occasionally subtle
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
$LAYYYTER
noise dept.
Origami Around
Sweet Seals For You, Always
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
Kiana Khansmith
Jules of Nature
Xuebing Du
Monterey Bay Aquarium
if i look back, i am lost
Today's Document
Three Goblin Art
AnasAbdin
#extradirty
DEAR READER
cherry valley forever
sheepfilms
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@kdgalactic
Can’t believe I have to say this shit here but if you support Tc3st and Pr0sh!pp!ng, stay THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME.
I am not even joking on this. If you follow me, and you support that, it’s an instant block. I’m not playing around with this shit. I check whatever I can to make sure that my online spaces are safe and I don’t want to see that shit.
I don’t support it. I never will. It’s not okay.
once again thinking about grumpy chef!paz falling for sweet clueless food critic!reader 🥹
it’s hard to describe but I’m thinking him having a like an exclusive up and coming restaurant? The gables are booked months in advance but all he wanted was just his little place on the corner and he’s a little overwhelmed and stressed out about the success but also happy of course because opening a restaurant is a risky endeavour and at least he gets to pay his bills and his employees
and then one day he notices you coming into the door and taking up a reservation of just one person. and since his entire team has been waiting for the food critic from That Magazine to come and eat, it’s pretty clear that you’re that critic. So when he notices you sitting in front of your dish with the most confused look on your face, he thinks his career is about to have a very sudden stop. and so he does what he never does: he intervenes.
“This seat taken?”
“Oh no! Not at all!” you squeak, “please, go ahead.”
“I should say the same thing to you. You’ve been staring at your soup for what? Ten minutes now? No longer hungry?”
That seems to embarrass you and he watches as you shift in your seat, looking surprisingly adorable for someone who literally holds his livelihood in their hands.
“You know I’m the critic.”
“I do. So you’ll forgive me if I try to salvage what now seems like a lost cause.”
“It’s just … I’m not really a food critic?”
And with the help of a glass of wine you tell him how your colleague retired and they decided that lifestyle was close enough to food and now you get to write all the reviews until they find someone better. It’s not that you don’t like food you just don’t know how to properly critique it other than like/don’t like.
“What if I teach you?”
“Huh?”
“What if I teach you what good food should taste like? And you
That’s how you end up every lunch break at his restaurant when all the prep is being done and Paz takes 15 minutes out of his time to talk to you about food, what it means to him, how he came to be a chef and soon enough the 15 minutes morph into 30 minutes into an hour where he cooks stuff just for you and listens to your adventures in the restaurant scene. And if he suggests one day that maybe he can teach you to cook something nice after closing time, then it’s just in the interest of your education and not because he’d like to kiss you dizzy. 🥺😌
Excuse me, id like to order this. This is brilliant. I love this so damn much
Oh Muse, Tell me of the Things Done by Golden Aphrodite
(Simon 'Ghost' Riley x F! Reader)
Rating: Explicit Wordcount: 5.6k Warnings: None Tags: Greek Mythology AU, Greek God inspired, Human sacrifice reader, God of death and wrath Ghost, Size difference, Size kink, Praise Kink, (Marriage kink if you squint?), PiV sex, Aftercare, Eros and Psyche inspired, Cliffhanger A/N: Part two dependent on reception
They call your fate a tragedy.
It’s a necessary one, the temple priest says, as you weep at the steps leading up to the grand mausoleum- inlaid with gold and obsidian. You wrap your arms around yourself as they tell you of your duty, inform you of your sacrifice. The statue of the god of wrath and death looms tall and menacing behind him, his bone white mask a single flash of pale amidst the dark, swirling robes that cover his limbs. You shiver as you look upon it, flesh cold as you imagine your final moments pleading at his feet.
A sacrifice, they say.
One to appease the god as death ravages your city, an holy offering innocent, beautiful and pure to quell his anger and rage. Eyes rest upon your trembling shoulders in a mixture of hope and pity, and you know even if you cry out none shall aid you. Your destiny is to die at the hands of a god so that they may live, and if it means your life is called for, they shall offer it for you.
You do not scream or struggle as they take you into the temple, you do not speak as they wash you and smooth aromatic oils into your shivering skin. You do not even look at them when they clothe you in a dark chiton and allow a veil to flutter over your despairing, tear-rimmed eyes.
When they close the altar doors behind you, you dare not throw yourself against them in one last bid for freedom.
The altar is dark, black marble columns stretching high above you and vanishing into a ceiling that the candlelight doesn’t reach. Lanterns litter the steps leading up to the sacrificial altar, with opulent offerings of jewels, weapons, and polished bones stacked high. Shadows dance between them, casting long and sinister against the temple walls. Your bare feet skim the cold stone floor as you ascend, tracing your hand against the frigid, dark mirror surface of the altar. You were not told what to do, only to wait.
So you wait, and you wait longer, sitting upon the edge of the altar, trembling and holding in your cries until they break apart inside your throat. The chamber is silent as the grave, with not a breeze or whisper of warm air to comfort your frigid flesh. Eventually only the sound of your hiccuping sobs fills the emptiness, as you weep for your fate, for the tragedy that has befallen you, for how they shall remember your name in poems, until at last you fall asleep splayed upon the dark altar and awaiting your demise.
As you dream fitfully of the ever after, the candles waver and snuff out with a cold gust of wind. Dark eyes regard your pliant form prone atop the piles of offerings.
and quietly, arms reach forward and cradle you to him as you are taken away.
---
When you awake, it is in somewhere new.
You come to far more gently than you anticipated, soft dreams still clinging velvet to your slumber. It takes a moment for you to realize that you’re no longer curled tightly atop the hard surface of the altar, but rest instead upon silk sheets and soft, plush bedding. The veil still drapes across your face, and as you delicately lift it, your surroundings are revealed to you.
It’s a large chamber, far larger than the temple, but sparsely furnished. You lay upon a bed fit for a man larger than any you’ve ever laid eyes upon, adorned with dark sheets and embroidered with gold thread. Torches flicker with a strange black light against the walls- silver dancing along the outer edge of flames. The blazing hearth does the same amidst a mantle of dark stone, stretching upwards into a ceiling you’ll never reach. A mirror and a basin stands in the corner, and beside them curtains blow in from the balcony, where dawn glows yellow against the horizon.
You’re alone.
You’re careful as you creep from bed towards the balcony, the wind ruffling your gown as you stand at the precipice. Below, a stark mountain valley yawns dark and fathomless without end.
The door groans as it opens.
You flinch away from the sound, spinning and feeling terror pool low and vile in your stomach at the sight that awaits you.
It’s him.
Taller than any man, a being of pure power, the god Ghost stands at the doorway clad in billowing dark fabric, his dark eyes boring into your shivering form from behind the stark white of his skull mask. The sheer size of him is enough to send goosebumps racing down your spine, his immortal stature ensuring you scarcely come up to his chest. The strength of his limbs is curled in tight muscle discernible even with his cloak, and when you meet his eyes you think of the space between stars- a void into which no light escapes.
He takes only three strides to cross the chamber.
You cower backwards until your spine hits the railing of the balcony, and as you glance over your shoulder the valley wind roars from the depths. You wonder if it is a more fitting end to hurl yourself from here than face whatever slow death the God of Wrath has ordained for you.
He stops just at the threshold, regarding you as you look up at him with tearful, terrified eyes. At this nearness you can sense the pure energy that rolls off of him in waves, a strangeness that speaks of something far from human, an unfathomable power that your mortal soul will never fully understand.
“Don’t.” Is the first word he ever says to you, looking past you to the valley. He reaches out his hand, not an inch of his flesh visible beneath his gauntlet of white bone. “Come.”
You stay where you are, heartbeat fluttering as you eye his outstretched palm.
“If I was going to kill you, I would have done it when you were asleep.” He intones, voice deep like distant, rolling thunder. There’s a strangeness to it you cannot place, the tone of it ringing between your ears in a distant echo, otherworldly.
“Don’t hurt me, please.” Are the first words you return to him, desperate as a thing wheezes from your lungs.
Ghost stares at you unblinkingly, and despite the black ichor that paints his gaze, his eyes look almost kind.
“Come away from the balcony.” He tells you, his voice softer.
You cast another glance down at the dark valley, swallowing hard, before at last reaching your hand forward and settling it in his cold palm. He draws you inside, out of the wind, and you find yourself hovering near the hearth with its strange, dancing flames.
“Your name.” He tells you, watching as you hesitantly warm yourself, carefully looking at him out of the corner of your eye.
When you tell him, he repeats it. Slow, purposeful, as if tasting a foreign fruit for the first time. It shivers through you, as if he somehow has wound magic through the sound alone.
“You will stay here.” He tells you under no uncertain terms. “In my palace. No harm shall come to you here.”
You blink at that, face falling open with confusion as you turn to him fully.
“Why...?”
Ghost regards you coolly, but when you focus on his eyes you can swear they crinkle with a wry smile.
“I have no reason to hurt my bride.” He explains simply.
“Your...” You echo, blinking. “I...”
“You were given to me.” He tells you, advancing upon you until he’s mere inches away, one arm braced on the hearth so he bends over your smaller, mortal form. “As a sacrifice. I saved you. Your life is mine by rights.”
Fear pulses bright through you, limbs awash with dread as the blood drains from your face. You had expected death, but the daunting reality of this, of being given to a god as a bride...
Ghost must see the terror in your eyes, for he removes himself from you, striding towards the heavy, ancient door.
“I will not touch you unless you ask.” He states, voice lower. “You are free to roam this palace as you like. There is food in the banquet hall.”
He pauses, observing you as you hesitate near the hearth.
“I will return at dusk.”
and with that, your new husband vanishes.
----
True to his word, no one stops you from roaming the palace.
It’s a massive structure, with towering black columns and high ceilings. Obsidian, marble, and gold accentuates every corner, and you find treasures and trophies displayed at every turn. You are entirely alone as you wander, bare feet skimming against the cold tile as you take in your new home. Each room reveals a new wonder. A bath with glimmering water that billows steam from golden fountains, a garden with dark roses that creep along stone walls, a library with scrolls in tongues you don’t understand, and a banquet hall filled with food that doesn’t seem to rot.
