Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Knowing, as it turns out, doesn’t ease the pain. 

Ghost had thought it might. Hoped it would. But it doesn’t. Flores had been clear and pragmatic in her explanations. He might not know who he is, she had said. It had hurt, to hear that. Seeing it, though, feeling the reality sink into his guts like a stone, is some of the worst pain he’s ever felt. 

He had looked into Johnny’s eyes, and he had seen nothing. No recognition, hardly any life at all. Ghost had been frozen in his seat, and it was only a mad stroke of luck that had a nurse doing the rounds right then. She came over to the bed and began asking Johnny questions. He gave no response. Only a flat stare into nothingness, a faint groan, and a speck of drool collecting at the corner of his lip. 

Flores said it might be like this for days. Forever, Ghost thought, unbidden. It terrified him, sent cold into his bones. All at once, a life comes to him, technicolour and horrible: Johnny, alive, but locked in himself. Maybe gone entirely. Beyond Ghost’s reach, an empty cripple, a shell. His fire snuffed out. 

Soon after Johnny wakes, in a moment he will regret for the rest of his life, Ghost leaves. He steps outside, walks down to the stairwell, and sits on the landing until his arse is sore.

What will he be, Ghost wonders, if he’ll never be Johnny again? As soon as the thought appears, he curses it. Feels ill for even thinking such a thing. But he thinks back to that night, after Johnny had met Parker, and understands what he had felt. 

He’ll never step on a training grounds again. Never take a life, and never save one, either. Will likely never hold a rifle, or visit the armoury, or do the job he’d always said he was born for. The Special Air Service would thank him for his bravery and throw him to the curb like last week’s rubbish. If you stripped Soap down to the bones, peeled the skin and sinew away, what would you see?

Would Ghost still love him, if he was different? If he was broken? 

It’s a sour, awful question, but an easy one. Ghost would. He always would. It would sear him to the bone, to see Johnny bedridden, miserable, embarrassed. But he would love him. Whatever was left of him, whatever he could build back, whatever was lost forever in a heap of concrete in Kastovia. He would love it all. 

Ghost had known it for years, but he hadn’t understood it till now, not really. It’s such a trite, foolish sentiment, but it’s the truth: John MacTavish is it for him. Simple as. If all he’ll ever get from him for the rest of his life is a crooked smile, or the simple touch of his skin, he’ll glut himself on it. He’s not leaving, not for fucking anything. 

He goes back to Soap’s room to find him asleep again. The nurse has left, and Ghost makes a note to ask her later what she had done for him. If Ghost could do any of it, next time. 

He takes his seat, holds Johnny’s hand. It’s near the middle of the night, and he might soon drift back to sleep, himself. Ghost flexes his hand just to feel the bones of Johnny’s fingers roll under his touch. 

“Sorry I ran,” he says, low. “Won’t happen again.” Ghost isn’t sure if Johnny can hear him, but he says it all the same. Just in case. 

Another day passes, and Johnny improves, though not by much. He’s been promoted from silence to babbling, clumsy and nonsensical. His words are slurred, and nothing that comes out of his mouth makes a lick of sense, but it’s a semblance of speech, the doctors say. Some proof that he has the ability to verbally communicate, even if he’s not quite there yet. 

Ghost will take it. It’s just steps, Flores had told him. Some are small, some are large, some might even be backwards, but at least he’s moving, she’d said. She’s right, of course, so he beats patience into himself. Soap just needs time. Ghost can give him that. 

He even starts — so, so hesitantly — to feel good about the whole thing. To feel something approaching calm. It’s at that exact moment, of course, that Johnny’s parents arrive.

He feels his heart leap to his throat when Flores says as much, peeking around the corner of the entryway. Ghost, frankly, would rather be anywhere else, do anything else. But he’s made a promise. If Johnny were truly awake, able to communicate with any level of meaning, Ghost imagines he might take a twisted sense of satisfaction from the whole thing. He’d certainly gotten his way in the end. 

In the version of their story where Johnny is lucid and revelling in Ghost’s poor attempt at a meet-the-parents scene, Ghost would have cuffed his shoulder, told him to piss off. Johnny would have laughed. They would have sniped at each other, and the affair would have put more greys on his head than there already are, but they would have been happy. 

He’d had his chance at that, and pissed it away. Now he’s got to lie in the bed he’s made. 

He will. He swears it. Swore it, to Johnny, lost in himself, and he’d meant it. But he’ll need a proper smoke if he’s going to get through it. He’s not yet called Price, besides; he’s not sure how to explain it all, but it’s the lesser of two evils. 

So he heads outside, back to the same stretch of pavement from that first day he’d arrived, and nicks a lighter from a stranger’s back pocket on his way. When he takes his first, deep drag, it feels like the first proper breath he’s had in days. 

Price picks up on the second ring, and wastes no time on formalities or greetings. “How is he?” His voice is careful but rough. It’s audible, the way he’s bracing himself for another funeral to plan for. Ghost knows the feeling. Knew it, anyway. 

“He’s awake.” 

“Fuck,” Price breathes. “Fuck. He solid?” 

Ghost is unsure if he should tell the truth or not. Frankly, he’s not entirely sure what the truth even is. “Well, he’s not dead.” 

There’s a sigh from the other line. “Hold on, I’m fetching Gaz.” 

Once the Sergeant is in the room, Ghost tells them everything. Well. Mostly everything. Some things are just for Johnny and him — or just him, depending on if Soap ever shapes up. 

Gaz, insightful shite, cuts to the quick the way Price nor Ghost have the stomach to. “Does he remember anything?” Ghost is silent, measuring his words, and Gaz seems to read that for what it is. “Damn.”

“He knows his name,” Ghost supplies. 

“Not the year?” Gaz asks. “Not you?” 

“I dunno what the fuck he knows.” It’s sharper, more truthful than Ghost had intended. But that’s a hell of a low blow. “Half the time he opens his mouth it’s bloody gibberish. This morning he asked if a tiger was coming for tea. His brain’s fucked.” 

“Oh, like that old book?” 

“What book?” 

“The Tiger Who Came to Tea. It’s a book.” 

“Well that’s mint, innit? If he needs to learn how to read again, at least he’s already at year two.” 

Gaz turns stern. “Easy, mate.” Ghost feels the guilt immediately. Perhaps Flores was right about him needing more sleep. Much more of this, and he’ll be as mad as Soap. 

It’s just… jarring. It makes his skin crawl, the wrongness of not knowing what Johnny’s thinking, what he’s feeling. The one person he’s ever had complete, unerring trust in, who he knows better than he knows himself, is lost to him. 

“He’s gonna be alright, sir.” 

“Yeah? And how do you know that?” He’s so, so tired. 

“Call it a hunch.” 

He wishes they could speak for longer, but all of them have got obligations to get back to. Not Price and Gaz’s fault theirs is across the country. Ghost resolves to have a proper call once Johnny is more himself, and if he never gets there, well. He’ll figure something out. He always does.

Flores gives him a sympathetic look as she bars him from reentry. Visitation rules: two visitors per room, and those slots have already been filled by a woman he assumes to be Johnny's sister and the man he knows is his father. Ghost recognises him from the photos Johnny had shown him after his surgery. Looks like he’d recovered well, just like Soap had said. 

So he stands in the hallway, waiting his turn, feeling for all the world like he might itch straight out of his skin. He should be in there. His sister — Lottie, maybe — is sitting in his chair. His teeth begin to ache, pain smarting through his molars, and he realises he’s been clenching his jaw.

The sight of them there, at Johnny's bedside, rankles something in him. It makes him feel ugly, jealous and lonely and inadequate all at once.

It was only fair, he supposed, punishment for not protecting him, but he burned inside. You don't know him like I do, he wanted to say, he’s mine, not yours. It might have felt good, to shout, to scream, if it had been true. But it wasn't true, was it? 

This was Johnny's blood. The people who made him, and had taken him back in when Ghost discarded him. The people who he loved, who made a home for him, who hadn’t nearly gotten him killed. They had more right to be with him than Ghost ever did, and it, stupidly, made him want to cry.

Ghost does his best to stay still, leaning against the wall a few metres from the gathering of the rest of his family, and avoiding eye contact staunchly. It works, for a while, until it doesn't. 

A slight, grey-haired woman approaches him and clears her throat to get his attention. It occurs to him to ignore her, and he’s tempted, but if this is who he thinks it is, he knows well enough that she won’t let up until he gives in. 

She looks a mess. Swollen eyes, pallid skin, unsteady on her feet like she hasn't eaten properly for days. Ghost supposes they have that in common, if nothing else. But she’s stern, strong, and carries herself well. The toughest woman in the room, Johnny had always said. “Are you here for my son?” 

He’s got no energy for his usual deflections. The time has passed for good impressions, for earning favour. This is no medal ceremony. “Yes, ma’am.” 

“You look like an army man. Do you serve with him?”

Ghost blinks, eyelids heavy. He's so tired. “I'm his Lieutenant.” 

The careful distance she’d placed between them melts away in an instant, and recognition crests in her eyes. Her face goes slack and sorrowful. “You wouldn’t happen to be his Simon, would you?” 

His Simon. All his. Christ, sometimes it felt like that was the only thing he wanted to be. “I suppose I am.” 

She looks like she’s cried herself dry, by the red in her eyes, but they go glassy and wet all over again. Ghost hopes, prays, that the tears don’t fall. Marching into war is nothing compared to the terror of making Johnny's mum cry. “Oh, you should have just come for holiday, you stubborn thing.” There the tears go. “We didn't want to meet you like this.” 

She says it so familiarly. Like she knows him. Like it’s that easy. It is, you numpty. He can hear it in Johnny's voice, chastising, as clear as if he’d really said it. Ghost almost laughs, delirious. Maybe it was. “Yeah, probably should’ve.” 

Elaine rustles through her handbag for a small packet of tissues, and blows her nose, before offering Ghost one as well. He hadn’t realised his eyes had gotten a shine to them. “Oh, no use fretting over that. There’s always next time. We can make the corned beef hash again… though I did a pure fine job of it as a first try, I’ll say.” 

Ghost balls up the tissue in his fist, stunned. “You cooked corned beef hash? For Christmas?” 

“Och, John told us it was your favourite. We wanted to make sure you felt welcome, to thank you for taking care of our boy.” She chuckles, weak and wet. “Lord knows he can’t make it easy.” 

He grinds his teeth again, and it takes all he’s got not to ask for another tissue. He manages, barely, but his voice breaks when he goes to speak. “I’m afraid I haven’t done a very good job of that.” 

She becomes stern, suddenly. Protective. “He would never have blamed you, and you know that.” Ghost thinks she might actually be right, which is the sorriest part of all of this. It’s wearing him down, has been for a long time. He deserves his lashings. 

“You don’t even know me.” 

“That’s where you’re wrong, lad. I know John loves you, and that tells me plenty.” Elaine sets her chin; she’s got the same jutting jaw as her son. “He told us all the times you saved him.” 

Ghost wobbles. “Mission reports are classified.” 

She rolls her eyes sky high. “You’re just as bad as him, you know that? He wouldnae give us any of the juicy bits, no matter how many times we asked. But he told us enough. You’ve saved his skin enough times so far,” she says. “Don’t tell me you’re giving up on him now.” 

It’s a familiar trick. Goading him into a fight, preying on his temper. Lighting a fire in him. “No bloody chance.” 

Elaine smiles, that same tug at her mouth’s corner, the same smug satisfaction. “Good lad.” They lapse into silence. She’s a spitfire and a half. Johnny was right: they get on well. 

He looks at Johnny through the window of the door, and finds him asleep. It’s good to see him rest, God knows his body needs it, but there’s also a bone-deep fear that comes with seeing his eyes shut, his mouth still. Everytime he looks over and sees that stillness, he wonders if this is the time he’ll stay that way. “Was he awake, when you went in?” 

“Aye, for a bit.” She sighs, low and mournful. “I hope he gets his wits about him soon. It’s not right, seeing him like this.”

He pauses, contemplates how to ask exactly what he wants, and whether he should ask it at all. He probably shouldn’t. “Did he… know you?” 

Elaine sees right through him, just like her son. “Not yet.” She’s gentler than she has any right to be about it. “Just give him time.” 

“They say he might have forgotten,” he murmurs. It burns on the way out. “That he might not come back.” 

“I don’t think so, Simon. I’m no doctor, but I know my son. He’s not the forgetful type.” 

