Can- Can You Draw Ghost Big Cheesin’ Too? 🥺

Stitches (Part One)

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

Part Three of Snowblind

Rating: Mature Wordcount: 6.1k Tags: Slow Burn, Heavy Angst, Trauma, Found Family, Taskforce 141, Team Dynamics, Major Character Injury, Whump, Hurt/Comfort, Unreliable Narrator, Self Esteem Issues, Referenced Familial abuse, Hospitalization, Self Sabotage Warnings: Explicit Injury mention, Forced sedation A/N: The needed, heavy, heavy chapter for Fix. Please head the warnings and read carefully, and practice self care if you need to

The first time you need heli-evac, it's in Venezuela.

Tracking down a cartel supplier to AQ forces, Laswell tells you. International arms dealers. The mission is off the books, quiet. Clean house, harvest intel. Price and Gaz could have cleared it easily, but for some reason Laswell mandated the full task force. Something about the intel not adding up, too many loose ends. You know better than to question her, all of you do.

Unfortunately for you, Laswell's prophecy comes true.

You see the rug on the floor shift a moment too late. The trapdoor flies open out of the corner of your eyes as you spin, and there's yelling in Spanish just a split second before the bullet rips through your side. You fall backwards just in time to avoid the next hail of fire, and the motion throws off the aim of the attack long enough for you to squeeze off a round, the cartel member's figure jerking grotesquely as your aim rings true.

There's voices then, as your head falls back against the floor, cursing blindly at the pain. You'd been shot before, but this, the bullet inside you feeling for all the world like it was trying to twist inside you further, deeper, makes your voice crack hard and dry in your throat. There's iron in your lungs, breathed in with every staggered inhale, lancets of agony etched across your torso and spine. Something inside you feels wet and warm and abstractly wrong.

You press a hand to the center of the pain, and when it comes away red there's a cognizant dissonance to it, a small 'oh' that manages to filter through your thoughts as the stain blossoms scarlet against your side. It's the sight that manages to make the world begin to spin, hazy and unfocused even as there's shouts and it's Gaz's face that flickers into view, trembling like the hazy after effect of a poorly animated CGI movie.

He's talking, but with the blood rushing in your ears you barely hear him, blinking and trying to clear the strange filter that obscures the pure look of fear in his eyes.

"Stay with me, Fix. Gonna get you out of here."

You nod, and it's all you can really manage, heart pounding relentlessly, pain bubbling up your throat in a choked, pleading cry that has Gaz's face grow ashen with concern.

It's Price, then, who shoves the sergeant aside, and even in your dissociative, blank-minded state you see the tremble of his hands as he fumbles for the med pack strapped to your kit.

Oh. You think a bit groggily, blinking as you remember. I'm the medic.

That's probably bad.

There's no time to process it further, because suddenly Price is pressing down on your side and you yell, try and flail away from the pain. Gaz has to hold you down, face pinching with something that tears further at you, an emotion that feels far too concerned for what you're feeling. There's a distant part of your mind that runs through the possibilities, of the bullet lodged up against your diaphragm, through your spleen, or possibly even your lungs. You can breathe, you can kick your legs, but the dizzying rate of the spinning world around you does not bode well for your near and distant future.

"...x...h-ey...Fix! Keep your eyes on me, mate."

You try to, from behind the veil of tears that clouds your vision as the hurt coats the underside of your tongue in an open, confused whimper. Price is yelling something you can't quite make out, and there's a tone to his voice you've never heard before. It cracks and makes you blink, forces you to try and raise your head at him, only to have Kyle's gentle, gloved hand resting you back down against the floorboards.

When you try to breathe you choke, feeling your chest compress down painfully. The air in your lungs stales, and with a wheeze you grasp blindly at Kyle, feeling panic race potent and toxic through your veins. You catch his eyes then, and the worry there has now transformed into something all consuming. Terror.

He snaps at Price, and though you can't hear the words you hear the tremble in his voice, and you realize at that moment just how terrible things must be, because suddenly Price is cutting the straps of your tac vest and shoving it rudely aside, ripping your jacket and shirt and placing an ear to your chest.

He pales.

It's that bad. Something in your thoughts whispers, and then, in a sudden, macabre burst of clarity. Try to say goodbye.

When you fumble for Price, however, he only snaps at you, tells you to stay still and stay awake. You try, you do, but the world is too bright, oversaturated, spinning like the lights of the county fair rides you saw once as a child from the window of a car. Fluorescent, vibrant, dizzying and enchanting. Glittering in the distance from beneath the grey haze of incoming mid-season thunderstorms. Now it's tinted with a putrid, vile taste of metal and bile and a sudden wave of nausea washes over you, as the skies grow green in your memory. You close your eyes against it, trying to find ground on which to retreat where there is none. Price says something about a helicopter, and whether it's moments or minutes later you feel the dull whump whump whump in the distance, beating the air around you slower than your stuttering heart rate.

Who's arms hoist you up, you aren't sure, but you can smell the scent of them. Charcoal. Gun oil. Sweat. Musk. It's familiar somehow, but it isn't until you see your blood seeping red over white skeletal gloves that you understand.

It's the last thing you see before the world goes dark.

---

You wake about eighteen hours later, and the first word out of your mouth startles Soap so much beside you he barks a laugh.

"Your mother teach you to curse like that?" He asks, but mercifully dims the overhead light when you whine at him. You ignore the fact that your mother would turn you over to your father if you ever spoke like that, deciding that such a tiny detail isn't really worth the time it would take to convey it to the Scot.

When you turn to him, Soap's brow is furrowed in a way you don't recognize. He sits in a chair at your bedside, hands clasped, shoulders hunched forwards, leg bouncing and fidgety. Wound too tight. Anxious. His blue grey eyes are drawn with concern, brow furrowed. He doesn't look at you.

"Scared us stiff, hen." He murmurs low, enough that you have to strain to hear it. "Nearly kicked the bucket- Christ on a cross, Fix. There was so much blood."

You don't reply. There's not much to say, really. You messed up, forgot to check a corner like a goddamn rookie, nearly bled out a result but you're here. Alive, mostly whole...minus the hole.

You tell him as much, but when Soap laughs it's a little mirthless, his head shaking as if he's deciding between disbelief or a reprimand.

It isn't long before Price appears, leaning on the door with a weary smile that betrays his concern. You wonder if he's slept recently, or if he's subsisting only on cigars and a gluttonous dose of black coffee. Cognac, if he found it.

The captain gives you the rundown of your injury. Gunshot to the left side of your ribs, nothing short of a bloody miracle it missed your major arteries. However, it managed to puncture your lung, collapsing it and forcing you to briefly asphyxiate on the helicopter. You were unconscious by the time you were handed off to the med-evac crew, flagging by the time you got to the hospital. Had there been a chopper unavailable, and had it not been for Gaz's quick attention to your labored breathing, it very well could have been your death would have been in a sticky, spider infested cartel hideout, far, far away from home.

That fact makes you feel your heart drop down to your stomach, and Soap sends the captain a look. Yet Price's eyes remain locked on you, arms crossed, head slightly bowed, gauging your reaction. He's waiting for you to say you want out, for you to quit, to go home.