You eat until your stomach is full, and with every bite the food tastes more delicious than the bite before. You scrub yourself in the bath, and when you exit you find fresh garments awaiting you, embroidered with glimmering thread. The finery is beyond anything you dared imagine, and quietly you feel your reservations departing you as the thought of possibly escaping ebbs slowly from your mind.
Dusk finds you back at his chambers, watching the shadows grow long against the walls as slumber slowly descends upon you.
You’re on the brink of sleep when the bed dips, and a bare hand curls gently against your cheek. In your half-dreams, you nuzzle into the touch with a languid sigh, feeling the air fan across his palm. Ghost is silent as he lays beside you, observing your restful face with half-lidded eyes. His mask lays on the table beside him, disposed along with his cloak and armor.
You see nothing when you’re roused by the sensation of him tucking you against him, the world engulfed in darkness. Hypnos whispers across your senses as your eyelids flutter, trying to discern the shape of him as he presses in close behind you. Ghost tucks his legs under yours, his massive frame curling around you and his nose burrowing into the junction of your throat and jaw, where he draws in a heavy breath.
“Sleep, mortal.” He whispers there, one massive arm wrapping across your front.
True to his order, and engulfed in the warm sensation of his body pressed against yours, you find the gossamer veil of sleep draw over you once more.
He’s gone again come morning.
You awake alone, and find yourself missing the presence of him.
The banquet hall is refreshed with food of all kinds- delicacies from far lands you’ve never traveled to. You spend an exorbitant amount of time in the baths, dozing gently as steam billows around you. In the library you find a collection of war poems that you devour with eager eyes until the sun begins to slope towards the horizon, and oddly you do not find yourself entirely bored despite being alone in the massive pantheon to which he has left you.
Yet as darkness descends, you find yourself awake in his bed, waiting for him.
When he at last appears, as the moment where all light has drawn away from the horizon, the dark candles snuff out in a cold billow of wind. Plunged into darkness, the only sensation available to you is a hand caressing your cheek.
“Little bride.” He rumbles as the bed dips before you. “Were you so eager to see me you chose to forego sleep?”
Hesitantly, you raise a hand to press his own against your face, feeling the immense size of it dwarf your own.
“Yes.” You tell him in a scarce whisper, as if you’re revealing a tender secret. Your heartbeat thrums loud in your ears, fluttering inside the cage of your ribs as he draws closer. You try to remember the words you had meant to say- a thank you for saving you? Awe at the splendid riches allowed to you? A quiet plea to leave, one which you don’t truly mean?
You reach forward in the darkness, finding the shape of him broad and strong against your palm. There’s smooth skin of scars that litter his immortal flesh, across the wide breadth of his chest, down to his waist, traced across his arm and shoulders and the massive span of his back. He’s bare to you, and you can’t suppress a shiver at the mere thought that you are laying with a God.
“You’re frightened.” He notes at the shake in your hands, attempting to draw away from you.
“No.” You tell him, a hand gripping tighter to his to prevent his retreat. Words clog your throat, lips parted with breath as you feel his coal-dark eyes bore into you in the inkinesss of his chambers.
“Touch me.” You whisper instead.
When he bends to you, he swallows the sigh that pours past your lips.
Ghost defiles you in the way warriors do- pure strength tempered by careful restraint. You splay under him bare, his hands smoothing over your flesh like admiring a masterful weapon. He memorizes the curves and softness of you, humming notes low and deep into your skin as he drinks in your scent like ambrosia. He spends his time admiring the outline of you in the darkness, fingers dipping between your legs and spreading you over large, calloused fingers until you mewl and grip at the fine silk sheets.
“Sweet little thing.” He rumbles, pleased, as you offer him high, keening moans, head tossed back against the pillows. Wetness dribbles down your thighs, coats his hand just as he licks greedy and hot into your open mouth that chants his name. His towering frame bends over you, hauls you to his waiting hands with hardly any effort. Your hands scrape against his shortly shorn hair as he lays claiming bites across your throat and collarbone and Ghost moans against your skin like the pain and pleasure are twin beings.
“Ghost.” You chant in a hymn as his worshipers do when his clever tongue drinks down your arousal at your entrance, and the answering growl that he responds with sends pleasure fissuring down your spine like the earth split open. His hands hold you still as you buck and writhe with your climax, broken sounds filling the empty chamber so loud you think your shout can be heard at the far reaches of the palace.
He shushes you when at last he sheathes himself inside you, the girth of him splitting you wide enough you whimper into his chest. Yet he holds you to him, noses into your hair and whispers low, soothing words as your legs quiver.
“Good.” He purrs as you go pliant against him with a keening sigh, arms looped around his neck and nails digging into the flesh of his spine. “Perfect little bride. They were right to offer you to me.”
You think the nectar of the gods must taste like the glide of his tongue when he kisses you.
Ghost plays the symphony of your flesh like poets play the harp. His massive frame hunches over yours, the sheets tangled around you and his fingers entwined with your own. Each roll of his hips has you choking on a plea, has him huffing hot breaths and growling filthy praises in your ear.
“Made for me. Just me.” He groans, voice grinding deep in his chest as he ruts into you. Slow, measured, infuriatingly not enough. The drag of him inside you threatens to pull you under into madness as you mewl and squirm, desperately chasing the touch of him. “Made to take me, made to be in my bed, in my palace.”
It’s possessive, almost wild with the force of his claiming you. You go to him willingly, tears watering your eyes as you choke on a sob of pleasure. Yet it’s not enough, as he draws your pleasure higher, higher, burning you alive like the inferno of the heavenly sun but refusing to push you over the precipice. You plead his name, dig your fingers into the dip of his spine, ask for divine mercy that he keeps just beyond your mortal reach.
“Say my name.” He tells you, the sound of your coupling echoing out into the chamber- wet and debauched along with your desperate gasps.
“Ghost.” You sob, clinging helplessly to him, laying kisses upon his bare face in the darkness as an offering to the altar of him. “Ghost.”
In return, Ghost bestows upon you your own name, snarling it wild and feral against your lips as you at last fall apart beneath him. You choke on a cry of his name as something great and tender snaps abruptly inside you, races outwards along your limbs with such sudden ferocity you wonder for a moment if you’re been burned alive. Yet the pleasure itself drowns you like the deep and bottomless ocean- a surrender where you try to claw your way to the surface and instead allow the depths to take you.
Ghost growls as he buries himself fully inside the wet clutch of your heat, emptying inside your heaving form with a long, low groan. You feel the spend on him leak from your joining, collapsing against him as you try to remember how to breathe. Ghost adjusts so you lay sprawled atop his broad chest, rising slow and purposefully beneath you as you tuck your head under his chin. A war-worn hand strokes lazy paths against your skin, and you hear him hum with a deep satisfaction at your consummation. You feel claimed in the best of ways, not as one of his beloved war trophies but as his.
When you finally grow restful against his chest, you prop your chin up and try to find the shape of him in the darkness. He’s absent of his mask, you know, and curiously you try to discern his features in absolute blindness. You wonder if he’s as handsome as you dare to dream.
“Why can I not see you?” You ask in a whisper, and Ghost’s hand stills where it traces along the ridge of your spine. He’s tense, and it startles you when he speaks with his voice pitched low, authoritative in a way he’s never spoken to you before.
“As long as you remain here, you will never see my face.” He tells you, his chest vibrating under your palms. “I will care for you, protect you, and you will be mine, but you never see me. Understood?”
You don’t, really, understand. Confusion wrinkles your brow at the enigmatic declaration, but Ghost eases under you as you nod anyways, and the comfort of his gentle touch resumes, and assuages you of your worries until you fall asleep.
In the morning he lingers in your marital chambers, the pale light of dawn glinting off the armor he has donned before you awoke. He sits at the edge of the bed, a bone white gauntlet stroking with surprising gentleness across your brow. You catch it with your palm, kiss across his ivory knuckles as he huffs a warm breath of affection.
“I will return.” He tells you softly, and steps towards the balcony, only to vanish in a billow of smoke.
You lounge in bed in his absence, feeling the pleasurable soreness of your lovemaking imbue itself in your muscles and limbs. Even after a full rest you find yourself exhausted, and it isn’t long before you curl back into the sheets until the chariot of the sun reaches its zenith. Even then, you wince to yourself as you creep from bed, roused by your empty stomach and the mess between your thighs. You don’t make it farther than the basin at the edge of the room before your legs threaten to fail you, and you resign yourself to a few sips of water and washing what you can before collapsing back into bed.
You’re still there when he returns, and Ghost pauses when he hears your empty stomach, hums with dissatisfaction when you tell him of your troubles. With no effort at all, he lifts you into his arms and walks in the way gods do- only several long strides before you find yourself at the baths. Candles cast shadows against the walls, dancing hypnotically as Ghost deposits you at the edge of the water, pausing to disrobe himself of all but his mask before once more lifting you and walking into the baths with you in his arms.
The moan that bubbles up your throat at the heat that ensconses your weary limbs prompts a laugh from the God above you, who releases you only enough to reach for oils at the tiled edge. Ghost is careful, deliberate as he washes you, and despite your protests he insists, as if the act itself is another means of proving his devotion. Yet he can’t resist grazing a rough thumb over your nipples until you squeak, dipping his fingers between your thighs in slow, lazy circles until your legs tighten around his wrist.
Ghost takes you like that, holding you flush to him as his fingers work deftly inside of you, plucking at something bright and powerful until your voice fills the chamber with gasping, wanton pleas. You grip at him as you gush over his palm with your climax, a whimpering sound caught in your chest as he lauds affections into your slick skin.
