Chapter Text
During quiet night shifts in the medbay, Ghost keeps finding reasons to be around you. He lingers in the doorway, brings you little treats, shares tea, and lets you care for his minor injuries, building a soft, obvious attraction between you.
The medbay changed after dark.
In daylight it belonged to the base in the usual way, functional and brisk and always slightly too loud. Boots in the corridor. Radios crackling. The sharp chemical smell of antiseptic fighting a losing battle against engine grease, damp wool, metal, and men who had spent too long outdoors. During the day, the room was all clipped voices and paperwork and urgent hands moving from trolley to patient to cabinet and back again.
At night, it belonged to you.
Or as much as anything on base could.
The overhead lights stayed dimmed on the evening shift, half the banks switched off to spare tired eyes. The hum of refrigeration units became louder when the rest of the building settled. The old kettle by the side counter gave a tired rattle every time it boiled, like it objected on principle to doing its job. The windows showed nothing except reflected light and your own shape moving through it all, sleeves rolled, pen tucked behind one ear, tablet in one hand and a mug going cold on the counter because you kept forgetting it existed.
You liked nights for the same reasons most people didn’t. Fewer interruptions. Fewer people pretending they were fine. Fewer officers hovering over your shoulder wanting numbers, readiness estimates, recovery times, asking when someone would be “fit for duty” as if muscle tears and concussions cared about operational urgency.
At night, the truth came easier.
A soldier with split knuckles would admit his hand hurt too badly to close properly.
A lieutenant with a migraine would sit still long enough for you to notice his pupils were uneven and send him straight for further evaluation.
A sergeant would finally confess the cough had been there for two weeks.
At night, people stopped performing invincibility.
Or most of them did.
You were updating the controlled meds log when you heard the familiar cadence of heavy boots slow outside the open medbay door.
Not pass.
Slow.
You didn’t look up right away.
There was an art to these things. If you acknowledged him too quickly, Simon would go still in that particular way of his, as if caught doing something he had not intended anyone to notice. If you waited just long enough, he would decide for himself whether he was walking on or stepping in.
You clicked your stylus against the tablet once, twice, and then looked up.
Lieutenant Simon Riley stood just beyond the threshold, broad shoulders nearly filling the doorway, hands tucked into the pockets of his hoodie. Not regulation for formal hours, but by this point half the base stopped pretending the night shift ran on parade standards. The hood was down. The balaclava stayed on, black as the shadows in the corridor, the white skull pattern pale under the low light. His headset rested loose around his neck. He looked like he had materialized out of the dark, which, with Ghost, was never that much of an exaggeration.
“Evening,” you said.
“Evening.”
His voice was low and rough around the edges, northern and unmistakably British, the vowels flattened by sleep deprivation and old habits. He tipped his head toward the empty room. “Quiet.”
“So far.”
He gave a small grunt that might have been agreement.
You watched him for a second. “You injured?”
“No.”
“Then you’re loitering.”
One dark brow lifted above the edge of the mask. “Is that a medical term?”
“It is when it happens repeatedly in my doorway.”
“Right.” He leaned one shoulder against the frame. “Could be I’m conducting routine patrols.”
“Of the medbay?”
“High value location.”
Your mouth twitched before you could stop it. “Because of the controlled substances?”
“No.”
He said it simply, like the answer should have been obvious.
Heat stirred low in your chest, warm and quiet. It had become the shape of your evenings lately, that feeling. Small at first. Then less small.
Simon had started appearing more often a few weeks ago. At first it had been after missions, practical enough. A cut above his brow, once. Bruised ribs. Knuckles skinned raw. A shallow graze along his shoulder. He would sit on the examination bed and let you work in near silence while he watched you with those dark, steady eyes that never missed much.
Then he had started showing up even when he didn’t need treatment.
Sometimes he only walked past the door, slow enough to look in.
Sometimes he stopped to ask for tea, as if the medbay kettle had some superior quality no one else on base had discovered.
Sometimes he came in with little excuse at all, leaning on the counter while you finished paperwork, asking how many idiots had managed to concuss themselves in the training yard this week.
And sometimes you would find things.
A ration bar left near your mug.
A wrapped sweet placed beside your tablet.
Once, a packet of honey lozenges you had offhandedly mentioned liking when your throat was sore.
You had not told anyone else that.
You still had the wrapper from the first candy folded into the back of your locker like an embarrassing little secret.
