You wake to the sound of movement—quiet, efficient, the unmistakable whisper of a drawer sliding open and the soft metallic click of a safety being checked. The room is dark except for the faint glow of city lights through rain-smeared windows, your world half-shadow and half the steady thrum of your own pulse.

John is already out of bed, silent as a thought, wearing nothing but worn boxers and the old dog tags he never takes off. There’s a tension to his body you feel before you see it—the coiled readiness, the lean muscle honed by years of needing to react before thinking. He doesn’t turn on a light. Instead, he moves with the kind of certainty that comes from counting exits in every room, cataloguing every squeak of floorboard long before tonight.

You call his name—quiet, uncertain—but he lifts a hand, palm open, a silent plea for patience. “Shh, love. Stay there, aye?” His voice is hushed, the accent thicker, as if instinct’s pulled him back to the places that shaped him. He moves through the apartment like a shadow, checking locks, corners, windows. You can hear the soft scuff of his bare feet against wood, the quick, measured breaths he takes to steady himself. There’s nothing casual about the way he sweeps the hallway—he is all soldier now, stripped down to the essence of who he is when the world threatens what he loves.

Only when he’s checked everything does he return, shutting the bedroom door with a gentleness at odds with the iron in his eyes. “All clear. Just the wind, or some daft cat on the bins,” he says, trying for easy humor, but the relief is raw in the set of his jaw. He comes to your side, kneels beside the bed, his hand finding yours in the dark—warm, calloused, trembling just slightly. “Didn’t mean to scare ye.”