miludd6

[miludd6]

Chapter 8/2 of Skin Of Thunder The Body Is A Burden Until It's Touched (previous chapter) (next chapter) (all SOT chapters) (masterlist) Simon 'Ghost' Riley x fem!Reader TW: childhood abuse, childhood trauma

“There is nothing more terrifying than being held by someone who sees all of you, and touches you anyway.”

After that night, the world didn’t stop turning.

Ghost hadn’t expected it to, he wasn’t that daft, but the sheer brutality with which everything returned to normal still knocked him sideways. Fuck, he barely had time to process what had transpired between the two of you beneath the soaked haze of neon lights, the way your scent clung stubbornly to the collar of his jacket, the way your voice blurred by passing headlights, before he was back in the thick of it, deep in routines and chaos alike. The kind of chaos he’d known all his bloody life, the kind that wore familiar uniforms and snarled familiar orders, its heartbeat measured in the bursts of automatic gunfire and boots hitting concrete.

Back to routine it was.

The base dragged him under immediately, swallowing his body and his thoughts with it. He was back at the shooting range, squeezing triggers with a mechanical ease, hearing the sharp report echoing, bullet holes precisely drilled through lifeless hostiles as Gaz tossed banter in the background. Back on the mats, sparring with Soap, trading bruises, the crack of knuckles and the scent of sweat grounding him in easy violence, muscle memory that left no space for sentimentalism. Back in front of a monitor with Laswell’s sharp, calculating face delivering intel, the weight of every syllable heavy with the next life he would either save or snuff out. Ghost was back in motion, forever caught in the inertia of the next op, the next threat and the next shadow war. Everything etched deeply into muscle and marrow.

Everything he knew by heart.

Yet now, amongst all this brutal familiarity, was you.

His quiet disruption.

His vivid revolution. 

You, whose smile outshone constellations, who set whole galaxies alight with a glance. You, whose skin burned hotter than a thousand suns could ever dare. You, who wore your feelings plainly on colourful sleeves. You, who had somehow threaded your way into every crevice of his life, stitching yourself into the seams until he wasn’t quite sure where his edges ended and yours began.

You hid yourself into the hollow of his throat, into the ache in his knuckles, into the corners of a bed too cold. You, like a bloody litany, like a wound that begged to be kissed. The gravity in his marrow. The fire beneath the frost. The echo in every room he left empty.

Every breath, every breach, every break.

You. You. You.

It wasn’t as dreadful as he’d first thought.

Hell, he hungered for you, quietly but violently, though he’d never confess it aloud, not even to the dark. But temptation wore your name and Ghost’s skin prickled every time you brushed past him, each accidental touch filling his veins with gasoline, scorching him like napalm. He suspected—no, he knew—you were testing boundaries, intentional in the way your fingertips grazed his gloves as you handed over paperwork, daring him to pull away.

Instead, he lingered.

Stubbornly. Masochistically. Addictively.

Like a match begging to be struck again and again and again.

He found excuses to keep you close. Pathetic ones. Like helping him tidy up the never ending flood of paperwork that cluttered his desk, your handwriting precise where his own scrawl betrayed impatience. Bloody hell, he could recite every poor excuse he had invented by now, and each was a more miserable justification than the last. But it didn’t matter.

And then there were cigarette breaks.

“Fancy a smoke?” He had asked casually one day, as if it was nothing.

Christ. He was turning soft as fucking butter left out in the sun.

Ghost was usually a solitary smoker, preferring silence to idle chatter. Yet there he was, time and again, in the designated smoking area with you, offering you a drag, watching with quiet satisfaction as your manicured fingers trembled ever so slightly when you took it from him. Ghost hadn’t smoked this much in bloody years, yet there he was, reaching into his pocket for a battered pack of old fags, lighter flicking stubbornly under calloused skin, just to feel your warmth beside him a little longer. Nothing mattered, not the nicotine, not the smoke, not the relentless call of duty, only that fragile bridge between his silence and your voice, stretching out softly in the fading sunlight, built on whispered jokes, hidden meanings, daft banter, and smirks, fucking grins he didn’t let you see.

Ghost found himself craving it, those quiet moments when the whole world narrowed down to you and him and the burning tip of a cigarette. Each puff was another second stolen from the harsh glare of floodlights, another heartbeat away from the machine he’d become.

He was getting used to it, like a seasoned alcoholic savouring every bitter mouthful, knowing well the cost yet chasing the feeling regardless.

Ghost was becoming an addict.

He saw it plainly, recognised the fucking signs from too many missions spent tracking dealers and informants. Except now, the needle in his vein wasn’t poison, it was the delicate curve of your smile, the gentle sweep of eyelashes lowered in shy embarrassment, the melody of your voice laced with warmth as you recounted another small story from your life. He collected each tiny detail like brass casings after an op, counting them silently, meticulously, hoarding each one like they could somehow fill the hollow spaces carved out by all he’d lost.

He hoarded you in pieces.

You always wanted a dog, a big one, you’d said, a companion during hardships to make you laugh, your favourite flowers were red tulips and you’d always meant to learn embroidery, but your hands were always too busy with less delicate things. He remembered all of it. The music you swore had healed you. The childhood tales you told with gentle smiles and distant eyes. The names of your old schoolmates, the ones you still met in London, haunted by how easily and unconditionally you loved them. The way you lit up recalling cheap train rides and even cheaper gin, and how you laughed like home was a place found in people, not blood. He memorised the way you spoke of your grandparents, how they raised you, the warmth in your voice when you described their home, not your parents’, never your parents’. He noticed the absences, too, the stories you didn’t tell, and adored you all the more for them.

And the more you gave him, the more he wanted.

Because to Ghost, your life was worth more than the sum of all his blood soaked years. More than any honour he’d pretended to hold.

More than himself.

And you were a hell of an easy mark too, flustering over his driest quip or deadpan delivery, watching the bloom of heat in your cheeks with wicked satisfaction. Sometimes he laughed too, only a breath but fucking hell, it felt good. It felt like breathing after drowning for years. Ghost found himself chasing it, that easy humour, the flutter of your pulse visible against the soft skin of your neck, and wondered how far he could push it, how much he could make you flush and stumble over your own quiet words before you finally gave in to the game entirely. Sometimes, when his jokes dipped too far into the morbid, into the grotesque, or became too intimate, you’d smack him lightly on the shoulder, a gesture so gentle it barely registered as reprimand. And God, that undid him more than any kiss could.

He remembered clearly the night he realised he was truly fucked.

It was late afternoon, the sun dipping low beyond the airstrip, the sky bruising into purple and orange, melting across the horizon as if it might never rise again. You sat beside him in the smoking area, shoulder blades pressed to the concrete wall, legs carefully tucked beneath you on the bench, face bathed in the golden light. You were blinking at your cigarette rather than smoking it.

Ghost watched you from the corner of his eye, lips quirking beneath the mask as you clumsily brought the cigarette up to your mouth, puffing on it gently, coughing softly as you blew the smoke back out, your cheeks flushing faintly in embarrassment. It was fucking adorable, truth be told, watching you try your hardest to look nonchalant when you clearly had no bloody clue what you were doing. You held it delicately between two fingers, like it was something fragile that might shatter if you gripped it too hard.

He told you from the start to leave the smoking to him. It wasn’t a habit you needed. But you, ever stubborn, ever radiant in your quiet rebellions, insisted on learning how to do it properly. And he, bloody sod that he was, never could bring himself to say no to you. So each time you stepped out together, he handed you a cigarette without a word. It was a terrible decision for his wallet, sure, but in moments like these, watching the flame catch on the curve of your lips, watching smoke awkwardly unfurl from your mouth, it felt like the best decision he ever made.

“Christ alive,” he drawled, voice dry and laden with quiet amusement. “You fuckin’ smoke like you’re scared it’ll bite you.”

You glanced up at him sharply, eyes wide, embarrassment painted comically red across your features. “Don’t be a prick,” you protested, cheeks flushing beneath the fading sunlight. “Not everyone’s been chain-smoking since their bloody teens, alright?”

“Might as well put your pinky up while you’re at it.”

“Oh, piss off,” you muttered, a pout forming involuntarily as you gave another exaggerated puff. “Shit. That’s it. Last time I ever touch one of your filthy cigs, I swear.”

Ghost huffed, slow and lazy, like a wolf stretching its limbs.

The sun caught the edges of your eyes just then, gold bleeding into your hair, highlighting the stubborn crease between your brows as you clumsily flicked ash off the end of your cigarette and he found himself staring before he even realised it. Dark eyes traced the curve of your jaw from behind his balaclava, the way your lashes trembled when you blinked, the way the smoke curled from your lips in the laziest surrender, as if even it didn’t want to leave you.

“World’d be better off without you wastin’ the good ones,” he muttered.

You snorted. “Charming.”

Ghost watched you tip your head back, sunlight feathering against your throat, warming that tender, pale skin where your pulse fluttered too fast. The cigarette trembled slightly between your fingers, too posh for the habit, too gentle for the vice, and he had to turn away, just for a second, jaw tightening beneath the mask.

“Least you’re not coughin’ up your lungs anymore,” he murmured, flicking his cig away, the ember bouncing once on the concrete before dying. “Progress.”

“You’ve got such a weird way of complimenting people, you know that?”

Ghost shrugged, eyes fixed on the horizon.

He almost said something else then.

Some daft line about how it suited you, smoking, ridiculous as it looked. Another jab, another joke pulled straight from his ribcage and handed to you like it was distraction, deflection, the usual dance. Maybe something about your blouse that day, soft pink again, tucked too neatly into those dark cargo trousers. Maybe something about the gloss on your lips, or how your hair kept sliding down from your flower shaped clip like it refused to obey military standards just as much as you did. But then your gaze drifted, not to him, not to the cig, not to your hands fidgeting in your lap, but far, far out beyond the airstrip, where the sunset poured itself across the tarmac like spilled oil and the perimeter lights blinked like dying stars.

He let the silence stretch between you for a beat, long enough to hear the faint hum of a cargo plane in the distance, the crackle of someone’s radio half a field away. The sky was bleeding now, molten violet sinking into bruised purple.

And the silence changed.

It wasn’t the comfortable kind anymore. Not the quiet he’d grown used to with you. This one came heavier. Thick in the lungs. And something about it made Ghost’s mouth dry behind the mask. You puffed absentmindedly on the cigarette, not really smoking it, just holding it, your expression turning oddly distant and thoughtful. Gone was the mischief, the fire.

Then, quietly, you spoke.

“Did I ever tell you about my dad?”

Ghost’s focus snapped sharp, his training kicking in like a switch flipped in the marrow. That old, cold instinct of reading a room, reading a face, preparing for confession or deceit. Fuck, it felt like the start of an interrogation, like he was back in some concrete room with sweat in the air and blood still damp beneath fingernails. But it was only you. You, of all people. And yet his body didn’t know the difference. His gaze dragged over your face, searching for threat where there was only tenderness. 

Of course he knew about your father.

Ghost knew more than he had any right to.

Names, dates, patterns, your file folded neatly into the chaos of his memory. The personal things, though, those you’d handed him in fragments, unknowingly, in brittle pieces pressed between breaks and offhand remarks. However, that winter day came roaring back, the sting of your voice in his office, the accusation you hurled like a match to dry straw, that he knew too much.

So why now? Why pretend you didn’t remember? 

He shifted slightly, voice careful in its neutrality. “Mentioned he served. Marine, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah. Royal Marine,” you confirmed, voice distant, eyes unfocused. “Retired now, medals cover half the bloody walls back home. Dad fought in Kosovo, you know. Before that, he was a nightmare in South Armagh.”

Ghost didn’t interrupt. He let you go where you needed to go.

“He did two tours in Iraq,” you continued, your fingers worrying at the cigarette again, thumb running slow lines along the filter. “First when I was still a baby. Second when mum died. He was on deployment when she got hit by an IED outside Kabul. She didn’t—” you exhaled through your mouth slowly. “She didn’t even make it to Helmand. There was no heroic exit. No valiant last stand. Just a knock at the door while I was doing homework in my pajamas. And dad didn’t even cry. Not once. Not even at the funeral. Just stood there, perfect parade rest, whole unit in dress uniform. And he just—and he just fucking stood there, Simon. Like mum was just another bloody casualty log while I cried until I puked.”

You glanced over then, catching Ghost in your peripheral vision.

“Dizzy—”

“He always wanted a son.”

Your mouth quirked, but the smile didn’t hold.

Ghost swallowed carefully.

“I tried, you know,” you said, voice thinner now. “Tried to be one. I had to. My granddad was in the Falklands and his dad before that was a radio op on the HMS Belfast so… yeah, fucked up legacy, huh?”

Your voice faltered slightly, fingertips trembling gently around the cigarette, eyes locked on your manicured nails, glittering in the dying light.

“I tried so damn hard when I was a kid,” you continued softly, your tone unbearably gentle, laced with quiet anguish. “Dad never remarried so—I mean, I had no other choice, right? My grandparents, mum’s parents, they raised me after she died. Granny cut my hair short, dressed me like a boy and granddad taught me how to shoot, tried to teach me how to act tough. They thought maybe if I acted like a boy, if I looked like a boy, dad would finally be proud. I even started talking like him,” you went on, voice distant now. “Swearing, spitting, everything, really. I thought if I just—if I just played the part, you know? If I could be the son he never had, then maybe I can… but no, he still didn’t look at me. He never did. Well, not the way he looked at the sons of his mates. Never like that.”

Ghost said nothing.

The wind tugged toward the sky then, carrying your quiet words off into the deepening dusk, where clouds rolled over the airfield like great black dogs. There was no softness in the world around you now, just the brittle cold of the early spring that knew how to bite, and the harsh halogen of security lights casting pale gold across the gravel.

