#hesh walker x fem reader

[blingblong55]

Smooth- David 'Hesh' Walker NSFW

Based on a request:

Hello!! Do you think you could write some smut for Hesh, gn!reader, pretty please? <3 you have all artistic freedom

F!Reader, smut, MDNI, 18+, face sitting, unprotected!sex, oral!sex, rough!sex, after care, fluff?

A/N: I love it when I get artistic freedom :) and like last one, we are going straight to the smut part

Your moans muffled by the cock in your mouth, his tongue teasing the sensitive skin of your wet cunt. His hands keeping your down, slapping your ass once in a while so you would clench around his tongue. He loves the taste and feeling when you get sensitive. Your drool making his tip and cum become more messy. You were drunk on his cum, barely being able to create a coherent sentence.

His balls in your hands and you licked and gave them the special treatment he needed. Your skirt pass your hips, the image in the mirror anytime you looked at it was more than pleasing. "H-hesh!" you whimper, unable to take this much pleasure. Your ass littered with his handprint, all red and stinging at each contact his calloused hand gave.

Your thighs shaking but also warming his face. Once he had cum inside your mouth enough times, he slaps your ass once more and makes your get on your knees. Tongue sticking out waiting for him to stroke himself in front of you. He places a small clip on the cock ring and a then on your necks collar. To keep his dick warm as he answered some emails and read mission files.

Your couldn't take his cock out of your mouth, the proximity of the cock ring and your collar making it impossible. You gag and choke multiple time, his cum leaking from your mouth after you couldn't swallow fast enough. Anytime he would be close to cumming, he would slap your face and spit in his hand and then slap you again.

The aftercare was the best part though, after he had unclipped you from that position, his arms wrapped around you as he carried you to bed. A warm and damped cloth cleaning your body, you would whimper when he would get to sensitive areas of your soft and smooth skin. He would kiss the reddened parts of your body, "You did so good for me, R/N." His lips meeting your thighs then stomach.

He handed you a bottle of water, and covered you in the softest blanket you two owned. He kisses your cheeks and caresses them, "I love you, my beautiful girl." More kisses on your cheek and forehead. His embrace so warm and in now way had a trace of the man that made you scream his name minutes before. You snuggle into his hold, such tranquility that he brought you after a much needed time.

A/N: brings me joy to say I'm excited my dear anon asked for him

[halcyone-of-the-sea]

Hi Hal!

Congratulations on finishing all the requests (there were so many good ones!!) and thank you for opening them up again!! I’m excited to see what you have in store for us with all your other projects, bestie!!! 😊😊

I was unsure of who to request at first because there are so many good ones but then I saw Hesh’s name and an idea hit me.

If you’re ok with it, could you possibly write one for Hesh where the reader is part of the Ghosts has been taken/captured by the Federation and after some time, they get intel on where she is so they go out to rescue her and she and Hesh are reunited? I don’t know if you want it to be a pre-established relationship or one where they both admit their feelings after they get her back, so I’m leaving it up to you. But I need a little rescue/reunion fic to fill the void in my heart that the ending of Ghosts made.

As always, feel free to change it up as you see fit and do whatever you want. I just think that Hesh deserves more love and I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing Riley again (aka: the best dog in the world)!!

Thank you and remember to take care of yourself and I appreciate you and your work!! 💕💕 Love you, bestie!!!!

Lengths Of Love

PAIRING: David 'Hesh' Walker x F!Reader

SYNOPSIS: You'd loved Hesh for as long as you can remember, and you'd pulled him out of trouble for even longer, but you'd never had the courage to tell him how you feel. Until you do. Until you're being dragged away from his broken body.

WORDCOUNT: 10.7k

WARNINGS: Major spoilers for CoD: Ghosts, heavy angst, blood, guts, descriptions of wounds, canon-typical violence, weapons and firearms, death, torture involving: drugs/hallucinogens, physical violence, mental stress, talks of PTSD, anxiety, paranoia, rescue fic, best friends to lovers plot, wounds that would 100% kill you that you live from (plot armor fr), etc.

A/N: Bestie, I don't know what you put into your prompts, lmao, but I always end up writing so much for you!! Thanks so much for sending something in <3<3

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

The beginning of the end started with good intentions and one statement. 

“You hear this? It’s Rorke. He’s here. They’re evacuating on the train system below.” Hesh’s green eyes darted to you and Logan, his painted face a collection of rage and surety. The three of you were, in an instant, in agreement of revenge—there was no question as to what had to be done. Merrick couldn’t stop you, not on this. 

Rorke had made one of the most dangerous decisions of his life, and that was underestimating the Walker boys and their partner in sinful crime. 

“Harp,” you look away from the body of the warhead as it enters the atmosphere, locking onto Hesh’s hard eyes; the ones that had grown steadily colder since the death of his father, Elias. But it wasn’t just him—the patriarch had been close to you as well. The knowledge of his passing, witnessing it as the rope restraints seared into your flesh, had lit an all-consuming fire in your gut.

Like hounds, the scent of blood had hit the air. 

“Let’s get the bastard. Now or never,” you ease out, and Logan darts his gaze down to you from behind his balaclava. 

“Damn right,” Hesh barks, nodding firmly to you.

Anyone would have missed the way your gaze lingered on him as he darted off and began rushing down the stairs from the control room, Logan ever quick at his heels. But they wouldn’t have missed the way your breath pushed out a soft sigh as your eyes kept locked on the back of Hesh’s head as you followed after. 

You’d been childhood friends since practically infancy, a neighbor to the Walkers. It was natural that Hesh would grow to be the object of your daydreams ever since grade school; a constant and digging knife into your heart when he’d repeatedly pick other girls over you.

But such was life. 

All that mattered now was bringing down Rorke, silly love could wait.

“Merrick,” Hesh yelled down his line, the world outside this building rampant with open war. “The missile’s away and we’ve got a lead on Rorke, we’re going after him!” 

The white double doors meet the three of you as you all rush to them, and the panicked man’s voice flashes down the line immediately. 

“Negative Hesh! You three get back here and return to the rally point. We’ll track him down together.”

You call, “Isn’t an option, Merrick. We can’t let this one go.” 

You and Hesh ram your shoulders into the doors, Logan darting through first with his weapon drawn down the hallway. The brunette’s and your shoulders brush in a jostling of gear—pulling the back as your eyes lock. Cold light seeps from overhead, metal under your feet clanking in-key.

You look away before Hesh agrees and levels with the Ghost over the line to push your point. “Sorry, Merrick. Your mission is complete…ours isn’t.”

Federation heads pop up from behind makeshift barriers of barrels and other stacked items and as you all enter and clear rooms, alarms blare with the ferocity of fighting lions. Hesh keeps by your side, offering you openings that you greedily take as another soldier falls with a stiff twitch of your finger on the trigger. 

Darting behind cover, the man slams to the space beside you, calling over above the noise and the whizz of bullets.

“How long till impact?!” You shove a new clip into your FAD, brushing sweat and blood from your cheeks, smearing patches of your own paint. 

Glancing at the watch on your wrist, you hear Logan pushing the line. You dart out of cover to help—locking onto hostiles and backing up the younger brother with quick feet.

“Eight minutes, Hesh! You got a plan that doesn’t leave me with scorched hair?” He finds it in himself to laugh, clocking a soldier to your left and riddling him with bullets. 

“We need to get to that train, Harp. Don’t worry—I’ll kiss the burns away for you.” He rushes past and sends a smirk over his shoulder. You’re left stunned for a second, wishing that the teasing tilt to the older brother’s words was more than that. You blink, and the feeling is forced away.

Later.

“Keep pushing, Logan,” Hesh moves on. You all sprint down descending ramps, farther and farther underground with every step; adrenaline building to a breakneck level like weight slowly being added over and over to a chest. “We need to get to Rorke!” 

You didn’t want to tell him, but, while revenge was on your plate as well, this was a very reckless idea.

As you grab for a grenade from your belt and jerk on the pin, you chuck it down the way and call out a warning to the boys, who, like a well-oiled machine, dart and wait for it to detonate. Bodies fly, bloody splashes of torn limbs, and three Ghosts materialize from the smoke with masked and painted faces; eyes like fire and veins boiling. 

“Fire team suppressed in 3-1,” Hesh shouts through the line as you slide your knife into a man’s eye, his goggles breaking in a shattering of glass. “Advancing to loading bay!” 

There’s a large elevator ahead for transporting crates, and all of you jog inside as the gate creaks shut.

Merrick’s stiff voice replies, “Roger that.”

Silently, you click into the channel and mutter out as a moment of relative peace coats your body like a blanket, even if for a few small seconds. 

“I’ll keep ‘em safe,” a small twitch of your lips, “Commander.”

A deep and unimpressed voice wafts into your ear with a large sigh. “Know you will—just remember to keep yourself safe in the process, Kid…Don’t do anything stupid.”

You shift your gaze to Hash and find green already staring at you. Blinking, the man quickly darts his vision away and after a moment you turn your face back down to the connection and huff through a burning epidermis.

“Haven't you heard?” The elevator shows the train as it descends down, and you call to the boys, ‘six minutes’, with a firm voice. 

“Stupid seems to follow us three everywhere.”

Hesh points as the figures of more soldiers walk around below. “There’s Rorke’s train, straight ahead!” Sure enough, the worm of black and gray metal extends to your eyes across the large room

“He’ll be on there soon. Logan, take left.” You order and the brown-eyed man nods from beside you, shouldering his rifle and checking the clip. “Hesh?” 

“Taking right—you got Point, Doll.” He stares at you, licking his lips. “Clear the way?” You tilt your head at him as the elevator jumps to a stop, the barrier sliding away. It pains you to look away.

There were so many things you had to tell him. Too many things. 

“Always.” Shiting your face forward, you take a breath and take notice of points of cover, scoping the room in three seconds flat. Screeching wheels and alarms ingrain your eardrums. “On me.” 

As you head out first, fire the first bullet, the two peel off in opposite directions, Hesh only sliding up beside you and uttering into your ear.

“Be safe.” 

That comment makes you want to be anything but, if only he’d whisper into your ear like that again. 

Clearing the room, you can’t get your mind off the fact that this crush was overtaking nearly every part of your life—years of quiet agony and staying your tongue in fear of losing what great friendship you had. 

The stock set into your shoulder recoils with another burst of fire, Federation soldiers scream in pain, but you barely register over the shadows in the sides of your vision. 

“Damnit, Hesh,” you growl, bullet grazing your shoulder as you grunt and slip behind a concrete divider. 

“What’s that?” Your eyes widen comedically. Shit…had you forgotten to close the line? 

“Eh,” you clear your throat, grimacing at the small sparks of pain in your shoulder. “N-nothing.” 

There’s a bout of silence and then a panting voice, rough and growing more serious. “You alright over there, Harp?” You can’t even respond before Hesh quickly continues. “I’m comin’ to you. Stay there.”

You violently shake your head, although he can’t see it.

“Hesh, I’m fine! Keep right and clear that hallway.” 

There’s a deep grunt. “Fine, but if I see one scratch I’m makin’ Riley chase you down the Base when we get back.”

If we get back.

You roll your eyes with a growing smile, steeling yourself and slamming your weapon to the top of the divider before locking onto your targets. “Please, we both know he loves me too much for that.”

“Most I’ll have to do is put a treat in your pocket, Sweetheart.” His sly smirk is heard easily, and you swallow tense-like and breathe shakily. That low drawl in his tone left you more distracted than you could ever get used to. “Hell,” There’s a struggle over the line before the shink of a knife meeting flesh. A breathless chuckle that leaves your gut swirling. “Maybe I’ll just chase you down myself.”

Logan coughs over the line and you have to click off before you scream. Your face flares up until your ears ring and you have to duck behind your cover again before you get metal right to the forehead. 

Behind the barrier, you glare at the floor.

When did general teasing get so hard for you? Jokes and jabs carrying weight—since when? Sure you’d liked—more liked loved—Hesh since before all of this, but you’d carried on well enough. 

“Fucking hell,” you grumble, shaking your head to clear it and rushing. 

The brothers pop through the side hallways to flank the enemy, taking out the one or two hostiles that were still breathing after you level your barrel with the last standing head; firing with a burst of gunpowder.

“Train’s leaving, let's go!” Hesh screams, waving an arm quickly at you, walking backwards on quick feet. “Harp, C’mon!” 

You chuff, hopping the divider and sprinting as the metal object speeds up—there’s a moment where you fear you might miss it, Hesh and Logan both forced to hop on even in your absence.

“Harp!” Green eyes flash, one hand on the railing and the other extended out. 

“On it!” Snapping, you slam your palm into his and feel his strong fingers curl to clutch you. Logan grabs your collar and helps; the both of them easily yanking you over just as the wall of the tunnel engulfs you all in illuminated shadow.

Back meeting the train’s body, you pant and chuckle as Logan shakes his head, amused, and pats your shoulder. You wink at him jokingly. 

“Good save there, Walker Number Two.”

Hesh grabs the side of your neck, looking you over as he leans back with a breathless chuckle at the title for his brother. He blinks quickly at your shoulder, eye narrowing before he reaches out and looks at the blood on your gear.

“You mind telling me what this is, Doll?” You make a nose in the back of your throat as the smell of his musk hits your nostrils; the deadly concoction of his scent and his digging gaze.

Stuttering, you huff. “Eh…bullet graze?”

You’re leveled with thin lips, but Logan grabs his brother by the upper arm and peels him off you, motioning to his radio as the train gains even more speed. Wind whips past your face as Hesh clears his throat, quickly avoiding your eyes. 

The man’s splotchy paint shows his red skin under the darker pigment. 

“Merrick, we’re on the train,” he speaks, shifting past you without another look. “We’re going after Rorke.”

“Solid Copy.” You watch the brunette walk away and hold your breath, though you don’t know why—heart beating not just because of adrenaline. 

Embarrassment breeding in your stomach, you ignore Logan’s knowing stare and push off the wall, rubbing at your bleeding shoulder with a stiff hand. 

—

You break a man’s neck against the wall, hand on the back of his head before you slam it into the hard metal. There’s a crunch of bone and a broken rattle before the broadcasted feed from the screen on the train’s panel spits out a message in panicked Spanish to the already deceased men.

“Evacuation protocol C is in effect. All personnel secure cargo and supplies—”

Hesh interrupts ahead of you as you let the body drop, scowling at the heavy sound of its dead weight. At his angry voice, you perk and tune in.

“Tell Rorke we’re comin’ for him.” There’s a quick shove from the other end of the feed, the previous man disappearing as the individual that takes his place makes your eyes go to slits. A great growl like a wolf echoes from your heart and seeps from between your clenched teeth. 

Rorke’s scarred face appears with a smirk and a cocky voice.

“Why don’t you just tell me yourself?” You look at your boys, more concerned for them as you watch firsthand the trauma the death of their father brought them. 

Logan holds his weapon tighter, fixing his grip. Hesh is a bit more direct. He leans closer to the screen, bearing his teeth like a dog and snarling with rage and hatred.

“You’re done, Rorke.” All of a sudden he peels back a fast fist and sends it careening into the screen—making a shattering of glass and a hard thud emanate deep into your bones. 

Blinking quickly, you tense as it happens, not expecting that. But as soon as you try to make sense of it, the brunette is already banking off to the side door, calling a sharp, “Let’s finish this!”

He grabs the side of the train car and wrenches on the handle, grunting and pushing with all of his might.

“Hesh,” you try to reason, stepping in now before things get too hot. “We need to think of a plan before you rush into things. This could get us in a heap of shit that we might not be able to get out of.”

It’s like he doesn’t hear you, and you spare a glance with Logan for help. But he, too, has already joined his brother with a swish of gear on the handle. With one great push, the door opens to the outside brightness, making your face turn away for a moment. 

Along the far expanse of open sand dunes outside; mountains flanking the bridge this train flies across, you get the perfect view of a warhead meeting the ground in an explosion of fire and death. It bursts far across the valley, and you cover your eyes as the sharp ball of light burns your retinas. 

The shockwave hits moments later, and Hesh says easily as the train shakes and squeals like a metal pig, “Looks like Icarus got control of the rods!” The boys step out onto the platform along the train, and you have no option but to follow. “All that’s left is Rorke, let's go!”

“Hesh,” you try again, hissing out his name, and you’re graced with a quick glance.

“Harp,” he comments, “what is it? We can’t wait any longer—”

“What we can’t do is go in blind!” You shout above the wind, legs stanced to help you stay up. Green eyes twitch with confusion, perhaps even a little hurt. 

“Blind? What are you talking about, we push forward and take what’s owed.” You know how much this means to him—to Logan—but there was a point where pride and stubbornness outweighed sense. This was dangerous, especially for Hesh. 

You were always the one to keep him level; keep him from becoming too much like his dad. 

You’d promised that old bastard you’d look after his boys, albeit in a teasing sense, but to you, it had been a stark vow on your soul. Logan was a brother to you, and Hesh…Hesh would always be more, but that only made your love for them both grow. 

“You keep those two from getting in their heads, you hear? They mean well, but there’s no one I trust more than you to level them out, Harp. I’m proud of you. And I’m sure your folks would be too.” Elias had said that, and when he died you bottled it up and used so much force that coal had turned to diamond. 

You would keep Logan and Hesh safe. Safe, and level, and not hard-headed. 

For as much as you secretly loved your brunette, he sure was stubborn as all hell.

“If you want out, Harp,” Hesh calls to you, gritting his teeth. “Just wait back in the train car. This is something we can’t put off like everything else—this ends now; today. I’m not letting Dad’s killer survive.”

“Son of a bitch, that’s not what I’m saying!” You’re quickly losing your standing. Logan jogs ahead to scout, time ticking. “Hesh, you know that I loved Elias as much as you two did—not one is denying that this needs to happen. I'm with you. But this is too damn dangerous! We can’t rush into this without a plan of attack; of exfil! Do you even know how we’re going to get off of this thing?!” 

Hesh had been isolating the few days he had on the U.S.S Liberator, keeping to his room. The man idolized his father and put him on a pedestal of gold even when he was a teenager. He’d even pushed away from you, which all together was unheard of. Logan had nearly had an aneurism when you’d come back to the cafeteria and shook your head in disappointment after trying to get him to open his door. 

The two of you told each other everything. Always. That was just…how it was.

But the man that Hesh had donned the skin of was not the man you loved.

Hesh glares at you, eyes going alight with anger. 

“If you were with me, you wouldn’t be holding me back.” He turns and runs after Logan, leaving you behind in the open air as the train banks left and right with the sway of the bridge. 

Staring. Barely breathing. Mouth parted and eyes wide. 

When the man is at the end of the current train car, having to jump a small distance to the next, he pauses. His back is tight, and under him, his feet shuffle. 

There’s a moment you hope he’ll turn around and come back, take you into one of his hugs, and squeeze the life out of you. It wouldn’t be such a cruel way to die, you think, to be held in his arms. 

But the next moment you see the back of his head shake, and he jumps over to the next section, not even giving you a second glance.

You don’t want to admit how long you waited there, your mind jumbled and confused. 

Don’t take it personally, you try to tell yourself, sucking down a breath before slowly walking forward. He’s hurt. Grieving. He didn’t mean it.

Rationality was a tool of the level-headed, and you were anything but that nowadays.

Over the line Hesh’s voice makes you flinch as you slowly follow after, train car after train car.

“Rorke must be at the front of the train!” You step over dead bodies and lend merciful bullets to the ones still writhing, boots coated in crimson. Following a trail of wreckage with stiff lungs. 

Stay out of his way? Fine, you could do that.

You stayed back from the head-to-head fighting, laying covering fire and keeping off the comms—whenever Hesh managed to look back at you, you simply moved on to the next hostile. 

Eventually, you all ended up on the rooftops, the boys far ahead and yourself blank-faced at the rear. Logan was acting more concerned than Hesh was, glancing at you constantly in confused worry. But it was very much short-lived.

“Incoming!” The right side of the railcar bursts with fire, and you gasp before grappling for the opposite side of the train, keeping you there before the swaying beast leveled out. “Helos. Take cover and take out the gunners!”

You scoff, quickly making your way behind a connector joint to lean your back against it and catch your breath. Two helicopters fly alongside the train, Logan already firing at one, and Hesh…your eyes narrow with annoyance. Hesh was already running ahead of the pack, his low grunts and growls over the line giving way to his impatience. 

You click your jaw and try to remind yourself that this is the same man who held you close during movie nights and carried you to bed when you fell asleep. Made you waffles when your boyfriend in eighth grade broke up with you on Valentine’s Day.

Stitched your wounds before he gave them a teasing ‘kiss better’ and looked up at you through dark lashes. 

You wildly shake your head to force yourself back to the present.

The gunners are harder to hit not only based on wind and distance alone, but on the erratic movements of the pilots. It’s several clips before you down the second Helo, and Logan’s follows immediately after as they both collide and ram into the mountainside.

You both share a glance and rush after the misguided brunette. 

At the end of the train, only the engine remains. 

“Clear!” Hesh relays, jumping down from the roof of the railcar and hurriedly walking to the white door, leaning against the wall. “We’re at the last car, Logan. Rorke’s pinned, he knows we’re comin’.”

You gaze down from the top as Logan follows, silent and brooding. Your hands along your FAD tighten under your gloves. You don’t even look at the man. 

“Merrick, do you copy?”

“Copy, Hesh.”

“We’re moving in on Rorke.” You slide him a look, seeing him glaring those pretty greens into the ground. “If you hear the word “Checkmate”, you will fire on our position! Confirm?” Your eyes snap with horror, heart lurching.

Surely, you hadn’t heard that right.

Merrick’s voice echoes your frozen confusion. “Say again, repeat your last.”

You jump down and stagger for a moment, barking out a harsh, “What the fuck are you doing?” Inside of your chest, your heart rampages like it never had before. “That’s suicide!”

He was going to kill everyone to bring down Rorke, and you get no answer beyond a clenched jaw and a quick side-eye.

“You heard me, Merrick, on “Checkmate”, hit this train!” The connection is cut and Logan gets into position to shoulder the door open, you watch, stuttering. 

Hesh levels with his brother, “We can’t take any chances, Logan. Even if we fail, Rorke dies.” Panic builds, and you’re taking quick steps forward.

You keep those two from getting in their heads, you hear?

You have to stop them, you have to drag them away—but even you know that deep down the only thing that will stop these two is a bullet. 

Eyes snapping back and forth, you only get close enough to try and snatch at Hesh’s arm right as he finishes a countdown of three; at the end, Logan kicks down the engine room door with a violent connection of his boot.

Even with the drop on the three guards inside, it doesn't stop the bullet from ripping through your lower side, preoccupied and distracted yet again. You yell loudly, balking back into the door frame and hunching over as blood spurts out of you. Hesh’s head whips your way immediately, jaw going slack and a soul-deep hysteria takes over.

So now he pays attention.

“Shit, Harp!” So little time. 

Logan can’t take care of the last remaining Fed soldier by himself, and in a large act of self-sabotage, that very soldier just happened to have a missile launcher. 

The entire left engine explodes—the train jerks; everyone is sent in a back-and-forth motion, first hitting off the last train car before being sent right back through the engine room entirely. A transference of force gives you whiplash as your head bounces off the door frame. 

The world goes blurry, body hitting and slamming through layers of glass and pain before the control room is suddenly where you end up, using the body of a stunned guard as a cushion. 

There’s a second of muffled gunfire, struggling and yelling—and then it all comes back into focus like a sniper’s scope being correctly sighted. You gargle an expletive and shove the guard under you back down despite the searing heat in your side and head; struggling to unsheathe your combat knife as the world tilts. 

Hands push at your cheeks, grip at your neck futilely, but when you get the blade out and struggle the hands down once more, you hammer the point into his throat with a thump of your boot pressing for purchase on the floor. 

The man spasming, you push off of him and slam to the ground, coughing in great lung-shattering segments.

“You can’t win, Rorke!” Hesh’s voice brings you back from the swirling, and you hear your blood patter to the metal floor like rain.

“Shit,” you mutter, gasping for air. 

Gazing up you see Rorke holding Logan in a chokehold, free hand pointing a gun at Hesh. Your eyes bulged, trying to push onto your knees and reach for your weapon as you saw Hesh continually looking away from the target and worriedly watching you. His hands at his sides are loose, but when you lock eyes with him, they clench and shake. 

“It’s over—” He tries, but the loud gunshot bounces off the train’s enclosed space. You’re yelling before you can think, darting forward and leveling your gun right to Rorke’s head as Hesh’s form collapses to the ground.

Standing on unsteady feet, you pant and stumble, but the devil’s brown eyes hold you captive. Rorke smirks as you guard Hesh behind you. 

“Well, well, well, seems the girl’s just as promising as you, eh, Logan? She’s the other one who slipped her binds in Las Vegas.” He laughs. “Look at me, I’m surrounded by young talent.” 

“I don’t exactly care if you are or aren’t,” you growl, shuffling to keep Hesh even farther behind you as you instrumentally cough again. Your legs are wobbling. “Just that you put my fucking friend down.”

“You willing to die for him?” Rorke looks demented, with his scar and his intimidating build. Whatever torture he had been through to make him like this—a Ghost killer—it had worked perfectly. There was no coming back from this. He whistles lowly. “That’s some loyalty you have there.”

His mind was dead to all else.

You don’t hesitate in an answer, even as the man behind you grabs your leg, trying to move you with a wheezing breath.

“H-Harp,” his spine moves in a cough. “Don’t…please.”

“Always.” Interest alights in those dark, tiny eyes. Logan tries to give you messages with his gaze, but you ignore him. Ironic. “That’s not something I’ll break on. Unlike you.”

“Shit, Kid,” there’s a grand laugh, “now that’s heartless…but good,” Rorke glances at Hesh, raising a brow and chuckling. “I’ll love to see the look in his eyes when I—”

“Checkmate!”

“Checkmate confirmed.” You look down at Hesh and see him watching you, his gaze open and bare. 

“I’m sorry,” he gasps, but all you can do is watch. 

There’s no time to think.

“I love you,” you confess in a fleeting moment of bare nothingness, blurting it out. “I’ve loved you.”

Hesh’s body entirely halts, jaw slowly slackening in horror; something shifts behind his eyes but before he can open his mouth, a rageful bark bullies the smooth tone of his throat back.

“What did you do?!” Your form is bodied into the controls behind you, colliding as you snarl and are forced to recover. With a snap of your finger, you fire a shot into Rorke’s foot. 

He yells and whips his wrist back, slamming the butt of his gun into your temple. 

As the bridge ahead of the train explodes, Hesh drags himself to cover your body, muttering into your flesh words you cannot name as the darkness sets in.

“It’s over,” Hesh speaks grimly to Rorke, turning to look at him silently as he presses your head into his chest, sharing a nod and thin-lipped look with Logan still stuck in his arm. “It’s over.”

“Shit, Son…” The train gets thrown and broken in a wave of utter destruction and rebirth; and through it all, Hesh never lets go—not even when the water below comes up to meet you.

—

The beach’s sand is coarse, and it sticks to your gear with a fervent hold. To your skin, the paint, and blood, for the moment washed away as hands dragged you from the water, small puffs of breath and whimpers greeting you. 

“C’mon, Sweetheart.” Hesh. And he sounded frantic. “C’mon, open…open your eyes, dammit. Please, you just told me the best thing you possibly could. Please.” 

Water slips off your neck, and as you’re weakly lying back, propped against a rock, hands slip to your cheeks, moving the skin as a barely conscious body tries to make you wake up. 

A forehead hits against your shoulder, a deep groan of pain emanating from the man who grips at your gear.

“No, no, c’mon,” Hesh can barely keep himself sitting up, bloody and broken. Logan had to drag him from the water not seconds prior, and in turn, Hesh had grabbed what little strength was left and helped him get you. “Logan!” Green darts to brown, and the older brother pleads in a broken voice, “Help me!”

You bend your head forward and cough up blood and water, shoving Hesh away from you so you can collapse on your side and expel your stomach.

“Harp,” the man quickly mutters, dragging himself over and grabbing your shoulder to keep your face out of the sand. “Fuck, okay—it’s okay I’ve got you.”

“You,” your voice cuts out, and you shake as you gasp and sputter, “A-are a fucking idiot!” 

Hesh chuckles, and you feel his head hit off your arm, his struggling breath. “God, I know. I know, Sweetheart.” 

Logan crawls over to you, pushing you back against the rock and grappling for his medical pouch as Hesh patches into the comms. You grunt and look down at the younger brother, head swirling in colors and ears pounding with your pulse. 

“Merrick, do you copy? Merrick, come in.”

“Hesh! Hesh, is that you?” You weakly smirk at the shock and relief from the tone, letting your head tilt back as Logan hurriedly packs your gunshot wound with gauze. You wince and stare at the sky—blood infectiously tinging the sand below you. 

Hesh tries to help too, but you and the man are in far worse shape than Logan. The older brother’s shoulder leans into yours heavily, and you shift your eyes to the side as they flutter.

You haven't forgotten what you told him, what you confessed, but right now pushing back the black in the sides of your vision was more important.

And Rorke. What had happened to Rorke?

“Yeah,” Hesh watches you, face screwed with concern. “Yeah, I’m with Harp and Logan. We’re…we’re alive. Rough shape, but alive.”

“And Rorke?” You hold your breath.

“Dead.” Logan ties off a quick tourniquet and your spine tightens in agony, hissing out as your nerves spike with electricity. The brown-eyed man spares you a sorry glance but you shake your head in dismissal. “He’s dead.” 

Out in the water, the enemy warships are firing off missiles inland, some smoking and others already sinking. Merrick gives you the news as Hesh brings a hand up to your chin, tilting your head his way. You go willingly, skin on fire from the scrape of his gloves. 

Logan moves back, having done what he can, before he collapses back into the sand, panting with an arm over his stomach. His older brother’s forehead bumps into yours, eyes stuck. 

“Copy that. The Federation is in full retreat—the rest of the payload is inbound to finish the…”

Whatever else Merrick relays is lost and Hesh’s lips splay over yours, his nose letting out a long breath and body sagging, dead-weight. Cheeks hot and mind running, you let instinct take over and reciprocate, quick fingers pulling at his vest straps.

“Since when?” He asks, breathless when he moves back an inch. 

“After you introduced me to your first girlfriend, Cassie Albrook,” you smile, eyes crinkling. “Seventh grade. The one with the black hair? God, I was so jealous.” 

Hesh chuckles deeply, body jerking as he kisses you again, pulling back and holding your cheek in his hand. His eyes are wide and open.

“You mean to tell me, I could have been kissin’ you all the way back since seventh grade?” Your face moves with pure love, flesh going soft—even the pain diminishes somewhat. 

Merrick’s voice still gruffly moves down the line, and the last bits of his sentence are heard. 

“...Sit tight, Recon’s comin’ for ya.” Everything was looking up. 

Missiles slam into the Federation ships out in the water, the sudden burst of liquid and fire making Hesh briefly cover you with his side to protect you from the shockwave. When you turn to look, nothing but sinking metal remains. 

