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Ghost has many well kept secrets held deep and buried in wooden chests, wrapped in chains and sitting snug on the ocean floor of his psyche.
It’s not hard to keep it that way, with the way things are. He’s faceless, nameless, emotionless, expressionless and a mystery to even those that deem themselves intimately close. He’s strong, and for the price of strength, cold and unattached.
To all except one.
Because John fucking MacTavish is the only prick willing to scuba dive like he’s scouring the rubble of the Titanic for missing pearls. He holds his breath and he dives, uncovering every secret Ghost has stowed away like he’s getting paid by the damn hour.
And it’s torture.
Ghost isn’t someone that people usually want to be close to.
Ghost isn’t someone that people trip over themselves to get to know, to worm into his rusted, regretful life.
He’s gruff. He’s mean. He’ll chew you up and spit you out, turn you into a splatter on the ground before he even risks it. His face is smeared, tarnished by his own hand, if only to be the unfallen, unshakable, unrelenting soldier that his men need him to be. He can be whatever they see fit, when he’s stripped down to a voice and a pair of formidable hands. He lets them do it, in all honesty; fill the gaps, spin tales of what kind of monster The Ghost might be, because the real truths are far, far worse. Lackluster, maybe. Or simply… real. Childishly, he cradles the parts of himself that nobody– nobody is privy to, because they’re soft and bloody and undeniably Simon Riley. Any sensible bastard with a rifle would stomp something so blatantly weak into the ground without a second thought. Mankind is all the same: when they know you, they know exactly how to hurt you.
It’s fair to say that he isn’t used to closeness.
Legs brushing beneath the mess hall table. Hands clapping against shoulders, against helmets. Simple ‘good to have you back’s, or ‘missed you this morning’s.
But Soap gives it all to him like it’s second nature.
Soap gives it all to him like he somehow knows that Ghost wants it, one of his precious secrets dug up and held high.
It’s new. Nobody has ever wanted to know him before. Nobody has ever hunted for the things that make him tick just for the sake of having them. He feels like a clock, a pocket watch, a project for Soap to disassemble and put back together again, over and over.
It’s torture, undoubtedly. But deeper, farther away, it’s almost… warm.
Soap’s hands. Gentle though relentless as they peel away gear after gear, layer after layer of Ghost’s resolve like they’d pull teeth. Wild, crazed, he chases after every little piece of the elusive Simon Riley and shows it to Ghost like a coyote with a rabbit in it’s mouth. Every secret, better left tucked away in dark, quiet nights, unabashedly stuck between his teeth.
Though, nothing has been nearly as much of a hassle as this newest secret, Soap’s shiny new toy to play with while he watches Ghost squirm like a bug.
It started on a mission, with Ghost and Soap holed up on the third floor of some ramshackle building and curled in front of a window to scope out the scene below. Soap presses a hair too close. Ghost can feel the warmth of his arm through their thick shirts as Soap taps dust off of the windowsill and peers through a pair of binoculars, impatient and restless.
The touch burns only as much as Ghost allows it to.
The day has been slow, far too many hours with Soap’s incessant voice in his ears making promises Ghost would never let him fulfill, paired agonizingly with the breathtaking pink of the sunset. His knees ache and his boots are clean, rather than dirtied by the dust or grime or blood of anywhere more interesting than here. Soap seems to share his sentiment, arms heavy and fingers dragging harshly across white painted wood, all out of stories.
“Lt,” he finally sighs, tearing his attention away from the silent, empty sand of the clearing ahead.
When Soap looks at him, all baby blues and calm water, Ghost smells trouble like a paranoid bloodhound.
“Play a game with me?” Soap innocently suggests. His grin is far less innocent. “To pass the time, is all.”
“Like fucking what?” Ghost barks, amused and bewildered, willing himself to look anywhere but the glint of Soap’s smile in the watercolor of the sky.
“I don’t know. 20 Questions, Go Fish, I Spy,” he prattles on. “spin the binocs?”
Instead of dwelling on the soiled implications of a poor man’s version of spin the bottle, Ghost scoffs, “I spy a soldier slacking on the job.”
“Not very good at I Spy, are you?” Soap drawls, too bright for how long they’ve been here, how late it is, and whose company he bathes in.
The look Ghost levels him with could shave mountains down to pebbles– that is, if it wasn’t so sunlit and resigned, perfectly hand-crafted for just about nobody else. Weakness drapes Soap like silk, the only thing on this earth that Ghost would spoil rotten and bend to the mischievous will of, even if he does it with a bite and growl. Finally, inevitably, Ghost hollows his lungs in a deep, dramatic exhale and narrows his eyes out the window, gesturing to tumbleweeds and rundown rubble. “Go on. Show me how it’s done, then.”
Soap takes his offer like an over-eager dog, trapping it in his pretty teeth and never giving Ghost the chance to demand he drop it. He pours his attention through his binoculars, leaning his weight against the windowsill and tapping his boot against Ghost’s while he searches the landscape. The sound, the dull thump, thump, thump and the ease of which Soap gives him such unabashed closeness singlehandedly pulls Ghost apart like cheap cotton.
“I spy…” Soap sings. “something yellow.”
Charitably, he relinquishes the binoculars to Ghost and makes a show of dusting his hands off and reclining back in his rickety chair.
Ghost gives himself time. He listens to the soft creak of Soap rocking, humming something under his breath. He follows the staccato of Soap’s voice, like midday beaches, a light in the eerie monotony of this job. Thump, thump, thump, Soap taps, an easy, constant touch that makes Ghost feel like a bear with a naive child curled up in it’s fur, too young to understand the horrors such a thing is capable of. Except that Soap is anything but naive. Their shoulders slide together, Soap’s knee knocks into his with an unjust softness, and it isn’t with naivety that Soap curls into him– it’s something a little more honest. Generosity, arrogance, trust, maybe. Soap understands exactly what kind of beast burns the wood of the chair beside him. He burrows into it anyway. He doesn’t know what’s good for him, Ghost decides. This bear will maim him– but his eyes are bright and they’re looking at Simon. His grin is sweet and spotless and it shines at Simon. His arm is warm.
It burns only as much as Ghost allows it to.
When Soap clears his throat, Ghost makes a disheveled effort to steady his grip and will himself cold, focus trained on the terrain rather than frivolous thoughts of monsters and kind hands. “I think everything out here is yellow, Sergeant,” he finally declares.
