Chapter Text
"If you would let me give you pinky promise kisses
Then I wouldn't have to scream your name
Atop of every roof in the city of my heart
If I could see you
Once more to see you"
–Mitski
The outside air was pregnant–heavy with the humidity of a looming summer rainstorm, murky, thick nimbostratus clouds swelling and swelling. Building. Dirtying the picture-perfect, pink-colored remains of the day.
The heavy weight of all the heat and the damp soaked into his pores, left dewpoint droplets under the sleeves of his hoodie on his forearms, in the deceptively delicate-looking but generous blonde hairs there.
Everything was sticky, and he was agitated, even after the hospital’s AC cooled him off some from his long walk.
Simon had a complicated relationship with storms.
It wasn’t that he hated water, getting wet. He liked swimming. Liked showers. Baths, on occasion.
Water that was contained . Controlled.
Storms were unpredictable, and unpredictability made him uncomfortable. Moisture got in his rifle, in his gear. Made the mud thick under his boots, made it impossible to clear enough distance with any sort of confidence an officer needed.
Rain was that missed shot. Bad visibility, delayed evac.
Thunder punctuated a good deal of the memories he wished he could forget. Nightmarish frames of gore, of crying, heartbroken faces that he was responsible for. Of his own arm getting torn to the bone by strong canine jaws. Snapping jaws that weren’t meant for him–sharp teeth twisting apart his flesh and exposing things that were supposed to stay in until the horribly hot, gushing blood soaked his sleeve and soaked fur and spattered on cement.
The sky did not care about his pain, or the pain of those animals. Still, the clouds broke open and poured down.
Rain would always remind him.
Worst, and best, and most painfully of all, rain reminded him of John MacTavish. The cataclysmic watercolors of his eyes, and the way he did whatever the fuck he wanted. A man that sometimes felt like a distant fever dream. Something– someone– that had happened to Simon in some other life, in some fantasy.
There’d been two Johns in his life. He’d loved them both, at different times. Loved one of them, still. He could admit that to himself, pushing fifty-five. That he’d loved two men, that he’d cared for them as more than brothers.
A lot of good it did him, admitting it to himself nearly twenty years after it would’ve made any difference.
Most people were wrong about him. They mistook him for Ghost. He was just Simon, though, at the end of the day. He wasn’t fearsome. He was a fucking coward, in the ways that really mattered. He was always a coward.
And John Price was always a bastard.
Simon turned from eyeing the blooming rain clouds out the window, watched the way Price touched the nurse’s arm from where he was lying draped in ugly taupe hospital sheets, watched his easy, charming smile as he buttered her up with a war story. Same one Simon had heard more times than he could stand.
He wanted to roll his eyes.
Being bedridden didn’t stop the old lech from hitting on anything that breathed. He’d propositioned Simon for a fucking blowjob the night before, for “old times’ sake.”
It almost worked.
“You ever going to tell that story properly?” Simon’s voice was tinged with an old sort of irritation. Long-festered, resentful.
“Properly?” The genuine confusion made Simon want to punch the fucker. Price didn’t even look at him, was too busy staring down the nurse’s arse as she left.
“Yeah. The truth. Or ‘ave you seriously convinced yourself that’s how it ‘appened?”
“Don’t know what you’re on about.” Price gave him the decency of meeting his eyes, then, but his icy blue irises were empty. They weren’t midnight blue. Bluebonnets, robin’s eggs. The sky, so fucking alive and expressive that it made Simon’s bones ache to look in them.
Endless shades, ever-changing, prisms of fascination reflecting a mortar blast.
No. Just ice.
He decided to push, decided he was too restless and angry to let it go, again. “That was my promotion. Should’ve been mine.”
Price huffed out an amused breath. “Jesus, Simon. Still got your panties in a twist ‘bout that?”
The crass dismissal shut Simon down faster than he’d gotten worked up. “I don’t know why the fuck I even keep coming here–” Simon pressed himself off the wall with the boot he’d had propped up behind him, ready to enter flight mode, already a few steps toward out .
“ Simon , wait . Why do you care so much about that shit now ? You didn’t back then.”
Simon’s stride halted, his back to Price, still. His shoulders sagged, a little, weakened just a fraction by the vulnerability that wanted out. He’d been wrestling it into submission for too long. He was tired. “That’s…it was different.” We were different .
