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cina-buni · 1 year

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AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I'm very tired and have work early in the morning but u HAD to finish this masterpiece!! Had me in a chokehold from start to finish!!!!! I'm obsessed

Breaking and Entering

(John Price x F! Reader)

(Call of Duty Masterlist)

Rating: M Wordcount: 4.2k Tags: Girl Dad Price, Wife Reader, Angst, Fluff, Feral John Price, Cuddling, Hurt/Comfort, TF141, (Unrealistic interpretations of UK gun laws) Warnings: Home invasions, Deadly use of firearms A/N: AKA the home invasion fic nobody asked for

When your number lights up his phone, Price knows it by heart.

There’s just one problem.

You aren’t supposed to call this one.

He’s in the middle of a briefing when it happens, discussing relevant intel ahead of a mission happening in the imminent future. Arms folded, beside the projector screen, voice taking on his gruff, clipped tone used only to convey orders, information, commands. It’s a late workday, but the intelligence that has just come in is valuable, extremely relevant to the team’s next hunt. As much as Price would like to be home, he can’t be. Duty comes first, and you’ve learned to accept that in him.

His phone rings in his pocket, and he catches Gaz’s face just in time to see the expression of ‘Really, Cap?’ Before he excuses himself, looks at the screen.

It’s you.

Normally he’d have his phone on silent for briefings, but now he’s glad he’s forgotten. He’s told you explicitly that this number is for emergencies, and emergencies only. Short of life or death scenarios, this number is exclusively off limits.

Which means when he sees the number, his heart sinks below his stomach.

He’s answering and moving before your voice even comes through, wordlessly striding from the briefing room and ignoring the questioning calls from his team after him. There’s no preamble to your conversation, and he tries to remove the anger, the fear from his voice when he speaks.

“Where are you?”

“In the bedroom.” You whisper back urgently, and he can hear the tremble in your voice, can practically feel you shaking through the phone. There’s a pause on the other end of the line as he shoves open the doors to the command center towards the direction of the parking lot.

“John.” You whisper again, voice very small, hushed and quiet. “John, there’s someone in the house.”

Price doesn’t freeze despite the cold wash of dread in his veins. There’s only motion under his feet, heart pumping full of adrenaline in his chest, where something fearful, furious, brutal coils in a low growl.

Before he can respond, however, there’s the sudden crash of something on the other line and you whimper.

“Where are the girls?” He demands as he waves off an officer who salutes him as he walks by, swinging his hand so hard the other man flinches.

“In the bathroom. I locked them in, they’re being quiet like their mummy told them.” You reply, and he can hear the growing sob in your throat. You’re terrified, beside yourself, but you don’t say it, don’t tell him how worried you are, how you want him to come home. You know he’s already on his way, you know to be brave, and for a moment Price’s heart swells with the tender affection of pride before it quells when there’s another clatter in the background.

“Hang up and call the police.” He tells you on no uncertain terms, pulling his keys from his jacket and all but racing towards his car.

“I already did. Told them where we are but-”

You pause then, release a low, shuddering exhale that crackles through the phone.

“John, I just wanted to say I love you.”

“Don’t.” He snaps before he can stop himself, gripping the steering wheel with a white-knuckle grip. “You are going to be fine, you understand me? You and the girls. I’m on my way, the police will get there before I do.”

And if they don’t, there will be hell to pay. He adds silently.

He can hear you suck in a breath to say something next, only to pause.

The stairs creak in the background.

Price floors the gas.

“Get the gun.” Price tells you gravely, flashing his credentials at the gate operator without looking at him. “Can you get to the safe?”

It had become necessary due to the nature of his work to ensure you had a certain level of self-defense for your safety when he wasn’t home. Price had more enemies than he could count, and while he had made every precaution to ensure nobody, not even his team, knew of your existence, he had placed a certain level of insurance with you just in case. The paperwork had been a nightmare to get through, but with the mention of his specific job description, the powers that be had allowed an exception to the laws on weapons, leaving you with a short revolver hidden in a safe in the bedroom.

