Archive of Our Own ^beta

So, Soap’s a big guy. Obviously.

He’s not overly tall, but he’s wide in the shoulders and thick in the thighs. He’s the kind of big that’s naturally built all over: training muscles on top of mission muscles on top of an innate bulk.

He’s the kind of big that makes him immovable to most guys.

The kind of big that’s always been -ger than most everyone else—if not by height, than at least by heft.

And honestly, that’s mostly been a turn-on. Call it an inferiority complex, but he likes being big enough to hold men down while he rides them; get them squirming between his legs while he uses them to get off. He likes the surprise when a guy tries to get the upper hand only to find Soap even heavier and more capable than he looks.

He likes the fight in it.

(And okay, fine, maybe there’s a bit of a martyr complex in there, too.)

(Maybe he likes being big enough to bracket a man to the bed and do all manner of wicked things to him because it means all thoughts of Soap’s needs can be forgotten, and he can be nothing but good, good, good [enough].)

(Maybe.)

Anyway, as much as he’s ever bothered thinking about it, being a big guy is one of Soap’s more innate positive qualities.

So when they’re on mission and Ghost spots a grenade before Soap does, and, with no time to warn him, grabs him by the waist and flings him back behind cover, gear and all, Soap’s really not expecting to think much about it, aside from maybe, ‘Oh, shit.’

What he thinks instead is: ‘Oh-hmm.’

And then, in rapid succession: ‘Big.’

Ghost dives in after him as the grenade goes off, and for a second he’s backlit in glorious, gritty fire (and it shouldn’t be beautiful, probably—isn’t, objectively—but it is; Christ, it is), and then he’s landing hard on Soap’s stomach, tucking his head into his chest as shrapnel rains down around them.

He’s broader than Soap all over. Wider in the waist and the shoulders. Thicker in the thighs. Folded underneath him, Soap can barely move. He’s protected entirely from any stray debris, and he should be grateful for how Ghost always has him covered.

He should be thinking, ‘Hell’s bells, thank you, sir.’

What he thinks instead is, ‘Get in me.’

(Strictly speaking, that’s not actually true.)

(What he thinks is a whole host of inappropriate things too abstract in their filth for actual words. Images and impressions and ideas all in a blurred row.)

(Get in me about sums it up, though.)

Ghost asks, “You injured?” as he pushes up on his arms.

It makes his pelvis grind into Soap’s thighs.

He’s so heavy Soap can’t move his legs.

Steamin’ Jesus.

“Solid,” Soap wheezes. (Thinks, ‘Solid,’ as he eyes Ghosts forearms and notices for the first time that they go that far around.)

“Good.” And then Ghost is pivoting off him, and the weight of him is like a fucking steamroller, and he orders, “On me,” and Soap only just stops himself from responding,  ‘Oh, no, please, on me, I insist.’

And here’s the thing: Soap has two eyes and an unfortunate soft spot for the insufferably broody, so it’s not the first time he’s thought about Ghost in less-than-Catholic ways. He’s dark in all the ways Soap is weak for: eyes, temper, humour.

Plus it’s a built-in taboo that he’s a superior, and Soap’s got a very not-Catholic browser history featuring titles like military bottom teases drill sergeant intohot fuck and 4823916.mp4 (army, brat bottom, dom officer top, faceriding) that make L and T two very dangerous and tempting letters at the beginning of Ghost’s name.

(Plus there’s the whole saving each other’s lives thing; the having each other’s backs thing; the working together near-24/7 thing. The whole it’s a real possibility that Soap’s going to die on duty, and the last person he’s going to talk to is Ghost, and that kind of makes it more okay; and that’s just, like, a pretty standard Tuesday thing.)

The way he figures it, of course Soap’s thought about fucking Ghost.

No shit.

(Who cares? Like it’s weird? It’s not. It’s to be expected, probably. Who are you, anyway, the jerk-off police?)

But here’s the thing: Soap likes to get a little bossy in the sack; likes to get on top and hold men down and fight all the while. And all his carnal thoughts where Ghost is concerned have always mirrored that: Ghost leaning back, arms above his head, watching Soap take what he wants—watching him bounce and writhe and cum; the two of them getting back off a mission, too wired to be discreet, getting each other off like it’s half-brawl, wrestling each other’s cocks out and making it hurt a little. Things like that. The kind of filth Soap is used to.

Thoughts of size have been unfortunately—perhaps a little shallowly—reserved for what might be between Ghost’s legs.

But here’s the thing: no one has ever picked Soap up like a fucking lapdog they’re trying to save from a house fire before.

And apparently that gets Soap so hard so fast when he thinks about it that he gets a little nauseous for a second.

So after a mildly confusing and very brief wank—but an admittedly satisfying one—floodgates unknown to him burst open, and suddenly Soap is noticing some brand new nonsense about his lieutenant every fucking day, and it’s driving him a little up the wall.

Exhibit A:

Ghost tugs off his gloves after a mission, and they’ve got grit all over them, and blood soaked so deep that the skin on Ghost’s hands is flaky and sticky and brown. But all Soap sees now is the size of the gloves; the breadth of the palms and the length of the fingers. And he wonders what size bruises the hands that fill them would leave on his hips, and if they’re big enough to hold him down one at a time so the other can work him open a little too hard, a little too fast.

Exhibit B:

He’d clocked the second they met, of course, that Ghost is a full head or more taller than him. But now Soap realizes that it puts Ghost’s thigh (which, holy hell, goes that far around) right at dick level. And he wonders what it would be like to be ordered onto that thigh; to be told to rut like a cornered animal while Ghost looms over him and looks down as if he’ll get a treat if he gets himself off well enough.

Exhibit C:

Ghost’s always been firmly on the un side of hinged, so Soap watches him do medically interesting things to the human body on a semi-regular basis. But now Soap clocks just how often those things involve picking up fully grown, heavily geared men and maneuvering them like toys, taking them clear off their feet, sometimes letting them dangle so their kicking boots don’t even brush the ground. And he wonders how long Ghost could hold him up, and how easy it might be for him even given Soap’s not-inconsiderable size, and if he could do it one-handed so he could hold Soap’s dick hostage in his fist, too.

Exhibits D, E, F…frankly, by Exhibit Z-1a, Soap swears he’s going to give his cock rug burn with how often he’s whipping it out.

His browser history is having a personality crisis.

He can barely look his lieutenant in the eye.

