Ghost's Section
Main post & Soap, Price, and Gaz’s parts: here
Ghost — Acts of service, quality time, words of affirmation (regular and a sort of modified version, I’ll explain later), and receiving gifts.
Ghost — Acts of service. Like I said, every one of the boys would like acts of service, but it’d mean the most to Simon— especially if you’re working off of his backstory from the comics.
Simon is a man who doesn’t trust anyone. He’s learned time and time again that the people closest to him could and would hurt him, or be used to hurt him. How someone presents themselves means nothing to him, and what they say to him means even less. In his experience people are rarely true to their word. As long as they’re competent he doesn’t care. He doesn’t let himself get attached.
Getting him to the point where he would realistically be comfortable enough to show affection outwardly in any capacity is going to be like pulling teeth.
What’s good to keep in mind is that Simon values consistency. Above all else, in a new relationship, he is waiting for the other shoe to drop— even if the other person has been around for a while, he never really gets over that. So the best way to handle that is just for it to never happen. For him to ever start being even in the ballpark of ‘affectionate,’ someone else is going to have to make the first move. (Or at least motivate him to try, he’d never go out looking for a deeper connection of his own volition otherwise.)
Price does this naturally, he’s long since gotten into the habit of taking care of his men. It’s his job to have a good sense of what’s going on with them, and how they’re holding up at all times. So, if after a rough mission, or around the colder months he notices Simon is starting to squirrel himself away, he’s going to bloody well do something about it; he’ll take it upon himself to bring Simon food from the mess if he notices he hasn’t been going as much as he should. The first few times Simon’s skeptical, of course, but eventually he figures it’s not in Price’s best interest to mess with his food, and tries it— he’ll at least have a few bites of anything Price brings him, even if he doesn’t like it, or if he does, he’ll eat the whole lot of it. Price notices what does and doesn’t get eaten, and takes care to bring something his lieutenant will actually finish. God knows the man needs it. Simon starts returning the favour on days Price is too buried under paperwork to pull away from it.
If he notices something’s up with Simon’s gear (broken, scuffed, bent, gotten so coated in blood it won’t ever come out), he’ll put in to have it replaced without being asked. Like hell is he sending any of his men out with faulty gear.
Initially Gaz does little acts of service to get on Simon’s good side— he’s not too sure what to think of his lieutenant, the man is very cold and closed off, giving little to nil away. It’s not that they have to be buddy buddy, but it’s common sense that a team that likes each other functions far more smoothly than one that doesn’t. So he starts simple, he figures out how Simon takes his tea (after a couple times watching him prepare it, he manages to memorize it) and the next time Gaz makes himself a cup, he makes some for Simon too. Again, like with Price, Simon is skeptical, and probably won’t drink it the first few times. Not that that deters Gaz— if anything it spurs him on. He’s a bit of a competitive bloke, and now it’s a matter of principle; he will get on Simon’s good side, damn it.
The third time, Gaz makes sure that Simon sees him make it, keeps his movements steady and measured, makes sure Simon can see his hands at all time while he does, makes once for Price as well, and when he brings it over, Simon simply accepts it with a nod, and watches as Price accepts his own cup barely managing a thanks before he starts drinking it, not even looking up from the report he was working on. After another moment or two, Simon pulls his balaclava over his nose, and starts to sip from it cautiously, but he does drink it.
From there, Gaz moves on to doing little things, like keeping extra smokes on him even while out on the field for Simon to bum one— and making sure he always has a working lighter. He also personally ensures that Simon’s knife oil ‘mysteriously’ never gets too low without another to replace it. He never says anything about it, just does it without a word.
It must be working well enough, he figures, when he goes into the armoury after training one day to clean his guns before the next op — passing Simon in the hallway on his way in without much thought — and his weapons are strangely already ready to go.
Soap helps Simon make his masks. With their work, Simon goes through a lot of them. He does his best to fix them when he can, but that’s not always possible. That, plus the fact Simon always likes to have extra, just in case, means he spends more time than he probably should making them.
Often this means on nights when he’s having trouble sleeping, and he’s already done as much paperwork as he can stomach, he finds himself hunched over in his bunk, working under the shitty glow of the lamp on his nightstand, and repeatedly jabbing himself with the little needle he managed to swipe from medical as he sews the skull plate onto a plain balaclava.
Soap doesn’t get involved until a mission where Simon breaks his arm.
He had already been short on masks beforehand, but after how roughed up he had gotten, he was down to his plain, skull print balaclava. Even with a broken arm, Simon wouldn’t ask for help, instead trying his best (and failing) to do everything one handed. By the time he gets a quarter of one done, with ample aid of alternating between cursing it out, and his own arm, Soap finds him; popping in after hearing him carrying on from the hallway as he was walking back to his own quarters. After ample ribbing, Soap invites himself in, and sits down next to Simon, taking the incorrectly threaded needle away from Simon before he can cause further damage, and finishing it with some huffed orders from Simon over his shoulder while he worked. After that Soap kept coming back to help him make more until his arm healed, and occasionally made more for him even after the fact. He even started keeping a spare mask in with his own gear, just in case.
Words of Affirmation. Hearing he's good at what he does is nothing new to Ghost, it's something that doesn't carry much weight for him anymore, he knows he's good, he doesn't need the external confirmation to affirm that. What sticks with him the most isn't praise for what he does in the field, as Ghost, but off of it, as Simon; complements about the way he makes tea, whispered genuine assurances in between slow kisses (especially when paired with gentle touches to his scars, he's so used to be handled/treated roughly that anyone being soft with him, when he ebbs past the instinctive urge to be suspicious, makes his heart twist and ache in a way that he's hesitant to get to stop), all that good stuff.
What also sticks with him is when someone indulges him, say, going along with his shite jokes, teases him back, banters with him— he's used to people shying away from him, or outright absolutely shitting bricks just because they're in his presence.
This is what I mean by a sort of modified version of words of affirmation, just carrying on with Simon, basically, otherwise known as turning towards a bid for affection. Super cool behaviour, btw, totally recommend looking into it if you're interested at all by human social behaviours (which, if you've gotten far enough into this to read this, I'm just going to take a wild guess that you do, there's a short article about it here if you want just a working understanding of it).
Receiving Gifts. Honestly, Ghost would accept pretty much anything anyone gives him, as long as he cares about them. Once Soap handed him a small pebble as a (sort-of-not-really) joke, and told him with a straight face that he was giving it to him because the rock reminded him of Simon. There was a sort of bemused flicker in Simon's eyes, but he took it with a wordless nod. It now lives in his TAC vest, and he takes it on every mission he goes on (when he can't sleep either on base or during an op, he'll take it out and smooth his thumb over it). One time he thought he lost it, and felt a sense of dread pressing down on his sternum until he found it again (it had fallen to the floor when he was changing out of his gear, he now keeps it in its own pocket that can velcro shut).
The fact that anyone would go out of their way to get him something — just because it reminds them of him, or because they genuinely think he'd like it — always catches him off guard, probably always will. He savours it all the same, even if doesn't exactly look like it when he's first gifted it; Simon may not be the kind of man to go out of his way to buy or get himself anything, but there's no chance in hell he gets rid of anything someone gets him, it's either getting added to his gear, or being kept safely tucked away, hidden in a secure location within his quarters that only he's aware of.
