Gloss and Salt | Simon "Ghost" Riley x Reader

11

One freckle under her eye. A soft white line between her eyebrows. An old scar, thin and weak. But there. The convex lines of her top lip, how they separate her smooth skin tone from the plush pink Ghost's fingers love to trace. Hair splayed out around her like a halo, holy and pure. So far away from what he is. An opposite. Exactly what he needs. Her to be across from him. Would she be the same as him, she'd stand beside him, obscured, only visible if he turns his head. Opposite of him is much better. Facing him, like she currently is, a peaceful calm curtain over her face.

Shadows linger under her eyes, not just from the long flight. There's no shine on her lips, no glow under her soft cheeks, for once she looks like a normal person. Like all of them. Tired and wrung out from all the violence and pain they bring and simultaneously experience. The same as him right here.

He drew the curtains for the first time he's lived in this house for her. His bedroom windows face east for a reason. The sooner the rising sun shines in his face, the sooner he can wake, escaping the clutches of darkness that reach for him in his sleep. A stream of sunlight still manages to flood through a spot, but it'll take a little more time before it reaches her. Ghost's been awake for a while now, his body adjusting back quickly to his native time zone. He doesn't know what he imagined this moment to feel like. A thousand scenarios ran through his mind while he brushed his teeth last night. Falling asleep with her wrapped around him, limbs tangled and heat vibrating between them. Him accidentally rolling on top of her, crushing her in his sleep. Her back pressed to his front, the lines of her body waking him up with the friction of her movements.

Thoughts jumbled around his brain before he left last night, would she be hungry? Maybe she'd like a drink to calm down after the flight. The beers in the fridge are untouched, as are the sandwiches he haphazardly threw together.

All the incessant worrying dissipated when he stepped back out of the bathroom, the sting of his minty toothpaste on his tongue. All for naught when all that was peeking out of the sheets was the top of her head, her breathing already steady and deep. The poor thing didn't even pull off her clothes or brush her teeth before she knocked out.

It's light enough in the bedroom for him to trace her features undisturbed. He wanted to do the same on the car ride last night when she slumped into her seat fifteen minutes into the two and a half hour drive, but he knew she wouldn't appreciate it if he'd ran them off the road just to stare at her.

A strand of hair slips onto her face when her head threatens to slide off the edge of her pillow. If he could just make himself heavier, make the mattress dip even more for her body to roll towards him without waking her up. He lifts his hand, it hovers for a moment, then puts it back down. Touching her is all he wants to do, cut her well deserved sleep short just for his own enjoyment. It's wrong. But she's here. No one is trying to kill them, the only noise threatening to wake her is chirping. Not shots or screams.

A crushing weight in his chest submerges him in something warm.

She's here.

In his home. In his bed. Next to him. No obligations or orders pulling them in all different directions. Listening for any objections within him holds his breath in his lungs for a second. He doesn't find any, the revolting aversion for closeness is all but a distant echo.

Eyelashes tickle his finger when the strand of hair lifts off her face. Ghost has gotten this lucky, if, for some universe-defying reason, his streak of it continues for once in his life, he'll get to wake up next to her again. He comforts his selfish streak by telling himself that her body needs food and a hot shower to bring back the flush in her cheeks. The first time his fingers brush her skin in this environment, this environment that's safe and warm and everything else that Ghost hasn't felt in literal years, goosebumps raise his skin with prickling needles. Her eyelids flutter with lucidity coming back to her, confusion glazing over them at first. It takes a beat or two until she realizes who's looking down at her in the dim light.