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- One -
The safe house in the snowy countryside of Belarus was cramped, damp, and freezing, but the atmosphere inside was suffocatingly hot with tension. Exfil was still four hours out, leaving the three operators trapped together in a concrete room that barely had space for three cots and a single rusted wood stove.
Ghost leaned against the far wall, his arms crossed over his chest, his skull mask dark and imposing in the fading light. His eyes flicked between König and Keegan. Even an unconsciousness man could feel the static electricity between the massive Austrian Colonel and the American Sergeant.
The Lieutenant wasn’t happy with Keegan either. During the op, Keegan had pulled another one of his dumbarse moves – a high-risk, low-survival maneuver that got the job done but left the American completely exposed. The mission was a total success, and they had all walked away without any extra holes in them, but it had been a reckless gamble. Ghost intended to give the Sergeant a piece of his mind once they reached base, but König was already unraveling, and the Lieutenant watched the Colonel pace in the small space.
König had already shed his tactical vest, his towering frame pacing the tiny length of the room. Suddenly, he stopped, turning a dark, thunderous glare at Keegan.
“You think because the Lieutenant is here, things are different?” König’s voice was a low, menacing rumble.
Keegan, who had taken off his ballistic mask to breathe better in the stuffy air, looked up. His face showed the tight, defensive line of his jaw. “Colonel, the line was falling back. I had to anchor the flank or the whole grid would have collapsed. It was a calculated risk.”
“It was stupid!” König replied sharply, stepping into Keegan’s personal space. “You threw yourself into the open again. You did not care if you lived or died. It is clear to me, Sergeant, that you need a reminder.”
Keegan’s face went entirely pale. The blood drained from his cheeks so fast it was visible even in the fading light. He took an instinctive step back, his wide eyes darting towards Ghost before looking back at the Colonel.
König noticed the glance and let out a dark, harsh sound. “The Lieutenant won’t save you.”
Ghost shifted his weight, his brow furrowing beneath his mask. He expected a fistfight, or at the very least, König threatening a court-martial. What happened next left the seasoned Lieutenant in a state of uncomfortable fascination.
König moved with the terrifying speed of an apex predator. He grabbed Keegan by his upper arm. Keegan, entirely aware of what was coming, completely lost his stoic facade.
“König, wait, no, please, not here,” Keegan pleaded, his voice dropping into a desperate, panicked pitch as he tried to dig his heels into the concrete floor. “Sir, please, Ghost is right there -”
The Colonel ignored the pleas completely. With overwhelming, brute strength, König sat heavily on the edge of the nearest cot and dragged the struggling Sergeant face down across his knees, pinning the younger man’s lower back with a massive, unyielding forearm.
Ghost watched as König used his free hand to firmly yank Keegan’s standard-issued trousers and underwear down to his knees, completely baring the Sergeant’s backside.
What the bloody hell? The Englishman thought, completely paralyzed by shock at the scene.
Spanking was not a military punishment. It wasn’t a punishment listed under the Service Law, and it certainly wasn’t standard discipline. It was...totally absurd, prehistoric, and profoundly personal. Ghost opened his mouth to intervene, to demand what the hell König’s plan was, but the words caught in his throat as König brought his massive, heavy palm down with a resounding crack.
Keegan let out a sharp, choked gasp, his fingers instantly clawing into the canvas of the cot.
The safe house was far too small for Ghost to give Keegan any real privacy. There was nowhere to go; the door was to stay locked until the extraction team arrived, and the room was an open space. Mortified and deeply uncomfortable, Ghost averted his eyes, staring fixedly at the rusted wood stove.
But he couldn’t block out the sound.
The strikes were heavy, deliberate, and utterly relentless. König wasn’t rushing. He was delivering a systematic, physically brutal reprimand. Ghost’s eyes involuntarily flicked back to the scene every few moments, drawn by the sheer, bizarre intensity of it. Keegan was trying desperately to hold it together in front of his Lieutenant, locking his jaw, but König’s massive hand wasn’t stopping.
Within minutes, the stubborn resistance broke. Keegan became a sobbing mess, his voice cracking into loud, weeping apologies as the fierce heat became impossible to ignore. He was writhing against König’s iron grip, completely stripped of his hardened operator persona, reduced to a crying wreck because of a spanking.
When König finally stopped, Ghost looked over and was genuinely surprised by how deep and angry the red coloration on the younger man’s rear and upper thighs actually was. It looked white-hot and glowing in the dim safe house light.
König didn’t say a word as he carefully pulled Keegan’s trousers back up, covering him. Ghost braced for the Austrian to push the man away or dismiss him with a cold command.
Instead, König gathered the crying Sergeant up into his arms, lifting him easily against his broad chest.
