az

(gaz is tense after the operation went a little sideways. you, clingy person you are, ground him. 1.4k words)

Tensions are always high after botched missions. Even you, a tumbleweed of an operative, notice—Captain Price running through more cigars in a day than usual, Ghost disappearing into rooms with a heavy scowl even you wouldn’t touch. Comfort be damned, you’d like to keep your fingers.

Gaz, though… 

Sergeant Kyle ‘Gaz’ Garrick is a man of the mind. You know better than most how he would far prefer a lengthy interrogation than a blazing gunfight, how he kept his composure in even the toughest of moments. His control is a precise thing, however much of a student to Price’s pragmatism he still is.

Yet, now, you feel an odd little mix of pity and delirious need to comfort the man as he stalks through the safehouse, brows locked in a furrow. He’s frowning, you can see, shoulders hunched. When he stops at the counter in the kitchen, grabbing a sachet of instant coffee, you could almost laugh at how pissed off he looks.

“If you scowl at it long enough, it might make itself into a cup of coffee,” you say, nodding to the plastic, light despite the heavy atmosphere following the mission. You don’t try to hide the way you step closer to him, posture easy. You stop a few feet away, and you can see now the bandages peeking out from his sleeves, the small cuts on his hands. “Save you the trouble.”

Kyle catches your eye, and the tension—some of it—melts from him as he huffs a laugh, eyes crinkling slightly as he sets the sachet down. “Yeah? Might even become a latte,” he tries, but the exhaustion’s still clear in his body.

You hum in lieu of a response, and he seems to take it as a go-ahead to continue what he was doing before. Which, you figure, was making coffee, given how he reaches for a mug.

You step closer. Close enough now to smell him, the musky scent of sweat after his workout, aftershave, and the cologne he wears. He quirks an eyebrow but doesn't protest, not even as you step behind him, nose nuzzling the back of his shoulder blades.

You've always been a clingy person. To anyone, really—your early life having been spent practically inseparable to your parents, and later on, your friends. It's like you couldn't survive without always feeling another person's touch, needing the warmth of their body, the thrum of their pulse to know they were alive. To know they were there with you. It's made its way into your behaviour with the 141, too, though much more toned down—Simon had bad physical-touch days more often than he didn't, and Price tended to pat you hard enough to knock you over if he weren't careful.

But Kyle? Kyle welcomed it with open arms. The first time you'd slumped against his shoulder after a particularly exhausting workout, huffing a deliriously tired laugh, he'd just chuckled and patted your head. 

It felt like being seen, in a way. Being accepted for who you were and told indirectly the way you acted wasn't 'weird'. So that was how it went, now—you’d seek out his touch, and he'd reciprocate freely. It wasn't uncommon now to see you two practically draped over each other, legs stacked on top of one another, or with one's head in another's lap. It never really failed to make your heart warmer, soft with satisfaction.

Which brought you to now, as he conspicuously continues making his coffee, your forehead pressed to his back. He's taller than you, but you don't mind—easier to headbutt his chest and back that way. Your arms wrap around his torso, cradling the warmth of his skin as you huff a breath of contentment against him.

You feel Kyle strain his neck to look over his shoulder at you, and without seeing, you can practically feel his cheeky little grin. 

“What's all this, exactly?” he asks, hands diligently pouring the coffee grounds into his mug. You shake your head, silent. 

Though you haven't admitted it, the botched operation took a toll on you, too. The lingering anxiety of shrapnel embedding themselves beside your head, the cacophony of combat—the fear that overtook you for a split second when a tango had wrestled Kyle on his back, knife inches from his throat before you'd put a bullet in their ear.

You needed this. Selfish as it were, maybe you think you need this more than he, the reassurance he was still warm with life.

Feeling him now, your body pressed against his, was… comfort. However tired the two of you may be.

He huffs when you again do not answer, turning back to his coffee. You've taken to stuff your nose into his shirt, looking up at him through your eyelashes, eyes raking over every inch of muscle in his shoulder blades, his neck, his jaw. 

For a man so seasoned in combat, his skin looks softer than you would expect, what with all the muscles. Under the fabric of his shirt, you can feel the contours of his body, and—impulsively—you open your mouth and softly chomp at the flesh there.

