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The late-night interaction started with you being a hypocrite. Your policy of “knock and wait until the person on the other side of the door allows you to enter” was one you’d held long before you joined the military. It was the bare minimum level of respect that could be shown, as well as a display of patience.
Tonight you committed the ultimate sin: you knocked as you opened the door.
From his desk, Captain Price spoke with the heaviest of sarcastic tones as you closed the door to his office behind you: “Yes, please, come in. No need to wait outside until I’m ready.”
The famed boonie hat was off and sitting politely by his buzzing desk lamp. His hands were bare, their gloves paired and no doubt in his middle desk drawer. One of his hands reached for his mug whilst he kept scanning the sheet of paper in the other. He only looked up when he patted the placemat – not his mug – to see you holding his drink hostage, staring down into the blackness that occupied it.
“You can’t drink this; you’ll be up all night!” You frowned.
“That’s the point.” Hand open, palm up, eyebrows raised, Price began to stare you down. His silent steely eyes held you like a deer in the headlights. Except you had far better control over your instincts and knowledge of your Captain that ran deeper than the Marianas Trench.
After blinking first out of the two of you, you held the mug to your lips and started chugging the coffee down.
“For God’s sake,” grunted Price. He was up and out of his chair.
Celebrating the success of getting him to move, you circled around the desk backwards, still holding the coffee out of reach, “It’s gone eleven; you need to go to bed.”
Price was unrelenting, “Give me the coffee.”
“You’re gonna regret it in the morning!”
“You’re already gonna regret it; I’m putting you on bathroom duty for the next two weeks.”
The hand was already back out, not close enough to make a sudden grab for the mug. It was a power play. His success required you to give it up willingly, and he was adding to the pressure of the return.
“Three weeks. Give it back.”
Making more demands though, he didn’t have to do that – just add to the punishment and let that speak for itself. He must really be tired.
Rather than push that tactic, you decided to butter him up instead and make him lower his guard by handing back the coffee mug. He didn’t even smile at his success. An ache grew in your chest, melancholy in the absence of those eye crinkles that appeared whenever John’s grin grew across his face. You watched him sit back down at his desk, replacing the coffee mug, before he leant back and sighed deeply with his face hidden in a hand.
“John?” You said quietly. He let out a low hum but didn’t look at you.
You followed the path he’d taken until you were stood behind him. With a firm squeeze on his shoulders, you wrapped your arms loosely around his neck and rested your chin on his head.
“Why are you so persistent, eh?” He said gruffly
“Because I care about you,” You mumbled before kissing his cheek and releasing him in favour of spinning him around in his chair to face you, “C’mon, you can leave it until tomorrow.”
Captain John Price did not rise from his office chair. Instead, one of his feet kicked up to rest on the opposite’s knee. He lifted then tilted his head, his fore and middle finger stroking over his bottom lip, teasing it into a smirk as he watched you through slitted eyelids.
“What?” You folded your arms, struggling not to fidget further.
John pursed his lips, “Just lookin’ at you.”
“That’s a dirty tactic, Captain.”
“Pulling rank is a dirty tactic – and an odd choice for you to make, considering I outrank you by a very large margin.”
“Don’t I know it,” You popped out your right hip with a grin.
Your double entendre scored you a couple of points, since you got to hear Price’s hearty laugh for a few seconds. It broke his stare as his head lolled back, only returning once his mirth had ended – the only clue to its existence the glint in his blue eyes and the crinkles at the corners.
Carefully, as if to avoid a HR violation, he said, “Are you trying to seduce me into bed?”
How dare he, when he was sat looking at you and looking like that, accused you of such a thing. Sure, you’d done it before and it had been very effective, but you has to act like you were slightly above using sex to get John to prioritise his health over his paperwork. Set an example and all that.
“I don’t need to,” You replied, “Because my boyfriend is going to do what I ask.”
“Is he now?” John raised his eyebrows.
