#simon ghost riley x you

[spurbleu]

to me it’s an inherent truth that ghost is socially “ugly”

scars that are uneven and pucker skin because he had hastily sewn lacerations together. burn scars on his back and hands, with skin that wrinkles like haphazard gills across his abdomen. blonde hair gene that makes his eyelashes and eyebrows near invisible. a crooked, broken nose that hardly works unless he brings whatever smells right to his nostrils.

and it wasn’t a sob story. he’s wasn’t insecure because to him it really isn’t all that important. at the end of the day the body he’s been put in sleeps, eats, and kills. fucks good, if it feels like it. that’s all he’s ever needed.

it’s not until you come into the picture, domestically enough, that he does start to care.

starts small, like checking if there was anything in his teeth, or smoothing out that one hair that likes to plant itself over his forehead.

the trivial, small details that furrow in between his ironed apathy.

then, insecurity blooms. found where one scar begins and the next ends. he stops lingering at the mirror, and wears thicker clothes because “london’s fuckin’ freezin”. keeps his eyes trained ahead when you shop downtown, so he doesn’t catch a glimpse of himself next to you in the store windows.

doesn’t realize how bad it had gotten until you, who had picked up on his lack of subtly and libido, asked him to take a bath.

with you.

and suddenly he’s rendered a quiet, awkward bastard in your flat bathroom, that is much too small for him.

you run the water to a boil and put relaxing salts in while he strips. he sits down with his mouth in a firm line because what the fuck is he supposed to say when his bird massages shampoo into his hair and hums a song that isn’t his favorite but becomes one when she kisses his cheek while at the chorus.

watches with wavering interest as bubbles form from the soap and the water begins to cool. hasn’t said a word since you started the strange routine that makes him feel raw and vulnerable in a way that he characterizes as childish.

“you’re so handsome, si.”

you’re swiping lotion onto his face. he hadn’t even realized you’d been staring.

“what?”

you laugh and swipe a thumb under his crooked nose, over the cleft lip. fingers trace the scar that runs up his cheek.

you hold his ugly in your hands. and you find him…handsome. he’s seen a liar and you can’t be one for the life of you. it disturbs him, that whatever comes from you lips isn’t just a compliment, but an observation.

what a foreign thing, to be given someone’s truth so easily.

the room gets quiet aside from the foam whispers and sputter of water when his legs shift.

“I said,” you kiss him gently, “I think you’re handsome.”

the apathy to his appearance never returns. however, the harshness is retired for however long you continue to hold him.

he will be whatever you want him to, and if that means he’s handsome, then a good place to start is believing you when you tell him so.

[hydriadss]

This is how I end up every time I read a masterpiece of Ceilid! Never and I never end up unsatisfied! I love each and every one of her works ❤️

BIRD DOG | Simon 'Ghost' Riley x Reader

MOODBOARD · AO3

A few times a year, Simon goes home to an empty apartment in a shithole city and counts down the days until he can leave. This time, there's someone waiting for him when he comes home.

Convenient. He was already planning on ordering takeaway.

Or: the live-in masseuse au

tags: Size Difference, Size Kink, Explicit Sexual Content, AFAB reader - Freeform, Masseuse Reader, Forced Cohabitation, Strangers to Roommates to Lovers, Porn with Feelings

The mangled hand of fate lets him go but seldomly. 

He does, though, get a few weeks off a year. Bids farewell to his captain (the barest hint of a nod after leaving each other on the runway, chopper blades spinning faster and faster, the other man headed back out, his duties never finished; the world can never let them both rest at the same time) and then he’s gone, bags long packed and truck loaded the night before last. He drives a long, circuitous route after leaving the military base, the mask only shed when the paranoid prickle in his head finally abates. 

It never quite goes away though.

And then comes the drive back, the road long and the drudgery endless. One hand on the wheel, the other hanging out of the side of the truck, a cigarette pinched between two knuckles. Occasionally, he takes a drag. 

This is the part he always hates. The drive back. Roads winding through quiet towns and over hills, blue disappearing into black, streetlights piercing the darkness and demarcating the beginning and end of civilization. Manchester is a long drive north. He stops once for a piss by the side of the road and then carries on. 

It’s a wonder they let him go at all. He is violence forthright; setting him free does no one any good. It’s hardly even a reward for him, more of just a pretense of normalcy. A week to stretch his legs, so to speak. If he were anything other than human, maybe they’d force him to stay on base indefinitely, secured and contained behind barbed wire fences and reinforced concrete walls.

But a few times a year, they play this game and send him off into the world.

There’s an apartment in Manchester that he’s rented for as long as he can remember. A shithole flat in a shithole borough, and though Simon’s squirreled away enough money to buy a place of his own, the thought of owning anything makes his skin crawl. It’s not in his blood, he thinks. He’d sooner live in a shack in the woods, no fixed address or way to find him. Even his flat in Manchester is rented under a different name, and he pays his landlord in cash for the year. 

It’s dark when he reaches the city, the sky soot black and patchy with clouds. Moon nowhere in sight. Nothing beautiful ever visits Manchester. 

But there’s a light on in the window when he pulls up in front of his place.

Odd.

Would’ve remembered if he left the light on the last time he was in town months ago; filament would’ve blown out in at least that time as well. Still, there’s a light on in the living room window and a new curtain pulled across to keep anyone from looking in.

Simon stares at the light while he leans outside against the truck and finishes his cigarette. Stubs it out under his boot when it’s down to the filter and locks the car door behind him. Violence already itches under his skin, knuckles tingling like they know what’s coming if he opens that door and finds some junkie living in his flat. It’ll be worse if he finds out that his scumbag landlord moved someone else in after picking up on him being gone nearly half the year.

His key still works though. Fancy that. 

He finds you like that, sitting up from a nap on his couch, sweater slouched down a shoulder and groggily blinking open big doe eyes that widen when you notice him in the doorway, fear making you freeze up. 

You’re a pretty little thing; a pleasant surprise to find something like you sitting on his couch. It quells the violence simmering in his belly because it awakens another appetite instead. Like a meal delivered right to his door. He was already planning on ordering takeaway. 

He drops the duffel bag by his feet, propping the door open with it. “You lost, bird?”

Terror leaves you mute. He can only imagine; he must seem like something straight from a horror movie—defenceless girl waking up to the dead-eyed stare of a giant dressed in all black watching her sleep and blocking her only way out. That’s not completely true; there’s a backdoor through the kitchen that leads into a laneway behind the house, but the door sticks in the winter, not easy to open in a hurry. 

He has as much right to ask as you do to run at the sight of him though, considering it is his fuckin’ flat. 

You can’t seem to choke out a single word. Scared stiff, likely, heart slamming against your chest while the worst scenarios possible play out in your mind. Simon nearly rolls his eyes. 

“Fuckin’ ‘ell,” he grumbles, finally kicking his bag out of the way so the door can shut behind him. “Cat got your tongue or somethin’?”

The sound of the door slamming shut must finally snap you out of it because you scramble off the couch, nearly tripping over the arm when you run for the back. Screaming too, just to piss him off extra. His back already aches something fierce from the long drive—he wasn’t expecting a headache on top of everything else. 

“Heeeeeeeeelp! Heeeeelp!” 

Your screams are borderline deafening, almost more aggravating than finding someone living in his flat in the first place. 

You scramble down the hall, so terrified that you go for the first open door, slamming it shut behind you. His eyes follow the shape of your bare legs and the way the muscles in your ass move as you run. 

“I’m c-calling the police!” you yell from behind the bathroom door. 

When Simon looks back down the hall, he notices your phone on the floor, bright side up. Must have dropped out of your pocket when you bolted like a scared cat.

“No, you’re not,” he says blandly, staring at the door. There’s a pause on the other side like you just noticed your missing phone, then a bleat of panic. “Don’t try going out the window either—thing’s been sealed shut since the nineties.”

On the other side of the door, the window rattles in its frame for a good few seconds before you give up on trying to escape that way. There’s a pause while you consider your options. Simon waits patiently on the other side of the door, his temper slowly but surely getting the better of him the longer he goes without a shower and a beer, locked out of his own bathroom. 

What a bloody headache. 

He pounds a fist against the door, bracing his feet in case you try to open it and scurry out around him before he’s had a chance to have a chat. “Gonna come out now?”

“Get out of my house!” you shriek instead of being polite. 

Figures. He should’ve known his landlord would pull some shit like this. “How long’ve you been living here, bird?” 

“I have a knife!”

Pretty thing that likes to lie. There’s not a shot you have anything better than a hair dryer or nail clippers in there. 

“Better get away from the door ‘cause I’m kickin’ it in,” he announces, taking a step back to give himself some distance and waiting a few seconds for you to realize that he’s dead serious before you start screaming at the top of your lungs again. 

Got quite a set on you. That doesn’t matter much to him though. The door caves in after only a few good kicks, the frame splitting right up through the lock when it finally gives, and the two halves—the door itself nearly snapped in half—banging against the wall when it ricochets open. 

You’re trembling between the toilet and the wall when Simon walks in, knees practically knocking together. The crotch of your shorts are wet and there’s a small puddle under you; must’ve pissed yourself in fear, and he’d almost pity you if you weren’t squatting in his flat. 

The closer he gets to you, the harder you wail. Full on bawling now, snot and drool dribbling down your face, and Christ, he sure picked a bad time to grow a heart. He’s not immune to a pretty girl in distress, much as he wishes he could be. 

He kneels in front of you, purposefully blocking your only way out, before knocking his knuckles under your chin, huffing out a breath when you flinch. “Ain’t gonna hurt you, bird. You’re just in my flat, is all.”

“Your flat?” you repeat in disbelief. “This is my flat. I pay rent!”

“Got a lease then?” he asks, and though your eyes are still bloodshot and your nose is still leaking, you nod. 

“Yes.”

“Show me then,” he orders. 

And you do when he steps back to give you some space, scampering shamefully to your—his—bedroom to rifle through the dresser until you pull out a handful of papers that look suspiciously like a lease. He skims it with a growing tick in his eye. It looks like one because it is one.

“See?” you mumble. He ignores the attitude in favour of reading until the end, where he finds his landlord’s name, the blotchy signature underneath it unmistakable. 

“Bullshit,” he grunts through his teeth.

“It’s not. You can call him and ask! Where’s yours?” 

His copy of the lease is tucked away in a drawer in the kitchen, buried under loose rubber bands, old batteries, and takeout menus from restaurants that went under years ago. When he returns with it and holds it up to your nose, you frown.

“Oh. I guess that explains some things.”

“Explains some things, huh? The clothes didn’t tip you off?” Simon asks, referring to the sweatpants and shirts still lining the dresser shelves. Your lips tighten. 

“I thought the previous tenant skipped town and left his clothes. I was gonna throw them out eventually.”

“Good thing you didn’t.” His voice is thick with sardonicism. 

It’s an interesting standoff to say the least. You, standing there in your soiled sleep shorts with tear-streaked cheeks, and him still decked out in his military gear and boots tracking dirt across the flat. You sway on your feet, the adrenaline crash likely intense. He catches you when you sway too close to him and you flinch when his hand clamps down over your shoulder, a new wave of adrenaline coursing through you. 

“I’m fine,” you snap, taking a step away.

For fuck’s sake. His mood darkens at the continued hostility. It’s not like you’re the one who came home to a strange man squatting in your flat—if anyone has a right to be hostile, it’s him. 

Skittering back into the bedroom, you shut the door behind you, likely to change into another pair of shorts. Simon’s mood festers the longer he waits for you to come out. The last string of his patience nearly snaps when you finally creep back out into the living room, the sour expression on your face pissing him off even more.

“I’m gonna call Tom,” you mutter, picking your phone off the coffee table.

“Go ahead.” He doesn’t bring up that it won’t change a thing. Not his problem if you’re so green behind the ears that you think your landlord will drop everything to answer a call, especially after dinner. 

No one answers when you ring, just as he thought. He plops down on the couch and rests a foot on the coffee table, ignoring the way you pace back and forth waiting for your landlord to pick up.

“No answer?” Simon asks rhetorically. 

“Aren’t you gonna try?” you ask.

“Yeah. Tomorrow. When ‘e’ll actually pick up.”

“Well, what are we supposed to do then? I’m not getting a hotel room for the night.”

“Me neither, birdie.”

He meets your stare with one of his own. It doesn’t take long for you to give in. 

There’s a pullout bed in the couch that you offer to take and he lets you because he is, at the end of the day, a selfish prick who won’t give up a week of decent sleep for anybody. Not when his back and neck have been acting up for the past month and keeping him from getting more than three hours at a time. 

The ache behind his eyebrow throbs as Simon sits on the edge of the bed. A slow exhale. 

Tomorrow can’t come quick enough.

In the morning, Simon rings his landlord and listens silently as the fuckhead blubbers on the other end of the phone about late payments and eviction notices.

“This ain’t a charity, y’know,” the other man sniffs. “I gotta pay my bills too.”

He lets the man make excuse after excuse and accuse him of this and that until he finally goes silent when he notices Simon hasn’t said a word in minutes. At which point, Simon icily reminds him of what he does for a living and the fact that he paid him for the year in full just a few months back. 

Not much to be done after that. There’s silence on the other end before his landlord tries to hem and haw his way out of it. He offers Simon one of his other properties currently sitting vacant on the other side of town, but that’s not the answer that Simon is looking for. 

“If anyone’s moving out, it ain’t me,” Simon growls into the phone. 

The wounded look that you shoot at him rubs him the wrong way.

His landlord’s still rambling on about moving costs and lawyer fees when Simon hangs up, no longer in the mood to try and talk things out. 

He doesn’t really understand the legalities here, but he knows he can’t just toss you out on your ass when you’ve also got a lease, same as him.  

“I have every right to be here,” you start up the second he hangs up the phone, not letting him get a word in edgewise, shoulders rolled back like you’re trying to be assertive. “I’ll take it to court if I have to.”

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ.” Simon scrubs a hand down his face. 

“I’m serious. Rent is expensive and this is the only place close enough to where I work that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg—and I don’t have the money to hire a lawyer to get my money back—”

“I’m not gonna kick you out,” he finally snaps, fed up with your caterwauling. 

You pause, hope warring with disbelief. “You’re not?”

He gives a curt shake of his head. “Too much of a headache. I’m only…in town for a week anyway.”

“Oh. ‘Til when?”

“‘Til whenever I’m back.” Purposefully cryptic. He gives you a flat look when you open your mouth to pry some more. 

You reconsider, chewing your bottom lip until a better question occurs to you. “Are you in town a lot? Because I’m not sure how else we could make this work. I could sleep at my cousin’s until you leave?”

“Your cousin live around here?”

You hesitate. “No.”

“Then that ain’t gonna work, is it?”

“At least I’m trying,” you hiss, and Simon has to tamp down the amusement that swirls in his chest at the sight of your shoulders puffing up. “I’m not ripping up my lease and if you’re not either, then we have to figure out something unless you feel like taking this to court.”

While Simon wouldn’t usually take kindly to being threatened, his annoyance never quite develops into anything more substantial. 

“Just keep outta my way and I’ll keep outta yours,” he says. 

