#09 ghoap

[gray-samael]

Ghoap for 14 February. Personal art.

[walmart-icarus]

Do you ever shoot your teammates thinking they're hostiles or is that just me

[inkformyblood]

bite-sized domesticity (COD YoOTP25)

Year of the OTP prompt: Like Real People Do - Hozier 09 Ghoap

Riley’s a stain over the counter top, cheap linoleum cracked and peeling beneath his equally torn nails. There’s a mug resting next to his elbow and MacTavish knocks his knuckles against it as he passes by on his aborted way to the sitting room. Fucking freezing. 

“Those poor techs keeping an eye on things and having to deal with your arse at three in the fecking morning.”

Riley barely moves as MacTavish swipes the mug up, lifting his arm when he makes a second pass for the plate. Few crumbs left but otherwise it’s been licked clean, knife as well when he stoops to place them all into the dishwasher. 

“Doing it wrong.”

MacTavish doesn’t bother straightening, leaning further into the bend to peer back at Riley through the crook of his elbow. They’re both shelled out of their usual fatigues for this mission, Riley still favouring dark fabrics but they’re softer, a loose pair of joggers with the drawstring knotted and a plain long-sleeved black t-shirt, where MacTavish has stopped looking in the mirror for the sake of seeing his father’s face staring back at him. The daft bastard had been right in his choice of jumpers and house slippers, less so on the beard. 

“You want to do it?”

“Nah.” Riley leans further onto the counter, one bare foot resting on the crossbar of the stool. There’s a dark stripe across his sole already, his toes pink from the cold. His scars extend even there, pale crosshatching over his heel, a darker line traced just beneath his toes. 

MacTavish fumbles his slippers off, hissing beneath his breath at the cold tile, and kicks them over to Riley. One goes wide, skidding to a halt next to the far end of the counter, but the other knocks against the stool. “Then don’t bitch about the way I’m doing it.”

“Pity the poor woman you wind up clubbing over the head and dragging home with you.” Riley does pause his oozing to slide the slipper onto his foot, dropping back onto the stool to hook the other one with his foot before he draws it on also. “Too much of the army in you.”

MacTavish snorts, wishing — and not for the first fucking time since this recon mission was shocked into life — for a smoke. Too much exposure to their targets could send them scurrying back into hiding, ruining a ten month long intel trail, one very intricate daisy chain of pardons and protection details, and countless hours of overtime that would be peeled from MacTavish’s pound of flesh if he spooks the neighbours too badly. As arms dealers go, MacTavish has spent more than enough time next to worse and if his only complaint at the end of this was that they listened to some shitty soap operas too loudly then it would be two weeks well spent. Riley is starting to get opinions about the fate of poor Gabriella and MacTavish will kiss his own service pistol before he admits that he is as well. 

Might have to slip the techs something nice and strong to get the name of the programme after the mission. 

“Never had to drag anyone into my bed before, don’t think I’ll start now, Riley.” MacTavish straightens, cracks his knuckles before the want for fresh air begins to tear through tendons, and does it again just because. Riley’s eye roll is audible, barely blanketed by the blonde curls that MacTavish scuffs his palm over as he retreats back into the sitting room, a smidge quieter than the snap of Riley’s teeth on thin air.

Riley follows him a moment later, too-large slippers smacking against his heels with every step. It’s too much like MacTavish’s litter of nephews and nieces, down to the overly-serious weight of his gaze, the slight bend to his knees as he walks before Riley tips himself onto the armchair head first. MacTavish takes the sofa, swings his legs up onto it and relaxes back, shoving one of the decorative pillows behind his head. Some bastard had too much fun with the backstory budget for a place that no-one's meant to see and the pillow is pink and frilly, some tripe about love picked out across the front.

Riley had nearly laughed himself sick when they’d first seen the place in the light of day, deliberately being sent the previous night so they wouldn’t turn tail immediately.

MacTavish had sworn at Price over their secure line the instant it had been deemed safe to do so.“S’all well and good making us fucking newlyweds to explain why we’re reclusive, but the fucking pink, Price? Fuckssake.”  

“Ever think about it?” Riley asks, legs draped over the arm of the chair, his torso wedged into an impossible curve across the seat. His head is half falling off the edge, but his gaze is sharp, locked onto MacTavish like he’s starving, already carving out his liver. 

“About what?”

“Wife. Kids.” Riley waves one arm, a load bearing one by the way he slides three inches down. “House with a garden.”

