#ephemeral salt | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

shroomi1e · 1 year

Text

❝ i object! ❞

kazuha + albedo

summary: you as a noble should naturally marry another noble, despite your love for another. your parents had managed to pry your lover off of you and get you wedded to a powerful nobleman- that is, until your past lover comes barging through the doors on your wedding day.

cw: gn!reader, arranged/forced marriage, teeny tiny bit of alcohol, angst to comfort

what i listened to while writing: wave - wave to earth

a/n: *slowly crawls out of my cave* hey guys. it's me again😭 i randomly got the motivation to write again, idk what demons possessed me to write this in the span of 5 hours but at least i have new content!!!! i was gonna do this with more characters but kazuha and albedo were the only ones i see pulling this cheesy-typa stuff tbh

▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄

kazuha

“…what?”

your gaze fell down towards the wooden docks you were standing on. kazuha frowned, his grasp on your hand loosening. he was aboard the crux, and the crew was preparing to leave inazuma for another trip to liyue.

“i’m from one of the tri-commissions, kazuha,” you said defeatedly. “it’s over for us now. i’m going to be wedded as an alliance with another commission. i… i’m sorry…” but before kazuha could respond, the large ship began to sail away, his hands completely slipping away from yours.

kazuha leaned over the edge of the ship, watching your figure get smaller and smaller. though he hoped you would at least give him a wave goodbye, you simply turned around and left the docks of ritou, leaving him saddened and confused.

▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄

kazuha spent the next month lost in his thoughts. ink blots were all that filled the pages of his journal now that he’s lost his muse.

“it’s over for us now.”

those words played in his mind like a broken record in hopes that maybe he could find a sense of doubt from those words, just a hint that it wasn’t truly over. he’s tried to understand, truly. but the thought of losing you ate kazuha up from the inside, especially knowing that he had no control over it. there weren’t any flaws in him or you that caused this, only circumstance. and that stung his heart more than anything.

despite kazuha’s wishes and prayers, the wedding would happen either way. news eventually reached his ears that two commissions from inazuma would be joined through a marriage between the two heirs, and that was when kazuha truly felt like he was losing control. you were being swept away so suddenly, carried away in the arms of another man. what was he to do?

you were being fitted into a kimono that very second, the maids tying the knots and wrapping the fabric around your body. your limbs felt heavy like lead, your head hanging low like rotten fruit on a tree. you tried to live in a fantasy just for at least a few moments, imagining that kazuha was the one you were being wed to, not a nobleman.

kazuha almost felt like a dream now that he was gone, as if he was only a fleeting imagination before you had to wake up to reality. the ephemeral touches, the honey-dipped sunsets, the smell of salt and the sea. that was all simply an illusion. you had to go back to the wooden floors, the inked papers and the melting candles. this was reality now, where everything was out of your control.

“this is all for the sake of our family, you know that?” your father’s voice broke your train of thought. “think of this as a way to pay us back for raising you. you’re much better off with a nobleman than that wandering fugitive anyways.”

you grit your teeth and tightened your fist, your knuckles whitening. “i know.”

the ceremony went through in a daze, the sacred sake tasting bitter on your tongue. a part of you felt like you should’ve just jumped on that ship along with kazuha. regret sat in your stomach like a sickly bag of bleach. but you knew it was for the better, both for you and your family.

after the vows, the priest then asked, “does anyone here object to the wedding?”

a heavy silence followed. the two of you were heirs to the biggest commissions in inazuma, it was obvious that nobody would dare to object this wedding. your gaze fell further down in defeat. it was really happening now.

“i object!”

your head snapped up from the ground and turned towards the voice. at the end of the crowd stood kazuha, the wind blowing softly through his hair, the golden light from the sunset outlining his silhouette.

emotions rushed through your chest: happiness, regret, sadness, doubt, and guilt. the cup you were holding dropped to the ground and shattered. the crowd began to murmur and gossip.

“kazuha,” you breathed out.

the crowd parted to make way for your lover, who confidently walked towards you and held his hand out. everything around you seemed to suddenly disappear the moment your fingertips met his. it was only the two of you now.

“kazuha… what on earth are you doing here?”

“i just need you to answer one question for me,” kazuha said softly. “do you trust me?”

by the way he eagerly interlocked his fingers with yours, his intentions were obvious. if you were to answer this question, it would mean throwing away everything you’ve known thus far: your family, your possessions, your wealth, your inheritance, your responsibilities. everything. but with the way kazuha was silently pleading you with his eyes… how could say no?

you let out a shaky breath. “i do.”

kazuha merely smiled in return, his eyes softening as if to tell you that everything was going to be alright. that he understood your choices, and that all you need to do was take this final leap of faith.

“hurry up kazuha!” beidou’s voice interrupted. a few meters away, the crux was anchored to the docks, the crew eagerly waiting to set sail. “the guards might come and take ya anytime soon!”

kazuha held your hand tightly and began running towards the docks, the two of you giggling as he helped you up on the ship. the nobleman, priest, and the crowd all watched in disbelief as you hopped onto the crux, sailing away with the samurai.

the crew cheered as you and kazuha shared a kiss of reunion, the anchor lifting from the seafloor and the two of you sailing away into the golden sun, just like you were meant to be.

▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄

albedo

“i…see.” albedo’s eyes wander off to nowhere in particular after hearing your explanation. he blinks a few times as if to confirm that he wasn’t dreaming.

“it’s not your fault, albedo, and neither is it mine,” you added. “i hope you understand.”

for the first time since albedo was created, he feels numb. his fingertips lose grip as it all finally settles in. you’re leaving him for another man.

of course, he knows that’s not really the case. albedo understands your circumstance as well as the political powers at play, but at the end of the day, that’s what’s happening, right? you’re being wedded off to another man, which of course means you’ll have to leave him.

and when he sees you take off your ring- the ring he gave you- and put it on his desk, his heart shatters. you silently take your leave, disappearing into the dragonspine snow. albedo’s gaze is immediately pulled to the golden band on his desk, which seemed so much duller now that it wasn’t on your finger.

▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄

projects seem more pointless than ever before, and piles of crumpled up drafts fill albedo’s trash bin. he’s taken down all the portraits of you in his home because it was too painful to bear, yet he can’t deny that he was still hopelessly in love with you. the thought of you standing at the altar with another man made albedo positively sick. and there was nothing he could do about it.

he even decided to abandon his projects to visit the city in hopes that he could catch a glimpse of you, but you never seemed to be there. he’d wander for what seemed like hours, only for it to be in vain. ‘of course,’ he tells himself, ‘they’d be busy preparing for the wedding.’

the ring in his pocket weighs heavier than before. he takes it out and twirls it in his hand, the afternoon sun reflecting off of it almost blindingly. the church bells ring in the distance, as well as the melody from the church organ.

wait… the organ is playing.

albedo clasps his hand around the ring tightly before frantically running up the stairs towards the cathedral. the scent of flowers fills his nostrils as he makes his way past the statue of barbatos and climbs the final flight of stairs until he’s met with the wooden doors of the cathedral.

he won’t lose you. he can’t lose you.

albedo’s hands feel heavy as his palm rests flat against the door. once the organs stop playing, the faint voice of a priest could be heard from outside. he can hear the nobleman say his vows, then you. his flat palm turns into a fist as he contemplates what to do next. he’s never liked crowds, nor has he ever liked being the center of attention. this could certainly ruin his reputation, and hell, the clan you’re getting married to might even get him fired but-

the thought of you being by his side again gives albedo more than enough courage to push against the doors.

“does anyone object to this wedding?”

with one strong push, the doors swing open. sunlight spills into the cathedral and forms a path of light leading to you. and dear lord barbatos, you look breathtaking.

albedo watches as you turn around in confusion. the ring you were holding in one hand clatters to the floor, echoing down the hall.

though albedo had planned on walking towards you, he couldn’t help but start running down the aisle. panting, he turns to the priest. “i object this wedding. i am their rightful lover, am i not?”

you step down from the altar, your hands reaching to caress his face and gently wipe the sweat from his forehead. “even after everything i told you… you still came. i tried so hard to hurt your feelings, so why are you here?”

despite the tears pooling in your eyes, you’re smiling. and that’s all albedo needed to see. “i must be going insane, y/n. i’m not one to act like this.”

he kneels down right then and there, holding up the ring with two of his fingers. “will you marry me?”

you take a moment to look down at albedo, who’s kneeling before you in a silent plead. the faint bags under his eyes are proof enough that he’s missed you. your family would hate you for this. doing this would mean to be shunned and disowned from your clan. the support you once had would dissipate in an instant. albedo might be put in danger as well. but you’d rather have nothing and albedo rather than everything but albedo.

“yes,” you said before sliding the ring on your ring finger, right where it belonged. you grab albedo’s arm and run out the cathedral, much to the protest of your family sitting at the pews.

you skip down the steps in a hurry before turning your head to see albedo smiling softly. you’re dolled up, and the afternoon glow of the sun hits your face just perfectly. and with his ring resting on your finger, albedo can’t help but simply adore you.

‘you are killing me softly,’ he thinks, ‘yet you seem to be the only thing keeping me alive.’

4K notes · View notes

seattlesellie · 8 months

Text

knight!ellie x princess!reader drabble. ♡🗡️🕯️

an: since i’m thinking of writing a full fic of knight ellie x princess reader i wanted to know what you guys think ! let me know if i should turn this into something way longer. just a lil peak of the themes of a longer fic 💗

cw: mature themes, reader is a little lonely, tension.

the moon is so bright, so big, so white, luminous, it reflects in her emerald eyes and renders them almost mystical, bordering on the verge of the unreal. one couldn't help but wonder if she herself was not entirely real, a specter of dreams made flesh. do you recall those distant days of childhood? just eight years old, insisting that your imaginary friend — aurora, was right by your side? you clung to her like a lifeline. you'd shed tears as your mother, the reigning queen, denied the request for an extra place setting, an empty plate reserved for aurora alone. how you fell asleep bawling, tasting salt on your tongue, bitter and sickening, feeling as if you were drowning in your sleep, the specter of aurora growing gaunt and wretched, as though starved for existence.

how you woke up plagued by guilt, tormented by a high fever and a stubborn eye infection, crying and screaming for your imaginary best friend. and how from that day on, the castle fell empty. you wandered around, through those regal halls like a specter, floating like a brittle ghost, nodding politely when a maid curtsied in reverence, offering a feeble smile to the steward as he addressed you as his cherished princess.

you filled your duties, all your royal obligations, attended to your classes, spoke only when spoken to by your parents, ignored when another royal called you a “loony” when catching you in the midst of a conversation with several alabaster rabbits.

you formed a connection with the world around you, a bond that ran far deeper than what met the eye, and now one knew.

you rub on your eyelids with the back of your hand, and blink in dismay — oh, you’ve been mistaken, she is real, and her abdomen rises and falls with each breath, the clang of her armor a testament to her existence, to your sanity. her eyelids flutter, and her throat subtly moves as she swallows. a strand of her auburn hair sways in the wind too, but sweet aurora’s hair also danced in the breeze, so who knows.

sometimes it all is simply too blurry.

for now, you choose to believe.

the grass tickles your bare toes, you don’t laugh.

