Chapter Text
For the first time in months, Soap’s phone chimed with a notification from Ghost.
Ghost: Nice stream.
Soap’s heart jumped into his throat. He hadn’t realized how much he missed Ghost until he saw the man’s name pop up on his phone. He had just closed out an impromptu stream on his channel, playing the newest Battlefield game. Lots of people tuned into his streams these days, even his unscheduled streams, but it hadn’t occurred to him that Ghost might be keeping tabs on his presence in the world of video game streamers.
Soap: you watched my stream?
Ghost: Yeah. Haven’t heard you laugh like that in a long time.
Ghost’s reply had been immediate. Warm, achy nostalgia spread throughout Soap’s chest. He missed his fucking friend.
Soap: haven’t heard you laugh in even longer.
As Soap hit send, he wondered if Ghost would take it as a jab to his stoicism instead of the ‘I miss you’ he meant it to be.
Ghost: True.
Soap swallowed at the lack of response from Ghost. He wasn’t ready for the other man to slip away again. They had tried to keep in touch after their mutual discharges, but like so many things, their connection had faded as they adjusted to civilian life.
Last thing Soap heard, Ghost was working construction in the London suburbs. He had no idea what Ghost knew about his current situation.
Soap: gimme a call?
He watched the message icon go from sent to delivered to read, and the call appeared moments after. Ghost’s profile picture was blank. Soap had never assigned a picture for him.
He answered the call. “Ghost!”
“Hey Johnny.”
Soap grinned into the receiver. Fuck, he had missed that voice in his ear.
“What’re you doing watching my stream at this hour?” Soap checked the time. He had memorized the time difference in the UK since he had moved stateside. It was 0500 in London. Ghost was either up too early or too late.
“Couldn’t sleep,” Ghost said, and Soap felt a twinge of sympathy. He knew that feeling too well. Frankly, he had started streaming earlier to delay his own inevitable sleepless night.
“Sucks, mate.”
“Yeah.” They lapsed into silence for a moment, and Soap searched for something to say. There was so much he wanted to know about Ghost’s last few months, but nothing seemed appropriate to ask.
Luckily for Soap, Ghost broke the silence.
“How’s Texas?”
Soap exhaled. An easy question. “Fuckin’ hot.” Soap had spent his first year of civilian life back home in Scotland. Anyone who knew him during his years of service knew he wanted to retire in Scotland. However, once he was finally discharged and sent home, it stopped feeling like home. He ended up moving to the states — part of it was a career decision, as his presence in the online streaming sphere grew, and part of it was just to get away from his childhood. He loved Scotland, but he hated living at home.
“Does everyone wear cowboy boots?”
Soap barked a laugh that sounded a little too forced. “Some of them. Everyone says ‘y’all’ way too fucking much.”
“And streaming?”
Soap frowned. That was a harder question. “What about it?”
Ghost didn’t say anything for a moment, and Soap swallowed, his throat suddenly dry.
“How is it going?”
“Really good,” Soap said. “I get paid to play video games.”
“Paid enough to support yourself?”
“Yeah, I make enough to support myself. Why? Do you want exact numbers? They’re in US dollars, fuckin’ Brit.” Soap cut himself off before he could make a bigger fool of himself. Ghost wasn’t bantering with him, so Soap was just being an ass
“No, I don’t need exact numbers. I was…” Ghost sighed loud enough that the phone picked it up. “I lost my job.”
“Oh shit, Ghost.” Soap’s hands itched with the urge to do something besides sit there and be useless with his sympathy. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Ghost said, a little too quickly. “I’m just looking for some kind of income.”
Realization finally dawned on Soap. “And you think you might want to stream?”
“Maybe. Seems like it suits you.”
Soap grinned. He tried to keep his expression neutral, so Ghost wouldn’t hear the excitement in his voice, but he couldn’t wipe the smile away. Ghost might become a streamer. They could play together. They could be together. Just like old times, but without the constant fear for their lives.
“It does suit me,” Soap said, “and it might suit you too. But I’m legally obligated to warn you about all the terrible shit to try to scare you off. Can’t say I didnt warn ya.”
“Hit me.”
Soap was grinning like a fool. Sure, he had made his friends in the gaming sphere. Some of them were also vets, and some of the vets were guys he had known before. He had forged some incredibly close relationships with other gamers.
But none of them compared to Ghost. His best friend.
“Well, internet people are creepy,” Soap began. “Most of them are normal, but it just takes one or two weird bastards to dig up your personal information and put it on blast.”
“Like what?”
Soap chewed his lip, trying to decide which level of embarrassment he was willing to share with Ghost. After the briefest moment, he decided on the most egregious ones, in the spirit of scaring Ghost off. “Been doxxed before. I’ve moved since then, but my address was publicly available for a while. It’s still there if you search for it.”
