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ontheoddoccasioniwritestuff · 1 year

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Star-crossed in the Crosshairs (John Price x Reader)

Chapter 3: To My Knees

Fic Summary: This mission is the pinnacle of your efforts for the past three years. Your whole team and yourself have worked countless hours, slaughtered hundreds, risked life and limb for scraps of intel, and now it all boiled down to pairing up with another taskforce to get this job done and dusted. An unexpected spanner in the works comes in the shape of your former best friend, now also a Captain and somehow resurrected from his KIA status, John Price.

You can’t afford to let feelings - old and new - get in the way of your purpose. No matter how much you’ve missed, wished for, loved him, and no matter how much he might feel the same.

Content warnings: Usual COD content (violence, torture, death, guns ESPECIALLY in this chapter), mutual pining, back from the dead, friends to allies to lovers, Reader is GN, some use of Y/N.

Chapter 2 // Masterlist // AO3 Version // Chapter 4

Gaz and Bronze were stretching out this first glass, just hitting the two hour mark, but the conversation cover had yet to run dry. Occasionally, there would be input from another of your team, waiting in shadows and around corners, easing the tension ever so slightly with their addition to the chatter as well as providing repeated remarks on how their target was not yet in sight.

You stared at the map in front of you, brows bent as if you didn’t have it half memorised, as if there hadn’t been any passersby in this alleyway for ten minutes. Earpiece wired through your clothing allowed you to listen into the conversation you had yet to join.

One you’d considered remarking on was Gaz and Bronze joking about:

“Price told me he and Laswell met at a falafel stand.”

“And did they?”

“No. She annoyed him during a football match.”

That sounded more plausible at least. Price’s long-time partner was a neglected Liverpool season ticket. You tapped your fingers on the steering wheel to a familiar footie chant you had learned to chant during your first match. But you didn’t add anything. Nor did you say anything when Gaz insisted he was a catch and too good for Bronze when Crash joked about them being on a date.

You did when Soap talked about how he’d been guided through Las Almas in a mission gone south by Ghost, a bullet in his arm and delirious on adrenaline enough to exchange dumb jokes. After hearing his shellfish joke, you decided to join in with easing the tension that was creeping in through your neck.

“Two windmills are standing on a wind farm. One asks, ‘what’s your favourite type of music?’ and the other replies ‘I’m a big metal fan’.”

The radio crackled with Soap’s low chuckles, “Pretty good, Captain.”

“I wouldn’t say good,” interrupted Chance.

“What’s good then?”

“What’s red and bad for your teeth?” You could already hear giggling down the radio before Chance jumped in to ensure she delivered the punchline: “A brick.”

“Tha’s awful, actually,” Soap said but with a dark snigger. Then he cut himself off sharpish: “Markovič on the south side of the street, heading towards Los Gatos.”

Your back straightened, “Alone?”

“Affirmative.”

This did nothing to confirm for you whether Markovič either had back-up you couldn’t see, or he was beyond stupid – both dangerous in any man, let alone an arm’s dealer, let alone the glorified sidekick of a terrorist. Your hands flexed then tightened around the wheel, then one held the ignition key, waiting for your signal.

“He’s at the bar,” Gaz reported. A minute later, he added: “He’s a gin man.”

You mirrored his attempts to keep things a little light, “Do they have Gordon’s out here?”

“It’s not the pink one, that’s for sure,” Gaz mumbled, and you could hear its echo in a half empty pint glass he was likely pretending to drink from, “You a gin fan yourself, Captain?”

“Not a big drinker at all.”

“What’s your vice then?”

“Sudoku.”

You’d let them debate whether or not you were serious later; Team Banshee would probably offer a few pieces of evidence to fill the gaps in the 141’s knowledge of you. But here was where your banter ended for now.

“He’s moving to sit alone, outside.”

You could picture him sipping a ballooned glass with ice swilling around, condensation as slippery as his character. The metal of the key warmed in your pinch, map discarded in your lap. Simulating every possible approach to any choice, your brain narrowed down Gaz and Bronze either heading inside for an attack in the bathroom, or directing Ghost, Chance, Price, and Crash to tail Markovič and intercept before he got home.

Your two soldiers continued their cover, ordering some tapas to split and doing their best not to flaunt how good it was to the rest of you. Gaz mentioned how he’d already paid the bill, and filled out the reimbursement forms too apparently. Just left the boxes of the amount blank, ready to be completed upon return. Both Gaz and Bronze dropped titbits of info on Markovič every minute, Soap too from his ledge.