Ghost stared, utterly stunned. He had worked with König on multiple high-profile ops; he knew the Austrian as a ruthless, socially awkward, and terrifyingly aggressive giant. He had never seen the man act in a comforting manner towards anyone. Yet, there König was, his massive arms wrapped around Keegan, resting a hand on the back of the Sergeant’s neck, and holding him tightly as Keegan buried his face in König’s shoulder, sobbing out the last of his adrenaline and pain.
König looked over the crying man’s shoulder, his icy eyes meeting Ghost’s masked gaze across the tiny room. There was an unspoken, dangerous warning in the Colonel’s eyes: Not a word, Lieutenant.
Ghost slowly leaned back against the wall, clearing his throat quietly and looking back at the stove. He realized that whatever the twisted, intense dynamic happening between his Colonel and the Sergeant… well, it wasn’t his place to break it. There was nothing else to do except wait out the next four hours in the concrete room.
- Two -
The flight back from Belarus was a masterclass in suffocating silence. Keegan hadn’t looked at Ghost once, keeping his eyes glued to the deck of the chopper, his jaw locked tight and his ballistic mask pulled firmly over his face. The mortification radiating off the Sergeant was palpable. To be broken down like that, reduced to tears and treated like a child in front of a commanding officer he deeply respected, had clearly shattered whatever armor Keegan had left.
Back at home base, the mandatory debriefing was a blur of cold, professional facts. Once dismissed, Keegan vanished, likely retreating to the dark corners of the shooting range or his quarters to bury his shame.
But Ghost couldn’t bury it.
Hours later, the sun had set over the base, and the Lieutenant was sitting in his darkened quarters, the scene playing on a loop in his mind. The sharp, echoing crack of König’s hand. Keegan’s desperate, uncharacteristic pleading. The deep, angry crimson left behind on the younger man’s skin, and finally, the way the massive Austrian had held him, offering an intense, protective comfort that Ghost didn’t think König was capable of.
It defied every rule of military conduct, yet the Lieutenant couldn’t shake the bizarre scene from repeating in his mind. He needed answers.
Ghost stood up, checked the hallway, and made his way down the quiet concrete corridors towards the Colonel’s private office. He didn’t knock softly; he gave the heavy steel door three firm, authoritative raps.
The door swung open, and König stood there, towering in the door frame. He had shed his sniper hood, his pale face and intense eyes looking down at the Lieutenant. König didn’t look surprised to see him. He simply stepped aside, gesturing Ghost into the room before closing and locking the door behind them.
For a long moment, neither man spoke. The silence in the office stretched, heavy and expectant. Ghost, usually a man of few words who always knew exactly where he stood, found himself completely at a loss. Where the hell did you even begin a conversation like this?
König just stood there like an immovable statue, his arms crossed over his massive chest, patiently waiting. He wasn’t offering an explanation, and he wasn’t apologizing.
Finally, Ghost shifted his weight, his fingers curling into the shirt he wore. He cleared his throat, his deep, gravelly voice cutting through the quiet.
“What the hell was that stunt back in the safe house, Colonel?” Ghost asked, dropping the formal sir in favor of raw bluntness. He stared directly into König’s eyes. “Because from where I was standing, it looked a lot like a Service Law violation, and a bloody bizarre way to handle a rogue Sergeant.”
König didn’t flinch. He let out a slow, heavy breath and walked over to his desk, leaning his massive frame against the sturdy wood.
“You think I care about British law when it comes to keeping that man alive, Lieutenant?” König asked, his voice low and deadly serious. “Look at his file. Look at how he operates. Keegan is a ghost in more ways than one. He goes out there, and he treats his own existence like an expendable asset. Standard discipline does not work on him. I give him paperwork? He reads and signs it. I give him extra PT? He completes it without a word. I pull him from rotation? He waits, and the next time he is out in the field, he does the exact same thing.”
The Colonel straightened up, how towering height casting a long shadow across the room. “Our op four months ago – he nearly died and didn’t care about it. I had to break through his detached armor. He needed to feel something real. He needed to understand that his actions have a direct, painful, and humiliating consequence. When I punish him like that, he cannot hide behind his operator persona. He is forced to be a man who feels pain, who feels vulnerable, and who realizes that someone is furious that he almost died.”
Ghost listened, his arms still crossed. As a soldier who had seen too many good men killed because they had lost their sense of self-preservation, the Lieutenant could actually see the twisted logic. The spanking acted as a visceral, psychological shock.
But he still couldn’t shake how profoundly bizarre it all was. “It’s unorthodox, Colonel, to say the least. It’s a thin line you’re walking.”
