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There were always too many people.
If there was one thing Ghost hated more than anything, it was feeling like he was being boxed in- squished among the suffocating heat of bodies like a sardine. The way people’s arms and shoulders brushed against his as they moved past; lingering touches that made his body tingle in all the wrong ways. If there was something he hated almost as much, it was Christmas. The shining lights and joyous laughter of those around him stood out in stark contrast to the dark void threatening to consume him from the inside out.
It brought back too many bad memories.
All of it.
Another arm brushed against his, and Ghost found his hand itching for the gun tucked away in his waistband. Ghost agreed to a nice family outing, he did not agree to strangers touching him all night. Someone was going to find themselves in the wrong place, squeezing past the wrong person, and regret it. Ghost would make sure they regretted it. Ghost would make sure no one ever touched him again. Ghost would-
“Uncle Simon?”
Ghost blinked, quickly focusing in on the voice. Patty stood before him, effectively blocking his path. She looked up at him with those big doe-eyes of hers and held up the small cup she was carrying.
“Ma is getting ice cream, do you want some?”
Ghost’s eyebrows knit together. “Aren’t you cold?”
“Nope!” As if to prove her point, Patty ate a large scoop of the ice cream and raced back towards her mother.
“I don’t know where she gets that from,” Johnny chattered at his side.
Ghost shook his head as he wrapped an arm around his partner. Johnny had been complaining about the cold for 10 minutes before Ghost handed over his jacket to shut him up. Not that he minded; Ghost wasn’t cold anyway, and he liked the way Johnny looked in his clothes. His jacket looked like a dress on the smaller man, which was only funny because Johnny really wasn’t that small to begin with.
Not that that stopped Ghost from bullying Johnny for his height anyway.
“I think the better question is where do you get it from?” Ronnie laughed from Johnny’s other side. “You’re the only one that's cold.”
“Cause it’s fucking cold, Ronnie! Not all of us can be bison-chested Americans like you.”
“You might be the least Scottish Scot I’ve ever met.”
“Oi you take that back you motherfucker I will fucking kill you how dare you I will end you-”
Ghost smiled.
Maybe this wasn’t his most ideal outing, but it was nice in its own ways. Ghost couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a night out with people he loved like this. Love might have been a strong word, but Ghost knew he at least cared enough about these people to go through this kind of effort for them.
“Where are we going again?” Ghost asked, taking up just enough of Johnny’s attention to stop his threats on Ronnie’s life.
“I think we’re trying to find the giraffes? Those are Patty’s favorite,” he answered.
“So we had to come in the dead of night, when there are also hundreds of people here for some reason?”
“We’re not really here for the giraffes, we’re just here to see the lights,” Ronnie explained. “The zoo puts up these elaborate decorations with Christmas lights. We come every year.”
“Why on earth would you do that?”
“It’s a tradition, you know? Your family doesn’t have Christmas traditions?”
Ghost’s jaw clenched, but he couldn’t get mad at Ronnie. Some people got to have nice lives. It was their fault Ghost wasn’t one of them.
“I don’t celebrate Christmas,” he answered simply.
In his periphery, Ghost could see Johnny subtly shaking his head at Ronnie. The pair shared a look and some kind of silent conversation that Ghost wasn’t a part of. Ronnie nodded his understanding, and that was that. They moved on to talking about their favorite exhibits, and got into another spat about whether the polar bears or grizzly bears were the better bear.
Ghost preferred black bears.
There was a shout of laughter somewhere to Ghost’s left, and suddenly there was a body pushing hard into his. Ghost reeled from the touch, one instant away from drawing his gun before he made eye contact with the young boy at his side. The teen laughed and apologized, quickly regrouping with his friends with some accompanying shouts. The group quickly disappeared in the sea of faces.
Next to him, Ronnie and Johnny continued bickering like nothing had even happened. Neither man was any wiser to Ghost’s quickening heart beat, nor the near murder that’d almost taken place. Beneath the storm brewing in his mind, Ghost was dimly aware of the envy he felt towards them. He wondered what it was like to not care about little things like that. He wondered what it was like to think of those things as little. He wondered what he would be like if he hadn’t been forced to care about those kinds of things.
The already cramped space began to feel smaller, and Ghost knew immediately that he needed an out. He hated making Johnny deal with him and his problems, especially when they were supposed to be having a nice time together. Ghost refused to be a burden on these people, so, like the Ghost he was, he silently untangled himself from Johnny and slipped away.
Once swallowed by the sea of people, the overstimulation only worsened. The heat of so many bodies was overwhelming, and he couldn’t escape the sensation of people touching him when he didn’t want to be. All around him people were laughing and smiling like there wasn’t a care in the world. The decorative lights flashed and blinked around him, casting the world in a sickly red glow. He moved faster through the crowd until he wasn’t even moving at all.
