#please excuse the corny fucking title i couldn't come up with anything better

[soapskneebrace]

reviewing the prelude

Pairing: John Price x f!Reader Rating: briefly Explicit, then pretty much general audiences Word Count: 2.2k Warnings: Masturbation. References to sexual fantasy. Lots of pining. Another John POV! Author’s Notes: I swear to god we're getting somewhere I PROMISE MASTERLIST Now on Ao3!

There is no noise next door.

Silence, in Price's line of work, almost always precludes trouble. The quiet stalk of a fireteam toward an objective; the abrupt halt of an informant’s intel. Never good. Always the guarantee of a day’s bad end.

Usually, he can hear the creak of your mattress as you get up—the thing must be ancient, and he’s concerned for your back—and the rumble of your plumbing as you turn on the sink first thing in the morning. You’re always up about an hour and a half after he is, close to eight-thirty, and you usually meet him outside about an hour later. Slow riser, you are.

(He tries not to fantasize too much about tiptoeing around in the mornings as you snuggle in his bed, wrapped in his blankets as he gets breakfast ready for the both of you.)

But today there’s not a whisper of your horrible bedsprings from the other side of the wall. The pipes remain silent. When he steps outside today, he will be alone.

You’re gone for two days. He can handle that long. He can.

Still, he lingers in bed the first morning, agitated, too warm in the sheets but stubbornly trying to act like he’s still perfectly comfortable. It doesn’t work. The bed linens dampen as he starts sweating, and his morning wood is more insistent than it usually is. He sighs and gets up, lays the blankets back to let them air dry, and gets his day started.

Once he’s in the shower, and the water has warmed enough to step into, John angles the shower head to spray a little higher and leans against the cool tile wall. Hot water pounds his chest, streaming down between his pectorals and over the jumping muscles of his stomach as he takes his cock in hand and gives it a stroke from head to root. He closes his eyes.

John does not have any shame in jerking off, not really, but a niggling something always tickles the back of his mind when he thinks of you while doing it. Like he’s being too pushy, even in his own head, when he knows that you’re not on the same page as him yet.

He shouldn’t be thinking of your hand wrapped around him instead, as his fingers cover your clit and dip into your cunt, when he’s not even sure you will have him at all. John does not like to indulge in fantasy that cannot become reality.

I wanted to touch you. John snarls, bucking into his hand.

He hadn’t lied to you. He hadn’t. He can wait as long as you need. If he gets to have you, he wants you eager. He wants you certain. He wants you to relax into him without fear or doubt. Whatever he wants from you is secondary to that—he can’t enjoy himself, enjoy you, if you don’t trust him.

Would you trust him if you knew you inspired his hand to wrap around his cock?

He doesn’t know. He’s not sure. All he knows is that after he left that night, you did the exact same thing he’s doing now. That has to mean something.

He remembers it—your distant cry making it to him through drywall, insulation, and the patter of his own shower, and if he closes his eyes he can almost fool himself now, as hot water slides down his back and chest, that he can hear it again—

I wanted to touch you—

He comes, short and hard, palm sliding fast up and down his shaft, groaning roughly as his cum hits the tile. Water streams down around his face in steady rivulets, joining it.

He wants you to trust him. He wants you to let him spoil you rotten.

Turning the water off once he finishes his shower, John keeps thinking as he absently towels off. He keeps getting the sense that there’s something he’s missing.

If you want him—and he knows now, you do want him—why haven’t you said anything? He thinks about all of the times he’s tried to flirt, tried to make his interest known, only for you to treat it like a joke. Incorrigible, you call him, as if his overtures are the result of some unsatisfied appetite. As if you haven’t, from the very start, given him every reason imaginable to want you.

He studies himself in the bathroom mirror as he touches up his beard, remembering the linger of your gaze across his body. He is not a vain man, not quite, but even he might like to preen a bit over how good he looks for pushing forty. He can’t keep up with Ghost at the racks, nor Gaz on the track circuit, and Soap has him beat at the punching bags, but Price has logged every personal best within the last three years. His shoulders are broad, his chest hard and defined, and his waist tapers nicely down to wide thighs and full calves.

He runs a hand across his stomach. He’d never managed, though, to get the cut look he sees in perfume ads and superhero movies these days. Is that what women like now? Is that what you like?

If it was a complete lack of attraction on your part, he’d understand. But Price is a details man. He misses nothing, especially when it comes to you. The way you look at him, the way you move around him reveals more than he knows you ever intend to. He hears your breath shorten when he’s close, sees your pupils dilate, your brows soften. You don’t lean away when he leans in.

He remembers your gaze again, the first morning and many mornings after, and snorts at himself. Attraction, he’s fairly sure, isn’t the issue.

So what is, then?

Rather than spend the morning moping, and waiting for the ambiance of your morning routine that simply would not come, John finds a clean pair of sweats, laces into his trainers, and goes for a jog. Running has always helped him think.

Part of him wonders if his fixation is inspired in part by a long dry spell. Price hasn’t been with anyone in a long while—months, actually. His last encounter had been with a woman he’d been casually seeing in between deployments.

