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Plan A
“Owe you mate,” Soap says as Gaz hands over a single small bundle of fresh mistletoe. The 141’s Christmas party wasn’t a planned thing, but rather a spur of the moment decision from four tired men with nothing better to do before they went their separate ways for the holiday break.
"Nah, I'm doing this for my own benefit. Sick of seeing you two dance around each other," Gaz laughs.
It wasn’t as hard as it should have been, thanks to Price, to commandeer the empty bungalow just outside the base that the military keeps for visiting officials.
Soap holds the plant as delicately as he can, he’s only got the one, but it’s braw with sturdy green leaves and bright red berries. He won’t allow this mission to fail.
He finishes putting up the lights and the wreathe he’d crafted himself from the pines in the nearby woods, wanting something to do with his hands. Price brought some ornaments from classified whereabouts and Ghost, in cryptic fashion, said he'd grab the tree.
Ghost is currently in the kitchen baking some cookies for the party, gingersnap he thinks, but Ghost’s been tight lipped about the intel. He’s refusing to leave the kitchen while baking, and denying anyone else entry either. Probably for the best, if Soap has to be around him in that apron? He's not sure he can wait for the mistletoe mission.
His L.t is thankfully staying away from Soap nailing the mistletoe above the archway as he stands on the short ladder. Doesn’t even question the thunk of the hammer as Soap positions it just so, engrossed in the baking as he is.
If all goes to plan, Ghost will exit the kitchen with the cookies, and walk right under the mistletoe he placed. Soap will stand by the bloody archway all night if that’s what it takes.
Ghost finishes the cookies right on schedule. Price and Gaz sniffed them out ten minutes ago and wouldn’t quit badgering him about them. At least they’re respectful enough not to enter Ghost’s domain while he’s working.
Soap peeks around the corner, watching Simon pat some tool that's making sugar fall like snow over the cookies. Upon closer inspection, Ghost cut the fuckin’ things into little Christmas shapes. A few trees, some gingerbread men, a couple of what he thinks are meant to be snowflakes but look more like deformed blobs.
Watching the big bastard carefully add the finishing touches, Soap’s chest fills with something only previously nameless, but that he struggles to say all the same.
“Ye done in there yet? Prepping the cookies for war or sumthin’?” He asks, eager to finally set his plan in motion. Ghost looks up from where he’s hunched over the tray and tsks.
“Patience, Johnny.” He says, but straightens to slip on mittens all the same. (Be still, his heart).
“Send them my way, Ghost. I’ll have them trained by morning,” Price adds offhandedly from where he’s practically melted into the couch across the room. Soap shares a look with Gaz, and by the time he’s looked back to the kitchen, Ghost is walking out a second hidden exit connecting to the living room, cookie tray in hand.
Plan B
Getting Ghost back into the kitchen failed. He'd sat on the plaid loveseat in front of the TV and refused to move after Soap handed him his favourite tea. Apparently baking the best damn cookies the military ever made exempted him from doing anything else for the rest of the party, that is, according to Price.
Soap admits the cookies are really good, but he bites the head off his gingerbread man with more force than necessary.
He decides to take some initiative. A couple other SAS members were invited, but they aren't due for another 40 minutes or so. He's on a time limit.
Ghost doesn't have line of sight to the kitchen archway, so Soap deftly unhooks the mistletoe, and waits until Ghost leaves to take a piss. He reattaches it above the central beam where he's sure to walk past, as Price watches silently with a raised brow and Gaz shoves a chair beneath him to reach.
Ghost is quick, but Gaz is quicker, and he slides the wooden chair back in place just as his L.t returns, and the doorbell rings.
They're early. They're early and the mistletoe is in plain sight behind Ghost's masked head. Anyone walking in might meet Ghost under it as he passes by to return to his designated position (the plaid loveseat).
If anyone walks under it before Soap catches Ghost there, then it'll be a dead giveaway to his real motive. A mistletoe that only counts for Ghost specifically? Might as well profess his undying love here and now.
"Ghost!" Soap says, a bit too urgently. Simon stops to look over his shoulder with a questioning grunt.
"Get the door? Gotta piss," he says, and hopes it isn't suspicious that he's not heading to the loo already.
Without a word, Ghost turns to the door, and as he grunts out some greeting Soap jumps to knock the mistletoe down once more, and sweeps it up before bee-lining it to the loo.
Plan C
Soap puts it above the loo door before realizing that'd be a tad more creepy than he's going for.
Plan D
He hangs it in increasingly obscure areas as the day goes on, areas none of the guests will go to, or rather areas no one will go to at all. He removes it from the attic hatch.
Plan E
Soap looks at the battered bundle of mistletoe in his hands, then at Ghost across the large and loud room. He catches his eye, parses Simon's look of "Alright?" from behind the mask.
Soap nods, and decides to put it up one last place, obvious and visible, for anyone to make tactical use of if they wish. Gaz went through the trouble of finding it for him after all, he'd hate for it to be a waste.
He hooks it above the back door as he makes his way over to sit closer to Simon and join in the conversation.
Mission Success: RTB
The sun's still out, but he knows Ghost's looking forward to getting a Christmas tree more than he was letting on. He figures the man's planning the timing out so he can break from the festivities.
Earlier Ghost leaned over amidst the game of cards and whispered in Soap's ear that they're going to chainsaw one of the trees outside to decorate later. Soap called him daft, but leaned into his warmth for just a moment.
Before long, Soap's roped into a rather aggressive conversation about holiday flavoured drinks, and the failed mistletoe kiss has almost left his mind. It isn't until Ghost calls him from across the room, voice coming from over near the back porch that Soap pays attention to where he'd gone.
"Soap, you comin'?" He says, halfway out the door, halfway under the mistletoe.
Soap calls out for him to wait, and runs to gently pull him back in with a hand on his coat. In his surprise, Ghost doesn't resist as he turns him around, slides a frantic hand to push his mask up, just over that striking nose, and pauses to look at him, merely a breaths distance away.
In a moment he takes in the rough jagged scars upon pale freckled skin, the light stubble and sweeping lashes, the dark eyes and the creases surrounding them.
Ghost doesn't push him back, or yell at him, not that Soap expected he would. He knows Ghost, and part of him knows he wants Soap. Maybe not in the same way, or just as much, but as Ghost stares down at him, a little uncomprehending, a little concerned, Soap kisses Simon as fiercely as he can.
He knows there's no other way to do it when all his heart belongs to the man gently clutching him in surprise. He kisses him as though it's his first and last chance, as though there's any way he could explain a kiss like this away as a silly holiday tradition.
But he tries, he really does. Once he pulls away, and Ghost stays frozen, expressive eyes wide and searching. He lowers his hand from where it had been cradling Ghost's face, and savours the surprising heat of his skin as he makes to speak, to explain, to lie.
"Ye were under the Mistletoe," he starts to say, avoiding Ghost's eyes, but he's cut off midway.
Ghost pulls him much like Soap had done earlier, and he finds it's his turn to be shocked into complacency. He drags him all the way out the open backdoor and onto the porch, back against the lattice wall, where he grabs Soap's face and kisses him with teeth and scarred chapped lips and everything Soap has ever wanted.
