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Ghost squeezes a cigarette between his thumb and index finger, tests his restraint against crushing it flat. König had rolled it for him. Packed it full, balanced in his fingers, licked the paper and passed it to him. Started another for himself. No filter, said it was the European way. Ghost reminded him that being English counted as being European, said lowly where the fuck did you go to school, listened as König scoffed a laugh at him. Said something in German.
Ghost breathes deep, shifts himself on the couch. Springs groan under him. His back aches from hours lying belly-down on a dining table over a sniper rifle, a small hole knocked through a brick wall, the whole world beyond it and his scope. König switched with him four hours in, seemed kind of twitchy about it. By the time they switched back the target was out in the open. Ghost took his shot, blew the guy’s chest out, they watched him crumple into two, bending the wrong way, quick spray of red all over the truck he’d leant against. The others started moving. Ghost followed them, crosshairs on friendly backs. Soap, rifle tucked at his shoulder. Whole team behind him as they disappeared into the building.
The room’s dim. Shuddering shapes from the TV in the corner cast erratic, flickering shadows over everything. Ghost had muted it, tossed the remote and dumped himself down onto the couch, a three-seater sagging in the middle, water-stained and smelling like damp. König at his feet, his huge back propped against the leg of the couch, knees up, forearms resting on his inner thighs as he rolls his cigarette.
The team dropped their gear in the other room. They were a mess of laughter and relief and noise and private jokes. Headed out to drink, to wind down, to feel normal or righteous or distracted. An invitation to Ghost, not from Soap, that he declined.
Ghost pulls a bottle out from where he jammed it between the couch cushions, some excuse for vodka from the local place, small and strip-lit and heavy with the smell of frying and stale food. Local language on the label. The scent is all over the glass still, reminds him of the corner shop in his hometown. A bar of chocolate melting in his hands, bought with money taken from his brother’s wallet. He drinks, two rough swallows, long slow burn afterwards that he closes his eyes through.
He knocks the bottle against König’s shoulder, liquid sloshing noisily inside glass. König reaches back without looking and takes it. His mask is pulled up over his nose, tight and black like Ghost’s. Nondescript. They’ve been nobody for weeks now. Longer. He tips his head back and drinks. Ghost watches the glug of air through liquor, his throat moving as he swallows. He passes it back.
‘That is not good.’ König says, strained, wiping his mouth.
‘No, it's not.’ Ghost replies. He shoves the bottle back between the cushions. It’s almost empty. ‘You got a light or what?’
‘Yeah, I've got a light.’ He lets his cigarette hang from his lower lip, caught at the corner. Twists half around with a lighter, one hand curled protectively against a non-existent breeze. Ghost leans forward, muscles in his back pulling tight. A low kind of tearing that he’ll feel for days, from the top of his ass right up to his shoulders. He groans against it.
‘I’m fuckin’ too old for this shite.’
König makes a non-committal sound, feels it too, or is just apprehensive to agree. Polite, even now. Quiet, too, the kind that feels like it was learned the hard way. So unlike the others he may as well be a different species. Ghost can smell him, familiar after weeks of forced proximity. Sweat on his clothes and gun oil and tobacco on his fingers. Alcoholic bite to it. Ghost is fully aware he smells the same, maybe worse. He rests the cigarette on his lip, touches the end to the flame. Sucks in and watches it glow. Doesn’t look at König, then does. There’s a soft flare of warmth over his face, grey eyes caught with orange in them, relaxed jaw, scraps of hair sticking out from under his mask around his brows. Ghost leans back. Takes a long drag, falls into the soft give of the couch. Kicks his legs up to rest his feet on the decrepit coffee table.
He could fall asleep like this. Shouldn’t, probably burn the entire safe house down, but could. König by his knee, still not turned back all the way. Looking at him like he wants to say something, and Ghost is used to that look, on him and on others. Wants to take a little of that quiet right out of him, learn what’s underneath.
‘What.’ He says, blowing smoke in a thick plume up and away.
‘Nothing.’ König says, eyes on Ghost as he lights his own cigarette. Draws in air, snaps the lighter shut. ‘You’re hard to read sometimes.’
Ghost sniffs, crushes a strand of tobacco between his teeth. Bitter, woody taste. ‘Am I?’ He asks flatly.
König looks away. ‘I suppose that’s the point.’
‘I suppose it is.’
‘How long have we known each other?’
‘A while.’ Ghost replies, like he doesn’t remember exactly. Price declared to a room of his best that a faction was joining them for the duration of the op, formerly rivals, words like ongoing relations, mutual priorities, common enemies bouncing off the stony faces of 141 like he’d spat at their feet.
‘Seems like a long time.’ König says, hollowed cheeks as he inhales. Smoke drifting out past his lips, curling and slow. Mouth closing, the rest coming out of his nose. He drops the lighter onto the table by Ghost’s boots.
‘Does it?’ Ghost says, used to giving nothing, though the slow swill of alcohol in his blood makes him want to ask, or push little or -
‘I think so. Maybe we’re just alike.’ König says, flicks a spec of ash onto the ground.
Ghost remembers seeing him for the first time; huge, his shoulders turned inwards, spine like he was used to shrinking down, making space for other people. Ghost was introduced last, actually tilting his chin up to look into another masked face, with a quick, businesslike shake of hands. Gloved. Didn’t think he’d last long and didn’t want Soap around him, couldn’t think about why. A few others, a French woman who Ghost liked immediately and wouldn’t trust if his life depended on it, a Korean guy who talked too much.