At last, halfway through the third glass of gin, Gaz muttered down his microphone, “He’s headed for the bathroom. We’re on him.”

You twisted the ignition and the engine roared to life, “Meet you at the corner of Liepų and Lajos Street?”

“Can do, Cap,” Bronze said and you heard the scrape of his chair before he stopped talking.

The gear stick shifted, you drove out of the alleyway and took the two minute drive to your location. The mileometer kept your speed safe enough to not be pulled over by any rent-a-cop that might spot you, but quick enough to be with your team. Two back doors were flung open within the second you stopped, Gaz and Bronze hauling their prisoner up then tossing him in with a bag over his head and hands zip-tied. In your rear view mirror, Markovič’s body folded like a sheet of paper without Gaz or Bronze for support.

You heard two bangs after the door slams, so you moved out, ready to collect the rest of your team. Crash and Ghost were from the same corner about a quarter of a mile out. Chance and Price were close enough to the safehouse to have made it back just as you pulled into the garage. No one felt daft for over-estimating the amount of manpower on this mission. This was, after all, just the first step in the right direction.

You helped haul the dead weight of your prisoner up the stairs in the absence of your regular workout.

A chair stood proudly in the centre of the one room without windows, the one you’d soundproofed that morning with your team. Even just stepping into the room felt like there was cotton wool against your ears. Tarps muted all footsteps. Hanging from the door frame was a black makeshift curtain blocking your captive from seeing anything outside the room.You took it upon yourself to search him whilst Gaz and Ghost bound his wrists and ankles to the chair’s metal frame: a wallet with just two cards, a stack of cash, and a few coins; a packet of tissues; a dog tag without a chain stamped with Odristanian; and an acorn.

Gaz and Ghost led the way out, you taking one more survey of the room before you followed satisfied and with the door shut behind you.

“He was carrying this in his waistband, tried to pull it out on us when we put him in a headlock.” Bronze held a tiny handgun up like it was a pair of dirty underwear. You took it, though he’d already had the frame of mind to empty the chamber and remove the clip.

“Good job, Gaz, Bronze,” You said first, before you could forget to praise your team. “Chance, you’re the lead on this. Ghost, I want you in there with Chance ready to sub in if she wants to take a break. No one else goes in unless Markovič’s somehow a master of withholding information; I don’t want him getting any ideas about how many of us there are or where he is through the door.”

Both nodded, happy with their positions. However-

“He’s got no idea where he is,” Bronze interjected, “He walked right past the toilet to take a piss in the alleyway out back. He’s hardly gonna figure out anything through a gap in the curtain.”

You stared at him, expression once again carefully neutral, and Bronze’s eyes widening told you he knew he’d been caught with his trousers down – in front of his entire team no less. Muting your frustration for now was the best approach, even though you shouldn’t have to tell this fully grown man about taking precautions in the possibility of this being a trap. Instead, you continued delegating your team for the night ahead.

“Still, we’ll approach with standard caution. Crash, Gaz, you’re on watch: one in the sitting room, one from the roof. Make sure no one’s tailed us. Soap, Price, I want you observing from here, and you can feed any info you think helpful to them via their earpieces. Bronze, you’re with me. We’ll swap around in shifts when times comes to sleeping and watch, but again, we keep Ghost and Chance on Markovič.”

Bronze trailed behind you as you entered the sitting room, where all the packs were (yours included). Following the cable you’d plugged in that morning, you found and began fiddling with your tablet to get it live and onto the webcam that Gaz had installed amongst the padding on the walls. Price and Soap already had theirs set up whilst you were patting down your prisoner.

“I was part of a capture or kill mission about fifteen years ago,” You mused aloud, knowing Bronze was paying attention.“Capture was easy, and folks got cocky. Turns out it was a catch and release. Our target’s army was on our location within the first minute of interrogation. Killed half of us, wounded the rest. Botched everything beyond belief, set some of us back a year in terms of recovery and intel, and we were considered the lucky ones.” Then you rose to your feet and made carefully practiced eye contact with your Sergeant, “You understand why I’m telling you this?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Don’t make me tell you again, and certainly not in front of others.” You held out the tablet to him with the grainy footage displaying Ghost entering the room, Chance settling in, “Every behaviour is communication. Figure out what’s being said. You’ve got the rest of the hour then you swap with Crash.”

