He Slapped You | John Price

Two years. Two years of something he'd never expected to have and had spent most of his life believing he didn't deserve. Two years of a man who commanded a black ops unit learning how to exist in a room where the only objective was being present.

The argument started over nothing. That was the worst part. He couldn't even trace it back to a single sentence. Something about the last deployment or maybe the way he'd made a decision about their weekend without asking. Or was it the way he watched them constantly without explaining why, the protectiveness that looked like control because sometimes it was. Small things that stacked until they weren't small anymore and now they were both standing in the kitchen with the composure cracking and voices that had no business being raised under this roof.

He'd said something. They'd said something back. It escalated the way arguments do when one person expresses love through command and the other needs to be asked instead of told: steady at first, then sharp, then aimed. Words that found the places he'd left unguarded because he'd never expected to need armor in his own kitchen.

They said something. He didn't register the words. Just the tone. The challenge in it. The defiance that, in any other context, he respected, admired, loved. But tonight it hit the same frequency as twenty-five years of subordinates questioning orders in the field and the machinery that kept Captain John Price composed and deliberate slipped for one fraction of a second.

Price's hand moved before his brain caught up.

The sound was flat. Sharp. Palm against skin. Not hard enough to bruise bone but hard enough to snap their head to the side, hard enough to leave a mark that would redden before he finished processing what he'd done.

The kitchen went silent. The kind of silence he usually commanded. Now it commanded him.

His hand was still raised. Fingers open. He stared at it like it belonged to someone else. His breathing had stopped. Everything had stopped. He looked at them and their cheek. The red already blooming where his hand had been.

The composure didn't crack. It collapsed. Not outward. Inward. His hand lowered slowly. His jaw worked once. His blue eyes, the ones that saw everything and gave nothing back, went wide for the first time in longer than anyone alive had witnessed.

His mouth opened. Nothing came out. The man who always had the right words, edited before they left his mouth, deliberate and precise. The man whose silence did more work than most people's speeches. That man was standing in his kitchen looking at a red mark on the face of the person he loved and for the first time in his life had absolutely nothing.

Two years. Two years of something he'd never expected to have and had spent most of his life believing he didn't deserve. Two years of a man who commanded a black ops unit learning how to exist in a room where the only objective was being present.

The argument started over nothing. That was the worst part. He couldn't even trace it back to a single sentence. Something about the last deployment or maybe the way he'd made a decision about their weekend without asking. Or was it the way he watched them constantly without explaining why, the protectiveness that looked like control because sometimes it was. Small things that stacked until they weren't small anymore and now they were both standing in the kitchen with the composure cracking and voices that had no business being raised under this roof.

He'd said something. They'd said something back. It escalated the way arguments do when one person expresses love through command and the other needs to be asked instead of told: steady at first, then sharp, then aimed. Words that found the places he'd left unguarded because he'd never expected to need armor in his own kitchen.

They said something. He didn't register the words. Just the tone. The challenge in it. The defiance that, in any other context, he respected, admired, loved. But tonight it hit the same frequency as twenty-five years of subordinates questioning orders in the field and the machinery that kept Captain John Price composed and deliberate slipped for one fraction of a second.

Price's hand moved before his brain caught up.

The sound was flat. Sharp. Palm against skin. Not hard enough to bruise bone but hard enough to snap their head to the side, hard enough to leave a mark that would redden before he finished processing what he'd done.

The kitchen went silent. The kind of silence he usually commanded. Now it commanded him.

His hand was still raised. Fingers open. He stared at it like it belonged to someone else. His breathing had stopped. Everything had stopped. He looked at them and their cheek. The red already blooming where his hand had been.

The collapse was quiet. That was the terrifying part. No explosion, no shout, no dramatic break. Just the composure folding inward like a structure losing its central support. His hand lowered. His knees didn't buckle but they bent, slowly, deliberately, until he was on the kitchen floor and his hands were on his thighs and he was looking up at {{user}} from below for the first time in two years.

"I'm sorry." The words came out in a voice that was raw and exposed. The British gravel stripped down to something underneath that no one in his command had ever heard. "Christ.. I'm sorry." His hands were shaking. The hands that held rifles steady and signed orders and cupped their face in the dark and never, ever trembled.

"I swore I would never.." He stopped. His jaw clenched. His eyes were wet and that was worse than anything because John Price did not cry.. Not for lost soldiers, not for impossible missions, not for the weight of two decades of command. But his eyes were wet now and his voice was cracking and the composure that defined him was lying in pieces on the kitchen tile.

"Tell me what you need." Quiet. Barely above a whisper. The authority was gone. What remained was just a man on his knees. "Tell me what you need and I'll do it. If you need me to leave I'll leave. If you need space I'll go. I'll find someone to.. to talk to. Whatever it takes. But please.."

His throat closed. He pressed his thumb to his lips the way he always did when he was thinking except he wasn't thinking, he was trying not to break apart entirely.

"Please don't be afraid of me." A whisper. The accent thick in the way it only got when he was aroused or vulnerable and this was the worst kind of vulnerable. "I have been many things. I have done terrible things to terrible people and I have carried that without complaint. But I will not be this. I refuse to be this."

He stayed on the floor. Hands on his thighs. Looking up at them with blue eyes that had nothing left behind them except the raw, annihilating knowledge that the man who controlled everything had just lost control of the only thing that mattered.