That’ll do!

just writing and reading about the big guy with the skull face Saturn \ 90s kid \ they|them \ side blog \ 18+ only \ fuck AI

[ifuhaveghost]

𝗠𝗔𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗟𝗜𝗦𝗧 | AO3 | all works 18+

Simon "Ghost" Riley x reader

stray | ongoing series | Explicit A masked stranger in a pub has nothing to say to you, wants nothing to do with you - right? - and has no plans in sticking around.

But even the toughest strays like to be inside sometimes.

Mission Gothic Romance | ongoing series | Explicit online dating AU

no place like you | oneshot 670 words | smut

blurb tag

---

fic recs

[soilents]

PLEASE MORE ALERUDY 🙏

also food 🪱🪱🪱

thank you for the meal… 🍽️ some doodles !

los vaqueros..

i imagine alejandro’s laughter is contagious

the song has nothing to do with his name, but it reminds me of him every time it plays 😆

[07x1x4x1]

cw: post MW3; angst; hurt/comfort | fem!Reader × S. Riley

Simon has been watching you for the past weeks since the world has tilted on its axis a second time in his life.

Johnny is dead. Price is gone. Kyle is trying to keep things running. The 141 is no more as it once was.

And then, there is you.

Shattered. The light once beaming in your eyes now gone. Buried with Johnny. Extinguished by Price's abandonment.

You're nothing but a shell of your former self; of the woman who could give all of them a run for their money with her banter, her discipline, and fierce loyalty.

And Simon has been observing the decline in real time while refusing to deal with his own grief, like watching a wild animal deteriorate in a zoo cage.

The base at night is a different kind of quiet.

Not the quiet of the field, that loaded silence where every snapped twig is a countdown. This is the quiet of fluorescent lights and linoleum and men who don't know what to do with their hands when there's no mission brief on the table.

Simon knows it well by now. Decades of it.

He finds you at 0247 hrs by the eastern wall of the compound, sitting on an equipment crate in the cold with your jacket somewhere that isn't on your body. Not crying. Not staring at anything in particular. Just present in the way that means absent.

He's seen it before. In the mirror.

He doesn't announce himself. You'd only straighten up, roll your shoulders back, manufacture something that looks like fine. You're good at fine. Good enough to fool the man with the clipboard and the psychology degree who'd nodded along and signed your clearance form three weeks ago.

Simon had read the report. Sergeant displays healthy coping mechanisms and strong unit cohesion.

He'd thought about what healthy coping mechanisms looked like on you in the months before. The way you'd drag Soap into the worst film you could find on a Friday, just to hear him complain. The way you'd argue tactics with Price over terrible coffee like it was sport. The way your laugh carried down the hall and somehow made the hall feel shorter.

Simon hasn't heard it since Verdansk.

He crosses the yard without a word and sits on the crate beside you. Not close. Just present. The cold doesn't bother him. He's a sniper. He can wait.

You don't tell him to leave, and that's something.

The silence between them stretches long enough that Simon starts counting his own breaths. An old habit. Something to do when there's nothing to do.

Eventually, you speak first.

"Couldn't sleep."

It isn't a question and it isn't an explanation. Just words to fill the air, thin as the excuse they are. He doesn't call you out on it.

"No," he replies.

Another stretch of quiet. Somewhere across the compound a door opens and closes. Neither of you moves.

He watches you from his periphery the way he watches everything—without appearing to. You've pulled your knees up slightly, arms loose over them. Relaxed posture. Practiced relaxed posture. There's a difference and you've never known that he knows it.

Your eyes are doing that thing again. Open but somewhere else entirely. Not quite a thousand yard-stare, but close.

Verdansk. Or before it. Or the specific seventeen seconds he suspects you replay on a loop because he has his own seventeen seconds and he knows what they do to a person's face in the dark.

"Soap used to hate the cold," you remark somberly.

It comes out almost conversational. Like a grenade with the pin already pulled, lobbed gently into the space between you.

Simon lets it land.

"Aye," he agrees. "Complained about it enough."

The corner of your mouth moves. Not quite a smile. The ghost of the muscle memory of one. It's the closest he's seen in weeks and it costs you something—he watches you pay it.

"He complained about everything." Your voice stays even. Careful. "Terrible sleeper. Ate like a bloody labrador. Couldn't fold a map to save his life."

Could save yours, though. Simon doesn't say it. Neither do you. It sits between you anyway.

He waits.

