igotbloodonmyhands

Latest Posts by igotbloodonmyhands

So, you would rather vote for a man who thinks windmills cause cancer, whales are going crazy because of windmills, and talks about Arnold Palmer taking showers with other pros, thinks Putin is smart and trusts him? You're in a cult. Get help.

Hey yeah sooo

What are you talking about? I haven't posted in months, and the stuff I posted about is about me imagining fictional men from a video game being in love, I have no idea where you got that from.

Also, I'm not quite sure which country you are talking about, all those are statements I thought I'd only find on a bingo card in scrabble, so if you're talking about Trump, hate to tell you, but I'm German, I'm not gonna vote for him because I simply can't.

Please tell me what the actual fuck you're on about, thanks

Hello my worms, I wanted to inform ya'll that I am actually still alive. Yes, I too am surprised. Sorry for not updating in such a long time. I promise I have a valid reason. A few days after my last post I met someone, and it wasn't my probation officer. (just kidding, I am a law abiding citizen) At a workshop in my school I met a very hot guy and we started talking. Long story short, he's my boyfriend now. He's more than I could have ever wished for, and for the first time in a veeery long time, I'm actually happy. I realized that all those fanfics and stuff were an unhealthy coping mechanism (not saying fanfiction is bad, but the way I interacted with it was), and I doubt I will continue writing fanfics for now. Especially since he is pretty much a fanfiction come true. Please imagine a 6'0 blonde guy that has arms like I have legs. His uniform ain't helping. Please forgive my rambling lol

I have a hankering to write rn so I was wondering if you would be so kind as to assist me with this task?

If yes, could you please give me a prompt to base a drabble/one-shot on. It can be in any of the following: Star Trek, COD: MW2, or Lazytown [can only be one ship as most of the cast are kids (im covering my bases)] [state which ship you have in mind too if you have one].

These are the few fandoms that I would feel somewhat comfortable writing in at the moment. If you don't know any of them or can not think of an idea that is okay. Just say so in your answer to this ask! That would be completely understandable 😊✨️

Thank you in advance ❤️✨️

Hey there, sure thing

Since I only know COD, I'd choose my all time favourite of Ghoap or Körangi with a nice bit of physical hurt and comfort.

March 29th is National Vietnam War Veterans Day.

On March 29, 1973, the last remaining American troops withdrew from Vietnam, and President Nixon declared “the day we have all worked and prayed for has finally come.”

Today we honor and remember all of the brave men and women who served during the Vietnam War, as well as their families who also sacrificed so much. Let us give these veterans the long overdue recognition and welcome home they deserve!

Riley bros

Bonus: wee Johnny

record-keeping...

REBLOG IF YOU HAVE STRETCHMARKS

This way people can see they’re not alone. I have them and this would help me see that.

At my fire department, most of us have nick makes

We got Jost, which is a normal name, but the problem was that during the first few weeks nobody knew his real name, so they just called him Jost

Then we got tree, which is a 6'5 guy, pretty self explanatory

Then we got glow stick, because that dipshit once asked our chief if we could carry glow sticks to house fires so we could see in the smoke. No. We can't.

Next is dinosaur, cuz his first name is Joshua, like the dino Joshi from the video game

And we got onion, because no one could pronounce his Romanian name properly and he loves onions

My lovely nick name is tits, since I was the only girl in the squad

skanies 🐍

i’m loving these new marker brushes so much they are so fun to use

Soap has problems with a washing Machine...

I want write a Mini fic about this situation, but i'm really Bad with that, so if someone get inspired with this and want do a fic THANK YOU

Instagram

I need a part two, pleaseee

you're a part of a task force - not exactly sure which one, but your team is called in to help.

only - you have no idea which side you're supposed to be helping, so as your team barrels through the area, looking for anyone who might have called reinforcements, you get seperated.

you're good on your feet, you're one of the best with a gun, and you're a quick thinker, so you're on guard but still pretty confident.

that's until you find yourself yourself in a building. its been abandoned, some of the walls crumbling and falling in on itself - you have to jump over a few of the piles.

the room you enter has a metallic tang to it, and the creaking of the door does nothing to calm your nerves. its the breathing that you hear, soft and slow - strained. someone is dying.

the man in the corner of the room has a bullet wound in his shoulder, his eyes are shut and his hand is pressed against the section of his shirt coated with blood.

he's dark skinned, clean shaved with a dark blue sweater, covered by his bullet proof vest. he hasn't seen you, and even if he had, the gun by his arm was only just out of reach. he'd have to fall onto his side to reach it.

your gun is trained on him, waiting for any sudden movements as you check the immediate surrounding area. your radio crackles softly, and you wince, watching the mans eyes flutter open.

"you-" he can barely get a word in before he's gasping for breath and clutching his shoulder in pain. "are you here to kill me?"

you purse your lips, tuck your rifle on your back and respond with "i think so."

you've never felt bad for killing a man before - its your job, you get paid to take people out as though they were rubbish bags. only, this man in front of you, with a half smile on his face and his brows furrowed in pain - you feel guilty.

" can- can i know your name," he stops to cough a few times, "before you kill me?"

you look him over once more, his eyes almost pleading, and then out the window. no one would know he was here, his family- friends, even team, they'd have to declare him KIA.

rolling your shoulders, you push forward, grabbing his gun and tucking it into your belt, before pulling him from out against the wall. you slot yourself under his left arm, the one without a bullet in it.

"i'm not going to tell you my name," you decide, helping him stand up. "because then i can't kill you."

Holy o.o

have you,,,,,, posted the water melon video here?👀 just asking…………………

You mean this one?

Patreon - YouTube

*:･｡☆ warnings: heavy gore, torture, hurt/comfort, whump, s/a towards reader, men being gross, gunshot wounds, stab wounds, blood and violence, branding (torture method), waterboarding (torture method), reader (thaye) is a badass, first kiss, dismemberment of fingers, eye trauma, protective!ghost, implications of smut/sex, aftermaths of torture. (there is probably a lot i missed, but idc lol all the other shit should b enough warning!!) 〔☆〕 desc: you and the 141 are deployed to austria with the intel of a drug boss known as rolmuth who is harboring romanian soldiers to the east coast to smuggle illegal mercenary personnel into america. what happens when a rapid snowstorm picks up and you (callsign 'thaye') are separated from the others then further captured and interrogated alongside your lieutenant?

—✩ PHANTOM TOUCH ✩—

word count —15.6k

a/n: sorry for my inactivity! the entire time i was workin on this shit... let me tell you.. this is 51 pages on google docs LMAO so i hope the length and word count makes this fat fucking hurt/comfort one shot worth it.

VIENNA, AUSTRIA.

“Move, move, move!” Price yells.

Snow fell and blanketed the ground beneath you, you were dressed in white camouflage tactical gear. 

Your movements were slower as you trudged yourself through the snow, you turned in every direction searching for your captain. 

Your lieutenant. 

Anybody. 

Rapid snowy winds smacked you in the face, nearly forcing your eyes shut as you traveled through the gusts. 

“Soap?!” You shout, planting your feet below into the patches of snow, 

Your arms raise to cover your face. 

“Fuck!” 

“Thaye!” A voice echoed through the snow that encased you in a blanket of long silence. 

Snow nestled into the ground below—everything around you seems to just slow down.

You traipse yourself heavily through the thickness around you as you snap a clip into your M4 carbine, swinging it behind you like it had been previously.

Thump.

Your head droops down and you feel your heart drop into your stomach seeing the body of one of the men you were deployed with face up.

His head four inches deep in the snow and his right eye completely destroyed, his chest marred with several bullet wounds.

The root of his nose is fractured to the point where it’s flattened into what’s left of his skull. 

You swallow the knot in your throat that might have also been barf trying to make its way out of you, kneeling down to peel the soldier’s dog tags off of his corpse.

Hudson “Scooter” Wheeler. 

It makes you smile slightly, your thumb dragging over the metal tag to wipe off the thickness of blood that had coated the carving of his name.

“I’m sorry, Wheeler.” 

The loss of fallen soldiers leave footprints and engravings on one’s heart that never allows them to be the same, again. 

You wished sometimes you could just be without the worry about who you have to lose and who you have to save. 

Restless nights followed by mornings and afternoons full of nothing but unpromised resolutions. You nearly felt as if insanity would be a better route than going through the pain of losing the people you stood side by side with, enduring the effects of grief, bloodshed, and war.

Although there were moments of bonding and camaraderie that were forced to turn into utter gore and distrust due to the change of the objective that deemed those to turn against one another in hopes of survival and success. 

Pride; a fickle sense that could drive an individual to the depths of madness and create a staked claim to prove more power then they own or deserve.

You didn’t understand it. Nor did you want to. 

You were left in a society where the drabness of gray ruled the world and pain of loss clenched to the soldier’s  hearts almost desperately. 

And yet that perpetual colour of gray; a colour so dull but so compelling, it still lights the depths of hell you lived in by merely a petite dose.

Your mouth had begun to feel tacky with your muscles stiffening as the weather conditions intensify by every fleeting moment. 

Inside your combat boots, you feel your feet begin to grow numb; similar to the feeling of stepping on fresh-cut grass and grazing dull needles. 

Now, you wonder what hypothermia would feel like. You weren’t used to this sort of weather. 

Even under your white half-face balaclava, you felt your lips and their absence of moisture. 

Still, you trekked forward, squinting eyes searching for any sign of life around you.  

Your face lights up at the sight of a shadow-like movement through the blistering storm and rapid winds once you wipe off the frost lingering on your goggles. 

They moved closer—it seemed to be one person. 

There’s a tree to your left—your legs manage to jerk themselves through the snow until you're beside it.

You cautiously lower your body into the snowpack below you, clutching your rifle in your grip while your eyes fixate on the moving figure ahead of you. 

Your finger grazes over the trigger of your carbine rifle.

A leg comes before the torso, then the face. 

The skull mask.

Ghost.

Relief washes over you immediately—raising to your knees.

“Lieutenant!” You call. 

His head immediately snaps in your direction, and the time spent staring at each other seemed everlasting, though in reality it was just a few seconds before his large hand was squeezing your shoulder and he was right in front of you.

“Thought we lost’ya,” Ghost rasps.

“What’s the sitrep?” 

“Enemy force has ordnance on standby—Price ordered all units to the West Safehouse,” he says.

You nod softly. 

“Why’d you hang back?” 

His eyes widen under his balaclava and you open your mouth to speak—Ghost tugs you by your vest, pulling you to the side.

“Gh—“

There’s a person behind him.

Sounds muffle around you, complete silence surrounding you as Ghost’s head is slammed with the butt of a rifle. 

Your hands reach down to pull your handgun from off of your hip, pointing it towards his attacker, squeezing on the trigger and unhesitantly dropping him to the ground before he can double back and finish him off.

No words leave your mouth as you turn in one quick jerk, the barrel of a L1A1 being aimed between your eyes. 

Not even seconds later was the thick handle of a bowie knife met with the back of your head. 

Immediately, your body meets with the snow, and you feel the coldness of the snow over your mask. 

You struggle to pick up your head, pain surging in the back of your head enough to blur your vision. 

Keeping your eyes open was a challenge—they constantly blink shut as you watch the enemy force yell at each other, manhandling Ghost by ripping his weapon sling off of him and dragging him by his fur-lined parka. 

His body was dragged up into a Humvee and roughly thrown in before you were picked up by your ankles and wrists and tossed right on top of him.

Your head slumps against Ghost’s bicep as you're washed up by incapacity, your mind fogging against your will. Enervation holds you captive and sweeps you off your feet. 

You’re met with blackness, next, yet the only thing you could think of was your failure to protect your superior.

☆════━━━┈┈┈┈━━━════☆

You awoke to the sounds of struggling—something teetering on the floor. 

It takes a moment for you to come to your senses and stir from unconsciousness, eyes fluttering open to take in your surroundings.

The ever-present smell of waste and deteriorated flesh smacks you with reminiscence, the overbearing cold, the taste of grime, blood, and bile in your mouth. 

When you go to move your hands, they’re immobile; binded by thick ropes that with your state of exhaustion and physical weakness, would be impossible to escape from. 

Your heavy head manages to shift for oneself to observe the room—your gear was purloined, leaving you in your cargos and a tank-top.  

Below you, the ground was concrete and stained with blood that led to the large metal door that had a closed hatch. 

Vaguely, you recall in short and brief flashes why you were there, your eyes shutting for a few moments before opening once again.

Ghost.

Where was Ghost?

“Lieutenant,” you cough. “Ghost, wh—“ 

“‘M here, kid.” Ghost wheezes. “To’yr left.” 

Your head turns, stopping at the sight of his mask on the concrete, blood smeared across the maw of the skull, over the eye socket. 

“Ghost, are you injured?” 

“No.” 

Slowly, your eyes trace up the ground beneath you until Ghost’s boots are in view. 

His soles skid against the ground as he attempts to drag the dentist chair he’s strapped in. “Fuck!”

You shift in your wooden seat in an attempt to reach your hand down to pull up the velcro flaps of your cargos. You couldn’t reach.

Ghost’s boots stop skidding against the floor as the metal door’s rusted hinges creak, the door being flung open to welcome a man inside—three other men were behind him holding military grade rifles with drum magazines.

The man inside the room raises his hand, offering departure in the Hindi language, to which his men shut the door behind him.

His arms were wrapped behind his back, the sound of his heavy boots echoing off of the thick stone walls. 

He walks around the room for a while, allowing you to raise your head to take in who he was.

A European man that’s approximately 184 centimeters with long pushed back shaggy dark hair; his eyebrows arched, a bushy beard. 

On his cheek, a nasty deep laceration scar that reaches the end of his eyebrow. Under his left eye, another scar reaches the bridge of his nose. 