Ghost flirted the way some men handled explosives, carefully, with expert restraint, and full awareness of what might happen if he slipped.
It would have been easier if he were obvious in a different way. If he smiled more. If he touched. If he pushed. But Simon Riley’s attention came quiet and deliberate, made of pauses and remembered preferences and appearing where you were, over and over, until coincidence gave up and left the room.
You set the tablet down. “Routine patrols, then. Very professional.”
“Always.”
“That why you’ve been haunting my corridor every evening this week?”
His gaze flicked briefly to your mouth, then back to your eyes. “Maybe I like the lighting.”
You laughed softly. “In the medbay.”
“Mhm.”
“Fluorescents do suit me.”
“Wouldn’t go that far,” he said, deadpan.
You narrowed your eyes at him. “Insulting medical staff is poor operational strategy.”
“Didn’t insult you.”
“No?”
His head tipped again, almost thoughtful, and there it was, that dangerous stillness of his, like all his focus had narrowed to one point. “Said the lights don’t. Different thing entirely.”
Your throat went a little dry.
You looked away first, pretending interest in the inventory tray nearest you. “You’re trouble tonight.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“By me.”
“Aye.”
You heard movement, fabric shifting. When you glanced back, he had pushed off the doorway and come inside, not far, just enough that the room acknowledged him as part of it now. He reached into his pocket, set something wrapped in silver foil on the counter near your elbow, and withdrew his hand.
Your favourite caramel sweet.
You stared at it for a beat, then at him. “You cannot bribe me.”
“Wasn’t bribing.”
“No?”
“Thought you might like it.”
You did. Ridiculously, absurdly, heart-achingly, you did.
“Thank you,” you said, softer than before.
He only nodded, but there was a shift in his posture, a faint easing through the shoulders, as if your taking it mattered more than he intended to reveal.
The radio clipped to your scrubs crackled before either of you could say anything else.
“Medbay, casualty inbound. Training injury. Two mikes.”
Your entire body switched tracks. You were already moving before the transmission ended, setting your mug aside, pulling gloves from the box, clearing space on the nearest treatment bed.
Ghost moved too.
Not out of the way. Into usefulness.
He grabbed the rolling stool and shoved it clear with one boot, then lifted a tray back onto the counter when it rattled too close to the edge. By the time the door banged open and two soldiers half-carried, half-dragged a groaning private inside, the space was ready.
“On the bed,” you ordered.
The private clutched his wrist and looked one step from being sick. Sweat stood on his forehead. “I think it’s broken.”
“You think, do you?” you said, calm by instinct. “That’s helpful. Sit.”
One of the escorts started talking at once. “Obstacle course. Fell off the wall, landed wrong, then tried to catch himself and his hand bent under him and he nearly passed out, ma’am.”
“Brilliant decision-making all around.” You nodded to the others. “You two, out unless you’re the ones bleeding.”
They disappeared immediately.
The private winced as you examined the wrist. “Hurts.”
“That will be because you injured it.”
Ghost hovered near the cabinets, not interfering, just present. The patient clocked him after a moment and visibly tried to straighten despite the pain.
“No need to impress the lieutenant,” you said dryly. “He’s not handing out medals for dramatic suffering.”
You heard, rather than saw, the tiny huff from Ghost that passed for amusement.
The wrist was not broken, not that you could tell without imaging, but it was badly sprained and swelling fast. You checked cap refill, range of motion, tenderness points, watched the private’s face, then secured the joint, wrapped it, and sent him off with orders, ice, pain relief, and strict instructions not to be an idiot tomorrow.
He thanked you twice.
He nearly saluted Ghost on the way out, thought better of it, and fled.
The medbay fell quiet again.
You peeled off your gloves and tossed them away. “You know they get more nervous when you stare at them.”
“Wasn’t staring.”
“You were being ominously silent in a corner.”
“Helpful corner.”
You smiled despite yourself. “Fair point.”
He had drifted closer while you worked. Now he stood on the other side of the treatment bed, one hand braced against the metal rail. In the dim light the lines of him seemed even sharper, all contained power, thick forearms, broad chest, the black cotton of the hoodie stretching over muscle. He looked like a man built for breaching doors and surviving impossible things, and yet he was in your medbay helping you tidy after a training sprain at nearly twenty-three hundred, as if there was nowhere else he’d rather be.
You busied your hands with the discarded wrappers and gauze. “Tea?”
His answer came too quickly to be casual. “Go on, then.”