“What the hell do you mean?”
“We were fuckin’ kids, John. And I…” I looked up to you. “I thought you knew what was best.” I loved you. He was thinking about the past too much. Foolish. He didn’t know when he’d gotten so sentimental and foolish.
“Your mistake.”
His rounded shoulders snapped back to full tension, squaring up. “Yeah, hell of a mistake to waste most my life on.”
“Why don’t you piss off, eh, if that’s what you want? I don’t need your pity visits.”
Simon looked back, once. Looked at Price, a broken man at the end of his life. The one who’d taught him to shed his weakness. To wrap himself in the embrace of the cold, emotionless Ghost when he was afraid. In pain.
The steel shroud of bone and skull fell around him so easily. “You know what? Gladly.”
↣ ↢
As soon as he tried to light his cigarette, the swollen sky burst, heaving a great, cacophonous sigh over him–his hair, his clothes soaked before he could backstep into the hospital’s covered entryway.
His rotten fucking luck.
Teeth dug into the filter of his smoke, breaking the paper open, and he pulled his hood up, as if it mattered. He was wet as a forgotten backyard mutt, even the cheap white sweat-rag tank he wore under his tee suctioning at the bare skin of his back like unwelcome hands.
No fucking chance was he going back in the hospital, anywhere near his beloved fucking ex-captain again, so he didn’t bother moving out the rain. Stood right there in the onslaught of it, watching the small crowd gathering under the pavilion.
He spit his ruined cigarette onto the pavement at his feet.
Worst Saturday he’d had in a long while, and that was sayin’ somethin’. He thought of grabbing the folded balaclava in his back pocket, thought of the familiar, warm prison cradling his face, the safety of hiding from the world until he could get back to his flat and drink the rest of that fifth waiting so loyally, so faithfully on his nightstand.
But he hadn’t worn it since he’d signed his final retirement papers. It wouldn’t shield his orifices from blood spatters, anymore. Wouldn’t put righteous fear into enemies long dead, into enemies he no longer had. Wouldn’t do anything but scare children tagging along the street.
He was just Simon, now. And christ , was that a joke.
Simon laughed a hollow laugh, a bitter croak in the cage of his throat, let his head fall back, let the water droplets pelt his uncovered, horrible-ugly-scarred face. Who gave a fuck?
Maybe tonight would be his last night. Fifty-four. A ripe old age he was never supposed to reach.
When his eyes refocused on the rain beaten path to the main road, he planned the journey–another stop at the liquor store. Three or four bottles, maybe. Maybe one last take out, maybe shepherd’s pie–a quiet goodbye to his mum.
There was still a box of buckshot in his closet, the handmade shotgun Johnny had commissioned him for Christmas one year propped up next to his front door.
A quiet goodbye to him, too.
He’d never felt so at peace about the idea. Surrounded by all three of his loves somewhere far from the battlefield–the best he could hope for.
His clothes were one with his skin, he’d stood there so long, and people were staring.
A hallucination from his past was staring. Like he knew what Simon was gonna do, like he was a figment of Simon’s imagination after all. A make-believe friend come to see him off.
Except–Johnny looked just as spooked as he probably did. Wide, wide open eyes.
He was real and alive, walking toward Simon, fast, and faster. And he was saying something barely audible through the pour of rain.
Johnny’s lips moved, formed the name he had in that once-life. “ Ghost ?”
Nononono nono . No. Not today. Not right now. Simon turned himself away on autopilot, praying the universe would autocorrect; Soap would assume he’d been mistaken.
“ Ghost !” The emphasis on the ‘o’, clearer. Brassier, closer. Simon trudged through the sodden grass quick as he could, trying to escape to the cover of the carpark.
His heart was louder than the rain, louder than his ragged breath.
They’d not seen each other for years . Managed not to run into one another, managed to stay nice and goddamn separate. Though, he supposed he’d been on borrowed time with Price’s condition being what it was.
Soap had tried to be the glue keeping them together before they’d all peeled apart anyway.
He wouldn’t have settled for the long radio silence–perhaps he expected it from Simon, but not from Dear Captain.
“Simon!” a vice around his wrist jerked him to a hard stop, “Fuck’s sake , mate.”
