#writing w no plot shld be more popular

[robiinurheart33]

Soap likes it when they’re alone.

Don’t get him wrong, it’s fun when 141 are all together, the four of them kicking ass on a mission. But when it’s just two of them on a mission, it just feels.. different. Like he has Ghost all to himself. They work wonderfully together as a duo, which is probably why Price never separates them. Also probably because Gaz is his favourite, that prick. (He misses them.)

They’re currently on a stakeout, and Soap was supposed to be asleep 2 hours ago.

He’s sitting across from Ghost, dressed in his sleepwear which was a sweater and old sleeping shorts he used to wear back in secondary school. Ghost was wearing a large hoodie, some sweatpants and the mandatory balaclava. They were both sitting in front of two windows next to each other, the wooden blinds pushed open and moonlight illuminating them both. The cooling air seeps into the room, and soap breathes in deeply. He glances down towards his journal, a finger stuck between the pages, the other hand twirling the pen around. It’s quiet.

His journal is far from neat, pages sticking out waywardly and the leather ripping off from one side of the cover. Soap resists the urge to pick at it. It’s filled with notes from missions, sketches of his loved ones. Mostly sceneries of places he’s stationed at.

He looks up at Ghost staring out of the window. Soap turns his head back out the window, wondering what Ghost was specifically looking at, what he was thinking at the moment, whether he would scold soap if he said he wanted to slip out to buy some supper because he’s hungry. Soap flips back open his journal, and can feel ghost attuned to his actions, even if he wasn’t currently looking at him. Soap likes him for that. He pays attention. Soap wants to return the favour. He wants to know his ins and outs, wants to pay attention. He’s always been an attention-seeking child, which meant that most adults and classmates would ignore him. Endless nights of young dumb teenage John Mactavish sobbing into his pillow about insecurities, his future and the people around him. The things he used to do for attention, each one more drastic than the last. He can’t count the amount of times his Ma had to bail him out, the amount of stress he caused her, his dear Ma.

He likes the natural attention the army brings him, big brute having the green light to legally kill people for a living. It was liberating for a while, but eventually that too died out. At the not-so ripe age of 30-whatever, Soap learns to savour the portions of attention and praise he’s delivered, especially when he joined 141. Maybe in another universe he would be just a little easier to love, little easier to endure. It’s not something he really dwells on nowadays (lie), but he would have preferred somebody be actually interested, not just for the sake of taming him.

Soap looks back on the half-filled page of his journal, clicking open his ballpoint pen, and starts to sketch Ghost. He’s a pretty good subject, not really needing to focus a lot on anatomy since most of his face is covered anyways. He’s familiar with the strokes. He eventually gets lost in it, thoughts fading away and autopilot coming to take over the wheel, the skktch of pen on paper is repetitive and soothing to his ears. It’s the only sound between them now, the crickets and wind opting to stay out of their safe little bubble.

So when Soap looks back up again and sees Ghost looking back, he physically bristles. They lock into a strange sort of stare-off, Ghost’s eyes upturned slightly in a way Johnny knows that he found it amusing. They look at each other for about a solid ten seconds, enough time for him to memorise his blond eyelashes and his eye shape, clocking in internally on how to draw him even better, tempted to just look down and sketch them as fast as possible, so he wouldn’t forget. Ever.

“…Wha’?” Johnny’s fine with breaking first.

“You’re looking at me.”

“Astute observation, LT. Is it still night time?”

“Wha ‘ave you got for us?”

Soap covers his journal in a sort of bashful kind of way, feeling like a schoolgirl covering her diary.

“Didn’t know you got yourself a little diary.”

Soap tsks. “It’s a journal.”

“Right.” An indignant huff.

“Am’ no lying!” Soap feels heat rush to his cheeks, strangely defensive of his pride in front of his lieutenant.

“Never said you were. Drawin’ me now?” His manc accent was suddenly getting very annoying. Ghost’s eyes skirt down to his hands covering the pages, and suddenly Johnny is very aware of the skin wrapped around the muscles of his hands, down to the bone. He feels the dirt under his fingernails, the ink smudged against his fingertips and palm. He wants to turn his hands in and out, inspecting them himself to see if they’re worthy of being looked at by Ghost. Acutely aware of the sheer pressure, the weight of ghost’s attention on him, his skin gets all prickly and he wants to hide.

Is he doing that on purpose?

“Yer a good subject, never movin like a statue. It’s good for practicing my still life.” Soap’s ring finger twitches, and he knows he’s been given away.

Ghost’s eyes glint in the moonlight. His eyes are almond shaped, bigger than most. His pupils are dilated, dirt brown, like the whisky he likes to choke down. His eyelashes are long, so blonde they’re almost white. they shine so brightly soap wants to reach over and close them, just to calm his poor heart a bit. Soap wants to jab his pen into his eye. Soap knows how many strokes it takes to draw Simon’s eyes.

“…. At least get my good side, Sargent.”

“Full o’ shite, you.” he chuckles, the spell breaking as soap rests his knee up on the table and placing his journal against it. It would be a little harder to sketch ghost now, but it’ll be a cold day in hell if Ghost ever sees what he does with his journal. (Would probably be more inclined to call it a diary, old fuck.) Although, he can’t help but admit that it’s a beautiful night in this particular day. It doesn’t count that Ghost and Soap’s legs are in between each other’s under the table, just short of touching each other. It doesn’t count that Johnny pointedly ignores the way that Ghost is still looking at him from the corner of his eye. It doesn’t count that Simon allows Johnny to draw him out when he would break the neck of anyone even trying to look into his eyes too deeply.

It doesn’t count that here, in their little fake apartment with one bed, sniper gun concealed under the window, two toothbrushes side by side in a cup in the bathroom, that they allow themselves to be Simon and Johnny.

They fall back into comfortable silence, Johnny 2 hours and 30 minutes over his allotted time to sleep.

Ghost’s pov