Proving Myself To Ghost

Finding my Place

The team enter the barracks in a comfortable silence and break apart to enter their own rooms. By the time I reach the end of the hallway and enter my own room I see Soap and Gaz both exit theirs with clean clothes in their hands heading towards the showers. I enter my own room and grab myself some clothes and follow suit.

When I reach the showers everyone is already in their own stall with the room quickly filling with steam, I step into my own stall and once again silently thank whoever chose floor to ceiling tiled walls with a floor to ceiling curtain as well. I undress quickly in the small area before the shower and step in around the half wall, quickly turning the heat as high as it would go.

I wash quickly and stand in the water, relishing in the heat as I think back over all the events of the day. Being the perfectionist I am, I needed to go through every second of the day, figuring out where I went wrong and what I could improve on. Every time I rewind the moments I come to the same conclusion, I did everything I could right, just that insufferable enigma of a man managed to be one step ahead of me and with his sidekick Soap they're an immovable force. I outwardly grimace at my realization that they truly are just better, even if only slightly.

I let out a long sigh, finding myself to be just a small bit jealous of their team and how close they all seem to be with one another. That's not even close to what I have with my own team back at Kortac. There's a healthy respect we have for one another's skills and we work great as a team on the field but off the field most of us don't communicate at all, let alone have the lighthearted comradery this team has.

Eventually I become aware of the water beginning to run cold so I turn it off and begin to dry off and get dressed, becoming very aware of the silence in the showers, I must have been in there a while as it seems everyone else has already left. I step out of my stall to once again see Ghost leaning against the far wall, wearing black sweatpants and a too tight black tee, I mentally check myself, I definitely shouldn't be noticing how tight that shirt is at all.

"This is becoming a weird perverted habit, Ghost, if I didn't know better I'd almost think you like me," I tease him with a cocked eyebrow.

Ghost snorts, "hardly, this is about the only time you leave your room other than training, so only time I can talk to you."

"Didn't realize this was a sorority and we needed team building exercises, do you want to braid my hair too?" I answer back with an eye roll.

"Is that what you do in Kortac? Avoid each other until it's time to work?" he asks, although I can't tell if it's sarcastically or genuine curiosity.

I stand in silence weighing his question before letting out another sigh and shrugging my shoulders, "some of us are great friends, I get along with this big Austrian guy, you'd like him, he has a proclivity for face coverings too," I smile thinking about the shy giant.

"Mmm, König, I've worked with him before on assignments, he's a good teammate, I was hoping he's who Kortac would send us," Ghost answers before shifting himself slightly and crossing his arms over his chest.

"So you really don't hate all of us?" I ask with a smirk.

"There's always an exception to the rule, I'm trying to decide if you are one too... König contacted us to put in a good word for you," Ghost responds cooly, as if he's talking about the weather right now.

"Sounds like something he'd do, he's who did most of my training when I joined and was about the only person I felt gave a shit about me," I answer before quickly looking down at my feet, realizing I had said more than I had wanted to.

"So, you don't like the rest of your team?" Ghost asks while continuing to stare at me through the eye slit in his mask.

"I didn't say that... they're all good people, they're just not... I don't know... It's all just a job to them, clock in, clock out. What we do should matter to them, it should matter to all of us," I finally answer after mulling over his question for some time.