A/N: FAITH. Defined here as the complete trust; something that is believed with complete conviction. This one vaguely and loosely follows a one-shot I posted on ACOD called "Free". It isn't really necessary for you to read it to understand this one, but it would help. If you do decide to read it, beware: "Free" is over 13,000 words long. ALSO! This one is really kinda fluffy, but the footnote at the end explains it.
Reeserella: Haha. Thank you. That one made me smile when I was writing it. :)
duvalia: Ummm... Close enough to a weekend? XD Ohdear... I think there would be more hell to pay if the baby were Royce's, lol. Would you know that Sebastian had to go and inspire that one too? Sneaky bastard. XD
TheBleeding: Rule One: Don't ever worry about rambling. I do it all the time, so I rarely notice when others do it. XD I have a few foster brothers and a veritable fuck-ton of close friends either in the military or going to school on military scholarships. One of my foster brothers is in the Army and he had these stories of kids in Afghanistan thinking it was funny trying to teach the soldiers Arabic. Spent almost 10 months in Afghanistan and he heads to Iraq in January. T_T
xGhostxStealth: Haha. Thank you. I look forward to seeing anything you come up with. :) I'm working on getting my hands on the comics, I'm just a little broke at the moment. XD
Arhani "Hanny" Daforcena: Well... If Ghost is a Superhero... Then that must make Soap... Um... The bestest Superhero ever? XD
ameij: It's a gift. And I love making you cry. XD I love you too. :D
xStealthxSniperx: My younger brother is 14, so he has me buy a lot of his knives for him. XD I try doing tricks with them, but I'm easily distracted. He was teaching me to use his butterfly knife and I managed to bruise most of the back of my right hand and stab myself in the palm of my left hand, lol. No, your phrase did not sound corny. It made sense to me because I know exactly what you mean. :) They are called the Seven Holy Virtues and these are going to be a little more difficult than the others because these guys are so often portrayed as anything but virtuous... Also, no. Ezio does not appear until the second game. :(
iTestedGarrus'reach: As long as you promise to keep the plan a secret, I suppose I can let you live. XD I'm terrified for the sake of my hypothetical children, mostly because I have very little patience and I'm immature myself (though I've started talking to one of my ex-boyfriends again and my mom listed genetic reasons we would make awesome babies together). Heh heh.
GranBoy: I did a Google image search of that band of yours, and I must agree. Very pretty. :D Fleshing out the characters is a huge pet peeve of mine. Just because they make their living getting shot at doesn't mean that's all there is to it, you know? I kinda like to think that Ghost is only a bad-ass when he needs to be. Because really, the CO is the one everyone is scared of. The XO is the one everyone runs to, so he can't be mean all the time... Haha.
Aphelion: OMG! YUSSSS! :D Send iiiiiiiit! :D
Joveesia: Haha. Yeahhh. I'm a mega-nerd. Serenity and Firefly are seriously amazing. :D The gameplay is pretty good on campaign, even though it's a really short story mode... Yeah... I hope you get a chance to play it for reals. And thank you. Ameij and I have actually been linking back and forth to each other for quite a while now, haha. "If Only" was the first one, actually... We tend to accidentally inspire one another. XD
Strude: Haha. I have never personally done drugs. Drinking on the other hand... Well... Let's not venture there. XD Trust me, things like the Soap/Ghost/Stray/Roach have crossed my mind... I just have to be careful which boundaries I cross, because there may not be any coming back once I unleash those beasts, heh heh. I'm glad you like the stories luv, and there will be plenty more of them. :)
It was a delicate situation, one that required finesse and patience and just a little luck. Roach had opened up his closet and a parade of skeletons had come dancing out of the farthest reaches and the darkest corners. No matter how much self-help experts said it would help you to get secrets off your chest, they always failed to mention how much it can torment you while you're trying to recover from telling those secrets.