MacTavish lets his gaze go half-lidded, studies the hatch marks of the sunlight filtering through the cracked and dusty blinds over Riley’s form. It is the kind of image that would make a Renaissance painter chisel his hands bloody against a marble block to capture the harsh angles of his limbs, the soft haze of his curls, the intensity of his gaze. 

“You offering, Riley? Angling for a nice patch of grass out the back to piss on, warm blanket in front of the fire at night?”

“Going to throw me a bone, sir?”

Laughing, MacTavish throws his forearm over his eyes, sinking back into the soft creaking cushions beneath him. It’ll be easier to confess this if he isn’t looking at Riley directly, the remembered bruise of a cushion beneath his knees in the confessional, musky incense clogging every breath. “I had thought about it before, younger man, big dreams, ‘s what’s expected of me after all with my parents and sisters. Never felt like quite the right fit and I doubt I’d find someone willing to put up with a bastard like me now.”

Riley shrugs, nearly entirely upside down now, one leg hooked over the back of the chair as a final effort to halt his slow descent to the floor. Won’t be helping the newer recruits assumptions that he’s a vampire. “I’m sure there’s someone out there. Bound to be some poor sod with some good qualities, y’know, like head trauma—”

MacTavish launches himself across the room with a curse, swinging the pink plush pillow in a telegraphed arch as Riley hits the floor with a snarling laugh. 

They’re meant to be newly-weds, after all, some noise is to be expected. 

⁂

The harsh glare of the neighbour’s brake lights dip out of sight around the bend of the cul-de-sac before MacTavish nudges the door open, his keys hooked around one finger. Again, curated for the life they’re living and, accordingly, someone’s had a bit too much fucking fun with it. Not enough for the techs to monitor chatter in the field or whatever bugs they’ve got embedded up some terrorist’s arsehole, but they had to stretch their creative sides.

He didn’t even know there could be pink glittery leather keyrings before now.

“Come on, babe,” he calls back into the maw of the house, swinging the keys into his palm and back out again. Stings a little, metal not yet body-warm, all useless except for the house and the car key. One, MacTavish thinks is someone’s locker key, coughed up for the greater good.

Riley snarls, barely audible except for the comm woven around his ear, against the puckered line of his mouth beneath his mask. “Go fuck yourself,” he hisses, each syllable crisp enough to be imprinted on MacTavish’s tombstone, shining marble and all. He pauses at the door, one hand braced against the frame as his gaze swings from one side to the other, a crease in his brow. 

Soldier’s instincts. No, close match but not entirely. MacTavish chews his cheek as he considers it, the raised curve of Riley’s shoulders and the swell of his cheek beneath his mask, teeth bared when the only blood they hold is his own. When MacTavish had been younger, one of his neighbours had a dog, or at least, they had the sound of a dog chained up behind their high fence, announced by the yellow warning signs they plastered over every inch. They’d make a game of it as kids left alone would always do, seeing who could get closest to the fence before the never-seen dog would charge, fragile wood trembling beneath the weight of it, barking loud enough to chill blood in the very marrow it was made in.

Riley’s a screaming yellow beware of the dog sign.

MacTavish holds his hand out, palm up and fingers splayed, and he might get bitten for this strange communion but it’d be worth it. “Riley?”

“Yeah.” A pause, sunlight splintering through the clouds that had descended to illuminate the golden band on MacTavish’s finger and fuck, he’s already damned several thousand times over but this will be the sin he’d nail himself to the cross for. His answer to Riley before hadn’t been a lie, close enough to the truth to slip inside its skin and cosy up for body warmth. 

Riley curls his fingers into MacTavish’s, corpse-cool like he always is, a stubborn refusal to follow any orders he doesn’t seem important, and falls into step at his side.

The car ride is unimportant, mundane, except when it isn’t.

MacTavish drives, too familiar with Riley’s assumption that civilian road signs were nothing more than suggestions, and the radio crackles as they slide between stations. Riley taps at the controls with jagged fingers, twists the volume loud to the fading sting of a drumbeat and keeps it loud when the next song starts, some crooning pop ballad about broken hearts. MacTavish knows the scar that curls over the far edge of Riley’s right wrist, the dark line that follows the jut of his tendon before it moves into the meat of his palm like a bastardised fortune teller. But now he also knows what it looks like when Riley taps his hands against his knees along with the beat, his sleeve coming up just enough to expose the scrap of skin, and MacTavish is starving, devouring what he shouldn’t want.