“Fine.”

The agreement you come to is that when he’s in town—seldom and erratic—he’ll take the bedroom and you’ll sleep on the couch, a fair compromise since you have the flat to yourself the rest of the year. 

He doesn’t explain himself, of course. Doesn’t explain why he’s allowing this instead of dragging you to court kicking and screaming. It’s no one’s business but his why he chooses not to go down that road.

He tells himself that it’s easier this way; that it’s easier just to run your lease out and spare himself the legal mess. It’s not like he’ll even be around most of the time anyway. 

What he carefully side steps, even in his own mind, is the sharp displeasure that accompanies the thought of forcing you out of his flat and onto the streets.   

Cohabitation is—

Easy wouldn’t be the right word. He certainly doesn’t make it easy on you, leaving his dirty dishes in the sink and his half-empty beer cans in the shower caddy, his cum drying on the wall over the tub spout. You try to do the same by leaving your dirty laundry on the communal furniture, but it doesn’t have the same effect. 

It’s interesting, at least. It’s not as though he’s never lived with anyone before—his memories of his early years in the service are littered with bunkmates packed into every corner of the room, and learning to sleep everywhere from moving caravans to while standing in formation, always surrounded by other people—but he’s paid his dues. Barring deployment, he thought he’d earned the luxury of his privacy. 

But it’s not all bad; it’s been years since he had fun like this. 

You try your best to annoy him in return, but you don’t realize that you’re playing chicken with a man who’s been buried alive. There isn’t much someone like you could do to break him. 

Living with another person doesn’t soften him up one bit. There’s a time for change and it’s not off the back of a four-month covert operation, his nerves still razor sharp and ability to sleep practically nonexistent. He gets precious few weeks to himself and he isn’t going to waste them trying to get in the habit of smoking on the porch instead of in his own living room. 

“I’m a masseuse.”

“Oh yeah?” Simon grunts, barely listening. There’s a match on the telly and a beer in his other hand—a perfect afternoon, if only you’d just stop yapping in his ear for five fuckin’ minutes. 

“Yes, and I can’t show up to work reeking like a chimney,” you explain, scooching closer to him on the couch while being careful to leave some distance between the two of you. For all your posturing, you’re still timid around him, like a kitten hissing and spitting around a much bigger cat. 

“What’s that got to do with me?” he asks rhetorically, not in the slightest interested in how it pertains to him. He takes another drag from the cigarette dangling between his index and middle finger, ashing it over the side of the couch. 

“It means I’d prefer if you didn’t smoke in the flat,” you say, hissing the last few words. 

He takes another drag, turning to look at you before exhaling right in your face. “That’s a shame.”

You cough and squawk, and he fights down a grin. 

For the most part, he leaves you to your own devices, intent only on enjoying his time off. He fixes the bathroom door at least, which you begrudgingly thank him for. 

A week and a bit, Simon reminds himself when you come in through the front door chirping into your phone, your voice effectively drowning out the TV on in the background. When you spot him staring at you from the couch, you go quiet as a mouse and slink off to the bathroom, locking the (newly installed) door behind you. He supposes it’s the only place where you feel any semblance of privacy since his bedroom is off limits until he leaves. It does leave him without a bathroom though. 

Pissing in the alleyway behind the flat half an hour later, he scowls into the darkness and reminds himself that he has no one to blame but himself for this mess.  

When his leave comes to an end, Simon doesn’t bother to give you a heads up. You’ll realize it in a couple of days when you notice his absence around the flat, the siege finally lifted. He supposes you’ll be grateful for his departure and grateful not to make you feign politeness.  

Duffel bag packed away in the car, he leaves with the bed still unmade. Knows that’ll ruffle your feathers later on when you come home, but it’s his parting gift. His reminder to you to enjoy the couple months reprieve his job allows you. 

And then the road slips away under him and he’s gone. 

The months away are just complex rearrangements of the same thing. Each time it drives his soul deeper into the gully, buffeted by katabatic winds. 

His daily life on base is split into brackets of time. Wake up, go to the gym, work, clock out, see the captain for a drink. Wash, rinse, repeat. Each day blending into the next. Back where he belongs, under the thumb of a system that he’s long sold his body and freedom to, and sent out God knows where to do God knows what. 

Then, again the rooster crows at first light and he lifts himself out of bed.

When he’s deployed, everything changes while everything stays the same. He doesn’t have the same freedom of movement as he does on base, but in truth very little changes from one deployment to the next if you zoom out enough. Limited time to sleep on the chopper before it touches down, body tensed for what’s to come, and then he’s off, his objectives clear. 

Driving a knife into a neck to the hilt and pulling it out one inch at a time. It’s the one he knows how to do, and he does it well. He doesn’t have to like what he does; he doesn’t even have to think about it so long as it gets done. 

Ghost exhales and slips the mask back on.

In [redacted city] in [redacted country], he sets his scope up in the window of a building across from one where his target is slated to be in twelve hours and then he waits. Flexes his fingers when they go numb and ignores the thirst clawing up his throat. Four hours later, his elbows ache something fierce from digging into the ground for hours on end, a sharp pain shooting up his arms, but Ghost pays it no mind. Mind over matter. 

Amidst the hours of laying there and waiting for his target to come into frame, his mind doesn’t wander. That’s a luxury for a different time—when the job is done and his target is executed. 

At the very edges of his consciousness though, something flickers. The skin around his eyes pinches as he pushes the half-formed thought away. 

Then his target walks into the room and everything else disappears.

You’re still there when he returns months later on another government ordered leave. Same petulant frown and wobbly lower lip when he walks in through the front door, dripping wet from the rain outside. When he tosses his duffel bag onto the couch, you scowl, nudging the bag onto the floor with your foot. 

“You could’ve rang,” you mumble, pulling the throw from the back of the couch over your lap to hide your bare legs. Pity to be deprived of a nice view, but Simon doesn’t take it to heart. 

“Didn’t think you’d still be ‘ere,” he grunts instead, shrugging out of his jacket and shaking it dry, suppressing a smirk when you start squawking about getting water all over the floor. 

That’s partly a lie, though not one he’ll ever admit to. Simon figured there might be a chance you’d be gone, but in the time since he last saw you, he’s done enough digging around online to know that you weren’t kidding about the lack of affordable flats in the area. There’s hardly a unit nearby that isn’t going for double what he pays, some even more. 

“Well, guess I’m sleeping out here tonight,” you grumble. You’re on your tiptoes in the doorway to the living room now, the throw wrapped around you like a security blanket. 

He doesn’t answer that. No point getting your hopes up when he has no intention of giving up the bed. 

In another life, he might be enough of a gentleman to let you sleep in the bedroom while he takes the couch, but in this one, his back is ravaged by sciatica and his dominant hand and wrist twinge with the beginning of carpal tunnel syndrome. Most nights, it’s a miracle if he can get five uninterrupted hours. 

So no, he won’t be giving up the bed.

But Simon toys with the thought of dragging you in with him. It’s been awhile since he had a woman, so long that the memory is fuzzy when he dredges it up, and though his hand does the job when the itch grows severe, he’s no monk. He could pull you in with little effort, sweet talk you until your knickers are around your ankles and your legs are in the air, hot cunt steaming when your legs part and he sinks his cock in deep. Wouldn’t take more than a half dozen thrusts before he busted, pretty pussy painted with his cum.

In the doorway, you eye him dubiously, scrunched nose expressing your discontent. 

It’s an idea, at least.

He still leaves his dishes in the sink and wakes to you pounding on the bedroom door, whining about having to scrub his plates with a pot scraper, but time and distance have mellowed any hostility in you. You treat him less like a stranger intruding on your space and more like a roommate you’ve grown to tolerate despite his many faults. 

The oddest thing is opening the fridge up to more than just a six-pack, a stick of butter, and three half-empty bottles of mustard. Fresh produce and meat spill from the shelves now, leftovers packed in tupperware and neatly labelled. He eats like a king now, takeout relegated to the days when you don’t feel like cooking. On those days, Simon heads down to the chippie a few streets away and gets enough for the both of you before heading back to eat on the couch with you. 

He still gets a kick out of leaving his cigarette butts in cups strewn around the flat for you to find. 

“So what do you do anyway?” you ask out of the blue.

“What’s it matter?” Simon grunts from beside you. He has to slow his usual gait to keep pace with you—which is irritating as all fuck—but you didn’t leave him much choice when you insisted on going to the store well after dark.

“I’m just making conversation. You always get so squirrely when I ask—what are you, some kind of secret agent?” 

He’d roll his eyes if he had any less self-control.

“No way. No way. You are?” you gasp, suddenly glued to his side, hands scrambling for purchase on his bicep and shoulder. 

Simon stares down at your hands clutching his arm, unconsciously tucking his bicep between your tits. “Best to not ask questions, bird.”

You pout. He ignores the impulse to lean down and sink his canines into that plump bottom lip.

His nose itches because the world is changing. 

He used to catalogue his time off base in much the same way. Wake up, workout, tinker with the junk pilfered from estate sales and scrap yards he’s frequented over the years, then head to the pub for a drink. Wash, rinse, repeat. 

That’s changed since you came into his life. Aside from when you’re out working, you unbalance his schedule. Upset his routines. The structure propping up his entire existence gets taken down in an instant when you open your mouth and ask him to the market with you, giving him no choice but to slam the door shut behind him and drive you there.

Each day comes with its new flavour, a new bite to it. 

“You’re not eating takeout again?” you ask him, aghast when you come home from work to find takeout containers all over the coffee table

“Always a fuckin’ lecture with you, huh?” Simon grumbles into his curry. Shovels another forkful into his mouth. 

Just as he expected though, you don’t let it go. He was a fool to think you would. It’s not so bad at first when all you do is cook for him—with the life he’s lived, he’s never been one to turn down a home cooked meal, so he accepts the proffered food happily—but it’s another thing entirely when you rope him into it.

He’s already pissed off when you wrangle him into the kitchen under the guise of needing his help—absurd after your subterfuge from the day before, his expectation being that you were happy to do all the cooking yourself, not force him to debase himself by chopping up all the vegetables and meat while being ordered around like a line cook. 

What really ticks him off though is that—

he grumbles to himself as he chops the mushrooms into thin slices

—you keep getting away with it.

The worst is when you catch the tremor in his hand at the breakfast table, quick eyes picking up on the subtle quiver instantly.

“Something wrong with your wrist?” you ask. Always prying into his business. 

Simon closes his hand into a fist. “It’s nothing.”

You frown. “Doesn’t look like ‘nothing’.”

“Well, it is.”

“Can you relax your grip? I just want to see that again.”

How he lets you talk him into massaging his wrist is beyond him. Then you press your thumbs into the meat of his palm and rub in smooth, circular motions, and his brain goes offline for half a second. The relief hits him like a cudgel to the head; knocks him upside. 

“Jesus fuck, bird,” Simon groans. His knee bangs against the leg of the table. 

“Feels a bit better, huh?” you ask, the corner of your mouth quirking up in a crooked, teasing smile.

And fuck if it doesn’t feel a thousand times better by the time you’re done. He snaps when your thumbs dig in too deep at his wrist and pain radiates up his arm, but all you do is laugh it off, smiling to yourself when you press down on a tender point on his wrist and his jaw goes slack.

Sometimes, he wishes he could study you like a bug. Pin your arms and legs down to get a closer look. Kneel over you and pin your shins down with his to keep you from squirming away, then tuck his fingers into the inside of your cheeks to pull them open. 

But he keeps his hands to himself. Just barely. 

He doesn’t stay long this time, called back from his katabasis before the week’s even up, Price’s voice urgent over the phone. His duffel bag is packed before the call is even over, boots laced up and mask folded neatly in his pocket for when he leaves the city limits. 

“You’re leaving?” you ask when you notice, and if Simon were less of a realist, he might think you sounded upset. 

“Need me to take out the trash?” he asks, his answer implicit. Yes, he’s leaving. Even if it weren’t for his job, he’s not the staying type; those kinds of decisions are out of his hands anyway, and even if it were up to him, he’d be long gone by now. Adrift; across the pond or somewhere down in the Balkans, far enough away that you couldn’t find him even if you wanted to. 

That’s what he tells himself. Whether he believes it anymore is another question.

You’re quiet for a second. “Sure. Thank you.”

Simon nods. Nothing more to say. The ache in his gut could be anything else. 

He lifts a hand on his way out, ruffles your hair once before he’s gone.

Rain soaks him down to his britches but still he stands in it without complaint, watching some of the privates unload a delivery truck parked outside of the commissary. Even the mundane parts of his job are his to attend to and he does so with little complaint.

When they finish around eighteen-hundred hours, he signs out for the day and heads to Price’s office for a drink. It’s so routine it’s practically part of his DNA. 

Price already has both glasses poured when Ghost arrives, two fingers each, and it goes down smooth when he rolls the mask up over his nose to take a sip. 

“Got out the pricey stuff just for me?” Ghost asks. He can tell by the taste and from the bottle sitting on the shelf behind Price, label facing outward. 

“What else am I saving it for?” Price asks rhetorically. “I’m not letting the good stuff go to waste.”

Ghost hums. It’s still raining buckets outside. He watches as it hits the windowpane behind Price’s desk, almost transfixed.

“Got time for a drink before you’re out on Friday?” 

He shakes his head. “No time. Gotta be out by six.”

“Six?” Price repeats, a mite surprised. “Why? Something waiting for you back home?”

Ghost doesn’t answer. 

Price lifts an eyebrow. “Well, spit it out.”

He shrugs. “Nothing to tell.”

“So there’s no one back in Manchester?”

“Didn’t say that.”

Price’s lips twitch into a grin under his mustache, eyes faintly amused. “Heard.”

Truth be told, he has started to think of you as someone waiting back home. Maybe not for him, but waiting all the same. Why else would you be back in his flat in Manchester in his bed if not to wait for him to come back?

It almost makes him itchy to leave. He can tamp down the urge when the situation calls for it, but it sits right under his skin most days. If he thinks about it for too long, his focus goes razor sharp and the edges of his vision go blurry. 

In the present moment, he brings the glass to his lips and tips his head back, letting it pour down his throat. 

He has some nascent idea of where this is going.

As always, you’re curled up on the couch watching TV when he walks through the front door, on the verge of sleep. When your eyes land on him, you blink away the sleep and smile so brightly that his chest aches. “Simon!”

In nearly forty years, no one has ever said his name like that. Brimming with brightness and warmth. Like for once someone has longed for him in his absence. 

All he can do is stare at you for a time. It should make his skin crawl, and it does, to an extent. He should be out the door already—lease broken, all his shit in the back of his truck, ties cut, and so many kilometers between you and him that he has no choice but to forget your face. 

Instead, he kicks the door shut behind him and ruffles your hair when he passes on his way to the bathroom to piss and scrub a towel over his face. 

It must be a form of self-punishment. That’s the only explanation for why he comes back every single time when he has more than enough money to fuck off down south for a week instead—he could be spending his leave in Costa Brava or sipping rakija in Kotor, but he chooses to come back to this hovel with its bleak weather and seedy underbelly every single time. What other urge would drive him to abuse himself like this other than masochism? 

