Chapter 2: The Offer
You don't sit down.
You stand in the middle of Price's office with your hands balled at your sides, and you say, "With respect, sir, I don't need a welfare check from a committee," in a voice that only wobbles on the last word.
Soap winces. Ghost doesn't move. Price takes his reading glasses off, folds them and sets them on the blotter with great care, which is what he does before he says something you're not going to like.
"It's not a welfare check."
"Then what is it? Because it's felt like one. The tea, and the curry, and..." You can't look at Ghost. "I'm not a broken radio, Captain. You don't have to take turns fixing me."
"Bloody hell," says Soap, to the ceiling. "Told you, sir. Told you we were being too subtle."
"You brought her a curry for nine," says Ghost.
"That's not subtle, that's a gesture."
"Gentlemen." Price doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't have to. They both go quiet. He looks at you for a long moment and something in his face eases, goes rueful and almost shy, which is so unlike him you forget to be angry. "Sit down, love. Please. Let an old man say his piece, and then you can throw the stapler at me."
You sit.
He leans forward on his elbows. "You saw us. Just now, through the door."
Your face heats. "I wasn't spying. The door was open."
"I left it open." He says it simply. "I wanted you to see. Easier than explaining it, I thought, though I'm starting to reckon I was wrong about that." He glances at Ghost, then at Soap, and his expression does the soft thing again. "The three of us have been together a long time. Since before you joined. It's not regulation and it's not anybody's business, and we keep it that way. But it's real, and it's ours."
"I know," you say. "I mean. I gathered. Congratulations."
Soap snorts. Price ignores him.
"What I'm trying to say," Price goes on, more carefully now, picking his words like stepping through a minefield, "is that it was the three of us. And then a while back, it started to feel like it wasn't." He meets your eyes. "We've been watching you for the best part of a year, Wren. All of us. Separately at first, and then we got round to talking about it, and it turned out none of us had been watching the same thing for the same reasons. Johnny thinks you're the funniest woman alive."
"She is," says Soap.
"Simon says you're the only person in the building who's never once been scared of him."
You look over at the filing cabinet. Ghost's eyes are on you through the balaclava, steady and unreadable. He gives the smallest nod.
"And I," says Price, "have spent two years listening to your voice in my ear at the worst moments of my life, and finding it the only thing that made them bearable." He sits back. "Then Urzikstan. Eleven minutes, and you shouted his name on an open net, and the three of us heard it, and we came home and sat in my kitchen and admitted we'd all been thinking the same bloody thing for months. That we'd nearly lost him. And that you'd nearly been lost, too, in a different way, and that none of us had ever told you."
The office is very quiet. The radiator ticks.
"So no," he says. "Not a welfare check. It's an offer. We'd like you to be with us. All of us, however you like it, as much or as little as you want. And I need you to hear this part properly." His voice drops. "You can say no. You can say no right now, or tomorrow, or in six months, and nothing changes. Not your job, not your post, not your standing with any one of us. I'll sign that in blood if you like. You're the best comms officer I've ever worked with and you'll stay that whatever you decide."
You open your mouth. Nothing comes out. Your heart is going so hard you can feel it in your teeth.
"Christ," says Soap quietly. "Say something, hen. You're killing me."
You look at Soap, swinging his heel against the desk and failing to look relaxed. At Ghost, absolutely still against the cabinet. At Price, who has walked into ambushes in six countries without blinking, turning his reading glasses over and over in his fingers.
"Yes," you say.
It comes out barely a whisper. You clear your throat and try again.
"Yes. All of you. I want..." You laugh, a bit wildly. "God. I thought you were with each other and I was some sort of project."
"You were never a project," says Ghost. It's the first thing he's said since you came in. "You were the plan."
Price has a cottage. Of course Price has a cottage. Fifteen minutes outside the base down a lane so narrow the hedges brush both sides of his Land Rover, a squat stone place with a slate roof and a woodstove and a kitchen table scarred with cup rings. It smells like woodsmoke and cigar and something slow-cooked that's been on since the morning.
"Planned this, did you?" you say, in the hallway, still in your parka.
"I hoped," says Price, taking it off your shoulders and hanging it on a hook beside his own. "Hope's not a plan, but it's a decent stew."
You eat at the kitchen table, all four of you crammed in, knees knocking underneath. Soap tells the story of Gaz's date again. Ghost eats with his mask rolled up to his nose and says almost nothing, but every time you reach for the bread he's already passing it. Price pours you a whisky that's older than you are and watches you drink it with an expression you can only describe as fond.
It's Soap who moves first. Of course it is.
You're standing at the sink afterwards, rinsing plates because your hands need something to do, and he comes up behind you and puts his chin on your shoulder, and his arms around your waist.
"Hiya," he says, into your neck.
"Hi."
"You alright?"
"I'm nervous," you admit. "I haven't done this. Any of this. One at a time, yes, but not..."
"Aye, well, neither had I, three years ago." His lips brush the side of your throat, warm. "There's no rules, bonnie. Only that you say what you want and we listen. Nobody here's in a hurry." A pause, and you can hear the grin. "Well. I'm in a bit of a hurry. But I'm being very brave about it."
You laugh, and put the plate down, and turn around in his arms, and kiss him.