“Tech’s say to pick up a few things and tail from a distance in case they meet a contact here,” Riley reports as they park the car a few rows down from their neighbors. MacTavish nods, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel before he swings himself out of the car and makes his way around to Riley’s side. The other man is already out, door shut behind him, and it’s an easy job to wrap his arm around Riley’s waist as they walk towards the store. There’s a moment of hesitation, Riley’s arm raised and ready to drive his elbow into MacTavish’s torso, then he relaxes into the hold. If he had been a stray cat, MacTavish thinks he might have even been purring, a jagged chainsaw rumble, too large for such a slim frame.

“Sounds like a plan.” MacTavish isn’t an accomplished home cook by any stretch of the phrasing, but he can boil water well enough and follow the instructions on the back of a packet. There’d be a meal deal or two they can pick up to supplement the stock in their fridge and wouldn’t stretch the slim budget on their cards until it snaps. Not a trolley, too bulky to use effectively. A basket shoved into MacTavish’s chest until he grabs at the handles, letting it hang at his side. 

It’s a dangerous taste of what he could have, the sheer domesticity of it. MacTavish keeps one hand on Riley as they wander the aisle, the harsh fluorescents overhead humming vaguely and turning Riley’s face skeletal, the purple stain beneath his eyes devouring his features. MacTavish speaks without registering what he’s saying, his gaze slipping over the matched sets of the other couples as they move past, formless, shapeless, inconsequential, some mindless story about his sister’s kids as they’re too close to his thoughts. Heavy fruit dipping low from the boughs.

“It’s sweet,” the lass at the checkout remarks, all of sixteen with all the brashness her age allows. She blinks deliberately at Riley, a dark smudge of mascara in the corner of her eye from when she’d rubbed it, and he matches the expression with a brow raised. “He the protective sort?”

She’s talking about him, one elbow propped against the register like they’re housewives gossiping at the letterboxes, her grin wide as she catches MacTavish’s gaze. 

“Yeah. He is.” Riley’s fingers brush against MacTavish’s hold at his waist, the scrape of his shoulders at his back. “‘S sweet though.”

“Yeah, totally. Anyway, here’s your change.”

“Come on, babe.” Riley turns in MacTavish’s hold, steering them both and MacTavish is helpless to obey, more fucked if Riley realises exactly what he could do with a single word. It would be worth it, burning the universe down for a smile. “Let’s go home.” 

⁂

Evening falls quickly, the sky plump with the same shade of purple as a fresh bruise. 

MacTavish breaks first, a yawn rumbling through him as they lounge in the small sitting room after some scran. He’s reminded again of his da, dozing in front of the telly in an evening, arms folded across his chest and eyes closed but not yet asleep, as attuned to the signal of the remote as the set in front of him. 

“Any plans for the evening, Riley?” he asks, tipping his gaze sideways to the same chair Riley had claimed earlier. 

The other man is hunched down into it, a blanket twisted over his shoulders and one of MacTavish’s hoodies sacrificed to the cause. He’s pulled the slippers back on when they’d returned from the brief surveillance in the supermarket, and one dangles from his foot extended over the arm of the chair. A blade flickers over his fingers, the flash of metal just visible as an advert plays, some shite about cleaning products or a new tv show, in a string of pinks and greens. “Same as usual. Bother the techs, keep an eye out, sir.”

Closest thing to civilian life they’re likely to get this side of the dirt. Double bed in the house but only one of them has used it at a time, or, at least, that MacTavish knows about. Limited surveillance in the house at Price’s insistence and MacTavish isn’t going to think anything more about that. 

Sometimes, in the early hours of the morning, MacTavish will wake in pale grey denial with the bed indented just beyond his reach.

The space will be cold when he wakes fully. 

But he will keep leaving a space for Riley, crack open his ribcage for him to burrow inside if it would provide just a moment of comfort. 

“Night, Riley.”

Riley grins up at him, tips his head back to watch him walk past. “Night, sir.”

[aidenlydia]

“Just seems like smt u would do” + bonus

[baohanhanesel]

I bring you 09 Ghoap

[ddosq]

Ghost: M-MacTavish?!?!

[savedbycupid]

Fated to lose each other in every universe.

