Work Text:
Something Precious
Soap had forgotten something. Something important.
Technically, he'd forgotten a lot of things. Since almost losing his life to Makarov, a bullet that had nearly done its job in ending him, his time had been spent first in hospital and then in recuperation in an old cabin in Scotland that was close to a whole lot of nothing. And some sheep. Not his, thankfully, they just thought his land was also their land and Soap hardly cared if they made use of it. He certainly wasn't.
He remembered very little from their fight against Makarov—a fight the others must now finish without him, a bitter pill he hadn't swallowed well. He was meant to be doing, not sitting. To the frustration of just about everyone around him, sitting still really wasn't something he did well. Even with his sniper mastery, he wasn't the hold still for hours type. He was the take difficult shots in the middle of a firefight type.
Makarov's face remained clear in his mind, that moment when he'd been about to shoot Price. Soap was never going to let that happen and he didn't care if it had cost him his life. He owed Price that much at the very least.
He remembered…gas. Price almost dying, Soap's teasing comment about his face melting off. You ask me it'd be an improvement, because Ghost always thought he was so fucking funny with his old man jokes.
Milena. Ghost's droll To hide my face. Soap had wanted to laugh, because what answer had the woman expected?
He remembered… You with me, Johnny? He would always remember that, Ghost just taking it as understood that the two of them would work together, when once he'd thought Soap was just Price's barely leashed dog like everyone else.
Ghost bitching about him smoking.
Little of both, Laswell. That's the way.
There was something there, in that last, hazy memory. It nagged at him, hinted at what he was forgetting. Little of both. The comment had made him want to laugh. Why?
His last clear, perfect memory, as best he could gather from what everyone had told him, was of a couple of days before the hunt for Makarov had begun in earnest. Prison escape. Stolen Missiles. False flag operation. But they didn't have all those details, not then, only the knowledge that Makarov had escaped.
Before that, though, they'd had a couple of days of downtime after taking out a terrorist cell in Madrid. He'd cleaned house the way he was known for, the skill that had given him the name everyone loved to mock and ridicule.
What the hell kind of name is Soap? Derisive laughter accompanied by a sneering jabon?
He remembered…whisky, but not the scotch he preferred, it had been something Irish. Beer, something local and pale, not to his preference either, but at the time he'd just been happy to be out relaxing for a brief few hours.
Voices nattering on. A hand on the small of his back. He never let people touch him, not like that. Handshakes. Hugging a brother in arms. Fist bumps. That sort of thing. Not a hand on the small of his back, warm and heavy and protective. He didn't anyone protecting him, not in a shitty dive on a shitty street in Madrid.
He remembered…cigarettes, peppermint, a low voice in his ear. Something important had been said. Something important had been done. Remembering what, though, was like trying to catch a fistful `of smoke.
Something important had been stolen from him, and he was angrier about that than the weeks of recuperation and the endless 'is the feral dog of the 141 still fit to serve?' tests looming in his future. He was fine but nobody was going to listen to him.
No one ever did. Not until Gaz, a better brother than any of those he'd had by blood once upon a time. Not until Price saw his potential and pushed him hard, harder than anyone else.
Not until Ghost had guided him through the streets of Las Almas despite them both knowing it would have been smarter for him to cut and run.
He'd thought Graves was different, which just made the bitterness linger. Nothing left a mark like feeling you'd been taken for a fool. Finding out he was still alive, a memory he'd apparently forgotten, had made his shitty situation so much worse.
Didn't matter. Graves would get his one day soon, by Soap's hand or someone else in the 141, or by his own fucking arrogance in crossing someone else. Despite what people said about him, Soap did know how to bide his time.
Unfortunately, biding his time while he recovered was not going so well. He did a lot of things exceptionally, and a lot of things well, but he'd never been very good at doing alone. But his family didn't want him, and the family that had loved him were all dead.
The sister who'd loved him no matter who he was attracted to. The cousin who'd first shown him the SAS…
He needed to be out in the world doing something, but with multiple wounds, one of them right on his fucking head, he wasn't going anywhere. Price himself had told him to stand down and get lost, so Soap had obeyed.
