#cod list

[bigproblemsfunnylife]

Price pretends he hates Reality TV. If someone catches him watching, he grumbles, “Rubbish. Rot for the brain. Can’t believe people watch this.” But he’s also aware of every contestant’s name, backstory and recent betrayal in any show.

[bigproblemsfunnylife]

LITTLE CABIN

➩ ᴍᴏʀᴇ

ᴘᴀɪʀɪɴɢ: Ghost x Soap

ꜱᴜᴍᴍᴀʀʏ: Caught in a sudden storm during a recon sweep, Soap and Ghost are forced to take shelter in a crumbling cabin.

ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢ: Mild swearing, romantic tension.

Soap wasn’t sure when the clouds had started rolling in. One minute the hills had been golden, sun glinting off every scrap of wet grass and the next a shadow had swallowed the ridgeline. He had to squint through the curtain of rain beginning to fall, the wind pressing it sideways against his cheek. The whole landscape, the rough track cutting through the scrub, the dark shapes of far-off pines had gone soft around the edges.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered, tugging the zipper of his jacket up to his chin. “Price really picked the perfect day for this, eh?”

Ghost, walking ahead, didn’t turn. His hood was already drawn tight, his mask dark with moisture. If the storm bothered him, he gave no sign. It was typical, Soap thought, not without a flicker of admiration and annoyance. Always steady, always quiet, as though Ghost could walk through a hurricane and come out the other side bone-dry.

Soap picked up his pace to match, boots sucking in the mud, rifle slung over his shoulder. “You see that sky? Looks like it’s tryin’ to murder us.”

“Keep moving,” Ghost said, voice flat. “It’ll break soon.”

“Aye, break right over our heads.” Soap glanced upward again, wincing at a jagged white line tearing through the clouds. Thunder followed fast, too fast. “No time to make it back to the truck.”

“Then we find cover.” Ghost was scanning the slope to their left, eyes sweeping over rock outcroppings, tattered fences, the ghost of an old shepherd’s trail winding down toward a copse of trees. “There.”

Soap followed his line of sight and caught the faint outline of something man-made among the trunks. Weathered wood, a roof sagging under years of neglect, but standing all the same. “Is that—”

“A cabin.” Ghost was already angling toward it, moving with the calm of a man who had done this a thousand times before. “Let’s go.”

The rain came harder as they descended, soaking Soap’s hair, running cold rivulets down the back of his neck. By the time they reached the little structure (really no more than a single-room hut with a rusted tin chimney) the ground was running with water. Ghost pushed the door open with his shoulder; it shrieked against swollen hinges.

Inside, it was dark and musty, but dry. The air smelled of wood rot but the roof held. A broken table leaned in one corner, and what might once have been a cot sagged against the wall.

Soap shook the water from his jacket with a shiver. “Cosy,” he said, dropping his pack onto the table. “Romantic, even.”

Ghost gave him a look, or what little Soap could see of it past the balaclava. “Shut the door.”

“Aye, aye, big man.” Soap shoved it closed and shot the bolt, just in case the wind decided to test it. He stood for a moment, listening to the storm lash against the walls.

Ghost was already checking the room, running a gloved hand along the windowsill and the cracked floorboards. Soap watched him for a moment, a little smile tugging at his mouth despite the chill.

“You always like this in a storm?” Soap asked finally, sitting on the edge of the crooked table. “Calm as a monk?”

“Better than panicking.” Ghost crouched to inspect something near the doorframe, then stood again, apparently satisfied. “You done complaining?”

Soap grinned, teeth flashing in the gloom. “Not even close. We’re stuck here for hours, mate. I’ve got enough complaints to last us till morning.”

“Lucky me.” Ghost stripped off his wet gloves and flexed his fingers. The scarred knuckles caught what little light came through the window. “Get that jacket off before you freeze.”

Soap obeyed, peeling it away from his arms and hanging it on a nail near the door. His shirt clung damp to his shoulders and he ran a hand through his hair, shaking out the water. “So. What do we do till it lets up?”

Ghost didn’t answer immediately. He’d taken a seat on the cot, shoulders bent as he adjusted the straps on his vest, eyes fixed on some middle distance Soap couldn’t see. The silence stretched, filled only by the drum of rain on the roof.

Soap cleared his throat, softer now. “Y’know… normal folk would light a fire. Maybe share a dram, talk about their feelings.”

