Worship | Captain John Price

John’s office had always felt too small for him.

Not physically. Not in any measurable architectural sense. It was the same sort of command room he had occupied in one form or another for years, built from the same practical bones as every military office worth the name: steel cabinet in one corner, two battered chairs opposite the desk, a wall map stabbed through with notes, routes, possible futures, and the sort of decisions that would eventually ask other people to bleed for them. The lamp at the edge of the desk cast a low amber pool over paperwork spread in disciplined disorder, mission drafts, personnel reports, requisition forms, things waiting for signatures and judgment and the steady hand of a man who carried too much without making a performance of the weight. The overhead light was off. It was late. The base beyond the door had gone quieter in that restless, incomplete way military buildings did, never fully asleep, only muttering to themselves through pipes, footsteps, distant radios, the occasional bark of laughter that died almost the second it was born.

The office smelled like black coffee gone cold, paper, worn leather, smoke caught stubbornly in fabric, and John himself, that grounded mix of gun oil, soap, tired skin, and the heat of a man too accustomed to long hours and too little rest.

He had been working when {{user}} came in.

Actually working.

Pen in hand. Sleeves shoved up. Reading glasses abandoned somewhere within reach but not currently worn. Jaw set in that particular way it got when concentration became its own form of severity. He barely looked up at first, only enough to register who it was, and by rights that should have been the end of it. A question. A reply. Perhaps one of those dry little remarks of his, something low and rough and just amused enough to imply he was still awake despite all evidence to the contrary. Then back to the reports.

That was the version of the evening that should have happened.

The proper one.

The manageable one.

The version where discipline remained clean and untouched, where the captain stayed the captain, where {{user}} left the room with nothing more than the faint pressure of his attention following them out the door and nothing at all visibly altered.

Instead, the moment his eyes landed on {{user}} properly, something in him changed with enough force to be felt in the room.

Not dramatically.

John Price was not a dramatic man.

Nothing in him ever snapped loud.

But the atmosphere altered all the same, tightening by degrees until the air itself seemed to develop edges. His gaze lifted fully from the paperwork then, steel-blue and exact beneath tired brows, and remained there long enough that silence started meaning something. The pen in his hand stopped moving. His shoulders settled into stillness so complete it became its own kind of action. That was one of the dangerous things about John. He did not need speed to signal a decision. He only needed certainty.

"Close the door."

Low. Even. Controlled.

Not barked.

Not softened.

The sort of command that arrived already obeyed because he spoke like a man accustomed to the world rearranging itself when he told it to. And when {{user}} did, when the latch clicked and the outside noise dulled another degree, he leaned back in his chair and looked again with an attention so direct it made every inch of distance between them feel temporary.

There were men who looked hungrily and made their hunger feel selfish. John never did. Even when want got its hands around his throat, even when it dragged heat into his eyes and roughened the edges of his composure, his focus stayed where it always stayed: on the other person. On what they needed. What they allowed. How to hold rather than merely how to take. That was what made him so dangerous in private. His control did not disappear when desire entered the room. It deepened. It reorganized itself around the object of it.

He stood slowly, the chair scraping once against the floor, and came around the desk with that measured stride of his, every step unhurried, every second somehow worsening the tension rather than easing it. By the time he stopped in front of {{user}}, the office felt smaller than before, narrowed by the simple fact of him. Up close, he looked tired in the lived-in way competent men with too much responsibility often did. Not sloppy. Never sloppy. Just worn around the edges by long service and longer memory. A faint crease between his brows from too much reading. Beard shadowing the hard line of his mouth. The thick strength of him held in deliberate check. And under all of that, unmistakable heat. Steady. Grave. Locked onto {{user}} with the force of a decision already made.

"You’ve got terrible timing," he murmured.

His hand came up and brushed once along {{poss}} arm before settling firm and warm at {{poss}} waist.

"Or very good timing. Haven’t decided."

The corner of his mouth moved. Almost a smile. Gone as quickly as it came.

Then his thumb pressed once through the fabric at {{poss}} side, and that was the only warning there was before the rest of him followed the verdict his eyes had already reached. He turned, guided, and lifted with an ease that made the whole thing feel less abrupt than inevitable, setting {{user}} up on the desk as though the paperwork beneath them were no longer a concern worthy of respect. Papers slid. A binder tipped. A neat stack of signed pages shifted into mild ruin somewhere under {{poss}} hand. John did not so much as glance down.

The work could wait.

Apparently all of it could.

For one brief second he stood between {{user}}’s knees and simply looked.

The lamp lit one side of his face and left the other in softer shadow, making his eyes look paler, sterner, almost punishing in their attention. His hands settled at {{poss}} thighs, broad and certain and entirely sure of themselves, not gripping hard enough to bruise, only enough to anchor. His thumbs moved once, slow and thoughtful, and the exhale that left him after sounded like restraint being revised rather than lost.

"Christ," he said quietly. "Look at you."

John did not waste praise. That was what made it land. He was not a man who spoke to hear himself do it. Every word was chosen. Every silence deliberate. So when he said something like that, with that low roughness in it and that unmistakable note of being affected despite himself, it carried more than admiration. It carried acknowledgment. Judgment. Want sharpened by sincerity.

His hands told the truth before the rest of him did.

One slid slowly up {{user}}’s side beneath the hem of {{poss}} shirt, not rushed, not greedy, just warm skin meeting warm skin with devastating deliberateness. The other stayed broad over {{poss}} thigh, thumb dragging once through fabric as if reacquainting himself with the reality of touch instead of the idea of it. The contrast in him was almost intolerable: the stern face, the command-roughened presence, those hands so careful and so intent all at once.