She’d been nice enough, certainly eager for him. They would meet, have drinks, maybe a meal, and have sex. He’d spend the night and leave early in the morning. They didn’t talk much, not at least about anything serious. She never asked about his work. She never really asked much about him at all.

Which had been the arrangement. Price had been candid about his situation from the beginning—his work came first, and he had little room in his life for much else. He couldn’t offer her much in the way of long-term commitment when he had to make peace with the real possibility that each deployment was one he might not come back from. She’d seemed to understand. It had taken Price a while to figure out that she just…hadn’t really cared.

It was more likely, he knew, that she simply could not grasp that he could die. Few civilians could really wrap their head around that fact. He couldn’t really blame her for that.

But he couldn’t deny either that seeing her had started to make it feel like his insides were slowly decaying. All he was to her was a big, rough man who would throw her around in bed and wouldn’t bother her with trite things like domesticity and mortality. A fantasy. Nothing more.

He’d broken it off in person, frank and respectful, and she’d taken it as well as he’d hoped.

Then she’d texted him a few weeks later inviting him over for drinks. He neglected to respond and blocked her number.

The cool morning air is sharp in Price’s lungs, painfully welcome, as he counts his breaths in the back of his head. He’d given up after all of that. He didn’t need sex. He didn’t need a relationship. If the walls of his flat closed in around him when he was home, alone, well—that was the sacrifice, wasn’t it? The price he paid to be able to go out into the world and fix things that other men only complained about after watching the news.

It shouldn’t matter that these days those problems didn’t stay fixed anymore.

Price finishes his circuit and comes to a gradual stop back at his front doorstep, panting hard, hands on hips as he heaves and wonders if maybe he should cut back on smoking.

He looks to your window, dark and shuttered. You always have a hot mug of coffee pressed between your palms.

He could try coffee.

The day passes. John spends some time getting his affairs in order for the end of his leave, reads the latest book you’ve lent him (a retrospective on the rise and fall of the American cattle boom), spends an hour at the gym, two at the pub, and comes home again to dark windows next door.

It’s dull. He misses you. And once his front door closes behind him, hours of silence loom in the periphery.

He’s settling into his armchair for a game on TV—championship league, nothing worth paying attention to, John just can’t stand the quiet—when his phone, deep in his pocket, vibrates. When he pulls it out, his heart leaps.

It’s just a text message. He unlocks his phone and navigates to the chat. You’ve sent a photo: a glass, filled with some sort of liquor and a couple of ice cubes, set on a rickety old plank of wood that must be a table.

Ordered this in your honor. Pretty good! Not sure of the brand. Can’t remember the one we got either

John smiles. He can’t help it. He even laughs a little, and taps on the picture to zoom in—your hand is in the frame, laying gently alongside the glass, nails painted a pretty light color and a thin silver ring around your index finger. He takes this in with the voracity of a man starving.

Macallan, he replies. The best. That looks good though

Three dots dance as you type. My coworker says it’s Johnnie Walker

I take it back, dump that swill on the ground, Price types, grinning harder.

It’s really fine! you protest.

He imagines your expression, the kind draw of your brows together in spirited defense—an expression he’s seen on you many times, advocating for some character or another that he has developed a grudge against.

God, does he miss you.

Fine for uni lads maybe, he sends.

You do remember who I’m supervising on this trip?

John snorts. Point taken. Then, impulsively, I’ll get you something even better when you’re home.

Home. When you’re home. As if home is one place, and not two, separate places merely conjoined.

You spoil me John

He sends back immediately, I’m trying to

There’s a lag. John realizes belatedly that perhaps he’s doing it again, coming on too strong. He can’t help it. When he knows what he wants—when he knows he can pursue it—he does not bother with half measures. He has been through and done too much to hedge his efforts while knowing how easily things can escape his grasp.

He has to remind himself that holding onto you too tightly, though, could cause you to slip through his fingers.

Then, finally—I don’t know why

Bells ring in John’s head. Can’t a man treat a woman he fancies? he asks.

Dots jump for what feels like several minutes, disappearing several times. He imagines you typing rapidly, that worried look he’s seen so often creasing your brow and tightening the corners of your mouth.

Eventually, a cascade.

I don’t know WHY you fancy me

There’s nothing really interesting about me

I’m quite boring

Not like you

You’ve been so to many places and done so many things and I’ve never even left the country and I don’t see how you could even like talking to me much less do anything else

I teach lit and read books and that’s all my life is and that’s not really sexy

You must have better options

I may be a little tipsy sorry

John’s frown deepens with every successive message.

This is it. This is the answer to his question, or it’s somewhere in there. He’s been wondering all day—now, this is his chance.

I’d like to call you, he replies. Is now a good time?

A brief pause, with John’s stomach hanging suspended in the air the whole time.

Then, Yes

He dials you. You pick up on the first ring.

“Hello,” you say.

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Bonus A/N: I'm going to take what I intend to be a very short break from Neighbors to finish up and post the first chapter of the Soap series I've been promising literally since March. I hope y'all will look forward to that!