Chapter Text
“Well, this is unexpected.”
Gaz was slowly drowning in his third pint.
He’d been staring into the bottom of the glass, ignoring the quiet bustle of the bar around him, as it became ever more apparent that he'd been stood up. Again. He had a feeling the bartender had been giving him sympathetic glances as he gradually stopped checking his phone, but he refused to look up and acknowledge the pity. The bar was dark and a little classier than he’d been expecting, but the beer was the same as anywhere else, as was the sting of disappointment. Same old, same old.
That voice, however. It was right - that he definitely hadn't been expecting. Not here.
He still almost refused to drag himself out of his beer, waited until Price was at his shoulder before he bothered to look up. Gaz knew that voice intimately, knew it almost better than his own, but it was still a shock to hear it, just as it was a shock to see Price out of the blue, outside of work and at a bar like this. He looked…good.
Fuck. He looked really good, in a creamy white shirt with the sleeves rolled up his forearms, thigh-hugging black trousers over lightly scuffed boots, shine of a black leather belt at his waist. There was even a gold chain glinting subtly through the hair of his chest, replacing the more familiar tags, peeking through his open collar. He looked nicer than Gaz had ever seen him.
Though if he was being honest, and several beers in he may as well be, Gaz would take Pricein his filthy uniform as well, covered in dirt and blood and wearing his fucking boonie. Would take him, frankly, just about any way he came.
But that was a dangerous line of thought.
He swallowed and glanced away, back into his glass, as Price planted a hand on the bar next to him. “Gaz,” Price said, voice a low rumble. “You alright?”
Gaz almost laughed. As usual, those blue eyes pierced him, saw right through him. No, Cap, he thought. I’m not alright.
Instead of saying anything, though, he shrugged and kicked out the stool next to him in a half-hearted invitation. The very scent of Price was making Gaz’s head swim, cologne cutting through the cigar smoke instead of gun oil and sweat, something deep and rich. He ran a finger through the condensation on the side of his glass and tried not to pay too close attention to the heat of Price next to him. To the softness of his voice as he flagged down the bartender and ordered two more pints.
Having John Price there, looking like that, after he’d been stood up? The universe had to be fucking with him.
“So you look like someone kicked your puppy and punched your nan,” Price said conversationally. “What’s going on?”
Gaz shrugged again, and let his gaze skate over Price’s face, his bright eyes, his trimmed beard. “Was supposed to be meetin’ someone,” he muttered, trying to keep his voice lighter than he felt. “Guess he had other plans.”
Not for the first time.
Price raised his eyebrows. “You got stood up?”
He sounded genuinely surprised, which Gaz supposed was somewhat gratifying, maybe even a little flattering, and a little flicker of appreciation warmed Gaz’s heart.
“It does happen,” he said, with what might have been his first, faint, smile of the night. “If you can believe it.”
“Find it hard to, if I’m honest,” Price replied, with a gentle knock of his shoulder against Gaz’s, and Gaz wanted to melt, just a bit, into the touch. The warmth swelled. Price was being kind. Why did he have to be so fucking-
“Ah, stow it Cap,” he mumbled. “Come on now.”
Price just chuckled.
“Well drink up then,” he said, tapping his fingernails on the side of the fresh pint. “It’s on me, alright?”
And what was Gaz supposed to do but accept the drink, looking up at the inexplicable presence of his captain in this gay bar which he apparently had just happened to be passing through? Seen Gaz on the way to somewhere else, and stopped to cheer him up before heading onto wherever the fuck he went dressed like that, smelling like that, looking like pure goddamn sex. He was wearing, Gaz noticed, a gold watch, and a leather and gold bracelet, a single ring on one of the fingers of his right hand. He looked expensive, and for the first time Gaz realised that Price was a catch. Not just to him, and not just in the ‘yeah, I obviously want to fuck him,’ kind of way, which he was just about used to by now, but in the way where he could hardly believe the bastard was still single.
“Shit, if it’s on you,” he finally said, and picked up his pint, taking a healthy swig under Price’s approving gaze. Something about that look, about the way Price seemed so pleased with Gaz, made him want to squirm a little. It was one thing at work. Here, where Gaz had dressed himself with the intent of attracting a certain type of attention, where he’d been primed for a certain type of night, it was almost unbearable.
He set his drink down and licked his lips. “Well,” he said, trying to talk over the buzzing in his blood. “You sure know how to make a boy feel better about getting ditched, Cap.”
Price’s lips twisted a little, and he took a sip of his own drink. “He, uh - I assume it was a he?”
Gaz rolled his eyes. He’d never said it explicitly, but Price knew he was gay. And they were sitting in a bar so queer it might as well have been named the Hammer Barn. “Yeah, Cap, he’s a he.”
Price grinned ruefully. “He doesn't know what he’s missing then, eh?”
“He does,” Gaz shot back, a little bitterly. “We see each other occasionally, when I’m in town. When he can be bothered showing up.”
