Wait For Me || John "Soap" MacTavish x OC (Call Of Duty)

9. Terrible love

She felt him before she even saw him. That electric shock between them, his metallic and familiar scent, the grip of his arms protecting her from the world. In those moments, the doctor felt herself in the eye of the storm, breathless, paralyzed by the sparkle of those sea-blue irises in hers.

Wrapped in his towering and imposing frame, safe, overwhelmed by his downpour and captured by the solid and constant beat in his chest.

Despite the resistance so deeply rooted within her, she had eventually begun to succumb to the sweet flattery of that stentorean presence in her life.

However, as the days went by, she had also had the distinct feeling that the sergeant was carefully avoiding something. Something uncomfortable, cumbersome inside him. Something that, in all probability, scared him.

After seven days of that curious asylum, late one afternoon the peace was interrupted by the indiscreet vibration of Johnny's cell phone on the kitchen counter.

The lad shot up from the sofa, almost mechanically, leaving the TV on that they were both watching distractedly, Yael more than anything else busy reading some medical article on her laptop.

She watched the imposing figure cross the room with measured, almost cautious steps, as he took the call. He answered curtly, his voice husky and deep, heading for the stairs. He clearly didn't want to make her a part of that conversation.

Yael feigned a detachment she didn't feel. She turned off the TV, tried to go back to concentrating on what she was reading, but to no avail.

The words tangled in her brain in turmoil, losing their meaning, while the thought that that phone call would take him away from her for an indefinite time became clear in her mind. Suddenly, the comfortable nest she had created on the old sofa seemed unbearable to her.

In the silence, the muffled ticking of the modern wall clock ticked mercilessly a very slow time.

From the large three-part bow window, the last light of the day set the clear sky on fire, caressed the yellowed hedges and fragmented into intricate patterns on the wooden floor of the living room.

The last chirps before sunset occasionally animated the immobile, almost suspended background of the sleepy external reality. Then, Yael heard it. Johnny was pacing the bedroom furiously, the harsh tone of his voice just a little higher, not enough to let her make out the words, but enough to make her realize how upset he was.

She didn't want to eavesdrop, it wasn't in her nature and she doubted the sergeant would have tolerated such an intrusion into his work.

Despite everything, those mechanisms were still so deeply embedded in her that they knotted her stomach. She would pretend not to understand, not to have caught the name of Captain Price, nor another name, unknown, but pronounced with such hatred that it made her shiver.

She wouldn't ask him anything. Because deep down she feared the answer.

Lost in those thoughts, she didn't notice the muffled, measured footsteps on the stairs.

When she saw him appear on the threshold of the living room, his shoulders so broad that they blocked the entire passage, her heart immediately accelerated its beating. Not out of fear, nor out of surprise. For love. Simply. In its purest form.

The boy gave her a crooked smile, the stormy sea in his blue irises engulfing her deep down, but he didn't say a word. He took his place back on the couch, sitting at her feet, as if nothing had happened.

Yael watched him for a few seconds, cursing herself for that old modesty that didn't allow her to intrude further into Soap MacTavish's life.

What she had felt for her father, what she still felt for him, was a tremendous love, terrible in the devastating emptiness it had opened up inside her in years of silence, of broken promises and of words unspoken.