Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was the middle of June and there was a blistering, record-breaking heat wave boiling through Manchester. Simon had never been more grateful for his job. The deli had industrial air conditioners that put the beat-up fan in his bedroom to shame. 

The small dining counter in the front of the deli kept cool in spite of the oppressive sunshine outside, but it was even better behind the counter where Simon was. The deli meat case had an open refrigerator that pumped cold air onto him all day. If he really needed it, he could go sit in the walk-in refrigerator in the back, but they had animals waiting to be butchered hung up in there. It didn’t bother Simon to be in there with all the hanging meat, but there was always the danger he’d bump into something and get slime all over his apron. 

Simon was even more grateful that the job would last the whole summer, before he shipped out for the Army in the fall. It got him out of the house. Not that he didn’t like Tommy or his mum well enough, but twelve sweltering hours with either of them in a tiny apartment was enough to drive someone with twice Simon’s patience insane. His mum hadn’t begrudged him the job either. The deli payed well and Simon’s income supplemented the hole in the grocery money his dad had left when he’d fucked off. 

He worked the lunch shift, so it was mostly slicing deli meat, making cheap sandwiches, and packing up fresh meat for housewives who came in to pick out steaks for dinner.

The day had been unusually slow, presumably due to no one wanting to be fried by the sun. Simon was considering a turn in the walk-in fridge when the front door opened, letting in a blast of hot air and a teenage girl. She wore a baggy t-shirt that was at least one size too big, gym shorts that revealed long unshaved legs, and scuffed trainers. Her short dark hair looked to have been cut by someone wearing a blindfold, so Simon presumed it had been the girl’s own handiwork. 

Even Simon could tell that she wasn’t exactly pretty by current standards. Not that he was really the type to notice if a girl was pretty or not.

“What can I get you?” he asked, as she hopped up onto one of the red vinyl stools that lined the customer’s side of the counter. It spun and tilted a little with the force of her movement. Her eyes met Simon’s and his internal monologue stuttered a little. 

Blue. Very blue.

“Sandwich. Dealer’s choice, ta,” she grinned, those bright eyes sparkling with something sharp. Her voice was deeper than Simon had been expecting, rich and far too husky for someone that young. Definitely younger than him, by at least a year or two. The words twisted with a heavy Scottish accent. Far from home then.

Simon went through his options. The deli wasn’t any kind of fancy establishment and their sandwiches were comparable to what a person would make in their kitchen at home. Most of the people who bought them regularly were blue-collar laborers with a specific order Simon made up every morning for them to take to work. 

After a moment's consideration, he decided on roast beef, tomato, lettuce, mayo, and white bread. It was a safe bet, though he didn’t foresee this girl cutting into him the way some of the housewives did.

He hoped she didn’t have any allergies. He figured that most people with allergies wouldn’t give a stranger the power to send them into anaphylactic shock. However, anyone with a haircut like that might be prone to all kinds of idiocy though. The girl had started to swing back and forth on the stool, craning her head to look out the big front window where the sweaty pedestrians were slogging by.

He wrapped up the sandwich in paper and then punched up the total. The girl watched as he did it, pulling out a beat up men’s wallet and counting through her notes. She slid her money across the counter to him. Simon picked it up and counted through it. Perfect change. He gave her back the receipt with the sandwich.

As Simon went to wash his hands, as he always did after handling money, she unwrapped it and bit into it. Simon watched her eyes close as a satisfied grin split her face. She chewed for a minute as Simon fumbled with the tap, not wanting to seem like a creep for watching her eat.

“Good fucking sandwich,” she called to him, loud enough to hear over the running water of the sink, and hopped down from the stool. She walked out the door, sandwich in hand, taking another bite as she did so.

Simon had expected the interaction to be a one off. In fact, he hadn’t really expected anything at all. He felt a jump of surprise when the girl walked back through the door, this time with a large drawing pad in one hand and a fistful of pencils bound up with a hair tie in the other.

Their dialogue went almost exactly the same, save for Simon making her a different sandwich. There was also the fact that she sat at the counter to eat her sandwich this time. As she ate, she fished out pencils from the bundle and sketched. The way she sat looked almost painful to Simon. One leg was propped up against the seat of the stool to hold up the sketch book and the other pressed against the chair leg to keep her from over-balancing where she leaned back against the countertop. 

Simon tried not to stare at her sketches and keep up with his work, but he could tell that she was good from the glances he got. Much better than the doodles he made on napkins when the deli got too slow to tolerate.

The girl came every day at the same time and Simon made her a different sandwich, keeping a running list in his mind of the combinations he’d already tried. She sat for an hour, picking at her sandwich and drawing the people who came in or walked by outside. Then she’d thank him and bounce back out of the deli.

It took a week and a half for either of them to broach the silence of their strange routine.

“Never did ask, what’s yer name?” she said as she counted through the notes in her wallet. The sandwich today was pickle loaf with mustard, mayo, and onion on rye bread. It made Simon shudder a bit to make it, but he noticed the girl had a taste for vinegar and nobody except old folks who’d grown up on rations liked the pickle loaf.

“Simon,” he grunted out as he wrapped up the sandwich. The girl made a pleased hum, sliding her money across the counter just like always.

“Mary,” she said back, “Ye can call me what ye like though.”

Simon counted the bills. Perfect change, just like always.

“Ye work here very long?” Mary prodded when he didn’t respond. Simon looked up at her then and found those blue eyes trained on him with interest. He hadn’t noticed the dark circles below them before.

“No,” he said.

“Really? Ye make a pretty good sandwich,” Mary tilted her head as she studied him.

“I’ve got a younger brother.”

“Ah,” she grinned, “Ye’ve been getting babysitting practice. I’m here visitin’ my own sister.”

Simon gave a non-commital grunt.

“Her name’s Sarah. She’s gonna be a big shot doctor,” she explained, “My mam thought it would be good for me to spend the summer with her. Might straighten me out.”

Simon gave her an exaggerated once over.

“You don’t exactly look like you need straightening out,” Simon said.

“Aye, I ken I look grubby an’ straight-laced now,” Mary said, “But I’m the reason St. Anne’s Girl’s School doesn’t have a chemistry classroom anymore. Ye ever see a priest try to scold ye while the edge of his beard’s still smoldering?”

Simon let out a snort of laughter.

“Got me expelled. No one else thought it was funny, but I think God’s got a better sense of humor than my parents do,” Mary winked at him, “They think I need to be more like Sarah, proper young lady and all that shit.”

“Not sure you should be talking to me then,” Simon said and Mary let her gaze trail down his figure before snapping back up to his face, a mirror of what he had just done to her.

“Probably not,” she grinned with all the sharp pride of a cat that had caught a mouse.

“Simon,” Mary called, spinning around on her barstool, “What’re ye gonna be when ye grow up?”

After Mary had learned his name, she’d used it every chance she got. She yelled it in greeting when she walked in, teased him with it, mumbled it under her breath when he looked too closely at her drawings, and on one memorable occasion, had squeaked it out when she tipped over a barstool. With the way she was worked up at that moment, Simon was looking forward to a repeat performance.

“I’m already grown up,” he said, packaging up the ground lamb Mrs. Corbit had ordered over the phone, “I’m joining the army in a few months.”

“Oh, are ye?” Mary’s tone shifted from boredom to genuine interest, “I’m hoping to join up too, when I’m old enough. Gotta good luck charm and everything.”

Simon looked up at her, setting the lamb down. She pulled a sliver chain out of her shirt, not the thin kind women usually wore for jewelry but something closer to the kind they used for dog tags. On the chain dangled a heavy pendant that looked to be made of real silver, not the cheap shit the chain was cast from. It was of a man on a horse and the man looked to be stabbing some kind of malformed lizard. The pendant was tarnished in places, clearly old and well loved. It didn’t look like anything Simon had ever seen a girl wear, but it oddly suited Mary.

“My grandda’s,” she said, fingering the chain, “It’s Saint George.”

“That’s the guy with the dragon, right?” Simon said, suddenly making sense of the lizard. Those weird little lumps on its back might be wings.

“Yeah, dinnae expect ye to ken,” she laughed, “He’s the patron saint of soldiers. Kept my granda safe during the war, but it didn’t do much for the cancer.”

Simon hummed thoughtfully, his eyes lingering on the pendant a moment longer before Mary trucked it back in her shirt.

“Ye doin’ anything tonight, Simon?” Mary asked.

“No.” Simon was never doing anything on any night, not unless Tommy had drug him into one of his hairbrained schemes.

“Good,” Mary nodded, like she’d been expecting that answer, “My sister’s going out for dinner and I’ve got fuck all to do without her. Ye wanna catch a movie? I’ll pay.”

“You’re too young to be asking me out on a date,” Simon pushed back from the counter. A flicker of apprehension flared to life within him. Mary was perfectly tolerable to be around, surprisingly so, and Simon had been enjoying the reprieve from afternoon boredom over the last two weeks. He didn’t want to ruin that with unnecessary complications like feeling.

“I’m sixteen, ye ass. It’s only three years,” Mary shot him a lopsided grin, “Sides, dinnae hav’ta be a date. We can just be a pair of guys going to see a movie.”

“A pair of guys, huh?”

“Sure,” Mary shrugged.

“Alright,” Simon nodded slowly, “But I’m picking the movie.”

The movie was some grimy action flick that Tommy had been pestering Simon about for a few months. Mary seemed to enjoy it more than he did. In her baggy jeans and baseball cap, it looked more like Simon was taking a younger brother or a friend from school to the movies than the pseudo-date it actually was. 

They were both way too poor for popcorn or any of the other overpriced shit the spotty kid at the booth was trying to sell them. So, there had been no excuse for Simon to use when he let Mary take his hand in the dark theatre. They’d been sharing the armrest amicably and then Mary’s hand was pressing into his.

Her fingers were smaller than his, but not by much. Just enough that their knuckles didn’t squeeze together uncomfortably. Mary’s hands were dry and warm with unexpected callouses. Simon wondered whether he should try to extricate himself, but Mary was so absorbed in the movie, it seemed rude to bother her. When the movie was over, she pulled her hand out of his with a nonchalance that made his chest squeeze and twist. The inherent lack of romantic intent in the exchange should have given him some comfort that he hadn’t somehow come onto her like some creep, but instead, all he felt was a vague disappointment. 

He drove her home in his beat up little Subaru, taking in her chatter between the sporadic directions she gave him to her sister’s apartment. Mary rolled the windows down and let her arm drift out of it, catching the air currents. The setting summer sun had cast everything in a hazy golden pink. Mary’s dark hair gleamed in the light and Simon did his best to keep his eyes on the road. It didn’t take long for them to round the corner to her sister’s rented house.

It was an old thing with peeling blue paint that the landlord had clearly gone over a few times. The neighborhood was a good one, if on the poorer end. It was way nicer than anywhere Simon had ever lived.

“I’m nae really a car guy myself. Motorcycles are more fun, but I can definitely see the appeal,” Mary said, musing on the movie, “Something very attractive about a bit o’ reckless driving. Speakin’ which, yer driving is absolutely shit.”

“You can walk next time you wanna go somewhere,” Simon said as he pulled into the driveway in front of her house. He slid the gearshift into park and fished out a cigarette from the pack laying on the dash, offering it to her. She took it, swiping his lighter from the cupholder.

Simon watched her light it, something terrible and thick and tight working its way into his chest. Mary watched him right back, her eyes glittering in the dim glow of the lighter, something burning in them that felt dangerous to Simon.

“Mam won’t let me smoke,” she grinned, all white teeth, before taking a long drag.

“It’ll kill you, you know,” Simon repeated on instinct the words his own mum had snapped at him a thousand times. Mary blew out a steady stream of smoke and handed the cigarette to Simon.

“Aye, but gambling’s no fun if ye don’t have the chance to lose.”

“Is that what you’re doing with me, taking a gamble?” Simon asked, taking his own drag from the cigarette. Unbidden, all of Tommy’s useless ramblings about indirect kisses floated to his mind. He quickly passed the cigarette back to her.

“Nae,” Mary said, a strange smile crossing her face as she looked down at the cigarette, “I’m a sure bet. Just seeing what sparks I can get to catch.”

“You’re the weirdest bastard I’ve ever met,” Simon shook his head, “Talking in fucking riddles. Can’t even speak English.”

“Ye say the nicest things to me,” Mary let out a laugh, tinged husky from the smoke.

The front door of the house swung open, startling Simon’s gaze away from Mary. A woman stepped out of the front door of the apartment, golden light flooding into the house behind her. She looked to be a carbon copy of Mary, just older and with soft brown eyes that roamed over Simon’s car. 

“Ye coming inside, Mare?” the woman called, quirking an eyebrow as her hands settled on her hips.

“Yes, Sarah, gimme a fuckin’ minute ye bint,” Mary yelled out the car window. Sarah just rolled her eyes, flipped her off, and went back inside the apartment.

Simon was still laughing when he pulled out of their driveway. 

The drive home would have been dreary, the sun having gone down and the city fading into a smoggy blue, but there was an itch crawling under Simon’s skin. He felt like static electricity was running over his body, down from his fingers and straight into his gut. By the time he pulled up to the dingy brick apartment and trudged up the steps, it was like every hair on his body was stood up on high alert.

“Where you been?” Tommy asked as he walked into the living room. It was dark inside, the cool light of the television the only thing illuminating Tommy’s face. Their mum had probably already gone to bed.

“Movie,” Simon grunted.

“And you didn’t take me?” Tommy whined, causing Simon to roll his eyes.

“You weren’t invited,” Simon said, “Someone from work asked me.”

“You gotta girlfriend?” Tommy asked and it sent a splinter through Simon. Mary was the same age as Tommy.

“No,” Simon said and walked past his brother into the dark hall, heading for the bathroom. He flicked on the dim overhead light, the fan rattling to life with it. Simon stuck his hand into the shower, twisting the ‘hot’ nob as far as it would go despite knowing it wouldn’t do much more than lukewarm.  

He ignored the buzzing sensation that ran through his head. He ignored how it got worse as his hands brushed over his stomach when he pulled his t-shirt off and shucked off his pants. The spray of the shower was freezing against his skin, sucking that hum right out of his skin and washing it down the drain.

Simon began to look forward to his evenings. It was the closest he’d ever come to having a social life, even if that consisted of himself and a scraggly teen crawling over every abandoned parking lot in Manchester like ants trying to find their way back to the nest. Tommy kept giving him odd looks every time he came home after dark, but he’d learned quickly not to give Simon any shit about girlfriends. It wasn’t like that.

Simon showed Mary how to use a knife, how to separate meat from joints and strip it off bones. She showed him three different ways to cobble together a homemade flashbang. In his glove box, he’d stashed a drawing Mary had done of him sharpening one of the larger knives the deli had. She came in everyday to eat a cheap sandwich at the bar counter and steal his cigarettes.

None of it was romantic, which gave Simon some comfort. He wasn’t stringing this girl along with the promise of something more and they both knew that.

After work, they’d drive around to anywhere with a decent view and no people, which more often than not was parking lots that had grown up into fields and old factory loading docks near the river. Mary’d gotten in the habit of bringing snacks with her and foisting them off on Simon while she sketched wherever they’d parked for the evening. She could tie knots in cherry stems with her tongue. Simon threw the pits at her until she spit one back at him, nailing him between the eyes.

  She’d also gotten in the habit of ragging on his music taste and had practically taken over his junky radio. Her CD collection had set up shop on the floor of the passenger seat, next to a few pencils and her spare pair of trainers. Simon couldn’t even complain because she’d somehow gotten the radio to stop making that horrible popping squeal everytime it turned on.

By the middle of July, it was all so second nature that Simon would have been surprised to find himself anywhere other than laid back on the hood of his car, listening to R.E.M. hum through the speakers from one of Mary’s CDs and pour out the open windows.

Mary sat next to him, staring out at the water in front of them. Her sketchbook was laying in the passenger seat, left behind when she’d gotten up to grab his lighter. She pressed her hand to Simon’s mouth, letting him take a drag from the cigarette she held.

“Where’d ye get that scar?” she asked, running her thumb over the ridge that bisected his mouth. Simon’s eyes flicked over to her as she drew her hand back. Her hair was a wild mess, the humidity turning her choppy cut into a dark fuzzball. He blew out a steady stream of smoke.

“My dad’s a real piece of shit. I haven’t seen him in about a year though,” he said and Mary nodded.

“Yer mam’s alright?”

“Yeah, pretty sure she’s the only reason me and Tommy are still alive. Don’t know how she ever married a bastard like my dad,” Simon shrugged. It gave him some small comfort that he’d passed his father in height and with any luck, he’d bulk out a bit more once he was in the military. If the fucker every showed his face around again, Simon could take care of it.

“I think my mam might prefer if I were dead,” Mary said, flicking some ash off the end of their cigarette, “I feel like I came out wrong somehow. I’m jus’ not what she wants.”

“You seem alright to me, but I’m not the best judge. Head’s all fucked up these days,” Simon said, just to watch Mary’s mouth twitch up.

“I like yer head,” she grinned, that teasing sharp curl twisting her mouth, “Ye’ve got nice hair. Pretty eyes.”

“Fuck off,” Simon said, but he couldn’t help giving her an answering smile.

“Ye free tonight?” Mary asked, her face verging on sullen. She’d been quiet most of the afternoon, having picked at her sandwich more than eaten it. It wasn’t exactly worrying Simon, but he wasn’t used to the silence anymore.

“Why?” 

“My sister wants to have ye round for dinner,” Mary said and Simon looked up from the stew meat he’d been packaging. There was something equally anxious and nauseous clouding those blue eyes. Wasn’t a date if her sister was there, he reasoned.

“Alright,” he nodded.

What followed was the most surreal evening Simon had ever experienced. His dad had inflicted some sit-down family meals upon them a few times when he was in his apologizing phases. They were nothing like the easy conversation between Sarah and Mary over the largest helping of shepherd’s pie Simon had ever been served. Simon felt strange sitting at Sarah’s unblemished oak table, shoving potato into his mouth while she and Mary traded friendly barbs. 

Sarah would throw the occasion question about school or family or work his way, but she seemed content to let him eat in silence if he liked. By the end of the meal, Simon felt like an exceedingly full decorative statue. The only thing that had kept him grounded in his chair was the occasional press of Mary’s foot against his shin throughout the hour.

“Its yer turn to wash the dishes, Mare,” Sarah grinned, shooing her off to the kitchen with a stack of dirty plates. Mary stuck her tongue out at Sarah but went willingly. The sound of running water and clanking ceramics followed almost immediately. Sarah craned her neck back to look at the kitchen before turning to Simon. The serious look on her face sent a jolt of apprehension through him.

“Listen, Simon, I’ve been wanting to talk to ye about Mary for a while. Thank ye for taking care of her,” Sarah said, her voice low, “This is the most I’ve seen her eat in weeks. She’s been needing a friend but she won’t let me be one.”

The phone rang at that moment, saving Simon from having to respond.

“Shit, tha’s probably Mum,” Sarah said and scrambled up from the table to rush to the living room. Left alone with the sound of dishes being washed and a hushed one-sided conversation, Simon suddenly felt very out of place. This woman had slipcovers on her couches, for Christsake.

He pushed his chair out and slipped out to the sliver of backyard behind the apartment. Fishing a cigarette out of his pants, he leaned against the porch railing and lit it. The air was muggy and made him feel a little nauseous after how much Sarah had shoveled onto his plate. He drew in on the cigarette and then let the smoke trail back out of his mouth. What Sarah had said about Mary, that didn’t square with the person Simon knew. Maybe it did, in some respect, but Mary didn’t need taken care of and if she did, Simon certainly wasn’t the person to do it.

The door opened behind him and then clicked shut. Mary materialized at his side, her arms wet and hands wrinkled where they pressed against the railing. She smelled like dish soap. The silence lingered between them for a long beat, the soft breeze rustling through the neighbors trees masking the distant noise of traffic.

“Why do you keep coming back to the deli?” Simon studied the end of the cigarette, “I’m not really good company.”

“Ye are, Simon. Better than ye know,” Mary said, no hesitation in her response. Simon passed the cigarette to her out of habit and she took it.

“Your sister said you needed a friend. Why me?” There was an old wooden fence at the end of the spit of grass that the landlord considered a yard. It was gray with age and not very straight, so that the sunlight and weeds on the other side poked through all the cracks. Simon stared at it resolutely, not turning to glance at Mary at all.

“I dinnae rightly know how to explain it,” Mary said, “I feel like my body’s burning up and I’m stuck inside, beating on the glass trying to get out. Been that way my whole life, until ye came along I s’pose.”

“What, I’m some kind of fire extinguisher?” Simon asked, twisting to look at her and she met his gaze steadily.

“Nae, still feel like I’m on fire,” Mary snorted, “It's different though, the way ye look at me. It’s the difference between a bomb and a firework, ye ken?”

For an instant, he saw it, understood it in the way the beautiful and brutal seemed to intertwine in those blue eyes.

“Dinnae make any sense, does it?” The words came out a disappointed sigh and Simon knew he wasn’t the first person she’d tried to explain this to.

“No, it does, almost,” Simon said. It was like watching a knot pull loose into a single thread again, the way Mary’s shoulders sagged in relief. 

Simon was wiping down one of the tables in the corner of the deli with a little more vigor than the spot really deserved. It was late in the evening and the sign in the window had been flipped over to ‘Closed.’ The bell to the front door tinkled and his eyes snapped up.

There was Mary, at last.

“Didn’t think you were coming in today,” he said, looking her over. She didn’t seem the worse for wear in her baggy shorts and old t-shirt, but there was a tightness in her shoulders that mirrored Simon’s. He’d finally worked up the courage to ask her to come round to his, if only to prove to Tommy that he did have some semblance of a social life.

“Sorry,” Mary said, her hands coming together and twisting in a distracted gesture, “My mam’s come to pick me up a few weeks early. She’s been at Sarah’s all day.”

“You snuck out, didn’t you?” Simon guessed and Mary gave him an amused huff, dropping her hands.

“If they didn’t want me to, they shouldn’t’ve given me a room with a window,” she said, “I don’t have long before they notice, but I wanted to come say goodbye.”