Kyle jolts, spoon clinking against his mug—”Jesus!”—and whips his head at you at you with a wide-eyed, incredulous grin. It matches your own devilish one, though yours turns into a yelp in record time as he fully turns his body around and wraps his arms around you, hauls you up to the counter like you weighed half a sack of potatoes.

“Kyle!—” you screech, laughing and kicking when he crowds against you, traps you against the cupboards. Your hands scrabble to push him off, but he doesn't budge. Instead, he just leans in, teeth nipping back at your shoulder. It's not enough pressure to hurt, just to tickle.

He's got a mischievous glint in his eyes now, though you can immediately see the exhaustion's been replaced by playfulness. Though your actions have led you to this predicament (being bitten at by a man twice your weight and just as feral), you cannot help but grin. It's an accomplishment.

“‘s what you get,” he mutters into your throat, the smile clear in his voice as he trails a series of bites on your skin—from your bicep, up to your shoulders, to your collarbone. “Biting me like that. Tickled.”

You huff giggles of satisfaction against his ear, and it turns into a sigh midway when his gnawing turns into kisses. “That's the point,” you breathe, leaning into them. Soft, warm against your skin, and they trail up your neck to your jaw.

Now this you haven't done before. Roughhousing, sure, cuddling, sure—but you haven't quite gotten to kisses yet. Maybe a few close-calls here and there where you thought you were ballsy enough to, but then chickened out seconds before, but not this.

Kyle doesn't seem to mind. His hands are off you now, braced on either side of your hips on the counter to support his weight. Not that you aren't touching—your thighs bracket his, and you have half a mind to cross your ankles to lock him in. It makes him pause for a moment, but not long enough for the kisses to break in sequence.

The conversation lulls, and his coffee's completely forgotten at this point.

You've settled on resting your hands at his hips. His trail of pecks have reached the corner of your mouth, now, and that's when he pulls back slightly. His pupils are blown, and he looks a little intense, but you think it's soft nonetheless.

He's close enough to kiss. You tilt your head like you're testing him and he seems to sober up, just slightly, though his hand ends up at your waist. 

You don't want this to end, though. Not when you're enjoying your predicament so much—so you tug at his shirt, pulling him closer, tilting your face up.

“This okay?” you ask, and it makes him chuckle a little. He nods, silent now, like he's too bashful to answer, or maybe he just doesn't want to confront the situation directly. You're fine with that, you think—and you lean forward to kiss him yourself.

Your eyes close when you do, and it makes you focus on the feeling more than anything else. His lips are soft, if a little chapped. His stubble and moustache scratches a little at your skin but you don't mind, and you pepper a few of your own little kisses against him, the corner of his mouth, his cheek.

He hums in contentment and his blush isn't too visible, but you can feel how his skin heats up around his cheeks. 

“Good?” you ask again, hands moving up to cup his face. The tension’s out of him now, melted by the warmth of your body against his. He nods again, and turns in the direction of your palm and kisses your palm. His hand moves up, cupping your hand as he does. "Yeah."

You smile. “Good,” you breathe, thumb rubbing soft circles against his cheek. He bites the meat of your palm at this, like he's flustered by the tenderness, and you can only giggle.

You can definitely get used to this form of stress relief. 

thinking about puppy y/n, though not the whimpering, submissive, pawing-at-affection kind. the kind who is an overeager young pup, snapping at heels and barking at anyone who breathed their way wrong, who needs a little hands-on training to be reined in.

y/n, who has consistently gotten into fights with both their peers. y/n, who is entirely too eager to do training courses and expend their restless energy. y/n, who bristles at being ordered around but gets an insatiable, determined glint in their eyes every single time they are given a task to do.

eventually, price, dog person that he is, starts training you like one. maybe he doesn't even realize it at first, too focused on dragging you back by the scruff after almost tackling sergeant mactavish for cracking a little joke about being a border collie, but eventually he realizes it's not an inaccurate assessment.

so he starts praising you for successfully completed tasks. when you're dragging your feet, he offers to smuggle you your favorite MREs. it works better than expected, he thinks, when you preen, a little pridefully, at his "good drill, soldier."

