Haunted

[churbooseanon]

Summary: Every night Florida prepares for the ghost that hunts and haunts his life.

Discovered Flower Power this morning due to agentfloridaofficial and dear god I don’t know why. This just happened. This is for you, agentfloridaofficial, if you even know I exist. Just for you.

Haunted

He’s waiting for a ghost.

It’s the same thing every night at Blue Base. He waits an hour after lights out to be sure that Sarge isn’t going to try anything, for Alpha and Tucker to settle in, and then he’s not Captain Butch Flowers, he’s Agent Florida. Comes out of his room with the assault rifle on his back, boleros drapped around his waist because the sim trooper armor he’s been assigned just isn’t comfortable with them on properly. Still, he needs them where he can reach them because he knows the terrors that lurk in the dark hours of the night.

He used to be one of them.

Flowers dances cheerfully through the base, Florida melts through it like a shadow. Moves on silent feet to Alpha’s and Tucker’s doors, locks them down. They never know they spent most of the nights locked in, relatively safe behind thick metal doors that Florida knows will never be enough. It’s why it’s not the only thing he does.

Blood Gulch Outpost Alpha isn’t built like any other simulation base. The walls are thicker, reinforced further than any other base. There are tons of hidden recesses, compartments, and hide aways that Florida designed himself when the Director had asked what he’d need. There is a sneak built into the doorframe of Alpha’s room that Florida can get into quickly enough to pull the AI chip that Alpha doesn’t realize is embedded into the base of his helmet, and store it there for safe keeping until a Recovery agent can come to fetch him. There are a lot of other things he’s got to work with. There’s a full-auto turret in a recess above Alpha’s door. There are grenades hidden in a false wall leading into the dorms. He’s got guns and clips and magazines and knives hidden everywhere. He’s got access to all of ‘Commands’ video feeds, and at night he brings up the monitors and lets his mind tune out to that receptive state that made him such a good killer.

He sits on the counter in the kitchen, his legs crossed under him, assault rifle in his lap, knife twirling in the air and in his hand, his other hand hovering on his bolero, ready to take out whatever he needs to slam in place.

He’s waiting for a ghost.

A beast of a man in white armor hinted with brown at the shoulders and a golden head and skin the color of a good cup of mocha and eyes that used to be gold themselves and warm and would follow the lines of his body and a smile that could put Florida’s to shame. Hands that weren’t calloused like they should have been, but soft and yielding like his lips, that grip like vices and teases like feathers over skin. Mouth like fire and liquor and passion that could tear you apart if you let it, and Florida had.

Oh god he had.

Sits there, watches, eyes never quite focusing, watching in the dimmed kitchen light the monitors that show off all the bright day outside. Night in the kitchen is simulated, like the soldiers, like the war, like Alpha’s humanity and Florida’s indifference to his orders to shoot to kill. Everything about this place is fake. Like Alpha. Like him. Like the Meta.

He’s waiting for a ghost.

And hoping to put it down.