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Soap tries not to visibly limp as he hops off of the helo. God, his knee smarts like a son-of-a-bitch. He made it all the way to the end of the mission, torrential downpour and all, the beating blades of Dino-4 sending wet ripples across the earth, when he slipped in the mud and twisted his knee something wicked.
He spent the entire flight back to base gritting his teeth as the turbulence rattled and twinged at his sore joint, all while ignoring a certain lieutenant’s gaze burning a hole into the side of his head.
He’s the first on his feet when the helo touches down. His plan is to limp back to his room and lick his wounds before anyone has a chance to notice he’s injured.
Of course, it’s a fat chance he could get anything like that past Ghost.
A firm hand wrapped around the strap on the back of his tacvest swiftly stops him in his tracks.
“Doesn’t look like you’re walking towards medical, Johnny.”
He ducks his head a little, faltering slightly. “Don’t need a nurse to tell me to rest and elevate the damn thing,” he protests. “I know the drill.”
Ghost gives him an entirely unconvinced hum.
He doesn’t harass him any further, though, and Soap slinks off to the showers to get clean. A few minutes later finds him toweling off his hair in his room, wrapped up in a sweatshirt he stole from Ghost a few months ago, when he gets a knock on the door.
“Can’t stay away from me, can you?” Soapy teases, grin splitting his face.
Ghost is still dressed in full gear—he probably came straight from debrief with Price, and that makes Soap a little dizzy.
His eyes flick over Soap impassively. “Nice shirt,” he grunts.
Soap has the decency to look bashful. “Thanks. Stole it from this real mean bloke, waiting for him to hunt me down over it.”
“Better start sleeping with your eyes open, then.” He pushes past Soap and into his room, jerking his head toward the bed. “Get on the bed.”
“Not gonna buy me dinner first? What do you think I am, easy?”
“The easiest. Bed, Johnny.”
Soap opens his mouth to protest, but one exasperated look from those big, brown eyes has him reluctantly giving in. He shuffles over to the other side of the room and settles down.
That’s when he notices what’s in Ghost’s hands—a bottle of water, and a big bag of ice.
Ghost grabs one of Soap’s pillows and shoves it under his knee, careful not to bend it the wrong way as he gets it situated. He gets it nice and elevated, then places the ice bag on top of it and tucks in the corners so it stays in place.
“Better?” Ghost asks.
Soap grumbles a little. “It wasn’t even hurting that bad.”
Ghost stares at him blankly.
Another grumble, and then a quiet mutter of, “Yeah, feels nice.”
Ghost gets off the bed, shaking his head. “Tells me he won’t go to medical because he knows to elevate and rest, and then does neither. Fuckin’ hell.”
Soap just flips him off.
Ghost tosses him the water bottle. “Get some sleep, Johnny.”
Soap wants to protest, just to be stubborn, but the exhaustion behind his eyes is only growing. The ice feels amazing on his swollen, burning knee, and the relief only relaxes him further. Ghost’s looming, ever-safe presence is the cherry on top, and if he was more selfish he would ask him to stay and chat until he falls asleep.
But Ghost is still fully kitted, grimy hard-shell skull etched with blood in the corners, and Soap would bet his good knee that he’s just as exhausted.
“You too, Lt. Been on your feet long enough since we landed. Go take a breather.”
Ghost hums, but he’s distracted, gaze lingering on the pile of Soap’s gear haphazardly tossed in the corner of the room. He lumbers over to it and rummages around. He plucks out Soap’s vest.
“What are you doing?”
Ghost gestures to a tear near the collar. Soap met the sharp end of an enemy’s knife when he was knocked off balance; he was thankfully unharmed, but his vest got a nice chunk carved out of it.
“Ripped your tacvest.”
“Likely thing to happen to a tacvest,” Soap tosses back. “Don’t worry about it, Ghost. I’ll take it in tomorrow.”
Ghost, predictably, ignores him. “I’ll fix it.”
“Simon,” Soap insists. “You really don’t need to.”
Ghost responds by flicking off the light in Soap’s room. “Goodnight, Johnny,” and then he’s slipping quietly out the door.
Despite himself, Soap falls asleep smiling up at the ceiling.
He wakes up disoriented as hell. He slept over eight hours—a miracle by all accounts—and rapidly blinks the sleep out of his eyes. The ice pack, melted and lukewarm, jiggles and rolls off of his knee, plopping onto the floor.
He stretches, groaning as his shoulder pops, and that’s when he notices it.
There’s a cup of coffee sitting on his bedside table.
Soap blinks at it once. He picks it up; it’s still warm.
“Ghost,” he murmurs, voice thick and fond.
It’s almost unbearably sweet that Ghost would get him coffee and make sure it was in his room when he woke up, just so Soap wouldn’t have to walk to the kitchen. It also makes him laugh, that Ghost broke into his room and snuck around while he was sleeping to do it. He’s terribly good at traipsing that line between considerate and creepy.
It turns out the coffee isn’t even the nicest thing Ghost has done for him before seven in the morning. Soap finds his tacvest draped over the back of his chair. It’s all stitched up and reinforced, a thick scar of Ghost’s black thread running down the collar. Soap runs his thumb over it, one of Ghost’s many fingerprints left all over Soap’s life.
Soap drinks his coffee, but that’s not what makes him feel warm all morning.
