Work Text:
"oh my god, you suck"
he didn't even want to bake this early in the morning - much less in summer, and if it weren't for how every word was drawn out from you laughing through them, john might've been irritated by it more. because there is still that familiar pang in his chest, the one that spreads a nasty heat to shoulders and up his throat. the one that usually gets him in trouble.
it's tempered by the fact that it's coming from you.
because you do like to fuck with him, to get a rise out of him. you're combative in that playful way he can understand. the way he's able to meet you at. the way that sates the impulse to yell, to argue, to win. the way hanging out with lemar used to. in more serious moments, the moments he can't escape his own brain, the moments he can't help but dwell, there's the passing thought that that's part of what took him so long to realize how he feels about you.
another part was he kind of hated you for a while. he thought he did. hated how comfortable you made the carnage from his divorce feel. it felt like you pushed your way in.
you didn't.
not really.
you were never trying to.
separating the grief of his old life, divorcing the woman he thought he'd grow old with, losing custody of his baby, from whatever he felt for you. some man he just happened to be paired with for whatever mission from valentina that he barely remembers anymore. it was fucking hard.
it should've taken longer to get used to, he thinks. after he started to understand how he felt. what he felt for you. you should've taken longer for him to get used to, but you didn't. everything with you felt natural. easy.
easy in a way things haven't felt since he was deployed.
so he doesn't really mind that you laugh at him while he struggles to scoop out the dough for the cookies evenly.
"they're not that bad." he says it flatly, letting a little annoyance slip in. "who bakes in summer anyway."
you mostly ignore him. "you're so bad at this- hey! you're doing it bad on purpose."
"i am not," he is. "i'm doing it just how you said." he is not. he's close. john figured out a few minutes ago what he was doing wrong, but hasn't bothered to correct himself.
"john."
"it is." he likes watching you fix the ones he's done, listening to you harass him about how shit he is at it. pointing out ones that are particularly bad, ones that you were correct about, that he may have done poorly on purpose because how shit they are entertains you.
"it's exactly how you said." his voice raises a little, just to meet yours.
because everything feels light in the mornings he spends with you.
"it is not." your laugh rings out.
he doesn't mind being the butt of the joke when you smile at him like that.