Wait For Me || John "Soap" MacTavish x OC (Call Of Duty)

6. Birdie

It had been over three weeks since John had left. Since she had watched him disappear into the huge military vehicle, Yael had stood for a few more minutes in the pool of orange and buzzing light, the sharp evening cold pinching her nose, as if in a daze.

Her heart was pounding in her chest, but her brain was working at the pace of a crazed blender. She wondered why she had kissed him, why she had let her intentions show so openly. Why him of all people.

She kept asking herself this question over and over again in the days that followed, and every time she received a message from Johnny's number.

They could be counted on the fingers of one hand. They were telegraphic, noisy, sometimes indecipherable because they were abbreviated in Scottish, yet they told her things about him that she would have preferred not to know. Not to get even more caught up in that feeling that smelled of trouble. Whatever it was.

Several times she had been about to not answer, not to give him any further illusions about the idea he must have had of her. Instead, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't suppress that simple joy of knowing that he was alive and safe.

To silence that bulky and cowardly part of herself, she simply decided not to look for him.

She let the days pass by, all the same, pretending that she didn't care, that there was no such thing as that naive and instinctive fear that crept into her mind the doubt that John MacTavish had simply forgotten about her.

She had become so good at deceiving herself that it was even easier with others. She hadn't felt like telling Ann about her exploits with the sergeant, except for a few vague hints about the first coffee they had had together. Not to be reminded of the absurdity of what she was doing.

That's why she asked her out that night. Laughing, with a lightness she didn't really feel.

After weeks of intense work, the sweet promise of a free evening finally loomed before a couple of days off. She didn't want to be a burden to Ann, not again, not to unload her useless lucubrations on her.

They changed quickly in the staff locker room, anxious to lock themselves in a pub to escape the biting cold and drown their headaches in the bottom of a glass of scotch.

The double doors of the unusually deserted emergency room closed behind them with a dry whistle, sucking away the bright neon light and the almost oppressive heat of the central heating system.

"Damn, it's cold." blurted Ann with a nervous laugh that was already turning into condensation. Her green eyes, veiled and light, met hers in the breeze and Yael couldn't help but laugh spontaneously.

Their voices sounded strange in the wide and deserted square. The unnatural orange light of the streetlights in the humidity seemed to distort the outlines of the surrounding world, trapping reality in a cold and distant stasis.

That's why they started when, at the sides of their field of vision, they noticed the advance of three immense and dark figures in the penumbra, their faces half hidden by the light fog that had fallen on the square.

Yael felt Ann's hand slip cold into hers, her nails digging into her fingers, and she forced herself to focus. She held her breath, but not out of fear.

She didn't notice him first, but Lieutenant Riley did. The familiar brown eyes, hard and distrustful, set in the black balaclava with the features of a human skull.

Her heart skipped a beat. She probed the shadows more carefully and finally, next to the lieutenant's cupboard size, she recognized the familiar mohawk crest of Sergeant MacTavish.

"Johnny..." she called him, perhaps with too much confidence, given the smug smile of Sergeant Garrick next to him.

Only now that the square face, the unshaven beard, that irregular scar on the chin, the straight nose and the incredibly blue big eyes were in front of her did she realize how much she had actually missed him.