[knownqueerbaiter]

SEPARATE CHURCH (AO3) AND STATE (TRADPUB)

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

req'd by @msbarrows

god here's hoping

text: I hope I'm online when it happens

[everythingfox]

Baby otter first time in the water

[blackpyrefly]

kity

[mite75]

[sephirothhh]

Red Dead Redemption 2 2018—dev. Rockstar Games

[jessss-ica]

if anyone needs me i’ll be alone in my tower

[frostedmagnolias]

Anklet

c. 1898-1899

by René Lalique

Musée des Arts Décoratifs

[wheeloffortune-design]

my publisher: Good morning! Huh did you advertise for the pre-sale yesterday? Because we launched twelve hours ago and we already made sales!

me: yeah, i posted on tumblr

publisher: .........tumblr?

me: that's where the gays are.

(link to Mrs. Victoria buys a brothel, a sapphic western)

[wheeloffortune-design]

update

publisher: And what is your marketing strategy on... tumblr?

me: idk, i shitpost at 2am?

publisher: .....and it works?

me: depends on what the gays find funny at that point in time.

publisher: Could I have a link to your tumblr?

me: .......absolutely not.

(link to Mrs. Victoria buys a brothel, a sapphic western where 50 year old women kiss and murder)

[wheeloffortune-design]

update!

publisher: I've been looking into tumblr, have you thought of using Blaze to promote your book?

me: NO

publisher: But it seems like an efficient way to get this in front of more eyes-

me: people on tumblr hate Blaze.

publisher: There is no algorithm and you can't pay to promote a post? I don't understand how anyone advertises anything on tumblr.

me: That's the best part. They don't. They can't.

(trying to make him understand that we do not control the attention. We just have to show something shiny and gay enough and if people are interested, they'll reblog.)

(Mrs. Victoria buys a brothel, a deconstruction of the colonialist cowboy mythos dressed up as a sapphic romance.)

[curlicuecal]

(I read this book, it is good)

[junkyarded]

so awesome that you can see something new come out and think wow that looks bad and then never watch it and keep living

[vaokses]

Learn the language of you

Series Masterlist / Navigation

Pairing: Daeron Targaryen x Wife!Reader

Summary: 

Daeron has become used to spending the evenings in your rooms, though he has not quite admitted how much the habit means to him. When you notice an irritated patch beneath his collar and reach for him, an ordinary act of care becomes something neither of youcan ignore, and Daeron must decide whether being seen wanting you means he has to retreat.

Word Count: 3.4k

Warnings: sexual thoughts and fantasies, references to brothels and past sexual encounters, developing relationship, arranged marriag, romantic touching, no explicit sexual content just Daeron being down bad and being a thousand percent a sub, Daeron continues to be very normal about his wife’s hands.

A/N: This takes place before their first kiss, and it's the first of a few stories I'll be posting going forward regarding the development of their intimacy. It was inspired by an anon message about the ways in which Daeron, consciously or not, might turn care or affection into something that arouses him. Hope you like it, please let me know what you think!

This is another installment of the Where I am good and loved collection/series, but like all pieces it can be read as a standalone.

Title is from the quote "If only I could visit you as a foreigner goes into a new country, learn the language of you, wander past all borders into every private and secret place. I would stay forever, I would become a citizen of you."

By now, Daeron has stopped pretending that he comes to your rooms for any reason worth naming. 

The excuses had once required some effort: a misplaced hairpin, a book he thought might belong to you, news delivered so late that it could easily have waited until morning. Lately he simply arrives before supper and finds the chair near your dressing table unoccupied, as though no one else has understood that it is his. You no longer ask what he is doing there, and he no longer offers to leave before you have decided whether you want him to. 

He has noticed this development, though he has declined to consider it closely. 

This evening, you are choosing between two pairs of earrings while he turns one of your letters over in his hands. You have not given him permission to read it, warning him against opening it while you finish pinning your hair, and he has been resisting the seal for long enough to feel that some public acknowledgment of his virtue may soon be required. He says as much. You tell him that an unwillingness to commit petty treason while sitting three feet from the victim is not yet a virtue. 

He watches your mouth in the mirror when you say it. 

You are occupied with the earring and do not see. He has become increasingly accomplished at looking at you when your attention appears safely elsewhere: the movement of your fingers at the nape of your neck, the small concentration between your brows when a clasp will not catch, the part of your throat left uncovered while your hair is lifted. There is something indecent in how much neck a woman possesses once a man’s mouth has begun wanting to touch it. He has known women more naked than this and looked with less difficulty. 

The comparison makes him lower his eyes to the letter. The wax has been stamped with a sun and spear. One of your sisters has written your name on the outside in a hand that leans sharply forward, impatient even before the letter begins, and he runs his thumb over the edge of the folded parchment instead of breaking the seal. 

“Is that uncomfortable?” 

He glances up. “The temptation? Excruciating.” 

Your eyes have moved from his face to somewhere beneath it. “Your collar.” 

He touches it reflexively. The skin along one side of his throat has been bothering him since he dressed, but discomforts that do not involve fire, blood, or his father’s disappointment rarely seem worth announcing. 

“It is a collar,” He says. “Discomfort is half its purpose.” 

“You have fastened it badly,” You set one earring down beside the other. Daeron expects you to return to the mirror. Instead, you turn toward him and hold out your hand for the letter. He gives it back and watches while you place it among the brushes and little covered pots on the table. “Come here.” 

He is already near you. The observation reaches him only after he has shifted forward in the chair. 

You make a quiet sound of impatience and step between the dressing table and his knees -not between them, precisely, though his body supplies the distinction before he has any use for it. Your skirts brush the front of his boot. He looks up. 

“Hold still.” 

He does. 

There is no pause in which he considers refusing, no remark offered quickly enough to make the obedience seem accidental. The words leave your mouth, and his body answers with the same thoughtless compliance as a hand turning toward warmth. Only when your fingers reach his collar does he realize how readily he has given himself over to the instruction. 

You loosen the top fastening. The edge of the fabric drags once against the irritated skin, and Daeron breathes through his teeth. 

“That bad?” 

“No. I enjoy making wounded noises when women undress me. It lends the occasion gravity.” 

Your mouth twitches before you look down again, and then a small laugh escapes you, quieter than the ones he has coaxed from you in company. It is hardly more than breath, but it warms him with an immediacy he would prefer not to examine. 

“You are being very brave then.” You tease. 

“I have been told so often.” 

The jest comes easily enough, but your hand has already returned to his collar, and whatever answer he might have built after them dissolves when you look at him properly. 

His face has been studied often enough for signs of failure that the attention should feel familiar. Maekar searches for wine in his eyes and weakness in his posture. Servants look for the temper of the morning before deciding how near to place the cup. Other men have watched him to see whether he is drunk enough to become amusing, and women to see whether he is drunk enough to become easy. 

Your gaze moves along the reddened skin beneath his jaw as though that is all you expect to find there. 

Daeron becomes aware that he has not shaved as carefully as he might have. He has shaved himself for years, since one too many mornings when the razor flashed near his throat, the shadow of a servant’s arm opened briefly into wings, and he jerked back hard enough to send the basin ringing across the floor. After that, he decided it was kinder to spare the servants the fright and himself the embarrassment. There is probably a darker patch along the line of his chin, a small blemish near his mouth, some evidence of poor sleep gathered beneath his eyes. He knows what mirrors offer when he allows himself to look, and he does not usually imagine that close inspection improves the effect. 

You do not appear disappointed. 

Your fingers settle beneath his chin and turn his face toward the light. 

Something small and shamefully pleased unfolds in his chest. He lets you position him, his head tipped back enough that his throat feels exposed, and watches your concentration narrow until there is nothing else in the room requiring you: no sister waiting inside a letter, no supper below, no pins slipping loose from your hair. You are looking at him because there is something about him you have decided deserves your attention. 

He knows better than to make too much of it, and makes too much of it anyway. 

“Stay there.” You order when he moves to speak. 

His mouth closes. 

You remove one hand and reach across the dressing table. The loss of your fingers beneath his jaw is immediate and disproportionate, and he resents the small pot you pick up for having required them elsewhere. 

The lid gives with a faint scrape. Rosewater reaches him first, jasmine beneath it and the sharper scent of whatever has been mixed into the salve. He knows the blend. The first bath drawn for him in your rooms had carried it faintly in the steam because the servants had assumed the water was meant for you. He had sat in heat nearly painful enough to redden his skin and breathed in something that belonged to your body, your clothes, the rooms where you slept. 

He had tried not to think of that afterward. 

Your thumb touches the angle of his jaw. 

The salve is cool. Your hand is not. 

Daeron draws a slow breath and holds it for a moment, unwilling to let you feel how the movement travels through his throat beneath your fingers. You smooth the salve over the irritated line with practical care, your other hand steadying the side of his face. 

You are close enough that he can see where the color of your mouth deepens toward the center. A loose section of hair has fallen near your cheek. Your sleeve brushes his shoulder when you lean nearer to inspect the skin, and his attention moves lower before he catches it, following the line of your body beneath the fabric. 

That, at least, is easy enough to understand. 

You are his wife. You are beautiful. Your hand is at his throat and your mouth is within reach. He has wanted women under circumstances considerably less encouraging, there is nothing mysterious in a body responding to proximity. 

You tell him to lift his chin a little more, and he does that too. 

The obedience sends a warmer pulse through him than the sight of your mouth had. 

Daeron remains still, suddenly attentive to every place your body nearly meets his. Your skirts touch his knee when you shift. Your fingers spread along his neck to keep him steady, one resting close enough to his pulse that you must feel its change. He wonders what else you might tell him to do in that same quiet voice and dislikes how quickly his imagination provides answers. 

From there, the want acquires edges, destinations, familiar exits. A woman’s hand can move lower. A mouth can close over another mouth. Clothes can be loosened for reasons less respectable than an irritated collar. There are rooms built for such transactions, bodies arranged around them, ways to leave afterward carrying little beyond fatigue. 

He lets himself imagine your thumb passing over his lower lip, your hand sliding down from his throat, the space between your knees and his disappearing entirely. 

He enjoys it. 

That may be the worst of it. He does not fight the response when it first gathers low and hot inside him. He sits obediently beneath your hands and allows himself the pleasure of being touched, privately greedy for every unnecessary second you spend smoothing the same patch of skin. His breathing grows more deliberate. He keeps his hands on the arms of the chair because placing one at your waist would tell you too much, though the image remains available to him, vivid and uncomplicated. 

Then you draw your thumb away to gather a little more salve, and what he wants most is not your mouth or the imagined weight of you against him. 

It is the hand back where it was. 

The realization enters without dignity. He wants you to continue touching the same place, your palm against his jaw, your fingers curved along his neck, your attention fixed on the minor discomfort you noticed without being asked. Wanting your mouth or your hand lower, elsewhere, would have been easier. He could bear simple lust. Lust has never required him to believe anything generous about another person. 

This does. 

The mornings return to him with abrupt, humiliating clarity: tea placed within reach, the coverlet lifted, your hair spread near his arm while the room lightened around you. The ordinary kindness of being expected somewhere. The fact that you have begun looking for him before asking why he has come. 

A brothel has never required him to be known from one evening to the next. Anonymous hands do not remember where the skin is sore. Pleasure taken to exhaust the body asks nothing of the morning. 

Your thumb returns beneath his jaw, and his body responds more sharply because it is yours and, shamefully, because you are being careful with him. 

There is the filth in it, he thinks. There is what he does to every decent thing. 

You touch him kindly and some starved, ill-trained part of him drags the kindness downward, gives it heat and appetite, folds it among all the other wants he has carried into worse rooms. He has taken something you offered without suspicion and made it into this. 

He should move. He should make a remark and rise from the chair before you feel the proof of him gathering beneath your hand. Instead, he remains where you put him, unwilling to surrender the touch before surrender becomes necessary. 

The pleasure lasts another second, perhaps two, before he thinks of you noticing, and enjoyment closes around the possibility. 

If you understand, you may step away politely. You may fasten his collar and become more careful tomorrow, and the next evening, and every night after that. You may reconsider the looseness with which you let him into your rooms, the bed shared without fear, the casual liberties of your hand at his face. You may realize that none of it is harmless to him. 

Or you may offer more. 

The second possibility is no gentler. You are his wife. Arousal may look to you like a duty announced by the body, something that requires managing because you have been unfortunate enough to cause it. You might kiss him from obligation and permit whatever follows while he wonders whether you want him or merely understand marriage too well. 

His face grows hot beneath your fingers. He feels the flush moving upward when the motion of your thumb falters against his throat. His breath catches. He swallows, and your fingertips move with it. 

Daeron looks at your mouth first because that is where his attention has already betrayed him. Then, against every useful instinct, he raises his eyes to yours. 

The expression on your face has changed. 

For one suspended moment, he feels every place where you are still touching him: the heel of your palm against the side of his jaw, your fingers curved along his neck, the faint coolness of salve beneath your thumb. Nothing has been taken away yet, which somehow makes the pause worse. He has time to understand what you have understood. 

His mouth opens before he knows what he means to say. 

A joke might still save something. He could blame the warmth of the room, the collar, the lateness of the hour, the wine he has not yet drunk. He could make the response vulgar enough that neither of you would have to look directly at what caused it. There are a dozen ways to make himself less naked than this, and for once not one of them reaches his tongue quickly enough. 

You are looking at him. 

Your expression has not closed. There is no alarm in it, no careful blankness laid over discomfort. Your mouth has softened slightly, as though something almost like a smile had reached it and stopped there. Then your gaze lowers. 

Only for a moment. 

His lips. 

You looked at his lips. 

The realization sends the heat in him somewhere new. It does not soothe him; soothing would require certainty, and he knows better than to trust any meaning that is kind to him. Perhaps you are only confirming what his face has already betrayed. Perhaps you are wondering whether he intends to kiss you. Perhaps the softness in your expression is fondness, or pity, or simple amusement at how thoroughly he has failed to hide himself. 

It might be pleasure. 

The possibility tightens something low in him and makes the embarrassment worse. 

He tries again to speak, but the sound gathers in his throat and stays there. Your fingers are close enough to feel the failed attempt. He sees the instant you notice, not because your expression changes much, but because your attention sharpens. 

Daeron looks away. 

The dressing table offers him an assortment of harmless things: the uncovered pot, the letter from your sister, the two earrings waiting beside the mirror. He fixes his eyes on one of them and could not afterward say which. He is aware only of sitting there with your hand against his face while both of you know what it has done to him. 

You might draw away now. You might finish fastening his collar, step back, and become a little more careful tomorrow, and the next evening, and every night after that. The bed could become narrower without either of you moving in it. Your hands might begin to hesitate before doing what they had done without fear, every ordinary kindness acquiring a pause in which you considered what he might make of it. 

The prospect hurts with an immediacy he does not want to examine. 

There is another possibility, and it is scarcely kinder. You are his wife. His body may look to you like a duty announced, a need that requires managing because you have been unfortunate enough to cause it. You might lean closer, might kiss him because the marriage allows it, and he would have no way of knowing whether you had wanted the kiss before he forced the question into the room simply by sitting still beneath your hands. 

You do neither. You wait, your palm warm against his jaw. 

It should make the moment easier. Instead, he becomes more conscious of how badly he wants the touch restored, of the exact pressure of your hand and the small absence left by the stillness of your thumb. He had thought humiliation might extinguish appetite, but it has only stripped the appetite of every excuse. 

You know now. Whatever dignity there was in pretending has already gone. 

His eyes return first to your hand because looking at your face still feels beyond him. The rosewater and jasmine have warmed against his skin, the scent altered slightly by the heat of your fingers. He searches for some sign in the curve of your palm, in the pressure of it, as though your hand might tell him something your face has not. 

Then he looks up. 

Nothing in your expression has closed against him. You do not smile or move. 

What passes through him is hardly brave. It is closer to resentment, or hunger, or the petulance of a man who has already been deprived of enough things by his own fear. 

If you are going to know, he may as well have the hand back. 

Daeron turns his face. 

It is scarcely a movement, only the side of his jaw settling more fully into your palm, his chin lifting by a fraction toward the place your thumb had been smoothing. He cannot make himself hold your gaze while he does it. His eyes lower again, but the rest of him has already confessed enough. 

For one breath, nothing happens. 

Then your fingers move. 

The touch returns without ceremony. Your thumb passes once beneath his jaw, following the irritated line with a care that could still be practical if either of you were determined to call it so. The salve no longer needs smoothing, not really, yet you linger long enough for him to settle against you and understand that you have not mistaken his request for permission to do anything else. 

Relief moves through him before he can stop it. His shoulders loosen, and the breath leaves him slowly. 

He wants to close his eyes. He wants to turn his mouth against the base of your thumb, to put one hand at your waist and keep you where you are. He does none of it, though there is no particular virtue in the restraint. He simply cannot tell which movement would end this and which would ask for something you have not offered. 

So he stays where you have put him. 

Your fingers rest at the side of his neck for another moment, light enough that he could pretend afterward they had never lingered. Then you draw away and refasten the collar, careful this time that the fabric does not scrape the tender skin. 

The loss of contact leaves him abruptly cold. 

You step back toward the dressing table. Your skirts pass over the front of his boot again, and he notices that too, because apparently his body has become incapable of allowing anything you do to remain insignificant. 

You pick up the earring you had abandoned. 

Daeron remains in the chair. 

Neither of you speaks. The room does not insist upon it.  

You turn toward the mirror and lift the earring to your ear, your fingers steady despite everything that has just happened. The letter remains sealed. Somewhere beyond the chamber, a door closes and footsteps move along the corridor toward supper. 

He watches your reflection for a moment before lowering his eyes. 

The place beneath his jaw still carries the shape of your hand. He touches it with two fingers, cautiously, as though the skin might tell him whether the moment happened as he remembers it. A faint trace of salve comes away against his fingertips. 

Rosewater and jasmine. 

He looks at the shine left there, then brings his hand nearer beneath the pretense of examining it more closely. The scent reaches him again, warmer now, caught somewhere between your touch and his skin. 

Across the room, you fasten the earring. 

Daeron does not leave. 

Thank you so much for reading!

[dark-scape]

(I think he was in like 5 different Ska bands)

[bearwriting]

Armscye

Start Here Previous Chapter

Summary: Bruised and bloodied, you end up with the last person you thought you'd turn to, and you're getting closer.

Word Count: 4k

Warnings: Alcohol use

Your next steps weren’t clear. You didn’t know where you needed to go and you didn’t know who you needed to find, but you finally had something real to chase.

Whatever Caorthann meant, you would be god damned if you weren’t going to find out.

The clean façade of Ibis & Jacquel had never been a more welcome sight. Bast twined herself around your legs, yowling as if to admonish you for being away for so long. You knelt to scratch her little head.

“Hey darlin’,” you hummed. “Good to see you.”

She chirruped and trotted back to the front door. You let yourself in, Bast immediately disappearing up the stairs, and you took a deep breath. The scent of old ink and paper, underlaid with the faint chemical burn of formaldehyde, brought you a gentle comfort. This place was the closest thing you had to a home base, and you were relieved to step over the threshold.

Until you saw Messrs Ibis and Jacquel watching you coolly from the end of the hall, arms folded and lips pursed, looking for all the world like parents waiting up for a child who broke curfew.

“He got here last night, reeking of liquor, and has been unconscious in my library for,” Mr. Ibis checked his watch, “sixteen hours.”

No greeting, straight to the point. They were pissed.

You could feel your pulse throbbing between your eyebrows and you pinched the bridge of your nose. “I got it.”

Cheap whiskey mingled with clove smoke singed your nose hairs before you even opened the door. Inside the library, it was so strong that it made your eyes water.

Sweeney was sprawled in the middle of the floor and snoring loudly. A book lay open on his chest, but when you tried to read the title, the letters swam across the cover.

The throbbing between your eyes got worse.

“Oi.” You nudged him with the toe of your boot. When he didn’t move, you kicked him. “I said, oi!”

He groaned and with immense effort lifted his head to squint at you and let it drop back onto the hardwood with a soft thunk. “Didn’t think you’d show,” he slurred.

“If I knew I was going to be assaulted with chemical weapons, I wouldn’t have.” You crouched by his head, hovering over his face, and prodded his ribs. “That whiskey breath’s unforgivable.”

He cracked one green eye and scowled. “Not all of us had the luxury of a toothbrush and a real shower.”

You shifted so that you were sitting cross-legged. “You were supposed to meet me there.”

“We were fighting. And I had to run an errand for the old man.”

The brittle quality of his voice threw you off. You knew something was up, that much had been clear from your phone call, but now you could tell that something was really wrong. His face was pale, and the ever-present bags under his eyes were even darker than usual. Patches of his beard were missing from where he had pulled it out, and his hair had been cut and shaved unevenly, like he’d gone at it with a trimmer and a pair of safety scissors. He probably had.

You placed a hand on the crown of his head, absentmindedly carding your fingers through his thick, fiery locks.

“What happened?” you asked quietly.

When he remained silent, you sighed and lay beside him with your hands folded on your stomach. The silence of the library was at once comfortable and smothering.

“What happened?” you asked again.

“Why did something have to happen?”

You sat up sharply. “I am not playing this game with you, you old bitch. Either tell me what happened or leave before Mr. Jacquel turns you into jerky.”

He didn’t answer and you scoffed, moving to climb to your feet, but paused when you felt his hand close over your wrist, gently, like he was afraid he’’d bruise you. Or that you’d leave. “Wait.”

You didn’t lay back down, but you didn’t get up.

A loud exhale. He didn’t look at you.

“She’s dead.”

“Who’s dead?”

“Some cunt’s wife.” He took an unsteady breath. “I promised, I promised myself that I’d never—“ His voice cracked. “I can’t—I can’t come back from this.”

The silence was suffocating.

“Are you going to say anything?” he asked. “Tell me that I’m a sack of shit for doing what he said?”

You looked at him. A bead of sweat rolled down his temple, despite the cool air of the library, and his chest rose and fell too quickly. You pulled his head onto your lap.

“Did he tell you why?” you murmured with your lips against his forehead. His beard was coarse under your fingers as you traced his jaw.

He pressed his face against your thigh. “Something about needing someone for a coming war.”

“Oh, christ,” you groaned. “That can’t be good.”

He huffed out a laugh. “Never is, is it?”

“Mhm. Come on.” You slapped his chest and dumped his head from your lap. “I’m hungry. You coming?”

He hummed and pulled himself to standing.

As you followed him out of the room, you couldn’t stop yourself from grabbing the book he had been reading when you came in.

“Hey.”

He turned and you held the book out. “What is this?”

“You can’t read it?”

You shook your head and he stepped forward to take it. “It’s—“ The rest of his sentence was drowned out by a horrible static. He saw your face and blanched. “Oh. Right.” He tucked the book into his arm. “I’m sure the bird has dinner on, let’s get out there.” He was out the door and down the hall before you could say anything else.

“Wait, get back here!” you yelled, trotting after him. When you entered the dining room, he and Mr. Ibis were having a quietly heated argument on the other side of the table, while Mr. Jacquel watched you intently from the doorway to the kitchen.

“Does anyone want to tell me what that’s about?” You pointed at the book that was now in the hands of Mr. Ibis.

Mr. Jacquel moved to stand beside you and inhaled deeply.

Unnerved, you shifted away. “Weirdo.”

“Your magic is getting stronger, isn’t it?” he asked with a tilt of his head. “Can you control it now?”

You blinked, too surprised to give a snippy response. “Yeah, actually. Not consistently, but more than I used to.”

“The smell of it is all over you. How you made it here unscathed, I don’t know. You’re a beacon of power.”

You shrugged. “Met the right people, I s’pose. Is anyone going to answer my question?”

Mr. Ibis finally looked at you. “First, you both need to eat.”

After you had sucked down three bowls of Mr. Ibis’s koshari, you were at the sink, helping with dishes. The water was scalding and the steel wool was rough in your hand. You tried to commit the sensations to memory.

“I’d like to talk to you about the book that Mad Sweeney found in my library,” said Mr. Ibis. His voice was calm and unassuming, but his eyes betrayed him. They flicked from your face to the dishes and back again, as though trying to gauge your reaction.

“I mean, I can’t even read the title.” Your attempt at nonchalance failed miserably. You both knew what that meant.

His next words were slow and calculated, like he was testing to see if you could understand him.

“That’s because it is yours.”

Water splashed onto your shirt from a spoon. “So it can give me answers?” His lips flattened to a thin line and you ground your teeth. “Right. Of course not.”

“We don’t get to read our own stories,” he said gently.

“Shut up, you old bird.” Your throat felt like it was closing up. You were so fucking sick of the world’s worst wild goose chase.

“Let me see the blade that Hester gifted you.”

You didn’t even bother asking how he knew. You just rinsed your hands and retrieved it from your rucksack.

Mr. Ibis, who now sat again at the dining table, held out his hand for the blade and unsheathed it, slender fingers skimming the gleaming steel. “You can read this?” He tapped the etchings. You nodded and he drummed his fingers on the table, his eyes searching your face or your soul. You never could tell which.

“But not this?” He indicated the book that lay before him.

You nodded again.

His dark eyes were fathomless. There was something that you were missing that felt just out of sight, like fireflies blinking in and out of existence at dusk.

Your eyes moved from him, to the dagger, to the book, and back.

Could it be that simple?

“It’s the same inscription?”

A knowing smile curled the corners of his mouth. “Now you’re getting it. Do you know what it says?”

The lines in the dagger glinted in the dim light of the dining room. “Yes,” you said slowly.

He held it out to you. “Can you tell me what it means?”

“I haven’t been able to—“

He cut you off. “I asked you to tell me what it means, not what it says.”

Everyone was in on the riddles, it seemed.

“Can you just say what you need to say?” you asked, exasperated.

He leveled you with that calm gaze. “Do you remember learning how to read?”

“I don’t remember fuck all,” you muttered.

He was patient. “Sound the word out. I know you know the letters, tell me what they mean.”

You sat in the chair beside him and squinted at your knife. A pressure built in your head as you tried to read them aloud, but you were able to manage it. One at a time, you read the etched letters up the fuller. “Hazel, white fir, gorse, elder, holly, hawthorn, white fir again, and ash twice in a row.” You looked up at him. “So it’s trees?”

“This is an alphabet known as Ogham, the language of the trees. That you can understand and read it is indicative of much. Though, you can’t say the word, can you?”

“No, and I can’t read that cover, either. Trying to do either gives me the same feeling, like I might puke.”

He hummed. “There are very few that can read this. That you can means that you’re getting closer.” Your eyes widened and he regarded you carefully. “I am going to break a rule.” He handed you the book. “I want you to read the first few pages.”

The book was huge and heavy with what must once have been a beautifully embossed cover. But in your hands, the cover was battered and scarred and the gilded edges of the pages had dulled and worn off. You were surprised the cover hadn’t fallen off entirely.

“I thought librarians were supposed to care for books.”

His eyes narrowed. “Focus.”

You bit back a retort and tried to read the raised letters of the title. They blurred in front of your eyes, and it made your head hurt terribly, but you forced yourself past it. It felt horrible. Nausea swelled up at the back of your throat, oily and disgusting, and your head was pulsing.

And then there it was. The same careful lines as the ones on your dagger.

“Holy shit.”

That searching gaze again. “Read the first few pages,” he said.

You opened the massive book with extreme care. The book was falling apart, pages brittle and images dulled. The writing inside was utterly illegible, with some pages torn out and others scribbled on until nothing of the original text remained. You showed Mr. Ibis and his face pinched in consternation.

“I feared as much.”

“Can you please just get to the point?”

He took the book from you gingerly, afraid to damage it further. The expression on his face was unreadable. He thumbed to the very first page, a tangled illuminated image of—

The world slowed, and your ears began to ring unbearably loudly and it drove you to your knees. The hair on your arms stood on end and you tried to look up at Mr. Ibis, but his face was gone. In its place was an imposing avian head with an elegantly arced beak and an expertly woven headdress of a deep midnight blue. Gold threads glinted in the fabric and his eyes…you knew you would never forget them. They were fathomless black, letting no light escape his all-seeing gaze, and they burned into you.

You were aware that the bird was speaking, but you couldn’t hear him over the ringing in your ears.

The last thing you saw before the creeping darkness at the edges of your vision consumed you was Sweeney bursting into the room in a whirlwind of fury.

. . .

“Suibhne, do not do this.”

The king tossed his mane. “This is my land, and they are not welcome here.”

“This won’t end well.”

“It matters not. I cannot let this stand.” He swept from the hall with finality, but you darted after him, snatching at his cloak, but it came unraveled in your hands.

Yet, this did not stop the king. He marched onwards, stark naked, for the swath of land beside the lake where the new church was being built.

“Suibhne!” You pelted after him, but he was not to be deterred, and in his rage was already approaching. Horrified, you watched as he accosted the priest.

“—our land!” he was roaring when you finally caught up. “Your God has no place here!”

The priest was watching him serenely. “The word of the lord has a place in all.”

Furious, the king grabbed the psalter that the priest held and threw it into the lake with all his might.

“Suibhne!” You were screaming now. “Stop this!”

His wild eyes pinned you in place. “We have to put an end to this before they put an end to us. It is my duty as king to protect our people, as it is your duty to serve your king.” He grabbed the smaller man and made for the lake.

“This will get us nowhere!” You trailed after him, energy crackling around you as you became increasingly agitated.

He rounded on you. “I never knew you to be such a coward,” he sneered.

You reared back. The rage that had surfaced at the sight of their church being built on your sacred ground now directed itself at your king.

. . .

Your hearing was the first thing to return as you began to regain consciousness. Two voices, one angry and abrasive, one cool and measured, were arguing. As the world came back to you, you realized it was Sweeney and Mr. Jacquel.

The light of the morgue was cold and blinding, and the slab underneath you was freezing. Sweeney had his back to you and was gesticulating madly.

“—will fucking kill them,” he was saying. “Is he out of his fucking mind?”

Mr. Jacquel looked at him, his calm visage never wavering. “If we are to help them, we need to know how they’re being affected. Once that has been determined, we’ll have a better idea of what to do.”

“Then ask,” Sweeney snarled. “You cunts won’t be able to do anything if they’re dead.”

Mr. Jacquel’s eyes found yours, and he favored you with a gentle smile. “I suppose we can do that now.”