Into the dining room, sat around the table like some fucked-up family dinner. Soap was checking his sniper rifle, Price smoking, Bronze without any distraction to aid his redemption from earlier. So you set yourself apart to make the MREs up, an eye on the spare tablet streaming the torture live.

After receiving silence as the answer to her first question, Chance started by plucking out Markovič’s nose hairs, Ghost holding his head still whilst Markovič attempted to wriggle away from her tweezers. Then she moved onto something more interesting. Technically you were to thank for that technique, for suggesting a viewing of Paddington to boost team morale and bonding after a particularly shitty close to a mission in 2020. You just hadn’t realised she’d been taking notes during the screening.

As you heated up the chilli, you felt Price’s shadow blot out some of the sting of the stove’s flame. His cigar left smoking in a gaudy ashtray, clearly bought from a tourist boutique nearby.

“I can help,” He said.

You snorted, “Two Captains making tea for their teams, now that’s a laugh.” But you still shoved over the mess tins – clean from when Crash had scrubbed them clean earlier.

“It’s our jobs to make sure we all stay on our feet. You included,” Price said as he unstacked them, handing you the one with a little bar of soap drawn on the underside in permanent marker.

“Which is why I’m making the dinner.”

“You know I meant you resting, not you staying on your feet.”

“Had plenty of rest in the driver’s seat,” and you dolloped the chilli into the tin.

You four ate in relative silence, apart from Bronze beside you who was noting down the reactions on your tablet’s post-it notes app, responses that Ghost and Chance were certainly logging in their own heads. That was his punishment technically: becoming your secretary for the paperwork you’d fill out at the end of the mission. He fucking hated it but he did it because you told him to, and he never needed to be told twice.

Some of Markovič’s methods of resisting were more akin to mindfulness practices: the deep breathing, the eyes closed, the rocking (limited against his restraints). He started to crumble at the twenty minute mark, letting slip Čiernik’s plan to relocate for the

“That’s new,” Bronze remarked when Chance began digging the tweezers into the wound on his stomach she’d sliced open with the accuracy of a surgeon. Markovič in response had let out a wheeze and told them that he’d give them the location.

“Crash, Bronze is on his way up to swap,” You called down your radio. No response, which was unlike her. Regardless, Bronze was already heading up, your tablet back in hand.

Chance sipped from her water bottle in the top left corner of your screen, behind Ghost whilst she watched what he was like in the interrogation room. Two words: viciously unempathetic.

“Why did the man miss the funeral?” Soap asked, not taking his eyes off the screen.

You sighed, unable to figure it out, “Dunno, why?”

“He wasn’t a mourning person.”

Your mouth twisted into a half-smile that was trying to take itself seriously, “That’s pretty good.”

“Can’t take credit for that one.”

“Then send my compliments to the chef.”

“Ghost’ll be happy to hear them,” Soap snorted.

As you went to direct your smile directly at the Sergeant, you instead caught Price looking at you, though he glanced back down at his screen when you made eye contact. You didn’t like how the implication of him watching you instead of his Lieutenant sent your stomach flipping over the powdered eggs from this morning.

To cover your ruffled feathers, you went into the hallway to smooth them out and collided chest to chest with Crash.

“Sorry, Captain, didn’t hear you,” She explained quickly, catching her breath

“Your radio faulty?”

Crash paused before replying, “I was in another channel.”

Your frown was automatic, “Why?”

Another pause. “Listening to Chance and Ghost in the interrogation.”

“That’s not what I asked you to do.” Your weighted statement shrank Crash in front of you like a cotton shirt in the tumble dryer.

“Sorry.”

“Do better.” Somehow you managed to restrain your additional comment until after she’d left and into a whisper: “Fuck’s sake.”

It was embarrassing, your team showing you up with rookie missteps and trivial unprofessionalism. Now of all the times and places they could choose to be stupid.

Soap offered to swap out with Gaz, let him rest a little, and you agreed to it.

“We’ll start sleep shifts in a few,” You added, then repeated once Gaz was in the room again. He inhaled his MRE, despite being the one to order a bowl of nuts to pick through during the capture earlier.

When Chance exited her torture chambers, you held up her MRE – still sealed in its packet. She nodded and you began to make it as you asked:

“How do you think it’s going?”

Yes, you had been watching and paying attention to your screen, but it wasn’t the same as being in the room. The blurry pixels could only offer so much.