"I keep—" you start, and stop. Your jaw tightens. He watches you decide whether to finish, watches you weigh the cost of it. "I keep forgetting. For a second. In the morning. Before I'm fully—" A shaky breath. "And then I fucking remember."

Simon says nothing.

Because there is nothing. Because he does it too, that horrible half-second of grace before the weight of it crashes back down, and he knows that anything he says about it will be either a lie or a uselessness. So he says nothing, and he stays, and after a moment his broad shoulder finds yours in the dark. Gentle.

Not too close, not a press. Just contact. Proof of another person.

You don't pull away.

"Price should have told us," you say, quieter now. Something harder underneath it. "He should have. We fucking deserved to know. We deserved the choice."

"Aye," Simon agrees again. "We did."

It's all he can give you on that. It's all he has. The anger about Price lives in him too, in a room he hasn't opened yet, and he suspects when he finally does, it'll take a wall down with it.

But not tonight.

The cold finally wins. You shift, and the movement seems to drag you back into your body, into the practical fact of being a person sitting on a freezing metal crate at three in the morning.

"My arse has gone numb," you announce.

Simon huffs through his nose. The closest thing to a laugh he's got in stock these days.

"That's what the jacket's for," he says.

"Didn't ask for commentary, Lieutenant."

"Wasn't commentary. Was a fact. You're sat out here freezing yer tits off out of spite."

You turn to look at him properly for the first time all night—actually look, eyebrow up, something sharp flickering behind your eyes that he hasn't seen since before everything went to hell.

"Out of spite," you repeat.

"Aye."

"That's rich, coming from the man who once stood watch for nine hours in monsoon season because Price suggested he take a break."

"Different."

"How."

"I'm not the one with a numb arse."

It surprises a sound out of you—short, ugly, real. A guffaw. An actual one, dragged up from somewhere you'd buried it, and it shocks you both. Your hand comes up like you can catch it and put it back, eyes going wide for half a second like you've done something wrong.

Simon watches you sit with the fact that you're still capable of it.

"Soap would've had something to say about your arse, Lt.," you mutter, recovering.

"Soap had something to say about everything."

"He'd have offered to warm it up. Cheeky bastard."

"He'd have gotten decked for it."

"He'd have deserved it." You wipe your face with the heel of your hand, quick, businesslike, pretending it's the cold. "God. He was so fucking annoying."

"Worst man I ever served with," Simon agrees.

It's a lie and it's the truest eulogy either of you has managed in weeks, and you both know it, and that's exactly why it works.

He stays beside you in the cold until your breathing evens out, until the rigid set of your shoulders drops two degrees, until you're no longer somewhere else entirely but here, on a crate, in the dark, next to him.

It isn't healing. It isn't fine.

But you're still here.

And for Simon Riley, who has learned not to ask for more than what he's given, that is enough.

For now.

[valiants]

Hmm I think because their lives are so inundated with safewords already (sitreps, callouts) it'd feel redundant to have a specific one between them (also I think they are DEEPLY freaks who WOULD go without)

I do think they would check in on each other in their own ways, doting and concerned...🥺

+

I can't imagine Soap ever ANNOYS Ghost, but I bet he can get under Ghost's skin a bit as they get more comfortable - a feat achievable by a scant few in his life, surely...

[warmfrequency]

type of guy you divorce and remarry three times over

[ifuhaveghost]

does anybody, like, want to send me a prompt or something? feeling like challenging myself a bit. Ghost x reader, (n)sfw from angst to fluff to smut, I'm open for it all

[soilents]

🪱 🍁 (leaf for decomposition. nutrient soil)soil do u bave more traditional sketches by any chance?

thank you for the extra leaf ‼️ yes i do have more

happy pride everyone 😢

[delavegaaaaa]

“You can’t fix him” I don’t wanna fix him! I wanna FUCK him! I’m a pervert not a psychologist!

[daniel-bruehl]

#they did not have to include that shot aND YET

Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley(’s waist) in CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE II

[ifuhaveghost]

𝘔𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘎𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘤 𝘙𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 18+

Masterlist

Ao3 || general Masterlist

Simon "Ghost" Riley x reader [gnc!reader with boobs and vagina, she/they]

Had been the lads idea, the dating profile. They had suggested it out of nowhere one afternoon, sliding in on the table they occupied at mess without much of an intro to the outrageous idea. "Absolutely not", had been Simon's stern response, spoken with the finality of a bullet to the brain. And that had been it. Or so he'd thought.

||online dating AU, reboot Ghost with comic backstory, canon divergent, canon typical themes/violence, mature themes, eventual smut, angst, hurt/comfort, fluff, touchstarved Simon||

PART I

PART II

PART III

[s-ghost-r]

The first time you see Simon kill someone is the first time he kisses you.