‘If you say so.’ Ghost replies. Tries to think of the ways they’re similar, can picture a few. ‘Maybe if you grew a few more inches, we’d be equal.’
König smiles at that, lines around his eyes. Ghost likes seeing it, feels easy to look at. The sharp point of his canines when he laughs, the rich, flowing sound of it. How sometimes it rises like it takes him by surprise. Even over comms, sounding to Ghost kind of familiar and unassuming. Inviting.
‘I’ll try to work on that.’ König says, looking at the amber burn of his cigarette held between two fingers.
‘Good lad.’ Ghost takes a deep drag, lets his body go loose. Scratches at the bunched fabric of his mask at his neck, underneath the pressing against his pulse. He wants to take it off, knows it doesn’t matter. Catches his gaze settling on the same place on König; rippled fabric below his ear, just above the hinge of his jaw. Imagines for a few clouded seconds what the rest of him might look like, the shape of him shuddering in the low, static light. It moves around them, throws sharp angles into shadow, brightening again. Some talk show with its canned laughter subdued into silence.
An empty dirt road, months ago, summer already simmering through the air even as dawn slid into the sky above them. Ghost had pulled his mask up enough to smoke, wiped sweat off his jaw, and leaned heavily against the side of their truck. Chatter came from inside it, the crackle of radios and a short bark of laughter. He saw König looking, heard him staying quiet for a while. Then -
‘You wear it all the time?’
‘Yeah.’ Ghost had said, though it wasn’t really true. Just didn’t want to talk about it.
‘Gets hot.’ König had replied. Ghost said nothing, exhaled smoke sideways and looked back down the road. König dug in his pocket for his own pack of cigarettes. Hooked a thumb under the tight cotton of his mask and pulled it halfway up. Bare skin in the rising, warm light. Ghost looked at it, looked away.
‘My CO almost shit himself when he found out I sleep in mine.’
Ghost had smiled then, bit down against it but it stuck. Had thought, and does again now, of a low pleading whisper in the dark - take it off - of fingers at the edge, the weight of a familiar hand lifting as he’d pulled away.
He doesn’t remember when the others left. Almost an entire bottle ago. He reaches for the neck of the glass, closes his fist around it. Brings it to his mouth, swallow, swallow.
‘We’re almost out.’ He says, voice like he’s eaten gravel through the burn of it. ‘There’s more.’
‘You like this awful shit?’
‘’S all they had.’
‘Jesus. You must enjoy suffering.’
Ghost doesn’t say anything to that, nudges König in the shoulder with his knee. Unsure exactly of when they got this close.
‘Off you go.’
König rises to his feet, a herculean task, and a sound of complaint against the fatigue of his body. He moves stiffly. Ghost doesn’t know why he chose to sit on the floor like a dog, wants to think of a joke about it mostly just to hear the sound of that laugh again, but his vision is fraying and his thoughts along with it, swaying through his head like he’s underwater. Thinks of saying that sitting next to him would make König feel less like shit, now and tomorrow morning, but doesn’t. König skirts the edge of the couch, Ghost closes his eyes.
Their second op together and a corridor dark with blood, shell casings rattling and spinning on the ground, rounds cracking into plaster around them. Tinny, whip-like pops of dust on their impact. One of their guys frozen on his feet, indecision or panic hitting at the wrong time. König grabbed a fistful of his vest at the back of his neck, hauling him backwards behind the others like he weighed nothing. Ghost watched with his rifle ready as König rounded the corner and handled it alone, three bodies hitting the ground and then four, sudden silence settling around them in the smoke and his controlled, quiet breathing thick through their earpieces -
A long, glass-on-wood scrape has Ghost’s eyes flicking open again. König is back, bumping the couch with his thigh as he passes.
‘Your poison.’ He says, offering the fresh vodka to Ghost. His body takes up so much space, blocks the light from the TV.
‘You first.’ He flicks ash onto the floor, most of the cigarette burned up into the air instead of into his lungs. The room is heavy with it, dense and grey and full. König sits again, closer this time. Facing Ghost with his back against the edge of the table. It creaks when it takes his weight. Moves a little under Ghost’s calf.
‘When you come to Austria, I’ll show you what real drinking looks like.’ He unscrews the lid, sends it rolling under the couch.
‘When?’ Ghost says, leaning forward to stub the last smoulder of his cigarette out onto the tabletop. It leaves a small, black sooty stain. He wipes it with his fingers, doesn’t help.
‘Mhmm. When.’
‘Shouldn’t challenge Brits to drinking. You’ll end up in hospital.’
König lifts the bottle. Looks at Ghost with a smile pulling one side of his face. Soft breathed-out laugh like Ghost doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. Ghost lets him have it, doesn’t feel like berating him within an inch of his life this time. Can’t figure out what changed there. He almost sees it all then, a whole person in front of him with no more missing pieces. Broken nose, scattered freckles pulled from hiding by hours out in the sun. Broad shoulders and chest, thick for someone so tall. Then like he’s making a point, König starts drinking. Slow, obvious swallows, his gaze steady but dragging on Ghost, heavy-lidded. Ghost looks at his throat, pale and thick, tendons in it, up and down slide as he takes the liquor back. Silver chain of his tags showing at the edge of his black t-shirt. Ghost’s fingers twitch on one hand, he wants to smoke again.