“hate being a princess” you mutter with a sigh, tilting your head to the side — her side, to see if perhaps she vanished like the rest of them, yet finding her there.

her role as a knight is dictated with silence in your presence, a mere executor of commands from your father with a duty to bow in submission, so she doesn’t respond. all she has to do is be your protector, keep you safe and guarded, make sure you won’t try and run once more.

she’s also not supposed to help you with your clandestine escapades from the castle, she’s not supposed to lay in the tall royal gardens ridiculously green grass with the princess, to allow the opulent and delicate fabric of her dress to gently brush against the barest portion of her knee. yet — she allows it.

she’s not supposed to help you pick flowers and greet you good morning, she was supposed to be unyielding as stone, almost ephemeral yet ever-present.

and now your ankle shifted to rest gently against hers, and she didn’t even nudge you.

“i despise it” you repeat. you try and voice your frustration but it comes off as too soft. ellie typically abhorred anything soft. she’d rather sleep on a hard mattress than a plush one, favored stomping over floating.

and yet you seem to be an exception.

you seem to be an exception for lots of things.

and ellie doesn’t respond. she blinks at the full moon and it blinks back at her.

“do you like being a knight?”

you think you may have heard a breathy chuckle. you’re unsure, you sigh.

“ellie?”

and she never told you her name. you figured it out by yourself.

then she begins, pink tongue folding and moistening her lower lip. “i like being your knight”, she blinks thrice, in a hurry — like she said something wrong, as though she feared she might have offended anyone else whose knight she was not. she takes a deep breath, for some reason it's shaky.

“i like, i- need, to protect the kingdom. it’s my duty. for the sake of your father, the people, you — you know that, my princess”

and usually you’d cringe when addressed with that title. you voiced it already — that title isn’t you, you don’t want it, it felt like a burdensome label imposed or cursed upon your birth, but for some reason, when she says it ; “my princess” it feels like her “my”, is the one that holds the power to cloud your mind. and that’s why you don’t argue that it isn’t your name, because she calls you as hers, and oh how bad you want to be hers.

you overheard the conversations among the other young royals, who spoke in hushed tones about "crushes." you eves dropped and furrowed your brows intently when they talked about the charming sable boy, a dark haired prince from a faraway land, an adviser. they described the feeling of having a crush as if they were “falling”, “giddy”, “thrilled”, “like riding a horse, really really fast”

and it never really happened to you, albeit you really did try. you just accepted it, you’d be crush-less forever, forced to marry a crush-less prince, forced to live a crush-less life.

then you met knight ellie.

it happened when she removed her bascinet, when she casually tossed her tousled auburn locks from side to side, when she smiled that sly smirk then immediately wiped it off and glued her gaze to the stone wall. it was in the way her eyes met yours, her all but graceful bow, and the sound of her armored knee meeting the ground, when she chuckled after winning the battle of who would be the princesses knight. how cocky she looked as her arm was raised in triumph, only to transform into humble grace when officially declared the winner.

but it wasn't a feeling akin to falling; it was more like crashing down. you also didn’t feel giddy, you felt nauseous and tight everywhere, you weren’t thrilled you were petrified, and you didn’t ride a horse really fast — it was more like being thrown off the horse and crashing onto the ground, nose-first.

so it didn’t feel like crushing, it felt like something else. and you really had to go to the washroom.

“you don’t… owe anything to the kingdom, or to my father” you murmur.

she really doesn’t. it got her family starved, killed. “i do” she lies, swallowing thickly. “also, i really don’t need protection” then you lie, rolling your eyes with a huff.

she'd call you a brat if she wasn't your knight, and if she knew for certain that you wouldn't go running to your father after being offended.

“i should run away” you muse, idly toying with the hem of your dress. ellie sees the bare flesh of your thigh and she feels like maybe she shall run away as well. then her breath hitches down her throat, and she really hates it because this isn't the first time. perhaps she's sick, a throat infection. it's getting very hard to breathe.

t'must be the armor, the decides.

then she decided it's not.

it's simply the cold night air. definitely not your naked thigh, or your hunger to be free, or the way your dress flows with the wind, or the way your eyelashes flutter and your fingertips tap tap tap on your plushy lips.

“should i fetch the horse then, my princess? which one d'ya want, charlie... or buster, maybe. he's a strong one” ellie croons then swallows a chuckle.

she’s also not supposed to joke with you. or to stare at your thigh, or to let you place your head on her armored chest.

“yes” you reply like she’s serious.

then a cloud veils the once-bright moon, and your knight clears her throat.

“i should take you to your room, freedom warrior, s’getting late”

“you shall take me to the forest to pick some blackberries, knight”

ellie chuckles and argues back. “i shall not”

“disobeying a royal?” you say with a wink.

you might actually be the death of her.

#ellie williams #ellie williams x reader #ellie x reader #ellie williams smut #ellie williams fanfiction #ellie williams x you #knight!ellie #ellie williams fluff

832 notes · View notes

bettergeology · 1 month

Text

Taking a stroll in the ephemeral brines of Death Valley.

As a basin completely isolated from the sea, Death Valley is the ultimate sink and final destination for all of the surface and groundwater for an immense area of eastern California and central Nevada. Following an unusually wet summer and winter of 2023/2024, a lake as deep as 3 feet filled the salt pan on the flood of Death Valley and brought back a glimpse of how it must have looked when the valley contained a permanent lake in the geologic past.

Strong winds during my last visit actually pushed the lake some two miles to the north, churning up the sediment and mud of the lake bottom and turning the water to the color and consistency of chocolate milk. As the salty water evaporates from the surrounding mud, it draws the salt into long, threadlike crystals that turn the salt flats fuzzy for a brief time.

#death valley #adventures #bettergeology #lake #desert #california desert #national park

132 notes · View notes

yeyinde · 2 years

Note

Hiii I LOVED your fic with soap I’ve read it like 5 times since I found it yesterday, your writing is absolutely STUNNING and the characterization for Soap was spot on. If you have any free time I would love a Ghost fic like Soap’s— domestic, fluff, SMUT, and a little angst. I feel like Ghost would be a tender, giving lover if given the chance to be truly comfortable with someone. Anyway, if not, I just wanted to say your writing is some of the best I’ve ever read and it inspired me to pick up my own pen and start writing again :)

hi! @madiganjay and thank you so much!! 🖤😭 that's so sweet and i'm sooo sorry this took so long! i have no excuses just Ghost + Domestic Fluff had me oscillating between several different ways this could go. to me, the idea of domesticity with Ghost is permanence and presence. something tangible that confirms his existence, that ties him to you.

i tried my best at domestic Ghost, so i don't know if this is quite what you had in mind, but i hope you enjoy it!! this is nearly 8k of Ghost Doing His Best™️

⇾ warnings: gendered reader, female!reader, gendered anatomy; unfettered filth (as per usual); slightly possessive!Ghost, jealous!Ghost; unsafe sex

"Brought curry." It's not much of a greeting—no hello, how are you? How was your day?—just: "didn't have lamb, so I got chicken."

On the television in front of him, a game between Everton and Manchester United plays. Streaks of red and blue dart across the sprawling field of green. Takeout is spread out on your coffee table—curry for him, butter chicken for you; he got you salted Lassi, too. The white drink sits on the table beside the styrofoam containers, dripping condensation down the clear plastic cup. The colours catch in the clear polymer. Neon smears in milky white.

Its—

Salt pools between your teeth; your lips sting. "You—," your voice breaks over the word; a tendril of embarrassment curls inside of your guts, admixing the alcohol you'd just finished drinking with Gaz. You flush, clear your throat. "I wasn't expecting you."

It's a stupid thing to say, in retrospect. You never expect him, and you suppose that's the point. Ghost—Simon Riley—comes and goes like an undomesticated alley cat wandering around until he lets himself inside your flat for however long he plans on staying.

There is no routine in this. No set schedule; nothing was ever painted in concrete, just shades of sporadic abstracts. He comes, he goes. Ephemeral visits only a handful of times a year.

It's the fourth—year, that is.

The weight of it sat in your stomach for weeks. Knots spool together until a clump forms in the pit. Heavy and noxious; it leaked poison into your bloodstream that carried the illness of want in a particularly nasty shade of green.

Four years since Price had dragged you—an office worker on loan from HQ—to a sparse room in a country you'd never been to before, and you set your eyes on the interrogator known, then, only as Ghost.

(Terrorism never sleeps, Price always says.

Whenever he's around, neither do you.)

The walls were painted in rust. The stench of wet pennies and sweat filled the air. None of that mattered, though, when you looked up, and caught liquid sin gazing at you from wide, red-rimmed eyes.

(Maybe, he doesn't sleep, either.)

You fed him information through an earpiece as you scoured and decoded the rudimentary messages in the text the enemy sent to each other, and tried to remain professional when his voice growled his affirmative in shades of smoke and violence in your ear.

Hours later, exhausted and craving something to keep you from wishing the world was constructed by the hand of solipsism, you leaned against the window, desperately trying to pretend you were the same person you were yesterday.

Lidded eyes swept across the vast expanse in front of you—barren lands, badlands: wartorn and deadly, and littered with carrion. You tried to stop your hands from shaking by curling them into fists, but all it did was puncture your palm, and fill your nails with sticky blood.

It didn't work— nothing did.

You sunk your teeth into your knuckles to stop the quiver in your joints.

War is much different in person than it is on a blue screen. Numbers—friends, foes, coordinates, codes—are much easier to stomach when they're all in binary. A marker on your desktop goes down, disappears from the black map in front of you, and you pick up your earpiece, calling it into evac, and click on another to follow, to relay commands in code.

One life is gone, enemy or friend, and you sip your expensive coffee (£5.6 but the logo is cute, and beans are robust) while staring at the pictures dotting the navy blue fabric of the pre-owned cubicle. Docile. Mundane. You glance at the clock, and wait for the hour to pass until you can leave, and spend the rest of the evening watching shows.

