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The dead haunt Ghost like they're personally offended by his name.
He doesn't sleep often, or at all really, but he knows when he slides himself between the sheets: No sweet dreams or lover will be waiting at his side. Whoever lies next to him varies depending on the night and what sins God wishes to punish him for that day.
Sometimes the people he's killed curl themselves into him, blinking up through their eyelashes and whatever gore remains of their heads, bleeding onto his linen sheets. Other times, the people he tried to save rest their heads on his shoulders and whisper sweet nothings into his ears.
Tonight, he sees the prostitute in his bed.
She still has a smudge of white powder under her nose and her eyes are lined with a shade of coal darker than the night sky. She is not beautiful. Simon's father rarely tolerated beauty, but he despised it most when his son was present to experience it.
He knows if he approaches his bed, the prostitute will grin up at him. She will spread her legs, expectantly, and the skin of her thighs will be blue from a lack of oxygen. Her shirt will slip from her shoulder, showing off a clavicle made from the bone of a sacrificial lamb, and she will laugh.
She will want him to laugh back, to recreate her final moments with the boy who had held it in the palm of his hand.
Ghost scrubs a hand over his face.
The prostitute makes a gurgled noise between a giggle and a choke. Realistically, he knows she isn't really there; she's just a phantom of his childhood, a lingering taste of stale bread and snake venom on his tongue. Realistically.
He tries not to look back at her, but her giggles are already petering into laughter.
"Simon," she cackles in between wheezes. "Simon, don't you fucking look away from this."
Ghost stands, tugs his mask back over his face, and reaches for the doorknob.
The prostitute continues laughing, not even bothering to leave the warmth of his bed to haunt him further, as he stalks down the hall.
Not that she really needs to in the end. He can hear her voice, their voices, through the sound of a hundred gunshots. What difference did a little hallway make?
He leaves.
"Christ," a familiar voice floats out from behind him. "You're still awake?"
Ghost blinks away the fatigue and turns to face Soap.
The other man stands before him, arms crossed and eyes heady. He looks exhausted too, yet the grin that he shoots Ghost is nothing short of alive.
Something in Ghost aches at the sight.
"Yeah," he responds, inclining his head to the spot next to him. An invitation of sorts. Soap's grin widens incrementally as he slides into it, with the confident ease of a man who's used to squeezing and crawling into spaces that weren't meant to house him.
Ghost regards him with lidded eyes.
When he first met John "Soap" MacTavish, an instant disliking for him had crawled up Ghost's throat at the sight of the other. He was green, somehow a little too idealistic, and very much in Ghost's way. Working with others was not his forte.
Then, everything that could have gone wrong went extremely, horrifically wrong; and Soap's very presence had taken root somewhere deep in the recesses of Ghost's chest. The new burst of life festered and grew with every quip he and Soap had exchanged, with every hidden truth Ghost had allowed to slip out from him, until it felt as if every nook and cranny in Ghost's ribcage was bursting with foreign flora.
Then, like a gunshot, "Soap" somehow turned into "Johnny."
"No one fights alone," Ghost had said to Rodolfo and had felt the warmth of Soap at his side, unyielding and unmoving.
Now here they are, sitting side by side, and something like comfort settles over Ghost's bones—like the world's most effective salve.
"Why aren't you asleep, L.t.?" Soap cuts through the silence, running a hand through his mohawk. It sticks up at odd angles and Ghost watches the weak moonlight bounce off the dark color.
"Why aren't you, Sergeant?" He reflects, coolly.
Soap huffs out a quiet laugh.
"No rest for the wicked, I suppose," he says.
If Ghost were a man with looser lips, he thinks he might tell Soap that he's seen evil, clawed through dirt and wet mud to get away from it, embraced it like it was his lover; and the man beside him is the furthest thing from wicked that Ghost can picture.
But venom glues his mouth shut and all he can do is shrug.
"Well, that explains why I'm up, Johnny."
Soap raises an eyebrow. "Do you ever sleep then?" he asks.
"I'd be dead if I didn't."