Any attempt to answer that is swiftly dismissed. 

One day. One day is all he manages after promising to keep himself in check this time around. He manages to get through that first day largely because of the physical distance he puts between the two of you, playing chess with a couple old men in the park, rock doves pecking at the birdseed scattered under the wrought iron tables and benches. 

His restraint breaks when he catches you dozing off in front of the television, socked feet tucked under your thighs and head balanced precariously on your fist, elbow resting on the arm of the couch. 

He sits down beside you and his lip twitches when your head bobs, slumber briefly breached when the cushion under you dips with his weight. 

“C’mere, girl,” Simon grunts, pulling you onto his lap. 

You go somewhat willingly, only putting up a little bit of a fuss. Grumbling to keep up appearances. But that melts away the second he tucks your head into the crook of his neck, body going lax and fingers burrowing into the fabric of his shirt at his belly, gathering it together in your fist. 

Christ, Simon thinks, dropping his head back on the couch. What am I doing?

Even he doesn’t know these days, but his chest aches in a way it never has before. He makes a mental note to see a doctor when he’s back on base. 

His back aches too, but you pick up on that rather quickly, hounding him when you recognize the stiffness in his back for what it is. It takes you days to wear him down enough to agree to a massage, but eventually you do. He regrets it the second the words leave his mouth, leery at the thought of putting himself in such a vulnerable position.  

You lock him out of the bedroom while you set up your table and do all the little things that you need to do in order to set the mood. His nose wrinkles when the smell of incense hits him. 

“You can strip down to your comfort level,” you explain after letting him back into the room, patting the bed as if he doesn’t know where to lie down. “Then get under the blanket and let me know when you’re ready.”

He cocks a brow. “You trying to get me naked, bird?”

“Simon,” you sigh, a touch exasperated, hands on your hips to emphasize your weariness. 

His belt clinks as he unlatches it. “Don’t worry, birdie, just gimme a second to get these off.”

A frustrated growl and then the door slams shut behind you when you bolt out of the room. 

He spares you the indignity of having to repeat yourself, sliding under the towel and barking at you to come back in when he’s stripped bare and covered. You slip back in quietly and flit over to the dresser to press play on your music.

The first touch of your hands against his bare back almost makes him flinch. All his regret comes rushing back and he very nearly calls it off, and then you press the heels of your palms into the meat of his shoulders and the bottom falls out from under him. Then you drag them down the length of his back and he very nearly bites his tongue clean off. 

Simon doesn’t bother muffling his noises when you dig your hands into his back to work out the plethora of knots, huffing and groaning like he’s balls deep. When you get to his shoulders though, he has to fight to stay put, 

“Oh, your back is really messed up,” you note, a bit breathlessly. 

He doesn’t acknowledge your words, too intent on not vocalizing his pain. Not even a grunt passes his lips. 

You work years of hard labour and soreness out of his muscles, leaving behind a new man. The oil coating your palms makes your hands glide across his back. 

He must fall asleep at some point because he wakes to the sound of television in the other room. Groggy at first, cotton mouthed and sleep drunk, and when Simon stumbles into the living room, you’re sitting on the couch with your knees drawn into your chest. 

“Oh hi,” you say when you notice him standing there. “Sleep well?” 

Speech still beyond him, all he can do is nod and plant himself on the couch beside you. Shirtless still. Simon only notices it himself when he tips his head to look over at you and finds that you won’t meet his eyes, gaze steadfast on the TV. 

“Shoulda ‘ad you do that when you moved in,” he says. 

“I could give you another one before you leave,” you reply, still not looking over at him. He bets that if he brushed his knuckles over your cheeks, they’d be hot to the touch. “Just tell me when.”

Maybe he will. What use is there in depriving himself of life’s little pleasures when his soul bears all of life’s bruises? 

He reaches over to pinch your cheek, grinning when you yowl. Just as warm as he thought.

One thing Simon doesn’t take for granted anymore are his scarce moments of privacy. No stranger to a little exhibitionism (barracks walls and tent flaps hardly muffle sound, and he’s learned over the years that men will tolerate anything if it means they can rub one out in peace), he still appreciates the time he gets to himself to take care of things. 

He’s only just finished tugging one out, his jeans buttoned back up and his hand still wet with his spend, when you walk in the front door.

You start up the second the door slams shut behind you, steam practically billowing out of your ears. “Well, thanks a lot—one of my regulars just gave me shit because she said I smelt like an ashtray and she couldn’t ‘properly relax’ for the whole hour—” 

Afterglow proper scotched, Simon sits there and lets you cuss him out until the pounding behind his eyebrow becomes unbearable. 

You go quiet when he rises to his feet, unused to him actually reacting to your whinging. Sometimes you don’t realize how accustomed to him you’ve become—how ingrained he’s become in your everyday life. What continues to elude you for no good reason is that you live with a stranger, and a strange man at that. It would piss him off if it were anyone other than him. 

Practically chest to chest now, you nearly go cross eyed staring up at him. Jaw unhinged and mouth dangling loose, just the slightest gap between your lips like you forgot to close them. He lets you size him up for a second before lifting his hand to your mouth and slowly but firmly shoving his cum-covered fingers into your mouth.

Dumbstruck, all you can do is stare up at him with his cum-slicked fingers in your mouth, holding them there for a few more seconds and whimpering when he drags them out and then feeds them slowly back in. You even go a little glassy-eyed.

When he finally pulls his fingers out and lets his arm drop to his side, you sway on your feet a little, at a loss for words. There’s a creamy sheen on your bottom lip that disappears when you suck it into your mouth on instinct, eyes going wide when you recognize the taste on your tongue. 

“Thanks for cleaning that up, birdie.” And then he reaches down to zip his fly up, smug when your eyes flit down to his crotch. 

The stakes are different now than what they were all those months ago. It can’t be a carefree cohabitation when he’s playing for keeps. Whatever that means. 

But his time is cut short again, the world catching up to him and yanking him back. And when Simon goes this time, he can’t help but drag his feet on his way out.

You’re looking good. A comment made in passing, Price’s face barely twitching through it, but Ghost catches it and he lets it sit for a moment before responding.

“Yeah?” he grunts, looking away. The recruits round the part of the track closest to where they stand, panting through their seventh lap. 

“Put on a bit of weight since you left,” Price notes. 

“Calling me fat, sir?”

He rolls his eyes, huffing out an exasperated breath. “Give it a rest, you fuckin’ muppet. I said you look good.”

Price isn’t wrong though. He both looks and feels different. With increasing regularity, he watches the clock and counts the days down until he’s released from his duties again. His want has him circling like a bird of prey. 

All his life, he’s had to live in the moment, concerned only with the immediate, tangible present because that’s all that life let him have. And though it’s been decades since he’s needed to be in survival mode, those instincts have never quite left him. 

The shock to his system has left him forward-thinking for once. A girl in his house and food in his fridge; his body feeling better than it has in years—he’s still lucky if he gets more than five uninterrupted hours of sleep, but his expectations are different when he’s not at home. Even the concept of home is foreign, like a language he’s just starting to learn. 

The future isn’t some nebulous concept out of his reach but a real place that he gets to walk into. 

Desire tips him like a scale. There may not be any coming back from this.

Love shows him no mercy, so he doesn’t show you any either. 

Months pass before Simon’s leave comes around again, and when it finally does, he’s already packed and signed out before his last day on base is even up. He says his goodbyes to Price on his way out and the other man visibly suppresses a smile, eyeing the bag clutched tight in his hand. 

“Give her my best,” is all he says before getting back to the paperwork in front of him. Simon leaves without another word. 

Then the long drive back. A skein of birds in flight follow him for part of the journey. A train running parallel to the throughway follows him for the rest. Tree boughs bend under the weight of the last snowfall.

Then he blinks and when his eyes open, he’s home.

You’re still sitting on that blasted couch when Simon opens the front door, pretty as a peach in August, and his name rings like a bell off your tongue when you say it, summoning him to you. It’s not his fault that his urges prevail, that he has no choice but to throw his bag down onto the carpeted floor and stomp over to you, lifting you up by the collar of your housecoat and dragging you into a scorching hot kiss. 

“Mmf,” you squeak against his lips, eyes flying open. 

It’s messy and frenzied, spit dripping down your chin and his tongue halfway down your throat. No finesse or skill to speak of, only an incessant buzzing at the back of his head that only quiets when you give a helpless little moan, an instant balm to his suffering. 

Simon pulls back for a moment to let you breathe. “That’s my welcome ‘ome?” he murmurs. His lips brush against yours when he speaks. 

“W-welcome home?” you repeat, flustered, your lip catching against his. He sucks it between his when it does, cock throbbing in his pants when you gasp, hot breath billowing into his mouth and making his head spin. 

This is nothing like being high on pain meds or three sheets to the win. It pulses through him and makes his cock chub up, forcing him to shove a hand down between his legs to readjust himself. That gets you good when you notice. 

He kisses hungry and mean, ever greedy for your mouth, fitting his hand over the back of your head and angling you how he likes. Holding the delicate cradle of your skull in his palm and knowing that he could crack it if he squeezed his fingers hard enough. The thought sends a rush right through him, his violent underbelly scratched in just the right way. 

“W-where’s this coming from?” you gasp when Simon pulls back. You look thoroughly flustered, but he ignores you to hook a finger in your mouth and wrench it open. 

“Open,” he grunts, giving your inner cheek a sharp tug. 

You go cross-eyed when he spits in your mouth, the glob of spit landing right on your tongue, and your affronted little gasp hits him like an arrow shot straight through his heart. He’s considerate enough to seal it in with a kiss, making sure not to let you waste a drop. Tongue pushing in right after to lick it up, growling at you to suck it when you only nervously kiss back.

His patience isn’t infinite though and kissing barely wets his appetite. It’s not enough to plumb the depths of his hunger when there’s something uglier down there waiting with its jaws wide open.

He twists you around and bends you over the back of the couch, rucking your housecoat up to your waist. Your knickers get ripped clean off, tearing at the seams, and your ensuing shriek nourishes the hunger simmering low in his belly. Appetite never satiated, belly never full. 

He likes that you didn’t expect him back so soon. Fuzzy, unshaved legs and holey socks; pimple patches on your face and nothing under your robe. The lazy domesticity appeals to him in a way he never would’ve expected. 

Then his fingers split the seam of your pussy and the runoff of his appreciation cascades down the slopes of his shoulders and his back. Slick drips from your winking hole, gathering together into a tight bulb before a single drop drips onto the couch beneath you. 

“Fuck—now there’s somethin’ to come ‘ome to,” Simon grunts, and then drags his tongue between your dew-slicked lips.

His enjoyment was a foregone conclusion when he imagined this back in his quarters in the barracks, cock in hand, but the reality of having his mouth on your pussy exceeds his expectations a thousandfold. It’s all soft, pillowy skin and sweet nectar. He gorges himself on it, an almost pathological need to be tongue-deep in your cunt.  

“Wet little gash just sucks ‘em right in…” he murmurs, plunging two fingers into your hole slowly. The soft flesh of your hole bulges around his fingers when they sink in all the way to the knuckle. 

“Fuck—don’t call it that,” you bleat, so pathetic that he’s smitten. 

“Shouldn’ta wagged it at me if ya didn’t want me to touch it,” Simon teases, then crooks his fingers just so and your leg spasms. 

He keeps you stuffed full until your legs shake, on the verge of coming, and then he rips them out. 

You practically scream in frustration, twisting to look at him from over your shoulder. “What’s wrong with you?” 

“Somethin’ wrong, birdie?” He smirks when you arch your back, pushing your ass back in his face. 

“I want to come, Simon,” you whine, wagging your ass in his face again. Just his luck that a little slut like you dropped into his life.

“Alright,” he sighs, mock aggrieved. “Lemme see if I can ‘elp with that.”

Ungrateful little thing, he thinks when he turns you over onto your back and heaves you up into the air. 

“Simon—”  you keen his name when he has you pinned up against the wall, his arms scooped under your thighs to hold you in place. 

He plunges into that warm little honeypot between your legs in slow, measured strokes at first, savouring each punctured whimper and hiccup that drops from your lips. Each flex of his hips brings him that much closer to heaven and that much closer to hell.

“Didn’t think you could just barge in without consequences, did ya?” Simon asks rhetorically, voice gone brassy and tiger-stripped, thick in his chest. “Been sleeping in my bed for nearly a year, ‘aven’t ya? Ain’t I owed this?”

He means it too. 

“You’re—so full of it,” you retort, hiccuping through your words.  

Your arms hang limp around his neck, fingers twined at his nape and nails scratching at his hairline. The low ache in his back is barely a deterrent—he’d hold you up all night if it took that long to make you come. A distant voice at the back of his head reminds him that he’ll suffer for it in the morning, but he shakes that thought away. 

He chases the beads of sweat snaking down your chest and tits with his tongue, straightening back up only when that nearly makes you lose your grip around his neck and topple out of his arms. 

“Hey,” you pout when Simon chuckles, digging your nails into his back in retribution for laughing at you. It has the opposite effect though, the pain stoking his pleasure and sending a shiver down his back, his next thrust so rough that you bounce in his arms.

Your skin smells like sweat and musk this close, so heady that his head spins. It registers dimly at the back of his mind that he’s still dressed while you’re fully nude, housecoat and knickers in a pile on the floor in front of the couch, but he can’t pull away now, not with the need to come pressing into him on all sides, dick hard enough to split diamonds. 

He stares down between your legs where his cock splits you again and again, a ring of white cream at the base. He could paint that little snatch white with his cum or stuff it deep inside, both options appealing to his baser instincts. It’ll be a coin flip in the end.

When the ache in his back grows too significant to ignore, he lifts you up off the wall and drops you down on his cock, burying himself to the hilt before carrying you to the open door to the bedroom. 

“Sorry, pet,” Simon murmurs when he feels you clench around the thickest part of his cock, whispering a little oh fuck to yourself under your breath. He kicks the door shut behind him with his heel. “Back’s shit. Mind taking over for me?” 

The mattress squeaks under his weight when he sits down on the end. You blink up at him. “You want me on top?” 

He nods and hums his assent, digging his fingers into the muscle and flesh of your ass and kneading. “Yeah, bird. Still wanna see all the pretty bits though.”

The pretty bits being the globes of your ass facing him while you ride his dick, his hands pulling apart your cheeks to watch you take it inch by inch, thighs quivering with the strain.  

Your thighs are stretched out on either side of him, pretty calves resting perpendicular to his chest and toes curled into the mattress. He eyes those with some interest before your pussy distracts him again. There’s no angle that isn’t nice to look at, but this has got to be his favourite so far, tight bud between your cheeks clenching every time you drop down onto his dick. It’s easy to ignore the ache in his shoulder with a view this nice. 

“Fuck, birdie,” Simon murmurs, dragging his hand over your ass and then swatting it, grunting when that makes you clench up around him, inner walls squeezing his length and nearly milking him dry. “Coulda been doing this the whole time.”

You laugh a bit breathlessly. “No—you were way too annoying.”