It gets so bad that Ghost conks his head on an errant low door frame one day and Soap has to hurriedly cross his legs.

It’s embarrassing.

(And case in point, even the fact that it’s embarrassing sets off whole new ideas: Ghost holding him down and getting him off just right, too right, too much and too fast so Soap goes off like a shot. Holding his cum-covered dick in his huge hand afterward and laughing darkly at him, “Already, Sergeant? Really? You like me that much?” and grappling Soap into easy submission when the shame makes him try to wriggle away. “Don’t run now, sweetheart,” Ghost might growl, heavy arm around Soap’s neck to keep him subdued, “I’m not done with you.”)

(See? Ridiculous.)

Soap’s not a believer in going stupid over a fucking man. He kills men for a living, they’re not hot shit. He usually categorizes them and moves along accordingly: does or doesn’t like; respects or disrespects; will or will not fuck. Men who get stuck in the middle are worth, at most, a few pints. Maybe a hangover or two.

But this? Soap’s letting himself get distracted, noticing and staring and daydreaming like a schoolgirl. He’s not sloppy per se, because their job doesn’t allow for sloppy unless it insists on dead, but there’s a little preoccupied and then there’s popping stiffies while he’s still on the clock. It’s fucking unprofessional, is what it is.

And inevitably, Ghost thinks so, too.

Inevitably, Soap fucks up one too many times, like this:

They’re out on an easy intel run, set to infiltrate a relatively poorly guarded manor in the Cayman Islands. Some millionaire asshole trying to posture as a billionaire has gotten in with the wrong arms dealers, and now they’ve got to figure out what he knows before someone else comes to blow it out of his head. He can’t afford the full-time security he pretends he can, so it’s meant to be a simple in-and-out with nothing but a handful of ill-trained, underpaid mercenaries between them and the target.

Soap goes in with Ghost, Price and Gaz stationed off-shore, and for a while it’s the usual: silence, stealth, knives out and kills quiet. They switch off having each other's backs, motioning each other on efficiently until they reach the master suite they know the mark is in and deal quickly with the guards stationed outside it.

Ghost kicks the door in, and Soap actually does just fine with that, all things considered. He stomps over the fallen, partially splintered wood, and Soap only briefly thinks, mostly nonsensically, ‘Lucky door.’

But then they’re rushing the suite, weapons drawn, and the mark is, at first, just a formless shape beneath a set of sheets. The roiling lump proves to contain a man when he fumbles and falls out of bed, all tangled up in gaudy blue silk, and a naked woman tumbles out the other side screaming bloody murder. She’s got her discarded dress held up in a matter of seconds, clinging to it like it could stop the bullets if they decided to shoot, while their mark’s still wriggling around on the ground trying to get free of the sheets, probably wishing he’d gone for cotton.

“You, quiet,” Ghost barks, and the woman obediently stops screaming, panting ragged breaths that threaten to turn back into wails any second. They hadn’t necessarily been expecting a guest, but their mark is known to frequent certain escort services. “Put your kit on and get out of here.” She nods and scrambles to do as she’s told, slipping her dress on without bothering with underthings and scooping up her heels with one hand, her purse with the other.

She’s almost out the door when Ghost calls, “Wait.” She stops short, trembling. Ghost snaps up the mark’s discarded trousers and digs through the pockets until he finds a wallet. He pulls out a wad of cash, but when he fans it out, finds it’s only ones, maybe fifty bucks in total. He snorts. “Of course. Cheap prick.” He snatches a few watches and rings off the dresser and puts them in a gaudy pile on top of the money. “Doubt they’re real, but someone’ll buy them, if you’re persuasive,” he says, and drops the stack into the woman’s hands. “Sorry for your trouble.”

She hesitates, nods, tucks her payment into her bag, and hurries out the door.

“Now, you,” Ghost says as the muzzle of his gun lands on the mark. “Be a good lad. Up we get.”

Soap has to grit his teeth.

Be a good lad.

Christ, that’s hot.

Their mark is one Daniel Mason, born 1984 and likely to die in the next six months. He’s a blonde-haired, blue-eyed American type, on the skinnier side of things, defined in a way that probably does wonders on Instagram but belies more time with a coke habit than at the gym. He’s understandably wobbly as he makes his way to his feet, sheet wrapped around his waist. Ghost’s got at least a foot and a half on him, maybe more. He has to look up as the lieutenant approaches. Has to crane his head backward like a kid.

“Come on, now, don’t be shy. We’re all going to be friends, here,” Ghost says, and rips the silk from around Mason’s waist.

Logically, Soap knows what Ghost is doing. They need to get Mason feeling as vulnerable as possible; to get him humiliated and wanting the whole thing over and done with. He certainly looks ridiculous standing there, condom still hanging on his now-limp dick, alternating between folding his hands in front of him and putting them at his sides.

It’s not a sex thing, it’s a tactics thing. Soap knows that.

Soap’s dick, though, is an idiot.

It doesn’t know shit.

So when Ghost near fucking choke-slams Mason onto the bed and holds him there with one hand around his neck, the other training his gun squarely between the tits, Soap’s dick decides it’s a great time, yet again, to say good morning. Even worse, it’s at an awkward angle, kind of stuffed behind belts and straps and pointed to the side, so it hurts a little as he thickens.

He shifts awkwardly and keeps his gun steady, aimed carefully at Mason’s temple.

To his credit, after he gets his breath back, Mason doesn’t muck about with begging for his life or offering them bribes. He wheezes up through the vice of Ghost’s fist, “You could’ve asked nicely, I’m going to cooperate.”

“More fun this way,” Ghost growls, and shifts his aim further south until his gun is butted up against Mason’s cock. Soap swears he sees the thing shrink away from the  metal.

And logically, Soap knows what Ghost is doing. If death isn’t an immediate intimidation—if Mason is either cavalier enough to still believe he’s going to beat the grim reaper or reckless enough to not care one way or the other—they’ve got to ante something else up. And a man with a penchant for paid sex is likely to care about keeping about the thing Ghost’s got in his crosshairs, even if he only has a little while longer to enjoy it.

It’s not a sex thing, it’s a tactics thing.

Soap knows that.

But Soap’s dick, though…

Christ, Ghost’s gun is big, too. Big gun for big hands. He wonders if he could goad his lieutenant into making him suck it; into pressing it against his hole, teasing as if he could slip it inside. He’d probably insist they leave the safety on, loaded or not. Spoilsport.

