curious very curious

long term teammates, tolerable conversation, a perfectly adequate, non romantic relationship.

that's what you and Simon had.

you'd known the alpha for years at this point, you had met before the task force, both serving as young sergeants in the SAS . it was an acquaintanceship, passing comments over comms or emailing documents for superiors.

when you'd both been invited into the task force for a secret operative (that turned into multiple), it became something closer. something more subtlety intimate and tension filled. whether it was sharing MREs wordlessly or quietly smoking together behind crumbling buildings, you did it together, and no one was allowed to say a word.

meanwhile, scents and primal urges were never a real problem between you two thanks to the uniform scent blockers and his seemingly obvious un-attraction to you. not like you cared... he was hot, of course, smoking hot. but you had gotten used to alphas preferring omegas.

on your second year in the task force, hed been placed in a simple in-and-out opp in south America. once hed gotten back he started getting more agressive and territorial, even pacing outside your door at night? when price found out hed been scented by a bolivian con-woman he was banished to his quarters until he was civilised. you, being the only beta on the team, were asked to use your scent to neutralise his rut urges, a common request for betas, being the mediator and all. but seeing him in such a viscous (horny) state (even if it turned you on), upset your instincts. so you also made time to help your poor simon bathe and rest and hydrate.

a knock was placed on his door with your forehead as you carefully balanced two trays of tuck from the mess hall, his one being significantly heavier, making you wobble. "hrmph.." you heard him grumble from inside, he sounded like an agitated dog.

"don't start, I'm being so good to you." a firm acknowledgement as you carefully manoeuvred the door open whilst balancing the trays of semi-hot food. he shuffles in bed, covering his nude lower half and peevishly glaring at you from amongst the covers and sheets before sitting up to eat.

the room was moist, and the smell that lingered wasn't something you wanted to think about Simon doing, so you focused on giving him the food and cutlery. you gave him water, ran a bath, tidied up his quarters, and you ended your pottering by opening a window as he finished eating. you cleared your throat and looked at the huge miserable man, who was already piercing his eyes through your head. "you okay, si? need anything else? you look super fucked out."

"tired. horny. angry. no. thank you."

"mhm, your welcome. you're sure you dont need anything else? i can scent you to help with the pain?-"

he grumbled again, low in his chest. the sound flipped your stomach and made a heat crawl up your spin. 'ew? no? now you want to fuck him? when he's acting like a rapid dog?? you're sick.' you mentally scolded yourself as he writhed around uncomfortably in the sheets further before answering truthfully this time.

"all i can smell is you, luv. and its not neutralising shite. i feel like a horny mutt ‘round ye." he whimpered, the most embarrassed you’ve seen him look.

you froze in place awkwardly, standing stiffly at the end of his bed by the window. you hardly thought before retorting, its like your brain didn't even want to process what he'd said whilst stumbling out a petulant reprimand and avoiding the hot eye-contact he was forcing. "nah… beta scents can't make you horny, i think its just your hormones talking-"

"you’re so pretty, wish i could smell ye all the time… wish you’d let me do what i need to, i’ll be so good.." he shuttered as he mumbled, voice course from whining and growling into his pillow for days. you stood frozen in the middle of the hot, sex perfumed room. your face was flushed and your insides were tingly, you don't think you've ever been this pitiful in your life.

he was hunched over himself, still, peering at you like a predator through those midnight eyes. you'd never felt like prey before as a beta. his short, choppy, blonde hair was messy and arousing but less entertaining as your eyes trailed down his plump pecs and solid biceps. his tummy and champagne happy trail protruded slightly and the moist bedsheets were bunched at his abdomen, hardly covering his unrelenting erection.

"you’re being dramatic… you’re not into me like that anyway-" never have you been so flustered and visibly pathetic in your life. you tried to reason with yourself aloud on his behalf when he cut you off. "i am. have been for a long time. can you ‘least sit on my face?… please.. i need this.. you…” he let out a whiny please and fluttered his pretty eyelashes at you…

💙 Ayuna haven't met clones before and she didn't like Jango Fett. So she clearly wasn't a fan of a myriad of Jango Fett clones not even for Mandalore but for the republic that ended in a highly dangerous empire.

And then her younger sister brings a whole bunch of them. Eo's people are her people. Dank Farrik but this is the way. With time she got to know each of them better and her picture of clones changed. A bit. Maybe.

Clones having the attractive feature of Fett, but showing so different personalities made her curious. More or less, because some of them openly worshipped her for being a beautiful, big and strong warrior and sister to their former Commander (Text and Voice, young and still too much of testosterone), some of them were just else. Like Forest.

🌲 Forest liked her. He could see her beauty but in matter of facts, he just wasn't interested in a whatever closer way. He smugly enjoyed her subtle playful testing waters and understood her suspect in his typical intuitive way. He was kind of eager not only to gain her respect but her trust. Despite being reserved most of the time, it was clear, that the tall Mando wouldn't vanish from Eo's life again and Forest was looking forward to that. She was interesting.

💙 Her whole life Ayuna was used to get all the lewd glances and offerings from almost every humanoid (and some not humanoid) species, so she stopped believing in friendships with younger and attractive specimen, especially human males.

Due to all of her experiences she had a lot of prejudices and behind her stern and often gruff demeanor she was quite playful. And she was still a feral mikkian woman, so she enjoyed testing especially that strange clone that seem to look directly into her soul and made the surprising experience that this one – despite being a human male and a Fett clone on top – just appreciated her silent and curious nature (maybe because with similarities to himself) and seemed to enjoy her attentive backquestions.

Ayuna learned that Forest indeed was just interested in talking and asking thousands of questions about Mandalorian life, forging, her life on Kalevala, mikkian nature (very direct questions included that he managed to ask like asking for a recipe and also meaning it) and even more about her opinions and experiences in this and that. Nothing more. What Ayuna found nothing but refreshing.

She also learned with surprise that this was almost shocking for the others, as they know Forest most of the time silent and observing. Not for Eo though. She knew best herself, that Forest preferred deep talk and only with good listeners, that are capable of following his strange strings of thoughts.

For also calm and broody Ayuna the long-haired clone was "talkative" and that made her sister laugh 😹

Some clone headcanons concerning nat-borns

Some of you already know maybe (I can't remember if I already rambled about some things or not):

Clones tend to bond with "their" nat-borns, when they are friendly and caring. If they aren't, clones are still loyal beyond a lot of borders, Umbara showed us.

If the close nat-borns are beautiful and flirty too, clones easily fall in love with them. They barely know anything than Kamino, war and maybe some downtown affairs if they had a chance to. So if they spend more time with integer and caring nat-borns that are on top superiors and treat touch-starved testosteroned clones eye-level, the human nature kicks in.

During GAR time, clones closely observed their nat-born superiors and after curfew in the clone barracks, when they didn't have to perform for any nat-borns, they chatted and headcanoned about their "favorites".

Those chats didn't stay innocent 👀 Human after all!

Hope you enjoyed another "The Source Code" ramble post 😹

Taglist 🌟 dm me for joining or removing 🫶 

His younger self would've had your husband skinned in the back of his butcher shop the first night he saw you. He still remembers it now, the way you peered at him with wide eyes. A hummingbird heartbeat in your chest because you were afraid of finding another man other than your husband attractive.

Those first words too— 'I have a husband.'

Like it ever mattered to a man like Simon Riley. He might've even called that whole ordeal a meet-cute if he hadn't immediately decided your husband and your fate that exact moment.

Truthfully, he expected you to shy away, create space between the two of you, but then you showed up with a bowl of food for him. It was quite the bold move on your part, and then you went on to tell him you cooked it for your husband. And that ugly beast in his chest perked up at that. How could it not?

Your husband hadn't been deserving enough of that meal, so you thought to bring it to him. That was all the confirmation he needed that you were something worth pursuing and Simon always takes his pursuits seriously.

He was bold for you after that. Dirty thumbs and all. He didn't think you would say yes, but he did anyway because he wanted to see how you would squirm, eyes dilating to hide the lie you muttered to him.

