#and through that you could dive a lot more into Hesh’s personality and his need to help and protect

[arsonistman]

Oh I figured out why I get so annoyed over a lot of Logan centric fics; he gets babied and infantilised to absolute hell and back

[callofdooty]

Just us

Keegan P. Russ & Thomas A. Merrick (Platonic)

Warnings: Angst, spoilers for the story of COD: Ghosts

A short, messy and incoherent drabble because I desired Angst :) Set shortly after the events of the game. Just Merrick and Keegan having a heart-to-heart. Extremely rough around the edges, but this is my first proper dive into writing these characters.

Keegan is cold.

It's nothing new, really. He's always been cold, and not in the emotional sense. Literal. Physical. Running colder than the rest was something of an inside joke for the Ghosts. Or, at least it used to be. Rorke used to rib him about needing an extra layer all the time, and back then he couldn't tell if the man was just joking or genuinely held some sort of distaste for the fact. He never had the courage to ask.

With the perspective he has now... Well the lines only become more blurry. Even now, he's not sure what to think.

The cold is its own type of twisted comfort at this point. The chill of a high vantage point, for example, was familiar, a home he could find almost anywhere, a place to put his heart and no one else could find it; because it is his heart, it's everything he dedicates himself to. Gun at the ready. Eyes sharp. Wits sharper.

But up here, there is no gun. And there is no target. Just him, staring off into the shining lights of a city, distant familiar glimmers taunting him, because of all the things to remain constant in his life, it was the reminder that he's always been alone, far removed from the world around him, isolated in a way that's never felt like a choice, like he had any control over it.

Even in the Ghosts, Keegan had his moments of feeling out of place, especially starting out. A young kid, a quiet kid who didn't actually know how to be... a kid. A person, even. And it's not like anyone around him knew how to do that either - most of them jaded adults who lost any semblence of their youth long before Keegan was even on this earth - so nobody could teach him how. Ajax and Merrick tried, they... really tried... but the lost can't lead the stranded; they barely knew how to act either. So of course, it was an awkward middle ground. Too "mature" to relate to anyone his age, but too young to actually find any sense of belonging outside of Merrick and Ajax.

Even then, he's lucky that they even put up with him. Keegan knows he's not exactly fun to hang out with, even less so when he was younger and lacked any practice in anything that wasn't strictly serious business. Their insistence of including him probably did more than they, or even Keegan himself, realised at the time.  It didn't magically make him into some social butterfly - he still prefers to let others do the talking - but it sure as hell taught him that he had the capacity to be something other than a weapon. It wasn't much in the grand scheme of things, but it meant a lot to him. Without them, he figures his life would lack the pitiful embers of warmth it has.

Or perhaps it moreso of an ember, now, seeing as the other one snuffed out not too long ago. Slipped right through his fingertips, ashes whisking away in the wind to join the vast desert comprised of the shit. He wonders, idly, if the rest of the men on that mission greeted Ajax on the other side. Wonders if he's now greeted Elias.

He wonders, ever so bitterly, if he threw away his youth for nothing.

Fourteen men against hundreds. And that now amounts to this: two survivors left to shoulder the weight of a legacy that's since been crushed in the hands of the very fucker that made it.

And for what? A crime none of them even commit. A crime that none of them would ever dream of committing, apart from the son of a bitch persecuting them for it.

Fucking traitor. A roach that refuses to leave, no matter what you do to get rid of it. And now he has Logan, doing god knows what to that poor kid. The kid that Elias had trusted them with.

Fuck. He doesn't even know if Hesh is okay yet.

Familiar footsteps break him out of his thoughts.

"Gonna catch a cold out here, frosty."

"Not how that works," he replies dully, refusing to look away from the distant glimpses of light and life. He hears Merrick sigh, those heavy footsteps slowly approaching until they were right next to him. Merrick slumped down in that spot, looking out at the same skyline with the most resigned, exhausted eyes he's ever seen on the guy. They don't speak for a while, letting the gentle winds fill the dead air between them, until Keegan finally breaks it.