Pain, unexpected and sharp, lanced through Simon’s chest.

“So, this is it then,” he said, dropping his cleaning rag and wiping his hands off on his apron as he came out from behind the table to stand in front of her.

“Yeah, it is,” Mary said and Simon took in a deep breath, nodding as if it would make the ache in his ribs stop spreading. Mary opened her mouth, halted to reconsider her words, and then went ahead.

“Look, ye ken I think yer right bonnie,” she began. Simon didn’t really know what that meant, but the blush making its way up Mary’s face told him enough. It didn’t make the gnawing pain any better.

“And I ken ye don’t feel the same,” Mary continued, “But I want ye to know ye’ve been the best friend I ever had.”

Simon nodded, unsure of what to say. He suddenly noticed the slight puffiness around Mary’s eyes, the pink tinge making the bright blue stand out all the more clearly. It looked like she’d been rubbing at them recently. Or she’d been crying.

“I want ye to have this,” Mary said, pulling her medallion necklace out of her shirt. The little image of Saint George gleamed in the evening sun coming in the window. Simon opened his mouth to protest but Mary barreled on, “Just for now. I’m gonna catch up to ye and ye can give it back to me when I do.”

“Maybe we’ll end up in the same unit someday,” Mary grinned, “But I need ye to be safe until I get there and I know ol’ George’ll have yer back.”

“Alright,” Simon swallowed. Mary pulled the medallion off her neck and Simon leaned down so she could put it on him. He had to lean fairly far given how short Mary was, even rocked up on the tips of her trainers like she was.

As the necklace slid over his head, dry lips pressed soft against his. 

It was a brief, earth shattering thing that left Simon blinking dumbly as Mary’s hands fell away and the weight of the medallion fell into place. Mary stared at him for a long moment, those blue eyes sharp and searching. Simon’s head had turned into radio static and all he could do was stare back. After a moment, Mary nodded, like she had decided something.

“I’ll see ye soon, Simon,” Mary promised as she turned and walked out the door, letting in some of the noise of the evening traffic.

Simon never saw Mary again.

Chapter Text

There were a lot of people that Simon never saw again. He stopped looking over his shoulder when he heard a woman’s laugh in the mess, hoping to see blue eyes snap up to meet his. The sound of it was never quite right.

 Then he stopped going home for leave. There wasn’t much to go back to except a smoldering foundation. Price made him get a place eventually, but the little house out in the backwoods countryside wasn’t really a home for anyone.

And when he stopped seeing Simon in the mirror, it wasn’t all that hard to assume that part of him was gone too. But, he picked up souvenirs, markers for the things that kept slipping through his hands. 

Joseph had liked the necklace, had liked it even more after Simon had read him a storybook about Saint George, and dragons, and curious little boys. The book hadn’t survived anymore than anything else in that house had. Ghost could still feel the way Joseph’s little hands had tugged the necklace out of his shirt and he got in the habit of fishing it out himself, when he couldn’t sleep and his room on base seemed too quiet.

Eventually, everything in his life became routine, albeit a violent one. Ship out, ship in, blood and the thunder of artillery in the space between the two. Gaz was easygoing and Price tried to be stable enough to act as an anchor for them to orbit around. 

It worked.

Then Price told him they were bringing in someone new.

And for the second time in his life, Ghost was haunted by a pair of eyes that were just a little too blue to be real.

There was something about Soap that felt familiar. Familiar like the Springsteen and R.E.M. CDs he had tucked in the back of his sock drawer. He hadn’t played them in a decade, but he couldn’t exactly get rid of them either. They’d followed him around long after he’d gotten rid of any stereo that could actually play the albums.

It was the same with Soap. 

He grated against Ghost’s nerves like a rock in his shoe, poking and prodding him constantly, but it was the kind of rock that had been with him so long that the shoe would feel strange without it. Except Soap was still as green as a person could be to the 141, fresh off the plane and full of optimism that no one at Soap’s level should have been able to keep. 

Yet, Ghost couldn’t shake the strange tug in his chest every time those blue eyes locked with his own, full of mischief and fire. He wasn’t used to that anymore. He was pulled like a magnet toward their new Sergeant, maybe out of an instinct to protect the weakest link Ghost had rationalized at first. That wasn’t fair to Soap’s abilities though. Ghost had already seen the man’s hands slick with blood, that manic grin turning to look up at him like a dog looking for a pat. The 141 didn’t recruit weak links.

Ghost didn’t know what it was that drew him to the Sergeant, but he was pretty sure he didn’t have the kind of stereo to play those albums anymore. 

When Soap slid up beside him to lean against the fence while recruits jogged past them, offering him a cigarette was automatic. Soap gave an appreciative hum and took a deep drag. Things like that bothered Ghost, the muscle memory he seemed to have with Soap for no reason.

Soap’s eyes flicked up to him, crinkling at the corners and sparkling in the noon sun. The only time Ghost could really study his Sergeant's face was when it was turned upward to him like that. The man was too damn short to get a proper look at. Soap’s gaze locked with his and it sent a prickle down Ghost’s spine. Ghost forced himself to break eye contact, letting his attention wander over the rest of Soap’s heat flushed face. The brightness of the sun above them made the damp tracks of sweat in his shaved sides apparent, darkening his hair. Something about seeing the flashes of scalp under the short hair seemed vulnerable. Soap wiped at his forehead, cigarette still between his fingers, and Ghost tracked the motion.

The recruits were close enough to them now that he could hear them wheezing as they tried to keep pace.

“Look at ‘em go,” Soap whistled, “Poor fuckers, having to run on a day like this.”

Ghost didn’t respond, knowing Soap would ramble on regardless. He could sympathize with the comment though. He still hated the heat, even if he’d gotten more used to it. His balaclava didn’t exactly make for good insulation against the sun and he was pretty sure his eyeblack had started to run with sweat.

“I knew another Simon once, tall bastard like ye,” Soap said, passing the cigarette back to him. Ghost took it, flicking some of the ash down on the pavement below them.

“Wasn’t me,” Ghost grunted, “I would’ve remembered someone as annoying as you.”

“Ye wound me, LT,” Soap laughed, bumping his shoulder against Ghost’s arm for a moment,  “Absolutely gutting me.” If Ghost had been feeling warm before, it was nothing to the strange heat that bloomed along the back of his neck at Soap’s laugh.

Price’s loud sigh drifted up from behind them. Ghost looked over his shoulder and nodded to the Captain once, trying to remind himself that a hat like his would look exceedingly stupid with his mask. Even if it would keep the sun out of his eyes. 

“Is it too much to ask for one day without your constant flirting?” Price’s tone was long-suffering. 

“Constant flirting?” Soap’s face was split with a grin as he twisted to look at Price, “He just said I was annoying.”

Ghost snuffed his cigarette out between his gloved fingers, the bite of the fire barely there through the rubber grips.

“That’s practically a marriage proposal from Ghost,” Price shook his head, “Come on, I’ve got some new intel for you two.”

Ghost sat on the couch of the tiny safehouse, wiping blood off of his remaining knives. They were heading back into Las Almas in a little over an hour. The others were outside, making any necessary repairs to their limited supply of vehicles. The soft thud of boots on hardwood moved down the hallway, the intentionally quiet gait one that he recognized. A throat cleared and Ghost looked up.

Soap lingered in the doorway, staring at him with a pinched mouth and tension in his shoulders.

“Need something, Sergeant?” Ghost asked and watched as Soap flexed one of his hands, blue eyes wandering around the room before settling back on Ghost.

He’d pulled a bullet out of that arm earlier. Soap’s fingers had dug into his thigh hard enough to bruise when he’d poured antiseptic over the wound, but the Sergeant hadn’t made a sound. There was gauze wrapped over it now, the only outward evidence of the injury being the dark stain on Soap’s shirt.

“Nae, jus’ wanted to look at ye,” Soap shook his head, “Might be my last chance to get a good view of the Ghost.”

“That blood loss finally go to your head?” Ghost asked. His throat felt dry, probably dehydrated from all the shit they’d been forced to deal with in the last two days.

Soap had seen his face. So had everyone else in their little safehouse. Rather than the interest or teasing flirtation he’d expected to see in Soap’s expression when he’d pulled it off, his Sergeant had seemed lightyears away in that briefing room.

“Nae, sir,” Soap said, “I think I’m realizing how much it's gonna take for me to catch up with ye.”

His face still hadn’t lost that distant look.

Ghost was exhausted by the time they were all seated at the bar. Chicago’s nightlife seemed quiet though. He figured he could go a couple rounds before heading back to his room and stripping out of his civvies to collapse into his hotel bed. Price was telling some kind of story that had Gaz tearing up and Soap wheezing with laughter.

He let his fingers drift up to his mask, pushing it up over his nose as he took a swing from his glass. They caught on the chain around his neck as he adjusted the fabric and Ghost absentmindedly pulled the necklace out from under his shirt. He was used to the smooth feel of the medallion in his palm, though he tended to fiddle with it laying awake in the early hours of the morning more than he did out in public.

“Ye wear that thing all the time, Ghost?” Soap asked, his bright blue eyes catching the glint of the light like the necklace did. His gaze lingered on where the chain was wound through Ghost’s fingers.

“I’ve never seen him without it,” Gaz said between them. Price gave a nod from the other side of Soap. They were all seated in a row at the bar, the golden glow of the lights casting everything in a warm haze.

“Funny, didn’t think ye were Catholic,” Soap licked his lips like he was nervous. His eyes still hadn’t left the small outline of Saint George.

“I’m not,” Ghost said, taking another drink, “Girl who gave it to me was.”

“A girl? I didn’t know you got that from a girl,” Price said, his eyebrows shooting up, “Didn’t think you knew any.”

“I know plenty of fucking women,” Ghost grunted with exasperation. He set his glass down on the smooth wooden bartop with a thud.

“Besides soldiers, spies, and assassins,” Gaz said with a grin. He knew he had Ghost there. Ghost rolled his eyes and flipped him off, Gaz cackling in response.

“She was going into the military,” Ghost said, “Don’t know if she made it though. We fell out of touch.”

“Was she pretty?” Gaz asked, leaning forward as his smirk turned teasing. Soap’s eyes finally fell away, dropping back to the cup in front of him.

“Fuck, no,” Ghost snorted, shaking his head, “Don’t think she wanted to be.”

“Ye ever tried looking her up to see if she made it in?” Soap asked. There was a sudden roughness in his voice that made Ghost’s skin crawl.

“No,” Ghost said, “It’s been ten years. She’s probably got her own shit going on.”

Ghost was grateful when the conversation moved on, but Soap laugh sounded forced for the rest of the night.

Watching Soap work was like going to the cinema for Ghost. Not that he’d been to a movie in years.

A giddy thrill entirely inappropriate for a trained killer went through him every time Soap’s name was listed next to his on a mission assignment. That was becoming a more frequent occurrence too. As soon as Price figured out that Ghost played well with Soap, he’d stuck the Sergeant onto missions that Ghost previously would have done solo. His excuse had been that it adhered better to the regs if Ghost had a regular partner, but that was bullshit. The 141 had never been held to standard regs like that. Ghost still hadn’t figured out whether Price thought he needed a minder or if it was more for Soap’s benefit. 

Regardless, Ghost had gotten used to having a Scottish shadow trailing after him. His tent always smelled like burnt rubber and the glue Soap used for his explosives. There was extra wire tucked into his pack, just in case they got into a situation where the Sergeant might need it. He could identify Soap in the dark through a scope a thousand meters away, just by the way he moved.

Though, it was never dark for long on a mission where Soap’s specific skills were needed.

Ghost shifted on the patch of grass where he lay, staring through his scope. Soap’s silhouette flared to life through the glass, haloed by a bright wall fire bursting outward. All of it was beautifully timed and Ghost drew back from his rifle. He watched the structure disintegrate, the heat of it warming the previously cold night air. 

And there was Soap, coming back to Ghost, stalking up the hill toward him. The black grease paint streaked over his face had mixed with ash and concrete dust. He looked wild. His skin glowing in the light of the flames, flickering like he’d been set ablaze too.

“We solid, LT?” Soap grunted, nodding toward the rising flames below the hill as he reached Ghost. It stretched his neck, showing off the clean skin there. His face caught the light just right and his eyes gleamed bright and sharp. A sensation ran through Ghost’s whole body, starting at the crown of his head and flooding down through tips of his fingers and toes. It knocked the wind out of him.

Ghost wanted him.

He wanted to leave his rifle where it was, walk over to his Sergeant, and strip him out of his gear. He wanted to peel off his mask and run his tongue over Soap’s neck, just to feel the scratch of his beard against his cheek. He’d press him down to the ground and the blaze behind them would make Soap glow like sparks against the night sky. They’d rut together in the dirt until Soap’s face scrunched and slacked with ecstasy. Ghost wanted that full mouth to beg for mercy. He wanted to be the only thing that those blue eyes could focus on.

It was halfway ridiculous to even think about. Ghost had never wanted anyone. He could admit that guys were attractive and girls did nothing for him, but going further than looking was decidedly out of the question. Even as a snot nosed teen, the allure of snogging had been alien to him. When Tommy was running around after the girls in his classes, Ghost had wondered if there was a way to get the husband and kids without sex. He’d never felt that draw to lean in, to press his body against someone else’s until skin met skin. There had been one minor exception to that, but that had never amounted to anything, so it hardly counted.

“LT?” Soap was still waiting on him, those curious eyes dancing with the reflections of the blaze.

“Copy,” Ghost grunted, turning away, “Good work, Soap.”

Joseph is sitting on Mum’s lap. The glow of the living room lamp is warm. Simon’s at the other end of the couch, slumped into the mountain of throw pillows. Beth is humming loud enough that it carries from where she is stirring something in the kitchen.

“Uncle Si?” Joseph asks, looking sleepy as he rubs at one eye with a small hand. Tommy’s working late and Joseph always tries to stay up so he can tell him goodnight.

“Mm?”

“Why don’t I have any cousins? Todd has a whole bunch and they’re all coming to his house on Boxing Day,” he asks.

“You don’t have any cousins because Simon doesn’t have any kids and I don’t have any siblings,” Beth says as she walks out of the kitchen, setting a mug of hot coco down on the coffee table. Except it’s not the coffee table. It’s Price’s desk. The mug goes down too hard and slops over onto the paperwork. Beth doesn’t notice and sits down between them.

“Oh,” Joseph frowns at the spreading stain, “But I want a cousin.”

“We don’t always get what we want, but I’m sure Simon’ll do his best. Maybe that can be your Christmas present from him this year,” Beth picks up the mug again and takes a long drink. There’s some kind of rhythmic whirring sound in the distance. It’s too familiar to really bother Simon.

“You could bring someone home, Simon,” Mum says, shooting him a look over Joseph’s head. The whirring is louder now.

“Yeah, what about Johnny?” Beth grins.

Ghost blinked, finding his head tilted sideways and looking at Gaz’s boots across from him on the plane. The dreams were always like that. Disorienting, uncanny, and just a little too close to real memories. 

He’d often felt lucky that was all. There were enough nights he’d walked past the barracks to hear a strangled shout followed by shifting mattresses and soldiers trying to calm down one of their own while trying to keep from being punched on accident. It’d be bloody inconvenient for stealth missions. 

Something warm was pressed against him, under his cheek and tucked against his neck. Ghost lifted his head, straightening his spine and Soap’s lax body lolled onto him. His dark eyelashes fanned out over his cheeks, a fine layer of dust and grime having settled over all of it and set on his face as it mixed with his sweat. Not exactly endearing to most people, but Ghost’s heart lurched as Soap snuffled and pressed more firmly into the crook of his neck. Ghost could feel his balaclava starting to get damp from the warm sighs Soap was letting out. 

A snort came from across the aisle and Ghost’s gaze snapped up. Gaz gave him a smug grin holding up his phone. Internally, Ghost gave himself the luxury of a long sigh. He was going to have to explain to Price why one of his Sergeants needed a new phone. 

The 141 was technically on leave, though Gaz was the only one who’d left base so far. Price was set to ship out by the end of the week, just in time to beat the snow that was supposed to dump down on the base by Christmas. 

Ghost stared down at the banana muffin on his tray. The usual ugly brown paper wrapper had been replaced by one with green and red stripes, but the baking process had rendered it looking half brown as well. The mess was mostly empty, save for a few unlucky souls who didn’t have priority for leave and had pulled the short straw for when they would be on duty. There had been a time when Ghost would have been right alongside them, calling home to Manchester to see if they could reschedule Christmas so he could be there.

Soap plopped down across the table from him, his boot automatically seeking to press against Ghost’s. He looked half-awake as usual, the coffee not having set in yet, but the soft sleepy Soap that Ghost looked forward to teasing each morning was overshadowed by a truly vile Christmas sweater.

“The hell are you wearing, MacTavish?” Ghost squinted at the green and red knitted beams shooting toward his face, twisted into garish Christmas trees that ran over Soap’s pectorals. 

The worst part, Ghost realized, was that Soap was still incredibly handsome. He’d been trying desperately to sort through his new found sexual awakening. It was apparently limited exclusively to Soap, as he’d felt the old, normal revulsion at the idea of anyone else’s hands on him. The problem now was wrapping his head around just how far his attraction to Soap went, if it was something that needed to be managed or if it could simply be ignored.

“I cannae enjoy a little Christmas spirit, LT?” Soap grumbled, tabbing at his rubbery eggs with his fork. The fork managed to split the eggs and not pick any up at all.

“Not if it looks like that,” Ghost let his lip curl up so that Soap could see it where his face was exposed, “You going home soon?”

“Nae,” Soap shook his head, “Nobody there’d want to see me. Might call my sister if she’s got the time. She and her wife have got this free clinic in Mexico and it keeps them busy. She keeps giving me shit about my Spanish. Ye celebrating?”

“I haven’t done Christmas for a while,” Ghost said, taking a bite out of his muffin. It was dry and a little stale, but tea could help that.

“Do ye wanna not celebrate Christmas together then?” Soap asked, looking up from his eggs with hope sparkling in his eyes. A sharp squirming feeling wound through Ghost.

“You’ll just show up at my door even if I say no,” he sighed, like it didn’t secretly bring him some satisfaction that his Sergeant would pick his lock if he thought Ghost was going to be lonely for Christmas. Soap had never been much good at respecting social boundaries, his or otherwise.

“Ye know me too well, LT,” Soap beamed.

True to his word, on Christmas Eve, there was a sharp knock on Ghost’s bedroom door. It was late enough in the day to be dark outside and there was a chill in the empty halls of the base, brought on by the heavy snowfall they’d been promised. Ghost heaved himself off his bed, sticking an old receipt in his book and setting it aside. 

Upon opening the door, he found Soap, freshly showered and wearing a soft blue henley that Gaz had referred to as the ‘date night’ shirt. He’d brought a six pack of decent beer, the imported shit that König sent them sometimes. His mouth was open, but whatever witticism he’d prepared for Ghost had clearly died on his tongue upon seeing his Lieutenant. 

“Oh,” Soap’s eyes grew wide as he took in Ghost’s unmasked face, “I see Christmas came early.”

“It can leave early too,” Ghost shot him a look as he stepped aside to let Soap in. Soap shuffled past him, craning his neck so that he didn’t have to look away from Ghost’s face. Normally, the blatant staring would have made Ghost uncomfortable, but Soap scared the shit out of him on a regular basis for more reasons than he could count. A little staring felt almost reassuring in comparison. It was the reaction he expected out of everyone, unlike the first time Soap had seen his face.

“Sit where you like,” Ghost gestured to the room and Soap nodded. His room wasn’t big by any means. Just a standard bed with a folding chair Ghost used for a nightstand, a work desk he and Gaz had pulled out of the dumpster when the offices on base had been redone, and the door to the adjoining bathroom. It made most college dorms look like the Ritz, but it was better than splitting a room with a dozen other guys.

Soap set the six pack down on the green quilt spread over Ghost’s bed and it pressed an indent into the material. He looked consideringly at the bed before pulling two bottles out, cracking the top off one and passing it to Ghost. It was cold under his fingers as he took it. Soap plopped down on the carpeted floor and opened his own.

“Bed not good enough for you?” Ghost asked, pulling out his desk chair and sitting down in it. Unlike the chair, which was made of sturdier stuff, the metal frame of Ghost’s bed always creaked under his weight. A part of him wondered how well it would hold up with Soap’s added bulk.

“Nae, jus’ dinnae wanna get my germs all over yer sheets,” Soap grinned before taking a swig of his beer, “Actually, the physical therapy guy down in Med said I should spend more time on the floor. Good for my muscles. Dinnae want to pull my hip flexor again.”

“Smart,” Ghost agreed, taking a sip of his beer. The sweet, bready taste slid down easy as he looked at Soap, cross legged in jeans and leaning against his bed frame, “I’m not gonna carry you to exfil a second time.”

“It was only the last ten feet. Ye didnae do much,” Soap scoffed, “Gaz texted, by the way. He said to tell you Merry Christmas.” 

“Shit like that’s gonna get him stuck as Price’s replacement,” Ghost grinned, taking another drink. Gaz was the best between them at playing nice with the average person's sensibilities. Between the mask and his off-putting personality, Ghost was a PR nightmare, even if he was efficient. Soap could almost do it, but there was an edge about him that made people nervous, like he was just as likely to light up as the explosives he made.

“Feel like I should go to Mass tomorrow. Day of Obligation and all that,” Soap said. He stretched his legs out and tipped his head back against the mattress.

“You gonna?”

“Nae, the priest here is a complete bampot,” Soap complained, his face scrunching with disgust, “Haven’t really had anywhere to go regularly since I left home. Get moved around too much.”

“Mm,” Ghost hummed in understanding, “Haven’t been back home in a long time either.”

“Why not?” Soap asked, his eyebrows coming together into a frown. His blue eyes had taken on that look that made Ghost nervous - half concern, half curiosity, all a hazard to Ghost’s personal privacy.

“Same reason they call me the Ghost,” Ghost shrugged and took another drink of his beer. He hoped that would be the end of it, that for once Soap might let it drop. He knew better than that, though.

A beat of silence lingered in the small room.