eventually, the others start noticing too. it's ghost, at first—he'd been wary of your placement as their rookie in the first place, keeping a close eye on you. he'd been harder on you at first, expectedly ticked off at your reckless impulsivity. but now...

now, he finds himself reprimanding you with a stern bark of, "down, soldier!". when you're agitated, spouting provocations during downtime, mind running a little too wild, he only ignores you. only snaps when you get a little too bitey.

eventually, they wrangle you into something less untrained, yipping pup and into a half-trained guard dog.

you, for all your actual intelligence, has not quite realized what was going on. you were too busy enjoying the MREs and protein bars price has inconspicuously given you as rewards, much to the amusement of gaz and soap.

yet, when price pats you on the back with a gruff "good dog," and ghost closes his rough, calloused hand on your nape and growls a low "don't make me collar you, mutt," you feel a fuzzy, intoxicating satisfaction take hold of your mind. maybe you'll make it here after all.

(gaz is tense after the operation went a little sideways. you, clingy person you are, ground him. 1.4k words)

Tensions are always high after botched missions. Even you, a tumbleweed of an operative, notice—Captain Price running through more cigars in a day than usual, Ghost disappearing into rooms with a heavy scowl even you wouldn’t touch. Comfort be damned, you’d like to keep your fingers.

Gaz, though… 

Sergeant Kyle ‘Gaz’ Garrick is a man of the mind. You know better than most how he would far prefer a lengthy interrogation than a blazing gunfight, how he kept his composure in even the toughest of moments. His control is a precise thing, however much of a student to Price’s pragmatism he still is.

Yet, now, you feel an odd little mix of pity and delirious need to comfort the man as he stalks through the safehouse, brows locked in a furrow. He’s frowning, you can see, shoulders hunched. When he stops at the counter in the kitchen, grabbing a sachet of instant coffee, you could almost laugh at how pissed off he looks.

“If you scowl at it long enough, it might make itself into a cup of coffee,” you say, nodding to the plastic, light despite the heavy atmosphere following the mission. You don’t try to hide the way you step closer to him, posture easy. You stop a few feet away, and you can see now the bandages peeking out from his sleeves, the small cuts on his hands. “Save you the trouble.”

Kyle catches your eye, and the tension—some of it—melts from him as he huffs a laugh, eyes crinkling slightly as he sets the sachet down. “Yeah? Might even become a latte,” he tries, but the exhaustion’s still clear in his body.

You hum in lieu of a response, and he seems to take it as a go-ahead to continue what he was doing before. Which, you figure, was making coffee, given how he reaches for a mug.

You step closer. Close enough now to smell him, the musky scent of sweat after his workout, aftershave, and the cologne he wears. He quirks an eyebrow but doesn't protest, not even as you step behind him, nose nuzzling the back of his shoulder blades.

You've always been a clingy person. To anyone, really—your early life having been spent practically inseparable to your parents, and later on, your friends. It's like you couldn't survive without always feeling another person's touch, needing the warmth of their body, the thrum of their pulse to know they were alive. To know they were there with you. It's made its way into your behaviour with the 141, too, though much more toned down—Simon had bad physical-touch days more often than he didn't, and Price tended to pat you hard enough to knock you over if he weren't careful.

But Kyle? Kyle welcomed it with open arms. The first time you'd slumped against his shoulder after a particularly exhausting workout, huffing a deliriously tired laugh, he'd just chuckled and patted your head. 

It felt like being seen, in a way. Being accepted for who you were and told indirectly the way you acted wasn't 'weird'. So that was how it went, now—you’d seek out his touch, and he'd reciprocate freely. It wasn't uncommon now to see you two practically draped over each other, legs stacked on top of one another, or with one's head in another's lap. It never really failed to make your heart warmer, soft with satisfaction.

Which brought you to now, as he conspicuously continues making his coffee, your forehead pressed to his back. He's taller than you, but you don't mind—easier to headbutt his chest and back that way. Your arms wrap around his torso, cradling the warmth of his skin as you huff a breath of contentment against him.

You feel Kyle strain his neck to look over his shoulder at you, and without seeing, you can practically feel his cheeky little grin. 

