Work Text:
Soap would like to say that most his days are normal. Only occasionally punctuated by days of such insanity that his real life feels like nothing more than a pipe-dream. It’s the reality of short-term deployment. Their jobs are insanity, that’s the thrill of it, it’s why Soap loves it.
But the reality of things is, when they get home, when they’re safe , life is almost unerringly mundane. Some insane training exercises but nothing Soap hasn’t been suffering for the last decade. It’s normal.
But Ghost is anything but normal.
“What is that?”
Soap genuinely isn’t sure what he’s seeing. Ghost, for sure. That is definitely Ghost. Tall, masked and glaring down at Soap in a way that can be construed in any number of ways.
And, apparently, a Wheelson.
“I’d hope you know what it is,” Ghost says, patting the Wheelson on the head. “He’s important to our tactical success.”
“I know what it is, you idiot. I’m asking why the fuck you’ve brought it into a contained area and-” Soap can’t even finish. The thing has a fucking dickie bow on, bright pink and sparkly with a fucking collar tag dangling down from it.
“O-Son?”
“It’s his name,” Ghost deadpans. “Get it? Wheel Son? Because the wheel is an O-”
“Yes, yes, I get it,” Soap says, flailing his arms about. He wants to pinch himself. Anything to convince himself that this isn’t real. “Why?”
“I like him,” Ghost says with a shrug, trailing over to the small kitchenette. The Wheelson follows him closely, turret turning in some bizarre reflection of puppy eyes when Ghost gets the chocolate digestives out of the cupboard.
“How- what is happening?” Soap shouts. Is he losing his fucking mind? “It can’t eat! Who’s even controlling it?”
“I am,” Ghost says, flicking the kettle on and giving the Wheelson another pat on the head. There is a prolonged minute of silence as Ghost gets the tea bag, pours the water in and waits for it to steep. The psychopath takes it black, like no sane human being ever, and takes out the tea bag too early so he doesn’t make some monstrosity of a drink. And yet Soap can’t even bully him for it because he’s too busy staring at the fucking pet on wheels that’s roaming around like a giddy puppy.
“You’re joking,” Soap hisses. “You cannae be controlling it. You don’t even have a controller!”
Ghost’s mask crinkles, a smile or a frown, Soap doesn’t know. But at this point, he’s too afraid to ask. “I’ve got my ways.”
“That’s not an explanation!” Soap says, borderline hysterical now. “Where the fuck did you even get a Wheelson?”
Ghost shrugs. “I have my ways.”
“Stop saying you have your ways!” Soap screams. “No, fuck this! I’m just- I’m leaving. Absolutely not. Fuckin’ eejit.”
🙂
“Come on, boy, you’ve got to clear the way for us,” Ghost whispers, patting Wheelson’s back and pushing him forwards. “There’s a good boy.”
Bullets are flying, with Price, Gaz, Soap and Ghost ducked behind a crumbled wall. The Wheelson curls up by Ghost’s side. Soap still doesn’t understand what the fuck is going on, but he’s getting no help from the others. Gaz had just joined Ghost in patting the Wheelson’s head and Price gave it a fatherly smile as they brought it out of its room (its room, it has a fucking room).
The Wheelson rolls out timidly and turns around the corner, then tries to reverse around the corner but there seems to be some error somewhere. Wheelson’s turret spins around and then he starts rolling backwards right towards Ghost and Soap.
“What the fuck are you doing!” Soap screams over the din. “Go the other fucking way!”
“Don’t shout at him,” Ghost chastises calmly, even as the Wheelson attempts to run him over. He just puts a steady hand on the Wheelson’s back and urges it forward again.
“Go on, boy, that way. Towards the enemy, that’s it.” The Wheelson finally seems to understand what direction it’s going in and barrages towards the enemies, gun blazing. Does it look happy? It seems happy. It doesn’t have a face, and yet it seems to be joyfully spinning around as the enemies fall around him.
“There we go,” Ghost announces. “What a good boy.”
Soap just rolls his eyes and follows their new pet, gun blazing. The others tag along, Ghost sneaking up beside the Wheelson (which definitely puts him in harm’s way) and encourages it to shoot down wave upon wave.
“We’re surrounded!” Soap shouts, popping off another few shots.
“We’ll be fine. Ghost has this sorted,” Price says, taking a few more shots himself. “We’re getting out of this alive.”
For a few death-defying minutes, it’s carnage. They must wrack up a few dozen kills each, with the Wheelson bulldozing ahead to thin out the horde, Ghost by his side.
It goes to shit quickly.
Some fucker on the other side has the wherewithal to pick up an RPG and send it flying straight towards the Wheelson. There’s a moment of prolonged silence as the rocket whistles through the air. Then…
“No!” Ghost screams, as the Wheelson takes on a coating of flames, spinning around with a mechanical screech.
Ghost pats him down desperately before hauling him off the fucking ground, muscles straining to lift what probably weighs at least half a tonne, if not more. “THIS IS MY SON,” Ghost screeches, turning Wheelson away from the enemy. “How fucking dare you.”
Oh, if looks could kill.