Smack. You yelp when he backhands your ass and your shoulders go stiff, spine a taut line with your impending orgasm. Simon can feel it like a knot in his throat, pussy so hot that it nearly burns him alive. 

“Shit,” you gasp, hands on his legs the only thing keeping you upright. You nearly rip out the hair on his thighs when you curl them into fists.

His hands glide up and down your sides, touching wherever he wants. It’s his God given right after housing you for so long, and though Simon clings belligerently to that belief, like the foundation of his existence is built on quid pro quo, on doing nothing for others unless there’s something in it for him, there’s something else that burrows underneath that maxim. Something far truer and more terrifying, and if he were to look it dead on, it would bring him to his knees. 

Simon grunts, lungs pummelled when you squeeze around his length, tight as a vice.

Good thing you’ve got him on his back instead.

In the end, it’s not up to him whether he comes in you or not. When his cockhead bumps against your cervix and he feels teardrops land on his thighs, your shoulders shaking with the force of your sobs, the spigot loosens and his stomach aches with how hard he comes. His heels dig into the mattress, hips lifting up, trying to cram more and more of his cock into your cunt, tendons straining against his neck. 

“Take it, bird,” Simon snarls, teeth grinding together, his voice sounding wrecked even to him. “Take it nice ‘n deep, fuck—wanna see it leak from your hole when I pull ya off—”

Your nails sink into his thighs, cutting him off. 

He does too, when you flop down beside him onto the bed and he tucks you under his arm, spreading your legs so he can push his cum back into your cunt, fingers pearly white with your mixed juices. 

“Oh God,” you whisper, squeezing your thighs together around his hand until he’s forced to wrench them open again, hovering over you this time, the cudgel dangling between his legs already thickening up again. 

And that’s how he spends his week, in a suspended state of euphoria, no sense of time passing. It doesn’t matter where it goes as long as you crawl into bed with him at the end of the day, eyes sparkling with delight. 

The leaving is tougher than it’s ever been, claws scoring right through his chest when Simon tips your chin up and leans down to slot his lips over yours. He’s not made for this sentimental bullshit, but it finds him either way. 

His chest burns on the drive back to base, acid reflux a bitch as always. 

The next time his landlord calls, he comes bearing good news.

“I’ll cut you a deal on the first month to make up for the…mix up,” he starts begrudgingly. “But don’t worry—the girl’ll be out of your hair by the end of the month. Gonna tell her today that I can’t renew her lease.”

Simon hangs up without saying a word, swathed in anger. Nearly crushes the phone in his grip when his landlord calls back a second later. He ignores that call too.

If he were a different man, if this was a different world—

No one ever knows when their world is about to change until it does. 

But even if his walls have grown barbed wires in the years that he’s been alone, there’s always a way to dig out from under. 

The return home is different this time around, the wind under his sails all but lifting him into the air. 

A year to the date almost. Another month and time will wrap back around on itself, the seasons changing the same way they have for all thirty-seven years of his life. When fate lets him go this time, Simon heads over to Price’s office before taking off for the week, carving out time for one last drink before he hits the road. Over a whiskey and kretek, he tells Price his plan and only just keeps from rolling his eyes when Price barks a laugh, clapping his hands together.

“Never thought I’d see the day,” he chuckles, shaking his head. 

“Shut up.”

“It’s a big step, Simon. I’m proud of you.”

Simon rolls his eyes, pleased despite himself. “Stuff it, old man.”

And then he’s gone again, following the same winding road back, with one stop along the way this time. He stays overnight at a local inn after signing the paperwork, too exhausted to keep driving. Too much on his mind anyway. 

It means nothing to him that people do this sort of thing all the time. He has survived the locust years of his life and come out the other side. That should be enough to give himself some grace when he tosses and turns all night, back pain flaring up and immobilizing him for an hour. Only when the first rays of dawn pierce through the threadbare curtains does it finally abate, and he heads out after his morning piss, ignoring the cramp in his belly on the drive over.

You greet him at the door when you hear his car pull up, standing under the door frame while he gets out and rounds the car, bare toes curling at the cold air. And any effort to tamp it down now is in vain, his chest filling with something unspeakable and unsaid. 

“Put your shoes on,” Simon instructs, coming over just to pull you in for a kiss before nudging you back into the flat, shutting the door behind him. 

“Why?” you ask, lifting a brow. “Wanna go for coffee or something like that?”

“Something like that. Why aren’t you putting your shoes on?” 

Herded into the truck after getting dressed, you badger him with question after question the whole drive over while Simon keeps his mouth shut, focusing on the road in front of him. It’s not a long drive at least, but your incessant questions make it last an eternity. 

Until he pulls up in front of a house with a short gravel walkway and a garden in desperate need of attention, milkvetch growing near the front step. The outdoor sconces are new though, and though Simon already has a few things in mind to fix up around the house, it’s got good bones. Leagues nicer than the place you just left.

“Are we picking someone up?” you ask when he puts the car in park, confused. You stare at the door as if waiting for it to open. 

Simon doesn’t respond.

You look over at him and he takes one of your hands, holding it palm-side up and covering it with his own ugly mitt. You feel something cold drop from his hand into yours and he curls your fingers into a fist to hold it.

“No.” 

When his hand moves away, you uncurl your fingers to find a key. It means so little and so much all at once. If he could say it with words, it wouldn’t be the same so there’s no point in trying. 

“It’s ours?” you ask.

“Yeah.”

There’s a watery sheen over your eyes when you look up, and your lip wobbles. And in a way different than ever before, his chest grows tight, the ache in his heart a fresh and welcome pain.

[amaryllis-3]

Alpha! Simon and Beta! Johnny who, after searching fruitlessly for years the third member to complete their pack, found the perfect little Omega in a pub after one of their missions.

The problem? The annoying mark sitting on your neck that almost seemed to mock them.

You were already mated. What a way to spoil the party.

The two, fortunately, were certainly not known for being saints. What would have been a small theft when their moral compass was well and truly messed up anyway?

AN: Sneak peek of an idea I was planning to work on in the near future

➮ 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓

[lxvvie]

it's been a while since we talked modern dadfare so I'll just say that Simon's and Missus' girls are an epitome of ''children of love''

because holy, mum and dad were wildin' when they were making them

Simon is an absolute horndog for the missus and he can’t be arsed to do anything about it except show his love nice and proper.

A bloody gorgeous sight if he ever saw one. It’s also why he’s genuinely surprised that he doesn’t have more children considering how much he and the missus are all over each other whenever he’s home.

Or, rather, he’s all over the missus.

And it’s always, “I’m never letting you touch me again, Simon Riley,” when he gets the news.

“You said that last time, sweetheart.”

“I mean it this time.”

“Said that last time, too.”

And Simon has no problem chuckling his ass all the way to the couch that night.

[eaturheartout2021]

Keeping It Under The Table

Summary: During a mission briefing Ghost does something a little out of character but you don’t seem to mind.

Cw: dubcon, public orgasm, unrealistic military scenarios

Pairing: Simon Ghost Riley x female!reader

Word count: 1.2k

The briefing room was in total blackout save for the bright screen at the head of the room showing an intricate map and multiple mug shots. The large rounded table sat a few blacked out silhouettes you failed to make out as you hurried in to find an empty seat.

The soft click of the door shutting behind you made the captain turn his head at the noise clearing his throat. You stilled holding the chair back in your hand.

“So glad ya decided ta join us. You’ve just volunteered ta take all the briefin notes.” He said with his signature smile. You stifled a groan while Soap and Gaz, just ahead of you, let out mimicked snickers.

“Right you lot, Laswell got us some intel about a data file that Makarov has been tryin’ ta get his grubby mits on for months. What’s on that file? That’s what I want ta find out.” His gruff voice rang through the small space clear and sharp, with full attention. Except one.

You glanced up from your haste scribbling to find Ghost leaned back in his chair, not looking at his captain, but at you. The lieutenant who hardly spoke a word to anyone but his team was staring at you. Possibly mentally scolding you for being late to such an important meeting. It made heat rise to your cheeks in embarrassment.

You quickly looked away to try and keep up with the quick pace of information being thrown around. A few hours go by, a plan is set, a team put together consisting of Ghost, Soap, Gaz, and you; an intelligence expert and the know how around computer systems. Any one else could call you a “hacker”. A date and time is placed along with a RV point where Nik will be waiting with an evac.

You’re writing as fast as you possibly can, trying to get as much as the information as possible when a slight nudge hits your boot. At first you think it’s an accident and pay it no mind, but it happens again, this time the other foot stays. You glance up and Ghost is looking at you once again.

You can’t read the emotions in his eyes, the plain black surgical mask covers the bottom half of his face concealing any other giveaways he might be able to make. You slowly raise an eyebrow as if to say:

‘Did you mean to do that?’

He slowly closed his eyes and the corners crinkled up as if he were giving a sly smile under his mask.

‘What if I did?’ He seemed to say.

His foot slowly pushed the two of yours apart, spreading your legs ever so slightly. Your heart was about to fly out of your chest. The lieutenant who never spoke, who was the lone wolf out of the pack, was flirting with you? 

More than flirting. The toe of his boot ran up the side on your spread legs, egging them to open more. All the while, above the table, he sat perfectly still. Arms crossed over his chest, looking absolutely bored. You however were flushed past your shirt collar, breath starting to become labored.

You had to adjust yourself you try and calm your racing heart. This was coming from nowhere. Sure you had always had feelings for the mysterious man sat across from you but you dropped it once he never returned the same thing. Respectfully. That is until now, where his boot was climbing dangerously close to your clothed cunt.

Instinctively, you spread your legs wider to give him better access which made him get a tiny glint in his eye. His boot hovered slightly over your cunt and you looked at him, silently asking what he was doing.

You definitely saw the devilish smirk paint itself across his face when he pressed slowly but firmly into you. You ground your hips softly up to meet him but stopped to not catch attention. Ghost didn’t seem to like that and pressed harder. You bit the inside of your cheek hard enough to draw blood when he start to rock his boot over your clit through your pants.

Briefing notes be damned. Price could write you up and make you clean bathrooms for a month and it would be worth it. You dropped your head into your hand but tried to make it look as natural as possible. Not as if you were riding your superiors boot underneath the table in a room full of your colleagues. Which turned you on more than it should have.

You looked back up at Ghost and his chest was rising and falling quickly. Eyes never leaving you as your hips slowly ground down in tiny circles. He didn’t move his foot but let you set the pace, eyes darting to Price every so often. Always so vigilant.

You tried to keep taking the notes but he turned you into a pile of mess in mere seconds. Brain turned to mush and unable to form a single coherent thought other than Ghost Ghost Ghost.

The unbridled need in your stomach was on fire and you looked at him with eyes that almost brimmed with tears. Pleading with him to help you. He understood immediately.

His foot began rocking in little waves in time with your small circled thrusts and it took a Herculean effort not to cry out. Your legs were shaking, your breath hitching, stomach clinching. His foot pressed into you firmly meeting with your thrusts sending you spiraling over the edge.

You held your breath, eyes rolling into the back of your head, fingers gripping onto your pen with such force it could’ve shattered it. Ghost coaxed you through your high softly and when you opened your eyes, his met yours and the hunger that stared back was overwhelming. He moved his foot away just as Price finished.

“We leave at 0400. Flight deck A. You four solid on what needs to be done?” Price glanced over at you, head still in your hands.

“Solid Cap’m.” Ghost’s heavy timbre rang in your ears.

Price hummed in acceptance and soon dismissed the group not before stopping you from making a speedy and quick exit.

“I want those notes on my desk by this afternoon.” You held the notepad to your chest and smiled softly.

“Yes sir. They’ll be typed up and in your folder no later than 1800 this evening.” He nodded and finally dismissed you.

As you made your way through the hallway to your barrack, a muscular arm caught yours and turned your back and pinned you to the closest wall. Ghost stood towering over you, arms caging you in on both sides. The silent shadow slunk his way to you and you never heard a thing. A small smile found its way to your lips.

“You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to do that to you.” His dark eyes peered down at you with such heated lust you thought you’d burn alive.

“I can’t wait to see how these next few weeks play out then.” You run your hand down the front of his shirt and slowly graze over the buckle of his belt. Ducking under his arm you continued to walk the way you were heading.

Behind you, you could hear a deep groan followed by heavy footsteps trailing after you.

I’m so excited to finally be writing semi-regular again after almost 2 years… oops 😬. My requests are open so if you have any please shoot me an idea and I’ll happily try my best to make it happen!

Ps: I’m genuinely so obsessed with this man that if he broke me in half I’d probably thank him and ask for more… just 😩🤌🏻 military men. That is all.

[simonz-angel]

nasty nasty room!mate simon

nasty crawls up over his neck, dripping from his pores as perspiration builds in a sparkling sheen over his face. its nasty, lewd the way he tangles the soft cotton of your panties between his scarred fingers.

and he’s ashamed, but not enough to keep him from pressing the material to his leaking cock. not enough to keep him from inhaling the faint scent of you off the worn fabric.

he could faintly hear you from the other room, giggling and talking all sweet with your friend over the phone. it fueled him, a burning desperation building a deep, knotting pit in his lower belly.

and so he abided, fisting your panties against his cock and stroking. it was a fast, desperate pace, his cheeks already burning a bright red but the way he felt had him almost imploding in on himself.

his throat shuddered, lungs pulling taut beneath his ribs as he choked on his own gasps. he couldn’t barely breathe, eyes rolling, neck arching back. good god, it almost hurt.

and the faster his wrist flicked, the more he got lost on the thought of your sweet pussy. the what ifs? the now? the later? the way you’d hug up nice n tight around him, the way he’d force you to take every fuckin inch…

his skin crawled burning hot, balls twitching so desperate for attention, so desperate to empty out. and he writhed, bowing into the soft sheets in a feeling that couldn’t be simply granted.

[finemadeline]

Light angst; finishes in fluff

Slight gore and descriptions (things that come with being a combat medic)

Ghost x medic! reader

A person can only take so much. 

So much blood, so much gore, so much sinew. Their pained screams ring in your ears; your hands still feel grimy and sticky even after multiple washes. 

It gets to a point where you never feel clean.

It gets to a point where you never feel sane.

If you listen too closely, you can hear the bullets getting closer. Here the pained screams that come along with bones cracking, and skin shredding, and bodies dropping.

But a medics work is never done. 

Wounded soldiers come in and out of your scrapped up tarp — barely enough to call it a tent, with gore spilling from their stomachs; eyes pleading. Hands clinging to your shoulder, begging for you to save them. Fingers gripping onto the last little momentum of their family; or the last thing they’ll see before they close their eyes permanently.

When your eyes look up to theirs, you can still see the youth in them. Full, chunky cheeks caked with blood and dirt. Voice still high-pitched and cracking. Wide, bright eyes, dulling as time passes, that shouldn’t be here. 

And you do what you can. What you’ve been taught. You sever limbs with little anesthetic, you sow stitches into skin too jagged to hold itself together,  you pull bullets from within ripped up bloodied flesh — all with taut lips and focused eyes.

Eventually, it stops. Momentarily. You return to base where the screams are less pain-filled and more lighthearted.