“But teenage lads weren’t interested in girls who acted like boys, I learned that the hard way back then,” you murmured bitterly, voice barely audible now. “All those little shitheads with their Topshop girlfriends and stupid hair gel, I hated them. I hated them so much. They—they made me so angry, Simon. They always laughed. Called me a dyke and I—”

You stopped and took a breath.

Your hand moved down with more force than necessary, stabbing the burned down tip of your cig into the concrete, grinding it until it was nothing but ash and smeared paper. And Ghost could see the tremble in your fingers, the tension in your knuckles, all of it.

Clear as day.

You were trying to keep hold of yourself.

“Anyway,” you waved a hand as if trying to bat the air clean, “I moved to London the second I turned eighteen. I left when I got into university. I didn’t even tell dad until I was halfway down the M6. I didn’t want him to—you know.”

You were blinking hard then, rubbing your cheek with the sleeve of your blouse. Somewhere between the story and the silence, you’d shed tears you were now trying to erase before they even dried. It made Ghost want to put a bullet through the bloody moon, just so you wouldn’t have to cry beneath it.

“And then I—I went a bit off the rails, I guess,” you went on, laughing awkwardly. “I spent my entire bloody student loan on makeup. Glittery lip gloss, false lashes, the works. I wore the frilliest, stupidest fucking dresses I could find, the whole lot. Went to clubs in stilettos I could barely walk in just to catch some daft bastard’s eye, any bastard really, it didn’t matter. I went out every weekend and let the first guy who smiled at me take me home because I—I just—I just wanted someone to look at me like I was—” You paused again, blinking fast. “I know that’s fucked. I went too far. But I—I thought if I just leaned into it enough, I’d finally find whatever it was I missed. That my body—that I will be worth adoring, I guess.”

You raised your hand then, wiggling your fingers, trying to laugh again. Ghost looked at your hand, at the perfect, glossy little forget-me-nots painted on your long nails, delicate petals in different shades of baby blue on a pink base.

“And now—” you muttered, rubbing your cheek again, more forcefully now. “—now I can’t fire an SA80 without breaking one of these.”

It was meant as a joke but your voice cracked.

And Ghost didn’t know what to fucking say.

All he could do was stare.

His lungs were raw like he’d run a marathon without rest, like your pain had clawed its way down his throat and settled there, gnawing against his ribs like it belonged.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t move. Ghost just sat there with your story in his hands and no idea what the hell to do with it. Because shit, he’d never learned this bit. Never learned how to hold someone without hurting them. He never figured out what to say to someone bleeding out that didn’t sound like a mission report or a fucking apology whispered through gritted teeth over a body that wasn’t gonna make it. And that same uselessness gripped him now.

Even as a lad, he’d stood silent when his brother cried after their dad’s drunken episodes. He just stared at the floor like his feet might vanish if he didn’t move. Ghost remembered how Tommy’s shoulders shook, remembered wanting to touch his arm, to say something, fucking anything, but he didn’t. How he’d sat at his mum’s bedside in the hospital when his old man had hit her too hard and Ghost couldn’t touch her even as she trembled like a leaf. Violence, he knew. Orders, he knew. Extraction, infiltration, execution. 

Ghost knew how to kill a man three different ways in under ten seconds. But comfort?

He hadn’t the faintest clue.

“I’m sorry,” you suddenly said. “That was… a lot.”

Ghost’s head tilted slightly, the gravel crunching uncomfortably under his boot as he shifted.  His mask had grown damp near the seams and he fought the urge to pull it down, just for a moment, just to breathe properly, just enough to look you in the eye without the damn thing.

But he didn’t do that.

Your knees were drawn tight to your chest, sleeves stretched over your hands like a child hiding. He dragged his tongue across his teeth behind the mask, jaw working slow, deliberate.

“Meanin’?”

Your shoulders jumped a little. Like the question caught you off guard, or maybe it was just the night wind curling past, slipping beneath your blouse, finding the softest parts of you. The light didn’t reach your eyes, not fully, but the silver rim caught the soft curve of your cheek, the shine on the skin that hadn’t quite dried yet.

You sniffed. Ghost heard it.

A wet, embarrassed sort of thing.

“I just—” you began, voice barely there. “I just hope you don’t think I’m disgusting. Or used. Or whatever. I just hope you don’t—”

Ghost blinked, once. Slow.

You were staring at the ground now.

“It’s just—what I told you. I wasn’t—I’m not the girl you probably thought I was. I’ve done shit I’m not proud of. Things I didn’t even want to do half the time, just—just to feel wanted. And I know that’s not—I know you probably think less of me for it, because you were right, about the attention thing I mean, but—” You trailed off again, fighting with your own words. “I wanted to tell you this in London. In the car. That night. But I couldn’t. I didn’t want you to look at me differently. I was scared, you know. Scared that you’d—” you swallowed hard. “—scared you wouldn’t want me anymore if you knew.”

Ghost sat still.

Utterly still.

Not out of coldness. Not out of indifference. But because every goddamn cell in his body was fighting to stay in its place. Not to move, not to reach, not to tremble.

Because all he could see now, all he could bloody think about, was your father’s face. Not your smile. Not the way you hugged your knees like you were trying to shrink yourself out of existence. Hell no. All he could think about was that bastard, still alive in some godforsaken suburb with medals on the wall and nothing but rot behind his ribs. Then you exhaled, head bowed low between your arms, resting on your knees like a kid who’s been picked last.

His hands itched for the weight of a weapon.

Ghost wanted to find your dad. Wanted to storm his neat little house with its framed photos and false fucking pride. Wanted to strip the medals off the walls with his bare hands and ram them down the fucker’s throat until he choked on every ounce of the legacy he used to break you. He wanted to kneecap him first. Not kill, execute. Deliberate. Surgical.

To make it hurt.

Then let him crawl. Crawl through every room, let him drag his useless, bleeding body past the photos he never deserved to pose in. Let him cry for mercy he’d never shown you. Let him beg. See how proud he was then. How stiff he stood. How bloody noble he was.

And then, only then, pull the trigger.

Simon Riley, not Ghost but Simon, wanted to tear the fucker limb from limb.

He wanted to slit the throats of every man who had touched you without reverence, who had looked at you and seen nothing but a body to claim. Every bastard who’d fucked you without knowing how to see you. Who never once bothered to understand your heart. Simon wanted to castrate them, make them bleed for every careless word, every unworthy glance.

But worse was the part of him that wanted the bullet too. For the way he’d scoffed at your clothes the first time, for the irritation in his voice, the way he let military standards warp his perception of beauty, of you. For making you feel ridiculous. Unworthy. Less than a soldier. Less than brilliant. And yet, he did none of it.

Instead, what left his mouth was quieter.

“He was a right bastard. Your old man,” he murmured gruffly.

You blinked. Startled.

“Deserve a round to the teeth,” Simon finished the thought.

A short and breathless laugh escaped your lips, more exhale than joy, but it was something. It made Simon feel his chest loosen, just barely. He shifted his weight, scratched behind his ear like he needed to do something with his hands.

“Don’t reckon you’re overcompensatin’,” he muttered. “Not my place to say but—”

You glanced at him from beneath your lashes, wary. He looked away then. Jaw twitching. His thumb brushed the edge of his mask, a small gesture, half nervous tick, half muscle memory. He licked his lips behind the balaclava, searching for the words, like he was digging them up. He hated how dry they were. His mouth. His words. Everything around him.

“You’re the most attractive woman I’ve ever met.”

Colour bled into your cheeks, slow and warm, like a rising tide. You dropped your gaze and pressed your cheek to your knees, trying to hide from him, but you didn’t look away entirely. Your eyes, still glossy with tears, searched for his gaze again, and your lips pulled into a faint, almost invisible smile. So faint he might’ve imagined it.

Then you shifted a little closer. Not much.

An awkward inch.

But it was enough.

“…Thank you,” you whispered.

Simon only hummed, staring out at nothing.

Then, after a beat, he muttered, “I should be the one worried.”

Your brows furrowed, “What do you mean?”

He didn’t answer at first.

Just reached for his pack of fags, fingers unsteady now. Slower than usual. He lit one with the sort of quiet deliberation that felt like ritual. A borrowed moment. A breath stolen from a past he hadn’t touched in fucking years. He inhaled. Held it. Then let it out.

Fucking hell. It wasn’t enough.

Nothing would be, really.

Simon thought about what he’d promised. About not pushing you away. About trying. Trying to let you in. He’d never told anyone this. But fuck, you’d given him your story. Bled it into his hands. And he couldn’t sit in his own silence anymore.

Of all the vile things he’d done and witnessed, there were too many to name, too many that still throbbed behind his eyes when the nights went quiet. So he reached for a memory buried deep in dust and time, something old enough it no longer bled when he touched it. Something distant. Harmless. Safe enough, he hoped, to give to you without staining your hands.

So he breathed in again. Slower.

“I never—” he started again. “Weren’t a womaniser. When I was a lad.”

You frowned.

“My old man used to hunt animals, capture them,” Simon huffed. “Wild ones. Mean bastards. Badgers. Rats. Once had a fuckin’ fox bleedin’ out in the shed. Used to show ’em off. Brag to his braindead mates. Then when they were fuckin’ gone, he’d make me deal with ’em. Said he’d ways to ‘make a man out of me.”

Your gaze shifted.

“One time—” Simon’s hand twitched. He glanced down at the burning cigarette between his fingers. “—he brought in a bloody snake from one of his mates.”

He swallowed.

“Held me down. Told me to kiss it.”

Your face twisted in horror. “What?”

“Said if I didn’t kiss it, he’d let it go in my bed at night,” He looked straight ahead. “Damn thing weren’t even dead. Still squirmin’. Could feel the scales under my lips, movin’. Tasted like piss. Proper fuckin’ foul. Couldn’t eat for a week.”

He flicked the ash off the end of the cig. Watched it spiral down.

“Didn’t kiss anyone for years after that. Didn’t touch anyone. Couldn’t stomach it, not even with birds who liked me back. Felt like if I did, I’d turn into him and I’d carry it. That filth. Or taint ‘em or somethin’. Fuckin’ bastard, he was.”

You breathed in quietly, shaky.

“My first kiss,” Simon continued, voice lower now, like he was speaking through a crack in a wall, “was a dare. First year in the Forces. One of the lads thought I was full of shite. Bet me a tenner I’d bottle it. Felt like I was takin’ a piss on somethin’. Never told the lass that. Never told anyone that.”

There was a long silence after that.

But not dead air. Not awkward. Something deeper. Something carved out between two people who’d shown one another their bones and didn’t quite know what to do with the mess on the floor. You shivered beside him, just slightly. Simon wasn’t sure if it was from the cold or the weight of the story he’d dropped between you like a live grenade with no pin. Maybe both.

Then, after a beat, you hummed.

A soft, gentle noise that felt like balm over the rawness.

“He was a right bastard too,” you said, voice a little rough. “Your dad.”

Ghost huffed a small breath. The closest he could get to laughter in that moment.

“Died screamin’, though. Guess the world’s fairer than I thought.”

Silence again.

And then you moved.

It was subtle. So slight he almost didn’t notice at first. You tucked your knees tighter, curling in like a petal folding inward for the night. Then your hand with those blue forget-me-nots on the nails slid across the bench. Just a painfully small inch. Then two. Not quite touching. Not reaching. Open in a way that had nothing to do with words.

Then you moved again.

You inched closer. Agonisingly slow, like you expected him to snap, to jerk away. Simon felt the warmth of your thigh brush his, the contact cautious but solid. Real. And before he could brace himself, before he could ready a mask thicker than the one on his goddamn face, your head tipped. Carefully. Slowly. Until the curve of your skull settled against his shoulder, your hair brushing his sleeve, your cheek warm even through the layer of his hoodie.

Simon’s spine locked.

“Thank you,” you whispered. “For telling me.”

He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t make his mouth work. Couldn’t force air through his throat.

So he just hummed. A low, gravelled thing. He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe, only barely. His body went still, more still than when he was on recon, heart thudding like boots on stairs. You were there. Right bloody there. And he didn’t know what to do with it. So he just sat there and let your presence burn into the fabric of his clothes.

Simon watched the tarmac stretch into shadow. Watched the flashing lights of another aircraft blink in the distance before it took off, thundering through the dark and vanishing into the clouds. Another ghost swallowed by the sky.

Your breathing was steady now.

Like you’d finally exhaled something that’d been stuck in your lungs for years.

“Simon?” you called.

He tipped his chin.

You didn’t lift your head, but your eyes turned up toward him, soft and wide. Your signature lovely smile wasn’t there, not fully, but your mouth curved gently, reverently, like something was breaking open behind your ribs.

“For what it’s worth,” your voice was smaller now. Almost shy. “You’re the most attractive man I’ve ever met.”

Simon let out a sound. It could’ve been a laugh. Might’ve been a cough. Either way, smoke ghosted out between his teeth in a huff as he muttered—

“Then you’ve met a lot of ugly bastards.”

You snorted. “Hey, I’m serious. Even if I can’t see your face, you’re still more handsome than anyone I’ve ever been with.”

Ghost raised a brow.

He tilted his head, deadpan.

“Might be the mask, then. Makes up for the ears. They stick out.”

You laughed.

God, you actually laughed.

It punched the air from his lungs, sharp and sweet.

