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Soap had never been a big fan of spiders. With all their legs and eyes, as well as how they could sneak around anywhere, building their little homes. As a kid, he’d have nightmares about giant spiders crawling on his walls, and he never really grew out of this fear.
He handled it, though. Thinking of spiders still made him itch, with all their legs and eyes, but at least now he had the balls to kill them on sight.
In the military, you couldn’t exactly have a phobia of anything. Tight spaces, heights, dogs. You could always end up coming in contact with one of those, and it wasn’t ideal to freeze in fear when your life was at stake.
But it was one thing to pass a little test, another completely different one was to interact daily with a spider.
It was uncanny. Ghost was a person, yes, but he also had everything that made Soap dislike spiders.
Eight limbs, eight eyes so dark they looked like they were all pupils, and that silent yet deadly aura to him. From what he knew, Ghost was able to produce webbing proportionately as strong as a spider’s, and had retractable venomous fangs. If all that was already scary in a minuscule animal, imagine in the brickwall of a man that Simon was.
Johnny had always felt like this towards the lieutenant, but that never stopped him from growing closer. Simon interested him, on a personal level, amount of limbs be damned, so he eventually grew used, or at least as used as he could be, to the creepy arachnid features.
Time didn’t seem to heal it, though, but to amplify it. Now, adding to that itch on his back and behind his ears, he began to get this strange, almost sickening weight on his stomach. Together with the chills and shudders, he felt a sick magnetism to Ghost. Like a car crash you can’t look away from, he’d tell himself to justify it.
It made no sense for it to be anything other than his arachnophobia messing with his head.
Enclosed in a tight space, only him and a spider, nowhere else to run, no way out.
Or, alternatively, in the car with Ghost.
He knew he was fidgety, yet it only made him more nervous to know he was being watched. Perks that came with having near 360° vision, Ghost could watch him no matter where he went.
It snowed heavily outside, and Soap tried to focus on that instead. The grass covered in a layer of fluffy, white snow, the icy leaves and cotton-like treeline. He almost wanted to run out of the car just to make snow angels.
But of course, stillness didn’t last long. It never did.
Apparently the snowstorm would only get worse, which meant they wouldn’t be able to move on with the OP, yet there was nowhere available for the extraction either.
Which is how they ended up where they currently were, stuck in a tiny safehouse that looked very little safe and very much falling apart.
Food was sparse, heat was sparse, and the snow was too heavy for them to go out to gather firewood or hunt for something to eat. The fireplace had enough leftover wood to burn for the night, but by tomorrow it would certainly become a problem.
Ghost just sat by the fireplace once he’d gathered all the blankets he could find, the stone walls of the safehouse making it feel almost as cold as the outside. To even dream of making it through the night, they’d have to sleep right next to the fire.
“Lt?”
“Hm?” He looked up from the makeshift bed he was making, already under the assumption that they’d have to huddle for warmth. It wasn’t the first, and was far from the last time either of them would have to do this in this line of work.
“What did the baby tarantula say to his idol?”
Weirdly targeted joke, yet Simon still nodded his encouragement for the punchline.
“I a-spider to be like you one day.”
“Not bad.”
“Wha’ve ye got, sir?” He waved his MRE, reading the label, “Got stew.”
“Cheese tortellini.” Ghost didn’t hesitate before throwing it at Soap, who busied himself getting everything sorted for their so-called meal.
“Lucky. Or maybe ye just intimidate enough recruits to get this every time.”
“Maybe.” He grinned while trying to get in contact with base, looking amused at Soap’s train of thought, though it wasn’t all that unrealistic.
Ghost himself was already scary and unapproachable, but adding the whole venomous spider thing made him absolutely terrifying to any recruit. A handful of them turned around and went the opposite way just to avoid passing by Ghost in the halls. Soap wouldn’t be surprised if the lieutenant took sick pleasure in it.
He didn’t exactly fight against the reputation that’s been built surrounding him, after all.
“Fancy a cuddle, sir?” Johnny grinned as he got under the covers, body shivering slightly, he wasn’t sure if from the cold or the proximity.
“Keep it tactical, sergeant.”
