“Couldn’t sleep,” I admit, staring downrange. The target is a blur for a second before it sharpens again. “Needed… this.”
He hums like he understands more than I’m saying. For a second, neither of us moves, the space between us charged and fragile, and all I can think about is the kiss and how it cracked something open I don’t know how to close again. The slap before it. The apology after. The way he looked at me like he hated himself for wanting me and hated me a little for making him feel it.
I shift my weight, the floor cool beneath my boots, and force myself to focus on the target instead of the way my pulse is still skidding along my ribs. Jon’s breath brushes my ear when he exhales, slow and deliberate, like he’s anchoring himself just as much as he’s anchoring me. His chest is close enough to my back that I can feel the heat of him through both our clothes.
“Muscle memory’s there,” he says after a beat, voice low. “Your head’s just louder than your hands right now.”
I huff out something that might be a laugh if I had more air. “That’s one way to put it.”
He eases back a fraction, not leaving entirely, but giving me just enough space to prove to myself I can stand on my own. The cigar glows faintly when he takes a drag, the smell of smoke cutting through the sterile tang of oil and metal. It shouldn’t be comforting. Somehow, it is. Maybe because it always means he’s here. Maybe because his presence has become a habit my body picked up before I knew it was learning.
I lower the weapon, resting the barrel toward the ground, and finally turn enough to look at him. Up close, the lines around his eyes look deeper in the low light, carved by years of command and sleepless nights. He looks tired. Not the bone-deep exhaustion I know too well, but the kind that comes from carrying too many people and too many secrets at once. His jaw is rough with stubble. His uniform shirt is wrinkled at the collar. He looks less like a captain right now and more like a man who forgot to stop being responsible for everyone else.
“Nightmares?” he asks, like he already knows the answer.
“Yeah,” I say, because lying feels pointless. “Among other things.”
He nods once, jaw tight, and for a moment it feels like he wants to say more. Like there’s something sitting heavy on his tongue that he’s choosing not to give voice to. Instead, he reaches out and taps the side of my helmet lightly, a familiar gesture from a hundred training sessions before everything went wrong. Before everything became too loaded to touch without consequence.
“Don’t force it,” he says. “Bad nights aren’t the time to prove anything.”
“That’s rich,” I mutter. “Coming from you.”
A corner of his mouth lifts, just barely. “Fair.”
Silence settles again, but it’s different now. Not suffocating. Not sharp. Just… there. The kind that lets me hear my own breathing without wanting to claw my way out of my skin. I lift the gun once more, adjust the way he showed me, and take a careful shot.
This time, it lands closer.
Not perfect. Not clean. But close enough that my shoulders drop a little, relief sneaking in where panic used to live.
“There you go,” Jon murmurs. “See?”
I swallow, nodding, and set the weapon down on the bench. My hands are still shaking, but not uncontrollably anymore. I peel off my gloves and tuck them into my jacket pocket, suddenly very aware of how quiet the base is, how alone we are out here. How easy it would be to step closer. How stupid that would be.
“I should probably head back,” I say, even though the idea of returning to my room makes my chest tighten again. The walls in there always feel closer after dark.
“Yeah,” he agrees, too quickly. “You should.”
For a second, neither of us moves. The air between us feels stretched thin, fragile as glass, and I can almost see the moment from earlier replaying behind his eyes—the argument, the slap, the kiss neither of us planned for and both of us felt too deeply. The one he apologized for like it hurt him to want it. The one I haven’t stopped feeling since it happened.
I turn my head toward him before I can stop myself, searching his face for something I don’t have the words to ask for. Permission, maybe. Honesty. Proof I didn’t imagine the heat in it. Proof I didn’t imagine us.
He just looks at me, expression soft and unreadable, like he’s standing at the edge of a line he’s already crossed once and refuses to cross again tonight. Like restraint is the only thing holding the rest of him together.
Then he steps back.
“All right, soldier,” he says gently. “Get some rest.”
“Are you coming to my party?”
The question slips out before I can dress it up or take it back, raw and unguarded. It feels stupid the second it’s in the air, like I’ve offered him something fragile without checking if he knows how to hold it. Like I’ve admitted I want him there in a way that has nothing to do with my parents or the event or any excuse I could hide behind later.
Jon’s mouth curves, just slightly, the barest hint of a smile tugging at his lips. “Have I ever missed one?”
He turns and walks away, boots crunching softly against the gravel, the glow of his cigar bobbing once before disappearing into the dark.
I stand there a moment longer, listening to my own breathing even out, to the quiet hum of the base settling around me again. The target still hangs downrange, marked but not ruined. Kind of like me, I think, and then immediately hate myself for thinking it.
