You've always been the best of the best, but when you're placed as a god amongst titans…you're unsure of your footing in the world. A certain case will slowly expose you as the lines between who you and your Lieutenant are blurred.
or
You: a U.S Marine, are transferred to a new unit, the 141; and when a mission in a burlesque club takes stage, you may just have to step up to the mic...
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
Chapters:
Prologue: Calefaction
Chapter 1: Oxidation
Chapter 2: Amplification
Chapter 3: Ignition
Chapter 4: Miasma
Chapter 5: Endoergic
Chapter 6: Deflagration
Chapter 7: Pyrolysis
Chapter 8: Conflagration
Chapter 9: Incendium
Chapter 10: Incineration
Hello, this is a tiny passion project I did. It is complete, and I will be posting two chapters a week! The total is around 37k words. I'll be cross-posting on AO3 and Wattpad. This is my first-ever COD fanfic, so please be gentle in my characterizations. I've never played the game, but i do extensive research. This Simon is very soft but also very obsessive so yeah. Smut is included in Chapter 10, but again, I don't write much smut, so be gentle.
You've always been the best of the best, but when you're placed as a god amongst titans…you're unsure of your footing in the world. A certain case will slowly expose you as the lines between who you and your Lieutenant are blurred.
or
You: a U.S Marine, are transferred to a new unit, the 141; and when a mission in a burlesque club takes stage, you may just have to step up to the mic...
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
Chapters:
Prologue: Calefaction
Chapter 1: Oxidation
Chapter 2: Amplification
Chapter 3: Ignition
Chapter 4: Miasma
Chapter 5: Endoergic
Chapter 6: Deflagration
Chapter 7: Pyrolysis
Chapter 8: Conflagration
Chapter 9: Incendium
Chapter 10: Incineration
Hello, this is a tiny passion project I did. It is complete, and I will be posting two chapters a week! The total is around 37k words. I'll be cross-posting on AO3 and Wattpad. This is my first-ever COD fanfic, so please be gentle in my characterizations. I've never played the game, but i do extensive research. This Simon is very soft but also very obsessive so yeah. Smut is included in Chapter 10, but again, I don't write much smut, so be gentle.
You've always been the best of the best, but when you're placed as a god amongst titans…you're unsure of your footing in the world. A certain case will slowly expose you as the lines between who you and your Lieutenant are blurred.
or
You: a U.S Marine, are transferred to a new unit, the 141; and when a mission in a burlesque club takes stage, you may just have to step up to the mic...
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
Chapters:
Prologue: Calefaction
Chapter 1: Oxidation
Chapter 2: Amplification
Chapter 3: Ignition
Chapter 4: Miasma
Chapter 5: Endoergic
Chapter 6: Deflagration
Chapter 7: Pyrolysis
Chapter 8: Conflagration
Chapter 9: Incendium
Chapter 10: Incineration
Hello, this is a tiny passion project I did. It is complete, and I will be posting two chapters a week! The total is around 37k words. I'll be cross-posting on AO3 and Wattpad. This is my first-ever COD fanfic, so please be gentle in my characterizations. I've never played the game, but i do extensive research. This Simon is very soft but also very obsessive so yeah. Smut is included in Chapter 10, but again, I don't write much smut, so be gentle.
I absolutely adored your last project! I love that even though we did get some spice on it, it wasn't the center of it all, I love how these two repressed humans got to meet the other and saw themselves on them somehow! I love the specific and professional terms you used, and I love the use of metaphors! And while I'd love to read more about Mozu's backstory, I find it so cool (and kinda sad too lol) how she is "made of water" like she is just existing for her work!! It's a very cool character you created!
I believe your writing is very very cool and unique, and it was such a pleasure to be able to read that masterpiece you created, and the end was just sooooo sweeeet!
I wish you the best in life, because you deserve it all. Take care of yourself, and enjoy life!
Thank you for sharing your project with the world, it was very amazing to read yesyes
Thank you so much! Im definitely not opposed to expanding on this universe, I loved the characters I got to create and I have so many more ideas!
Your kind words were so sweet, and I appreciate it so much! You have no idea <3
You've always been the best of the best, but when you're placed as a god amongst titans…you're unsure of your footing in the world. A certain case will slowly expose you as the lines between who you and your Lieutenant are blurred.
or
You: a U.S Marine, are transferred to a new unit, the 141; and when a mission in a burlesque club takes stage, you may just have to step up to the mic...
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
Chapters:
Prologue: Calefaction
Chapter 1: Oxidation
Chapter 2: Amplification
Chapter 3: Ignition
Chapter 4: Miasma
Chapter 5: Endoergic
Chapter 6: Deflagration
Chapter 7: Pyrolysis
Chapter 8: Conflagration
Chapter 9: Incendium
Chapter 10: Incineration
Hello, this is a tiny passion project I did. It is complete, and I will be posting two chapters a week! The total is around 37k words. I'll be cross-posting on AO3 and Wattpad. This is my first-ever COD fanfic, so please be gentle in my characterizations. I've never played the game, but i do extensive research. This Simon is very soft but also very obsessive so yeah. Smut is included in Chapter 10, but again, I don't write much smut, so be gentle.
You're burning; the emotion between you two has sparked into something that eats away at everything in its path. Which of you will blister under the heat?
°❀⋆.ೃ⋆˚🐝˖°ʚɞ°❀⋆.ೃ࿔
Burning. All-encompassing sprawling heat spreads throughout every portion of your body. This was new, this wasn’t the normal dessert dry rots, this was heavy; the crack of thunder rolling on rain dark clouds.
Hands are all over your body, touching every inch of your bare skin, over the bumps of scars and stretch marks, ravenously hungry, yet gentle. Rough hands contrasting the reverent nestle. The slow drag of a solid movement deep inside of you, the wet humidity of breath fanning across your pulse points. “Whose are you?”
The question strikes electrically across your senses as your hips buck needily into the languid thrusts, too little yet so much at the same time. You don’t speak, can’t move, the falling needy sounds that escape are embarrassing. It tangles from your breath, a bird falling from the nest, caught on the wind of his lips. The textured skin underneath your tongue is so soft yet tight… almost rigid. The movement doesn’t pick up like you need, only the leisurely, almost there rocking. “P-please…”
A sweet chuckle, so saccharine and impudent, “Please… who? Whose are you, Birdie?”
“Yours.” The words rush from your lips as you let out a desperate keen, pushing your hips down needily; only met with a clicking sound and the tightening of his grip on your hipbones.
“Ah—I want names, lovie. Whose are you?”
“Simon.”
The expanding encasement of oak and brown bark forests draws you in. Ensnaring you in diverging thickets of a heady concoction of desire and adoration. The way his body moves down you, the snap of his hips as he picks up. The pudge of thick layers of fat and muscle ripples against your thighs as the pace picks up. The pleasure shooting throughout your core. “Yeah, whose girl are you?”
“Simon…”
“Si—”
“—ozu? Mozu!” You snap awake, breathing heavily, the warmth of the dream slipping away like sand through a glass. You let out a wounded whimper as you explode upward, the feeling of pain spreading across your back. An almost itchy eruption of tingles across the skin. An arm wraps around your waist and swiftly—yet mindfully—pulls you against his chest. The remnants of forest fires expand in your nose as you’re tucked gently against his chest; the soft fabric of his worn shirt rubbing against your flushed nose. “Fuckin’ hell. You alright there? Fuckin’ nightmares.” He mutters, settling you as he tries to still you so you don’t injure yourself anymore.
Yeah. Nightmare.
Ignoring the slickness between your thighs, you nod, turning your face as you wince again. “Y-yeah, I just need my meds.” You grind out, voice like a garbage disposal. Simon moves, grabbing the pill bottles that were on the side of his desk before shoving them at you, along with a water bottle. You obediently take the pills, shivering lightly as the last of your fantasies fall apart.
And so do you.
What the hell were you thinking? Falling for your Lieutenant. You couldn’t do it, couldn’t be the woman who slept with her superiors, you wouldn’t.
Yet… it wasn’t just an unadorned attraction that lingered in your chest. No. You knew yourself too well for that. Sure, you had a one-night stand before, flings in high school, and the military. Nothing serious, though, no relationships and especially no dreams about calling yourself someone’s.
The way your chest beats, though, the rapid pace of blood swelling underneath your cheekbones…it hints at something much more dangerous than lustful temptations. Something you don’t want to put a name to.
You come back to your senses when you see an arm in front of your eyes, a big wine-dark splotch across his right forearm, underneath a particularly big stretch of burn scars. “An’ this one was from bloody fuckin’ pisspot.” The way the memory is spat brings you back, such veracity. “I think you would’ve liked how I killed ‘em, with his own bloody knife.”
“Atta-boy.”
You grin up at him, back in your mind, as that twisted smile looks back down at you. The echoes of words long past are not lost on him. “You' right?”
“Yeah.” You breathe, the full remnants gone, leaving behind shame. “Sorry to wake you.”
“S’fine, you called out to me, you know?”
You hope to whatever is or isn’t there that your underglow of blood is not visible as you turn your head. “Sorry.” You say instead, trying to steady your breath, eyes fluttering shut for a moment, focusing on the thudding of Simon’s heartbeat against your chest. You pull away, flustered as you catch what you're doing, practically basking in his warmth like a cat in a stray beam. “Sorry.”
The lame apology falls again, and he rolls his eyes. “Go get cleaned up.” There's this softness to his voice, one you can't linger on as you nod, turning tail and bolting towards the bathroom.
It takes you a while to shower, and you can't exactly wash yourself under the spray like you'd wanted to. The bandages needed to stay dry. So you sat on the edge of the tub, a dry brush in hand and a netsponge in the other, scraping and bristling away the dry skin and then washing it away soothingly with your soap. One thing you didn't skimp on when you weren't in the field is hygiene. When you're lost in a forest for three weeks, on your period, and without any access to running water…you depended on the moments you could be clean, to be clean.
Washing yourself methodically, you bite your lip, looking at yourself in the mirror. The bruising is starting to change hue, the healing stages beginning to bloom in ugly colors. The swelling is gone now, cuts mostly scabbed up, though you can tell the one split across your brow would definitely scar.
Another to add to the repertoire.
Shakily, you pull your bandages off, quiet whines of pain escaping like a wounded dog. It irked you that every movement felt like platelets shifting. Grinding up against one another, causing earthquakes to spread across your body. You turn around, facing the music for the first time as you see the zig-zags across the flesh of your back; the gashes where the buckle had been, and bruised imprints of it litter your skin. It's a mess, it's disgusting, a minced meat of thick stitches and medical glue. You shake your head, moving to put the balm on when you pause, stopping and staring at yourself.
You hadn't needed to do this on your own yet.
Yeah, the nurses told you how and showed you, but that was so you could demonstrate it for someone. Apparently, you're supposedly not going to be able to reach the spots on your own. You hate that she was right, so you stare at yourself for so long that you drift—escaping back into the depths of your mind.
“A ndind ailsiu. Cáinté im gaí cainte gaithe. Am.” You snap your eyes back, the sound punching out of you as you come back to your body. Unsure of what spurred your sudden grounding for a moment, you pause. Then the knocking starts again. “Mozu? You ‘right in there?”
There’s a layer of concern in his voice, and you bite back a chattering hiss. “Fine.”
“You need help?”
“No.”
“...”
“Yes.”
You slowly unlock the door after you settle a towel around your chest, covering yourself, mindful of the stitches in the back. It wasn’t as if Simon hadn’t seen you when you’d been changing before, in the field, but then again—he was never really looking then. Here it feels… different, vulnerable. Here, you really aren’t Mozu anymore. You turn away from his eyes, from the sweet aurora-dipped concern on his face. The dawns rose on his jagged cheekbones and cast shades of pink across his lips, pulling you into them. You wanted to kiss the mottled hues so badly, taste the dew over oak forests. You pull into yourself, so aware of what you look like. Wounded, desolate, practically threadbare. Simon doesn’t shy away from the wounds; he only gets a darkness that travels across the deep browns of his irises. It’s gone before you can comment; you don’t know what you’d say if you did. All words seem lost on you as Simon corrals you closer, a large hand spanning the expanse of your back, ghosting up the back of it. You’re sure he can feel the heat radiating from your wounds.
“Let me wash my hands.” He mutters quickly, yet surgically cleansing his hands, you can't help yourself as you peek at them through the corner of your lashes. Drawn to the twist of long, strong fingers lathering themselves, rolling around his palms. You almost shiver as you remember the singing phantom remnants of your dream spike in your mind.
Whose girl are you?”
Fuck.
You’re rounded by a quirk of Simon’s brow, an amused look on his face—almost knowing. You dart away again, nudging the ointment to him, “This is the healing shit.”
“Bloody fuckin’ hell, you got yourself into a right mess, huh, Birdie?” A superbot of levin popping across your skin in goosebumps as you hear the nickname, a hushed sound punches out of you. Simon looks at you nervously, hand pausing, scanning you for signs of discomfort before the soothing balm spreads across your back. You almost collapse forward with a coo at the cooling effect it has. Laughter falls from Simon’s mouth as the brow moves back upwards. “Tha’ good, yeah?”
You nod absently as he keeps spreading it across your back. “Thank you.” You say suddenly, and when Simon goes to brush you off, you shake your head. “No. You’re dressing my wounds, housing me, and… and you found me…” You can’t help the slight break in your voice as you remember the thwip of leather through stale earth-tainted air. “You found me.”
“I’ll always find you.”
You tell me you need me, I ask you why
A startled shake of your head comes out as you scoff slightly. “Why? I’m not much to find there, Liet—”
“Simon.” He snaps, and you shut your mouth in response. “And you don ' say that shite. Not when you disappeared without saying anything. Put the mission over your life.”
“That’s what we’re trained to do, Simon.” You sigh, shaking your head. “I don’t know why this suddenly matters to you.”
He makes an angry sound, one that resembles a bear or wolf more than a man. “It always mattered.”
It’s your turn to be mad, your turn to turn petulant as you shake your head. “You barely know me.”
“I know enough.” The dry answer settles across you like a brand. When you don’t comment, he continues his movements, finishing spreading the balm and helping you bandage the wounds. “I know the parts of you that slipped through Poppy, the covert glimpses behind Mozu, I know that you are…” He stops himself, seeming at a loss for words.
“What?”
You ask, hushes, you’re looking at him now, in the tight space of his bathroom, the feeling of him so close to you. “My story.”
The way he puts it, as if it were simply that, it disorients you completely. You shake your head, the closeness becoming suffocating, losing yourself in the thickets. You can’t do this, can’t let yourself do this, but you’re moving, and you’re surging and suddenly…
You kiss me so sweetly, it gets me high
Your lips touch, your dream was right, you run your tongue across his lips with need as he takes you in his mouth deeper, carefully pulling you closer to his body, settling you against his thigh as he inflames the kiss. You’re falling, you’re crashing, you’re burning, and every part of you is help in the inky space of him.
The sunlight through my window pane illuminates your face
“Simon.” You gasp against his lips, and he nods, the sweet chaste touch plundering into a passionate gnash of teeth.
“What do you need, Love?”
I need you closer and you’re not even an inch away…
“I just need you.” You whisper.
What you want is what I want and I can't seem to get enough
“You have me.” He promises, it’s so immediate, so ready, like a devotional martyrdom in the presence of everything that is you. You don’t know why, but you get drunk off the power; it’s not enthrallment, it’s… subjugation.
It makes me sweat…you're in my head…It turns me red with love
Everything is so intense, you’re breathing the same air, identical gasps and touches. “Why me? Why now?”
"It's always been you.” He states, “I don’t show my face to just anyone, Lovie.” Simon shrugs as he pulls back to just watch you through hooded eyes. “As for why now… You threw yourself into another man’s arms and got yourself captured by the enemy–”
“—nd stopped the terrorist attack.”
You chime up at him, and the sweet stillness of his gaze doesn’t waver. “And stopped the terrorist attack.” He agrees, but then the amusement falls to a serious leer. “You scared me. I didn’t know I could still feel scared.” He puts it purely, unrestrained, into the air, as if it wasn’t terrifying the shit out of him to say.
It felt even more scary to hear.
“Simon—”
“I’m not saying you have to stay.” The way he phrases it is as if he is sure that you wouldn’t. “But just… don’t lie to me and say you feel nothing.”
I need you…I need you…I need you close
“I do but... who are you falling for Lietenuant? Your soldier? Poppy—”
“You. Not Mozu, not Nadzeya. You. Believe me when I say, I love you.”
Promise me you'll never let it go
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
Oh honey, it haunts me to see you go
You freeze in his arms, still in the bathroom, covered only in bandages and a towel, so small against him. A commensal almost position as he nurtures you through the gravity of the revelation. In this moment, he didn't know whose heart beat faster—his or yours.
I feel your hands on me when I’m alone
You finally meet his eyes with a look of timid want.
When you come home, you call my name
“Simon.”
Believe me when I say
“I…”
Tomorrow I will love you more than I did yesterday
“I can’t do this if it’s a one-off—I won’t… won’t become that person, don’t ever make me that person.” You put your boundaries first, a line in the sand, a final strand between you and temptation.
What you want is what I want and I can't seem to get enough
“I will never make you that person, Birdie.” He takes his hand in yours, running it up to touch the pounding stuttering of his chest. Your eyes widen, and he tries not to focus on the way your hand feels so right in his. “This is real. I don’t want you. I need you.”
It makes me sweat
With a sudden grip, you grab a fistful of his shirt and yank him back down on your lips with voracious demand. Your lips are petal soft against him, the slight scabbing of the cut reminding him to be gentle as you try to climb his body like a little minx.
You're in my head
He had heard you this morning, seen the flush of your face, the can’t of need on your voice; he hadn’t placed it then, but seeing you in an almost identical state now, he realizes why you had seemed so off this morning. It hadn’t been a nightmare then.
It turns me red with love
“You dreamin’ about me this morning, Lovie?” A mortified look passes over your face, and he latches onto it with an insistence that astounds even him. He wants to commit the look of sheepish desire and thinly veiled shameful arousal. As if you were willing yourself not to get wet. He clicks his tongue softly, corralling you closer as he moves you both toward the bedroom. “What did your pretty little mind make up to get you so worked up, hmm?”
I need you
You both settle on the bed, he gently lays you across his sheets—already committing to getting softer ones for your skin—mindful of your bandages. “We go as far as you wish. We stop any time. Any flinch.” His words leave no space for disapproval, yet all the room at the same time.
I need you
“I need you.” You echo his earlier words, the cant in your voice unmistakable.
He nods, once, and then again, as if not believing it, and he doesn’t know if he does. You are here, underneath him, the flames licking up his arms as every touch becomes incendiary. He slowly removes your sleep shorts—the tantalizingly loose oversized things that hang off of you like a damn drape. Framing your hipbones and thighs. He had to excuse himself to the shower when he’d seen you come out that night. You’d never wear such things in Russia, always too cold. It was different from the lingerie you wore in the burlesque shows. This was easy, it was intimate, it was real, and most importantly.
It was his.
I need you close
He looks at you gently, one of admiration as you nod your hurried permissions, he slips the shorts and panties off…and…
Promise me you'll never let it
He lets out an audible groan. The sight of it was enough to make the half-hard mast of his cock expand. “Look at how wet she is, all fo’ me.” He murmurs, tilting his head in a way that makes you squirm. It was as if he was taking in every aspect of you before he moved, the twisted bridge of his nose skimming your clit as his breath fans over your pussy. You let out a gasp, and Simon has to bite back another sound. “I’m gonna take care of her, alright? Gonna take care of both of ya.”
With that promise, the pause between you is enough for you to voice any disapproval, he dives into the deep pomegranate musk, and promptly loses himself in the forbidden bloom.
Promise me you'll never let it—
Simon grunted as his lips passed over your folds, his eyes rolling with a groan as he lapped at your sweet slit. "You taste like fuckin' 'eaven, you know that love?
You squeak, just so slightly, enough for him to continue with an enthused response. Your hips shift as you shyly try to retreat, but a hand wraps up under your thighs and up to your hips, large palms grasping you back down on his lips. "Don't run from me, sweetheart, don't hide this pretty pussy from me. Look at 'er cryin' all fo’ me, yeah?”
He can’t help it, the taste, the way you writhe just so slightly, the whine of your tone in the back of your throat; it chimed like church bells. It was beautiful, it was heavenly, it was salvation.
The patheticness of it all was that he could append hours like this, between your thighs as your hand unsurely pet through the slight curls of his hair, grasping and pulling when he’d suck your clit into his mouth or dip his tongue past your entrance to dive into your slick. “There, look at this perfect little cunt, hmm?” Your eyelashes flutter at him; it's addictive. The cute little roll of your dilated eyes and curl of your toes as his finger comes up to slowly circle the ring of muscles at your entrance. Teasing it slightly with the pad of his finger.
You look beautiful, too beautiful to be under a sinner like him. He felt like he was tainting the light just by touching you. Yet… when his finger slips inside, and your voice climbs to a strangled chime… he’s decided then and there damnation is fine if he’d gotten a taste of this.
Funny, he never understood why Adam ate that damn apple.
There's a ringing clarity that comes in the waves of your staggered, breathy moans as you try your best to not fuck yourself on his finger. “Shh…shhh… gonna take care of her, yeah? Gonna take care of my pussy.” He coos as he lazily pumps his finger in and out of your channel, the warmth already hugging him like a vice.
Unable to stop it, a loud moan spilling from you, “S-Simon!”
His heart practically jumpstarts at his name. Bringing him back to reality, away from the hypnotizing nectar of your mound. “That’s it, Lovie, say my name.” He adds another finger, pushing it in, and just watching as your eyes slightly cross from the girth. “Fuck you’re so tight on my fingers.” You huff, pulling his mouth toward your pussy impatiently. Simon knows you’re wanting—needing, and it drives him rabid.