“You don’t see it?”
“I see sand. I see sandstone. I see dead, dry grass, if that’s what you’re shooting for.”
On the same beat that he swallows something thick and nervous, Soap curls his fingers into the back of Ghost’s balaclava, a fistful of ribbed cotton, and pulls.
Just enough for Ghost’s eye to catch on a silky, yellow curtain spilling out of an open window a few stories up.
Just enough for his breath to hitch and his hands to go white-knuckled.
Silence bleeds into quiet revelation before Soap goads, “See it now, sir?” and his hand turns gentle, smoothing down rumpled fabric condescendingly.
Ghost’s mess of organs, trapped inside, might as well be scattered across the floor, open and swelteringly bare in Soap’s insatiable gaze. You liked that, his eyes say. You liked that, didn’t you? With the way Ghost’s stomach sinks, it might as well be a threat, a gun pressed to his temple.
Another secret laid out.
It’s easy to shove Soap off and grumble some haphazard response that regains any semblance of faux anger Ghost once had. It’s easy because Soap lets it be easy, shiny smile and a daunting, conniving laugh, all because he knows better.
And it’s unbearable.
Soap’s hands are scarred and rough with callouses, but they’re also freckled. They touch Ghost like they’ve forgotten that he’ll ruin them.
He wants them to thread through the greasy, thin blonde of his hair without the thin barrier of his mask in the way.
He wants them to push, pull, shape into whatever Soap deems right.
He wants to touch, touch, and feel no shame for the trail of his fingers. He wants to forget about the blood that seeps through his gloves and stains his skin, about monsters and naivety.
He wants to deserve it.
Soap’s laugh is raucous and untamed, but it sounds like rolling down hills and falling asleep in the sun.
He wants to hear it again.
Wanting things from Soap is dangerous, petrifying. Because even if Ghost barks, scowls, chokes on the impudent words, Soap will give it to him. Soap’s ears will perk up and catch on a single skip of his vicious heart and he’ll lunge, as if desire paints a picture on Ghost’s face. It doesn’t. He’s spent decades making sure that it doesn’t.
He sees it all, too keen and too willing, and Ghost aches for a place to hide, stripped of every little cove he called home.
Soap is remorseless. He takes and he takes and he takes.
Ghost wants him to take more.
It scrapes like salt in a gaping, hideous stab wound, to need so much from one person when he’s survived this long with nothing. Soap has turned him into a bumbling alcoholic, something to pity and spit at the feet of, following Soap around like he’s the last sip of gin.
It’s unbecoming, and he wants more.
Soap’s eyes are icy and cruel, but they turn a painterly, treacherous orange in the blast of C-4s and they promise absolution.
Ghost wants them on him, always, always, always.
Ghost wants Soap.
It’ll end with one of them in a ditch, surely. Ghost booze-stained, indulgent and harrowing– and Soap torn to shreds.
The second time it happens is at a bar, when Soap corrals him away from base and hurls him neck deep into as many pints as he can afford. Ghost is sipping on his second drink as Soap downs his third and scratches his barstool across the creaky floorboards to sit uncomfortably closer.
His arm is warm. His breath is, too.
It burns only as much as Ghost allows it to, he tells himself again and again.
He can feel Soap’s eyes, ever persistent, trailing over every slice of pale skin he deems new, with Ghost’s mask settled on the bridge of his nose and his lips sealed over a shallow glass. Instead of facing him, instead of giving away whatever little detail Soap might notice in the strain of his mouth or his eyes or his goddamn clavicle, Ghost watches Soap’s hands. They itch across the bar’s counter, fluid and unthinking as they circle a glass of whiskey. He runs his fingernail along the divots, taps it so softly Ghost wouldn’t hear it if he wasn’t looking. His fingers are deft. Thin. Thick around the knuckles and permanently red where Soap must’ve slammed his fist into one too many noses. Belatedly, he notices the way Soap’s fingers curl with a slight jaggedness, stiff joints that Ghost wants to soothe with an uncharacteristically gentle touch, palms pressed together. He wants to count the freckles. He wants to count the scars, see how many he recognizes.
But Soap begs for his attention, a soft exhale and gentle drum of carmine fingers.
“What?” he finally asks, letting his eyes meet Soap’s. It feels like he lost some sort of game he didn’t know they were playing, a sly grin making it’s cozy home across Soap’s face. It looks right on him.
“Bourbon makes you red,” Soap beams.
Bourbon does not make him red.
When Ghost grumbles and turns away, giving Soap a spiteful cold shoulder, Soap lets admission flow like waterfall. “And your hair,” he marvels, snaking a hand up Ghost’s back to play with the rebellious strands sticking out from beneath his rucked up mask. “It’s longer than I thought.”
His knuckles, warm, warm, warm, keep brushing against Ghost’s neck. If he focuses enough, he swears he can feel the scar that lines Soap’s pointer finger. If he focuses enough, he swears he can imagine Soap’s hand sliding up, up, up and tangling into a nest of grimy, matted blonde.
He swears he can feel Soap’s breath.
“Imagine me a lot, MacTavish?”
Nothing prepares him for Soap’s heady, simple “Yes.”
It burns only as much as he allows it to.
It burns only as much as he allows it to.
Ghost sighs long and exaggerated, sinking into himself and reaching for the lip of his balaclava to hide the unending spread of his bourbon flush.
Or, he would, if Soap didn’t bury his hand in the coarse, black cloth at the back of Ghost’s head and tug until his chin points towards the ceiling and the long column of his throat is bared.
“Does it go all the way down, Lt?” Soap teases, tracing the edge of splotchy red bleeding down Ghost’s neck.
Ghost decides, in this moment, that neither of them will survive this.
Ghost is ruined and Soap is in his blind line of fire, eyes lidded and content, like there’s no place he’d rather be than staining the barstool next to Simon fucking Riley. Even as Ghost pushes him away, even as he grovels into the varnished, undeserving counter, Soap stays close and unfathomably warm. Because he knows.
You liked that, he oozes, bleeds.
Maybe it’s the lack of control.
Maybe it’s the gall Soap has to pull a stunt nobody would dare to pull.
Maybe it’s the knowledge that Soap is doing it on purpose, turning Ghost into putty just because he knows he can. Because he wants to. Soap’s burning attention, burning touch, focused solely on him.