His other eyebrow shoots up. "Are you dead then?" he sounds just a tad too serious, and it nearly sends Ghost shifting in his seat. "I've never seen you sleep, not even once."
"Not dead yet," he resists the urge to scratch the back of his neck, a nervous habit he had picked up as a boy and one that would just not go away. "But if I was, I promise I wouldn't haunt your ass."
Soap snorts.
"What a waste of a perfectly good name, sir. I could go around telling people I'm haunted by a ghost named Ghost."
Ghost watches him and tries not to think too hard about how Soap's words settle comfortably on his skin. "I thought you were religious," he responds.
Soap squints at him. "Aye," he says, with an exaggerated emphasis on his Scottish accent. "I grew up Catholic. Mass every Sunday, linen shirts, and church pews, y'know. The whole deal."
Ghost tries to picture it. A tiny version of Soap before he went by the name, sitting in a wooden pew, his hands clasped together in prayer. It's a little disorientating to think about.
"So," he fixes the man beside him with a look. "You think you're going to heaven when you bite it?"
The grin on Soap's face is a fire and Ghost draws nearer, knowing that in the end, he and a moth aren't all the different. Their shoulders brush, then their arms. Soap's hand, callused and torn from the pains of war, is so close to Ghost's, he can practically feel the skin on skin.
If he extends his pinkie, he can interlock it with Soap's and drag the man from the Promised Land into the deepest pits of purgatory with him.
Oh, how he wants.
Ghost swallows, and he hears the other do the same.
"Sure," Soap says, voice low and dark with promises Ghost wants to choke on. "Maybe I'll see you there."
Heaven and hell were just words to Ghost. But, maybe, just maybe, he thinks being in either place with Soap wouldn't be too bad.
"Or maybe you'll look down and see me waving from below," Ghost responds.
They're closer than ever now, and he's unsure who's moved first. Maybe him, maybe Soap, maybe both of them at the same time. All he knows is that from this angle, he can count the number of eyelashes fanning Soap's cheekbone.
Soap blinks up at him, mouth slightly parted.
"Dramatic as always, Simon," he murmurs.
"You're one to talk."
When Soap suddenly leans forward, closing the last inches of the gap between them, Ghost almost falters back. To want something is one thing, but to suddenly have it in his blood-stained hands is completely another. Their foreheads press together, and even through the fabric of his mask, he can feel the warmth of Soap against him.
It's almost enough to send him to his knees.
"Simon," Soap whispers, barely above a rasp. "Take it off."
Nothing but their foreheads are touching, and their hands aren't even brushing against each other, but Ghost's entire body is an inferno--burning up from the inside and out. The heat is painful, excruciatingly so, but somehow, it's not enough. It'll never be enough.
"Take what off?" Ghost says back, drawing in closer. Their noses brush.
Soap licks his lips.
"The mask," he grits out, though, by the downward flick of his eyes, he's thinking of a million different things Ghost should take off instead. “Take it off.”
"That's a negative," Ghost replies, hardly daring to breathe.
"Are you ugly?"
Soap's eyes flutter shut as Ghost tilts his head closer, in an action so close to a kiss, he can almost taste it on his tongue. His cold, cold heart thuds in red, hot want.
"Quite the opposite," he says and drags his teeth along Soap's chin.
He digs in hard enough that he's sure that Soap can feel the sting of canines against his skin even through the mask. With one gloved hand cupping the other's clean-shaven jaw, Ghost tilts Soap's head back far enough to press a bruising kiss at the corner of his mouth.
The man shudders hard enough, that for a brief second, it seems like he's crying.
It's Ghost's turn to shiver.
Soap's eyes fly open, and he draws away, just far enough to whisper in Ghost's ear.
"My room," he demands, and normally Ghost would quip back with a dry joke about how Soap was giving his superior commands, except now, tonight, he only wants to use his mouth to take the man before him apart.
He nods shakily and stands.
Soap rises beside him, and their height difference is suddenly all too prominent. Blinking rapidly, Ghost peers down at the other, at his mussed hair, and blown-out pupils. Briefly, he wonders what Soap sees back.
Ghost threads his fingers through Soap's coarse, black hair and tugs, ever so slightly.