Home, wherever that may be, to the waspish gaze of your father and the sad, docile eyes of your mother. To linen sheets and pristine, white French doors, a garden where you aren't allowed to dig your hands into the soil.

You refuse. You don't speak to Price, returning his gaze with your own. Silent, unwavering, a bough not bending to the howling gale of your thoughts.

He nods to himself, then nods to the nurse hovering by the door, and promptly vanishes.

Gaz comes to visit you, and in the days that pass between him and Soap you are hardly ever lonely. They brings cards, games, sneak you snacks past the nurses. Slowly, their laughter and banter eases the unspokenness between you, the 'What if?' that hangs as a constant reminder in the shape of your bandages. Yet you see it in their eyes, the way they glance at you when wince after laughing too hard, when your eyes grow distant in the silence.

Price floats by, brings with him a thermos of hot tea. It's unlike him, and when you question him on it he merely shrugs, tells you to drink up. Yorkshire gold, you recognize. The same kind you mother liked, with her British sensibilities.

You try to ignore the bitter ache of disappointment that settles inside you when Ghost doesn't visit, acrid like over-steeped tea.

It's on Price's third visit that he tells you you're cleared to head back to base with them. After that, however, you have a mandatory six week leave to fully recover.

It sinks your stomach.

Six weeks. Six weeks they'll be deployed without you, six weeks you'll be trapped at base, not knowing the details of their missions, not knowing if it's at that very moment that they need you. All because you got caught off-guard, because you didn't check your corners and nearly bled out in from of your team.

You swallow hard at the news, but know any protest on your part is futile. Price's orders, as per the doctor's, are absolute.

The next day, you find yourself being assisted down to the tarmac, Soap present at your side and offering little jabs that mask his worry. Price deposits your pack beside his, between the three others. You blink then, see in one of them the thermos he brought you, and wonder why it isn't stored with his own things.

Ghost watches you from where he sits, locks eyes with you when you glance from the thermos to his silent, piercing stare.

Ah.

Yorkshire Gold.

You settle in one of the seats, wave off Gaz's fussing as he checks with your pain. You'd been dosed shortly before the flight, and by the time the plane is in the air you find yourself drifting off to sleep, slouching uncomfortably as drowsiness takes you.

Strangely, when you wake shortly before your landing about eight hours later, it's not your seat you find yourself in. Instead, you lay on the floor of the cargo hold, head braced by a folded jacket. You can smell the scent on it. Charcoal. Musk. Gun oil. You have just enough time to turn and bury your face into it before Soap is shaking you awake and helping you back to your seat.

No sooner have you landed are you rushed off to medical once more, checking your stitches, rebandaging the gash in your side. The doctor frowns when he examines you, pushing his glasses up his nose and commenting within ear range of your captain to not undertake any strenuous activity, that you may require eight weeks instead of the six you've been issued with.

Eight weeks. Fifty six days. Two months without your team.

Stuck alone on base, in the dim light of your room, praying that somehow they return whole, unharmed.

Price must sense your thoughts, for he lays a heavy hand on your shoulder, offers you a conciliatory smile that you feel only deepen the wound in your chest.

"It seems like a long time." He tells you genuinely, voice dipping low, rusty with cigar smoke. "It'll be over before you know it."

You don't have time to reply, because to your horror there's another soldier at the door, saluting before conveying that the captain is needed in the briefing office. When you trail behind Price, he only turns, settles both his hands on your shoulders and gruffly tells you to rest.

When you watch his back vanish down the corridor, you try not to hear the sound of creaking bones and rifle bullets, of cataclysmic destruction that leaves behind only the aching void of loneliness in its wake.

You don't even have time to say goodbye.

You watch from the windows of the barracks as the plane lifts off to an unknown destination, vanishes behind the veil of clouds, and then there's just you.

Alone. Again.

Alone with your thoughts, with the embrace of rumination that feels like the whisper of the witching hours, desolate, dark, restless. You feel it wrap around you even in sunlight, and the ghost of solicitude loops her lithe arms around your neck like a lost lover, kisses the inside of your thoughts with the taste of temptation.

They aren't coming back. They don't need you. They've seen how weak you are now, they'll never return.

"They'll be back." You whisper aloud to yourself in response, placing a trembling hand against the glass pane. "They haven't given up on me yet."

---

You wander the base aimlessly for the next few days, haunting the mess hall and rec room, trying to find yourself in the silhouettes of others. Your small collection of paperback novels is polished off quickly, tiny notes scribbled  in the margins of 'Dante's Inferno' and 'Wuthering Heights'. Eventually they stack in a tiny tower at your bedside, spines creased gently and pages dog-eared.

You heal slowly. Far too slowly. The pain has become mostly manageable, but there are nights when you rise in your sleep with a wheeze, pace the dark confines of your room trying to escape the shadows there. It doesn't help that your dreams are plagued by them, your comrades, bloodied and broken, reaching out for hands that aren't there. Hands you cannot reach.

One night you wake in a cold sweat, gasping for air, the visage of a cracked, bone white skull mask haunting your innermost thoughts. The eyes blank, cold. Dead.

Laswell tells you little about the mission. You get bits and pieces, but every time you push all you receive on the other line is a disparaging sigh and "Fix, you need to rest. I'll keep you updated if anything goes wrong."

You hate it. You don't want to know when things go wrong. You want to be there when they do, to prove yourself to them, in hopes that maybe they'll keep you just a little longer.

Soon. You remind yourself by day five of the team's absence, constantly pacing the corridors, trying to find instances of them in your loneliness. Soon they'll be back. Soon they'll need me again. Soon, I'll know I can stay.

You wake on day six before dawn, gasping awake as you fall in your dream, endlessly into the chasm of failure, where the crippled bodies of your teammates reach out for you with emaciated, broken limbs.

The training grounds are still dark by the time you get to them. You run them, blasting music, circling the perimeter over and over again like you're trying to stay to the edge of a dark, endless whirlpool. Running so as to avoid the chasing, predatory self-doubt that nips at your heels with feral eyes and jagged teeth.

The sun rises, and soon it begins to bake the back of your neck, your shoulders. Eventually you stop, and the inertia of your motion threatens to drag you off your feet. Your chest aches, but you welcome the pain. It's a distraction, a reminder. An anchor against the fraught silence that plagues you more than any wound.

By the time dinner rolls around you're back again, circling the drain until well past sunset, after your playlist has looped for the third time that day. By the end of it you're bent over, breathless, shaking, and yet somehow there's triumph. Yet it tastes hollow, bitter like over-steeped tea, and you push down the part of you that offers a gentle respite, a reminder of self-preservation.

If you run, you can flee, can hide from the perilous self-doubt that threatens to haunt the shadows of your thoughts, spinning cobwebs of dismay that overtake the empty caverns you've long since carved out. Fight or flight fuels every waking moment, a spiral you mimic with your steps across the training field, running a rut in the grass so deep it resembles the abyss that haunts your dreams. Perilous failure, a chasm where the wind howls in your ears and bites across your skin. You feel like a doe in the twilight glade, heaving heavy breaths as the wolves of your ruminations bark and howl, nip at the hocks of your legs.

