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It’s a quiet night, cloudy but warm, the occasional breeze blowing past like a whisper through the air. Moonlight spills down on to the earth below, caressing and enveloping the world in a gentle glow. Everything is soft and still and peaceful. More than he deserves.
Smoke blows up and past his face. Ghost grunts, the sound muffled slightly by the fabric of his mask, and scrunches his nose up at the smell, turning to scowl at the culprit. Soap grins at him in return, shameless as he takes another hit of the cigarette between his lips.
“Sorry L.T.” He says after his next exhale, the expression on his face giving away the fact that he isn’t sorry at all, and Ghost has to put effort into forcing back a fond eye roll. He turns away from Soap, back to the sky above.
On base, bordering several cities, the light pollution fogging the air is veritable. No matter how much Ghost squints and squints at the gaps in clouds, he can never seem to catch more than a few stars in the wide expanse. It’s disappointing in a resigned sort of way; he’s far too familiar with searching, desperate, for even a spark of light, and repeatedly only finding suffocating darkness. Soap speaks of the view back home with a wistful sort of sadness. The small, dinky Scottish town he hailed from apparently had the most amazing view of the night sky.
The next time Soap asks Ghost to take leave with him- to go to his shitty flat in Edinburgh, or spend a few days in the countryside -he might just have to agree.
Soap inhales around his cig again and it seems, somehow, more prominent than the last, like he’s gearing up for something. It has Ghost turning to blink at him again, eyebrows furrowing when he catches the pensive glare on the sergeant’s face. He watches Soap let his breath out with a huff, the smoke harshly spewing out into the air.
He’s beautiful.
The thought catches Ghost off guard, makes him clench his fists for a moment from where they lay at his sides, the fabric of his gloves scraping roughly on the surface below. The concrete roof of the storage shed isn’t the most comfortable location but it’s theirs when they want it on nights like these. He bites his lip and feels the raw skin throb in protest, having already bled earlier in the day after a bout of incessant chewing. It stings, but it works in drawing Ghost’s thoughts away from Soap and his inherent beauty, the way the moonlight kisses his skin just right, the way his mohawk- overgrown, more of a shaggy mullet that definitely doesn’t pass regulation -is ruffled with sleep and being awkwardly pressed into the ground, the way his eyes are soft and shining and the prettiest shade of-
Ghost’s teeth sink farther into the skin of his bottom lip.
After a long moment where Ghost stares at Soap and Soap stares at the sky, his own gaze unreadable, the sergeant sighs and stubs the cigarette out on the roof. He rolls over onto his right side until he’s facing Ghost, something vulnerable in the twist of his mouth. Despite himself, Ghost mimics him, flips onto his side and props his head up on his hand.
“Soap?” Ghost asks, just because he can, and because Soap has yet to say anything after an awkward minute spent in silence.
The air ruffles Soap’s hair- it’s cold, brief, but it still leaves Soap’s cheeks and nose and ears a flushed red compared to the rest of his warm skin. Ghost feels his mouth drying in real time, swears he can feel his blood pumping in his veins.
Bites his lip again.
“What are we, Simon?” Soap says at last, a pout on his lips that Ghost can imagine, in excruciating detail, kissing away.
Ghost blinks, sucks in a short breath that burns his throat as it goes down, like swallowing shards of ice. He’s been expecting the question for a while now, but to hear it voiced out loud gives him pause.
He almost doesn’t want to reply, because replying would make this- whatever this is -real, and that, to Ghost, is far scarier than anything else. When things become real they become tangible; capable of being felt out, touched, damaged, and the mere suggestion of his relationship, he supposes, with Soap becoming damaged in any way is enough to make his stomach clench.
But Soap- Johnny -the kindest man in the military, with his unreasonably sunny disposition and unwavering altruism, deserves to feel secure in this thing going on between them, and if that means labelling it, well.
Let it be known that Ghost is so impossibly tender for only one man.
“Whatever you want us to be, Johnny.” Ghost replies at last, hoping Soap can see the sincerity in his eyes behind the balaclava and dark paint, because it’s true. Ghost is sure he will be content with anything Soap asks of him, even if his own heart is left to rot. If Soap only wants friendship, Ghost will give him that. If he only wants sex, passionate but temporary, Ghost will bow to his every need.
Deep in his core though- the untainted part of him that is still wholly Simon Riley and not the mangled remains of a dead man, a ghost- he knows what he wants, and what he wants is purely Johnny.
He wants lazy mornings in bed, sunlight beaming in through the window, sweet warmth and their limbs so entwined it’s hard to tell where one of them ends and the other begins. He wants easy affection during the simplest of activities, wants to brush his knuckles against Johnny’s as they pass in the halls. He wants to rip Soap apart with his bare hands and climb behind his ribs, wants to be the one to stitch him back together again when all is said and done.
He wants all of him, and he wants to give all of himself in equal measure.
Even now, confronted with the perfect opportunity, Ghost can’t bring himself to say those three words. Romance has always been a finicky thing to Ghost, but it’s undeniable how his heart picks up when Johnny is around, how he yearns to hold Soap’s face in his hands and kiss him until they’re both breathless. He knows what it is, what it means, but he’s- he’s scared. Scared of Soap rejecting him, mostly, and losing his presence at his side forever.
Ghost wonders what that says about him; that he’s quicker to admit to his fear than to his adoration.
Soap lets out a small sound, like a sigh, or a growl. It’s completely exasperated, but not irritated. Ghost’s hand twitches anyway with the instinctive need to make up for whatever he’s done wrong.
“Not helpful, Si.” The words are spoken around a half-smile, partially covered by Soap’s fingers cradling his own face. As always, the nickname sends a little thrill up Ghost’s spine- more evidence pointing towards his… crush. “What d’you want us ta be? ‘Cause personally this pussyfootin’ aboot is gettin’ on ma wick.”
The words make his breath stutter in his lungs. Ghost mutters a cursory “English, MacTavish” to the thickening of Soap’s accent and grins behind his mask when the Scot’s eyes narrow at him. “That’s… fair.” He allows with a half-hearted shrug that doesn’t quite work with his positioning. Feeling oddly emboldened by Soap basically confessing (praying he’s read the situation right), Ghost asks; “What are you gonna do about it?”
Soap’s eyes widen. He raises one of his eyebrows, shifts closer to Ghost. He can feel Soap’s breath through the mask and uses a large chunk of his brain power trying not to think about what that’s doing to him.
He startles slightly when Soap chuckles to himself. Before he has the chance to ask-
“What d’you want me ta do aboot it, Simon?”
Ghost lets the question swirl around in his head for a moment. Glances up at the sky. The moon is high in position, cloud-covered as it is, but there’s still no stars. He turns back to Soap, who’s watching him with a patient smile and red cheeks. Soap, who has never once been afraid of Ghost, not like everyone else. Soap, who treats Ghost reverently, like he’s something to be valued.
Maybe, Ghost thinks, it’s okay to be scared. But maybe he doesn’t have to be.
“I can think of a few things.” He murmurs lowly, gaze purposefully darting down to Soap’s lips. The flush decorating his sergeant’s cheeks dips further down his neck and disappears beneath his hoodie like spilled paint across a canvas.
In another life, Soap might have said no. Might have let him down gently with a soft smile or put him out of his misery like a dog, quick and efficient. Ghost doesn’t have very long to entertain the idea, because in this life-
In this life, Johnny flips them until he’s straddling Simon’s hips- blocking out the misty moon and absent stars -and kisses him breathless through the balaclava.
And it’s everything Simon has ever wanted.