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Gaz was more than a little tired of dancing around the thing between him, Soap, and Ghost.
The whole ordeal started at the pub, like most situations Gaz finds himself frustrated over. The old man had clocked out early, bone tired with a belly full of cheap, knock-off yank beer and a sated smile on his lips, leaving the trio alone to shoot the shit until walking would become a problem.
Soap, with all his highlander tolerance, had nothing to show for the doubles he’d downed but slightly pink cheeks, while Ghost was absentmindedly rocking back and forth with a yard-long stare, words just barely decipherable through his heavy Manc slurring. Gaz was neither here nor there, aware enough to see the way Ghost’s eyes trailed from his lips to his chest but gone enough to think nothing of it.
At least he didn’t until he relaxed back into his seat, legs spread wide, and Soap took hold of his cheeks, nearly breaking his damn neck with the sudden movement, and smashed their lips together, not caring any about his boyfriend that sat just to the right of him.
He breaks the kiss with a manic grin, shooting a heavy eyed look to Ghost before curling his fingers around the collar of Gaz’s shirt and heaving him forward until their noses brushed.
“Should be with us.” Soap mumbles, eyes alight with want.
And doesn’t that sound like his absolute wettest dream. A night spent unraveling all the twisted feelings in his chest, a chance to nip it in the bud. Gaz spares a glance at Ghost behind him, finds his eyes locked firmly on his crotch, and turns back faster than light. He’s only a man, after all, and what is man if not easily susceptible to temptation?
“Might just take you up on that.” He whispers back.
He remembers the entire night play by play, the alcohol doing nothing to block the memory of Soap on his knees with Ghost pressed against his back, or Soap draped over him mumbling praises in his ear with a mouthful of Ghost, the blond scratching gently at his scalp, fingers buried in his short hair.
It’s everything he never let himself want. It’s just as rough as it is loving, at least on his part, letting his tongue or his fingers spell out words he’ll never let himself say.
When he wakes up that morning, sharp pains stabbing through his temples, it’s with Soap and Ghost curled around him, not nearly enough space for all three of them on the bare, military grade mattress. He lets himself soak in it — the warm morning sun painting the three of them in a gentle glow, the closeness of unintentionally synchronized breaths — and lets himself pretend that this could be real.
Then he slips away, duty calls and everything, but he does bring them two bottles of water from the mess, sending a short smile to a newly waking Ghost before hightailing it out of the door.
He expects that to be the end of it, a night of fun to fill some desire the couple had been itching to act on. He was just the first willing participant, he tells himself, they’d only chosen him because he was easy.
That would’ve been fine except for the fact that it doesn’t end there.
They don’t always fuck, though Gaz isn’t complaining about the nights they do. Sometimes they just hang around, watch movies pressed against each other in the rec room, or walk the perimeter of the base when they’re off duty. It’s nice, these pseudo-dates, feels right in a way he can’t place and can’t bear to name.
Along with his mentally dubbed date nights, came the kissing. Soap and Gaz had always been closer than normal friends, often sleeping piled on top of each other and giving the occasional handjob before he and Ghost had become a thing.
After that first night, Soap had taken it to the next level, pressing short kisses to any bit of Gaz he could reach. A kiss to his cheek when Soap passes his seat before a debrief, a kiss to his temple when Soap trotted away on recruit duty after lunch, a kiss to each of his knuckles before and after a mission. He waves it off, calls it friendship, refuses to call it more, to get his hopes up.
Every morning after he gets a kiss from Soap and a warm grin from Ghost as he slips away for breakfast.
They meet up with him, sit shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh on either side of him no matter how many empty seats surround them, and he pretends.
Later, when they’ve done whatever it is they’d been assigned that day, they’ll settle in together. Whether it’s playing cards on Ghost’s bunk or sharing embarrassing stories from their greenie days, it seemed like they were never apart.
Which is why it was so fucking irritating that he wasn’t with them, not in the way he wanted to be. He wanted Ghost to trust him enough to let him really get to know him, flaws and all. He wanted to fill the pages of Soap’s sketchbook the way he knows Ghost does. He wanted them to want him.
Every night he spent buried in Ghost with Soap sucking bruises into his neck weighed on his bleeding heart, every afternoon spent leisurely with one or the other or both made him fall that much harder, until suddenly he found himself three feet from the pavement with nothing to brace with but the fantasy of loving and being loved in return.
So, however stupid and entirely awkward, he goes to Price. The man wouldn’t judge, he knew, even if he’d beg Gaz to spare him the finer details of the arrangement.
