Chapter Text
Looking back, Ghost might have acted too headstrong about this whole Soap thing.
The south side gym reeks as Ghost passes by. Mixtures of spiked and low scents waft out, ones so vile they crinkle Ghost’s nose under his mask. The smell worsens his near permanent headache, one he’s ignored all encouragements to go to medical for. There’s nothing any doctor can do for his condition, only something he can solve, but Ghost isn’t ready.
He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be unless his hand is forced, and he believes he’s done surprisingly well this past year given the circumstances. Sure, all of this resistance can be for nothing. But faced with the biggest challenge of his life, Ghost isn’t surprised he’s run for the hills.
He should keep walking, nothing good can come out of a room smelling that putrid, but curiosity gets the best of him as he moves closer. Plus, he also smells their entire pack inside, including the one scent that’s like a balm to his senses, calling him to enter despite every reason he shouldn’t. He leans on the edge of the doorway, and it doesn’t take long for him to understand what’s garnered so much attention.
Soldiers are lined up everywhere, all hollering and watching Soap in the center of the ring. Ghost hasn’t been to a match-up in a while, doesn’t really do much of anything anymore besides his missions and required meetings. Price goes too easy on him, but being the only omega in their pack comes with an equal amount of perks as well as downsides. He’s an older, patient alpha, and Ghost isn’t above exploiting his own designation to get what he wants.
He watches the sweat drip down Soap’s exposed chest, a wide grin on his face as he smacks person after person down to the mat. Possessive pride wells in Ghost’s core, his own smile rising under his mask watching Soap win each time. He wants to posture, to preen and gloat to the entire room about his alpha’s strength, his abilities, but Soap isn’t his, Ghost’s mind reminds itself, and his smile slides right off.
If it wasn’t the dumbest decision, Ghost would join the matches then and there. Release his own suffocating tension that’s crammed tight in the recesses of his hurting brain. He’d give Soap a run for his money, alpha or not, but Ghost can predict he’d easily get lost even being that close to Soap’s body. He can feel himself slicking just from viewing Sop in this element, and he shifts his legs to try to clamp down the sweet smell. It’s embarrassing, another emotion Soap rips out of him by nothing at all.
They’re not required to take suppressants thanks to too many activists groups fighting for biological freedom, but even if so, Ghost would find a way to not take them anyways. He’s proud of his designation, and he’ll slit the throat of any alpha who attempts to make him feel differently. Recently it has been the biggest fucking drawback of his entire life, but that’s only in regards to Soap.
Soap whose panting, high on adrenaline and showing his alpha in every twitch of his hands, taking down every challenger. His scent smothers Ghost's throat, and he’s toying a dangerous fine line just staying here with Soap so duped up on his hormones. It feels too good in the moment, inhaling his strong, musky scent that has tempted Ghost for a year now. One that only himself has denied, and the thought has Ghost sobering where he stands.
He’s the reason his head hurts, why he’s so out of sync and why Soap’s practically bleeding a rut daily. Nothing else is responsible for the permanent soak of his cunt, and he should really leave before this can get out of hand. Soap surely knows he’s near, and Ghost isn’t helping any for the people here to genuinely spar. He ignores the roll of nausea in his belly as he turns to leave, but the moment he steps towards the exit, all hell breaks loose.
Voices shout in alarm as strong, metallic blood overtakes the entire room. It’s moronic, he needs to go, but Ghost whips his head around to see Soap cradling his own face. The blood drips between his fingers down to his growling teeth, a noise only growing louder in the now silent room.
Ghost’s eyes widen, his jaw shaking as he stares at the animal shedding its skin. Later on he’ll discover Soap got distracted watching him go, and someone happened to take a lucky, miss timed shot. But currently, Ghost can’t move, rooted to the spot, and he makes a noise he didn’t think he would ever be capable of.
Ghost whines.
It’s piercing, louder than Soap’s growl, overtaking all of the scents, and every head snaps to him. It’s rusty, gravelly from disuse, but there’s no denying what just came out of his lungs. A desperate, needy plea for his alpha, an instinctual need to take care of Soap differently than he does in every other instance. Out in the field, in the barracks, during training, he has his eyes on his sergeant, but right now, he needs to take care of Johnny. Pure omega desperation, and Ghost can’t stop.
Soap slowly looks up from his hands, directly meets Ghost’s gaze, and his eyes are a bright, hazy red.
“Ghost, get out of here!” It’s Price’s voice, filled with his alpha, and not meant to be disobeyed. But while he’s their pack leader, he’s not Ghost’s alpha, and his legs won’t fucking work at all. Price and Gaz cross into his vision, hurrying to get to Soap who has crouched, growling and leaking spit from the edges of his mouth, his entire focus glued on Ghost.