Ghost was in the back of a taxi racing through the streets of Brighton. Joyous laughter and twinkling lights whizzed past outside the window, and the sharp pain of a probably fractured ankle enveloped his left foot. Ghost ignored all of it. He watched the streets change around him, mapping his location through the city and mentally timing how long it would take to get home.
He shouldn’t have left them. Ghost couldn’t stop the sound of his nephew’s voice, dripping with naive confusion, as he asked his father why his Uncle wouldn’t stay. Nor could he ignore his brother’s voice, soaked in its own passive anger, Simon has more important things than us, Joseph.
That wasn’t true.
That wasn’t true and Ghost was going to tell them. He just needed to get home, and he needed them to be there. He prayed to whatever force listening that they were there, and that they were ok. Simon just needed his family to be ok, and if that meant praying to every god out there, he would do it.
Maybe if he had just prayed harder, they would have been ok.
When Ghost came to, he was sitting on some secluded bench in a dark corner. Satisfied with the thought that no one could see him, Ghost curled in on himself, allowing his mind to replay whatever it needed to to make it through.
The first thing he saw was Patty, face slick with tears and a knife pressed against her throat. What kind of monster could hurt a child? Ghost could name a few, he thought, as he watched Patty’s face morph into Joseph’s. Ghost wondered, not for the first time, if his nephew’s final moments had been spent in fear. He didn’t know if the kills had been long and drawn out or quick and clean. Did Washington make his brother watch his son die, or was it the other way around? Ghost always had more questions than he did answers, but this was the only time it ever truly bothered him.
From somewhere beneath the storm, a song began to bubble up. Ghost recognized it immediately as his mothers voice, gently singing a lullaby from his childhood. Her voice was saccharine sweet, and Ghost listened to it with rapt attention. He hummed along quietly, drowning out the sounds of gunshots and laughter with her voice. Slowly, the sounds of the real world around him found their way back into his ears.
Ghost opened his eyes, carefully examining his surroundings. Perhaps his bench wasn’t as secluded as he’d first thought, but no one had bothered him. Ghost also had no idea how long he’d been sitting there, but his legs ached when he stretched them out. He’d probably been away for long enough, he decided. Imagining the kind of fit Johnny was having at his lost partner did pull a small smile onto Ghost’s lips, odd as it felt.
With a deep breath and a quick neck pop, Ghost prepared himself to brave the sea of bodies once more.
“Well, fancy seeing you here stranger,” lilted an oddly familiar voice. Just to his right, 2 figure’s stood out among the crowd; Ghost was quick to recognize the auburn hair of Clarissa, making the small boy hovering around her Timothee.
“You really are a spy, aren’t you?” Ghost deadpanned.
Clarissa laughed as she scooped her son up into her arms. “As exciting as that sounds, no I'm not. Just lucky, I suppose. Are you here with your niece?”
“She’s with her mother. Who I should be getting back to.”
“Mind a bit of company?”
Ghost sighed just slightly. Truthfully, Ghost didn’t think he wanted the company, but the darkness lingering on the edges of his mind didn’t seem to be giving him a choice. As annoying as she was, at least Clarissa was a familiar face he could focus on.
“Sure.”
“Great! Where to?” she beamed.
“The giraffes, I think? You know where that is?”
“I love giraffes!” Timothee near shouted from his mother’s arms. “Did you know they sleep and give birth standing up!”
“Very interesting.”
“The giraffes are on the other side of the zoo, so it looks like we’ve got a bit of a hike ahead of us.”
“Joy.” Ghost shoved his hands into his pockets, and the trio began their journey.
“You could stand to at least pretend to be happy,” Clarissa chided. “You know, you still haven’t told me your name.”
“You still haven't told me who you work for.”
“I work for the BBC. Who do you work for, mystery man?”
Ghost huffed. “Call me Simon.”
“Well it's nice to meet you Simon.”
“Hey Mr. Simon, did you know giraffes can grow up to 5 and a half meters?” Timothee rambled. “And newborns are taller than most people! Hey, how tall are you?”
“Six foot four.”
“Oh. I thought you were British.”
Ghost eyed the kid with confusion as Clarissa laughed with no inhibitions. It took a moment for him to remember that Europeans used the metric system. Ghost had spent so much time around the Americans on base he’d gotten used to using imperial, as awful as it was.
“I am,” he answered, a little offended at being implied to be American. “I'm from Manchester.”
“Are you?” Clarissa asked, still recovering from her small laughing fit. “I hear it's lovely this time of year, but I’ve never been.”
“Probably for the better.”
“Must you be so grumpy about everything? You know, there's more to the world than just doom and gloom.”
“Sure, and don’t you know that you’ll never be disappointed if you never get your hopes up?”
“That's.. Sad.”
