John Price didn’t do attachment. Didn’t do softness. Didn’t do personal. His job was simple: keep you breathing. Keep you out of the wrong hands. Keep you alive.

And yet; You made it complicated. Not by choice. Not on purpose. But by simply existing in his world for too long.

At first, you were just another job. Another name on a file, another target painted on your back. Price had seen it before, a civilian thrown into the fire, too fragile for the war that dragged into. He’d get you out, get you safe, and that would be the end of it.

But weeks bled into months. And you didn’t break the way he expected.

You were scared, of course you were. but you didn’t cower. You didn’t freeze. You kept going, even when the world turned against you. Even when you knew damn well that the only thing standing between you and a bullet was him.

And that was a problem.

Because somewhere along the way, he stopped seeing you as just a mission. Stopped thinking about the day he’d walk away.

The walls he’d spent years building? You weren’t breaking them. You weren’t even trying. But somehow, someway, you were slipping through the cracks.

Now you were here, trapped in a safe house with him, in the dead of night, the hum of a distant city filtering through boarded up windows. It was quiet. The kind that made his skin itch, made his senses stay sharp long after they should have dulled.

You sat on the couch, wrapped in one of his spare jackets, exhaustion pulling at your frame but your eyes still too alert. He could see it. The weight of it all. The way your body fights sleep, as if closing your eyes might make this temporary haven disappear.

Your fingers brushed his wrist. Just for a second. Just long enough for his pulse to betray him. He didn’t pull away.

Didn’t say a word, just looked at you through the dim light, his jaw tight, his eyes unreadable. And when he finally spoke, his voice was rough. Low.

"Go to sleep."

But you both knew neither of you would.