“Not quite sure it works that way.” 

“Maybe not. But when has he ever played by the rules?” That gets a smile out of Ghost, a proper one. The fight’s not over yet. Johnny’s been dealt a bad hand, and having to sit by and watch is shit. Always is. But he trusts him, implicitly, unendingly. He’s had worse odds.

Johnny had always said his mother was a hugger from hell, but she hasn’t touched him once. Ghost doesn’t particularly want her to. He thinks one day, though, he might not mind it. Her voice is clear, authoritative despite her diminutive size, and he’s starting to realise he trusts her, too. “John thinks the world of you, you know.” 

Dagger to the heart, that. “He shouldn’t.” 

Elaine smiles. It’s a bittersweet thing. “Guess you got lucky, then.” 

If only she bloody knew.

Over the course of the evening, the MacTavishes approach Ghost tentatively, introducing themselves in turn. He has an inkling Elaine had given them a talking to, warned them not to crowd him all at once. He appreciates it, in a way, but part of him almost wishes they’d get it over with in one fell swoop. Bit like water torture, this staggered approach. 

But it’s nice, too. Nice to meet Lottie, and his father, and the cousins. Nice to learn the people who made Johnny who he is. 

Lottie had left Samuel with his father back home. She hadn’t wanted him to see his uncle like this, especially if it would have been the last time. Johnny probably would have said the same. But his sister Claire had brought her daughter, little Violet. Around six years old, that one, and loves her Uncle John to death. She’s shy, and Ghost isn’t one for children, so they don’t speak much. But he sees her puff up her chest and square her shoulders when the doctors try talking to her — and the way she keeps sneaking suspicious glances his way when she thinks he’s not paying attention. She’s a firebrand. Ghost thinks he might not mind getting to know her, if he gets the chance. 

It takes most of the day for the whole family to cycle through and visit Soap, confined to two at a time as they are. They head out that evening to the hotel rooms they’ve rented, and they come back the next morning to do it all over, and over, and over. 

Four days later, Johnny recognises him. 

It's altogether pretty pathetic. Ghost has sat vigil on Johnny's right side since he’d arrived, but after waking, Soap’s only correspondence has been to the nurses and other staff. He primarily just repeats himself. Slurred and garbled where am Is and who are yous and all manner of questions. Every day the doctor comes by and runs a rudimentary neurological exam: what year is it, who’s the prime minister, what’s your name. Rarely does he answer with anything other than nonsense. 

Nurse Flores assures him this is normal. It does not help. 

Then like a bolt of lightning, like a whisper, one afternoon after Flores leaves to exchange his bedpan, Johnny tilts his head. Looks at Ghost rather than through him for the first time in weeks. The corner of his mouth twists in a bemused, weak grin, but a grin nonetheless. Syllables still swollen and too-large for his lips, he says, “What are you doin’ here, Simon?” 

The MacTavishes had left for their lodgings earlier that evening. Ghost is fiercely, devastatingly glad they aren’t around to see, because he cries like a bitch. The kind of sobs that paralyse your jaw, that tear your throat. He wills the tears away, wants them gone so those blue eyes can come back into focus, and then they are gone, down his face and soaking his shirt, a stiff thing given to him by Flores after informing him he smelled worse than some of her patients, and he had no open sores to use as an excuse. 

Johnny blinks slowly at him, obviously still not-quite-there. Reaches a hand out, trembling like hell. Ghost will notice, later, the strength of the tremors. Now, all he can do is hold him, and hope this fades into the haze of delirium Soap’s so fond of sinking into these days. If the memory persists, Johnny will never let him live it down.

It doesn't last. The next morning Johnny's back to his ramblings, not a bit of recognition or coherence to be found. 

Ghost thinks he should probably be upset, but he can't bring himself to be sorry in the least. He’s got proof, now. Johnny knows him. Their life together hadn’t spilled out with his blood over rebar, or tiled operating theatre floors. It's there, pumping and alive. He doesn't care if he has to wait for the rest of his life to see it again. He'll wait for him. 

Soap’s family comes round again that day. He doesn't know any of them either. They hide it well, but he can tell they're disappointed. Ghost certainly would be, if it were him. But there's a hope in their faces he hadn't seen before. It's a damn good sight. 

It’s late in the evening when it happens, but Elaine and Lottie are by Johnny’s bedside, Ghost watching through the window, and Johnny recognises them. All the sound from through the door is muffled, but there’s no mistaking the joy on the womens’ faces. They’ve gotten him back. It might be one of the best things Ghost has ever seen. 

Elaine turns to him and meets his eyes through the glass. She’s crying, positively wracked with sobs, but she looks like the happiest woman on earth. That’s the moment Ghost knows, really, truly knows. They’re going to be alright.

Johnny floats in and out, those next few days. Sleeps most of his hours away like a lazy old dog. In the windows where he’s awake, he’ll talk, motormouth till the end, even if he’s not making much sense. But he gets better every day. Speaks more clearly, makes a touch more sense. The doctors are very optimistic, and they tell Ghost so. 

He also forgets. Most always, any fleeting conversations Ghost can fit in are gone from Soap’s recollection within the day — within the hour, sometimes. Ghost doesn’t mind. He’s heard more of his own voice this past week than he has in months, but it kind of feels like being a person again. Like they’re waking up together. 

Johnny’s also gotten better at initiating, rather than purely responding to stimuli. Ghost is carefully feeding him some pea and ham soup from the kitchen when he gets his first questions of the day. That will likely be gone sooner than later; he can’t imagine a lucid Soap would suffer the indignity of being hand-fed, so he’s trying to enjoy it while it lasts.

“Simon.” 

“Yeah, Johnny?” 

“Where are we?” 

“We’re in hospital, Johnny.” 

“Oh.” He takes a sip from the spoon. “Why?” 

Ghost has gotten better at telling this story. He just needed a few tries. “We were on a job, and you got knocked around pretty bad.” 

“Shite.” Johnny wrinkles his nose, furrows his brow. “Did you get ‘em?” 

This is a new one. “Get who?” 

“Whoever took me out.” 

“No, Johnny.” It hurts to say. Hurts real fucking bad. “But they’re dead.” 

“Oh. Good.” Johnny is easily mollified, like this. Ghost reckons he should probably be grateful, as much as he likes to whinge over his incessant pestering, but he’d take a million questions, demands, snipes, just to keep Johnny talking. Even if the smoke damage and intubation still has his throat fried a bit. “Did I fuck up?” 

“No.” It’s a lie, sort of, but it’s one he can feel good about telling, at least. “You did good, Johnny.” 

That, inexplicably, brings a real smile to Soap’s eyes. He looks just about the most himself he’s been since he first went down. “I did?” 

“Swear down.” 

When Johnny had been out, really out, and Ghost had thought he’d lost him for good, he’d had lots of time to think about everything he wished he’d said when he had the chance. Everything that was too trite, or too honest, or too embarrassing to live down. Now, he figures, is about as good a chance as any. Especially since there’s a fair shot he won’t remember any of it come tomorrow morning. 

Well, perhaps that’s a bit of a cheat. He’ll tell him again, if he forgets. They’ve got time enough for that now. 

“You’re a damn fine soldier, Soap.” 

“Och, you’re taking the piss.” 

“I’m not. You… I couldn’t ask for a better partner.” Johnny looks positively dumbstruck, lucid enough even with his scrambled brains to realise how off-script this is. “You’re the strongest person I know.” 

He looks positively dazed. “You know a lot of strong people.”

Ghost chuffs a laugh, helpless. “Yeah, suppose I do. I know what I’m talking about. You gonna fight me on it?” 

Johnny, weak as a lamb and twice as wobbly, brings a hand up near his face, twists his wrist, and drops his arm. Locking his lips and throwing away the key. “Whatever you say, sir.” 

Sir. That stings, a bit. Soap might not know it yet, but Ghost does, sure as the rising sun. He’ll never be that to him again. Johnny’s title is lost, left in the rubble and wind. There on paper, sure, but that’s never meant a bit to either of them. What does it matter to have a rank if you never use it? If you never fight, if you never lead? 

Ghost supposes he’ll have to figure it out. They both will. If Johnny lets him, God willing, they can do it together.

They get a decent schedule down.

Flores goes through her routine — at least, the parts Ghost hasn't commandeered. She won’t let him do most of it, something about legality and liability, but she’d been generous enough to hand over some bits. Ghost is now in charge of his teeth brushing and his shaves. It's a little strange, to do it from the opposite end, and Soap gives him a cross look all the while, indignant now that he’s more himself, but it lets Ghost see his starry eyes and feel the oils of his skin all at once. He’ll take aggrieved protestations with ease, for a trade off like that. 

While she works, Johnny’s doctor stops by. Ghost supposes he’s a busy man, as he’s not in and out very much. But he’ll grace them with his presence at least once a day. He greets them in that cool, distant way doctors tend to be. “Good evening, Mr. MacTavish. How are you feeling today?” 

Johnny hasn’t said as much, but Ghost can tell he doesn’t care for him. He doesn’t blame him. “I’m good.” 

“That’s excellent to hear. Are you experiencing any excessive pain or discomfort around your sutures, or are they warm to the touch?” He opens his tablet and begins typing, noting when Johnny gives a simple yes or no. “Any residual soreness in your throat? Now is about the time we start seeing that subside, especially once you’ve begun eating and drinking.” 

“My throat’s fine, sir.”

“That's wonderful,” the doctor smiles, though it sits stiff on his face. “Have you noticed any changes in your hearing?” 

Johnny shifts in bed, defensive. “A little.” 

Irritation rises in Ghost’s chest. He’s never had much patience for indirectness, and it irks him to see it directed Johnny’s way. “Why do you ask?”

The doctor’s eyebrow gives a twitch at the brusqueness, but gets on his way. “What I mean to say is, as you’ve begun making strides in your mental recovery, it’s become more apparent that you’re less likely to respond to speech if Nurse Flores or I are on your left side.” 

“I work in demolitions,” Johnny says, frustrated. “Not the first time I’ve had trouble after a job. It’ll go away.”

The air in the room has turned cold. “That’s true, sometimes hearing loss is temporary. Unfortunately, we tend to see those cases resolve fewer than forty-eight hours after the initial incident. You’re far beyond that range. It’s difficult to be certain at this stage, and we aren't sure of the severity without testing, but I believe you’ve experienced major hearing loss, particularly in your left ear. It would certainly be consistent with your close proximity to the explosives. I’m sorry,” he says, “I know that’s not the kind of news you’d hoped for.” 

Soap blinks, blinks again. Works his jaw. 

The doctor, Solomons, is sympathetic, in a sickly-sweet way — not like Flores. More like a man who’s recently been through sensitivity training. “Again, I would certainly order audiometry sessions to be sure, but I think it’s very in-line with the trauma you’ve experienced to expect you’ve suffered blast-induced sensorineural hearing loss, which I’m sorry to say is a permanent condition.” 

Ghost expects it to hit like a shot to the chest. It doesn't. 

He feels so little that he begins worrying more about his apathy than about the news itself. This will upend Johnny's life, he thinks. He'll never hear properly again. Never be as independent, as elite as he once was. Ghost should be devastated. 

But it doesn’t change anything, not really. As soon as that charge blew, Soap’s life as he knew it was over. He's unsteady, and crippled, and will need a live-in carer. This is just one more card in a shit hand. 

It won't be the same. But their life before, for all its good bits, had its own share of miseries. Maybe this isn't a loss, but an exchange. No more infallible sense of purpose, but no more month-long stakeouts, either. No more late nights at the range, but no more flavourless ORPs. He can make it good. He can make it better. 

And the truth is, Ghost will take anything so long as Johnny's alive to bear it with him. That's all he’s ever needed. He knows that now. 

Johnny takes it with less grace.

His face is twisted, sour. His brow pinches so hard the temple-end of his incision pulls forward. “So that’s it, then.” 

“Depending on the audiometry findings, it’s possible you could be a candidate for a cochlear implant. It’s not a cure, but it can help. We can also refer you to an excellent support group for deaf—” 

“I’m not deaf,” he grits. “I can hear just fine.” 

Solomons and Flores exchange a look. “I understand this is a lot to take in, Mr. MacTavish. But I want you to rest assured knowing there are options to help you in your recovery.” 

“I said I’m fine! Can’t you hear, you daft prick?” Johnny is utterly, thoroughly unwilling to budge, and everyone in the room knows it. So Solomons pages an audiologist. 

