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Had to happen today of all fucking days. Drowning the stinging cut beneath a flow of water in the bathroom, curbing the tears welling in your waterline with deep breaths until they choked painfully in your throat. Of all fucking days. A damned paper cut. The cherry on the so called cake. Fucking perfect.
You’d let the paperwork pile up intentionally, let it become an alien mound on your desk, filling your in-tray. Just to keep yourself here, just to keep working on into the night and pretending you weren’t going home to a cold empty flat that barely felt like home.
Real home belonged to rolling hills full of supple meadowsweet and the smell of rain, crumbling cobblestone walls lining rough beaten roads barely big enough for the tractors drilling through and a warm hearth. Always lit, always warm, always welcome. The smell of whiskey and smoke.
The surreal reality you lived in only drove the breath from your lungs, two fists wrapped around your chest and squeezing tighter with each passing week.
This time last year you were drinking yourself dirty with true friends, colleagues. A celebration, not just of you but your life, your work. Your excellence. The word shivering through you on a memory you wished stayed buried along with the feel of his hands branding you.
The year before that, candles and cake and cheery faces. A house full of laughter, of little running feet, and the patter of rain against the stained windows. The glass reflecting the flicker of the newly lit fire.
You pinched the cut, biting your lip at the sudden sting, and quickly wiped the back of your hand across your cheek before the tear could fall further than the dark shadows under your eyes. Rubbing at your nose with damp fingers.
Lifting trembling eyes to the reflection, a stranger staring back at you. Poorly dyed hair and all. Switching off the tap, succumbing to the flimsy papercut, gripping the basin tightly.
Happy birthday. You weren’t sure if you muttered the bitter words to yourself or the reflection, you weren’t even sure which of you deserved it. You didn’t feel happy, not in the slightest, you barely remembered what it felt to be happy and as for the birthday? Another year meant nothing spent like this. The shadows only growing the longer you stared and this time you didn’t twitch an inch as a tear shimmered in the mirror.
Bold as glass trailing down your cheek. Happy sodding birthday.
You splashed water on your features, stole a deep breath, avoided the reflection as if it were out to get you, and yanked a few paper towels from the dispenser. Hands dried but the sting remained. A filmy red line along your finger disappearing beneath the plaster you folded around it.
Smoothing down your shirt and walking out as if nothing had changed. You still had a mountain of work to get done, the grind never ended if it already chewed and spat you out in the dirt. Returning to your office wearing the same old mask, the same old sodden professionalism you’d forced upon yourself.
Only to crack the second you stood before your desk, sinking to your chair with lips parted, breath caught, at the sight of the little cupcake sat atop the open file. The one that sent you fleeing in the first place. A single candle stuck in the pretty red frosting, and you tugged the note out from beneath the box of matches beside it.
An open flame would be a safety hazard on your desk. You pursed your lips, sat back, hand shooting to cover your mouth as a fresh wave of tears plucked your eyes. Nobody knew you here, nobody knew to even ask about a birthday, about a family or friends or have you got any plans this weekend? They just knew the worker, the assistant, and yet somebody had. Amongst all the mess, somebody knew.
Laswell, maybe? You sniffed. She didn’t seem the type. So, Soap, then, but you’d only just struck up a friendship with the man—if that’s really what you could call it, you only spoke to him to rebuff his cheeky lines.
Oh, who the fuck cares. You poked open the matchbox, striking a light and lit the candle carefully, extinguishing the match as soon as the flame caught. Paperwork be damned. Refusing to let the moment pass—to relinquish the warmth flooding your chest—by blowing it out, letting the wax run into the frosting.
You blew it out eventually, slipping the cake back into the box, tucking the candle away safely with the note and marshalled the tightness in your throat as you left with it. Keeping it tucked in the fridge because you couldn’t bring yourself to eat it and used one of the broken magnets to stick the note on the fridge.
Catching Soap the next day as he dropped something into Captain Price’s office and thanking him—albeit sheepishly—for the gesture. “I don’t remember telling you it was my birthday.”
“Ye birthday?” He raised a confused eyebrow, “Lass, I dinnae get you no cake.”
A frown pinched your brow, glancing down at the spot the cake sat last night. “Then who—?”
“Wait.” You didn’t get to finish the thought as Soap slammed his hands flat to your desk. “Yesterday was ye birthday?” He peered at you, bold eyes wide. “And ye spent it alone?!” He practically spat the last word. “What kind of crime is that?!”
You weren’t exactly alone, you had a cupcake. “It’s not a big deal.” You tried to shrug but Soap pushed off the desk, shaking his head vigorously and muttering words under his breath you didn’t quite catch. “Captain.” He stuck his head back in Price’s office. “Am borrowing the lass for the foreseeable future.”
Your features twisted, suddenly alert. “Wait.”
Price grunted, “I want her back intact.”
“Soap, what are you—?” he had your jacket off the hook before you fully stood from your chair, forcing your arms into the sleeves despite your protests. Dragging you out by the wrist, calling into Gaz in the comms room as he went.
“Garrick, get yer arse in a tizzy, we’ve a travesty to rectify.” Soap instructed, still clutching your wrist even as his fellow sergeant blinked, staring confusedly until Soap released a breath. Sticking a thumb at you. “Was the lass’s birthday yesterday, she dinnae feel inclined to tell us.”
Kyle recoiled, “Seriously?” he set down the file in his hands without a second thought and then a frown crinkled his brow as he followed them out.
“Where are we going?” You spluttered as Soap continued tugging you down the corridor.
“It’s five o’clock somewhere.”
And that’s how you ended up driving three—Ghost showed up an hour after you hit the nearest pub, skull balaclava and all, claiming he just came for the drinks—drunk, lumbering SAS operatives back to your flat for the first time.
What you didn’t tell them in the morning is you snapped a picture of them all in various stages of distress around your living room at gone midnight, legs hiked up over the cushions, arms splayed across the nearest thing they could find. Gaz hugging Soap’s leg like a teddy bear. Pure gold.
Ghost woke before any of them, even you, the black balaclava hiding the hangover draining his features, and he stood staring at your fridge door when Soap stirred. A particularly virile snore startling him awake and he fell off the couch with an oof.
“What ye looking a’?” He yawned, rubbing heavy eyes as he joined Ghost in the kitchen, narrowing them at the little note you had pinned to the fridge. “S’tha the Captain’s handwriting?”