“I’m sorry,” Hesh tells you, and you don’t have the energy to pull away from his neck as you let your head rest—the thumping of your brain and the calming shadow of his form giving way to believe you had a concussion. 

“Hm,” you hum, letting him continue. His voice echoed in his breast.

“I…I’ve been an ass these past few days, weeks, I shouldn’t have said what I did—wanted to take it back as soon as I turned away from you.” You close your eyes and sigh long, sarcastic even now. 

“You owe me dinner and a movie, then I’ll see if I can forgive you.” Hesh chuckles, nose pressing down into your scalp. He kisses you there as water falls from his chin.

“Sounds like a plan, Doll.” The man lets himself rest, curled around you and waiting for the recon team as the sand and the water move. “I love you too…just so you know. Long time.”

Your failing mind lets off a scoff. But a happy one.

When you wake again, not remembering when you’d fallen asleep, it is to the sound of screaming. 

“Logan!” You jolt up and have to place a hand on your head to stop the pounding. Hesh is struggling to move, fighting to get to his younger brother who you turn as quickly as you’re able to face. “Logan!”

Your face voids of blood. 

Rorke is dragging the other man away, pushing him to the ground as Logan tries to fight like a dog on his back, with only one arm working properly. Growling, you try to stand—body falling and sliding right back down as Rorke kicks Logan’s combat blade from his hand, walking over to you and Hesh. 

He stands and pants, limping from your shot to his foot and a hand across his abdomen in obvious pain.

“Look what you did,” Rorke motions behind him to the still-falling missiles being disposed of from space into the ocean; atop the wreckage of what Rorke had been a part of. Falling to your side, you leave behind a raging Hesh who attempts to move and get to Rorke while you go to Logan. The devil wheezes and points from you to the boys, forcing a grunt of approval. “You’re good.”

Hesh is shoved back by a ruthless boot into the rock, and you snarl, coming over to Logan and his very broken arm as he weakly writhes on the ground. You place your body over his and bare your teeth as if a beast. 

“Rorke!” You bark. “It’s over! It’s done. Everything you’ve built is dead and recon is on its way for us…you’re finished.”

“Nothin’s finished, no,” Hesh tries to lunge again as Rorke’s body stumbles closer to you but falls into ragged coughs and stays on his side in utter agony. 

“Stay away from them!” The man you’d just confessed to hisses, hand grasping futilely at the sand. Green eyes run back and forth from you to Logan, desperate and breaking by the second. “Rorke! You son of a bitch!”

“Nothin’s ever finished.” Grabbing you by the scruff of your neck, you’re being tossed off Logan and thrown to the side in a cloud of sand, body screaming at you as you yell out loudly. 

Rorke bends a knee to look Logan in the eyes, shaking his head.

“You’d of been a hell of a Ghost.” Yelling, you wrench at the combat knife in your vest, set your feet, and tackle Rorke off of the Walker boy with a feral curse on your breath. 

“Get the fuck off of—” Your leg twists with a defining crack as you’re grappled and thrown off, only able to slice a nice long cut down his jaw and at the beginning of the man’s throat. 

Screaming you hear briefly Hesh’s rageful bellow, his calling of your name in high keens of helplessness. Promises of revenge and justice. 

Breath breaking as tears line the back of your eyes, Rorke comes over you and pins your dominant hand to the ground—you look up and grimace, trying to make your body function. 

Move!

Rorke laughs, great shoulders shaking with glee. He’s fucking demented as he continues his sentence from before your fruitless attack. 

“...But that’s not gonna happen, is it?” The man smiles and you struggle as Logan and Hesh rapidly try to assist. 

“Harp!”

“There ain’t gonna be any Ghosts.” Rorke’s eyes shift to Hesh, and you follow with a sense of dread and horror. The man’s mind had been made up when he turned back around, disregarding Logan entirely in favor of you and your ‘unbreakable’ loyalty. 

The joy it would bring him to destroy you and set you loose after such. Set you loose on Hesh. 

He leans in close to you, so you can feel his breath and his conviction. 

“We’re gonna destroy ‘em together.” 

“Harp!” You’re shoved back, knife grasped and ripped from your hand as your broken leg is grabbed and pressure is applied. 

You scream again, arms carding across the dunes as Rorke begins dragging you backward like a child holding onto a stuffed toy. Blown green eyes meet yours, Hesh reaching out and screaming at the top of his lungs for you. 

But he can’t move.

“Harp!” 

And you can’t feel your fingers. 

“I love you,” you whisper, perhaps for the last time and he sees your lips move. Hesh screams and slams his hand into the ground, Logan stumbling to his knees but immediately dropping back with a small cry. 

And Rorke chuckles.

—

You don’t know where he took you, but you do know the jungle floor is cold and wet, and the mud under your fingernails makes you feel gross. 

What you do know is that the earthen walls of the pit you are in are pointless to try to climb—the top is slatted with a covering of long sticks with wide square openings. You know it’s going to rain by the smell in your bloodied nostrils. 

You know that your leg is broken, your bullet wound is festering through the tourniquet, and your concussion is making you sleepy. 

In your head, you count these ‘knowns’ and sprinkle them like seeds as you stare blankly at the sky far above. Everything aches; hurts. When you breathe, it comes in and out with a wheeze. 

You know that Hesh loves you, and perhaps that’s the only fact you care about. Wherever he is, you’re glad he can’t see you like this. 

Rain patters against your head, the storm clouds finally rolling through. Leaves can be heard shuffling on their branches. You breathe in and out, rising and settling your lungs slowly. 

You can’t break—not like Rorke. 

No matter what he did to you, you can’t betray the Ghosts. Logan. Hesh.

Elias’s words echo as you curl into a tiny ball, shivering and whimpering as your wounds move and pull. 

...I’m proud of you. And I’m sure your folks would be too.

You know this game. Torture. They’ll pump you full of hallucinogens, starve you, beat you within an inch of your life; and through that you cannot give in.

But it’s easier said than done.

In the middle of the night, the top of the pit is pushed away and there are the voices of multiple people that dance above the rain storm. They jump down and in the state you are, there’s nothing you can do to stop them from hooking their arms under yours and hauling you up, limp and motionless. 

The words are in Spanish, and you still can make out some over the commotion and the way your hearing dips in and out. 

“Where do we inject….”

“...neck, I believe…arm could work too…”

“...nasty…was it? I heard…mix of drugs…Who knows?”

Your head is harshly yanked back, and the sharp pinch of a needle digs into your neck, the action making your good leg kick out in panic but there’s little you can do. 

A flood of thick fluid enters your veins and like sap seeping out of a tree some drops exit the wound and mix with the rain weighing down your clothes. They’d taken your gear, only your undershirt and cargo pants still clothing you. 

When they’re done, they let you drop back to the floor, where you flop and smash your face into the mud with a weak drag of your cheek along the sludge. With calls from above, a rope is tossed down and they all ascend. The top is clattered back over moments later. 

Laying still and groaning, teeth clenched, already you feel ten times more strange than before. 

“Ah,” you grasp at your head, which was bursting to begin with, as it gains a looseness to it—the mud below you shimmered with puddles, the chill got colder, and your clothes felt grating against your skin. “Not good. N-not good.” 

You pull at your shirt collar, coughing as your eyes bulge; your heart breaks itself as it immediately can be felt hammering into your ribcage far more sensitive than you’d ever experienced. It felt like your chest was going to rip open. 

Panicked sounds emanate from the back of your throat, fingers digging into your scalp as the drugs carry their venom through your blood. 

Your wounds blazed.

You start screaming, babbling for nothing, and pulling at your flesh, but the overhead striking of lightning leaves the desperation mute to all but the trees.

—

Hesh stares at you from the corner of the pit, but his eyes are not green. You watch, silent, barely moving, from where you curl into a tiny heap of bloodied flesh. You’d torn at your skin for days; time looped together with more injections and no food. Water you got from the sky.

They had offered soup, but you knew better even as you dug harsh lines into your neck. There were just more drugs in the broth. 

But Hesh. Hesh.

He wasn’t right—didn’t stand like him, or breathe like him; there was something off about his smirk as he watched you gaze at him in an addled stupor.

“Feelin’ good over there, Kid?” Not Hesh. Not. Hesh.

You’re panting, your body sweating profusely in the humidity and so, so hungry.

Not Hesh takes a step forward and his image tilts like the turning of a page with Rorke taking his place, but as soon as it happens it flips back on itself to your Love.

“N-not right,” you hurriedly whisper.

Not Hesh puts a hand to his ear, kneeling down in front of you. “What was that, now?” A long chuckle. His voice is…is…deeper. Your eyebrows flinch up and down. “Who do you see, Sweetheart?”

“Hesh,” you whimper out. “Hesh, what are you talking about? What’s going on? I…I feel like I’m…I’m twisted inside out.”

“Hesh, huh?” The man looks to the side, smiling. “Well, that’s better than I expected. This’ll be fun.”

“W-what—” A fist connects with your face and you get catapulted into the wall. Before anything else, your stomach is kicked, making your call of alarm get forced out as a gasp as your clotted bullet wound reopens in a great tear. A large hand grips you hard by the chin, snapping it forward to stare into those wrong eyes but the familiar face of Hesh. 

What was he doing to you?

“H…Hesh,” you can’t even stutter out his name before you break down into coughs and gagging; tears rolling down your cheeks, and blood and mud everywhere.

“Yeah, that’s right. You just keep lookin’ at me.” You dry heave and push at his hands, fingernails digging into his skin to create crescent moons. “Keep lookin’ at Hesh.”

—

It’s three months of the same, and you can’t go on anymore.

You lay in a near comatose state on the ground, flesh completely covered in mud and open wounds—maggots eat at your dead skin, wriggling deeper. Not having the heart to pick them out, or even move the few non-broken fingers you have, you lay in blank agony. Pain so deep you can’t scream or make a single noise. It would make it worse; it is making it worse. 

Breathing is becoming a chore.

“Is today going to be the day?! God, I sure hope so.” Hesh looks down from over the edge, fiddling with another syringe of drugs. “Enough blood down there to make a fuckin’ painting out of. Shit…You lasted longer than I thought, Kid.” You don’t look at him. At his dark, wrong, eyes. 

“I’m nearly impressed.” There’s a low chuckle and the crackling of branches. 

You close your eyes and try to think of a single kiss and green eyes, but the rest of the image is tainted to you. Your mind can’t call it forward without the corruption of the puppet ahead of you, this shifting specter of mist and smoke.

Memories that used to bring you comfort call to fear and spine-curling hurt. 

This couldn’t be Hesh, you told yourself for the millionth time, but…who else could it be? Your body was too broken to try and work through the hallucinations, to think or rationalize.

There’s a thump of boots and a grunt. Someone coming closer as birds speak far above. Singing. It's the first you can recall another living creature being this close to the smell of infected decay.

 “Now, now, let’s see that neck of yours.” You’re seized and pushed onto your back, head lulling and eyes fluttering. Hesh’s image shifts and bends into another, one you should be able to name but can’t quite recall. It’s hard to focus. “Just one more, and we can fix this. Together. No more Ghosts, huh? We’ll make it right.”

Birds songs. Birds and flying shadows. Rapid wing beats like an eagle or the pound of paws on the ground. 

There is an un-godly snarl and a call of rage. 

“Rorke!” The dark-eyed Hesh snaps his head away, his needle stilling in his grip only inches from your flesh. He’s grappled and ripped away, thrown up and slammed down into a full-body jerk of pure strength not a second later with a cry of shock. “Get the fuck off of her!” 

Shadows roll and wrestle, feral yowls like that of beasts bounce off your impaired hearing, mud stuck in your ears. You think your vision cuts out for a moment because the next there’s a different man gripping your shoulders, slightly shaking you back awake.

Blue eyes like the ocean. Your brow barely twitches in confusion. 

Keegan? 

“C’mon, that’s it. Right here.” A light is taken and directed right into your eye in the fading light. “You’re doin’ great, Harp. Just keep lookin’ at me.” 

The light passes over your blood-coated eyes and barely diolates. Keegan’s lips under his balaclava thin to an alarming degree. 

“Fuck,” he grunts, looking down at you before he darts his vision over to Hesh, the actual Hesh, who’s locked limbs with the former Ghost; fists to guts and primal anger. 

In his haste to get to you, Hesh had damned himself—he’d left no opening for any of the others to get a clean shot at Rorke. But no one could blame him, even if it was reckless; incredibly stupid. 

The man had been on your trail nearly every day since you’d been taken. Barely sleeping, eating little. A man possessed. 

The Ghosts had been half convinced something had taken over his image and scooped out his personality.

“Merrick,” Keegan patches into the secure line, looking back down at you. “Positive ID on HVT, three klicks West. Hesh has engaged—we found Harp.” 

There’s an instantaneous response, worried breath. “Solid copy…how’s she doing?”

“We need MedEvac immediately. She won’t last another night.” There’s a curse on the other end, a loud and quick call to the rest of his squad. 

“Copy! I’ll call it in!” Keegan tries to stabilize you as Hesh and Rorke rip each other to shreds, and Hesh, who had the upper hand in the beginning, is quickly losing it.

“Awe, look who tracked ‘er down!” Rorke snatches at Hesh’s collar and lays two jabs to his ribs—there’s a definitive crack as the younger man shouts in pain. “Young love! So fucking pointless.” 

“I’m going to rip you into pieces,” Hesh bares his teeth, eyes wild and unrestrained. For a moment Rorke looks taken aback by the utter conviction in his green gaze. “And make you choke on your own damn teeth! You hear me?!” 

Ripping away with a tear of fabric, Hesh bends low and tackles the former Ghost to the ground, splaying him out on his back before his fist is snapped back and brought down; again and again and again. 

“Hesh!” Keegan shouts, pressing deeply into your wounds and trying to give you fluids with one hand. “This fucking kid.” The Sergeant gives up, shaking his head. 

Trust had to be given, and Keegan knew that at this moment he had to trust Hesh to hold his own. He needed to keep you conscious. 

“Easy, Harp.” You can feel the cracks in your dry throat as the water seeps past them, and you cough up droplets before the blue-eyed Sergeant tilts your head and helps you. “Easy, Sweetheart.” 

Keegan doesn’t even want to look at your body as the brutal sounds of a fist on bone continue, clothes scuffling and gargled breaths—the savagery and barbarous remnants of mental and physical torture too much even for him. 

“Christ,” he hisses. 

You gulp down water slowly and let it fill your stomach like a brick. 

Hesh reduces Rorke’s face to a mess of flesh and busted bone, sweating and not even stopping as his knuckles split under his gloves or his fingers dislocated from their sockets. His eyes burn, his face goes red—he looks insane. 

He looks like a spirit of utter revenge. 

Only when Logan and Merrick drag him off the spasming body does he stop, but not after he tries like hell to fight out of that hold as well. Whipping around, he attempts to land a punch on Merrick before Logan is forced to put him in a restraint hold. 

Hesh’s cheek meets the mud, face being sunk into it as his right arm is twisted so far behind his back it nearly breaks. The older brother growls, free arm and legs moving—back sliding. 

“David!” Merrick barks at him, face pulled in a sneer, enraged at the man’s lack of sense. “Shut this shit down. Look at her, dammit!” Logan gets bucked off, but the youngest Walker boy has enough sense to wrestle him back down and grab onto his chin; forcing those green eyes to lock on you and Keegan. 

The second he sees you, he entirely freezes.

Merrick sighs out harshly, jogging over to you and already checking in with the MedEvac that Kick’s flying in. There would be no resistance—all the other hostiles were dead. 

“Jesus Christ,” the Commander breathes, kneeling by you instantly and studying your body. 

Hesh’s reaction is slower, but the spread of vile tears burns the back of his eyes. Logan lets him go at seeing this, standing and holding out a hand, but the brunette stays on the ground a moment longer; utterly still. 

Hesh’s mouth opens and closes. 

All at once he’s rushing over and limping up at your side as Merrick grabs more medical supplies from his packs to help you. 

“Oh my God,” Hesh breathes, and Keegan sends him a glance. You’d drank all of the water. “Harp, hey, you’re going to be okay—it’s gonna be alright, you hear? I’m right here, Logan and I are gonna get you home. Back to California, okay? Riley’s waitin’ for you, Doll.”

You flinch at that voice, and Merrick looks sharply at the blue-eyed Sergeant. Their eyes lock, holding for a long moment. Logan’s brows tighten in confusion. 

The brunette seems not to notice it at all, hands finding your cheek before Merrick can give him a warning. Your eyes slowly shift to him before they peel back with fear.

Hesh’s vision goes glossy, clenching his jaw. “Shit, what did he do to you—”

“Hesh!” 

You yell and yerk back, shoving the man off of you with a fear-filled sob. 

“No!” Keegan and Merrick grapple to keep you down, not wanting to aggravate your wounds as Hesh falls to his ass, hands slapping behind him before he hisses and brings them back up. He blinks quickly in confusion and panic.

Logan rushes over and hides him from your view, beginning to understand what was going on. 

“No!” You call again, Keegan having to hold your head into his chest to hide you away. Merrick yells down his comms to hurry the Helo up, and that he doesn’t care about anything else. “No,” your voice gargles off as you sob into Keegan. “Please, no more.”

“Shh,” the Sergeant mutters, looking over his shoulder at a pale and shaking Hesh. “Nothin’s going to happen to you. Not anymore.” 

“Harp,” Hesh whispers, jaw slackened. “I…I don’t…”

“Hallucinogens,” Merrick says grimly, watching you shake and wail. Logan has to look away, his fists clenching. “Who knows what she’s seen. Reckon it wasn’t anything good.”

It’s like he doesn’t hear anything besides your cries. Whenever you gasp Hesh tenses as if he wants to run to you—comfort you the best way he knows how. 

Hallucinogens? He thinks and feels tears dribble down his cheeks as he blinks, rubbing at his jaw and shakily placing a hand over the back of his neck. Logan puts a heavy grip on his shoulder, weighing them down even more.

—

Rorke’s death should have been a time of celebration—of honoring the fallen. Elias Walker, Ajax, and countless others. The Federation was nothing more than broken factions now. Dust to the wind. 

But no one can celebrate when they’re trying to fix one of their own.

You were being kept in the secure medical ward under twenty-four-hour surveillance and around-the-clock care; only Keegan was allowed in, seeing as you were the closest to him outside of Logan and Hesh and had no adverse effects to his presence. 

Merrick had said he didn’t want to risk Logan going in, as it might worsen things. Hesh was taking it hard. 

He just got you back, how was this right? How was it fair that you’d had to go through that right when it was supposed to be over and done with? The man got sick over it, thinking about what Rorke had done to…break your mind like he had. 

Two months. 

Two months of nightmares plaguing him, of your eyes when you looked at him. If Hesh had just been stronger, then that bastard would never have dragged you away on that beach. He resulted in working out more, running laps around Fort Santa Monica with Riley at three in the morning—he grew bags under his eyes. He grew quiet. 

When all of his broken ribs and fingers healed, the artificial wounds, he was offered awards for taking down Rorke; even a summon by the President. 

He’d denied all of them. 

If a medal was going to get you better faster, he’d have taken them in an instant. But he wasn’t that stupid. Hesh was withering, and everyone saw it. He loved you more than anything—more than fame or recognition. The man lay awake at night fearing that you were too cold or uncomfortable in the far-off ward, he was paranoid about your safety. 

More often than not, the nurses found him and Riley fitfully sleeping outside of your door on the hard ground, arm used as a pillow. They didn’t have the heart to move him.

In the last two weeks before the third month of your isolation and evaluations, in his nighttime routine, Hesh finds your door open. 

He stares at it now with a blank expression, fatigue once burning his eyes all gone for a deep and pounding panic. With a hand gesture, Riley halts and sits, and, sensing his handler’s mood, lets his ears go straight up in attention. 

Hesh reaches for the gun in the back of his pants, peeling it out slowly and taking a nearly silent step forward. Ready, his ears strain for a sound…but there is none. 

His free hand reaches for the door, the short sleeves of his gray sleep-shirt bunching. A moment later, he lightly taps the barrier farther out before entering the room with the gun drawn.

He said he wouldn’t get distracted, but it would be a lie to say his eyes didn’t immediately go to you. 

You were there, asleep, curled up on the far recliner chair instead of the bed. Head lulled to the side and knees kept close to your chest. But it was the scars that broke Hesh.

They were large and long—on your face and arms; legs. All moving and stretching like a child’s drawing up your sleep shorts and shirt, disappearing only to reappear somewhere else. Healed over but still fresh.

Hesh drops the gun and turns his body slightly away, staring at the side wall before he takes an unsteady breath. He re-hides his weapon and turns to leave, not seeing anyone else.

Maybe Keegan had forgotten to close the door…he’d have to chew him out for that. Already a dull point of anger was making his jaw clench at the sly older man.

“Bastard,” Hesh mutters.

Before he can exit and close the door softly behind him, he hears a broken squeak of alarm. He halts as you stare heavily into his back—awoken by the sound of nearly silent feet. In a steady motion, the man’s hands are by his sides, open and visibly holding nothing. 

“I was just leaving,” Hesh whispers, not looking at you. His heart hammers. “I’m sorry, I thought someone else was in here—the door was open, okay?” 

Your hands twitch, body still and breath held tight.

“Hesh?” He flinches, eyes closed tight. 

Don’t look at her. Don’t turn around. Leave.

“Are you really…him?” You ask silently, eyes darting nervously around the room and quickly waking up fully. 

It’s a moment before he answers you. 

“Yeah,” he forces out, voice tiny and sad. “Yeah, it’s me, Doll. Just David Walker.” 

Your throat bobs with a thin swallow. Treatment was still ongoing, but it’s not every day you wake up to find the man who you had nightmares about standing in your room. 

Breathe, you have to remind yourself. It was the drugs. Not Hesh. Never Hesh. Rorke.

But you were still scared. 

“I…I need to see your eyes,” you say. 

Hesh turns carefully, staring hard at the floor. His heart lurches, hands going clammy. 

What if she has a setback? He asks himself. What if I mess this up…Shit, Hesh, you couldn’t have minded your own business?

Oh, but he never could when it came to you. 

“Then look at me, Sweetheart.” The man breathes slowly, darting his eyes up to your face. “They only belong to you.”

But your gaze can’t slip to his sockets, only able to glare fearfully into his neck. But this Hesh felt different, more like the one you grew up with—those memories still coming back but tainted; you need to see green, but it was hurting you to think that you might not.

“I’m scared,” you admit, shakily. The man’s thighs tense, but he stops himself before he can go and take you into his arms. That wouldn’t help. “I’m…I don’t know what’s real anymore.”

“I’m real. I swear to you, Harp, I’m real. I’m right here and I’ll wait for you as long as it takes. Even if it’s years, I will always be right here.” He pleads, hands still at his sides and going nowhere if you don’t tell him to. It’s like a floodgate opens, months of internal pain and heartbreak spilling out. You needed to know this, even if he never got to see you again. 

“I have loved you since I saw you get jealous over Cassie Albrook in seventh grade and tried to hide it because you thought she made me happy—she could never make me happy, Harp. That was you. That was always and will always be you. I…I can’t breathe when you’re not near me, I don’t know how to act right when you’re hurt. Seeing you hurting is…is…” Hesh’s voice breaks and he falls silent. 

“Please, if you need to look into my eyes, I’m beggin’ you, Sweetheart, please, do it. Even if it’s only one glance.” Your breath is stuck in your throat, tears welling and sliding down your cheeks. 

In your skull your brain pounds, bordering on hysteria and an urge to flee. There was so little that you trusted anymore. Keegan, yes—the nurses and doctors? You had no choice there. 

You knew that the Hesh you’d seen in the pit was Rorke, Keegan had explained it all to you after the drugs had been pumped from your system; you understood that part. But it didn’t make the sickening confusion any better.

Symptoms of severe PTSD, paranoia, anxiety—you’d seen the charts when the nurses thought you weren’t looking at them. 

You still wouldn’t let anyone with a needle anywhere close to you, had to be put under for it. 

But you’d been so lonely here. A simple kiss seared into your mind before the horror set in, a stain of a smile on your lips. A chest vibrating with a content purr. 

Hesh. You want your Hesh back. 

Taking a stuttering breath, your eyes dart upwards. You push through your misty gaze and lock on a color that can only be described as a grassy field of verdant growth. Great open plains of viridescent being—showing you a world bathed in tender belonging. 

Home. 

You sob and rush from the chair on legs that still hurt even now, meeting Hesh in the middle as he takes a step forward and wraps his arms around you. You’re covered and kept in a hold so tight it’s like he’ll never let you go, heart pounding and his face loose with shock.

But he says nothing beyond a loud shuttered exhale of relief, pressing you to his chest and burying his face into your scalp, breathing you in; taking you down like a sinner in church until all that remains is you. Your fingers digging into his shirt, your face in his neck, how you call his name as if calling a ghost back from the dead.

“Oh, my Girl.” Hesh chuckles through the tears in his eyes. “My Girl. I missed you so much, you won’t even believe it.” 

You push yourself into him tighter. 

Riley, at some point, had come to stand in the doorway, his dark beady eyes seeing only the colors in gray, brown, yellow, and blue, though that never truly mattered. Color was only half of the picture. 

And the rest of the image in front of him was seeped with the pigment of love. 

The dog’s tongue lulls from the side of his mouth, and in the air behind him, his tail moves back and forth into a soft arch.

TAGS:

@luuvbuzz, @emerald-valkyrie, @anna-banana27, @blueoorchid, @cryingnotcrying, @writeforfandoms, @homicidal-slvt, @jade-jax, @frazie99, @elmoees, @littlemisstrouble, @alpineswinter, @phoenixhalliwell, @idocarealot, @lavalleon, @facelessmemories, @h-leigh, @20forty9, @glitter-anon-asks, @emily-who-killed-a-man, @neelehksttr, @aeneanc, @escapefromrealitysm, @i-d-1-0-t, @pparcxysm, @hawkscanendme, @caramlizedtomatos, @waves-against-a-cliff, @sanfransolomitatm, @maelstrom007, @jemandderkeinenusernamenfindet, @pheobees, @glitterypirateduck, @uselsshuman, @fan-of-encouragement, @halfmoth-halfman, @ghostlythunderbird, @I-inkage, @pukbadger, @kopatych11, @0nceinabluem00n, @cocrorapop, @knightofsexyness, @abnormalgeil, @smallseastone, @jacegons, @330bpm-whiplash, @simon-rileys-housewife, @4-atsu, @tiredmetalenthusiast

[cerberiasworld]

【Hesh/Reader】焚尽伊甸

⚠️：Y/N不是个人（字面意义上）

智慧要救你脱离淫妇，就是那油嘴滑舌的外女。

她离弃幼年的配偶，忘了　神的盟约。

她的家陷入死地，她的路便向阴间。

凡到她那里去的，不得转回，也得不着生命的路。

——《旧约·箴���（2：16-19）》

地上有很多弹壳，阳光透过烟尘让这些金属发出微弱的光。你跪在地上，黑色羽毛的翅膀垂落在身侧，那些弹壳被你捡起来放在裙子上。在这空无一人的废墟上，那些悲鸣的灵魂在看着你，他们刚刚脱离了自己在凡间的容器，还不知道发生了什么。你把每一个弹壳都拿在手里仔细擦干净，然后对着太阳去看它们反射的光。这里的弹壳太多了，你很快就攒了一小把，你拎着裙摆把它们兜起来，准备继续向前走。

“如果我是你，我不会对它们放在衣服上的。”突如其来的声音吓了你一跳，弹壳纷纷落到地上。你转过身，看见一个士兵打扮的人，他正好奇地看着你，也不知道在那棵烧焦的树底下站了多久，一只德牧坐在他的旁边，狗狗和他的主人一样冷静而且好奇。这个士兵上下打量你，最后视线落在了你的身后，“那是……翅膀吗？”

他站得很放松，但手没有离开他的枪。你摇了摇尾巴：“你是谁？”

这个士兵的视线被你的尾巴短暂地吸引走了一会儿，然后又把目光放在你的脸上：“这并不重要，亲爱的。重要的是这里很危险，而你，你不该在这里。”他停顿了一会儿，又看向你身后的羽翼，“它们不是道具吗？”

你看了看自己的翅膀，把其中一个抬了起来，黑色的羽毛反射出来漂亮的虹光，他的视线跟着你的翅膀移动，眼中说不清楚是震惊还是别的什么，但他的面色依旧平静。你有些骄傲地转了一个圈，向他展示自己的翅膀：“你们凡人没有这个，对吧？”

一阵干笑从他的喉咙里流了出来，他挑着眉看你是怎么展示自己的羽毛，就像在看一只小鸟：“没有，sweetheart。凡人没有翅膀，除非穿上道具或者特效……但我想你的应该不是道具。”他一边说着，一边靠近你。他的指尖微颤，他感觉到自己的指肚有些痒痒的：“你是……天使吗？”

“天使？”你轻笑出来，“和那个差了远了。”

士兵也笑了出声，他见你抬起手��，就也伸出手拉你从地上起来。他的手套很粗糙，而���他很用力，战争让他忘记了一部分温柔，他的掌心在你的肌肤上留下了一些痕迹，不过很快就消褪了：“那你是什么，sweetheart？”

“这并不重要，亲爱的。”你学着他刚才的语气，借他的力量站了起来“重要的是这里很危险，而你，你不该在这里。反正你也没有告诉我你是谁，不是吗？”

士兵慢慢放开你的手臂，你真的很柔软，他已经记不清自己上一次触摸到这么柔软的东西是在什么时候了。他看你的尾巴摇来摇去，意识到你是在逗弄他，这让他的心情莫名变得很好，老天，上一次他这么和人聊天是在什么时候来着？而且你看起来似乎是无害的，虽然你有奇怪的翅膀和尾巴……

“说得有道理。”他自己都没意识到自己的嘴角一直在勾着，“你可以叫我Hesh。”

你点点头，看向他身后：“那这个小家伙呢？”

“Riley，他是个好孩子。”他拍了拍德牧的头，声音中带着骄傲。“那你呢？”

你摇了摇尾巴，笑着看着他。

“所以，你不打算告诉我这个秘密，对吗？”Hesh露出来了有些懊恼的表情，但却依旧笑着。“那你为什么在这里？这里很危险。”

“为什么危险？我又不是一个人在这里。”

“真的？还有谁这么傻，往这片废土上跑？”

你看向空旷的四周，那些灵魂们在哭泣，在看着你。它们不敢靠近你，就伸手抓住Hesh的制服，述说着自己的痛苦和遗憾。Hesh看不见它们，他只能看见你在环顾四周，时而望向大地，时而看向天空。他有些怀疑你的精神状态了，毕竟这里看起来什么都没有：“我来这里，是为了那些走丢的灵魂。”

Hesh并没有理解你在说什么，就下意识地选择了沉默。你叹了口气，笑着说了句“别在意”，转身在这片焚烧过后的土地上行走。他惊奇地发现你的双脚赤裸，仿佛感觉不到地表滚烫的温度和坚硬的石块。他和Riley跟在你的身后，在这片枯萎的大地上前进，他也说不上来自己为什么会下意识地走在你的身后，他感觉自己好像回到了幼年时期跟在父母身后的时候，这感觉他已多年未曾再有，你娇小的身影在他的眼里逐渐变大、变大，好像跟着你就可以抵达——

“你可以在这里休息。”

你的声音让他从神游中回神，他发现你们正在一栋摇摇欲坠的楼房前，虽然残破，但可以遮风避雨。他想问你你是怎么找到这里的，但是他看到你蹲下来给Riley嗅闻你的手，他���把问题咽了回去。

房子里有一些食物，还有水。Hesh本想招呼你来一起休息，但他见你摇头。他此时才意识到一切的不对劲，不仅因为你的翅膀和尾巴，还因为你的肌肤柔软无瑕，双唇水润丰满，一点都不像是在这片废土上长期行走的样子。他终于开始感到害怕，但是你只是坐在床边，用尾巴逗弄Riley，他不禁再一次询问自己，你究竟是什么，你到底从哪里来。

你们在接下来的时间里没有说话。太阳终于落山了，周围连虫鸣都听不见，月亮、月亮去了哪里？他见你的眼睛在黑暗中闪着光，莫名觉得好像没有月亮也没什么大不了。

你看Hesh想要在地上休息，就用尾巴缠住了他的手腕，他不解地看你，在你拽着他要往床上带的时候意识到了这是一个邀请。但他是否该接受这个邀请？你看起来那么娇小、那么脆弱、那么……诱人。他看着你的眼睛，想到了月亮、生日蛋糕上的烛火、手术台上的无影灯。

“你是什么？”他忍不住再次询问。但已经知道答案不再重要，重要的是在此时此刻他要进入你。他想到了自己的弟弟，想到了自己的父亲，想到了每一次任务，每一次抚摸Riley的感觉。两者的结合本该是一方填补另一方，但此刻他只感觉到满溢。他感觉到他是残破的，而你，你是完整的。

你并不是那根缺失的肋骨。

当他释放出来后，他终于获得了许久未曾拥有的平静。他听见你在唱歌，一首奇怪的语言的歌，虽然他听不懂那里面的歌词，却能听出来安抚的意味。

　　然后他闭上眼，他听见玻璃在震颤、窗框抖动，爆炸声携带着的冲击波让本就不结实的房间里又掉落了不少碎水泥和尘土，惹得人想咳嗽。Hesh听见了有人在呼喊，痛苦又绝望地呼喊，还闻到了刺鼻的血腥味。他抬起头，看见了你。你赤裸的脚趾被泥土和血染成了黑色，火光透过灰尘从你的身上流下，他看着你的眼睛，想到了水晶，想到了旷野的走兽和豺狼，他听见野山羊与伴偶对叫；夜间的怪物在你眼中栖身，于你瞳孔深处醒来。

　　Hesh从梦中醒来，感觉到身下的织物之间一片冰凉湿黏。窗外阳光灿烂，他眨眨眼睛，听见知更鸟在鸣叫。

[pear1escence]

Hello! I read your “being keegan’s girlfriend would entail…” and was wondering if you could do one for David/Hesh Walker? My manz doesn’t get enough love

If not that’s totally okay! Thanks for reading!

