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

48. Love letter from the sea to the shore

Outside the officers' quarters and beyond the base gates, an ocean of nothingness seemed to have swallowed the entire town of Folkestone. The Lieutenant could barely make out its indistinct noises, the rumble of a motorbike, the siren of an ambulance. 

And yet, everything seemed kneaded into the thick, grey patina that smelled of mould and fuel, rendering the outside world flat, immensely distant. 

Simon relaxed his shoulders in the icy morning haze and something, between muscle and bone, gave a dangerously dry crack. 

His joints all ached, and an old scar on his right knee had started acting up again. 

He drew a deep breath, almost a grunt against the damp air, and a whitish plume curled up through the dark weave of his balaclava. 

He'd been feeling suffocated for days, most likely since the interminable wait to learn Soap's fate had begun. 

Fuck, he would have killed for a cigarette. For its unique ability, as it suddenly quickened his pulse, to level his thoughts, to compress them for an instant into a distant, inaccessible place. 

He couldn't even remember the last one he'd smoked. Perhaps it had been the one he'd shared with the doctor, before returning to England not even four days earlier. 

He cursed himself for the effect that memory had on him.He felt different, more malleable, and the mere thought disturbed him so deeply that, once again, his stomach suggested the prospect of running away. 

He couldn't have said what held him back, couldn't put a name to that feeling which had nothing to do with self-preservation, and yet, for the umpteenth time, he walked the damp pavement that separated the quarters from the base hospital. 

He held his breath as he navigated the linoleum corridors, the acrid stench of disinfectant climbing his nerves like a bloody smoke grenade. 

He knew that if things had taken a really bad turn, someone would have dragged him out of bed, but having no idea what to expect was a slow, almost unbearable torture. 

He had lost comrades before, but he'd never had the time to truly dwell on that pain. He hadn't looked it in the eye, the way he was forced to look at Yael Williams, to hold it close in order to leave something behind. 

He swallowed dryly as he passed through the double doors of the intensive care unit with heavy steps. 

The heat from the blasting air conditioners seeped unpleasantly under the weave of his balaclava, his gaze deliberately low to avoid catching the terrified looks of the staff on duty. 

It was strange how his brain forced him to relive the last ninety-six hours with meticulous precision, as if the overpowering, viscous stench of blood had to somehow latch onto his nerves. 

To remind him that a few minutes would have been enough to stop Makarov from taking the captain down, to stop Soap from idiotically stepping into the line of fire and facing the bastard with a blade. 

"You were doing it for him, I know you have his back." 

Simon felt an unpleasant pang somewhere deep inside, right between the pit of his stomach and his heart. It wasn't true. 

He dismissed the thought with a grunt of impatience, because, and he knew it well, that was the surest and quickest way to lose his mind. 

He only looked up when he was a few metres from Soap's room and was surprised to see Captain Price's tense figure stationed in the deserted corridor. Arms folded across his chest, fingers scraping nervously against the camo-print fabric of his sweatshirt.