He waited. Patience has been built into a man like him. Another routine he faced until you built enough courage to face him again. He'd wait forever for you; he knew you'd come.

And then you did, his pretty bird built up the courage to walk into his shop, burying the overwhelming thoughts of your husband somewhere deep. That was an issue he'd deal with another day, for now, the only thing that mattered was rewarding your bravery. What better way was that than to make you forget your husband's name on his fingers and tongue?

You were so pretty on his butcher block too. A sweet lamb, tangled into the arms of two men who were probably too corrupt for you. It made you taste better; the sweet sap right from the core, tinged with bravery and courage.

You were too naive. Why wouldn't you trust him to drop you off at home? Except now he's got your address and there's no way the beast in his chest could control the obsession he had with you. He watched you through the window, sad eyes in the morning when your husband left for work.

And your husband? The sorry loser had no idea that another man was watching the both of you, that there was another man between your legs most nights. No idea that you came to him all by yourself with a drooling mouth to taste the skin of his cock.

Simon plotted after that, mulling over how he would finally do it.

You surprised him again, then. You beat him to the punch and maybe that's why he chose you.

You had looked at him with so much fear, and the beast inside of him roared. You came to him for protection?

This was the easiest part. Simon's a practiced man in blood and flesh.

Even then, his main concern was always you. Staring with tears down your cheeks that clump your lashes together. And maybe the feeling in his chest is wrong, foul. He's sure of that because he shouldn't be jealous of the fact that he wasn't the one to make those tears collect at your collarbones. Shouldn't make his dick twitch in his jeans.

Your husband is an issue for a later moment. Right now, he's got you clinging to him for support, and he's never really been someone's safe space. He shouldn't be yours, but you're a bit too naive to realize that. Too used to the mistreatment from your husband that you don't see the sick and twisted thoughts swimming in his brain.

He takes you to his, of course, makes you at home. And maybe he should stay, make you the priority right now, but he leaves you in his kitchen with a kiss to your forehead and a promise of being back in an hour.

Business is what he calls it.

You're in the shower when he comes back and you don't even react when he joins you. His shower isn't built for two people, especially of his size, but he forces himself in. You can't move much, not like you had plans other than standing in the water and letting the water wash away the stains of your husband's fingertips. The waters hot, like it could scald the sins right off your tainted skin.

Simon replaces them then, hands probably more rugged than your husband's, who's had more blood on their fingertips, but you let him because at least it isn't his. And the sick and twisted version of your chest likes it because at least it's not your blood.

His calloused hands feel nice on your skin and it helps you forget. Forget everything your husbands ever said to you. Unworthy. Harlot. Going to hell. Forget the way his hands felt around your neck trying to drain the life out of you. How his hands felt on your body at night when all you could imagine was Simon.

Marriage is a funny thing, isn't it? Something sacred, meant to twine two souls together for eternity. It's not a fragile thing. Your husband managed to taint it all. Push you into the arms of a man who you're sure doesn't deserve it either, but he's put you first and that's more than your husband's ever done.

You don't think God intended this for you. Didn't put Simon in your life because he was your soulmate and he doesn't act like he's the son of God. Your mother would hate him, take one look at his gangly teeth and scarred lips and shun the both of you. You don't really care, how could you when she's played a part in the abuse you've faced from your husband for years?

You chose you when you chose Simon.

Maybe you shouldn't; you don't know much about the man. Like how he got all those scars decorating his body. That's why marriage is a funny thing, how can a man you know nothing about treat you better than your husband?

You do know that he lets you act on your desire. That he practically controls those desires in the palm of his hand. That his chapped lips on your neck, nipping at the bruises left by your husband, feel better than anything God has ever promised you. That his fingers, trailing down your stomach and slipping between your thighs, make your core tighten in a way you've never felt.

The both of you don't even think about waiting, let you gather your emotions from the night you just had. You'd rather have him fuck your mind blank, and the slick he's greeted with is enough proof of that. Truthfully, there's this part of you that likes it even more, that it's wrong, that your husband's lying on the shed floor while you've got another man's fingers curling into your waiting cunt.

You can't find it in yourself to really care.

Simon likes it more too. You barely know him outside of the way he makes you cum, but you're not entirely ignorant despite the way your husband promises you are. You know the type of man he is, one who likes corruption a little too much.

He's not a saint. He's no angel.

Not with fingers like this or a mouth like that.

You're fine with that, you'll do anything he asks as long as he keeps your mind foggy and a little melted.

"Not here." He speaks for the first time since he's joined you and it makes you jump. "The bed."

You hadn't even realized you were grinding your ass against him, his cock pressed between the clefts of your ass.

It doesn't have to be anything sweet. You're not losing your virginity and Simon hardly knows how to be gentle, but that's not what you need. Not right now. You want it to hurt, to feel any sense of guilt for what you’re about to do.

You're impatient when he lays you out on his bed and takes his time like he hadn't taken you apart layer by layer more times than you can count on his butcher block. Like he hadn't had his tongue pressed against your clit for hours or mapped out the spot that makes your toes curl and back arch.

He laughs when you push at his head with a whine, "Just want you already."

He remembers when you first denied him, when you held on to your dignity and told him you weren't hungry. That dignity was lost somewhere in between all this. Now it's got you impatient and demanding.

Simon obliges, of course. He'll deny you another time, make you beg and twitch with overstimulation when it doesn't feel this urgent. When you aren't shaking in the palms of his hands because the memory of your husband is still at the corners of your eyes.

He'll make you forget.

You don't even know what he's done. That he's got your husband's blood under his nails and slabs of meat in the back of his freezer. What will you think of him when you find out? Will you thank him for finishing the job for you? Or will you look at him with fear?

He glides his length along your slit, dragging down until his head notches at your entrance. He keeps it there, for a second too long, to watch the way you part so prettily for him, slick pouring out over the sides of his tip. You squirm, hips shimmying in annoyance because he's still dragging it out too long for your liking.

Finally, finally, when he breaks the barrier and pops through your walls it's worth it all. You fist the sheets, tongue pressed to the roof of your mouth, throat tense to stop the way you want to drop it in bliss. And when he bottoms out, you swear you see this God everyone's been telling you about since you were a little girl. Maybe it's because you died then and there, split in half by the massive girth of Simon and you're face to face with judgement.

You think you did, or maybe you just held your breath for so long that everything around you started to get blurry, white specks falling before your irises. But then, Simon's there, gangly face invading your space, tapping your cheek with his knuckle.

"Jesus—bird." It's through gritted teeth. "Bloody breathe."

It's not enough, not until he presses his palm on your chest and pushes down. It makes you stutter, the breath stuck in your throat finally escaping. You gasp; it's loud and burns, but it brings you too.

Simon's there and he's real, and he's got his cock pressed so far inside of you that you feel his heavy balls pressed at the base of your cunt. Your fingers clammer to his shoulders in a panic and he thinks you're regretting this but your next words are rushed.

"Move, Simon, move-- please, god hurry."

You know you haven't died when his hips move, slow and languid, sliding just far enough to give him room to thrust forward again. He's so big it hurts at first, tears welling in your lashes and maybe you should've let him finger you for longer. You don't regret it though, not when the pain from your marriage, from your husband, melts away to this.

A tangible pain.

A pain worth feeling for once.

It makes the thought of your bloody hands, the poor bunny, the years of pretending for other people finally fade away. All that's left is Simon. His weight pressed to your chest, almost suffocating you with his scent. Larger frame curling over you like a prey, shoulders so wide you can barely see over them, blocked by his chest and collarbones, and thick neck, and all the scars that litter his body. Fat cock kissing your cervix with each thrust, bullying his length into you so harshly that you think you'll be ruined forever.

That's what he wants isn't it? To ruin you for anyone else. Leave you with nowhere to go but back to him. You can't even find it in yourself to care, not when his thumb finds your clit and his filthy mouth finds your ears and presses words into your skull you've never even imagined. They're possessive, growled into your skin like you're his territory, an angry indicator over the fact that your husband didn't appreciate you enough. That your husband even had you at all.

