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Two hours before Soap is supposed to head to the airport and fly back to base after 8 days of leave, his girlfriend breaks up with him.
He met her during his last leave—before he was with the One-Four-One—when he got trashed at a bar and woke up with her still in his bed and no idea what to do besides ask her out for a breakfast date. Despite their limited time together, Soap thought she had all the makings of the perfect wife: she was polite, and Scottish, and laughed at his terrible jokes, and had a body that his friends slyly congratulated him on. She was a girl his parents would've loved if they'd gotten the chance to meet her. After so many failed romances and concluding that marriage maybe wasn’t for him, Soap had imagined a future for them that he could tolerate, chubby-cheeked babies and peaceful holidays together.
She gives the usual platitudes during her departing speech—it’s her, not him; it’s too hard with him being away for long stretches of time, especially since they need to be building a foundation for their relationship; she can’t handle the months of him being gone when she only gets a week or two in return, waiting for a man who barely returns her communication attempts and who could be KIA for several months before she stumbled upon the news herself; she feels like he’s not as invested as she is.
She’s still very polite while being upfront about her reasons, and Soap doesn’t try to get her to stay. He knows that it’s hard to be the one left at home, and she’s too beautiful to waste her time on a soldier. He doesn’t feel sad necessarily, just frustrated. He’s approaching his 30’s, and his family isn’t subtle about how he’s more dedicated to his career than he’s ever been to a woman. He wants to find someone he can make it work with but there always seems to be something wrong. It must be him, he thinks distantly, because she’s laying out her reasons for their incompatibility and all he’s thinking about is how crowded the airport is going to be at this time of day.
She leaves and Soap feels nothing as the door closes behind her. He sighs and finishes packing his duffel. His family will be upset, sure, but it’s no great loss. She can find someone better than him, a man who will love her the way Soap has witnessed on TV and heard people talk about but never experienced for himself. Perhaps he’s just not wired for it, some part of his brain fundamentally broken in a way that makes him good for the military but not much else.
No point in dwelling on it. His relationship may be over, but he doesn’t need a girlfriend right now—not when he’s gunning for a promotion.
And certainly not when he has Ghost.
His arrangement with Ghost, as Soap’s taken to calling it, started after they arrived back on base after staying a week in D.C. for meetings with Laswell and other important U.S. National Security people. Soap didn’t mind that extra week in the States, but it was nice to be somewhere familiar again; Credenhill was a breath of fresh air after the low-grade paranoia of hotel living.
Soap had taken some time to journal and then went to find Ghost. After Las Almas and Chicago, he’d grown used to the banter and camaraderie. Having Ghost give him instructions—and praise—through the comms brought a smile to his face, and toward the end of their race to find the last missile, he found himself having to bite back irritation when it was someone else on the channel. Soap wanted the snark and the wisdom of his lieutenant, his deadpan delivery of jokes and a voice that was too gruff to be soothing but couldn't really be described as anything else when it had guided Soap through the worst moment of his life up to that point.
Soap had reached Ghost’s room and knocked twice, opening the door without waiting for an answer. The audacity of something like that would’ve been unthinkable during their first mission together, but that was before being entrusted to be Ghost’s eyes during the prison break, before the legend of Ghost had been unmasked before him to reveal nothing but a scarred man. And realistically, he’d gotten used to entering and exiting Ghost’s space whenever he pleased via their adjoining hotel rooms.
Maybe he should’ve given his actions more than a second of thought, Soap thought belatedly, because one step into the room and he saw Ghost was naked apart from shorts pushed down his thighs, sitting on the edge of his bed with his cock in his hand. Frozen in place and face heating, Soap nearly yelped when Ghost looked up and made eye contact. He didn’t move his hand.
“You gonna stand there all night, or are you coming in?” Ghost asked, not a hint of self-consciousness to be found.
“I—” Soap couldn’t stop staring at his cock. He had figured a man Ghost’s size had to be working with a lot, and he wasn’t wrong. At a first glance, it looked bigger than his own by a few inches. There was a strange heat in his stomach that had to be envy. A natural reaction, despite being content with his own size.