It takes a heap of nonsense with more doctors and tuning forks, but they call it: total deafness in his left ear. The doctors spell it out in more technical terms, but Ghost mostly tunes that out. It makes him feel raw. 

Johnny’s jaw clenches, fists tighten as much as he’s able, which isn’t much. His eyes are wet. Ghost feels sick with grief for him. He watches as every muscle in his face contorts, as his Adam’s apple bobs and sticks high in his throat. It’s a slow process, watching the first tears fall, and watching Soap fight it as hard as he can knowing he’ll lose the battle anyway. He’ll cry, and he won’t hear the heart monitor pick up tempo as he does. 

Johnny had still thought, Ghost realises, that he would go back. That he could heal and mend and be himself again. Maybe it was the haze that still hung over him, a bit, or maybe just plain stubbornness. But he’d thought it wasn’t the end. 

Ghost freezes, unsure what to do — unsure what Johnny needs from him. He’s never seen him this way, and it’s scaring the piss out of him. 

Flores rescues them all. “Mr. MacTavish, would you like to be alone? Or would you like us to stay?” She’s so gentle. Ghost can tell she’s asked that same question a thousand times, to a thousand different people, though he can’t imagine how she can stomach it.

He sniffles, a wet, choking thing. Tries to speak, it looks like, but nothing comes out save for a cracking sob. She takes that for the answer it is. 

The two of them make their exit, and Ghost stays behind and listens to the worst sound he’s ever heard. He wishes he were anywhere but here; he’s fiercely glad he has the privilege of being here at all. “Johnny,” he tries, mindful to keep his voice raised. “Do you want me to leave?” 

There’s no spoken answer, but Johnny weakly thrusts an arm over the side of the bed and towards Ghost, flexing his hand as best he can. Simon holds it harder than he probably ought to.

“You’ll be right,” he says, to both of them. He hopes it’s true. He’ll make it true.

It takes an aching hour or so for Soap to calm. Ghost hands him a tissue to wipe his wet face with, and tries to clean him up himself, before being swatted away. Stubborn shite. 

“I want to be alone, I think.” His voice is steady again, though his eyes will be swollen and red tomorrow. Ghost wants to refuse, but he won’t take that from him, and Johnny really does look firmer on his feet, so to speak. He trusts him. 

“You sure?” 

“Aye, I’m sure.” 

Ghost rises, obedient. He gets the foolish urge to wipe Soap’s tears, to brush his thumb through the salt-trails like it had stroked Johnny’s hand as he cried. But it would hardly be welcome, and he’s equally unsure he’d have the balls to do it, regardless. So he takes his leave. 

There’s not much to do, drab as this place is. Everything is dull by design. No wonder people hate being in hospital. 

He walks to the caff, picks up a sandwich without paying much attention to its contents. Gets a slice of stale-looking spotted dick for Soap. He’s not strictly sure if he should be smuggling him puddings, but it won’t kill him. God knows he could use a little sweetness. 

He begins wandering. Takes the lift a few times, explores the floors he thinks won’t get him a run-in with security. As he makes his third rotation of the lobby, snack haul stuffed in his pockets, Ghost notices the gift shop.

The place has loads more cuddly toys than he would have thought. Feels like walking into bloody Hamleys. He’d thought of getting a card, maybe some flowers, if they wouldn’t wilt too soon in the dry air of the ward, but a little bear in tartan pyjamas catches his eye. 

It's brown, soft, with a plush heart held in its paws. There's an embroidered message in clean white thread: Get well bear-y soon. 

It sets him back a blistering thirty quid. Bloody racket they’re running in here.

The girl on the till is entirely too chipper for someone who rings up fretting families all day. Her smile is near blinding. “Oh, that's a cute one. He's always been my favourite, twee little thing.” Ghost grunts. “That for anyone in particular?” 

Historically, he’s never needed a name for what Johnny is to him. He's just Soap. His place, his importance goes without saying. But every time a civvy asks him as much, he’s never sure what to tell them. “A friend,” he ends up answering. It doesn’t feel like enough. 

Once he’s figured enough time has passed, and he can see the sun’s disappeared when he crosses by the odd window, he heads back to Johnny’s room, though he stops by the chapel on his way. Ghost doesn’t stay long — he reckons it might be a bit blasphemous to carry food into a house of God — but he wants to say thank you. 

He sits on the same pew, in the same spot, and reaches into the bag from the shop to pull out the bible he’d picked. It’s a drab, humble thing, blue like the upholstery where he first prayed. Well. Maybe not his first prayer. But it might as well be, he thinks. It was the most important one. It’s the first one that was ever answered. 

Mindful of the time, he only reads the first bit. Just one first step of many. He’s in no rush. 

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters…

When he returns, Johnny is asleep. His bruises are so angry and dark, it hurts just to look at him. But Ghost looks. He looks until Johnny wakes, and he hands him the bit of wrapped spotted dick from his pocket, and looks as he eats. They eat together, hushed so Flores won’t catch them, and Ghost cracks a joke, and they laugh like children. 

Johnny goes to bed properly after telling Ghost to find a shower and take one, because he’s ripe. Ghost obliges, and comes back to the room when he’s done, creeping slowly back to his chair so Soap won’t wake. He looks, even as he opens his bible and traces the words he already knows. And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning…

The next day, Johnny receives more guidance on his upcoming discharge, now that he isn’t forgetting things as frequently. His family is there for that bit, which is both good and bad. Good, because it’s rough bloody news. Bad, because with Elaine in the room, Solomons doesn’t look expectantly at Ghost as if he’s Johnny’s caretaker anymore, which chafes more than he’d ever admit. 

He’s told he’ll need extensive rehabilitation in a facility that can handle him. It’s phrased a touch more delicately than that, but the effect is the same, and Ghost feels an accusation where there isn’t one. He can’t help him, not the way he needs, not right now. Not an indictment, just a fact. Doesn’t make it hurt any less. Johnny isn’t thrilled about it, either. Two months in a clinic is a tough pill. The tentative option of a cochlear implant is broached, which Johnny shuts down fast, along with any mention of learning sign language. He’ll make do, he says, which Ghost knows is a veiled denial of the idea that he’s got anything wrong with him at all. 

Then there’s the medications, the therapies, the coping strategies, the support groups. Soap would probably rather go into another coma than face all that rubbish. He doesn’t say it, not out loud, not in front of the doctor, but it shows on his face. He’s got that look he wears when Price tells him to stand down.

When Solomons gets to the most horrific bit — the not drinking bit — Johnny’s had just about enough. 

It’s a sudden, violent enough motion that it shocks them all; would have shocked Ghost, if he hadn’t recognised the tension in his neck and the grinding of his jaw. Soap throws an arm out, more of a battering ram than anything, and strikes the wheeled table by his bedside. The contents go flying, though it’s not much more than the remnants of his family’s lunch and a few well-wishing cards. 

“John!” His father reprimands, shocked and embarrassed in equal measure. Lottie and his mother start fussing, his father begins picking up the rubbish, and Claire hurries Violet out of the room, though Solomons and Flores don’t seem fazed. 

Ghost doesn’t blame him for the outburst. If he’d been the one sworn dry, he might have done worse.

Nurse Flores turns to Johnny’s parents and attempts to smooth things over. “Periods of anger are very normal for patients like your son. It can take a long time for traumatic brain injury survivors to gain control of their tempers.”

“No,” Ghost smiles in spite of himself. “That’s just Johnny.” Angry at the world, throwing blow after blow not even a month off his deathbed. Simon loves him more than anything. “Give him a fag and he’ll be sorted.”

She gives him a strange look. “He really shouldn’t be smoking, either, you know. Nicotine could make his recovery much slower.” 

Johnny shouts a curse, head in his hands. Ghost sucks his teeth. “Best bolt down the chairs, then.” 

Whichever poor nurses are going to be saddled with him at the clinic are going to have a time and a half. Weathering Johnny’s bitching and moaning is a task Ghost himself is hardly equipped for, and he spends half his time handling terrorists. 

Then again, Flores does all right with him. Maybe they’re tougher than he gives them credit for.

After Solomons leaves, it’s back to two to a room, which Flores sympathetically but staunchly still enforces. Ghost and Elaine step out, leaving Claire and Lottie to hear Johnny’s many grievances while his father takes a lap.

“I suppose you’ll be heading back soon,” she says, as Ghost thumbs in — over two quid, Christ, these stingy cunts — for a Twirl at the vending machine.

“Back?” 

Elaine furrows her brows, confused. “To your base? The task force?” 

Oh. The chocolate bar drops. He hadn’t… “I reckon I hadn’t thought that far.” Opted not to, more like. It’s a corner of his mind that stings when he gets too close. Going back without him, to silence and war and the cold with no light to unthaw him, is unthinkable.

She gives him a measured look. Johnny had told him heaps about his mother, but he hadn’t mentioned the most striking thing about her: that keen, hawk-like look in her eye that tells him she knows more than him, maybe more than everybody. “Well, what do you want to do?” 

Want? Christ, what doesn’t he want. To never lose him again. He wants Soap to be safe, and happy, and he wants to be the reason for it. He wants Johnny to be the same thorn in his side he’s been ever since they first met, and to have the life annoyed out of him by his stupid banter and pestering and jokes, and he wants it every day for the rest of his life. 

“I want to stay.” 

By the gleam in her eye, it’s the right answer. “Listen close, lad. It’s up to you two, but there’s an old house on John’s father’s side — it’s a pure boorach, but we… we want him to have it. Now, I don’t know exactly what you and my son have gotten up to, but you’ve been at the poor thing’s bedside for ages, and looked after him for a long time before that, so I’ve got an impression.” 

Ghost can’t help but laugh. It’s happy, and bashful, and God, she’s got no clue. She thinks they’re fucking. Probably thinks they’re a proper pair of sweethearts, and they haven’t so much as kissed. They’ve never even said anything. 

He wouldn’t dare correct her. The truth would sound even more preposterous than the lie. 

“It’s his choice, and yours. And that house needs a bloody lot of work. But it’s there if you want it.” 

It can’t be this easy. “You sure, ma’am?” 

Elaine grins, wide and bright. “Aye. I’m sure,” she says, and Ghost is just glad at least one of them is.

Things become… difficult, after that. Johnny seems to be realising, in picture-perfect clarity, how much of himself he’s lost. He gets meaner than usual, prickly in a foreign way, but Ghost toughs it out. Something about thinking him dead for a week makes his skin a little thicker when it comes to the little things, even if Soap’s determined to be a right twat about it. 

He doesn’t begrudge him. He’s not had as much time — awake, out of his mind, or otherwise — to absorb it as Ghost has. So the rest of Johnny’s hospital stay before his next dreary deployment is spent squabbling, which Ghost can deal back in spades.

Johnny does his meagre therapies that the hospital is properly equipped for, and bitches, and jabs, and looks for weakness. Deflection clear as day. He takes a spill on the way to the en suite toilets, and lashes out for it. Is aching down to his bones from trying to hold a cup steady, and makes it the problem of whoever enters his room for the rest of the evening. Stubborn prick is trying to chase everyone away, whether intentional or not. It’s a tactic Ghost is passingly familiar with. 

He can tell his ambivalence is making it worse. Soap’s looking for a reaction. He’s frustrated with his inability to walk, think, be himself, and is looking for the punishment he feels he deserves. That’ll be his largest learning curve, Ghost thinks. He’s waiting for his lashes. Ghost has had no problem dealing them in the past: a missed shot, a sloppy step, a backhanded word, and his Lieutenant is there to correct him, sure as day. But Ghost refuses to play that game, not now. Not for this. 

Unstoppable force meets immovable object. That’s always been their way. But these new rules are wearing him down, he can tell.

It’s one of his rougher nights when Johnny decides to address whatever the hell they’ve got going on between them. 

“You shouldn’t be here.” 

“Why not?” Ghost asks, dismissive. “God knows I’ve got the leave for it.” 

“You should be working. Spending your time looking over a cripple isn’t helping anyone.” 

“It’s helping you,” he says, confused. Like that wasn’t obvious. Like there could possibly be anything on earth more worth his time. 

Soap scoffs, turns his head away. “There are people here to help me. I think the doctors and nurses and physical therapists and speech therapists and bloody cleaning staff up my arse twenty-four hours a day should be proof of that.” He’s staring daggers into the dry erase board on the wall with care instructions written in pretty looping letters. “And I’ll be getting help for the rest of my sorry fucking life, don’t you worry. You’re wasting your time.” 