The man is inches from your face, now, a tilt in his head. 

“We see how long it takes to break you, Sergeant.”  His eyes crinkled as his lips upturned in a depraved smile. 

He lifts himself from his bent position, grips the crest rail of the chair, and pulls you farther from Ghost.

“Who is your commanding officer?” He asks, feet spread apart as he looks down at you to assert his dominance.

“Fuck you.” You bite back.

The man’s hand roughly takes hold of your chin, tilting your head up towards the dangling ceiling light. 

“I eat boys like you for breakfast.” 

Ghost chuckles beside you.

His eyes narrow as he releases a choked scoff, his head swinging back before bursting into laughter.

“My drug ring reigns across the entire country—my men swarm all city.” 

His accent is thick, though his English  isn’t terrible. 

“It is either you tell me now and you and friend die quick, or you die slow of bleeding until we find on our own.” 

“Good fuckin’ luck,” Ghost grunts.

You swallow thickly, groaning as the man pulls your head back by the scalp of your hair. 

You purse your lips as you collect saliva from the walls of your mouth, spitting just above the man’s eyebrow and watching as the gob runs down over his eye.

He snarls, dragging an open hand down his face. Using that same hand, the male flexes his hand into a fist and socks you in the jaw. 

“Hey!” Ghost shouts. 

You hear it pop and you immediately outstretch your neck and slam your forehead into the bridge of his nose, arms jerking in an attempt to escape your restraints. “You motherfucker!”

He lets out a groan, his head flinging back as blood streams down his nostrils, his hand trembling over his nose.

“Bitch! Madarchod! Bevakooph veshya…” He hisses through clenched teeth. “Broke my nose!” 

His palm smacks you across the face so hard, a pinkish red hue starts blossoming across your cheek. He repeats it again, then again, and again. 

You squeeze your eyes shut, bracing yourself as numbness circles inside the flesh of your cheek, a similar feeling to those static electricity globes that you’d get for your twelfth birthday and press all five of your fingertips against.

“Hey! This is between you an’ me, a’right?” Your lieutenant gives a sharp nod, trying to reason with the man. 

He stares at Ghost for a few moments, squeezing his fingers in his fist before leaving the room, the door slamming loudly behind him.

You take the moment to actually look at Ghost, your eyes taking in his features entirely.

From his long and messy dirty blonde undercut, to his shade and stubble. 

To his bruised and bloodied lips and the thick scar running from his top lip to the underside of his chin.

To his thick and beautiful eyebrows, the scar on the start of his left eyebrow, running down to the bridge of his nose.

To his deep and all familiar brown eyes—long and light eyelashes accompanying their shape.

To the scar that spread out from the right inner corner of his lip and across his cheek as if it was the engravings of a smile line.

There were several scars littered across the male’s face; each one of vast distinction from the other. 

Once again, the door thrusts open and the man returns, cotton wads up his nostrils with another male by his side, pushing in a rolling mayo stand with different tools and items you assumed were torture devices.

“Hey! Hey! What’re y’doing?” Ghost jerks in his seat, his eyebrows furrowing as the man picks up a syringe, flicking the glass and squeezing out a droplet of the liquid inside. “What th’fuck is that?”

“You will have your answer soon enough,” he simply replies. 

“Agarwal—blade.”

The second man grabs the rotary tool from off the tray, a saw blade in the other. 

Your hands tug against their bindings enough to chafe your wrists, it feels as if your skin is being shredded with a cheese grater. 

“Paip rinch, ab.”  The taller man holds out his arm, to which the man who was now identified as Agarwal hands him a pipe wrench.

“English, asshole.” You grunt.

He slings it over his shoulder and slowly walks towards Ghost as he whistles. 

Ghost’s eyes don’t avert from his gaze, even as the pipe wrench drops from off his shoulder to clatter on the floor, hanging from his wrist and dragging along the ground.

“Who…is…your…superior?” His voice is grim, each word coming out as he takes a step.

Using the hook jaw of the wrench, he lifts Ghost’s chin.

“Piss off,” the blonde huffs.

Not even seconds later does the man swing the wrench around and belt it into his stomach. Ghost lets out a wheeze, his body lurching over in reaction to the sudden pain coursing through him. 

“No!” You yell. 

“Who.” He asks again with spite in his tone—he was demanding, it no longer was a question in his favor.

“You’ll know who when he comes’a knockin’ ‘n blows lead thru th’lot of ya.” Ghost says with a slight raise in his head.

The wrench is swung back into his stomach, causing Ghost to hurl and expel vomit onto his boots.

“Leave him the fuck alone!” You kick yourself forward a bit using your boots. Agarwal’s hands grip the slat of the chair and pull you back towards the tray.

“No, no,” he nearly coos, yanking your head back by the thinner group of hairs on the nape of your neck. 

You clench your jaw and subside, lifting yourself up with your hips to help avoid the pain.

His eye’s strain, beads of sweat rolling down the end strands of his hair regardless of how cold it was inside of the formidable room.

“Get me my player,” the bearded man says as he trails his 12” redwood handle knife across Ghost’s jawline.

Agarwal’s hand releases your hair to your relief and he leaves the room. 

“Disgusting—“ the male snarls. “Making mess of my floor.”

Your eyes narrow as you watch a pool of blood start to form as he slashes Ghost’s cheek, a groan spilling from your lieutenant’s throat.

“Fuck you ‘n y’r floor,” Ghost coughs. 

He drops the wrench to the floor, then uses a rag that was hanging out of his pocket to swipe off the blood from the knife’s blade.

Two men walk in, one pushing in a record player and the other holding a tactical vest and a book.

Your vest and your book.

His name patch reads “Gamble”, the one who throws your vest and the book onto the floor. 

“Rolmuth, the woman—she has had access to our radio frequency and has been writing down our shipment codes and locations.” 

Ghost’s head raises, his pupils shrunken as he takes in the sight of the morse code book. 

The man holding the knife cracks his head in your direction before proceeding towards you.

“Thaye…” he susurrated.

You don’t flinch when his arms raise to swing the knife over towards your temple, a maniacal laugh escaping through the barriers of Rolmuth’s teeth. 

The knife lowers to release one of your hands, though before you can reach for anything, he slams your arm backward against the back leg of the chair, the feeling of your bones snapping beneath your skin causes you to let out a sharp, excruciating cry as your now-broken arm falls limp to your side.

“Thaye!” Ghost shouts. “Fuckin’ bastard…” 

“How?!” Rolmuth yelled through his teeth, lips drawn back in a snarl as he nearly foamed out of his mouth. 

His fist meets with your cheek and your eyes squeeze together in grimace to the pain as he punches you again. 

Ghost calls out your name and you can hear the metal of his chair scrape and grind against the ground. 

You feel your cheek begin to swell, the tender flesh on your face blooming into purple and blue bruises.

He walks to the record player and takes a record out of its sleeve that was resting on the shelf of the small table the player was brought in on. It has wheels on it—similar to the mayo tray.

Rolmuth blows on the record, though the sleeve looks too clean to hold any dust, then places the record on the platter. After pressing play, he drops the tone arm down.

The record scratching sends chills up and down your spine before the music almost beautifully fills the room.

Why does the sun go on shining?

You watch Rolmuth pick up a pair of pliers.

Why does the sea rush to shore?

You wonder if he’s going to try to rip out your teeth.

Don’t they know it’s the end of the world,

He clasps them around one of your fingers on your broken arm.

Fuck.

The cold metal around your finger makes you nearly want to cry.

‘Cause you don’t love me anymore?

He was going to rip off your finger.

“Who is your captain?” His hand squeezes the pliers, applying pressure to your singular finger. 

“Go…to hell—“ 

A scream rips itself from your throat as you feel your sinew and flesh tear, the pliers tearing your finger from off your bone.

“Tha’s enough!” Ghost jerks and flails in his seat, there’s a sip of panic in his voice. “Get th’fuck off of her!” 

Why do the birds go on singing? 

Rolmuth wriggled the rest of your finger off, your eyes daring to skim down to look at the bone sticking out from your knuckle. 

Blood spews out of the gore, coating your entire hand and dripping from the crevices of your skin into your lap, staining your cargos, turning their white color into several distinct shades of red.

Rolmuth sets the finger—your finger down lightly on the standing metal tray besides you. 

Why do the stars glow above?

A penetrating ringing fills your ears; one so loud it felt like it’d be the cause of your tears instead of the pain surging through the entire left side of your body.

Don’t they know it’s the end of the world?

You’re in shock, unable to speak. Your jaw is locked, your teeth are clenched so hard it feels as if you might shatter your teeth. 

It ended when I lost your love. 

Ghost’s voice echoes in the back of your mind, when he calls out your name, you’re pulled out of your trance. You jerk your slumping head up.

You want to call out his name, but it seems like your throat is swallowing every little word that is being screamed inside of your head. 

The room is spinning and you can’t feel your arm, you can’t feel the finger move that was just severed from your hand.

“Look at me, look at me, love…” your lieutenant simpers. 

Your eyes search the room until they land on Ghost’s, he sounds far away. You feel your eyes widen as cold metal wraps around another finger once again. 

Why does my heart go on beating?

Rolmuth’s lips close in near your ear as he tugs lightly at your middle finger. 

“You don’ want to lose this finger, do you?” You feel the man’s hot breath run up the side of your face and brush past your ear.

“Who…is…your...captain?” 

Why do these eyes of mine cry?

Every nerve in your body seized, your spine stiffening with every urge to kill the man standing beside you. 

Ghost coughs up blood; internal bleeding. 

“I’ll fu…cking…skin you…” you croak, your words finally becoming coherent.

He laughs. Rolmuth’s single arm raises in a humorous gesture of surrender. 

Don’t they know it’s the end of the world?

Your eyes squeeze shut, though shoot open at the rush of heat, the pliers applying clutched pressure to your finger before Rolmuth started ripping off the second finger, wiggling it until it broke off skin and sinew. 

It ended when you said “goodbye.” 

“Look at me, Thaye.” Ghost’s voice sounds desperate, so you offer him a short glance as your jaw slacks and your body retracts.

Your strained eyes snapping to the bearded man as he places down your middle finger on top of your pointer finger.

A gag surfaces in your throat and your body twitches as you watch your finger fall and roll almost as if it’s the most natural thing. 

Ghost yells your name again.

You finally focus on him, your eyes welling up, reddening and puffing against your will.

“Jus’ look at me, angel,” Ghost’s silked voice calms you, although in a manner you can’t hear him as well as you want to. 

Every muscle and ligament inside of you feels tense and stuck.

Why does my heart go on beating?

You had three fingers on your left hand—three fingers.

Thumb, pinkie, ring. Thumb, pinkie, ring. Thumb, pinkie, ring.

“Y’ll kill her, she’s losin’ too much blood—she’s goddamn delirious!”  

Gamble’s fist barrels into the side of Ghost’s head, you hear a feral groan leave his gullet.

At least I can still put a wedding ring on my left hand. You thought.

Those three fingers trembled and twitched, it was the only movement on the left side of your body besides for your left eye—is he going to take one of my eyes? Your head is swarming with thoughts.

“Ghost…” you slur, still locked onto the blonde’s eyes. 

“I know, love,” he says as gently as he physically can. “So proud of’y…” 

His speech comes out as a garble, but you’re still able to understand him. 

“‘M gon’ get us outta here…alive, a’right?” 

Your head slumps at the attempt of a nod. 

“Save y’r energy, lovie.” 

“Shut the fuck up,” Agarwal grips Ghost’s earlobe, pulling him closer. You’re not able to cognize his words, but you’re aware of the vexation in his countenance. 

You flinch once Rolmuth drops the pliers on the metal tray. He removes his latex gloves that were blanketed in your gore and throws them onto your lap. 

“Clean them up—she still is of use to me.” His voice grows more distant as he leaves the room.

Gamble injects Ghost with a syringe that was hanging off of his waist, casting him with drowsiness, his eyes struggling to keep open before he’s blacked out.

“What did you do—…what did y’do to him?” Your eyebrows stitch together. “What did you do?!” 

They unstrap his arms from the chair, then his ankles.

“Answer me goddamnit...” You seethe, tears warping in your eyes.   

“Shut the bitch up,” Gamble nudges Agarwal in the shoulder before he pushes Ghost further out of his restraints, his body still and unconscious allowing the scarred man to bind his wrists with zip ties. 

Agarwal simply nods and paces toward you. The stock of his gun smashed into your jaw before you could react.

☆════━━━┈┈┈┈━━━════☆

DAY TWO.

The woman in the doorway was bedraggled; tired eyes and shrunken tear-stained cheeks. 

There’s a light illuminating from the pulled-back curtains—a light so bright it could dry the shining tears that spill out scarlet fluid over the eyes of the miserable.

You feel only patient while waiting for the morning sun to rise over the horizon line of the ocean side.

It’s deteriorating yet caliginous frame of murky grey stone and vast sorrow of an arched entrance sat in disposition from harrowing memories filled with bloodshed, grief, and war.

Your face relaxes at the distinctly ravishing but delicate overcasted ray of light shot down from the amidst along the ruins, the melancholy ambiance nearly sent chills down your spine.

Heavenly cries of forgotten mothers begging for forgiveness of their past sins, children's playful and beatific screams, although it was nothing unknown to you.

Screams were usually followed by split rib cages and bullet wounds—tears, blood, those screams and sweat, you went through it all just for it to lie unheard and forgotten.

You searched the odd and seemingly afterlife-like realm with your eyes, you could only wonder where you were, and why you were there.

Why the flowy white dress draped over your body oscillated with the wind in a gorgeous motion.

You're lifting your head out of the water now. 