Ghost sighed and it came out shaky. “Just get inside and close the fucking door, Johnny.”
Soap did. Paralyzed in this unfamiliar territory, he simply watched Ghost, waiting to take cues from him. Ghost reclined back slightly back on one steadying hand, dick hard and wet and red where the tip came out past his foreskin. If Soap could’ve thought clearly in that moment, he might’ve wondered if Ghost was showing off a little, but his head was filled with nothing but static. It wasn’t the first time Soap had seen someone getting off, but this was Ghost. That made it different for some reason. Seeing someone who spent his time acting like human needs were above him like this felt wrong, like Soap was seeing proof that this larger-than-life myth was little more than an animal being driven by base instincts.
“Like what you see, Johnny?” Ghost’s voice was a little breathless, and the heat in Soap’s stomach burned a few degrees hotter. He had seen Ghost do many things in the field without breaking a sweat, so the pleasure Ghost was feeling must’ve been miles above anything Soap had had in recent memory. That was when Soap realized he was hard, leaning back against the door in a way that was—unintentionally—inviting Ghost to stare at his crotch.
“Looks like a good time,” Soap said. It was the least-incriminating thing he could say, something that wouldn’t make him sound defensive if he tried to explain that it was normal to get hard when someone was being so… shameless. His brain had already forgotten that Ghost was the one that told him to come in the room, that he clearly didn’t care about whatever reaction Soap had.
Ghost grinned, his Glasgow smile scars shifting. “It is.” The wet sound of skin on skin filled Soap’s ears, and there was only so much he could take before he edged his hand down to his waistband.
“Can I—” He cut himself off, hoping Ghost would get the message as he thumbed his button. Something about asking outright seemed more shameless—more gay—than being given permission.
“Yeah,” Ghost said, gazing at Soap as he pushed his underwear down. “There’s a good boy.”
Soap shuddered, Ghost’s words reaching him at the same time he wrapped a hand around his cock. He groaned at the immediate relief.
It felt like Ghost was whispering directly into his ear when he said, “That’s a nice cock, Johnny. You get a lot of ladies with it?”
Soap tried to conjure up a story from his past that he could share, a pretty blonde or a frisky brunette or his fucking girlfriend, but all he could focus on what the way Ghost stroked himself, the little flick of his wrist he did when he got to the head, the way his thumb would rub at his slit occasionally. “I do all right,” he finally said.
“No need to be modest. I bet you’re in a different cunt every week.”
“What about you?” There’s no way Ghost didn’t pull with a dick like that.
“Eh. Too much effort. I’ll take a mouth here and there though.”
Soap imagined it with picture-perfect clarity: Ghost, his hand in some woman’s hair as he fucked up into her throat, gagging her with all of his inches and holding her head down if she tried to pull off. He imagined the noises, the spit, the power in Ghost’s hips and hands as he took without mercy—the way Ghost would demean and compliment in equal measure.
His orgasm blindsided him, cum streaking up his shirt, moaning louder than he ever had. Ghost watched him intently, stroking faster.
“C’mon, Ghost,” Soap slurred out. Even if this was new territory, he wasn’t going to leave someone hanging. “Show me how big your load is.”
Half a minute later, Ghost did, spewing filthy words while he shot enough ropes of cum to make the envious heat flare up once again. It was all over Ghost’s torso, dripping down slowly. Soap couldn’t look away until Ghost sighed and stretched, a series of satisfying pops breaking the quiet.
Soap, unsure what to do next, took off his shirt and flipped it inside out, tossing it to Ghost so he could clean up. Ghost gave his thanks with a nod and asked, “Want a smoke?”
And so they made themselves semi-presentable and crowded together by Ghost’s window. Soap didn’t think about his new girlfriend back home as they shared an illicit cigarette. Why should he have? It wasn't cheating. Ghost didn’t touch him and he didn’t touch Ghost, and neither of them were gay. It was just two friends helping each other out; stuff like that happened all of the time in the military behind closed doors and in secluded corners. Soap had never partaken before, but he was starting to understand the appeal if the orgasms were always that good.