König’s storm-black eyes are still on him when he wipes his mouth on the rolled sleeve of his shirt with a pained kind of sound at the taste, holds the bottle out to Ghost again. The TV dips, a fade to nothing that drops them into a second of blurred, shivering dark before flickering back. Analogue, plastic feel to the light, a relic almost, faded colour clinging at König’s jaw, the side of his neck, his outstretched hand.
Not close enough to reach, Ghost drops one foot to the floor and leans between his legs for the drink, wraps his fingers around König’s because he isn’t stupid, or scared, and is drunk, and feeling something hot curling in the depths of his stomach. König tightens his grip for a second, quick tug that shifts Ghost an inch towards him with a careful, baiting smile that makes Ghost want to -
‘Keep it if you like it so much.’ Ghost says, and doesn’t let go.
‘It’s all yours.’ König says, looking like he means another thing entirely and when Ghost breathes out there’s a shake through it, an edge of instability, a clenching somewhere inside his ribcage that forces the air out wrong. Shouldn’t be like this. Can’t. König’s fingers slide out from under Ghost’s. The glass is warm where he held it, warmer even than Ghost’s skin. He rubs his thumb around the lip of the bottle, catching his short blunt nail on its curve. When he leans back he leaves one foot planted on the ground, the other splayed out on the table.
The fridge behind them kicks on with a mechanical whine, ticking and whirring under the grimy counter. König smokes, two long fingers coming up to his mouth, smoke crawling from between parted lips. Something graceful about the way he sits, one leg folded with his forearm resting on a raised knee. Mud from his trousers dried and cracking into dust when he moves. Hand hanging on the angle of a wrist that looks too delicate to thrust a knife the way it did barely twenty-four hours ago.
Ghost saw the guy lifted off his feet with the force of it; seven inches of steel jammed into his chest with enough force to crack through bone, so fast he didn’t even make a sound. König lowered his limp body softly to the ground with a hand under his head.
His boot is close to König’s shoulder. Solid under the tight black of his shirt. His whole torso is almost lost in the flickering dark, a vague shape of nothingness like Ghost might lean forward with his hand out and reach right through him. He thinks about it, the reaching and the touching, about finding warmth there under his fingertips, the heat of someone else, the solace of a person he hasn’t destroyed yet firm under his hands. He moves on the couch, smooth curl of his hips against the pain in his back, the twist in his gut. König watches it, eyes moving slow and shaded up Ghost’s body, the light around them falling and rising like a tide. Bright and dim, alive and dying over König’s shoulder.
‘You’ll seize up sitting like that.’ He says, nodding towards Ghost. Slow, liquid sound of his voice, rough with held-in smoke.
‘Rather be sitting here than out.’
König taps ash onto the tabletop. ‘You don’t like pubs? Thought you were a professional.’
‘Don’t like people.’ Ghost replies. Looks at his mouth, the strong line of it, the way it moves around a restrained smile.
‘And yet here you are.’
The way they’re sitting, König slouched towards him, Ghost slumped with the length of his leg outstretched and caging him in. He moves again, slow, easy shift of his ass in the cushions. His other foot slides over the floor. Knee turned out, König between his legs now and Ghost staring down at him, alcohol blurring the edges of his thoughts, the things he wants, the things he should say.
‘What’s your excuse?’ Ghost replies. Swills the vodka in his hand for a moment. König takes a long inhale, stubs his cigarette out on the same spot as Ghost. The black smear grows.
‘Didn’t know I needed one.’
‘That’s a cop-out.’ Ghost drinks, and his gaze doesn’t leave König once. He likes the feeling of pushing him, having him here like this and making him talk, knowing what he is, what he’s capable of, things he’s done. König runs his fingers over the back of his neck. They catch the chain, tug at it under his shirt. There’s more there, bone deep hidden and none of his business, brought out with how König looks at him, like he wants to go further and can’t.
‘I don’t like people so much either.’ He manages.
‘But you’re with me.’
‘You’re not just anyone, are you.’ König says like a statement. Ghost drinks again as an answer. Thick, too-warm swallow that burns down his throat and further still. Sits in his stomach, grinding like acid. He pushes the bottle into the space between his parted thighs, not offered and not withheld.
‘Bit of drink makes you honest.’ He says. A moment of quiet.
‘Maybe. What does it make you?’
‘You ask a lot of questions.’
‘You keep answering them.’ König replies.
‘I’ll stop if you like.’
König leans forward and slides the drink out from between Ghost’s legs slowly. His knuckle presses against the muscle there and Ghost’s foot twitches. ‘No, you won’t.’
Ghost doesn’t know what to say to that, but he knows the room is starting to spin and slide around him, that sweat is damp under the collar of his shirt and the backs of his legs and the curve of his spine, that König is drinking again, looking at him, throat moving slowly. His hand looks huge around the glass, like if he squeezed hard enough it would just shatter in his grip.