The kettle was old enough to qualify as historical equipment, but it worked. You filled it from the sink, flicked it on, and reached for the mismatched mugs you kept above the counter. One had a chipped rim. The other had a faded cartoon fox on it, though you were fairly sure no one but you and Simon used those cups anymore.
He took the fox mug without comment when you handed it over.
That, somehow, was one of the more intimate parts of this whole strange dance. He knew which teas you preferred. You knew he took his strong, barely any milk, no sugar. He knew where you hid the decent biscuits behind the out-of-date procedural binders. You knew he would wash the mug after and leave it on the drying rack even though every rank privilege in the world said he could walk away and someone else would eventually handle it.
Domesticity in a military base looked like this. Not lace curtains and shared grocery lists. It was a contraband packet of nicer tea tucked into your drawer because he’d somehow noticed you grimacing at the standard issue stuff. It was him standing close enough that your sleeve brushed his when you both reached for the spoon. It was silence with no strain in it.
Steam curled from the mugs. You leaned back against the counter, cradling yours between your palms.
Simon took up his usual position by the side of the room, near enough to speak quietly, far enough that anyone walking in would call it nothing at all.
“How bad’s the backlog?” he asked.
You blew across the surface of your tea. “Three follow-up evals in the morning, one sergeant pretending he doesn’t have a chest infection, and a stack of reports tall enough to qualify as structural hazard.”
“Could leave the reports.”
“I could,” you said. “And then they’d become future me’s problem, and present me already hates her enough.”
“A tragedy.”
“You’re mocking me.”
“Bit.”
You glanced at him over the rim of your mug. “You look tired.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Been worse.”
That meant very little from Simon Riley. You had learned that quickly. Been worse could mean anything from mild fatigue to the sort of exhaustion that made hands shake when they thought no one was looking.
You studied him more openly. There was a faint shadow beneath his eyes. A stiffness in the way he held his left shoulder. His hands were clean, recently washed, but one knuckle looked slightly split again, a fresh crack in the skin.
“Your shoulder bothering you?”
His gaze dropped briefly, then lifted again. “S’fine.”
“Interesting. Because that answer is usually how I know it isn’t.”
His eyes held yours over the mug. “You saying I’m a liar, medic?”
“I’m saying you’re predictable.”
“Dangerous allegation.”
You set your tea down. “Sit.”
He did not move.
You crossed your arms. “Simon.”
There it was, that tiny pause. He liked his name in your mouth. You knew it. He knew you knew it.
Then, without argument, he set his mug aside and lowered himself onto the exam bed with the resigned air of a man humouring someone he had no real intention of refusing.
“Shoulder,” you said, stepping between his knees so you could reach.
Even after weeks of this, the proximity always landed like a struck match. You could smell clean soap, cold air trapped in cotton, the faintest trace of gun oil that no amount of washing ever entirely erased from certain uniforms and certain men. You touched the fabric near the seam first, giving him time to brace or pull away. He did neither.
“Lift your arm.”
He did, slow and controlled. The movement was smooth until halfway, where the muscles tightened against something deeper. Not injury enough to stop him, but enough for you to notice.
“Pulled it,” you said.
“Probably.”
“How?”
“Training.”
You looked at him flatly.
He sighed through the mask. “Sparring.”
“With?”
“Soap.”
That explained quite a lot.
“Did you win?”
He went silent.
You smiled. “You absolutely did not.”
“Not the point.”
“That means no.”
“Means he got lucky.”
“Mm.”
You palpated the joint gently, feeling where the tension sat. He was warm under the fabric. Steady. You had touched him before, of course. More than most people on base likely ever would. Wrists, ribs, throat for pulse, the broad shelf of his back as you checked old bruising, once the sharp line of his jaw when he had taken a graze high on the cheek and let you clean the blood away while glaring at everyone else in the room.
But this was different. Not medically, exactly. Only in the way the air changed around it.
“There,” he said quietly when your fingers found the worst of it.
“Thought so.”
You moved behind him and pressed your thumb into the knot of muscle near the shoulder blade. He exhaled slow.
“Hurts?”
“Bit.”
“Good.”
He turned his head slightly. “Sadistic.”
“You lot only come here when I make treatment unpleasant enough to count as penance.”
“That your strategy?”
“It’s working.”
A very soft sound came from him, not quite a laugh. You treasured those without letting it show.