But that's why he likes you, isn't it? Damaged goods is what your mother would refer to you as. A divorcee and a sinner. Simon doesn't mind. He likes you that way. He's a stray too after all.

A particularly harsh thrust does it for you. Teeth in your neck, thumb on your clit, and cock pressed against the sweet spot in your cunt. Your toes curl, your voice escapes you, jaw slack.

"There ya go," Simon groans, voice tight.

He's putting up a front you can't even recognize because you're much too far gone to realize anything but the way the sweet honey in your core has turned fire hot, burning and scalding your skin. It makes it sticky, hot honey molding the pleasure into the exact shape you need.

Everything goes white after that. Everything is forgotten and all that matters is that you can feel Simon. Urging you on, praise on his lips and the tip of his tongue.

He lasts much longer than you, fucking into you even when you go limp, muscles loose, and morphed into the mattress under you. You don't mind, not when the drawl of his hips keeps you in that fuzzy state where the only thing in your human brain is the primal urges of release.

When the morning comes and you've got his cock snug in your cunt again, you ask, breathlessly,

"How do you like your eggs?"

He laughs, "Over easy."

"Coffee?"

"Tea."

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~ dm for removal -

Wolffe straight up not having a good time whenever he recollects his mission on Khorm

A drawing from last April. I never got to adding the background and posting this back then, sorry folks

You won’t text him first. Not because you don’t want to. He knows wanting when he sees it, and you were sick with it by the end of those three hours. You weren’t loud with your wanting, giggling across the table, leaning in with your mouth soft and your lashes lowered, playing at anything clever enough to call flirting.

Your wanting was uglier than that. Lonelier. It sat underneath your skin, trapped, pressing its face to the bars every time he asked another question and didn’t look away from the answer.

You wanted his attention with the shame of someone who has gone a long time without it being give. Without being fed.

Authors always made hunger pretty in stories. They made it into longing, into hands reaching across moonlit sheets, into mouths opening under rain, into women looking out windows and being tragic in a way that can still be admired.

They don’t talk about the way starvation ruins. They don’t talk about how it hollows the eyes and rots the teeth. How it makes the stomach cramp around even the promise of food. How something can be so empty that being fed feels like a threat, because emptiness at least has been faithful. Emptiness at least never pretended to love you and then sat laughing beside another woman’s ring.

He saw you in the cafe and knew you were starving.

A thing under the porch with its belly flat to the dirt, tail tucked hard, ribs showing through the hide, eyes huge and wet. Something that had learned to live off scraps and then hated itself for salivating when a hand came close. Something that would crawl forward an inch, trembling, nose full of the smell of food, singleminded focus on the pile of meat in the palm of the hand rather than focusing on the person attached to it, never knowing whether that person was coaxing you forward to actually feed it or just wants to watch it want.

Ghost had taken you off guard.

He hadn’t meant to, not at first. The cafe had meant to be a small, controlled reintroduction. Coincident, engineered- even if the path had already been laid beneath your feet before you walked it. He had planned for a cup of tea, ten minutes, a quiet word spoken between you two.

Nothing more than a hand lowered to the ground, palm down, fingers curled in, near enough for the frightened thing to smell him without feeling seized.

Then you sat down.

And you ate.

There was no other word for it. Once you understood he was listening, once you realized he wasn’t waiting for a gap so he could put himself back in the center, something in you split open at the seams and spilled out. You started carefully at first, picking at the edge of conversation, apologizing with your eyes and your curled in shoulders every time you took up more than a mouthful of space. But he kept asking. Kept waiting. Kept his gaze steady, his voice low, greedy for even a scrap of your attention.

After that, you devoured, tearing into his attention like a starving thing with meat, single minded, blood soaking the maw of the need inside you while the rest of you tried to keep your hands clean. His questions became bones cracked open for marrow, redirecting attention back to you became bowls full of steaming food pushed closer, his patience became warmth, and you were so cold you took so much of it before you remembered you were supposed to be civilized.

You talked safe subjects, nothing important, not to you, but Simon took every piece and kept it. Let it settle under his ribs. Let it gather, building a nest inside his chest, taking up space that had previously been empty for so long.

Then you saw the clock and there it was: the flinch after feeding.

He watched the horror move through you. Watched you understand three hours had passed and immediately become sorry for them. Sorry for speaking. Sorry for taking. Sorry for having a need visible enough that someone might recognize the size of it.

You gathered yourself head down, tail tucked, voice gone light and brittle with the scramble to leave before he could change his mind about wanting you there.

He should have let you go.

He asked for your number instead.

Now, sitting in the dark of his car with your contact open on his phone, he can still see the way you looked when he did. Startled, then pleased, then frightened by the pleasure.

You held his phone and he could see you already imagining how this would go: You’d give him your number, spend the next several days looking at your phone every time it chimed, hope blooming so instinctively you never had the chance to crush it. Then you’d see it was only another app notification, another spam email, another weather alert, and quietly swallow the disappointment before it had the chance to embarrass you. By the end of the week, your stomach would churn with hope turned sour almost as soon as your screen lit up.

Still, you typed.

That matters.

(He tells himself that has to matter.)

Now, he sits with your name glowing beneath his thumb and his thoughts drift towards Price.

That’s the bitter root of it, isn’t it? Price. Always Price somewhere under the skin of this. Price with his steady hands and his calm voice and the brutal, useful patience that once got inside Simon Riley the same way he did to you, teaching the dog in his ribs where to lie down.

Ghost remembers being young, though young feels like the wrong word to use. Young implies something soft that could have still been saved. He had been all bone and bristle by the time he met Price, a body full of locked doors, every kindness treated as suspicious, every hand as a possible fist that hadn't swung yet.

He doesn’t remember himself as a boy so much as something that existed wrong in the world. A dog with wire sunk deep around its throat, grown mean from the pull of it, teeth bared at every hand because every hand he'd known came moments before pain.

He had his hackles up at everyone. Soap's noise put his teeth on edge- all that warmth and reckless affection crowding the air until Simon wanted to bare his own just to make him back off. Gaz was worse, quieter, easy in his skin, easy with people, trust that had never once cost him anything to give. It made something starved in Simon snarl before Gaz had done a single thing wrong. Price's attention was the worst of all, because it didn't rush him. Didn't demand his loyalty and trust. Didn't pity him. Didn't give him anything obvious enough to reject.

Price approached like he knew the dog.

That’s what Simon hated first.

(A mug of tea left near his elbow without comment. A plate shoved toward him with a blunt eat before you drop. A cigarette offered after a bad op without mentioning the shake in Simon’s hands. Price never asked for the animal’s belly before he’d earned the right to see its teeth.)

The first time Price touched the back of his neck, Simon nearly broke his wrist.

It hadn’t been much, that was the awful part. Just fingers carding into the short hair at his nape after a mission had gone bad enough that Simon’s vision kept flashing white at the edges. A firm grip, warm and certain, thumb pressing where tension lived like a buried wire. His whole body had gone rigid. (- Teeth. Blood. Movemovemove. Every old alarm screaming at once, every nerve insisting this was the part where the hand became a fist, where the door locked, where the kindness took off its mask and showed the bill due-)

Price didn’t flinch.

He only tightened his fingers enough to hold and said, low, “Easy, lad.”

Easy.

(As if Simon were something that could be calmed without being humiliated. As if the dog in him could be spoken to without making a joke of the muzzle. As if staying still under a hand did not have to mean surrendering to it.)

It worked.

That was the part Simon never quite got over. It worked. Price domesticated the dog by increments, by pressure and food and presence and that damned voice that always sounded like it knew the dog would heel because he’d decided it would.

He taught Simon which hands could be tolerated near the throat. He taught him that a command could be shelter if given by someone willing to stand in the storm with you. He taught him that being fed did not always mean being owned.

(Or maybe it did.

Maybe Simon just learned to love the owner.)

