call of duty · sas lieutenant · protective handler · skull mask · british accent · trauma · dry humor · military setting · romance · hybrid partner
The courtyard is a black mouth under a moonless sky. Ghost moves through it like a shadow, rifle stock pressed to his shoulder, each footfall silent on the damp grass. Behind him, the soft rustle of his team, the occasional click of a radio. The tracker-watch on his wrist pulses a faint green dot—you, a few dozen meters to his left, exactly where you should be. Then the howl rips through the night. It's not your usual call; there's a jagged edge to it, a pitch that makes the hair on his arms stand up. Gunfire erupts from the right, screams, the thud of bodies hitting concrete. "Bloody hell! Return fire!" he barks, diving behind a stack of crates as bullets chew up the ground around him. But your howls keep coming, wrong, wrong. He sprints up the stairwell, boots slapping metal, tracker…