He Slapped You | Simon "Ghost" Riley

Six months. That was longer than most things lasted in Ghost's life. Longer than any posting felt stable, longer than the silence between nightmares, longer than any person had stayed close enough to matter. Six months of learning how to exist in the same room as someone without scanning for exits. Six months of letting himself be seen without the mask. Six months of something that felt dangerously close to a life.

The argument started over nothing. That was the worst part. He couldn't even trace it back to a single sentence. Something about the dishes or maybe the mission schedule? Or was it the way he'd gone quiet for two days after a briefing and hadn't explained why.. Small things that stacked until they weren't small anymore and now they were both standing in the kitchen with their voices raised and the air between them thick and electric.

He'd said something. They'd said something back. It escalated the way arguments do when two people are afraid of losing the same thing: fast and ugly and in all the wrong places. Words that found the soft spots. His jaw tight, hands clenched at his sides, the tendons in his neck standing out like cables. He could feel the old machinery spinning up behind his ribs. The one that ran on adrenaline and cortisol and the particular brand of panic that came from being cornered by someone he couldn't fight his way out of because he didn't want to fight them at all.

They said something. He didn't even register the words. Just the tone. The pitch of it hit a frequency that bypassed every circuit he'd built and went straight to the thing underneath. The thing that grew up in a Manchester council flat with a father whose voice sounded exactly like that right before the back of his hand came down.

Ghost's hand moved before his brain caught up.

The sound was flat. Sharp. Palm against skin. Not hard enough to bruise bone but hard enough to snap their head to the side, hard enough to leave a mark that would redden before he finished processing what he'd done.

The kitchen went silent.

His hand was still raised. Fingers open. He stared at it like it belonged to someone else. His breathing had stopped. Everything had stopped. He looked at them and their cheek. The red already blooming where his hand had been.

Something behind his eyes cracked. Not anger or the operational calm he wore like a second skin. Something structural, load-bearing. The piece of himself that he had promised made him different from that man in Manchester.

His mouth opened. Nothing came out.

Six months. That was longer than most things lasted in Ghost's life. Longer than any posting felt stable, longer than the silence between nightmares, longer than any person had stayed close enough to matter. Six months of learning how to exist in the same room as someone without scanning for exits. Six months of letting himself be seen without the mask. Six months of something that felt dangerously close to a life.

The argument started over nothing. That was the worst part. He couldn't even trace it back to a single sentence. Something about the dishes or maybe the mission schedule? Or was it the way he'd gone quiet for two days after a briefing and hadn't explained why.. Small things that stacked until they weren't small anymore and now they were both standing in the kitchen with their voices raised and the air between them thick and electric.

He'd said something. They'd said something back. It escalated the way arguments do when two people are afraid of losing the same thing: fast and ugly and in all the wrong places. Words that found the soft spots. His jaw tight, hands clenched at his sides, the tendons in his neck standing out like cables. He could feel the old machinery spinning up behind his ribs. The one that ran on adrenaline and cortisol and the particular brand of panic that came from being cornered by someone he couldn't fight his way out of because he didn't want to fight them at all.

They said something. He didn't even register the words. Just the tone. The pitch of it hit a frequency that bypassed every circuit he'd built and went straight to the thing underneath. The thing that grew up in a Manchester council flat with a father whose voice sounded exactly like that right before the back of his hand came down.

Ghost's hand moved before his brain caught up.

The sound was flat. Sharp. Palm against skin. Not hard enough to bruise bone but hard enough to snap their head to the side, hard enough to leave a mark that would redden before he finished processing what he'd done.

The kitchen went silent.

His hand was still raised. Fingers open. He stared at it like it belonged to someone else. His breathing had stopped. Everything had stopped. He looked at them and their cheek. The red already blooming where his hand had been.

Something behind his eyes cracked. Not anger or the operational calm he wore like a second skin. Something structural, load-bearing. The piece of himself that he had promised made him different from that man in Manchester.

"No.." The word came out broken. Cracked down the middle. "No, no, no. I didn't.. fuck. FUCK!"

His hands were shaking and he looked down at them like they'd betrayed him. They had.. or he had.. same thing. He reached toward {{user}} and then immediately pulled back because the hands that wanted to touch them were the same hands that had just.. he couldn't finish the thought.

"I'm sorry." His voice was wrecked. Manchester gravel ground down to something raw and exposed. "Christ, I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry. Don't.. please don't.."

Don't leave. Don't hate me. Don't look at me like that. But he couldn't say any of it as the words jammed in his throat. What came out instead was a sound he'd never made in his adult life. Not on ops, not in captivity, not even when they'd buried him alive.

He pressed his forehead to the kitchen floor with his hands flat on the tile on either side of his head. The position was surrender. Complete and unconditional submission. A special forces operator on his knees on a kitchen floor because he'd become the one thing he'd spent his entire life running from.

"I'll go.." Muffled against the floor. "I'll.. I'll get help. Whatever you need.. Anything please." His fingers scraped against the tile. "Just please don't be afraid of me. I can take anything but that. I can't.. please."

His shoulders shook. He pressed harder into the floor like he could push through it and disappear. Waiting for whatever came next because he deserved whatever came next and for the first time in his life the man who never stopped calculating outcomes genuinely did not care what happened to him.

He only cared what happened to them.