By mid-afternoon, Soap has wrapped up his knee and taken care of his handful of tasks for the day. All that’s left in his routine is to plant himself at Ghost’s side and bug him until the sun sets.
Ghost, evidently, spent all night fixing Soap’s shit instead of winding down from the mission, so Soap would bet his last dollar he’s off in a quiet space somewhere babying his guns. To Ghost, a mission isn’t complete until everything is cleaned and primed and put away.
He finds Ghost in a corner of the armory, hunched over a table with his rifle. Soap watches as he slides the bolt out of his sniper and sets it carefully on an old white rag.
Soap knows Ghost’s cleaning routine down to every little detail. He knows that Ghost doesn’t like using fancy cleaners or copper solvents, and that he only uses one specific brand of gun oil and gets grumpy when he runs out of it. He knows that Ghost only tolerates triple twill patches and boar bristle brushes; someone once offered him a synthetic brush, and Ghost threw it in the bin right in front of him.
He knows that Ghost can identify the right size jag for a caliber by sight alone. He’s had the same cleaning rod he’s used since he was in basic, and he refuses to upgrade to a better one because ‘no one who knows what they’re doing needs any bells or whistles.’
He knows that Ghost fires off exactly three rounds after cleaning to foul the barrel before he takes his gun into the field, to make sure it’s accurate down to a needle point.
He doesn’t realize he’s been staring until he looks up and catches those big, brown eyes looking right back at him.
Ghost tilts his head at him, a silent question. When Soap doesn’t respond, Ghost kicks at the metal folding chair next to him, sliding it away from the table.
His grin splits his face as he collapses in the chair, eyes on Ghost’s deft hands as they meticulously clean his favorite gun.
“Ghost.”
“Soap.”
“Tried to catch you in your room,” he says.
Ghost hums. “Needed a change of scenery.”
“Sure know how to pick the prettiest spots,” Soap teases. “Coulda told me if you were going stir crazy, you know. I’d skive off with you, if you wanted.”
Soap would go to the ends of the earth with him, but he keeps that to himself for now.
“I know.” Ghost doesn’t look up from his work. “How’s the knee?”
“Right as rain, Lt.”
“Try keeping it that way.”
Soap rolls his eyes. He crosses his arms over his chest as he watches Ghost carefully slide the cleaning rod through the barrel, remove the patch, and repeat the process all over again.
“Cleaned your EBR,” Ghost comments, off-handed and casual. “Fouled it too. It’s checked back in.”
It shouldn’t take Soap by surprise. Ghost doing things for him isn’t exactly novel, especially not considering the past week, but it still floods Soap with a soft, delicate sort of warmth.
“Thanks, Lt,” he says, and his voice is gentler than he expects it to be. “Thanks for patching up my vest, too.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Soap shakes his head, his chest getting all affectionate and soupy. Soap thinks that he needs to mention it a lot more often. Ghost goes out of his way so often to take care of him—not even just the knee and the ice and the gun, but the way he’s just always there for him, having his back on and off the field, finding ways to make Soap’s life easier without even being asked.
Feeling bold, Soap reaches up and knocks his knuckles against the side of Ghost’s mask, right where the stained, white hardshell is stitched into the balaclava. “Didn’t take you as a seamstress. Guess you really do make those yourself, aye?”
Ghost doesn’t flinch away from the invasion of his space. “Don’t exactly sell ‘em at Greggs.”
Soap’s cheeks hurt from smiling. He finds himself scooting his chair even closer, the metal scraping against the floor.
“I mean it, Ghost,” he presses. “Thanks for always takin’ care of my shit for me.”
“What I do, Johnny,” he answers.
“Aye,” Soap agrees. “I know. That’s why I love The Ghost.”
Ghost just snorts.
They fall back into an easy silence. Soap is happy just to sit next to him, mostly because watching Ghost handle his sniper always feels like watching a work of art come to life.
“Bored?”
Soap’s head snaps up. Ghost is looking at him from underneath his long, blonde lashes.
“Nah,” he answers easily. “Nothing quite like this, actually. Never met someone who cleaned their guns as meticulously as you.”
His hand stills where it’s polishing the barrel. It’s soft, the way he moves, the way his voice comes out when he eventually says, “Told you, Johnny. It’s what I do. I take care of what’s mine.”
Soap’s body floods warm, all the way from his feet to his throat. Sometimes Ghost says things like this, so simple and jarring and vulnerable, so bone-rottingly sweet, and it feels like the sun breaks through the clouds, like the whole world suddenly settles gently into focus.
And, in that moment, Soap can feel the ice on his knee, and the hot coffee at his bedside, and the ridges of thread hand-stitched into his worn tacvest.
“Yeah?” Soap asks, and his voice is hopeful and raw, and it betrays everything that he doesn’t have the words to say.
Ghost’s hand stills on his gun. He looks up to hold Soap’s gaze, and, as always, he seems to understand him down to his fingerprints, down to the electrical dance that makes his heart beat. Like everything else that’s his.
“Yeah, Johnny,” he says.
Soap kicks his foot out to knock their boots together. Ghost presses back.
Here in the armory, surrounded by the cloying smell of gun metal and oil, shots from target practice thudding dully from the training grounds, Soap doesn’t think he’s ever belonged to something so sweet.