You shifted again, closer, your side warm against his. The stars were starting to bleed through the clouds above. He kept his eyes ahead, watching the dark swell and rise at the edge of the base, where the horizon dipped low and the wind dragged its teeth across the gravel. The weight of you against him was a new kind of gravity, unfamiliar and holy, like he’d been built for this moment and just never known it. And somehow it didn’t scare him like it should’ve. The closeness. The contact. The tenderness. It should’ve snapped every muscle to attention like an ambush at midnight. But instead, he felt—

Fuck.

Simon felt lucky.

Like the universe had handed him a moment and forgotten to ask for anything in return.

Simon didn’t know what demon had slithered down his spine and cracked his ribs open like a rotted corpse, didn’t know what madness had poured into his chest, but in that short second, he felt lucky. Unthinkably and unforgivably lucky. The kind of luck that felt profane, stolen from a life he was never meant to live. And Christ, how he wished he could stop time, trap it in amber. Keep you like this, close, trusting him, touching him like he wasn’t made of dirt. You could never understand the weight of what you’d given him.

The mercy. The grace.

Your hands, your warmth, your laugh, you silenced the long war he’d waged against his own body, that cursed prison of flesh he’d always wanted to tear away, to escape. The skin he’d tried to scrub clean, the muscle he’d bruised, starved and trained into obedience. For years it had felt like a coffin, but now, if only for this fleeting moment, it felt like something worth touching without shame. To be wanted, not feared. Because this body had brought him here, to you. And no, not close to your body, but closer to your heart.

Your head shifted slightly and he felt it then, the rise and fall of your breath syncing with his. Like a metronome he’d been waiting his whole life to hear. You tilted your chin up, nudging into the fabric of his arm.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Thinkin’ I should quit smokin’,” he lied, “if you’re gonna keep nickin’ all my fags.”

You let out a breathy chuckle against his shoulder, and he felt it vibrate through his clothes, through skin and tissue and scar, his bones thawing slowly under it.

“Oh come on,” you murmured, “you love it. You’d miss me gagging on them.”

“Not denyin’ that.”

“You’re horrible,” you gasped between giggles. “Absolutely awful.”

“Can’t help that,” Simon muttered.

“You need professional help.”

“I’ve got HR,” he deadpanned.

You snorted, hiding your grin behind your hand. “That poor woman.”

“Poor?” he echoed. “I’m the one workin’ with her.”

You slapped his tight weakly, scandalised and amused in equal measure, and he soaked in the warmth of it, like sun through cracked glass. “Simon—”

Simon almost didn’t notice the way he was smiling.

Not properly, not with his mouth but something about the shape of it tugged behind the mask, behind the bones of his face, behind that old stitched-together piece he wore as skin. It ached, strangely. Like his body didn’t know what to do with this situation anymore, like it mistook it for shrapnel, for some injury flaring up under his ribs.

He’d lived a long time in a body that felt more like punishment than flesh. But now you were pressed against him, soft and unafraid and somehow he didn’t feel like a burden anymore. He felt like a man. He felt wanted. Maybe even lovable, if he dared to stretch it. And bloody hell, wasn’t that the strangest fucking thing? To want and be wanted in return. Not because of what he could do, or what he’d survived, or what he’d endured, but just because. And Simon didn’t need more. Just this. Just this peace. Just your laugh. Just your eyes, soft and tired and still somehow burning like dawn on the horizon.

He didn’t deserve it.

He knew that.

But for once, he let himself have it anyway.

“The weight of a body is nothing compared to the weight of carrying it alone.” Skin of Thunder Chapters

Sorry for the long wait and for the extra long chapter, too. This one’s packed with internal monologues and a whole lot of feelings, so… my apologies (or maybe you’re welcome? You decide.)

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Chapter 8/1 of Skin Of Thunder The Body Is A Burden Until It's Touched (previous chapter) (next chapter) (all SOT chapters) (masterlist) Simon 'Ghost' Riley x fem!Reader

“He had spent his whole life trying not to feel his body, until she made him want to live in it.”

That moment was the beginning of Ghost’s reckoning.

He only thought about the consequences of his actions when the door shut tight behind you. When the interior light of his battered car caught the shimmer in your gaze, he nearly forgot how to breathe. Your eyes glittered in the rearview mirror, breathtaking twin stars flaring in the night, softened by the rain and some unspoken ache he dared not name. The scent of your perfume rose like prayer in a ruined chapel, curling through the silence like incense drifting beneath the broken arches of the same, abandoned cathedral.

Ghost watched you tug the seatbelt across your chest with trembling fingers and heard the faint click as it locked. He felt the weight of your breath that fogged the window beside you, soft and uneven, a confession in condensation. It clung to the glass like longing—

—fleeting, warm and doomed to fade.

The air inside the vehicle felt tight. Claustrophobic. Only then he felt it—that slow, sick lurch in his stomach. Like falling down a well and hitting every stone on the way.

What the fuck was he doing?

You fumbled with your bag, cheeks flushed, and mumbled, “Thank you. For coming. I know it’s late and weird and I probably shouldn’t’ve called but—”

“Where d’you live?” Ghost cut in.

Fuck. He said it too sharply.

The words landed like a blade on a porcelain floor, cracking the quiet with something unkind. Not brutal, no. Not cruel either. But too direct. Too bare. Too much like a man trying to build distance. He didn’t look at you when he said it. He didn’t have the nerve.

You startled a little, your eyes flicking toward him before darting down again to your lap.

“Right. Sorry,” you whispered, and gave him the name of a street.

Ghost nodded once, started the car, and pulled away from the curb. His hands on the wheel were steady, but inside, everything shook. His pulse throbbed in his neck, hot and wrong. The cold surface of the steering wheel bit into his skin, and the heater hummed like an apology between the two of you. You sat in silence beside him, one hand clasped around your bag like it might anchor you to the world. Your knees were turned inwards. Eyes on the window.

You didn’t speak again.

Rain wept against the windshield, the wipers moaning as they dragged themselves across the glass, blurring the lights outside into halos. The city slid past in streaks of oil, storefronts of pubs, sex shops, bars, mundane liquor stores and tiny convenience stores glowing under neon signs. Red. White. Pink. Amber. Each one bleeding into the next like wounds refusing to clot.

Ghost stared at the road, but saw nothing.

Every breath inside that car felt like stepping into a fire he’d lit himself and he didn’t know how to fill the silence without burning himself. His focus was on you. On the weight of your presence beside him. The echo of your giggle over the phone, bright and beautiful. The image of you on that bench, soaked in neon and drizzle, wrapped in that ridiculous periwinkle coat like a dream left out in the cold weather too long. Your cheeks pink from the cold, from the wine, from nerves you’d tried to hide behind lipstick and sequins. Your mascara had smudged beneath one eye, just a touch, not enough for most men to notice, but Ghost saw it. That soft, tired imperfection. That silent declaration that you were real.

He hated how beautiful you were without trying.

You weren’t meant to be here.

Not with him.

You were meant to belong to safer places. To better nights. To a man who didn’t see ghosts in every reflection and didn’t carry graves behind his ribs. You were supposed to laugh without flinching. To call someone and know they’d smile when they answered. To be held by hands that hadn’t hurt. Ghost knew this. Knew it deep in the marrow of him. And yet—

—yet you were here.

Beside him.

The car rolled through Soho’s skeleton. Fog laced the windows, blooming thicker as the heat rose and Ghost didn’t wipe it away. Everything between you two had already been smudged beyond recognition anyway—fingerprints of silence, outlines of what once was, all ghosted over in a distortion neither of you dared to clear.

Finally, he spoke. A truce offered in low tones.

“Your mates,” he said, eyes fixed ahead. “They know who I am?”

You looked over at him slowly. “Not really. Just that I work with you.”

A lie. But Ghost nodded anyway.

Silence again.

Rain streaked the glass in silver veins. The reflection of streetlights shimmered across your skin like the memory of touch. Ghost didn’t know what he expected you to say next, maybe nothing, maybe everything, but you were quiet. The kind of quiet that made his palms sweat. The kind of quiet that filled rooms like water fills lungs.

You were twisting your fingers, thumbs pressing into the pads of your opposite hand like you were trying to knead guilt out of your bones. And then, just when he thought he could bear the silence a little longer, you mumbled—

“I’m sorry.”

His hands tightened around the wheel.

You swallowed. He could hear it. You continued then, softer this time, like you were speaking to the space between their heartbeats. “I shouldn’t’ve called. I know that. It was stupid, and I didn’t think it through, and I—I’m sorry. Really. I just wanted to know—” You paused, still not looking at him. “If I fucked things up. If I crossed some line I wasn’t meant to. If you—if you hate me now.” Your voice cracked ever so slightly on the word hate. Like it tasted wrong in your mouth. Like you couldn’t believe it, but feared it anyway.

Ghost blinked.

Your words struck deep. Deep enough that he felt it in the backs of his teeth. That creeping, shameful warmth rising up in his throat. He licked his lips, jaw flexing beneath the mask, his neck itching like it always did when he felt too much.

He forced a sound. Low. Tired.

“You didn’t.”

You turned to look at him. Fully.

Ghost felt the weight of it like a sniper’s scope on his skull. He exhaled hard through his nose and pulled the car to a stop at a red light. His chest rose and fell once. Twice.

“Then why’d you leave?” you asked.

The light turned green. Ghost didn’t move.

“Needed time. Head wasn’t right,” he muttered at last.

“You mean… because of the job?” you asked, quietly. “Or because of me?”

The car behind honked once.

Ghost didn’t flinch. Didn’t so much as glance in the fucking mirror. Just eased off the brake like dragging his feet through ash and let the engine roll them forward.

“Somethin’ like that.”

You tilted your head. “Like what?”

He knew this was the moment.

The one he’d been avoiding for days. For weeks. Maybe since the second he saw you for the first time, eyes too bright and heart too open. That moment when the line blurred between the two of you and everything started to rot. This was the fucking bullet he’d been dodging from the moment he laid eyes on you, and now it lodged clean in the centre of his chest.

Ghost tasted copper in the back of his throat.

He could’ve lied. Christ, he bloody should’ve. Could’ve told you it was orders, or protocol, or something vague and military enough to pass. But he was tired.

Bone-fucking-deep tired.

So he spoke.

“I’ve been a soldier since I was seventeen,” he started, the words scraping their way out from somewhere deep. “Got sent off quicker than I had time to think ‘bout what that meant. And I’ve killed more people than I can count.” God, he fucking hated himself for that. “Done what needed doin’. Lost track after a while, if I’m honest. I’ve had to make decisions, fuckin’ bad ones. Things I’ve done with these hands just to make it to where I am now.”

Ghost glanced at you, briefly.

“But it weren’t noble, sweetheart,” he muttered. “Weren’t clean. I’ve been a bastard. A liar. A coward, at times. I’ve taken the easy road just to survive it. Burned bridges. Burned people. And no flag or medal makes it right. Just means you’re the one who got away with it.”

The wipers groaned across the glass again.

A low mechanical sob.

Christ, how could he ever make you understand the depth of rot inside him? What language existed vile enough to carve it into your heart, to make you believe when he said he wasn’t worthy of you? What would it take? Should he describe the screams he’d silenced, of the men bound to chairs pleading for mercy he wasn’t allowed to give? Should he name the number of men whose eyes went glassy under his boot? Or should he confess how many innocents he’d condemned with a nod, a call, a whisper into comms? Sacrifices made not for glory, not even for peace, but for the math of survival. One life here. Ten saved there. Would that be enough? Would you finally believe him then? How could he explain the cruelest truth of all? That in a world full of monsters—

—he was one of the worst.

“I saw the way you looked at me,” he continued. “I’ve seen it before. And I’ve watched it die. Every fuckin’ time. I’m—fuck, I’m not the man you think I am, love.”

You sat still.

Completely still, like a deer in a clearing, heart thudding just beneath the skin, but refusing to run. No more nervous apologies tripped from your lips like loose petals falling from a wilting flower. Not even the tips of your fingers moved now, though just seconds ago, you’d been kneading your knuckles like they owed you penance. Like silence could be folded and tucked into the palm of your hand if you just worked at it long enough.

Then, your head leaned back against the seat. A slow motion. Deliberate. Like you’d decided to carry the weight of what he’d said not on your shoulders, but in your throat. As if swallowing his confession had left something raw lodged behind your tongue.

Ghost didn’t have anything else to offer.

He’d torn open his bloody chest and spilled out what little was left inside. No metaphors. No rehearsed deflection. Just the cracked, ugly truth he wore like his mask. He let his words hang there, dangling like the edge of a noose. They were meant to end things. To sever the thread before it could wrap too tightly around his neck.

That should’ve been enough.

That should’ve been it.

But then—

You hummed.

“You know, my friends, they think you just want to fuck me.”

Ghost’s throat closed. Hard.

“They think I’m an idiot,” you went on, voice a little stronger now, “for believing otherwise. They said that’s all this is. That men like you are just getting off on the power trip. Or the age thing. Whatever. But I told them they’re wrong. That you’re not like that. That you don’t—” You stopped, exhaling like it cost you something, frustration visible on your features. “God, I defended you like I actually know you. But the funny thing is, defending you to them felt the same as defending myself to you right now. Jesus.”

Ghost exhaled hard, like he’d been punched in the lungs.

“You’re wrong too,” you said quietly, finally turning your head to look at him. “I’m—I’m not some precious little thing that makes you better. I’m—shit, I’m not your bloody prize, Simon. I’ve made my own messes. Just… not on your scale. And I’m tired of being put on a pedestal for being pure and kind and gentle and all that shit when all I’ve ever done is trying.”

You swallowed hard, jaw tense.

“So don’t you dare use that as a reason to run from me.”

Christ.

What could he say to that?

What the fuck was he supposed to say to that?