That earned him a faint huff of breath, almost, almost a laugh. “We’re not normal folk.”

“Speak for yourself.” Soap crouched near the hearth, poking through the debris. Miraculously, there was some dry wood under the grate. He worked the flint from his pocket, striking until sparks caught. Soon, a little flame was licking upward, painting the walls in warm gold.

Ghost watched in silence, mask turned toward the firelight. When Soap straightened, brushing soot from his hands, Ghost finally spoke.

“You’re good at that.”

Soap blinked, surprised. “What, makin’ fires?”

“You’re good at finding a way through.” Ghost’s voice was low. “Not many can do it.”

The words sat between them like stones in Soap’s chest. He tried for levity, though it came out softer than intended. “Careful, Ghost. Keep talkin’ like that and I’ll start thinkin’ you like me.”

Something shifted in Ghost’s gaze. The mask hid his mouth, but the eyes above it didn’t waver.

“Maybe I do,” Ghost said quietly.

The fire popped, sending up a little shower of sparks. Soap felt his throat go dry. “Well. That’s… bloody forward of you.”

Ghost didn’t move. He just sat there, still as ever, but Soap could feel the charge in the air, something… electric.

Soap stepped closer slowly until he stood in front of him. “Y’know,” he murmured, “if you’re gonna say things like that, you can’t expect me not to do somethin’ about it.”

For a long moment, Ghost didn’t reply. Then, almost imperceptibly, he tilted his head upward.

Soap reached out, fingers brushing the edge of the mask. Ghost didn’t stop him. He tugged it down just enough to see the line of a mouth he’d only imagined before.

The kiss was brief, warm despite the chill. When they drew apart, Ghost’s eyes were softer somehow and the tension around them eased.

Outside, the rain battered on. Inside, Soap felt strangely still.

“Well,” he said at last, voice a touch unsteady. “Guess we found somethin’ to do after all.”

Ghost shook his head, but there was a faint curve to his lips now, almost a smile. “You talk too much.”

“Aye.” Soap grinned. “But you don’t seem to mind.”

The fire crackled and the storm raged, and for once, neither of them were in a hurry to leave.

[bigproblemsfunnylife]

FEAR RESPONSE

➩ ᴍᴏʀᴇ

ᴄʜᴀʀᴀᴄᴛᴇʀꜱ: Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley and Johnny ‘Soap’ MacTavish.

ꜱᴜᴍᴍᴀʀʏ: Ghost confronts his childhood trauma with snakes. Soap is there, he is always there.

ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢ: Mentions of childhood trauma, abuse, phobia, panic attacks, sensory overload, and recovery (emotional support.)

⚠︎ Can be read as platonic or romantic.

Ghost’s fear of snakes didn’t come from a movie or a close call in the field. It started at eight years old, in the damp backyard of a run-down house in Manchester.

His father, a cruel man who liked to teach “lessons” in the name of strength, had come home drunk with a bag full of snakes he claimed to have found in the canal. One was still alive.

He made Simon hold it.

“You flinch, you get the belt. You cry, you sleep outside.”

Simon didn’t flinch.

He screamed.

And for that, he got both.

He still remembers the feel of it squirming in his small hands, the cold scales sliding against his skin, how alive it felt, how wrong it felt. He remembered the way his fingers clenched involuntarily and how the snake thrashed in panic. He didn’t remember if it bit him.

He didn’t remember much after that except the heat of his father’s laughter and the raw fear of the sound of the hissing, the sting of a belt over his shoulders, the shame, the bile.

Most assumed he feared nothing, not with a name like “Ghost,” not with that mask stitched into his skin like armor. But fear was there. Not in the battlefield or in enemy gunfire. But in something older, primal.

Snakes.

Not even the deadly kind, just snakes in general. The way they moved, with that cold, dry slither. The way they looked at you with lidless eyes. He hated them. Couldn’t breathe around them. Couldn’t even watch a nature documentary about them without his throat tightening.

The memory of that day and these after burned into him like scars. His father’s hand, again, rough and punishing, forcing him to grab a writhing garden snake in the yard.

“Quit bein’ a bloody coward, Simon. Hold it. Look it in the eye.”

Crying hadn’t helped. The more he screamed, the tighter the grip.

