Ok so about android reader, maybe you could write something abt it being a little before Christmas and the team is about to go on leave and just them talking about it in front of reader and also them thinking abt reader when in leave.
Srry if this is unreadable english is not my first language and I wrote this in a rush.
Love your writing, haven’t been able to get it out of my head! :)
Winter is a great season, you think to yourself, trekking through miles of snow covered trail, wounded Soap breathing you in the ear.
Would have been distracting if it wasn’t for the loud crunch of the snow under your boots.
The world around the two of you is coated in snow, heavy clouds breathing down your nape remind you that the blizzard is following you like an insistent salesman, eager to sweep you off your feet.
And while you will survive the wind and the cold and the terrain, your injured charge will not.
“Feeling alright, sir?” You muse, patting his thigh on the go, like he weights nothing and Johnny’s teeth chatter from cold, his grip on you crushing. Like he is nervous you’d leave him behind, deeming his wound a waste of resources.
That’s what they all must think, you toy with the thought, switching to the light jog. That between being optimal and being good, you will always choose being optimal.
Not like a machine can have a set code of ethics or a divergent programming that can finally shine into their faces with ‘I’m alive! Click on me!’.
But you are not a big fan of putting up a performance, not when the situation is dire and you have positively no time for admiring the snow. What a shame, the weather is so promising for a little hike.
You could burrow in a snow, curl in there and listen to the crunch of ice above you. You could become a rabbit or a bear, could sleep all winter — lulled into slumber by the wind and the trees.
Come spring you could have sprung from the ground fresh and new.
A beautiful idea, you think to yourself.
If you were human and willing to share it, they’d call you poetic.
But you aren’t and there is no time to burrow in the snow because Johnny’s teeth are chattering right above your ear, his laboured breathing really not helping you to think about abstracts of rebirth and nature.
He buckles a little, trying to ‘make it easier’ and almost makes the two of you tumble in the snow when his weight shifts on you suddenly.
Okay, that is distracting.
You already miss the comfortable routine of Ghost’s quarters.
“Sir?” You are terribly patient with him, Johnny once said. Almost to an infuriating degree. But you have seen what insubordination does to him and as far as you can tell, his wounded pride is worse than his burst of irritation. “Are you doing okay?”
“On a bonnie day like this?” He slurs out, clinging to your back. Human’s subconscious search for warmth not stopping despite you not being human. A warm body is a warm body even if the heat is from your output vents working double to keep him from tipping into hypothermia. “I’m fuckin’ prime, Engine.”
Of course he is, you think to yourself with something you usually see on captain’s face when Soap’s explosion collapses the wrong building like a house of cards.
Five miles until you can reach the safehouse, wind picking up when you change the hold you have on sergeant and he just grips you tighter.
“Good. Hold on, sir.” You muse and sprint up the trail, ignoring the pained hiss of your cargo, his weight pressing on your shoulders feels the same way Simon’s hand on your nape does.
Wind is outright howling by the time you get to the hidden shack, nestled between puffy snow-covered pines. Almost a picture perfect cabin.
“Feel like taking a vacation, sir?” You hoist sergeant a little higher up your back, so his chin can rest on your shoulder when you kick the doors down.
It’s rustic inside, cold and bare, but it’s better than nothing. Would do Soap more good than burrowing in the snow with you and waiting for spring.
“Oh, a wee trip would do me good. But I’m no cheap date, mate, take me to dinner first before dragging me in your…” he looks around, seemingly bored and concerningly pale from blood loss. “…palace.”
You huff out air, vents straining when you put the man on the worn couch, making sure not to worsen the state he is in and lock the doors back, cutting off the winds vicious blow of more snow.
You got here in time. A few more minutes and you would have had to dig a sufficient burrow to hide Soap in there.
You think about curling around him to keep him warm and comfortable and the engine vibrates somewhere under your solar plexus.
“What do yer lot usually do on Christmas?” Johnny asks a few hours later, bored to death, bud wounded leg stretched out and propped on a stool you dragged from the other room for him. “Any…any celebrations? Anything fun?” He asks like he doesn’t know the answer, but Johnny likes to hope against all odds even when you look at him with this strange look in your eyes.
“Research centre has an annual work party before Christmas.” You report back, busying yourself with his bandages and calculation of how quick you can get a fire started if that’s rather not optimal for you to be discovered, but even more so for Soap to start slowly dying two weeks away from Christmas leave.
You don’t add that the party doesn’t include you. It’s for human staff, not their prototypes and not their projects.
“Right.” Johnny nods, watching your every move, so quiet you glance up at him a couple of times to check if he’s still conscious. If he is still breathing.
The steady beat of his pulse under the sensors in your fingers is reassuring but some inner tug still makes you double check. Better safe than sorry.
“You seem to have other questions, sir.” You muse, finally climbing onto what is supposed to provide bedding with him and wrapping Soap in two coats before plastering yourself on top of him. As much as his injury allows. “You can ask. No one’s here.” You murmur in his neck and note how his breath hitches.
Soap is so wonderfully warmly alive.
He is the most human out of the whole team, the blazing fire and the crushing wave of an explosion.
Soap is the laughter and the roar, the fist and the hug, the sharp calculating eyes and long half-lidded gazes. If you were human you’d say he is impossible not to love.
If you were a human you would have kissed the tiny speck of mole on his neck.
Thankfully, you aren’t human.
Thankfully, no one can notice a missed beat of a mechanised heart that never skips one.
Just not in the programming for your strings to get tugged.
“Ye plan to spend this Christmas with Ghost?” Johnny asks suddenly, his fingers finding yours to grip tightly, crushing grip that you find almost soothing. A reliable hold of a good soldier.
