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MacTavish knocks on the door when every light in the barracks has been turned off. He keeps his rap of his knuckles light and his steps lighter, and the answer from inside is nigh inaudible.
The door creaks open and Riley peeks at him through the crack before stepping back to let him inside. MacTavish closes it behind himself as silently as he can.
It’s become a routine. A silent habit they both share after the day is done. Born of necessity, but one MacTavish doesn’t mind.
Riley minds it some more. That much is obvious from how his shoulders fall with a sigh. He faces the lamp on the table, then grabs the hem of his hoodie and pulls it over his head. Everything necessary is in the kit stuffed into the top drawer of the desk. Riley waits with his head hanging low.
In the dim yellow light of the table lamp, his skin looks soft. In the late silence and tranquillity, his sigh comes gentle. He waits with his head tilted to the right as if baring himself, and even though it’s quickly become a routine and one of necessity, MacTavish still lingers a moment to let the feeling permeate him. Riley with his back towards him, illuminated by the faint glow of the lamp, waiting for him.
It’s only them and no one else at all. The pressure of others is shuttered behind the locked door that encloses them in this little pocket of space. Taking a step forwards is like wading through water.
MacTavish places his palm on Riley’s back. His hand splays out over his trapezius. Riley’s body shifts as he breathes out. The muscles deflate under his palm. The skin warms up where it’s always a smidgeon too cold to the touch. Riley sways – into his palm, then away from it, and into it again. Like he’s unbalanced, or dizzy, or can’t decide which way to allow himself to lean. MacTavish draws an arc with his thumb, following the line of his vertebrae. Riley’s next breath comes shuddering.
MacTavish pulls back until it’s just his fingertips gliding over his skin, up to the left shoulder until they catch behind the edge of the bandage. The adhesive has come loose at the corner. Riley has undoubtedly been scratching and picking at it again.
He peels the bandage off as gently as he can. Riley makes no reaction to it either way, but his breaths come too steady to be natural. They’re barely audible even in the quiet of the room; MacTavish can still feel it with his hands on Riley’s back.
The plastic packaging crinkles loudly, but the cotton swabs inside are silent. Riley flinches at the first touch. MacTavish sets a palm on his nape to soothe him. Riley leans into it, then away again. Sometimes it feels like MacTavish uses that touch to ground himself rather than Riley.
The cut looks better than yesterday, though still a deep red, the healing skin tender. The position of it is painful, even as Riley makes it look like a non-issue. He’s good at hiding things like this. It’s only obvious in how he prefers to let his left arm hang by his side instead of crossing it across his chest, how he lounges with his side leaned against some wall instead of his whole back. It’s obvious in how he stays in the office that he never uses and takes on work he’s technically exempt from.
MacTavish hushes him as he draws the disinfectant over the wound. The sound is more an escape of air than anything else. He draws circles into the back of Riley’s neck with his thumb, coaxing his finger higher until the tip slips under the hem of the balaclava. Riley is tense under his hands, yet he’s never made a single complaint since the first night that MacTavish came to change the dressing instead of the medical team.
The packaging rips open. MacTavish touches his fingers to Riley’s shoulder before he starts fitting it over the wound. A deep cut from a hostile approaching from behind. Not the only wound he sustained, but the only one Riley can’t tend to himself. MacTavish drags his fingertips down the line the bandage will cover, drawing the shape of it before pressing the adhesive to skin. It’s a tricky spot, the skin pulled taut with the slightest movement, like Riley listing forwards to lean is hands on the table. He curls them into fists, shoulders hunched, head lowered.
Wisps of hair peek out from under the back of the mask where the hem has ridden up from pulling his hoodie off. MacTavish smooths down the edge of the bandage. Riley’s breath hitches. MacTavish flattens the edges one more time, his touch light and gentle and too soft to actually press it any firmer to skin.
His fingers trail down the middle of the bandage, ghosting over the shape of the cut. A single downwards slice that he follows to the edge of the wound, then over the edge of the bandage, and further down yet.
He can’t hear Riley’s breaths, and with his touch so light he can’t feel them either. They might come shallow, or they might not come at all. Riley stays perfectly still as his hand drifts down until the small of his back. MacTavish’s hand veers sideways before he reaches the waistband of his trousers to caress over dip of his lower back, then the convex of his hips. MacTavish steps closer as he curls his palms around Riley’s waist.
It's just his hands. It’s the only point where they touch. His boots are nearly beside Riley’s and their legs might brush at a mere sway, but MacTavish keeps that paper-thin distance between them, even as he leans forwards to follow the hunched curve of Riley’s spine.