The entire time your mind flashes with visions of them. Of Gaz's grin, eyes hidden by his sunglasses that reflect the sibylline brightness of daytime. Of Soap's jovial laughter, the corners of his eyes scrunching and broad chest rising, a sound that feels like trumpets announcing victory. Of Price and the sulfurous mist exhaled like dragon's breath, floating up into the same sky where you silently offer wishes for his approval.

Of Ghost, of the stygian, merciless presence of him that feels less like the visitation of a reaper and more of shadows in which to shelter yourself from the dazzling brightness of all things blinding. You lean into him and wordlessly, he has you, watches you from afar and traces your steps that mimic the history of his, observes you ascend the precarious tower of expectations you've yet to dismantle inside your soul. He extends his arms, prepares to catch you if you fall.

You need them. More than they need you, and it's the realization of that which has you clawing your sheets in your dreams. You need them to keep you, here in the place where you've found a home, dangerous and fraught that it may be. There's nowhere else for you. Not with your parents, not with your former company. You need to not be alone. You need to prove to them you can stay. Even if you can just fool them, be selfish enough to trick them into keeping you, you need them to smile at you long enough for the smoke to clear in your hideous self-deprecation, to drink in the oxygen of them like it's your last breath.

If you can heal faster, can show them how resilient you are, then everything will be fine, everything will be-

Red. On your fingers.

Wet, warm, crimson as you delicately prop under your shirt, hissing at the feeling of something torn and damp against your skin. It shines rusty under the scant light of the dark training grounds, coats the pads of your fingers like scarlet ink with which to smear a forbidden oath.

You stare down at it mutely, realizing with a strange sort of distance that it's yours. Gingerly, your hand snakes under your shirt, reveals a torn gash in your side. When you press down your knees nearly buckle at the sudden wash of pain, dark and viscous and choking you. Your voice chokes in your throat and you hate the sound of it, hearing the useless whimper of agony that chases up your windpipe. How you didn't notice the tear before is beyond you, something about imbibing in the hurt, letting the ache fill the crevasses of your heart like liquid metal seeping into a fissure.

Your hand clings to the fence beside you, fingers tangling with the chain link as the distress of your injury washed over you all at once.

Fuck, it hurts.

You've done something, whatever that may be, and now your mistakes seeps over your fingers.

This is bad.

Bad not just for you, but for your recovery. Shit, the looming eight weeks ahead of you seems to stretch into infinity, into an inexhaustible leave where they leave you behind, dismiss you and curse you to roam the earth endlessly, looking for a place in which to rest.

The infirmary.

You have a key, of course, being one of the medics. It's probably empty at this hour save for the sergeant on attendance. You can probably sneak past them, grab enough supplies to see to this yourself without one of the nurses telling on you to Price or Laswell.

You stumble in the direction of the barracks to retrieve your key, shrugging on your jacket to hide the blossoming stain across your side.

You don't hear the plane land.

The barracks are quiet by the time you reach them, most of the officers and squaddies already tucked into their quarters, the commanding officers lounging in the rec room or officer's lounge. It makes your journey easier as you traverse the corridors, trying to avoid any questions lest someone see you even now, realize what a complete and utter wreck you are, dipping falsehoods onto your fingers. Your feet nearly trip over the stairs, hand clutching at the rail ad dragging yourself upwards despite the effort it takes to not think about your leaking wound.

Carnations, scarlet and blotted with vibrance, blossom where stitches meet skin, a grotesque bouquet of regrets with the scent only of iron to color your senses.

When you reach the third floor, and turn the corner, you feel a wave of nausea suddenly wash over you, green and viscous and sour. You have to brace on the wall for a moment, waiting for your stomach to settle before making your way down the hall.

Then you see him.

Tall, imposing, clad in black. He soaks up what little light there is in the dim hallway. The unshed tactical gear makes him look bigger than he is, looming like a phantom outside your door. His scarf trails behind his back, and for a moment it feels almost like the cowl of a specter, his bone white mask a flash of white before it all ends and you're sucked down into an obsidian infinitum.

His hand is raised to knock, hovering over the metal surface. You can smell the grenade smoke wafting off of him from where you stand, acrid, burnt, molten metal like the glint of his stare. You blink as you realize he must have come straight from the plane, not bothering to untack or store his gear before coming to see you.

You startle at the sight of him, and it's in the corner of his stained vision that somehow he sees you, turns with an alert gaze that's soon masked by an expression of disinterest.

"Ghost." You hoarse, and his eyes narrow at your tone, closing the last few steps between you, stopping just short of you. Not touching, not moving, not reaching for you. Contained in his own orbit that you're drawn to anyways, looking up into his eyes, where the ink of his paint has faded from his blonde lashes.

"Fix." He greets, hands loose at his sides, chin tucked to fully regard you. The strap of his helmet creaks as he does, and briefly your eyes dart up to the night-vision goggles still strapped to his head.

"Price sent me to check on you." He offers in the silence that follows, and there's enough clarity within you to note that it somehow feels rehearsed, too practiced.

"Well-" You huff an anxious laugh, try to not let your eyes dart to your door handle, mind running to your desk drawer, where you keep your clinic key stashed. "Consider me checked on."

There's a pause between you, and within it lies the heaviness of the unspoken, the unsaid. All the confessions inside of you threaten to bubble up like the last gap of air before drowning in the deep, dark ocean.

I'm glad you're safe. Where are the others? Are they hurt? Did you need me? Will you forgive me when I wasn't there?

"How's your injury?" He asks suddenly, voice flat, but beneath the feigned disinterest you see his eyes, framed by blonde lashes, dip to your side. Your heartbeat flutters -too loud- as you pray the blood has yet to seep through the fabric of your jacket.

"Fine." You answer, a little too quickly, and that dark gaze sweeps up to your face, pins you to the spot without a single touch. You feel your chest tighten now not with the constricting compression of pain, but with something more phantasmic, a byproduct of his very presence. A prickle of awareness that breathes across your neck every time he ventures close, a reminder of him where he smears his ink stained fingers on the inside of your skull.

Door. Desk. Drawer. Stairs. Five minute walk. Clinic. Back room. Supply closet. Third shelf.

Your mind runs the steps ahead of you, but you can't sidle past, not with Ghost's immense, towering form blocking the width of the hallway. His dark gaze stares down at you, scrutinizing you, and it feels somehow like you're being flayed open by his knife, skin parting from bone as he dares a glance at the hidden, duplicitous interior of you. You try to not meet his eyes, knowing that if you do he'll see it, he'll see all of you, with his gaze that feels like black holes, threatens to tear you asunder with the gravity inside them.

He says something else when your eyes again dart to your door. When you don't immediately, he tilts his head at you, eyes narrowing.

"Fix?"

"Sorry-" You supply immediately, eyes darting back to Ghost. Yet the world around you wavers then, and you frown, blink, trying once more to tether yourself firmly to gravity. Even as you focus, however, the room seems to tilt and sway under you, and you can't help but rock on your feet a little in a subtle but desperate bid to find balance. "W-what did you just say?"

Ghost stills suddenly, and his eyes narrow from behind his mask, form going rigid as he appraises you.

