Safehouse [Simon 'Ghost' Riley x f!Reader - NSFW]

Chapter 1

"Contact, three o'clock."

The words are spoken softly over the coms, small whispers of static followed by the quiet click of suppressed gunfire. Simon hardly blinks when the body hits the floor - in fact, the only reaction he shows is a small exhale as he steps over it. Staring down the holo-sight, he surveys the hallway in front of him, shifting his barrel towards the edge of a darkened corner across the way. The lights had been cut long before they'd made their entrance through the rooftop hatch, but he can still see the soft glow of an emergency panel on the wall.

'Stair 1 - NO ROOF ACCESS. Exit down (1) levels.'

Bingo.

"1-4-1 moving to first deck."

"Copy."

Simon pauses before the entrance to the stairwell, listening for the telltale sound of your footsteps behind him. He doesn't spare a glance behind him; he doesn't have to. The feeling of your hand bracing against his shoulder tells him all he needs to know.

Ready.

Forcefully, he pushes the release on the door lock, leaning into his stock the moment he enters the landing. It takes no more than five steps to clear the first landing. Five steps in which he stares down the blackness over the railing, breathes the stale air around him, and sorely regrets the things he'd done to get to this point.

It was supposed to be a simple op, little more than a kill or capture on a former informant cut loose. The SAS had taken a few risks in their haste to follow Zakhaev's sloppy trail after Barkov's demise, leading to more than just a few...unfortunate incidents in the office as of late. Intel suggested the target was holed up on the first floor of a company-building-turned-headquarters with reinforcements around the perimeter. However, nearly twenty minutes after deployment and only a few stragglers dropped, Simon is seriously starting to doubt the credibility of their intelligence circle.

The fucker's already split, he snarls in his mind, taking the steps one at a time, hyper-aware of your hand digging into the sleeve of his flak jacket.

Fuck.

Boiling anger washes hot through his veins as he steps aside to let you rig the explosives on the hinges of the door. Normally, he'd be paying rapt attention to the way your fingers fly over the wires, fascinated by the look in your eyes. But now, totally unimpressed by the silence on the other side of the door, Simon's itching to clear the final floor and spit in the face of whoever gave them this intel.

You back up in front of him, sliding into your rightful place braced against his waiting hand.

"Fire in the hole," he hears you call over the radio, and he closes his eyes as sparks fly.

However, what greets him when the door opens isn't silence, or even emptiness, for that matter. It's an errant gunshot right over his left shoulder, and it's then that the rage in his blood bleeds away.

"Contact!" he shouts as he shoves you behind the wall on the other side of the door, firing randomly over his shoulder to hopefully get a few of them to duck their heads long enough for the two of you to come up with a plan. He breathes deeply as he scowls at the walls of the stairwell, listening intently to the sounds on the other side.

Bullets whiz through the open door, underlined by hurried, loud shouts in Russian. The seconds that pass feel like hours, the flashbangs on his leg practically burning a hole through his skin as he waits for the right opportunity. He spares a glance towards you, but you're already staring back, glistening eyes locking with his even through the goggles he wears. It looks like you have the same idea.