It became a tradition after that. Post-mission, lonely, or bored, Soap would seek Ghost out. Even when it evolved into hand jobs, or when Soap got to experience jizzing so far down Ghost’s throat that he couldn’t even taste it, he thought nothing of it. It was still just friends helping each other. Sometimes they didn’t even get off together, and Soap would seek him out because Ghost was genuinely good company. He figured it was good manners to not just hang around somebody when you wanted to come, not thinking about how his face would warm when Ghost would laugh at his terrible jokes or throw an arm around his shoulders after a job well done.
He even thought about how well Ghost’s dry sense of humor would fit in with his family’s, the way Ghost could talk shop with his father and be fussed over by his mother. His parents usually had a distaste for his friends growing up, but he thought they’d like Ghost. Soap learned he could be a charmer if he wanted to be.
But still, it wasn’t anything to think about too hard, because Ghost was just his friend, and they simply had an arrangement, and they weren’t gay.
Credenhill is as chaotic and boisterous as always when Soap gets back. He puts his stuff in his room and wanders into the little kitchenette. Gaz and Roach are making some sort of concoction on the stove that Soap doesn’t even want to begin guessing what it’s supposed to be.
“Welcome back,” Gaz says. He’s always got a smile on his face, and it makes Soap smile in return.
“When’d you get in?”
“1100. Roach came a few hours later.”
Roach nods in confirmation, never too chatty on the best of days. He’s the only soldier Soap has met that’s more than happy to let others speak for him, but no one bats an eye at it anymore.
“Did you have fun with your lady friend?” Gaz asks, sly just like all of his friends back home.
Soap thinks of the door to his flat closing and disappointment a layer too close to the surface to be genuine. “Nah, we broke up. Too hard to be apart, and all that.”
Gaz punches his shoulder mildly in a show of condolence. “Sorry to hear that, mate. There’s always other fish in the sea.”
“Didn’t know you had a girl, Sergeant.” Soap whips around, beaming when he sees Ghost standing at the little island behind them. He’s as dressed down as they can be, plain black balaclava on his face. His arms are crossed and he looks oddly tense.
“Was nothing serious,” Soap says, suddenly feeling off-kilter in the face of Ghost’s tension. “Only met her a few months ago.”
Ghost hums. He raps his knuckles against the counter before turning around and presumably heading off to his room. Soap watches him go with a foreboding feeling in his chest. He doesn’t stick around to listen to Gaz and Roach give an opinion on what just happened, following after Ghost.
He doesn’t catch Ghost in the hallway, so he does his customary two knocks and enters when he gets to his room. Ghost is standing by his window, a cigarette in hand with his mask only pulled up to the bridge of his nose.
“What do you want, Sergeant?” Ghost asks. It’s the coldest he’s sounded towards Soap in a long, long time.
“Just want to know what the issue is.” And there is one, or else he would’ve invited Soap to smoke with him.
“‘The issue’?” Ghost demands, turning to face Soap completely. He’s grinding his teeth. “Jesus, Johnny, do I have to explain everything to you like you’re a fucking child?”
Soap holds his hands up in surrender, no idea where the hostility is coming from. “I’m lost, Lt..”
Ghost looks like he’s itching to take a swing. “It’s fine if what we do is all fun and games—I don’t care about naming it. But it’s not just a bit of fun when I was helping you cheat on someone without even knowing!”
“What are you talking about?” Soap asks, confused and trying to disarm the bomb that Ghost has become. “There was no cheating.”
That was the wrong wire to cut. Ghost explodes, putting his cigarette out on the windowsill and stalking over to pin Soap against the wall. “Are you an idiot, MacTavish?” He hisses.
“Steamin’ Jesus, Ghost, I didn’t go out and find some girl for the night!” Soap defends, struggling against Ghost’s hold.
“You think it has to be a woman for it to count?”
“Yes!”
Ghost scoffs. “Then what were we doing?”
