Chapter Text
The first of October, 1998 came to them during a fairly wet week in autumn. No sooner had Simon stepped into the shop before he was shoved off towards the meat locker, jacket making puddles on the floor because he hadn't had the chance to wick off the rain. He had the youngest back in the shop, so he had the job of unloading the carcasses from the meat locker and onto the bandsaw. Most mornings were a rush to fill the display case before the doors unlocked, but the spot of bad weather was keeping most customers out of doors that morning. A few regulars braved the wet for their usual orders of bacon or mince or some such. Better to risk a little rain than compete with the weekend crowds on the hunt for a Sunday roast.
Simon didn’t mind the quiet. There was an easy rhythm to breaking down an animal: remove the head from the shoulders, shoulders from the saddle, and saddle from the hindquarters. Seam out your cuts. Trim. Tie. Repeat.
Out on the sales floor, one of the grocers was working restock, while another was set to mopping up the rain that had gotten tracked in on the bottoms of what little foot traffic had passed through that morning. The reflection of the cars outside flickered across the floor, all turned on their heads in the reflection of wet linoleum. Only one person worked the register, though in the absence of any customers, she was really just occupying her time by flicking through the different gossip rags on the racks by checkout. The steady plonk of fat water droplets smacking the bricks outside kept time with the same monotonous rhythm of the clock dragging the lazing present ever onward.
It wasn't until just before noon that someone had burst out from the back office and barked to turn on the radio, any station. Simon's mentor had stripped off his gloves into the bin and twisted the knob for volume, one click to turn it on and then all the way up until the entire butcher's counter could hear the latest report from the local news station:
“ – confirm that the U.S. government has deployed a missile to Raccoon City. The number of people still within the city at the time of impact is unknown, but early estimates are that nearly 100,000 civilians and service members were unable to evacuate ahead of the bombing. The White House has yet to issue a statement, however – ”
When the world turned, that day, it turned on its head, taking Simon with it.
He never completed his apprenticeship, in the end. Instead, Simon returned to the military, prodigal son welcomed back with minimal fuss. It'd been less than three years since he had transferred into the reservists, and current events had every military on the planet scrambling for warm bodies to stuff into uniforms. There was plenty of war to go around. Civil unrest was stirring in the Eastern Slav Republic and tensions winding ever tighter in Urzikstan. By the time Simon was deemed fit for service, Penamstan had broken out into a civil war, which is to say that the foreign powers behind the scenes were lashing out in fear of losing their foothold in the middle east.
Simon was all set for his first deployment back when he got pulled off the flight in the eleventh hour. Orders from the top down, he was told. The Brass wanted him in Mexico, and like a good soldier, he did exactly as he'd been told. It was supposed to be a quick assignment, a few weeks at most.
In the end, Simon didn't return home for another ten months.
Once he finally made it back to Manchester, they assigned Simon a shrink by the name of Dr. Halloway. He'd hated every moment of it, starting right from the off. Simon had sat in the chair instead of the couch and watched as Halloway, barricaded behind her desk, scribbled something on her little notepad before their first session had even started. She always did that, stuck her fingers where they didn't belong and pulled out parts of him he hadn't even known were there to begin with. It was her job, sure, but then it was Simon’s job to kill people. Not every profession comes with clean hands.
He had these dreams, sometimes, about being back in the shop he'd apprenticed at. In one of these dreams, Simon was a sheep in a slaughterhouse, being kept in one of the pens. There was another where he’d been back in that shop in Manchester, laid out on the cutting table. His mentor was dressed up like a surgeon and Simon stared up at the flickering fluorescents on the ceiling. The buzzing overhead lights sawed away at his nerves with the elliptical insistence of a circling fly. Another dream had Simon swinging from a hook in the meat locker and it was so damned cold and dark as he stared down at the blood soaked dirt below.
Simon told Halloway about the dreams exactly once. She asked him if he was ready to talk about what happened during his time in Coahuila.
The topic never came up again.
“Lieutenant Riley?”
“Ghost.” He corrects automatically.
“Nice meetin' ye, Ghost.” The man before him grins. “Sergeant MacTavish, most call me Soap.”