Or guns, apparently, when Ghost gently puts the Wheelson down and takes out a Lachmann from fucking nowhere and starts methodically taking down each enemy one by one with no resistance, a timid-looking Wheelson rolling beside him.
“You- no. Fuck this. I- I can’t. I fucking can’t anymore,” Soap yells.
“Complain about it when we get out of here,” Price says, face deadly serious, like Ghost didn’t fucking protect a military-grade mini-tank like it was his fucking dog.
“With all due respect, sir-”
“That’s enough from you, Sergeant. Get to your positions, we have to get out of here.”
🙂
The Wheelson is everywhere from then on. And Soap means everywhere. To the extent that he’s seen Ghost pissing with the fucking Wheelson at his side, like an over-eager puppy with attachment issues. Soap had to try and piss with the Wheelson just fucking staring at him. Through him. At him? How the fuck does something without a face look at him like that.
Yet the others don’t seem to care at all.
Price has somehow signed off on this shit, mostly because it seems like he has his own rapport with the goddamn thing. And the thing seems to like him back.
But there’s one thing everyone on base knows to keep on Price’s good side. That hat is his life. He takes it off once in a blue moon. Usually on the missions he fucking has to, or when it gets so hot he genuinely gets light-headed. That hat lives on his head, rotting, mould-ridden and wonky. It hasn’t been washed in twenty years, at least.
And it’s on the Wheelson’s head.
“Ah Jesus Christ,” Soap sighs as the Wheelson rounds the corner (alone, who the fuck let it go unsupervised? Who the fuck is controlling it?). “How the hell did you get that then?”
Price’s hat has been perched on the top of the Wheelson’s turret, sunken and stinking to high heaven.
“Please don’t say you’ve grown hands,” Soap whispers, getting down on his knees to inspect the hat, praying to high heaven that he won’t get run over by this monstrosity of a machine. “I will die if you’ve grown hands. Or a mouth. So please don’t speak either.”
Silence ensues, which is…comforting, actually, if useless. “Look, I’m going to guess you didn’t grow hands. Which means someone stole Price’s hat, right? Gaz? I bet it was Gaz.”
“Soap, what are you doing?” Ghost rounds the corner, hands in his pockets, cool as a cucumber. He doesn’t seem worried about the fact that he somehow managed to lose a possibly multi-million pound machine. A fucking piece of equipment that may weigh over a tonne and can only roll so fast. Soap is still too scared to pick it up and see if he even can. He doesn’t want to start that competition with Ghost.
“Thought if you can talk to the thing, then I can talk to it too. It’s gained a hat.”
Ghost looks down, eyes impassive from behind the mask. “It seems so.”
“Price is going to kill you,” Soap warns.
“And I’m not the one who took his hat.”
“Gaz?”
“Gaz.”
“Are we going to do anything about it?” Soap asks.
“What do you think, Wheelson?” Ghost asks, getting down on his knees and looking the Wheelson in its…eyes? Eyes. Probably eyes. Terrifying, googly, blank eyes.
“It cannae speak. Whatcha trying to speak to it for?”
Ghost just looks up at him blankly, raises a single eyebrow, and then turns back to Wheelson without an answer. Which, fair. Hypocrisy is a bitch.
“Come on, you want to give Price’s hat back?” Ghost coaxes. The Wheelson manages a spin that somehow manages to convey an affirmation and goes trundling down the corridor, denting corridors every time it gets its course even slightly wrong.
“Oh come on! ” Soap shouts, running after them. Of course, as soon as they get to Price’s office, Soap gets blamed for the whole thing and the Wheelson just spins his turret in glee and trundles back out, Ghost at his heels (wheels? (w)heels?)
🙂
Missions go to shit all the time. That’s to be expected with the 141. They’re thrown into the missions no one else will be sent in, where the intel is thin and the chances of survival are negligible for anyone that isn’t as insane as their team.
But that doesn’t mean they’re not infallible.
“Ghost? I’m surrounded.”
There’s a hiss that might be swearing, might just be Ghost’s mic fucking up, but Soap likes to think of it as the former. “How many exits?”
“Two,” Soap says. “I’m in the basement. There’s stairs up and a window I can squeeze through in a pinch. House is completely surrounded. Cannae get out without finding some sort of resistance.”
Ghost hums and Soap knows he’s fucked. Ghost can act as relaxed as he’d like but he’s the kind of man to give you an answer or nothing. He’s a leader for a reason. He can think on his toes. But they both know that there’s no getting out of this one.
“Fuck,” Soap hisses. He’s going out fighting at least. Fuck sitting here, waiting for a bullet through his head. If he’s going down, they’re going down with him.
Then, “Incoming.”
“What?”
Soap can practically hear Ghost’s smile as he says, “You’ve got a friend on the way. Don’t worry, we’re all getting out of this.”
“What the fuck are you on about?”
“You’ll see.”
Ah, back to the cryptic bullshit.
Before Soap can interrogate further, the sound of a gunfight breaks out outside. Reinforcements? Oh fuck, if Price has shown up, Soap is at genuine threat of crying, and then probably at threat of dying for crying in front of his Captain.
