ghost babygirlifier

Masterlist

• rugby!simon • civvie!reader • 141!reader • apocalypse au • ghost has a crush one two three

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Content Tags

• angst • fluff • hurt/comfort ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ Links • Ao3

The stranger appears like an avatar of the slow, starving extinction of the wastes, a swaying conglomeration of bones and rags. Beady, sunken eyes look out from frostbitten flesh. You freeze when you notice the apparition staring at you with those dead fish eyes.

He is not menacing, not in the way you can see Simon being. His back is bowed over sharp ribs, bloated belly, and protruding joints, his breath wheezes from blackened, ash-clogged lungs. But he is desperate and desperation has made an animal of him.

You are not a person and neither is he. You and all you have are means of survival and he is the starved animal that will take until there is nothing left.

He is faster than you anticipate. He lunges with a renewed vitality at the life you hold like a spluttering flame. Ragged, sharp nails rip into you, through the bulky layers of your clothes. Hands grasping, wrenching, slamming you into the ground. He is a fury of madness, his fetid fear spilling from him as rotten blood from a putrid knife wound.

Simon appears so fast that the sudden presence of his mass makes your ears feel like they need to pop, his gravity encompassing you like a collapsed star.

His event horizon passes over you, colliding into the man instead. Ash plumes from the ground where Simon slams the man down under his weight.

His violence is a brutal, efficient thing. Silent and final. The stranger doesn't even manage a gasp before it's taken from him. Gloved hands separate vertebrae as if that was the first thing they ever learned to do before discovering the tenderness they're capable of when holding you. There is no second glancing at the body on the ground, no compartmentalization. It was a threat and now it is nothing. Death as transformation.

When Simon turns his eyes to you, you feel time stretch between the space separating you. Two black wells, pulling you into their dark infinity with a swooping vertigo. In them is the darkness at the end of all things. You feel its phantom weight wrap around you like the depth of it all is too vast to be confined by just the borders of him.

His hands, clean of blood but still soaked to the bone with it, rise to your face, fingertips grazing your cheeks. The skull of his mask touches your skin when he lowers his forehead to yours. This close you can't see his mask, can't see death. All you see is Simon.

Palms drag across your cheeks, over your ears. Fingers lace together at the back of your head, cradling you, further securing you into his gravitational orbit.

Simon says nothing, skin still crawling from the sight of you in the ash. A Ghost howls in his blood, baying for the world's to be spilled.

Simon smothers the Ghost, focuses on the weight of you in his hands. A flame still burns.

His mask leaves your skin as he angles your head down. You lose sight of his face, vision instead taken up with the fortress of his chest and shoulders.

In one moment you feel nothing but the biting cold on your skin and in the next you feel warm, uncovered lips pressing to your forehead. The heat of them scalds you. The texture of their scars sink into your skin like a brand.

He moves down, laying a kiss on each of your closed eyes like coins for a burial. They remain closed as his lips travel to each of your cheeks, face upturned to the warmth of his attentions. That warmth drags further down like the last sunset the world had ever seen.

Simon pauses. A man made into a ghost made into a man again. His hands, which were born into the language of violence long before the world ended, which know the feeling of broken bone and steaming blood better than the weight of something alive have remained steady through every reaping of every soul they severed.

Never once have they faltered. Immovable through the war and death of every known thing, the remains of which continue to fall like snow years later.

i guess we'll see when the game actually releases but the only way i can see any of that making sense is if either

laswell sent ghost after him

ghost is going after him on his own volition to reel him back

ghost has been assigned the hit from the brass to assassinate price

ghost will also end up going awol

Soap discovers it on accident.

The morning he does starts off with Ghost passing him in the hallway, a steaming to-go cup in his hand. The smell of coffee meets him.

"Since when do you drink coffee?" he says, halting in his tracks.

"Since the time you learned to mind your own business," Ghost says without pause in either voice or step, continuing his march like a man on a mission.

Soap snorts and keeps walking, thinking nothing of it until a few days later he spots Ghost with another coffee, this time along with a little paper bag. He makes the mistake of setting it on the counter for a moment.

Johnny immediately hooks a finger in the opening and peeks inside, the smell of sweet and warm baked goodness meeting him.

Ghost nearly takes Soap's hand off from how hard he slaps it away.

"Hands off."

"Ach, Jesus, alright." He rubs his stinging hand. "A good morning to you too, Lt."

Ghost rolls the top of the bag closed again and leaves just as suddenly as he appeared, mind and attention focused elsewhere. He disappears around the corner as Soap tries to think of how and why Ghost is walking around with warm pastries. Did he go off base and bring it back? Did he bake it himself? Now there's an image, Johnny thinks.

He's given the opportunity to find out just the next day.