When you are at last clean and sated, Ghost wraps you in his own cloak before you find yourself in the banquet hall with grapes being lifted to your lips. You know the tale of the goddess taken to the netherworld and having eaten the fruit there, know it meant forever tying herself to a place of death. Yet as your lips close around his fingers as the morsels are fed to you, you can think of no other realm in which you’d rather be.
and silently, you wish you could see the face of the man who has taken you as his bride.
The days are spent as such. You become accustomed to the palace, teaching yourself its interior so you can navigate it blind. You spend hours in the baths, dozing with your head cradled by your arms on the tiled edge. You devour the poems in the library and write your own thoughts on parchment beside them which you find in boundless supply. In the afternoons before Ghost returns you walk on long strolls through his gardens which seem ever changing, blooming with iridescent blossoms and fragrant lilies bright like starlight. You find a harp which seems to offer no sour note despite your lack of familiarity, and wind beautiful music through the obsidian and onyx halls of his home. You find yourself wanting for nothing- not food or shelter or finery of any nature. In return, you offer your love to the God who has claimed you, and to you he returns the same.
Ghost returns to you at sunset, and most nights find your form tangled with his as he takes you whimpering and breathless against the sheets. He seems to know your body like a swordsman knows his blade, invents new ways to pluck at your desire until the only thing you can offer him is reedy, desperate sounds of his name, reminding him you are his. Afterwards he tends to you, and even then you kiss the other shell of his mask as steam billows around you in the baths as your bare bodies embrace.
You find yourself increasingly nocturnal if only to spend the long hours of darkness in his company, talking and touching in the absence of any illumination. You ask him of the poems in his library, of the trophies that adorn his palace, of the emptiness between these walls and how he bore the loneliness that came before you. You ask him of the offerings given to him by his worshippers, of immortality and all things of a god-like nature.
You never ask him to show his face.
Instead you map it with delicate touches in the darkness, trying to instill in yourself an image of his likeness behind the mask. His jaw is strong, and along it you think you feel the smooth skin of another scar that snakes up towards his ear. His hair is short, and you wonder if it is the same dark color as his ember stare. His lips are soft as they press to your skin, as if he himself is the acolyte to your divinity.
As the weeks turn into seasons, and the high winds of autumn reach the mountaintop, he tells you of how he became a God.
Gods are not born. They are chosen, he says. Those of great valor, of devotion and strength are lifted into the pantheon and blessed with immortality, with divinity beyond that of human comprehension. Outliving those who once knew them as human, their legends are inscribed in the songs and poems, spoken of in many tongues until their following becomes great and loyal.
When you ask him with quiet reverence how he became immortal, Ghost’s form goes rigid with something you think can only be fury.
“I was betrayed.” He tells you, voice filled with murderous intent.
He tells you how he was once a soldier- a warrior that some claimed was already a demi-god. Yet he was mortal when his commander betrayed him, abandoned him on a hill of battle upon which Ghost was buried beneath a pile of rotting corpses, slowly suffocating under the weight of dead men. He had clawed himself free with savage intent, feeling rage become the only emotion known to him. It had taken days for him to free himself of the putrid flesh and decay that surrounded him, and it was only once he stood upon the pile of death that he breathed in his first gasp of immortality. The wrath became him, and he became wrath, or so the legends are said.
When you ask him how long ago this was, Ghost does not answer you.
You try not to think of what will happen when he witnesses your final, mortal breath.
and you try not to wish to see his face before you die.
“Are you hideous?” You ask him teasingly, drawing circles on his bare chest as his fingers idly soak themselves in the spend between your legs.
“Far from it.” He replies dryly, and you place a giggling smile upon his grinning lips.
You try not to dwell on it. There is so much you have to be grateful for, after all. A warm bed, a blazing hearth, clothes, a home, food, endless entertainment, and most importantly a husband who swears his devotion to you every sunset.
Yet in the daylight you find yourself missing him, and in the hollow place of his absence you try not to let temptation take root in the emptiness.
It’s on a cold morning when you find a snake in the garden.
You’re bent over a swath of coal-dark dahlias when you hear it slither behind you. When you turn, you’re greeted with mahogany dark eyes and shimmering green scales. Yet even as you flinch away the serpent doesn’t deign to chase you, regarding you curiously as it speaks in sibilant, seductive words.
“I see the God of Wrath has found himself a muse.” A feminine voice purrs, amused. “Which mortal realm did he steal you away from?”
“I wasn’t stolen.” You retort, shying away as the snake curls closer around your bare feet. “I was an offering.”
Sinister, the snake laughs at you. “And has he refused to let you leave? Are you too afraid to try? He may kill you, hermosa.”
“He wouldn’t.” You manage, tucking yourself up on a pedestal where your dress drapes over the edge. “He loves me.”
“Oh?” The snake asks, curling around the base of the stone, where the light reflects upon its shimmering body. “Are you sure, little muse?”
“Of course.” You reply quickly, even though a shadow casts longer upon your heart with every word spoken by the serpent.
The snake hums thoughtfully, winding itself around the stone slowly, until at last it raises its smooth head to the level of your gaze.
“Then why hasn’t he shown you his face?”
You falter at that, hugging your knees defensively and brow furrowing with dismay. The serpent plucks at the secret doubt inside you that you quietly tuck away at every sunset, that you feel thrum under your fingers as you trace the planes of his face in darkness. You try to conceal it, hardly ever speak of it, but you can’t help but wonder why Ghost refuses to show himself to you.
“Maybe he’s a monster.” The snake goes on. “Grotesque and rotten. The only way he can have your love is if you never see him.”
That can’t be true. Your husband is beautiful and strong, and you know even if he was hideous you would still love him for his fierce protectiveness and tender care. Even if his visage was obscured by scars of battle past, you would still love him.
“He doesn’t trust you, little muse.” The snake hisses quietly, and it sounds strangely pitying, a sadness which you feel plays upon the harp strings of your ribs. “Can you truly be wed to a man who does not believe in you?”
“Ghost loves me.” You repeat in a whisper, mostly to yourself.
“If that were true, he would love you even if you saw his face.” The snake offers, tongue flickering in your ear.
Something dark and viscous simmers in your stomach like tar, and you further hunch in on yourself, uncertain.
“Away with you.” You say at last, refusing to look at the serpent, who laughs wickedly as she winds herself into the bed of dahlias, and vanishes.
That night, when Ghost lays with you, the whisper of his affections feels sour against your skin.
You lay awake even as he sleeps behind you, his massive form curled around you and bracketing you in his warmth. The darkness looms long inside your thoughts, where the words of the serpent echo into the void where light fails to illuminate the face of your husband.
He loves me, he loves me, he loves me.
Yet you know of Ghost’s warning, his oath that you will no longer be his if you see his face. To risk the love he has given you for such a temptation seems sacreligious, a sin for which there is no return.
He doesn’t trust you, the snake whispers.
In the morning, you feign sleep while you hear him depart to realms unknown.
He’ll return after dark. He loves you, he loves you, he loves you.
You do not find the snake in the garden.
He doesn’t trust you.
“You’re mine.” He huffs, dark and deep against your lips in your bed that night, and you shield your cry of desperation behind a moan. You give everything to him, your entire being, lay it bare before him as the offering you are, knowing he will keep you safe and love you with fierce devotion the way warriors love their oaths.
He loves you.
He leaves at dawn.
but he doesn’t trust you.
The wick burns against your fingertips as you light it.
You approach the bed with silent steps, your bare feet skimming across the stone as they did in the temple at the altar as you’d sacrificed yourself to him.
He loves you.
He’d taken you, spared you, made you his bride. He gave you his palace and all the treasures within, and with it came his love.
You see the broad, scarred plane of his back as you draw closer.
He hides behind a mask, refuses to let you see the one thing that nobody else has ever seen. Not even you, his offering, his bride, his muse, his beloved.
The candlelight illuminates his face.
and you feel your breath catch tightly in your chest.
He’s breathtaking.
The word ‘divine’ does not compare to his likeness, with his eyes closed and his lips parted in sleep. His alabaster skin shielded from the sun is written with scars, but the stories told by them seem like the songs of great poets, wild and magnificent in the way of feral things. Long, blonde lashes swoop gently over his cheeks, still rosy with the exertion of your lovemaking, face slack and open in his slumber.
He’s the most beautiful creature you’ve ever seen.
Even when his dark eyes open, look upon you with despair, he’s still beautiful.
“No.” Ghost speaks in a tone you’ve never heard, full of grief, and it stabs through you like a blade. “How could you?”
“Ghost-” You try, reaching for him as he raises himself from bed, drawing to his full height and towering above you. Yet your fingers are just short as he draws away, towards the balcony.
“Leave.” He tells you, his voice hardening with fury as a cold wind begins to billow around his form, cast in starlight.
“No-” You try, panic bubbling up your throat as you try to move forward to him, pleas for forgiveness upon your lips. “Ghost-!”
“LEAVE.” Ghost bellows as smoke churns wildly about his immortal form, the cold wind slicing against your skin and preventing you from drawing near.
“I love you!” You cry in desperation as tears form, and the mantle of his cloak descends upon his shoulders, bone white replacing his face.
Ghost doesn’t respond, not as he becomes wrath, not as his eyes look upon you with betrayal and despair. You try to move forward, to touch him once more, but when you reach out your hand, skim your fingers against the outline of him-
He’s gone.
As the cold wind retreats, and with it your husband, you collapse to the floor and wail with your despair.
Mayday Mayday Chapter Two: Effective Fire
(Simon "Ghost" Riley x F!Medic "Fix" Reader)
Part Six of Snowblind
Rating: Mature Themes Wordcount: 4.8k Tags: Slow Burn, Whump, Blood and Injury, Active Combat Scenarios, Teammates to ??? to Lovers, Angst, Banter Warnings: Crashes, Descriptions of blood and injury A/N: Special thank you to @okaycoldplay @gazs-blue-hat , @laeilaps , and @vampirekilmerfic for the research and development of this installment! and thank you to everyone still reading despite the large gap in updates.
In the darkness of the desert, you engrave in your soul the names of the dying and the damned.