Soap keeps his gun out and ready, listening to the screams of those outside. God, a fucking team must be on its way for the amount of bullets being fired. How did they know it had gone so wrong?
And then, finally, the door slams open and Soap is faced with his saviour.
“The Wheelson?” Soap shouts, heart plummeting.
“My wheel son just saved your life. Now come on, we’re getting out of here.”
The Wheelson beeps and Soap slowly trails up the stairs and looks down at the blood-flecked machine. “Well then,” Soap says, shifting on his feet. “Thanks for that. Let’s go?”
The Wheelson beeps again before reversing, slamming into at least five walls on the way before it trundles over a veritable field of corpses. Soap literally had no chance. Not against this many people. And yet, this… thing saved him.
“You and Wheelie getting on?” Ghost says over the comms. He’s sitting somewhere on a roof on overwatch, across the city and completely useless once everything went down. Good for him.
“I’m not calling him that.”
“What about Willie?”
Soap almost trips over his own feet. “Oh fuck you.”
“I quite like it. I might call him Willie from now on,” Ghost says.
“Don’t you dare.”
Ghost just laughs. He sounds like he’s moving, which is promising. Their LZ is somewhere between the both of them, hopefully they can find each other before they have to fight their way out of here. Then again, with the Wheelson here…
Soap practically stomps all the way to the LZ, where Ghost is waiting on the balcony of a half-rubbled building. “Looks like we’re clear,” he says, jumping down. “How are you and Willie doing?”
“I’m going to kill you, sir.”
Ghost just smiles, or Soap thinks he does, and then goes over to greet Wheelson in the most obnoxious way possible. “Time until extraction?” Soap asks, to try and get them back on track somehow.
“They’re only a few clicks out. Willie will protect us, won’t he?”
The Wheelson does what can only be an approximation of a nod. Soap can’t even begin to explain how he does it.
“Great.”
Soap wants to kill him. Or the Wheelson. Or himself. Any of the above. This? This is just…
No. Soap has to admit, the Wheelson saved his life. Soap doesn’t even know how it got here. But Soap is alive because of it and he can’t discount it. He looks over at the Wheelson, who’s now running circles around Ghost like an excited puppy. It’s cute. He’s got to at least concede that. And Ghost seems happy. The sort of happy that only happens when they’re alone, when Soap will nuzzle just the right place on Ghost’s neck and he’ll do that broken sort of laugh and push Soap away.
Soap can’t fault him for that.
Maybe, just maybe, this Wheelson thing has something going for it.
🙂
Soap lies in Ghost’s arms on their incredibly uncomfortable single, army mattress. But Soap doesn’t mind. He’s comfortable, pillowed on Ghost’s huge chest as he flips through his phone on autopilot.
“I wanted to talk about something,” Ghost says, pulling Soap closer. Sometimes Soap forgets how fucking huge this guy is. He can carry double Soap’s weight with ease, and can drag him around like it's nothing (Soap loves it, he can’t lie).
“Sure, what is it?” Soap asks, turning so he’s balanced on his front, pressing a quick kiss to Ghost’s peck before sending a smile his way. Ghost takes some coaxing to talk about the serious shit sometimes, but he’s getting better at it. Soap is too, in all honesty. None of them are used to it, but they know they have to. There’s too many pitfalls and landmines in their histories not to.
“It’s about Wheelie.”
Or, Ghost could be absolutely fucking with him. Soap humours him anyway, though he’s sure his face says something a lot less kind than his words. “What is it?”
“Look, upkeep of Wheelsons are high and I just figured, since we’re partners, that we sort of count as his parents, right? So, really, you should be helping with the child support.”
“Ghost,” Soap says, the urge to kill him rising. “What the fuck are you on about?”
“I’m just saying. Thought we were in this together, alright?”
Soap shoves his way up Ghost’s body, purposefully kneeing him in the hip as punishment before straddling his waist and looking down at him with the most condescending look he can possibly muster. “Ghost, I’m only going to say this once. I am not paying child support for a multi-million pound killing machine that you decided to adopt. Against my will, I might add. Technically, Price should be paying child support. He’s the one that’s aiding and abetting you.”
“That would presume it’s illegal.”
Soap rolls his eyes, leans down and rolls Ghost’s mask up. “You,” he says, pressing a quick kiss to his lips, “are awful.”
Ghost just smiles wide, revealing the missing canine that got punched out before Soap even knew him. Ghost’s still too scared to go to the dentist and get it fixed.
“Do you know how annoying you are?” Soap asks, though he’s grinning too. He doesn’t even care how absurd his man is, not when he gets to have this. To lean down and kiss him properly, to forget all the darkness and danger of their other life. To have this. Them. And their goddamn pet Wheelson.
“I’m not giving you money,” Soap mumbles between kisses. “Just by the way.”
🙂
In the end, Ghost does have to return his Wheelson to whoever he got it from. But for those few months, Ghost was happy. And Soap was happy that Ghost was happy. And when they finally have to wave their goodbyes, Soap takes Ghost by the hand, smiles up at him and says, “Maybe next time we should just get a dog.”
THE END