“Please, I need— need—”
A tsk, “I know…open up f’me Birdie, come on, spread those wings, show me.” He hums as he nuzzles your thighs further apart by the large width of his shoulders. Simon laps up the glistening witness that drips on the sides of your thighs before delving back into your clit and resuming the languid pumps. “You’re gonna cum for me just like this, aren’t you, Lovie? Gonna clench down so prettily on my fingers.”
“I…oh, please, Si–faster I just, please…”
You squeal slightly as his fingers shove in and out, the pace picking up as he fucks them in and out of you. Your eyes roll as you pussy sucks his digits in. “Greedy little pussy, she needs it, huh, needs to cum?” Your arousal paints his face as he delves back onto your clot, his fingers not slowing as they curl up into that spongy spot. “Right there, huh, sweetheart?”
“Yes! Oh, f-fuck, Si! Please baby, I just–”
Baby.
It reverberates in his ears as his eyes white out with the burning need. Drunk on you, all of you, spurring him off of cliffs he’d never thought he’d find himself on. You chirr and whimper, consuming him as he flicks your clit with his tongue. “C’mon, birdie, cum f’me.”
You gasp, your thighs quaking as it shoots through you, erupting across your skin. You moan loudly, eyes rolling as your hips jerk into his mouth. Simon groans, soothing you through your orgasm; massaging out the soft juts of your hips as you twitch. “There you go, there you are, good girl.”
He soothes, coming back up, kissing up your body and over your bandages, finding your pulse point in the crook of your neck. Huffing the tart berry-like sweat that pooled there.
You pull him upwards, gravitating him toward your lips as you yank him in. Finding one another in the slow drag of lips and the slight slick of saliva. You babble out quiet whimpers as if stabilizing yourself through breaths.
You look down at him, toward his erection, but he stops you. “Not tonight—I… not tonight.” He murmurs, looking at you softly. “I want you, but I need you healed for that.” There was a tinge of entertainment in his words. You pout but ultimately nod as he pulls you inward, the feeling of your arcs locking onto one another staining him.
You were the sun, you were his light, you were the oxygen, fuel, and spark that lit his life. “I love you.” You murmur as he pulls your dazed, hazy form towards him, gently.
“I love you.”
—Promise me you'll never let it go
꒷꒦ꙮ꒷꒦
All doone guys! I hope you enjoyed, and thank you for the journey <3
You're finally back home, but there's a gaping hole in your since you’ve come back. Your L.T.
°❀⋆.ೃ⋆˚🐝˖°ʚɞ°❀⋆.ೃ࿔
You wake to the scent of a sterile room.
It’s not something you’re used to. Medical tents always smelt like sweat and copper, the sharp acrid tang of antiseptic. Though it was never completely pristine, not like a civilian ER. No, you opened your eyes to a hospital room, not just any, you recognized the feeling of the cot beneath you, and you almost groaned at the realization.
You were in the damn infirmary.
Several shuffles follow at the sound of your pained grunt, and you flicker to see Johnny and Gaz both sitting by your bedside. Your eyes crinkle against the light with a low moan; instantly, they’re dimmed. Cap was by the door, seeming to have just come in when he saw you squint against the light. “You got a concussion there, Sergeant.” You hear your Cap grumble at you, though his concern is thinly veiled. “Few broken ribs, your back’s gonna need some healing up.”
“They care about HIPAA here?” You mutter out, Gaz snorting at you as Johnny smiles so hard his cheeks crinkle.
You’re ultimately ignored. “You’re gonna be on med leave—three months.” Your face twists at that, nodding as you look away at his words. Both the boys are watching you closely; an air of nervousness around them as they take you in. What a sight you must make. You don’t even bother thinking about what you look like.
They’re shooed out of the room when the doctor comes in to check on you. She’s kind, clinical, nice in all the right places, but stern in others. No heavy duty, no agitating wounds, apply cream; lah-deh-dah. You were bed-bound for a week after that, made to stay in the infirmary with shitty food, prodding, and the constant beeping of machines. Yet, they wanted to keep an eye on both your ribs and the lashes on your back. Waiting until the risk of infection window had drawn to a minimum for release.
In that time, each of the men on your team visits—Captain brings paperwork and stern talking to’s. Rough, ‘You scared us, Kids, ' and ‘Good job' with a clasp to your shoulder, carefully. Gaz reaches out, a brotherly, ‘Hey, pretty girl,’ with comforting gifts like clothes from your bunk or a new pillow that focuses on your hips and relieves pressure on your back. Johnny brought jokes and chatter, bright and lemon scented—it was soothing. A warm, comforting cloak that slowly enveloped you, chasing away the memories of being under Mikhail, the splatter of Isaak’s blood. The promise of hellfire.
Yet…there’s a gaping hole.
Simon.
Ghost.
Lieutenant.
He never shows, and what should you expect? You’d completely broken down on him, forced him to bare himself to you in a way that was the most intimate for him, just to soothe away dangerous things that weren’t there. He’d saved you from your own hubris; he was the aching waves that slowly alleviated the hot, waxed blisters across your skin. Crying out in victory as his ripples cradled you into the depths of his ocean.
Yet… there was something so beautiful about him, your Lieutenant. The way his face was mangled with scars looked less like torn pieces and more like stained glass. A meld of colors meshing into the oriana, and you chased it. The beauty of a captivating nebula stretching across the pitch-black skies of that basement.
You’d seen yourself in the mirror by the time you’re released. Your eyes had traced the mottled darkness blooming across your temple and cheekbones. Become familiar with the gaping gashes in the tendrils of derma that had been sewn and glued shut. The way your eyes shakily dart to exits as if waiting for him to come back.
You’re pathetic.
Maybe that’s why you don’t tell anyone when you’re being let out of the hospital. Only pack your shit and drag your ruck on your arm back to your barracks.
The 141 had a specific area, not split by gender like some others were, no. It was just a simple set of quarters that lined the hallways with a barren sitting room. You’re walking through it, silently, when you hear a voice settle across the room.
“What are you doin’?” The gruff Manchester accent spills over you, and your eyes dart to the corner of the kitchenette, seeing Ghost sitting in the gloom. Illuminated only by the dingy light above the stove, he has a tea in his hands. It’s not particularly dark. Only the early flicks of morning, the sun not breaking above the horizon yet. You’d thought the 141 would be snapping at a newest group of recruits awake by now, or in the office. Yet here was your Lieutenant, causally leaned against the counter, sipping from a mug far too small in his hand.
You stall, unable to move as you drop your ruck, eyes scanning over the masked face, his balaclava back on. The phantoms of his cheekbones and twisted smile imprint on your brain. When he continues to stare at you, obviously awaiting your answer, you finally grip your voice from the lowest bellows of your voicebox. “Got released.” Your words sound weak even in your own ears.
“You’re on leave for three months. Go home, Sergeant.” There’s a moment where you flounder, you hadn’t even thought you couldn't stay on base. Ghost seems to catch onto your look of a conundrum because his interest quirks. “What?”
You’re immediately embarrassed, and you don’t want to admit anything to the man who has already given you so much. “Nothing.” You blurt, before bending down to grab your ruck, ignore the stretch of your back, and grimace on your face. Your mind runs a mile a minute trying to figure out how much a hotel room would cost for three months when—
A hand darts out to grab it. You blink, surprised at how fast Ghost had moved. “Spit it out, Sergeant.”
“I’m not exactly a citizen, Lieutenant.” You state, and when you only get a blank look, you sigh. “I don’t have a UK citizenship, can’t rent an apartment if I don’t have that shit and fake documents.” You mutter darkly, not bothering to look up at the rigid form of the man in front of you. “I don’t exist.”
“What do you do for leave?” He asked abruptly, and you shrugged.
“Only had one or two—I stay on base.”
“What about your shite?”
“My shit?”
“Yeah, your fuckin’ clothes and shite.”
You give him a deadpan stare and gesture to your room and to your ruck. “That’s all I got, L.T. Look, there’s no dignified transfer for someone like me; only a black body bag with no tags.” The lament rests on the silence between you two, a fragile thing fractured by Ghost.
“That all you need?” He juts his chin at your bag. You tilt your head and nod once. He starts moving then, slinging your bag over his shoulder. Moving you, crowding you towards the door and away from your much-needed bed.
“What? What’s happening?” You’re not answered, just corralled to a large black truck with black-tinted windows. “This is feeling more and more like a kidnapping.” You mutter as he helps you inside, minding the bruising across your side and your ribs.
“Just sit and shut it.”
You do so, not speaking as you’re driven to a new location, your eyes growing heavier and heavier by the second. Unable to stop it, the warmth of the cabin mixing with the heavy scent of burning oak and stale cigarettes lulls you to sleep.
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
Ghost doesn’t know how he got into this situation.
Well, he did, when you slunked into the barracks, your shoulders drawn up to your ears, eyes flickering to every corner of the room before landing on him…his resolve had broken. He’d been avoiding you since he’d gotten back to base. Before, he was like a ravaged dog protecting his pack, resource guarding, snapping his jaws at any of the men coming close to you. It wasn’t until Price had arrived that he’d let anyone touch you.
You looked so small in his hands, like a songbird with its wings shattered. You were limp on the floor, splatter crimson pooling down your back and dripping onto the cement below. Your face was swollen, the angry coloring already beginning to bloom underneath your skin. You looked…extripated; frenzied as you had screamed and begged him not to touch you. Only calming when he’d taken his mask off.
He cradled you as you’d fragmented, each part of you slowly exposing itself to his eager eyes. It was astounding, visible even during the brightest of days; casting shadows across his planet, warming him as you denuded your barest self.
So he’s held you, like the cosmos enfolded the stars and suns, he kept you close to his chest, whispering soothing words of new scars until you’d slowly devolved into nothingness.
Yet… that wasn't what stopped him from seeing you. No, it was the way you looked at him when he'd torn his mask off.
How long had it been? Since someone had seen the barren flesh of his face? Ghost didn't remember, nor care at this point, because when your eyes caught his…you burst. It was as if all the pressure, the fight, the implosions paused, and a sense of… peace fell over your expression. Then you'd collapsed into an unconscious slumber, and his panic arose.
No one had ever looked at him like that, never seen him so deeply.
It was intoxicating.
Your eyes could start a fire
So, he stayed away, knowing that the burning of your gaze would slowly lick up his reservations and burn away his moralities. That was when he got a taste of the irradiance radiating from your center; he would never be able to return to the dimout. It wasn’t clamor, it was deliverance.
Even here among the clouds
Yet, you came back, he’d tried to scape you…not very hard though. He could have stayed silent and let you walk past, but there was something… something about that smoldering that made him speak. It wasn’t a choice, it was a demand. The inability to stop the confession of a man to his god.
Light up the blue sky
There was no time anymore, just before you and after you. It used to be before Ghost and after Ghost—yet that doesn’t matter anymore. None of it matters. Only the fact that there had been a sun in his orbit now, a combusting ball of gas that nurtured his being simply by existing. There was darkness, and then there was you.
You innocent creature
It was weird, seeing you so relaxed, even seeing you sleep in the field, and the missions were nothing like this. You seemed…at ease. There was no crease in the space between your eyebrows, no tension in your jaw, just simple, blissful sleep. He’s sure some part of that is aided by the pain killers and exhaustion, but he’d seen the way your body had seemed to melt a moment when you’d breathed in.
If you could set me on fire
Simon got to his flat, his flat, thanking a deep part of himself that he was a religiously clean person due to the military. He pulled the truck to a stop, eyes roving your sleeping form, debating. He wants to tuck you into his chest, running his fingers across the nape of your neck as you brand a spot for yourself in his arms."Sergeant." He states instead, not even having to say it again, when your eyes snap open, alert and panicked. “Hey–it’s me. We’re here?”
“Your apartment?” You mumble, hands rubbing at the sleep in your eyes.
“My flat.” You mouth his words back at him snootily as you go to open the door; it locks immediately, and you turn back toward Ghost with a raised brow. “Say it. My flat.”
You stare at him blankly, but he looks dead serious, so you let out a long sigh. Looking up between your lashes as you lie on an overly saccharine Birmingham accent. “We made it to your flat, Lieutenant?”
“Fuckin’ hell.” He mutters, the amusement in his voice too blatant to mask as your fingers unlock the little knob on the door and make your slow and careful escape (damn those back stitches). “Be fuckin’ careful, alright? Don’t need to fix you up again.”
He swears he sees you bite your tongue as if stopping it from poking out between your lips as you skip out the door. Shaking his head at the smile fighting his cheeks, he grabs his keys and both bags as he leads you into the building. It was a small thing, just a one-bedroom flat in a blockhouse. When you step in, you see his barren living room, nothing bleak, just… unlived. No art on the walls, no pictures or unnecessary furniture. He had furniture, of course, a solid black plush leather couch that reclined on the ends, a coffee table, and a television (he watched the news, and the games, that was it—no Johnny, he did not watch soaps).
You walked in, the tinge of tobacco staining the back of the air, not like he smoked in the house; he smoked off the balcony attached to the main room. Your eyes met his softly, as if you knew how hard this was for him, for him to let you in.
Even though i'm made of water
Yet you stood there, with those damn eyes of yours, only patiently looking at him as if he were the world. He ushered you inside, locking the four locks on the door and shoving off his boots. You follow suit, moving to take off your combats with a flinch as you reach for the laces. Ghost moves suddenly, startling the both of you as his body kneels; coming to his knees before you like a devotee at the altar of his goddess. He unlaces them, methodically pulling the expertly tied knots, unrounding them from the ankle and lifting them off your feet. The entire movement is tranquil, every touch so clement, an emollient of veneration.
We could set the beauty free
You look down at him between your lashes, and abruptly, he is shot into fantasies of those heavy lids looking down at him for other reasons. Rapidly, he’s seeing you splayed across his bed like a sunbeam, your voice carrying sweet laments as he devours you whole.
And burn away eternally
Fuckin’ Hell. He doesn’t know how he’s going to make it through three months of this.
Your eyes move around your Lieutenant like a rabbit scatters across barren snow, ducking and hiding from a predator’s gaze. You almost dance around his sight as he stands before you, your eyes trailing his body as he stands, so close to the sweet pomegranate redolence. Maybe too close, it clouds his nose, invading him, sending venom through his veins, and solidifying his blood into a mushy heap. It was ridiculous. You shouldn’t be able to undo him with a simple look and hitch of your breath, yet here he was a supplicant. “There.” He mutters after a moment, not letting the live coil of emotion emanate between the two of you.
There’s this dazedness to you as you finally lock onto him. Traveling, up, up, up, to meet his timbered stare. “Thanks.” You murmur, just as softly, letting the electricity spark. You continue your observations as he breaks away, nodding toward the rest of the flat. “Kitchen, bathroom, bedroom. You sleep there.” The tone leaves little space for argument, but what can you say? Apparently, you squeeze through the gaps like a damn cat, because you’re hissing and spitting at him within seconds.
“I’m not taking your bed.” You insist.
“Not a question, Sergeant. You’re healin’, you can’t take the couch.” As he goes to move on, he’s surprised by the defiance flaring up like a backdraft as you round on him.
“No. You don’t get to Sergeant me. Not me. Not here. Not…not after that.” You whisper, eyes flickering to his lips and then his eyes. “We shared once, we can do it again.”
Yes, because that’s what he needed, the image of you fanned out amongst his black sheets, in his bed, in his room.
The following swoop of his stomach and saliva pooing is practically Pavlovian.
“Fine.” He forces out instead; it’s guttural and ripped from him by force. Yet he tries not to care, simply nods as he grabs your ruck and enters his room, it’s barren here too, a bed, a single side table. He places your items at the foot and nods towards you. “You can change.”
There’s a wince in your step as you nod, moving toward the clothing. He hesitates, but ultimately heads towards the door. “Uhm… Ghost—”
“Simon.” Your face is blank again, and he doesn’t hold back on the eyeroll this time. “No Sergeant, no Lieutenant, no Ghost.”
“No Ghost.” You echo, almost a coo, the way it falls like sin from your lips. “Simon.” The goosebumps spread across his arms and settled throughout his body with a muffled shiver. “Then…you can, you can take off the mask, you know? If it’s just… me and Simon.”
Your exchange is heavy, scented with something new and fresh, a spring blooming through the bitter ends of winter. Flowers blossom under dew-frost blankets as he slowly reaches for the edges of the balaclava, pulling it above his head, the cool air hitting the ugly twist of his nose—broken too many times.”Just you an’ me.” He agrees through chapped lips. A final nod, your eyes cradling the mess of defects and marks with ease, the soothing balm of your stare so strange compared to the heat behind it. A swailing blaze that cuts through his coppice of torment. Utter purgation.
The fizzling is back, that same electricity, the swaying of Simon being pulled by your gravity, inching ever so closely to inferno. Shaking, he turns his head, not used to being so exposed in the face. Yet, there was a part of you that... that he just needed to expose himself to. Your advertence became a sine qua non, and he doesn’t think he can go back to the way it was before.
Before you.
After you.
The simplicity of being in your orbit would have to be enough for him.
꒷꒦ꙮ꒷꒦
Sorry for the lateness, my life has been crazzzy! I got a promotion and now I'm working about 50/60 hours a week.
Hi guys, soso sorry, the chapters are going to be a little late, but ill release both of them at the same time as an apology.I got a promotion managing a store! (Im 22) But ive also worked 50 hours last week and I have yet to have a day off! Anywho, BiR finale will be out either today or later this week.
hiiiiiiiiii i just binge read all of Bound in Rouge and . i'm obsessed. i need BiR Simon so bad sobbing. theres just so so so much i love- the original storyline, the unique ocs, the depth you've given to Mozu and Ghost, the care you take in portraying such atrocities and evils in the world. i hope you know i will be playing with Mozu and Ghost in my brain like little dolls now <3
I dont even know how to respond to this, im absolutely sobbing. Tysm for the love. Here's a picture of my puppies snuggling as a show of my appreciation
You've always been the best of the best, but when you're placed as a god amongst titans…you're unsure of your footing in the world. A certain case will slowly expose you as the lines between who you and your Lieutenant are blurred.
or
You: a U.S Marine, are transferred to a new unit, the 141; and when a mission in a burlesque club takes stage, you may just have to step up to the mic…
°❀⋆.ೃ⋆˚🐝˖°ʚɞ°❀⋆.ೃ࿔
Sprawling and all encompassing, heat was no stranger to you; It consumed you under layers of sand and nyco—splattering across your skin like molten waves, causing sweat to collect down at the base of your neck. It pools there a moment, before slinking into the scarf you wore wrapped underneath your combat helmet and across your lower face. The desert goes on for miles outside the tent, the grains like the endless rise of the ocean; the rolling tides of fever beckoning you like a siren.
You did not heed the calls today.
It was dingy in this little outcrop, a few klicks from anything that resembled civilization. The only thing out here was the quiet hum of generators and the slight raucous of the teams outside. Finally eating no doubt, your day a job well done.
The warmth of the dessert is nothing like the scalding dousing of crimson you’d just come from. The murky tans and browns of your uniform adorned with rusty dried red and mud. Yanking off your helmet, you march, shoulders tight as your face hits the mirror, staring at yourself, you take a deep breath.
The color in your eyes darkens on that last statement.
You are here, you are alive, and you are yourself.
No one can take that from you.
Settling your shoulders, you take a deep breath, the lingering smells of copper and sulphur slinking to the folds of your mind as you center yourself.
The mission was a success, no friendly casualties, no injuries.
The terrorist cell you’d been pursuing the past few months had been operating outside of Yusufiyah. The city was a mess of blood by the time the task force had been done with it; the cell was taken down, and done so quickly.
It had still been months of infiltrating the small villages on the edges of the city, slowly pushing herself amongst the women, gaining their trust, listening, and coaxing information. This, with a combination of checkpoints, patrols, and controlled take-downs, had finally given way to you finding your golden ticket.
The wife of an insurgent had confided in you, and with your surveillance, you had been able to pin down an attack that had been planned for the power plant supplying a third of the country's power.
After that, you and your team had finally been able to ambush the section and secure the munitions.
Pulling off your jacket, you settle by the small chair and plastic desk, a small, beat-up brick of a laptop. Sitting in the tan shirt, you breathe, trying and fighting the tightness in your chest. Staring at the black screen. You have no one to call, not anymore.
Your fingers drum against the white material, clicking as the dirt and blood dried under the beds of your nails, smudging the perfect color. The clink of your dog tags is the only other sound aside from your tapping.
The sound of boots stomping through sand wakes you from your mind. It’s loud, purposeful; a ganter of someone in charge, someone composed. Stiffening, your eyes dart toward your service weapon before you hear the familiar baritone of your Lieutenant.
Scrambling, you immediately place your jacket back on, calling him to enter as you snap to attention. “At ease, Sergeant.” He mutters, dark grey eyes on you as your body forcibly melds itself into a relaxed position. Feet still squared, shoulders tight and ready, but hand relaxed and clapped together below your back. “You did good out there, handled your own, got some good information.” The words were stiff, but true. It wasn’t often your gruff lieutenant spilled praises, especially not to you.
You nod, a quiet, ‘Thank you, Sir.’ spilling from your lips as he nodes.
There’s a look in his eyes before it dissipates, flickering to the tent flap and then back to you. “Captain Quý called.” Your arms immediately draw up at the words, your commanding officer called, about you, to your Lieutenant. Your eyes can not help but snap to his, in surprise, before falling back to his boots forcibly.
“Have I done something wrong Sir?”
“On the contrary. They’re calling for your evac, whoever it is you impressed is pulling you out.”
Your entire body freezes, locking up, “Evac, Sir?”
The perfect press of his uniform—even out here amongst the deserts and sweat—flexes with his body as he turns to look around, before leveling you with one of the most genuine looks you’d ever seen out of your superior officer.
The steel hulls of his gaze seemed to lessen as he took your bewilderment. You’d been with this unit since you’d finished your previous mission and training after being recruited a year or two out of AIT and MARSOC.
A&S and ITC were hell, but you came out on the other end, and immediately deployed as a Critical Skills Operator. “You’re being called in, TS/SCI, priority, Alpha.”
