HEAD HUNTED (I) | SIMON 'GHOST' RILEY
PAIRING: Simon 'Ghost' Riley x Medic! Reader
WARNINGS: predator/prey dynamic, war realism
SUMMARY: when your CIA contact warned you that you were being headhunted as a specialist medical technician for a new joint task force, you'd rolled your eyes. Now, with the face of death following you through Caracas, the situation seems far, far less trivial.
Venezuela is supposed to be a clean break from the Royal Army. You've found work with an NGO promoting public health education and working at a free clinic in the heart of the ranchos.
You're as far removed from IED shrapnel wounds and sand in your service boots as you can possibly get. Work is rewarding, and life is finally less frenetic.
It's the stuff of dreams. And then, you catch eyes with of the face of death across the dance floor, and it becomes a nightmare.
Since the night at the club, things have been... off. The ranchos have never been safe, sure, but now they feel like sniper's alleys.
Unsettled after a week of sleepless nights, you reach out to an American contact for a sitrep on cartel activity. You get back a status normal about the cartels, and a warning: one of the CIA higher-ups has been showing significant interest in your file from the joint task force in Kandahar Province.
Somewhat reassured that you're not a soon-to-be cartel hit, you roll your eyes, and close your laptop, putting your contact's warning out of your mind.
(You've got bigger things to worry about than the Americans.)
You cling to your flimsy reassurances, even as unease makes a home in your bones in a way it's not done since getting blood on your boots was a regular occurrence.
Though you've always been careful about keeping an eye on your drink, you're near-religious about only drinking bottled water, now, even going so far as to check the seals for tampering; if it is the narcos, you're taking no chances.
You find yourself watching the shadows, more often than not. Though you tell your coworkers you're fine, your pulse goes rabbit-quick every time you spot shifting in the shadows as you walk back through the slipshod streeting of the ranchos, breath coming quick and harried at the flash of empty eye sockets in your peripheral vision.
Home, too, offers no relief; your sleep pattern has been thoroughly ruined by the cold burn of paranoia.
The faintest of noise sends you bolt upright, heartbeat rabbit-quick at the susurration of your curtains in the breeze from the just-cracked window.
(You tug your bed out of direct line-of-sight of the windows, hoping it will help. You wake up that same night in a cold sweat, feeling the kiss of crosshairs on your neck.)
Thoroughly keyed up, you start carrying your flick knife. It's no service blade, but it's good quality — Caracas is as dangerous as it is beautiful, after all — and a knife to the femoral artery does the job, no matter the make.
You halfway hate yourself for carrying it, for giving in to the boundless paranoia that's subsumed your waking moments.
After two weeks with it's weight in your pocket, you've nearly talked yourself into stowing it back in your sock drawer. Any chance of that evaporates the second you find the landlord's wife white-faced and shaking, talking about a mascarilla de muerte.
The next morning, you go to ground.
You start the day as normal, heading to the clinic and doing the routine check-ups and triaging walk-ins, pretending all the while your hands aren't shaking.
As soon as your working day's over, you slip through the back door and deeper into the streets of the ranchos, stringing yourself deeper into the spiders' web.
You take a long, circuitous route, terribly, terribly certain that you're being hunted. As nightfall creeps in, you take advantage of the pre-Carnival partying, passing from bar to bar in order to get lost in the crush of people.
Each bar is soaked through with the stench of rotgut tequila and cheap perfume, and bachata music pulses through the floorboards to the point that reverberations rattle your shins.
No matter — you're there for cover, not to partake in the festivities.
By the time you've followed the crowd through to the outskirts of the ranchos, your arms are sticky with spilled liquor.
The itch of eyes on you has gone, and your shoulders loosen, just slightly. In the wee hours of the morning, just as the skies purple, you make a break for it, head into the city proper in the middle of the tipsy masses winding their ways home through the ranchos.
The crowd thins as people peel off, and by the time you reach the edge-place of the city, where skyscraper meets slum, it's just you and a few other stragglers.
This is it. You flick out the blade of your knife, and advance towards the neon lights with your heartbeat in your throat.
You're almost to the metropolis when a strong arm pulls you into an alleyway.
There's an arm around your middle, pinning your back up against an immovable wall of muscle, and another across your collarbone.
You catch a glimpse of yawning eye sockets, and with an aborted shriek, you struggle.
You swear and threaten, tear at the meat of the forearm across your chest, jab elbows into ribs and stomach, kick at knees and shins in powerful strikes, throw your head back to try and break your assailant's nose.
Aside from the odd huffed breath and shift in stance, all your fight gets you is a slow, steady increase in the pressure across your chest, the ache of hypoxia settling somewhere deep in your lungs as the points where your ribs anchor to your sternum creak ominously.
As a last resort, you bring your heel down on the bridge of your assailant's foot — hard — and kick out, knocking your assailant's stance off just enough to turn your knife in your hand and press the point of the blade to the inside of his thigh, just nicking skin. There's an answering pinch of metal just above your hip bone.
You gasp, the reedy sound punched out of you by a new wave of fear.
"Stand down, Ghost. Not much use if you make mincemeat of their ribs, are they?" A voice says from the mouth of the alley, all cigar smoke and Estuary drawl.
You catch sight of a Union Jack patch, British issue camouflage and oh, hell. This isn't a cartel hit, this is a special ops grab-and-bag.
"If you're not going to make like the cartel and gut me, get the fuck off of me." You spit.
Ghost releases you, sending you stumbling a few steps forward.
You turn to face him, glowering up into irascible, yawning sockets.
"What, and you couldn't just come and introduce yourself at the club?" You spit. "I'm retired, bellend. What's more, I'm on holiday."
Ghost tips his head forward. There's a gunmetal glint in his eyes, almost obscured by his skull mask. You're suddenly aware of the sheer bulk of him, of his mountainous stature. Were it not for your intruder — Ghost's CO — he'd have turned your ribs to sawdust.
You shudder, turning away from his stare.
"Well, terribly sorry to interrupt your holiday, Lance Corporal," The CO says, not sounding sorry in the slightest, "but we've got need of a medic. Now, how'd you feel about accompanying me and my mate for a sit down and a chat?"
