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sprout-fics · 1 year

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Snowblind

Part One of Snowblind

(Simon "Ghost" Riley x F! 'Fix' Reader)

Wordcount: 6.5k Tags: Angst, Fluff, Medic/Sniper Reader "Fix", Body heat sharing, Reluctant cuddling, Pining, Longing, Slow Burn, Injury/Sickfic Warnings: Referenced childhood trauma including verbal abuse A/N: This is the first in a series of oneshots following the romantic development between you (Codename "Fix) and the man known only as "Ghost"

Summary:

He's stolen the breath from your lungs, sucked it dry and robbed you of your ability to speak. You can only blink in the darkness, feeling your dry eyes chafe and sting as you desperately try and comprehend the enigmatic forces that possessed him to do this.

You shudder, long and hard, feeling the tremor crack outwards like crevasses in a glacier, fissuring like the rifts in your heart. Ghost can feel it, you know he can. Yet the only response your trembling elicits from him is his hand curling into the knob of your spine like a gnarl in an ancient tree. When he breathes you can feel the rise and fall of his chest, like a gentle tide sweeping over your toes at the beach, luring you out to sea.

Tag List: (Reblog this post to be added to future fics from this series! If you'd like to be removed please DM me!)

@dankest-farrik @zwiiicnziiix @moondirti @sritashimada @ladiilokii @yeyinde @sandinthemachine @verdandis-blog @guyfierriii @fan-of-encouragement @starlitnotes

The air is thin in the mountains. Here, up in the sky, the oxygen settles downwards towards the earth and away from your form perched against the cliffs. The frostbitten air of the peaks scraped hard against your lungs as you breathe in, scorching the back of your throat and setting a cold brand burrowing into your veins. There’s a blooming ache in your chest, one that can’t be quelled no matter how you breathe.

You know it's bad, you're panting, mouth open and sucking the frigid air deeper into your chest where it accumulates like a slow acting poison. It bleeds into your blood and races along the underside of your chilled flesh, biting your bones with a dull, insistent ache. The sharpness of the sunlight against the pristine snow feels like it's dancing off the back of your eyelids, searing your vision even with your vision scrunched shut.

You'd heard your local informant whisper something about the curse of the sheer whiteness back in the village, rambling in halting English of the word: 'Snowblind'.

White, pristine white, the color of lace and freshly pressed dinner napkins. The color of the pearls resting against your mother's throat. When she swallows your eyes dart up to her face. She's looking past the gauzy pale curtains of the banquet hall, outside to the hazy, dimming streetlights beyond. Her eyes are distant, sad.

"Keep moving, sergeant."

You blink several times, trying to clear your vision against the brightness that feels everywhere all at once, freezing and radiant and deadly despite its etherealness. At last, you cast a look over your shoulder, and there you meet the white mask of your comrade, only several steps behind you as your team trudges up one of the secluded mountain trails hidden within the tree line.

His eyes are dark, and for a moment you're startled by the contrast of them against the grey and white landscape around you. Yet they're just as cold, unflinching and unmoving, imbedded into you just as severe as the chill in your bones.

"Yes sir." You manage, and your eyes don't break from his despite your answer, voice cracked and dry. He'd warned you before the start of your journey to stay hydrated, and now your throat feels tacky with every swallow, sticking to itself like velcro.

"Another mistake." His voice clips against your ears, and you flinch, bunching the fabric of your pressed school uniform against your tiny fists. "When will you learn, oh daughter mine?"

"Ghost, Fix." A voice calls ahead, and you catch sight of Price at the head of your group, snow halfway up his calves as he turns to you both, face grim. "Keep up, we're burning daylight."

You nod, keeping a hold of your weapon as you breathe, let the freezing air settle in your chest before you're trudging forward once more, struggling against the thick layer of powder that clings to your greaves with every step.