“I won’t push, but ye can tell me if ye like,” Soap said, staring at Ghost like he might peel him apart. Ghost wished like hell he’d worn his mask. He needed some kind of barrier between him and Soap at that moment. This was dangerous. He didn’t talk about this shit with anyone. Price only knew out of necessity. 

Soap kept looking at him, so clearly willing to accept whatever answer he got. Ghost licked his lips and took a long drink.

“I suppose you’ve been a good boy this year,” he said, turning his head away from Soap. It was almost unbearable to hold his gaze like that, “It’s a shit bedtime story and I’m not telling you all of it.”

He would, though. He already knew it. 

“Anything ye want, Simon,” Soap said, as smooth and easy as cocking a rifle.

Then Ghost began unfolding himself. It came out in a detached way, like he was reading someone else’s history. The lady in psych, the only one he could really tolerate, had used words like ‘dissociation’ and ‘normal response.’ The compartmentalization of that part of his life had been wholesale and shoved far enough back in his mental closet that some days it felt like it had happened to someone else.

He described the gruesome details of Roba’s handiwork alongside his memories of dragging Tommy out of the gutter and tossing him in rehab. The feel of a half rotted jawbone under his bruised fingers alongside the first time Joseph said his name. It was all tangled together like Christmas lights shoved in a box, some still glittering when plugged in and the others as cold and dead as Ghost had felt standing next to the smoldering remains of his brother’s house.

He came back to himself to find Soap wiping at his eyes, beer long forgotten on the floor beside him.

“That’s all of it,” Ghost said and set his own beer aside on the desk. It had gone warm while he was talking.

“Ye alright?” Soap croaked and it made a small smile play over Ghost’s face. It was just like his Sergeant, checking on the guy with a split lip while he was actively bleeding out. Ghost felt surprisingly light, like he’d been the one to have a cry instead. Soap’s whole face had gone blotchy pink and his breathing had a wobble in it, like he might burst into tears if provoked.

“I’m fine,” Ghost said and he really was, for the most part, “It’s getting late, Johnny. Go on to bed. Don’t wanna fuck up what little sleep schedule we’ve got.”

“Aye, just give me a second. Got something for ye,” Soap said and stood up with a little difficulty.  He pulled a small scrap of paper out of his back pocket, no bigger than an index card, and moved to hand it to Ghost. Ghost took it from him, but instead of moving back, Soap’s hand slid up his arm to rest on his shoulder.

“Merry Christmas, Ghost,” Soap said, his red rimmed eyes still sharp and shining as he squeezed Ghost’s shoulder. His fingers felt like a brand through the fabric of his shirt, “And thank ye.”

“Merry Christmas, Johnny,” Ghost said, staring up at his Sergeant. It was so rare that he got to see him like this. Even after being dragged through Ghost’s bloody history, he still seemed to have a glow about him.

And then Soap stepped back, moved to the door, and left with a final ‘goodnight’ thrown over his shoulder.

Ghost looked down at the little card in his hands, flipping it over to find a pencil drawing on the back. It was a picture of Ghost in his civvies, leaned back against their standard booth at the bar near base. The little Saint George medallion sat on his chest, a gleaming spot of white on the black of his shirt. Ghost wasn’t sure he ever really looked that relaxed, at least not in public.

He set it next to Mary’s drawing in his top desk drawer, safe from rogue coffee stains and grease paint smears.

Joseph's bedroom is little and the furniture looks like toys beside Ghost. Tommy always teases him that he’s practically a giant next to his nephew. Ghost digs through the pile of books on the floor next to the bed. 

Joseph had wanted him to read the Saint George book again. There’s blood downstairs and there’s probably blood on the bottom of his boots too. Ghost doesn’t want to think about that. He finds the book and grips it tight in his hand.

"What d’ye ken about Saint George?” Soap’s voice comes from the open window. 

Ghost turns, but Soap isn’t there. Mary’s scrawny frame is tucked into the windowsill, baggy men’s jeans hanging off her waist. Her arm’s bleeding, bullet wound dug in deep, and she’s got one of Ghost’s old knives in her hand, flipping it around and around. 

There’s blood on the tip and Ghost knows he put it there first.

“On your signal, Simon,” Price’s voice crackles over his radio. Ghost can’t remember the signal or who the target is today. 

A bomb flares to life behind Mary, lighting up the night outside.

“Don’t know anything about saints,” Ghost says, squinting past her to look at the billowing cloud of fire in the distance. Was it a bomb?

The color isn’t right, or maybe it’s too right, like some half remembered blaze of a sunset over the poorer half of Manchester. It moves like a wave, crackling and popping into showers of sparks. It shouldn’t be like that. Not here. 

Mary looks away from him, following his gaze out to the roiling mass of light behind her.

She looks back and it’s Johnny, the edges of his face tinged gold with the aura of the explosion. 

“C’mon, LT,” Soap grins, “I’m burning alive, jus’ for ye.”

Ghost’s eyes flicked open to the darkness of his tent. Gaz was dead to the world next to him. Price and Soap had taken the second watch, leaving them to split their singular tent.

He felt warm, almost sweaty, despite the cold air gnawing at the exposed skin around his eyes. His hand was still clenched tight, as if there was something in it. There wasn’t, of course. Part of him wanted to pull the medallion out of his shirt, just to satisfy the urge, but that wouldn’t have boded well for his self control. 

Instead, Ghost heaved himself up, careful and quiet so as not to disturb Gaz. If he had time to dream, he’d slept long enough.

It was overcast, the clouds above them sitting high but still tightly woven, keeping the sunshine from turning the tarmac into a frying pan. Ghost resisted the urge to shift on his feet where he stood next to Soap. It would only be an excuse for him to brush their shoulders together. Their plane was taking all fucking day, and Price had taken the opportunity to pull Alejandro aside to discuss some last minute logistics for some fishing trip they were supposed to take after the mission.

On Soap’s otherside, Rudy did rock back and forth, shaking the stiffness out of his knees. His eyes followed Alejandro across the tarmac to where he and Price were huddled together.

“Still haven’t told him, then,” Soap’s words made Rudy’s face scrunch in a grimace.

“You ever been in love, hermano?” Rudy grumbled. Ghost felt like he was somehow eavesdropping, though he was clearly right next to them.

“Just once,” Soap winked and something within Ghost gave a lurch, “Nice kid, let me bum cigarettes off him, took me to the movies.”

“Sounds like a real Casanova,” Rudy said, giving Soap a look.

“Hardly,” Soap snorted, “But I think he was the only person at that point in my life who really understood me. Fell tits over ass for him almost immediately.”

“What happened?” Rudy asked.

“He never felt the same way and I changed,” Soap shrugged and Rudy nodded, like he understood. Given how long his shit with Alejandro had dragged on, maybe he did.

Ghost flexed his fingers. Anyone who could let Soap go like that must have been an idiot. There was someone out there who had the chance at what Ghost craved, no regulations or chain of command bullshit to get in the way. Ghost wanted him fucking dead.

By the time they were hiking through the jungle in Brazil, Ghost’s ire had settled into a simmer, bubbling under the surface of his conscious thought as they trudged through the dense undergrowth. The smell of damp earth and fresh rain surrounded them almost as tightly as the heat.

Alejandro and Rudy had taken a different path to the camp, just to scout out any potential problems and ensure they had more than one way out of there. Mud squelched under Ghost’s boots and he could hear Soap’s doing the same. Sweat poured down his back and his mask was wet clear through. Not for the first time, he made a mental note to see if R&D had come up with a fabric more breathable than what he currently had.

“Whatcha gonna do when ye retire, LT?” Soap panted out behind him, clearly not faring much better. The atmosphere was thick enough to swim through.

“I’m not going to retire,” Ghost said, stepping over a fallen log. His pants had started sticking to him as well, making the movement uncomfortable.

“Ye’ll hav’ta,” Soap grunted, struggling to get over the log since his legs didn’t have quite the same reach, “I’m nae gonna retire until ye do and ye’d feel bad if I got killed on yer account."

“Not that bad,” Ghost paused, waiting for him, “But I do like you alive.”

“So, ye don’t have any secret wife hangin’ around,” Soap said, letting out a successful huff as he got both feet on the ground. His landing had made a wet, squishing sound as he pressed into the dead leaves and mud.

“Wives aren’t really my thing,” Ghost said, turning to continue up their path.

“What about husbands?”

Ghost paused again. Foreign birdsong hummed around them, the intermittent buzz of insects their only accompaniment. His boots were starting to sink into the mud and there was sweat running down into the corner of his eyes.

“Dunno if I’m really the marrying type, Soap,” Ghost said, adjusting his pack with a shrug and moving forward, “I’ve done the family thing before and it didn’t end well.” 

“I know, but I think ye could be the marrying type, for the right person,” Soap’s voice came behind him.

“What about you?” Ghost tried to change the subject. They were lucky that the scum they were out there hunting had apparently taken the day off, because Ghost was pretty sure he’d never felt less focused on a mission in his life.

“Aye, for the right guy, I could be,” Soap mused and Ghost could practically see the smile on his Sergeant's face, “Could have kids and a house. Even a dog, if they really wanted one.”

“You hate dogs,” was all Ghost could think to say. That electric want flared up inside him, aching and clawing at his chest. He could just turn around, right here, and shove Soap down in the slime of the forest floor. Straddle his waist, put his whole weight on Soap so that he couldn’t even think about getting up, kiss him until he was breathless from more than just the heat.

“Yeah, but ye don’t. Lotta people don’t,” Soap said. Ghost closed his eyes for half a moment and then pushed aside a low hanging branch, moving deeper into the jungle.

If humans had as good a sense of smell as dogs, Ghost was pretty sure their little camp would have been fucked. The tent he split with Soap was absolutely rank. Layered over the usual burnt rubber and glue smell was wet socks and several hundred pounds of sweaty soldier. It was frankly disgusting, but Ghost was so used to it at this point that it barely registered beyond hoping that their target didn’t have bloodhounds. 

Alejandro had first watch, so Ghost was stretched out next to Soap in their tent. The Scot looked miserable, stripped down to his tank top with his head pillowed on his clammy arm. The muggy humidity hadn’t improved since that afternoon and the forecast had called for steady rain throughout the whole night. 

Ghost watched a drip of sweat track down Soap’s neck and disappear into the light smattering of chest hair peeking above his tank top. A brief curiosity flickered through Ghost’s mind. Would Johnny get sweaty like that during sex? He usually did during sparring.

Ghost let out a slow breath, willing the thought away. He let himself observe his Sergeant more carefully, steering away from any untoward observations. Soap had been uncharacteristically quiet while they set up camp and ate their shitty dinner. By the time they had started getting ready for bed, his face had taken on that strange distance. Where he’d normally be ribbing Ghost or peppering him with invasive questions, he’d instead laid down next to his Lieutenant in the dim light of the setting sun and gone quiet.

“Where d'you go?” Ghost asked, startling himself as he broke the silence.

“Hm?” Soap jerked his head up, blue eyes confused as they met Ghost’s.

“When you get that look on your face. It’s like you’re not here at all,” Ghost said. Soap frowned, readjusting himself and stretching a little. Even in the dim light, his body seemed to shine. The logical part of Ghost’s brain reminded him that it was probably just sweat.

“I’m here,” Soap said,  “Happy Easter, LT.” Ghost hadn’t realized it was that late in the year already.

“Kinda ironic, isn’t it?” Soap continued, a hint of that distance creeping back into his face even as he gave Ghost a wry smirk, “Getting murdered because ye love a buncha shitheads who don’t even like ye.”

“Mm,” Ghost grunted. It sounded idiotic like that, but Ghost had done equally stupid things, “Aren’t you Catholic?”

“Aye, always did like a man with a morbid sense of humor,” Soap chuffed and leaned forward to fish something out of his pack. Ghost knew it was a beat up rosary that lived in Soap’s chest pocket during most missions.

Ghost didn’t really need to ask about him being Catholic. It was more of a rhetorical question than anything else. He remembered everything about Soap, whether he wanted to or not. Sometimes, if they had a bit of downtime in a foreign city, Soap would come back to the hotel room smelling like incense with that same distant look in his bright eyes.

Like a hundred other nights, Ghost fell asleep to the soft murmur of Soap praying the rosary, interspersed with the occasional pit pat of light rain on the canvas tent.

It was all going well until they shoved open the door to the room where the hostages were and found five little faces staring at them in terror. The room was a small concrete cell at the back of the compound, bare except for its young occupants. Rudy and Alejandro were down the hall, stripping information from the computers in the grimy office. Everyone else in the compound had found themselves in various states of demise depending on which member of the team had stumbled upon them first.

Between the smell and the gaunt look the children all shared, their captors had clearly left to them to their own devices. Ghost felt a wave of nausea flood over him, visions of an entirely different child bursting behind his eyes.

Soap crouched down and spoke to them in thick, broken Portuguese. The kids stared at him in confusion and terror until he switched to Spanish. One of the girls burst into tears at that and stumbled forward into Soap, pressing her small face into his chest.

“Go get Rudy,” Soap murmured, turning his head to look up at Ghost. His words were soft and in that same comforting tone, but his eyes had hardened into cold fire. Ghost turned stiffly and fled out of the room.

The image of Soap carrying a little girl, barefoot with a bandage over one eye that Rudy had carefully put on, out to the vehicles that had arrived for exfil would stay with Ghost forever.

Two days later, at their temporary base, it still had its claws deep in his skull. Standing outside in the humid air, cigarette slowly burning down to his fingertips, it played through his mind in sick, uncomfortable turns. The whole thing was tangled in a horrible knot that he was either going to have to untangle or shove in its own box to live in his mental closet. He knew the right answer, but there was a selfish part of him that was sick of losing out to his sense of reason.

The door to the roof swung open and shut behind him. He didn’t even have to turn around to know who it was, the soft sound of boots on the rooftop as familiar as his own heartbeat. Ghost cast his eyes up to the stars glittering overhead. They weren’t the same ones that hung over Manchester and it made him feel strangely homesick, the sensation almost alien to him now.

“Was wondering where ye went,” Soap said, coming to lean against the wall with him and look out at the courtyard below them. Technically, neither of them should have been up there, particularly since they were just guests on the base, but no one had ever tried to stop Ghost from finding his way up to somewhere quiet. 

“When ye were little like that, like those kids,” Soap started, “Did ye want to be a soldier when ye grew up?”

“Not always,” Ghost said, passing his cigarette to Soap out of muscle memory more than conscious choice.

“I did,” Soap said, taking it from him, “What else did ye want to be, Si?”

“A butcher, for a while. Not that different than what I do now. Then I thought…that I might,” Ghost paused, “That I might want a family. Try to do a better job than my dad.”

“It’s not too late to want that, Ghost,” Soap said, his tone soft in a way that sent a flash of hot, stomach curdling shame through Ghost’s body.

“Of course, it fuckin’ is,” Ghost’s voice went bitter, “You know what I’m like.”

“Sometimes the person ye were’s gotta die so ye can survive,” Soap mused, pressing the cigarette out against the concrete of the wall, “Doesn’t mean ye cannae dig parts back up when yer ready.”

“What the hell would you know about it?” Ghost said, turning to look at Soap. There was a tension in his shoulders that Ghost wouldn’t have pushed on a normal day, but his head hadn’t been right for most of the past week. He wasn’t thinking half as straight as he wanted to be for a conversation like this.

“More than ye think,” Soap said with a shrug. It was a deflection and it infuriated Ghost for reasons he couldn’t understand.

“You got your name on a grave like mine? No, I didn’t fucking think so,” Ghost spat, letting his frustration boil over. Something flashed over Soap’s face for an instant that took the wind out of Ghost’s sails, but it was too late.

“Nae, but I might as well. If ye think I dinnae ken what it’s like to look in the mirror and see a stranger wearing yer own skin, yer fuckin' daft,” Soap’s eyes had gone as hard and flat as his voice, so much more distant than Ghost had known they could be. “It's not the same, but yer not the only one with ghosts following ye around, Simon.”

He turned and walked back out of the door, leaving Ghost in the dark to watch it swing shut.

Chapter Text

Ghost had a problem. He’d been sitting at his desk for the last half an hour, watching a fly beat itself to death against the window while he tried to muster the willpower to finish filling out his paperwork. For a man prized by others for his efficiency, Ghost had been having more and more days where distraction tugged him around by the mask.

There was a Soap-shaped hole in his mind that all of his thoughts seemed to pour directly into, waking or sleeping. Brazil had cracked something in the trust that they had built, not that Ghost didn’t think Soap would have his six or that their chemistry in the field had suffered. It was the little things that Ghost had gotten used to outside of missions, the ways that Soap had slipped inside of his head without him noticing. 

Ghost groaned, tilting his head back to stare at the tiled ceiling. The pzink pzink pzink of the fly hummed in the background and he wondered if that was how Soap had felt trying to make friends with Ghost before he’d fucked everything up. He let his eyes close, trying to force his mind to the training schedules he needed to plan, but that circled and fell down the hole in his head too.

There really had been a time when he’d planned to go down in the field, not even that long ago. What was the point in retiring to endless years of being bored and useless? He had nothing to go back to and no one to stick around for. But, Soap had changed that.

That was the root of Ghost’s distraction. Soap had dug that hole in his head all by himself and things had been welling up out of it, threatening to consume Ghost. He’d been having thoughts of dragging Soap back to his house in the woods during their next leave and then maybe doing it again next Christmas. He knew Soap would jump at the chance.

And that led to daydreams of having Soap in his house. Sweet things better suited to the romance novels Beth had used to read than a pair of murderers, but Ghost couldn’t help it if his mind conjured up how the pale morning light would catch Soap’s blue eyes where the sunrise was streaming into Ghost’s kitchen. Those flashes of his Sergeant's bedhead and morning pout as he fiddled with Ghost’s toaster, morphed into Soap moving in, of a retirement that they took together. All the things that he’d thought of as ‘his’ quickly became ‘ours.’

The house was already perfect. There was the room upstairs that would be just right for an art studio or even a nursery. Ghost shifted in his chair, stretching some of the stiffness out of his back. Even in the privacy of his mind, he didn’t let himself linger on that particular fantasy very long.

Once Ghost got Soap there, even just for a week of leave, there would be late nights sprawled out on the couch together. Those could become waking up in the same bed, curled up to stay warm. He could convince Soap to stay with him, be with him, if the external pressure that hung around them was removed. No more Lieutenant Riley and Seargent MacTavish, just Ghost trying to find ways to stitch Soap permanently to his side.

The fly had gone silent at the window, finally having succumbed to exhaustion.

Was that what had happened in Brazil? Soap had been avoiding him since then. Not outrightly so, like some school kid with a grudge, but it was a tangible thing. The Sergeant still sat with him in the mess and ran trainings with him, but he didn’t push Ghost to come to the range afterward or steal his cigarettes when they were waiting out on the tarmac. He wasn’t peeling the layers of Ghost back and sticking needles in the Simon underneath anymore. Ghost should have felt grateful for the space, proper boundaries between a superior officer and a subordinate.

It was fucking hateful.

The smell of cheap tobacco and beer clouded the sharp burn of the alcohol in the back of Ghost’s mouth. The first real flush of summer heat had sent half the base scrambling for a night out on the town, which meant their normal bar was packed to the gills with sweaty men and women in their twenties. Something about the warm weather had made the recruits unreasonably randy. Well, not just the recruits.

“You alright, son?” Price asked as Ghost tipped back another shot. From his seat at their regular table, Ghost had a perfect view of the dance floor. It also currently happened to be a perfect view of both of his sergeants. 

“Fine,” Ghost gritted out when Price’s elbow pressed against him, nudging him to respond. He’d been a shitty conversation partner all evening, but he couldn’t really be assed to pay attention at the moment. Gaz and Soap had been dancing for the last thirty minutes, curling and twining ever tighter together to show off moves that had the crowd around them laughing and throwing out wolf whistles in turn. Ghost knew there wasn’t anything but a close friendship between them, but in all truth, Ghost didn’t even have that with Soap at the moment.

He watched Soap roll his hips, the fabric of his too-tight jeans straining against the movement. Gaz was clearly trying to hold in a laugh as he slid a hand around Soap’s waist and bent him into a low dip. Ghost was pretty sure if he bit his cheek any harder, he was going to start bleeding.

“It’s not really my place,” Price started and Ghost held in a groan, “But you’re not gonna get anywhere just staring at him.”

“Don’t think you should be pushing me toward my subordinate,” Ghost said, tearing his eyes away from his sergeants. There was a drop of bourbon left in the bottom of his glass and he rolled it around the bottom of the cup.

“If it were anyone other than you two, there’d be no way in hell I’d even suggest it,” Price said, leaning forward to set his arms on the table, “You should talk to him, before it's too late.”

“I need a smoke,” Ghost said, standing up as Price sighed, giving him a look that told Ghost that the conversation had only been delayed. He pushed through the crowd that lingered around the edges of the bar and headed toward the backdoor.

Ghost pushed open the heavy door and stepped out into the alley, the warm night air only a few degrees cooler than the humid swamp of the bar. To his disappointment, the alley was already occupied, though the pair of recruits standing under the streetlamp were too pissed to notice him. 

He squinted as he looked at them, pretty sure it was Corporal Radley and the big guy that seemed to hang off him like a leach. Ghost could never remember the man’s name, just that he was about twice the size of a regular recruit with about half the brainpower. Radley was somewhat competent from what Ghost had seen and with a few years of training, the man might even make something of himself if he could manage to ditch the shitheads that followed him around.

Ghost shoved a hand into his jeans, fishing for his cigarettes, when the recruits’ conversation grew loud enough that he could hear.

“Did you see Soap in there?” Big Guy guffawed out and Ghost’s hand froze. Radley gave a low whistle and a nod, leaning back against the lamp post. There was  a smirk on his face as he looked up at his friend.

“Can’t believe he’s still single if that’s what he’s like off duty,” Big Guy continued. Ghost couldn’t see his face but from the way the man was swaying, he was fairly intoxicated.

“I thought the Sergeant had something going on with his Lieutenant,” Radley frowned, confusion coming into his tone. Ghost felt himself give an involuntary nod.