Ghost didn’t know what to do with this, what to do with you, your trembling voice soaked in hurt. He could hear the blood in his ears now, a distant roar like the sea breaking itself against a shore it would never shape. A dull, relentless thunder, louder than your voice but not louder than your meaning. Because you didn’t get it. Or maybe you did. Maybe that was the fucking problem.

He turned his face slightly, mask still clinging to him like a second skin he couldn’t crawl out of. It burned. Christ, it fucking burned, heat crawling up his neck, scratching at the inside of his skull like fire trapped beneath his bones. He wanted out. Out of the car, out of the weight of your stare, out of this suffocating coffin of closeness. He was one bloody breath away from throwing the door open just to feel the rain on his face. Anything but this heat.

Anything but you looking at him like that.

“What d’you want from me, then?”

You frowned, “What?”

Ghost bumped his head against the seat in frustration, breath hot and heavy beneath the mask, his face itching like he’d crawled through nettles. “You fuckin’ heard me,” he ground out, his voice cruel, mocking and venomous. “What d’you want from this? From me? Want a bloody relationship, is that it? Want a fuckin’ ring on your finger? House with a picket fence?”

You bristled visibly, eyes flashing darkly in the dim interior of the car, turning your face away from him, pressing fingertips to your forehead as if battling a migraine. “What the hell is your problem, Simon?” you shot back sharply, your voice edged with disbelief and desperation. “Is that really what you think of me? You think I called you because I want—what—a diamond ring? Jesus, give me a break. Bloody hell.”

“Then what?” he growled. “What the fuck d’you want?”

Your gaze snapped back to him, blazing and brilliant in your rage. “I want you to fucking try, Simon! I just want you to stop acting like you’re protecting me when all you’re really doing is controlling me.”

Ghost groaned, the sound of a man cracking at the seams, as he dragged his free hand down his face, rough palms scraping over the fabric of his surgical mask, sweat collecting beneath it like fever, like shame. You were right. Fucking hell, you were right.

And it gutted him.

But he couldn’t say it.

No, he couldn’t give you that mercy. The cold truth rattled in his chest like bones in a sack, useless now, broken too many times to be worth anything. Frustration coiled tight in his chest, a serpent made of guilt and grief. It hissed beneath his ribs, digging in its fangs, writhing in the silence that followed your words. But beneath the anger, far worse, was something softer. Something weak.

Exhaustion.

It braided into the bones of him, pressing down like the weight of years, like all the men he’d buried inside himself just to become the one who sat beside you now. Your words were brave, bleeding and beautiful in its defiance, but naive, God, so naive. You were fighting for love. For redemption. He was fighting to shield you from the monster he couldn’t kill. And he was losing. Bloody hell, he was losing. He couldn’t fight you anymore.

Couldn’t fight himself anymore.

He was so fucking tired.

Too tired to argue.

Too tired to keep pretending he didn’t want you to save him.

Eventually, he spoke, voice low, nearly defeated. “Can’t promise you anythin’.”

You looked away again, chin trembling ever so slightly in defiance. “But I—I never asked for anything,” you whispered. “Just asked you to try.”

Ghost’s narrowed eyes flicked briefly to your reflection in the glass, a fleeting glimpse of the damage he’d done, the hurt he’d unintentionally inflicted etched plainly on your lovely face. Fuck. He didn’t want that. No, he didn’t want any of this. So he looked away quickly, his own reflection distorted in rain streaked glass. He swallowed back the bitterness that rose in his throat, a sick, acidic thing. It burned, scorching a trail down into his chest.

He felt terrified.

Fucking hell, Ghost was terrified, like an astronaut drifting away from the spaceship into the starless void, into the cold nothingness. Adrift in the frozen silence between logic and feeling, between what should be done and what had already been done. He should have thought with his head. Not with his heart. And definitely not with his shaft. But there he was, gripping the bloody wheel like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to Earth, pulse roaring in his ears, a muffled cacophony drowning out everything but you. Everything but your breath, your wary silence, the way your teary eyes flicked towards him again and again, uncertain and searching.

So he drifted.

Into the ache. Into the dark.

However, Ghost didn’t dare meet that gaze head on, because he knew he’d see himself there, reflected in all you had hurled at him. Every accusation a mirror, every whisper a reckoning. He could hear your words again, echoing softly in the back of his skull, relentless and gentle, bloody and beautiful in their brutality.

Just asked you to try.

His jaw flexed beneath the mask, teeth grinding silently together.

Something in his chest twisted sharply, bitterly. Because trying was the scariest fucking thing you could ask of a man who’d made peace with dying. Easier to storm compounds, to clear rooms, to hunt terrorists than to confront the shadows buried in his own ribcage. Easier to walk into enemy fire than to step into the fragile, devastating unknown of your trust.

But he did it anyway.

He did it, even though his mouth felt dry as bone.

Because you were worth trying for. Oh, you were worth bloody drowning for, even if it meant fighting against the currents he’d let drag him under his whole life. So he swallowed down the fear, the years of dirt and ash he’d kept tucked neatly behind his sternum and whispered, voice barely audible above the murmur of traffic and rain.

“I’ll try. Ain’t promisin’ miracles, love, but I’ll bloody try.”

He risked a glance in your direction.

A small smile had appeared on your lips, gentle and hesitant, blooming across your flushed cheeks like a sunrise over a city that had known too much night. Relief pooled warmly in his veins, confusing and welcome, bloody intoxicating. However, before you could reply, before the tenderness in your eyes could spill over and drown him completely, he forced himself to continue, words scraping out low and gravelly:

“And for what it’s worth, your mates are fuckin’ daft.”

He felt your attention sharpen, “Meaning?”

“This—” Ghost said, voice dragging slightly, “—weren’t ever about sex, sweetheart.”

He felt you looking at him sharply, surprised perhaps, but God, he couldn’t bring himself to meet your eyes just yet. The rain blurred the neon lights outside into abstract brushstrokes of colour, luminous streaks that fractured across the wet windscreen. And after a short silence, he heard you hum quietly, a delicate sound that seemed to warm the space between you, and then you spoke, voice tinged with gentle amusement.

“Didn’t peg you as the kinky type anyway, sir.”

And despite himself, Ghost chuckled. Almost laughed. Like brittle tinder catching flame, low and fleeting, more breath than voice. He shook his head slowly, mouth twitching behind the mask, the sound disguised as a huff.

“That’s ‘cause I don’t make a habit of bein’ pegged, love.”

His voice was calm. Dry as chalk.

Your cheeks flushed crimson with embarrassment and laughter both, as you quickly covered your face with both hands. “Stop—stop talking. I can’t do this with you, Simon.”

You laughed, and God, if that wasn’t the sound to split the storm inside him. It came soft and sudden, like sunlight bleeding through the cracks in a chapel roof, falling warm against cold stone. It was the kind of sound that could mend a man without laying hands on him. It found its way past the scar tissue, past the barbed wire strung tight across his ribs, and unwound the iron vice from his heart with nothing more than grace. For the first time that night, his jaw unclenched, the war behind his teeth falling quiet.

And that time—

That time, he didn’t even try to hide the smile behind the mask.

“Somewhere between ache and affection, the flesh begins to believe it is worthy of being held.” Skin of Thunder Chapters

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Chapter 7/1 of Skin Of Thunder Nostos And The Knife (previous chapter) (next chapter) (all SOT chapters) (masterlist) Simon 'Ghost' Riley x fem!Reader

“Nostos, they said, meant going home. He thought the knife would be what he left behind, but the home no longer recognises the man, and the man has no name left to answer.”

It was a strange thing.

Silence.

Not the quiet of an empty room, nor even the silence between two childhood friends passing in the same neighbourhood they grew up in, now each ignoring the other’s existence.

No, this silence was different. It was alive, whispering cruel secrets between every tick of the clock, every quiet shuffle of paper, every tap of a keyboard in the pale grey hours of morning. It had weight, had shape. It was your silence—

—and Ghost didn’t understand it anymore.

Not really. Not fully.

And maybe, he reckoned, that was the truth of things, he never fucking had. He’d thought he knew every thread of you, every subtle shift of your lovely eyes, every quiet sigh—but now you stood before him, like a stranger clothed in familiar skin, and it felt like staring into a shattered mirror, each fractured piece reflecting an image he couldn’t recognize.

A week had passed since the argument that left him battered and hollow, and yet you moved through your shared space as if the storm had never touched you at all.

You didn’t avoid him, didn’t flinch away when your paths crossed, didn’t lower your voice to exclude him.

God, no, instead you treated him with polite, distant respect, like a stranger whose name you’d heard only in passing. You didn’t try to make idle conversation, as though you knew the limits he had drawn around himself and around you. Ghost caught you watching him sometimes, only from the corner of your eye, but whenever he turned his head, your gentle gaze had already slipped away, returned to your desk or fixed intently upon your monitor.

You treated him as though he were simply another piece of furniture—necessary, useful, but meaningless beyond its function. And Christ, that stung far worse. It was subtle but merciless, a punishment far harsher than before.

And that was the cruellest fucking irony. The quiet hum of the fluorescent lights in the empty hallway above him seemed to mock him too, whispering that perhaps you’d learned too well from the very best.

From him.

And Ghost understood then, bitterly and painfully, that this was how you’d chosen to hurt him back. With silence. With mercy he didn’t bloody deserve.

It was the waiting that bothered him most.

Waiting for you to crack, to falter, to reveal the raw truth he knew lay beneath that controlled, impenetrable exterior. He waited for the inevitable day you’d corner him again, hurling wrath sharper than knives. He waited for the moment he’d have to look you in the eye and admit, fucking finally, that you’d always been right.

Only now, you’d learned caution.

But were you truly right about him?

Ghost didn’t know.

Your words haunted him still, echoing endlessly through the empty cathedral of his thoughts, a sermon on truths he couldn’t accept, wounds he refused to acknowledge. He wondered if he had actually believed the delusions you spun about his nobility, his goodness, his honour. He wasn’t a good man. You’d been wrong. Christ alive, you’d been so fucking wrong.

But then again, so had he.

Perhaps his methods were brutal, ruthless even, but hadn’t he warned you from the start? Hadn’t he tried to show you the truth, that beneath his mask lay no saint? Yet you’d persisted, determined to cast him in gold. Your childish devotion had been a cruel joke from the beginning. You’d mistaken him for some divine instrument, Justicia’s fucking sword wrought in human flesh, righteous and honourable, but he was only rusted iron, bloodied and nicked from a thousand injustices of his own. And yet, you’d placed him on a pedestal built from your gentle hopes, oblivious to the cracks in his foundation.

Now, everything lay shattered at your feet.

You’d each constructed palaces of expectation, fragile towers of crystallized glass, built upon assumptions and wishes too brittle to withstand the truth. And now, after two months spent orbiting each other like two lost stars drifting through cold emptiness, the illusions had finally shattered. Perhaps it was inevitable they’d crumble, right?

However, the blindfold had slipped at last, and you stood exposed before one another, hearts stripped bare, each holding bloodied hands up to the unforgiving light. He saw a reflection he loathed and longed for, a mirror he wished desperately to shatter, because in it he saw himself staring back, just as wounded, just as proud. And in that painful revelation, in that devastating honesty, he saw it, not salvation, but something worse.

The hollow of your heart mirrored his.

Maybe that’s why Ghost decided to leave Johnny alone.

Because as much as he wanted to break that smug sod’s nose, as much as his knuckles ached at the thought of it, Ghost knew that Soap had meant well. Always bloody meant well.

It was Johnny who had drawn back the curtains, he who’d managed to unwrap you, layer by careful layer—uncovering a side of you Ghost hadn’t been able to see himself. And that grated on him, set his teeth on edge. Because Ghost had prided himself on being observant, on reading others like open books left carelessly on a bedside table. And yet when it came to you, he’d fumbled like a fucking recruit, missed the subtle details, misread every quiet glance, every awkward touch, every hesitant smile. He’d never needed another man’s eyes to read someone else—certainly never needed another man to read you.

But Johnny, with his blunt charm and easy laughter, had cracked the code in seconds.

And now Ghost was lost.

Lost in a way he’d never expected. Lost in the question of what to do next, where to step now that he’d wandered into unfamiliar territory. He had no bloody map for this, no coordinates to guide him through the labyrinth of feelings he had spent his whole life burying, wondering if there was even a way back to solid ground.

In the end, it came down to time.

Time to think. Time to breathe.

Time to sift through the wreckage left by his own bloody hands, to sort the shards of himself he’d left scattered. He’d faced firefights with steadier nerves than this, walked straight into ambushes with clearer eyes, but the battlefield of his mind was murky and uncharted, littered with emotional landmines he’d planted himself. So, for the first time in years—maybe even a fucking decade—he filled out a bloody leave form willingly.

Ghost wasn’t a man who asked for leave lightly.

It was a concept as foreign to him as peace, a privilege for men whose wars ended when their boots hit home. Not for him. Never for him. Yet now, his pen hovered over the stark white sheet, hesitating briefly before scrawling the dates, a quiet betrayal of his own rigid discipline. Or perhaps this was how he would change for you. Not in a grand, redemptive arc, but in the cowardice of retreat. Was this growth, this moment of soft surrender? Or was it simply an excuse? A fragile veil of justification draped over the truth he dared not name?

He didn’t know.

He didn’t want to know.

All he knew was that he couldn’t stay. He couldn’t face you, not like this. He had to get away from the way you looked at him like he was worthy. From the anger in your voice when you realized he wasn’t. Because no, he wasn’t forged for righteousness but for survival. Not to defend, but to destroy. Not of honour, but of instinct. A blade not gilded in gold, but rusted in grief, not held by the hand of justice, but clenched in the grip of fear.