There he finds himself: stood at parade rest in front of the Captain’s desk, keeping his eyes trained on the mountainous piles of paperwork and blacked-out names to be stamped and sent away. Price’s expression is incredulous and stressed, but somehow still exasperatedly fond.
He’s much calmer than Gaz knew he’d be if his subordinate came looking to him for relationship advice, much less relationship advice with the only two remaining members of their taskforce. Or just two people at all. Why was he always in the most fucked situations?
“Son,” Price sighs, setting down his gifted fountain pen and roughly dragging his hands down his face, “Have you considered just asking them if they want to be with you?”
It’s as stinted and humiliated as Gaz felt, he was somewhat glad they were on the same page, emotionally speaking at the very very least. This was worse than his mum’s boyfriend trying to give him the shovel talk way back when.
“Of course I have! It’s all I can think about. But what if they say no?” He wrings his hat in his hands, feeling the grey hairs growing from the sheer emotional toll this predicament had taken on him.
“Then they say no, not much you can do about that one other than move on. But they won’t, is the thing.”
“You don’t know that, Cap. Not for sure.”
“Since when have you ever doubted me?”
“Since today. I can’t be wrong about this, I can’t.”
There’s a short moment where they simply look at each other, stuck in a stalemate of stubbornness, before Price slowly stands, making his way around the desk and crossing his arms. Gaz feels ten years younger somehow, like that clumsy sixteen year old getting sat down by some guy pretending to be his dad while he drained his mum of her personality.
Only difference is Price doesn’t have to pretend. Gaz thinks if he handed the Captain adoption papers right that second he’d sign them with no sweat off his brow.
There was something there, something about latching onto strong, adult male figures who show him any modicum of kindness and respect, but he was too strung up to appreciate the irony of having daddy issues in the military.
Price runs his fingers in a straightening motion over his mustache, before leveling Gaz with a stare blank enough to physically make his gut churn.
He wonders if this is where the old man tells him he can’t go chasing pipe dreams of forbidden romance with his best friends, wonders if this is where all his hopes have come to die. He wants to run away from the bombshell of reality and bury his face in the softness of Ghost’s chest, Soap’s hand running soothing paths over the planes of his back.
Instead, Price just mumbles something about having never wanted kids and cracks a few of his knuckles. “Listen, kid,” he starts, “MacTavish has come in here every day for months chattering on about you said this or you did that, and I’ve never heard someone speak with as much pride as Simon when he talks about you. So please, for the love of God, just go fucking talk to them.”
Gaz's heart is firmly lodged in his throat, as much as he hates to admit it, and he fruitlessly tries to swallow it down enough to take a breath that didn’t feel on the verge of Too Much Emotion. That couldn’t be true, couldn’t be, because that meant all the time he’d spent pining, watching with an aching chest as his friends flawlessly gravitated toward each other, he’d never stopped to consider that just maybe they were pulled into his orbit.
He’d really kill himself if that was the case, because that would make him the biggest bloody moron in the UK.
Before he can spiral into some rant of “just friendship” Price holds a tired hand up, briefly silencing his swirling thoughts.
“Take a minute,” He gestures to the chair behind Gaz, pushing himself up to round his desk once more, “Think about it.”
He does, though it’s mostly based on the instinctual need to follow orders. His head spins with the momentum of memories come and gone, smile lines and crow’s feet, before Soap and Ghost had even called themselves an item.
Ghost leaving the kettle on for him in the morning, nodding to him as he waved.
Soap walking three steps closer in the cold, searching for warmth.
Ghost pressing a firm, grounding hand into his shoulder when a bullet flies just too close to his face.
Soap running to him on the tarmac, wrapping him in a nearly inescapable bear hug when he returned from missions he’d been lent out on.
Moments upon moments, months and days and weeks of the couple carving out spaces for themselves behind his heart, nestling into the muscle with clasped hands. Someone should just bring him the loaded gun at this point. What kind of idiot didn’t notice his feelings were reciprocated even when actively searching for signs?
How long had he watched bitterly, guiltily, as Soap wrenched the mask up to press a smiling kiss to Ghost’s bitten lips? How many times had he woken up in Soap’s arms after a long night and ached with the intensity of his affection, his love? And all that time spent hurting, spent beating himself up for wanting more when the two had each other, was for absolutely nothing.
He breathes, unclenches his fists, lets the revelation wash over him and calm the pitiful storm of self-blame rattling the confines of his brain. He breaks it down, focuses on bits of information instead of the big picture.
Soap and Ghost loved him.
Soap and Ghost loved him.
