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A cacophony of bombs fall like a symphony, or the heavy bass to a song that no one can hear. Ghost smiles, barging his way through the door and into a retro-fitted diner hidden in this bumfuck of nowhere city. It’s certainly going for a theme; red booths and subway tile, a large wall of windows glowing a violent shade of orange from the fire outside, a broken neon sign on the brickwork reading COCK & REAMS. Ghost smiles giddily as he rolls up his mask and shoves a cigarette in the gap between his teeth, hanging loosely from his mouth as he skips across the room.
A lone jukebox lies in the back-corner, still humming with whatever electricity is keeping this place going. Half the city is out but turns out he’s a lucky bastard for once. Holding a lighter up, he inspects the jukebox closer, going through the slim selection of records in the glass frame. Jesus Christ, this thing really is old, he thinks, tapping at the glass. They couldn’t afford a fucking CD player?
Oh, but it does have one of his favourites.
He taps one of the buttons and watches as the record flips onto the turntable, the first beats echoing through the barren canteen.
“The sun is shining in the sky,” he sings, bouncing on the ball of his feet and grinning like a madman just set free. It’s not far from the truth. “Ain’t a cloud in sight.”
He continues to hum, dancing across the room as another barrage of bombs act as the backing track, the crack of a window as a stray bullet pierces it adding a certain tonal excitement to the whole thing.
Ghost flies in a circle, arms outstretched and takes another drag of his cigarette as he shouts, “Hey you with the pretty face! Welcome to the human race.” People scream outside, some sort of frantic yelling, followed by a hail of bullets.
Ghost arches an eyebrow. Someone is having more fun than him.
He’s just getting into the good bit of the instrumental when the bell above the door rings, followed by heavy, thudding footsteps. Ghost twirls on his feet and looks at the most beautiful man he’s ever seen. And he’s seen a lot of fucking men in his time. Though most of them, he’ll admit, were ugly bastards.
Well hello, Ghost thinks, taking the fag out of his mouth and chucking it into the distance. What’s it gonna set fire to? The flames?
Then the man points a gun at his head and Ghost feels his heart skip a beat, the song finishing with its long, drawn-out notes, a loaded silence taking its place.
“Who are you and why shouldn’t I shoot you?” The man asks grimly, holding the gun a little too tight, shoulders a little too taut. Someone really ought to loosen him up.
Oh, this is going to be fun, Ghost thinks, cocking his hip. So much fun.
💣 🍦 🩸
Everything’s gone to shit. John’s in the middle of an active war zone with no backup and no available extraction. His comms died about half a mile back when some lucky fucker got a bullet in it.
Then again, better the comms than his fucking head.
He’s been looking for somewhere to take a pit stop for the last hour, but pretty much everywhere is shelled to bits. He needs fucking electricity and maybe even a functioning phone, though he doesn’t hold out much hope. Whilst some of the power grid seems to still be running, it’s scattered and sparse.
Another round of bombs falls, though distant this time. The noise still ricochets through him, leaving a high-pitched whine in its wake.
He’s alone, exposed.
As if to agree with him, he hears the familiar sound of a gun being cocked.
A bullet misses his head by a stray metre, cracking into the wall behind him and pockmarking the bricks. Ears ringing, John dives forward, ducking under the sudden hailstorm of bullets that land where he was just standing, and scrambles to the nearest cover he can find.
He dives behind the closest wall and listens carefully, though time is running short. Three assailants, if he counts the footsteps correctly.
He breathes slowly, locking down the adrenaline so that it can’t spiral into panic, just the razor-sharp focus that he needs. The sort of focus that gives him a chance at making three shots that hit all three targets without letting any of them get him first.
But he didn’t get into the SAS for fucking nothing. Price didn’t choose him because he was shit.
There’s always room to be better.
He learnt that fucking lesson on the godforsaken bridge. They all did. Now he’s faster, stronger, sharper. He’s cut himself into a tool, leaving the man on the bridge behind.
The three of them go down no issue at all.
John gets the hell out of there before more can arrive. He runs down the streets like a madman, keeping his eyes peeled for somewhere, anywhere, that could be useful.
Then, hope at last. A diner, a little way down the street, lights on and the glass somehow unshattered. It’s his best hope, even if it’s a slim fucking chance. A diner probably has a landline and at the very least he can keep away from the nearest flames and give himself solid cover if more fuckers arrive.