“Stop acting like a little bitch. If you can’t handle this, how’ll you handle war, huh?”

He’d wet himself, once. That was the day the mask began. Figuratively, then literally.

Years later, he’s taller, draped in black gear, breaking necks for the greater good. He thinks he’s put it all behind him.

Until the mission in Northern Syria.

Recon with Soap. Two-day hike to the extraction point. The sun eats the sky, and the desert is crawling with life.

They bunk down for the night under a rock overhang. Ghost spreads out his tarp, the mask still on even though it’s just the two of them. He never sleeps without it.

At 2:17 a.m., it happens.

The pressure on his chest.

Something cool. Something moving.

He wakes up in absolute silence. Muscle memory kicks in before the panic does.

His hand flies to his torso, and touches scales.

A sand viper.

Small, not lethal.

He freezes. Not because it’s deadly, but because he’s five years old again.

His breathing starts hitching. His vision blurs, the heart races, the mask suddenly feels suffocating.

He doesn’t even realize he’s making noise until:

“Ghost?”

Soap’s voice is groggy but alert. “Simon, you good?”

No answer. Just his ragged breathing.

Soap scrambles up, eyes sharp despite the dark. He sees it immediately.

The snake.

And Ghost, statue-still, eyes wide, pupils pinpricked.

“Alright, don’t move,” Soap says calmly, crawling closer. “Just breathe. I got it.”

With gentle hands, Soap picks up the viper and tosses it a few feet away, into the sand.

But Ghost isn’t “back” yet.

He’s frozen, locked in. The air isn’t going in right. His fingers are twitching. He claws at the neck of his balaclava.

“Off— Off— Get it off—” he gasps, tearing at the fabric.

Soap moves instantly.

“Okay. Okay. It’s off.”

He pulls the mask off slowly, helping Ghost sit upright.

“It’s gone. You’re alright. You’re with me.”

Ghost’s face is pale. Not scared, terrified.

Soap has never seen that look on him before. Not even in combat.

And then Ghost does something he’s never done.

He starts crying.

Silent, seething, embarrassed tears with shoulders trembling.

“I— fuck— I can’t—” he tries to speak, but chokes.

“I hate those things. I hate them— I hate—”

“I know,” Soap says, voice like a balm. “You’re alright. You’re safe now.”

Soap doesn’t push or demand answers.

He just sits beside him, hand on his shoulder, grounding him through the tremors.

They didn’t talked of that night for a long time.

They say you can prepare for anything. Torture, waterboarding, sleep deprivation. But no one tells you what to do when your fear isn’t logical, when it’s coiled tight around your ribs.

The day started with dry wind, burning sand, and Price’s voice crackling over the radio: “Interrogation resistance training. Level 3. Pack light.”

Ghost had done Level 3 before: restraint, stress positions, disorientation. But this one was new. The facility had been updated, thanks to intel from recent POW scenarios. They were experimenting with phobia-based exposure now.

And for Ghost, that meant one thing.

Snakes.

He’d told no one, of course. But somehow, someone knew.

When the 141 touched down at the remote site, a sprawling hell of tents and concrete bunkers in the middle of a sun-choked nowhere, Ghost kept his mask tighter than usual. He already felt them on his skin like phantom memories. The thick, cold body of a python forced into his eight-year-old hands by a laughing man with liquor on his breath.

Soap noticed the shift immediately. Johnny always noticed.

“Oi. You alright?”

Johnny’s voice broke through as they walked across the tarmac.

Ghost didn’t look at him. “Fine.”

“You sure?”

A pause. “Don’t tell me… you’re scared of the sun?”

Ghost gave a dry laugh. “Sun’s not the problem.”

Phase one: The Cell.

He’s stripped of gear. Black bag over his head. Taken to a simulated holding room. Concrete walls, one chair, handcuffs… They leave him for hours.

Silence is fine, stillness too.

But his pulse ticks like a metronome.

Because he knows what’s coming.

They’re testing his limit.

Phase two: The Trigger.

The door opens. A man in a tan uniform steps in, no face, no name. Just a clipboard.

“We’re going to assess your stress response to environmental stimuli,” he says blandly.

Ghost doesn’t move, and definitely doesn’t speak.

The man nods, and snaps his fingers.

The crate is wheeled in.

Is heavy and made of metal, marked with a biohazard label and a live-animal warning.

