The Azrael Series: Chapter One
(Simon 'Ghost' Riley X Reader/ Slowburn/Sort of Enemies to Friends to Lovers)
°°°°°
Summary/Notes: Task Force 141 is assigned a new member to deal with Makarov for good. Highly-skilled, brutally efficient and devastatingly competent, Ghost has met his match - and finds himself at odds with the SAS Fraternization Regulations as getting to know you makes him re-evaluate a life he never thought to allow himself.
°°°°°
Chapter One
Introduction 1
@beansproutmafia @chinuneko @agustdpeach
Click.
Ghost watched you methodically assemble your rifle, noting how deliberate each movement was. You worked smoothly - barrel into receiver, scope in place, alignment done perfectly. He met your eyes as you surveyed the area, sliding in casings into the magazine with focused intensity.
Not sparing him another glance, you turned to look into your scope, securing the perimeter. Out on the craggy cliff face of the unforgivingly frigid Ural mountains, escape would not be easy. The only thing keeping you from being spotted was the taiga camouflage you wore and the relative cover of the copse of rocks you had climbed on to next to the lieutenant, chest pressed flat on to the rough ground as you settled yourself into a prone position.
"Alpha Two, in position and operational."
Your voice was clear through the coms, unhampered by the face coverings you wore even as your warm breath created soft puffs of vapour, swirling lazily into the air.
Next to you, Riley shifted, your sides touching as he took a final look over the perimeter and inconspicuously - attempting to, anyway - looked over your rifle to see your handiwork.
"Alpha Actual, in position and operational."
His voice reverberated through the rock you had both deemed fit to survey the target location - A laboratory nestled in a valley in the Ural mountains that served as a logistics facility for Makarov, protected by the mercenaries he hired.
"Copy, Alpha Squad. Bravo Squad getting into position, T-Minus 10. Maintain positions. Over."
"Copy." "Copy."
Twin voices rang out, and then there was a silence, a chasm between you and the lieutenant.
You did nothing to break it, comfortable in the stillness of the break of dawn, even as the lieutenant continued to sneak assessing looks at you.
Though your file spoke for itself, experience and skills clearly laid out for the entire team to peruse in black - admittedly mostly redacted - ink, it was another thing entirely to trust a new teammate to watch your back.
Station Chief Laswell had attempted to soothe the situation, utilizing lots of what you recognized to be CIA mediation training to make the mission seem like less of what it was.
But the message was clear to you immediately upon receiving team assignments.
Ghost was babysitting you.
It didn't matter, you decided. You were the unknown variable in a well-oiled machine that had been training together for months. A factor that could put the team at risk so long as they didn't know - or trust - you.
Acceptance would come. Or it wouldn't - you rarely found the kind of stability needed to forge lasting relationships in this lifestyle.
Hunching your shoulders as the wind picked up, you meticulously cleared each area of your assigned quadrant, catching sight of Sergeant McTavish as he came into the view of your scope on the southernmost side of the compound.
Sergeant McTavish - Soap, as he had insisted you called him - had given you the warmest reception by far. He had taken one look at you during introductions and had been not just welcoming but outright friendly, giving you a wide smile and offering to take you on a tour of the team's home base.
You watched as Soap glanced behind him, jerking his head in the direction of the building closest to him as another hooded figure sidled up by his side - Sergeant Garrick.
Sergeant Garrick did not have quite the same warmness as Soap, but his wary smile had seemed genuine, facial muscles pulling up in such a way that your deeply ingrained intelligence training had told you was free of deception. He had offered to spar, and said that he'd give you a lay of the land outside the base upon return from this mission.
That's about where any sense of welcome started and ended with the team, Laswell and Captain Price had kept you at arms length, a clipped sort of professionalism. Lieutenant Riley was an apathetic sort of distance, and you had the sense that he was on the look out for any of your weaknesses and would no doubt be more than glad to pull out the Personnel Transfer Forms in his desk that had barely ever seen the light of day if you failed to live up to expectations.
You kept your breathing low and steady, the high elevations making the air feel thin. Next to you, you felt the lieutenant shift.
"Our directive mandates recon and reaction only, no active engagement."
His eyes on you felt like an itching in the back of your throat, easy enough to ignore but always at the back of your mind.
"Yes, sir." You affirmed, laser focused on clearing the western perimeter of the compound. "I was there when the instructions were given."
There was a pregnant pause where you continued constant surveillance, not even looking up as in your peripheral vision the blazing nothingness of freshly fallen snow was obscured by the bone white of your lieutenant's skull mask.
"I could do without your attitude, sergean-"
He had leaned in close enough to you that you were able to reach behind him to his nape and pull him in your direction, sandwiching yourself between his bulky body and the rough stone below. Before he could pull away, you tightened your grip on his coat, indicating with your free hand to remain low on the ground.
It had been subtle, well hidden, but the glint of a sniper scope aimed in your general direction had you reacting immediately.
Slightly winded from the lieutenant's weight on you, you reached up and clicked on your coms link.