You try desperately to gather your thoughts. Top secret clearance? High priority? You look at him uneasily as he juts his chin toward your bags. “Pack ‘em up, you leave the sandbox at 0200.”
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
Back home, everything was always drawn under a low cast of dreary gray. The skies looked like the top of a cage, clouds locking the land beneath it into an inexorable pressure. The smog clung to the air, every breath the backwash of acridic chlorine, every step on an upturned bit of pavement.
“The transition between Manchester and death would be unnoticeable…”
Ghost agrees, he’s never found any comfort in the never-ending overcast, didn’t let his haunches fall to the familiar lull of mist patting softly at the windows throughout base.
There was no color in England. From the moment he was born, life had been grey-scale. His father vivid blacks and intense shadow, mother a blinding white with a twist of greys painting him and his brother.
A balance, a scale, waiting to tip into one direction.
Incandescence vs the void.
On days like this, days that remind the quiet in him of the times of before, before the mask, he gets more… intense. Bloody broody—MacTavish would call it.
It’s easier to pretend in the corners of his mind that the past never existed when the sun shone, but in the murky fogs of rain, he can’t seem to slip from the clutches of Simon.
Grunting, he takes a sip of his tea, eyes on Johnny, who had been crowing to Gaz for the better part of twenty minutes on a bird he’d seen.
No. Not a woman. A bird.
“Ah dinnae ken what kind of thing it was, but it was vicious.” Soap’s eyes were blown wide with the exclamation. “Just a wee brown thing, but fast, took the other bird an just ‘wham!’ the fucker was on a spike.”
Gaz’s eyes roll, “So the bird stuck another bird to a branch?” His tone was tired, eyes rolling as he took a look at the Sergeant.
“Nah, it was planned, knew what it was doing–”
His voice is cut off by Captain Price stepping in the room, eyes dragging over his men. “Heli Deck, now.”
All of them move, food and drink abandoned as they all make their way to the front, all listening intently to him as he walks. “We’ve got an incoming transplant.” The man says bluntly, everyone looking at him with thinly veiled surprise… even behind Ghost’s mask, he was sure that he could feel the deep browns pinning him in place.
“A transplant?” Gaz asked in surprise, his eyes flickering between his two other teammates before returning to his Captain. “What kind of transplant?”
Captain Price grumbles, mustache drawing downward in a scowl. “Got the call in last night, Laswell pulled strings to get ‘er yanked from duty.”
Ghost can’t help but feel a bit put off by that, no talk from Laswell since the last mission and all of a sudden they were getting an overnight transfer?
Hmpf.
They stepped out, eyes on the horizon as they awaited the familiar chopping of blades cutting through air. “Do we know anythin’ about ‘em?” He can’t help but ask as they wait.
“American, mid-twenties, just promoted to Staff Sergeant—”
“American?”
“MacTavish.” Ghost warns, lowly, getting an innocent and toothy leer from said man.
Their captain keeps speaking. “She just took down one of the largest terrorist cells in Iraq.” All men blanch for a moment, before he continues, “Marines, some special ops task force. They attach ‘em to infantry units. Call ‘em the Sparrowhawks.”
“A right jar head then?” Soap laughs when Gaz only shakes his head with slight bewilderment.
Their boots scrape against the tarmac as they wait, the sun barely pulling above the clouds, casting the entire area in a lazy yellowey luster. “Nah, apparently she’s part of the first females to make it through Raider training.”
Gaz looks over at his captain with a surprised balk, he’d spent the longest time working with Americans. Especially Marines, seeing as he’d had his own set of Gold Parachute Wings.
The thought lingered among them, a soft musing of what kind of hardened soldier would step out of the chopper as it made its way down, the breeze of the swooping rotary wings sweeping through them, snapping back the rim of Price’s boonie hat.
It lands, and they all wait as the door rolls back with a loud snap. Two escorts pop out, M14s strapped to their chest as their eyes drag over the area. The American flag patches a sore thumb amongst the members of the SAS. One of them steps forward, a western-southern twang in his voice as he regards him. “You Price?”
Everyone stiffens as he regards the Captain. “That I am.”
Careful and piercing eyes stare through him he nods before clicking on his radio. “Eagle-2, Eagle-1, over.”
“Go head, Eagle-2, over.”
“I authenticate for release, over.”
The sound of static cuts through the air as they all wait, a moment later, and a quick, “Authentication read, wilco, out.”
A beat, a shift, and then the sun broke through the gray. The spray of golds and pinks pushing through the clouds rising through the horizon; a burning inferno tried desperately to break from the monotone walls, streams of resplendent lights bathing behind the heli deck.
Strange, Ghost could have sworn the forecast called for rain all day.
The sound of voices comes deep from the helicopter. A moment later, a woman steps out, wrapped in American Desert MARPAT, The two sentries watch darkly as you cross the tarmac, all eyes on you.
You must’ve been tired, it was early morning now, and if you’d been pulled from Iraq last night… and with the flight having been at least five hours, there was a large chance you hadn’t slept yet. Though you step out with confidence, the deep sleep-deprived eyes stare straight at Price as you make your way over. Incredulous gaze trailing over him, the depth makes Ghost shift a moment. It made his instincts kick up, that look in your irises. It was envisaging every movement, every possibility, breaking down every transposition they’d made. Every twitch of their bodies was categorized and sealed away in your mind.
The boots on your feet move silently across the blacktop, body shifting in a way that makes you move almost in a stalking manner. It was as if you were spooring them. The slight glassing made him sure of that as you moved closer, an alert prick of your mind beneath your cover. You stand a few feet away from them, like the smart huntress you are, and then snap your hand in an American salute. “Captain Price, Staff Sergeant (L/N), but they call me Mozu, Sir.”
Mozu.
The butcher bird.
Captain Price returns the salute, and they both drop them, his eyes raking over the woman. Take note of the patches aligning your tac vest. The most striking being the skull and dagger patch in the center of your chest. A black and white keffiyeh is wrapped around your lower face, only revealing your eyes. The cover contained all your hair, tucked up and slicked back. Body tense and waiting, a look in your eyes he’d seen time and time before as he looked at his men.
A barely contained monster poised to strike.
Price holds out a hand to shake yours. “Welcome to the 141, Mozu.”
Who knew that handshake would lead to damnation?
꒷꒦ꙮ꒷꒦
hello, she's rough but she's here, it gets better, I think. I hope you all enjoyed!
You're missing, and it's up to Simon to save you. Can you trust Ghost to have your back? Or will you fall into the hands of someone much worse?
°❀⋆.ೃ⋆˚🐝˖°ʚɞ°❀⋆.ೃ࿔
Laughter…
It always starts with laughter.
You and Róisín are in the lounge, wrapped in matching pajamas as you chatter by the television. She was giggling, whispering pretend secrets into your ear, cooing about classmates and schoolgirl crushes. You listen intently, humming in the right places and nodding when she wants you to.
That's when you hear the screaming.
The alarm goes off, the one that was only in training and drills. You dive for Róisín, grabbing her into you as you immediately move toward the panic room, the screech escaping her lips breaking your heart as you shush her sweetly. You enter the locked room, huddling her close to your chest as her cries fill the room.
“Am gáeth i mmuir. ar domni. Am tond trethan i tír. Am fúaim mara. Am dam secht ndírend. Am séig i n-aill. Am dér gréneg. Cia dé delbas faebru.” You sing, the weight of a young girl against your chest as you slowly run your hands through her silken curly locks, the vivid ginger color mixing among shades of fiery strands. “A ndind ailsiu. Cáinté im gaí cainte gaithe. Am.”
Your words do little to muffle the pops in the distance.
And it definitely did nothing against the clang of bullets hitting the door.
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
You don’t quite know how you’d done it.
Family trees barren and rotted from the roots, severed, a logging field of profligacy you’d grafted yourself from. You should have decayed amongst the other decomposed pomes, yet you didn’t. You seemed to bounce across the branches and launch yourself into a grove of possibility.
The Marines were a chance, an escape; it wasn't honor that drove you; it was desperation. Yet, like the good soldier you were, you adapted. You acclimated with a vicious intent, accelerating in boot camp, tackling AIT, and thrust amongst a new project after she finally emerged at the end of Raider training. The Sparrowhawks were something to give you purpose; a reason for the shitty hand you’d been dealt. The attachments, the infiltrations, the camouflage, being able to become someone so different, you began to lose yourself and the voices that came along with it. It was salvation.
Darach Cillian, an up-and-rising powerful man developing a broken faction of the UVF. Originally a loyalist, he was a senior organizer in the program, leading some of the main attacks on Republican paramilitaries and political activists. This caught the attention of Interpol, which considered him a growing danger. His continuous attacks and growing unease in the country called for them to send in a special infantry team—attaching you as their Sparrowhawk.
It took six months of deep undercover work as Brígh Doyle, daughter of an LVF leader, and protestant Irish Mother. She was the perfect plant. Going to school near their mansion, you slowly habituated yourself to going to a European school. At twenty-two, you still had enough youth clinging to you to pass for seventeen. Searching for a ‘job’, you’re hired as a maid for the Mister Cillian.
That’s when it went sideways.
You were doing both your jobs simultaneously, cleaning while snooping through documents in the main library. A place you were technically allowed to clean. Well, allowed today, that is; the usual girl, Orlaith, was out. So you, perfect kind, sweet Brígh, offer to clean it.
You’re looking through a book when you first hear it, a crash that sounds deeper down the hall, the same one you weren’t supposed to go down, but when a high–pitced wail follows, you’re moving with the speed and agility you were trained in. Bursting into a room, you see a little girl, maybe… six? She’s sitting next to a shattered vase, face shrewd up in panic as hot tears slip down her ruddy cheeks.
Immediately you’re moving, you don’t have much experience with children, but you’d kill for one, or die, either one.
Mindful of the clay in your small flats, you were required to wear. Dancing across the shards of pottery as you kneel down a few paces from the girl. “Hey, are you okay?” she asks sweetly, soothing balm over the blistering sobs and hiccups.
The girl looks up at her with watery eyes; her irises a shocking shade of brine. You’re taken aback for a moment, the match of that and her mess of fire-red curls. “I broke the vase, and Da is going to be so mad.”
You nod solemnly, “That does sound scary, but are you hurt? Did it touch you?”
The little girl looks at you for a long moment, but then she looks over her little freckled skin, and then back. “No.” She says, petal pink lip wobbling.
“That’s good, is it okay if I lift you? Out of the mess?”
“Da says I’m not ‘loud to talk to strangers.”
Damn parent who actually parents. Your parents never taught you “stranger danger”, just “don’t be so loud or you’ll get kicked,” danger. “Well, my name's Brígh, what’s your name?”
“Róisín.” She whispered, looking out at you between the copper frames of her lashes.
Another bobble of fake seriousness, “Well, Róisín, my favorite color is green, what’s yours?”
The girl smiles a moment, a giggle in her voice. “Purple!”
“A perfect color.” You concur simply, children were easy to agree with, absolute in their opinions, and pleased easily by compliance. “Now you know my name and favorite color, guess we aren’t strangers anymore, right, we can be friends, right?” You try, and the girl thinks for a long moment before nodding and giving you the renowned symbol of pick-me-up.
“Friends.” She states that as you lift her easily into your chest, she curls into your scent. You’re checking over her arms and legs for cuts.
“I bet that was really scary, huh? Now who is supposed—”
“You want to tell me why my daughter is in your arms, crying?” The voice was timber, a deep chasm of coppice sessiles that you found yourself getting yanked into. Your eyes flutter over to a man who stood large over you, towering, his controlled indignation lurking under the thin layer of ice skirting across a fjord. You freeze as your eyes meet the target of your mission, Darach Cillian.
He looked more…human when he wasn’t behind the glossed screen of a photograph. There was more depth to his stare when you realized the little girl in your arms was outstretched in an excited, “Da!”
You hand her off automatically, snapping your body into a smaller position, hunched in on herself. “I–I–”
The stuttering wasn’t part of your character; you were freezing. Nothing in your files pointed to anything about him having a daughter. Yet here she was, tangible in his arms, the same rounded nose and oval face.
You’re saved by Róisín, who gasps happily, pulls her father’s stubbled chin toward her, pursing her smile as she presses her face to her father's smushed cheeks. It almost sends you into hysteria; you’ve seen the scattered remains of bombed and tortured, emaciated bodies. All by his hand, and here he was, letting a little girl squeeze his face. “This is Brígh.” She says her name like it's gospel, looking over at her adoringly. “She’s my friend, she likes green, and she saved me from the ouchies.”
“Did she?” Mirrored fixation falls back on you, twinning curiosity drinking in your body. “That was very nice of Brígh, but what do we say about strangers?”
“Brígh isn’t a stranger; we know each other’s favorite colors,” Róisín informs her father, and his face softens in understanding before falling back to you, who was taking a very hard interest in your little flats. “I broke the vase, Da.” The little girl whispers sadly.
His eyes drag over to the fractured remnants of what had been one of his favored vases. It was expensive too. Somewhere up in the six figures, you’re sure. “That’s okay, mo stóirín, are you hurt?”
“No, Brígh checked.” The absoluteness of her words makes even you weaken. “She found me really quick!”
Now it was your turn. “I uhm, Orlaith is out today, I was cleaning the library.” You whisper, biting your lip shyly as you look away. “I just heard a scream. I promise I–”
“I wanted to play, but I was running, and I fell… it was scary,” Róisín admits to her father, confiding in him like she was giving her confessional.
“Where’s Miss Deirdre?” When Mister Cillian’s question is met with a shrug, he gets a dark, vehement curl of his lips, and you know in that moment that she would not be surviving very long. A sigh, and then he’s looking at you. Really observing you, you shift from foot to foot, wringing and weaving your fingers worriedly until he seems to settle on what he wants to find. “So…Brígh… huh?”
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
“Come on, Brígh.” The saccharine chirr brings her back as she feels the blow rain down on her skin. It hadn’t been long, a few hours maybe, and Mikhail had been quick to start, citing flight times. You don’t know what you want: the pain to stop, and to give in to perdition, or to prolong it with the knowledge of it ending being the true start of retribution.
No matter, your skin splits open as you feel the belt whip across your back, a wail on the edge of your lips as you try to bite down the bile growing in the back of your throat. The way the leather rips up the mesh of skin, threading your back makes your stomach roil violently. Yet, you don’t want to give them the satisfaction. If you were gonna upchuck, it was going to be on one of them.
There were two: the guard from before and Mikhail. Mikhail wasn’t the one to get his hands dirty much, preferring to drone patronizing encouragements into your mind as the pain expands over your back. “Brígh? You can take it, can’t you? Nothing compared to what he’ll do,”
Crack
“What do you think is going to happen when he gets here, huh?”
Crack.
“I can’t imagine, when he told me he wanted you, alive?
Crack!
“I knew you weren’t only our vreditel', so how could I refuse, Kukolka?”
Crack
“Especially when we found out you were so valuable.”
Crack.
“A few thousand, maybe, but 140 million rubles?”
Crack!
“Well, how could I refuse?”
You mumble something under your breath, thick saliva pooling at your mouth, drool spilling desperately down the sides of your chin. Mikhail leans down, coming close to you, his face dipping near yours to hear you more clearly. “What was that?”
“I said… go fuck yourself!” You snarl, teeth cutting into his ear and ripping. Chunks of cartilage crunch through your enamel, mashing in a mess of skin and flesh between your gums. Mikhail howls in pain and punches you in the side of your head, hitting you, bashing against your temple, jaw, and cheekbone.
“Oh, you stupid girl, I’m gonna show you what real hurt is.” He whispers, and you shriek, twisting violently as the pain in your back blooms, blood spilling across the floor, leaving an almost wing-like imprint behind. A bloody angel.
“You… wanna know…the thing about..men like you?” You choke out between strangled breaths as his hands come down to clamp around your throat, limiting the little supply you had left.
His hands tighten, the manic vituperation lessening as he leans down. “What.. We always win?”
“You…always…talk…too…much.”
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
His eyes upon your face.
The first man goes down with such ease that Ghost doesn’t give it a second thought. There is no show of power, no bow to be strung, no game to play except the thrill of the chase. The darkness had always been something he’d grown up with, transposing the small bits of light that had sometimes swept through. Every bit of him was atomizing the remnants of each man he left behind. Every life he took eased the ache in his chest as the memories of Isaak pressing against him obliterated any remnants of clemency.
His hand upon your hand
It’s not blind, it's not careless, it’s pivotal, it’s pure strategy. A calculated elimination of every person around the estate. He didn’t blink as he took out guard after guard, didn’t stop there; anyone who got in his way was eliminated.
His lips caress your skin
He didn’t believe in divine intervention, never could quite buy into the idea of god. If there was one, he thinks it’d be you. There’s something…inside you, some fission that pushed out boundless waves of energy that fed the rapacious mongrel deep inside of him. You weren’t like our sun, no, you were a blue star, burning so hot and bright that you ended in a swift supernova. A short but brilliant life.
It's more than I can stand!
You aren’t in any of the rooms on the third floor or the second. He'd been taking men down in droves, hiding their bodies in umbrageous corners of the mansion. As he makes his way down to the first floor, he finds his way through the room, meticulously searching for any sign of you, of Isaak.
The first clue is in the bedroom, a deep cream-toned room with piles of blue silk roughly strewn to the side. You aren’t in Isaak’s room, and he doesn’t know if he’s relieved or belligerent. Then, he finds the study.
He doesn’t know who killed Isaak, though he’s envious of those hands. There’s some sick satisfaction that clicks inside when he sees those ravenous eyes go blank and the body stiffening with rigor mortis. A computer sits open, and blinking, a device plugged into the side—one Ghost recognized as yours.
Growling, he begins his search once more. Silence in his movements as he makes his way down to the final steps, the bloodied boots leaving behind prints on the polished marble.
He hears it first, the sickening thud of skin on leather, a crack across cutis as you let out a strangled scream. One born of reluctance and stubbornness. One also muffled as new sounds arise, the sounds of punches being thrown.
Why does my heart cry
When he turns the room, it’s like he’s back all those years ago, stepping through the front door of his mother’s home, only to be left with the vacant stares watching back.
There was blood all over the floor, a discarded belt caked in crimson, staining the brown a deep maroon. You’re fighting like hell, your hands ripping at the ones encircling your windpipe. Mikhail is on top of you, the side of his head was bleeding, gushing down his jaw, and dripping onto your already gore-ridden face.
God, you're beautiful.
Feelings I can't fight
There is no pause as he takes down the one other man in the room; he doesn’t even have the chance to gurgle out the last breath as his body hits the floor.
You're free to leave me
He hears you mumble something to Mikhail, a low “You…always…talk…too…much” before his gun hits the back of the man’s head. The shot that rings out after is child’s play, positioned, of course, so you wouldn’t be in the crossfire. The splatter of brain matter smattering across your face. As he bends down to help you, you start to scream, thrashing in his touch as your words bubble into desperation.
But just don't deceive me
“Mozu…Mozu it’s me, it’s Ghost!”
Yet, you aren’t hearing him, lost in the struggle, in the haze of it all. He tries to focus you, tries to get your glazed jeweled eyes onto him, tries to force some hint of recognition.
And please
“Hey, it’s Simon!”
He calls again over your screams, and then, in a swift movement, unthinking, he’s pulling his mask off.
Believe me when I say I love you
“It’s Simon, hey, c’mon, it’s Simon.” You seem to latch onto his words, onto his face now that it wasn’t shrouded in darkness. That gaze caresses every part of his face; it was so… delicate…so…acute. It drags from the tips of his sandy blonde chopped hair that's grown out from the short crop he usually keeps it. Causing the ends to curl just slightly. His eyes had bags; he’s known it, the perpetual bruising underneath his lids that made his brown eyes look like sunken mud. You move from the side of the scar raised, sliding down his right temple, then to the long strip over his nose and lip. Then to the ‘y’ shape of the pink disfigurement on his cheekbone, hooking underneath his left eye and cheek. There's a tightness in some spots of his skin, a shiny pink rippling. Burn scars. “Tol’ you I was a pretty bird, Sergeant.”
Neither of you mentioned it wasn't you who’d asked.
“Always knew you were, L.T.” You quirk a defiant smile in spite of everything.
Y yo que te quiero tanto, ¿que voy a hacer?
Me dejaste, me dejaste en un tango
El alma se me fue, se me fue el corazón
Ya no tengo ganas de vivir porque no te puedo convencer
Oh, bloody fucking hell he loved you.
Why does my heart cry
“Let’s go Mozu. Get you out of here.” He says instead, as he pulls you up.
Feelings I can't fight
You're free to leave me
But just don't deceive me
And please
Believe me when I say I love you
꒷꒦ꙮ꒷꒦
So sorry it's late, guys, I lost track of the days cause I have an MRI. I really hope you guys are enjoying! Almost done :)
song: El tango de Roxanne by Ewan McGregor, Jacek Koman, and José Feliciano
cw: Guns, graphic violence, drugging, murder, death
You had finally done it, infiltrated the Mashcov family, yet, how would Simon react now that you're gone
°❀⋆.ೃ⋆˚🐝˖°ʚɞ°❀⋆.ೃ࿔
Your plan was going perfectly.
You’d know there was no way to get through to the Mashcov family from the patriarch; that much was obvious, yet the son, the son, was more of a weak spot. Not totally convinced by his father’s life, yet complicit enough to enjoy the fruits of what comes from it. So you go through him, you get into his house—the one he shares with his father, and you get to snoop through the files on his Daddy’s computer.
Flawless design.
It worked too, you get to the back of the car, Abelev sat in the front seat as the man’s hands are on you, his lips attaching themselves to the side of your neck as his fingers trace the hemline of the dress you’d changed into before you’d left out the back door. You weren’t quite in your body when you felt his grip drag on you. It was so different from the feeling of Simon’s own on you last night—his rough and reverent—while Isaak's was soft and voracious. You didn’t quite know when you’d started comparing men’s touches to your Lieutenant, somewhere in the quiet night of him cradling you with his hushed gravel stories of his mother and little brother, you think. It wasn’t consuming, but it was confecting.
