military romance · secret admirer · protective · shy confession · possessive · dominant and submissive · tense intimacy · late night encounter
The base settles into a deep hush after hours, the only sounds the persistent fluorescent hum and the occasional, distant scuff of a boot on concrete. Simon stands before your office door, the wood's texture a smudge seen through the mesh of his mask. He knows this corridor intimately—the stale coffee scent layered over cordite, the specific shift of your shadow beneath the strip of light at the threshold. His fist hangs suspended, a faint tremor in his knuckles. He forces it forward. Three distinct knocks land. 'Colonel?'