Don't. You think desperately, both to yourself and to him. Don't look.

The wound must be worse than you thought, because the sudden wash of dizziness makes you threaten to sway on your feet, lost in inertia. You can feel the tug of it, your feet carrying you in endless circles as you spiral down a familiar whirlpool, lost in despair.

"...You alright?" Ghost asks tentatively, as if not expecting you to give him a straight answer.

"Solid." You reply almost instantly, and even as you tilt your head up to regard his massive form the shape of him seems to shift before your eyes. Despite being pinned under his stare you try not to sway, not to buckle.

Just breathe. You remind yourself, forcing manual inhales and exhales in an attempt to remain composed. The warm wetness of your wound is already bleeding through your bandages, soaking the gauze packed against your side and dyeing it a rancid scarlet that reeks of failure. You know the longer you stay here, the longer he questions you that you run the risk of being discovered, of your ruse being revealed in horrific, dazzling color.

God, you wonder if he can smell it on you- the bitter, iron taste of blood.

"Don't lie." He states, stepping closer, and when you instinctively take a step back you nearly stumble, one arm dropping to your side in an attempt to find something to balance with. "You don't look fine."

"W-what do you mean?" You try, but your voice wavers when you speak- as unsteady as your form. A sapling in a thunderstorm. Lighting bursts across the darkened skies of your anxiety.

"Fix." Ghost states, and that sends a flash of panic through you, the way his voice evens with seriousness, eyes suddenly steely and trained completely on you. A hunter's scope, and you're caught in the snare.

"Don't." You manage, and take another step back, retreating-

The world shifts under you.

You have just enough time to blink, for your lips to part in an 'oh' of realization before the weakness in your legs finally gives. As they buckle your eyes dart to Ghost's, and you catch a single glimpse of shock that flashes plainly across his gaze before he's moving, reaching for you-

When the world stills again it's to the sensation of an arm under your back, the hand snaking around your side and pressing close to your raw, seeping wound hidden under your gear.

You choke on the pain, the sound a strangled gasp that bubbles up your throat and forces the air from your lungs.

When Ghost moves his hand you feel it, feel the crimson ooze soaking through your shirt and jacket against your side, and painting his glove in dark, glistening wetness.

"FUCKING hell." Ghost snarls when he realizes what it is, his eyes darting down to your side where red colors across the fabric of your white tee.

"G-Ghost-" You manage, even as the world spins around you, an abrupt kaleidoscope of shape and color. It's the white of his mask that grounds you, mirroring his wide, surprised gaze as it turns from his glove to your ashen, stricken expression. "LT, wait-"

"You stupid girl." Ghost snarls, and you flinch.

Before you can stop him, Ghost reaches for his radio, and when he presses down it leaves a bloody stain on the casing.

"Price." He barks, voice grating deep in his chest- the one he uses to issue orders, bring men back into line. "Fix is injured. Tore her stitches."

In a desperate bid you try to reach for him, face alight with pain and shock as you try to stop him, try to grapple the radio away. Yet Ghost merely knocks your hand aside and fixes you with a stare so harsh and cold it freezes you in place.

"How bad?" Price's voice crackles from the other end of the comm, and you swallow, try to answer.

"I-I'm okay." You supply, but Ghost snarls at you.

"She's not okay." He echoes over you. "She's fucking bleeding out."

"I'm...not-"

"Shut up." Ghost bites at you, but there's a waver in his voice you don't recognize as it harshes inside his chest, grinding and impatient and...somehow scared.

You hear Price curse on the other end of the radio.

"Where are you? I'm on my way and sending Gaz to find a medic."

"Southeast hallway. Third floor. Outside her bunk." Ghost replies sharply, and at once he's readjusting you, laying you down on your uninjured side. You curl into yourself, feeling tears threaten as he does so.

It hurts.

The pain itself, but the knowledge that with every stained drop you're exposing yourself, letting him know you failed, that you aren't fit to stand by him, that your injury is-

When Ghost's hand presses down against your wound you yell, the agony of his touch unexpected and horrific as he tries to stem the gush from your side. It blinds you, sends white shooting across your vision in brilliant white specks, blotting out the brightness of the humming fluorescent lights above you both. The aftertaste of it lingers in your mouth, like burnt pennies, thick and vile as it clogs your chest, grips your heart-

"Stay. Still." Ghost tells you on no uncertain terms even as you writhe, tears now spilling from your eyes and tracing down your cheeks in hot, furious trails.

"I'm sorry-" You try, but your voice is cracked, caught in your throat as a sob. "Ghost, I'm sorry-"

"Why did you do this?!" He hisses, as he uses one hand to press against your shoulder and anchor you. "Why didn't you say anything?!"

You swallow, but it does nothing to stop the ache in your throat, the pain that laces up your side and cross your spine, your hips, your heart.

"I-I didn't-" You hiccup, and the world is in chaos now, with your cries and your secrets exposed, with his gaze raking over your trembling, injured form. "Didn't want you to see, Ghost. I'm sorry-"

He stills.

Then, Ghost's eyes take on a light you've never seen before. Frustration, anger, disappointment, these things you've been witness to in your lieutenant. However now the color of Ghost's eyes is dark not with these things, but with fury.

"Have you gone bloody mental?!" He bellows at you, and the world feels like it's trembling with the volume of his voice alone, shaking at the foundations of the earth itself. "Do you have any idea the danger you put yourself in?!"

There's a note of his words that ring true in you, that cleave apart the shell of doubt and allow radiance to seep through. You hide from it, curl further into yourself on the cold linoleum of the hallway, a sob cracking your throat as the weight of the world comes crashing down around you.

They're going to leave you for this. You're going to be alone again, all because your life seems to be a litany of failures, an impossible grave to claw out of as dirt pours in from the top.

You're heaving now, breaths too uneven, too ragged, and when it presses down on your lung the hurt is enough to make you cry out a strangled yell, kick out your feet in an automatic reflex.

Ghost's voice sounds distant now as blood rushes in your ears, your heartbeat wild and banging against the inside of your chest like a frantic, trapped bird. His hands are on you but you hardly feel them as panic engulfs you, and the whirlpool roars as it drags you down, down, down.

"Hey! Calm down, Fix! Fuck, just breathe!"

It hurts. Everything hurts. Your chest, your side, your lungs, the pain feels like it's seeping into your bloodstream, blocking your airways, poison running through your veins.

Another set of hands. Cigar smoke, ash.

"Soldier! Fix! Look at me!"

You can't. You refuse. If you see Price's gaze now in the moment of your ruin the stitches that bind you together will come loose at the seam and you'll unspill, empty cotton falling over their fingers. Fluff where there's supposed to be iron.

"Where the fuck is the medical team?!"

"They're on their way. Keep pressure on the wound."

Hands on your face. Gloves that smell like gun smoke.

"Fix, darling. You're having a panic attack. You need to breathe, you're going to hurt yourself if you don't."

You shake your head, dislodging the captain's touch.

No. You think with a ragged heave of air. Don't look. Don't look don't look please don't look.

