Chapter Text
It starts during a relatively easy mission.
Ghost is on overwatch, keeping Soap safe through his scope as he infiltrates a low security warehouse.
The scent suppression patches at Ghost’s neck itch something terrible, trapping sweat and dust under his ghillie suite and irritating his scent glands. It sets his teeth on edge but Ghost just licks over his canines and breathes through the discomfort, folding it away into a corner of his mind where everything that isn’t Soap, his scope, or the bloody warehouse currently resides. He breathes in deep and lets numbness settle over his body as he lays on his stomach, but his mind stays sharp as he peers through the scope.
The patches are probably overkill for Ghost this far away from the warehouse that’s already shit in the middle of nowhere. No one is going to be smelling alpha out here. Not to mention that the 141 mandated general suppressants already cut all their scents down noticeably. Soap, on the other hand, is the one who did actually need the patches for this mission, infiltrating as he was.
He’d sported patches on all his scent glands as they’d readied themselves back at their safehouse, gearing up and checking comms. There’d been the obvious ones at Soap’s neck and wrists, but Ghost knows that there’s patches on his inner thighs too, hidden under his fatigues and gun holsters.
And it’d been…strange to notice as Soap’s scent grew fainter and fainter until it'd disappeared entirely, until Ghost could no longer pick up that distinctly omegan scent. Warmth and spice, rich like a good cuppa, but with overpowering overtones of sweet, musky thistle that Gaz never let Soap live down, considering it was Scotland’s national plant.
Price had been quick to pick up on how well Ghost and Soap worked together after the clusterfuck that was Las Almas and he'd made it his mission to team them up as much as possible since then. He’d been right too, Ghost and Soap worked perfectly together, like a well-oiled machine, despite any of Ghost’s earlier reservations. Now, Soap’s presence has become something of a given, and while Ghost never lets his guard down on any mission, having Soap at his back had become an added security he’d come to count on.
But unlike Soap’s presence, Ghost hadn’t realized just how used to Soap’s scent he’d become.
It wasn’t something he’d actively registered, the smell of thistle somehow incorporating itself as an unobtrusive part of Ghost's background, only noticeable once it was gone. It was like being scent-blind to your own home and only registering it after you'd been away too long.
And fuck was Ghost noticing the lack of smell now.
His suppression patches itch, his teeth buzz, and Ghost is running his tongue over them so hard a sharp canine digs rough into the soft flesh.
But once again, Ghost pushes those thoughts—as well as the extra layer of irritation that comes with being unable to focus as he usually does—away. He breathes and centers back on the guard he’s been tailing as he makes his rounds through the building. Ghost follows him as the man lazily sweeps through a room before he leaves the way he came.
It’s been a moment since Ghost has had sight of Soap, deep in the bowels of the warehouse as he is, but Ghost isn’t all that worried. They’d been authorized to use deadly force and Soap had been giving him short updates as he moved quietly through the building dropping guards. If all was still going well, Soap was due in the second-floor room the guard had left any minute now.
After another few moments with no update, Ghost checks-in.
“How copy, Sergeant?” Ghost asks through his throat mic.
It takes a moment for Soap to respond.
“Coming up to the second floor,” Soap says. Not a moment later he pops up in the room and gives Ghost a jaunty wave through the window, but like the good soldier he is, he doesn’t take his eyes off the room as he scans for threats. “And now that I got a big strong alpha watching my back again, I feel safer already,” he quips.
Ghost doesn’t roll his eyes only because it would take his sight off Soap, and he’s better trained than that, but he does give a quiet snort.
Soap could be as hot-headed as any young alpha, and he of all people gave all of two shits about stereotypical dynamic roles. He deferred to Ghost because of his ability first and foremost and his rank as Lieutenant second, not because Ghost was an alpha. Same way he deferred to Price as their Captain, even if some idiots found it a hardship because he was a beta.
“Be advised,” Ghost says as he sweeps his gun back a room over, to where the guard from earlier had just finished his round again, “guard is looping back to the room.”
“Copy, Lt.”
Soap hides behind a storage shelf as the guard enters the room. Ghost watches Soap pounce on the man when he walks by, wrapping an arm around his throat and choking the life out of him.
Soap is always a beauty to watch in takedown, a ball of barely controlled energy let out like steam from a boiling kettle in a—more or less—controlled burst of violence.
Not that Ghost would ever let him know that. Instead, all he says is, “Solid takedown.”