You think once, perhaps thrice, about the men in green who will never get the chance to come home again, but it's smothered when your coworker leans over the metal divider, asking if you want anything from Greggs.

A game of chess with real people.

(You slept rather soundly before this. Now, binary numbers make you tremble.)

The worn wood behind you creaks.

Price, you think, forcing a smile that doesn't fit. Neither do the fatigues. The stench of rot in your nose. The gun they shoved into your hands.

"I'd kill for a coffee, sir."

When you turn, you're met with the endless yawning of night condensed in circles framed by pale flaxen. A storm in the middle of a wheat field. Stalks of yellow smatter across midnight blue.

Ghost.

There is a moment of nothing where he simply tips his chin, baleen lines bunching together, and stares at you. It's unnerving. Eerie. He feels entirely out of place in this world, and yet—

You can't imagine him anywhere else.

His stare is heavy. He blinks his eyes shut. You breathe again. They slide open. The air is siphoned from your lungs.

A chasm sits in his gaze. You find the heft isn't entirely unpleasant.

Then, he shifts. Shadows flexing in the limited light. A car driving down the street, headlight burning the tenebrose until it dances, scattering across your room. He moves like liquid in the dark.

"Coffee won't help," is all he says. Impassive. Pragmatic. But his eyes—

Your throat is acrid. Sand gathers in wet clumps against your larynx. You swallow, and taste Yorkshire Gold. Pennies.

"Any suggestions about what might, then?"

It takes him two steps to get to the window to your four. His size is—

Immeasurable.

He's a man, you think, and yet—

It's not so much the sheer bulk of him, the height, but rather the way he carries himself. There is a presence about him that makes him feel bigger, more dangerous. He knows his heft and uses it to his advantage. He takes up space until you feel smothered by his proximity, but—

You don't think anyone else has ever felt more distant.

A moor. Wide, endlessly deep, but uncrossable. Untraversable. Mouldering signs are pitched in the recesses of his eyes when they slide to you, liquid black pooling in the corner, and they all say: stay away.

(Written in red. In blood.)

"A few," he offers. His gaze drifts back to the grime-streaked window. "Nothing legal."

"Oh," you mutter, blinking. You can't tell if it's a joke or not.

"Get some tea. It'll calm your nerves."

"I'm not—," you start but his eyes drop to your hands, clenched by your sides, and shaking. Beads of crimson gather in the cup, pooling in your lifeline. Guilty, then.

He leaves you by the window, and you watch his broad back retreat through the arched doorway. A layer of sand fluttered under his boots. No prints.

(Is he even real? Or did the endless dunes of decay conjure him up in grains of sand, and rot?)

You find the stash of tea (Price muttering something behind you about Gaz drinking all the bloody English Breakfast), and in the loose, dried leaves of brown, black, and fawn, you find yourself thinking of him.

Four years later: he's still on your mind.

"I was out with—"

"Garrick."

"Gaz," you say instinctively. Only Laswell gets away with calling him Kyle. Everything else just sounds wrong. "We went to some club in Essex. I would have come home sooner if I'd known—"

You stop. Teeth sinking into your tongue. Stupid. Stupid. You think of the man in the club with hands that were cold as ice. The irritation you felt toward Gaz when he pulled you away, and shoved you into a taxi. His knuckles knocked on the hood. Don't drive away until you see their door shut, yeah? He slips folded bills into the man's hand through the crack in the window. Message me when you get home.

You sent the text when your key cut through the hole. Home. Thanks.

His reply was instant: worry about you sometimes. Get some sleep.

"Um…thank you for the food. I'm actually starving," you huff, words tumbling out in an effort to stem your accidental faux pas. "We didn't eat before we headed out. I only had a few drinks, but—"

More than a few. Your feet wobble.

"—Thanks." You wince, adding: "again. It's—it's good to see you—"

Stupid. Stupid.

He says nothing, but his stare hasn't wavered since you opened the door. An indecipherable Rorschach. Unknowable. Unreachable.

Four years, and you still have no idea what this is.

Three months in the desert drinking tea with a behemoth who had an absurd sense of humour, and then—

Home. Goodbye. Price waving you off: a two-finger salute diving off his forehead. Ghost stood on the tarmac of some private, military-owned base. A sleek, black Jeep a few paces away to take you wherever you wanted to go.

Home, you supposed. You look around and it feels wrong. Stuck in limbo, purgatory. A strange microcosm where the people are the same—the man in the Jeep has a thick Northern accent; his words are rounded, and robust—but the place is different.

Know anything to calm the nerves now that we're home, sir?

His head tips. A few. None of them are good for you.

The tea was pretty good advice.

He'd said nothing. Nothing, nothing—

The man poked his head out the window. "Coming?"

You offered a shaky smile. See you around, Simon—

You'd slapped your palm against your mouth, eyes darting around the barren void in the middle of needn't know and somewhere in England, and he—

He shuddered. Eyes a polynya. A rumble broke the silence. Low, and—

You turned, hand curling over the handle of the car. You'd gotten it open an inch before his hand slammed on the frame beside the window, the door snapping shut. The force of it rocked the Jeep.

They're riding with me.

And—

Now: he sits in your home with takeout from the Indian place you like, one you mentioned in passing a year ago. The place with the best raita and spicy chicken biryani.

The one with a shell-shocked teenager manning the front with a single cook in the back. The register is barely used. They yell your order through a small window to the kitchen, and the cook brings it out himself when he's finished. It always feels a little bit illegal when he hands you the bag, but you're almost certain this man is secretly a Micheline star chef when he isn't condensing samsara into his tandoori.

Silent, a little tipsy, you toe your shoes off, trying not to make any more of a fool of yourself tonight. You stumble a little, head thick with those stupid sex on the beaches Gaz bought for you, and slowly make your way to the couch.

He hasn't looked away. Not once.

It's stifling. His presence nearly smothers you.

It usually isn't this— strange.

The handful of times he'd come around, it was always the same routine, the same dance. He'd be there, bathed in black and searching the alcoves of your flat, and then—on you. Your back against the wall, the hello snuffed out by the bulk of his body pressing into yours, his hands on your thighs, fingers tugging at the hem of your clothing. You'd tumble somewhere: the wall or the floor or the couch more often than not.

(It took him a year to fuck you on your bed.)

The next morning, he'd be gone. Rising before the sun—if he even slept at all—and off somewhere until late at night. He'd stay a few nights, but those were rare. Usually, it was once.

One night of brutal fucking where he had on you nearly every surface in your flat, taking, and taking until the sky broke crimson, and your eyes misted over from fatigue. He'd drop you in your bed, and when you woke up, sore and dazed and aching all over—

The bed is cold. Empty.

His presence is erased. The only thing that confirms it wasn't a dream is the burn between your legs, the quiver in your knees, and the bruises along your hips and thighs in the perfect impression of his large hands.

I wasn't expecting you, you'd once said.

His eyes are glued to you. Liquid midnight framed in white. Want me to leave, pet?

They dance with humour, hidden in the shadows of his intense stare, when you trip over yourself in your haste to say no. No, no, please—stay.

Sometimes, you like to pretend those obsidian edges softened a little at the ache in your voice. The palpable urgency bleeds through. That they regard you with a touch more warmth than before.

"Alright," he says, and nothing more. Alright.

It's enough. More than enough, really. It's a miracle a man like Simon would even offer that much considering his life, and who he is. It's more than you'd ever ask for.

And yet—

(In the darkness of your room, you crumble.)

—you want more.

More. More—

The butter chicken is warm, and slightly cooled. You glance at him from the corner of your eye. How long had he waited for you? Why did he wait for you?

You bite the soft, buttered naan to keep yourself from asking those silly questions.

This whole thing—if it even is a thing—is purely physical. Release. Something to stem the surreal feeling of being back on land where guns aren't being aimed at your head, and artillery fire doesn't clog the atmosphere. The stench of death is replaced by the cold, wet streets of London. The screams of the dying are just honking cars from impatient drivers; the chatter of civilians.

It's something to quench the inescapable sense of ennui when you leave the building after playing with the lives of the men on the field, and hear mothers chatting in the train about the mundanity of life.

Anything to calm the nerves. Nothing more. Nothing less.

And yet: he's sitting on your couch with his mask rolled up to his nose, eating chicken curry while passively watching football on your small television. Your hands brush when you both reach for more naan or roti. Gaze meeting over the Biryani.

It's different. New. This hasn't ever happened before in the four years since the conception of whatever this is. It's—

Jarring. Bewildering.

You expect, at some point, for him to stand up, and leave. That intimacy of eating dinner together while he murmurs low about what certain calls, or plays mean to you will break something inside of him, and scare him away. It's soft. Domestic.

Ghost is untouchable. Unseen.

But your eyes find the orange sauce smeared on the corner of his mouth. The ashen stubble on his chin, and jaw. The flash of teeth when he brings the dripping piece of curry to his mouth. His jaw working as he chews. The swallow. A flash of red when he tries, and fails, to catch every bit of curry from his lips.

It's bliss, you find. These small moments when he feels so distinctly human clot in your chest, and you worry that one day the mass will grow to be so big, you will crumble under the weight of it all.

(Maybe, it's the sex on the beach, the too-sweet rumchata, but the thought makes your stomach burn with anticipation. You want this man to ruin you with the mundane.)

"Finished your dinner?" He asks, eyes sliding to you.

The meagre food sits like a lump of coal. Your appetite dissolves as your slurried mind struggles to both remain as composed as possible so as not to spook him, and keep all the ugly things you want to say behind the seal of your lips.

It should just be sex. Fucking. No strings attached. Nothing—

You wonder if it's your life, drenched in a proxy of ordinary, that lures him in. You're not a civilian, but compared to him, you're only a short step above. Is it just—happenstance? Does he come to you because there are no other options for a man who died years ago?

Are you—

Convenient.

Something to pass the time. Something that makes him feel human again.

An evanescent dalliance within the boundaries of having no past, and no future. He isn't jeopardising himself by sneaking into your flat at night to satiate the hunger inside; the need to feel something other than the weight of a gun in his hands, and smell the blood, the smoke, the napalm in the air.

You work in the same circle.

He, when he's allowed to exist, on the field; and you, sitting behind a computer screen while you oversee the deaths of others in a sequence of numbers.

Your hands are too delicate to carry the weight of a gun, to aim and pull the trigger, but he can still feel the same sin when your fingers touch his flesh.

Not drenched in blood, but stained.

You're not innocent; he isn't sullying a civilian with his rough hands that reek of gunpowder.

