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Soap has been sweating like a motherfucker all week.
There’s heatwave passing through, and it’s been absolute hell. Soap can usually handle the heat pretty well, but even he is at his breaking point.
It's extra hot one day, and Ghost is feeling particularly comfortable, so he rolls his sleeves all the way up past his elbows. He leaves them like that for the rest of the day as he works around base and supervises training in the blistering afternoon sun.
The extra exposed skin is enough to have Soap walking into walls all day, but he tries to keep his cool and act like forearm alone isn't making him sweat.
Ghost's skin is understandably pale, sliced all around with old, shimmery scars. He's veiny and muscled and big, even here, and Soap just wants to run his fingers all over him.
He doesn’t though, of course. Just eats up the sight with his eyes, thinks about what those arms would look like braced on either side of his head.
His own cumbrain behavior aside, this is the first time Soap has gotten a real look at Ghost's tattoos. They cover his left arm in a solid sleeve from his wrist to his elbow, a gaudy mess of skulls and guns and knives etched into him.
And what Soap realizes after staring at them for so long, is how corny it all adds up to be.
Soap still finds it hot, because it's Ghost, and Ghost could wear a potato sack and clown shoes and it would still get Soap weak in the knees.
Really, though, it's a right gaudy mess.
And Soap knows that Ghost has his whole—thing, with skulls, and bones, and whatever. He knows that the military is the backbone of Ghost’s personality.
But Soap wants to say—really, mate? All that? He's got a skeleton knight, for fuck’s sake. And the grinning missile? Come on.
In a way, it’s almost sweet. Big, scary, ominous Ghost, unique and distinct in almost everything he does, inked up with some of the corniest tattoos Soap has ever seen. He can't help but be endeared with the way Ghost wobbles between mysterious and reclusive and utterly, laughably over the top.
The heatwave is exhausting the hell out of Soap, and all he can think about is taking the evening off and relaxing somewhere with better air conditioning than the base they’re holed up at. Of course, he has to bring his favorite lieutenant along for the ride.
He manages to lure Ghost off with him to a bar that night. It's a true, gritty dive bar, sticky floors and dull lighting. The bartender has got a greasy rag over his shoulder and none of the glasses look all that clean. It’s mostly empty, thank god, and they settle under the low light in shadowy table toward the back.
While the cool night air is a relief from the unforgiving sun, Soap feels just as hot as he has all day, his eyes glued to Ghost's arms.
Ghost's fucking sleeves are still rolled up.
He swallows, mouth dry despite his drink, as Ghost easily slides another glass in front of him, flexors of his arm tensing under his tattooed skin. The condensation smears across the scratched, greasy wooden table.
Ghost plops back down across from him.
God, he's so fucking pretty like this, with a soft black balaclava that shows off his eyes. He's so fucking pretty with his goddamn eye-black, the leather hood of his jacket yanked over his head.
A true fucking phantom, his lamb eyes and gravelly voice nestled in a sea of shadows.
Like the condensation on the table, Soap feels sweat on the back of his neck.
If Soap doesn't get a hold of himself, he's going to drop to his knees and beg Ghost to shove his rough-knuckled fingers in his mouth, or scramble across the table and lick the ink out of his tattoos—
"There something on my arm, Sergeant?"
Soap fucking jolts. His eyes flick up. He not so subtly licks his lips to make sure he isn't drooling. "Nothing aside from that fucking disaster," he replies, jerking his chin towards Ghost's smoky sleeve.
In only the balaclava, Soap gets the pleasure of watching Ghost's eyebrow arch up, blonde hair smudged over with black paint. "Disaster?" He questions.
Ghost finished his drink a few minutes ago and rolled his mask back down all the way, obscuring his mouth and chin again. And God does Soap wish he could still see his mouth, know if it was quirked up or down. God, does Soap wish he could see all of him.
"Come on, mate," Soap says, voice easy going, grin soft. "That's all a little tacky, even for you."
Ghost just tilts his head.
"Even for me? You saying I'm normally tacky, Johnny?"
Soap just gestures at the off-white skull print on the bottom half of his mask.
Ghost shakes his head. "You make a shite date, you know that?" He jokes, unaware of the way Soap's stomach bottoms out at the word date.