“Helping each other.”
“So you’d help any guy? If Meat came in here right now and asked you to get him off, you would?”
Soap doesn’t even have to think about it. “Of course not.”
“Then why is it different with me?” Ghost presses, pushing him harder into the wall like it will physically force an answer out of him.
They’re talking in circles, but Soap doesn’t know how to make him understand such a simple concept. “Because we’re friends, Ghost! It’s not cheating if we’re straight.”
Ghost exhales heavily. “Johnny. Do you think a man blowing another man isn’t gay?”
“Obviously it is if they’re together, but I keep telling you, you daft bastard, we’re friends helping each other. No different than me covering your tab.”
Ghost shakes him roughly. He’s close to shouting when he says, “It’s not the same at all! Tell anyone in this building that you’ve come in my mouth and they wouldn’t think we’re straight. That’s not a thing straight guys do, Johnny, Christ alive.”
The foreboding feeling in Soap’s chest returns. The floor has fallen out from under him, and his impact on the concrete below is going to alter his life forever. “It’s not?” His voice is quiet.
“No. Most of ‘em would break your nose for even asking.” Ghost seems apologetic, at least, for the coffin nails he just hammered in.
“I— I’m— I—” Soap gives up on his stuttering attempt at words. Ghost moves back a step to give him some breathing room and he grabs Ghost’s face, feeling out of his mind. He desperately needs to know if what he’s been told is the truth, if he can put a name to the feelings that have been creeping into his periphery for weeks now. He hammers in the final nail in the coffin himself by putting his lips to Ghost’s.
Every stupid cliché he’s ever heard bursts to life inside of his rib cage as Ghost kisses him back, his tongue opening Soap’s mouth and pressing inside with more care than he deserves. He's never liked kissing, always thought of it as something he had to tolerate to get to the main event, but his knees are weak from Ghost’s mindful tongue and teasing nips. Ghost pulls back after a final little bite to his lower lip and says something, but Soap doesn’t hear it—can’t, actually, because the only thing he hears is a high-pitched ringing like a flashbang went off.
At least the flashbang is providing him with some clarity in the afterimage. That feeling he always mistook for envy had been attraction, and he’d never realized because that was never what it felt like when he was with a woman. The way he always wanted to spend time with Ghost wasn’t politeness and casual friendship—it was a need to be close to the person he liked. The way he couldn’t keep a girlfriend and thought he wasn’t built for marriage? That was because he didn’t actually like women at all.
His whole life had been spent thinking he had to be the one to desire and chase when in reality, he was the one who wanted to be desired and chased.
“You with me?” Ghosts asks. His angry tone is gone, and his thumbs are sweeping back and forth over Soap’s cheekbones.
“Think so,” Soap says. He is, mostly, except for a part of his mind that’s going through the rolodex of every male friend he’s ever had and looking at them through this new lens. Were there blatant signs before that he just ignored? Crushes that he told himself weren’t crushes? Longing that he misattributed to merely wanting friendship because they weren't girls? It’s too much to untangle right now with Ghost in front of him, equal parts tender and intense.
“Good.”
Soap stares at the scars he can see on the visible half of Ghost’s face, the Smile and the jagged one that goes from the left side of his top lip diagonally down to his chin and various little divots where the skin must’ve been split repeatedly. So much history is written on Ghost’s skin that the old adage doesn’t ring true here; Ghost is always the victor, the one left standing when someone decides to make him bleed, but he’s covered in scars from dead men all the same.
He’s beautiful. Soap never acknowledged it before and now it feels like a waste of all the times Ghost has let him see his face.
Soap grabs the edge of the mask and takes it off. Ghost must’ve showered recently; his hair isn’t matted down or greasy—a little flat, perhaps, but nothing that Soap can’t rectify by running his hand through it. Ghost lets him without issue, too focused on pushing his thumb into Soap’s mouth. He’s seen this heat in Ghost’s eyes before, this hunger on his face, so he sucks on Ghost’s thumb. The ridges of his fingerprint feel nice against Soap’s tongue, proof that Ghost is alive and here with him.