He barely manages to swallow down another pathetic whine when Price tackles Soap down, Gaz behind restraining him to the mat. The sounds from his chest are so foreign yet so natural, Ghost doesn’t feel fear, but more of an oppressed awakening, like fate no longer allowing him his denial.
Price yells again, booming in the gym, and it snaps Ghost out of his idle state. He beelines to his quarters, and each step garnishes more pain throughout his body, worse from the sounds of Soap snarling his name.
As soon as the door shuts, he strips, laying flat on the bed with his four fingers reached under and shoved up in his cunt. He’s drenched, dripping down his thighs while whining into the sheets bit between his teeth. Alpha, alpha, Johnny repeats in a mantra in his mind, out of his lips. It feels almost like a heat, but just not quite right, like he’s missing that final piece to push him over the edge.
When he finally reaches orgasm, it tastes like the beginning of the end.
The incident in the gym happened about a month or so ago, and Ghost hasn’t worked alone with Soap since then. He’s become wracked with guilt, knowing it’s his fault for the scene and why Soap reacted so strongly. Fueled on his own blood, sure, but more so the simple sight of Ghost turning his back, a signal of another repeated denial to his already juiced up inner alpha. Nothing more than an animal, restrained from making chase towards the one thing that would soothe all of his problems.
But Ghost has been more focused on his own hang ups. His omega has laid dormant for years, and it’s more or a less a mind-fuck having it awake all of a sudden. Not everyone has a true mate, sometimes people are born at the wrong times, folks die, any sorts of excuses that would keep a pairing apart. Ghost assumed for most of his life he fell into that category.
During the heights of his past torture, he’s contemplated digging his glands out of his neck, his wrist, his thighs. Any place on his body that could be used against him, but he never managed to make that final plunge. It’s easier to tell himself no one can possibly be matched with a walking omegan brute like him, but Ghost can’t deny the evidence, not any longer.
From the moment they met, he and Soap have both known that they’re fated. True mates in the purest form, sometimes Ghost isn’t sure how Soap didn’t claim him right then and there on the tarmac. He smelled it before he even got the chance to shake Soap’s hand. The rich, molten chocolate thick under his tongue, the calm wafts of a morning dewy breeze, and the slips of gun metal that hold a hint of blood.
Soap’s mouth watering alpha, nearly sending Ghost to his knees right in front of everyone. Lingering as the days go by, even when he isn’t near Ghost. His mate had become known from that point, and Ghost has put all of his strength into resisting the inevitable.
No one seems to understand the change that will happen if he allows the bond. It’s terrifying to imagine that he won’t be alone anymore, one half of a greater whole, and at first he’ll be physically incapable of being away from Soap ever again. Bloody military shouldn’t allow it, but for once Ghost doesn’t have those gits on his side.
People avoid him even more than before, solely because he reeks of the unmated. His glands pound everyday, like they’re going to hop right out of his skin and run into Soap’s arms. Soap’s alpha calls to his biology like a magnetic field that Ghost has never felt the tempting pull of until now. He’s changing, and Ghost is man enough to admit that he’s scared fucking shitless.
Blessedly, Soap has honored his desire to keep their fate unspoken. It must have been plastered in his eyes, because Soap has never broached the topic before. He’s a good, respectful man, and it’s just Ghost’s luck he didn’t end up with a horrible, stereotypical alpha. That would have been easier, as he would just kill them with no questions asked.
And although Soap’s alpha surely screams, howls at him to take Ghost at every waking moment, he hasn’t done a fucking thing. Ghost himself has coped fine in the past year despite the headaches, until he whined like a true, desperate fool. Biology has a mind of its own, a force of nature that will complete itself one way or another. But Soap’s taking the brunt of the pain, and the red in his eyes hasn’t left Ghost’s mind since.
Soap has the ability to be so bloody terrifying. Having a friendly chat pales in comparison to witnessing him out in the field, and the sight explains how he’s flown up the ranks so quickly in his career. He gets the job done, whether he’s recklessly sacrificing his own well-being or viciously killing mark after mark, Soap cleans house.
Ghost remembers holding watch in the church, and he nearly didn’t resist touching himself as he guided Soap through the streets, knowing that it was his alpha out there, hunting, killing his way to reunite them together.
The alpha within Soap thrives here in their task force, in their pack. It’s alive, swollen and beating out of his chest with his young virtue, Ghost grows so incredibly fond just thinking about him. The almost permanent snarl to his lip, the protruding vein in his forehead, the swell of his strong, tense arms.