Only one problem; there’s music playing inside.
He’s not alone.
He goes in anyway, gun at the ready, breathing in then out in steady, controlled breaths. Only one way to do this.
“Who are you and why shouldn’t I shoot you?” He orders, gun trained on the dancing figure. Who, for all extents and purposes, just seems like an extraordinarily kitted out civilian. He hasn’t ever seen a soldier act like this, even the wild ones, not in the middle of a burning city.
What the fuck?
The man spins to turn him, fucking twirls like a little girl, and tilts his head, sunglasses falling down his nose to reveal startlingly blue eyes with eyelashes longer than John’s fucking dick.
It should not be a detail he notices.
He stares more at them than he does his fucking sight.
“Hello,” the man drawls, face completely obscured by a bizarre balaclava. It’s splattered with white paint, a crudely drawn skull done by an unskilled hand. The artist in John is fucking irked.
“You didn’t answer my question,” John spits, doing his best to keep his gun level. The man doesn’t seem to give two shits as he strides closer, eyes sparkling with untold mirth, until his head is pressed right up against the barrel of the gun.
He’s a fucking idiot, then.
John puts the gun down.
“There we go,” the man drawls. “I’m Ghost. You?”
Codenames then. Well, Soap doesn’t exactly fucking exist anymore, and he’s never managed to pick up another name, so he gives the next best thing.
“MacTavish,” he says, eyes narrowing. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Oh, you know, enjoying the fun,” Ghost says flippantly. And what kind of name is fucking Ghost? It’s like a kid playing superheroes. Add the shitty fucking cosplay and, well…
Ghost sighs abruptly, pushing his sunglasses back into place, not an inch of skin on show. “Look, I’ve got a mission, same as you. But given the state of all that,” he says, waving his hand at the window, where the roar of the fires has only grown louder, another bombardment falling on the city, “I’d say we have time for a break.”
John has a dawning feeling that -- Did that… Did that fucker just wink at him?
John looks him up and down but it doesn’t give him much. Aside from the shitty mask and even shittier sunglasses, the man gives nothing away. Generic weaponry, no flag markers and a stance that makes him look more like a model than a military man. But he’s got to be.
“A PMC then?” John asks.
“You could say so,” Ghost says.
Enigmatic fucker.
“How about a song,” he says, like they’re playing a game of cat and mouse. Every time John pushes forward, it’s like Ghost takes glee in leaping back. He practically dances back to the jukebox, humming to himself for a moment before he hits the button with a flourish.
The jukebox takes a moment, the needle squawking a bit before he hears the familiar scratch of a record starting.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” John mutters when he hears the music start.
“Is this real life? Is this just fantasy?” Ghost sings, a little off-key and more gravelly than Freddy Mercury could ever be.
John snorts. “Is this your way of telling me something?”
Ghost’s mask shifts and John wants to rip it off him, anything to make his read on this man clearer.
“No, just enjoying the music. This is a favourite of mine,” he says, coming closer. “I’m just a poor boy,” he sings, “I need no sympathy.” And then, without a care in the world, Ghost leaps onto one of the nearest tables and points a gun at John’s head. With a completely straight face, he sings, “Mama, just killed a man. Put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger, now he's dead.”
“Is this your idea of a joke?” John barks, frantically looking for the safety. It’s on. Oh, thank fuck, it’s on. Jesus Fucking Christ.
“Are you allergic to fun?” Ghost says, rolling his eyes and dropping the gun to his side. His posture abruptly shifts into something tighter, losing all the loose-limbed joy of before. Now this man John could believe is a soldier.
He looks stunning, strangely, even covered head to toe. He towers above John like this, bathed in an orange-red glory as the fires rage behind him. He looks like power. Like a dangerous addiction you know you shouldn’t touch.
John hasn’t wanted something in a long, long time.
The sensation is almost foreign, and fucking confusing to boot. The man’s clearly insane and is having some sort of identity crisis. But he also hasn’t shot John yet for all he’s waving it around.
Then Ghost shifts again, hopping down and sitting on the edge of the table, leaning in so their faces are barely an inch apart.
“Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango?” He whispers, like it’s a fucking secret, glasses slipping low again so those eyes lock onto John’s. They’re dazzling, brighter than should even be possible, gorgeous.
