#╰ ⸻ ✧ 007. ╱ ⌜ calls. ⌟

[glassgob]

[Image ID: Digital illustration of ARC Trooper Echo post- Star Wars: The Bad Batch finale. He is casually standing while wearing ARC Trooper Fives' armor. Fives' helmet is tucked under his left arm. End ID.]

inspired by k8s_space's fic new armor, old memories because the concept of echo taking fives' armor had me sprawled out on the floor o|-<

[haunting-hole]

mithrun "workplace safety negligence" meshi

[kojiandrew]

Andrew Koji for the next James Bond (x)

[thestalwartheart]

When it burns you red but you won't let go

RADI00Q: 31 SONGS FOR BOND AND Q THE CHEEKY BONUS SONG: Tears For Fun - Griff

[staticnonapus]

*changed my age to 22*

[marcsnuffy]

This one comment in one of BLTV's info pages is very funny to me

[cowpokezuko]

The next James Bond should be a butch lesbian and it should just never be addressed. She's the same type of flirty, toxic, alcoholic but now its wish fulfillment for ME

[ask-itager]

who's taking whose last name when you get married?

But really it doesnt matter since we'll still be called "mister germany" and "mister italy" anyways

[sgt-tombstone]

Ocean Eyes

A few months ago, I started writing a Call of Duty/James Bond crossover fic because I was endlessly fascinated by the idea of Ghost and 007 interacting with each other and, maybe, having a shared past. Unfortunately, I hit a brick wall soon after and I���ll probably never finish it, so here’s the first chapter, which is the part that I’m most proud of. It’s comic canon compliant up to a point, so be mindful!

Cw: torture, death (not main characters), comic canon backstory and all of its associated traumas, implied sexual assault

————

They’re kept in the same room.

Roba calls them his “blond English boys” and they’re kept in the same room at all times.

Whenever his skin is sliced through, whenever he’s forced to fight his own teammates, whenever his body is violated, the other man is there. Bound and gagged, still and quiet, the other man has no choice but to watch through blackened eyes almost swollen shut.

He doesn’t know why Roba has forced them together like this. Their pale hair, perhaps, or their somewhat similar stature, he thinks, when his mind is clear from pain enough to muse over such patterns. More often than not, he doesn’t care. Roba’s intentions mean little in the face of the reality of his actions, and he has long-since given up trying to parse out his torturer’s twisted logic.

All he knows is this: the man has blue eyes.

Piercing blue eyes, as cold as ice, nearly aglow in the dim light of their cell.

Relentless blue eyes that have seen every inch of him, inside and out, have borne witness to every agony, every injustice, every humiliation.

Unflinching blue eyes that have faithfully watched the beatings that left more of his skin red than white, the knife edges coated in hallucinogenic drugs slicing thinly across vital veins, the white-hot metal pressing over and over to smooth inches of skin between inflamed gouges.

More often than not, that blue, the startling intensity, the singular pop of colour in the Stygian catacomb, is the only thing that keeps him from breaking, from babbling every secret that has been entrusted to him since basic training in the face of Roba’s inventiveness. He has been torn to shreds, down to the foundational, microscopic level, and every time that his cellmate whispers to him in the aftermath, too quiet for the guards to hear, his steady, stalwart gaze never recoiling from their shared agony, he knows that those blue eyes are being stitched back into the underpinning that makes him who he is. He doesn’t know who he is anymore, but he knows that his soul is navy bright-blue.

Blue keeps him strong.

Blue keeps him sane.

He knows, when he is forced, in turn, to watch his cellmate’s own torment, when his cellmate can’t look away from his own honey-brown eyes, that the reliance, bordering on dependency, is mutual. His cellmate, whoever he is, whatever he has been reduced to, has a soul the colour of army green-brown to match.

That makes it all the worse when, six months and seventeen days after his capture, he is dragged from the cell by Roba. It’s the first time he’s been outside of his cell, the first time he’s been without his cellmate.

Without his strength.

Without his sanity.

The last thing he sees before finding himself unceremoniously buried alive in his former commanding officer’s casket is pain-terror-desperation shining in bright blue eyes.

————

When Simon pushes his way to the surface thirteen hours later, jawbone in hand, dirt covering every inch of his skin, coating his mouth and lungs, sucking in burning breaths of dry air, the first thing he sees is blue, brilliant blue sky.

It is not the same. It will never be the same.

It is not strength. It is not sanity.

But it is close enough for now.

————

The subsequent five months are spent in a haze of agony.

He pushes all thoughts of anguish-filled blue eyes from his mind. It takes him a month to reach the border of Texas and four more months to summon the courage to step foot in Credenhill.

