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

37. Never fall for a teammate

Johnny woke with a start, a cold, clammy trickle of sweat running down his spine and his index finger stiff and numb, as if he'd been clenching it repeatedly in his sleep. 

It wasn't the first time he'd dreamt of shooting, and it wouldn't be the last. Yet, for some strange defense mechanism, his brain refused to process that information. 

It vanished as soon as he opened his blue eyes to the world, the granite monotony of some nondescript lodging. For a few minutes, it lingered at the corner of his vision, like a premonition, a sense of unease, but he could never quite recall what he'd dreamt about. 

Almost never.

Instinctively, he ran his hand along the side of the bunk, his vision still clouded by sleep and the pounding of his heart in his throat. 

When he realised he'd been hoping in vain for a familiar weight, nestled against the cold edge of the sheets, he fell back onto the pillow with a thud, his thoughts crumbling on the damp pillowcase along with the mocking laugh that had clawed its way up his chest. 

He let out a sigh that still tasted of grease and tobacco as his fingertips scratched absently at his closely shaved scalp, stumbling, with a grunt, over the longer strands of his mohawk, still streaked with gunpowder. 

His muscles ached, even the deepest, most visceral ones, as if the rush of adrenaline had coursed through his veins even in unconsciousness. 

With a sharp crack, he realigned each vertebra, mobilised his shoulders, and only then did the acrid smell of sweat on the starched sheets convince him to leave the bunk and wash away the weariness under a scalding shower.

He almost tripped over the fabric tangled between his numb legs, letting out a rude and shamefully Scottish curse as his tactical trousers slipped from his still-slack grip after the unrefreshing sleep. 

With a grunt caught in his throat, Soap strode towards the bathrooms in heavy, nervous strides, ignoring the bite of the mountain cold that was gnawing away at the last vestiges of the warm, fragrant sunlight. 

He would rather not remember the images, faded by desire and blurred by steam, that betrayed him at the sight of the damp, chipped tiles. 

He swallowed them down in a sigh, pushing them back, whispering on the edge of the need he carried within him, like the words that had become indelibly mixed with the roar of the water.

It seemed strange to him, this collision of their worlds, at suicidal speed and, at the same time, at a heart-wrenching slowness. 

Yael was no longer a distant dream, suspended in a formless reality to which he had to return, faded, slipping away on the battlefield. 

No, she was in it up to her neck, in ways that troubled him more than he had allowed himself to admit until that moment. 

Johnny walked towards the armory with a lit cigarette between his lips and an indescribable feeling churning in his stomach, convinced, however, that meticulously preparing his equipment would bring order to the chaos that was stirring somewhere between his constricted lungs. 

The main hangar was strangely deserted, and the sound of his tactical boot crunching on the discarded cigarette butt seemed to echo through the sheet metal roof at several hundred decibels.

"Slept well, MacTavish?"

The Sergeant nearly let out a curse between clenched teeth as the raspy, mocking call reached him from the far corner of the structure, right by the armory entrance. 

Soap caught Ghost's sidelong glance in the gloom, his eyes deep-set in the painted balaclava and his imposing figure leaning against the tail of Nik's helo.