Behind you, Ghost follows like a phantom inside your shadow, tailing the group and watching your six. You can hear him moving, can hear the crunch of snow under his giant weight as he follows in the trail Price is carving at the front. Usually, Ghost is silent despite his bulking, rippling frame. It's an uncanny ability, one that more than once has had you with your heart in your throat as he oozes from the darkness like a wraith. The man whispers through walls like they aren't there, clinging to shadows like they're his second skin. His presence is there and gone again, only to reappear behind you- unmistakable, searing, cataclysmic.

Now with every shift Ghost sounds like he's summoning an avalanche, shifting and rumbling ominously like the mountain itself. It feels like the ground moves under you with every strumming heartbeat, the trail invisible and eroded by white. Your muscles ache from the exertion of the climb, but you bite down hard on any complaints. The world around you fills in like a gaussian blur, and among it is the hazy, unknown shape of Ghost’s mask against the sheer whiteness of the landscape. Briefly you wonder if your legs give in, if you fall blind, if Ghost will be there to catch you before you collapse into the pillowy slush.

It's a selfish thought, one that has no place on your current mission. You know that if you fell, if you failed to stay alert for even a few moments it could quite likely prove to be fatal. The rogue group of mercenaries you're all hunting know these mountains far better than you, venturing down the slopes only to pillage the surrounding towns for supplies and fuel- leaving nothing but devastation and red stained snow in their wake.

For all you know they could be watching you right now, clocking your movements as your team sticks within the relative shade of the tree line. These mountains loom large over your form, pine and fir clinging to their rocky outcrops- a perfect hiding spot for snipers like yourself. Your white gear camouflages your team’s ascent towards the nearest abandoned outpost, where blood is still etched into the wood walls at the group's most recent slaughter.

Seek and destroy, Price had told you all. As simple as they come.

You can't seek past the snow blindness.

When you shake your head, try to blink away the dryness there you feel him behind you all at once, shrinking the scant few steps between you both until his form towers behind you even with the slope under your feet.

"Fix."

When he speaks your callsign it sounds like a wolf howling at the moon, primal, sacrosanct. It draws you in like a gravity well as he presses closer, just a hair's breadth away. The heat of him glows into your back like a furnace, form casting a shadow across you as he mercifully blots out the sun that leans low on the horizon.

"I'm fine." You respond to his silent question, and you turn your head so he can't see the redness around your eyes, the miosis that leaves your pupils lost in the sea of your irises. You know he'll just scold you for not bringing sunglasses like the rest of them- just another item in the litany of mistakes he seems to take note of no matter how hard you try.

They're applauding for him as he walks the stage. Your feet kick in the empty space between your seat and the ground. His smile is dazzling, blinding, drawing them in like the gravity of the sun itself. You can't stand to look, focusing your vision on the black tops of your shiny new shoes.

"Eyes up." Your mother snaps sharply, but her graceful smile never flickers. Only you can see the flicker of acridity hidden behind her eyes.

The bitter grimace that draws tightly across your face tastes as sour as the dry taste in your throat.

You make a point of jogging the next few steps to keep up with Gaz in front of you, feet crunching snow as you rip yourself free of his shadow behind you.

You can feel his eyes locked on your back.

You don't see the flicker of something there, feather-light and uncertain nestling in the frost-laden branches of his heart.

----

You reach the outpost just as the sun kisses the horizon.

It's a mess. There's bullet holes in the wood, blood still caked and frozen into the floorboards. A shattered mug sits on the tiny kitchen unit, coffee staining the frosted counter. The bodies are long since gone, but it feels as they never really left. Ghosts cling to the broken panes and desolate interior. There's a poster next to the shot-out TV with a flaking, gaping hole through the singer's chest. You think it might be Freddie Mercury. You aren't sure.

The team around you is silent, withdrawn. Part of it is the grueling trek up the mountain, the silence that fell over you all with the knowledge you were in enemy territory. Now here, in the gravesite of others, there's a stillness that's more profound, lachrymose. The boots of your comrades thump and creak over the floorboards as they survey the damage, look over the claret blemishes painting an abstract against the walls.

"We're setting up here for the night." Price announces just as your boots toe the corner of the sole couch in the common area. Part of the stuffing has fallen out. Like a toy shredded by a teething puppy. "It's not much, but it'll have to do."

