Chapter Text
The flat, when the key had been jangled into the lock in such a way that the front door actually unlocked, was as cold as it usually was when Simon managed to get himself back through his front door. It probably didn’t help that he had picked the flat solely based on the fact it looked cool and for nothing else, and despite it being a grade II listed building (one that made Price always kiss his teeth appreciatively) it was fucking freezing when he wasn’t at home and had turned the heating off.
Once a flour mill on the River Foss, now was where Simon bashed his way into instead, needing to get some WD-40 onto the locking mechanism of the door because every single time he made his way home it took another few minutes to get into the flipping thing. He shuddered, hoodie zipped all the way up to his neck as he kicked the door shut with his boot and tossed his keys onto the old ashtray that he used for a key tray. The blissful thought that mostly everyone else that lived in the building was a twat who bought up property to then list it on Airbnb, so, for that most part, he was usually alone in the flat complex.
He could kick his door shut so hard that it slammed and generally not hear a peep from anyone else, it was complete and utter bliss.
Or, it would be, if he wasn’t still so sore about the fact that the moment he had tried to get back to Soap, still in bed in his motel room back in Chicago, they had been told they needed to leave almost immediately. Bundled into a plane and sent home to sit, stony faced, at a debriefing that was miserable and tedious. One which even Laswell looked annoyed to be at, which Ghost chalked up to the fact that she had a beautiful wife, and a crusty little dog that needed walking, waiting at home.
Soap had glanced at him across the table, bottom lip jutting out until he caught himself and it was sucked back up into an expression that resembled something a bit more professional. But, Simon could see it in his eyes. The disappointment. He had scratched his face through the balaclava and kept to himself that he felt exactly the same, praying that the debriefing ended without incident. Which, thank God, it did. Everyone shuffled out of the meeting room in single file, like little ants. Price, leading the charge as he stomped off, clearly agitated about something but when Ghost had tilted his head inquisitively, Soap had shrugged and shook his head. Completely none the wiser.
“So—”
“Right—”
Ghost and Soap had said at the same time, crowded into the narrow hallways that led maze-like through the barracks in Credenhill, almost on top of each other so it made sense for them to be speaking over each other too.
Soap relented first, opening his palm to Ghost and saying, “You first. Sorry.” Which had been the worst thing he could have offered as it made Ghost clamp up, his shoulders hitching up to his ears before he could pull them down to a short exhale, the inside of his balaclava hot and sticky against his skin and he wished he could pluck the fabric away without giving away the fact that he was clearly frazzled.
Tired. Hungry. If he was being honest, he sort of wanted to go for a post-mission poo and then fill a Sports Direct mug as full as it would go with Lemsip and then hibernate for the next two weeks of allotted leave. But, there was Soap, halting his progress into a graceful descent into his stupidly expensive, ridiculously cold flat that he wasn’t even too sure why he paid a mortgage on because he was never there.
He took another breath, eyes right on where he had sucked so hard on Soap’s neck that it looked like someone had given him a swift punch to the jugular. Something which, thankfully, no one had mentioned in the meeting, despite the fact that Ghost had watched the way that Laswell’s eyes had fallen on the bruise. She had leaned back in her seat, drummed her fingers onto the desk for a brief moment and then continued speaking, as though she had never noticed it to begin with.
“I—”
“Well—”
Simon felt like giving Soap a kick to the shins, tutting his tongue against the soft palate of his mouth as he manhandled the conversation to allow him to actually speak without Soap interrupting, shoving his thumbs through the straps of his chest pack and boring down on him like he might do an unruly recruit. Eyes sharp and tone gruff as he grunted, “Shut up. For a moment.” Which, to Johnny’s credit, he did, “I was going to apologise.”
Soap laughed, then realised Ghost was being sincere and quickly quelled the sound by closing his mouth with a snap, then said, “For what?”
“Dunno.” Ghost’s thumbs were beginning to lose feeling with the way the pack was cutting off blood to them as he stood there like a lemon, feeling like a soulless brute towering over Soap as Gaz very clearly watched them from down the corridor, his fingers wrapped around the curve of the wall, which Ghost patently ignored. What he wanted most of all, in that moment, was to reach out and squeeze Soap’s hand. A little relief in the stuffy, bleak atmosphere that barracks life perpetuated, but instead, he dipped his eyes and said, “Never mind.”
“Christ.” Soap murmured, blowing caution to the hierarchical wind of the setting as he took a small step forward into Ghost’s space, bright eyes and a smile that made Ghost’s insides feel sick, “I’m not in a strop about it. If that’s what you’re worried about.” Soap smelled like the inside of a plane, metal and sweat, and Ghost’s nose twitched at it, “Simon—”
“Bit of formality might do you good right now, Sergeant.” He didn’t mean it in a twatty way, but the distance was instantly expanded between them as Soap almost stumbled backwards, almost dislodging a cork board with fire safety protocols off of the wall behind him.
“Sorry.” He muttered, eyes no longer bright but obedient, the switch that all people in their line of work could instantly turn at the flip of a switch. From man into dutiful pup, “ Lt. .”
“Are you going home?” Ghost shifted on the balls of his feet, wishing they were both back in that skanky little room, curled around each other as Soap peered at him like everything was about to go up in smoke. Like a magician’s terrible trick.
“Yeah,” Soap nodded, chewing on the very outer corner of his bottom lip, “Nae point staying here. Might as well be bored aff my tits at home where I don’t need to hear the bells waking me up.”
“Right.” Ghost said, stilted, “Right. Yeah. Sounds alright.”
“You’re being strange,” Soap frowned, then corrected himself, “Lieutenant.”
“I am not.” Ghost snapped, “I’m just—”
“I know.” Soap linked his fingers together in front of him, standing like he was at a wake, “I’m disappointed too.” He spared a glance towards where Gaz was listening in, watching the fingers disappear for a moment, but both of them knowing full well that he hadn’t moved anywhere yet, “Maybe you could give us a text? Do you use Whatsapp?”
Ghost could just about picture the CCTV footage of the two of them, caught in that hallway, stiltedly speaking to each other as Soap’s smile crept into place despite the fact he’d been doing a relatively good job of keeping it at bay as the situation evolved and changed through a few iterations, “Yeah.”
“Back to single syllable answers, eh?” Soap’s fingers tangled further, suggesting that he wasn’t feeling as cool as he was portraying. The very top of his hairline was damp, which could have been from the airlessness in the corridor but when Ghost stepped forward, finally finding the courage, Soap went dark pink in the cheeks to match the nervous sweat.
“Yeah.” Was all he answered, smiling beneath his mask, the worry of being not only post-mission but post-fuck was starting to smear away with the persistent rub of his thumb.
“Arse.” Soap grunted, back flat against the wall behind him, the cork board still threatening to fall off, “Well, I prefer Whatsapp if you are going to text me.”
Christ. They sounded like schoolchildren.
“Yeah.” Ghost said once again, really pushing out the boat on type casting himself as the big, monosyllabic brute, but Soap even found it in himself to smile back at the small joke, “Heard it’s more secure than normal texting.”
“Better for sending photos, too.” Soap angled his face up and they couldn’t kiss where they were standing, the cameras would pick it up so easily and they were already pushing it by standing so close in the corridor to begin with. Instead, Ghost hummed, low and gravelly, the way that he thought Soap enjoyed when it was being murmured into his ear through the comms, watching the younger man’s mouth open to say something. Then, he watched him close it straight after, thinking better of whatever he was about to say.
