Relationship: Simon "Ghost" Riley & John "Soap" MacTavish
Words: 1800
Triggers: Blood/Injury, Whump, Medical Innacuracies, Infection, Delirium, Fever, Past Child Abuse (mentioned)
A/N: Been dealing with a little bit of burnout, trying to get back into things with some whump prompts
“Come on, Soap. Just a little bit further.”
His sergeant doesn’t respond, and that worries Ghost more than anything. Soap’s starting to get heavier and heavier with every step. His head’s hanging down, breath sawing raggedly through clenched teeth, but he’s gripping Ghost’s jacket with a surprising amount of strength.
“Almost there. See it? Through the trees. That’s it.”
The safehouse isn't much. A rough-hewn log cabin, ancient, snow clinging to the roof in a thick, white blanket that’s sliding down one side and half-obscuring the front door. It probably hasn't seen use in decades, but it's better than nothing and right now, their backs are against the wall.
Three days ago, their mission in the hills went tits up. Intel was wrong, and they've been on the run ever since. The only problem is, Soap got caught in a blast while they were trying to escape and took a deep shrapnel wound to his left side. Ghost had tried to patch him up the best he could, but Soap started running a fever a day ago and now they're out of time.
Ghost kicks the door open and shoulders Soap inside. The interior is just as rough as the outside—one big room, a stone fireplace that takes up most of one wall, a wooden table with a single broken chair and a cot in the far corner. It's freezing and smells kind of musty. But it's four walls and a roof. It's safe.
“Easy. I've got you.” He guides Soap to the cot, lowering him as gently as he can onto the lumpy mattress. Soap lands with a choked-off groan, the sound tearing from his throat.
Ghost whirls and starts stacking a fire in the hearth. Soap’s wounds won’t mean shit if he freezes to death first.
“Gonna get it warm in here first, then we’ll have a look at ya,” he says over his shoulder.
Soap just shivers on the cot and says nothing.
While he gets the fire going, Ghost takes stock of their supplies. He’s got almost a full IFAK between the two of them, cold water from the hand pump that he can warm, some dubious looking rags, and a half-gallon of what looks like homemade vodka.
Not ideal.
He glances over at the cot. Soap’s eyes have drifted shut.
“None of that, Sergeant. Eyes on me.” He has to shake him hard before Soap cracks one single blue eye open.
"M'fine, LT. Jus'...need a minute."
"You're not fine," Ghost says, his tone flat, leaving no room for argument. He runs some water in a pot, sets it over the fire, and starts carrying over supplies. "And you're not getting a minute. That wound’s probably infected and we’ve got to clean it out. Understood?"
Soap lets out a shaky breath, collapsing back onto the mattress. "Aye, sir. Loud and clear."
Ghost pulls off his gloves, skull mask, tac vest and jacket, leaving his balaclava on. Scrubs up his hands as best he can and comes to kneel by Soap’s bedside.
Ghost peels back the ruined fabric at Soap’s side, slow and careful at first, and the smell hits him hard enough that he stills. Sickly sweet and wrong, copper and rot, the unmistakable stench of infection. His jaw tightens behind the balaclava. Three days. Three days of sweat and filth ground into an open wound. And that’s if he was able to get out all the pieces. He should have known it would be bad. He just hadn’t let himself go there.
Soap twitches as air hits exposed skin, a sharp, broken sound tearing out of him. His hand claws at Ghost’s sleeve again, fingers slick with sweat, grip desperate.
“Easy,” Ghost says automatically, voice pitched low, steady. “Easy. I haven’t even touched it yet.”
Soap’s skin is burning. Not warm—hot, fever-hot, heat rolling off him in palpable waves. Dark blue eyes roll half-lidded, unfocused, lashes clumped together with sweat. Ghost presses two fingers into the side of Soap’s neck and counts his pulse. Fast. Way too fast.
“C’mon, Sergeant,” he says sharply. “Stay with me.”
Soap’s mouth moves, but what comes out is slurred, breath hitching on itself. “Hurts.”
“I know.” Ghost reaches for the jug of vodka, pours some into the cup, holds it to Soap’s lips. “Small sips.”
Soap fumbles at it, misses, coughs when the burning liquid hits his throat. He turns his head away, shaking it weakly.
“No—no, s’fine. Don’ need it.”
“You do.” Ghost forces him to drink, even though he hates himself for it. He doesn’t have any kind of painkiller—they’ve used up what they had on them already—and this is going to hurt. It’s the vodka, or nothing. He waits, patient as stone, until Soap finally lets him tip the cup again. Just enough. Soap swallows, grimacing, breath coming fast and shallow.
Ghost goes back to the wound and starts peeling back the layers of bandages.
The fabric sticks. He has to soak it with warm water, peeling it away millimeter by millimeter. Soap clenches his jaw and breathes shallowly and unevenly through his nose. When the last of the bandages finally comes loose, Ghost catches his first proper look, and his stomach drops.
The wound is angry and swollen, the edges livid red, the skin around it mottled and hot. There’s dried blood crusted over everything, and beneath it he can see streaks of yellow-white pus. He swabs gently, clears away grime and clots, and there it is: a jagged piece of metal lodged deep, half-buried in muscle. Or maybe fabric. Maybe both. It’s hard to tell where the rot ends and healthy tissue begins.
“Shit,” Ghost breathes. He gently tilts Soap’s head toward him, wincing at the blue eyes dilated with pain. “I’ve got to clean this out, Soap. It’s gonna hurt.”
Soap nods weakly.
“Open your mouth for me.”
Soap obediently opens his mouth, and Ghost puts one of his gloves between his teeth. “Bite down on this, yeah? It’ll help.”
Soap nods again. His fingers grip the cot, and Ghost moves his hand to his own knee. “Just hold onto me, okay? As hard as you like. I’ll make this as quick as I can.”
Ghost gets to work. He can tell Soap’s trying to keep quiet, but it’s a losing battle. By the time he’s halfway through, the sounds Soap’s making are inhuman, and Ghost at the point where he wishes Soap would just pass out from the pain. At least that would be a mercy.
“I’m sorry.” Ghost’s hand is shaking as he continues to clean out the wound. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t…Please…” Soap pants. “Please, stop.”
“We’re almost done.”
“Please…I-I cannae….”
“I know. Just hold on a little longer.”
Soap lets out a little sob that breaks Ghost’s heart in two. “Please…don’t hurt me anymore…”
Ghost’s hands still. Blood is still running freely down Soap’s side, bits of filthy shrapnel and fabric and debris he’s pulled from the wound sitting off to the side.
“’M sorry,” Soap whispers, his voice thin, childlike.
“Soap?”
Soap’s eyes crack open, wild and unfocused, pupils blown wide. He clutches at Ghost’s arm. Sweat’s beaded across his forehead. He’s not looking at Ghost’s eyes. He’s not seeing him at all.
“I didn’t mean tae,” Soap says, words slurring. “I swear I didn’t. I’ll…I’ll do better.”
Ghost’s hands pause, hovering just above the wound.
“This isn’t—” He stops himself, refocuses. “Soap, listen to me. You’re hurt. I have to clean this out.”
Soap shakes his head weakly, panic sharpening now, breath coming in short, broken gasps. His grip on Ghost’s sleeve tightens, nails digging in hard enough to hurt.
“No,” he whispers. “Please. Please don’t.”
Ghost swallows. “It’s infected. There’s something still in there. I need to get it all out.”
Soap’s head rolls to the side, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. “Please,” he says again, voice cracking. “I’ll be good. I promise. I won’t…I won’t mess up anymore.”
The words hit Ghost like a physical blow.
“Soap,” he says again, more urgently now. “I don’t—”
He doesn’t finish. He can’t. Because Soap lets out a broken sob, curling in on himself as much as the wound will allow, shoulders shaking.
“Please, Da,” he whispers.
Ghost freezes.
The cabin goes very, very quiet. Even the fire and the roar of the wind outside seems to hush. He stares down at Soap, at the man who has fought beside him, bled beside him, joked beside him, trusted him with his life without hesitation—and sees a terrified child instead, curled in on himself and begging not to be hurt.
Ghost’s hands tremble.
He forces them still. Forces his voice to stay level, even as something sharp and ugly twists in his chest.
“Hey,” he says, softer now. “Hey, Johnny. Look at me.”
Soap doesn’t. He squeezes his eyes shut, shaking his head, breath coming in ragged pulls.
“I’ll be better,” he whispers. “Please, Da. I swear. Just don’t…don’t…”
Ghost sets the tools down with deliberate care. He reaches up with one hand and brushes back tendrils of the sweat-soaked mohawk that he’d once thought so ridiculous up until this very moment.
“Johnny,” he says softly. “It’s all right. You’re hurt, but we’re going to make it better, okay? You’re doing good. So good. I just need you to hold on a little bit more.”
Soap makes a small, broken sound. Ghost wants to stop. He wants to give him a bit of a breather, but he knows it’s not going to go any better for him if he does.
In the end, Soap nods weakly, and Ghost hates himself for it.
He grits his teeth and finishes the job, not stopping until the wound bleeds cleanly once more and Soap is long since passed out from the pain.
Hands still shaking, he re-bandages the wound. Cleans up the area. Tries another sat call to Price even though it’s not going to go through because of weather and prays the weather will clear in time for a medivac. Wonders where he might be able to find some anti-biotics, because that’s going to be the next fight. He finds a stack of thick, wool blankets on a shelf and pulls one over Soap, running his hand across his brow. Soap makes a small noise and turns toward his touch.
He throws another log on the fire. Checks the loadout on his weapon and sits there, staring into the flames and listening to Soap breathe.
Rescue will come. Soap will heal. They’ll move on from this night.
But Ghost is never going to forget what Soap said.
He’s never going to forget the sound of Johnny begging him to stop.
The ground shudders beneath his boots. Dirt and smoke kick up in a cloud from somewhere near Ghost’s position. The world tilts for a fraction of a second, and then the radio bursts with static and panic, with a single voice cutting through the thick of it:
“Man down!”
No call sign. Nothing. Soap freezes, stomach plummeting. Heart hammering.
Motherfucker!
“Who’s down? Who the hell is down?!” he curses into the radio. “Bravo 0-7, how copy? Ghost?!”
His squad looks to him, confused, panicked—but he doesn’t even register them. He’s scanning the chaos north, eyes darting across broken walls and smoke, but he can’t see anything.
“For fuck’s sake!” Soap keys his mic. “Watcher-1, I need a MEDEVAC.”
He rattles off their position, and his attention snaps back to his squad instinctively, barking orders faster than he’s thinking, corralling the recruits toward cover. Every syllable tastes like ash in his mouth. His hands are trembling, but he doesn’t care. He’s already plotting a path to Ghost’s last known position.
Soap shoves the last recruit into cover with a barked, “Stay put an’ keep your bloody heads down!” They’re shaken, wide-eyed, but they listen. Good. That’s all he needs from them.
Now he can move.
The second he turns, though, the wind shifts and his chest goes tight.
Ghost is lying prone in the dirt.
Soap’s pulse spikes, rattling in his ears.
Not him. Not now. Christ above, not him.
If you can't tell, I'm far too excited for October😊
Pairing: Simon "Ghost" Riley/John "Soap" MacTavish
Works: 30 of ?