You worked the tension out as best you could, careful but firm, feeling the muscle gradually yield beneath your hands. He sat still for you in a way he probably did for no one else. Trusted your touch. Trusted your judgment. On this base, with these men, with him, trust was never small.
When you finished, you stepped back. “No sparring tomorrow.”
“Can’t promise that.”
“Then I can promise this gets worse.”
He looked up at you. “Bossy.”
“You like that I’m bossy.”
The words slipped out before you could stop them.
Silence.
Not awkward. Not empty. Charged.
His eyes darkened, unreadable to anyone who did not know how much lived in the smallest shift of his expression. Then, low enough that the room seemed to lean in to hear it, he said, “Maybe.”
It was such a little thing. One word. Barely above a murmur.
It settled in your chest like a live coal.
You cleared your throat and reclaimed your mug before your face could betray too much. “Well. Medical authority. Try not to throw punches with that arm.”
“No promises, love.”
Your hand tightened on the ceramic.
He did that occasionally, dropped an endearment in that rough, effortless voice as if it meant nothing. As if he did not know exactly what it did to you. Love. Once darling, dry as dust when you’d scolded him for tearing stitches. Never often enough to feel like habit. Just enough to feel intentional.
You took a sip to hide your reaction and nearly burned your tongue.
He noticed. Of course he did.
“Careful,” he said.
“Thought you liked me injured. Keeps me in business.”
The corner of his eye crinkled, which on Ghost was practically a grin.
The hours crept on. One more walk-in came through just after midnight, a corporal with a laceration across his palm from badly handled equipment. Simon stayed while you stitched it, leaning in the corner again, arms folded, watching with that uncanny stillness. The corporal visibly sat straighter under the attention, answered every question in full sentences, and thanked you both on the way out, as if Ghost had personally overseen the procedure.
When the door shut behind him, you gave Simon a look. “You’re becoming part of the furniture.”
“Quality improvement.”
“Intimidation enhancement, more like.”
“Patient compliance was excellent.”
“Because he thought you’d kill him if he squirmed.”
“A useful clinical tool.”
You laughed, tired and real, and the sound seemed to catch him by surprise. His gaze fixed on you for half a second too long, as if he’d forgotten to mask whatever crossed his face.
You started on the report while the memory was fresh. Standing by the far wall, tablet in one hand, stylus moving quick across the screen, you typed in the treatment notes, supplies used, follow-up instructions. Your shoulders ached from the shift. Your tea was gone cold again. Somewhere down the corridor, a door slammed and someone shouted, muffled by distance.
You leaned back against the wall for support, one ankle crossing over the other, and finished the last sentence.
Laceration irrigated. Four sutures placed. Dressing applied. Patient advised to return for wound review in forty-eight hours.
You tapped submit.
A shift in the air made you glance up.
Simon was there.
Not across the room.
There.
He had moved so quietly you had not heard a thing. He leaned one shoulder against the wall beside yours, close enough that his arm nearly brushed yours, body turned toward you rather than the room. The angle of him caged you in without trapping you, broad and warm and unmistakably present. At this distance you had to tip your chin up to meet his eyes.
And he was watching you.
Not with the detached, tactical awareness he gave the rest of the world. Not the hard look that made recruits second-guess every decision they had made since enlistment. This was focused differently. Softer, though no less intense. Appreciative in a way that sent a slow, treacherous pulse through your veins.
For a second you forgot how to breathe.
“You move like a bloody ghost,” you murmured, before you could stop yourself.
One brow lifted. “Do I.”
“You know you do.”
“Thought you’d be used to it by now.”
“Maybe I prefer notice.”
His gaze dipped, just briefly, to your mouth. “You noticed.”
The room had gone very still.
You became aware of everything at once. The cool wall at your back. The heat of him beside you. The faint scrape of fabric when he shifted his weight. The pulse beating in your throat where he could probably see it. Your own hand still wrapped around the tablet, useless now, forgotten.
He was close enough that one small movement would put your shoulders against his chest.
Close enough that the clean, dark smell of him filled your head.
Close enough that you could see the shadows in his lashes, the faint scar at the edge of one eyebrow, the way his breathing stayed maddeningly steady while yours tried to trip over itself.
You swallowed. “Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere else, Lieutenant?”
“Am I?”
“That depends. Are you here for medical reasons?”
His eyes did something impossible, warming and sharpening at once. “Could make something up.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“No?”
“No.” You kept your voice even with effort. “You’ve had suspiciously minor reasons to appear in my medbay lately.”