You set to work quickly, assessing the men injured in the crash laid down beside each other against the gritty earth. It’s slow, slogging work, working in near total darkness. Ghost had punched out the lone red blinking beacon from the helicopter lest it betray your position, and as a result you work only through the scant illumination of the flashlight held by the pale-faced private next to you. You try to refrain from snapping at him when his hand wavers and you pause your hands over the limp forms of his brothers.
There’s no way around it. It’s bad. It’s...really bad.
Aside from Ghost and his concussion, there’s four more soldiers wounded, not including the pilots. Fractures, contusions, and shrapnel laced wounds litter the debris-strewn space around you. Groans and scarcely stifled cries seem to be the only sound aside from the lonely, cold wind that travels through the valley.
You try your best to push aside any thoughts of impending attack, narrowing your focus down to the flesh and bone under your hands. The flashlight illuminates seeping pools of red under some of the bodies, and as fast as you work it doesn’t seem to stem the tide of crimson that you know will haunt you for days to come.
Both pilots are concussed, out cold, and you think it’s for the best. If they awoke to the state of themselves, it would be far more agonizing. The pilot has a broken right leg, the thing bent at a horribly awkward angle that had one of the other marines swear a sacrament at just the sight. Shrapnel litters down his waist to his calf, and somewhere between it all you think you feel a fractured rib that belays a tender, weakening heartbeat that flutters with every red ooze from his wounds.
You try your best to make him comfortable, and quietly attach a black tag to his jacket to signal his chances of survival. There’s only so much you can do, and silently you pray that if he does pass, that at least it’s without pain.
His co-pilot isn’t much better.
When you go to attach a black tag to him, the marine behind you shoots out to catch your wrist. In the sloping glow of the flashlight, his eyes are pleading.
“Please.” Is all he offers, quiet and forlorn. “He’s…my friend. Please.”
You regard him with sad eyes, but quietly nod and begin to work on the unconscious man who had saved your lives.
The shattered windshield sliced through his upper arm, where a tourniquet now cinches the vein tightly as you work to apply bloodstop to the worst of the gashes. There’s a piece of debris lodged in his stomach that you work desperately to treat, thanking whatever higher power that be that the object itself stops most of the blood flow. You use a good amount of your supplies on him, ensuring your assistant holds aloft your one and only fluid bag to try and ease the strain on his body despite the blood loss. He’s covered in your own jacket to try and keep him warm as he shivers, a tell-tale sign of shock. The cold that bites your skin is nothing compared to the silent dread that pools low and dark in your stomach. He's deathly pale, and you assign the marine to watch over him and the other pilot, to guard them if and when you should be found.
Down the line, your next man is unconscious, bleeding from his head and arm broken, but otherwise whole and in one piece. He’s a boyish sort, you think as you wipe the blood free and use butterfly stitches for the gash on his forehead. He still hasn’t shed a soft roundness of baby fat on his cheeks, and you can’t help but think how young he is to be out here, prone in the dark desert sand.
He rouses just as you finish working on him, startling and grasping at your sleeve in a sudden panic.
“Easy.” You soothe, laying a hand flat on his chest as he tries to raise his head. “Try not to move. You’re okay.”
You catch his eyes by the light of the flashlight. They look lost, but then they find you, blink, before he slips away again. His heart pulses steadily under your hand. You squeeze his hand just one, hoping he feels it before he goes still again.
Beside him is a corporal who seems to babble in delirium as you carefully inspect his pupils and wrap gauze around his head. His left arm has debris engraved into it, not nearly as bad as the pilots, but no doubt requiring a careful operation the second you land back at base.
If you land back at base.
You try not to think about that either.
The corporal talks in circles, no doubt severely concussed but at least halfway lucid. You catch him drifting more than once, shaking him awake and telling him to keep talking unless he falls asleep. He chokes back a sob when you wrap a tourniquet around his upper arms, biting his lip so hard it bleeds but offering no other complaint. When you tell him, breathless but firm nonetheless, that he’s going to be okay, you find him smiling at you through heavy eyes.
Your designated assistant, a flint-eyed man with dark hair who goes by ‘Smit’ bends to assist you with each man, each of you easily slashing the straps of the plate vests and discarding them to the side so you can inspect the unevenly rising chest of each man. A second holds the flashlight as you work, illuminating the scarlet slashed over their forms that you rapidly try to stem.
“Hang on for me, soldier. Keep breathing.” You murmur to the marine under your hands, and then to your new assistant: “Hold down on the gauze. Keep a steady pressure. Let me know the second his breathing changes. Understood?”
“Yes sir- er, ma’am.”
With each new wound, each new injury, you do inventory on your existing supplies- not nearly enough to deal with a situation of this caliber. Gunshot wounds, flash-bang concussions, these were routine for you. This, where the crash constitutes a disaster zone, you feel the weight of your quick decisions sink heavily into your shoulders.
The pilot is the first to go.
Martinez, the man designated to watch over him, quietly signals you over. You feel the pilot’s pulse flutter under your fingers, your other hand quietly holding him as he lets out several long, slow breaths and then goes forever still.
“He saved our lives.” The marine tells you solemnly as you cover his face. “I’ve never seen a pilot come back like that from a tailspin. We...”
He trails off. You know he doesn’t need to finish the thought.
We should all be dead.
A hollowness burrows deep and aching into your chest. You wish you had time to indulge it.
“Take his jacket.” You quietly offer. “See if you can warm up the co-pilot.”
“Yes ma’am.”
You rise to your feet and pace away for a moment, lingering between the soft perimeter of the crash and the injured men contained within it. It takes a few breaths to settle your heartbeat, and you wonder if you should feel more grief than you do- if it is a reflection on yourself that you learned to blunt your inward pain so long ago.
You look up to the sky. There’s still no stars.
In the darkness, you watch the massive, prowling shape of Ghost pace the perimeter like a wolf protecting the corpse of felled prey. Beneath him, lain flat against the sand, the marines keep a silent, steady watch for the smallest indication of enemy movement. You can barely make out the outline of your lieutenant, his figure blurring into shadow like a wraith. When he senses your eyes on him and turns, you can make out the shock of white from his mask.
“We lost one.” You tell him quietly as you approach, careful to keep your voice quiet from the nearby soldiers. Ghost seems to have expected this, for he nods, silent as he considers.
“Dust-off is on standby.” He relays back to you, voice dipping so low it feels like it vibrates the earth beneath your feet. “They’re waiting for the area to clear before they send another chopper.”
You grimace, mouth pressing into a line. Right. Of course the base is waiting to make sure there’s no more RPGs in the zone before they can send a team to your position. Knowing procedure, it could be up to a day before you see help.
Ghosts eyes watch you as you process this information, trying to run the numbers on the supplies in your field kit, trying to prioritize who’s wounded and who may not return home.
“Sorry.” You offer suddenly, and you sense Ghost still, tilt his head at you.
“I jinxed it, I think.” You offer, more to yourself than to him, and you wonder how much of the stress is getting to your head. “With it being a good night for a hunt and all.”
It takes Ghost a moment to digest this, but eventually he huffs and shifts away from you.
“Hunt’s not over yet, Fix.” He tells you simply, and you think in the darkness he somehow sounds bemused. You blink at that, always surprised by how Ghost can take a situation such as this and simply compartmentalize, offer a scant bit of humor with the confidence that he, at least, will survive.
You wonder, quietly in his shadow, if you’ll make it home despite all this.
You shake the thought as soon as it appears. There’s no time to entertain it, and as you snap your gloves off and slide on a fresh pair, returning to your makeshift triage.
A sound.
There’s a current that runs through the remaining members of the team around you as you all seem to catch it at the same time. Distant, a low thrum that sounds for just a moment before the desert goes silent once more.
Then again, louder.
You can’t discern where it is at first, ears straining to track whatever it was- another chopper, a truck, or...something else.
Then, to the east.
“3 o’clock.” Ghost states just loud enough for the circle of marines scattered around the site to hear, and there’s a flurry of movement as the team situates itself to face the oncoming threat. You can hear it now- the distant churning of an engine choked by sand as it draws closer. “NVGs on. Now.”
You follow the order automatically, hearing the whine of your goggles as they come to life and throw the world into a sickly green light.
“Fix.” Ghost snaps as you try and squint in the darkness to make out distant, blurry shapes of the oncoming forces. “On your weapon. Now.”
You don’t hesitate, quickly snatching your weapon from near the row of fallen men and murmuring a few quiet orders to your assistants there. It takes all of five seconds for you to reappear at Ghost’s side, lowering yourself to the ground alongside him as he flattens himself, opening his scope to peer into the horizon.
You see them now, in the distance. Two trucks together, and as they draw closer you see the forms of men with weapons held aloft as they rapidly close in on your position.
“What’s the call, Ghost?” One of the sergeants besides you asks, fingers tapping nervously on his weapon. You feel it, the frenetic, taut energy that courses like an electric current between you all. Holding its breath, starved of air, waiting until the moment the first bullet signals destruction.
“Not yet.” Ghost replies, eerily calm. “Wait until they’re in range. Conserve your ammo, there may be more.”
You shudder to think of that, already finding your stomach wind tighter every moment the trucks grow closer. You can already tell you’re outnumbered. There has to be twenty men at least, and as they near you hear them begin to raise their voices in the darkness in battle cries that pull taut at the low, cold coil of your gut.
You don’t allow yourself to think what may become of this- gazing into the scope of an enemy for a single heartbeat before everything goes dark.
Forever.
“Hold steady, lads.” Ghost murmurs, voice a deathly low roll in his chest.
The group draws closer, unloading from the truck, weapons out. They must not see you in the dark. Maybe they think you all died in the crash, bodies lying prone and scattered in the sand amidst the wreckage of the helicopter.
“Not yet.” Ghost intones quietly as the men from the truck grow closer, cautiously approaching the edge of your perimeter. “Set your targets.”
You choose a man in the middle of the group, both hands on a soviet-era rifle as dust billows at his feet. He’s less than thirty paces away from you, and with each heartbeat he takes another step towards the crosshairs of your trigger.