“Learned from the best, Lt,” Soap replies jovially, as he carefully lowers the body to the floor.
“You have another guard in the next room down the corridor. He’s stationary but you’ll have to be quiet about it, there’s one guard left a corridor away that’s still within hearing distance.”
“Rog.”
Soap makes his way down a long corridor with conveniently spaced windows that wraps around that entire side of the warehouse. Only two more guards and three more rooms before he made it to the computer that housed the intelligence they were after.
The guard leans on his elbows over a desk, a handgun within reach, as he idly scrolls through his phone. Soap creeps through the doorway, a knife in hand, and slowly stalks towards him.
It’s at the last possible second that the guard turns around.
Soap is as stealthy as they come when he wanted to be, and Ghost has half a mind to wonder what’d given him away. A creaking floorboard? A rustle of cloth? Or had the guard just chosen that exact moment to randomly turn? The other half of his mind is occupied training his scope on the bastard as he throws a wild punch at Soap.
These guys aren’t trained, Ghost has every confidence in Soap’s ability to subdue him, and he doesn’t want to give away Soap’s position unless he absolutely has to. A shattered window would definitely alert the final guard.
Ghost watches as Soap easily dodges the punch. The guard reaches for his gun but doesn’t have time to actually do anything with it because Soap rams his knife up through the bottom of his jaw in one smooth movement.
And that would have been that—a still silent enough takedown—if not for the fact that the momentum of Soap’s knife tips the guard backwards and onto the desk which then breaks into pieces under his weight. As an added shitty bonus, the gun still in the guard’s hand also goes off.
“Fucking shite,” Soap curses. “Someone will have heard that.”
Ghost is already sweeping the scope to the next room where, through another conveniently large window, he can see the last guard getting his semi-automatic ready as he makes his way across the room.
A semi-automatic is a hell of a lot more formidable than the handgun the last guard had had on him, and while Ghost trusts Soap’s abilities, there’s no need to put him in senseless danger. He has a perfect line of sight on the fucker, and Soap’s position was already compromised.
Ghost breathes and pulls the trigger on the exhale. The window shatters in a twinkling explosion of glass and the guard goes down in a spray of blood. Ghost smoothly pulls back the rifle bolt in the time it takes the body to hit the ground.
“That lovely tinkle of glass your doing Lt, or should I be getting ready for another fight with trigger happy arseholes?” Soap asks.
Ghost sweeps back to him and sees that Soap is crouched to the side of the doorway. His own gun is up and ready, waiting for confirmation before he moves away from cover.
The corner of Ghost’s mouth quirks up at Soap’s question.
“Left you a gift, Johnny,” Ghost answers.
“Aye?” Soap says and Ghost can about hear his grin. “I’m quakin’ in excitement, Lt.”
Soap quickly makes his way to the next room. He leaves his mic on so Ghost can hear the creaking of the door open and the soft rustle of his tac gear as Soap walks over to the body.
A sharp intake of breath and then a low whistle.
Ghost had taken a perfect headshot, and even from a distance Ghost can tell the guard’s face is nothing much but a splatter of blood and brains on the floor.
“Careful, Lt,” Soap rumbles, accent noticeably thicker, “bloody gifts like these, might think yer courtin’ me proper. The old way at least.”
A pause, it drags too long, the opportunity for the witty comeback that Ghost should be inserting into the conversation rapidly dwindling away.
Because what Ghost is suddenly realizing as he runs his tongue over his teeth and his canines catch over the sore spot they’d left earlier—
Is that, even if Soap is joking, he really isn’t wrong.
Bloody courting gifts like these were the fashion back in the days when they were all a little more animalistic than current society liked to remember. Back when an alpha showed that he could protect and provide by turning up with something bloody hanging from their teeth. Back when an omega marked themselves in the red of that bloody kill and then ran.
Ghost’s jaw twitches, a curious tingle zips down his fangs. He presses the sore spot on his tongue hard enough that he tastes blood.
Something in his brain rewires and clicks into place.
Ghost breathes out, feels a rumble in his chest, like something that’d long slept slowly rising and shaking off the last dregs of its dreams.
“Jo—” he starts, and feels just a tinge of alpha, coating his words.
“Shit,” Soap spits. Through comms, Ghost can just faintly hear the dead guards’ radio crackling to life.
“Status?” Ghost questions. His voice is back to its usual gravel, the mission and Soap’s safety preceding anything else.