Words: 155K
A loosely connected series of GhostSoap fics based on my own headcannons, through the course of their relationship. They won't necessarily be posted in order, but they will be ordered chronologically as they are posted. Based on prompts for whumptober, angstober, and flufftober, there will be a lot of whump, hurt/comfort, and some spice later on. Each fic will be individually tagged
You can find the Series on Ao3 HERE
Outside Looking In (emotional whump, yearning)
Challenge Accepted (angst/worry, fluff)
Ozone Before the Storm (whump, betrayal)
I Hope You See the Sun Someday in the Darkness (whump)
Of Course There Was Only One Bed (light angst, fluff)
English, MacTavish (fluff)
Sold My Soul, Broke My Bones (whump, angst)
We'll Make it Alright to Come Undone (whump, angst, fluff)
Sit By Me (fluff)
Early Morning Walks (fluff, light angst)
Polar Opposites (fluff)
Can You Get Through All the Pain Inside You? (whump, angst)
Ka-Freakin' Boom (angst, whump)
Pumpkin Carving (fluff, light angst)
Put My Trust in Half Empty Glasses (angst, whump)
Even With the Smallest Cuts, You Lose So Much Blood (whump, angst) Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
Picking Up the Pieces (angst, fluff)
All These Hollowed Out Spaces Left Behind (angst, fluff)
Mission Accomplished (fluff, light angst)
Hoodies, Blankets, and Other Dangerous Comforts (fluff, light angst)
Highlands Interlude (angst, fluff) Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
Mission Ready (light angst, smut)
If All My Days Are Numbered, Why Do I Keep Counting? (Whump, Angst) Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
In My Dreams, We Are Together (angst, fluff, dreams)
Letters to Simon (angst)
My Panic's at the Ceiling, but I'm Facedown on the Floor (angst, whump)
Hey, Johnny (vol. 1) (angst)
Do Not Open Until December 25th (angst, fluff)
A Shift in the Weather (angst, H/C, smut)
Highlands Revisited (Angst, H/C) Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
Relationship: Simon "Ghost" Riley & John "Soap" MacTavish
Words: 3500
Triggers: Blood/Injury, Whump, Medical Innacuracies, Infection, Delirium, Fever, Restraints, Past Child Abuse (mentioned)
A/N: A couple people asked for a part 2, but this was getting long, so I'm going to break it into 2 parts. Dialing up the whump on this one (I've been in a mood lol) but part 3 will be all comfort ;)
Soap is getting worse.
Ghost had hoped just cleaning out the wound would’ve been enough, but it was an empty hope. He knew better. Over the next few hours the sergeant rallied a bit, and he was even able to sit up with help and take in a bit of broth, which fueled Ghost’s optimism. That all came crashing down, though, when the broth made a violent reappearance an hour later, along with Soap’s fever.
“Come on, Johnny, please,” he says, holding a cup of water, Soap propped up against his shoulder.
“W-Won’t be able…tae keep it d-down.”
“Gotta try anyway.” He brings the cup to Soap’s lips. “Drink.”
Soap manages to take a few sips, but he’s trembling so hard Ghost has to hold his head steady. As he’s helping Soap lie back down, he accidentally brushes against the bandaged wound, and Soap cries out, flinching violently away.
“Sorry! Sorry, I didn’t mean to…just—here, lie back and let me have another look.”
Soap clenches his jaw and complies, breathing shakily through the pain.
Ghost isn’t sure what he’s expecting to see as he peels back the layers of bandages, given Soap’s decline, but it sure isn’t the faint red streaks that are starting to trail outward from the wound.
Ghost’s heart plummets.
He’s septic. Or starting to head that way, at least.
Fuck.
Soap’s watching him through half-lidded eyes, so Ghost mimes a smile through the balaclava for his benefit. “We should change these bandages out.”
“Th-That bad…huh?”
“Johnny—”
“Yer a…shit liar…LT.” Soap wearily closes his eyes and turns his head away.
Soap’s bland acceptance overpowers Ghost’s worry and frustration, and he snaps. “Listen up, Sergeant. You are going to be fine. We are going to get you some antibiotics, you’re going to heal, and you are going to be fine. This is not that bad. You just need to hold on for a little bit longer.”
Blue eyes crack open, and Soap manages a wobbly grin. “Tha’…an order…LT?”
Ghost thinks for a moment of going full officer on Soap’s ass, but then he remembers what Soap had said in the depths of his delirium, pleading for his Da to stop hurting him and promising he’ll be good. That he’ll do better.
Ghost’s shoulders slump. “No, Johnny. I’m asking you to.”
He gently brushes his fingers through that ridiculous mohawk and is surprised when Soap sighs and leans into the touch, his eyes drifting shut. Wringing cool water from a cloth next to him, he wipes the sweat from Soap’s face and throat before placing it back on his forehead.
Ghost runs his fingers through his hair until the younger man drifts into a fitful sleep.
Then he gets up and does another round of the cabin.
He doesn’t know what he expects to find this time—like the antibiotic fairy’s paid them a visit and left a few bags of hospital-grade meds on their doorstep. Ghost has already been through the cabin twice. There wasn’t anything other than a bottle with a couple expired paracetamol pills, and he’s already given them to Soap, along with what was left from their IFAK’s.
If Johnny doesn’t get meds soon, he’s going to die.
Ghost pushes away the thought violently and storms out of the cabin.
The sat phone’s battery is almost dead. He tries it anyway and fights the urge to throw the damn thing as far as he can when the call doesn’t go through.
Maybe there’s some kind of plant we can use. Like…like they did back in the olden days. Or—fuck, there must be something I’m forgetting. Are you supposed to keep a feverish patient cold, or let the fever burn the sickness out? Why didn’t I pay more attention during first aid class? Why the hell didn’t I insist on carrying a full med kit this op? Why didn’t I…didn’t I…
It’s only after his knees buckle and he lands ass-first in the snow that Ghost realizes he’s hyperventilating. He rips his balaclava off and sucks down the frigid air, letting the skull mask drop into the snow.
Calm yourself down right the fuck now, Riley. You’re no use to him if you let yourself go to pieces.
Self-flagellation works about as well as you’d expect, and it’s several long minutes before Ghost is able to haul himself to his feet and go back to the cabin to check on Soap.
He’s not sure if the fever’s higher or it’s just that his hands are so cold, but Soap looks even worse. He’s completely unresponsive as Ghost checks him over. Shadows like bruises under his eyes stand out against ashen skin, flushed bright with fever up his throat and cheeks. Ghost remembers now, you’re supposed to keep a fever patient cool, but all he’s got is snow, and Soap’s pulse is so weak he doesn’t want to chance shocking his already taxed system. So he changes the cool compress and tries unsuccessfully to get Soap to drink a little water and counts down the minutes with each weak flutter of Soap’s pulse.
Hours pass. Ghost spins his wheels as Soap weakens, and what little he does say completely incoherent.
He doesn’t know if that’s worse or better than hearing him plead for his father to stop hurting him.
Somewhere around dawn, Ghost is staring at the fire and listening to Soap’s labored breathing and seriously considering carrying his sergeant out of the mountains on his back, even though that’s sure to kill him but it’s better than sitting here and listening to him slowly die…
…when he hears the distant whine of snowmobiles. Multiple, coming from the direction they were fleeing from.
Ghost’s heartrate triples under a load of adrenaline. They found them. Somehow, the enemy was able to find their trail, and now they’ve tracked them down.
Grabbing Soap’s gear from the floor, he rifles through his kit until he finds the Scot’s Semtex and a trip wire detonator. Not wasting a second, he rigs the front door. Then he flips the table on its side and drags it over to protect Soap.
“Johnny.” He shakes him, hard, slapping his cheek when he doesn’t respond. “Come on, Johnny. Wake up.”
Soap lets out a small whine but opens his eyes. They widen a bit when they take in Ghost’s face. “Yer…yer mask—"
Ghost doesn’t hear him, busy pulling both their plate carriers over Soap’s prone body to protect him. “We’ve got company. I’ve rigged the front door to blow but I’ve gotta leave you for a little bit. Gonna try to flank ‘em. Here.” He presses his pistol into Soap’s hand and curls his fingers around the grip. “Safety’s off. You with me, Johnny?”
Soap blinks up at him, eyes glazed, but he pulls the pistol closer until it’s resting on his chest. “W-With you…Ghost.”
“Good lad.” Swallowing thickly, he cups the side of Soap’s face, rubbing his thumb over his cheekbone. “Hold the fort down, yeah? I’ll be right back.”
Soap nods, and with one last ruffle of his hand through Soap’s mohawk, Ghost shoulders his sniper rifle and exits the cabin through the back window. He sets up position on the southern ridge overlooking the cabin in a spot he’d scouted when they’d first arrived, setting up his nest behind the blind he’d made.
He doesn’t have to wait long.
Two snowmobiles shoot from the woods, headed straight for the cabin. There are only two figures wearing snow camo that he can see, but the lead sled is hauling something behind it. They pull to a stop in front of the cabin, and both figures disembark.
Ghost is sighted dead center on the taller one’s back, when the figure halts and raises both hands above his head.
“Ghost! Soap! It’s Price and Gaz, you can put the guns down.”
Price! Ghost squeezes his eyes shut, nearly dizzy with relief, then he scrambles to his feet.
“Over ‘ere!” He plows his way down the hill towards them.
Price’s moustache twitches when he sees the sniper rifle and the direction Ghost came from. “Where’s Soap?”
“Wounded. Bad. He’s in the cabin—no, don’t go that way!” Ghost hollers at Gaz, who had started towards the cabin. “I rigged the front door with Semtex. We’ll go in through the back.”
Gaz glances at him, then does a double take, like Ghost has grown a second head or something. Price is looking at him strangely, too.
“Were you expecting company?” Price asks.
“I wouldn’t be surprised, they’ve been chasing us for three days. Thought we gave ‘em the slip.”
“Better safe than sorry,” Price grunts. “Gaz?”
“On it.” Gaz grabs his rifle from the sled and jogs towards the treeline.
“Lead the way, Lieutenant.”
Price follows him around back, and they both climb in through the window. Once his boots hit the floor, Price does a quick visual sweep, taking it all in—Semtex on the front door, the table-barricade, and Soap, unconscious, laying on the cot with a pistol in his hand.
“Bloody hell.”
Price goes to Soap as Ghost disconnects the trip wire on the front door and waves the all clear to Gaz.
“I’ve got a full med kit on the sled, Riley, grab it.” Price doesn’t look up from where he’s bent over Soap.
Ghost feels like a boot private all over again, scrambling over himself to obey his CO’s orders, but the relief he feels over having someone else to help inexplicably makes him feel like he wants to cry. He scoops the kit up and hurries back into the cabin.
“He caught some shrapnel in his side three days ago,” he blurts, dropping the kit by the cot. “He’s been feverish for two.”
Price doesn’t look up from his watch, his fingers clamped around Soap’s wrist. “How long’s he been like this?”
Ghost scrubs a hand over his face, then flinches. He still doesn’t have his mask back on. Maybe that’s why Price and Gaz were looking at him so funny. He’s not sure when he took it off or where it is, but strangely, right now he doesn’t care. “I cleaned the wound out last night. Fever spiked again a few hours after. He’s been in and out since then. Mostly out. I think he’s going septic.”
Price hums low in his throat. He reaches up, presses two fingers to Soap’s throat, then leans down and pulls back one eyelid.
“Soap,” Price says, tapping his cheek firmly. “John. Can you hear me?”
Soap doesn’t respond. His breathing is shallow, uneven, his lips cracked and dry. Price gingerly peels back the edges of the bandage. His face smooths out, and he covers it back up.
“Should we clean it out again?” Ghost hates the tone of his voice, the little waver. He hates how he’s crouched at his Captain’s feet, looking helplessly up at him like the man holds every answer in the world. But apparently, watching his chaotic, loud-mouthed sergeant suffer in misery and pain for seventy-two hours straight is enough to turn the terrifying Ghost into a buck private still wet behind the ears.
Price’s response is terse but kind. “I’m not going to mess with it. If I go digging now, I risk killing him. But there’s still plenty we can do. Antibiotics and fluids for starters, he’s as dry as a bone.”
Ghost nods. “I tried to get him to drink some water, but he hasn’t kept much down.”
“I’m not surprised. Poor lad’s temp is so high he’s practically glowing.” Price finally straightens and shrugs out of his coat. “Right. Let’s get him sorted.”
Ghost moves out of the way as Price opens the med kit. He feels…stripped, suddenly. It causes a flare of possessiveness he doesn’t like and doesn’t have time to interrogate, and he fights the urge to shove his CO out of the way so that he can be the one to tend to Soap, even though he doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing.
“Riley, on me. You’re not in the way.” Price says quietly. “I could use the help.”
“Yes, sir.” The answer comes out both automatic and grateful.
Price hands him a bag of saline. “Hold that. Might take me a minute to do the stick, it’s been a bit since I did that A&D rotation at the base hospital.”
It does take him a couple tries, but Price finally finds a vein in Soap’s arm. Soap stirs, a faint sound slipping from his throat that lands like a knife right through Ghost’s gut.
“Easy, John,” Price murmurs. “Just a little pinch.”
Once he gets it started, he looks up at Ghost, still holding the IV bag. “Give that a good squeeze, let’s get as much as we can in him.”
Ghost dutifully obeys like it’s the most important order of his life and studies Soap’s face. So pale except for the unhealthy fever flush, his chest rising and falling so shallowly he can barely see it. Nothing’s changed. He feels a little flutter of panic start to build, but he beats it back down.