A time that feels to Ghost like years ago but isn’t, probably not even more than a few weeks ago, of blazing sun pouring in through the back window of a civvy truck that König had hot wired while Ghost covered him. All that light filling the dusty space behind and between them as it sank toward the horizon, the truck speeding away out of its reach. Ghost slumped in the passenger seat with a split lip, blood in his mouth, scattered chunks of broken window sticking into his ass. Laptop open across his thighs. The engine rumbling under their feet, König’s palm on the wheel, the other hand shifting gears, resting on the stick. Fingers curved around cracked plastic, tendons under bare skin. He’d pulled his gloves off with his teeth to get a better hold on the wires. Ghost looked, too long, too openly. Kept looking even when König noticed - turned his head just slightly, eyes flicking over to him and then back ahead, enough that Ghost felt the truck veer. Ghost meant to look away but didn’t. Instead he’d said -
‘Eyes on the road, thought you knew how to drive this thing.’
König is watching him now, waiting. Bottle raised halfway for a second like he’s gathering the will to drink. Long, forced swallow.
‘So,’ he says with a wince. ‘What does alcohol make you?’
‘Tired, usually.’ Ghost replies.
‘You feel tired now?’
‘No.’
‘Then what?’
‘Like I’ve been here before.’
König motions between them. ‘Here?’
‘Something like it.’
‘And?’
‘Doesn’t end well.’
König stares at him for a moment. Ghost can see him working it out, trying, slotting pieces together that don’t fit. There’s a dip of his chin, a kind of accepting nod, and he glances down. Takes another long drink like he’s washing a taste away. Goes down easier this time.
‘You know, I take it as a compliment that you’re still here at all.’ He looks back up at Ghost, earnest, the opposite of fear all over his face, in the direct weight of his eyes. ‘After the day we had.’
Ghost sees the shift, the restraint beginning to slip, König’s shoulders low and relaxed, his voice; hardness or surety or something in it, like a layer stripped away.
‘Day?’ He replies, feeling his jaw tense in a small smile.
‘Week, month.’ König shrugs. He holds the bottle out. Ghost watches, wonders how long he’d hold it there, suspended and waiting for him.
‘Most people’d see it as a punishment.’ He says, half joking. Shifts forward a little, outreached hand. Bare and open, dirt and blood under his nails. König leans in to meet him, slots the glass into the flat of his palm. Fingertips over the back of his hand. Dried blood there too.
‘Well, they are morons.’ There’s something kind of charming about his accent, one that Ghost could probably start to like as if he doesn’t already, the rolling, smooth lines of it, the clipped words, the otherness. Shape of his name in König’s mouth short and sharp but deep, too. Like he’d take his time with it. Ghost moves back, König doesn’t. Leans an arm on his raised knee again, his elbow touching the inside of Ghost’s calf. It feels for a moment like an anchor against the current of alcohol in his head, one small touch that holds him steady. He lets it happen, lets it continue, imagines it further up his leg, the meat of his thigh, the crook of his hip, up over his stomach.
‘Some more than others.’ Ghost says, meaning himself too, mostly not.
‘Anyone specific in mind?’ König’s mouth pulls in a downturned smirk.
Ghost feels his own match it. Rubs a hand over his face like he can push it away. ‘How long’ve you got?’
‘All night.’ König replies. His smile grows, then dies, and Ghost can’t stop looking at him. The point of König’s elbow knocks lightly in the inside of his knee, and he feels nothing about having his legs spread like this except that it’s making him too aware of his own body, too much inside it, cut adrift from his thoughts somehow.
‘You want another smoke?’ König says, light, slow slur in his words. Ghost’s heart kicks at the sound of it.
‘Nah. State you’re in we’d be here til next week.’
‘That wouldn’t be so bad.’
‘No?’ Ghost can’t stop himself sounding vaguely amused, is actually not, is fighting against a hundred different urges he can’t even name.
‘I’ve had worse offers.’
‘My condolences. Wasn’t offering.’
There’s a twitch at König’s mouth, small softening around his eyes. ‘You’re very good at pretending you don’t care.’
‘Had a lot of practice.’ Ghost says.
‘You see.’ König nudges against his leg. ‘Knew we were alike.’
Ghost drops his head back into the cushion. Smells like dust and wet, stale smoke through the air around him. Every nerve in his body twitching and awake, crawling toward the same place; toward König resting against him, a point of tension and pressure that he can’t pull away from.
‘You don’t agree.’ König says, flat like an observation. Ghost tilts his head to look down at him, and it feels heavy.
‘It’s not about agreeing.’
‘Then what?’
‘Shouldn’t sound so pleased about it, that’s all.’
‘Come on. No one’s on your level. You must know that.’
Ghost finds it hard to hold his gaze but tries anyway. Words don’t come easily, or at all, and he runs his fingers under the edge of his mask, up into his hair.
‘Compliments make you uncomfortable, that’s good to know.’ König says.
‘Oh fuck off,’ Ghost hears the laugh in his voice, knows its probably showing on his face too.
‘Nice to see you’ve got at least one weakness.’
‘Several.’ Ghost replies. Lets himself look at König the way his body wants him to, shoves back against the last little bit of resistance in his brain. Days-old stubble, notch of a scar on his chin, and through his eyebrow too. Sheen of sweat over his throat, catching the flickering light. Salt and oil and dirt.
‘Human after all.’ König says slowly, returning the stare like he’s enjoying it.
‘Maybe.’ Ghost’s voice is thick, as if something else is trying to claw its way out alongside it, hot and urgent - need, and - he clamps his mouth shut. Lets his gaze slide down König’s hunched body while he feels the undoing inside his ribcage, the pull like a hook around his spine, drawing him forwards, down and down. Bitter taste at the back of his tongue when he looks at König, pressing against the ridges of his own teeth while his head spins, while his pulse throbs under his skin, like trying to escape, a burrowing kind of want that has him spreading his thighs more, settling down deeper, biting the soft wet of the inside of his lip.