“Enjoy your leave, Johnny.” Ghost tried to sound sincere, because he truly was, he wanted Soap to be able to slip into bed and have just as big of a sleep as he was about to have, “You’ve got my number.”
“Aye.” Soap smiled, “I have.”
Ghost’s stomach lurched at the thought of the conversation, still completely fresh in his mind even after the drive back to York, which had been a complete pain in the arse because the M1 had been completely chock-a. Road works almost all the way up and every time that he’d managed to get up into top gear, cruise control on at a nice comfortable seventy, he’d seen a variable speed limit sign and had to come all the way back down to fifty. It had been shit. The worst drive you could possibly have, taking over an hour longer than normal and now, with the flat being fucking freezing and the memory of how Soap’s thighs felt around his cock only being a memory, Simon felt like he might start smashing things up.
Instead, thankfully, he found the thermostat, turned it up to twenty (as a treat) and stuck the kettle on. The rhythmic rumble of the element soothing his raging headache as he patted the phone in the back pocket of his jeans. He could ring him. He could find Soap’s number, ring him, and spend the rest of the evening complaining to him instead of to the empty air of his flat.
But, he didn’t. He made his cup of tea, having at least enough sense to stop off at the Waitrose across the road for milk and bread so he could have that life-giving cup of tea after a long drive. He’d even gotten a tin of spaghetti hoops because he felt so shit and needed something closer to the dinners you had at age six rather than something a man on his way to forty might eat.
He settled onto the sofa, finally pulling off the balaclava and finding that his breath stopped fogging up the moment it met the air as the heating kicked in and with the little light on, a cup of tea in hand and the telly on a new episode of Grand Designs, he didn’t feel so shit anymore. Not quite human just yet, but give it a couple of hours and he might even have a bath. Allow himself to sink down into the scalding water as the bruises and scrapes on his body were exposed, a testament to the fact that he wasn’t indestructible, but close enough.
He wasn’t particularly sure when it had happened, sometime between Grand Designs and Gogglebox, but the next thing Simon knew, he was blinking awake with a start. Cup of tea stone cold on the coffee table and the television having turned itself off on a power saving mode, Simon rolled himself into a sitting position, mouth dry and tasting a bit like a badger’s backend. He shook himself off, stark lines from the sofa cushions bisecting his face along with all the other scars as he rubbed a fist into his eyes, managing to wipe away at least a little of the sleep that crusted into the corners of his eyes.
His phone, as cold as the cup of tea after being left out all night, lay dark on the coffee table next to the mug and when Simon’s hand reached out to tap at the screen to see what time it was, he was met with a bundle of notifications. All from one person. The sight of the name on the notifications made Ghost’s neck prickle with anticipation and a feeling he couldn’t quite place. Which turned out to be needing a piss worse than he’d needed one when it had been twenty minutes drive back into the city centre and he’d been stuck in the school traffic.
The man in the mirror above the sink that stared back at him as he washed his hands post-piss looked nothing like the man he had last looked at back in the motel room. That man had been flushed, hair rumpled in a way that looked quite attractive as he had splashed water on his face and left Johnny’s sleeping, pressing a kiss to his face that was accepted with a happy, sleepy sound.
The man in his flat in York’s bathroom looked tired and even more pale than normal, those lines from the cushions still ripping through his skin and he rubbed at them, trying to smooth them away. He was exhausted, that was the diagnosis that the intelligent, worldly man came to the conclusion of as he pulled up his top lip to look at the fuzz on his teeth. He’d brush them later. But, the emotional and all too rational man that lived, quite far down in his guts, suggested that maybe the reason he looked like complete shit is that he was hoping that Soap might invite him back to his. Finish the way they were supposed to, with him inside of Johnny and continuing their kissing-till-they-passed-out streak.
It was ridiculous. To miss a man that you’d last seen yesterday morning.
His top lip was let to fall back into place and he unscrewed his mouthwash to swill out his mouth quickly, the bare minimum but he felt a bit like he’d been run over. Twice. With a JCB. The bath calling to him with thoughts of steam curling around the high ceilings of the building, smoking himself out as he turned a nice rosy red, stewing in his own disappointment that after a decade of forcing himself into a miserable, tight little box of celibacy and resentment, the one person he wanted to open up to hadn’t understood the signals he was sending with the rise and fall of his eyebrows, in morse code, to try and have a quick snog before Soap darted back off to Scotland. Probably to a boyfriend. Or worse, a phone full of apps that would let any number of blokes into his trendy, youthful flat. He probably had an airfryer. Cunt.
The phone lay face up on the coffee table still and it dawned on Ghost that he would have to actually open up the notifications at some point, the nail of his right hand thumb being shoved into his mouth as he gnawed on it. He’d chewed on his fingernails since before Soap had even been born and to know that some scrappy little twat was making him feel like a nervous Nelly was making the annoyance rise slowly but surely in the back of his head.
He stalked over, stamping across the hardwood floors, the muted thump of his socked feet not sounding very frightening or threatening and he felt like a phantom in his own home. Felt more comfortable in the back of a rumbling, shaking military van or splayed out on the ground in a ghillie suit, but seemingly not in the flat that he owned and took up space in like every other person in the world managed to do without triggering some sort of mental confusion.
The phone felt heavy in his hands and when he flicked it open with his thumb, the face ID was always a bit confused to actually see his real face, he was confronted with the Whatsapp messages. Just as he had first seen, all from Soap and all from about fifty minutes ago. He twisted around to peer out of the window, the weather outside not giving away much as to what time it was and it was only when he focused his bleary eyes onto the top of the phone screen did he really comprehend that he’d slept for about fourteen hours. Give or take.
It took a good second before Ghost could even understand what the photo that Soap had sent was, turning his phone in his hands as he tilted his head and brought it closer and then further away. Before he realised it was black mould creeping up the walls of what looked to be Soap’s bathroom, something he knew about all too well in an older building, despite the work they had done to the wharf area to fit the new flats in since the 1980s. He spent most of his time away from home in the winter worrying about the condensation that was no doubt sitting on his windows, seeping into the fixing and growing airway tightening, horrendously nasty mould.
Soap’s bathroom, for lack of a better term and as he had said himself, did look fucked. Ghost could just imagine the way it smelled, damp and cloying, making you suck in a breath just to then hold it for the next few moments so you didn’t have to smell anymore of the rotten, wet scent.
He enlarged the photo and then zoomed in, studying the trails of black mould up the walls and before he even really was aware of what he was doing he had pressed the call button and had plonked his arse down onto the sofa, waiting for it to ring through to Soap. Although, as soon as the line was picked up on the other end it felt like being right back in the corridor, squeezed in and feeling unsure of how to pursue the situation. All the courage that the drink had given him back in Chicago had fled, which was completely fucking stupid given what he did professionally. He wasn’t a coward, at all.
However, the soft sound of Soap’s mouth against the receiver of his phone on the other end did put the shits up Ghost. Just a little.
“ Fuck , hello, Simon. God. Did you see the photo?” Soap’s voice crackled down the line, like he was moving about swiftly.
“Looks bad. What’s the drill?”
Soap made a noise of frustration, “Well, it’s fucking everywhere, because of course it is. Leak in the fucking roof and everything’s mouldy and wet through. I didn’t even notice when I got home yesterday because it was dark when I got in and I fell flat asleep almost immediately.”