He’ll kill you, given the chance.
Ghost is silent beside you, body taut, entirely still. He doesn’t even seem to breathe. if you didn’t know better, you’d think he was a corpse.
Twenty paces.
Fifteen.
You see it happen in just a moment. A man pauses at the edge of the group as he looks directly at you on the small rise towards the crash. He raises a shout.
He drops dead before he can finish.
Your eardrums ring as the men around you wordlessly unleash a hailstorm of bullets on the group. You watch five men go down in the first few seconds, unable to lift their weapons before they drop. The remaining open fire on your position blindly, bullets burying themselves into the dirt with puffs of dust. Gunfire explodes across your vision like fireworks as you open fire, tracking shapes in the shadows and deftly squeezing the trigger after them.
They’re trying to find you in the dark, and it’s difficult with your group spread apart as it is, perched on a low rise that offers a semblance of cover to shield you. There’s shouts that echo in the darkness, panicked, angry, offering orders that are cut short by the sound of a gunshot.
You watch as a man retreats to the cover of one of the trucks, and moments later the engine starts, and the vehicle begins to roll towards you with increasing speed.
“TAKE OUT THE TRUCK.” Ghost orders over the chaos at you, head not turning for even a moment as he focuses his sights.
You have a momentary pause as to why it isn’t Ghost trying to take the shot. He’s always been a better sniper than you, so how-
You watch him take aim at a man fleeing in the direction of the truck.
and miss.
“FIX!!” Ghost bellows, thunderous, and you lock on to the front wheel swerving in the dirt. You take a breath, and a split second later your shoulder jolts with the impact of your rifle, and you watch the rubber of the tire spin into shreds. Yet the truck continues, swerving erratically in your direction. It raises a burst of panic in the men around you, who open fire on the truck as it closes in, all while its passengers take aim at you all.
You watch a body down the line jolt, then go still.
“Anderson!!” One of the corporals hollers, and before you can scream at him to stay where he is, he foregos his weapon in favor of reaching for his teammate.
He screams as his body jerks, cries as he collapses onto his side.
You have no time to look, unleashing your ammo at the truck’s other front wheel in a desperate bid to slow it down before resorting to firing upon the driver. He jerks before slumping forwards, twisting the heel so the truck goes careening off course and away from your sight range.
“They’re flanking us!”
You don’t move unless it would give away your position, instead trying to track the targets in front of you before turning your attention to your side. That is, until you realize-
“Ghost-” You bark, voice cracking. “The injured-”
The truck disappeared towards the broken tail that shelters your comrades.
“Stay put.” Ghost snarls as a bullet pings off the dirt between you, making you flinch. “If you get up, you’re as good as dead.”
You try not to let your hands shake as you focus through your scope again, tracing the remaining five or six targets that flee back towards the other truck. In the chaos of trying to take down the vehicle headed towards you, they’ve gotten a head start, and rapidly begin to reach the edge of your firing range. You try to lock onto them, catching one by the shoulder as he stumbles, then goes down with your next shot. Yes his comrades manage to reach the truck ahead of him, piling in and backing up away from the range of your weapons.
“They’re retreating!” A voice rises beside you.
“They’re getting away.” Ghost growls back, ceaselessly firing upon the truck in an effort to slow it as it withdraws.
There’s gunfire to your right now, and at last you twist towards it, army-crawling in the direction of your wounded patients.
“They’re hidden behind the truck.” A voice tells you, shielded by the mangled helicopter tail. He ducks, crouching, as a bullet pings off the metal.
The wounded are on the other side.
Yet when you try and jolt forward, around, trying to reach for them, you’re hauled back by the straps of your tac vest.
“I said-” Ghost growls in your ear as you all but fall back into the heavy plane of his broad chest. “Stay. put.”
You didn’t realize you were shaking until you were in his arms. The adrenaline bites hard and sour on the underside of your tongue, chest heaving and brain working into overdrive as you force yourself to freeze, process his words.
“Think.” Ghost tells you, breathless enough that you think you might have imagined it.
You blink, trying to reroute the synapses of your thoughts to listen to him, to obey this order he’s given you. You remind yourself it’s Ghost’s voice that has guided you through darkness, through blood and sin, through your own undoings and towards the light of survival. Now, with souls of others cupped preciously in the palms of your hands, you will yourself once more to listen to his guiding clarion.
With you still sprawled back against him, Ghost reaches one massive arm around you to your front. You think he’s about to secure you, roll you out of the way, only for him to deftly pluck your one grenade from the front of your vest. With hardly any effort, Ghost uncaps it right before your eyes...
and hurls it in the direction of the truck.
There’s a pause as it clatters somewhere into the front seat, followed by a shout-
BOOM-!!
Debris erupts upwards, rains down on you. The world spins, rings around you for a moment, and you scrunch your eyes to try and grimace through it. Eventually it fades, and you feel a body pressed to yours shift, one arm looped around your front slowly retreating as you’re released.
He’s still holding you.
For a moment you feel your brain short-circuit, torn hopelessly between utter bafflement at Ghost’s proximity to you, and the reminder of your task at hand. Awkwardly, you cough and scramble to detangle yourself from Ghost, who eases slowly away from you, giving you space.
“All clear!” One of the marines nearby yells in the silence that follows. You glance back at Ghost, crouched as you are by the wrecked helicopter tail. The white of his skull mask flashes luminescent green under your night vision, shadows dancing from the fire of the truck. He nods at you in a silent affirmation- ensuring he’s covering you as you dart for the wounded.
You keep low as you crawl towards the forms of your fallen comrades, grabbing the first man you can and dragging him backwards until one of the other marines assists you. There’s smoking forms hidden behind the truck not far off, one of them moving and moaning wordlessly in pain.
You manage to get everyone behind cover from the truck, not yet looking to see if they’ve been further injured, focused instead on the perimeter, looking for future threats.
“Sergeant.” A marine quietly offers next to you, and you turn, look into his eyes.
The man you’re still holding- clutching onto his tac vest straps by a death grip. He’s dead.
“It’s Martinez.” He whispers solemnly. The one you’d left to defend his brothers. He’s still holding the IV bag.
It takes a few moments for the thing inside your chest to awaken- that dark beast that howls in anger and sorrow. It draws upwards, clawing viscous and sinister at your inside, and as you stare into the blank eyes of Martinez it growls in low tones words of grief and fury at you’d been unable to save him.
That you’d failed.
You release the body like you’ve been electrocuted- muscles a live wire as you try to control your shallow breathing. Blood rushes in your ears. The world dizzies you with shades of green.
“Fix.”
You turn, eyes wild, almost careening into Ghost behind you. He catches you by your elbow, steadies you silently. The warmth from his gloved hands bleeds through, and somehow you find your balance.
You almost want to shield the fallen soldier behind you, trying to hide the act of failure you’ve committed. Yet when you try, Ghost’s grip on your arm remains tight, as if somehow anticipating your movement.
“Think.” His voice echoes again in your mind.
Your throat is a hard, bitter scrape of air as you swallow, steady yourself.
“Who’s injured?” You ask the survivors gathered around you.
“Anderson is dead.” A voice intones, quiet and grieving. “Smit is gone too.”
Three men including the pilot. Three men you failed to save. Three souls to haunt you.
You stare up at Ghost, trying to make out his expression despite the night vision. You wonder if he still feels grief despite everything. You wonder if you respect him for that.
Over his shoulder, light in the distance.
He blinks, follows your gaze.
More trucks. Distant, but closing in. Hyenas come to pick off the wounded survivors.
“Dig in.” Ghost tells the team, releasing you so abruptly the world spins. “We’ve got enemy reinforcements inbound.”
Yet as you focus in on the convoy headed in your direction, you see just how many reinforcements Ghost speaks of.
Three cars. You’ll be overrun.
“Ghost, we need to retreat.” The marine sergeant tells him roughly. “We can’t hold this position.”
“Retreat to where?” Ghost snaps back, never taking his eyes off the convoy. “We hold here.”
“There’s buildings north of us, they look abandoned-”
“We won’t make it. Not with the trucks.”
He’s right. Even if you didn’t carry the wounded, in which Ghost would have to haul you to withdraw himself, there’s just no way you can make it to a cover without the trucks catching up and encircling you all, cutting off any escape- or chance at survival.
“Reload.” Ghost declares when the sergeant goes quiet of protests. “Inside the chopper, wounded first.”
The men echo a chorus of acknowledgments, moving around you. Yet you remain rooted to where you stand, gazing at Ghost, at the convoy, at the starless sky.
You’ve lost three men. Now more enemies come to reap the souls of those who have lived. You need to retreat, to fight, to protect the men you’ve been tasked with, to ensure your own survival.
Think, he said.
Think, Fix.
Think.
The answer comes before you can second guess yourself.
“We need to blow up the chopper.”
The men around you freeze, turn to look at you. The air feels stale in your lungs, heartbeat stuttering, but under their eyes you force yourself to repeat your words.
“We need to rig the chopper to explode- and retreat.”
Ghost stares at you wordlessly. You expect him to snarl at you, to reprimand you, but instead he simply watches, waits for you to speak.
Listening. Perhaps even trusting.
You swallow hard, settling yourself where you stand before speaking again.
“We have demolition charges for the bunker. We can set them on the chopper, wait until the trucks get close, withdraw and then set them to go off. It’ll give us time to take the wounded and hike to a better position.”
It’s quiet in the moments after you speak.
Then:
“That’s crazy.” The marine sergeant offers in utter disbelief. Then, quieter: “It could work.”
Ghost’s eyes haven’t strayed from you. You lock onto them, quiet. Pleading. Trusting.
“It would take a crack shot to explode the package at that distance in the dark.” Is the only thing he offers. Yet the silent message is clear.
Can you do it?
For a single, suffocating moment doubt threatens to choke the hope from your chest, obfuscating it in a noxious cloud of self loathing and hatred. Instead, you square your shoulders, look at Ghost’s eyes, pupils blown wide and dark under the starless sky.