He lets his breath fan over Riley’s shoulder first. He follows it with his mouth a few seconds after. Nothing more than a dry press of his lips to the bony part of his collarbone. Barely-there pressure that makes Riley tilt his head to the opposite side. On the table, his hands are still curled into fists, fingers blanched white.
“Feels like I haven’t seen you,” MacTavish murmurs against his shoulder. In the edge of his vision, Riley makes a slight gesture with his head. He shrugs with the other shoulder. A tiny motion that barely moves him at all.
“Tired.”
“Tired?”
“Mm.” He hums an affirmative. MacTavish lifts his mouth only to tilt his head up and peer at Riley’s expression. It’s hidden beneath the mask, but his eyes are closed. “Don’t want to bother you anyway, since you’re busy. With the mission details.”
The mission details that are supposed to fix the ones that were fucked up. The ones that resulted in the deep knife wound on Riley’s shoulder and the bruises over his hip and the adamant recommendation for bed rest. The ones that resulted in Riley taking up any excuse to be busy with work and the ones that resulted in Riley pressing his coiled fists into the table.
“I can make time for you.” MacTavish presses his mouth to his shoulder again. A little farther out, so he can keep track of how Riley’s lashes flutter, like he doesn’t quite want to open his eyes. His jaw shifts beneath the mask, but no smart comment follows. No quip about MacTavish already seeing him every evening, no teasing smirk he can read even through the fabric. He only hears the slight exhale of breath.
His body warms up beneath MacTavish’s hands, gently holding him and nothing more. Riley lists into him, barely perceptible, yet he corrects himself a moment later anyway. He tilts his head away, closed eyes looking at the corner of his room, avoiding MacTavish’s gaze roving over his face.
“Simon?”
He sucks a breath in.
“It’s alright.” He nods his head, confirming words MacTavish hasn’t said. “You don’t— you don’t have to.”
His arm twitches like he wants to unwind his fist. He breathes in deep through his stomach so MacTavish feels it in his hands. Riley holds that breath. Then turns his face away again.
MacTavish lifts one palm and Riley’s breath comes out shuddering. He sets it on the back of his neck. First the tips of his fingers, then the rest of his palm, slowly easing upwards to slip his fingers under the hem of the mask, brushing through the soft hairs at his nape.
“Let me look at you.”
He turns Riley with the palm on his waist, barely any strength behind it so it’s more of a suggestion. Riley’s arms fall to his sides the moment he isn’t leaning on them anymore, hands only loosely curled. He doesn’t lift his eyes, looking vaguely near MacTavish’s chest, even as he cups his jaw with both hands to ease the mask up.
“It’s just scars,” Riley mutters. MacTavish drags his thumb over the silvery line across his chin, fading into Riley’s bottom lip. Then upwards, over the crooked bridge of his nose, Riley’s lashes fluttering as the fabric slides over his eyes. Over the faint line near his hair, mussed from being under the balaclava more often than not these last few days.
“It’s just you.”
MacTavish drops the mask on the table. Through his lashes and downturned gaze, he can just barely make out the blue of Riley’s eyes. In the dim light of the lamp, they’re dark, almost a stormy grey.
“Not much.” Riley shrugs. MacTavish cups his cheek in one palm, easing his chin up to face him.
“It’s enough.”
Riley blinks up at him. The angle of the light accentuates his lashes, casting dark shapes over his cheekbones and framing his eyes. It covers the purpling bruise around his eye, softened by the shadows until it doesn’t look as painful as it must feel. MacTavish draws an arc under it with his thumb, skirting around the edge of the bruise where it bleeds into blue.
Riley’s eyes lower, looking at nothing in particular. Or looking intently, to stop himself from lifting his gaze again. He exhales, and doesn’t breathe back in. MacTavish cups the side of his face in his palm and Riley lets his head fall into it.
“You’re gorgeous, you know that?”
The corner of Riley’s mouth quirks up. A sort of smile that’s so close to the kind MacTavish is used to seeing on his face. The sort of smile that makes his heart clench tightly in his chest because it’s not the right thing.
“If you close your eyes,” Riley murmurs, “sure.”
“This doesn’t make you ugly,” MacTavish insists as he traces the harsh scar carved into his cheek, keloid raised and jagged and healed unevenly. Riley’s breath of tired laughter fans over his hand.
“Makes you crazy.”
“Maybe.” He trails his hand up over his cheekbone to card his fingers through his hair. It’s matted with small tangles that come loose under his hand, and Riley leans his head into it when he drags his nails over his scalp. “But it doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
Riley’s eyes flick up to his. His mouth is curved just slightly, but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. It’s tired, if anything, a little forced, wry at the edges. That little curve of his mouth conveys everything he won’t say out loud.