He was the sword of Phobos, dragged from the forge of panic, sharpened by fear, and wielded by the trembling hand of a boy who never got to be. He only cut to make things stop hurting. And maybe that’s all he was doing now. Because now—

—now he turned that blade inward.

And fled. Or tried to, at least.

Ghost stood outside Price’s office longer than he cared to admit.

He stared at the dull sheen of the brass handle, inhaling deeply through the fabric of his mask, trying to steady the fierce rhythm of his heart, hammering against his ribs like a caged beast. This wasn’t a mission he could control. Christ, this was something else entirely, something intangible and personal, infinitely more dangerous than any combat he’d ever faced. Fucking hell, he’d rather take a round to the chest than confront the strange vulnerability that gnawed relentlessly at his guts. Was this really love, perhaps? Or was it just flight, a tactical retreat disguised as necessity?

Steeling himself, he knocked sharply once before pushing the door open, stepping across the threshold.

The tiny room was darkened, lit only by a single desk lamp casting long, stretching shadows across battered maps and classified documents. The thick smell of cigar smoke hung in the air like a shroud, a familiar scent that clung to everything in Captain John Price’s orbit, an old friend whispering harsh truths and even harsher comforts. Ghost hesitated, just for a heartbeat, the form clenched in his gloved hand, edges crumpled from his own reluctant grip.

Price didn’t look up at first, brow furrowed as he scribbled notes, cigar dangling precariously from the corner of his mouth, glowing softly in the half-light. Ghost stepped forward, placing the leave forms onto the desk, the paper landing beside the ashtray.

The Captain’s hands froze.

“Leave,” Price echoed, slow and sceptical. He plucked the cigar from his mouth, narrowing his gaze as though the words might rearrange themselves if he stared hard enough. “Now?”

Ghost remained silent, jaw tight beneath the balaclava.

Price exhaled hard through his nose. “You’ve not taken leave in ten years.”

“I know.”

“Last time you did, it wasn’t voluntary.”

“I know.”

Price shifted slowly, deliberately leaning back in his chair, the leather groaning beneath him. He regarded Ghost carefully, eyes narrowed, appraising him with that same scrutiny he used on fresh recruits and potential threats. It was a goddamn scalpel. Only now it was turned fully upon him, cutting deep beneath layers of masks and bravado, straight down to the marrow of his bones. And hell, it made him feel bloody sixteen years old again. Standing in the hallway of a smoke-stained council flat, waiting to get knocked across the face for breathing wrong.

Ghost needed to think. Fast.

“Got some personal matters to see to.”

The captain’s silence lingered, pressing heavily between them. Ghost knew that look well, the thoughtful, calculating stare, the way Price’s eyes seemed to strip him down to sinew.

“Timing’s awful.”

He stiffened. “Not askin’ for your blessin’. Just your signature.”

Price didn’t blink, cigar ember glowing like a dying star in the dim office light.

“’Course you’re not. You never do.”

He tapped the ash off into the tray with calculated, deliberate precision. The clock on the wall ticked once. Then twice. It was a quiet Ghost recognised from ops, the moment before breach, when every breath counted, when tension thickened like blood left too long in the cold.

And then Price spoke, low and even.

“You want to tell me what this is really about?”

“No.”

That earned a slight tilt of the head, not surprise, just confirmation. Bloody hell, the old man wasn’t daft. Never had been. “I’ve got men runnin’ recon on half a dozen compromised sites. Gaps in Shepherd’s Bravo trail, the brass breathin’ down my neck, and our Dizzy one diggin’ through comm logs like she’s tryna raise the fuckin’ dead. And now you, of all people, decide to swan off for a week?”

Ghost’s throat burned behind the mask. “It won’t affect the op.”

“Everythin’ affects the op, Ghost.” Price’s voice was firmer now. Not angry, but close enough to the cliff. “Especially when one of my best operator’s suddenly packin’ his kit and leggin’ it off base with a face like thunder.”

“Not leggin’ it,” Ghost replied, low and sharp. “Just need time to get my head straight.”

“Tell me why,” the captain leaned forward, eyes burning through the haze of smoke between them. “’Cause I’m not signin’ this until you do.”

Ghost’s hands curled into fists, like coiled snakes, aching to strike. But they didn’t strike. Not this time. There were no enemies in the room. Just the bitter scent of tobacco, old wood and a man who saw through him like he was glass stained with blood.

“Not your business.”

“The fuck it ain’t,” Price snorted, tossing the signed form toward the centre of the desk with a flick of his wrist. “You think I’d let Soap go dark mid-mission without askin’ why? Think I wouldn’t drag Gaz in by his collar if he came to me lookin’ like a kicked dog?”

“Just a week.”

“Not the point.”

The captain’s voice sharpened, and Ghost could feel it, the shift in the air, the way the walls seemed to close in around him. The damn office had grown smaller, maybe he had, or maybe everything did now, Ghost didn’t know anymore. Maybe that was why he needed to leave so badly. Because if he stayed, he’d shatter between these walls. Not by the cruelty of war, but at the mercy of a woman who never meant to be a hammer. Just a hand, soft and open, reaching for the wrong kind of weapon.

“So it is about her, then.”

Ghost stilled.

Dead still.

Price leaned back slow, eyes narrowing, as if confirming a suspicion he’d carried for days but never voiced aloud. The cigar burned low, smoke curling like a ghost around his knuckles as he exhaled through his nose. There was no smugness in his voice, no I told you so. Just quiet calculation.

“I see.”

Ghost felt the heat rise behind the mask.

The office was too hot now. The walls too close.

He could feel them creeping in around him, thick with old smoke and years of command, of loss and duty. They held him there, in the flickering hush of that worn office that had seen more confessionals than any bloody church. The kind of place where hard truths got spoken whether you were ready to hear them or not. Price didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Ghost should’ve known better than to come in thinking the old man wouldn’t see through him. This bastard had built his career on knowing when his men were lying—especially the ones who didn’t speak at all.

“Didn’t come here to chat about her,” Ghost muttered, voice gritted.

“No,” Price nodded. “But you’ve got it all the same.”

He stood, the movement slow and precise, hands braced on the edge of the desk as he leaned forward. His beard caught the amber glow of the desk lamp, casting his features in burnished shadow. “I’ve seen a lot of things bring a man to his knees. Seen ‘em crack from pressure like old bone, snap clean in two over grief, guilt, fear. But you?” He tilted his head, studying his lieutenant like a broken compass. “Didn’t think you’d be the one to break over a woman.”

“She’s not—” Ghost paused. “She’s not the problem.”

Price gave a tired nod. “Then sort it. Or let her go.”

Ghost’s silence was the loudest thing in the room.

The choice hung in the air between them like a blade suspended by breath, glinting softly in the dying light of something neither dared to name. It was not loud, not spoken. It was in the silence.

And God, all he could think about was your lips, glossed and parted in that breathless way you did when you were on the edge of saying something awkward. The soft line in your cheek when you smiled like you didn’t know what you were doing to him. The glint in your eyes, bright and defiant, like stars on a winter night that never promised morning.

He said nothing.

He did nothing.

And perhaps that, too, was a decision.

Because if love was a battlefield, then silence was surrender. Maybe, in the way he thought about you like he’d already lost you during that war, Ghost had made his choice. And maybe, just maybe, it had never been him who held the blade at all.

Maybe it was you all along.

“I look at you, and I don’t see a man who’s bein’ chased,” Price said. “I see a man runnin’. And that’s a big difference, Simon.”

It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t even an accusation. It was a verdict, delivered quietly as a bell toll before the noose, final as the closing of a casket. Like a judge with no need for witness or plea, weighing only the callouses on a man’s palms, the dried blood beneath his fingernails, the weight of dirt stitched into his laces. Eyes dulled by too many sleepless nights, too many truths swallowed whole, too tired to lie convincingly anymore.

And Ghost didn’t flinch. Didn’t plead. Didn’t pretend. He wore his guilt like a second skin, silent and resigned, as if innocence was a suit that no longer fit the shape of him.

Price sighed, then picked up the paper. “One week. No longer.”

Ghost nodded.

“I’m signin’ this, but I’m tellin’ you now, if you come back and this is still hangin’ over your head, if it fucks with your work, with your instincts—I’ll pull her. Reassign her permanently. I won’t risk the team’s cohesion ‘cause you don’t know what to do with your bloody heart.”

It seemed the blade you wilded had changed hands, passed quiet as breath from one soldier to another, and now it rested in Price’s grip, steady and unflinching. Each word he spoke carved clean through flesh and silence alike, drawing blood not in torrents, but in thin lines, the kind that stung long after the wound had dried.

Ghost hummed. “You’d punish her for what I did?”

“I’d protect her from what you might do next.”

Ghost bit down a thousand things he wanted to say. None of them mattered.

“Understood.”

Price held his gaze another second. Then signed the sheet.

“Take the time. But sort yourself the fuck out.”

The cigar hissed out in the ashtray.

Ghost left without a word.

Didn’t look back, didn’t linger. Just turned on his heel and shut the door behind him with a click that echoed louder in his chest than it did in the corridor. A clean break, or something like it. The paper was signed. The verdict delivered. But the silence followed him down the corridors, nested in his collarbone. A silence that didn’t end when the door closed behind him. It melted into him, stitched into the seams of his shadow like a curse. He walked slow. Measured. Not like a man with time to waste, but like a man with nowhere to go and too many places he couldn’t return to.

One week. No longer.

Seven days to become someone you wouldn’t regret caring about.

Or seven days to finally let you go.

Fucking hell.

His balaclava itched.

“The sea never returned Odysseus whole. So why did you think you could walk back untouched, when your wars were fought beneath the skin?” Skin of Thunder Chapters

[miludd6]

Chapter 7/2 of Skin Of Thunder Nostos And The Knife (previous chapter) (next chapter) (all SOT chapters) (masterlist) Simon 'Ghost' Riley x fem!Reader

“He followed the thread back to you, Ariadne in periwinkle. But the labyrinth was inside him now, and your gaze was the knife that refused to cut him free.”

Downtown London crouched beneath a bruised sky, stained with ink, the darkness slick and suffocating, pressing down like a hand around the throat of God.

The hum of distant traffic sounded like whispers from another life, broken voices weaving through the smog, stitched with the sharp bark of a dog that wouldn’t shut up and the laughter of drunk men who hadn’t yet realised the evening was swallowing them whole.

From his cramped flat, Ghost watched distorted shadows dance across the peeling wallpaper, casted by the streetlamps below. Neon seeped through the blinds like a surgical blade, slicing him open in thin, clinical ribbons of light. Somehow his bed felt smaller tonight. He lay rigid, staring upward at the ceiling, which felt impossibly close, like a coffin lid ready to close.

It was a dull canvas for his mind’s twisted cinema.

He rolled onto his back, the cold mattress creaking beneath him, gaze fixed blankly upwards. Sleep was a luxury long abandoned, replaced by endless nights spent wrestling with demons that wore faces he recognised all too well. Bloodied hands, empty eyes, whispers in the dark. And now, among them, was you. Your voice was a ghost of its own, more persistent than the dead he carried on his back. It lingered like the scent of gunpowder on his fingertips. Because you wanted him to confront himself, but Christ, you had no clue what lay beneath the mask. No bloody clue the Pandora’s box you were desperate to pry open.

It had been four days since he left the base.

Four days hollowed out by silence so thick it pressed against his eardrums like the deep sea, a pressure that didn’t burst him, only crushed. During his voluntary exile, he cleaned his entire flat, not to tidy, but to repent, scrubbing the tiles like they were sins, vacuuming dust from the corners where memory congealed.

He moved through it all like a revenant.

Washing laundry that wasn’t dirty, scrubbing dishes that weren’t stained, cutting his hair with the precision of a soldier dressing a corpse, shopping for groceries in the fog of strangers. He cooked food he didn’t eat. Lit cigarettes he didn’t smoke. Slept with the telly on just to drown out the sound of his own mind clawing at the inside of his skull. Oh, and he drank. A lot. Not to forget, but to remember things differently, until the bottle’s mouth became a confessional, and his silence tasted like rot.

He drank to feel you.

Ghost was clawing at the walls of a cage he built himself. All he could think about was you and he wanted to burn it out. Carve the image of you from his brain with fingernails and whiskey. But it stayed. You stayed. And he hated how badly he wanted to be fourteen again, not because it was easier, but because pain was simpler then.

So he drank until the room spun like a carousel and he could almost see her, his lovely mum, standing in the corner again, hands wringing the hem of her apron. Ghost wanted the pain. He wanted the sting of his father’s hand across his face, sharp and red and real. Wanted the sound of his mother screaming his name through bruised lips and trembling teeth, her voice splitting the tiny kitchen like lightning tearing a house in two. Because for a single, sickening moment, he’d be close enough to reach her again. Just to crawl back to her warmth, to that tragedy of a woman who once kissed his bruises and pressed damp hands to his fevered brow like prayer.

Ghost wanted his mum to tell him what to do with you.

But the dead didn’t answer.

There was no one left to ask. His mother was bone now. Ash and absence. There was no absolution waiting for him in the dark. Only the walls replied, groaning like they were fucking sick of him, too. His flat smelled like disinfectant and smoke, and the only voice left was the one in his head, whispering things he couldn’t outrun.

You are your father’s son.

You are your father’s son.

You are your—

Ghost shifted, fists clenching around rumpled sheets as he forced his eyes shut. He wanted to forget everything, at least for tonight. Yet sleep remained a distant shore, forever receding no matter how fiercely he swam towards it. His ocean of thoughts churned like stormy waves, tossing him mercilessly until he could barely breathe. But he wasn’t afraid of dying. No, he was afraid of wanting to live.

Because it meant he might need you.

