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Ghost knew this would come someday. He predicted it, but his traitorous mind wouldn’t let him avoid it. He knew from the moment that stupidly good-looking sergeant had bumped his fist softly into his shoulder on that darkened tarmac. (Although, could it really be described as soft? Simon thinks so, because despite Johnny actually being good at what he does, he was always soft with Simon.)
As soon as he heard that Scottish accent, he knew he was done for. He knew that his cold and walled heart would start to melt; the bricks being deteriorated over time with every Scottish jab, or stupid jokes shared over scratchy comms in dark alleys.
Las Almas had really opened Simon’s eyes. For the first time in what felt like hundreds of years, his chest cavity cracked, and he felt his heart start to beat faster at the idea of Johnny not making it out of the Shadow-lined streets. But then Johnny was jumping into the abandoned truck Ghost had been able to hot wire and start up. And they were on their way out to Alejandro’s safe house.
Now though, as he runs through the streets of a ransacked town in Northern Russia, Las Almas seems like it was decades ago, when it was just a few months earlier.
Instead of coaching Soap through the Shadow-lined streets of the Mexican city, Ghost is sprinting to try and find Soap in the quiet, snowy town. He heard over comms (the same comms they were just joking and flirting over, his mind unhelpfully bestows upon his consciousness) the man getting ambushed and taken down, but Ghost wasn’t certain of Soap’s exact location.
He’s been trying to reach Soap for the past few minutes — since he started running — but Soap hasn’t responded. As each second ticks by without a response, Ghost’s chest freezes and his breath stutters. He tries to blame it on the frigid Russian air filling them with every inhale, but he knows better than to start lying to himself now.
Ghost turns another corner and slows when he hears voices up ahead. He doesn’t recognize them, or the language being spoken, so he assumes it's a gaggle of Russian soldiers — and secretly hopes it’s the one who took out Soap.
As he creeps closer to the entrance of the alleyway, he sees shadows of men dance on the walls and ground. He crouches down and takes another step, seeing Soap lying on the snowy ground, surrounded by Russian soldiers.
He’s bleeding, Ghost can see that much, as a puddle gets bigger and taints the free-falling snow. Two soldiers are plied next to Soap, so he assumes that Soap had taken care of a few of them before being taken down himself. Ghost raises his gun, takes aim on one soldier’s head and fires, watching him fall before refocusing on another.
Soon, the remaining three soldiers drop and Soap blinks wearily around, his blue eyes irregularly slow as they track the movements. Ghost slinks into the clearing, looking to his right and left, making sure no others appeared, and grabbing Soap by one strap of his vest. Once his grip is secured, he begins dragging him over to the alley he was just in.
Soap lets out a pained groan, his eyes rolling back in his head as his body goes tense. Ghost gets them into the darkness of the nearby alley and lets go of his strap, instead wrapping an arm around Soap’s waist. Soap is struggling — albeit weakly — against Ghost’s grip, his hands fumbling and not really pushing against Ghost’s arm around him.
“It’s just me, Sergeant. It’s Ghost,” Ghost whispers into Soap’s ear, hoping that’ll make the man more compliant, watching as Soap’s body immediately relaxes and a smirk quirks up on his lips.
“Hey, L.T.” Soap tilts his head up, squinting at Ghost through lidded eyes. “Knew you’d come fer ‘e.” It’s at this moment that Ghost realizes that part of the blood on his face isn’t from the other soldiers, but from a knife wound through his eyebrow. Ghost isn’t sure how Soap still has his eye, but he’s not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“Always, Johnny.” Ghost looks down further at Soap, his hands running over his chest. His vest is torn open and he can see a stab wound just under the tear. Ghost swears and unhooks Soap’s vest so he can get a better look. The wound is deep, definitely hitting some organs inside of Soap’s chest, and the blood is sluggishly pouring out.
