Christmas Decorating with the best friend you're in love with should qualify as psychological warfare.

John “Soap” MacTavish has survived warzones, black sites, and the general chaos of being on Task Force 141… but nothing... and he means nothing...has ever scrambled his brain like you do.

Which is tragic, really, because you’re his best friend. His partner in crime. The one person he trusts with all the versions of himself: the loud, the goofy, the brave, the painfully intelligent, and the secretly terrified.

And right now? You’ve got him on his knees: literally, because the two of you are in the 141 rec room trying to decorate the world’s saddest fake Christmas tree.

It had started normal enough. Music playing. Cocoa cooling on the table. You and Soap wrapped in a smattering of tinsel because he doesn’t know how to behave around shiny things.

Then came the debate.

Star or angel?

You argued star. He argued angel. You threatened to flip a coin. He threatened to rock-paper-scissors it. It was all harmless, warm, familiar bickering...until he had the idea.

The terrible, brilliant, hopelessly lovesick idea.

Before you can ask what he’s doing, Soap snatches a roll of tape, grabs something from the cluttered supply box, and climbs the stool like a man on a mission. He turns back to you with that ridiculous grin: the one that means he knows he’s about to get whacked.

“I solved it!” he announces proudly.

And there, at the very top of the tree, taped to the plastic branch with an alarming amount of commitment…

is your military photo.

Your face. Your uniform. You, right at the top, glowing under the warm string lights like some position of honor.

“See?” he says with a shrug, cheeks pink, smile too soft for someone who just vandalized a tree. “Now we’ve got both. A star and an angel.”