Ghost’s fingers curl around the chair.

It opens with a hiss.

A gloved handler pulls out a live ball python. It’s nonvenomous. Small, compared to what his father once made him hold.

But Ghost’s body doesn’t know that.

He jerks instinctively, breath catching. The mask hides the tremor in his jaw but not the tension in his shoulders.

The snake is placed in his lap.

“You are free to remove it,” the handler says, “but if you do, the test restarts.”

Ghost freezes. The weight of it wraps over his thighs. His breath turns shallow.

The python shifts, tongue flicking.

He sees it again. The memory. The drunken voice: “Don’t drop it, Simon. If you drop it, I’ll feed it to your brother.”

His body’s screaming move but he can’t.

And then Johnny enters. Training protocol be damned.

Soap barges in, all Scottish and zero patience.

“What the fuck is this?” he snaps at the handler. “You didn’t say live specimen in the brief.”

“It’s part of the test.”

“Test my ass.”

Ghost doesn’t speak. Doesn’t move. He’s still frozen, every muscle locked like a trap.

Soap kneels in front of him, voice lowering to a murmur. “Simon. Hey. Look at me.”

Ghost’s eyes barely flick to him.

“Take it off,” Ghost rasps, finally.

“I will. But only if you want me to.”

Silence.

Then: “No.”

Soap pauses, surprised.

“You sure?”

Ghost nods, a twitch of his chin. His voice is hoarse. “I have to… stay.”

Soap sits cross-legged beside him on the floor.

The python shifts, Ghost flinches.

“Alright,” Johnny murmurs, “we’re gonna get through this.”

Phase three: Exposure Repetition.

Later that day, Ghost asks to go back in.

Soap protests. “You don’t need to do that shit again.”

“I do.”

“But why? You did it. You stayed in the chair.”

Ghost looks at him with the mask off. For once, his eyes are bare and unreadably vulnerable.

“Because one day, someone’s gonna put worse on me. And I can’t freeze again.”

The next day, it escalates.

A bigger snake. On his shoulders, around his neck.

His skin crawls, his hands shake. But he doesn’t flinch.

Soap stands in the corner, jaw clenched, watching every second like he could punch the fear itself.

“You’re doing great, Ghost,” he says softly. “I’m right here.”

It becomes a mantra, a sort of litany Ghost repeats under his breath when the handlers aren’t listening.

“I’m right here.”

[bigproblemsfunnylife]

CALL OF DUTY

ᴍᴀꜱᴛᴇʀʟɪꜱᴛ

ᴄʜᴀʀᴀᴄᴛᴇʀꜱ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴍᴀʏ ʙᴇ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ (ɴᴏᴛ ɪɴ ᴀʟʟ): Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley, Johnny ‘Soap’ Mactavish & Captain John Price.

GHOST x SOAP x GN! READER

➩ ʀᴏᴍᴀɴᴛɪᴄ

Safehouse: A love of three

Domestic Life: Bedtime Edition

Domestic Life: Kitchen Edition

Domestic Life: Cleaning Edition

HEADCANONS

“Price’s vegetable garden”

“Price’s weapon”

“Gaz has a low alcohol tolerance.”

“Price and Reality TV”

“Simon never…”

“MacTavish’s doodles” + “MacTavish’s Masterpieces”

“He doesn’t sleep well”

“The day Price finally retires”

“Soap has memorized…”

“In safe spaces…”

GHOST x SOAP

➩ ʀᴏᴍᴀɴᴛɪᴄ

“The mission had gone sideways…”

“Soap likes the rain”

“Starts out simple…”

“The kitchen”

“Ghost would never admit…”

“Souvenirs for Soap”

“Fear Response”

“Ghost confronts his childhood trauma with snakes. Soap is there, he is always there.”

“Little Cabin”

“Caught in a sudden storm during a storm, Soap and Ghost are forced to take shelter in a crumbling cabin.”

“HALLOWEEN SPECIAL”

[bigproblemsfunnylife]

Gaz has a low tolerance for alcohol but occasionally smokes when the pressure gets too high. He’s not proud of it but sees it as a necessary evil to take the edge off. He’s trying to quit but it’s a slow process.

[bigproblemsfunnylife]

Even in his own home, he keeps a weapon close. Not because he expects trouble, but because he doesn’t know how to feel safe without one.

—Captain John Price