“What's all this, exactly?” he asks, hands diligently pouring the coffee grounds into his mug. You shake your head, silent. 

Though you haven't admitted it, the botched operation took a toll on you, too. The lingering anxiety of shrapnel embedding themselves beside your head, the cacophony of combat—the fear that overtook you for a split second when a tango had wrestled Kyle on his back, knife inches from his throat before you'd put a bullet in their ear.

You needed this. Selfish as it were, maybe you think you need this more than he, the reassurance he was still warm with life.

Feeling him now, your body pressed against his, was… comfort. However tired the two of you may be.

He huffs when you again do not answer, turning back to his coffee. You've taken to stuff your nose into his shirt, looking up at him through your eyelashes, eyes raking over every inch of muscle in his shoulder blades, his neck, his jaw. 

For a man so seasoned in combat, his skin looks softer than you would expect, what with all the muscles. Under the fabric of his shirt, you can feel the contours of his body, and—impulsively—you open your mouth and softly chomp at the flesh there.

Kyle jolts, spoon clinking against his mug—”Jesus!”—and whips his head at you at you with a wide-eyed, incredulous grin. It matches your own devilish one, though yours turns into a yelp in record time as he fully turns his body around and wraps his arms around you, hauls you up to the counter like you weighed half a sack of potatoes.

“Kyle!—” you screech, laughing and kicking when he crowds against you, traps you against the cupboards. Your hands scrabble to push him off, but he doesn't budge. Instead, he just leans in, teeth nipping back at your shoulder. It's not enough pressure to hurt, just to tickle.

He's got a mischievous glint in his eyes now, though you can immediately see the exhaustion's been replaced by playfulness. Though your actions have led you to this predicament (being bitten at by a man twice your weight and just as feral), you cannot help but grin. It's an accomplishment.

“‘s what you get,” he mutters into your throat, the smile clear in his voice as he trails a series of bites on your skin—from your bicep, up to your shoulders, to your collarbone. “Biting me like that. Tickled.”

You huff giggles of satisfaction against his ear, and it turns into a sigh midway when his gnawing turns into kisses. “That's the point,” you breathe, leaning into them. Soft, warm against your skin, and they trail up your neck to your jaw.

Now this you haven't done before. Roughhousing, sure, cuddling, sure—but you haven't quite gotten to kisses yet. Maybe a few close-calls here and there where you thought you were ballsy enough to, but then chickened out seconds before, but not this.

Kyle doesn't seem to mind. His hands are off you now, braced on either side of your hips on the counter to support his weight. Not that you aren't touching—your thighs bracket his, and you have half a mind to cross your ankles to lock him in. It makes him pause for a moment, but not long enough for the kisses to break in sequence.

The conversation lulls, and his coffee's completely forgotten at this point.

You've settled on resting your hands at his hips. His trail of pecks have reached the corner of your mouth, now, and that's when he pulls back slightly. His pupils are blown, and he looks a little intense, but you think it's soft nonetheless.

He's close enough to kiss. You tilt your head like you're testing him and he seems to sober up, just slightly, though his hand ends up at your waist. 

You don't want this to end, though. Not when you're enjoying your predicament so much—so you tug at his shirt, pulling him closer, tilting your face up.

“This okay?” you ask, and it makes him chuckle a little. He nods, silent now, like he's too bashful to answer, or maybe he just doesn't want to confront the situation directly. You're fine with that, you think—and you lean forward to kiss him yourself.

Your eyes close when you do, and it makes you focus on the feeling more than anything else. His lips are soft, if a little chapped. His stubble and moustache scratches a little at your skin but you don't mind, and you pepper a few of your own little kisses against him, the corner of his mouth, his cheek.

He hums in contentment and his blush isn't too visible, but you can feel how his skin heats up around his cheeks. 

“Good?” you ask again, hands moving up to cup his face. The tension’s out of him now, melted by the warmth of your body against his. He nods again, and turns in the direction of your palm and kisses your palm. His hand moves up, cupping your hand as he does. "Yeah."

You smile. “Good,” you breathe, thumb rubbing soft circles against his cheek. He bites the meat of your palm at this, like he's flustered by the tenderness, and you can only giggle.