It’s only been a couple goddamn minutes. Keep it together, Simon.
Meanwhile, Price is injecting things into Soap’s IV port. “There. That’ll help. A little, at least. It’s not nearly as strong as he needs, but it’s what we’ve got.”
“Will it—” Ghost starts, then stops himself.
“It’ll slow down the infection. Buy us time.”
Ghost swallows. Nods.
Price is checking Soap’s vitals again. “I don’t like the sound of those lungs. Help me sit him up a bit.”
Ghost slides an arm behind Soap’s shoulders, easing him upright. Johnny whimpers, his head lolling forward until Ghost braces him back against his chest.
“Easy, Johnny,” he murmurs. “Be still. I’ve got you.”
Price pulls out a portable oxygen mask and pup canister, and he fits the mask over Soap’s face, adjusts the strap, and opens the valve. The faint hiss of oxygen fills the cabin. Soap breathing stutters, then—slowly—finds a marginally steadier rhythm.
“Good,” Price says again. “That’s it. Just breathe, son.”
Soap’s fingers twitch weakly, then curl into Ghost’s sleeve.
Ghost just holds him tighter, taking stock. Right. Fluids. Oxygen. Antibiotics. It’s not a miracle, but it’s something. It’s everything compared to what Ghost was working with an hour ago.
Price straightens and rolls his shoulders, then he looks at Ghost properly.
“You look like hell,” he says mildly. “Status, Lieutenant.”
Ghost says nothing. He can imagine what he looks like right now. Maskless, face exposed, holding Johnny’s limp body in his arms like it’s his last tether to this world. Still, he can’t shake this feeling of impending loss. Of watching something vital slip through his fingers. It makes him feel unsteady. Panicky.
When had he changed? He’s lost men before. Lost friends. Lost family. Some had been lost from afar and some had been lost close enough that he watched as death slipped its final veil over their eyes. A few had even been his fault. But none of them had felt quite like this. Like every hurt was doubled on his own skin until it felt like he was gasping out his last breaths right beside them.
When had Sergeant Johnny MacTavish become that unquantifiable essential he was not prepared to lose?
“You did the right thing, Simon,” Price says quietly. “Do you hear me? None of this is your fault.”
Ghost stiffens. “Sir—”
“You did everything you could with what you had. Cleaning that wound saved his life. Bought him time until we got here. Kept him alive.”
Ghost looks down at Soap, pale and still beneath the blankets, oxygen mask fogging faintly with each breath. He brushes the damp hair out of his eyes and flattens his palm over Soap’s forehead protectively.
“He begged me to stop hurting him,” Ghost says before he can stop himself. “He—I don’t think he knew who I was.”
Price’s expression doesn’t change, but something in his eyes softens.
“Fever’ll do that,” he says gently. “He won’t remember it.”
Probably not. But I will.
Ghost nods once, sharp, like he’s locking the words away for later. “He’s going to be okay?”
Price glances down at Soap, then meets Ghost’s eyes. “He will.”
Something tight and painful in Ghost’s chest finally loosens. Just a fraction.
“We’ll let this work for a bit,” Price continues. “Stabilize him as much as we can, then we move. Soon as we’ve got a window.”
Ghost nods. “I’ll prep—”
Gaz appears in the doorway, breath fogging in the cold air. His expression is grim.
“Sir,” he says. “We’ve got a problem.”
Price turns immediately. “What is it?”
“I climbed the ridge to get a better look.” Gaz swallows. “There’s movement, and it’s headed our way. Boots on the ground, vehicles pushing through the treeline. At least a dozen, maybe more.”
The words detonate with a heavy drop of panic.
Soap can’t be moved. Not on a snowmobile exposed to the elements.
Ghost feels it instantly—the shutter slamming down somewhere deep inside him. The fear doesn’t show. It just compresses, hardens, turning into something cold and sharp.
“How long?” Price asks.
“Minutes,” Gaz says. “Not hours.”
“Right. Change of plans.” He looks at Gaz. “Prep the sled—”
“But he’s not stable,” Ghost interrupts.
"We're out of time," Price says. "We can't stay here."
“I can carry him—"
“We've got a rescue sled courtesy of Laswell. We figured at least one of you were injured and we’d need to evac you when you missed your check-in." Price hurriedly packs up the med kit. "He needs to be immobilized, though. Gaz, get the backboard.”
Gaz doesn’t hesitate. He's gone and back in seconds, the bright orange plastic of the backboard a jarring splash of color in the dim cabin. Ghost’s jaw tightens, a muscle twitching in his cheek. He knows Price is right. Logically, it’s the only way. But the thought of jostling Soap, of putting him through that kind of pain again—
“Simon,” Price says, his voice softer now. “We’ll be quick. And we’ll be gentle. I promise.”
Ghost nods and slides an arm under Soap’s neck and shoulders, cradling his head as Gaz pulls back the blankets and takes up position at his feet. Soap lets out a quiet moan.
“Easy, Johnny. Easy. I’ve got you.”
Price directs them like a conductor. Roll on three. Lift. Slide. Secure. Straps go across Soap’s chest, hips, legs—snug, not tight. Ghost checks the IV line twice, making sure nothing's kinked, his fingers clumsy for half a second before he manages to calm himself down.
“Mask stays on,” Price says. “Bottle comes with us.”
Ghost nods. He takes the oxygen tank without being asked and secures it against the board.
Outside, the sound of engines grows louder. Not close yet...but coming.
“Let's move,” Price snaps.
They hustle out the back door into the cold, breath steaming, boots crunching in the snow. Ghost and Price lift together and settle Soap onto the sled that’s hitched behind the lead snowmobile. Ghost adjusts the blankets and tucks them tight around Soap’s sides while Price secures the board and puts up the wind cover.
Soap stirs faintly, panicking a bit when he realizes that he can’t move. He makes a choked sound through the mask and starts to flail weakly.
“Johnny. Johnny, it’s all right. You’re safe,” Ghost says evenly despite the way his stomach’s clenching. “We’ve got you on a backboard, that’s why you can’t move. Price and Gaz are here. We’re getting you out.”
Blue eyes, just faint slits above the oxygen mask, lock in on his and hold. Pleading. It’s hard to see Soap so vulnerable, someone as strong and capable and vital as him reduced to a frightened child in his delirium.
“I know. I know it hurts, Johnny, and I know you’re scared, but we’ve got you. Price, Gaz, and me. Ghost…Simon. It’s Simon. I’m here.” He’s not sure why he says his given name. He’s never said it to Johnny before, but here in this moment, his callsign doesn’t feel like it’s enough.
“I’m here, Johnny.” He pulls the blankets up to Soap’s chin, smooths his fingertips over his brow. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. You’re going to be okay. I promise.”
Soap’s lost consciousness again, but Ghost would like to think the strain on his face has eased a bit.
“Mount up, let’s go.”
Price’s voice makes his shoulders hunch, but movement at his side makes him turn. Gaz is standing there with something in his hand. “I found this on the ridge.”
He holds it out. It’s Ghost’s balaclava and skull mask.
The sound of the approaching enemy is getting closer. Ghost gives one last look to Soap’s sled before he pulls the balaclava and skull mask back on, and he fires up the snowmobile. Price, with Gaz riding pillion, pulls out in front, and Ghost follows pulling the rescue sled, leaving the cabin behind them in a swirling cloud of snow.
Relationship: Simon "Ghost" Riley & John "Soap" MacTavish
Words: 9500
Triggers: Mostly fluff, but some angst/discussion of past child abuse
Johnny dusts his hands off against his jeans and steps back from the tree. “Kyle?”
“Mm?” Gaz is trying to hook a huge ceramic snowflake onto a branch that absolutely will not hold it.
“I’ll be right back, yeah?”
Gaz glances over, eyes flicking to Johnny’s expression. Something in them softens. “Need a minute?”
“Aye. There’s something I need tae do.”
“All right. But hurry back. We’ve still got to convince Price to wear his jumper and I’m gonna need backup. And a distraction while I decorate his office.”
Johnny snorts under his breath and heads for the door. His heart is beating a mile a minute, and he feels like there’s lightning in his veins, fizzy and effervescent with nervous energy. But he knows one thing for certain as he steps into the hallway—he can’t let Simon spend Christmas Eve thinking he’s lost him.
Not when the truth is that Johnny has never needed him more than he does right now.
-or-It's Christmas Eve, and Simon and Johnny finally TALK.
When Johnny was a child, Christmas had been his favorite day of the year. The tree, the decorations, the games and the food. Everybody would be smiling, there would be hugs and laughter—even his father would be in a good mood and seem to forget that Johnny existed entirely. When he was small enough, Johnny liked to sit behind the Christmas tree and watch everyone from behind its branches, colored lights and tinsel softening the edges until it was as pretty as a Christmas card. He didn’t understand then that it was just a façade, an annual excuse to smooth over unpleasant things and pretend they didn’t exist.
That didn’t come until later. By the time he was ten, Johnny MacTavish had learned how to mask with the best of them.
After his father died, Johnny became an angry teen, like all the poison in his father’s soul had planted a seed within his own, one bruise at a time. He hated his stepfather and resented him trying to take his father’s place. He hated his kindness. He hated his pity. So he was cruel and mean and spiteful and bad, acting out and throwing everything back in their faces. Those Christmases, Johnny learned that it was probably better if he wasn’t around at all.
It got better after he joined the military. Time and distance has a way of…well, not healing wounds, but letting them fade. Burying them deep. Anger became too exhausting to maintain, and besides—that was never really him to begin with. He became the clown, the cutup, the solid friend and the center of every conversation, of every room. That too was exhausting in its own way, but Johnny learned if he just tried hard enough, if he was well liked enough, old thoughts and feelings didn’t hurt as bad.
So Christmas became his favorite time of year once again. Especially if he had an excuse not to go home. In Gaz he found a partner in crime, someone who was even more enthusiastic about the holiday than he was, so when Christmas Eve rolled around again, not two days after his argument with Simon, Johnny was awakened by Gaz kicking the bottom of his door, holding an oversized box of Christmas decorations clutched in both hands.
“Steamin’ Jesus, Kyle. Do ye have any idea what time it is?”
Gaz pushes past him and sets down the box with a muffled thunk. “Up and at ‘em, sunshine. We’ve only got one day, and I’ve planned a tight schedule.”
“Yer insane.”
“And you’re usually more excited about this.” Gaz narrows his eyes at him. “Your hands hurtin’ you?”
Johnny flexes them, two swollen masses of bruises and stitches, the right wrist still immobilized in a soft brace. “Just stiff.”
Gaz looks over to the bed, conspicuously missing a six-foot-three blond in a balaclava. “Trouble in paradise, then?”
“Fuck off.”
“Sorry. I’m serious, though—did something happen between you and Ghost?”
“Just a stupid argument.” Johnny scrubs at his hair and grimaces. “I don’t want tae talk about it.”
He begins hunting around in his dresser for a tee shirt and some jeans because obviously Gaz is not going away. He goes to the bathroom to change, but when he comes out and goes for the sweatshirt on the back of the chair stenciled RILEY, Gaz thrusts what looks like a mismatched wad of yarn at him.
“Uh uh. Got you covered, mate. Got one for everybody.”
Johnny holds up the jumper and makes a face. “It’s no’ much of an ugly jumper contest if ye pick ‘em out for us, Kyle.”
Gaz roots around in the box until he finds the jumper he’s looking for. It’s got stars on the sleeves and a tiny elf body on the front, cut off at the neck so it looks like Gaz’s head belongs to the elf. He puts it on along with a jaunty red and green stocking hat.
“Price is always such a wet blanket about it. This is the only way I can get him to participate.”
Johnny grunts, smirking at the thought of Gaz presenting Price with his own ugly Christmas jumper. “You sure his attitude might not stem from the time you snuck those swans into his office?”
Gaz snickers, and he reaches up to help Johnny pull his jumper on. “It wasn’t exactly seven swans-a-swimmin,’ but it was close.”
“I would’ve paid good money tae see you smuggle ‘em in.”
“Spoiler alert, they bite.”
Gaz’s smile fades, and he looks at Johnny seriously. “Really, though. Are you doin’ okay?”
Johnny sighs. “Just working through some stuff. Don’t want tae bring anybody down. Not today. We’ve only got one day for this, and it looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us. Though I’m not sure how much help I’ll be with these hands ‘o mine.”