You listen idly, frowning at your feet as they blur in and out of focus. The lights are out, and the dimness of the setting sun has long shadows stretching against the walls. The lamps probably still work, but turning them on is begging for a shower of bullets while you all rest, betraying your position like a midnight beacon.

It hurts to keep your eyes open. They feel itchy, raw, like you've been crying without the tears. You're tired of seeing white, nothing but white, but here in the dimness of the cabin it feels even more difficult to keep track of the things in front of you. Every time you try and focus it summons a sharp throb against your temples, like icepicks lodging themselves in a frozen outcrop. When you wince, it’s where the others can’t see it.

"I'll take first watch." Ghost offers grimly, and you hear the sound of him unshouldering his pack.

"I'll take second." You volunteer readily, looking up and catching the white of his mask.

White, white, sparkling, shimmering, too bright, incandescent like the afterburn of staring into a lightbulb-

"You can hardly see."

You blink, not sure if the haziness in your vision has somehow manifested in your hearing. Yet when the wavering after-effects subside you find yourself staring at the other four members of your team who have all turned to meet your gaze.

The chill from the mountain gives way to a heat itching along your skin, thorny and warm. You can remember running your hands under hot water after being outside in the cold for too long, the sting smarting against your knuckles and palms. Their gazes rake over you, and when you swallow there’s the cold, blank aftertaste of snow in your mouth.

"I-I'm fine." You try, but your voice is rough, cotton mouthed.

None of them move, and in the growing darkness you think you see Price frown.

Your heart drops straight down to your boots.

Gaz is the first to move, shifting on his feet before taking a few steps towards you.

"Let me see." He offers, drawing his kerchief down past his nose. His breath fogs into the air, and when his hands reach for you they seek to take up all the light in the room.

You stay still, grimacing even as he tilts your head up to see your eyes. It takes everything in you to not tear yourself away, to hiss and spit like a feral cat at his hands on you. You don't want him to see, don't want any of them to see. If they can just look away, can avert their eyes and not see you for what you are, trying desperately to keep up with them and failing even so, then you'd be able to bear this much.

"Soap, light." Gaz instructs, and out of the corner of your eyes you see the dimness of Soap's outline lift a flashlight up to illuminate your face. You hiss at the light, scrunching your eyes shut as the back of your eyelids throb.

The stage lights are too bright. You can't see the crowd. When you hover nervously into your mother's side she rests a hand atop your hair. It feels like a tiger claw.

"It's not bad." You try, offering a small surrender in hopes of preventing a total capitulation. Gaz only shakes his head.

"You need to keep your eyes shut, give them a chance to heal." He tells you plainly, releasing his grip on your chin. Soap's flashlight mercifully vanishes, and for a moment you're thrown into complete and utter darkness, mentally grappling for an anchor, for something to hold onto. When you wobble on your feet, Soap's hand is at your elbow. It burns.

"Gaz is right." Price states gruffly from where he stands behind the two men next to you. "I need your eyes sharp for tomorrow. No watch for you tonight."

That itch inside you burns higher, souring the inside of your mouth with a biting aftertaste. You want to argue, want to protest, but you know it's a futile effort. Price is right, you know that. Even so, the scorch under your skin urges you to lash out, to somehow convince your captain that you can still pull your weight, that you aren't a hindrance, that you deserve to be there just as much as the other men around you.

You'll only end up sounding like a petulant, whining child, all for the useless, performative effort of staking your place here.

"I'll take second watch." Soap offers in the terse silence that follows. His voice is low, a mere murmur in the growing darkness. Then, to you: "Rest up, lass. Consider yourself lucky you get a full night's sleep, eh?"

You don't feel lucky. You feel rotten, a spoiled gem compared to the dazzling pieces next to you, shining radiantly even in the shadows.

"Yes sir." You mutter, wishing for all the world the snow would sift down over your form, bury you there in its pristine, glittering frost.

---

The cabin is colder than a coffin when the sun goes down- pitching it into complete, unmitigated darkness.