It had happened before a mission labeled "routine" but with the potential to become a shit-storm in the blink of an eye. They were to be taking a foreign liaison on the mission to keep another government happy. Gary had shut down, pushed everyone way, became paranoid, tried to opt out of the mission. He'd finally confessed to Ghost that he'd been involved with the liaison twice before, and both times had ended in severe abuse, mental, physical, and in the conclusion of their second try, sexual.
It had been almost a week since their mission went south and the liaison used everyone's mad scramble for survival as an opportunity to beat Gary again. Simon had tried stopping the crazed man, tried talking sense into him, but it had ultimately ended in the liaison's death, one that was officially listed as a casualty of their war with Ultranationalists. In that week, Gary had made only minimal progress. He was still plagued by nightmares, he still woke up shuddering and whimpering and screaming.
Riley had eventually broken down and told Soap what was going on with his lover. John had listened with a passive expression, though his eyes gave him away; he was just as appalled by Yuri's behavior as anyone could possibly be. Simon later told him about the nightmares, how Gary would spend much of the night pleading with demons from his past. He was beginning to look haggard and run sluggishly. Ghost was genuinely concerned.
"No. No, don't. Please no." Roach begged.
Ghost's fingers slid through Sanderson's dark hair and the Sergeant quieted some. The clock on the nightstand mocked their plight with a cheery blue display: "0216". Simon rubbed at his eyes with a sigh that was nearly silent.
"You don't have to keep waking up for me." Gary mumbled.
"Yes I do."
"Just makes me feel guilty."
"Why?"
"Because now you're losing sleep because I'm such a damn fool."
Shocked and appalled by that proclamation, Simon sat up and pulled Gary onto his lap and held him close.
"I wouldn't do anything if I didn't bloody well want to, so you've got nothing to feel guilty over."
"Hn."
"What do you dream?" Ghost asked after a moment. Roach just shifted and sighed and contemplated the best way to answer that question. It wasn't the first time he'd been asked that question, and he doubted it would be the last time.
"Sometimes they're flashbacks to Yuri and Ukraine. Sometimes... Sometimes they're worse."
Riley waited for Gary to continue.
"Sometimes they're about you. A lot of you leaving because I'm fucked up. Standard shit."
Simon sighed. Even after Yuri was gone, Roach was having these nightmares and insecurities.
"I'm not going anywhere, Sanderson. You have to trust me in the way that I trust you." Simon murmured.
"What do you mean, in the way you trust me?" Gary demanded.
"I've got a long history of heart-break and eventually promised myself I'd never get close to someone with the potential to hurt me again. I'm trusting you to help me keep that promise." Ghost eventually admitted. The words were heavy, words he'd never spoken aloud before, not even to himself. He was putting his fragile trust in romanticism in Roach's hands, with the faith that the trust would remain intact, and with the hope that the Sergeant could prove his cynicism wrong.
Neither of them said anything for a long while, but it was Gary who broke the silence when he said, "When I was a kid, my mom used to tell me that falling in love was a lot like gardening. She said that sometimes relationships are like oleanders; they look so pretty, so inviting, until you realize how poisonous they are, and sometimes it's too late. I didn't know what she meant until I met Yuri. He was my oleander; so pretty and completely toxic."
"Sounds like your mother was a wise woman."
"She was a gardener with a lot of analogies and metaphors." Gary chuckled.
Ghost smiled and nuzzled the side of the American's neck. So many people liked waxing poetic about how compromise was the death of relationships, but they had never experienced what it was to be in love, but restrained by ruined trust.
"You aren't planning on sleeping again, are you?" Riley almost stated.
"Not really."
"Would it help the nightmares if I promised, right now, that I'm not going anywhere until you do?"
"What do you mean by that?"
"I'm not leaving you. You're going to have to leave me first."