Sure, Simon had thought about this. A lot. Thought of seeing Soap again, of what he’d say. Fuck knows he had endless hours of loneliness to fill. To think and think some more. To overthink his fucking thinking. To rehearse bullshit conversations he’d never have. Catastrophize, wish for encounters that would never come to pass. Hate himself for hoping, hoping so loud he gave himself a bloody headache.
But here was his chance, one of those conversations laid out before him, waiting to be had, and all Simon could say was, “Johnny, let go.”
Simon wasn’t prepared for the pained confusion in Johnny’s tone, a quavering that threatened his strained, out-of-breath syllables. “Wha–why ? It’s been ages. I’ve miss–”
“You know why,” he spat the words at Soap so he didn’t have to hear that . ‘ I’ve missed you’ –he wasn’t prepared to confront more of his raw pain in such quick succession. He couldn’t keep all the old want off of his face, his features bare with the crushing desire he thought he’d let go of. Soap’s touch brought it all right back. It was only waiting, stuffed down inside him, deep, where he left it. An unhealed wound, seeping and oozing.
Infected.
Now it was ripped open, and he couldn’t meet Soap’s eyes fully.
The metallic bite of Soap’s wedding band imprinted on his wet wrist like a fucking brand. Nothing’d changed. He missed his chance a long time ago.
Soap gripped at him harder, stepped forward, into his space, tried to duck down and get the eye contact Simon was refusing him. Always the willful bastard, always the one who dared . When he spoke, his voice sounded a lot calmer than he looked, eyebrows pinched and mouth drawn into the pout he wore when he was thinking about something too hard. “Just…come up wit’ me. See Price.”
Simon scoffed. “Not goin’ back up there. The cunt’s in a shite mood.” Besides, he had other things to be getting on with. His bottle, his last meal. His shotgun.
“Fine. Visitin’ hours are almost up, and I still need to…” Soap sighed. “Meet me after. There’s a café.” That grip tightened more, just about cut off the circulation to his fingers. Simon imagined them going all purple and numb, imagined Soap leaving him something to remember.
The hard-headed prick was going to keep them right there in the rain until he got his way.
“Yeah, I know it,” Simon conceded. Shite little place. Cheap. Specialized in burnt coffee and rubbery scrambles, had cradled him in the womb of its garish fluorescent lighting and young, overtly flirty waitresses one too many lonely nights.
“Alright. I won’t be more than an hour. Wait for me.” Soap raised his voice too loud so he could be heard, so he could make sure he was heard, wiped raindrops off his brow with his free hand.
“An hour, then.” That was all he’d wait. He supposed if tonight was his last night, he could be a little selfish for a little while, even if it was ultimately pointless. Broke their hearts more.
Snarling dogs at his heels, again, biting at his choked-up throat. Vicious and hungry.
Johnny still hadn’t let go of him, didn’t for a drawn out moment, his thumb digging into the softness inside his wrist, into the tendons and the life-sustaining veins, like he was checking for a fucking pulse. Like he was making sure Simon was real.
Simon wondered if he was real, too.
↣ ↢
Sometimes, they’d go to the sea cliffs.
He’d be flipping channels late at night, trying to find something to occupy himself off-duty–which usually looked like a bender followed by a coma, accented nicely with the sounds of some late night crime drama he didn’t give two fucks about–and he’d get a text.
Portland, tmrw morn. I’ll drive.
Soap never expected an answer from him. He just showed up. Four A.M. came ‘round, and there was a sharp, rhythmic knock at his door meant to be recognizable.
He’d come unannounced, the first time, and Ghost had nearly shot him. Pistol drawn, ready, aimed chest-level at his own front door.
Soap must’ve heard the hammer cock with his damn sniper ears, and good thing, too. “Ye can put the piece away, Lt., ‘s’just me.” The muffled sound of his amusement made Ghost smile, too, despite himself, as he’d turned the safety back on and stuffed his Beretta into the waistband of his sweats.
He didn’t ask how Soap’d found his address.
They didn’t really speak when they went down to Dorset. Soap would drum his fingers against the steering wheel along with the country tune bleeding maudlin from the stereo, Ghost would sip at the scalding, horrific McDonald’s tea that Soap had bought him, and they’d arrive, gear up and hook their hands and feet into the limestone for long, long hours.
Ghost had found it odd, at first–Soap so bloody quiet. But this is what he needed–when there was something fucking with his head, when he was too keyed up after a particularly traumatizing op. When he’d made a mistake he couldn’t quite live with.