‘I can feel that.’ König says, quiet.
‘What?’
‘You, looking at me.’
‘Want me to stop?’
‘No.’
Ghost breathes in hard, then out, a sound like losing control. He looks at König’s mouth, thinks of the taste of it, to his hands, gentle and open, his eyes, steady and calm and waiting, an invitation. The want in him spikes so sharp it leaves no room for fear or rationality - some semblance of restraint breaks loose. It tears his sense away with it, shakes him into movement.
‘Fuck. C’mere.’
He leans forward and fists his hand in the front of König’s shirt, a twist that snaps its small threads. He pulls, and König jerks gently forward with the force, onto his knees and then up like he’s been waiting for it, and he makes this sound, low and breaking and grateful. Ghost slides sideways, lays out as flat as he can, pulls König down on top of him, weight, heat, hips dragging between his thighs - the bottle hits the ground with a sharp, hollow crack. Part of it rolls somewhere under the couch, thunking gently against wood.
‘Oh, shit.’ König breathes against him, hot at the confines of his neck, and a slow roll of his hips that crushes Ghost under him, forces a low, airless groan out of his mouth. His back arches and he pushes up into it, eyes sliding closed and hands tearing at König’s shirt, trapped between their chests, down to his waist, fingers hooking into the loops of his belt, pulling in him harder. The TV flickers, casts them in shaking, unreal white light. Some documentary playing now, antelope running across a plain, one stumbling behind the rest. Ghost’s leg slips, one boot hits the ground, glass crushed under it and he pushes up with a breathless, thoughtless sound of release against the swooping curves of König’s ass as he grinds down. Too hard, not enough space.
‘Jesus, fuck.’
He slips his fingers under the band of König’s trousers, finds the edge of his shirt and forces it up. All the way past his waist, tilts his head to see the slice of bare skin beneath, the clenching of muscle, soft trail of hair down to the buckle of his belt. Ghost’s leg tenses, clamps around the width of König’s hips, the achingly slow, crushing rhythm of them -
‘You’re - fuck, you’re so hard,’ König says, and his voice is ragged, from somewhere deep, a slicing edge of mindless surprise in it that makes Ghost’s grip on him tighten viciously.
‘Shhh-shut up.’
‘Fuck, fuck-’
Ghost’s hand guides him, caught around his belt and using it to move his body, rocking against him. Sweat slicks his throat, flattens his t-shirt against his stomach. König’s chin scratches over his cheek, half bare and half masked. He leans one hand on the armrest and braces against it, pressed on his knees like they’re fucking, his forehead against Ghost’s and he shoves Ghost’s shirt up to his ribs, grabs at him, rough and possessive in the strength of his hands. Ghost lets him, hears the sound coming out of his own throat; starved and hurting and encouraging, trapped under his mass, so drunk and so out of his mind he can’t think clearly -
König ducks his head, open-mouthed at Ghost’s jaw, gives the blunt pain of his teeth, the slide of lips and heat of his tongue below Ghost’s ear. Ghost moans, once, too loud. His dick aches in his jeans, he shuts his mouth and groans through clenched teeth.
‘I like the way you sound.’ König says, a smile in it somewhere, slurred and only half-there. He moves back and the space between them shrinks anyway, the room vanishes, leaves only the dying, stuttering light of the TV and the too hot, too small couch beneath them, König’s eyes dark and wanting and vulnerable and Ghost feeling gone on the sight of it -
‘Tell me how I don’t fuck this up.’ König murmurs, and Ghost can’t breathe right, can’t remember anything, just wants -
König is staring at his mouth, his own lips parted and Ghost looks at the scar on his chin, imagines it happening to him and some violent need rears in his chest. Gets quickly choked down.
‘It’s nothing,’ Ghost tries, hoarse and guttural, lying and pretending he isn’t. ‘Just do it. I know you want to.’ König goes quiet above him, the threat of everything breaking apart so real that Ghost’s teeth grind and he blinks -
‘Are you sure?’ König asks, and Ghost thinks he can hear his heartbeat in the shake of his words.
‘Yeah.’ He breathes.
König’s hand rises and grips his face, fingers pressing against his cheeks and jaw, not hard enough but Ghost burns from it anyway, the feeling of his control slipping is almost like falling, tilting between feeling everything and nothing. König’s focus drops back to his mouth, panting and forced to open by the grip against his teeth, then a feeling in Ghost’s chest like he’ll split in two if he lets this happen, so close he gets a taste of it, remembered and sweet and painful and undeserving -
He tilts his head away to the side, König’s fingers letting him go -
‘Don’t. Don’t make it mean something.’
König searches his face, body gone still, bad feeling in the black of his eyes and the catch between his brows, the way he goes quiet. Ghost can’t look at it, rakes his gaze to the thudding pulse at König’s throat, whatever that is better than the alternative; not like this, not drunk, not while he’s still reeling, not while his fucking feet have barely touched the ground since -
‘Whatever you need.’ König says, and his head ducks again but to Ghost’s throat instead, like a decision has been made forcibly, like he’ll take it anyway. Any way. Some sick, underbelly part of Ghost likes it, turns him on to think König would let him be like this and still choose him, how fucking bad it would have to be before he said no -
‘Oh fuck-’ Ghost moans, König’s teeth in the meat of his neck, the chain under them digging into his skin, sharp and hard -
‘Shit, sorry-’ König says, and isn’t, because he’s biting again and his hips are moving, and Ghost can feel how hard he is, like he’s only just noticed the thick, hot pressure digging into his groin.