“With Ghost? That’s ridiculous,” Big Guy snorted, “Don’t think that anyone would try to be with him. I mean, he’s a fucking legend in the field, but would you really want to share a bed with that guy?”

“Yeah, see what you mean there,” Radley sucked at his teeth, grimacing. It sent a strange sensation through Ghost’s chest, like looking up at the sky in Brazil and seeing the wrong stars.

“So, d’ya think I’ve got a chance with MacTavish then?” Big Guy asked and Ghost could hear the leer in his words.

“Maybe, I’ve never seen him date a subordinate, but he’s always friendly with you,” Radley shrugged. It was a tactful answer. Ghost could’ve almost appreciated it if he didn’t feel like his skin was boiling over. His mask chaffed on the top half of his face, everything suddenly too hot as a cocktail of jealous shame flowed through him. It was time to call it a night, go back to base, and forget the whole evening had ever happened.

If the recruits had to run in the hot morning sun while hungover, they’d only brought it on themselves.

They’re fully geared up, standing out on the tarmac while they wait for their plane to taxi around.

He cradles Soap’s helmet as he unzips Ghost’s pants and sinks to his knees. He’s glowing, light pouring out from his skin and lingering where he brushes his hands down Ghost’s thighs.

The house is burning, a great pillar of smoke going up in the middle of Manchester. It’s been burning for a while, but Ghost is pressed up against the hood of his car. He’d sold the Subaru when he’d joined up, but it’s here somehow.

Blue eyes meets his, a cheeky grin before that pink tongue darts out, wet and warm and -

Ghost woke with a bleary grunt. The bedsheets wrapped around him were sweltering and sticky. He pushed off the blankets and sat up, rubbing his face with clammy hands. The cool air nipped at him where he had sweat through his shirt. It wasn’t quite pitch dark in his room. A smidge of light filtered in through the blinds of his window, a combination of the lights on base and the full moon hanging low on the horizon.

He let out a sigh into the stillness of the room, the sheets shifting around him as he did so. 

Unlike usual, he couldn’t ignore the heat running through his gut and the way that electric buzz had traveled south. All the blood in his body seemed to have pooled into a throbbing mess that twisted his stomach with guilt. It couldn’t keep happening like this. It was burning him alive.

Slowly, carefully, and all too aware of what he was doing, Ghost laid back against the damp sheets and pushed the hem of his boxers down.

“Sergeant,” Ghost said and Soap jerked his head up from where he was leaning ever closer to his porridge. He’d been struggling to stay upright the whole morning, his spoon slipping out of his hand and clattering onto his tray twice. Ghost pressed his boot against Soap’s, up near the bend of his ankle.

“Nineteen hundred. Knife fighting and grappling. You’re due for some practice and I’ve got the time tonight,” Ghost said and watched as the words registered in Soap’s brain.

“How generous of ye, LT,” Soap grumbled, looking back down at his porridge and stabbing at it with his spoon. Ghost didn’t miss the way his Sergeant fought a smile as his boot nudged him back.

When Ghost arrived at the gym that evening, he had to remind himself that he wasn’t taking Price’s advice. He was just teaching his Sergeant some necessary survival skills. It was what a good Lieutenant would do.

The gym itself was blessedly empty, only a few sparse individuals stationed at the weight machines on the other side of the room. Because of that, Soap found Ghost sitting alone on the bench by the sparring mats when he arrived for their session. Ghost gave him a subtle once over, the little black tank top Soap wore showing off where the man had bulked up recently in the shoulders. He’d need that muscle for more than looks if he was going to make it through the evening unscathed.

“Catch,” Ghost said and tossed Soap one of the rubber knives he had been holding. Soap caught it by the handle, not even seeming phased.

“Just like old times, LT,” Soap said, looking down at the knife in his hand and running a finger over the tip. It was blunt, but the rubber was stiff enough that the danger of a painful bruise wasn’t out of the question.

“You ready?” Ghost asked, standing up. Soap’s eyes followed the motion before coming to meet Ghost’s gaze. It sent a prickle up the back of Ghost’s neck. Soap hadn’t looked at him like that in weeks.

“Always,” was Soap’s reply, a flare of mischief and something wilder glittering in his smile.

The real joy of working with Soap was that he was incredibly easy to train. He picked up skills so quickly that he’d give seasoned officers a run for their money within a month of a training session. The problem was that most people weren’t prepared to keep up with that learning curve, which left the Sergeant gnawing at the bit for more. More to learn, more to do, harder work, higher standards.

 It was one of the reasons that Ghost felt they’d always worked so well together. Not only was he prepared to give Soap more, he intended to run the man ragged. He held him to unreasonable standards because he knew Soap could meet them and Soap thrived on any scraps of approval he’d felt he’d earned. Ghost lived to see those blue eyes light up with determination every time Ghost told him to go a little further, jump a little higher. And then, he’d watch his Sergeant do the impossible.

“Again,” Ghost called out an hour into their session. Soap groaned where he’d just been thrown to the floor, hissing as he sat up. He wiped the sweat off his face where his mohawk had started to drip. He got to his feet, knife still gripped in one hand, as Ghost stood leisurely flipping his own knife end over end.

“Anytime now,” Ghost said, smirking as he saw Soap stiffen. He looked up at Ghost and there it was.

There was that fire.

Soap moved and time flowed slow for Ghost. It was like watching him through a scope, his silhouette tinged red in the glow. The chemistry that made them so formidable a team flared to life, twisted with an edge of competition.

He met Ghost blow for blow this time, a foot catching him behind the ankle and sending them both to the floor in a heap of sweaty limbs. There was a desperation in his movements that fueled Ghost as they grappled for the upper hand. A surge of pleasure ran up his spine as he pinned Soap to the mat, digging his knife into the space between his ribs.

That pleasure was only matched by the feeling of a rubber knife pressed against his neck, the first draw of the evening. Ghost went to congratulate his Sergeant, but the words caught in his throat.

In the scramble, Soap’s tank top had ridden up. 

Ghost had seen Soap topless a few times before, but it had always been under duress so he’d never had the time to take in the actual landscape of his torso. There was a thick smattering of dark hair that got denser towards Soap’s centerline, trailing down in an inviting strip from his chest to where his boxers obscured his hips. The typical assortment of scars for someone in their career littered his body, curving over the solid shapes of muscle and bone.  What drew Ghost’s attention were two clean scars under Soap’s chest, pale and faded into the curve of his pecs.

“Where’d you get these?” Ghost asked, leaning forward on his knees as the hand holding his knife slid up to thumb at one of the scars. Soap’s knife fell away, landing somewhere on the outside of Ghost’s leg where he had pinned the Sergeant in. 

“Top surgery,” Soap swallowed, his throat thick with the movement, “Think they’ve healed up pretty well.”

“Top surgery,” Ghost repeated. Something in his mind was slotting into place, but there was too much static in his head for him to take hold of it.

“Yeah…” Soap said. Something in his gaze had turned uneasy as he stared up at Ghost. 

“Huh,” Ghost said, “Didn’t know that about you.”

“Oh,” Soap’s voice had gone very quiet, “Thought it would be in my file.” Ghost shook his head. Price kept most personal shit like that out of the files he gave to people to review. Medical would have a more comprehensive copy, but unless it was relevant to a mission or they chose to disclose it, Ghost usually knew fuck all about the people he worked with.

“You’re favoring your left leg tonight,” Ghost said, giving his thigh a light tap and Soap flinched, “C’mon, up, we’ll go again.” He rocked onto his heels and stood up, offering Soap a hand. Soap stared at it for a moment before gingerly reaching out his own hand to be pulled up. 

They went a few more rounds, but Ghost could tell neither of their hearts were in it anymore. Soap was distracted and Ghost was moving on auto-pilot, a combination likely to land at least one of them in Medical by accident. Ghost called it a night, but even the compliment he tossed at Soap for his hard work wasn’t enough to bring the man fully back to the present. They made their way to the exit in silent unison, Ghost stepping out into the hallway first.

“Are we solid, Si?” Soap asked, lingering in the doorway to the gym. There were little streaks on his temple where sweat had tracked its way down out of his hair. His face had taken on that distant look again and it sent a twisting ache through Ghost’s chest. 

“Course, Johnny,” Ghost nodded and headed back to his room.

There hadn’t been time to address Ghost’s new revelation about Soap. They were sent out on an emergency mission the next morning and as Ghost crept down the concrete hallway of the compound, he wanted to go back in to the previous night and strangle himself. Soap had been withdrawn since they had met in Price’s office that morning, his knee bouncing with its usual nervous energy but his expression conspicuously blank.

The tension had only mounted when Price had assigned them to the same team. Ghost had tried to make a joke, something like their usual banter, only to get back a nod from Soap. It was then that he had known that he’d fucked up the night before. The real problem was he didn’t have any way to fix it before they were sneaking down suspiciously empty corridors.

“Something’s not right,” Ghost murmured, looking up at the ceiling. Soap hummed in agreement behind him. They should probably check-in with Price and make sure no new intel had cropped up.

The sound of a shoe scuffing against the floor echoed from just down the hall.

Ghost stepped forward, only to be jolted back as an explosion rocked the hallway, one of the rooms in front of them blasting apart. It knocked loose a chunk of concrete from the wall, the debris striking hard against Ghost’s mask and just narrowly missing cracking against his actual skull. The impact was still enough to leave Ghost’s head ringing.

The world tilted sideways as he was slammed to the ground in a tackle.

Ghost rolled with it, eyes connecting with a man at the end of the hallway half obscured by the billowing dust and smoke, one hand outstretched like he’d thrown something. Quick and easy as breathing, Ghost had raised his pistol and shot the man through the head, the bullet sliding right between his eyes.

Behind him on the floor, Soap let out a shuddering gasp.

Ghost sat up immediately, turning to look at his Sergeant lying flat on the ground. His face had scrunched with pain, a layer of dust coating his body as Ghost was sure it covered his own. Everything seemed alright until Ghost noticed the handle stuck firmly in Soap’s side. His eyes met Soap’s and there was a terrible moment where all Ghost could do was stare helplessly at him before his training kicked in.

And then, he was moving. 

“Soap’s down, we need medevac now,” Ghost barked into his radio. He hoped Price’s radio was on, wherever he was. They didn’t have time for any fucking delays. He glanced back at the dead man leaking out in the hallway, scanning for any other threats as he went. There was an empty knife holster on his thigh. How the fuck had he missed that?

“I’m sorry,” Soap gurgled, “Should’a been faster.” Ghost felt his heart lurch as he realized Soap had misinterpreted his actions. The smoke and dust had hit his eyes and he felt them prickle as he blinked. The familiar smell of burnt rubber had risen up in the air, but the dark stain spreading over Soap’s torso had given it an undercurrent of iron.  

“None of that shit,” Ghost chided, trying to stem any bad feelings before shock actually set in, “Can you get up?”

“Dinnae think so,” Soap said. His gaze traveled down to the knife buried in his side and a wave of nausea passed over his face.

“C’mon, look at me, Soap,” Ghost said, laying a hand on his face and brushing some of the dust from his cheek, “Keep your eyes on me.” Soap raised his hand in a mirror of the gesture and Ghost wished desperately that he wasn’t wearing a mask.

“Quit tha’ panicking. Ye’ll be alright,” Soap’s fingertips brushed over the dark cloth and the hard contours of the mask, sliding down to his collarbone. His fingers stopped where the medallion lay on Ghost's skin, right next to his tags under layers of fabric. The words sent branching ice through Ghost’s chest.

“Course, I will,” Ghost said, “You did good, Johnny.”

“Ye’ll be just fine, Simon,” Soap wheezed out.

Ghost heard the ‘without me’ clearly in the increasingly labored gasps.

Ghost hadn’t been let in to see him yet. Everything had been touch and go for the first day, full of horrible long hours of sitting silently in the grimy baselayer of his gear while Price talked to Laswell and Gaz paced a hole into the floor of the ICU waiting room. The briefest glimmer of relief had washed over Ghost when they’d been told Soap had come through the emergency surgery fine. That had been immediately dampened by the news that he was struggling to fight off the infection that had spread from the wound due to the large amount of blood loss. He hadn’t woken up when he should have and the word ‘coma’ had been floated around.

Soap’s family had been contacted and were supposed to be arriving soon, according to Price. Ghost and Gaz had been sent to shower and change into a fresh set of clothes courtesy of Laswell in the intervening time. Gaz had stayed at the hotel to fill out some of the more pressing paperwork that needed to be accomplished while they were grounded. It was technically Ghost’s responsibility, but Gaz had pushed him out the door and Ghost hadn’t really even fought to stay. He wouldn’t have been able to fill out the forms anyway. 

Ghost walked down the now uncomfortably familiar hallway to the ICU waiting room with his hands shoved into his dark hoodie. The black surgical mask he wore didn’t even get a second glance from the nurses that passed him. It didn’t look out of place in a hospital the way it did in a bar. 

He came to the sliding doors that separated the waiting room from the actual patient wing, pausing for them to open before stepping through. His intent had been to check with the receptionist to see if Soap was ready for visitors, but there was a woman already standing at the counter. Ghost froze. She looked just like she had ten years ago, save for a few wrinkles around the eyes exacerbated by worry.

“Dr. Sarah MacTavish,” she said, leaning slightly over the counter to peer at the receptionist’s computer screen, “I’m here for John MacTavish. I was told he was brought in for traumatic pneumothorax and developed an infection after.” 

Ghost blinked and he was a decade younger, a hundred pounds lighter, staring at a closed door with the sensation of his first kiss still lingering on his mouth. 

His hand drifted up to the chain around his neck, fingers going white at the knuckles as he caught and gripped the medallion. The receptionist said something back to Sarah, nodding, but Ghost was already turning around and fleeing back into the hallway. His body steered him toward the waiting room, empty at that point in the afternoon. He stumbled into a chair, his breaths growing increasingly short. 

Ghost had watched the light leave men’s eyes under his hands. He’d saved millions of lives from the control of tyrants. He’d dug himself out of his own grave. And yet, here he was wheezing in a hospital waiting room, unable to string a coherent thought together with how fast his head was spinning. It was like hundreds of thousands of strings in his mind had suddenly snapped and were being stitched back together to form a tapestry he should have recognized a long time ago. 

“Shit, fucking hell,” Ghost gasped out, his free hand fisting tight in the fabric of his jeans.

“Simon, you alright, son?” Price’s voice came from somewhere above him.

“I don’t know,” Ghost said. The bland pattern of the tile floor was starting to swim and the lights overhead were getting far too bright to be normal.

“What’s happening?” Price said, suddenly closer and Ghost realized he must have sat down next to him.

“Soap’s sister just got here. I…” Ghost swallowed, “What d’you know about Soap's life before he joined up?”

“You better not be telling me that bothers you,” a stern note had come into Price’s voice and it settled something inside of Ghost enough to start piecing everything together. It was like a mission debrief, just one fact after another until they could shape some kind of coherent story out of it.

“No, nothing like that,” Ghost explained, “We knew each other, for a little while. I can’t even remember what it was like to be nineteen.”

He looked over at Price, who’s thick brows had formed an even thicker frown as he watched Ghost try to form a sentence. There were dark circles under his eyes that had developed over the last few days.

“This fuckin’ necklace,” Ghost said, tugging at the chain he still gripped like a lifeline, “It was his grandfather’s. Didn’t realize it was him until today.”

“Never been anyone for you but him, huh,” Price gave him a considering nod, “Always wondered about that.”

“The hell are you talking about?” It came out as a hiss, mostly from a desire not to yell in a hospital. He was already causing enough of a scene as it was, but that at least could be excused as a regular hospital waiting room crisis. 

“Simon,” Price sighed, “I’ve never seen you be really interested in anyone other than Soap. Now, I find out that, besides your family, the only person from your past you care to remember is our Sergeant. You’ve worn that necklace for years. What am I supposed to think?”

“Does it even fucking matter now?” Ghost choked out and then immediately regretted the words. The bland generic artwork hung on the walls around them was supposed to be soothing, but all it did was remind Ghost that he had not one but two of Soap's drawings in his desk on base.

“He’s tough. You know that,” Price said, laying a firm hand on his shoulder, “You need to sleep. You won’t be any use to him like this when he does wake up.”

“Don’t think I can,” Ghost shook his head, “Why wouldn’t he tell me? He’s gotta know who I am, who I was.”

“Lotta reasons, son,” Price said, “He might’ve thought you wouldn’t want to know.”

“Course, I’d wanna know,” Ghost said, squeezing the medallion hard enough it bit into his palm. 

Late at night, after Sarah had gone back to her hotel, Ghost snuck into Soap’s room. Hospital security was pretty shit in comparison to what he was used to circumventing. No one saw him slip in and he’d make sure no one saw him leave. It hadn’t been hard to get a hold of the schedule for night rounds, so as long as he was careful, he wouldn’t get caught.

The room was dim and quiet, save for the soft beeping of the heart monitor and the intermittent noise of the IV pumping liquid into Soap’s veins. Ghost had spent his fair share of time in hospitals, for himself and for other people. He was used to the weird smell, the chatter of nurses, the interrupted conversations when the third doctor of the day walked in. He’d sat at the bedside of each of the members of the 141 for various reasons, sometimes even shared a room with them. He’d never seen Soap be so still before.

Ghost teased Soap frequently about his size, but never once had he thought of his Sergeant as small. It was impossible, the way his very being seemed to radiate out of him like compensation for the missed growth spurt they all badgered him about. He looked small against the scratchy white hospital sheets, his head turned ever so slightly into the rubbery pillow. Soap’s face was puffy and paler than normal, but he could see the kid he’d known that summer a lifetime ago layered underneath his Sergeant.

Ghost let himself look a moment longer, his thumb tracing the ridges of the medallion and catching on the curve of the dragon’s back. 

“Look, we don’t really talk. Given all the shit I’ve seen, it’s hard for me to believe you exist,” Ghost said to the silence in the room, “But Johnny does. We’re not good men, but Johnny thinks you’ve got a sense of humor about that kind of thing.”

A small part of Ghost, distant in that moment, thought that there really was something comical about the whole situation. It was the kind of thing to make Soap laugh until his eyes were sparkling with tears and his body doubled in half. Ghost didn’t feel like a joke had been played on him though, nothing nearly so cruel as that because it had been his own fault in the end. Maybe that was what Soap had meant by the turn of phrase all those years ago.

“He needs help. I’m… I’m out of options,” Ghost let his head fall forward, the stretch of his stressed muscles pulling all the way down his spine, “I can’t fix this.”

There’s laughter coming down the hall. Ghost walks upstairs to the small room. It looks like it did when he bought the house, but he knows he repainted the walls blue.

A glow pours out from the doorframe, sunburst bright.

He pushes open the door and Johnny’s curled in the corner of his childhood room, sitting criss cross on the rickety bed. Joseph is tucked into the space between his knees, years younger than Ghost remembers him. 

Old CDs that Ghost has kept are scattered around them on the bed and Ghost thinks he recognizes the lyrics to an R.E.M song, but he doesn’t know where the stereo is.

"What d’ye ken about Saint George?” Johnny asks, but he’s not talking to Ghost. 

Joseph’s pudgy fingers brush over his face, coming away stained with light.

Ghost jerked awake the moment Gaz’s hand landed on his shoulder. Gaz intercepted the arm that had come flying toward his face and gave Ghost a look. He huffed and stretched, cracking his neck from where he’d been slumped over in the waiting room chair all night.

“He’s asking for you,” were the only words that Gaz needed to say to get Ghost moving.

Afterward, he wouldn’t be able to recall walking down the hall to Soap’s room or even opening the door. He was just suddenly there, stepping into the soft sunlight coming in from the open blinds. Tired blue eyes watched him, blinking slowly as they did.

“Hi,” Soap’s voice was rough and husky. Propped up in bed with skin half a shade too pale and wires coming off of him, he was the most beautiful thing that Ghost had ever seen.

“Johnny,” Ghost breathed out.

“He lets ye call him Johnny?” Sarah called from the chair in the corner. Ghost hadn’t even realized she was there. He knew that should have scared him, but he couldn’t muster the willingness to care at the moment.

“F’ck off ye bint,” Soap’s growl was weak, but it made Ghost smile nonetheless.

“Aye, ye get snippy now that yer big bodyguard shows up,” Sarah sighed, standing up, “Guess I’ll kip down to the caf and see if they got any more pudding. Dinnae have too much fun withou’ me.”

Ghost stepped aside and let her exit, grateful for the unfailing ability Sarah MacTavish had to read the room. As the door closed behind her, he slid his mask off, tucking it into the pocket of his hoodie. He walked over to Soap’s bed, not bothering with the chair but gingerly sitting on the edge of the mattress. Soap smiled at him, the motion lazy with pain medication. His normally pristine mohawk was a greasy mess and his beard was filling in thick. The man hadn’t had a proper wash in a few days, instead just being scrubbed down by the hospital staff.

Ghost lifted a hand and ran it over Soap’s scalp, the short hair prickling at his fingertips. Soap leaned into the touch in an unconscious move, chasing the warmth of his palm. The edge of his ear was cold to the touch.

“That was stupid of you, Sergeant,” Ghost said and Soap nodded.

“Aye, but ye can carry me easier than I can carry ye,” Soap flicked him a wan grin that struggled to stay in place as he pressed against Ghost’s hand.

“You can’t do that again,” Ghost said, letting his voice dip low. He wanted to be furious with Soap, but it wouldn’t be right. He’d done what he was supposed to. It was just part of the job.

“I ken,” Soap said, blinking at him, “Sarah and Gaz already read me the riot act.”

“No, Johnny, you can’t do that again. You can’t do that to me,” Ghost said and Soap paused, taking a moment to really look at him. Even dulled by the drugs, there was something sharp in that gaze and Ghost knew Soap had understood him.

“Alright, Si, I promise,” Soap murmured against his palm. He let his eyes slide closed and nuzzled into the curve of Ghost’s hand. After a minute, his breathing evened out and Ghost realized he had fallen asleep. Gently to keep from waking him, he drew his hand back and stood, creeping out of the room on silent feet.

