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starsofang · 3 days

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Change of Heart

hitman!ghost x f!reader / part 5

previous part

tw: violence, blood, heavy angst, abuse, PLEASE be warned <3

When life has completely and utterly failed you, you hire a hitman to take you out, too afraid to do it yourself. Instead of killing you like you had planned, he strikes up a deal with you, and you're too stubborn to bail out.

Day eight came easy, as did day nine.

Simon would stick around for as long as he could, but it was enough to satiate the linger of loneliness you felt when he was absent. He’d spend time in your apartment, stealing the leftover pastries you had from day seven of your deal where he’d confessed to wanting to get to know you more than just the weakling client that had hopes of dying.

Waking up on day ten, you woke up to a text from him, saying he’d be busy until further notice, but would stop by to see you when he could.

It was nice, having him let you know rather than leaving you wondering. He knew it would provide a comfort of knowing he was still around and had all intentions of seeing you make it to the finish line.

Just the thought of him beginning to learn your comforts was enough to have your heart running marathons and your cheeks aching with a never ending smile. You hadn’t felt giddy over another being in a long time, and the butterflies in your stomach had been withering for so long that when they found life again, it was an explosion of ticklish vibration. Their wings wisped away the growing dust that had begun to build, and eased away the prickling coldness to replace it with an earthy warmth.

Like the previous days, work was spent with joyful courage and building anticipation. The change in attitude was obvious to everyone around you, and no one dared to disrupt your craft when you buried yourself in it. You worked tirelessly to create the perfect mix of pastries in hopes of taking them home one day and gifting some to Simon during one of his visits.

Things finally felt as if they were falling into place, and for the first time, you could say you were happy. Whether Simon remained a friend or carried into something more, only time would tell, but you felt satisfied with his existence either way.

Even as your body ached in every joint as you finally closed up shop and began your travel home for the night, you somehow felt light on your feet with every step. There were no heavy weights anchoring you to the pavement, no drag of your shoes along the gritty gravel, and there was certainly no anxiety spouting in your chest like a wildfire.

You felt at peace.

It was a lovely feeling to revel in after such a long time spent in isolation and imprisonment. Freeing, even, to no longer have bars and chains linking your mind to all the troubles that settled inside like a shitty tenant that refused to leave when unwanted.

Simon saw something in you that you hadn’t before, and it was slowly unmasking itself, no longer fearful of the light.

Gliding up the stairs to your apartment, your eyes instinctively searched for Simon before reminding yourself that he wouldn’t be making it tonight. But when they landed on the door, where it was slightly cracked open with barely a sliver of dim light passing through into the hallway, your first thought was that he was there to surprise you. He had gotten his, ah, work done early and let himself in while you were at work.

You ignored the alarms going off in your head that were desperately trying to remind you that Simon no longer went into your apartment on his own accord. He’d started to wait outside for you, leaned up against the wall like a form of security until you got home.

Your racing heart won over the voices in your head, and the eagerness to get inside and see Simon once again for another nightly ritual of watching him smoke while you talked about your day took over all warning signs.

Entering your apartment, you pushed open the door, stepping inside and locking the door behind you. Your eyes searched for the familiar mass that always took up the whole room, and when you saw it hunched over the kitchen counter, facing away from you, you brightened.

“Simon!” you greeted cheerfully, but when Simon’s head snapped up to look at you, you froze.

Simon certainly didn’t have a head of hair for you to openly admire. He didn’t have an unmasked face that showed off thin lips pulled into a threatening sneer.

Your mind completely blanked when you saw the man impersonating Simon. No, he wasn’t impersonating – because he could never be Simon. He could only ever be the person who you’d drag down to hell with you and throw into the pit of flames to watch his sick soul burn into ash.

“Simon, huh?” That voice, filled with nothing but venom that dripped from his tongue and spat out to your face. It could melt you into a puddle of sticky goo mixed with flesh and blood the way it expelled from his lips. It was the voice that filled your nightmares, that forced you into a cold sweat when you’d wake up in the middle of the night, eyes staring at the ceiling with burning tears and a heavy, broken heart.

The very man you’d run away from, who you’d cried to Simon about when life felt like it had run its course, was standing right in your kitchen, hand tightly gripped on to the napkin Simon had given you days ago with his number and doodle of a skull.

