Chapter Text
You really, really wish you had brought your pepper spray.
Unfortunately, the skimpy dress your friend managed to squeeze you into allowed zero room for anything other than your body, and you’d been forced to stick your phone and ID in your bra. It clings to your thighs and rides up the faster you walk, and while it made you feel damn good earlier, now it’s pissing you off to high Hell.
Now, more than ever, you wish you’d stayed at the bar. Despite the exhaustion tugging your shoulders down, you’d much prefer the noise and smell of dozens of people than the man keeping pace with you, hands in his pockets as you walk in silence. You’d stopped responding to him a while back, and now he’s content to follow you, no doubt thinking you’re dumb enough to try and go home.
The streets are dark and wet, twin sets of footsteps echoing through the night as you search for another person out in the darkness. You wrangle your phone out and are halfway to calling your friend when your phone dies, a spike of annoyance and nervousness piercing through your body. Knew I should’ve fucking bought a new one.
“We’re almost to your place, yeah?” He asks, and you want to scream. You bite your cheek and ignore him, side-stepping wide when his shoulder brushes against your own, bare and goose-bumped in the cold air. You don’t even bother to wait for the crossing signal, heels clicking brashly against the concrete, and your heart kicks up in your chest when he matches your pace.
Up ahead, your knights in shining armor emerge in a rowdy group of men that spill out of one of the buildings across the street. Their accented voices bounce along the walls and you make a split-second decision, nearly jumping off the sidewalk to jog across the street.
“They yer friends or somethin’?” He asks, and you chance a glance back at him, he's hesitated on the curb. His face is tucked in his hood, though the glow of the streetlights illuminates his smarmy smile. His eyes are dark and blown, a tell that the man is probably high. You whirl back around, ignoring the chill that slides down your spine as your heels click in the night.
“Yes, in fact, they are.” You say, with much more confidence than you feel, and you clear your throat before you’re halfway across the road. Hey!” You call, blood beginning to rush in your ears. “John!”
You cringe internally. Really? John was the best you could come up with? Regardless, one of the men whirls around like you’ve fired a gun, drawing the attention of the other men, and you begin to slow, realizing your mistake.
If your shadow was big, these guys were bigger .
Too late now.
You step up onto the sidewalk and slide right under the closest man’s arm, fingers tangling in the many loops on his pants as you tilt your head up at him. His boonie hat casts an intimidating shadow across his face, and he looks wholly unimpressed, blue eyes narrowed and no doubt thinking you were a drunk college girl.
Which, you kinda were, but that’s not the point.
“Fancy seein’ you here!” You say, laughing nervously, and the man stares down at you with a blank look. He opens his mouth, no doubt about to tell you to fuck off when his head snaps up, no doubt catching your shadow creeping across the street. Your teeth are clenched in a brittle smile. “ Help. Me. ”
He tucks you more securely under his arm, cedar, and something spicy, almost smokey, fills your nose. The other men around you stop as well, sharp eyes taking in the situation, and you barely hold in a sigh of relief when you realize they’re military. There’s no other plausible explanation, not when two of them have visible thigh holsters and the third has a sizeable hunting knife clipped to his belt.
And the fact that they all look like they could snap your spine over their knee.
There’s a darker-skinned man donned in a baseball cap, sunglasses perched on the brim despite the time, full of boyish charm. There’s another man with… a mohawk. He’s attractive, icy blue eyes sparkling with something dangerous, and his smile has just a bit too many teeth. The third man gets you to pause, his dark eyes narrowed over your shoulder. He dwarfs the others in the group, both in size and height, and he’s, even more, intimidating with the skull balaclava on his face.
“We got a problem here?” His chest rumbles against your back, a warning and a question wrapped into one. He turns fully to face the man and casually pulls out a cigar, briefly dropping his hold on you as he lights it. When his arm returns, it drapes over your shoulders like a blanket and keeps you pinned against his side, casual but protective.
“Jus’ tryin’ to get my friend home,” He says, shrugging as he wipes at his nose. He rocks on his feet, hesitating to step forward as he’s pinned under a microscope. “Sorry about this man, she’s a real clingy drunk.”
“You know this guy?” The man with the mohawk asks, Scottish lilt filling the air as he crosses his arms, rocking back on his heels as he waits for your answer. When you shake your head near-frantically, the friendly look in his eyes vanishes as he turns back to the man. “Ya’ heard tha’ lass.”
There’s a deadly tension in the air as if the man is actually weighing his options, dark eyes darting between each man as his hands shift in his pocket. Your stomach drops, icy dread filling you, and there’s a rumbling chuckle that rolls through your ribcage from the man behind you.
“Try it,” The man in the skull balaclava steps forward, boots soundless on the pavement as his arms swing lazily, hands big enough to palm your head like a child’s basketball. He comes to stand nearly toe-to-toe with the man, head craned down to stare him in the eyes. The man’s eyes narrow, mouth opening like he wants to say something, but wisely closes it. “I’ve been itchin’ for a brawl.”