A warm body that wouldn’t ask anything of him, that he didn’t need to explain himself to, and physical exertion intense enough to melt his anxious brain into unthinking soup.
They both dealt with themselves in near the same way–displace the fucking shit.
Ghost supposed Soap would’ve come over for a marathon fuck instead, if they’d ever crossed that boundary.
Nothing he could do to help the hungry beast in him that thought of what that’d be like–Soap riding him like he climbed, putting all that energy into taking his dick. Taking it hard from six AM to eight PM like he took the ascension impact in his joints. That sweat going to good use on Ghost’s tongue and between their bodies.
The purpose his sergeant had when he was focused on a goal–would he be fucking purposeful with his hips, would he look Ghost in the eye the way he looked at the base of a climb–determined, ready.
Soap was the first to the top that evening. Ghost was always the first, his limbs were longer, and no matter how much Soap trained and tried, Ghost’s sprawling legs and arms took him up easier–but Ghost let him, let those thick, sculpted thigh muscles flex and tense in his line of vision.
Straining glutes perfectly visible under Soap’s slutty little polyester shorts.
Yeah, they were streamlined to keep him cool, for better movement, but they were still fucking tiny, and Ghost was just a sorry, red-blooded man that recognized what he liked when he saw it. Ghost knew if he hung back a bit, he could see up them enough to clock the curve of Soap’s arsecheek meeting his thigh, a glimpse of his darker, curlier body hair.
The softness of his balls fat enough to slip out the side of his jock with his brisk, jerky movements.
He wore his harness looser around his thighs, cinched tight at the waist. Didn’t bother with a shirt, either. An insufferable little showoff. Skilled, powerful, knowledgeable about how he maneuvered. But Ghost knew there was hubris in the way he flaunted his body.
Ghost’d always enjoyed looking , sometimes. At men, especially. The men he worked with the most. He’d never really considered physical attraction as anything other than perfunctory, though.
Acting on the pull wasn’t necessary, just a biological itch he was content to scratch with his own hand most of the time, quick-like and simple. No complications. He didn’t shit where he ate, not after Price.
When it came to Johnny, though–the need within him had become wholly consuming.
Stole the breath right out of his lungs, how bad Johnny made his insides tighten and light up with want. How much he wanted to make things complicated with his sergeant.
He wanted to reach up, yank aside Soap’s flimsy goddamn shorts and suck that round, tight sack into his mouth, right there, clinging to the rocks, watch Soap try and hold on for dear fucking life. Tell him he was bloody perfect.
It’d be fucking perfect–the taste of Soap’s salty skin in his mouth, Soap’s musk in his nose, his sun-warmed thighs cradling Ghost’s face and the sound of the sea in his ears.
The closest he got to his fantasy was reaching out a hand to steady Soap’s overextended calf when his footing almost slipped on some crumbling shale, let his touch linger under the guise of keeping Soap stable until he kicked away the loose fragments and his foothold was solid.
Ghost didn’t remember the view at the top. The only thing clear in his memories was the troubled look on Johnny’s face as he looked out over the seaside, as he glanced at Ghost tentatively, like he wanted to say something. The sweat on his forehead, at his temples. Droplets dotting the outline of his upper lip.
His mouth opening, but all he said was–
“Ready?”
The pace he set on the abseil down was punishing.
Ghost felt the adrenaline-induced euphoria Johnny was chasing in his own body, was so overheated and sweat soaked that he deigned to tug off his windbreaker, his tee as they approached Soap’s jeep. Got rid of the sopping, see-through undershirt, too.
No point being uncomfortable the whole three hour drive back to Hereford.
“Awrigh’, Ghost?” Soap broke their usual silence with his panting little breathy words. The backdoor stuck like always and Johnny jerked at the handle without mercy, flinging it open with a metal squeal.
Ghost resisted the urge to lecture Soap about lubricating the damn hinges again. “Smashin’. Why?”
Soap unbuckled, unstrapped, tossed his gear into the back seat, his collection of carabiners jangling together. He peeked over at Ghost where he was leaning up against the jeep’s passenger side door, halfway through a hastily unwrapped protein bar already. “Slow up there today.”
Ghost shook his head, spoke around a mouthful. “Can a bloke not enjoy the scenery? Everythin’s a bloody competition with you.”