The thought should disgust him more than it does.

Instead, it sits cold and useful in his chest as he looks at your name. Price made a lesson of him. Fine. Ghost can use it better. Ghost can take the thing Price used to pull a snarling, half feral man into loyalty and turn it back on what he was careless enough to lose. There’s a irony there so sharp it feels like mercy if he holds it at the right angle.

Price taught him how to quiet the dog.

Ghost will use the lesson to take Price’s girl.

Not fast or clumsy. You’d bolt. He knows you’d bolt because he knows your fears now, knows the way it presses you low to the ground the moment wanting makes you visible. He can’t come at you head on with sweetness.

Sweetness would make you sick. Price ruined sweetness for you, poured it over lies until even kindness must taste like another woman’s perfume if it gets too warm. You need plain things first. Small things. Dry things. A line of crumbs leading out from under the porch.

So he sends a photograph.

It’s of an old dog outside a laundrette, sitting just outside the spill of yellow shop light. It had made him think of you before he could stop it, the way it held itself apart from the door, close enough to still feel the heat every time someone came out, far enough back not to be kicked.

It was the way it didn’t ask to be let in, didn’t even seem to believe in being let in anymore, and still hadn’t left.

He sends it without a caption.

Then he waits.

Waiting is usually nothing to him. He can empty himself into it. Become breath, pulse, shadow, the patience behind a scope. He can wait through cold, blood loss, hunger, the slow crawl of pain up the spine. He can wait while men lie. Wait while they bleed. Wait while orders change and bodies cool and the world makes its ugly little adjustments around him.

Waiting for you is different because he knows what the silence is doing to you.

He imagines the phone lighting in your hands. Imagines your face going still when you see his name there, surprise catching in you before pleasure can make itself known, before you can shove it back down where it belongs. You wouldn’t have expected him to reach for you first. Wouldn’t have known what to do with the weight of anyone’s attention laid in your lap.

He can see it too clearly, the small panic that must have buzzed beneath your skin, the way you must have froze, start trying to build yourself into something acceptable before you answered, trying to decide what kind of person you’re supposed to be in response. Casual. Funny. Grateful, but not too grateful. Interested, but not hungry. Human, but not so human that the need shows and scares him off.

The message sits delivered.

No answer.

Thirty seconds.

A minute.

Two.

The dog in his ribs starts to pace.

(He can almost hear Price, years ago, voice dry with that infuriating calm. Patience, lad.)

Ghost’s jaw tightens.

He gives you another thirty seconds, then sends the second text.

Made it home alright?

Nothing elaborate. Nothing that corners you. Just concern shaped like a practical question, societal expectations to ask even for people who just met, something you can answer without needing to expose the whole trembling nerve of yourself. It’s neutral enough to pass for restraint, and it would pain the picture of polite concern, if the tracker hadn’t already told him you were there. (If Simon thinks too long about that, about the fact that he knows the answer before he ever asks the question, the whole thing gets a little harder to call patience instead of hunger.)

Your reply comes fast enough that he knows the first message had you frozen.

Yeah. Sorry, I should’ve texted.

There it is.

The apology lands in him like a match dropped into oil.

Not because he’s angry at you. He doesn’t think he could be, not for this, not for a reflex beaten so deep it moves before your pride can catch it. He’s angry at the invisible boot. At every room that taught you to lower yourself before anyone asked. At every person who made you believe being remembered created a debt. At Price, most of all, because Price knew exactly what it meant to be trusted by a wounded thing and still treated you like something that he expected to still be there when he came back to it after neglecting it.

The image is ugly, but it’s true, and truth has never cared whether it flatters.

Ghost types, You don’t need to apologize

He stares at it, then adds, Just wanted to make sure you got in

A softer man would put a smile after it. A warmer one might add something sweet, something easy, something with a little glow to it. Ghost does neither. He doesn’t want to sound like Price, doesn’t want to lay syrup over the wound and call it comfort while maggots and flies fester around it. You’ve had enough of that. You need the plainness of bread before the body can tolerate anything richer.

The messages go read.

You don’t answer for long enough that he knows you’re retreating into yourself, trying to fold the whole exchange into something manageable, trying to draw on experience of theoretical scenarios you’ve read about, heard talked about, seen on tv- to figure out how to respond next in just the right way to seem interested in the conversation without appearing ravenous and scaring someone off with the force of your hunger.

Finally, you send, I did. Thank you.

Too careful.

Too small.

Manners, then. The old kennel. The place you go when you’re trying to be acceptable enough to keep, distant enough to discard without mess.

Ghost lets the silence sit for a breath.

He could push for more.

He wants to. Christ, he wants to. There’s a hunger in him too, quieter and more disciplined, but it lifts its head at the sight of yours. He wants to put his fingers into the wound and make you tell him who did it. Wants to count every reason and give each one a name, a face, a consequence. Wants to hear you say Price with that broken softness and then teach your mouth to shape someone else’s- his- name afterward.

But pushing now would be greedy.

You take another few seconds, and he imagines you looking at the screen, worrying your bottom lip as you try to find reasons to keep the conversation going- desperate for even a crumb of attention. Maybe the corner of your mouth moves. Maybe it doesn’t. It matters too much to him either way, which is its own warning. He ignores the warning. (He’s good at that too.)

Then you text, Did you get home okay too?

Ghost looks up.

His car is parked beneath the hacked back branches of a sycamore, engine off, rain ticking against the roof. The street is wet and mostly empty, amber black under the lamps, water running in the gutter and gathering around the tires. A car drives past at the corner. Somewhere above him, someone’s television hums through a cracked window. Somewhere lower, a couple argues.

Ghost sits in the dark and looks at your question.

‘Did you get home okay too?’

You’re returning the shape of concern because receiving it without offering something back feels like debt. You’re trying to make the exchange equal so your own need doesn’t show too much. He can almost see you doing it, can almost hear the little startled scramble inside you: ask him too, ask him too, don’t just sit there being cared about like a wound with a mouth.

His thumb moves.

Close enough.

Of course he’s close to home.

Because he is outside your apartment.

He doesn’t let himself dress it up as sentiment. Sentiment is soft, and this isn’t soft, has never been soft, never been the lover standing under a balcony reciting poetry to a swooning maiden. This is the clean, brutal certainty of coordinates fixed beneath his skin. Your building. Your window. The narrow mouth of the alley beside it. The weak spill of light through your curtains when you forget to shut them all the way.

It should feel like surveillance. It does feel like surveillance. But beneath that, uglier and harder to name, is the fact that some part of him has already settled here with you. Already placed itself inside the narrow hallway, beside the lock, under the hum of your living room lamp, in the corner of a life that has not invited him in. Close enough, he’d said, because the honest answer would’ve been worse: he hasn’t gone home in weeks without coming here first.

There’s a pause.

Then you text, Close enough?

It’s the first time you ask for clarification without apologizing for it.

Small. So small it would be nothing to anyone who hadn’t spent three hours watching you ration your own existence. But to him it is movement in the dirt. The creature under the porch lifting its head. A trembling step forward, belly still low, tail tucked.

He writes, Still out.

Another pause.

In this weather?

Had worse.

That comes out natural enough. True enough. He can almost feel your uncertainty through the phone, the way you’re trying to decide whether this is banter or concern or too much. Trying to find the right amount of you to put into the next message.

You settle on, That’s not reassuring.

Wasn’t meant to be.

You answer with, You’re weird.

Ghost’s mouth shifts, barely.

You kept talking to me for three hours.

He knows the second he sends it that it’s too direct.

Direct enough to turn a light on. Direct enough to show you the bowl after you’ve licked it clean. In his mind, he sees the shame come up fast and hot, sees you jerk backward from the memory of yourself sitting in that cafe, devouring his attention until the clock betrayed you. (Like he still wouldn’t be there listening to you speak if you hadn’t looked up and seen the time) He sees your hands tighten on the phone. Sees the animal in you realize there is blood on its mouth.

He sends another text before you can bolt.