A nod in your direction had Sweeney spinning so fast that he nearly fell over.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he demanded. “Circe just poking had you vomiting your guts up, and you want to look at your book? How stupid are you?”

You were too dazed to answer. As you had seen the true form of Mr. Ibis, now you saw Mr. Jacquel. Large ears and thick black fur with a headdress similar to the one you had seen on the bird, and those same haunting, jet-black eyes.

And Sweeney. Golden light radiated from him and you saw a man with wild eyes, gripping a spear that matched him in height. His flaming hair drifted around his face, and swathes of blue paint spiraled across his skin and disappeared under the pelts he now wore.

He was beautiful and terrible.

The king waved a hand in front of your face. “Did you hear me? What is the matter with you?”

“I just wanted answers,” you told him miserably.

“You’re an idiot,” he snapped. But despite his anger, there was fear in his eyes, fading now, but there all the same.

“Man, fuck you.”

He growled and stormed from the room.

“He was worried,” Mr. Jacquel told you softly.

You stared up at the ceiling, furious with yourself and with him. More than anything, though, you were furious with the universe and the sick cosmic joke it made of your life.

Muffled yelling came from upstairs and Mr. Jacquel sighed. “He will have to leave if he cannot collect himself.”

You snorted. “Good luck with that.”

Mr. Jacquel shone a penlight in your eyes and then tested your reflexes, chuckling when you nearly kicked him in the groin.

“It looks like we’re all good there.” He gave you a last once-over and decided that, physically, you seemed to be fine.

The two of you climbed the stairs and the shouting got louder. In the dining room, Sweeney was cursing out Mr. Ibis, whose tranquil demeanor only seemed to be making him angrier.

“Physically fit as a fiddle,” Mr. Jacquel interrupted.

Sweeney’s gaze was scrutinizing as he scanned you, searching for anything the jackal may have missed.

You couldn’t look away from the rich blue swirling up his arms and across his face.

When he could find no fault, Mr. Ibis stepped forward. His bill carved through the air as his head bobbed. “I believe that relegates you to my purview,” said he.

Sweeney grabbed you by the arm, hard, and yanked you behind himself.

“After what just happened?” he asked incredulously. “Not a chance,” he looked at you, braids floating, “especially since this one doesn’t have two brain cells to rub together.”

You couldn’t speak. The three of them stood before you in the glory of their true forms, and it was overwhelming you. They were all so beautiful, it made your soul ache.

Finally, you swallowed and managed to find your words, eyes trained on the floor. Anywhere but the three of them.

“I wanted answers,” you hissed. “I’m dead with or without them, and if this gets me closer, then I’m taking that risk.”

“You don’t know—“

“I don’t care!” Your voice cracked, but you pressed on. “I do not give a shit. I’m the one who’s got a target on their back, I’m the one with no idea who they are.” You were in his face now, the fear of their terrible beauty replaced by anger and annoyance. “This is my fucking life. If I want to risk it—“

“I can’t watch you die!” he roared. “You have a fucking death wish, and it is killing me!”

“Then don’t,” you snapped. “You’re grown. No one’s forcing you to be here. Like I said, I’m dead no matter what I do, but one death is a little less certain than the other.”

“Get the fuck out of my face,” he spit, “you ungrateful—“

“I’m ungrateful?” Your shriek was bordering on hysterical. “You stupid fucking—“

“Enough!” Mr. Ibis shouted. It was such an alarming thing to hear the old bird raise his voice that it shut you both up immediately. “Enough,” he repeated, calmer this time. “Get it together, the both of you. You’re running out of time, these ridiculous shouting matches must cease. You cannot separate yourselves again, do you understand me?”

“No!” you cried. “I can do this myself.”

“You cannot,” Mr. Jacquel spoke up. “You need him. You will play a crucial role in what is to come, and you cannot do it without him.”

Sweeney looked at you smugly.

Before you could knock the teeth out of his head, there was a tapping at the window that made all four of you jump.

A massive raven stood expectantly on the sill, its feathers a deep, oily black, and a small scroll was tied to its leg.

Bast yowled furiously.

Sweeney crossed the room in two long strides, threw up the sash, and started yelling.

“Get the fuck away! Get out, go!” The raven bit him, and Sweeney let out a string of profanity that made Mr. Ibis wince. He clutched his hand and spat at the bird, who ignored him in favor of you.

“Caorthann,” it croaked.

Your blood ran cold.

“Caorthann,” it croaked again. It wanted you.

You moved towards it with every fiber of your being screaming at the wrongness of it all. It stuck out its scaly leg that had the scroll tied on with a black silk ribbon that easily came undone when you tugged on it. You unfurled the note. There wasn’t much on it, only a hastily scrawled note.

Jack’s Crocodile. Tonight, 10pm. Don’t be late. -W

You crumpled the paper and threw it across the room.

“You,” you pointed at the raven. “Which one are you?”

It opened its beak. “Memory is a strange bell. Memory is a strange bell,” came its hoarse voice.

And then it flew into the night.

You laughed, mania creeping into the sound. “Muninn. I fucking hate him, I hate him.”

Mr. Ibis was watching the whole exchange with a shrewd expression. “The books on memory are on the southern wall of the library,” he said simply. “I’d recommend starting with ‘M’.”

You and Sweeney looked at each other and bolted down the hallway.

Trawling through the vast library of Ibis and Jacquel was no small task. Shelves ran ceiling to floor and wall to wall and held more books than you thought ought to fit in such a space. How the bird kept it all organized and managed to keep track of everything, you had no idea.

“You got anything yet?” you called down from where you were on a ladder. He was further down the row on his hands and knees, inspecting the titles closer to the floor.

“Nuthin’,” came the response. “Fat lot of good that clue did, there’s enough to keep us here for years.” You glanced down and saw his sour expression as he looked over the myriad titles before him. “You’d think someone like them would have a system that made more sense.”

“Yeah, well, it’s….” Your voice trailed off as your eyes landed on a thick volume bound in black leather and embossed in silver, and something in your mind clicked. “Hey!” you hollered. “I got it!” You plucked it from the shelf and tossed it down to him, jumping down after it and landing neatly on your feet.

“What the fuck is a—“ he squinted, “—Mímir?”

You took it from him and flipped it open. The pages were thin and vellumy beneath your fingers, and the script was thin and precise. “God, you’re dumb.”

He made an indignant noise and you rolled your eyes.

“Seriously? The guy that took Odin’s eye so he could drink from the well of holy shit.” You were starting to see the bigger picture.

Sweeney raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“The well, the fucking—that bastard.” Blood pounded in your skull and white-hot rage bubbled inside of you. You looked up at your leprechaun and handed him the book with trembling hands. It was open to an article that had been published in 1982. You tapped the title. Waters of Memory, Waters of Forgetfulness. “I just found the motherfucker that took myself away from me.”

His eyes widened. “So the old man—“

“Had this guy root around in my head, yeah.”

Sweeney flicked through the pages. “A Jötnar.”

“What?”

Once again, the book was passed between you. “He’s a frost giant.”

“This feels like a fucking bit. We’ve been going for how long in circles? And it was right here.” Your whole body was starting to tremble.

He watched you with a raised eyebrow.

“We need to get to Jack’s,” you said.

tags: @kind-wolf @imaginethatneathuh

[mirrormauve]

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simon 'ghost' riley x f!reader | soulmate!au | 12.8k (oops)

Just because you were bonded, Ghost was all too aware, didn't mean you would stay together.

this is part 2 to faultlines in which Ghost didn’t want a soulmate, and he was sure, if they existed, that they didn’t want him either.

cw; soulmate!au in which soulmates share scars, abandonment issues, loneliness, references to self-harm, lots of talk about scars, angst, fluff, references to domestic abuse and past violence, references to simon's past, descriptions of pain, description of torture, canon typical violence, military inaccuracies, miscommunication, touch aversion, reallllly slow slowburn, ghost being sort of really bad and weird at affection and communication, making out, two people being so weird and intense about each other

Simon was not familiar with comfort.

It was unsettling, to be sat among cushions and piles of blankets, soft white light from the lamp he’d flicked on for you hours ago. Outside, the sun was beginning to rise, a spill of dusky, deep purple lightening the horizon, like someone had overturned a paint can.  

His hands were curled into fists; his mask lay abandoned on the arm of your sofa. There was a basket of knitting to his left, a sweater sleeve unfurled over the side. Books lined several shelves, plants were gathered in the same terracotta pots as the ones in your office, in a neat fist beneath the window that overlooked the street. 

It looked and felt like a home. 

Simon couldn’t remember the last time he felt truly at home somewhere. He stayed on base when he could; his flat was little more than a bed and a kettle. 

He was watching the front door and listening to the domestic sounds of you puttering around the kitchen one room over. 

“Please,” you had said when he started to stand to follow you, fingers careful against his jaw, cradling his face as though he were something that deserved to be cradled. “You’re exhausted. Just stay here.” 

So he did. So he was. 

Patiently waiting for you to return, replaying the last few hours. Unwilling to admit it was with anxiety. 

Your presence was a tug behind his navel, an urging to relocate closer to you, a glowing point of light he needed to seek out, swallow. 

Simon wished things had gone differently. His own fucking fault for leaving things as they were, for thinking he could remain close to you, deal with the ancient pain in his chest because it was just another ache to add to the collection, with you never the wiser. 

It wasn’t fair to you. 

He had never particularly cared about fair before.

He wondered what it felt like to you. 

He couldn’t imagine you felt warmth. 

Ghost was a lot of things. Warm was not one of them. 

But he had spent the last several hours with you in his arms, your lips against his, tracing scar for scar, memorizing each of the marks you had given him somewhere in the chaos of his own.

Simon might not remember where every scar on his body originated, but he was going to know all of yours. He wanted to know where you laid on his skin, every mark he’d ever overlooked. He would have a perfect catalogue of knowledge. 

It was odd to be touched, and not exactly comfortable, not after so many years of covering his skin, insulating himself from any touch. 

Touch meant harm. 

It was a fact he’d learned very young, a lesson learned again and again, only compounded by life in the military where even friendly touch was tinged with roughness out of necessity. 

Your hands on his skin felt like being peeled apart, unzipped, insides poked at. He didn’t mind. 

Nothing could have made him pull away from you. 

Your fingers had traced the back of his neck, the soft, vulnerable space behind his ear. The touch was tentative. If he shifted even a little, you had retracted your hand. 

A floorboard creaked, he glanced up as you appeared in the doorway. 

“Simon?” 

You held out a hand. 

He stood and took it before his brain could catch up, all instinct. 

He had meant it, when he said you deserved better. But it was a commitment, a promise, too, when he said he was all you got. 

.

.

.

Captain John Price was standing in your office. 

You halted in the doorway with a cup of coffee, hot ceramic searing into your fingers. “Captain Price,” you said. “Good morning, sir.” 

“G’morning,” he answered with a nod. 

“Is there something I can help you with?” You asked, crossing the room to deposit your cup at the edge of your desk. “Would you like a cup of tea? Coffee?” 

He shook his head, “Thank you. Take a seat.” 

It felt wrong to sit behind your desk, so you dropped into Simon’s usual seat, tugging the black and blue blanket you’d knitted for him months ago into your lap. Price took the opposite chair. It had so often gone unused, aside from the odd analyst debriefing a too long meeting, until Kyle and Johnny began frequenting your office too. 

Price didn’t say anything for a moment, brows lowered, mouth a considering line. You fidgeted beneath his piercing stare. 

“Ghost told you,” you guessed after a few beats of painful, weighted silence. 

He nodded after another long moment. “We knew,” he admitted, eyes finally flicking away as he adjusted in the chair. 

“I guessed as much.”

“But,” he continued, sitting forward. “Now you know.”

You felt, suddenly, as though you were about to receive a lecture or a reprimand. You swallowed thickly, and nodded, chewing your lower lip. “It’s not ideal,” you acknowledged. “I know how bad it is.” 

He was quiet again, watching you. You shifted, uncomfortable under his scrutiny, not sure what you were being evaluated for or how to pass muster. “He had to tell you,” Price said eventually, not unkindly, “It was only a matter of time.” 

The words had to landed perhaps harder than Price meant them to. It had only been a few days since you saw Simon’s face, since you bonded, and you still felt wrong about how it had happened. You weren’t sure if you ever wouldn’t feel wrong about how it happened. You shouldn’t have kissed him; you should have been able to let him go. 

The knowledge hung like an invisible weight around your neck, that you were not something Simon wanted, but an unwelcome inevitability. 

The memory of his touch, his extended presence in your apartment that weekend, made you feel a little ill on reflection. You should not have touched him, shouldn’t have kissed him, probably should not have seen his face at all. It all felt like a choice he wasn’t allowed to make. 

You weren’t quite sure where you and Simon stood now. Inextricably linked but to what end? What were you to him but something to manage?

I didn’t want to tell you. I never wanted you to know. 

Your belly clenched at the memory of the words, the heavy weight of the admission in his mouth. 

Maybe that was all soulmates ever were, an inescapable obligation and nothing more. Maybe the whole thing had been romanticized to the point of becoming something amorphous and unrecognizable. 

But when you thought of what he was to you—

Mine, you thought immediately and unhelpfully, possessively.

It stung like salt in a wound.  

He was anything but. 

The warm glow of the newly stitched bond in your chest was accompanied by a different ache, a more mundane one. A bleak cloud of heartache.  

The cruelty of it, the unfairness, smarted. You’d always assumed that discovery would mean an end to the lonely isolation you’d felt your whole life, not an evolution of it. There was still nowhere for you to go, no safe place for you to settle, no person that wanted and accepted you. 

You thought of the torment of the untethered bond. It had been excruciatingly painful, and you had only bore it for a few hours. And Simon had hidden it from you for months. His dedication to keeping you out, at a distance, spoke louder than any words could. 

It was akin to sitting next to a muzzled dog. He was chained to you. On a leash he could never escape. 

But you’d gladly keep your loneliness, if it meant he wasn’t in pain. You just wished you didn’t have to; you wished you belonged. 

Maybe he’d left the bond too long and it had corroded, shorn down into a jagged point. It could never cause anything but agony between you. 

You pinched your palm. “Yeah,” you agreed. “He had to.”

Price cleared his throat, sighed. “It’s not just Simon,” he said, “that has to worry about you now. You’re a vulnerability to all of us, to my team.” 

“I know,” you said again, because it had already occurred to you. That you now knew exceedingly dangerous information, how easy it would be for someone to make the leap of logic that you were important. 

“Better, for now, that it stays between us.” His eyes met yours, intense, serious and steady. 

Though you knew he was right, though you’d already had a similar conversation with Simon, it still hurt somehow, still felt like what you imagined having a knife stuck through your ribs must feel like. 

The discovery of a soulmate was supposed to be something that was celebrated. Announced to family and friends, parties thrown, congratulations given. 

It was also, by nature of the rarity, something to fixate on. It had led to pairs being featured in the news, followed by throngs of people convinced that their proximity to a bonded pair alone would aid their chances of finding their own. 

You did not want that, but it would be nice to tell your cross hall neighbor that had become a friend, or your sister. It would be nice to be able to tell anyone. The pride you should feel was replaced instead with something closer to shame. 

You would only ever be a liability. Something to manage, something to hide. Not just for Simon, but for his team as well. 

You were holding something so rare, something most people searched for their whole lives, and instead of letting it lie in the palm of your hand like the extraordinary sun soaked pearl it was, you had to close your fingers around it, relegate it to the dark cave of your fist. 

“I understand, sir. I haven’t told anyone. I won’t tell anyone.” 

Price relaxed a little then, leaning back in his chair. “Good.”

You fiddled with the blanket in your lap, calmer for the scent that lingered in the fibers and sloughed off it in waves from all the time it spent behind Simon’s shoulders, tea and tobacco, the faintest hint of summer grass lingering between. All those times you’d laid on it in the sun, inhaling his scent blooming in the air around you, soothed, flashed through your mind. 

Those summer months seemed a lifetime ago. A different you. A different Ghost. 

You glanced out the window. 

The world beyond the glass was gray with autumn drizzle; the bright red and orange fan of changing leaves raked at low hanging clouds. The air was chilly, and already threatening a cutting, winter iciness. With luck, you wouldn’t be stationed in England for much longer, and then none of you would have to worry about your inconvenient bond. 

“If the lads haven’t said yet,” Price began as he stood, one broad hand landing on your shoulder heavily, “Congratulations. Glad Simon finally pulled his head out of his arse. I was beginning to worry.” 

You glanced up in surprise, lips parted. The small smile on Price’s face faded. “Simon. . .” he started, then stopped. He contemplated his next words carefully before he continued. “Simon is more sensitive than he appears. You’ll take care of him.” 

The notion of Simon needing anyone for anything, should have been a laughable one, but coming from Price, it felt like the world tilting onto your shoulders. The 141 were a strange little family in their own right, one you were now an unfortunate interloper of. 

They looked out for each other, now you were being tasked with the same. 

Price wasn’t asking a question. 

You answered anyway. 

“Of course I will.” 

He squeezed your shoulder once and let his hand fall away. 

Ten minutes later, your coffee cold and abandoned at the corner of your desk, you were still sitting in Simon’s chair, picking at the blanket and anxiously worrying at your bottom lip.  

It had just started to bleed, the tang of copper dripping onto your tongue, when Johnny and Kyle appeared at your door, Simon looming large and imposing behind them with Price in tow. 

You stood, wondering if you’d been that lost in your thoughts that you hadn’t noticed the hall outside lurching into motion around an op, when you noticed the cake box in Johnny’s hands. 

You frowned, glancing from the sergeants’ open faces to the box in Soap’s hands.

“What’s going on?” 

“Think we wouldn’t congratulate the pair of ye, lass?” Johnny said. 

He slid the box onto your desk and opened his arms which you found yourself readily stepping into. 

Your throat closed, a heavy knot choking you suddenly. You didn’t look at Ghost over Johnny’s shoulder, couldn’t. “Oh, well—that’s not—you didn’t have to—” 

“It’s not nearly enough,” Kyle interrupted, “But it’s the best we can do. Considering.” 

You had to blink back tears as Soap released you and guided you forward to flip open the lid. The cake was lavender, like your headphones and blanket. Words were scrawled with dark icing, along with misshapen blobs you supposed were meant to be flowers. The words were an illegible heap but it didn’t matter what it said; it mattered they’d gotten it, even if it was bittersweet. 

Perhaps you were being afforded a little celebration after all. 

“Had to do the writin’ ourselves, yeah? It—”

“It’s perfect.” 

You felt small, safe. 

It was not a bad feeling, even if it was a false one.  

You still didn’t look at Simon, afraid to know how he felt about it as he stepped into the room after Price.

“Their idea,” he would tell you later, softly, when half the cake was gone and all but Simon had departed your office.  

You could only nod, and wonder if that meant he hadn’t wanted it acknowledged at all. 

You didn’t ask, the answer would probably shatter your feeble feelings. 

Soulmates, ultimately, were supposed to be the thing their pair needed most, be it romantic, platonic, familial, even adversarial, in rare instances. There was no guidebook on figuring out which, or what came after, or what you were supposed to be. 

For so long, you had held onto hope. A romantic, dramatic hope that you would find your soulmate and be granted that. Understanding. Feeling like there was one place you actually belonged. Someone who could see past the scars that kept everyone else at an arm’s length, that made them believe they could never fit into your life. 

Not even, really, you thought, were you hoping to find that feeling with your soulmate. You hadn’t been delusional enough to think you would ever really find them. 

You had just—wanted someone who saw you, looked past the scars and decided you could be home, anyway. The many failed dates you went on were proof enough of that, proof of your hope and longing. 

But maybe this was why fate had stuck you and Simon together—your ability to understand that what he needed most was to be left alone. And you were already so good at being alone. 

You could give him the security of someone who needed nothing from him, of letting the bond lie dormant and cold, maintain his anonymity and the walls he’d built so carefully around himself.  

A sentinel fate, a sword of his name. 

You could give him that peace. 

Your fate, it seemed, was as you’d once guessed. 

You were meant to be alone.  

.

.

.

Simon adjusted your hips with a sharp jerk and then pushed his palm between your shoulderblades until you tilted them into an angle he was satisfied with. 

“Eyes forward,” he grunted. 

But you were giggling again, glancing over your shoulder with bright eyes and a genuine smile. A rare sight recently.

Had been since—

“Am I holding it right?” 

He glanced at your grip on the blade in your hand, and nodded. You turned back toward the target—a thick plastic training dummy littered with stab wounds. You had made steady progress over the last few months. 

Simon liked training you, it settled some latent anxiety he’d never admit to, to know that you could hold your own, at least temporarily. Just long enough, as he always stressed to you, to escape danger, not face it. 

But you were proving yourself to be surprisingly adept at sparring. 

You were fast, and seemed to enjoy running. Cardio didn’t seem to burn you out. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen anyone do as many jumping jacks in a row as he’d seen you do, seemingly just to do it. 

You took quickly to instruction, minor adjustments in form. 

You could wriggle out of ropes and zip ties. You could effectively parry, knew where the major arteries were and how to sever them. 

And, after a few failed attempts earlier in the week, you’d learned to compensate for the weight and balance of the blade, and seemed to be comfortable with throwing knives too. 

“Won’t have this much time to aim, bird,” he reprimanded when you only stood there, unmoving, your eyes sweeping over his face, brows knitted and serious. 

Your skin shimmered faintly with the dew of sweat. A faint gossamer sheen. He wanted to slide his fingers over the pulse in your throat, just to feel it kick. Maybe his teeth, too, to carve it out, hold the thread of your vein in his mouth. 

The soft murmur of your lips against his skin, babbling nonsense. 

The space between your shoulder blades was bare, the delicate lacing of a tattoo scrawled there. You didn’t share tattoos, that pain must not count as scars in the cosmic bind of the universe. 

The memory of that weekend together haunted him. How easily you’d fallen into each other, just to have it wiped away as soon as it was done. You bare legs in the kitchen, making tea, leaning against him as though it were natural, where you belonged. You stripped down to almost nothing, letting look at your scars as you carefully wiped the eyeblack from his skin, hands cradling his face. 

He was perhaps plagued by those moments when he wasn’t with you, the soft give of your body beneath his on your bed for two blissful nights, beneath him on the sparring mat, something of a distraction, something to sink his teeth into when sleep invariably would not find him. The memory of your safe touch. 

He still wasn’t used to being looked at so openly, directly, didn’t understand what you got out of it anyway. He couldn’t imagine what you saw, when you stared like you were trying desperately to preserve something as vital to you as air. He was right there, within reach and not moving away for once in his life. Not going anywhere. Never. 

This, bound to you, was where he belonged. 

But you seemed to keep skirting away. Pulling away from his hands, from him. 

He wasn’t built for this, relationships and emotions, for things that required a gentle touch and not the cold metal of a gun. 

Wasn’t good at it. He didn’t know if he had done something wrong, crossed some invisible line, and didn’t know how to ask either. 

Was this another thing he had to figure out how to earn? Was this just another thing he was destined to lose, had already?

The stiff concentration melted from your face, replaced with a smile, amusement he missed seeing the last few weeks sweeping over your face, softening your features. “But I have time now,” you said, before you suddenly pivoted and flung the knife, all in one fluid motion. Just as he’d taught you. 

The blade buried itself deep into the throat of the target. 

He raised a brow. “What were you aimin’ for, sweet’eart?” 

“The head,” you admitted, sounding surprised yourself. 

“Not bad, that.” 

“Thank you, LT,” you said sweetly. “Maybe one day I’ll be able to take you on.”  

He grunted, pressed another throwing knife into your hand and lifted your arm into position, cupped your elbow and drew it down a little. 

You were liquid gold in his arms, warm and trusting, allowing him to adjust the angles of your body without complaint. He could feel you breathing; not just the physical rise and fall of your lungs, though he could feel that too. Ghost could feel the tight, corded line of your soul stitched to his, the warm voracity of it like a glowing line of light, a thin strip of aurora borealis. This close to you, he could feel the softness of your breath, the delicate beat of your heart through it. 

He would probably never admit it to you, but Ghost missed the pain. He missed the watery, drowning ache in his lungs that meant you were on the other side of the glass, alive, waiting. The pain had been a constant reminder of your continued life. Being alive hurt, it only made sense, then, that the bond ached with your life. 

The warm glow it had transformed into was nice, but it was placating, an illusion that things would always be all right. The comfort and safety of it itched, made his fingers curl with the urge to peel up his skin, pinch the pain alive again with his own bloodied fingers just so he was sure you were there. 

You leaned back into his chest, the length of your spine laid against the bow of his body. Simon folded his fingers around yours, adjusted your grip on the handle, angled your wrist down a fraction. 

Your hand was small in his, the fragile bones of your wrist like a bird's hollow wing. He thumbed at your pulse, wished he had taken his gloves off. 

His nose brushed the shell of your ear, inhaling the sweet scent of your skin lavender and oak moss threaded with the animal salt of your skin. 

You shivered. 

“Not in this life or the next.” 

You laughed, a breathless catch in your throat. The vibrations of it again his chest like a half remembered song stuffed between his ribs. You turned your head and pushed your forehead against his jaw gently. He felt the shush of your breath against his throat. He wondered, not for the first time, why it couldn’t always be like this. Why had things felt like one stumbling block after another since you saw his face?

Wasn't it supposed to be easy? Wasn’t that the one thing soulmates were promised?  

He’s not particularly good at wanting things. Wanting meant asking for something he could lose, and he’d lost too much. 

But now he had you, he wouldn’t let go. 

The half completed residency paperwork in his, until now, underutilized office, was proof enough of that. It had been almost a year. You and Laswell had promised a year. A contingency, a plan for you to stay. 

You would stay. 

He wasn’t sure you would stay. 

Probably, he should talk to you about it. 

Simon wasn’t good at this.  

How hard could it be to ask his bloody soulmate to stay in the same country as him? 

Very, apparently. 

He’d rather almost anything else. 

He’d rather present you with the residence permit like a cat with a dead mouse, wordless and hopeful.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of red tape that required him and you to go through, not limited to slicing his skin open in a court to prove his scars showed up on you.  

All the fucking ones he’d already given you, wouldn’t count. 

Just because you were bonded, he was all too aware, didn't mean you would stay together. You could leave, die. Simon was the one to endure, he knew which of you would remain. 

The closer he got, the further you seemed to drift away, something tender and self actualizing in your gaze. But he’d had a year to come to terms with it. 

Maybe you just needed time to adjust to the idea of your soulmate being him. He wasn’t the kind of person anyone hoped for. 

“You wouldn’t let me win?” 

Simon didn’t want to imagine a world where you were on the opposing side of anything, where winning mattered. 

“Together this time, yeah?” He said instead, squeezing your wrist. 

“Not like I’ve got much of a choice.” 

“Want me to let go?” 

“No,” you answered quickly. “No.”  

“Aimin’ for the head again?” 

“The eye,” you clarified. 

He raised a brow. “Ambitious, that.” 

You nudged your temple against his cheek again, the flicker of your lashes through his balaclava like the delicate, furred wings of a moth. “I’m trying to be the best.” 

“Average might be a more achievable goal,” he said wryly. 

Your laugh echoed inside him again. “Affirmative,” you grumbled in a poor imitation of his accent. 

He squeezed your hip in slight reprimand. 

“But I think I can do it,” you continued in your own voice, leaning into his hand. “I just need practice.” 

“Mm.” He rubbed your wrist again, felt the steady flutter of your pulse against his fingers. “Just aim at something you can hit if you ever have to, yeah?”

Something you’d been over plenty, he still felt the need to repeat it. What do you imagine is going to happen to me? You’d asked once. A question with far too many answers. Bad things happened to people he cared for. 

“Promise,” you said easily. “I know where all the important arteries are, after all,” you murmur, teasing. 

He grunted, unimpressed. “Lot of good that’ll do if you’re aimin’ at the eyes.” 

You rolled your eyes and settled back into him, but you were laughing, reciting the names of said arteries under your breath. “All right, enough of tha’,” he muttered as he moved your arm through the motion once, before you swung hard and released the knife on the second pass. 

This time it was at the right height, but off center. It hurtled by the target’s ear and clattered to the floor. 

“You’ll be turning enemy combatants into regular Van Goghs,” he said. 

“Very funny,” you nipped, digging an elbow into his ribs, but you were giggling again. “It was close.” 

“Was. Nice work.” 

You made a soft, self-satisfied noise, something near a purr in your throat. “Thank you, Ghost.” 

He nodded as he released you and stepped away to retrieve the fallen blade. Cold seeped in as he did, a bone deep chill where you had been touching him. A thready, pulsing warning to stay near. 

Moving away from you was no longer painful, but not exactly comfortable either. It was nice to be within the warm bubble your soulmate provided. 

He felt it now, the retraction of that pulsing sweetness, like the petals of a flower furling closed. The bond was dynamic now, malleable and yielding, nothing like the taut, fragile, painful thing it had been for so long.  

Simon felt it stretch, loop slippery coils around him as the tension popped like stiff joints. 

When he turned, you were across the room, sitting on a weight bench as you pulled on a hoodie and kicked off your trainers. Not his hoodie, though he’d left one at your flat, thinking, maybe, you might want something of his, the way you had given him the blanket. 

Done for the evening, then. The tightening in his chest he felt now had nothing to do with the bond; he could admit that. 

You were no longer smiling, and the permanent stitch that had sown itself between your brows shortly after you bonded, had appeared yet again.  

He collected the knives, approached you slowly, out of your sight line, watching the slant of your scarred cheek, the downward tilt of your mouth. You had been worrying at your lower lip with your teeth recently, and the crease in the middle of the plush bottom curve of broken skin was wet with the tiniest well of blood. 

Simon remembered what it had felt like to touch that soft flesh, kiss you, lick into your mouth. It had felt like—he couldn’t say what it had felt like. He didn’t have the vocabulary, the understanding of the tangled mess of emotions in his chest, snarled and guarded as a nest of snakes. Unraveling it seemed unwise, a fool’s errand. 

All he knew was that it hadn’t happened, that he had been safe with you, whether he could name the emotions or not. He also knew that it had not happened again, and didn’t know why. 

And wanted it to happen again—for you to stick your hands beneath the edge of his mask or shirt or anywhere at all and ask can I? 

He wanted you, he thought numbly, stupidly, to hold his fucking hand. 

It was sort of like being a lovesick teenager, only Simon wasn’t sure he’d ever been that. It was all new.  

