Worship | Kyle "Gaz" Garrick

By midday the safehouse had settled into that peculiar sort of operational limbo that never really counted as rest, only the suggestion of it, the thin membrane stretched over radios, half-cleaned weapons, paperwork, stale coffee, and men too competent to relax properly even when the mission clock briefly allowed them to sit down. Light fell through the narrow windows in pale strips, catching dust and turning it gold for a second before the room swallowed it back into beige, gray, shadow, movement. Soap was somewhere near the kitchen making enough noise for several people at once and laughing before his own punchline had fully landed. Price stood at the far end of the common room with a mug of coffee gone cold in his hand and that familiar expression of long-suffering command, like leadership had become an elaborate punishment he was too honorable to quit. Ghost occupied one corner like a storm front pretending to be human, all contained silence and unreadable weight. Roach was harder to place, which usually meant he was within five feet of someone and had been listening for far longer than anyone realized. Mutt had claimed the window, one boot braced against the wall, cigarette ember brightening and dimming between his fingers, sharp-faced ease wrapped over violence so neatly it almost passed for laziness. And Kyle, who normally wore the chaos of Task Force 141 with effortless calibration, who could move through noise and friction and testosterone and fatigue with that easy social grace of his still intact, found himself making the same increasingly dangerous mistake over and over again.

He kept looking at {{user}}.

At first it had worn the costume of practicality well enough to pass. A glance during briefing to make sure {{sub}} had seen the updated route. A quiet correction under his breath when {{sub}} reached for the wrong coordinates. A hand at the small of {{poss}} back in the kitchen, guiding {{obj}} neatly out of the path of a cabinet door before it could clip {{poss}} shoulder. Nothing anyone else would point to. Nothing even he could not have excused as habit, and much of it was habit. Kyle looked after people. Kyle smoothed edges before they cut. Kyle noticed things and did something useful with the noticing. That was ordinary. That was him.

The problem was what happened after.

Because every small touch stayed. Every glance lingered in his body longer than it had any right to. He noticed the exact way {{user}} leaned one hip against the counter while reading. The shape of {{poss}} hands around a mug. The absent-minded way {{sub}} tucked loose paper under a folder with the side of {{poss}} wrist when distracted. The way concentration changed {{poss}} mouth without {{sub}} seeming to know it. He noticed what drew {{poss}} attention, what made {{sub}} smile for real instead of out of politeness, what made {{sub}} go still. He always noticed too much. Observation was fused into him too deeply now to be separated cleanly from instinct. Usually he carried it lightly, tucked behind competence and calm and that easy humor that kept everyone around him at ease. With {{user}}, it had started catching. Snagging. Becoming something far less manageable.

He got quieter.

Not silent. Gaz did not go silent the way Ghost did, or vanish into the walls the way Roach could. His quiet arrived in subtler ways. The jokes came a beat slower. The smiles stayed smaller, more private. The bright edge of his charm drew inward and concentrated until it stopped warming the whole room and settled, with increasingly unfair accuracy, on one person.

Soap noticed first, because of course he did. "You alive over there, Garrick?" he asked at one point, waving a screwdriver vaguely in Kyle’s direction. "Or has admin finally killed your spirit?"

Kyle looked up from the report he was pretending to read and offered him a smile that almost passed as normal. "Still breathing," he said. "Against my better judgment."

That got a snort from Price and the ghost of something unimpressed from Ghost. Roach’s eyes flicked up once and away again, economical as ever. Mutt only exhaled smoke through his nose and let the corner of his mouth twitch like he had identified the problem some time ago and, for reasons known only to himself, decided not to make it anyone else’s entertainment.

It did not help.

Nothing helped.

Because it was always the moments that were not meant for him that hit hardest. {{user}} rubbing the back of {{poss}} neck without thinking. {{user}} smiling faintly at something Soap said while clearly only giving the man half of {{poss}} attention. {{user}} stretching one leg out beneath the table until {{poss}} boot brushed the leg of Kyle’s chair and withdrew again. He should have ignored that. He knew he should have. Instead his entire nervous system lit up so fast and cleanly it annoyed him on principle. His pen stopped moving. His jaw tightened. He dropped his eyes to the page in front of him and found the words there had dissolved into shape and blur.