The taste of salt seems so thick, heavy. Like you could drown in it. Like you could get drunk off of it.

The waves crashing onto shore sound so loud atop the eerie silence, their white crests phasing through your body as if your presence was unknown to them.

You loved the ocean because as opposed to the ones who were supposed to; the ocean loved you and was never afraid to come too close, even at your worst.

As you move farther from shore, the water slowly travels up your body, submerging your frame. 

You close your eyes as your head is the last thing the water consumes. You feel the water bubbles tickle your skin and elevate themselves up to the surface. 

It doesn’t take long for that familiar burn inside your lungs and that familiar feeling of being gagged by the water to swarm your senses.

Your head jerks up and you let out a loud gasp as you fade into consciousness, slipping into colored imagery instead of just monochrome. 

Waking up felt like hell; your mouth was dry and most of your limbs felt unresponsive. 

Only when you see Ghost curled up on his side, laying on the floor in front of you, are you able to register where you are and what’s going on.

His knees bucked up into his abdomen  with his hands zip tied behind his back and his face battered and bruised. 

Specks of dried blood ran from his scalp down his face reaching his compression undershirt. 

He was asleep.

There was a gentle rise and fall with his chest—you could still hear his labored breaths from where you were. 

It felt colder. 

Your eyes wander down to your left hand that was wrapped in bandages that were stained red, your two fingers missing and replaced with nubs that were uneven from each other.

If your arm wasn’t broken, you could use it to break the leg of the chair and wield  it against the next person to walk through that large metal door that made you wonder if it was life or death upon you.

If your fingers weren’t missing, you could use them to untangle your restraints on your other hand.

You could barely move your wrist—the pain that swells your entire arm makes it nearly impossible.

Ghost stirs on the floor, his body curling into itself further before his legs straighten out. 

“Lieutenant,” you mumble. “What did they do to you…?” 

His eyes flicker to yours. 

“‘M alive, aren’t I?” Ghost says.

His voice is so hoarse and weak—he sounds dehydrated.

“You are.” 

Your eyes close a moment to allow yourself to breathe in the air around you.

The single door breaking up the dull room that held them hostage creaks open on rusted hinges allowing Rolmuth to enter.

Two different men from the day prior push in the same record player and the same rolling metal tray that was stained with your blood. 

“Rise and shine,” one says, his boot meeting harshly with the lower section of Ghost’s back.

 The blonde’s eyes stay intent on the movements of Rolmuth as he lifts up different record sleeves to read their names. He slides one out and places it on the platter.

That familiar sizzle fills the room before the gentle hum of the music begins.

A short gasp leaves your mouth as Rolmuth kicks down your chair by the back stile, your head immediately jerking forward before it slams down onto the cement floor.

He dismisses the two of his men.

Rolmuth’s hand levitates over the tray and he grasps an old tan hand towel, draping it over your face.

You can hear the buckle of Ghost’s pants tink lightly on the floor as he jerks himself. “Fuckin’ bastard!” He yells.

I don’t want to set the world on fire. 

It was going to be okay, you told yourself. You trained for this. Truthfully, you were one of the best swimmers on the task force. You can hold your breath—but if that rag manages to cave in, you’ll most likely panic and lose focus.

I…just want to start a flame in your heart.

“Are you ready for talk, now?” Rolmuth arches over you. 

In my heart, I have but one desire…

Your voice muffled, you call him something along the lines of an asshole and a prick, which is quickly silenced by the pressure of water that smacks you in the face.

And that one is you, no other will do…

Ghost watches the man pour a jerry can of water over your face. His breath hitching in his throat watching your body twist and turn trying to evade from the water. 

I’ve lost all ambition for worldly acclaim

Your body arches up in protest, head jerking side to side as if it would make it any more easier on you.

I just want to be the one you love…

Focus on the music, you tell yourself. You can barely hear your own voice. 

And with your admission…that you feel the same,

Rolmuth’s smile is ear to ear as he continues tipping the canister over your cloth-covered face.

I’ll have reached the goal I’m dreaming of, believe me…

You violently thrust your body, panic surging  through you as you feel water invade and swallow your lungs. 

I don’t want to set the world on fire…

Involuntarily you gasp and choke in more water, you feel your eyes roll to the back of your head.  

I…just want to start…a flame in your heart.

Your throat was burning like scolding lava, your heart throbbing inside your chest threatening to rupture. You don’t dare to make noise. 

You’re gagging, gasping, sputtering. That you can’t handle. But you don’t let yourself cry. Not like this.

I don’t want to set the world on fire, honey,

The music is starting to garble. 

Why is it starting to sound so distorted? You ask yourself. 

I…—you too—uch.  

“Stop, y’ll fuckin’ kill her! Bloody tosser!” Ghost grits his teeth before spitting out words.

Now that you have the chance to think about it, that song reminds you of someone.

I just want to start…

Your grandfather—you’d sit on that circular crocheted rug and listen to that song as him and your grandmother baked apple fritter.

A great big flame…

He loved that woman more than life itself; when she’d started to get sick with bone cancer, he helped her bathe, he helped her eat, get dressed. 

Down in your heart.

Your mother told you about how he had asked her doctor to keep the fact that she only had three weeks left to live just between them. 

You see, way down inside me,

She was still happy. So happy. He wanted to spend those last three weeks with her. He retired from his job and took her to all the places she’d talked about visiting. 

Darling, I have only one desire. 

She passed away, and he spent every day doing all her favorite things. He watered her plants, he baked. He listened to her favorite songs. 

And that one desire is you, 

He adopted a puppy—a beautiful Australian Shepherd which he named after her. Your mom would say that your grandma’s being was reincarnated into that dog. 

And I know nobody else ain’t going to do. 

Would that happen to you too? Who would you want to belong to? What kind of dog would you be? 

A deafening ringing fills your ears, you finally stop fighting. Breathing.

“She’s not movin—“ Ghost wheezes. “She’s not fuckin’ movin’!” 

He was trained for this. He couldn’t break. He couldn’t.

“Enough!” The blonde yells again.

They could crack him, but they can’t break him. They wouldn’t kill her. 

Rolmuth finally puts down the canister and removes the rag from off your face, his body bends over to lift your chair back up. 

Your body twitching, struggling to release the water clogged in your gullet

“Wake up, bitch,” he snaps and his open palm cracks against your cheek. Your eyes shoot open.

Your mouth opens, your strained and bloodshot eyes widen with horror as you vomit out water, sputtering between your lips as you hack and gag. 

The taste of bile is sickening to your empty stomach. 

Ghost calls out your name, catching your attention as you stabilize from your state of stupor. 

“So proud of’ya, Thaye,” he groans. “Y’r strong, ‘lright? We’ll kill these bastards, all of’em.” 

You can hardly spare the man a small nod before your chin is grabbed by Rolmuth’s uncut nails—blood and dirt caked underneath them.

“You tell who you are work for, I consider sparing life.”  Rolmuth runs a blade across your cheek, increasing the pressure slightly to slit your skin—a feeling similar to a paper cut. You moan in pain. “Your friend I can not speak for.”

Blood trickles down from the incise, slowly flaring through your cut and pushing from the barriers beneath your top layer of skin. 

“F…uck…—“ your silenced by sudden metal on your tongue, scraping gently like a threat. 

“I will carve out ur pretty little tongue, cut it in bits, and feed it to you.” Rolmuth coos. “Would you that, yes?” 

“Y’sick fuck, get th’fuck away from ‘er!” Ghost attempts to jerk himself up, the bonding on his ankles not allowing him to, his bruised ribs protesting in pain as he lets out a sharp breath.

Your eyes burn into his, your neck flinching as he slowly pushes the blade farther down your throat, his hand prying your mouth open. 

He chuckles lowly, small “ah’s” leaving him as he slowly opens your mouth farther to allow the tip of the knife farther down. You salivate, drool racing down your chin and over the creep’s knuckles. 

Ghost’s eyes divert from your face to the man’s hands. Disgust laced in his features. 

He swallowed thickly, he could feel his skin boiling. He wasn’t angry. 

Pissed.

He was incensed. 

More than that. 

“G..host…” your slightly muffled voice trembles.

His gaze fixes back on yours, watching as your left eye twitches at each of Rolmuth’s motions. 

“I know, love…J’s look at me, ‘lright? J’s look at me.” 

It presses onto the skin of your tongue, it’s curved edge digging into the fragile skin and tissue causing the metallic taste of iron to taint your sense of taste.

You still bore into your lieutenant’s gaze.

Saliva and blood dribbles down your neck, the sight no doubtedly arousing the male in front of you—his tongue leapt out to slowly trace along his bottom lip.

You might drown in your own saliva at this rate.

Your lieutenant purses his dry and cracked lips, but he doesn’t look away. 

He takes the blade out of your mouth, rubbing it against the cloth of his pants to clean it. 

Rolmuth raises the knife and pierces your thigh, the feeling of cold metal hitting you first along with the shock, the sound of cloth tearing.

“I want names!” The man hollered, spit landing on your face just below your eyes.

Ghost watches your pupils shrink, his own eyes widening and slowly shifting to your thigh. 

An intense tingling sensation swarms your entire leg, then a heat. A heat that felt unbearable. 

Ghost searches for your eyes again, his mouth moving, though you can’t hear anything he says.

He broke through skin and sinew, twisting the knife inside of the laceration.

“Talk, bitch!” Rolmuth’s eyes darken. 

It takes a few moments for the pain to surface, and when it does, it’s scorching. Your jaw slacks open as your eyebrows pinch together, a shrill whimper escaping you. 

“Don’ look, don’t.” Ghost pleads with you. Even he was struggling not to look at your thigh.

It didn’t take eyes to tell there was blood bubbling from the wound and dripping down your pants and trembling leg. 

A narrow vertical split across the midsection of the flesh of your thigh. Your eyes didn’t leave Ghost’s.

Was his hair bleached? It seemed like such an unnatural shade of blonde. Brunette underneath. He must bleach it himself.

Rolmuth gave it one more twist, releasing a thin, raw, scream from your throat. 

Tears stung the corners of your eyes, but you wouldn’t let them get the satisfaction of that from you. Especially not you. 

“They’ll b’ere soon, Thaye.” Your lieutenant says.

“You are weak,” Rolmuth spits. “You will break.” 

He rolls his shoulders before gripping your pointer finger and holding a jab saw above it.

Your eyes flicker to Rolmuth’s and Ghost calls your name. 

“I want a name!” Rolmuth’s scream makes your head spin. 

“Fuck y—“ your voice is replaced with a high pitched cry followed by gasps and whimpers as Rolmuth’s new blade carved through sinew and bone. He lifts up your finger against the blade and with one swift movement, your finger falls onto the floor. 

“I’ll fuckin’ kill you, y’bastard!” Ghost’s lips twitching in pain mixed in with a whole lot of anger. 

Your body jumps up, an animalistic noise escaping your throat as you swing your head back and wince loudly, the pain in your thigh 

“Name! Or I take another!” Rolmuth yells just inches from your face. 

You couldn’t handle it—your vision is swarmed by black spots and your head is killing you. Your body is in so much pain you feel so much, but so little all at the same time. 

When your eyes roll to the back of your head and lolls, you can faintly hear the man yell ‘shit’ before you’re unable to comprehend what is happening.

Everything fades into a subtle blackness, and the last thing you hear is Ghost yelling your name. Screaming your name. 

☆════━━━┈┈┈┈━━━════☆

DAY 4

You wake up to the sound of loud groaning and thumping. 

It takes you a few moments to register that you’re awake and you can actually move. 

So you do—you upheave your head and take in the light spilling in the room from between the iron barred vent. 

It stings your eyes, blotchiness surrounding your peripheral before you’re able to adjust to the light. 

Ghost is on the floor taking blunt forces into his lower abdomen—the blonde sputters out a cough as his entire body jerks at the contact. 

The man grips the neckline of Ghost’s shirt, lifting his head from off the ground as thick red paste runs down his split and swollen lips.

His legs lift themselves up in an attempt to propel his body up and out of the man’s grasp, but he falls flat as his neck is slammed back onto the cement. 

Before Ghost can gasp for air the moment his neck is released, a closed fist slams into his cheekbone, knocking the wind out of him. 

“Stop,” you rasp. “Let’im go…”

Ghost is twitching on the floor, blood spilling from his mouth. His entire face is caked in red flakes and black and blue blemishes—the entire left side of his face is fattened with knots.

“No…” you snarl.

The man whirls his head and glares at you, an amused expression of disbelief stamped onto his face.

“No?” He says cockily.

The man paces towards you and cuts off your bindings, bundles your hair in his fist and drags you over towards Ghost, you whine and raise your unbroken arm to try and pry his hands off, but he only tugs harder. 

He pulls your hair up until you're positioned on your knees, chin raised up and neck tilted.

You hear a click, it wasn’t a gun. 

He unsheathed a pocket knife. It was a fairly decent size. You were tired of seeing knives.

Ghost watches the man’s hand lower to your abdomen, fingers pirouetting across your delicate skin, it sends a shivering fear throughout your entire body like electricity. 

“Please…” you meekly whisper, attempting to pull yourself away, your body is so weak from lack of use. Your voice came out as a croak. 

His other hand holds a knife that teases the neckline of your shirt. 

Ghost thrashes against the floor attempting to wrestle out of his bindings. “I’ll skin you,” Ghost’s voice is hoarse.

“How would you feel If I just…” His fingers trace along the scars on your stomach. “Touch her, ever so lightly…Right in front of you?” The man snickers.

You yelp as his knife cuts a thin line down your blood-stained neckline until your cleavage is exposed. 

Tears surface the corners of your eyes. 

No, no, no, no…

“Keep y’r eyes on me,” Ghost whispers weakly. “That’s it, love.”

