Chapter Text
⋆｡˚ ☁︎ ˚｡⋆｡˚☽˚｡⋆ He looked wrecked ⋆｡˚ ☁︎ ˚｡⋆｡˚☽˚｡⋆
The First of the Collection. Graves and Callsign: Sweetheart get into some fun during a training house clearing.
The shoot house breathed like a sleeping animal—plywood ribs forming crooked corridors, chalk tally marks ghosted pale on the concrete, paper silhouettes stapled at sternum height with jagged staples that caught the light. Spent sim rounds rolled underfoot in the dim like loose teeth. Over the doorframe, a dying green chemlight bled its faint permission, washing their gear in sickly glow.
They stacked tight, shadows nesting inside shadows.
“Stack one,” he murmured, voice a dry Texas drawl wrapped in command. “I’ve got point.”
The radio hissed once in his ear, quiet approval from some bored range NCO up in the catwalks. He barely heard it. His world had shrunk to this doorway, this team, the familiar weight of the rifle in his hands—and the warm presence sliding in behind him.
She took her spot without needing to be told, glove landing on his shoulder blade for that one brief squeeze. Anchor point. Confirmation. Their muzzles hung low-ready, fingers indexed straight along the frames, safeties on but intention coiled. Two more shapes formed up behind them, kit creaking softly—plates, mags, slings. The world narrowed to angles and air.
“Set,” she whispered, breath ghosting the side of his neck, her voice riding the foam-and-sweat scent of the kill house and the faint reek of burnt sim powder.
“Breach.”
He rolled the knob with a smooth wrist, knuckles brushing the paint, door bumping against its rubber foot with a muted thud. Threshold evaluation—slice the pie. His feet found their marks automatically: heel-toe, heel-toe, rifle shouldered. He took soft corner; she owned the hard, muzzle tracking clean arcs, light discipline perfect.
White light strobed once—just enough to burn the layout into their retinas—then vanished.
“Left clear.”
“Right clear.”
“Room secure.”
They flowed out again, a single organism breaking and reforming like water. Hallway. Door left. Door right. The slap of boots stayed soft, almost reverent. Somewhere above, a catwalk board creaked under an observer’s weight.
She felt him without looking: the way he kept his elbows disciplined—not chicken-winging, not lazy; the way he never crowded her angles, how he trusted her shoulder to ghost his six without question. The choreography lived in their bones now.
Stolen glances skimmed like pebbles over water—useless, necessary. He kept skipping her callsign, skipping rank and protocol, for the quiet little sin that fit better.
“On you, sweetheart.”
She didn’t need the endearment to move, but it lit up every nerve under her plates.
“Copy,” she said, already stepping past his muzzle, presence flipping from shadow to spearpoint.
No bang tonight. No flash. Training only; live structure but safe rounds. They buttonhooked instead, just like they’d rehearsed since forever. As they turned, she caught the quick flash of his grin along a plywood edge—the brief, wolfish curve he never wore in daylight.
Targets went down one by one in tidy pairs, the dry thup of sim rounds muffled by ear pro. Double taps. Controlled pairs. Center mass, no drama. “No-shoot” babies blue-taped to the paper stayed untouched, their cartoon faces bright against the grey.
She could’ve run this maze blindfolded. She knew every corner by sound—the hollow echo where a section of wall wasn’t braced properly, the slight change in temperature where the AC vent dumped cold air over lane three. So could he. That familiarity thrummed between them, a shared map etched into muscle memory.
Maybe that’s why they both noticed it at the same time.
The last door’s latch sat already unlatched. Hinge quiet. No scuff marks on the concrete. The room beyond looked too clean even in the shadows, edges too sharp, like scenery waiting for the actors.
“Last room,” he said, breath even, rifle barrel steady. “You and me.”
“Copy.”
The two tail-end teammates held rear security, posting at the intersection with bored professionalism. This was the last run of the night. Everyone knew it.
He opened the door silent, body forming a wedge. They bled around the threshold, boots whispering. Muzzles swept corners, then dead space, then ceiling cutouts. Her eyes tracked high-low-high, the drill older than sleep.