If he could feel the weight of your proximity, you were able to feel the heft of his. But you didn’t turn as he approached, head bowed over the laces of your shoes as you coiled them around your fingers and tucked them under the tongue. 

The space beneath your eyes was swollen, discolored with sleeplessness. There was a bruise beneath the edge of your hoodie collar, more on your forearms and the sides of your knees. Defensive marks, sparring marks. 

To see them brought him a kind of fucked up satisfaction. 

Simon pulled off his gloves, slipped his hand into place on the back of your neck. 

You flinched just a little, and then settled. 

The memory of you lying in the grass behind the barracks in the summer sun surfaces quickly. How badly he had wanted to reach down and touch you then, touch his own faint, paper thin scars on your skin, the side of your throat, the hook of your collarbone, all those shining little reminders.

Now he could, he did, and you still felt far away, like there would always be something holding you at a distance. As though you were behind unbreachable glass, seen, but not heard, not touched. 

What had Johnny called all that pain? 

Bond corrosion. Erosion. 

Maybe he’d let it go on for too long, really had damaged something vital, by denying it for so long. Maybe Ghost had inadvertently taken the one thing that was supposed to be a solace to you, and twisted it beyond repair. Maybe there was no comfort on your side, just a rusted lock that could never be pried opened again. 

You tilted into his palm. 

He hoped it was voluntary. 

“Ghost,” you said softly. 

“Bird,” he answered, drawing the word out lazily, letting his hand slide away. 

Your mouth twitched into a half smile. “Hey,” you caught his hand and tucked it instead between your palms. 

He sat next to you, pushed his shoulder against yours. You fell against his side slowly, almost reluctantly. You laced your fingers with his.  

Maybe you were just disappointed. Once the shock of finding your soulmate faded, once that restless, prodding first night together was over—he wondered if you felt cheated, let down. Maybe the distance was protective. 

Maybe he should just ask. 

You sat together quietly, fingers threaded. He waited, hoping that if he waited long enough you would look up and smile and talk to him. 

But the well of your incessant chatter over the last year seemed to have finally run dry. 

Not only were you quiet, it was like you were lost, unsteady. “All right?” 

When you met his eyes, your features softened. “You’re not a bad teacher.” 

“Reckon that’s a compliment, yeah?” 

You smiled, settled more firmly against his side. Yours was a warm, welcome weight. He’d not relished the thought of anyone’s touch in a very long time, maybe hadn’t ever. Kind touch was never something in high supply. But if you never let go, it’d probably be all right, that. 

“Yes,” you agreed. “Very generous with compliments.” 

Ghost wasn’t sure those words, in that order or otherwise, had ever been applied to him before. 

He palmed your cheek, tilted your face toward his, peering into your eyes like he was examining you for injury. “You hit your head?” 

“Like you wouldn’t have noticed.” 

“Mm.” 

“Simon,” you said, his name careful and curling in your mouth, safe there. Your fingers were at the edge of his sleeve, the soft pads of your fingers against his bare wrist, sliding over the scars on his palms, defensive wounds that his mind refused to remember earning. 

He nodded and you pushed his sleeve up. 

“I think I found another,” you said. “Can I show you?” 

Simon didn’t remember how he got every scar on his body, but he was trying to become familiar with all of yours. You’d had trouble, though, deciding which actually belonged to you. Some of your scars were buried beneath his own, others were scoured so deeply on Ghost, that they appeared as though they could be yours on your skin. 

It was odd to be touched, and not exactly comfortable, not yet, but he held still and let you have your fill, because he wanted you to. His body wasn’t his in these moments, but belonging to you was all right.

Your fingers traced his forearm, sending skittering sparks of warmth along his skin, curled like shaved gold into his stomach. It was horrifying, really, the way you made him feel. Not like himself, too much like himself, or someone he should have been. 

The touch was curious, and cautious. 

“Here,” you pushed a finger into the middle of his forearm. The scar was barely visible on his skin, and buried beneath the black of tattoo ink. “I think I burned myself taking something out of the oven. It probably wouldn’t have scarred but I kept picking at it.” You held your arm alongside his. The mark on your arm was deeper, puckered where his was flat. But they matched. 

Your fingers wriggled inside his rolled sleeve and you traced a particularly deep gouge along the side of his bicep. 

Shrapnel, he thought, but you didn’t ask. 

He waited for you to ask. 

You both sat there cloaked in silence. 

He watched the side of your face, the way your mouth twisted to the side, the downward sweep of your lashes fluttering against your scarred cheek. 

“Anymore?” 

You shook your head and slid your hand up his chest instead, to the base of his throat. “Can—?”

The word hasn’t even left your mouth yet. Pathetic, he thinks, as he yanks the fabric over his head. He smelled of desperation, a deep need to be kept. 

You smiled, touched his cheek, his ear. Your fingers scraped over the close cropped sides of his head into the longer hair at the top. 

When your face tilted up, lashes fluttering closed, he met you halfway, tasted blood on your mouth. It was like coming home. Simon could feel his scar on your mouth, like you were echoes of each other, calling across something vast, receiving an answer anyway. 

His tongue slipped into your mouth as your hands fisted in his hoodie. You groaned quietly when he threaded an arm behind your back, pulled you into his chest. 

“Simon,” you mumbled, mouth traveling from his down his jaw and back, nails digging into his bicep. He’d never get tired of his name, known and coveted, in your voice. You made it sound real, almost sweet. 

He touched your jaw, your soft skin so different to his, the small of your back beneath your shirt. 

The knot in his chest seemed to unravel, flatten out like a dog showing its belly, deeply satisfied, asking to be picked—

You pulled back suddenly and sucked in a sharp, awful breath. “Jesus, I’m sorry,” you said. “I—“ 

Simon shook his head, cupped the back of your skull to bring your forehead to him. You breathed, eyes closed, for a long time. 

Eventually you blinked and met his eyes, searched until you found something that made your gaze close. A door shut in his face. 

“Well,” you said, retracting your touch slowly, fingertips drawing down his jaw. He told himself it was reluctance, even if he knew better. “It’s late. I should probably get going.” 

He wanted to hold you gently, but was afraid he might crush you instead. His unwieldy hands were not suited for this kind of work. 

“Mm. Walk you to your car.” 

Your smile flickered a little. “What if I said no?” 

Then he would follow you anyway. He would make sure you got there safely, anyway. He might not be built for care, but he was built for that. For teaching you violence, for making sure you were safe. 

“Then you go alone.” 

“Liar,” you said with a huff as you stood, bracing your hand on his shoulder. “I know your shadow now, Simon.” 

He just stood and held out a hand for your bag, tugging the mask back on with the other. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that declaration.  

You needed time, that was all, he thought again, for the disappointment to abate, for him to make himself useful to you. 

Eventually, he would see your flat again. He’d stand in your kitchen with a cup of tea and your smile would be real.  

Simon should know better, by now, than to hope for anything at all. 

.

.

.

The orders arrived one innocuous morning in November, passed to you by an administrative assistant on your way to your office, who smiled like the envelope was not essentially a live bomb. She was new to the base, her eyes bright and watchful. She had been in your office a fair few times, to pick your brain, she said. She wanted to work in intelligence some day, too, in more than a strictly secretarial role. 

You took it from her with great trepidation. 

“You alright?”

“Fine,” you smiled tightly as your stomach clenched. 

Her smile turned sympathetic. “Don’t want to leave?”

“I don’t know,” you answered honestly, flipping the envelope over in your hands. 

“Come now, I’d wager Ghost will be none too happy.” 

You furrowed your brows and glanced back up at her. 

Ghost was Ghost. You hadn’t realized any of the others noticed him in your office. They were a nosy, gossipy bunch, such were the ways of intel, and you were sure one of them would have mentioned it, even passively, at some point.  

“Don’t know what you mean.” 

She smiled and rolled her eyes as she turned back to her desk. “Sure.” 

You walked back to your office slowly, distracted, telling yourself it was something—anything—else. 

You were not being stationed elsewhere; you were not being sent home. 

You closed the door behind you and stood staring down at the all too familiar seal stamped next to your name. It didn’t feel like your name, like your hands curling around the edges of the paper, claws that were already starting to dig in, so you couldn’t be dragged howling away. 

For a long time, you could only stand there, vision tunneling, mind sluggishly trying to catch up to what your heart already knew. 

Eventually, you realized you were not drawing breath, and choked as you inhaled, the air thick with the scent of tobacco and black tea. Ghost, when you glanced around, was not there, but he had been. A cup of coffee was at the edge of your desk, steaming, still hot.

Because you still preferred coffee in the morning, despite having developed a taste for tea, and he knew that. He seemed to know everything about you.

It made you want to cry, but you crossed your office to your desk instead and sat. 

Delicately you slit the letter open along its seam, and read what you’d already known would be within. 

Home. 

Only the shape of home had long ago shifted.

Home was here. 

Home was the base and your softly lit office; it was your flat that you’d worked hard to make your own; it was tea with your coworkers and baking with your neighbor. 

Home was—

Home was—

It would be better for everyone if you went home, but the notion of leaving behind the little life you created so painstakingly over the last year tied your stomach in knots. You liked your apartment and the base and your neighbors. You liked your coworkers and hot cups of tea on rainy afternoons in chilly offices. You liked Soap and Kyle and Price. 

And Simon—

You liked having him in your life, in whatever way he let himself be. You liked when he visited you. You liked being close to someone, even if it wasn’t exactly in the way you wanted. You liked the quiet surety of your routine with him, even if it was unfair to both of you for you to be comforted by it. 

Your chest ached; your throat closed.  

It would be better for you to go. 

You did not want to go. 

You carefully pushed the letter back inside the envelope and thrust it into a desk drawer. 

It felt more like an execution notice. 

.

.

.

You managed to keep the information to yourself for two days. 

The tender bruise it left on you only seemed to deepen, that well in your chest that was meant to bring you comfort only serving to pinch. 

You wondered, again and again, if something had gone wrong. If you were not properly bonded, if Ghost had frayed the bond beyond repair like a dog chewing through its leash, if, perhaps, you had done something wrong. Maybe your disbelief has sown rot into your soul, an infected tether that poisoned both of you. 

It was raining again, a chill passing beneath the frame of your window, the lights dim and low. The last of your coworkers had long gone home and night had long ago fallen. 

You were curled in your office chair, your blanket and Simon’s tucked around your shoulders, when a gentle knock caught your attention. 

When you glanced up and found Ghost in your office doorway, you smiled, you forgot for a moment about that letter in your desk and everything it meant. 

“Ghost,” you greeted, unfolding your legs, blankets sloughing off your shoulders and into your lap. “Hey.” 

“Bird.” 

“It’s late.” 

“Is,” he agreed with a nod. 

He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him and the knowledge that you would be leaving this—him—soon clamped around you, seized something in your chest and squeezed. Fear and loss welled like twin heartaches, pooled in that hollow beneath your ribs that should only know warmth. 

He paused for only a moment before he rounded your desk, cupped your face between his ungloved palms and tilted your head up. He didn’t say anything, gaze trailing slowly over your features. 

Your chest tightened with the examination—bright, painful hope. To be the focus of your soulmate’s attention was like being buoyed, like sitting in the sun. It made you feel deeply settled. It was nectar sweet and confusing. You wanted to kiss him and felt as though you should ask for nothing and receive even less. 

And guilt. 

You felt guilty for not telling him as soon as the papers were handed to you. 

You expected the contact to be brief, but when he pushed his forehead against yours, he left it there for a long moment. 

He didn’t usually and it gave you pause. His eyes were closed when you opened yours again. You felt as though he were asking for something but you couldn’t understand the question. Exhaustion curled off him in waves. 

“Are you okay?” His eyes flickered open, confusion swirling in when he found you already looking at him. 

He tilted back and didn’t answer.

“You look tired,” you said carefully. “More tired than usual, anyway.” 

“What are you still doin’ ‘ere?” 

“Waiting for you to come make us a tea.” 

He made a soft huffing sound that you took to be a laugh. “Aye?”

“Mm.”  

He made a discontent noise and pulled away entirely. “Shite liar for someone who works in the shadows.” 

You smiled. “You just know me too well.” 

“Alright?” 

A heavy hand closed around your throat and you glanced away. “Yeah.” 

When he dropped into his usual chair, he tilted his head. You could read the words in his eyes before he said them. “Want to try that again?”

“I would actually like a cup of tea,” you said. 

“I’ll make you a cuppa if you tell me.”

You smiled, “Negotiating now?” 

“Always seem to be.”  

You frowned, not sure what he meant by that as you let your head fall back, wondering if you could put off telling him awhile longer. But Ghost’s suspicion was raised now. He looked relaxed, arms crossed over his chest, legs spread wide. His chin was tipped down, brows knitted together. You knew he was ready to go home, by the simple mask he was wearing and the dark hoodie he was swaddled in.

You thought of pushing the hood back, tugging the mask off, raking your nails through his hair as you had that day in the guy, and banished the image with a shake of your head. 

You fidgeted, plucked at the edge of your sweater with nervous fingers. He wouldn’t care, you thought, and you weren’t sure what would be worse: apathy or relief.

Simon said your name slowly, a dangerous warning hidden somewhere in the back of his throat. 

The sound seemed to take up space in your chest. 

He watched you, waiting for you to spit it out, shoulders stiffening, brows an unyielding, lowered line. 

You took a deep breath, bravely plucked the letter from its place in your desk drawer, and slid it across the tabletop toward him. 

Simon went very still, staring at the unassuming little envelope. You waited and watched him, watched his eyes and the slope of his unmoving shoulders.

Tension bled into the air so thickly you felt as though you might choke on it. You clenched your jaw so tight that pain lanced down your neck and into the top of your spine.  

Minutes passed and he didn’t so much as twitch. You weren’t sure he was breathing.

“Simon?” You said quietly, gently, as you could. “You okay?” 

He blinked, seemed to come back into himself, gaze locking onto yours as he reached for the letter with large, ungloved hands. His eyes only slid away from yours again when he pulled the letter out of its sleeve and glanced down to read it. 

“That’s all right,” he said after a moment, his voice even. 

Your belly lurched. So apathy it was, unmoved by the prospect of you leaving. 

“I know,” you said quietly. Your voice cracked under the pressure in your throat, as you willed yourself not to cry. “Nothing to make a big deal about. Just thought you should know—”

He shook his head and abruptly stood. “Ghost—?” 

He crossed your office in two strides and wrenched open the door before he disappeared through it.  

You frowned, wondering if you were meant to follow him, knowing that you never were. You settled back in your chair, tucking your legs in again, staring at the frost slowly creeping across the window glass, obscuring the fat yellow moon peeking from between parted winter clouds. 

Simon returned, to your surprise, a few minutes later, with a file folder. 

You felt a sense of dread as he dropped it on your desk. 

“What is this, Simon?” 

“I’ve already started it.” 

That did not answer your question. 

You sat forward and pulled it toward you, flipped it open and found a half completed residency application. Your fingers froze before you thumbed through the myriad pages. Forms filled in in chunky block handwriting. 

“What is this?” You asked again, attempting to quell the rising panic in your chest. “What did you do?” 

“The bond has to be officially recognized first,” he said, still not exactly answering your question. 

You swallowed. You’d heard about formal bond recognition and frowned at the last several instructional pages. Required photographic proof of bond pairing, and, an in person demonstration of proof of said bond—

You imagined it for a moment, the two of you before some faceless judge, Simon carving out another part of himself for the sake of you being able to remain when he didn’t even want you. Didn’t want you around, never wanted you to know who he was. And yet he was willing to shackle himself to you, toss the key away. 

Nausea welled, a heavy hand closing around your throat. A date was scratched in red at the bottom of the page for mid-April next year. Distantly, you realized it meant he had been working on this, thinking about it, for much longer than you had. It was. . .sweet. 

It should be sweet. 

You were suddenly aware of how much you did not know about him as you read through the pages. His birthday. His last name. If asked to fill out his half of the forms, you would not be able to. But it was all there in his own hand writing, information freely given for you when he had only given up his name by accident. He was giving up everything he kept close to the chest, that he kept from everyone. 

But your horror and revulsion won out when you turned the next page and found a scan of his military ID. His naked face stared blankly, uncomfortably out at you. 

What it all meant crashed down on you with the force of a toppled building. You saw yourself demonstrating the bond again. Simon unmasked, a wolf without its teeth, because you knew he would never let you be the one to prove the bond. He would stand there and carve himself up, wrench out a bone and lie it down as proof. 

Years of wishing you could protect the soulmate you didn’t know from further harm curled fingers through the bars of your ribs, prying loose that desperation. 

Now you could. 

His name, his face, his privacy, his sense of safety. 

You slammed the folder closed and shoved it away. “No,” you said, horrified. “No. Absolutely not.” 

His brows softened when you glanced up at him. His voice was maybe the gentlest you have ever heard. “I would do it, love—”

You made an involuntary, distressed sound. “Jesus Christ, Ghost. No.” 

All this effort was not his choice, and you couldn’t take anymore from him. It was pity and harm rolled into one. It was self flagellation; it was locking a weight around his ankle and jumping into a deep lake. 

You couldn’t keep burdening the people around you, anyway. Simon with the bond he had no interest in and was plagued and bound by, the rest of the 141 being vulnerable for it. 

Price had asked you to take care of him and you could. 

Ghost’s gaze was hard when you met his eyes. “Why not?” 

There was a dangerous edge in his voice, a fissure that said tread carefully. 

“Why would I ever want you to do this?” You fired back. 

Your voice was panicked and louder than you meant it to be. 

He shrunk away, at the same time that his shoulders seemed to widen a few centimeters. 

“I can’t do that to you,” you said, pushing the file back toward him. “I won’t do that to you.” 

“You aren’t going to try to stay.” His voice was flat and far away. 

Something lurched behind your breastbone. You rubbed at the spot but the pain didn’t fade. “I will not let you scar yourself for nothing!” You snapped. 

He was so still, his body a coiled spring. “Nothing.” His voice was hollow.   

You swallowed. “It’s easier this way, Simon,” you said after a long beat of silence. “It’s safer, if I just go.”  

He sat back, like you’d punched him and was struggling for breath. 

You watched the wall come down in his eyes, protective distance, that blank, far away, unreachable look he always used to wear when he first started visiting your office. 

“That’s what you want, yeah?”

You closed your eyes for a moment, and when you opened them again, he was gone, as though he’d never entered your life at all. 

The room seemed to reverberate with the loss of him. A warning in the still, cold air, a tragedy leaching into your lungs. 

You fucked something up, but you weren’t sure what or how. You paced circles around your office until you felt ill. You knew he wouldn’t come back, that you might have broken the fragile peace that existed between you. 

Maybe it was for the best. 

The pain didn’t recede. 

.

.

.

You used to have nightmares. 

Each night you would lie down, close your eyes, and drown for a few hours. Long, looping gray halls, faint outlines of fists knuckled into drywall. You would search, thread your way up and down staircases without end, flinging open doors that led to the same bruised walls.

You could trace the trajectory of Simon’s life through your scars. The child abuse he’d clearly endured, the abrupt way the regular tracery of pain vanished, and then slowly appeared again. In starts and fits, enough for you to know that he had endured and finally escaped, and perhaps had a dangerous job, or lifestyle. You imagined a boxer, an MMA fighter. You imagined a construction worker, a welder, a fire fighter, a soldier.  

For awhile, you were content, the dreams receded like nothing more than a bad memory. Mostly, he seemed to be safe, and that was enough. A new mark would occasionally be added to your skin, but it always seemed incidental, an accident or mishap. That you could handle. 

Then those awful months had come, where each morning there were fresh marks. Your fear was like a fist in your throat. You rarely slept, afraid of what your mind would conjure, afraid of all the ways you could never help. Your soulmate was being tortured, of that you were sure, and you could only watch. 

You would wake up—a plethora of new scars seared into your flesh, and a sense of pain, the impression of pain you should feel, lingering around you like a malignant cloud—and plead with anything, anyone that might be listening to help where you couldn’t. Your throat, chest, and back saw the most damage then. No more defensive scars on your palms, but thin circlets had formed around your wrists. No more bite marks but that awful corded scar had roped its way around your throat. 

The nightmares returned with vengeance clutched in their fists. Bloodier, more violent. 

Now, dreams of perpetual, unending silence. A life lived alone. Those same looping, gray halls filled with doors that you could hear other people behind, just out of reach, all locked. Most times, though, the dreams were more violent than that, blood on concrete, endless replays of dreams past, torture past. 

It filled you with a type of horror you thought long past you, that you thought couldn’t be felt anymore. 

But it was worse, now, knowing it was Simon that had inspired those dreams. It had been bad enough knowing only that it was the abstract concept of someone meant for you on the receiving end. 

You’re sure your dreams were only a whisper of what he experienced. 

The dreams seemed to be arbiters, harbingers of some tragedy, rewritten lines of a play long acted out. 

You missed him. 

Didn’t know how to check on him. 

How to apologize for ever having shown up in his life. 

It made you wish you’d turned down that transfer last year, that you had never gotten the one thing you always wanted. 

Soap, when he appeared in front of you, assessed your sleeplessness with an astute, bluntness you only felt numb to.  

“Ye look like shite.” 

“Thank you for that, John MacTavish,” you said, swerving around him and down the hall toward your office. “Is there something you need?” 

He followed you, situated himself as comfortably as he always did, firmly in Ghost’s chair. 

“You okay, lassie?” 

You clutched at the files as you hovered in the doorway and took a wincing breath. The pain hadn’t gone away. “Yes. Just tired.” 

“Ghost has been tired, too.” 

“It’s a good thing you aren’t a spy, Soap.” 

“Aye, but am not tryin’ to be.” 

You huffed, tightened your hold on the files and tablet. The pressure against your chest helped. “I’m getting transferred home.” You smiled but it felt awkward and false. “Good news.”

He tilted his head. “For who?”

“Simon,” you said easily. “And all of you. I’m a burden the rest of you have to bear,” you attempted to joke. 

Neither of you laughed. 

Johnny was uncharacteristically quiet, the silence like a shroud. 

“And you talked to the Ghost?” He asked after a long moment. 

“Yeah.”

Johnny frowned. “And he’s alrigh’ with tha’?”

You frowned back at him, fidgeted, plucked at the edge of your sweater with nervous fingers. “I can’t ignore orders,” you said simply, though you both knew there was a solution. The one Ghost had already thought of. 

Soap was still watching you, his head tilted to the side. “What d’ye want?” 

A strange choking feel raked up your chest, bound itself over your heart. If you could, you’d slip into Simon’s bloodstream. To be carried there, to belong. You wanted so badly to be wanted, to have somewhere safe. 

You shook your head. “I don’t think it matters what I want.” 

It was unfair, though, that it didn’t. 

That you have never mattered. 

A sudden, intense burst of anger welled up in the back of your throat. “I’m starting to think the whole fucking thing is fool’s gold.” You ground your teeth together, “I think it’s all bullshit meant to give you hope. And nothing else. It never meant anything at all.”

Johnny looked pained. “Ach, bird—”

“No,” you interrupted. “No. I’m sorry. That’s not fair of me. I think I am uniquely fucked up.” 

A burst of warmth made you whirl toward the hall but no one was there. 

.

.

.

Once, Simon, without preamble, before you knew what he was to you, had abruptly asked one afternoon if you’d ever gone through RTI training. 

“Yes. I might not do field work, but I still know too much,” you’d answered and tilted your head curiously to the side. “Why?”

He had not answered, but looked marginally more at ease. 

“Were you?” 

“What?” 

“Tortured?” 

His eyes had flicked over you. “Think you know the answer.” 

You had nodded.

“They say to compartmentalize,” you said, curious. “That you buy time instead of trying to avoid talking. But I was never good with pain. What did you think of?”

In an odd bout of truth sharing he had said, “Dead now, what I thought of.” He settled into his chair more firmly. “Don’t think of anything you care to lose.” 

And that had been that. 

.

.

.

Simon didn’t say goodbye.

You weren’t exactly speaking, anyway. 

Silence had unspooled between you and him, thick and cloying, a rope that wrapped tighter around his throat with each coil. 

Ghost still checked on you, watched from the shadows as you began moving through preparations to leave your post. Cases handed off to other intel officers, your office slowly depleted of the things that made it yours. 

The potted plants in their terracotta shells disappeared and reappeared in other offices—in the break room, on a filing cabinet in the hall. The bug lamp vanished and so did your blanket and the lavender headphones, the stack of books in the corner. Your scent faded, that oakmoss and lavender that permeated the air seemed to falter more with each passing day. 

When he peered into your office, a wraith at the edge of your life once again, you worked in total silent stillness in the cold room. You had not touched his blanket, slung over the back of the chair as it always was. 

Things were moving too fast, and he was wasting time. You would be gone by the end of the year; it was already the middle of December. He knew, when he looked in on you before they left, that it would be the last time. He would return to the base and your office would be empty, bereft. 

Soap was staring at him from across the transport plane, his brows drawn down, fists curled loosely around the straps of his vest. His sergeant looked angry. 

The air was cold. 

Simon’s skin ached. That bloody pain was under his ribs again.  

He couldn’t stop thinking of your blanket. Why would you remove it first when you needed it? You were always cold, always sun seeking. Your blanket abandoned, his hoodie you wouldn’t wear. It was like you were abandoning comfort. 

“The lass seemed—”

“That’ll do, Sergeant,” Ghost cut Soap off quietly, a warning in his voice. If Gaz and Price were listening, they didn’t show it, huddled over a tablet together at the far end of the hull. 

Soap glanced away. “Was cryin’ before we left.” 

Ghost jerked his gaze back up. 

“Enough,” he snarled, and then felt exhaustion tug his anger back down. 

He closed his eyes and leaned back, letting the heaviness of his gear fall against his body, crushing even as his spine loosened.

It was enough. 

He didn’t need to be reminded of your misery, or your rejection. 

Domestic conflict didn’t suit him. He was afraid of it, had only ever watched it end with a bruised cheek, tears, a voice like knives. He already swore that he would never be that kind of man, that he wouldn’t become his father. 

Conflict that couldn’t be swiftly ended with a gun or a blade was out of his bloody purview. 

You deserved better, and that truth had never been more apparent or that you knew it too. 

Why would I ever want you to do this?

Fair enough question.

Mapping his own fear wasn't easy. It didn’t come naturally. 

He wanted nothing more than to scoop it out with a rusty spoon, put it on offer to you. 

But you didn’t want that, and he’d known that all along. 

The plane hummed and shook like it was in the fist of a giant, shuttling them through the sky, an overgrown child with a toy. 

“Aye,” Soap said, an unusual snap in his voice. “Maybe you were right, LT.”

Ghost opened his eyes. 

It was bait. 

They both knew it. 

Ghost asked anyway, his voice low and dark. “Usually am. Care to tell me what about this time?” 

“Maybe she deserves better.” 

.

.

.

Task Force 141 was deployed on an emergency op. They left three days ago, chasing some nightmare that they had dealt with before. Intel that you had pooled and passed off to Laswell without too much thought about it, turned out to be something they’d long been searching for. 

Price checked in with you. Kyle and Soap said goodbye. 

Ghost disappeared without a word. 

You caught a glimpse of his shadow disappearing down the administration wing’s hall before they had gone, warmth fading around you, and knew he had been outside your office. His involuntary monitoring only served to make your chest ache.

You knew that you weren’t likely to see any of them again. Your apartment was a sea of boxes; your office was bereft. It was unclear how long the op would last. 

You weren’t likely to see Ghost again, anyway, who had become as good as his namesake over the past few weeks. It was terrible, the way you waited and hoped that he would come back to you, just so you could say goodbye. He was impossible to hunt down when he did not want to be found. 

As it stood, you were alone, your office was empty for all but the equipment you were given on your first day and Simon’s blanket. You weren’t sure what to do with it. It wasn’t yours but leaving it behind to be tossed in with the trash or thrown in storage somewhere to rot, festering alone, eaten by moths, seemed wrong.  

Still, you had left it over the back of his chair. Maybe he would see it when he returned and finally take it with him. 

You did, however, keep the hoodie he had left in your apartment. No one had to know that you slept in it, felt comforted just by touching something that was his. 

Were you especially pathetic, or was that something all bonded soulmates felt? You couldn’t imagine Simon feeling that way about something of yours. It was hard to imagine him being comforted by anything besides a gun, a knife, his own violent hands.  

Maybe if you weren’t so upset, maybe if things had gone differently, you would have noticed you were being followed long before it was too late to do anything about it. 

You were walking from your car to your apartment, gym and work bags slung over your shoulder, sweat still drying between your shoulder blades when the unease settled around you. You felt watched, not in the way that you had become accustomed to. 

The back of your neck prickled, some long buried sense warning you that danger was near. When you glanced over your shoulder, the street was empty and blue in the waning winter light, the barest fanning of snow shimmering, fans of yellow puddled down the sidewalk behind you. 

But you could hear footsteps.

You didn’t change your pace, slipping your hand into the front pocket of Simon's hoodie instead, feeling the comforting weight of the switchblade gifted to you all those months ago. Cold, solid metal. 

It felt a bit like safety, wrapped in Ghost's fading scent, the knife he'd given you in your palm.

All those nights you stayed late on the base, Simon waiting patiently for you to leave, eyes closed, arms crossed before he walked you to your car flicked through your mind. 

The irony struck you now, of all those careful wanderings to your car, no one had ever been there along this route. The path from your car to your front door was barren, the moment of your day that you were most alone. 

When you glanced behind you again, still no one was there.  

You told yourself it was nothing, though every instinct was telling you that wasn’t true. Cold bled between your shoulders, snaked down your spine in a warning drip. 

The footsteps faded but the watched feeling didn’t. 

Once inside you locked the door behind you and made a beeline for your bed side table drawer where you’d stored Simon’s half completed residency application. You started to shred it with your hands before you realized that would not be enough. 

A thud on the landing outside made you jump, confirmed your worst thoughts. You were on your way out, all the case files and hard drives you had been trusted with handed back over to Laswell, debriefed a million and one times. There was only one thing someone could be looking for. 

You calmly carried the documents to your kitchen and threw them in the largest pot you had. It only took a moment for it all to go up in flame after you dropped a lit match in, suffocating his name and yours, the edges of the copy of his military ID going at the corners and then swallowing his face. 

You wanted to dig your hands into it, scoop the ash into your mouth, just to keep it all safe. 