As the hours dragged their carcasses across the floor, Ghost found himself teetering on the lip of sleep, that trembling and fevered edge where reality softens just enough to let the rot seep through. He lay there like a body not yet buried, the ceiling above him a void, a mouth with no teeth as the city bled in through the cracks. His eyelids sagged, breath slowing, and for a heartbeat he welcomed it. Finally, that last inch before falling. Sleep wasn’t rest, not for men like him. It was oblivion. And oblivion was holy.

In his dreams, you were in Manchester with him.

It was summer, but the sun was wrong. Somehow it was too sharp, too white and too hungry. It seared everything it touched. Bloody hell, and you were there, laughing on Tommy’s rusted bike, the wind threading your hair into ribbons, your smile the only real thing in that melting place. Your mustard colored dress tangled around your thighs, sweet as blood on milk teeth.

“Come on, Si,” you shrieked joyfully.

Not Ghost. Not Lieutenant. Not sir.

Just Simon.

He was just a boy in this dream. Small, dirt on his kneed, breath hitching in his chest like he hadn’t earned the right to air. And you were you, exactly as you were now, radiant and unreachable, sunlight caught in your lashes, your laughter slicing him open.

You told him to chase you.

And he did.

Because how could he not?

You were his. Even in the wrong time, the wrong skin, the wrong world—

—you were his.

“Wait,” Simon begged, stumbling forward. “You have to stop!”

He ran, barefoot and panting, legs sticky with sweat and panic, the gravel biting into his soles like a thousand tiny needles. You were always just out of reach. And you never looked back. You never slowed down. And the sun—God, it burned. It melted into his dark eyes until all he could see was your outline, blurred and brilliant and cruel.

“I have to go home,” Simon cried out, voice cracking like snapped bone. “He’s gonna be so angry—please, give the bike back—I need to go—he’ll hurt me, please—”

Then his feet tangled—

—and the world tilted.

You never listened.

You never fucking listened.

His mobile buzzed.

Ghost jolted upright, heart kicking like a boot against his ribs, breath stuck in his throat as if he’d just been yanked from the dream by the collar. His phone lit up the room like a morgue drawer opening, cold, white and sterile.

Fuck. He didn’t even remember closing his eyes.

The screen glowed with a number he didn’t recognize. His hand closed around it, knuckles pale with the force of his grip, dread sinking teeth deep into his gut. Only a handful of souls walked this Earth with his personal number and they knew damn well it weren’t for fucking social calls. Emergency only. Life-or-death. So who the fuck was this?

He brought the phone to his ear with a growl.

“Who’s this?”

“Ghost? Is that you?”

His blood turned to ice—no, to shards, jagged slivers scraping through veins suddenly too narrow to carry the weight of his pulse. His gut coiled tight, a sick knot of anger braided with fear.

For a heartbeat, he was certain this wasn’t real, just some cruel, looping dream dragging him back to Manchester, back to the scorching pavement and the echo of your laughter fading down some endless road. A feverish hallucination stitched together by whisky and weariness, taunting him with the only voice he both craved and feared.

Yours. Always yours.

“The fuck is this?”

There was a pause, and then you giggled.

A real one. Not like in his dream, where it was haunting and hollow. No, it was a real laugh, messy, clumsy and unfiltered, followed by a faint snort, like you were half embarrassed by it, and he swore something cracked open in his chest.

“It’s just me,” you said, giggling still. “Jesus, calm down.” The laughter turned sheepish, and Ghost stood up fast, the room spinning a little.

He pressed a palm to the wall to steady himself.

Fucking hell.

This was exactly what he deserved, wasn’t it?

Some divine bloody punishment.

“How’d you get this number?” He snapped, already pacing, muscles coiled tight.

This had to be a dream.

His flat was cold, dark and dead, yet somehow he could still feel the Manchester sun burning his skin, hear your voice like it was stitched into the walls. It didn’t belong here. None of it did. This wasn’t right. No, you weren’t supposed to call him, weren’t supposed to reach him here. This place, this flat, it was his personal grave, buried far beneath the reach of anyone he cared for. Including you.

Especially you.

You hummed, the warmth in your voice frayed at the edges now, softer than before. More vulnerable. It pulled him back to reality. Back to you. “Ah, well—I saved everyone’s number. Emergency contacts, remember? But listen, that’s not important right now, I—”

Ghost stood by the window, parting the blinds with two fingers, peering down into the street below. London stared back, neon glaring, puddles shimmering like pools of mercury beneath the white street lamps. The world felt strangely alien, distant somehow. Unreal. Like he was still trapped in his own head. He dragged a hand down his face, calloused fingertips catching on the stubble at his jaw, urging him to wake up fully.

“I—” you started again, hesitating, your voice dropping to something more fragile, uncertain. “You’re in London, right? Still on leave?”

Ghost’s jaw clenched so tight it made his ears ring.

He didn’t reply, just waited for you to get to the bloody point.

“See, I’m out with my friends and they… well, they’re all a bit tipsy, and—” You murmured, like you were confessing a sin, accompanied by distant laughter, girlish and drunken whispers echoing faintly behind you. “And they said I should call you.”

Ghost blinked hard, frustration pulsing behind his eyes.

He couldn’t believe his ears.

“The fuck are you on about?”

A muffled snort sounded through the line, followed by a feminine voice, still urging you on. You sighed, your sweet voice trembling slightly now, edged with that familiar vulnerability he’d spent days trying to erase from his memory. “I, uhm… told my friends about you. More than I meant to, honestly, and—shit, they convinced me to call.”

Ghost blinked again.

His back hit the wall beside the window, shoulder blades landing with a dull thud. The city below blurred into meaningless shapes. Now, it was your voice that painted everything with meaning, whispering his ruin into the goddamn phone.

There was a long silence on his end.

Not tactical. Not measured. Not the sort of quiet you keep on a stakeout, waiting for the target to show their face. It was the kind of silence that only existed when something cracked open inside you, and everything started pouring out. Except nothing did. Because he didn’t have words for this. Ghost didn’t have tools for it. No briefing, no procedure. Just you, your voice skipping over the line like a stone on dark water, pulling ripples out of places in him that had been still for too fucking long.

“I’m sorry,” you added, quieter now. “I shouldn’t’ve called. It’s just—I thought maybe you wouldn’t pick up, and then you did and—oh, now I feel stupid.”

Ghost exhaled through his nose, slow and sharp.

“Hang up, then,” he muttered, low. “Spare us both the fuckin’ trouble.”

It was cruel.

He knew it in the marrow of his bones, in the echo of his mother’s voice warning him about kindness turned into knife, but still, he didn’t stop. He couldn’t. Because every second your voice bled through the phone, every syllable trembled like a bloody memory soaked in salt, it scraped something raw inside him. Peeled him back to sinew and sin, to the tender flesh he’d buried beneath drink, beneath distance, beneath the grit of pretending he didn’t care.

You were a wound speaking in ruin. A siren dragging its nails down the inside of his ribcage. And with each breath you gave him, he bled a little more—

—because you didn’t hang up.

Instead, you continued. “I guess I just wanted to ask—I mean, I just wanted to know if you’re alright. That you’re—you know. That you’re okay. I mean, I—”

“Fuckin’ hell,” he muttered, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “You pissed?”

“…Uhm, maybe a little.” You giggled again, softer this time, like you knew you were on thin ice, like you knew the weight of his name on your tongue might break you both. “But not that drunk. Not—I mean, not wasted or anything. Just—uhm, comfortably tipsy.”

“Don’t call me pissed out your skull and tell me you’re not.”

“I’m not pissed,” you objected childishly.

“You’re slurrin’, love.”

You went quiet. Ghost rubbed his eyes.

Your voice dropped then, barely audible now. “I just—I dunno. You disappeared. Again. And I guess I thought maybe—maybe I said too much. Or didn’t say enough. And I couldn’t—”

Ghost turned away from the window, dragging a hand through his short, damp hair. He paced. The floorboards creaked under his bare feet like dry bone. The air in the apartment had grown thick, warmer somehow, like your voice had soaked into the wallpaper, into the floor, into the hollow of his fucking throat.

“Listen—”

“I’m not good at this,” you interrupted suddenly. “At—at knowing what’s too far. Or what’s okay. I just—I just wanted to know that you’re alright.” Your words stumbled out, heavy with nerves and the weight of whatever drink had made you bold enough to call him. “I’ve always been like this. Since I was a kid. Oversharing, I mean. Saying too much. Being too much. My dad used to say I’d get myself hurt if I—but I—I can’t live like that, Simon. I never could. And maybe I’m a fool for it, but I—”

Ghost stopped pacing.

He should’ve told you to sod off. Should’ve hung up. Cut the cord before it tangled further. But he couldn’t. Bloody hell, not when you sounded like that. Not when your voice hit him like shrapnel to the ribs. Ghost exhaled, slow and deep, the sound dragging from the pit of his stomach like something dying. You didn’t even realise what you were doing to him, did you? You never did. You never fucking understood the damage you dealt—

—sweetly, softly, unintentionally.

“Comin’ to get you,” he muttered.

“What?” you breathed, caught off guard.

“Fuck’s sake, just stay where you are,” Ghost said again, firmer this time, already grabbing the jet black shirt from the back of his chair and pulled it on over his head with a rough jerk. “Don’t leave. I’ll come get you.”

“Wait, you don’t have to—”

“Don’t care. Stay put.”

He bent to grab his worn jeans, yanked them on with fingers that moved like muscle memory, like ritual, breath catching slightly as the room tilted for half a second. His stubborn hangover still clung to the back of his skull like dried blood, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now but getting to you. His boots sat by the door with military precision, laced tight, waiting like loyal dogs as he stepped into them.

“You don’t have to—” you tried again. “I shouldn’t’ve called. I’m sorry—”

But he wasn’t listening. Not really.

He was already moving, slamming his baseball cap low over his eyes and dragging his black surgical mask up over the lower half of his face, the fabric familiar against his skin, a quiet veil he could breathe behind. He yanked his coat from the hook by the door and shoved his arms through the sleeves, movement fast and angry, as if he could somehow outpace the ache coiled behind his sternum. His fingers flew through the motions as he threw up his hood like they were made for this—preparation, protection, damage control.

“Name of the pub?” he barked, voice hoarse.

“Er—Hold on.” You fumbled with the phone. There were irritating noises in the background. Music, laughter, some bloke yelling about tequila like it was the Second Coming. Then your voice came back, clearer but nervous. “The Grey Mare. It’s off Meard Street. Soho.”

“I’ll be there in twenty.”

“But Simon—”

He hung up before you could say anything else.

Before he could.

The phone slid into his pocket.

He needed both hands free. For the wheel. For the weight of this choice. For the hollow in his chest that had started to echo when he heard your voice again. The stairwell reeked of mildew and cigarettes. Every step echoed as he descended. The night had grown colder, it bit sharper, like it knew something was about to change.

Like it wanted to see it bleed.

The London streets were slick with rain.

Ghost didn’t remember getting in the car. Didn’t remember the way his fingers curled around the door handle like they were choking it, knuckles white. He just drove. He gripped the wheel tighter than necessary as he pulled out of his narrow street, headlights smearing across wet brick and dark pavement. Soho wasn’t far, but the drive stretched like wire under tension, each red light another nail through the heart. Rain flicked against the windscreen in nervous bursts, like even the sky couldn’t decide if it should cry or not.

His hands trembled on the gearshift.

Just once. Just for a moment.

Fuck. What the hell was he doing?

He should’ve never let this happen. He should’ve told you to go home. He should’ve stayed in his flat and let the memory of you dissolve like aspirin in the morning. Should’ve never let you near him. Should’ve built the wall higher. Should’ve scorched the bloody ground beneath his feet before letting you step close.

But then he remembered your voice.

I just wanted to know that you’re alright.

He didn’t know what he was going to say.

Ghost didn’t have a speech ready, no tactical approach to this situation. But you’d called him. After everything. After the silence, the argument, the look in your eyes when you’d told him you were done begging him to be human.

He parked half a block away, somewhere off Wardour Street, the kind of alley where piss and perfume lingered in equal measure. He killed the engine, shoved the door open, and stepped into the night. He stepped out into the wet, cold air, shoulders hunched against the drizzle, hands in his pockets. The streets were busy with bodies spilling from clubs and kebab shops, people blending into the Friday night. He moved like a shadow, weaving through it all, ears tuned to the cadence of your voice.

Ghost didn’t need to ask where you were.

He knew, knew before the turn, before the light changed. He felt you before he saw you, like gravity bending toward a star. He could’ve found you blindfolded in a burning city, through fog or fire or riot, guided by some merciless tether buried in his ribs. Even if a hundred hands dragged him back, even if they carved him down to bone—

—he’d still find you.

And there you were.

Perched on a bench outside the pub like some forgotten deity from a myth no one had written yet. One foot tucked beneath you, phone gripped in both hands like it might float away, head bowed beneath the soft blur of city lights. That daft periwinkle coat you always wore clung to you, sleeves darkened at the cuffs from the damp. Your hair was a halo of chaos, twisted back in that way you always did when you weren’t trying, but still managed to look divine. And your cheeks glowed like you’d stolen fire from the gods and didn’t know where to put it.

Your top glittered, sequins catching the amber light like a sky swallowing itself into dusk and shimmering like spilled stardust. Red, violet and indigo, colours he never thought could look holy on skin. But they did. On you, they did. A fucking galaxy written across your chest. You didn’t look real. You looked like a siren mid-breath, a goddess waiting at the edge of war, soft and unbothered while men burned for the right to kneel.

You looked unholy in your softness.

Like a cathedral dressed in neon—

—a saint cloaked in sin.