It’s not an unexpected sentiment, from Johnny. It’s just so bloody misguided that Ghost doesn’t know where to start. “I’ve got your six, always will. We’re a team.” 

Soap scoffs. “We were a team. And then I had to go and get a building dropped on my head.” He grits his teeth, looks down at his hands in his lap. “It was gonna happen eventually,” he says, sounding very much like he’s reminding himself. “That’s the job. They’ll call someone up to take my place, and you all go back to work. No need to draw it out.” 

Such stubborn pricks they are, Ghost thinks, the pair of them. Did you think we’d just bugger off and replace you, get the next big bastard we saw and never look back? How bloody rich. “Do you remember the fight we had before we left?” 

The corner of Johnny’s mouth twists, frustrated, as he thinks over the question. Probably deciding whether or not to lie and avoid the topic altogether. “Yes,” he admits, sounding more defeated than anything. 

“You said you thought about me, when you thought of getting out,” Ghost tries. He feels flayed open. “You said you couldn’t imagine it without me.” 

“Rub salt in the bloody wound, why don’t you,” Soap sneers, gearing up for a fight. 

Ghost takes a breath and calms himself. His temper won’t do him any good here. “I felt the same. Still do. But everything I touch turns to shit, Johnny. I didn't want to lose you.” 

Johnny scoffs, bitter and mean. “Aye, and that worked out so well, didn’t it?” 

He can feel this getting away from him, just like the first time. He’s still no better with words, with showing his soft belly, but Ghost is a man who learns from his mistakes. There’s no running now. 

“I’m turning forty,” Ghost says, and Johnny’s jaw clicks shut. “In December.” Even as the room around them is filled with ambience and hospital bustle, the air is still, like a held breath. “I’m gonna be forced out anyway. Might as well make something of it.” Johnny watches him closely. Blue eyes flicking from his cheeks, to his brow, to his mouth and back again. Ghost feels the back of his neck start to glow hot. “You let me stay with you, keep myself busy, you’d be doing me a favour.” 

Some of the sharpness in Soap’s eyes starts to wear away. “Is that right?” 

“Swear down,” Ghost says, hoping it doesn’t sound as desperate as it had tasted on his tongue.

Soap keeps assessing him. “You don't have a life to get back to?” 

Ghost chuffs a sad laugh. “Johnny, you’re all I’ve got.” 

“No pressure.” 

He shrugs. No point in sugarcoating it. Soap seems to have guessed as much, because he doesn’t look surprised — just looks back to the ceiling, seemingly mollified. The room is still again. Johnny goes back to eating his jelly with disinterest, and Ghost goes back to watching him. 

Soap opens his mouth to speak again, and Ghost is glad. He’s been talking more, lately. Getting back to himself. He’s been getting mouthier with the nurses, which Ghost knows is probably a pain in their rears, but he can’t help but be happy for it. “When I said I thought about you, I didn’t mean as mates.” He’s still looking away. The telly is on in the corner with the sound off. His voice is flat, stubborn but tired. 

Ghost has nothing to say but the truth. “I know.” 

Finally, those blue eyes look his way. “And that wouldn’t bother you?” 

“No.” Ghost can feel his red, wet insides spilling out between the two of them. “It wouldn’t bother me.” Please, he’s begging, cold and pathetic. Please hear me. 

Maybe it's the naked desperation in his voice, or just plain luck, but God help him, it lands. Johnny melts straight down the middle. Puts a stubborn face on, of course, jaw squared and thin lips in a pout. But he goes soft in the eyes. 

By silent, mutual agreement, the two of them avert their gazes. Look at anything besides each other. After saying what was not-said, it almost feels unbearable to look at Johnny. Too vulnerable, too bruising. But Ghost is a greedy thing. Every so often, he’ll look back over to where Johnny has resumed eating his jelly, the curve of his fingers trembling around his plastic spoon. Johnny goes to surreptitiously glance over at Simon, gluttonous in his own way, and Ghost looks away, caught — an idiotic cycle of cowardice, of what-now, of children being admonished for opening Christmas presents early.

It’s on the fourth such instance, when Simon’s letting his eyes linger on the pink flush of Johnny’s neck only to feel Soap’s gaze hot on his shoulder, that Johnny exhausts his patience. He gives a coarse laugh and runs his free hand over his face. “What are we doing,” he asks, delirious. 

Ghost is unsure how to answer. Never in his life has he had anything like this, not even close. It’s making him stupid. “I don’t know.” It’s funny, in a sort of pathetic way. Soap is a heartbreaker, even if he’d resent the accusation. He’s had loves before. Loved and been loved. None of that is showing now. The two of them might as well be back in primary, pulling each other's pigtails. “What do you want to be doing?” 

Johnny cuts his eyes in his direction, sharp and salacious. “You.” 

That makes Simon laugh. A real, true laugh, maybe the first he’s had in a week. What a line. “Fucking hell. You pull often with that one?” 

Johnny shrugs, smile creasing his face all the way up to his eyes, looking all too proud of himself. “Did it work?” 

“Don’t think a shag is in your future till you heal up a bit, Johnny. You’ve still got half your brains missing.” 

“It’s just half my skull.” 

“Could’ve fooled me.” 

Soap’s smile gentles. He looks tired. Of course, he looks tired most all the time, but this is an easy kind of tired, from the late hour rather than pain or grief. “Reckon you’ll just have to stick around till I’m back in top form.” 

“I’d have done it anyway.” 

“I know.” Johnny, hand trembling all the while, clumsily places the jelly carton on his wheeled bedside table, then turns to Simon and pats the mattress. “Get up here.” 

Ghost startles. “You can’t be serious.” 

“As a heart attack.” He waves a hand, stifles a yawn. 

“We can’t both fit in there.” 

“I’ll shove over, make room.” 

“The last thing I fucking need is to knock some of those wires around, set an alarm off, yank a tube out—” 

“Simon, get the fuck up here.” 

“No,” he says, firm. “You want a cuddle, yeah, you wait till you’re out of that bed. We’ve got time.” And how strange that is, to say it and have it be true. 

Johnny doesn’t argue, though he looks ready to gear up for a spat, and Simon understands. He’s not the only one that wants. But just days ago he had a broken body and a head full of mush, and Simon had thought he’d die in that bed. They’ve waited this long, God knows. They can wait a while longer. “Can you,” he starts, before cutting himself off. He looks painfully earnest. He’s not been in hospital long, but he’s already started shedding some weight, and his skin is going pale from where the sun hasn’t had the chance to touch it. “Sorry. I just miss you, I think.” It looks painful to say, Johnny’s mouth twisting into a grimace, like he’d regretted it as soon as it had left him.

Ghost loosens, helpless. He’s not a man who’s ever felt the need to touch or be touched — sometimes he forgets that Johnny needs to feel things in the cradle of his palms to know they’re real. He scooches his chair against the tile, wincing at the noise it makes in the quiet of the night, and brings himself as close as the bed will allow. No distance between them more than is strictly necessary. He grabs Johnny’s right hand with both of his own, and holds it firm. 

It’s… strange. If he really, truly thinks, he’s not sure he’s ever held hands with anyone in his life. It feels almost overwhelming. How do people do this, he wonders, out on the street, on the tram, in front of everyone? He can feel Johnny’s pulse under his fingers, the rough of his skin, every callus, every scrape. The dampness of his palms, the living proof of everything he’s held. Simon holds still for a long while before risking movement. Even when his greed wins out, he starts slow, fearful and desperate all at once. He strokes his thumb over the ridge of Johnny’s knuckle, feels the bend of his trigger finger. Commits the drag of their skin to memory. Every twitch, every pulse of blood. He’s so warm. Simon is briefly, deliriously glad that he’s not the one attached to a heart monitor, and then wonders how much more his tired heart can take before it gives out altogether. 

He’s not sure how long he sits there, holding Johnny’s hand. Could be an hour, for all he knows. Johnny mostly lets him have his fun, only occasionally flexing a finger or giving a content squeeze. It’s only when Simon absentmindedly brings his hand to his lips that Soap well and truly jumps. Ghost goes cold, fearful, and looks up to his face for the first time since he’d taken his hand. 

Nearly all the blue is gone from his eyes, pupils blown and cheeks mottled. Just as Simon is about to pull away, Johnny runs a thumb across the scarred cleft of his lip. Like soothing a scared animal. He sags into the touch as Johnny’s fingers run across his dimple, his chin, the peak of his jaw. Lets Johnny have his turn feeling. Lets himself be felt. 

They end up compromising, on the snuggle. Soap shifts to the very edge of the bed, and Simon lays his head in the crook of his shoulder, the back of Johnny’s hand still tiredly tracing his face. Simon burrows his nose into the warmth, feels his pulse, smells his skin. “You smell mingin’.” 

“Is that so.” It’s more of a murmur than a proper question. 

“Like antiseptic.” 

Johnny pinches his ear. “Give me a sponge bath, then, Nurse Riley.” 

He grunts, breaths deepening. “Tomorrow.” It had been a joke, he’ll realise later, but for now it makes perfect sense. Johnny asks, Simon answers. He’ll do it tomorrow.

The decision to go back to Scotland is an easy one. Ghost is loath to separate Johnny and his family, and the house, the life waiting for them, isn’t one he’s particularly keen to forfeit. He’d looked for himself: there’s a good clinic nearby where Soap can stay those first few months, and the drive’s not too bad. He can visit as often as he likes, and get their home ready in the meantime, collecting his pension all the while. It’s a good plan. 

Ghost knows, though, that Johnny won’t process it all for a while. He’d barely gotten his wits about him a week ago; his career, his physical aptitude, everything he knows, or knew, has slipped out the door when he wasn’t looking. 

They’re leaned together in Soap’s hospital bed, the night before his discharge, when he voices as much. 

“What are we gonna do, after I’m done with therapy?” 

“Well,” Ghost says, “doctors say that might take years. Got a ways to go before you worry after that.” 

“No, I mean… the clinic. The stay-in bit. When I come home — what will we do?” Johnny’s voice is soft, scared. His eyes are on the telly in the corner of the room, but Ghost can tell he isn’t paying a lick of attention, not really. He’s all in his head, trying to make plans and contingencies for a mission he’s got no intel on. 

It’s hard to answer. He’s got no clue, same as Johnny. But Soap’s looking to him for guidance, the way he always has, and he’s not about to hang him out to dry now. “There’s plenty of work to be done. I’ll take care of the house, keep myself busy while you work on fixing yourself up. Your mum says it’s a real shithole. We’ll have to work at it for a long while, I reckon.” 

“That’s what I mean. I can’t…” Johnny looks at his own palms, calluses worn away from his time in a plush bed. “I can’t build nothin’, can’t go on runs, can’t do drills.” Suddenly, he looks sad, small in a way Ghost has never seen. Like a scared little boy. He wonders if this is how he looked when he shipped off to training for the first time, leaving home to find a new one somewhere else. 

“This isn’t a solo mission, Johnny. I've got your six. That’s the deal, yeah?” 

He doesn’t look very reassured. He looks, actually, a bit like someone had just kicked his dog, wobbly and afraid. “I don’t even have any hobbies, Simon.” 

“You carved that nice mask for me, remember? You’ve got your drawings, too.” 

Soap sends him a withering look, and raises his trembling hands aloft to prove his point. 

“Alright, bad examples. But you’ll find something.” Ghost is struck with the knowledge, suddenly, that he’s got no hobbies, either. It’s… daunting, a bit hollow. “Look, we can… we can find some together, alright? We can do all the things retired old geezers do.” 

“Like crosswords? Or birdwatching?” 

Ghost sniffs. “Not a bad idea, that. Or bowling?” 

That nets him a laugh, finally. “I can barely lift a cup, mate.” 

“Ah, that’s no problem,” Ghost leers. “That’s why they’ve got those ramps.” 

“Those are for children.” 

“If the bowling shoe fits.” Soap thumps him solidly on the shoulder. He’s getting stronger already, Simon marvels. That one might even leave a bruise. The two of them lapse into a comfortable silence, though he can see Johnny’s still stewing. There’s probably nothing he can say that will make him stop, he knows, but there’s no harm in trying. “I've been thinking.” 

“Dangerous.” 

