Three Little Words
Characters - John Price x OC
Summary - 5 times Person A wanted to tell Person B they love them + the 1 time they finally did. (Thank you for the prompt @love-me-a-good-prompt !)
Word Count - 1,411
Warnings - None, just some fluff!
A/N - Ok, so, this is my first post on Tumblr, and I’m not really sure how to do this? But here goes nothing.
Here’s a little story that I wrote with a not-very-fleshed-out OC + Captain John Price, and I was really proud of how it turned out! So I wanted to share :) (I haven’t written in an exTREMEly long time, so please take this with multiple grains of salt, thanks!)
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Eliza pretty well knew after the first 2 weeks they had known each other that she was falling hard for her neighbor, John Price. There was something about him that was so captivating, it threatened to pull her in entirely, and she knew if it did, she would never surface.
The first time an “I love you” almost slipped out, they had been sharing some quiet time before work, first thing in the morning. She was sat at the table next to John, sipping her warm drink and just soaking in his presence, trying not to be too obvious as she stared at him, wanting to commit as much of him to her memory as possible. He was shipping out in a couple of days, being deployed to who knows where, and she realized with a sharp stab in her chest that she would miss their daily ritual, would miss him. Finishing their conversation with her drink, she stood to go back inside, when suddenly, John blurted out her name, seeming almost started that he had done so. He stood and haltingly asked if she would be his girlfriend, cutting her off to insist he understood if she didn’t want to start a relationship with him. Being with a career military man is a hard life. But, despite his trying to convince her otherwise, she assured him she wanted to. She couldn’t deny the pull between them, and she wanted to explore that with him. When she left for the hospital that day with a smile splitting her face, John was on the porch to see her off. Swallowing her “I love you,” she bid him a good day with a hug, and off she went.
The second time had been a few days later, when she saw him off on his deployment for the first time. He didn’t really know how long he would be gone, saying that “cleaning up loose ends never really had a time limit.” She had taken the day off, driving him to the base he so often frequented, and with a tight hug and shy kiss on the cheek, she waved him onto the plane, biting her cheek to keep the words slipping out of her mouth and the tears sliding down her face.
The third time was when he reappeared on the doorstep of the ER where she worked. Doing a double take, she thought she was imagining him at first, but when he smiled and his blue eyes crinkled around the edges, and with the faint scent of cigar smoke lingering in the air, she knew it was really him. She had run and jumped in his arms, delighted to see him after 3 months of radio silence. She kissed him hard on the mouth then, becoming very red in the face after she realized what she had done. John’s face was tinged pink too, though he smiled brilliantly through it all.
The fourth time was when they had his whole team over for dinner. Kyle “Gaz” Garrick lived in London, so he was over quite often, but Johnny “Soap” McTavish had traveled in from Scotland, and Simon “Ghost” Riley was visiting from…somewhere. Eliza enjoyed cooking large, family style meals, and so when the opportunity came about, she jumped on it as fast as she could. After the meal was over and everyone had had a few drinks, Kyle and Johnny were teasing Eliza about how much she and John “loOoOOoved each other!!” All she could do was bury her flaming face in her hands keep her eyes as far away from John as she could. She loved him with all of her being, it was true, but neither of them had said it yet, and when they did, she wanted it to be a private affair, just her and John.
The fifth time had actually been later that night, after the boys had left. John had stayed after they’d gone, helping her wash dishes and tidy her living space. He was standing at the sink with his back to her, washing and drying her dishes as she swept the kitchen and dining area. The image of the two of them married and living together in domestic bliss hit her so hard it threatened to choke her. She sucked in a deep breath, all of her being wanting to scream those three little words from the rooftop, but she clamped her hand over her mouth, trying to kill the words in her throat. They hadn’t been dating half a year, and three of those months were spent on their own, John’s job forcing him to stay incommunicado. After all, what she felt could very well be infatuation, not true love, and John, being a little over 10 years her senior, would surely have more an idea of actual love than she could.
How could she say it first?
She quickly turned around when she noticed John had stopped his job to listen to the quiet commotion behind him. She had never been so happy to stub a toe in her life, as the pain in her foot easily excused the tears forming in her eyes.
When those heavy words finally did slip through the cracks in her resolve, it was like a weight was lifted from her shoulders - no, from her very soul. John was staying home for a few months, and he had taken up driving and picking up Eliza from work. She thanked him time and time again, as she loathed driving in London traffic to get to the smaller hospital outside the massive city. Smoothly pulling into a parking space, John leaned over to give her a chaste kiss on the forehead, which she returned by giving him a quick peck on the nose. Seeing him smile made her giggle, and, with that image in mind, she knew she could easily last her 12 hour shift. She jumped down out of the giant black SUV, and, turning to grab her almost forgotten drink, she said with a smile on her face, “Bye John, love you!”
She turned around and stopped in her tracks, her smile dropping, realizing what had just come out of her mouth. It came so natural and easy, just like everything did with John, the thought not shooting up any red flags as it had formed in her mind.
“Love you, too, darling.”
She could hear the smile in his voice. She spun around so quickly she stumbled into the car, staring at John like a deer in the headlights. He chuckled at the no doubt ridiculous look she had on her face, and she could feel the blush slowly crawling up her neck, settling in her cheeks. “You do?”, she asked in a choked whisper.
John had the sense to look a tad worried now, the smile dropping slightly and a small crease forming between his brows. “Of course I do, love. I think I always have.” He reached out a hand toward her, silently asking for her own, which she gave willingly, even if it was a tad shaky. He placed a gentle kiss on her knuckles, his facial hair tickling her skin, and said quietly, “I’m glad to hear you love me, too.”
Eliza stood there in awe, struck dumb at the wonderful man before her. How could she have gotten so lucky? A smile spread on her face so wide it hurt, as she turned her hand in his to grasp it and pull herself back into the SUV. She held John’s face in her other hand as she kissed him deeply. Pulling back, smile still on her face, she said, “Well, I’m happy to know you feel the same too!” She jumped out of the vehicle again and started walking backwards towards the hospital, yelling all the way, “Because now that I know, I’m never going to stop saying it! I’m going to tell you that I love you so much you’ll get sick of it!”
John, with a smile just as wide and bordering on painful, yelled back, “I never could!”
Eliza laughed as she turned around to enter the building, and John could see her spin back to face him one last time as he leaned over and pulled the forgotten passenger door closed, already making plans to have dinner cooked for the two of them and a dozen roses in hand when he picked her up that night.
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