Being Keegan’s girlfriend would entail…

Being David Walker’s girlfriend would entail…

David ‘Hesh’ Walker x fem!Reader (that’s my last name too actually wink wink)

Explicit - 18+

⭒ He’s got a lot of room in his heart for tenderness.

⭒ The pain he feels from having lost his father hasn’t gone away, but it doesn’t plague him like it used to. (Listen, we’ve got Logan safe and sound in this universe our man doesn’t need any more problems)

⭒ What he needs from a lover is patience. The violence he’s experienced, it’s made him rougher around the edges. (Tougher? Rougher? Pls help) He just needs a lil time to soften up to you, I think Hesh would be the sweetest man f’you, such a loving and considerate boyfriend.

⭒ Hesh cherishes the intimate, sweet moments of a relationship. Holding you in his arms in the early hours of the morning, listening to your little puffs of breath, the calmness in your face as you sleep.

⭒ He’s so gentle with you. If it’s his thumb stroking over your cheek in soothing motions, or the palm of his hand running along the soft skin of your back. Treats you so well.

⭒ Chemtrails over the Country Clubs by Lana Del Rey reminds me of him. ‘Tulsa Jesus Freak’ and ‘Let Me Love You Like A Woman’ are Hesh songs to me. Very domestic and intimate.

⭒ I think of him as a socially confident person, a man who carries himself with confidence, falls into conversation easily. He’s charming he’s got rizz basically, you don’t have to search for long to find the reasons you fell for him.

⭒ I mean…pretty green eyes, tall, arms like his? I’d eat him up.

⭒ He’d date someone shy, I think. I think he’d find your shyness endearing, amusing even.

⭒ He loves taking you out for dinner, partly because he loves the sight of you all dressed up for him. He strikes me as someone with he a classic taste, likes romantic makeup styles, dresses that hug your curves and lacy lingerie.

⭒ His softness carries over into the bedroom, of course. I can’t imagine him being degrading or enjoying anything too rough, honestly. He can’t resist teasing you a bit though, a little meanness is all fun. He likes you submissive though, and he can be stern sometimes. Who’s complaining anyways let’s be honest with ourselves😓

⭒ He’s gonna be groping you mercilessly. Loves soft thighs, a nice pair of tiddies, anything soft. He’s big on foreplay, loves to finger you while praising you. Luvs to praise.

⭒ He WILL suck on your nipples. Probably groaning about how much he loves your body while doing so.

⭒ Wouldn’t actually choke you, but he’ll wrap a hand around your neck nd apply pressure gently, he likes seeing his hand ‘round your neck + you find it grounding, even comforting.

⭒ Makes you look him in the eyes while his hand is in your panties, “Does that feel good, baby? Yeah?” Nd you best believe he’s stopping if he doesn’t get an answer.

⭒ Very into eye contact while he’s fucking you. Again with the “You like that, pretty girl?” While gripping your jaw nd making you look at him, groaning out a “Good girl” once you answer him.

⭒ This just turned into sex headcannons bruh😞

⭒ Loves blowjobs. Also lowkey wants you to lick/suck on his balls but he’s a bit embarrassed to ask, you’ll figure out he enjoys it from his reactions anyways. Also pretty hairy, but not as much of a bear man as Keegan is.

⭒ He sends you pics of him in his combat uniform while he’s out on deployment. He’ll certainly appreciate pics of you in return, a mirror selfie of you in some nice lingerie would drive him crazy. Loves a nice photo of you in his boxers too.

⭒ I think he’d be very shy about reciprocating those kinds of images, but he’d send you over some mildly suggestive ones. He’d be very confused if you ask for a nut vid. (That sounds so fucking dumb, nut vid??)

Me?? Writing for someone other that Keegan??? No but this was fun, I’ve been wanting to write for Hesh for a while. Hope you enjoyed!! I think this is my first request ever tihi

[lizzy019]

𝐼'𝓁𝓁 𝐵𝑒 𝐻𝑜𝓂𝑒, 𝑀𝒶𝓂𝒶.

David “Hesh” Walker x Fem!Reader [Reader is engaged with David]

cw -> slightest breeding kink, fluffy otherwise, some sad stuff to start

Word Count -> 1.4K

Ovulating for David, the manliest man <3

Home alone, 12 at night, and only the sounds of rain and cars were keeping you awake. How pitiful it must’ve looked to see a woman crying just because she’s lonely.

The burn in your heart and the ache in your head made you cry hard, what if David didn’t come home like he promised? You’d told him so many times over, “Don’t promise me things you’re not certain you can keep.”

Sniffing quietly in the empty room asides yourself, you find solace in wearing his shirt and resting on his side of the bed. Months have gone by without him, and you were worried another soldier would come to visit instead of David with a belonging of his like an arm or his helmet.

You’d spent hours crying, and eventually you’d fallen asleep from all the fears nagging and clawing at your already exhausted mind.

Everything dulled to silence and darkness once your mind shut off in exhaustion.

All while David and Riley tip-toed into the shared condo of yours to greet you as usual. Oblivious to the fact that you were sleeping, Riley sniffed his way to your bedroom door, rattled it open and bolted to your mattress only to jump and shower you in licks.

Upon the moist feeling and kicks being shoved to your body, you inevitably wake up and realize that it’s Riley who’s licking all your skincare off.

This has you wake up almost instantly, hands rubbing Riley’s back in greeting as you chuckled softly. 

“Stop bombarding me in kisses, Riley. I’m tired.. Where’s David?” You ask the pup drowsily, watching as he runs off to retrieve his owner.

You waited only a few minutes before the thudding of David’s work boots alerted you of his closeness. You were giddy.

And as soon as you could’ve thought it, he was shooing Riley to bed in front of your bedroom’s door as handsome as ever. Regardless of the dirt and grime collected on his clothes and skin.

Maybe it was the way his eyes fell on you, or maybe it was how he looked so handsome as he chucked his duffel bag to the side and took the softest steps forward to greet you.

There he was.

In all his great glory.

You didn’t hesitate to jump up from your seat on the bed and rush into his arms, your own holding his body so tightly you were sure his head would pop off like a champagne cork.

David’s muscular arms were clasped to your body as well, holding you just as tight as he almost shivered out a heavy breath. He was home, with you and his pup safely.

The urge to have you here and now after so many months away was clawing at him, he wanted to get you both bare bodied, to collide skin to skin and to make the love you both missed for so much time.

But David waited for you to escape the hug, smiling down at you when you finally did. 

His lips mashed against yours instantly, shoving you onto the bed behind you as his hands were quick to slide off your pajama pants and his own uniform’s pants.

“Missed you mama, missed you so much..” He murmured between kisses and breaths, pulling away only for a moment for you to take off your top and for him to take off his.

Soon, it was just how he liked it. Skin on skin collisions.

Your hands tangled in his chest hair, smiling at the cute brown curls before your hands came back to pull him in for a kiss again. More tongue action was added however.

Light moans were escaping you both, his fingers working your clit like you had all those nights he wasn’t with you. You were moaning just as you were when you thought of him.

You prepared yourself for his arrival to your entrance, moving to fix your position to grab a condom for him.

The urge to have you raw, put his baby into your fertile womb and grow a child together immediately took over, any sense of want for protection dissipate.

“Mama.. mama, I don’t want a condom. Please?” David asked so politely, hands shaking as they came to meet your waist.

You hesitated for a moment, really? He wanted to feel you raw for once? This new information gave you a small smile, putting the condom back in the bedside table’s droor before you nodded happily.

“Sure, baby. But if you get me pregnant, this damn baby’s yours.” You smiled, getting into the usual missionary position and teasingly wiggling your hips.

“That’s the point, mama. Wanna have a baby.” He smiled at your sweet hip wiggle, giving his cock a soft stroke before pressing up against your entrance.

The feeling of his tip just pressing in was congenial, almost heavenly before he fully thrusted his length deep into your achy core. Like a sword in a pedestal, he sheathed his weapon into your safety.

Moans reached new highs when the flat of his thumb came to massage at your clit, hands grasping his shoulders in an attempt to ground yourself. Walls clenching around him had him whining out too.

It was almost mind numbing how much pleasure you were receiving, even more than just physically. It was amazing knowing he was home and craving you as much as you did him.

Ecstasy was climbing up, lines of sweat building at your hairline as the room got warmer from all the movement. Regardless, the amount of pleasure being given to you was incredible.

“David- David, I’m gonna cum!” You cried out, legs moving to wrap around his hips as he smashed his mouth against yours.

Fingers moving to rub his overgrown military cut, you felt the cord in your stomach tightening and tightening. You were close, and you knew he could feel it. His lips pulled away for a second to capture your neck’s skin.

“Can feel it mama, you gonna bust?” He asked, smirking against your skin as he sped up a bit.

The gentlemanly part of him was forcing himself to hold on for you to release first, but he was close to letting go too.

“Come on, come on mama, I gotchu, you’re almost there.” His words were soft, hands finding anywhere to touch you to satisfy his urges.

His praising words had you almost edging, hands seizing his biceps as you held them tighter than your pussy could clench onto his cock.

Before you knew it, he placed one last kiss to your neck before you finished in totality just like he urged you to. Body tensing as release and pleasure swooped your body up to cloud nine, walls clenching sporadically before everything finally eased down.

Soon after, the warmth of David’s release filled you as well before he flopped on top of you to rest temporarily.

“...Wanna have a baby with me, mama?” He asked pleasantly, a soft chuckle escaping his lips as he gently pressed a kiss to your forehead in praise.

You couldn't help but smile as he said it, that pretty, toothy and happy grin coming across your lips had David’s heart doing spins.

“Yeah, I’d like a mini-us running around with Riley.” You smiled, gently scratching his scalp.

After your lovely reunion and the quick shower you two took to clean off the residue, you both were now in the comfort of your bed while David began explaining everything that he could tell you about on his mission.

“It was a bit nerve-wracking, that mission, I mean. Running from straight death itself and losing some good soldiers.. I mean, I see it often, but it doesn't get easier.” He vented very softly, moving to lay on his side and chuck an arm around you.

“But I’m home with my lovely fiancée, I think it was worth it. I just feel bad that my fellow deceased teammates’ families, friends and partners won’t ever see them again like how I come home and see you, yeah?”

The words were understandable, his concern was laudable, but his pain didn't stop there and you knew that.

To shut him up temporarily, you flipped onto your side as well and pressed the softest and sweetest kiss to his lips before rubbing the muscle of his neck.

“You’ve made it home, David. Reward yourself with some sleep, mh?” You smiled, hugging him close before whispering a “goodnight” and closing your eyes.

David looked at your peaceful expression and nodded, kissing the crown of your head before letting himself drift off too.

“G’night, mama.”

[agentmarvel]

Hiiii! Could I please request 🖤 for Keegan with “marriage of convenience!” Thank you!!! <3

i had a lot of fun with this one! thank you for sending one, nonnie!🖤

keegan russ x fem!reader

cw: obsessive!keegan

mdni - 18+; minors and ageless blogs will be blocked

Hesh doesn’t ask favors lightly, so when he asked Keegan for a solid, he was happy to oblige. He didn’t get much in terms of specifics from the elder Walker brother, just that a really sweet thing needed some help, and Kee was the man for the job.

Marriage wasn’t quite what he had in mind when he agreed. He understood that you needed insurance, but there had to be a better way to find it. It’s quite a commitment, even if it’s hollow, and his conspicuous absences would definitely be glaring. You know nothing about him and vice versa. Would you hinder him from getting his dick wet under the guise of emotional trauma from infidelity? The military would rule in your favor in a divorce, especially if you weren’t fucking someone else. Would you whine and nag about the length of his mission? Would he bitch and moan about the way you decorate or your cooking when he’s home? There are too many variables. Enough that he almost considers turning Hesh down.

But then he met you, and all those thoughts went out the window.

Keegan isn’t one for love at first sight, but the second you walk into that coffee shop, he’s hooked on you. He takes his time memorizing every detail of your gorgeous face, each curve of your body in that pretty dress, the cadence of your voice, the sound of your cute giggles. Your little habits don’t go unnoticed; the way you cover your mouth when you eat, the way your nose scrunches when you’re talking about something that you think is gross (Keegan notes that you don’t like tomatoes, that precious little scrunch deepening as your mouth turns downward in disgust).

You seem to be equally taken with him, listening with rapt attention as he answers all your questions. When he walks you back to your car, you loop your hand through his arm. He must look startled, because you immediately retract and apologize. No, no, that’s not what he meant! He was just surprised that you felt the same. To comfort you, he casually slips an arm around your waist, settling on your hip to pull you closer.

It all goes quickly. Within a week, he finds himself at the courthouse, signing a marriage license with his free hand tucked into yours. Days later, he’s in the base admin office, adding you as his next of kin and beneficiary and adding you to his insurance policy. Over the weekend, he moves you into his off-base home. All standard to make the marriage look real, he tells you, no one will question it.

No one will question if your marriage is real because it is. No longer is this simply “doing Hesh a favor”. No, you’re his wife now. You’re his. His to hold, to kiss, to absolutely ruin, to love. And Keegan does love you. Everything about you. You’ll warm up to it pretty soon. While you’re still a little skittish about how real this has become overnight, hiding from his affection and trying to remind him this isn't real, he knows you’ll come around. Before long, he’ll be coming home to your bright smile, smothering him in kisses. You’ll be begging him for a baby when he fucks you stupid after not getting to touch you for weeks or months at a time to keep you company while he’s away. He can’t wait to come home to your big, round belly, swollen with his child, bouncing a chubby little baby on your hip while you prepare for another. You’ll be such a good wife and mother; you just have to come around to the idea.

pick your prompt here!💌

[howtotwirlaknife22]

Mother

David “Hesh” Walker x Fem!Reader

Summary: you and Hesh have been living together for a little while now, and you recently found something out that will change the dynamic between the two of you, forever.

Warnings ⚠️: pregnancy, reader has some mood swings, intimate themes

A/N: happy belated Mother’s Day out there to current mothers, your own mothers, mothers to be, step mothers, or any mother figure really! I hope ya’ll like this cute little one shot I did for Hesh, let me know if you want more!

For the last few months, you and husband Hesh had been living together in your new house just outside of San Diego. Things had finally seemed to start getting back to some form of normalcy after the federation had been successfully defeated. When the news broke that the United States had come out on top, everyone was ecstatic. Including Hesh. So much so, that the second he and his team had returned home from a mission successful, he popped the question to you. You couldn’t contain the joy you felt in that moment. You had a small wedding ceremony, with his team and some of your family and friends attending. It was a cozy wedding, and you were happy Hesh’s team could be there for him. Losing his father was hard on him, and not to mention his brother going MIA for a while as well. But they eventually found Logan, though he was in a hostile state after being tormented by the feds. But they were able to get him back to his old self after a few good months of therapy. You were happy to hear this, and you were happy you were able to see Logan at your wedding, acting as Hesh’s best man. Shortly after you were married, you had bought a house together. It was one of the newer houses in the outskirts of San Diego that had been built after the federation collapsed, and Hesh’s military connection definitely came in handy when it came to obtaining it. You and Hesh had so much fun going to different department stores in the main city choosing out different furniture and kitchen equipment, and you both loved to play house with one another in the fake housing set ups. Once the two of you had gotten fully moved in, you were ready to finally start your sweet little life together as husband and wife. Once you both adjusted to each others schedules in your day to day lives, you had finally found time to hang out with one another for casual date nights. And when you just wanted to spend time at home, you often times cuddled on the couch together and watched a movie, played video games, and sometimes you even cooked a fancy meal together and laughed when one of you burnt it or added to much flour, often times resulting in ordering take out for the night. But your all time favorite thing was the alone time you two had. The intimate and deliciously passionate bedroom activities you enjoyed together. You two tried to make time for each others needs, and you couldn’t remember a day since you had been married that you hadn’t explored one another’s bodies in some form. But lately, Hesh had gotten a little more tied up back on base with his new promotion, and you had been a little more lonesome at the house than usual. You usually wouldn’t mind, and you didn’t the first few times he came home late, but this time felt different. You felt…anxious. You had always considered yourself strong and independent and you didn’t feel like you needed a man there to support you. But this night in particular made you feel uneasy. You couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was wrong. It was starting to get closer to around midnight by the time Hesh stepped through the door, and you were still wide awake sitting on the couch once he came inside.

“Babe?” He questioned, shocked that you were still up. “What are you still doing up? I told you you don’t have to wait up for me.” He placed his coat on the coat rack and his keys on their hook. You stared at him for a moment. For some reason, that sentence was off to you. It rubbed you the wrong way. You couldn’t shake off the feeling of pure annoyance. took a deep breath, and finally you blurted out

“are you cheating on me!?”

Hesh was shocked. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. You were always so calm and collected, and you knew he had been working later hours as he had been adjusting to filling out new reports. With raised eyebrows, he placed a hand up in defense.

“Whoa, where the hell did that come from?”

You lip curled a little and you muttered.

“Yes or no…”

Hesh furrowed his brows and crossed his arms.

“No. God no. Babe, Where the hell would you even pull an idea like that from? You know I’ve been stuck on base since I ranked up.” His tone shifted into a slightly softer one towards the end of his sentence, and he slowly began to take a few steps towards you on the couch. You felt your curled lip begin to quiver, and in a few seconds you went from a sneer to tears fully streaming down your face as you began to sob into your hands. Hesh was disturbed to say the least. He had never seen you this distraught in the 5 years he had been with you. You looked up at him once he sat beside you, choking out an apology through sobs.

“I-I’m sorry…I..I don’t know what’s wrong with me…I just…I’m so worried that you..that you’re…y’know…I’m worried you don’t like me anymore..” you didn’t even know what you were saying. None of it was truly what you meant, but it felt right to say it anyways. So you kept on rambling. “I’m just worried you find me gross…I’m worried you’re gonna ditch me for someone who’s prettier and smarter than I am…I’m..I’m worried you’re bored of me!” You sobbed and curled into him as he slowly sat down beside you, curling an arm around your shoulder to comfort you. Hesh tried to shush you and rub your back as you cried into his chest, but it was no use. You were sobbing uncontrollably in his arms and the only thing he could do was hold you.

“Babe…are you feeling okay? This isn’t really like you..” he tilted your chin up and was heartbroken to stare into your red and teary eyes. You sniffled and glanced up at him.

“I…I don’t know…I just..fuck..” you pushed yourself off of him and wiped your tears off on you sleeve. “I…I think I’m gonna go to bed…goodnight.” With that, you huffed and promptly turned on your heels heading straight for bed, leaving Hesh alone and confused in the living room.

“What the fuck was that?” He questioned, sighing heavily.

A few days had passed after that incident, and you had continued to grow more and more irritated with Hesh. Whether that was a dish left in the sink for too long, or the toilet seat getting left up once or twice a day, or even the trash getting taken out an hour later than usual. Everything he did seemed to annoy you. And you couldn’t prevent the little outbursts you would have on him, no matter how hard you tried to look past those petty little incidents. These often ended with you crying and locking yourself away in your shared bedroom for hours at a time, and Hesh had begun to grow irritated with these outbursts as well. It all came to a head one day when Hesh had to leave for work earlier than usual one day, and you had been greeted in with facial hair scattered all around your bathroom sink, most likely from him rushing to get ready for work that day. You gritted your teeth and began to type out an angry text, your fingers dancing across the screen at a million miles an hour. Just before you were able to hit send, you felt a sudden wave of nausea wash over your body. You paused, clutching your stomach. Maybe you had just eaten some bad chicken the night prior? After all, you had meant to throw it out a few nights ago. You felt another wave of nausea, this one stronger than the last. You groaned and slowly slid down to the floor, setting your phone to the side. You blinked a few times and whimpered as you felt your stomach turn. You could feel the aching feeling you get when you’re about to vomit creeping up on you. You slowly made your way to the toilet and lifted the seat, feeling your mouth begin to fill with saliva. You whimpered again, this time spitting into the toilet as the Silva became too much. You felt your stomach begin to bubble up, before you felt the rush of vomit coming up your esophagus. You coughed, spitting up the remains of the foul bile into the toilet. It took a few minutes for your vision to return to normal again, and you stared into the toilet before you had the slow realization as to why your mood had been so shitty for the past few days. You gulped and opened your phone, the unsent text staring back at you. You felt guilty and embarrassed and quickly deleted it. But you switched contacts over to your best friend, who you swiftly texted a few words to.

Can you please buy me some pregnancy tests?

You sat on the toilet, holding the plastic stick that you had just urinated on in front of you. You stared back at it as you waited for a few agonizing minutes for the final results. Your friend was outside the bathroom door for moral support, calling out to you.

“Any results?” You sighed.

“Not yet…two more minutes.” You had a timer set on your phone as the seconds counted down. You gulped, hoping that the mood swings could be explained because you were about to get your period instead. You and Hesh had discussed having children a few times, but neither of you really thought it was necessary in the near future. And you weren’t sure how Hesh would even react to the news, especially given his new position. You were quickly ripped from your thoughts as your timer went off, and your eyes snapped from your phone to the test. You thought you were going crazy. You blinked a few times and shook your head before you stared at the test as hard as you could. Two lines. Two blue lines staring back at you. You couldn’t believe it. You were ripped out of your thoughts when you heard a loud knock on the door.

“Hey! You good? What does it say?” Your friend called out from the other side, a hint of worry tinged in her voice. You opened your mouth to speak but no words came out. Your friend knocked again. “Y/N? You okay?” You swallowed hard and stuttered out.

“I…I’m okay..” you sat up from the toilet and flushed it, washing your hands quickly and opening the door. You were staring down at the test before you held it up, showing her the plastic stick. Her eyes widened and she stared back at you with her mouth agape.

“Are…are we celebrating?” She asked quietly, her tone unsure. You didn’t even know. You were unsure yourself.

“I…maybe?” You felt tears begin to well in your eyes. “I…I gotta talk to Hesh once he gets back. Fuck…this would explain why I’ve been so mean. But..damn. Shit..he didn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve any of it!” You began to sob into your hands as your friend rubbed your back gently.

“Hey hey, it’s okay. I’m sure he’s gonna understand. But…that does mean you’re gonna have to tell him soon.” She pulled your hair back and tied it into a loose ponytail. You let out a shaky sigh and looked up at her.

“You’re right…I just…I don’t know how to break it to him.” You friend gave you a sympathetic look and you knew this would be some of the hardest news you’d ever have to break to anyone. You weren’t 100% sure how he’d react, but you knew you had to tell him.

You had been avoiding him for the past few days after you found out. But you didn’t really have to, as he had been giving you the silent treatment for the past few days anyways. Your most recent outburst didn’t help you out much in that field, and you were trying to figure out a good way to bring it up to him. Trying to find the right time was the current issue. Things had been so tense since your hormones had started to go crazy, and you were so anxious that you had ruined a core piece of your relationship permanently because of them. It was a Saturday night, and Hesh had been home from work all day. He had barricaded himself in his office all day, and you stayed in bed for most of the day, trying to work your way around your newfound nausea battles. It had been in and out of the bathroom since 5 that morning, and it was currently nearing 7. You groaned and decided that it was a good time to shower and go to bed. You inhaled sharply and decided that you would at least try talking to Hesh first. You knocked on his office door and slowly opened the door, peeking your head around as you slid it open.

“Babe?” You called out quietly. Hesh was sitting at his desk, typing away at something on his computer before he grunted out, not even turning towards you.

“You’re supposed to wait for me to say ‘come in’ before you come in y’know.” He responded coldly, continuing to type away on his keyboard. You felt your lip quiver. You knew you had been mean the last few weeks, but you didn’t realize you had been so mean that he was giving you the cold shoulder.

“Sorry..I’m going to bed. Goodnight.” You mumbled, turning on your heel and slowly closing the door behind you. You felt tears begin to prickle in your eyes as you walked through your hallway to your bedroom. You could hear a quiet but defeated sigh come from the office, and you wiped your tears as you gathered some comfortable pajamas from your dresser drawer. You opened the door to your bathroom and entered, turning the shower on as you got things set up for your nighttime routine. You stripped yourself down and entered the shower, the warm water washing away some of the tension in your aching muscles. You inhaled as the steam rose, and you hummed quietly. You placed your hands on your stomach and rubbed it gently. You had your first appointment with the doctors on Monday, and you knew you had to tell Hesh soon. You wanted him to be there with you at the first appointment, but you still had to make sure he was on board with the whole thing. Not to mention patching up the last few weeks of hostility. You shook your head and rinsed yourself off, stepping out of the shower to dry yourself off and slip into your comfortable clothes for the night.

The time was now 11:30, and you were still awake in bed. You knew you should sleep, you hadn’t gotten a good full night the past few days due to morning sickness, but your body just wouldn’t let you sleep. You tossed and turned and eventually gave up, resting on your side and staring out of your window, looking up into the night sky as the moon shone through your open blinds. You heard your bedroom door creek open, and you heard footsteps approaching your bed. You didn’t turn over, but you were happy to hear your husband coming to bed. You had been going to bed before he did or after he did the last few days, so this would be the first time you’ve gone together for a bit. You didn’t say anything and instead kept looking up at the moon until you felt the opposite side of the bed dip, and you slowly turned your head towards him as he crawled under the covers next to you. Hesh noticed your head turn and he raised an eyebrow in surprise.

“What are you still doing up? I thought you went to bed almost 4 hours ago.” He mumbled, pulling the covers up towards him. You exhaled through your nose and muttered out.

“I couldn’t sleep…I just..I couldn’t.” Your eyes wandered over his form until they met with his eyes. His hardened gaze softened a little as he scanned your swollen red eyes and puffy cheeks.

“Were you crying?” He reached his hands up and cupped your cheeks, rubbing his thumb over the apple of your cheek. Your lip began to tremble once again and you gave a small nod, avoiding his gaze as tears welled again. He bit the inside of his cheek and sighed. “I’m sorry baby. I didn’t mean to be such an asshole to you earlier. Or anytime the past few days really. It’s just..you’ve had a bit of an attitude lately and I don’t know what I did wrong. Did I do something wrong? Or did something happen that I don’t know about?” He questioned, continuing to stroke his thumb over your cheek. You bit your lip and slowly slid yourself up onto your knees, sitting over him. He slid up onto his elbows and cocked an eyebrow at you. You began to speak in a quiet voice.

“No…no you didn’t do anything wrong. I’m..I’m really sorry I’ve been so bitchy and mean lately..” you balled the blanket up in your fists as you sighed. “You didn’t deserve that…I’ve just..everything has been so out of wack lately..” you voice broke at the end of your sentence as the tears began to stream down your hot cheeks, and Hesh sat up fully and pulled you into a warm hug.

“Hey hey, it’s okay…don’t even worry about it, okay? I promise you I’m not mad..at least not anymore..and whatever is wrong, we’ll work through it together. Just tell me what’s up and we’ll figure it out, alright?” He pulled away and brushed some strands of hair out of your face. You looked up at him with a nervous gaze and opened your mouth to speak, but nothing came out. This went on for a few moments before Hesh furrowed his brows at you questioningly. “What?”

You couldn’t bare to keep it in any longer. And there was simply no time like the present.

“I’m…I’m pregnant.”

The both of you froze for a moment. Hesh’s eyes went wide and he stared right back at you with a blank expression. You stared back with a nervous one, and you waited for a while agonizing minute for him to respond.

“You’re..you’re pregnant?” Hesh whispered. You swallowed hard and nodded at him, whispering back.

“Yes..”

You were engulfed in a tight bear hug, and you could hear a choked out sob exit your husband’s mouth. Your eyes widened and you wrapped your arms around his shoulders, hugging him back just as tightly. You could hear him sobbing quietly into your hair as you felt tears coming from your own eyes. Were these happy sobs you heard, you weren’t quite positive until Hesh pulled away, a small smile lining his tear stricken face.