“Watch it. We’ve got a decent bit of land, yeah? I want a course somewhere. Can’t be too hard to set up. It’s simple enough, and I’m sure there’s something even your lazy arse can do. God knows you’ll be climbing the walls without a proper workout.” 

“Oh, I can think of plenty of workouts we can do,” Soap leers. 

“Fucking doesn’t burn many calories, Johnny.” 

“Maybe not the way you do it.” 

“Fine. We can have the bedroom and the course, then. The more the merrier.” 

Johnny gives a sideways smile, his cheeks pushing the corners of his eyes into wrinkles. “You spoil me, Lt.” 

Simon feels his chest swell. It’ll be hard, not having a team to lead anymore, to train up and protect in the field. For the first time, though, he thinks his new job will be better. Easier. A relief and purpose all in one. They’re a team of two, now. No more reconnaissance, no more bruised elbows from lying prone on rooftops. No more helos, no more Humvees. 

In the absence of ORPs, Ghost will have to learn to cook. He figures he’ll get lots of practice: Johnny's got an appetite like no other. The thought warms him. Soap is fastidious about his body, and will surely run their course ragged, competing against himself, but they can be indulgent now. He thinks about what Soap would look like with a layer of fat on him, soft around the edges, a physical reminder of how well Ghost provides for him. The skin of Johnny’s cheek is hot against his sternum. Dazed, he thinks of how much hotter it’ll feel when they’re in a proper king-size, warmed straight through to the bones. 

Johnny loves the snow, the fresh chill, and he can have it. Ghost will take him up north every year, twice a year, as many times as he wants, but their home will always be warm. Warm from the fire, warm from love, warm from Simon. 

Ghost is scared, too. It’s just like Soap had said: the Army is the only thing he knows. Mandatory leave had been hard, feeling less like himself the longer he stayed away from Hereford, but he was alone, then. He’s got his new team, now, kitted out and ready for action. Bravo 7-1, under direct command of Bravo 0-7. Mission parameters unclear. Objective… Well, he supposes they’ll make that up as they go. 

Minutes pass, and Ghost doesn’t feel himself falling asleep, which is fine by him. He's got a future full of laying in bed with Johnny and he’s still glutting himself on it.

Soap looks up and catches Simon's eye. “Do you think it’s enough?” Ghost knows him well enough to know it’s only a half-honest question. What he’s really asking is, are you sure you won’t get tired of me? That I won’t become something you regret, someone you resent?  

He’s asking do you think it’s enough for you. 

That, Simon can answer. He feels the surety, the certainty, down in the marrow of his bones. “Fuck yeah.” 

Johnny smiles, relief clear on his face. “Fuck yeah.” 

When it’s time for his discharge, Simon isn’t sure how to feel. He’s ready as hell to get out of there, for certain. It feels like a lifetime he’s lived in hospital. Sleeping in the field would’ve been preferable over that damn chair — he’s sure his back is in a worse state than some of the patients. And he’s thrilled for Johnny, who is chomping at the bit to get out, to make some sort of progress towards normalcy, or whatever will count for normal now. But it seems too soon. He worries, absurdly, that it’s too early, that Johnny should be waited on hand and foot for as long as he can. 

Elaine tells him he’s mother henning, which he resents. But she seems pleased when she says it. “John’ll be in good hands, with you.” 

“I’ll try my best, ma’am.” 

“That’s a good lad.” 

The family doesn’t depart until Johnny’s moved outside, ushered in a wheelchair by Flores, who was kind enough to bid them goodbye. Soap’s so cross over it, too, the spectacle they make, huge family unit crowding down the hallways and out to the pickup. They lather him with kisses and hugs until Johnny’s red as a tomato. Flores lifts him, easing him into the passenger seat of the rental Ghost had gotten.

Then, he’s all Simon’s.

His bruises are fading to a sickly green, and his hair is mussed from his sisters’ teasing, and he looks like a dream. Simon can’t help but smile. “How about it? You ready to go home, Highlander?” 

“I’m from Glasgow,” Johnny grouses. 

“Ah, it’s all the same thing, innit?” 

A punch lands heavy on his shoulder. “It’s time you learn. Scotland’s your country, now.”

Isn’t that a hell of a thought.

The drive is awful. It rains the whole way, and sitting in a saloon for ten hours makes Simon’s legs stiff as a board, so he knows Johnny’s having a rougher time of it. He’s a trooper, though, doesn’t complain much at all, and nicking an Irn-Bru from a petrol station on the way shuts him up for a good two hours at least. 

He also sleeps. It’s probably awful on his neck, but Ghost knows he needs the rest, and is likely bored off his arse besides, so he lets him doze. Sneaks glances his way, too, though he nearly runs them off the road when he looks for a bit too long. 

They’d left at sunrise, early enough that they arrive at the clinic just before closing. The sun is setting when they pull in, orange and blushing, and Simon has never seen a car lot outside a medical facility look so beautiful. 

An aide meets them at the door with another wheelchair, which Johnny grunts at, and introduces herself before retreating into the building to let them say their goodbyes with some privacy. It’s a nice gesture, if a bit formal, and Ghost says as much. 

“What, you’re too good for a goodbye, now?” 

“Just seems a bit dramatic. I’ll be with you tomorrow.” 

Soap furrows his brow in suspicion. “What do you mean, tomorrow?” 

“I mean I’ll come visit tomorrow.” 

“It’s an hour drive both ways from the house to here. Don’t be daft.” 

Simon had hated the wheelchair on principle, but it gives an amusing view, with the height difference between them. “Reckon I’ll be putting a lot of miles on it, then.” 

“You can’t be serious.” 

“Course I’m serious. What, you sick of me?” 

Johnny sputters. “No, I’m… I just… that’s an awful lot of trouble to go through.” 

“Well I suppose that’s up to me, innit?” Ghost gives a soft sigh. He wishes, for hardly the first time, that Soap weren’t so damn stubborn. “Johnny, when I said I was with you, I meant it,” he says, which he thinks is worlds more dignified than if I let you out of my sight I’m afraid I’ll never get you back. 

Soap looks at him like he’s gone mad, but it’s soft around the edges. His blue eyes flit all over him, head to toe, all around his face and back again, like he’s looking for something. When he finds it, he sighs, a smile tamped down around the corners of his lips. “Best get going, then, if you’re going to get your beauty sleep.” 

“You calling me ugly?” 

“You said it, not me.” 

In the silence that follows, Simon realises, like a gutshot, like a killing blow, that he wants to kiss him. He begins his routine of packing it away, careful as a live wire, before he thinks, why not. Why not? 

He can’t think of an answer. So he cradles Johnny’s jaw in his trembling hand and tastes him. 

It’s a quick thing. An impulse. It ends as soon as it starts. Johnny looks like he’s cracked his head open a second time, dazed and blurry-eyed. He looks like heaven. He looks like something Simon doesn’t know the first thing about how to handle. Simon looks at him and sees the rest of his life, and quakes for it. 

It occurs to him, then, that he’s out of his depth. 

The last man he’d had anything more than a perfunctory shag with was… Christ, he can’t even remember his name. It was ages ago. He was probably high. When was the last time he’d done something sweet? Something proper? Has he ever? 

He’s saved from himself, as always, by Johnny, who knows him. He doesn’t ask for words. What is there to be said, that they haven’t already? That isn’t shouted with every mile driven, every home rebuilt, every verse reread? 

When Johnny cradles the back of Simon’s scalp with his wide-open palm, and their noses brush a second time, Simon can see the truth of him: pupils blown, eyelids wide and yawning. He’s scared shitless. At the first — second — touch of his mouth against Simon’s cleft lip, they exhale in tandem, stricken, and Ghost can taste the sweetfizz of the pop Johnny’d drank on the way. It makes him hungry. It makes him stupid. Simon laves his tongue across Johnny’s lip, his teeth, wet and clumsy and begging, and Johnny gives a heaving breath that sounds like it came from the gutter of him. 

Simon wants so badly, so much. They could have been doing this all along. He could have had this. He has it now, has Johnny now, but now isn’t enough. He wants all of it that escaped his grasp, and he wants all of what will come later, wants him in a hospital bed and this parking lot and the bed he’ll make for them— 

The bell above the entryway chimes, and Simon comes back to himself. Partly. Conscious of the nurse’s eyes on the pair of them, he takes another deep, aching kiss, and another, because he can. When he pulls away, he gives one last bite to Johnny’s bottom lip, swollen and now stinging from Simon’s teeth. Johnny puffs a thin breath of a whine, and he mourns the loss of it, escaping into the air rather than subsumed into Simon’s throat where it belongs. He looks like if he weren’t in a wheelchair he’d be bruising his knees. It’s a good look on him. 

The nurse clears her throat, and Johnny flushes deeper, and that’s that. 

Simon waits outside the clinic and watches through the glass as Johnny’s wheeled back and out of sight, but not before he shoots Ghost a cheeky salute. 

The sun is nearly gone. Inside his ribs, up and to the left, something’s shaken loose. He feels it rattle and throb the whole way home.

Simon really does put miles on that rental. 

He visits Johnny every day, back aching and legs cramped. Soap tells him he’s mad many, many times, and implores him to stay home just one bloody day. Simon tells him to sod off. 

“You want me gone, push me away,” he taunts, while Johnny’s having a go at the parallel bars. It earns him a warning glare from the nurse, but Johnny beats a record that day. Rising to the bait like clockwork. 

They eat lunch together, more often than not. Johnny complains of the sludge they serve in the clinic, so Simon makes sure to pick him up a snack from the petrol station, and a pop if he can find one, though he still isn’t sure of the appeal of Irn-Bru, even after he steals a sip while Johnny’s busy eating his sandwich. It’s so sweet it’s liable to rot his teeth out. 

Soap asks if he can see the house, sometimes. Simon had intended to save it as a surprise, some sort of welcome-home, but he’s worn down easily, these days, so he starts snapping pictures of his handiwork. It’s novel, too, to have a proper camera roll, photos of a life. Some nights when the bed is cold he goes through them all, photo after photo of stripped boards and rusty plumbing. A sparse and shoddy house turned into a home with his own two hands. It’s kind of a miracle. 

He omits the odd piece of furniture he’s picked up, and the backsplash that’s a hefty work in progress. There ought to be some things kept secret. He wants Johnny to get a decent gift out of all this. He wants, Simon realises, to impress him. To do well by him. 

They never run out of things to chat about. Simon, shamefully, had been afraid they might, away from the Army, striking out anew. But it’s a futile worry. Johnny’s gift of gab remains fully intact. 

“You know Agatha?” 

“Which one is she?” 

“The bitty with the tortoiseshell glasses,” Johnny offers. Yeah, Simon knows her. She’s the reason the lounge is always out of coffee creamer, greedy thing. “She told me she can set me up.” 

“That so?” 

Johnny stuffs his face with a handful of crisps, and talks as he chews. “Aye. Said her daughter’s recently divorced. Showed me a picture, too.” 

“She a looker?” 

“Eh.” He wipes his hands with a napkin, though there’s still a smear of grease on his lip. “Not really. But she’s rich.” 

Simon hums in approval. “Sounds like a good opportunity. You gonna take her up on it?” 

“Depends. I’d fancy a Porsche. That in your budget?” 

“No can do, mate. I can get you another pack of,” he pauses and looks at the empty bag, eyebrow raised at the label. “Aberdeen Angus. Final offer.” 

“Good enough.”

They kiss before Simon leaves, every time. Generally speaking, it ends much like it had for the first one: indulgent, lazy, timeless, usually resulting in Nurse Bailey fetching Johnny by force. The other patients are quite scandalised by the whole thing. Johnny gets a kick out of it. 

Simon couldn’t care less what anyone thinks. If they knew Johnny, really knew him, they’d be doing the same. 

As it is, he misses him fiercely, even as often as they see each other. He’d never had a finish line, before. Nothing to wait for on deployments, no reason to cross days off the calendar, no anticipation during the quiet lulls of the day. Now, it’s all he can think about. Johnny, with him. Lounging on the sofa and doing fuck all. Kissing, fucking, talking, for more than an hour at a time. He’s so impatient he can’t stand it. And Johnny takes the piss out of him for it, but Simon knows he’s the same. Knows he wants just as badly. 

What a thing it is, he thinks, being something someone can come home to.

It’s a long two months for both of them: Soap relearning how to walk, and Ghost learning how to use his hands to build rather than tear something down. 