“Mhm.” Ghost did not seem particularly deterred, so Soap went for something worse.
“And there’s a gif of my crotch that kinda shows the outline of my dick.”
Ghost didn’t respond.
“I stood up on camera, and my gym shorts were… clingy.”
“I’m not planning on using a camera.”
That made sense. Soap hadn’t really expected him to show his face to his audience, but that brought up another concern.
“Plenty of streamers keep their faces private, but there are consequences for that too.”
Ghost made a curious noise.
“You’ll get all the regular assholes who assume you’re ugly because you won’t show your face, but then you’ll also get fans who fall in love with your voice or your personality and decide that you’re really hot. Both groups will be disappointed by your actual face.”
“Is that a jab at my appearance, Johnny?”
“You’re no supermodel, Ghost,” Soap teased.
“I know what I look like.”
And just like that, they fell back into their old rhythm, like they had never been separated. Soap’s cheeks hurt from grinning.
“Just saying though,” Soap said. “People are shitheads on the internet. I’ve seen it happen.”
“I’m not gonna show my face.”
“It’ll probably never come up. You’re unlikely to be exposed because you don’t have any family members posting your personal information on a Facebook page.”
Ghost was silent, and guilt surged in Soap. He hadn’t meant for his last comment to sound so mean, but he had already said it. Ghost had no family, no one to fall back on for support, and now his best friend had jabbed at a sore spot.
“That’s the way I prefer it.”
Soap let out a breath. Good. Ghost was going to ignore it. Soap made a silent promise to be less of a complete jackass and continued with the conversation.
“What else can I say to make this seem like an awful career?” he mused. “Oh, turning your hobby into your work can fuck you up.”
“I have other hobbies.”
Soap pursed his lips. He didn’t know any of Ghost’s hobbies. He didn’t even know if gaming was technically something Ghost liked to do. Ghost wasn’t really the type of person to do things for the sake of fun. “Like what?”
“Fishing.”
“Fishing?” Soap couldn’t picture it. He tried to imagine Ghost, massive as he was, sitting in a little boat with a wide brimmed hat and a fishing rod between his knees.
Actually… once he thought about it, he could picture it very well. It was perfect for Ghost. A quiet activity that you could probably eat when you were done.
“Fishing,” Ghost confirmed.
“Okay fine. So you play video games for work and fish for fun. That could work.” It could work perfectly. If Ghost wanted to fish in the mornings, he could stream in the evenings. But Soap wasn’t about to tell Ghost that until he had given him every warning he could think of.
“What if I told you it would be long hours with no separation of work time and off time and you have to stay motivated even when you’re not feeling it?”
“I’d say that sounds easier than anything we did in the 141.”
Soap’s face twisted into a wry smile. There was no deterring him. When Ghost set his mind to something, anyone would be hard pressed to turn him away.
“Alright then. Guess you’re gonna need to set up some channels. What’s your username gonna be?”
“Ghost.”
Soap rolled his eyes. “Ghost is gonna be taken pretty much everywhere. You’re gonna need something more unique than that.”
“But I’m Ghost.”
Soap laughed at that. The way he said it was so insistent, almost petulant. He was Ghost, to be fair. Soap couldn’t imagine anything that would suit him better.
“You can be Ghost. Just tack something else on to the end to make it unique.”
Ghost grumbled. “I’ll think about it.”
“You do that.” Soap pulled up his library of games and scrolled through, looking for a good game for Ghost’s debut. “Have you ever played the Untitled Goose Game?”
“The hell is that?” Ghost asked.
Soap grinned. “Perfect.”
-
“Are you recording?”
“I am,” Ghost’s voice came through the headset, crisp and clear. Looks like he had gotten his new microphone set up after all.
Soap had insisted on buying him a good microphone for his games. “It’s essential for your audience to hear you clearly,” he had said. When Ghost had tried to argue, Soap had doubled down, demanding Ghost’s address to put in the shipping details, cajoled Ghost into accepting it as a birthday present despite not knowing when Ghost’s birthday was.
“Okay good. You got the title screen open?”
Ghost paused for a moment. Soap could hear him clicking around.
“This looks ridiculous.”
“Oh, it is,” Soap said. “That’s what makes it fun.”
“So we’re not going live?”
“Nah. I figure we can record a couple videos for your channel, build your audience a little bit, and then you’ll have an audience for your first stream, yeah? And if you decide it’s not your scene, we don’t have to post it.”