The sleeping bags are sprawled between the TV and couch, well away from the entrance and partially shielded by the half-wall of the kitchen. There's not much room for four people, but the proximity is a welcome one. The blotted rug offers a small reprieve from the harsh floorboards, but even then the cold manages to seep through the woven fabric, into your sleeping bag.

Beside you, Soap shifts restlessly, twisting, turning, and mumbling. You know he's not truly resting, too pent up and anxious to let the velvet whisper of sleep wash over him. Like you, he must sense the strange spirits in this place, hear their voices over the low, lonely whistle of the wind outside the window. Price and Gaz sleep soundly near it, under the broken pane, unmoving and silent. You wonder if they're actually asleep, or simply feigning it just as you do.

The MRE in your stomach churns uncomfortably, cold before you had managed to finish it. The steam had curled against your fingertips, warmed by the scant few minutes Price had allowed you all to use the tiny stove unit. You had wanted to place your hands against the door, trying to imbue feeling back into your frozen knuckles regardless of the burn it would impose.

You seem to be doing that often, trying to counterbalance only to teeter near the precipice, a dangerous and aleatory asymmetry that you can't control. Desperately trying to take orders as they're given, to anticipate them in the way the others seem to read the minds of the brothers next to them. You're striving, contending, toiling in the way that only you can. Yet every time you try to follow them as the axis shifts you're again feeling the world lurch under you as they march ever onwards.

Too cold and too hot, a feverish flippancy that leaves you reeling in the darkness, shivering under your bedroll.

Soap flinches in his sleep, as if something has brushed over his shoulder. You hear him mumble and twist, then settle once more. It's a clear night outside, hardly any clouds. Moonlight streams through the trees outside, dancing in haphazard shapes through the broken panes of the window. A single ray illuminates the top of your sergeant's shoulder, and you follow the curve of it downwards across the planes of his back hidden under the fabric.

He'd tried to break your sulking earlier, after you had all eaten and had begun to settle in. You were laying out your bedroll when Soap had waggled his eyebrows at you, ever flirtatious and good-natured.

"Going ta be a cold one, lass. Might need to share body heat."

You'd scoffed at him, stomach still twisting from your interaction earlier. No, you'd prefer to lick your wounds in private, under the solitary moonlight.

"In your dreams, Soap."

"Aye, a man can dream alright."

You hadn't dignified him with a response, huffing and burrowing into your sleeping bag.

Now, nearly an hour later, teeth chattering, shivering hard, you wish you had taken him up on the offer. If only you had zipped your two bags together and nestled into him, trying to leech warmth from his body, then you wouldn't be worried your teammates would find another body here in this desolate cabin come morning.

It had to be well below freezing. Even with all your gear on, feet still tucked into your boots, it's not enough. The cold flays against your flesh like a jagged knife, stabbing inside and twisting, separating mind from body as you try to grapple with the shadows in your thoughts.

Fall asleep, give in to the temptation of rest and pray you wake up come dawn. Stay awake, watch the hazy, dappled moonlight dance across the floorboards as you long to sleep. Scoot closer to Soap, surrender and plead with him to share what little heat he has to spare. Keep to yourself, refuse to show any sign of weakness lest they notice, lest they leave you even farther behind.

If you could make it through the night, if you could be rested come morning, could get up and keep up, then maybe they wouldn't look down on you. Maybe then they'd even consider you one of them.

A shifting noise and a sigh, not from Soap this time. No, it's behind you, near the doorway. Ghost perches near the window, hidden in the shadows as he keeps watch. If he's noticed Soap's restless slumber he doesn't given any indication.

You'd seen him settle there, his weapon across his lap, seated in one of the few remaining chairs. He'd easily dwarfed it, legs spread and boots planted on the floor. Your eyes had traced his toes of his boots, skimmed across the snow that had yet to melt from them. When your gaze had darted up to the white of his mask you found his gaze leveled at yours, eyes piercing and intent from behind the darkness of bottomless charcoal. You'd paused, watching them, but the expression there had been blank, indecipherable.