Your ex-boyfriend was somebody you never expected to see again, nor did you ever want to see him, not in your worst dreams. He was the reason you had gotten to the point of hiring Simon when he was Ghost, planning on paying him with all your hard-earned money just so he could kill you and you would be free of being trapped in a hellish life.

Yet here he was in the flesh, nothing but pure, unfiltered rage burning in those dark irises of his.

“Finally found you after all this time, just to find out you’re fucking somebody else,” he tsked, glancing at the napkin in his grasp before up at you. He looked downright sinister, the way he grinned at you. It was full of pointy teeth that bared at you in warning. “What did I always tell you I wanted?”

Your feet felt as if they were in quicksand, pinning you to the floor, leaving you immobile. All you could do was gape at him like a fish out of water.

“Loyalty,” he answered for you, spitting the word out with the burn of a thousand fires. “But you haven’t been loyal, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart.

It made your stomach turn when he called you it. Coming from Simon, it was coated in endearment, soft and sweet, like icing on a damn cake. But from your ex-boyfriend, it was littered with splintering daggers that tore into the surface of your flesh, cutting you open and wringing you dry.

It wasn’t right. That was Simon’s name for you. Only Simon’s.

“I’ll remind you who the fuck you belong to if that’s what has to happen,” he taunted, and when he took the first step forward, that’s when your feet willed you to move.

Everything happened so quickly, it felt like you were in a timelapse.

One moment, you’re paralyzed as you stared the face of your nightmares in the eye, and the next, you’re bolting. You practically threw yourself in the bathroom, locking the door and pressing your back against it. He preyed on you like a lion to an antelope, hounding on you the second he saw the shift of your body language.

Infuriated fists pounded on the door, livid feet kicked at the weak frame. His shouts filled the air with a crippling sense of dread, and you realized there was no way out of this.

Just like your mind had been all this time, you were trapped, imprisoned in a cage of misery, clawing at the bars with failed attempts to release yourself.

Your body jolted with every bloodthirsty smash into the door, the wood slapping and shuddering at each brutal hit. Your hands shook in staggering distress as you fumbled for your phone that laid stuffed in the pocket of your jeans, and it took multiple feverish tries before it was tugged from its confinement.

Swiping it unlocked, you found Simon’s contact, not sparing a single moment before slamming the call button.

The call rang. And rang. And rang.

The dial tone engulfed your body with calamity. The air in your lungs felt littered with toxics, extracting all of the oxygen out and leaving you suffocating. Sweat leaked from your neck and forehead, leaving you with a sheen of brooding panic.

The bathroom was closing in on you, and it only felt smaller and smaller the more he beat your door in.

You tried calling Simon again. And again. Each time, the ringing echoed in your ears, worming its way in your brain and infesting you with the realization that he wasn’t picking up.

He wasn’t coming. He wasn’t going to save you. He wasn’t going to see you take your final laps around the track, nor was he going to watch you race over that desired finish line of triumph and success.

He wasn’t going to be the one to kill you like all was intended in the first place.

Your ex-boyfriend was going to take away everything new, just like he had taken away the identity you wore before.

Your phone clattered out of your hand and slid across the tiled floor until it hit the side of the bathtub when the door finally gave in, the lock making a sickening snap when it burst out of the hinges.

You were pushed forward with aggression as he shoved past the doorway, allowing himself free access in the small place you chose as your temporary safety net. That net was thrown off of you, leaving you exposed to the imposing danger that was destined to come your way.

Your ex-boyfriend was shouting profanities at you, but all you heard was a dull ringing as your mind fully checked out, leaving you in a paralyzing daze. His mouth moved, but made no sound, and you watched with an empty stare the way the venom pooled out in a frothing foam around his lips.

The first hit sent you staggering on your feet. You lost your balance, crumpling into a heap on the floor. Then the second came. Then the third.

The relentless abuse kept coming, battering your body black and blue, staining your skin with a sticky red.

During the entire display of violence and bitter authority, your mind began to replay your times with Simon. His lovely, baritone voice filled the emptiness in your head with a soft lullaby that lured you far away from the virulent aggression being hissed in your face between every ferocious strike.

It distracted you from the strain on your mind and being. It turned you away from the damage, disengaging you from temptations to open your eyes and take a look at what was in front of you.