Nothing. No targets. No furniture. Just a single clean wall, newly painted, white as a blank page, and the sharp resin smell of cut pine and fresh latex, weirdly out of place among the scuffed particle board.
“Room secure,” he said, voice low, the call automatic.
“Not me,” she heard herself say, before she could think better of it.
Something in his shoulders went very still. The rifle dipped a fraction, muzzle angling at the floor as if the threat profile had just changed into something doctrine didn’t cover.
He turned fully, visor of professionalism lifting off his face like he’d finally decided—deliberately—to set it down. The overhead fluorescent buzzed, flickering once, casting him in stuttering frames: squad leader, teammate, something else entirely. His boots scuffed once on the concrete as he stepped closer.
He backed her into that spotless wall with a care that felt like reverence, every inch of him still soldier, every inch of him absolutely not.
The impact was soft, gear thudding lightly against paint. Her plate carrier kissed the wall first, then her shoulder blades, then the back of her skull. The chemlight over the door threw a faint green haze across them, like NVG bloom without the headset.
What hit them then felt like a door blown in by a pressure wave made of weeks, months, too-long looks and not enough sleep. The first kiss landed messy, hungry, a miss and a catch as teeth clicked and noses bumped, both of them half-laughing, half-drowning. The second found the center like it had always meant to, all alignment and intent.
His mouth was heat and resolve; hers was relief and dare. He tasted faintly of gun oil, burnt coffee, and the cheap mint gum they kept in the ready room. She swallowed a sound that wasn’t a laugh at all.
“Sweetheart,” he said into her lower lip, like the word itself were a touch he couldn’t stop giving.
She climbed him by the front of his plate carrier, fingers hooking MOLLE like rungs. He went with it, crowding her space with solid, reassuring weight. Their chests met with a dull clack of plates. One of his hands slid to span the small of her back, fingers splaying over the drag handle at the top of her vest, steadying them both like she was something he fully intended to rescue.
Gloves hit the floor with flat thumps, one after another. Velcro hissed like steam as they dragged it open for a little more room to breathe, to feel. A zipper rasped in the dim. Nylon straps creaked. Layers shifted—combat shirt, undershirt, webbing—edges softening into the shape of two people who had never learned how to be patient with each other and weren’t about to start.
He dragged his knuckles along her jaw, slow, tracing the line from ear to chin, notching her face up for another kiss. This one went deeper, slower, almost careful, like he was memorizing a route he never wanted to forget. It broke only because breathing was still non-negotiable.
He looked wrecked and pleased about it, color high in his cheeks, breath tripping the way it did after a hard run in full kit. A bead of sweat crawled from his hairline, catching on his brow, and she wanted to lick it away more than she’d ever wanted a clean shot.
Her knees went a little unreliable—gravity, adrenaline, everything reckless and right—but he caught it instantly, hand threading into her hair, fingers firm against her scalp. The tug was gentle but grounding, a reminder that he knew exactly how much force she could take, exactly where her breaking points weren’t.
He laughed once—quiet, rough-edged. “Fuck,” he whispered, voice frayed with wanting and barely-leashed restraint, forehead resting against hers for a heartbeat. “You can’t say ‘not me’ and expect me to walk that off.”
She smiled, wicked and soft all at once, and answered him with another kiss that stole the rest of his oxygen. His free hand bracketed her hip, thumb pressing into a spot he had no right to know felt that good through fabric, through gear.
They lost track of the small things—who pulled who closer, who pressed who harder against the wall. There were only fragments: his dog tags tapping lightly against her throat; the cold tick of a buckle against her bare wrist; her fingers sliding under the edge of his collar to find warm skin and the thunder of his pulse.
The shoot house around them blurred out, plywood walls and paper targets dissolving into backdrop. The world shrank to the circle of his arms and the taste of his mouth, to the quiet, hungry noises they dragged out of each other, the ones neither of them would ever make in front of anyone else.