“I think he radioed in for backup before you got to him Lt, a whole squad of guards is about to be dropped off,” Soap responds from where he’s kneeled by the body, radio in hand. “We got about ten minutes before they get here.”
“Computer should be in the room up ahead,” Ghost says. “You have five minutes to gather the intel and then you haul ass Sergeant, regardless of whether you find anything or not.”
“Rog, Lt.”
***
Soap gets out safe, though he cuts it closer than Ghost is comfortable with. Such is their job, though mostly, such is Johnny.
They trek back to their safehouse, radio in for ex-fil, and spend the hours long wait alternating watches by the window with guns at the ready. The warehouse operation had clearly been alerted to their presence and their safehouse is still close enough to enemy territory to warrant caution.
But the time passes without incident, even if Ghost is a bit more restless than usual.
He chalks it up to the fact that Soap had only narrowly avoided being caught as he’d escaped the warehouse, and the way that it had layered on an almost anticipative tension on Ghost’s trigger finger as he’d sighted enemy heads in his scope.
He’d been more than fucking ready to dole out death from afar in grizzly burst of red if any of their enemies caught so much as a glimpse of Soap.
In fact, he’d been...somewhat eager.
But Soap had made it out unscathed, and while that should have calmed the tension pulling tight at his shoulders, it’d instead never really left. And going back to their sterile safehouse that smelled of nothing—not a hint of familiar thistle—was only adding onto Ghost’s unease, making his skin crawl strangely and his teeth itch.
But Ghost is nothing if not a professional and soon enough a military jeep is tearing its way over the uneven terrain towards them.
A car and helo ride later they’re back on base. Soap hands over the flash drive to Price, they give their after-action report, and he and Soap go their separate ways to their respective barracks.
Ghost is tired enough to not bother with a shower, just quickly strips off his gear, looking forward to finally being able to collapse onto his bed. Maybe he’ll be able to sleep off that edginess that still hasn’t really left him. Finally unsticking the damn suppression patches makes Ghost shiver in relief, but it also brings back to mind what Johnny had said earlier.
Careful, Lt, bloody gifts like these, might think yer courtin’ me proper. The old way at least.
Ghost’s teeth itch.
But it’s not like Johnny had meant it.
Not for Ghost at least.
Ghost has heard what some of the recruits whisper about him on base, especially when he’d started going on more and more missions alone with Soap. That he’s a frigid alpha hiding under a skull mask, someone that’s never shown interest in anybody, and who could work alongside Johnny—one of the few omegas in the military, and one of only four in the 141—without batting an eye.
Frigid is far from what Ghost’s alpha is.
He doesn’t know if it was his shit childhood with his shit alpha of a father, or his torture under Roba, or the murder of his family and the absolute bloodbath he’d unleashed afterwards, but Ghost has always known that his alpha is more animal than human.
He knows he’s not normal, knows his alpha craves chase and violence and biting someone into bloody fucking submission. He also knows that in this day and age, society at large would think of Ghost and his alpha as nothing more than a slavering beast.
And it’s fine, in the same way that no omega in their right mind would ever look at Ghost, Ghost has never had an interest in any omega either. What could he possibly offer a soft, dainty, little omega? And conversely what the hell could a soft, dainty, little omega possibly offer him?
So, Ghost has ignored his dynamic for most of his life, buried it deep under military grade suppressants and only succumbed to absolutely medically necessary ruts in the privacy of his own rooms.
Ghost doesn’t give a shit what the rest of the base thinks of him or his disinterest in finding an omega and he knows that Soap is the same. Not that Ghost and Soap have ever sat down to have a conversation about their dynamics of all things, but Soap is everything society says an omega shouldn’t be.
He’s built his body into something thick and strong and there’s always that manic spark in his eyes as he guns down hostiles or blows them into pieces. Soap is not soft, not in personality, not in body, and he’d about shoot anybody who so much as hinted he needed protection because he happened to slick instead of pop a knot. He’s more interested in his military career than he would ever be in finding a mate and any person who says differently, alpha or otherwise, usually finds themselves face down in the dirt.
Ghost likes to think that their similar dismissal of dynamics is part of the reason that they work so well together, and a large part of the reason why the banter they’d indulged in in Las Almas had carried on into every other mission they’d been assigned to.
It’s why that banter always pushes into the borders of outright flirtation. Because they both know it would never lead to anything.
So, what’d happened over comms with Johnny was nothing more than an extension of that.
Soap was joking, as always.
Ghost runs his tongue over his fangs one last time, sore spot twinging, and falls into a dreamless sleep.