Ghost takes out the med pack by his hip, shuffling through the contents to find the gauze. He puts pressure on the wound with some of it, wincing at the pained hiss Soap let’s out. He uses his other hand to reach up to his radio, clicking the receiver and taking a breath.
“7-1 Bravo to 7-0 Bravo, come in?” He says into his radio, hoping Price responds.
“This is 7-0 Bravo, how copy?” Price’s voice comes through his radio, the quality butchered by static and distance, but almost sounding like an angel.
“Solid, but Soap is hit, it’s pretty bad. A stab wound to the chest.” Already Ghost can see the blood seeping into the gauze. It strikes fear deep in his chest, in a place he thought wasn’t capable of feeling anything since the accident.
“Okay, Medivac is two minutes out, where are you both?” Ghost gives their coordinates and looks back down at Soap, whose eyes are fluttering again.
“Hey, hey,” Ghost says, slapping Soap’s cheek gently. Soap’s eyes look up at Ghost and they’re glazed over. “Stay with me, okay?” Soap licks his lips and nods, his throat bobbing with a swallow. Ghost grabs Soap and hauls him up, trying to get to a better vantage point to get to the medivac.
“Ghost…” Soap is looking up at him, his face twisted in a grimace.
“Yeah, Soap?” Ghost looks up, hearing the sound of the chopper blades coming closer. A hand is gently brushing his cheek, which is covered by his mask, and he looks down at Soap again. The younger man is smiling softly up at Ghost.
“Lift up the mask fer me?” Soap asks, his voice staggering gently in the syllables. His accent is getting thicker, which alerts Ghost to the fact that he’s getting closer to passing out.
Ghost wordlessly lifts the mask up to his nose and Soap brushes his fingertips over his cheek and the scar marring the skin next to his lips. Soap leans up, wincing and Ghost helps adjust him, his eyebrows furrowing in worry.
Soap leans up and gently presses his chapped lips to Ghosts, his tears and some blood making it wet between them. Ghost kisses back, savoring the feeling. Soap pulls back and smiles again, his eyes losing their bright blueness that Ghost fell in love with. In the next second, his face slackened, and his eyes closed.
“Soap?! Soap?!” Ghost shouts, turning and placing Soap on his back, his hands pressing down more on the bleeding wound. “Soap! No! Stay with me, Soap!” But Soap doesn’t open his eyes again. Ghost feels for a pulse and feels a slight beat under his fingers, but it’s weaker than he would like.
There’s shouts behind him and Ghost turns, yanking his mask down again. “Price?!” He yells, then turns back to Soap, shaking his shoulder. “Johnny! C’mon now!” Price rounded the corner with some medics. Ghost stands, lifts Soap into his arms as Price comes up to him.
“He just went unresponsive,” Ghost informs the medics as they run to the helicopter. Ghost places Soap on the gurney they have inside and jumps in after. Price comes in behind him, placing a hand on Ghost’s shoulder, giving a little tug on the vest strap there.
“C’mon, son, let the medics do their job,” Prince insists, trying to pull Ghost away to give the medics more space, but Ghost does not budge. His hand is clasped in Soap’s, refusing to let go for a fear that Ghost doesn’t want to entertain at this moment.
Soap cannot leave him. Ghost can’t lose someone else. After the loss of his entire family, Ghost doesn’t think he’d survive losing Johnny as well. Johnny was the first person he let in after the deaths of his family — or actually, Johnny was the first person who forced his way into Simon’s walls, who took one look at Ghost and decided it was worth it to bring back Simon.
As Ghost sways with the helicopter and watches the medics hook Soap up to wires and IV’s, starting to pack the wound in his chest, Ghost prays to a god he no longer believes in, to a god that he doesn’t think exists.
Please. Not him.
———
Ghost sits, hunched over in an uncomfortable chair, inside Soap’s hospital room. They got back to base hours ago — Ghost lost track about two hours in — and he hasn’t moved a centimeter, whether that be a leg twitch or a shift of hips to adjust for a better sitting position.
