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Ghost was ten years old when he learnt that his wings were not meant to be seen.
They had started coming in on the eve of his birthday, excruciatingly painful as it ripped through the flesh and skin on his back to protrude out. With no ways to alleviate the pain, all he could do was bite down on his pillows to muffle the sounds of his agony.
By the time the sun was just barely peeking over the horizon, it was over. His wings, inky black and intimidatingly large for a child, were wet with blood, drooping down from the weight of them. Ghost had simply laid there, panting, in the aftermath of his throes.
When his mother finally came in to check up on him, Ghost remembered vividly, so vividly, the way her eyes had widened at the sight of them, the words devil slipping out with such vitriol. She hated his wings, saw them as proof of her own failure at raising a good, virtuous child.
She tugged Ghost up, clamping her fingers into his shoulders and ignoring the way he'd moaned in pain. She stared down at him with a fervour-filled expression, and forbade him from ever leaving his wings unbound lest someone saw how sinful he was.
He remembers the way his mind had cycled through the hundreds of wings he'd seen before, but never any quite as dark as his. To his pain and exhaustion addled mind, his mother was making sense.
So, when his mother pressed a roll of bandages into his hands a day later, he knew exactly what she wanted him to do; bind his wings flush against his back, easy to be hidden from view.
He did as she wished, and it hurt his still-healing wings. But the gentle, pleased smile his mother gave him when she saw his bound wings, made him bite his tongue to stop the complaints from spilling out. He kept them hidden after that, in some attempt to get back in her good graces.
It didn’t work as well as he hoped it would, but it stayed that way throughout the rest of his childhood, teens, and twenties. When he enlisted in the Army, he hated with a passion any time he had to expose his wings, be it for medical purposes or showering.
Anyone who was brave enough to ask about it only got a vicious glare in return. Every glance towards them made him sick and nauseated. Every whisper in the hallways made him want to claw them out of his back with his bare hands.
He kept his wings anyway, if only for the fact that the healing process would put him out of commission for months, if it even healed right at all.
Ghost just grew used to abusing the reputation he’d cultivated over his time in the military to get them off of his back. It worked for the most part, excluding the nosy new recruits who seemed to want to test the limits of Ghost’s patience.
Soap, thankfully, was not one of them.
When Ghost met Soap for the first time, it was in a dingy old bar, courtesy of Price. He'd come up to them, and the first thing Ghost noticed about him were his pristine, white wings. So white that they resembled snow, and while not quite as large as Ghost's, they were enough to catch the attention of the people around them.
They were the kind of wings that Ghost thought would be more suited to a Saint than a soldier.
Ghost shifted in his seat. Soap's eyes had drifted to the distinct lack of wings; bound tightly and hidden beneath layers of clothing that denied their very existence. He expected, even prepared a biting remark for the questions that usually followed, but it never came.
"John MacTavish. Call me Soap," he said instead, with a lopsided grin. He stuck his hand out, and Ghost barely took a second to think it over before he returned it with a firm handshake.
"Ghost," he responded. "Pleasure meeting you, Soap."
***
Ghost takes a shot to the shoulder the first time Soap offers to help him preen his wings.
"...Your arm is still healing, you hear me, Lieutenant Riley? I don't want to see you training with it for the next few days…" The medic prattles off. Ghost respects her; she was professional enough to tell Ghost what he can and can't do even when her colleagues were terrified of the sight of him.
Her eyes flicker to his wings and Ghost barely bites back the urge to fold them away from her line of sight. "You'll have to get someone else to preen your wings," she says, almost offhandedly. "God knows they're long overdue for a preening."
"I'll be fine," Ghost tells her curtly, because he would be. He’d managed it on his own with worse injuries.
She stares him down, lips pursed and utterly undeterred. Ghost glares back, just as unwilling to be the one who gave in. Their impromptu staring contest might have gone on for a while, considering how stubborn they both were, had someone not knocked on the door with what had to be the worst timing.
"Lt?" Soap pokes his head in, stepping in and shutting the door behind him as soon as he catches sight of Ghost. "Price told me to give this to you–"
"Sargeant MacTavish, was it?" The nurse asks abruptly, peering over at him.
"Aye." Soap nods slowly, returning her stare with a skeptical one.
"Your Lieutenant here–" She jerks her head in Ghost's general direction. "Refuses to have someone else preen him. I'd appreciate it if you could convince him so that he won't reopen the stitches in his shoulder trying to do it himself."
Soap blinks, looking over at Ghost's wings as if he hadn't even noticed that they were free from their usual confines.
"I'll do my best," he answers with a lazy salute. The nurse nods at him sharply, and it feels an awful lot like some sort of alliance against Ghost was being made right in front of him.
"I'll leave you to it," she says, already walking off to her next patient briskly, and Soap turns back to him.
"No," Ghost says, rejecting the idea before he even got a chance to say it. "I'm not lettin' someone I don't know preen my wings."