Ghost froze.

Something in him broke open.

Ghost felt the weight of you like revelation, like prophecy etched into bone. In that moment, all he wanted, all he needed, was to press his face between your thighs, to disappear into the scent and heat of you, to be unmade in your softness and drowned in the sacred altar where your warmth lived. Not for pleasure. Not for sin. But for absolution. To be ruined by you in the most reverent way a man could ask for. As if the only peace left in this goddamn world waited there. As if his salvation was the sound of you gasping his name.

His boots scuffed the wet pavement, and your head snapped up.

Eyes wide. Lips parted.

Like you hadn’t really believed he’d come.

Ghost stopped a few feet away, soaked through the shoulders already, staring down at you through rain and neon. He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to.

Your voice broke the quiet. “Jesus Christ. You really came.”

He stared at you for a long moment, chest burning with something ancient and endless.

“Told you to stay put, didn’t I?”

You huffed a laugh and looked away, embarrassed. “I did.”

He stepped closer. “You still drunk?”

You shook your head. “No.”

Ghost sighed. “Alright?”

“I don’t know,” you said. And it wasn’t a lie.

Another breathless beat dragged through the rain, each drop ticking like a slow countdown off the brim of his cap.

You looked up at him, eyes wide, searching, as if you couldn’t quite tell what story his silence would choose to write this time. Would it be rejection? Would it be the cold turn of his back, boots retreating into shadow while the night swallowed you whole? You looked at Ghost like you expected punishment, like you feared he might vanish with the rain and take your name with him. And God, he almost did. Almost turned. Almost broke.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he said, voice low, “C’mon. Let’s get you home.”

A pause.

Then you rose, slowly, like the earth itself had to loosen its grip on you. The hem of your coat fluttered in the breathless hush between raindrops, and your hand slipped your phone into your pocket with a finality that made Ghost’s lungs tighten. You didn’t speak. You didn’t have to. The moment stretched, quiet and trembling, as you lingered beside him, your eyes lifting to meet his dark ones beneath the wet brim of his cap.

And oh, how you searched him.

Like you were looking for the path home in the wreckage of his face. For mercy, maybe. For the echo of that tenderness he buried so carefully. For a flicker of warmth he’d let slip once, too rare to trust, too sacred to name. Nostos, the old word whispered somewhere in the cradle of your gaze. The ache of return. Not to a place, but to a person. To him.

And then, you whispered, barely audible, “You look like shit, sir.”

Ghost huffed. Almost smiled.

Almost.

“You too.”

“You were the Iliad, he the ash after the fire. He brought the blade back with him, yes—but left the hand that held it.” Skin of Thunder Chapters

[miludd6]

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[miludd6]

Chapter 6/2 of Skin Of Thunder The Ship of Theseus (previous chapter) (next chapter) (all SOT chapters) (masterlist) Simon 'Ghost' Riley x fem!Reader

“The gods once whispered that to change was to survive, but what of the price? If you lose yourself piece by piece, at what point do you cease to be the one who began the journey?”

You worked like the devil was on your heels.

For days now, Ghost watched you.

Your fingers never stopped moving. Your eyes, tired but sharp, combed through data like you were looking for God buried in the fine print. You chewed your gum less, sipped your coffee cold, wore your clothes wrinkled from long nights and early mornings. You stopped adjusting your bloody pen holder. You started dressing in greys, navy blues and forest greens mixing with caramel browns and velvet noirs, something more uniform, something more restrained. You were trying to disappear into the work.

As if that would make it easier to be near him.

As if that could erase the memory of how you looked at him in the snowfall, your pretty eyes soft and steady, as if the world itself paused for just a breath in your gaze. As if it could erase the warmth of your lovely voice as you shared a story from your childhood, a tale that wove itself into the quiet night, threading your past with a tenderness he never thought he deserved. As if it could silence the reassurance in your words, the quiet promise that, despite everything he feared, you weren't going anywhere—

—no matter how much he resembled the man he hated most.

And it annoyed the ever-loving fuck out of him.

There was something bleeding out the seams of you.

That need. That drive. That old, familiar hunger Ghost knew too fucking well—the desire to matter. To prove something. To claw your way out of the periphery and into the heart of the mission, where the lines between clarity and consequence went soft and red. He watched it unfold in real bloody time. You didn’t belong there, not really, but fuck if you weren’t starting to fit into the cracks of it. Like moss growing between broken pavement. Quiet. Relentless. Somehow alive in a place built for the dead.

And you weren’t subtle about it.

Not like before.

“I—I think I’ve found a lead,” you muttered during a morning meeting, voice quiet but sure, maybe a bit hoarse, as if you'd held it in for hours. “Something’s off in the supply manifests tied to Site Bravo. Same trail of requisition codes as the drop Shepherd covered up in August. Different name. Same ghost print.”

Not maybe. Not sorry to interrupt.

Just that.

Ghost had felt Johnny look at him.

A glance. Blue to brown. A signal passed between brothers, a conversation spoken entirely in silence. He knew what Soap was thinking—knew it down to the fucking marrow, because it echoed his own unease like a bell tolling at the back of his skull.

A question.

How much do we give her?

And Ghost, for all his damned instincts, hadn’t answered.

Because he didn’t know. What could they really share with you? How far could they let you go before the edge turned from paper to blade? You were meant to file leave reports. Handle contracts. Chase down requisition forms. You were meant to be safe, for fuck’s sake. Instead, you were tracing the fault lines in a system that had already burned them once. All because of Laswell and the damn faith she placed in you, like a weighty crown you never asked for, yet somehow bore upon your shoulders with a silent, unyielding force.

Laswell didn’t blink when you’d said that.

She’d nodded, lips pursed in that tight little way of hers that meant she already knew. She’d known before you even said it, probably. You were confirming her suspicion. Making her job easier.

She seemed almost proud.

Price’s fingers tapped once against the table.

“Show me,” the Captain said.

And that was it.

The gates creaked open.

You’d earned a sliver of space on the game board now. A voice among wolves. And Ghost couldn’t bloody stomach it. Not because you were incapable. Not because you weren’t clever. You were too clever. Too quick with patterns. Too good at slipping past red tape and excuses, unravelling men with nothing but a well-timed silence.

“…same trail of flagged shipments. Bypassed Bravo through a dummy requisition. Followed it back to a private account connected to Shepherd’s former logistics branch. It’s buried, but it’s there, I promise. I just… need more time. To figure this out, I mean.”

Ghost exhaled slowly through his nose.

You were laying out the recon like it was fucking doctrine, like you’d been born doing this. And he knew, shit, Ghost knew it was never about how you dressed. Not anymore.

It wasn’t in your perfume or your ribbon or the way your fingertips skimmed the edge of the table as you spoke. It wasn’t about your bloody memories, nor the fire that burned in your chest, nor the unwavering determination that drove you to believe in the greater good, that you could help others. No, it was the way you combed through line items like they were sniper reports. The way you annotated briefings like you were prepping for a trial by fire.

Ghost had seen that hunger before.

He’d worn it once.

Maybe he was wrong about you. Again.

Because it showed. Your military blood. It was in the way you held yourself like you were always waiting for a hit that wouldn’t come. But still, you carried your softness like armour. As if kindness could bloody save you. As if the careful way you spoke, the way you looked at men who didn’t fucking deserve it, would make you immune to the rot curling beneath the surface of this world. Like if you stayed warm, stayed light, stayed just one fucking shade brighter than the sickening grey walls and black ops and brown dossiers, then maybe you wouldn’t turn into what they were.

And yet there you were.

Elbows on the table, nails chipped, hair tied back in some loose bun you clearly didn’t have time to fix. And there he was, sat opposite you, watching you slowly turn into something sharper than before.

Something he’d have to mourn.

Of course, he didn’t bloody show it.

No, he let the silence drag, heavy as a noose around his neck, as Price looked you up and down. Ghost could hear Soap shifting, restless as always, while Gaz exhaled, long and low, like he’d been holding it since you’d opened your mouth. They were waiting—for permission, for guidance, for their captain’s word.

“Good work, Dizzy one,” Price finally said, eyes narrowing in that quiet, calculating way of his. “Get it done, but keep it quiet. Anythin’ comes up, you bring it straight to me. Clear?”

You nodded quickly, exhaling a tight breath, relief washing across your face.

“Yes, sir. Understood.”

The meeting broke soon after, chairs scraping, bodies moving with muted urgency. Johnny nudged Kyle, murmuring something about grabbing a cuppa before heading down to training. Laswell gathered her files, exchanged a brief glance with Price, and disappeared back down the corridor like a shadow herself. But you lingered, arranging papers carefully, meticulously. Like you didn’t trust your hands to keep still if they weren’t full.

Price passed by, giving you a brief nod that looked suspiciously like approval. You returned it, quiet and steady, like you’d practiced this. Ghost knew you had. He’d watched you in his peripheral, muttering words under your breath like prayers, rehearsing lines you’d later speak to the Captain. Ghost knew exactly how far you were prepared to go.

The answer? Further than you fucking should.

You were drifting into the deep end, and you didn’t flinch anymore. Ghost could feel it—a slow churn, a sick weight in the pit of his gut that hadn’t left since the day you stopped asking permission to speak. It wasn’t pride. Not really. And it sure as hell wasn’t worry in the clean, palatable way people talk about concern.

No, what Ghost felt was grief, dressed up in fatigue.

You didn’t understand what it cost—to be trusted in this circle. To just walk into that meeting room and not be dismissed. You’d asked for a seat at the table, and now you had it. But tables like these? They were altars. And sooner or later, they demanded sacrifice. You’d bleed for it. And that was the tragedy of it. He could see it, clear as bullet glass.

And it wasn’t heroic.

Wasn’t admirable.

He could see it vividly, the day he’d stand at your funeral, staring blankly at your parents for the first fucking time, a meeting that should have been under different skies, under different circumstances. He could feel the weight of it, the cold weight of soil falling on top of you before he could prove himself worthy. He had always known that it would end this way, as if some cruel curse clung to him—every damn soul that dared to draw near would be swallowed whole by death, leaving him with nothing but the weight of their absence.

It didn’t help that you’d started opening up again. That you talked to him more. Smiled more. Joked more. Made grieving you even harder. And the worst part? You were doing it for him. For them. For all the wrong reasons.

You were standing so close now.

Always too close.

In hallways, in briefings, in the cantina, laughing with Johnny about some bollocks he'd said, throwing your head back with a brightness that made Ghost’s lungs seize. Gaz would chime in, cool as you like, and you’d lean toward him, but your eyes, those pretty eyes would flick to Ghost. Always. And fuck, he’d pretend not to see. Pretend not to notice the way your body angled slightly his way. Pretend your fingers didn’t brush his gloves when you handed him reports now. That you didn’t wait just a second too long before pulling away.

Bloody hell, it was easier when you kept your distance.

When you looked through him like he wasn’t there, like he was just the outline of something dreadful. When you didn’t speak to him unless prompted. When your lovely smile belonged to everyone but him. That made sense. That was how things should’ve stayed.

It was on a frosty night, a few days after Christmas when he caught you slipping again.

The base was half-dead by the time Ghost got back from the gym. Quiet in that eerie, echoing way that only these corridors managed after dark. Fluorescents buzzed low overhead, casting everything in that sterile, unforgiving light. Cold bit through the reinforced walls like it was trying to gnaw through bone, and the sky outside had gone black as coal, stars veiled behind low, grim clouds. When Ghost opened the door of his office, black hoodie clinging damp to the muscles in his arms, chest still rising and falling from the aftershock of exertion, he found you exactly where he didn’t want you—right there, in his space, haunting the silence like you belonged in it. Still in there, long past oh-twenty-hundred, light from your monitor bleeding pale across your cheeks, fingers typing slow, methodical.

“Still here,” he muttered, more accusation than observation.

You didn’t jump. Didn’t startle like you used to.

Just hummed low in your throat, barely turning.

“Didn’t realise it was past curfew,” you murmured, your voice warm but frayed at the edges, like a record played too many times. “Thought you liked it when I was working.”

Ghost huffed. “Like it better when you go home in time.”

You paused at that.

Like you were measuring something in the silence between his words and the huff that hadn’t quite landed as casual. Your hand hovered over the mouse for a second longer, then dropped to your lap. You turned in your chair slowly, the wheels squeaking slightly beneath you, the only sound in the room besides the hum of the radiator kicking out weak heat.

“I—I just don’t like going home when it’s this quiet.”

He blinked. The words hung there, a fragile confession drifting like a weather report.

Clear skies. No one’s waiting.

Ghost stared down at the floor, at the scuffed linoleum beneath his boots. Thought about all the nights he’d sat right there, staring at nothing. Letting the silence fill his ears like water. He hated this—hated that you could say things like that with your voice so calm, hated that you were still here at all. He should’ve told you to leave.

He should’ve told you to run.

Instead, he sat down. Watching you. Letting you stay. Again.

“Place’ll still be here in the mornin’. Shepherd’s fuck-ups aren’t goin’ anywhere. Neither’s this fuckin’ orchid you keep babyin’.”

You cracked a smile, just a twitch of your lips. The orchid sat on your desk, a single flower still clinging to life like it didn’t know when to quit. Like you.

“I think it’s really dying.”

“So are we all,” Ghost deadpanned.

You snorted. “Charming.”

“Get paid to shoot problems, not talk ‘em to death.”

You arched an eyebrow, playing along without even realising it, eyes crinkled at the corners. “Yeah, but still. Could’ve at least lied and said it’s got a chance.”

Ghost gave a hum. “Wouldn’t wanna fill your head with false hope, love.”