"Fuck," the other mutters, but the choked edge of his voice is enough to tell Ghost that he likes it.
Soap clears his throat. "My room," he repeats, and this time he sounds much less hazy but still just as demanding. "Since you seem particularly allergic to yours, L.t."
Allergic to it and the bedmates that seemed to find themselves in it every midnight.
Ghost just nods and lets himself be led to his execution.
When they get into Soap's room, the man pushes the Ghost onto the bed with a particularly harsh shove.
Ghost barely manages to lift himself up on his forearms before Soap is straddling his lap, staring down at him with those dark eyes of his. The light of the dimly lit room shines behind him, creating an almost angelic halo around him. Ghost bucks up, involuntarily.
Soap laughs and its gunpowder, boots against gravel, and bitter coffee.
He stops Ghost with a broad hand on his chest, not pushing or shoving--just a tethering sort of weight that feels too good to be true.
"Be a good boy and stay still," he says, and, oh—
Fucking hell.
—Ghost bites back a moan rising to the back of his throat.
Apparently, however, he's not fast enough and Soap leers down at him, eyebrows raised, tongue pressed to the inside of his cheek.
"You like that?" he grins at him and there's something hungry in his gaze. "You like being called a good boy, Simon?"
Ghost contemplates shooting him in the head and then bathing himself in Soap's crimson blood.
He resists it with some difficulty.
"You know what I like even more, Johnny?" He asks, instead, and reaches out to grip the other's hips. He presses his fingers into the tanned skin, hard enough that he knows it'll hurt, and revels in the way Soap's expression shutters, even if it's just for a split second.
"What's that?" He rasps, hips rolling ever so slightly.
"The thought of you on your hands and knees," Ghost murmurs. "Crying on my cock."
Soap huffs out a laugh.
"Now wouldn't that be a pretty sight, sir."
"Quite."
Soap leans down, and presses his chapped lips to the base of Ghost's neck. It's everything and nothing all at once. It's the bite of an apple and the warm sun on Ghost's back. It's a pair of lips against a patch of unmarred skin.
Regardless, Ghost arches into the touch.
"That can stay in your spank bank for now, though," Soap whispers, though he sounds a little more wrecked than he had before. His voice goes straight to Ghost's dick, holding him like a vice. Ghost bites back another moan threatening to slip free from his lips. "I have other plans for tonight."
"Hm," Ghost manages. "What's that?"
"Relax," the other man all but purrs into his ear. "Be a good boy and let me ride you, yeah?"
Fucking. Hell.
Soap full-on cackles as Ghost's stomach spasms.
"Oh, fuck you, MacTavish," he mutters through clenched teeth.
"That's the plan, L.t.," Soap manages through his laughter. His eyes are half-crescents, curved with mirth, and some quiet part of Ghost wants to take those eyes for himself—to keep them preserved in a jar like a mad scientist, untouched and unsullied from the world around them.
He bites his lip hard enough to bleed if only to stop himself from wanting.
"Fine, then," He leans back down on his forearms and spreads his legs ever so slightly. "Show me a good time, Johnny."
The amusement in Soap's eyes twists into something headier.
"Copy."
Though Simon Riley's father didn't particularly care about Christianity and the loving ideals of the Messiah Himself, there was always one day of the year he would crowd his sons into the car and drive them to their neighborhood church.
Sometimes it was Christmas, sometimes it was Easter, other times it was after a particularly violent night and Simon's father had felt enough remorse in his blackened heart to at least pretend to atone for his sins.
More often than not, Simon had sat at the cold church and prayed to whatever cruel deity that watched over him to crawl into his skin and give the fantastical power needed to tear his father apart with his bare hands.
It had taken some time, but it had happened. No thanks to any sort of god, though.
There had never been something like heaven or hell for someone like Simon who knew the taste of ash and blood in his mouth more than he knew the taste of his own spit.
But, in Soap's bedroom, under the haze of the moonlight, he thinks he might have found the closest thing to both misery and paradise.