You exist in that murky limbo he can fall in. Safety lingers in the cartilage of your joints; familiar, and attainable: you know the rules and what he does. You will never look him in the eye and ask why.

But—you're still dangerous. Covetous.

More, you think. You want more.

"I—," you taste malt on your tongue. You didn't drink any, but the taste reminds you of—

Hands on your waist. Warm breath in your ear. Come home with me.

Gaz, suddenly there, eyes blazing. Step off, mate.

Everton scores: blurs of blue dart across the green, but none of it sticks in the gummy lining of your head. It feels like you're somewhere else. Your body is sitting on the couch; you feel the soft, worn cushion below. The food is heavy on your belly. Eyes grainy from the alcohol you'd drank.

But you're not here.

You're adrift in grey matter. Head tilted toward the pink, undulating dome above. Afloat in stagnant molasses.

"I kissed someone tonight," you murmur. On the screen, a man throws his hands up, words at the bottom blur together.

The couch creaks when he moves. You can feel his stare on your temple, on you, but you don't meet it. Coward.

The geyser in the brackish pond rumbles. It tastes of sabotage.

"I probably would have gone home with them, too, if it wasn't for Gaz."

The roar of the television is the only sound you hear, but it feels distant. Warbled. There is a pounding in your head that starts at the base of your skull. The beat almost sounds like a warning.

Your hands tighten around the wet plastic cup of the cool salted Lassi. The crinkle it makes drowns out the noise of the cushion shifting under his weight.

"I guess it's a good thing I came home when I did—"

"Yeah, it is."

You can't place his tone. Arctic ice. Polar. A Chinook, perhaps. It bites into you, churning the chicken and alcohol in your stomach.

At least, in the end there would be no questions. No late nights gazing up at the ceiling, or leaning over the sink, peering at yourself in the mirror to make sense of why he picked you. It would just be—

An empty bed. Dinner for one. A single toothbrush in the holder.

(I bought you a toothbrush. You can leave it in the—

No need. I got my own.)

You huff. "Says you—"

"I'd have ripped him limb from limb for touchin' you."

His eyes are darker than you'd ever seen them. Black holes. Pooled ink.

For all your aplomb, your demure under the ire in those alcoves. The ones that leak—impossible—the same covetous spool in your chest.

"Simon—"

"Where'd he touch you?"

It's a command.

He reaches out; his palm is blistering when it rests on your bare thigh.

"Here?"

"Why—?" You shiver. "Why would you tear him—"

Sometimes, you forget how massive he is, but he seems quite eager to remind you when his hand falls on the cushion behind your head, closing that meagre distance between the two of you with his body. He's a shadow looming over you. A gaping chasm that yawns before you. Dangerous and dark. The warning signs are written in blood.

Stay away, they say, but he pushes himself closer to you.

"I don't share."

"What—what is there to share?"

His eyes flutter. Hard, unyielding obsidian. In the gaps, sit a near cosmic distance. An unreachable planet on the fringes of the solar system.

Ashen brows draw together. A cornered animal will lash out, and—

"Thought it was obvious."

You swallow and taste the sea. "It isn't."

An impasse, then, when he freezes. When his hand burrowing between your thighs halts on your flesh. An uncrossable no man's land. A valley where those who venture seldom return.

The chossy below your feet wobbles.

He says nothing. You don't expect him to, but you can't say it hurts any less.

You knew what you were getting into. What this was.

Still:

"Maybe we should stop this."

"That what you want?"

"It's pretty obvious it isn't, and that's the problem. I'm not going to ask for more than you'll give, but—;" a deep breath, a shudder. His thumb brushes your skin, a soft roll of his rough finger, and your heart thrums. Sings. The catch in your voice is thick, palpable. "How can you expect me not to want more?"

"What do you want? Want me to show my face? That it?" His hand raises to the edge of the mask, and something sours inside of you. "If you want to see so—"

Your hand on his wrist stops him from tugging it down. "I don't." Firm, decisive. "I don't want that, Simon. I just want you. And if—;" your eyes flicker to the containers, the half-eaten food on the coffee table. A dinner usually for one. "If you keep doing this—dinner, and—and—"

"I thought you liked butter chicken."

Your chest expands with your exasperated huff. Humour, at a time like this. And yet— "I do. I just meant—"

"I know, pet. I know."

"If you keep this up, I'll want more." You turn to him, hand dropping from his wrist. "I'm greedy. How can I not be when you tell me stupid jokes and bring me curry?"

"I knew you'd like them."

"Simon—"

Avoidance, then.

His hand inches down, sliding up your thigh. The loose shorts you'd worn fall to the side, and he slips through until his fingers meet the gusset of your panties.

"You're wet," he husks, leaning down. His forehead pressed to your temple. He smells of turmeric and ash. "That all for me, pet?"

Your thighs spread, giving him more room. His fingers brush along the seam of your clothed cunt. Your chin dips. Charcoal. Midnight black. His lashes are long. The missing coal around his eyes makes them look darker.

"Always."

His knuckle presses against your clit, chest brushing over your shoulder. "Better be."

Lashes flutter when you mewl, arching your back to get more of his touch. Needy, eager. You gasp when his finger crooks inside of your panties, bare skin on your cunt. You’re feverish; burning up from his touch alone. An ache knots in your belly; a spooling coil winding when his knuckle grazes your flesh. His breath is heavy in your ear.

"C'mon," he murmurs, the tip of his finger drags down the length of your slit. "Haven't had this pussy in months, pet. Need to feel you."

His words made something inside of you snap.

It's frantic: desperation claws at your chest carrying the urge to sink your teeth in his skin until it punctures with your mark, one that brands his body. The thought alone makes your belly quiver. An ache. A need. An itch. He's there, always: his hands are firm on your waist when you slide into his lap, hips pressing against your core as your fingers tug the buttons of his trousers off.

Your thighs burn from the stretch of his bulk. The sheer absurdity of how massive he is, and how comparatively small you feel with your knees split apart, is never more apparent than now, when you're barely able to touch the cushion below.

"Need you," you pant against the skin above the mask. Stubble crests over his cheek, and chaps your lips. "Need you so bad, Simon—"

"Fuck, pet," he breathes, ragged and harsh. His hands are brands on your flesh, pulling you closer, and closer, and yet—at the same time—keeping you at bay. "Would you have been this desperate for him?"

No. Not at all. You haven't been driven to the brink for a man since Simon. No one has ever burrowed deep under your skin until you were itching at the dermis so hard, it broke. It ripped. And the bloodied tatters that remained still weren't enough to quench the burn.

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

His snarl is muffled behind the mask, but you feel the bite of it when his hands clench around your hips, jerking you forward until your cunt is nestled on his hard bulge.

"Gonna fuck you, now."

The words are ground down to the marrow; stripped and pulverised into dust when they slip through. Broken bones, fragmented ash—he blows the smoke of them into your face until you're reeling from the way they shred your throat and lungs when you breathe them in.

There is no finesse in the way you tug your panties off, letting them dangle around your ankle. Or the way he shoves his boxers down enough to free his cock.

It's quick. Dirty.

Simon has been rough in the past—often leaving you feeling like the victor of a well-fought war—but that always came after what felt like hours of foreplay. His face buried in your cunt. His fingers slowly stretching you for his cock.

This—

This feels desperate. It feels unhinged and raw. All his meticulous self-control catches fire in front of you until your skin blisters with the heat of it.

His fingers slip under the mask for a moment, and when he carefully pulls them free, they're covered in spittle.

No lube, no prep—

His thick fingers are on your cunt, slick and wet from his saliva, and they sink inside of you. One right to the last knuckle. Another joins. The stretch makes your toes curl. Makes you drop your head to his shoulder as he works in the third. The lewd sounds of your pussy being hurriedly fucked open by his fingers, palm digging into your clit, makes you burn.

It's not enough, but you look down and feel desire bloom at the sight of him—his cock is leaking prespend all over your mound, jerking against your belly with each quick thrust of his fingers within you. He pulls his hand away, and smears the wetness across his cock before gripping the base.

Your eyes are fixed on the pearlescent beads on the fat head, gathering in a thick, milky pool before rolling down the side. It gathers at the clinch of hi thumb and forefinger. Your mouth waters at the sight.

"Lemme suck your cock after," you slur; it comes out as barely more than a whimper. "Need to taste you—"

His cock jerks in his hold, spitting more prespend down the length of him.

"Fuckin' hell, pretty thing," he rasps, dragging your hips closer until your cunt is pressed taut against him. The drag of his flared head between your folds makes you keen low in your throat. "You won't even get a chance, pet. If you think I'm pulling out of this tight pussy at all tonight, you're wrong."

It's not a warning, but it's all he gives before his hand grips himself tight, the other clasped around your waist. His urgency bleeds through when his hips lift off the bed.

It's always an arduous undertaking whenever he sits you in his lap, and slowly feeds the entirety of his thick cock into your quivering body. Sometimes, nearly driven delirious from the intense pleasure-pain that pools in your core, you whisper into his ear that he's going to ruin you, break you down the centre.

You'll snap me in half, you whimper.

His response is to force more of himself into your body until you gag on the words in your throat, choke on your spit.

"I want to," he hisses; water doused on flaming coal. The grit of his voice is saturated in sin, and the sound makes your eyes roll. "Wanna break you open until nothin' fits inside this pretty cunt but me."

"You'd ruin me for everyone else, Simon? That's not fair—"

Your words make him groan, make him grasp your hips, fingers digging into the swell of your ass. He pulls you down onto him until he's swallowed whole. The air is punched from your lungs. You feel the throb of him in your esophagus. Broken, then, by this man. This untouchable, unattainable being.

"Fuck—," little hiccups spill from your throat. Your head is a slurry of want want want want and too much too full too big. You can't take him. You needed more foreplay. To be stretched around three fingers until you could fit him soundly.

This—

This feels a little bit like a punishment.

"Fuckin' hell," he rasps into your neck. "Wouldn't know what to do with this little cunt if he had it."

"And you do?"

His answer is to plant his feet on the ground and drive the length of him into you. A battering ram to your core. There is a white-hot pleasure burning through your core. It leaks into your marrow until you're heavy with the weight of it.

He helps you along. Hands gripped tight to your hips, he lifts you up off of his cock, and lowers you down with a fervour that leaves you quaking.

It's not so much as riding him, but being battered by a hurricane. All you can do is cling to him—arms wrapped tight around his neck, thighs shaking as you struggle to keep up with his brutal pace. Your forehead falls, rests against his shoulder, and you moan brokenly into the seam between your bodies.