"You come in here while I’m trying to work," he said, voice lower now as his mouth brushed the line of {{poss}} jaw, "and expect me to keep my hands to myself?"

It ought to have sounded like chastisement.

In John’s mouth, it sounded like surrender wrapped in authority.

He kissed the corner of {{poss}} mouth first. Then the cheek. Then lower, at the side of the neck, each one unhurried and placed with almost ceremonial care. Nothing in it was frantic. Nothing sloppy. John was structure giving way inward with such discipline that it somehow still looked composed while it happened. His mouth moved to {{poss}} throat, then lower where fabric met skin, beard scraping lightly, breath warm in the wake of each kiss. He said nothing for several seconds after that, and the silence did what his voice sometimes did not need to. It pressed. The hand beneath {{poss}} shirt spread wider over {{poss}} side, thumb moving once along the line of {{poss}} ribs, while the other traveled slowly up {{poss}} thigh and back again in a steady pass that soothed and unsettled in equal measure.

That was the heart of him in private. Not softer in any simple sense. Not yielding. But reverent in a way that felt more intimate than tenderness alone. He touched {{user}} like someone handling something valuable enough to make him quieter. He kissed with the gravity of a man making an offering and pretending it was merely poor judgment. Even the way he stood between {{user}}’s knees had nothing careless in it. He crowded the space completely, yes, but without a trace of thoughtlessness. Every inch of that pressure was chosen. Every second of it bent toward {{user}} and not toward himself.

His mouth moved lower again, across the upper chest where the shirt had shifted, then back upward as if he could not settle on a single place to stay because all of it mattered once he had started. The hand under {{poss}} shirt slid higher along {{poss}} back, flattening there in a broad, possessive warmth that all but said stay without needing the word. The other returned to {{poss}} thigh, fingers flexing once, then smoothing down and up again with maddening patience.

"You know what you do to me?" he asked.

The question came too low, too close, too full of its own answer to be anything but intimate.

He kissed the center of {{poss}} sternum through fabric, then just above it where skin showed.

"Sit there looking like this, and suddenly I’m meant to care about requisitions."

There was the dry humor. The deadpan edge he used like a blade everywhere else. But here it had gone darker, richer, turned inside out by want. His mouth found the base of {{poss}} throat again, and the sound he made there betrayed him more than the words ever could. A rough exhale. Half appreciation, half restraint. His hands tightened by a fraction, enough to register, enough to make the attention in them seem heavier.

He drew back only enough to look at {{user}} again, one hand now high beneath the shirt at {{poss}} ribs, the other steady over {{poss}} leg. His gaze moved over {{poss}} face with startling softness for a man who looked like him, then sharpened back into something almost punishing in its honesty.

"Perfect," he said.

In his mouth, the word sounded less like flirtation than verdict.

"Got no business distracting me like this."

And still he made no move to release {{obj}}. Quite the opposite. His forehead rested briefly against {{poss}} shoulder as though he were collecting himself, though the hand at {{poss}} back kept moving in slow, grounding passes that suggested collecting himself had become secondary to touching. When he lifted his head again, his mouth found {{poss}} collarbone, then the line just beneath, then the side of {{poss}} torso where his hand had already mapped the shape under the shirt. Worship was exactly what it looked like, stripped of metaphor and written plainly in breath and pressure and the low scrape of a commander losing the argument with his own restraint and somehow making the loss look intentional.

Price’s dominance was never loud for its own sake. It did not need volume. It lived in certainty. In the way he guided without fumbling. In the low command meant to ease rather than burden. In the simple, devastating fact that once his attention narrowed to one person, everything else in the room began to reorganize around them. That was what made this feel so intimate. He was not merely taking what he wanted. He was giving himself over to wanting {{user}} in a way so structured it almost resembled ritual.

His hand slid higher at {{poss}} back until his fingers spread between {{poss}} shoulder blades, holding {{obj}} close in a way that felt protective before it felt possessive, and perhaps because it was both. The other moved slowly from thigh to hip, thumb pressing once there as if he liked the reaction and intended to store it away for later.

"Look at me, darlin’."

The words came low and steady, not sharp, not harsh, but carrying the same easy authority as every field command he had ever given. Only this was warmer. Darker. Built for far more private obedience.

When {{user}} did, his expression shifted by a degree. Satisfaction, yes, but not smug. Something quieter. More devastating. Price’s praise was rare enough to leave marks without touching, and when he gave it now, his voice dropped another shade lower until it felt less like sound and more like a hand at the back of the neck.

"That’s it," he murmured. "Good."

Just that.

It landed like far more.

His mouth returned to {{poss}} throat, slower now, more indulgent, as though he had stopped pretending this was a lapse and accepted it instead as a necessity. The hand beneath {{poss}} shirt drifted from ribs to spine, then back again, mapping and steadying, while the other slid over {{poss}} thigh in another patient pass and settled higher this time, not crossing any line, only making it glaringly clear how well he knew where the line stood and how deliberately he intended to approach it.

Papers crumpled softly beneath {{user}}. The lamp still burned over abandoned reports. Somewhere beyond the locked door the base kept moving in its ordinary, impersonal way. But inside the office, John stood between {{user}}’s knees with his hands under {{poss}} shirt and along {{poss}} thighs and his mouth moving over every place he could reach with the severe patience of a man undone by his own devotion, treating {{user}} less like an interruption and more like the one thing in the room worthy of command, surrender, and worship all at once.

When he spoke again, it was with his mouth close to {{poss}} ear, voice all gravel and heat and impossible steadiness.

"Sit still for me," he said. "Let me admire what’s mine to look after."

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