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

35. Adrenaline

As the needle pierced the thick, damp layer of his wetsuit, glued to his skin, Johnny had to shake his head a couple of times to clear the dull veil of pain that clouded his vision and muddled his breath.

The reaction was immediate.

He breathed out the burning of the puncture, the unpleasant sensation of the icy liquid spreading under his skin, and suddenly, his heart doubled its number and force of beats. It squeezed his sternum, all the way up to his throat.

He knew the feeling, the subtle and wicked euphoria that exploded in his brain, galloped in his chest for long moments, the apparent invulnerability, deaf to any pain.

He was both fascinated and terrified by it.

"Fuck!" Soap barked in a whistle in the deafening silence of the cargo, his hoarse voice barely louder than the drum that echoed in his ears all the way to his skull.

He sat heavily on one of the rough seats, his shaved nape hitting the cold metal, his heavy breathing turning rhythmically into puffs of white condensation.

He watched it rise up the cold currents that swirled in the cockpit, as if dazed, his pupils sharpened by the drug, but his foot tapped on the bare bottom of the helicopter non-stop.

The profile of the dam, as well as the lights that swarmed over Verdansk, disappeared swallowed up by the dense darkness of the night now frayed at the edges that were already lightening in the distance, beyond the mountain profile.

When the helicopter landed on the runway with a dull thud of pistons, the vibration climbed indiscreetly up Johnny's chest, echoing between his bruised ribs. He was sweating.

The sergeant closed his eyes for a moment against the rosy and dusty light that filtered obliquely through the window, as if to dispel at least a little of that veil of atrocious and familiar lucidity that had stuck to his eyelids.

The lieutenant opened the hatch with a sharp crack and the icy air of the last scrap of the night, humid and earthy, pleasantly wounded Soap's lungs in a puff that suddenly swept away the smell of grease and gunpowder from the cabin.

The thud of their boots hitting the concrete of the runway sounded strange in that dense, almost foggy stillness, it clung to his senses sharpened by adrenaline along with the swift steps of both of them, who, in tacit agreement, disappeared towards the lodgings.

A pale and washed-out dawn whitened in the distance, beyond the peaks of the Urals, when Soap abruptly opened the double aluminum door of the squat concrete building. The faint dusty light gushed inside, gently caressed the contours of the bare common space and adhered, all too sweetly, to the figure in the shadows a short distance from them.

She didn't say a word, but visibly held her breath, her long hair loose on her shoulders, disheveled as in the endless nights she had spent beside him. Welcoming, so welcoming.

MacTavish looked at her, for a long time, longer than he should have, as if dazed, despite the roar of his heart that amplified his instincts.

For once he didn't ask anything, he felt invincible, certain of what he should say, of the warmth he would want to give her.

Soap moved forward in slow strides, his ears on fire and a trickle of sweat stinging his shaved temple. It was by pure instinct that he freed his shoulders from the oxygen reserves, pulled off the tactical gloves and the black wetsuit from his chest in a dry, nervous gesture. He gritted his teeth at the sharp pain of the hair pulled out abruptly, of the fresh bruises that pulsed on his bruised bones.

Yael's eyes widened in his.

It was the first time Yael had sought solace in Lieutenant Riley's dark, almost vicious eyes. She found them gleaming mockingly from behind the white mask, lingering on hers for a moment, the space of a breath, a genuine, unrestrained snort.