Ghost lets up enough to let Mason breathe, and he tells them what they want to know, and Soap wonders if he’ll have the energy after exfil to rub one out about all this, or if he’ll have the patience to wait until the morning and finger himself properly.

He wonders if he’d get chewed out for decking this Mason guy just once before they leave, just because he has the audacity to lie there naked and prone under Ghost and not know how good he’s got it.

He wonders if his umpteenth inappropriate hard-on of the fucking week is visible through his gear.

He wonders and he wonders and he wonders, right up until Ghost glances at him, then glances back in a double-take that would almost be funny if it weren’t for the triple whammy that hits alongside it: a heavy, meaty thump; a gut-deep pain in his side; a panicked, stern, “Johnny—”

He drops to a knee before he’s aware of doing it, wind knocked firmly out of him. He looks up in time to see the set of brass knuckles coming this time, and the fist they’re attached to, and the hairy fucking goon behind it all who’d managed to sneak up and get the drop on him. Fucker’d nailed him right below the ribs. He’d probably been aiming for the liver—missed, though, thank Christ, so Soap’s still got enough of his wits about him to drop and roll out of the way.

He gets his weapon trained again and drops the merc three seconds later, and then he’s on his feet, sweeping the room, rechecking the exits and windows. “Sorry, sir,” he says, and hopes it doesn’t come through how he can’t quite get a full breath in yet. He’s going to have wicked bruises, both to his side and his ego. “Shouldn’t have happened.”

Ghost, gun pointed his way and half flung off Mason, apparently having been only a half second behind Soap, narrows his eyes. “No,” he agrees. “It shouldn’t have.” Soap opens his mouth, some half-thought defence already behind his teeth, but Ghost snaps, “Later, Sergeant.” And the way he barks later, Soap gets the distinct impression that the promise it holds is far less pornographic than his traitorous prick suggests.

‘Hell’s bells, take a fucking hint,’ he thinks pointedly.

(‘I can think of a few things you could be taking,’ his dick thinks back.)

They finish up with Mason expeditiously, intel collected and confirmed over comms before Ghost finally lets up and hauls the man back to his feet then down onto his knees. Soap pays proper attention this time, monitoring the doors and windows, carefully keeping his eyes on their six while Ghost ties Mason up at the ankles and wrists.

He does, contrary to popular belief, have an instinct for self-preservation, so he spins on his heel the second he sees Ghost produce a length of rope.

It only helps so much. He still hears the telltale swish-swish-swish. The little grunts Mason makes as Ghost tightens the knots and leaves him hogtied on the carpet to be found by whatever meagre shift change will be here come morning.

“Can’t you—” A tacky sound; Mason licking his dry lips maybe. “I mean, I cooperated, right? Isn’t there witness protection or some shit? Diplomatic immunity?”

Soap bristles and sweeps the room again. This fucker—this fucker—has got Ghost’s rope and bruises on him. Soap wants to hoof the lucky bastard in the grapes.

(Sometimes—only sometimes, mind you—he thinks maybe he should take Price up on the standing offer to see someone in a more professional capacity for some of the things that go through his head.)

(But then he figures a shrink’s office is likely where he’ll end up anyway, so he might as well let a few more traumas pile up first. Get them all off his chest once he’s retired, a one-and-done type of deal, if he even makes it that far.)

“Sure there is,” Ghost says. “Not for you, though. Maybe your boss’s boss’s boss, if he turned, we could talk. But you?” Mason grunts. Ghost must’ve nudged him with the toe of his boot or something. Maybe rolled him off his stomach onto his side. “You should be wishing we had clearance to kill you. I’d’ve just put a bullet in your head. The men who come for you next won’t be that nice.”

Gaz calls for a sitrep over comms right then, and Soap’s relieved for the distraction. “Aye, solid,” he answers, and he turns to make sure Ghost’s on the same page, and he catches just in time the way his lieutenant stoops over Mason’s prone body, fucking dwarfs him like an eclipse, and stuffs what looks to be his own discarded underwear into his mouth as a makeshift gag. “Oh, Christ Almighty.”

“Soap?” Gaz radios, tense. “What’s happening? Need backup?”

Soap clears his throat. (His dick clears a wad of precum right into his underwear. Christ Almighty.) “No. No, still solid, we’re good. Just—” Lord above, Ghost could step on the guy if he wanted to. Grind his boot down on his ass. If it were Soap, he’d be hard, harder than he is right now, and it would force his dick into the carpet, and it’d probably be enough to set him off, and that’d just get Ghost to be meaner, to really throw his back into it as he— “Thought I saw incoming. Through the window.” The wall behind Ghost and Mason is solid concrete, floor to ceiling. “It was nothing.”

Ghost tilts his head slowly to one side. It could almost be cute, like a confused dog, only Ghost is more hyena than anything else. It comes off predatory instead, like it’s just a matter of deciding where to bite and how hard.

Soap resists the urge to wither under his stare. He’s going to be torn a new fucking asshole (his dick makes the obvious connection, but it’s so pathetically on the nose that it’s easier to ignore) for his lack of focus this mission, he knows. Knowing Soap’s luck, Ghost probably thinks it’s some bullshit macho military ew-a-naked-guy, I’m-not-fuckin’-gay thing, so that’ll be fun to navigate later.

“Job’s done,” Ghost says. “We’re on our way. Out here.”

He steps over Mason as he approaches Soap, stalking slow. Soap wants to shrink; forces his back straight instead. (Christ, his chin only reaches Ghost’s sternum. Jesus.) He forces himself rigid even as Ghost stops only a scant couple inches away. “Sir?”

This close, Soap can hear the rumble in it when Ghost breathes. He looks derisively down his nose, insomuch as that’s possible with the mask and all, and orders, “My quarters after debrief, soldier. You’ve got shit to answer for.”

This close, Soap wonders if Ghost can see his pupils dilate. He looks up, neck craned back in a way that has him throbbing. “Understood.”

Ghost glares. “Understood, what?”

Fucking hell, Soap’s pretty sure his fucking hole twitches; clenches down around nothing as he leaks into his briefs.

“Understood, sir.”

Ghost hums. “Better,” he murmurs, and he brushes past Soap, gun at the ready again, positioning himself by the door, prepped to check the corners and head out.