“I can do it.”
Ghost holds your stare. The trucks in the distance grow closer.
“Pack up.” He barks, turning. “Wounded take priority. Take what you can, leave the rest. I want the charges on the nose of the chopper, and whatever ammunition is left after reloading. Wounded at the front, the rest of you watching our six. MOVE!!”
You fall in line, a flurry of activity as you rapidly check the wounded men, hauling those who can stand to their feet, taking the weapons of the men who carry those who can’t. You watch as the marine sergeant and two more secure charges to the front of the chopper near the fuel tank, working quickly as the rest of you pass them, headed up the rise.
You can hear the engines of the trucks now, roaring with sand choked valves as they close in.
“Move. Move!” You urge the men ahead of you, hanging towards the rear as Ghost takes up the tail of your group. You watch the lights of the trucks near the forms of their fallen comrades as you reach the top of the hill. They swiftly pass them, firing several shots into the sky as they near the crash site.
You plant yourself at the top of the rise, rock and dirt digging into your stomach as you focus through your scope, swinging your sights from the rapidly encroaching convoy towards the exposed charges. Ghost hovers at your back as the men hike past him, encouraged by their sergeant. You know if this doesn’t work, if you shoot too soon or too late, it will be an early grave for you all.
“Not yet.” Ghost tells you, observing as the trucks begin to eclipse the former perimeter where you’d been laying only minutes ago. You steady your breathing, forcing your heartbeat to slow, loosening your hands on your rifle and then slowly tightening it once more. You keep your finger off the trigger.
The trucks pass the perimeter.
Not yet.
The trucks creep up on the helicopter tail.
Not yet.
The trucks pass by the burning wreckage of the other truck.
Your finger lays on the trigger. You focus on the demolition charges.
Deep breath in.
Quietly, from behind you:
“Now.”
You squeeze the trigger just once, and at the exact moment that the trucks come up parallel to the nose of the bird, you watch as the charges explode. It takes a moment for the heat to burn a hole through the fuel tank, but then a second, larger explosion alights and deafens you with the sound of its ignition. The force of it momentarily rocks you backwards, and it's only Ghost that manages to keep you steady as the shockwave briefly rolls over you both.
When you open your eyes, you see the three trucks gone. Engulfed in the inferno.
Clear.
“Bloody fuckin hell.” Ghost breathes beside you, observing the carnage with an expression far from unimpressed. “Bloody good shot, sergeant.”
You’re so stunned by the blast you almost miss the praise, blinking even as Ghost grabs you by your arm and hauls you to your feet beside him.
“Thank you. Sir.” You manage at last, still gazing down at the flames. The rifle in your grip feels too heavy. Then: “Holy shit.”
“Keen observation.” Ghost remarks dryly, but there’s an undercurrent of something else to his voice. Something that sounds almost relieved. Pleased. “Let’s get moving.”
He turns, and you follow in his shadow. Behind you, the blaze of your destruction alights you in fiery warmth.
He hikes higher into the hills.
You follow him.
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Mayday Mayday Chapter One: Bravo Going Down
(Simon "Ghost" Riley x F!Medic "Fix" Reader)
Part Six of Snowblind
Rating: Mature Themes Wordcount: 5.1k Tags: Slow Burn, Bad Flirting, Whump, Blood and Injury, Active Combat Scenarios, Teammates to ??? to Lovers, Angst, Banter Warnings: Crashes, Descriptions of blood and injury A/N: Special thank you to @gazs-blue-hat , @laeilaps , and @vampirekilmerfic for the research and development of this installment! and thank you to everyone still reading despite the large gap in updates.
It’s a starless night when your helicopter gets shot down.
The ride to your destination is a long one. The ever-present roar of helicopter blades is the only sound you seem to hear in the darkness of the chopper, sandwiched between two larger marines who seem to check and recheck their gear every five minutes. They chatter in small exchanges over comms, barks of laughter to cover up the anxious energy caught between the darkness of the thumping blades above. There’s a tense, heavy atmosphere in the cabin that pulses between you all, a pent-up focus prowling just inside its cage, waiting to be released into the thick of battle. You feel it as much as they do, grounded only by the tap of your fingers in a steady rhythm against your weapon, running and re-running the attack plan in your mind as the marines around you shift with taut, scarcely contained energy.
They’d sat behind you during the briefing, watching attentively as Laswell detailed the fly-by-night mission to hunt down an AQ cell holed up in the dry desert mountains. Normally such a cell would be swiftly dealt with using air support, but in this instance Laswell needed one of the majors hidden inside the mountain bunker alive for interrogation. It’s high-risk, high-reward business, and the gravity of the mission isn’t lost on you.
The marines seemed surprised to find you second in command of this mission, shifting uneasily with low tones as Laswell announced it so. You were surprised yourself at the arrangement, considering the leading CO that stood broad-shouldered and heavy-stared before them as Laswell went over the approach. With Price off-duty and nursing a sprained shoulder from the team’s last deployment, and Soap and Gaz on an assignment of their own, the mantle had fallen to you to be partnered with the team’s one and only lieutenant.
It doesn’t sit well with your fellow American troops, you can tell. They’d expected one of their own to be second in command, especially considering your medic designation. Yet when one of them had dared voice such an opinion, his fellows snickering behind your back, Ghost had barked at them a snarling, low reprimand that quickly silenced any and all objections.
Now Ghost sits across from you, legs spread wide enough that the soldiers on either side of him have to compact their spaces to allow him room. You see the way they’re a little tense, a little intimidated by his size and presence. You can hardly blame them. Ghost has been quiet aside from a few orders for the entire ride so far, and you’re not sure whether to be grateful or unsettled by his silence.
Things have been...odd since you got back.
You’d been given all of a week to settle at base before the team was tasked with a flurry of missions- all short and swift deployments that left you with plenty of leftover energy to spend on the rest of the team. You’d been concerned about integrating yourself back into the group after such a long stint away, but fortunately the team had accepted you back with open arms. It had taken time to catch up with the most recent intel, and even then Price had insisted on putting you through your paces with training and other exercises to ensure your skills were still fresh. With Soap and Gaz at your side, it was a relatively easy task to tackle the list of training exercises your CO had tasked you with, buoyed by the boy-ish, lighthearted energy of the other two sergeants.
To test your revitalized skillset, Price often designated you to Ghost’s squad during deployments, trusting his second in command to sharply and swiftly correct any blunders on your part- of which there had mercifully been few. More than that, you seemed to flourish under the command of Ghost, quickly ceding to orders and swift with your deliverance. It had garnered you several rare instances of praise from the Brit, spoken quietly and perfunctory over comms, quick enough that you had to pause and ensure you had heard him right. When you had offered bits of banter over the radio, Ghost had surprisingly indulged in your humor, leaving you grinning even during ex-fil and almost giddy with the oddly fluttering feeling in your chest.
As if that wasn’t odd in itself, Ghost seemed...different than you remember off the field. More than once you’d caught him staring at you across the rec room between missions, dark eyes boring into you as if you were something to be studied. He sometimes sought you out himself to relay a message as opposed to using the team’s designated chat log, offering the excuse that he’d been nearby anyways. His gaze always managed to catch yours when you entered a room, and despite the man never smiling, you always saw the glimmer of recognition there as you caught his stare, as if he was anticipating your arrival.
You told yourself he was just looking out for you, as his duty as your superior, but the truth of it felt...more than that. Ghost was never one to go out of his way for his teammates, always offering the bare minimum of what was required of him to keep the task-force functioning. You know his past, mysterious and intriguing as it is, prevented him from truly bonding with the rest of the team. To him you were all co-workers, soldiers, but not brothers in the way you thought of them.
Yet it was Ghost who tossed you an extra water bottle after training, who had nodded to the weights someone stashed in the gym when you looked for them, who had given you his full attention as you stood before him and checklisted your gear for him before mission, who looked out for you at the bar and escorted you back to the barracks on the night of your return...
It made you wonder if there was a man behind the mask after all.
You dance around each other in fleeting glances and quiet words, and the meaning of it all is contained in the distance between you. You never touch, never dare to scrape against the soot-dark form of him, but you feel the presence of him at your back all the same. Watching, guarding, a sentinel that you can’t find yourself to venture far from. You lay awake at night ruminating over the way he says your name, ‘Fix’ like it’s his mother-tongue, a word so inherent to his language that it makes you feel like you were born to belong there against his lips.
Now, in the darkness of the helicopter, Ghost basks in the wash of red light overhead. His arms are crossed, weapon at rest between his legs as he awaits the slow downturn of motion that signals your approach. When you catch his eyes, the Brit tilts his head at you, heavy helmet and night vision goggles shifting expectantly.
You smile at him a little nervously, feeling the return of taut anticipation flowing through your veins as the hour of your hunt inevitably draws closer.
“Good night for a hunt, eh LT?” You venture cautiously, feeling one of the marines beside you tense. Nobody has dared to say a word to Ghost for the entire journey so far, and instantly all the attention in the cabin seems to land on you and your hesitant, clever smile.
Ghost blinks at you, doesn’t move an inch from where he’s seated. In the dim, red light of the hold you can barely make out his half-lidded, lazy stare as he regards you. Unbothered, unlike the men around him, he huffs a small sound before replying.
“Can’t see shit on a night like this.” Is all he offers brusquely. It’s enough.
“Well that’s what night vision is for. Anyone ever tell you you look good in green, sir?”
Shit.
You instantly clamp your mouth shut, but it’s too late. The words you just spoke hang heavy in the space between you, and the silence that follows is deafening. You wince internally, struggling to contain your expression as a dozen eyes regard you- gawking at your brazen flirtation you just offered to your fucking CO.
You want to crawl six feet under.
You can make out the whites of Ghost’s eyes in the darkness, surprised and taken aback. It takes him a moment to collect himself, eyes hardening and words steely.
