Work Text:
It’s nights like these when life becomes quiet. No explosions, no gunfire, no sounds and echos of war, just silence. Occasional scribbles of pencil on paper, the smell of an autumn themed candle drifting into the rooms musty smell, the light flickering in the corner of Simon’s eye.
It’s nights like these when it all goes quiet. All the panic and thoughts in his mind, the rough edges of his brain cutting into the perception of his life which he was unwillingly given. But he makes it work. His hands rough and calloused coming up to shift the paper of the book to the side, continuing the chapter with deep imaginations and breaths.
He looks up. The sergeant sat with his back to him at the desk, the candlelight the only thing illuminating his chiselled face, as if he was made from the God’s themselves. Simon exhales slowly, watching as Johnny’s face contorts in concentration. It isn’t the same as what he sees on the field, he is more relaxed and content. Relaxed and content because he is with his favourite person. Simon is his favourite person.
He makes life work, Simon does. He makes it work because he has his Johnny.
His eyes must’ve bore holes in the back of Johnny’s head as the bed shifts beside him, and he is suddenly engulfed by a warm body encasing his own. The smell of coconut fills his nostrils as he presses a kiss to that stupid mohawk that he loves so much.
All the torture clashes like flashbangs behind his eyes, his face scarring with even a look at the triggers that he’s pulled, the triggers that cause him to become the Ghost. His mind fogged with screams and blood driven down its walls, his thoughts nothing but everything that’s happened to him, everything that he’s done and everything that he will do.
It’s nights like these where his mind is quiet. Where he focuses on the rise and fall of the chest of what’s his, where he focuses on what’s right in front of him, grounding him from his endless path of anxiety and threat.
With the mask, he is a brutal, killing machine with little to no remorse for human life if it got in the way of what he wanted, needed. But without the mask, he was just Simon. He looks at his Johnny, and he smiles, his face bare, scars for show like a case of earned trophies.
He watches his sergeant smile back, eyes gleaming with admiration and a sense of hope.
It’s nights like these that life is finally his own.