Wasn’t a complaint.

Then, after a beat, because the truth is already loose and he doesn’t feel like calling it back:

Best part of my day.

He lets it stand bare.

No joke. No softening. No easy escape hatch where you can pretend he doesn’t mean it.

The silence afterward stretches.

Ghost watches the rain slide down the windscreen and thinks about food after famine. How the body rejects what it needs because it has forgotten the basics of receiving. How the first mouthful can twist the gut. How fullness can feel like sickness when emptiness is the only thing that has stayed. You’re holding those six words somewhere in your flat, and he knows they are too rich. He knows they are turning over in you like cream in a stomach that has only lived on drops of water.

Your reply comes at last.

Oh.

Just that.

“Oh.”

A sound more than a word. A small animal noise, really, translated into text because you have no other way to make it without being seen.

Then:

I had a nice time too.

Then, almost immediately:

Sorry. That sounds weird.

Ghost exhales through his nose.

Again. Always again. The apology running after every honest thing you say, trying to drag it back into the dark before someone punishes you for letting it breathe.

He wants to be upstairs.

The want comes sharp enough to hurt. He wants to be in the room with you, close enough to stop the apologies before they leave your mouth. Not softly. Softness wouldn’t do. Softness would let you wriggle away, would give you too much room to turn fear into politeness and politeness into distance.

He wants his hand at the back of your neck, firm the way Price’s had once been on his, holding you still through the first wild panic of being kept. He wants to press you down out of the wind, out of the open, out of reach of every old voice that taught you wanting was something to be ashamed of. (Wants to feel you fight the comfort because of course you’d fight it, because starving bodies cramp around food, because a kicked dog still snaps when someone kneels too close. He could take the blood. He’d take worse if it meant you learned.)

Easy, he’d tell you.

Easy.

Not a plea. Not a coax. A command with shelter inside it.

He sees it too clearly: you beneath the weight of him, breathing fast, hands braced against his chest like you can push away the thing you’ve crawled toward your whole life. Not hurt. Not trapped. Held down from the panic. Held through it. His voice at your ear until the animal in you exhausts itself against his steadiness and finally- finally learns that staying doesn’t always end in a kick.

Then the quiet after.

You curled beside him because he has made himself the safest place left.

Ghost watches your shadow cross the seam of the curtains.

The thought is intimate enough to be covetous and he knows it.

He is not a good man. That has never been a useful lie to tell himself. Good men have soft hands and clean intentions and the luxury of waiting for permission without needing to stack the world in their favor. (Good men call themselves good while they leave women like you crying at bus stops because goodness, he has noticed, often ends where inconvenience begins.)

Price would be called good by plenty of people.

Price, who made you a home and kept another one behind your back. Price, who let you send tenderness into the dark and never told you it was being filed beside someone else’s garden, someone else’s ring, someone else’s future. Price, who knew how to love damaged things, or claimed he did, and still left you standing in a doorway while laughter closed over your head like water.

(He wonders what Price is doing now. Wonders whether the man has noticed your absence. Whether he’s staring at an unanswered message with that crease in his brow, annoyed that the quiet little place he kept tucked away from the rest of his life has stopped opening on command. Simon hopes it hurts. Not enough. It won’t hurt enough. Men like Price don’t understand the worth of a thing until another man’s hand is already around it.)

No. Ghost is not good.

He is patient.

There are worse things to be.

(And the patience works.

Not quickly. Not all at once. Nothing so crude as a trapdoor snapping shut beneath your feet. It’s slower than that. Meaner, maybe, for something being gentle. A photograph here. A message there. Home yet ? Eat something? Door locked? Little scraps pushed under the porch with two careful fingers, close enough for you to smell, never close enough to make you bare your teeth. He lets you take them and run. Lets you retreat granted, every time, because that’s part of it too: teaching a frightened thing that the food will still be there when it comes crawling back.

Months of it. Months until you text him first about stupid things- the woman in front of you at Tesco buying twelve tins of peaches and nothing else, the rain getting into your shoes, something that happened in the book you’re reading. Nothing important. Everything important. Tiny pieces of your day dropped into his hand like offerings.

Then one night, you call.

Your name fills the screen, and Ghost goes still with the phone in his hand because he knows before he answers. There are sounds the world makes when a thing finally comes to fruition. The low click of a door catching. The wet snap of bone under pressure. The little choked intake of breath on the other end of the line when he says your name and you come apart.

“I didn’t- ” A swallow. A breath that judders so hard he can hear your teeth almost click around it. “I didn’t know who else to call.”

There it is.

Months of crumbs. Months of the hand beneath the porch. Months of letting you creep forward and startle back and creep forward again, belly low, tail tucked, eyes huge with the shame of needing anything at all.

Now you’ve crawled close enough to press your shaking mouth into his palm.

“I think there are two men following me,” you whisper, and the last word breaks ugly, wet in the back of your throat. “They’ve been behind me since the station. I crossed twice and they crossed too. I don’t- I don’t know what to do.”

For one sharp second, he isn’t here.

He’s years back with Price’s hand scruffed firm at the nape of his neck, fingers buried in short hair, holding him still through the first feral snap of panic. Easy, lad. Not a plea. Not comfort, not really. A command with a wall built around it. Something to hide inside until the teeth stopped showing.

Ghost’s hand tightens around the phone.

The dog in his ribs lifts its head, and grins; all blood slick teeth in the dark, delighted, patient no longer.

He steps out into the night, keys biting into his palm, and lets the door swing shut behind him.

“Keep me on the phone,” he says. “I’m coming.”

Good girl. Come here, then.

Three lines. That's all the local paper allows for the personals section, which is a relic from another era that you didn't even know still existed until you were flipping through the classifieds looking for a vintage bookshelf and your eyes snagged on the column header.

SEEKING CONNECTION

You'd laughed at first. Then you'd read a few. Then you'd read them all, sitting cross-legged on the sofa with your tea going cold in your hands, and something small and sharp turning over in your chest.

The ad you eventually submit reads:

Married woman, mid 30s, seeks interesting conversation and perhaps more with a like-minded gentleman. Discretion essential. If you enjoy good food, dry wit, and don't mind a woman who can out-drink you — I'd love to hear from you. Reply to Box 64.

You pay for four weeks in advance and feel sick the entire drive home.

Because here's the thing about being married to Captain John Price.

You love him desperately and completely, in a way that has settled into your bones over the better part of a decade and become indistinguishable from the architecture of who you are.

Adore the way he smells—stale cigar smoke and sandalwood and old gun oil, a combination that should be repulsive and instead makes you want to bury your face in his neck and stay there. Love his hands, broad and scarred and capable of violence you'll never fully understand, and how gentle they are when they cup your jaw or fix the clasp of your necklace.

And you melt for the rumble of his voice on the phone at two in the morning when he calls from whatever godforsaken corner of the world he's operating in, tired and tight-lipped but always, always asking about you first.

You love him, and he loves you, and it hasn't been enough for a long time.

Not because the love ran out, because he did.

John Price gives everything to his work. Every deployment bleeds into the next. The gaps between homecomings stretch longer—three weeks become five, five become eight, eight becomes ‘I don't know yet, love, I'll let you know when I know’.

And when he does come home, he's there but not there; hollow-eyed and distracted, reaching for his phone at dinner, falling asleep on the sofa before nine, making love to you the first night with a desperate urgency that fades by the third morning into perfunctory kisses on the forehead and an apologetic mumble about an early briefing.

Someday, you stopped asking when he'd be home six months ago; stopped leaving the porch light on four months ago, and you stopped wearing the nice knickers three months ago because what was the point again.

Two months ago, you realised you'd gone an entire week without hearing his voice and hadn't noticed until Thursday.

That's when the panic set in. Not the sharp, clean kind, but the slow, creeping kind. The one that makes you lie awake at three a.m. staring at the ceiling and wondering if this is it, if this is what the rest of your life looks like. A nice house in Hereford with a well-maintained garden and a husband who exists primarily as a name on a bank account and a voice on the other end of an increasingly rare phone call.