It was enough to leave you unsure of how long the dispute went on. It could’ve been minutes, it could’ve been hours. All you know is that when your body was on the brink of full blown collapse, teetering on that edge with your feet grasping for stability so you wouldn’t lose balance and pummel right off of the cliff and into the endless abyss, that was when he decided to stop.

That was it. He didn’t want to kill you, because he wanted you to suffer.

This was his subtle reminder that you ran from him, and it came to bite back at you. You were never free in the first place, only granted a brief time away from solitary before he came roaring back with his teeth sunken into your neck, stalking his prey down when the time was right.

With one last attempt to push you into a freefall over that cliff, he crouched in front of you, head tilted as he sneered at the bloody sight of you.

“If I find you being disloyal again, I’m going to let you fucking die next time,” he muttered with distaste, clicking his tongue in mock disappointment.

He stood, unsparing of another glance before he left you in the bathroom on the cold, mucky floor, making sure to slam your front door shut to leave it rattling your eardrums.

You didn’t move an inch. Surely, you could’ve mustered up the strength to crawl back on your feet and clean yourself up in the sink. You were stronger than this. Simon was teaching you that.

But you didn’t.

It was hours that you laid there, or at least that was what it felt like. Time moved tirelessly slow when you were a broken version of yourself, glued to the tiles like your body wanted to mold itself into them.

It wasn’t until the sound of the front door being opened did you spark the courage to shift your head, eyes drifting towards its general direction.

The mass that you thought was Simon earlier was here. Except this time, it really was Simon. There was no mistaking the balaclava with a hand painted skull on the mouth, or the way he had to lightly duck under the doorway so as not to hit the very top of his head.

Simon was calculated in his movements, throwing himself to the open bathroom in which you laid. He was panting as if he had run all the way to your apartment. Your tired eyes watched the way his chest rose and fell in an erratic pattern, the view of it coming closer as he scurried to you.

“Sweetheart,” he breathed out as he crouched next to you. The sound of the nickname coming from his mouth rather than your ex-boyfriend’s was like music to your ears. “Fuck, m’so sorry, m’so sorry.”

He ripped the gloves off his hands in order to cradle your head in them, his skin warm to the touch and offering a temporary relief to the cold chill that rattled you to the bones from lying on the cool tile. He inspected every inch of you, taking in the bloodshot redness that infested your eyes, the blood that caked and crusted your nose and mouth, the swelling of your cheeks that made you resemble a pufferfish.

His eyes were filled with pain and regret, but behind that, a fire burned. It was faint, embers burning slowly and mixing with fresh ash, but it was there. And it was angry.

Simon was gentle with the way he carefully eased your body up so you were sitting flush against the sink cabinets, shoulders slouched and head bobbing sluggishly. He rummaged through the small bathroom closet, quick to fish out a clean washcloth and run it under the faucet before returning back to you.

His touch was delicate as he attentively cleaned off the mess from your face. Red stained white cotton, and the sight of it made you queasy.

“You didn’t answer,” you whispered, words burning your throat with a sharp dryness that you tried swallowing away.

Simon froze, his hands pausing its notions across your skin. It stayed there, hand slightly shaking with a burning sense of penitence.

“I–”

“You didn’t answer,” you repeated. You were choked up, surely beaten down from the lacerating corruption to your own body. “I called you. You didn’t answer.”

Simon sucked in a sharp breath, eyes flickering over yours. He could see the emptiness in your pupils, void of everything he’d seen you work so hard to restore.

There was nothing. It was hollow.

“M’sorry, sweetheart. You have no idea how sorry I am, I should’ve looked at the phone, I should’ve checked to make sure you got home,” he rambled, words thick with a heavy layer of guilt.

You shouldn’t be angry with him. Hell, Simon should be the last person you were angry with. After all, he had been the one to pick up the pieces of your shattered being when he had no reason to. He had been the one to pick friendship over compromise when you first hired him to kill you.

You shouldn’t be angry with him.

But right now, you wished he had just pulled the damn trigger when you first told him to.

“Why didn’t you just let me die?” you wailed. Your resolve was cracking more than it already was, leaving you exposed to nothing but pure pain. “Why didn’t you just kill me?”

Simon said nothing, and he allowed you to bubble out snotty tears and crushing cries. He wiped every tear away with the washcloth, swiping gently over your skin and absorbing all of the evidence of your tribulation. He let you break, he let the rubber band snap into two, even if it meant stinging him in the process.