"Fuck," Soap hisses, jaw clenched. The urge to bite at the muscle is so consuming, Ghost has to squeeze his eyes shut for a beat. He lets out a shaky breath.
Thankfully, Soap doesn't notice, his own eyes narrowed in concentration as he slowly, so slowly it barely seems like he's moving, lowers himself onto Ghost's lap. A trickle of sweat slides down his forehead and his neck. Ghost swipes his thumb across the trail and feels the man on top of him quiver ever so slightly.
"You're too fucking big," Soap grunts, though there's a whine caught somewhere in between his words.
"You can take it," Ghost says, but his own words are broken up with a staccato of gasps and quiet groans.
The look Soap shoots him is enough to send Ghost's cheeks flushing a bright red.
"Oh, I know I can, sir," he says, and his words glide down Ghost's skin like bourbon. "Can you though?"
"Find out."
At that, Soap grins and finally sits fully down.
Both men let out a hiss of air at that.
"Fucking hell," Ghost manages through clenched teeth. It's so hot, so tight, he has to pinch himself in order to not cum like a hormonal teenager getting laid for the first time. "You, ah, alright, Johnny?"
Soap nods shakily. "Fuck, just give me a second," he responds.
They stay there for minutes and Ghost, like he often finds himself doing lately, watches the lines and sharp angles, how they seem to both soften and sharpen in the dark of night. It's beautiful. He's beautiful.
Soap, of course, catches him staring.
"What?" he asks. "Don't tell me you've taken a liking to me, L.t.?"
He shifts, experimentally, and Ghost digs his fingers into the mattress, barely stopping himself from thrusting into him like a savage dog.
"Never that," he groans. "Move."
"You forgot the magic word," Soap says, and his voice lilts in the way it always does when he teases Ghost. It's enough to send sparks of arousal shooting down Ghost's spine.
He's never begged once outside of the cold confines of the church. Not for his father to take away whatever rabid animal he brought home that day to torment Simon, not for his brother to curb his crippling addiction, not even for his own life.
But, now, deep in a man who had somehow made a home for himself in the tiny jagged crevices of Ghost's chest, the words push against his teeth, nearly leaking out like a particularly bad oil spill.
Please. Please. Please.
"Fucking move, Johnny," he says, instead.
He grips onto Soap's hips and bites back the sudden, all-consuming urge to physically manhandle the other man to where he wants him.
"That's not quite it," Soap responds and, before Ghost can even roll his eyes at the quip, he rises.
"Shit," Ghost gasps out, and his toes curl at the sensation of Soap around him. It's too much, too dizzying, but the other man keeps sliding up the length of Ghost's cock with barely a hitch in his breath.
"What's the magic word?" Soap murmurs in his ear.
"I—“ Whatever was on the tip of Ghost's tongue abruptly cut off as Soap, with only the very tip of Ghost's cock spearing him open, clenches down. Hard.
Fuck.
Unwillingly, Ghost's eyes roll back.
"Johnny," He wheezes and lets go of Soap's hip with one hand to press it over his mouth, to keep in the cacophony of sounds and pleas to: Move, please, move, sweetheart, I'll do anything, I'll get down on my knees and beg.
"Close, but," Soap curls his arms around Ghost's shoulders. "That's also not it."
"Please," Ghost says, tired of their games and their piss-poor attempts at a witty conversation.
He's no academic, no philosopher. He's Simon "Ghost" Riley and a gift like Soap didn't land in the lap of someone like him more than once. So, their minutes together where they were like this, Soap hovering above him and Ghost holding onto him like a life raft, are precious.
He meets those eyes, bright like lamps, and holds their infinite stare.
"Please," the words come out easily like they never have before. "Please, Johnny, I need you to move. Fuck, I need you to do anything. I need you—"
Soap drops down, sinking all the way down, and Ghost throws his head back and moans.
The sound comes out rough and scratchy, an unfamiliar note played on an out-of-tune instrument, and Ghost would apologize for it—if only he could stop the next coming from somewhere deep in his throat.
"Shit," he barely hears Soap gasp out. "Fuck, y-you should hear yourself, right now. Sound like a fucking slut. So, s-so fucking good."