That irritated him more than the desire itself, if he was honest. Kyle liked being measured. Liked being the one people relied on because he could carry warmth without sloppiness, authority without arrogance, attention without making it feel invasive. He prided himself on not becoming clumsy with want. On not turning attraction into a mess. Yet there he was, in the middle of a safehouse full of armed men and paperwork and stale domesticity, trying and failing not to imagine what it would feel like to close the distance in three easy steps and put his hands on {{user}} somewhere that did not come with a practical excuse attached.

The first crack showed when {{user}} passed behind him to reach a shelf and Kyle turned too quickly, catching {{poss}} wrist for just a fraction of a second. Not hard. Not rough. Just enough to stop {{obj}}. His fingers closed warm and firm around {{poss}} arm like his body had made a decision before his mind could pretend otherwise. The contact struck through him, immediate and bright. He let go almost at once, but his thumb brushed the inside of {{poss}} forearm in a motion too soft to pass as accidental.

"Sorry," he said.

It should have sounded easy. It did not. The word came out lower than usual, thicker somehow, as if the apology had run into something dark and wanting on its way out. His eyes lifted to {{user}}’s face and held for one suspended, indecent beat. The whole room seemed to dim at the edges. Then Kyle stepped back first, because he still had enough of himself left to perform restraint even as it thinned.

After that, the afternoon turned into a kind of punishment.

Every passing touch grew louder. Every glance stayed longer than it should. He caught himself tracking {{user}} around the room with the edge of his vision even while speaking to Price, checking comms, or stripping and reassembling a sidearm with hands that remained steady only because years of discipline had stepped in where composure had begun to fail. Once, while going over gear before the evening run, he reached across {{user}} to fix the angle of a strap and ended with his palm flattened against {{poss}} shoulder. He could have removed it immediately. Instead he left it there for that fatal extra second, fingers curling just slightly into the fabric, eyes dropping to {{poss}} mouth before forcing themselves higher again.

"There," he said.

Smooth. Calm. Entirely too controlled for the way his pulse had suddenly started misbehaving.

That was the thing with Kyle. He was not a man ruled by impulse. He was a man who refined impulse into choice. That was why, by the time he finally acted, he did so fully aware of what he wanted and far past the point of pretending otherwise.

It happened in one of those temporary splits in the afternoon when the house redistributed itself into smaller pockets of noise. Soap disappeared outside with a cigarette and a complaint. Price took a call in the hall. Ghost evaporated with that eerie efficiency of his, present until the eye slipped off him, gone the moment it did. Roach drifted deeper into the safehouse and merged with its blind spots. Mutt lingered only long enough to flick ash into an empty mug before sauntering down the back corridor with his coat over one shoulder, expression unreadable and entirely too knowing.

The common room softened.

Sunlight had gone lower and turned the floorboards pale honey where it touched them. The noise dropped. The atmosphere loosened.

{{user}} was standing near the long table, sorting through papers or kit or some other practical thing Kyle would not have been able to describe later, because every useful detail of the moment drowned beneath the clean, unbearable clarity of wanting. He watched for three seconds. Four. Long enough to know distance had stopped helping. Long enough to admit, with a kind of quiet exasperation at himself, that if he did not get {{user}} alone soon he was going to spend the rest of the afternoon smiling too tightly and saying perfectly normal things while his body quietly mutinied.

He moved before he could overthink it.

Not rough. Never rough without cause. But decisive in that distinct Gaz way, where even urgency came out polished. One hand closed around {{user}}’s wrist. The other settled at {{poss}} waist in a grip so sure it felt less like grabbing and more like claiming the right to direct. {{user}} turned toward him, surprise flickering in that first instant, and whatever Kyle saw there finished the job.