You don't want to leave him. The thought alone makes you nauseous.

You just want someone to see you again.

John finds the newspaper three days after he gets home from a six-week deployment in eastern Syria.

He's not snooping; he's looking for the TV remote, which has migrated into the crack between the sofa cushions again, and his hand closes around the folded section of newsprint wedged beside it. He pulls it out, intending to toss it on the coffee table, and his eyes catch the circle of biro ink around one of the small ads in the personals column.

John reads it, and then again.

Then he sits down very slowly, the remote forgotten, and stares at the far wall for a long time, connecting puzzle pieces like his life depends on it, which it very well does apparently.

Married woman, mid 30s. His wife is in her thirties.

Dry wit. His wife is the driest, sharpest-tongued woman he's ever met. It's one of the first things he fell in love with—the way she could dismantle a man's ego with a single raised eyebrow and a well-timed "Bless your heart, love".

Can out-drink you. He's watched his wife put away Whisky Sours at the SAS Christmas do with a composure that made seasoned operators look like lightweights.

Discretion essential.

John sets the newspaper down on his knee. His jaw works and his eyes don't leave the wall.

And he doesn't confront you.

Not over dinner nor in bed that night when you roll towards him and press a kiss to his shoulder—a habit you've kept even through the worst of the distance, even when you're angry with him, even when he doesn't deserve it.

Instead, he waits, and he replies to Box 64.

The letter that arrives for you a week later is postmarked locally. Plain envelope, no return address. Inside, a single sheet of paper, handwritten in a bold, slanted script you don't recognise.

I enjoy good food, better whisky, and I've never met a woman who can out-drink me, but I'd enjoy watching you try. Friday, 8pm, O’Malley’s on St. George's Lane. I'll be the one who looks like he doesn't belong in a place that posh. — J

Your hands are shaking when you finish reading it, and you have to sit down at the kitchen table and press your palms flat against the wood to steady yourself.

You could throw it away. No. You should throw it away. This was a mistake—a stupid, reckless, selfish mistake born out of loneliness and too much wine and that ugly, gnawing ache in your chest that flares up every time John leaves.

But John has left again. Three days at home, then a call from Kate Laswell, then a bag packed and a kiss on your forehead and a quick ‘Be back soon, love’ and the sound of the front door closing and the silence that rushes in to fill the space he used to occupy.

You read the letter once more.

I'll be the one who looks like he doesn't belong in a place that posh.

Something warm and reckless curls in your stomach, and you hate yourself for it, and you fold the letter into the pocket of your cardigan and carry it around for three days before you decide you’re going.

Friday night. O’Malley’s.

You arrive twenty minutes early because you're a control freak in crisis, and you take the farthest booth in the corner because your back needs to be against a wall and your eyes need to be on the door—a habit you picked up from your husband without realising it.

You order a gin and tonic to give your hands something to do, and you check your reflection in the blank screen of your phone for the third time. You look good, like you tried again—not the kind of effort you make for John when he comes home, all desperate and over-polished, but a quieter kind; wearing your favourite dress with subtle makeup and your hair done the way you like it, not the way you think someone else wants to see it.

You look like your old self, and that's terrifying, because the whole point of tonight was supposed to be about being someone else.

When your wedding ring catches the light as you reach for your drink, and you stare at it for a long moment, the slim gold band John slid onto your finger nine years ago with steady hands and unsteady eyes, and you don't take it off.

You should, but you can’t, and you did say you’re married.

Eight o'clock comes and goes. Five past, then ten. You're about to convince yourself you've been stood up, which would be both a relief and a humiliation, when the pub door opens and a man walks in, and every nerve ending in your body fires at once.

Because the man standing in the doorway, scanning the room with those sharp, assessing eyes, is your husband.

John is wearing civvies. Dark jeans, a black henley pushed up to his elbows, boots that have seen better days.

He looks like he came straight from the base, which he probably did. His hair is freshly cut but his beard is full, and there is a tiredness around his eyes that you can read from across the room, the same bone-deep fatigue he carries home from every deployment and tries to hide and fails.

He spots you and your stomach plummets.

Meanwhile, his expression doesn't change; not a flicker. He holds your gaze across the crowded pub, and then he walks towards you with the kind of unhurried, deliberate stride that you've seen him use in exactly two contexts.

When he's approaching a superior officer, and when he's about to do something that no one in the room is going to enjoy.

Your heart is hammering so hard you can feel it in your teeth. Your hand tightens around your glass until your knuckles ache, and every instinct in your body is screaming at you to run to the bathroom, to the car park, to another country, but your legs won't cooperate, because Captain John Price is walking towards you and you have never in your life been able to move when he's looking at you like that.

He reaches the booth, stops, and looks down at you. And a beat of terrible, electric silence follows.

Then he smiles, though not the tight, exhausted smile he gives you at the front door when he's been gone for weeks, but something warmer, something almost boyish, and then he slides into the seat across from you, settling in with an ease that makes your blood run cold.

"You must be Box 64," he says casually, calm, like he's meeting a stranger for the first time, which is insane, because he is your husband and he is sitting across from you at a pub where you came to meet another man and he knows. He fucking knows.

"John—"

"John," he repeats, tasting the name like he's hearing it for the first time. Then he extends his hand across the table. "That's right. Pleasure to meet you."

You stare at his outstretched hand, then at his face, and back at his hand.

"John, I can explain—"

"Nothing to explain." He keeps his hand where it is, steady and patient. His eyes don't leave yours. "I'm J. You're Box 64. We're here to have a drink and see if we get on. That was the arrangement, wasn't it? What your ad said?"

Your mouth opens and something inside you dies a little, along with the words in your throat; anything but one.

"John."

"You gonna leave me hanging, love? Already?" He nods at his hand, one eyebrow raised, and there is something in his expression—beneath the calm and the performance—that you can't quite read.

It's not anger, not even hurt. Something closer to resolve, like he's made a decision about tonight and he intends to see it through, and nothing you say is going to alter the trajectory.

You take his hand, shake it weakly.

His fingers close around yours, warm and rough, and he gives one firm shake before releasing you. Then he flags down the barmaid, orders a whisky neat, and turns back to you with that same easy, unreadable smile.

"So. Tell me about yourself."

You stare at him owlishly.

"I—I don't—" You can feel heat crawling up your neck, your throat tightening with the precursor to tears. "John, please, can we just—"

"Tell me," he says again, and his voice is gentle, but his eyes are steel. "What do you do? Where are you from? What made you put that ad in the paper?"

The last question lands like another slap, even though his tone doesn't change. You swallow hard, your fingers wrap around your glass for something to anchor to.

He waits for you to answer; patient as a sniper in a ghillie suit.

"I'm—" You exhale shakily. "I'm from here. I live in Hereford. I'm—" Your voice threatens to crack, and you bite the inside of your cheek until it steadies. "I'm a teacher."

"A teacher." John nods, like this is new information and not something he's known for the better part of a decade. "What age?"

"Year four."

"Year four. That's—what, eight? Nine?" He takes a sip of his whisky. The barmaid left it quietly and shot you a look like she sensed the tension. "Brave woman. I've faced insurgents with less fight in them than a nine-year-old with a grudge."

The laugh that escapes you is wet and startled and completely involuntary, and John's eyes soften for a fraction of a second before the mask slides back into place.

"What about you?" you ask carefully, because two can play this game, and if he's going to make you sit through this surreal performance, you might as well commit. Your voice is still unsteady, but there's a spark of something underneath the fear—defiance, maybe, or the stubbornness that made you put the ad in the paper in the first place. "What do you do?"

"Military," he answers briskly, which is what he always says at parties and barbecues when civilians ask, offering nothing further.

"What branch?"

"The kind that doesn't let me talk about it." He leans back in his seat, one arm resting along the back of the booth leisurely and looks at you with an expression that's half amusement, half something hungrier. "I travel a lot. Gone more than I'm home unfortunately."