Smiles are a funny thing. If an animal greets you by a show of its teeth, you'd best back up if you don't want to chance getting bit. For any animal besides humans, smiles are a warning to pick up your arse and take it elsewhere. Which is to say that MacTavish’s smile taps a nerve that should've been bred out of humans at some early fork of evolutionary divergence.
According to the dossier, MacTavish is well liked and well decorated for someone so early on in his military career. There are rumors, but no record, of occasional misconduct. Anyone smart enough to slip the noose isn't afraid to flirt with fear, evidenced by the fact that the man is still holding a hand out for Ghost to shake.
Captain Price watches from the side, waiting for them to finish sniffing each other's proverbial arseholes. He's got the look of a pet owner who's brought home a new dog and Ghost can't shake the suspicion that he's the stray here. By the sound of it, MacTavish had been brought up at Price's knee throughout his military career. Ghost hasn't been on Bravo Team since before Coahuila. He's not entirely sure why the Lieutenant General is asking for him by name.
When it’s clear Ghost has no intention of reciprocating the handshake, MacTavish's grin widens by another couple of teeth and the scar on his chin twists at the movement. Instead of withdrawing the offered hand, the sergeant chooses to encroach his space further by delivering a solid smack to Ghost's shoulder. A little too sharp to be wholly friendly, though his sweatshirt dampens any sting of it.
“Look forward to working with ye, sir.”
Christ, this was going to be a long assignment.
“Gold Eagle to Bravo 0-7. Unknown vehicle at west end of terminal. Silver van.”
Ghost angles his scope in that direction. He'd noted the vehicle about ten minutes ago, parked at the end of the airport's kiss-n-drive lane. The tint on the van's windows means Ghost can only just make out the shape of the driver inside.
“Got eyes on it.” Ghost confirms. He feels his spotter shift next to him. They've set up on the roof of the car park across from the main terminal. It's a decent enough vantage, not that they're spoiled for choice in the matter. Short of posting up in air traffic control, there isn't anywhere else to perch. Either way, it'll do the job which, at present, is some cunt named Makerov and his merry band of terrorists. Word on the street is they're planning an attack on Verdansk International, so here Ghost is, watching a minivan for any sign of danger ‘neath that suburban outer shell.
It's not much of a wait before a kid comes galloping up to the vehicle, followed closely by a harried mother juggling their luggage. The minivan's driver – female, caucasian, middle-aged, thick glasses – climbs out to greet them. Still, Ghost doesn't stop tracking the car even after it peels away from the curb. It's not until he confirms that it's pulled back onto the highway that he calls it in.
“Civilian vehicle. They've moved on.”
“Copy, 0-7. As you were.”
Down below, a couple lingers, holding each other. There's a ring on the man's finger, but not on the woman's. An elderly gentleman drops his bags getting out of a taxi, and is assisted by a stranger who looks like a backpacker on holiday. The younger man smiles and shakes a mop of curls from his eyes as he waves off the elder's fussing. Someone else manages to trip over their own suitcase, then glances around to make sure nobody else saw. A businesswoman brushes past, texting on her mobile as she breezes through the automated doors. A bus unloads its passengers in front of the terminal. One of them stops a few steps from the curb and pats down their pockets, before making a performance of tossing up their hands to an audience of no one and everyone all at once.
Little snapshots of mundanity, all vignetted by a sniper’s scope.
Ghost is only just getting settled when the order comes.
“This is Gold Eagle actual. We have a situation developing at the stadium. Pack it up and get out to the tarmac, son.”
Lieutenant General Shepherd is already waiting in the helicopter by the time Ghost is waved through security. He hasn't even sat down before they’re lifting off.
“Bravo Team's confirmed contact with the terror cell at the stadium.” Shepherd fills him in enroute. “All first responders on-target are considered hostile. The team's located explosives in the VIP area, but Makarov's still in the wind.”
“He's not getting away.” Ghost barks into his heatset.
“That's a promise.” Shepherd nods back.
And Shepherd doesn't break that promise.
When Price reports that they're bringing the target out, Ghost gets to work on clearing the path. For now, his focus is entirely on keeping his men alive. Which would be easier if the sergeant would quit showboating.