Soap sags despite himself. He sighs. Takes a somewhat shaky breath. Promptly gathers his shit and wills the monster between his legs to stand down. (It tells him to go fuck himself—or better yet, something tall, dark, and murderous—but what else is new?)

He takes his place by Ghost’s side, weapon trained, ready to move out.

"Keep up,” Ghost barks. “Stay low.”

Soap looks accusingly at his dick.

‘You heard the man.’

——————

They make it through exfil with little more than a curious look from Gaz and a muttered conversation between Price and Ghost that culminates in some unreadable expression on the captain’s face that might be something like pity. He pats Soap sympathetically on the shoulder afterward, so that’s probably not a great sign. (Gaz looks momentarily more confused before he pinches the bridge of his nose and seemingly gives up on the lot of them.)

The closest friendly base is just south of Cancun, on the island of Cozumel. Alejandro’d called in a favour from a friend, so they’ve even got half-decent rooms, a single for each of them, no cramped bunks. It’s not raining when they arrive, but the evidence of a recent downpour is everywhere. It’s wet, muggy, little hard to breathe until they get into the A/C.

The shower Soap takes is lukewarm, then cold. He tells himself it’s because of the humidity. Because of the cloying night heat that’d made stripping his gear off make all sorts of sweaty, sloppy sounds.

He’s blessedly soft when he gets into debrief; shamefully doesn’t stay that way when Ghost stalks in and drops into a chair opposite and the fucking thing creaks under his weight, but at least he only firms up a little. Humiliation and fear and defiance make an uneasy, roiling pit in his stomach, and it leaves him wavering between excitement and dread.

Debrief is quick and uneventful aside from the way Ghost glares over as he reports, “One minor injury, no medical required.” The swollen, fist-shaped lump on Soap’s side throbs. Something else does, too, at the implicit threat of incoming disciplinary action, but only halfheartedly. He is, after all, a soldier first and foremost, and right now he’s one who’s disappointed an officer. There are ingrained connections here that, in the quiet and post-mission adrenaline drop, evoke a certain professional shame.

Anger might look good on Ghost, but incompetence isn’t sexy on anyone.

Soap keeps his head down (one of them, at least) for the most part. Speaks when spoken to. Nurses his hurt side and his hurt pride in relative silence until finally, mercifully, Price cuts them loose.

“Tav?” Gaz asks after. “All right?”

And Soap thinks, ‘No, because I’m an idiot,’ and his dick thinks, ‘No, because he’s an idiot,’ and he says, all easy bravado he doesn’t feel, “Right as rain.”

——————

Ghost, true to his word, is waiting for him after. Soap doesn’t dare dilly-dally, as much as he wants to, and he barely gets a knock and a half off before Ghost’s door is swinging open, his lieutenant standing straight-backed and cross-armed and taking up near the whole doorway so Soap has to wait like a chastised child for Ghost to step aside and let him in.

There’s a pathetic little desk in Ghost’s quarters—perk of the extra rank, probably—and even though it’s a sad, particle board thing, tucked into the corner with a rickety, mismatched office chair, Soap despairs at the sight of it. It might as well be the big, harsh, oak things of his fantasies for all his dick gives a fuck when Ghost drops himself into the chair and strips his gloves off and throws them distractedly onto the cheap laminate surface.

“Talk,” he orders. No fanfare, of course, and Soap’s a fool to have hoped for any lead-in here. “The fuck is going on with you, Sergeant?”

Soap has to swallow the truth: You see, sir, I can’t help but notice lately that one of you is one and a half of me; and it’s a right crying shame that you’ve never put it to good use, you know, that just one of your hands (your fucking hands, look at you, showing them off, you slag, bare knuckles out for free) can probably fit over my throat and touch both ears.

He manages not to choke on it, just barely. He opens his mouth, but something on his face must give him away, because Ghost cuts him off.

“If you lie to me and say, ‘Nothing,’ on my life, I’ll take you off active duty indefinitely.”

Soap balks. “On what grounds?”

“Mental instability. Insubordination. Take your pick, I’ll make something stick, trust me.”

Soap sighs. “Fine, I’ll admit I’ve been…” He scrubs a frustrated hand over his dishevelled mohawk. He wishes he could sit, but the only place left is Ghost’s bed, and he doesn’t want to imagine what his lieutenant would say if he dared. (He doesn’t want to imagine what his fucking dick would say.) “…distracted.”

The mask belies nothing, but Ghost’s eyes are expressive enough for anyone who spends as much time with him as Soap does, and they go supremely flat and aloof. “And the pope is Catholic,” he says. “Specifics, soldier.”

This time, Soap does choke, just a little bit, trying to stifle a laugh.

Specifics. Soap’s got so many specifics he wonders if he physically pales in the face, what with how fast all his blood hurries downward. Specifically, he’s wondering if the desk would hold both his weight and that of Ghost’s hand bearing down on the back of his neck. Specifically, he’s thinking that Ghost probably barely fits in the bed alone, so they’d have to fuck on the floor, maybe Soap on his knees, Ghost hulking over his back. Specifically, he wishes Ghost would just bend him over and leave a few overly large hand prints on his ass, because it would be less painful than trying to explain…

“I, uh…” Soap, chatterbox he can be sometimes, is at a loss. “I’ve been…”

Ghost pushes himself up onto his feet, and doesn’t seem pleased to do it. He crowds into Soap’s space and looks disdainfully down at him, and Soap is suddenly reminded of Mason and what Ghost had done the last time he’d had someone in his sights like prey. “I’ve never taken you for a coward, but I’ll treat you like one if I have to,” he threatens.

Soap’s breath shudders, and that’s probably a giveaway in itself, but this close up, at this angle, Soap wonders if Ghost can see the head of his cock poking up into his waistband. “I’m not a coward,” he says, too quiet, too meek, not like he’s ever been, disciplinary action or no. “I’m trying to be—I don’t know. Professional.”

“And following your cock around like it’s a shiny new fucking toy, that’s professional to you, is it?”

Soap’s not used to freeze winning out against fight or even flight, but everybody gets one sometimes, he supposes. He freezes completely, face and all, too stiff to even blink. A strange sort of static kicks up in between the bones of his hands and feet, and he can feel his heartbeat in his lips. Somehow, his body finds the blood to flush, and it must come from his brain, not his dick, because suddenly he feels like he might pass out altogether.