For half a moment, as smoke curled around your kitchen, you felt stupid. It was probably nothing and you’d just erased the only memory of your soulmate’s face you had been allowed. 

Then, the front door exploded inward.

You were slammed into the counter, scattered remnants of the meager combat training you had received flicking through your head. 

But your body was faster than your brain, you wriggled loose and stabbed upward with the blade suddenly in your hand. 

You both seemed surprised when you made contact, slicing a long stripe along his cheek up to the corner of his eye. The point of your knife sunk into his eye, and when you ripped it back, blood sprayed across your ceiling. 

You had been drilled not to linger though, yanking back when he released your elbow, screaming and clutching his face. 

You dodged two more men whose fingers grazed you but didn’t catch. They seemed more surprised than you were that you avoided it, that maybe Ghost had been telling the truth when he said you were unreasonably fast. 

You flung your knife at the one in the foyer, and watched it sink to the hilt into his throat. 

You didn’t pause, flew down the steps to the road and wrenched down a black street and then a tiny alley that you hoped you could lose them in, that you could get lost in. The irritated crash of voices followed you as you zigzagged through the streets of the town that had become your home, and now had turned into a maze. 

Distantly, you realized they were speaking in Russian, footsteps pounding against the pavement behind you. The wind was bitterly cold, snow burning down around you. 

Ghost’s words fanned across your mind, you just had to be fast enough to run away, to hide, that was all. You held onto his voice, the memory of him guiding you.

All you had to do was run away. 

But you turned down another street and found the narrow close ended in a brick wall that you were not tall enough to scale. 

This time when you were pushed forward, your temple connected with brick, stars bloomed across your vision. Your arms were pinned immediately to your sides. 

You threw your head back, skull connecting with a crack against someone’s nose. 

“You fucking bitch—” 

Thick fingers against the back of your neck, slamming you forward into the brick again. This time nausea crawled into your throat along with pain and a thin trickle of blood, stars blooming across your vision. 

“Easy, easy! Nothing that will scar. Not yet.” 

You were shoved harder against the wall, an uncomfortable, heavy weight bowing your spine, but your captor was careful not to let your face rasp against the brick again. 

Blood licked warmly into the corner of your mouth, dripping lovingly into your mouth. A nerve throbbed behind your eye. You grunted, air squeezed out of your lungs when the man behind you leaned harder on you. “Careful, little rabbit,” he said. 

Footsteps sounded behind the pair holding you captive, slow and measured, a brutal, unhurried pace that eventually stopped to your left. 

“I don’t have to wonder what you were burning, but I think I can guess,” he said by way of introduction. “Let’s see her face.” 

The hand on the back of your neck cupped your jaw instead, yanked your face around so violently you felt it in your neck. 

A man’s face swims into your peripheral vision. Dark, sharply intelligent eyes met yours. Predatory, like looking into the teeth of a fox. You had seen his face before. And if he was here, the op the 141 was currently on was a decoy.  

Fear swam into your gut, adrenaline sweeping down your spine. 

“Ah,” he said, reaching out to stroke the back of his pointer finger down your cheek. “You must belong to Ghost,” he said. He drew a blade slowly from his trouser pocket. It sung as he flipped it open and held it to your throat, drawing it shallowly over your flesh. “No one else has so many scars.” 

You shivered and the blade bit deeper into your skin.

You felt blood pool warmly in the hollow at the base of your neck. “Yes, I think if I had Simon Riley here, you’d match, wouldn’t you?” His eyes flicked over you, watching you closely. 

You didn’t blink, despite how irked you were that he knew Simon’s name. Didn’t acknowledge the implication of your scars. “He won’t come,” you said, voice hoarse. “If that’s what this is.”  

“He will,” he said, withdrawing the knife, wiping it clean on a handkerchief he pulled from his pocket, swiping it neatly clean. “Simon Riley,” he said again, drawing out the syllables of a name you wanted to rip out of the air, stuff in your own mouth. “He tends to have this kind of bad luck with things he cares for. Don’t you agree?” 

You didn’t move, didn’t breathe. The lancing pain in your head was growing and thinking was a failing battle. The pressure on your spine was intense, your lungs crushed beneath the weight of the man holding you in place, a mouse beneath a paw. 

You closed your eyes. “He doesn’t care about me.” 

“That is not how soulmates work.” 

You laughed, a choked horrible sound to your own ears. 

The world tasted like blood. 

Like the copper tang of a penny pressed beneath your tongue. 

You could taste it on your teeth.

“Then you don’t know Ghost very well.” You said. “He doesn’t want me.” If anyone could overcome that instinct, that taboo, it was Ghost. He would not come for you, of that you were sure. It would be easier. “He won’t come. It’s the tactical choice.” 

“I suppose we will see, will we not? We will have fun together, you and I, in the meantime.” 

He disappeared from your view, footsteps disappearing back down the close.

Panic settled hard and fast in your stomach, what you were about to endure whether they killed you eventually or not.

You squirmed as the weight eased off your back, kicked backward desperately. Your sneaker connected with a shin before you were jerked around and slapped. You lunged forward, not sure what you were about to do when a sharp pain bloomed in the side of your throat and the world went dark. 

There was one thing you were certain of, though, as your consciousness faded and your body was hauled through the dark, the thickening snow. 

Makarov was wrong.  

Simon was not coming. 

And you, as always, were alone. 

.

.

.

Ghost couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. 

The base felt eerily silent as he tracked through it, hauling his kit, beelining for your office, the failed op like a warning bell in the back of his mind that he couldn’t ignore.  

It was your intel, Laswell said, that led them there.  

Your office was empty, dark. 

The only personal item left in the room was the blanket you had knitted for him all those months ago, left across the back of the chair he always sat in. 

He pressed gloved fingers against it and a chill curled in his gut. Your office, for so long a comfort, a warmth, a haven, felt barren, vacant. It smelled of dust, and he knew you hadn’t been there in a few days. The scent of your perfume no longer lingered in the air, your presence as faded as if you’d never been there at all. 

It did not help the feeling that something wasn’t right. 

An indescribable, irrational fear gripped him. Like talons hooked around his lungs, pulling them slowly from between his ribs. The pain had returned, settled as neatly behind his breastbone as if it had never left. 

Nausea wound tight in his throat. He pressed a hand against his chest but it didn’t ease. It lingered, seemed to pulse worse than it ever had before. He had heard you and Johnny, once, talking about the pain. There were cases where it had returned, when soulmates were separated against their will, or, if one was in danger, dying, hurt. 

Usually it meant the pair was dying, it was a warning, an easing into the snap of the bond being severed forever. 

Simon dropped his kit, kicked the door shut and yanked up his sleeves, the hem of his shirt, searching fruitlessly for a needle in a fucking haystack. 

It was faint, at first, because it was yours and not his, buried beneath pain and thick scarring and years of not taking care of those scars. 

He watched, for the first time, as a scar that wasn’t his bled into his flesh. 

A deep one, puckering the meat of his forearm in a new and disturbing way. It was not an accident. A message was being writ in your skin for him to see. 

It didn’t hurt, and that was the worst part. The ghost of pain seemed to linger in the air above it, pain he should feel and didn’t, the suggestion of torment like an electric current he desperately wanted to stick his fingers into, wrap around his wrists and yank away from you. 

An involuntary, nearly inaudible sound wrenched out of him.

It wasn’t just one. The more he stared, the more faint, flicking lines he saw, across his arms, his stomach. 

He knew what it meant. 

He didn’t know how to process what he was seeing, or the feeling that accompanied it. 

The uncertainty and fear you’d once described to him, of knowing that his soulmate was hurt but not how, of being helpless to watch, washed over him in a violent wave. 

He took a deep breath. 

Then another. 

Simon was gone. 

Price, he knew, would still be in his office. 

if you made it this far thank you for reading! I'd love to know what you thought!

[mirrormauve]

faultlines

simon 'ghost' riley x f!reader | soulmate!au | 18.8k (oops)

Ghost didn’t want a soulmate, and he was sure, if they existed, that they didn’t want him either.

cw; soulmate!au in which soulmates share scars, references to self-harm, lots of talk about scars, angst, fluff, references to domestic abuse and past violence, references to simon's past, descriptions of pain, military inaccuracies, miscommunication, touch aversion, reallllly slow slowburn, ghost being sort of really bad and weird at affection

Simon didn’t remember how he got every scar on his body. 

The big ones, the important ones, sure. He remembered them all too well, even through the haze of pain and fatigue that often hung thickly around their reception. 

But there were too many to account for. To remember the particulars of each slash and burn and gunshot wound was a losing battle. He’d long since given up on keeping track of them. Little lines on the sides of his fingers, stretchmarks on the backs of his biceps, winged fans of a burn on the side of his thigh, a pale line along the point of his elbow that he might as well have been born with.

There were ones from further back, too. Scars that time and pain had eroded the precision of the memory, but not the feeling. Cigarette burns on his forearms, a necklace of animal teeth on his side, a craggy line across his hip, accompanied by the shadowy memory of hand reaching for him, and not being quick enough to duck out of the way. 

They all meshed together into the hard patchwork of scar and muscle his body had wrought itself into.

Almost none of them could be helped, out of his control, out of his hands.

They were a catalogue of his life, a story traced on his skin.

Stamped, more like. Branded. 

Survived. 

And soulmates shared scars. 

Their hurt was his; his hurt was theirs. Literally or metaphorically, he wasn’t quite sure. Simon had so many, spent so much time in pain, it was impossible to know if any of them didn’t belong to him originally.  

He didn’t like the thought of someone sharing his scars, having felt what he did. Possessive of them and the pain in a strange way. 

It’s ironic, then, that he should be able to find his soulmate more easily than the average unmarred person, and wanted to do nothing of the sort. Simon dismissed the whole thing as drivel a long time ago, anyway. If they did exist, if they weren’t just incredibly rare instances of luck, Simon was sure that he hadn’t been afforded one. 

There was guilt, too, settled somewhere deep inside him, that someone had to endure it alongside him. It was easier to believe he’d been left out of the whole thing. 

Better he was alone. 

The likelihood of finding that person was slim. It almost never happened. Eight or so billion people swanning around the planet would do that. A one in eight billion chance. 

A grand, cosmic joke. The unfairness of it drove some people crazy, drove them to do insane things to increase a probability that couldn’t be altered—to know that person probably existed somewhere and yet know that they would probably never run across them.

A trend of self harm cropped up online every few years, healed over self inflected wounds posted in forums of people seeking their other, fated, half. The presumption being that they were being desperately searched for in turn.  

Idiotic. Determined. Fallibly human.

And taboo. Most saw it as circumventing fate. 

Violently frantic for the thing Ghost had been unwillingly given. A way to find them, or, at least, easily identify them. And he never would. 

But, sometimes, he wondered. 

He tried to picture the imprint of a person somewhere out in the world wearing his wounds, suffering his losses. The thought would circle his brainstem in an unrelenting loop, a bright fish whispering around the perimeter of its bowl before it dissipated in lieu of something more pressing. 

It was always there, though, waiting to be grappled with again. 

He always came up blank. Nothing but a shadow in his mind where a person should be. Fitting, typical.  

It was a cruelty he couldn’t imagine, somehow. Someone being fatefully, inescapably afflicted with him. 

Simon didn’t want a soulmate anyway, and he was sure, if they existed, that they didn’t want him either. 

If there was someone out there, someone wandering around with his scars on their skin, he was certain they hated him already. 

He didn’t particularly believe in fate; life had taught him not to. He believed in himself, his capabilities, planning and contingencies. And Simon didn’t relish the thought of something he couldn’t control, someone holding the other end of his corded, deformed soul, like a leash they could tighten and use to yank him to his knees. Compromised, vulnerable. 

It wouldn’t happen; the margin for discovery was so small it was practically nonexistent. 

He blamed Soap, then, for tempting fate.

Ghost listened to Johnny yammer on, the sound of his voice louder than usual in the rattling dark belly of the transport plane home. The glow of green light, the roar of engines, the jangle of gear. 

It was an irritating, and sometimes endearing, quirk of Johnny’s that he couldn’t stop talking in the post-op cortisol and adrenaline drop, his words a smeared haze of jumbled thoughts spoken aloud for hours afterward.

The notion of a soulmate was at the front of Soap’s mind, not for the first time. He’d always seemed to enjoy the idea of it, and find some comfort in it, particularly after a close call. There was someone waiting for him, somewhere, after all, it couldn’t all come to nothing yet.   

Simon glanced out the window, watched the sea below morph into land. 

A yellow network of light winked below, a sea of reverse stars swimming in the black.

“Lucky that way, Lt,” Johnny declared with finality, finally winding down, sounding exhausted. “Findin’ ‘em will be easier.” 

Ghost glanced over, the first time in nearly an hour that he’d acknowledged the conversation beyond a hum and a nod. “What do you mean?” 

Soap gestured to his scarred chin, then his temple. “Know ‘em straight away, wouldn’t I?”  

Simon’s own thoughts spoken out loud; his hopes to never see his own scars reflected back at him turned on its head. 

Johnny made it sound like a good thing, instead of the nightmare it was. 

No, he thought for the nth time in his life, not that, not for him. 

But he’d always had an extraordinary knack for beating the odds. 

.

.

.

The base was a constant flurry of activity, a relentlessly buzzing hive of people. There were very few places that skirted away from the general chaos of life on a military base, but Simon had catalogued them all—the field behind the barracks when drills were not being run, the concrete service walkways beneath the base, crowded with spiderwebs and dust, the cool, sterile medical wing, and, the orderly administration offices. 

Each place had caveats. 

The service walkways were the most reliably quiet, but Simon hated being underground, hated the claustrophobia of it, like some part of him would always be clawing at black earth, and so usually avoided it. 

Soap had found him smoking behind the barracks once and now regularly joined Simon there. 

The medical wing could be crowded and frenzied, depending on the day. 

The administration offices were practically serene in comparison. Neat file folders, tidy desks, windows that let in the watery, gray English sun. Square offices with their doors propped open, conference rooms bathed in the light of glowing intel reports, data convergences, and map overlays, uniform gray walls and floors. 

The admin wing only occasionally spasmed into restless activity if an emergency op was underway or about to be, and if that happened, Ghost was usually already swept up in it himself, probably already long gone. 

A spare office stuffed away at the end of the hall with the name plate removed technically belonged to him. A mostly unused space he sometimes finished reports in but, more often than not, sat empty. 

He preferred to haunt the corridors, observe the more peaceful, inner workings of the military, breathing in the quiet air for five minutes at a time. It gave his perpetually over taxed nervous system, his forever-in-fight-or-flight-mode body, to relax, if even it was only an increment or two. The lightning was softer, the constant bark of orders and drills, the snap of gunfire, the general loudness of the rest of the place, was muted and far away.

Simon knew of all of the staff and their precuilarities—names, ages, birthdates, minor feuds among each other, immediate family members, previous posts, favorite foods, habits, complaints about the building’s irregular temperatures and the pervasive scent of diesel. It wasn’t information he necessarily collected on purpose. Gleaned over years of half heard conversations, glimpses of photos on desks. They, like the medical staff, didn’t often change, not like the revolving door of soldiers and operators. 

It was a regular, routine, quiet place. 

So it would be difficult for even the most oblivious person not to notice when the familiar order of the place was interrupted. 

Soft, dandelion light flooded the hall from a doorway that had always before been shut tight.

The scent of an unfamiliar perfume lingered in the hall in a feathery streak, oakmoss and lavender. It settled hard in his lungs, made his footsteps slow slightly, caution prickling at the back of his neck. 

The click of ceramic being sat on wood, the soft shuffle of files, tapping of computer keys emanated from within the now open office. The faintest notes of bubblegum pop floated by, at odds with the chill, still air. 

Inside, you were hidden behind two massive computer monitors, the very top of a pair of lilac headphones just visible over the rim. Plants in colorful painted terracotta pots lined the window to your left absorbing what they could of pale winter light, a thick blanket was thrown over the back of a chair in the corner, a jumble of bright, hand crocheted squares. A brass floor lamp with a circular shade sat behind your desk and drooped forward like the antenna of a giant radio, or a bug, casting a delicate halo of light around you like a protective ward. 

There was something. . .lambent that emanated around the room, that had nothing to do with the ridiculous lamp. 

Simon hovered in the doorway, in the shadow of the dim hall, just to get a glimpse of your face. Start a mental file on you, begin his careful catalog. Something to match the color and light to. 

It was a surprise to you both, then, when you glanced up and caught him at it. 

You stood hastily, headphones sliding down your neck when the cord jerked taut, the tinny sound of pop echoing loudly from them until you slammed your fingers down onto the keyboard and silence descended abruptly. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t see you there. Can I help you with something?” 

Simon could only stare at you, a curl of dread snaking its way between his ribs. 

Johnny was right, then, he would know his own scars anywhere. 

He would know his own face anywhere. 

He would, apparently, know you anywhere. 

Your face was a faded mapping of his own, the same scarring traced with a lighter hand. The same crack over your lips, a line drawn across your cheek, a faded check through your brow, the bridge of your nose bisected, the outline of webbed burn scars crosshatched at the edge of your jaw and shoulder. A jagged, thick line crossed your throat. 

Despite his legacy marring your face, you were pretty. Beautiful, even, with curious, cautious eyes, one side of your mouth pulled up into a half grin that tugged at the line across your cheek and somehow didn’t ruin the brightness of it. 

You were watching him watch you with a tentative gaze, brows drawing slowly together the longer he stood there staring at you, breathing around the newly minted cavern under his lungs. 

His eyes met yours again, and as soon as the realization settled in, something clicked violently into place inside his chest, like a missing rib bone had suddenly slotted into the cage around his heart. 

Pain bloomed hot and tight across his chest, so acute he covered his side, expecting to find a knife inexplicably lodged there. He grunted mutely. The discomfort receded as quickly as it had come, leaving behind a vast hollow just beneath his breast bone. Cavernous, lurching, undone. 

The hollow hardened into a solid brick of pain. 

Nausea swept into the back of his throat. 

“Are you okay?” 

He was frozen in the direct line of fire. Your eyes swept over him, fingers curling around a folder on the edge of your desk which you thumbed nervously. You began to lift your other hand, an aborted half movement toward your face that you dropped at the last second. But you didn’t avert your gaze. You looked past the mask, past him, and into his eyes. 

You saw him. 

Simon was not to be seen.

Ghost didn’t get caught, didn’t freeze. 

Didn’t feel like an animal trapped in a cage, pinned and weak and panicked. 

Not anymore. 

He was a ghost, a shadow, a silent—

The silence unspooled, thin and fragile as unraveling lace. 

Your smile widened, a slow, confident thing that stretched across your face crookedly, pulled at your scarred skin as you tilted your head. It was, maybe, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. 

“Sir?”

Amusement threaded your voice; a laugh curled like a sleeping animal in your throat. 

Instead of answering, he faded back into the hall.

As he retreated an uncertain realization prodded at the back of his mind. One wonderful contingency. 

You had not felt the shift, the world turning horribly on its axis, the pain that radiated hot as a wildfire. 

You hadn’t recognized what he was. 

And he was going to keep it that way. 

.

.

.

It felt like there was a hook in his chest, slipped right between his ribs, a constant painful tearing that landed him again and again outside your office door. Like he was a fish on a line, and you held the reel in your fist, totally oblivious to it. 

He didn’t love you, that’s not how the soulmate bond worked. You were tied together, for some reason, though that reason remained to be seen. Resentment was all he felt, a burning desire to chew his leg out of this trap, to grip the line that bound you and run a knife through it. 

Better yet, through you. 

Sever the tie as cleanly as a blade through an artery. 

One sure way to free himself was your death. 

It was unusual, but it happened—headlines of a soulmate killing their pair because they couldn’t tolerate the connection. It was taboo, considering how rare the bond was. The link suffocated them, instead of comforting them. 

Simon understood the urge.

He thought of your office, the way your back was angled half toward the door, how easily he could slip in and slice your throat open. He had seen and done worse, but the thought of you lying in a pool of blood, let alone at his hands, was so abhorrent and wrong that he doubled over as an acute, sharp pain pinched between his ribs, like someone wriggling their fingers between the bars to claw at his insides. 

Which irritated him. Things like that didn’t bother him, not anymore. At the very least, he was better at handling discomfort than this. 

It did start him thinking about someone else doing it, though. Slipping quietly into your office and nudging a knife between your ribs, pressing a silenced pistol against your temple, Ghost left to find your cold corpse. 

It was wrong. 

He could feel your life wrapped around his fingers, tangled in little ribbons around his wrists. A pulsing, glowing, bright thing.  

The resentment doubled because he should not care. He didn’t know you, trust you; your death should mean nothing. You should mean nothing.  

Still, he found himself walking the administration wing again the following day, even though the sun was out and it’d be nice to sit behind the barracks and smoke and listen to Johnny rattle on about something or the other when he inevitably showed up. 

Your door was open again, gold light spilling into the corridor, the low flutter of too loud music in your headphones accompanying it. 

Simon would never admit it to himself, but he also needed to know that he could remain hidden from you. The shock of your eyes finding his still hadn’t left him. It had never happened before—not on an op, not about the base, not out among civilians. He blended in, he remained invisible, but you saw him, sensed him, and he needed to know if that was something he had to adjust to. Planning was survival, and you were an unknown factor he needed a method for handling.  

Simon stepped close to your door, out of the beam of light. 

Your office was bathed in soft, cream light but not from your antenna bug lamp. 

Your back was fully turned toward the door, face tilted into the scarce winter sun streaming in the window as you leaned back in your chair. Your eyes were closed, headphones over your ears as he suspected they were. 

Fuuucking hell. 

Couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, back toward the entry point of the room. 

Your life hung there, trusting, fragile as spun crystal. 

He waited, but you didn’t turn, didn’t seem to know he was there. Something in his shoulders uncoiled, tension slowly replaced with an odd sense of calm. The pain in his chest eased for the first time in twenty-four hours, fading to a tender ache. 

Your lunch, half eaten, laid abandoned on your desk. The blanket that had been on the chair in the corner was swaddled around your shoulders. 

You yawned, eyes still closed. 

He waited for you to sense him, glance up, but you seemed unaware of him. He wouldn’t admit it then, but he half hoped you would. 

Ghost backed away, left you to your peace. 

The weight in his chest intensified again.

He hated you for it. 

He went back the next day. 

And the day after that.

.

.

.

Anchor might be a better descriptor. 

Hook was too violent.

Simon knew what it felt like to have a hook between his ribs, and this feeling was not that. 

He was satisfied, after weeks of observation as late winter turned to a wet spring, that you did not have a preternatural sense of his presence. In the process, he learned other things. 

You hated the cold, and your office always seemed to be chillier than you would prefer, blanket perpetually tucked around your shoulders. He watched you fiddle with the radiator one morning, bottom lip caught between your teeth, sigh, and resign yourself to it. He waited for you to complain to your coworkers like everyone else did, to call maintenance to fix it, but you didn’t. 

You liked to sit in the sun, however you could, squinting against the glare of it against your computer screens just to have it on your skin. 

You hunched over your desk, and clearly had pain in your neck and back because of it. 

You often stayed later on base than many of the staff and walked out of the building alone late at night. 

You didn’t drink tea, but politely accepted the tea several different coworkers made for you with the very good intention of showing you a proper cup. You drank every drop as you chatted with them, even though you clearly detested it. It didn’t show, but Simon could tell. He didn’t like that he could, that it was instinctual and nothing else. 

They were also plying you with shit tea, of course you weren’t going to like it. He watched as one bloke let it steep for a full fifteen minutes and then presented you with what must have been the bitterest lukewarm tea to ever pass through the base. An older secretary took the opposite approach and handed you a cup of barely brewed tea with approximately four tablespoons of sugar in. 

Absolutely bloody foul. 

Horrific crimes committed in your name, and you swallowed them with a smile. 

And you smiled a lot. From the tiniest twitch of your lips when you were alone, to a grin so big he could see all your teeth, that your eyes squinched closed. 

You nearly always had headphones on—wired earbuds dangling from the collar of your shirt as you walked down the hall, or over ear headphones looped around your neck at your desk, usually pop, occasionally 70s rock or alternative spitting from the speakers. 

You talked a lot, and your voice carried. One of those truisms about Americans, you could be heard long before you were seen even if you weren’t being particularly loud. He didn’t need to be close to hear you, and he found himself thinking one afternoon good. It would be easier to keep track of you. 

He liked your voice, anyway, liked your laugh, liked to hear you say English phrases in that accent of yours that made them sound ridiculous. 

You could likely give Soap a run for a world record of useless chatter. Anyone who walked into your office was subject to your stream of consciousness if they lingered long enough. 

Lonely, he might have called it. But you were new, to the base, and to the country. Your only connections were those you were attempting to craft with stuffy intelligence officers who sometimes seemed to regard you as below them. 

He found his thoughts drifting to the sound of your voice once he’d left you for the day, replaying things he’d heard you say in the period of observation he allowed himself, like the tune of a lullaby. It calmed him. 

The resentment in his chest festered like a badly healed wound. You were nothing but a distraction, a thorn stabbed into his side, stealing his focus from nearly everything that was more important. 

That used to be more important. 

Now his every thought was asterisked by you. 

Distracted. 

He didn’t do well with it. 

He didn’t like that he could feel the newly rended hole in his chest corroding and throbbing when he wasn’t near you, suffocating him. He’d felt worse in his life, so he could mostly ignore it. 

Simon decided that the nature of the bond was at least neutral. You were not a threat.  

He was tired, anyway, of constantly thinking about your back to the door, your headphones playing too loudly. 

After you left one evening in mid spring, he moved your desk. 

Simon sat in your dark office for longer than he should have, letting the pain ease out of his chest. 

It was enough to be where you had once been. 

That was as close as he cared to be. 

He fixed the radiator before he closed the door again. 

.

.

. 

He went by Ghost, you learned eventually. 

His was a redacted, blacked out name in the files on your computer, so Ghost seemed less a name than a description. You briefly scanned the ops he had been on. It was a horrifyingly long list, most of them totally classified or excised beyond comprehensibility. And those were only the missions you could see, likely his involvement in many ops had been scrubbed entirely. 

It was clear that he was good at his job, though it left you to wonder what he had been doing in the administration wing of the base, let alone peering into your office like a silent wraith. 

It should have been terrifying to find him looming in your doorway. His massive frame had blotted out the corridor behind him. Mostly in black, a skull mask covering his face. You hadn’t been able to see his eyes in the low lighting. But you had only felt curiosity, apprehension, a delicate wrenching in your gut. 

Something that a different person might liken to butterflies. Absolutely absurd, but nonetheless true. 

Fear, afterward, of course, that you’d missed some kind of order or request. 

It had also been a while since someone stared so openly at you, since you’d felt the urge to duck your head, obscure the scars littered across your skin. You never had before, and you wouldn’t have started then. You wore them proudly. Most bore their soulmate’s scars better than their own, and you were no exception. 

It had become a rarity, really, in recent years that anyone spared you more than a glance. Being surrounded by military personnel who had seen worse, might have had worse on their own skin, meant you didn’t stand out.

When you mentioned the incident to Laswell, worried that some kind of disciplinary report, during your first month at this post no less, was headed your way, she had only shook her head. “That’s just Ghost. He probably didn’t say anything. You get used to it.” 

The base, especially among the operators, was filled with odd personalities with even odder quirks, so you decided not to question it. You had only nodded, and said, “Okay.” 

Laswell had smiled. “You’ll do well here.” 

You suspected you were being watched in the weeks following the incident, though you couldn’t say why at first. The suspicion was confirmed when you arrived one blissfully sunny spring morning to find your office warm and your desk moved. Your other furniture was rearranged neatly around it. You rounded it, dropping your bag as you went, half expecting to find a note. 

There was nothing, and you started to rotate it back, a bit irritated, when you paused and sat. The new angle gave you a clear view of the door and window. The sun hit your face without causing a glare on your screens. The monitors had been lowered ever so slightly so you could easily see over them.

You left your desk in its new position. It was better that way. 

Ghost appeared in your office that afternoon as suddenly as he had left it. 

You sensed that he’d been there for a long time when you finally noticed him in the doorway, that you were only seeing him because he wanted you to.

You smiled and turned away from a report. A welcome reprieve for your strained eyes and hunched back. 

“Hi. Something I can help you with, Lieutenant?” 

This time, he stepped into your office, grasped your offer with both hands. 

The room seemed to shrink and adjust to his size. He was more massive than you remembered, in height and breadth. His eyes didn’t leave yours, a deep blackened honey brown half hidden by skull. Neither of you looked away.

“Have I passed?” 

His head tilted ever so slightly. When he spoke his voice was like an iron rod shoved down your spine. Deep and jagged and rough, it settled between your ribs, in the pit of your stomach. “Passed?” 

“Your test?” 

“Think I’m testin’ you?” 

“You moved my desk.” 

He didn’t answer for a long moment, still not dropping your gaze. The silence lasted so long you began to think he wouldn’t answer at all. “Practically had your back to the door,” he said eventually, as though that explained it. 

It conjured the image of Ghost creeping around the base in the dead of night to adjust offices into more tactical configurations and you had to bite the inside of your cheek to keep the giggle in your throat from bubbling out.   

You nodded and then shrugged instead. “I guess I don’t think about things like that.” 

“Should.”

“Maybe.” 

“Especially in the field.” 

“I don’t do field work.” 

He nodded slowly and finally took his eyes off yours, glancing around the room again. When his lashes caught the light, you saw that they were a light blond. 

“Welcome to sit,” you offered, taking up a pen and a pad of yellow paper. “Ghost.”  

He didn’t sit, but he didn't leave either. When he remained mute and motionless, you looked back at your report and continued working, resigned to the new addition to your office. 

Minutes passed in silence, with only the scratch of your pencil over paper, the tapping of computer keys, for company. 

All at once, the room sighed, and when you looked up, he was gone. 

Ghost was strange, slightly off putting. 

You liked him.

Maybe, you thought, he’d come back. 

.

.

.

Ghost visited regularly after that. 

Sometimes he simply stood at the door and watched you work. 

His boots were so silent that you often didn’t know he was there until he was leaving again. It felt as though he often melted into nothing but shadow, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable feeling. 

You didn’t feel watched, so much as observed, minded.

But the lengthy silences began to wear thin, so you started talking to him.  