You feel your shirt tear entirely down the middle and fall down your arms, pooling around your wrists. 

Your vision blurs and your mouth starts to feel dry, teeth chattering in unison with your trembling lips. 

When the knife rests over the center gore of your bra, your breath hitches in your throat and tears bead down your cheeks. 

The blade slices through the cloth and immediately your hand rises to cover your nude chest.

Ghost’s eyes stay locked with yours, one half-closed from being beaten beyond his control.

You feel his facial hair scrub raw against your skin, sipping in your fear and vulnerability.

“Team Delta en route for seaside, Corbin, what’s your report?” 

His radio.

The man pauses and takes his hand off the midline of your ribcage to grab his radio.

“Delta, this is Pooch on standby—hostages are stable, the woman is awake.” 

You release a choked sob, causing the man to release the talk button and bash it against the side of your face, sending you straight onto the floor. 

“Thaye…” Ghost croons.

You clutch your chest with your one hand as you feel the right side of your face swell. 

“It’ll ‘b over soon,” you tremble, releasing a shaken breath. “They’ll find..us…”

“Shut the fuck up,” his voice is slicked with spite. “Both of you.” 

“Pooch, this is Delta, rog that. Don’t kill our intel—0-7, signing off.” It crackles.

You lift your head and turn it slightly, blinking causes the pain on your cheekbone to burn like acid. 

“Go to h—“ the radio is bashed into your face again causing your vision to swim and make your head stumble. 

The sound of blood trickling and hitting the floor fills your ears, your left palm flattens against the cold floor. Missing fingers wrapped to keep you alive, not because they care.

He punches the radio into your right eye. You keep your head down in submission.

“You wanna act tough? Get treated like you're tough!” He yells.

His hand tugs your head back—you can see your own blood splattered against the communicator before you’re met with the same fate.

Ghost watches as the man beats the right side of your face in with the butt of the radio until it’s practically unrecognizable—caked and blistered. Bruising and swelling so tender on your skin. 

He can’t do anything.

He can only watch. 

You whimper and cry, hissing through your tears while your jaw clenched, the radio mercilessly landing on the same spot allowing more blood to cascade from the wound. 

The last hit is the hardest, sending your numbing cheek staggering back down onto the ground, you wheeze. 

If Ghost’s hands weren’t tied behind his back, the man standing above the two of you would be a mangled corpse. He knew that. 

Your breaths are shallow and rasped. It feels like hell to breathe—to move your face. Crimson just pools beneath you as Pooch flicks off your gore from his communicator.

He grunts in disgust as specks splatter onto the ‘cleaner’ side of your face. Like water spots on a windowpane or glass shower door. 

When you hear the door slam behind you, it makes you flinch. 

Your body has broken into tremors now, maybe it’s not tremors—but your spasming. 

And your hand is still covering your scar-ridden chest, but you feel like you might pass out again. 

Ghost’s own breaths are ragged—you wonder if lunderneath all the blood on your face if you’d look just like him. 

“Sleep,” he rasps. “I’ll watch ya.” 

You relax as much as you possibly can, your single eye twitching shut in favor of your other one. 

All you’ve had these past four days was sleep, yet it didn’t replenish. It didn’t make you feel any less tired or exhausted. 

With your bones feeling brittle and sore, it was hard to shift yourself into the mindset of falling asleep, but you tried. 

You felt Ghost scoot himself towards you, possibly just to shield your unclad chest and give you a taste of comfort. 

Your eyelids feel heavy with pain and fatigue, your body stilling as you allow yourself to sleep.

☆════━━━┈┈┈┈━━━════☆

DAY 5

Your hands are tied above your head, a gag set between your teeth which you gnaw at in an attempt to drag it down to hang around your neck.

Ghost is a few feet away from you—both of you hanging on metal piping with rope around your wrists. 

Ghost’s boots were on the floor, he was too tall to hang like you, where you could swing your feet. Did they take your shoes? 

You watch the steel poker ignite in the industrial furnace; the end of it glowing all shades of red, yellow, and orange. 

It was two different tools Rolmuth was holding, now. They had two different symbols on each one that you were unfamiliar with. He was choosing.

Rolmuth spun the branding irons with his thumbs and pointers, chuckling dryly to himself as he approached Ghost, setting one of them back inside the boiler.

His boots were so loud, they echoed off the walls of the room they were in—It looked like some sort of boiler room, but you weren’t too sure. 

You two must’ve been in a warehouse of some sort. 

Rolmuth has to look up to look your lieutenant in the eyes. 

When they’d woken you up, they threw you a gray tank top, so you weren’t as exposed as you were before. 

The Hindi man pulls down Ghost’s gag. 

“460 degrees of heat on metal…” he says as he lifts the hem of Ghost’s shirt. “You talk, I spare you more scar.” 

“Go fuck y’self, y’manky twat…”  the blonde snapped.

An open mouthed yell left Ghost’s throat as the metal is lanced firmly over the middle of his stomach, tugging at his flesh and skin.

Ghost’s eyes squeeze shut as loud whimpers escape from him, ragged winces. 

“Stop!” you cry.

God, you’d never heard him in so much pain. You never thought you’d ever hear him scream in agony, in physical pain. 

You're forced to watch the smoke trailing up the rod, Ghost’s back arching in tormentation. 

“You piece of shit!” You twist and turn your body causing the rope to shred through layers of your skin. 

His muscles tense and his knuckles go white from how hard he’s gripping the pipelines holding him up. 

Rolmuth removes the metal from Ghost’s skin—it could be described as a flesh eating parasite; the way that his skin sticks to the rod as if it’s desperate for that contact.

A hitched gasp manages to make its way past his lips as he feels a tinge of relief, his body twitching and pained moans and hisses filling your ears.  

You jerk your body weight down, kicking your bare feet until you feel the metal start to dent. 

Rolmuth sets the iron back onto the furnace over a rack, he’s bending over to adjust the heat, the fire is roaring.

You tug your arms down and you let out a strained whine at the feeling of your wrists starting to bleed.

When the metal gives in above you, it creaks and drops you down.

You slide down the metal and Rolmuth’s body swings up from fidgeting with furnace levers and knobs. 

His arms are immediately reaching for his gun while you lift your legs up and kick the heels of your feet into his shoulder blades, hard. 

Rolmuth’s head slams back into the brick base of the furnace, he lets out a groan, his form dragging down and slumping against the floor.

Your body lands harshly on the ground, an excruciating response coming from the back of your head.

Black spots cloud your vision as you slowly try to regain your composure. Your vision is blurring, everything sounds far away and echoed. 

The gun slides across the floor.

Your jaw clenches as you pick up your heavy head, your eye searching for the gun regardless of the pounding that distracted you.

When you spot the muzzle, you lurch yourself forward and reach, finger grazing the trigger guard before your pulled back by your hair, earning a yelp to leave you.

Your lungs refuse to cooperate in your chest as your scalp is nearly torn from your head. 

Rolmuth growls with clenched teeth, pulling you away from the gun and towards him as he kneels himself over you.

This was the first time you were able to get a decent look at his face—if it weren’t for your messed up eye—but you only can see the rage dispersed over his face as his hands gather around your throat.

He slams your neck down, adding onto the pain thrusting through the back of your head.

“Bitch!” Rolmuth snarls.

You suck in your gag, causing panic and adrenaline to rush through your entire body as your binded hands thrash and attempt to push him off of you. 

You duck yourself, bend your leg and kick it against his ankle to heave yourself up with all your weight upwards. 

He exclaims in his native tongue, some of which you can only recognize as insults and swears.

Ghost calls your name weakly.

Rolmuth’s hands slip from your throat allowing you to breathe and sit yourself on top of him, you tug your body and maneuver yourself until you're behind the man, pulling the knot of your bindings against his throat and crossing them over. 

His neck lifts to try and give himself access to air, though you tug and hold his waist steady between your knees. 

You yell with your clenched teeth, the fabric between your lips making the muscles in your jaw ache. 

Him wheezing beneath you, fingernails clawing at your split and abused hands before he shifts.

“Thaye!” Your lieutenant hollers.

Rolmuth’s hands reach down to his vest to pull another gun, aiming it at your foot and pulling the trigger causing you to let out an agonizing scream, pain racking your entire body. 

The bullet shoots clean through, you knew that for sure. It was too close. 

Your grip on his neck loosens so you can slap the gun out of his grip.

In three quick motions, Rolmuth’s back atop you with his hands grasping your hair again, dragging you towards the furnace until your face is close enough to feel the heat radiate onto your face.

You feel the thickness of gore engulf your foot and drip down your toes onto the floor. 

Your grunting, muffled, and loud breaths make your head pound as the man squeezes your jaw and forces your neck towards the mouth of the forge. 

“No…” you snarl with bared lips, kicking your legs regardless of the pain, throwing yourself towards him to keep yourself as far from the flames as you could.

Rolmuth laughs dryly accompanying his guttural breaths, his body stretching yet keeping a firm hold on your mandible as he takes hold of one of the branding rods. 

“No!” Your eye widens and your hands reach up to push his face away from you.

“Fuck!” He growls, shaking his face to keep your hands off as he pulls the iron out of the furnace.

He wastes no time pressing it into your side regardless of the thin tank covering your skin, and the cloth does absolutely nothing in regards to the sudden gut wrenching sensation that makes it feel like your entire body was drenched in gasoline and set on fire with a blowtorch. 

Your cry is deafening to the ears and the smell of burning charred flesh is quick to fill your nostrils. You feel and you hear your skin bubble up, sizzle, then pop, then stick to the metal and entangle itself around the start of the handle taking the appearance of something similar to chewed bubblegum. 

Even trembling and shaking, you manage to find a way to position your hands so you can plant your thumbs into his eyes and use some of the only fingers you have left to press them into his eyes, causing the man to yell. 

Still, your screams aren’t matchable as your fingernails gouge into his sockets and claw at his eyelids, shredding through flesh easily as blood began to dribble down his face and over his lips like tears. You still manage to scream louder in anger than the man can in pain. 

Your fingers shove deeper into the grooves of his eye sockets, the organs are pushed so far back that blood sprays across your face and he finally releases the rod.

It clangs to the floor, and he starts sobbing in his native tongue, convulsing hands reaching up towards his red-painted face as you pull your gag out.

“Go to hell,” You seethe wobbly as you lift yourself and steer yourself behind him, taking Rolmuth by the nape of his neck and forcing himself inside the mouth, against the grills inside the furnace. 

He shrieks and cries, moving erratically as his face is engulfed by the fire. Slowly, yet quickly, his skin is shredded by the blazes and the bottom rows of his teeth are exposed. 

It takes him a while to stop making noise before you pull his head out and throw his twitching body onto the ground, then you finally allow yourself to lean against a boiler tank and take pressure off your injured foot.

You propel yourself off the tank by your palms and drag yourself regardless of your ankle to the edge of the furnace, turning yourself around to scrape the rope against the brick.

A gasp releases from your throat at the sudden relief around your wrists, the rope falling to the ground. 

“Ghost?” You lift your head. 

“‘M here.” He replies. 

“I don’t know if I can get up.”

“I know you can,” Ghost urges. “Find…” he sputters up blistering coughs. 

“…Fin’a knife, ‘n get me outta these binds, yea?” He huffs. “‘N I’ll do the rest.”

Your eye blinks as you grip the ankle of Rolmuth’s corpse, pulling him toward you to start flipping up his vest and pant pockets.

He didn’t have a knife on him. 

Got to be fucking kidding me.

A door is swung open, a singular set of footsteps stepping into the room.

Your eye searches for a weapon—anything that can deal enough damage.

A metal fire poker is hanging off the wall to your right, so you swing your elbows back and lift yourself up by the palms of your hands.

As quick as you can, you hoist yourself up by using the support of a metal deaerator, your arm sliding against it as you limp and throw yourself towards the wall creating a subtle thud. 

“What the fuck…?” A man’s voice murmurs.

You silently curse to yourself under your breath as you grab the fire poker off the nails that were being used to hold it up.

Using the heel of your injured foot, you shuffle against some shelving, looking between the gaps for the man inside the room. 

He’s holding a Fennec, nothing you haven't dealt with before. 

He’s twenty seconds to your left, carefully skimming along the floor with his eyes down the sights of his gun.

You pinch a metal screw off of one of the shelves and toss it into the corner closest to you to lead him your way. 

“Fuck,” the younger male jumps slightly. He looked young and lanky, at least from his physique.

When you hear his boots start to rub against the floor, you lift your head slightly to watch him turn towards your direction. 

Your fingers and nubs flex on the thin metal, it’s hard to gain a clear grip.

The man comes around the corner of the shelves, the sounds of his tactical gear shuffling alerting you when he gets closer until his helmet is in sight.

You immediately thrust the fire poker into the gap below his collarbone and into his scapula, dampening the fabric of his undershirt in that area as it rips. 

Out of panic and shock, his finger grips the trigger and you have to jerk him away before any of his bullets are able to hit you.

“Please!” The boy pleads, gun dropping to hang around his neck as he grips the caps of your shoulders. You only glare at him before plunging the fire poker further into that same spot until it tears and mauls through his back, sticking out on the other end.

He’s gasping out, but it’s almost like no air is exhaling, mouth held agape as his grip on your shoulders releases. 

You shout and cry out at every thrust until the hole carved into his skin is able to suck in the hooked tip. 

The male’s head falls and you allow his body to slump down and forward, the metal rod holding his stilled body up. 

You heave dryly and press a palm on the wall to support yourself, your foot is killing you—literally.

The blown out flesh and puckered skin walls made you want to barf. You could stick a finger through your foot and feel your pulsating muscles just hug around your finger. 