You can definitely get used to this form of stress relief. 

(gaz is tense after the operation went a little sideways. you, clingy person you are, ground him. 1.4k words)

Tensions are always high after botched missions. Even you, a tumbleweed of an operative, notice—Captain Price running through more cigars in a day than usual, Ghost disappearing into rooms with a heavy scowl even you wouldn’t touch. Comfort be damned, you’d like to keep your fingers.

Gaz, though… 

Sergeant Kyle ‘Gaz’ Garrick is a man of the mind. You know better than most how he would far prefer a lengthy interrogation than a blazing gunfight, how he kept his composure in even the toughest of moments. His control is a precise thing, however much of a student to Price’s pragmatism he still is.

Yet, now, you feel an odd little mix of pity and delirious need to comfort the man as he stalks through the safehouse, brows locked in a furrow. He’s frowning, you can see, shoulders hunched. When he stops at the counter in the kitchen, grabbing a sachet of instant coffee, you could almost laugh at how pissed off he looks.

“If you scowl at it long enough, it might make itself into a cup of coffee,” you say, nodding to the plastic, light despite the heavy atmosphere following the mission. You don’t try to hide the way you step closer to him, posture easy. You stop a few feet away, and you can see now the bandages peeking out from his sleeves, the small cuts on his hands. “Save you the trouble.”

Kyle catches your eye, and the tension—some of it—melts from him as he huffs a laugh, eyes crinkling slightly as he sets the sachet down. “Yeah? Might even become a latte,” he tries, but the exhaustion’s still clear in his body.

You hum in lieu of a response, and he seems to take it as a go-ahead to continue what he was doing before. Which, you figure, was making coffee, given how he reaches for a mug.

You step closer. Close enough now to smell him, the musky scent of sweat after his workout, aftershave, and the cologne he wears. He quirks an eyebrow but doesn't protest, not even as you step behind him, nose nuzzling the back of his shoulder blades.

You've always been a clingy person. To anyone, really—your early life having been spent practically inseparable to your parents, and later on, your friends. It's like you couldn't survive without always feeling another person's touch, needing the warmth of their body, the thrum of their pulse to know they were alive. To know they were there with you. It's made its way into your behaviour with the 141, too, though much more toned down—Simon had bad physical-touch days more often than he didn't, and Price tended to pat you hard enough to knock you over if he weren't careful.

But Kyle? Kyle welcomed it with open arms. The first time you'd slumped against his shoulder after a particularly exhausting workout, huffing a deliriously tired laugh, he'd just chuckled and patted your head. 

It felt like being seen, in a way. Being accepted for who you were and told indirectly the way you acted wasn't 'weird'. So that was how it went, now—you’d seek out his touch, and he'd reciprocate freely. It wasn't uncommon now to see you two practically draped over each other, legs stacked on top of one another, or with one's head in another's lap. It never really failed to make your heart warmer, soft with satisfaction.

Which brought you to now, as he conspicuously continues making his coffee, your forehead pressed to his back. He's taller than you, but you don't mind—easier to headbutt his chest and back that way. Your arms wrap around his torso, cradling the warmth of his skin as you huff a breath of contentment against him.

You feel Kyle strain his neck to look over his shoulder at you, and without seeing, you can practically feel his cheeky little grin. 

“What's all this, exactly?” he asks, hands diligently pouring the coffee grounds into his mug. You shake your head, silent. 

Though you haven't admitted it, the botched operation took a toll on you, too. The lingering anxiety of shrapnel embedding themselves beside your head, the cacophony of combat—the fear that overtook you for a split second when a tango had wrestled Kyle on his back, knife inches from his throat before you'd put a bullet in their ear.

You needed this. Selfish as it were, maybe you think you need this more than he, the reassurance he was still warm with life.

Feeling him now, your body pressed against his, was… comfort. However tired the two of you may be.

He huffs when you again do not answer, turning back to his coffee. You've taken to stuff your nose into his shirt, looking up at him through your eyelashes, eyes raking over every inch of muscle in his shoulder blades, his neck, his jaw. 