Talked at him, more like, about anything that came to mind. 

The shit weather and how cold you always were. Recounted phone calls with your sister and noted things you’d seen on your commute. You told him of your slightly creepy neighbor who would follow you occasionally down high street when you did your weekly shopping trip, but that was probably harmless.

You were sure he wasn’t actually listening, his eyes focused somewhere in the middle distance as he stood statuesque in the middle of your office.  

The visits were occasionally broken up by operations that could last days or weeks, once up to a month. Time passed either way, but you found it passed more easily when you could reliably count on a visit from Ghost. Hearing his voice in staticky communications wasn’t the same. A blinking green dot on a map that you tracked just a little more closely than the others. 

Ghost sat down for the first time toward the middle of a particularly miserable and cold spring afternoon. He sighed as he did, the only sign of any feeling. Almost a resignation in the soft cut of it. 

You didn’t comment on it, just chatted as you usually did, buoyed in a way that you could not explain. 

He started to bring you coffee, done up to your preference, always when you were hitting the midday lag. 

In exchange, you left offerings at the edge of your desk. Baked goods, protein bars, chips, sweets— which disappeared when you looked away from him. You noted what went first so you could invest in it. Chocolate went more frequently. 

But Ghost, whether he was listening or not, made you feel less alone. The ache of loneliness in your heart eased, and maybe that said more about you than him. 

If he was around, he usually slipped in while you ate lunch. He didn’t eat with you, the mask never moved, but you began cooking extra in the evenings, leaving tupperware containers at the edge of your desk in addition to brownies wrapped in waxpaper, chocolate chip cookies sprinkled with sea salt. “Don’t have to,” he always said. 

“Want to,” you answered, and then received the empty, clean container from the day before as though it were an offering.

Your office always smelled like tobacco and tea for hours after he left, a comforting combination that you began to wish you could bottle. 

He didn’t appear one day at his usual allotted, precise time. You figured something came up or he finally got tired of you, but he turned up instead late in the afternoon.  

“Sorry,” he said as he sat, without explanation, a paper cup of coffee steaming at the edge of your desk like it appeared there by his will alone.  

“Oh,” you answered. “You didn’t have to—“

“Did,” he said simply. “‘ave you eaten?”

“Yep. Got something for you, too.” 

He settled back. “Neighbor still botherin’ you?” 

You blinked in surprise, the slightly creepy neighbor had not spoken to you in a few days. “Oh. . .I—You were listening.”

He tilted his head. “‘Course I was, bird.” He leveled you with a look. “So?”

“Not recently. Not in a couple days.”

“Good. Let us know if he does, yeah?”

Then he sat back and waited, shoulders relaxed as though attending a sermon, but content with silence anyway. 

When you glanced up from a report a while later, for clarification on a mission detail that he happened to be on, his eyes were closed. 

It felt akin to having a wolf willingly curl up in your lap, blood wet maw dripping peacefully onto the floor.

.

.

.

When you turned from watering your plants one innocuous spring day, you found Ghost entering your office with a different mask on. A soft black balaclava. You could see his eyes and brows, the bridge of his nose and the thin, bruised skin beneath his eyes.

You froze and then smiled at him, tried hard not to stare. His eyes were always pretty but now you felt you could actually see him. Blond brows and lashes, his irises were lighter, amber honey in the yellow light of your bug lamp, as Ghost had called it one afternoon without a shred of humor. 

It was raining, and the dim light made the small space cozier than usual. The patchwork blanket was around your shoulders, a ward against the chill bleeding beneath the window. 

In his usual chair, you’d laid a gift. 

He pointed to the blanket you had carefully folded there earlier. 

“It’s for you. I knitted it.” 

He froze, hand half extended toward it. You swept past him around your desk again, inundated with the scent of black tea and cigarettes as you went. His was alternating black and dark blue squares to your brightly colored purple and teal. “Just in case you were cold. You’re always so buttoned up after all,” you joked. “And you fixed my radiator this winter. So it’s a thank you, too.”

Ghost only moved it to the back of the chair. You hadn’t expected him to take it, really, but his gloved fingers lingered on it for a moment, rubbing the fabric gently. “How d’you know it was me that fixed it?” 

“Who else would have?” 

He grunted. “You knit?” 

“When I can’t sleep,” you answered. “Keeps my hands and brain busy.”

His brows furrowed, and seeing even that small movement felt like seeing him naked, like seeing something he didn’t want you to. You averted your eyes, heat crawling up your neck. 

“Can’t sleep?” His fingers slid off the blanket and he sat.

You shrugged. “Must seem silly to you. You see it with your own eyes. But some of the reports. . . stick with me.” 

Ghost considered this for a long moment. “It’s not.” 

“What?” 

“Silly.” 

The way he grunted the word made you laugh. 

“Could I ask you something, Ghost?”

“Reckon you just did.” 

You rolled your eyes. “Am I allotted only one question?” 

“Just two.” 

It was. . . funny. You giggled and shrugged. “Guess I’m shit out of luck.” 

“And out of questions.”

You laughed again. 

He surprised you by laughing too. If a low, graveled grunt counted as a laugh. You certainly counted it, a cache of swollen pride bubbling in your stomach. “Go on, then.” 

“Where are you from?” 

The levity vanished. His brows lowered. “Why?” 

You shrugged. “Just curious. I’m not good with all the accents yet. Just can’t place you.” 

He relaxed back into the chair again, but didn't answer. 

The pinch of his brows, the tense line of his jaw, remained, his expression considering as he tilted his head back. 

“Why do you come here?” You asked instead. 

This question he answered readily. “It’s quiet.” 

“That’s one way to tell me to shut up.” 

He blinked and lowered his chin to meet your eyes. “Not the kind of noise I mean.” 

You decided not to take offense at being called noise. 

You snorted and reached beneath your desk, taking some pride in the fact that Ghost did not tense anymore than usual when you did, withdrawing your lunch. 

“Hungry?” You asked.  

“Tryin’ to see my face?” 

You smiled. “Never,” you answered, “Not sure I want to see what you’re hiding under there.” 

The rain tapped against the window as you popped the thermal lid off.  

“Why are you here?” He asked as you folded your legs beneath you on the chair and tucked the blanket around them. Ghost rose without asking and twisted the knob of the radiator beneath the window a bit higher.

You waved your fork, indicating the office. “Fairly positive I work here. But perhaps base security is more lax than I thought.” 

He sighed, a long suffering sound. “England, smartarse.” 

You smile and dig your fork into last night’s spaghetti bolognese. The steam caressed your face in a warm puff as you lifted a bite. “I’m on loan to Laswell.” 

“On loan?” He asked as he settled back into the chair, broad shoulders pressed to the wall behind him, against the blanket. It slid over his elbow a little, curled over his forearm. He didn’t move it. 

When you lifted your gaze to his, his stare was piercing, brows lowered, furrowed. You imagined he must be frowning.  

“Temporary replacement for whoever used to be in this office,” you explained. “She needed someone quickly, who she could trust.” 

Ghost folded his arms across his chest, something more tense than usual in the movement. “How long are you on loan for, then?” 

You shrugged, twisted your fork into the noodles. “It’s unclear. So, for now, indefinitely.” You smiled, “Hopefully not through another winter, though, I don’t think I’m cut out for the rain and cold.”

His shoulders eased, but only marginally. If it weren’t for all the hours he’d passed in your office, you weren’t sure you would have caught it at all. 

“From somewhere warm?”

“Warmer than here. Especially in the winter.” 

“Must be nice, that.” 

“Has its perks. But the summer is its own kind of hell.” 

“One you enjoy.” 

“But of course. I like feeling like I’m baking alive.” 

He snorted again.

You ate in silence for a bit. The quiet had become comfortable between you somewhere along the way, silken and gentle. 

When you were scraping the last bit of sauce from the bottom of the container, Ghost said, “Manchester.” 

“Hm?”

“Where I’m from.”

His voice was low; he wasn’t looking at you, eyes trained on the door instead. 

“Manchester,” you repeated, trying to place it on the map of the UK in your mind. “And do you all sound sort of like—“

You were about to say like you have gravel in your mouth but he makes an affected noise, that stiff grunt again. “Are you laughing at me?”

“It’s your fucking accent.”

“My accent?” You asked incredulously. “Have you heard yourself?” 

“Got a thick one, bird.” He imitated your voice. “Manchester.” The sharp rhotic r sound was like a gunshot in his mouth, each letter enunciated to the point of being butchered. 

You scoffed, not bothering to fight your smile. “Takes one to know one, I guess.” 

“Suppose it does.” 

“Fucking Brits,” you said, without any venom. “I can’t do anything right according to you all.” 

He tilted his head, something predatory in it. It made your heart flutter a little. “Who’s tellin’ you you can’t do something?” 

You sighed, long suffering. “My coworkers. Can’t make tea, apparently. I don’t care for it and everyone keeps insisting I just make it wrong.”

“They make it wrong too.” 

You groaned. “Not you too.” 

Ghost rose to take his leave as you snapped the lid back onto the now empty container. 

“I’ll show you how to make a proper cup sometime.” 

You paused, a warm surprise sweeping into your chest, and decided not to linger on this solitary acknowledgement that Ghost would return to your office. “Big fan?” 

“I love tea.” 

It made you laugh. “Of course, English afterall.” 

He nodded, just once, and started toward the door. “Ghost?” You called. 

Ghost turned and you slid another tupperware container across your desk. “For you.” 

He stared at it, for a moment too long, as he always did, like he was telling himself to leave it. “Didn’t have to.” 

“I know.” You nodded at it again and then then ducked behind your computer screens. “I always want to.” 

Ghost moved so silently that you didn’t hear or see him take it, but when you looked up again he and the container at the edge of your desk were gone. 

.

.

.

It should be a good thing. 

You would be gone soon enough, none the wiser of who Ghost was. Of what you were to each other. 

But it didn’t sit well. It was a new thing to nag at the back of his mind, finding your office empty, you becoming a ghost in your own right. He hated the ache in his chest, the thought of you so far away. He could only assume you’d be stationed back in the US.

The thought festered, burrowed. 

“Laswell.”

She jumped, hand going beneath her desk before she spotted Ghost in the corner of  her office. She sighed and closed her eyes, fingertips rubbing her eyes instead. 

“Ghost,” she sighed, “Don’t do that.” 

Simon said your name, and Laswell lowered her hands to look at him. “How long has she got?” 

“What do you mean?”

“Said she’s on loan. I want to know how long.”

Laswell considered him; Ghost waited. He wouldn’t explain himself, and Laswell knew that. 

“Maybe as long as a year.” She tilted back in her chair and asked anyway. “Why?” 

Ghost didn’t answer, slipping back out of her office and down the hall. 

You were still in your office, hunched over the desk, lavender headphones pulled down around your neck. He watched you for a long moment, eyes tracing over scars that belonged to him. It was jarring each time to see pain he experienced threaded over your skin. It made him feel exposed by proxy.

As he watched, you lifted a hand and rubbed your neck with a wince, fingers lingering on the long scar slashed at the base of your throat. The grimace faded from your face and your expression receded into the impassive, blank, focused slate it always settled into as you continued working. 

When he sat down in your office, you just shot him a tired smile and continued working. 

He walked you to your car around midnight. 

“Tell us if you’re here this late again,” he said, not looking at you. 

“Ghost,” you said. “It’s almost enough to make me think you like me.” 

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he answered. 

You just laughed. 

.

.

.

“Tea?” 

You jumped, just as Laswell had, only your hand didn’t go beneath the desk. Nothing there to reach for, he knew, your vulnerability like a beacon, or a stain. 

It would need remedied. 

But first, this. 

It was the sixth time in two weeks that you were at your desk well past when everyone else had gone home.  

“Jesus Christ.” 

“Unfortunately not.” 

You laughed; his shoulders eased. “Ghost,” you said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” You tilted your head. “I’m starting to think you’re spying on me.” 

“What’re you still doing ‘ere?” 

“What are you doing wandering around our wing after hours?” 

Not a line of questioning he was keen on following. That just being near a place you had been earlier in the day was enough to loosen that fucking tether in his chest. That he was worried incessantly about you being alone at night.

“Offerin’ to make you a tea,” he answered. “Obviously.”  

“Obviously,” you echoed. “Of course.” 

“You’re supposed to tell me when you’re stayin’ late.” 

“Ghost,” you said seriously, lifting your brows, “I’m here late again today.” 

“Hilarious, you are.” 

You giggled again. “Are you really offering to make me tea?” 

He nodded. “C’mon then.”

You smiled and shrugged the blanket off your shoulders. He waited while you locked your computer and stood.

Simon allowed you to lead toward the breakroom where he’d observed the many cups of tea you’d politely swallowed from well meaning coworkers, who left it to steep for too long or too short, added too much sugar and milk, or left it totally plain. 

The overhead lights were too bright, a blue-white glare that made you frown and squint. Your nose scrunched up in distaste. There were circles beneath your eyes, exhausted loops that matched his own.  

“So,” you prompted, leaning against the counter, “How does one make a proper cuppa?”

“Not bad,” he said of your accent, lifting the electric kettle from the hook to fill with water. “Little posh.” 

“I’ve been practicing.”

He grunted, and put the kettle on, before rooting through the cabinet above the sink for tea bags. A grim selection awaited him, but he’d make due with what was available.

“Ah, so you boil the water. I was under the impression you could just stick it all in the microwave.” 

He involuntarily made a pained sound. “Fucking hell,” he muttered, “That your usual method?” 

You bit the inside of your cheek, poorly concealing a laugh. “I scandalized a data analyst with that joke.” You cup your chin in your hand, peer up at him from beneath a thick fringe of lashes. “I do know how to boil water, I’ll have you know.”

“Got a head start then.” 

You laughed again, shoulders shaking. Simon watched the corner of your mouth curl, and it eased something in his chest. You were painfully close, the woodsy, floral scent of your perfume curled in the air. Your elbow brushed his. He didn’t know how you could be unaware of the bond at that moment, when being that close to you felt like being lit on fire. He wanted to reach for you so badly that he had to clench his fist closed to avoid it. 

If someone were to ask him to move away from you right then, it would end badly. Bloody. 

The thin, needle sharp connection ached, begged. 

Simon ignored it.  

When you glanced up, he looked away. He could feel your eyes on his face, and didn’t mind the scrutiny in it. He didn’t mind you watching him, and wondered what you saw. 

“I like being able to see your eyes,” you said, just as the kettle clicked off. 

He met your gaze, disarmed by the declaration. Your features had softened, melted into a dangerous fondness. “Why?” 

“You have pretty eyes,” you shrugged. “And it’s hard to see you with the other mask.” You shifted, watching him lift the kettle, pour the hot water into a mug and over the teabag he’d dropped into it. 

“You can tell me to fuck off, if you want,” you began carefully, fingertips drumming nervously against the counter. “Why do you wear it?” 

Simon watched the teabag bob on the surface of the water, thin amber trails unfurling, coloring the water slowly brown. “Five minutes,” he nodded at the tea. “Don’t touch it. None of that dunking shite.” 

“Yes, sir,” you agreed. “Five minutes, no touching.” 

He huffed, and your smile widened. You bumped your shoulder against his. The contact only lasted a second or two, but the relief it provided was so intense that he nearly choked on it. 

The pain, softened by your proximity, returned immediately, crept down into the soft ligaments between his bones. He felt the loss in the roots of his teeth, the middle of his chest; it was like losing his breath in a different way, being suckerpunched in the solar plexus, knocked on his ass.

“To hide my face.” 

“Your identity, you mean.” 

“My identity,” he agreed.

“Why?” 

He released a long, slow breath, and thought about telling you to piss off, maybe even just to see how you’d take it. Were you as good as your word? Would you let the subject drop? 

Instead, he said, “There are a lot of bad people in the world, bird.” 

You pursed your lips, fingers toying with the teabag string, flicking the tab at the end with your nail. There was another question swimming in your eyes, but you let it go unasked, dropping your eyes from his instead. 

“You’ve seen more of them than most,” you said. “I would guess.” 

“Part of the job.” 

Your mouth curled a little, lashes fluttering against your cheek. “Hm. But y’know something? I think I’d know you anywhere,” you said, without a hint of shame or irony. “It’s all in your eyes.” 

Before Simon could respond, you hid a yawn in your sleeve and rubbed your hand over your face, exhaustion layered in thick rings beneath your eyes. “Even if this is gross,” you indicate the tea, “At least it will keep me awake.” 

“I take offense to that.” 

You laughed again. “Hm. Sorry, Lieutenant.” You leaned in, “It smells so nice, so why does it taste like shit?” 

He rolled his eyes. “I’ll make you a coffee if it’s shit.” 

“You’re kind.” This time when you leaned your shoulder against his, you left it there. The empty soreness like a bruise inside his ribs loosened again. For the first time in a while, he was left with the absence of pain.  

When the tea was done steeping, he did yours with a bit of honey. There was no way you’d take it plain and like it, but he drew the line at milk. Especially the blasphemy that was the military issued powdered milk in a canister that sat on the counter. Abso-fucking-lutely not. 

“There you are,” he said, “Cup of tea.” 

“A proper cuppa,” you tried again. It was a little less posh this time. 

He huffed. “Better all the time.” 

“And I have you to thank.” 

Your face creased as you took the cup between your palms, an unreadable expression flitting across your features. Then your mouth twisted to the side, a sure sign you were attempting to keep some emotion or thought in check. 

Your shoulder was still pressed heavily against his. 

“Thanks, Ghost.” 

“”S just tea.” 

You shook your head and lifted the cup, blowing gently on the surface before you took a tiny sip. He watched your face, watched your throat move as you swallowed, the flickering web of your lashes. A step up, at least, from all the shit tea from your coworkers that make your brows tense in an effort to conceal a grimace. “One good thing has come of this,” you said after a moment of contemplation. 

“What’s tha’?” 

“I know how to make tea for you now.” 

“Like it?” 

“I love it.” 

You briefly tilted your head onto his shoulder, then pulled away entirely. The flood of discomfort was worse than before. His muscles spasmed around it in a violent convulsion. “I mean that really.” 

He breathed out, through it. “I don’t take honey.” 

You studied the contents of the cup, tilting it one way and then the other, like something important laid at the bottom of the porcelain well. 

“Noted.” 

Sure enough, the next day, a hot cup was waiting for him, which he drank as you chatted from behind your computer, decidedly, pointedly, giving him the privacy to do so. 

.

.

.

Things settled into a pleasant rhythm. 

A regimented, regular existence that you had long ago learned to embrace. The base became home more than the tiny apartment you rented and spent only enough time to sleep, bathe, and cook in. 

You timed your days to the ebb and flow of the base, to visits to your office, debriefings and conference rooms, the restless energy of so many people in one place moving. You breathed around absences, the pockets of emptiness that sometimes cropped up. The loneliness that felt like an unfillable pit in your stomach. 

People often saw your scars and thought not to bother. Why would fate have marked you so heavily if you weren’t meant to find your pair? The scars meant nothing, really. They were no more significant than anyone else’s. Your chances of running into your soulmate was no higher than someone who had accrued no scars from their bond. 

You were a stopping off point, a bit of fun, but not someone to invest time and effort into, not when the reminder that someone else might come along and render it all moot was so visible, so literally in their face. To look at you was to be reminded of that bond waiting in the wings, for them and for you, and that you could only ever be temporary. 

It made friendships hard too. Some were jealous, others thought there couldn’t be room for anyone else in your life. You were important to no one.

It had been proven to you time and again, and you weren’t sure what kept you hopeful that someone would one day see past it. So when Sergeant Davies stuck his head in your office one Friday afternoon long after Ghost had departed your office for the day, and asked you out, you found yourself saying yes. 

“Would you like to go out sometime?” He asked, hand rubbing the back of his neck. “Just round the pub for drinks?” 

“Oh,” you said. “I—” 

It had been a long time since anyone took interest in you. You’d only talked to him a few times before, but Davies was handsome in a boyish way and sweet and you liked him well enough, you found yourself hesitating for half a second. To your horror, your mind flashed to Ghost, stomach lurching painfully, a knot of tension fisting itself in your chest. 

You looked at his usual chair, empty now, seeing his large frame sprawled there anyway, thighs spread wide, arms crossed over his chest, eyes steady and focused, locked onto you with an intensity and constancy you still weren’t used to.

Heat bloomed in your lungs, crept up your neck. You glanced away, back at Davies waiting at the door. 

“Yeah,” you answered firmly. “Sure.” 

“Brilliant,” he grinned. “How about tonight?” 

Your belly gave another sour squirm that you ignored; it had just been a long time, that was all. “I’m free.” 

“Brilliant,” he said again. “I’ll text you.” 

“Okay.” 

His grin was crooked and self satisfied as he exited your office. 

So you found yourself walking off the base with Davies later that evening. You found yourself laughing and hopeful in a local pub that you hadn’t gotten the chance to explore yet, busy as you were, the base a tide that tugged you back again and again. Like a magnet, you wanted to be there. 

And all of it came to nothing, the moment Davies saw the extent of the scarring when you took him home. It wasn’t just your face, it was your hands and arms and chest and belly. Your whole body was marked, dogeared for someone else. He looked down at you in your bed, his head framed by your ceiling fan and you saw the moment it clicked. The moment it wouldn’t work. 

“Someone out there is really looking for you,” he said. “You’re lucky.” 

“No more than anyone else,” you countered. “You know that’s not how it works.” 

“I know,” he said, pulling on his shirt. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” you said before he kissed your cheek and retreated. 

Still, you didn’t sleep, just laid on your side, half undressed, staring out at a sky that slowly lightened, stars fading, wondering if perhaps your truest fate was to be lonely for your whole life. 

You didn’t hate your scars, or your soulmate. But sometimes you thought it would be easier if you didn’t have one at all. 

.

.

.

Monday. 

There was a knife in Simon’s pocket. 

Not unusual in and of itself, he carried several at all times, slipped into his sleeves and belt and boot. 

The one in his pocket, though, was for you.

A gift, a contingency, and an offer all wrapped in one. 

The knowledge that it was yours was an uncomfortable weight in his chest. It meant admitting he cared enough to procure it, test it, hand it over. 

It wasn’t quite your typical lunch hour, but Ghost was headed to your office anyway. It was sunny, for once, and he expected to find you taking an early break anyway, leaning back in your chair with your headphones on, absorbing the rare rays. 

And, he wanted to be done with it, to stop tapping his pocket repeatedly, checking the blade was still there, like it might have run away. 

Soap had noticed his fidgeting as they all sat through a briefing on intelligence reports with Laswell that morning. Ghost had forced his hand still, exuded a forced calm, but Johnny’s eyes hadn’t turned away. 

When he arrived at your office, deliberately rustling against the doorjamb so as not to startle you, you glanced up and smiled tightly and his plan vanished. 

Something was wrong. The blinds were closed, your office an unusual sea of gray air. Your shoulders were caved inward protectively, your expression wan and closed. Your smile didn’t reach your eyes, your voice was rough when you said, “Hey, Ghost.”  

Simon took his usual seat, watching you type something, decidedly not looking at him. He watched you, the set of your mouth and eyes. He waited for your chatter to begin but it didn't. 

“All right?” 

“Hm?”

“You’re quiet.” 

“Oh, only one of us is allowed to be quiet?” You joked, but it came out a bit brittle, and worn.

There were, he noticed as he looked at you, circles beneath your eyes. “What ‘appened?” 

You looked up again, and shook your head. “I’m just tired.” 

“Try again.” 

Frustration crept into your features. “Who said I want to tell you?” With that, you ducked behind your monitors.

Simon waited, but you did not reemerge. 

He stood, and rounded your desk. You glanced up then, leaning back when you found him so close. “Jesus, Ghost—” 

“Nice weather.” 

“I can see that.” 

“And you aren’t out there sunnin’ yourself? Something horrible must have happened.” 

Your mouth twisted to the side and you glanced away. “I. . .I’m just being dramatic.”

“C’mon, then.” 

You blinked up at him. “Where are we going?” 

He didn’t answer, but you rose anyway when he tilted his head toward the door. Simon snagged the blanket you’d knitted for him months ago from its place along the back of his chair, finally with a proper purpose, and carried it over his arm. 

“Lunch.” 

You grabbed it and followed him down the hall. Simon shouldered open an external door and held it open for you, the scent of your skin, the warm brush of your body so close to his as you ducked under his arm like a beacon, a light he wanted to follow. 

Carefully, you nudged your shoulder against his as you walked. The familiar sharp, sweet pang whenever you brushed too close together settled in his chest. He wondered if you felt it too, if you felt that sickly flutter in your chest, or if his suspicion that he was holding one end of an untethered bond in his hand was right. 

Just his luck. 

Didn’t matter though. 

He ticked his elbow out a little, and after a moment, you pushed your hand against the inside of his arm. His shoulders loosened; his jaw unclenched. The pain in his chest settled. 

The absence of the ache was intense; he was so used to being in near constant pain. 

“So, what are we doing?” 

“Walking.” 

“I can see that.” 

“Why’re you askin’, then, bird?” 

You huffed but didn’t ask anymore questions as he led you down one concrete pathway. 

The sky was a flawless robin’s egg blue, only a wispy, thin line of cloud on the very distant horizon. The distant shouts of drill instructors snapped in the warm summer air. Your shoulders drooped as you walked, eyes fluttering closed for a few seconds at a time as you tilted your face to the sun, inhaling deeply. 

He led you around the last building in a long line of barracks and brought you to a halt. The only thing beyond was a chainlink fence that marked the edge of the base. A faint breeze coated him in the smell of your skin, settled deep in the well of his lungs. He took a breath, watched your lashes flutter. 

Your thumb stroked a pattern against the inside of his arm, lazy and slow. “You’ve got a soft spot for me, Ghost.” 

He didn’t deny it. 

“What are we doing back here?” 

Ghost pulled away from you with some effort and spread the blanket over the grass. He sat on the concrete steps that led to the back door of the unused barracks.

You sat on the blanket, started to open your lunch and then flopped back in the sun instead. “A usual haunt?” 

“Sometimes.” 

“Secret’s safe with me.” 

“Mind if I smoke?” 

“No.” Then, “I won’t look.”  

He grunted in acknowledgement, rolled the bottom of his mask up, carton of cigarettes and lighter pulled from the depths of a trouser pocket. Simon watched the rise and fall of your chest, tracing the latticework of scars over your face. They looked better on you, he decided. Not as noticeable as his own, faded and light, pencil through wax paper instead of the thick groves of his own. 

They glinted a little in the sun, like the scales of an iridescent fish. 

Your eyes remained peacefully closed, soaking up the sun like a long deprived plant. Sweat beaded along your forehead, and when you pushed up your sleeves, Ghost was reminded that all of you matched all of him.

He recognized a burn mark on your forearm that belonged to him, a cut that wrapped halfway around your wrist. He was pretty sure the burn mark was from a mishandled flare, the wrist scar from a rope that had gotten tangled and burned him. 

Simon wanted to reach down and cup the side of your throat, feel the soft, sun warmed skin beneath his fingers. He wondered if your scars felt the same as his own, rough and grooved. 

Probably not, they were imitations, ungenerous sketchings of his own. 

He’d like to map them all against his own, find out if he bore any of yours. He wouldn’t have noticed something small that you might have collected yourself. A childhood fall, a careless burn while cooking. 

He watched the delicate flex of muscle in your forearms. Your shirt was a little askew, more faded marks left like a tracery of veins on your chest and collarbone and shoulder. It was fucking awful, a wrenching feeling in his chest, to know all that had been inflicted on him, had fallen on you too. 

He wondered about the pain again, imagined you writhing with terror and agony and confusion, every gunshot wound and burn and slash he received an echo inside you. Cigarette burns dotting your arms and wrists when you were just a child, months of pain without end when he was captured and tortured and his life was irrevocably changed. 

Simon wanted to ask, needed to know just how much damage he’d inflicted. But the words stuck in his throat. A fear of knowing, if he asked about the pain, maybe he’d hear other things too, how much you must hate him and didn’t know it was the man in front of you your hate should be directed at.

When he stubbed out his cigarette on the heel of his boot and rolled his mask back down, you blinked into the sun and exhaled, long and slow, and then sat up, leaning back on your palms. 

“What ‘appened?” He asked.

Your mouth twitched into your usual, if a bit more sheepish, smile. “You’re like a dog with a bone, you know that?” 

“Affirmative,” he said. 

You rolled your eyes and set up straight, brushing your palms together before reaching for your lunch. “I brought something for you.” 

“Stalling.” 

“Pushy,” you countered, giggling, rummaging around in your bag. Your smile faded as you pulled free one of the usual containers, what looked like lasagne within. He watched the edge of your mouth curl, the scar slitted along one side pulling at your expression. “I went on a date this weekend.” 

Ice slid down his spine, curled in a viscous circle in his gut. “Bad date?” 

“No,” you said, shaking your head adamantly, staring down at the container in your lap. “No, it went really well.” You glanced up at him and then dug in your bag again, passing another one to him along with a fork. “Until he saw my—” You fidgeted with your sleeve and then yanked it down. The other followed suit. “My marks. My scars.” 

“He’s a prick.” 

“No, he wasn’t,” you shook your head. “It’s happened before. They see the extent of it, and it’s like something biological clicks. I’m off limits.” You sat your food to the side and wrapped your arms around your knees. “Even though I’m no more likely to find mine than anyone else.” 

You looked very small, and alone at that moment. 

“I know it’s not my soulmate’s fault,” you said quietly. “I know that. I know that. And I don’t blame them for it. But sometimes I get so lonely I just—I wish—I wish I didn’t have one. Sometimes I wish I could hate them.”

The chill spreads outward.  

It was confirmation enough. If you knew, you would hate him. All that repressed, sentimentalized resentment would come bubbling up the moment you were actually faced with the person who so fundamentally changed the course of your life. 

He looked at his scars winking in the sun on your skin and felt a self hatred so intense it nearly made him flinch. He wished he could crawl out of that grave and kill them all over again, slower, just for this. 

You glanced up and smiled tightly. “But I’m a hopeless romantic, and dramatic. It was just disappointing. I always have hope someone will see past it.” You ran your hand over the blanket and unfolded yourself to finally begin eating. “This helped, though,” you said. “Thank you, Ghost.” You nodded at the food in his hands, averted your gaze again. 