You lean down and unclip the knife holster from the gun belt, unsheathing it then hobbling around the shelving towards Ghost who was still hanging from the pipes. 

“Okay, okay…” you breathe sharply, struggling to lift yourself up onto the brick platform of the furnace, nearly stumbling off before you catch your footing. 

“Keep still,” you say, arching your hand to start cutting at his bondings until he’s dropped onto the floor.

Ghost lets out a loud groan, his arms clutching his ribs. They’d broken one of his ribs, maybe multiple. You both were in bad shape.

It takes him a moment to get himself off the floor as you seat yourself and scoot off of the hearth. 

He grabs both of the hand guns that had been dropped onto the floor, holding one out to you.

You unclip the magazine, then snap it back into the chamber at the sight of one missing bullet. 

It was the same one that Rolmuth used to shoot your foot. 

Ghost’s hand rests on your cheek, gently. “Y’did good, ‘lright?” He spoke with a lilt. 

“Can y’walk?” 

“A little.” You nod. “Fuckers took my shoes…” 

He lets his hand fall to check his magazine, then he nods. “‘Don’t know if I can carry ya with m’ribs.” 

“It’s okay, just don’t wait for me.” You reply.

His eyebrows furrow. “Bloody hell, Thaye, I ain’t leavin ya.” 

“I know but—“ 

“No.” 

Ghost’s half-lidded eyes glare at you, giving you all the warning to stop.

“Stay behind me.” 

He starts walking towards the door, slowly peeking it before leaving with you behind him.

Walking hurt—even while you only applied pressure to the heel on your injured foot, the muscles contracted and the pain was torturous. 

One man entered the hallway holding a box from another room, which Ghost took care of by shooting a single bullet between his eyes.

The box had opened and dropped glass equipment, alerting four others who had been lingering in the room he came from.

They yell and communicate in their native tongue, one sticking his head out of the door threshold to aim his rifle.

Ghost fires his pistol and the man swings his head back into the room, still opening fire into the hallway.

“Fuck!” You hiss, dodging the bullets and moving quickly behind a filing cabinet, lowering yourself down. 

Ghost’s back presses against a door to your right, pulling himself out of cover to fire at the man.

Two bullets miss and the third causes his head to fling back and smear blood as his body arches and falls down to the floor.

You lift your head and aim your pistol, gasping when your throat is suddenly hooked back from behind you. 

When the combatant turns you around and attempts to make a slash at your throat, you manage to extract yourself by gripping his wrist and snapping his elbow out of place, the sounds of bones snapping as he yells.

His knife drops from his hand and you scramble to pick it up from the floor.

You groan as his boot digs into your bandaged hand before you're able to pick it up, then his hand grips your neck to lift you up.

He wraps his arms around you and squeezes you, locking his wrists over each other at your back. You clench your teeth and jerk violently in his grasp.

Ghost is fighting four other men, locking them in the crook of his elbow and smashing their skulls between the doors.

The man holding you in position crushes you in his grasp even with his broken arm. He tries dragging you into another room.

“Let me the fuck go,” you gasp, causing the man to laugh. 

“You will regret ever trying to leave your room,” he utters. 

You breathe a moment, heart pounding through your chest as you swing your head into the side of his neck and sink your teeth into his skin with all the strength in your jaw. 

Crimson liquid seeps into your mouth and down the front of your neck as you yank out the flesh of his throat. You spit out the skin and blood, wiping your mouth and tongue against the skin of your arm as the man’s grasp loosens

His shoulder blades and chest are glistening in red, gore spurting out of the torn spot in his throat as his body stumbles and he’s gargling on his own blood trying to speak.

“Fuck you…” You shutter weakly, eyes slowly skimming down to the knife lodged inside your waist. 

Shit.

He must’ve stabbed you before lifting you up, your adrenaline pumping so fiercely you couldn’t feel it until now.

You stumble on your feet slightly, shaking hands lowering to wrap around the handle and pull it out of the slit.

The runnel of red paste turns into a thick stream down as it drenches your tank top. 

You lift your head slowly and throw the knife overhead across the hallway, hitting a man who’s pointing a handgun at the back of Ghost’s head. 

It’s blade spades into the back of his skull and makes his body wriggle down onto the floor.

“Ghost…!” You gasp and press your open palm over your soaking top and open laceration. 

Ghost steps over both legs of a bloodied man before shooting him dead and advancing towards you.

“Shite…” He huffs, gently removing your hand and placing it back after gaining a clear inspection.

His hands grip the hem of his shirt and roughly tear at the fabric creating a long strip, then he moves your hand aside again to tightly secure it around your wound. 

You hiss and groan, hand gripping his shoulder as he tugs and pulls at your body while tying the knot of the fabric. 

“I’s ‘lright.” Ghost mollifies as he scoops his arm underneath your armpit.

It offers you some support as he guides you both out towards a staircase.

It wasn’t a warehouse—you and Ghost were just in a basement that was turned into a meth lab. 

Boxes and boxes full of lab equipment scattered along the floors. 

You’d never seen such a big basement, one with torture chambers and stonework rooms. 

Hell, in the corner of the room with all the steel liquid tanks and chemical barrels. 

A woman is in bright blue hazmat coveralls and a chemical mask standing on top of a metal stool. 

Ghost raises his pistol and you lower it slightly with your palm, his eyes glaring at you with his head kept facing forward. 

“You can’t miss, we don’t know what corrosives are in these tanks. Is it worth it?” You keep your voice low, personal between the two of you.

He doesn’t reply, instead he looks forward, then squeezes the trigger and picks the woman off by shooting her in the side of her neck.

You swallow thickly as her body spasms on the ground, the stool getting caught in her ankle as crimson fluid rises and bubbles inside of her mouth. 

Ghost guides the two of you up the cobble stairs, one hand dragging up the wall and the other across your lieutenant’s wingspan.

Your eyes flash at the sudden two objects being thrown down the stairs, the sudden silence as they roll down step…after step…after step before Ghost is swinging you up into arms and yelling.

He’s breaching himself through the door, into open fire before the staircase you had come up from explodes into the emitting heat compressed air and blasts behind the two of you sending you both flying forward. 

Smoke engulfs the room, giving both you and Ghost coverage to get behind cover.

You're pulled by the back of your shirt behind a deep freezer, bullets flying and hitting the metal.

“Fuckin’ pricks got us pinned!” His head lifts over to fire at three of the men who have ballistic shields covering those firing LMGs behind. “‘N I’ve got four left.”

You can’t see through the thick smoke—you can’t breathe while wheezing into the crook of your elbow. “Seven,” you inform him. 

“Cover me,” Ghost grabs your arm for a moment, letting go and serving around the freezer. 

You follow behind him with a raised pistol, shooting off at any glares you're able to see through the fumes.

Six…Five…

A man steps out from cover behind a wine cabinet, but before he can fire his rifle, you pop him in the eye.

Four…

Ghost quickly crouches down and shimmies the rifle out of the corpse’s grip, grabbing at a magazine and stuffing it into his vest he’d managed to keep.

You groan and push over a bookshelf behind Ghost once you’re both out of the smoke. He takes aim and opens fire at three men, blowing holes in their chests before he rams into the fourth with a loud yell and slams down the stock of his assault rifle into his face until his teeth and nose are finely pressed into the persian rug.

You finish off two more who try to walk through the threshold of the room, turning your head over your shoulder at the sound of approaching footsteps.

Two…

You jerk yourself away before you get slugged by a riot shield, ascending yourself and shoving your firearm past the barriers of his lips from behind. You pull the trigger and his head flings as the bullet rings out and creates a sizable hole in the back of his head.

One…

Before his body hits the tile, you take hold of his riot shield and deflect the hail of gunfire from the individual who came emerging from the threshold corner.

You walk forward until his clip is empty to drive the shield into his vest-covered chest, stunning him so you can push it aside and fire your last shot into the underside of his jaw. 

Zero.

Bullets continue spraying throughout the entirety of the house while you make sure you don’t pass out from the amount of blood you’ve lost.

You grab the TAQ-V from off the floor and click a new magazine into it, shoving a spare into your back pocket before pushing into the same room as Ghost.

He’s piling bodies on the floor, wrestling for dominance over a knife. 

You fastdraw another handgun you’d grabbed off of one of the bodies and shoot the man in his knee cap to allow Ghost to gain the upper hand and pierce the man’s temple with the weapon. 

“Thanks,” he says gruffly. 

You nod softly, inhaling sharply as you feel wet blood pool around your uninjured foot. 

They took your shoes for no reason, like they had a use for them.

Maybe it allows you to move around more quietly, but it still disturbed you that they took the time to even peel off your socks. 

“What intel did y’know that we didn’t?” His chest is against yours, head craning down to keep the conversation between the two of you.

“Lieutenant, we don’t…” You pause a moment, your head spinning. 

Hunger, thirst, the cold, the blood loss. There was so much holding you hostage and you weren’t even able to comprehend how you were still standing—limping.

“Well, Seargant?” His voice is low, still holding the same husky British drawl.

“We don’t have the time for this, for now—“ Ghost shoves you aside before you can finish, raising the muzzle of his rifle to open fire on the men entering the room.

“Fuckin’ riot shields!” He pulls you behind a flipped over tattered blue couch that had already gone through its fair share of bullets.

A bullet flies and hits the side of the couch a hair’s breadth from your face. 

“Goddammit,” he curses while replacing the magazine in his gun.

The men brandishing shields push further.

When one reaches close enough, you run in front of the shield and grab the sides before he crashes into you. 

You turn him until his body is vulnerable to Ghost, your teeth ground into each other.

“Ghost!” You yell to catch his attention, head snapping in your direction to fire a single round into the back of his head.

You throw the body off of yourself and yank the riot shield to cover yourself, ducking your head as you recoil your fist and punch one of the men baring LMGs hard twice in the jaw.

You thrust the shield into the next, throwing it into his abdomen as he topples, finishing him off by shooting him down in the chest.

One turns with his M4 raised, but you turn your gun around and bash the stock into the base of his chest, then again into his cheek, swiping your leg across the floor and knocking him down then picking his head up and slamming it down on a thick shard of glass sticking upwards to finish him off. 

Ghost drops the last body, finishing off a magazine into his vest and throwing the weapon aside. You toss him another one, which he catches with ease.

“We’ll force upstairs, look f’r our shit, ‘n leave.” He says as he picks up a frag grenade from off a vest.

“There should be Skimobiles somewhere around here, the ones they were using in the FFO,” you nod.

“A’right,” he groans while rolling his shoulders. “On my mark.” 

He trudges past bodies until he’s at the threshold of the staircase, stepping up slowly with the grenade in one hand and his gun in his other.

You follow behind leisurely, eye down the scope of your rifle. 

He pulls the clip and tosses it up, arm stretching behind to press his hand against your shoulder blade. 

“Oh shit—grenade!” A man yells from upstairs before detonation. 

“Go!” Ghost immediately backs up off the wall and skips over two steps into the corridor, prefiring as he loops around a wall.

There’s already bodies and limbs splayed across the room from the combatants who were hit by the frag.

Your back rubs against the wall as you lean to shoot down the hallway, whirring bullets firing past you.

After a few back and forths between staying flat against the wall and leaning to fire off your gun, bodies drop and you’re able to progress down the hall. 

Ghost is somewhere on the opposite side of the house, you still hear heavy gunfire.

You pause at the sight of another man at the end of the hallway and you recognize him immediately.

The look in his eyes and the scruffiness of his face made your lips stretch in almost the most feral look.

Corbin, that was his name. Callsign ‘Pooch’.

Anger burns in the depths of your lungs and stomach as you grip the wall for support, lunging yourself forward to lift your feet over each body that was littered across the hallway floors.

Sweat ran down the sides of your face and splotched down around the neck of your shirt with the blood.

You watch his face twist into a wolfish grin as he slings his gun over his shoulder and walks towards you. 

“Alright, sweetheart.” He purrs. 

White noise fills your ears.

All you can see through the glossy shine of your eyes is the man who humiliated you in front of your superior. 

All you can see through the blinding red rage is the man who beat Ghost and cracked his ribs, forcing you to watch him retract and twitch at every fleeting fist. 

Even the hail of gunfire is silent in your ears as you drag your injured foot. Everything sounds underwater, everything feels dull.

His fist intersects and meets with your cheekbone causing your head to shift to the left and your body to stumble where you stand. 

You grip his wrist and divert his second punch by lifting your arm and thrusting your knee roughly into his thigh to tamper his movements.

He groans, with grim chuckles following after. “I’m going to enjoy every last second of this,” he coos.

Your body shivers in disgust as you slide your fingers down to your waist, priming the knife stuffed beneath the hem of your shirt. “Go fuck yourself…” you hiss.

His eyes flicker down to your hand and his boot immediately connects with the middle of your torso, sending you across the floor with a loud thud.

Pooch steps between your legs and lifts your upper body by the neckline of your shirt, his knuckles slamming down to beat on your already swollen face. 

Drool and blood pour from your mouth, a strangled gasp leaving you at every punch before he releases you harshly back down onto the floor. 

Your eyes are rolling to the back of your head, the pressure and swelling in your face and head being all too much for you.

A boot is savagely kicked into the lower pit of your abdomen, making you gag on air.

“Get the fuck up.” Pooch spits. 

You clutch your stomach and turn, slowly feeling for the knife, then quickly lifting the edge trimming of your tank top and grasping the handle, pulling it out and sweeping your leg around and behind his ankles to knock him off to the side.

He yells out swears as you level yourself over him, his legs kicking out to make your chest rest on the soles of his boots. 

Both of your hands grasp the handle of the knife making it easier on your lack of fingers. His hands grip your forearms as you cry out and try forcing the knife down on him.