“I had that one.” Ghost mutters after the third time MacTavish drops a target that he'd already called out. Christ knows there's plenty of death to go around.
As he makes another sweep, Ghost catches Makarov in his crosshairs. It'd be so easy. Just one flick of his finger. Done and dusted.
Ghost finds a different target.
He almost wishes he hadn't when Makarov lays those flat eyes on him once they're all loaded up in the helicopter.
Most people weren't evil, in Simon’s opinion, and he'd told Halloway as much. Selfish, sure. Greedy. Fanatic. Ignorant. He'd seen it all before. But as much evil as people were capable of, very few people are truly evil in the very core of their being. But when you meet people like that, you can tell when someone is evil. Truly evil.
Evil you can feel in your bones.
An oil slick smile spreads across Makarov's face. The whole lot of them are shouting over the rolling thunder of the propellers, but even his own words feel distant. Muffled. It takes a few seconds to parse through anything that's being said, so it takes a few seconds too long to internalize what their captive is saying.
“I expected you to stay at the airport…” Makarov says, too satisfied for a man in enemy hands. “And die there.”
When Verdansk International explodes below them, Ghost feels like he's back behind his sniper's scope. Like he's been put up there just to watch.
“This is still a win, boys.” Shepherd offers a piss poor attempt at comfort after they've landed at Arklov.
“Tell tha’ te all the families grievin’ tonight, sir.” MacTavish tacks the rank on at the end, toeing the line of insubordination. The man's been spoiling for a fight since Price talked him down from painting Makarov's brains across the floor of the helicopter.
There's three members of the Inner Circle found dead at the airport, all clearly shot dead on their feet. One mystery remains, though. While two of the men were killed by bullets matching the kind used by airport security, the bullets they dug out of the third man were ones used by the Russians. The trail goes cold as those three corpses in the cooler, leaving only questions.
Ghost understands how paranoia seeds itself deep in the psyche. How it might've felt on the drive over, to look over into the passenger seat and wonder if your partner's gonna kill you. Trying to stay awake just a little longer, just in case tonight's the night you won't wake up. Searching for the stranger under a friend's skin. Picking apart conversations to unravel the lie and finding you don't actually know a thing about the people beside you. They could really be anyone.
Anything.
Why'd you do that? A young Simon had once whispered through a hole in a bathroom stall. Why'd you say you love them, when you don't?
There was a bandaid on her Achilles heel, right where the back of the stiletto dug into her skin. That was all he could see of her when she said:
Judas got twenty silver for a kiss, kid.
Shepherd makes General off the back of everything so in a way, he was right about it being a win.
Ghost spends the next several months tracking down Makarov's Inner Circle. The bastards have scattered to the four winds the moment that airport bomb went off. Kill and capture orders shift like the tides, all dependant on how badly they want any particular bastard of the week.
Somewhere along the way, he's tracking a Brazilian gun runner who's made a retreat back to his homeland. The trail goes cold two weeks in. Last they'd heard, he was headed north towards an area that turns out to be a conversation ender with any of their local contacts. Corruption is nothing new in this line of work, but Ghost isn't convinced that's what this is. The wider and wider he casts his net, the more he suspects that these people are scared. Doesn't help that when he puts in a request for satellite imagery, it's immediately stonewalled, which trips off Ghost's alarm bells left, right, and center.
When the wells of information dry up, Ghost goes digging. The areal survey he dredges up from some digital archive shows a scar of scorched jungle that blots nearly the entire region off the map. It would've been a massive fucking fire. Truly massive. Its not just the kind of thing that gets forgotten after doing sixty seconds on a local news channel. This is proper end of days shit. The date on the file reads back nearly five years ago, now. Ghost isn't sure what his target could want from there, but he reports it anyways.
The next day, he's being called back to base.
For those last remaining dregs of the year, Ghost haunts the halls of Credenhill, only getting pulled off ice for the occasional recon. The most action they'd seen while he was gone was a pharmaceutical CEO getting popped sometime in back in August. That's quickly overshadowed by the attack in Piccadilly.
His phone doesn't even ring once the entire time.
As the base settles into winter, it's the usual paperwork and training and routine deletion of emails reminding him to use his paid leave before the year is up.