The stranger appears like an avatar of the slow, starving extinction of the wastes, a swaying conglomeration of bones and rags. Beady, sunken eyes look out from frostbitten flesh. You freeze when you notice the apparition staring at you with those dead fish eyes.

He is not menacing, not in the way you can see Simon being. His back is bowed over sharp ribs, bloated belly, and protruding joints, his breath wheezes from blackened, ash-clogged lungs. But he is desperate and desperation has made an animal of him.

You are not a person and neither is he. You and all you have are means of survival and he is the starved animal that will take until there is nothing left.

He is faster than you anticipate. He lunges with a renewed vitality at the life you hold like a spluttering flame. Ragged, sharp nails rip into you, through the bulky layers of your clothes. Hands grasping, wrenching, slamming you into the ground. He is a fury of madness, his fetid fear spilling from him as rotten blood from a putrid knife wound.

Simon appears so fast that the sudden presence of his mass makes your ears feel like they need to pop, his gravity encompassing you like a collapsed star.

His event horizon passes over you, colliding into the man instead. Ash plumes from the ground where Simon slams the man down under his weight.

His violence is a brutal, efficient thing. Silent and final. The stranger doesn't even manage a gasp before it's taken from him. Gloved hands separate vertebrae as if that was the first thing they ever learned to do before discovering the tenderness they're capable of when holding you. There is no second glancing at the body on the ground, no compartmentalization. It was a threat and now it is nothing. Death as transformation.

When Simon turns his eyes to you, you feel time stretch between the space separating you. Two black wells, pulling you into their dark infinity with a swooping vertigo. In them is the darkness at the end of all things. You feel its phantom weight wrap around you like the depth of it all is too vast to be confined by just the borders of him.

His hands, clean of blood but still soaked to the bone with it, rise to your face, fingertips grazing your cheeks. The skull of his mask touches your skin when he lowers his forehead to yours. This close you can't see his mask, can't see death. All you see is Simon.

Palms drag across your cheeks, over your ears. Fingers lace together at the back of your head, cradling you, further securing you into his gravitational orbit.

Simon says nothing, skin still crawling from the sight of you in the ash. A Ghost howls in his blood, baying for the world's to be spilled.

Simon smothers the Ghost, focuses on the weight of you in his hands. A flame still burns.

His mask leaves your skin as he angles your head down. You lose sight of his face, vision instead taken up with the fortress of his chest and shoulders.

In one moment you feel nothing but the biting cold on your skin and in the next you feel warm, uncovered lips pressing to your forehead. The heat of them scalds you. The texture of their scars sink into your skin like a brand.

He moves down, laying a kiss on each of your closed eyes like coins for a burial. They remain closed as his lips travel to each of your cheeks, face upturned to the warmth of his attentions. That warmth drags further down like the last sunset the world had ever seen.

Simon pauses. A man made into a ghost made into a man again. His hands, which were born into the language of violence long before the world ended, which know the feeling of broken bone and steaming blood better than the weight of something alive have remained steady through every reaping of every soul they severed.

Never once have they faltered. Immovable through the war and death of every known thing, the remains of which continue to fall like snow years later.

But when he presses one final, soft kiss to the Eden of your mouth, when he feels his pulse beat in concert with yours, they tremble.

[ifuhaveghost]

how is this still getting better and better with each part when the first part was already so prefect...

[wolverinecore]

priCE PRICE PRICE

[auberghyn]

2026 Art x Fic Call of Duty Collab Masterlist (141 RECON Server)

Decided to do a fun monthly collaboration with the awesome people in our server, so this masterlist will be a collection of stories written by my friends with accompanying art drawn by me! (The gallery will be updated accordingly. Stay tuned!)

Please Note: Majority of the pairings will be AFAB!Reader x C.O.D. MMC, unless stated otherwise by the author.