“Oh Jesus Christ,” John mutters, throwing himself away, eyes scanning the windows for threats because if he thinks for one more second about how attractive the strange fucking diner guy is, he’s going to lose it.
“Well, that’s enough of that,” Ghost declares, seemingly out of nowhere, leaping off the table and landing with a gentle thud. “I’m hungry.”
“You’re… hungry?” John asks, eyebrows climbing into his hairline. Following this fucker’s train of thought is like a wild goose chase.
“Yup.” He pops the p and spins to face John, though whatever face he’s making is completely obscured again. “And what better place to eat than a diner? I’m sure they’ve got something around here.”
With the song still raging in the background, Ghost uses two hands to haul himself over the counter and starts investigating the bar area, only popping his head briefly into the kitchen.
“The kitchen’s fucked,” he says with a small shrug, before his head swivels back to John, “but you know what isn’t?”
“Enlighten me,” John sighs. He wonders why he’s even still playing the game. He hasn’t even fucking looked for a phone yet, but there’s not one clearly within sight. Really, he should just fucking turn around and leave before this gets any worse.
He stays.
“The ice-cream freezer. And, if the power’s still on then…” He trails off, skipping over the blender and jamming his finger down on the button. It immediately whirls up a storm to match the utter carnage reigning down outside, blocking out the music entirely.
John arches an eyebrow, wondering where the fuck this is going, even when he can see it unfolding right before his very eyes.
“Milkshakes!” Ghost says, like John is the insane one. “Any flavour preference?”
“That milk is probably off,” John says instead, nodding at the large fridge on the far side of the bar.
John can practically hear Ghost roll his eyes.
“Place only evacuated yesterday. It’ll be fine,” Ghost snaps.
“You know, you’re a real hard fucker to read with those glasses on,” John grouses and crosses his arms over his chest, desperate to think about anything other than fucking milkshakes.
“Aw, you want to see my eyes?” Ghost asks, pitching his voice an octave too high as he takes the glasses off and bats his eyelashes. “You only had to ask nicely.” Then he smoothly folds them into one of a dozen hidden pockets. John wonders idly just how many of them have knives in them.
“Oh! Here comes the good bit,” Ghost says, apropos to nothing, eyes twinkling.
“So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye!” He screeches, still at least a little out of tune, though he makes up for it with passion. He’s even added some objectively awful air guitar, head thrown back as he makes nonsensical hand movements. “So you think you can love me and leave me to die! Oh! Baby.”
“Is this necessary?” John asks as Ghost plays the non-existent guitar.
“You really do hate fun,” Ghost sighs, rolling his eyes, though he does let up. “Fine. Hopefully a milkshake will cheer you up or you really are a lost cause.”
John settles him with a look before turning his back to the whole thing, focusing his gaze out the window instead. Bombs are falling but more distant and sparse now. He tracks the streets for signs of people but comes up with nothing, just the bleak roads and raging fires as the ground shudders with each impact.
“Stop being fucking morbid,” Ghost barks.
“Then stop acting like a fucking loon,” John shoots back. He cranes his neck to look at Ghost, letting all his irritation show. Ghost doesn’t seem to give a shit, ducking under the counter to grab some tools and then digging his way through the freezer.
John better not get fucking food poisoning from this bullshit.
When did he even agree to himself he was gonna drink this?
(Probably the moment Ghost fluttered those fucking eyelashes at him.)
From there, things go shockingly quick. Ghost works like he’s a professional chef, even if it’s making something as simple as a goddamn milkshake. He does it with the same flourish he seems to do everything with and yet the movements don’t seem wasted. There’s a sort of military precision to the drama that should be impossible.
This man is a fucking mystery.
John should kill him. He should. He should just shoot him in the back of the head while he’s not looking and carry on with his mission. Sure, he’s not an active threat, but he’s not an ally either. He would have confirmed that a lot fucking quicker if he was. The idea that this man could be working with that fucking monster should be enough for John to grab his fucking gun but…
But--
Well, there’s nothing fucking to go there, is there. He just isn’t going to do it. John’s always been a bit of a fuck-up like that. No amount of desperate training is going to stop that. That’s why he usually has Price with him for missions like this.
“If you give me that look for even a minute longer, I’m going to start crying,” Ghost says out of nowhere, dropping a cartoonishly perfect milkshake on the table and taking one side of the booth. He drapes himself over it without a care in the world, arms resting on the back, legs spread out wide.