For a man so seasoned in combat, his skin looks softer than you would expect, what with all the muscles. Under the fabric of his shirt, you can feel the contours of his body, and—impulsively—you open your mouth and softly chomp at the flesh there.

Kyle jolts, spoon clinking against his mug—”Jesus!”—and whips his head at you at you with a wide-eyed, incredulous grin. It matches your own devilish one, though yours turns into a yelp in record time as he fully turns his body around and wraps his arms around you, hauls you up to the counter like you weighed half a sack of potatoes.

“Kyle!—” you screech, laughing and kicking when he crowds against you, traps you against the cupboards. Your hands scrabble to push him off, but he doesn't budge. Instead, he just leans in, teeth nipping back at your shoulder. It's not enough pressure to hurt, just to tickle.

He's got a mischievous glint in his eyes now, though you can immediately see the exhaustion's been replaced by playfulness. Though your actions have led you to this predicament (being bitten at by a man twice your weight and just as feral), you cannot help but grin. It's an accomplishment.

“‘s what you get,” he mutters into your throat, the smile clear in his voice as he trails a series of bites on your skin—from your bicep, up to your shoulders, to your collarbone. “Biting me like that. Tickled.”

You huff giggles of satisfaction against his ear, and it turns into a sigh midway when his gnawing turns into kisses. “That's the point,” you breathe, leaning into them. Soft, warm against your skin, and they trail up your neck to your jaw.

Now this you haven't done before. Roughhousing, sure, cuddling, sure—but you haven't quite gotten to kisses yet. Maybe a few close-calls here and there where you thought you were ballsy enough to, but then chickened out seconds before, but not this.

Kyle doesn't seem to mind. His hands are off you now, braced on either side of your hips on the counter to support his weight. Not that you aren't touching—your thighs bracket his, and you have half a mind to cross your ankles to lock him in. It makes him pause for a moment, but not long enough for the kisses to break in sequence.

The conversation lulls, and his coffee's completely forgotten at this point.

You've settled on resting your hands at his hips. His trail of pecks have reached the corner of your mouth, now, and that's when he pulls back slightly. His pupils are blown, and he looks a little intense, but you think it's soft nonetheless.

He's close enough to kiss. You tilt your head like you're testing him and he seems to sober up, just slightly, though his hand ends up at your waist. 

You don't want this to end, though. Not when you're enjoying your predicament so much—so you tug at his shirt, pulling him closer, tilting your face up.

“This okay?” you ask, and it makes him chuckle a little. He nods, silent now, like he's too bashful to answer, or maybe he just doesn't want to confront the situation directly. You're fine with that, you think—and you lean forward to kiss him yourself.

Your eyes close when you do, and it makes you focus on the feeling more than anything else. His lips are soft, if a little chapped. His stubble and moustache scratches a little at your skin but you don't mind, and you pepper a few of your own little kisses against him, the corner of his mouth, his cheek.

He hums in contentment and his blush isn't too visible, but you can feel how his skin heats up around his cheeks. 

“Good?” you ask again, hands moving up to cup his face. The tension’s out of him now, melted by the warmth of your body against his. He nods again, and turns in the direction of your palm and kisses your palm. His hand moves up, cupping your hand as he does. "Yeah."

You smile. “Good,” you breathe, thumb rubbing soft circles against his cheek. He bites the meat of your palm at this, like he's flustered by the tenderness, and you can only giggle.

You can definitely get used to this form of stress relief. 

thinking about puppy y/n, though not the whimpering, submissive, pawing-at-affection kind. the kind who is an overeager young pup, snapping at heels and barking at anyone who breathed their way wrong, who needs a little hands-on training to be reined in.

y/n, who has consistently gotten into fights with both their peers. y/n, who is entirely too eager to do training courses and expend their restless energy. y/n, who bristles at being ordered around but gets an insatiable, determined glint in their eyes every single time they are given a task to do.

eventually, price, dog person that he is, starts training you like one. maybe he doesn't even realize it at first, too focused on dragging you back by the scruff after almost tackling sergeant mactavish for cracking a little joke about being a border collie, but eventually he realizes it's not an inaccurate assessment.