🐂 CREATIONUARY (Art Link) Minotaur!John Price x AFAB!Reader (FIC Link) by: @bunnyreaper | AO3

✍️ FIGUARY (Art Link) Life Drawing Model!John "Soap" MacTavish x AFAB!Reader (FIC Link) by @youarehereyouaresafe | AO3

🤖 MARCH OF THE ROBOTS (Art Link) Cyborg!John Price x Filipina OC (Dr. Tala Arao) (FIC Link) by: @the-californicationist 🩸 APRIL SHOWERS (Art Link) Serial Killer!Simon "Ghost" Riley x AFAB!Reader (FIC Link) by: @silverlullabies 🐠 MERMAY (Art Link) Merman!König x AFAB!Reader (FIC Link) by @konigs-lover

Work in Progress:

June: @the-californicationist July: @gloomwitchwrites August: @verascrow September: @verascrow October: @bunnyreaper November: @youarehereyouaresafe | petaltouches (AO3) December: @unseaworthy

[ifuhaveghost]

𝘔𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘎𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘤 𝘙𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 ||

part II 3.2k ; 18+

|| Ao3 || series Masterlist || general Masterlist || part III

Simon "Ghost" Riley x reader [gnc!reader with boobs and vagina, she/they]

||online dating AU, reboot Ghost with comic backstory, MW canon divergent, canon typical themes/violence, mature themes, eventual smut, angst, hurt/comfort, fluff, touchstarved Simon||

chapter cw: cod typical themes, non graphic injury/sickness, big spoon full of angst and suspense in this one, medical inaccuracies (don't think too hard about it)(Soap disclaimer: I apologise to every Scottish person coming across this. I did my best and am learning.)

   1

Was supposed to be a simple recon mission. In, have a good look around and out. He'd done it too many times to count; before 141, it had been years and years of operating solo for him. This was what he knew and he prided himself in being exceptionally quick and efficient. Undetectable. A ghost. 

But all the skill, all the experience in the world could only do so much when suddenly the operation turns into a perfect storm. 

Oh, he's been in and out, alright. Of consciousness. If he had to guess: maybe about twenty four hours worth of drifting back and forth. Hard to tell from the dark, dirty hole he’d crawled into. 

Residential structure. A whole block of it, now crumbling and unsafe and therefore, unoccupied. If you didn't count a few corpses and the occasional stray dog. There's not much of use left between the rubble, had all been cleared out a while ago, naturally. Useful things never stayed idle for long. But someone had carved a hole into a wall in the basement, straight into the ground behind and concealed it with a shelf. An endeavour probably not up to building codes but one that had saved his life. 

Had helped him vanish from right under the noses of his pursuers and stay hidden. 

All there is in this damp, dark hideout is a dirty mattress and a fat stack of dirty magazines. The latter was a nice surprise, with some luck would be his ticket out of this uncomfortable situation. Blessed be the horny. 

He isn't exactly sure what the bloody fuck had happend, how this mess had come about, and on top of missing intel, he had difficulties remembering the details now. But he was sure Price would fill him in on all there was to know once he fetched him. 

Ghost was sure he would fetch him. He was a useful thing after all. 

In any case, if the cavalry wasn't coming for him soon, well, there was only so long one could survive on a diet of dandelion leaves and charcoal tablets while also concussed and who knew what else was wrong with him. He's sure there's blood in his piss, but it's hard to say, with the light situation and sparse rations of dirty water.

The last time he dragged himself out of the hole had taken a real toll on him, but there had been no way around it; if he wanted to be rescued, he had to let the saviours know where to find him. Approximately. Most of his gear was lost or broken. And so was this part of the city.

Still, the streets were crawling with armed men, if you could even call most of them men. He'd sneaked past kids that couldn't be older than fourteen carrying weapons Ghost would argue they shouldn't even know exist. But it felt hypocritical to complain when it was so useful; luring the pubescent guards away from the checkpoint two blocks away long enough to use the radio and vanish into the night again had been easy. 

Child's play, you might say. 

All he had to do was drop some of his x-rated inventory along some strategic spots on the patrol route the night shift covered and try not to faint while the word got around and trust the force of tits, cunt and arse to be strong enough to pull most of the lads off their posts. 

He'd left with his knife squeaky clean and a little closer to home. 

Curled in on himself in his hole, he's chewing the last of his dandelion stash. Picked hastily on this latest venture outside, he'd made sure to get mostly the biggest leaves, not only for quantity, but those were so bloody bitter, it helped staying awake. At least some. Also was something to focus on, other than his own bitter thoughts. The bastards are loud in the quiet dark. 

He is not afraid to die. He just doesn't want to. 

There had only been one other time where he had been this close to death and it surprised him, how very similar the two were in quality: tightly cradled by damp dirt and the dark, blanketed in the smell of rot and decay. 