It feels a little bit like possession. The flavour of a claim, ownership lingers in the air; it's heavy on your tongue, in your chest. But he's not the type of man to do that, is he? Distance. Separation.

Something like that is far too intimate for a man who shouldn't exist.

Even so—

Each blunt grind of his cock inside of you has milky pleasure blooming inside of you. His hard grip is tight enough to bruise, and when he digs his fingers into your flesh, you wonder if it's intentional. If he wants you stained and broken by the time he's finished.

No condom, either. It's rare that you go without one, despite being on birth control. He'd only ever lost it enough to forgo the contraceptive when he was injured, when his hand would press to his side each time he moved. The mask covered it up, but you saw the red in his eyes when he shifted.

You took advantage of his weakened state—lemme take care of you, Simon—and finally (finally) got a taste of his cock. His hips rutted into your mouth, and the noises that spilled out of him were obscene. You swallowed every drop while he heaved on the couch, forearm thrown across his forehead, eyes wide and red and looking at you in a way that made your toes curl. It was—

Magma. Melted rock. Soft, molten, and—

He passed out after. You cleaned up while he slept. It was the first time you'd ever seen him slumber, but despite the itch to look, to see, you kept your distance. A throw was tossed on him gently, a bottle of water left on the coffee table. You grabbed a book from the shelf, curled up on the chaise near the window, and watched the lour gloom of London under a deluge.

(London, you find, is always prettier when it storms.)

He woke up hours later to the smell of lamb soup.

His voice was a husk: a charred log. He pulled you down on the couch with him, back pressed to his front, and he'd taken you then. His arm draped over your collarbones, forearm tucked under your chin; his other hand gripped your thigh, keeping you open for him as he rutted inside of you. Delirious, perhaps, from the pain. From the uncomfortable, dangerous, vulnerability he showed you. It didn't feel distant when he pulled you into him, eyes murky bogs in the middle of a barren forest. It felt—

Stripped. Raw and naked and somehow virginal despite the heavy pants of pleasure in your ear, muffled by the mask that had not moved at all since his head dropped on the armrest behind, and he woke up to a porcelain bowl of cawl on the table.

The bare grind of his cock inside of you should negate the purity in the act but somehow, somehow, it feels more innocent than anything else you'd experienced before.

He came inside of you, a wrecked groan reverberating in your ear as he squeezed you tight to his body, and made you take every drop.

No words were exchanged. You ate cawl on the couch and tried to pretend you didn't see the hungry look in his eyes when you caught his gaze on the pearlescent smear staining your thighs.

(Each time after that, he wore a condom.)

Until now.

You can feel him pulsing in your throat. It feels more intimate—hurried and rushed as it: your thighs spread over his, his cock buried deep inside you, chest pressed against yours. There is nowhere for you to turn, to hide, except to burrow your face in the crook of his neck, breathing in the ozone scent of him. Gunpowder. Pyrolysis. Sulphur. Smoke. It sits heavy in your lungs.

"F—fuck, Simon," you mewl, fingers clawing at the fabric of his sweater. You need something to hold on to, to keep you grounded amid the battering of his hips.

"Yeah, pet," he breathes, his hands gripping you tighter as he ruts into you. His cock grinds against something inside of you that has you seeing white. "You like that don't you? Like my cock inside of you. You're desperate for it, aren't you?"

There is no room for words in your esophagus when you can feel the blunt press of his head bludgeoning into your sternum. All you can do is work yourself against the brutal onslaught of him driving his hips, his cock, into you from below. There is no stability for you to find purchase, and give back just as much as you take, but Simon doesn't seem to want that. Not right now.

He fucks into you, barely able to pull the full length of him out of your drenched pussy, and seems find pleasure in grinding against your core in deep, short strokes that leave you chasing Ursa Major in the Magellanic cloud that spools in your head.

Each thrust leaves you trembling, legs quaking as he knocks against a place inside that makes your back arch; making liquid euphoria brim in your veins.

Fucking Simon with an abundance of prep rides that perfect equilibrium of pleasure and pain. This—

This feels like it might wreck you. Your cunt is stretched wide around the base of him, pulled taut as he digs his heels into your worn, stained carpet and drives himself into you like he's trying to split you in half, and take refuge in your womb.

The sounds that spill out, filling the room, make you feel like you're floating. From the seal of your sopping pussy and the lewd squelch of him sliding against your walls; the deep, ruined moans that drip from your mouth; the deep, hoarse groans he makes that has your belly quivering—it has your fingers digging into his shoulders, clenched around tense muscles.

"Fuckin' hell—," his head tips back when your knee slips, bringing your pelvis closer to his groin. "This cunt was made for me, wasn't it? All mine—"

Stubble grazes your nose when you press your lips to the silver of skin exposed on his jugular. Teeth catch on the coarse hair, skin drawn between them. Capillaries burst under your tongue, flooding his flesh a bright red, then a deep purple. The perfect impression of your teeth—

"Fuck—!" He snarls, hands pulling you closer to him as he jerks within you.

Simon knocks the thoughts from your head when he spears his cock inside of you. It's rough, raw. The pain that blooms in your core when he chevies into the seal of your womb as you see a supernova behind your eyelids. The explosion of energy. Each synapse inside of your head buzzes with the force of it.

"C'mon, pretty thing," he husks; the roar of the ocean upwelling on the land. You taste salt on your tongue when you pant, moaning his name into his sweat-slicked neck. He tastes of iodine. "I want you to cum on my cock, pet. I need to feel your cunt squeeze me tight—"

It pulls on the thread keeping the deluge from spilling over. The seams split; the levee cracks. It wells inside of your core, each plunge pushing you further and further to the edge of that roaring precipice. Standing on the ledge of a cliff, eyes pointed down at the black water that slams against the granite, frothing and angry. It sprays mist from the vitriolic sea. Arsenic white. It crests over you. His grunt in your ear. His hands tighten until you feel bruises bloom under the tips of his fingers. The chossy cracks. The rocks tumble. Your feet slip—

It's familiar, this. Everything about him makes you feel like you're falling, and this—this—is no different. A leap. A drop. Your feet hit the water first.

It happens all at once; crashing over you like a rogue wave. Swallowed whole. Sucked under.

Knees scrape the murky sediment below. You babble in his neck about how good his cock feels inside of you; hiccuping stupidly at the absurd stretch of him, how big he is, and—shyly, tentatively—how much you missed this, missing feeling him inside of you, tasting him on your tongue.

It punches a snarl from his throat; ripped and raw on the barbed wire lining his jugular. It drips blood when he bites into it, fingers cutting into your skin to stem the ache in his voice from leaking out.

(Things are only real when whispered out loud.)

He pulses inside of you, head tilts back as he groans with his release.

These soft moments nearly ruin you: when his hands clench around your waist, paroxysms of pleasure hard enough to bruise; his chest expanding with his deep breaths, brushing yours with each inhale; the heat spuming inside of you. The noises he makes. The way his brow pinches together when he cums.

Your eyes fall on the column of his neck, tracing a bead of sweat slipping down from the humid mask, over the bluish mark you left on his skin, to where it pools in the indent of his collarbone. His throat bobs. You watch it all.

He's never more real than in these moments, you find.

You think of object permanence, and sink your teeth into the raw ring around his neck.

Simon shudders under you. "Fuckin' hell, pet—;" is a gravel-rucked rasp from his chest. He swallows again. "You tryin' to go for the jugular next?"

He doesn't wait for an answer. His arms tighten around you, locking you to his chest. You throb around the softening length of him, pulsing like a heartbeat. Brassbound bliss is thick around your neck; heavy iron pulling you down.

The cosmos spits you out, and gravity drags you home until you're centred; surrounded by the scent of sweat, sex, and the cloying tang of Simon—warm milk, wet nickles, and clove. Your nose brushes the hem of his mask, and you catch the frenetic headiness of Ghost. Warzone. Gunpowder. Ichor. Your tongue flicks out, catches the sulphur on his skin.

You feel his feet shift, his thigh flex.

Hold on tight, pet. It's the only warning you get before his hands curl under your knees, locking you to his chest, and he stands.

The power in his muscles is dizzying, intoxicating. He hefts you into his arms with an ease that makes your head swim. All the liquid inside shifts as he moves. A vertiginous wave washes over you.

You feel so small in his arms. So fragile, breakable. He holds you tight to his chest, hands ironclad on your thighs, and huffs when you giggle in his ear about how strong he is. How big and tough, and powerful Ghost is.

"Ghost ain't the one still buried deep inside of you, pet." He mutters into your temple, words slurred, hushed. They're almost drowned out by the cheers spilling from the speakers, and you wonder if he even meant for you to hear them.

You duck your head, nuzzling your nose into his throat. "M'tired. Take me to bed, Simon."

"Gladly."

It's a short walk from your living room to your bedroom, and he knocks the door open with the flat of his foot. He takes a moment before stepping through the threshold, eyes darting around your bedroom briefly. Hyper-vigilant. Always. This never changes even if he's in your flat or walking into the communal kitchen a whole sea away.

It takes him two steps to reach your bed. He doesn't bother with the lights.

He lays you on the cold bed, hovering over you with eyes like Orion. You think you find Betelgeuse in the far reaches of those unfathomable depths.

"You're pretty," you slur, stupidly, dizzily. You're not drunk—not really —but you're intoxicated by this, by him. His scent in your nose, his taste on your tongue, his weight pushing you down into the soft sheets—his cock inside of you still, twitching when you speak. It makes you giggle—robust and bubbly—and babble about the stars in his eyes, and heaven in his touch. "Your eyes are so—"

He huffs, those pretty eyes rolling at you. "Haven't even seen me without the mask, pet—"

"Don't care."

"No? What if I was ugly?"

"Doesn't matter."

"Scarred up?"

You shrug.

Another huff, deeper this time. His head drops, forehead pressing against your temple. You can feel the vibration through your bones when he rests his chest on yours, and murmurs your name low. Ashes and embers. Smoke is thick in your nose.

"You're clingy when you're drunk."

"Says the one who hasn't let go of me since I sat on your cock—"

His hips grind against yours, and the cheeky tone dies off in a whimper.

"That's what I thought."

"No fair," you pant, arching your back under him. Your legs tighten around his waist. "You can't just abuse me with your dick to shut me up. You know it's my weakness."

"If it works…"

"You're a terrible man."

"Never said I wasn't, and anyone who says otherwise is lying."

Your hands slide up his shoulders, and you feel something sour twist inside of you when he tenses as you glide over his bare skin. Your nails graze his scalp, fingers threading through his moussed locks. He shudders at your touch.

