STILL not the drabble you wanted but due to very mild demand for elaboration and bc I can't draw rn, here's a bit more of this and this stupid scenario where the two Ghosts swap universes….:
Price eyes him suspiciously across the desk, as if Soap is trying to con him out of the precious time in his day, "He's not himself?"
"He is himself, just different." Soap licks his lip, leaning forward on his knees, deathly serious. Tries to word it out: "He feels- rich."
"Right," Price squints, not getting it.
"He's, slower. More leisurely," Soap explains, "Talks different, barely slurs any words. Doesn't slouch, y'know where he bends his neck-"
Price raises a hand to stop him, not interested, "I think you've made him angry, Soap. You should talk it out-"
Soap feels indignance rise in him like bile, "Price, I haven't done this." For once he is not the anomaly in Ghost's life, hasn't fucked it up, he swears down, "He got up at 11AM this morning wearing a dress shirt, had a lamb in his bed."
Price gives a blank stare, pitying. Soap snaps shut his mouth, realizing how it sounds, "A literal baby sheep-"
"Don't have time for your lovers' quarrel, Soap," Price admonishes, stands as a sign for Soap to leave him and to leave him out of this. "Come see me when you've filled your reports."
"Christ, it's not-" Soap hisses, gets up too, itchy with the injustice. He snipes back, following Price to the door, "This is your problem too y'kno - your best man on the ground doesn't know his WPs from his wooly-pullys overnight-"
"If you're worried about him send him to medical," Price suggests, like that's possible, "Until I get a diagnosis from someone who's not fucking him on the regular, it's not my problem."
Soap throws up his arms, honestly a little hurt by the callousness; it wasn't fucking, they were making love. "That's very nice, captain - bleeding heart you are-"
Soap sighs so loud it rattles the windows, scrams.
The truth is that it was serious, Price's indifference notwithstanding - this sudden change in Ghost's behavior was unprecedented, groundbreaking. You couldn't make that man change his shampoo on pain of death.
Then suddenly over the course of one night he was walking around, play-acting as an old-timey gentleman, or something. Besides that he was being uncharacteristically affectionate with Soap, even clingy - wanting him around all the time, demanding he stay home from his work. Ghost was being cute, of all things, which unsettled Soap as much as it compelled him.
Soap stands in front of the door of his Lt's quarters, decides that this man was not the Ghost he knew — despite looking identical to him — but an impostor.
Soap has entered the room expecting him to be out, maybe roleplaying somewhere - finds him sitting at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, looking exactly like a house pet who's been left alone for too long.
Soap hesitates at the doorway, can't help but feel a pang of guilt having left behind this- oddly helpless version of Ghost to fend for his own. His now-bare face too smooth, too clean, his hair too tousled and soft-looking compared to the short, ragged spikes of its usual state - for him to fit in very well here on the base, with the rough.
"Yes, I'm back," Soap says, proceeding carefully. He toes off his shoes, pulling his body glove out of his belt, over his head. He eyes Ghost a little warily, who reddens along the edges at the show of skin, like he's never seen a man shirtless before.
He looks a bit more disheveled than when Soap left him that morning, shirt open to the chest and eyes drawn in like he's been nervous. Soap nudges an elbow at him vaguely, "and you're still..."
"Are you going to be more amenable now?" Ghost asks, blushing and petulant - which is unbelievable on countless levels.
"When was I-" Soap gusts out a breath, cuts his eyes to the ceiling, bloody hell. He changes course, before he loses his fucking mind at everyone on this wretched earth pointing fingers at HIM for this madness. Rubs his face, pushes a hand through his hair, "Were ye waiting here this whole time? Did you eat at least?"
Ghost shrugs haplessly, almost childish - it stuns Soap to stillness more than anything else from this upside-down day - "Where would I go, we have to figure this out."
Soap blinks himself out of it. He can't get mired in this... facade, this punishment - or whatever it is Ghost's doing to him.
"WE don't hafta figure anything out, Lt. You just gotta stop fucking with me," Soap grits, unwrapping and throwing his brace on the chair. He kneels properly while he's down there, scans under the desk, "Where's the lamb? (whistle) C'mere lass-"
"Why won't you look at me."
Soap nearly hits his head as he jerks up, "What?"
