𝗙𝗢𝗥𝗘𝗩𝗘𝗥 𝗪𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗘𝗥 / call of duty x reader

13. there's no such thing as bad thoughts, only your actions talk [18+]

You'd, somehow, forgotten just how... vibrant two of your oldest friends were.

With the blades of the helicopter still spinning, the deafening sound of aircrafts around you, and a steady mist of rain, your body collides with another.

"Oi, watch it!" You exclaim, a beaming smile stretched over your features as the bulky, oblivious man squeezes his arms around your torso and buries his head into your neck. "You smell like gunpowder. And your fiancée."

His voice comes out muffled against your skin. "And you smell like cheap body wash."

He squeezes you once more before finally letting you go, his dimples deep and hair soggy with rain. You study his features, the sharpness of his jaw and the dusting of brunette against it. Him. One of your oldest friends in the military.

He looses a breath, eyes meeting yours and his hands falling to your shoulders, a comforting weight. You don't have any words, can't find them, so all that leaves your lips is a single name.

"Alex," you whisper, voice breaking in the middle, heart a sore throb in your chest.

The storm clouds above paint the world around you in harsh greys and physical manifestations of sadness – but in it all, your light has arrived.

And how powerful it is.

"Moonflower!" A deeply familiar, feminine voice shouts, and you spread your arms wide and accept the body that crashes against your own. Your laugh is startled and pure, but relief and serotonin floods your system as warm as the embrace you're surrounded in.

You'd found solace and even a home in your solitude, your loneliness, but now?

Now, with the only two people in your life that have remained by your side, no matter the distance, holding you in their embrace?

It feels like family, even if you know there isn't a space between the two of them for you to fit in – no crevice large enough for you to ever comfortably merge.

A foster family, maybe. Or a found one, however tenuous and distant.

"I missed you both so much," you murmur, voice cracking slightly. You clear your throat, inhaling a trembling breath as you squeeze your eyes shut and rest your face in the crook of her neck. She smells of an odd mixture of her usual perfume, and Alex's cologne.

You wonder if you'll still have enough limbs attached to get to their wedding, by the time everything has been dealt with.

If you'll even have a head attached.

It's a small eternity (or maybe a few seconds, or maybe a few years) until she pulls away, a glint in her eyes that seems a concoction of pity and strength.

"You look stunning, Farah," you grin, and your cheeks burn with the odd sensation of joy.

She crinkles her nose, dark stray hairs flying across her face from the continuing wind of both winter and the helicopter. Her skin glows with health – and you realise, then, how even with the stress of reconstructing a nation, she's happy. Honest and unrepentant and golden. A survivor of war, but a survivor nonetheless.

Raising a brow, she returns, "You look like shit."

A chuckle leaves your throat, the familiarity that is Farah's honesty akin to a hot chocolate and a blanket wrapped around a freezing frame.

"You look like you've been injured," Alex adds, a small wince gracing his features. He's miraculously found himself once more at Farah's side, not unlike a loyal guard dog.