“There we go,” he announces, lifting an arm to motion to the opposite side of the booth. “Come on, I want to wipe that look off your face.”
“What look?” John snaps, though he takes the seat anyway.
“The ‘boo-hoo I’m such a sad military man’ look. It’s embarrassing.” Ghost levels him with a serious look. “Stop being a self-pitying cunt.” Then, a sly smile. “It doesn’t work for a pretty boy like you.”
Fine, John thinks. If that’s how we’re doing this.
John leans forward, holding himself up on his forearms and looks Ghost straight in the eyes, looking for something he can’t hope to find. Ghost is a blank fucking slate. Strange and manic and a little fucking terrifying.
But John isn’t scared, he realises. Not one fucking bit. Confused, sure, and more than a little annoyed, but not scared. Even though the man’s been all but threatening him since the beginning, John hasn’t felt threatened. It’s almost maddening.
“What about you then? You hiding a pretty face under that mask?” He asks, letting a small smile build on his lips, just enough to feel the faintest pull on his lips.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Ghost teases.
“You gotta take it off to drink the milkshake. Can’t drink through the fabric,” John taunts, grin growing. Fuck it, if Ghost can play this game then so can he, and he’s going to fucking enjoy it.
Ghost slowly brings a hand up to his face, rolling his mask up just enough to show his lips. It doesn’t tell a pretty picture. His lip is partially gouged out and it’s clear he hasn’t shaven in days, a dark shadow growing patchily around the scars. When Ghost grins, it reveals a missing tooth where his canine should be, the rest criss-crossed and out of place.
Ghost leans forward, tongue peeking out of the gap between his teeth as he smiles, before wrapping his lips around one of two straws, slipped into a thick milkshake, buried under a mountain of whipped cream and a cherry on top.
“You not gonna drink?” He mumbles around the straw, flashing John a coy look.
John stares at his lips like a starving man.
The straws are barely a few centimetres apart, John is at risk of butting heads if he leans in, but…
He starts to lean in and just as his lips touch the edge of the straw, all hell breaks loose.
Ghost’s gun goes off in a thunderous bang, blitzing John’s eardrums. Adrenaline floods his system and before he understands what his body is doing, he’s got a knife to Ghost’s throat, stopped just before he can tear through his jugular.
“Is this the reward I get for saving your life?” Ghost drawls, even as he leans into the knife’s pressure, a small trickle of blood appearing from the surface cut. “Because believe me, I’ll only enjoy it.”
“Wha-?”
John’s eyes follow Ghost’s gaze and sees the unmarked soldier now strewn over one of the booth seats like a ragdoll.
“Oh,” he breathes.
“Seems someone wants to interrupt our date,” Ghost says with a wink.
John doesn’t even have time to bring up that word choice before his ears tune into the low clamour of people outside, louder now that the song has dragged to an end.
“There’s more coming,” John warns, heart pounding, the thrill of anticipation burning through his body.
Fights like these are the sort of thing that should scare the bejesus out of you; John lives for it.
“Then I know just the thing,” Ghost says, taking one last sip of the milkshake before jogging over to the jukebox.
“You can’t seriously be-” John starts but Ghost is already smashing his hand down on the button a little too gleefully, spinning on his heel to send John a blinding grin, before he pulls his mask back down.
The bass line is all too familiar.
Ghost walks to the beat, a swagger to his step and gets right up in John’s grill. “Steve walks warily down the street, with the brim pulled way down low.”
“You can’t be serious,” John sighs. He unholsters his gun and looks out the window to see if any are brave enough to come through the door.
They’re not.
Fucking cowards.
“Are you ready?” Ghost sings, winking. “Hey, are you ready for this? Are you hanging on the edge of your seat?”
“Ghost, stop-”
The first guy makes his way inside and without missing a beat, Ghost spins and puts a bullet through his head. Then another, hitting the next guy right in the sentence. Then another. Each one perfectly matching the beat of the song.
“You’re insane,” John whispers. “You’re actually fucking insane.”
And maybe, John realises, maybe he fucking loves it.
Ghost laughs and lets another hail of bullets, bodies falling to the beat of another one bites the dust, another one bites the dust, and another one gone, and another one gone-
John joins in, fucking up the rhythm but making this shit go a hell of a lot faster. Ghost, shockingly, doesn’t complain, just lets them fall into an easy partnership, back-to-back, taking out a veritable horde of PMCs who seem intent on killing the two of them.