Simon looked at the cold cup of tea in front of him, a layer of white scum on the top forming as he kicked his feet up onto the coffee table, attempting nonchalance despite the fact that Soap couldn’t see him, “Yeah. I know what you mean.” He cleared his throat, plucking at the hem of his t-shirt, “You staying somewhere, then?”
“Ach—” Something hit against something else down the phone line and Ghost could just imagine Soap thumping his foot against a wall in annoyance, “—I rang up my sister and she’s in Mallorca. With Maw and Dad. Bastards. In the autumn, too. Lunatics. Even my fucking nana is away right now. I’m right up the creek, Simon.”
“So, you wanted me to help you? Of all people?”
“Don’t say it like that. Cummoan.” Soap’s voice sounded closer after that, like he was pressing the phone so close that Ghost felt like he could kiss him through it, “I just thought maybe after the other night that—Fuck—I don’t know. Sorry. Completely silly. Ignore me, man.”
“You got your car fixed yet?” The memory of Soap whining about his crappy Peugeot bubbling to the surface.
“Naw,” Soap sounded embarrassed, “Forgot to.”
“How did you even get home?”
“Price was meeting his sister and her family in the Peak District for some annoyingly normal family holiday. I got a lift up with him to there. Then I got myself to Sheffield, then I got the train back. Well, trains. Multiple.”
“Sounds like a fucking nightmare.” Ghost couldn’t remember the last time he’d relied on the public transport system in the UK past getting the bus in the city whenever he was home. He’d rather eat his own socks than have to get from Hereford all the way to Glasgow without a car, even if that car was a 2004 Peugeot 206 like Soap had cooped up in a garage somewhere, rotting away into scrap.
“Yeah. It was. Now I’ve got home and I’ve got mould growing out of my arse.” Soap sighed, the phone jostling around like he was swapping ears, “I’m sorry, Lt.. It’s my problem. My shite-hole flat. I just—”
“If you can get down here, you can stay with me.” By the time that Ghost had said it, his brain had caught up with his mouth and his head smacked against the back of the sofa, the sound soft enough that he hoped it didn’t travel back to Soap.
“You taking the piss?”
“No,” Ghost went right back to chewing on his thumb nail, muffling his words ever so slightly as he glanced around the room and thought about the amount of dust that had settled everywhere and how embarrassing that would be to let Soap see, “I’ve got a two bed. Or you could sleep on the sofa. I assume the council needs to come round to investigate.”
“Yeah.” Soap murmured, voice quiet, “Need to strip a load of wallpaper. Proper fucking ball ache. And it’s baltic’n’all. I can see my breath in here. Think the fucking boilers on the blink as well. God—” He paused for a second “—Am sorry, Simon.”
“Stop whinging. I’ll send you my address. I don’t think it’ll be too shitty to get down on the train.”
“Still in York?”
“Yeah.” Ghost smiled before he could stop himself, his lips twitching up at the reality that Soap did listen when he spoke, “I was gonna have spaghetti hoops on toast for dinner. If you can get down here by about seven then I might even think about letting you have some.”
“Better than nothing.” Soap laughed, “I’ll pack as much of my shite as I can. The stuff that isn’t brown and furry, at least. I’ll text you when I’m at the station and you can come drive us home, eh?”
“Yeah, sound.” The very bottom of Ghost’s spine, right where it met his arse, lit up with the thought that Soap had just described his flat as ‘home’.
“Thanks, Simon.” Soap breathed, tired sounding and if Ghost had his way, he would have been pushing his thumb across the exhausted man’s cheeks and finding out the way that Soap’s mouth felt against his own when he said Simon’s name out loud, “I promise I wasn’t trying to wrangle somewhere free to stay out of you. I just wanted—I thought that maybe you might know what to do.”
“It’s fine. I’d probably just be pissing the time away if I was by myself anyway.”
“Mint. Right, I’ll let you know when I’m up your end. Love you—” Soap stopped with a choked sound, then stumbled out, “—Shit. Sorry. I was just on the horn to my sister and—Sorry. I’m really fucking tired, man.”
“Get a grip, MacTavish. I’ll see you later.” Ghost said, then listened for the noise of affirmation on the other end and the muffled, shy goodbye and hung up. Immediately opening up the text chat to type off a message to Soap, fingers shaking ever so slightly as they moved over the keyboard.
Ghost didn’t really particularly understand half of the emojis on his phone, but the thrill he got from clicking a tiny, pink, sparkly heart when speaking to Johnny made him feel like he needed to clutch his phone in his hand and then dash it across the walls of his living room. Watching it shatter into pieces as he chewed on his own fingers and came to terms with the fact that he was a grown man who was unnecessarily and unhealthily attached to the concept of never being apart from a small Scottish man who he’d seen pick his nose on missions and then glance around hoping that nobody had seen.
He needed, more desperately than anything, for Johnny to still feel the throb of need that he’d held so delicately for Simon in that motel room, eyes huge and rolling until they fixed onto his face and sucked him in. Drank in the sight of this monster of a man, beastly in all other approaches except for between them in the grotty sheets that should have been either one of their beds at home. Ghost found his own saliva rattling around his throat at that thought and he coughed twice, smacking his chest as he tried not to obsess over the thought of Johnny, nude, in his bed in the flat.
He stood, eyeing the dust and clutter again, then set about putting the kettle on. If he was going to make sure his place didn’t look like a shit hole then he would need another cup of tea and maybe a chicken bake from Greggs, his stomach grumbling at the notion of being fed and he tried to ignore his phone the whole time. Lest he get distracted by Soap’s barrage of text messages that had already begun by the time he’d flicked the switch on the kettle.
—————
It felt like a bit of a disservice to his own legs to get a sausage roll, a chicken bake and a steak bake delivered from Greggs, especially considering there was one about five minutes walk from the building, but the woman delivering glanced over Simon once with his black face mask on and said, “Here you go, mate. Hope you feel better.”
So, seemingly, he looked horrendous enough that he didn’t feel too guilty for the laziness of it all. It did save him a good fifteen minutes in which he managed to put some toilet cleaner down the bog and then wipe at least seven different surfaces with a cloth to shift the dust and then some anti-bac. He’d already gotten it looking like a normal person might live there by the time he was halfway through stuffing the steak bake into his face, then realised he’d been dropping flaky pastry crumbs in a neat line behind himself as he’d been wandering around with a microfibre cloth.
It was ridiculous. He murdered people for a living, stalking them from the shadows like something out of a nightmare, and there he was, nervous about the fact that he hadn’t cleaned the inside of his kitchen cabinets since he’d bought the flat about three years ago. All of his heightened senses, trained to detect someone creeping around and tossing a knife into their chest before they could do the same, were poised entirely on the fact that the shower had blackened soap scum along the runner of the doors.
“This is fucking stupid.” He said, out loud, to nobody at all. Then, scrunched up the Greggs bag in his hand and shoved it into the bin and set about finding the hoover to tidy up the winding path of mess that he’d trailed along behind himself. Almost angry at himself that he’d made the mess in the first place. But, he was the Ghost and he cleaned up messes, not created them or made them worse. Something like that.