The song was the perfect bait for Isaak, but the words, you couldn’t quite help yourself from staring at the man who had slowly become a fixture in your nights. The dry wit, the strong concerns, the little quirks. You could feel the sparks of something…beginning, and that terrified you.
So, you did what you did best, enmeshed yourself in the mission, let every part of it extirpate the hopes blossoming in your stomach. You let go of who that was, unmoored yourself from using him as an anchor, and forced yourself to be the soldier you knew yourself to be. You couldn’t let yourself fall to this, no matter what you’d said in your song. You liberated yourself from the binds he was deliberately inflicting on your skin.
From one trap into another, from one grasp into a new.
“You are so beautiful,” Isaak murmurs against your pulse point, a sickening feeling flowering underneath your skin. “How did no one take you yet, hmm? No one scooped you up?”
A forced laugh as he continues to play with the hem of your skirt. “No one has been lucky enough to catch me.”
“That will change, yes?”
His mouth reattaches to you, and you roll your eyes slightly at the words. As if. Your mind wanders back to Simon, back to your Lieutenant. Just this afternoon, you’d been translating some intel for your Captain, conversations between Isaak and his associates; you'd been haunched over since early morning, only half-heartedly gnawing on a chunk of a ration bar before going back to it for breakfast. Ghost had come up behind you, the feeling of his observations barely registering in your mind. You don’t think of his rustling, nor the groan of the stovetop being clicked on. Not until you hear a grumble behind you, the warmth of his body coming up to caress the empty space between you two. “You need to eat.”
You hum tepidly, not pulling away from the thick headphones and hushed Russian dialects slipping through the speakers. You don’t even pull your eyes from the script of your writing inked across the lined paper.
A brusque muttering slipped through the back of your hearing before you suddenly felt the chair being pulled out, the rickety wooden thing leaned back on its two legs, your eyes meeting deep layers of brown, a twinkle of mischief. “Eat. Or I'll be offended, Sergeant.”
There’s a distinct swoop feeling in your stomach as you chuckle, a mirthful feeling building for the first time in a long time. “How could I possibly offend you, Lieutenant?”
He doesn’t move, doesn’t let you free from the bosquet abyss. Just lights up, like the small glow of fireflies lazily drifting across the dew-slicked grass. “Make me think you don’t like my cooking.”
“Well, you do know the saying about Brits and their cuisine.” A huff and then suddenly, his hands around your waist, his arm grabs you into the crook of his body, lifting you up and out of the chair with ease.
“Up an at ‘em, soldier.” He tugs you despite your peal of laughter, nudging you to your spot on the wall, a bowl of what looks like instant mashed potatoes and sausage. “Bangers an’ mash.” He mutters as you turn.
You cackle at that, and he rolls his eyes warmly at you despite the fact that you don’t see him. In fact, all of him seemed to soften. You coo contentedly at the warmth of food in your stomach…
“Blyat'!”
You jerk back suddenly, the swear edging your lips as the feeling of a bite nipping the crook of your shoulder brings you back to the moment. Issak’s teeth pierce your skin painfully. You let out a hiss of surprise as he chuckles at you. “Now I have your attention again.”
“Sorry,” you smile mousily as he soothes the bite with his tongue, the feeling of the car rocking to a close. The large upscale mansion is a heady melding of Byzantine and ancient Rus. The wooden arches are Russian motifs; obviously pulling inspiration from ancient palaces and churches in Yaroslavl. It was probably built in the nineties; any time before that was uncommon for such upscale buildings. It was glorious. A beautiful array of carved lumber and polychrome brickwork. “It’s… magnificent.” You murmur.
Yet, you don’t even feel his eyes slip from you as he agrees, dragging you out of the car incessantly. As his hands paw at your body, Abelev follows close behind, his large body off-puttingly quiet on the gravel pathway. “Roma, you may leave us now,” Isaak says with finality as you enter the foyer, the large, grandiose staircases leading further into the home. The man drags the charcoal leer to her, the rise of his scar twisting on his mouth as he hesitates, before nodding once. The thick molasses depths of his glower put you on edge; Isaak barely lets you pause on it. You are pulled to the left, the man dispassionately listing off things as he passes. Bathroom, guest room, library, my father’s study, oh look, this is my bedroom…
Father’s study, hmm.
There’s little to register in his room, a show of opulence, a little boy playing dress up as a grown man under his daddy’s roof.
You’re pulled into Isaak’s lap as he settles you against the deep blue silk of his bedsheets. Hands on your hips, roaming your body, you can feel the press of him against you, the feeling of his icy hot touch on your body. Blistering frost stains your skin black with the bite as they trail over the soft press of your flesh. It was a swinish gluttony that obliterated any sense of peace you’d found within yourself. The touch… it was too much, too soft, too little, too hard, just… wrong. His hands weren’t quite large enough, calluses never having been built along the pads of his palms. It was…unnerving.
With a smile, you slowly trail your hand down into the slope of your skirt cheekily, as if putting on a show, and covertly you grab the small needle taped to the inside of your thigh. You pull the cap off, pricking him slightly as you bring your hands up and then drag your nails down his neck—disguising the feeling. The drug was a small paralytic that you’d thankfully brought in your ruck before the mission.
It works within minutes, his eyes dilating as his touches get more sluggish, blinking with an enfeebled motion. His brows furrow as you slip off him, Poppy disappearing in a second as Mozu emerges.”Shhh…shhh…” You sooth condescendingly as he slowly slips into a hemiplegic sort of state. “You’re confused, and that’s okay… of course you were too stupid to know you were being used.”
Those piercing cerulean waves crash violently against the shores of his lashline, Poseidone's mighty anger fracturing on rocky paths below. You knew he was pissed, murderous even. Yet you just bend down, giving a patronizing coo. “You thought you were hunting me? You thought you could catch me?” You get really close and whisper in English. “You don’t even know who I am.”
As you slip out of the room, you feel a heavy weight being swung at you, ducking and twirling out of the way and bringing your leg up in a swift cyclone kick. It barrels directly into Abelev’s stomach knocking the wind out of him as you grapple his arm, latching his wrist joint so he drops the gun and you can simultaneously hitch forward wrapping your legs around his neck and twisting into a leg lock, crushing his windpipe as you grab the blade from the side of your dress and stab it into the side of his neck; the spray of arterial blood sputtering across the room as his eyes roll into a blank slate. Heaving your breath, you get up, fixing the hem of your skirt, you kick the heels off, slowly making your way through the halls.
You find your way into the large, maximalist office. Deep red, brow,n and cream colors enrich the paint. Marble and brass accents mix together, and the plush velvet fabrics and brocade hang across the walls. A lone computer sits in the center of a large executive desk. A smile brightens on your face, looking around and clearing the room, you slink inside deeper. Rounding the computer, you click your teeth as you see the password. Grabbing the HID from your bra ha—. You stick it into the side of the computer, opening a backdoor and obtaining passwords through the computer's contents in seconds. Your fingers fly across the keyboard, finding the files you were looking for and screenshotting them, every paper trail, all the locations, uploaded within seconds.
You step back with a satisfied smile before your heart drops at a familiar click.
“Oh, Mozu, I wish you wouldn’t have done that.”
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
“Am gáeth i mmuir. ar domni. Am tond trethan i tír. Am fúaim mara. Am dam secht ndírend. Am séig i n-aill. Am dér gréneg. Cia dé delbas faebru.” You sing, the weight of a young girl against your chest as you slowly run your hands through her silken curly locks, the vivid ginger color mixing between shades of fiery strands. “A ndind ailsiu. Cáinté im gaí cainte gaithe. Am.”
“If I sing it again, it won’t be as special, hmm?” You whisper, kissing her rosy, youth-chubbed cheeks.
She nods solemnly, her pleats perfectly styled with matching bows to her school uniform. “Do I look pretty?”
“The most.” You promise sweetly, your hands brushing against her face. “Now go on, grab your shoes and school bag. We’ll walk in a moment.”
“And you’ll be taking Conan with you both.” A deep north-Irish accent spills across the room, and you feel a weight appear on your upper shoulder as you glance up to see him.
A strong stubbled jaw, the slight peppering of greys mixing in with the deep browns. Solid, clear blue eyes, the same shade as the Atlantic Ocean crashing against the limestone cliffs of White Rock. He leers downward, the weight of a ruler looking to a maid, yet when he sees you, surrounded by his daughter’s toys and hair products, he softens. “You know better to go anywhere without him, both of you.” He states that firm rhotic sea-salt words splashing across your body. You give a sheepish look, ducking your head as you glance up between your lashes.
“Sorry, of course, Mister Cillian.” You say, standing up, fixing the pleats of your skirt.
The tender note is back as he fixes the collar of your polo. “Now, you know you can call me Darach.”
Before either of you can speak again, the excited squeal of Róisín interrupts the moment. “Da!” As she tackles his suited legs, the man swoops her up in his arms and brings her close to him.
“Mo stóirín.” He coos at her as they sit for a moment in the silence of their comfort.
“Did you see how Brígh did my braids? I’m so pretty now, pretty like her.” At her words, you feel that warm underglow come back to your cheeks, and the duo turns on you with matching shades of oceanic mischief and awe.
Yet, Mister Cillian only nods in solemn agreement. “You’re right stóirín, she is quite pretty, both of you are.”
You let out a gentle cough as Róisín reaches for her with grabby hands, he transfers her to you as you swoop her to your hip. “Come on, wee one, time for Primary. Say bye to your Da now.” You give Mister Cillian a shy wave as the two of you are joined by Conan, who leads you both to the school yard a few blocks away.
You didn’t always walk, but on days like this, when the weather was perfect in the sky, you and Róisín preferred it. She was off your hip now, hands wrapped in yours as she chimes in your ear. Skipping the cracks in the pavement as the young girl swings your joint arms. “Brígh, will you always be here?”
The question is so sudden, but with children, it’s something you get used to. They have little use for filters, a thought pops in their mind, and they spurt it out with no social niceties. You hum in pretend thought, “I’ll be here a long time, and when you don’t need me anymore, I’ll be a ring away.”
Those eyes look up at you, the ginger locks almost glowing in the sun. “I’ll always need you.”
“Then I’ll always be here.”
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
“What do you mean, she’s gone AWOL? Ghost—damnit Lieutenant, answer me!”
There’s no comprehension of the orders in his ear as he snaps the stupid earpiece to the ground, stomping his heel on the small object. His dark eyes drag over the dressing room, over the small vanity with the words ‘Poppy’ strewn across the back. The blooms sitting on the edge in an immaculate crystal vase mock him, grabbing it, he chucks it against the wall, little care for the shards scattering and exploding across the room.
Will drive you, will drive you…Mad!
You were gone. You weren’t here. He had ripped the crowd apart looking for you, but Isaak, Abelev, and most importantly, you were gone. Miss Petrov gave him a pitying glance when she saw him roving the mob of people. Like he was some jealous boyfriend and you were his scorned lover drawn to the arms of some other man.
As if he were some… cuckold and you had found yourself a new paramour.
Roxanne!
There’s a certain… anger that bellows inside of him as he progresses into something…wrathful.
You don't have to put on that red light..walk the streets for money…you don't care if it's wrong or if it is right
You didn’t, how could you do this? Break the bounds of what you were becoming for a damn mission. He knew you'd said that you’d do anything for it. Anything to complete your tasks, but this?
Roxanne!
There was no mistaking that you’d gone willingly, you’d not caused a commotion, your gun had been left with the rest of your gear in your changing bag.
You don't have to wear that dress tonight
The sight of you, wrapped in the same color as that man’s eyes, swathed in his stare with the weight of him. It was… it was something else, that bitter jealousy, a contagion inside of him, spreading metastasizing…
Roxanne!
No. He wouldn’t allow it; he knows exactly where you’re going, knows the damn place where they’d taken you. Where you’d willingly gone.
You don't have to sell your body to the night
No. He had some hunting to do tonight.
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
You’re frozen, hands drawing away from the keys as you slowly draw your hands up, stepping back from the desk. Mikhail Mashcov stood before you, an almost bored look on his face. He had another man behind him—one you recognized from photos as one of the Bratva guards. He helped a stumbling Isaak, who looked at you with a shaken lividity. You smile once, tilting your head as you slowly take hold of the situation you’d found yourself in. “You’re too late, I’ve already uploaded it. You have failed, your plan is done.”
His head tilts, and he nods once, “You’re right, the SAS knows my exact plans…” You become rigid as the man clicks his teeth, the guard helping Isaak to a chair in the corner of the room. You’d never mentioned the organization you were with. You’d had the name Mozu since you were in the American forces. There was nothing that tied you to the SAS, unless he had some other intel. Unless your whole mission has been made. “But…we adapt, we make new plans, that’s how the world keeps turning, yes?”
Mikhail sneered, those oil-black irises practically gleaming in the lowlighting of the room, he gestures with his gun for you to walk forward; you do so. Cautiously, you inch near him, eyes on his index finger. Waiting for the second it twitches to the trigger. In that moment, that second, your life would be done. The blink of an eye, a millisecond decision, and poof, oblivion. “Yeah? Adapt? How you gonna do that? Your government? Knows you failed. Your money? It’s gone.”
The silence stretched for a long time before there was a loud sound of deep belly laughter. “You think Russia is the only one who has money? No… Now, when I first heard of a foreigner in the club…I was a little angry when I found out my dear сын had fallen for a spy.” You stare at him through his joyful explanation, not understanding where he was getting at. “You are a very good spy, little Kukolka. We didn’t even know it was you until that little scuffle at the club. That Englishman? Did you in. When we realized our little Nadzeya was just a story? We put your little face out there to see what bit.”
The terror began to brew in your stomach; too many organizations to count wanted your head on a spike. “Yeah?”
“The only thing we needed to do then was… catch you. Our client, you see, said he’s paying almost double our government for you. Alive, unfortunately."
Alive? That was a surprise; your brows furrow as you shake your head once, not understanding. “Who would want me alive?”
“Someone who thought you dead. Brígh.”
No.
You try to move back, but the safety clicks off on the gun as you glance to the side, the guard is watching you with a dark outface.
No.
You don’t realize you’re panicking until you see him, cavalier and purring his deeply thick words through her like molasses. He nears you closer, his body almost touching you. “Oh…Kukolka… a certain man was so happy to hear you had made it.” The slimy, sickly fatherly tone makes her hair stand on end. “So he asked that I…keep you here until he can come and collect you.”
Your heart pounds in your chest, steadily including buh-dump, buh-dump, buh-dump, racketing across your ribs. Flashes of dulse and peat fires consume you, dragging you back to places you feared. Pulling you down into purgatory as your nailbeds bend with the effort of your claws.
“So, we let you play your little game… because, do you want to know something, Mozu? The best way to catch a bird?” The muzzle of the gun pushes against the underside of your jaw, resting in the small area underneath your chin. You shake your head, not quite sure when—
“You give it a rat.” The shot rings out as the slunken sound of a bullet rips through Isaak’s throat, ending him in moments. A gasp escapes you, despite yourself. Out of all the things you’d expected him to do, it wasn’t that. The sacrifice was so biblically true to his namesake; he was gone. Those haunting expanses of cerulean dimming to grey stygian depths.
Looking back to you, the hot metal stings with a sulphuric fire as it presses against your cheekbone. “Now he said alive, but he didn’t say we couldn’t have some fun first, yes?”
꒷꒦ꙮ꒷꒦
completely forgot to post lol, hope y'all enjoy, oh and BTW, FUCK ICE, GO TO LOCAL PROTEST, BE SAFE, HELP YOUR NEIGHBORS
song: El tango de Roxanne by Ewan McGregor, Jacek Koman, and José Feliciano
As Issak's obsessions grow, so does the unspoken bond that began to bloom between you and your Lieutenant.
cw: PTSD attack, vomiting, death, violence, war, sexual harassment not done by Simon
°❀⋆.ೃ⋆˚🐝˖°ʚɞ°❀⋆.ೃ࿔
The sound of shrikes is a hushed singing of sweet warbles, whistles, and trills, mimicking the vocal patterns of other nesting songbirds around them. Compact predators, silent on the hunting ground aside from the small chirps as they take down their prey.
Not a hard imitation to make, sure, but impossible for true raptors. Which is why sometimes, falcons and hawks use behavioral mimicry, flying in similar flight patterns and plumage to ambush them. Look like a shrike, fly like a shrike, catch a shrike.
When you’re a devourer… when your talons pierce and rip songbirds apart for fun… There is no hiding who you are. Yet maybe, just maybe, he can disguise himself just enough for the hunt.
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
Before you’d left that night, Isaak cornered you once again, this time with an air of arrogance and self-assurance, worn like a crown. The never-ending blue of his eyes bore into your inner being as he crowded against you, not bothering to give you space, as the sharp tinge of pure chemical alcohol hit your nose. The expensive kind, where you could smell the underlying mineral grain.
“You wore the pearls.” he says confidently, eyes slowly dragging down your body.
You give a shy twirl, so sweet and treacly, feeling the rove of his gaze on every bit of exposed flesh. You silently thank the designers for the nude undertone of the clothing; matching your skin tone perfectly. It gave the pearls a look as if they clung to your derma, embellishing over the soft muscles in your body. Scars are hidden away with makeup or smartly placed garnishing. “You guessed my size right.” You say simply, not hinting at the underlying danger in your tone.
He revealed his teeth, pulling them back into a triumphant leer. “Yes, I’m good at…observing.” There’s an almost slimy residue in the air after it leaves his face, sending shivers up your spine.
You cock your head to the side, a faux sense of conviction. Not leaving his sight as you send him a mink-like simper. “You always observe girls?”
“Only the pretty ones,” He whispers, inky and potent, the spill of slick oil across waves of azure. An ecological disaster overflowing, drowning the wildlife in the unforgiving grease. You force a blithe beam at his compliments. As if fully taken by him, you flutter your lashes with a sweet giggle.
“I don’t know about that.” You’re surprised at how much truth comes out of your mouth. It doesn’t sound fake to either of you, and you blink slightly, startled by the sincerity as his face cants, sinking into a scowl.
The way he dips his body down to be on your level makes your heart stop in your chest. Closer you can almost see the deranged radiance lurking behind his iris. “I know so.” He whispers, his hand coming out to touch your face when a sudden grunt broke through the sound.
“Don’t touch the dancers.”
Your head snaps over as you see Ghost, still much larger than Isaak’s 6’ form, having three inches and at least seventy pounds on him. In a moment, there's the clatter of the sound of Isaak’s bodyguard, Ablev, crossing the club. Simon's words are a garbled mess of Russian that doesn’t quite sound like you’re speaking it, but it was enough to get the point across. Though it obviously marked him as a foreigner. The chatter slowly dies down in the room, everyone turning to look over at the commotion. The way he stood, it was poised and ready to pounce.
Isaak watches him for a lingering, rigid moment before bursting into laughter, eyes bright. “Yes, yes, my apologies.” His hand comes up placatingly in front of them, as if trying to brush away the entire argument. “I got excited. Calm now, Roma, he was just doing his job, yes?”
The strain catches for just an instant longer before Ghost grunts. “Never again." In that same inflection.
You send an apologetic smile as you leave the dance floor, using the apprehension to make a swift escape. Ducking behind and underneath people to make your way back to the dressing room, hiding inside, ignoring the new bouquet of flowers on your desk, and three gifts stacked by your mirror. None of the other girls were here, so you huff breaths quickly, terror staining your body. He was so close to touching you. You had to be ready for this, had to force yourself into capitulation for the sake of an assignment.
The creak of a door catches your attention, driving you out of your inner musings. You quickly stand, chair almost toppling with the force of your thighs hitting it. You whip around, heart palpitating, until you see the familiar balaclava. Instantly, your shoulders draw down, a confused look on your face as he marches his way over. Grabbing you by the arm, you yelp lightly. “Change.” He mutters, pulling you, not roughly, to the wrack of clothing. “We’re going back.”
“But I still have a number!” You protest, silenced by the tumultuous glower. Grunting, you pull on your clothing behind the partition, popping out fully clothed while Ghost finds you again. Latching onto your sleeve this time as you’re corralled toward the exit door. You make your way to the back alley where his bike sat propped against the kickstand. “I shouldn’t leave. We still have recon.” You protest, feeling like you want to stomp your foot to get his attention as you argue at what seems to be a brick wall. Suddenly, you feel hands wrap around your waist, lifting you without so much as a grunt as you’re placed on the back of the bike, not getting a second to adjust before your lieutenant is climbing on after and shoving the helmet onto your head.
“Let’s go. Night done.” He snarls, his gloved hands tightening on the handles as he revs it. You don’t move to hold on, until you feel the bike suddenly jerk forward and stop, sending you scrambling as you squeal, arms automatically wrapping around the first solid thing—Ghost’s back. You could've sworn you’d heard a chuckle before you both took off.
When you get to the apartment, you throw the helmet off, barging up the stairs as your anger rolls off you in palpable waves. Ghost follows you like a phantom, not making any noises as he ascends behind you. It’s almost a game, who will break first.
You don't, not until you get off the computer with John, giving your daily check-in report. You both sit in silence, his voice ringing in your heads as you try to figure out the damn next move. Higher-ups were putting the pressure on you as chatter picked up about the attacks. “Squints want results, not excuses; find the locations, no matter what it takes.”
Whatever.
It.
Takes.
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
You wouldn’t look at him, pouting at that damn spot in the wall as you chew angrily on your bite of pasta. Ghost just simply discerned you, eyes not leaving you again. It seems to grate on you because, as soon as he grunts, signaling he’s done, you whip around. “I had that handled.”
“Did you? Because from where I saw it. He looked about ready to take you then and there.” Ghost tries to make his voice blasé but is unable to mask the edge to it. The sight of you—trembling like a damn rabbit in the jaws of a coyote —set him off. There was no use trying to hide that when you had clearly seen it for yourself. The question was why? He'd seen you take down men Isaak's size; hell, he'd seen you take down people bigger than him. Yet, that was when you were Mozu; hidden behind a veil of indifference and vicious wit. Here… as Poppy… you were vulnerable. You were an exposed nerve, unable to stand on your own two feet. The sight of you so… helpless did something inside of Ghost…inside of Simon.