"How about me?"
Ghost blinks.
"What?"
"I'm just sayin'. Your shoulder's fucked. I can help you preen your wings, if you'd like." Soap shrugs. "Team bonding and all that."
Ghost pauses – he doesn't know the last time someone else had offered to preen his wings for him. He studies Soap’s expression, expecting some sort of shit-eating grin, but all he finds is an atypical display of sobriety.
He lets himself think on it for just a few seconds more before he nods – he can allow it just this once, when he's got a bullet in his shoulder that impedes his ability to preen himself. "I'll take you up on that offer, Sargeant," he mutters.
Soap blinks, as if he hadn't actually expected Ghost to accept his offer, but before he can take it back, he barrels on. "Go on."
"After dinner, I'll head to your quarters." Ghost gives him an even stare, switching the topic. "What was that about Price wanting you to give me something?"
Soap accepts the diversion as it is, merely shrugging and handing Ghost a stack of papers. "Just some paperwork you have to fill out."
***
As agreed, Ghost finds himself standing outside of Soap’s quarters, hand poised over the door in preparation of knocking. His hand wavers, for just a second, before he finally knocks, taking a small step back.
A few heartbeats later, and Soap yanks the door open, beaming at him. “Gonna be honest, Lt. Thought you were goin’ to pussy out,” he says, stepping aside to let Ghost walk in. Ghost gives him an unamused stare as he does.
“I always keep my word, Sargeant.”
Soap shrugs in response, gesturing inside his room. “Make yourself at home,” he tells Ghost. He steps further inside, surveying the room – it’s neater than he thought it would be, but he probably should’ve been expecting that, honestly.
Soap’s already sat on his bed, just letting Ghost take in his room. Once Ghost has had his fill, he turns back to Soap.
“Take your shirt off," he says, almost immediately scrunching his nose up as soon as the words came out of his mouth.
Ghost turns around, deeming it probably more uncomfortable if they were facing each other while he did.
“You’re asking your superior to strip for you?” Ghost asks dryly, sliding his hoodie off. He hears Soap sputtering in indignance from behind him, and he allows himself a small smile. He tugs his shirt off next, and he can practically hear the gears turning in Soap’s head as he processes the bandages wrapped around his wings.
"Jesus," he murmurs, more to himself than to Ghost. "Isn't that uncomfortable?"
"What do you think?" Ghost snipes back, beginning to unravel the tightly wrapped bandages. He winces at the ache in his wings from being bound to the same position nearly every day.
Once he gets the bandage off, he's finally able to spread his wings, flapping them a few times just to stretch them out. There's a sharp sting in his shoulder from where his bullet wound resides as he does, but he ignores it, turning to face Soap.
His eyes are trained on Ghost's wings, a small frown playing on his lips – he's never had a very good poker face, Ghost thinks, with an unnerving amount of fondness. Soap’s face twists into some indecipherably sad emotion before it smooths out, patting the space in front of him invitingly.
"Sit here," he says. Ghost does, with his back facing Soap, and he shifts in discomfort. He never liked being so close to someone with his back to them, especially not entrust it to them after how many times he’d been betrayed, but this was Soap.
Ghost trusted Soap to cover his back on the battlefield with his life, so if he couldn't trust the Scotsman to preen his wings, then he wasn't sure who else he could trust.
"I'm going to touch your wings now," Soap tells him, careful. He appreciates the warning beforehand, and gives him a stiff nod of acknowledgment.
He's still caught off guard when Soap's hands first land on his left wing, somehow. It’s searing hot where it connects, and he instinctively jerks in surprise, nearly hitting Soap in the face with his wings. Soap, mercifully enough, says nothing of it though, simply running a hand over the curve of his wing and humming soothingly, like Ghost was some frightened animal.
His touch was… gentle. Even so, Ghost tenses as if he's ready to start swinging at the slightest hint that Soap might harm him, feels breathless in a way that makes it seem like he's forgotten how to breathe entirely. He digs his fingers into his thigh to keep them from balling up.
It's more of a force of habit than anything else.
To his credit, Soap doesn't seem to take any offence at that. He merely begins to flick out specks of dirt, and brushes over Ghost's feathers lightly, with just barely enough force to encourage old, soon-to-be moulting feathers to fall.
Eventually, after a while of these repetitive motions, it becomes clear that Soap genuinely had no intention of attempting to hurt him. Just an honestly baffling single-minded focus to preen Ghost's wings to perfection.
Soap keeps combing through his feathers, the touch starting to feel more like a comforting embrace than scorching heat, and he shudders. He feels like he's melting, every conscious effort being put into holding himself upright and not collapsing into Soap's warmth.
He can't remember the last time he was touched without the intent of harm, let alone the last time he was touched even half as gently.
It still takes a long time before Ghost allows himself to shut his eyes, allows his guard to drop ever so slightly.
The world keeps spinning, and Soap's hands do not still.