But the ringing never stops, and the pain doesn’t cease, and the memories never finish replaying.

Eventually, your smile stops reaching your eyes and the little sheen in your eyes dissipates. Something swallows you, and you wonder if you even have the energy to escape. An internal battle that you can never win — not that you’d try. It’s hard not to be lost, it’s hard not to drown.

But a medics work is never done. 

So you continue and put on a brave face. Continue smiling without meaning it, laughing with no real joy behind it. It’s easier this way, you think. To pretend everything’s fine.

But Ghost noticed. 

He always noticed.

You don’t hear him walk in: only noticing his presence when the couch dips and pulls you closer to him, his body taking up more than half of the love seat. When you smile up at him, he doesn’t smile back. Just stares at the window quietly and folds his hands in his lap, while allowing his knee to brush against yours.

Silence fills the room, and you sink back into your thoughts before Ghost breaks it, shifting into your space a bit more.

“You’ve been quiet.”

You pause, looking up at him to find him already looking at you.

“Not much to say.”

“No’ very like you,” he murmurs, eyes flitting to the bags under your eyes.

You huff, bitterness filling your chest as you move to pull at the strands of the couch. 

“You know me?”

“Kno’ enough. Kno’ somethin’s wrong.” 

A beat of silence follows.

Your fingers pull on the strands tighter, the couch cushion straining as you look away.

“…my head hurts.”

Evasion. The best possible thing to do. 

Ghost shifts again, this time moving his head down to catch your eyes. 

“Heads been hurting for a while, yeah?”

You want to argue; tell him that you’re fine, and just needed a little rest  — but you can’t. Instead, your throat closes up and your tongue finds the roof of your mouth, as your eyes begin to sting. 

Ghost seems to always do this. Pull back your layers, and make your walls crack. Make you softer — more vulnerable.

Your lips quivered, your voice cracking as you spoke. 

“Please, I just-“ 

“Don’ have to explain yourself. Jus’ be truthful.”

The first tear falls as you grip the cushion tighter, your hands shaking.

“..Yeah. It has.”

You hate the silence that follows. Hate that he makes you vulnerable, more truthful; makes your heart hurt and your throat burn with bile. You stand, ready to excuse yourself and hole up in your room; let the memories flood you until it drowns you. You deserve it, you think.

But instead, Ghost grips your arm, pulling you closer.

“C’mere,” he grumbles; almost sounding more annoyed than anything. Annoyed that you let this brew in you for so long, let it fill your lungs and suffocate you instead of finding reprieve.

Finding him.

And you don’t find it in yourself to pull away from him when he pulls you into his lap, only tucking yourself into him deeper, and crawling into his lap. Nuzzling into his neck, and wrapping your arms around his neck tighter as your tears begin to dampen his shirt. 

You don’t know why he does it. You don’t know why you sink into him so easily, either. But you don’t complain. You never have.

As he begins to murmur into your neck, cooing into your pulse point, you grip him tighter. The ringing stops and is instead placed with something much more low and gruff — something much more soothing. Your lungs drain and your throat burns a little less.

A small part of you needed this. Needed Ghost to be here. Needed Ghost.

And when you find yourself in Ghost's bed the next few mornings, tucked underneath his arm as his scent floods your nose and breath fills your ears; your eyes gleam a little more and smiling hurts a little less and fills your cheeks — almost reaching your eyes.

No, a medics work is never done. 

But Ghost makes it easier. 

[betweenstorms]

Chapter 4/2 of Skin Of Thunder Petals Bite Back (previous chapter) (next chapter) (masterlist) Simon 'Ghost' Riley x fem!Reader

“Soft things don’t always surrender. They bruise, they bleed, they bear thorns when forced into the hands of those who don’t know how to hold them.”

Grey sky stretched out above Ghost, endless and indifferent, clouds threatening rain but never quite delivering. Biting wind whistled through the motor pool, rattling loose tarps and kicking up the scent of damp concrete and petrol.

The air carried the sharpness of late afternoon.

Ghost barely felt the cold anymore.

It existed on the periphery of his senses, like an afterthought, only to be endured and ignored. He shifted his weight, thick boots scraping against gravel as he watched Soap checking the equipment list of a Husky TSV. Price and Gaz were off to the States, leaving them behind for what should have been an unremarkable few days.

Routine checks, maintenance, training, the kind of monotonous shit that usually allowed Ghost to slip into autopilot and to fill the hours between the weight of responsibility and the unbearable silence that always followed. Endless drills, the steady rhythm of shooting, the harsh repetition of routine, those were the things he understood, the pulse of purpose that kept him grounded—

—but his mind wouldn’t settle.

Not when you were around.

And worse? You were everywhere these days.

It wasn’t a coincidence, not in his mind. You were actively seeking him out, weaving yourself into the patterns of his days with a subtlety that should’ve been harmless, but wasn’t. It began innocently enough. A passing glance here, a brief exchange there. But then came the fleeting moments when he caught you watching him, your eyes darting away the instant his dark gaze met yours. It was quick and hesitant, it spoke of something fragile yet determined. You seemed to hover just close enough for him to notice, as though waiting for the right moment, waiting for him to see you clearly.

Waiting for him to act.

He should have felt something.

Satisfaction, maybe. Triumph, even.

The woman he’d long watched from afar seemed to mirror his desire, drawing his attention with freshly manicured nails, a touch bolder in the way she painted her lips, as if inviting him to notice. And yet, all he felt was annoyance. It was a strange bitterness, as if your awful taste in men was somehow a personal affront. You were young and beautiful, alive in a way he had never been. Full of potential, of dreams yet to be realized, while he was a faceless man made of regrets and scars, half-buried in the meaningless life he had chosen. Even with his rank, with the authority that came with it, his salary would only buy you a life of mediocrity. He was just a middle-aged soldier who had fought for nothing and gained even less.

What could he offer you, truly?

A relationship built on borrowed time and fleeting moments between missions, each second reminding him that he was nothing more than a passing shadow in your world. All he had left was this sick devotion for you, a dingy copy of what real love should be. He wasn’t even sure it was worthy of the name. And you deserved fucking more than that.

More than him.

His thoughts dulled his senses, made him slow, because it wasn’t him who noticed you first. Johnny, ever the perceptive bastard, was the first to clock you as you approached them across the open lot, bundled up in that long olive coat like a cocoon against the biting wind.

The Scot’s grin was immediate, like he’d just stumbled upon something far more entertaining than the endless equipment list in his hands.

“Would you look at that,” Soap drawled, stuffing the tablet under his arm. “What’s this, then? Did you finally break and send her one of those nasty wee letters in the suggestion box?”

Ghost grunted, unimpressed, keeping his gaze fixed on you.

He should’ve looked away. Should’ve gone back to checking the TSV like this was nothing, like you were nothing. However, even now, he felt that familiar pull, the tightness in his ribs, the way his breath came just a little too slow, a little too deep, as if he were trying to drag you into his lungs along with the cold. It was unbearable. Infuriating. You shouldn’t be out here. You shouldn’t be anywhere near him. Moreover, your coat did fuck all to shield you from the cold, and it irritated him—properly irritated him—that you hadn’t worn something warmer. It was November, for Christ’s sake.

Your breath curled in the air, white wisps unraveling into nothing as you neared, your voice as uncertain as your steps against the cracked tarmac.

“Afternoon, Sergeant… Lieutenant.”

The latter said nothing.

Soap, however, was grinning like a right bastard.

“HR takin’ field trips now, aye?”

Ghost exhaled through his nose. His patience was already thinning, stretched tight like a wire, and you were the knife poised to snap it clean in half.

“What d’you want?”

His rough voice came out sharper than he meant, more bark than question, slicing through the air. You blinked, your lips parting in surprise, as if your very soul had momentarily stilled. A fleeting shadow passed over your face, a hesitation so quick it could have been a trick of the light, but Ghost saw it, he felt it even. He saw the subtle drop of your lashes, the shift of your weight, the flush that colored your cheeks as your gaze turned—

—not to him, but to Soap.

“I was actually looking for you, Sergeant.”

That got both men’s attention.

Johnny’s brows shot up, his smirk curling even further as he leaned against the Husky, arms folding over his broad chest. His gaze flicked between you and Ghost, amusement glinting in his bright blue eyes.

“Me?” He pressed a hand to his chest, mockingly affronted. “Christ, lass, you just made my whole bloody week.”

Ghost’s fingers twitched.

The cold bit into his skin, but it was nothing compared to the slow burn beneath his ribs.

You shifted again, the movement small but telling, hands curling into the sleeves of your coat as if seeking refuge. “There’s been an issue, sir,” you started, voice even thinner than usual. “With—uhm, Sergeant Garrick’s deployment files. The system flagged an… inconsistency in the reports, and I, you know, need confirmation before I can finalize them.”

Ghost’s gaze dragged over you slowly, taking in the way your chin lifted just a little too high, as if trying to overcompensate for the uncertainty that bled into your voice.

He had known a lie when he heard one.

Soap, the smug weasel, knew it too.

Johnny let the silence stretch just a second too long, watching you with the sharp amusement of a predator toying with its prey. His grin deepened, teeth flashing like a wolf about to sink them into something soft.

“That so?” He hummed, tapping his fingers against the metal hull of the Husky. “Funny, that. Cause I reckon you could’ve just sent an email to Gaz, yeah?”

“He’s in the States, sir.”

“Still knows how to send an email, doesn’t he?”

You shifted on your feet.

“I thought it best to sort it out in person, given the circumstances.”

The Scot exhaled a short laugh, shaking his head.

“C’mon, Dizzy girl. If you're gonna lie, at least make it interestin’.”

You bit the inside of your cheek, your blush deepening as you stared resolutely at the ground, looking like you wished it would swallow you whole. Ghost knew that feeling. The crushing weight of being seen too clearly. And right now, Soap was seeing through you like a fucking pane of glass. After a seemingly endless moment, you exhaled sharply, hands burying deeper into the pockets of your coat as your shoulders bunched.

“Fine,” you muttered. “I’ll just call Sergeant Garrick, then.”

Johnny barely managed to stifle his laugh, choking on it before hastily clearing his throat in a poor attempt to muffle the sound. Ghost, however, didn’t bother hiding his exhale, the weight of the moment making him feel older somehow, like a decade had been carved into him with every excruciating second. With a grunt, he turned his focus back to the half-checked vehicle, trying to shake off the absurdity of the exchange. Yet, just before you could retreat entirely, as the blush creeped past your collar and up the slope of your jaw, Soap shot out one last parting jab because of course he did.

“Or,” he drawled, deliberately dragging it out for his own entertainment, “you could just ask Lt., y’know. Like you meant to—” He let the words hang in the air as he watched you stiffen. “Before you chickened out.”

Your breath hitched audibly, and Ghost felt it more than he heard it—that sharp inhale, heavy with the sting of embarrassment, and it twisted something deep within him. He hated how it made his chest tighten, hated the way his mind latched onto the tiny details, how the wind blew your hair across your face, how your nose scrunched ever so slightly, how you narrowed your eyes against the harsh air.

You were always too close. Even when you weren’t touching him, weren’t looking at him, you were too close.

Inside his goddamn head.

And despite everything, despite his own resolve, despite the way he had spent weeks, months trying to bury whatever this was—

He fucking thrived in it.

You swallowed. “I didn’t—” You hesitated, glancing toward Ghost, and he could already see the panic pooling in your eyes. “It’s not—” You grunted, turning sharply on your heel. “You know what? Never mind. I’ll handle it myself.”

Ghost watched you pivot sharply, the wind catching the ends of your coat as you turned away. He should’ve let you go. Because that was the right thing to do. Because if he had any ounce of sense left, he wouldn’t follow you. He should let you walk off with your pride barely intact, let you slip away from his sight and leave whatever the hell this was to settle back into the murky waters of things better left unsaid.

But Johnny had already fucked that up.

And now? Now the damage was done.

Ghost sighed through his nose, slow and measured, before he muttered, low and gravelly—

“Hold up.”

You froze.

Your shoulders tensed, your back stiff, as if you were contemplating whether to shamefully pretend you hadn’t heard him, whether you could just keep walking and ignore the command of your superior entirely. Ghost almost wished you would. It would’ve made this easier.

But you turned.

Slowly, hesitantly, like you were afraid of what would happen if you faced him now.

“Meet me in my office in an hour.”

Soap let out a low whistle, rocking back on his heels.

Ghost ignored him.

“An hour,” he repeated, firmer this time.

No room for argument.

You hesitated, chewing on your bottom lip like you were waging a silent war within yourself. He could see it, the way your neatly manicured fingers clenched tighter into the fabric of your coat, like you were anchoring yourself. The way your brows knit together, the smallest crease forming between them as you considered whatever was twisting around in that pretty little head of yours.

But in the end, you nodded.

A small, stiff movement—uncertain, but accepting.

Ghost only gave a curt nod in return, dismissing you without another word. He turned away, as if the conversation had already been buried, done and dusted, filed away in some locked compartment in his mind where things went to fester in silence.

He refused to watch you leave.

But he couldn’t resist.

The wind teased at your hair as you hurried back inside, and in that fleeting moment, he knew that he had made a huge mistake. His gaze fixed on you, laced with a quiet annoyance that ran deeper than words, a storm of frustration rooted in something far more ancient. It was the anger of every man who had tasted love but could never grasp it. The fury of a thousand souls who had stood where he stood, yearning for a woman’s love, all the while feeling the hollow ache of being a stranger to his own heart, incapable of offering anything gentle, anything soft. 

No fate so cruel would ignite a desire so fierce within him without concealing some terrible price in the shadows of its gift. No, it could never have meant for him to possess you—never intended for him to hold something so pure, so untouched by the scars he carried. Perhaps it had allowed him to crave you, not as a blessing, but as a punishment, a reminder of all that he lacked, of all he was unworthy to claim. His devotion, in its aching intensity, was a curse—a wound he could not stop himself from inflicting upon you.

As the painful realization settled within him, he could almost feel the familiar stir of Soap about to open his bloody mouth, ready to speak something daft once more.

Ghost snapped. “Not a fuckin’ word.”

“Didn’t say anythin’.”

“Didn’t need to.”

An hour passed like molasses dripping from a spoon, slow and thick, pooling into the empty space of his mind, stretching too long for comfort. The single overhead light in his office hummed faintly, casting sharp shadows across the desk where Ghost sat, forearms braced against the surface.

You were late.

Only by a few minutes, but still.

Not that he was counting, no. He wasn’t sure why that irritated him. Maybe because it meant you had thought about ignoring him. Maybe because the idea of you deciding not to show up made something cold settle in his gut. He shouldn’t have expected you to be on time. Hell, he shouldn’t have expected you to come at all. Part of him had even dared to hope you wouldn’t, that you’d take the out he’d given you and leave this whole damn thing alone. But he knew better than to expect the easy way out of anything.

Then came the knock.

Soft and hesitant.

Ghost inhaled through his nose, rolling his shoulders before responding.

“Come in.”

