🌇Push/Pull
gn! reader x Kyle 'Gaz' Garrick
"The kindness of strangers and the strangeness of everyone I know has just fucked with my heart."
-Flower Face, Honey and Milk
(tw:co-depandancey, unhealthy relationship)
Kyle is watching you get ready. He's watching you put on his favourite shirt, the one that sticks to the shape of your waist, he watches as you sling on the belt that he likes to hook his finger between when his hands get sweaty from holding your waist, he watches you put on the sunscreen, the Chapstick he bought you, the same brand as his ex but different flavour, the flavour he revealed in licking off his lips in the afterglow of your quick, chaste kisses.
And he's seething.
"So Fiona introduced me to some folks and we're meeting at the park today-"
Well maybe seething isn't the right word, maybe off-put describes his feelings better, maybe saying he feels left out or underappreciateed is much more appropriate.
"-and she asked me again why you can't come and I told her-"
"I can't come because I'm still injured from the last misson love, how many times do I have to tell you?"
"Right, that's what I told her and-"
It's not that he doesn't like you going out, he does! He likes to strut around his pretty baby, he glows whenever he gets to show you off to the friends and colleagues that he goes on and on to you about. Whenever they say as long as he's happy he smiles, leans down to kiss your cheek, he's happy he's so happy.
Happier than ever.
Or at least he used to be.
"-and she said we could just sit at a café and talk or do something else but I said-"
"You said I fucking hate coffee right? And that I don't want to be around your group of brain-dead, usless-"
He stops himself takes a deep breath that stings his ribs, forces his disdain down.
"-friends?"
You freeze hands on hold as their buttoning up your pants and he gets to drink in every little shift on your face, once upon a time he had an abundant source of them now he gets scraps.
He knows it's unfair, since most of them are his friends or people from his circle but he'd do anything to get some more of you.
"Something along those lines."
"That's my pretty baby."
Kyle met you in a small, underfunded museum.
As a British patriot he likes to stroll around, check out new art exhibits, museums, statues. He likes to keep his pointer finger on the pulse of things and luckily for him he found you there, tucked behind a birch desk eyes wet and reddened nose pinkish from cold like a little rabbit, shaking ,frozen fingers constantly tucking in your scarf that kept coming undone.
"So we're going to the park to see the new flowers set up-"
By then you were still fairly new to London, to it's frigid, charecteristic weather.
Just a bleak foreign student trying to work and study but you were the most inept, socially incapable thing he'd ever seen.
Try as he might he could never picture you raising your hand in class, asking for notes or showing anyone but him around the displays he couldn't picture you anywhere else either, it was like they had placed you here then built the decaying museum around you.
"-then we're gonna go to that bookshop Mark's been going on and on about-"
You were stuttery, overly apologetic, the only attendant in a cramped museum where half the displays were badly kept and the rest were moldy due to the leaking roof but Kyle liked you, he liked the way you talked the way you gushed on and on about the exhibits in that fast paced, high pitched voice of yours like you were desperate for anyone to listen to you, like any attention shown to you, like you were desperate for anyone's light to stay on you long enough to warm your clammy skin.
He liked that. Like feeling important, big, sought after.
"-then we'll probably visit the mall where you first introduced me to them, since its the anniversary of our friendship and all!"
He cringes at the over-emotional sentiment.
Then you moved in with him, Kyle was used to living with someone he often boosted about his independencey but he had first moved out with his childhood sweetheart who he was sure he'd marry and then there had always been someone to keep the house alive when he was away working and you had easily filled that role.
"It's so nice being able to go out in public without feeling like I'm gonna heel over and die y'know?"
"Tell me about it."
You stayed inside most of the time but you did your best to contribute to rent and keep the house in order, you often cooked for him too and Kyle realized the whole bit about soldiers and the way to their hearts wasn't that far off.
He doesn't remember when the two of you started dating it wasn't a big deal it was the natural conclusion of things, you moved from the floor mattress to the couch to his bed.
And he restocked his diwindling supply of condoms.
"Are you...mad? Kyle ,you know I can stay in if you don't wanna be alone or if this is bad day or-"
"Did I say that?"
You quickly went from being the tiniest, most pathetic thing he'd seen to being a inconsequential thing with benefits then before he knew it you were the thing that pulled him out of bed every morning, the thing that gave him purpose, kept him warm and full of hope like light crawling out from under a doorway. He associates you with warm bedsheets, the last candle during a power shortage, breakfast for dinner, home; he doesn't dare wonder what you associate him with.
Then your first panic attack happened.
"Did I say one bloody thing that even mildly implied that lovely?"
"Well no but-"
It had been a regular morning till he saw you curled into yourself in bed breathing heavily, eyes unfocussed.
He hadn't even needed to ask what was wrong, he just wrapped his arms around you and pressed his nose to the side of your hair, breathes in the smell of your anxious sweat, listened to your sharp quick breaths.
He remembers feeling this intense sense of gratitude, of privilege. He was the only one that got to see these, got to see you. He was trusted, entitled.
He was loved and loving.
"Then don't pull shit out your ass."
It was addictive, you were addictive.
Never before had he a lover so colorful, so twitchy and moist, you made life fun and he was cold when he met you.
He desperately wishes now that he had kept you to himself, that he hadn't introduced you to his friends ,his colleagues he hadn't wanted you to go on searching for new horizons he had just wanted to show off his perfect lover, his one in a thousand that followed him home.
"I-I know Kyle I'm sorry, I really am."
"I know you are, you always are, go hang out with your dumb mates, remember to pick up groceries on the way back, yeah? Miss your cooking."
"Oh already did yesterday, with Burns! Pasta dinner tonight?"
And now you're leaving him, leaving him sprawled and injured on the bed as you go on and expose his precious to other people, he tries to be happy for you and he is.
He's happy that you're better , that you're back in the cycle of life, back in the crowd like any other civilian but what about him?
You bend down placing a hand on his chest as you press firm, sweet kisses all over his face starting from his brow and ending on his lips, no one reaches for him like you do, no one makes him as warm ad you, he's aware he only has a small pocket of light left before his vanity wears off.
He lays there soaking it in, you pull back too quick.
"I'll pick up our meds and some pesto for you while I'm out okay?"
He nods as he watches you leave but when he licks his lips it's not the familiar taste of artificiall cherry that he'd grown accustomed to, it's apple.
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