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‘Got a light?’
Ghost leaning against the side of the mess hall, hood up and hunched against the mist of rain drifting down through the dark like a curtain, floodlights catching the tops of his shoulders, the wet shine of his boots.
The cigarette glows orange when he draws in a breath, Soap watches it light up the sharp curve of his jaw, hollowed cheeks, the tip of his nose. Ghost lets Soap take it from his mouth and have a drag of his own before he flicks it to the wet ground and grinds it under his boot. Then he takes Ghost’s jaw in his hand and kisses the ashy, bitter taste out of his mouth, makes it his own with his tongue and the gentle graze of his teeth. Ghost slides a hand up his back, pulls him in close with a long hard exhale as if he’s been waiting an eternity for it to happen.
*
The first time they fuck Ghost is terrified. That he’ll hurt Soap, that Soap won’t tell him if he does, that once he starts he won’t be able to stop.
Soap’s thighs spread beneath him, tanned and hard, open like an offering. Soft, hot skin rocking in the sheets with the held-back rhythm, where Ghost’s body pushes into his, whining and begging and clawing against his ribs to just do it.
And so Ghost lets himself go, gives it everything, hooks his thumb past Soap’s lips, over his bottom teeth and spits right in his mouth and Soap says yeah yeah yeah, that’s it, like a thank you.
*
Ghost wakes up with panic closing his throat. He leaves the bed, leaves the room, leaves Johnny. He walks until he can breathe again and it takes hours, barefoot in the dark over stones and gravel and grass, shivering against the breeze sighing over his skin. He walks until he can’t hear them anymore, until his mind is his own again, until he’s alone the way he’s supposed to be.
When he returns Johnny is waiting, like he always is. He sits up and lets Ghost climb over him, straddling his lap, pressing their foreheads together, smothering him in his weight and his warmth. Sometimes it feels as though Ghost might crush him, and Johnny is okay with that as long as it helps.
He smells of water and earth and outdoors. Soap breathes it in and slips the mask off over Ghost’s face, kisses his skin. Kisses his cheekbones, the crease in his brow, his temples. Petal-soft and damp with sweat, Johnny strokes his fingers gently over the planes of that face in the dark.
‘I’m sorry.’ Ghost’s voice is a whisper lost in the press of their bodies, so quiet he’s not sure he even said it out loud.
‘I’ve got you.’
*
He’s floating, submerged, drowning all at once. Johnny fills him so perfectly it's like it’s what he was made for; each roll of his slim, scarred hips pushes the air right out of Ghost’s lungs until it feels like the only way he’s ever known breathing.
‘You’re so good, you’re so fuckin’ beautiful, I can’t believe you’re mine.’
Ghost feels himself smile.
He has never known peace, or safety, or divinity, but thinks this might be as close as he can get. He doesn’t deserve any of those things and doesn’t deserve Johnny at all, not as a friend and definitely not like this; staring down at him as though he isn’t real, hands gripped to his waist, sweat running tracks down his chest and saying those -
‘You’re the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen. I want to stay like this forever, I fuckin’ adore you, I need you, I-’
*
'Don’t think about me until you’re home.’
Like they even had a home, like this place wasn’t just one more in a long line of half-empty spaces that they occupy, spending time waiting to die.
Soap’s fingers sliding up into the back of Ghost’s hair under his balaclava, feeling their way and mapping their memories.
‘I’m serious. I don’t exist until you see me again.’
Ghost nodding because its the only way they’ll survive.
Soap pushing kisses into the fabric of his mask, slow and feather-light against the corner of his mouth. They don’t say goodbye, don’t tempt fate, just touch each other quietly and try not to imagine it being the last time.
Given an hour of patient silence by their friends before the break, before Ghost closes the hole in his chest where Johnny lives, tucked away and safe, closes it tight and pretends it was never there.
‘Please come back.’
‘I will.’