He's en route to the shooting range to meet with Kyle when he runs into Ghost marching off with yet another bag in his hand.

"Hey, Lt," he calls, jogging over to him. "I'm headin' to the range, you in?"

"Later." Ghost doesn't look at him, instead scanning around searching for something. Soap looks down at the bag in his hand, seeing light condensation on the inside from whatever hot food is in it.

"Jesus, you doin' food deliveries on the side now or somethin'?"

"Or something," Ghost says in the tone of voice that actually means: "Shut the fuck up."

"Well if that's the case," Soap starts, willfully ignoring him just to rib him a bit, "I think I'd like to make an order for lunch—"

Ghost tenses. He does so in a way that Johnny only sees when there's a loaded gun in his hand and a soon-to-be corpse standing in front of him. It activates something in Johnny's lizard brain and muscle memory takes over, immediately stepping into a defensive position, facing whatever it is that's coming at them.

But all he sees are a couple of medics on their break.

You're sitting at one of the tables outside, trying to get as much fresh air as you can on the woefully short break you managed to get. One of your coworkers, someone who's worked on the same ward as you ever since you arrived at this base, walks up to you. You smile up at him in greeting. He hands you a styrofoam cup filled with a steaming drink, made from the overworked coffee maker which you gratefully accept.

The both of you are too far for either Soap or Ghost to hear. They can only see you kick out the other chair for him to take, see him sit in front of you, and start getting into a conversation that you both lean into.

You laugh at whatever he said and the sound of it reaches to where the two soldiers stand.

Soap swears the air drops in temperature a few degrees. He stills. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up. All he dares to move is his eyes to look over at Ghost.

Ghost stands there like the manifestation of cold wrath itself. His eyes, as dark as the thoughts running through his head with perfect clarity, stare down the medic sitting in front of you. As sharp as the knives that his fingers have the sudden urge to wrap around.

The sound of the bag in his hand collapsing under Ghost's deathgrip cuts through whatever spiraling void his mind began to fall down. Ghost heaves a quiet breath and resumes his march over to your table. Soap stays where he is, watching with a morbid fascination.

When he approaches, you look up at him and instead of the concerned (if not frightened) expression that Soap expects, you give him a beaming smile. He places the bag down in front of you.

In the moment that you're busy opening and looking through it, Ghost shoots the man across the table from you a look that Soap can't see from here, but the way that all of the blood drains from the medic's face gives him a pretty good idea.

You place the containers of food on the table and say something to Ghost. He rumbles something back to you and turns away without anymore fanfare. By the time he makes it back to Soap's side, the puzzle pieces have started to click together.

"Aye, so it's your lass who you've been sneakin' all those goodies to."

"Wot?"

"Ye know, your girlfriend?" He gestures to you.

"Fuck are you on about, Johnny?"

Soap is struck with the full understanding that A) Ghost is head over arse in love with you and B) Has no intention of doing anything about it. Which does and doesn't surprise him. The man's a workaholic, dedicated to the job just as much as any other of the 141; they wouldn't be alive if they weren't. But he's also not one to be passive about things. Ghost is about as blunt as a sledgehammer to the back of the head, doesn't waste time with tedious little social dances.

Which leads Soap to come to the other, most crucial realization of C) Ghost has absolutely no idea.

"Nothing. Never mind."

Ghost rolls his eyes and slinks off, leaving Soap standing there with a million thoughts racing through his head.

Soap disagrees with the notion that he's impulsive. Impulsivity carries the notion of thoughtlessness, of a lack of regard for the future. Instead, Soap sees no point in running in circles, hemming and hawing. He encounters a problem, sees what needs to be done, and executes. Hesitation gets you blown up.

Which is why, after encountering this predicament, Soap knows what needs to be done to solve it. All that is required now is the right time to act and the perfect opportunity strikes on an afternoon he's walking with Ghost to Price's office.

"Lieutenant!" your voice calls out from the other end of the hallway. The man in question immediately halts and turns back around. You come jogging up to the both of them, a small plastic container in your hands. "I was going to give this back to you earlier but, you know, busy." You hand the container to him which he takes. "Thanks again, it was really good."

"You liked it?" he asks, soft, timid, like your approval is what keeps the world spinning.

Soap wishes he had a camera right now. Or a pencil and paper. Just to immortalize the look on Ghost's face.

He stands with his chin tucked, like a bashful wee puppy dog if Soap had to describe it. He stares at you with his big, unblinking eyes, glittering like you just handed him the key to paradise instead of a piece of empty plastic.

"It was delicious," you say fervently, "you have to show me what recipe you used."

Sweet, steaming, bloody Jesus.

Ghost has been cooking meals for you.