***
It’s late and Ghost is filling out a backlog of paperwork in his room when somebody knocks on his door.
Ghost gets up and picks up his faded balaclava where he’d thrown it on the bed after dinner. He pulls it on and glances at the clock on the nightstand. It’s late, later than Price would come get him if it wasn’t important. He wonders what emergency the old man needs him for now.
He opens the door, fully expecting to meet mutton chops and a bell hat, and there’s a split-second where a face isn’t at the height he expects it to be, but then his eyes are drawn lower and—
It’s not Price, it’s Soap, and he’s dressed down, in joggers and a tank.
Soap’s scent prickles a little stronger in Ghost’s nose than usual. It might be because Ghost had gone all of yesterday without being able to smell it or, more likely, it has to do with the sweat that dots Soap’s temple, a fine sheen of it glistening over his shoulders and collected at the dip of his collarbone. It darkens the white cloth of his tank at the valley where his pecs meet, more of it speckling the thin material translucent where it sticks to the outline of his abs.
Soap must have just finished at the gym; it was around the time he—and usually Ghost—liked to haunt it.
Ghost has to resist the urge to paw at his nose, and settles instead for crinkling it discreetly, hoping that the mask doesn’t make the movement too obvious.
“Sergeant?” Ghost questions.
“Sorry for the stink, Lt,” Soap says as he fans out his top, more of his scent wafts into Ghost’s room. Clearly Ghost hadn’t been discreet enough. “Just finished at the gym and I wanted to drop this off before it got too much later.”
Ghost raises a brow. Soap just grins.
“May I come in?”
Ghost opens the door wider and gestures for Soap to enter.
For all that he’s used to having Soap around, this will be the first time the Sergeant has been in his room. They hung out outside of missions—well as near Ghost ever got to “hanging out,” which really meant hovering in the near vicinity as Soap either talked his or somebody else's ear off. But that had always been at the mess, or the gym, or on the rare day off in the rec room with the rest of the 141. They worked and trained together plenty alone, but having Soap, here in his room, with his scent slowly filling the small space—
It rankles something in the back of Ghost’s brain.
Ghost shakes it off and walks over to lean back against his desk. He fully expects for Soap to keep standing as the only other seat in the room is the one at his desk right beside him. But Soap just walks in and drops heavy at the end of his bed. He makes a show of bouncing a few times.
“Helluva a lot better than the one I got, Lt,” Soap jokes.
“Perks of being a Lieutenant,” Ghost replies dryly, even though they both know damn well that every soldier got the exact same military cot, it didn’t matter what rank. Well, unless you were Price. Probably. Old man needed his back support.
The silence stretches.
“Well, Sergeant?” Ghost finally asks.
Soap gets up and sticks a hand in his pocket. When he pulls it out, he’s grabbing onto a sheathed, black, tactical knife.
He walks the short distance over to Ghost, smiles with all his teeth, blue eyes glinting and speaks.
“Gift for a gift, Lt. Ye left me that beauty in the warehouse, only holds fair I return the favor, aye?”
Ghost’s eyes go wide, flicking from the knife Soap balances on his palm, to that blinding smile that somehow, despite the muscles and the chin and eyebrow scars, always managed to convince those who first met Soap that he was just an overeager friendly dog of an omega. That is until he opened his mouth.
Ghost wraps a hand around the hilt of the knife, and it’s only as his finger brushes Soap’s palm that he realizes he’s not wearing gloves. Saliva floods his mouth, lightning zips through his canines. He can feel heat prickling at the back of his neck.
The alpha in his chest—which Ghost had apparently not done a good enough job of shoving back inside himself—rumbles in something that feels startlingly close to...satisfaction.
What the fuck?
Ghost grabs the knife and watches as Soap curls his hand into a fist and shoves it back into his pocket. Soap doesn’t wait for him to respond before he heads towards the door. He opens it and steps through.
“That’s all I wanted to drop off,” he says as he pauses in the hallway. He looks over his shoulder and his canines catch in the shitty hallway fluorescents, blue eyes so bright for a moment they seem to throw out a light of their own. “Have a good night, sir.”
Then he turns and leaves.
***
Ghost sits at his desk again, reports pushed haphazardly to the side and his new knife laying on the chipped veneer of the desk.
Soap had gifted him a knife.
This could—
It could technically—
No, it doesn't have to mean anything.
Ghost had never been interested in any of this shit, and even if he had been, it’s not like he’d ever have a head for courting.