He kicks his legs up and backwards, upending you over him and sending the knife flying. 

You hiss and give yourself no time to recover, flipping on your stomach and army crawling with your forearms to grab the knife.

He topples atop your body, planting a piercing slap across your face before reaching for the knife and propelling it downwards into you.

Before you’re able to block, the knife breaks through the skin in your stomach, your hand managing to grab his wrist before he’s able to gut you open.

You seethe and let out a sharp whine followed by a croaked cry, your other hand circling his wrist in an attempt to push him away. 

Quickly, you roll your body off to the side and let go of him, causing the knife to pierce into the wood flooring as you grip a console table to succor yourself up.

Corbin abandons the knife and flings himself upwards, swinging his gun into his arms. 

“I’m done playing games.” 

You advance on him, grabbing the rifle and pushing it into his chest before he can aim it at you.

One of your hands grip the upper hand guard while the other grips the bolt and holds the muzzle up.

You yank his body over towards the window behind you, turning your body then grabbing the man by the back of his hair and smashing his head through the glass.

It shatters from contact and leaves cuts and shards in his skin, a loud yell clawing its way from his throat.   

His finger grips the trigger and bullets roll out into the floor as you pull his head back.

You pull the rifle sling from off his shoulder, tossing it aside and disarming him from the X12 tucked into the back of his pants.

He growls at every tug of his scalp as you shoot him in the back of the leg and force him onto his knees.

A loud wail echoes the hallway from the man below you.

 “Shut your fucking mouth,” you snap.

“You don’t get to scream.”

“You don’t get to cry and whine like a little bitch.”

There’s no remorse in your voice, no sense of mercy for the man being held on his knees and whimpering.

You smack the magazine onto the base of his nose, blood dripping it’s way down his nostrils as a struggling noise spills from his lips.

“You…fucking….” he chokes on his own words. 

His entire body violently trembles at the tortured scream he releases as you squeeze the trigger again, shooting Pooch in his shoulder then proceeding to stick your thumb into the ravage wound harshly.

“Bitch! Fucking bitch!” He strains and pants like a dehydrated dog trying to jerk away from you.

You replace your finger with your foot, lowering his back against the floor as you press your toe into the bullet hole.

Another scream tears out of him as you blow another hole into the other side—his chest convulses.

Blood seeps from his mouth, you hold the grip of the handgun with both hands and sob out loud as you empty the entire magazine into his head until his face is unrecognizable to the amount of bullet holes.

You keep pulling the trigger, even as the gun starts to click announcing its out of ammunition.

The entire floor below you is covered in gore; flesh, messings of brains, blood, skin. 

So much.

Your body snaps around as a hand abruptly drapes over your shoulder, your arm raising the gun ready to bash it into the skull of the next man to try and touch you.

“Thaye, Thaye—y’got him! Thaye, he’s dead!”

Someone calls your name trying to snap you of out haze.

Ghost—your eyes soften with glistening tears as he calmly disarms you after deflecting the hit with his forearm, tossing the handgun aside so he can push you into his chest by the back of your neck.

“‘S over, sweet girl.” Ghost says with intonation. “Can’t hurt ya anymore.”

Your eyes are wide with terror, hands bundling your lieutenant’s shirt as you exhale a shaky mewl.

It’s him who releases you first, handing you your custom rifle and radio.

His balaclava is back on his face, along with the skull mask.

“Y’r vest ‘n boots are in the room I came from,” Ghost jerks his head.

You nod softly and shamble towards the doorway in the direction he’d pointed out.

You pause.

A little boy walks out of the threshold—he’s holding a gun far bigger than his head.

Your eyes widen slightly. “Did these men take you from your family?” 

You turn your head over your shoulder to call for Ghost, the sound of a bullet whirring filling your ears.

Ghost wastes no time pulling out his handgun and shooting the little boy in the head before running towards you.

Your right shoulder is screaming at you as time seems to slow down to a crawl. You hear Ghost yell behind you and the gunshot ringing as the little boy falls back and you do too, hitting the ground hard.

The masked man is on his knees in front of you within seconds, lifting your head into his lap.

“Thaye! Thaye, don’t y’fuckin’ die, not now…” He growls, applying pressure down onto your shoulder with both of his gloved hands.

Your lips slant in a tired manner, eyelids feeling heavy. His bloody hand kneads your cheek, smearing gore along your already dirtied skin.

“Fuck! Fuck!” he curses loudly. “Stay awake, love, please…”

God, he was hurting, it hurt to have your head against the burns on his stomach, but he wouldn’t let you die.

“Babygirl,” he says weakly. 

All you can see is an uncleanable amount of red seep and cover your shirt.

Your lungs clutch together inside your chest, labored breaths escaping you with a strained noise.

“I know…I know—keep those gorgeous eyes on me, sweetheart.” He inhales a shaky breath, flipping up your blood-crusted hairs from sticking to your forehead.

You whisper an apology, catching his attention as you grip his waist. Ghost’s eyebrows furrow.

“Don’t. Don’t say sorry,” he says. “You did this, you saved our lives, love.” 

“‘M just finishin’ the job, ‘lright?” His split and bloody lips find a place on your temple, planting a raw and long kiss to your throbbing skin.

“…’least I got to see your face before—“ 

Ghost holds you, squeezing your hand as a slight warning. “Don’t talk like that.” 

It was a demand. 

“That an—“ you spur into a coughing fit, blood spraying onto the man’s vest. “…Order, Lieutenant?” 

“Spare y’r energy,” he huffs. 

“Simon—“ you slur.

“Stop.” He snarls.

Your ragged breaths start to stray, causing panic to surge through the man above you.

“No,” he growls, squeezing your smaller hand in his a bit tighter than before. “Don’t, Thaye,” he says through clenched teeth.

Your body falls limp in his lap, the grasp loosening on his shirt making his heart pound through his chest, a painful pounding that felt similar to acid reflux.

“No!” Ghost yells, desperately palming at your tangled hair in panic. “Fuckin’ massacre,” he exhales shallowly.

One arm scoops beneath the back of your knees, the other across your shoulder blades with his hand holding your arm. 

A loud strained groan claws it’s way from his gullet at the sudden pain inside his ribs as he lifts himself up and off the floor. 

His muscles tighten inside his body, a burning sensation in his abdomen as he clutches you close to his chest, feeling your blood seep into his shirt.

☆════━━━┈┈┈┈━━━════☆

The gentle rhythmic beeping and steady flow of air through your nostrils was something that felt unreal and forced.

You slowly flutter your eyes open to light slipping in between the beige curtains. Your eyes are half-lidded and threatening to close against your will as your bandage wrapped hands rests atop the metal railing on either side of you.  

It smells of strong floor cleaner and hand sanitizer, a scent that is slightly uneasy on you as you slowly slip back into consciousness. 

Your muscles feel tight in your body; pain racking your shoulder and neck as you crane it to take a look around the room. 

The walls are spinning and the ceiling above you is spiraling making you sick to your stomach. 

On the bedside table to your left—closest to the window—there’s flowers. They’re too withered to try and recognize what kinds, shredding to flakes in your fingers when you caress them between your pinky and thumb.

Your hand drags up to pull nasal tubes out of your nostrils. It’s almost as if you’ve forgotten how to breathe air, throat tightening and lips so still from lack of moisture.

There’s a penetrating migraine in the back of your skull as you carefully swing your legs over the side of the bed, the thin baby pink and spotted hospital gown flowing down your sides leaving you slightly exposed in your thigh region. 

Bare and bandaged feet slide along the smooth cold tile, sending chills up your body as you grip the IV stand with your trembling hand, the other holding onto the bed railing for support. 

You groan and strain as you struggle to lift yourself up, propelling upwards with your palm and grip on the stand until your knees straighten and your standing up somewhat decently.

Where was Ghost? Is Ghost alive?

So many thoughts coursed through your head along with the punishing feeling of dehydration. 

You guide yourself using the wheels on the IV stand towards a counter, your hands gripping the handle of the sink and pulling it upward.

A choked moan manages to break from you as you scoop the water in your hands and swill the rich liquid. 

Water dribbles down your chin, which you wipe away before lifting your head to look into the medicine cabinet mirror. 

Your hand rests on the wall in front of you as you heave.

They cut your hair shorter, not too short but enough so that it was comfortable. Your entire right side of your face being bandaged, stains of blood being a faint copper color.

Bandages wrapped around your neck and reached down your shoulder you’d been shot in.

Your hair had been taken care of neatly while you were in a coma, that was obvious.

Ghost. Where?

You grip the IV stand and hobble towards the door, turning the knob and gripping the threshold with your other hand as you step out. 

A nurse pauses in her tracks, rushing to your side in an instant. “How are you up? Your injuries are critical,” she gasps, palm flattening against the small of your back.

“My lieutenant—…my lieutenant…” you say in an undertone.

“You need bed rest, you’ve only just woken up.” Her voice is gentle yet commanding.

“No,” you bark, shuffling out of her hold. “Please take me to him.” 

The woman bites her lip before nodding hesitantly, hand against your back again to guide you towards his room.

It was only a few doors down from you—when the nurse opened the door, allowing you into the room.

You see the back of Ghost’s head facing in your direction, his hair tousled from the bandages wrapping around his head.

“Ghost,” you call.

His head turns from facing the window to facing you, you hear him murmur your name in reply.

“Y’minx,” he breathes. “Hell y’doin’ out ya bed?”

You carefully walk yourself towards him, the nurse holding her hands atop her chest nervously. The sound of the plastic wheels of the stand makes his breath hitch in his throat, the sound of reassurance that you were alive.

“You okay, big man?” Your voice is hoarse from lack of use, but he’s able to that you perfectly.

“D’ya ever worry ‘bout y’self, love?” Ghost asks with a tinge of humor. 

Heavy casting was on his right leg, bandages and patches on practically every inch of his body—similar to you.

“Sometimes,” you smile softly and push strands of his hair out of his face, your heart slightly shatters in your chest at the sight of him flinching at your touch.

Ghost scoots himself over slightly, wincing at the sudden movement.

You seat yourself beside him on the large gatch bed and his hand pushes you down to lay beside him.

“Wait, Mr. Riley—“ the nurse takes a small step forward.

“I’ll ‘b fine,” he grunts.

Her eyes blink slightly as she takes a few steps back, her lips separating to speak though no words come out. She simply turns on her ankles and closes the door behind her.

Ghost secures an arm around your waist, pushing your back flush against his bandaged chest.

Your eyes trace his tattoos and the muscles of his arms, every scar and blemish.

“Where’s the force?” You ask quietly.

“Left recently,” he mumbles back tiredly, pressing his nose into your hair. “Y’smell like pomegranate—got y’self a damn spa crew while y’were out?”

You laugh dryly, breaking into a light fit of wheezes.

“Not too hard, Seargant.” Ghost’s finger tucks a loose strand of hair from your bangs behind your ear.

Your wet bandages on your hands rub against his knuckle as you hold onto his hand, he seems to pay no mind.

You turn your body slightly so you can get a better look at his face. “Odd seeing you without your eye black.” You quip.

His closed eyes open to look down at you. “Mm, might as well see m’down in me knickers then, eh?” He chuckles huskily.

“Very funny,” you roll your eyes lightheartedly. 

You catch his small glances to your lips, his hand leaving your chest to run his thumb down your bottom lip until that same hand is cupping your cheek lovingly.

His eyes narrow, he’s sleepy, but you still catch yourself propping your body up with your elbow and closing the gap between the two of you. 

Instantly, his head cranes and tilts to deepen the kiss, his fingers gently sliding down the side of your face to press his thumb into the underside of your jaw and drag his fingers along the nape of your neck.

Ghost breathes into your mouth, the taste of mint leaf and citrus enveloping your taste buds as his tongue laced over yours.

The kiss was passionate, you feel his eyebrows furrow showing his desperation as you both kissed softly at a gentle pace and motion.

Your eyes flutter open as you feel his warm lips leave yours with a quiet pop, both of you panting lightly with his forehead pressed against yours. Ghost’s eyes are unable to open for a few moments after you disconnect. 

When they do open, your eyes bore into his brown orbs, the dark purple hue circling under his eyes showing his deprivation of sleep.  

When he feels you buck gently back into his groin, he releases a small grunt, lips meeting yours again for a small chase kiss.

“Not like this,” he says quietly. “I’d take you on this bed right here, right now, but y’ve recently waken up ‘n we’re both still in r’covery.” 

You hum in agreement, his hand finding it’s place on your chest once again with the knowledge of your lower abdomen injury.

“‘N to b’honest—‘can barely feel m’damned balls, feels like ‘ve got whiskey dick.” He grumbles, and you bite your lip to suppress a giggle.

“Simon!”

“Don’ you laugh at me, woman.” Ghost lowers his head into the crook of your neck, biting the skin gently 

“My deepest condolences, Lieutenant,” you purr, catching his lips in another kiss when you jerk his head upward with your uninjured shoulder. He growls against your mouth in reaction.

There’s a long yet short line of silence as you turn towards his back again, your legs tangling with his as you hold your lips against his knuckles.

“Y’have no clue how strong you are.” He swallows the knot in his throat as he speaks. “God, Thaye, they…they told me there was a chance y’d never wake up.” 

“Hey,” you hum. “Stop that, I’m here now.” 

His eyes stare blankly at the wall ahead of you, maybe even the same wall you were staring at—if your eyes weren’t closed already. 

“I just don’ know what I would’ve done if I made it outta there ‘n y’didn’t make it with me.” He says. 

“Y’r the reason I made it out with you in the first place. If y’hadn’t pulled that barmy stunt—“ he pauses, and you feel the rise of his chest and the fall as he exhales deeply.