Price nodded, and then leaned in conspiratorially, looking around before cocking his head close to Gaz’s.
“You wanna go plant C-4 in his yard, Sergeant?”
A startled laugh bubbled up out of Gaz’s chest, catching him off guard.
“I don’t want to blow him up, Cap,” he said, and then, without thinking about it too much, “I wanted to suck his dick.”
That got him the pleasure of seeing Price’s eyes widen a little, flickering up and down Gaz appraisingly. Yeah, that’s what I was here for, Gaz thought glumly, ready to sink straight back into the bad mood he’d never really left. Why are you here?
Actually, that was a pretty valid question.
“So I don’t think you can help me out with that one,” he added, trying to make it sound like a joke. “This is a gay bar, Cap. Not that I don’t appreciate the pint, but what the fuck are you doing here?”
Price hadn’t taken his eyes off him, so blue and sharp in the dim light that Gaz almost wanted to squirm again. He’d planted one elbow on the bar, and was rubbing the knuckle of his thumb back and forth over his bottom lip as he studied Gaz, a gesture effortlessly, impossibly sexy.
This is the man, Gaz reminded himself sternly, who wanted to check to make sure you hadn’t pissed your ghillie suit. Stop it.
It didn’t really help.
“Well, Kyle,” Price finally answered, in that low, rough rumble of a voice, “I was hoping to get my dick sucked.”
The words landed heavy between them, and Gaz forgot to breathe for a moment as he studied them. Okay. Price was out to get laid, same as him. Okay. Make it make sense.
“You’re not gay,” he said, with less confidence than he expected. But he wasn’t. Gaz had seen him tongue deep in women more than enough times to confirm that (once, accidentally letting himself into the wrong hotel room, literally and explicitly). “Come off it, Cap.”
Price shrugged a single shoulder. The light was glinting off the touches of gold on his skin, the ring, the chain, but Gaz had seen this man kill people with his bare hands, brutally, cruelly. He knew the violence that was hiding under the polish, and it made his heart beat harder that only he could see the wolf in sheep's clothing, like it was a secret just for him. It was almost unbearably hot.
“Not most of the time,” Price agreed. “Sometimes, though…” He finally broke eye contact and let his gaze roam around the bar, taking a thoughtful sip of his drink. “Sometimes I like to pick the most beautiful person in a room and go home with them, and sometimes the most beautiful person happens to be a boy.” He grinned, wide and a little evil. “I’m flexible.”
“Oh fuck off,” Gaz whispered, and Price laughed again. “You’ve never said.”
“It’s never been an issue,” Price argued, and Gaz rolled his eyes.
“Price-”
“I think you can call me John, here,” Price cut in, amused, and Gaz wanted to hit him. There was a strange, shivery feeling travelling up and down his spine, spiralling out to his fingertips. Something confusing and rich and warm, like the heat that was coming off the man next to him. Something impossible.
“John,” he said, and his voice was too soft around the word, he had to pause, and swallow, and start again. “John. Are you fucking with me?”
“Never, Kyle,” Price replied immediately, sincerely. The bar was still quiet, but there was no shortage of beautiful boys scattered about the place. Not a single one of them would complain about going home with John Price, not looking like that.
Gaz would have gone home with him fresh off a battlefield.
He turned back to his pint. Nothing had changed, actually, even though it felt like the very ground had shifted beneath his feet, the world he thought he knew completely upended. This was still his captain, still unattainable, a fantasy. And now he’d been stood up and he got to watch that fantasy go off with someone else. Incredible.
“Okay then. Well shit, don’t let me stop you,” he said, trying to be fucking cool about it. “Thanks for the pint, but I should get out of your hair.”
Price just hummed, seemed to settle deeper into the stool, knees spreading a little. “Nah, Kyle, you’re not in my hair. I’ve already clocked the most beautiful boy in this room, but I don’t like my chances with him.”
Gaz looked up and met that smile, that heavy, heady gaze. Eyes only on him.
The ground shifted just a little more.
“Fuck off,” he said again, unsteadily, and Price’s smile grew, dimple flashing through the salt-and-pepper of his beard.
“No point in going home with second best,” he added. “Rather just have a drink with you than settle.”
“Aww, come off it.” Gaz didn’t know what to say, how to act. Oh, he knew how to flirt, he knew how to pick up, but he didn’t know how to flirt with Price, not seriously, not in a way that mattered. He hadn’t known it was an option.
“Yeah, that lad that stood you up, mustn’t have two brain cells to rub together, eh?”
That made Gaz pause, a slow smirk spreading across his face as he sensed the chance to win a point or two, get off the back foot Price had had him on since he showed up.
“Lad? Captain, come on, he’s older than you.”
As he’d hoped, that made Price’s eyebrows shoot up for a moment, and then crease thoughtfully, looking at Gaz with an expression Gaz couldn’t quite interpret. It was lighting him up inside, to have those eyes so intent on him, and Gaz took another long swallow of his beer to hide the shiver that wanted to run through his body.