He shifted, turning her gently until she faced the wall again, palms guiding her shoulders to clean paint, chest pressed warm along her back. Not pinning—bracketing. Guarding. The edge of his plate touched between her shoulder blades; his breath ran hot along the shell of her ear.
She felt his smile when she gripped his forearm, tendons shifting under her fingers, the muscles there still humming from the run, from the shooting, from her.
He lined their bodies like a checklist—stance, support, contact—and for once, let the checklist go.
“Still good?” he asked, a rasp at the base of her neck, the question not about tactics at all.
“Yes,” she said, and it came out as a sound he swallowed with a shiver as he dipped to kiss the spot where her jaw met her ear, then lower, mapping a route along salt-slick skin.
They moved together, finding a rhythm that had nothing to do with cadence calls or bounding overwatch. It lived in the hush between their breaths, in the drag of his hand flattening over her sternum to steady her, in the way she arched back into him, trusting that he would be exactly where she needed him, exactly when.
Fabric rasped. Steel buckles clicked softly. The room filled with unguarded sounds—hers, his—the kind you couldn’t fake, couldn’t log, couldn’t translate into any after-action report. Time slipped. The line between wanting and having blurred at the edges.
“Kiss me,” she said, the words barely air, and he did, turning her cheek with his fingertips until he found her mouth again. He kissed her like a sector he planned to hold for life—slow sweeps, sudden surges, little retreats that only made the next advance sweeter.
The rest blurred toward the edge of a bright cliff. The details went soft-focus on purpose: a shoulder bitten back into a half-laugh; a whispered curse that sounded too much like prayer; the muffled thud of a knee against concrete and his hand smoothing over the hurt as if he could press it out of existence. They climbed together without looking down, the whole world narrowing to heartbeat, breath, contact.
When the moment finally broke over them, it felt like the clean pop of a flash going off behind closed eyes—whiteout and relief. His forehead rested against her shoulder while her lingering tremors worked themselves into his palm where it spread over her ribs, counting each breath like it mattered.
Silence returned as a living thing. It nosed around them, curious, then curled up and kept watch while they stood there, pressed together, letting their heart rates fall out of the red.
He breathed with her until both their pulses slowed out of combat tempo, until the thin edge of laughter crept back into his chest like a white flag.
“Sweetheart,” he said again, softer now, reverent, words fogging the strip of new paint by her ear. He eased back just enough to see her face, thumb sweeping sweat from her temple. His eyes ran a quick assessment that had nothing to do with wounds or gear.
“You okay?”
She turned into his palm and kissed it: first the heel of his hand, calloused and warm, then the inside of his wrist where pulse met skin. “Yeah,” she said, glowing with it, the word a satisfied exhale. “Room secure.”
He huffed out a breath, then grinned, ruined and beautiful. “Copy that.”
They put themselves back together with the quiet competence of soldiers reassembling kit after a drill. Plates straightened. Straps tugged. Velcro smoothed. Zippers ghosted closed. He fixed the loose thread on her sleeve with a neat twist and tucked it under a seam, the smallest domestic act in a room meant for violence.
She plucked a fleck of red sim paint from the corner of his jaw where a round had splattered earlier and rolled it between her fingers before pocketing it like a trophy.
At the door, he reached for the knob and didn’t turn it yet. The green chemlight over their heads flickered one last time, guttering out to a faint smear.
“Tomorrow,” he said, finding her eyes, tone just this side of official again. “We run it again clean.”
She bumped his hip with hers, the smallest contact, sharp with promise. “We just did.”
He laughed, low and warm, then leaned in to press one more kiss to her mouth—soft, softer—until both of them were steady again. When he finally opened the door to the empty hallway, the shoot house let their secret go like a satisfied exhale, breath flowing past them into the dark.
“On me,” he said out loud, voice back to business.
“On you,” she answered, falling into step, shoulders just brushing. The choreography of the job settled around them again, but now it held something else inside it—something they’d finally allowed to exist, bright as that clean white wall and just as impossible to ignore.