Gloss and Salt | Simon "Ghost" Riley x Reader

5

Ghost has to come to terms with his emptional landscape as the Agent gets hurt.

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„Can you not hit every bloody hole in the road there is MacTavish?" Price screams over the roar of the engine. The van shakes and creaks around them as Soap pushes it to its absolute maximum capacity, going down the rural road at a breakneck speed. Ghost has a hard time getting his pulse down to an acceptable level again. The blast still rings in his left ear, Price's yelling doesn't make it any better. Soap's driving is fucking terrible, but seeing as Gaz and the Agent were lying across his and Price's shoulders respectively, the only choice was to let the Scotsman take the wheel. The old shitbox that they're currently crammed into the back of probably won't even make it to their destination if Soap keeps this up. Ghost tries to plant his feet on the metal floor and swallows hard when he feels them slip. His boots are not wet, the woods they were combing before were bone dry. She's deathly silent while Gaz groans next to her at every movement the car makes. A particularly deep hole in the road and the subsequent jerk of the car makes her wince, clutching at her left arm. Her glove is soaked with blood when her hand lifts again. The same blood that prevents Ghost from finding any sort of good footing on the ground.

As far as he can see, she's not dying today. Neither is Gaz. Laswell had warned them that they would encounter resistance. Thankfully the „resistance" is fairly incompetent. They were combing the woods outside of a small town about two hours away from Caracas on a tip from a CIA agent whose subdermals went offline soon after. They had been approaching a hut when Ghost caught her eye roll as Laswell relayed the order to look for the poor sop that had disappeared in the area. She'd just turned her head back to Soap who was asking about microchips again when Ghost had heard it. A quiet hiss, so quiet he almost missed it, followed by a yell from Gaz as he set off a tripwire, making a thunderous noise erupt to their left.

His relaxed walk went rigid as his muscles tensed, feeling the twinge of adrenaline rush through him as her and Gaz went down. The improvised bomb had been so poorly made that the shrapnel didn't even reach him, nor Price or Soap that were walking behind them spread out a little further. In these moments, Ghost always appreciates the bond he has with the others of the 141. It grants them wordless communication, reacting to situations quickly and on instinct. Soap's rifle shot up to cover Ghost and Price as they darted towards the two laying on the ground. Distant voices were steadily approaching from between the trees, drawn to them by the explosion. Price got to her first and promptly lifted her onto his shoulders, not even asking if she's fit to walk. Her little noises of distress punched right into Ghost's chest in all the wrong ways as he lifted Gaz upon his shoulders. Glancing to his left, Ghost had only seen blood already seeping through the fabric on her leg that faced the IED before they took off into the direction of the van. He's sure they could've taken on whoever came towards them, but Price had taken the decision out of his hands. Now that they're in the back of the van with a different kind of fear for their life, Ghost feels the smallest sliver of relief that Price had decided to retreat.

Said man huffs out an expletive as Gaz holds up his tactical sunglasses, a sharp piece of metal stuck inside them.

"Thank fuck for your sensitive eyes, eh Kyle?" Price grins and Gaz nods in agreement, his small laugh soon replaced by another groan.

Ghost doesn't feel like laughing. Bile burns the back of his throat as his eyes fix on another sharp piece of metal out of the bomb. It's embedded into the soft part of her cheek, a steady ooze of blood dripping down from it. Her position next to Gaz made her take the brunt of the explosion, Ghost silently thanks Soap for his inquisitive nature that made her turn her head towards him, saving her pretty face from more damage. Johnny's foot still doesn't let up off the gas as they clear the tree line. More light floods into the back of the van, revealing another stream of red flowing down out of her hair. She tries to wipe at it with her right hand before it gets into her eye. Another thump makes her hand jerk, catching on the metal in her face. The pained noise she lets out twists uncomfortably in Ghost's chest. His jaw is starting to hurt, the muscles in it flexing non-stop with every little new injury he discovers on her. His pulse thrums through his hand cramped around the barrel of his rifle at a steady pace still. 'She's not dying' he hammers into his head, with a little luck they could even be back out again tonight, but Ghost's synapses still fire in all directions at the sight of her blood. Not a shred of him is interested in looking at her any further, it's so unlike him. The sight and stench of war always attracts his eyes, not able to tear himself away from exposed bone and viscera. His eyes fix on every last detail, you'd think he's seen enough after looking at his own soft and pink insides hanging out of him that day. Nonetheless, he always gets the rush of not being in the position the corpse in front of him currently is. How the fuck does a little bleeding on her end suddenly make him almost feel sick?