“Where do you find a turtle with no legs?”
“I'm sorry?”
“Oh where, where!” Timothee asked excitedly.
“Right where you left him.”
Timothee burst out laughing in his mothers arms, catching the attention of a few people as they passed each other by. Clarissa looked at him with no small degree of concern, no doubt rethinking introducing him to Ghost. Her expression softened though when she noticed the crinkle in Ghost’s eyes, silently smiling at his own joke.
“That was a terrible joke,” she smiled.
“You got a better one?”
“What does a spy do when he gets cold?”
“What?”
“He goes undercover!”
“You are not selling this whole not a spy thing very well, you know that?” Ghost asked.
“That’s cause we are spies,” Timothee said nonchalantly as he picked at his jacket zipper.
Immediately, Ghost felt his body tense. He side-eyed the pair, but kept his posture otherwise relaxed. “Is that so?” he asked.
Timothee nodded. “Yup! Mama and I watched the spy movie last week, and now we’re spies too. You can’t tell anyone though, because it's a secret.”
Ghost mentally reprimanded himself. Why would he think to believe a child for even a second? He knew first hand how random their minds could be. He nodded solemnly. “Of course. Your secret's safe with me.”
“Mama said you work for the government. Are you a spy too?”
“I'm a soldier.”
“A soldier?” Clarissa asked, making no attempt to hide the attraction in her voice. “That certainly explains the muscles.”
“Are you objectifying me again?” Ghost asked, doing his best to sound genuinely upset. He wasn’t sure if he’d hit the mark or not though, because Clarissa’s smile only deepened.
“Naw, I would never!” she gasped. “I jist like a keek at a braw ben like yerself. Ye widnae deny a wummin such simple pleasures, wid ye?”
“I would say yes if I had any idea what you just said to me.”
Clarissa’s smile quickly fell away to a rolling laughter. The way she laughed was loud, and unapologetic, and so glaring Soap-like that Ghost was sure it must have been a Scottish thing. The Scots being a loud bunch was not new information, of course.
What was also not new was how much just thinking about Johnny made Ghost miss him. He wished they could’ve been together telling jokes instead. No small part of him wished he hadn’t wandered off and separated them. Part of him wished Johnny had followed him, and part of him knew just how terrible he would’ve felt if Johnny had. Ghost was an adult. He could handle his problems on his own. Though, that didn’t mean he didn’t want someone to care too.
And Johnny did care, he reminded himself. Johnny cared about him so much, and was probably worrying himself sick over Ghost’s disappearance. That was why he needed to find him, and fast.
“ Giraffes!” Timothee shouted, pointing enthusiastically at the enclosure just ahead of them.
Ghost eyed the platform before them. It was bumped into the enclosure, and crowded with people moving up and down the attached stairs. Three giraffes also crowded the platform, sticking their long heads over and into the crowd.
“Can we feed them Mama?”
“You can feed them? Simon asked, genuinely bewildered about why anyone would want to do that. “You don’t think getting close to a wild animal is a little dangerous?”
“I don’t think I’d call them wild,” Clarissa pointed out. “Besides, giraffes are herbivores, so I don’t think we’d be in much danger anyway.”
“So we just stand up there and hand them leaves?”
“No, they’ve got little pellet dispensers that you can use. Haven't you- You’ve never been to a zoo, have you?”
“Can we go feed them please Mama?” Timothee begged again, saving Ghost from having to answer.
Clarissa shook her head. “No, I'm sorry Darling I don't have any change. We can feed them next time, ok?”
“But I wanna feed them now!” Timothee cried, tears beginning to build in his eyes. Without thinking much of it, Ghost opened his arms and motioned for Clarissa to pass him over.
“What are you doing?” she asked quietly, but handed over her son anyway.
“New orders just came in,” Ghost said, wiping at Timothee’s eyes. “Objective: feed those fucking giraffes. You ready soldier?”
Timothee smiled wide, previous tears all but forgotten. He clutched Ghost’s black hoodie tight in his hands as he nodded. “Ready!”
“Let's move.”
The pair quickly cut a line through the sea of people and up onto the platform, Clarissa trailing just a few steps behind. Ghost found the food dispensers after a quick scan, though he did have to watch someone else use it to figure out how. He pulled a few loose coins from his pocket and got himself a handful of pellets, dumping a few into Timothee’s smaller hand. They watched a couple other people try their luck before they were able to worm their way to the edge of the platform.
Timothee thrust his open hand out toward one giraffe, who was happy to wrap its purple tongue around the boy’s hand and relieve it of its food.
“Why is it’s tongue purple?” Simon asked with wonder.
“I dinnae ken,” Timothee said with a shrug. “But they feel weird!”
Ghost followed suit, and very quickly decided that a giraffe’s tongue had one of the worst textures imaginable. He silently reminded himself to never feed any animal ever again, and vigorously wiped his now slimy hand on his jacket.