People like him never let go.
“Lieutenant is off duty on Christmas.” You hum, your vents whirring out hot air to warm up the space between the two of you. To keep him warm and safe, tucked in your hold, covered from the world. “I’m staying back.”
“Aye, in yer box.” Johnny murmurs, pressing himself against you, big wolf of a man given human body and will to ache for more than he can ever chew. “If ye ever get lonely — you should come over.” He says like it is that easy. “Me mum would love to meet another mate of mine.”
You huff out air, holding his hands in yours, holding him close and breathing out warm air into his mohawk, small shiver forcing sergeant to get closer.
“Maybe next year.” You say for some reason. Even knowing full well there is no way military would let the billion dollar piece of equipment out of reach simply to partake in human festivities that were never reserved for you.
But Johnny still nods and grips you tighter, brush of his lips could be accidental against your neck, you think to yourself. Only he doesn’t pull away and doesn’t say anything.
Unusually quiet and habitually hungry for more.
“That true that L.T. gets to pull your wires?” Johnny whines in your neck and you stare in the distance, mechanically patting his back. Is he…is he complaining right now? “Cause others say he must have done it already.”
“Lieutenant didn’t pull my wires.” You clarify for some reason and try to not file away the way sergeant perks up, looking at you with newfound energy. “And neither will you, sir. I can’t guarantee you won’t electrocute yourself.” You add and be deflates ever so slightly.
“I’m good with wires.” He tries again in a few minutes, his pads tracing the line of your fingers. You know that Johnny could have snapped yours if he wanted to see if he can push some more.
You let him touch anyway, some part of you bracing.
“Don’t doubt that, sir.” You murmur a little too mechanical and he intertwines his fingers with yours. Holds them close to his chest.
Takes you a moment more to understand what is he doing.
Johnny doesn’t look you in the eye anymore, but still breathes out on your joined palms.
He is trying to keep you warm in return.
“I will read up on your wires. Can I touch them then?” He asks, almost shy in his curiosity and you tilt your head to the side, squeezing his palm in yours.
Can he? Sure. Not many would stop him.
“Do ye want me to?” Soap asks after a pause and finally looks up at you. “I thought that I never asked if that would be alright.”
“Does it matter?” You look at him, left eye flickering for a moment before you are the shiny perfection.
“It does to me.” He murmurs and nuzzles his head back in your neck. “I know you tell l.t. to fuck off if he’s being a cunt-“
“Lieutenant is not a cunt.” You interrupt and Soap snickers, his warm cracked lips brushing your neck again.
“He is sometimes. I want you to tell me to fuck off too. If I’m being one. Or if you don’t want me to touch your wires.” Johnny mumbles in your throat and shudders when your engine rumbles deep under the layers of your frame. “Deal?”
“Okay.” You agree for some reason and lay your cheek on his hair, watching the entrance just in case, monitoring for extraction to pick the two of you up. “Deal, sir.”
It takes Gaz another half an hour to arrive, snow-coated and grinning from ear to ear, his voice — a stroke of a brush against the paper.
“What, a slumber party and I was not invited?” He grins wider when Johnny pulls one arm out of the blanket cocoon purely to flip him off.
Kyle is nice, you think. Much nicer than most soldiers are when he helps you transfer Johnny to your transport and sits on the other side of you, his head dropping on your shoulder when the helicopter takes off.
Kyle knows you don’t need to move and knows he is always welcome to take a nap on you. Soap already does, that’s only fair.
You don’t say anything, but drape one hand over him and make sure he is as secure as Johnny is on your right side. Still in the blanket cocoon and still bored.
“Merry Christmas, soldier.” He says squeezing your palm one more time when they prep him for a transfer to the hospital.
Just while no one is looking and you squeeze his back.
You could have ran and chased him, could have found a way to get out and come to see him for the holidays. You could have lent him your shoulder when his hurt leg would get wobbly.
That would be something out of a novel, a human experience to live through, a yearning not suitable for the likes of you. Not when in comparison to the non-military functionality you will be always found lacking.
You lean a little lower, letting sergeant’s eyes drop to your lips — his irises the stormy sea, his hand tightening on yours. And you gently bump his forehead with yours, Soap’s eyes flying wide open to look back in your eyes.
Something in his face impossibly vulnerable.
“Didn’t know you could do that.” He murmurs with something you do not understand, his thumb tracing a circle on your outer palm. “Merry Christmas to you, Engine.” He says and doesn’t elaborate even when you tilt your head in question.
You don’t ask what he meant, letting the nurses shoo you out of the way. You don’t think about it and don’t focus on the crease between his brows, on his jumped up pulse, on his fingers intertwined with yours.
“Merry Christmas”, you think to yourself, deafening darkness of your storage cloaking the whole space. Too bad you don’t have the human fear of unknown, might have made it more interesting. “It will be great when he comes back.”
Johnny watches the telly in the white nothingness of his hospital room, bored to death, unusually cold despite the two blankets nurses kindly provided him with.
There was this tiny moment, shorter than Simon’s laughter, when you looked at me and smiled like you couldn’t believe him.
Not in the same practiced, too wide, too mechanical way with your eyes always the same and your mouth stretching too wide.
You bumped his forehead with yours and smiled like you wanted to.
“Merry Christmas.” Johnny says to the quiet of the room, still feeling the phantom grip of your palm in his. Always a little too tight. Reassuringly so.
You are not the type to let go, he knows it.
“And Happy New Year, Engine.” He repeats for some reason, warmth spilling through his body when he closes his eyes and you bump his forehead with yours again. “This year’s wish I am giving away to you.”