Maybe it’s the growing soft spot eating Ghost alive.
Hell would be better than this.
Hell wouldn’t be nearly as insufferable as an eager sergeant with a penchant for turning Ghost inside out.
In the mess hall. In safehouses, on missions. Damn near everywhere, Soap has a hand on Ghost’s back, inching devious fingers up towards his neck. He never pulls, never follows though on any of the promises he makes with his traitorous hands, just traces patterns into Ghost’s shirt and smiles with an innocence he’s never truly carried. Every time, without fail, Ghost tenses every muscle in his body and lets the conversation carry on without him, stuck in horrific anticipation. Every time, without fail, Soap lets him work himself up over nothing.
He dangles it in front of Ghost’s face, just barely out of reach, another cruel game.
It all comes to a head during a sparring match.
Ghost swings his right hook into the firm, unprotected muscle of Soap’s side, reveling in the hiss of pain he gets as Soap dutifully wears himself down. Sweat lines Ghost’s brow, licking at the neck of his mask. Soap can’t see it, he tells himself. Soap can’t see his breath, heavy and staining the fabric in front of his mouth, hot against his dry lips. Soap can’t see the stutter of his back step, the spiteful, added force of his tackle, except for the fact that he can– he does. His teeth drip with a venom that shouldn’t make Ghost feel so wrung, goading, begging, commanding. Knowing. Every time Ghost gets a forearm around his neck or a knee against his back, pressing him into the mat, he yields– and he comes back harder.
He hasn’t beaten Ghost yet.
But it’s clear that he won’t call it quits until he does.
“You’re not goin’ easy on me, are you, Si?” Soap jokes, breathless and sweat-soaked, arms splayed as he and Ghost circle each other like two wild beasts.
Ghost decidedly doesn’t look at how red his face is. Ghost decidedly doesn’t take pride in how he’s the one that made it that way.
Ghost decidedly doesn’t wonder how far it goes.
“You think so little of me,” he mumbles, keeping his wits in a tight fist, close and inescapable.
Soap’s fingers twitch idly, beckoning Ghost to lunge with the stiff bend of his pink knuckles.
Do your worst, his eyes say, blind to the razor sharp edge of dangerous claws. But Ghost’s attention gets hung up on his hands. And his hands say give up, don’t they? His hands say let me.
His hands say let me, let me, let me.
Ghost lunges like a rabid dog.
Soap meets him in the clash of teeth, always giving twice as hard as he gets. Ghost preens in the feeling of their palms pressed together, a foolish test of endurance as he lets Soap hold him back by the stubborn veins of his forearms. It isn’t long before Ghost can deftly duck and capture Soap around the middle, forcing him to the ground in a truly sinister performance of power, held over Soap’s head. His weight pins Soap down, warm, warm, warm where their bodies bleed together in the familiarity of bruises and careless punches. He goes for Soap’s arms, an efficient, calculated race to render him helpless, but in a flash– Soap has his legs fastened around Ghost’s waist and the world becomes dizzyingly upside down.
This is the kind of closeness Ghost knows well. This is the kind of closeness Ghost allows himself to crave, with his knuckles bloodied and his ribs bruised.
Soap sits above him like the devil.
Ghost’s back sticks to the mat in a cruel role reversal as Soap slides down to secure Ghost’s legs between his own, ensuring that he is well and truly trapped . Soap’s smile is crooked. His sparse, barely there freckles soften his face and fight unmatched against his sharp, devious canines. Sweat runs in trails down the muscle of his neck to soak into the collar of his shirt, evidence of exactly how far Ghost has pushed him.
This kind of closeness is different with Soap.
It feels less like letting off steam, caged adrenaline finally set loose, and more like being chased.
Soap will tie him up like cattle and slaughter him without guilt.
Soap will open him up and Ghost won’t be able to put the pieces back together, ruined by how it feels to have it– everything he can’t ask for.
Unless he wins.
He just barely gets his arms above him, bracing to shove Soap off of him and send him careening backwards, another win under Ghost’s belt.
Except that a hand, unaccounted for, snakes it’s way under his head and beneath the fabric of his mask, into a tangle of sweaty, sandy hair. Then, it grabs a fistful and pulls.
The touch burns.
The touch burns.
The touch burns.
It takes every ounce of his being to stop any sound from leaving his traitorous throat as his head is yanked back and his vision swims. His hands hang in the air uselessly, impossibly placated by Soap’s daring grip, a guilty dream turned reality. Those fingers, real, real, pet through his hair, too soft, too gentle, while Ghost strangles the frantic thump of his heart into something less terrifying.
“That all you needed?” Soap coos, victorious at last.
A desperate attempt to gather his pride, Ghost grits his teeth together and hisses a stern “Sergeant.”
Soap digs his fingernails into the viscera of Ghost’s ribcage and pries it open, carving skin away. He sees, he sees, he sees, always, always. He wants Ghost raw, severed, and he cares not for the chains that shackle the deepest parts of him, better left hidden. “Sir,” he answers, unmoving.
His hand is so warm.
The touch burns.
“What are you doing?” Ghost is a puppet on Soap’s strings, his words knotted and tangled within them, unable to breathe.
“Giving my lieutenant what he wants, yeah?” Soap hums, pushing into Ghost’s space until Ghost can feel his breath seeping through the mask. “You should see the way your eyes go fuzzy when I get a hand on your head. Lord in heaven, it’s bonnie.”
Secrets were never secrets when it came to Soap, this Ghost knew. But at least they were quiet. They were unspoken, two grown men pulling pigtails and never speaking slimy, disgusting need into the world. Even as Soap teased, even as Ghost pushed them apart, it was never truly real. Now, Soap makes it real, impatient, starved. He sits delicately, shifting to straddle Ghost’s hips so carelessly that Ghost could buck him off with little to no effort. He assures that Ghost can escape, gives him a kind, unquestioned way out and it only makes Ghost’s heart thrum heavy and angry as he lies pliant. It feels like holding his thrashing heart in his hands, offering it up to Soap and saying look– Look at how I do not run, an admission even in his silence.
“Do you want this?” Soap asks, Soap begs, Soap demands, already holding the answer inside his calloused hands.
In truth, it’s an offer. They both know that, even if Ghost would never admit it. He could say no, he could snarl at Soap and demand that he get up, and Soap would. Soap would let him leave. And he’d still knock their knees together when they sit side by side. He’d still clap him on the back after a hard mission and laugh at Ghost’s crude jokes with disappointing punchlines. He’d still hang close to Ghost, like nothing had changed.