“Y’survived internal bleeding, trauma to the head ‘n eye, two broken ribs, second and third degree burns, asphyxiation, dismemberment, stab wounds and gunshot wounds..” Ghost squeezes his fist tighter against your chest. 

“So did you, Si.” You coo softly. 

“Christ…” he mutters. 

His fingers interlock with yours best they can, regardless of the most of them being numbs on your knuckles, and it wasn't until your hand rested on his chest and rubbed over the raised scars, that he realized he hadn't been touched so gently in nearly eleven years. It wasn't a new feeling, but it was a feeling that he had craved desperately. 

Never had fallen in love before, but he knew you had bad experiences with it—figuring out that your ex-fiancé had cheated on you while on deployment. Someone had to love you, and he was skeptical of it being him, but it was clear you loved him too and now he was scared you’d stop. 

But hearing your gentle breathing as you slipped back into sleep hunched into his form led him somewhere he’d never been. You cleared his mind and cleared away his thoughts. For the first time, he doesn’t want to look away from what he has the ability to feel.

Helloooo, here’s a new sketch and this time young Sirius Black from Harry Potter / Marauders! Hope you like it :)

Here’s the template I used

Op, whatever you took, I need it

BLAME MY MUTUALS FOR ENCOURAGING ME TO POST THIS CRACK! IT IS AWFUL PLEASE FORGIVE ME. (I love you guys thank you for feeding my demons) anyway, It’s about cum. Read at your own risk.

-

Ghosts mind is bleary, it didn’t matter what else was happening all he knew was Soap. His body his flesh. With one last breathy noise Soap cums, spilling over his hand, and collapsing back into the covers.

Ghost smiles softly and then is in the bathroom running water over his hands, washing off the cum still spread between his fingers.

Ghost puts his hands together to scrub it off with the water.

Soap’s cum becomes sudsy. It froths up and starts to smell like clean grapefruit and sanitation.

What. The. Fuck.

This entire time! His boyfriend wasn’t the human, Ghost thought. No! No… Soaps cum was SOAP!

Ghost shoots out of his dream with a yell and a cold sweat.

He definitely gets smacked when he describes the dream to Soap later and asks him if he’s actually a soap dispenser disguised as a Sargent.

-

This was in my drafts as

“Ghost makes soap cum. Ghost washes hands. Soap’s cum turn into soap and Ghost wakes up in a cold sweat”

It’s awful I love it.

spring 🌼🌧️

Sleepless

Ghost never sleeps. At least nobody ever saw him do it. On missions, he'd always take the night watch, the most he did was close his eyes and snooze a bit, immediately waking up if anything happened. When he slept on base, his room was always locked, and he obviously had the room farthest from the rest. Peaks of being a lieutenant. But now here you were, in a safehouse in the middle of nowhere, crammed together in the tight space. Ghost was not pleased, to put it mildly. He didn't show it, but you could see it in the way his jaw clenched under his mask and his voice got even more gruff.

"Y' go to sleep. I'll take the watch", he ordered, sitting down heavily on a chair. "With all due respect, sir, you look like shit. You should sleep a wee bit too", you remarked, looking him up and down. Even with the mask he couldn't hide his tired and droopy eyes. "Watch your mouth, sergeant", he gruffed. You smiled and raised your hands "Just being honest, Lt" An annoyed and tired sigh escaped him. "Go to sleep. Don't make me force ya"

You giggled, but relented. Taking off the heavy vest and settling down on the floor. It didn't take long for you to fall asleep, the exhaustion from todays work kicking in.

A loud bang ripped you from your peaceful slumber. You shot up, alarmed, gun at the ready. After a few seconds another bang. Worry set in. Was Ghost in trouble? Had you been discovered?

Quickly you got up, clearing the house. Nothing and no one was there. Until you got to the entrance, where Ghost was set for night guard. You didn't see him immediately, which by his size was hardly possible. He was leaning against a wall, facing the door. As soon as you saw him, you froze. That wasn't Ghost. That wasn't the deadly, tough and cold man you knew. He was scared. Hunched in on himself, arms wrapped around himself, knees pulled up to his chest. He was trembling.

You didn't know what to do, so you just stood there. He shook and trembled like a scared puppy. It hurt to watch him like this. "Ghost?", you asked, carefully. He began muttering under his breath. "No no no no, don't touch me, don't fucking touch me!", his chest began heaving with effort, his fists clenching the fabric of his uniform. You took a step closer to him. "Stop, please stop, it hurts, please!", pleas kept falling from his lips.

Should you wake him up? It didn't seem like a good idea, but he kept banging his head against the wall, which you were sure was too loud for your both sakes.

So you placed a gentle hand on his hand, shaking him slightly. "Ghost? You gotta wake up", his eyes shot open in an instant, they went from fear to rage in a split second. He growled lowly, leaping forward and pinning you on the ground under him, his giant, gloved hand around your throat.

His eyes bore holes into you, but they didn't seem focused. He seemed to be still somewhere else. "Ghost!", you called out, trying to get him to let go of you. No reaction. "Lieutenant!" Still nothing. It became hard to breathe. "Simon, please!" His gaze went sharp, focusing on your eyes.

"Fuck, shit", he cursed, immediately letting go of you. He sat next to you, looking worried. "I-I'm so sorry", he whispered. You could see remorse in his eyes.

"Everything is fine, Ghost, I'm fine", you assured him, despite a blue ring forming around your neck. "No, it's not, I hurt you", his hands reached out to you, without touching you.

"Is that why you never sleep with us (get your mind out of the gutter)?",you asked. He nodded. "I don- I can't. The next time I maybe wake up when it's too late."

You sighed, pulling him to his feet. He looked lost.

"Then I stay awake with you"

ghost has no idea what to make of you. you show up out of nowhere, barely a day after price announces that they have an extra addition on their team for the next mission, and then you show up.

you're nothing like them - you probably haven't seen a man get shot, never felt your bones break and have to set them yourself in a fight. he has this sick fantasy of breaking you, wiping that stupid smile off your face and watching you crumple as he breaks your spine with one hand.

soap loves having you on base, you're good with a gun and you'll joke with him about almost anything - sure, you never come out to the pub with them, but whenever they come back to base you've cooked something and that's better than any pint of beer johnny's ever had.

he's worried, he thinks you wont make it out there - beside them. you're small, and not in the sense that you're short, in the sense that there's barely anything to you, nothing to grab if you trip in the middle of active fire.

gaz is just finally glad to have someone else to talk to, to complain about soap and ghost to, rant about how price pissed him off. you're always willing to talk, which is probably a good thing.

he always turns down his radio whenever you're on a mission together, he doesn't want to hear you die, or hear your voice trail off as you get caught. he has to bite his knuckle whenever you speak out of fear.

price is sick of it, sick of watching the boys play with you like a doll and then sit you delicately back on the shelf, so he takes matters into his own hands and shoots you between the eyes.

you sit up four minutes later.

ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ

i just rlly like the idea of immortal!reader but the guys have no idea and suspect nothing until they get shot in the head and then just,,, get back up !

Shattered

Ghost and his mask were one. Everyone knew that. Sometimes you thought that he couldn’t take it off if he wanted, that it had grown on his face. But on the most recent mission, things went south. There were more hostiles than you expected, and Ghost got overrun. He was a big boy, but even he couldn’t hold his ground against seven attackers. They knocked him to the ground, beating him until he was unconscious.

By the time you and Gaz finally managed to get through to him, he was covered in blood and bruises. His mask was destroyed. The skull sewn on the balaclava was broken into several pieces that were scattered around him. While a medic rolled him on a stretcher and carried him away with Gaz‘ help, you crouched down and picked up the shattered skull.

Ghost was brought to the infirmary immediately, he had a cracked rib and bad concussion. You cradled the pieces and put them on the desk in you room, carefully putting them back together. Luckily you had a bottle of glue laying around.

After gluing the pieces back together, you decided to paint the cracks a dark black. The mask was broken but now it was whole again. Just like Ghost. Well, for the first part. You wondered if there was something in this world that could slot the pieces of his broken soul back together. He’d never be the same again, just like the mask. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t bee good again.

You were a bit nervous when you knocked against the door. „Yea?“, his usually deep voice was even more gravelly now. It sounded… Weak. You slowly opened the door, looking at the figure laying in the bed. He was pale, his head bandaged, his hand gripping his injured side as he sat up. Even here he had on a black surgical mask.

„I uh, wanted to see how you’re doing“, you said, the nervousness in your voice more audible than you’d like. „Had worse“, he mumbled, suppressing a wince as he shifted. „Yea…“, you didn’t quite know what to say. „I got something“, you reached inside your duffle bag and pulled out the fixed mask.

Ghost froze up immediately as he saw the mask. You got nervous. What if he didn’t like it? What if he’d get angry you painted his mask? You heart beat so fast you’re sure he’d hear it. „It was broken, I fixed it“, you hurried to explain yourself. „I can see that“, he said without any expression or hint as to what he was thinking. „Why are there black streaks?“, he asked. Shit. He didn’t like it. He probably hated it. You shouldn’t have painted it, you shouldn’t even have touched it. „I can get them off, I‘m sorry“, you immediately started to start scratching at the paint, trying to get it off.

„Stop.“, he commanded. You stilled and looked up at him. „Don’t. I like it.“, he reached out. You gave him the mask. „Turn around“. You did as he said.

When you were allowed to turn back, he looked like himself again. He looked like Ghost. The black streaks formed an intricate pattern, making the mask look even more intimidating than it already did. He grabbed his phone and looked at it in the camera. „It looks good“. You held your breath. He liked it. He thought it looked good. That was unexpected, to say the least. „I‘m glad….“

You turned around, opening the door. „Wait“, he said. You looked at him. „Thank you, (name)“. „No problem“

The black streaks had formed a small heart on his forehead.

Fluff and theft

Note: This is my first try at writing x reader, so I apologize if it is a bit cringe or weird, I‘m still learning. I also have never played the games, so I don’t have a perfect view on their personalities, but I‘ve tried to get it as accurate as possible. Word count: 619

Prompt: "Is that my shirt you're wearing?" Gender neutral reader; platonic, can be read as a bit more.

Ghost:

It wasn't your fault, really. You fell into the mud on the obstacle course, and well, that was your last clean shirt. Conveniently there was one of Ghosts giant shirts laying around in the laundry room. It was so comfy, but you could use it as a dress. Where it looked tight on him, it completely engulfed your body.

"Is that my shirt you're wearing?", a deep voice sounded behind you as walked in the common room. "No....", you mumbled. Ghost chuckled. "I give you a ten seconds head start", he said. Shit.

You ran. But it was no use, of course. Ghost was way faster than you. When he caught up to you, he quickly put you in a head lock. You couldn’t move, but you could feel he was still being gentle. „I need my shirts, (name), you know?“, he grumbled. You snickered. „Yea, and so do I“ You knew he was frowning, even if you couldn’t see it. „I‘ll get it back tomorrow. Washed. Otherwise, you’ll be doing at least ten laps around base“, he said.

„Yes sir“

Gaz:

His shirt just looked so inviting, it really wasn't your fault. When he forgets his shirt in the laundry room, oh well, he has to expect it to be stolen.

"Is that my shirt you're wearing?", an amused voice sounded from the kitchen when you walked in the common room. "Maybe", you said. Gaz chuckled and rolled his eyes. „Are you planning to steal my wardrobe?“, he asked. You looked at the shirt, which had a big „Garrick“ written on the front. „Noooo, you know I‘d never do that“. Gaz snorted. „Oh, I know you would, (name)“. You looked at him with played offence. He just shrugged. „We’re team mates, I know you a bit at this point“. You flipped him off and tugged at the shirt. „Just so you know, this is mine now“, you stated, walking out the common room. „Oh no no no, no it isn’t“, you could hear Gaz and started running. „Catch me if you can, pretty boy!“, you shouted.

Soap:

Mixed up laundry, it happens. It wasn’t your fault, now you had a big shirt in your basket, which clearly wasn’t yours. Not that that’d stop you.

"Is that my shirt you're wearing?", Soap chuckled when you walked into the common room. „Yup. It was in my laundry basket“, you said, opening the cup board. „Is that so?“, he grinned, looking you up and down. The shirt was way too big for you, not that you minded. It was comfy. „Not that you’re not looking good in it, but I kinda need that shirt“, he said. You shrugged. „You can have one of mine“. He laughed. „I highly doubt that’d work. You’re way smaller than me, shorty“. „Oh well“, you said, „then you’ll have to get a new one issued“. He rolled his eyes and got up from the couch, stepping behind you. „I‘ll get it back tomorrow“, he said. „Maybe“.

Price:

It wasn’t your fault Price left his shirt in the locker room. He should care more about his stuff.

You walked in the common room, Price sitting on a bar stool in the kitchen. He looked at you slightly confused. "Is that my shirt you're wearing?" „Yup. You left it in the locker room“. You looked down at the shirt. „Comfy. Mine now“, you stated. He chuckled. „I don’t think so, soldier. I need that back“. You gave him puppy eye „But it’s comfy“. He rolled his eyes. „I‘m not gonna get that shirt back, am I?“. You giggled. „One day“. He shook his head. „One day I won’t have anything to wear“. You smirked. „I won’t complain“

Hello my worms, I just wanted to tell ya'll that I'm not forgetting about your ideas and requests, I just have exam time right now, so I don't have the time and brain energy to write more complex stories. But you can expect me to be back completely on Friday :) Take care and drink your water

This is soooo good! I think Ghost also has a fear of thight spaces, or at least spaces he can't escape from, since it reminds him of the coffin in Mexico.

TaskForce 141! and what they’re scared of!