And even though you could easily glance at him, Simon pushed up his mask and popped open the lid of the lasagne still warm between his hands. 

You ate together for the first time, in silence in the sun. You closed your eyes, kept your face pointed up and away, a cool breeze ruffling your shirt sleeves. 

“Have you found yours?” 

Simon looked at you, the edge of your jaw, the soft shadows your lashes cast over your ruined cheek. “Don’t think someone like me is meant for one.” 

You nodded. “Me either.”

.

.

.

He walked you back to your office. 

You felt better, settled, but he sort of just had that affect on you, you were coming to find. 

Ghost smelled like sun and freshly mowed grass and cigarette smoke. His shoulder kept touching yours, something in your chest lurching each time, like a rib bone had come loose and was knocking against your heart and lungs. 

Ghost carried the blanket back, folded it and set it carefully along the back of what had become his chair. 

You sat and turned, expecting to find him already silently gone as was his way. 

Instead, he was very close and depositing something on your desk. 

Matte black, compact, deadly, cold to the touch. 

A folded pocket knife sat at the edge of your desk. Ghost loomed over you, his shadow curling around your edges. 

He slid it toward you, watched you fold your fingers around it. For a long moment, each of you was holding it. “What’s this?” You asked when he released it, gloved fingers sliding across your desk, back to his side.  

“A knife.” 

“Oh, really? I've never seen one before.” 

He rolled his eyes. “It’s for you. I’ll teach you how to use it.” 

“Why?” 

“In case you need to.”

“Is this about me staying late?” 

“No.” He did not elaborate. 

“You know I received firearm training. I can shoot a gun. Isn’t a knife a little—” 

“But you don’t carry a gun.” 

“No,” you agreed. “I don’t.”  

He nodded as though that explained it. “Right.” 

You considered it, flipped it open. Deadly, shiny blade newly sharpened and oiled and well cared for. It was odd to be given a weapon, and yet unsurprising where Ghost was concerned. You glanced up, watched his dark, intense eyes flick over your face. You weren’t sure what he was looking for, but his brows knitted the longer you stared at each other. Concern, weariness.

“Okay.”

His shoulders loosened. “Tomorrow.” 

“Tomorrow,” you agreed. 

.

.

.

If you thought you would receive one lesson in knifework and be done with it, you didn’t know Ghost very well. 

You only ran drills first, as though Ghost were making sure the physical fitness exam you had to pass once a year was up to scratch. You proved again and again that you could run without getting too winded, disassemble, load, and fire a service weapon. When he was satisfied with that, the real training began. 

You practiced with a rubber blade that bruised when stuck into your ribs. He did not go easy on you. You left the gym battered and bruised, sweaty and just a little bit resentful. But you could break a wrist lock hold, grapple and use your body and size to your advantage. The goal he repeatedly told you, was not to turn you into a fighter or a soldier, but give you an opportunity to get away, to run away.  

What kind of danger he imagined you getting into between the base and your apartment you couldn’t begin to imagine. But you enjoyed spending time with him, enjoyed being in the gym. You found yourself laughing when you were repeatedly slammed into the mat, knife wrested from your fingers. It was fun. And, it was good for you, you decided, even if you thought his intense insistence was a tad dramatic. 

Ghost was a bit dramatic about certain things, you were coming to learn.

This was one of them. You were, you thought with warmth, one of the things he was a bit dramatic about. For whatever reason, you’ve been tucked under his wing, into his shadow. 

On the third week of relentlessly brutal training, you arrived at the base gym, empty as it always was, to find him holding a length of rope. 

You eyed it warily and shifted from foot to foot, amused despite the discomfort. “What do you imagine is going to happen to me?” 

Ghost didn’t answer as you set your bag down and pulled off your sweatshirt. The room was warm, close and humid, the scent of left over dregs of soldiers clogging the room for most of the day. The scent of plastic, lemon disinfectant, and sweat is thick on the air, but when you stepped toward Ghost, his familiar comforting smell of tea and cigarettes washed over you in a vacuous, orbital cloud. 

You looked up just as his eyes slid away from you, blond lashes catching the light, skin pink around his eyes. You’d swear it was a blush if you didn’t know better. “Ghost?” 

“Better to be prepared, yeah?” 

“For what?” All the same, you turned with a sigh. 

After a painfully long moment he stepped close and pressed the dark material around your wrists. His body was warm behind yours for that brief moment even without touching you, like the glow of a heat lamp that made the rest of the room feel cold by comparison. 

His gloved fingers were carefully delicate against your skin. It sent sparks skittering up your arms. What would his bare skin feel like against yours? 

Rough, warm. Safe.  

It’s a thought that had curled its roots into your mind the first time you fell to the mat together and you felt his weight against yours, brief and heavy, but comforting somehow. It wasn’t supposed to be, he was playing predator, it should have been panic inducing. 

Stupid, silly. 

If your most recently failed date had shown you anything, it was that feeling anything for anyone that had seen your scars was a failing venture. And Ghost had seen more of them now, than most. Maybe you should start wearing a mask. 

“What’s the goal today?” You asked, feeling a little like you couldn’t breathe. His warmth and scent and the weight of his presence was overwhelming in a way that made you want to curl into him, gladly suffocate. 

“Same as always,” he answered drolly. “To get away.”

“Hm. I keep thinking you’ll challenge me,” you teased.  

“Not a game, bird.” 

“But what am I meant to do? I can’t fight.” 

“Get out of the bindings. Get to the door.” 

“Is that it?” 

You would swear he’s smirking. “Simple enough, aye.” 

It wasn’t easy. 

For the third time in a row, you landed hard on your back. 

Ghost’s weight was heavy against you, before it lifted away. Your sweaty skin stuck to his hoodie.

Your breath comes in hard, deep pants. Your wrists ached and panic had begun to set in. 

“On your feet.” 

Clumsy as a newborn deer, you stumble to your feet. You had to be faster than him, incapacitate him. “You won’t be getting away from me,” he’d said once, “so you’d have a chance.” It was a compliment; one that said you were doing good. 

It didn’t feel like you were doing good now. 

By the sixth time, you felt raw and helpless, wrists caught at an odd angle beneath you. It wasn’t fun; it wasn’t sparring. You couldn’t manage to wriggle out of the bindings and you were useless at anything he’d taught you without your hands. 

“You’re hurting me,” you gasped. 

He released you immediately and the pressure in your wrists eased. It hadn’t been pain, not really, just panic, just exhaustion. 

But you knew instantly that you’d made a mistake, that he would not take it that way. 

“Shit.” 

.

.

.

The window was open and you were not in your office. 

Simon paused in the doorway, noted your bag on the chair in the corner, the patchwork quilt trailing over the arm of your desk chair and spilling onto the floor. His was gone from the chair. You’d been wandering off without him recently. 

He turned and marched back down the hall. An administrative assistant pointed toward the external door. “Getting sun, she said,” he said. “Sir.” 

Ghost nodded and shouldered the door open. He found you behind the barracks, lying on his blanket, staring up at a patchy sky, slices of blue peaking from between low hanging gray clouds. 

When his shadow fell over you, you opened your eyes and squinted up at him. “Ghost, you’re blocking my sun.” 

“Not much sun to speak of.” You grimace and frown at the sky. “You weren’t in your office.” 

“Sorry, should have left a note.” You patted the blanket next to you. “Sit.” 

Simon sat on the concrete steps. “Where’s your lunch?”

“Forgot it.” 

Worry sprouted, blossomed along his veins, ubiquitous as the pain that accompanies it. 

“Canteen,” he said. “Let’s go.” 

“It’s okay—“

“Wasn’t a suggestion.” 

“You’re bossy,” you said but didn’t move, chin tilted up, eyes flitting shut again. “I’ll have a big dinner.” 

He sighed and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, content enough to wait you out and smoke. The clouds continued to gather, putting your beloved sun to rest for the moment. The air grew steadily thicker with humidity. 

“Gonna rain,” he commented. 

You ignored him, eyes squinching closed harder, like you could will the sun to return. He watched you, made himself look at the bruises on your wrists and forearms, he knew there were matching ones on your ribs. They were harmless, just the usual consequence of sparring, but the ones around your wrists—that’s a mistake he won’t soon forget. 

When a fat raindrop landed on your arm, you sat up with a grumble. “Ready now?” He asked, pulling down his mask again. 

“I can see you won’t leave it alone.” 

“Affirmative,” he said. 

You rolled your eyes and started to get to your feet, pausing when he held out a hand to you. You stared for a beat too long before gripping his hand in yours. 

Even through his gloves, it was like being electrocuted. 

You released his hand as soon as you could, eyes skirting his. “Your lead,” you said. “I haven’t had the privilege.” 

He grunted, followed you closely back inside. 

As Simon’s misfortune would have it, Johnny was still in the canteen. 

He lasered in on the pair of you immediately, a grin growing across his face as he approached. “Ach so this is where you’ve been off to LT.”

Ghost herded you into line, a raucous group of new recruits halting their conversation to ogle you before their eyes flicked to his and away, conversation continued at a more subdued level. He shifted closer, between you and them, though you didn’t seem to notice.

“Haven’t been off anywhere,” he grumbled. 

“Who’s this then?” 

You smiled and offered your hand and name. “It’s nice to see that Ghost has bad manners with everyone.” 

“John MacTavish,” Soap said, all charm as he practically bowed. “Call me Soap.”

“Soap,” you giggled. “I’ve seen you in my reports.” 

Soap’s gaze flicked over your face, sharp eyes making the quick calculations that had made Simon hope he wouldn’t be in the canteen. “Are they yours?” 

“Sergeant—,” Ghost said sharply, a warning in his voice. 

But you only laughed and touched your cheek with obvious pride as the line moved up. “No. None of them belong to me. They’re nice though, right?” 

Simon went very still, swore his heart rate slowed. You held out your arm, showed off a sliver flash.

“Very becoming, lass.” 

You smiled again and gestured to your own chin, the side of your head. “Yours?” 

“Aye, all mine.”

“Ah, luck.” 

“Lucky indeed.”

Johnny’s eyes shifted to Simon’s, brows raised, with a look that said he knew. Simon glanced away, gritting his jaw so hard it ached.

 “Am I going to get food poisoning from this?” You asked as a tray was handed over, eying warily what was ostensibly mash, peas and carrots, mystery meat. 

“Probably not,” Johnny answered cheerfully. “Been mostly fine.” 

“Yes, but I think you military people might have tolerance to low levels of poison.” 

“That’s for sure, bonnie.” 

“Bonnie,” you said, giggling. “Are you calling me pretty?” 

Soap covered his heart, balancing his tray with one hand. “You wound me. Simon only keeps us good looking bastards around.”

“Simon,” you said softly, glancing up at him. “I didn’t think anyone knew your name.” 

Ghost didn’t answer for a moment, glaring daggers into the side of Johnny’s head, ignoring the way his heart was clenched so tight it felt like it was in a vise. Simon, his name on your tongue—  

“It’s need to know,” he snapped. 

Your expression folded and you glanced away. “Right, of course. Sorry.”

Simon clenched his jaw so hard it clicked as Johnny shot him a look. “This way, lass,” he said, leading you toward a spot in the corner of the mess. 

“Oh,” you said weakly, “That’s all right. You don’t have to—”

Ghost couldn’t help but notice the anxious look you threw him, the thin line your voice had transformed into. 

Soap wasn’t listening, already talking your ear off, pulling out a chair for you. You smiled and sat and Simon was left to silently watch it unfold. 

.

.

.

“Fuckin’ hell,” Soap muttered when they’d safely returned you to your office where a contingent of lesser analysts awaited you. The corridor leading away from the now closed door seemed impossibly long. “D’ya know how many people would kill to meet their soulmate? You’ve got yours right under your fuckin’ nose and haven’t even told her yer name!” 

“She doesn’t need to know.” 

“Yer name?” 

Ghost leveled Soap with a stare. 

Soap gaped at him. “Steamin’ Jesus. You aren’t plannin’ to tell the lass at all?” 

“Stay out of it, MacTavish.” 

Johnny followed him down the hall, outside into a bleak, gray drizzle. “You know it can kill you?” Simon kept walking. “Simon.” 

He stopped, glanced at Soap with a warning in his eyes. “Do ya?”

“It won’t.”

Johnny continues anyway, urgently. “There’s a pain, they say, under the ribs when—“

“Stay out of it, Sergeant,” Ghost growled, that very pain growing as it always did as he moved further and further away from you. “It’s nothing.” 

“It‘ll corrode,” Johnny said to his retreating back. “She’ll feel it eventually.”

Simon ignored him. 

But he wondered as he walked away, if he died, if you’d feel the corded snap of his life floating away from yours.  

Somehow, being that sort of ghost, didn’t sit well with him. 

.

.

.

Johnny, predictably, did not stay out of it. 

He regularly and reliably began to show up in your office. More than once, he looped Garrick into accompanying him. Ghost had watched as the same realization Soap had snapped into place on Gaz’s face, and knew it was only a matter of time before Price knew too. 

Luckily, they were the only three on the entire base that could make the connection, that had seen his face, so at least it was done with. None of them said anything to him about it, but there were a lot of worried glances being exchanged. 

Ghost felt the edge of his sanity begin to wear thin the longer it went on, not that there was much left of it in the first place.

The disruption, the infiltration, the distraction grated until his insides felt raw with irritation. He hadn’t wanted anyone else to know, not because he was ashamed, but because you were his, and you didn’t deserve to be burdened by that. He would shoulder that horrible belonging for both of you. 

But the way you’d tenderly touched your cheek remains burned into his memory. The soft look in your eye. The gentle way you and Soap always spoke of soulmates whenever they came up, reverent and tender. 

You enjoyed their company, Johnny and Kyle, and seemed all the better for it. It was clear immediately how much you liked both of them. How much you desperately needed friends. 

Ghost was loath to admit there was a seed of jealousy wriggling in his belly. The easy way you got on with them proof enough that a wire had gotten crossed somewhere, that you were more cursed by him than anchored by.

Then, the gifts left at the edge of your desk began to extend to the lads and not just himself, and it felt vaguely as though he were losing a vital piece of himself to it. 

Then, you stopped coming to the gym. You were gone, office dark, before he could walk you to your car. You went on another date. 

He didn’t know what to do with any of it.

One Tuesday at the end of July you were in your office, but Soap was there before him, tearing into a packet of crisps, lounging in Simon’s chair, patchwork quilt flattened beneath him in a heap. It was hot, and humid, a fan in the corner working overtime, window propped open.

You were happily listening to Johnny explain the ins and outs of football. A match was playing on your computer screen which you’d turned back so both of you could see. 

Your eyes found Simon’s when he paused in the doorway, and you waved him inside, an unsure smile twitching at the corners of your mouth. “Hi, Ghost. Do you keep up with soccer, too?” 

A groan from Soap. “Bloody Americans.” 

“Sorry, sorry. You keep up with footie too, mate?” 

“Horrendous,” Ghost said flatly.

Your smile faltered then brightened again. It didn’t quite reach your eyes. “You should hear my Scottish accent. Soap said I offended every one of his ancestors.” 

“Aye and you did lass,” he said solemnly. “Yeh—” 

“Sergeant,” Ghost interrupted loudly. “Aren’t you due for PT?”  

“Ach, right,” he muttered, getting to his feet, “Thanks for the reminder, LT.” 

“Oh, Soap,” you said, “Hold on.” You rummaged beneath your desk for a long moment, then passed him a brown paper bag full of cookies. “Your favorite, as requested.” 

“You sweet on me or something, bon?”

You rolled your eyes and said, “Out of my office.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

Ghost took Soap’s vacated seat, watched you avoid looking at him as you moved things needlessly around your desk, twisted your monitor back around and muted the match. 

The silence was suffocating. 

“All right?” 

You froze, then shuffled the papers together and slid them to a corner of your desk. “I wanted to apologize.” Your voice hitched a little. 

He blinked, taken aback. He didn’t like that you could surprise him. “For what?” 

You bit your lip, fidgeted again. “Your name, I guess. You didn’t want me to know.” Your mouth twisted to the side. “And your team bothering you here—” 

“You’re apologizing for Soap?” 

Your brow furrowed. “Well I encourage it—”

“No.” 

“No?” You shook your head, “and that day in the gym—” You opened and closed your hands anxiously. “I think I upset you.” 

He stared across the room, toward your big, sunny window, all those little potted plants that have flourished through the summer months. Your bug lamp seemed to droop in the heat, sad and watchful. He’d hurt you, and you’d taken the blame. Something horrible lurched in his belly, heavy and unforgiving. “Didn’t. I should have been more careful.” 

“Right,” you said carefully. “So if it’s not that, why are you—” 

He shrugged, watched one of the emerald leaves sway in the warm breeze. “I like you to myself,” he admitted. “Not the best at sharing.”  

“Oh,” you said, voice tender. “Oh.” 

“Mm.” 

“I’ll make space.” 

He didn’t quite understand what you meant by that, but he liked the way it sounded. Space for him. 

“You’ll come to the gym later, yeah?” 

“Yes.” 

“Good.” He stood, deposited your knife, which he’d snagged early in the morning to clean and sharpen, back onto your desk, along with the new box of tea because he noticed you were out the night before. “And don’t tell bloody Soap.” 

“Aye, LT.” 

He chuckled. “Take care of that.” 

“Teach me how?” 

He nodded. 

“Thanks for the tea. I used the last bag yesterday afternoon.” 

“I know.” 

Your smile was soft, your fingers touched his. He breathed a little easier. 

“‘Course you do.” 

.

.

.

Simon couldn’t stop thinking about pain. 

His body functioned at a constant low level of pain, had for years. Maybe it had his whole life, so he tended not to notice it. But the ache you caused had only seemed to grow over time, tendrils spreading to the furthest reaches of his body, the tips of his fingers, the backs of his knees, places he didn’t think could hold pain. 

The intensity increased too, until he could no longer ignore it. It was like a whine, like a child begging to be seen to. 

He kept thinking of your voice, too, dreaming of it. You’re hurting me. Panic ridden, laced with fear.

You said he didn’t, after,  but he didn’t relish the thought of the possibility. Accidentally hurting you, hurting you on purpose. He thought of his mother, doing her best with a brutal man. He was afraid of unknowingly stepping into a cycle, to find himself standing above you one day, drunk, mean, angry. 

You’re hurting me.  

It echoed like a heartbeat. Inevitable. 

You might collect his scars, but he would not add to them with his own hands. He’d rather die; he’d rather be burned alive; he’d rather crawl out of a grave a hundred times over. 

He was afraid of it. Afraid that every terrible aspect of this bond between you could only bring you pain. 

His father loomed in the recesses of his mind, all the violent men he’d ever known, every bloody fist. Simon’s scalp ached, the memories swam behind his eyes. Long nights, wild animals, dead girls. 

There was one person who had a preoccupation with soulmates who was likely to know, who badgered him regularly about eroding the bond, about bond tears and pain. Simon could know, once and for all, if he was the cause of the indirect pain, at least. His own imposed on you, pushed into your skin like a punishment. He could cross that off his long list of sins. 

Johnny, when Simon finally tracked him down, was sat in the armory cleaning a rifle. He watched over his Sergeant's shoulder for a long moment. The methodical movement soothed him, brought his heartrate down a little. 

“Johnny.” 

Soap jumped and glanced around. “Spooky fucker. Should put a bell on ye—” 

“Does she feel it?”

“What—”

He exhaled long and slow. “My pain. If I’m shot tomorrow, would she feel it?”

Soap glanced around, brows raised. “Ye don’t know?” 

“Say I don’t.” 

“No, the lass doesn’t feel it.” Soap turned his wrist, pointed to a scar that was lighter than some of the others, a pale tracery that slipped from the inside of his elbow to mid forearm. “Not mine. Watched it fade in one mornin’. Didn’t feel a thing.” 

Ghost looks at the scar, and Soap lets him. “Tha’ why you haven’t—”

“No.” 

“Why?” 

“Deserves better.” 

Johnny nodded, continued cleaning the rifle. “Thing is, LT. She doesn’t. That’s the point.” 

Well, at least he only had to worry about becoming his father. 

Fucking perfect. 

.

.

.

Two months deployment.  

The pain in Simon’s chest was agonizing, a constant fire. He couldn’t sleep, pain meds did nothing for it. 

He could only wait it out, wait until he was back on base and hope you were in your office, that the solace of your presence in that warm yellow light would be waiting for him. The pain would recede. He needed a plan, though. Clearly it wasn’t fucking viable to just let it go on. It was too distracting and only getting worse. It was no longer something he could ignore. 

Maybe, he didn’t really want to.

Maybe, Johnny was right. 

He half convinced himself that the lancing ache was so bad because you’d been posted somewhere else the last two months and you were further away than ever. Your office would be empty. This was just an agony he would have to learn to live with. 

Finally, though, they were going home. Intel secure. One last building to sweep. Empty. A loaded silence that made the back of his neck prickle. 

Not as empty as they thought. 

Soap steps quickly into the last room ahead of him, gaze sweeping from one side to another before he lowered his weapon and stepped forward. 

Ghost followed quickly, lowered his gun when he saw what Johnny had. Civilians. One curled around the other, sobbing so hard she made no noise. 

When she lifted her face, Simon sucked in a startled breath. She looked like you, only without his scars. There was a mark slowly bleeding into place on her temple, one that matched the gunshot wound of the woman beneath her. 

The wail that suddenly pierced the air was distraught, horrible, a lurch and a bang. 

Soap was there, kneeling, looking for wounds that Ghost knew didn’t exist. Horror froze him for the second time in his life, your face swimming behind his eyes. 

“I thought you said they couldn’t feel it,” he barked. 

“What?” 

“Soulmates.” 

Soap looked at the pair with fresh eyes. 

“They can’t, LT,” Soap said without glancing at him. “It’s no’ that. It’s just—” 

Grief. The unbearable snapping of a fated cord. The tether in his own chest pulsed, ached. He thought of it breaking cleanly in two, as though it never existed, your light snuffed out, leaving him in total darkness again. 

It wasn’t pain she was feeling, it was the absence. 

“Ghost,” Johnny said sharply and Simon finally snapped out of it, went to his side. 

It wasn't worth it, he thought. None of this could be fucking worth it. He was left with the sinking sense that all he could ever do was hurt you. 

All the same, he felt an urgency to go home. To return to your side. To feel your pulse under his fingers. 

Just to be sure. 

It took them a long time to get her to leave the body. 

.

.

.

Task Force 141 was deployed for nearly two months. 

September and October passed slowly, in starts and fits that seemed to drag. 

You developed a pain in your side, a stitch from taking it too hard in the gym you assumed. But nothing seemed to help it. The pang became a prick became a small misery that the base medical staff couldn’t pinpoint the origins of. 

You missed Ghost, and Kyle and Johnny, tolerated the terrible tea your coworkers made for you, went on another series of failed dates, and finally became friends with your cross-hall apartment neighbor. Months of baked goods and hellos finally coming to fruition. Pieces of a life were falling together. 

Finally, they were coming home. You left your offer that night with the assurance that they were uninjured, that Ghost, and likely Soap, would be in your office by noon the next day. 

But Simon still managed to reappear as he always did, silently and without warning. A shadow crossed your back as you were locking your office near midnight, a hand grazed your back. You followed the series of steps you’d been taught months ago. Foot back, elbow out, knife in hand, open, turn—

Your wrist was caught by the flat of his palm, fingers of the opposite hand yanking it from your grip.  

You blinked and breathed out heavily, relieved. The tight tenderness in your side leveled off for the first time in a month. “Ghost,” you murmured, lowering your now empty hand, “You aren’t supposed to be back until tomorrow morning.” 

“That disappointed to see me?” 

No. Never. But he was still in full tactical gear. The skin around his eyes was still layered with eyeblack, exhaustion and an acid tension rolling off him in a thick wave. His gaze was heavy, but steady, assessing you in turn. He smelled like diesel and cigarettes and gun powder. You lifted your chin. “Surprised to see you. Glad to see you.” 

He only flipped the knife around and held it out to you. “Nice work.” 

You smiled as you took the blade and stored it again. “You’re making me paranoid, I think.” 

“Good. Paranoid keeps you alive.” 

His eyes flicked over you, looking long and hard, though for what you couldn’t be sure. He stepped closer, until you were forced back against the door. He towered over you, corralled you back against the cool wood. Soft, dark eyes like wells of ink in the shadow of the hood pulled over his head, searched long enough that you began to worry something was wrong. 

You reached out and rested your hand on his forearm. His body was so taut you could feel the tremble of exhausted, overwrought muscle. “Ghost,” you said gently, carefully. “Are you okay?” 

He inhaled deeply, so hard and fast it sounded pained. 

He looked at you again, eyes sliding over you slowly, like he was orienting himself, finding steady ground on which to stand. 

“Why don’t you cover ‘em?”

Your belly clenched. “Cover what?” you queried, silently begging him not to ask that question. 

“Scars.” 

You went still, looking down at your skin. You had rolled up your sleeves earlier in the evening when furious typing had required it. They glinted silver in the low light of the hall. Pretty and delicate as dragon scales. 

It wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before. 

Still, you fought the urge to cross your arms. You hated when he stared at them. 

“Why would I?” You rubbed your wrist. “I don’t want to. They belong to my soulmate.”

He glanced away from you, his jaw tight beneath the mask. “You actually believe in that shite?” His voice was harsh, aggressive in a way he had never spoken to you before. “It’s a bloody children’s tale.”  

You bristled, felt something hard and mean well behind your breastbone in a tight knot. The pain that had been kicking you in the ribs lately reared again, made you wince and cover your side. “Well,” you snapped, gesturing to yourself with your free hand, “these aren’t mine, so I guess I have to.”  

He scoffed and you felt your heart lurch, hurt settling in your gut, twisting an invisible knife that much deeper. You tried to side step him but he didn’t move, a terrible, solid wall of muscle and—anger? Irritation? You couldn’t tell. “What the fuck do you care? Maybe you’re ashamed of yours,” you said roughly, “But not all of us are.” 

His brows furrowed and he shook his head again. “Oh, come off it.” 

“What?” 

“You’re tellin’ me that if you came face to face with the bastard that did this to you, you wouldn’t hate him?” 

Indignation burned a righteous path up your throat. “You don’t get to do that,” you said lowly. 

“You didn’t deny it,” he said. “You would.” 

“No,” you interrupted vehemently, swallowing around the word like gravel in your throat. “No, of course I wouldn’t. It wasn’t done to me, it—” 

But Simon was determined, his mind set. 

“He hurt you, changed the course of your bloody life, whether you want to admit it or not. You’ll hate him for it, love.” 

“For something he went through?” You asked incredulously, defensively. “Do you know how scared I was?” 

Ghost’s eyes went blank, his stare suddenly flat and far away. His gaze drifted from yours, the weight of flinty amber lifted. “Of him,” he said viciously, like something terrible he’d always known had been confirmed. 

“No,” you snarled again, not sure why Ghost was fighting you, not sure why he cared about your scars suddenly. “You aren’t listening. For him.” Your ribs ached, your breath came in short bursts. He was too close, the clashing sensations of safety and agitation calcifying the tension between you into a solid, immutable wall. 

You inhaled shakily through the sudden distress. Your lungs hitched and spasmed before you could suck in a proper breath, feeling faint, glad for the wall behind you. 

He blinked, looked down at you again. “Hey—” 

“I was so scared I would lose him before I ever got to meet him. Ever since I was a kid I’ve had scars. Cigarette burns and scratches, bite marks. I used to hope he was older than me, so it wouldn’t have meant that he—so that he wouldn’t have been—” Agitation rises like a tide, all the nights you’d sat awake watching scars bleed into your skin. Your parents had been unable to look at you in the morning, wondering what the future held for you. What kind of person that child would grow up to be. 

The same fear Simon seemed to be holding onto so tightly. 

You stumbled over his concern, something prickling at the base of your neck. 

“Once,” you continued shakily, “they just kept showing up, day after day, for months. I didn’t know what was happening and there was nothing I could do. I thought he was going to die and I couldn’t help him. I was so worried and all I could do was watch.” 

You met his eyes, saw something so raw and wretched there that you flinched back, closed your eyes, breath caught. 

You aren’t sure when you transitioned to using he instead of they. 

It suddenly didn’t feel like you were talking about someone you hadn’t met yet. 

You thought of how strangely intense he was about you. How you had felt so strongly about him immediately. How the only bit of his skin you’ve ever seen has been around his eyes; the delicate veins at his wrists.

You thought of him making you tea and teaching you to defend yourself. You thought of him walking you to your car and pulling you into sunny days. You thought of all the cups of coffee and boxes of tea, the gentle way he handled the blanket you made him from cheap cotton like it was spun gold. 

You thought of Johnny asking after your scars the first time you met him. How not long after you’d been personally introduced to the rest of the 141 for no discernable reason. How they checked on you. How they were probably the only people that knew what Ghost’s face looked like. 

“No,” you whispered, pieces of a terrible puzzle sliding together in your mind. 

You opened your eyes.  

“Ghost?” you asked softly, tentatively lifting your hand. 

He jerked back. “Don’t do that,” he warned.  

You stepped closer, knowing you were playing with fire, that he might burn you, lash out like a dog with its leg in a trap. 

But if he was yours—

If he was yours, you would not be the one to inflict more hurt on him. 

He did not want this, he did not want you, that much was clear. 

You closed your hand and let it fall, pushed your fist against your heart instead. “I see you,” you said gently. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” 

“You don’t understand,” he rasped.  

“You survived.” You backed away. “That’s enough. To know you’re okay.” 

The empty spot in your chest ached, seemed to grow tendrils that wrapped around your heart. A bond so close and not latched. Because you haven’t seen him. He has to let you in.

“When you’re ready. If you’re ever ready. I'm here.”

He finally returned his gaze to yours. 

“Did it hurt?” 

“Did what hurt?” You tilted your head but he didn’t answer, just stared at you with big, moon dark eyes, brows pinched inward, eyeblack creating a tiny white line there. “Oh, you wouldn’t know, I guess.” You shook your head, “No I was just scared. Just worried. It didn’t hurt. You’ve never hurt me.” 

He moved so quickly and silently that you jumped when his hand curled around your wrist. Light enough that you could pull away if you wanted.  

“You don’t have to. You never have to. I don’t want to take anything else from you.” 

Ghost hesitated, his chest rising and falling quickly. “Do I have any of yours?” The question was quiet, almost reverent.  