“I’m gonna be a dad…and you’re gonna be a mom!” He exclaimed, sliding his hands from your shoulders down to your stomach. “How long have you known?” He looked up at you with a new shimmer in his vibrant green eyes. You smiled softly.

“Only a couple of days…I haven’t even had my first doctors appointment yet, but I took about 3 tests, and all came out positive.” You placed your hands over his on your stomach and you leaned in to kiss him gently. He kissed you back, this time with the same sweet passion that you had missed for the past few days. You hummed against his lips before you pulled away. “My first appointment is Monday.” You smiled as he beamed at you.

“I’m taking off of work then. I want to be there for your first appointment. And every other appointment from here on out.” He placed a hand on your cheek again, grinning from ear to ear. You bit your cheek as you searched his gaze shyly.

“So…you’re not upset? You want to have this baby with me?” He gave you a confused look and leaned in to give you another gentle hug, placing his hand on the back of your head.

“Upset? Baby, this is the best news I’ve heard all week, or that I’ll ever hear in my life even.” He pulled away from you and took your hands in his. “I’m so happy to have you in my life baby. I was already happy to call you my wife, but now you’re going to be the mother of my children as well.” You couldn’t help the happy tears that streamed down your face as you sniffled and smiled at his sweet words. “I love you so much baby…please, don’t ever forget that.” You squeezed his hands and looked up at him with glistening eyes.

“I love you too, Hesh.”

Taglist; @kun3ho141 @milkteaarttime @forsworned @keegansshark @blacktacmopsi @pricebf

Let me know if you want to be added to the taglist! -💌

[mockerycrow]

CROW’S 4K CELEBRATION GUIDELINES

I truly cannot express my gratitude for all of your love and support over the last couple of months. I never imagined I would hit even 1k, and now I’m at 4k?? holy. fuckin. shit. I love you all!!!

NO LONGER ACCEPTING 4K REQUESTS <3

-> GUIDELINES BELOW THE CUT <-

RULES

PROPER REQUEST FORMAT: “character x gender!reader w/ “insert prompt here” + an AU if you would like :-)

One character per request (unless it’s character x reader x character! (i.e ghost x fem!reader w/ “i can’t do it anymore.”)

Specify the gender you would like. plain “character x reader” will result in gender neutral.

AU’s are allowed.

See my general request rules.

please be patient!! i will get these out asap.

not all of these will be full fledged 3k+ word fics!!

characters that I will be writing for this celebration (all call of duty); ghost, gaz, soap, price (including reboot and og), roach, könig, alex keller, farah karim, kate laswell, alejandro vargas, rodolfo parra, russell adler, frank woods, alex mason, jason hudson, david mason, gideon, jack mitchell, keegan russ, logan + hesh walker.

PROMPTS

fluff prompts #1

fluff prompts #2

angst prompts #1

angst prompts #2

smut prompts #1

smut prompts #2

-> 4K Celebration Posts Masterlist

[ai-luni]

Another anon who is lowkey (highkey) a whore for Hesh here 🥰

Birthday sex followed by a "oh you can't walk?" Sort of next day?

This is a Hesh whore house, you're very welcome here!

It's His Birthday

David "Hesh" Walker x Fem!Reader

A/N: This became much longer than I thought it would end up. Please excuse how dramatic I get when I have to write smut. Also why there are so many similes, idk i'm sorry. Mystery for the ages.

Word Count: 4k

Warnings: smut. Straight up. Overstimulation.

Where it started:

5:00pm, San Diego, Hesh’s birthday. 

You were parked outside of a restaurant with a large dinner reservation for the two of you and the rest of the ghosts. The plan was to meet at 5 but now it was 15 past and you were desperately trying to reapply your lipstick while Hesh spat at the taste of a makeup wipe in the driver's seat. 

“You’re not meant to eat it.” You gave the snarky comment once satisfied with your lipstick, now turning your attention to the boy that was basically sucking on the thing. Snatching the wipe out of his hand, you cleaned the coloured residue lining his lips. Gently, his gaze was fixed, mesmerised by the way your freshly coloured lips parted in concentration. 

You held the cold wipe to his chin as you lifted his head up, allowing himself to close his eyes now that he no longer had a good view of you. Instead enjoy the feeling of your fingers outlined by the rag, over, across, under his chin. Enough to pull an erotic groan from his throat. You couldn’t be any later without raising suspicion but fuck if the way his adam’s apple bobbed didn’t make you want to give up and drive into a alleyway. 

“How’d we manage to get it on your chin?” With a long restrained sigh, he looked back down at you. The silence was so deafening, you had to cough out a giggle to break the tension. The intensity of his gaze didn’t crack though. Instead he gave you that stupid ‘I have you in the palm of my hand’ smirk, eyebrows raised. 

“Let’s do it again and find out.” 

You weren’t going to let him win this one. 

You left him, one foot after the other out of the car. Topped off with a slow spin around to face him once more. Shoulders dipped enough to peak at the boy readjusting his belt. You thought about retorting with some kind of witty comeback but just seeing the man you loved in that suit. That white button up and those navy trousers. It wipes your mind clear. 

“I’m not wearing any panties.” 

-

5:25 

Finally you dragged him into the restaurant, all the boys cleaned up real nice. Merrick was still wearing jeans but sometimes you just have to pick your battles. They all stood and made a controllable racket. A soft chorus of “Finally!” “Hey you two!” “Where have you been!” “Took you long enough!” welcomed you as you and Hesh were being guided to the back of the place. 

It was Elias who greeted you two first, giving you a hug and passing you to Logan. When he met Hesh however, he let out a hearty chuckle. You could hear the pat on his back reverberate through him as they both beamed with proud smiles.

“Happy birthday my boy.” 

And down the line until you found your seats. 

6:57 

To say you had a few drinks would be an understatement, some of you already finishing your third of the night. The waitress for your table seemed a little intimidated by the rows of large men now getting rowdier by the glass, she would approach the table by your side which gave you the perfect opportunity to ask for the cake. She gave you a little nod, taking away as many plates as she could. 

Half of the table was absorbed in a conversation you couldn’t really be bothered to make out but amongst the smiles and cheers, you didn’t really mind. You were certain they were the loudest guests this restaurant would have in a good while. The boys were too hesitant with the flashiness of the place at first but the food was good, the drinks were good, the place was clean and the people were nice. It was all worth the treat. 

You just allowed yourself to sit back and enjoy the ecstasy of the moment. Your left hand subconsciously rests on the back of Hesh’s right tricep, tracing where the bottom star is tattooed on his skin with your pointer finger. His attention squares in on you within a second, phasing out of the conversation and in your bubble with ease. 

“You alright, doll?” He breathes out, dragging the corners of his lips up with it.

“Yeah.” 

“I could get used to seeing you like this. Should take you out more.” 

“You treat me just fine as it is.” With that you cross your leg, skirt riding up in the process. Your nail now trailing over his shoulder blade and he shivered in response, just as you were anticipating. He wanted to retaliate, he wanted to get you back the way you were playing him. You could see it in his eyes as he forced them not to lock on one place too long on you but his mouth went dry. He only licked his lip, considering what he possibly could say from his repertoire of ‘things that wind you up’ that wouldn’t get him in trouble in front of his family and team. 

He was saved by the cake. 

He rolled his eyes as the rest of you raised your drinks to him, all the attention placed on him solely. The waitress reached over your shoulder to place it in front of the man now holding his face from embarrassment. Another waiter pulled out a lighter for the few candles you brought to put on top. The rest of the table was too busy adding fuel to your own fire. 

“Happy birthday to yoOuUuU!” You moved to Logan’s shoulder seeing who could sing the best, most obnoxious riff. Hesh’s eyes - though his face was red - were filled with pure adoration. Adopting the exact proud expression his father makes, like all of his dreams have been fulfilled and preserved on a silver platter. 

“Make a wish, baby!” You yelled once the lot were done singing off key, to which he complied. His smile only grew wider, looking directly into your pupil before blowing out the candles. The waitress took the cake away again to slice it. You finally returned to your seat with a hand immediately resting on your thigh. 

“Thank you, doll.” He gave you a squeeze and your head was sent into a spin. It was the moment you knew you’d made it over the peak of the night and now the thought of him taking you home again was just over the horizon. You couldn’t think of anything else. 

-

It was another hour of cake and coffee before goodbyes were said. And only one thing dwindled in your thoughts. His hand was on you the rest of the night, under the table, in the car and up to the door of your apartment. 

The warm palm on the small of your back was intoxicating, cologne still strong and suffocating. You could only hold your confidence for so long until the only thing holding your hips up was him holding you up.     

8:49 

The keys jingled in your grip, you couldn’t control them, your hands were shaking. Somehow you knew the moment that door closed, it’d be the beginning of your ruin. You tried to play the game with him but he was too good, you knew he played you right into his hands. The touches, the looks, the smiles, the smell, the comfortable silence. You were in the eye of the storm and anticipation was never one to calm a heartbeat. 

His hand cupped your hip, moving you over enough to take the key and unlock the door for you. But he didn’t open it, not yet. The sound was enough to wake Riley though, faintly through the door was the sound of scurrying paws across the floor and the thud of his nose to the door.

You felt paralysed as he pushed your back against the door. Hands to hips, the man towered over you, a wicked grin setting across his face, lighting up his eyes. His left hand travelled to your thigh, guiding itself inside the tight fabric to your hip. Confirming there was in fact no strap. He just groaned and dug his nails into you like he teeth did your lower lip. 

Your hands were gripping the growing hair behind his ears. Soft lips over yours like nuzzling your head into a pillow. Neck craning to keep your lips locked longer, just a little longer. A shadow of smoke from the volcano, mixing your warm breaths and the air from your nostrils turns to an eruption, his burning tongue to your upper lip, lapping up the dripping saliva from your teeth to your own tongue. 

A burning metal rod wouldn’t feel as intense as he did to you, hands grasping at the flesh that joins your ass and back. One steadied under and the other over the dress pulling you closer to him. 

You pulled your head back a millimetre and his neck acted on instinct, reconnecting your lips with the clunk of your noses colliding, teeth grazing each other’s for not even a quarter of a second but the nerves on the bottom of your feet could feel it. You needed more, you couldn't stop. A moan partially made it out of your mouth, and the momentum you’ve built endures the more he lifts his head. 

The fingers of his left hand knead your bare skin, the other arm bracing itself on the door. You kissed his chin like it could kissing back, soon dragging your tongue in a straight line down Adam's apple to his collarbone. 

“Shit.” He spat out.  

With your face buried in the crook of his head, his forehead fell forward knocking on the door. Riley’s continuous sniffing under the crack of the door, restless tippy taps reacted quicker than expected, letting out an alarmed bark. The both of you brought back to reality. This was a communal hallway and he almost had you half naked. 

“David, we have to go inside.” Your forehead was now resting on his heaving chest with a clear view of the tent in his pants. He only shook his head, still resting against the door. He slowly dragged his fingertips out of your dress, not bothering to readjust it back down. He brought his own palm to his crotch as you watched. 

He thought about you, his hand petting through the trousers fabric like he has many times before and your name slipped through his lips out of habit. His skin was hot, his skin was burning and any noise he made was more out of impatience than it was from pleasure. 

“It’s my birthday.” Was all he said as he pushed you further into the door. Another knock caused the excited dog on the other side to bark again. 

“Fine.” He sighed, defeated and desperate. 

You pulled away from each other, skin dripping with sin it almost stained the concrete floor you stood on. He couldn’t help it, he glanced at the two other doors on your floor. A smile suggesting they’re in for it just as long as you are. And with a cheeky slap to the ass, he followed you inside. 

9:07

“Hey boy.” Hesh greeted Riley, giving his coat a gentle ruffle and a solid pat to the side. The shepherd dog circled him then ran by your side to say hello. Satisfied, he left you two in the kitchen to lay back down in the living room. 

You turned on the kettle. His eyes snapped to you with almost a hint of venom. 

“What are you doing?” he asked, slow tactical steps approaching the island like he was clearing a room. 

“Making a tea.” It took everything within you to keep your composure, your dress barely covered your crotch and was bunched at your waist, your lipstick now a faint haze around your lips. You turn to look at him, arms crossed like he hadn’t just pulled you to bits in the hallway. “You want one?” 

He stood in disbelief, certain he had already won. Certain he had whittled you down to nothing but the prize in the middle of a parcel, yet here you were still playing. In truth, your stomach was completely twisted, you were scared and evaluating what, if anything, you had to do tomorrow and if it would actually be plausible to complete. Even the coloured marks down his stained chin and neck did nothing but make you groan in the back of your throat. 

That was his last straw, he couldn’t stall it anymore.

9:14 

“You’re fucking ridiculous.” You were over his shoulder, the boiling of the kettle fainter and fainter as you entered the bedroom. You were tossed onto the bed over at least two metres. His footsteps heavy, ripping his shirt off by the button. 

He ate it up, every bit of it. Your big doe eyes, parted lip, dazed eyelids with blown out pupils bound to roll back second. He held your ankle in his hand, undoing the fiddly little strap of your heel. You began on the other foot but he only swatted your hand away.

“I’m a big boy. I can do it.” 

When he was done with one, he threw the shoe over his shoulder and your leg to the side of the bed. Same with the other foot, leaving your legs wide open and dress completely collected on your waist. 

He’d been waiting all day for this, all month. This wasn’t the first time he had you this week but today it just felt different and he had to make sure you felt it.

He held his arms out, gripping your ankles to get a good look at your pantiless pussy. You felt a gust of warm air as he let out a sigh. The man licks his lips, a feral instinctive look in his eye. But he wanted to ease you into it. As much as he wanted it now, he knew it would be so much fun if he took his time. 

What he did want right that second however was that dress off you. Hands now gripping your hips, he yanks you forward off the bed, resting all your weight on him. He was now on his knees as well as he brought you into a searing kiss. A bruising rough.. 

His fingers were clawing at the bottom of your dress, peeling it off until you stopped him at your ribcage. 

“There’s a zipper in the back.” With that you turned on your knees for him. He zipped it without a second thought. 

Just the sight of you stepping out of your dress like it was nothing, like it wasn’t driving him absolutely mad. The sight of you swaying that ass in front of his face.

He needed his pants off. Now.

You hadn’t even turned around to see him before a hand pushed your naked back forward over the bed. With your head now on the bed in front of you, you looked back between your legs to see your boy, unbuckling his belt at rapid speed. He’d just started at the button on his trousers and in anticipation, you swayed your hips a little more in clear view for him. 

“Shit.” He grunted, instantly latching his warm tongue to your thigh. His actions were so impulsive, like it was this or death. Licking a trail of arousal that had been falling down your thigh since you made it into the apartment. Then he dove straight into the layers of your pussy. 

You watched with half lidded eyelids as he pulled his dick out, pants still on and too impatient to yank his boxers down properly. 

9.46

“Oh god” you cried out, pussy throbbing against his tongue as it ran across your vulva like sorting through a filing cabinet. The clicking of saliva echoed through the room, moving his tongue at a rapid speed. His breath laced with his vocal chords with every huff and grunt and slurp. Lips enveloping your pussy like a last meal. 

Then his tongue found your clit, his nose nudging your entrance, breathing in your arousal. He circled it, tongue pointed, muscle tensed. 

“Oh my- David!” your hips bucking against him, you needed more.

“Say it again, doll” He shoved his tongue into your vagina, scraping any service he could find. The taste soaking into the layers of his taste buds and you clamped around him. 

You only opened your eyes for a moment to see him jerking himself off with one hand, his other hand was on your ass but you were so enthralled with the pleasure, you couldn’t care to notice. 

The noises were absurd, you were drooling. And yet his name never stayed on the tip of your tongue too long, jumping out whenever it could until you started chanting for more until there wasn’t anything else to ask for. 

“Come on, baby. Come on, doll.” He whispers into your pussy, his breath lighting every nerve like a control board of buttons. You felt him everywhere, the tight rope in your stomach pulling you up and down, tightening and squeezing. Your orgasm coming in as hot as a blowtorch and his kiss broke the creme brulee crust. The sticky, slurping of his folded lips, his tongue lining and carding through you. It was almost a cooling sensation. An anecdote. 

But it kept coming and coming, like a lag in all your pleas for more but each finally being fulfilled one after another. And he drank it all. Any fluid you gave him, he drank it and enjoyed it. Himself almost let go but he pulled his hand off him whenever he felt close to the edge. He didn’t want to slow down so he needed to stay a little more comfortable. 

9:52

“David, DAVID” You were clawing at the bed sheets for your dear life. Your spine jerking like a child safety lid turned the wrong way. Cranking to something that had already long happened but kept going. The movement was so involuntary you cried out to him. 

“DaVID I came! I came already!” Your voice was muffled in the sheets, your tears staining the sheets. He only pulled away for a second. 

“More.” 

And he was back at it, one hand still barely working on himself while the other was back on your foot. His thumb deeply massaging into the sole of your foot. 

All you could think of was David, all he could think of was you. 

Your stomach hollowed and you were on the verge of screaming. Your pussy burnt but continued to leak for him. 

He got you again. Your knees buckled and he caught you with both hands keeping you steady. You spasmed and stuttered through your who knows what numbered orgasm, voice desperate to say something, anything, with no breath to do so. 

“Shit baby, almost there.” You could’ve sworn you had squirted on him. Your stomach muscles contracting and releasing by the millisecond, toes flexed. You saw white spots, fluctuating and flashing just for you. 

10:05 

The soonest moment you physically could, you gasped for air. Climbing onto the bed before the boy could catch you. You were still trembling, hips bucking into nothing, lips wide open and you wouldn’t dare open your eyes yet. 

You only heard him chuckle and felt him fall on the bed next to you.

“You’re done huh?” he asked, voice too amused for his own neglected state. You only nodded your head while trying to catch your breath and regulate the tears falling from your eyes. 

“Sure you don’t have another one in you?” You shook your head with what energy you had left. You knew it was going to happen again tonight anyway but for this moment, you had no capacity to think or speak. He pulled you to his chest, pants still shamelessly riding his thighs. You laid on top of him, fighting against your body curling up on itself. 

He stroked your hair. He kissed the crown of your head and closed his eyes in content. Mouth wet and covered in your arousal. 

You could feel how hot he was, you could feel how hard he was. You were slowly regaining your conscious mind and after all, it was his birthday.

“Just give me a minute.” you sighed out into his chest and joined him in enjoying the satisfaction of the moment. 

- 

5:30am

There was a gentle clawing at the door. In the grogginess of what you think was just about 4 hours of sleep, Riley woke you up. It’s still pretty early, both you and Hesh being early risers but Hesh still looked completely out cold so you knew you’d have to deal with Riley this morning. 

Your body ached. Sore in places that hadn’t been felt in a good while. You tried to move as slowly as you could, both not to wake David up and because it would be too painful to move too quickly. Your left foot was completely asleep, nerves turned off that it almost made you consider just not getting up at all. But Riley’s whimpers pressured you up anyway. 

One foot at a time you dragged your legs off the mattress. Your hips ached like a raging siren. Any time your panties shifted and grazed you in a certain spot, a gasp left your lips before you could stop it. 

Just take it slow, you’re not that pathetic. 

Holding the bedside table for dear life, you tried to stand up. Right foot taking all your weight. Now take a deep breath. 

Testing the waters, you shift your weight, hoping to balance it out. Tripping over nothing, you are just hobbling into the wall. 

“Ow.” You let out louder than intended. “Shit”

There was a rustling of fabric behind you, you looked over your shoulder cautiously, not daring to make a sound. Your mission failed, Hesh was awake.

“Why’s Riley crying?” His voice was groggy, it was sexy. He didn’t roll over so you felt safe if you kept quiet. 

“He has to go to the bathroom.” You let out, trying not to reveal any of the pain you were feeling. 

“What time is it?” He was sitting up now. You felt so dumb, you knew he would be way too cocky for the rest of the day if he knew just how much he ruined you. He begun to turn around when you didn’t reply, “Hey, are you alri-” 

And there you were, clenching the wall for dear life, legs trembling uncontrollably. Skin hot and red and bruised, hair a mess with residue lipstick colour staining your swollen and bruised lips. 

“Oh.” there was that wicked smirk again. He knew he won the game and took the prize. He made his bed and slept in it. It definitely woke him up though. Who cares if he still had lipstick staining his chin too. 

He got out of the bed, chucking on a shirt and a pair of pants. Passing you with a kiss to the cheek. 

“Stay here, I’ll be right back.” With that he left you holding the wall. You listened as he took Riley outside, took him into the kitchen and then like it was in slow motion, you heard every step he took back to the bedroom. 

You hadn’t moved a muscle, you weren’t sure you could. And he chuckled and it made you mad but you laughed with him. 

“Let’s get you cleaned up, doll.” The rest of the morning was spent in his arms. He held you up in the shower, he carried you to the kitchen counter. Whatever you thought you might get done today definitely was going to happen. But a day was never a waste if it was spend with Hesh.

[hello-summ3r]

Find Me In The Ruins Of Our Past 𓆩ᥫ᭡𓆪

David "Hesh" Walker x fem!Reader

Part 1.

Story description:

Years after ODIN struck, the damages left by the catastrophe remained in numerous parts of North America, including San Diego. Accounts of survivors up until now were rare, extremely rare. However, it was not lucky. It would be better off if you were dead in times like this. You had survived up until now with other survivors like you, but that lasted until you were found and attacked by a federation recon group. Everyone either died or were separated, but you escaped. Now, you venture the forests injured and alone... but are you really alone in this dark, miserable world?

!TW! : injury detail, gore, strong language, rapid changings of pace, war topics, sensitive topics, post-traumatic states, slowburn?, sex?, barely proof-read, 1am writing session

Story under the cut.