The saccharine sweet ritual that alphas and omegas engaged in had never been for him. Alphas leaving gifts of safety and comfort for an omega, showing how attentive they could be in that way. Things like soft fabrics and blankets, food sometimes, to show they could provide. Omegas reciprocating with gifts an alpha could make use of, something to do with their field of work usually. Something to impress that they trusted in the alpha’s ability to protect and provide.
Even if Ghost had ever been interested, what was he supposed to gift an omega anyways, a gun? A fucking knife? Those were about the only two things that Ghost’s mind ever connected to safety and he sincerely doubted any sane omega would take them as a courting gift.
And yet...
Ghost had joked about gifting Soap a bloody, headless carcass and Soap had whistled low and said,
Careful Lt, might think your courtin’ me proper. The old way that is.
And then Soap had gifted him a knife.
A knife exactly like the ones Ghost favored when he killed hostiles in the shadows, nothing but the soft hiss of blood to break the quiet.
This feels...entirely too much like reciprocation for Ghost to ignore.
And if Ghost looks at it from a certain deranged angle, Ghost had gifted Soap safety, it just so happened that in their line of work safety meant a dead hostile.
Ghost picks the knife up, unsheathes it.
The blade is solid black, same as the hilt, and it’s sharpened to a wicked, wicked, edge.
There is no way Soap had just ordered this knife and handed it over to Ghost straight out of the package. No, Soap had taken this knife and whetted it over a finer and finer grit until the edge was sharp enough to tear through tissue paper, and burnished enough that it’s damn near a safety issue the way it catches the light of Ghost’s desk lamp.
He brings the knife closer, wanting to see if he can spot a brand name and it hits him.
The knife smells like Johnny.
Ghost is ripping his balaclava off without registering what he’s doing, bringing the knife to his nose, and huffing in a deep breath.
He wonders how long the knife must have sat in Soap’s pocket, because it didn’t just smell faintly of him, like any tool inevitably smells a bit of whoever uses it. No, this knife is saturated with Soap’s scent and the only reason Ghost hadn’t picked it up right away was because his room already smelled of Soap and because his balaclava had dulled the scent somewhat.
And then Ghost realizes he has the cool flat of the knife pressed against his cheek and is huffing at it like a fucking addict.
What the fuck?
Ghost is panting, the knife smells like Soap, his room smells like Soap, his blood is pumping fast and hot and straight to his cock.
He wonders what it would be like to have his nose right at the crook of Soap’s neck. To breathe in straight from the source of rich musk and thistle. His alpha growls violent aggression at the thought and it only adds to the fire in his gut.
Ghost’s canines ache.
He doesn’t just want to bite; he wants to clamp down and tear.
He’s palming at himself before he’s even realizing he’s doing it, the flat of his palm against the heat of his hard cock enough to make him groan.
What the actual fuck?
Ghost slams the knife back onto the desk and jerks his chair back fast enough that it scrapes something awful against the floor.
His alpha snarls at him as he does, that same slumbering beast that’d woken when Soap had joked about courtin’ him proper and that apparently had never gone the fuck back to sleep.
But this wasn’t just about Ghost and his now very awake alpha.
What the fuck was Johnny doing?
Ghost had thought Soap was like him, uninterested in current dynamic relationships, omega or otherwise.
But this—a deadly weapon in return for a bloody gift—this was something older.
This was something that Ghost had thought only he and a broken, primal part of his brain suffered from.
But Soap is fucked up too. He was part of the 141 for starters, and a less than squeaky clean moral compass was practically a requirement to work so well alongside someone like Ghost. To be able to laugh at Ghost’s shitty half-a-dog jokes while he ran half dead from blood loss through the streets of an unfamiliar town, to grin and keep a tally as he sniped down hostiles, to watch Ghost kill a man and rumble in his ear with a voice made of sin, “fucking beautiful, sir” and mean it.
So yes, Ghost had known that Soap was bloody insane, he'd just never thought that that manic glint in his eye when he engaged in violence would transfer over when he actually engaged with his dynamic.
Bloody fucking hell.
Did Soap want to court him?
And did Ghost want to court Soap in return?
Ghost’s alpha paces the cage of Ghost’s ribcage, talons clicking against the floor, muzzle pulled back in a soft growl. He’s eager to be let out, he wants to taste blood.
Ghost has the startling realization that although he’s never been interested in courting any omega, that when it comes to the question of wanting to court Soap, his answer is a very fucking emphatic yes.