It wasn't something he was able to name, simply a growing familiar emotion that had begun to build in his chest. An all-consuming pressure stretching out inside of him, straining against his ribcage, bones creaking as it threatened to explode.
He was a damn powder keg and you were the fuse.
Your face twists into something furious; the rage of it all is mesmerizing. There is a crease that forms in the center of your eyebrows, as your nose scrunches lightly in your anger. You leap up from the floor, standing as you cross the cold hardwood. “You do realize you just put yourself on their radar? Our whole mission could be compromised!”
The mission, this fucking mission. The same mission he didn't want you on in the first place. This little game was not one he had looked forward to playing.
All you cared about was the mission, and so should Ghost. Yet he couldn't. He couldn't because every time he closed his eyes now, flashes of you were there. It haunted him, splattering across his dreams, your small accented tone whispering away the demons scratching at the edges of his psyche.
Yet, you couldn't know that, because he didn't know why, the mission was no longer his priority. Didn't know how, somewhere in the layers of satin and whispered stories of scar,s you left imprints of yourself. Fingerprints scattering across his insides with little care for you staining him. It was maddening.
“The mission doesn't include you shagging the enemy.”
You flinch, taken aback by his tone, it's real and raw. It spat out with a coating so venomous it stings in your veins. Within that moment, he softens, and you, you become steel. Iron rod straight back, shoulders squared, a switch that was flipped. A hunter, a soldier, Mozu.
“You wanna know how I got my name?” You ask, just as viciously as he had. He doesn't get a chance to speak because you were moving. “I bit a man's throat out and impaled him on melded rebar, because he decided to lay a fucking finger on me.” There's an imperceptible shiver that settles in Ghost, not fear but the thrill. “I've killed men far better for far less. Trust me when I say, if I wanted him dead. He would be.”
You both sit in the silence, it holds you suspended, a zero gravity spiral into the abyss of fury. Yet, he nods. Once, and then looked away. You wait a beat, still with that position locked in for the pounce, then look toward the door. “I'm going for a walk.”
“It's snowing.” Ghost says, an absoluteness in his voice, as you throw on your boots and jacket, walking toward the door and blatantly taking one of his cigarettes as you go.
“Yeah, it'll cool me down.” You snap, strapping your M9 to your thigh. He wants to follow you, wants to protest, he almost does, but you're gone before the words force themselves out of his mouth.
The slam of the door echoes in his head like a damn death knell. Moving, he goes to the cracked windows, watching your small form disappear around the block. Growling, he moves to follow but stops himself. What would he do to go against your stubbornness? Let you get yourself in trouble.
Yet, you were his responsibility, his Sergeant. No one else's. You getting hurt? Not feasible.
So he waits by the window, like a dog waits for its owner.
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
Laughter…
It starts with laughter.
The hum of the road and jangle of your gear mix as the radio is left on high, chatter is flooding throughout the cabin. Blistering heat from the high noon sun causes sweat to slide down dirty faces as they head back to the rendezvous. Your team medic, Doc, or Sergeant Morgan sits to the left of you.
“So, Doc,” You call over the humming of the road from the back right of the vehicle, strapped in. “You got someone special waiting for you back landside?”
She laughs. “Unless you count my new baby brother, I ain’t got much of nothing else.” Doc is silent for a beat, a look passing over her face, before she turns to Yip, who sits in front of you, a fellow soldier. “How bout you, Yip? You actually trick some unlucky sonovabitch into marryin’ your ass?”
The conversation devolves into chuckles, friendly barbs, and teasing comments passed commonly. Then, you get a few miles out to the protected area. “This is Punisher One; we’re a few klicks out from the fuel-up point, over.”
“Punisher Two, good copy.”
Before anyone else can speak, an ear-piercing boom erupts the entire humvee flipping with the force of the explosion. You duly remember the splatter of something across your body as you feel the entire metal cage flip. Your head is rocking inside your helmet violently. Screaming, there’s screaming, some language—not one you recognize through the pulsating in your ears. Blood mixing with ringing—high-pitched and whining as sand and melted metals scatter across your body.
The entire left front side of the Humvee is entangled in strips of hardware twisted all together. Benson—the driver—was gone. Not metaphorically, but physically. There was nothing but a thick layer of mess coating where he had been.
The crying was coming from Yip, whose leg and left arm had been blustered away; he survived long enough to see the bullet pass between his eyes as insurgents descended upon them. Doc moved, unclicking her belt as she dropped down, picking up her M249 as she looked toward the shooting. “I’m going to lead them away,” She hits her radio, “This is Sargent Morgan, 38191145; my Humvee was hit by an IED, requesting backup, three men down, I repeat, three men down.”
You try to protest, but your words come out slurred, and you shake your head desperately as she darts off, shouting in the same foreign language. The shooting stops momentarily. Before it picks up again. You finally get some awareness as you hear it coming closer, rushing you, and try to unbuckle, but feel your straps unable to move. Struggling, your heart pounds in your chest, the pops of bullets raining down on the outside of the machine. A stray round hits your thigh, and you bite through your lip, muffling the scream.
Quickly, you reach into your vest, pulling out your knife as you slice desperately at the material binding you. You know the other Humvee was a few minutes out. All you had to do was last those few moments. You drop down violently on the roof, your shoulder popping as you slam down.
They come in waves.
You’re able to hold your own, taking down six men before one finally slips through your sight. He fires seven cracks, two piercing your skin. You strike back, the impact of your slugs practically ripping his shooting hand apart. He drops his gun due to a lack of ability to grasp. Then—without thinking—he vaults, tackling your already slumped form. Your knife gets knocked to the side, helmet slamming down as he sees your face. A dark look crosses the man’s eyes as he looks down on you, his body impelling you down as he positions himself over you. With a guttural scream, you push all of your might, jerking your jaw up and clamping down on his neck. Blood spills throughout your mouth, copper staining the porcelain white enamel. The shock mixed with pain is enough; mustering your adrenaline, you shove his body; his entire form bucking backwards as a piece of the crushed steel juts out from the heap.
It takes seventeen minutes for reinforcements to arrive.
You kill fourteen men.
Your uniform is caked with blood, tissue, and soot. Helmet split, slowly bleeding out, gun running low on ammo as you desperately try to keep them back.
Seventeen minutes to kill fourteen men.
Breathing…
You aren’t breathing.
The taste of bitter splash of tobacco gets drowned out by the bile rising in your throat. It floods your mouth until you expel it on the snowy sidewalk, a mess of snot and vomit spilling down your face. A sudden noise comes from behind you, and you don’t even wipe the spew from your chin as you whip around with your weapon drawn.
You drop it when you see that familiar balaclava, clattering to the ground as you retch again.
It’s like he doesn’t know what to do for a moment, frozen in time, and then, his body ticks into movement. It was as if Ghost had hung back, looming as Simon moved. Bending down as he wraps an arm around your waist hesitantly, uncaring of the scent of vomit and litter, no doubt stinging his nose. He pulls you into his chest, scarred hand trailing in the tresses of your hair, underneath the weight of the locks and to your scalp, scratching a soothing pattern as your head lolls instinctively into the warmth. Still out of your mind with the haze of a flashback. Still lost in your thoughts.
You both stand there for a long moment before you talk, voice raw from the sickness. “You know…when people are too close to a bomb when it goes off…they just disintegrate. No parts left of them, no gear, no tags, just…pink mist.”
Simon doesn’t speak, only trails his hand in your hair as snow falls softly around you both, the cold such a contrast to the fever of the desert. “I killed ‘em. Killed ‘em all.”
A pause.
“Atta girl.”
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
There are times, not often, but in the quiet moments of rarities and anomalies, where you find beauty. Times when spectacles unfold in the stillness of nothing. A swirling susurrus, shifting and dancing off one another, waves and swirls of darkness dancing like shadows across the clouds. Some call it Sort Sol or the Black Sun. Ghost feels as though that is some form of truth as you stand on the stage, bathed in the backdrop. If there could ever be something so complex to exist as a contradiction, it would be you.
Yet, a murmuration was more. Complete synchronicity with your partners, every single speed, direction, and motion creating a rippling pattern. One moves, the other shifts to match, no leader, no commander, just a decentralized flutter of wings and movement.
It is what moves under his skin as you step into the light, the off-the-shoulder evening gown; a shade of blue that is naggingly familiar. It looked like silk, coming to cup your breast, framing them perfectly, lips painted a haunting rouge as you came to the microphone. So different from the performances he’s come to know. “Sweet love, sweet love, trapped in your love…” Resonant and confident; an engrossing timber spilling across the club, you stand there, everyone watching with bated breath, all uncaring of what you sang, just needing to hear your voice. Ravenous for it. This Saturday, the building was packed past capacity as people tucked in stubbornly. “I've opened up, unsure I can trust…”
You hadn’t trusted him, not before last night, the night he’d found you in the snow. Ghost hadn’t known how to react to your glazed eyes. The empty thousand-yard-stare that he’d often seen in himself made him pause. Yet…Simon… Simon remembers his mother’s hands caressing him as he had been in similar positions growing up as a boy. Hushing him sweetly and running her hands through his curly, sandy blonde locks.
So… Ghost hung back, Simon took over, tucking your small body into him as you sobbed with the weight of your actions; your past. He’d gotten you back to the flat, pushed you to the five-minute heated shower before coaxing you out and to the bed, lying there as he whispered his own stories about his scars. Childhood ones, innocent ones, dangerous ones. You responded in kind, mapping out constellations of raised and discolored skin. “My heart and I, we're buried in dust…” So long you’d been alone, an action Ghost and Simon could sympathize with. Your eyes sweep across the large crowd, staggering for a moment when you see the precarious watch of Isaak in his booth, before seeming to meet his own, a warm smile veiling your lips. “Free me, free us…”
What was freedom? Was it you? You felt more like purgatory than freedom. Every part of you draws him in, a damn lotus flower, making him lose himself to a blissful oblivion. Gouging himself on the honeyed dates as his mind slips from thoughts of missions and pain. The encompassing, serene, intoxicating mirage that he found himself falling for each time.
“You're all I need, when I'm holding you tight. If you walk away, I will suffer tonight…” The feeling of your body on his was something novel; it was marvelous. It didn’t matter the context; it was ethereal. The sick didn’t even register when the overwhelming sweet tang of pomegranates mixed with the bite of frost. “I found a man I can trust…and boy, I believe in us…”
You hadn’t moved your sight from him… did you mean that? Mean it when you utter the next line. “I am terrified to love for the first time…”
Love.
“Can't you see that I'm bound in chains?”
Love.
“I finally found my way…”
Love.
He’d never felt it before, not one that wasn’t familial. This was comparable, but so utterly different at the same time. A striking contrast of abrasive avant-garde and aching familiarity.
“So much, so young, I faced on my own…walls I built up, became my home.”
It was insane; neither Ghost nor Simon had put two and two together. Fuckin’ love. That’s what it was. The pressure, the cracks, the breaks, it was all fucking love. A diamond would crumble to dust beneath the weight of you. You had walls? He had moats. You had castles? He had scales and wings. A princess hidden away due to his selfish desires; the world not touching the purity of his hoard, he so desperately keeps. So much he’s lost. So much you’ve both lost. “I'm strong, and I'm sure there's a fire in us…sweet love, so pure…”
You continue to sing your soothing melody as Simon fragmented inside of himself. Two halves splitting and melding all the same. There was something that affixed them, that emotion to have you, to want you, to need you. Both obsessive and explosive, but proliferating. “...Suddenly the moment's here….I embrace my fears, all that I have been carrying all these years, do I risk it all? Come this far just to fall, fall, oh-oh-oh!”
The sway of your hips mesmerizes him as the spotlight and microphone follow you down the stairs. You dance to the half-moon table again, a moth to the flame as you stalk around the curve. “I can trust…and boy, I believe in us…I am terrified to love for the first time.”
You make your way to Isaak’s side, leaving a trail on his jacket with your finger as you dip closer to him. “Can't you see that I'm bound in chains? And finally found my way…I am bound to you
I am, oh, I am…I'm bound to you…”
The song ends with an eruption of cheers. You’re sitting practically on the man’s lap now, deep eyes sparkling as you look up into Isaak’s eyes in a way that drives him wild. The fulminations bubbling behind his maw as he hardened. Did you believe in them? How could you, as another man, move to touch you? Before he can even think to cross the room and put a stop to it—again—Abelev moved, blocking the view of you and Isaak.
Ghost tries to move, but when he rounds the side, the booth is empty, and you are gone. Because what Ghost didn’t know…what Simon didn’t know… is that he wasn’t the only one hunting tonight.
꒷꒦ꙮ꒷꒦
Almost done, almost done, almost done, yaaay. anywho, are y'all liking this? Let me know, thank you. I really hope you all enjoy :)
cw: sexual fantasies, sexual songs, obsessive behavior, obsessive/ooc Simon, nightmares
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Your plan to seduce your way into the family is in place, yet Simon has something to say about that...
°❀⋆.ೃ⋆˚🐝˖°ʚɞ°❀⋆.ೃ࿔
Ghost knows he’d lost the fight when John doesn’t dissuade your little… game you’ve started playing. Apparently, Laswell had checked in and found it to be the right move; the faster and closer you got to the Mashcov family, the better.
That didn’t stop him from barking his distaste at the entire situation, his expression dark, body tense and brooding as soon as the two of you got back to the flat and sat in front of the beat-to-shit laptop. None of the 141 seemed to appreciate the news update. Johnny seemed frustrated and downcast, Gaz kept relaying mission information like you’d the memory of a goldfish, and Cap hadn’t done much talking other than the first report. No one liked the idea of one of their own being used as bait for any mission, no matter the stakes.
You hadn’t done much of anything, walking around the flat as if you were silent; you didn’t even argue with him when he’d taken the couch once again, only muttering about something as you’d showered. You refused to look at him, acting as if he were his namesake as he trailed you with his eyes the entire time. Never once letting his concentration fall, not when you’d glared at the wall over your instant noodles, nor when you’d stepped out of the shower, cold, wet hair drying amongst the musty kick of the space heater.
Ghost says nothing as you stomp, mutely, to lie against the springy mattress. Not when you struggled to let yourself surrender to the exhaustion. Or tossed against the undoubtedly scratchy wool of the blanket on your delicate plush skin. You finally seem to succumb to sleep around two hours later, the turning lessens, and your breathing evens out to soft little huffs.
That’s the sound his ears latch onto as he closes his own eyes, not bothering with the kick of the heater, or the rough howling of the wind creaking through the old building. It offset the usual hissing of voices in his mind as he slowly let himself drift…
He’s choking.
He can’t breathe. The feeling of dirt and rocks ripping the undersides of his nails until they peel off in bloodied chunks at the beds. The tender underside exposed, adding a new branding pain as he digs himself out from the depths of hell. Desperately coughing up rounds of soil as he cups air around his mouth and claws, using the jawbone to shovel. He doesn’t go blindly up; he tunnels, creating a cavern with his arms and feet, and he plows through handfuls of earth sideways until he slowly moves upwards. Packing the material underneath him,
It takes thirteen hours.
Thirteen hours of thinking he was going to surrender to the damp air.
Yet his hand breached the surface.
And he became something entirely new.
He can’t escape it, because he’s back in again, and he can hear his father’s laughter echoing in his mind as he smells the overwhelming concoction of death and piss. The feeling of scales against his lips. The pain of smoldering ash on his skin to chase away the gunpowder.
It was too much.
And he was choking.
And he was suffocating.
And.
“—ant?”
The taste of sand, the feeling of breaking the desert surface.
“Leiutanant!”
He was going to die here.
“Ghost! Wake the fuck up!”
Eyes snapping open, he feels hands on him, reaching blindly, they leap from his grasp before he can even move to capture them. “Hey, calm down, it’s me, it's Mozu, you’re in the flat, Russia, it’s just you and me.” Your voice is soothing; it’s pitched in a way he’s never heard before. Carrying the same melodic chime of your singing, but… different somehow. It was a heady concoction of sleepy husk and concerned pacifications. Simon latches onto it before Ghost can stop himself, and immediately he’s letting out panicked gasps as he tries desperately to get a fucking grip.
As if a saving grace, your voice filters through his ears…a contrast to anything he’d ever listened to. The mollifications carried on sweet symphonies, the trickle of kind honeyed melodies escaped your lips as you turned your back to him, resting on his legs that he’d swung over the couch when he tried to catch his breath. It was grounding. “Take your mask off, it’ll help you breathe. I won’t look.” You promise, quietly, humming a melody as your eyes flutter closed.
“Am gáeth i mmuir. ar domni.”
The sudden language change shocked Simon enough that his panting paused; it was similar to the muttering he’d heard from Johnny, different but alike. Absent-mindedly, his hands moved to follow your previous directions.
“Am tond trethan i tír.”
You sing lightly, it wasn’t sugary—it was raw. Something so real and succulent, Simon wanted to latch onto it; he was practically salivating as you continued on, his breathing evening in his aching chest, scarred chapped lips cracking against the cold air as he dragged in greedy pull after pull of air.
“Am fúaim mara. Am dam secht ndírend. Am séig i n-aill. Am dér gréneg.”
The way you croon in the club is for show, a rough or saccharine show of hands, but this was earnest; it was baring a piece of yourself, the words seeming to transport you in time as you sang them quietly. You were slowly stripping yourself of your barriers and baring the bloodied insides of yourself, and Simon was starved for it.
So he sat there, for well over an hour of you humming whatever that little lullaby of yours was. Slowly losing himself in his mind. When had he last been soothed away from the clutches of a nightmare? At such a young age, he was taught to be seen and not heard. It was a new experience, something foreign. Yet, it felt so good, so nice to have someone there with him, not feeling or bearing pain, just witnessing, just being there as he fell apart.
“Cia dé delbas faebru. a ndind ailsiu. Cáinté im gaí cainte gaithe. Am.”
You finish once again, Simon recognized it as the end after a few reiterations. Your voice would pitch out as you anchored him with your heat on his legs. Susurrating syrupy little tunes against him. The vibrations were climbing up his legs like wildfire licking up trunks of spruce. His body was on fire, he was a wreck, and it was your fault. You were burning him, slowly from the inside out.
“You tell Johnny you can speak tha’ shite?”
The piercing gruff tone of his voice broke your mellifluous murmurs.
“Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic are different.” You smile wickedly, still not looking at him, eyes on the cracked wall. “But no, he’d never leave me alone.” A shadow crossed your eyes, “‘sides, I’m not fluent, jus’ know a lullaby and phrase or two, Sir.”
You look far away for a moment, as if you’re not fully with him in that room, but as fast as it was there, it was gone. There’s a part of him that wants to pry. It's the same part that wants to peel back the layers of thew that lay under your skin, dissecting the parts of you that you’d squirreled away so desolately. He’d save that for another night, though, tonight he’d let himself char against your touch, the small parts of his resolve crumbling like brick baked clinker.
Another part of him wants to thank you, groveling at your feet for pulling him from his mind so quickly. He’d hadn’t come down that rapidly after a nightmare in…ever. So inconsistent with any iteration of all those nights before.
You both sit there for a long moment before you randomly point to a large line that spreads across your forearm. “You know, out of all my scars, I think I love this one the most.” Your voice is soft as you caress the jagged thing; it’s not raised, just a slight discoloration across your skin. “It was summer, and behind my house there was this huge bit of woods, and in the middle was a small creek.” Your lips quirk as the memories overtook you, a gentle stare into oblivion. “This big willow had these huge branches, and young, dumb, and brave me decided to swing across on the branches, so I wrapped my arm around the branch and swung. God, I fell right in that damn brook, water and tadpoles soaking my overalls, blood running down my arm; you’d have thought I'd been dying with a scream like that.”
Simon waits a moment before he speaks, pulling his mask on as he does so, “Then what?”
That glaze is back as you flicker downward. “I…my neighbor found me, cleaned me up, and gave me honeycake and lemonade. Told me I needed to have more wits than brawn, but if I was gonna be stupid i’d better, “Be a lionhearted little fucker.”
A snort, short but genuine, escapes him; it shocks him for a moment. The sincerity of it all. When was the last time he’d ever felt such things? The slight pace of his heart picked up as he pressed the smile lines of your cheeks into his mind, hoarding it away greedily. A dragon creating an amassment of homages to you. He groans, matching the energy you set forward, and rolls up one of his sleeves, a patch on his elbow that looked pinker and rougher than the rest. “Wrestlin’ with my brother, tried to get out from under ‘em and he dragged my arse across the pavement.”
You let out a soft tinkle of laughter, another coin in his collection. “Can’t imagine anyone dragging you now.” You say, and he grunts with a nod. Looking across your arms, he sees a thick, raised pink scar on your right shoulder.
“What's tha'?” He’s surprised by his question, and you duck your head to see what he’s talking about. You blink in shock but shake your head.
“Bullet graze during my first tour in Iraq.” You mutter, and he blinks at the revelation. “Yeah, got some real chest-candy for that one. Some bastard set off an IED under my Humvee…only two of us made it out. My buddy, Doc, got captured; she was MIA for a few months, actually. I got out with a few bullet wounds and a splitting fuckin’ headache. It’s a wonder how the world works.”
Silence overtakes him, and then…then he nods, lifting his shirt suddenly, your eyes dart away from him, but his voice brings you back. “Meat hook.” Is all that comes out, and your eyes flicker back to the raised circular dark scars on the left side of his ribcage. Without your permission, your eyes wander over the expanse of his chest. It’s not as if he’d had a six-pack, nor did you expect him to. He had workers' muscles. His were built over years of stamina, endurance, and functionality. There were no aesthetics to his body aside from the large tree roots tattoo that melded into an expanse of his left bicep that melded downward into a grayscale of weaponry and smoke. Ghost was all-powerful grips, strong cores, and endurance. Built to withstand, not resist.
He chuckles a moment, letting his shirt fall.“You all right there, sergeant?”