Soap stares gobsmacked, open mouthed at the side of Ghost's head, mind reeling. Ghost doesn't realize because he's too busy looking at you. Nothing short of a bomb threat could pull his attention away.

Ghost shrugs, fiddles with the container like he all of the sudden doesn't know what to do with his hands.

"It was nothing. Just something I threw together." The way his eyes soften, sweet as melted chocolate at your praise screams otherwise.

"Well, either way. It was amazing." You look down to quickly check your watch.

"No rest for the wicked, eh?" Ghost drawls.

You sigh. "Tell me about it."

Soap watches the moment with certainty that nothing will come of this, can see in perfect vision that you'll leave and Ghost will do nothing but watch with the yearning they write about in poems. The both of you will live in complete ignorance about the near apocalyptic levels of longing that he just knows bothers Ghost more than he realizes.

He glances at Ghost. Glances at you. Formulates a plan. Sees every way it could go horribly and every consequence that could come of it. Commits anyway.

"Have to say, I really admire you medic folk," Soap says before you scurry off, leaning a shoulder against the wall, casual as can be.

"Oh," you say, taken aback by the sudden flattery. "Thank you, Sergeant."

Soap feels Ghost's presence behind him like a world-ending missile in its pre-launch phase. He swears he can hear a countdown start.

"Aye, some of the hardest workers I've seen. Nothing short of brilliant, too."

The missile's coordinates lock in right on Soap's head. He refuses to acknowledge the cold sweat that starts up along his spine.

You wave him off, a pretty heat making its home on the apples of your cheeks. Soap wouldn't have guessed Ghost had an eye for sweet little things like you. "Takes all sorts to keep the wheels moving," you say, a humble deflection.

"But you all are the ones that keep us in one piece. That's no' a small task," he leans his head in just a touch, as close as he dares with the Shadow of Death standing right behind him glaring holes with those demon eyes of his into the back of his skull. "Ah, careful though," he further dares to employ the little side-smile-eyebrow-quirk that's yet to fail him, lowering his voice into a gravely lilt that always gets him the attention he wants, "you keep on like that and you'll make the rest of us look bad, bonn—"

"You have training duty to report to," Ghost interjects in his full Lieutenant Voice that has Soap unconsciously shooting up from his slouch on the wall. By the time his muscle memory has passed, Ghost has already shifted his attention back to you. "I'll see you later, yeah?" he addresses to you, sounding like a completely different person from literally just a second ago.

You smile at him and nod. "Yeah." He returns the nod and watches in soft silence as you march off to whatever else the rest of your day has in store for you. The two of them stand in silence. He measures the air like he would the stability of a live explosive in his hand.

"So," Soap says once you're out of sight, hearing the countdown reach zero. "When's the weddin'?"

Put him in front of a thousand flashing cameras that will have his face plastered on every global sports news outlet and the most intense thing he'll feel is a simmering irritation. But the feeling of that little black box sitting in his hand makes his vision start to vignette if he thinks about it too much.

(It's so small, sitting in his hand, the ring inside even smaller. Yet the weight of it, the image of it on your hand, is immeasurable.)

The day he finally decides to ask you was the product of months of agonizing over it. Should he just hand the box to you? Just ask, not even include the ring? Fuck if he knows. He never thought he'd get this far, never thought he'd find you in any lifetime let alone this one.

He's not sure he actually makes a decision, but he finds himself picking a random day on one of the morning walks you take together when the weather allows.

Simon has been so caught up in his head that he doesn't realize how weird he's been acting all day, weirder than usual at least. He especially doesn't notice the worried looks you've been shooting him.

He's spoken maybe one complete sentence all morning and has maybe blinked twice, his mind fully anchored on the black box shoved in the recesses of his pocket.

He walks beside you rigid as an ironing board, marching like he's going to war. Eventually, you hover your hand over his arm, slowing to a stop.

"Si, are you oka--"

"I don't want to be your boyfriend anymore."

Silence.

"W-what?" He can barely hear you over his pulse thundering in his ears. It's the tone of your voice that truly reaches him. Small, a little scared. It churns his gut even more and there is a moment when he's genuinely concerned he might actually hurl.

"No. I mean--" He curses so low under his breath all you hear is him growling like a dog at himself.

He turns his back to you, hands fumbling in his jacket pocket. The box gets stuck and he's there flailing around, nearly ripping his jacket trying to get the bastard thing out.

And when he turns back around, sees your precious face, sees the woman whose side he never wants to leave, he drops to his knees.

Not the one. Both of them.

He doesn't realize.

Simon opens the box so fast he nearly tears the lid clean off. The ring that has been haunting him for months glinting from the cushion inside. He looks up at you with his huge brown eyes, more anxiety in them than you've ever seen. His dry throat clicks when he swallows. His mouth opens and all he can get out is:

"Please?"