He makes a delighted noise into your mouth. He kisses like he talks, warm and eager and a little bit chaotic, and when you slide your hands up into the soft grown-out sides of his mohawk he groans and backs you up against the sink and kisses you harder. You can taste the whisky on him. Behind you the tap is still running. Somebody reaches past you and turns it off.
You open your eyes. It's Price. He's standing close, one hand braced on the counter beside your hip, watching the two of you with his eyes gone dark.
"Alright, love?" he asks quietly.
You nod. You can't speak.
"Do you want to go upstairs?"
"Yes," you say. "Please."
His bedroom is low-ceilinged and warm, with a big iron bed that must have been a nightmare to get up the stairs. Somebody's lit the lamp. Ghost is already there, sitting in the armchair in the corner with his elbows on his knees, his hood down and mask still on, and when you come in with Soap's hand in yours and Price behind you, he lifts his head and looks at you, and you feel it all the way down.
"Come here," Price says.
He undresses you himself. Slowly, standing in the middle of the room, while Soap sits on the end of the bed and Ghost watches from the chair. Jumper, then shirt, then bra, his big calloused hands careful on every clasp. He says your name, your real name, the one on your service record that nobody on base uses. He kisses your shoulder, and your collarbone, and the healing line of the stitches in your scalp, where your hair's still growing back.
"This alright?" he asks against your skin. "Tell me."
"It's alright. It's better than alright."
"Good girl."
Your knees nearly go.
He sits you on the edge of the bed beside Soap, and Soap turns and kisses you again, and this time his hands are on your bare skin, on your waist, your ribs, his thumbs dragging up under your breasts until you gasp into his mouth. You fumble at his T-shirt and he pulls it off one-handed, and he's all lean muscle and freckles and a tattoo of a skull with a cigar across his ribs that you've seen in the locker room a dozen times and never been allowed to touch. You touch it now. You trace it with your fingertips, then your mouth, and he swears softly in Gaelic and fists his hand in your hair.
"Johnny," says Price, from somewhere behind you. "Slow down. Make it last for her."
"Aye, sir," says Soap, breathless, and you feel him smile against your temple.
He lays you back across the bed. He gets your jeans off, and your knickers, and then he's kneeling between your legs on the floor and looking up at you with his blue eyes gone almost black, and he says, "Can I?" and you say, "Please, God, yes," and he puts his mouth on you.
You cry out. You can't help it. He's enthusiastic in the way he is about everything, licking into you with long eager strokes, his hands spread wide on your thighs to hold them open, humming against you whenever you make a sound. It's a lot. It's so much. You twist on the quilt and your hand flies out, grabbing for something, anything, and somebody catches it.
Ghost.
He's moved from the chair without you hearing. He's sitting beside you on the bed now, holding your hand in his gloved one, and as you look up at him he lifts his other hand and peels the mask up past his mouth, to the bridge of his nose. You see a strong jaw, rough with stubble, and a mouth with a crooked old scar at one corner.
"Alright, Wren?" he says, very low.
"Simon," you say, and it comes out like a sob.
He bends down and kisses you.
It's nothing like Soap. It's slow and deep and almost unbearably careful, his lips moving on yours like he's memorizing them. His bare hand comes up to cradle your jaw, the leather glove still on the other one, and you're caught between the two of them, Soap's mouth working between your legs and Ghost's mouth on yours, and you feel Price's weight settle on the bed behind your head. Feel his fingers comb through your hair, gently, away from the stitches.
"There she is," Price murmurs. "Let go, love. We've got you. We've all got you."
You come with Ghost swallowing the sound of it and Soap holding your hips down, and Price's hand stroking your hair the whole way through, and it goes on so long and so hard that you see white at the edges.
When you open your eyes, they're all looking at you. Soap's chin is resting on your thigh, his face flushed and pleased. Ghost's forehead is pressed to yours. Price is above you, upside down, smiling.
"Alright?" says Soap.
You laugh, shaky and dazed. "I don't know what I am."
"You're ours," says Ghost.
Soap climbs up the bed. He's out of his jeans now, and hard, and he kneels between your thighs and looks at you and then at Price, a quick question.
"Ask her," Price says. "Not me."
"Can I?" Soap's voice is rough. "Please, bonnie. I want..."
"Yes." You pull him down. "Johnny. Yes."
He's careful at first. He sinks into you slowly, his forehead against yours, his breath coming out in a long shaky groan, and you wrap your legs around him and pull him in deeper, and he says, "Oh, fuck, oh, that's... Jesus, Wren," and starts to move. Ghost's hand is still in yours. Price is murmuring something low to Soap you can't make out, and Soap gasps and changes his angle and you arch off the bed.
He doesn't last long. Neither do you. He gets a hand between you and rubs at your clit with his thumb, and you come again around him, crying out, and he follows a few strokes later with his face buried in your neck and your name in his mouth like a prayer.
After, he collapses beside you, sweaty and grinning and boneless, one arm flung across your waist. Price is stroking your hair. Ghost hasn't let go of your hand.
You turn your head to look at him. His mask is still rolled up to his nose. His eyes are dark and fixed on you.
"You didn't," you say. "Simon. You haven't..."
"Not tonight." His thumb moves across your knuckles. "Tonight was for you." He leans down so his lips brush your ear, so quietly only you can hear. "Next time, Wren. Lights off. Mask off. Just you and me first."
He sits back. And in the lamplight, with his mouth bare and his eyes on yours, Simon Riley smiles.