Sarah was waiting in the hall. She gave him an appraising look and Ghos realized he hadn’t put his mask back on.

“I’d always hoped he’d find his way back to ye,” she said, “He’d tell me what he could about ye, when we both had time to talk. Yer still takin’ care of him, I hear.”

“Been doing a piss poor job of it,” Ghost said, feeling uncomfortably like he was back at her kitchen table instead of in the hallway of an ICU.

“Nae, ye don’t see it,” Sarah pursed her lips and shook her head, “Ye always brought out the fire in him. Ye don’t know what he’s like without it.”

Like before when he’d barely been an adult, she left him silent, trying to figure out how to respond.

“Don’t let him leave ye again, Simon,” Sarah said and the conviction in her voice reminded him of Soap, “He won’t survive doin’ it twice.”

Ghost didn’t think he’d survive it either.

“Price, I need a favor,” Ghost said as he walked into their hotel room. He'd left Gaz with Soap, watching some ridiculous show off of Gaz's phone while Sarah grilled Soap's primary doctor. Price looked up at him from where he had been slumped at the small desk along the wall, quirking an eyebrow, “I need to be on paper somewhere. Legal documents.”

“You know you can’t be Simon Riley anymore,” he said, sitting more upright. Ghost nodded in agreement as he went over to his duffle bag and began rifling through it for another clean set of clothes.

“I know. I’m not planning to be,” he said. If everything went right, the name Riley would end buried in a plot in Manchester. He found the clean shirt he’d been looking for at the bottom of the bag and pulled it out.

“What are you planning, son?” Price narrowed his eyes in suspicion. Ghost stood and made his way to the bathroom.  Plans and to-do lists had already started unfolding in his mind and he knew if he wasn’t careful, he’d have the next ten years scheduled out before any ink had touched the paper.

“I’ll let you know if it works out.” 

Chapter Text

Even as a recruit, Ghost had always been praised for his tactical thinking. In part, he supposed he could thank his father for that. Living with that cretin of a man for over a decade would make anyone a master in thinking more than one step ahead.

His plan wasn’t a mission, not even in the loosest sense, but that didn’t mean Ghost wasn’t treating it like one. There were certain parameters, like Soap’s discharge date and the requirements for his recovery following that, which had to be considered. 

There was the available intelligence that Ghost had gathered. Soap was between apartments and staying on base full-time, therefore having nowhere to live during his medical leave. He would need someone to help him around the house, at least for the first few weeks. Sarah was the only family he was willing to be in a room with and she had to return to Mexico soon. He didn’t have friends outside of the military. All of those factors together had given Ghost the perfect window for infiltration.

All he had to do was execute his plan with precision and skill, neither of which he had when it came to a certain Scot under his command. By an unspoken rule, they’d both been skirting around any uncomfortable conversations during Soap’s stay in the hospital. However, that time was drawing to an end and Ghost felt it was time to make his first offensive move.

“Getting close to that discharge date,” Ghost said, leaning against the window in Soap’s room while the man picked at his lunch. The Scot had complained often enough that while the hospital might serve food fit for the English, it certainly wasn’t for him. Ghost had refrained from having the haggis debate again.

“Aye,” Soap said, stirring his mushy peas with distracted disgust.

“You know, you could take your leave with me,” Ghost said, glancing out the window. 

“What?” Soap’s head jerked up toward Ghost.

“I’ve got a house up north of Manchester, plenty of extra room,” Ghost shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant, “Nothing fancy. It's out in the country, but it's close to town. They’ve got a good PT clinic there.”

“Uh huh,” Soap’s face had scrunched into a confused frown, “And yer just gonna take yer leave to be my nursemaid. Ye know that I’m gonna be out at least two months, if not more, right?”

“I’ve got more than enough time accrued. Price already signed off on it,” Ghost said. His face felt suspiciously warm under his mask as Soap scrutinized him.

“I see,” Soap paused and licked his lips, “Thought this out, have ye?”

Ghost shrugged again.

“Alright, then. Not like I’ve got a lot of other options,” Soap sighed, looking back down at his tray. There was a hint of mischief pulling at the corner of his mouth,  “Besides, how could I pass on seeing where the Ghost lives?”

Internally, Ghost let out a great sigh of relief. He was going to need every ounce of his tactical skill if he was going to succeed.

The Manchester airport had been grating as usual and Ghost’s masks were firmly tucked in his duffle. It made his skin crawl, but it had to be done. If he wanted to do this with Soap, he was going to do it correctly. Every time he felt discomfort creep up his neck, he’d nudge Soap into another round of conversation, just to watch the man’s gaze sweep greedily over his face.

It was enough to keep him sane as they slogged through the crowds from the first airport terminal until they were alone and safe in the rental car hours later. Soap initially complained about having to be a passenger with Ghost behind the wheel again, but he wouldn't be cleared to drive for a few weeks. He contented himself by fiddling with the radio as Ghost drove away from the airport and pulled out into the main flow of traffic. Nostalgia wasn’t a sensation that Ghost was used to feeling.

“You been back to Manchester since you were sixteen?” he asked and Soap froze. His hand fell away from the radio, tuned to some station playing exclusively hits from the nineties. 

“Ye, ah, figured it out then,” Soap said, sitting back in his seat with a huff, “I was pretty sure ye would after all this.”

“You weren’t gonna tell me,” Ghost said, his mouth pulling into a thin line.

“At first, I thought ye already knew and didn’t want to bring it up. When I found out ye didn’t, I wasn't sure I wanted to tell ye. Didn’t know how ye’d feel about me, being what I am,” Soap explained and then paused, clearing his throat, “And it’s a bit awkward to tell yer Lieutenant that he was yer first kiss.” 

The tension that had been mounting inside Ghost for weeks broke and was quickly replaced with another emotion.

“It’s not that awkward if it was his first kiss too,” Ghost said, like there wasn’t suddenly a burning red flush creeping its way up the back of his neck. He wasn’t sure how visible it would be to Soap, given that his mask usually covered most of his more involuntary expressions.

“Hell nae, yer pullin’ my leg,” Soap gaped, turning to look at Ghost and then wincing as it tugged at his side.

“You remember what I looked like,” Ghost said, “Tall, scrawny guy who always has a busted lip or black eye isn’t what most teens think is attractive.” 

“Away an’ bile yer head, ye were always a bonnie lad,” Soap said, flashing him a cheeky smirk as he looked back out the window, “Ye still are.”

“Fuck off,” Ghost couldn’t help the grin that stole across his face.

“It was a right proper trip when ye pulled off yer mask in Las Almas,” Soap said, “Felt like I’d seen a ghost for real.”

“That ugly, huh?” Ghost said. The traffic was beginning to pick up as they got closer to Manchester proper and out of the greener areas.

“Now yer just fishin’ for compliments,” Soap snorted, “Nae, just not used to being around anyone who knew me before.” That was a sentiment intimately familiar to Ghost.

“That’s what you meant in Brazil,” Ghost nodded, “About killing who you used to be.”

“Aye,” Soap said, “I wasn’t really living then, barely surviving. Ye remember.” Ghost nodded again. In retrospect, he could better understand what he’d seen in flashes and glances that summer. Sarah had been right. Soap was different around him, for some unfathomable reason, so Ghost had never borne the full brunt of Soap’s war at home.

“You don’t see your parents anymore, do you?” Ghost asked.

“Nae, just Sarah and her wife. She doesn’t talk to ‘em either,” Soap said, his tone going subdued, “They acted like I was killing their child and I guess I was.”

“You ever try?” A cold, sick feeling twisted its way under Ghost’s ribs.

“Thought about it a lot,” Soap said, clearing his throat, “But, ah, I’d promised some shithead I’d get my necklace back from him and once I got outta that house, I could be what I needed to be.”

The horrible iciness under his sternum was suffused with warmth and melted away as Ghost’s heart lurched within him.

“This all makes a lot of sense of the questions I had,” Ghost said, nudging the conversation in a different direction. He was going out on a limb and he was hoping Soap would have his six when he landed on the ground.

“Oh?”

“Never found anyone but men attractive. Turns out you weren’t an exception to that rule,” Ghost said.

“I knew ye liked me!” Soap crowed, punching the air as hard as his healing lung would allow.

“I had low standards then,” Ghost said, just to hear Soap squawk in protest.

The conversation wandered into safer topics as the drove through Manchester and out into the countryside. They passed several small towns before they came to the village near Ghost’s house.

It was provincial, in a way, the kind of place one would expect to find in a countryside romance novel, which worked perfectly for Ghost’s purposes. The old houses and downtown shops were all within walking distance of Ghost’s house if one was feeling spry, but the car parked in Ghost’s garage would be necessary for the first few weeks.

They picked up takeaway from the small curry place on the edge of the village, the delicious smell of spices suffusing the rental, and drove out the winding road which led to the house. The landscape was all softly rolling hills, sheep pastures with old farm houses perched out on the edges. It caught a beautiful mix of greens and dusky evening purple as the sun had started to descend over the edges of the treetops.

Soap let out a small ‘oh’ when Ghost flicked on his blinker and turned down one of the small driveways.

The large yard was a little overgrown, but in decent shape until it met with the edge of the forest behind the house. There it had grown into a real field full of summer wildflowers that tossed gently in the soft breeze. The house itself was built from faded brick and stone, like most of the others in the area. It wasn’t a fancy thing, but the arched front door and round window set in the upper storey gave it an unusual bit of character. A plain garage was attached to the side and a small porch looked out on the back half of the property. 

Ghost parked the car and got out, grabbing the takeaway with one hand. He went around the vehicle to help ease Soap up from the front seat.

“This is nicer than I was expecting,” Soap grunted as he leaned against Ghost, the stiffness in his body making him unsteady, “No offense, LT.”

“Shut it,” Ghost said with a smirk. He grabbed both of their duffles from the backseat, shouldering them easily, and then guided Soap down the path to the front door. After a momentary fumble with his keys, he pushed open the door, revealing the small living room and adjacent kitchen.

There was a musty smell in the house that had gathered from lack of use. Ghost took his leave on base when possible, so it didn't get aired out often.

There was a thin layer of dust on the coffee table and the squishy blue couch looked barely sat on, as if it had just come off the showroom floor. The warm setting sunlight came in the window on the far end of the living room, casting the beige walls in orange. Ghost helped Soap over to the couch and deposited him down on the cushions.

“This is really nice,” Soap said as he looked around. Ghost tossed their duffles in the hall and placed the bag of takeaway on the coffee table. 

“Were you expecting it to be a shithole?” Ghost asked as he collapsed next to Soap, the couch threatening to swallow him with how thick the padding was.

“Well,” Soap grinned at him, scooting the takeaway toward himself and rifling through the bag, “I’ve seen yer room, Ghost. Here, this is yers.”

He passed Ghost a container of curry, the spicy smell wafting out of the open box.

“Your room doesn’t look any different than mine.” Ghost fished around for a plastic spoon and peeled it out of its wrapping.

“Aye and I’ve been living in shithole apartments in Glasgow for ten years. Pardon me if I’m surprised ye’ve got some kind of taste,” Soap said, stirring his vindaloo with a wide grin, “Speaking of taste, I think this’ll be the first thing I’ve had with any real seasoning in a month.”

“You can’t even taste it with all the burning,” Ghost rolled his eyes. Soap had a passion for foods that rode the line between well seasoned and inedible. He’d once seen the man chop up a raw onion and drizzle it in mustard, calling it a salad when Gaz had asked what the hell he was doing. 

“Tha’s very British of ye. 'Sides, I like a bit of fire,” Soap said and dug in.

Ghost scrubbed the cheap towel over his short hair as he walked down the dark hallway. The scalding shower had felt divine after a day at the airport. He’d left his duffle in the bathroom with the rest of his toiletries. That shit could get put away properly in the morning.

His main concern was making sure Soap was properly tucked in before he made his way to the couch. The house only had one bed, given that Ghost never expected to have company. As the injured party, Soap was obviously entitled to the mattress. It was just a matter of making sure the man passed out on said mattress. 

The pain medication should have set in by now and Soap always needed a bit of corralling anytime he was under an external influence. Ghost had bullied Soap into taking it when he’d noticed his Sergeant wincing halfway through dinner. He gave a cursory knock on the bedroom door and pushed it open when he got no response.

Soap was standing by the dresser in his boxers and a t-shirt, one of the few picture frames Ghost had in the house in his hand. It was the one of him and Joseph at the beach, the day before Tommy had gotten out of rehab. Soap set the picture back on the dresser, his soft expression illuminated by the small lamp beside the bed as he looked back at Ghost.

“Ye kept it,” he said, nodding to the medallion sitting on Ghost’s bare chest as he padded barefoot over to stand beside Ghost’s bed. He’d changed the sheets earlier while Soap was in the shower.

“Would’ve lost it, but I’d left it in my locker before everything with Roba. Price held onto my shit,” Ghost said. There had been a very small part of him that he refused to acknowledge which had connected the absence of the medallion on that mission with what had followed. The only other person who knew about that was the lady from psych.

“I’ll hav’ta thank him,” Soap yawned, sitting down on the bed “Ye’ll stay with me, right, LT?” 

“Course,” Ghost said. He’d been planning on working his way from the couch to the bed over several weeks, but if Soap wanted to jump ahead, he wasn’t going to protest.

For all the time he’d spent crammed into soggy tents with Soap, it felt strangely intimate to settle under the covers with him, despite having much more space between them than usual. Ghost reached over to click off the light on the bedside table, but Soap batted his hand away.

“Leave it on for a little bit. I’m nae quite sleepy yet,” Soap said and Ghost leaned back with a sigh, settling onto his side to face Soap. Pain medication made Soap talkative, more so than normal. However, it also made him feel hazy enough not to notice the heavy exhaustion creeping up on him and he had fallen asleep mid conversation several times in the past few weeks.

“Ye ken much about Saint Peter?” Soap asked and Ghost’s eyebrows quirked at the conversation topic.

“Only saint I know anything about is George and that’s your fault,” he said and that drew a little laugh out of Soap.

“His name was Simon too. To start with anyway,” Soap said, snuggling into his pillow, “Christ’s the one that started callin’ him Peter. Means ‘rock.’”

“Not exactly flattering,” Ghost said. He’d known plenty of guys with worse, but still.

“That’s the funny part. It was a compliment for him,” Soap’s grin turned momentarily soft, “Simon was impulsive as fuck, worse ‘an me. Cut a guy’s ear off once. But Christ called him Peter because he was starting to grow into something solid that people could depend on.”

“Why’d you pick John?” Ghost asked. It was still a good Catholic name, as far as he knew, but he had begun to wonder now that he knew it had been of Soap’s own choice.

“Cause he beat Peter in a race,” Soap sniggered, the drugs clearly beginning to do their job, “I had my own Simon to catch up to, ye ken?”

“Mm,” Ghost hummed, “Don’t think you’re gonna be doing much running with those stitches."

“Aye, but I don’t have to,” Soap’s eyes caught his, blue sparkling with a perceptiveness that twisted knots into Ghost’s stomach.

“Why not?”

“Yer not Peter, yer Ghost. Ye just keep on coming back to me,” Soap said, quiet and happy. Ghost let himself grin in response.

“Feeling haunted, Johnny?” Ghost asked, letting his hand come up and run over Soap’s scalp, the short bristly hair soft under his calloused palm. Soap let out a noise of pleased contentment.

“A man can dream,” Soap murmured into his pillow.

“Not a girlfriend, then,” Tommy says. Simon shakes his head.

He’s nineteen. 

Tommy’s older.

“Any good with kids? Joe’ll want to meet him,” Tommy asks. The light of the television flickers in the room and casts stark shadows across his face. He’s got their mother’s eyes, like Simon had.

“He’s the best. Knows all about Saint George,” Simon says. The soft grey shadows of dawn are starting to spill pink across the living room wall and they drown out the television with their intensity.

“Ah, Beth’s gonna like that. She and Mum are getting sick of reading that book,” Tommy’s smile is wide, bright and healthy in a way Simon rarely saw, “Kept you safe, didn’t he, your little saint?”

Ghost came awake with a deep breath, not startled out of sleep but very suddenly conscious nonetheless. There were tear tracks running over the bridge of his nose and down to where the side of his face met the pillow. The bedroom air felt cold against his wet cheeks.

 Soap’s bulky form took shape next to him as he blinked against the darkness of the early morning. His face was slack and squished against his pillow. It left him looking extraordinarily young.

Ghost was silent as he slid himself out of the sheets, exceedingly cautious not to make any sounds or moves that would wake Soap. He padded out of the room and shut the door with a soft click behind him. 

The first fingers of dawn’s light were just beginning to creep down the hall from the windows in the living room and kitchen. Ghost knew that the sunrise looked best from the room at the top of the stairs. The light flooded in through that big round window and scattered over the walls like something that could be touched.

He went into the bathroom, intent on grabbing a pair of pants and brushing his teeth. He flicked on the light and was faced with something surprising. 

Ghost stared into the mirror and Simon looked back at him.

It shouldn’t have startled him as much as it did. He’d agreed to let it happen. It was the deal that he’d made in the darkness of Soap’s hospital room. Love always meant leaving something behind. Most people left behind simple things like one night stands or their terrible taste in cars. He was going to leave behind a grave.

After he pulled himself from the mirror and found a decent set of clothes, he sent a text to Soap to let him know that he’d be back in time to cook breakfast after he’d gotten some groceries. The Sergeant wouldn’t be up for another two hours at least, given how deeply his medication usually put him under.

In the meantime, Ghost drove to the gym downtown, the only place open that early in the sleepy little village. It didn’t feel that uncomfortable to go out without his mask, though he’d usually worn his black surgical mask on previous visits. 

People had stared at Ghost the first few times he’d been there on leave, but by the fourth time, he’d just become that reclusive soldier who bought the cottage on the edge of town. The nice thing about a place where everyone knew each other was that strange people just became part of the landscape after a while. It was like that on base, where his mask just eventually became his face for even the greenest of recruits. However, while anonymity was his shield most of the time, being a known entity was more useful in the village. 

The gym looked relatively deserted from the outside, but the lights were on, so Ghost pushed open the front door. It wasn’t anything fancy, just four walls, equipment, and a set of sparring mats for the boxing class that met a few times a week.

Ghost recognized Hannah at the front desk, a short blonde woman with biceps that would make half the recruits he knew cry. She looked up as he came up to the counter and grinned, “Thought that was your car I saw in the parking lot. You in town for long?"

“A while,” Ghost said with a nod.

“Still got your punch card?” she asked. Ghost fished it out of his wallet and let her stamp it. Then he spent an hour mindlessly putting his body through its paces.

Afterward, Ghost went to the shop to sort out his empty fridge. Eggs, a bag of spinach, a loaf of bread, two tins of beans, and a bag of the little caramels he knew Soap liked all went into the cart. It didn’t take him long to come up with some kind of menu for the rest of the week. However, the shop’s meat department was severely lacking. Despite having not done any real work as a butcher in a decade, Ghost had retained the discerning eye it had given him.

He vaguely remembered there being a decent looking deli down the road and headed that way after he’d loaded the other produce into his car. The deli was a small brick building with a large front glass. The hours were pasted on the front door and Ghost could see that they had just opened. He went in, glancing at the small refrigerated section they had for sandwiches and salads. 

There were local ads tacked to cork boards beside the open refrigerator, hocking sheep shearing expertise and asking for volunteer baked goods for the local school’s theatre group. The whole place was covered in a variety of papers, including the main counter.

A ‘Help Wanted’ sign was taped to the front of the cash register, advertising a full time position with decent pay, though it had been a long time since Ghost spent much time job hunting. There was a portrait, an icon as he’d heard Soap call them once, of Saint George hung behind the counter on the back wall. The dragon and the soldier both seemed to stare at him.

It felt like an omen.

An older man, verging on elderly, came limping out of the back. He was short and stocky, with short gray hair that was going white in several places. A look of mild surprise passed over his face before he smile, his dark eyes twinkling, “Morning, don’t think I’ve seen you in here before.”

“Been out of town with work,” Ghost said, hoping that sounded friendly enough.

 “Military?” the man guessed and at Ghost’s lack of response, just nodded and continued on, “I know the look and you’ve got it about you.”

“So do you,” Ghost said and that drew a laugh from the old man.

“Right, you are. Took the place over from my father when I finished my service. Owen Baker,” the man said, sticking out his hand, “The wife always thought it was funny I ended up a butcher instead.”

“Simon MacTavish,” Ghost said, taking the man’s hand in a firm grip. That was what his current driver’s license said, courtesy of Price and Laswell. He hadn’t picked it, but he’d been pleased, nonetheless.

Ghost leaned up against the hood of his car, staring at the half-full parking lot of the physical therapy building. The weather was warm, even if it was overcast. It would’ve been a great time to have a smoke. Ghost’s hand twitched instinctively toward the pocket of his jeans, but they were empty aside from his keys.

The nicotine cravings hadn’t quite worn off for either of them. Soap wasn’t allowed to smoke during recovery and had been given a strongly worded suggestion by Sarah that he drop the habit altogether. In solidarity and partly not to be a source of temptation, Ghost hadn’t bought any more cigarettes since they’d left the hospital. 

Owen had commiserated with him that past Friday when he’d gone in to buy beef. He’d reminisced about how he’d stopped smoking when his wife had been pregnant, which led to two irritable people with weird cravings in his house instead of just one.

Soap came out of the building, spotting Ghost immediately and giving him a flirtatious little wave. He was moving stiffly, but with a bit of renewed confidence that Ghost hadn’t seen in a few weeks.

“Feel like a set of bloody bagpipes after all that breathing and stretching,” Soap complained as he hobbled up to Ghost. He pulled a folded paper out of his back pocket and handed it to Ghost. Ghost unfolded it, revealing a flier for the art center in town. It advertised an after school program with kids, adult painting and pottery classes, and some kind of gallery opening at the beginning of October.

“Lauren gave me this on my way out. She said I should start finding things to do while I’m here. Keep my mind active and body moving while I’m getting back to full capacity,” Soap said. Ghost nodded. Lauren was half the reason he kept the house he had, since he mostly had to be there for medical leave.