"Guess I'm a liar, then," you fit your cheek against his, murmuring in his ear. Quiet, low. The ghost of a whisper.

His voice is tight when he speaks. Airy, light. It's as soft as you'd ever heard him. "Guess so, pet."

His arms tighten around you, holding you just a little bit closer. It's almost cruel how he holds you close to his chest like this. Like you're something to be protected, to be shielded.

(Humans are greedy things by nature.

How can he expect you not to want when he gives you moments like these to cling to?)

He doesn't stay long. Two nights watching football on your couch, drinking tea, and feigning obliviousness to the crack in the foundation that lingers between you. The intimacy is startlingly easy to fall into; he sleeps (really sleeps; his eyes closed, soft snores spilling out from behind the mask), relaxes around you in a way that makes you distinctly aware, now, of how tense he was before.

(And yet—he still came.)

There is no confession to be had over cawl or the roast dinner you make before he leaves, leftovers tucked inside his backpack when he isn't looking, left there for whatever endeavour he was going on next. You can't imagine they have many homemade meals.

You don't even really know what he wants from this, what he expects, except that it's happening. He's here, and that—

That's enough.

You're greedy, always will be, but there's a dissonance inside of your chest, balmed by the tinge of green in those obsidian depths when you spoke of going home with another man. The acrid taste of his ire feels more poignant than any words could offer.

A man of action.

(And action comes often in his life.)

He calls you—for the first time in four years, somewhere overseas—and the sound of his voice in your ear has you grinning stupidly in the solitude of your bedroom.

"Did I wake you?"

"Wasn't sleeping."

It's quiet. Through the static, you can almost make out the chitter of insects native to whichever place they called him to. You think about filling in the gap, but there is a breath. A shift. Then: "me, too. Wondered what you were up to."

"Wouldn't you like to know."

"Pet—"

"Thinking of you."

Silence again. His breath is white noise on the line. "I'll be—;" he pauses, inhaling once more: "—back soon. No promises."

"No, never," you smile. "Bring me a souvenir."

"All I have are heads, pet."

"How romantic."

"Never been much of one."

"I guess I could redecorate. Macabre-chic. "

He huffs. You wonder if it's a chuckle. "Would start to smell, wouldn't it?"

"Not much worse than you after a mission, surely."

"You—"

"Kinda miss it, though."

He says nothing. You catch the grainy inhale. The forceful exhale.

"Not much to miss."

"There's lots."

"There ain't."

"If you say so. Still do, though." You let it sit for a moment; a tender glimmer of raw vulnerability—the flavour he runs from. It brims. Your mother taught you that it was best to let things simmer. "It's been raining like crazy in London. Kinda reminds me of Wales."

"What do you call a sheep tied to a fence in Wales?"

"Do I want to know?"

"A leisure centre."

You nip your chuckle at the root, feigning exasperation instead. "You can do better than that."

"What do you call a soldier that survived mustard gas and pepper spray?"

"What?"

"A seasoned veteran."

Your huff trails off into silence. It's palpable, thick, but it isn't uncomfortable. It reminds you of the softness of night when you're supposed to be quiet. When you tiptoe around with a gingerness to avoid a raucous. Anything over a certain decibel is off-limits. It's not a rule. It isn't written down. But you follow it, anyway.

In that gloam when the sun sets over the horizon, and night settles like a blanket, you whisper:

Make sure those heads come home safe.

The sheets rustle. Something in the distance shatters.

He sucks in a breath. "I should go, pet."

It's as much of a promise as he'll ever make.

In the sticky gossamer of sleep, you feel something brush over your temple. A soft smear of warmth; transient and fleeting. The fluttering wings of a magpie.

It leaves before you can sink into its weight.

When you wake the next morning, the room smells of rust and gunpowder.

(No heads, but you find a whittled sheep on the pillow beside you.)

You open the cupboard above the vanity, reach for your toothbrush, and—

Oh.

A slow, soft smile crests over your lips, cheeks flushing under the jaundiced light.

Inside the solitary holder, another brush has taken residence beside yours. You stare at the two brushes in the rusting cup, heart thudding in your chest.

#simon riley x you #simon riley fanfic #simon riley #simon ghost riley x you #simon riley x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #simon ghost riley #this is about as domestic as i can make ghost #simon riley cod #cod mw2 #call of duty modern warfare #call of duty

2K notes · View notes

chronicallylatetotheparty · 11 months

Text

Actually, Luka being a Guardian now makes perfect sense.

The only requirements are faith in authority and a willingness to betray your friends' trust.

No wonder Adrien wasn't Guardian material.

#luka salt #ml #miraculous ladybug #ml recreation #adrien agreste #ml ephemeral #order of the guardians

32 notes · View notes

sprout-fics · 8 months

Text

Falling Down to Earth (Part Three)

(Simon "Ghost" Riley x F!Medic "Fix" Reader)

Part Four of Snowblind (Formerly 'Of Shadows and Bones')

Rating: PG-13 Wordcount: 5.5k Tags: Slow Burn, Trauma, Found Family, Taskforce 141, Team Dynamics, Hurt/Comfort, Unreliable Narrator, Self Esteem Issues, Referenced Familial abuse, Mom Laswell, Domesticity, Reunions, Therapeutic healing, Sparring, Fluff, Happy Ending Warnings: References of childhood verbal abuse A/N: (See Ao3 for full author's notes)

Just like that, the autumn wind washes gently across your being.

It’s been weeks since you cried into Laswell’s arms in the dim, midnight light of her kitchen. Time has shifted since then, and the pull of the earth rotating endlessly under you now casts you into a hazy, resplendent golden glow of fall. The northeastern breeze cradles you as you lift your face to the late October sunshine, eyes closed and basking in the glory of the waning sunlight before winter’s eve. The aging trees that line the lane of Kate’s neighborhood begin to transform into amber and cognac, shifting against the crisp air where summer falls away with a gentle sigh.

It transforms you too, you think. The world is ever changing, evolving, turning itself over with death and renewal in a ceaseless evolution that seems to mirror the interior of your soul. You allow it to carry you, cradle you, and in your reverie you think about how despite everything, some things seem to stay the same.

“Grief is a funny thing.” You write in the journal Laswell has given you, a shawl draped across your shoulders, the crickets outside speaking of a time well past sunset. “I didn’t know that’s what it was until now. I’m still not sure what I’m grieving for, exactly. Maybe it’s for the things I missed because I didn’t let myself have them. Maybe it’s for the way I was treated. Maybe...it’s for the way I treated myself.”

You wake there come dawn, head bent against your arms, fingers tucked against the pages as if you still have so much more to say.

It’s not been so long since that night that you can’t remember the chest cracking sensation of your sobs, the way your fingers had stretched her shirt as you clung to Laswell in the solitude of her embrace. You think if you let your memories shift ephemeral across your thoughts you can still taste the salt of your tears, not unlike the ocean you were once so afraid of. It still roils under your gaze, held high on a precipice far above the waters. There lies your darkest nightmares, the haunting words of your father with his devastating prophecies. Yet it feels distant now, something caught in your shadow, but only when you turn to look. You know it will follow you, and that alone is enough to frighten you. Yet it is chased away by the brightness of the changed world around you.

The things Laswell said to you, her hushed words as you emptied yourself of sorrow into her arms remain with you. How she was sorry, how she was proud, how you belonged exactly where you wanted to be. You hold the words fast to your heart like a small, glowing lantern that burns a gentle flame. The fear, the anticipation and the dark chlorosis stays there too, but it’s different now. Changed, just like you.

Like the inexorable change of seasons, there’s something inside you that’s shifted now. Your paralytic fear and self-loathing keeps its place inside you, but the heaviness is no longer unbearable. You feel it lifted by a new, whispering updraft that buoys your healing wings and holds you delicately aloft against the sun. Sunlight dapples through dissipating storm clouds, and it streams through your fingers onto your wide-eyed, captivated gaze.

There’s things about the world around you you’ve never noticed until now, and in this new, profound wonder of yours you take it in with fluttering fascination that feels like the wingbeats of hope.

You notice the laughter of children in the afternoons when the school bus whines to a halt at the top of the lane, of the games they play and the call of their parents when it comes time for dinner. You notice the way black-eyed susans grow against the aged fence of Kate’s back yard, see a chipmunk sit and eat the dried seed heads. In the hours past sunset there’s a call of a barred owl from the aged oak that shadows the front yard. In the morning the rising sun reveals hovering particles of dust that float against the gauzy white curtains in the front room. Small things you’ve taken for granted now seem to mesmerize you, offering a glimpse of a world so much more delicate and beautiful than the one you thought you knew.

You notice the sound of your own voice now, how you’ve gone from quiet and subdued to something gentle but firm. You surprise yourself by how much you seem to say now, allow your own thoughts to echo into words. More than once you provide a quick comment to Kate or Paula and they pause, laugh at your humor, delighted and astonished at the things you’ve kept quiet until now. They notice the shift in your demeanor, look upon you with tender gazes that say little and yet convey so much. They’re watching you find your path, watching you balance delicately atop this new summit, arms spread like extended wings to hold yourself aloft. They hold your hands as you do, and you trust them to catch you should you stumble.

They take you to a fall festival, where the scent of maple curls across your senses. Paula stands over the produce stand and considers ingredients philosophically, and you sheepishly tug Laswell to go look at the petting zoo, to which she gives you a bemused look at your childlike fascination. When Paula fetches you to examine Halloween decorations Kate wanders off in search of coffee, returns to confess her secret adoration for cider-spiced flavors. You linger by the pumpkin patch, watch children struggle to hoist pumpkins larger than themselves. Paula nudes you meaningfully, and you carefully choose one for yourself, where it later sits on the steps up to the front door with a misshapen, lopsided grin.

“I know the sound of my own laughter now.” You write, and again that ache of grief and hope sits heavy in your chest, expands exponentially outwards as if your bones are barely enough to contain it. “I’d forgotten what it’s like to feel so much joy.”

The golden hour of afternoon spills through the windows of the office you visit each week, where conversations come easier to you now between you and your therapist. He smiles fondly at you as you struggle to reveal the things you’ve kept so tightly wound to yourself, trying and earnest and still learning the words to name the things you feel caught inside your hollow, filling heart.

You tell him everything you told Laswell and more. It’s a slow, grueling process. There’s so many things you’ve repressed and forgotten, and you learn you can’t remember them because it’s too painful, and that it’s alright. You learn the names of the things you experienced and learn how to balance them carefully against the weight of your soul, decide what is and isn’t worth remembering. He’s patient in a way you aren’t familiar with, and you smile at him gratefully when he gently suggests that it’s enough, and sends you home with a reminder to be kind to yourself.