Ghost lets out a noise like a growl, yanking his hand free and kissing Soap again. Pressed together like this, it’s the most contact they’ve ever had at once. “Do you want to fuck me, Johnny?” Ghost bites near the hinge of his jaw, harder than any past partner would dare.
It’s electrifying to be the smaller one for once, to feel delicate and truly at the mercy of someone else. He’s so hard, and he’s dizzy with how much he wants Ghost. This is the piece he always thought was missing. Turns out he was never broken, just looking for the wrong people to fix him.
“Please,” Soap begs.
Ghost hooks a finger in Soap’s belt loop and drags him to the bed, shoving him down. It’s gasoline for the fire in his veins, burning him alive as he strips awkwardly from his prone position. Ghost is naked and straddling him by the time he kicks his pants off, looking down at him like he’s an enemy combatant and Ghost is figuring out the best way to make him scream.
Soap isn’t scared. Ghost would never give him more than he could handle.
“Open me up.” Ghost drops a bottle of lube and a condom on his chest, jerking himself slowly while he waits.
Soap pours the lube on his fingers, spreading it around and reaching between Ghost’s legs to find his hole. Ghost doesn’t complain that it’s cold, just takes two fingers as easily as he does anything else. He looks like a dream, moving himself on Soap’s fingers and stroking his cock, allowing sweet little sighs to escape his throat when the angle is right.
After a third finger, Ghost opens the condom and puts it on Soap. “Get tested, and I’ll let you fuck me raw next time.” Soap is reeling from that declaration—it’s the one thing he’s always yearned to experience but never been stupid enough to actually do—when Ghost repositions a little and then sinks down on his dick, not stopping until every inch is inside. He’s hot and tight and perfect, so fucking perfect and strong and beautiful giving himself to Soap like this.
He grabs Ghost’s thighs, admiring the muscles flexing while he gets ridden. Now that he can recognize the lust in his stomach, he can encourage it, nourish it until it ruins him for anyone else. He drags his hands all across Ghost’s torso, admiring his thick abdomen and pinching his nipples, scratching his shoulders and grabbing his cock loosely so that he’s forced to fuck Soap’s fist.
“So good, Johnny,” Ghost groans. He smirks when Soap thrusts up into him at the praise. “Like that, do you? Don’t get used to it. You get a pass today, but you gotta earn my praise next time.”
Soap whimpers. He knows Ghost has a mean streak, but he’s only experienced it once when Ghost edged him for nearly an hour before finally letting him come. He’s both anticipating and dreading the sexual torture Ghost will put him through.
“Until you do, you’ll be my whore, a good-for-nothing hole for me to come in. I’ll put so many loads so deep inside you that you’ll be able taste ‘em, and you’ll thank me for every single one. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” Soap gasps out. Each word strikes like lightning in his groin, his world narrowing down to that sensation as he gets dangerously close to coming. “Please, can I come, Ghost? I’m so close, pleasepleaseplease—”
Ghost leans down and pries his jaw open, drooling a line of spit into his mouth before kissing him. Soap takes it as permission and pulls Ghost down by his hips until there’s no space between them, finishing into the condom with a moan that gets swallowed up by Ghost. He doesn’t even notice Ghost jacking himself off in his daze until cum is pooling on his chest.
There’s spit smeared around his mouth and the room is stiflingly hot, the smell of sex in the air. Ghost doesn’t bask in the afterglow, getting off of Soap and taking care of the condom for him so there’s not a mess in a few minutes. He does give Soap a quick and dirty peck on his way to the window to smoke the rest of his earlier cigarette, so Soap counts that as a win.
“‘M sorry I was an idiot,” Soap says softly. It’s woefully inadequate, but it’s all he has right now.
“We can talk about it later.” As always, Ghost has a sixth sense when it comes to Soap’s needs. He’ll give Soap however much time he needs to sort out his feelings so they can have a productive conversation later. “Just don’t fuck anyone else in the meantime.”
Possessive bastard. Soap doesn’t mind one bit.