He considered that, then nodded once. “Fair.”
“And the hovering.”
“What about it?”
You raised your brows.
He leaned a fraction closer. Not touching. Just enough to make your heart kick hard against your ribs. “You mind it?”
The honest answer lodged behind your teeth.
No. God, no.
You should have stepped away. Shifted, joked, broken the line of tension before it became something harder to manage. This was a military base. He was a lieutenant. You were the medic assigned to half the men he worked with. The walls were thin, the corridors not nearly empty enough, and gossip here spread like a brush fire.
Instead you heard yourself say, softly, “Depends.”
“On?”
“Whether you plan to say something while you’re doing it.”
For a heartbeat he only looked at you.
Then, very low, with that dry rasp that always seemed to land just under your skin, he said, “Was talking.”
“That was not talking. That was lurking with eye contact.”
His head tipped. “And now?”
You felt your own smile start, helpless against it. “Now you’re crowding the medic.”
“Dangerous?”
Your chin was already lifted for him, and from the way his gaze lingered on it, he definitely appreciated that. The realization sent warmth flooding through you so suddenly you almost laughed at yourself.
“Potentially,” you whispered.
Something changed in his eyes.
Not restraint loosening. Nothing that obvious. Simon Riley did not unravel where anyone could see. But something in him deepened, a quiet acknowledgment, like a hand laid open between you.
One of his gloved fingers lifted, slow enough to let you stop him, and caught on the edge of the tablet in your hand instead of touching you. He eased it gently from your grip and set it on the side counter without looking away.
The gesture should not have felt intimate.
It did.
Your breath snagged.
“Shift’s nearly over,” he said.
“Another hour.”
“Mhm.”
“Why?”
He seemed to weigh the question. With anyone else you might have thought he was searching for a lie. With Simon, it felt more like deciding how much truth to place in your hands.
“Tea in the mess tastes like disinfectant,” he said at last.
You stared at him.
That was not an answer, and yet with him, it was.
You huffed a quiet laugh. “So this is all about beverages.”
“Mostly.”
“Mostly.”
His eyes held yours. “And you.”
Your heartbeat stumbled.
There it was. Not a confession exactly. Simon did not do things like other people. He moved in increments, gave truths in measured portions, as if each one had weight.
And still it landed like a direct hit.
The corridor outside remained silent. No footsteps. No voices. Just the hum of fluorescent lights and the thin whistle of air through old vents.
“Simon,” you said, and his name came out softer than intended.
His shoulders shifted, minute but visible. That, too, mattered to him.
“You keep bringing me sweets,” you said.
“Do I.”
“You know you do.”
“Maybe you look like you need feeding.”
You tried for scandalized. It came out fond. “That is an outrageous thing to say to medical staff.”
“Thought you preferred honesty.”
“Not when it’s rude.”
He leaned in just enough to make your breath catch again. “Not rude.”
“No?”
His gaze swept over your face with startling care. “You work through meals. Forget your tea. Get that line between your brows when you’re focused.” A pause. “Then it goes away when I bring the caramel ones.”
You had not known he noticed that much.
The softness that bloomed in your chest hurt a little. Not in a bad way. In the way tenderness often did when it arrived somewhere hard and stayed.
“You notice too much,” you murmured.
His answer came immediate and quiet. “About you, yeah.”
You looked at him then, really looked, and what you saw was not flirting for sport. Not casual. Not convenient. This was Simon in the only way he seemed capable of being with feelings, carefully, stubbornly, with actions first and words dragged after.
You wondered what it had cost him to say even that much.
Before you could answer, the radio cracked alive again.
“Medbay, status check.”
The spell broke, thin as glass.
You exhaled sharply, hand flying to the radio clipped at your waist. “Medbay here. Operational.”
“Copy.”
Static. Silence.
You and Simon remained where you were for one impossible beat, the nearness now charged with interruption. Then he straightened, not far, just enough to put air back between you.
You missed the heat immediately, which was embarrassing.
“Right,” you said, because someone had to.
“Right,” he echoed.
He looked almost annoyed, though whether at the radio, the interruption, or himself, you could not tell.
You reached for the tablet. His hand got there first.
Your fingers brushed.
It was the lightest contact possible. Barely there. Skin to glove. Nothing that should have mattered.
It mattered.
His hand stilled under yours.
The room went silent all over again.
You did not pull away right away, and neither did he.