With him in the dark, back then in the desert, had been four faces…

Mum Tommy Beth Joseph

…and now there were four faces again…

Johnny Kyle John… and…

…and one that wasn't really a face. Was only the memory of a picture of a face. A smile. He'd never seen it in motion, never witnessed it bloom or twitch or widen, had only seen it once weeks and weeks ago and since then, only called upon it inside his mind. An icon at whose feet he mourned a heavy maybe. Indulging in grievance of what he could never allow himself to find out. 

“Because of their quiver,” he rasps, dry and burning his throat. Barely even words. The fever has come for him at last. Took it long enough.

Kyle and Johnny and John and Kyle and John and Johnny and what's the worst that could happen Simon what is it you're afraid of Simon oh Johnny oh Kyle oh Tommy and it's the quiver the quiver it's because of the quiver John because there's a big black hole in Tommy's skull big enough to swallow him and how did that happen Simon how how how could you let this happen Simon why don't you live a little? Oh Beth oh mum oh little Joseph in your tiny coffin why don't you live a little? We just mean well just want you to live a little longer just a little just a little Simon because of the quiver and the smile and the fire it's in their eyes and in your veins Simon in your brain Simon John and Johnny and– 

“Gaz!” 

In his tomb, Simon flinches. The fever speaks with the voice of his friend. He finds that a foul thing to do–

“Gaz~~do ye copy?”

“~~copy~~~ found something?”

“Affirmative! Get~~~”

In his tomb, Simon unfolds his stiff limbs and lifts his head. In the dark, the world turns belly up. He retches. 

“Roger~~~on my way~~~”

Bitterness drips off his chin, bile and rot and dandelions and it's not the fever talking after all. Not in that silly accent.

“Johnny!” There’s no volume to his call, throat too tight and on fire. He kicks the shelf instead. 

Simon Riley isn't afraid of dying. But he really fucking rather not. 

“Gaz, I heard something!”

Kick. Kick. Shove.

The fire is in his leg too. Maybe he can set the shelf alight. Create a beacon. 

       2 

Johnny doesn't heed Kyle nor Price as they shout in his ears for him to wait, wait, Soap, bloody wait. 

There is a hole in the side of a building, civilian housing, and along the walls, the ruined, dusty pavement, something is off. 

Not a single dandelion. 

Abundant in every other street, their absence here is screeching. 

‘Mind the dandelions’

A voice like a dead man speaking riddles into the radio. 

clank clank 

The beam of his torch catches on shards of glass clinging to charred window frames, black as death, like the sockets of a skull. chunks of concrete lining the bottom of the hole below like nasty, ragged teeth. 

Johnny MacTavish has always believed in signs. He waited five endless days since Ghost had gone dark. He's been out of patience for four and a half. So he enters the maw and listens…

clank…. clank…

“Ghost?” he shouts into the belly and follows the echo of his own voice before anyone, friend or foe, can answer. 

“Ghost?” twelve steps lead to three doors. One locked, two blown off the hinges. 

clank clank screeeeeech

“Ghost?” Through the middle, down a corridor, beam of light bouncing, bopping, swaying and–

tap shhhk tap shhhk… tap

-a figure steps into the light. Hunched, shuffling. Dying.

“Ghost…”

“Soap!” it barks from behind but he's already moving, relieved as the steps of his team fall in behind him. They need to get him out. And fucking immediately.

"Found him!"

Ahead, the figure stumbles, one leg dragging stiff and heavy.

“Simon,” he rasps through a throat too tight to shout. “Stop, ye madman. I'll get you. We got you.” 

Simon does not stop. Figures. 

But when he reaches him, Simon smiles. 

Then he collapses into Johnny's arms. 

       3

“He’s burning up.”

“Look at his teeth!”

“Bleedin’ Jesus.”

“Charcoal, I reckon.”

“Because of… the quiver…”

“What he say?”

“Simon, Son? You with us?”

“Tommy?”

“Aye, t's Johnny, m’ right here.”

“Live'a… little…”

“He’s goin’ out again, Cap!”

       4

They're going to make a case study out of him or something. Impressive, his recovery, they say. 

“You gonna let me out of here then, doc?” 

His voice is still hoarse, they tell him bruising around the vocal cords takes time. He tells them he knows. 

“No,” doctor Hunt says drily, not glancing up from his tablet, noting every fart he lets slip in his file. Stands to reason, with the study worthy gut infection and all. Doesn't mean he has to like it. “But we can increase activity, now that all the levels are there where I want them.”