He doesn’t remotely know what to say, but Ghost seems content to wait him out. He smells like utilitarian soap and sweat. He practically dwarfs out the single shitty overhead light. Christ, if Ghost breathed out hard enough, Soap’s sure the force of it would take him (gladly) to his knees.

“…no,” he admits finally. “It’s not.”

“And did you think I wouldn’t notice?” Ghost glances downward, and Soap’s cock pulses hot and shameful at the way his eyes stay flat and aloof as he surveys it. “Nearly got yourself killed slobbering over some Yank wanker like a fucking teenaged girl fresh on the pill. What are you, hormonal? Going to start humping legs like a dog? Maybe we should leave you tied up in the backyard if you’re going to behave like a bitch in heat…”

Ghost continues on, muttering all sorts of filth like he’s got a line straight to the version of him that exists in all Soap’s fantasies, and it’s abruptly ridiculous because Soap can’t even enjoy it. His brain has tripped and found itself fixated on “some Yank wanker,” painfully slowly connecting the dots with what precious little blood is left to it.

Ghost thinks…

Hell’s fucking bells, Ghost thinks…

“You think it was for him? For anyone else but you?”

Ghost cuts off abruptly, and Soap is struck by how effective the mask can be. There are wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, but they’re not like Soap’s ever seen there before, a totally new animal; and without any other facial context clues, he’s at a loss.

“Sergeant…”

Soap doesn’t even know whether Ghost puts a question mark on the end of that or not. Whether that’s anger underpinning the spitting of his rank, or confusion, or warning, or maybe even something that might be, could be, is…?

All at once, Ghost’s mask goes the way of his gloves and lands in an unceremonious pile on the desk behind him. His bare face is uniquely unimpressed, almost enraged. His lips, which Soap remembers very specifically to be surprisingly plush, are pressed into a hard white line; his nostrils are flared; his forehead is a tight, furious ladder, taut with the tension in his brow.

He looks lethal.

He looks gorgeous.

He looks like a good time and a bad idea, and Jesus Christ, Soap’d never stood a chance here, had he?

Somehow, Ghost crowds in even closer. So close Soap has to step back into space he doesn’t have, so his knees hit the edge of the bed and he drops unceremoniously onto it. It creaks ominously under his weight. He can only imagine the sounds it makes under Ghost’s. He’s forced to look up at an obscene angle, chin tilted all the way back, and the vulnerability of it nearly makes him drool.

“Ask for it,” Ghost orders.

Soap licks his lips, a tacky, nervous sound.

“Sir…?”

Ghost’s fingers twitch at his side, maybe eager to touch, maybe itching for something more metallic and violent. “Whatever it is you want, ask for it. You need to tell me where to stop, or else I’ll fucking tear you apart.”

Soap nearly groans out loud. “That’s it, though,” he says, “I want you to. You’re maybe the only one who could, and I can’t stop thinking about it. I don’t understand it, I don’t…I’ve never…but fuck, I want you to hold me down because you can…” He cuts off, tortured, humiliated. Hard. “I think I want you to take me to pieces.”

He cuts off again, this time because Ghost’s massive hand is around his throat.

His fingers do, in fact, touch both Soap’s ears.

He pulls Soap back to his feet by the hinge of his jaw, and he doesn’t stop when Soap’s standing, makes him get up on his fucking tiptoes, gets him open-mouthed and practically panting so Ghost can bend over and slide his tongue inside, coax Soap into a kiss that’s more exploration than anything, more just Ghost tasting as he likes, licking filthy and insistent and nipping at Soap’s bottom lip in between and…

And…

And something goes funny in Soap.

Nerve-pain funny, electric and automatic, wrapped around his bones.

He’s spent so much time thinking about what Ghost might be like, and it suddenly seems a terrible oversight: he’s spent almost no time at all thinking about what he might be like.

Turns out he goes kind of stupid. Kind of lax and thoughtless. He feels abruptly like his skin is made of rubber, like his body is a doll, out of his control, made and moulded to someone else’s specifications. Like it exists purely for whatever Ghost wants to do to it. And Soap, lifelong military man, used to giving his body away for silly things like His Royal Highness’s service, has somehow never liked doing so this much. Never surrendered it like this, eager to submit, to serve, to succumb.

He sinks to his knees, heedless of the hand around his throat—practically hangs himself off Ghost’s grip until his lieutenant hisses, “Fucking hell,” and lets him drop. He nuzzles forward against Ghost’s dick, mouthing at the cheap fabric of his sweats, leaving an obscene, careless wet spot. Ghost thrusts his hips forward, hand at the back of Soap’s head, grinding himself against Soap’s tongue, trapping him in the meaty cradle between his thighs and his palm.

“Look at you,” Ghost growls, “Fucking gagging for it, aren’t you?”

Soap groans. Goes for Ghost’s waistband and loves it—God, shit, fucking loves it—when Ghost catches his hands and holds them up above his head, both his wrists in a single grip. And Soap tugs at the hold, and tugs harder, and it’s totally futile, and he slurs, “Oh, God,” and tries in vain to yank Ghost’s pants out of the way with his teeth.

Ghost grunts and pulls Soap off by the hair, and Soap makes him hold fast, struggling a little, heedless of his stinging scalp. His knees slide apart as he rocks his hips, grinding his cock against the taut fabric of his underwear, so desperate he thinks it would be enough to set him off if Ghost would let him—no, if he’d order him to. Ghost stares down at him, red in the face, huffing like some great beast of legend, like there should be fire on his breath, and practically snarls, “Christ, needy slag,” and Soap thinks he would do anything—anything—debase himself completely without a second thought—so long as Ghost fucking ordered him to all hoarse and feral like that.

“Here,” Ghost says, almost annoyed, and hardly bothers to pull his trousers out of the way. Just reaches in and pulls out his cock and sets his waistband under his balls. He strokes himself unceremoniously, just once, not even long enough for Soap get a proper look, and then shoves himself pointedly at Soap’s slack lips. “Here, open your mouth if you want it so bad, fuck, eager little—”

His cock forces Soap’s jaw wide. He feeds it to him, fucks it slow and steady into Soap’s mouth, then into his throat, pausing when Soap chokes but not pulling back, just waiting for him to catch his breath as best he can. And by the time he’s as deep as he can go, blocking out the thought of air, pulsing hot against what feels like Soap’s fucking larynx, the base of his dick doesn’t even come close to the sergeant’s lips.

