Work Text:
Soap had never been able to sit still. Even as a lad, all his school reports included ‘bright, but needs to apply his focus’, ‘John needs to manage his body better, his fidgeting is distracting others’, and others of the sort. He was reprimanded regularly for chewing pens, tearing up paper, scribbling on the desks. Of course, it didn’t help that they didn’t give him anything to do , he just had to sit there and listen, or read, or write, and his brain just didn’t work like that. He loved to learn, and loved science - he had to be clever to become a demo expert - but he always needed something to do with himself while he was doing, or he felt like he was going to tear his hair out.
So when he started learning for himself rather than school, he knew he needed to accommodate for how he worked. It was then he tried all sorts of fidget toys. There were less marketed like that back then, but there were always things like rubic cubes, magnets, those tiny puzzle games. Anything that kept him hands busy while he was thinking worked.
As time went on, and he started working out in the field, he had less space for carrying things like that. He’d started chewing on the chain of his dog tags, fiddling with cables (he always had them with him), and if he had nothing else, he always ended up with his fingernails digging into his skin. It relieved the pressure a little.
Until one day in the barracks, he saw someone doing something with paper, folding it, making little shapes. No glue or anything, just clean folds and it would become a thing , like an animal, or a box, or a star. So he started researching. He’d always enjoyed learning new things, and this was a double whammy - he got to learn and got a new thing to keep his hands busy. And there were so many things to learn! He started with easy ones, like little boxes and stars, and then those paper cranes, he tried a dinosaur, and a cat, and lilies. Then you could do lots of individual components that went together into one big thing, so he could do the same repetitive task over and over again. It was great, he could easily keep a few sheets of paper squares in his vest, and then whenever they had to stay still do do something, or when he was trying to think through a plan, when he needed to stay silent and hidden, he could just keep his hands busy with those precise folds and it would stop that pressure that built up in the base of his skull, making him itch all over.
It took a while before he noticed the finished origami disappearing. He never needed them once they were done, it was the act of doing that he liked, and there were only so many tiny folded bits of paper he could keep. So he’d usually discard them, left somewhere in the canteen, or the break room, or on a desk. He never left them out in the field, he knew better than that - sometimes he’d bring them back, smushed into a pocket, sometimes he’d burn them into ash, no trace left behind. But around base, he’d leave them, and one day he noticed they’d started… disappearing. He thought they were just being thrown in the bin to start with - he ought to have done it himself, anyway, so he wasn’t offended. Then he noticed that there was always one person there every time he made one that vanished from where he left it. That one person that he found his gaze lingering on, that made his skin hot, that left his stomach tying itself in knots. So he started… experimenting. He’d make a little selection of flowers, tied like a bouquet. One time, a box which he put a few tiny animals in. Then, he found he could make a little skull, and that was too perfect to resist. That one, he couldn’t just leave out to fate. No, he took his time on it, getting every fold perfect, and then after a debrief in his Lieutenant’s office, he snuck it onto the corner of the desk just as he left the room.
His heart was beating stupidly fast, he was acting like a teenager with a crush. He walked as quickly as he could back to his room, taking a few deep breaths before distracting himself in work.
It took a few days, a few excruciating days with no response of any kind. It didn’t really matter, he knew he shouldn’t expect too much of the man, and he busied himself choosing the next one to make, something new to learn. Until, there was a firm knock on the door, but no one there once he swung it open. He looked around for the culprit, sure it would just be one of the lads playing a prank, but something caught his eye on the floor. Picking it up, he carefully shut and locked the door before sitting down with the parcel. It was perfectly wrapped, plain paper, crisp folds, tidily stuck tape. He carefully unwrapped it - it was too nicely done to recklessly tear into as he normally might - and the contents made his heart squeeze. A pack of paper, specifically origami paper. And not just any paper, but the posh stuff - he’d seen it during his research, but hadn’t quite bitten the bullet on buying it, the cost a little too high for him. And yet, here he had a whole box of it, just waiting to be used.
Cheeks flushed, he turned back to his research - yes, he’d have to pick the perfect next project for it now.