Something in the Orange | ghost x soap ✓

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How do you define fear?

The Oxford Dictionary defines it as the following:

Noun

An unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.

Verb

Be afraid of (someone or something) as likely to be dangerous, painful, or threatening.

To many psychologists, fear is an extremely powerful weapon. It is a natural and primitive human emotion. According to research, it involves a universal biochemical response and a high individual emotional response. During war, fear and terror are often used as weapons to distort the opponent's decision making or break the opponents will power, forcing the military and political leaders need to respond to this tactic.

Fear? Often feels like when you first jump into a cold body of water, and you feel your chest tighten as your breath is sucked from your lungs. You struggle to break the surface because for a split second you wonder if that was the last breath you were ever going to breathe.

Fear? Feels like you have caught fire and no matter how much you swat at your shirt, it keeps reigniting, sourcing your flesh underneath.

He could not hear much over the roar of blood in his ears mixed with the sound of the helicopter. He could feel the vibration of the helicopter motor and he could see his captain's mouth moving but not hearing the voice he came to know as Price's. He could feel his chest tightening, his legs feeling like concrete. He felt like someone was turning a dull knife in his abdomen, mixing all his intestines together. He felt like someone had lit a match on all the fine hair on his body and left him to burn.

He could feel himself drowning in the fear from this mission. And he could not pinpoint a cause.

Laswell was on the ground, circling to try to find the missile. Gaz was in the Chicago River with his team of Marines. Ghost was in a separate helicopter, on his way to his overwatch. The youngest team member could hear them chatter back and forth on the comms to each other. He wondered if the overwhelming fear was because he was going without Ghost. Yes, he was going to have Captain Price on his six, but that man was not in the trenches of Las Almas with them. Ghost and Soap had a different connection than anyone else. Ghost had seen Soap at the absolute lowest part of his entire military career and did not blink. He tended to him gently; a sort of gentleness that took a lifetime to learn. One that was learned from others not being as gentle to them.

Minus the part that Soap was completely head over heels for Gho—Simon. He has been since their first mission almost three months ago. Jonathan Alexander MacTavish was in love with Simon Finn Riley. He felt like a teenage girl who had a crush for the first time. He wanted to scream it from the roof tops. He wanted to love Simon in the ways he had not been. He wanted to show Simon how beautiful love can be and that it is not something to be afraid of.

He was in love with Simon.

And he absolutely loved it.

Ghost was his battle buddy. The masked man who killed for him. Simon was the love of his life. He needed to draw a line between the two. He loved both sides of the tall British man equally—but on the field, in the middle of a mission, he needed to be able to swallow his feelings.

The younger man leaned against the metal frame of the helicopter as he watched Ghost's helicopter cut to the left, navigating to his overwatch position. His hands found their way to his brace on his left knee; he started tightening it hopeful it would distract him and convince himself that he was fine. Soap was not sure how he was chosen for this role for this mission—he was not fully recovered from the bullet that Graves had embedded in his right shoulder. He wondered if he would ever fully recover from the betrayal the bullet came with. If Price thought something was wrong with Soap, he did not bother to address it. Soap wondered if the Captain had his own guilt he was fighting with. He never expected any of this to unfold the way it did; none of them could have ever expected it. No one had on their bingo card that Shepard and Graves were in bed together and had covered up such a fuck up on the American side of things.