“A tactical cuddle, then.”
Soap turned around, back turned to Ghost. He was smaller, it made sense to huddle for warmth like this, but Ghost never came to meet him halfway.
“Sir?”
“I can’t lie like this.”
“Why not?” He frowned, turning on his back to watch the spider, slightly itchy when three pairs of eyes met his face, luckily the remaining ones were behind his ears, so one less set of eyes to worry about. He tried to stay cheery, though, hoping to coax himself into remaining calm. “I don’t bite.”
“The spooning logistics don’t work wiv more than two arms,” Ghost replied, and it was the first time Johnny actually, consciously thought of how to spoon someone. Indeed, the only place to put your arm without it falling asleep was on the crook of someone’s neck, which meant doing so with more than one pair of arms was not only impractical but also uncomfortable.
“Right… you could always be the little spoo—”
“No.” Simon’s back stiffened in a far less than natural way, making his discomfort evident with anyone who had the eyes to look for it.
“Alright, sir. Sorry I asked.” Sounded like something they wouldn’t be unpacking for now, maybe too complicated. “Don’t plan on freezing me balls off tonight, though.”
“Come ‘ere.” Ghost, also laying on his back, stretched all six arms out. Soap would be lying if he said it didn’t make him freeze for a second. The sight of it, so strangely intimate, every limb stretching towards him, all eight eyes on him, yet for once Johnny didn’t feel fear.
After some shuffling, all legs and elbows, they managed a comfortable position. A pair of arms wrapped around his shoulders, another under his arms and the last on his lower back, creating a cocoon of warmth. He should feel claustrophobic, but it only made him sleepy, the heat coming off of Ghost in waves. His hands rested on Ghost’s chest and on his side, figuring a comfortable position to stay for the night.
Simon’s chest was comfortable, broad and cushioned further by the vest, and once Soap saw him, already with his eyes closed, still wearing the bloody mask, he couldn’t help but comment, “Ye really do sleep in tha’ thing, do ye, Lt? Kind of a useless sleepin’ mask, though, wiv yer eyes oot.”
“Helps keep warm.”
“Bet it does.” He nodded along, snuggling back into Ghost’s chest.
A minute dragged by, only the sounds of wind rattling the windows and the fire crackling filling the space, a comfortable level of warmth finally settling. It wasn’t close to ideal, but both of them had seen worse. Sharing sleeping bags was far less pleasant than a pallet on the floor.
“Pocket.”
“What?” Soap frowned, lifting his head to watch Ghost, whose arms loosened around him.
“The spare mask is in the front left pocket.”
Soap had to struggle up a little bit, dislodging his hand from their mess of limbs and opening said pocket. After pushing his fingers inside and probing a tight roll of cloth out, he unfolded it, finding a worn out skull printed balaclava.
He pulled it over his head, fabric fitting snugly, hugging his face, though it had extra holes that weren’t quite that useful for him, meant to give room for Ghost’s extra eyes. Though the fabric felt cold, it didn’t take long to absorb the heat of his face, and begin to maintain it. Took him a while to get used to breathing with the fabric in the way, but the extra heat made up for it.
“Sir,” he whispered after a while, propping his head up with his elbow on Ghost’s chest, careful to support it where the gear was thicker. A bit obnoxious, maybe, but the physical closeness made it easier to breach boundaries, “why don’t ye like ta be the little spoon?”
“I just don’t like it.”
“Ah’m sure there’s a be’er reason than that, Lt.”
Maybe it wasn’t sensible to push it like this — Simon was a private person, as close friends as they presumably were, if their banter was anything to base himself on. But he wanted to know, and the distance seemed to melt any boundaries away together with the snow on his boots.
“I don’t like feeling trapped,” he conceded, not meeting Soap’s eyes, which softened with understanding nonetheless. Maybe one day he’d find out the reason why, but not yet.
“Mhm. We all have things we don’t like.” He took Ghost’s silence as his cue to end the conversation, lying back down, and so did Ghost, tightening his hold on Soap yet again. “In fact, I didnae like spiders.”
“Didn’t?”
“Might be changin’ me mind.”