“I walk whatever line keeps my men from coming back in body bags,” König replied smoothly. Then, he paused. He took a slow step towards the shorter man, his icy blue eyes locking onto the Lieutenant’s skull mask with unblinking, heavy intensity. “And make no mistake, Lieutenant. I would spank any soldier under my command who acted like their life did not matter.”
The air in the room felt incredibly thin.
Ghost stared back, but for the first time in a long time, an uncomfortable prickle of unease washed over him. He was a big man, heavily built and lethal, but König was an absolute anomaly of nature – a mountain of muscle who stood nearly two hundred and thirteen centimeters tall. Looking into the Colonel’s deadly serious eyes, Ghost realized with a sudden, jarring wave of discomfort that if König ever decided that he’d crossed that line, the Austrian could physically overpower him. He could drag Ghost over his knees and strip away his dignity just as easily as he had done to Keegan. The thought of being handled like a misbehaving boy made Ghost’s jaw tighten beneath his mask.
“Right,” Ghost said, his voice dropping an octave as he took a step back toward the door. “Message received, Colonel.”
König simply nodded once, allowing him to leave.
Once out in the corridor, Ghost needed to clear his head. He walked the perimeter, the image of Keegan’s raw, tear-streaked face in the safe house refusing to leave his mind. Keegan was a good soldier, and the sheer humiliation he must be feeling right now was a dangerous thing to let fester.
Ghost headed toward the secondary armory – a place where operators usually went when they wanted to be alone with their thoughts and mechanical tasks.
Sure enough, as Ghost rounded the corner of the hanger, he spotted the American walking across the tarmac, his head down. The moment Keegan’s eyes flicked up and caught sight of the skull mask, the Sergeant immediately froze, turned on his heel, and attempted to disappear into the shadow of a nearby transport vehicle.
“Sergeant Russ,” Ghost’s voice boomed across the tarmac, laced with absolute command. “On my six. Now.”
Keegan halted. For a second, the Lieutenant thought he’d actually ignore the order, but the ingrained military discipline won out. He turned around, his ballistic mask pulled up tight against his face, and Ghost saw the rigid, painful tension in his shoulders. He walked over, his eyes strictly fixed on the rank insignia on Ghost’s chest.
“Sir,” Keegan said, his voice completely hallow.
It was painfully obvious to Ghost just how deeply embarrassed and humiliated the younger man was. Keegan looked smaller, his usual sharp, confident attitude totally drained out of him. He was bracing for the ridicule, bracing for the lecture, and looking like he wanted the ground to open up and swallow him whole.
The walk across the tarmac and through the concrete corridors of the barracks was excruciatingly silent. Ghost kept a steady, uniform pace, his heavy combat boots clicking against the floor, while Keegan marched half a step behind him like a man walking to his own execution.
When they reached the Lieutenant’s private quarters, Ghost opened the door, stepped inside, and waited for Keegan to follow. As soon as the door clicked shut, Ghost reached over and turned the deadbolt, locking them in.
“Take the mask off, Sergeant. Face bare,” Ghost ordered, his voice deep but level.
Keegan hesitated, his hands twitching near his tactical collar. He clearly wasn’t happy about the order, but under the immovable weight of Ghost’s authority, he reached up and pulled the ballistic mask over his head, tossing it onto the Lieutenant’s desk. His face was pale, his eyes rimmed with a faint, telling shadow of exhaustion, and his jaw was set so tight the muscles jumped.
The Sergeant stood at rigid attention, staring straight past Ghost’s shoulder at the blank wall. He braced himself, waiting for the hammer to come down. He expected Ghost to mock him for crying like a baby because of a spanking or for the Englishman to tell him that he was a disgrace to the uniform for letting another man put him over his knee. Keegan was waiting for the lecture.
Instead, Ghost let out a long, heavy sigh that rumbled through his skull mask. He stepped into Keegan’s line of sight, forcing the younger man to look at him.
“Relax your bloody posture, Keegan. I’m not going to smoke you,” he said quietly. He reached up and pulled the skull mask off, revealing his scarred face and empathetic eyes. “What happened in Belarus...König’s a mad bastard, and his methods are completely mental. I’m sorry you had to go through that with me in the room.”
Keegan blinked, his rigid composure instantly fracturing. The kind words caught him off guard. He opened his mouth to say something – to lie and say that it was fine – but the sheer wall of shame and relief crashed into him all at once.
A sharp, choked gasp broke from his throat, and before he could stop them, hot tears spilled out from his eyes and ran down his cheeks.