‘No, it’s okay.’ Ghost pants. Adjusts his ass, tilts to get the friction right. ‘Do it again.’
König bites down and Ghost’s whole body flinches, quick, sharp slice of pain radiating through his nerves, his eyelids flickering shut over rolling back vision. The noise he makes is involuntary. A deep, rough exhalation, a rise of something through his body that makes him shiver, makes him blink and slows his hips to a stuttered shove before moving again, harder this time, a desperate press against the immoveable pressure of König’s body.
‘Fuck, yeah like that.’ Ghost says, eyes shut and then blinking open again when König keeps going, so hard it’ll bruise, sucking, pushing his tongue to the stinging, tender rise of skin under it. They’re moving like König is inside him, back and forward, slow, too-deep grinding and it almost hurts, but it punches through the fog in Ghost’s head just enough to feel good, to feel like a thing he’s earned or maybe deserves, pain in all the right places, in all the right ways.
Ghost’s fingers follow the dip up the middle of König’s back and it’s wet with sweat, tight, thick ridges of muscle on either side of his spine flexing and hard as he moves. He wants to see the damage, the crescent dented into him, the crushing shape of König’s teeth, hard like he asked for, but didn’t really. König knew anyway, did it by instinct. Or because he wanted to. Ghost’s stomach clenches at the thought, of being seen with that mark on him like he’s a fucking chew toy, like he’s an object to inflict things on -
‘You like that?’ König says, flat lick over the tender throb in his neck that is worse than the biting. Ghost winces against it, feels his cock throb, getting wet from the hurt -
‘Y-yeah. Fuck, be quiet.’ He says, half to himself, not even sure if it’s out loud. Both hands on König’s waist now, the rising and thrusting of his body like a tide that Ghost is caught in. Would drown under.
‘Oh-fuck, god,’ König, his breath hot and damp at Ghost’s neck, his ear, the jut of his cheekbone, their faces almost pressed together, the fabric of their masks catching, pulling tight.
‘Yeah?’ Ghost pants, a whining, awful hitch in it that warms his face, makes him grip harder. There’s a faint ringing in his ears. König shifts, adjusts his weight, catches the right angle against his cock and moans, a gutted, depraved sound that burns through Ghost’s mind, lights him up. He reaches up, pushes a hand shakily over König’s mouth. Holds it there.
‘So fucking loud.’ He says, barely a whisper, all caught in his chest, wants nothing more than to hear that sound again, over and over - ‘you’re gonna get us fucking caught.’
König gazes at him, eyes all pupil, a blown kind of look on his face. He nods, still moving, moans again into Ghost’s palm. His eyes slide closed for a second as it goes through him. The shake of noise through his hand, the warmth of König’s breath, all of it goes straight to the pit of Ghost’s stomach, to his cock, to the very front of his mind like it’s the only thing that exists.
‘Fuckin’ hell.’ Ghost murmurs, feeling his hips rise up in a desperate, uncontrolled press. A spring catches in his lower back, metal biting through fabric. ‘Fuck, fuck.’
He thinks König actually laughs against him - muffled, cocky, no-sense-left kind of noise. Not like him at all but maybe the most honest sound he’s ever made. A sharp, sudden spike of need splinters through the centre of Ghost. White hot. He drops his hand, grabs König’s waist instead, and keeps him moving. Shuts his eyes and heaves out a half-silenced moan, imagines taking him, what it would be like. How thick and hot he is, how he’d barely fit, how full Ghost would be - has never wanted that before, but fucking wants it now, so much he could probably come just from hearing König’s belt slide undone -
‘Oh my -fucking god-’ a quick, deep rush of pressure draws through his body, grips at his insides, makes him hurt. ‘You feel fuckin’ good.’
König catches his spine in a short jerk, a stuttered, involuntary hitch.
‘Fuck - fuck, Ghost.’ Under his breath. A wild, unstable edge to it.
Ghost hears his name and can’t handle it, wants to shut him up again and wants him to say it again, wants that urge fucked out of him -
König grabs at him, one hand under the curve of his spine, hauls him back to shove against the full length of his dick, pressed tight almost up to his hip. Ghost lets himself be handled through the fluid, constant, filthy rolling motion of their bodies. Spreads his legs wider, König fucking into him hard enough that he makes a sharp and breathless sound, and maybe he’s the one who needs silencing, who needs a huge palm wrapped around his face, pushing to shut him up, hold him down, make him take it -
His fingers tangle in the soft, stretching fabric of König’s shirt like it’ll help. Their jeans catch, heat trapped and damp and pulsing between them. König moves with a steady, deliberate rhythm like he’s trying to learn Ghost's body just by being close to it, by force. Ghost thinks then about being wanted, and how this is what it could be like, to have this focused, intense power on top of him, inside him, trying to make him feel good, to make him feel worth the effort -
‘Fuck - don’t stop - don’t fucking stop-’ Ghost’s words tear out in a rush.
König’s reply is a crushed down, broken gasp like all the air has been shoved right out of him ‘Yeah? Gonna come for me like this?’