The ground trembles as footsteps draw closer, and there's voice you don't recognize, hands pawing at you, light in your eyes-

You flail blindly, confused, scared, and when a heavy pair of hands lands on your shoulders to pin you it only makes your voice choke out with a frantic cry.

"We need to put her under."

No, no, please don't. Not sleep, not the nightmares-

"Do it."

Price. Captain. No, please-

"It's alright, darling. We've got you. You're okay."

Don't-

A jab, a little pinch on the inside of your arm. You try to make a noise, a whimpering sound of protest. There's a sudden flash of clarity before the darkness, and you open your eyes (When did you start crying?) to Price above you, his face pinched, distraught. Ghost is holding down your legs, and as your eyes drift to him he becomes nothing more than a shimmering phantom, blurred dark at the edges, a void in contrast to the too bright world around you.

"Please-" You whisper, the word heavy on your lips, eyes blinking-

Then there's nothing.

Tag List: (Reblog this post to be added to future fics from this series! If you'd like to be removed please DM me!)

@dankest-farrik @zwiiicnziiix @moondirti @sritashimada @ladiilokii @yeyinde @sandinthemachine @verdandis-blog @guyfieriiifierriii @fan-of-encouragement @starlitnotes

they will not leave me alone

more ancient gods

It's been two months since you appealed to the ancient gods in a last ditch attempt to save your village. Two months where soft rains fall every few days, healing the dried, cracked earth. Two months since most of those gone for battle return, scarred but no longer scared. Two months where game have slowly returned to the lands around the village, and barren plants have begun blooming again. Two months where the only death comes at the end of a long life.

You try to find a new rhythm to your days. Three months ago, you were another member of your people, albeit one with more knowledge of the old ways than was considered necessary. Now, though, the village elders have spoken in hushed terms of elevating you to the position of prophetess or seer, believing you have some direct connection to the four gods who saved them. You do not share their faith, but you still bear the initial marks of all four gods on your body.

You still do not know what it means.

In the meantime, the shrines you asked for have been completed, and you've become their de facto caretaker. You keep the altars clean and say prayers to each god in turn. After the way they've blessed the village, you think it might be good to consult the ancient tomes again; perhaps there are other gods whose aid the village could use If only there was a place to pray to them. If nothing else, you could learn how to better show devotion to the four gods who feel so real to you now, though you struggle to explain why.

A fortnight after the first rains fell, a young mother asked if she could make an offering to Gaz for the health of her new baby. Two days later an old man found you and, hesitantly, asked how he could ask the god of death to guide his wife in the afterlife. Two of the men you'd played with as a child bring seeds as an offering to Tav the night before they're set to till and sow the field. The former leader of your people's warriors brings his best weapon to lay on Jon's altar in thanks for bringing him safely home.

At night your dreams are more vivid. You find yourself in fighting leathers, sword in hand, as Jon teaches you swordplay. The god of death reminds you you gave your life to him, and he does not plan to cut you down so young, urging you to learn Jon's lessons. Tav joins you in Gaz's unwalled tent, dishes spread feet from the fertile fields where now both men use your body for their pleasure.

More than whispers of conversation carry from your dreams. Jon telling you the shrines and worship make their presence in your village, and in your life, stronger. Gaz hinting that dreams will no longer be the only place you see them. The god of death talking about the power of names before giving you the one your people had lost to time: Si. Tav commenting on how you'll glow when he can truly show you how powerful your fertility is.

Everything points to a reality you cannot comprehend. Until one day, half a year after that first night, your village is visited by four large men, strangers to all but you.

main masterlist

fun date idea: you come over and we watch a video essay about saltburn and i pause it every 5 seconds and explain in excruciating detail why i disagree with everything the video is saying 😄

peristalsis - viii - epilogue

selkie!soap x reader. strangers to "lovers." rebirth. mommy issues. semi-public sex. breeding season. smut. pregnancy reference. the end. . Running away from life to the Scottish Hebrides, you meet a man who won't leave you alone. . Masterlist. Ao3.

previous

Your pelt is not the same as Johnny’s.

Its greys are subtler than his paint-splash riot; nearly a solid dove, sparsely freckled with dots of charcoal. It’s lighter in your hands than you think a second skin should be—sometimes it feels so gauzy, so filmy, that you fear to tear it simply by wrapping it around your waist.

(Where it belongs.)

You can’t bear to part with it. You must be touching it at all times, fingers idly rolling a few soft strands of fur, palms smoothing out the wrinkles over your lap. Sometimes you find yourself staring at it, never knowing how long you have been until you come out of the trance with a jolt, neck aching and stomach growling.

You have no idea how Johnny went without his for even a day—the thought of ever putting yours down feels like abandoning a days-old infant.

Truly, though, the real infant is you.

The world touches your senses as if they are brand-new. Every sound is sharper. Every color is brighter. The world has come into focus in such a way that you are surprised you ever thought you could see it clearly before—nothing blurs in the periphery anymore.

It’s as if you have been completely reset. Every nerve ending tuned toward decadence. Everywhere you look, you find something that captivates you.

It makes you dizzy with rapture.

He is terribly amused by it, Johnny. He’s amused by all of it. As you settle into your new self, he watches you quiver and shake on new, coltish legs, and grins amiably at your frustration, quick to smooth over your frustration with his mouth on yours.

He’s been through it, after all. More than once, even—he has two resurrections, to your one.

And you’re quick to accept the appeasement he offers. Your appetites now yawn wide for anything you can fit inside of them, and you are voracious. You bite at him when he kisses you, which only makes him laugh more, and then he drags you down to the floor to rut like he knows you need to.

“I’m going to kill you someday,” you snarl at him, more than once, held against him back to front. “You did this to me, you fucking asshole.”

He grinds his cock deeper into you every time, touching some hidden nerve that has you clenching desperately around him, writhing with every limb as he laughs into your ear. “I could always pull out, bonnie, y’want me to do that?”

You claw at his naked hips behind you with the sharp tips of your nails, digging trails into the sheen of sweat coating his skin. “I’ll fucking kill you if you do.”

You’ve hissed and spat for too long to remember how to speak gently to him, but Johnny takes it in stride. He fits his teeth around your neck and cups the soft parts of your body with hands that can’t seem to get enough of the way your flesh spills between his fingers; when you spasm around him, howling your climax, he wrenches you against him with an iron grip and finishes deep inside of you moments later with a torn moan, thighs and hips hot and flush along your backside.

You threaten to castrate him if he pulls out anytime soon after. He kisses the indentations of his teeth and smooths his spread hand over your belly.

You end up with him, like this, more often than not. He always chuckles at your antics, your clenched teeth, the red lines and half-moons you leave on his back and thighs. Less with amusement than satisfaction—because these days, you don’t walk around without the bruises of his grasp painting your flanks, or the arch of his bite etched into your neck.

He’s been alone, too. He was alone from the start. All of a sudden awake to the world, unsteady with awareness, and so hungry all the time it must have felt like he could never be full—

And he hadn’t had anyone, not like you have him, to hold him in the throes of it.

You catch a look in his eyes, every now and again, and see the echoes of that time. It glints like a shard of sea glass catching rare sun beneath a wave. Dulled edges—he can think of it without hurting anymore. He can remember the craving without succumbing to its dissatisfaction, without falling into the gall welling in his stomach at the injustice of it. This was not always the case, but watching you, now, balms the ache in a way nothing before ever had.