Chance sighed, stretching out her shoulders, “He’s gobby, in the worst way. But he’ll break soon. Just wanted him to remember what relief feels like.”

To be fair to him, Markovič had lasted longer than you thought. Perhaps you should start drinking gin.

“Anything you fancy?” You asked her.

Shrugging, Chance suggested with a wry expression, “Stick and poke?”

You mulled it over, tongue poking in your cheek. Then you gave her a nod of confirmation, your nose wrinkled, as if she was asking if you wanted another pint because it was her round. Stretching out your spine as she returned to her post, you returned to your screen and watched the basis of Chance’s failed tattoo artist dream reworked to suit her current occupation.

Each time Markovič passed out from the pain, Ghost used smelling salts to bring him back to continue a malicious cycle of Chance stabbing him in the same places with a heated needle.

It culminated in the reveal of a piece of intel that struck your partnership. You could see Soap’s fists wringing an invisible neck. Ghost squared his shoulders as he corked the smelling salts. Even Price’s jaw clenched at the mention of a name you’d come across in their files. Markovič begged with his two captors, desperately clawing at the chair and asserting with his remaining energythat it was the truth.Chance continued poking inside his dermis for ten minutes more – just to be certain. Plus you were certain she had read her fellow Lieutenant’s body language and how he wasn’t quite content with leaving the room this way – and he landed a solid punch on the back of Markovič’s head that sent him into unconsciousness and his chair tilting over. Your prisoner looked peaceful for the first time since you'd captured him, folded over and praying in his own putrid blood.

Both the Lieutenants finally left the torture chamber and both their Captains met them outside the door. Chance had very little to add to what she’d already reported. But Ghost shoved his demand right there and then.

“He can’t tell them we’re coming,” He said, his words as harsh as if he’d spat at you.

You nodded in agreement, “I’ll take care of it.”

But Ghost shook his head with the same ire, “S’alright, I’ll do it. Not hungry anyways.”

“Ok,” You said, maintaining the calm to balance his fury, “Good job. You too, Chance.”

“I’ll contact Laswell,” Price stated, the chair legs screeching on the wooden floor as he rose to stand.

“Patch in General Fernandez too; I need a word with him. Ta,” you added the last word quickly as he started to leave. While you stopped yourself looking at his hips, you didn’t quite manage to wrangle the memory of how you’d wrapped your legs around them for a piggy back after a successful football match as rookies, and sometimes imagined if you were on his front instead of his back, arms still around his neck, holding him close, just as eager, just as delighted to be with him.

“Fuck’s sake,” you muttered again, pinching the bridge of your nose. You were worse than Bronze with the unprofessionalism at this point, letting it spill out of your head into your actions. If you were alone, you’d slap yourself. Hard. Get your head screwed on right and tight.

Onscreen, Ghost was clipping open the zip-ties from Markovič, who collapsed onto the tarps, the KA-BAR in his neck hardly leaking despite the angle. He left it in there to recover in the morning, once livor mortis was well and truly underway.

Summoning your façade back into position, you moved to the side room for a little privacy, ready to talk to the equivalent of your line manager. “Laswell, patching in Komodo” was the last you heard as you switched to the appropriate channel.

“This is Komodo Actual,” General Fernandez spoke clear as a whistle down your earpiece, “Nice to hear from you at last, Captain.”

You nodded even though he couldn’t see you, “Sir,Markovič has given us the details of Čiernik’s next move and one of his storage facilities he frequently uses; Laswell’s verifying the kinks of what we can do about it.”

“Good work. Any damage on your side?”

“Not yet, standby for that. Markovič also gave us intel involving Gold Eagle.”

There was a pause, and you could only assume that your very thorough General was sweeping his room once more to assure absolute secrecy before he asked: “What’s the intel?”

“We’ve stumbled upon another of his pet projects. Čiernik is on his payroll.”

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AN: Thanks for the patience, I've started a new job and it's taking a lot of my time. I appreciate the love I've been getting on this. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea so it makes it all the nicer when it finds folks who like it <3

Next chapter, things start amping up, and some hints/teasers become answers so rewards for those who've been paying attention and those who are along for the ride!

Taglist: @mockerycrow

#john price #john price x reader #captain john price x reader #john price fanfic #captain price x reader #captain john price fanfic #cod #cod fanfic #mw2 #mw2 fanfic #cod x reader #my writing #r: gen #wc: >2k

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