Work Text:
For luck.
Ghost remembered his words as if he had uttered them five minutes, not two weeks and three days ago.
For luck, Johnny, he’d said, handing Soap the one knife that he would never have parted with under normal circumstances, the one knife that he always took on missions, the knife that had kept him safe all these years, after Roba.
Johnny had shot him a beaming smile as he took the knife, as if he knew that somehow Ghost would watch over him even from afar. Then he’d hopped in the back of the van, that same smile still on his lips and an unspoken promise in his eyes, leaving Ghost behind as he drove off with his team.
Ghost hadn’t watched them leave base, knowing it would be bad luck, even when Soap had his knife.
He hadn’t looked, knowing that Soap would be back after four days, safe and sound.
Four days later, Price had called him into his office.
Ghost had known the moment the captain looked up from where he was sitting at his desk, tired and worried. He’d known that Soap wasn’t coming back, that he wasn’t safe and sound.
“It’s a beautiful knife.”
The voice got Ghost back to the present, and he looked up at the shopkeeper, who was currently examining the blade, testing its sharpness.
The young man looked like he wanted to ask about it, but the skull balaclava covering most of his customer’s scarred face was enough to discourage him from voicing the questions that Ghost would never have answered anyway.
“How much?” Ghost asked, his mind drifting back to the moment his world had crumbled, the second he’d understood that he hadn’t managed to protect his sergeant, that his knife was nothing more than that – a knife.
He’d been stupid to ever think otherwise, of course, but a lot of soldiers he knew were superstitious in some way or other – do this before a mission, don’t do that before you deploy… He’d seen it, even if most tried to hide it because it was bad luck to let others know about it.
Yet Soap had trusted and believed him when he’d taken the knife, like he’d thought that what had protected Ghost all these years would surely protect him, too – as if good luck could be transferred like that, from one person to another.
Maybe they’d both believed it, because Soap’s eyes had promised he’d come back to Ghost, alive and unscathed, and Ghost had trusted him, refusing to watch him leave like this might be the last time he’d see his sergeant.
“Can’t give you more than 100 quid,” the shopkeeper said honestly, although he fully expected the man across to bargain for a better price.
But Ghost just shrugged.
The knife was as good as worthless to him now, and he didn’t care about what would happen to it.
He watched as the shopkeeper put the knife away, remembering how Soap had put it in his pocket.
Sergeant MacTavish was injured, the captain had said.
Ghost could still hear the words in his head, remembered them spinning around and bouncing off the confines of his skull until it hurt.
Soap was injured.
Johnny wouldn’t be coming back to him.
“Thanks,” he said, taking the two 50£ notes the shopkeeper held out, carelessly shoving them in a pocket in his jeans.
He left the shop without turning back. There was no need to worry about the knife now, no point in pondering over his decision to give away what had kept him alive and safe after Roba. It was just a knife.
Outside, he took a deep breath. For a moment, he was tempted to rip the mask off his face to feel the cool, fresh air. He felt dizzy, as if his lungs refused to fill, his diaphragm uselessly inflating them with a gaping emptiness instead of oxygen.
The first time he’d seen Soap after that mission, his sergeant had been hooked up to a plethora of machines that were keeping him alive. There were tubes leading in and out of his body, constant beeping, the sterile smell of hospital mixing with the odour of blood and piss and fear.
Sergeant MacTavish had seemed so small and vulnerable, his sweaty mohawk stuck to his forehead, making him look defiant even while dying.
Ghost had been scared to go near, as if his presence alone would manifest his fears of losing his sergeant to a bullet or a blast. But the machines had kept beeping, a steady reminder that Johnny wasn’t dead, that he was still here.
Ghost had sat down in the chair that a nurse had put next to the bed, waiting, listening to the other man’s artificial breaths, in and out and in, holding him tethered to life.
He’d spoken to him, whispered words of comfort and reassurance and, sometimes, of anger.
At first, he had felt stupid about it, talking to someone who wasn’t conscious, but after some time, he had begun to think that maybe, just maybe, Soap would hear him anyway. It was worth a chance, Ghost had thought, anything to convince Johnny to come back to him, even if it meant baring his own feelings, entrusting them to a cold hospital room in the hope that nobody but Soap would ever hear them.
At some point – after hours, or days, Ghost couldn’t tell – Captain Price had dragged him away from the bed, reminding him to eat and sleep, because when Soap wakes up, he’ll give me hell for not looking after you.
Price had been so convinced that the sergeant would make it. When Soap wakes up, he’d said, as if it were a certainty rather than a matter of chance and miracles.
Ghost didn’t remember how he spent the time away from that bed; he knew Sergeant Garrick was with him, sometimes the captain, too, both making sure that he stayed alive, much like the machines did with Johnny.
He missed Soap.
Base wasn’t the same without the Scot’s lively chatter, his stupid jokes, the accent that Ghost claimed was silly but secretly loved hearing. Their team wasn’t the same. While the news of Soap being critically wounded seemed to hit the lieutenant the hardest, as some recognised with surprise, everybody in the 141 keenly felt the loss of Sergeant MacTavish.
At night, Ghost would sometimes wake up to the sound of Soap’s bright voice in the corridor, but then he’d realise that Soap wasn’t there, that it couldn’t be his voice. A split second of happiness before reality returned. In those moments, he would curse Captain Price for not letting him stay with Soap during the night, even when he knew that his CO was right.
The nights were still the hardest.
Ghost sighed and shoved his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. He’d promised Price to be back within an hour and bring him some good coffee, not the shite he drank on base now that Soap was no longer around to brew a decent cuppa. The café he’d seen on his way to the pawnshop had looked nice enough, so Ghost decided to stop there.