After another brief stare down, you rolled up the sleeves of your shirt: “Fine. Can’t say I didn’t try being nice.”
And that’s how you ended up perched in his lap, nice and comfortable and straddling his thick thighs. You didn’t miss the quirk of John’s lips before he ironed out his expression to remain neutral; that became especially difficult to maintain as he shuffled the chair around to face the desk.
“Hope you don’t use these torture techniques on anyone else,” he signed a document and placed it in his out tray – his very small out tray.
“No, I save them for geriatric stubborn superior officers.”
“I’d be very surprised if Ghost let you try this out.”
“Are you kidding? He’s all over me,” You said, bobbing and weaving your head from side to side as John tried to get a good look at the next file behind you.
John scoffed to (poorly) hide the wince, “Don’t say that.”
“Jealous?”
“Disgusted.”
“You brought him up; one might call it a dirty tactic.” You were very pleased with that one. “I’ll stop talking about it if you come to bed.”
“Extortion! Now we’re talking.”
“A language you can understand, at last!”
“… Fine!” John capped his pen then kissed you on the forehead, “I’ll go to my room.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
Even with this assurance, you continued to monitor him close down his office for the night and retire to his private quarters. That meant watching him get undressed, occasionally helping him with an item of clothing he clearly wasn’t struggling with.
When he was down to his undershirt, you headed towards the door, but John caught your elbow neatly, “Hang on, you’re not staying? After all that hard work putting moves on your superior officer?”
You untangled yourself from him, “No, you put me on toilet duty for three weeks.”
“Sweetheart-”
“Shut up and get into bed.”
John didn’t try holding back the smile or the flush hidden mostly by his mutton chops, "Technically, I only agreed to go to my room."
"John!"
“I'll get into bed if you tuck me in.”
“Toilet duty. Three weeks.”
“I’ll lower it to one week.”
“No, you won’t.”
As he sidled away from you, John sighed, “I guess you know me too well.”
“Oh, I see what this is,” You said as he languidly removed his sleep shirt with his back, his gorgeous back, to you, “You’re trying to seduce me again.”
“Just taking turns, it’s only fair.”
With a flourish, John discarded the shirt into his laundry basket. You had to redirect your gaze to the ceiling because, if you could see any part of his chest, you would not be able to control yourself and you couldn’t let him catch you ogling openly.
“Fair, right. You don’t ever play fair,” You deflected, temptation approaching in your peripherals.
“I find that accusation offensive.” You stiffened as, with ease, John lifted you up into his arms and smirked since he’d given you no option but to look at him. “If anything, my playing this way balances out your actions in my office.”
You weren’t immune to his charm; he’d eroded your iron will into a rusty stump. So, as he carried you over to the bed, your hands slid up to link behind the back of his neck and you relaxed a little.
Still, you couldn’t help but throw another quip his way: “Getting practice in?”
John paused before sitting down on the bed with you over his lap, “For what?”
“Weight lifting, Gaz said you were trying it out the other day. Got matching sweatbands and legwarmers.”
It was a lie that doubled as a rib. But there wasn’t any retort to this fabrication; John started unlacing your boots instead, acting more interested in getting you to sleep with/beside him than whatever slip-up he’d just skidded on. Thing was, you weren’t sure what the slip-up was, what was making him act like this. If you weren’t about to curl up atop the blankets and snooze, you’d probably have been able to work out what was suddenly bothering him, and maybe you’d be more subtle. But it was almost midnight and you’d had a 5:30 start, so you just asked him outright:
“Why, what did you think it was practice for?”
“Dragging your arse around while out in the field,” John replied, tugging off one of the boots to toss it over by his. Your pride wasn’t wounded because that was the biggest fib you’d heard.
You bent your leg, holding your foot hostage, “Johnathan Price, tell me now or I’ll go to my own bunk.”
But the use of his full name didn’t dissuade him. No, John grabbed you by the ankle and dragged back, causing you to slide back against him. He raised his eyebrows at you when you tried tugged it back, effectively ceasing your resistance to receive his revelation.