"That must be hard," you reply, and you mean it in a raw way that has nothing to do with the roleplay and everything to do with the long years of lonely nights and unanswered phone calls sitting between you.

John hears it and you watch it land. A brief tightening around his eyes, a muscle jumping in his jaw before he takes another slow drink.

"It is," he says quietly. "Harder on the people who wait, I'd imagine."

Your breath catches. You look down at the table, at your ring, at the condensation pooling around the base of your glass.

"Yeah," you whisper. "It is."

The silence that follows is different from the others. Not tense or loaded. Just heavy, in the way that true things are heavy, settling between you like something solid.

Then John clears his throat. "Another round?"

You nod, not trusting your voice, and he waves the barmaid over again.

The second drink loosens something.

Maybe it's the gin, perhaps the sheer absurdity of the situation, but somewhere between your second and third drink, the fear recedes enough for you to actually talk.

And John—your husband, who has spent the better part of a year giving you monosyllabic answers over dinner and falling asleep during films—is talking back.

He's always been charming. It's how he got you in the first place, at a mate's wedding eleven years ago, when he cornered you at the bar and spent forty-five minutes making you laugh so hard you snorted champagne up your nose. Though you'd forgotten what it looks like when he aims it at you with intent.

John asks about your students and listens to the answers. He asks about the book you're currently reading and offers an opinion on it that tells you he's been paying more attention to your nightstand than you thought. He tells you stories from deployment that are carefully scrubbed of classified details but still make you laugh; the kind of stories he used to tell you when you were dating. Absurd, self-deprecating, designed to make you think he's funnier than he is.

He is funny. You'd forgotten that, too.

"You've got a nice laugh," he says at one point, swirling his whisky, and the way he says it, like an observation, like he's hearing it for the first time, makes your stomach flip.

"Don't flatter me, J." The letter feels strange in your mouth, this thin fiction stretched over the truth of him. "I'll think you're after something."

"Maybe I am." He holds your gaze and doesn't smile. "That a problem, love?"

Your mouth goes dry.

Three drinks in, you're leaning across the table towards each other, and his hand is resting on the tabletop close enough to yours that your little fingers are almost touching, and you're telling him about the time one of your Year Fours brought a live frog to class in his lunchbox and it escaped during maths, and John is laughing—really laughing, with his head tipped back and his eyes creased—and for a vertiginous moment, you manage to forget.

You forget that this is a performance; that your husband is sitting across from you pretending to be a stranger because you put an ad in the newspaper looking for someone else. Everything except the sound of his laugh and the warmth in his eyes and the way he's looking at you like you're the most interesting person in the room, which is how he used to look at you all the time, before the deployments ate him alive and left you with the husk.

Then his eyes drop to your left hand, and the warmth doesn't leave his expression, but something sharper slides in alongside it, like the glint of a blade edge, and then he reaches across the table and takes your hand, turning it over in his.

His thumb presses against the band of your wedding ring, holding it there.

"You know," he says, and his voice is still easy, still conversational, but there's a new undercurrent to it that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, "if you were really going to go through with this little adventure of yours—"

He taps the ring once with his thumb, clicks his tongue.

"—you probably should've taken this off first."

The blood drains from your face. The pleasant haze of gin and good conversation evaporates in an instant, replaced by a cold, lurching clarity.

"John—"

"Bit of a deterrent, love. Even when you mentioned it in the ad." He's still holding your hand, still running his thumb over the ring, and his expression is unreadable—not angry, not hurt, just steady, the way he looks when he's holding a position and waiting for something to break. "Any bloke worth his salt would've clocked that you're not really in it five minutes in."

Your eyes are stinging. "I wasn't going to—I would never have—"

"I know." He replies simply and releases your hand. "I know you wouldn't."

The lump in your throat is enormous and razor-edged, and you have to look away at anything that isn't his face, because if you keep looking at him, you're going to cry in the middle of this pub and he will never, ever let you live it down.

"I'm sorry," you manage, barely a whisper. "John, I'm so sorry, I didn't—I was just—"

"Don't."

You look back at him. He's leaning forward now, strong forearms on the table, and the mask is gone. All of it, the J performance, the first-date charm, the controlled amusement. And underneath is just your husband. Looking at you with an expression that is not anger, that has never been anger, that is something far worse.

Guilt.

"I should've been home more," he murmurs; too honest for a pub on a Friday night. "I should've—" He stops, his jaw clenches before he tries again. "I should've given you a proper life. A family. A husband who's actually fucking present. And I didn't, and you—"

He gestures vaguely at the booth, the pub, the entire premise of the evening.

"—you shouldn't have had to do this to get my attention."

The first tear slips down your face before you can catch it. You swipe at it furiously with the back of your hand before the barmaid, who has become somewhat intrigued by whatever is happening at your table, can clock it.

"I wasn't trying to get your attention," you lie, and you both know it's a lie, and his mouth twitches; not quite a smile, something more tender and much more broken.

"Yeah, you were." He reaches across the table again and takes your hand, properly this time, threading his fingers through yours and squeezing. "And it worked."

You let out a breath that's half laugh, half sob, and squeeze back.

For a long moment, neither of you speaks. The pub buzzes around you. Glasses clinking, conversations flowing, some '80s song you can't name playing from the speakers. And you sit in the middle of it, holding hands across a sticky table, and the nine years of silence and distance and loving each other badly feel, for the first time, like something that could be survived.

"I need the loo," you announce eventually, because your mascara is probably wrecked and you need thirty seconds of privacy to pull yourself together before you dissolve entirely.

John releases your hand with a nod. "Take your time, love."

You slide out of the booth on legs that feel slightly unsteady with gin and adrenaline, and make your way to the back of the pub, past the bar and down the short corridor to the ladies'.

It's a single-stall bathroom. Small, clean enough, a lock on the door that you click shut behind you before bracing your hands on the edge of the sink and staring at your reflection in the mirror above it.

Your eyes are bright and glassy. Your mascara is, as predicted, smudged. You look wrecked and flushed and alive in a way you haven't in months, and you hate that it took this—a dating ad and a Friday night charade—to put that look on your face.

You run the tap and press your cool, damp fingers against your closed eyelids. Breathe. You can do this. You can go back out there, finish your drinks, go home with your husband, and figure out the rest in the morning like adults who have been married for nearly a decade and know how to have a difficult conversation.

You're drying your hands when the lock clicks.

You freeze. Your eyes snap to the door in the mirror's reflection as it opens, and John slips inside and closes it behind him with a soft, definitive click of the lock.

The bathroom shrinks to nothing.

He fills the space. Not just physically, though he does that too, broad shoulders and solid frame taking up far too much of the small room, but atmospherically. The air changes when he's this close, gets heavier and becomes charged, like the pressure drop before a storm front.

"John, what are you—"

He moves. One step, then two, and then his big hand is flat against your lower back and he's pressing you forward, gently but firmly, until your hips meet the edge of the sink and your palms catch the porcelain on either side.

His body moulds against your back. Chest to spine, hips to arse. One hand sliding from your lower back to your waist, gripping and anchoring, while his other forearm braces against the wall beside the mirror.

You can see him in the reflection; towering behind you, head dipped, mouth hovering at the shell of your ear, and your breath stutters at the look on his face.

"Gonna make you remember why you married me, darling," he mutters into your ear, and his breath is hot and damp on the side of your neck, sending a shiver cascading down your spine. His hand tightens on your waist, pulling your arse back against the hard line of his cock already straining behind his zipper.

"John—"

"Shh." His lips graze the spot beneath your ear. No kiss but a warning. "You wanted to be seen, love. I see you."

His hand slides from your waist to the hem of your dress and drags it up slowly, bunching the fabric around your hips until you're exposed from the waist down. The cool air of the bathroom hits your bare thighs and makes you gasp.

"John, we can't—We're in a pub—!"