Sanderson fell asleep with a smile that night, though he was unsurprised to wake up to an empty bed; Simon had said something about needing to go in early to cover some kind of report with MacTavish and Shepherd. He was, however, surprised to see a slip of paper sitting under a single gardenia. The petals felt soft under the Sergeant's fingers and he looked at the slip of paper with a curious expression. There was a URL, but to what, he was unsure. Gary took a seat at the small desk where a small laptop sat, the white gardenia still clutched in one hands. What had his mother told him it represented?
"You're lovely, is what it says. It also says 'sweetest love'. If you get a gardenia, it means you're the one."
Gary wondered if Simon knew that when he left it. Rather than dwell on the thought, Roach opened the laptop and hurried to enter the address with shaking hands. It was a link to a song, one that insisted, "I don't know why I love you. I just know I can't stop thinking about you. Oh wait, it's 'cause you make me smile." (1)
At the bottom of the screen, he noticed a secondary window open in a text document, labeled only "READ ME". Rather than disobey the capital letters, Roach opened the document.
"Before you call and ask, yes. I know what the gardenia means. Yes, the song is ridiculously romantic. But I'm more than willing to seem like an idiot fool if that's what it takes for you to trust that I won't go anywhere, and I'd hurt myself before I'd hurt you. I'll be home in time to take you to lunch. I love you. ~Simon"
Sanderson looked at the flower in his hands and the hand-written link that led a song that Ghost had selected specifically to convey how serious he was. It wasn't so much a matter of if he wanted to trust Riley, but more of a condition of if he could. He looked back up at the letter, the beat to the song still in his head.
Ghost opened the door to the small house he rented with a sigh. He hated paperwork; bullets were easier to handle and required less diplomacy. He heard an eerily familiar song playing in the back of the house and he smiled when he followed it back to the bedroom. Lounging in the middle of the bed, gardenia in hand and song on loop, was Sanderson. Riley dropped onto the mattress next to his lover and watched the American run his fingers over the edges of the flower petals. He eventually looked away from the flower and at Simon. He nodded for a second before he spoke.
"Okay."
"Okay?" Ghost asked.
"I'll trust you. Until you fuck it up of course."
"Now that we have that settled and you've made it clear you're going to trust me enough to stick around, I think it's time for you to meet my daughter."
"Your what?" Gary screeched as he bolted upright.
There was a moment of stunned silence before Simon began laughing so hard he was crying, and "The...The look on your face..." was all he could manage.
"Oh that's really cute. What if I used my kid as a joke? It's all fun to bring up a hypothetical kid, but it's not so funny when you've got one yourself. Just because Melanie wants to treat him like a joke, I have to be more responsible and actually raise Thomas." Gary scowled.
"Wait... What?" Simon asked, the laughter dying. Sanderson continued to glare at him for a few seconds before he, too, lost his composure.
"How did you come up with names that fast?" Riley asked as he laughed.
"Melanie was my mother's name. Thomas was my dog's name."
He'd promised to trust Simon, something that he knew could lead to heartbreak, but he knew that it was necessary. As they continued to laugh at their own silly jokes, Sanderson got the impression that maybe he could leave it all behind, assuming he could let the fear go and trust Simon to act accordingly. When they made their way to the pub they usually had lunch at and Riley knew exactly what his lover would order and gave him that gentle, knowing smile of his, Gary decided that there was no way Simon was an oleander. He knew that that he could trust Riley and he could trust that there would be no toxicity here.
(1) The song referenced is "You Always Make Me Smile" by Kyle Andrews.
A/N2: Yes. This one was fluffy and a bit out of character, but I couldn't help it. My favorite ex and I have been talking a lot lately (he calls me at least once a week, texts me every day, and plays Xbox Live with me every chance he gets) and he recently posted the referenced song on my Facebook page, saying that it really reminded him of me. So I of course grinned like an idiot for the rest of the day and I wrote most of this while listening to that song. Hope it wasn't TOO unbearable, but FAITH was kinda difficult to write for these guys T_T