The guilt of a bad mission can linger for years in the pit of his stomach. MacTavish knows the feeling well. There was little to do about it then, out there on the field. There’s even less to do about it now, after it’s all done. Even so, Riley hiding himself away here isn’t conducive to anything.
“I’m serious.” MacTavish tilts his face up again when Riley tries to turn away. He doesn’t quite meet MacTavish’s eyes. Still, he can read enough from the hunch of his shoulders and the tilt of his head. “You’re worth it. You’re always worth it to me. I’ll kiss every single one of your scars if you don’t believe me.”
Riley lets out a weak laugh. In the small light, his eyes twinkle with it, and it’s an image MacTavish has missed seeing. In moments like this, he’s more used to it than he’d like to be.
“Lie down,” MacTavish says. Riley’s laugh cuts short. The smile falls from his face. His lips part on a breath as he looks up at MacTavish with his breath caught in his chest.
“Really,” he gives a little shake of his head, “I don’t—”
“I’m serious,” MacTavish repeats. Riley grabs his arm when MacTavish guides him backwards by his hips, though he makes no other motion but to hold on. His eyes go wide and the backs of his legs hit the bedframe. At another nudge, he sits down. With a hand directing him by the shoulder, he lies on his back.
Riley’s hand encircling MacTavish’s forearm is loose, sliding up to his elbow as MacTavish climbs over him, holding himself up on one arm, the other hand tracing the shape of Riley’s jaw. He follows it with his mouth. Presses a kiss to the faint scar at his chin. Then tilts his head to the side to get access to his neck and drag his lips over the line around his throat. Under his mouth, he feels Riley swallowing, and then the subsequent sharp inhale. Riley’s mouth moves, practising the words before he says them.
“You don’t actually have to do that.” He follows it with an amused breath. MacTavish feels it hitch where his lips are pressed to his throat. He leaves a kiss there before leaning back to properly look at him. At his face, pupils wide open in the dim light, skin glowing under the soft yellow hue, a red mark on his bottom lip where he already ripped a piece of skin off.
“You act like loving you is the hardest thing in the world,” MacTavish murmurs, drags the back of a finger down one cheek, flushed a soft pink, “when it’s the easiest, simplest thing in my life.”
Riley’s hand tightens around his arm when he places the next kiss on his collarbone. It doesn’t pull or push but merely holds, and the grip of his fingers feels desperate in the same way Riley’s sharp inhale does.
MacTavish follows the scar from a piece of shrapnel to his shoulder, presses a kiss on the bullet wound on his arm. Three light kisses on the knife slashes near the elbow, then down to the burn marks on the forearm.
Riley stays entirely still underneath him, so it’s doubtful if he’s even breathing. MacTavish lifts Riley’s hand up himself to press his mouth to the back of it – split knuckles from too many punches – and then the palm – a throwing knife gone rogue. The tips of his fingers that are roughened up from broken glass from a broken window, and then the wrist with the faint marks from an angry stray cat.
He turns Riley’s arm over to follow the opposite side back up. He takes his time. He basks in it. If there’s anything in his life he needs to do right, it’s this. Riley’s skin is a mix of soft and tough. Cool where it’s smooth and numb where the scars are raised and rugged.
Riley’s hand is tight around his arm. It squeezes at each press of MacTavish’s lips. He sucks a breath in, a jolt in his chest that MacTavish feels nearly against his own. He feels it when he sets his mouth over the puckered star-shaped mark on his sternum.
“I get the point,” Riley says. His voice breaks on the words. “You don’t have to actually do it.”
MacTavish pauses to glance up at Riley’s flushed face. The pink has spread over his cheeks and down to his neck. His brows are furrowed, eyes half-lidded like he can’t decide whether to look or not.
“Don’t have to. Want to.” He kisses pinkish cut of a knife on the opposite shoulder and follows the curve of it down to the burn wound across his bicep.
Riley sucks in a wet gasp. His voice is reedy and weak. “John.”
“I want to,” MacTavish says against the scabs of the freshest wounds across his forearm. They criss-cross with existing cuts, and MacTavish leaves a kiss on the centre of each.
Riley’s face is scrunched up. His eyes are red, squeezed shut, and head tilted away like he can’t bear to look. His bottom lip is held tightly between his teeth. When MacTavish coaxes his fingers loose from around his own arm, Riley doesn’t fight it. He lifts his palm into MacTavish’s and easily lets him turn it over so he can press his lips to each fingertip where a near lifetime of wielding weapons has left callouses.