Lauren was altogether too young to be as good a physical therapist as she was. Over the last few sessions, Soap had come out to the parking lot sore and content with his progress each time, something that even the PTs on base hadn’t been able to achieve during his various injuries.

“Might sign up for a class,” Soap said, taking the flier back from Ghost.

“You should,” Ghost agreed.

They hadn’t hit any major road bumps in their medically required domesticity, but it wouldn’t be long before at least Soap started climbing the walls. A bored Soap led to things like calling the fire department. Men like them weren’t designed to sit still for too long and it would be best if they found things to occupy themselves before it got to that point.

Ghost was a sniper; the long game was his specialty. However, it was literally Soap’s job to play with fire. As much as Ghost selfishly wanted to pin Soap down, it wouldn’t work if he stifled the man. He didn’t want to see the light fade from Soap’s eyes, especially not by his own hand.

Soap came home smelling like incense.

A swath of dark blue clouds had followed him up the driveway and there was a chill in the wind that accompanied him into the house. He’d finally been cleared to drive, though Ghost insisted on chauffeuring him most places. Soap let him, on the pretense that the practice was improving his driving skills. However, Soap had asked if he could take the car alone that night and Ghost had let him.

“Y’alright, Johnny?” Ghost called, giving him a surreptitious once over from where he stood at the stove. Soap could take care of himself, but Ghost was still his Lieutenant. 

“Aye, LT,” Soap said, giving a little grunt as he sat down on the couch. 

“How was it?” Ghost turned his attention back to the grilled cheese and ham sandwiches that were hissing at him in the pan. He shoved his spatula under one to peek at the bottom. The first drops of rain began to patter on the trees outside.

“Priest’s better than the guy on base,” Soap mused from the couch, “His wife’s nice. They gotta kid tha’s about two.” Soap had gone to one of the painting classes and met one of the local priests, Anglican instead of Catholic. On a whim, Soap had decided to go to his parish’s Saturday mass, just to try it out. Ghost hummed an acknowledgement as he divvied out their sandwiches onto plates and then ladled some of the reheated veg next to them. 

“It…It was really good actually,” Soap sighed as Ghost brought the plates over and set them down, “Might go back.”

“Good,” Ghost said, giving the back of Soap’s neck a firm squeeze as he dropped onto the couch as well. Soap pressed into the touch like a cat, chasing Ghost’s hand a little when he pulled away. It sent a pleasant buzzing through Ghost’s skin.

They ate in silence for a while. Soap didn’t have that glazed distant look about him, which Ghost counted as a small victory. However, he could tell that Soap was in a pensive mood nonetheless.

“What you said about Peter on that first night here,” Ghost said, around a bite of veg, “Been thinking about it.”

“Oh?” Soap asked distractedly. He’d been chasing a piece of carrot around his plate unsuccessfully for the last minute. 

“Just wonder how he felt about not being Simon anymore,” Ghost said and Soap stilled next to him, setting his fork down. He let out a breath that wasn’t quite a sigh, but something more relaxed.

“Christ still called him Simon too, mostly Simon Peter. Not that I’d call ye Simon Ghost,” Soap said, a bit of cheek coming into his more serious tone, “Think its more that we’re the sum of all our previous parts. Some good men are only good men because they weren’t once, ye ken?”

“Still talk in riddles, Johnny,” Ghost snorted, shaking his head. He could do nothing for the rest of his life and he’d never be tired of it as long as he was with Soap. The way his mind worked was endlessly fascinating to Ghost.

“Better than yer jokes,” Soap scoffed, “Fish in a tank.”

“Was a good one,” Ghost grinned.

After dinner, while the rain outside began to pick up and a few distant peals of thunder sounded over the hills, they fell into their evening routine of relaxation.

Soap kicked his socked feet up into his lap as he stretched out on the couch and Ghost’s hands settled on top of them. Ghost had gotten in the habit of rubbing circles into his ankles while they watched television. Soap picked the show every time. Most of Ghost’s preferences lay in books, so he was content to get an education in Soap’s favorite media.

Soap flicked through several options before settling on another episode of Midsomer Murders. It was a little comedic, given how the town seemed to resemble their own a bit too closely. They’d watched a few of the old seasons, Ghost a bit surprised at how engrossed in the mysteries Soap got. It seemed like an odd choice for someone who used to ramble on at length about the action movies he’d seen. But, Soap hadn’t quite found himself then.

That need to prove himself seemed to have faded with time. Or, Ghost thought, maybe it had shifted into a need for approval instead, given the way Soap always turned back to look at him with questioning eyes when they were on a mission. Living with another person for the first time in years had reminded Ghost of all the little things he still had yet to discover about Soap.

“Ye get tired of this yet?” Soap asked, staring blankly at the television as Ghost massaged the tension out of his ankles. Soap’s phone lit up on the coffee table with another message from Gaz.

“S’not a bad show,” Ghost shrugged. He liked all the little bits with the detective at home.

“No, I meant being here,” Soap said, turning to look at Ghost, “Yer not itching to get back into the field?” The rain outside grew louder, the wind driving it hard against the window. Lighting flashed pale and disappeared.

“Hard to get bored when you’re here,” Ghost said. A loud crack of thunder rolled over the house, seeming to echo the frown on Soap’s face. The people on the television were snipping at one another.

“Come off it, LT,” Soap said, sitting up a little straighter, “Ye gotta be getting sick of me by now, running around like my housewife. 

“I’m not,” Ghost said, trying to keep his face from doing anything strange. He still wasn’t used to arguing without his mask to give him the edge of looking calm.

“Ghost, ye don’t have to lie to me. I know what I’m like,” Soap’s voice oscillated between a growl and a hurt scoff. It made a flare of heat rise up in Ghost’s chest, angry and full of sharp edges. How in the fuck did Soap not understand? Ghost hadn’t been perfect since they’d been on leave, but he’d really been trying.

“I like how you are. I like taking care of you,” Ghost insisted, his eyebrows drawing together in indignation, “Always have.”

Soap’s lips parted, his eyes going wide in surprise.

A crack of thunder rattled Ghost’s teeth inside his skull, a wave of violent sound carrying through the whole house. They were plunged into darkness, the television blipping off as the light in the kitchen did. Both of them sat silent and still for a moment before Ghost sighed, “I’ve got candles, gimme a second.”

He stood up and made his way into the kitchen on memory. He felt around for a moment, fingers skating over a cold metal handle, and he opened the cabinet where he kept part of his emergency supplies. The thick waxy cylinders of the unscented candles were easy to find and the lighter sat on the bottom of the cabinet next to them. Ghost scooped them all up and walked carefully back to the couch.

He set a few of the candles down on the glass top of the coffee table. It didn’t matter if wax dripped onto it since he could just scrape it off later. The lighter sparked to life in his hand, casting dim and flickering shadows around the small living room as he lit a few of the candles. When he had enough lit that they’d be able to get around without knocking their knees into the furniture, Ghost looked up at Soap.

Blue eyes glittered with the reflections of the candles and there was a look in them that terrified and thrilled Ghost to his core. Firelight always brought out the best in Soap. Maybe it was just because they were made of such similar stuff.

Keeping their gaze locked, Soap eased himself up off the couch. The huff of air at the tenderness in his side he let out was barely audible over the raid pounding against the window panes. He came around the coffee table to stand next to Ghost. Another flash of lightning flitted past the window.

“Johnny.” The name came out somewhere between a question and a statement. Ghost licked his lips, something in the way the light was dancing over Soap’s face making his heart rate jump a little faster.

“Can I?” Soap asked, his voice a husky whisper. Ghost nodded. He didn’t know what Soap was asking for, but if it was Ghost’s to give, he’d give it.

Calloused fingers brushed over the back of his hand as Soap stepped forward. His head was tilted up to look directly at Ghost. The smell of incense and candle smoke was overwhelming in Ghost’s lungs, so thick that he could taste it when Soap’s mouth pressed featherlight against his.

“Ye don’t know how long…” Soap whispered as his hands slid up to grip Ghost’s biceps, the movement of the words almost a kiss in themselves. 

“Yeah, I do,” Ghost murmured. His own hands were trembling, practically weak, as they settled on Soap’s waist. Soap rocked up onto his tiptoes, his hold on Ghost tightening as he slotted their mouths together more firmly. 

Electricity exploded over Ghost’s skin, sending a shudder through him that mirrored the thunder rumbling outside. The scratch of Soap’s stubble, the slight taste of salt on his mouth, the smell of incense; it was like the whole world had suddenly become technicolor. Someone made a sound halfway between a sigh and a sob. Ghost realized it was him as Soap pulled back.

“Too much?” Soap asked, a small frown creasing the space between his eyebrows.

“No, just.. Since you, I haven’t…” The words came out halting. His head was buzzing, absolutely singing, as the electric current rolled through his body. It crashed and ebbed, like waves, every time Soap’s thumbs swept back and forth over the curve of his shoulders.

“Oh,” Soap’s voice was whisper soft. His blue eyes roamed over Ghost’s face, dark eyelashes blinking silently. Ghost leaned back in and watched them flutter closed.

Chapter Text

A slow two weeks of soft kisses before bed, all toothpaste flavored, had Ghost’s head in a pleasant fog. 

There hadn’t been any discussion on what exactly they were doing together and Ghost was reluctant to be the one to broach the subject. He didn’t want to derail his own plans by jumping ahead too quickly. He wasn’t sure what was going on in Soap’s head. They were breaking at least seven regulations. That wasn’t a problem since Price had practically tossed Ghost at Soap, but Soap didn’t know that.

Instead of worrying, Ghost let himself sink into moments like the strange experience of grocery shopping with another person. Ghost was used to existing alone in the world. If he needed food, he planned out his list and went through the aisles as quickly as possible. There was no need to linger in the store for longer than it took to inspect the bag of onions he needed. 

Soap derailed all of that. 

Ghost leaned against one of the shelves as he watched Soap flit back and forth between the aisles. Pads and tampons were tossed into the cart beside the frozen peas, with two chocolate oranges following them shortly after. Ghost had crossed everything off his list ten minutes before and had been content to wait while his Sergeant got distracted by every sale sticker.

“That it?” Ghost asked as Soap came back with a package of scones.

“Think so,” Soap said, triumphantly setting the scones down in the cart. He flashed Ghost a bright grin and Ghost herded him toward the check out. They made it all the way through loading the groceries into the car before Soap shut the trunk and pressed Ghost up against it.

Being kissed in a parking lot in the middle of rural England hadn’t been part of Ghost’s expectations for how his life would turn out in years. Yet, he bent down to give Soap a better grip on his shoulders. Now that he felt he’d been given permission to touch, Soap was handsy.

That was an even larger change in Ghost’s life. He’d never quite gotten used to the easy way that Soap touched him, even when they’d first met. However, a friendly slap on the shoulder was a much easier adjustment than feeling Soap’s pleased humm against his mouth.

Ghost fluctuated between wanting to burrow into Soap’s bones and feeling like even the barest brush of Soap’s knuckles on the back of his hand would send all of his atoms flying apart. He craved that touch now, addicted to the sensation of Soap’s warmth on his skin, but he knew it would be some time before his body grew used to the feeling of arms wrapping around his waist and hands stroking down his back.

Fortunately, they had another stop to make in their shopping. Ghost was grateful for the brief reprieve he got from Soap’s physicality when they went to the deli. He wasn’t sure he was ready to come apart like that in front of his Seargent and he certainly wasn’t going to do it parked in the middle of the village.

The bell over the door rang as they walked in. Soap immediately wandered off to look over the bulletin boards while Ghost went up to the counter to talk to Owen.

“Good to see you, Simon. Gotta special this week on chicken,” the old man nodded to a handwritten note taped to the counter. His eyes twinkled as he smiled, looking over Ghost’s shoulder “That your young man, then?

Ghost nodded, glancing back at Soap. The man had his phone out, looking between it and one of the advertisements for a trivia night at a local pub.

“Could tell with how you were looking at him when you came in. My oldest’s like that, married last year,” Owen said, drawing Ghost’s attention back, “I’m fine with him liking blokes, but I’ve got a Scot for a son-in-law now.”

“Hate to tell you this,” Ghost grinned, “But Johnny’s the prime candidate for the next Braveheart.”

“I won’t hold it against you too much,” Owen snorted, shaking his head. They chatted for a little while and Ghost did take Owen up on the deal for the chicken. Soap eventually wandered over and received a solid ribbing from the old man. There was an edge to the teasing that reminded him a little of how Gaz treated Soap and it made something warm settle in Ghost’s chest.

With all their shopping done, it was time to head home and put together lunch. Soap gave a heavy sigh as they got back into the car.

“Solid?” Ghost asked as he started up the engine and buckled in. He did a full check of his mirrors, knowing Soap would take the opportunity to snip at him about his bad driving habits if he didn’

“I miss going to the gym with ye,” Soap mumbled as he pulled out into the road.

“Won’t be long,” Ghost said, a little wave of sadness passing him over him at the thought, “You know the girl who runs the place? She’s dating your PT.”

“Tha’s nice. Very village-ish,” Soap perked up and Ghost chuckled. Soap had always been one of the main sources to go to if you wanted to know relationship gossip on base. He figured it wouldn’t be long before he had a full map of the current trists in the village as well.

When they got home, Soap put together some kind of rice and beef mix for their lunch, making it Ghost’s turn to wash dishes. Soap leaned against the counter, watching him as he ran the water until it was scalding. He squeezed a bit of dish detergent onto the scrub brush and set to work on their cereal bowls from that morning.

“I think if ye put a bed in the guest room, ye might actually be able to have a guest without them feeling like they’ve been sent to prison,” Soap mused, craning his neck to look down the hall. The guest room was currently completely empty, the door across from the bathroom.

“Who said I want a guest?” Ghost said, setting the clean dishes aside as he washed them off. There hadn’t been very much to clean as Soap was adamant about using one pan for everything he made.

“What if we want Price and Gaz to visit?” Soap said, like inviting people over was the kind of joint decision they made regularly, “Ye never told me what that empty room upstairs is for. Putting in a home gym?”

“No,” Ghost shut off the water and pulled a towel out of the drawer next to him, the movement verging on violent. His attitude about what fantasies he was allowed to entertain hadn’t changed, despite everything else that had in the last two months.

“It's a nice space, with that big window,” Soap’s voice was quiet,  “Be a good kid’s bedroom, nice sized closet.”

Ghost gave a grunt in response. His knuckles went white around the towel. Even now, especially now, he hadn’t let himself think about that. He should’ve put that shit in a box in the back of his head with-

Firm lips pressed a kiss to the back of his neck, sending a buzz of electricity down Ghost’s spine.

“Ye know I love ye, right?” Soap murmured, his arms wrapping around Ghost’s waist, hand falling over the damp spot where the water had splashed up on him.

“I…” Ghost felt the towel slide out of his hand. He blinked, one, twice. A stuttered breath made its way in and out of his lungs. He turned around to look at Soap, whose arms stayed firmly locked around his middle.

Blue eyes looked up at him, slowing down time and pinning him in place like always. Soap leaned up on his toes and kissed Ghost, a quick and chaste press of their mouths.

“Johnny,” Ghost let the name fall out of his mouth.

“Mm?” Soap answered, sliding back down onto flat feet. Ghost’s hands flexed where they were still slack at his sides. He opened his mouth, the shape of the emotion, the vow that it was, unfamiliar in his mouth after so long.

“Love you too,” Ghost said, the sound of it half choked and forced.

“Oh,” Soap’s face lit up like a flare of bright fire against the night sky. Ghost’s hands were shaking as they settled on Soap’s back, pulling him forward so that Ghost’s head could drop and rest against Soap’s.

A few more weeks crept by in the same way. There was a part of Ghost that had feared Soap would get sick of village life and chafe at being kept in one spot for so long while he recovered. In reality, Ghost had nothing to worry about.

Soap had adjusted to the different pace of life better than he had. For a man who made a living setting the world on fire, village life strangely suited him. He went out to Mass or to the pub at least once a week, leaving Ghost time to sit on the couch and read in the evening. He met people for lunch and was being hounded to join the local football team when Lauren gave him the greenlight. 

Soap already had far more friends in the neighborhood than Ghost did. It didn’t bother Ghost at all. That was the way it had been on base too and he was glad to see Soap morphing back into his usual social butterfly self. It was made all the nicer that his friends didn’t mind that Soap came pre-attached to a skulking giant.

As the weather cooled off, landscaping their yard had taken over Ghost’s time. Over dinner one night, Soap had mentioned putting in a vegetable patch in the spring, like he intended to still be around, and it had made something warm glow to life inside of Ghost. Digging in the dirt and building flower beds was good, easy work. It gave him a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day and kept him occupied while Soap was at his classes.

The art center had been a good call. Soap had made a lot of connections there and it had given the chance to focus on his art completely, something which the military had never afforded him the time for. The paintings Soap brought home were different from what Ghost usually saw him draw.

“You never do any people,” Ghost said as he adjusted the frame they’d just hung up. The decoration in the living room had been relatively sparse, so Ghost had floated the idea of putting some of Soap’s work on the walls. Soap had stared at him, flabbergasted, before it had gone straight to his ego and he spent the next few days preening that Ghost thought he was a good artist.

“Nae, not yet,” Soap said as they both looked at the painting. It was set up like a still-life, but Ghost knew that Soap didn’t have all the objects in it, partially because he recognized one of his old knives, the set he’d lost in Germany, nestled into the shadow of a vase of chrysanthemums, “It’s different than drawing and I don’t think I’m ready to paint anyone. It’d be too much.”

“What d’you mean?” Ghost asked. He could swear that those were his tags draped over the copy of The Wind in the Willows . Ghost was impressed with the book in particular, the painting of its cover like a miniature artwork itself.

“Painting lets me be more, I don’t know, expressive,” Soap shrugged, “I’m used to seeing everything through a technical lens, ye ken? It’s all about how big the explosion is, how much damage it can do. Ye stop thinking about how fun it is to play with fire.”

It sounded like something that he’s said to Ghost a long time ago, but he couldn’t quite place the words. If it was important, it would come back to him when he needed it.

“It looks good,” Ghost said.

The forest floor should be cold and slimy, but it isn’t. It’s as warm as the hood of his car in the July sun. Johnny is straddling him, stripped bare save for the dirty grease paint streaking his face and the medallion lays on his chest.

His broad hands press against Simon’s tac vest and Simon wonders if the material of his pants is making him chafe. Johnny’s hips move in rhythmic jerks. Simon follows him, letting him set their pace.

The jungle sings around them. Rain drips in rivulets from Johnny's chest onto Simon’s stomach, seeping through his shirt. He shifts and Simon slips ins-

Soap’s breath was humid and warm against Ghost’s neck. The bedroom came into focus slowly, slower than the sensation of Soap’s body curled around him. Ghost took in a long, deep breath of his own, feeling something pop pleasantly in his back as he did so.

The buzzing under his skin demanded that he carefully extract himself from Soap’s grip before it grew into something he couldn’t manage. Soap snuffled, giving a frustrated whine as he shifted flat onto his front as his human pillow slipped away. Ghost ran a hand over his face, tucking Soap back in and padding away from the bed with haste.

As someone with a low libido and no interest in other people, Ghost had never had to worry about the effects of denied arousal on his body or psyche. That was before Soap had proven both of those presumptions about himself categorically wrong. As long as the category was Soap, he was interested constantly.

Prolonged, strenuous activities were still out for Soap, which limited their displays of physical affection to increasingly heated kissing that Ghost cut short under the pretext that Lauren would yell at them both if they set back Soap’s recovery. On the one hand, Ghost was incredibly grateful for the excuse.

The practicalities of sex were never something that he’d had to consider in any great detail. He’d never expected to know how to get another person off. It was something he didn’t need to do much for himself anyway. Soap was working with different equipment as well, which put the entire thing beyond Ghost’s area of expertise.

However, on the other hand, Ghost really fucking wanted Soap. Soap’s attempts to crawl into his lap and nip at the scars on his jaw were growing ever more frequent and bold. He'd always been a flirt, but that now came with the threat of wandering hands. It wasn’t that he was unaware of the effect he was having on Ghost either.

The previous night, Ghost’s resolve had wavered briefly when Soap had sucked a hickey into the space just under the edge of his jaw. When he’d called time as usual, Soap had winked at him before shuffling into the bathroom to scald his skin in the shower while doing his best to butcher R.E.M.s greatest hits. He’d gone to bed with an uncomfortable throbbing between his legs that seemed to have only dissipated into his dreams.

Ghost walked into the kitchen, willing that itch to stop crawling through his skin. It didn't help. Evidence of Soap was everywhere, all illuminated by the cool morning light.

Stacks of half finished drawings littered every flat surface in the living room. Soap’s muddy trainers sat in a pile by the door, like they had been in his car a decade ago. The bathroom smelled like Ghost’s aftershave because Soap had accidentally knocked over half a bottle. Their bed had cotton sheets now because the microfiber ones made Soap too hot.

It felt like a real home.

Soap was the kind of person who took up space, not just in the house but inside of Ghost. He’d crawled under Ghost’s skin and set up camp. And all Ghost had done was ask him if he’d rather build a house and stay permanently.

The itch didn’t sink below a constant simmer within him until he dropped Soap off at the art center. 

Taking advantage of having a few hours to himself, Ghost went to the gym, hoping to burn off some steam before he had to face Soap again. Hannah greeted him with a smirk when he pushed open the door and made his way to the desk.

“Little birdie told me that our resident reclusive bachelor might officially be off the market,” she said, eyes drifting to the hickey still clearly visible on Ghost’s neck. He couldn’t really blame Lauren for gossiping with her girlfriend. It was a village after all.

“Might be,” Ghost nodded, pulling his punch card out of his wallet.

“Good,” Hannah chuckled, “It’ll give the old biddies something to gossip about.”

The exercise did help, at least enough to clear Ghost’s head. He was in a significantly calmer state when he went to pick Soap up from his painting class.

However, the clarity didn’t last. Ghost found the man standing in the parking lot with several small, brightly colored handprints adorning his previously black t-shirt. He was talking very seriously with Martha, the woman who ran the art center. She and Soap had hit it off quickly, not that it surprised Ghost. 

