggle session.

MILITARY SERVICE HEADCANONS

(Ages are estimated. I'm using the age I think they are today. My sources on the military aspects are my autism. Also I know SAS officers don't do any boots on the ground work. In reality Price would be a Regimental sargent major and Ghost would be a Sargent Major.)

Soap likely went through selection as soon as he was able to. Likely as soon as he hit their eligibility criteria (2 years service and recommended by their CO) given age and rank. You reset your rank on joining the UK special forces, so he likely went into selection as a private. He was 3 para before this (his canon regiment in the original series) and used to call everyone a 'hat' when he was still a paratrooper. (Hat is an insult used by paratroopers towards other regiments.) I think he's about 26 or 27, he probably joined the army at 16 as you're able to do in the UK.

Gaz canonically went through selection in his fourth year of service but the maths doesn't work out. Realistically, he probably went into selection in his second year in the infantry. He's a little older than Soap (probably around 30-ish assuming he only did 3 years in the Met and joined the Met at 18. He'd have to do a minimum of two years to be allowed to do armed policing work in England like he does in MW 2019.) and likely was aiming for the SAS as soon as he joined the army.

Ghost was likely either Infantry or potentially a Royal Marine. Given his potential age is around 30 to 35, I'd say he likely went into selection in his second year of service. I think he was one of the older people in his intake, being around 21 while the others were 18. He was probably a late 80 to early 90s baby, so would have been around 18 during the big wave of royal marines recruitment that started in the 2010s. (For any Americans here, Royal Marines are very different to American Marines.) He was likely a butcher for a bit before he decided to join, his size and build would have definitely made him suited to being a commando. Average age of a Lieutenant is between 28 to 30, so given the extra years for training and selection- its a good probable age for him.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Don't bloody move, Sergeant."

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

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

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

That's how it starts.

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

You're not 141—not technically.

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

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

You learn Kyle in fragments.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I could love you so easily it terrifies me.

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

"Don't."

He stops, closes his mouth. Your heart stutters.

"Don't say it, Kyle."

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

"Why?" he asks eventually.

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

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

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

And that's it. Okay.

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

Kyle never says it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Hilarious. Now don't move."

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

He’s trembling, but insistent.

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

You pause to look at him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be careful with my heart.

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

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

It's the fucking Polaroid.

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

And you think about Kyle.

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

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

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

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

"Hey."

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

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

"Don't."

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

His footsteps stop.

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

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

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

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

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

"I'm fine," you say again.

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

Two days later, they’re stateside again.

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

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

His phone buzzes with a message from Soap.

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

And Kyle types back: Good. Thanks.

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

you alright mate?

Yeah. Why?

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

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

whats going on between you 2?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You walk inside, passing him tentatively.

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

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

"I don't want tea."

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

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

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

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

"Alright."

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

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

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

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

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

…When your baby leaves you all alone…

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

…And nobody calls you on the phone…

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

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

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

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

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

…Come on, cry to me…

"Be careful with my heart," you whisper.

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

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

You allow yourself to kiss him.

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

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

"Kyle—"

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

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

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

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

But Kyle doesn't say it with words.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Eloquent."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Bloody hell, Kyle."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kyle holds you through it.

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

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

"Stay. Here… with me."

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

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

“got you a present, honey.”

his southern drawl is low and sweet as he speaks into your ear, one palm caressing your shoulder. his touch drags down your arm until his fingers encircle your hand, giving it a grounding squeeze.

“yeah?” you say, and it comes out slightly breathy. excited. even somewhat…nervous. anxiety at facing him again, after all these years. you quickly stamp it down.

you will not feel guilt, pity, empathy. regret. you feel anger. hatred. betrayal.

“just tell us why, love. tell us and it ends.”

the words, falsely sweet and antagonizing ring through your skull.

“yeah.” he says, bringing you back to the moment. his hand drops from yours as he steps around you, hand reaching for the door. “wanna open it?”

your eyes are locked on the metal door before you. it’s in perfect condition, a steely gray that reminds you too much of the infirmary and the past.

you nod. phillip grins, his hand twisting the door knob, and pulls the door open.