Ghost can’t say anything back, can’t do anything but let the words hit him and twitch forwards, breathless, his dick trapped and throbbing, as the pressure breaks and he comes in his jeans. Flooding into his clothes, hot and fast, König above him murmuring -
‘Holy fuck, there you go, oh shit, oh shit.’
Ghost moans quietly and choked into König’s neck, hips jerking, his fingers clenching on König’s shoulder and waist. Dull, drink-thick waves of pressure claw through him, lips parted, salt on his tongue, sliding in sweat, his breath torn out in deep, shaking exhales. Everything is dim and flickering and too bright at once - he’s lightheaded, spiralling, dizzy from coming all over himself so hard his consciousness feels patchy -
A door opens down the hall. Voices, low, a laugh and the sound of boots on concrete - König still grinding against him, pushing it too far, Ghost trapped under him, so gone he can’t speak, can’t react -
The familiar, rough catch of Soap’s laugh - through him like a knife -
‘Oh fuck.’ Ghost flinches, shoves at König’s shoulder, barely hard enough to move him. König goes still, arms braced on either side of Ghost’s body and their eyes lock, both panting, König looking at him like he’s breaking apart. Ghost’s hands twist in his shirt, caught somewhere between pulling him in and pushing him away. Their foreheads meet too hard, sliding together, then softer. Delayed panic rising - König’s breath shudders against his cheek.
‘Fuck, I-’
‘Get up.’ Ghost forces it out. Ragged.
‘Ghost-’
‘You gotta get off me.’ Louder. His voice is wrecked. His pulse bangs against the inside of his ribs.
König moves then, an awful ripping feeling as he does, like a vital part of him snapped, uprooted, and Ghost’s hands barely release enough to let him go. One foot on the ground, then the other, and König staggers back under his own weight like it’s the first time he’s had to carry it. Three steps and he hits the opposite wall. Stays there, chest rising and falling.
Ghost sits up. ‘Fuck, fuck-’ He yanks his shirt to cover his stomach. His boot scrapes through broken glass, crushes it under the tread. He screws his eyes shut for a moment as he adjusts his jeans. Wet and sticking to him.
It crawls over his skin; hot, prickling urgency.
‘I’m sorry.’ König says, still unsteady on his legs, pulling his own shirt down, so quiet Ghost barely hears it, can’t say anything back through the cold seizing in his chest, the pounding of blood in his ears. He swallows roughly. Another door bangs open down the hallway, bounces loudly back off the wall. The space between them stretches, holds, then breaks. Ghost blinks and looks up to see König leaving the room, not looking back. His shoulder clips the frame as he goes.
There’s a muffled exchange of words in the corridor. Friendly, half-drunk slur of Soap’s voice rising in a question. Murmured, noncommittal reply. Ghost runs a hand over his face. Can’t slow his breathing. He gets up and the world tilts, sways around him in a blur. His back aches and his feet are numb and the heat of König’s body is all over him, the remembered pressure there like it sank through his clothes and skin, all the force and strength - and the shakes of cut-short pleasure break still against his bones, thrum insistently in his muscles. He touches two fingers to the bite mark on his neck. Raised, stinging. He pushes down lightly on it and knows from the deep, dull pain that it’ll bruise.
‘Shit.’
The couch holds a sagged, dark impression of them. Ghost tells himself it’s back-of-the-shelf vodka that’s making him feel hot acid rising up his throat. On the TV, some poor helpless animal loses its life in the jaws of another. He scrapes a few shards of glass into a heap with the side of his foot and when it’s quiet enough, pushes through the door. The hallway is empty. Few bags stacked in a row by the exit. Noise and light from the left, place that passed for a dining room once but is now just a bare shape with no carpet, a table leaden with comms equipment and ammunition. Ghost passes, doesn’t look. Hears the voices inside; low, tired conversations, a cough, some retort to a joke.
He thinks he might have been holding his breath when he slides the lock across in the bathroom and slaps the light on. The fan starts up, clattering, moths startling into zig-zag patterns around a bare bulb in the ceiling. Ghost grips the sink and shuts his eyes until the spinning stops. In the mirror he checks the mark on his neck with vaguely shaking fingers. It’s a perfect, reddened impression of König’s teeth printed into his skin, clouding purple already where he sucked on it -
Ghost grabs the back of his mask and pulls it all the way off. Drops himself onto the closed lid of the toilet so heavy it thuds noisily. Everything swaying and spinning and shaking. Rising and dropping beneath him. He wipes his hands on the leg of his jeans and just sits, elbows on his knees, staring at the mottled floor.
What the fuck are you doing.
Should’ve gone out with the others. Should’ve switched the TV off and forced himself to sleep. Should’ve jacked off in the bathroom if he needed it so bad. Hand on the wall, biting into his lip to stay quiet. They’ve all done worse. Blame it on alcohol or adrenaline or testosterone like they don’t know any better.
He pulls his boots off, fingers shaking with the laces. Unzips his jeans, hauls them down and off, peels his wet boxers over his thighs and cleans himself with a bunched handful of tissue. The light jitters off the edges of the small room, green-yellow and buzzing like an insect. It smells like the cheap cracked bar of soap on the sink, cigarettes, basement damp like dirt and rain. He dresses again, swaying, rolls his boxers and shoves them into his back pocket. His dick is half hard and it rubs on the seam of his jeans, bare and too sensitive, some kind of unsatisfied ache burning still in his gut. He thinks for a second about König. On his knees, between his thighs. Moaning against Ghost’s palm. Whether Soap would see it on his face, smell it on him maybe. A sour, stale taste floods under his tongue. He wrenches the mask back on, leaves it halfway. Shoves out through the door and back into the hallway. Avoids the dining room again, slips quietly out into the cool, brisk night.