Ghost got out of the car, catching just the end of their conversation. 

“You think about this, John,” Martha said, her voice friendly but serious, as she handed Soap what looked like a pamphlet for a school, “Your man’s here. I’ll see you next week.”

“LT,” Soap grinned as he walked over to the car. Martha smiled at his retreating back before making her way inside the art center.

“Do I want to know?” Ghost asked, nodding vaguely between the shirt and the pamphlet. Soap glanced down at his shirt, like he’d forgotten he’d stained it.

“Ah, well, ye remember I told ye that Father Frank was taking this class too?” Soap asked and Ghost nodded, “He brought his toddler with him today on account of the babysitter being sick.”

“And the kid decided to use you as a canvas?” Ghost guessed.

“I might’ve encouraged it,” Soap rubbed the back of his neck. “Didnae barely pay attention to the class. Spent the whole afternoon with the wee bairn finger painting, naming colors, drawing out basic shapes together. Frank said it's the best behaved he’s been for anyone.”

He paused, giving Ghost a more guarded look. Ghost returned it, crossing his arms and widening his stance a little. Soap sighed, his gaze darting away as he continued, “An’ Martha wants me to get my certificate to help teach one of the Saturday preschool classes. Says I’m a natural.”

“You’ve always been good with the recruits,” Ghost said, as if the idea hadn’t sent something like a fire through his brain. His Sergeant, running around after a bunch of kids, all of them snuggling up to him for story time or drawing lessons, the man coming home covered in little handprints every day.

“Aye, but I’m not sure how it’d work seein’ as I’ve already got a job,” Soap said and walked past Ghost to open the car door, “Speaking of which, Frank said he and his wife would like to have us round before we leave. I’m still Catholic, mind ye, but yer English priests aren’t all bad.”

The bed was cold when Ghost came to, his internal clock registering the time at about oh-four hundred. 

It didn’t take him long to find where his Sergeant had gone. Soap stood out on the porch, looking out into the dark of the woods. The air was freezing when Ghost shut the porch door behind him, his bare feet leaving prints in the frost that had settled on the wood. He wished he’d grabbed a blanket or a jacket, anything to wrap around his Sergeant’s shivering shoulders.

Soap didn’t turn to look at him as he came up to lean on the railing beside him. His eyes were fixed upward, staring at the stars. These stars were ones Ghost knew. He could name a handful of the constellations, could navigate by them if need be, but he doubted any of that would be useful for whatever was going through Soap’s mind. 

“Can’t sleep?” Ghost asked. The words were thick with grogginess and his tongue felt numb. His breath curled in a little cloud in front of him, visible in the moonlight.

“No,” Soap’s voice had a waver in it, “I just want a fuckin’ smoke but I cannae even have that.”

The world was silent, save for the shaky breaths they were both taking. Most of the wildlife had begun their journey elsewhere as the cold set in and the rest were likely huddled together and asleep. Like he and Soap should be.

“I was…I wasn’t back there,” Soap started, “But I was stuck, wrapped up in the sheet. Couldn’t breathe.”

He finally turned his blue eyes up to look at Ghost. Dread wasn’t something Ghost was used to seeing in that face.

“I cannae go back, Ghost,” Soap whispered, “I’ll hesitate.”

Ghost understood the fear intimately. He’d had his own hesitations after Roba and it had taken months of grueling work to keep his head clear on a mission. To be a second too slow, to freeze in the half instant when it was necessary to move, was more than dangerous in their line of work. It could get everyone killed. He knew Soap would never set foot on base again if he thought his ineptitude would be the reason any of them went down. 

“They can train that out of you,” Ghost said. 

Soap’s expression crumpled.

That had been the wrong thing to say, Ghost realized a moment too late. Soap ducked his head, hiding his face from Ghost, but not before he saw the wetness threatening the rims of those blue eyes.

“Didn’t think of tha’. Stupid of me,” Soap said, taking in a deep breath. There was a shaky rattle in it. He turned to push past Ghost, but he caught Soap by the arm. Soap was cold to the touch, the bare skin like ice beneath his fingers. 

“Johnny.”

“I’m goin’ back to bed,” Soap growled and shook Ghost’s hand off. 

“Am I allowed to come with you?” Ghost asked as Soap wrenched open the door.

“Do what ye fucking like,” Soap hissed and slammed it behind him. There was something between rage and grief churning in Ghost’s chest. He was sick of being left behind, sick of doors shutting while all he did was stand there and stare at Soap’s retreating form.

Ghost followed him into the dark hallway, the warmth of the house hitting him like a wall. He pushed open the door to their bedroom, half tempted to flick on the light and have it out with Soap. However, the sight of the other man stopped him dead in his tracks.

Soap was curled up on his side, one arm outside of the blankets, clutching them tight and the other under his pillow. His face was turned into the pillowcase and his shoulders were shaking. Soap had never been one to cry out loud.

Ghost laid back down in the darkness, the sheets still warm on his side as he slipped under the blankets. He mirrored Soap’s position, curving his body around Soap’s but not touching him. He reached over the covers and brushed his fingers against Soap’s, bitingly cold and dry.

Instead of pulling away like he expected, Soap’s fingers threaded through his, bringing their hands together with a firm squeeze. The back of his hand fit perfectly inside Ghost’s palm. Ghost closed his eyes and let out a breath. The medallion inside of his shirt was a heavy weight around his neck.

“Ye planning on cutting that soon?” Soap asked, glancing up from his sketchbook at Ghost’s hair. The early morning sun was coming in from the kitchen and the water for Soap’s coffee was still percolating, slowly rising to a boil. They sat facing one another on the couch, not quite ready to make breakfast.

“No,” Ghost said. It was growing out, the pale blond strands begging to curl just a little. He’d worn it longer when he’d been a teenager, but not since then.

“Good, wanna spend some time drawing it. Gonna miss it when we go back,” Soap said, returning to his sketchbook. Ghost swallowed. The tension from the previous night still lingered in the house and for good reason.

There still hadn’t been any real discussion of what would happen when Soap’s leave was officially over. They were both chronically prone to avoiding having that kind of conversation as long as things were stable. It was how Ghost had been able to get away with falling in love with Soap at nineteen and not realizing it until he was gone.

There were no labels on the thing between them, despite the various ‘I love you’s that Soap had whispered into Ghost’s shoulder as he fell asleep. There were no guidelines on what to tell other people, whether they were a couple or a secret that Soap intended to keep hidden. However, the way Soap had looked at him the night before lingered in his mind. 

“Do you want to go back?” Ghost asked.

“Simon,” Soap looked up at him like he didn’t know what to say. Ghost didn’t offer him any words, just waited for the conflict in Soap’s face to clear.

“It’s nae about that. Cannae leave ye without someone watching yer six,” Soap said, letting his gaze drop again, “If yer going back, I’m goin’ with ye.”

It was the answer that Ghost had been coveting for a decade and Soap had finally given it to him.

“Still think you’re the marrying type?” Ghost shifted against the couch cushions, paying careful attention to Soap’s body language. His shoulders were tight, tense like they got when Price had to dress them down after any particularly fucked up mission.

“Yeah, house, kids, and dog,” Soap nodded, frowning as he scribbled out a few lines, “For the right guy.”

“What about me?” Ghost asked. The scratch of the pencil stopped.

“What about ye?” Soap parroted, the frown still on his face as he looked back up at Ghost.

“Think I could be the right guy?” There was a waver in Ghost’s voice as he said it. He could’ve played off as a joke if it had been anyone else, but not with Soap.

The pencil slid out of Soap’s hand, making a quiet thump as it hit the rug.

“Are ye proposing?” Soap whispered, his blue eyes wide and body almost frozen. Ghost was fairly sure he was holding his breath.

“Something like that,” Ghost swallowed, a flare of nerves rising in his chest, “We could retire, get that dog you keep saying I want.”

“Ye want to retire. With me,” Soap’s eyebrows scrunched as he processed the words. He set the sketchbook aside on the coffee table. Ghost’s own face stared back at him in graphite, blonde eyelashes rendered soft in a way that seemed unreal. “Yer not jus’ doing this cause I almost died, are ye?”

“No, but you scared me real bad, Johnny,” Ghost admitted. He would’ve gotten there eventually, given the daydreams he’d been having for the last year. What had happened in the field just expedited things. “Haven’t felt like that in a long time. Didn’t know I still could. Besides, I’m pretty sure ol’George is getting sick of looking after us.”

“Thought ye were gonna die in the field,” Soap said, though it sounded more like an accusation. Ghost let out a sigh, slumping into the couch cushions. There was a growing lump in his throat, making it difficult to swallow.

“You make me want to be selfish,” Ghost explained and watched as Soap’s face went slack, “If I can have you, I want you as long as possible.”

“Yer actually serious,” Soap whispered.

The morning light caught his face, glowing and red tinged at the edges. It made his eyes glitter like the dust motes floating through the beams that cut through the silent living room. Ghost knew that he would remember the way Soap looked in that moment for the rest of his life.

“I am. And what I’m asking isn’t fair to you,” Ghost said. He reached across the space between them and took Soap’s hand in his, “You know I’m not a good man, Johnny.”

“Neither am I, but ye love me. Ye take care of me. Always have,” Soap said, squeezing his hand and slotting their fingers together. Their knuckles fit together just as comfortably as they always had.

“Always will, whether you want it or not,” Ghost promised, going willingly as Soap tugged him closer so that his knee bumped against Soap’s shin.

“Ye sure ye want to be stuck with me forever?” Soap asked, his voice breaking as he said it. 

“That's all I’m asking for. You left me once, almost did it a second time. I’m not gonna let it happen again,” Ghost said. There was a wobble in Soap’s mouth and his grip had gone tight as iron on Ghost’s hand, “You gonna be mine, Johnny?”

“Goes both ways, Simon,” Soap swallowed, the muscles of his jaw working in the soft glow of the sun, “Everyone ye’ve ever been, everything yer gonna be, it’s all mine from here on. Ye understand?”

“Yours,” Ghost agreed and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth, relishing the rough scratch of stubble there.

Ghost walked into the deli early in the morning, the bell ringing out clear and strong. He’d dropped Soap off at physical therapy a few minutes before. The man had assured him he could make the short walk from the PT office to the art center, leaving Ghost with the whole day to himself. In the new domestic normal they’d found themselves in, that typically would’ve meant puttering around outside the house, mowing the yard and maybe digging some flower beds for Soap to fill in the spring. Not today though. He had errands to run.

“Simon,” Owen called from behind the counter with a grin, “We’ve got in rack of lamb today, if you're looking to make something nice for that Scot of yours.”

“Actually, I’m not looking to buy anything,” Ghost said, coming over to the counter and leaning against it. Owen quirked a grey eyebrow, waiting for him to go on.

“You still got any of those job applications?”Ghost nodded to the ‘Help Wanted’ sign. Owen’s face morphed from surprise into a bright, toothy smile.

“Job’s yours, son,” Owen said, offering Ghost his hand over the counter, “You and John planning on sticking around then?”

“Yeah, we are,” Ghost said, shaking his hand with a matching grin.

After they’d gotten the necessary paperwork squared away, Ghost took a day trip into Manchester, leaving himself plenty of time to get back to pick Soap up from his painting class. It was easy to find where he was going, even though he hadn’t been more than a handful of times. The location was practically etched on the inside of his mind.

Ghost parked in the small lot beside the cemetery and stepped out of the car. The sun was warm in the clear autumn sky, but it didn’t feel like enough. He was too used to Soap being his heat source at this point.

He meandered through the rows of graves, past the rows of old stones with half faded names and toward the newer section of grey granite and marble slabs. He knew which ones he was looking for, a set of five graves all dug at the same time, four full and one empty. Ghost slowed down as he neared them and then came to a stop in the middle of them.

“Hey kid,” he said, squatting down in front of the square of marble, “You’re getting another uncle.”

They quit their jobs and got married on the same day. The weather forecast called for heavy snow that night and Ghost loved the way Soap’s face went pink as the cold nipped at his cheeks. The ink was barely dry from their signatures when they walked hand in hand out to their car, stopping for a quick kiss before they got inside.

Father Frank and his wife had sent them a gift basket when Soap told them that he and Ghost were tying the knot. Hannah got them a bottle of wine, delivered through Lauren at Soap’s last PT session. Owen had sent them home with a free roast, citing the need for a good dinner even if they weren’t making much of a fuss about it. It was surreal to have that many people be pleased about their marriage.

It made Ghost realize that he was about to be a civilian with normal friends and a job that didn’t involve murder. He was no longer the thing that went bump in the night for the tyrants of the world. He hadn’t even seen one of his masks in over a month.

A brief flash of panic went through him at the thought. He’d spent so long easing Soap into the idea of retiring that he hadn’t thought about his own retirement. A small part of him, warm and glittering, perked up to remind him that Soap would be more than happy to help him to adjust to married life.

There had been a pile of paperwork to do, but nothing compared to what they were used to. Soap hadn’t been able to choose between strangling Ghost or kissing him when he found out what his new legal name was. It was strange for Ghost to think that all it took to make Soap his husband was a few signatures. 

For him, it felt like so much more than something that could be properly expressed in a folder that fit in the desk drawer of a government worker. There was a part of him that wanted to ask Father Frank if there was some kind of blessing or shit for people like them. It was the only thing he could think of that would remotely capture the infinite finality that was rattling through his body when they drove back from signing the last of everything. 

When they got home, they called Soap’s sister. Ghost grinned as Soap endured several screeches of joy from Sarah and her wife. He was significantly less self-satisfied when Sarah demanded to speak with him. After the other MacTavish extorted several promises from him about her brother’s wellbeing, Ghost called Price.

A long sigh was what greeted him.

“Ghost, if you’re calling me trying to come back to base right now, I’m going to fire you. Soap’s still got another two weeks of leave,” Price said and it was good to hear his voice. He had called to check in a few times during the first weeks of Soap’s recovery, but they’d mostly texted since then.

“No, sir. I’m, uh, calling to tell you I’m not coming back. At all. Soap, either,” Ghost said. Soap was pacing up and down the hall, talking in hushed tones to Gaz. They’d agreed to split up the duty of informing the rest of their friends.

 A beat of silence crackled over the phone. The first snowflakes of the year curled through the air and fell on the lawn outside of the window 

“Good, was hoping that’s what you wanted your paperwork for. Laswell said you’d  both been requesting some extra documents,” Price said and Ghost could hear the smile in his voice, “We’ll miss you like hell, but I’m glad. I’d always hoped I’d get to see you retire.”

“We’ll come in to sign our discharge papers when our leave runs out,” Ghost said.

“Alright, son,” Price chuckled, “I’ll let you get back to your honeymoon.”

“Price-” Ghost started, but the phone clicked off. He was going to have to give his captain hell when they saw each other.

“Aye, we’ll have some sorta party when the weather gets better. Don’t want ye getting stuck in the snow,” Soap said to Gaz over the phone, coming back into the living room, “Course, we’ll stay in touch. We’re retiring, not dying, ye cunt. Next time ye get leave, ye come down an’ stay a week with us. Alright.”

Soap dropped his phone on the sofa and collapsed on top of it. He gave Ghost a wry look, “Didn’t expect them to be so sentimental about it. It's kinda nice.”

Snow was drifting outside in sheets, coating the ground in a heavy white blanket. It looked like a Christmas special, Ghost thought, as he watched it cover their front lawn from the warmth of the living room couch. It would actually be Christmas soon. He should probably ask Soap if they were going to be the kind of couple that would be putting up a tree.

He took a deep drink from his tea, letting the heat of it seep through his chest. Down the hall, the shower shut off and Soap’s half-hummed singing became audible. Ghost set down his tea on the coffee table and picked up his small plate. They’d bought a cheap cake to celebrate and Ghost had snuck a piece of it out of the fridge when Soap had gone to clean up.

He picked at the soft vanilla sponge as the bathroom door opened and shut. Soap came down the hall wearing just a pair of old sweatpants, his skin scrubbed pink and hair damp. The lack of shirt showed off the dark and downy swath of hair on his chest, the more prominent scars on his torso visible as well. Ghost knew he should be used to seeing it by now, but his eyes still lingered on the exposed skin

 “So, I’ve been thinking,” Soap said as Ghost set his plate down and picked his tea back up. Soap leaned against the arm of the couch and gave Ghost a look filled with mischief, “I’ve got a clean bill of health, full range of activities.”

“Mm?” Ghost hummed as he took a drink. 

Soap bent down, close to his ear, “I was wondering if ye wanted the dog or the kids first.”

Ghost choked on his tea and Soap removed the mug from his hand, setting it on the coffee table. After a moment of coughing, Ghost glared up at Soap. Soap chuckled and slid off the arm of the couch and into Ghost’s lap. He wrapped his arms around Ghost as his thighs parted to bracket Ghost’s. He was warm and heavy, the heat of the shower still lingering on his skin. Soap leaned forward for a kiss and Ghost’s hands moved up to settle on his waist.

Soap’s mouth was cool against his after the tea and there was a hint of dampness still lingering in his beard. He could smell the artificial spiciness of Soap’s shampoo. The scent had soaked into all of their pillows as well and it made something in Ghost’s chest twist up tight.

Soap tilted his head, his tongue darting out to press at the seam of Ghost’s lips. Ghost’s mouth parted and Soap licked inside, pulling a deep sigh from Ghost. He liked open mouthed kisses best, where he could run his own tongue over the points of Soap’s teeth in turn. It was the closest he’d ever been to reciprocating the way Soap made him feel, the buzzing electricity that welled up inside of him.

Soap drew back and Ghost had to restrain himself from chasing him. 

“I ken ye’ve been holding back on account of me being stabbed, but I’m only gonna have the one wedding night, Si,” Soap said, his voice low and husky. There was a hint of fire in his blue eyes, like Ghost was a building he was looking to take down. 

“Fuck, Johnny,” Ghost groaned, letting his head tilt back against the sofa. He’d already been reduced to rubble. Soap, however, was intent on setting him aflame.

“That’s what I had in mind, yeah,” Soap grinned, “Ye didn’t answer me. Dog or kids?”

“We haven’t been married twelve hours and you’ve got baby fever already?” Ghost’s hands squeezed at Soap’s waist. It was a dangerous line of questioning. The warmth in his body was beginning to pool low in his gut, where Soap’s hips pressed against him.

“Maybe I’m just trying to lock ye down,” Soap said, the words only a little louder than a whisper. He pressed his forehead against Ghost’s. Sat in his lap like this, Soap was almost even with him for height.

“You’ve got me, Johnny,” Ghost promised. There was nowhere else he’d rather be than on that couch, no one else he’d rather belong to.

“I ken, maybe I like the idea of being a dad,” Soap said, nuzzling his face against Ghost so that his short beard scratched at his cheek, “Like the idea of ye being one, too.”

“Yeah?” Ghost swallowed, his throat clicking with the weight of it.

“Do better than our parents, that’s what ye said,” Soap pressed a kiss to his temple and then a much wetter one against his neck, “We’re already halfway there. Gotta nice house, stable jobs, friends with their own kids. We’ve got that extra room upstairs. It’d be perfect.” 

“Johnny,” Ghost groaned. His hands slid further down, squeezing the round curve of Soap’s ass. Soap drew in a sharp breath and burrowed his face into the warmth of Ghost’s neck.

“We’ll do right by the wee bairn. Ye know, have Christmas and birthdays and go on holiday to the beach,” he murmured and began rocking his hips back and forth, brushing against the growing hardness in Ghost’s jeans. Ghost’s hands flexed hard enough to bruise.

“Shit,” Ghost shuddered.

“Let's get this off, aye?” Soap said, tugging at his shirt. It was all Ghost could do to nod helplessly and raise his arms as Soap pulled it off over his head. The shirt ended up tossed on the floor as Soap pulled Ghost off of the couch, kissing him as he ran his hands over Ghost’s now bare shoulders.

They stumbled down the hallway, unwilling to break apart for more than a few moments until they’d shoved open the bedroom door. Ghost closed the door behind them, locking it out of habit. The bedside lamp was glowing a soft yellow and there was already a towel laid out on the bed.

“You’ve been planning this,” Ghost accused him as he pushed Soap toward their destination.

“Is it wrong for a man to seduce his husband?” Soap said, nipping at his jaw, “Just trying to consummate the marriage.”

“Awful big word for you,” Ghost teased. The back of Soap’s knees bumped against the edge of the mattress.

“Aye, I’m hoping there’s something else big for me too,” Soap said, giving him a leer that would have made a weaker man blush. Ghost snorted and tipped Soap back on the bed. Soap let himself go flat on the mattress. He hooked his thumbs in his waistband and slid off his sweatpants, discarding them on the floor.

Ghost didn’t think there were any soft parts of Soap. The sharp features of his face and calloused hands certainly weren’t delicate. The man was made of as much hard muscle and scars as Ghost was, even after a few months of recovery. 

But there, nestled among the dark thatch of Soap’s hair, was something undeniably soft.

“Look at you,” Ghost breathed out. His hand subconsciously settled on Soap’s knee where his legs dangled off the edge of the bed. He wanted to press Soap’s legs open wide and get a better look at the inside of that pink slit. His dick was straining inside of his jeans and he could feel a sticky wetness leaking into the material.

“It’s all yers, Simon,” Soap smirked at him, like he knew exactly what Ghost wanted, “Go on, ye can touch.”

“How?” Ghost asked. His knowledge of anatomy was limited, his experience more so. He knew his way around a cock only by virtue of having one.

“Here, give me yer hand.” Soap was a good teacher, particularly when he had a vested interest in his student doing well. He showed Ghost where to touch, how to make him slick up, where to press inside. Just one finger at first, gently eased into of Soap while they exchanged soft kisses. 

The way Soap’s hips jumped a little every time Ghost brushed his thumb over the head of his little cock was intoxicating. His hands had been the brutal end of so many lives and yet he could still give pleasure like this. Soap’s cunt was warm and wet, like the inside of a person’s cheek. Ghost flexed his middle finger, rubbing at Soap’s inner walls only to feel them contract tight as Soap gave a little choked gasp.

“There, right there,” Soap panted, “Fuck, yer a fast learner.” 