Soap laughed, but Ghost couldn’t help but notice just how flat the sound was.
The sun was slipping under the horizon, the unusually potent heatwave of the day dying down, and Ghost knew Soap was going to ask him to drive; he didn’t fancy night drives, much. Gave him headaches–something Johnny had confided in him, and Ghost would take it to the grave before he reported it, even though he should’ve.
Ghost’s eyes flicked down to the sudden sensation of Soap’s fingers sliding under the leather strap of his underarm holster, digging into his bare pec. He tugged, once, smirking up at Ghost before he wandered to the back of the jeep. “Thought I was the only paranoid fuck that carried all the time.”
Ghost snorted, “Finally met your match, kiddo.” He ignored the heat spreading through his chest at the remnant of Soap’s touch on his skin.
“Fuck off. Am no’ a child.”
“Naw, you’re a perfectly respectable, gun wielding adolescent.” Ghost shoved his trash into one of his cargo pockets, ripped open another bar and started forcing it down his gob.
“Remind me why we’re friends again.” Ghost could hear Soap kicking off his climbing shoes, undressing and redressing behind the cover of the vehicle. Ghost watched him in what he could see of the rearview, toweling his body off. Shameless. Watched the disjointed glimpses of his golden skin in the mirror’s small frame. A dusky nipple, the curls of his chest hair. A thigh, the side view of his curved, firm arse. The elastic band of his jock hugging the soft fatness of the underside.
Soap’s eyes caught his in the reflection. Stayed.
Ghost realized he’d not answered. He looked away, cleared his throat. “‘Cos I let you drag me out here. From my comfortable fuckin’ bed at ungodly hours, mind you.”
“Mm. Aye, aye. That you do.” Soap slammed the hatchback and reappeared, wearing low-riding, dark track pants and a plain white tee that hugged every line of his muscular torso.
He looked so fucking good like that.
He leaned against the jeep next to Ghost, reached into Ghost’s lower left cargo pocket without asking and retrieved his cigarettes.
Didn’t make any moves to get in, to get going. Just pulled out Ghost’s zippo, too, and lit up.
Those interminable blue eyes were on him, again. Wordless, but the kind of wordless that was loud.
“What’s on your mind, Johnny. Spit it out.”
Soap tucked the cigarettes back where they belonged, his head fell back with a thunk against the jeep’s window, and he looked up, at the sky. Looked out across the row of cars. Looked, very carefully, at Ghost’s profile.
“I’m…I was thinking of askin’ Emma to marry me.”
Ghost’s stomach dropped at that name. At Johnny bringing her up. At what he was bringing up.
Marriage? Johnny? To her ?
They never talked about his girlfriend. Ghost almost forgot she existed, sometimes.
The words felt absurd, and Ghost’s silence was heavy as he crushed the protein bar wrapper tight in his fist.
He could hear the implicit question in Johnny's words, a question that had no business being there: Should I, Lt.? Or is there somethin’ I should know?
The question was on his face, too. If Ghost wasn’t too much of a pussy to look. He could feel that steady gaze on him, all the same. Always on him. Burning him.
He probably could’ve pushed Soap into the backseat, right there, right like that, had his lips and his body slow and deep.
Ignoring that question was probably Simon's biggest regret in life, and, fuck–things he regretted–that was a lengthy list.
He knew what he was giving up. He knew, sure enough. If he ignored the question they both knew was hanging between them, he’d lose Soap just as sure as he’d never even fucking had him. He’d never feel the way he did again, but who the fuck was he to hoard the entire sun to warm his empty insides? His heart might’ve been a dead end, but Soap could have the house, the doting wife, the children. Things Simon simply couldn’t give him. Things he apparently wanted, much to Simon’s surprise.
And didn’t Johnny deserve those things? Deserve more than what little he even had to offer?
He wasn’t equipped to be someone’s lover, a romantic partner, a person Soap could grow old with. He wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to be. He was a soldier, a well-oiled machine, that was all. A brute, on a good day. And Johnny deserved the entire world.
So he watched the sunset die in Soap’s eyes, and the bits of humanity and longing Soap had dredged up in him die with it.
He did what you were supposed to do when a mate shared good news. He clapped Soap on the back, and said, “Don’t know why you’re sulkin’ about tha’. Any bird'd be lucky to have ya, MacTavish.”
He climbed into the driver’s seat. “Congrats, lad.”