Then, with maddening composure, Simon lifted the tablet and passed it to you like neither of you had just forgotten the entire shape of the world for half a second.
“Report,” he said.
“Yes,” you replied, far too quickly. “Right.”
He stepped back at last, reclaiming distance the way a man might holster a weapon. Deliberate. Controlled.
“Should get out of your way,” he said.
“You don’t have to.”
The words escaped before caution could grab them.
He paused.
Your face warmed. You tried to salvage it. “You’re not in my way.”
One side of his mouth shifted beneath the mask, visible only in the faint movement of the fabric. “No?”
“No.”
He looked at you for a long second, and there was so much in it your chest felt too small to hold. Then he dipped his chin once.
“Alright.”
He did not leave immediately. Instead he returned to the counter, gathered both mugs, rinsed them at the sink, and set them on the drying rack like he always did. Domestic. Ridiculous. So achingly ordinary it almost undid you.
You finished the report while he stood there, pretending that the tiny rituals between you did not mean anything more than convenience.
When you finally glanced up again, he had moved to the doorway.
“Night, doc,” he said.
You smiled despite the ache low in your ribs. “Night, Lieutenant.”
His hand touched the frame, then dropped.
“Simon,” he corrected, without looking back.
And then he was gone, swallowed by the dim corridor beyond the medbay.
You stood very still for a moment after.
Then you looked down and found another sweet by your mug.
You had not seen him leave it.
Of course you hadn’t.
A laugh slipped out of you, soft and helpless.
You picked it up, turning the wrapper over between your fingers, and tucked it into the pocket of your scrubs like something precious.
Outside, the base kept breathing in its sleepless way. Boots somewhere in the distance. A generator thrum. Doors opening and shutting. Men moving through the machinery of war, preparing for orders, for missions, for the next inevitable injury or callout or long stretch of waiting in between.
Inside the medbay, the lights hummed. The kettle clicked as it cooled. Your half-finished reports waited. The smell of tea still lingered in the air.
And somewhere in the corridor, Simon Riley was walking away with that careful, measured restraint of his, leaving behind caramel sweets and clean mugs and tension you could still feel in your pulse.
Softness in places like this was never simple.
It existed anyway.
In the cup he always washed.
In the ration bar left by your elbow when you forgot to eat.
In the way he came to you hurt and let you patch him back together.
In the way he lingered, hovered, circled back.
In the way his voice changed when he said your name.
You knew better than to call it safe. Nothing on base was safe. Not truly. Not when deployment rosters changed overnight, not when helicopters lifted in darkness, not when blood could turn from abstract possibility to red reality in less time than it took a kettle to boil.
Maybe that was why the gentleness mattered so much.
Because it was made in spite of all that.
Because Simon, who carried violence like a second skin and wore his own ghosts as naturally as his rank, still found his way to your doorway night after night just to stand there and ask for tea.
Your shift ended at oh-one-hundred.
You signed off the final report, checked the inventory once more, and switched one bank of lights completely off before heading for the door. The medbay fell deeper into shadow behind you.
In the corridor outside, the base seemed quieter than before. Most of the traffic had thinned. The night watch had settled into its rhythm.
And there, on the bench opposite the medbay door, sat a folded packet of biscuits you liked but had only ever mentioned once, weeks ago, when the vending machine had run out.
You stared at it.
Then up and down the empty hall.
No sign of him.
A little note would have been too much to expect. Simon did not operate in notes. He operated in remembered details and disappearing acts.
You picked up the biscuits and held them against your chest for one brief, ridiculous second before tucking them under your arm.
“Bloody hell,” you murmured to no one.
Your smile followed you all the way back to your quarters.
It stayed, even when you set the biscuits on your desk and changed out of your scrubs.
It stayed when you washed your face and caught sight of yourself in the mirror, tired-eyed and unmistakably affected.
It stayed when you lay down and stared at the ceiling in the dark, replaying the night in fragments.
His shoulder under your hands.
His body beside yours at the wall.
And you.
About you, yeah.
The words should not have been enough to make your chest ache.
They were.
Outside, somewhere far across the base, a helicopter engine started up, low and hungry. A door slammed. A dog barked once and went silent. The world kept turning toward whatever came next.
But for one fragile, stubborn stretch of night, there had been tea in the medbay and Simon Riley leaning close enough to steal your breath.
For one fragile, stubborn stretch of night, there had been something almost ordinary between you.
Something soft.
Something building.
Something that felt, dangerously, like the beginning.