Find Me In The Ruins Of Our Past 𓆩ᥫ᭡

~~~

Alone. Dark. Dangerous.

Surrounding her, the army of soldiers that stood with authority on the grounds of what once was her home. A wasteland now, owned by the sickening taunts of crows that only could remind her of a fallen memory out of reach.

The helpless, innocent bird teeming with life that visited her days in the mornings at the cracks of dawn, before disappearing into the field of trees lining the flowery path just outside the window. The gentle music that it sung, echoing softly off the tranquil, vibrant leaves that hugged the notes like a blanket, sweetly danced to her ears. However, it was now replaced with the fiery orchestra of choking croaks that reverberated around the ash-covered barks, ripped apart from the bare, naked trees, enveloping her, swallowing her whole.

Her feet had grown accustomed to the rough terrain of the ground. The skin had become calloused and become rough as she tread along the natural surfaces. The daggers of bushes and twigs pierced at her like tiny swords, dragging away strips of her epidermis as she stumbled onto the pathways where they laid. Her breath was always ragged and labored, and even in the coldest nights, not a puff of condensation after each strained exhale was present. She was cold as snow and like a forgotten statue of ice. Not one bit of her was relaxed, but locked and tense like chains had been dragged across her muscles, restricting them into place.

Her lips were cracked and dry, giving her the metallic taste of iron each time she ran her tongue across, the taste that never went away no matter how many times you tried to swallow it down. Below her sunken eyes were dark clouds, the thunderous vapors that hung high, but low. Out of reach, but low enough for you to believe you could reach it. They painted her face like war paint, the kind you would see soldiers roughly apply before shooting for their deaths.

It was difficult out there, where you wouldn't possibly distinguish a winding branch from the ugly picture of an outstretched, armed hand. Or, where the cumulonimbus clouds hoarded the vast canvas of the sky, splashing it with darkness and gloom. The atmosphere still reeked of the overpowering stench of blood and death from months to years ago. The fallen bodies of soldiers had already been washed away into the sea of crushed leaves and mud. Their flesh had separated from bone and both melted with the earth, becoming one. The bones were left scattered, leaving a truly gruesome sight, but her only concern was navigating her way through the unevenness of the littered land. most importantly, was to not destroy any much more of whats left of the precious flesh of hers that could tear away like the plump, sweet meat of a peach - the kind that would happily be pecked away at by ravenous and famished birds when they get the opportunity.

She bent down by a low-hanging tree just across from a streaming river, hastily sitting on the damp grass from the rainfall a couple days back. She let out a deep exhale, her throat cracking as the air tickled the sore rings of muscle. Sluggishly, she closed her eyes, stretching one of her legs out in front of her as she attempted to get some rest underneath the tree. The air was thick and smelled of precipitation. For the first time in what seemed like forever, the sun shone through the gaps of leaves, and the dense layer of ash from years ago subsided enough for some sunlight to come through.

"Fuck..." she grumbled to herself as she rested a hand on her temple.

Rest was almost impossible for her. The pain was too much to be ignored for some measly couple hours of 'sleep'. she grumbled before opening her eyes again, meeting the dreadful atmosphere around her. The forest was silent, so deafeningly silent in that moment that she almost wished the crows flew back to taunt her. Her head turned a few times, then a few times more, as she gazed for any sort of life she can use to distract her with - but there was nothing. not even the hover-flies were there to shiver around the ground.

Suddenly, she heard a faint whistle from the grass behind the tree she leaned up against, but it wasn't the quietness of a bird, but it also wasn't the footsteps of a lone deer. it was different to the life she has heard before wandering around the landscape.

then, a snap.

Her eyes shot open, her fatigue draining away almost immediately. Startling her, a loud bark ripped through the dense air, and it broke her from the quietness she had been surrounded by for the past 3 years, counting. The next thing she saw was the vicious beast panting before her, gazing into her eyes ferociously as it bared its fangs. It stepped closer, and closer, the warning evident in its glossy, green eyes. It was like it knew how helpless she was in this situation, and it fed off of it. The canine snarled, shaking as it approached her more.

Her muscles froze in place, except for her fingers, which clawed at the ground, gripping it. The tips had turned white from the sheer amount of force in her grasp, and so was her skin as it fell paler each second, each heartbeat that she knew may as well be her last. Beads of sweat raced down her face eagerly, a complete contrast to her body, which was like a corpse with rigor mortis. Tense and stiff. The wash of fight or flight locked in her mind, capturing her in a chokehold. One that could mean she stays under that tree ripped to death by the deadly beast. She could only imagine the scene. Her trachea teared from her throat after the animal sinks its fangs into her rings of muscle.

With another step, it pounces. It leaps like a thousand leopards chasing a herd of gazelles. The nightmarish bark of the german shepherd pierced into her eardrum as it reached forward with its snout. This was it. It was over for her. Could be to die an agonizing death in exchange for much-needed rest be so much to ask for?

Her arms instinctively reached up, shielding her face. She expected the bite, the moment its teeth gnaws at her tender muscles. The screams that could only be voiced existed in her head, but it was broken by a call far away. It wasn't a bark, but a man. She could decipher the words, but most were muffled as she recovered from the fact she had been hyperventilating the whole time. Slowly, she uncovered her face, peering in the direction.

"Riley! Stay!" he shouted across the plain, waving his arm at the dog.

She slowly blinked her eyes at the small interaction, dropping her head back against the bark of the tree. Fatigued, she exhaled shallowly as her vision became blurry, small opaque dots blinking in and out occasionally like condensation on a glass. Soon enough, the sounds around her began to dim, and so did her reality as her limbs dropped to the floor and relaxed. All tension dissipated from her body as she sunk into the crook of the tree, and she slipped into the darkness of unconsciousness under the sheltering branches above.

[halcyone-of-the-sea]

Im so happy your write for Hesh!!! Could I request Hesh and reader who was training to be a ballerina before ODIN and became a nurse because she wanting to help others? I love writing so much!!!!

Dancing With Scalpels

PAIRING: David 'Hesh' Walker x F!Reader

SYNOPSIS: It's strange, maybe you'll have to thank Hesh's dog for breaking his ankle - otherwise, you'd have never met him.

WORDCOUNT: 2.2k

WARNINGS: Broken bone, mentions of death, but mostly fluff

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

You hum as you organize your desk, taking up papers in your hands and sliding them under the metal holder of your clipboard with a clack of material. The medical ward was slow today, and while that was a good thing, it left you with little to do besides paperwork and re-cleaning your space. 

Glancing over your own handwriting as you carefully place the clipboard back down on your desk, you sigh and stretch your arms above your head. You listen to your bones crack before dropping them, eyes sliding around until they finally land on the picture, which sits on the tabletop like a silent reminder. 

It’s been about five years since ODIN struck, since the world shifted and broke, but you still find it in yourself to look back on the past with fondness. The images of your troupe, all dressed up in flowy finery and posing in your pointe shoes, were a deep comfort to you. 

Most of them were dead you knew, yet in that image, they still lived and breathed—had the sway of their feet and the grace of their arms to display to an awaiting crowd. Their smiles had never faded. As you stare at that picture, bodies trapped in time, you hear the stomp of booted feet coming in from your open door; ears perking and attention zapped away. 

The soft smile on your lips disappears, a sheen of professionalism coming back like a curtain over a stage. You blink and latch onto the shadow of a man who limps slowly into the view of the opening. He’s about to pass by, a large grimace on his stubbled face, before you call to him.

“Sir?” Your feet take you out from the desk, quickly skirting around the chair before you’re about three feet from the tall individual. “Are you alright?”

The man is in his late twenties, burly and strong with wide shoulders and the tapered waist of an athletic build. He’s wearing recon gear atop a gray jacket, staps and guards interlocked like the fingers of lovers while he struggles to properly place his left foot on the floor. 

Wisps of brown hair stick out from under a black beanie. It looks like he’d stopped at the armory first, coming here after dropping off his weapons. 

The stranger’s green eyes blink at you, the tightness of hidden pain stuck in the lines near his pulled lips. His strong jaw works, pulling a nonchalant smile that looks more like a poorly done wince. 

“Hey,” he clears his throat and has his hands clenched at his side. “Sorry about barging in, there any nurses available right now?” 

“You’re looking at one,” you tilt your head to motion inside of your room, hand coming up to rest on the wooden frame of the door. “Do you need help walking?” 

“Nah,” a wiry chuckle, gloved hand waving in dismissal. “I got here alright, I think a few more steps won't—” 

His limp foot catches on his good one as he turns, and with a panicked widening of his gaze, the brunette stumbles as a sharp noise of alarm echoes. Your eyes widen. Before he can slam his face into the ground and create more problems, you dash forward and loop your arms around his waist, his gear digging into your scrubs. You grunt and take the full weight of him for a moment before the injured man snaps out a hand to the doorframe and quickly struggles back to his feet. 

You stare and watch his cheeks go red, his eyes darting away with an embarrassed chuckle. 

“Ah…sorry about that, Sweetheart.” You huff and cross your arms. 

“Quite the show for ‘I think I’ll be just fine.’” A flash of a smirk goes across his square jaw.

“Well, maybe your beauty just made me lightheaded.” At your unimpressed stare, he shakes his head and questions, “That bad?”

“Very,” you joke, smiling and rolling your eyes. “C’mon, let’s get you looked at before you end up breaking your nose, Soldier.” 

“Sounds like a plan, Ma’am.” You hook an arm around his waist and let him lean on you, his limb resting along the span of your shoulders and his injured leg weakly trying to help you along. Halfway to the examination table, he grunts out, “Name’s Hesh by the way—don’t think we’ve met before.”

You smile and say your name. “Transferred in from Dallas two weeks ago. Was told you needed more nurses here after a Federation attack near the Wall.”

“Then you were told correct, thanks for stepping up.” He’s set down with a huff and a grimace, his eyes swimming with annoyance at his leg. “Damn thing.” 

You turn and wash your hands in the sink, slipping on sterile gloves as Hesh undoes his laces. 

“Sorry for droppin’ in like this, I tried to play it off but I think it’s broken.” You look over your shoulder and tense—the pale skin of his ankle was a deep black and blue, and the foot was somewhat twisted to the side. 

“Well, shit,” you curse and Hesh blinks up at you sheepishly, sending a stiff smile. “It’s good you came by when you did. What happened?”

The man’s hand goes to run over the back of his neck. He seems highly embarrassed about something.

“Ah, well,” he plays off a small twitch of his lips, “Riley, my K-9, he, uh…he managed to dart after a hostile before I could see him. Shoved me right to my ass and down a ravine in the process, actually.” 

You have to put your wrist to your mouth to stifle a giggle, kneeling down to gently grab onto the affected limb. 

Hesh takes in a tiny breath as you gently move the appendage, grumbling through a strained smile. “That funny, Doll?”

“Well,” you easily detail, “all I’ll say is that I’m sure it was something to see firsthand.”

“Tell that to Logan, my brother wouldn’t shut his mouth about it all while draggin’ me back. You try listenin’ to him while you’re half passed out—that was even worse than the pain.” You hum, chuckling.

This Hesh character was quite the casual talker, conversation with him came easily. You touch the skin of his ankle and quietly apologize when he hisses, noticing the swelling of flesh and sighing. Moving it from side to side and asking him if he’d broken his ankle before.

He answered in an affirmative—playing football in high school.

“Sorry to say this, but you’re right, Hesh, definitely broken. I don’t need to see an X-ray to know that.” He groans lowly. “Let’s get this all sorted and get you out of here, hm?” 

There’s a long sigh. 

“...Yes, Ma’am.”

Over the course of hours, you take various X-rays and scans, looking for the point of most contention and finding it in the form of a break in the lower tibia; it was clean, luckily for him. No bone shards or anything of that sort.

“I’m beggin’ to know if I need surgery, Sweetheart.” Green eyes lock with yours as you push him back into your office, the wheelchair squeaking under him. You smile gently at a few other nurses who pass—they nod back with a teasing smile at the man below you. “I’m on the edge of my seat, here.”

“I’m not the doctor, Hesh,” you chuckle, tilting your head. “I legally can’t tell you that.”

“Legally?” His brow raises. “C’mon, the world fell apart—there’s no Risk Management anymore.”

“Are you sure Riley didn’t intentionally push you over the edge of that ravine?” Your eyes narrow, a joke in your eye. 

A slow smile grows on Hesh’s lips. “That hurt, Ma’am.” 

You scoff and shake your head, wheeling him into the previous room and leaving him to go to the paperwork on your desk. Grabbing it, you open your top drawer and deposit it away for another time. Gliding up beside you, Hesh sighs and glances around as you tidy up. 

His eyes find the framed picture on your desk. 

“Whoa,” the brunette utters, locking onto your form in the middle of the group. You blink and look to the side, noticing his staring. Face going hot, you raise a brow in question. “That you?” 

Hesh wheels slightly closer, leaning forward but respectfully not touching any of your things. You restrain a wide smile at his intrigue. 

“Why else would I have a framed picture of ballerinas on my desk, Hesh? Of course, it’s me.” You pick up the frame and tilt it his way, resting your hip on the side of your desk as he takes it gently, delicate with your belongings. “Two years before ODIN—we were in Europe for a competition.” 

“Shit,” he mutters, sliding you an awed glance. “You must be really good.”

“Was,” you laugh, shrugging. Hesh confusingly looks up while you explain the best you can. “It’s been so long, plus I gave it up when everything went down; went to get my qualifications to be a nurse and help out.” Hesh looks a bit sad at that, sneaking a glance back down at your bright smile in the picture. 

“Looked like you loved it,” he commented, handing the frame back after a moment of thought. “I’m sorry.” 

You’re slightly taken aback by the apology, oddly touched by his sudden seriousness about this. After a slow inhale, you hum. “It’s alright, Hesh. That’s just life—it’ll take us places even if we want to go or not. We just have to make the best of it.” 

“You’re happy, though, Sweetheart,” he asks, eyes not faltering, “right?” 

It’s not a feeling of uncertainty that makes you hesitate, it’s the way he asks you so genuinely; honest with his intentions. Rarely have you had people—soldier or civilian—come in here and speak to you like this. You stare with slightly-parted lips.

A bashful smile blooms on your lips. 

“When I’m helping patients like you, Hesh, yes. Yes, I’m happy.” The man stares a moment longer before he clears his throat and glances down, contact broken; a crimson sheen infects his face. 

“Good. That’s good.” Even if he’s not looking at you, a grin still twitches his lips; making your face go heated and warm with something else entirely. Hands stuttering over your frame, you put it down where it was and lick your lips, smiling at the tabletop. 

When the doctor comes in, you let Hesh speak and pipe in with anything you needed to include, the air suddenly tinged with something between you and the soldier that you can’t put words to. It’s so potent even the doctor sends you a raised brow on the walk out. You avert your eyes and itch at your cheek. 

“Least I’ll be able to get back out in the field quicker,” Hesh sighs, taking off his beanie for a moment before itching at the top of his head. “If I’d of had to go under, Logan would never let me hear the end of it.”

“You and your brother sound like you’re constantly nagging at each other,” you huff. 

“Shit, what else are we good for?” The both of you share a laugh, eyes crinkling. There’s a moment of intimate silence before Hesh splays his hands and speaks.

“I’m gettin’ a splint, then?” You internally curse yourself as Hesh’s lids narrow on you, head tilting with a deep smirk. The trance is broken.

“Until the swelling goes down,” your head nods, fingers motioning to his ankle. “Then a cast for twelve to sixteen weeks.” 

“Hm,” Hesh looks away and thins his lips, seriousness slipping back into his expression. 

Staring, you ask carefully, concerned, “Hesh?”

“No,” he shakes his head, the smirk coming back as if it never left, “No, it’s just that’s a long time to not be able to take you out, is all.”

Your face blanks, heart all but stopping in your chest. The man watches you closely, slowly slipping his beanie back on his head with an innocent smile.

“Too forward?”

“N-no,” you stutter, face heating to an alarming degree. “No, I think that one was just right.” 

Shaking your head quickly you brush down your top and listen to Hesh’s bright chuckles as you gather your bearings. It’s after you sigh and look back into those greens that you laugh and utter, “I think I’d be willing to wait.”

“Oh, yeah?” Your face can’t stop smiling at the teasing tilt to his words. “Now, I’d hate to make you sit around that long, Sweetheart.” “Hesh, I’m agreeing to go out on a date with you, take it or leave it,” you huff in exasperation, staring at him with a loose expression. 

His eyes lighten, the stain of happiness leaking through.

“You proud of yourself?” 

Hesh looks smug, but promptly states, “Didn’t think I’d get this far, if I’m bein’ honest.”

You press a hand to your mouth to stifle your loud laugh.

As promised, fifteen months later, there’s a knock on your office door—you stand and think nothing, opening the barrier only to find a large bouquet of flowers and the man holding them up to you. 

Your face softens and Hesh returns a warm hum of greeting. 

“Hope you’ll forgive me for bein’ late, Doll,” his eyes crinkle. “Was learnin’ how to dance. C’mon, I got some moves to show off—we’ll get you back in those pointe shoes in no time.”

TAGS:

@luuvbuzz, @emerald-valkyrie, @anna-banana27, @blueoorchid, @cryingnotcrying, @writeforfandoms, @homicidal-slvt, @jade-jax, @frazie99, @elmoees, @littlemisstrouble, @alpineswinter, @phoenixhalliwell, @idocarealot, @lavalleon, @facelessmemories, @h-leigh, @20forty9, @glitter-anon-asks, @emily-who-killed-a-man, @neelehksttr, @aeneanc, @escapefromrealitysm, @i-d-1-0-t, @pparcxysm, @hawkscanendme, @caramlizedtomatos, @konigsleftkidney, @sanfransolomitatm, @maelstrom007, @jemandderkeinenusernamenfindet, @pheobees, @glitterypirateduck, @uselsshuman, @fan-of-encouragement, @halfmoth-halfman, @ghostlythunderbird, @I-inkage, @pukbadger, @kopatych11, @0nceinabluem00n, @cocrorapop, @knightofsexyness, @abnormalgeil, @smallseastone, @jacegons, @330bpm-whiplash, @simon-rileys-housewife, @4-atsu, @tiredmetalenthusiast

[krypticcafe]

❧ Customer Service Policy

aka The Rules

As much as we love our beloved customers, this cafe is a one-man crew and to make sure the place doesn't burn down and ruin things for everyone, we have our own rules and regulations regarding special orders along with some guidance for the lost.

Many thanks, ✎ Kryptid

❧ Before You Order:

I will do a max of 10 characters for headcanons or fics per request, but you may request more in another one. Depending on the request, I might take out characters or make a second part.

I specialize in masc, amab, dominant, and particularly gender neutral readers, but I'm open to all types.

Readers are automatically written gender-neutral unless requested otherwise.

I do character/reader and occasionally character/character fanfics.

Poly ships are more than welcome! Please state if it is poly, because I will assume you want them all separately.

I will not always accept requests. I write on my own schedule.

If you want a specific kind of reader, please directly state so, such as gender, assigned sex, and/or pronouns. For example,

May I have a transmasc reader with König?

Can I get Din Djarin smut with an amab reader with they/them pronouns?

Can you do Ghost x fem!reader?

I would love to request a könig/horangi/masc reader please!

Remember, it's better to be super specific than super vague for the best customer satisfaction.

✅️Will Write✅️

Polyamory/Open Relationships

Smut (certain kinks and within reason)

Mild Dub-con (depends heavily on request)

Platonic Relationships

Sibling/Related Readers

Child/Younger Reader

AUs

Comfort/Trauma Fics

Readers of all genders, backgrounds, etc

Dark/Psychological Fics (within reason)

Dead Dove (depending)

Half-Humans/Humanoids

Robots/Mechs

Light A/B/O

❌️Won't Write❌️

Explicit or Graphic Non-con/R*pe Smut

Dark/Psychological fics glorifying actions

B*astiality

P*dophilia

Inc*st

Certain Fetishes

Real People

Pregnancy

A/B/O Mpreg

❧ Flavors:

✎﹏Call of Duty

Simon "Ghost" Riley ('09 & '22)

John "Soap" MacTavish ('09 & '22)

Captain John Price ('09 & '22)

Kyle "Gaz" Garrick ('22)

König

Stray/Hound ('09 & '22)

Kim "Horangi" Hong-Jin

Gary "Roach" Sanderson

Farah Karim

Alex Keller

Alejandro Vargas

Rodolfo Parra

Sebastian Krueger

Nikto

Sobieslaw "Gromsko" Kościuszko

Keegan P. Russ

Logan Walker

David "Hesh" Walker

✎﹏Slashers/Dead By Daylight

Ghostface (films)

Danny Johnson/Jed Olsen/DBD!Ghostface

Jason Voorhees

Harry Warden

Michael Myers (films, DBD)

Pyramid Head (games, DBD)

Bubba Sawyer (films, DBD)

Thomas Hewitt

Brahms Heelshire

Trapper/Evan MacMillan

Anna/Huntress

Wraith/Philip Ojomo

Legion/Frank Morrison

Ji-Woon Hak/Trickster

Sally Smithson/Nurse

✎﹏Star Wars

Poe Dameron

The Mandalorian/Din Djarin

Cassian Andor

Obi-Wan Kenobi

Stormtroopers

✎﹏Marvel

Sam Wilson/Captain America/Falcon

Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier

T'Challa/Black Panther

Peter Quill/Star-Lord

Gamora

Mantis

Nebula

Steven Grant/Marc Spector/Jake Lockley/Moon Knight

Matt Murdock/Daredevil

Wade Wilson/Deadpool

Eddie Brock/Venom

✎﹏Marble Hornets/Slenderverse

Masky/Tim Wright

Hoodie/Brian Thomas

Jane the Killer

Eyeless Jack

Kate the Chaser

Slenderman

all rights reserved © krypticcafe, all fanfiction belongs to me and should not be copied, edited, published, sold, or translated without permission. all characters belong to their respective fandoms and creators.

[rinniewrites]

Ghost Stories Chap.1- No Man’s Land

Simon “Ghost” Riley x Fem!Ghost Reader (MW2 (2022) X COD:Ghosts (2013) crossover

Summary: Taskforce 141 is sent on a confidential mission where they discover Ghost isn’t one of a kind.

A/N: decided to rewrite the first two chapters because I did not like the way the story started. I combined the new ideas mixed with the old ones and made one long chapter! 

Word Count: 2.8k

Task Force 141 was sitting at a booth in a bar with their usual banter. Soap and Ghost make horrible jokes making Gaz howl in laughter while Price shakes his head. “Aye! Laswell!” Soap shouts pointing his drink in her direction. “Hey boys I have a very special task for you,” Laswell says as she approaches the end of the table with a file in her hand. “Special, eh?” Gaz questions as he reaches for the file. “Top Secret.” She says pulling up a chair from a nearby table.

“I have a very good friend down in Santa Monica. He has two sons. He’s sent them on a special mission down in No Man’s Land. It is a confidential mission but his sons can’t go alone and I want you all to assist them.” “And what will we be assisting them with?” Price raises an eyebrow as he reads the file on Logan and Hesh.

Laswell glances around the nearly empty bar before turning back to the group of soldiers. “My friend, Captain Elias Walker has recently discovered that the Federation seeks to overwhelm the United States and they plan to do it using the ODIN missiles.” She explains pulling out more pictures of documents. “Bloody hell.” Gaz sighs. “Your job is to help assist Logan and Hesh in grabbing intel and finding out who is in charge of the Federation and take them out. I can have a plane ready for you by the morning to take you to their base in Santa Monica. If you are up to the task.” Laswell explains. Price nods his head, “We’ll take it.” Ghost looked away taking another shot and getting up to leave.

------------ SANTA MONICA 1400 HOURS

“Aye we should go to the pier and ride the wheel huh L.t?” Soap wraps his arms around Ghost. “Johnny gets off of me we are almost there.” Ghost grunts. They approach the entrance to the base where Elias Walker was waiting for them. He quickly scans the group of men before standing up straighter. You could see the conflict in his eyes. “Gentlemen. I am Captain Walker I run the base here.” Price fixes his hat before taking a step forward, “Captain Price. This is my taskforce 141. This is Sergeant MacTavish, Sergeant Garrick, and Lieutenant Riley.” The men nodded in greeting. Ghost could feel Walker’s eyes lingering on him. Obviously, it’s something he was used to but he did not enjoy it when people stared longer than they should.

Walker continued to talk while his eyes were still on Ghost, “I’m sending you to assist my boys in a secret mission in No Man’s Land. That’s the area where the accidental ODIN missile hit. Right in front of the stadium. The federation has turned it into a base. They already got a headstart so the path should be clear and you could meet them right at the tunnel. After you gather the intel you will meet with a very special recon team. They will help the rest of the way.” He explained to the task force. He then turns and nods at a soldier behind him that had a box of new radios. “These are the radios with special comms you will need to complete this mission.”

As the men begin to switch out their radios Walker called out to Ghost, “What’s your callsign Lieutenant?” Ghost looked back at the Captain before answering, “Ghost, sir.” Walker hums before asking a question. “You ever hear the Ghost story.” At the mention of that Soap and Gaz shoots up. “The infamous story about the Ghost Team that took on hundreds of enemy soldiers and won? I used to hear that story all the time when I was a little lad.” Soap said cheerfully. Gaz nodded. “That’s just a made-up story though right? That was only the story reported of them and it is kind of hard to believe.” Walker chuckled before turning back to Ghost, “You remind me of one, a Ghost. They wear those masks like the one you got on your face.” Ghost remained silent but was interested.

Walker starts to walk towards a jeep signaling the men to follow. “This is the truck you will be taking follow the road down until there is no more left. You will see the entrance to a forest, follow the trail and it will lead to where my sons are. Good luck soldiers.”

---------

The men finally see the entrance to the tunnel in the distance Price sigh in relief as the journey to get there wasn’t easy. He thinks back to how the ground shook as they walked on the edge causing Gaz to almost fall off the end of the edge, a deer scaring Soap causing him to curse loudly in his native language which caused Ghost to scold him resulting in a small argument almost alerting the enemy.

Once they reached the right side of the tunnel Ghost spots two people laying the grass, which would’ve been invisible to the untrained eye. Logan and Hesh stand up and train their guns at the other men. Price holds his hands up, “Sergeants, we are taskforce 141 sent by your father to assist you.”

141 quickly introduces themselves. Hesh steps up nodding at the group, “Nice to meet you all, our job right now is to head into the tunnel and gonna put this camera on Riley so he can scout the area and look for intel. We will meet with a recon team after” He leads the group to the tunnel.

As the six of them and Riley, the german shepherd walk into the tunnel, Gaz notices multiple conveys coming down. “Vehicles incoming, shifting right.” He warned. The group quickly shuffles behind rusty cars as the vehicles pass. As they get to the end Hesh puts his hand up, “Hang on. Straggler on the right, two o’clock. Take them out.” Logan signals for Riley to kill him. As Riley takes down the Soldier the team continues moving forward. “Jackpot,” Gaz says. Price looks in the direction Gaz is, “Sergeant, there is a massive enemy camp just ahead.” Hesh nods and hands Logan his tablet, “Sync up with Riley.”

Logan syncs up with Riley. The dog slowly moves forward and climbs through the entrance of an abandoned bus before continuing out of sight. “Wanna see why Riley is the most valuable teammate?” Hesh asks pointing to the tablet. The team gathers around Logan and watches carefully.

As the soldiers watch the camera they see Riley in the grass dodging Federation soldiers. Suddenly Gaz points to an area on the screen, “The guy on the trailer, you see him?” “Hold on Riley.” Hesh zooms in to see an unfamiliar man standing on the trailer as two Federation soldiers bring out someone their faces weren’t visible since the man was blocking the view. “Riley move to the right.” Riley obeyed Hesh’s orders as the captured person came into view everyone looks in confusion. Soap turned to Ghost and says, “Ghost he looks like you.” Hesh turns to his brother, “ Logan sync up the mic let's hear what the bastard is saying.”

The mic soon pics up the conversation, the man leans down to look at the masked man, “What’s wrong? You look like you've seen a Ghost.” He taunts. They could hear Ajax’s shaky voice, “Rorke?” He asks. The group listens intensely. None of them had heard of a Rorke before. Rorke signals the two soldiers to send Ajax back into the truck. The man, Rorke turns to the rest of the soldiers, “Move everything to firebase Charlie! Including him! Operation Homecoming will be on schedule!” He exclaims. Hesh curses quietly telling Riley to head back.

“What the hell is Operation Homecoming?” Ghost asks. “Hell if I know.” Price says as Riley returns. Suddenly, Hesh’s radio goes off, “Viking what’s your position? You all better double time or get left behind.” Hesh groans in frustration before responding, “Let's move! Stalker-Six, we're headed to your position. Don't start the party without us!”

The men regroup with Riley at the exit point. Riley takes off forward, barking. “What the hell Riley? Slow down!” Hesh shouts after the dog. “What’s up with the dog?” Soap asks watching Riley growl at the tall grass ahead. “It looks like he senses something.” Ghost says.

Growling was heard all from multiple directions.“Shit! It’s wolves!” Gaz exclaims reaching for his handgun. All at once, the wolves started running at the group from all directions. Ghost shot at a wolf that was heading for Logan, he nods at him in thanks. While Ghost were focused on Logan another wolf tackles him. Ghost hits it with the butt of his gun and it backs off before attacking Riley. Logan shoots at the wolf. Not being able to catch a break, the handgun runs out of ammo. The wolf Ghost shot at looking pissed as it leaps toward him. The wolf almost got a hold of the masked soldier before a man tackles it down. Two other dark figures run past him shooting the wolves off.

As Logan, Hesh, and 141 gather themselves the three new figures turn around to face them. There were two men and a woman. They wore all black but masks covered their faces. Ghost makes eye contact with the woman. You look him up and down as Keegan side-eyes you before throwing a nasty look at Ghost. Price and Gaz share a glance and Soap gawks at them. “Holy shit! You’re the Ghost team! The one from the stories! Yer real!” Ghost quickly hits him upside the head, “Quiet MacTavish.” You smile at the man with the mohawk. “You’ve heard of us before?” You smirk. Merrick scoffs before turning to you, “Noir we don’t have time for this.” He heads over to Hesh. “Do you have the intel?” Hesh stares at Merrick before grabbing the intel, “Captain Merrick? We were waiting on you, sir.” Merrick scans through the intel. Price speaks up, “ We saw a group of Feds moving a guy to Firebase Charlie. He was wearing a skull mask as well.” You glance at the tablet in your captain’s hand. “Yeah Ajax. They’re taking him to the stadium.”

Merrick nods while putting the intel away in his vest. “All right, we don’t have a lot of time. You stick with us but you listen to what I say no questions asked, understood?” There was a chorus of “Yes sir!”.

-------- Fireball Charlie 1546 HOURS

The group crouches in an abandoned building right across from the stadium. Keegan prepares a gun before turning 141. “Remote Sniper. It’s not loaded. Anyone wanna do the honors?” Ghost grabs the sniper and points it toward the stadium. You slyly scoot next to him before leaning closer, trying to match his line of sight. You hear him scoff but chooses to ignore you. “You have eyes on Ajax yet?” Keegan questioned pushing in between you and Ghost. Your face scrunches up and you gently push his shoulder. “Negative.” He briefly responds. Soap comes and sits on the other side of Ghost, “Aye, L.T. check the press box. Twelve O Clock.”

“You got eyes on him?” You questioned. “Affirmative, but they’re moving him.” Merrick grabs a grenade launcher. “We should move in.” Gaz looks at Merrick puzzled, “Move in? There are at least a couple of hundred soldiers out there. What about backup?” “Why do you think you’re here.” Merrick sneers. “Convoys incoming. Logan, Noir, Price, grab a grenade launcher and help me tag them.”

You four tag the trucks as they come by. “Convoy cleared let's move.” You reach two empty trucks and climb in. Ghost sits in the front with Keegan. Riley sits next to you sniffing the air and listening for enemies. Keegan starts the truck up before turning to Ghost. “Watch and learn kid.” Keegan begins driving across the street. “Approaching Gate,” Merrick announces. The gate was heavily guarded by Federation troops. “Blow the charges on my mark.” Price tells you and Logan. “NOW.” Trucks explode as Keegan accelerates through the gate alerting the troops in the field. “WEAPONS FREE!!”

Shots are flying everywhere as more and more soldiers come out to stop the truck. Keegan makes a sharp right causing everyone to hit the other side of the truck, nearly falling off. “Fucks sake Keegan you can’t drive for shit!” You yell trying to grab your gun and continue shooting at the soldiers. Keegan makes another turn before driving up seats and into the stadium crashing right into a concession stand.

Merrick frantically gives orders over the chaos, “Noir! Take the 141 and go find Ajax! We’ll hold them off from here and meet you on the second floor near the southwest box.” “Rog! Riley, let’s go!” You run as the rest of the Ghosts throw smoke and flash grenades. As you reach a dark hallway a flash bang goes off. “Company! One O Clock!” You exclaim while covering your eyes. Gaz pulls you cover with him. “Looks like they’re protecting the door.” You nod as you get back up shooting an enemy and throwing your knife at another that tries to crawl away. You grab a flash and throw it toward three more federation soldiers blocking the door. “EKIA. Let’s move.” You push through the doors to find the room mainly empty. Nothing but an injured enemy on the ground. The rest of the Ghosts run in behind you, Merrick grabbing the Federation soldier and holding him up.

“Where is he?!” “I don’t know!” Keegan notices Riley sniffing the ground, “Riley’s got his scent let’s go. Merrick slices the soldier's neck before following Riley.

Riley leads them to a slightly open shutter door. You give Ghost a smoke grenade. “Smoke ‘em.” As the room begins to fill up with smoke, soldiers start piling out Soap and Gaz shooting at them until no more came out. Once you make sure the room was cleared you continue to follow Riley. You walk in between Soap and Ghost. “Dogs are really intelligent and easy to work with I believe every task force should have one.” Ghost huffs out a breath that you think counts as a laugh. “Johnny’s fuckin’ terrified of dogs almost pissed his bloody pants once when he thought a pitbull was chasing him.” You hold back your laugh to save Soap’s pride. “Oi, L.T. don’t go around telling my business you fucking clipe.”

-------

Riley leads them to a clubhouse door. Price steps up and puts his ear to the door. “This must be where they’re holding Ajax. Gaz, help me smoke them out.” as soon as they throw the gas you all rush in, quickly clearing the room of Federation soldiers. “On Riley, he’s found Ajax.” The room was dark but you could hear Ajax’s haggard breath. You turn on your flashlight to see Ajax beaten up and bloody, barely clinging to life. Keegan rushes over and takes his mask off, holding him up. “Come on Ajax stay with me.” He feels blood on his hand as he sits Ajax up. “Shit it’s bad.” Your heart dropped as you see your teammate, an unbeatable Ghost, dying in Keegan’s arms. You don’t cry though, you know how dangerous this job can get and the many sacrifices that will come. But it doesn't stop you from feeling anguished.