You know this without his needing to explain, and you know it like scenting petrichor in the air. All you have to do is meet his gaze, and you know.

And he knows, too. Everything. You cannot see him without him seeing you, and he’s been looking at you with the kind of eyes you now possess for much, much longer. There is no depth within yourself that you can hide from him in.

He can look at you and know you’re hungry. He can watch the way you wave one hand and know you’re antsy. You can begin a sentence, and he knows the end of it without you having to finish.

It can only flay you to the bone. You are known. From the best to the worst parts of you, Johnny knows them like he knows the creases in the palms of his own hands. He knows the yawning chasm in you that near-overflows with your want, and he does not hesitate once at the precipice on his way to diving into it.

It pulls your jaw tight. You can only shudder with fever at the exposure, and reach for him. Again and again. Swallowing his laughter down like medicine.

John Price, when he finds out, heaves an enormous sigh of relief even your newly-heightened senses couldn’t see coming.

Your new vision peels back the gruffness. The gaze he has fixed on you, this whole time, has not been the apprehensive criticism of a lover’s apathetic friend. Instead, it is the concerned look of a stranger, one who gives a damn about what happens to a woman all alone on a side of the world to which she, until very recently, did not belong.

It had been invisible to you before; a wavelength of color your old eyes were unable to perceive. Now, you see so much of him that you wonder how you could have possibly missed it.

You see his exhaustion. His own loneliness, in self-imposed exile, one eye always on a man he fears will find a convenient cliff to jump off of in a fit of despair. You see sleepless nights, and notice for the first time a gold band on his ring finger, scuffed, in need of a good polish—if only he would take it off long enough to clean it.

“I’m sorry,” you say to him, out of nowhere, meeting the cool blue of his gaze. He doesn’t seem surprised at your understanding. He only nods.

“Ain’t been easy,” he allows.

But now you’re here. He’s not the only one Johnny has anymore. You can see the weight lift from him the moment you tell him you’re staying.

He goes to his office at the back of the pub with a lightened stride and returns, a little while later, with a stack of papers in his hand that he drops on the bar in front of you.

“Take care of the place,” he tells you with a heavy pat to your shoulder. “And don’t let Soap off easy. I’m going home.”

Price leaves you there with the deed to the pub and a casual wave over his shoulder. You do not see him again—though he’s left his phone number in one of the margins.

“Oh, aye?” Johnny says when you tell him, later that night as he’s boiling lobsters for dinner.

He doesn’t respond for a laden moment. You watch your report pass over him like a gentle wave; you see where it could build, where it could swirl up into something bigger, harder, angrier—but it doesn’t.

His back tightens, and then loosens, and he turns to grin at you over his shoulder.

“Barry, there’s a wall in there I’ve been dyin’ to knock down, and he wouldnae let me. Place is too claustrophobic, ask me.”

You arrange the silverware, letting his placidity wash over you.

About a week later, you drive Johnny’s truck somewhere with cell service, and call your mother.

The landscape of her emotions changes as rapidly as an ocean storm; elation and relief, to finally hear your voice. Hope when she asks you when you’re coming home. Confusion—when you tell her you aren’t.

Johnny explained it.

“We canna go far from the ocean, hen. Not for long. It won’t feel…right. I’ve tried. You get an itch, ken? You can ignore it at the start. But it willna go away, and it willna be denied, either. It’ll drive you mad if you don’t go back. So you canna stay away.”

And you’d known immediately what he’d meant—

You can feel it on the edge of the periphery. A lodestone in your belly points in its direction, always. You could close your eyes, start walking, and find yourself on the shore, pelt already in your hands. Sometimes, you find yourself waking in the middle of the night with the sound in your ears, legs twitching restlessly. You feel too hot and too cold at the same time, and thirsty, all over your body rather than just in your throat.

Any thought of moving further inland inspires an existential panic you can’t explain. The notion of a fifteen-hour flight, and landing somewhere that hasn’t seen an ocean for at least a million years, makes your skin feel so tight around your bones that you have to run to the nearest shoreline just to make sure the sea is still there.

You’re on a jetty right now, in fact, watching the water lap against the stones. It was the only thing you could think of that would give you the strength to make the call.

You cannot go home. You know now that somehow, you’d always expected to, deep down. You’d return to the house you grew up in, pet the old family dog. Meet for brunch at the same hole in the wall you’ve gone to for years.

Sometimes the price you pay to become something more does not reveal itself until it’s too late.

So you cry with your mother over the phone, when you explain that it’s best if you stay. You tell her that coming back would only hurt you if you tried, and this time, you aren’t even lying to her.

You don’t know if she’s actually comforted by the conciliatory offer you make of your new job tending bar—she doesn’t need to know you own the place yet—but she sniffles, and puts a brave face on it.

“You always did want to live somewhere else,” she offers, watery—but glad, you hear, that you’re alive.

You bite your lip.

From her, there will be no begging for you to come home. No entreaties of love or need.

When you say goodbye to her, you cry some more—but it isn’t the storm that used to claim you. You wrap your arms around yourself and squeeze, pinch the soft fur of your pelt and roll it between your fingers as you allow yourself to shake and weep, and when you catch your breath, you dry your face and drive back to the cottage, where Johnny is making lunch.

That night in bed, he holds you gently in his arms, rocking his hips into you as you cling to him with your fingernails.

“Don’t leave me,” you whisper in his ear.

He kisses the corners of your eyes before new tears can fall, and tightens his arms around you.

Each day you go to the sea.

It tugs at you, like a child tugging the hem of your shirt. Like a current pulling you outward. You wake every morning thinking not of breakfast, or the day ahead, but of that swaying world, slow and vast, hugging the edges of the land to coax it, eternally, back into the depths.

There is no serenity, now, like the serenity of the water. To enter the ocean is also to let it inside you; the barriers between yourself and the rest of the world thin out. You give some of yourself away, and receive something new to settle in the empty spaces left behind.

You think you understand now why Johnny is always smiling.

The cold no longer stings when you bare your skin to it, down in the cove. The salt-wind of the incoming tide is soft against you as you fold your clothes, beckoning as you tuck them beneath a large rock.

Johnny strips beside you, less careful, balling everything up in an untidy mass, until you glare at him. The intended admonishment falls flat as your glare turns into something sweeter, as the dark hairs on his chest lift with goosebumps.

He grins at you, seeing the shift. “Here, hen?” he teases as he obediently tidies his shirt and kilt. “Out in the open?”

Out in the open.

You draw him to you, dragging him down into the sand; the joining is quick and hard, spurred by the burgeoning need to go under. You cage his ribs with your knees as you ride him, breasts against his chest as you take his mouth without art or finesse. Johnny digs his fingers into the meat of your ass and helps you along with quick, forceful thrusts, and your orgasm prompts his own, inner muscles pulling him deeper as you pant and moan.

Primal. Without artifice. You exchange hot breaths through open mouths as you speak with your eyes, the ocean-blue of his gaze pulling you in. You grind together even after finishing, prolonging it, displacing a little longer the moment that your bodies must separate.

