The Myth of Abduction but instead of Hades and Persephone it’s John Price and Kyle Garrick

No bc Price doesn’t drag Gaz into the dark kicking and screaming. He doesn’t have to.

He recruits him. Selects him. Claims him.

Price sees the shine immediately: Gaz’s laugh over comms, the way he still believes there’s a right way to do things, the instinct to protect rather than dominate. A bright thing in a place that eats light. And Price, who has lived too long underground, decides he will not let that brightness belong to anyone else.

So he pulls Gaz closer. Gives him better ops. More trust. More danger. Calls him son and kid with a fondness he doesn’t give to anyone, wraps authority around him until it feels like safety. Until it feels like loyalty. Until Gaz’s world quietly narrows to Price’s shadow and Gaz’s eyes are on him and him alone.

Everyone else thinks Price is turning him into a protégée.

What they don’t see is how possession masquerades as mentorship. How obsession wears the uniform of duty. How the underworld doesn’t need chains when it can convince you that the dark is where you’re meant to be.

And Gaz- warm, hopeful, defiant Gaz- doesn’t realize he’s been taken.

Only that the sun doesn’t reach him anymore.