Ajax gasps for air and spits out blood. His lips quiver as he tries to speak. “Rorke, it's Rorke… Look at the wall... Look. He’s targeting…” He suddenly stops moving. “Ajax!” You call out. “He’s gone.” Merrick curses loudly. Price and Gaz take off their hats in respect. Hesh takes your flashlight and walks to the wall. “Holy shit.” Ghost walk towards him. “What is it?” Hesh calls out, “Merrick come see this!” The rest of you (besides Keegan) stalked toward the wall. The wall displays a bunch of notes in different foreign languages. Pictures of the team are scattered all around. You see a picture of Ajax with his face crossed off and his mask hangs by the photo. Merrick takes the mask down and holds it in his hands. “Rorke, he’s targeting Ghosts. This is a kill list.” You stare at the candid photo of you. It was you talking to Ajax a few months back outside the safe house in Rio De Janeiro. Next to the picture was a blank face photo with question marks on it. Showing that they did not know what you looked like behind the mask. Ghost asks the question most of you were thinking. “Who the hell is Rorke?” He got no response.

[pear1escence]

David ‘Hesh’ Walker x fem!Reader 𐐪𐑂 ♡ 𐐪𐑂 18+ Smut - short and shitty❤️

Hesh totally has a thing for heels. Something about the height it gives you, the commanding ‘click clack’ of your steps, the natural energy of dominance you exude in a pair of glossy black red bottoms.

He won’t admit it to himself that he wants you to take control, not when the voice in the back of his head tells him that a man’s place in the bedroom is dominant, but that doesn’t stop his cock from growing hard in his dress pants when he watches you getting ready for a night out, painting your fingernails in a deep red colour to match your pedicure, those glossy black stilettos twisting back and forth with boredom, legs lazily stretched over the desk you sit by.

He wants nothing more than to push his face into the junction of your neck, inhale the musky, dark, sexy vanilla perfume you wear, rut his uncomfortably hard dick against your thigh and finish in his pants with your nails raking down his back. But he’d never admit that.

That he imagines your sharp stiletto heel tracing up his thigh, the sole of it pressing against his fabric-covered cock, that teasing smile on your painted lips. That he palms his dick through his pants imagining it’s you, barely giving his cock any attention and mocking his desperation for it. Pulling him closer with a hand wrapped around his tie, licking up his neck and nipping at his earlobe, unbuckling his belt to fish out his dick, the soft traces of your fingertips along his shaft not enough to make him cum, but enough to have him gritting his teeth, so so desperate for more.

He fucks his fist to the thought of your teasing laughter if he was ever to admit his desires to you, breath hitching in his throat as he pictures those perfectly manicured nails tracing along his cockshaft.

Hidden away in his barracks, jerking himself off to nothing but the thought of you, those pretty heels and the way they make you look. Only giving in to his hard-on because it was near painful, wanting to get it over with quickly both from the embarrassment that heats his face and his need to cum, thick brows knotted in pleasure, his head tipped back against the wall, the only noise being the wet faps of his hand around his cock and the breathy half-moans he lets slip. He comes all over his fist, face burning with embarrassment despite you being his, and so he swears to himself, although he knows he won’t stick to it, that he’ll forget this dirty fantasy, won’t entertain it anymore.

[halcyone-of-the-sea]

Crimson Fangs Sing Me Lullabies

PAIRING: David 'Hesh' Walker x F!Reader

SYNOPSIS: Ten years is a long time to be alone.

WORD COUNT: 18.7k

WARNINGS: Angst, gore, canon typical violence, stitches & needles, death, fluff, puppy love type stuff, mutual pining, Hesh being adorable, Ghosts timeline

A/N: Back to my roots with 30+ page works.

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

He vividly remembered the moment Riley had alerted him on that rainy Tuesday afternoon. It was when the sky was pelting against his soaked beanie and the abandoned houses of South California were utterly silent—as still as the heart in his breast. The ground under his feet was soft, grass giving way to slopping mud that caked up to his ankles in thick mounds of flooded earth.  

Hesh had only been out for a swift survey of the area, taking Riley for backup as Logan stayed at camp to pack and hide any trace of two individuals from inside Fort Santa Monica snooping around. Seeing as Federation Soldiers frequented the area, any piece of them that was left in No Man’s Land was subject to identification. Nothing from a broken branch or a boot track could be out of order; certainly not when the two brothers were here to scout possible weak points in enemy territory. Try and find ways to slip in a fire team—give ‘em all a good scare and wipe another point off the map. 

But Riley was along because not only was he Hesh’s responsibility, but the German Shepherd’s instincts were far superior than a soldier’s ever could be. For only 14 months, the dog was making quite the name for himself around the Fort.

A chilled wind whips down the street, the overgrown road filled with rusting cars and trash which flutters in retaliation of being disturbed all across the asphalt. Rain comes down sideways in great roars. Whatever the dog had honed in on, it was loud enough to be heard over the noise of nature.

“Riley,” Hesh calls, calm and collected, to the animal that was intently staring at a large home; hackles tense and tail pointed high. Blue was the color, hiding peeling white trim behind suffocating ivy. A large portion of the left side was ripped away to show its insides like a dead deer would, which had most likely happened when the earthquakes had been rampant during the first few years after ODIN was fired. Tectonic plates shifting and the like. Green eyes narrow. “Go on boy, search.”  

If there were Federation Soldiers this close to camp then it needed to be taken care of—quickly and quietly. No time to get Logan. 

Sharp ears perk and the lithe dog shifts its haunches, raised neck fur accented by a low growl. Paws pad over the ground and twin footfalls follow swiftly after, the body of a Honey Badger Assault Rifle pointed down but ready to aim at a moment's notice.

But nothing could have prepared Hesh for what he found that day. 

—

You press to the oozing wound with a futile hope that it would stop gushing, breathing so loud it can be heard over the deluge outside this shitty excuse of a shelter. Your arm was splattering blood all over the damaged hardwood of the first house you could stumble into, feet flinching back until your spine hits a dresser in the upstairs bedroom. 

Dust lives on every surface; flies through the air as you string curses under your breath with stuttering sobs. You’d hoped that there was a medical kit stashed away here somewhere—something to scavenge that could fix the knife slice that was making you dizzy. 

T…there was just too much blood.

But after the loud slamming of cupboards and the destruction of more than a few rusty door hinges, it hit you like a bullet to the chest as your clothes stuck to you like a second skin. Everything had been picked over. 

No medicine in the bathrooms, no rags in the kitchen, and no hope of bottled water to clean the wound out. Nothing. 

“No, no, no.” You force the black dots away from your eyes, vision blurry with tears as you press harder to the gash. It squelches and more scarlet hits the floor. “It can’t end like this. Not like this.” 

All that you had were the clothes on your back and the sparse materials in your backpack that amounted to an empty water skin, a blanket, and the pages of an old book. 

Blood pooled on the ground, and you realized far later that the only reason you had heard the noise downstairs was because of the steadying way you had bitten your lip; a sob cut short. Your body stilled like you were caught in a bear trap. 

It had been a soft whistle, barely heard over the sheets of rain hitting the broken roof. Water lightly taps your head in an uneven pattern as it leaks through the frame like an ant tunnel. Blinking as a few more tears are forced down your cheeks, you slowly turn to the door that hangs off one hinge. 

Small brown eyes are already locked onto you.

Its pupils are so tiny you wondered if the German Shepherd was half snake—they seemed almost slitted as you gaped at its presence. The army green vest that was wrapped around its frame only served to make you more afraid. 

Dogs were not your friends. Not in this day and age. Certainly not the ones that belonged to the soldiers that had cut your arm open not an hour earlier in the woods. That’s what they did, then? They sicked a dog on you? 

You swallow down a gulp and stand paralyzed as the beast’s lips curled back; its tail puffing up and wagging with aggression. Your breast filled with the constant drumming of a panicking heart.

“G—” voice small, weak, you try to appease the thing with a forced smile as your brows bunch in. This demon doesn’t even blink. “Good doggy.”

You stumble backward only a single shaky step, and then it lunges. 

The dog runs at you with a gnashing of teeth and a shredding snarl on its lapping tongue. Sharp barks meet your ear-piercing scream as they echo off the termite-eaten walls. Rushing back, you feel saliva splatter against your face; a sharp snapping flash just inches from your nose. Your back slams into the far wall with a resounding crash.

“Riley!” A masculine voice yells out, followed by feet rushing up the creaking stairs, but you don’t even hear it before fuzzy neck fur is gripped in your hands. Paws dig into your stomach. Worse, fangs graze your neck as ears stay stapled to an angular head; bobbing back and forth with intent to rip your flesh out. 

You could smell its damn breath.

Straining, every bit of adrenaline-laced strength builds as a split-second to act takes form. You plant your shaking legs and shove with your shoulders—racing away before the loud thump of the Shepherd’s form hitting the floor is registered. Its vibrating growl of hatred echoes off your brain along with its skidding claws. You stagger quickly into the bathroom and slam the thin wood with a loud yell of fear, finding the rusted lock before flicking it with a floundering grip.

The barrier shakes not a second later with the force of a vehicle as you balk back from it with a horrible fear in your breast.

What would it feel like to be mauled to death? You swallow through a closed throat, seeing the door almost cave with the force behind thrown at it; eyes wide and snapping to the tiny box you’d caged yourself into. Oh, fuck me.

“Riley!” Again that voice, closer. There’s a pause in the attack, but the deep barking continues. Eyes flinching, you shake wildly and notice the under-sink cupboard not a moment later with a prey-like haze over your thoughts. “Easy, boy, easy!”

Stumbling, you whip open the small enclosed area and do what you can to shove yourself into it—legs pressed tight to your chest and grunts falling from your lips as you try and maneuver past pipes. Your arm feels like there are a million knives stabbing one after the other, but you don’t for one second dare to stop what you’re doing. Letting the tiny door shut with a bounce of wood, you get totally swallowed by darkness. 

You realize quickly that the barking has entirely stopped. 

“Shit,” hand going to capture your mouth, your fingers press tightly to hide even the sounds of your ragged breathing, dealing with both the hunched-over nature of your spine and the knowledge of someone outside the door. 

Someone who was probably going to kill you. 

Silence lingers, but before long there’s a commotion of a hand that begins to jimmy the door knob. Your ears twitch, blood draining little by little from your head. 

Don’t open the door. Please, don’t open the door. 

The door is shoved open with a shoulder, a brief grunt echoing off the air as the thing slams to the wall. Soon after, the clatter tells you that it falls off of its rusty hinges along with the muffled curse of annoyance.

Measured footsteps make you stare, wide-eyed, at the tiny crack in the side of the wood ahead of you, light from outside dim but enough for you to notice shadows as they slink past. A sigh.

“Clear.” Weight shifts, and you hear a defining click of a safety. You press on your mouth harder. “What was all the ruckus about, boy? Another raccoon give you the slip?” 

Claws pad over broken tile and you hear a nose twitching as distinctly as you can hear your own pulse in your ears. This man that was talking….he didn’t sound like the normal soldiers you’d encountered. There wasn’t an accent to his American English, in fact, he sounded native to the region. Deep of voice and lax in phonics. 

But you had more pressing matters than a man’s speech pattern. A bark rips through the bathroom, and you hear a soft chuckle as your body spasms. 

“It’s not going to be in the cupboard. C’mon, Bud, we need to get back to Logan. Time’s ticking.” More snarling barks, getting higher in octave. The door rattles as you choke back screams as dog feet scratch with aggression, making the barrier bounce with every punch. “Hey, Riley! Enough!” 

A bulky shadow snatches a limb out, grabbing the handle on the back of the dog’s vest, but it’s a bit too late for that. White fangs capture the jutting edge of the frame and rip it off its holding with a raging of metal and splintered wood. You yell between your fingers and try to force yourself away—to try and disappear into a shattered bit of drywall that groaned as you put weight on it. 

Feet kicking out, the dripping wound on your arm makes you wrench the other hand to grip at it, a vain attempt to protect your weak area at the moment. It burns like you’ve just flayed the skin from your bone, peeling the flesh like a person would do to a raw steak. 

And then the dog is reeled back with a sharp yell, “Riley, stand down!”

At once all barking and drool-dripping snarls come to a halt. Panting, you look out to the half-body of the man and into the dead eyes of Riley—a beast that glares at you despite not being able to as his front legs are held off the ground by his vest similar to a kangaroo. It is like staring into the color of dead earth and waiting for it to swallow you whole. 

You wonder if you can die with a still pounding pulse, or if your soul can dip into the very confines of your intestines until you bleed it out. With black dots at the sides of your vision, as Riley is lowered to the ground and left to stand still, you decide that, yes, that could very well happen. 

There’s a large exhalation of air from the top, not-visible, image of the man and although you don’t want to look away from the small-eyed dog, eyes drift slowly to stare. 

Large toned thighs covered in green and brown camo tucked into muddy boots; straps and holsters that drip water with the subtle shifting of hips. Yet it’s almost immediately that those legs bend as a broad chest comes into view followed by a pale, square face. 

You blink quickly, dispelling tears from your lashes mixing with rainwater as it flows down from your forehead when green eyes meet yours—wide and strangely…curious? Brunette hair is trapped by a beanie, and the beginning of stubble spread out down his cheeks, jaw, and chin. Gray sweatshirt, combat vest, patches…your eyes struggle to take it all in but ultimately the large rifle sitting against his chest paints a clear enough picture, even if this man was completely different from the other soldiers you’d encountered out here. 

Shaking, you curl in tighter and hunch your shoulders, hiding away your arm.

Hesh doesn’t know what to think. 

He looks you over with a blatant expression of shock, Riley still on high alert beside him as one of his knees connects with the cracked floor. Lips slightly parting, the man’s head slightly pulls back, trying to understand what the hell he’s looking at. 

A… civilian? This far out in No Man’s Land? How was that even possible—Federation control was practically assured in this area and they shot on sight. Clearing his throat, Hesh sees your water-wet body jerk back, impulsive fear stuck over your head. He quickly raises his hands, dropping his rifle to let it hang from its strap with a clenching jaw as Riley huffs.

“It’s alright, Ma’am.” He coughs awkwardly, watching you incredibly closely. Still not sure how to handle this. “Erm…” A glance is sent to the far wall, “My name is Lieutenant David Walker with the United States Special Forces, you’re going to have to tell me what you’re doing out here. It’s not safe.” 

Firm, yet you notice the words are also subdued as the tension in the air somewhat lessons—like a mother scolding a child that she doesn’t want to start bawling. Your eyes waft away from him back to Riley, though the knowledge that the man was in the Special Forces was startling. You had thought everyone else was dead, most of all the remnants of the military. 

When did this happen? 

Riley still stands as still as anything, watching with his lips curling every so often. Hesh notices your terrified gaze and commands the dog with an easy comment, “Hey, Riley, away Bud.”

The beast pads off with one last long stare, back into the bedroom where you hear the thud of a fuzzy backside hitting the floor and a canid grunt. Immediately a great sigh exits your mouth, crumpled lungs wheezing. The man’s Adam’s Apple bobs as he lowers his arms, lips peeling into a languid frown when his head tilts.

“Sorry about him,” Hesh says, and your shy gaze stops on his neck. Green eyes narrow on you. “Riley’s trained to flush out Feds—not that good at rolling out the welcome committee. ‘Specially out here. He means well.” 

Your lips stay shut, shifting the bloody mess of your arm closer to you. If he was going to kill you, you think, he would have done it already. 

This Lieutenant David Walker wasn’t wearing the dark coloring of the other soldiers in the forest or the towns—wasn’t wearing the patch of twelve yellow stars set into the black void of a rhombus outlined with red. 

He wasn’t part of the group hunting you down. 

Hesh sighs deeply, sparing more glances around the broken-down house and the beautiful woman hiding away in the bathroom cabinet. Even with all of his burning questions, it wasn’t safe to be here. Logan was expecting him back. 

Itching at the back of his neck, the large man mutters, “Well, I guess you’re just going to have to come with us then.” Hesh wasn’t about to leave you here alone. 

Civilians were meant to be behind the Wall, and however you managed to end up outside, he needed to get you back not only for his own consciousness but because you looked like you needed a good meal and a warm bed. 

How long has this girl been out here? He asks himself internally. 

A gloved hand slowly extends out to you and you level on it with a stiff twitch of your feet, eyes glinting.

“Got yourself pretty much folded in half in there, Ma’am.” Hesh chuckles, trying to put you at ease as you just watch like a deer in headlights. “Can’t be too comfortable, huh? How about I bring you back to camp and I can sift ‘round in my packs—see if I can’t find something for you to eat, yeah?” 

It was like coaxing a wild animal from a cage. A chained fox ready to bite its own leg off for the simple release of freedom that it would bring soon after. Hesh couldn’t blame you, Riley usually had that effect on people. 

The dog wasn’t trained to be a pet, after all. 

At the prospect of food, your ears perked. If this person had food, they had to have bandages as well—medical supplies. You glance quickly down at your arm, seeing how the blood had drenched your abdomen from where it flooded out into the lines of textile and thin your lips. It didn’t look good; if it was left untreated…

Green eyes flutter to stare at where you had briefly peeked at. 

“Shit,” Hesh starts, sucking down a breath. His fingers curl from where they still wait for your hand in his. Looking at you as your heart skips a beat from the concerned comment and the unwavering way he stares. “Riley didn’t get you, did he? Let me take a look.”

David moves closer, head partially going under the counter to carefully touch you on the shoulder, shifting your arm from the top. If it was a simpler time, you would have laughed at the sight of such a built and tall man trying to stick his upper half into such a confined place. 

His fingers dig into your flesh and with a hesitant line on your forehead, you slightly present your cut as he sends you a tiny smile in reassurance. 

He…doesn’t look malicious. Maybe I can… 

You blink away black dots and shiver as fingers close around your wrist. Holding back a gasp, Hesh’s eyes widened at the gushing slice; immediately clocking it as a wound from a large and serrated knife. 

Federation? Many of the others from the recon units come back with similar wounds courtesy of the certain blades that the Feds used. 

Digits go to dig around in his medical pouch as your eyes flutter, seeing the heavy frown on David’s face and the lines on his forehead. Ears twitching at the sound of shifting paws, your body quivers. Green quickly glances up as your hand clenches; making more blood fall out to the wood. 

“He won’t do anything,” Hesh assures you, “not without my order. You just need to focus on me, alright? I’m going to wrap this up to help stop the bleeding.” A roll of bandages escapes his pack, and he gets to work tying off a tourniquet above your elbow. “Can you tell me your name, Doll?” 

Your nerves are alight from the rough scape of his gloves along your skin, but you whisper out your title with a stuttering voice. More hushed than a breeze on a humid summer’s day. Speaking after all that screaming hurt your vocal cords. It confuses you that you aren't more afraid of this man—the hard yet sparking eyes.

Hesh sends a quick glance and smiles. 

“Well, we’ll have you all fixed up soon. Promise.” He decided fairly promptly that it would be counter-intuitive to ask you so many questions in No Man’s Land; he’d wait for all of them to be back in the Fort and his father’s opinion. 

Elias Walker was sure to be intrigued by this.

Flinching when David carefully pours water on the wound to clean it out, more wrappings come after to press the torn edges of the injury close together, white rapidly becoming red. But the bleeding would stop soon, as the tight bite of the tourniquet cuts off the flow and leaves your arm completely numb. 

Hesh licks his lips and releases your hand, moving back to rest on the ends of his feet to let his limbs hang off his knees. Looking you over one last time, the man wonders if you were a scavenger. A drifter, maybe? There was a score around the Wall, but they all got caught eventually. 

But none of them were this far out, this afraid.

“C’mon,” David stands, one hand resting atop the counter and the other still extended into the cabinet for you. “We need to get going so we can make it back before dark. Or until the storm gets worse. I’d hate to catch a cold.” 

You stare and push down your fear, injured hand held to you as the other slowly drifts forward. Hesitating over his expectant palm you bite your lip before letting his grip encompass yours. Firmly, fingers tighten over your skin and you shiver at the prospect of touch. 

As gently as he’s able, Hesh helps you out from your hidey-hole, stabilizing you with a hand to the small of your back as you pop to full height. 

“Easy,” he murmurs, watching you stumble as he holds tight. The dog stands from the bedroom, ears erect, but the Lieutenant doesn’t even look. “Riley, stay.” 

Your eyes purposefully never stray to the canine. 

The grip over yours squeezes before it’s gone, and a part of you blinks at the sudden sweep of coldness that returns to you. 

“Thank you,” you whisper, sliding your vision to the still form at your side as the house creaks and groans; rain followed by a deep rumble of far-off thunder. Hesh’s lips pull up, huffing out a single, dismissive, chuckle yet his heart jumps with pride.

“Don’t worry about it.” The man’s limbs rest on his weapon, loose. “Least I could do for lettin’ Riley scare you like that.” A beanie tilts as his rugged head nods to the doorway. “Follow me, Ma’am.” 

You stare at the back of his head as he slips past you, walking past the broken door. Blinking after, you stuff your hands into your pockets and quickly catch up with a few strides; feeling light-headed from the leaving adrenaline in your blood. Not fully convinced you trusted him, David had the one beneficial factor of being in the American military that made you go along. 

Why would someone impersonate them? It didn’t make sense, and thus, he had to be telling the truth. 

But you really didn’t like being near Riley. 

Tail still stiff, the dog stays on David’s right while you keep to the left, if not slightly behind. Brown eyes glare and rage, and you hunch your shoulders in mute retaliation, fixing the position of your backpack after it was smashed between the wall and your body. 

“So,” Hesh tries to break the tension, carefully going back down the stairs and looking back. You perk. “How long have you been out here, if you don’t mind me asking? Don’t get many civvies in No Man’s Land.” 

His boots thump while your shoes lightly press, descending back to flat ground. 

“I…” You lick your lips, “I don’t know.” Brows peeling back, Riley exits the house first, Hesh pausing for a millisecond before humming leisurely and going after—not without a narrowed look of confusion directed at you first. 

“Alright.” He coincides. Maybe you were just in shock. “No worries.”

No Man’s Land? Silently, you dig into the back of David’s head when he leaves the shelter of the house, getting soaked by rain as nitrogen fills your nostrils. What’s that? 

Feet traveling out through rubble, you side-step wood and drywall, breathing in the outside air as you soon feel the water wet down your head and clothes once more, shivering at the constant slap to your scalp and cheeks. 

Shuffling after David, you see him call above the storm with one hand to his chest, speaking into a radio.

“Logan, I’m coming to you! I’ve got an injured Civvy with me—knife wound. It’ll need stitches.” There’s a murmur from the other end, but you hear none of it above the rain; Riley peels out ahead, taking point with a constant pattern that leaves the dog coming back after a moment or two into a heel position. “Affirm. Hold down the camp until I get back. We’ll need to move ASAP.”

Digging into the collar of your shirt, you stay in Hesh’s footprints, shoes getting even more mud-cased all along the old material as you all turn into the treeline, forsaking the dead neighborhood to go back to its rotting. 

You only send one glance behind before it’s swallowed by bushes and downed logs.

The cover of the branches offers some reprieve from the downpour, but only to a point where you still were left floundering over the rugged terrain while David walked it like a pro. 

Hesh was constantly looking over his shoulder at you—slowing his pace when you got too far behind him and Riley. At your almost frigid shivers, his lungs built in a low sigh. 

“Here,” he says, firmly, and plucks the beanie off his head to wring it out. Water pools to the soggy ground as your legs slow, constantly blinking eyes looking up from the rocks you were currently intent on not tripping over. “Sorry, it’s not much. Logan’s got a spare blanket he can lend you later.” 

Pausing, your fingers inside of your pockets twitch at the outstretched article, lashes fluttering as a raindrop bounces off your nose. Cleaning your throat when Hesh prompts you with a small, “Go on,” and a motion of his hand, you take the offering slowly. 

Slipping it on, you pull the thing far over your ears, hating how your hair feels under it but not willing to take it off once the pounding on your skull ceases. 

“Better?” David asks, tilting his head as his short brunette locks get weighed down to his forehead. 

You nod wordlessly, attempting a small flinching smile in gratitude. Hesh delays his turning feet for a moment, seeing that with a barely-there flush to his pale cheeks. Clearing his throat once more, the Lieutenant clicks his tongue for Riley to continue, and offers you a hand over the rocks. 

Up and over, he helps you all along the way, suddenly not caring about how long it might take to get back to camp.

Walking beside you, you take glances at David, wondering aloud, “Who’s Logan?” 

He smiles, green roving over the terrain and now on even higher alert now that there’s someone else with him for the trip back. Riley sniffs along the badly flattened trail, though still takes time to stare back at you with distrust. 

“My brother,” Hesh pushes his hair back, expelling water like a rag, “Riley and I went out to scout territory while he stayed behind. Erm,” the brunette chuckles and another wave of thunder rolls overhead. “Don’t think too much about it if he’s a bit quiet when you meet. Logan doesn’t talk much.” 

“I won’t mind,” you also chuckle, though yours is more forced; subdued. It was easy to speak to Hesh, even if your arm was pulsing and your heart was rampaging.

The Lieutenant sends you an appreciative side-eye, smiling slightly, “Good. I’d hate for you to think he was being—”

Riley halts with a huff. 

Attention shaping forward, David steps in front of you with a quick foot, and your frozen view of the western cluster of trees is blocked by a broad back. 

“Riley’s got something.” He speaks low, deathly serious. “Keep behind me.”

You suck down stiff oxygen, body weary as you peek over to stare at the dog and his vest as it shifts when he moves. The large white lettering of ‘Beware of Dog’ on the side catches your optics like a knife in the dark. 

Hesh takes slow steps ahead, knowing you’re behind him by the way your breath stutters and brushes the back of his neck. His vision bores into the treeline, peeling back bark like the books of a page, his heart a steady bump in his chest. 

Riley continues to alert, paws shimmying and fur caked in mud as his tail begins to go wild. 

David levels his rifle to the shadows dancing, clicking off the safety with a thumb before his cheek finds the stock, staring through the scope with deep-set brows. The man waits for the beast to engage first. 

With the minutes ticking and the rain drowning everyone, you find every swaying branch and twitching leaf to be as anxiety-inducing as a typhoon; still, Hesh stays unperturbed in front of you. About to open your mouth and utter a confused plea to keep going, Riley suddenly rushes.

Pushing headlong into the treeline growls akin to a demon echoing off the atoms of the air when the puffy tail disappears. There’s a moment of strained silence right after where your legs are itching for you to run, but David stays and so that means you will too. He’s really your only chance for survival at this point.

“C’mon boy,” the brunette mutters, hips shifting weight. 

It’s only when pained screams enter the air that the two of you really tense up, a loud, panicked thing that bounces off your eardrums over and over again. You gasp and take a step back, and that’s when two black-armored individuals burst from the bushes, yelling behind them and pivoting to try and shoot an enraged Riley with blood dripping from his maw.

Hesh dispatches them with only four bullets—two for each as their exposed necks explode into crimson. Snapping your gaze away you swallow tersely, blinking as if to dispel the image from your mind. You had seen people die before, in painful and gruesome ways, but that didn’t mean you had ever gotten used to it. Lowering his gun, Hesh tilts his head at the two Federation soldiers, the third taken out by Riley before he drove the others to him. 

“Good, boy!” David praises, oblivious to your plight, and the dog trots over with a lolling tongue, eyes bright. His gloved hand pats Riley’s side a few times, ruffling the fur atop his head as paws tippy-tap before shifting to look back at you. He double-takes, gaze widening with a frozen smile. 

Green blinks at your nervous expression and your body that had backed up a good five feet with your hands stuffed into your pockets. His petting hand pauses and Riley barks. Hesh watches you flinch at the sound and tenses. 

Awkwardly standing up to his full height, his fingers itch at his stubble.

“I…” David pauses, not sure what to say to you. Shaking his head, the man grunts out, “Camp’s this way, Ma’am.” A finger points down the trail and you nod quickly, still not looking anywhere near the bodies or Riley. Or him, for that matter. 

“Okay.” Sharing a look with the dog at his side, he thinks his lips and pauses before he takes off down the grass, concern and apprehension stuck in his veins. Not knowing why, he begins to feel a bit strained.

You stay well behind him all the way back to Logan, thinking and worrying.

I don’t know this man, you tell yourself, arms wrapped around your middle and beanie heavy atop your scalp. Even if he’s nice—even if he says he’s in the military, I don’t know what he could do. I have to remember that. 

And that damn dog. 

You can’t get its eyes off of you—constantly watching and tense as if you’d bolt and he would get the chance to pounce on you. It didn’t trust you and that sentiment was entirely mutual. Pulling your injured arm closer, the image of flashing fangs is playing in your mind as you and David get closer to a dense cropping of stones and deep foliage; now it was worse. Now Riley had congealed blood dripping off his chin, all fur up to his eyes deep red and stained. Rabid looking. 

He was one minute away from ripping my throat out back in that house. 

You shiver, but not from the cold. If not for the kind way Hesh had wrapped your arm and the promise of further help and food, you’re not entirely sure you wouldn’t try to bolt. 

People haven’t exactly been kind to you out here—not for many years.

Your eyes whip away from Riley and stay on David’s boots until the man pushes through one last bush, holding it back for you as you shuffle past with a silent nod of appreciation. The presence of another man immediately makes itself known when you stare into the remnants of a campsite. 

Grass trampled to form a semi-circle, a stuffed backpack rests against a large boulder and, in the middle of the area, sits a small pit for a fire. The dig-out ground is now flooded over by the rain, creating a concoction of mud and brown water. A large overhang stemming from two gigantic rocks gives a small reprieve, though there’s little room for more than two people, and if the rain slants the other way it would end up being completely useless. 

But the figure standing under it is taking what little cover it offers. Shifting with a similar outfit to David and blinking at you with brown eyes. Quickly, he lowers his gun when Hesh calls out, “Woah, Logan—it’s me!”

Blonde hair lays flat over the brother’s head, and you instantly see the resemblance between the two in the same shape of their jaws; the angle of their twin noses. But Logan did seem to be the younger of the two, though not by more than one or two years. 

David saunters forward, hips swaying, and pats you lightly on the shoulder before looking back to send you a soft smile of reassurance. Water flows off his chin. 

“Now, let's get that arm looked at.” He walks under the overhang and bumps forearms with Logan, who continues to watch you carefully. Riley trots up and the blonde rubs his head when David bends down to grab his backpack. 

You awkwardly shuffle, still out in the rain with a cautious feeling in the back of your chest. If you could peel back your skin, you would see an amalgamation of alarm bells strung up by cords of hesitance. Who was to say these men were any different than the black-clothed ones? Could you know their character based on a simple tourniquet and a soggy beanie? 

Brows tight, your shifting feet slosh through a puddle. Did you have a choice? 

Hesh calls over the rain, peeling out a large medical bag from his pack—the white cross capturing your vision. “C’mere! We need to get that stitched up.”

Sighing deeply, you walk until the rock stops the sky’s tears, fingers twitching in your pockets and feeling quite tired. 

“Logan,” the Lieutenant orders and the blonde takes his eyes from you slowly, his stubbled skin sporting a scar up the right side of his jaw. Riley looks up at him when the pets stop. “Give her your spare blanket, would you?” Green flickers to your arm before they go to your face. “Feelin’ alright about needles, Ma’am? It won’t feel that great, but I promise I know how to stitch a straight line.” 

You watch Logan jumble through his own belongings, shivering and hearing the snap of latex gloves from David’s side. They both worked like a well-oiled machine, with gears and pins moving in stupendous arks of shared understanding. If you were being honest, it almost overwhelmed you when a heavy fabric was dropped over your shoulders. 

Fingers go to keep the blanket over your form as a small protein bar was held loosely in your face from Logan’s hands. Brown eyes blink when you carefully take the item, whispering out a small, “Thank you, Logan.” 

The silent man studies your expression before he nods firmly, backing up and taking Riley with him out into the rain with a whistle to allow you more room. You respond to Hesh as he waves you over with a hand.

“I don’t mind needles,” you admit and David listens, patting the rock beside him on the ground for you to sit on. Doing that, you unwrap your bar and hunch deeper into the blanket. “It’s the blood that bothers me.” 

You get a silent side-eye and a gentle hum in understanding. 

“I’ll be done before you know it,” Hesh offers a twitch of his lips, going to lightly twist your arm so that the stained bandage can be unwrapped and laid to the side. “Then when you’re back in the Fort I can get you home to your family. I’m sure someone’s pretty worried about you right now, huh?” 

Your face scrunches, confusion taking hold as you’re just about to bring the protein bar to your lips. Fort? Family? What was this guy talking about? 