The door cracked open, and there you were, framed by the dim corridor light. You didn't meet his eyes straight away, instead looking around the office as if seeing it for the first time, gaze flickering over the spartan desk, the shelves lined with monochrome folders, the neat, clinical order of it all. Ghost stayed silent, watching you. You made him so fucking restless, like he had an itch buried beneath his skin that he couldn’t scratch.

That already pissed him off more than it should.

Then, clearing your throat, you spoke.

“Apologies for the delay, Lieutenant.”

Lieutenant.

Always so fucking formal. Like you were trying to keep this professional. Like you weren’t the same person who had fidgeted under his gaze just an hour ago, who had all but chickened out before Soap had forced your hand. Like you were trying to level the playing field, keep things contained. Ghost let the silence stretch, let it settle thick between you before he finally leaned forward, dark eyes locking onto yours.

“You wanted somethin’,” he said, voice even, controlled. “You’ve got my attention.”

A pause.

He nodded toward the chair opposite his desk. “Sit.”

You did as told, perching on the edge of the seat like you weren’t sure if you were welcome, baby blue nails lacing together in your lap. You seemed unsure whether to clench them into fists or hide them away. Ghost let the silence stretch, let you sit in it, watch it settle into the space between you. You swallowed, shoulders straightening ever so slightly, though he could see the tension coiling in your muscles.

“Yes,” you murmured, lifting your chin a fraction. “Sergeant Garrick’s files. I told you there was a flagged inconsistency, and I—”

He tilted his head slightly.

“—I wanted you to see it, sir.”

Ghost felt the anger stir within him, a tightening in his chest as his gaze fell to the folder you had tucked behind your back. If it was truly that important, why had you lied, claiming you wanted a sergeant to see it rather than a lieutenant?

Something in him hardened at the thought. It was unprofessional, so fucking unprofessional, and you seemed to know it too, for the flush that crept across your cheeks was impossible to hide beneath the harsh glow of the fluorescent light.

But he didn’t press you on it, not yet.

Instead, he leaned back, arms folding across his chest. “Go on, then.”

You paused for a heartbeat before placing the clipped file on his desk, the edges of the manila folder worn and creased, filled with hastily scribbled notes and redacted lines. It was clear you had tried to untangle the inconsistency yourself. He reached for it with a steady hand, flipping it open, his dark eyes tracing each detail with the same cold, methodical precision he applied to everything else.

Deployment logs. Operation dates. Standard signatures.

And there it was—buried between the neatly typed lines.

An approval code that didn’t match.

Ghost dragged his thumb across the inked page, the edge of his touch grazing the error. It wasn’t a glaring mistake, nothing that would set off alarms, but it was sloppy. Too sloppy. He was certain Gaz wouldn’t have made such an oversight. No, everyone in the task force was meticulous of their reports, especially given the heightened scrutiny since General Shepherd’s disappearance, since the betrayal of Las Almas. A discrepancy like this could only mean one thing—either someone had grown careless, or someone had intentionally altered the facts.

Neither option sat well with him.

He glanced up at you. “Where’d you pull this from?”

“Central records,” you answered promptly, straightening under the weight of his gaze. “It was flagged automatically when I cross-checked the report against previous submissions.”

Ghost grunted. “You tell anyone else?”

You hesitated just slightly before shaking your head. “No.”

His gloved fingers drummed lightly against the edge of the desk, weighing that. If you’d gone to anyone else it would’ve kicked off an internal review, maybe even an inquiry. But you hadn’t. You’d brought it here, to him. Suspicion lingered in him like a shadow, ingrained in his very nature, and so he had no choice but to test one of his theories in action—to see if he could trust you with something like this.

Ghost flicked the folder shut before pinning you with a sharp look.

“What d’you want me to do about it?”

You blinked, thrown for a second.

“I—I thought you’d want to handle it, sir.”

“Didn’t ask what you thought, sweetheart,” he replied evenly, tone edged with something forceful. “Asked what you wanted.”

Your jaw tightened, a flash of tension running through you.

Was he too blunt? It was a challenge, and you were intelligent enough to recognize it for what it was. He could see the subtle shift in you, the way you bristled at his words, the sharp inhale as if you were gathering yourself before responding.

“I want to know if it’s something I should be worried about,” you admitted, voice quieter this time. “I don’t deal with classified ops, but I know enough to tell when something isn’t right, okay? If this is nothing, just… tell me, and I’ll clear the flag in the system.” You hesitated, fingers curling against the fabric of your trousers. “But if it is something… I need to know.”

You weren’t like him.

Not in the least.

The flush on your cheeks and the soft tremor in your voice spoke of a truthfulness so pure, you couldn’t weave a lie if your life depended on it. You weren’t made for deception, for the tangled web of half-truths and the murky grey that lay between duty and betrayal. You were born for a world of order and safety, where every rule and every order had its place, where paperwork and policy kept everything neat and contained. No, you weren’t meant to wade through this mess, his mess. You weren’t meant to know about the blood that stained his past or the violence that carved its mark on his pathetic soul. 

That world wasn’t yours, and it never would be.

He wouldn’t drag you beneath the surface, wouldn’t drown you in the black water that held Las Almas, Shepherd, his father, his family, his past—everything—captive in its suffocating depths. No, he wouldn’t let it poison your breath, wouldn’t let it stain your lungs, even if it meant wounding you to keep you safe from this darkness.

From this fucking filth.

He would protect you from it, no matter the cost.

Ghost exhaled sharply, pushing the folder back across the desk toward you. “Clear the flag.”

Your eyes widened slightly. “But—”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to.” His voice was quieter now, but no less firm. “It’s above your pay grade, love.”

You stared at him, your mouth pressing into a tight line.

This was the longest you had held his gaze, however, not out of warmth, but out of defiance. He could see the thoughts churning behind your eyes, the quiet stubbornness taking root, the way your nails dug into your palms as though you longed to push back—but you didn’t.

Slowly, you reached forward, taking the file back.

Ghost let his gaze flicker over you once more, then leaned forward, lowering his voice just slightly to match yours. “This never happened. Understood?”

Something unreadable crossed your face—frustration, maybe.

Then, finally, you nodded.

“…Understood. Sir.”

Ghost hummed, watching you stand.

There was no mistaking it now—your temper, usually something delicate and restrained, had sharpened into something heavier, something closer to disappointment. However, you weren’t built for spite or cruelty. No, he’d seen you flustered before, had seen you uncertain, nervous even, but never this. And yet, even now, your anger was soft. No biting words, no disrespect, no accusations. Just quiet, simmering restraint, held back like water against a dam.

You really weren’t like him.

You were on the verge of saying something—something you probably shouldn’t. Ghost could see it in the way your lips parted slightly, how your breath hitched just before you swallowed it down. So before you could find the words, before you could dig yourself even deeper into something neither of you could afford, he spoke.

“You ever lie to me again—” his voice was low, a rough warning, “—it’ll be the last time.”

“I didn’t—”

Ghost’s chair scraped against the floor as he stood, the slow, deliberate motion filling the tense quiet.

“Go. Don’t waste my fuckin’ time.”

“But Simon—”

The name hit him like a live round.

Simon.

It rolled off your tongue like a plea, raw and unguarded, slicing through the air between you. The way you said it stoked something deep and ugly inside him. He had turned his back to it, to the boy who once answered to it. Yet, there it was, dragged out of the grave and onto your lips like it had any right to still exist.

Before he could think, he moved.

Ghost rounded the desk in two strides, closing the distance between you. He didn’t touch you, oh he didn’t need to. His presence alone was enough, the sheer force of him, the weight of his massive frame towering over you, swallowing you whole. You shrank back instinctively, your breath stuttering, eyes flashing with something between fear and defiance.

He hated it.

Hated the way you looked at him.

Like his mother had looked at his father.

He could still see it—his mum, trapped in the corner, trembling, while that pathetic excuse of a husband, of a father, of a man, loomed over her, rage spilling from him like the sour stench of beer. The sting of a slap. The pain in her eyes. The desperate tears of fear. The shouting.  And the gut-wrenching cries that shattered everything inside him.

Ghost felt sick.

His stomach twisted, bile rising, his pulse hammering like the pounding of boots in an empty street. He wasn’t his father. He wasn’t. But the way you looked at him right now, like he was someone who could hurt you, made him feel like he was.

He took a step back.

A breath.

He dragged a hand over his face, the fabric of the balaclava scratching his skin, pushing away the suffocating heat curling in his chest. “Get the fuck out.”

For a second, you paused, caught in the weight of something in his eyes, something unspoken that held you for just an instant. But whatever it was, it passed, and you turned away. Your lips pressed into a thin, unforgiving line, and without another word, you reached for the door. Your movements were stiff, deliberate, like you were holding yourself together by sheer force of will. As if, in front of him, you couldn’t afford to let yourself break.

The door creaked open.

You were a breath away from leaving.

And this time, Ghost didn’t stop you.

“You looked at him like a bloom trembling in the wind, and he was the storm that crushed beauty beneath its weight. Petals bite back, he thought, but they never survive the winter.” Skin of Thunder Chapters

[ltash]

CONSUMED

Your undercover mission with Ghost to catch Makarov went South.

SimonGhostRileyxFemaleReader

There's not exactly a whole lot of time for formalities when you're chasing a known terrorist across an entire city. All the time is taken up with shouting orders over the radio and checking your six as you make your way to the next location.

But the sight of you, something different than what he's used to in this line of work, not to mention how you're certainly a sight for sore eyes, certainly makes him pause for just a little bit; staring across at your distant, brisk form as you pass him by, briskly striding with purpose.

And when you stepped into the grand ballroom, the world seemed to slow. The red silk slip dress clung to your form like a second skin, every movement fluid and deliberate. Diamond earrings shimmered under the golden chandelier light, catching the eyes of more than a few admirers. The unmistakable click of your Louboutins against the marble floor was drowned out by the soft hum of conversation and distant orchestral music.

At the bar, you took your seat with effortless grace, the picture of a Russian elite with secrets worth trading. You could feel Soap's watchful gaze through his scope, ever steady, ever ready.

To anyone else, you were just an elite; a well-to-do woman who certainly didn't mind showing off her status. To the taskforces' eyes, you're a goddamn fox; a veritable vixen, and that dress does nothing to quell the fact.

Soap, in particular, is more than grateful; taking every opportunity to gaze at you through the scope of his sniper. He's not the only one, either, who's paying extra special attention.

In the sea of elites draped in luxury, Ghost stood out, not for his wealth, but for the sheer force of his presence. He wasn't just your bodyguard; he was a guard dog, a predator among prey.

Across the room, your gaze found him. Thick thighs, solid like tree trunks, clad in dark grey cargos that did nothing to hide his powerful build. His black t-shirt stretched over a lean, muscular torso, every ridge of strength evident beneath the fabric. His left arm bore a sleeve of intricate tattoos, inked stories of war and survival, stark against his pale skin.

Skeleton-printed gloves encased his large hands, hands capable of both destruction and protection. And then, there was the mask. The balaclava, crowned with a white skull, rendering his expression unreadable. But his eyes, those sharp, watchful eyes, never left you.

He stood tall at 6'4", a tower of shadow and steel. Unshakable. Dangerous. A force meant to break men apart with his bare hands. And tonight, he was yours.

Soap is a good little spy.

He's good enough to see the attention you're drawing from every other elite in the room; all of them hungry, salivating to have a taste of you in any way, shape, or form. But he's also good enough to see the way Ghost looks at you; not with that same hungry, desperate gaze that the others do, but instead, something much more darker and cold.

Soap isn't exactly worried about you, per se, but he is a little bit concerned.

The haunting melody of Renegade drifted through the ballroom, slowed and reverberating through the air like a ghost of a song.

"Keep your eyes on mine...

And if you want, I'll tell you lies..."

Your gaze lifted, drawn by something unseen, and met his across the room. The world around you faded, the hum of conversation dulling under the weight of his stare.

Ghost didn't move. Didn't waver. His dark eyes, shadowed beneath the white skull of his mask, locked onto yours and held, unrelenting, unwavering.

It was a silent command. A challenge. A promise.

And you weren't looking away.

Every pair of eyes was on you, on your tight, hourglass figure and your sensual, sultry gaze behind those dark lashes. But those were cheap thrills; nothing compared to the way Ghost's gaze glued onto your form; intense, unflickering and downright predatory as it locked onto your gaze. And when it did, there was no breaking it. He was like a predator that managed to catch its prey with only its gaze.

"Tell you I'm yours for life..."

Ghost moved, slow and deliberate, his strides purposeful as he paced across the room, never once breaking eye contact.

"Oh, should've listened to them, don't you know what I am..."

The words seeped into the air, weaving into the tension that crackled between you. And in that moment, it felt as if he was speaking to you, not with words, but through the unyielding weight of his stare.

His eyes, dark, intense, held a question, a warning, an unspoken truth.

He wasn't just your protector. He wasn't just a man standing in the shadows for you. He was something far more dangerous, something you should have been wary of.

But you weren't afraid.

And neither was he.

You swallowed hard, your throat suddenly dry, and tore your gaze away, unable to hold it any longer.

Even though he was your teammate, even though this was just another mission and he was merely posing as your bodyguard, you couldn't ignore the pull, the undeniable, magnetic force that seemed to tether you to him.

It was reckless. Dangerous. A distraction you couldn't afford.

And yet, with every passing second, every lingering glance, it became harder to fight.

Soap was still watching you through the scope. He wasn't exactly worried about you, not entirely, anyway. But he had his concerns. Namely: that every damn elite in this place appeared to be eyeing you like a goddamn meat market, sizing up each and every curve of your body and salivating to have a taste of it. Soap's finger itched on the trigger of his gun; wanting to pick some of them off for their damn audacity.

Ghost's job was to cover you, to be your shield in case things went south with Makarov. Even though you could hold your own, you weren't just some undercover agent, you were Spetsnaz, trained to survive in the deadliest situations, the weight of what you were about to do still pressed down on you.

You were about to lie to him.

Makarov. The man whose very name sent a ripple of fear through even the most hardened killers. A man who thrived on chaos, who could read deceit like it was second nature.

It was overwhelming, to say the least.

You exhaled slowly, steadying yourself. The mission had to come first. No fear. No hesitation. And yet, as your eyes flickered back to Ghost, standing tall and immovable in the crowd, a silent guardian in the dark, somehow, that pull toward him only grew stronger.

It was part of the reason why they'd paired you with Ghost. Not because they thought you were incapable, but mainly because they knew that Ghost had an unnerving presence to him; one that would put the other elites on edge and keep the attention off. Though, from the way Soap was watching, from the way his focus kept shifting to the men that kept leering in your general direction, you were certainly getting more attention than they had originally expected.

Minutes ticked by, each one stretching longer than the last. The weight of anticipation settled deep in your chest, tightening with every passing second.

The wait for Makarov was suffocating enough, but it was Ghost's gaze that truly unraveled you.

You could feel it, steady and unyielding, burning through the crowded ballroom like a silent tether pulling you in. He hadn't moved, hadn't spoken, but the intensity in his stare was enough to make your pulse quicken.

The mission demanded your focus, yet all you could think about was him.