“God dammit,” Keegan hissed, slapping a hand over his face. He was absolutely furious with himself, his shoulders shaking as he began to cry – again – in front of the one man on this base whose respect he craved the most. It had been humiliating enough when it was just him and König in the dark, but breaking down in front of Ghost felt like total defeat. “Shit, I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I’m sorry. I’m -”
“Hey. Cut that out,” Ghost interrupted, his voice dropping into a soft, gravelly tone Keegan had never heard him use before.
Keegan didn’t expect what happened next. Ghost didn’t look away in disgust, and he didn’t tell him to man up. Instead, the Lieutenant stepped forward, closed the distance, and wrapped his arms around Keegan’s trembling shoulders, pulling him into a firm, grounding hug.
The shock lasted less than a fraction of a second. The moment the solid, safe warmth of Ghost’s chest pressed against him, Keegan’s remaining defenses shattered. He collapsed into the older operator, his hands flying up to latch onto the fabric of Simon’s shirt, gripping it so tightly his knuckles turned white.
He buried his face into Ghost’s shoulder, finally letting the suffocating weight of his humiliation out in heavy, ragged sobs. Simon didn’t move an itch; he just held the younger man steady against him, keeping his grip tight, unyielding, comforting embrace.
As time stretched on, the heavy, rhythmic sound of Keegan’s breathing as his sobs slowly began to taper off. Simon didn’t loosen his grip for a second. He kept one massive forearm locked across Keegan’s upper back, his other hand firmly anchoring the back of the Sergeant’s neck.
For Keegan, the warmth was overwhelming. It wasn’t the intense, dominant heat of König’s embrace after a punishment; this was the steady, grounding solidarity of a fellow soldier who understood the exact weight of the armor Keegan wore every single day.
As the initial wave of frantic crying subsided, the fury at his own vulnerability returned, though weaker this time. Keegan took a shaky, ragged breath. His forehead still pressed hard into Ghost’s shoulder.
“I’m supposed to be an elite operator, sir,” Keegan whispered. “I’m not...I shouldn’t be breaking down like a fucking child over a spanking. Especially not in front of you.”
Ghost let out a low, rough rumble from deep in his chest. He didn’t pull away, but he shifted his grip slightly, his hand squeezing the nape of Keegan’s neck to force the younger man to listen.
“Listen to me, Keegan,” he said, his British cadence steady and unyielding. “You’ve been running hot for months. You push yourself to the edge. You treat your own life like a spent casing, and you expected your mind not to snap from the pressure? What König did...it’s archaic. It’s designed to strip away every bit of your control until you have nothing left to do but feel it. Anyone would break under that. I don’t think any less of you for it."
The Lieutenant paused, his eyes darkening slightly as he remembered König’s intense gaze from earlier. “To be completely honest with you...the giant bastard looked me dead in the eye earlier and told me he’d do the exact same thing to me if I acted in a way he didn’t approve of. And looking at the size of him, I don’t think I could stop him.”
A watery, incredibly faint chuckle broke from Keegan’s throat at the admission, his shoulders dropping a faction of an inch. The image of the legendary, terrifying Ghost being put over König’s knee was absurd enough to cut through the thickest of Keegan’s shame.
“He’s a psycho,” Keegan muttered into Ghost’s shirt, his grip on the fabric finally loosening, though he didn’t make any move to pull out of the hug,
“He is,” Ghost agreed. “But he’s a psycho who knows exactly how valuable you are to this unit, and so do I. I don’t ever want to see you acting like you’re expendable again, Keegan. You’re a brilliant operator, but you’re a man first. Don’t let the job hollow you out.”
Keegan stood there for a long moment, letting the words sink into the quiet spaces of his mind. The humiliation in Belarus hadn’t vanished entirely – the physical memory of the stinging reprimand still hummed uncomfortably beneath his trousers – but the suffocating weight of the isolation was gone. He wasn’t a liability, and more importantly, he hadn’t lost Ghost’s respect.
Slowly, Keegan eased his weight back, untangling his fingers from Ghost’s shirt. The older man let his arms fall away, giving the Sergeant his space but remaining close enough to offer a steadying presence.
The Sergeant wiped the back of his hand across his eyes, his face flushed and his throat still tight from crying, but his gaze was finally clear as he met the Lieutenant’s bare face.
“Thank you, sir,” Keegan said, his voice carrying a genuine, deep sincerity.
Ghost picked up his skull mask from the desk, running his thumb over the painted jawline before looking back at the Sergeant. A faint, rare trace of a smirk touched the corner of his scarred mouth.
“Don’t mention it. Literally,” Ghost said, his voice returning to its usual dry, gravelly tone. “If anyone asks, I was giving you a proper, terrifying military dressing-down that left you shaking in your boots. Got it?"
Keegan managed a small, genuine smile, pulling his own ballistic mask over his head to hide the lingering redness of his face. “Crystal clear, Lieutenant.”