Riley’s lashes are dark and heavy when MacTavish follows the lines of scars back up the arm again. He lets out a choked sound that breaks off midway, the start of a word that he can’t get out after the first syllable.
MacTavish pauses, so it’s only his breath fanning over Riley’s skin. But he doesn’t move. Doesn’t push himself into the mattress and doesn’t push MacTavish away. He takes an unsteady breath in through his mouth, then presses it tightly together into a thin line to stop the wobbling of his bottom lip.
He holds it awhile, then breathes out, and MacTavish follows the fall of his chest to place his lips over the puckered skin of a puncture wound. The slash of a knife is just below and MacTavish traces it with his mouth to get to the brownish burn scar that takes up half his side. A kiss to the top of it, another to the centre, one to the very bottom edge where it intersects with pockmarks from a harsh fall onto harsher ground.
A little to the side is the badly healed laceration from an explosion, covering the silvery lines from before the army. MacTavish recognises the mark left by something sharp, but Riley hasn’t said anything about their origin, so he presses his mouth to it and lingers, as if a simple kiss might heal it, before he moves to the marks over his stomach.
A curved scar disappears into the waistband of his trousers where it wraps around his hip and down to his thigh. The fresh bruise on his waist that won’t leave a scar but will stay a mottled yellow for weeks. MacTavish brushes his mouth over it only faintly, and even gentler over the uneven indent from a patch of missing skin that the bruise covers.
Riley’s stomach shudders under his touch. His body twitches, jolts, and then stills. In the edge of his vision, MacTavish sees his fingers curling into the sheets. Riley’s leg jerks. Half a motion to knock him off him, perhaps, before it trails into a twitch towards the side as if to curl around him instead.
Riley operates in the extremes. A knife to the throat or every limb wrapped tight around him. MacTavish has dealt with both. But so rarely does he get this version of Riley – the indecisive one who doesn’t know what he wants himself. Or who knows, but can’t decide whether he can let himself have it.
An uneven cut under his ribs from a stray piece of rebar. A patch of discoloured skin from chemical burns. Riley lets out a choked noise that makes the knot in MacTavish’s chest tighten. It furls until it steals the breath from his lungs, in a way that only Riley evokes in him. The sharp edges of him have never bothered MacTavish and the soft insides are worth it more than enough.
A lingering kiss just below the navel where a hound dug its teeth in under the Kevlar. And a second kiss to the faint, barely-there mark beside it that Riley never paid attention to when treating the wound.
MacTavish’s hands are roughened up from the same job. There’s blood coagulated in the lines of his palms and dirt stuck under his fingernails. Yet he caresses his hand over Riley’s side as gently as he can and fits his palm into the dip of his waist, covering the scars he’s kissed already, the ones that get tight and itchy when the weather turns cold. He touches as gently as he can to hold him together when no one else will. When Riley himself won’t.
Riley makes small breathy noises like it hurts. He sucks in a sharp gasp of air, his chest twitching and shuddering under MacTavish’s touch. It’s only his lips in a gentle caress. No teeth, no tongue, as chaste and tender as it can be. It’s barely a press against the entry point of the meat hook in his side, just a little firmer in the middle of the vivisection scar running down his chest. He drags his mouth up it, a faint caress, so he can leave another kiss at the very top.
The flush has spread down to Riley’s neck and MacTavish touches his lips to the border of the redness where it’s just a faint pinkish hue, mellowed out further by the yellow light, blending into his natural pallor. The raised scar under his mouth curves around to his back where it criss-crosses with the other whip marks.
He trails his nose up the line of Riley’s neck. His throat bobs with a heavy swallow, jaw clenched tightly. MacTavish brushes over the scar on his chin before lifting himself up to press a kiss to the corner of Riley’s mouth. His lips part under MacTavish’s to suck in a wet gasp of air. MacTavish follows the Glasgow smile up his cheek, leaves a kiss on every uneven, ragged cut of it where the knife sawed at a new angle. The skin is rough and raised under his lips. It’s warm from the flush covering Riley’s cheeks. MacTavish tastes the salt of his tears.
He kisses the very tip of the scar, a firm press of his mouth to Riley’s cheek. Neither of them are men of words. MacTavish doesn’t know if he even has the words that could express what he needs to, doesn’t know if his tongue could shape them. Knows even less if Riley could understand them. But he can understand action, and MacTavish can understand action, so he can leave a kiss on Riley’s cheek, firmer than the rest, and hope it unfurls the tangled knot in his own chest. Can hope that it soothes the one inside Riley’s.
He deviates from the path the scars create and presses his mouth to the freckles dusting Riley’s cheeks instead. They’re so pale they’re imperceptible, but they’re scattered all over the bridge of his nose after an hour spent in the sun.
