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

33. Everything to me

The dense, fragrant night shadows stretched beyond the Ural crests, caressing the concrete along with the thick fog of the moor as Yael crossed the track towards the communal showers.

She breathed in the sharp dampness, letting its earthy scent wound her, and for a moment her light irises were lost in a starry sky that seemed impossible. 

Her hope was that the hard, unforgiving jet of water, along with the residue of blood and gunpowder, would wash away from her heart that sense of bitter nostalgia too.

She undressed calmly in the deserted bathroom, the smell of industrial soap and mould tickling her nostrils as she carefully folded her tactical gear and covered her body with a towel. She left the ante-room with a sigh caught in her throat and her amber eyes carefully avoiding the long, bare mirror above the row of concrete sinks.

She was almost about to turn back when the sudden rush of a siphon filled the humid air. It wasn't in her plans to meet anyone, let alone exchange a few words, not without clothes. 

Then, suddenly, a low, hoarse rattle, the exhausted and heavy growl of a distressed animal, climbed the white-tiled walls, vibrating gently in her chest, slipping into the space between her heartbeats. 

She recognized it immediately, as if that deep, weary breath had told her everything she needed to hear.

Her heart was pounding a mile a minute as she reached the only shower in use, her fingers so tight around the towel that her knuckles turned white. She stopped, stunned, a step away from the cubicle. 

Under the scalding jet of water, in the whitish steam that dissolved in spirals between the tiles and beaded on his dense body, Soap MacTavish seemed irresistibly beautiful to her. 

Her gaze hesitated gently over the longer strands of the mohawk on his shaved nape; lingered lightly on the taut, powerful contours of his broad back, recognized every scar that dotted his shoulder blades, the swollen veins on his arms, the chest that expanded like a bellows with every breath, his narrow waist, his defined buttocks.

He didn't seem to have noticed her and, on the other hand, Yael couldn't move a step. 

She watched him breathe for a time that seemed both short and very long, in a sweet, scandalously romantic stasis. 

She wanted to call out to him, to confess what was stirring beneath the thin film that wrapped her regret, but the words died in her throat, clogged with silence. 

Instead, without her permission, her cold fingers reached out towards his damp back, the rough skin, under the tense muscles, shaken by a shiver that swirled indiscreetly beneath her fingertips.

It all happened in the small space of a breath, a couple of the beats that were fluttering in her throat. 

Almost without registering the movement, Yael found herself pressed against the chipped tiles of the cubicle by his planted body, her arm stuck mid-air. 

She felt the back of her head hit the glazed surface with a dull thud, a spark of pain, and a stifled groan escaped her lips as a huge hand of Soap's quickly grabbed her neck. The pressure of his fingertips cut off the air in her lungs, perhaps leaving a bruise, filling her eyes with tears.

In his blue irises, Yael recognised the sharp gaze of a predator, his jaw clenched, his chest heaving against hers and the towel slowly becoming soaked at their feet.

Perhaps she should have been frightened, yet, quite simply, she wasn't. 

As her carotid artery throbbed frantically under the sergeant's rough fingers, she waited for the attractive contours of his face to soften, for his grip to loosen just enough to allow her to breathe.