Chapter Text
Relationships were all about trust. Trusting that the person you were with understood you at the deepest level, that they were willing to say when they didn’t, that they would back off when you needed them to. It was a lot of trust that Ghost was so terrified to give. He made sure others trusted him, trusted his loyalty, but he never, ever, expected to trust any single person back. He huddled over the remains of Simon Riley like a starved animal protecting the last specks of meat left on a carcass they’d managed to drag away for themselves. The tiny bits of Simon that remained were for him and no one else. No one would ever pick away at those rotting bones again.
Traitorously, those specks of flesh had a mind of their own. They sang around the presence of a certain individual, rattling in Ghost’s hold like they wished to reanimate themselves into something that the man before them would consider being kind to. All that rotting corpse wanted was someone to be kind.
Ghost hated it. The vulnerability, the way that whenever he was looked at by that man his heart lurched–though he was sure it was his ribcage that nearly yanked itself free from his body. He put walls in place for a reason, and without even trying, they were breached by someone he was sure would never look at him that way.
That man was Captain John Price.
Yes, sure, someone might mistake this feeling for a misplaced sense of duty and responsibility, but Ghost knew that it wasn’t. He felt duty and responsibility, and these were not remotely close to the drowning, suffocating, unreality of his… crush on his superior officer.
Ghost did not do crushes and before it all, Simon didn’t either, not after—.
Simon didn’t do a lot of things he should have.
And as such, Ghost felt no need to fulfill the wants of a dead man.
Except for when that dead man kept trying to rise from his grave, kept trying to beat against Ghost’s hold as he crouched over his corpse, kept trying to resurrect when all Ghost wanted was to be alone in peace.
Having a relationship meant opening himself up to more pain, more hurt, more disappointment, and he couldn’t handle any more. Who would hover over his corpse when he died from the pain of it all? Who would protect his bones? It wasn’t fair. His heart and his mind were not fair .
But life was rarely ever fair.
Except for when it was.
—
Price noticed Simon long before Simon was ever Ghost. He looked upon his broken and battered body in a hospital in South Texas and saw something rare in the young man. He was beautiful in his peaceful, medically induced slumber, even when the most they could do was sponge bathe his emaciated form. But it was rare when someone understood the violence one must have endured to look so very gentle.
He remembers watching over him like a hawk, committing his file to memory, hoping someday when he was well enough that he would join the small task force he one day hoped to set up within the SAS. The man in the bed before him was a force of nature, a man who could level armies with the right intel. Simon Riley was as much an asset as he was an angel.
That memory sticks to his gums like taffy—watching Simon rest and reading the plethora of accomplishments he’d managed to secure with only a few short years in the service—when he meets the man again in the jungle outside of the Zaragoza cartel’s home base. The flames illuminating his figure and the grease paint on his face in the shape of a skull confirmed to Price what he already knew about the man.
He called out to Simon and in response was told that that man had died, that what remained now was a ghost.
But Price didn’t tend to believe that, not when some days behind that balaclava he’d taken to wearing, he saw Simon. Simon with eyes filled with so much reverence that he thought John hadn’t noticed. Eyes that begged in a way that was so very alive and so very human to be noticed, to be seen as precious, to be loved.
Another thing Price remembers is how expressive those eyes were, when they finally opened. Everything was painted in that honey brown, from the confusion to the fear and everything in between and made all the more striking by the long pale lashes that fluffed around the shape of them. If Simon Riley was truly dead, then the only thing that remained of him were those damned eyes.
That said, Price liked to believe he knew better. Liked to believe he was above fraternizing with subordinates, especially ones who he felt thought they owed him a debt. He wasn’t a manipulative person and he wasn’t someone who swung his power around like a hammer to drop whoever didn’t bend to his will.
If this was going to happen, it would never be because of him. He would never let anything pressure Ghost into choosing to feel any way about him.
Business as usual until it wasn’t. Until the magnet attraction snapped them together by sheer force.
—
The air around them is humid and cloying, the jungle around them is teeming with bugs and snakes and other animals that chitter and crawl and honestly make John’s hackles raise. He can feel the sweat trickle down the back of his neck as he swats away a bug that flies too close to his ear. Ghost is a solid presence beside him, just right behind him.