"'s the kid okay?"

Another sigh, shakier this time.

"Stable," Merrick reports, "Kick's watching over him with Riley."

"You know hell's gonna break loose when he wakes up, right?"

"I think hell's what we'll need to actually kill Rorke."

"As if we haven't raised enough of it the last few times we've tried."

"Takes a lot to kill a Ghost."

"Unless you're him," Keegan could taste the bitterness as it rolled off his tongue, "then it's easy pickings across the board,"

"Keegan-"

"We're fucked, Merrick." Keegan hisses, turning to glare at the other, stunning him into silence. "He got Ajax. He got Elias. And now he has Logan. We were barely keeping with it in the first place, nevermind now! We're a thread away from losing everything." At this point, Keegan was shaking, breaths shuddering as words spilled out, built up over who knows how long. "That sick fuck knows he's won, and he took Logan just to piss in the wound."

Merrick breaks through his shock almost immediately, shaking his head. The stress - the loss - had gotten to all of them. Ajax should have been the final straw, the point of no return for Rorke. It should've been the moment where they stopped fucking around and got on with it. And yet here they are. Four men down, the rest breaking apart like glass. In the exact state that Rorke wanted them in.

Fuck that.

"We're going to get him back, Keegan." Merrick refutes, "I know you, brother, and this isn't you. You don't lay down for anyone, especially not Rorke." He watches as Keegan averts his gaze, stubbornly keeping it to the floor. He frowns, and grabs the other man's shoulder, firm but not harsh, "Hey. Look at me."

Keegan isn't a particularly emotional guy. Merrick's known that since they met a whole 22 years ago. Hell, the kid didn't even really joke until a good few months into being friends with him and Ajax. Much like the rest of them, the easiest thing to resort to is anger; raw and powerful, fuel for action and a momentary relief from fear, or hesitation. But Keegan's anger, even so, wasn't exactly the same. Just as brutal, but hardly ever as explosive. It was contained and precise, much like everything Keegan did, much like everything Keegan felt. So when Keegan looked up at him, it almost took him aback to see the amount of grief in those eyes, uninhibited and nothing short of painful.

"I miss them." Keegan chokes out finally, voice fragile and breaking, barely audible. Shame stirs in his stomach, making him nauseous before working its way up, gripping his heart and then balling up to cause a lump in his throat that he tries his best to swallow around. "I miss him." The shame ignites like a gasoline trail, flaring quickly into anger (whether it's at himself or Rorke... it's hard to tell with all the smoke) that only makes him feel more sick. "God damn it, I miss that piece of shit."

And Merrick understands. Because of course he does. Rorke was their leader, the one they all depended on and the one they thought would always guide them instead of turning into the nightmare that he is now. It was the worst fear of any Ghost.

Keegan's head thumps against his shoulder in defeat, and suddenly they weren't in - or just shy of - their 40s. They were teenagers again, with only each other to truly trust in. Just as lost, but even more alone than they ever had been.

"What do we do Merrick?" Keegan mutters, "God, what do we fucking do? It's over... We can't win this shit."

"Look at me." Merrick repeats, almost wincing at seeing Keegan's mournful gaze again. "We're not losing, alright? We're gonna get back out there, we'll find Logan and we'll take down that son of a bitch. For Elias. For Ajax. For everything he's taken from us."

Keegan hesitates, searching Merrick's eyes before sighing, nodding meekly.

"Right. You're right." He almost loses his balance as Merrick pulls him in. Neither of them had ever been the touch-y feel-y sort, far from it actually, especially in Keegan's case; but both of them know this hug is overdue, something they've needed for longer than either wants to admit. And they stay like that, leaning into each other, watching the skyline in silence. For the first time in a while, Keegan takes comfort in warmth.

"It's just us, now, Keegan," Merrick sighs. "Let's make it count."