so he starts praising you for successfully completed tasks. when you're dragging your feet, he offers to smuggle you your favorite MREs. it works better than expected, he thinks, when you preen, a little pridefully, at his "good drill, soldier."

eventually, the others start noticing too. it's ghost, at first—he'd been wary of your placement as their rookie in the first place, keeping a close eye on you. he'd been harder on you at first, expectedly ticked off at your reckless impulsivity. but now...

now, he finds himself reprimanding you with a stern bark of, "down, soldier!". when you're agitated, spouting provocations during downtime, mind running a little too wild, he only ignores you. only snaps when you get a little too bitey.

eventually, they wrangle you into something less untrained, yipping pup and into a half-trained guard dog.

you, for all your actual intelligence, has not quite realized what was going on. you were too busy enjoying the MREs and protein bars price has inconspicuously given you as rewards, much to the amusement of gaz and soap.

yet, when price pats you on the back with a gruff "good dog," and ghost closes his rough, calloused hand on your nape and growls a low "don't make me collar you, mutt," you feel a fuzzy, intoxicating satisfaction take hold of your mind. maybe you'll make it here after all.

(gaz is tense after the operation went a little sideways. you, clingy person you are, ground him. 1.4k words)

Tensions are always high after botched missions. Even you, a tumbleweed of an operative, notice—Captain Price running through more cigars in a day than usual, Ghost disappearing into rooms with a heavy scowl even you wouldn’t touch. Comfort be damned, you’d like to keep your fingers.

Gaz, though… 

Sergeant Kyle ‘Gaz’ Garrick is a man of the mind. You know better than most how he would far prefer a lengthy interrogation than a blazing gunfight, how he kept his composure in even the toughest of moments. His control is a precise thing, however much of a student to Price’s pragmatism he still is.

Yet, now, you feel an odd little mix of pity and delirious need to comfort the man as he stalks through the safehouse, brows locked in a furrow. He’s frowning, you can see, shoulders hunched. When he stops at the counter in the kitchen, grabbing a sachet of instant coffee, you could almost laugh at how pissed off he looks.

“If you scowl at it long enough, it might make itself into a cup of coffee,” you say, nodding to the plastic, light despite the heavy atmosphere following the mission. You don’t try to hide the way you step closer to him, posture easy. You stop a few feet away, and you can see now the bandages peeking out from his sleeves, the small cuts on his hands. “Save you the trouble.”

Kyle catches your eye, and the tension—some of it—melts from him as he huffs a laugh, eyes crinkling slightly as he sets the sachet down. “Yeah? Might even become a latte,” he tries, but the exhaustion’s still clear in his body.

You hum in lieu of a response, and he seems to take it as a go-ahead to continue what he was doing before. Which, you figure, was making coffee, given how he reaches for a mug.

You step closer. Close enough now to smell him, the musky scent of sweat after his workout, aftershave, and the cologne he wears. He quirks an eyebrow but doesn't protest, not even as you step behind him, nose nuzzling the back of his shoulder blades.

You've always been a clingy person. To anyone, really—your early life having been spent practically inseparable to your parents, and later on, your friends. It's like you couldn't survive without always feeling another person's touch. It's made its way into your behaviour with the 141, too, though much more toned down—Simon had bad physical-touch days more often than he didn't, and Price tended to pat you hard enough to knock you over if he weren't careful.

But Kyle? Kyle welcomed it with open arms. The first time you'd slumped against his shoulder after a particularly exhausting workout, huffing a deliriously tired laugh, he'd just chuckled and patted your head. 

It felt like being seen, in a way. Being accepted for who you were and told indirectly the way you acted wasn't 'weird'. So that was how it went, now—you’d seek out his touch, and he'd reciprocate freely. It wasn't uncommon now to see you two practically draped over each other, legs stacked on top of one another, or with one's head in another's lap. It never really failed to make your heart warmer, soft with satisfaction.

Which brought you to now, as he conspicuously continues making his coffee, your forehead pressed to his back. He's taller than you, but you don't mind—easier to headbutt his chest and back that way. Your arms wrap around his torso, cradling the warmth of his skin as you huff a breath of contentment against him.

You feel Kyle strain his head to look over his shoulder at you, and without seeing, you can practically feel his cheeky little grin. 