Maybe that’s worse. To know that there’s nothing Ghost could do that would make Soap turn tail and run.
He should.
God, he should.
But instead, he gazes down at Ghost with those stupid fucking persistent eyes and laces his war-torn fingers in Ghost’s hair, making pretty offers he shouldn’t be so eager to fulfill. Soap dives into everything he does wholly, with all he’s got.
The answer is yes. Ghost wants it so bad that it claws at his throat, ruining itself at the chance to be set free. He wants it so bad that it hurts. But, while his body screams for it, his mind cries he’ll know, he’ll know, he’ll know. He’ll see it all as it is and not what Ghost wants it to be. And if he doesn’t like it, there won’t be a hole to crawl back into, his home dug up and irreversibly destroyed.
He wants it, starves for it like a man at a mirage.
To have it– to have it just might kill him.
“Don’t make me say it.” His voice is steady, though quiet. Ghost has dedicated his life to hiding every part of himself that gives away a sliver of truth, but his chest rises and falls with a raucous beat, pressed too close to Soap.
Soap’s heart beats, too.
“Just once,” Soap barters. “Tell me this is okay.”
Soap’s heart beats, his eyes soft, like he wants it, too.
It’s a flaw, deep-rooted and irreplaceable, how quickly Ghost folds when it’s Soap’s hands begging him for things. They lie in the depths of the ocean together and Ghost offers up every pearl he has, all because Soap bats his eyelashes and puffs out his chest. He gives in so easily, every time, to burn in the flame of Soap’s smile. “It’s–“ he forces out. “I–“
He sucks in a deep breath, tearing his eyes away from Soap to glare shapes into the ceiling.
Silently, he drags a hand up to cover Soap’s through his balaclava, pressing it closer, firmer.
“I… want it.”
A great dane, a ruthless killer, whittled down to a puddle of nothingness because Soap asked for it.
It’d feel worse if it wasn’t met with such shameless pride.
Soap is up and off of him in seconds, pulling Ghost to his unsteady feet and dragging him out of the training room, towards the barracks. Ghost can’t quite catch his breath, when their hands are linked together like two lovers who steal kisses behind trees. As if they have a love that is dainty, pure, all gentle hands of porcelain. Ghost’s hands are brutish. He and Soap are tools of war, guard dogs for higher-ups and littered with the scars to prove it. They have trails of bodies that span fields and no matter how many decades go by, it’ll stay that way. They are not dainty. They are not pure. They have not a love with frills and white lace.
But none of that changes how Soap squeezes his hand, fervent and coveted.
The door to Ghost’s private quarters is wrestled open gracelessly and shut tight behind them. Everything else melts away in the wake of Soap’s hands around his waist. They make him feel like something worth holding. Something precious. Something smaller, kinder than Ghost. His mind catches up, albeit late, and it finally sets in that this thing between he and Soap is becoming tangible. Something that he can see. Something he can feel.
“Say the word and this stops,” Soap promises, staring up at Ghost with something hungry and wistful. As if Ghost wouldn’t crumble apart if Soap took his hands off of him.
Ghost doesn’t make a sound.
Without objection, he lets Soap slowly and carefully roll up the hem of his mask until it sits on the bridge of his nose. It’s nothing he hasn’t already seen, but Soap traces the jagged line of his mouth like it’s a present, gift-wrapped specially for him. The pit in Ghost’s stomach sits stubbornly, distantly dreading the moment Soap decides that Ghost isn’t quite what he imagined and remorselessly throws him to the dogs.
But Soap is pushing at his shoulders, and Ghost is falling to his knees, and it all becomes a lot less dire.
“You go so easily, don’t you? No bark, no bite. Just waiting for somebody to treat you like the good boy you are.”
“Zip it,” Ghost mumbles, the shape of the words a touch too foreign without black fabric against his lips. Say it again, he pleads. Do you mean it?
Ghost’s hands twitch in his lap, begging to stain any skin Soap will let him. They’re so close, and Soap looks so proud, staring down at him like a godsend. Does he deserve it?
Tell me I deserve it.
Fingers tuck themselves under the rolled edge of his mask, gently threading through the tufts of hair underneath. It’s a threat, a promise, as Ghost’s mouth falls the slightest bit ajar and Soap’s eyes shine something wicked.
“A little bit of bark, then,” Soap grins. Ghost’s attention stays loyally trained on his face as the stark sound of a zipper makes itself known, fly undone. “We’ll fix that, aye?”
When the grip in his hair turns mean, he trips over himself to keep an embarrassingly broken gasp in his throat, face shoved in the crease of Soap’s hip.
Ghost lets himself fall limp, docile in Soap’s grip. These hands won’t hurt you, it swears. These teeth won’t bite. And Soap–
Soap coos at him like it’s true.
Gently, he guides Ghost towards the swell of something more prominent, more imperative, and Ghost lets his tongue loll out with the ease of a doll, staining Soap’s boxers a darker cotton. Soap cradles his head, digging fingerprints into the overworked muscle of Ghost’s neck, pale and tense, while he grinds into the kind, open mouth Ghost offers. It’s dirty in a way devoid of knives, mud or guilt. It’s drowned in something Ghost can’t quite describe, encompassing and somehow buried and muffled, all at once. Shame, maybe. Shame lines the very edges of Ghost’s being, no matter the hour, the day, the company, and it burns like whiskey alongside every swallow and nicety he dares spill onto the ones he protects. This– this shame simmers low and bright. This shame is debauched and crude as it creeps up the back of his throat and he begs Soap to share it’s space. This shame feels horrible, jittery and terrified in the lowest depths of Ghost’s gut.
And this shame is hopeful.
When Soap tugs him away by the ends of his hair, Ghost lets his eyes drag up. Soap is always a vision, gleaming and scrappy in a way that’s more charming than men like them need to be. Eyes like scopes, complete with crosshairs for irises, solidifying your end. A jaw with an unshaved shadow Ghost wants to feel against his cheek, against his collarbone, against his thighs, if Soap felt courteous enough. A smile, skewed and malicious and happy, undeniably John MacTavish. Soap is always a vision, but nothing can compare to this, with his killer eyes so drunkenly hooded and a hand pushing the waistband of his boxers low, low, low.