The look Gaz gives him says that he’ll drop it…for now.
“You’re my creative director,” he says, hoisting up the box again. “And to run interference with Price if need be.”
“Tall order.”
“Scrooge himself would be proud of that guy. But I’ve got a few ideas.”
Johnny follows Gaz down the hallway towards the rec room. The barracks have mostly emptied out—anyone who’s got the leave has already left for the holiday. But while the 141 has today off, they’re heading out tomorrow—without Johnny—to escort the HVA they picked up to headquarters for interrogation. It’s probably going to be a boring job, but he still wishes he were going with them. Anything would be better than sitting here spinning his wheels.
Johnny tries to put up a front while he and Gaz put up the tree and decorate the rec hall. His heart’s not really in it, and his head is still back in the smoking area with Simon where they had their argument.
It’s been two days since then, and he hasn’t seen Simon once.
Of course, Simon is only giving Johnny what he asked for. Space. He just didn’t think that Simon would be that good at it…or that it would hurt so much. He’s been going over and over the argument in his head, the memories he shared and ones he didn’t, what Simon had said to him and the black look of pure, murderous fury on his face when he said it.
And the conclusion Johnny has come to…is that Simon might be right.
Speaking about his father out loud, bringing those memories out into the light to be witnessed and judged has changed them somehow. It’s very easy to laugh something off, to minimize it or explain it away, but when someone holds up a mirror and forces you to look—really look—at them, the veneer of excuses seems very thin indeed.
And in processing these memories anew, other, darker memories have resurfaced. Ones he’d shoved down so deeply he’d almost forgotten about them, like they’d happened to someone else.
A stolen kiss behind the barn with a boy with hair the color of spun gold.
A moment of joy so bright and wonderful and true…until the beating from his father that nearly killed him afterward.
And the lies that were told and accepted by everyone.
There’s a heaviness in Johnny’s heart, now, as he watches Kyle gleefully detail his plans for Price’s office this year, thankfully not involving waterfowl. What must it be like to be that carefree? What must it feel like to come from a place of love so intense that you carry it around with you like armor? He used to love this holiday. God help him, he still wants to. But tonight the lights look too bright, and the cheer feels like something happening behind glass. He can see it, he just can’t get his hands around it.
“So, Kyle. You grew up in London, right? What were Christmases like for you?” he asks before he can stop himself, and he quickly scrambles to cover the awkward question. “I mean, in the big city and all.”
If he thinks the question is strange, Kyle doesn’t show it. “Well, it was just me and Mum. She’s a teacher, so she always had the time off, and I swear she would start making her plans months in advance.”
Johnny chuckles. “So that’s where ye got yer obsession from.”
“I guess.” Gaz keeps fussing with the garland—up on a chair, down again, back up—and Johnny mostly watches him, grateful for something bright to anchor himself to.
“Mum always made Christmas a big deal,” Gaz says. “Not because we had much. We didn’t. But she could stretch a pound farther than anyone I’ve ever met. She’d bake gingerbread for the whole tower block. Always had some daft Christmas movie on, the old ones she could quote by heart. And every year she’d let me pick one new ornament for the tree—just one—but I’d take, like, an hour agonizing over it. Drove her mad.”
Johnny smiles, small and soft. “Sounds lovely.”
“It was. We had our traditions. Mince pies on Christmas Eve. Staying up to watch Midnight Mass even though neither of us are that religious. Mum’d fall asleep halfway through it with her head on my shoulder.” Gaz grins fondly, tucking a loose branch into place. “Every year, she’d buy me socks. Always said it wasn’t a proper Christmas without new socks.”
Johnny lets out a breath that feels heavier than it should. “I bet yer missin’ her today.”
“Yeah,” Gaz admits without hesitation. “Course I do. But we’ll do our own Christmas when I get back. Have a big meal, open presents. She always hides the good biscuits till the holidays.” He laughs lightly. “She’ll probably cry when she sees me. She always does after a deployment.”
Johnny’s chest does something strange then. A little flip, a little ache.
He thinks of his own childhood Christmases—the laughing, the lights, the games—and for the first time, he sees the performance in them. The shine. The brittle edges. His father in a good mood because people were watching. His mother smiling too brightly. Himself, small and silent behind the tree, pretending the world was softer than it was.
He’s never missed his father. Not really. Not like that.
He thought he had. Johnny thought that hollow space inside him after he’d passed was grief, but…no. It was something else entirely. A question left unanswered. A wound never acknowledged. The ache of unfinished business, not love. He sees it now, clear as day—what Gaz had that he never did. Safety. Acceptance. A place where being loved wasn’t conditional or a test to be failed.
Johnny swallows down the lump in his throat. “Yer mum sounds brilliant.”
“She is,” Gaz says simply.
Johnny nods, but his mind has already drifted, back to Simon’s face twisted in fury not at Johnny but for him. Simon’s voice rising, desperate.
“None of that was your fault, Johnny.”
Johnny hasn’t been able to shake it. He hasn’t been able to stop thinking about the way Simon looked at him, like the world had cracked open. Like Johnny mattered more than the truth he’s been telling himself for twenty-five years.
And he knows, finally, what that twisting feeling in his gut is.
He’s got to talk to Simon.
He doesn’t know what he’ll say. He doesn’t know how he feels about everything and he doesn’t know if he’s ready for the truth, the whole of it. But he knows Simon. And he knows he can’t let that look on Simon’s face be the last thing between them before he deploys.
But before he talks to Simon, there’s something he has to do, first.
Johnny dusts his hands off against his jeans and steps back from the tree. “Kyle?”
“Mm?” Gaz is trying to hook a huge ceramic snowflake onto a branch that absolutely will not hold it.
“I’ll be right back, yeah?”
Gaz glances over, eyes flicking to Johnny’s expression. Something in them softens. “Need a minute?”
“Aye. There’s something I need tae do.”
“All right. But hurry back. We’ve still got to convince Price to wear his jumper and I’m gonna need backup. And a distraction while I decorate his office.”
Johnny snorts under his breath and heads for the door. His heart is beating a mile a minute, and he feels like there’s lightning in his veins, fizzy and effervescent with nervous energy. But he knows one thing for certain as he steps into the hallway—he can’t let Simon spend Christmas Eve thinking he’s lost him.
Not when the truth is that Johnny has never needed him more than he does right now.
Ghost keeps to the edges of the rec room and watches the chaos.
He doesn’t decorate. He doesn’t wear the ridiculous jumper Gaz gave him. He doesn’t sit. Just stands in the shadow beside the far wall, arms loosely crossed, mask in place, letting everyone pretend he isn’t hovering.
Except he is hovering. As close to Johnny as he can be without intruding, just watching. Watching him.
Johnny stands by the artificial tree as he and Gaz argue over the rules of some mind-numbing Christmas game Ghost can’t begin to guess. Gaz is wearing some abomination of a jumper that makes him look like an elf mid-cha-cha, and Johnny’s own is red and green and hideous. A knitted monstrosity.
But somehow Johnny looks…good in it.
Johnny laughs as Gaz starts to make ridiculous, silent gestures—Oh. They’re playing charades—the sound a little thin perhaps, not as bright as it should be, but it’s there. It’s real. And Simon feels something warm and raw twist inside his ribs because Johnny is laughing without him.
Because Johnny isn’t looking at him.
Two days. Johnny asked for space, and Simon has given him exactly that. And every inch of it feels like a slow, deliberate wound.
Price wanders in with a mug of tea and mutters something under his breath about “bloody children,” but Simon can see the faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He’s letting himself be pulled in, orbiting Johnny and Gaz like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Laswell shows up with a tin of cookies she “totally didn’t bake at two a.m.”
A catering van arrives with a full Christmas dinner someone ordered in.
Someone puts on a movie—one of those stupid holiday ones that drive him up the wall, the kind with magic snowfalls and predictable endings and soft, happy music. It’s too warm in here, with the fake tree lights blinking unevenly and the smell of cinnamon sugar filling the air. Warm with sound, warmth with chatter, warm with people who have somehow, impossibly, become like family to him.
He should go. He knows he’s being fucking weird, lurking here along the fringe like a creep, but he can’t. Not when he can watch Johnny laugh and shine here from a safe, secluded distance. Gaz pokes him in the ribs and Johnny swears at him in Gaelic, and Simon’s chest aches so sharply he has to brace a hand against the wall.
Simon had always assumed Johnny’s brightness came from a childhood full of joy. Maybe a big noisy family of MacTavishes just as chaotic and earnest and steadfast as him. Maybe Christmas mornings full of love and gentleness. He thought Johnny had been shaped by warmth, because how else does someone grow into that?
But now he knows better.
Now he knows every spark of Johnny’s joy was forged in the dark. That his laughter was carved from silence. That all that warmth was something Johnny made himself, with no blueprint and no permission.
A miracle, Simon thinks, throat tight.
Johnny MacTavish is a goddamn miracle.
And he can’t stop thinking about the letter he recorded two nights ago, the words he spilled into the dark because there was nowhere else for them to go.
“If your father were still alive, Johnny, I’d put him in the ground with my bare hands. And I wouldn’t make it quick.”
He meant every syllable. The anger is still there, simmering low and sharp, but now it’s tangled with something softer—an ache so deep it feels like gravity.
I miss you, Johnny. I don’t know how not to care about you.
I don’t know how to give you space when all I want is you.
He stands there until the lights blur slightly and he has to blink hard, which is of course the precise moment when Johnny decides to look up, their eyes meet, and the whole room falls away.
Johnny’s expression freezes first. Gentle surprise. Something hopeful, maybe. Something scared, too. And beneath all that, something that makes Simon’s chest constrict—hurt. Hurt he put there.
Simon is the first to break. He drops his eyes and retreats from the room, but not before he sees Johnny turn back towards Gaz and Price. Down the hall to the safety of his own barracks room, shutting the door with a definitive thud.
Simon rips off the balaclava Ghost insisted on, sucking down great lungfuls of air.
He lasts all of five minutes before the walls start closing in on him.
“Fuck it,” he mutters, grabbing his cigarettes off the dresser. He shoves them into his jacket pocket with trembling hands. He needs air. Cold, dark, sharp air that might cut through the noise in his head.
He opens his door…
…and stops dead.
Johnny is standing there with one arm raised like he was about to knock, eyes wide and startled and impossibly blue beneath the hall lights.
A tiny intake of breath leaves Johnny’s chest. “Si.”
Simon’s throat works. “Johnny.”
For one long, breathless moment, they just stare at each other.
Johnny’s bandaged hands hover awkwardly at his sides, his braced wrist held close to his ribs. His shoulders are squared like he’s forcing himself to stand there, but his eyes are raw. Soft. Determined.
And Simon feels something inside him seize, then crack like a fault line shifting.
“Can I come in?” Johnny asks quietly.
Simon is trying to be respectful and give Johnny the space that he asked for, but his stupid heart leaps at the request and he hastily retreats a step, leaving the door open.
Johnny moves past him, and Simon closes the door. He’s still wearing that awful Christmas jumper, but he’s got something wrapped up tight in an opaque shop bag and clutched in both hands like his life depends on it, looking around Simon’s room like he hasn’t been in here before. It’s awkward. Simon can see that Johnny is visibly anxious, tugging at the neckline of his jumper and fidgeting, and why wouldn’t he be? He’d yelled at him, just like his father. Of course he’d make Johnny nervous now.
“Fuckin’ thing.” Johnny drops the package onto the bed and rips at his jumper, trying to get it off. He’s having a hard time, his hands obviously still stiff and sore, but Simon doesn’t dare offer to help. “I cannae talk tae ye wearin’ a silly thing like this—”
Up over his head it goes, and the jumper is tossed on the bed as well. Johnny is just standing there in a tee shirt and jeans, his mohawk adorably disheveled and his cheeks flushed. There’s another pregnant pause while he just stands there breathing, and Simon can’t wait any longer.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry.”
They both speak at the same time. Johnny rears back, mouth snapping shut, startled, and Simon just stares at him, wondering what the hell Johnny has to be sorry about? He’s still wondering when Johnny holds up a hand.
“Please. Just let me go first.”
Simon nods once and sits on the edge of the bed, looking up at him. He forces himself to just be still and listen, though he has to fold his hands together between his knees so he won’t reach for Johnny.