Heaving a sigh, he pushed himself up and limped to the kitchen to fix another cup of coffee because what the fuck else was there to do? The power around here was dubious at best, especially in winter. He had enough firewood there was no pressing need to chop more, thankfully, because even he knew that wouldn't be good for any of his wounds.
He had books. Puzzles. Art supplies, of course, but outside of a few half-assed sketches he hasn't accomplished much there, too frustrated and discombobulated to get the images out.
There's also cross-stich, probably left here by his sister years ago, forgotten by the rest of the world after she'd died. That was what he'd been focusing on, the draw of doing something his sister had enjoyed irresistible, and the attention needed for the delicate work scratching the same itch as carefully handling chemicals, wires, triggers, all the math and hard focus that went into assembling or dismantling a bomb.
The pattern itself wasn't unappealing, if not something he would have chosen himself: a slice of earth, showing the grass and birds and such above, and deep below the skeleton of a long-lost dinosaur. His sister had only gotten about fifteen rows into the project, meticulously switching colors as she went block by block, row by row.
Soap preferred to work one color at a time in a given area, and after a week and a half of enforced solitude and nothing else the fuck to do, he was just over half done.
Weeks ago he'd been killing enemies and stopping bombs. Now he was cross-stitching dirt and bones. What a fucking world.
Sitting down with his fresh cup of coffee, he kicked his feet up on the table and sipped at it. Dark would fall soon, leaving him with fuck all to do, as the gas lamps around the place weren't really enough to manage anything.
He had a solar charger for his phone, thankfully, but nobody had called except Price to check in at the beginning of the week and a handful of texts from Gaz.
Nothing from Ghost, but Soap hadn't expected it. Chitchat and texting weren't really Ghost's way.
His head ached, all his scattered memories flickering through his mind like an old movie, the film scratchy and worn, completely gone in places. There was something there, something to do with Ghost—
He jumped at the sound of a knock on the door, nearly spilling his damned coffee. What the fuck? Setting down his coffee, he got the handgun he kept under the coffee table and prowled to the door on silent feet.
It had nothing as obvious as a peephole, but there was a carefully arranged slit between heavy planks that served the same purpose.
Soap froze, breath hitching, as he took in his unexpected guest. Had he finally cracked? Lost his mind entirely?
He lowered his gun and yanked the door open right as Ghost started to knock again. "LT? What are you doing here?"
"Freezing to death," Ghost said in his droll, perfunctory way. "Let me in."
"Thin-skinned Brit," Soap retorted out of habit as he stepped back to make room. He was big, but Ghost was big, and seeing him again after just a couple of weeks apart left Soap just the slightest bit breathless.
He'd always been a bit breathless around the notorious Ghost. There were more rumors about him than there were stars in the sky, and Soap had been fascinated long before they'd actually met—though met was generous. Ghost had grunted in his general direction, and maintained that distance every time they'd wound up working together, which back then was rarely. Soap's specialties lie with urban warfare—clearing out rat holes, picking threats out of a crowd, blowing shit up or making sure shit didn't blow up. Like the bombs he'd defused to the eternal rage of Makarov. Fuck that piece of shit.
Ghost, though… Ghost was primarily a solo operator, creeping in, doing the job, creeping out again. He was overwatch, the best in the game, a voice the enemies never heard, a figure they never saw, but whose guiding hand they died by every time.
He'd had Ghost as his overwatch countless times now, that deep, smoky rasp that could be cold as ice one minute and telling the world's stupidest jokes the next. The jokes had definitely been a surprise. Ghost was never anything but impersonal. He did his job and then went on to the next. To hear him telling the world's worst dad jokes had bowled him over.
No one had been more surprised than Soap that day in the sicario's mansion when Ghost had called him Johnny. Nobody did that. Soap didn't allow it. The last person to call him Johnny had done it sneeringly, after calling him a few slurs, and he'd gotten a busted nose and missing teeth.
After that, no one else had dared try it.
Now Soap thought he might actually, really die if there came a day where Ghost no longer called him that.
He closed the door and locked it, the damn place old enough he could and did put a bar across the door. Then he went to the coffee table to put the gun away before finally turning to his unexpected guest. "What are you doing here, Ghost?"
"Came to see how you were doing, you numpty. And to bring you this—" He shoved a hand into a pocket of the stupid gray fleece jumper he couldn't seem to live without. The skeletal hand unfolded one finger at a time until it revealed a mangled bullet. "Put it in Makarov's head myself."
