Gloss and Salt | Simon "Ghost" Riley x Reader

5

"Sergeant, slow the fuck down." Ghost bellows at him, a little louder than he intends.

That finally gets Soap to let up a little bit on the car and she leans forward onto her elbows, careful not to push anything deeper into her flesh. Her mouth hangs open because of the metal stuck in her cheek, a string of bloody saliva travels down to the floor. The van swerves to the left, off the main road, towards the safehouse that the lost CIA agent left them with. At least the bastard's life was useful for something.

The instant the van comes to a stop his hand pushes open the doors, flooding the back with even more light. He catches the sight of the floor, beautifully painted with dots and streaks of red that smear under her boots as she gets up to limp out of the vehicle. Soap is quick to jog around the car to offer her a hand, but she refuses wordlessly and makes a beeline to the house as fast as she can. He shoots the others a concerned look as they file out of the van, but Price waves him off.

"She's spooked Johnny, let her be." he tells him.

The house has the same feel as the one in Kosovo did. Lived in but absolutely lifeless at the same time. Too clean cut for the people currently occupying it.
Price, Gaz and Soap start to squabble about Soap's horrible driving on their way into the kitchen while Gaz strips himself of his gear to assess his injuries. Ghost's head turns to the right and he spots her rifle haphazardly thrown onto an armchair in the living room alongside her backpack. The door to the bathroom is ajar, he sees her moving around inside it. A pull in his legs makes him take a step forward. It's not the one he usually feels. The one that's swirling with the need to touch her, to have her. The cloud of lust and the pull of desire in his abdomen are fully absent. It's a force of concern, one that he's never let himself feel before. His hands want to mend, they want to make sure he can feel a pulse beneath her skin, one that's not fast from his touches and words, but just one that is there.

His own rifle leans onto the chair, his helmet comes down next to it softly. The door gives way easily under his fingers.

Her eyes are hard as they look at him through the mirror, but they look down again quickly as she starts to fiddle with the clasps of her tactical vest. Ghost stands in the door, for once not really sure what to do with himself. She pays him no mind as she carefully pulls the vest over her head, the various things in it clattering as she sets it down onto the floor. He almost steps back out again, he doesn't stay where he's not wanted. But for a split second, when their eyes meet again as she turns, he sees the guard in her face drop. Just like back then, when she was close to him the first time. The door shuts behind him as he takes a step towards her and silence falls around them.

"You okay?" he asks low, his eyes searching for hers through the mirror she's still facing.

"Other than looking and feeling like Swiss cheese? Yeah." she weakly retorts. Leave it to her to try and make jokes still.

Her reassurance settles heavy and warm in his bones. It makes his hand come up to her jaw from behind, tentatively tipping her head to the right to get a closer look at her cheek. The edges of the metal piece are sharp, another mistake by the person that made the bomb. An image flashes through his mind, a bigger piece of jagged metal in his own hand, the serrated edges ripping and tearing so far into flesh that his victim won't ever be able to get it out again. Bleeding out into the soft earth as punishment for what they did to her beautiful face.

"Looks pretty nasty Gloss. Not gonna lie." he whispers down to her, her face still in his hand.

"Can you help me Ghost?" she whispers back to him, eyes locking with his in the polished mirror.

The vulnerability in her voice burns hotter than any of her touches ever could. Even now, in the middle of a foreign country after a grim reminder of the danger they face, she puts trust in him. In Ghost, the one who keeps everyone at an arm's length, the one who's the least trusting and thus, the least trustworthy in the group. But here she stands, letting him close to her, even when she's hurt.