Soap had his scope trained directly on you, taking every opportunity he could to admire your figure in that damn dress. He wasn't entirely bothered by how other elites kept staring at you; knowing that Ghost was with you, keeping everything under control. Though, he did wonder what it was that Ghost was up to; seeing how the balaclava-clad man was staring, unblinking, at you.

The low growl of engines filled the night as a fleet of sleek black Range Rovers rolled up to the grand entrance, their tinted windows gleaming under the golden lights. A hush fell over the crowd, the unspoken weight of power and danger settling in the air.

Then, the doors opened.

Vladimir Makarov stepped out first, his presence commanding, calculated. Dressed in a perfectly tailored black suit, he exuded the kind of quiet menace that needed no theatrics. His sharp eyes swept the room, assessing, calculating. Behind him, a small entourage of armed men followed, their movements crisp, their expressions unreadable.

The air thickened with tension.

You inhaled slowly, steadying yourself. This was it.

From across the room, Ghost didn't move, but you knew his hand was already hovering near his weapon, ready.

Soap tensed up the moment that Makarov exited his car; attention immediately shifting and watching him intently as he made his way inside the gala. But it wasn't just him; it was almost like the entire crowd seemed to simultaneously tense up the moment he entered; watching him with an almost bated breath that could've made the gala completely silent, if not for the quiet whisper of the crowd.

"Eyes on the target, Ghost." You whispered into your radio, keeping your tone smooth, composed.

"Gotcha," Ghost's voice crackled back, low and steady. No hesitation. Always watching.

Before you could dwell on it, a presence loomed closer.

"Privet!" Makarov greeted, his voice thick with false warmth. The moment his lips brushed your cheek in a mock display of civility, a chill ran down your spine.

You forced a small smile, playing the part, even as your instincts screamed at you to pull away.

Makarov straightened, unbuttoning his coat before sinking onto the plush leather couch in front of you. His sharp eyes studied you, piercing and calculating, like a predator sizing up its prey.

You crossed your legs elegantly, masking the tension in your muscles, keeping your expression unreadable.

The game had begun.

Makarov smirked as he leaned back, his coat slipping from his shoulders.

"Ты выглядишь напряжённой, моя дорогая." (You look tense, my dear.)

You forced a small smile, keeping your posture relaxed. "It's been a long day, Vladimir."

"Ах, но сегодня только начинается." (Ah, but today is just beginning.) He reached for the glass of vodka on the table, taking a slow sip before setting it down. "I assume you already know why we're here, да?"

"I have an idea," you replied, tilting your head. "But I want to hear it from you."

Makarov chuckled. "Always so cautious. That's why I like you." He leaned forward, his eyes gleaming with cold amusement. "The Gora Dam... The airport... These are merely the beginning. I want to send a message-a reminder to the world that no one is untouchable."

"Ты хочешь вызвать хаос." (You want to cause chaos.)

His lips curled into a wicked grin. "Chaos is necessary. Without it, people grow complacent. Weak. They need fear to remind them of their place." He tapped his temple. "It is a lesson history has taught us time and time again."

In your ear, Soap's voice crackled softly.

"Bloody hell, lass. He's really goin' off, ain't he?"

You ignored Soap and kept your gaze locked on Makarov. "And how does drowning thousands in a flood prove your point?"

"Because it will not just be a flood," he said smoothly. "It will be a cleansing. The dam collapses, the waters consume everything. And in the chaos, we strike the airport. Mass panic, mass casualties. The world will watch in horror as their leaders do nothing." He tilted his head. "And then they will see who truly holds the power."

Ghost's voice came through the radio, low and tense.

"We've heard enough. Keep him talking just a little longer."

You took a slow breath. "And what happens after? You expect people to follow you after this massacre?"

Makarov laughed softly. "People always follow the strongest, моя дорогая (my dear). When they see their governments crumble, they will turn to the ones who showed them the truth."

You glanced at his coat, spotting the pistol tucked inside. Your fingers twitched, but you kept still.

"We've got everything," Soap muttered. "On your mark, Ghost."

Makarov leaned closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Скажи мне, ты со мной?" (Tell me, are you with me?)

You smiled, shifting slightly in your seat. "Of course, Vladimir."

And then you heard Ghost's quiet command.

"Now."

Soap's finger was on the trigger; ready to take his shot. He had a clear-cut view of Makarov, sitting there smug as if he'd already won. But Soap waited, taking steady breaths and watching intently as you continued to speak with him. The only problem with the fact was how closely Makarov was leaning towards you; making a clean shot more difficult, especially with you so goddamn close. Ghost's breath was just as steady as Soap's, gaze unblinking as he kept his watch.

Makarov's sharp gaze flickered downward, and in that split second, you knew.

His smirk faltered. His eyes locked onto the tiny mic clipped discreetly to your collar, barely visible against the dark fabric. The amusement in his expression drained, replaced by something far colder.

"Ты думаешь, я идиот?" (You think I'm an idiot?) His voice was quiet, dangerous.

You barely had time to react before his hand shot out, fingers closing around your throat in a crushing grip. Your breath hitched as he yanked you toward him, his other hand reaching into his coat? pulling out his pistol in one swift motion.

"Ghost!" Your voice choked off as the muzzle pressed against your temple.

Ghost was already moving. His gun was raised, aimed dead at Makarov's head.

"Let her go," he ordered, voice like steel.

Makarov only laughed, tightening his grip on your neck. "Ты подвела меня, моя дорогая." (You betrayed me, my dear.) His finger hovered over the trigger. "Жаль." (A shame.)

You didn't hesitate. You struck, hard. A sharp jab to his wrist, forcing the gun upward just as it fired. The shot went wide, shattering a chandelier above you. You twisted against his grip, ignoring the burning in your throat.

Ghost's gun roared, but Makarov was already moving, ducking behind cover as his men stormed the room.

And then the gunfire truly began.

Chaos erupted as the first gunshot rang out, followed by dozens more that filled the air. The calm and quiet gala turned into a bloodbath in an instant; blood and broken glass flying through the air, people screaming and shouting in panic. Soap's eyes widened as they watched the scene unfold, seeing Makarov's men pull out their guns and begin to return fire.

"Bloody hell..." Soap cursed under his breath, taking cover behind a nearby pillar. "Lass is in trouble."

Makarov's grip was like a vice, his fingers digging into your throat as he snarled in Russian, "Ты предательница!" (You're a traitor!) His gun pressed against your temple, the cold metal burning against your skin.

Ghost was already moving, his pistol drawn in a heartbeat. "Drop it, Makarov." His voice was low, deadly.

But Makarov only smirked, his eyes gleaming with something close to amusement. He knew exactly what he was doing.

You didn't hesitate. Your training kicked in-one sharp twist of your body, a well-placed strike to his wrist. The gun wavered. You elbowed him hard in the ribs, making him grunt. That was all you needed.

You dropped low just as Ghost fired. The bullet whizzed past you, grazing Makarov's coat. His men reacted instantly, opening fire. Bullets tore through the room, shattering glass and splintering wood.

Soap cursed in your ear. "Fuck! No shot!"

Before you could even register the movement, Ghost was on you, his arm wrapping around your waist. It wasn't just a grab-it was precise, calculated. He pulled you into him, twisting you both in a fluid motion that felt almost like a dance. Bullets zipped past, some so close you could feel the heat of them. His body shielded yours completely as he fired back, sharp, controlled bursts.

Makarov didn't stay to fight. "Идём!" (Let's go!) he barked, already moving. His men covered him as he slipped out, vanishing like a ghost into the chaos.

Ghost's grip on you was ironclad as he pulled you into cover behind an overturned couch. "You good?"

You nodded, your breath ragged. "Yeah."

Soap's voice came through, frustrated. "Bastard slipped away again. Bloody hell."

The gunfire faded into the background, drowned out by the pounding of your own heartbeat.

Ghost was above you, his body shielding yours, his arms braced on either side of your head. His weight wasn't crushing, just enough to keep you anchored, protected. Your hands were still on his back, clutching the fabric of his gear like a lifeline.

You could feel his breath, hot, uneven, against your forehead. Your own chest rose and fell in sync with his, both of you reeling from the chaos.

Slowly, you peeled yourself away from the safe haven of his chest, your fingers still gripping his vest as you looked up.

His eyes found yours.

Dark, intense, searching. He wasn't just checking if you were hurt, he was making sure you were here, with him.

You swallowed hard, your breath still ragged. "Ghost-"

"You're okay," he murmured, voice low and rough. It was more of a reassurance to himself than to you.

Your throat burned from Makarov's grip, your body ached from the impact of hitting the ground, but none of that mattered. Not right now.

Right now, it was just you and him.

You nodded slightly, still caught in his gaze. "Yeah. Thanks to you."

His jaw tightened. "He got too close."

Your fingers curled against his vest, a silent acknowledgment of just how close it had been.

Soap's voice crackled through the radio, breaking the tense silence. "Ghost, sitrep."

Ghost's gaze lingered on me for a moment longer before he responded. "Status green. Target escaped."

There was a beat of silence on the other end before Soap spoke again, voice gruffer than usual. "You both okay?"

Ghost's eyes flickered back to me, a quick once-over, assessing the bruises that were likely already beginning to form on my neck. "We're fine," he replied, his gaze not wavering from mine.

The mission had been a disaster. Makarov had slipped through your fingers once again, and the weight of it pressed down on everyone. After the chaos, Laswell arranged for you all to lay low in Berlin, a quiet, upscale hotel tucked away from prying eyes.

The halls were dimly lit, the soft hum of the city outside barely seeping through the thick windows. The Task Force had taken up an entire floor, each of you assigned a room for the night. It was meant to be a moment of respite, a chance to regroup before the next move. But none of you were at ease.

You had showered, hoping the scalding water would wash away the tension clinging to your skin. It didn't. Wrapped in a towel, you stepped out onto the plush carpet, glancing toward the window. The Berlin skyline stretched before you, distant lights flickering against the darkened sky. Somewhere out there, Makarov was still moving, still planning his next step.

You pulled on a loose shirt and a pair of shorts, running a hand through your damp hair. Sleep felt impossible. Your mind kept replaying everything-how close you had been, the weight of Makarov's hand around your throat, the frustration in Ghost's voice.

And Ghost-

He had been quiet after the mission, more so than usual. His presence had been impossible to ignore, though. Even in the debriefing, his gaze had lingered, watching you with something unreadable beneath that mask.

You sighed, sinking onto the edge of the bed. Maybe you were imagining things. Maybe it was just the adrenaline, the way near-death experiences blurred the lines between everything.

Then came the knock at the door.

Soft but firm.

You turned toward it, pulse skipping. For a moment, you hesitated. No one on the team would come unless it was important.

You exhaled slowly, crossing the room. Your fingers curled around the handle, and you pulled the door open.

Ghost stood there, his presence filling the doorway. He hadn't changed out of his gear, his balaclava still in place, but he had ditched the heavy tactical vest. He looked, less like a soldier, more like a man standing on the edge of something.

His eyes flickered over you, taking in your casual attire, the damp strands of hair curling at your shoulders. Something dark passed through his gaze.

You swallowed. "Couldn't sleep?"

He didn't answer. Instead, he stepped forward, forcing you to move back as he shut the door behind him.

And then, in a voice lower than usual, he said, "I wasn't here to talk."

"He got away because of you," he finally said, his tone sharper now.

You stiffened. "Excuse me?"

Ghost exhaled harshly, stepping back just enough to pace. "We had him, and then you hesitated. If you'd kept him talking a second longer, we could've ended this."

Anger flared inside you. "I was buying us time.."

"You let him see your damn mic!" His voice was low, dangerous, but controlled. "That mistake cost us."

His words hung in the air like a suffocating shroud. They stung, but he was right. I had made a mistake-a small one, perhaps, but in this world, mistakes got you killed. I felt a pang of guilt, of shame, but I refused to let it show.

"And what about you?" I shot back, my own temper flaring. "You could've taken the shot instead of standing there like a statue."

Ghost froze, his shoulders tensing. His gaze flicked back to me, the intensity in his eyes flaring.

"That shot wasn't clear," he gritted out. "Too many people around."

I rolled my eyes, crossing my arms. "Since when are you afraid of collateral damage?"

His jaw clenched, tension rolling off him in waves. He was fighting something, control, emotion... I couldn't tell.

"This isn't about that," he growled. "If I'd taken that shot, and people got hurt, "

"People were already getting hurt," I snapped. "We had our chance and you just stood there."

He moved suddenly, closing the distance between us in two strides. His hand shot out, fist pounding against the desk beside my hip. I felt the impact, the wood trembling beneath his touch.

His face was close now, his breath hot against my cheek. "You don't understand how it works," he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

"You don't understand what it takes, the risks it takes, to bring down a man like Makarov."

The sound that left your lips was a mixture of a gasp and a wheeze, an audible pulse of raw sensuality.

Ghost's gaze hardened, his breathing deepening as he pushed you back against the desk, crowding into your space. He was suddenly everywhere, the heat of his body, the smell of him, the sound of his voice as it dropped an octave lower.

His hand found the edge of your shirt, his thumb tracing a line along the bare skin of your hip. It was a possessive, intimate gesture, his touch sparking a low burn in your belly.

The sound that left your lips was a breathless whisper, a shuddering plea.

"Ghost..." The name trembled on your tongue.

His hand slid beneath your shirt, palm pressing flat against your stomach. His touch was rough, calloused, yet it sent a shiver through you, igniting every nerve under your skin.

"Don't you get it?" he murmured, voice thick with suppressed emotion. "You don't know this world. You don't know the risks. You don't-"

His words faltered as his fingers traced higher, brushing the edge of your bra. His eyes darkened, his touch turning possessive.

Your back arched instinctively, body melting beneath his hands like putty. Any protest died on your lips the moment he leaned in, his body pressing against yours. Logic blurred, lost to the heat coursing through you. His touch was both demanding and reverent, his hand trailing up your torso, thumb skimming the underside of your breast.

"This isn't..." you tried, already breathless.

He didn't let you finish. "Shut up."

His lips found your neck, teeth grazing, biting down just enough to make you gasp. His hand cupped your breast, firm, claiming.

"I should be angry with you," he muttered against your skin. "Shouldn't touch you. Shouldn't want this."

Thoughts scattered, incoherent beneath his touch. Every inch of you burned for him, hypersensitive to the way his hard body pressed against yours. The room was silent except for your ragged breaths, the rustle of fabric.

Then, he pulled back just enough to meet your gaze, his fingers tilting your chin up.

Your hands found his jaw as you leaned in, lips barely a breath away. "I need you. I want you. I don't know why, don't know how, but I've never desired anyone like this, never wanted anyone the way I want you, Simon," you whispered.

His eyes burned with something deep, unrelenting. The silence that followed was thick, charged.

And then he moved, swift, decisive.

His hands gripped your hips, lifting you onto the desk. Your legs parted, framing him as he stepped closer. His head dipped, lips tracing a path down your neck, your collarbone, moving lower, relentless in his intent.

You surrendered to him. Let him worship you.

Clothes fell away, discarded like an afterthought. He left you bare in his arms, the need between you both desperate, consuming.