A flustered look paints your face, and Ghost finds himself wanting to chase how far the underglow of blush spreads. See how much of it could consume you, see how much he could really make you squirm.
Instead, looking at the wall. “Better get some sleep before tomorrow,” he mutters. You scramble as he moves against you, grabbing his lighter and a pack of cigarettes from the side table. His back is cracking as he moves against the rough material. Lighting it as he lets the taste of stale tobacco linger on his taste buds, passing down to his lungs like an old friend.
“You can’t go back to sleep on the couch.” You say crossly, a finality in your voice, as if you’d just decided it, so it must be so. Honestly, it was cute.
Simon arches a brow under his mask, a smirk on his lips as he chuckles. “Yeah? Now why’s tha’?”
You roll your eyes at him, that same hand on your hip as you look indignantly up at him from your position still on the floor by the space heater. “You’re hurting yourself on this stupid couch… besides, I.. it…”
There’s a sudden…floundering to your words, the dim radiance of your blush blooming beneath your skin. It’s amusing, but also, he wants to know what the hell you’re getting on about. “Spit it out, Sergeant.”
“It’s cold!” The way you confess, it’s like you choked it up, vomiting it like a hairball, and a mortified look passes over your face as Simon stares blankly at you. “Look, the space heater doesn’t reach over far enough, and I get cold, the blanket isn’t enough, so…”
A cross look passes over his eyes. “So you’ve been strugglin’ every night and couldn't sleep?”
A panicked expression explodes from you as you shake your head. “No, I’ve survived worse, Sir—”
“But you’re still not warm enough.” His voice had a hint of anger to it, as if miffed by the whole situation, the fact that he didn’t know anything about your shivering in a bed by yourself, as he hogged the warmth of the heater, irked him. You could’ve gotten sick, or worse. “We’ll put the heater in the bedroom.”
“Then you’d be cold,” You reminded quietly. “I… look, why don’t we just…share the bed. It’ll be a tight fit, but it’ll be warm with the two of us.”
The idea of being in a full-sized bed with you, with your body so close to his, breathing in your scent—untainted by the smell of chemical perfumes or musky club air—was tempting. It was as if every part of him wanted to say yes. Fuck, the way you looked up at him with those big eyes of yours, thick lashes framing them like the art they were. He would build a fucking gallery and fill it with images of you if he’d had to. Trying to hold himself back, he began to shake his head when you let out a soft sigh, brows furrowing as you looked up so earnestly. “Please, Sir.”
‘Please, Sir.’
Suddenly, nothing else in his mind mattered, all of it, all of the bad, the past, the anger, the monsters, Ghost, it was all gone, all in perfect harmony within himself, because your words, that was all that mattered.
‘Please, Sir.’
Fuck, he couldn’t wait to take a palm to himself when given the moment, echoes of those words in his mind as he pleasured himself.
It was the nail in the coffin, the straw on the back, the Trojan horse to his fucking Troy. It absolutely desolated his resolve, breaking him down until he sighed. “Simon.”
“What?”
“If we’re sharin’ a bed, you might as well know my name.”
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
The first night sleeping with…Simon…was strange to say the least. You didn’t quite fit well on the bed together, but it worked anyway. Your hands would fall or brush against one another. Touching each other as you settle on the squeaking fabric below. There was no…skin contact, your lieutenant still wore his hoodie and a thick pair of sweatpants and black socks. You didn’t know how he slept like that. Yet, as you were observing him from the corner of your eye, you suddenly felt a weight shift, and he was rolling over, the spruce grove made you suddenly feel as if you were being coaxed deeper into the wooded crops. You blink in surprise, and you’re sure his eyes are sparkling with something that looks like mirth at your shock. “Can’t sleep if your eyes ain’t closed, Sargent.”
He’d muttered as you squealed, turning over to bury your face in the thin pillow that smelled like mothballs.
Utterly mortifying
Yet, you think, a small part of you, that it was the best sleep you’d gotten in years. The slight comfort of the feeling of his body next to your own, the massive amount of heat he throws off. The man was 6’3 and 230 lbs. There was no escaping the all-encompassing incalescence of the space around his body, and you were so…so close to him. You’d known Ghost was a …large man, but you’d assumed some of it was padded by his tac gear. It wasn’t. He was just built like that. In a way that made anyone feel small, no matter how big.
It made a difference, is all you’re saying.
You both don’t mention anything about the night before, and when you wake, he’s already dressed, showered, and smoking a cigarette in the living room. So, you just… go on with your routine like normal, a ration bar and some oatmeal for breakfast before you go to the club for rehearsals. Yet, when you walked in today…things felt off. Ghost had hung back a few moments; you two never arrived together. When you walked in, all eyes were on you. It made your anxieties prick. Had you been made? It was impossible, you’d been so careful. You slowly walk in, the triplets giggling as you pass, Miss. Petrov comes barreling up to you, an unreadable expression on her face. “Oh, Poppy!” She squeals, and a surprised look passes over your face. “Come here, my Lastochka, oh, you beautiful girl!” She kisses your cheeks, the press of painted lips leaving behind stains on your skin.
Tilting your head, you look over, bathed in curiosity. “Miss Petrov? Have I done something?”
She giggles lightly, and you hear the doors click as Ghost enters the room in the corner of your eyesight. “Oh, come, come, Malyshka.” She pulls you toward your dressing room, tugging your arm excitedly as she chatters on. You tune into her incessant ramblings, only catching some of the muttered and jumbled rapid pace of the Russian. “Oh, just so exciting, I knew you’d bring presents, but something like this?”
This is...
This is…
This is bad.
Your dressing room mirror was overfilled with flowers, a profuse display of blossoms decorating and spilling across the sides. It was… an exuberant display. A concoction of Lilies, gloriosas, clematis, anemone, heather brooms, and orchids. Intense, vivid blues, pinks, and oranges consumed every speck of space. Boxes stacked against the side, all matched with glittering bows. “I…what is this?” You gasp, the scent of fresh flora invading your senses as you try to stop your heart from exploding. You could practically hear the ‘I told you so’ in your lieutenant's voice, but there was no going back from this.
“Gifts.” She says simply, as if that were all it were. As if this were something normal that happened. “From Isaak Mashcov.” You hesitantly make your way over to the piles of glittery boxes and bags, opening one, you’re met with a burlesque costume, high quality and perfectly your size. A shiver runs through your spine. How he got your body measurements, you were unsure, nor did you know how he’d gotten these handmade so soon. You look over at her in confusion. “The Mashcov family is very good friends of the club, I’ve never seen him take such an interest!”
That’s what you were afraid of, you let out a shaky smile and you nervously nod along. Until she’s pushing you to open the gifts, the first one on top has a letter attached to it.
Nadzeya Smirnova
Moy Kukolka,
I hope you enjoy my present, Rodnaya. I believe, truly in my heart, you deserve the finest of fabrics and feathers. I do hope you wear them for me at our next meeting. I shall see you next Saturday, and every night in my dreams until then.
Wear the pearls.
Yours.
Isaak
Your hands shake as you read the letter, Miss Pretov pushing you to open the packages, pouring out layers of lace, velvet, and satin. Swarovski crystals embedded in corsets and jewelry, luxury feather boas, and silk slips overfill the room. It was overwhelming, it was drowning. You could practically feel the reverence through the largesses. The air was stiff, and you nod, taking a deep breath, “I… t-thank you, I’m just, I’ll be right back.
You needed to get away from it, escape the overwhelming plume of rich, heady citrus and light florets. Stumbling out of the room, Coco gasps in surprise, steadying you on your heels before you escape through the back alley. You never even notice the dark eyes that watched your fervent escape. Yet as you lay your bare shoulders against the expanse brick wall behind you. You can’t help but wheeze as you slowly realize you’re being sucked in again. You’d been down this road, the easy obsessions, the quiet limerence, but this was loud, this was volatile. Before, it was a stable reactor, perfectly balanced between danger and a meltdown. This was a chemical response ready to explode.
The door swings open, and your wet eyes flash to see Ghost there. Quickly, as if they were never there, you wipe the red rimming of your eyes vehemently. A waver in your lower lip as you steel your expression. As briskly as it was there, it was gone. He looks down at you, the way your shoulders draw in against the cold, still in your little tank top and dance shorts. Sighing, he shrugged off the thick black jacket he wore, allowing it to fall over your shoulders. You bury yourself in the stale tobacco and the robust smokey earth. “Thanks.” You mutter.
His face pitches downward, head moving so you can see his expression. “What happened?”
You twist your lips nervously, unsure of yourself, if you revealed it, you might get yanked from the mission. Hiding it though, was a non-option. You’re sure all the girls have it spread around the club that Mashcov had a new favorite. “He latched on.” You mutter reluctantly, eyes not meeting him. “First stage of limerence, the glimmer, the infatuation… if I accept the gift then…”
“Gift? What gift?” Ghost growls out, his eyes sharp and dangerous, a razor’s edge as you dance delicately on the wire. “He gave you somethin’?”
“A bouquet of flowers and several outfits.”Your revelation only spurs him on; he reaches out to his burner phone. “What are you doing?”
He barely sends you a glance as he begins to dial something, “Callin’ Price, you’re getting pulled.”
“Pulled? What?” You hiss, moving to grab the phone. “Are you serious? This is our only shot, if we don’t get an in—”
“And you’re willing to risk him deteriorating?” Ghost snaps, but you’re not listening; your eyes are only on the small brick phone in his hands. “What happens when it fades, huh?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.” You hiss, finally reaching out to grab the phone and try ripping it from Ghost’s grip. His large hand comes over your wrist and traps it as he pulls your arm above your head. Your other one comes to claw at his hand, but it doesn't budge. “Let me go.”
A low chuckle escapes him. It’s not real, though; it's sardonic, dark, and minacious. The clenching of his jaw is visible even under the mask. “So you’re gonna die for what, a mission?”
“Don’t we all?” You hiss angrily, “What is so different, huh? Soap throws himself in the line of fire all the time. Gaz deactivates bombs, and how many times have you or Captain been the man left behind, huh?” It wasn’t fear that propelled you forward in your irreproachable fury. You weren’t just mad, you were hurt. As if you couldn’t do your job correctly. “What other choice do we have?”
You feel your body get pushed against the wall, the feeling of your lieutenant pressing you into the broken slabs pressing against the jacket as your wind is immediately expunged from your sails. “The difference is you.” Then a pause. “You feel any indication he’s devolving, we yank you. Copy?”
“Loud and clear, Sir.”
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
The next Saturday doesn’t come soon enough, the night goes smoothly until he hears the welcomings of Miss. Petrov, as Isaak steps through the club, eyes rake the crowds before his face pitches down in displeasure. As if rushing to accommodate him, she waves her arms around, pointing to the stage and then looking at her watch. They settle down in the center of the booth as the kick of jazz ripples through the club, the spotlight illuminating the feathered wings hiding your body on the top of the piano you lie across. When the rippling plumage pulls away to reveal your little body unfurled across the polished black top.
Ghost felt his breath catch as his eyes rake over your skin. Utterly indecent and heavenly. Heavily embellished, nude-toned bra with thousands of sewn-on pearls, draping over your skin, a matching encrusted panty set that made him salivate. You looked…angelic, the way the soft pearlescent embellishments illuminated against your skin. Beaded lines wrapping around your body like tangles.
Even from his place, he could see the satisfaction and manic glee that alighted Isaak’s face as the quills revealed your ineffable disposition. This must be one of the gifts he’d gotten you.
“A guy what takes his time…I'll go for any time.”
You look around as you sit up, the girls making the wings' little extensions behind your back, creating an ethereal scene as you look around at the crowd with a wink.
“I'm a fast movin' gal I'd like some slow…”
You open your legs cheekily, grabbing the hat of the pianist in front of you while you run your fingers through his hair. Something in Ghost wants to break his neck for just being this close.
“Got no needs for fancy drivin' when I see a guy arrivin' in love…” You dance on the small bench, shaking your hips as the pearls clack together, “I'd be satisfied, electrified, I know a guy what takes his time…”
Taking you apart bit by bit, the way you would break under him, the gasping, quiet begs of mercy as he finally shatters and lets the beast inside him feast. It wouldn’t be sorrowful cries, no, pleasure-filled whimpers and mewls of need and desperation. The little jerk of hips as you begged him to give you a moment of reprieve.
“A hurry up affair, I always give the air,...wouldn't give any rushin' gent a smile…” Images of that shy little grin you’d had on your face when he’d fragmented apart around you. Just the patient and the mischievous tiny thing that gave him peace. “I could go for any swinger who would contemplate to linger awhile…a lullaby would be supplied to have a guy what takes his time…”
The way you move around the club is like you commanded them; it wasn’t like you’d bark at recruits or cadets, no, it was…inebriating. Drunk on your glacé beams and twists. The cynosure of the entire room, guiding and pulling them toward you in your gravitational pull. “A guy what takes his time…I'd go for any time…a hasty job really spoils a master's touch…”
“I don't like a big commotion, I'm a demon for slow motion or such. Why should I deny that I would die to know a guy who takes his time.” Your prance moves downward from the stage, going from table to table as you flounce around men, touching or grabbing drinks or hats as you go by. At one point, you grab a cherry from one of the men’s drinks, licking it before you drop it back into his mouth.
Ghost was going to murder someone tonight.
“There isn't any fun…”You make your way to Isaak, hips swaying as your heels click with the beat of the song. “In getting something done…if you're rushed when you have to make the grade…” She perches at the edge of their table, legs crossing as she leans back on her arms to dip her face close to Isaak. “I can spot an amateur, appreciate a connoisseur at his trade…who would qualify, no alibi to be the guy who takes his time…”
She kisses his glass, leaving behind the print of pink on the rim of the cup. Before winking, and getting up, bringing herself off with a shimmy and back to the dressing rooms, money thrown out after you as you walk.
Isaak picks up the glass thoughtfully and then presses the marked crystal into his mouth as he takes a sip.
Forget a murder, Simon was going to start a massacre.
꒷꒦ꙮ꒷꒦
Welp, here you all are. I know Simon seems a little soft, but that cause he is here, IDK. Anywho, I really hope you guys are enjoying now that we're halfway!
Song: Guy What Takes His Time by Christina Aguilera
cw: Fighting, uncomfy male oc, obsession, possessive behavior
You've caught the attention of Issak Mashcov, son of the leader of a Russian Mafia. How will Ghost react to this new attention?
°❀⋆.ೃ⋆˚🐝˖°ʚɞ°❀⋆.ೃ࿔
Leaving the stage, your heart would not still in your chest; it was a constant pounding of a hummingbird rattling around in your ribcage. The girls congratulated you sweetly as you walked in, giggling and smiling as you hurried back to the dressing room, feeling more exposed than you’d ever been before.
Look, you’d been a marine since you turned eighteen, in the field not long after that. You weren’t… prudish, or even shy when it came to nudity! The number of times another person watches you take a piss in the military is a very high amount—and that was just medical. Nevermind being in the field, showers, and changing, in front of groups of all different people. There was no room for hiding your body away from others—it was just another tool at the end of the day. A blunt object with the stamp of Property of the U.S Government across your back.
Yet…this was different. Soldiers usually don't look back, and when they do, it’s rarely with that starvation lurking behind their gaze.
You had done dance before—knew enough of a mix of hip-hop and ballet from your time during your childhood, when you’d sneak into the dance studio and watch them practice. Back then, it was used as an escape, running away from the brutalities of home to slip behind a mask. It was a little thing; you’d found a gap behind the mirror wall where you could just squeeze your body into enough. On the other side of it was a small unused room, just enough space for you to follow the steps and practice.
It was something that stuck with you, a way of working out, keeping your body trained in a way that most others weren’t. Coordination, footing, and spatial awareness are all similar building blocks of both fighting and dance; mix the two, and you get a deadly pair.
You were no Anna Pavlova, but you could catch a beat and knew how to move your hips on rhythm.
Zelena was seated in the vanity beside yours, large Hollywood bulbs illuminating her porcelain-like complexion, the sharp swoop of her cheekbones casting shadows across the shallows of her cheeks. The upturn of her nose and bright green eyes were definitely striking. You knew that she’d been in the ballet before—forced leave after an acl injury.
You shoot her a sweet beam as you sit in the seat next to her, placing the white silk robe on. “Wow—is it like this every Saturday?” You ask breathlessly, making a show of fanning your blush underglow.
The woman sends her a faintly hidden look of disgust before ‘schooling’ her expression as she turns to fix her eyeliner. “Well, when you’ve been in the business for long enough, you’ll start to notice when the trends are.” Zelena lets out a high-pitched, ‘hmm’ before continuing. “Guess it’s just something that comes with… experience.”
Okay, you hated this girl for Poppy.
You get it, you’re stepping on her toes, taking the spotlight, but that wasn’t Poppy’s fault. Plus, you hadn’t even taken anything from her—you both had solos tonight. Zelena’s was supposed to be edgier and more serious than yours; also, completely opposite styles. While Poppy played on desires and sweet temptations, Zelena was more… lurid.
Yet, you do nothing, because Poppy would never have caught on to the obvious venom coating. “Wow, yeah, I guess when I’m as old as you, I’ll get it.” Well, almost nothing.
The floundering brings you immense satisfaction, and you almost let out a chuckle when a timid voice interrupts you all. You both turn your heads, hearing a quiet, “U-uhm, Poppy? It’s for you.”
Getting up, you quickly cross the room, ducking costume racks and hot irons as you get to the door, passing Irina, who gives you a concerned look. You almost question her, until you open the door and see your Lieutenant standing outside. Looking probably three inches taller than his already massive form as he spreads his chest and squares his shoulders. You look behind your shoulder, directing her a cheeky wink before you slip out of the room, grabbing Ghost by the arm of his hoodie and yanking him further down the hall into one of the private rooms. Ignoring the zap of electricity as the tips of your fingers brush the dark fabric.
“What?” You hiss, almost seething that he would make contact with you in the field, in front of coworkers; As if that weren’t breaking the mission rules.
The man doesn’t move for a moment, doesn’t speak until he seems to look you up and down, the hardwood stare picking everything about you apart. “What?” He echoes, dry. “‘What?’ She fuckin’ says, as if you didn’t just put us all on the line.”
You tilt your head at him condescendingly, “You mean doing my job? Completing the fucking mission?”
“Your mission was to get close to Zelena—”
“My mission was to gather intel on the Mashcov family and take them down.” You whisper, voice a hairbreadth of sound. “And I have not failed a mission yet, Sir.”
Ghost lets out one sharp chuckle before he nods once, tilting his head at you. “And you think shakin’ your arse at the enemy is gonna do that, yeah?”
Not to be outdone, you mimic his forward step, anger causing your shoulders to pull up, the patter of your pulse sounding in your ears. You're close now, so close you can smell him. The cool tobacco curling around you, filling you with the smoky undernotes of oak.“I’ll do what it takes.”
Before he can respond, a knock sounds at the door, and he growls. It rips through his chest and expands in the room. Filling it to the brim with menacing grit. It sends goosebumps scattering across your exposed skin, heart dropping as he yanks open the door.
It was the first real show of anger you’d ever seen from him, directed at you.
It was the first show of any real emotion you’d seen from him.
Pure frustration, vexation radiating through the deep resonance so viciously that it burned. Like a damn shot of fucking morphine, setting your veins on fire before a soothing numb follows.
Why does it make your stomach…swoop?
Miss. Petrov is standing outside, glancing over her shoulder swiftly, as if to check on something before she turns back to you two. The dark wine gaze roves over you two, the close bodies, your wide eyes, and Ghost’s seething form, and she seems to put something together in her mind. “No personal pleasure on the clock.”
Ghost's body snaps, the entire thing drawing back like a bowstring, taut and ready to fire off at a twitch of the fingers. You step forward, cheeks a flustered pink that you didn’t have to force. “O-of course, Miss. Petrov, I am so s—”
“Save your breath, you’re being asked for a special thank you.” The rumbling sound is back, low and baritone, snaking down your skin and settling itself in the heat of your belly.
Before either of you can make a fool of yourself, you nod hurriedly. “Of course, Miss. Petrov, I’ll be right there.” You shoot a glare at your Lieutenant before following obediently after her, slipping the robe off on your way. Barely even flinching at the freezing whip of Ghost's leer, the darkening of his eyes, swallowing the brown, the intense furrowing of his brow that causes his nose bridge to crinkle.
Barely.
You shouldn’t be surprised when you’re led straight to that half-moon table, a pack of wolves snarling behind their white conciliatory smirks. You’re drawn in, like a roe deer being corralled, bites nipping at your heels as they try to outlast you. Exhausting you until they can all pounce.
Poppy plays her part well. You come out, beam on your perfectly polished lips. The glinting of your costume captures the hazy carmine lights, scattering like rubies. Ghost follows soon after, exiting out of the doorway to lean on the bar as he observes you.
The air is thick with the cigarette’s brume as you cut through the crowd, people parting and sending you compliments; showering you in praise as you pass. It was electric, the kind that tinges the air right before a summer storm. That sticky, heated sort of tingle that starts low in your bones and thrums until you can feel your hair stand up. You wonder, almost half-heartedly, what the team must think of you now. You don’t meander on the thought. Only take another step toward malediction. You find your way over to them, your shimmering heels lengthening your legs as you parade through. “Красный…” Isaak’s voice breathed as you approached, squared jaw dropping in an almost reverence. A glimmer of…something in his eyes. For just a moment, sizzling plasma flowed through the slightly obscene blue of his irises. They weren’t a calming cobalt like Johnny, no. They were the kind of shade that caught the light, illuminating the pure white of his sclera in an off-putting way. Yet as you approach, they’re overcome by his pupil expanding.
It takes your mind a moment to adjust from the hushed English to your practiced sugary Russian. “Hello…I heard you were asking for me?” You ask, perfectly mawkish, an innocent widening of your expression, a slight tilt of your head.
Issak trails up and down your body without any restraint, humming a satisfied sound when he reaches back to your face. “Indeed, you’re new, no?”