When he finds his family a week later, bled out like pigs, laid like Christmas presents under the still-flashing tree, red viscera soaking into the rug, dying the red wrapping paper an even deeper shade of crimson, he doesn’t allow himself to grieve. He laughs, maniacally, hysterically, and adds their names to his mental list of people stolen from his life by Roba, alongside the blank space left for the other blond English boy. Family in every way that had mattered. He considers suicide, goes so far as to test his jaw’s capacity to open against the muzzle of his own pistol, but the harsh scrape of metal against his teeth only triggers his gag reflex.

He calls the police and refuses to think about blue eyes that never got justice. He answers the detectives’ questions and refuses to think about blue eyes that had slowly broken, drops of truth scattered amongst the waterfall of lies that had fallen from his lips under Roba’s knife, impossible to parse out. He attends the funeral and refuses to think about blue eyes that likely ended up in an unmarked grave, just another MIA soldier. He returns to his flat to drink himself into reckless oblivion and refuses to think about blue eyes waiting for him on the other side. If he thinks like that, he might as well crawl back into Vernon’s coffin and let the maggots finish what they had started.

He hunts down Sparks and Washington with single-minded determination. Washington’s life drips from his slit throat, Sparks’ life splatters against the wall, and Riley’s life goes up in smoke.

He boxes up the anger, the despair, the numbness, and he returns to work.

————

Simon Riley dons the mask, and when his new captain, freshly promoted, pulls him into his office, quietly murmuring about a joint task force targeting the Zaragoza Cartel, he volunteers on the spot.

————

James Bond pulls himself back from yet another brush with mortality, and when M pulls him into her office, bluntly informing him of a joint task force targeting the Zaragoza Cartel, he volunteers on the spot.

————

When their eyes meet across the airstrip, everything else ceases to exist. All Simon, not-yet-Ghost, can see is brilliant blue, and nothing in the world, not the strongest restraints nor the harshest orders, could keep them from collapsing into each other like dying stars, like desperate men clinging to the familiarity that their very souls yearn for. It is the first time they have touched. They have seen every inch of each other, have witnessed each other’s agony and atrophy, could identify each other by their scars and screams alone, but this is the first brush of skin and it is more vulnerable than anything they saw in that basement. The tarmac is sweltering but neither of them move, army fatigue green-brown pressed to Tom Ford navy-blue, the bulk of each other’s bodies clutched together, physical for the first time.

It should be awkward. In the six months they had spent together, Simon had never even known the other man’s name, yet here he is, clinging to him like a burr, and it is the first voluntary human contact he’s had since he crawled out of Vernon’s grave. The other man is clinging back just as strongly. The hard press of bodies should be distressing after six months of watching each other be violated in every way imaginable, but it’s not sexual. It’s hardly even physical; the squeeze of their bodies is a meaningless byproduct of their true intention, to fill the aching void in their souls that Roba had carved and they had been forced to fill with each other.

It should be wary. It has only been two months since Simon discovered Sparks’ and Washington’s loyalty to Roba, since he was betrayed by those he thought he could trust to sympathise and support, since he slit Washington’s throat and shot Sparks. It has only been two months since Simon Riley was forced to die because of Roba’s brainwashing and he should not trust the blue-eyed man clinging to his fatigues. Sparks had had blue eyes. He should take a step back, distance himself from this stranger who is returning to Roba’s lair with him. He should not trust that bright blue eyed gaze, but he does.

It is strength.

It is sanity.

————

When Lieutenant Simon “Ghost” Riley takes the shot, his rifle aimed directly between Roba’s eyes at 600 metres, it is with Commander James Bond, 007, on the scope at his side, calling the shot, and Simon has never trusted anyone more in his life.

————

Seven years later, Ghost catches a glimpse of Sergeant John “Soap” MacTavish’s blazing blue eyes, nearly aglow in the dim light of the night-darkened airstrip, piercing, relentless, unflinching, and he knows that he is fucked.

Blue keeps him strong.

Blue keeps him sane.

His long-buried soul is navy bright-blue, and it thrums in his chest, resonance reverberating beneath his ribs. He has never trusted anyone more in his life, and he will burn the world to keep pain-terror-desperation from shining in those bright blue eyes.

[benoits-neckerchieves]

James Bond with cats!!!!!!

[amoralmorel]

[CakeFight.mp4].jpeg

from chapter 14 of @emberwritesinsight’s birdhouse rock

[wastrelwoods]

playing dragon age for the first time by never reading any note letter or journal entry they put in front of my eyes on the screen. i simply do not need to know all of that information at this time

[neighbourhoodtwo]

also when octavian is like huh sextus you've changed since i last saw you... girl there was a WAR. you PROSCRIBED HIM

[crocodilenjoyer]

love this thing. the skank

[josilverdragon]

He is MINE now lol

[sgt-tombstone]

listen, I was watching Spectre (2016) recently and all I’m saying is

Rodolfo really wasn’t wrong about Ghost fitting in well in Mexico… you can’t tell me that’s not Simon Riley on his day off