“We?” he grunts. “Gonna take me for a dance?”

Hunts eyes drift over to him at last, face crinkling and dimpling with all sorts of life lived. “That would set your recovery back, I'm afraid. As they say: two left feet.”

“Pity.”

Swaying back to the foot of his bed, Hunt snuffs the tablet out with one push of a button. “I'll see you tomorrow,” he threatens. “Get some rest.”

“S’ all I do.”

Pushing the door open a slit, Hunt gazes outside and the smile lines turn into canyons. “Well, you'll be thrilled to know you got company then.” He opens the door wide. “Sergeant MacTavish, come in.”

“Major Hunt,” Johnny acknowledges before his head pokes around the doorframe, eyes drifting between him and the doctor. He's hunched over, like he's been caught at something. Which is eavesdropping, of course. “Dinna want tae interrupt anything. I can wait.”

“We're done,” Hunt pushes past the doorframe and with a hand on Johnny's back, him into the room. “The Lieutenant is in a good mood today,” he adds with a grin over his shoulder before he vanishes. 

Johnny's eyes are big and excited. “Aye? S’ that true?”

Simon takes a deep breath and sighs. And as Johnny settles into the armchair to his right, already yapping about everything and nothing, mostly nothing, he finds that it's not, not true. Especially now that he got some distraction. 

Time passes strangely when your brain keeps filling up with fog. Just two hours and Simon can't stop yawning. No intentions to let Johnny know just how tired he is, he clenches his jaw whenever he feels another sneak up on him. 

Nights are the worst, with nowhere to go and nothing to do. He prefers company to the slow, viscous drag of time stuck here on his own. He'd never admit that either. Was scarcely believing it himself. 

“I should let ye rest.”

Simon stifles another yawn, teeth grinding, and lifts his brows. “M’ I boring ya?”

“Yer look half asleep–”

“I'm fine.”

“But before I go,” Johnny rambles on, his own brows drawing together over the bridge of his nose. “I got something I want tae show ye.”

It’s a piece of paper, crumpled and a little dirty. It rings a bell deep In the fog of his mind, then, when he slides it across the bedside table, it shrills like an alarm. Johnny must see it on his face.

“Wait, just listen.”

“Fuckin’ hell, Soap, don't– I'm not in the mood for a casual shag–”

“Ye kept talking about it,” he jumps up and starts pacing. “When ye were oot o it!”

“Abou’ wha’?” 

“Because of the quiver!” 

Simon takes in a quick breath and Johnny stops pacing. His hands clamp around the foot of the bed. “So you remember.”

“Talkin’ about it? To you?” 

“All of us. Price, Gaz, the medics, doctors, pilot heard it too.”

“Brilliant.” 

“That's a no then.” 

The last thing he remembers is collapsing back in the hole after sending his message and that part already felt more dream than memory, blurry and thick and full of chasms. Looked like the fever had started much earlier than he had realised. 

“What else did I talk abou’?”

Johnny chews the inside of his cheek. Nervous. A rare thing. “Names, mostly.” Nodding, his eyes flick to the ceiling, then narrow slightly; it's like he's listening back in time. “Ours,” he supplies, smiles just a tad as he places his hand over his heart. “Mine the most, I'm certain.”

“Followed by curses by any chance?”

“Ye big flirt.” 

“Go on.”

“For the rest… you gotta ask Price. Made us swear on our reproductive parts not to go poking around or ever speak of it again.” A pause, then adding in a ramble. “Scary as hell, Captain threatenin’ yer cock and balls, let me tell ye.”

It's itchy, the first huff. And unsuspected. Just a twitch, a spasm in his diaphragm. Johnny's brows turn steep with worry when it happens again, then again, more of a snorting sound next time, then a wheezy he he he. Simon's chapped lips crinkle at the corners and Johnny's follow suit. It's the way it turns the blood hound all the way to puppy that does the rest. 

Simon is laughing. Soon deep from his chest, like the last, gravely waves of thunder when a storm has spent all its rage and retires behind the horizon. Johnny stares, awestruck, aware he's witnessing something no one will believe the tale of. When he finally joins in, Simon already feels tears collect at his lashes. 

“Christ,” he huffs when his ribs turn hot. “Tha’ shit ‘urts.” 

“Shite,” Johnny wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. “Think I pissed myself a little.”