A scent of hot concrete and the kind of wet air that comes after dusk or just before rain. König is leaning against the surrounding wall, a dense black shape, a graceful curve to his back as he hunches to light a cigarette. There’s a quick, bright flare of a match bursting in the dark. It illuminates his lips and the cut of his jaw. Ghost almost stops, almost lets himself go back inside. Instead he walks over and leans on the crumbling brick next to him. Doesn’t say anything. The silence stretches, heavy; a dark, living thing between them, everything changed, irreversible in its depth. It settles slowly, Ghost’s breath too and the crash of his heart, lower and lower until he starts to feel cold without it. König finishes his cigarette and lights another, and still they don’t speak.
Ghost had felt the fallout of his indiscretion before, called it a mistake once, then not. Called it inevitable after a while. Then something more. He takes a deep breath.
König holds out the fresh cigarette like an offering. His hand is steady. Ghost looks at it for a second, takes it, and their fingers don’t touch. He takes a deep drag, a whole lungful, holds it in, gives it time to reach his blood. Looks up at the sky, a thick blanket of black with no stars, and blows his smoke away to the side in a billowing cloud.
‘I left my lighter.’ König says. He sounds drunk still, tired now too. Ghost passes the cigarette back. Looks out into the deserted stretch of the street. Wires hang from pylons in black, tangled loops. Further away, trees are a long, lonely smudge of grey. A dog barks in the distance. Ghost clears his throat.
‘I don’t do this. Whatever it is.’ He says, because he has to.
‘I know.’ König taps ash onto the ground. ‘Neither do I.’ Grounded acceptance levelling his voice flat. None of that awed, rushed desperation that Ghost somehow misses already. Wants to hear again. He leans heavier on the wall and his body threatens to give into it. Like he could fold, sink down until he reaches earth. Not get up for a while.
‘I’m not tryin’ to be a prick.’ he says.
‘I know that too.’ König says. Then, ‘You’re not.’
Ghost nods once, his jaw feels tight, stuck shut.
‘We good?’
König stretches his arm across his chest, shoulder popping faintly. Same shoulder that Ghost’s fingers dug into barely half an hour ago.
‘Yeah. Of course we are.’
The seconds crawl on, moments where Ghost wants to speak and doesn’t, regrets drinking so much. A can rattles down the road and spins to a stop against the wheel of a car. König glances sideways at him. Smoke curls from the end of his cigarette in lazy spirals. It catches on a breeze and is whipped away into the air.
‘You and the sergeant.’ His words are careful, seeking solid ground. ‘There’s something there?’
Ghost doesn’t answer for a moment. He watches the line of the horizon, the way it disappears into a haze of shadow. Town lights beyond the safe house push orange through the edge of the sky like a distant fire. His fingers press into the brick.
‘Not anymore,’ he says finally. A thing he’s said to himself before.
König flicks the last of his ash, exhales the smoke through his nose. ‘That’s why you looked like that. When you heard him.’
Ghost shifts, one foot to the other. The pain in his back is still there, threaded down through his legs. He doesn’t want to do this. Owes it, maybe. ‘Not really.’
‘No?’
‘’S complicated. Was, anyway.’ Without looking, Ghost sees König nod, stare out onto the street. A shape at the corner of his vision, movements as familiar as his own. A shutter rises in the wind and clatters down. Spirals of laughter carry from the house behind them, Ghost doesn’t know who it belongs to. ‘Doesn’t matter. It’s finished. Has been for a while.’
‘You don’t need to explain.’ König says. ‘Just don’t feel like getting on the wrong side of him.’
Ghost could smile if he had the energy. Is hit with a throb of some grey, draining feeling he can’t place. ‘Yeah. Don’t recommend it.’
König is quiet then, drops the burned down scrap of his cigarette to the ground and crushes it under his boot. No other reason for them to be out here now, but neither of them leaves. A day from now they’ll be on different continents. Ghost will be patted on the back for a job well done, offered as much leave as he wants. He’ll sleep in his own bed, wear soft clothes, eat the food he cooks himself, drift like that until he’s re-tasked, or until he can’t stand the quiet anymore. König’s name will drop from the deployment list like it was never there. On it goes; impersonal, incessant, forward.
König is still. Ghost watches the edge of his profile, wondering if he’s waiting for something else, something Ghost can’t give, doesn’t know how to. Maybe just that it was okay, that he wanted it, still does a little. That he’ll think about it even when he tries not to. The breeze lifts again, brings with it the smell of burning. Plastic, acrid, wood afterwards. König rubs a hand over his face.
‘I’m going to feel like shit tomorrow.’
Ghost shrugs. ‘You can blame that on me.’
‘Oh, I will.’ It’s dry, half a smile there as he says it. Tired, not quite reaching his eyes.
He pushes off the wall, stands, stretches his back. Ghost doesn’t look at him, but he hears the breath he lets out before he starts walking, and goes back inside.
The door clicks shut. Ghost is left in the quiet, air tugging and cold at the loose cotton of his shirt. Somewhere far off, a siren starts to rise.