“You’re fuckin’ crazy, man.” He says, a waver to his voice, and even with the mask, you can tell the big guy’s grinning something wicked. There are another few seconds of tense silence while the man takes in his odds, bloodshot eyes jumping between each man. “You can have her,” He finally spits, turning tail and taking off the way he came from, not bothering to keep up the 'drunk friend' act. “Fuckin’ whore anyway.”
“I outta batter ya’ ass!” The Scott shouts, taking a menacing step forward, and the man in the baseball cap holds out a hand, shaking his head with a smirk as your stalker disappears into the darkness.
“Y’alright there, love?” The man behind you asks, catching your attention with a gentle squeeze. You tilt your head up and nod, fixing him with a grateful smile. You’re beginning to shake, both from the drop from your adrenaline high and from the chill in the air, and the man is only hesitating for a moment before he’s tugging off his coat and dropping it around your shoulders. You shove your arms into the sleeves without hesitation, sighing at the warmth, and only slightly squeak when the man pulls you back against him, arm low around your waist.
“Thank you for that.” You say, and then take a quick moment to meet each of the other men’s eyes. “And thank you too, he’d been following me since I left the club and my phone is dead.” He’s handsome, with thick facial hair and glittering blue eyes, you’re not ashamed to admit he’s definitely your type. “May I use your phone? I can call an Uber to take me home from here.”
“An… Uber?” The man questions, and there’s a snort from beside you. It draws your attention to the baseball-capped man, who’s busy digging his own phone from his pocket.
“Price here is uh, what you’d call… technologically unadvanced.” He chuckles out, passing you the phone with a wink. You accept it with a grateful smile and pretend not to notice how the arm around your hip tightens for a moment. You pry your card from your bra and order yourself a car, passing the phone back after a minute.
There’s only a single moment of awkward silence before the mohawked man is bounding forward with a bright grin, none of his earlier bloodlust present in his eyes. He offers a large hand out, and you take in the mottled scars stretched across his sun-tanned skin. “M’name’s Soap,”
“Huh?” You say eloquently, brows furrowed, and the masked man lets out a huff of a laugh as he returns to the group, finally done with staring down the retreating man. You shake ‘Soap’’s hand and offer him a small, if not confused, grin. “Military stuff?”
That gets you a raised eyebrow, and you gesture to the holsters on their belts.
“Also you guys are fucking massive, ” You snort, and that gets a guffaw out of Soap and another rumbling chuckle from Price. “You don’t get that big to not kick down doors and deliver finishers.”
“Finishers, huh?” Manchester, you place the accent as he speaks, and he shifts his crossed arms with a raised eyebrow, or at least you think he’s raising his eyebrow. His mask doesn’t give away much. He stares you down for another moment, and you keep your eyes on his before he finally gives you an approving jut of his chin. “Ghost.”
“Kyle.” The final man says, and three heads snap over to him, disbelief clear on Soap’s face. The man frowns, shuffling in place as he rubs the back of his neck. “What? I’m not gonna tell the pretty lady they call me Gaz .” You snort, covering your mouth with a hand quickly, and the man gives you a wounded look.
“Hey, I think it’s kinda cute,” You hum placatingly, and this time there’s definitely a squeeze around your waist. You offer your own name, sans a cool callsign. “You all go by your signs, then?”
“Military brat?” Ghost answers your question with a question, and you snort lightly as you nod. “Where’d he serve?”
“She ,” You correct with a proud smile. “And she’s usually on base training newbies; says that all she’s done since becoming Master Seargent is teach babies how to stitch basic wounds.” There’s an impressed look on Soap’s face, a smile quirking at his lips as he whistles.
Headlights flash across the men, lighting them up in bright artificial lights as a car pulls up behind you. You turn, finding your shiny Hyundai Elantra waiting, idling on the curb. You offer the men one last smile and step back, albeit reluctantly, toward the car.
“How’d ya know my name?” ‘Price’, if you understood right from earlier, blurts out, and you give him a questioning hum as you turn to look at him. “My name. It’s John.”
You can’t help the disbelieving laugh that escapes your mouth, but you quickly cut it off when you realize the man is serious. You give him an appraising once over, taking your time as your eyes drag up his frame, and you can’t help the way your lips quirk at the slight flush on his scratchy cheeks.
“You look like a John.” You say simply, an impish grin on your lips. His eyebrows jump up, blue eyes questioning, and you stifle another huff of laughter with your hand before gesturing for his phone. He hands it over after a moment of hesitation and you waste no time putting your number in, sending yourself a text so you have his number later. “There you go.”
“What was that for?”
“Gave you my number.” Price looks like you just told him the moon was cheese, eyes wide in disbelief as he glances between his phone and you. You open the car door and stick your head in, verifying your ride before climbing in. “Call me sometime, yeah?”
And then you’re closing the door, leaving the man staring dumbly after you, stock still under a yellowed streetlight.
It’s not until you get home do you realize you still have his jacket, cedar and cigars pleasantly filling your nose.
Call me indeed.