"Cheers," Soap replied as he took it. "Wish I could have seen it myself."
"Laswell had eyes on. Wouldn't let me smuggle vid out, but said you can see it when you return to duty."
That was the best news Soap had heard since being kicked off to recover. "I'll heat up the kettle for your stupid tea." He pointed a thumb over his shoulder. "Bedroom on the right, loo on the left."
Ghost headed off without comment, and Soap focused on heating water, digging out the lone box of tea he'd brought with him, and trying to get his heart to calm the fuck down. So Ghost had come to see him. So he'd brought him the bullet he'd lodged in Makarov's rotten head. Didn't mean anything more than teammates looking out for each other.
Friends, though Ghost had stubbornly always refused to use the word. But it was always him and Ghost, ever since Las Almas. A duo, sure as Price always had Gaz at his side, ever since their crazy ass meeting at Piccadilly Circus. That had been a hell of a story. Normally Price might have taken Soap with him for such a clusterfuck, but they hadn't been 141 yet and he'd been sent out to sort a different mess.
Damn it, he'd really hoped that as they spent time together his stupid, boyish crush on the mysterious Ghost would fade. And yeah, his infatuation with a legend was long extinguished, but it had been replaced by feelings for Simon Riley that were as hopeless as his so-called remaining family accepting him.
"Little of both, Laswell. That's the way."
"Johnny—"
Pain stabbed at his temple, the sudden sharpness of it causing him to fumble the teaspoon he'd just grabbed from the drawer. It clattered to the kitchen floor, overly loud in the quiet cabin.
"All right there, Johnny?" Ghost asked.
"Fine," Soap bit out as he bent to retrieve the stupid spoon, tossing it in the sink before grabbing a new one to set with the tea and cup on the table. "Every time I try to remember something, my head gets pissy about it."
Ghost grunted and moved in, resting a hand on his back and pushing back toward the living area. "Sit. I can make my own damned tea."
Soap rolled his eyes, but didn't argue, stubbornly ignoring how large and warm Ghosts hand had been. How familiar.
A soft laugh. The scent of peppermint. "Johnny—"
Another spike of pain, making Soap wince as he resumed his seat, though he budged over so there'd be enough room for Ghost. It wasn't a large sofa—it wasn't a large house—but it would just be enough for the two of them, and he had made certain to buy the biggest damned bed he could manage to fit in the bedroom. For himself, because he liked his creature comforts when he could get them, but it would pay off nicely tonight when they shared it.
If only—
No sense in going down that path. Again.
"Thought you'd be happier to see me," Ghost said as he sat on the couch with his tea and a box of biscuits he'd filched from the cupboard. Without ceremony he pulled off his mask and tossed it on the table before focusing on his snack.
"I am happy to see you," Soap said. He'd have to be dead to not be happy to see Ghost, however much a fool that made him. "My head keeps fucking hurting. I feel like I'm forgetting something important, but it won't bloody come to me."
Implacable as ever, Ghost crunched down a biscuit and said, "What do you remember?"
"Not much at all," Soap said glumly, before recounting the depressingly short list of memories. He gave a small laugh as he realized something he hadn't before. "They're all you, LT. Everything I remember involves you."
Ghost sighed, looking forlorn and amused all at once. It was, as ever, all in the eyes. Even without a mask the rest of his face gave away nothing, but his eyes laid everything bare.
"You're staring awfully hard, LT."
"Am I, Johnny?"
"Why?"
"You tell me—"
"You're so smart," Soap said.
Ghost didn't move, but the lines of his stilled, sharpened. He was on alert. Something about what Soap had just said, remembered, was important. "Recalling more?"
"Not really. We were…outside. On a street." Soap closed his eyes, tried to concentrate while not pushing too hard. "Maybe an alleyway?"
"Yeah, smelled like a locker room that hadn't been cleaned in six months."
"Foul," Soap said with a brief laugh before he turned pensive again. "An alleyway…the bar. You were at the bar. The whole time?"
"No, I joined you later, right as you were about to get in a damned fight. Again."