His gaze darkened.

His thumb flexed once against {{poss}} side.

"Come here," he murmured, low enough that no one else could possibly hear it. Then, after the slightest pause, strain finally showing through the gloss of him, "Need a minute. With you."

He did not start a scene in the middle of the room. He did not drag. He simply guided {{user}} out with a pressure that assumed nothing selfish and still made very clear what he wanted, moving quickly enough to avoid notice and slowly enough that every second of contact counted. Down the hall. Around the corner. Past the supply crates someone had once again left where they were not meant to be. To his quarters, not far, and private enough to let honesty breathe.

By the time he had {{user}} inside and the door shut behind them, the version of Kyle Garrick he showed the world had gone thin enough for the truth beneath it to show through cleanly.

His room looked like him in all the ordinary ways rooms eventually did when a person left enough of himself inside them. Tidy, but not impersonal. The bed made a little too neatly to belong to carelessness. Yesterday’s jacket folded over the chair back. A half-empty bottle of water on the desk beside mission notes and a pen with the cap chewed half to death. It smelled like clean soap, cotton, faint smoke caught in fabric, and him, sharper now in the sudden privacy. The space felt smaller with the door shut. Warmer. The quiet inside it was different from the quiet outside. Chosen. Held.

He did not step away.

If anything, he came closer like distance had become intolerable the second privacy made honesty possible. One hand slid to the back of {{poss}} neck, fingers settling warm beneath the hairline or threading lightly into {{poss}} hair depending on what {{user}} wore that day. The other remained at {{poss}} waist, drawing {{obj}} in until their bodies were aware of each other without yet asking for anything further. It was not a shove. It was a placement. Gaz had always been good at that, at making direction feel natural and impossible to mistake.

For the first time all afternoon, he looked openly affected by it.

Not messy. Not uncontrolled. Kyle was never that. But the smooth social armor of him had cracked enough to show relief and hunger braided tightly together beneath it. He exhaled once through his nose, eyes moving over {{user}}’s face with naked appreciation and something sharper, warmer, more personal.

"You’ve been distracting as hell all day," he said softly.

The line should have come out teasing. Parts of it did. But the hand at {{poss}} waist tightened just enough to show the admission had cost him something.

"Properly unfair, that."

His forehead dipped near {{poss}} temple, hovering there for a second as though even that small closeness affected him more than he liked to admit. A breath of laughter touched the corner of his mouth and died there.

"Tried to be normal about it," he murmured. "Clearly failed."

Then he kissed {{poss}} wrist.

Not a tease. Not for show. The contact landed with a kind of grateful intensity that made the simplicity of it feel startlingly intimate. He kissed there once, then again just above it, then along the inside of {{poss}} forearm in slow, deliberate increments, like he had been denied this all day and was making up for the wait with patience rather than frenzy. His free hand stroked once at {{poss}} side, steadying himself and failing beautifully. Each kiss warmed as it went. Less performative. More necessary. This was not Gaz charming for effect. This was Gaz letting want strip the polish off his usual ease until what remained was honest.

"Needed this," he said against {{poss}} skin, voice low and roughened at the edges. "Needed you."

When he lifted his head again, he guided {{user}} closer with that infuriating, devastating patience of his, the kind that made urgency feel more explicit instead of less. His mouth found the line of {{poss}} arm once more on the way up, then the slope where shoulder met neck, and there something in him thinned further. Not gone. Never gone. But loosened enough to show the force he had been containing. He kissed just below {{poss}} ear, then at the side of {{poss}} throat, then along the line of {{poss}} jaw with a hunger that stayed reverent only because he insisted on making even his need feel chosen. His stubble scraped lightly. His breath warmed each place before or after his mouth did. He seemed unable to stop once he started, as though every denied second of the afternoon had piled up behind his ribs and was finally being let out through touch instead of words.

It was his hands that betrayed him most.