To his relief, there were only a few people sitting around the small tables in the café, and no queue. Instinctively, he scanned the room for potential threats, but the elderly ladies drinking tea and eating scones felt as harmless as the two students hunched over a pile of books and a laptop in front of them, talking quietly.
The smell of coffee and fresh bread reminded Ghost of the mornings back on base.
He remembered how he had surprised Soap one morning, a few weeks back, as the sergeant had been making breakfast for the 141; coffee for himself, Price and Gaz, and black tea for Ghost. He’d even organised croissants, though he’d refused to share the secret of their procurement.
Ghost realised that this was the last time they’d all sat together for breakfast; the day after, he’d been assigned a solo recon job, and just a few hours after he’d returned, Soap had left for his fateful mission. Without the sergeant around, Ghost had avoided having breakfast with the others, preferring instead to eat in his room or go for a run.
When Soap had been reported WIA, Ghost had all but stopped eating, struggling to keep anything down while knowing that his sergeant was in the hospital, fighting for his life. Price had done his best to make him eat, even bought Ghost’s favourite cereal – the stupidly sweet chocolate one Ghost had thought only Soap knew he liked. He’d managed to force it down, if only not to disappoint his captain, and of course he’d been sitting by Soap’s bed with a bowl of said cereal when the sergeant had finally, finally woken up.
You know those aren’t really healthy, LT, Soap had said, voice raw and hoarse from disuse and from the tubes that had been shoved down his throat.
Ghost had nearly choked at the sound of it. He’d coughed and swallowed, blaming the tears in his eyes on the sugary chunks stuck in his throat, then he’d got up to take his sergeant in a careful, gentle hug, mumbling a quiet Welcome back, you twat into his ear.
Soap had just laughed at him, the cheeky bugger, and Ghost had held him a little tighter, unwilling to let go, all the while soaking the man’s hospital gown with his stupid, helpless tears.
“What can I get you?”
Ghost looked up at the elderly woman behind the counter, realising he didn’t even know what he wanted to order. Silently, he stared at the list of beverages on the black board behind the woman’s back. It was long and… complicated, and Ghost didn’t know what half of the terms on there meant.
“Coffee,” he said, hearing how stupid he sounded, but the woman just gave a friendly laugh, as if she could sympathise with his confusion.
She prepared two cups based on his vague description of what he wanted, one for Price and another for himself, and a strawberry milkshake for Soap. On a whim, Ghost also bought a slice of lemon cake for the captain, then he paid, accepting the neatly packed paper bag the shopkeeper held out to him.
The way back to the hospital was thankfully short, so when he got to Soap’s room, the coffee was still hot.
“Went out of your way there, huh,” Price smiled, lightly patting Ghost on the shoulder as he accepted the coffee and the cake. “Thank you, Simon.”
Ghost grumbled an unintelligible reply, knowing that although he was so bad at showing his gratitude to his CO, Price still recognised it for what it was.
“What about me?” Soap asked from the bed, eyeing Price’s lemon cake and coffee with sad eyes. “Do I get nothing?”
“Greedy bastard,” Ghost chuckled. “You’ll just suffocate on the crumbs, and then the nurses will kill me for murdering their favourite patient.”
Soap gave a disappointed huff, knowing that Ghost wasn’t really wrong – about the crumbs anyway, considering how much his throat still hurt.
“I got you something else though,” Ghost added, sitting down on the bed as he reached into the bag again, grabbing his coffee and the milkshake. “Not sure if you’re allowed to have that,” he admitted, “but you like this stuff, don’t you?”
Soap nodded, shooting him one of his beaming smiles.
Ghost winced when he saw that the movement made the sergeant’s cracked lips bleed, even if Soap himself didn’t seem to notice it.
“Johnny…” he muttered, slipping off his glove before he reached out to wipe away the droplets of blood with his thumb. “Gotta look after yourself,” he reminded him, as if the man wasn’t practically tied to the bed, unable to do much of anything with his broken shoulder, both arms in casts, and his cracked ribs.
Clumsily, he smeared some lip balm on Soap’s lips, the soft gesture garnering him an exasperated huff and an affectionate smile from the sergeant and an amused hrumph from the captain.
“Seeing that you’re in good hands, Sergeant,” Price announced as he got up from his chair, “I’ll leave you both to it and go sort out the paperwork you caused with this mess.”
Ghost shot the captain a glare at his choice of words.
Soap, however, was completely unfazed by it. “Gotta keep you on your toes somehow, sir,” he told Price, a mischievous glint in his eyes.
“That you do plenty,” Price sighed, then he grabbed his jacket and turned to leave. “I’ll be back in a few hours. Try not to do anything stupid in the meantime.”
Ghost gave a diligent nod in reply, ignoring the whispered Speak for yourself, LT from Soap.
“I got rid of it,” Ghost said when the door had closed behind the captain.
He remained seated on the bed even though the chair was now unoccupied, and held out the straw of the milkshake so Soap could drink.
“The knife?” Soap asked after a few small swallows.
Ghost nodded. “It brought you no luck, so I sold it.”
“Oh Simon…” Soap hummed, voice low and hoarse. “You shouldn’t’ve done that; it was your favourite knife.”
Ghost shrugged. “It brought you no luck,” he repeated, looking down at the cup in his hands.
“That blast…” Soap spoke again after a short moment, “That blast should have killed me. But I’m still here, Si.”
Ghost looked up, his eyes meeting Soap’s. The Scot had never called him that before.
“Yeah, you are, Johnny,” Ghost confirmed as he took in Soap’s features, the timid smile curling the corners of his mouth, the slight flush on his cheeks, the strangely expectant look in his stormy blue eyes…
Hesitantly, Ghost pulled the balaclava over his head and brushed his unruly curls out of his face.
“You are,” he whispered, and leaned in to press a chaste kiss on his sergeant’s lips. “You’re here.”