“Thought about carrying you to our bed on our wedding night.” His blue eyes held you still for that revelation, setting your stomach into knots, then he was back to untying your laces.
You knew he had nerves of steel, but John remaining pretty casual after confessing to a daydream of marriage between you both? You would’ve had more composure dealing with bomb defusal. Even now, your face was hot, your throat was drying up, and you weren’t even the one to confess.
Marriage, you’d mentioned it by the third week of the relationship, saying that it was something you would like with the right person and he was looking like that right person. John agreed and, after a quick one in his private shower, you left the subject there beside your recently relocated shampoo bottle. There hadn’t really been any other mentions of it before now, and that was over a year ago – maybe fourteen months? But, in the occasional instance of space whilst waiting for evac, your mind had considered seeing Price at the end of an aisle or even sat a registrar’s office in smart civvies. Gaz had caught you smiling to yourself once and teased you about it for two weeks after.
It took until your boots were reunited on the floor that you resurfaced from your racing train of thought. You stood up as elegantly as you could, even though John’s gaze was resolute on your face, watching and waiting for your response. Well, here it was.
“And,” You began unbuckling your belt, “What if I wanted to carry you to our bed on our wedding night?”
God. His face.
The shock took a split second to wear off. Spreading across his face like the rising sun was that smile, close-lipped with scrunched up eyes, like he was watching you open a present he knew you were bound to love almost as much as he loved you. Absolutely cheesing away at you, and it made you feel like your bones were gonna collapse from under you.
“Did you think of that?” You added.
“Can’t say I did,” John shook his head, keeping his warm eyes on you, “But, if that’s the case, you better join me with the weightlifting then, Lieutenant Price-to-be.”
“Love this assumption I’m taking your name.” That retort came quick. You were still a little immune to his charms.
“Why, you keeping yours?” He sounded cocky, and it would’ve been even more effective if he wasn’t reaching out for you to return into his arms whilst you removed his shirt from the laundry and slid into it.
Once you spotted his stance, you stepped back into his grasp, both your hands cradling his jaw, “Was thinking double-barrelled, or you can take mine.”
“Then I’d really be all yours.”
“And everyone would know it.”
He was making you swoon with his stare again, so much so that you had to hold his face and rest your forehead against his to ground yourself. Closer to the sun but it never burnt you - and he never looked at his stupid paperwork like that.
He whispered to you, “Guess what.”
“What?” You waited as he leant around and pursed his lips against your ear.
“I’m still putting you on toilet duty.”
The wheeze from his chest erupted with a splutter at your gawking then shielded his face from your indignant smacks, pushing him so that he was flat on his back.
“You bastard! You’re so mean to me!” You cried, trying to kneel over his hips to pin him down. Instead you were just sat upon him and that definitely wasn’t a bad thing in John’s eyes.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” He stroked over both your thighs, “How can I make it up to you?”
And, while he did look delicious lying there, burning cheeks and beaming up at you, he’d just sealed his fate.
“By getting some shut eye ASAP, and taking your future spouse off toilet duty.”
The downfall of Captain Price: caught in a trap of his own design. He’d be pissed if he wasn’t also proud. Though, of course, he never went without a final negotiation in his favour:
“Only if you stay.”
Ignoring the urge to joke about walking back to your room in just your underwear, you agreed to his terms. He looked pleased as punch laying beneath you; such a shame that you had to get off him to get under the covers on your designated side of the bed. John followed you over your territory for a little bit, kissing away the sting of his jape, before switching the bedside lamp and settling down for the evening. At last!
So, of course, that was when the coffee you chugged earlier kicked in alongside the karma for knocking and entering without waiting.
But then a snore buzzed from John’s side of the bed. So, as he snuggled up beside you, a hand instinctively brushing up against you, that cross to bear was accepted for the sake of your future husband.