His touch was a storm, demanding, possessive. Every movement left you breathless, aching for more. He stripped you down, exposed you, left you vulnerable in a way you'd never been before. And you didn't care. You wanted this. You wanted him.

His hands were everywhere, exploring, claiming. Rough, yet careful, like he was holding something precious. Each touch, each caress, seared into your skin, branding you his.

The night stretched on, filled with whispered promises, mingled breaths, shared heat. The need to have each other was insatiable, undeniable. He became you, and you became him. You became one.

And you were lost, so lost in him, in the way he consumed you. The only name left on your lips was his.

Simon.

You fell into the abyss of ecstasy, shattered beneath his touch. But he caught you, every time. He gathered the broken pieces of you, putting them back together.

And in the end, you weren't just his. He was yours, too.

[eddieswritinghell]

I just found your blog and im already OBSESSED 😍

Would I be able to request Ghost with a prek/kindergarten teacher? Maybe helping her make decorations for the classroom or building cubby’s for the classroom?

Thank you!

Sorry for the delayed response. Got caught up in uni work, but I hope you like it!

"Why is everything so tiny?" Simon nudged a rather small chair away from an equally as small circular table.

Because they're tiny. I am a kindergarten teacher after all. Everything is small because it promotes a better learning environment for the children. They're small, so having things in their size lets them experience things in the way an adult would." You bump the chair back into place with your knee and move to set the box down on one of the tables with a heavy thump

"I... guess that makes sense. Do you have a normal-sized chair I can sit in, preferrably Simon-sized so I don't get stuck in it?"

"I have my stool behind mt desk, but I'm going to be sitting on it to finish up some lesson plans. Which while zi work on those you'll be putting together paper chains to hang around my classroom. I need links of 100, as many as you can make before you run out of paper. Chop chop, mister." You clap your hands together and toss your hair over your shoulder as you walk toward your desk. You can hear Simon grumble behind you before you hear the creaking groan of him finding a seat in on of the tiny chairs. Consider yourself impressed it didn't break with his weight.

The rhythm of you typing away on your keyboard combined with the rustling of paper from Simon, it was relaxing in your classroom. Your classroom had a calming aura to it with its dimmed lighting and purple and green theme. You tried your best to not get distracted from your task, but seeing the tall and broad man sitting before you at a tiny kindergarten table using kiddie scissors to cut up strips of construction paper to glue together made you smile. You felt your heart melt at the thought this big man would do anything for you if you asked. Maybe you could convince him to play a tree in the play you wanted to host later in the year.

Distracted from looking at him, you barely notice him sealing the last of the steps together creating about 4 chains. He stretches his fingers and looks over his shoulder toward you with a glare, but you could see the hints of a smile in the same eyes. "I think that's the rest of them. Anything else you want me to do?"

You dart your eyes away back to your screen. Despite trying your best to not get distracted, you had lost your place within your work. You really needed to finish this up before class started up again the following week, so you glanced around the room to see what else he could do. Just your luck, but you spotted some boxes to the side that you had been meaning to put together for some years now. The cubbies had been in storage in your back closest for a while, you just kept putting them on the back burner. Better now than ever, you suppose. "You could out together those cubbies and line them up by the door. I have some screwdrivers in my desk. Not sure what you'd need."

Simon grunted in agreement and moved over toward your desk to retrieve the screwdrivers you pulled from your drawer. With a quick swipe, the tools were gone and Simon was off on a mission to put those cubbies together. Thankfully, he was working out of your direct line of sight so you wouldn't be distracted by the horrifically tight black T-shirt he wore as it stretched across his back as he moved.

Eventually, everything was finished up and you were thankful for the help, even though you did have to bribe Simon a bit. Though you believe he wanted to spend the day with you anyway considering he wasn't sure how long his leave would last. Regardless, you finally could mark those items off your to do list and worry about spending the next day relaxing in bed with Simon.

[readwritealldayallnight]

Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley, who from the moment he laid eyes on you, has only ever referred to you as his wife

You, this sweet little thing, running through the halls on base one day when you turn a corner and nearly run headfirst into the Lieutenant, who’s walking alongside Soap

“Oh! Sorry about that, sir.” You told him, never slowing down in your hurried pace as you snuck around his large frame and continued down towards whatever you were evidently late for

The only reason his gaze had followed your retreating form, was that unlike everyone else, you had met his eyes when you spoke, even smiled warmly up at him

That one smile and he was done for

“Who was tha’?” The sergeant had questioned, seeing Ghost’s attention still fixated on you.

“Think that was my wife.”

“Yer what?!”

Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley, who makes it a point to let everyone know that you are in fact his wife

Well, everyone apart from you apparently

He would certainly never abuse his position as a Lieutenant, but some new recruit had the audacity to whistle at you as you walked by? Well 100 laps around the base don’t exactly run themselves

Another soldier saved you a seat next to him in a briefing? He can enjoy scrubbing toilet seats for the next week in that case

Someone actually had the bollocks to ask you for your phone number? Perfect, he needed a volunteer for demonstrating hand to hand combat to the recruits, medics on standby of course

By the time he properly introduces himself to you for the first time, it’s understood by everyone else around that you are, for all intents and purposes, Mrs Riley

Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley, who listens to you tell him your name in a voice that resembles music to his ears, hardly bothering to remember your last name, seeing as it’ll be changing soon enough anyway

“You can call me anythin’ you want, love.” His deep, gravelly voice had sent shivers down your spine, cheeky smirk widening beneath his mask. “So long as you call me, that is.”

By the end of your first date, (you were sitting alone in the dining hall and he wordlessly joined you what do you mean this isn’t a date) he’s wondering if you’ll insist on a ceremony or if he can sweep you away to the nearest courthouse and make this official, slipping a ring onto you finger and himself into you

You had laughed when he put his number into your phone and named himself ‘Husband’, certain that the man was only messing with you, some kind of hazing that you apparently weren’t aware Lieutenants played on the new communications hire, but it was only fair seeing as he’d saved your contact under ‘Wife’

Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley, who is over the moon every time you play along, even if he knows you believe you’re only playing

“Ach, thanks Lt. Just what I needed.” Soap said, seeing Ghost’s approaching form enter the common room, holding a steaming cup of tea in each hand

“S’for my wife. Get your own.” The older man gruffly replied, sliding the mug onto the side table next to where you’re curled up on the couch, reading a book

“Aw, thank you honey.” You giggled, smiling up as him with an expression he thinks would taste even sweeter than honey if he were to run his tongue across your upturned lips

“Happy wife, happy life, sergeant.” Ghost shrugged, ignoring the other man’s pout, landing next to you and reaching an arm behind you across the back of the couch

“God, maybe I really should keep you.” You’d laughed, reaching a leg out to dig your socked toes into his muscled thigh, teasing him

Grasping your foot into his large, strong hands, he began massaging it, uncaring that you were only two of the many people in the common room, not when you looked at him like that, smiling together as though you truly were nothing more than a married couple

Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley, who surprised you one day, insisting he needed your help with something crucial off base, and drove you to a local shopping outlet to look at none other than dresses

“Is there some sort of party happening?” You’d questioned, confused out of your mind

“Suppose you could consider it a party.” He’d answered, leading you through the many racks of dresses, you noticed were all, very conveniently, white

“Now while you’re lookin’ through dress sizes,” he’d added, taking your left hand in both of his. “You know your ring size? Got my own shoppin’ to do ‘round here.”

Series masterlist

[succubusvalentine]

Simon Riley with a user who basically kidnaps herself. CW : Masturbation, mentions of oral

It started with the little things. You felt the hairs on the back of your neck raise more frequently. You heard heavy breathing and a slick sound at night coming from your slightly open window. A blank account following your public instagram account.

You then started seeing him. A tall burly man that seemed to always appear In the corner of your eye. You never saw his face because of the balaclava he wore. And that frustrated you.

Hell, if a guy is going to stalk you, the least he can do is not hide his face.

Eventually, you got sick of it. You let the brute of a man follow you home as usual. Let him watch you 'sleep' through your window while he fisted his cock. And then when he went home, you followed him.

You honestly thought he'd catch you. Feel you watching him. Following him home. But it seemed that his post orgasmic haze rendered him vulnerable.

You followed the man to a nice looking home. Not huge or anything, but It was cozy.

You then watched through a window as he drank a glass of whiskey, before walking through the home to his bedroom.

You quickly rushed to the bedroom window, glad the blinds weren't fully shut.

The man then sat down on his bed, pulling something from his bedside drawer-hey wait, are those your fucking panties you lost? Sneaky bastard. Those are your favourite.

And now he's fisting his cock again. Only this time, he's taken off that stupid balaclava to sniff them and-oh.

Oh.

Fuck, he's hot.

Those scars, the dirty blonde hair, the slightly crooked nose from being broken so many times, Jesus H Christ.

Yeah. To say you were thinking of this mans face between your thighs was an understatement. He might genuinely be one of the hottest men you've ever seen.

You quickly went home, going to the blank account that had followed you, and with a few clicks, you found the guys private instagram. Simon Riley. He's not the only person who's good at stalking.

You then found out that he was in the military. A Lieutenant. Seemed to be really private. No matter though, you already knew where he lived.

The following day, you took the day off work, and broke into Simon's home. Moving almost all of your stuff in. He wouldn't mind.

Then, when Simon walked into his house he stopped dead in his tracks as he saw you, sipping from one of his mugs, on his couch.

The woman he'd been stalking for nearly a year.

"I-what-what are you doing here?" He muttered, eyes wide as he took off his balaclava.

"You should have shown me your face earlier. I would have moved in ages ago" you shrugged.

"Moved in?" Simon almost squeaked.

⛧°. ⋆𓌹♰𓌺⋆. °⛧

before you all panic, yes. There will be a part two :p

Edit! ~ there's a part 2 you thirsty animals ⟢ right here! ❤︎

[leviathanleva]

Ghost has been gone for months...

Six months, to be exact.

When he finally gets home it's late at night, well over midnight. All the lights are off, no sound coming from anywhere.

He wonders if you've started moving on. Wonders if your feelings have started fading.

He slips his shoes off and makes his way into your shared bedroom. You're sound asleep in your bed, on his side even though his scent has long since left those sheets.

He undresses and slides in beside you, gentle not to wake you. His head hits the pillow and he sighs as your familiar scent enters his nostrils.

He drapes an arm around you and freezes when his hand lands on your belly.

Your very swollen belly. And he feels a kick right back against his palm.

"Welcome home, Si."

part 2

[circe69]

the daddy issues you didn’t know you had were definitely showing through whenever you were around simon. he’d say things like,

“you say yes sir, y’understand me?”

“watch your fucking tone when you talk to me, puppy.”

“sit down, hush up, and listen to me, sweet girl.”

“who the fuck d’you think you’re talking to, lovie?”

“good girls do what they’re fucking told.”

he’ll kneel in front of you to massage your feet after a long day of work, working his way up your legs while praising you. “these strong calves, my big girl s’working so hard.”

and don’t even get me started on where he grabs you to get your attention. his hand is constantly grabbing the side of your hip, even hovering right above the globe of your ass sometimes.

if the two of you are in a crowded room, he’ll wrap his arm around your waist and rest his palm over your tit, squeezing softly every time you look up at him.

and in bed? bitch, he’s using a fucking chain. a sweet little collar with a heart on it attached to a few silver links that he’ll tug when you’re being bad.

“just look at’cha, panting like a fuckin’ dog. you like being treated like a dog, baby?”

every tug around your neck was an instant shock straight to your clit as you took his cock from the back, your cheek smushed into tear soaked sheets.

he’d swat your ass if you were being a brat, “quit your crying n’come already.”

and every time you squirted around his cock, spraying the base of him and his heavy sack, he’d say something like, “wow, would’ya look at that, she can do tricks,” as he feels your walls pulsing around him. “fuckkkkk, do another one, speak bitch.”

you could barely function after your nth orgasm of the night, but you knew too well what would happen if you didn’t do what he said. “yes-mmph- yes sir.”

and the aftercare? he’s as sweet as pie, caring for his precious lover who’s taken him so well. he’ll wrap you up in his warm arms and peck every inch of your face, “did so well for me, y’know that?” *peck* “m’very proud of you, sweetheart.”

this is shit but whatever love you guys bai!

[maskedbyghost]

Ghost Loves Your Hair, the thing is, reader with curly/Kinky hair *feral noises.*

-🐻✨

Oh, Simon is the best.

The first time he offers to wash your hair, he just goes for it, running his fingers through like it’s nothing—until you yelp and grab his wrist, stopping him mid-motion. He freezes, his eyes wide.

“What?”

“You—you can’t just rake through it like that,” you say, half laughing, half horrified.

That’s the night he sits beside you, watching as you show him—how to work the conditioner through in sections, how to scrunch instead of rub, how to be patient with the curls. His brows furrow, his lips pressing into a line as he absorbs every word and your every motion. He doesn’t say much, just nods, hands twitching like he’s already trying to commit it to muscle memory.

The next time he washes your hair, it’s different. He moves carefully, smoothing the conditioner between his palms before working it in the way you showed him. His fingers detangle slowly, and when he scrunches the ends, he murmurs, “Like this, yeah?”

Your chest tightens, warmth blooming behind your ribs. “Yeah,” you whisper. “Just like that.”

Later, when he wraps a T-shirt around your hair instead of a towel, pressing a kiss to your temple, you realize—this isn’t just him helping.

It’s him loving.

@daydreamerwoah

[witchthewriter]

Simon Riley who took you home after a night out, expecting sex but you couldn't go through with it.

You were both already naked, your hands on his chest, straddling the large man when you just ... couldn't do it. Being a virgin at this age felt embarrassing, and tonight you wanted to get rid of the title.

Simon, saw the dismay on your face and wrapped a blanket around you. Your face was bright red from embarrassment, god, what was holding you back?

"it's alrigh' love."

You felt the need to leave. You hadn't given him what he wanted...so you guessed it was time to hit the road.

So, both of you got up to do very different things.

You started putting on your dress and shoes, but when Simon turned around, he had a pair of his shirts and large sweat pants for you to wear.

His gruff voice was so gentle.

"You don't 'ave to leave..."

You weren't expecting this. There were no alarm bells, nothing in your stomach to say 'run.' But Simon Riley knew the dangers that women faced and he never wanted to make another woman feel that way.

"I uh, just want you to know, you can do whatever you like. I just ... fucking hell. What I'm tryin' to say is, I'd like to spend more time with ya...if that's alrigh' by you..."

He offered you a shower, and god did you want one. Surprisingly enough, Simon had pretty good products in his bathroom. None of that 30 in 1 shampoo. Clean towels. Everything was in perfect order; neat, tidy.

When you had changed into the perfectly oversized clothes (he is like 6'6?), and walked downstairs, Simon was waiting on the lounge with various drink options, and a sheepish grin.

"Thought you'd need some water, but I also have whiskey, coffee, tea..."

"Oh, thank you! Um, I'm fine with water...and maybe a tea."

"Woman after me own heart," he said with a grin and went on to make the best cuppa he's made in his life.