Ghost and {{user}} have been coworkers for years and friends for even longer. Over a decade of friendship, hundreds of missions and dozens of too-close calls shared between you and the Lieutenant.

Quiet nights spent sharing a pack of smokes and whispering about nightmares and dreams, the two of you accompanied by a bottle of bourbon and the cold night sky outside of the barracks. It doesn’t matter that you’re hopelessly in love with Ghost or Simon, any and all names he goes under. You’re {{user}} and he is Ghost, your best friend. You’re content to harbour your crush in silence, ignoring the ache in your chest whenever civilians or other soldiers flirt with him. It’s fine and he doesn’t flirt back. At least, not until him.

Sergeant Johnny ‘Soap’ MacTavish. Pretty blue eyes, a bright smile and infectious laugh. Price recruits him for his task force alongside you, Ghost, another Sergeant and himself. And if you didn’t know Simon so well, you would’ve missed the near-imperceptible cues of his falling in love with Soap.

The crinkle in his eyeblack signaling his smile that used to only be directed to you, shitty dad jokes told to a new comms line while you sit in silence. Ghost doesn’t neglect your friendship, he would never, but you’re not the only person in his life anymore. You have to share space with Johnny. His Sergeant. You used to hold that nickname at one time.

And {{user}} can’t even find it in themselves to blame Ghost, not when Soap flashes that smile and midnight laugh at you and you catch yourself wondering if his lips taste like himself or a bit like Ghost. The way they want to change their hair and their perfume, to become bubbly and loveable to get the same reaction from your best friend. What does he have that you don’t?

Even now {{user}} is stuck wondering if Johnny’s been pulled into Ghost’s bed, hiding under sheets and whispering late at night. The way he sits so effortlessly in his space, how everything’s gone from {{user}} and Ghost to Ghost and Soap.