[lululandd]

these two deserves a comfy chill time after what they went through🥺💙

'09 ghoap my beloved

[s0fter-sin]

“simon riley’s dead,” ghost chokes out; bitter resentment coating his tongue. “i’m just wearin’ ‘is corpse.”

mactavish doesn’t shy from his venom; sees through his hiss and doesn’t fear his rotten-fanged bite. he reaches out, pressing the flat of his hand to his breast and ghost damns himself for the way his breath catches; for the way his shoulders curl in around it in a silent plea for it to stay.

“that’s no drum in your chest,” he whispers defiantly.

his hand slowly drags over his chest, coming to rest over his sternum and he feels its possession like a brand against his skin.

“it ain’t bellows inflating your lungs,” he dares and he involuntarily inhales; his body longing to rise to his challenge.

mactavish pushes and he rocks back on his heels just to sway in closer; just to beg for the pressure to chase the phantom weight of six feet of dirt from his bones.

“you’re far from rigor mortis, riley,” he promises and there’s air at ghost’s back instead of decaying wood and infested flesh. “i won’t let the earth take you from me yet.”

[bone-trash]

Part 3 (more explicitly Ghoap-y for the holiday)

thanks to @gratia-illi-puella for motivating me to make another one of these — plus an extra “vintage ghoap”

[noahdrawsalot]

WIP because I suck at completing drawings before deadlines, the full rendered drawing will come soon

Merry Christmas everyone!!

[soitgoesanonymous]

i drew them smoking together idk :0

[emmster]

38 with 09! Ghoap?

Plz?

39. Because time’s run out

[electricchaser]

09 Ghost has a designated chair in Soap's office.

Soap doesn't clue into it at first. In the beginning, it was just an extra chair stuck in the corner of his office. It was old and worn, and he had a newer one in the other corner, but it was only for him to use when he needed a break while working, or for company, so he didn't care to replace it. Then Ghost started hanging around after hours, or even just during the workday, tending to his own responsibilities while Soap worked, but every time he'd sit in that exact chair. It confused Soap for a minute, and at first he'd try to make small talk, not wanting Ghost to feel uncomfortable or unwelcome, but eventually he catches on that Ghost isn't interested in conversation, or any interaction. He just doesn't want to be alone. Just wants to have a little company without the pressure of actually having to engage in social activities.

So Soap doesn't say anything when some of Ghost's belongings, officeware and paperwork start accumulating in a small bin under the chair overtime.

He doesn't say anything when he walks up to his office one afternoon to do some paperwork, only to find it unlocked and a bell set on top to alert anyone inside, and merely sits down at his desk to work on his reports when he sees Ghost curled up and out cold in the chair.

He doesn't bring it up when he continues to find Ghost curled up in his chair, sleeping or otherwise, even when Soap isn't in his office. Eventually he gets used to Ghost just being an accessory to his office, like a picture frame or a little basket of pens, always there, even when he wasn't.

He does say something when another recruit is in his office and they go to sit in that chair and he's struck with this overwhelming feeling of just... wrong and politely but firmly directs them to the other chair because 'that's not their chair'.

The first time Soap walked into his office after Shepperd's betrayal, and he sets eyes on that empty chair, he feels like a cold bucket of water was dumped over him, because seeing that chair empty has a whole different meaning now. It didn't mean Ghost was just off training or busy with other things. It didn't mean Ghost was just tied up somewhere else busy working. No, now that empty chair was a sign of pain. A symbol, of how Soap had been betrayed, a constant reminder of how the person that chair belonged to was no longer around to use it.

It takes a solid three weeks of Soap gathering his things and working somewhere else on base before he can finally stand the thought of sitting in his otherwise empty office to do his paperwork. The first time he does, he has to take multiple breaks to sob and pull at his hair and curse the world, and curse himself because damn it he should've known better than to get used to something that could get taken away from him so easily.

A few months later, Soaps snaps at an ignorant rookie who sees the old worn out chair and suggests getting rid of it, replacing it with something in better shape, and he only has half a heart to feel bad after the fact.

That chair never leaves Soap's office, even after he dies, because Price knew. He knew and he doesn't have the heart to clear out Soap's office. Not yet. Not for a long time. It isn't until Price leaves active duty and someone else takes over that that office gets cleared out, and even then, that chair and most of the belongings in that office leave with Price, set up and stored safely in a room in his house, because he'll be damned if he lets the only things left of his teammates just get thrown away, like they never mattered. Because they mattered to each other, more than anything or anyone else.

[aidenlydia]

Has this been done yet

[baohanhanesel]

09 Ghoap cuddles