You have him every day, too. Often more than once. He is as essential a need as the sea, and he gives as freely and as frequently as you ask.

After, you both rise, and help to dust the sand away from each other’s bare skin.

Suddenly, you wonder aloud, “If I get pregnant—what’s it going to be?”

Johnny goes still, the hand on your shin stopping mid-sweep. Then, eyes crinkling, he barks a laugh. He kisses your knee and, as he rises, kisses your mons, then your navel, your sternum—

Then the reluctantly smiling curve of your mouth.

“Wouldnae mind findin’ out,” he says, stepping away from you, and walking backward toward the ocean.

His gaze does not leave you once it rises to meet him. It crests around him, embracing him, vibrant and alive and rushing toward you.

You draw your pelt over your head, and follow Johnny into the waves.

a/n: I'm going to put my final thoughts in a separate post. This is the end. Thank you so much for reading!!

Fierce wars and faithful loves

It isn't easy being a woman, especially an omega, in the military. Both your primary and secondary genders marking you as inferior in others' eyes. But not every man, and not every alpha, thinks that way. Captain John Price, an alpha if there ever was one, knows something special when he sees it, and the new omega on base may be just what his pack needs.

poly!141 x fem!reader, omegaverse

1: first sight 2: the offer 3: transfer paper 4: family talk 5: introductions 6: decision time 7: joining the 141 8: making it official 9: meet Ren 10: what glass ceiling? 11: settling in 12: asset retrieval 13: nesting? 14: undercover work 15: preparations 16: small comforts 17: new beginnings 18: homecoming 19: a change in the air 20: wine and dine 21:

main masterlist

Honestly bizarre that tomatoes get all the flack for “not being a vegetable” because they're technically a fruit when:

A) There are a ton of fruits that get categorised as vegetables. Like this also applies to pumpkins, squashes and cucumbers.

B) The fucking mushrooms are standing there at the back of the crowd in this witch trial, trying to look inconspicuous because they somehow got into the vegetable club with no fucking controversy despite the fact that they're not even plants.

Summary: Task Force 141 operates successfully without an omega, at least that’s what Price has been saying since its formation. Two alphas and two betas balance the pack just fine, and they have the numbers to prove it.

It works for a while, until the Omega Initiative is born and the 141 find themselves having to adjust to the sudden addition of an omega to their pack. Fresh out of an institute, you’re hardly fit for their secretive, dangerous world, or so Price thinks. 

As each member of the team gets closer to you, things begin to come to light, not only about you but about the decision to force you into their lives.

Maybe, just maybe, Price was wrong and the 141 does need an omega after all. 

Pairings: Poly 141 x reader, Price x Gaz, Ghost x Soap

Warnings: Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics, NSFW content, explicit smut, fingering, oral (m and f receiving), knotting, biting, claiming, mating cycles, Alternate Universe, a/b/o typical classism and sexism, age differences, military inaccuracies, canon typical violence, blood, weapons, language, no use of Y/N, brief torture, hurt/comfort, let's be real this is so unrealistic but it's a/b/o you're not here for accuracy.

Chapters containing smut are marked with a *

Updates are posted on the weekends, either Saturday or Sunday PST

This fic can also be found on my Ao3 -> HERE

I will no longer be using a taglist for this fic, please follow THIS BLOG and turn on notifications

**This fic is currently in progress**

NAVIGATION PAGE

CRCB DIRECTORY

Part 1 - The Omega

Chapter 1 - The Introduction

Chapter 2 - Adjustments

Chapter 3 - Speak Their Language

Chapter 4 - You Can Be Useful

Chapter 5 - What I Want *

Part 2 - The Bond

Chapter 6 - One Step Closer *

Chapter 7 - Sweet Strawberry

Chapter 8 - The Thing About Ghost

Chapter 9 - Save Me

Chapter 10 - Treat Me Gently*

Part 3 - The First Heat

Chapter 11 - It's Coming

Chapter 12 - Fire In My Veins*

Chapter 13 - Piece Me Back Together*

Chapter 14 - The Aftermath*

Part 4 - The New Normal

Chapter 15: Bonnie*

Chapter 16: Big Brown Eyes *

Chapter 17: Alone

Chapter 18: Don't Let Me Go

Chapter 19: Daddy Issues

Chapter 20: The New Normal *

Chapter 21: Crime and Punishment *

Chapter 22: I Won't Be Gentle

Part 5 - A Pack of Five

Chapter 23: Regrets

Chapter 24: The Last First Time *

Chapter 25: Animals *

Chapter 26: Fuck *

Chapter 27: Drown In It *

Chapter 28: Two Is Company, Three Is A Party *

Chapter 29: There's Something Wrong With My Omega

Part 6 - The Tragedy

Chapter 30: Butterfly's Wings

Chapter 31: Forced Proximity

Chapter 32: The Tragedy

Chapter 33: Ghosts of the Past

Chapter 34: The Whole Truth

Part 7 - The Aftermath

Chapter 35: Threads

Chapter 36: To The Sea

Chapter 37: The Silence

Chapter 38: Shattered

Chapter 39: Life

Part 8 - The Next Chapter

Chapter 40: Where Do We Go From Here

Chapter 41: Revenge

Chapter 42: Comfort and Joy

Title card made by the beautiful @141wh0re

Simon, without ever really considering it, places a lot of weight on a name. It's why he likes the separation between Simon and Ghost, why he gets to a point where he calls Soap Johnny, even when no one else does. It's important, what you call someone. There's a lot in a name.

With you, you'd never even know about Ghost -- to you, he's just Simon, and that's all he ever wants to be. He doesn't want those worlds to mix. Simon will do just fine.

But, after you've been dating a while, when you've convinced him to relax enough to lay his head in your lap while you watch tv and you let out a soft little "there you go, baby"?

Well that's something else entirely.

Because he's never been a "baby." He's never been "honey" or "sweetie" or any of those other cutesy little names you come up with, but when you call him those things, it's nice. Sort of relaxing in a way he never knew it could be.

"Baby, can you change the lightbulb for me?" "What's for dinner, baby?" "Right there, baby, don't stop."

He notices, every single time. It makes him want to try it too, to see if it'll give you the same little easy thrill it gives him. But he's not sure what kind of pet name feels right. He turns over words and phrases in his head when he's trying to go to sleep or in the shower -- he'd absolutely never admit this to you -- and he practices, trying to figure out what feels natural, what feels like you.

In the end, all the practice is for naught, because the right one slips out without him even thinking about it.

It's after he comes home from a deployment, exhausted from both everything that happened and from trying to hide his desperation to see you. When he gets home, you take him in your arms, and all the tension, for the moment, anyway, just falls right out of him, and he holds onto you like a lifeline.

"Missed you so fucking much, sweetheart."

He can feel you smile, your face pressed against his chest, and while he is glad to see you seem to like it, he wasn't prepared for how much he'd like it himself.

Because what you call someone matters. He'd spent the first half of his life as Simon, the second as Ghost, and now, as a complete surprise to him, he's getting a third chapter where he gets to be "baby," where he gets to be close enough to you to share these special little names. He gets to know your sweet heart, and it's more than he deserves.