By the time that he had finished the manic and fitful cleaning, stopping at around one o’clock to force himself to sit down and have a glass of blackcurrant squash while watching an old episode of Star Trek (The Next Generation, obviously), he was completely drenched in sweat and stunk like the locker rooms in the gym at the barracks. He pushed his sodden fringe, needing a trim by the looks of it, from his eyes and shouldered his way into the shower, not even noticing that his phone was buzzing from where he had plonked it onto the closed lid of the toilet. Too busy scrubbing underneath his armpits and wondering if Johnny would notice that, if everything went spectacularly and not awkward in any way, that his cock tasted a little bit like cedarwood and amber.
When the screen of his phone finally graced his eyes, toothbrush stuffed into his gob and spittle running down his scarred chin, the text messages from Johnny were already about ten minutes past the point Simon should have seen them. Ghost’s body shifted into a burst of frenzied, almost tectonic, haphazard energy as he tugged his dirty t-shirt back over his damp body. Very much aware that he was going to smell a bit like a wet dog when he picked Johnny up from the station, hair still wet and dribbling shower water into his eyes. He’d worry about that after he managed to shift his arse into gear and scramble out of the building and back into his car, which had just about enough diesel in it to get to the station and back.
“You smell a bit like wet dog.” Johnny’s warm, clean smelling body pushed up against Ghost’s as soon as he had parked in the short stay bays and hopped out to apologetically clap him on the shoulder, black face mask back on and he hoped that Soap couldn’t tell that he was grimacing underneath it.
It was a perfunctory hug, one that blokes gave each other when they met at the pub, a few slaps on the back to make sure that it didn’t look too overwrought with emotion. Despite the fact that Simon was to shove Johnny down the nearest alleyway and kiss him until he understood that he was horrendously sorry that he ever had to go all the way back home just to find the lingering mould, then travel all the way back down again.
“Just showered. Sorry.” Ghost led him back to the car, eyebrows twitching down into a frown as Soap glanced at the empty fast food packaging in the back, probably all from about five months ago. Or, whenever it was the last time they actually were allowed a substantial amount of leave and Simon could pootle around in his decrepit little Nissan, accruing rubbish as he went.
“Those yours?” Soap grinned, shaking his thumb at the mess as he slipped into the passenger seat, thighs flexing in his jeans in a way that had Ghost slamming the door on him and then stamping around to the driver’s side with one thing in mind but absolutely no idea of how to broach the subject without sounding like some sort of pervert who only invited Soap round to shag him.
“Fuck off.” He settled on. Not particularly witty, but it felt right enough in his mouth and Soap grinned like he never wanted to be anywhere else but the passenger seat of Simon’s car, feet tucked into the footwell politely.
“Drive me home, Parker.” Soap clipped in his belt as he did a pretty rotten impression of Lady Penelope.
“Fucking muppet.” Ghost sounded far too happy and he didn’t miss that Soap absolutely noticed the glee, his hand finding Simon’s knee only three minutes into the twenty minute drive home. Once again getting stuck in the going home school traffic, which was fine with Simon, as it meant that he could cast sneaky, wanting glances at Soap from the corner of his eye the entire way.
—————
“You jammy fucking cunt.” Soap tossed his single duffle bag onto the floor, peering into doorways before Ghost could even begin to think about stopping him, then wandered into the lounge-cum-kitchen, laughing quietly as he slapped his hands onto his hips, “This place makes me look like a pure scaff. Bet your bills are whoppers, mate.”
“I just thought it was nice.” Sheepishness wasn’t an emotion that graced the likes of Ghost very much, but as Soap poked about his things, standing and staring out the window at the river Foss winding by, enraptured by the lay of the land and also the fittings of Simon’s radiator if the way he was jabbing his finger into it, it would seem that the emotion was giving it a good go, “Bought it a few years ago. I don’t know what to do with my money half the time. Everything just seems a bit shit. Buying a flat seemed like the best use of it.”
“God, you’re such a laugh to be around, you know that?” Soap stopped fiddling with the radiator, forehead almost pressed against the huge window, breath fogging up the glass, “ Everything is shit. I’m the Ghost. I’m a big goth, moan moan moan. ”
Ghost spluttered, peeling off the black face mask he had hanging off his ears, tossing it into the kitchen breakfast bar, “I’m not a goth.”
“Aye. ‘Spose so.” Soap’s arse found the sofa, his eyes fluttering shut like it was the first real rest he’d gotten since they exfilled, which probably was the case. Ghost was as dutifully friendly as one could be with their captain with Price, but he wouldn’t want to be stuck in a car with him for a couple of hours, especially outside of their dignified, allotted working time. He’d once ended up in a pub with Price, without anyone else, and he had talked at length about his allotment for about forty minutes before Gaz had turned up and everything had shifted to Price’s golden boy and Ghost had managed to slip off to the loos to see if he could fit through the window and run away. Always felt like intruding upon something when spending time with the two of them anyway, probably how people felt with him and Soap.
“I haven’t had time to set the spare bed up, but if you want a sleep then you can take the sofa or my bed for a bit?” Ghost couldn’t help the nervous tic of flipping on the kettle, the process welded into his mind like any good Englishman when he stepped through the threshold of his castle, “There’s some blankets in that basket,” He nudged his head towards the wicker one next to the sofa, “I don’t mind. You look like shit.”
“Thank you.” Soap groaned, eyes closed long enough that Ghost could imagine it was growing harder and harder by the second to reopen them, “I could say the same for you.” He managed it though, plying them open with a small, quiet grunt as his body relaxed further into the sofa and made Ghost’s stomach twist at the knowledge that Soap was happy to make himself comfortable in his home, “You okay? Y’know. After everything.”
Ghost’s shoulders rolled and he just about stopped himself from shoving his thumbnail back into his mouth to chew on, “Yeah. Fine.”
“I’m sure that’s about as much as I’ll get from you, so, good.” The wicker basket was opened, Soap’s fingers fumbling a little as what Ghost could only assume was a full body exhaustion overtook him, “Christ. I’m gonna have to have that kip, this sofa is fucking comfy. Just a toaty one. Wake me up in an hour or so, would you?”
“Taking liberties with my hospitality.” Ghost’s elbows found the breakfast bar as his hands propped up his chin and he watched as Soap slipped closer and closer towards sleep, finding the way that his eyelashes fluttered gently and his mouth twitched to be the most tooth-rotting, aggravatingly sweet thing that he’d ever seen.
“Maybe.” The clock read three minutes past four and Simon made a mental note to allow Soap to sleep until at least half past five, maybe six o’clock if he put up any kind of fight when he attempted to wake him, “Hey, Simon?”
“Mm?”
“Am no in a strop with you.”
“I didn’t think you were.” Ghost scratched his chin absentmindedly, thinking of how Soap’s mouth formed a wobbling smile when he had spoken to him in the bar in Chicago, full of unabashed joy and the kind of cheekiness that only a man in his twenties could tangle with, “We’ll talk about it later.”
“You gonna be a twat about it when we do?”
“Nae danger.” Soap smiled, like he absolutely was, “Could I have a wee nighty-night kiss?”
“Nae fucking danger, Johnny.”
Soap uttered a final laugh before falling fast asleep, dribbling down his shoulder as Ghost stuffed a PG Tips bag into his favourite mug and thought about all the shite he could toss into the guest room so Soap had no option other than to share his bed with him for the foreseeable future.