It’s so wet and hot in the jungle that the dead leaves behind them don’t crunch, they squish like peat and stick to the bottoms of their boots. Every slow and deliberate step is met with the sound of pure dampness being squished back down into packed earth.
Ghost doesn’t mind the noises, the heat, the bugs. They remind him of the day he was born.
It does help to be covered thoroughly from head to toe, though, the bugs finding no purchase in the cotton of his long sleeve or the rough of his cargo pants.
John becomes the man on the receiving end of the bites with his exposed neck and forearms.
When Price swats away another bug, Ghost can’t help the small laugh that escapes him.
“Alright, laugh it up while you can, I’ll have you doing my paperwork for a month,” Price scolds with no real heat behind his words.
“Ain’t that abusin’ privilege, Cap?” Ghost shoots back.
Price whips his head to glare at him.
He doesn’t catch the small pressure plate until it’s too late. The soft click as the mechanism for the explosive underneath them slots into place, waiting for the release of pressure to detonate.
Ghost’s eyes widen, Price catches them as his body freezes. Always so expressive, those damn eyes.
Especially when they well with tears that Price knows with everything in him won’t fall. They never have.
Instead, Ghost begins to laugh. It’s quiet—quieter than Price has ever heard—but panicked. It’s the kind of laugh that speaks of pure hysteria, like Ghost’s mind is trying not to break into splinters as he covers his mouth over his balaclava. His shoulders shake and Price can only watch him, unable to move an inch.
He can’t watch the display anymore, so he looks around. Not far off from them there is a fallen tree branch. It’s large and heavy, making an indent in the damp ground beneath them.
“Ghost. Ghost, I need you to do something for me,” he whispers into the air.
Ghost, still laughing with those eyes brimming with unshed tears, makes a noise of acknowledgement. “Y-Yeah, Cap?” He giggles uselessly.
“It’s a long shot, no chance the bloody thing ain’t holding down a landmine of its own, but I need you to bring that branch over here. I—Let's see if we can switch it onto this one, yeah?” Price instructs.
The laughter subsides, nothing but stray chuckles exiting Ghost’s mouth.
“This don’t work? Isn’t anybody alive I’d rather die next to,” Ghost says, still a bit giggly. Price notes that he can hear more of the Manc in his accent when he gets like this, like Ghost can sense that this may be his last moment to be Simon, just as it’s his last moment to be John.
“Can’t think of anybody better to make sure that don’t happen,” Price responds, his smile a bit watery. His foot is starting to ache, but he can’t let up any bit of pressure, not until it’s sure he can move without setting off the landmine.
Ghost keeps his eyes down, looking for pressure plates, as he makes his way to the branch. Price can see every inch of him tense in anticipation as he heaves the branch up. There’s a brief moment where Price shuts his eyes, but no explosion comes. He lets out a sigh of relief he didn’t even know he was holding, his body sagging.
At this moment, Ghost is the strongest man alive in Price’s eyes. He heaves the branch over one shoulder and trudges forward despite the strain that it must cause. The branch isn’t light by any means, about as wide as Price and twice as thick. Price can see the visible shake in his legs as he makes his way back toward John, those expressive eyes of his showing the strain of the weight on his shoulder.
He can tell it’s both physical and mental.
“Alright, good lad. Lets just set this down and… hope for the right timing?” John tries to assure as the branch hits the ground with a loud thudding noise that makes him wince.
“On the count of three.”
“One.”
Ghost positions himself low to the ground.
“Two.”
His hands brace against the branch, ready to push.
“Three.”
Price steps back.
Ghost’s hands slip.
“PRICE, NO!”
For a blessed moment, John Price feels absolute peace with the fact that he’s going to die. He lived a good life, he thinks. He made friends, he tried to make the world a better place. He likes to think he did good. His life flashes before his eyes and he finds he only regrets one thing. He regrets not letting Ghost know that he was loved and so was the man behind that balaclava that dug himself out of a shallow grave so many years ago.
