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It isn’t often that they have opportunities like this. Opportunities to get out, get off base, go out to a bar without having to worry about the next mission or any other duties. When they can just be a couple of guys out for drinks.
It always goes the same though. Ghost sits himself in the shadows in a corner of the bar and they order their first drinks together. And then Soap is off making friends, joking around, bantering with anyone and everyone. It’s like he has some strange ability to conjure suitors in every bar he enters. But when Soap is so very good at fending them off, distracting them with other nonsense, redirecting their attraction to someone else, then who is Ghost to complain or to scare them all away until he has Johnny to himself? Especially when they always buy Johnny free drinks and he just so happens to get a bourbon and somehow manages to circle back to him with a drink and no one the wiser as to exactly who Johnny would be going home with.
And if Ghost always ends up being supported by Soap because he’s absolutely fucking sloshed by the end of the night from all the drinks Soap has slipped him…Well, that’s no one’s business but theirs. (And Simon will never admit it, even under pain of death, but Johnny is always so soft with him when he’s drunk and is even more willing to cuddle. It settles something that lives carved into the walls of his heart, to know Johnny loves him so.)
Tonight starts like any other. Simon hides in the corner of the bar to watch his beautiful, brilliant Johnny light up the room like he was a star and everyone else was a planet, caught in his orbit. He goes around and around the bar, talking to anyone and everyone, ever revolving around Simon himself, always ensuring that Simon remains the center of his orbit.
As the night wears on, Simon finds himself rather drunker than usual. He can no longer tell if it’s because Johnny manages more free drinks than usual, or if he’s just more tired than usual - which, in all fairness, he hasn’t been sleeping well lately, even with Johnny sleeping beside him, so it definitely is a possibility - but, even so. He can feel Simon pushing everything that made him Ghost into the dark corner of his mind Simon usually resides in until all that is left is the need to take off his mask, to bury his face in Johnny’s neck and just exist for a while. Not as Ghost, as Simon . Without any expectations of anything at all. No missions to be carried out, no paperwork needing to be completed or recruits needing training. Where he doesn’t have to be anyone but the person he thought had been murdered and burned with the rest of his family years ago.
He huffs a tiny laugh into his drink. Trust Johnny to be the one who had so carefully found where Simon hid behind the layers and layers of Ghost and coaxed him back out little by little. He watches fondly as his Johnny redirects yet another flirt after procuring yet another drink for Simon. His revolutions around the bar have been getting smaller and smaller, straying less and less from Simon’s side. A sure sign that they’d be calling it a night shortly.
By the time they do leave, Simon is virtually dead on his feet. The alcohol and recent lack of decent sleep have caught up with him and if he didn’t have Johnny under his arm, Johnny’s solid arm around his waist, he would be on the ground.
As it is, he sways ominously when they stop just outside the bar and Johnny lets him go to put his - and Simon’s, to be honest, seeing as Simon couldn’t seem to take his eyes off Johnny long enough to do it himself.
But when Johnny pulls away to look in his eyes, to make sure he’s still solid, even drunk as he is, Simon’s body tries, quite unsuccessfully, to follow. Given how large both of them are, it would not be remiss to compare the way they collided as Johnny caught Simon before they hit the ground to the collision of a pair of binary stars. They had been silently caught in each other’s orbit all night, like they always did on nights like this, but this time, when Johnny caught him, something in Simon’s chest collapses inward for a single solitary moment before it explodes outwards and consumes him. Or, more accurately, it collapses inwards, allowing Johnny’s brilliant being to consume it, make Simon’s heart damn near actually go supernova and destroy them both.
And then Johnny is talking and Simon wonders if the soft Scottish lilt in his voice is what the stars would sound like in the night sky, if space carried sound. He could almost hear them now, each star whispering their story across the empty vastness of space with that gentle Scottish inflection that Simon knows Johnny saves just for him .
He’s so caught up in his thoughts about Johnny’s voice he doesn’t even register what Johnny is trying to say to him until a hand is laying on his cheek and Johnny asks him, “Ye solid there, love?”
“Yeah, sorry, what’d ya say?”
Johnny smirks and it’s like the sun breaking through the clouds on a cloudy day. “I asked ye why ye were so keen on fallin’ on meh. I know yer attracted ta me, but ye can’t claim I’m gravitationally attractin’ ye that much. I ken guarantee ye tha’ I dinnae have as much mass as the earth.” The smirk falls from his face and it’s as if the clouds have rolled in front of the sun again. Simon would do anything to make his Johnny shine like a star with that smile again. “I suppose ye didnae mean to fall towards meh like tha’. Ye were jus’ fallin’.”
“Johnny? English? Please?” Simon pauses for a moment, brain struggling just a little at how to get him to smile again. “And what about gravity?”
Clearly it’s the right thing to say, because Johnny’s entire face lifts and Simon’s star is back. He takes care to slip himself back under Simon’s shoulder to support him before he starts talking.
“Well, there’s a thing. It’s called the law of universal gravitation. States tha’ every particle in the universe attracts every other particle with a force. Isnae terribly difficult, ta be honest. The gravitational force is just the masses of the two objects multiplied together and divided by the distance between their centers of mass squared and that answer multiplied by the gravitational constant.”
Simon lets the voice of all the stars in the night sky wash over him as they make their way back to base. It’s not as passionate a lecture as his usual impromptu speeches, but Simon feels the blazing warmth of the soft smile he knows Johnny’s lips are curling into nonetheless.
Johnny is still vaguely mumbling about gravity and forces when they reach Simon’s room, but Simon doesn’t mind. Not when he can finally pull off his mask and pull Johnny into bed with him so he can bury his face in Johnny’s neck and he can fall asleep to Johnny gently scratching his scalp and the rumbling vibrations of Johnny’s voice in his chest. Will he be paying for it with a nasty little headache in the morning? Almost definitely. But it is more than worth it, to listen to Johnny talk about the things that make him happy, to bask in the warmth of the star that is Johnny, and to know that he’ll still be there come morning, sure as the sun he is to Simon.