“Spend less time gawking and more time watching the rest of your squad, sergeant.” Ghost tells you pointedly, though it’s without true malice. You contain a cringe at the reprimand, wanting nothing more than to groan into your hands at your own foolishness.
Yet your mouth seems to have a mind of its own, because before you can stop yourself, you reply with a “Gawking isn’t the word I’d use, LT.”
The private beside you sucks in a deep, trembling breath.
“Is that right?” Ghost’s eyes are suddenly sharp as they pin you to where you sit. “What word would you use, then, sergeant?”
Christ alive, just send you home in a body bag.
You feel your mouth open and close a few times, desperately trying to find the words, any words with which to salvage the rapidly spiraling conversation. You should really shut up, offer a murmured apology and keep yourself silent for the rest of the mission, but the eyes of the other soldiers stare unblinkingly at you as you finally find your voice.
“Looking...respectfully? Sir.” You manage, a little strangled.
The marine on the other side of you snorts. Ghost glares at him, and the man clears his throat before avoiding the Brit’s gaze.
“’Respectful’ isn’t the word I’d use for your behavior right now.” Ghost warns, low and dark, and you sit up straighter just by his tone alone. “I’d suggest you find a way to sort that mouth of yours before we drop in.”
“Speaking of-” A different voice interrupts, and even the pilot seems a little perturbed by your conversation. “Approaching target. Five minutes out.”
That seems to divert everyone’s attention well away from you and towards the mission at hand. Mercifully, Ghost draws the attention of everyone on board as he stands and clutches at the ceiling to steady his massive form.
“Listen up.” He barks, a dozen eyes looking towards the source of the deep, growling Manchester accent as it repeats the name of the asset you’re after. “That’s our target, needed alive. You know your orders. Keep this op clean, understood? No fucking body bags.”
A chorus of ‘Yes Sir!’s joins your own voice. Ghost seems to take up all the space from floor to ceiling as he nods, begins again-
A sound catches your attention, a distant fizzle that you manage to hear above Ghost’s booming voice. You open your mouth, a warning on your lips-
“RPG!!” The co-pilot yells just as the alarm blares, and suddenly the heli tilts, launching you violently against your straps as the pilot takes evasive maneuvers. The cabin descends into a chaotic flurry of voices as the marines react, trying to process suddenly being under enemy fire.
What happens next takes only seconds.
The sudden change of axis has Ghost stumble, one hand clenched in a white knuckle grip against the ceiling. You can hear the rocket above the growing alarm just as it whooshes past the hull, missing the chopper by mere feet. The blades whine above you, straining as the pilots try to right the heli, grunting over the comms. Garbled radio traffic is drowned out by the groan of the chopper, and the sudden gasp that tears from your own throat as you instinctively suck in air.
Yet just as it seems the chopper rights itself, you hear another sound outside. The two pilots' voices drown out each other as a second alarm screeches, and you manage to catch Ghost’s shocked eyes just as the sound of the incoming missile reaches a shrieking whistle. You open your mouth to holler at him to get back in his seat, and you see him move in the same direction, finding his balance and stretching out the hand not attached to the ceiling-
“Deploying flares-!”
“Hang on!!”
The RPG catches the flares on the outside of the hull, but the impact is close enough it throws the heli sideways, sending the bird into a tailspin. You watch in horror as Ghost instantly loses the balance he’s collected, hand slipping from the ceiling as he’s hurled up into the overhead so hard you hear a crack even past the roar of the straining blades. If it’s your voice that screams for him, you aren’t sure, but instantly you’re reaching for your straps, fumbling in an attempt to reach him. Your hands shake, breathing shallow and rapid, world spinning endlessly as the pilots struggle to contain the bird into a controlled descent. There’s voices yelling above the claxon, screaming orders, but yours is silent, heart hammering as you try desperately to remember how to breathe.
Ghost slides limply across the floor, head lolling.
You yell as you reach for him, fingers barely scraping his helmet and night vision goggles, unable to catch a grip. Yet the two marines across from you holler over the comms, one set of hands and then the other managing to find the edges of Ghost’s tac vest and hauling him with tremendous effort up into his seat across from you. Just as they manage to secure him, the pilot’s voice once again yells over the comms, barely audible as the helicopter groans and shrieks and the alarms blare deafening in your ears. Everything is spinning, turning on a dizzying axis you can’t find the balance to. You’re not sure which way is up, trying vainly to track the ground growing closer through the window next to Ghost’s slouched form.
“Mayday, mayday, this is Bravo going down-”
“EVERYONE BRACE!!”
You shut your eyes, hands in a death grip on your seat straps. Your jaw clenches so hard you can feel your teeth grinding, but the sound is obliterated by the catastrophic groan of the heli around you. There’s no time to do anything else except pray, and you try to remember the hymns and blessings taught to you by your mother all that time ago- having lost them when faced with a God that didn’t care about the suffering and the damned.
Fuck. You think for a half-heartbeat, the G-force of the spin forcing your head against the wall before you manage to tuck it forward. Blood rushes in your ears, and you catch a glimpse of Ghost before you, body leaning as the inertia drags at him. I never got to tell him-
The impact is catastrophic.
It forces all the air up from the bottom of your lungs in a wheezing gasp, tossing you violently against your seat straps. The force of it digs sharply against your ribs, painful and horrific as your entire body is hurled about like a rag-doll. You have no doubt if you weren’t secured you’d go flying against the interior of the bird, likely breaking your neck and leaving your body to rot in the dry desert sand. The bird groans desperately around you, tilting dangerously so your feet tilt up towards your head, the blades thumping at the sand once, twice, before getting caught and going still. Even then, the chopper slides another dozen meters, threatening to roll over completely before you at last come to a shuddering stop.
It’s automatic when you start counting in your head. One, two, three- Your training instinctively kicks in. Wait for the debris to settle, check for fuel leaks-
As soon as you reach five you fumble for your buckle, clawing at it in an attempt to free yourself as your voice rises over the groans and wheezing gasps of the men around you. It takes a few attempts to get enough air into your lungs to yell to your team, feeling your chest struggle for oxygen as your heart races up into your throat.
“Report.” You manage, voice cracking with grit and sand just as your hands find your buckle, one arm bracing yourself on the wall behind and below you. The lights flicker. In the darkness of the desert, the stars obscured, you can scarcely make out the bulky figures of your comrades in the cabin- similarly trying to free themselves. The chopper seems to have rolled onto its side somehow, as you find yourself with your legs higher than your head, the forms of the marines around you all but dangling from their straps from where the ceiling should be. There’s a brunt, singed metal type of smell that instantly has your gut coil with the instinct to go, move, clear out-
A few breathless murmurs, and after a moment another voice in the darkness.
“We’re good here, sarg!”
You breathe a sigh of relief at that, until-
A groan, loud and low, somewhere towards the ramp.
“I-it’s Johnson! His helmet is off!”
“LT is unresponsive!”
“I think the pilots are dead!”
Fuck.
You don’t stop to consider the possibilities of what that means. Fear claws at your chest, and you give yourself a breath to stubbornly swallow it down. You know that panic is a death sentence in this situation, and losing your head means endangering not only yourself, but the rest of your team.
You run through your options as fast as you can, knowing every second could be a grain of sand in a rapidly draining hourglass.
The helicopter can’t fly. It’s dead. The comms may still work, and no doubt the crash alarm has signaled the base about the nature of the situation. Yet it’s unclear if the chopper is sound. You can’t smell smoke yet, but you know the mangled mess of metal may change at any moment, sparking with fire and consuming you all in one bright blaze. Even if that’s not the case, it doesn’t solve the fact that the RPGs had to have come from somewhere nearby. The window to evacuate shortens by the second, and so you raise your voice in the darkness, drawing the attention of the others.
“Everyone out!” You bark, finally unclasping your buckle and feeling gravity drag you down, gear and all. “Check your squad, make sure nobody is left behind!”
It takes effort with the weight of your supplies to force yourself up above the seats, feeling bodies around you do the same. Fortunately the wreckage feels stable, even if the tremble in your limbs has yet to settle. Your chest doesn’t seem to expand enough to suck in all the air you need as you fumble in the darkness, eyes drawn to the gaping hole where the tail of the helicopter used to be.
Your hand lands on the closest arm you can reach, feeling the other soldier startled in the flickering darkness. “You.” You manage, throat dry. “Help me get the pilots.”
“Yes ma’am!”
You precariously balance as you turn, catching the slumped figure of Ghost out of the corner of your eye and watching with blessed relief as he raises his head a few inches.
Thank God. You think with an exhale of utter gratitude. He’s alive.
Yet the task at hand remains, and as Ghost is balanced between the shoulders of two marines, scarcely lucid, you turn towards the flight controls, a younger corporal just behind you.
There’s shattered glass at the windshield, and it allows the nighttime wind to breeze inside, sand spilling over the cracked panels and monitors. A red light flickers erratically overhead, illuminating the limp forms of the two pilots. It’s not an easy undertaking to wrestle free the two unresponsive men- one of them sticky with what you assume is blood as you haul them towards the exit carved by your landing. You’re not even sure they’re alive, but you’ll be damned if you leave them after their miraculous mid-air recovery that likely saved the rest of you.
“Damn good pilot, Smith.” The marine grunts beside you as he shoulders the pilot and makes towards the exit. “Sure hope this sonofabitch made it.”
You silently wish the same, hauling the co-pilot by his straps backwards with you, nearly tumbling twice before mercifully making it towards the hatch someone has kicked free. You can hear garbled words over the radio, and in the blinking light you see a small shower of sparks as the dashboard short-circuits. Thankfully, it doesn’t catch into flame, and you at last make it onto gritty desert sand with the limp form of the co-pilot atop you.
Two soldiers on either side of you manage to hoist him up and allow you to scramble to your feet. It’s the first time you’re able to take stock of the situation now that you’re free, heart thumping against your ribs and form trembling from the adrenaline still pumping fresh through your veins.
Good God.