“Is that right,” Price said slowly and then, mock stern, “Sergeant. This wouldn’t be some kind of sugar daddy situation, would it?”
Gaz snorted a little, ungracefully, and thought of Stavros, with his fake Rolex and cheap shirts, of the way he’d met Gaz at a bar two or three times and only stayed for a drink before splitting a rideshare back to Gaz’s place. Thought about how he’d somehow found that charming, this much older, slightly dishevelled man - he’d seemed a bit of a rake, incredibly handsome, a photographer without a penny to his name, and, apparently, better things to do on a Saturday night than keep a meeting up with his little soldier boy.
Fuck him.
“Maybe without the sugar,” Gaz said absently, and saw Price’s eyebrows go up again. The beer was battering down his own sense of self control, though, and he added “Quite happy to be called daddy, though.”
At that, Price took a deep breath and quirked a little, crooked smile, eyes crinkling in amusement. Maybe, if Gaz was willing to fool himself, a bit of interest, too.
“My, my, Kyle, Learning all sorts of interesting things about you tonight, aren’t we?”
“Me? Daddy kink is one thing, Captain, I’m still trying to process the fact that you - that you like -”
The smile deepened.
“That I like to fuck boys sometimes?” Price finished for him, at once crude and gentle. Again, laying it out there between them, so they both had to look at it, couldn’t keep dancing around it.
Gaz finished his beer and set it down carefully and precisely on the bar. “Yeah,” he said. “That.”
Price nodded. There was a faint flush of red at his throat, and in noticing it, Gaz noticed the freckles that dotted his chest, sparse but dark. Noticed the light sheen of sweat on his skin. Noticed, again, his scent, thick in the warm bar, leather and tobacco and spice. Noticed every little, innocuous, fatally attractive fucking thing about him.
“Bit caught up on that idea, eh Kyle?”
Gaz chewed on his lip uncertainly. He’d probably been caught staring at the captain's chest, and couldn’t really bring himself to be worried about it. He felt like he, in his blue button down with not nearly enough buttons done up, was being stared at too.
And yet…
“Christ, Cap. What are we - we can’t act like this.” Can we?
Price tilted his head, and shifted a little on the bar stool, spreading his thighs and drawing Gaz’s attention, now, to the thickness of them, the sheer size. “Why?” he asked, voice deceptively casual. “Who’s gonna stop us?”
And then he was leaning in, and reaching out, and Gaz let out a long, slow breath, as Price finally did what Gaz hadn’t realised he’d been waiting for him to do for the whole conversation.
He touched Gaz. Just quickly, just a brush of his thumb over the inside of Gaz’s bare wrist, but Gaz shivered again, licked his lips again as goosebumps raced up and down his skin.
“Are you gonna stop us, Kyle?”
Gaz blinked, slow and heavy. The touch was like a drug, Price's very presence, so close and overwhelming, was like a drug. He wanted this. God, fuck, but he wanted it, had always wanted it in a part of his mind that he tried to keep buried away - locked in a box marked ‘Not Allowed’ and ‘Never’ and ‘Don’t Even Think About It’. But he had thought about it, of course he had, in moments of weakness, when the knowledge that he would have fallen in love with Price In a heartbeat if it was an option was just too damn heavy to carry. He’d think about it, and miss what he’d never had, and consider asking to be moved to another unit, and would know that he never, ever would ask. Because he was Price’s no matter what, even if that box had to stay locked away and buried forever. Even then.
And now, here in this bar, Price had asked him if he was going to stop them?
He chewed on his lip some more, sucked on it thoughtfully for a moment, and then met Price’s eyes.
“Nah, Cap. I’m not gonna stop us.”
“Good boy.” There was that rich approval again, rolling off Price in waves as he rubbed his thumb over Gaz’s wrist, his calluses catching on the sensitive skin.
Gaz let out a small, disbelieving laugh.
“Fuck, Cap,” he breathed. “You know too much about me, this isn’t fair.” Knew that he craved that approval, knew that as much as he teased and bitched and moaned, he’d roll over and show his belly for just a hint of praise from his captain.
“Yeah, well, when have you ever known me to fight fair, Kyle?”
Price looked far too smug, far too pleased with himself. So used to getting what he wanted, and of course, it was what Gaz wanted too, so Gaz wasn’t going to get in the way.
He might be dreaming, though. This might actually be a fucking dream, because that was still his captain, and Gaz didn’t just get to - he wasn’t supposed to be allowed to have this.
He looked at his empty pint glass and shook his head. “I think I need a stronger drink.”
Price pulled his hand away, dragging his fingers over the back of Gaz’s as he went, and reached for his wallet.
“I’ve got some good whiskey, back at mine,” he said, and it wasn’t exactly an invitation, because he already knew Gaz wouldn’t say no.
And he was fucking right, the gorgeous, arrogant prick.
“Yeah,” Gaz said, head swimming. “Shit, alright. Yeah, okay.”
Price gave him an indulgent look. “Fucking thought so.”