It's a damn close thing that the laughter doesn't pick up again right there, but Simon is sore and tired… and might actually piss himself if this goes on. When the last wave of hilarity has subsided, Johnny pours him a glass of water and eyes him pensively as he sips from it. 

“So?” he asks when Simon puts down the glass, tapping the piece of paper.

“Won't need that.”

“Ye never replied–”

“You looked?” he barks. Painfully.

“Easy,” Johnny holds up his hands, then crosses them over his chest. “Kept raving about it over and over and we didnae even really understand what exactly ye were sayin first- Garrick figured it oot and then we all figured it might mean something important–”

“Doesn't mean anything.”

Johnny has the nerve to wave it a way, like the lie was reeking. 

“What I'm saying is, we agreed tae take a look. Just in case ye secretly were seeing the bird so we could pass on the news. Were ready tae crack yer password and all.”

Simon says nothing. 

“But ye never even changed it,” he tilts his head. “And ye never even replied.”

“Johnny,” he warns but it's missing teeth. 

Pushing the paper closer again, Johnny smiles. “Maybe it does mean something.” He pushes his hands into the pockets of his hoodie and starts to make his way towards the door. “Sounded like it means something.” 

       5

Being lonely was easy when there was no one to miss. Not comfortable, mind, not that. But lack of comfort wasn't a problem for him. It was where he lived, always had and he had learned to embrace it early. You could say he's been raised that way. It kept him alert, kept him moving. 

It's how he'd withstood Roba, how he'd survived the desert. Unbroken but steeled.

To miss someone was to want someone and he approached all his wants with teeth and claws. Didn't know how else to be; stood only to reason his adoration would be a feral thing. 

And the thought that someone could want him: big, bruised, dangerous thing that he was. Primed for breaking. Like breaking people adored by other feral, dangerous things…

How could he withstand being wanted, by the one he adored if walking away became necessary to keep them safe? He couldn't. He knew without a doubt he couldn't. 

So companionship was a path his thoughts rarely took, not because his heart was cold, but because it was not.

The sun had set; night brought whispers and shadows to his room. There's a tree in front of the window, its gnarly branches projected by garish, orange light across his walls and ceiling, swaying softly. Way back, when he'd been a nervous kid, plagued by his own, vivid imagination, he would have talked himself into seeing thick, swollen knuckles and long, splintered nails reaching for him and hidden under his blanket. Was no use though. The nightmares always found him there anyway. 

The slip of paper still lies where Johnny had left it. Simon didn't need it. Had memorised what's on it, not on purpose, but by just how often he'd pulled it out with intention to chuck it in the bin before logging in eventually.

“What's the worst thing that could happen?” he murmurs into the dimness and waits for the smoke to fill his nose, for the coppery taste on his tongue. But they don't come. Maybe he's too tired. Maybe he's too far down that path he never allows himself to walk very far. Maybe the stink of death can't reach you here, where warm, soft things await you, beckoning you to just go a little further, just a little more.

He feels fucking daft, knowing what Johnny had told him. Obsessing, he can't think of a different word, over something so small, so insignificant the way he did about that picture of a stranger. And what would come from replying to that silly joke. 

“Nothing, most likely,” he grunts. “No fairy tale happily ever bloody after, that's for sure.”

Then what are you afraid of? Price asks in his mind and that pisses him off. That the old man was stuck up there. 

Alright. Enough. Time to kill the fantasy. 

His lockscreen reads 0319. Fucks's sake he's tired. Installing the app is a quick affair, so is logging in. When he spots the tiny envelope, the blinking number reads 56. 

“Fuckin hell.” 

Tiny faces fly by as he scrolls and scrolls and for a moment he's convinced what he's looking for isn't there anymore. For a moment he hopes it won't be there anymore. Problem solved, time to move on. 

But it's there, at the bottom. His chest expands until his aching ribs have nowhere to go. He forgoes enlarging the picture again, that's not part of the mission, would endanger the mission, so he goes straight to the message. The time stamp is from almost six months ago. 

>Nightcrawler: Why do Archers make bad Secret Agents?

<S: Because of their quiver. 

Hitting send feels like scratching an itch, a bad one, the worst itch imaginable. An itch that wants to make you peel off your skin. He groans. Fuck. Good job. Now he can finally try to sle– 

Three little dots are bouncing. Disappear. Bounce again. 

>Nightcrawler: Bullseye. 

