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Loving Simon Riley was easy. From the moment they had first met, Soap had been endeared by the man. The Halloween costume? Kind of charming. Intimidating, sure, to constantly be by someone’s side whose stare could make any recruit shit themselves, face hidden behind a patched up mask meant to remove one’s identity, separating the man from the soldier. Anyone who saw Ghost from far away assumed him to be a legend, a broken shell of a man who had gone through so much that all was left behind was the echo of what he used. He was, in some ways, but he was so much more than that.
It was the small things that Soap quickly learned to love. The way the corner of his eyes crinkled when he told a bad joke, visible despite the black makeup. How he would turn his head before lifting his mask when they were eating together, trying to hide his face even then. How his dark eyes caught the sunrises, orange beams reflecting so perfectly in the brown hue of his irises. The horrible shirts he always wore at the gym, either with bad jokes or shitty band design on them. The way he always stood behind Soap, always watching his back, always.
When the two of them became more than brothers in arms, it was an entirely new person that Johnny learned to love, so many more details to discover. The way Simon loved to grab Johnny from the back, his big arms wrapping themselves around his form and pulling him closer to his chest, silent, placing kisses in the back of Soap’s neck, hot breath against his skin, as if he was afraid to lose him. How he always slept with his head facing the door, his back never turned to it. The light gray hair on his temples he always sighed when spotting. How he always stared at the rest of the world like he wasn’t truly a part of it, gaze losing itself for a moment as he watched people go by their lives, only coming back to his senses when Johnny approached him.
It was easy to love Simon Riley, but Simon Riley didn’t believe that.
Nothing had made this more obvious than the first time he had allowed Johnny inside his apartment. A small, cheap flat in Manchester, two rooms, a bedroom, a small balcony, elderly neighbors, cracks in the walls and mold in the corners, the kind of place you would expect for him. Simon had obviously been nervous about bringing Johnny home, even if the two had been together for a while then, the entire thing being unexpected as they had found themselves more drunk than they had anticipated and in need of a place to sleep for the night.
The inside was pretty much what Soap had expected. Bare-bones. No real decorum. No pictures on the walls. Neat for the most part.
The kitchen was small, packed with the bare minimum, the fridge full of quick meals, cans and not much more. No plants, he had tried when he was younger but kept killing them, apparently. No animals, of course, who had time to take care of them with the job they both had. There was a shelf with books in them, although most of them were coated in a thick layer of dust. No mirrors, except for the one in the bathroom, which had clearly been broken by a large fist. One toothbrush, one towel, one razor, one bottle of shampoo.
His bedroom had been the worst offender. A single person bed in a corner of the room. “We’ll make it work” he had told him. Again, no pictures, just a few postcards up on the wall near his desk. Soap recognized a few he had mailed him when the two had been sent on different side of the world. That made him smile.
Fitting in the bed was difficult. It already would have been complicated to fit two normal-sized people in a single person bed, but two buff guys like them was a whole other challenge. Simon kept apologizing, his tone way too close to being shameful for Johnny’s liking. They found a comfortable enough position eventually, Ghost’s back against the cold wall while he held Soap tightly in his arms, their legs intertwined as best they could.
There was silence as soon as they went to bed, but Johnny could feel that Simon wasn’t sleeping. His breathing against the back of his neck was steady, his fingers digging into his flesh, not painfully, but purposely. It had been difficult, then, to find the right words, but Johnny eventually talked, his voice almost a whisper in the strange quiet of the night.
“Am I the first person you ever took home?”
He knew the answer, of course, only confirmed by a quiet “yeah” he could feel against his skin.
Johnny wanted to ask him why, but the signs around the flat were pretty telling. Simon had never settled here, never took root. It wasn’t uncommon, for men like them, to feel at odds with their civilian lives. The man versus the soldier. Simon versus Ghost. Of course, it was different for him. Rare were the soldiers who had gone through what he had gone through. The job had taken literally everything from him. His purpose, his family, his identity. Whoever Simon had been before all of this was long gone, replaced by an echo of the man he used to be, floating through life like a ghost, never really belonging anywhere, no tether to bring him back to the living, no one to remember him.
Loneliness was a cruel affliction. Soap couldn’t recall how many times he had spotted Ghost back at base when he should have been gone and on leave. He asked him, then, many times, what he was doing here, and every single time, Simon would shrug, making up excuses about “catching up on some paperwork while he could”.
Now that Johnny had seen what waited for Ghost once he got back “home”, it suddenly made a lot more sense.
Gently, Soap grabbed one of Simon’s hand and brought it to his lips, kissing the pale skin of his knuckles and intertwining his fingers with his, before turning around, almost falling out of the bed as he did so.
“What are you doing?” Ghost asked, the darkness not enough to hide his puzzled expression.
“Turn around, I want to hold ya.”
A snort escaped Simon’s lips, almost mocking, as if he didn’t believe him. Well, he probably didn’t, and so Johnny insisted.
“What? Don’t think I can spoon ya?”
“The fuck you want to do this for, Johnny?”
“Do I need a fucking reason? Jesus Christ, just turn around and let me hold you.”
After another second of hesitation, Simon relented, turning around, face facing the wall as Johnny laid back down, his arms going around his bigger shape and getting as close to him as possible. Half of his ass was hanging from the bed but it was manageable, especially after Simon grabbed one of his arm, Johnny’s hand coming to rest on top of his heart.
It was his turn to be able to kiss the back of Simon’s neck, lips gently meeting his cold skin while his free hands played with his hair, fingers tenderly brushing them as he felt his partner slowly relax in his arms.
It was then that Johnny decided to offer Simon to come live with him. He would ask him, the next day, while the two would be preparing breakfast. He wouldn’t make a big deal out of it, just a casual mention. His flat was big enough for the both of them, Simon had been there already and liked the place, Johnny had a king-size bed, and a decorum that didn’t remind him of a prison cell. Hopefully, Simon would say yes, but if he didn’t, he would understand. Recovery was a slow process, and no matter what Simon decided, he would stick by his side, finding more ways every day to love the man he had fallen for.