"Do you always take men out and then insult 'em all night?" He's got smoke and smiles in his voice, and Soap knows he's not bothered by Soap's teasing in the least. His eyes are squinted up a little. Smiling.
Soaps heart flutters. "Only if I know they can give it back to me."
Ghost braces both his bare forearms on the table, leaning forward. He hums. "Yeah? Let's start with that fuckin' haircut of yours then."
Soap laughs into his drink. He rakes his fingers through his hair. "Oh, fuck off. This is still about you and—" he gestures again. "That."
Ghost acquiesces, leaning back. He holds Soap’s gaze for a long moment. "What about it?"
Soap scratches at his cheek. "Uh—what's up with it? I mean, you got, what...six skulls in one sleeve?"
Ghost shrugs one shoulder. "Sure. Skulls are cool."
Soap blinks. Snorts. Drops his face into his hand. Skulls are cool, he says.
Oh, how he adores Simon fucking Riley.
"Sure, mate, sure." The alcohol is making his head spin a little, so he keeps pushing. "And what about the bombs, and guns, and barbed wire, and...are those American dog tags?" He laughs again despite himself, really getting a good look.
"I'm in the military, Johnny," Ghost replies, voice dry, as if that explains it all away. "Don't think it fits me?"
It doesn't, if Soap is honest with himself. Ghost is a lot of things, but skull mask aside, he’s not—superfluous like this. He just tilts is head back and forth, like he’s considering, in a non-answer.
Ghost gets real fucking quiet, then.
Soap keeps tracing his tattoos with his eyes, soaking up every silly detail in the low light of the bar, fingers twitching with his need to touch. He normally gets a glimpse of them in brief flashes when Ghost’s sleeve rides up, and even today, he’s mostly seen them from afar, squinting his eyes to try and make out the details.
This is the most up-close he’s ever seen them, and he’s delighting in getting his fill.
He looks up with another smart comment on his tongue; it dies as soon as he gets a good look at Ghost.
Ghost's eyes aren't smiling anymore.
He's got a serious, intense sort of look on the small strip of his exposed face. He's staring right into Soap's fucking Soul.
And Soap—oh, his stomach drops right out of his ass. He's sure he can hear it squelch awkwardly on the sticky, grimy floor by his feet.
For all his teasing, he didn't really think Ghost would be upset with him. He knows Soap is just taking the piss, right? But Ghost doesn't look like he's joking anymore, and Soap has a horrible, sour feeling that he crossed some sort of line, insulted or belittled him.
Maybe Ghost honest to God loves the tattoos. Maybe, to him, it really is just cool as hell. Maybe this was the manliest, edgiest thing he could come up with, and Soap just shit all over it.
Maybe it all meant something? A new skull for every teammate he's lost in the past? A dog tag for a death?
Oh, fuck, has Soap just mocked something serious? Did Ghost quilt together a sleeve full of sentiment and Soap could only—
Ghost's voice, rough like gravel under tires, interrupt his racing thoughts.
"I didn't pick any of that shit out."
Soap blinks at him. His heart is racing in his ears. “What?”
“I didn’t—” He brushes the backs of his knuckles over the sleeve. “I said didn’t pick any of this shit out.”
Soap just blinks. The thought of the Simon Ghost Riley, the man who doesn’t even let people see his skin, letting someone else pick out what to permanently etch into it is a concept so foreign he can barely believe it.
“You—what?”
Ghost just stares at him.
“Who…did, then?” He asks, unsure. He still, after all this time, doesn’t have a good grasp on how much he’s allowed to ask Ghost, of how deep he can pry into his elusive past before Ghost snaps the curtains shut.
“Old squad.” His voice is rough, clipped, but not unwilling.
The first thing Soap feels is blank surprise, because huh? The second thing Soap feels is a truly uncalled for amount of jealousy.
Fucking obviously the 141 is not Ghost’s first team.
Still burns him fucking raw to think about Ghost belonging to anyone else. Still makes his teeth hurt to think that some other unworthy tossers got to claim Ghost as theirs, even if he’s sure Ghost has never felt that way about anyone but the 141.