“Did you piss someone off?” John shouts over the gunshots and the music and the bombs still fucking falling outside.
“What?” Ghost screams back.
“There’s a fucking- Fucking lot of them- Lot of them here- I know it’s not for me,” John tries to explain between shots. His ears aren’t going to recover from this one, he can feel it.
Ghost doesn’t answer that, just fires off the last of his round as the last few stragglers fall. The song comes to a sharp end as the fight does, leaving two filthy men on a blood-soaked floor, a pile of bodies around them.
The silence feels almost heady, a strange peace after the veritable carnage around them. John lets himself lean back a bit, Ghost’s weight holding him up, a dead body between their feet.
Then Ghost turns, hiking up his mask with a boyish grin. “So, are you gonna kiss me or what?”
John laughs, louder than he’s laughed in months, and steps over a corpse so he can look Ghost right in the eye. It’s only now, face to face like this, that he realises just how small Ghost actually is. The man is larger than life in many ways, but John still towers over him like this. He’s at least grateful that he’s got one thing on his side in all of this, even if Ghost doesn’t seem to give two shits that he has to look up to meet John’s eyes.
“You’re a menace. A fucking confounding menace,” John groans.
“You like it,” Ghost says with a strange little head jolt.
“How’d you figure that?” John asks, tilting his head down until he can feel Ghost’s breath against his mouth. A small taunt.
“Because you’re smiling rather than moping.” And then, before John can even get a word in, Ghost smashes his lips against John’s, aggressive and possessive. John can taste the coppery tang of blood and decides not to question where or who it came from, just pressing harder, too much teeth and tongue and perfect.
Ghost kisses like a man possessed and John is happy to meet him at just the same level.
They pull apart for just a moment, panting against each other, and John gets just a flash of an image, a moment where the flames hit just right against Ghost’s face, painting him in a golden glow, eyelashes shining bright in the inferno. The jukebox is silent but the world is still a cacophony around them, explosions and shouts and heavy footfall. All distant. All far, far away from whatever this is.
It feels like being in a movie.
Though who would ever write a movie like this.
💣 🍦 🩸
John doesn’t so much forget about Ghost as he puts it to one side. A strange and fascinating night that creeps into memory at inopportune times but is otherwise compartmentalised in a portion of his mind that he rarely touches. He doesn’t have time to think of nice things, and has even less time to be missing them.
A year passes. Price remains himself, dragging John across the world whilst they qualify new candidates. Few pass selection and even fewer stay, but they’re slowly gathering a Task Force together with Price at the helm and John by his side.
They get most in the traditional way. Word spreads quick and to Price even quicker so if there’s a shining star, Price is quick to know about it and take a look. All within the usual military channels.
And then, sometimes, rarely, Price will throw in an absolute wild card.
“Since when did we hire PMCs?” John asks, flickering through the dossier. Simon Riley, late twenties, with such an insanely redacted file it’s almost comical.
“Since Simon Riley. Never seen anything quite like him. But he’s the best of the best,” Price says, taking the file back and tucking it under his arm.
“If you say so,” John says with a shrug. “When’s he landing?”
“Any time now. He’s coming straight in from Russia.”
John doesn’t even ask, just follows Price outside and onto the tarmac where they’ve got Meat running drills with some of the newer recruits. None of them are outstanding but Price is determined he can get them up to par.
Riley’s plane lands ten minutes later, roaring onto the tarmac, Price and John standing at the ready to greet him.
John recognises the tune before he fucking sees the mask, even if it’s a poorly whistled rendition.
It’s just like the first time.
“Still one of your favourites?” John shouts, ignoring Price’s raised eyebrow.
Ghost turns to him, his mask much improved, glasses covering up his eyes. Somehow, still, John knows he’s smiling wide.
“Well, well, well. If it isn’t my favourite partner. Nice to see you again, MacTavish,” he says, almost coy.
“And you, Ghost.”
It’s strange, how much it feels like a circle, with the descending sun painting Ghost in a golden wash, the bloody mask reflecting a single spark of light, sunglasses glinting. He’s just as fucking gorgeous as he was then.
“You know him?” Price asks, voice gruff, but when does Price sound any different. John’s only seen that man smile with a cigar in his mouth.
“Yeah,” John says, smirking. “Can’t wait to have him on the team.”