“There’s a reason, I think, that I never talk about my family or my childhood.” Johnny frowns, considering. “I think that I knew if I looked hard enough it wouldn’t hold up tae that kind of scrutiny, and the way that I am, it’s just easier tae let everyone assume. Because it was perfect. On the outside, at least. We wanted for nothing. There was love. Laughter. Good memories. There were rules, yes, and a way ye were expected to act, especially when Da was around. Everything was about the MacTavish legacy with him. Or God. But it was okay, because it felt like a goal we were all working towards together.”
Simon watches, confused. He has no frame of reference for the kind of childhood Johnny’s talking about, and it doesn’t compute with what Johnny told him earlier. But he waits, patiently, as Johnny gathers himself and pushes on.
“But then there were things that would happen that nobody would talk about, and…and more often than not, they happened tae me. Because I was my father’s son. I was the hope for the MacTavish legacy, the continuation of the bloodline like we were some kind of bloody royalty, and not a single day went by that Da didn’t remind me of what that meant. What I was supposed tae do. How I was supposed tae act. Who I was supposed tae become.”
Johnny’s voice has become progressively darker. “There was a different set of rules for me that I could not seem tae figure out, much less follow, so there were lessons. So many lessons. And I tried…I really tried, but…”
He drifts off, staring unfocused at the floor, and Simon feels something in his stomach twist.
Johnny takes a deep breath and wipes his palms on his jeans, restless. “I didnae understand then that it was all just…a show. A mask. A way tae make everythin’ look normal.” He huffs a shaky laugh, eyes glancing toward the door like he half-expects someone to burst in and tell him to shut up. “Took me a long time tae see that.”
Simon’s heart aches. He remembers Johnny laughing earlier in the rec room. Jumpers, tinsel, lights reflecting in those blue eyes. All of it genuine. All of it real. But this—this is the shadow beneath it.
Johnny presses on.
“After Da died, I was angry. So fucking angry. I hated my stepfather—he was an ol’ friend of me mam’s an’ I thought he was tryin’ tae replace Da. Thought his pity was worse than anythin’.” He drags a hand through his hair, frustrated. “I spent so many years thinkin’ I was the problem. That if I just…just tried harder, or acted right, or shut up at the right moments, everything would settle.”
Simon can feel himself shaking with the effort not to interrupt. To not go to him. To not say everything he’s screaming internally.
You were never the problem, Johnny. Never.
Johnny’s voice goes quieter, thinner. “But ye know what hit me square today? When Kyle was talkin’ about his mum, about their traditions, the love he grew up with?” Johnny laughs without humor. “I realized…I-I can’t remember a single holiday without feelin’ scared of doin’ something wrong.”
Simon inhales sharply, and Johnny flinches like he’s startled himself with honesty.
“I never dared tae look too closely at my childhood until I saw the look on your face that day, and I just…I was so fucking angry at ye for makin’ me look. I keep circling that moment, Si. The anger I felt an’ the…the way I felt when Kyle was talkin’ about his mum and I got tae thinkin’…what if yer right? I’ve gone so long thinking I was the problem because it was easier to blame myself—everyone else did. And it was easier to believe them instead of going against the man everyone idolized.”
Johnny breathes shakily, and the look on his face is enough to break Simon’s heart in two. So fucking lost, like his entire world and everything he believed to be true was crumbling at the edges.
“And it…I’m so confused, Simon. I dinnae ken if I’m right or you are, but all I know is that I am so fucking confused right now and I’m racking my brain going through each an’ every memory, some that I’ve buried so deep down I’ve almost forgotten them and all I can think is that…what if yer right?”
The room is so quiet in the wake of his confession that Simon can hear his own pulse thudding in his ears. Johnny stands there, stripped of every defense, waiting for an answer Simon isn’t sure exists.
Oh, Johnny.
Simon’s thoughts are pure chaos. Memories bleeding over, anger morphing into guilt, the horrible clarity of hindsight cutting like a blade. He sees it now. All of it. The bravado. The relentless humor. The way Johnny gives too much, tries too hard, burns himself at both ends just to be wanted. The way he never stops trying to prove he’s useful. Worth keeping. Worth loving.
And Christ—he hadn’t seen it until now. He had bulldozed straight through something sacred and fragile because he couldn’t stand seeing Johnny’s past mirrored too closely to his own.
His hands tighten between his knees. His jaw locks.
Johnny shifts, nervous now in the silence. “Si?” His voice is very small. “Say somethin’.”
He’s looking to Simon for answers Simon doesn’t have, but he’s not running. Simon hasn’t broken anything at all. Yes, he was heavy handed but Johnny is here now, asking for help in his own way and Simon is in a very unique position to help him through this.
So for the first time in a very long while, Simon shuts down that voice in the back of his head, opens his heart, and begins to talk.
“My father was a drunk,” he begins, because it’s best to begin at the beginning. “A second shift factory worker pissed off at the world. Cruel, vindictive, and sadistic. He loved nothing more than to see someone else suffer. Made ‘im feel powerful, I think, because he was pissed off at his lot in life and jealous of anybody who had better than ‘im.”
He’s staring at the opposite wall, but he feels Johnny sink down to the bed beside him, close but not touching.
Simon swallows thickly. “So…he took it out on who he could. Me. My mum. Tommy. Each one of us handled it in our own way. Mum popped pills. Tommy tried to stand up to him at first, but eventually he joined the old man, taking it out on me. Can't beat em, join em, I guess. And me? I tried to make myself as small as possible.”
He laughs. “You probably won’t believe it, but I used to be a scrawny little thing. Short for my age, nothin’ but skin an’ bones. Didn’t get this way—” he gestures up and down his body, “until after I joined and became obsessed with being the biggest, baddest motherfucker in the room. That’s how the mask started. Just a bullshit badass symbol, because I was a fuckin’ idiot. But Mexico…after Mexico it became a way to hide, even from myself.”
Beside him, Johnny’s gone very still. Simon fingers a scar on his face, the one across the bridge of his nose, a matching remnant of his childhood just like Johnny’s.
“You know how I got this one?” He doesn’t expect a response, but Johnny shakes his head slowly. “Beer bottle after the old man got laid off one time. Tommy was the one who mouthed off to him, but I wasn't fast enough and caught the recoil. Mum shrieked so loud the neighbors phoned the coppers, but Da was long gone by the time they came round—they got called to our block so often timeliness wasn't much of a virtue. Da was back a week later, I got thirty-seven stitches in my face, and Mum never pressed charges.”
He sighs heavily. Wasn’t that long ago that he’d thought he and Johnny MacTavish were nothing but polar opposites. Now here they sit, side by side swapping the horrors of their youths, but Simon has had a lot more time to process his than Johnny has. He’s always seen his childhood for exactly what it was.
He can’t imagine thinking something was safe and good and true, only to find out the heart of it was dead and rotten.
Simon turns to face him. Blue eyes, wide and depthless, stare back without a hint of the anger or resentment from before. So fucking brave. Standing there at the edge and wondering just how deep it all went.
If Johnny can be that brave, he thinks, then so can I.
“I don't tell you this to compare or belittle what you went through, Johnny,” he says, not flinching, not taking his eyes off Johnny. “I'm telling you this because while I haven't experienced what you have, I do know what it feels like to be afraid of someone who's supposed to take care of you. I know what it feels like to believe it's your fault. If you were just different, better, quieter—just anything other than what you are—then things might be better. Sound about right?”
Johnny lets out a little huff of air, and some of the tension falls from his shoulders. “Yeah.”
Simon leans toward him, closer but still not touching. “It’s a lie, Johnny. It was a lie then, and it's a lie now. Different beginnings, us, but the ending's the same. We’re still left picking up the pieces by ourselves.”
He wants to reach out to Johnny but he doesn’t let himself. He’s got to push through to the end, and if he touches Johnny right now he might not make it.
“But you’re not where I am yet,” he says. “You're standing on the edge of this thing, staring into the abyss, and I didn't give you the grace to accept it on your own terms. Hearing those words out of your mouth? What your father did?”
He shakes his head and beats back the anger that flares, white hot. “I was so horrified by the thought that you and I might have this thing in common that I projected my own demons onto you and I shoved it in your face. I’m not good at this whole feelings thing, but that’s no excuse. So I'm sorry, Johnny. I’m sorry for what you went through and I'm sorry for how you've got to wade through this fucking shit right now, and I'm sorry I didn't allow you the time and space you need to work it out on your own terms.”
His hands clench together. “I’m sorry, Johnny. And I want you to know that I am here if you need me. If you…if you want me. Even if it’s to just give you space, I can do that. I would do anything for you, Johnny. Anything. I hope you know that by now.”
Johnny closes his eyes. He breathes deeply for a moment, his bottom lip trembling so slightly Simon almost misses it, braced on pins and needles and wrung out raw waiting for Johnny to push him away again, to tell him to fuck off, to—
What he does not expect is for Johnny to lean into him, tilting his body until his head is resting on Simon’s shoulder.
“Ye know what, Si?” he asks quietly. “Yer better at this whole feelings thing than ye think.”
Silence, so profound it’s deafening fills the room, but the thing that weighs most is the sheer mass of the burden Johnny’s just laid down.
Simon doesn’t even realize he’s moving.
One second Johnny’s head is resting on his shoulder, and the next Simon’s arm is sliding around his back with quiet inevitability. Hesitant at first, then firmer when Johnny doesn’t pull away.
Johnny melts.
It’s not subtle. It’s not restrained. It’s like something inside him finally gives up the fight, and he turns fully into Simon and wraps his arms around him with everything he’s got, bandaged hands clutching uselessly but fiercely at the back of Simon’s shirt. His forehead knocks into Simon’s collarbone as he presses in, burrowing close like he’s trying to crawl under Simon’s skin. Like he’s afraid if he loosens his grip for even a second, Simon might disappear.
Simon stiffens in a startled reflex, then immediately softens.
His other arm comes up around Johnny without thought. One hand spreads wide between Johnny’s shoulder blades. He pulls him in, solid, unyielding, anchoring him there. Johnny’s breath stutters once against his chest, and then the trembling starts in earnest, small and violent all at once.
It hits Simon like a physical blow, feeling Johnny breaking apart right there in his arms.
Simon bows his head and rests his cheek against Johnny’s hair. He says nothing. He doesn’t rush it. He just holds him, steady and unmovable, giving Johnny something that will not flinch from his fractures, will not lock him in a cupboard, will not disappear through a slammed door. Minutes pass. The kind of time that stretches without shape, where neither of them is fully aware of anything but the quiet moment of blissful peace shared. Johnny’s trembling eases in slow increments, his breathing evening out, and Simon can feel Johnny’s heart beating steadily next to his own.
Something in Simon’s chest shifts.
He’s spent so long believing he was the weight. That he was the one who leaned too heavy, needed too much, clung too hard. But Johnny is here in his arms now, needing him just as fiercely. Just as helplessly. And Simon hates that Johnny is hurting like this, but Christ, he’s grateful he can be the one to help him through it.
Eventually Johnny stirs. Not pulling away completely, just shifting enough that his forehead lifts from Simon’s chest. They’re still wrapped together when Johnny tilts his face up slightly. So close Simon can feel the warmth of his breath on his cheek, see the faint redness in Johnny’s eyes, the soft tremble in his lower lip he’s trying so hard to control.
Their gazes snag.
Something strange happens in that suspended inch of space between them. The kind of moment that bends around itself, heavy with unspoken words. Johnny’s eyes drop down to the scar across the bridge of Simon’s nose, then down to his mouth and holding for a moment, Johnny’s lips parting like he’s about to say something, but his breath catches in his throat.
Simon’s pulse stutters. His stomach feels bubbly and he’s a bit dizzy, a strange feeling of something coming down the line that he can’t see and is aimed right at him as Johnny’s head dips oh so slightly towards his…
…then Johnny startles.
“Oh—” He blinks, reddening, almost flustered by his own proximity. “Shite. I— I almost forgot.”
He slips free of Simon’s arms quickly and turns back toward the bed, reaching for the opaque shop bag he dropped there earlier. The movement breaks the spell like a snapped thread.
Simon stays sitting exactly where he is, hands still half-curled like he’s braced for something.
What were you about to say, Johnny?
What were you about to do?
And why does it feel like all the air just left the room?
Johnny retrieves the package from the bed and turns back toward him, suddenly shy in a way Simon has never seen before. The edge of nerves in him is unmistakable, his shoulders a little too stiff, his grip a little too careful as he eases the object out of the opaque bag.