You nodded, “‘Course you do. I fell out of a tree when I was a kid. Gave me a nasty scar on the back of my elbow. I landed on a rock.” 

His eyes flicked away, like he was trying to imagine it. You twisted your arm, showed him the thick line of scar there, totally different than the lighter version of his on your skin. “See? You’ll have that one in the same spot but lighter. Maybe not even visible, since you’re so pale.” 

Your breath caught when he stepped closer, the pain in your chest was so intense it made breathing difficult.

“It’s not fair to you.” 

“What isn’t?” 

“To bloody leave it. Hurts, yeah?” 

You didn’t admit to the spasming in your chest; it wouldn’t help anything. “When have you ever cared about fair?” 

He made a pained sound. “Don’t.” 

“I’m okay. I don’t need anything from you. I don’t want anything from you.”

“You’re supposed to need things from me.”  

He peeled his gloves off, tucked them into his back pocket. The hall was still and silent aside from your combined ragged breathing. It sounded like you’d been running a marathon. “Ghost—” 

“Simon,” he said. “Please, call me Simon.” 

You closed your eyes, felt his hands graze your collarbone, your throat, before anchoring on your jaw, tilting your face up. “Look at me, sweet’eart.” 

“I can’t.” Your voice trembled, tears clogging your throat. 

“Can.” 

Very gently, he leaned down and pushed his forehead against yours. 

You shuddered and swallowed and stepped closer. Simon curled his arms around you, pulled you into his chest. He was so broad and tall, you felt swaddled against him, warm and secure. His scent wrapped around you like ribbons holding you together. “No point dragging it on, yeah? No point you being in pain.” 

“How long?” 

“The whole time,” he admitted after a moment. His voice rumbled against your cheek. It felt like home. “First time I saw you.” 

“You have had this pain for almost a whole year—” 

“Not your fault,” he interrupted, one massive hand sliding down your spine. “Not your fault.” 

You huffed, hooked your fingers beneath his tac vest. “I’m sorry anyway.” You pulled back, felt his arms tighten around you for a moment. He didn’t want to let you go. “Is there anything you need to take care of? Reports or debriefing or something?” 

“No.” 

“Would. . . would you want to come to mine—” 

He reached under your arm and plucked your keys out of the lock before you could finish, guiding you down the hall, his hand never leaving your skin. 

You had never seen Simon outside the base, you realized suddenly, and everything felt vastly more fragile. It also felt as though that hollow pulse in your chest would tear if you were asked to walk away at that moment, something real and physical would tear and drop out of you, an irreparable part of your soul. 

You weren’t sure how you drove home, Ghost huge in your passenger seat, your hands shaking each time he shifted his grip on you. 

In your apartment, you hesitated, not sure where you belonged in your own space anymore. Simon looked strange in your tiny living room, among soft blankets and years of collected books and knicknacks. An all consuming shadow. You wondered if this would end like all those dates, just another failure, another loss. 

When you started to step toward the lamp, Simon’s fingers curled around your wrist to keep you by his side. “No.” 

“Just turning on the lamp.” 

He released you.

As you stepped away, a hollow pulse in your chest retched with pain that made you gasp and clutch the edge of the sofa. It felt real, like something was breaking, jagged edges clawing at the inside of your skin. You wondered what Ghost’s self imposed distance might have done to the bond. There were stories, albeit few, of corrosion. The bond literally rusting out, slowly poisoning the soulmate and their pair. 

“Come ‘ere,” he muttered. “Sit down.”

When his palm cupped your elbow, the world became softer. Like purr instead of a shriek. He guided you onto the sofa. 

Your hands shook when he released you, making quick work of the lamp. The room flooded with soft yellow light. He glanced around. Art on the walls, forest green rug over hardwood floor, molding you had painted a delicate gold. You felt embarrassed of it all suddenly. 

“God,” you muttered. He didn’t seem to feel the pain at all, which made your chest ache in a different way and guilt pool heavily between your bones for it. You didn’t want him to be in pain, but you felt as though you were breathing water, choking on your own lungs. “How have you dealt with this?” 

“Worse now,” he said, though you felt it was his version of a kind untruth. 

He sat next to you, reached for you, then faltered, unsure. You closed the space, folded your fingers between his. The scars made a fucked up little mirror when you looked down at your hands. They matched exactly. “I’m sorry.” 

Simon didn’t answer, but stayed close to you, letting you hold his hand. Even the smallest amount of space between you seemed to burn, a brazier that flared hot and demanded attention. But it was better; just having his bare hand in yours helped. 

“Nothin’ t’be sorry for.” He said after a few minutes of uneven breathing, eyes trained on your hands, thumb running over the back of your fingers. 

“You don’t want me.” 

It wasn’t a question. 

He glanced up, something razor sharp in his eyes. You flinched a little, but his hand tightened on yours. 

“You don’t have to—We don’t have to bond,” you tripped over the last word. “It’s okay.” 

“Obviously it’s not, bird.” 

Your heart sunk and you glanced away. A one in eight billion chance was sitting under your nose for months, and he wanted nothing to do with you. He was being forced into it.

“I’m sorry,” you murmured again. “Ghost, I’m—”

“Simon,” he corrected.  

“Simon,” you echoed. 

He curled his hands around your wrists, lifted your palms to the bottom of his mask. He let your hands settle at the base of his throat, eyes never leaving yours. “I didn’t want you,” he said plainly. “I never wanted you to know.” 

You swallowed and nodded. “I’m s—” 

“No.”

You closed your mouth with a click of your jaw. You don’t expect a speech and he doesn’t give you one. “You deserve better,” he said. “But I’m all you get.” 

His knee touched yours. Your faces were tilted together, so close that the only thing you could see were the soft depths of his eyes reflecting the gold light.

It didn’t feel close enough. 

You wished it were all different. 

That he didn’t feel forced, that you were what he wanted. 

“I deserve you. Isn’t that the point?” 

He watched you for a long moment, an unreadable expression on his face, then nodded. 

“Go on, then.” 

Your throat felt tight as you tugged the mask upwards, heart lurching when you recognized the same scar on your throat on his. You pushed the fabric over his chin and mouth, up until you could pull it over his head. 

You looked at him, the same scar over his mouth, along his cheek, the bridge of his nose was nicked, the outline of burn scarring crossed the edge of his jaw and neck. When you looked past that, you saw him. Crooked nose, thick, furrowed brows, dark eyes you’d loved for a long time cast darker by the black around them, light eyelashes and hair, longer on top and curling. 

Something seemed to. . .snap then. A warmth broke between you, filled that awful, dark, pained well in your chest. It hurt, but the pain was brief, like stitches done by a seasoned medic. 

Breathing was easier. You could feel the pulse of him without the threat of imminent pain. It was a warm, comforting, safe thing in your lungs. You inhaled, attempted to stand, to give him a bit of space. “Should be able to separate now. Shall we test it—” 

You didn’t get a chance to move away, tugged suddenly from your seat and into his lap. You fell heavily against his chest, wrapped tightly in his arms, foreheads slanted together. 

“No,” he said, sounding, for the first time since you’ve known him, breathless. “No.” 

“I don’t want to.” 

“Good.” 

“Can I touch you?” 

“Can do anything you like to me, bird.” 

You stroked the side of his throat, felt him shiver. “Well, I won’t. Not anything.” 

He made a content noise of agreement. 

You touched his jaw, his cheek, the tail of his brow, the faded check through it that you’d never noticed matched your own. His arms tightened around you in increments until the pressure forced you to take shallow breaths. “You’re beautiful.” 

“Lookin’ in a mirror, are you?” 

“Sort of,” you answered. “A little.” 

His hands shifted, anchored on your hips, and pushed you back a little. 

Disappointment that it was over so soon pinched at your throat but you backed off, attempting to slide from his lap. His hand caught at your hip. “Stop trying to bloody move.” 

“What—” 

He was only taking off the vest, which probably should have been left at the base. It dropped heavily to the floor as he pulled you against his chest. It was warmer, softer like that, thick muscle coiled beneath your cheek when you rested it against his shoulder, heartbeat hard against yours.  

“No more pain?” 

“None.” 

“Good.” 

You pushed your face against his throat, felt him tense and then uncoil. One large hand cupped the back of your neck, holding you there. You brushed your lips against his pulse point, felt a scarred flutter against your mouth, a muted grunt.

“You’re all I want,” you admitted quietly. “I think I knew. I think everyone knew. I’m sorry,” you finally said, “that I’m not who you need.”  

His hand squeezes your neck and then he’s pushing you down against the cushions, pressing one massive thigh between your legs, hauling you closer like it could never be close enough. The space between your bodies would always be too large, because you couldn’t climb into his chest, nest among his veins. 

It would have to do then, his hand tilting your jaw up, his eyes searching yours as you part your lips. 

“You are, sweet’eart,” he said simply, mouth brushing yours before he kissed you properly. 

He tasted of black tea; his eyeblack rubs off on your temples. 

Already, he was leaving pieces of himself behind with you to mark safe.

“Simon,” you murmured against his mouth. Just to say it, just to be rewarded with a shudder.

The kiss slipped into something more desperate, your hands felt the skin of his back, your own scar on his elbow, and you thought, maybe, you could become what he needed.  

if you made it this far thank you for reading! I'd love to know what you thought!

[mirrormauve]

wolfsbane

simon 'ghost' riley x f!reader | 10.7k

widowed after a terrible tragedy, your only company was a wolf who seemed even more grief stricken than you.

cw; werewolf!au, abandonment issues, loneliness, grief, angst, tension, hurt/comfort, very brief smut, references to self-harm and depression, hunger, suicidal ideation, references past violence, descriptions of pain, description of death, canon typical violence, simon is a wolf through most of this, he shows affection in the only ways he knows how, don't ask me when or where this takes place

A shadow followed you through the woods. 

Soft as a whisper, slicing through the dense copse of trees behind you, he stops at the edge of the woods, venturing no further than the brush at the edge of the thicket. The fields, thick with grazing sheep between the edge of the sharply culled forest and the village in the distance, was wide.  

A growl spilled out behind you, warning and wary, as you stepped onto the path that cut through them.

You ignored the sound and hurried toward the village, just beginning to flicker with orange lamplight, wine dark dusk settling over the land like a thrown quilt. Thin tendrils of light still reached across the Earth in shattered ocher threads. 

It wasn’t raining for once, and sunset was still about an hour away. 

Plenty of time.  

The rumbling growl faded as you crossed through the meadow, undulating with wavering grass, skirting clumps of calmly grazing sheep. They paid you little mind and the walk was easier now that you were once again on flat land. The bunched muscle in your calves seemed to lengthen with your strides. 

Their shepherd was not so forgiving. He had not forgotten the flock that was killed. 

He watched you with a malevolent gaze. 

He spit as you passed, muttered something about devils as you went. Of the villagers, his hatred ran the deepest. 

The forest stretched over the mountains behind you, refuge and shadow in one. Already you ached to slip back into its dark, safe roots. The shadow at your side. 

People quieted as you passed them on the street, eyes following you warily. 

The apothecarist did not greet you when you pushed open his door and slid back the hood of your cloak; he did, however, keep his eye warily on you, watching your progression to the counter, basket over your arm. 

To the village, you are an omen and a curse, a gravedigger dragging the corpse of the past behind you.  

He continued to arrange his vials and potted tinctures until you cleared your throat and pointedly set your burden on the counter between you.

You waited silently as he lifted the emerald cloth and examined the herbs and plants you’d collected over the last month. When you left the village again, you would not return for at least a fortnight. 

“Ten years ago,” he said suddenly without prompting, his voice as weathered as his face. “The last of the wolves were killed. That werewolf, too. We’ve had no trouble with killings since.”

You watched him remove the herbs, bundled with twine, and lay them in a neat row over the length of the scarred wooden benchtop. 

“There are no wolves left,” you agreed. “Only stories.” 

His hands froze, then resumed their work. “Stories,” he said slowly. “Do you want to know what tales are told about you?” 

You didn’t reply, waiting for him to finish assessing the plants.

“A sheep was found mauled.” 

“Foxes?” You offered. “Shame.”

“Do not think, girl,” he said lowly, as he finally looked up and coin was slid toward you across the counter, “that we do not see the smoke that follows you.” 

You counted the coin into a pouch at your hip. “Smoke,” you huffed, gathering your basket as you turned away. “You’re seeing things. Smoke doesn’t linger, does it?” 

The floor creaked beneath your feet as you crossed the shop again, eager to be back in the quiet hum of the woods, nestled between the trees, shrouded beneath the mountains. 

Summer was in full swing, the sky a bruised purple, fingers of sun still draped over the fields. You passed through the village, an outsider looking in. The townsfolk milled around each other in that easy way only people who had known each other their whole lives could. They watched you pass uneasily, and you knew it wasn’t only the wolf rumors that made them draw together like a clutch of frightened sheep.

A woman alone in the woods was suspicious by nature, and you had been outspoken even when your husband was alive. 

You traded a little of your coin for a new gutstring and departed as quickly as you’d come. 

The air in the valley was still warm as you left the village, sweet with the scent of freshly cut hay and lavender pocketed along the path. 

The shadow was waiting just inside the treeline, and vanished as soon as you glanced at it. 

You knew, though, that you were not alone. The so-called smoke kept an even pace behind you, though you knew it must be tiresomely slow for it, only veering sharply to the left and away as your cottage came into view. 

To circle the perimeter you knew, the vegetable patch and the herb garden and the crooked fence that contained it all. The pine trees swayed, shushed against each other in the darkness that had finally fallen. The stars were bright overheard, silent pinpricks in the purple black sky, a crescent moon rising through their sea. A rare clear day was transitioning into a beautifully crystal night. 

The shadow, the smoke, returned, coming no nearer than the gate. No more than a suggestion of a shape in the dark.

“I told you it would be fine. We need to hunt in the morning.” 

The growl was, you thought, unilaterally troubled with your assessment of your little excursion so near nightfall to a place so hostile. “Okay,” you conceded. “In future, I’ll plan better.” 

Your wolf was gone from one moment to the next, faded from existence, as if in agreement with your promise. 

He would be back in time for dinner. He would slink through the gate then, and keep watch while you ate, back to you, body tense and coiled with unwavering intensity. 

If it weren’t for the pained, lonely yips you had sometimes been privy to in the early years of your grief, the gentlest, lowest of howls cut short without answer, you might have believed once, too, that he was no more than a phantom that haunted the hills. 

.

.

.

You had first seen the wolf nine summers ago, a year after the hungry madness that had engulfed the town in the valley. He was silent as a wraith, immaterial and immaculate, flickering between the swaying pines, shade and ink and smoky impartiality all at once.

Not one of the wolves, you thought at first, from the pack that used to live there. 

He was big, even for a wolf, massive and unearthly silent, his coat a pristine, dove white.  

The mountains were covered in snow for much of the year, but in the mild summer months, he moved so quickly he was only the suggestion of something monstrous moving through the ever present fog, nothing more than an apparition. Blink and you missed him, blink and you might think you were seeing things. 

He kept his distance and you kept yours, worlds orbiting each other but never touching. Wolves never quite scared you. Stories of monsters lurking in the woods had been more like a siren song than a cautionary tale. Your husband had loved them, too.

Though that pack had tolerated your husband, uncannily seemed to understand some truth about him and disapprove, like he’d made a choice they could only begrudgingly accept, they embraced you. They loved you, your unusual wolves.  

And you’d loved him, and them, and your home, and these breathing mountains he’d settled you in. It felt as though you were finally home. 

You’re more wolf whisperer than I’ll ever be, he’d once said, delight, love, in his voice. He had been fascinated with them, understood them, but they were fascinated with you.

You waited anxiously for a new pack to emerge when the pale wolf arrived, to enforce its territory around your cottage. You dared to hope that maybe some of your wolves had survived the culling. 

But none ever did.

He was alone. 

It hadn’t been until that winter, six months later, that you truly saw him for the first time. 

That winter had been a harsh one. Food was in very short supply as nearly every creature had gone to ground. It meant that traveling down the mountain for supplies was impossible. Your stomach shrank with hunger.

You weren’t sure you would survive. 

The wolf’s fur blended into the barren landscape, invisible among the snow that fell in ever increasing drifts, shimming, beautiful, deadly waves. Hungry, bored, trapped, you lay in the snow in what was a vegetable patch in the warmer months, by your husband’s grave.

Perhaps you would have been more concerned with the possibility that the beast was lurking somewhere nearby, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. You spent hours sitting at his grave, the grave you’d been left to dig yourself, a black hole in your chest. If you were eaten by a wolf, you wouldn’t be hungry anymore, or lanced with cold pains, or lonely, and the wolf would be fed. A sound victory all around. 

The supplies in your larder dwindled to nothing; the once full shelves were left with only a few jars, and the spring thaw was very far away. You spent nearly all your time digging for winter potatoes with bloodied, dry fingers, or hunting, sitting statuesque on icy ground with your bow, waiting for deer or hare that never came. 

It seemed, for a time, that you were totally alone in the world. Nothing moved, nothing breathed. 

Then, one afternoon, the snow stopped, and a rabbit appeared. 

You were lucky, given how your arms trembled with the pervasive chill, that you were able to pull back the bowstring, let alone hit your mark moving stealthily across a clearing in the gray woods. 

Your mouth watered as you dressed it and hurried home, reminding yourself that this was no feast, that you would need to make it last. 

Darkness had curled in the air as you cooked a small portion, divvying up the meager remains for maybe two more meals, if you were lucky. 

Still, you felt as if you could finally think again. Things were not so bad as they seemed.  

You were crossing the garden with a basket for firewood, not willing to sit in the cold and stare at the fathomless, bleak sky that evening, when movement caught your attention. 

You stilled, and turned slowly. 

The wolf who moved too quickly to be seen, who you had not glimpsed since the autumn snows first came, was sitting perfectly still at the threshold of your garden, neatly in the open gateway. 

The garden smelled of fresh snow and blood. 

You had carried the scent of meat and blood for miles through a frigid, empty landscape, and here was your reward. 

But he did not move, only watched you.

Despite his size, he had clearly not been eating either; he was thin, gaunt. You had spent so much time observing the wolves when the mountains were thick with them, that you knew that they could go for long stretches without food. But it had been a very, very long winter. You wondered when he had last eaten.

Belly fully, you suddenly did not want to be eaten alive. You could survive this winter, as you’d survived everything else. 

A minute passed in thick silence, regarding each other warily, before you noticed the blood on the snow behind him, that his right front paw was torn and bleeding red in a steady pulse into the snow. The scent of copper in the air was the smell of his own blood. It was tracked all through the snowbanks outside the gate, as though he’d been pacing, waiting. 

It was clear he had stepped into a trap. He must have been exceptionally hungry, to have ventured so close to the village where they still lined the edge of the woods with metal claws. 

Wolves were too clever for traps. He must be exhausted, starving, ignoring instincts dulled and deadened, to have come close to a trap at all, let alone step on one. 

You lowered the basket to the ground, feeling a fool when you spoke. “Did you step in a trap?” He did not blink. He had never been still enough for you to see his eyes. They were a deep, dark brown, near black, glittering with lupine intelligence and pain. The fur around his eyes was darker, too.  

You also saw, for the first time, that the fur along his right shoulder was matted down, laced with scarring that spoke of burns. He was one of your wolves, then. It made your throat close. Though you had never seen him among their number, that did not mean he hadn’t been there. 

You knew better than anyone that this wolf wasn’t seen when it didn’t want to be. He’d lost as much, more, than you had. His pack was dead. 

He didn’t move when you crossed back into the cottage, retrieving your medicine bag and the leftover portions of rabbit. 

Likely, you were about to be mauled by a wolf, but you’d never been good at letting things lie. You hunted out of necessity, but a hurt animal, even a wolf, wasn’t something you could ignore. 

He didn’t move when you kneeled in the snow with a healthy distance still between you, and offered the back of your hand, eyes cast down. “I can help. I have food.” 

You couldn’t help feeling that was the point. He’d returned to your cottage because he was hurt; he already knew you could help. 

Minutes passed, and you jumped when his cold snout pushed into your hand. He moved, as always, so silently. 

You allowed him to sniff your hand for a long moment, warm breath fanning over your wrist and palm. When he sat, nose pulling away from your skin, you reached for the rabbit and lay the two reserved portions in the snow.

He gulped down the raw meat in one great swallow, two of your future meals gone in half a second. 

“I’m sorry I don’t have more,” you said, his warmth seeping into the air around you. You didn’t move, afraid to be the next thing chewed and swallowed. “You must have been very hungry to venture so close to the village.” 

You dared to glance up. 

He eyed you as he licked blood from his maw, huge teeth glinting in the low, pale light. Snow began to sift down, flecks stuck to your cheeks, his lashes. His face was scarred as his shoulder, cross sections of lines across his snout and brow as though he’d been in a lot of fights. 

You held out your hand. “Those traps are barbaric.” 

A long, unblinking, tense moment passed, then his paw settled in your hand. It wasn’t like the paw of a dog. It was large and heavy, bigger than your hand. The fur was soft despite the blood, the pads rough. 

Tentatively, you felt along the musculature of his foreleg, found the wound where the trap had clamped around his leg. “Poor thing,” you murmured. 

He didn’t so much as twitch as you cleaned the wound, applied a poultice and wrapped cloth around it. “There you are,” you said softly, lowering his great paw to the ground, after you’d tied the bandage off and tucked the ends into themselves. 

When you looked up, the wolf was regarding you again, watchful. 

Your heart nearly stopped when his head dipped forward, sure you were about to be eaten now that your utility had run its course. 

But he only pushed his massive head into your jaw, then along your throat, great, warm huffs of air venting against your cold skin. 

You were being scented, remembered. It made you want to cry, just a little. It had been such a hard, lonely winter, but this was good, this made it worth it. 

Slowly, you lifted your hand to his scruff and let your hand lie there for a long moment. When he didn’t seem to mind, you buried your fingers deep in his fur and felt just how thin he was beneath his coat. His fur was soft, silken against your dry, rough palms. It had been a hard winter for both of you. 

His nose touched the soft flesh beneath your ear and your shoulder ticked up when it tickled, a laugh escaping your mouth. You froze but he only inhaled hard again and then pulled away. 

You let your hand fall and watched him stand, test the foot. He limped a little, but he was no longer bleeding out. He disappeared in a blink, left you kneeling there. If not for the blood, your missing rabbit, you would have thought it a strange dream. 

The following week he would return each evening to stand sentinel in the garden. You ignored him, letting him craft whatever boundary his instincts told him he should. 

On the fifth day, he approached and guided you bodily out of the garden as you were collecting wood. The sky was silvery and fat with the promise of more snow. He led you, huge shoulder pushed against your hip, to a sheep in the forest, carried up the mountain between his teeth. Smart, you thought, not to have the blood trail lead to your front door.

Impressive, too, when you knew the sheep remained inside barns for most of the winter.  

“You went back to the village?” You asked him of the sheep at your feet. He sat several paces away, watching you, still wary. “Didn’t you learn your lesson the first time?”

If wolves could appear unimpressed, this one did.

You shared the sheep.

He remained an unmoving guardian between a pair of spruce trees as you took a cut of meat, the still hot blood melting the snow, draining in rivulets through ice. “You shouldn’t take their sheep,” you said. 

The wolf was unmoved. We needed to eat, his stare seemed to say, and here is food. 

“If they think there are wolves here, they will come again.” You shook your head, something shaken in your voice. “Thank you. Please don’t take their sheep.” 

The fucking sheep, got your wolves killed. Got your husband killed. Got a man in the village killed. 

You were almost killed.  

Perhaps you’d been alone and isolated for too long, but you swore he seemed to understand you. 

He didn’t follow you home, but he returned a few hours later, muzzle wet with blood, and allowed you to change the bandage around his leg. 

The wolf never brought you another sheep. 

As best as you could understand it, you began to hunt together through the rest of that long, lonely winter. The snows eventually abated, and though teamwork was no longer necessary, you continued hunting in tandem.  

He watched the cottage at night; he protected you while you ate. You cared for his wounded paw until it healed. He laid in the snow with you, albeit feet away, his back always to you, watching the dark landscape beyond the garden gate. 

You kept each other fed through those inhospitable months.

A partnership of sorts, you realized, had formed somewhere along the way. 

When summer finally arrived, cool and wet, the mountains awash in humid fog that now provided cover in lieu of snow for your wolf, you thanked him with a meal. Venison with potatoes and carrots and plenty of bones to chew and suck the marrow out of, presented on a plate in the garden. 

You watched him eat, lined cloak tucked around you. 

It was dangerous to name wild things. A wolf was still a wolf, no matter how he had adopted you. Still, it felt like it was time. Each of you were well fed, no long starving, haunted, lonely creatures. 

Naming something, too, meant it was yours. A protection or a curse. 

You carefully held out a hand when he finished, and, as always, he met the back of your hand with his cold nose. 

“Would you mind having a name?”

He huffed against your skin. 

“Suppose that means you wouldn’t,” you hummed, slowly moving your hand along his snout, lined with scars. His eyes closed as you stroked the silky black fur around his eyes. “Shadow,” you mused. “You move like one, afterall.” 

A grumble. 

“Grudging acceptance won’t do, darling.”

You pulled your hand back and tucked your cloak more tightly around your shoulders as you thought. “Hm.” Shadow didn’t fit. “Smoke?” Another grumble. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”  

Gloomy names tracked through your mind, his disposition and his penchant for skulking about in the dark, blending into the landscape in a near undetectable mass. 

“Ghost.” 

This time he did not grumble. Those oddly intelligent eyes flickered. 

“Ghost,” you said again, just to be sure it would stick. 

He turned his back to you, the great heft of his flank leaning heavily against your calf as he watched late shadows crawl across the garden. 

It was the first time he kept watch next to you. 

It was as much acceptance as you could ever hope for, even if you did still find yourself waiting for him to turn and sink his teeth into you. 

Ghost only trotted to his usual spot at the garden gate when the stars emerged from behind the usual gray sweep of clouds. 

You had weathered a season together. 

.

.

.

They called you wolf whisperer in the village. 

It was a dangerous thing to be called. You’d played witness to the madness that overtook the townspeople ten years before. Vast swaths of your beloved mountains burned, wolves shot and left as carrion that you had buried with your own hands.

It had, too, left you a widow. 

Your husband had been a great defender of the wolves, and died for it. Shot, they later claimed, accidentally, during the hunt. Suspected to practice communicating with wolves, the gossip in the village said he had taught you this dark art before he died. Not only did you understand wolves, you could control them, so the stories went. 

It had been a hungry year, the sheep in the pastures dwindling day by day, and hysteria had given way. The outsiders in the mountains, those people who loved wild animals, were to blame, convening with devils and wolves to destroy their flocks and livelihoods. 

You were only tolerated now because you stayed away, safe in the great shadows of the hills and trees. Your innocence was proven only by the accident of having been locked in the jail while it all unfolded. 

And, most importantly, because there had been no mauled sheep for many years now, and no wolves to do it. 

But your wolf survived it, somehow. He was the last of his kind. You had heard it in those howls. There was no one to answer, a grief in the song that you at once recognized and could never understand.

The morning after your too late descent into the village, the wolf was waiting in the morning mist at the gate again. 

“Ghost,” you greeted as you sat on the front step to restring your bow. 

He crept through the gate and settled among the herb garden, nestled neatly beneath the blackberry bush. 

Despite his size, he was quiet and always careful of the plants. His fur often smelled of soil and thyme and yarrow. He was surprisingly clean, for a wolf, when he wasn’t covered in blood and viscera. He smelled mostly of mountain air, something animal and smoky just beneath. 

“They found a dead sheep. Did you kill it?” 

Those clever brown eyes found yours, glaring from beneath the shade of the foliage. “I didn’t think so. But they’re worried again.” 

You wondered how far a wolf’s memory stretched, if he remembered the forest in flames, the sounds of the hunting parties moving through the trees, underbrush cracking like bones beneath their boots. The other members of his pack dead. 

When you stood, bow slung across your shoulders, basket over your arm, he trotted alongside you for a moment as you trailed into the trees, fur brushing your fingertips. His size never failed to surprise you. His shoulder reached your hip, his head could easily rest at the curve of your waist. 

And then he was off, noiselessly disappearing between the trees, a testament to the name you’d given him years ago. He would return to your side, once the way ahead was well scouted. You padded after him at a slower pace, over a deadened carpet of orange pine needles, the breeze warm and gentle on your skin. 

The hike to the stream took a few hours. 

You knelt at the waters edge as the fog dissipated, sun peaking through the ever present thick bank of clouds, to harvest the meadowsweet that grew in clumps along the edge of the water. 

His behavior was not typical of a wolf, you’d known that for a long time. You had told yourself he was an unusually intelligent animal, that without other wolves to form a pack with, he’d formed a pseudo pack with you, driven by loneliness and survival instincts. 

But the apothecarist’s words rattled around your mind. 

That thrown away line—you’d forgotten about the man they’d accused of being a werewolf. Some kind of amorphous being that could shift between wolf and man, wrecking havoc on their sheep and fields, marshalling the other wolves along with him. 

He’d been tried, found guilty, and killed in a matter of hours. 

You had spoken for him, or tried to. Rumors already swirled about your husband speaking with wolves, it didn’t help that his loudmouthed wife had defended the town outcast accused of being a wolf in disguise, shoved into the lone holding cell for it as things escalated beyond anyone’s control. 

It had been, you’d heard years later, an uneasy, difficult struggle to drag him to the gallows, which had only confirmed what they thought they knew. 

He was easy to blame. An outsider with a suspected checkered past because he was not a regular in the village, in a too large body that loomed above most of the other men in town. You had never seen his face, his nose and mouth always covered by cloth, his hood always pulled over his head. But he sold you the best cuts of meat back when you still bought meat, and spoke quietly in a rough voice. 

His body was burned, you had been told, afterward, to be sure. 

You dipped your fingers into the stream, cool water rushing over your skin. 

Ghost gracefully loped out of the underbrush and sat next to you, close but not touching, until his nose nudged your cheek and then your throat. 

“That tickles.” 

His nose dug in a bit harder, right over your pulse point, rough tongue lathing over your skin before he bit you lightly. You laughed and pushed his face away. A grumble followed, but he leaned heavily against your side instead.  