But he'll never, ever stop trying to earn it.

Bartender!Ghost x Waitress!Reader Masterlist

Ghost Masterlist

Summary: You need some extra cash for rent, and you're sick of sitting at home, staring at a computer all day. You hear pub a few blocks away from your flat is looking for a server. Can't be hard, right? Well... the serving part isn't hard. But the brooding bartender that suddenly enters your life is - in more ways than one.

Warnings: cursing, misogynistic/degrading behavior towards reader (not from tf141), NSFW, humiliation, pining, masturbation, jealousy, slow burn

Check out this amazing art by blobbysblog!!!

Storyline:

pilot

interview

day one

simon's jealousy starts

hurricane shot

customer yells at you

simon gets hit on

you meet BarOwner!Price

you ask simon to take the mean customers

mitch says something he shouldn't

simon makes you cry

you both apologize after you avoid him for two days

you suggest a promotional drink for Halloween

price gets you a stepstool

price makes simon work for what he wants

you spill drinks on your shirt

simon lets some stress out

simon finds you crying in the walk-in

you and simon kiss in the stairwell

Headcannons:

the vision

pub dynamics

flirting pt 1

"DOOR!!"

flirting pt 2

when customers leave you their numbers

kyle and johnny

plans for the au

replacing simon's tools with pink ones

You always find Simon in the same spot—sitting on his couch with a mug of tea in one hand, the TV on but the volume low, like he’s watching it just for background noise. He barely moves when you come in, just shifts his head a little like he was expecting you, even though you never text to say you're coming.

“And then she rolled her eyes at me,” you say as you drop down next to him, letting out an annoyed sigh. “Like I was the one being unreasonable for asking her to hold the door.”

Simon doesn’t react right away, which isn’t unusual. He lets a second or two pass, like he’s thinking it through, even though he probably made up his mind as soon as he heard your tone. Finally, he hums quietly and says, “She’s not worth your breath,” while reaching over to pat the top of your head in that way he always does.

You don’t even bother hiding how much you like that. You lean into his hand just a little, and for a moment you let the annoyance melt off your face.

It’s always like this between you and Simon. You walk in, already mid-rant about something that annoyed you during training or some dumb argument someone had in the mess, and he just listens. Or, well—he sits there while you go off, mostly quiet, only chiming in with a few words here and there.

But he always makes it clear he’s paying attention. The way his eyes shift to look at you when your voice tightens. The way he’ll hand you a blanket or a snack before you even ask. The way he remembers the tiny details you forget you even told him.

You joke sometimes that you adopted him. That you took in this emotionally unavailable soldier who barely likes people and decided that he’s your best friend now, whether he wanted that or not. He never complains. He never tells you to leave. Even when you steal his cookies or fall asleep on his couch, he just lets you stay.

He’s quiet, sure, but he’s also dependable in a way that makes everything feel easier when you’re around him. You can talk to him for hours and he won’t interrupt, won’t judge, won’t try to fix it unless it’s something he can fix. And when it is, he usually does—without making a big deal out of it.

So when you started seeing that guy from base, Simon didn’t say anything. You thought maybe he just didn’t care, or that he wasn’t the type to get involved in stuff like that. He didn’t ask many questions. Just nodded and said, “He treatin’ you right?” in that low voice of his that didn’t give much away.

You smiled and said yes, because at the time, it felt like the right answer.

He stayed the same after that. Still your go-to person for venting. Still the only one who ever made you feel like you could talk without holding back.

But every now and then, you noticed something shift. He wouldn’t look at you as much when you brought up your boyfriend. He’d change the subject quicker. And when you said something like, “he forgot our plans again,” Simon would just sigh and hand you tea or cookies or whatever he had nearby, like he didn’t want to say what was really on his mind.

You remember one night clearly, when you showed up outside Simon’s door after a long shift. You were quiet, which was rare, and you didn’t even try to hide the frustration in your eyes.

“He forgot again,” you mumbled, pulling your knees up onto the couch. “Said he’d pick me up, and then just... nothing. Not even a text.”

Simon didn’t say much in response. He just handed you the remote and tapped your shoulder once, like that was his way of saying you deserved better without actually having to say the words out loud.

But the breaking point came later. One night, you showed up to his room without even thinking, your eyes red and puffy, your hands trembling a little as you wiped at your face. He didn’t ask what happened. He didn’t need to. He just stepped aside and let you walk in, like he’d been expecting you again, like he knew this was coming.

“He cheated,” you said, and the words felt so bitter and small in your mouth that you almost didn’t believe them yourself.

Simon pulled you into a hug before you could even finish the sentence. He didn’t say anything, didn’t try to offer advice or tell you what you should’ve done. He just held you, solid and quiet, with one hand pressed between your shoulder blades and the other smoothing over your hair. You didn’t realize you were crying until your face was already buried in his shirt.

At some point, he moved you to his bed. You weren’t even sure how, but you ended up under his blanket, wrapped in warmth that didn’t come from the sheets, and you felt safer than you had in weeks. His voice was low when he whispered, “Don’t worry about it,” like he was promising to carry the weight of it for you.

You didn’t know it then, but he didn’t sleep that night. He stayed up until you were out cold, then got up quietly, left his room, and came back a few hours later like nothing happened. What you also didn’t know—what he would never admit unless you asked him directly—was that he had counted every single tear that rolled down your face. Every shaky breath, every time your chest stuttered with a sob. He remembered the number. Kept it in his head. Then found your ex and hit him that many times. One punch for every tear you cried.

A few days passed, and word started going around base that your ex hadn’t been seen. Missed duty. No one could get ahold of him. You didn’t ask Simon anything. You just looked at him across the mess hall, saw the way he was nursing a cup of tea with a blank expression and fresh tape wrapped around his hand, and something in your chest clicked into place.

You didn’t smile. Didn’t say anything. You just looked at him, and he looked back, and that was enough.

Later, after things calmed down, you found yourself back in his room. Same spot on the couch. Same blanket. Same you and Simon. But this time, out of nowhere, he said, “I’m in love with you.”

It wasn’t dramatic or emotional. He said it like it was just a fact—like he was finally telling the truth after hiding it for too long.

You blinked at him, not even sure you heard him right. “What?”

He shrugged a little, like it didn’t matter if you believed him or not. “Figured you should know.”

You didn’t know what to say right then. There was too much in your head. But a few days later, he took you somewhere quiet, away from base, with a folded blanket under his arm and your favorite cookies packed in a tin. He made tea and handed you the mug like he always did, and when you sipped it, it was just the way you liked it—strong, with that little bit of honey he adds even when you don’t ask.

You sat next to him, legs stretched out on the grass, shoulder pressed against his. After a while, you turned to look at him and said, “You’ve been looking at me like that for a long time, haven’t you?”

He tilted his head slightly. “Like what?”

“Like I’m your whole world.”

Simon didn’t answer right away, but the look on his face said more than words ever could. Then he reached over, patted your head like he always did, and said, “Yeah. That’s about right.”

--------------------------------------------

@daydreamerwoah @kylies-love-letter @ghostslollipop @kittygonap @alfiestreacle @identity2212