It’s a Christmas present.
Johny clutches at it with both hands, his jaw working, then he abruptly thrusts the present at Simon, his cheeks coloring even further.
“It’s…it’s for ye,” he says quietly.
Simon takes it automatically, still a bit dazed from the hug. The present is meticulously wrapped with sharp, precise corners and tight ribbon curled into swirls…and a blue cartoon dog with a Santa hat printed repeatedly on the paper.
“I couldnae find any paper, so I got this from Lexi in admin—I caught her whilst she was wrappin’ gifts. She’s got a five-year-old at home,” he explains, ducking his head. “My niece likes it—Bluey, that is. ‘tis a cartoon.”
The paper is bright and absurdly cheerful. So out of place with the heaviness lingering in the room that Simon has to pause a moment to adjust. Johnny wrapped this with his own hands. Whatever it is, he picked it out, wrapped it up with the most garish paper Simon has ever seen in his life, and he’s chosen this precise moment—after they’ve been wading through darkness together and the memories are still sitting there, crowding in at them from the edges—Johnny has chosen this precise moment to do this.
Johnny…is giving him a Christmas present.
For a moment, the world narrows to the weight of this oddly perfect, terribly fragile thing in his hands. The paper crinkles softly when his fingers tighten without thinking.
He doesn’t want to open it.
The thought lands sudden and absolute. He doesn’t want to open it because once he does, whatever this moment is, it will change. And he doesn’t want it to change. He wants to stay right here, suspended in this quiet, unreal space with just the two of them, safe and warm and soft.
Johnny shoves his hands in his pockets, his shoulders creeping up towards his ears.
“Ye—ye dinnae have tae open it right now, if ye don’t want tae,” he says quickly. “I just— I mean, I wanted tae give it tae ye before—well. Before tomorrow. An’ I know it’s not much, and—”
“Johnny.”
He freezes, and Simon looks up at him. Johnny looks borderline distressed, probably wondering if he’d misstepped because Simon’s just sitting there like a planker and staring at the present, but Simon doesn’t know how to explain himself.
“It’s…it’s fine, Johnny. It’s not…”
Johnny takes a small step forward. “Not what?”
But Simon just shakes his head. No one has ever wrapped something for him like this. No one has ever given him something like this.
He suddenly realizes Johnny is watching his face, worry flickering at the edges now, creeping in where confidence should live.
So Simon very carefully adjusts his grip.
And even more carefully, he begins to open it.
He peels the tape back instead of tearing it. Folds the paper inward instead of crumpling it. The sound of it is soft in the quiet room, each small movement deliberate, almost reverent. He doesn’t realize until later that he’s already decided to keep the paper.
The last of the paper falls away, and Simon’s breath leaves his body like it’s been punched out of him. It’s a photograph in a frame. He recognizes the location immediately, because he’s seen this exact spot nearly every night in his dreams.
He’s standing with his back to the camera, on the shores of the loch in Scotland. The cabin Johnny had rented would be back behind the camera and to the left, he remembers, the trail down to the water meandering slowly into view. His body is a dark silhouette against the loch sparkling with golden reflections of the sun, the peaks of the Scottish Highlands carving through the sky beyond him. He remembers this day. This precise moment. He remembers the feel of the sun on his bare face and the scent of the moss and the loch and the aftermath of the storm that had blown through the night before.
But most of all, he remembers the feeling of pure and lasting peace, and the warmth of knowing that Johnny was coming down the hill to join him.
It is one of Simon’s very best memories, and unbeknownst to him, Johnny had captured it to be preserved forever in a simple black frame.
“I-I took it the day before we left. Ye just looked so peaceful, so…” Johnny clears his throat nervously. “Anyways, I just wanted ye tae have a bit ‘o that tae keep with ye…”
And doesn’t that just gut him. How thoughtful the gift is—isn’t that Johnny to a ‘T’? How perfect and wonderful and good Johnny is, after everything he’s been through, to think of a thing like this and to take the time and effort to make sure Simon gets to keep it, too.
Simon’s heart swells until it feels like it’s going to burst right out of his chest. Until it feels like he can’t swallow past it. He knows he’s making Johnny nervous but he can’t seem to force the words out, and to his horror…a tear he didn’t realize was gathering spills down his cheek.
He turns his face away.
“Simon?” The bed dips down beside him. “Are…are ye okay?”
When Simon still can’t respond, he feels a warm weight cover his shoulder, and he knows Johnny’s seen the tear tracks.
“No. Och, mo chridhe,” Johnny’s hand shifts until he’s gently rubbing the base of his neck. “Ye dinnae have tae hide from me, Si. Please. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Simon stops himself, heart pounding, and stares down at the picture frame. “I’ve never…Nobody’s ever really given me a Christmas present before. And this…it’s just…it’s…”
He can’t get the words out. Simon lets Johnny turn him, lets him gently smooth away the tear tracks from his cheeks, clucking and murmuring something soft and low in Gaelic, little sounds of comfort Simon doesn’t need to understand to feel.
And that’s when Simon truly breaks.
He folds forward into Johnny’s chest, breath hitching, the frame pressed carefully between them like a sacred thing. Johnny wraps around him instantly, fierce and protective, arms bracing Simon like he might never let go.
It is the safest Simon has ever felt in his life.
They sit like that together for a few more blissful moments, until panic hits Simon square in the stomach, and he pulls back.
“But, I didn’t get you anything.”
Johnny stares at him, blinking, before he ducks his head, laughing softly. He smooths away the last of Simon’s tears and threads his fingers through the hair along his temple, his expression unbearably soft.
“Ye did, Simon,” he says quietly. “Ye already did.”
Before he can ask what Johnny means by that, a loud burst of laughter sounded from outside in the hall. Behind him, Simon can see Johnny’s discarded Christmas jumper in a heap on the bed.
Johnny follows his gaze, but he shakes his head. “We don’t have tae go back out there if you don’t want to. We can just—stay.”
Simon shakes his head. “I want to.”
He reaches past Johnny, picks up the jumper, and presses it into his hands.
Johnny stares at it like Simon’s just handed him a live grenade. “You sure?”
“Put it on.”
A beat passes. Then Johnny breaks into helpless laughter, soft and breathless and disbelieving. He drags the jumper back over his head, wincing a little as the fabric catches on his bandaged hands, and Simon helps him pull it on.
Then he pauses, steps back to his own bed, and picks up the jumper Gaz left for him earlier, the one with tiny white skulls in Santa hats stitched across the front.
Johnny’s smile freezes.
“Simon,” he says faintly. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
Simon pulls it on anyway, along with his plain balaclava.
The skulls look faintly ridiculous stretched across his broad shoulders chest. But when he turns back around, Johnny is staring at him like he’s just witnessed a small miracle.
“Christ,” Johnny breathes. “Kyle’s gonnae pass out.”
“Let him.”
Simon opens the door and steps into the hallway first.
He doesn’t look back to see if Johnny follows.
He doesn’t need to.
The rec room is loud. Tinsel and lights draped across every surface. The tree is fully lit now, ornaments glinting. Someone—probably Gaz—has strung garland across the TV and taped paper snowflakes to the walls. A terrible Christmas movie plays in the background, half drowned out by laughter and clinking glasses. Somehow, the size of the crowd has doubled, anybody who’d been left on base drawn into Task Force 141’s Christmas party and welcomed into the fold like they’ve always belonged there.
Gaz sees Simon first.
“…No,” he says faintly.
Then he sees the jumper.
“No,” he repeats, louder, grinning.
Simon lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug and walks in like this is the most natural thing in the world. Price stares openly for a full two seconds, then exhales through his nose and reaches for the jumper draped over the back of his chair. It’s hideous—green, blinking lights, pom-pom ornaments hanging from a Christmas tree stitched across the front.
Without a word, he pulls the jumper on, fumbles with it a bit…
…and the tree lights up.
“There. You happy?” Price scowls at Gaz.
Gaz grins like he’s just won the lottery. “Ecstatic, sir.”
He turns to Johnny. “Thought you abandoned me for a second there, Tav.”
“Never.”
“Glad to see you managed to coax Ghost from his room—and get him to wear the jumper. Must’ve taken some persuading.”
“Not as much as ye’d think,” Johnny smiles to himself.
Despite how the day started, it is the best Christmas Johnny has ever had. Friends, coworkers, and strangers all mingling together, good food, good company, all the worries and cares over what tomorrow might bring set aside. Laswell and Dr. Bedi and Price and Gaz, a motley group of people who have somehow become more important to him than his own family.
And Simon.
Simon, who has become the center of Johnny MacTavish’s world.
Simon who is standing beside him right now, shoulders finally easing as the noise and chaos washes over him, eyes raking everything in like he’s experiencing Christmas for the first time.
Johnny’s chest tightens.
Not everything is fixed. Not even close. He knows that. His past still aches like an old break that never healed right. His head is still a tangled mess of questions and doubt and things he’s terrified to touch. His heart still stumbles over feelings he doesn’t have words for yet. There are going to be a lot of tough days and even harder conversations in the future, but it doesn’t seem so bleak as it did this morning, standing here with Simon by his side.
Johnny hadn’t expected to feel this…light. Loosened. Like something inside him that had been knotted too tight for too long had finally slackened just enough to let him breathe, all because someone stayed long enough to bear witness to his scars and show him their own. To hold him up when he felt like collapsing and to give him permission to grieve for something he’s never realized he’s missed.
A miracle named Simon Riley. Who wept over a stupid Christmas present like it was the most precious thing he’d ever been given and who’d then walked back into the rec room wearing an ugly jumper with little Christmas skulls on it…like it wasn’t the single most unhinged thing he’d ever done in his life.
Simon catches Johnny looking at him. He doesn’t say anything, just gives that small, private tilt of his head that he knows means I’m here, Johnny. I’m with you.
Johnny feels it like a hand pressed against his heart.
Christ. I am so fucking in love with him.
Hours pass, and the party dies down. The rec room has mellowed into the kind of warmth that only happens after hours of food and laughter and drinking. The lights are softer now, edged by the low hum of people talking who don’t quite want the night to end yet.
It’s down to just the four of them, now—Price, Gaz, Ghost, and Soap.
Price tops off their glasses with the whiskey he’d rescued from his office after discovering Gaz had somehow managed to coat every inch of the office in fake snow. Gaz reclaims the remote like the natural tyrant he is and begins scrolling through streaming options.
“Right, we need something to wind down with,” he says, half to them, half to himself.
Price grunts. “If you put on Die Hard again, I’m leaving.”
“It’s a Christmas movie!”
“It’s not.”
“You’ve got a little something on your jumper there, Price.”
Price scowls and brushes at the fake snow on his shoulder. “You’re cleaning that up before we leave tomorrow, Garrick.”
“Why?” Gaz whines. “I thought we could have a snowman contest when we get back. Tav’s hands should be almost healed and you know I owe him a rematch from that op in Russia.”
“Five years old, the both of you,” Price grumbles, but his moustache is twitching suspiciously. “Riley, tell me you’re on my side.”
Simon just grins into his drink, his balaclava pulled up over his nose. “Sorry, Price. Ten quid says Soap’ll kick his ass.”
Johnny beams. “Thanks, LT. Ye’ll be helpin’ me, o’ course?”
“Wouldn’t dream otherwise, Johnny.”
Price lights up his cigar, blatantly ignoring the no smoking sign behind him. Gaz grabs the back of his shirt and yanks him down to the couch.
“Oi! Watch the drink!”
“You’re blockin’ the telly, old man.”
In the soft light from the Christmas tree, without his signature Booney hat (and the addition of the ridiculous jumper), Johnny is struck by how different Price looks. Carefree, with little crinkles around the edges of his eyes and a smile that even his moustache can’t hide, especially when he starts arguing again with Gaz.
Gaz catches Johnny watching and quickly looks away, scrolling until he finds the movie he was looking for. “Oh! This one.”
Johnny lets out a laugh before he can help it. “Bloody hell, Kyle. Been ages since I’ve seen that.”
Simon tilts his head. “I’m sorry—what is this?”
Gaz gasps like he’s offended on a personal level. “You’ve never seen The Muppet Christmas Carol?”
Simon stares at the screen, dubious. “It looks like it’s a kid’s show.”
Price groans. “It is. It’s Charles Dickens. With puppets. Gaz, you can’t be serious.”