When his eyes open and refocus, he’s not before John the Baptist at the gates of heaven, but above him there’s an angel. The skin around his beautiful honey eyes is blackened with grease paint that is smudged in certain spots. Tears cling to pale lashes and refuse to fall. His laugh isn’t tinkling bells, but it is a sound that makes John feel safe.
He registers the damp and soggy earth behind his head, the incessant buzz of bugs and the cloying heat around him. There’s not an angel above him, but Ghost. They’re in the jungle. Neither of them are dead.
Price joins in on the hysterical laughter that rings in his ears.
“Was a dud,” Ghost cackles, relief painted stark in his eyes. “Tackled you back, sure I was gonna die, but it was a dud.”
“Oh thank fuck,” Price laughs, covering his face with his hand. The adrenaline seeps out of him and leaves him feeling shaky and wired out. “We—Radio. We gotta radio exfil. Not a chance in Satan’s seven hells am I finishing this goddamned mission. Not like this.”
Ghost grabs his radio, communicating for immediate exfil, rendezvous point same as infil. His voice is surprisingly even and steady, even when the giggles return after the communication is received. Their laughter peters out to nothing as they move, more deliberately and slowly this time, away from the depths of the jungle and back to their point of infiltration. Every step is measured, making the trek back take longer than the trek in.
In the silence, Price has a chance to think.
He doesn’t think Ghost has his mind on the same thing.
“I like you, Simon,” Price says, just as Ghost chokes out ‘I think I like you, John.’
They stop dead in their tracks, a different landmine between them this time.
“I—“
“Did—“
“You go first—“
“No, I wanna hear you first—“
They stumble over each other before Price runs a hand over his face.
“We’re proper adults, yeah, no need to stutter like grade school children,” he sighs.
“You’re the one who said you liked me, like we’re in grade five or summat,” Ghost quips, a nervous edge to his words.
“Oh my days, you’re arguing semantics? The whole thing is how I’m feeling and you’re arguing the word choice. ‘Specially when you said it at the same time as me?” Price laughs, incredulously, and Ghost shrugs.
Price can tell his energy is through the roof, nervous and scared, like a wounded prey animal attempting to flee from the clutches of an advancing predator. So Price speaks.
“Back there, I felt my whole life flash before my eyes. And I realized I only regretted one thing, one thing only in my whole life. That was not telling you how I felt,” he says, reaching out a hand.
Ghost looks at it and back at Price. Those bones are stirring again in Ghost, but this time he lets them. He stops hunching over them. He lets them shamble toward Price. Shaky like a newborn deer, he extends his own hand. It’s gloved and he can’t feel John’s skin against his, but tenderness explodes in Ghost’s heart like shrapnel and that familiar urge to laugh when the pain hits is instantaneous.
Oh, Lord, do people ever wonder if love is violence?
His breath hitches and Price waits ever so patiently—always patient, always with Ghost—for Ghost to gather his thoughts.
“Not great with my words, but, uh. Felt the same thing back there… Wishin’ I told ya… It—Fuck, I—“ The words trip and stumble over themselves and shame blooms in Ghost’s skin. He moves to pull his hand away, but Price holds firm. What a pattern to notice now, huh? That Price is always patient, always there, always holding firm for Ghost. Is it a wonder he fell?
“Hey, no hiding from me, okay? I know… I know this isn’t going to be easy, but I think that you deserve the chance, yeah? Lemme give it a shot,” Price says. There’s the distant whir of chopper blades above them and the constant buzz of bugs around them and Ghost is so sticky he thinks he might be coated in honey, but nothing about it sours the moment when Simon Riley is born again.
Price acknowledges that loving him will be a challenge, a difficulty, there’s no false pretense that his love will change anything or fix what was broken in him so long ago, yet he still wants. He doesn’t want the pretty or the perfect, he wants the ugly and the broken and the difficult and that makes Ghost—no, Simon—want to hold him to it.
“Alright… Yeah, yeah, uh,” Ghost clears his throat. “We can—Yeah. I wanna. Give it a shot, that is.”
The answering smile he gets makes it all seem worth it.