Advent Calendar with John Price

Dec 1 - Operation: Advent

You tried, halfway between Door 19 and 20, to be logical. To counsel your own heart. He's kind to everyone. He brings tea to rookies. He remembers birthdays and keeps spare socks. He's your captain; he takes care of you because that's what he does.

Then Door 20 opened on a photograph, two inches square: the team in a bright, ridiculous summer, your head tipped back in a laugh you didn't recognise as your own. His thumb had smudged the edge. On the back, his careful handwriting: Good day. Your argument crumbled like sugar.

Door 22 sent you past the loading bay where he'd once walked you home when the lights died, torch beam and his voice steady as a handrail. Door 23 tucked a chocolate coin into your palm with another grid, and you caught yourself smiling like an idiot at a gold-wrapped circle of sugar.

Door 24 had been stitched with extra care. The red thread made a little loop at the corner like a heart that didn't want to be obvious. Inside, on a bed of tissue, lay a miniature sprig of mistletoe made of pewter, cold and weighty and shining where the light caught. The coordinates were scrawled larger than before, as if he'd rewritten them to get them right.

Up. The helipad.

The stairs were metal and mean, your boots ringing as you climbed. Wind met you halfway and then all at once, a slap of cold that smelled like snow and night. The door banged open against your shoulder, the sky widening into a dark you could step into.

He was there.

Price stood at the edge where the painted circle said don't, the wind worrying the hem of his coat, his hat pulled low enough to shadow his eyes. Two enamel mugs steamed at his feet, clouding like small, patient ghosts. When he turned, the floodlights rimmed him in silver - every edge, every laugh line, the beard he'd gone lazy about after last op. His smile, when it came, was crooked and small and brave.

"Evening," he said, as if you'd just run into each other in the hall.

"Evening," you answered, because anything else would have spilled out too fast. You held up the calendar like a piece of evidence. "You're terrible at subtle."

"Am I?" He sounded almost relieved, and you realised he must have imagined a hundred ways this could have gone wrong. He toed a mug your way; you crouched to pick it up, fingers grateful to cup the heat. "Figured we could secure a quiet perimeter," he added, aiming for wry and landing somewhere gentler, the last words rounding like he wanted them to hold.

The helipad lights hummed. The wind tugged at your hair, found the warm places and tried to steal them. He'd arranged everything else - he hadn't arranged the weather. You stepped closer.

"Price," you said, trying to find the right place to start in a story that had been writing itself for months. "John."

He blinked like the second name landed somewhere he hadn't expected it. "Mm?"

"You made me a map." You tapped the stiff paper. "You made me a map out of all the places you remembered me, and all the ways you've been... you." You huffed a wet laugh that turned to breath in the air. "I don't know how to say thank you without making a fool of myself."

"Make a fool of yourself then," he said softly. "I'll look the other way."

There was a silence, not empty but full of things you could choose. You thought of every door in the little calendar, of every tiny, careful thing he'd tucked behind it. How love, in his hands, wasn't a grand speech or some sweeping move. It was a teabag, a note about a bad step, a photograph where he had been the one looking, not smiling. It was neat handwriting and red thread and coordinates that brought you to him. It was two mugs cooling on an empty helipad because he wanted there to be room - clear and open - for this.

"You're not subtle," you said again, and your voice did that wobble that happens when something long-held finally sees daylight. "And I've been pretending I didn't see it so I wouldn't have to - " You swallowed. "I didn't want to risk the place I already had in your life."

"Place you have," he corrected gently, without hesitation. "Present tense."

You looked down at the tiny metal mistletoe in your palm, cool and ridiculous and perfect. "Is this official, then?"

He scratched his jaw, a habit that always meant he was searching for the right word as if it were tucked somewhere in his beard. "Official as you want it to be. I know I'm - " He breathed out through his nose, a rueful sound. "I'm a bit banged-up round the edges. Not much of a poet. Better with maps than speeches."

"You drew a good one," you said. "It got me here."

"That was the hope." His eyes - sea-dark in the half light - flicked to your mouth and away again, a courtesy you adored him for. "If I've got my navigation right, this is the bit where I ask if I can - " The wind lifted the rest of the sentence off his tongue and flung it somewhere over the runway.

You stepped into him, not because he asked permission, but because you wanted to answer it.

He was warm even in the cold, all wool and soap and the faint smoke of someone else's fire. When his arms settled around you they didn't grab or prove; they held, gathering you in like you were something he'd been steadying himself to carry for a long time. Your cheek against his chest found a heartbeat that made sense of the night. He breathed out, and the sound he made wasn't brave or captain-calm. It was relief. It was oh, thank God.

"Perimeter secured," you murmured into his coat.

He laughed, low and astonished. "Yeah," he said. "It is."

You stayed like that long enough for your tea to go from hot to warm to borderline. He didn't seem in a hurry to let go, and you weren't interested in teaching him how. When you finally leaned back, his hands came with you, settling at your waist as if they belonged there and had simply been waiting to be told.

"Why maps?" you asked. "Why this?"

He tipped his head, thinking. "Maps make sense of big things," he said after a moment. "They don't change the terrain. They just... help you trust it. Help you know where you are. I thought maybe - " Another light scratch at his jaw. " - maybe I could show you where you are with me."

You blinked hard, because tears felt unwise in a wind this sharp. "And where's that?"

He didn't flinch. "Right in the centre of it."

You could have kissed him there and then, the way the line landed in your bones. You did, but gently, a first page rather than a last line. He met you with the same softness, a steady pressure and a careful tilt, like he'd been practising restraint so long he wanted to honour it even now. His mouth was warm and certain. The world didn't tilt. It came level.

When you parted, the sky had begun to release its promise of snow - fine, hesitant flakes that melted on his eyelashes and stayed on your glove. You reached up and brushed a crystal from his hat brim. He caught your wrist and pressed a kiss to the inside of it, quick and reverent, a gesture so simple it nearly knocked you out of your boots.

"John," you said again, because it felt good to say. He hummed like he agreed. "What happens on the second?"

He glanced at the calendar, grinned, and it lit his whole face. "Door 2 will have to wait till morning," he said. "Tonight I want to show you the view."

"The view?" you echoed, glancing at the dark beyond the lights.

"Mm." He shifted so your backs were to the wind and the city lay far off, a smudge of warmer glow under the low sky. "It's all right to want something quiet and ours," he said. "Doesn't make you less of anything. I wanted to give you that. A little circle that holds."

You leaned into him, fitting under his arm like it had been made for the purpose. Snow made lace out of the air. Somewhere below, a door banged and laughter rose, then faded. The two mugs sat at your feet, forgotten but faithful.

"Is this where I say thank you?" you asked, voice small for no particular reason except the size of your heart.

He tipped his head to rest against yours. "You already did," he murmured. "You came."

The perimeter held. So did you.

Warm, and certain. Tonight.