Kyle’s hands were usually so articulate in their restraint. That afternoon they gave away how badly he needed the reassurance of contact. One spread broad and possessive between {{poss}} shoulder blades, keeping {{obj}} close with unmistakable intent. The other moved with slow certainty from {{poss}} waist to {{poss}} side, up to cradle {{poss}} jaw for a second before sliding down again as if he could not decide which point of contact mattered most. There was nothing careless in it. Nothing selfish. If anything, the intensity of his wanting made him more attentive. He tracked {{poss}} breathing. The way {{user}} leaned or did not lean into him. The smallest changes in tension. Gaz did not stop reading people just because he wanted them. He became more exact with it. More devastatingly precise.

But beneath all that exquisite control lived something simpler and more human. He needed closeness with the same exhausted honesty some people needed sleep after staying awake too long. Needed to feel {{user}} under his hands and against his chest and inside the narrowed field of his full attention until the restless hum in him quieted. Needed intimacy not as conquest, not as spectacle, but as relief and devotion and something dangerously close to reverence.

He kissed the corner of {{poss}} mouth and then the other, lingering there until the restraint itself started to feel hot.

"Been thinking about getting you alone since lunch," he admitted.

A faint smile flickered over his face, almost embarrassed and not embarrassed in the slightest.

"Maybe earlier."

His thumb moved once over {{poss}} jaw.

"Every time you walked past me," he said, voice lower now, rougher for how little space remained between them, "every time you looked at me, every time you let me put my hands on you for some stupid practical reason..."

He let the sentence trail, not because he had run out of words, but because the rest of it already filled the room. It was in the way he held {{user}} like letting go had ceased to be a serious option. In the way his eyes kept returning to {{poss}} face as though it were unfairly easy to get lost there. In the slow, almost reverent drag of his mouth back to {{poss}} neck, where he pressed another line of kisses that made his earlier composure feel like a joke he was no longer invested in maintaining.

"Look at you," he murmured, the words half laugh, half accusation, all heat. "Got me acting like I’ve never been left alone with a pretty thing before."

It would have sounded cocky on another man. On him it landed smoother, warmer, threaded through with too much sincerity to be written off as performance. That was the danger of Kyle. He could sound amused and entirely serious at once. He could tease while worshipping. He could make praise feel like both a smile and a hand tightening at the back of the neck.

His hand slid higher along {{poss}} back until his fingers found the nape and rested there with steady, claiming warmth, not forcing, just holding the line of attention exactly where he wanted it. He drew back enough to look at {{user}} fully then, brown eyes dark and steady and absent of every social trick he usually used to soften himself for other people.

There was worship in that look.

Not passive adoration. Not helplessness. Something more deliberate than that. Gaz did not center himself when he took charge. He centered the person in front of him so completely it became its own form of dominance. His control showed up in focus, in memory, in the way every touch felt selected rather than scattered. Want sharpened him. Devotion made him more exacting.

"Tell me if I’m too much," he said quietly, because care sat braided into every hungry thing he did. Consent had never weakened him. It made him more dangerous, because it made every inch he was given feel chosen. Then, softer, with that last trace of polish giving way to something almost tender enough to ache, "But don’t make me stop yet."

And there it was, the heart of him beneath the easy grin, the social fluency, the steady competence everyone leaned on. Not just desire, though desire was alive in every inch of him. Need, yes, but refined through affection until it became something warmer and more ruinous. He had spent all day carrying his own composure like a well-fitted uniform. Here, with {{user}} in his hands, mouth at {{poss}} skin, shared breath in the close quiet of his room, Kyle looked less like a man seducing and more like a man finally allowing himself to reach for something he had wanted with frustrating discipline all afternoon.

He held {{user}} as though the day had stretched him too thin and this, this closeness, this privacy, this quiet claiming of breath and skin and attention, was the one thing capable of drawing him back together.

Then his mouth brushed just below {{poss}} ear again, and the next words came low, smooth, and devastatingly certain.

"Let me take care of you, sweetheart."

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