Not noticing your look, Hesh, sets off to work, one thumb caressing your numb forearm as he sews your flesh back together. At some point, you turn away, content to bite your lip at the pain and glare into the stone beside you rather than see the crimson slosh down your arm. David wipes at it every so often, seeing the curved needle slowly bring the ragged ends of skin to a neat line. 

He does his best to move as fast as he’s able, careful not to dig too deep and cause you more stress.

You eat your bar with a ravaging hunger, done with it almost immediately and licking the remnants off of your fingers. Hesh chuckles deeply, but a part of him is concerned at the sight.

You had said you didn’t know how long you’d been out here—how were you getting food? The wildlife? You didn’t seem the type to go hunting; didn’t even carry a gun unless it was in your backpack. David doubted that, though.

“Hell, the only person I’ve seen devour those things like that is Logan.” He comments, cutting off the last suture with the small scissors from the pack. You turn to watch his face, seeing the concentrated lines above his eyebrows and the way his tongue lightly pushes out of the side of his mouth until he licks his lips. “Don’t know how he does it—they’re more bland than his cooking.” 

You huff slightly at that, embarrassment heating your cheeks as the needle stops its up-and-down motion. Hesh finishes up with one last look over, tilting his head to the side. 

“You seem pretty close,” whispering, you glance at the figure in the rain, the yellow ball being tossed absentmindedly to Riley before it’s dropped at Logan’s feet as he walks the perimeter. 

Hesh smiles, “Definitely. Couldn’t imagine my life without him.” Fresh gauze is spread and taped down, new bandages unfurled. “Feeling alright? You’re doing great.” 

Your eyes blink at him, slipping over his handsome features and the way his hand holds you so softly even if he is quite large. The cold didn’t seem to bother him at all. You clear your throat and nod shakily.

“Isn’t the first time I’ve been stitched up.” Muttering out your confession your fingers twitch as David tightly wraps your wound up, securing the end and unwrapping the tourniquet at your elbow when he’s done. 

“Really?” The brunette frowns. “Sorry, that must have been tough.” 

You flex your hand, closing and opening your grip as his own travels to the marks the ruthless tourniquet had made on your skin. Freezing your eyes lay stuck to his fingers as the tips of them brush the indents, imaginary pricks under the skin forming as blood begins to flow properly again. 

Hesh doesn’t know what overcame him to do so, slowly pressing into the flesh with a low grunt stuck in his throat. Maybe it was some ill-placed concern for you—some guilt left over for how Riley had treated you before he had shown up. The fear in your eyes when he had killed those Feds.

But you…he wanted to help you.

Unexplainable actions make your heart thump, blood rushing to your head as your limb shakes at the contact. 

Quickly, green orbs pull far open, realization dawning. Clearing his throat, David swiftly moves his hand back to his knee, not meeting your eyes as a red flush makes everything from his nose to his ears pink. Your lips part at the sight in shock, jaw loosening. 

“Well,” he says loudly, moving back to stand and taking off the latex, “that’s that. You’re all set to go.” 

Without meaning to, a small giggle escapes your mouth as you rest your opposite hand on your arm. If anything that makes Hesh all the more flustered, quickly picking up all of his supplies and zipping up the medical kit with a racing pulse. 

Running a hard hand over the back of his neck, you see David call Riley and Logan back as his cheeks go back to their normal color. Your vision narrows on him, trying to understand this individual like how you could understand the thunder that rips the sky or the blanket over your shoulders. You swipe at the last dredges of rainwater on your nose, seeing the two brothers converse in hushed voices. Riley continues to watch you, shaking off inside the overhang and huffing.

It was quite obvious the dog held a grudge for you shoving him to the ground. Warming glee leaving you, you frown at the canine and shift your eyes to the outside world; the downpour is softer on your eyes than feral brown. 

You only turn back when your name is brought up. 

Hesh stares at you, serious, as Logan goes to swing his pack over his shoulder. “We need to start moving soon. It’s bad enough to be in No Man’s Land but to be this deep in Federation territory is worse. Do you have enough energy to keep going?”  

“I…” your lips stutter, taken aback, “Yeah, I should be alright.” If the terrain was anything like it was getting out of that town, I’m not going to make it a mile. Pulling the blanket tighter to you, you ask, “How far away are we?” 

Wherever they were going, it sounded like a good idea to tag along as long as they were allowing it. 

Hesh shares a stiff glance with Logan. 

“Full day of hard hiking, give or take. Terrain’s changed so much it’s a gamble every time.” Your face blanks, throat closing.

“Okay, sure.” You don’t know when you had come to care whether these men left you behind or not, but Hesh’s caring attitude had struck something in your chest like a drum. 

Now that you had someone to talk to out here, someone to caress your wounds, it felt vile to stake out on your own again. Running from soldiers with yellow stars and black rhombus patches outlined in red. This pair wasn’t so bad, at least from what you knew as of now.

David’s lips tighten, eyes sliding half-closed to narrow on you. Green meets brown, seemingly telepathically communicating in that way only siblings can. 

Hesh nods his head, slapping Logan on the shoulder firmly as he calls Riley to a heel position.

“C’mere, boy, we’re leaving.” The dog lopes over as the brunette stops in front of you with a smirk. A silent Logan huffs a chuckle from his position, shaking his head to himself. You look up in confusion, a slow death seeping into you as a teasing expression makes Hesh’s face shift. His arms cross over his chest.

“How do you feel about piggyback rides, Sweetheart?” 

—

You yelp, gripping tighter around David’s neck as the ground nearly gives way, his handle on your hips increasing. His mouth releases a grunt though he quickly rights himself so he doesn’t send the both of you careening over the edge of this rocky hill.

“Easy,” he huffs, looking behind at you as the slowing rain falls on everyone. A brow raises, puffs of breath escaping Hesh’s mouth as he begins to continue on. “Or you’ll choke me out before we make it back.” 

You cringe and loosen your hold, muttering, “Sorry, David.” 

“Hesh’ is fine,” he laughs, turning back, “Only person that calls me David is my old man. And don’t worry about it.” Eyes twinkle. “There are worse ways to die than being choked by a pretty girl.” 

You heat, sputtering for a minute as the joke registers; glaring at his head below your chin. 

“Well then, I guess you wouldn’t mind if I just yanked you off this cliff? Pretty girl and all.”

The deal had been you would keep up with Logan and Hesh as long as you could, from then on the Lieutenant would so graciously allow himself to be the pack mule while Logan and Riley protected the both of you. In all fairness you had done better than expected—David had called you stubborn and practically forced you onto his back when you started dry-heaving on the side of the trail. 

Over the walk, you had gotten into a habit of softly arguing with the man, Logan sending back amused glances every once and a while. It felt good to speak to people again.

“Hm,” Hesh huffs through his nose, sidestepping a boulder and carefully finding footholds in the ascending ground. Riley barks from the top of the hill as if telling him to hurry up. “Y’know I don’t have an answer for that right now. Would you be throttling me on the way down or no?” 

“Depends,” you deadpan, not looking at the edge that the man walks confidently, shivering but still keeping Logan’s blanket over your shoulders.

Hesh blinks water from his eyes, glancing over his shoulder. “On what?”

“On if I can get to you before Riley chomps my hands off.” A loud bark of laughter springs from his chest, unexpected but pure. It echoes off the cliffs and the trees, and you have to laugh slightly with him. You feel his hold squeeze your thighs, hiking you a bit farther up as he makes it to the top, Logan looks at him with a slightly parted mouth before his gaze slides to you. 

You swore there was a spark of thankfulness in his expression, but he’s turning and whistling for Riley a second later. 

“Shit, that’s a fair point.” Hesh chuckles, and you notice his shiver when the cold wind whips past. 

Cheeks burning, you move your hands making the man under you make a noise of confusion. Ignoring it, you peel at the blanket around you and place it above the both of your heads, blocking out the water even if the fabric was already soaking. You rest your elbows on his shoulders and sigh, looking at your bandaged arm for any blood. 

Dark, yes, but all the red fluid was dried. It was seemingly all good. 

Hesh feels his lips pull in a heart-felt smile, stubbled cheeks gaining a sheen as you hide his head from the rain. He didn’t need you to, of course, but the action came from a place of genuine care. It felt…nice. 

“That’s kind of you, Ma’am. Thanks.” Green peaks slightly up, and you turn away so you don’t meet his eye, cheeks burning.

“Least I could do.” Your mouth mutters. “Thanks for not letting Riley eat me alive…and the stitches.” 

Hesh grunts softly, still smiling. 

“Well, I’m not one to let my dog rip apart civilians. Least of all ones that need help.” He keeps a close gaze on Logan and the canine, watching the treeline and the rustling bushes from the blanket edge. “It’s a good thing I found you when I did—wound like that’s a nasty thing to treat half passed out.” He dares to push, “How’d you get it if you don’t mind tellin’ me?” 

You noticed how he would try to ask unassuming questions in hopes you would be able to explain yourself but in reality, you were just as confused. The military was still functioning? You had no idea, stuck in the same areas for…a long, long, time. 

It made you afraid. How…how many years had passed from when the sky had erupted with fire, beams of pure light slamming into the earth. You try not to dwell on it. 

Holding the blanket edge tighter, you wiggle your chilly nose to push back sniffles and explain to the best of your ability. Hesh had called those men Federation Soldiers, and you had heard of that title before the world had fallen apart like a toy castle under the fist of a child. 

Federation…You speak slowly, thoughtful of your words.

“I was running,” David slows a bit, putting distance between the others as he watches Riley sniff an old rusted bucket stuck in the middle of a Black Sage bush. His lips thinned, and a tense feeling in his gut was forming. “I don’t know for how long or where I was going, but I knew that if I didn’t run, I would die.” Your arm was throbbing, but you only look at it and continue. “I bumped right into one of those men when I was trying to see through the rain.”

Voice dipping slightly, you hold back a squeak of surprise when David’s thumbs start moving back and forth slowly over your thigh. Blinking down at the top of his head, you pause and speak through a hitch of breath—the man mistaking it for upset and feeling his eyes crease. 

“...He swiped at me with a knife and I raised my hand up to block it. I,” you stare over at Riley as he runs next to Logan, that brown and black coat soaking wet. “I thought they had sent a dog after me when I saw yours in the house.” 

Hesh tilts his chin to the ground, lungs breathing down a sigh through his nose. Walking around the form of an abandoned and rotting side table, the Lieutenant tries not to imagine how scared you must have been in that instant. 

He moves his head and you look into the expression of a soldier who takes his job very seriously. At the intensity that lives behind his eyes—at close range—you see flecks of bark and mossy dirt; a delicate and almost pretty curve of lashes. You’re entranced by a rugged beauty as you sigh. 

“That’s never going to happen again.” Skin heating, you see his gaze search your face, hold firm. “I said I would get you home,” he declares, letting a small smirk peel his lips. “And I’m not one to go back on my word, you hear?” 

Your chest tightens. You don’t have the heart to tell him whatever place he’s bringing you isn’t your home, but you feel light at the statement anyways. The insinuation was enough.

“Okay,” you mutter, and you both stare a moment longer. 

Nodding subtly, David studies the dirt and grime on your cheeks, the weather on the epidermis in what could have been sun exposure or simple blemishes. Your expression turns shy at the blatant staring, and you move your head back just as Hesh chuckles deeply, blood pumping. Walking faster, the Lieutenant rejoins the other two with an alert eye and a soft smile as a thankful feeling grows for the blanket over his head and the woman holding away the downpour. 

He decided then and there that nothing bad would ever happen to you as long as he was around.

It’s an incredibly long walk, but when you see the Wall for the first time, you nearly fall right off of Hesh’s back. The rain had stopped by now, though the air was still moist and the sun low—giving the world a shivering temperature. 

But the Wall. 

Hesh had called it Liberty Wall in a passing comment as he had let you slide from his hold, your feet stumbling not from fatigue but from sheer amazement. It was…gigantic. Falling to pieces, sure, but nonetheless a great achievement.

“There she is,” David sighed, stretching out his arms and groaning as Logan radios in from where you all stand along the ridge. Riley lies panting at Hesh’s feet. “Good to see ‘er again, huh? Been outside for too long, I’m about ready to eat a whole plate from the mess hall—and that’s really saying something.” 

About to chuckle to himself, eyes narrow in confusion at the realization of your blank expression behind him, frozen body with wide-open lids and parted mouth. Hesh’s brows crease. 

“Hey...you alright?” Clearing your throat, you notice the twin brown and green gazes on you with a quick swivel of your head. 

The brothers share a look.

“Mhm,” you bite your lip, hands descending into your pockets as you shuffle, shoulders rolling under the straps of your backpack. 

Hesh crosses his arms as the radio on Logan’s chest statics with a garbled voice, “Affirmative. You’re all clear to proceed, Sergeant. Good to have you both of you boys back so soon—Riley too.” 

It was becoming even more clear that you needed to be brought to Fort Santa Monica and to their father. You had met Federation soldiers, were in No Man’s Land for who knows how long, and acted as if you’d never seen possibly the most recognizable landmark that had been made during the last ten years since ODIN. 

“Logan,” Hesh turns to his brother but keeps his eyes on you, “radio into dad, yeah? Tell him we’re back and going to be showing up at HQ. Ask for an empty room.”

You stare along the barrier, mind running back to all the events that had happened since the moment the world had changed, wondering. Thinking. 

If this had been here the whole time… Faces flash over the back of your eyes like a layered movie before you push them back. The trail that Hesh and Logan had taken to get here was probably only known to the likes of them—no one else, or you would have traveled it ages ago. The dark-clad soldiers were so numerous that you’d never even thought to take the main road up North, nor the woods. They were everywhere all the time.

A hand grips your upper arm and you flinch, focusing back as Hesh’s strong jaw comes into view. He flattens his lips in a still-line smile of comfort.

“Let’s get you inside, Ma’am.” His hand carefully presses down farther on his hat atop your head, pulling it over your ears once more. “Find you some less soggy clothes.”

“What about you?” You ask without really knowing what you mean, finding some strange sense of comfort when David was near to you. 

The man chuckles, heart jumping, beginning to guide you down the slope and watching you closely in case you trip. Riley keeps on his right, neck hair still bristled whenever he looks your way. 

“What about me?” He asks, cheekily.

“You just carried me more than halfway here,” you shiver and dig deeper into Logan’s blanket, “and you’re just as soaked—I don’t want you to get a cold because of me, Hesh.” 

The sentiment was true. David was feeling worn out, and some of the liquid dripping down his face was undoubtedly sweat, but seeing that adorably concerned expression was almost enough to make him forget the aches in his shoulders and thighs. He blushes and turns his gaze ahead, clearing his throat. 

“Ah,” the man shakes his head, “don’t worry about that. Could’ve been worse.” He smirks, “could have had to carry Logan.” 

You laugh quietly at him as everyone makes their way down into a large, underbridge, area made of concrete; heading quickly to a checkpoint in front of a large pair of black-steel doors built into the Wall. 

“I don’t think it would be that bad. Funny to watch, at least.” Staring at the back of the younger brother, Riley suddenly comes up from behind you, seemingly intent on getting there first. His ear brushes your swaying hand and the next thing you know, Hesh is shoving you to his opposite side as savage barks make you yelp. 

“Woah, Riley!” David hollers and your heart jerks to a ravaging pace, air trapped in your throat as you’re kept close to a strong chest by an arm around your shoulder. “Holy Hell, stand down!” 

Logan by now had turned and was jogging over, grabbing the dog by the vest and peeling him back across the concrete. Panting, you watch with shaking limbs and look down at your fingers. 

Nothing more than a large scratch across the top of your left hand, but it was irritated. You sink deeper into Hesh’s side and cover it against your chest. Green eyes jump back and forth from you to the raging canine, Logan’s grim-set face glaring down at the furry beast, putting Riley into a sit with a gloved hand to his behind. David smushes you closer and after a minute of more barking, the dog falls silent, though still glares at you violently. 

You struggle to take down air, face scrunched like crumpled paper. This dog… 

Hesh glares and clenches his jaw at Riley, for the first time in his life entirely frustrated with the animal. 

Guiding you forward quickly, the brunette doesn’t move his grip, scowling over his shoulder before bee-lining to the entrance. He speaks in clipped sentences to the guards who all know him and his brother well. 

“Take us to HQ.” You’re ushered into the back of an armored truck, Hesh taking your right side and telling Logan to stay with Riley in the next vehicle of the convoy. 

Blinking quickly, you swallow down saliva and hold your hand tighter, shivering and staring at the floor. 

“Let me see,” muttering, Hesh reaches out. “It’s okay, it’s not your fault…Christ, I swear he’s never like this.”

You shakily put your hand in his, the large mark aggressive looking but barely bleeding. But you remember the pressure of Riley’s fangs vividly as they slid past your flesh like soap.

“Ah, shit,” the man huffs, “I’m sorry, Sweetheart.” His thumb runs over the mark lightly, gritting his teeth and sending you a stiff glance. Your vision tilts as you look away, but the slide of his hold was addictive; the small twitches of his fingers and the warmth they bring. 

“Y’know,” you attempt a small, wobbly, chuff, “he looks a lot cuddlier than he is.” 

Still tense and feeling guilty, Hesh pushes forward a dull twitch of his lips; blaming himself. Maybe the dog needed more socialization if this was how he was going to act around injured civilians when they barely brush against him. 

“Yeah, I suppose.” Still holding your hand, he squeezes before stuttering nerves release you—hesitation to let you go bunching his knuckles for a second more. He liked the feeling of you in his hold, liked how your tension slowly leaked away when his attention was on you. “Doesn’t hurt, does it?” 

You feel the slight pulse in your hand, sighing before shaking your head.

“No, not really.”

“‘Not really’ isn’t givin’ me the reassurance I’m lookin’ for, Ma’am.” Shuffling out of the blanket, you place the water-heavy fabric in the seat beside you as the car flies over the ground, speeding you into safety.

“I think it would be worse if I lied.” Itching at his chin, Hesh huffs and nods, his large body so close to yours that his shoulder bumped yours with every movement of the vehicle. 

Your heart is steadily calming, and you rub at your face. The feeling wasn’t bad, and you almost find yourself leaning into him and putting your head in the slot of his neck.

Stop that.

“Guess so, but it would make me feel less like an ass.” Smiling, you raise a brow and view the way his chest beats quickly through his clothes, bouncing his vest up and down with adrenaline. Green narrows at you and your face heats. “But, no, honesty would probably be best, Sweetheart. I’d hate for you to be hurting and not tell me.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” you smirk, swiping fatigue from your eyes as you yawn. “You’re very nice, Hesh—your brother too. Not what I would expect.” 

Wide lids side-eye you, lips parted. There’s a second of still silence as you slouch back against the seat, placing your stitched arm over your abdomen and pulling Hesh’s hat farther down your head; even if it was wet, it had gained a semblance of a precious gift. Like a present on a holiday, one you shake because you’re so excited to open it you have to stimulate your mind with its hidden contents. 

David blinks quickly, looking away to stare out the window and see the dark sky outside and the shadows it leaves as the twenty-minute drive to Fort Santa Monica truly begins. He lets you rest your eyes, but the comment has genuinely struck him.

Nice was not on the list of what most people called him. Stubborn—a natural-born leader, ruthless, and prey driven. But…nice. He clears his throat quietly and watches the raindrops sneak down the glass. 

“You’re not too bad yourself, Ma’am.”

—

You’re sitting in a large room filled with screens playing black and white video footage, pulling at the collar of a two-size-to-big sweatshirt and shifting in large camo pants. They had taken your backpack. In front of you, the face of an older man was simply watching you as you looked around with fatigued wonder. Desks with stacks of papers; large computer data storage boxes, the entire works. One of the upsides to this, you blinked at a water dispenser and realized, was that the lights were dim in here and you were finally somewhere that had AC. 

Inside your head, you were at a standstill. Part of you thought this was a dream, was this really all here the entire time, and you and the others just—

“I think we can start with names.” Your eyes whip forward, finding Elias Walker’s cold brown stare and graying hair as he stands across from the table you’re sitting at; your feet shuffle under the wood.

Hesh and Logan are by the door, the younger leaning on the wall petting Riley and the older keeping his arms crossed and fingers loose on the collar of his vest. Green softens when you look over slightly, a comforting smile finding your vision. He nods.

No need to be worried, he seems to say, I’m right here with you.

Over your head, the damp beanie was still there, now only slightly water-logged. You pull it down over your ears with a slow grip and listen. 

“You can call me Elias, and those are my boys you met,” a pale hand is moved in explanation. He grunts, “I’d imagine you’re all acquainted well enough.” 

You nod giving your name and mutter, “Nice to meet you.” 

Elias crosses his arms over his chest—it’s not hard to see how all of these men are related, though Hesh is more of a carbon copy of the father. The older man has a calm but stern look on his face as he frowns.

“And what was it that drove a civilian down into Federation-occupied land? Past the Wall?” You fiddle with your fingers in your lap, licking your lips. Elias wasn’t one to beat around the bush. “Better yet, how exactly did you make it outside—only way out is through the checkpoint.” Brown darkens, “else there’s a breach I don’t know about.” 

You struggle to answer, not sure if you know how to formulate a sentence that would make any sense. But this was starting to make you nervous. The unyielding intensity, Riley glaring at you, your blatant tiredness. Shock was settling but you didn’t know how to explain.

“How…” speech falters, and Hesh watches closely, frowning but knowing that you had to show them how you had gotten beyond the barrier. It was a massive security breach—it was a miracle you were even alive, really. “How long has it been since that wall was built?”

Elias stills. By the entrance, Hesh’s expression freezes. It’s as if the very air flips at the bare insinuation you offer forward. 

Shifting his hips, the older man’s muscles tense, as if he’s thinking over something very important. “Ten years since ODIN struck. Work on the Wall started right after.” A silent pause. Expectant. You feel your face drain of blood; a blank horror. 

Ten…ten years? It was silly, but your mind quickly went to your age—adding the numbers together and the time you missed. Ten years of hiding; of watching rare acquaintances die, scavenging for supplies. Ten years and this entire time you would have been able to live normally had the Federation camps moved just a tiny bit Eastward to open a path for you. 

“I…” You clear your throat, forcing out a blatantly fake laugh through a whimper, “Wow. That’s something, huh?” 

“You mean to tell me you’ve never left No Man’s Land?” Elias leans forward, placing his hands on the table and closing in. He doesn’t look angry, but his tone is disbelieving. Accusing. “That’s impossible.” 

“Dad,” Hesh steps forward, holding out a hand in front of him and glancing at your numb face—the sway of oblivion. 

“Ten years,” you whisper, staring off into Elias’s tense neck. “But she died just a week ago. All this time we could have…” David turns his head to you sharply. 

It’s like time stands still in that room—a void completely separate from all else besides a brewing acceptance. No one knows who you’re talking about, but the context is little needed for the way you spoke. Obviously, you had lost someone terribly important to you and Hesh understood that the reason you had probably made it so far was because of whoever they had been. You weren’t exactly the perfect image of a natural survivalist—not helpless, no, just not like the Lieutenant of Sergeant. Certainly not like their father.

“Shit,” a hand is lightly placed over your mouth, stomach bunching in your abdomen. 

“Let’s do this another time,” David interferes, and his father throws him a sharp glance. “It’s late, Dad. Everyone needs some rest; we can pick it back up in the morning—first light.” His mouth quirks in a stiff smile, and Logan backs him up silently.

Elias stands back up to his full height, crossing his arms loosely, and you’re stuck in the well that makes up your consciousness, descending bucket being fruitlessly dragged back up by a rusty handle only to fail halfway in the air as the rope bunches. The father sighs deeply and shakes his head, giving in to his son after a clench of his jaw. But it was obvious you posed no great threat.

“Alright.” Hesh nods and walks over to you, placing a hand on your shoulder as you look up at him slowly. He plasters a small smile on his face. It looked incredibly kind—the strong set of his eyebrows now soft. 

“Why don’t you come with me?” Fingers squeeze into your flesh. “There’s a pretty good barracks building a five-minute walk from here—doesn’t smell like the others and you’ll get a room all to yourself.” Elias watches, face losing a part of that tense edge. He shares a glance with Logan and turns to resume his work. “That sound good? I swear I won’t put you up in building three.” You stare and he acts like he’s sharing some big secret as he lets you stand up. “Ant problem.” 

You spare a tiny, broken, chuff of a laugh and his face brightens. A small win.

“You coming, Logan?” The Lieutenant asks, but the blonde is already shaking his head ‘no,’ pointing to the back exit to the shooting ranges. He was a night owl, through and through, and hasn’t changed a bit since they were kids. “Sounds good. I’ll take Riley.” 

“You boys take it easy,” Elias says over his shoulder, and you stay at Hesh’s side as he leads you out of the room, whistling for the dog to come to a heel which the canine does with a lolling tongue and sharp ears.

“You too, old man. Don’t worry about us.” 

“I always do.” The door closes and once again you three are walking together—Hesh more present with using his own body as a barrier between your form and Riley with his right hand near the dog’s vest handle. 

“I think my dad came off a little heavy, sorry about that.” David’s voice brings you back, pulling that bucket a little farther up from the pit below. “It’s just…”

The sentence falls.

You bite your lip and say, “It’s just his job. Even when I think about it,” the man still hasn’t released your shoulder, but instead moves his hand to the span of your shoulder blades. You try not to shiver and fail when he listens as if you’re the most viable source of news ever created. “It does sound a little...insane.” For lack of a better word. 

David chuffs, tilting his head and scrunching one eye. “Maybe just a little.”

The man feels you shaking and he doesn’t think you notice. Eyes wide and fingers twitching from where you keep them. The noise probably doesn’t help.

Buzzing lights and conversations only a door away as the two walk down the hallway and make it to the stairs to lead down to the main floor. From there the sounds were more barking dogs, vehicles, and gunfire from the training grounds. 

This was a military base, after all, and it never really went to sleep. It must be grating to hear after the utter silence of No Man’s Land.

“...But you wouldn’t be the first, believe it or not.” David tries to keep your mind off it, keep your attention on him…but he was curious; desperately so. Yet still, he didn’t want to rush you. You looked so overwhelmed it made his chest squeeze. “Heard a few reports from Dallas before it fell—a family that had lived in a man-made bunker and were found by patrols five years in when they were out scavenging.” 

“Really?” Your lashes caress your cheeks, and a small smile comes to you. You wonder how this man can make you feel so comforted; at ease despite the dog at his side and the various intimidating-looking gear strapped to him. Hesh was good-natured, it almost seemed impossible to imagine him a hardened soldier like you knew he really was. Kind, if not a bit mischievous and blunt. “That sounds more interesting than what I lived like.”

“Well, I doubt that.” Lips perk in a smirk. “Anyone with brains knows that time spent outside the Wall is always interesting.” 

“We just moved around a lot,” you admit, “those soldiers were always changing camps so we never stayed long anywhere.” 

“Hm,” Hesh makes a sound in the back of his throat, nodding. “Could’ve guessed that. Bastards jump around like cockroaches—can never get a good hit on ‘em.” He doesn’t press. 

“Really?” You feel more present now, itching at your cheek before looking at Riley as he lopes along and watches the roads from where you walk on the sidewalk. “What about the pattern?” 

David blinks his green eyes at you, face creasing. 

“Pattern?” 

“Yeah, they shift in a hexagon pattern every month. I had a map with it marked so I knew where to set camp.” Breath stills and Hesh stares at you, shocked, but his tone changes to a serious rush. He turns you slightly towards him with two hands on your arms.

“Would…you be able to mark those points again? If you had another map.” You lick your lips, cheeks going hot as you stutter, and feel his hands press into you. His chest was incredibly close to you, body heat leaking into your bones. Riley glares.

“Y-yeah, I think so.” David studies your face, searching for any hesitance. He pauses, green glimmering. There’s a moment when you notice the fast blinking on his face, the slight flush to his stubbled jaw as he clenches it, and are reminded of the caressing thumb that had dug into your inner elbow. 

Delicate stitches. 

The world blurs like a reflection in unknown water. Ripples that distort the streetlights into the shadows on his face and create soft waves of old scars and pale flesh in their warm illumination. Hesh’s breath hitches.

“G-good.” And he’s releasing you quickly as you wonder if being found by him was truly the best thing that could have happened. You spare a glance at Riley with racing blood, trying to stop the smile that insists to form for no reason. The dog cocks its head. “We’ll…get on that tomorrow.”

“Okay.” Whispers dance on airwaves as David keeps his eyes forward. Clearing his throat as you clock that tick and pull his beanie off. You bump your elbow to his side and he snaps his neck back over like a line with a hook. “You should have this back.”

You both walk slowly, side by side down a back street, and spare each other quick glances with flaming faces.

“No, that’s alright,” Hesh utters, rubbing at his neck and avoiding looking at you head-on. Your fingers brush the fabric and your expression softens. “I have a whole bunch in my room, don’t worry about it. I’d…” he chuckles to dispel the strange tension in his shoulders. “I want you to have it. Don’t want you cold.”

Your eyes crinkle, and the man swallows.

“So you think that your hat will help with that?” Teasing, you take it back anyways and situate it back on your head, shyly putting your hands into your pockets. “What? Is it special?”

“Woah,” Hesh, smirks with a raise of a hand, pointing lightly at you. “Hey now, Sweetheart, don’t disrespect my beanies like that—they’ll save your life.” 

Laughs bounce off the street. 

“I guess I’ll have to keep a close eye on it then,” Riley huffs and Hesh pats his neck firmly, giving him attention. “For my safety.”

“Damn right.” Your heart hurts from how fast it’s beating, that great muscle like a large drum that echoes in your ears. Skin tingles with an undeniable tension in the air.

The barracks building comes into view. 

It’s nothing extravagant, but the thought of a soft bed and a pillow not filled with mold was addicting. Your eyes blink along the structure as Hesh leads you in, keeping the door open for you as he tells Riley to sit at the entrance. The dog does so, though obviously with disapproval—grunting in that lupine way as the barrier separates him and his handler.

“He really does not like me,” you mutter out, raising a brow and catching back up to David who waits a few more feet into the building. 

The brunette sighs.

“He does tend to hold grudges. Once he wouldn’t play fetch with Logan for two days because he forgot to give him his dinner.” 

“Hell,” your brows raise up, “my odds are in the ground.”

“Probably, Ma’am.” You elbow his side again and he chuckles, bumping his shoulder into you as his hands sway at his sides. “Ah, don’t hold it too close, Riley’s just a special case. My father trained him so he’s all business.” A smirk, “Nothing like me.” 

You stop as Hesh does—in front of a nice-looking wooden door.

“Here.” He points to the handle and you grasp it, twisting and pushing past. 

You enter a tiny but clean room smelling like linen and golden light. Delicately, as if the world would break apart if you touched anything you stare at the lamp on the nightstand, the curtain over the window; the…comfort. The sight of an extra blanket on the end of the bed almost made you cry. 

“Now,” Hesh slides past you as your lip quivers, wide eyes looking around. “No one else can access these barracks without an ID, so there’s nothing that should go…wrong…” 

He trails off when he sees your face.

“Hey,” David takes a step forward. “What’s wrong?” His eyes slip around, looking for what might have upset you as he comes back to you.

“Nothing,” fingers lightly rest on your collarbone as you shake your head; vision going blurry at the man’s worried face. “Nothing’s wrong, Hesh, I promise. Just…” you laugh wetly, and a tear drops down your chin. “I forgot what it was like to have an extra blanket.”

It was more than that, but the statement was all you could describe right now without making a complete fool of yourself. David’s breath stills, hand stuck an inch from your arm. 

He watches the tears fall from you and, without thinking, he reaches up the back of his pointer finger and brushes it along the flesh; creating a line of fire up until he completely swipes it away. After a second of quivering silence, the air flimsy as your lungs jump, he finds no fear or discomfort in your expression and does this again—wiping away any trace of past hurts. 

Blinking, you tilt your head forward and bump it into his chest. Startled slightly, Hesh grunts, but his hand finds the back of your head above his beanie and cups it, staring down at you with hot cheeks and a thick throat. 

“I…” he begins but can’t find the words. You made him want to skin his hands of calluses so that the roughness of his touch was foreign to you. 

You only deserved warm flesh and extra blankets. As much food as you could eat—soft mattresses and even softer clothes. So short of a time he had known you, but not a second more did he want you to suffer. 

Ten years. He can’t even imagine it, and yet here you are in his arms. Kind. Unbroken.

Hesh’s head stutters, hesitating, before his neck bends and he presses his face into the top of your head, closing his sad eyes and running his other hand up and down your back. 

Sniffling, you melt even more into him.

“She died a week before you found me—my friend. She was with me since the beginning.” The hitched voice that comes out of you is so quiet that the brunette has to strain his ears to listen but listen to you he does. Silent as a bug and tightening his hold so you hear his strong heartbeat rampaging in his chest. 

Logan and him did this a lot when their mother died. Just hugged and held each other as if their lives depended on it. He doesn't know why, but he knows it has to be the same for you as well.