You don’t answer his query, but Price can hear a rustle, the sound of you moving across the room to the top of the dresser.

Moments tick by, and Price doesn’t speak in the silence, not wanting to offer a single sound that may alert the intruder to where you are. You remain just as quiet, but Price can hear the low, slow click of the safe’s lock as you twist the code into place.

April 22nd. Your eldest’s birthday.

“I’ve got it.” You whisper, barely audible through the phone.

Price sighs in relief, the smoky breath of him curling across the dashboard as he weaves through traffic, speeding tickets be damned.

“Good girl.” He rumbles, trying to keep his voice low, even, reassuring. “Is the door locked?”

“...Yes. Yes.” You reply back, and he swears he can hear the sound of the gun shaking in your hand as you hold it.

“Loaded?” He asks again. There’s a click that is too loud when you open the chamber to check.

“Six bullets.” You murmur, voice a little more even, more level now in a way that makes his heart ease, makes the commanding, logical instinct of his military training activate.

“I want you by the door.” He orders you as if you’re one of his own. “Both hands on the gun, just as I showed you. Understand?”

“Yes, Sir.” You answer, and that alone, the wry humor you give him nearly has him smile, chuff with affectionate laughter. Yet whatever humor he possesses is terrifyingly absent in this scenario, the one that could very well end with both you and his daughters dead by the time he gets home.

Bloody fucking hell. Where are the bloody cops?

“John…” You whisper then, just a touch louder so he hears you better over the thrum of the engine. “I can’t hear him. I think he’s gone.”

Price allows his eyes to flutter shut for all of a moment, clamping down on the premature relief that rises in his chest.

“Are you sure?” He asks, softer, trying to ease your frayed, tender nerves.

He can hear you swallow over the line, trying to wet your dry throat. “I…I think so.” You tell him at last. “I don’t-”

BANG-!

The sound of the bedroom door being kicked in.

He can hear you scream from the other end of the line, voice rising sharply in panic and terror as another, deeper voice echoes in the background, rising even louder with words he can’t hear. The sound is garbled, unintelligible as your phone drops to the floor. Price can barely hear the sound of his own voice when he shouts for you, words cracking in his throat. The road around him blurs, and he looks to the display on the dashboard to gauge the time until his arrival.

Two minutes.

Two minutes for you to die, for his two beautiful daughters to be killed as they scream for you, two minutes for the undeserved happiness of his life to be stolen from him.

Price yells again, voice desperate, calling your name. There’s the sound of struggle in the background, and you curse at your attacker- feral, untamed, terrified. Like a wild, injured mother animal defending her young from a predator.

Yet before Price can call out for you again, there’s a crunch, another, and the line goes dead.

The world drops out from under him.

The tires of Price’s car screech as he takes the turn into the neighborhood far too quickly, leaning with the inertia of the vehicle as he races down the street towards the house where his whole life is falling apart.

The car lurches to a stop in the middle of the street, Price not bothering to park properly as he tumbles out of the driver’s side door and towards the front step of the townhouse.

BANG-!!

A gunshot.

Price sees the image of your smiling face in a beautiful white dress flash behind his eyes.

The house goes silent.

Price used to be a religious man. His father would drag him to church on Sundays, would insist on his boys dressing proper and maintaining the appearance of good, devout, obedient children. He tried very hard to make himself believe through his adulthood, but in the years spent toiling in the dusty, blood-soaked underbelly of the world, Price has long since convinced himself there is no God left for ruined men like him.

Even so, in this moment, he prays.

The front door is locked, latched tight. The burglar must have come through the back door into the garden. Price calls for you, and it’s a stupid move on his part, alerting the enemy to his position, perhaps startling them enough to give them an opportunity to escape. Yet the silence that greets him has his blood thrumming, deafening in his ears and he kicks, once, twice at the center of the door before the latch buckles and the thing swings open on its hinges.

There’s crying from the bedroom.