With no small amount of effort, Ghost bites the edge of his glove to muffle out the stream of wanton noises, and places a hand flat on Soap's stomach.
The other's shirt had somehow gotten lost sometime between Soap shedding his pant and Ghost stripping off his. For the first time in years, gratitude toward false deities and fantastical gods rushes through Ghost.
Maybe in another life, he would not be allowed to touch Soap like this. With one reverent hand on his bare skin, feeling both the old battle scars and the new under the calluses of Ghost's own. But in this one, by some small sliver of a chance, he can.
He traces a bullet wound, still relatively fresh from their run-in with Graves on a patch of skin above Soap's waist. He drags his blunt nails across a series of old stitches lining his abs, right above his belly button. Soap accepts his touch with nothing more than a shiver.
It's nothing short of amazing.
All the while, Soap rides him, with the ferocity and hyperfocus of a man on a mission. He's brutal with his movements, with the snap of his sinful hips, and in the back of Ghost's treacherous mind, he knows sex is ruined for him.
Would another man or woman touch him like this? Sigh into the sensitive skin below his ear like this? Use him like he was completely at their mercy like this? Better yet, would Ghost allow it?
Somehow, he doubts it.
"You told me I sounded like a whore," he rasps, after what feels like centuries and seconds at once. "But you're the one moving your hips like you're being paid for it."
Soap lets out a breathless chuckle and wraps his strong arms a little tighter around Ghost's shoulders.
"How do I feel?" He asks, and there's just a hint of vulnerability coloring his usually confident voice.
Like the heaven and hell I've been searching for, Ghost does not say.
Like the first bite of the forbidden fruit, Ghost does not whisper into his ear.
Like a baptism of honey and gold, he does not think.
"Perfect," he manages. "Tight and hot and just for me."
Soap shudders and his movements falter for a beat.
"Is that right, Simon?"
"Yeah, gorgeous."
Soap's hips stutter at the pet name.
Ghost fights back another moan at the sight and instead, drops his hands long enough from Soap's waist to skim over the tops of his thighs.
They're shaking with an effort to stay up, to keep moving. Ghost slaps a hand across the thick coils of muscle and tanned skin, before gripping them with both his hands, fingers digging into the flesh. Soap's resounding whine is sweeter than any symphony in his ears.
"Fuck," he gasps and weakly grinds his hips back onto Ghost's cock.
And, suddenly, like the selfish bastard he is, Ghost wants more.
He reaches up and traces Soap's mouth with his thumb. Even after an amused quirk of a brow, Soap lets him and opens his mouth willingly. When Ghost presses the pad of this thumb over the plush pink of the bottom lip, the other man nips at it with his teeth, eyes hooded in a challenge.
He bites with enough force to draw blood.
Pinpricks of vivid crimson bloom on Ghost's thumb and he barely has time to feel the familiar sting of it before Soap takes it into his mouth. He stops only when his lips brush Ghost's second knuckle and with another quirk of his brows, he hallows out his cheeks and sucks.
Christ, Ghost is so hard, he aches.
"Johnny," he says and tries to remember what it means to speak English. "Is it my turn?"
Soap blinks at him and slides off his thumb, mouth a shade of slick pink that Ghost desperately wonders what it tastes like.
"You don't have to ask, L.t.," He says, hoarse. "What happened to making orders, not taking them?"
"I'll take only what you give me," Ghost admits before he can stop himself. He noses at Soap's throat so he won't have to see the stare of surprise on the other man's face for his lack of deflection. "So is it my turn or not?"
Soap breathes out a sigh.
He sounds contemplative, but Ghost is pressed so close to the other, he can feel the tremble of his thighs, and the pants in his breath. He knows he'll say yes, but still, he waits faithfully for the spoken Scripture of the other's mouth.
"Fine," Soap acquiesces, after a beat. "Be a good boy and make it worth my while, eh?"
Ghost plants his feet on the mattress and fucks up, hard. Soap lets out a choked noise, hands flying to grip for purchase. He clenches and unclenches around Ghost, hole fluttering, eyes wide.
"I always do."