You sat there for a long while, watching fish dart beneath the crystal water, a ridiculous idea turning in your mind. The sun emerged and disappeared in quick flashes, warmed your skin beneath your hooded cloak. 

“They would have me shot for this,” you said, burying your fingers in his scruff. “I’m already a traitor.” 

A snarl shuddered against your side. 

“You’d like to see them try, yes, I know,” you answered. 

The wolf had heard it all before, the story of that night, many times over. He never seemed to mind. But you had a different story to tell. 

“There was a man killed, the same day as my husband, when all that madness broke out,” you said. “They said he could transform into a wolf. I hadn’t thought about him in a long time.” 

Ghost went motionless against you, listening, you guessed, to something you couldn’t hear, something other than your voice. 

“He was kind to me in his own way,” you said. “He didn’t live in the village, but I saw him often enough. I’m from a city. I was just learning how to dress an animal, and I wasn’t very good at it. Very messy. He showed me how.” You rubbed one of his pointed ears between thumb and forefinger. “I spoke for him that day, tried to save him. But I think that’s why he died. And I think that’s the only reason I wasn’t shot during their hunt too.” 

The water burbled, a bird sang a sweet song, clouds drifted over the sun again, dark rainclouds rain on the horizon. 

“What am I still doing here?” You wondered. “It was my fault and I’m all alone, but I don’t know how to leave.” 

The question inspired a discontent noise from your wolf. 

You leaned into his shoulder, buried your face in his fur. 

There had been an absurd notion stirring in your head since the apothecarist reminded you of the supposed werewolf.

You were just lonely. 

But this wolf.

He seemed to understand you, his behavior was nothing like a wolf’s. The—

The wolf was just a wolf. 

Your wolves had just been wolves. 

You couldn’t bear it any other way. 

Still, you murmured into his scruff because it didn’t matter, because he was just an animal you were projecting every bit of loneliness and hope you’d ever felt onto, because he didn’t—couldn’t—underrstand you, “I wouldn’t mind, you know. If it was you.” 

Ghost rumbled, and then stood and padded off, splashing up the stream a little way before bounding onto a river rock and turning back to you, clearly waiting for you to follow.

He hardly ever left you alone in the woods.

You stood and followed him upstream to your usual hunting grounds. 

.

.

.

Ghost repaid the favor of saving his life the second winter you spent together. 

The nights were long and unending, the days so short the sun barely breached the horizon before it descended again. The mountain became impassable once more and food dwindled quickly, though that summer season had yielded a better backstock than the one before. 

It had been months since you spoke to another person, years since conversation had not been tinged with wariness and barely leashed disgust. You were so lonely, it was like a spectre in the room with you, following you. Much as you adored the mountains, your wolf and your solitude, it was not enough. 

Grief was like a rock in your chest. 

You cried a lot, sat for hours at your husband’s grave, talking to ghosts, to people and wolves and a time long dead. 

Then Ghost disappeared, too, as he was wont to do occasionally, following some smell or instinct you could never be truly privy to. It made the long, nearly endless and enterally dark days seem even longer. You, too, were without a pack, without something tangible and worth holding onto. 

Snow piled up, and though you had plenty to eat comparatively to the winter before, you didn’t.

You laid in the garden or at your husband’s grave, staring up at a sky you knew there must be stars in if only you could see past the clouds. 

Ice stuck to your eyelashes, collected in tiny piles on your frozen skin and clothes. You were so cold it hurt, but still you didn’t move. You missed your husband, and wished you knew how to howl. 

The cold turned warm and comfortable, a sense of serenity curling amongst your bones. You closed your eyes, so relaxed you felt sleep, and peace, was only a breath away. 

You didn’t know if you closed your eyes or slept, but it seemed that seconds later you were being pawed awake. Something high pitched stinging the air. 

Ghost’s teeth were latched into the hood of your cloak, tugging your body over the frozen ground toward the cottage. 

“Ghost?” 

The high pitched whine stopped abruptly. He peered down at you, nudged you. 

Then, desperation seemed to set in, if a wolf could feel such a thing. For the first time, he snarled at you. It was an angry, mean noise, lips pulled back over huge teeth. When you didn’t react, your limbs stiff and unwieldy, he did it again, snapping at your face and hands in huge, ferocious bites that never landed. 

But it was hard to keep your eyes open, let alone move. 

“‘S okay,” you mumbled, wishing you had the energy to pat his neck, feel his fur between your fingers. “Go ahead. You can have me.” 

Your eyes closed again, soothed by his dark eyes staring down into yours. He would have something to eat, at least, and you’d failed the other wolves you’d known so badly.

The night went dark, sleep curling at the edge of your mind. 

Your body swayed, a voice whispered. 

It was a nice dream. 

Arms fitted beneath your knees and behind your shoulders, a warm chest pressed against your ear. 

Johnny, it must be. 

A dream of your husband. 

“Please,” a graveled, weak voice said. “Please, love, stay. Fucking hell, I need you to stay.” 

You tried, but the dream faded. 

Morning light woke you, bled into your cottage through a gap in the curtains. You were on the floor before the fireplace whose embers had burned down, but were still putting off heat. 

The wolf, inexplicably, was next to you, radiating a heat that was almost defiant and daring in its intensity. 

Ghost had managed it, somehow. He had dragged your unwilling, unyielding body inside next to the fireplace you don’t remember lighting, but that you must have. 

His body was half atop yours. Sweat slicked your forehead. 

He was an inert mass over you. 

You put your hand in his coarse fur and pushed your face against his scruff, turned into his body. “I’m sorry.” 

His maw closed around your opposite wrist. His teeth pinched and dug in, but he did not bite. It felt like being held.

He growled when you tried to move, and would not let you up for several hours. 

He would not forgive you until spring was well and truly arrived. 

Neither would he leave. 

.

.

.

That second winter with Ghost was at the front of your mind as you knelt near the blackberry bush. 

The inexplicable fire in the hearth, blanket and wolf curled over you, the door shut tight. 

Did it matter, you wondered, if it was him? 

Your fingertips were stained purple and red as you picked and dropped the fruit into your basket. Autumn was already upon you, showing its face earlier than you had hoped. The berries were still a bit under ripe but you were determined to make a pie. 

Since that winter, you and Ghost were rarely apart. Protection, spell, determination, you didn’t know what to call it. 

He had loped off something earlier, you had thought he wasn’t far.

But when a twig snapped behind you and a human voice rang out, you were decidedly alone among the dead orange leaves beneath your knees. 

“Get up.” 

You glanced over your shoulder to find a rifle aimed at you. You looked past the gun to the man. The shepherd had finally come to call. It was a small miracle Ghost wasn’t there, and at that moment, you were grateful for it.

“Up,” he barked when you didn’t immediately move to follow his command.  

You put your hands up and got to your feet slowly. You didn’t say anything, blinking placatingly at him, uniformly unimpressed. 

“Where is it?” He said, lowering the rifle a fraction when you didn’t lunge at him. 

“Where is what?” 

“That goddamned wolf.” 

“I don’t—” 

He took a step forward, silencing you as the barrel lifted again. “Don’t lie. I’ve seen you with it, calm as can be, just walking along. Talking to it. I told the others we should have done you in that day too.”  

You shook your head. Anger prodded delicately behind your breastbone. “I’m alone here. There are no wolves left.” 

“Liar,” he snapped back. “You always have been. Crying for those wolves, screaming for that beast we burned.” He jabbed the barrel of the gun at you. “I’ve seen you,” he said again. “You and the big, white one, yeah? Always knew we missed one.” 

You breath caught but you slowly shook your head again, trying not to look at the rifle. “I haven’t seen a wolf since that night.” 

A flicker of doubt crossed his face, before his resolve hardened again. “We didn’t have wolves before you. You brought them with you.” 

“To eat your sheep? What’s that get me?” You shot back, unable to help yourself. The grief, the loneliness, that bleak darkness in you, surge to the back of your throat. “You lost sheep. I lost my husband.” 

“I lost everything!” 

His voice echoed off the mountains, loud as thunderclap. 

You flinched a little, feeling, for the first time, a thread of fear. 

“You seem to have recovered well enough.” 

He huffed. “I lost half my flock. It’s taken me a decade to recover. And now my sheep are dying again. Three are dead. If you were decent, you would have left while you had the chance. We starved that year while you set wolves on us. I won’t let you do it again.” 

You gritted your teeth. “I’m sorry for what happened that year. But it was not wolves killing your sheep then, and there are no wolves left to kill your sheep now, even if they had been.” 

And, you thought, the only wolf left, your wolf, didn’t kill sheep. You knew he didn’t, because you’d asked him not to, because he inexplicably listened to you. 

The shepherd’s mind was already made up. You were guilty the moment you stepped into the village. Outsiders were easy to blame. “We didn’t have wolves,” he said again, “before you and your husband showed up all those years ago.” 

You stepped forward, until the barrel of the gun was pressed against your chest. “Do it then, if you’re going to,” you said calmly, evenly. “Shoot me. I don’t care.” Maybe you would be enough, maybe if he killed you, he wouldn’t go looking for Ghost. 

Surprise pulled at his features. He didn’t know what to make of you, most of the men in the village never had. 

His lips parted instead of pulling the trigger, when a horrifyingly loud growl echoed around the silent garden. 

No, you thought desperately.

But Ghost was already there, stalking through the garden gate, circling you and the shepherd in a wide arc. 

There was no fear on the man’s face, just a vindictive satisfaction. “Liar,” he said softly. “And now I have proof. You’ll hang for this.” 

Ghost snarled again, louder, but you didn’t look at him. You grasped the barrel of the gun with both hands, to keep it pressed against your chest, to keep his focus on you. “Yes, you’re right. I lied. I’m the one you should be angry with. I brought the wolves here.” 

He considered you, holding the gun against your chest, eyes not leaving yours. 

Ghost growled again, louder this time, more desperate than menacing. You dared look at him, then, hoping he could read the do not behave like the violent wolf he thinks you are in your eyes. 

The shepherd slowly shook his head. “You aren’t the one killing my sheep.”

“He’s not the one killing your sheep,” you rasped, anguish coloring your voice now. “Please.” 

He was all you had left. You were the only two left. 

“I reckon there’s only one way to know for sure,” he said, suddenly thrusting the gun forward into your chest. You doubled over in surprise, before the butt of the rifle smashed into your temple. 

Vision blurred by sudden tears, you couldn’t see. 

But you heard the violent, ferocious bark, followed by the sound of tearing cloth and a snarling so deep and deadly it seemed to shake the ground, before a gunshot cracked through the air that rendered you deaf except for a terrible ringing in your ears. 

Your heart lurched into your throat, fear curling up the back of your neck like an electric shock, so swift it made your head swim.

 “No,” You leapt forward blindly and latched onto the shepherd’s elbow, dragging his arm down with all your weight. 

He threw you off and another gunshot rang out. A blinding pain you couldn’t understand the origin of tore through your side.

It threw you to the ground in its intensity, rendered you mute and confused, a desperate, feral howl renting the air apart. It’s shredded tatters swept across your vision in painful stripes. 

Leaves churned beneath paws and boots in a horrible struggle. 

You stared across the garden, Ghost tearing, covered in red.  

The man still had the gun in his hands. Even with his throat torn out and Ghost’s massive paws pushing all his weight into his chest, he was still trying to kill your wolf. 

You lurched up, just lifted the gun again a final time, even as his throat was being shredded to a fine pulp by Ghost’s ripping, tearing teeth. 

“Ghost!” 

Ghost unhooked his teeth from around the shepherd’s neck and his massive front paws pounced on his forearm. Bone snapped loudly, like a twig beneath a boot. 

The gun went limp in his grasp, and he stilled with a final horrible groan and sigh. 

You took a shaky breath and slumped unceremoniously back to the ground, hands trembling as you pressed them to your side. There was so much blood. 

You could feel it rushing out of you, pooled warmly on the ground beneath you, steaming in the early season chill.

Dizzy, you looked to Ghost instead.

“Come here,” you mumbled, beckoning your wolf forward. “Are you okay? Did the first shot hit you?”

Ghost didn’t move, terribly still, eyes locked on you, but the only blood you could see dripped from his scarred muzzle. The rest of his coat was its usual pristine white. Relief made your shoulders sag, the tension in your head pulsing along with your slowing heart. You choked out a deliriously happy laugh. 

“Please come here. I’m going to die and I don’t think I can do it alone.” 

The pain spread, glass shards tumbling through your veins. 

There was so much blood. You were swimming in your own red sea. Your fingers were stained with berry juice, slick, salted blood. You were just picking berries and now you were going to die.

“Ghost—” 

Ghost finally appeared silently at your side, nudging your hand with fierce, unforgiving growls until you put your arm around his neck. You tried, just for his sake, to stand, leaning on his massive frame, but your body would cooperate, and you slipped back down to the ground. 

He whined, a sound you hadn't heard in a long time. Once when he had been newly alone, pack mates gone, and that night you almost died in the snow.

“‘S okay,” you mumbled, petting his muzzle when he stuck it in your face, still making that horrible, grief soaked sound. “I probably deserve it. My fault, all of it. It’s over now.”

The whine cut off suddenly when your eyes slipped closed. 

Sleep beckoned, but, just like the last time you’d been tempted to lapse into oblivion, arms pushed beneath you, under your legs and shoulders, lifting you gently. Violent pain lanced up your side with the motion. A cry slipped out of your mouth.

A voice rough with disuse murmured in your ear. “I know,” the voice said, strangely gentle and desperate. “None of that. Not again. Eyes open, love.” 

You peeled open your eyes with no small amount of effort. The blank gray sky wheeled overhead, droplets of rain pattering against your skin. 

A man was cradling you to his naked chest, the movement of his body like the lull of wind through the trees. You recognized the scars cast across his face, the dark eyes set forward. That intelligent, steady, lupine gaze. He smelled like autumn woods, the crackle of leaf and loamy wooded forest floors, undercut by the smokey brine of blood. There was a certain handsome wildness about him. Brutal, some might have called it. 

It would be hard not to recognize your wolf after nearly ten years together. 

“Ghost?” You murmured. Your hand moved of its own accord, left bloody fingerprints across his stained jaw. 

He looked down at you. “Don’t close your eyes,” he barked. “Keep lookin’ at me.” 

You wanted to, for as long as he’d let you, but you were so tired. You could hear your blood pattering onto the ground as he walked, steady and unyielding as an oak tree. 

His voice was familiar, but you couldn’t place it, didn’t know how it could be. 

“Sorry,” you said as your vision tunneled and the world went dark. 

.

.

.

There was a lot of blood. 

He packed the wound to stem the flow so he could search for the medical supplies he knew you had somewhere. 

He yanked on trousers from the wardrobe that he knew belonged, once, to Johnny.

Ghost’s hands trembled. He wasn’t used to this body anymore. The pale hands he extended made him want to bare teeth he didn’t presently have. 

He was unwilling to admit that the shaking might be in part due to watching as you were shot because of him, that you were catatonic and might die. Because you had been trying to protect him. Some wild animal that you shouldn’t care about at all. 

He slammed into a wall and lurched into the kitchen to scrub your blood off of his hands in the bucket of water by the basin, and hoped you didn’t die while he did. 

He was near blind with pain from the sudden colorful clarity of his sight. He couldn’t smell anything, couldn’t hear your breathing or the tempo of your heart. All the avenues of you that he had painstakingly mapped over the last decade were lost to him. Your scent was familiar to him as his own, maybe even more so. He could smell your fear and joy and sadness. He knew what your grief and loneliness felt like in the back of his throat. He could track your mood through the spikes and dips in your breathing and heart rate. 

All of it was fucking lost to him. Years of carefully collected information, inaccessible. 

But a wolf was not suited to assessing or tending wounds. He had to stay, remain exposed, in this horrible body until at least then. 

He scrubbed until his hands were raw, and thankfully didn’t have to search long for your medicine bag, stuffed full of cloth bandages, poultices, disinfectants. A needle and surgical thread. 

Ghost had only been in your cottage once, when you nearly froze to death in the throes of your grief. He’d been assaulted by your scent, your blood and musk, and, worse, the dead smell of his pack mates still somehow lingering in the air. He had been sure you would die then, that he had not found you in time and wasted too much time trying to warm you in the garden, then to move you. His wolf was useful in many more ways than the human ever could be, but it was not suited to that kind of movement and care. 

You might have died, all because he had not wanted to transform and suffer the ache of being a person for even a few minutes. Of being seen for what he was, even by you. 

There was too much to explain, too much history. 

He returned to the bedroom, still clumsy with the taste of another failure so close. 

Fear still gripped him, the sight of you with a gun pointed at you, him not there to prevent it. He should have been there, should have smelled the shepherd from miles off. 

Though your skin was clammy and ashen, you were breathing evenly, closed eyelids fluttering. 

Ghost carefully maneuvered your body to the middle of the bed, and sat next to you. The feather mattress dipped a little under his weight and when he pulled the packed cloth away from your side, blood gushed out and then stemmed a little. 

His hands were unsteady, shaking. This body was slow, cumbersome. 

It didn’t look as bad as he’d feared. It would have been a graze, if you had not been shot at such close range. Flesh was missing. You would scar horribly, and his surely botched stitching would only make it worse. 

He cleaned the wound, slow and methodical. The shaking stopped as he worked, hands steadying. 

His stitching was as bad as he predicted it would be, but you wouldn’t bleed to death. The cloth bandage had to be wrapped around your middle, his unwieldy hands sliding between your inert form and the mattress, rough fingertips brushing the soft skin of your back and belly. 

It was all he could do, all he should do. 

He should leave, disappear into the forest and let you think the whole thing had been a bizarre dream. 

Instead, he pushed his fingers against your pulse and felt the reassuring throb of it, imagined it was loud enough for him to hear. Ghost kept his hand there, pressed to that thin delicate skin. He lifted your wrist to his nose but all he could smell was the salt of skin and blood. 

Though he wished he could taste your scent on the air, be comforted by it, for the first time in a decade, he was seeing you with clear sight. The wolf’s vision was poor; he, ironically, saw you best at night. Now, it was like finally seeing a finished painting after looking for so long at a rough charcoal sketch.  

He’d taken for granted those years he’d been able to see you clearly, speak to you as you smiled and your lashes touched your cheek. Something of a pretty bride. Gentle in a way he didn’t know people could be.

The village had been a way to check in with Johnny, to learn anything he couldn’t glean just from watching the two of you. News of fear of wolves, that he’d disastrously failed to heed.

He’d waited for you to leave for so long, counting the days and weeks and months like a clock that had timed itself to the moment you would realize there was nothing left for you there. You would go back to the city; he would live out his days as a lone wolf. 

He had known, at first, why you didn’t go, all those nights you lay in the cold at Johnny’s grave. You couldn’t leave him, couldn’t leave the memory of him there. 

But the grief had faded with time, and still you’d stayed. You laid in the snow with a wolf, opened your arms to it, talked to it. And though you didn’t have the words for it, didn’t understand the feeling, Ghost knew. 

The pack had shrunk, but it was still a pack. 

He would wait for you to wake up. 

You knew, now, after all, what he was. 

Ghost didn’t want to leave, anyway. 

In the meantime, he had a body to dispose of, and your blackberries needed bringing in. 

You would not wake up for two nights. 

.

.

.

A candle was guttering on the window when you woke, warm yellow flame jumping against the dark glass.

It was late, quiet in a way it only ever was when most of the world was asleep. Rain pattered against the roof. Its familiar rhythm would have been comforting if not for the sharp pain in your side and the memories that accompanied it. 

Ghost. 

Your wolf turned man, just as the stories had said. 

A fever dream, surely. Delirium and shock. 

Gingerly you pushed yourself upright. 

The sheets were clean. Your wound was bound, and when you lifted the bandage, you found it had been expertly cleaned, and stitched. The stitching was messy, but careful. 

You winced and attempted to change the bandage with more cloth wrapping that had been left on the sideboard. But your fingers were stiff and graceless and you could not get the wrapping to cooperate. Since it wasn’t bleeding, you decided to leave it for just a moment. Just to check on the house, to make sure your wolf was okay—

As soon as your feet hit the floor, something in the house shifted.

You were so used to being alone, that another human presence within the walls beats like a second heart in your hand. For one moment, you forget, think it’s only your husband stoking the fire. He would come back to bed and smile and ask why you were getting up. 

But when you turned to glance over your shoulder, pain swelling up your side, the unfamiliar-familiar man loomed there like a shadow manifest real. 

You stared at each other for a long moment. 

He was wearing Johnny’s clothes, too small for him. The trousers are too short, the shirt too tight. 

“Shouldn’t be movin’,” he said. 

You could only stare. Massive as your wolf was, this man was bigger. 

Fear and dread coiled in your stomach. He was an unfamiliar man. And men could hurt you in ways a wolf never could. 

You touched your side and a needlepoint of pain raked up your side, settled just under your arm. A hard breath caught in your throat. 

The man didn’t step forward, still as stone, just as your wolf often stood. 

“Ghost?” Your voice stammered out of you.

He nodded, once, the movement barely perceptible. 

You stared at him, your wolf made man.

“You’re a wolf.” He nodded, gaze guarded, maybe even afraid. “You’re my wolf.”

Possibly you were in shock, but you thought a hint of pride replaced the fear behind his eyes, satisfied, at least, with that assessment. 

“A werewolf?” 

He huffed, his mouth ticked up a little at the corner. “No. Not like your stories.” 

Ghost still didn’t move closer, and you were glad for it. The space was a kind way to let you adjust to his presence. 

The word werewolf loosened something in you, though. The man they’d executed. You shifted your gaze to his shoulder, to the same burn scars your wolf had, that you had always assumed were from the forest fires that day. 

The knowledge sunk like a stone in your belly. The wolves. How your husband loved those animals. How odd their behavior was. How they seemed to know something they shouldn’t. How he was killed along with them. How they loved you. 

You were, you were beginning to understand, part of a pack all along. 

Your chest constricted, throat tightening. 

You looked away, salt welling at the corners of your eyes, inhaling shakily. 

One question would tell you all you needed to know, but you were afraid to ask it. 

The floor creaked gently as he shifted in the doorway. 

“I need help,” you said instead. “With the bandage. Could you—I can’t get it to—” When you looked back again, he was already moving across the room, rounding the bed, as though he’d only been waiting for permission. 

He knelt on one knee and whatever threads of fear and anxiety you’d felt dissipated. You recognized his eyes, the scar across the bridge of his nose. Your wolf who had never done you harm, and wasn’t likely to start. 

You hitched your shirt up beneath your breasts and watched him carefully clean and tend your wound as you’d once tended his paw. He worked as if he’d done it many times before, cleaning it again carefully, applying a poultice when you pointed it out in the medicine bag. 

“Shouldn’t have done that.” 

You knew what he meant. Shouldn’t be speaking for wild animals. 

“What?” You ribbed. “Stand there? You did all the work.”

He ignored your joke. 

“Get shot,” he clarified roughly.  

“Next time I’ll dodge,” you tried again, touching his wrist. 

His mouth twitched. It was, you suspected, the equivalent of the wolf huffing into your hand. Irritated that he was amused.

“Willin’ to get shot over a bloody wolf.” He shook his head.  

“Not just a wolf,” you said. “In more ways than I knew, apparently.” 

He remained silent, focused on his task or ignoring you, you couldn’t tell. His lashes were very blond, angelic around such dark irises. 

“Why?” You asked. “Why did you never tell me. . .show me?”   

He didn’t answer, working quietly. He wrapped your wound methodically, and though his hands shook a little, his work was sure. He looped the cloth around your waist, arms circling your body but not touching. His biceps were massive, all muscle and corded blue veins. 

His hands anchored tentatively on your hips when he finished, as though waiting for you to throw him off. 

It was the closest you had been to another human in a very long time. You tilted your face closer to his. He smelled like your wolf, cut with blood and sweat. 

You lowered your free hand to his shoulder and when he didn’t shake you off, rubbed your thumb against the column of his throat.

“Not exactly the easiest thing to tell,” he finally answered, meeting your eyes. “Don’t like people much,” he added when you nodded in understanding. “Don't like being one either.” 

“The other wolves—“

Grief crossed his face. It was answer enough. He carried the blame and guilt like armor, something to wield. It was his fault they were all dead and that was reason enough to never reveal himself to you. You both wore that guilt and grief so poorly.

“I’m sorry.”

His thumb tracked down your side, beneath your ribs. Your breath caught and hitched, which made your side ache. “You—” you shuttered, and inhaled slowly, “—You don’t have to stay like this.” 

His gaze was unwavering. “You have questions a wolf can’t answer.” 

Slowly, you shook your head, brows knitting together. “I don’t think I do,” you said. 

You could see all the markers of the story laid out in front of you. The pack, your husband, what choices had been made about who wanted to be human and for which reasons. 

One question would give you all the answers you needed. 

“Was he like you? Johnny?” 

“‘e was.”

You wriggled your hand into his, found you missed his teeth around your skin. His fingers tightened instead. “He never told me.” 

“It was supposed to be behind him. For you.” 

You felt raw, tuned inside out. Your body ached all over. 

He moved his hand from your hip to your chin, angling your head to the side, examining your temple. A dissatisfied sound rumbled out of him, more animal than human. 

“But all of you came, too.” 

“He was still ours.” 

It was the simplest kind of belonging, where leaving didn’t mean you were alone, didn’t mean you were forgotten.

“Do you have a name?” 

You wondered if it was a product of being an animal for so long, or if he was unusually prone to long silences. You waited. 

“Did,” he nodded. “Once. ‘aven’t been him in a long time. ”

You hummed. 

Exhaustion tugged at your eyelids. The warmth of him so close was a balm. “Would you like to have one again?”

He pushed away from the floor, and pooled over you lithe and liquid as the wolf you knew he was. You breath caught again, your side ached, but you allowed yourself to be guided down, his large hand supporting your spine. 

His gaze was steady and intense. He had been watching you for a long, long time.

“Already gave me one, yeah?”

“Ghost,” you said. “Yes.” 

“You don’t want ‘im,” he said softly. “No use to you.” 

“Who?” 

His body engulfed yours. You felt torn apart beneath him, though he wasn’t touching you, supporting all his weight on his palms against the mattress. 

“I feel blind,” he admitted.  

“You don’t have to. . .you can be a wolf,” you said again. “I don’t mind.” 

It would, in actuality, be more comfortable. You didn’t mind the unease, though, of being so close to another person again. 

He only stared at you again, his body easing down against yours. It was so careful, so tediously mindful of the fragile stitches on your side. You wondered what he saw, what he was blind to now that he hadn’t been before. It was a terribly different experience, too, being watched by a wolf and being watched by a man whose body heat was slowly bleeding into yours. 

The silence unraveled, then winched you together. 

Just as there were questions a wolf couldn’t answer, you realized, there were things a man wanted that a wolf couldn’t have.

You tilted your chin up, offering. 

You expected him to hesitate but he didn’t. He pressed his face against your throat. The inhale was sharp and frustrated. His biceps bunched around your head when he fell to his forearms instead. His weight settled over you still so carefully. 

"Can't smell you proper," he complained.

"Sorry."

You widened your legs to accommodate his bulk, sliding your hands beneath the shirt that once belonged to someone else. His back was littered with scars, raised lines against your fingertips, constellations of who he claimed was no use to you. His past, his previous name, all the grief and pain you’d experienced in tandem. Your fingers trailed gently over the blanket of old burn scarring. 

His teeth digging into your skin wasn’t totally unexpected, but it still made you flinch. A choked groan carved a path through your throat. 

“Are you real?” 

Maybe it was a dream, a feverish delusion brought on by your long weathered loneliness. Your wolf was a man who saved your life. The world knew the husband you’d lost, the pack that had been slaughtered. 

But then he touched you, and the doubt sloughed away. 

He pushed one hand to your hip, holding you in place though you weren’t moving. It covered an alarming amount of skin before he pushed it along your spine to the base of your neck. His fingers tangled in the hair at the nape, resting against your skull that suddenly felt incredibly fragile. 

He lifted his head and tilted onto his side. His body formed a neat pocket for you to fit into. He drew you further into him when you cupped his jaw. Your neck pulsed with an ache. Unlike your side, it felt good.

Ghost closed his eyes, a pleased hum lodged somewhere in his chest. You rubbed your hand through his hair, traced the scar that hooked the corner of his mouth.  

His cock was heavy and half hard against your thigh, fingers of arousal you’d thought long dead curling to life in your belly. When you brought your face close to his, eyes fluttering nearly closed, he automatically met you, as though it were the easiest thing in the world. 

He shook his head when your fingers skimmed the waistband of his trousers.

“Stitches,” he said. 

“So be gentle,” you answered. “This time, at least.” 

His hand tightened on the back of your neck. Your breath hitched as you waited for him to decide. “If that is something you want,” you said after a moment. “It should go without saying.” 

“If,” he repeated. “Funny, that.” 

But he seemed to make up his mind, hand wandering to your waist instead, curling his fingers in your dirty tunic. You felt as though you couldn’t breathe, air crushed from between your ribs as he kissed you again, tongue sliding against yours, hand squeezing your breast until you gasped and hissed. 

“Careful,” he said.

It was only when he was deep inside you, tears gathering at the corners of your eyes from the stretch, the slow, even rhythm of his body against yours, the heavy, intoxicating weight of him in your cunt, cautious and gentling, that he told you. 

How careful he was, for someone with such a sharp bite.

His name was pressed into the skin below your ear.

For safekeeping. 

A past self he thought dead slipped into your mouth. 

It was a name you already knew.

I read a book about lone wolves recently. can you tell?

as always thank you for reading, thank you for being here. would love to know your thoughts <3

[bo0zey]

 i tried to be funny and it backfired miserably

[bo0zey]

it’s 2014 it’s time we moved on as a nation and stop reblogging this

[bo0zey]

every person who reblogs this in 2015 is gonna get their ass kicked by yours truly

[chernolian]

via teaboot

[shamebats]

Migraine sufferers will be like "it's not like I'm disabled or anything, it's just that if I do any of these normal everyday things other people do all the time, my head explodes. But I'm fine honestly, as long as I avoid doing anything ever and my environment and the weather never changes, then my head explodes a little less"

[sinistra-orlok]

[we-all-got-scars-again]

IT’S MARCH

[multifand0mtrash]

[magical-awesome-kid]

Uh… It’s still May…

[clowncare]

[normalstuffidk]

It’s august

[storm-driver]