And he let them—he let them choose how to permanently mark his skin?
“Why did you let them do that?” He tries to keep his tone carefully neutral, tries to bottle up the accusation. He isn’t here to shame Ghost, or act like the possessive bastard he is, he’s just trying to put the pieces together.
Ghost huffs out a big, tired breath.
“When I first joined the force, I got stuck on a squad with a bunch of try-hard wankers. Just—” he rolls his big brown eyes. “You know the type.”
Soap nods. He can guess what Ghost means—hyper macho men that roll around with squared shoulders and huffy attitudes, hot-headed and arrogant.
Nothing like Ghost, who is level-headed and arrogant.
“My first base had this old tradition, that after basic, the whole squad would go out and get tattoos together. Sign of brotherhood, or whatever bloody fuckin’ bullshit they thought it was.” His eyes are unimpressed.
Soap has frozen in his seat, as if moving will spook Ghost like a wild animal. It’s a blue fucking moon that Ghost willingly and casually talks about anything before the 141.
“I thought—I don’t bloody know,” he grumbles. “That I had something to prove, I guess.”
Soap can’t help but sputter. “You? Something to prove?” Because he has only known Ghost as an absolute force of nature, a menace on the field that makes him thankful every day that they’re on the same side. Ghost is universally respected at worst and downright feared at best, but—
This was before Ghost, wasn’t it? This was just Simon Riley. Private Simon Riley, fresh-faced and still breaking in his military boots.
Thinking about it makes Soap’s stomach flutter, fills him with the same sugary fondness of seeing a partner’s baby photos.
But it makes sense, really. Ghost, a mile wide and twice as tall, just a unit and a half of a man, probably felt like he had an image to live up to when he first joined. Especially when he was, what, nineteen when he enlisted? He was barely more than a kid, tossed in with a bunch of assholes who thought they had something to prove.
And it makes double sense that a bunch of pathetic men, men who could never be half of the man Ghost is, might feel intimidated by some young, brilliant brickhouse showing them up left and right. It wouldn’t be out of character for them to jump at the opportunity to knock him down and feel bigger about themselves.
“Trying not to be held back by that pretty boy name of yours?”
Ghost rolls his eyes again. He kicks at Soap’s boot under the table.
Soap grins.
“Everyone was pickin’ whatever dumb shite they could get off a flash sheet and I decided to get my whole fuckin’ arm marked up.” He shakes his head, like he can’t believe it. “Said I’d get a whole sleeve. Fuck all that mattered.”
Soap puts the pieces together; he knows it’s easiest for Ghost to throw out a bunch of loosely related information instead of filling in all the gaps with details.
“So, your squad picked all this shit out for you.”
“Didn’t know what the fuck I wanted,” he answers with a shrug. “Didn’t really want any of it to begin with. Figured I’d let ‘em choose. Show I was—” he huffs again, put out with himself. “Like I didn’t give a fuck. Like I could take anything.”
It does, in fact, look like the tacky sleeve of a bunch of fresh military wank stains trying to have a dick measuring contest. It makes sense; it’s just so startlingly far from who he knows Ghost is.
“Fuckin’ stupid, right?” Ghost asks.
Soap shakes his head, and he means that. He doesn’t think it’s stupid; he doesn’t think anything Ghost could do or tell him would make him think that. And, besides, he does get it.
“Nah. Just tryin’ to wrap my head around The Ghost letting other people tattoo him on a whim.”
“Fuckin tellin’ me,” Ghost mutters. He eyes Soap’s drink, like he wishes he had another.
Soap’s eyes are fixated on the ugly, warped skull and crown inked into his skin. He shakes his head again. “Can’t believe you ever thought you had to impress a bunch of assholes. You get how that’s fuckin’—preposterous, right?”
Ghost whistles, low in his throat. “Big word you got there, Sergeant. Who taught you that one?”
Soap couldn’t keep his grin down if there was a gun to his head. He kicks Ghost back under the table. “Fuck off.” He meets Ghost's eyes, warmer than the burn of whiskey. "I mean it, though, Ghost. I know a man can change a lot over the years, but—fuckin’ hell, it’s hard for me to picture that. Can’t imagine anyone not just—bein’ in perpetual awe of you.”