It’s hard on some days, and you come back weary and ragged, overworn and crumpling into Kate and Paula’s arms. They hold you, keep you safe from the spiral of your own mind, and you learn how to let yourself be taken care of despite the tears that well in your eyes.

You learn that too- how to cry and not punish yourself for it.

Kate is patient as she reminds you over and over again the things she thinks of you, the things that are, and they balance against the words of your father, tip the scales so his prophecies are carried by the wind off the distant edge of the earth. You learn and keep the knowledge that you are so much more than what he thought of you.

“I didn’t realize just how much I’ve done with myself.” You write in your journal in the gentle cradle of evening. “I always thought it wasn’t enough, and maybe it still isn’t in some ways- but the things I’ve done mean a lot to me. I graduated university by myself, joined the military, got my medic training, made sergeant rank, got recruited by the CIA, and now I work with an international anti-terrorism taskforce.”

You pause.

“I’m still so young.”

You sometimes wonder what your father would think of you now, with all the things you’ve done, what they’d all think of you. The last time you’d spoken to your family had been shortly after your college graduation, when your mother had asked if you had gotten over your fierce independence and were ready to come home. You told her instead you were following through on your commitment to join the army. She’d been frantic and had handed the phone to your father. He’d only gotten three seconds of yelling before you had hung up and blocked all of them, curled into yourself in your dorm bunk and cried yourself empty.

You know reaching out would be only an attempt to prove yourself to them still, and you know now you don’t need them.

Instead, you look across the Atlantic, past the unfathomable depth of the ocean to the place where you belong. You look to them.

The team still hasn’t reached out, and you know it’s through no fault of your own. They’ve been deployed out of cellphone range for weeks now. Even if you tried to contact them the call wouldn’t go through. So you wait anxiously for them to return, thinking about all the things you want to tell them once you hear their voices.

Kate must take note of your anxious pacing when the worry becomes too much, because one weekend she tosses you a gym bag and tells you to be ready in ten minutes. You follow orders and clamber into the car with her, curious when she drives you out of the city and towards a subdued suburb with an aging strip mall, wherein lies what seems like a martial arts ring.

“Don’t tell Paula.” Kate levels at you with a pointed finger when she escorts you inside, and you hide a cheeky smile but cross your heart to never tell.

“Didn’t figure you for the type.” You levy back and watch as Kate rolls her shoulders while she wraps her hands. She has a lean build, narrow shoulders with stringy muscle that flexes under your eyes. She’s not strong so much as she is dexterous, agile in a way where the boys are not. They’re larger, packed with muscle that slows them down. Not Kate. Kate is lean, efficient, and fast.

You learn this quickly, as your typical approach to sparring with the boys becomes null and void against Kate’s quick onslaught, precise and practiced. A foot hooked around your ankle sends you sprawling the first time, and the second Kate uses your momentum to send you tumbling once more.

“I thought you never joined the military?” You wheeze from the mat as Kate stands over you.

“I didn’t.” She smirks and offers you a hand to stand. “I’ve just lived around soldiers long enough to pick up a few things.”

“More than a few things.” You gasp, doubling over to catch your breath as you rise. “Christ, Kate, that knocked the wind out of me.”

Laswell grins smugly. “That’s why we get back up.” She supplies, and you blink at the barely hidden nature of her words before feigning a roll of your eyes with a begrudging smile.

Kate stretches as she wanders away from you, looking very much like a cat in the sunshine, even with the pleased curl of her lips. It’s unfamiliar to you, the way she easily folds herself into the ring, seems at home here. Kate is a woman of many mysteries, and this itself feels like one of hundreds you’ve yet to fully understand. Yet somehow the confident flex of her muscles and glint of her eyes as she takes in your stance makes complete sense with what you know of her.

“Foot forward.” She nods, and you blink, glance down as you adjust. “It’ll help you balance when you throw your punch.”

You must look a little nervous at that because Kate huffs an amused chortle.

“Don’t laugh.” You whine piteously. “What if I hit you and Paula finds out? I don’t want to sleep on the streets.”

“Better make it count then.” Laswell quips, and springs forward.

Hours later, you find out Kate has been doing this since before Ethiopia, maybe even before you joined. You get the upper hand on her a few times, and warm under the praise she gives you before standing at attention when her hands gently guide your arms at a different angle, widening your stance. The guidance she gives you is much more focused on speed rather than the precision and endurance Price’s training offers. It’s useful in its own right, perfect for when you find yourself without any weapon to spare, and are focused more on escape than fatality. The bounce of the mat under your back becomes familiar, and more than once Kate snips at you for holding back on your strength, afraid to grapple in earnest.

It’s only once you’re both braced against the wall, damp with sweat and trying to catch your breath that you both call it quits. You pass a water bottle back and forth between you and prod the forming bruise on your hip with a minor grunt.

“You did well.” Kate tells you, and you beam at her.

“You’re different from the boys.” You tell her again, and Kate smiles around the lip of the water bottle.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” She returns.

“It is.” You assure her, take a long sip of water when she offers it. “Harder, in some ways.”

A comfortable silence falls between you at that, and as you pull your knees up to stretch you idly offer: “I managed to pin Ghost once.”

Kate freezes out of the corner of your eye, but the gesture is lost in a moment before she offers a mild ‘Oh?’

“It’s true.” You go on, shifting to continue stretching with a little grunt. “Took a couple tries. Can’t say he was nice about it. I ended up bruised to hell the day after.”

“Sounds like he didn’t go easy on you.” Kate replies a little absently in a way where you know she’s thinking about something.

You pause, consider her words, mind hazing over and returning to that September day.

You blink and the light changes. Your next breath, forced through parted lips, seems to ooze the toxicity from your veins, lifting the weight from your shoulders. The bones inside you are still cracked, fractured, and you know they probably will be forever. Now, however, you understand, and the knowledge seems to strengthen them, dull the bitter horrible pain of your own doubt long enough for you to see.

Not a shadow, a light in the darkness. Guiding you forwards even if it threatens to blind you, drawing you out of the confines of your own lack of confidence by force if he has to. He's not doing this to mock you at all. He's not looking down on you, he's not gloating or tossing you around for his own sadistic self-pleasure. He's trying, in his own way, to teach you, to show you that you do have what it takes. He's breaking you systematically, scooping you from the ashes and charred remains so the frayed and broken edges of you are polished into something new. Something stronger.

He's doing this because he sees you. Just you, and that's already good enough. You're good enough.

“No.” You offer quietly. “I think he did. I think he knew how much I needed it.”

You straighten to look at her then, and there’s silence that passes between you as you are both caught by the other’s stare. There’s meaning in the absence of words, one that you can see by the way Kate’s eyes glint with curiosity and a knowing sort of intrigue. You wonder if what little you’ve said is too much, if maybe she’s seen that part of you too, the part that always wonders why Ghost seems softer with you than the others, the part that longs for him to be. She seems surprised for a moment, eyebrows arching silently as realization flickers across her gray eyed gaze.

When she smiles, she says nothing. At a mere glance, however, you can tell she knows.

You clear your throat, feeling your face warm, make a point to stand quickly and feign a few more stretches before hastily providing that Paula will be missing you both soon. Kate acquiesces gracefully, to which you are grateful that she does not needle you for further details about your concealed feelings towards the lieutenant. You’re not sure you can stand it if she did.

It’s after dinner that Kate gets a ping on her cellphone, taking a glance and grabbing for her coat. She provides a quick excuse of ‘work calls’ before giving Paula a parting kiss and grabbing her bag to race off towards the Pentagon. You and Paula exchange a look, and you can hardly contain your smile because even though Laswell has said nothing, you know her sudden disappearance means they’re back.

It’s already the wee hours of the morning in the UK, as Soap would say. The team sets up to debrief in the morning, and you know you won’t be able to contact them until after. You know from experience that they’re more than exhausted, de-kitting and slinking with weary limbs to rinse the grime and blood in the showers. There’s no way to talk to them tonight, and even tomorrow you know will be spent as a much-needed day of rest. The excitement, the trepidation gnaws at you as you force yourself to bed, anxious to hear the voices of your team, to know they’re home safe and sound, to tell them all the things you wish you said sooner.

Laswell doesn’t appear at breakfast the next morning, and Paula tells you she’s still at her office vigilantly reviewing the intel the team has gathered. You take it from her lack of contact that there’s been no major incidents, that everyone is alive and safe and well. Still, you pace anxiously around the house for most of the day, counting the hours on your watch and tracking the differences in the time zone before you’ve vowed to call them. As you do, you try to plan the words you want to say, raking a hand across your face and distracting yourself with the news, with something. You’re stalling, you know, but your mind wanders back to the hospital, to the way you pushed Soap and Gaz away, and you can’t help but wonder if the things you want to confess are going to come too little too late.

The phone line rings for what seems like hours when you finally gather the courage to dial Gaz. You know he’s the one who’s most responsive to his cell, with Soap being easily distracted and Price and Ghost hardly ever looking at theirs. It’s only a few moments, but the wait feels like a lifetime before he finally picks up.

“Fix?”

“Gaz.” You exhale, face melting into a relieved smile. He sounds surprised, yes, but more than that he sounds pleased to hear from you. A positive sign.

You hear a whoosh of air on the other end, and Gaz leans away to the phone to talk to someone on his side.

“Hang on, mate. Gimme a sec-”

You wait, and then blink down at your phone for the incoming video call, hesitantly tapping at the screen to reveal Gaz’s warm, cheerful gaze.

“Fix!” He greets again, and now you can see the smile that lights up his face at the sight of you. “Bloody good to hear from you. How have you been?”

Something sharp clenches in your ribs for a moment, in the same place as your injury, the place where you’ve been holding so much heartache for so long. You nearly wince at it, feeling the muscles grow taut-

and then release, unfurl in blessed, emotional relief.

“I’m good, Kyle.” You tell him, trying hard to keep the swell of emotion out of your voice despite the way it clings in your throat. “Really good.”

Gaz smiles impossibly brighter, but before he can say anything else there’s motion, bickering, a protest, and then Johnny’s face replaces Gaz.

“Fix!” He grins, eyes sparkling. “God, hen. We’ve missed you so much. How are you? How’s your ribs? Are you taking it easy?”

Warmth threatens your eyes now as you feel the sweet release of reprieve flood through you. It takes effort to swallow it down, to not get emotional at the mere sight of your friends- but Johnny’s words “We’ve missed you.” threaten to undo you at the seams.

