Burnt Leaves
Simon "Ghost" Riley x GNC Reader
SFW / Fluff & Comfort / No Dialogue / TW: Drug abuse mentions, mildly unhealthy coping with insomnia, one off-handed joke about dying
Summary: You deal with plenty of bullshit as is, and insomnia is just the straw threatening to break your back. You have your ways to deal with it, though. Seems like the skull masked lieutenant needs a new coping mechanism as well.
I may write more if people actually enjoy this, also i wrote this at like 3 am and i am dealing with insomnia myself, pls excuse if it sucks lmao
Being in the military was probably your best option. You weren't small or weak, you had quite a ways to go, sure, but you held your own. That's what initially impressed your training captain. You had a drive despite being depressed as shit. Which, maybe you lied to your recruiting officer. And the doctor. And your training sqaudron. But what's a little lie compared to staying in that drug den you reluctantly call home?
The harsh drills and tense, full body aching was nothing to you. Not compared to watching your mother be strung out on a stained, burned, broken couch while being left in the drug dealers care. Hell, or even when you had to help her find a dehydrated vein with a short and dull needle. Perhaps something that you considered a life saving skill, but it made you feel disgusting if you thought about it for too long.
You've been shifted around a few bases when you were needed, seeing as you were sort of an everyman. Excelled in the maintenance of weaponry, one hell of a mechanic, and maybe a few things you knew how to do that were definitely against the Geneva Convention. To be fair, though, if you had to decide between dying and using a makeshift gun that was severely out of regulation, you'd take your chances in court.
But all of this shifting around and half assed childhood you had lead to even more goddamn problems you didn't need. Often, maybe every few nights every single week, you dealt with insomnia. Bad weeks had you trying to fight the uncomfortable disorder every night, but you lucked out with having to deal with it half the time usually.
It was always so uncomfortable. The inside of your skin felt like it was covered in small pyramid-shaped cones that pressed into every nerve where there was pressure. Your eyes were heavy but never heavy enough to induce sleep. Your mind would never fog up the way it was supposed to. And it drove you absolutely crazy.
You had a few ways to deal with it, as most chronic sufferers do. Sometimes you accepted it and laid there until pure exhaustion won. Your worst option.
Most of the time, though, you'd already spent a few hours hoping, tossing and turning in restlessness before getting up. You'd lace your boots and try to walk it off. Speed up the exhaustion process manually. And it worked maybe 50 percent of the time. And you'd collapse back into your bunk, shoes still on and pillow over your head, and get just enough sleep that you wouldn't hate yourself in the morning.
And the nights that even that didn't work, you'd find yourself in the kitchenette of the rec area. You'd stare desperately at the coffee pot you were using to heat up water while you waited to choke down a bland, bitter chamomile tea. You couldn't stand tea on its own. You didn't have a sweet tooth, but you could accept when something needed a little bit of sweetness.
This often settled you down enough. The overwhelming tired made you cry in the barely lit room while your tea steeped, palms pressed into your burning eyes as you wished you'd just fucking sleep. And you'd stop. You'd drink your tea. And get enough sleep to function.
And you fell into this pattern and habit.
Until this one mother fucker.
See, you ended up being called in to aid in the upkeep up vehicles and guns at a fairly large base that served as home grounds to plenty of "real soliders". You didn't pay mind to many of them, but Captain Price's team at least treated you decently since you were the one making sure their guns jammed significantly less. However, Ghost creeped you the fuck out.
That teams lieutenant was horrifying to you. He stood way too tall, was way too broad to move that fucking quietly. He held this awful aura to him that was completely unreadable. And he barely ever spoke to you in a way that didn't feel like a back handed... well, you wouldn't even call them compliments. The man would stare more often than breathe, just watch you move about your job from the doorways and wait for you to notice he was there before declaring that he would have been able to kill you six different ways by that point. You've been able to get that number down to four, at least.
And for some reason. This also included your overstimulated and tired crying time at the coffee pot at 2 a.m. as well. It seemed like it was his third time just watching you when he spoke up for the first time, mostly just asking what the hell you were doing. You'd jump out of your skin, a blessing of a feeling if it didn't shoot unnerving shivers down your spine, and stammer out a half coherent response about tea leaves. And then he just... stood there. Watching you drink your tea and then leave after you were done.
At some point during this routine, he'd started to invite himself to sit across from you at the small table. He never really struck up conversations, though you swore you could see amusement in his eye as you made faces at the bitter tea. He knew you were burning the leaves, but he couldn't tell you that. Listening to another person rip into him about being British was very low on his to-do list.
This became comfortable. You began to tolerate his shadow-like presence. Maybe even enjoyed the silent company. You could guess that he was suffering the same just from how tired his eyes looked past the mask. Maybe he too found solace in a shared solidarity that you two really haven't expressed. It was bittersweet. Two barely functioning and sleep deprived people finding a space to relax, lit only by a half burnt out overhead lamp. Maybe, even if a bit selfishly, you had begun to go a little morr often judt for the company of a man you didn't know the actual name of.
Ghost never left before you, but only arrived after you began heating some water. He never had a cup himself, sat himself in the same chair, and limited himself to a handful of yrs or no questions a night. You didn't mind.
But he once again found a way to disrupt this routine.
You were reaching up to grab a mug from the cabinet above you, your other hand grabbing the coffee pot of hot water. You heard him move, which honestly should have been your que to turn around, and you felt him standing directly behind you. He covered your hand on the handle with his much larger one and practically forced you to let him grab the pot. He grabbed two mugs and moved off to the side, only meeting your eyes when you didn't move.
What ever fucking compelled him to do that, you had no idea. You were staring with bloodshot eyes and still even had your hand vaguely where the pot was. He simply nodded his head to the table and turned back to the mugs.
Guess you weren't making your tea? Deep down, thr angsty teen part of you hoped it was the forever sleep kind of deal. But that was dumb, so you shook your head a little to ignore that.
Ghost set your mug down on the table before sitting himself across from you, lifting his mask up enough to take a drink.
You've yet to see him do that, so your brain was just kind of off at this point. You stared, not that you meant to, as the man replaced his mask and set his mug down, staring back at you with a quirked brow. You looked down in a daz3 before grabbing your own mug, taking a long sip. Did he make a different kind of tea? Why the hell did it taste so... so much better? Your confusion actually earned you a small laugh from the other, a quiet, muffled chuckle from under his mask. That shouldn't have given you butterflies. He still scared you, after all.
He never explained himself, but from then on, you left the tea making duties to him and he didn't seem to mind. You fell into the pattern of getting there before your insomnia got into full swing every night, starting the water and getting the mugs. Then your midnight partner would show up and handle the rest.
As much as the mask gave you the creeps, it was growing on you. Like the previously bitter tea.