Price looks up expectantly as he jumps from his chair, an elated, disbelieving smile on his lips. He laughs breathlessly, fingers tingling with the intensity of his pounding heart.
“They won’t say no.” He whispers, barely managing to stifle the manic giggles that threaten to bubble up from his chest.
The Captain smiles back at him, and Gaz could live the rest of his life in those doting blues. “No, they won’t.”
He leaves like fire was at his heels, throwing a rushed thanks over his shoulder, Price calling back a sarcastic “You’re dismissed!” He isn’t running, though he certainly isn’t taking a light stroll, either, as he books it to Ghost’s room. They’d be leaving to meet him for dinner sometime soon, he was resolved to beat them to the chase.
They want him, they want him, they want him.
The thought burns, a red hot, love sweetened reminder that browned his teeth rotted his gums. No more waiting on the sidelines, no more silent seething or needless jealousy, he could have them. He could be theirs.
There’s no moment of hesitation as he knocks on the plated door, a special pattern they had worked out just for him.
One, two, pause. One, two - three, four.
There’s the sound of rustling, murmured voices, before Ghost calls out a muffled “Come in!” He steps in with purpose, and promptly stops in his tracks.
On the bed there’s Ghost, face bare and pink, with Soap at his side, sleep softened with red pillow lines criss crossing his cheeks.
Simon is maybe the most beautiful person he’s ever seen. He’s got a strong jaw, peppered with a flattering five o’clock shadow, the hair only visible through the soft light pouring in through the hole in the wall they called a window. A scar nicks his top lip, he knew of this one, but it continues up his face until it meets the apple of his cheeks. His nose is fully crooked, and if he squints he can see a smattering of white hair in between the strands of gold.
Those honey and liquor eyes take in his reaction with smug abandon, and maybe a little worry, waiting for him. Soap looks on in obvious solidarity, the first time he’d seen Ghost’s face fully he didn’t stop talking about it for four days, Gaz had loathed it at the time, but he knew now that he’d be the same.
He thinks he says something stupid like oh or wow but he can’t be entirely sure, drinking up the sight, completely star struck. He looked tired, but happy, peace was a good look on him, an amazing look, even. He could get used to that face, could practically feel the stubble under his palms with how hard he imagined cupping those flushed cheeks.
“Come here to stare then, Kyle?” Ghost rasps, smiling gently as Soap intertwines their fingers, sitting up and leaning against his side.
The Scot snorts, amused, “Give ‘im a minute, Si, it’s his first time.”
He blinks away the stupor, not at all helped with the beard Soap had yet to shave off. It wasn’t big, toeing the line of overgrown stubble just so, but God did it make him hot under the collar. He was a wreck.
“Uh,” He says intelligently, “No, actually. I came to talk to you. To you both.”
That gets their attention, and they sit up a bit straighter, nice smiles dropping for tilted frowns. He only sort of wished he hadn’t said anything, wanting to bring back that warm, floaty atmosphere that calmed them all effortlessly. He takes a moment, reminds himself that this would only bring good, lets that calm his jackrabbit pulse.
Though before he can let the steady stream of words out that he’d been letting circle his brain like a toy train chugging along its tracks, Soap breathes in sharply.
“Are you breaking up with us?”
Pause.
Fucking what?
It’s an entirely stupefying prospect. One: he hadn’t imagined that “breaking up” would be the term to put an end to a casual affair, and two: if he had been in a relationship with them, why would he ever leave? It was actually his dream come true, he wouldn’t ever let them go.
There’s an obvious air of desperate sadness on their part, one of total bafflement on his. There was some sort of miscommunication, that much was for sure, some disconnect that was keeping them from being on the same page.
He flounders, eyebrows skyrocketing and jaw dropping open in an attempt to gather his words. Something meaningful would’ve been preferable, something half decent and reassuring, instead what comes out is a squeaky: “What in the bleeding hell are you on about?”
Very smart indeed, Garrick. Real poetry there, mate.
Ghost frowns, shoulders dropping from their tense position steadily, “So you aren’t, then? Leaving us?”
His brain feels fried, like someone had taken a taser to his forehead and scrambled him all up. The less than elegant reply leaves his mouth without any thought behind it, mind working overtime to make up for the emotional roller coaster that he’d been on all day.
“How can I leave you if we weren’t ever together?”
Another bout of quiet and Gaz knows he’s missing something, trying desperately to search for the missing puzzle piece that kept him from understanding what was happening. He was going into hibernation after today, what with the way he feels absolutely drained of his life force.