The crash looks like something out of a grotesque action film. The tail lays feet away from the rest of the bird, one of the blades sticking straight up into the night sky and the over bent in a mangled wreck only feet away from you. There’s bits of metal and debris strewn around you, smoking and stinking as they’re half buried in the sand.
It’s nothing less than a miracle that you’re standing, bruised and battered as you are.
Twelve of you total, including the pilots. Four of you are standing, another kneeling beside the prone forms of the injured and two more helping to rest the co-pilot next to them. You check yourself, cataloging the various scrapes and bruises you can feel under your gear, and managing a prayer of thanks when you don’t immediately feel anything broken or bleeding.
and in your second breath-
“Where’s the lieutenant?”
“Over here ma’am!”
You turn on a swivel, neatly avoiding the debris as you find Ghost sat halfway up, eyes bleary but focusing upon seeing you.
“Fix.” He offers groggily, and the breathless sound of relief that leaves you is far from subtle. It takes you two steps to kneel before him, a wobbly smile on your face.
“Chopper went down, LT.” You convey quietly.
Ghost gives you a scathing look. No shit. It seems to offer. Were it not for the dire circumstances, you might have even laughed at the utter annoyance in his eyes.
“What’s our status?” He bites, hands limp at his sides and making no motion to inspect himself just yet.
You look at the chopper, rolled halfway on its side, one of the rotors bent and buried deep into the sand. It’s clear it isn’t going to fly again.
“We’re stranded. Emergency beacon went up as soon as the bird went down, but it likely will be a few hours before we see any sort of response- and that’s if they decide to fly despite the RPGs in the area.”
You suck in a breath then, steadying yourself. The truth of the situation begins to wash over you with cold, deathly dread.
“We’re on our own.”
There’s movement behind you, and you glance over your shoulder to where a few of the men have gathered, looking to Ghost for orders. You look to him as well, trying to track his eyes in the darkness. He looks...unsteady. You can tell he’s still trying to get his bearings after blacking out, and briefly it makes you wonder just how severe his concussion is.
“You solid?” You ask him quietly, trying not to draw too much attention from the men hovering anxiously around you both.
“Fine.” Ghost grits, but makes no effort to stand just yet.
Liar.
“What’s our move, Ghost?” One of the other soldiers asks, eyes darting between you to the mission’s designated CO.
Before Ghost can answer, you stand, drawing the attention of everyone including Ghost.
“I want a perimeter around the crash.” You state, settling yourself where you stand. “No doubt the team that crashed us saw us go down. They’re headed our way. Head on a swivel. Let’s make sure we see them before they’re on top of us. Move the wounded to whatever cover you can find. I’ll handle triage. Salvage whatever supplies you can from the helo, but if you smell smoke or fuel you let me know as soon as you do, understood?”
There’s a beat of silence from the men gathered around you, some of them shifting nervously, their eyes flitting between you and Ghost, who looks up at you in a mixture of shock and some sort of irritation you can’t place.
“I said understood?” You bark, making several of the men jump.
“Yes ma’am!”
“Good. Now you, and you-” You point out two men at the back of the small huddle. “You’re with me. I need your assist for triage. You two, I want to know what supplies we have left in the helo. Dawson, I want you to radio base and give them a report of our status. See if you can find answers about how long until we see a rescue team. The rest of you, I want you on the perimeter. Now.”
It’s only after the small huddle has dispersed that you turn to Ghost, nearly flinching at the ire there in his eyes.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, sergeant?” He seethes, and you have to swallow down the sudden bout of fright at his tone- dark and furious.
Your hands shake. It’s not rare to encounter Ghost in an annoyed or irritated mood, but what this is right now, the bright blaze of your lieutenant's eyes in the desert darkness, has a warning of danger zipping down your spine and settling low and heavy in your stomach.
No doubt he doesn’t appreciate you overriding him, injured as he is. Ghost is used to calling the shots on missions, and you know it’s a comfortable position for him, not having to rely on others' judgment to ensure his own survival. His own instincts pave the way for his men, allowing them to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. In control, it means he doesn't question his superiors and if they truly have his survival in their interests.
It stings, admittedly, that he doesn’t seem to have that faith in you to make a call when he’s concussed as he is, his eyes still trying to focus on your form above him. You thought by now you might have earned that.
Perhaps you’re wrong about that.
“I’m sorry sir.” You offer at last. “I’m not trying to override your command, but you’re injured-”
“I told you I’m fine.” Ghost snarls, shifting and trying to get his legs under him. It’s a wobbly sort of maneuver, and you resist the urge to aid him, knowing he’d only shrug you off with a growl.
“Ghost.” You manage tightly, trying to swallow down the hurt of his anger. “You’re concussed.”
Ghost pauses then, still glaring at you, but manages to raise himself up to a stand anyways. There’s a beat between you before Ghost is suddenly leaning into your space. You have to tilt your head up to keep eye contact with his higher stature, setting your jaw and trying not to flinch as his eyes burn down into your own.
“I did not give you permission to take command of this mission.” He growls, low and deadly. The vibration of it hums through you, settles low in your gut as a threat that you try vainly to ignore. There’s a natural instinct inside you to automatically defer to Ghost despite his injury, the fact that his pupils are blown completely wide and you think you can see the white edge of his mask tint with something dark and slick that oozes from his head.
You want to tell him you outrank him when it comes to the health and safety of the men, that your status as a medic means you can assess him if he isn’t of sound operational mind. You know his call wouldn’t have varied drastically from your own. Yet you also know that if Ghost perceives you to be a question to his authority the second he gets injured, it means hell for you in any future missions you may be on with him.
It means it might erase any trust you’ve managed to gain from him after all this time.
Ghost towers over you, hands clenched at his sides. You keep your gaze locked on his, trying to maintain a brave face despite the grave warning in his stare.
“Fall in line, sergeant.” He growls, voice bone deep and drumming dark into your skull.
You shouldn’t.
You do.
“Apologies, sir.” You offer in deference as you finally avert your gaze, feeling something liquid hot burn under your skin at the action. “Your orders.”
Ghost seems to relax a bit, shoulders unwinding as he lets out a long, slow exhale. Your own air still feels caught tightly in your chest, your heartbeat thumping like a battered thing between your ribs.
Ghost studies you, and even without meeting his gaze you can tell his stare hasn’t ventured from your form. What he seems to be searching for is unclear, and you restrain the urge to look back up at him, allowing him to see the bitterness in your eyes. He doesn’t need to see how much his lack of faith in you carves something deep and wounded into your skin, a failure in yourself to prove yourself to the man you admire the most.
“Handle triage. I’ll check the perimeter.” He orders abruptly, voice more even now that you’ve ceded to his authority. You nod mutely, not meeting his eyes, feeling a wash of shame and anger warm your face as you avoid his stare.
You turn from him in the direction of the injured men when his voice catches you again.
“Fix.”
You pause, not turning.
Ghost is silent at your back. He seems to be weighing his words, debating with himself. The desert breeze whispers at the bare skin of your neck where his gaze seems to be resting. The flickering red light from the helicopter washes crimson over your form.
“Good call.” Is all he offers, and you blink, lips parting in surprise as he brushes past you brusquely. The moment is gone in an instant as he moves towards the marines with their night vision trained on the horizon, broad and dark against the starless night sky.
Alone in his shadow you wonder why, despite his anger, his words sounded almost trusting.
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Fic Tag: Shadow and Bone
PSA as we go into spooky season and people start using activated charcoal to make foods look spooky.
Rebloggin' for this year's spooky season.
listen. aging into your thirties rocks. yes your joints get a little creaky. yes you can’t sleep in a pretzel on the floor anymore after a concert or a convention. and you lose some friends. but the thing is that you sort out who your real friends are and you sort out who you really are. and you get to see your friends settling into careers they like, and adopt new dogs and cats, and you find a job you can stand, and get really good at arts and crafts, and maybe that book you loved as a kid gets a movie deal and it doesn’t suck, and you learn to like new food and bake your own bread, and you realize that the great portfolio of self harm scars you all used to curate are going white with age and not updated, and half your friends are a different gender now and so much happier and maybe you are too, and you know who you are, and that it’s a journey and not a revelation. it’s a direction you’re headed, and you’re enjoying the trip.
reaching your 30′s rocks. and i’m hearing good things about what comes next, too.
i am looking into your eyes, i am holding your hand. i absolutely promise.
if you can just live long enough, your soul will build your body into a home. you will live there and you will find a way to be at peace. it’s worth the time and it’s worth the work. i promise.
Your soul will build your body into a home.
Seriously guys. Hold out until your thirties, it gets so much better. You get to be yourself, and no one can stop you
And more than that, wait until your 40s and 50s, when you stop caring what naysayers think about who you are because you KNOW, and you are ok with it. Wait until you realise that even at the unimaginable age of 50 (and beyond!) you are still a changing, growing, learning human being, only now you can just let so much bullshit go (shame, fear…) and just live into your greatest loves. Wait until you find your people and start to feel like you have something to give because you aren’t just barely holding yourself together anymore. Wait until the love you feel is freer, less greedy and grasping and more just a thing that gloriously exists and lights you up from the inside, like your heart is a hearth that the people you love warm themselves by.
Can you do something for me, please?
I want you to reblog this if you believe that two people can be very close and physically affectionate with one another, but still have a completely nonsexual, non-romantic relationship.
Even if the two people in question are capable of being sexually or romantically attracted to one another.
Because the friendship I share with someone I consider family in a way that transcends blood has been typecast as a romantic relationship ENTIRELY too many times, and I’m beginning to get sick of it.
he needs a break
Just a little Red Son practice 🔥🔥🔥
i meant to make a pic for valentines day but things got in the way. . . . but now i impulsively drew this so uh HAPPY (BELATED) VALENTINES DAY
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CH 6 (Momentum) - Page 36 Previous || Next
*Someone jokingly threatens MK
Mei:
Wukong should have a cameo in Lou Jitsu’s jumper for season 4 please please hear me Flying Bark you know I’m right
Wukong stumbles over his proposal thanks to stage fright. Ends up sounding too calm about it
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