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

8. From the moment I laid my eyes on you

Johnny's silence had been longer than Yael had anticipated.

For ten days, her phone had been silent in her locker at work and on her bedside table during the few hours of sleep she had managed to eke out.

She hated to admit it, but that emptiness had begun to carve a furrow inside her.

However subtle, light, and yet, it was there. She could feel its presence when she looked at the empty pillow next to hers. Three nights had been enough, three mornings when she had woken up with that cheeky and attractive face in her eyes.

She had broken the only rule she had ever really set for herself since being left alone with her father.

Not a soldier. Any man would have been fine, not one who would reduce her to the anguished, waiting ghost of the woman she could have been.

Instead, she missed John MacTavish.

Denying it would only do nothing but skirt the issue, move it elsewhere. She had been in therapy too long to fall back into the same vicious cycle.

By now she had let him into her life, her home, her body.

Perhaps there was no way to undo what had been done, even though she had always believed she was in control, she had no way to stop those emotions.

She checked her phone one last time.

The white light of the screen hurt her pale irises in the dimness of the room. Nothing.

She forced herself to close her eyes, to force her brain to sleep, as she had learned to do after years of night shifts.

The last few watches had been gruelling, her back was in pieces, her fingers stiff, but at least she hadn't had time to think.

Everything was fine. It had to be.

Yael fell asleep without dreaming, exhausted, even in that darkness occasionally pierced by the daylight cutting diagonally across the room.

That's why she didn't hear the discreet vibration of the phone abandoned on the mattress, she didn't see that terse and confused message.

"Lass, you home? I'll be there in 15."

The shrill sound of the doorbell made her jump out of bed as she was used to doing at the call of the buzzer during the night.

Still half-conscious, with her body on autopilot, she blindly pulled a t-shirt over her tank top and some pants.

Her empty, veiled eyes glanced fleetingly at the round mirror above the dresser, just enough to tame her long hair over one shoulder.

As she stumbled down the stairs, she wondered if she hadn't imagined it all, if she wouldn't open the door to the empty street like an idiot.

Instead, seeing that stolid and familiar figure appear on the doorstep hit her foggy mind with the force of a slap.

He looked like he had just jumped out of a helicopter. In that blue tactical uniform, the SAS insignia prominently displayed on his arms, the reinforced gloves and empty holsters at his thighs. It was clear that he had only removed the strictly necessary equipment before presenting himself at her door.

He looked nothing like a civilian. For a fleeting moment, she was torn between asking him if he had gone mad or letting out the sigh of relief that was tickling her throat.

"Johnny..." she murmured, her breath caught in her chest and a smile languishing on her full lips.

"Surprise. I just landed at the base." he muttered awkwardly in that deep voice of his, the Scottish accent almost slurring the words together. His blue eyes were bold and unashamed as they met hers. Yael felt her heart soar and, for once, she didn't feel like curbing that genuine instinct.