Soap’s forced to a stop far enough away that he can make out the mole hidden in Ghost’s pubic hair, and it’s humiliating (he forces himself forward, chokes himself more, because he wants so badly to be able to take more, take it all) and ridiculous (Ghost has a mole above his fucking dick neck; goddamn brick shithouse of a wet dream, and he has a mole above his dick neck, the fucking whore; Jesus, Soap could punch him, he wants to lick that little black dot so bad).

His dick leaks what must be a visible wet spot where he’s rocking it against his sweats.

Smug fucker that it is, Soap’s shocked it has nothing more to say.

Between his arms above his head and his hair in Ghost’s fist, Soap can do little but take what Ghost gives him, breathing in time with his slow, hard rhythm. He’s more talkative than Soap would have expected, doling out low good boys and that’s its. There’s a meanness about him, a dominance that matches his size, an impatience he can’t quite reign in, but his pace stays slow and there’s incessant praise in between all his insults, and all in all, it does Soap’s head in.

“There you go,” Ghost near coos, “Look at you, that’s so good.” And then he shoves himself a little deeper. Holds himself still until he feels Soap’s throat convulse and then holds it a second more, until he’s drooling all down himself. “Making a mess, hm? Next time I’ll get you messier. Stick my cock between your fucking tits, cum all over your face. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d get off on it, sick fuck, look how hard it makes you, sucking me off—fuck, get off me, get off—”

Soap takes heaving, gasping breaths as he’s hauled off Ghost’s cock. “No,” he begs, “Don’t—don’t stop—”

“I know,” Ghost barks. He tilts his head back, so Soap can’t see the look on his face, but he sounds tortured. Pissed. “Shut the fuck up, I fucking know.” He peers down again, glaring. “Almost made me cum, but not yet. You’re so…” He huffs. Grasps the base of his dick. Visibly twitches in his hand. (Soap’s dick strains; threatens ultimate embarrassment and only just stops itself.) “Didn’t think you’d be like this.” He pulls Soap easily to his feet, and releases his wrists. Lets them drape over his shoulders. Lets Soap steady himself on his wobbly, sore legs. “Wanna fuck you,” he mutters right into Soap’s ear, all hunched over and towering over him in every way. “Just like this, raw, with your fucking spit all over me still.”

Soap shudders. Nods.

“Use your words,” Ghost orders. “I need you to tell me you understand. Tell me I can…”

His muscles are drawn tight where Soap clings to him. He’s nearly vibrating, and Soap feels a sick, strange power beneath the thick molasses haze his thoughts have become. Ghost, brute that he is, is keeping himself in check for Soap, and it’s apparently a struggle, and knowing that feels like holding a jaguar on a leash—something that means nothing physically but everything in terms of trust and control.

“I want you to fuck me,” Soap says. “And I want you to do it like this.” He spits into one palm and reaches down and strokes Ghost’s dick from root to tip and marvels at the sheer size of it, so big his fingers hardly touch.

And hey.

Turns out Soap had been right.

The bed really is far too tiny for the both of them.

Ghost tries to put him on it—literally put him, mind you, ripping his shirt up over his head and sweeping him up by the thighs and dropping him on his back—and Soap thinks triumphantly, absurdly, ha, get fucked, Mason, I got mine—but it becomes immediately obvious that they’ve both got various limbs flung either on the wall or the floor, so the lieutenant deftly rethinks. He kneels on the floor and manhandles Soap halfway off the bed, his legs on either side of Ghost’s hips (and the size difference isn’t lost on him; the way he has to spread his legs that wide), his back on the mattress, his hands braced above his head to keep from conking it on the wall.

Soap makes to shimmy out of his pants, but Ghost catches his wrists again, and plants them firmly back against the wall. “Keep those there,” he orders, and rips everything off Soap himself, sweats and underwear both.

He forces Soap’s thighs apart, and then grunts, displeased, and lifts his legs onto his shoulders so he can pull his ass cheeks apart and look unabashedly where Soap is most exposed. It feels vulnerable in a way Soap’s not used to, on display and obscene. His knees reflexively try to clamp shut, but Ghost pries them pointedly apart again.

“Don’t you hide from me now, Johnny,” Ghost says. He reaches under the bed and pulls out a ragged duffel, and from the duffel pulls a half-empty bottle of lube. “Don’t you hide like you’re not fucking perfect.” He makes a mess pouring it out onto his fingers and over Soap’s hole, and makes a point of staring as he slips the first finger inside.

Soap quivers. Ghost’s fingers are longer and thicker than his, and he fucks them in slow, one at a time, and he keeps on staring, and he’s so fucking big that he blots out everything else, inside and out. It’s the kind of thing that would usually make Soap squirm away, this total, unavoidable focus without an ability to control it. Now, under the weight of Ghost’s naked face, Soap finds he’s fucking drunk on it, both mortified and oddly proud, and mortified at being proud.

He tries to cant his hips when Ghost gets three fingers in and the noise gets unbearably sloppy, and he doesn’t think he can stand any more the way Ghost keeps groaning how well he’s opening up, how good he’s taking it, how much it turns him on when he crooks his fingers and spends long minutes torturing Soap’s prostate, watching his cock flag and then fill and then twitch. “Fuck me,” Soap begs, and pushes against the wall, and arches his back, and drips precum all over his abs. “Please?”

Ghost throws his head back and sounds for all the world like a bull, the way he grunts and sighs and thrusts against nothing like he can’t help it. “I should,” he mutters darkly. “Should teach you to be careful what you fucking wish for.” He looks back down, and carefully begins to slide a fourth finger inside. “I’ll fuck you when you can take me properly.”

Soap’s eyes roll back in his head. His cock flags again at the stretch, but he shudders with a queasy, white hot pleasure as he forces his body to relax, to accept, to submit. For a while, Ghost focuses mostly on working him open, and then when he’s got enough room to work, when he’s got Johnny sloppy wet and open under his endlessly watchful eye, he curves his fingers again, and flicks his wrist hard, and has to hold Soap’s hips down with his other hand, he starts bucking so wildly.

Soap’s dick swells, then starts leaking again, and Ghost keeps on staring, but he doesn’t touch it, and Soap can’t even decide whether he wants him to or not. He feels oversensitive all over, overheated and overexposed, unbearable pressure radiating a nauseous thrill in wave after wave.