"Are you done with me?" Ghost's fist clenches in his periphery, then loosens with dejection, "You left earlier without even a glance back."
"No," Soap swallows, denial bright in his mind — he's not done with Ghost, Soap has barely even started with Ghost. Ghost is just, confusing him, which he's never done before.
Ghost's palm opens revealing nail marks, flesh otherwise unmarred and fair. He looks frustrated but also willingly laid open, vulnerable to attack — It's a look rarely seen on his Lt, who usually pushes his soft parts so deep within the castle there's no need to guard the gate. "Do you not want this anymore? Should I stop touching you?"
It lands like a brick in Soap's chest, and he's up on his feet quick, "No, Ghost," Soap chokes, scrambling for ground. "You're just, not what I'm used to."
"Why d'you call me that," Ghost grimaces, like Soap's the insane one, "feel like a spooked horse."
"It's your bloody name," Soap insists, widening eyes, like he's trying to jog Ghost's memory — as if it wasn't near-perfect already. As if the very fact of Ghost's callsign wasn't a foundational part of who he was. "The other you never complained-"
"There's no 'other' me," Ghost huffs, stepping close, leaning in like a dream. He reaches out to touch Soap's head, pushing at the crease between his brows with his thumb. He slides his fingers up to his widow's peak, through Soap's mohawk, caressing, "No 'other' you. We just need to get home."
Soap clears his throat, a false start, kind of overwhelmed. His eyes feel too big for his surely overheating face, as he looks up at this man so sure of what Soap means to him. A man who is definitely not his Ghost, but also is fundamentally, on an atomic level, still Ghost. "Where's home?"
Ghost grins then, boyish, slipping his hand down Soap's neck to rest on the side of his throat. "That's a fair point. Could be here," he shrugs, looking around appraisingly at the barren room like it's some grand mansion.
Soap loses breath for a half second, stutters it out through a rough pipe. He shakes Ghost off, a ridiculous man, nudges past him to get to the wardrobe, "You're off your head."
Ghost chuckles, following behind like a sheep to shepherd, "There you are, Johnny."
Soap later lies in bed, Ghost's face cradled in his chest, thinks it through properly: So what if Ghost has lost his mind — in the "wrong" way, in another way than the rest of them — and can't fight anymore? Was it so terrible? What if he were to just live, lay about in this springy cot all day, waiting for Soap to get home like some civilian spouse? Would Price allow it? Could Soap?
He is pulled into sleep like that, thoughts wild with possibilities, Ghost's breath warm and steady at his collar.
Ghost knows immediately that it is not his Soap.
It perhaps helps that he is the one transported, eyes falling open at the usual 5:58AM in an unusually soft bed, reaching over to turn off his alarm, only to find an ancient Webley and a rusty knife where his clock should be.
He has a valet here, a butler, and at least four maids he's seen - all of whom ran off terrified when they saw him walking about, casing the many floors of what is apparently his house. He thinks it may have been his mask which caused the distress, which he refused to take off to replace with his 'normal one', as his valet begged.
He ends up back at what seems to be his own office when Soap finds him.
"Sir?" and Ghost's spine warms only to quickly chill, both with familiarity and an unsettling difference. "May I enter?"
"Since when do you ask," Ghost says, turning slightly from observing a massive portrait of his teenage brother on the wall, who's sat demurely, obedient, in a three piece suit.
Soap looks lost at this remark, glancing at the corner, tapping a finger on the door jamb - the first visible sign that this Soap wasn't his, who never gets lost. "I heard talk downstairs saying you were not yourself."
Ghost nods him close and Soap shuts the door behind him, approaches with caution - though his voice has gone softer now, more knowing, "Is something wrong? What's with this mask? This.. jumper."
Ghost turns fully to take him in: Soap in all ways but the most critical — an easiness with which he'd handle Ghost in this situation, replaced with a more tentative hand, as if he was made of something fragile, brittle.
It is damning, this difference, but Ghost must admit he likes to see Johnny’s buzz all grown-out. "How am I usually?"
"Well you don't wear this, for one," Soap gestures pointedly at Ghost’s outfit, flapping the leather gloves in his hand - though even this strange version of him can't pass a chance to chat Ghost up, an impish grin filling half his face, "It's a good look though, sir."
Ghost tilts his head at the word, already done with this invisible line on the ground, "Who are you to me, here?"