He’s finished the backsplash, and the plumbing, and the hefty repair work — even installed a small ramp by the front door, since Johnny’s not exactly steady on his feet — but he worries. Simon can see every flaw in every board, every slightly off-angle and warped line of caulk. He worries it’s not enough, and he worries the whole week leading up to Johnny’s discharge, the whole ride to the clinic, the whole ride back. And he worries for nothing, because Soap’s positively struck dumb when he sees it. 

“Are you sure you didn’t call in a crew?” 

“It’s decent, then?” 

“Decent? Now you’re just fishing for compliments.” 

He had been, a bit. Needlessly, because Johnny’s wide eyes as he inspects the walkways do a more than fine job of conveying his appreciation. 

They go through the whole house, though it’s not all that large, and Soap pores over every inch. He’ll comment on the colour of the floorboards, or the paint, or a stray piece of furniture. 

Finally, they reach the bedroom. Simon, in an uncharacteristic spree of extravagance, had sprung for an adjustable mattress, and instructs Johnny to sit and see what he thinks. This earns him a lascivious grin. “I just meant to test it, you tosser.” 

“I’ll toss something.” 

Jesus. “Just tell me if it’s too soft so I can return it and get my money back.” 

“Not too soft. Perfectly firm, I’d say.” 

“You’re fucking insufferable, anyone ever tell you that?” 

Johnny’s smile softens. “Aye, once or twice.” The two of them fall quiet, and Simon sits next to him on the bed, shoulders pressed together. It’s been a poor day for weather. The clouds hang thick and grey in the sky, and have finally burst, rain falling softly onto the glass of the windowpane. There’s no gunfire for a hundred miles.

“Hey, Lt.” 

“Johnny.”

“Did you hear about the man who went deaf in his left ear?” 

Simon hums, eyes stuck on the rogue curl of hair falling over Johnny’s temple. “Tell me.” 

“His hearing’s all-right.” 

Ghost groans, and drops to his knees.

Johnny’s physical therapy sessions end much the same, most days, with Soap aching and crabby, at least until he gets some supper in him. After he’s well-fed — and occasionally well-fucked — they can chat about their days till the sun sets with less of an edge to the complaints. Sometimes, though, they’re just shit. Tonight is one of those times. 

He’s got no patience, is the thing. All that discipline, that laser-focus in the field that let him lay prone for days at a time, that’s all gone. He’s all instant gratification, now. Most of all, he’s got no patience with himself. Falling short of a milestone is something Johnny takes very, very personally, but he’s equally likely to take that anger out on himself as he is the closest warm-blooded thing. Which, more often than not, is Simon.

It starts with a cry for attention, like a child’s tantrum. Tonight, he’s employing all the favourites: scooching his chair out forcefully enough it scratches the floor, slamming doors behind him, and now scowling down at his food like it’d fucked his mum. 

Ghost has led Johnny for years. Sometimes, the brat just needs a correction, like a nippy dog. Soap would never admit it, but that’s half the reason he likes Simon as much as he does. He’s not the type to respect a man who’d let him walk all over them. 

He’d made as much very clear since coming home. Simon had given the whole soft thing a try, figuring it the healthy thing to do. Or something. All it had gotten him was Johnny looking at him like he’d been replaced by a clone. So now he’s back to ornery, which suits them quite well, if you ask him. 

“Something on your mind, Soap?” It’s less of a question, more of a command. Tell me what’s gotten into you so we can move on with our night without throttling each other.

Johnny takes a vicious bite of his pork. “Don’t know what you mean.” 

“Let me be clearer, then: you’re being a prick.” 

“How am I doing that? By not being the nice little housewife you were expecting? Sod off.”

Ghost just about laughs in his face. “If you think I expected you to be a housewife, you really have gone mental.” 

“Then don’t act shocked when I’m a prick.”

“God, you’re impossible.” Johnny’s face is mottled with blood, hot from no outlet. That’s half his problem, Simon thinks. Not having something to shoot must be driving him mad. “Just fucking out with it, mate. I can’t help you if you won’t tell me what’s got you in such a snit.”

Soap glowers, nerve struck. “Who says I need your fucking help? You think I can’t handle it on my own? It’s my life,” he says, dark. “I can do what I bloody want with it. Isn’t that what you said?”

Johnny’s meanness has a cruel streak to it, on his bad days. It never used to be that way. But Ghost is a cruel man, himself. It’s nothing he can’t brush off, nothing he takes personally. It makes him… proud, in a sick way. Ghost’s the only one who can handle him. It’s certainly true the other way around. Made for each other, the two of them. 

“We don’t do that anymore, mate.” 

“That so? Refresh my memory on when we decided that?” 

“When your mum gave me the keys to this shithole and I nearly broke my back fixing it up.”

Soap falls quiet. If Simon didn’t know him inside out, he might think he was cowed, but as it is, he knows better. He’s just angrier at himself than he is at Ghost. Simon softens, just a bit, despite himself. It’s hard to stay cross with him when he still has nightmares of him dead. “What’s this really about, Johnny?” 

Soap is silent for a good while, taut muscle in his jaw flicking to life every now and again. “I told Bailey about the course.” He scrapes his fork against the melamine. “She said it could be years before I can run it.” 

“Well, I should hope so. Won’t be done for a long while. Not if we’re building it proper.” 

“You think it’ll take a year to build that thing?” He scoffs, haughty. “Come off it.”

“Do you know how big that bloody thing will be?”

“It can't take that long. It's a bunch of lumber, not the Taj Mahal.” 

Ghost scowls. “We’re building this thing to last, Soap. I don't tolerate shoddy work.” 

It ends up being a premonition. It takes ages. Especially since Johnny is steadfast in his insistence that he share the workload equally, and he’s far from suited for carpentry in his state. 

The compromise they come to is this: Simon does the heavy lifting, and Johnny does the planning. Johnny also does the sanding, which began as a cheeky task to keep him occupied, and snowballed into the most serious duty Soap’s ever taken upon himself. Night after night, that stubborn bastard sands in the soft grass behind the house, intent and wholly dedicated. Bailey says it’s a wonderful idea. Low-dexterity, repetitive, and muscle-building like hell. Johnny’s arms, thin from disuse, begin filling out again. It’s so bloody good to see. Simon catches him admiring himself in the mirror one night and almost cries over it.

The lumber takes ages to sand down, but it dwindles after a few months. When the last of it is in the shed and ready for assembly, Simon sees the look in Johnny’s eyes, and makes sure to pull Bailey away and chat with her in private during his next session. He asks her if she thinks Soap could pick up carving again. She wants to fight him on it, he can tell, but they come to a compromise: balsa wood to begin with. It wouldn’t do for him to slice his hand open. 

Johnny doesn’t slice his hand open. A few nicks and cuts every now and again, but Soap keeps his knives sharp. 

It’s a long, long process, but eventually Johnny graduates to more durable woods. He spends hundreds of hours, maybe thousands, getting details as fine as he can manage, designs as delicate as possible. There are days when he gets angry enough to scream, endlessly frustrated at his fumbling hands. There are pieces he ruins, and wood he breaks. But those days thin out the longer he works, and eventually become rarities, and it makes Simon achingly happy. 

He sees the improvement in his craft, and the lightness in Johnny’s face as whittlings litter their home. Every month or so, Simon adds a new shelf to their walls, more real estate for the carvings. When Price and Gaz swing by, one leave, they take the piss, saying it looks like a proper art gallery. 

It’s a throwaway comment. Johnny laughs and forgets it. But Simon holds it close, warm and glowing in his chest, for a long, long time.

Johnny eventually goes under the knife again. It’s a replacement of the skull fragment they’d removed in his first hospital stint; not quite so traumatic, thankfully, but enough that he’s out of commission for a week or so. That’s when the migraines start. 

They become commonplace. Once every other week, if he’s lucky. The pain can run from a few hours to a few days, and Dr. Solomons says he doubts they’ll subside anytime soon. It’s just another in a long line of kicks while Johnny’s down. 

There’s no dossier, not for this, but Simon grills the doctors, and does his own research, and they experiment. Ice packs help a bit, and they cycle through medications until they find one that does a decent job, but the best thing for him is an honest-to-God bubble bath, straight out of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Ghost tried once to do a Freddy Kreuger bit, which was not well-received. 

“It’ll get a laugh out of you one day.” 

“Not likely.” 

They keep it dark, and the water warm. Sometimes Johnny asks him to rub his shoulders, and Simon obliges, even if it’s not a skill he ever particularly expected to learn. He hadn’t really expected any of this. 

Today is a migraine day. It’s also a day where Soap asks for him to stay, rather than leaving him alone, which are days that Simon prefers, even though it ends with him needing a change of clothes from all the spillovers.

“Thank you,” Johnny murmurs, mindful of the volume. The aches fade faster if he stays quiet. “Don’t say it enough, probably.” 

“Drawing a bath isn’t that hard.” 

“I don't mean the bath, you numpty.” Johnny looks a bit wistful, maybe even sad. “You know what I mean.” 

“I don't,” Simon says, which is the truth. God only knows what he needs to be thanked for. 

Soap sighs in frustration, like he's angry he's actually being made to say it. “I mean for being here. With me. And taking care of me even though I'm a cripple with a mucked-up head.” 

Jesus. He knew Johnny could be a self-deprecating prick, but if he really thinks he’s the one being done a favour, he’d hit his head harder than the doctors thought. Simon huffs an incredulous breath before turning to face him properly. 

“There’s nowhere I’d rather fucking be than here. I thought you knew that. Course I miss it, just like you do, but this is…” He thinks of the old cuckoo clock on the wall that gives him a bloody heart attack when it chimes, sometimes. The floorboard with the nail sticking out just a centimetre that Johnny keeps badgering him to fix, saying it’ll trip them sooner than later and they’ll crack their heads open, and wouldn't that be a way to go. The cast iron in the sink that Johnny was supposed to wash yesterday, but will inevitably keep avoiding until Simon threatens to withhold blowjobs until it's scrubbed clean. “I never thought I would have this.” 

Simon drops his head to Johnny's shoulder and inhales deeply against his damp skin, suddenly longing for the scent of that God-awful body wash he uses. Johnny, of course, understands, and rests his wide palm across the back of Simon's neck, working his fingers hard to dislodge some of the tension he knows is there. Simon knows with dead certainty that he should be the one giving thanks. Knows he could say nothing but thank you for the rest of his life and it would never be close to enough. 

“You could be in the field, right now,” Johnny mumbles, clearly feeling guilt over something that was categorically not his fault, nor his decision. 

“You could be dead.” Simon pushes his nose deeper into the curve of his trapezius, a touch smaller than it used to be, but still firm and strong. “I thought you were.” Sometimes he still does, in his dreams. Those nights are bad. Those nights, he wakes up paralysed, clammy with sweat, and unable to feel anything other than a vicious tension in his chest. “It would have killed me.” 

Simon raises his head to look Johnny in the eye, leaving no room for misinterpretation. “You could be in a fucking nappy, and I would wipe your arse for you. I just need you alive. You manage that, and I'm not going anywhere. And when you croak of old age, I’m following you then, too.” 

Johnny's smiling again, though it was probably the quip about nappies that did it. Got the humour of a child, this one. “You saying I'm stuck with you?” 

“‘Fraid so.” 

Johnny hums. Looks over Simon, eyes roving and pausing occasionally on something he must find worth a second look. Those eyes are brutal. Bluer than anything, cutting right to the quick of him every time. “Guess that might not be too bad.” 

“Better not be. You want me out of your house, you’d be shit out of luck.” 

“It’s your house, too. Mine and yours.” 

“I think there might be a word for that.” 

“Smartarse.” Johnny brushes a thumb over his jaw, rough and quick, just how he likes it. “Now fetch the paracetamol.” 

“Rog.” 

Today’s a good day, it would seem: Johnny’s migraine subsides in an hour or so. Sometimes they last for days, in a fog of pain he describes once as a perpetual flashbang. On those days, he spends most of his time in bed. They’d bought blackout curtains to keep out the light, which had helped. When Soap’s feeling well enough, though, he usually rallies to help around the house. Tonight he says he can help with supper, which is good, in that Simon generally enjoys his company, but sometimes he wishes he’d just rest, rather than pushing himself like he’s so fond of doing. 

They get started as the sun begins to fall. “I’ll clean out the sink,” Ghost says, “since you obviously can’t be trusted to. Go ahead and start the veg. I’ll sear the beef later.” 