He tries to warn Ghost—of what, he doesn’t know, because it’s not like any orgasm he’s ever had, and he doesn’t even cum, not really, not beyond the way he’s already been leaking so depravedly all over himself—but all he manages is, “I’m—fuck—” before he’s trembling all over, clenching hard on Ghost’s fingers.

“There you go,” Ghost coaxes as he eases back into a slow grind. “Fuck, you’re something else, you know that?”

Soap pants hard.

Says something like, “Ha-uhn?”

Marvels absently that he’s somehow both basking in a kind of afterglow and still unbelievably hard, a lazy string of pre dripping from his flushed head.

Ghost slides his fingers free, and where Soap usually likes to tease, to clutch and hold in a bratty little facsimile of what’s to come, now the idea doesn’t even occur to him. He’s lax and loose, and he lets Ghost out of his body just as easy as he wants to let him in.

There’s another long moment where Ghost just looks, gaze roaming everywhere, fixating in turn on Johnny’s hole, cock, legs, hands, face, and somehow they all feel intimate in the same way. Ghost leans forward, braces his hand on the mattress beside Soap’s head, and kisses him slow, and somehow that’s even more intimate, still.

Everything about Ghost is huge—his arm bearing down, dipping the bed under his weight; his tongue in Soap’s mouth, gentler now than before, but still firm, still demanding; the heft of his body as he bends Soap nearly in half—and for maybe the first time in his life, Soap feels small. Not helpless, not outdone, but small, completely boxed in and wrapped up by the only man big enough to do it.

The only man Johnny could ever trust enough to do it.

Soap moans a jittery, shaky kind of sound, and doesn’t even recognize his own voice. He stutters, “Ghost—Simon—sir?” and doesn’t know what he’s asking, only knows that he wants. Wants to feel smaller still, until there’s no more room in him, until he’s forced out of his body, out of his head.

Ghost hums. “You’re gone, hm?”

He doesn’t phrase it as a question, which is good, because Soap doesn’t get exactly what he means, even though he nods anyway. Gone seems like a good way to put it. Sunken in and faraway.

Small.

“Relax for me,” Ghost says as he finally rocks his hips forward.

And he’s big.

Christ.

Christ, he’s fucking big.

He’s so careful about it, slippery with excess lube and moving slow, but there’s no getting around the fucking bigness of him as he slides in, in, in—

“Hmgph?” Soap only realizes he’s been making noise when Ghost stifles it with one huge hand across his mouth.

“Shh. Shh. Fucking hell, noisy slag.” He shifts back an inch. Forward an inch. Soap groans into his palm. “Next time I’ll make you scream, promise, but now you have to be good and hush…”

And like he’s never been with a man before, Soap is good.

He hushes.

“Too much?”

It is, but in the best way.

Soap shakes his head.

“Hurts?”

It does, yeah, fuck, but in the best fucking way.

Soap shakes his head harder. Braces against the wall and pushes, forces Ghost another little bit deeper inside.

And it hurts, and it’s too much, and he loves it.

Ghost’s hand shakes against his mouth, and he bottoms out with a ragged exhale, eyes fluttering closed, expression pinched.

Soap mumbles rhythmically under Ghost’s hand, and they find out together what he’s saying when Ghost lifts it: a quiet litany of, “Please don’t stop, please don’t stop…”

So Ghost doesn’t.

He goes about fucking Soap first in shallow, easy thrusts, then in a languid, relentless, rolling rhythm. He holds himself up with one arm and reaches between them with the other. Gets his slick fist around Soap’s dick and jerks him so slowly it makes him ache. Tells him how hot and tight he feels, how he wants to ruin him on his cock, how he knows Johnny’s gone, but he’s got him, fuck, he’s got him.

And Soap’s always expected that any orgasm Ghost would wring out of him would be explosive—boom, whiteout, all heat and sound and collateral damage. But when he finally cums, it’s gentle and confused. He murmurs, “Sir…?” and gushes over Ghost’s huge fist and only realizes halfway through what’s even happening, and then he spasms hard and shoots for real and comes all apart.

He shakes and shakes and shakes and loses time in bits and pieces, so it’s all in flashes: his breath in a long, sticky string between his lungs and his mouth; a startlingly large puddle on his stomach, white streaks up over his chest; Ghost still working away, panting in his ear, muttering, “That’s it, Johnny, that’s all for me, yeah? So good, all for me…”

And then Ghost speeds up, gets a little rougher. Soap gasps, oversensitive, and Ghost groans, “’m sorry, I’m so close, take just a little more for me,” and if Soap could do anything but pant and try to stay conscious, he’d laugh. As if he wouldn’t turn himself inside out before God if Ghost needed him to.

As if he doesn’t love it.

It hurts, and it’s too much, and he loves it.

Loves it even more when Ghost seizes and forces himself inside, deep as he can go, swelling impossibly bigger, and loses it with a series of jagged grunts and Soap’s name in turn: “Johnny, Johnny, Johnny.”

Soap can’t feel the pulse of him, but he knows it in the measured rocking of Ghosts’s hips and the stutter of his breath. He revels in the tempo of the way Ghost gets off on him, the cadence of a climax that, like everything else about him, seems huge and unforgiving.

Finally, he settles, and together they collapse into a sweaty pile. Soap’s legs slip down off Ghost’s shoulders, and he catches them in the crooks of his elbows. Massages his thumbs into the meat of Soap’s hips as he sets them lightly, one at a time, on the ground. He pulls out gingerly, and in place of all his earlier fucks and slags, now he’s all there now and Johnny.

Everything about Ghost suddenly seems tender and tame, and it should maybe defy expectations, but Soap realizes a little bashfully that he’s never really bothered to fantasize about this part, so there are no expectations to defy. Ghost pries his hands off the wall and drops a kiss in each palm, then each wrist as he helps delicately stretch them out. He carefully maneuvers Soap onto the bed proper and peels off his own shirt to wipe them both down, hands deft and thorough and soft.

And Soap does little—can do little, really—but lie there and take it, fucked floaty and calm. Out of his head.

Small.

And where the bed is far too tiny to fuck in, turns out it’s just large enough for the two of them to sleep in, if Ghost takes up most of it. And if he pulls Soap mostly on top of himself. And if he holds him steady in the one pair of arms huge enough to cradle a man as big as Johnny.

——————

Just once in the night, Soap starts awake, jolted by something between dreaming and thinking, struck by a sudden, low-buzzing anxiety. His smallness seems all at once something to be ashamed of, his mindless desire for it even more so.