Price had tried to make him leave the med bay, to shower, change from his mission clothes (the ones covered in Soap’s blood he realizes later on) and eat something. Ghost had fought, nearly giving the older man a black eye for his efforts. He’s pretty sure Price did get a split lip though, from a stray fist, when he tried to grab Ghost by his arms and haul him away.
Ghost feels guilt in his lower belly for it, but he also can’t be bothered, not when Soap was so close to dying in his arms. Soap is in front of him now, laying on an uncomfortable medical bed with machines beeping around him. ( Soap’s deathbed , his mind unhelpfully inputs.)
His skin is a sickly pale that Simon had never seen before. The normally tanned skin was lively and warm, but when Simon reaches out and gently takes a hold of the younger man’s wrist, it feels like touching water fresh out of the tap after a chilly night — not yet cold, but not warm either.
Simon looks up at Johnny’s face and sees the way his eyes lay still behind his eyelids. That had never happened before. Whenever Simon would watch Johnny sleep beside him (like a rock, he might add. Johnny was aware of his surroundings, but god dammit was it hard to wake him up), he would watch the way his eyelids twitched with the bare movements of his eyes behind them.
His brown eyelashes fan softly across his cheeks, some clumped together from the grime the medical team hadn’t yet removed because they had been too preoccupied with his wounds and the blood from above his left eye.
There’s a bandage covering said eye, the doctors said he was lucky to still have it. They said the wound would leave a nasty scar, but at least he’s still able to see out of both eyes. (That is if he pulls through. The doctors provide hollow reassurances that they fixed everything that was damaged, but it was now up to Johnny and his body to heal itself.)
Simon clenched his fingers gently around Johnny’s wrist, feeling the weak pulse under the thin skin. God, Simon had never been more scared than he had been cradling Johnny’s vulnerable body, how Simon could easily manipulate him how he wanted.
Again, he’s reminded of how fragile life really is. He remembers finding his family, brutally murdered in his living room and feeling the blood stain him for months after, even if the physical evidence was gone. He had a feeling it would be the same with Johnny.
Simon’s eyes track down Johnny’s mostly covered body. Beside the bandage over his left eye and the finger-shaped bruises around his throat, Simon could pretend that nothing had happened because he can’t see any of the other lethal injuries.
Simon tentatively reaches an ungloved hand up towards Johnny’s scraggly mohawk. The usually soft brown hair is matted with blood, dirt, and the gel he uses to slick it back before a mission. Simon, in a move that makes his chest crack open that much more, brushes the strands apart with a couple of fingers.
He’s careful about it, not wanting to cause Johnny any more pain that he knows the younger will suffer from. Simon stares at his pale face again, still utterly baffled that even as the blood is drained from it, Simon finds him beautiful. (Though Simon always finds him beautiful, whether it be when Johnny blows something up and gets this feral look in his eyes as they glitter in the firelight, or when he and Gaz are trying to get themselves killed by pranking Price by taking his endless supply of bucket hats, or his exclusive set of cigars.)
He thinks that’s what the line in a marriage ceremony means. “In sickness and in health.” Even as Johnny lies here, possibly not making it out, Simon realizes that he would do anything for him if it meant Johnny would open his eyes and lift the one side of his mouth in his trademarked smirk.
The one that Simon knows will send both fondness and heat throughout his body. The way his pink lips quirk, showing off one of his canines, just like he gave him when he first found him. As the machine beeps to his right, Simon watches the way Johnny’s chest rises and falls, accompanying another beep. Each time his chest rises, Simon feels his own chest rise with a breath. It’s the only way he’s still breathing as the minutes tick on.
He never realized how much he was depending on Johnny to be okay until now. Although, he remembers feeling panicked in Las Almas, watching Graves and the Shadows shooting at him, leading him through the infested streets and hoping beyond hope that he would be okay. And again, when he was atop a skyscraper in Chicago, aiming for Hassan’s head before he tossed Soap out of a window like a piece of paper.