—————
As Johnny’s head descended further and further into the sofa, he didn’t wake with a shock when his forehead thumped against the arm of it, but with a quiet, wet smack of his lips that seemed to slurp up the torrent of saliva that he’d been depositing onto the soft furnishings of Simon’s home. His throat clicked, swallowing a mouthful of spit as he lurched upwards, mohawk mussed and face momentarily stricken with absolute terror as he failed to recognise where he was for a good few seconds, hands balling into fists in an attempt to defend himself. Until Ghost cleared his throat and set down his book he’d been lazily flicking through while Soap dozed on.
“It’s fine, Johnny.” He might have placed his hand onto Soap’s thigh if he were as brazen as Johnny had been back in the car, squeezing Ghost’s knee like they’d been going steady for yonks and not just came onto each other in a grotty motel room on a whim.
“Sorry,” Johnny sounded thick, phlegm caught in his throat that he coughed away and Ghost was rising to get him a glass of water before he’d even started to think about it properly, body moving to get what Soap needed before his brain had caught up, “Forgot where I was for a mo. Thought I’d been kidnapped by some homosexual king-pin of the North. Nice to know how the other half live.”
“It’s a fucking flat, Johnny.” The tap squealed as Ghost jammed it on and then off again, thrusting the glass of water at Soap as soon as he was close enough, almost spilling it all onto his book which would have been awful as it was a library book, one that had probably accrued hundreds in overdue fines because he was sure he’d taken it out during their last proper set of leave, “You can be a cunt about it when I’ve got a five bed in Chelsea. Not a two bed in York.”
“No mould though.”
“Not that I’m aware of, no.”
“Wha’s’at?” Johnny nodded at the book, the title reading ‘Babel’, his mouth at the rim of the glass, “Good?”
“Yeah. S’alright.” The edge of the sofa seemed like the safest place to rest himself, arse almost hovering an inch above it with nerves as he settled onto it, mindfully aware of the fact that if he had his way, he would have crowded Soap onto the sofa and kissed him until he could taste the slight mustiness of his sleepy mouth. He would have licked the fur off his tongue if it meant he could get away with a quick snog, not that he would ever voice that, as it was right disgusting. “Gaz recommended it to me.”
Soap regarded the book like he doubted that, “Gaz can read?”
“I’ll tell him you said that.” Ghost pushed the book further out of the way of the glass as Soap plopped it down, sans coaster, onto the coffee table with a shaking wrist, like sleep was still keeping him clumsily under its wing. “Did you not want to stay with him instead?”
“He’s with his mum. I didn’t think it would be right to start asking if I could go round Mrs Garrick’s house for tea.” Soap’s feet drew up underneath him, under the blanket, and Ghost’s throat closed a fraction of an inch more, “He’s been taking the piss out of me for the last couple of days anyway, don’t think I could stand much more of it.”
“You tell him?” Ghost’s eyebrows drooped and he watched as Soap’s eyes followed the movement.
“Yes.” Soap shrugged, clearly trying to play it off as the most casual admittance of guilt, one that Ghost didn’t care too much about as long as it didn’t get back to anyone that mattered. Or cared. Which he was still surprised that Price didn’t, “We’re mates, him and I. Just banter. Bit of craic.” Soap seemed much more like young man when he was trapped beneath a blanket in his civvies, untrained to the real world in the way you were destined to become when you signed your life over to the forces, “I took the piss for ages when I found out he was shagging some lass up in Worcester on evenings off. Only fair for him to take the mick when it’s—Uh—Well.”
“Me and you?” Ghost supplied.
“Yeah. Me and you.” Soap smiled, like that tasted nice in his mouth.
“That his girlfriend then, the bird in Worcester?”
“Naw,” Soap yawned, eye blinking at the television on mute as it beamed light into the early evening room, the sun already having already begun its traversal up the wooden hills, autumn in full swing, “She had a bloke. Right upset Gaz, I saw him crying in the mess in the wee hours one morning when I came to get a drink. I had to tell him to stop greeting over fanny, tha’s embarrassing.” Soap sniffed, scratching at the space between his nostril and top lip, stubble making a pleasant sound beneath his fingernail as he did, “I think there’s something he’s no telling me though. Told me he found Price on Grindr.”
“What’s that?” Ghost kicked his feet up onto the coffee table, having decided that Soap wasn’t going to do anything terrifying while swaddled in a blanket.
“What?” Soap stared at him.
“Grinder.”
“ Grindr .” Soap leaned forward, far enough into Ghost’s space that he involuntarily wheeled back, back twisted at an odd angle as he tried to leer away from the man as he peered at Simon like he’d grown a second head, “You’re pulling my fucking leg, man.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“A dating app.” Soap laughed, voice rising an octave like it was the funniest thing in the world to be discussing, “Primarily used by gay men.”
“Why is that weird?”
“Oh, so now you’re going to be telling me that you always knew Price was gay and that you and him used to cut about in Heaven back in the day, back when you could get a pint for less than three quid and Jezza Kyle was still on the telly.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Ghost crossed his arms over his chest, wishing that he had the bollocks to click the zapper and turn the tell off of mute so that he could have the comfort of whatever drivel he’d slapped on previously, “I couldn’t give a toss what Price was.”
“You’re a big fucking, lippy spoil-sport. I cannae believe you don’t want to gossip about this.”
“Wouldn’t you feel weird if Gaz and Price were gossiping about us?”
“Couldn’t give two shites, mate.” Soap grinned and Ghost knew that was the absolute truth, annoyingly, “As long as I keep my job, it’s all gravy to me. Anyway, they are. Gossiping, I mean. Gaz and Price are like this—” Soap twined two fingers together, shoving them into Ghost’s face, almost brushing the end of his nose as his eyes crossed to look at it, “—Might as well get right with it, because it’s happening.”
“You’re a complete numpty.” Ghost only realised he was smiling when Johnny smiled back, sheepish and stupidly pretty in the way that a hulking chunk of moron could be when it was bundled up on the sofa and Simon had absolutely no clue how to broach the idea that anything was on the table from that moment. Snogging. Fucking. Cuddling right then and there, waiting for the nine o’clock Film4 movie to come on so they didn’t have to move from that very spot for the unforeseeable future.
“Funny.” Soap murmured.
“What?” Ghost touched his fingers to the bow of his mouth, suddenly aware of how bare he felt, and that fear was confounded when Soap’s mouth split into a grin and he peeled the blanket away, revealing soft skin and sleep-warm clothing that pooled around him. The furl of his rolled belly as he sat, only just about visible beneath the thin fabric of his t-shirt and it made Ghost’s head go numb, eyes stuck to it even as Soap walked his fingers over the sofa cushions towards him.
“This is the most I’ve seen your face in the entire time I’ve known you. It’s so strange to see the way it moves. Your lip twitches sometimes. Funny.” Soap’s fingertips found the edge of Ghost’s thigh, touching the side of it with the brimming cheekiness that he spouted every time he shed the skin of his work persona, someone who was so tough and bold that it made even Ghost feel the joints of his knees shudder with fear. Because Johnny commanded the space around him, cleaning rooms with speed and precision, with a nasty barking mouth and a finger curled around the trigger. He was beautiful and something to be frightened of, and Ghost liked that.
“You were right, by the way.” Soap said, fingers burning holes through the denim of Ghost’s jeans, right into the fibrous muscles of his thigh, “I asked if you were ugly, back in Las Almas, and you said it was the opposite. I thought maybe you were just being a cagey prick. But, you know, you weren’t.” Soap’s eyes met Ghost’s, right in the middle, “You’re gorgeous, Simon.”