There’s no gun on him, too frantic to grab a side-arm before he sped off base. So instead Price reaches for a knife hidden in his pocket, holding it ready in front of him as he slowly ascends the stairs. The crying is louder now, and he can tell it’s younger voices. Whimpers, tearful whispers from his two beautiful girls still locked in the bathroom. Yet the bedroom where you are remains silent, and as Price reaches the top of the stairs he tries to remember whatever saint offers the blessing of protection, safety.

He rounds the corner, and instantly his toes bump against a limp, dead body sprawled on the floor of the bedroom. Price doesn’t look down immediately, trying to steady himself, preparing himself for the sight of his beautiful wife dead at his feet.

A dark hoodie. A surgical mask. A pool of red soaking into the carpet.

It isn’t you.

“John.”

Price looks up, and in the darkness of the bedroom he finds you with your back against the dresser, several drawers half open and spilling their contents onto the floor. You sit, holding the revolver, legs askew on the floor, hands trembling fiercely, shoulders shaking-

Alive.

Price collapses to his knees in front of you, and you whimper into him as he hauls you into his arms. You nearly push at him, still caught the shock of being ambushed, attacked, touched by a man that wasn’t him. When you squirm, Price merely holds you fast against his chest, murmuring low, raspy reassurances until you still.

“Shh, it’s me. It’s me, love. You’re safe. It’s over.”

With one hand, he tucks his blade into his jacket, with the other he slowly removes the weapon from your grip, clicks the safety on, and tucks it to the side, well out of the way. No doubt the presence of the weapon will be a nightmare to deal with when the police arrive, but that’s not his concern right now.

“Are you hurt?” He asks, turning you face up to him in his palms, and he can feel the wetness on your cheeks, can see the liquid stare of you in the darkness of the bedroom. You shake your head, lip trembling but trying not to cry, and it aches at him like nothing else. The hurt is only soothed by the taste of your lips, a desperate kiss, wet with the taste of your tears as you instinctively part for him, allowing a shuddering little gasp to break through. You whimper again, something that sounds like ‘John’, grasp at him a little harder until he tucks you back into his chest.

“T-the girls-” You try, voice cracking, and Price hushes you, rocking just a touch as you try to calm down.

“They’re in the bathroom.” He tells you quietly. “They’re safe.”

You hiccup at that, finally allowing a sob to break free as you cling to him, bury your face into his chest so his shirt stains with tears.

“I-I was so afraid.” You confess, and Price merely tucks you closer to him, hauls you into his arms with the promise of safety.

“I know, love. I know.” He tells you. “You’re safe. You’re alright. You did well, my brave girl.”

You cry a little harder at that, and at last Price hears the sound of sirens at the edge of the neighborhood, racing far too late to where the two of you sit in the darkened bedroom.

He hauls you up into his arms when they arrive, helps you down the stairs and presses you into the arms of a kindly police woman before returning into the house. An officer in a yellow jacket urges him to stay put, but Price snarls in his face, startles him so badly the man takes a step back and pales.

It’s easy to climb the stairs now, to come to the locked bathroom door that shelters his children from the horror they did not witness. As soon as he opens the door they spill into his arms, his two beautiful daughters, weeping against him in wordless blubbers of terror and relief. Yet the first question they ask isn’t about where he was, what has happened, why the police are there. Instead his eldest, at the age of six, her gorgeous eyes the same color as her mother's, stares tearfully up at him and asks: “Where’s mummy?”

“Outside.” He tells her with a gentleness he had forgotten he possessed, hauling her younger sister up into his embrace as she sniffles into his shoulder. “Let’s go see her.”

Yet before he steps back into the bedroom, he kneels down and stares at his brave, eldest girl and tells her: “We’re going downstairs. Don’t open your eyes until you’re outside, understand?”

She does, of course she does. He’s never given her a reason to doubt him, so the both of them squeeze their eyes shut, don’t open them even as Price lifts them over the dead man still laying oozing on the floor.

When they get outside they rush towards you, fresh bouts of tears in their eyes, asking about the blood splattered on your nightgown, staining it crimson. He can see you panic, nearly explaining the truth, before you shakily smile, hold them both in your arms and tell them: “It’s strawberry jam, my loves. Mummy is very silly and spilled jam all over herself.”

