Archive of Our Own ^beta

People were surprised when they discovered that the Captain of taskforce 141 was a dragon for multiple reasons. Dragons were rare, first of all, and had kind of a shitty reputation. Moody, possessive, dangerous.

Unlike most stereotypes, there was a bit of truth to that, John would be the first to admit. Dragons that hadn’t settled yet typically were a little… unstable. Their instincts were trying to drive them to find a hoard and settle down, preferably on top of said hoard. Young dragons mellowed out significantly after they found what they were supposed to be collecting.

Therein lay the second reason people often thought he was taking the piss when he told them what he was - John Price was 39, widely considered to be one of the most reasonable and easy-going guys holding his rank in the military, and he had yet to start a hoard. In short, the mere fact that he was able to successfully lead a diverse team of supernatural creatures defied all expectations.

He hadn’t always been like this, mind you - he could still remember the time back when he had climbed the ranks as a fledgeling. He had displayed all of the anger people expected of him, and more. The fact that his disciplinary records from that time were now highly confidential - like most of his military career - was a constant source of relief.

Looking back, he had only really started to 'calm his shit' (as Gaz would put it) after he had been freshly promoted to Captain. He could remember the moment like it was yesterday, mainly because it had also been the moment he first met Simon Riley.

It happened on some random base on the Mexican-Texan border. John had been sent there to lead some courses on counter-terrorism for both Mexican and U.S. American Special forces. Simon had been freshly dragged out of the Chihuahuan desert, half-dead, already more ghost than man at that point - quite literally.

Their paths collided just as the sun set. John was on a jog around the perimeter, still jet-lagged as hell and in a deeply irritated mood, as Simon burst out of a door on the side of the small hospital on base in a flimsy hospital gown. He was followed by the blaring of an alarm (the door had been wired) and two very distressed, extremely overwhelmed nurses - humans, by the smell of them.

Simon very distinctly did not smell like a human at all. He smelled like sand, and the sun, and smoke and antiseptic - and underneath it all like the sweet scent of decay that followed all undead creatures.

John stopped in his tracks and simply watched the almost cartoonish chase sequence that unfolded in front of him for a moment, too perplexed to fly off the handle like he normally would have done at an interruption like this.

Simon, who he did not yet know the name of, was obviously in bad shape. His run was really more of a stumble and John wasn’t really sure why the two nurses didn’t just… tackle him, or whatever. Something something ethics, most likely. Simon held something clutched to his chest that John couldn’t quite make out yet.

After maybe a hundred meters Simon almost fully faceplanted into the dusty tarmac, and didn’t immediately get up. The nurses still didn’t close the distance. There was a lot of hand-waving and pleading but no attempts to actually help - almost like they were scared of him.

John thoroughly had enough at that point. He stomped over, shooting a glare at the now extremely sheepish nurses, and held a hand out to the man on the ground.

“You alright, son?” This close, he could make out the soft, irregular sound of a heartbeat. Not fully or only very recently undead, then.

Simon flopped over on his back with a groan and blinked up at John slowly, like a cat. He could see what he had been holding now.

Still clutched in his left hand was a jawbone. The sight and feel of it almost made John flinch with the need to shift and the back of his throat tickle with dragon fire - that was a profoundly strong, profoundly evil-feeling magical item. Curious, because the man that was holding it like his life depended on it just looked sick, not like some sort of evil wizard at all.

Simon took his outstretched hand and let himself be dragged upwards. Touching him felt like licking a 9-Volt battery.

“Lieutenant Simon Riley, Sir. Are you here to take me home?”

One look into Simon's tired eyes was all it took for John to suddenly know that even though he hadn’t known it before, he had to bring Simon Riley home. It was imperative.

The Simon Riley he had met then had developed and grown into quite a different thing now, of course. The only Lich not considered a terrorist threat or on at least one international Most-Wanted list - John considered the fact that he had managed to conserve a sliver of Simon Riley in the entity that was now Ghost one of his proudest achievements.

Simon - Ghost - had been the first, but not the last.

He found Roach and Gaz within two months of each other, on opposite sides of the world. Much like you might stumble upon a real roach, he discovered Roach while overturning (proverbial) stones. It was a mission in the middle of nowhere. Argentina. A collaborative effort between the British and Argentine government to root out the collaborative effort of British and Argentine traffickers of both drugs and people.

The only reason John was fine with the mission as it was, was the fact that he had Ghost on overwatch. He meandered through the narrow streets of a small village with the rest of his squad, attention wavering at this point. Neither he nor anyone on his team had seen hide or hair of anything alive. Seems like the criminals had caught wind of their operation.

In his mind he was already back home, soaking in a nice boiling-hot bath, as he halfheartedly pushed open doors with the muzzle of his rifle - he would have smelled or heard anything inside the houses anyway, the visual check was more out of habit than necessity.

He had to have been significantly more distracted than he thought, because in that moment, he had entirely forgotten about a certain species of predator that only smelled like their environment, and that moved silently.

His instructors back at basic must have felt very vindicated right now, because as the door to the fifth house he checked swung open, he suddenly had an armful of very hungry, very vicious vampire.