They wound their way off the platform and found a mostly empty spot by the treeline on the opposite side of the walkway. Ghost handed Timothee back over to his mother, who was smiling like she’d just witnessed her son’s first goal at little league.
“Did you two have fun?” she asked.
“It was so cool,” Timothee gushed. “Mr. Simon, can we go do it again?”
“No,” Ghost answered with no hesitation. “I don’t have any more change,” he amended. A lie, but he didn’t want to risk another crying fit. Ghost was not equipped to handle child tears.
“That’s ok. Can we feed them next time we come?”
“Assuming there is a next time,” Clarissa quickly added, looking up at Ghost with what he could only describe as puppy-dog eyes. Hers had nothing on Johnny’s.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing you again,” Clarissa continued. “Maybe without all the extra.. People, though.” She hiked Timothee up on her hip with a strained smile. “Dinner, perhaps?”
Ghost couldn’t help the grimace that slipped onto his face. “No, I don’t think that’s gonna happen.”
“Why not? You’re a lovely man, clearly great with kids, I bet you’re quite used to women throwing themselves at you. And you're so pent up, going on a date or two would probably do ye some good love. So, dinner at mine?”
“Excuse me?” demanded an oh-so pleasantly familiar voice from next to them. The pair turned to see a rather angry scot, glaring death incarnate towards Clarissa.
Clarissa shifted a little, clearly taken aback. “I'm sorry, but I don’t think anyone was talking to you Sir.”
“Naw, but that is my boyfriend yer talkin’ to, who the hell even are ye!”
“Down boy, it’s not like I was going to say yes,” Ghost laughed.
“Well, some boyfriend you are,” Clarissa scoffed, all but ignoring Ghost now. “I found Simon sitting on a bench all alone! Where were ye then, hmm lad?”
“I-” Johnny clenched his jaw as he stared into Ghost’s soul. Quite the opposite of puppy dog eyes, he thought. Ghost sighed. Apparently some crisis management was now in order.
“Thank you for keeping me company Clarissa, but I’ve found my people now so we’ll be going.” Ghost ruffled Timothee’s hair as he passed, taking Johnny by the arm and dragging him away.
“ Keeping you company?” Johnny whisper yelled as they walked. “Where the fuck were you Simon? Youre there one second, I turn around, and youre fucking gone?”
“I just needed to be alone for a minute.”
“You call that alone? Wit’ some scunner hangin’ off ye? I dinnae- ow, Simon.”
Ghost hadn’t realized his grip on Johnny’s arm had only been tightening as they walked. At Johnny’s protest, Ghost let go like he’d been electrocuted. The pair came to a stand still in the middle of a crowd, and it was like all of Ghost’s previous feelings washed over him again in a wave. He hadn’t meant to leave Johnny alone, or make him worry, but why was he reacting so angrily? He didn’t really think Ghost would do anything with Clarissa, did he? The thought of that alone was almost enough to send Ghost plummeting back over the edge.
At least Johnny seemed to notice that too. His face softened immediately, and he extended one hand for Ghost to take. He took it tentatively, but couldn’t look at Johnny.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean- I know you wouldn’t do anything like that. I just didn’t know where you went, an I was so worried about something happening to you. But I still shouldn’t have.. Reacted like that.”
Ghost nodded, but couldn’t find his voice to give any other response. That seemed to worry Johnny more.
“Are you alright?”
Truthfully, no, Ghost thought. He didn’t want to lie, so he shook his head. Ghost could already imagine the tears forming in Johnny’s eyes at that answer. He hated upsetting people, especially Ghost.
“Is it ok if we keep holding hands?”
Ghost nodded, holding Johnny’s hand just a little tighter. He was almost certain the contact was the only thing keeping him grounded. Johnny nodded, and together the pair silently maneuvered their way through the zoo and back out to the parking lot. The rest of the family stood outside the car, anxiously awaiting their return. Patty rushed them when she noticed them approaching, shouting something Ghost couldn’t have been bothered to understand. Thankfully, Johnny scooped her up into his arms before she could touch Ghost.
“Is everything alright? You guys look sad!” she asked worriedly.
“We’re alright las, just tired is all,” Johnny answered. “I think it’s past your bedtime too, huh?”
“Can we have a sleepover?”
“Not tonight, I don’t think.”
“Damn.”
It was a fairly silent car ride back home, Patty’s chattering the only real sound. It didn’t take long for the kid to tire herself out, falling asleep with her head in Johnny’s lap. Eventually, Ghost too was able to rest his head on Johnny’s shoulder, hand still firmly tangled with his partner’s. Johnny pressed a gentle kiss atop Simon’s head, beginning the long process of untangling the knot that had been forming within him.