Johnny tuts. “You can’t tell me what to do anymore, big man. You’re my partner, not my CO.” 

“Is that what we are?” Simon hadn’t really thought about it. They were Ghost and Soap in the SAS, and Ghost and Soap out of it. The best of teams. How could you condense what Johnny meant to him in one word? “Partners?” 

“Well, boyfriend sounds a bit childish, don’t you think? And we’re not married.”

Simon couldn’t care less for marriage. It hadn’t done his parents any good, certainly. As far as he was concerned, it was just one more paper trail. But Johnny was a romantic, even if he wouldn’t admit it, and a traditionalist for good measure. If he ever asked, down on his one good knee, Simon knew he would give it to him. “Don’t wanna be my wife?”

Ghost gets an onion skin thrown at him for that. “Why am I the wife?” 

“You’re shorter.” 

Johnny gives a mighty scoff. “That makes nae sense!” 

“Fine. You’re younger.” 

“My mam’s older than my da,” he says, unimpressed. 

Simon shrugs. “You’re a good cook. Keep things tidy. You’re a pretty little thing, too. Sounds like a wife to me.”

Flattery, as always, earns his favour. “You think I'm pretty, Lt.?” Johnny grins, sharklike. 

“Don't even think about it,” Simon warns. “You take your cock out before we’ve got this on the stove and I’ll cut it off. Then you’ll really be my wife.” 

Johnny huffs. “Alright, Christ almighty.” He starts properly assembling the vegetables, even if he looks put out that he won’t be getting his dick wet. “Thought you said you’d love me even if I wasn’t useful anymore.” 

“I would. But if we don't get this sorted, then you’ll be going to bed on an empty stomach, and you wouldn’t like that very much, would you.” Johnny grumbles, but doesn’t argue. Must still be nursing a bit of a headache, then. 

After Simon finishes cleaning the cast iron, setting it to dry on the towel draped over the counter, he turns to look at him. His partner. Might take some getting used to, that. 

Ghost has his days when he prefers to be alone, sure, and he loves the quiet as much as he ever did. Sometimes he’ll feel especially prickly, and flinch away when Johnny goes to touch his back, or kiss his head, which Soap never takes personally, God bless him. But most days he feels like this, palms itching with the need to hold him. 

Simon crosses the space between their self-imposed kitchen stations, stepping loudly so Johnny won’t startle, and settles his hands on the bones of his hips. He marvels every day at how well they fit together. How he can touch something so beautiful and not have it crack. He closes his eyes, nose under Johnny’s ear. He can hear owls calling to each other outside.

“You knew I was thirty-six, didn’t you.” 

Johnny smiles — Simon feels it in the flex of his jaw. “‘Course I did.” He goes quiet, for a while. “But I needed it, so. Thank you.” 

Simon brings his hand round to cup the back of Johnny's neck, smooths a thumb under the lamblike skin under his ear. “How’d you figure it out?” 

“Maths. Common sense.” 

“That so?” 

Johnny takes a bit of chopped carrot, and brings it up over his shoulder for Simon to eat out of his hand. “Aye. Your tetanus shot was six years overdue. You enlisted at twenty and got your first, and should’ve gotten your second at thirty, if you weren’t too much of a numpty to go to the medics on time.” He looks up and grins, sharklike. “You’re not as smart as you think you are.” 

“I’m plenty fucking smart.” 

Soap grins, toothy and self-satisfied. “Well, you’re not smarter than me.” 

“Dunno, Johnny. Made a dumb fucking choice in a partner.” 

Soap knocks him on the skull. “I made a great fucking choice, you rocket.” 

“He's a bit surly.” 

“I like surly.” 

“Proper fucking nutter. Wore a mask all around for about fifteen years.” 

“Mystery is sexy, what can I say?” 

“Not much to look at, neither.” 

“Well, can’t argue with that.” Johnny's dimples are creased, and his crow’s feet are deep, and he looks so happy Simon feels a bit like he’s staring into the sun. “He's got a huge cock, though.” 

Ghost barks a laugh. “You’re the biggest slag I've ever met, Johnny.” 

“Ah,” Soap waves his hand dismissively, “I used to be. Gone all domestic, now.” 

“Just a slag for one, then?” 

“Aye. Just the one.” Johnny goes back to preparing supper. His knifework is abysmal. Always had been, in the kitchen, even before the tremors. It’s a wonder how he can make the most beautiful things with one blade, and a complete hack job with another. 

At this hour, the only light is from the old fixture above the kitchen table, the sort that’s got frosted glass shaped into vague flowers. Johnny picked it out at a car boot the next town over, all embarrassed and flushed when Simon haggled the seller for it. The light brushes yellow and rose over the scar of his incision, down the sides of his jaw, clenched in concentration as he butchers the peppers. He’s the best fucking thing Simon has ever seen. 

“I love you,” he says. Johnny stills, puts the knife down. Turns to him and raises his hands, cups Simon's cheeks, and kisses him square and soft. Ten lifetimes over and Simon would never get tired of this. A hundred. A thousand. Any time, anywhere, he’d scratch and claw his way back to this moment, no matter what it took. Breathing in the puffs of air from Johnny's nose, catching his lip in his teeth, stroking tender over his overgrown hair. His stomach growls, insistent on their late supper, and Johnny pulls away, laughing, ready to get back to cooking. Simon grabs him round the wrists and tugs him back, kisses him again, and again, and again. Again, as Johnny stops kissing and just starts laughing at him; Simon catches the ridge of his lip sloppily, takes Johnny's joy into himself, endlessly greedy. 

He only pulls away when he hears the rumble of Johnny's own stomach. He doesn’t move far — hooks his chin over Johnny's shoulder, settles his fingers over the bones of his hip, the plane of his softened chest. Lets him go back to chopping. 

Later, when they’re eating the beef stew of Johnny’s labour, Soap stops midway through his portion, and catches Simon's gaze. “I love you, too,” he says. His eyes are blue, and there’s a spot of gravy on his chin, and Simon’s chair scrapes across the baseboards as he stands, and the food goes cold.

He goes to church with Johnny on Sundays. 

It's a small church for a small town. Johnny probably thinks he tags along out as some act of mother henning, which isn't completely off the mark. But he likes spending time with him. He's still a bit greedy with their time, even if they sit on their arse a hell of a lot more than they used to. And the other reason, of course, which is to say thank you. 

Simon still doesn't know if he believes in God. If asked, he wouldn't say he’s a particularly faithful person, but he likes to cover his bases. He’d never tell Johnny this, of course, lest he never hear the fucking end of it. I made you believe in God, eh Simon? He'd be even more insufferable than he already is. 

And he doesn't pray before meals or anything, isn't devout in any way other than his Sunday morning sermons and the bible in their dresser, but he finds it gives him a sense of peace. It reminds him of his mother. He also, most importantly, isn’t taking any fucking chances. A promise is a promise, and one made over Johnny’s life isn't one he’ll break, not for anything. 

The old ladies in attendance haven’t quite warmed up to Simon yet, but they adore Johnny. Bake him sweets and everything, like he’s a proper little cherub. Soap takes immense pleasure in their favouritism. Simon takes immense pleasure in seeing him be loved.

They won’t be able to attend Midnight Mass this year, so they make do with a service early on Christmas Eve, as Elaine has invited them down to Glasgow. Johnny had been a good sport about it, saying they could always go next year instead, but Simon insisted. It would be good to see the MacTavishes again, for both of their sakes. 

As they cram into the Ford — Simon had bitten the bullet and gotten a banger after returning the rental — Ghost spares a look to his left. Johnny is carrying the Christmas pudding he’d baked in his lap, not trusting it in the backseat. Perfunctory gifts for the family are in the boot. They’d agreed to not exchanging gifts between the two of them, but they both know it’s a farce. Simon has Johnny’s gift hidden away in the attic, and he’d found his own gift by accident while stowing it away. All the room in the house, and they both managed to pick the same hiding spot. 

He’s built back a fair bit of muscle and fat over the half-year. The mohawk is freshly shaved, beard grown out a touch. He’s wearing an old sweater his granny had made him, green and hideous, and Simon thinks he might explode.

He kisses Johnny's temple, and feels so light. He never used to be like this, open with his affections, free with his heart. Johnny's made a sap out of him. He spills syrup everywhere, leaves sugar behind as he kisses across his face, smears honey over the apples of his cheeks with his thumbs. 

Simon feels a world away. Ten months ago was a lifetime. He finds himself missing it, often, staring out the kitchen window and hearing rifle fire — but then Johnny will walk by and swat his arse, or scratch his fingers over the grey hair at the nape of his neck, and it melts away like butter. He wonders what his squadmates would think of him now: the fearsome Ghost, well and truly domesticated. Tender to the touch, and melting under his master’s hand. John MacTavish has spoiled him rotten. 

They’re welcomed with enthusiasm by Elaine, Tom, and the rest of the brood. The family that couldn’t fly out to be with Johnny in hospital are particularly attentive, lathering him with kisses and attention and questions. They give Ghost a sideways eye or two, no doubt sceptical of the big brute John had brought along, but a stern look from Elaine sets them right quickly. 

She gives Simon the warmest welcome by far, tactfully pulling him to the edge of the room where the din is less oppressive. “How’s the house?” she asks, though he knows what she’s really after. 

“You were right about the state of it. Took a while, but it’s looking mint.” He glances over to Johnny, currently being showered in affections. “He’s doing well.” 

Elaine beams, and clasps his hands in her own, unable to help herself. “I’m so happy for you, Simon.” 

“I’m happy too, ma’am.” 

“And you look pure braw without that mask!” 

That brings heat to the back of his neck. It’d be a lie if he said he was used to it, or even particularly comfortable baring his face, but it doesn’t make him want to claw his own skin off, anymore. That’s probably an improvement. “It helps Johnny when there are lips to read.” 

“Always looking after him,” she fawns. As if he’d ever do anything else. 

Dinner is a massive affair. Simon doesn’t think he’s ever had a meal so robust in all his life. It’s a good thing the MacTavishes seemingly take massive portions as a compliment, because he packs away three whole plate’s worth of corned beef hash. He politely declines the haggis, though Johnny insists he’ll break him down one day. 

The presents are saved for Christmas Day, so the children scamper off to do God knows what while the adults lounge in the sitting room, bellies full and livers taxed.

“Your head spinning yet?” Johnny murmurs in his ear, low so the family won’t hear him. Not that they would hear even at full volume, mind — the house is raucous, MacTavishes speaking over each other in multiple conversations at once. 

“It’s not so bad.” 

“Aye, well, they’re driving me mental,” he says. “Everyone’s so damn nosy.” 

“I’m led to believe families are generally like that.” 

Johnny huffs. “I know they mean well. Just makes me wish I could still smoke so I can step out and get a moment of bloody peace.” 

“I can’t argue with that.” Ghost is a man of great strength, but the withdrawals are killing him. He’s found that gum can help. Not helpful at a family gathering, though. He’s been informed it’s rude. 

“Nobody made you quit. You did that to yourself, mate.” 

“It’s the healthy thing to do.” 

“Christ, since when do you care about being healthy? Half your diet is beer and red meat.” Johnny sighs and settles further into the sofa, clearly at ease despite his protestations. He slots his pinkie finger under the weight of Simon’s thigh. “You want to know something funny?” 

Simon shifts his leg closer to Johnny, hyperfocused on the places they touch. “What’s that?” 

“I only smoked ‘cause of you.” 

That grabs his attention. “Thought you said you started in secondary?” 

“For about a week. Only picked back up when I saw you taking your breaks. Just wanted the excuse to see you, I guess.” 

Ghost feels a vicious, satisfied curl in his chest. How juvenile. “Yeah? Put tar in those lungs just to get a look at my mouth?” 

Johnny jumps, looking around to see if they’d been overheard. His ears are flushed red. “You watch that mouth of yours. If one of the kids hears you I’ll never live it down.” 

“If any kid would hear us, it’d be Violet. She’s sneaky, that one. Good thing she’s in the other room.” 

“You keeping tabs on all hostiles?” 

“Kept a tab on her this whole time. She nicked my wallet about an hour ago.” 

“Jesus Christ,” Johnny mumbles with a wide smile and artificial awe. “Simon Riley, you’ve gone soft.” 

“She’s got a good head on her shoulders. Stealth needs work, though.” 

“You’ll have her combat-ready by the time she’s ten.” 