“That’s what they told me in basic,” Ghost said with a grin. His dick throbbed between his legs and precum welled up from his slit. Soap was a fucking sight to behold.

“Ye can add another if ye like,” Soap coached him, “There ye go, pull out and then both at once.” Ghost did what Soap said, carefully pushing past any resistance in the tight muscle. He scissored his fingers a little, adjusting to the additional pressure. 

He was inside Soap, at least a little. He pressed the heel of his palm up to tease at Soap’s cock, fascinated by how that made Soap tighten around him as he bucked his hips. Ghost slid his fingers out and then pressed in again, the movement easy and slick.

“You’re so wet,” Ghost marveled as he did it again, pressing up against that spot that made Soap squirm.

“Ye have no idea what ye do to me, Simon,” Soap whimpered, his hands fisting in the sheet, “Used to soak through my boxers when ye’d toss me around the sparring mat.”

“You like that?” Ghost let his eyes flick up to Soap’s flushed face “You wanna be pinned down?” 

He knew Soap’s body language better than his own. The embarrassment that twisted Soap’s mouth gave him his answer before Soap spoke.

“Only with ye, sir,” Soap nodded. That hint of subservience sent a pleasant frisson up Ghost’s spine. He pressed Soap’s leg wider and began to pump his hand in earnest.

It wasn’t long before Soap fell apart underneath him. All the warning Ghost had was a choked off whine and a look of surprise on Soap’s face when Ghost pressed his palm hard against his clit. Then suddenly, Soap’s cunt was contracting around his fingers in rhythmic pulses as Soap bucked against Ghost’s palm. After a few moments, Soap collapsed back into the mattress with a huff, his chest rising and falling with deep panting gasps.

Ghost withdrew his hand gently and spread out his fingers to watch the slick webbing between them. He drew his tongue up his palm to taste Soap. The slick was tangy and salty with just a hint of the metallic, like blood. Tomorrow, he resolved, perhaps for breakfast, he was going to eat Soap out. 

Soap tracked the motion, letting out a quiet groan as he watched him. Between his thighs, his cunt had gone pink and puffy, the dark hair around it glistening with slick. His cock peaked out of the lips, standing proud despite all of the abuse it had just endured.

“Get yer damn pants off, Simon,” Soap said, a hint of growl coming into his husky voice as he looked at Ghost. Being a good husband, Ghost obeyed.

Divested of all clothes, he climbed back on the bed, kneeling between Soap’s legs where he had moved to sit up against the headboard. Soap’s fingers wrapped around him as soon as he was within an arm’s length. 

Ghost shuddered. It was different than his own hand, different grip, different callouses, warmer too. Soap always ran warm.

“I want ye inside me,” Soap murmured as he leaned in toward Ghost, pressing kisses over the scars on his chest as he gently pumped his cock. The touch was light, just enough to move the soft skin and spread his precum down his length. It was driving Ghost mad.

“I’m guessing ye don’t have any condoms,” Soap continued, gently dancing around the subject of first times.

“Ah, no,” Ghost confirmed as Soap’s thumb swept over his head. His hips twitched forward, softly fucking Soap’s hand. Soap ran his unoccupied hand up Ghost’s flank, giving him a tug to encourage the motion before his hand trailed over to pull gently at his balls.

“I’m not on the pill,” Soap licked his lips, “Never really needed to be.”

Ghost knew that. He had a full list of what medications Soap took and when, “Johnny, we don’t have to-”

“I want to. If you do,” Soap interrupted. The flush of his face had moved from a pink to a red and Ghost could feel how warm he was when he leaned forward, resting his head in the crook of Ghost’s shoulder, “Probably should be having this conversation some other time, but I want it.”

“Are you sure?” Ghost was dumbfounded. They’d started this earlier with similar words, but Ghost had assumed it was just Soap’s attempt to get a rise out of him. This, however, was clearly something else.

“I’d have yer kid, Simon. Ye know I’d do it,” Soap’s growl was low against his neck, “It’s yer choice, if ye wanna fuck me full.”

“Shit, Johnny,” Ghost groaned as Soap’s teeth nipped at the skin over his pulse point, “Fuckin’ hell.”

He pushed Soap back against the bed, following him down so that he loomed over the other. Saint George dangled between them, glinting in the low light. Soap’s legs fell apart easily on either side of his hips and it laid bare the inviting pinkness between them. Flames licked up Ghost’s body, electric desire that made his skin feel a size too small. He wanted to burrow into Soap, split him open and leave a little bit of himself behind.

Leaning over, he kissed Soap’s collarbone and relished the way the other’s hands automatically came to tangle in his hair. Moving further down, Ghost licked over a nipple, stopping to suck at it for a moment when that drew a gasp from Soap. He gave the other side the same treatment and he leaned back up, Soap’s thighs were quivering.

Ghost pressed a kiss the inside of his knee and then he dragged Soap into his lap, blatantly showing off just how easy it was for him to manhandle the other. It forced Soap’s body into a slight arch that exposed the full stretch of his torso beautifully for Ghost. Taking his cock in hand, he rubbed his tip against Soap’s waiting hole, applying just the barest pressure. Precum dribbled from his slit, adding to the wetness there. Ghost flicked his eyes up to Soap’s for permission.

“Go on, Si,” Soap whispered, his half lidded eyes filled with desire. His legs shifted a few centimeters wider to welcome Ghost in.

Ghost pushed, the head of his cock parting Soap and sliding into that delicious wet heat. It was fascinating to see the way Soap stretched around him, sucking him in like their bodies were meant to join like that.

“All the way,” Soap huffed, pressing one of his heels against Ghost’s spine to urge him forward.

“Demanding little thing,” Ghost huffed out a laugh, just to watch Soap roll his eyes, “Don’t want to hurt you.”

“Ye won’t, but I wouldn’t mind if ye did,” Soap gave him a wicked grin, shimmying his hips a little so that Ghost sank in another inch.

“Not tonight,” Ghost said, filing that away for the future. He leaned down to kiss Soap, letting himself bottom out gently. When their hips connected, Soap gave a soft moan into Ghost’s mouth. He reached between them and laid a hand on his own stomach.

“Alright, Johnny?” Ghost asked as he pulled back from the kiss.

“Solid,” Soap said, “Yer just big. ‘S deep.” He pressed down on his stomach to emphasize his point and Ghost swore he could feel it. He swallowed and gently rocked his hips back and forth. Soap hummed in encouragement, his expression going content and full of bliss.

It made Ghost dig his fingers into Soap’s hips. There was an edge of danger to it all, fucking bare and leaking precum right into Soap’s womb. And Soap was not only letting Ghost do it, but he wanted it too, maybe even more than Ghost did. It felt right to Ghost, though. They were the kind of men who reveled in stepping just over the line of smart behavior. 

The slow rhythm Ghost began quickly sped up as Soap’s groans dissolved into choked gasps. Soon that was accompanied by a wet schlk schlk schlk as Soap squirmed under him. Nails pressed into Ghost’s skin, scratching little pink marks beside his scars every time he pressed in close enough to let Soap grind his little cock against his front. The slick slide around Ghost’s own cock was secondary to watching Soap come unwound for a second time. In and out, in and out, in and out. It was easy to keep the pace, to tilt his hips just right to keep Soap on a razor’s edge.

Ghost knew that sex wasn’t like that for everyone, that it was often just a cursory joining of bodies. But if it was even remotely like being inside of Soap, like feeling his inner walls twitch and quiver at just the touch of his hand, Ghost could finally understand why people enjoyed it so much. It was exhilarating to give pleasure like that and to see Soap react to it so freely.

One of Soap’s hands rested on his shoulder, the other pet gently through his hair. It was tender, almost dissonant with the wet smack of skin against skin. The flex of Soap’s ribs under Ghost’s palms with every gasping inhale was incredible. Ghost let his hand rest over the scar on Soap’s side, still new and full of color. Every little shudder, every moan, every cry; they all reverberated up to Ghost’s fingertips through that scar.

The surreality of it all struck Ghost as Soap’s hand clenched tight in his hair. They were married. This was his husband.

“Simon,” Soap whimpered, his eyes squeezing shut as his body went taught and his spine arched. His cunt tightened and pulsed around Ghost, a gush of wetness accompanying the contractions. His thighs flexed around Ghost’s hips and Ghost slowed down, gently fucking him through the aftershocks before coming to a halt.

“Fuck,” Soap breathed out, his body sagging back against the pillows. He looked half exhausted, wrung out and satisfied. His eyebrows scrunched in a frown as he looked up at Ghost, “Simon, ye didn’t …”

“It takes me a while,” Ghost said, clearing his throat. From what he had heard, that was supposed to be a good thing. Maybe not.

Soap’s ankles twisted over the base of his spine, effectively locking him in place. “S’alright,” Soap grinned up at him, “I can go as long as ye want.”

“Alright,” Ghost said, leaning down and pressing a kiss to his sweaty forehead. He found Soap’s hands with his own and threaded their fingers together. He shifted their position so that Soap’s hands were on either side of his pillow, Ghost’s own hands pinning them in place. 

Ghost draped himself over Soap, bringing their bodies flush together and resting his forehead against Soap’s as he began to move inside of Soap again, slow and deep.

“I love ye,” Soap murmured, pressing kiss after kiss to his jaw, “I love ye. More than ye’ll ever know, Simon.”

“Love you, Johnny,” Ghost whispered back, squeezing his fingers tight between Soap’s. It took a while before Ghost began to move any faster. Only when that tug began deep in the pit of his stomach did he begin to fuck Soap in earnest.

Even chasing his own orgasm, he kept their bodies close together, barely pulling out of Soap. The tension in his own body felt both strange and familiar, the way his muscles were beginning to burn, the sweat dripping from his body onto Soap’s. 

He felt like he was going to melt into Soap, like they were just going to become one person if he kept going.

The electric buzzing that had pooled at the base of his spine crested. His cock grew infinitesimally harder, giving one final throb, before it all crashed over Ghost. His balls drew up, almost painfully tight, as he emptied himself inside Soap with a quiet gasp. 

He pressed in as far as he could go, the first spurt of cum bursting from his slit and shooting into Soap’s waiting womb. As everything grew suddenly wetter, his hips twitched forward involuntarily, a stuttering movement encouraged by Soap’s ankles locked behind his back. He let his body do as it pleased, humping steadily into Soap while he painted his insides white. The crash of pleasure went on forever. His cock pulsed again and again, determined to give Soap all it had to offer. 

“Fuck, tha’s deep. Can feel ye cumming,” Soap whispered, his expression going starry-eyed and awed as another spurt shot into him. His hands squeezed tight against Ghost’s, “Love ye, Simon, love ye, love ye so much.”

Like before, each declaration was followed by a breathless kiss, easing Ghost back down from the high. They were both breathing hard when the last shockwave dissipated and his body went lax on top of Soap, his head falling forward into the crook of Soap’s neck. 

Soap’s hands slipped out of his and found their way to the broad expanse of his shoulders, rising and falling with each one of his breaths. They were both sticky and sweaty, skin slippery against skin. Soap’s head tilted so that his beard brushed along Ghost’s temple and Ghost nuzzled into the touch.

He could feel himself getting soft, over sensitive almost to the point of pain, but he didn’t want to pull out. Some primal part of him rebelled at ending the moment before he absolutely had to. However, he also didn’t want to crush Soap.

Carefully, he propped himself up on his elbows, shifting his weight off of Soap. The cold air nipped at him where their torsos had been together for so long.  He looked down at Soap, flushed red and sweaty, pressed loose-limbed into their mattress. The medallion hung off of Ghost’s neck and sat on Soap’s skin, right over his sternum.

The dim glow of the bedside lamp didn’t seem to account for the shine that seemed to well up off of Soap’s skin. There was light pouring out of him, pure and lovely. The look on Soap’s face was nearly indescribable.

Those blue eyes stared at him like he’d been the one to pin all the stars in the sky, like he was the center of gravity that everything else wheeled around. No one had ever looked at him like that.

For a moment, Ghost understood.

“Fireworks,” Ghost breathed out. Soap went still and quiet beneath him, not from confusion or fear, but something else entirely. There had been some hint of that old distant look which haunted Soap lingering in his body, so subtle and ever present Ghost had never really noticed it. And suddenly, it had vanished, faded away like a shadow before the full strength of the sun.

Silent tears welled up in Soap’s eyes, spilling down the sides of his face as he squeezed them shut.

“Aye,” Soap nodded, his mouth pulling into a soft, wobbly smile, “C’mere. Please, Simon.” Gentle hands pulled Ghost down into all that warm brightness. Soap kissed him, salt tinged and devoted, like he could get a spark of that light into Ghost too. Maybe, he already had.

Chapter Text

The warmth of summer had lingered on into the first few weeks of September. Simon found his attention drifting from the running tap in front of him to the row of trees beginning to turn orange down the street. The large glass storefront of the deli gave him a good view of the comings and goings of the village.

Simon flicked off the tap and dried his hands, rolling tight gloves onto them afterward. He was grateful for how well fitting his apron was as it kept the dog hair on his shirt trapped away from any clean surfaces, his hands included. He’d noticed the hair as soon as he’d walked into the store, still there despite the sticky roller he’d taken to it that morning.

Owen was in the back office, finishing up filing that week’s invoices. He’d been working hard to make sure that all the paperwork was in order for his retirement in October. His kids all had fancy office jobs in the city, so the store would be Simon’s in a few short weeks. It was still a surreal thought to Simon, as he glanced around the empty deli and turned to lean against the counter by the cash register. The old icon of Saint George hung at his back, its golden paint catching the sun and glimmering in the reflection of the glass of the counter.

The front bell chimed as the door was flung open, a little girl having kicked it open with one of her grimy trainers. Simon felt a jolt of surprise. The small spitfire turned to look at Simon, her face split in a huge grin. She’d gotten Johnny’s nose and coloring, but Simon’s dark eyes and curls.

“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” she yelled, running across the room and jumping up and down in front of the counter. Her accent was a horrible amalgamation of Manc slang and Scottish vowels.

“That’ll do, Gracie,” Simon huffed out a laugh, “You run off without Da?”

She grinned back at him, her face going scrunched as her smile showed that she was missing one one of her canines. It had come out the week prior after an hour of negotiation between her and Johnny on the proper removal method. Despite having left covert work a long time ago, Simon was still able to creep silently through the house that night and slip some pocket change under her pillow, completely undetected by his sleeping daughter.

“S’not my fault he’s slow,” Gracie said as the bell jingled again and the door swung open to reveal her frowning father, who apparently had caught that last bit.

“I’m nae slow,” Johnny groused as he walked in behind her, “Ye took off before I was done talkin’ to Martha.”

“Da, can I…” she tilted her head back to look at Johnny, pointing past Simon to the door to the back office. Johnny gave an exaggerated sigh of exasperation, his body sagging theatrically. 

“Aye, go ahead and say hi to Owen, ye little traitor,” Johnny nodded as Gracie darted past the counter to the office door, Johnny waited until the door closed behind her before he let out a real sigh, “Swear she likes everyone better than me.”

“You know she doesn’t,” Simon snorted, leaning forward against the counter, “Everytime we go past the barbershop, she tells me she wants to get her hair done like yours.”

“She’d really look like my clone then,” Johnny smirked, coming up to the counter and leaning on it as well. It put his mouth well within range of Simon’s. Simon’s gloved fingers flexed against the urge to pull him a little closer.

“What’re you doing here so early?” Simon asked, keeping his gaze steady on those lovely blue eyes and willing them not to drop lower on his husband’s face. 

“Boxing’s canceled this week. Hannah and Lauren went on holiday. Meant to tell ye last night,” Johnny explained, waving his hand at his own forgetfulness. 

Gracie had boxing on Tuesdays and Thursdays with Hannah at the gym. She was a proper menace, just like her Da, so they’d figured boxing would be a more constructive outlet than Johnny teaching her how to make bombs in the backyard after a game of footie.

“You could’ve texted,” Simon said, “Didn’t have to walk over here.”

“Aye, but then we’d’ve had to wait for ye to get home to see ye,” Johnny leaned further over the counter, giving Simon his best flirtatious look. It was then that Simon noticed the dark patch under his neck was in fact a smudge and not part of his beard. Or a lingering hickey, unlikely as Simon had gotten much more strategic in his placement of them over the years.

“Charcoal class go well?” he asked and watched Johnny’s face soften into something close to pride.

“Should see what those wee bairns have been making,” Johnny let his gaze trail out the window, his smile warm as the sunshine, “Looks like someone set off a bomb in the room.”

“Quit distracting my employees, MacTavish,” a voice barked from across the room and they turned their heads to see Owen walking back into the room with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. Gracie was struggling not to giggle next to him. The play feud between her Da and Owen over Johnny being Scottish was one of her favorite jokes.

“I’m half yer business,” Johnny said, straightening up in mock indignation.

“Spose you are,” Owen sighed as though it pained him before turning to address his singular employee, “Go home, Simon. Get this Scot out of here.”

“We’ve still got-

“I can close up just fine,” Owen said, making ‘shoo-ing’ motions with his hold hands. This was enough to make Gracie laugh outright, “John’ll never forgive me if I keep you trapped in here on a day like this."

“Yer damn right,” Johnny said, turning to look back at Simon with fond eyes.

Riley was asleep on the doormat for the back porch, letting out gusty snores beside Simon’s chair. Simon couldn’t really fault the dog for being lazy. He’d come to the MacTavish household after his own retirement and there was the beginnings of grey around his pointed muzzle. He’d already played a decent round of fetch with Gracie after dinner and then joined the adults on the deck when she’d finally worn him out.

Johnny occupied the chair on Simon’s other side, doodling away in a small sketchbook that Simon knew was mostly filled with sketches of him and Gracie. One leg was tucked up into the chair to support the pad of paper. Simon couldn’t help but be amazed at how flexible the man could be when he wanted to, for all the complaining he did about sore legs when Simon put that flexibility to use.

The setting sun glinted warm off of his dark hair, shading the mohawk just a tinge red with its light. Gracie had that same tone in her own brown hair and Simon could see the way the sunlight caught her as well. He took a deep drink of his tea, watching her ramble around the edge of the tree line. The sweet smell of autumn grass, dried out in the sun, came to him on the breeze. He set his tea down on the little table between their chairs and reached into the pocket of hoodie, pulling out a dark blue velvet box.

“I wanna do it tonight,” he said, holding the box out for the other to see when Johnny looked up from his paper.

“Yeah?” Johnny asked, setting his drawing supplies on the porch floor, “Thought we were gonna wait until next week for her birthday.”

“She’ll be tired after the party. You know how Frank’s kids wear her out,” Simon shrugged, “And if Gaz and Price are staying over, she won’t even look twice at us.”

“Aye,” Johnny nodded, a thoughtful smile moving over his face, “Ye want to do it now?”

“Yeah, alright,” Simon nodded. No time like the present. It sent just the smallest flush of nervousness through his chest.

“Gracie?” Johnny called, his voice loud enough to carry out into the yard where their daughter had started pulling up wildflowers and twisting them into a chain. Her head popped up and she stood to look at them.

“Yeah?” she called back, her eyebrows scrunching as she looked at them.

“Come over here,” Johnny said, waving her toward them. She gingerly set down her flower chain and then scrambled through the yard and up the porch steps. Simon had to suppress a laugh. She always moved with the utmost urgency, even for little things like bringing Simon her brush to do her hair in the morning.

“Wha’s up?” she asked, huffing a little. Her cheeks were flushed a soft pink from all the running she’d been doing. Her face and small limbs were tanned with the remnants of summer sun and a beach holiday, despite how much sunscreen had been slathered on her.

“Your Da and I’ve got something we want you to have,” Simon said, running his thumb over the seam of the box. It was small enough to be hidden inside his hand.

“What is it?” Gracie’s eyes narrowed with suspicious curiosity. She scooted closer toward Johnny to see if he had anything of interest on his person.

“It was my Grandda’s first, but it kept me and yer Dad safe for a long time,” Johnny explained, shooting Simon a soft smile. It made something in Simon’s chest twist up tight.

“Ye still didn’t tell me what it is,” Gracie huffed, her face pursing into a pout that she directed at Simon. Simon didn’t know how or when, but she had figured out that look was how Johnny got her Daddy to do just about anything he asked. She’d been using it as a weapon against him with increasing efficiency and ruthlessness. 

“C’mere, ye little animal,” Johnny laughed, pulling her up into his lap and rubbing his beard against her face.

“Da, stop!” Gracie giggled, shoving at him with her little hands. She was still small enough for a bit of baby fat to linger in the shape of them, “It’s scratchy, quit!”

“Alright, alright,” Johnny said, settling her properly in his lap before looking over to his husband, “Simon?”

Simon passed him the box. Their gaze lingered for a moment as their hands touched and Simon could see sparks dancing in those blue, blue, blue eyes. He swallowed around the lump growing in his throat and let Johnny take the box.

“Now, we’re giving this to ye because yer getting ready to be a big girl next week and we trust ye to take care of it,” Johnny explained, using the same tone he did when he was about to let her in on a secret. Gracie inspected the box in her Da’s hand with eager interest.

“Aye,” Gracie promised with a solemn nod, her eyes jumping up from the box to meet Johnny’s. The sun dipped into the space between the treeline and the roof of the porch. Its fading glow came glittering over the hills, illuminating them both like little twin fires. 

There were no lingering shadows or false stars on that small porch in the middle of the countryside. It was just Simon’s whole world, the very heart of his universe, wrapped in simple and holy light. 

“Okay,” Johnny gave her a nod back, his own serious tone undercut by his bright grin. It was daybreak in Simon’s heart, the swell of a sunrise bursting into a thousand shimmering points as he watched Gracie’s answering smile come over her face. 

She’d gotten much more of her Da’s features, certainly, and Simon loved that. Still, when Gracie looked at her Da, it was impossible not to see the twist of Simon that ran through her core. The way her small face crinkled with joy, like she’d seen a sparkling burst of fire against the night sky, it was a perfect mirror of Simon’s own.

Gently, as Gracie leaned forward to see, Johnny opened the box, “Now, what d’ye ken about Saint George?”

-fin-