He didn’t stop, not even when your tears ran dry and your body slumped in exhaustion, forehead planted on the plain of his shoulder.

Simon was fighting an inner battle himself. Where he saw a woman he felt compelled to protect, he saw the man who had failed to fulfill it.

He didn’t know why you were different from the others. He was a man with a life path full of gruesome roads that were littered with bloodshed and other people’s torment. He didn’t attach himself to people, and he had made his own promise to himself that he’d keep an arm’s length from anybody willing to see through him.

That didn’t stop him from seeking you out.

What he saw in you, he saw in himself. Deep inside, he saw the broken, little boy he was that had never received proper love. He saw the boy that everybody turned a blind eye to, who pretended to not see his suffering.

You were a mirror he looked into every time he found himself around you, and it was a mirror he didn’t want to watch explode into millions of tiny shards.

Simon might not have been able to save himself, but he could save you. He could stop you from becoming what he was, and that was exactly why he allowed himself the one, single chance to slip into your life.

The fire that brewed in his eyes had now become a full, raging forest fire, burning everything in its wake. It fueled with the burn of anger and rancor, festering through the optic nerve and burrowing itself in the lobe of his brain.

That bloodthirsty fervor crept its way through his veins.

The color in his vision turned red.

Simon told himself he would protect you. And if that meant hunting down the prey posed as a predator, then he’d go to the ends of the earth to make it happen at the power of his own bloody hands.

posting this at almost 1am when i gotta be at work at 5am but i was itching to let the juices flow so have another chapter <3 thank you to my lovelies who helped me brainstorm ideas for this chapter, i love y'all

#cod #ghost cod #simon ghost riley #call of duty #cod mw3 #cod x reader #cod mwii #cod fanfic #hitman au #ghost simon riley #ghost #simon riley #simon riley x reader #ghost x reader

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lennadanvers · 2 days

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Winter back home

Simon Riley x Reader

He has a problem.

He’s had problems all his life. He’s got a lot of experience in dealing with problems, really. The ones that can be solved with bullets, anyway.

This is not that kind of problem. Well, maybe a bullet could take care of this. But he promised himself he would never take that path. So, he suffers.

His problem is the dichotomy. His problem is Ghost, months of suffocating under a stale mask, the orders, the blood, the uniform. His problem is Simon, weeks of nothing, the silence, the civilian comfort, being a person.

He’s gone. Somewhere between base and “home”- a cold, dark flat in the outskirts of London-, he lost his soul. Now he isn’t here nor there. None of his names fit him.

He is just a being, two legs on top of two feet that can’t stand the feeling of dry, clean socks inside of simple sneakers. A head, a neck, on top of a pair of shoulders too wide to fit the door of normalcy. A back too tight to bear the weight of actual life. Hands too strong to hold reality without breaking it, skin so rough it tears instead of caressing. A pair of eyes that do not know where to look if not for threats.

He's a storm waiting to happen. Too dark to be a person, too broken to be a man. Too heavy for a ghost.

The flat feels wrong. Especially the first few days. He has to open the windows to let the fresh air in- more like freezing air. It’s okay, he’s used to dealing with the cold. It’s actually being comfortable what makes him uneasy. The fact that he has so much space for himself. He doesn’t have things. He doesn’t own more than a couple changes of clothes. His sofa looks new, even though he bought it years ago. His bed is soft, his bedside table is empty. He owns a table, two chairs and headphones. One bottle of water. Four glasses, a cheap six-piece cutlery set. Some plates he bought on sale. One rug he doesn’t step on. A broom. Shampoo, toothbrush and toothpaste are in the bag he brings from base. Even his bike just takes up half his designated parking space.

Other than that, he has nothing.

The other thing that bothers him is the silence. He should be able to sleep in the quiet- he’s fallen asleep in active bombing zones, for God’s sake. But the white noise of the cars, the soft humming of the refrigerator- all they do is keep him awake. It’s always too quiet, too… Too safe. He knows it’s a trap. It always is.

That’s why he checks the windows.

Like now, when he enters the apartment in silence. The lights stay off until he’s cleared every room. Then he turns them all on. His duffel bag goes into the wardrobe, still closed. The boots under the bed. He changes into civilian clothes, checks the pantry- empty, always empty- and starts his rounds.