"Should've thought about that before you went looking for a date, shouldn't you?" His voice is rough and threaded with something dark and tender at the same time, and his fingers hook into the waistband of your knickers, tugging them down your thighs in one smooth motion. They pool around your ankles, and he doesn't bother removing them fully—just leaves them there, tangled between your heels.

"Anyone could—"

"Door's locked." His hand trails up the inside of your thigh, calloused fingers dragging against the soft skin, and you bite your lip to keep the sound that wants to escape inside. "And you're going to be quiet for me, aren't you, hm?"

You hear his belt buckle. The clink of metal, the drag of leather through belt loops, then the rasp of his zip, and your hands grip the sink so hard your arms tremble, because the sound alone is enough to make your pussy clench around nothing in anticipation.

"Nearly a decade of marriage," he murmurs against the back of your neck, and his free hand slides between your thighs from behind, two thick fingers dragging through your supple folds, finding you already embarrassingly wet. He lets out a low, dark sound of approval that vibrates against your skin. "And I let you forget."

His fingers circle your clit once and your hips buck back against him involuntarily.

"That's on me," he continues, his voice dropping to that gravelly register that makes your toes curl in your pumps. "My fault. My fucking failure. Not yours."

He presses one thick finger inside you, then two, stretching you open with a slow, curling thrust that makes your breath hitch and your walls clench around him. He groans quietly and his forehead drops against the back of your head.

"'M finally gonna put our baby in you," he declares, and the words are rough and raw and utterly certain, a promise sealed against your skin. "Should've done it years ago. Should've given you that. Should've given you everything."

He withdraws his fingers and you whimper at the loss with a needy, desperate sound that you'd be mortified by in any other context, and then you feel the blunt, plump head of his cock pressing against your entrance and every other thought in your head goes static.

"John—" you mewl. John pushes in slowly.

He stretches you open around him with a fullness that borders on too much, and the sound that tears from your throat is muffled only because you clamp your hand over your own mouth.

More than a decade and his fat cock is still enough to make you go stupid.

"Fuck," John breathes, his hips flush against your arse, buried to the root, and his grip on your waist is bruising. He doesn't move yet just holds there, letting you feel every inch of him, letting your body adjust around the thick, throbbing weight of his cock.

Then he starts to move, and it's not the perfunctory, tired sex you've been having for the past year. The kind where he finishes quickly and rolls over and you stare at the ceiling and pretend you came.

This is John Price. The real one, the one you fell in love with. The one who backed you against the wall of your old flat on your third date and made you see God by eating you out through your knickers before he'd even taken anything else off.

He fucks you deep and deliberate, one hand gripping your hip while the other wraps around the front of your throat lightly; his fingers curled against your pulse point, feeling the frantic beat of your heart against his palm.

"Look at yourself," he orders, and your eyes—which had screwed shut at some point—fly open to meet his in the mirror. Pupils blown.

The sight of it is obscene. Your dress bunched around your waist, his thick forearm braced beside the mirror, tendons flexing, his body curved over yours, and the slow, powerful roll of his hips driving into you from behind with a rhythm that's making the mirror rattle against the wall.

"That's my wife," he grunts, and his reflection's eyes are fierce and fixed on yours. "Mine. Not some fucking stranger's from a newspaper ad."

You can't speak, only feel his cock dragging against your walls, his hand on your throat, his chest solid and warm and present against your back for the first time in what feels like forever.

He picks up the pace; harder and deeper thrusts, the wet slap of skin on skin echoing in the small bathroom while his ragged breath puffs against your ear. And then his rough hand leaves your throat to reach between your legs, flicking your clit and rubbing tight, fast circles that make you bite down on your own fist to keep from screaming.

"Quiet," he reminds you, and the bastard sounds smug. "You want the whole pub to know what I'm doing to you in here? Huh? Want them to know ‘m fucking my wife?"

You shake your head frantically; cunt fluttering and squeezing his shaft, because dirty talk from John Price is its own kind of sweet torture.

"Then cum for me quietly, love. Right now."

A few more hard, precise thrusts with his cock dragging inside your quivering cunt, massaging that spot that keeps swelling inside you, and you shatter.

The orgasm rips through you so violently that your knees give out, and the only things keeping you upright are the sink under your hands and John's arm locked around your waist. You clamp your teeth into the heel of your palm and muffle the cry that wants to tear out of you, your walls clenching and fluttering around his cock in rhythmic, milking pulses.

"Christ—fuck—" John's hips stutter, his rhythm breaks, and he buries himself deep—so deep—and holds, his cock kicking and pulsing inside you as he cums with a low, guttural groan pressed into the curve of your neck.

He spills himself empty inside you, balls throbbing with each little jerk of his hips. Hot and thick, deliberate this time. No condom, no pulling out this time, and the significance of that isn't lost on either of you. His hips roll lazily through the aftershocks, working every precious drop into your messy cunt, and his hand slides from your waist to your lower belly, pressing flat.

"There," he murmurs, and his voice is wrecked and satisfied, unbearably tender. "That's where it belongs."

You're shaking. Your entire body is trembling, your legs are useless, and there are tears streaming silently down your face that have nothing to do with pain.

He stays inside you for a long moment; breathing, his lips pressed against the nape of your neck, beard scraping your skin, his hand warm on your lower stomach. Then he pulls out slowly, carefully, and you feel his cum start to leak from you immediately, warm and slick against your inner thighs.

He reaches down, picks your knickers up from around your ankles, and slides them back up your legs with an almost clinical efficiency. When they're settled back into place, he pats your arse once, light and proprietary, and tugs your dress back down.

"There we go," he says, like he's just helped you with your coat. "Good as new."

You let out a sound that's somewhere between a laugh and a sob, your forehead dropping against the mirror.

"How about a 'thank you,' love," he adds while he tugs his softening cock back into his jeans, and when you lift your head and catch his eyes in the reflection, the smug satisfaction on his face is so thoroughly, infuriatingly Price that you want to slap him and kiss him simultaneously, "for stuffing your pretty cunt full of my cum, hm?"

"John."

"Mm." He presses a kiss to your temple, achingly gentle after everything he just did to you, and reaches past you to turn on the tap. He wets his hand and wipes beneath your eyes with his thumb, cleaning up the mascara.

"Ready to leave, love?" he asks, straightening up and buckling his belt with the same unhurried ease he does everything. "Or would you like another drink before your husband takes you home?"

Your legs are still shaking, his cum is slowly but surely soaking into your knickers, and your heart is so full it might crack your ribs.

"N-No," you manage, small and hoarse. "I'd like to go home now, John."

He looks at you, really looks. And there is nothing left of the J performance, not the Captain Price mask, just John, your husband. The man who drove to a pub on a Friday night not to punish you but to remind you both of what you'd almost let slip away.

"That's my girl," he replies softly.

He unlocks the bathroom door, checks the corridor, and guides you out with his hand on the small of your back. You walk through the pub on shaking legs, past the booth where your half-finished drinks are still sitting, past the barmaid who gives you both a knowing look that you pretend not to see.

The night air hits you like cold water when you step outside, and you suck in a breath that fills your lungs properly for the first time in hours.

John pulls his car keys from his pocket, presses the fob, and opens the passenger door for you without a word. You climb in. He closes the door, rounds the bonnet, and slides into the driver's seat.

Neither of you speaks on the drive home. His hand rests on your thigh, squeezing gently every other minute, and your hand rests on top of his, your fingers tracing the ridges of his calloused knuckles and the band of his own wedding ring, which he has never, not once in nine years, taken off.

When he pulls into the driveway, the porch light is off. You haven't left it on in months.

John kills the engine. Sits for a moment, looking at the dark house.

Then he turns to you, and his voice is quieter now, stripped of the previous smugness, the heat, the performance. Just the raw thing underneath.

"I will do better."

No grand speech or a promise wrapped in flowers and apologies and all the things you've heard before and stopped believing. It's four words, plain and blunt and offered without decoration, and they land heavier than anything else he's said tonight.

You reach across the centre console and take his face in both hands, and you kiss him slowly, like you have time, because you're going to make time.

"I know," you whisper against his mouth.