When Price turns up in Ghost's office sometime in mid December, he's got a tan and a smile, neither of which suits the weather outside the window.
“Got you a Christmas present.” Price waves a file at him.
“And here I didn't get you anything.” Ghost eyes the folder in the older man's hands. “What's this?”
“Not another bloody milk run, I promise you that.”
On the cover is a single number: 141.
March comes like a lion and with it, the first tanks begin rolling through the streets of Verdansk.
There's a boot tread stamped across a photo of a boy, near translucent on the page. Copier must've been low on ink, and for good reason. The fence around the base is covered with photocopied pictures and handwritten Cyrillic. Refugees crowd the gate, holding up the faces of missing loved ones. They press them against the windows of passing vehicles, pleading in Russian. Ghost doesn't need to speak their language to know what they're asking. Some of the soldiers go out to collect them, allow grieving loved ones to hold their hands, their faces, and thank them. It's cruel to give them hope. Ghost wouldn't know his own face in the mirror, let alone a stranger's son.
Ghost can't give them back their families, but he can give them a place to return home to.
Different photos hang on the board in the war room. Full colour. High quality. The kind you see in a glossy mag. One is of a man turned away from the camera. His face isn't pictured, but Ghost knows him by his suit, his haircut, his gait. When the job's done, Lasswell draws a red “X” over the photo. There's an odd ceremony in it, both equal and opposite to a shrine. You will not be remembered. Your ashes are indistinguishable from the building brought down on your head. A folder will be your winding-sheet before you are laid to rest in the catacombs of a filing cabinet, locked away to collect dust among strangers.
It didn't take a professional to know that Simon’s bell got rung pretty bad back in Mexico. His file details the whole laundry list of issues knocking around up there, while a few others go unmentioned. Simon learned a new term about a month into seeing Halloway:
Non compos mentis
Which is essentially Latin for “absolute barmy nutter.” Not the sort of diagnosis you want with someone carrying firearms in a target rich environment.
Among the diagnosis is another fun word: prosopagnosia, which is he-doesn’t-give-a-fuck for “face blindness.” Handy trick, that, to have a doctor's note saying you're bad with faces. Less of a trick in the field, unless you're keen on keeping secrets from your operators. Then it's a fuckin’ boon. Could tell him to pop a cap in the Prime Minister, and Ghost wouldn't know his picture on the morning news. Trouble is IDing your target, so Ghost compensates by learning their clothes, their hair, all their little ticks and tricks down to their very bones. He'll stalk them for days on end, rewatch surveillance footage until it's burned into his retinas.
And when the job's finished, he returns back to base a blank fucking slate.
The war room is livelier than a kicked wasp's nest and twice as angry. Orders volley back and forth in a tumble of English, Russian, and Arabic alike. A map of the Kastovian capital hangs on the far wall, subjected to the business end of countless markers. One of the comms officers darts over to stick a red index tab to the board, adding to the constellation of data points dotted over the streets of Verdansk. He doesn't spend any more time in here than he has to, dropping intel on their doorstep with all the gravitas that a cat leaves a dead bird before fucking off back to the field.
This one's a group project, though. AQ's shipping a heavy payload out of Verdansk and it's their job to make sure the bastards have a no good, very bad kind of day.
Price is heading up this operation under the joint leadership of the CIA's Kate Lasswell and the FSB's Sergeant Kamarov. There's enough three-letter agencies in the one room to collect half the damn alphabet. Toe-trodding is always bound to happen in matters of bureaucratic bullshit, and none of these organizations make for good dance partners. But momentum has carried them this far.
Some of the operators have even started getting friendly.
“Holy shit. That’s him, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s some other Skull-Stalker looking fucker.”
Maybe a little too friendly.
Ghost keeps his head forward, but he tracks the noisy table in his periphery. The bastards aren’t exactly subtle as they keep glancing over where the SAS is eating.
Well, the others are eating. Ghost is seated the wrong way round on the bench with his fellow airmen, back to the table and facing the entrance to the food hall.
His arrival at the mess had attracted a fair share of craned necks. But when Ghost had sat at an empty table without joining the queue, most had returned to their meals. Understandable. Big fucker in a skull mask? Something like that gets people talking. Gets people curious.