Soap adjusted his lighting, checking the feed from the camera. He looked good. His mohawk was getting a little shaggy, but he kind of liked it. It was the sexy sort of messy. He had changed his background lights to pink and yellow, for an upbeat mood, and he had drawn a little ghost on the dry erase board behind him.
“As long as I don’t have to dress up like a French maid, I think I’ll be fine.”
Soap gasped. He had worn a maid outfit a few weeks ago, as a reward for his audience after they met his goal for a charity fundraiser. His face flushed, knowing Ghost had seen him in the little costume.
“So you have been watching my streams!”
“I wanted to see what I was getting into,” Ghost said simply.
“Did you see the comments about the audience shipping me with the other guys?”
He could hear Ghost frown just by his tone. “What?”
“Yeah, brace yourself for that, Lt. If you play enough, people will call you gay, either to insult you or because they want it to be true. Or they think it is actually true. Then they’ll match you up with the people you play with.”
“Why?” There was genuine confusion in Ghost’s voice.
“I don’t fucking know. Your guess is as good as mine.”
“So they’ll think we’re a couple?”
“They’ll know we’re not,” Soap said, trying his best to be reassuring. He had never gotten an opinion from Ghost about anything in the realm of LGBTQ identities, and he was just hoping to avoid a violently homophobic reaction. “But some of them will pretend. And a few will be creeps about it. It won’t help that I’m out as pan.”
Soap’s voice shook a bit on the last sentence. He hadn’t officially decided to come out to Ghost until the words were already out of his mouth. Ghost didn’t say anything, and Soap couldn’t be sure that Ghost knew what pansexual was.
“Still want to do this?”
“Yeah.”
“Fantastic. I’m gonna do my intro first, and then we can get going.”
Soap straightened his shoulders and looked directly into the camera. “Good day, my lovely soap-porters!” He heard Ghost grumble at the pun and ignored him. “Today, I bring you a game that is long overdue on my channel: the Untitled Goose Game! We’ll be playing the co-op version, with someone new. Ghost, introduce yourself.”
“Hi.”
It took significant effort on Soap’s part not to laugh or groan at that introduction. He shook it off and reminded himself that Ghost was new to all of this. Soap wasn’t an expert when he started, but he could lead by example.
“Ghost is a close personal friend of mine,” Soap continued, “and I’m so excited to introduce him to you all. Ghost has never played the Untitled Goose Game before, so we’re going to watch him figure out the puzzles.”
“It’s a puzzle game?” Ghost asked.
“Um, kinda,” Soap said.
Ghost made a noise like he was irritated.
“Oh haud yer wheesht. You’ll be fine. Without further ado, let’s get into it.”
Soap smiled at the camera in silence for a moment longer, so his editor would have enough footage to make a clean cut.
“Your turn,” he said to Ghost.
“My turn?”
“To do an intro for your video, ya numpty.”
“I have to do an intro?”
“Generally, yes. That’s how videos start.”
Soap couldn’t decide if he was frustrated or amused. Maybe both. Ghost was normally pretty quick on the uptake, and Soap wondered if he may have a little stage fright, now that they were recording.
“Look, I’ll help you. Say: Hi, my name’s GhostLieutenant, and my friend SoapIsCheeky invited me to play Untitled Goose Game together. Hope you enjoy!”
There was silence across the call for a moment. Soap let him process the information.
“Hi, I’m Ghost, and Soap invited me to play the goose game with him.”
That was horrible. But it would do.
“Good enough,” Soap said.
Soap launched them into the tutorial.
“The fuck?” Ghost honked and waddled around as his goose character.
“It’s fun!” Soap waddled up to him and honked. “Look, come on. There’s a lad.”
Ghost followed him through the tutorial, clumsily learning to crouch and pick up objects.
“Channel your inner goose, Ghost.”
“When does it get fun?”
They passed the title screen, and Soap showed Ghost how to access their to-do list.
“Why do we have a to-do list? Get the groundskeeper wet?”
“Look, don’t judge it yet. Let’s just see if we can figure it out.”
With a bit of prompting, Ghost discovered the groundskeeper, prompted him to open the gate, and strolled into the garden. Soap tried to follow him, but the groundskeeper blocked his path, chasing Soap away from the gate.
“Oi, fucker!” Soap shouted. “Let me in!”
“Oh, I see how this is fun,” Ghost said. Amusement filled his voice as he yanked carrots out of the ground. “What do we do now?”
“Check your to-do list,” Soap told him.
“Wait, no, he’s putting the carrots back.” Ghost honked at the groundskeeper, causing him to pause.
“Okay, you distract him, and I’ll take one of the carrots for our picnic.”
“I’ll distract him alright.” Ghost grabbed a carrot and took off. The groundskeeper went after him, and Soap was pleased to hear a genuine laugh from the other end of the call.