“I’m always serious about the Muppets.”
“You’re a muppet.”
Gaz just chuckles softly and pushes play.
Johnny feels a tug on his pants leg. Simon’s looking up at him from the couch, and he jerks his head, indicating Johnny should sit by him. He sits, and Simon leans back, stretching his arm across the back of the couch and opening his body up so that Johnny can snuggle into his side. Johnny hesitates only a moment before he realizes that Price and Gaz are too busy arguing to notice.
When the Muppets start singing, Gaz joins in, until Price claps a hand over his mouth. Gaz digs a knuckle into his side, and Price yelps. “Christ, Kyle! That hurt!”
“Serves you right.”
“They don’t need any help from you.”
“You know, Price, there’s a character on here you really need to pay attention to.”
Johnny watches, laughing to himself, and he looks over to see Simon watching, too. He can tell Simon’s smiling behind the mask.
“Ye okay, Si?”
“Perfect, Johnny.” He leans down. “But if you start singing too, I’m going to smother you in your sleep.”
“Promises, promises, LT,” Johnny grins and snuggles into Simon’s side.
He didn’t have Christmases like this growing up. Not truly. But here, now, tucked in between warmth and laughter and soft bickering and a man he cares for more than anyone in the entire world…
It feels like a memory he’s being handed retroactively. Like something he should have had all along. Something that even he…and especially Simon, deserve.
And there is nowhere on earth he’d rather be.
“I’m confused,” Price is saying. “What kind of animal is the blue one with the funny nose?”
“That’s Gonzo,” Gaz whispers back. “He’s a ‘whatever’.”
“A what? And I thought he was Charles Dickens.”
“Listen, if I can’t sing, then you can’t ask questions.”
“Are you giving me orders, Sergent?”
“Damn right…Captain.”
Johnny feels himself slowly tugged sideways. Simon’s head tilts against his in a very uncharacteristic, blatant show of affection, and he feels Simon’s lips move behind his ear. “I didn’t thank you for the present, earlier.”
Johnny leans into him. “Ye don’t have tae say anything. I know.”
“Thank you, anyway.” Simon’s lips curl into a smile, and he drops his voice to a whisper. “Merry Christmas, Johnny.”
“Merry Christmas, Si,” he whispers back.
In her office down the hall, Kate Laswell, takes a sip of coffee, scrolling through the intel documents for tomorrow. She’d left the rest of the 141 a couple hours ago—it had been just down to the five of them, and she’d wanted to give them some quiet time. Lately, she’d been sensing some emotional undercurrents in the foursome, deep undercurrents she didn’t have context for but respected all the same.
Task Force 141 was a motley group of special operators, the best in the world, but the four men had come together to form a bond tighter than Kate had ever seen in all her years working intelligence. It was a special thing they had. Fragile, but unbreakable. And in a world that never stopped, never eased up on the constant threat of danger and destruction, tonight of all nights, these four deserved a moment of peace.
Kate Laswell is still looking at reports when the door to her office cracks open and her wife, Jess, comes in with their dog Milo at her heels.
“Hey,” Jess says softly. Tired brown eyes, scrubs rumpled from a long shift. “You ready to go?”
Kate looks up from the tablet and smiles in that way that belongs only to Jess. Tired. Warm. Real. “Yeah. Just—give me a minute. I want to say bye to the boys. How was your day?”
“Long. The ED on Christmas Eve never disappoints.”
“Uh oh.”
“Let’s just say I’ve seen more than my fair share of Christmas decorations where they don’t belong.” Jess steps fully into the office, Milo padding in at her heels, tail swishing lazily. “How was the party?”
“Watching a bunch of hardened soldiers put on ugly Christmas sweaters and act like a bunch of kids never fails to amuse.”
Jess laughs. “No geese this time, I hope.”
“It was swans, and no—Garrick snuck about a hundred pounds of fake snow into Price’s office, instead. Which reminds me, don’t let Milo in there or we’ll never get him out.” Kate puts the last few files away and grabs her coat. “Even Riley joined in.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It seems like he’s starting to come out of his shell.” Kate smiles faintly. “I was skeptical when Price paired him and MacTavish together, but they seem to be getting on well.”
Together, they walk down the hallway. Tomorrow, they’ll both have to go to work, but at least they’ll still have tonight. Once they get to the rec room, Kate motions for Jess to wait there with Milo.
“MacTavish doesn’t like dogs. I don’t want to startle him if he’s still up.”
She needn’t have worried.
All four members of Task Force 141 are out cold on the couch, fast asleep. Price is kicked back, his long legs sticking out and crossed at the ankles, his hands folded over his stomach. His head is leaned back, but it’s tilted to the side against Garrick, who’s slumped bonelessly over against Price, both arms crossed. On the other end of the couch, Riley is slouched down, one arm draped across MacTavish’s shoulders who’s snuggled into Riley’s side, his head on his shoulder.
All four men are snoring softly.
Kate blinks, but then she smiles. Jess’s laughing quietly from the doorway.
Kate tiptoes over to the cupboard where extra blankets are kept, and she selects two, gently pulling one first over Price and Garrick, then another over Riley and MacTavish. Then, without a word, Kate grabs a string of garland and a strand of lights, and she wraps both around the four grown men on the couch. Careful not to wake them, of course—she is a CIA operative—though after a few minutes, she realizes that all four are so far gone nothing short of an explosion would wake them.
She plugs in the lights, eliciting a quiet round of applause from the doorway, finds a bow, and places it in the middle of the display, along with a sign she hastily scrawls:
Do Not Open Until December 25th.
Not a single one stirs. Kate returns to the door, pausing just long enough to look back once more at the four men tangled together under Christmas lights, bulletproof vests forgotten, walls down, exhaustion finally winning. Safe and warm and at rest, and Kate will be damned if she’s going to let anything ruin it.
She watches for a moment, smiling, then she slips her arm through Jess’s and they turn to leave, closing the door softly behind them.
Got Your Six Series Masterlist
Gah! That ended up being a lot longer than I intended, but they finally talked! It's a start, anyway. They still have a ways to go but they're getting there, and Johnny knows he has Simon to help him work through things (and he's actually letting him). And another little hint of Price/Gaz, I'm going to be putting out some of their fics in their series to catch them up to where we are, again, if that's not your thing just bypass it, their relationship won't be the focus here, just background. Also my first time writing Kate and her wife, she was fun to write--she didn't have bubble wrap for her boys, but she did the next best thing. Let them rest! Like I said, I'm going to bounce back and catch up Gaz and Price a bit in their own series, but the next fic for this one will be more fluff...and a little bit of spice. Anyways, hope you enjoyed, and THANK YOU again for all the comments and support for this series so far, you are all the best! I hope that your December (and holiday season if you partake) is safe and warm and comforting <3 <3
Something in Ghost’s eyes—wide, tense, unfocused—sobers him immediately. Soap’s not sure where Ghost’s head is at, but he’s pretty sure his lieutenant isn’t seeing him right now. His chest is rising and falling in deep, even breaths, but they’re speeding up. His hands are clenched into fists, and Soap realizes he’s a millisecond from getting his face caved in.
Ghost is one breath away from shattering, and Soap doesn’t even understand why.
-or-Ghost is triggered by a tunnel op, and Soap picks up the pieces.
Soap shoves open the door to the safehouse and holds it open for his partner. Ghost, as always, is right on his heels, but Soap’s not fooled. He knows something is off.
At first, he thought Ghost was just angry about the mission they’d just completed. FUBAR as usual, but this one had been in a filthy old tunnel where they’d had to squeeze into a hole barely wide enough to accommodate the lieutenant and crawl through dirt, muck, and stinking foul slop that was probably best left uncontemplated.
But afterwards, when the silence lasted longer than usual, Soap knew something was wrong. He’d tried everything—bitching and complaining, teasing, speaking in Scots because he knows it annoys Ghost, even throwing a few ‘Dad jokes’ he’s Googled and has been saving up for a rainy day.
Soap’s even tried going completely silent as well, a herculean effort for him, just in case that might do the trick. Nothing.
Time to bring out the big guns.
“Steamin’ bloody Jaysus, that tunnel was black as th’ earl ‘o hell’s waistcoat. Me uni’s pure mingin’!”
That should get Ghost’s attention. Covertly, Soap checks behind him, pleased with himself.
Ghost is standing motionless, staring at his hands.
They’re caked in muck like the rest of him, but somewhere along the way, Ghost had lost his gloves. The sight of bare skin isn’t completely unprecedented—it’s not like Ghost goes around base wearing his full kit—but it’s not common for missions. Soap’s always filed that away under the mystique that is Ghost, but for some reason, the sight of Ghost’s pale skin covered in mud and blood unsettles him.
“Oi…Ghost.” Not a blink, not a shift, not a single breath that Soap can see. “You with me?”
Ghost doesn’t move. Doesn’t respond.
Did he…has Soap pushed too far?
Then, he notices the blood.
Soap frowns, concern softening his voice. “Ghost, yer hands…they’re bleedin’.”
Two steps and he’s beside Ghost, studying him under the mask. His hand hovers near Ghost’s shoulder, instinctively reaching out, but the instant he makes contact, Ghost jerks violently away. His back hits the wall with enough force to rattle a picture frame from the wall, and it shatters on the floor.
“Woah! Easy!” Soap pulls back, heart hammering. He freezes, hands still raised, trying to figure out what just happened.
Something in Ghost’s eyes—wide, tense, unfocused—sobers him immediately. Soap’s not sure where Ghost’s head is at, but he’s pretty sure his lieutenant isn’t seeing him right now. His chest is rising and falling in deep, even breaths, but they’re speeding up. His hands are clenched into fists, and Soap realizes he’s a millisecond from getting his face caved in.
Ghost is one breath away from shattering, and Soap doesn’t even understand why.
Wildly, he looks around the room for a clue, some kind of signpost to navigate through this. All the while, Ghost stands motionless in the corner like unexploded ordinance.
Soap exhales through his nose, centering himself. “Right… okay. No worries.”
In the end, diffusing Simon Riley isn’t unlike diffusing a bomb, and that’s something completely within Soap’s wheelhouse. In a calm and measured tone, he begins to talk.
“Did ye know, that the first practical application of TNT—or trinitrotoluene, if ye want to get technical—was as a yellow dye? Crazy, right? It all started in 1863, when a German chemist by the name o’ Julius Wilbrand first synthesized a new yellow dye. Mad bastard didn’t even ken it was explosive. Anyways…”
Soap keeps talking, his voice steady, words scattered like breadcrumbs for Simon to find his way back. Half for the room, half for Ghost—anything to fill the silence, anything to anchor him here. Slowly, he works his way through the history of munitions and the intricacies of detonators. None of it matters, not really, but the point isn’t the words. It’s his voice.
While Soap talks, he’s removing his own gear and placing it on the table. He keeps talking as he backs towards the kitchenette, fills a bowl with warm water, and grabs a towel. He’s still talking when he sets the bowl and towel gently on the table, next to his IFAK.
Ghost’s chest heaves like he’s still buried under a mountain of rubble only he can see. His shoulders twitch when Soap edges a bit closer, but Soap doesn’t stop. He’s close now, nearly close enough to touch but he remains still, keeping his hands visible and empty.
“Not gonna touch ye,” he says softly. “Just stay with me, aye? Can you look at me?”
For a long moment, Ghost doesn’t. His gaze is distant, lost in the dirt scattered on the floorboards and the blood. But Soap refuses to shut up, refuses to let the silence press in. His voice fills the air like smoke, warm and chaotic, and eventually Ghost’s eyes flicker—just a shift, just enough that Soap knows he’s been heard.
It guts him a little, the way Ghost looks at him then. Like he’s both anchor and storm at once.
“There, ye are.” Soap swallows hard, biting back his own heartache. “See? Yer hearin’ me. That’s it. Come back. I’ll talk yer ear off all bloody night if that’s what it takes, yer not gonna be rid of me that easy.”
Soap keeps rambling, steady stream of nonsense spilling out. He’s careful, though, no sudden moves, no pushing. Just his voice, filling the safehouse like a lifeline.
Ghost’s breathing is still jagged, his shoulders rigid, but there’s a flicker now, like he’s fighting his way back to the surface. His hands twitch once, curling tight against his sides, then loosening again. Soap catches it, heart thudding. Progress.