“Infection. She fell,” your voice cuts out, “fell on a rusty nail. She’s the only reason I made it this far.”

“Where were you?” Hesh asks, lungs aching for you. “When ODIN struck—in town?” 

You return to that time, hand sliding up to wrap around his waist to ground yourself. David lets you, increasing the pressure of his gentle hand on your spine. “Hiking. It…it was a family vacation.”

His jaw clenched tight. A swelling hatred strangles his neck, a feeling that makes his eyes slip back open—forests burning in his iris’ in great waves of an inferno. He had never wanted to charge out into San Diego more than at this very moment.

A family vacation had turned into a decade of surviving. Hesh didn’t have the heart to ask about where your family was now. He already knew the answer.

“Everything just…fell apart.” Your ribs hide your fast-paced lungs, your sniffling nose stuck deep into fabric.

“I know,” the man grunts, “I know it did, I’m sorry.” It’s all he can say. He knows. David pulls you back by the shoulders after a moment and slightly moves his head down to look at you head-on. “But you’re here now, okay? Behind the Wall. You made it. And I’m gonna make sure that you’re never alone like that again.” He attempts a smile as you see his concerned expression, shining with sincerity and honor. “I’d stake Riley on it.”

The wet giggle that exits you is automatic, and Hesh chuckles right back; put at ease and ears bouncing with that sound that he commits instantaneously to memory. 

“That’s counterintuitive, Hesh. I don’t want your dog.”

“Well then, it’s a good thing I never break my word, huh?” Perhaps why he was so good at this, comforting people, was because of Logan. Only two years apart, but he’d taken the big brother role easily—loved it, in fact. It made him feel good to see people smile.

But it made him feel on the moon when it was you.

You watch his green eyes slip over your face, thumb going to wipe away the last drops on your under eye as a deep heat starts smoking inside of you. David speaks lowly, compassion so visible you find you want to gaze upon his face for hours; mapping lines and piecing together what made this man…him. 

“Feeling better?” Smiling softly, you find yourself leaning into his hands on your face. The brunette smiles back and chuckles. It wouldn’t be so bad, you decide, to stick by his side—even if Riley was less than approving.

“Feeling better.”

You sleep that night with an extra blanket wrapped around your body and a dark beanie on your head; taking in the scent from the fibers of thistle and dog hair. You’d never smelt something more comforting.

—

A week passes with a flurry of activity. You find out that Los Angeles is still habitable—in fact, there’s a stable economy in the city and people are thriving. Fort Santa Monica is home to not only a handful of civilians from before the war but also an incredibly large amount of military personnel all under Elias Walker's command. 

Hesh had taken you out on the third day for a ‘tour’ as he called it, but it was also due to the fact that you’d been too afraid to leave your room when not called upon. There were so many…noises…again. People laughing, happy conversations, and greetings thrown your way.

“Word got out about the girl that lived in No Man’s Land,” David had teased as you awkwardly waved at a woman in fatigues that had slapped your shoulder and invited you out for drinks with her friends. You had politely declined. “Everyone’s eager, seems.” 

“I think I forgot how to properly speak to people,” you had sent a frown and a huff his way, keeping close to him as he led you on with a wave of his hand and a deep chuckle. 

But in all this time you had earned yourself a big reputation for being the woman who handed over intel that others had only just begun to unravel. Federation base locations. Patterns on movement—irreplaceable data.

Which was why you’d been asked, rather told, by Hesh that you’d be going to the bar with him and Logan for drinks. On the house. 

You’d quickly found it to be a strange affair.

“Not feelin’ up to it, Sweetheart?” your eyes lift from where you’d been swirling your still-full glass of amber liquid. “I know it can be a little loud—I’m sorry. Merrick’s a giggly drunk.”

Green eyes stare at you with pity, throat bobbing as a beer bottle sits on Hesh’s lips; the last dregs going down before he wipes his mouth with his sleeve. 

“If you wanna leave I’ll walk you back, okay?”

“No,” you wave a hand, touched but hesitant, “that’s alright. I’m fine, really.”

The lieutenant smirks and tilts his head—raising a dark brow in disbelief. The two of you had gotten close over the days; he had told you early on that you were easy to read for him.

“Don’t make that face at me, David.” You glare, pointing from your seat at the bar top. Hesh rolls his eyes and shakes his head as if disappointed.

“Whoa, first name—that’s illegal.” 

Your lips pull up in a sharp smile, leaning over the table as the music from the building plays in your ears; warm light on your cheeks and nose. “David, David, David!” 

“Hey! Quit it!” You’d grown fond of him in a way you can’t describe. So short of time and yet you both still get giddy when you see one another—hearts hammering. Even now as the laughter spills from both of your lips and people in the bar spare knowing glances, you don’t address it. 

“But really,” Hesh levels and you watch him spread his hands in surrender, beer bottle still shimmering in one hand, “whenever you want to go, just ask.”

“Hesh!” A call bounces from the far corner and you both look over, startled, to Ajax at the pool table. “Get over here so I can wipe the floor with you!” 

There’s a bout of laughter from the other bar patrons, bets being placed loudly. 

“Hey, it won’t be that easy—you’re on!” Hesh is off with a rush, patting your shoulder as he passes. You watch after with a wide smile and a raised brow, muttering to yourself.

“He’s unbelievable.” You can’t deny the loftiness that you feel when he looks happy like that. Really happy. It’s nearly a curse to try and think about what he would have become if the Federation hadn’t fired ODIN. He would have been in the military still, no doubt, but not quite the same. 

Hell, what would you have been like, even?

A shadow slips into the chair next to yours, and you look over, content. “Hey, Logan.”

The younger brother nods to you, sipping from his glass of water, a greeting smile on his square jaw. True to the brunette’s word, he was very quiet, but you didn’t find it in a disrespectful way. Logan carried himself with a subdued power, and the dichotomy between Hesh and him was laughable when you really thought about it; polar opposites.

You didn’t mind in the slightest.

Holding an easy conversation with nods or tiny comments back, you spoke with him for about twenty minutes while Hesh and Ajax called each other names and threw baseless threats through smirking lips like toddlers. At one point a very drunk Petty Officer Second Class, Thomas A. Merrick, had to drag a laughing Ajax off the pool table while you and Logan watched with exasperated glances. 

But the air was easy and the drink was flowing—soldiers from all over the Fort were here tonight. For you, though most just came for a good sip of alcohol and you didn’t blame them. You just did what was right, nothing more. 

“I think I’m gonna head out,” you tap a fist to Logan’s shoulder and he looks at you, sparing a quick glance at Hesh. You smile. “Nah, I think he’s going to be at it for a while. I’ll just walk back by myself—I’ve got my keycard, so I’m all good.”

A yell of victory rings from the corner before a loud exclamation of, “Rematch, right now! Your foot hit one of the balls to the left when you were climbing it!”

“It did not!” Logan stares blankly behind you and you laugh, slipping past. 

“Tell Hesh I said to have a good night!” You call over your shoulder, catching adoring brown eyes following you out and a mock salute from his water glass. 

Riley sits outside, resting his eyes, but when the door closes behind you the canine springs to his feet. The week hadn’t soured your relationship, but it definitely didn’t make it better either. Frowning, you pause in the night and look at the empty food dish and the filled water cup set out by Hesh for him.

“Tough luck, bud?” A muzzle lightly curls, but at least he wasn’t barking at you. Ears stand alert and ready. “Look,” you level, pulling Hesh’s beanie farther down your head as those beady eyes glare. “I think we got off on the wrong foot, okay? It’s not like I want you to hate me—I was protecting myself. You,” your finger points, and a lupine huff warns you, “came at me.” You point to your chest. “Remember?” 

It was comedic the way Riley yawned harshly at that moment, and you scoff.

“Who am I kidding, you’re hopeless just like your handler. I shouldn’t even be doing this,” reaching into your jacket pocket, you produce a small, soggy, napkin. Bending down, Riley growls low in his gut, but you ignore him. Not to say that the sound didn’t make your lips thin, though.

Unraveling the knot you’d tied in the bar, you look down at tiny cubes of medium-rare steak and sigh. “Look if this doesn’t work, I’ll give up.”

Flattening out the napkin, you pick up a piece and turn your vision upwards to an intently watching dog. At the sight of the food in between your thumb and first finger, the dog’s mouth gradually opens, tongue beginning to lull. A black nose twitches quickly. 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” you grumble, “Hesh said you were a food fiend.” 

Tossing one of the pieces on the ground, you let him sniff it before his teeth flash and he grabs it quickly, tossing it up and munching on it. When Riley’s done he looks back at you expectantly, shoulders less wound up but still uneasy. 

“Well,” you push the rest forward before standing, “go on then. Don’t let me stop you.” 

Shaking your head to yourself, you leave him behind and set off down the street, mumbling, “You can’t say I never did anything for you…” 

You hear the sniffing before the clammer of biting teeth, happy pants, and tapping feet. Huffing, you can’t deny the slight jump that affects your heart. You’d have to tell Hesh about the progress tomorrow. 

Your cheeks heat, smiling to yourself as you think about the brunette. His hands always seemed to be on you one way or another and during the last two days he’d been holding onto you for longer; firm touches that he had to blink himself back to the present to take away. The actions made your skin tingle and more than once you’d caught your gaze lingering on his visage—his body. As if trying to will him back to you when he had to leave. 

But the staring was mutual. You had sworn at one point you had seen him more intent to fuzzily look at your moving lips than to focus on what you were explaining. Fingers absentmindedly tapping on a desk and humming at every word from you. The look had been…your body shivers warmly in remembrance, staring giddily at your shoes. 

You continue down the street, circles of light from the lamps hitting you one by one as you glide under them like a moth. Humming a light tune, you take the route that Hesh had brought you down the first time, imagining his hands on you and his lips on yours. 

When you giggle silently and chastise yourself for thinking like that, you hear the last whispers of a distant conversation that lead you to pause.

Your face freezes, smile stuck as your legs stall. It was Spanish wafting over the air, hushed and harsh. That wouldn’t be alarming, many people here spoke the language fluently as it was the native one of the entirety of the Federation—it was needed for intelligence gathering, or at least that was what Hesh had explained. No use going into No Man’s Land if you can’t understand the driving force occupying it. 

But this was hushed arguing, not some common conversation. It didn’t sound normal and the scuffling feet over the concrete gave you pause. The night suddenly became very cold. Backing up a step as you stare in the general direction of the increasing footfalls, the sudden sight of three heavily armed men as they round a corner with strong eyes. 

Your vision finds them immediately—and they do the same for you. It was instinctual, then, when your suddenly fevered face snapped to their patches. 

Gold stars and a black rhombus. Red outlined. Your expression utterly drops. 

There’s a single instance where no one moves, neither you nor those three Federation soldiers that now stare right back with an equal amount of shock. 

“Eh,” you make a sound in the confines of your throat and all hell breaks loose.

Jolting away, shouts ring out as hands snatch at your limbs, and you can’t even begin to think about how these people got into the Wall undetected. 

Everyone’s at the fucking bar!

Yelling loudly, you dash to the side, a quick swipe going above your head as the beanie is wrenched off of you instead of your hair. Not bothering to fight for it, though a large part of you wanted to, your feet take you anywhere but here. 

Roaring in anger, the soldiers pursued with rampaging boots and vitriolic order. Why they don’t shoot you is a wonder. Maybe it was because they wanted to try and salvage what they’d already lost. 

The screams escape you as you dash backward, retracing your steps but it isn’t going to be long before they catch you—true to that idea, just as the words exit your mouth, a harsh hand captures the back of your neck. 

“David!” The other winds around your mouth, muffled screams stuck behind gloves. Legs and arms striking out, your body is dragged into a back alley; the others all join to force you to submission. 

Your boot connects with someone’s kneecap, and a hoarse yell echoes as you rage with a frenzied pulse. Wide eyes look this way and that, sweat forming on your brow as a punch finds your gut and a resounding insult flies to your ears. 

Going slack for a moment, the violent white that bursts behind your vision leaves your straining muscles useless and you try to breathe behind the unrelenting hand over your mouth and nose. Like a shot deer, your dragging legs give out; coughing and gasping for air. 

Pain shoots down your chest with ruthless efficiency. 

You suppose in that moment of ringing ears, that it was chance that you heard the dull shunk of a knife being taken from a sheath. It wasn’t chance, though, when your desperate teeth snapped into the heavy hand, ignoring pain and the tears smeared over your face.

With a sharp cry, the hand loosens enough for you to get the last word, a brief moment of clear realization, “Riley,” you scream with little breath but sufficient volume, “Come!” 

The knife descended on you, but you jerked your shoulder to the side, head ripped back to bare your neck to the silent moonlight as the hand recovered your face. Black dots swirl, shadows lingering like phantoms in the recesses of your mind and spilling demons from your eyes. Hatred flares in you, but not as much as fear does. That silver blade connects with the meat of your neck and shoulder junction, tearing past muscle and tissue to rent a large slash open to the air. 

Your legs kick before arms wrap around them—more quickly called orders and insults directed at the one who had missed your neck peeling back the drums inside of your ear. Thick, hot, blood stains your clothes; the copper scent gets stuck in your nose as you gag and try to force your lungs to function with nothing to suck down. Darkness seeps deeper, and the knife is brought up once more, the tip digging into your cheek with a firm bite when you try to flinch away.

That’s when a guttural and vociferous yowl exudes from the chest of a rampaging canine as it bursts from around the corner of the alley, white teeth glinting and eyes red. 

Riley has the man with the knife by the neck in two seconds flat, reaming him back and clinging to his spine with only his fangs on his nape. Multiple wet crunches echo for but a moment, a small sliver in time, but then the loud pained bellows that follow after drown out all else. Like a bomb had been dropped, the man Riley keeps ripping apart falls sideways, hands reaching behind his head to try and pry the dog off. In a fit of fear and stupefaction at the turn of events the remaining men release you, tossing your body to the side and into the adjacent wall in panic. 

Hands reach for guns but it’s already too late. Riley has ripped the entire back of the man’s head off in a flurry of fur and jerking maw—flesh peeling back in long strings into a waiting mouth as the screams continue. Now, though, they come from only the remaining soldiers as you watch with mute horror; gripping your leaking cut and vision fuzzy from the blow that your head had taken from slamming into the wall. Lack of oxygen. 

With all the ruckus, it was only customary that the streets were soon awake with confusion and rising tension. You swore you heard your name being called streets over, hurried yelling as the lights flicker on from the building across the road.

But Riley. Christ, Riley. 

The second man’s pistol was stopped from rising any farther as fast fangs found a wrist, the shot bouncing off the ground as you balked back against the wall and cried out. Across the Fort, the yelling starts up. Louder now. That remaining soldier unaffected thus far by the feral rage is snapping into a ready stance—shaking as the barrel is leveled with the dog’s skull as sharp points go for the kill once again. 

“Riley!” You snag out a leg and rip it back, curling your foot around his ankle. Black clothes hit the ground hard, as the man inside went with them. 

It carried on just the same. 

Panting you stare into the blood-dripping muzzle that now turns your way, three opened necks pooling to the ground and twitching. Gargling gasps dribble like glasswork exploding in kilns; such a vulgar, primal, sound. But you only stare at the beady brown eyes as they seem to bite you as well. Framed with crimson, whiskers droopy as droplets hit your knee and rancid breath slides over your stalled face.

“Please…” you mutter, bruised head turning to the side, eyes clenched shut. Licking lips resonate and you clench your hands as you finally hear the frantic calling of your name coming down the road. Fast-moving shadows.

Hesh.  

Riley breathes on you, but before your swallowing throat can call out the brunette in fear of what the dog will do, a wet tongue licks a long stripe over your cheek. Eyes bugging, you snap your head back up, jaw slackened and brain struggling to calm down. 

The dog watches with a slow tilt of his head, tail lowly swishing. 

“What the fuck,” gasping wetly, the hand on your wound lessens, hot fluid gushing between fingers. 

Riley huffs, feet shifting. 

Laughing slightly in anxious confusion, your free hand lightly raises. Soft fur conforms to you, letting your digits weave through the locks. Riley licks his lips once more and sits on his fluffy behind, ears sharply up and twitching. 

Hesh nearly runs past the sight, heart too fast for his chest and teeth clenched tight together. His mind was as sober as it could be—a deep sense of unease clawing in his gut. 

He’s heard the screaming; the gunshot. When he’d run out of the bar after doing a quick headcount for you and being unable to place your form, Riley had already been gone. A trail of dust and a floating napkin were the only indicators. But the fear was worse than that.

Where had you gone? Were you in danger? No thought was behind his sprinting, just a flushed face and a deep need to keep you safe. He’d promised you. 

No one had been able to stop his senseless searching as he took off at a racer’s pace, looking down alleyways and carrying the pistol in his right grip until his knuckles had gone white and see-through. Like a loyal hound, Hesh was intent to find you. Even if it turned out to be nothing. 

And then the real screams started, and so he screamed too—your name.

But now he slams a hand into the concrete wall and reels himself back, a hunched shadow stiff in the side of his green vision before he can fully pass the alleyway entrance. 

“Holy…” Hesh trails harshly, gaze going wide. 

You were there surrounded by three Federation soldier’s bodies and while that was alarming, there was only so much you could do when you were a corpse. Riley held in your arms was something that Hesh couldn’t begin to explain. 

But the shock was short-lived.

“Sweetheart!” He called, boots propelling him forward as he slid to one knee in front of you, hands pushing past fur and muscle to bring yours forward by your shoulders. A handgun is placed into the back of his belt. “Woah, woah, hey. Tell me what happened. Where does it hurt?” 

Staring into your eyes you immediately relax at the presence of the man, his large body seeming to shield you away while sending glances around the area; not liking the thought of more attackers. 

“Hesh,” you breathe, massive weight coming off of you even as you bite your lip in a pained whimper. 

“I’m here. I’m right here.” Hands travel over your body, gliding over bumps and bruises quickly and efficiently. “What the fuck…” he growls deeply. “It’s all gonna be okay.” 

A swift glance is sent to the canine who watches blankly. 

“Good job, boy.” You stare blurrily into Hesh’s neck as he carefully peels back your hand, face scrunching and body pulling together as sparks of agony alight as the gaping cut meets the breeze. 

“I,” stuttering, you ignore his harsh inhale, the ripping of his shirt as he presses the tattered cloth to your neck. You shiver. “I lost your beanie.”

Fearful green eyes lock on your as the calls from the rest of the soldiers from the bar finally make an appearance. How fast had Hesh been running to find you? 

“Hey, don’t even worry about it,” his palm encapsulates your cheek like a prized family heirloom, keeping your face pointed toward him as you shiver. The soft scraping of his hard calluses itches your flesh. A strained smile graces his lips, “I’ll give you another one.” He looks the rest of you over and grits his teeth. 

He doesn’t care about the dead soldiers—the possibility of a breach. Suddenly, all of his priorities had shifted in the short span of a week, horrible loyalty rearing its head.

“I need you to stand up for me, Sweetheart, okay? I’ll be right here, I just need you on your feet. I know you can do it.” You nod shakily, pulling strength from his resolve as his arm pulls you to his chest like it had when you’d first hugged; using his muscles to drag you up a second after checking to see if you weren’t in too much pain. 

Standing now, his grip stays around you, propping you up into the crook of his arm and increasingly looking more and more worried. 

When you flinch and whine, he looks about ready to burn down cities to bring you comfort. 

“Riley, come on!” Hesh calls, then softer, “I know it hurts, but you’re doing great. Keep at it just a little longer.” 

He moves you quickly, and the pounding in the back of your head threatens to drown out everything—your neck and ribs barely made a dent like that did. A pan being hit with a spoon. Nails on a chalkboard.

“Logan!” David yells, and he feels incredibly warm. Riley brushes your staggering legs, keeping close and looking up at you. Leaning in more heavily, you gaze up into Hesh’s frowning face, his continued glances, and the furrow in his brow. 

You wonder how you’d never noticed how truly handsome he was before. Hesh had a strong face—good bones and a soft nature to his skin besides the stubble. And his eyes. Oh, his eyes. You blink up at him and he spares a stiff smile, mostly dragging you down the alley. 

Other feet pound the ground near the entrance.

“What’s that look for? Huh? Makin’ me nervous over here.” His fingers squeeze your shoulder. “Got something on my face?” 

“You’re kind, Hesh.” You whisper, blinking and stumbling before he grunts, twisting his grip to bring you up into a bridle hold. “Far kinder than you should be.”

His heart breaks.

Clenching your teeth, you bury your head into his neck before the brunette starts to run again. He pounds past Logan and a group of armed soldiers, who slide to a quick stop. Hesh only spares his wide-eyed brother a single, horror-stricken, look on the way through. Riley follows.

“Just keep talking.” He pleads, your dead weight in his grip worse than anything he’d ever experienced. “Y’know, you keep ending up in my arms.” He rounds corners, heading to the MTF with a bursting pulse. Hesh keeps looking down at you, pressing your head closer with a hand as if he could bleed himself to give you strength. “I think I should get my own plaque—Pack Mule. What do you think?” 

Laugh, please, laugh. Please, I need to hear it.

You laugh slightly, ear ringing to his blood flow. You want to melt into him, let him keep holding you like this and keeping you to him like a stuffed animal. His breath on your cheek, his glassy eyes and bitten lips. 

You’d known he was good from the moment you had seen him standing and gaping at your form in that bathroom cabinet, willing to treat your wound without even knowing if you were armed.

He’s good.

Hesh sprints past an entrance, shoulder slamming into a glass door as it’s thrown to the side. 

“Nurse!”

You don’t know why, but hearing his voice crack like that made you want to sob.

—

The soft antibacterial whip made you glower and flinch back, frowning straight into Hesh’s serious face.

“If you clean it anymore my skin will fall off.” You shoo his hand away from your shoulder, pulling the hospital gown back up in the process. 

“Just making sure it’s healing,” he looks up at you from his chair as you sit on the end of the bed. “Can’t be too careful.”

“Says the man who’s been here every day and leaves Riley to watch the door when he has to go to the bathroom.”

“Hey,” Hesh blushes, pulling back to slouch and crossing his arms. “It’s called being cautious. We still don’t know where the breach is.” 

You stare with a soft smile, exasperation in your eyes. 

“David,” he raises a brow at the title, “I’m okay.” 

Moving your hand from your lap, you absentmindedly pet the dog that sleeps on the hospital bed, itching behind Riley’s ears. Hesh watches, moments passing as the small tension seeps out little by little. He glances at the outline of stitches that he has to place bandages on soon but quickly looks away, frowning to himself. 

You sigh, shaking your head. 

“When I heard your voice from the alleyway entrance, I knew I would be just fine.” Green slowly slides back, gaze softening considerably as he watches your expression. A low grunt is forced out, a rubbing of a hand on his neck. “You promised, didn’t you?” Your head tilts. “You haven’t broken it.”

“No, I haven’t,” Hesh breathes, standing, “and I don’t intend to.” 

You smile, face hot as his vision blinks to the upturn of your lips. “Hey,” Riley stirs next to you, “at least I know I won him over.” Your hand pats the dog’s head. 

The brunette stares and a moment passes before he whispers, “knew you would.”

Blinking, you turn to find the most delicate expression on David's face and your breath hitches in your chest. He swallows but doesn’t hesitate. The words had been eating at him for a while, and as he was never one to shy away from speaking his mind, it was like torture to keep this from you. But now…now events have forced him into the spotlight. He can’t forgo this anymore, he can’t lie and say he hadn’t been sneaking glances or daydreaming about you. Your smile, your voice—even the way you walked or how your eyes lit up when you were passionate about something. 

It was just right, and seeing you like this now only strengthened that. Hesh had felt fear like he had when he was carrying you a total of a mere handful in his entire life. 

He mutters, “I knew from the second I found you out in No Man’s Land that you were special.”

Not believing your ears, you stop your petting. Wide eyes like dinner plates and a half-parted mouth. 

Was he…?

“I knew when you made me laugh when I was carrying you through the hills,” Hesh takes a step closer and grabs you lightly by the chin, tilting it up with a finger. His face was adorably burning, but you short-circuit at the words that continue to flow with candor. Your heart skips beats and with a clammy hand, you reach up to brush his wrist. Shivering, confidence builds. “I knew when I hugged you the first night you were here and,” he looked down, “I…I knew you were special when I felt my heart bursting out of my chest when I found you in that alley.” 

“Hesh,” you whisper, and you realize you close the two of you had become, breath mixing like a cocktail of glorious infection and stolen words. 

“If I hadn’t gotten there on time…” 

“Hesh.”

“...Even if I’ve only known you for a short while, Sweetheart, I can’t stop thinking the same thing every time I see you.” You stare, eyes wet, and suddenly no longer aware of where your head is anymore. 

His lips brush yours, but all you care about are those green eyes; digging, drilling past membranes and thoughts more effectively than any blade. You’re entranced, wholeheartedly frozen just for him—just as he is for you. 

It’s nothing but a whisper now. You feel the words more than hear them. His thumb tightens on your chin, and you don’t pull back as you steal his warmth. His kindness. 

His loyalty.

“...that even if I hadn’t entered that house on that rainy Tuesday,” he shutters, “I’d still be looking for you everywhere I went.” 

When his lips meet yours, you capture his soul, dragging him down into the depths of your lungs and breathing hope back into him. You smile through it, bandaged and stitched but happier than you’d been in a long time. 

Pulling back from a soft and delicate meeting of flesh, both faces are heated, burning under the pigments. There’s a moment of sanctity—holy silence one would find in a church during high mass—as you stare at one another. Hesh’s fingers run small movements on your skin. You beam and he says in a whisper, “Hey…I guess that means I did something right.”

“You’re lucky you’re perfect, David.”

“I could say the same about you, Sweetheart.” You giggle and drag him back in as Riley snoozes on, legs kicking in a silent dream. 

When the nurses come to check on you in four hours, they’ll find the bed occupied by three forms. 

A soldier, a patient, and a dog. All curled up in a pile of multiple blankets and hard pillows—arms wrapped around one another with the man pressing the woman’s face deep into his chest; even breaths of a soft sleep that sing like rare lullabies. All, in their own way, seem to have heavy smiles stuck into the lines of their faces.

They leave them be.

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[halcyone-of-the-sea]

5k is so deserved! I constantly go back and reread your works and am always looking forward to what’s next ❤️❤️❤️

I’ve been having thoughts about a Hesh x femreader reunion request thats similar to your latest Keegan piece. Except reader was childhood friends with the Walker boys, but despite there being feelings between Hesh and reader they’re scared of confessing because of their friendship. they get separated when Odin happens, and both join the military and reunite during a joint Op with the Ghosts and readers team, and even after 10 years their feelings resurface and finally get together.

Can’t wait to see what you’ll write for all the requests!!

—To The Boy of My Childhood

⇢ ˗ˏˋ 5k Drabble Masterlist ࿐ྂ

╰┈➤ ❝ [Ten years came and went fast, but the memory of the Walker boys stayed. One more than the other. You never got to tell him you loved him.] ❞

You remembered his kindness, above all. His big, pure, heart. Hesh wasn’t just someone you grew to know and then threw out like a pair of old socks, no, he was too good for that—a mix of playful boyishness and the makes of a fine man. You wished you could have told him how much he meant to you before it all just fell apart. 

Growing up near the Walker boys was a treat and a curse, not for yourselves, but for the adults—no one got in the way of you three. Late nights in the backyard, laughter keeping everyone up into the small hours. The fights and the near-instantaneous make-ups. 

The older years of deep-rooted attraction to the green-eyed boy of your youth.

David Hesh Walker had been everything you had ever wanted, and even when the ground shook and the word split, you still couldn’t tell him how you felt. But fate had plans for the two of you—it was only a matter of time. 

Ten years, to be exact.

You jump down from the helo, your knees taking the brunt of the weight from your gear as your team follows. Fort Santa Monica was a bustling stronghold right on the door of Federation occupation—enemies stalking like animals beyond the wall for a glimpse of weakness. The men and women here were anything but.

“On me!” You call out behind you, and the resounding rush of booted feet follows as you all move out along the helicopter pad swiftly. The unit you were assigned was given a simple task—assist the commanding Captain here and his men with wall defense to reduce the amount of casualties. 

Over the ten years of war, you’d honed yourself into something akin to a walking weapon. Found deliriously surviving in the remnants of the USA, your rage and anger gave you the skills you needed to still be alive when the soldiers found you; brought you back to civilization. It hadn’t taken much for you to sign up after that, thinking Hesh and his brother were dead. 

Hesh. God, you had loved him so much that the feeling hadn’t dimmed in the slightest even now. Being so close to home once more made you feel…strange. 

“Lieutenant!” One of the soldiers comes up to greet you all, shouting above the whir of blades—he was an older man with a shaved head and a large beard. “Welcome to Santa Monica!”

“Good to be here!” You call, a rifle hanging heavy on your chest. “Where do you need us, Sir?”

“Fall in, I’m bringin’ you to Scarecrow!” So you follow, leaving the sandy beach of the port and heading into the dense streets. There were civilians in this Fort, you knew, just beyond the checkpoint of fences. You have to wonder how they felt about this—trapped in a rat cage with the water and the war clamping to them tightly. 

“Heard your unit was well-known.” You’d learned the man’s name was Thomas Merrick—a Captain here. You blink at him, head tilting. “Scarecrow was eager to get you here, can’t say why.” 

“I was told you needed support at the wall, Captain,” you explain, brows furrowing. “Were my superiors mistaken?”

Merrick's brown eyes stare at you as you walk beside him, your men all speaking to one another from behind. 

“No,” is all you’re told. 

This ‘Scarecrow’ was known as only that, and your lips thin at the comment leveled at you. Strange. 

Your other men are shown their barracks, and you send them off to get rid of their packs and belongings while you continue on with Merrick to the control room—eager to meet this Captain and get real answers. 

When you get there, the second you push open the door and Merrick takes his leave, you’re greeted by one of the old faces that you could recognize anywhere. 

You freeze just three feet into the room, locking eyes with this mythical ‘Scarecrow’ but it wasn’t some great war strategist, at least, not as you know him.

“Mr. Walker?” You pause, blinking in confusion. Elias Walker—Hesh and Logan’s dad. Your heart constricts in your chest. 

He looks at you, a small smile on his stern face as his arms crossed, nodding his head. 

“Thought I recognized that name in my request for transfers.” 

“Holy shit,” you breathe, a grin breaking out over your face for the first time in ages. Part of you wanted to race and hug him—bathe in the comfort that his rare soft looks would bring you when you were younger…but you weren’t that kid anymore. Being alive was enough, and with the things you’d seen, it meant far more than anything else. Elias seemed to share that sentiment, as he walked over and put a hand on your shoulder, squeezing it. 

“How did…how are…” Your head shakes quickly, memories flooding back along with the pain. But there, in your chest, a flicker of hope—something more blooming back to life. “Logan?” Your voice is tiny, pleading as you pause, gazing into Elias’s eyes. “...Hesh?”

“I already called ‘em back in. They��ll be here soon.” He gives you a proud nod. “I’m glad you’re still here, Sweetheart.” 

You laugh, smile wobbling. 

Alive. Hesh was alive. 

Every wall you’d built falls the second boyish laughter echoes out from the halls. You turn, hearing feet move down the floor, closer and closer as your body stills like a statue. 

Alive. 

When a shoulder pushes open the door, you stop breathing as a far older David enters the room, Logan, as always, not far behind. 

He’s mature now, with a beanie over his short brown hair and the presence of a grown man holding down responsibilities—he was smirking back and his brother, saying in a voice that haunts your dreams, “Think we should tell him what Riley found today, Logan?” 

The younger brother stops short, locks eyes with you, and his body goes as tight as a fishing line. 

Hesh’s brows furrow. “Logan?” He turns to you and those green eyes go confused for a moment, lips going thin. It’s a flash of recognition that re-ignites them—a flicker of something long past before they snap wide with fierce realization.

Blinking quickly, the man watches you, hands at his sides jerking forward by a millimeter as if to grab for you at even a single glance. No one speaks for a long, long time, and maybe you don’t want them to. Hesh and you are locked in a look of pure pain and elation—a dance of life and death. 

There aren’t any words for it beyond the sudden mad scramble for the other’s hold. 

You collide in a sharp breath and a hand to the back of your head—keeping you to him as you both grasp for purchase; for a glimpse of your childhood back.

“Jesus Christ,” Hesh breathes, anchoring you to him as his chest sputters. “Oh my fucking God.”

“Hesh,” you whimper through a sobbing laugh. “You son of a bitch, I should throttle you.”

He scoffs wetly into your ear, hands quivering and voice cracking. 

“Me? If I remember, Doll, you were the one to take that tumble down the hill—I…I tried to find you, y’know that? I swear, I didn’t want to leave but I—”

You pull back and slam your lips to his. 

It was far better than an ‘I love you’ when he melted and grappled you closer.