In times like these there’s really only one thing that Gaz knows how to do. He starts rambling.
“Look, this thing we’ve been doing is nice, real fucking nice, but I don’t want to be some no strings add on to your relationship. I thought maybe I could deal with it, be happy I was getting your attention at all, but I just — I can’t pretend I don’t love you the way you love each other. And I thought..I thought maybe, you guys love me that way, too.”
Sometime between when he started flapping his lips, he’d closed his eyes, not wanting to face the potentially negative responses waiting for him once he peeled them open. His hands moved in self soothing motions, rubbing up and down his jeans, getting lost in the sensation of rough denim on sweat damp palms. Maybe he and Price were wrong, though it was a slim chance, but he’d nearly been killed on slimmer, so he kept his eyes wrenched tight.
He can’t see the way Soap and Ghost share a confused look, the way they hold a conversation with gazes alone, leaning into each other like they’re an anchor.
“Gaz,” Soap beckons and he reluctantly sets his gaze on him. There’s confusion, a metric ton of it, and thinly veiled concern. “You hit your head or something, mate?”
Huh? He thinks, and says, apparently with the way Ghost raises an eyebrow in question.
“Johnny asked you to be with us that night in the pub. Do you not remember that?”
And it clicks. The disconnect, the missing detail, the final piece snapping into place. Soap and Ghost had been under the assumption that they were already together, that he’d agreed to being in a relationship with them. Soap hadn’t been asking for a one night stand, something casual and fun to let off steam. He was asking for Gaz, they were asking for him.
Should be with us.
Might just take you up on that.
How fucking ridiculous. What a stupid, stupid thing to lose sleep over.
He laughs before he can stop himself. It starts small, aborted giggles and half snorts, and then it gets bigger, the absurdity of the situation far too much to bear. It’s irrational and crazy but just when he’s about to calm down he looks at Soap and Ghost, those stupid, beautiful men that he loves looking beyond lost, and he loses it all over again. He has to crouch, knees going weak from the force of his borderline hysterical laughter.
His stomach is cramping by the time he relaxes enough to only giggle in increments, wiping the tears from his waterline and taking a deep, uninterrupted breath, only chuckling again once he makes eye contact with each of them.
Insane, he is, but what’s the fun in being a normal functioning member of modern society?
You couldn’t find a better visual definition of perplexity if you tried, each of them wearing matching furrowed brows and hesitant grimaces. They definitely thought he was fucked in the head. He knew he definitely was. Gaz had been the only one not giving them his all, and what a story that was. Idiotic.
He grins, bright and dumb, “I figured you’d only meant for the night. Couldn’t for the life of me figure out why you’d started spending all your alone time with me.”
The ice breaks, that cold worry cracks into relief and dubiety, their expressions a wicked amalgamation of momentary sorrow and fiery love, of good and bad and everything all at once.
Soap pulls from the floor by his hands, yanks him back down onto the too-springy mattress. One moment he’s laughing into the air and the next it's against the Scot’s lips. Soap kisses like he needs the contact to breathe, putting his heart and soul into the shared movement until their smiles force them to break apart.
He’s breathless, staring up at the endless ocean of his eyes, can almost smell the salt air on his breath. The beard scratched an itch Gaz didn’t know he had, flat on his back with temptation himself leaning over him.
“You get it now?” The air whispers as he plucks fruit from the tree, a rainstorm on the horizon of his irises.
“Don’t know,” he says back, turning his head to make eye contact with the angel tasked to save him. “Might need another. Just to be sure.”
The molten amber he is graced with is better than heaven, he’s sure, and he’d live a life of eternal damnation before returning to Eden without it. He bites the forbidden fruit, savors its taste on his tongue, lets the angel drink the juice straight from his mouth, damning him too.
Soap tackles him into a hug when Simon pulls away, alarmingly similar to all those times touching down, and giggles excitedly pressing his lips to every corner of Kyle’s face he can reach. He shares the elation, of course he does, and pulls him into a sweet kiss, leaning into Ghost’s touch as he presses his own kiss to Gaz’s forehead.
He goes to pull away but Gaz stops him, letting Soap trail pecks down his jaw to his shoulder as he leans up and finds out exactly what it’s like to lick the jagged keloid of that mesmerizing scar.
Tomorrow they’ll eat breakfast sitting shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh, no matter how many empty seats surround them, and Price will clap a congratulatory hand on his shoulder and ask them to politely keep the noise down next time. But tonight he’ll lose himself in the bliss, the Earth stopping, brain melting, exhilaration of loving and being loved in return.