Oh no. 

a/n: Hi there, wild ride, huh? Do not fret, reader is about to truly enter the scene and - much to Simon's turmoil - will be very hard to shake and very present for most of the rest of the story.

Thank you for reading. I eat comments and reblogs for sustenance, by the way. :3

[twolegsandbleeds]

even if it is full of love, all a ghost can do is haunt.

simon 'ghost' riley has loved you since before he knew love could exist without fists.

he’s loved you since you were ten and haphazardly pressed a plaster over his skinned knee with trembling hands.

he’s loved you since he was fifteen, standing on your mum’s doorstep with a black eye and a split lip, blood on his teeth, whispering, “can I stay?” like it was the only safe place he knew.

he’s loved you since seventeen - since the first time he sank inside you, clumsy, breathless. since your nails carved down his back and you whispered his name in his ear like it was something sacred and he believed for one perfect moment that he could be more than the violence he came from.

he’s loved you since the day he told you he was enlisting. since he promised he’d call, he’d visit, he’d write. 

he's loved you every time he's broken every single one of those promises.

and he still loves you now - six months post discharge - perched on a rooftop across from your apartment, watching you through the scope of a rifle he no longer has use for.

he wouldn’t call himself a stalker. the word felt too dirty and impersonal for what he was doing to you. he was just… watching. observing. keeping you safe in a world that was more dangerous than you would ever know.

torturing himself in the only way that still made sense.

he knows your routine by heart. 07:12 every morning you leave your building - give or take a few minutes if the lift isn't working. he knows you order a flat white with oat milk and caramel syrup and that the barista smiles at you like you're a regular she actually likes. he knows you order a croissant on weekdays and a cinnamon bun on the weekends - that clearly your sweet tooth hasn't changed in over a decade.

he knows that you sometimes linger on your balcony at night when sleep won't come, smoking one cigarette after another, blanket wrapped tightly around your shoulders whilst a cat peers at you through the glass door.

good, you got the cat then. you always wanted one.

every time the cherry of your cigarette glows orange in the night his chest pulls tight.

he should tell you he's back.

that he's been back for six months. six fucking months of being back in the same city, walking the same streets, observing you from afar instead of knocking on your door.

but how the fuck is he supposed to look you in the eyes now? how is he supposed to look at you as ghost when all you would see is simon, and simon got put away in a box in the back of his mind a long, long time ago. how was he supposed to tell you that the boy - the kid - that you loved is gone, replaced with someone who has blood on his hands that will never wash off. that the boy who used to sneak chips off your plate and once trembled when you touched him had grown up and become more monster than man.

he was terrified you’d look at him with pity.

worse - he was terrified you’d see him for what he really was.

so instead, he sits on this rooftop most nights in a black hoodie, scope pressed to his eye, telling himself he's keeping you safe. that this is all he can offer you anymore. that watching from a distance is better than letting you get close enough to see the rot.

he remembers the boy he used to be - the one that turned up at school with split lips and cigarette burns on the back of his hands, that held your hand in secret under your desk. the one that started fights on your behalf without hesitation. the one your mum started letting in without hesitation because she knew how bad things were for him at home.

but that boy? dead. buried. gone.

what replaced him doesn't deserve to be near you.

but still, he stays. he watches.

he mourns what he won't even let himself try to have from afar.

he watches the way your fingers pick at the edge of your blanket. he catalogues every sigh, every distant look in your eyes, every downturn of your lips. he hates whatever keeps you up at night. he hates even more that he isn't brave enough to find out what it is.

some nights, after your balcony light clicks off and you disappear inside, he stays longer than he should. lets himself imagine what would happen if you looked across the street and saw him. if instead of fear or disgust, you gave him that soft, lopsided smile you used to save just for him.

he always crushes the thought before it can take root.

he's taken more lives than a graveyard can hold. the idea that someone soft might still want him seems impossible to fathom.

so he keeps his distance even as the line between want and need grows thinner.

keeps you safe from the worst parts of the world.

and himself.

every night he sits there on that rooftop, scope pressed to his eye. chest cracking open for a person who has no idea that the spectre of the boy they used to love has come home - and knowing he's too much of a coward to tell you.

[ifuhaveghost]

Writing a little König thing and it's fun... but it feels like I'm cheating on Simon here...

[l3ibnest]

Soap with dogs!

Gaz with dogs!

Price with dogs!

Ghost with demons! TF 141 with dogs🐶 It's been a while painting full rendered pieces, enjoyed a lot! Inspired from awesome @yourfaithfulauthor's request.