Recruit 2162 | Ghost x Reader

Chapter 6

There was a lot that demanded your attention.

Firstly, you were still on a high from the successful mission, vividly remembering how it'd felt to grab the intel, regroup with your team, and safely leave in the helicopter. Making it out alive had helped, too.

Secondly, the 141 was in some deep and treacherous waters. A Russian ultranationalist by the name of Makarov had carried out an attack at an airport in Moscow, gunning down civilians and making it seem like he and his crew were American, effectively creating a narrative that it was an American terror attack on Russia. According to Price, it provided the perfect leverage for Russia to carry out their own attack in 'response'. The thought alone was stomach-twisting.

Perhaps, the concern over such a reality had been too distressing for your mind to handle. Instead of allowing yourself to explore the avenues this could lead to, your mind provided you with cushy content and comparably trivial problems to keep you occupied, a minor detail of the mission becoming a recurring theme in your thoughts.

Ghost's face might've still been a mystery to you, but the expressions it'd housed on that helicopter were not.

When you'd shoved yourself behind cover with Price's assistance after making your way back to them, he had an undeniable look of fear on his face, something you previously couldn't have imagined him feeling. It merged into relief. On the journey home, before Price had dropped the news about the terrorist attack, his eyes hadn't left you. Under his gaze you'd felt almost precious, like he was scared to blink in case something bad happened to you. You'd only caught glimpses of him, not wanting to call him out for his staring, but you remembered what you saw as clear as day.

It was nice to matter to someone, most of all someone like him, but you'd been battling with the idea about just how much you'd mattered once your head had hit the pillow back at base, thoughts of him in a tender light circling your thoughts.

Sure, you'd found him attractive from the get-go. You had eyes, after all. Even with no knowledge of his face, the way he carried himself, the way he spoke, the way the bulk of his body moved as he did hadn't gone unnoticed by yourself. That was all it was, a shallow attraction that you'd hidden away and ignored.

Getting to know him had made it tempting to revisit the attraction, his honesty and humour, and his commitment to you along with the way his figurative mask slipped a little more each day. Being around him was easy, and his stoic manner provided you with security where it often provided the opposite to others. It was clear that he wanted the best for you, and had grown proud of what you were becoming.

But seeing how he looked at you that day had made it all change.

You weren't convinced he was aware that he was showing his emotions, or once again perhaps your well-practised ability to read him from his eyes alone had served you well. Nobody else had noticed, so it couldn't have been that obvious. However, you had, and it was all you could think about.

Once your mind whispered about the prospect he could have genuinely just been pleased to have you back on a purely platonic level, you latched onto it and welded it to the centre of your thoughts. That would have to be the case – you couldn't seriously get involved with him, right?

You were broken out of your stupor when Soap interrupted your morning tea in light of an emergency meeting called by Price.

Sullen faces were all that was present in that room once you'd entered, the news having been broken that upon Laswell's inspection of the intel you'd retrieved, it too had turned out to be useless. The intel you and the rest of the 141 had risked your lives for was blank.