Soap glances around, thinking Ghost means this room, and not here - another period in time. He looks suddenly uncertain of everything, eyes darting down and hands twisting leather, a rare look on him — Ghost would quite like it off his face.
"I'm, I. I don't know," Soap sighs, almost frustrated, glares a little at Ghost like he's not liking this game very much. "I like to think, that I'm not just your employee here, but something else."
"Employee? You work for me?"
Soap frowns then, really worried now, as if the skull mask wasn't flag enough, "…Yes- Do you feel ill, Simon?"
Ghost hums, "No. But i'm not your Simon. Come here,"
Ghost sits Soap down across him on the settee and explains what happened. How he woke up this morning more than a century before his own. How he knows nothing of this place, this house, his relationship to this Soap - though he'd guess that it wasn't too different to the one with his own.
"D'ye-" Soap starts, a little eager, "Are you with him? Then?"
Ghost takes a beat to process the fact that Soap believed his story far too readily, "Yes. We fuck, if that's what you're asking."
"Oh," Soap nods, growing gradually pink. And oh, Ghost could get used to that. "You just- fuck? Nothing more?"
"There's more. I fuck him, he fucks me- I suck him off, he rims me out," At Soap's aghast look Ghost kindly demonstrates, making a hole with his thumb and forefinger, "That's where you lick-"
"Jesus, Simon-" Soap cuts him off, head hanging in embarrassment and definitely something else. His hand is a claw as it drags up his own dampening nape, "That's enough."
Ghost drops his hand, is fascinated by the heated curl of this Soap's back, how his thin tanktop stretches as his breaths come quick and quicker still. "Never done it before, have you. You an innocent here, Johnny?"
"Not an innocent," Soap promises the floor, laughing a little ruefully, "certainly not more than the other you."
"Then you better show him a thing or two," Ghost says, keeping his voice gruff and casual while his eyes scan Soap for reaction like a hawk — rewarded swiftly with a full-body shudder, "..you're missing out."
Soap is near-panting when he looks up, eyes an electric blue, "Maybe ye show me what we're missing"
Ghost is taken aback, if he's honest, at the readiness of this Soap to come on to what, he imagines, is a very foreign version of his own lover. There was no vigilance to this Soap, no defenses.
"Maybe," Ghost says, watches as Soap immediately takes a knee, puts his hand around Ghost's ankle like he's been waiting on the word for centuries.
Ghost opens his legs for Soap to crouch between, presses the back of his foot against Soap's rear, feels the heated weight - "Same where it counts, it seems,"
And of course this Soap wouldn't take that kind of talk, either,
His next move is basically an attack — breath a growl — as he seats himself across Ghost's hips, buries his mouth in the sliver of skin between Ghost's jacket and mask. Warm lips and expert tongue finding Ghost's pulse point with ease, this at least seeming to be well-treaded ground.
Ghost allows it for a minute, or a dozen — Soap necking him, pushing his mask up to mark him behind his ear, while rubbing off on his thigh. His voice gone raspy with confused desire and a hunger for new touch, groaning low with every friction — Ghost getting off on it too, despite this Soap feeling very different in his arms, more desperate and less sure. Less knowing.
Ghost comes to with his hands buried deep beneath Soap's top, roaming and clutching at his ribs to keep him still as Soap fights to effectively consume him whole. They've both turned on from nothing to eleven real fast, teenage in speed, and something in Ghost wants them to slow down, reassess. He is taken after all, in his own timeline, and they are strangers of a sort here. All of these differences he's finding must mean something.
Ghost must use all his strength to nudge Soap back so that he can pull off his mask fully - as a reminder to both of them that there's something under there, and it may be unexpected.
Soap makes a caught noise at the revealed sight, like he's torn between worry and something else. Ghost expects another kind of surprise — maybe he looks different here, or he's less cut up — "Why've ye got grease all over your pretty face?"
"'Pretty'?" Ghost smirks, the scar on his lip pulling.
His mind blanks, then, blissfully, to make room to hold only this vision, of Soap, Soap, Soap - sitting atop him in every possible universe, his rightful seat.
"Does that usually work on me?"
"Aye," Soap grins back, flushed and quite a looker himself, leans down to kiss him all-teeth, "Always."