John stumbled back, but did not fall - the vampire was lighter than he would have expected, and very weak. He was teething on his neck, not even managing to break through his skin. Not even a healthy vampire would have managed to really hurt him, of course - one of the perks of being a dragon was the fact that almost all magical creatures only affected him as much as he wanted them to. But this was honestly just sad. The attempt at a bite didn’t even really hurt.

He glanced down at the vampire clinging to him, making small, desperate noises and still trying to bite his neck. The obviously British uniform was quite a surprise, to say the least. John did some math in his head. The last time he heard of one of his countrymen being declared MIA in Latin-America specifically had to have been, what? A year ago? Shit.

He dropped his rifle to his side and put a hand on the back of the vampire, trying his best to make soothing sounds and projecting calm, safe, home.

“Oh, you poor thing…” he murmured to himself. Then, realization struck - the rest of this squad was human, or close enough to it to be in real fucking danger if they got to close to a starving vampire. Ghost was too far away to get here in time.

Making himself vulnerable to the weakening attempts at a feeding bite on his neck was a split second decision - but much like in the moment in front of a Texan military hospital, years ago, he didn’t really feel like he had a choice. He would keep this stranger safe, from others and from his own actions.

Roach made a miraculous recovery after that. He was back in action as a functioning member of John's team within a month. It was this admirable ability to bounce back from anything that earned him his callsign. It was also the reason why he was there already, when Gaz approached the team on their home base.

Gaz had been all confidence and friendliness even back then. He sauntered up to John, deep in a conversation with Roach, with a spellbook clamped under his left arm and greeted them like they had known each other for years.

John didn’t even question it too much, at first, because Gaz felt correct right from the start, in a way humans rarely did. He wasn’t a human, obviously, or not just a human. He was a wizard.

When John asked him later, after Gaz had already been signed to his team, if he had enchanted him in some way, Gaz just grinned.

“No, Sir. I just asked the universe where I should be - the answer was very clear. You feel it too, right?” John was unable to deny it, as much as he bristled at it at first.

John, Ghost, Roach and Gaz slotted together in a way that felt a lot like magic. They were unbeatable, unstoppable, when they all were on a team together. There were others, drifting in and out and they were fine - but they weren’t home. John would have felt if they were.

The next time he felt it was in the bumfuck of nowhere again, but this time in Scotland. It was freezing cold and John sincerely questioned why the fuck he decided to take leave in the middle of december to go to Scotland, of all places. He was technically a lizard, for fucks sake. Defrosting stiff joints got real old, real fast. Not having his team around didn’t help - the constant updates from Gaz and Roach and the occasional ‘still solid, sir’ from Ghost only barely managed to soothe his temper.

He was taking a very disgruntled walk through an almost offensively beautiful nature reserve when it happened. The smell came first, as it often did. Woodsy, but more alive than any wildlife could be. A lot like a wet dog, but like a wet dog on steroids. He knew that scent. He knew it intimately. Werecreatures, specifically wolves, were a bit of a pest in the military. Their temperament lend itself to living on top of each other and made them unusually content to follow a strong leader, more so than any other supernatural creature.

“For fucks sake…”

He barely managed to get the words out before he was barrelled over by probably close to 30 stones of unusually excited, unpleasantly wet werewolf. The mutt should be glad John had gotten significantly better at controlling his temper in recent years - as far as shifters went, a multi-tonne lizard beat an overgrown puppy any day, even in piss-poor weather.

As it was, John endured getting thoroughly sniffed and exactly one lick over his face before he kicked the wolf right in the solar-plexus. The wolf skidded back a few steps, but otherwise took the attack extremely well. After John had gotten up and had brushed the dirt, fur and leaf-litter off his coat, the thing had sat down on its haunches, happily panting in John’s direction.

It - he - was a big, shaggy thing. Tawny fur, teeth the length of his index finger and - wearing a bright blue scarf, patterned with cheery, yellow rubber ducks. Bizarre. John blinked. The wolf blinked back, his tongue lolling out of his mouth.

John pointed an accusing finger at the wolf. “That was really rude, mate. Be glad it’s too fucking cold for me to show you how well I normally take shit like that.”

The wolf cocked his head and smiled at John, a mischievous sparkle in his eyes. A distant howl made his ears prick forward and his gaze shifted off to the treeline. He stood and went down into a deep play-bow, furiously wagging his tail. Before John could properly react, he was already bounding off in long leaps, disappearing into the woods after a few seconds.

John stared after the wolf, puzzled at the strange sense of loss he felt at him leaving. In the end he just shook his head and started on the trek back to his cabin.

The next time he caught the scent of this specific wolf, back on base, he was introduced to John “Soap” MacTavish properly. aAs properly as things could go anyway, when Soap was involved. At least he didn’t lick him again, although it was a near thing. He was the only werewolf John knew that leaned that hard into species specific stereotypes and simultaneously, against all logic, the only werewolf that he didn’t find terribly abrasive.

Looking at him, his stupid hair-do and shitty tattoos, listening to him get a laugh out of Simon… It just looked like home, sounded like family.

Maybe, just maybe, John Price might have an inkling that he had already found his hoard years ago.