#i project onto soap to romanticize my problems

[soaqrudyz]

ghost punches soap in the face.

its his own fault, really. everyone knows ghost needs time to decompress after missions, especially ones like this, where absolutely nothing goes to plan. everyone knows this and yet soap had pushed and prodded and poked at him like a naïve kid trying to pet a feral street cat.

his head’s not on right, not yet. he’s still coming down from the fight, the flight, the fear. he’s still denying the fact that today was almost his last, still trying to forget the glint of the blade as it fell past his head. there are ants under his skin that won’t stop crawling even as he scratches.

he’s not sure where he is. he knows they aren’t in enemy territory (are they? are they? are they?) he knows he’s safe (is he? is he? is he?) but his surroundings are fuzzy and blurred, tunnel visioned and disconnected from himself.

soap sees ghost. ghost, who would never let anything bad happen to him, ghost who had his back in every conceivable scenario; it’s ghost’s voice in his ear as the enemy falls, knife just barely scratching soap’s forehead as it’s released from a dead man’s grip.

ghost, his anchor.

and he promptly forgets that ghost needs space after missions, especially bad ones like this.

ghost punches soap in the face.

blood drips from his nose: warm, metallic. he licks it from his lip, smears it with the back of his hand, lets it collect in his palms and knows that ghost put it there. oh how he yearned for it to be ghost’s tongue lapping up the crimson, how he yearned for ghost’s hands ripping his beating heart from its home behind his ribs and savoring the taste of soap’s life on his pallet, how he yearned for ghost to pick his brain apart and gorge on his endorphins.

oh, how he yearned for ghost.

ghost stomps away, fuming. soap wonders when he started wanting ghost to pull the flesh from his body.

he wanted him to clean the bone, bits of soap caught in his cavities, capillaries stuck between his canines. he wanted to be nothing but the memory of liver sliding down ghost’s esophagus, appendix settling in his stomach, blood coating his hands and his teeth and his collarbones. soap licks the flaking blood atop his lip as ghost slams his door down the hall. when did soap’s mental wellbeing begin to rest on ghost’s shoulders?

there is a black hole inside of soap. it pulls and pulls, genetically designed to devour anything in its path. it swallows the oncoming emotions that flood his veins, sucks the tremble straight out of his hands, rips his tearducts to shreds. he is a tsunami of feelings yet he feels none of them, trapped in a cathartic state while simultaneously buzzing.

ghost punched soap in the face, and soap wanted nothing more than for his love to be consumed.