The fist tangled at the back of Ghost’s head pushes, careful and powerful, until his slack mouth meets the fiery warmth of bare skin.
It feels unfit.
Ghost is clunky– awkwardly big, hunched at Soap’s feet like an old, limping pit bull.
But Soap groans, eyes sharp so as to not miss a single detail of Ghost’s face as he eases his cock between his lips. He melts into Ghost like that old pit bull is nothing short of perfect, sighing his contentment in a breathy “Attaboy.”
It’s heavy on Ghost’s tongue, a silent worship, swelling alongside his heart.
Both hands press into matted blonde beneath the hem of his mask. Ghost’s breath bleeds out through his nose rough and noisily as he follows every catch of a callous or scar, every slow bend of Soap’s pointer finger, every loving swipe of his boney thumb. It’s dizzying, ruining, how badly Ghost craves for Soap’s fingers to curl into relentless fists and push, pull, push, pull, until Ghost is deemed useful. Every vein might as well be on the outside, so warm and alive, everywhere all at once.
Give it to me, Ghost hums around the weight of Soap, lungs ragged. You promised.
He promised with blood, with knuckles, with leashes. With his hands, with his words, something devoted and honest. And, like a god answering a prayer, Soap follows through.
With a push– cracked lips spread wide and Soap’s impish grin fallen slack.
With a pull– perfect, blinding stars behind eyes and a pitiful moan poorly muffled, soaked into skin.
Sparks shoot up and caress each vertebrae of his spine until it settles deep and content in Soap’s hands, tugging at Ghost’s roots. It’s purposeful. There’s no question, no uncertainty to Soap’s intent, his push, his pull. He wants to see Ghost in pieces. Selfishly, selflessly, he gives it all, without holy restraint. To be the center of his attention, the thing Soap dedicates himself to pulling apart, is well and truly frightening, nothing between Soap and the truth Ghost hides behind his silhouette. It’s scary, but Soap wraps around Ghost like twine, listening to every unspoken plea and long glance, flooding recompense into the godless emptiness of a scathed man with no hesitation at all. He gives it all like Ghost is his only devotee, knelt down on the church’s floor. Ghost doesn’t believe in God. He hasn’t since he was a kid. Because, no matter how much you beg, God doesn’t answer. But Soap—
Soap answers.
With a push– fluttering eyes rolling back and a song that sounds awfully like gospel.
With a pull– a thank you, god, thank you.
It tastes like the last sip of gin. Ghost, ever the alcoholic when posed with Soap’s careless attention, laps it up devotedly. With every push, with every pull, Ghost sinks further into a drunkenness that feels closer to burning alive, climbing each bone of his ribcage like a ladder. Soap pants his praise into the tarnished air, groans his grotesque satisfaction, tugs at blonde roots with such a reverence that Ghost’s hands shake and his thighs slam together.
He can’t figure out when it became him in Soap’s maw, curled up in the fur of his very own bear and awaiting the clamp of a jaw, lined with bloodied teeth. If Soap wanted, whenever Soap wanted, he could chew Ghost up and spit out something gruesome and unrecognizable. But he looks down at Ghost so… adoringly. Lovesick and dumb. He runs a thumb along the scratchy, black fabric over a ruddy cheekbone and Ghost thinks this must be the softest fur he’s ever curled into. Ghost, too, is anything but naive. He curls into Soap with a purpose, a need, incomparable to anything a renowned monster should be capable of.
It’s trust, maybe.
Is Ghost the monster? Is Soap? Does it matter, if neither of them run?
If neither of them flinch?
If it feels good.
Soap is fuel to a flame. A pretty, pretty flame with red-knuckled hands tangled in Ghost’s hair and promises he intends to keep.
He burrows into Ghost’s throat as it spasms around him, a merciless god if any. Something in Ghost’s eyes must give him away – or maybe it’s the sounds Soap keeps pulling out of him, breathy and shattered, or the desperate press of his thighs together, friction sparse but there – because Soap peels them apart until nothing but a line of spit connects them.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he drools, marveled and breathless, taking a single, agonizing step back to rake his dangerous eyes down the length of Ghost’s body.
“Why’d you stop?” Ghost rasps hoarsely.
Soap simply hums, dripping, “You’d let me do anything I wanted, huh? On your knees, just for me?” as if therein lies the explanation.
He has to know. He has to see it, the way he sees everything Ghost doesn’t want him to, reflected in red-rimmed, endless eyes. Something deeper, something limitless and held greedily to Ghost’s chest. Something that screams you, you, you, stuck in the knot of his throat.
A boot wedges itself between Ghost’s knees and gently coerces them to slide apart.
He is regrettably open. His thoughts, his body, the haze clouding his vision, spread apart and on display under a rose-tinted lens. What someone else might see in a sight like this– Ghost can’t even begin to fathom. What Soap sees is different. Soap sees something softer. A project, Ghost reminds himself. Something to pick apart. Something more, maybe. It’s as terrifying as it is exhilarating, with a scalpel trailing over his neck, his collarbone, down his chest. But he doesn’t dare move. It would hurt, something whispers to him. One misstep. One wrong intention and Ghost’s insides would spill out over Soap’s clean hands. It would burn, if only Soap got his wits about him and decided that this project is better left chopped up and thrown to the side, irredeemable. Unfixable. Not quite worth it.
What if, he ruminates as he lies obediently on the cold metal of the exam table. What if he didn’t?
What if he kept Ghost around, taped together and better than before?
He traces the line of Ghost’s heart with a sharp edge. He holds all of it in his palms, bursting at the seams, and Ghost presses into it the same way he’d press into that scalpel, as long as it meant he’d get to keep this. You, you, you.
When Soap kneels, presses a tender hand to Ghost’s jaw, his wishful hope becomes less and less wishful. It seems almost cruel to imagine those hands with a blade to his throat when they’ve offered him nothing but good things.
They’re scarred and rough with callouses, but they’re also freckled.
They drag Ghost into a kiss full of dandelions and shared beds. They’d whine and cry if they knew he’d pictured them wrapped around his liver, blood-stained and rotten. They promise good things. They promise, they promise, they promise. He lets himself bleed into Soap like Soap is a strike of color across the endless sky, nebula after nebula, tracing his molars with an insatiable tongue and trailing his gratitude down Ghost’s back. Bleed isn’t the right word, he supposes. There’s no blood, no incision.