“That’s rank.” Ghost stood, knees propelling him off the sofa as Soap almost tumbled into the void he left behind, “That’s made me feel actually quite sick. Do you want to have some dinner soon?”
Soap laughed behind him incredulously, tossing off the blanket and crossing one leg over the other as he balanced his elbow on the sofa’s arm and peered at Simon like he were a particularly interesting animal, locked away behind the protective glass of the zoo, somewhere you couldn’t stick your extremities in case of loss of fingers, “You’re no gonna helpfully forget that we’ve shagged?”
“No. Just stop pushing your luck. I’m too tired for it.”
“You need to warm back up to me, that’s all.” Soap peered at Simon, now rifling through his meagerly stocked kitchen, “We still having spaghetti hoops then, darlin’?”
“You’ll get a kick up the arse if you carry on.”
“Babe?”
“I’m pretty deft with a knife, and I’ve got a kitchen full of them.”
“Cummoan. You can play pretend, but I know that you think I’m a stoater. You send me love heart emojis like a wee girl. You’re no getting out of this one.”
“Toast?”
Soap grinned, wider than ever, “Yes, please.”
—————
When Soap’s knees brushed against his own as they forwent the dining table to sit on the sofa, plates on the coffee table and backs hunched over as they spooned their child-like dinners into their mouths, Ghost allowed his shoulder to bump against him as well. He didn’t say anything, not even when Soap ducked his head and then glanced up at him through his eyelashes like he had been practising that move just to attempt to goad Ghost back into his arms. No goading was necessary, was the thing, Ghost was just flighty. Startled easily and quick to break for the exit in his personal life, the buzzing flash of the fire exit sign above the door burning his eyes whenever he bothered to get to know anyone. But, that didn’t stop him from meeting Soap’s warm mouth in the middle when he leaned in, spoon hovering above his lap, full of spaghetti hoops, as Ghost’s mouth closed around his own.
They pulled away the moment that Soap managed to spill scalding hot tomato sauce onto Ghost’s lap and he apologised profusely into the waiting cusp of Ghost’s lips, just about finding the plate to let the spoon clatter dully onto it as he grasped the sides of Ghost’s face and kissed him like he had been waiting to do it since he had been bundled into Simon’s untidy car. Just the one kiss though, albeit one that lasted at least five minutes, and then they went back to their meals. Grinning like idiots as their thighs continued to touch and much later, when Simon would peel off his jeans, he would find the ragged stain of the very minor burn from Soap’s accident. A testament to the fact that they were both ruinously stupid. For each other and just in general.
“Was waiting for that.” Soap spoke into the curve of Simon’s shoulder, pushing his face against him like a particularly friendly house cat, “Was gonnae do it in the hallway after the meeting but Laswell watches them camera tapes sometimes when she’s bored. Probably to see if we’re doing something as silly as snogging in the corridors.”
“Does your flat actually have a ton of mould in it or was that a lie to come over here?” Simon had opted for a bottle of Stella, slightly cliche but it was all he had in the fridge and his mouth was parched for a nice simple evening beer, one that paired so well with children’s pasta shapes in tomato sauce, obviously, “I bet it was a lie.”
Soap pushed off of his shoulder, looking scandalised, “A lie? My flat is currently looking like something from a fifties monster movie, all black sludge and spores, and you’re telling me I’m telling fibs?”
“It wouldn’t be a stretch.”
Soap’s hand shot out, grasping the bottle in Simon’s grip and it was a good thing they weren’t in the field because a slip up of such magnitude wouldn’t be ignored there, as Soap yanked the beer bottle away and pushed the open lip of it to his mouth and attempted to swallow the contents down in a few swift gulps. Which didn’t play out too well as the carbonation of it rocketed through his sinuses and he ended up coughing and dripping snotty beer from his nostrils as Simon refused to pat his back and offer any sympathy other than, “Stupid bloody bastard.”
“Aye, well, now you’ve got no beer.”
“I’ve got about three more in the fridge.” Simon’s thumb jutted towards the kitchen area, “I don’t really know what you were trying to do.”
“One up you.”
“Right. Didn’t really work, did it?”
“Shut your gob and turn the telly back on.” The front of Soap’s t-shirt was soaked and he smushed the flat of his hand across his nose, trying to wipe up the mess he’d made and it struck Ghost, in a place he didn’t bear to spend much time worrying about, that he was relatively endeared to the commotion. The smallest flicker of amusement at Soap’s stupidity that made him rub his forefinger and thumb over the corners of his mouth to try and trick them to ease down, worried that if he didn’t he would end up staring at him like a loon with a face-aching, beaming smile wrapping around his cheeks.
He pushed the remote towards Soap, not caring for a second what drivel he put on, having heard about the telly that the younger members of the team and the new recruits spoke about in their off time. But, was pleasantly surprised when Soap shuffled down on the sofa, carefully wedging his feet onto the lower shelf of the coffee table and flipped onto a BBC 4 music programme. All about the music of some prog band that Simon vaguely could remember seeing a long forgotten record collection in a house he barely recognised and felt sick inside when he thought too long on it.
“You’re no looking at the screen.” Soap murmured after a moment, arms crossed over his chest, showing off the bulge of his muscles in a way that made Simon wonder if he had been mentally adjusted to find attractive after so many years of being around men in peak physical condition, or if he just always had fancied men that looked like they could wallop the shit out of him in the middle of a drawn ring on the ground.
“I am.” Simon lied, trickling his eyes down the line from the bottom of Soap’s earlobe to where the skin of his collar met with the fabric of his t-shirt. Watching the skin turn mottled pink as Soap continued to fix his eyes to the television, eyebrow twitching ever so slightly as he ignored the fact that Simon was about two seconds from lunging at him to gobble him up. “Don’t worry about me.”
“I’m very worried about you. You could twist a cunts heid clean aff.”
“I’m just looking at you.”
“Why?”
“ Johnny —” Ghost’s voice was a warning, though a pleasant one. A warning for something that would lead down a very dangerous road for both of them, so Soap acquiesced, as simple as anything. Drifting his hand into the centre of the settee, palm up turned as the light from the television blared across his face, casting shadows that Ghost didn’t often see. Too often lit by explosions or more often than that, great, heaping darkness itself, clouding the idiosyncrasies of Johnny’s twitching, sun-tanned face. The buzzing chromatic of a basic telly programme lit up his features and gouged shadows so much differently than the spit of muzzle flare, Ghost wasn’t afraid to look at him here. Nobody else around. Nobody trying to hurt him, or Johnny.
“I’m not daft. I know you asked me around because of the other night.” Soap supplied, fingers twitching on the sofa as Ghost tried to wrap his head around whether it would be worse to hold his hand or not hold it, “And I am properly just as disappointed as you that we didn’t get to finish.” Slowly, Ghosts hand crept over, sinking into the waiting flesh of Johnny’s and Soap’s shoulders fell, the tension easing away as he squeezed Ghost’s hand like they were completely normal people, having a nice night in, nothing untoward or gristly about their lives at all, “But, nice and steady, eh? Nice and slow. Just two people, hanging out.”
“Bit backwards, innit.” Ghost grunted, “Fucking first and then holding hands.”