Soap scoffed. "It's not my fault people are always starting shit they can't finish." Because he never started the fights. All he ever wanted was to be left the fuck alone. He did enough fighting and killing on the clock, it wasn't at all his inclination on the rare occasions he had shore leave, or just a few hours to himself.
"One of them had shoved you when I showed up, kept you from hitting the floor or a table," Ghost said.
"The hand," Soap said breathlessly. "You were the hand on my back. I—" he focused, but it all remained blank. "Why was I ready to fight them?"
"They made fun of your Spanish. Not because of your accent, but because it was clearly learned in 'Mexico'. Which I guess wasn't the right bloody Spanish for those assholes."
"Do you know Spanish? You will…"
Yeah, that tracked. Soap couldn’t remember, but he would have been mad about that, about the insult to his friends, who in the midst of so much danger, so much chaos with not enough time, had taught him all the Spanish they could. That had mattered to him, and then some snotty assholes in a dive in Madrid had slandered their efforts? Yeah, he'd have started swinging for that.
The memories wouldn't come though, as hard as he tried. "I can't remember." He slammed his fists on his thighs, so angry he'd cry if he hadn't given up on that decades ago. "What am I forgetting? Why won't you just bloody fucking tell me?”
Ghost ditched the teacup and mostly-empty packet of biscuits on the table, arms resting on his thighs, hands dangling between them as he scowled at the dead TV. "Because I can't prove what I say really happened, and if I can't prove it then it's just fucking coercion and abuse of power, Johnny. I'll die before I do that to anyone, especially you."
Soap's breath seized in his chest, and the whole world spun around him and went upside down. Coercion? Abuse of power? "You can't mean—"
Ghost pushed to his feet and in the next blink was vanished into the bedroom, leaving Soap still tilting on his axis on the sofa.
There was no fucking way. Ghost couldn't mean—
Soap surged to his feet and went after him, throwing open the bedroom door. Ghost stared at him as though taken by surprise, but Soap just kept moving, fisting his hands in the stupid fleece jumper Ghost still wore, propelling them onward until Ghost's back hit the wall, just shy of the single tiny window in that room. "Are you fucking with me?"
"When have I ever messed with anyone like that, Johnny?" Ghost said, face blank as ever, voice low and uncharacteristically soft, but his eyes so full of sadness and longing that Johnny was never going to be able to breathe properly around this stupid bastard ever again.
"If you're telling me that after years of wanting I got what I wanted—and now I don't recall—I thought you were straight!"
Ghost laughed at that, soft and brief. "You said the same thing that night too. You're such a daft cunt. So smart with your calculations and chemicals, so quick on the mark with your targets…"
"Tell me what I'm forgetting right now or I'll skin that pretty hair right off your damned head," Soap snarled, giving him a shake for good measure.
That Ghost was allowing all the manhandling, when it didn't take a genius to know the man kept himself enshrouded and untouchable for dark, depressing reasons, really said it all.
Yet Soap was still taken by surprise when Ghost kissed him.
His lips were soft, and his mouth was hot. He tasted of tea and peppermint, and kissed with the same intensity he did everything else, master of his surroundings and taking no prisoners. Soap moaned and pressed closer, letting go of that stupid jumper to sink his hands into the pretty hair he'd threatened just moments ago.
The most shocking thing of all was how familiar it all was. He'd definitely done this before, and the realization that Makarov had taken the memory of his first kiss with Ghost actually did make his eyes sting.
When they finally drew apart, foreheads pressed together, Soap said in a voice shakier than he liked, "I can't believe you were just going to act like nothing ever happened. That you'd do that to me."
"Couldn't prove it happened, which is the same as it not happening. You're my subordinate, Johnny. It shouldn't have happened."
"Fuck all that," Johnny said, grabbing hold again and tossing-shoving Ghost onto the bed before stretching out beside him.
"Said that in Madrid that night, too," Ghost said with a laugh. "Should have known you'd do it all exactly the same."
"Stupid Manc," Soap muttered, kissing along Ghost's jaw before taking his mouth again, just because he could, because he couldn't not, when Ghost was lying so sweet and pliant and happy alongside him. "Tell me everything, will you? All of it that I forgot. So I'll have something of our first, if I never get the memory back."
Ghost smiled in a soft, sweet way Johnny had never seen before, the kind of smile that left him aching. "Whatever you want, Johnny."