However, that stress blanches in comparison to the one he’d felt when Johnny had collapsed in his arms in Russia. Simon hopes the kiss they shared isn’t their last. He would rather die than never get to feel Johnny’s soft lips on his again.
Simon thinks of the mornings they spent in bed, the sunlight barely making it through the blinds and gently laying upon their skin. He remembers how the sun would light up Johnny’s skin, make him look more alive.
And when he opens his eyes? The blue looked so bright in the sun, always so full of jokes and soft words that Simon never thought were made for him. Before he realizes it, his mouth is moving, and words start to spill out.
“Johnny, I don’t know if you can hear me,” Simon starts, feeling stupid already, “but I’ve heard that hearing a loved one's voice helps those healing…if I count as a loved one.” Simons stares at Johnny’s unmoving face, his hand still laced with the younger’s.
“I need you, Johnny.” Simon’s voice cracks on the word need, not wanting to admit it. “I can’t…I can’t lose you.” The tears start rolling down his cheeks, so Simon rips his mask off, throwing it on the floor next to his chair. His eyes burn from unshed tears and some of his grease paint is getting smudged.
“You’re all I have, Johnny. I haven’t let anyone get as close to me as I have you. I don’t think I could’ve stopped you, either. You were set on learning who Simon is…well, here he is,” Simon says, his voice breaking again as he scoots closer to Johnny’s bed.
“Please, Johnny.” His voice is wet with the tears flowing down his cheeks, making the black paint drip down further. “Without you, Johnny, I don’t know who I am. I don’t know who Simon is anymore.
“I don’t want to wake up in the mornings without you or fall asleep in an empty bed. I don’t want to drink tea at ungodly hours without your Scottish grumbling and cuddling against the counter because I ‘drug’ you from the bed when you came willingly right behind me,” Simon chuckles wetly.
“Nobody has appreciated my dry jokes more than you have, Johnny. Nor has anyone responded with worse jokes. Hell, no one argues with me like you do. No one even dared. I remember hearing recruits call you suicidal the first time we argued in the mess hall. Even if you know you’re wrong, you still argue just for the sake of arguing. And I encourage it.” He laughs wetly, shaking his head slightly, but one look at Johnny again makes him sober up.
“Without you, the last piece of Simon that lives will die. If you die, I die, Johnny,” Simon confesses, fear and bile rising in his throat, making it difficult to say anymore, as if he hasn’t already said everything short of the three dastardly words. The three words that Johnny had told him one night, then almost immediately followed it up with “ you don’t have to say it back, Simon. I know you love me. ” Simon doesn’t entirely know how Johnny knew before he even accepted it, but it was true, nonetheless. Simon watches, but Johnny doesn’t move, his eyes don’t open, his heart rate doesn’t pick up.
“I promise you, Johnny, if you come back to me, I’ll tell you all of this to your face when you can respond. I promise I’ll be better; I’ll do better for you.” Simon sniffs and wipes his eye with his sleeve, uncaring of the dirt and blood still on it. “Just-“ he sobs again, his head dipping down to stare at the floor between his muddied boots. “Just don’t let this be goodbye.”
He lets out another sob, his shoulders shaking with the force of it. Simon’s hand grips Johnny’s more, if possible, and he scoots his chair closer. He rests his head on the bed next to Johnny’s hip, trying to smother the sobs coming up through his throat. It’s deathly silent in the room for a few minutes – no sounds except the choked sobs from Simon and the slow beeps from Johnny’s heart monitor.
When he feels a squeeze around his hand, he thinks it’s his imagination at first. Then he feels it again and his head shoots up. As his eyes blink away the tears and refocus, he sees it. There’s that stupid smirk on Johnny’s lovely face, with his one canine making an appearance. The sob that escaped him is guttural, hurting on the way up as Johnny’s blue eye swims with happiness.
“Si…” he whispers, his voice scratchy from no use. It’s heaven to Simon’s ears.