Watching, always watching. Cataloguing your every move, taking note of your mistakes but saying nothing- judging but never speaking, like souls of the dead.

He's been as still as a grave this whole time, sinking deep into the darkness and letting it absorb him like an old ally. There had been minutes you'd forgotten he was even there, his presence shrinking slowly and subtly into nothingness like he himself was a phantom. It's only when he shifts, when you can hear his soft breath curling against his mask that he makes himself known. Ghost scrapes along the periphery of your thoughts like a specter, trailing skeletal fingers along the inside of your skull in a freezing, indelible imprint.

If there's ghosts remaining within the outpost then surely he's among them, not truly dead but never truly alive.

You wonder if he's cold to the touch too- if the iciness of his alleged heart extends like fissures across his flesh.

There's a guilty part of you that wants to find out, hard as it is to admit. In the same way that he presses at your back Ghost slinks within the outskirts of your mind. When he's there he's impossible to ignore. His size, his presence demands attention, respect, deference. With every move of his rippling shoulders he seems to echo in your thoughts endlessly, shifting and groaning like a rumbling mountain during a thaw.

He'd touched you once, one massive hand settling against your elbow during shooting practice. He'd never spoken, had let his palm cup your arm and lift it a fraction of an inch to correct you.

You shivered so hard your aim was off, and in the days that followed your thoughts roiled of him.

More than once you had caught yourself imaging those same gloved hands spread across the meat of your thighs- whispering along the small of your back, smoothing along your ribs and up your chest as they dug in, flipped you over as he pressed the full length of his frame into your back, smothering you into the soft surface of a mattress as he-

You scrunch your eyes shut automatically, trying and failing to ward off the haunting temptation that was your superior. Yet even then the sound of his voice bounces off the inside of your head, tantalizing and forbidden. It's poison, syrupy sweet and spilling like honey over your lips. You can indulge, you can taste, but only once before fate pulls you like a riptide into the river Styx. Forever damned.

Even if you were to yield to that unconscious, taboo seduction- allow yourself to accept those festering, unnamed feelings inside you, it would be for nothing. Ghost wasn't a man who developed affections towards others. Alliances, camaraderie, these were things needed in war. Yet the profound, prohibited thing as attraction, infatuation- no. He was a soldier, destined to be one until the day he died. You knew just as well as he did that there was never guarantees either of you would come home in anything other than a coffin.

It's hard to love a man who's already dead.

Soap shifts suddenly in front of you, recoiling in the darkness at a force you can't see. When he breathes it's to mutter a curse, and abruptly you hear his sleeping bag zip open, feel the floor tremble as he scoots himself free. He doesn't notice you're awake, wide eyed in the darkness as you watch his broad form unfurl from under the confines of his bedroll. When he at last stands above you he blots out the pale light from the windows, towering like a gnarled oak tree over your huddled form.

His boots creak against the wooden floorboards as he skirts around you, around the couch towards the phantom hovering by the doorway. His chattering shudder trails off into a mutter as he speaks to Ghost in a low, lilting accent. You can't hear the words, but you do hear the rough scrape of Ghost's voice, like soot sifting down from the sky after a dying wildfire. You want it to burn you, scorch off the frostbite from your fingers and let the flames light a wavering, flickering spark within you.

The conversation doesn't last long. You hear the sound of the chair scraping the floor as Ghost stands, yields the post to the Scotsman and begins to circle to where you and the other two men lay against the floor. It occurs to you too late to feign sleep, to try and quell the tremble of your frame as he approaches. By the time you realize his feet are less than a step away from the top of your head, and you hear Ghost pause as he traces the outline of your shivering form in the darkness.

"Fix."

The sound is a mere whisper so as to not wake Price and Gaz, only feet away. If you hadn't been listening you wouldn't have heard it, mistaken it for the cadaverous whistle of the wind outside the shot gunned walls. You try to pretend like it's just that- like Ghost hadn't just whispered your callsign in the midnight stillness, a deathly temptation of which there's little return.