Least they could do is keep it down.
“Think he wears it… yah know?”
“Fuck off, man.”
“What? You’re thinking it, too.”
Fuckin' Yanks.
Of course it's the bloody mask. Always is. They think there's some mystery to it, want a peek at the freakshow under the shroud. They'd be disappointed that there's not much to look at, just some scars and a nose that's been broken more times than reset. He doesn't much care what people say about him, so long as they keep it tidy in the field. But apparently his boogeyman act is bad for morale, to the point that Price had to pull him aside and ask him to start making a showing in the food hall.
Don't have to eat if you don’t want to. His captain had soothed. Just show them a strong front, yeah?
So here he is, a specter at the feast. Not that he's truly tempted to tuck in with them. The food here is pretty fucking uninspired, but about what one would expect from this sort of deployment. Former USSR states like Kastovia had lost generations of tradesmen to Soviet industrialization. Ghost has bounced around enough eastern european bases to know that some governments fail to supply their people with little more than a tin opener.
Something his fellow airmen have learned the hard way
“Missing the scoff’s fish finger sandwiches, yet?” Sergeant Garrick asks as he picks at something that may have once been cabbage. MacTavish puts a pause on grumbling into his borscht to shoot a foul look Garrick's way.
“Aye. Miss ‘em like Ah miss a hole in mah head.”
“Better than that fuckin’ stove tat, innit?”
MacTavish grins with all his damn teeth, and that's how Ghost knows that Garrick's made an enemy even before the Scot calls down the table: “Oi, Charles! Gaz's talkin’ shite about stovies!”
The answering string of incensed Brogue is unintelligible when translated through a mouthful of cold mash. Charles picks up her tray and wedges herself into the space next to Garrick. This jostles Lee into the Aussie that's been stuck to him like the plague and nearly sends Burns off the other end of the bench.
The whole shuffle draws less attention than you'd think. Most are keeping to themselves, breaking bread together and ignoring the bloodstains left on the loaves. It's like something off the documentary channel, where the animals that'd usually be killing each other are shown drinking side-by-side at the same watering hole. Make no mistake, Ghost wants to be paranoid. He wants to be wrong, because who the fuck would wish the world full of cheap morals and senseless pain? Christ, let him be a relic of a bygone era, put him up in a damned museum: Simon Riley c. 2000. Last man to ever be knifed in the back. And then the whole world would all join hands and sing some damn hymnals, or something. But ouroboros keeps on chasing its tail, and it's only a matter of time before things go to shit.
Whatever. Not his fucking circus, anyway.
Speaking of, Ghost's attention is pulled back to the sergeants, who have quit laying into Garrick and turned on each other.
“C'mon, Jimmie.” Charles is trying to offload something from her plate onto her fellow Scotsman. “Stick in till ye stick oot!”
At this point, Ghost would be less surprised if the two Scots were making shit up just to fuck with everyone. The suspicion only grows when MacTavish catches his eye and winks. The sides of his head have been shorn down to the skin since the last time they'd worked together. It makes the choice of haircut even easier to spot in a crowd.
“Less talking, more chewing,” Ghost cuts them off before they can ramp up again. They can’t afford leaving calories on the plate.
“Think if Ah eat mah greens, Ah'll grow up as big as you, Lt.?” MacTavish flashes that grin of his, one where you can count all his teeth.
An itch pricks along Ghost's skin, starting somewhere near the bottom of his ribcage and catching like wildfire beneath his clothes. He slumps further down on the bench and keeps a deathgrip on his biceps, rigor mortis locking his fingers into place.
MacTavish manages to find him later, while he's packing his own chute.
“We've got riggers fer that, ye know?”
“Take care of your kit and it'll take care of you.”
“Same goes for teams, Lt.” MacTavish rounds the table as Ghost finishes verifying the integrity of the lines, then starts stuffing. He's not as fast as a parachute rigger, but speed isn't the priority when you're just doing the one. While Ghost has lived through plenty that should've killed him, he's got no interest in picking a fight with gravity because his chute's all tangled up.