He leaned back, stretching his legs out under the desk, boots knocking lightly against the side of your chair. You didn’t flinch. Didn’t shift away. You were getting bolder again, and it made his stomach twist. But not with fear, no. With dread. Because it meant you had lowered your guard again, left yourself vulnerable again, and in doing so, you’d made the greatest mistake a soul like yours could make with someone like him.

You had trusted him again.

Ghost dragged a hand over his face, the rough material of his mask brushing against his palm, grounding him with its familiar weight. His gaze locked with yours, steady and unyielding. You watched him from beneath the veil of your lashes, leaning forward. There was something in your cheeks, a subtle flush that he couldn't quite place. Was it the play of light? Or perhaps the deceit of his own mind, bending reality into something softer, more fragile?

Then, you moved—

—just the slightest shift, yet it felt like the whole fucking world had tipped on its axis.

It was bloody madness, how you could bewitch him with nothing but the weight of your gaze, a silent spell that tangled his thoughts and bound his heart without a single word spoken.

And for a fleeting moment, he was transported back to the smoking area, the world outside lost in a soft blanket of thick snow and stillness. There, it was just the two of you, wrapped in the quiet of the night, hoping foolishly that everything between you was still intact, that he might, just fucking might, prove himself worthy of the trust you had placed in him.

You extended your leg, slow and deliberate, inch by bloody inch, ankle brushing first against his boot, then the hard line of his calf, mapping the contours of his skin, all the while holding his gaze as if daring him to look away. Ghost felt a shiver travel beneath his flesh, a feverish crawl that made his eyelids droop against the weight of it. He pulled his legs back, a reflex more than a choice, shaking his head as if to rid himself of the weight of your presence.

“You’re doin’ too much.”

Ghost spoke before his mind could catch up.

The words rolled out like stones, each one heavier than the last, scrambling to keep pace with the storm inside him. And the sight of your blush deepening only fueled the fire in him, a rising tide of frustration that made his chest tighten even further.

What in the hell were you thinking?

Your spell lifted in an instant, his mind snapping back into sharp focus. And there it was—a high ranking officer, a lieutenant, and an HR assistant, sitting too close, speaking too freely, the lines of propriety blurred and tangled in the space between them.

What the fuck was he thinking?

But even as the realization tore through him, he couldn’t speak it, couldn’t let the truth rise to his lips. No. No, no, no. He didn’t fucking want to. He just wanted you gone—gone from his office, gone from his life, gone from his goddamn heart. Now.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” Ghost refused to entertain your childish theatrics, to give them the weight of his attention. It was beneath him, beneath everything he had carefully built in the quiet of his own thoughts. He let your antics dissolve into the air, untouched, unacknowledged. Instead he found another outlet, another thing to pour the bitterness, a task to occupy his mind, anything to keep the storm from breaking free. “Always doin’ too damn much. Stayin’ late. Pickin’ up extra. Crawlin’ through shit that’d make a proper analyst fuckin’ piss himself. You keep this up and Laswell’ll start expectin’ it.”

You blinked. “But… that’s the point. To help.”

His voice dropped. “You tryin’ to impress her? Or him?”

Your breath hitched. “What—?”

“Price. Your dad. Or me? Doesn’t fuckin’ matter, right?”

The moment the words left his mouth, Ghost knew he’d cocked it up.

Properly, spectacularly fucked it.

And it should’ve stopped there. Should’ve died quiet on your tongue like so many other little mercies between you.

You froze like a rabbit caught in a crosshair, staring at him as if he'd slapped you clean across the face. Fury and embarrassment tangled on your burning cheeks, turning you blotchy with the effort of holding yourself together. Ghost watched you straighten your shoulders, watched you tuck your hands under your thighs like you needed to keep yourself from shaking. Your mouth opened, closed, then pressed into a thin, bloodless line, like you were forcing it all back down before it could spill out and make a fool of you both.

Ghost wished, for once in his sorry, sodden life, that he'd kept his gob shut. But no. Bloody hell, true to form, he’d gone for the fucking throat when he felt cornered. Cut you deep, quick and messy, like every instinct screamed at him to do when he got too close to anything good.

That was what he was trained for, wasn’t it?

Strike first. Strike deep.

“You think that’s what this is about?” you asked, voice trembling, but not from fear. Hell no, it was anger. Humiliation. “Trying to impress you? Or my dad?”

He should’ve let you have the last word.

Your voice cracked halfway through, splitting open something raw and ugly between you. But Ghost wasn’t built for mercy. Not when the blood was up. Not when his skin still burned from where your ankle brushed his calf like a damn match striking flint. So he doubled down. Because he was a bastard like that. Because somewhere deep inside, he still thought if he cut you hard enough, sharp enough, you’d finally stop trying to reach him.

Finally see him for what he really was.

His goddamn father reincarnated.

“Don’t matter what I think,” Ghost leaned back, toned arms folded over his chest like he was settling in for a fight he had no business winning, boots planted wide on the scuffed linoleum. “Matters what you’re doin’. And you’re makin’ a bloody fool of yourself. You’re not Task Force. You’re admin. Paperwork. Spare fuckin’ parts.”

You jerked back like he’d cracked you across the mouth.

A terrible, awful silence bloomed between you. Your face crumpled, just slightly, not enough for anyone else to notice. But he saw it. Of course he fucking did. He knew every inch of you by now, could read the little tremors behind your bravado like bullet wounds on a body.

“You—” your voice cracked low in your throat, “You have no right to bring my dad into this,” you said, each word sharper than the last, cutting your own throat to get them out. “Not when—not when you’ve been—”

You stopped, chest heaving, trying to stuff the rest of it back down.

But it was too late.

It was already spilling over, ugly and hot and furious.

“You wanna talk about fools?” you hissed, and your eyes—fuck, your beautiful eyes—they were blazing, not with hurt anymore. No, it was rage. Full, blistering rage. “Really? When you’ve been asking questions behind my back. Snooping through my file like some sad little coward. And for what? To remind yourself you’re still the big bad wolf? So tell me, Lieutenant,” you sneered—no warmth, no gentleness, just the title like a blade between your teeth. “If I’m a spare part, what does that make you, then?”

Ghost swallowed hard, throat burning behind the mask.

“What’s the real reason, then?” He mocked mercilessly, ignoring your question completely. “Why you’re trippin’ over yourself for a bit of attention you’ll never fuckin’ need on paper.”

Your hands balled into fists on your thighs, nails biting into the skin through the thin fabric of your trousers. You stared him down across the small divide, eyes wide and furious, chest rising and falling like you were holding back the urge to lunge at him.

Or worse.

Cry.

Ghost could see it—he could feel it even—the way your whole body vibrated with anger, hurt laced so deep into the marrow of it that it made him feel sick, made him feel ashamed even as his mouth kept moving, digging the hole deeper.

“You think you’re the first?” he said, low and cruel, the words coming out too fast, too raw. “Think you’re the first bloody rookie to come sniffin’ ‘round, wantin’ a pat on the goddamn head? Some little nod from the big scary men, yeah? Some fuckin’ validation?”

The words echoed in the tiny office, bouncing off the grey walls like ricochets.

He wanted to take them back.

God, he wanted to claw them out of the air, shove them back into his throat, choke on them.

But it was too late.

You were already moving, standing so fast that your chair clattered backwards and scraped a painful squeal across the floor.

“Fuck you, Ghost.”

You sucked in a shaky breath, shoulders trembling like you were physically holding yourself together with nothing but sheer bloody will.

“You know what’s pathetic? That for all your talk,” you said, voice rising, “for all your snide little comments—you wanted it too.”

Ghost went absolutely still, rigid as death.

Your voice was a blade cutting too close to bone, each word sharp enough to carve out truths he’d long buried. The anger rolling off you filled the office, stifling and suffocating, pressing him back into the same fucking corner he’d spent his whole life fighting out of.

He stared at you, heart hammering behind his ribs, the ache radiating outward like shrapnel embedding itself deeper into his chest.

“Soap told me,” you spat, venom dripping from every word. “Yeah, he told me everything. About how you watch me. About how you keep me at arm’s length, pretend you don’t give a shit, when really you’re just too scared to admit it.”

“Admit what?”

“That you want me.”

Ghost’s fists tightened, knuckles bone-white beneath his gloves.

He felt exposed, stripped raw by the light of your wrath, every carefully constructed defence crumbling around him. The fury inside him flared like a magnesium burn, white, hot and all consuming, because he knew you were right. But pride was a damn beast, stubborn and ugly, and Ghost couldn’t let it go, couldn’t let your accusations land without fighting back.

“Careful,” he warned, voice dangerously soft.

That low rumble of thunder before the storm breaks.

“Yeah?” you shot back, stepping closer, chin raised defiantly. “Then tell me why you pulled away just now, huh? Tell me why you flinch every time I get close? You’re such a bloody hypocrite, you know that?”

Ghost felt his jaw clench so hard he thought it might shatter.

He wanted to snap, to tell you to shut your bloody mouth before you said something neither of you could take back. But you were relentless, the fire inside you consuming every ounce of hesitation and shyness, burning through your usual gentleness until all that remained was pure, raw hurt.

“You push me away,” you continued, voice rising, trembling now, “then draw me back in whenever it suits you. You lead me on, Simon—”

“I never fuckin’ led you—”

“Oh, you didn’t?” you scoffed, cutting him off, eyes narrowing. “So—so all those moments, all the times you’ve let your guard down and made me feel like I—shit, that I actually mattered, those meant nothing, did they? Just games for you? Just—just another way to hurt someone who’s stupid enough to care about you?”

Ghost felt something in his chest crack wide open, sharp and jagged, spilling poison into his veins. He was fighting against the urge to lash out, to wound as deeply as he felt wounded. But the truth of your words was undeniable, brutal and unforgiving, pinning him in place.

“Never asked you to fuckin’ care,” he ground out, voice low and harsh, each syllable scraping against his throat like sandpaper. “Never asked you for a goddamn thing.”

“You didn’t have to!” You nearly screamed, fists clenched, shaking visibly now. “That’s the worst part. You didn’t bloody have to, Simon. But—but the second I get too close, you push me away like I’m the enemy. You treat me like I’m a threat!”

“Because you are!”

The silence that followed his words was a repulsive thing, a bloody tombstone pressed into the air between them, suffocating the space where words should’ve lived. It lingered, thick and heavy, like the scent of saltwater and decay, like the ship of Theseus—just a vessel, once whole and now fragmented, every piece replaced until it was no longer itself. And each word he’d spoken, every bitter breath he’d exhaled, was another part of him torn away, replaced by something unrecognizable, something fragile.

Ghost felt something deep inside him writhe.

He was sick with disgust at what he’d done, yet strangely, he didn’t take it back. He couldn’t. Because you were the storm that threatened the still waters he had created. You were a threat to the numbness that kept him tethered to this world, the hollow comfort of pretending. You were the tidal wave, eroding the shore of his carefully constructed nihilism, a flood that tore at the walls he had built so desperately to protect the darker truths buried deep within him.

And so, in that silence, he sat as a man torn.

Your voice was softer when it found its way back as if the words themselves were weary and fragile things that had lost their strength along the way. The words were broken, like a bird's winged flight on a night too dark to reach safety.

“You—you think you’re protecting me, don’t you? From… yourself.”

Ghost didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to.

Your laugh was bitter, hollow, cracking around the edges.

“God, you really are a selfish coward, aren’t you? You think your pain, your trauma or—or whatever this is, gives you the right, the fucking right to hurt me?” you nearly sobbed, voice shaking now, the anger bleeding away into something far more devastating. “You think it’s an excuse to treat me like shit whenever you’re scared?”

His jaw tightened painfully, the muscles twitching beneath his mask.

Ghost wanted to deny it, to lash out, to break something, anything, just to silence the crushing weight of your voice. But he couldn’t. You had stripped him down, peeled away the layers he’d built over the years, exposing the rawness beneath. Every scar, every broken part of him laid bare before you. Your words wound themselves around his throat like a tightening noose, choking the air from his lungs, drowning him in the weight of their truth. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, trapped in the suffocating grip of his own shame.

“You know the worst part? I still don’t hate you. Even after all this, I still don’t hate you, Simon. And that—that’s what hurts the most.”

You turned abruptly, snatching your coat off the back of the chair, grabbing your bag, your movements sharp and jerky. Ghost watched you silently, rooted in place, heart hammering painfully, fists clenched so tightly he thought his bones might crush themselves.

You paused at the door, your back to him. “I don’t know who hurt you so badly that you think this is the only way to protect yourself. But you’re wrong. And I hope one day you see that.”

The door slammed shut behind you, its reverberation cutting through the stillness like the final stroke of a hammer on a fragile frame, sealing away all that had once been.

Ghost sat at the heart of his own ruin, a ship torn apart by his own hands, every piece of what he once was slowly slipping into the depths of a sea he could no longer navigate.

He exhaled shakily, the rough breath tearing through his chest like an unwelcome confession. Beneath the mask, his eyes felt dry, staring into the void that he had created, the weight of his own actions pulling him down. Slowly, painfully, as if the weight of what he had just done had stolen the very strength from his limbs. His elbows rested on his knees, the tension in his body tight, drawn, like a ship adrift with no course to follow. His head bowed low, as if he could hide from the truth, the brokenness of it all—the way he had become something he never wanted to be.

Was this really him? Was this who he was now, a hollowed-out vessel, endlessly rebuilt but never whole? Because the man he had become, in pieces and fragments, was no longer the man who had walked into this room.

But this time, he could not rebuild himself like he did countless times in the past.

Not without you.

Not without the very thing that had torn him apart.

“The ship of Theseus sails on, but does it still carry the soul of its creator?” Skin of Thunder Chapters