Only Soap.
“Everything,” Soap bites, chest rising and falling in an impossible fight for air, hot against Ghost’s lips. He tugs at a dryer-faded shirt with eager, starry eyes, his voice a desperate snarl. ”Off.”
Ghost wrestles his shirt over his head and onto the floor faster than a sniper’s final blow.
And Soap damn near purrs, a rumble that resonates through Ghost’s bones and makes a home for itself in the cradle of his veins, while fingers tear at the buckle of his belt.
They move fast, deftly, pretty and jagged and red, fumbling to reach where no other has dared in a very long time. Ghost watches them dance beneath the staggered jump of his own stomach, listens ever so closely for a click, an airy pop, any tiny resemblance to the hands that Ghost has seen trace whiskey glasses and plastic trays. Guns and metal pins, torn from grenades. And, then, as Soap tugs Ghost’s belt out of it’s loop, he hears it. Soap’s pointer finger gets caught, just so, and the knuckle clicks so quietly Ghost could’ve made it up. But it makes Soap curse– and that makes Ghost shudder.
It reminds him of the bar. With Soap’s hand so close. How badly Ghost prayed for his mask to fall apart into specks of dust, just to see if that hand would slide up, up, up.
Now, he sweats into the fabric as it smothers his forehead, his ears, his eyes.
“Simon,” Soap falters, as Ghost rips it off and smears the grease paint around his eyes, tossing the balaclava in the direction he remembers throwing his shirt.
He sits pitifully bared in front of Soap. The scalpel draws up, begging to slam down in a splatter of blood. He imagines, instead, the warmth. The skin. The hands.
The flush of bourbon. Soap, Soap, Soap.
“Don’t make me regret it,” Ghost spits with finality, while Soap smooths down a tawny eyebrow and soaks in the view of Ghost’s face like a man at a museum. Like a lover.
A bear, a torturer, a nebula– he belongs to Ghost.
He runs greedy hands down the bare expanse of Ghost’s chest, his sides, over the restless, terrified beat of his heart, as if he knows. As if Ghost belongs to him, too. He doesn’t. He can’t, when Soap deserves better. Frills, white lace. Kisses behind trees. The blameless man that Ghost will never be again. But god help him if he doesn’t want to pretend like he is, if only to put every freckle and scar that lines Soap’s body into a locket. His fingers curl with symphonies, crackling like campfires, trailing into blue veins that wrap up Soap’s arms. His skin tugs and pulls, opens and closes with every breath, evidence of life. Reassurance that Soap has lungs, that he’s here, that he’s something.
The idea that he might be everything is a revelation better left abandoned.
Ghost takes one of Soap’s hands in his own. Slowly, in a mock recreation of the way this all began, he drags it up to lace through the sweaty hair plastered to his own forehead. No more mask in the way. No more question. Rugged stubble scrapes down the pillar of his throat, in answer, in thanks, in hunger, Ghost hopes. It stings for no more than a second before it loses in a war against Soap’s teeth, sunk into Ghost’s carotid artery like he’s trying to take a piece of Ghost home with him, and he wishes Soap would take more. It’s yours. All of it, if you wanted it to be. Chewed up and happy.
On the same beat, those slim fingers finally, finally slide beneath the hem of Ghost’s boxers and trace the peak of something that makes his hips jolt, a shaky gasp torn out of his mouth before he can think to cage it behind his teeth. He reaches for Soap with hesitant, unsteady hands– without gloves, without guilt, without worry of how inky blackness flows from his fingers in search of good things to taint. I could kill you, those hands say, shaped to hold down triggers. I could ruin you. I could make you a puddle of bones, a stain across pavement, a shield for the lucky.
I wouldn’t.
I won’t.
Gloveless, guiltless, Ghost digs his blackened fingers into Soap’s back and winds around him like a snake, a predator, or a man come home from war with open arms.
Soap takes his cock between his pointer and thumb, gently testing the waters, until he smiles into the crease of Ghost’s neck and rolls it. Ghost curls towards Soap like a wilting flower, howling a foul sound into Soap’s shoulder with a matching, unrestrained bite. Though, it does little to hide the way his legs slide impossibly further apart to beckon Soap closer, or the way his hands tighten into fists around the soft cotton of Soap’s shirt, wound up like a spring as he desperately holds it all in. All it does, in reality, is bring Soap’s mouth close enough to curl around the shell of his ear, a smooth tune like the dusty orange of violin as he croons, “There you go, big fella. Does that feel good?”
Ghost is made of lightning. It licks up his neck like a line of gasoline with fire hot on it’s tail as Soap drags his nails along Ghost’s scalp, soothing, sweet and patronizing, with his voice so low and crude.
It does feel good, sharper than the buzz that comes with a few drinks but just as heavy and content, sleeping in his gut like hot coffee.
It does feel good, but Soap knows. He tuts, rubs slow circles over the red, aching tip of Ghost’s dick and breathes sin into his ear, because he knows.
“You know, you looked so pretty with your lips stretched around my cock,” he seeps into a pale jaw. “trying so hard to hold it together. Can I get you to let go, Si? Fall apart?”
Ghost drools into the dip of Soap’s collarbone, carrying his pride in his silence even though his legs quiver and his teeth burrow into any slice of skin they can reach, a gag to muffle the wretched sounds Soap pulls out of him so easily. He begs with his brutish hands rather than the echo of his voice, pulling Soap closer, closer, closer.
“Wanna see it so bad,” Soap pleads, tucking his fingers lower, into the red warmth inside of Ghost.
He’ll get it whether Ghost wants him to or not.
It sits beneath his skin and it thrums under Soap’s carnivorous touch, rubs it’s cheek into his rough hands. Stupid, smitten, it reaches for him. He wants it, too. He does. But he also knows that the pieces won’t go back quite the same. It’s all in the reigning it back in. The patching it up, after he melts into something gentle and so drastically unlike The Ghost. He isn’t a child anymore, 6, going on 7. There’s nobody sitting by his bedside, feeding him spoonfuls of cough syrup that he’ll spit up because he doesn’t like the taste. There’s no one to coo over every skinned knee, soft voice and warm rag. Ghost is 29, going on 30. His skinned knees are gashes, knife wounds. His bedside is empty. He begs Soap to stick around. He begs Soap to feed him cough syrup in the shape of a kiss, coddled and held tight until the pieces fit together again.