He checks the three windows: the small one in the bathroom, the one in the bedroom that looks over the neighbor’s rooftop, and the one in the living room. Usually, the last one is his favorite. The view lets him keep an eye on the street, alert in case there’s something suspicious lurking down there.

This time, though, he can’t look down.

He’s stuck in the window in front of his. The apartment building across the street is nicer than the one he’s standing in. By his standards, anyway. That means it looks warm and worn down. Brick walls instead of grey cement, wood stairs instead of metal. It has pots with flowers and an old mirror in the entrance.

There’s only one apartment with the lights still on. It’s late, he reminds himself, for normal people. Most of them are asleep at two in the morning.

You’re not. Through your open curtains, he can see your tired face. You’re curled up on a desk chair, with messy hair and reading glasses on. Your pajama is cute, it looks soft and a little too big. It fits you perfectly. You’re holding a steaming cup and frowning at the pile of papers on top of your desk.

When you fix the -presumably hand-knitted- blanket on top of your shoulders, he frowns. Aren’t you cold? You should close the window.

And go to bed, while you’re at it. What are you doing up this late, anyway? Working? He hopes not. A cute little thing like you should have a quiet job, with stable working hours and low stress. But you look very stressed. Maybe you’re studying. That’s it, probably. You don’t look his age, but he’d bet you’re in your late twenties, maybe thirties.

He pictures you getting a degree. It’s easy, you look smart. Oh, you must have a degree already. Surely, he decides, you must have one. You’re getting a doctorate now, aren’t you?

It’s a silly question, of course. He knows nothing about you, except that you should be sleeping instead of munching at a cookie. But it’s a relief to pretend he does. To believe he can see life through your window. If he had to guess, that’s what living looks like: a woman in the room, plans for the future, eating homemade treats and knowing you’ll survive the upcoming test, even if you don’t pass.

For the first time since he bought this place, he’s actually there. As if taking a deep breath, Simon is suddenly aware of his body. The t-shirt he’s wearing is soft, a little too thin for the weather. The place smells like leather- must be the sofa. Was the ceiling always this high? Simon makes a mental note to buy air freshener and a blanket.

It takes him a couple of days of staring out the window to realize what happened.

It’s Friday, and he’s checked your closed blinds for the third time this afternoon. Simon hasn’t seen you today. He sighs and turns around. He goes to open one of the kitchen drawers when it hits him.

There are cookies in there. Two different kinds. And he’s wearing slippers- they were on sale at the supermarket, and he didn’t even think about it. But he’s thinking about it now. Simon looks around. One of his jackets is hanging by the door. There’s lint on the rug. The cushions on the sofa are out of their place. He left a mug on the counter.

He's living again.

It a crushing discovery. Once he saw it, it’s impossible to miss. He made plans. He has tickets to watch a movie next Tuesday. When was the last time he planned something other than a mission? And cookies? Simon hasn’t eaten cookies since he enlisted. Maybe longer. His clothes are comfortable. Actually comfortable, he doesn’t need to ignore the fabric irritating his skin. The windows are closed: he’s not cold. It’s quite nice, honestly. And the place smells like someone lives here. A mix of cologne, tea and leftovers from lunch.

The flat doesn’t feel empty. Simon doesn’t feel empty.

His muscles give out. It’s not a dramatic fall, more like an extreme relaxation. It hurts a little; like clenching your fist for hours and then letting your hand open. The blood starts flowing back with a tingle. The oxygen gets where it is supposed to go. There is a strange open space in the palm of your hand.

The relieved smile is a side effect.

He still wears it when he settles back down on the couch. Someone is playing music outside, and the plants on your building’s hall are blooming. What a weird time to bloom, in the middle of the cold.

Simon understands, though, when he sees you finally open your blinds.

Yes, he gets the desire to be alive now.

A/n: I sat down to write and four hours later I'm posting this. It is not proofread and I'm a little too tired to care. Maybe I'll fix it later. Also, my anxiety has been a bitch lately (that means I freeze instead of being able to reply to messages and asks- my poor friends have the patience of a thousand saints stacked on top of each other), so I won't reply to the asks today. Maybe tomorrow, we'll see. In any case, I hope you're all having a great weekend, full of flowers and treats <3

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