It takes the better part of an hour to explain to the police what has happened, to have you checked over by a paramedic, one who offers peppermints to your two girls as they balance at the back of the ambulance. Price entrusts you to them, discussing the situation in low, grave tones with the officers over why they were not as quick to respond as he had hoped. The officer from earlier is defensive at first, tries to puff his chest and explain to Price the logistics of the response, and Price levels him with a mere look of stony, violent anger that instead has the man fumbling for an apology.

It’s that alone that has the man dismiss any possible charges for you, takes one glance at the weapons permit and tips his hat at the captain with a small ‘Sir.’

At long last, after the crime scene tape has been rolled out and the house cordoned off, does Price return to you and the girls, who have calmed down considerably and now doze drowsily on either side of you, still dressed in their pajamas. You lean up into the tender kiss he bestows upon your forehead, murmurs another reassurance there before tilting you into his palms.

“We can’t stay here tonight.” He tells you gently, and you sag in relief.

“A hotel?” You ask, and Price only shakes his head at you, watching your brow wrinkle in confusion.

“I’m taking you to base.” He replies softly, firmly. “No place safer in the world than with me.”

You know it’s true, he can see it in your smile as you gaze up at him, adoring, with a trust he still struggles to tell himself he’s earned.

So you’re bundled into his car alongside your two young girls, the three of you in the backseat as he retraces his path back in the direction of the base. It’s only once you also begin to doze off in the back seat that he hazards a glance at his phone.

Five missed calls, three from Gaz alone, one from Soap, and one from Laswell that’s followed with a text saying “Call me. ASAP.”

He has a lot of explaining to do.

Somehow he manages to talk his way past the gate guard, who looks puzzled at the woman and two girls sleeping in his backseat. Yet he waves Price through, and eventually the four of you arrive at the officer’s quarters. Price manages to hold both of his daughters, one in each arm, with you clinging to his side, hiding your face in his sleeve as you pass the soldiers who pause with long, drawn out stares at the sight before them. It’s an unusual circumstance to say at best, and Price knows he’ll have to corner more than one man tomorrow to ensure their silence on the whole affair. All that matters right now is getting you and the girls to safety, to somewhere the three of you can bunk down and sleep this dreaded evening off.

What Price doesn’t expect to find, however, is three younger SAS agents awaiting him in front of his bunk, leaning against the wall and talking quietly amongst themselves. Gaz, Soap, and Ghost startle at the sight of their captain holding two young girls in their nighties, and a woman at his side with blood not entirely scrubbed from her nightgown.

“...Sir?” Gaz manages tightly after Price silently brushes him aside with little regard, unlocking his door. Yet when Gaz tries to assist the captain shoots him a look. The expression that flits across his sergeant’s face has him regretting it almost instantly, but apologies will have to wait as he ushers you inside. It takes a moment for Price to carefully deposit his sleeping daughters into the neatly made military cot, and when he does he catches your eyes just as you nod to the three men still hovering in the doorway.

It’s with a sigh that Price rubs the back of his neck and turns towards his concerned and puzzled team, clicking the door shut behind him so the conversation does not disturb his family.

“Introductions will have to wait until the morning.” He announces quietly, hearing the fatigue in his own voice. “They’ve had quite the night.”

“You never said you were married.” Soaps blurts out before he can stop himself, and at the look Price gives him in regards to his volume he mildly tacks on a little “...Sir.”

Price allows himself a moment to knead the bridge of his nose, huffing a suffering sigh as he decides what to say next.

“There’s a reason I haven’t told you boys.” He explains at last, looking up. “You know our work. You know the enemies we’ve made, myself more than the rest of you. You know they will exploit every opportunity of ours that they can.”

He levels his team with a severe, grim stare. “I will never allow my family to become one of those opportunities. Understood?”

The silent, unspoken words there ring loudly in the silence that follows.

This is a secret. For the four of us. Do not ever speak of it to anyone else.

He can see them trade glances, still confused, apprehensive, but at least agreeable to Price’s explanation.