Yet Ghost sees you go rigid in your sleeping bag, and when he echoes the nickname again it feels like an icicle breaking and shattering into the frosty ground below.

"Fix." He whispers again, and you can hear the exasperation in his voice when he sighs. "I know you can hear me."

You sigh yourself, giving up the farce of forced sleep and letting your eyes flutter open. They feel raw, too dry. When your vision shifts it summons a dull, insistent throb behind your eyelids- an aftereffect of the snow blindness.

"I'm trying to sleep." You manage, voice hoarse and teeth chattering with the burgeoning stages of hypothermia.

You feel the floor shift- and suddenly Ghost is crouching in front of you, blotting out the moonlight with his hulking, massive form. The suddenness of his shape in front of you is difficult to decipher, and when your vision wavers the throb at your temples sharpens, penetrating.

"Ghost-" You try, but the man before you is silent. You're unable to see what he's doing between the darkness and your own strained eyesight, but you can hear him shifting, hear the slide of cloth against skin before a hand suddenly braces against your forehead.

It's cold.

"You're freezing." He remarks, and you think you imagine the undercurrent of concern in his voice- a strange hallucination from your overexerted senses.

"I-I'm fine." You protest, shifting to try and meet his eyes to prove your point. You only succeed in catching the pale outline of his mask, his eyes boring holes into you and setting a shiver racing along your spine.

Yet that's nothing compared to the abruptness of Ghost's bare fingers digging into the fabric of your sleeping bag, burrowing beneath your hood and pressing on the underside of your jaw.

You swallow.

Your pulse flutters against his fingers like a trapped bird, wings spread and beating the frozen air around you. He's never been this close before. He's hardly ever touched you- much less with his bare hands. The sensation of it threatens to throw you from that precipice where you balance precariously, falling once more into that asymmetry you fail to understand. You can only pray that your rapid, strumming heartbeat doesn't betray you, doesn't let him sense the thoughts you're holding silent within your heart.

Yet the only thing Ghost does is huff at you, displeased at your wracked, trembling body. His touch vanishes from you, and for a moment you think that's the end of it, just another flaw he's secretly filed away to review at his leisure.

What you don't expect, however, is for him to unzip your bag in a single, fluid motion.

You're too surprised to protest, and when you open your mouth it's only to hiss at the sharp, unrelenting freeze that greats you outside the layer. You nearly bite at him for throwing you into the cold, your irritation from earlier still roiling low in your stomach and incensed by this sudden action of his. Yet instead, you still as Ghost's hand wraps itself around your waist, and with a grunt he hauls you closer, closer until he's all but curled around you, tucking you into his front.

You don't move.

You're unsure if you even can, completely taken aback as you are. It feels like your voice has died in your throat, brain working into overdrive as you desperately try to regain reality of the situation. The wind whistles through your mind as it empties into nothingness, entirely uncertain and shaken by the actions of your Lieutenant.

Ghost doesn't speak either, simply wraps himself around your shaking figure inside your bag, tucking his chin at the crown of your head and tangling his legs with yours. His arms secure around your back- feeling for all the world like prison bars, preventing your escape. When he breathes, you feel the air tickle the top of your hood, curl and dissipate into the midnight stillness.

Yet you still flee back to shore. Your entire form is rigid with uncertainty, a trepidation unmatched by your desire for warmth. The vulnerability of this, of being wrapped in the arms of your dead-eyed superior, the one who silent judges your every move and keeps his secrets close to his heart, is immeasurable. It feels like you've been stripped bare and laid out on the snow, skin engulfed in a cold brand that threatens to send your system into shock.

When you finally summon the strength to try and wriggle away, Ghost's clasp only tightens on you wordlessly, preventing your retreat. He hums a displeased sound, and that should be enough to silence you but it’s not, not when you feel it echo inside your ribs and spark that tender, infant flame there you keep just for him.

"G-Ghost." You try, voice trembling- from apprehension, from the touch of the gelid air around you, you aren't sure. "I-I can keep warm on my own. You don't-"

"Stop that."