When everything's packed all nice and tidy, Ghost finds his sergeant hasn't moved from where he's posted up on the other side of the table. He's back at the staring again. Under anyone else's scrutiny, Ghost has never had to wonder what it is they're looking for. They always see him as a puzzle, eyes so focused on the bobbling light they forget all about the teeth. But MacTavish doesn't look at him like he's trying to piece Ghost together.
In fact, it feels like quite the reverse.
MacTavish is the one to pull back first. His eyes sweep over Ghost one last time before he turns for the door. Before he leaves, he calls back over his shoulder:
“See you up there, sir.”
The door's locked when Ghost goes to open it. No bother, there. The next man in the stack – Garrick, going off his memory of their filing order – unhooks Ghost's sledgehammer and slips it into his hand. He only has to wait a moment before the sergeant squeezes his shoulder once for go.
The hammer's head punches the lock clean out of the plastic door.
Garrick clears the threshold first and hooks left. MacTavish is next, followed by Price, then Ghost. They keep to the walls, divide and conquer. It's all tight corners and narrow walls, no way to manoeuvre with your rifle held at the ready. There's no time for errors, though. Lasswell's Russian counterpart is intent on taking out the AQ's transport which is pretty fuckin’ inconvenient given that their team’s currently on the damn plane.
Bleedin' Christ, he hates politics.
They secure the payload after MacTavish has a one-sided argument with the Cyrillic keyboard. Garrick is granted custody of the package before they haul ass back towards the emergency exit. Ghost keeps the rear guard, just in case any enemy combatants managed to slip their notice. There must be some trouble with the hatch, because he hears, “No time fer tha'!” followed a few seconds later by an explosive charge firing. One way to go about it. Their ears pop as soon as the door's blown off. The vacuum swallows up anything near to the hatch and flings it into the open air beyond.
Price goes first, then Garrick. MacTavish shouts something that's stolen by the wind, but those blue eyes are as bright and wild as a sky in storm. There's thunder in Soap's smile and the spark of lightning in his pupils. This close, Ghost can almost smell the petrichor.
Then he's gone.
Ghost doesn't hesitate in jumping right after.
Behind them, the sky explodes.
The fact that Ghost has learned so much about MacTavish is purely incidental, a result of proximity and the misunderstanding that Ghost's not speaking means that MacTavish should talk for the both of them. This is the only reason why he knows it was MacTavish's cousin who first introduced him to the SAS. He does, in fact, speak Russian, even if he can't read Cyrillic for shit. He's modeled his haircut after World War II paratroopers and isn't keen on changing it anytime soon. He chews peppermint gum because he can't stand artificial strawberry and has been trying to kick smoking. The man offers him a stick every time he pops one in. Ghost knows it's a cheap bid to take off his mask by the fact that he's never made the offer to anyone else and always glances towards Ghost's mouth every single time.
Ghost might've misread all the attention for something else if it weren't for MacTavish being loudly, proudly, and very vocally straight.
“-an' the wee bird just stands therr wit her baps oot an’ goes ‘Sorry officer, but Ah cannae help it if the neighbors don' know how a woman sounds when she cums.’”
Garrick chokes in his beer, and Price gives him a few good thumps all while that caterpillar on his upper lip quivers ever so slightly.
“The hell do you even find these girls?” Garrick demands once he finally comes up for air.
“Figured it'd be on account of mah raw sex appeal.” MacTavish demures, which has Ghost snorting. “Tellin’ me you boys cannae relate?”
“Never had the neighbors phoning in a domestic.” Price shakes his head. He was the one who'd gotten them all here together. Ghost isn't sure where the case of screw tops came from, but he'd wager it somehow involved that Russian expat who flies a helicopter. Price has never been one to embrace the rules, but even this is beyond toeing the line, more like using the line like a damn skipping rope. Granted, they've probably collected enough misdemeanors between the four of them that a little fraternization would be a mere footnote in a court filing.
They're in sore need of this, though. Their allies damn near shot them out of the air, and postponing your date with the reaper is always a reason to celebrate. Not all's well in the force, though. While Lasswell may have taken her conversation with Kamarov offline, everyone knows mummy and daddy are fighting, and that sent morale in a sharper nosedive than the downed plane.