“What's all this, exactly?” he asks, hands diligently pouring the coffee grounds into his mug. You shake your head, silent. 

Though you haven't admitted it, the botched operation took a toll on you, too. The lingering anxiety of shrapnel embedding themselves beside your head, the cacophony of combat—the fear that overtook you for a split second when a tango had wrestled Kyle on his back, knife inches from his throat before you'd put a bullet in their ear.

Feeling him now, warm, soft, alive was… comfort. However tired the two of you may be.

He huffs when you again do not answer, turning back to his coffee. You've taken to stuff your nose into his shirt, looking up at him through your eyelashes, eyes raking over every inch of muscle in his shoulder blades, his neck, his jaw. 

For a man so seasoned in combat, his skin looks softer than you would expect, what with all the muscles. Under the fabric of his shirt, you can feel the contours of his body, and—impulsively—you open your mouth and softly chomp at the flesh there.

Kyle jolts, spoon clinking against his mug—”Jesus!”—and whips around at you with a wide-eyed grin. It matches your own devilish one, though yours turns into a yelp in record time as he fully turns his body around and wraps his arms around you, hauls you up to the counter like you weighed half a sack of potatoes.

“Kyle!—” you screech, laughing and kicking when he crowds against you, traps you against the cupboards. Your hands scrabble to push him off, but he doesn't budge. Instead, he just leans in, teeth nipping back at your shoulder. It's not enough pressure to hurt, just to tickle.

He's got a mischievous glint in his eyes now, though you can immediately see the exhaustion's been replaced by playfulness. Though your actions have led you to this predicament (being bitten at by a man twice your weight and just as feral), you cannot help but grin. It's an accomplishment.

“‘s what you get,” he mutters, the smile clear in his voice as he trails a series of bites on your skin—from your bicep, up to your shoulders, to your collarbone. “Biting me like that. Tickled.”

You huff giggles of satisfaction against his ear, and it turns into a sigh midway when his gnawing turns into kisses. “That's the point,” you breathe, leaning into them. Soft, warm against your skin, and they trail up your neck to your jaw.

Now this you haven't done before. Roughhousing, sure, cuddling, sure—but you haven't quite gotten to kisses yet. Maybe a few close-calls here and there where you thought you were ballsy enough to, but then chickened out seconds before, but not this.

Kyle doesn't seem to mind. His hands are off you now, braced on either side of your hips on the counter to support his weight. Not that you aren't touching—your thighs bracket his, and you have half a mind to cross your ankles to lock him in. It makes him pause for a moment, but not long enough for the kisses to break in sequence.

The conversation lulls, and his coffee's completely forgotten at this point.

You've settled on resting your hands at his hips. His trail of pecks have reached the corner of your mouth, now, and that's when he pulls back slightly. His pupils are blown, and he looks a little intense, but you think it's soft nonetheless.

He's close enough to kiss. You tilt your head like you're testing him and he seems to sober up, just slightly, though his hand ends up at your waist. 

You don't want this to end, though. Not when you're enjoying your predicament so much—so you tug at his shirt, pulling him closer, tilting your face up.

“This okay?” you ask, and it makes him chuckle a little. He nods, silent now, like he's too bashful to answer, or maybe he just doesn't want to confront the situation directly. You're fine with that, you think—and you lean forward to kiss him yourself.

Your eyes close when you do, and it makes you focus on the feeling more than anything else. His lips are soft, if a little chapped. His stubble and moustache scratches a little at your skin but you don't mind, and you pepper a few of your own little kisses against him, the corner of his mouth, his cheek.

He hums in contentment and his blush isn't too visible, but you can feel how his skin heats up around his cheeks. 

“Good?” you ask again, hands moving up to cup his face. The tension’s out of him now, melted by the warmth of your body against his. He nods again, and turns in the direction of your palm and kisses your palm. His hand moves up, cupping your hand as he does. "Yeah."

You smile. “Good,” you breathe, thumb rubbing soft circles against his cheek. He bites the meat of your palm at this, like he's flustered by the tenderness, and you can only giggle.

You can definitely get used to this form of stress relief. 

Simon with a little girl just makes me lose my mind🥹