"Captain, Alpha Two reporting. Hostile sniper positively ID'ed in area of operations. Westernmost building, clear line of sight of Bravo Team. Requesting green light for engagement."
You began to relax your arm but were quickly pinned to place by a hefty elbow as Ghost grabbed you by the collar of your coat, growling into your ear.
"Alpha Two heard. Confirm, Alpha Actual?"
Price's voice rang out of the coms, to no response.
Ghost snarled at you, placing his other hand next to your head, effectively locking you into place.
"Fuckin' hell sergeant, never heard of an anti reflect? Nine times out of ten a sniper has a sunshade o-"
"East facing window on furthest building, two windows down from the top floor. Sunshades work by blocking out light reflections but only with direct sunlight. The snow is freshly fallen and we're south- they hadn't accounted for the reflection of the sun onto the snowbank behind us. Nobody would expect hostiles on a blank cliff face-"
He grunted, keeping his eyes trained on you even as he reached over to look into your scope, bodies still pressed tightly together.
"Alpha Actual, positive ID'ed hostile? Over"
The captain's message once again went unanswered.
You shifted your legs a little, freezing when his thighs squeezed your sides in warning as he surveyed the westernmost building, the brutalist architecture starker in the snow.
You spoke in low tones, trying to get him to see your point. The low oxygen environment forced you to conserve your time spent talking.
"They're deeper into the building and have partial cover because of the drainage. They'd have direct line of fire on Sergeant Garrick and Sergeant McTavish. It'd be like shooting fish in a barrel."
"Alpha Actual, do you copy? Ghos-"
He huffed, the movement reverberating through you as he eased away from his position on top of you, falling into a low crouch behind the rock.
"Captain, hostile sniper ID'ed. West building, two windows from top. Clear line of sight on Bravo. Over."
There was another tense pause as the coms line grew silent, you taking the opportunity to roll over on to your stomach and keep watch on Soap and Garrick's position.
"Copy, Alpha Actual. Alpha Two, request to engage approved- Alpha Actual and Bravo Squad, maintain position."
"Copy, Alpha Two moving to position."
You wasted no time, disassembling your rifle in seconds, taking care not to let the snow into any openings as you turned to face your lieutenant and gave him a perfunctory nod, not waiting for his response as you left the relative safety of the rock formation.
The trek to the Southeast of the valley was arduous, the oxygen thin and the paths non-existent in the freshly fallen snow. Your lungs took in searingly cold air and your vision started to blur as the whiteness of the snow began to bleed into each other, the visor you wore being the only thing that kept you from snow blindness. Sometimes it became necessary to crawl on your hands and knees in the areas that were particularly visible to the valley down below. You did your best to keep your deep breaths from drowning out the coms, hearing Garrick and Mctavish's confirmation of identifying the sniper and entering an obscured alcove.
As you reached a copse of rocks that had the Western building in sight, you took off the gloves which the jagged rocks you had crawled on had embedded into and immediately began assembling your rifle, the familiarity of the metal body a comfort even in the frigid air.
You breathed in, then exhaled, before focusing on identifying the hostile sniper in front of you.
As your eyes began to adjust to the darkness of the empty room, a figure began to form, carved out of the inky blackness, partially hidden behind a mounted rifle.
The outside world stuttered to a stop. There was your breathing, low and calm. There was the enemy, looking up from their scope. There was your finger on the trigger, and then there was the the enemy's body jerking back, a bullet between his eyes as he slumped against the wall.
You waited.
You kept the corpse in sight of the crosshair, making sure the enemy's radio was within sight of you at all times.
Because if there was a sniper, then there would be a spotter, and it would just be a matter of who was more patient.
There was a flurry of movement as another person emerged out of the darkness and ran to their previous partners radio, stopping abruptly and collapsing as the insides of their skull became acquainted with the wall behind them.
"Captain, hostiles eliminated."
"Copy, Alpha Two. Bravo Squad, commence operation."
You kept your eyes trained on Soap and Garrick. You ensured they avoided engaging with the enemy, removing obstacles from their path before it could become a problem. Through the coms, you led them to the intelligence building and then back out, until they had successfully left the compound with Makarov's data in hand.
It was a perfect mission, and you could see by the pleased set of Garrick's shoulders, the twitch of Price' lips and the glint of Soap's eyes that the team really, really needed this win.
Evidently, not everyone was pleased with your performance.
Being the last one out of the chopper before debrief, you felt a hand on your shoulder, tugging you back until that familiar skull mask was in your vision once more.
"Liuetenant." You inclined your head, unsure of what he wanted.
"I don't like your attitude, sergeant."
"I don't need you to like me, sir. "
He remained silent, eyes boring into your own.
You regarded him, standing under the bright lights of the air hangar, mask and snow clothing so bright it almost made it hard to look at him. So you continued on.
"All I need is for you to know that on the field, I have your back."
Your lips quirked up as you managed a relaxed salute, muttering a 'sir' as you went to enter the debriefing room and began giving your report when everyone had gathered.
There was not a shred of doubt in your mind that the skull mask was trained on you the entire time.