Because, whether he’s scared or not, he’s chipping around the edges and Soap’s fingers are curling inside of him, searching and finding.
Soap pets, he whispers, presses Ghost closer to the crook of his neck like he’s comforting some poor sod and not taking Ghost apart bit by bit, two fingers drawing patterns over the spot that makes his hands tremble and his stomach flutter. The meat of Soap’s palm grinds cruel and dirty into his cock, twitching against it, into it, as his heart beats in rhythm with every squelch in and out, in and out, blood rushing hot in his ears. He feels strung up tight and tuned like guitar strings, a song in the pluck of Soap’s fingers. It’s warm, mahogany, syrupy like molasses and rowdy like unruly seas. It’s frantic and it crawls up his neck like a blush.
“Oh, that’s it. Gonna come like this?” Soap preens, and it takes hearing those words for Ghost to realize that the answer is yes.
Soap is a net and Ghost is up on the tightrope, eyes closed.
The fear of being known is something cruel. Ingrained in Soap’s mind is the silent tremor of Ghost’s shoulders, his legs, his stuttered breath. He’s heard the sounds Ghost makes, like a wounded animal. He’s seen Ghost debased and on his knees, awful and reserved for a lover’s eyes. He’s seen the weak little thing that’d break if he’d only mercifully crush it under his boot. And now, he’ll see Ghost fall apart. It shouldn’t be so easy. Soap disagrees– argues tooth and nail, bite and claw. Whatever he sees in Ghost, he runs his hands over the grooves like it’s brass, braille, fluent even without eyes. It’s like breathing. Knowing Ghost is like breathing.
“Do you deserve it?” Soap asks.
No. The longer they spend together, the more he’s certain of it. He isn’t here because he deserves it, a reward for being a damn good citizen with a platter of forbidden fruit and all the wine he could possibly imagine. He’s here because he wants to be. Because Soap pressed himself into the tiny space between Ghost’s heart and his ribcage, and he said let me. And god, if Ghost doesn’t ache to let him. It feels like being buried alive. Encompassed, swallowed, surrounded by Soap. And it feels good.
To be known and loved anyway. To be touched like something untainted. To shake and gasp into Soap’s summer freckles, his sturdy arms. To be so unfathomably warm.
“No,” Ghost replies honestly, pulling air into his lungs in short, sharp breaths, as close as he can get to the open fire of Soap’s skin. “Give it– give it to me anyway.”
It’s a plead, never a demand, a whine soaked into sunny alabaster.
“Please.”
Soap, unlike God, always answers.
“I think you do,” he sings.
His fingers tighten in Ghost’s hair. In the same second, his opposite hand bends strangely in the confines of black boxers to press a thumb to the tip of Ghost’s cock, firm and unrelenting. It swirls mean circles, fast, fast, fast, until Ghost’s breath comes out more like a sob.
“I think you’ve been a good, good boy for me, Si.”
And then his grip in Ghost’s hair pulls.
There’s no hiding the sound that tears out of his throat, no shoulder to cry into, as he moans something proper and broken and makes a pearly mess of Soap’s palm. Archaic and deadly like a high tide, it pulls him under.
God, it feels like the world rips apart, fizzles away in a garish show of colors and bright lights to make room for this. This… something. This dismantling. This grave injury, this falling away and coming together. This stubborn cradling of warm bodies, warm feelings, hoarded in Ghost’s arms until he squeezes it so tight that it wretches itself out and away, lest it stay and be crushed. It’s blinding behind his blown, glassy eyes and it burns every place he and Soap are connected, like the world is welding them together and singing their vows.
Maybe it’s concerning, the things Ghost would give. The things Ghost would do, for Soap. To live in this impossible, bloody, searing moment for the rest of his life. To be something worth cherishing. He’d curl into scalpels, polish boots with his tongue, be torn apart and put back together like some patchwork porcelain with golden seams. He’d be anything Soap wanted him to be, if Ghost could only sweat into a bite mark on his collarbone and melt into a hand in his hair. Maybe it’s selfish. Maybe Ghost will squeeze too tight and Soap, too, will tear himself out of Ghost’s arms.
But, right now, Soap is here. Ghost is squeezing and Soap is here. He coos at Ghost and runs gentle fingers through stray tangles, patient and kind, while Ghost’s chest heaves and he clenches thunderously, unforgivingly, around Soap’s soiled hand.
“Fuck,” he exhales shakily as the room bleeds back in.
And Soap laughs like picnic benches and wildflowers.
Ghost only grunts, hiding the beginnings of a dopey grin in the purpling bruise he left on Soap’s shoulder. Sluggishly, he drags a hand to tuck behind Soap’s in the cramped space inside of his boxers, to ground himself, to feel closer, to keep them linked together for just a moment longer.
Tenderly, with a smile Ghost can nearly hear, Soap presses their chests together as much as he can with an arm in the way.
He angles Ghost’s chin just so.
To let their breath intertwine together, a sworn oath. To swallow the gasp that slips from Ghost’s lips as he carefully, torturously slow, pulls his fingers out of the warmth that begs them to stay.
“Easy, boy,” Soap mutters into the air between them, smearing wet fingers up the unsteady plane of Ghost’s stomach. Like a lover, like a lover, he laces their fingers together, the back of his hand pressed into Ghost’s palm. “I’ve got you, don’t I?“
Ghost squeezes Soap’s hand like it’ll disappear in a single breath.
With as much care as he can muster, he pulls their linked hands to wrap around Soap’s neglected cock, trapped between them. He guides Soap’s hand, underneath his own, to a gentle pace that coerces a truly worshipful moan from peachy lips.
“Happy?” Ghost sighs, love-drunk and seeping graciousness the way sun seeps into a home, trapped in the wood. “You terrorize me for weeks. Tug me this way and that– until it’s all I can think about. And then you get me in your bed, yeah?”
“Your bed,” Soap drools. “Your, uh, floor, actually.”
Ghost swirls patterns over the knuckle of Soap’s thumb as he drags their hands up, down, a shuddery groan, up, down.
“Jesus christ. ‘Course I’m fuckin’ happy. Look at you,” Soap finally answers. “Can’t blame a man for pulling pigtails when he gets sounds like that. God, I wish I could…” he trails off for a second on a particular tight stroke, mouth falling slack with a sound Ghost wants to lick up like icing. “Wish I could keep you like this forever.”
