john price x reader
summary: you ask John to do the last thing he’d ever want to do
tw: mention of dying in the military
John Price who’s following the nasty footsteps of his family– a long line of men killed in the army, by their blind loyalty to the crown. John Price won't give up his job. John who knows that he’s not breaking the cycle– the curse. He won't suddenly be the first of many John Prices (because, of course they share a name) to see his fifties.
The same John Price who marries you. A non-military sweetheart. At first he thought you found it charming, brave of him to put his life down for the crown and for the world. You let him put a ring on your finger. You let his crew come to your intimate wedding (so intimate that your extended families aren’t invited). You let him disappear from your home for weeks on end, no contact, and welcome him back like it’s perfectly normal.
Then why are you so upset? Why are you standing before John on the morning of his deployment, tears in your eyes begging him, it’s time to retire.
He doesn't get it because it's all he's ever known. All the Prices have been cursed to ever know. You beg him to retire but you don't understand that he can't. That every fiber of his being will cease to exist if there isn't gunfire whizzing by his ear and someone calling him Captain. That John Price is fated to the same end that his father and his father before him and- hell -probably his father before him met. The Prices are simply born to serve.
He tries to help you understand. He gives you his mum's phone number, tells you to call her when you get lonely or worried on deployment. Call your mother? The woman widowed by war?
John cringes. The sun is peeking over the horizon. He needs to go and he tells you that. You crumble. Your hands tremble as they hold onto his chest, padded with layers of clothing and jackets. It's winter, when deployments are always the worst. It's only winter in half the planet, yet somehow John always ends up in the cold.
His thoughts pull him away from you, your heat, from the damp warmth of your breath to the molten tears streaking your face.
Please, John, you said, for me.
He leaves you for base. You whose picture John looks at a little more than usual during this deployment, and Simon Riley, who notices.
Simon Riley who sits next to John during his night watch. He pulls two cigarettes from his pocket and hands one to John, lighting it without a word. They’re in Siberia, of course. John’s been crying, but the bitter cold dries his tears before they can leave his eyes.
"Pretty bird," Simon says, gesturing his hand to the picture in John's hand. John's thumb brushes over the curve of your cheek. "Lovely bird."
John's fingers twitch, ready to refold the picture. Simon notices and places a calm hand on John's wrist.
"She's making me retire," John blurts.
"That true?" Simon muses, taking a drag like he knows it’s not. Frankly, he does know. John’s his longest friend, and Simon can read him like a book. "I didn't know that was possible, giving you orders.”
Simon puts a hand on his shoulder, “Why don’t you head in? I’ll take watch.”
John goes inside wordlessly. He heads to the bathroom and in the mirror he sees the face of his father. He’s always looked scarily like his old man, down to their idiotic facial hair. John grew it out like him in his twenties, when he was finally able to grow more than pubescent scrap. Now, with a fuller beard and duller eyes, he’s more similar to his father than young John ever thought possible. His father— a man who never had the privilege of going gray. Sure, he died a few years older than John is now, but he was never exactly old. Dead at 42. John's got... 5 years left by that count. 5 more years fighting, five more years with you.
John shaves it off. He leaves his stache, but that’s about it. He doesn’t want to see the old John Price, put six feet under before his boy— his namesake —graduated primary school. His hand shakes while he shaves. He should stop. The knife he’s elected to use is too sharp to risk a case of unsteady hands, but John needs it off. And off it goes. The skin beneath the beard is paler than the rest of his face. It’d take much longer for that to go away.
Someone pounds on the door of the bathroom. “Captain,” Johnny, “I know you’re takin’ a shite, but could you hurry up?”
John chuckles softly, “Fuck off, MacTavish.”
John shuts the toilet lid with his boot and takes a seat on it. He shoves a hand in the chest pocket of his coat, to the pen with a piece of paper stuck in the clip. John carefully unfolds the paper.
Armed Forces Pension Application Form.
John clicks the pen and gets to work.