He wriggles in the dark and tries to slip out from under Ghost’s massive arm, and finds himself summarily tugged back into an equally massive chest.

“Where’re you going?” Ghost slurs, voice sleep-rough.

Soap shrugs and figures Ghost can feel it, but evidently he’s keen on a verbal answer, squeezing tighter with a huff.

“Dunno. Figured I’d give you your bed back, I guess.”

Ghost snorts. “Stupid. Want you here.”

“I just didn’t—” Soap wriggles again. Ghost’s chest hair tickles his back. His dick lies soft against Soap’s ass, and sticks in a kind of ridiculous way. It’s far too hot in all the places they’re pressed together and they’re likely lying in a pool of their own fluids, and Soap silently despairs at how much he loves the lot of it. “—want to bother you—”

Ghost pauses for a long moment. Hums. Squeezes again, just this side of too tight.

“You did good for me, Johnny.”

Soap makes a soft, wounded, small sound.

“You did so good for me, made me feel so good, took it so well…” Ghost mutters on and on into the quiet, humid refuge between them, holding tight so Soap can’t twist away. The bulk of him becomes an impassable comfort, pressing in on all sides, crushing Soap under the immense weight of his praise: Soap is good, has done good, is so, so fucking good…

“There, now. Go back to sleep.”

Ghost doesn’t even make it sound like an order, but Soap’s body takes it as one.

He sleeps, and doesn’t wake again until morning.

——————

When he does wake again, Soap feels like he’s been hit by a particularly moist truck.

He’s phenomenally sweaty, still dwarfed in Ghost’s heavy-limbed embrace, and sore everywhere from the waist down. His legs scream protestations at him about how long they’d been forced up on some giant asshole’s shoulders. His own asshole has several more creative things to say about giant things.

His dick, smugly, maybe a little dazedly, says nothing at all.

It’s a fairly disgusting endeavour, unsticking the wet velcro of their body hair so they can get up, but yet again, Soap loves it all the same. His late-night anxiety is gone, soothed and slept away, and despite his somewhat sorry physical state, he finds himself facing the new day with an exhausted, rapt kind of calm.

“All right?” Ghost asks, a little hesitant, mask poised above his head.

And in the light of day, no longer small, firmly back in his head—maybe more firmly centred in there than he has been in weeks—Soap can see it for what it is. The care in it, and what it means, Ghost’s checking in before his face goes away for the rest of the world.

And isn’t that something? That Ghost can be so big inside, too, behind the mask, in the cavernous space he’s carved out for Johnny.

He’d asked for words before, but this time Soap finds he has none. So he just kisses Ghost instead—has to get up on his toes to do it, and doesn’t care a lick about the morning breath or stubble burn or crick in his neck.

“All right,” Ghost confirms, and hides his little smile behind his mask, though not quite quick enough.

Despite the past 36 hours, Soap does consider himself a consummate professional for the most part, so he doesn’t limp to the showers or to the mess afterward. He tugs on a fresh set of clothes with a minimum of Ghost’s fussing (helping, Ghost insists, as he fucking fusses) and goes in search of a strong black coffee like he does every morning, no passersby any the wiser.

And as they do every morning, Price and Gaz have beaten him to mess, both of them already hunched over half-eaten plates, Gaz idly scrolling on his phone. Soap greets them the way he always does—“Morning, Gaz. Cap.”—and so does Ghost—“…”—and Price takes one long, hard look at him, and then at Ghost, and promptly sighs with what looks to be his entire chest.

“Captain…?”

Price just shakes his head. He pulls a flask from his pocket and, glaring at the both of them, Irishes up his coffee with one, two—he sighs pointedly again, shaking his head—three hefty shots.

“Fuck both of you for the paperwork,” he snaps, then winks as he stands. “But it’s about time.”

Ghost snorts the approximation of a laugh at the captain’s retreating back. Gaz looks helplessly between the three of them until he catches Soap’s eye, and then he squints and leans in. And Soap must avert his gaze too late to avoid whatever inherent sergeant-to-sergeant communication Gaz has mastered, because in the next second he’s gasping, “You two—?”

“Don’t,” Ghost snaps.

Gaz’s mouth flies shut, but his eyes demand details later, MacTavish, and then he fidgets and squirms and taps out something on his phone that has Soap’s buzzing in his pocket a second later (he doesn’t bother to check it, and Gaz fidgets all the more for it). Eventually, Ghost is forced to leave them to grab a second cuppa, and Gaz lasts all of four seconds before he’s hissing, “What the hell, mate, I didn’t think Ghost even had sex. How did he pull?”

And Soap can’t help it. He leans forward conspiratorially and whispers, “Well, he looked me in the eye, and he got real close, and he said something in that sexy accent of his that was so hot, I couldn’t say no.” He pauses. Sips his coffee, just for effect. “He said, ‘Oi, oi, oi, I’m gonna stick it up ya bumhole, phwoar.’”

He gets a shove so hard it takes him off his chair for his trouble, but it’s worth it.

By the time Ghost gets back, Gaz has gone the way of their captain—maybe even to find him, try to sweet talk him into a shot or two from that flask of his. Soap wouldn’t blame him. He could go for a drink, himself—bourbon, maybe. He doesn’t drink it all that often, but Ghost might have a recommendation or two. He resolves to ask him when they’re home.

Resolves to do all sorts of things then.

Figures they’d better make all that paperwork worth it.

“The last time you had that look on your face, you were too busy ogling me to keep your wits about you,” Ghost says, suspicious. “What trouble are you going to make for me this time?”

“No trouble,” Soap insists, “Just wondering—your bed back at base, is it more…” he looks Ghost from top to bottom, and basks in how long it takes.  “…you-sized?”

The mask reveals nothing, but Soap doesn’t have to read anything in the minutiae of Ghost’s eyes and body language this time. The way he ducks down and steals a fabric-covered kiss, any audience be damned, reveals more than enough. “As long as we’re driving Price to drink, anyway,” he says, “I can put in for one that’s more us-sized.”

Soap laughs.

Them-sized.

The two of them combined, he doubts the military produces anything that big.

But then, he figures they’ll just push two beds together, or they’ll make one themselves, or they’ll sleep on the floor. The world is not generally designed for two them-sized blokes, but somehow or another, they’ll make it work.

“Us-sized,” he agrees. “Even better.”