“Johnny,” Simon whispers back. When Johnny smiles at him, the bandage moving gently with it, Simon realizes that he’s here, he’s alive . Simon jumps up from his chair and cups the injured side of Johnny’s face, more tears leaking as he scans his eyes and face.
“Ye mean it?” Johnny asks, his voice barely working. Simon swallows then nods, leaning his forehead on Johnny’s.
“Every word, Johnny. Every fucking word,” Simon reassures then he leans down and takes Johnny’s lips in his, his chest loosening when he feels Johnny kiss him back. The kiss makes his walls crumble, makes more tears drip down his cheeks.
For the first time since Simon watched Johnny get ambushed in that small Russian town, he feels at peace, he feels he can finally breathe. His lungs don’t feel like they are seizing up, he doesn’t feel like his heart won’t ever be full again.
As he pulls back, Simon looks down at Johnny, sees the way his blue eyes – still dull – fill with fondness and a certain aspect of knowing . That same knowing showed the night Johnny said “I love you” for the first time. Simon knows that Johnny can see through him, and he relishes in it, despite the years of survival instincts telling him to close up.
“I love ye, Simon,” Johnny whispers. Simon smiles and nudges his nose against Johnny’s in response. “Now, can ye please get a nurse?” Simon jolts and realizes he probably should and the dry chuckle he gets from Johnny makes him feel better.
He picks up his mask from the floor and presses the nurse call button. In this time, Johnny eyes Simon and sees the state he’s in. “Ye should shower, Si,” Johnny says, a laugh bubbling up behind it and Simon looks down at himself. He is covered in blood and mud still. Now that he is aware of it, it feels sticky in the bad way and makes his nose scrunch up in discomfort. Johnny just gives him a sweet smile and squeezes his hand.
“I’ll still be here when you get back,” Johnny says, just as the door opens to a nurse. Simon glares at him as he slides on the mask, stepping back for a nurse. Her nose scrunches as she passes, and Johnny gently waves his hand as if saying “see?”
Simon shakes his head but starts backing away. There’s a hand on his shoulder and he looks at Price. The captain does have a split lip, but he still gives Simon a smile. “Go shower, lad. I got ‘em.”
So, Simon leaves the medical, after looking back once more and seeing Johnny give him a large smile with an enthusiastic thumbs up. The nurse slaps gently at his hand, telling him to put it down so he doesn’t aggravate his wound and Johnny pouts up at her. It’s adorable. Simon knows that that fact will be kept between him and a God he doesn’t believe in.
His shower is nothing short of clinical, but it gets the job done no less. Thirty minutes later, he’s back in Johnny’s room, watching as he and Gaz joke around. Price sits on the bed by his feet, a soft smile on his face as he watches what he considers his adopted (or kidnapped, as Gaz likes to say), sons at this point.
Price smiles at him again when he enters, sliding off the end of the bed and moving to a new chair so Simon can take his spot. He does so without preamble, a hand immediately wrapping around Johnny’s knee. Johnny gives him a smile and rests his hand over Simon’s, sending another jab towards Gaz, who’s claiming some wild fact about what had happened while he was out. Simon can’t verify this fact, but by the look on Price’s face – both fond and exasperated – he’s going to assume Gaz is just making something up to make Johnny feel better.
As Simon continues to sit on this hospital bed, Johnny’s hand on his, the indignant squawking from Gaz, and the rough chuckle from Price every now and then, he feels fuzzy and warm in a way he hasn’t felt in a while. These three men (plus the addition of Laswell) are starting to become the family that Simon never let himself have.
Simon’s starting to think he might deserve this family. It’ll be a long time before he can admit out loud, but in the recesses of his mind, he thinks that maybe one day, he’ll trust these men the same way they trust him. Johnny’s thumb rubs over the back of his hand in a hypnotic pattern. He stares at it then looks up at Johnny.
Johnny smiles at him and Simon feels alright. He feels as if everything will be okay. At least for a little while.