It’s hard to stay away from the push, the pull, the magnetism that keeps the two of them in orbit. Ghost would swallow Soap whole if he could. Like planets cascading towards each other, colliding in a mess of asteroids and unfixable dents. They could be colors– bright, intangible, instead of creatures with blood between their teeth and beneath their fingernails. In a world where Ghost isn’t big, or imposing, or rough around the edges. In a world where Soap isn’t undeserved. In a world where they stay just like this forever. Soap’s hands are sunny, and Ghost holds them like he’s never stepped outside, soaking up the warmth with closed eyes and open arms. He touches them like he knows he won’t ruin them.
His hands promise good things.
He makes sure of it, as he strips Soap’s cock like cherrywood and stows away every sacred sound it gives him, pulled by his hand.
“Johnny,” he pours out. “I’m yours, I think.”
And it makes Soap laugh with that perfect, paisley-patterned laugh that Ghost wants to hear every morning, every day, in every life. “You think, do you? Say it again. Like you mean it.”
Ghost peels them apart to look Soap in the eyes. They flutter, flickers of forget-me-not, heavy like honey.
“Please,” Soap echoes, breath catching in his throat and escaping more like a whine.
It doesn’t feel so scary, when he knows Soap is there to catch him. To put him back together, soft voice and warm rag.
A bear, a torturer, a nebula–
“I’m yours.”
The words are foreign, strange and dry on his tongue, but they make Soap melt like cheap wax in his arms. Ghost comforts him in an echo of how Soap had done to him, angling his chin just so, to swallow every uninhibited noise he’s earned. To breathe together. His left hand scratches through an unkempt mohawk, patient, kind, like Soap would.
He loves, like Soap would.
“I’m yours, Johnny, I’ve got you,” he whispers, voice gravelly and unclean, nothing like Soap’s, as the lewd slide of their tangled hands turns uncoordinated and desperate. Soap’s hips press into the touch with a mean stutter, reaching for Ghost like Ghost just might be something worth reaching for. He could be, he thinks, if he wanted to be. If only in this company, in this room, soaking up sunlight. If only guided by Soap’s hand, a waltz and it’s step, one, two.
He loves, like Soap would, because Soap is teaching him how.
Their hands fit together, after all. Step, one, two.
Soap opens up for Ghost like a flower. Dutiful, happy, easy. And Ghost– Ghost would be remiss if he didn’t embrace it like the present that it is. He offers up everything, all he has, to keep Soap so close and unafraid, falling apart in Ghost’s arms without a drop of hesitation. Red pain blooms in his bottom lip as Soap’s teeth sink into it, painted with a cry. His hand shakes beneath Ghost’s, dainty though rough, soft and sweet in a way that seems larger than this. God, Ghost’s heart swells, pressed into a space too small for it now, as Soap becomes tiny. Defenseless and bare. Trusting so implicitly that Ghost will catch him when he falls, too.
That’s part of it, isn’t it?
Not bears, nor children, but… people. Two people sat by bedsides to coo over the skinned knees that nobody else notices. To say I’m here rather than you can handle it. To catch when one falls.
Ghost isn’t quite sure if he’s built for something so light-handed and delicate. A word with a capital L and tenderness in his fingertips. But he kisses Soap like he means it and he takes him apart with the promise that he’ll pick up the pieces, repayment in kind, in kind, in kind. Built for it or not, he owes it to Soap to try, doesn’t he?
Something as yellow as dandelions, crawling up the inside of Ghost’s stomach, deserves it.
It sounds vaguely like Ghost’s name, a garbled mess shaped like Simon, when Soap spills white stripes over a bare stomach and two melded hands.
Ghost holds him until he stops shaking, soft voice, warm rag. The pieces that make up Simon and the pieces that make up Johnny are shattered and swirled together on the floor and as Ghost picks them up, rebuilds himself, he thinks they both might be taking parts of each other home with them. So, he was right, in a way. The pieces won’t go back quite the same, but some of him lives on in Soap’s skin, becoming one with pale freckles.
So it can’t really be that bad, can it?
He lugs them both onto their feet with a pitiful creak of knees and a groan, love stained on Soap’s breath as he leeches onto him like Ghost will startle and run away the second this is all over.
He wouldn’t.
He won’t.
Instead, he huffs a gentle laugh into Soap’s lips and tugs him in the direction of the bed, an offer.
“Are you staying?” his words curl behind Soap’s teeth.
“God, Simon. Where would I go?” Soap breathes.
Anywhere, Ghost thinks. Soap could go anywhere. But he doesn’t. He ruins his knees on hardwood, burrows into duvets, etches Ghost’s broken pieces into his body and does it with glee, happily stuck to Ghost’s side. It isn’t where would I go– it’s why would I go?
Why would I leave?
And that… That feels like something to croon over.
Drunk on touch, Ghost lets Soap strip them bare and curl around him with gangly limbs, tucking his face into Ghost’s neck like a plush pillow. A sweaty, grease paint stained, plush pillow that grumbles and sighs when you ask it the important questions. The answers are too honest. Too intertwined with the gooey molasses of Simon Riley, but Soap has always had an eye for the things that Ghost tucks away. His secrets stay bound to the bottom of the ocean, chained up as tight as he needs them to be– but now, there’s a key. He tucks it into Soap’s pocket, brass and selfish.
Soap could always pick the locks anyway.
“Soap,” Ghost scolds, shying away from devious fingers as they inch towards somewhere creamy and sore, disrupting the cozy quiet of their tangled bodies.
“No, no, no. Where’d Johnny go?” Soap soothes, voice dipping quiet and honey. “Please, Johnny,” he gently prompts.
And, well, Ghost is nothing if not a good boy– for Soap and only Soap. He folds like cheap linen, though he pretends to bite and kick. A sharp breath, stuttered and resigned, before he swallows down his sticky pride and obediently spills out, “…Please, Johnny.”
”Christ almighty,” Soap marvels, pressing one careful finger inside and drinking up the sound it gets him. “You’re perfect, you know that? Will you give me one more? One more, is all. Cross my heart.”
Ghost doesn’t know if he can, can’t remember a time that he stuck around to find out, but he nods anyway.
Because Soap is warm, burning a hole into Ghost’s side.
And Ghost is nothing if not his.