You nod, a little shyly, as you wave slightly, “I was just hired earlier this week.”
“An amazing addition.” He concedes coolly, looking at the men at his table. “Wouldn’t you all agree?” They don’t hesitate before bidding to his words—out of truth or obligations you couldn’t tell. Though the way your skin is left untouched by the ravenous, lazy fixation of their stares…it makes you feel like it was a heady blend of both.
“Baby I wanna touch you…I want to breathe inside your well…”
Ears pricking at the soft velvet sway of Zelena’s song number, your head turns for a moment, expecting Issak’s to follow, but he simply watches you instead, waiting. You can’t help but feel the way dread fills you at the intensity of the stare. The weight behind his interest was damning, and you didn’t want to admit that it frightened you a bit. While you were dedicated to your mission and would do anything to ensure its completion, the slightly manic glaze of his face sets you on edge. You’d never seen someone look at you like that… not since…
“See, I gotta hunt you…I gotta bring you to my hell…”
“You don’t sound like you’re from Russia, yeah, not your native country,” Isaak comments as he moves to slide further in the booth, arm across the back of the seat as he nods at the small gap he’d opened. “Sit, please.”
It isn’t a question.
Feet moving before you can stop them, you drop to his side, trying to dismiss the prick of Ghost in your peripheral vision. You can’t imagine where his mind was as you slid on the vinyl seating. Your bare thighs brush against the cool material as you settle in beside him. The strong smell of vodka and beer mixes heavily between the two of you, thick cigars left burning as the plume of smoke swirls upwards.
You never did like the deep scent of fermented tar that would roll from the densely packed bundle of leaves. It wasn’t the tobacco that you hated—contrarily you actually enjoyed the smell of cigarettes. They were sharper, sweeter, a lighter air of paper. Your mother used to smoke them; they’d paint the already dirty walls yellow as you both huddled close. Maybe the heat was off, maybe your father had a bad day at the tables, either way. The smell was home, small, quiet slips of comfort in her otherwise disregarded existence.
Cigars were the opposite.
They were briny nights of trepidation and peat-tinged deception.
“Baby, I wanna fuck you…I wanna feel you in my bones.”
“No,” your soft accent rises above the music, the intense and heavy synthesizer, the room is dramatically dimmed, eyes smoldering in the candlelight as you lean forward as if indulging a secret. “I’m from Belarus!”
He laughs, a grainy thing that grates on your ears, feeding the growing pit in your stomach as you flutter your lashes at him. “See, I always know when someone is not from here, the accent.. It’s special, yeah?”
Exactly, which is why you picked a country close but not quite the same. A young girl from a small village in Belarus is a perfect explanation for the differences in accents and slips in words.
“Boy, I'm gonna love you…I'm gonna tear you into your soul.”
“Russia is very special, I’ve loved my time here.”
Isaak watched her, just staring at her for a moment, those intense glow illuminated by the glistening reds. “ So, what’s a good girl like you doing here? Hmm?”
“Desire, I'm hungry, I hope you feed me…”
The echoes of your song hit you as you force a titter, cheeks as warm as the room, a sweltering intensity that doesn’t seem to go unnoticed. “Oh… I love to dance, and I’m saving…”
You trail, biting your lip off-handedly as you glance away; handcrafting the look of faux embarrassment. The coruscate appears once again, a craving seeming to cultivate under your innocence. “A good girl indeed.” He agrees, simply.
“How do you want me, how do you want me?”
“Well, of course, I’m no liar.” You don’t even recognize the sound of your voice, candy-coated philandering. You’ve never flirted before, really, never one to go out to a party or bar. In childhood and adulthood, you weren’t…shy, just…reticent. Maybe it was due to the rapid growth of your adolescence, the need to become an adult due to the lack of competency of those around you. The trauma pushing for development. The words themselves are ironic, a cuckoo placed so gently amongst the others, a mimicry, only to slowly take over and consume.
“How do you want me, how do you want me? How do you want me, how do you want me?”
The canines of his teeth catch dangerously on the light as they bare themselves, a mockery of a real smile. This was more so an impetuous bearing of tush. “I’m starting to see that…tell me, Poppy, where did you learn to sing like that?”
The words that come are reverent, as if he’s swallowing up the sounds of you all for himself. A truly gluttonous display that made your stomach churn with sick. It was just strange… how swiftly and suddenly he seemed to clock onto you. “I’ve been singing since I was young…it’s always been my passion.” You say simply, as if to wave off the magnificence of your actions.
His head shakes, scattering the thick curls of black across his forehead as he leans in closer to you, the smell of alcohol and an almost chemical sandalwood overwhelming now. “Well… It’s simply… intoxicating…” he whispered, his hand coming out to brush your cheek when you pull back shyly. His hand falls, and there is a split moment where he transforms. No more mealymouthed phrases or unctuous smiles, it was raw, real. A fleeting glance at the monster lurking underneath his skin. Yet it’s gone just as fast. “I look forward to seeing you again…Poppy.”
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
“How do you want me, how do you want me?”
The noise grates on Ghost’s ears as he hears Price snap orders. Everyone is tense, Johnny hasn’t cracked a joke since he’d put the earpiece back in after your and his little, meeting, was interrupted. “Keep your eyes on them, he so much as twitches wrong—”
“Affirmative.” Ghost mutters as he watches you slide into the booth, tucking yourself in the side of the bratva, batting your eyelashes as he leans down into your space, a sweet grin on your lips. Have you ever looked at him that way? With those deep eyes that seem to suck you in and go on forever. He doesn't remember you making much of any eye contact with him. The man didn’t play by the niceties of social graces, never meeting someone’s eyes unless it was for intimidation. You’d rarely looked back at his heated stares.
Not until the fight.
“Honey, I wanna break you”
The way you’d taken a step toward him, thunderous in your anger as you seemed to crackle like the strike of lightning. It drew him in, a warm storm, a sunshower in the never-ending sands of the desert. Dry virga promising wisps of your righteous mizzles before it could hit him. Would you have hit him? Would you have drawn those jowls of yours back and masticate the hand that feeds you? ‘I’ll do what it takes.’ The words echo in his mind as he watches Isaak dip his head toward you with starvation written across his body.
“I wanna throw you to the hounds”
How could Simon not feel the pricks of need as he’d watched you perform in that little outfit and then not only put yourself in harm's way and directly into the attentions of the enemy, but also act venomously when questioned by your superiors? So irreproachable in your arguments, as if you truly believed there was no better way. As if your safety in the situation was not.
It made his jaw click.
“Yeah I gotta hurt you, I gotta hear it from your mouth”
The way your scent consumed him as you had gone toe-to-toe with him, body nothing compared to his as he towered over your provoked little form. Face hitched downward in what he supposed you thought was a vicious snarl, but he could only see a street mutt scared and cornered, trying to show the big dogs in the pound you were in charge. Yet the way your snarls quickly suspended into compliant whimpers around Miss. Petrov had his mind reeling.
The lines between Mozu and Poppy were blurring, and he had a feeling, somewhere buried in the middle, was where you lay.
“Boy, I wanna taste you, I wanna skin you with my tongue.”
The way that Isaak looked at you set both Ghost and Simon on edge, the latter because he recognized that look on his men before him—the manic sort of glee that gave way to limerent obsessions; The former because he'd seen that own look in himself earlier that night.
“I'm gonna kill you.”
The thoughts came quickly, the way they always do. A flash of a movie like moments crossing behind his gaze and spiraling out of control. The way he wanted you, the way he looked at you. It was setting him off, and all he wanted was to reach into his hidden holster and put a bullet between the man’s searching examinations.
I'm gonna lay you in the ground”
Ghost was no stranger to the dark thoughts, the kind that creeped in through the slats of his mind, beating like a pulse underneath hardwood vaults. It calls out to him, no matter how hard he tries to bury it under layers of varnish.
‘Desire, I'm hungry….”
It was like you kindled the already growing licks of provocation, like you were pushing him to act, though coyning smiles and sweet slick movements. Ghost was shikarring. This was the beginning of something new, something foreign.
“I hope you feed me…”
You know, bird trapping has a few basic steps.
“How do you want me, how do you want me?”
Different tactics, different methods.
“How do you want me, how do you want me?”
In the end, it’s all about the lure, the location, and the trap.
“How do you want me, how do you want me?”
Birds, they tend to be a skittish bunch, ready and waiting for the zip of flight, notoriously hard to catch if you weren’t trying to go for the kill.
“How do you want me, how do you want me?”
Yet… There are some traps, invisible to the naked eye, the moment they fly into it, they’re entangled, wings strung up in imperceptible wires, wrapping around them until they’re unable to escape.
“I wanna feel you, I want it all.”
Hammock-like pockets consume them as they wait, secured in a cocoon of nylon until their handlers are able to gently coax them from the webbing.
“I wanna feel you, I want it all.”
Never had Ghost had an interest in fowling, never put much mind into observing the little things, yet as he watched you hinge your chin upward, the trace of something on your lips…
Suddenly, it’s his favorite sport.
“How do you want me, how do you want me?”
“How do you want me, how do you want me?”
“How do you want me, how do you want me?”
“How do you want me, how do you want me?”
꒷꒦ꙮ꒷꒦
Hey y'all, sorry this is so late, I had doctors' appointments all day lol, anywho glimpses of Simon being possessive ooo
After preforming for the first time, Simon Riley is confronted with emotions he doesn't recognize, while you fall deeper into your role
°❀⋆.ೃ⋆˚🐝˖°ʚɞ°❀⋆.ೃ࿔
The flat that you two shared was dingy, an almost leaky thing, covered in the scent of must and damp wallpaper. There was a distinct dripping sound of water that didn’t come from the tap, and also random splotches of stains aligning the ceiling and walls. Cracks stretched across the windows; splinterings of the glass that allowed for streaks of wind to flutter in the room, giving it a bone-deep chill in the Russian winter. The only thing to combat that is a small space heater hooked up to an overloaded power strip in the center of the living room.
Well, if you could even call it that, there were no walls except for the dismal bathroom one. The back wall had the ‘bedroom’ tucked in the south-west corner, while the couch and broken television sat in the eastern one. The bathroom was along the north-west wall, complete with a wobbly toilet and spicket that ran out of hot water ten minutes into a shower. The kitchen consisted of a gas stove top that looked like it came from a 50's housewife ad, and the counters were lined with that fake marble plastic that peeled up in the corners.
The lieutenant didn’t seem to mind; he only shouldered his way into the small, thin door. He watches you toweringly as you enter after him, locking the deadbolt and two additional locks that had been installed. He hadn’t spoken much since the club, a muttered greeting when you’d met up with him a block down from the club after your shift. Climbing on top of his motorcycle as he zipped through the night streets and back to the ruse flat. The team was back at the safehouse, Ghost making a muttering noise as he clicked the buttons on the bulky computer; the screen flickered on to show the three men on the other side.
You’re both sitting on the couch, the bottom of it is broken, the way it dips toward the center and creeks uneasily under Ghost’s weight makes you certain of that.
Johnny is the first to speak, letting out a low whistle as his eyes draw up and down you playfully. “Well now, Bonnie, if we knew you had a pair of pipes like tha’ huh?”
A chuckle comes from Gaz as he pops over the Scottish man’s shoulder, eyes wide and teasing. “Should be callin’ you Wren, yeah?
“You can call me that if you want to lose your tongue.” You mutter out, heat rising stubbornly to your cheeks as you try to battle the underlying glow.
John lets out a chuckle, “Alright, lads, leave ‘er alone. Can’t be teasin’ our very own Dusty Springfield.”
They all erupted in laughter as Ghost shifted next to you, his massive form haunching forward as he let out a dark noise. “So, she’s in. What now?”
A serious blow passes over the team. “Reconnaissance, you’re our eyes and ears out there, Mozu. Surveillance says Issak is close to one of the dancers there—Zelena—goes to her for private dances.”
“Zelena, got it.” You murmur, eyes looking at the screen and avoiding the weighted glances coming from the corner of your Lieutenant’s mask.
“Other than that, you both keep your ears pricked, eyes on each other's six, yeah? Report anythin’ and everythin’.” You both nod at your Captain’s orders. The last thing you see is the three soldiers smiling as the screen blacks out, plunging you into the quietness of the room. The only sounds are your breathing and the faint fighting and conversations of your neighbors.
You shift uncomfortably, out of everyone on the team, you are most unsure about your place amongst Ghost. He wasn’t an easy man to break, you knew that. You’d seen it the first day you’d shown up on base.
Arms crossed over his chest, a physical barrier between him and the outside world, the stretch of his shoulders and square of his body screamed power and authority. The slight tilting of his feet and position told you he didn’t want to be near you any more than he had to.
Which was fine.
You were no stranger to those types of superiors, the ones who would rather you be seen and not heard. Yet… that suspicion falters when you hear the blunt comments he’d slip to Price. The intoned dry dad jokes that would alight Soap’s comms. The biting sarcasm that soaked his conversations with Gaz.
It wasn’t a him thing, it was a you thing.
Again, this was fine; you were introduced to the 141 as a catalyst. The looming tone of dangered deployments clung to you as if you were a banshee wailing death’s warning. You were a question, a bundle of text across an OMPF. Nothing but paragraphs of NCOERs and disciplinary records.
As the year goes on… It's stagnant. With the slow ins and outs of missions and stations, nothing changes; there is never a comment toward you that isn’t an order or gripe.
“Bloody ‘ell, Mozu.”
“Keep your eyes on a swivel, Sergeant!”
“UAV overheads!”
Always shortly snapped, always gruff.
You had thought Gaz would be the one joining you; he was the most practical. His ability to change languages on a dime, his observant nature, and covert surveillance training… It was the obvious choice. Yet, when you had looked at Price during debrief, he’d simply barked a quick— "Lieutenant will handle ya’.”
And that was that.
Except it wasn’t because now you were sitting, locked in silence with him as he barely spared you a glance. At least with the others, they tried to pretend you were included, slowly trusted your abilities through your brute strength and mental fortitude. It wasn’t that they didn’t trust your skills; it was just that you were closed off, flighty, evasive. It made it hard for anyone to pin down, nevermind paranoid C-PTSD rattled soldiers who’d never had a lick of therapy in their life that wasn’t mandated.
Yet, what were you supposed to do? Carve yourself open for them and eviscerate yourself on truths? No, they all had their wounds. They all rotted on the inside with their own wickedness swathed as justice. You would do no exhibition, you made sure of that; promised yourself in the darkness of that safehouse you’d never unveil yourself like you did when…when…
A shift brings you out of your thoughts as the mountain beside you moves. Startling you from the inner musings of your brain matter when the splintered plywood creaks. He gets up with a pop of his joints, cracking his head to the side, and does a lap around the small area, checking the locks and exits.
In your own body, you feel tense, trapped. It was as if the barometric pressure shifted; the buzzing in your chest swarmed as his form moved silently over the decaying floorboards. The flood of bugs seems to sibilate through your body, your mouth opening in a searching hinge as they flood out in the form of words.
“You pick up chow?” Those are the first things out of your mouth as your eyes flicker to the yellowing fridge.
A slight scoff came from him, “Bloody Yank.” You hear him mutter as he looks up at you. The spruce forests call you deeply among the branches. “S’called, scran in the SAS.”
You get a contemplative look over your face for a moment, processing his tone and body language, trying to devise your response. “Yeah, an’ I’d call it that if you bastards won the war, yet here we are.” You say crossly, moving towards the kitchen and opening the empty fridge that seems to have the lingering scent of rot. “MRE’s tonight, I’ll pick up supplies in the morning.”
“Ration pack.” Came the answering correction as you jerk two packs of food from your ruck, throwing one over to your Lieutenant. You sit on the floor, back against one of the overly soft walls, as you assemble the chicken curry, the sound of Ghost doing the same thing keeping your attention slightly. Your eyes dart over to him, where he had been opening the contents without heating them. Realizing something, you move from against the wall and turn, staring at the faded Gzhel patterns, as your food heats. You hear the rustling of the packaging stop before a voice filters through the room. “What, you throwin’ a wobbler?”
Turning in absolute confusion, your face pinched up as you looked at your Lieutenant. “What?”
“Wobbler. Like a tyke, poutin’ at a wall.” You realize half–way through his words he meant a tantrum.
Your eyes glowered at him, “You need to eat, can’t do that through a mask.”
The silence veils the room as you turn your head back again, watching the steam escaping your heating element. You pick up the packaging from the water, wiping it on your sleeve before digging into the lack of flavor. That didn’t stop you; it could be covered in ash and rolled in sand, and you’d probably still eat it. Taste and textures become distant memories in the face of famine. Being out on ops for days…your hunger wasn’t a foreign concept to you.
And if there was one thing starvation drove you to do, it was consumption.
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
The room was alive with people tonight. The club was adorned with patrons at every table, smoking, chatting, and drinking. The casual pass of laughter and conversation eased over everyone. The girls were radiant tonight, enriched with sequined costumes and perfectly dolled-up make-up worn like uniforms. The glitter spreads across gaps of skin. Idyllic and provocative smiles embellish them, their own individual weapons.
That’s what they used them like, hidden under the bright shine of teeth glinting off stage lights was something…minacious. The underlying taste of danger licked across their enamel. Kissed lips poised for devastation.
Ghost watched in the shadows of the crimson-lit room. This was the first Saturday since Mozu had been hired at the club. Everyone was tense, chatter on the line silent. It’s been two days and other than glimpses of closed rehearsals and the flash of you in the background of the girls, Ghost had seen nothing of Nadzeya. Only the quiet passive monitoring of Mozu around the flat.
He still remembered the first night they’d spent there.
When Mozu had first turned your back towards him that night, he was sure it was his first glimpse of some kind of resentment toward his attitude. A storm of vexation slips through the usual buoyant waves that seemed to wash across the shores of your psyche. Yet, no, it was those same usual considerations that had followed him on base. The silent pass of indifferent kindness as if it were second nature to you. As if it were easy.
It made the emptiness inside him grow.
That same attitude had continued into the night, despite the Lieutenant's best efforts and abruptness. He didn’t make small talk, only muttered a quiet, “You’re ‘lright.” to signal that he had finished eating. He hadn’t taken his mask fully off, only pulled it up over his nose as he dug into the cold meat; his stare pinned to your back as you’d eaten your own meal.
You hadn’t even tried to peek a glance at him through the corner of your eyes, simply watched the wallpaper like the waning blue swirls were the most interesting thing in the world.
It grated him.
Why were you so… kind? No—not nice. Kind. There were no sugared words, no surface-level politeness, no acquiesces for small conversation. It was like it was all…ingrained into you. The genuineity behind the small action enkindled a warmth in him that he desperately tried to snuff.
You’d looked up at him with those wide eyes, that slowly growing familiar lour passed over your squeezed face. Still-glossed lips pressing together so hard they lighten with the pressure. It was as if you were trying to keep your own words muzzled as you tried your best to fight with him.
And fight you did.
“You should take the bed, I’ll take the couch.” You’d told him, pulling your ruck toward you as you readied yourself for a chilling shower.
He’d scoffed at you, “Since when did you start giving orders, aye?” Ghost almost growled out as he turned his body on the dingy couch, stretching out his legs on the boxy little thing—the bolts groaning against each other under his weight.
Little hands moved to your waist as you jutted a hip out, head tilted like he was an idiot.
Maybe he was.
“I’m smaller, and you’re going to break that couch, you don’t even fit on it!”
You were right, it would kill his back, the awkward angle of the arms made sure that his 6 '3 form could not settle correctly amongst the crusted mustard colored cushions.
Still, he’d dealt with worse.
So, he only gives you an amused look beneath his mask. It was funny, the exasperation clear as day in your voice. Seemingly frustrated by his lack of factual observations. “Well then, I guess neither of us is sleeping on the bed.” You state, placing your pack, as if you would take the floor.
“Why don’t you go sit your arse down on the bed, or do I have to pull rank, Sergeant?”
You go stark still at that, the kindling in your gaze setting him ablaze before you drop it with a simple, “Aye, Sir.” Yet, when you walked away, he could have sworn he’d heard the emendation, “Ass,” as you marched toward the shower.
It almost made the crick in his spine worth it.
“Incoming."
Ghost hears the chime of Gaz pull him from his thoughts, his observations moving from the constant sweep to a piercing, immobile scrutiny. Isaak looks the same as he does on the glossed pages, taller than the average man, a layer of lean muscle wrapping his flesh, the deep onyx of his hair slick against his head as he swaggers into the room, flanked by his guard and two other men.
“On the left is Vanya Egorov, local shylock, and the bloke on the right is Samuil Kozlov, he’s one of the Mashcov family enforcers."
Kozlov would need to be taken down first; Ghost could recognize the cold occupancy of a reaper from here. He was shorter than Roma Abelev—the main bodyguard for Isaak—but no less dangerous; his bulk was what made him a threat. The danger in the takedown is Abelev seeing, so he’d have to take him out quietly or simultaneously. Egorov is barely a blimp on his radar as he takes in the plush, seedy man with a thick beard and swollen nose; he’d go down quickly.
Isaak had the movement of a man who’d never feared a day in his life, a confident gait in his bespoke leather shoes. A man of comfort, of wealth and power. They make their way to the main table that sits across the center of the stage. The large half-moon booth takes up a good amount of space. Dark glossy surface, top lined with pre-prepared drinks and cigarette dishes. They settle down at the table, a waitress immediately flocking to them as they settle. They seem to chat for a moment before she flits away to the bar—no doubt bringing drinks back for Isaak’s companions.
The opening number had already occurred, he’d remembered seeing Mozu spinning behind the girls, as if camouflage amongst the glamour.
Show a little more…show a little less…add a little smoke…welcome to Burlesque.
It wasn’t you who had sung them, but you did make an appearance in the first song. Not much, only the small shimmy forward and cheeky wave to the crowd when introduced by a:
You can dream of Coco…do it at your risk…the triplets grant you mercy but not your every wish…Zelena keeps you guessing, so cool and statuesque…behave yourself, says Poppy, welcome to Burlesque.