Dangerous, the glint in his eye when he’s slashing a throat, splayed in blood or commandeering their squad. He’s a purebred, gnarled thing who stops at nothing to get what he wants.
That’s the problem, and what makes Soap truly frightening. Because what he wants happens to be Ghost’s omega, and it’s only getting worse with each day that passes unsatisfied.
But no one can escape what they’re built of, and the bestial wolves within will always, always prevail.
For all his resistance, that’s not to say his own omega isn’t a mess of snarling fangs or choking limbs. No, a large part of Ghost wants to be worthy, to sink his claws into Soap’s spine and tilt back his neck for impending teeth. To complete their bond and shackle Soap under his boot forever, owning the one thing that can never leave him. Soap came and upturned his life, and Ghost’s own behaviors have become unrecognizable.
Ghost has always had masochistic tendencies.
His limbs act on their own without his control during this separation. Stealing Soap’s dirty clothes from the laundry, rubbing that intoxicating scent all over his aching body in hopes to soothe the itch. Yearning to press his front to Soap’s back at every instance available just to get a taste of the alphan heat radiating off of him.
But the rare times they’re in a conference together, Ghost stays away, deep into the shadows. If he doesn’t, he’ll scrub his face into that tan neck, he’ll beg for Soap’s teeth to gnaw down to the bone. The haze that has bled from Soap since the gym doesn’t help either, and while he’s a good man, that won’t stop the alpha from satisfying its own desperate, salivating hunger.
It’s become more out of self preservation at this point. For the fear bonding with Soap induces, Soap still has been so sweet on Ghost for this entire past year. No, he treats Ghost as if he walks on fucking water, like he wants to coddle Ghost close and make him feel small in the swell of his arms. To whisk the omega inside away from all this danger, pup him up and give him the life Ghost used to dream about as a child, but this one is the only life he’s ever known.
Ghost should rip Soap’s throat out with his teeth, but he physically can’t. Every inch of his matter screams to him what Soap encompasses. Alpha, security, safety, mate. He’s taken care of himself his whole life, become a shell of a man for his government who hides his face, and his thoughts late at night say, wouldn’t it be nice to let someone else do it for him? The one person biologically made for Ghost on this Earth?
Some days, Ghost isn’t sure anymore why he hasn’t just given in. Partly because he enjoys the control, but an even larger part howls to see how far Soap’s alpha will go to get what it’s owed.
The moment Ghost lands back on base from his recent, he senses something is wrong.
“No, I can’t. Find someone else.”
“There is no one else, Simon.” Price taps the folder again, capturing Ghost’s attention from staring at his boots. He’s sitting across from Price in his office, expecting to receive his next solo mission, the only type he’s worked recently. “It’s a standard retrieval. Get in, get the intel, get out. Soap will be on overwatch, so far away from you while you’re on the inside. I’d green light it as a solo, but I don’t have the clearance on this one.” Price pauses, softening his voice. “You have to go with him. Don’t force me to make it an order.”
Ghost sneers, but he doesn’t argue. The rapid thump of his pulse and the painful throb of his gland distracts him from any protest, knowing it’s a lost cause. Even the mention of being in Soap’s proximity again has him sweating. There’s no words to describe how dangerous this decision feels, but Price speaks like it’s all in Ghost’s head, and not like he was the one who had to restrain Soap from fucking him in front of their entire squad.
“Maybe it’s time,” Price offers cautiously. “Can’t avoid it forever. None of us can.”
“It’ll change everything.”
Price ducks his head, meeting Ghost’s eye. “Would that be so bad? He won’t hurt you, Simon. He’s your mate.”
“Not yet,” Ghost protests. “Not fully.” Price spreads his hands out, as if Ghost just said the obvious answer, the unspoken resolution. “I can’t,” Ghost repeats, but it’s weak, fruitless.
“Can’t, or won’t?” Ghost remains silent, so Price sighs, and thankfully tells him to get the hell out of there, while also honing in that he’s to be wheels up in the morning.
Ghost tries to walk to his quarters in a sour mood, but the thought of seeing Soap secretes sweetly off his pours, a renewed, buzzing energy to his steps at the prospects of being alone with his alpha. Maybe it is time, but not on a fucking mission. His mind is his own worst enemy, constantly at odds with itself, and this feels like a setup of sorts, like Price is the one forcing his hand. Ghost barely sleeps that night, tossing and turning while trying to stop every nerve in his body yearning to run to Soap’s barracks.