“I am now.” You reply, and internally wince at the way your voice trembles when you force the tears back. “Not at first, but Laswell helped whip me into shape.”

“Good woman, Kate.” Gaz comments and tilts the phone so you can see both him and Soap at once. “Jesus, it’s good to hear from you, Fix. We’ve all been thinking about you, wondering if you were alright.”

Ah, fuck it.

You let the tears come, scrub your face and try to not let them wet your cheeks, tilting the phone away a moment too late. A hiccup seizes your chest for a moment, and you allow yourself a few moments to let it free before looking back to Gaz and Soap’s concerned stares.

“I am.” You tell them, voice choked up. “I’m more than alright.”

You wish you were there, you wish you could be there beside them, but the embraces they’d offer you feel warm all the same, even from a thousand miles away.

“What’s all this?” A voice intones on the other side, and Soap turns towards the source, beaming brightly.

“We’ve got our bonnie medic on the line.” He says, and you’re quickly passed in a flurry of motion to reveal the face of your captain.

“Sir.” You greet, and Price blinks, then shakes his head with a small, fond smile.

“None of that.” He admonishes lightly. “You call me as friends do.”

“Of course.” You manage, throat constricting with a fresh wave of emotion. “Price.”

Price’s eyes are warm, affectionate, looking upon you not with the furious discipline from before, but that of the friend you know him as.

“You look good, Fix.” He offers softly, and you straighten under his gaze as the praise finds its mark. “Has Kate been treating you right?”

“More than right.” You return, feeling the anxiety shed itself with every word. “I’m getting spoiled here.”

“As ye should!” Soap comments from off-screen. “Our medic deserves the best.”

Price huffs a laugh then, and it makes your smile grow that much larger, almost enough to make your cheeks hurt.

“Seriously.” You add. “Have you ever met Paula? I know you have, Price, she’s told me the story about coming home to you and Kate alone in the kitchen.”

Price winces at that, at the awkward memory of Paula finding a strange man in her house in familiar discussion with her wife. “That wasn’t my best first impression.” He admits, and you hear Soap and Gaz whisper conspiratorially somewhere behind him, curious as to the details of the unsaid story.

“She’s an amazing cook.” You go on. “I’m going to have to work hard to get back into shape with everything she’s been feeding me.”

“What I would give for a home cooked meal right now.” Gaz laments woefully. “Think you can bring her back with you to the UK?”

You’re about to respond when Gaz’s words catch inside you. Your brow furrows for a moment, processing, before you look at Price, who looks to Gaz with a reprimanding frown.

“Wait-” You manage, hope rising sharply inside of you. “Does that mean-”

Price smiles, and it’s genuine, sincere, the kind of smile you only see after he’s immensely pleased with you. You feel your heart stammer and you suck in a gasp when he speaks.

“Laswell officially cleared you for duty.” He tells you, scarcely containing his own enthusiasm. “You’ll be coming back whenever she gives the order. But-”

Your excitement cuts short in your chest, but the hope there lingers as your breath catches.

“Only if you want to.”

It takes a moment for you to understand, and in the silence that follows Soap grapples for the phone with an almost manic desperation.

“We want you to come back.” He clarifies quickly. “The team hasn’t been the same without you. Of course we understand if you need more time, if you want to talk it over with Laswell, but-” He sucks in a breath, and you watch the way his blue eyes alight with anxious energy.

“We...we want you home, Fix.”

Home.

The place you’ve fought to be, to earn your place there. Home, with your brothers who have kept a seat warm for you despite all this time, have made a place for you in their hearts despite your failures. Home, to the place you are meant to be, to the place where you belong.

“Of course I’m coming back.” You sigh at last, your voice breaking with an overwhelmed happiness you can’t contain. It bleeds into Soap, his eyes melting with relief before Gaz once more seizes the phone.

“Not a moment too soon.” He announces, and his own expression scarcely contains the joy in his eyes. “We can’t wait to get you back.”

You laugh a strange, overwhelmed sound at that, once more wiping your eyes as they warm and obscure your gaze of the team’s smiling faces. As you do, there’s a quiet murmur on the other side, and by the time you focus back there’s a different face that looks back.

Ghost.

“Fix.” He greets, and despite the balaclava that hides all but his eyes, you see his expression soften. “It’s been a while.”

“It really has, hasn’t it?” You return, voice dipping low to match his own. “Are you well?”

Ghost shrugs, eyes darting away from the camera for a moment before they return. “Nothing major.” He offers. “A few bruises and scrapes, the usual.”

“You’re not allowed to get injured before I get back.” You tell him seriously, eyes narrowing. He only tilts his head in return.

“Thought I wasn’t allowed to get injured at all?” He drawls, and your smile returns at the way he easily falls into the banter.

“Well then you wouldn’t need me, would you?”

Ghost blinks, considers this, his eyes weighing on you even as you grin at him. You fail to contain the affection in your eyes as his gaze softens.

“I suppose that’s true.” He concedes at last, and your laughter releases like a soft autumn breeze.

The group crowds around the phone for what seems like hours, passing you back and forth before finally setting you up on a nearby table to observe them all at once. Soap disappears and returns with beers as you give them a tour of Laswell’s house. When you stop to pet Whiskey Gaz fails to resist the urge to make baby noises at the retired K9, who thumps his tail in amicable greeting. It precedes a conversation about the various working dogs the team has seen, which is then followed by a serious discussion about the differences between British and American suburbs as you give the team a view of the outside of the house.

Paula is introduced shortly afterwards, and as you pass the phone to her she happily greets the team, and then quickly follows it with a declaration of how they’re to treat you properly once you return. You think you see Price swallow thickly on the other side of the camera.

The team finally discusses their most recent mission in Kenya, tracking a weapon smuggling ring along the Somali Coast. You share stories of your deployment in Ethiopia, of the dry mountain wind and your bustling medical tent. You feel it curl around you from the source of your memories, winding back far before this story began. It lifts your face to the sky you thought you fell from, the golden clouds that once rushed past your form as you hurtled downwards. Now, you feel it catch under your wings and lift you higher, basking in the glory of the sun you have missed so much. it doesn’t burn as it did before, and instead the gentle warmth and laughter of your comrades fills the emptiness of your heart where you once held so much sorrow.

It’s not over yet, you know that. There’s still so much more to be done. The long ignored, festering thing inside of you remains, but the growth is stifled now, replaced by an ease you have never felt before. It will take time for it to mend, just as the wound that once lay in your side, but you know now that even though you’re still healing, it doesn’t mean you’re broken. There are those that love you, adore you, hold you close and safe to their hearts.

You’ll fall again, you know. The darkness of the ocean below, of the churning water of failure where your past haunts you, will remain. Yet present too is the arms of your family, your real family, ready to catch you as you fall back down to earth. You know now that you’re not alone, that as much as you fall there will be people to catch you, hold you fast within the safety and comfort of their embrace. You look to them like a headwind, feel the breeze of their smiles graze across your cheeks, breathe in the familiar scent brought to you by the wind. You lift your hand to it, discern it like the rotating axis of the earth, let it whisper across your memories and engrave their hearts there.

The hour grows late in the UK, and eventually the team is forced to end the call with promises of another one shortly to follow. You say farewell, and in the seconds that follow the screen going dark you buckle into yourself and let loose the full tide of emotion within you. Heartache, grief, joy, relief, and above all sincere gratitude that the ones you love accept you for who you are, will stand beside you despite everything. The tears run warmly down your cheeks, but beneath it is a smile, a thanks to the heavens for putting you in a place where you are loved.

You talk to them frequently in the days that follow, waiting for Laswell to clear the red tape to re-designate you to the taskforce once more. Price calms you as you await the news anxiously, assures you Kate will find a way to send you back to them one way or another. Soap and Gaz happily distract you as they find a way to include you in a drunken game night that has you clutching your stomach with laughter.

It’s on a quiet night that you talk to Ghost, who is the one to call you, strangely enough. It’s a short call compared to the others, and it’s endearing the way Ghost feigns an excuse to check in on you. You curl into the window seat in your bedroom, watching the sunset as you talk in low voices about everything and nothing at all. The comfortable silence lingers between you both and finds a place to perch inside you alongside the secret you hold just for him.

At last, the order comes through. You’re sent back as Laswell’s CIA liaison under her command, on loan to the taskforce indefinitely. You unfold your military greaves from the closet, smooth the fabric under your palms. The heavy fabric is a reminder as to who you are, the person you’re born to be. A soldier, a warrior, a protector.

You hesitate in the doorway of the bedroom, hoisting your duffle over your shoulder. The sunlight dapples through the sheer white curtains, washes the room in pale, ethereal light that sighs softly into your memories. You know you’ll be back again. Maybe not soon, but you know this place too is home, that in this city you grew up in, your real home is the place you choose to be, with the people who love you.

They’ll see you off as you make the long journey back to England, and will embrace you before you climb aboard the plane. They’ll await you for the long flight, counting down the hours until your return. When you arrive they’ll take you into their arms when you step off the plane, lift your face to see your teary, joyful smile and by the sound of their voices alone you know you’re home.

The hazy pink light of sunset illuminates your bedroom.

The journal left on your desk remains unfinished.

Tag List:

Please reply to or reblog this post with 'taglist' to be tagged in future updates. If you would like to be removed from the taglist, please DM me.

@dankest-farrik @zwiiicnziiix @moondirti @sritashimada @ladiilokii @yeyinde @sandinthemachine @verdandis-blog @guyfieriiii @fan-of-encouragement @starlitnotes @rentaldarling @mockerycrow @atenceladusiaawfytbwb @tinykaka @dumb-djarin @homicidal-slvt @soapskneebrace @selinn777 @nachtcirce @jujubashow @mutuallimbenclosure @kkinky @trash-boi-4-life @scatter-mind001 @alittlefansthings @allaboutirem0 @keiva1000 @makariaspresence @achelois-is-here @nightingale-ghost-writer @altered-delta @thetimidsarcasticcat @nestaarcheronss @bitchykittenconnoisseur @ghxstyops @whotfislynn @gazs-blue-hat @obi-wansorrow @liltofu99 @thatswhyilovetheghost @devilsfoodcake22 @dumb-fawkin-bitch @hlo-kty @children-of-epiales @definitelyanonymous @queenquazar @alicesfracturedmirror

#simon ghost riley x reader #simon ghost riley x you #simon ghost x reader #Simon ghost riley x oc #ghost x reader #simon ghost riley x ofc #reader insert #cod x reader #fic: shadow and bone #oc: fix #fic: snowblind #ITS DONE

247 notes · View notes