“Dinnae give a shit.” Soap grinned, the tip of his tongue touching the top line of his teeth making him look handsome and irritating, “I know you’re pure buzzing right now. I bet you haven’t held hands with someone since you were about thirteen.”
“Held hands with your mum the other night.”
“Ooft.” Soap tutted, “My maw would batter you.”
“Feels nice.” Ghost’s thumb spread along the top of Soap’s hand, feeling the way his skin was slightly rough but still warmer than anything, “Probably shouldn’t be doing it, but, s’nice.” He finally turned back to the television, strikingly aware that without his bally, Soap could no doubt see the way that he had closed his eyes to speak the sentence, taken in by the sensation of having another human’s palm clutched against his own. The first human who discovered the physical comforts of holding hands must have felt the same way, abjectly baffled by how something so simple felt so good when done with someone they shared their cave with. Something like that. “Anyway, I asked you if you wanted to come and stay with me because I was trying to be—Uh—I don’t know. Something.”
“Kind?” Soap suggested.
“Yeah. Kind.”
“Well,” Soap squeezed his hand again and for a horrible moment Ghost thought he might bring it up to his mouth to kiss gently, but he didn’t, “It is. Kind, I mean. I actually would have been completely up shit creek without a paddle if not for you. You’re a good mate, Simon. Don’t really get them much doing what we do.”
“Is this what mates do?” Simon shook their hands a little.
“Not sure.” Much to Ghost’s dismay, the television had begun the blare the tell-tale organ opening to Procol Harum’s A Whiter Shade of Pale and he was forced to keep his mouth in a sharp, flat line and not bark out that he ‘loved this song’ as Soap’s eyes attached to the side of his head like glue, lazing their way over him. Like a tongue lapping over skin, slow and steady, hot with justified want. “We could try and figure it out?”
“Christ.” Ghost rumbled a laugh, “Yeah, go on then.” His palm was sweaty against Johnny’s, he could feel it, “Maybe don’t tell Gaz. That we’re mates .”
“I’m no giving him a play-by-play of everything I do, don’t you worry.” Soap shrugged, clearly more adjusted to the idea of whatever this was turning into between them, casual and cool as thick-headed men in their late twenties were to things of the ilk, “I’ll spend a couple of days here. Maybe you could show me around the city, have a nice dinner somewhere. Make the most of being down. It’ll be like when I went to visit him when he was living in—Where was it?—Bethnal Green? Somewhere in London, anyway…”
Owner of a Lonely Heart was playing now, which annoyed Simon only slightly because he wouldn’t consider the song Prog-Rock even if it was by Yes, but whatever .
“You don’t shag Gaz.” Ghost said, sort of understanding what Soap was getting at. He knew what FWB stood for, he wasn’t that old or that stupid.
“No.” Soap grinned, all teeth, “Just you, actually.”
“So, we’re just chums then. Chums who—”
“Bum?” Soap suggested.
Ghost’s free hand scratched at the back of his neck, suddenly finding it to be prickling with an itchy energy that despite gouging his nails into the top layer of his skin, he couldn’t quite rid himself of, not until he asked, with as much humility and sincerity as a man like him could ask, “You want me to take you out to dinner?”
“If you know any places.” Soap nodded at their empty plates, “This was nice but it’s not exactly sustainable for the entire time.”
“I can cook.” Ghost heard his lips smack together at the injustice of Johnny’s implication, “I just didn’t have anything in.”
“Two mates can go out for dinner without it being weird. Just don’t make it weird.”
“You’re very adamant this is normal.”
“It’s normal if you don’t be a fanny about it.” Soap’s head lolled back against the sofa cushions, giving Simon a good look at the topographical line of his throat, exposed and full of thrumming blood, just below the surface, “I’ve fucked friends before. I’m still friends with them. I’m good at this, and if you’ll let me stay a bit during this leave cycle, I think we’d both enjoy it.”
It felt a little empty. Just shy of being almost too bittersweet for Simon’s usually very hidden sensibilities to handle and he almost whipped his hand away from Soap’s and barked that he ‘didn’t want to be fucking friends’, but he wasn’t even sure what might follow that. Because he would have quite liked to be mates with Johnny, in the way that everyone else got to be mates with people. The ones you could go down the pub with and play pool with, or ones that you invited to your wedding and felt no sense of urgent embarrassment at the fact they didn’t know you well enough to be there. Mates. Friends. Blokes together.
It could make sense, if Ghost reached so far into himself that he could just about feel the silky tendrils of normalcy as they brushed up against his fingertips and reminded him that, at the end of the day, he wasn’t inhuman. He didn’t drink blood or bite the heads off of enemies. He was a man called Simon, who liked two sugars in his tea and enjoyed trips to the cinema by himself whenever he could. Normal in the way that you had to allow a very tiny part of yourself to remain normal, otherwise you’d end up going completely mad and killing yourself.
“Right, Simon?”
He realised he’d been very quiet for a long while, enough that the credits to the television programme were rolling and the voice-over for BBC 4 was telling the viewer that Rick Stein’s Long Weekends was coming up next and as much as he would have liked to keep the sensation of Johnny’s hand grasping his own as long as humanly possible, Simon tentatively pulled his hand away. Feeling the way that Soap tried to cling onto him and wishing that their leave hadn’t been granted, then he might not have to be put into situations where some cheeky, short Scottish bloke wasn’t making it feel like someone was banging a gong inside of his head.
“I know a few nice places to eat.” He said, teeth almost gritted together, allowing just enough air and sound through, “We could go see the Minster if you want? I don’t go to the tourist-y places much honestly. Generally, I’d rather shit in my hands and clap, but we can have a bit of a wander.”
“You’re so different when you’re not on base or out on the field, has anyone ever told you that?”
Ghost wiped his sweaty hand on his trousers, “I don’t know. I don’t see people when I come home. You’re the first person I’ve had in this flat.”
“Really?” Johnny’s mouth fell open, “Not even like—Oh—Um. Well.” Like he had just remembered the self imposed act of celibacy that Ghost had broken with him.
“I’m just—” Ghost couldn’t think of the right word and ‘a miserable, lonely prick’ didn’t quite sit right, so he settled on, “—Private. I just spend a lot of time with myself and that’s alright with me.”
“I’m not intruding, then, am I?”
“No.”
“You’d tell me if I was?”
“Yes.”
“Conversationalist of the year, you are.” Soap’s eyes rolled fondly, like he was trudging through the learning stages of Simon’s new ‘out of work’ personality like the trooper he always tended to be with everything. Taking it all with a smile and a joke, “You gonnae show me my room then?”
Oh. Bollocks, the room.
“Right. About that.”
When the door to the spare room was pushed open to reveal the piles of crap that Simon had tossed in there earlier in the day, Soap looked like he was about to start clapping his hands in unabashed glee, beaming from ear to ear as he all but cackled and shoved his shoulder into Ghost’s, almost toppling him over with the force of it as he said, “You’re a nutter. If you wanted me to sleep with you again, you should have just asked.”
To which Simon did have a relatively witty and scathing retort for but it was smothered by Soap pushing him against the jut of the casing of the door, hands on his hips as he kissed him as though that was something that was allowed without any kind of ado. Which, maybe it was, if what Johnny implied about the nature of their relationship was true and not just him taking the piss out of a situation that shouldn’t have gone any further than the bedsheets of Ghost’s motel room. To make things worse, Johnny sighed into the kiss and muttered, “This okay?”