The drinks are getting warm and they're burning low on chap fuel. Ghost has abstained from the festivities, citing something about addiction in the family. It's not even a lie, but his reasons are far more influenced by the sergeant still eyeing him like a curious cat on its first life.
“What about you, Lt?” he leans across the crate serving as a table. “Am sure ye got stories tha’ could make a priest quit the confessional.”
“I don't kiss-n-tell, Sergeant.” Ghost is itching again.
“Aye, right. Proper gent, then?” MacTavish is still smiling, but his eyes have whittled down to slits. “C'mon, gie’s a hint. Blondes, brunettes, redheads?”
This is what soldiers do. Ghost knows that. They sit around and talk about who they've shagged, who they want to shag, even who their mates have shagged. Simon had never really engaged with those conversations, and if he did, he'd keep it vague.
Met this brunette once, he might've said, Had the kind of body men would kill for and one hell of a mouth. Blue eyes. Never stopped staring at me the whole time.
Soap blinks back at him, waiting.
“Not a fuckin’ pub quiz,” Ghost says instead, and refuses to rise to any more needling for the rest of the night.
Turns out, MacTavish absolutely fucked the landing on that last op, but they don't know it until his entire left knee blows out while running in the field. Ghost hasn't heard anything about it until after he's passing outside the medical tent. Rather predictably, the man's taken an objection to bed rest and is sparking a dart outside the tent. So much for quitting, then.
“They'll cuff you to the bed, you know.” Ghost warns.
“Not really mah bag, Lt.” He's got his head tilted back towards the sky. “Nurses 'round here aren't pretty enough for that.”
“Think they're any better back home?"
"Hope so, else this'll be a long couple of months."
There's talk about needing surgery, apparently. After that, he'll be doing PT before he can even start training his body back to his usual level of performance. As MacTavish's lieutenant, Ghost is glad to know he'll have a full staff of people sitting on him so he can't hurt himself further. As a soldier, he knows MacTavish isn't ready to leave this fight, and especially not from a bum knee.
The selfish and deeply unprofessional part of him admits that a little time apart will do them some good. It'll give Ghost a chance to put himself back in order. He can't be having his hackles raised every time he's around the sergeant. MacTavish is an unparalleled asset in the field, even if he lives in constant pursuit of fraying down every last one of Ghost's nerves. They need to find an equilibrium, a balance before the pressure builds into something unmanageable. Ghost owes it to him as his commanding officer, and as a fellow soldier.
Ghost says exactly none of this to MacTavish.
The other man waits a long while until he's forced to take Ghost's silence as an answer.
“Ah'll be back an' driving ye mad before ye know it,” he says, unspooling Ghost's thoughts right out of his head. “Don't have too much fun without me, yeah?”
“No worries there, sergeant.”
Ghost is God's own most perfect liar.
In his own sorry defence, Ghost had believed himself at the time.
In times of war, the one business that's always happy to see soldiers is the bar. When you're not planning to make it past thirty anyways, a functioning liver is a small price to take your mind off the horrors. The louder the horrors are, the more money people spend trying to drown them.
Ghost can't get drunk anymore, or maybe he can, but he's yet to find his limit in that regard. Still, even if he thinks the vodka tastes like piss and vinegar, it burns, and that's close enough to what he's after tonight to do the job.
The sun hasn't shown itself in over a week, though it hasn't been known to Ghost for years. It's still been there, though, and the absence of it now gnaws at his bones.
A few brave birds try their luck with him at the bar. Their broken English is halfway charming in the way that they've obviously only learned the words that will bag them a man the fastest. He's never quite sure why they waste their efforts on him. Maybe they like that he's big. Maybe they like that he's alone. Maybe they like the mask shoved up over the crook of his crooked nose whenever he takes a shot. Whatever it is, he doesn't bother wasting their time with anything more than monosyllabic answers. He doesn't have the heart to feel bad, since they've all left well before midnight, and he doesn't see a single woman walk out that door alone.
There's a bloke – brown, military age, dark hair, beard – who's seated further down the bar. Not a local, though he's been speaking Russian on and off throughout the night. He sounds American, or near enough to it. It's the kind of accent that suits a smile, and he's been doling those out to anyone who looks his way. Ghost can tell when he's smiling even when his back is turned. It's in the slope of his shoulders and the way people unfold themselves to him.