———————————————————————

Content warning: Mentions of death, needles, heights, dying alone, fear of losing others, and some of Ghost's trauma. (Let me know if I missed anything)

Word count: 600+

A/N: If you dislike my content, you can keep scrolling, DNI, and/or block. If you like my content, feel free to follow so you don't miss out on any up-coming works

Writing under the cut.

———————————————————————

John Price

This man is scared to make the call to families that they never want to hear.

He had to do it once when a private died under his command in his early years in the military. As punishment, the higher-ups made him call the family and hand deliver the private belongings.

He vividly remembers the mother of the private clinging to his shirt as incoherent words fell from the grieving mother's mouth.

He could only make out two sentences as she sobbed uncontrollably into his shoulder.

"Please tell me this is all a sick lie."

"Was he in any pain?"

Those two sentences would haunt him.

John could only stand there with the private's mother sobbing into his shoulder and stare into the eyes of the private's father, who looked disheveled and lost now that his only child was gone.

He had to watch as the private's father took his wife into his side with one arm and grabbed the dog tags and flag from Price's hands before giving him a slight nod and closing the door.

The grieving sobs of the family on the other side of the phone and in person keep him up at night.

Johnny 'Soap' MacTavish

He's scared of needles.

You can not convince me otherwise.

Sure, he's a Demilson expert, but when it comes to needles, he needs the nurse to 'count' so he knows when it's coming.

The nurse would definitely give him the shot when he's not expecting it.

"5... 4... 3..." and boom, the nurse would stick the needle in and not blink an eye when the Scottsman yelps and flails his feet around like a madman.

Would cuss after the shot. Not directly at the nurse but to Price and Ghost, who held him down and drugged him to the med bay for his shot.

Would nurse the shit out of where he got the shot.

Price needs him to lift something? He can't. He just got a flu shot and claims his arm hurts like a pain in the ass.

Needs to run laps for training? He can't because it would hurt his arm when he runs.

Kyle 'Gaz' Garrick

Heights.

That's it.

Do I need to explain?

He fell out of a helo and dangled there like a mistletoe that got left hung up in the same doorway for several months after Christmas.

But in all seriousness, he's scared of dying in battle while serving his country and never getting to say goodbye to his family.

He always calls his mom and dad before he has a big mission to let them know he won't be able to talk to them for a while.

"Kyle, honey, we love you very much. We're proud of who you've become as a man, and we know you'll make it back in one piece."

Safe to say he tears up some when he hears his mom say that to him.

Simon 'Ghost' Riley

He's scared he'll die alone and lose someone close to him.

Sure, he's closed off and gives off the 'I could give less than two shits on what happens to you.' vibe, but he's genuinely terrified he'll end up losing someone close to him again.

The last time he was close to someone, it ended up with them being murdered and him getting blamed for it.

In his mind, he thinks that he can't get hurt if he doesn't show how he actually feels towards people.

But he also hates how he's closed himself off to the world because being distant to protect people he cares about only brings up the fear of dying alone with no one around him.

"You alright, Simon?"

"Yeah, just thinking."

But in reality, he's not.

He went to therapy to talk to someone about it, only for his therapist to tell him to open up to people.

"You need to open up to people and be willing to get hurt in life, Simon. You can't get rid of the fear of dying alone until you let others around you get closer mentally and emotionally first."

Apr 2023

Military man yaoy

Heyy, here’s my first sketch I’m posting. It’s Mono from little nightmares II. I hope you guys like it ^^

Why. Why must you do this to me?

no but I've been thinking about Soap with temporary Prosopagnosia (face blindness) after his injury

---

Price had put Soap on medical leave after he got out of the hospital, his only responsibility being rest and recovery. Of course Ghost took time off to be with him as well. He didn't even need to ask either, Price just did the paperwork for the both of them at the same time.

Some days were better than others. Sometimes Soap had trouble remembering words or doing delicate tasks with his fingers. Ghost always waited patiently for him to work it out, only helping when Soap asked him too.

For the past hour, Soap had been lying in their bed, his lighthearted laughs filing their flat as he watched something on his phone. Ghost was sitting in the other room and reading a file Price had sent over, informing him on their continued investigation to find Makarov.

Ghost heard a particularly loud laugh before the box spring squeaked lightly, the sounds of Soap shuffling off the bed following soon after. He heard footsteps begin to approach him and he glanced over.

"Ghost!" Soap said cheerfully as he looked down at his phone. "You have to see this funny cat vid-"

Soap abruptly stopped speaking as he looked up, the words getting caught in his throat. The wide smile that always spread across his face with enough brightness to light up Ghost's entire world suddenly fell, swiping down in one smooth motion. His eyes widened slightly, almost as if in shock, and his mouth dropped open a sliver. His eyes locked onto Ghost's face, but there was no warmth to be found.

It was fear.

"Who are you?" Soap choked out, taking an apprehensive step backwards.

Ghost was immediately on his feet, the look on Soap's face shattering his heart. He raised his hands out in front of himself and curled his shoulders in, trying to make himself look less intimating.

"Johnny... it's me..." Ghost said slowly, the words coming out calmly despite the rising worry in his chest. "It's Simon."

Soap tilted his head as a deep furrow scrunched up his brow. His eyes jumped back and forth across Ghost's face, refusing to focus on one thing.

"What..." he let slip from his lips, breathless and confused. "I... I don't..." He squinted slightly. "...Simon?"

"Yeah, it's me," he said quietly, taking a careful step forward. Thankfully, Soap stayed where he was and he let Ghost approach him, although he still looked unsure, small.

Ghost gently took Soap's hand and placed it up against his face. At the same time, he wrapped his arm around Soap's waist and pulled them closer together. Once their bodies were pressed up against one another, Soap let out a shuddering sigh and he dug his face into Ghost's neck.

"I..." Soap started hesitantly, holding Ghost back tightly. "I don't recognize you..."

His usual confidence was gone, the words coming out weakly, almost broken in shame.

"But you recognize my voice?" he asked.

Soap nodded in silence.

"Okay..." Ghost said quietly, letting his fingers trace up and down Soap's spine. "Just close your eyes then. Listen to me speak."

Soap closed his eyes.

"I got you," Ghost murmured soothingly. He wanted nothing more than for his imperfect words to reach Soap and rid him of his fears. He wanted Soap to feel safe. "It's me. Just listen to my voice, love. Everything's going to be okay. I won't let go. I love you, Johnny."

Feb 2024

A phantom memory huh

Jan 2024

Barberry

Jan 2024

Drain version idk

This is amazing. Amazing is an understatement, it's glorious and beautiful and really good soup.

(I adore fics where Johnny’s family loves Ghost from day one, but, you know…angst)

Soap and Ghost had been together for almost two years. They never name the relationship, really, but it's serious and they both know it.

Thing is, Johnny's seen Ghost's face a total of four times, counting Las Almas.

Well, he sees parts of it regularly, more than others. Ghost will either roll the balaclava up when they're reading together in bed or when they're eating. Sometimes, when Soap wants to go out and Ghost indulges him, he goes in public in just either a face mask or a gaiter and Soap can see his short wavy blonde hair sticking all over the place and 

The four times he had seen Simon’s face in it’s whole — obviously, Las Almas; one time when he was unconscious and bleeding from a head wound and Johnny had to check; one time when they took a shower together, Simon stayed with his back toward him through most of it, but when they finished, he let Johnny dry off his hair; one time, when Johnny asked him to see him for his birthday presents, a few minutes after midnight.

Johnny wasn’t sure why exactly Simon didn’t want to show him his face. It wasn’t a trust thing — he trusted Johnny with more than his own life — and it wasn’t like he was ugly — he was downright sinful. He never drilled the topic because he didn’t care, if SImon wasn’t ready, then he wasn’t ready, but if he had to guess, it was all to do with identity and being seen. No one knew his face — people could know his name, Simon “Ghost” Riley, but they wouldn’t know the man behind the mask. Wouldn’t know the people behind Simon “Ghost” Riley.

(Johnny wasn’t completely off on the assumption — Simon didn’t want anyone to know his face because faceless people weren’t missed. Faceless graves — like his own — didn’t have people to leave behind, and faceless soldiers didn’t have loved ones to find and he was both. No one could get hurt if he remained faceless. Or at least that’s what he’d been telling himself.)

And Johnny is okay with that — if Simon never showe him his face again, he’d still love him all the same. Johnny’s family? Not so much.

They’re supposed to be in Glasgow for five days total, leaving after Boxing Day. Johnny gives them all a warning, that Ghost is a bit shy and doesn’t like showing his face, he’ll most likely stay covered the whole time, he might be wearing a balaclava, or a mask, he probably won't eat at the table.

When they arrive at his parents house, it almost seems like everyone forgot. Like everyone thought it'd be more mild or that Johnny was exaggerating.

There are looks. There is silence. People can't stop staring.

His mam takes one look at Simon’s balaclava once they enter the living room and looks funny at them. “Ah thooght Ah tauld ye boays tae strip doon.”

“Mam, lea him alane,” he tries but he can tell that Simon is getting tense and his mam is getting tense.

His mam, who is usually the sweetest person ever, is uncharacteristically quiet and curt whenever Simon is around. Simon doesn't really know how to make it better — Johnny's never seen him so silent outside of stealth missions, he just stands there like a sore thumb, not making anything less awkward. He didn't expect him to — Simon's social skills are lacking and he loves him that way — but he expected his own family to not make such a big deal out of that mask.

His da is stern and silent, which is as disapproving as he gets. His sisters are a bit weirded out, but mostly focused on teasing Johnny, even making fun of the mask. With a stupid grin, his older sister asks, “Does he keep it oan in bed?”

Johnny doesn't say anything to that, even though his face feels red. His sisters stop laughing.

“He does?” When Johnny tries to step out of the room and avoid the conversation, his sister’s tone changes. “Hae ye e’en seen his face?”

“O’ coorse Ah hae,” he spits out. He doesn’t specify it was only four times — he doesn’t think it’d help. “And ‘s a bonnie ane, alricht.”

It doesn’t save the situation and his sisters are also weirded out and wary from then on.

 The kids do not care — they ask maybe two questions, tilts their head as Simon explains and that’s it — and Johnny breathes a little easier as soon as his nieces push Simon outside to help them build a snowman.

The judgment doesn’t stop. Johnny’s blood boils any time it shows and even though Simon says it’s all fine, he can’t stop feeling angry about this. They just can’t get past the mask.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are difficult to Simon and Johnny knows it. He’s given him the option to omit the family dinner on both those days if he’s not feeling alright enough to spend those days in crowdy house filled with a flock of loud and cheery people of all ages.

Simon knows this. He also knows that if he says he wants to stay at Johnny’s flat for the time being, Johnny is going to insist he doesn’t have to go either, that he’d prefer to stay in with him and not go for the Christmas dinner. Which he also knows is bullshit — Johnny loves Christmas, loves spenidng time with his family, that was basically why he kept on insisting Simon couldn’t stay alone at the base for Christmas another year in a row. It was the main reason why he agreed to go with Johnny in the first place, he was pretty sure if he didn’t go with him, Johnny would insist he stays, too. 

So Simon stays in for Christmas Eve — or rather goes to a pub while Soap spends the day with his parents — but insists they go to Christmas dinner. 

His family is disappointed to see him there, to the point the usual manuevering around politeness and disapproving go onto a backburner.

“John said yer nae a fan o’ Christmas,” Johnny’s mum says to him pointedly.

“That’s right.”

“And yet ye’r ’ere,” she notes.

Johnny is far away from the earshot and he doesn’t want to lie to her so he admits, “If I didn’t come, Johnny would insist on keepin’ me company.”

“How come ye dinnae try to hae a bit mair cheer fur th' holidays then? Put a bit mair effort in for ma baby.” 

Johnny notices and soon enough, he’s next to him, their arms brushing, Johnny’s hand on the small of his back. “Lea him alane, mam.”

“It’s fine,” he says even though it’s not fine. They deserve an explanation, even just to know what they son is getting himself into. “My family was murdered on Christmas Eve. I’m—I’m trying.”

The silence falls over the room — Johnny’s mum, dad, his sister, all present, not looking at them. Simon closes his eyes, tries to breathe.

Johnny rubs his back. “Let’s gae home.”

“I’m not ruining Christmas for you, Johnny,” he says. Before Johnny can deny it — and he knows he’d try — he tries to placate, “Let’s just have ourselves a minute to calm down.”

Maybe it’s the way his voice is perfectly levelled or the way his hand trembles as he squeezes Johnny’s, but he lets him leave the room.

He steps outside — to the backyard. Sits down on the step to the garden and lets the snow soak through his jeans and the top o his balaclava.

The kids come outside, tripping over Simon’s legs. They were all oblivious to the trails and errors of Simon’s integration into the family, so they approach him as always

“Whit's wrang?”

There’s just something so innocent in having a six-year-old girl covered from head to toe in pink and glitter worry about you. Simon would never admit it in front of Johnny, but he finds the accent cute.

Simon takes off the mask.

The kids all look at him and look at him, a bit unsure maybe a bit fearful — it can be a scary sight, he admits, the elongated, jagged smile that sticks to him no matter the mood, makes him more crazy than he already is — but only one of Johnny’s niece keeps her eyes on Simon’s face. 

Shily, she asks, “Does it hurt?”

“No,” he replies. When she smiles, he smiles back.

Not anymore.

This is Johnny’s family. Simon can deny it all he wants, but Johnny’s seen him as family, as someone he’d leave behind, and it hadn’t been unrequited. He can’t hide behind a mask forever and maybe this was the kick he needed.

He steps back inside when his hands turn numb. He doesn’t put the mask back on.

Johnny’s eyes widen. “Simon?”

Simon just—smiles. He can feel the scars pulling on the corners of his mouth, the stiffer skin, but he’s not faceless. He’s not been faceless for a while.