The flush leaves his skin warm. There’s a wet glistening path from the corner of his eye down to his temple where a teardrop rolls into his hair. MacTavish kisses away the tear track over his cheek. Riley’s lashes flutter. His brows knit together. The breath he draws in is unsteady and grows increasingly closer to a sob.
MacTavish curls his arm around him as he rolls over onto his side and pulls Riley with. He ducks his head to press his face into MacTavish’s neck, hiding himself away though he’s clutching the front of his shirt. MacTavish pets over his back, only a small up-down following the raised lines of scarring. He presses his mouth to Riley’s forehead.
“Easiest thing in the world, Simon,” MacTavish reminds him.
Riley’s tears leave a wet mark on the collar of his shirt. Curled up, he fits so well in MacTavish’s hold, and although the tremble of his shoulders doesn’t ease the knot in his chest or the tightness in his throat, the stable warmth and presence of him does. Sometimes, MacTavish is selfishly glad for the minimalistic design of the beds, forcing them into this small space where he can wrap his arms around Riley and Riley curls into him, lest either of them fall off the bed.
The shape of Riley fits so well against himself. His face in the crook of his neck and his hips slotting against MacTavish’s and their legs tangled together.
In their line of work, in their kind of life, it’s hard to recognise the moments of peace. Even harder to accept it. But it’s moments like these that MacTavish thinks he knows what the word means. The air is thick and suffocating in his lungs, but he doesn’t mind holding his breath if he can listen to Riley’s inhales instead.
He hears him taking a conscious, steady breath in. His fingers flex where they’re clutching onto his shirt. He shifts in MacTavish’s arms, smearing the cool wetness of his tears over MacTavish’s throat. His lips move against it as he mouths the words before speaking.
“Why?”
MacTavish breathes in the scent of citrusy shampoo from Riley’s hair. It’s faint beneath the smell of smoke. He cards his fingers through his hair, just a soft drag and a mere suggestion for Riley to stay right as he is. There’s a scar at the top of his head, healed stitches that are covered by his hair, and he presses his mouth to it as he mutters, “Don’t know. Just is.”
He draws his hand downwards. The bandage is coarse under his fingertips, and he lightens the pressure to non-existent not to aggravate the wound underneath.
“I want you in whatever way you’ll let me,” he continues in nothing more than a murmur. “If all I can have is admiring from afar, I’ll take it.”
Riley has a tendency to hide himself away. A tendency that ebbs and flows with time and circumstances. Yet MacTavish’s door will always be open to him, whether that be the one to his office or personal quarters, or in a stairwell farther up north leading to his flat. It’s presumptuous, imagining them there. Every moment of looking at Riley is presumptuous. He wants things that are not guaranteed, things that are sheltered behind boundaries topped with barbed wire, things that are hidden away from him in dark locked rooms.
Riley could kick him out in a second flat. There’s no guarantee. So he presses his mouth to the top of Riley’s head and eases the tremble of his breath with a hand down his back and memorises the way it feels to have Riley softening in his hold.
Riley pulls back. MacTavish lets him go easily, but Riley only puts an inch between them to look up at him. There’s a sheen over his eyes, watery and reflecting the light. He shakes his head.
“Not— not from afar.”
He blinks his vision clear, another tear droplet absorbing into his lashes. The blush brings out the silvery scars around his face. His wetted lips smack lightly when he parts them.
Sometimes, MacTavish’s chest gets tight simply from looking at him. His breath catches, and the entirety of his focus hones in. It’s intent, the way he catalogues every single detail – the colour of his eyes and the curve of his lips and the curl of his hair – yet it’s no effort at all.
Easiest thing in the world.
MacTavish takes his arm to intertwine their fingers. Riley’s palm is clammy, cold in his own, but his fingers squeeze just as tight. MacTavish brings it up to press his mouth to the back of Riley’s hand. He doesn’t know the words to say what he means, so he presses the kiss firmly into Riley’s skin, leaves an imprint of himself, a guarantee.
Riley is gripping his hand tight enough to cut off blood flow. His fingers are curled to dig his nails into the back of MacTavish’s hand. His gaze falters, eyes dipping to look at MacTavish’s mouth, chest, their joint hands. It flickers up for only a split second before erring again, as it always does when faced with genuine affection.
He squeezes his eyes shut suddenly. Tight enough that his brows furrow with it. He pulls their hands towards himself and pushes his mouth against the back of MacTavish’s palm. His lips are pressed into a thin line, then pressed even harder to his hand, so his nose is forced into an uncomfortable angle and his fingers clutch on tighter.
It’s not words. But it’s not words that matter.