Simon "Ghost" Riley oneshots

Rain Down On Me

Ghost sat in the base's cafeteria, his eyes fixed on a half-empty tray of food in front of him, though he wasn't paying it any real attention. The room around him buzzed with the usual hum of soldiers chatting and clattering silverware, but it was all a distant noise to him. His mind was elsewhere. It had been for days now. Maybe even weeks.

You.

You were all he thought about lately, living in his head rent-free, taking up every spare moment of his attention. He didn't understand how it had happened, how you had managed to slip past the walls he'd built so carefully over the years. He had never let anyone get that close. He didn't know how. Yet, here he was, constantly replaying your smile, your laugh, the way you'd glance at him when you thought he wasn't looking.

And it terrified him.

"For so long I've waited, so long that I almost became just a stoic statue fit for nobody..."

The words of Sleep Token's Rain echoed in his mind, the lyrics almost a perfect reflection of his own internal struggle. He had waited so long, so long that he wasn't sure if he was even capable of feeling what he used to, if he could still let someone in. All these years of isolation, of keeping people at a distance, had made him like stone. A statue. Unmoving. Detached. And wasn't that easier? Wasn't that safer?

He sighed, rubbing a hand over his face, trying to shake the thoughts. He was good at running and had always been good at it. Running from emotions, from connections, from anything that made him feel vulnerable. But with you, it was different. You were different.

And that scared him more than anything.

"I don't wanna get in your way," he muttered under his breath, barely audible even to himself. He had spent so long staying out of people's lives, staying in the shadows, that he didn't know how to be a part of something real. And what if he did get in your way? What if letting you in meant dragging you into the darkness he carried with him? Could he really do that to you?

He was afraid. Afraid to admit it. Afraid of what it meant to feel again.

But the problem was, no matter how much he tried to run from it, you were always there.

You entered the cafeteria, your usual uniform hugging your frame, blending you into the sea of soldiers, yet somehow, you stood out more than anyone else in the room. To Simon "Ghost" Riley, you were more than just another soldier. You were the most beautiful human being he had ever come across in his life. He wasn't just looking at you; he was memorizing every detail, every curve, every nuance of how you moved.

He swallowed hard, keeping his face composed despite the turmoil raging inside him.

"But I finally think I could say," he thought, his mind syncing with the soft lyrics of the song drifting through the speakers, "that the vicious cycle was over."

It had been. Before you came into his life, he had been trapped in a loop, cold, distant, emotionally detached. It was how he survived, how he managed to make it through the years without letting anyone get close enough to hurt him. But now, as he watched you glide through the room, something inside him shifted.

You turned, your eyes scanning the room until they landed on him. And when your gaze met his, time seemed to stop. His heart skipped a beat, and for the briefest moment, everything else faded away, the noise of the cafeteria, the responsibilities, the weight of his past. It was just you and him.

And then you smiled.

"The moment you smiled at me..." he thought, his heart clenching in his chest. That smile, so simple yet so full of warmth, hit him harder than anything he had ever faced in the field. It wasn't just that you were beautiful, though you were. It was that your smile reached a part of him he hadn't realized was still capable of feeling.