Chapter Text
A sore back and heavy bones are the first things you notice when you wake up. The room is warm and full of light so you have to blink several times before you realize where you are.
You are at home. Or as home as this London flat can be.
You sigh, taking your time to return to the land of the living. After checking the time on your phone resting next to you, you decided that it was time to get out of bed and do something useful.
On your way to sitting down, pain sobers all your senses. You groan between annoyance and actual pain and then you make a mental note to drink some painkillers with your breakfast. (How could you forget you were down a knee?)
You sit on the edge of your bed, taking a moment to get up as the doc back on base told you to. You even take a few breaths before you push your body up to stand on your good leg. Once your feet are more or less on the floor, you take a moment for the dizziness to stop and then you hop your way to the bathroom.
Once your teeth are clean and your bladder is empty, you start making your way down the hallway to the kitchen. On the way, you use the walls as support, remembering that you were not supposed to put weight on your bad knee.
But then when you arrive at the kitchen you must stop suddenly, and the pain is back. It lasted less than when you got out of bed, but it was pain nonetheless. And all because you didn’t expect to have another babysitter.
It has become fairly annoying but to be honest, you’ll prefer this babysitter to Soap or Ghost. The first one didn’t shut up and the last one was very rude and liked to give you heart attacks.
In both cases it was annoying.
“You are going to be my babysitter now?”, you ask, supporting from one of the counters.
He had his back to you, but you could tell it was him. He was hard to miss and you had worked with him enough time to know how he looked from every angle.
He answers by putting another plate to dry, but you swear you can feel him smiling under all that bushy facial hair.
“Mornin’”, he simply answers. “Do you want coffee or tea?”
“Tea, I have to take painkillers”, he nods and leaves the sink, dries his hands, and turns to get a mug from the cabinet. While he serves you the tea and searches for your painkillers, you slowly move to sit at the dining table.
From where you are sitting you can see the lounge, how he left his boots at the door, (why the hell he used boots outside work too?) his jacket in the chair in front of you, a duffle bag in the settee, and his keys on the table you were sitting in. You chuckle quietly, realizing that he still had the silly keychain you gave him two Christmases ago.
Your moment is interrupted when he silently puts a mug in front of you with your painkillers.
“Thank you”, you say, but he doesn’t say anything.
He returns to the kitchen and starts meddling with things there while you take a sip from the tea and realize that it was exactly lik you like to drink it. Just when you were about to drink your painkillers, you heard him approach.
“You need to eat something first”, and when you are about to answer him, the smell of food hits you and then a plate suddenly appears in front of you.
Eggs, bacon, and toast. Simple, yet enough so the painkillers don’t settle badly. Yet that’s not why you are speechless for a second or two.
He puts another plate at the other side of the table. It has the same food as yours, except that his eggs are scrambled. He goes to the kitchen again, fetches his coffee, and returns to sit down in front of his plate. (Same chair with his jacket).
“Help yourself”, and after smiling at you he gives you a wink and he doesn’t wait for you to start. He hits the plate like he is in a rush. You know for a fact that is a soldier habit.
Slowly you decide to help yourself to breakfast. Is ridiculous, but those are the best eggs with bacon and toast you had eaten in your goddamn life. You don’t say it of course and you drink your tea and your painkillers in silence.
When he finishes, he collects the dirty dishes.
“How long are you going to babysit me?”, you ask, still from the table.
“I am not going to babysit you”, he answers, coming back to put your painkillers away.
“Well, Ghost was pretty sure he was babysitting. He was rude the whole time, you should have sent Gaz instead”.
“I didn’t send anyone; Ghost came on his own free will”.
“Didn’t look like it. He acted all the time like he was following orders”.
You can’t see him, but you know he just rolled his eyes.
“I’ll stay the necessary time”.
“What does that mean?”
“It means what it means”, and you know he doesn’t want to talk about the topic more, but bad for him because you were annoyance herself in disguise.
“You know you don’t need to do this, right? The doc said that it was a simple procedure and that I’ll return in a few more days”.
“But you barely can walk so there should be someone always with you, just in case”, he then starts drying his hands and watches you from the kitchen entrance. “I’ll be on the settee if you need me”, and then he passes in front of you and actually sits down in your settee to turn the telly on.
You suppose that you should return to your room to kill time because you can’t do much with a bad knee, but instead, you stay there, watching the back of his head, which isn’t hidden behind a hat.
It was weird to see him without one, but you realized it just now. Probably because you were still processing the fact that he made you breakfast, and tea. It wasn’t gourmet food, but you didn’t know he could cook, even if you did know that Price was a man of many talents and there was a huge probability that cooking was one of them.
After a while of simply staring and thinking, he turns the telly off and turns his body in your direction, putting an arm over the back of the settee.
“Spill it”, he was also a magician…or you were too predictable for your own good.
“Why are you really here?”
“Already told you you shouldn’t be alone with a bad knee”.
“You know what I mean”, he doesn’t answer fast, he takes his time.
He turns around then, to give you his back again. He doesn’t turn the telly back on, though.
“Does my presence upset you?”
“No”.
“Then?”
“Just want to know why three of the task members came to babysit me when I just had an ambulatory surgery on my right knee and will return to work in a few days”.
“They were worried about you. You didn’t tell them you were getting surgery or disappearing for two weeks on a holiday”.
“Because I didn’t want them worrying and this is not a holiday”.
“You know them, they would have noticed anyway. Soap especially, you two are inseparable”.
You sigh annoyed.
“You should look at this as their way of telling you you don’t have to be alone anymore”.
He isn’t looking at you when he says that but your heart acts all up anyway.
“I don’t need reassurance of any kind”.
“The task force disagrees”.
You groan annoyed and decide that you had enough Price for the morning, so you stand up to leave. The only problem is that on your way out, your anger got tangled with your feet and you ended up losing your balance and falling.
The pain hit you like one of Ghost’s punches, but five seconds into falling, Price was at your side, with his hands all over you.
“Do you belive me now?”, he asked, clearly amused, before he helped you get on your feet again.
His naked hands against your skin made your stomach volt for some reason.
“Oh, shut up, old man”, and he chuckles, before helping you get up and then walk the rest of the way to your room.
Once you are sitting in your bed, you sigh, and he goes on one knee to see your bandages.
“I told you I’m fine”, you complain.
“'top being stubborn, let me check ya”, he replies, and his fingers dance around your leg making you feel even more of an idiot.
What the bloody hell?
Is not like it was the first time someone touched you.
You were acting like a damn touched starved idiot.
“Stitches look fine”, he says, before wrapping your knee again in their bandages.
“Told you”, he rolls his eyes and gets on his feet.
“Next time you want to move, yell at me”, he says, before messing with your hair.
“Bloody the fuck off, old man”, he chuckles again before getting out of your room. “And don’t you bloody dare smoke on my flat! I’ll kick you out with my bad knee and all!”
“Sure thing!”, he responds.
You mumble some curses in his direction before sighing again and rubbing your face.
God, you were so screwed.
Having Price babysitting you was not going to be fun.