You still at his voice. It would be a reprimand, harsh and direct like all his orders, if it weren't for the undertone of something that felt dangerously close to concern.

When you swallow it feels like you're drinking in tepid water, the taste obscured by the ice crystals that dance silently in the moonlight.

"Stop...what?" You ask, and you sound for all the world like the child you've tried not to be, always fumbling, uncertain, and afraid.

Ghost goes quiet for a moment, and it occurs to you he may not have expected a response from you. He doesn't move, and the only indication he's not a corpse is the faint thrum of his heartbeat under your fingertips that hover at his collarbone.

"Trying to do everything yourself." Ghost tells you at last, and the sharp breath you suck in sinks into your lungs like tenterhooks.

Ah. It seems he even sees that mistake.

Your insides twist like the dull grip of a knife against flesh, and you grimace where he can't see it, feeling that acrid, bitter taste run foul across your tongue.

"I-I don't." You try, but it's a paltry defense at best, a useless one that you know he won’t accept.

"You do." He returns plainly, but there's no venom in his voice. It's just a simple observation, one you yourself can't see through your own stubborn snow blindness.

You fall silent, and whatever burgeoning warmth that glows between your two intertwined forms fails to reach your heart.

"I have to try." You whisper at last, and your voice sounds fragile in the darkness around you, wrapping across your form and keeping you secured within his embrace. The confession feels mephitic across your lips, souring within your chest along with all the doubts you hold there.

Ghost doesn't respond. You're not sure if he's starting to fall asleep or if he's waiting for you to speak.

Balances and counterbalances. Weighing the truth against your tongue, wanting to confess your sins and your guilts to a darkened window that watches your trembling form.

"I'm not...strong like you." You whisper, and the words are barely audible, shaken free of your chest but sifting downwards like powder from a frosted fir tree. "Not like the rest of you. Not yet."

Glaciers crack and shift inside your chest, groaning with ancient memories as they dislodge themselves to an unknown future. You're lost among them, body frozen and heartbeat too fast, vision obscured by snow.

"I...don't want to be left behind."

And there's the truth of it all. The fear, the loneliness of failure, of not being enough for these men, of not being able to prove yourself capable to stand beside them. They hike higher into the hills, their backs blurred by your own failing sight until they at last vanish into a cloud of white. You're all that's left, figure rooted to the frost beneath your feet, waiting for the fatal ice to creep up your veins and into your heart.

"I expected better of you." An old opponent whispers into your ears, breath ghosting across your spine. "I guess I should have never expected at all."

The truth stings sharper than any wound, leaking past your flesh and bleeding red into the snow like the men who once lived here. You can taste their lingering sorrow in the splintered air, can feel their regrets echo in your own ribcage like the affliction that haunts you still. The tightness there feels like you're buried under permafrost, starved of oxygen.

You think the words have echoed out into emptiness, that Ghost is immune to them, having already surrendered to sleep. Yet when he shifts, you feel warmth spill from him like a cup overfilled. It feels like hot water over your chilled, cracked lips, settling low in your stomach with an uncomfortable weight.

"No one fights alone."

It's hardly a whisper, his voice, yet it sounds like the final piece of the mountain giving way, snow, rock, and debris cascading over your rampant thoughts and drowning out any other noise. Catastrophic, cataclysmic, inexorable.

You curl into him. You can't help it. The pressure of it all forces you to bury yourself in him in a vain attempt to escape.

"You see my mistakes." You hoarse, throat raw, tight with an emotion you dare not name.

Ghost is silent like the grave, and that fact alone threatens to send you spiraling off that axis, into a desperate imbalance you'll never be able to rectify no matter how hard you try, how you strive to stand beside these men.

"I see you." He mutters, voice strangely fragile, almost hurt. "Just you."

You freeze.

And once again, the axis shifts.

Yet this time, you're not alone. Ghost keeps a hand at your elbow, helping you correct, maintaining your balance.