And maybe he’s laying it on a little thick, but at least he’s being honest.
Something about Ghost’s face softens with that, his eyes a little warmer, a little less guarded. “Old man always called me a crybaby when I was a runt.” He waves a dismissive hand, like he can waft the words right out of the air, remove them from the space around them before Soap can really hear them. “Used to want to—felt like I had to—” he doesn’t finish.
And steamin’ bloody Jesus, Soap can’t believe how much Ghost is revealing about himself. He doesn’t know why today of all days Ghost decides to be an open book, but he soaks it up like an eager sponge, tenderly wrapping each little bit of information and tucking it into the deepest part of his heart.
“You get it,” Ghost dismisses, eyes slanting away.
Soap does get it. It’s hard to imagine Ghost in that position, but he understands the desperate need to prove your own strength. He understands what it feels like to be on the run from your own past, even if only in your own mind.
“So they don’t mean anything to you.”
“Not a damn thing.” Ghost rolls his forearm back and forth, dingy light just barely illuminating the sleeve.
“So you’re not mad at me for calling it a tacky disaster?”
“Not yet,” Ghost replies dryly, eyes warm as they fall back to him, “but keep it up and I just might do something about it.”
Soap laughs, then, and it feels like it's bursting out of his chest. His grin splits his face so wide it might start hurting soon. He’s a mile high on the drug that is Simon Riley trusting him enough to talk about his past and all that exposed skin, and it’s coming together in his brain to create a whirlwind of dopey affection. He leans forward on the table.
The moment of openness is over, and Soap is grateful for what Ghost gave him, so he moves to change the subject, to give Ghost the chance to retreat into the safety of his murky shadows again.
“Speaking of wankers,” he says, wiggling his eyebrows, “you see that fucker, Private Collins, in the obstacle course the other day?”
Ghost snorts, loud and exasperated. He drums his bare fingers on the table. It’s distracting.
“Queen and country’s proper fucked if those are the type of men followin’ us.”
Soap throws his head back and laughs.
For the rest of the night, his eyes flick between Ghost’s face and his exposed forearms. And he still kinda wants to trace all that swirling smoke and gaudy skulls with his tongue, still hypnotized by the new skin, starving for it like a man lost in the wilderness, but he makes an effort to mellow out a little bit.
He doesn’t want to draw a bunch of extra attention to his tattoos after Ghost was vulnerable about them, and he’s not exactly sure how to explain to Ghost that his bare skin alone is enough to separate all the lobes of Soap’s brain, corny ink or not.
So they sit there until the bar closes, talking shit and trading awful jokes in the buttery light. Soap is just about dizzy with how much he wants to reach out and touch Ghost’s arm, trace all those pointless tattoos, maybe even slide their fingers together.
He thinks about holding Ghost’s hand, his tatted forearm pressed against his own, and gets hard so quickly he doesn’t hear what Ghost says for the next three minutes.
He’s good, though. He doesn’t try to touch him.
He settles for the warm scrape of Simon’s laugh against the back of his neck. Settles for watching his scarred knuckles flex as he taps his fingers against the wooden table top. Settles for drowning in his endless brown eyes.
He drinks up the sight of Simon Riley with his eyes as inconspicuously as possible. It’s better than whatever top-shelf liquor this shithole bar has to offer.
And then he goes back to his room, and shoves his jeans down to his knees, and pretends that Simon Riley’s pretty, tattooed arm is wrapped around him, fisting his cock, jerking him off until he comes all over those awful skulls and missiles.
And maybe it’s possessive, just a little. Maybe he thinks of a bunch of cocky British privates marking Ghost forever and mentally blacks out a bit, maybe he wants to drag his lips over all those black lines and make them his, use the skulls as target practice when he comes.
It’s not his fault that he has so many screws loose, these days. Ghost keeps rolling his fucking sleeves up. He’s all but flashing the whole base; of course Soap can’t be normal under these circumstances.
A few days later finds him staring again.
Ghost’s arms are crossed over his brick wall of a chest, forearms bulging, and somewhere around him imagining grinding on him till he loses it in his fatigues, Ghost looks over.
“Still worked up about my tattoos, huh, Johnny?”