There's a different breed of people that still haunt the bar at last call. This man isn't one of them. He should've left hours ago with any one of the long parade of warm bodies that were sidling up to him all night.
The stranger glances up from the countertop, smiles – soft, lopsided, teeth tucked away – and crooks an eyebrow at Ghost.
“You don't look like a vodka man.”
“When in fuckin’ Rome.”
The man offers to buy a round of whatever he’s having. Some kind of amber drink that might've been whiskey. The bartender pours out of a black-labeled bottle with a cameo of a two-faced woman and the word “Яна” on it in gold foil. A generous pour of brown liquor goes into a pair of whiskey glasses. No ice to thin the drinks before they're set on the bartop.
It’s smoother than Ghost would've expected, something he doesn't mind rolling over his tongue before swallowing. There’s a warmth to it, but it lacks that caustic burn that would usually have him biting back at whatever the poison of the day was. Liquid sunshine. A little sweet. Good body.
The other man smiles at him. Kind. Warm. He doesn't know any better. Doesn't know what it is that he's offering.
Ghost shouldn't.
He really shouldn't.
There's a hole in the wall of a bathroom stall.
There's a hole in the chest of a dead Russian.
There's a hole in the middle of the jungle.
There's a hole in the side of a hijacked plane.
In the back of his head, he hears that hateful voice:
“Okay if I touch you, handsome?”
Ghost hums something affirmational. Lips are pressing at his through the mask, guessing at the shape of them under the polyester knit. A bearded cheek rasps against his chin and the fan of whiskey stained breath curls in his nose. There's a weight settled into his lap, bronzed thighs to either side of him on the single chair in the hotel room. The other person is naked, hips flexing up into their fist.
“This good for you?”
Such a fucking gentleman.
It is good, would be even if the other wasn't trying to put on a bit of a show. Nothing fancy, just a step past the perfunctory stripping of one's cock in the shower. Making sure Ghost can see what's happening, mostly. There's a certain draw in the lack of finesse. No big performative moans to inflate their perceived pleasure. They really are sitting hard and dripping in his lap.
If they're put off by the fact that Ghost hasn't taken off a stitch of clothing, they don't mention it. His trousers are damp with perspiration when the other person finally settles themselves fully onto Ghost's thighs. The body on top of him isn't small by any means, but the warm weight in his lap is the exact reason he's here.
One hand, brown and gun calloused, drifts up and teases chapped lips that had been on Ghost just moments ago. He can hear the throat in front of him clicking on every swallow until those fingers reappear spit lacquered and ready for use.
He can't see what happens with those fingers, but he knows when it happens by the subtle shift in the hips as they lift up into the air. Muscles jump and twitch all along the legs and up to the shuddering planes of the abdomen. They're squeezing themselves tight between the legs, before letting go completely.
Time turns loose and sticky and taffy-pulled between the two of them. It's the closest Ghost’s felt to being drunk since dying and coming back wrong.
He makes the mistake of looking up.
Blue eyes.
Brown eyes.
The stranger is staring down at him the same way a deer stares down an oncoming truck. Unblinking. Uncertain. Uncomprehending. There's always a point when people actually get the full picture of exactly what it is they're fucking, live and in living colour. Even if they can't see under his clothes, under his skin, they know. It's something they can feel, deep in their bones.
There's a noise, one Ghost has heard every time he hilts a knife in an enemy chest, the artless sound of all the air evacuating the lungs. The body enfolds him, eclipsing the ceiling light until only the edges of the other man's curls are set aflame in tones of sepia. An arm winds around his shoulders, pulling, pulling, even when they should be doing the opposite. A forehead is laying itself against his and he can feel those eyebrows twisting up in sudden symphony with another one of those hollow, sucking breaths. The slick rhythm picks up for a few beats, then settles.
He still hasn't finished.
Those dark eyes are coloured with a hunger for something Ghost can only guess at. But when they flutter shut again, the other man slips back into anonymity. They could be anyone.
(Ghost doesn't want them to be just anyone.)
And if Ghost was cold before, then now he's on fucking fire.