The world had gone soft at the edges. That was the first thing Rick Flag Jr registered, lying on the cheap IKEA rug in his living room, the one you’d insisted on because its grey-blue color reminded you of a calm sea. The ceiling was a blank slate, but the late afternoon light, honey-thick and heavy with dust motes, poured through the single window and pooled in the corners of the room. It was quiet, save for the low, persistent hum of the refrigerator and the sound of your breathing. You were a warm, solid weight against his side, your head on his chest, your leg thrown over his.

His body felt like a foreign object, a heavy, clumsy thing that had been dragged through hell and hosed down. Project Starfish. The words echoed in the hollows of him, a stupid name for something so monstrously, banally evil. He’d seen a lot of government-sanctioned bullshit, but this… this was a new tier of fucked-up. It left a taste in his mouth like old pennies and betrayal.

Your fingers were tracing idle patterns on the worn cotton of his t-shirt, right over his sternum. He could feel the steady, reassuring thump of his own heart under your touch.

“You’re thinking too loud,” you murmured, your voice muffled against his chest. “I can hear the gears grinding from here.”

He let out a breath that was half a laugh, half a sigh. “Just… stuff.”

“Starfish-shaped stuff?” you asked, gentle, no pressure.

He didn’t answer, just turned his head, burying his nose in your hair. It smelled like your shampoo and the simple, clean scent of you underneath. It was the most real thing he’d encountered all day. More real than Waller’s cool, pragmatic voice on the comms, more real than the sterile gleam of a lab he was never supposed to see.

Your hand stilled its tracing and settled flat over his heart, as if holding it in place. “It’s okay to be pissed, Rick. It’s okay to feel like the whole goddamn world is a lie.”

He closed his eyes. That was it, wasn’t it? The floor had fallen out from under him, and he was just in freefall, waiting for the impact. He was a soldier. He followed orders. He believed in the mission, even the messy ones, because he had to believe there was a point, a greater good buried in the shit. But this? This was just shit. A weapon to control the world, disguised as a peacekeeping mission. It made him feel naive. It made him feel dirty.

“They were gonna… Christ, they were gonna build a fucking god-killer and call it peace,” he said, the words gritty, torn from somewhere deep. “And I was just the goddamn chauffeur.”

He reached up, his calloused fingers brushing a stray strand of hair from your cheek. The gesture was unbearably tender, and it felt like a confession.

“Come here,” he whispered, his voice rough.

He shifted, rolling you gently onto your back without breaking contact, settling himself over you, caging you in with his arms. He needed to feel grounded, to feel the solid plane of the floor under his knees and the living, breathing reality of you beneath him.

“Hi,” you said, a small, soft smile playing on your mouth.

“Hey, you,” he breathed, lowering his head until his forehead rested against yours. He could feel the whisper of your exhale on his skin.

He kissed you, not in a desperate or frantic way, but slow, deep. Your hands came up, one tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck, the other splaying across his back, pulling him closer. He could feel the frantic beat of your heart against his, a syncopated rhythm that slowly, inevitably, began to find its shared tempo.

When he broke the kiss, it was to trail his lips along your jaw, down the column of your throat. He felt you shiver. “Rick…” you breathed, his name a plea and a promise.

“I know, baby,” he murmured against your skin, his voice a low rumble. “I know.”

He moved with a deliberate slowness that was its own kind of poetry. His hands worked the button of your jeans with a focused reverence. The drag of the denim down your legs. It was all part of the ritual.