“Copy.” Gaz offers quietly at last, and both Ghost and Soap nod as well. Price manages to catch his lieutenant’s stare for a moment, and Simon darts his gaze to the door behind his captain, and then to Price meaningfully, nodding.

Of course Simon would understand the gravity of secrecy that comes with this, Price thinks, and for a moment he regrets not telling his second in command sooner.

“Good.” Price announces summarily after a beat, and the clipped tone of him has the team straighten on instinct. “We can talk more in the morning. Dismissed.”

Ghost nods, about to stride away when he catches Soap about to make further comments, grabbing him by the back of the shirt and tugging him away. Price can hear the Scot grumble in irritation, but obediently follows behind his LT. Gaz stays a little longer, shifting uneasily on his feet.

“Sargeant?” Price asks, and the tone isn’t unkind, still regretting the venom he shot the man earlier.

“Sir.” Gaz begins, eyes cast down to his feet. “...Are they alright?”

It’s that question, the soft, uncertain concern of his sergeant that makes Price’s shoulder go lax, has his breath exit him in a soft, steady sigh. His broad, calloused palm settles on Gaz’s shoulder, making the man look up with a worried, grimaced expression.

“They’ll be fine.” Price tells him, voice dipping low as it does for his own daughters. “They’ve had a bit of a shock, lad. They need to sleep it off, know that they’re safe now. You can help me with that come morning. Understand?”

Gaz brightens at that, always wanting to be useful, to prove himself to the man who has taken him under his wing.

“Of course, Sir.” He offers, reassured, and Price nods.

“Good. Get some sleep. The girls will be a handful tomorrow, I have a feeling I’ll be needing assistance.”

Gaz nods, makes finally to leave, when Price calls him once more.

“Gaz?” He asks, making the man pause. “Call Laswell. Tell her I’ve got three VIPs I’m dealing with. She’ll understand.”

Gaz’s gaze brightens, and Price inwardly cringes, recognizing the error he’s committed. No doubt Gaz and Laswell will be having an extended conversation in his absence about the things he’s failed to mention. Yet Gaz chirps an affirmative and vanishes down the hall before Price can stop him.

When Price returns to his room, the door clicking behind him softly, he admires the sight before him. His two daughters splay across the bed, clinging to your form tucked between them as you hush a lullaby to ease their dreams. Thankfully, they both have managed to fall asleep quickly, likely exhausted by earlier events. The sight of his girls soft, sleepy, blessedly safe in his quarters is nearly enough to bring him to his knees.

You look up at him as he leans on the door, beckoning him into bed. It takes a moment to divest himself of all but his shirt and pants, but eventually Price manages to scoot his way into the narrow cot, hauling his youngest atop his chest to make room. She curls there with a whining, sleepy murmur before falling still once more. A hand settles in her hair, idly stroking as Price coaxes her further into dreams.

Against his side, you scoot so your head lays against his bicep, your eldest daughter now tucked safely between you. It’s a bit awkward, the four of you trying to scrunch together on such a narrow cot, and Price doesn’t doubt that by morning he’ll be sleeping in his desk chair. Yet now, in the soft lull of evening, in the absence of gunshots and dead phone lines, he allows himself to be at peace.

“I nearly lost you.” He finds himself rasping quietly, as if he can still barely understand the thought. You make a sound of dissatisfaction at that, nudging him in disapproval.

“None of that.” You scold quietly, and Price holds his tongue about the fears he wants to say, the pleas for forgiveness he wants to ask of you for not being there when you needed him the most.

“I love you.” He says instead, and despite not being an emotional man, he finds the hollow of his heart aching, empty with regret.

You’re silent for a moment, and there’s a part of him that wonders if you’ll return it, if you’ll suddenly realize how selfish he’s been in allowing himself to love you despite his duty.

Instead you turn, grasp at his hand, bring it to your lips in a firm, tender kiss.

“I love you too, Captain Johnathan Price.” You whisper, and Price’s eyes close, chest aching, the world quiet around him, and yet full. When he breathes, it releases as a sighed prayer to the heavens, a plea for mercy for your safety, for his own forgiveness, for the promise of another day, another hour with his family in his arms.

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