He nudges untidy feathers back into place, with the ease of someone who's done it a thousand times before. It's absolutely nothing like the careless, almost brutal way his mother used to preen them, nor the clumsy yet efficient way Ghost himself used.
The gentle warmth of Soap's hands seem to seep deep into his bones, leaving him dizzy, weary, and relaxed all at once. It's disorienting, but he can't say that he hates it.
Quite the opposite, actually.
His wing feels cleaner – lighter – than Ghost thinks it's ever been, and the near constant ache that was once there has been worked out under the touch of Soap's slow, methodical combs. Ghost distantly registers himself trembling.
Soap pauses, and then one of his hands pulls away to curve around the back of his neck; firm and grounding in its steadiness. Ghost, for the life of him, can't stop himself from pressing into his hand with a breathless wheeze.
"Breathe, Simon," Soap murmurs. "It's just me."
It feels like he's drowning, water rushing in his ears and entering his lungs, with the only thing around to cling onto to stay afloat is the sound of Soap's voice. He barely manages, with great difficulty, to tilt his head enough to blink at Soap.
"Johnny," he manages, with much more emotion than he'd meant to say it with.
"Too much?" Soap asks, so, so concerned. His hands pull away from Ghost, and he barely manages to stop the keen that was bubbling in his throat. "Should I stop?"
Don't, don't, don't, Ghost's mind screams at him, I think I'll die if you stop now.
"Continue," he rasps. His throat feels dry, and when he licks his lips, they're just as cracked as he'd expected. "Please."
Soap does, after a firm squeeze to the back of his neck. Then, he picks up right where he left off, like Ghost wasn't mere seconds away from breaking down in front of him. Ghost shuts his eyes tightly, wants to cry when Soap finally removes his hands from his left wing, only to remember that there was a whole other wing he hadn't started on yet.
He finally switches over to the other wing, treating it with the same tenderness he had with the previous. Something tight and knotted was unfurling in the depths of Ghost's chest, and he wonders if it might stop feeling so empty one day.
"Lt," Soap eventually prompts, like he could tell Ghost was getting lost in his own head. "Why d'you keep your wings hidden? They're fuckin' gorgeous."
Gorgeous.
The word reverberates inside his head dozens of times – it's the first time anyone has said anything kind about them. Least of all appearance wise.
"Don't like 'em," he finally answers. He gives the shortest answer he's capable of, because he doesn't think he's ready to open that can of worms.
He can't see Soap, but he imagines that the Scotsman was shrugging as he responded. "I like 'em. They don't need as much care as mine do."
"Yours are beautiful, though." The words come out before he can even think about it. And then, because he can't take back words he's already spoken out loud, "It was my first impression of you."
Soap breaks him out of his thoughts with a short bark of laughter. "What, you don't think they're beautiful now?"
"Got used to them already," Ghost scoffs. "And I don't need to give you an ego boost."
Soap sniffs. "You're breaking my heart here, Lt."
There's a pleasant silence that follows his words, in which Ghost has the horrible realisation that Soap knew him well enough to ground him in near minutes.
…It's not quite as terrible as it first seems, though. Not when Soap was still preening his wings with the utmost care, beginning to hum some melody that Ghost doesn't know. It's not good, not by any means, but it's comforting.
Ghost just shuts his eyes and basks in the pleasant tranquillity of Soap's attention.
***
Soap offers to preen him more often after that, and occasionally, Ghost accepts. In return, he offers to preen Soap’s wings once his shoulder fully heals, because he always repaid his debts. And from there, it spirals.
Somewhere along the line, this easy trust becomes something more.
It becomes gentle kisses to their wings once they're done preening each other, becomes something that Ghost could call love. Neither of them acknowledge it for a long time, too scared of upsetting this precarious balance.
Sometimes, Ghost lets himself sleep beside Soap in their cramped army-issued bed. He wakes up with their limbs so entangled that it feels like they've never been separate entities, his wings a dark canopy above them, shielding them from the outside world and Soap's draped over them like a weighted blanket.
Neither of them are accustomed to love; too used to blood on their hands and the ever lingering sound of gunshots in their ears, but they figure it out somehow.
They don't mention it either, but it's enough to know for certain.
It's enough when Soap takes a few of Ghost's moulted feathers with him everywhere he goes, like his own personal lucky charm. It's enough when Ghost cracks a bad joke to calm him during a mission, when he finds himself wishing that time would slow to the pace of dripping honey every time he was around Soap.
It's certainly enough when Soap kisses him after a mission that could have gone horribly wrong with enough fervour to know he feels the same. When they start tumbling into bed with each other, whispering "Welcome back," and "Good to see you’re still alive," with nothing but relief, it feels like a confession.
They don't say "I love you," out loud – because Ghost isn't sure that he would be capable of it anytime soon, because Soap was caring enough to take it at a pace Ghost wouldn't implode at – but it's enough for them.