It was a simple little thing, nothing too big. Something in Ghost was satisfied that Mozu—or Poppy as you were referred to here—wasn’t in the main set. There was… this…agent in him that vetted about the exposure, that level of intimacy…it made his jaw grind.
Something there in the dark…is playing with your mind…it's not the end of days…it's just the bump and grind
One of the girls—Irina, Ioana, or Inessa, whichever of those three—pops up onto stage, an audacious grandiose as she talks to the crowd. “Alright, now everyone, when she says to behave, she really means it! Welcome to the stage, Poppy!”
A peel of cheers consumes them as everything dims, the movement of a chaise lounge wheeled on the stage, as jazz swells in the room, filling the silence.
Unable to stop the hitch of his breath, the spotlight illuminates the stage, a wispy, “Where have I been all my life…” Filtering through the expanding growl of trumpets.
“Ghost—what is happening in there?”
Suddenly, he can’t move; he feels rooted to his spot, unable to shake off the image that you made.
You’re lying no… lounging, an artist’s perfect odalisque in the front of the stage. The curtain drawn behind you is a velvet backlit. The glint of gemstones on your powder pink corset sends rainbows scattering across the stage, illuminating the soft, warm glow of your skin in the lustered lighting.
Voice, your voice… It was a rich and sticky-sweet decadence; a bite of toffee pudding that consumed Simon’s childhood in rare moments of peace. The reminiscence was ripped violently to the forefront of his mind, a phantom taste of dates and sticky-sweet buttery caramel splashed across his mouth, causing it to fill with moisture.
“The dress is Chanel, the shoes YSL…the bag is Dior, Agent Provocateur.”
You turn your head, and your eyes meet his, the shimmering pinks and silvers contrasting with deep blacks and whites lining your eyes, giving them a pure expression. Lips pouted in a pink, coquettish push. “My address today, L.A. by the way above Sunset Strip, the Hills all the way.”
Something most people didn’t know about Ghost was that he had a sweet tooth. Tea, black with three sugars. Dessert was always consumed with a ravenous need. It was an annoyance. A clink in his armor he’d admit—there was just an essence to a candied coating or saccharine layer that he clung to like a street-mutt with a bone.
Simon was one of the same; his memories of his mother slipping him and Tommy spoonfuls of honey or bits of granulated sugar cubes. Treats were hidden from their father for when they’d done well. Still after all these years, there's something so soothing about the crunch of coarse crystals under his teeth.
It was one of the few things the two agreed on, a sort of bridge between his two psyches.
“My rings are by Webster…it makes their heads twirl…”
Submission, another brick in the road paved between them. Not the type commanded on the field, but one given in reverence. Trust built upon carnal desires and needs.
You’re sitting up now, legs crossed, looking practically dainty to him as those shimmering impractical heels clung to your feet. “They all say, "Darling, what did you do for those pearls?" A shocked gasp cuts out of you as you look around, hand covering your smile. “What? I am a good girl…”
Bloody.
Fuckin.’
Hell.
Crepuscular Rays is the phenomenon of when the sun cuts through clouds, radiating from a single point and bathing the dark rolls of fog in gold and pink splendours. Manchester rarely had sunny days, but there were moments, moments of brief streaks and beams of light separated by shadows across the sky.
Moments in his life where he’d felt the warmth of God rays across endless overcast.
Nothing ever like this.
It was as if there was now a midnight sun punching through his void of tenebrosity. Breaking through the nimbus with ease, weathering a storm you hadn’t even known was raging. His chest was pounding, Simon and Ghost blending for a moment, a complete synchronicity that he’d never felt within himself before.
The curtain pulls as you make your way up the stairs, the little feathered skirt barely coming down to cover the curve where the meat of your ass hits the back of your thighs. It drives him insane, the way he can glimpse at the bejeweled lingerie underneath. Energy crackled beneath his skin as you crawled up the polished black stage steps. The movements… cheeky spreading of your legs, twists and turns of your ass, on your hands, tilted downward, looking pleadingly at them.
“B.H. I adore, Rode-O L'amore…Breakfast Polo Lounge, then poolside for sure!” Poppy… Poppy is at the top of the stage, a dancing pole in the center as you look back impertinently, spinning and clinging to the damn thing like you were a pro. “The Château for cocktails, the Courtyard at nine…Dan Tana's for dinner, the Helen's divine!”
Your hips rock as you step around the pole, using it as a stand to roll your pelvis back in a sensual pop. “You know I have found, the word's gone around…” You lift yourself up, using your leg to lock around the metal, as it rotates, spinning you. “They all say my feet never do touch the ground!” They sway back and forth before Poppy lands, that same amorous chaste glance of shock. “What? I am a good girl!”
The music breaks as you make your way back down the stairs, gloves that cover her hands slipping off as her legs kick out across one another in a model-like saunter. The feathered skirt slips off your hips as you step down the last step, leaving you in the encrusted leotard.
None of this is what gives him pause. No.
None of this is what truly sets the match.
It’s when that little walk of yours playfully marches past him, leaving behind a swath of honey and pomegranate musk, shooting him a wink as you pass. It was when you stepped up on one of the chairs to Mashcov’s table…legs sensually stretching and contouring with your teasing pirouette…allowing the man’s dark eyes to rove your form, leaning down with one last mawkish, “I am a good girl…” As you roll those thighs of yours down into a Dionysian squat… and let out five cloying, exaggerated moans. “Ah, ooh, ah, yeah, uh!”
That’s the flashpoint.
꒷꒦ꙮ꒷꒦
Haha, all done with this one, enjoy Simon and Ghost, confused as hell about what he's feeling
You arrive in Russia with Simon on your joint mission, he as your bouncer, and you as a dancer...
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It's strange how sometimes when you get so cold, it starts to feel like burning; Human nerves are sensitive little fuckers, you’d had your fair share of massacred axons to know that pain was like fire.
Your blood vessels begin to spasm, desperately trying to conserve the heat in your core. Slowly, the aches in your bones give way to an inferno.
The windburn outside the small cottage on the outskirts of Volgograd whips through the woods. The freezing roar of the night’s howling gale nips at your eyes, drying the moisture as you enter the cottage, a bundle of cut wood underneath your arm. You move silently across the room, dropping to stoke and feed the fire as you hear the mutterings of plans occurring in the kitchen.
Stepping in, your eyes drag over the group of three men, Johnny, Kyle, and Price, all standing hovered around a screen, Ghost sitting on the other side giving his daily report.
You’d arrived in Russia a week ago, immediately, Ghost was placed in a bouncer position in Bliss Burlesque to avoid suspicion. He was in a small apartment in Volzhsky, the same apartment you were due to join him in after today’s op.
During this week, Ghost has slowly built up surveillance in the area, bugs and hidden cameras are placed in every part of the small club. Getting everything ready for your entrance. Thankfully, one of the girls had recently left after coming across a large sum of money.
Hmm.
They were holding auditions for being one of the showgirls tomorrow afternoon. You slept pitifully that night, nothing soothing you, not even the sleepy murmurs of your teammates in the room. Mind running rampant, your thoughts become muddled as the sun comes up and the men vacate the space.
Slowly, you had built your persona perfectly, twisting yourself, contorting like a funhouse mirror to change yourself. Like a snake sheds its skin, you slowly tear yourself from one person, molting it as the next takes hold.
A shapeshifter.
From your personality to your facial expressions, it morphs into something new, something bendable under your own whims.
Yes, Poppy was a young girl, twenty-two, just moved to Volgograd one month ago from a small village in Belarus. Her father, a poor and gambling man, had neglected her from a young age. Mother absent and uncaring of the abuse of her father’s hand. As soon as she saved enough money, she escaped to Russia. Yet, funds ran out, and she needed a job.
Taking a breath, you allow yourself to sink into your muscles, letting your bones stretch the inside of your skin as you absorb her into yourself.
Taking your time, in the silence of the dark, dingy room you sat in, sleeping bag doing nothing to soften the hard, rotting wood. The scent of musty frozen earth penetrates your nose as you take a deep breath. Deconstructing every element of the girl’s life, was she bullied? Did she like warm or cool colors? What was her favorite meal growing up?
Losing yourself in the silence of it, the bright flashes of a life never lived passing behind the lids of your eyes. Using any emotional memories to connect to the past.
You pick yourself up, grabbing your ruck with you; you dress in the outfit a meek and shy Poppy would wear. A long-sleeve tight maroon sweater, fleece-lined leggings, boots, and a thick jacket.
You feel… exposed like this, without armour. You don’t remember the last time you wore civvies that weren't sweatpants. You step out, face free of the white facemask and black keffiyeh you commonly wore on ops. Makeup done in a popular Russian style, eyes dramatically framed in thick black liner, creating downward-facing tails in the creases of your eyes. Cheeks encased in a rosy hue, giving a doll-like complexion. It was perfect, you didn’t look remarkable, you looked like a common girl.
Exactly what you were going for.
Stepping out of the room, you see the three men all dressed in an array of different civilian clothes, dark and inconspicuous colors covering them. Johnny makes a noise as you step out, eyes wide as he takes in your face—one you didn’t commonly show.
“Och, Bonnie, you look…”
Price makes a short warning sound as the man’s eyes widen innocently and his hands go up. Your eyes roll, glossed pinkened lips in a glunch as you glare up at them. “were you ever tested as a child. For anything?" You snap, all the men making sounds of amusement as you right yourself. "Let’s get this moving.”
You move to the van, dark colors blending as the doors slam shut, Gaz reading the debrief file as you shoot off towards the city. “Isaak Mashcov, next in line for the Mashcov family line, thirty-two, current CFO of the Cherepovets Steel company. He frequents Bliss Burlesque every Saturday. Sometimes with business partners, others, always accompanied by Roma Abelev,” You flick to the image of the dark scowling man in a leather jacket, “trusted guard of the Mashcov family.”
You nod, showing the image to Johnny as you speak, “The plan is to infiltrate the club, and gather intel, hopefully, they discuss some type of plans, or we’re able to bug him from the club.”
“No risks, we’re on capture duty, they want ‘em alive.”
That complicates things.
The SUV skids to a stop a few blocks from the club as you slip out. Jacket covering your body against the biting chill of the afternoon. You walk through the door, and no longer was there a soldier, no more Sparrowhawks, and no more Mozu.
Ghost could understand Russian, knew what the contrast between hard and soft consonants meant; he was able to read all the upside-down pages marked in the Cyrillic script. Yet he could not speak it, unable to wrap his mouth around the unique sounds in a way that didn’t come out grated. Never could he lose the Manchester-lilt that stained his voice, consuming his vocal cords in a gruff and deep resonance.
Receptive bilingualism, Gaz called it—a bloody bother to deal with. Spanish, he could seem to grasp, though there was no rolling of his ‘r’s.
It was a common reason he didn’t do undercover missions; his imposing form and brooding presence commanded the room’s attention. All eyes were drawn to him, pulling their stares in like a supermassive black hole, trapping them in the deep gravitational weight.
Yet… the thought of Mozu being on this mission without him… it set a deep feeling in his chest. Nothing all encompassing, or particularly painful, but an almost bothersome… pressure. It kept building as he watched you walk away that day, mind flipping through the images of what could happen on this mission, what could go wrong with you alone.
So, he fixed Price with that hard glower behind his skull mask, shoved off any of his Captain’s attempts to level or prompt him. Something that Price sees in him at that moment… it makes him pause his opposition. Simply nodding while he walks away, muttering about ‘Bloody ingrates.’
Acclimation is seamless; his quiet nature only aids his ability as a bouncer. Balaclava covering his face as his eyes skirt the room. The entire area was cast in a red glow at night, the only white lights the ones beaming down on the center stage where the girls performed. Plush booths and tables scattered throughout the rooms, two separate bars lining the northern and southern walls. Billiards rooms, smoking area, private dance rooms, and the backstage dressing rooms made up the rest of the space.
He hadn’t seen much of Mozu since he’d implanted into the club, glimpses of your covered face passing the camera as you fed the fire. It made questions roil within him. Were you avoiding him?
Shaking off the question, his eyes watch as Miss Petrov mutters to herself, tsking and crossing off names as girl after girl comes through. None seemed good enough for her. The slight doubt that Mozu would even be able to pass the test of that woman was growing within Ghost. Some of these women were good…or Ghost thinks they were? He wasn’t sure. The bartender would mutter on about it, one girl in the Ballet, others sang opera, even the Cirque…
A name gets called out, and he freezes, eyes snapping to the stage as a girl walks up; she’s small, eyes downcast as her hair obscures his gaze. “Hi… I’m…I'm… Nadzeya.”
Nadzeya… Mozu’s alias.
Miss Petrov already looks dismissive, wrinkles on the corners of her eyes as her face downturns into a scowl. “Proceed.”
A static cuts through Ghost’s ear, the first chime of his teammates filtering into his mind as they no doubt observed through the screens in the van. “She in?”
“Affirmative.” Ghost grunts out, eyes drawing to her hips as you begin a routine, the kick of the band starting off into a rippling jazz.
You get a few steps into the audition when Miss Petrov cuts the music. “Stop... stop, what the hell do you think you're doing?”
He watches as Mozu… no Nadzeya seems to flounder, bright eyes going wide in the spotlights, wet and glowing. It catches his attention, draws him in as if he were a moth to a flame. The almost golden lit glow of your irises caught in the dark club, alighting your gaze like jewels. “T-trying out?”
The words come out stuttered, unsure. The way your hands come down to clasp one another, twisting and weaving your fingers together in a complex coil, only gives off proof of your anxieties. “I don't think so.” Miss Petrov snaps angrily, “This stage is for professionals, not some little girl playing dress up in Mommy’s closet.”
The smoldering candlelight burns for a moment, a flicker passing across them, it was so…quick. Just a moment, a blink, and then it was gone. Yet, it was magnificent, alighting them like a comet striking across an inky black sky. “I…I understand this is your club and all, Miss Petrov—be as rude as you wish— but I have been dancing since I was young, so don’t you dare tell me I’m not… professional.”
The girl’s eyes snap toward the two of them; the contortion is an agitated pout, lip jutting out. Simon can’t help the way his eyes trace the protruding plushness. “I may not have been to a professional dance school, but I have a lot of talent. If you would just give me a shot, I promise.”
The elocution that you have chosen flutters across the space perfectly; it’s not quite the same as Miss Petrov or the way the other women around spoke. The unique w sound is severely lacking in the other's accent. Nothing too obvious, but perfect enough for her cover as someone from Belarus.
“And what exactly can you bring that these girls can't?"
“Ghost, what the hell is goin’ on in there?” The chime of Price in his ears does little to distract him as he watches Mozu’s body stiffen, a calculating ponder passing through your face before you nod once.
“I can sing.”
“She can what?”
“Och, she’s takin’ the piss.”
‘Chatter boys.”
Trying to ignore the murmurings on the line, Ghost grunts, watching as Miss Petrov seems to flounder for a moment. “You can sing.”
It’s not a question, more a condescension. Face cast in a scowl. The entire room seemed to be waiting, staff peeking from behind corners, girls watching at the battle stirs between the two women. Ghost doesn’t know what to do, only fingers itching toward his hidden S&W tucked beneath the layers of black clothing. Taking note of those whom he would have to take down first.
Mozu nods, “One song. You don't like it, I'll walk out the door, but you have to give me a chance.” There’s a beat as Miss Petrov seems to take your words into consideration, the comms silent and tense as they await the answer that would make or break this mission. “I know every number in your repertoire, every move, just let me prove it.”
Did you know every dance? It had been a week, he supposes, a week to learn however many songs a place like this had under their belts. He didn't know that Mozu even knew how to dance, never mind sing. The body that's usually bulked by tac gear and layers of rigid armour plates and Kevlar is smaller than he’d assumed it would be. Uniforms always made someone take up more space, he supposed. Yet, seeing you in civvies? In something that clings to each and every divot and curve of your body? It did things inside of him.
The words seem to work as the woman looks at her deeply, nose still upturned, before you turns back toward the band. “Track 19, hit it!” Miss Petrov calls up as Mozu nods, settling herself beside a chair, shaking out the strands of your hair with your hands before breathing.
It is silent, nothing but the sound of breathing, before a loud, raspy, husky growl that rips through the room. “Oh…”
The entire room freezes, the slow stop of movement as everyone draws in a breath. “Oh yeah, yeah!”
“Bloody ‘Ell.”
Ghost murmurs, settling against the walls, hidden in the shadows as you lean down, expelling almost her entire breath and letting out another belt. “Ooh yeah yeah!”
The way you breathe, the way you move, it’s transformative, as if everything in her is coming out. The melisma comes out so intricately as you weave together the sounds to make the room’s breath catch. It was… mesmerizing, the way you yanked the oxygen from the room for herself, a greedy gulp of air that left everyone else gasping.
Mezzo growls fill the room as you kick off the chair with a swoop of her hips. “I need a tough lover, yeah yeah yeah…”
“Fucking hell is that Mozu?”
There’s something in Gaz’s voice that makes Ghost want to yank the earpiece out and snap it beneath his boot heel. There’s this feeling of almost anger as he realizes that his team had a perfect view of the stage—of Mozu.
“I need a, a tough lover, woo!”
Shaking the thoughts, he keeps his dark stare on your body, the way it rocks as the band picks up, the rise of music kicking off your confidence as you push out a leg sensually. “I need a, a tough lover, yeah yeah yeah…a tough lover, ooh yeah!” There is a pause as you jump your gaze up, the dance in your form as you pick up the beat, body moving in a slight jump as the energy of the songs consumes you. “When he kisses me, I get that thrill…” Your perfect lips pucker into an innocent moue. “When he does that wiggle, I won't keep still!”
Your body picks up, hands sensually grabbing your curves as you begin to lose yourself. It wasn’t as if you had perfect technique or the best dance extension, but… there's this exuding of ambition and sensuality that pulled everyone in like magnets.
The room picks up, staff watching and bouncing along as they watch the performance unfold before their eyes. “I wanna a tough love…yeah, yeah. A tough lover, woo—yeah, I need a tough lover, yeah, yeah…a tough lover…hum, hum!” Your hands come out to fake-windmill in front of you, as if to balance your unsteady feet that never wobble. “The seven sisters got nothing on him…” Your body shimmies across the stage as your face lights up in a carnal beam. “I'm talking about a lover who's fast as the wind…everyone will talk about how he got me fixed!”
It’s like he can’t stop his mind from devouring every little movement you make, the roll of your hips, sassy swivel of impressive floorwork. “It ain't voodoo, it's just that twist!” Why did it alight his veins so much? He’d seen dancers before, been to his fair share of strip joints in his life. Yet this was different, no rapid pull of clothes or lap dances, just the tease. The slight whiff of something that makes his mouth water, opening to let the scent in deeper. Dragging in every fantasy and dream out for those to view.
You cross the stage, looking and winking at a group of waiters and waitresses standing off to the right part of the stage. “He's a tough lover…yeah, yeah! A tough lover…woo! He's a tough lover…yeah, yeah! A tough lover…oh oh.”
A tough lover…
Is that truly what Mozu wanted? The way you look on stage… It’s intoxicating, it’s as if staring at the sun itself. Not in the way it provides warmth and nourishment, no. You were a nuclear reaction, dragging in heat and pressure to let off sparks of energy. It was as if you took every heated stare, every wanting leer, and clenching need and simply… transformed it.
Siphoning their desires into fuel as your hips sway in a tantalizing need. “Hey, hey, yeah. He'll make me laugh…”
Easy chuckles in the morning mixed with monotone snips and blunt jokes spilling across sun-dappled bedding.
“He'll make me cry!”
Pleas of overstimulation, whimpers of need, adorned gaze wet with desperation as hands clasp the sheet. Skin on skin, heat on ice.
“He'll be so tough he'll make Venus come alive!”
Destructive affliction, that profound ache of desire settling across his chest. He wondered half-heartedly what your story would be, as the Roman stories did so often end in tragedy.
“He'll do anything that he wants to do!”
Because, he decides in that moment, when he feels that piercing prick of that damn arrow start in his chest, that you would have a story.
“Step on Jesse James's blue suede shoes, yeah!”
There were no simple ways to destroy something; the inherent chaoticness of the devastation of something so structured and controlled always created ruins. It was full of complexities, the chance of collateral chaos and entropy causing dangers untold.
Yet, as he sees you, the way you flounce with that classic jazz isolation and playful pouted taunts…something in the inner workings of Ghost began to snap; that wall that he’d devised so intricately in the rubble of ash decomposing with the simple twist of your hips.
“A tough lover, yeah, yeah. A tough lover…woo a tough lover…yeah, yeah. A tough lover…hey yeah, yeah yeah!
A tough lover…yeah, yeah. A tough lover…yeah, yeah!
A tough lover, oh oh!”
The room erupts into cheers as Mozu stands in the center of the stage, breathing in deeply, chest heaving with need, hair askew from running your hands across the stands. The thick darkness of your sweep over the crowd moves until it meets his eyes.
Ruination and subjugation.
That's what he found in your gaze.
An eruption of claps scattered across the room from the few that were in the club. Miss Petrov was sitting there, an almost clinical look in her eyes. “Your dance was off in the second half.” Her thick accent spills out of the room, and all Mozu does is let out a cheeky grin.
“So I was on in the first half?”
Honestly, Ghost has to choke down the gruff laughter that almost forced itself from his chest. A proud uptick of his lips under his mask.
It works for Miss Petrov, too; a slow grin lights up the normally downcast leer. Long black waves peppered with graying roots were tossed over her shoulder as she looked up at the stage. “Next time, lead with your voice.”
Mozu’s face splits in an excited simper, nose scrunching in a way Ghost had never noticed you did before. “So, I’m in?”
“I’m going to regret this…” The older woman shakes her head and almost lets out a smile as she turns toward the group of dancers watching. “Okay, then, you come back here tomorrow, you sing lead.”
“We’re in.”
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hello, from now on, there will be a song accompanying the chapters, yay! Yes reader can sing and dance, look at y'all, so talented, but y'all are badasses too, dw