Not likely. Simon doesn’t want her anywhere near the service. She’s smart, and mostly-kind. She’s got a bright future. But he lets her have the satisfaction of robbing him for another half hour before he comes to collect. 

He stays sober enough to drive them home, which is a far enough journey to have his back smarting, and has them home near midnight. Simon complains about the late hour, and Johnny calls him an old geezer. Tough words from someone visibly nodding off on the ride back, but Simon magnanimously holds his tongue. He’s in the Christmas spirit.

Johnny insists on leaving a glass of whisky out for Santa, which Simon finds absolutely preposterous, but he makes sure to get out of bed early in the morning to drink it and keep up the ruse. He makes them a proper breakfast while he’s still warm from it. 

After stuffing themselves full, and a lazy shag against the counter, Johnny makes to go get Simon’s present, and his stomach flips. 

“It’s not much,” Johnny warns, handing over a clumsily wrapped box. 

“It shouldn’t be anything. We said we weren’t doing this.” 

“Come on, I had to get you something. Just a wee thing.” 

It’s not a wee thing. It’s a top-shelf bourbon with a near twenty-year vintage. He doesn’t even want to know how much this cost. “Nothing handmade this year?” he demurs, trying to bury the lede on how much restraint it’s taking not to have a glass right now. 

“I make you carvings all the time! Thought I’d try something new.” 

Simon blinks. “Those carvings aren’t for me.” 

“That’s what you think?” Johnny gives a pointed look around the room, eyes falling on all manner of birds and skulls and army men tucked between more mundane bears and trees. 

Ignoring the choke in his throat, Simon rises and makes for his own hidden present, at which Johnny squawks about his hypocrisy. When he returns, Johnny looking up at him with equal parts adoration and feigned outrage, he feels his palms start to slick. Maybe this was a bad idea. “It’s probably a shit gift.” 

“Shut your puss. Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s the thought that counts?” Simon appreciates the sentiment, but it rings hollow. He’s worried about this one. Has been ever since he picked it up. It’s a risk, and a less calculated one than he’d like.

Johnny begins tearing open the gift, wrapped clumsily in broadsheets. It’s been about half a year since his injury, and Johnny’s already regained such steadiness in his hands it blows Simon away near every time he sees him in action. The therapists have also seemed impressed with his recovery, at least to his dexterity — walking still gives him a bit of trouble. But it makes perfect sense. Johnny has attacked his therapies with the same ferocity he’s always had. Hungry to be better, hungry to be the best. Bailey had pulled Simon to the side, once, and told him that Johnny might do well to skip a session every now and again and get some rest. He’d just laughed, endlessly infatuated with Soap’s drive. What a fighter he’d won. He thanks God every day for him. 

He’d enforced the rest, though. Johnny hadn’t been best pleased at first, but he came around to the idea after being kept in bed and fucked slow for a long weekend. 

When the parcel is unwrapped, editorials littering the rug, time seems to slow down. The air chills, even through the warmth of the fireplace. Sweating under his arms, Simon is swiftly reminded why he avoids gift giving.

Looking at Johnny’s placid expression, Simon starts to feel his nerves spike. “I know you said you didn’t want to,” he explains, “but I thought…” Shame begins to flush down the back of his nape. How to explain this, he wonders, without sounding like an absolute nutter. What he wants most: the crackle in his ears, the jokes, the utter comfort that comes from knowing they’re together, protecting each other in equal intensity. “I miss having our own frequency.” 

Johnny strokes a trembling thumb over the glossy front cover. British Sign Language for Dummies. He seems to take in Simon’s words, and read between them effortlessly. “You could have just bought me a radio. Would probably be less work.” 

“Yeah, well where’s the fun in that?” 

Soap’s face breaks in a fragile little smile. He leans subtly in Simon’s direction, and rests his head on his shoulder. His retirement beard prickles Simon’s neck. It’s a good sting. Johnny begins paging through the book, exploratory, then intent. He finds what he’s looking for and begins to move his right hand. 

Shaky, flat hand raised, fingertips touching his chin. Hand pulling down and away. Thank you. 

Simon aches behind his eyes. He flips through the pages himself, straight to the one he’d memorised before wrapping, and moves his own hands. A single finger pressed to his sternum; palms clasped over his breast; a delicate trigger finger tapping Johnny’s heart. I love you. 

Johnny makes a soft sound, like something breaking open, and cradles Simon’s face in his palms. He can’t bear to look, to see what Soap is wearing so plainly on his face, so he closes his eyes, and lets himself be kissed. He feels all of it. The tremor in Johnny’s fingertips, the beard he keeps so fastidiously maintained, even when he can’t be bothered to wash his hair. The scratch of the wool sweater he’d gotten from his mother earlier that night. The taste of whisky, and mint, and his fire. 

He thinks so frequently, but he thinks it strongest now. He would do it again. His whole life, tip to tail. Every ruthless pain, every death, every moment alone. Just for this one minute sat with John MacTavish on a beat-up quilted rug. 

They have fights, sometimes. In all honesty, they fight quite a lot, though it’s mostly just good-natured squabbles, domestic bickering. Gaz used to joke about them being an old married couple, and probably feels the irony quite acutely. But sometimes they have real fights. Cold, seething, looking for an outlet they haven’t found on a battlefield in years. Something to ease the tension. It’s not very often, but it happens. Ghost rarely remembers what the fights are about, and he certainly doesn’t remember this one. 

The gravel is hard under his feet as he walks the perimeter of their property. Soap likes to say he’s like a guard dog when he does this — checking to make sure the pack is safe. When he catches Simon on his walks, he especially likes to take the piss by calling him a good boy, scratching round his ears. He usually gets that crooked smirk on his face when he does it, too, the one he has when he’s being particularly annoying. It never stops him from joining in, matching Ghost’s pace. 

He’s not here, this time. Probably still stewing in the house, if Ghost had to guess. Good on him. It’s what he deserves, finishing the last carton of milk before their biweekly supermarket trip, knowing it drives Simon mad. In fairness, it had only started over the milk. The fight had grown out of control, as fights tend to do, until they were screaming about God knows what, not even caring what was said, just knowing they were so bloody angry. 

Ghost keeps walking, figures he’s at least halfway round the property. He's mostly been looking at his feet, kicking the occasional rock when he’s feeling particularly petulant, ignoring the sun setting around him. When he looks up, the sky is pitch, all the golden light back from when he slammed the front door gone down the horizon. He takes a moment to let his eyes adjust. Notices the oak that was cracked in one of last year’s storms; the log bathed in moss he always forgets to move out of the path; the circle of mushrooms he keeps worrying about Riley getting into, but Soap insists they leave alone. Ghost’s much farther along in his route than he had realised. He’ll be back to the house soon enough if he keeps this pace. He frowns in irritation. He had been hoping the walk would clear his head, give him something to say to Soap that wasn’t just more harping on about the fucking milk. 

Ghost begins counting landmarks, after that. Mentally going down the list, a ticker closing in on the inevitable confrontation. Last time they had really fought, Ghost had tried to just ignore it, act like nothing had happened. He learned this was the wrong plan of attack when he’d been relegated to sleeping on the couch that night. 

He counts the shed, the spot where he sees the neighbour’s outdoor cat on occasion. The fire pit. The birdhouse. 

Ghost stops walking. All of a sudden, his head is quiet. He lifts a hand, traces a split in the wood with his trigger finger. The paint is fading. It used to be a deep green, but now it’s been dulled by the sun, by years of use. Johnny did a pretty neat job for a first-timer: it feels like every time he looks out the kitchen window, he can see a bird flitting around. Sometimes it feels like the house goes especially quiet in those moments. He likes to imagine what that bird must be feeling, coming to roost. If it’s returning home to a mate, to eggs, to an empty nest. If that bird can feel a fraction of the love that went into building that house. If it can feel a fraction of what Simon feels, coming in the door of the home he and Johnny built, seeing a plate on the table just for him. 

Ghost rubs his hand gently under the bottom of the birdhouse, where the grain is still smooth. Feels for what he knows is there, what he saw being carved with his own eyes: SR JM in clumsy, straight strokes. Ghost had laughed, at the time, said Soap was something straight out of a good old Christmas special, a proper cornball. Soap had just smiled, told him to bugger off. But Simon rubs his callused hands over it every time he passes by, bringing himself back to that moment where he had felt truly, brutally loved. He has moments like that more and more, these days. 

Ghost can’t remember what the fight was about. All the anger is sapped from him, straight out through the soles of his feet, carried away by the earth. Grounding in a literal sense. He feels that more often, these days, too. 

He sets off for home, closer now than it was before. Counts the constellations, idly, and finds Perseus. 

When he walks in the front door, the lights are out. Riley is in her crate, snuffling softly; dreaming about chasing some poor animal, no doubt. He pads through the halls until he gets to the bedroom, taking care to avoid the squeaky board that needs replacing. 

Ghost steps into the room to see Soap on his usual side, back to the doorway. He can tell by the rise and fall of his shoulders that he’s awake, and that he knows that Ghost knows he’s awake. They've known each other too long to pretend. He wonders if Soap is up because he’s too angry to sleep, or if he’d just wanted to wait for him. He hopes for the latter, but wouldn’t bet on it. Soap can hold a grudge like no one else, a fact that Simon privately finds amusing, though he has to admit it’s much less charming being on the receiving end.

Once Ghost takes a piss and brushes his teeth, he crawls into bed, arms wrapping tight around Soap. Johnny hums, huffs a little bit in irritation, and grabs Simon's hands to pull them snug to his own chest. Maybe it is the latter, then. 

“I’m still sore at you,” he grumbles. Sounds like he means it, too. Former it is. 

Ghost sighs a little, can feel the hair at Johnny’s nape sway under his breath. “I know.” 

That seems to get Soap’s attention. He pauses, cranes his neck around at an awkward angle to look at Ghost. “And you’re not?” 

“Not really.” 

Soap squints his eyes, suspicious. There’s a very particular look he gets when he doesn’t believe Ghost. It doesn’t happen very often, but it’s cute, which Simon thinks is probably not the intended effect. “You’re usually crabbit longer than that. Why aren’t you angry? You knock your head out there?” 

Ghost is tired, all the fight gone out of him. He mostly just wants to sleep. Soap’s a hell of an interrogator, and will wheedle away doggedly until he gets the truth, so Simon just decides to give it to him and save the hassle. 

“I saw the birdhouse.” 

It’s silent for a beat, two, three. “You see it every day.” 

“I do.” 

“So what’s that got to do with anything?” 

“It just made me remember I love you.” 

Soap gets up on one elbow, looking down at Ghost with a furrow between his eyebrows. “You needed reminding?” 

Ghost breathes a laugh. “Sometimes.” That gets him a pillow to the face. 

Johnny huffs, looking very much like someone who’s been stewing in bed for a half hour or so, ready for a fight. “Be serious, Riley.” 

“Swear down. I remembered how I felt when you made me that house. And I remembered when we were deployed, and thought we were gonna die out there, and ate those bloody reheatable beans, and couldn’t sleep right cause we thought we’d get our throats cut soon as we nodded off. I remembered thinking about what it would feel like to be a bird that knows it’s got a nest that won’t break.” 

Johnny looks like someone’s taken the wind out of his sails, all anger gone from his face. He looks… delicate.

The room is still for a moment. Ghost relishes in it, can feel things returning to their rightful place. Tomorrow, the milk will be talked through over a cup of tea, and a day later it’ll be forgotten entirely. They’ve made it through hell and high water to get here, to this home they’ve made. This life they live. Everything else is small fish. 

Johnny lowers himself down from his elbow and lays his head on Simon's chest, rubbing his brow affectionately over his pectoral. “I just remembered I love you, too.” 

Simon smiles into Johnny's hair, smells his own shampoo in it. The night has exhausted him. He’s ready for tomorrow. Johnny stopped by the neighbour’s house earlier to pick up some fresh eggs, and he’s already thinking about the full English he’ll get in the morning. He’ll probably wake earlier than Soap, as usual, and maybe he’ll even have breakfast made before Johnny rises. He'll grab Simon's arse from behind as he’s brewing the coffee, make some lewd remark, and Simon will roll his eyes. When they kiss, it’ll taste like morning breath, and Simon will scowl about it right before pulling him in to do it again, and again, and again. 

There will be light and dark, and fruits and birds, and two old men watching it all. There’ll be evenings, and there will be mornings. And it’ll be good.