A small part of him—alright, maybe a large part of him—wants to crawl into Soap.
If he were allowed, he thinks he would like to make a home inside Soap's ribcage. Maybe then, only then, would he truly be able to close his eyes and feel at peace. His own final resting place.
But, anatomically, it's just not possible.
So he settles for the next best thing.
In the dead of night, the sound of skin against skin is almost loud enough to drown out the muffled noises that pour from his lips and into Soap's.
Ghost, with his hands like steel on Soap's hips, fucks up into him with a sort of desperation he had only felt at the most lethal moments in his life. He chases after the raw need that eats him up from the inside. He yearns for the desperation between the fine-haired balance between life and death.
He wants to kiss Soap so bad, he wonders if the very want itself will drive him mad.
Soap holds himself over Ghost, fingers threaded in the bedsheets, and his body rocks forward precariously with every thrust Ghost pushes into him. He takes it, the passion, the violence, and only pushes back for more. Ghost could worship him for it.
He's close to doing so anyways.
“Fuck,” he whispers and moves his hips in a motion he knows will send Soap writhing. “Fuck, you’re everything.”
Soap only whimpers in response, knuckles white.
His lips are just close enough that, if Ghost were to turn his head, he would be able to kiss him. Through the fabric of the mask, their mouths could never truly crush together in a mess of vitriol and violence. But maybe, just maybe, this would do.
He strains his neck, ever so slightly, and leans in to press his covered lips over Soap's in a clumsy attempt at a kiss.
At the same time, he reaches down and fists the other’s neglected cock in one hand.
A dribble of precum spills into Ghost’s hand and he fights the urge to lick it clean. To consume everything from Soap until nobody can tell where he begins and Soap ends. He tightens his hold, ever so slightly.
“Shit, Simon, so, so deep, you’re so good to me,” Soap pants, open-mouthed, on Ghost’s own mouth. His breath hot against thick fabric. “I—“
Ghost wraps his arm around the other’s waist and fucks him hard enough to send Soap’s perfect teeth clacking.
”Fuck, I—“ Soap chokes out.
“You?” Ghost rasps.
He knows Soap is close, he can feel his own impending orgasm following it, they both just need something to tip them over the edge.
Something like—
“I want you to kiss me,” Ghost’s muse pleads, through hazy eyes.
“I, ngh, am kissing you.”
”I mean, ah, really kiss me,” Soap corrects. The tips of his fingers brush the mask. Not tugging or pulling. Just touching.
Ghost wants to frown, and wants to pull away completely.
But another part of him revels at the thought of pressing his lips to Soap’s.
As proof of his own weak heart, he only considers it for another beat before pulling the material up his chin over the bridge of his nose.
He stops.
”This is as far as I’ll go,” he says, like an oath.
Soap nods like a promise.
Then there’s lips, teeth, and tongue. There’s heaven and hell. There’s Soap crying out as he comes into Ghost’s palm. There’s Ghost doing the same as he sullies the only god he’s ever known from the inside and out.
There's the venom of a snake staining his teeth yellow and the laughter of his father behind him.
Ghost tastes all that and more on Soap’s chapped lips and he chases after it the best he can, before it gets swallowed back down into a moan.
They pull away, a mess of love-bites and cum.
“We should wash off,” Soap mutters, blearily. He still has a smudge of blood on his chin from when he gnawed on Ghost’s thumb.
Ghost wants it tattooed there.
He opens his mouth, ready to confess his sins, ready to tell Soap the feelings still marinating in Ghost’s head.
Exhaustion gets her claws in him first.
“Sleep first,” he tells the man beside him.
”The wicked don’t rest,” Soap combats, though his eyes start drooping shut too. “Thought I told you that, Simon.”
You sanctified me. Ghost thinks of saying. You’ve stripped the wicked from me with nothing but your lips and skin.
“See you in heaven, then, Johnny.”
Soap’s mouth twists into a grin and Ghost brushes back a stray strand of hair from his face. Before he falls asleep, he scans for any gore-stained faces or furious apparitions of the past.
He finds none.
In the bed, it’s just him and a man not unlike a god.