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

43. Race against time

Simon knew death. The ruthless sweetness with which it managed to smooth everything out. 

He had looked it in the face so many times that he loved its sure features, its wide, icy boundaries. 

Death was the only certainty in his life, the only thought that allowed him to open his eyes in a different continent every day. The only push towards existence he had ever felt since he could remember. 

He had always been faithful to it, always, until that moment. 

A split second, an atom in an ocean of nothing, a single instant in which he had thought: not him. 

A dull thud and the tactical boots slipped on the dusty asphalt, tripped over the spent cartridges. 

"Johnny!" he barked with a grunt that threatened to tear his vocal cords, his breath burning in his throat, narrowing his field of vision. 

It was a bitter, visceral feeling. 

Perhaps it had just been a matter of time, of opportunity. Yet, death had crept between them like an unwelcome guest, betraying a blind trust, sweet, liberating promises. 

The wet sound of blood beneath his knees caused a curious wave of repulsion, as the lieutenant crouched over MacTavish's prone body. His fingers dug exasperatedly into his neck, blind, stubborn, searching for a breath of life. 

Ghost held his breath for what seemed like an eternity. So long that, perhaps, death should have taken him too. 

Then, something moved, a slight, barely noticeable motion against the thick fabric of the tactical gloves. 

Soap's heart was still beating. An irregular puff left the lieutenant's contracted lungs. 

Son of a bitch. 

"He's alive," he croaked to the captain's pale gaze, and his voice seemed to come from a hellish pit, hoarse, sharp as glass: "I'll take care of him." 

"Captain... the bomb. How do we stop it?" Gaz pressed with atrocious lucidity, a tear in the silence that slipped away with the sergeant's blood, the dull throb of the artery beneath his finger. 

Price nodded, a mere nod, and Simon understood. It was a hard, sharp, painful split, yet so familiar. 

While Garrick and the captain defused Makarov's dirty bomb, it was up to the lieutenant to take care of Johnny, to remember the dozens of knowing glances, the petty jibes, the clumsy attempts to look beyond military rank, to build something.

It had all come down to that miserable moment, as the first gauze pad penetrated the wound, soaking slowly without any reaction. 

The lieutenant only realised he was panting when a captain's hand crushed his shoulder. 

He had heard nothing, neither the defusing of the bomb, nor the medical extraction request. Nothing but the thin wisp of air leaving Soap's lungs. 

He felt a twitch, a quick flash of guilt, only when the doctor's stressed voice echoed in his headphones. 

"Who is the wounded, Captain?" Ghost gritted his teeth so hard that he thought he could hear the snap echoing off the steel girders. 

"No time for this, Williams. Just tell us how to proceed," Price pressed with unnatural calm, almost as if he wasn't kneeling beside the youngest of them, watching life leave him through a hole the size of a walnut. 

"Tell me who's wounded, bloody hell!" the doctor had spoken so loudly that the lieutenant was almost certain he had heard her through the thick concrete that surrounded them.