And god, fuck, is Ghost a mind reader, now?
“No, sir,” he replies, eyes sliding up to give Ghost a dazzling smile. “Just noticing that you have a gap right here.”
Ghost tilts his head in question.
Soap takes a step closer, reaches out, and pokes Ghost right in the forearm.
There’s a little spot of skin that’s unmarred by any tattoos, a gap in the swirling grey flames that cover Ghost’s otherwise pale skin, like the artist missed a spot. It’s not very big, and admitting he noticed probably cleanly gives away just how much he’s been staring.
Ghost blinks down where Soap’s finger is pressed into his skin.
“Could fit another tiny skull there,” Soap offers, grin lopsided. “Want to go for lucky number seven?”
Ghost snorts. “Yeah, right.”
That’s the end of that. Soap doesn’t bring up the tattoos again, and neither does Ghost.
Soap still finds himself stiff in his pants looking at Ghost’s forearms, sure. But there’s a new, possessive sort of fondness. He’s probably the only person alive that knows how Ghost got the tats, and the trust that represents makes his heart thrum like a warm engine.
He also knows, that no matter what shitty, stupid claim an old squad got to make with Ghost, the 141 are the only ones Ghost really cares about. No tattoo, or scar, or shitty memory can ever compare to the loyalty Ghost shows them every day. No one has ever taken care of Ghost the way they do. The way Soap does.
So he can live with knowing how Ghost got his tattoos.
When the heat wave passes, Ghost stops rolling his sleeves up, and Soap only gets a brief flash of the ink by his wrist when Ghost takes his gloves off. He doesn’t think about the tattoos much outside of wanting to lick the sweat off of them or when he knows he’s alone in the showers.
That is, until, a week or so later—
Ghost lumbers over to him in the kitchen one afternoon, the light of golden hour breaking through the window.
“Hot tea, in this weather?” Soap questions, shaking his head fondly.
“Never too hot for tea,” Ghost rumbles back.
Soap’s eyes squint in an adoring smile as he watches Ghost prepare the kettle and get his tea ready. And it’s when he reaches into the cupboard for honey, arm stretched out, Soap realizes his sleeves are up again.
Soap can see—
He has a new tattoo, that same empty spot that Soap pointed out, the little hole in the mesh of flames and skulls and bullets—
It’s small and grayscale and—
Soap’s knees almost give out.
It’s a bubbly, sudsy bar of soap, nestled into the greyed out flames that curve around the bump of his wrist.
It’s a bar of soap.
It’s fucking Soap.
The floor is absolutely fucking ripped out from underneath his feet. He doesn’t breathe for who fucking knows how long. His ears are ringing. His eyes might be watering. Is the room spinning?
“—ohnny? Johnny.”
Soap’s head snaps up. His heart is going a mile a minute. Ghost is standing directly in front of him, tea in hand.
“Somethin’ wrong? Got all spacey on me.”
Soap swallows. “Your tattoo,” he croaks.
Ghost gives him a sardonic little look. “You still on that shite? Christ, Johnny.”
Soap just shakes his head. He reaches out. His hand is fucking trembling. “You have a new one.”
Ghost looks down, all blasé and casual, the bastard. He hums. “Mm. Oh, yeah. Got it a couple days ago.”
Oh, yeah, he says. Like Soap’s whole fucking world isn’t tilting on its axis. “Why?” He rasps.
“You were the one that told me I had a blank spot. Can’t have sloppy work, now can I, Sergeant?”
Soap cannot believe he has the audacity to tease him right now. “But why—” He doesn’t even know how to finish the thought. Why me?
And then Ghost’s eyes melt, amber honey in the sun, soft and sweet as they sweep over Soap’s face. “Got to thinkin’ about it.” His voice is the lick of a cat’s tongue, rough and affectionate. “Figured I should have at least one tattoo that means something to me.”
Soap can’t even breathe.
“Still ugly and tacky just like the rest of ‘em,” he continues, a wry little smile in his eyes, “but at least I actually wanted this one.”
And then he claps Soap on the shoulder, takes his tea, and leaves Soap to unravel in the kitchen, drowning in the wake of Simon goddamn fucking Riley.