“after you, then.”

you see him before you even take a step forward. the room is sterile, unremarkable. much better accommodations than you were kept in during your torture at your “family’s” hands.

but you’re better than them, aren’t you? you know you are. you proved it then and you’ve been proving it in the years since you left them behind, just to take your sweet time in planning the perfect revenge.

let them settle. let them come to terms with themselves, with what they did, then strike like a coiled-up rattlesnake with an itch for blood. angry. mean. lethal.

you move into the room, but graves doesn’t follow. you don’t need to turn your head to notice his absence. you’ve become so attuned to him, you weren’t just a shadow in his company anymore. the two of you were two halves of a whole— a perfect match made in the fiery depths of hell. you stoked each others fires, only making them rise terrifyingly higher and higher.

the door clicks with finality behind you. you can’t help but grin as you take in the scene before you.

a metal table, covered in any tool you would need to make this perfectly excruciating. a neat little line of weapons to choose from, just as he had possessed during your torture. oh, which to choose?

you can recognize him by his stature alone. muscled legs, feet clad in battered black military-issued boots. ankles restrained, chained to the chair he was sat in. hands tied behind his back, muscles bulging through his black long-sleeved shirt. combat pants splattered with the dark red of blood— undoubtedly a mix of his and whoever he took out in his attempt to escape his fate.

(if he had known from the beginning that this was you abducting him, your team— he doubts he would’ve even put up a fight. you deserved this. it was the least he could do.)

his face is obscured by a black hood. you knew that his balaclava hadn’t been removed yet, per your request. you wanted to be the one to break down that wall again. to pervert and destroy something so sacred to him, something that once held so much trust and meaning. his unmasking, his love.

you don’t say anything. you don’t have to. he can tell by the sound of the footsteps approaching him that’s it’s you. from the moment you left— maybe even before then (when he first met you) he knew he would never escape you. your laugh, your smile, your smell, the sound of your damn footsteps. you are his own personal hell.

you are delighted to be that.

you stop directly in front of him. a hand reaches out, fingering the fabric of the hood obscuring his vision. he makes no noise, no attempted movement. if you hadn’t known any better, you would’ve believed he hadn’t even known you’d entered the room.

“simon.”

the name leaves your lips with an undeniable venom in your tone. you can’t remember the last time you’d truly spoken his name aloud. you and graves had an understanding. it wasn’t that you couldn’t say his name— it’s that you didn’t care to give him that courtesy. to humanize him in that way again.

“miss me?” you say, gripping the hood and pulling it off. to his credit, he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t react. he’s a ghost, a machine— a man made of steel. you can barely tell he’s adjusting to the sudden influx of light.

he doesn’t say anything. he doesn’t have to. and you don’t need to antagonize him.

without any ceremony, you reach forward again and pull the balaclava up, unveiling his neck, chin and jaw, lips and nose, eyes and hair. a face you once loved— one seared into your brain, branded with a title of “traitor.”

“one last time, hm?” you hum, and he says nothing. he’s not gagged, no tape covers his lips, no bruises or wounds keep him from speaking.

he knows it doesn’t matter. nothing he says could ever be enough. this, him sitting here before you, was just the start toward being enough.

words do not matter to you. sorries and sympathy and begging will do no good.

he knows he will not leave this room alive. he does not care.

the two of you take the other in, catalogue new scars and marks to your skin that weren’t there when you were lovers. when you traced his nose in the dark, lips quirking in a grin when he gave a satisfied grumble. when he wiped blood from your lip after an intense sparring session, his thumb smearing the red down your chin.

when this was sacred and something that would never be replicated with anyone else. when you though you meant something to him. (you always did.)

“go on then, love.” he grumbles, and his voice is just as deep and ragged as you remember.

“one last time.”

—

authors note: hello!!!! the you thought you’d seen the last of the traitor verse! and then I drop this at 1am when I have to be at work in 7 hours… so if it doesn’t make sense or has mistakes have mercy I am sleep deprived lol.

but anyways enjoy this while I disappear again!