His voice was low and soft, the way he spoke under his breath when he wanted you and only you to hear while you were out in the field, throat mics turned off and face bare. He pushed Ghost up against the hard surface of the doors lip but with any kind of resistance he could have been pushed away, Ghost could feel it in the tense of his body, ready to spring away if Simon didn’t want him all over him. Which he did, but he also wanted to drape his sluggish body over to the bed and collapse into it, hours of sleep the previous night done on a sofa catching up to him as he peeled Johnny’s hands off of his hips and said, “Yeah. It’s good.” And then, “Sorry about the spare room. I should have tidied it. It’s a prick move to try and get you into my bedroom like that.”
“It’s fine. We’re on the same page, me an’ you. Same wavelength.”
Ghost really wanted to say, ‘I’m not sure about that’ and ‘I shagged you out of everyone in the world after not shagging for a decade and now you’re talking about being mates’, but instead, he said, “Definitely. I’m gonna go have a slash and then brush my teeth. Make yourself comfortable.” And waved a hand at the entrance to his bedroom, hoping that he’d remembered to empty the bin of used cummy tissues the last time he’d been home because he certainly hadn’t done it this time.
Much to his dismay, Soap hovered around him as he stuffed his toothbrush into his mouth and stared dead into the mirror, trying to not catch his eye as he dug the bristles into his gums a little too hard and spat a small amount of blood into the sink. Frowning at it as he finished up, stepping out of the way so that Soap could muscle his way in and Ghost watched for a moment, watching Soap’s fingers push through his mohawk. If he was honest, Ghost wasn’t the biggest fan of the style, but only since the time he had seen Johnny with his hair grown out. Less aerodynamic or whatever stupid reason he kept the mohawk, but undeniably soft and it had made him look simultaneously so much younger and yet also so much more mature. Less like a little boy playing dress up in SAS garb. Simon had longed to see it again ever since and it had eluded him the entire time.
The light flickered off, Soap’s hands having tugged on the hanging cord as he left the bathroom and it cast the entrance way into darkness and all it took was Johnny’s hand on the small of Ghost’s back to guide him into the bedroom. The two of them remained in darkness until Simon could scramble to flip the switch on the little lamp on his bedside table and he glanced between the bed and Soap, face unreadable to the other man as he said, “I haven’t changed the sheets.”
“Okay?” Soap raised an eyebrow.
“I forgot.”
“Mate, I’m not bothered. I’ve slept in much worse places, you have too. Cummoan. Stop being a Jessie.” He slid in, peeling back the duvet and then slotting himself into Simon’s space like it was the easiest thing in the world, to encroach upon the peace that Simon had whittled for himself. Except, it wasn’t really peace that he held while he was in this flat. It was boredom and a loneliness that he didn’t often think about because if he did, he’d end up tearing his hair out at the root.
So, he followed Soap in, stiff as anything as he slipped into his own bed that he slept in less than the room he occupied in the barracks, so much so that the mattress felt too soft more often than not. So used to the way that his back felt when he’d wake up in Credenhill, muscles groaning with a pleasant agony that reminded him that he was a professional who lived to perform his job. Someone like Laswell would say jump and Ghost would already be ready to leap.
He didn’t think too much on where Graves and Shepherd came into that though.
“Does Gaz know you’re here?” Ghost wasn’t sure why he asked it, laying rigid in bed to try and limit the suspicion that all he wanted, more than anything, was to cuddle up to Soap like a complete fucking idiot. But he couldn’t stop the nagging thought that somehow this was all going to get back to someone it shouldn’t. Put into the hands of someone that would see the two of them completely bollocksed by the legislation of their occupation, just because they wanted to find a little comfort within each other’s presence.
“No. Told him I was going home.” Soap propped himself up with his elbow in the pillows and his hand cupping his face, mouth lax and smiling, confident in ways that Ghost wasn’t sure he ever was before he found his real face, “He doesn’t care. You know he doesn’t. If Price’s reaction to us going at it the other night is anything to go by, neither does he.”
“He’s probably well disappointed.” Ghost murmured, finally gathering the courage to tuck the duvet under his armpits and lace his fingers over his belly, “I feel like a naughty child.”
“We’re just friends. It’s fine.” Soap sounded resolute and it dawned upon Simon that perhaps this was the work around. Just for now. “Do you know he had a missus?”
“No.” Ghost frowned, reeling through his knowledge of Price, “Did he?”
“Heard they got married when he was about eighteen and she was a few years older. Not much.” Soap’s hand slowly crept towards Simon’s, not stopping until he was cupping both of them into the shell of his bed-warmed fingers, eyes following the goose-bumps that spread across the skin of Ghost’s arms as he continued, “Think they got divorced a few years into it. Gaz only found out because Price got really, really wankered when they first met a few years ago. Never spoke about it again, though. Funny the things that people hide when it comes to what we do. Like they’re trying to save people from it.”
“Mm.” Simon grunted in agreement, “Surely he’s not stupid enough to be on a dating app if that’s what he practises.”
Soap shrugged as well as he could with his body smushed into the bed, “From what I can gather, it was a pretty anonymous profile. Gaz only noticed because he recognised a tattoo.”
“ Fucking hell .” Ghost breathed, then laughed sharp and loudly, just the once, “Why the fuck was Gaz on a dating app?”
“Trying to get his hole.”
“Don’t translate that. I can guess.”
“Gaz fancies him, you know.”
The bed was slowly starting to warm nicely with the two of them in it and Ghost could feel the incremental, minute movements of Soap’s body as he twitched closer, something that might not have been noticed by a regular person but he wasn’t normal. Not in any way. And he could sense the vibrations of the duvets and the way the bed creaked almost inaudibly as Soap hedged his bets of getting a wee cuddle, as he might describe it. It was distracting and Ghost almost was lost to the crooking finger of the heat of Soap’s body and the leaden feeling of his eyelids slipping down, survival instincts turned all the way down once he stepped through the threshold.
“Wait. What—Who?” Ghost mumbled, taking the opportunity to wrestle their hands around so that he could grasp Johnny’s fist and draw it up to his chest, almost hugging the limb like you might a stuffed animal, which was apt given how furry Johnny was.
“Gaz. He’s got a weird hero worship thing for Price and, personally, I think he’d give him a go if he offered. Which, he won’t. But Gaz doesn’t fancy men too often from what he’s told me and if he’s stooped to downloading Grindr, then he’s clearly aff his heid about something. I think that something is his very complicated feelings for an older man who he really, really can’t get involved with.”
“I don’t think any of that is true.”
“Naw,” Soap tapped his forehead with a finger, “Anno more than you about it. I think I’m onto something here.”
“On crack.”
“Oi. Arsehole .” Soap laughed taking the chance to struggle closer, so much so that the fan of his breath puffed against the freckled skin of Simon’s shoulder and when he bid him a very stilted goodnight a moment later as the time and conversation lulled between them into a simple quiet, Soap leaned over to kiss Simon on the mouth. Just once, again. As though he was only allowing himself the satisfaction of the single kiss, or perhaps, was just holding himself back because he really wanted another occurrence of the kiss against the door. Either way, Ghost leaned into it, mouth open only enough that it made the kiss smack when they pulled away and Soap managed to ruin it all by murmuring, “Night, mate.”
Which was a bit like taking a lemon and squeezing it over an open wound, but Ghost didn’t bring that up.