You exhale hard, letting go of a breath you didn't realize you were holding. The warmth of it curls into your cheeks as it reflects off Ghost's tac vest, the one your nose is all but pressed against. It absolves you of guilt, of the sins you're so afraid of, the ones that whisper in your shadows. When it dissipates, it's alongside the ghosts of the outpost that sigh, evaporate into nothingness.

Not an avalanche then, but a slow and steady snowfall from above, blanketing your senses in a gentle, downy realization.

He isn't the man you thought he was.

Ghost's gaze doesn't judge you, doesn't mark your faltering steps with sinister intent. He doesn't see you as they did, a blemish in contrast to a grand tapestry of triumph. His stare doesn't pass a verdict. He simply observes, takes you as you are, stands in your shadow ready to catch you if you stumble on the path marked by these men.

He sees you. Just you. As you are, no more, no less.

And you, you had been so blinded by the pristine, unblemished surface that you didn't even notice the beauty that lurked within the darkness.

That hope you had kept hidden under the ice of your heart, the one that had wanted to reach out for the man before you, seems to bloom like hellebores. Soft and somehow sturdy, you accept the things that are, and somehow find him waiting for you in the middle.

Him, unyielding, immobile, a steadfast mast when the inertia sweeps you out to sea. He's darkness against the light, a relief from the radiance of it all. His mask is snow sheer, but his gaze is dark like coals. Tinted black, like the bottomless pits of Tartarus, where dwells the spirits of which he fashions his name.

Ghost.

It should be the haunting wraith of the afterlife, tormented and distraught at all that has come to pass. Yet the man before you sinks into nothing but the present, grounding himself in ways you can only fathom. You want to lean against him, let him help you find the bedrock hidden under the snow, let him whisper your name in the way your heart so desperately craves. Not 'Fix'. Not your callsign, but your name. Yours.

You want him to see you, just you, and in turn smudge the charcoal from his own tinted eyes so you can see the iridescence underneath. Even if he doesn't feel the same, you crave the simple grace of knowing him, letting him yield a fraction of his heart to yours.

"Fix." Ghost mutters, and you wind the name around you like another layer, let it blanket you in warmth even if it's not meant to be.

"Sleep." He mumbles, and his own voice is tinged with fatigue. You nod against him, feeling his hand shift along your back as he settles with your frigid form in his arms.

He's not cold at all.

You know there will come time for you to understand your feelings towards him later, when you have both climbed down this mountain and into the lush valley below. Fragile though they are, you feel them thaw inside your chest, coalescing with the heat that he wraps around you. The emotions you harbor for this man, illicit they may be, spring forward in the twilight between light and darkness.

Ghost sighs, and the mere motion of it makes your heartbeat stutter in response, muscles falling limp and pliant within his embrace. It's nice, this. The steady frame of him feels like a wall shielding you from the wind, his chin braced atop your hood and his gloved hands pressed gently against your nape and the small of your back. He's large enough to dwarf you, this behemoth of a man. You should be scared of him, terrified of his strength and brutality. Yet all you feel is an undeniable sense of safety, here within his hold.

A wraith, perhaps. One that seeks your enemies, heralds their deaths with his own hands.

"You're warm." You whisper into his chest, arms bunched between you, his massive bicep your pillow.

"You're no longer shivering." He notes, and if you listen there's the trace of a smile there.

"…No." You agree, feeling the shudder in your limbs abate and warmth again instill itself against your flesh. "I'm not."

Yet he doesn't pull away, doesn't abandon you to frost, and you don't retreat, at last surrendering to his aid.

When you close your eyes, they no longer burn with the aftereffects of toxic brightness, and you realize that the darkness may be your salvation after all.

The night grows long against you both.

-----

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#simon ghost riley x reader #call of duty #simon riley x reader #simon ghost riley #cod #reader insert #my fic #my stuff #Series: of shadow and bone #tagging everyone who might be interested just to get a taglist going but if you don't want to be there please let me know ;w;#Absolutely no pressure #That being said I'm pretty proud of how this turned out #I really tried to push my limits with this one #I also like how the header turned out too #hopefully this gets notes ;w;

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