“Aye, there ye go,” he murmurs, softer now. “That’s it. Still with me, Ghost. Still here. Nothin’s gonna bury ye, not while I’ve got yer six.”
Slowly, carefully, he extends his hand, palm up. Waits.
One heartbeat. Two. His stomach knots. He’s braced for empty air, for Ghost to leave him hanging.
But instead, Ghost extends his own hand and places it in Soap’s.
For a moment, Soap forgets how to breathe. The weight of Ghost’s hand in his own is so solid, so deliberate, that it nearly cracks him in half. He expected to be left hanging forever, gripping nothing but air, and now there’s warmth and dirt and blood against his palm. A choice. A trust he hadn’t dared to hope for.
He swallows hard, steadies himself, and curls his fingers gently around Ghost’s. “Okay, Ghost. Okay.”
Slowly, careful as he would be defusing a live charge, Soap dips the towel into the bowl of warm water. He wrings it out, then starts to clean Ghost’s bare skin. His movements are firm, precise, steady—the way he handles wires and detonators—but gentled now, drawn soft around the edges. Blood and mud streak away under his hand, swirling pink into the water. He keeps talking, low and rambling, like the words can stitch the silence together, but his focus is absolute. Knuckles, palm, wrist. Every scrape tended to. Every shadow of grime wiped clean.
He doesn’t realize what it looks like—how the water runs dark as he wipes away the dirt clinging to Ghost’s skin, how each pass of the towel feels like something being lifted from him. To Soap, it’s just practical, just patching up his partner. But to those who understand, it would look like he’s washing the grave right off of Ghost’s hands.
“All done,” Soap says at last, attempting a grin as he pats the skin dry and wraps a neat strip of gauze around raw knuckles. His voice dips softer, almost hesitant. “All right, then, Ghost?”
He braces for a grunt. For silence. For the wall to slam down again.
Instead, Ghost caves. No sound, no warning, just the sudden weight of 6’3” of hulking lieutenant folding forward into Soap’s arms, his mask pressed into Soap’s shoulder. Like something inside him finally gives, and the fight bleeds out all at once.
Soap’s arms close around Ghost without thought, steady and sure, holding fast against the tremor that runs through the bigger man. For once, he doesn’t try to fill the silence with words. Doesn’t tease, doesn’t prod. He just holds him.
And in the quiet, Soap swears he’ll keep holding on as long as it takes. Softer, his face buried into Ghost’s throat, he whispers. “Yer heavier than ye look, LT. But I’ll hold ye up. Always. Ye dinnae need to worry about that.”
Ghost says nothing, just lets out a shaking breath, and holds Soap a little tighter.
My Panic’s at the Ceiling, but I’m Face Down on the Carpet
Whumptober Day 5 Prompt: Phobia
https://archiveofourown.org/works/75305301
Fandom: COD MW (Reboot)
Relationship: Simon "Ghost" Riley & John "Soap" MacTavish
Words: 7100
Triggers: Blood/Injury, Whump, Dog Attack, PTSD, Past Child Abuse
A shout echoes from somewhere behind him. Boots pounding. Snarling.
Gaz curses sharply. “Shit—Soap, right side! Hold on!”
Soap looks up.
Dark shapes explode out from behind a stack of shipping pallets. Massive, fast and low, fur and teeth and momentum.
Dogs. Big dogs.
Two of them.
And something inside Johnny MacTavish just…locks up.
-or- Soap has a fear of dogs and gets triggered in the middle of an op.
The compound is a concrete maze of flat roofs, narrow alleys, and shuttered windows flashing muzzle fire. Soap and Gaz slip between shadows, rifles sweeping, synced like they’ve been running ops together for a decade instead of a handful of years. They’re there to extract a HVA with information on Makarov. Price and Ghost have been paired together, breeching the inner compound, while Gaz and Soap cover the yard, disabling vehicles and cutting off the exit.
Soap is not a fan of this plan.
Don’t get him wrong—he loves Gaz like a brother and would have him as a partner any day of the week. But this is the first time the 141 has been deployed and he and Ghost haven’t been paired together.
After everything they’ve got through, it just doesn’t seem right.
But Soap is a professional, so he lets it slide off his back. He can’t be thinking about Ghost right now—this is the very reason he and Simon agreed to go back to call signs and professional distance after Scotland. What happened behind closed barracks room doors was one thing, but in the field, shit like that could get someone killed. And right now, Gaz was his responsibility. Not Ghost.
“Two on the balcony,” Gaz murmurs through the comms. “I’m covered right.”
“Got ‘im.” Soap adjusts and fires over a Mercedees hood, one-two, the targets’ bodies folding silently over the railing.
“Clean work, Tav.” Gaz says as he moves past, covering Soap’s flank.
“Bravo 6-1, this is Actual. We’re set to breech, but the HVA might make a run for it. We need that rear gate disabled.”
Gaz keys his mic, answering Price. “Roger Actual, proceeding to the rear gate now.”
“Slippery bastard won’t make it past us.” Soap sweeps left, vaulting a low wall. “Let’s shut the back door on him.”
They hit the yard. Open ground, half-lit by burning floodlamps, vehicles scattered like toys abandoned mid-play. Soap checks the gate—reinforced steel, hydraulic lock, chain-run mechanism. He kneels and pulls the charge pack from his pack.
Gaz moves up behind a concrete planter. “I’ve got overwatch. You do your thing.”
Soap does, with quick, efficient hands. Wiring placed just so. Primary charge. Anchor. Clamp. Circuit…
Concentrated gunfire from the inner compound. Then Price’s voice bursts over the comms.
“HVA’s on the run! Moving to your position—north yard! What’s the status on that gate, 7-1?”
“Soap, you’re about to have company!” Ghost’s voice is strained over the comms, and he can hear gunshots in the background.
“On it!” Soap barks, fingers flying.
Gaz shifts position, firing as a squad spills out from the main doors. Brass rains onto the ground, and Soap ducks as a ricochet kicks brick fragments in his face.
“Gaz—keep ‘em off me!”
“Roger! Moving topside!” Gaz scrambles for the high ground, trying for a better vantage to protect Soap.
“Almost there!” Soap snaps the detonator into place.
A shout echoes from somewhere behind him. Boots pounding. Snarling.
Gaz curses sharply. “Shit—Soap, right side! Hold on!”
Soap looks up.
Dark shapes explode out from behind a stack of shipping pallets. Massive, fast and low, fur and teeth and momentum.
Dogs. Big dogs.
Two of them.
And something inside Johnny MacTavish just…locks up.
Everything slows. Sound winks out. His lungs forget how to work. His hands stop moving.
The first dog is airborne before Soap’s brain even finishes processing the shape of it. Gaz fires, one shot, two, but he’s pinned down and the beasts are committed, leaping with terrifying precision towards Soap as his instincts scream. MOVERUNFIGHT
He’s got a gun right there. A knife, inches from his hand, but he’s frozen, his muscles locking down the same way they did when he was seven years old and helpless and cornered and—
The first dog hits him like a battering ram straight in the chest. Soap slams onto his back, air punched out of him, the world going white as his head bounces off the pavement.
Teeth flash, going straight for his throat.
He jerks his forearm up to protect himself on pure reflex, and the teeth sink into his arm. Hot breath and saliva. The pressure is unbearable. Searing. Every instinct is screaming at him to move but he can’t—
Another weight crashes onto him. The second dog. Bigger. It lands across his ribs and pins him, snarling, froth spraying across his face. Teeth rake for another opening—his jugular, his face, anywhere soft. Finds his other arm instead.
Soap scrabbles, back, feet kicking uselessly against the pavement.
The world narrows to the heat of fur, the snap of jaws, the smell of blood—his blood, the dog’s breath, he can’t tell—
“Soap!” Gaz roars somewhere far away.
But Soap’s brain is locked. Vaporized. Whited-out terror flashes behind his eyes like lightning trapped in a bottle. He can’t think past it. Can’t see past it. He’s seven years old again—backed into a cupboard, hot breath on his cheek, teeth tearing for him—
The dog shakes its head savagely, and pain rips up Soap’s arm.
He screams.
A shape barrels into the chaos—fast, brutal, human.
Snarling is drowned out by a wet, meaty squelch. First one, then another. Hot blood splatters Soap’s face.
For one horrifying second, he thinks it’s his. Thinks the dogs tore out his throat.
I’m dead. I’m dead.
He chokes, grabbing uselessly at his neck.
No pain. No open wound. Just blood that’s not his.
Gaz shoves the limp dog carcass off him with a grunt, then the second. He crouches over Soap, hands hovering, frantic, eyes wide. He’s saying something, but Soap can’t hear him over the ringing in his ears. Gaz grabs his chin and tilts his head up, searching for injuries, while Soap takes little gasping sips of air and his heart threatens to pound its way out of his chest.
He can’t move. He can’t breathe.
Bullets pepper the wall right above Gaz’s head. He shouts something, grabs Soap by the rig and hauls him bodily back, firing blindly to their left. Soap tries to lift himself, to brace himself and help Gaz at least pull his dead weight to cover but all he can see is two dog carcasses in a pool of blood, Gaz’s knife still sticking out of one of them.
Gaz drags him behind a truck, drops to one knee, and starts firing over the hood with furious precision. Soap slumps against the tire, breath sawing in and out, staring past Gaz’s boots toward the two dark shapes on the ground.
Gaz killed the dogs.
He locked up, and Gaz saved him.
Gaz is the reason he’s not bleeding out on the concrete right now.
Gaz is still firing over the hood of the truck, ducking as another barrage sprays the side. “Soap! Get up! We need that gate down! Now!”
Soap’s stomach lurches.
Right. Right. The gate. The HVA. Price said he was headed their way—they have to cut off the exit. Gaz needs his help.
Soap fumbles for the detonator clipped to his rig. Unclips it.
Drops it.
His fingers won’t work right.
Soap dives for the detonator as it skids under a truck. He’s scrambling for it, reaching, gasping, white hot pain flaring up his arms as his vision goes spotty around the edges.
Gaz doesn’t look back, too busy trading fire with the shooters up on the balcony. “Tav! We need that boom, mate!”
Soap drags himself forward on his elbows. He gets the detonator between his palms—no grip strength at all—and cradles it awkwardly against his chest as he thumbs the trigger.
A beat.
Then—BOOM.
The gate explodes inward in a roar of heat and flying debris. Smoke billows across the yard. There’s shouting, figures running, and a brief staccato burst of gunfire, but it all sounds very, very far away.
“HVA secured,” Price calls out over comms. “Fall back to point Delta.”
The world tilts as Soap sags back against the brick wall. He slides down until he hits the ground, legs folding under him with no coordination at all.
“Tav—we’ve got to go!” Gaz crouches in front of Soap, dipping his head into his line of sight, then turns and looks over his shoulder to see what Soap’s staring at.
The dog carcasses.
The furrow between Gaz’s brows deepens. His gaze drops to Soap’s torn up arms, still clutched protectively against his chest, and he curses softly.
“Come on,” he says, hooking his hand underneath Soap’s armpit and hauling him to his feet. “I’ve got you.”
It’s been two minutes since the rear gate blew.
Eight since he heard Soap scream.
“Bravo 6-1, what’s your status?” Price snaps into his mic.
They’re moving fast through the inner corridor, hauling the HVA between them. The bastard is bargaining, pleading, but Ghost barely hears him. The only thing he hears is the echo of Soap’s scream ringing inside his skull.
Price’s voice cuts through the haze. “Status, 6-1! Report!”
A beat of static.
Then Gaz, breathless: “We’re…we’re enroute. Two mikes.”
It’s not “Solid.” It’s not “All clear.” Just that they’re enroute.
Ghost’s fingers tighten around the HVA’s collar hard enough to make the man choke. They break through to the courtyard, the night air biting against the sweat cooling beneath Ghost’s gear. The helo is circling in, rotors kicking up grit. Price shoves the HVA forward, pushing him toward the extraction point.
Where are they?
Ghost’s eyes never stop scanning the narrow passage Soap and Gaz should be coming through. He needs visual confirmation…
Two silhouettes round the corner at a jog. Gaz first, rifle up, then Soap right behind him.
Ghost’s body locks.
Soap is covered in blood.
It’s soaked through his plate carrier and vest, his sleeves, up the side of his neck and sprayed across his face in fat droplets. It’s dried in places, tacky in others, sprayed across his shirt in a pattern Ghost recognizes far too well.
His heart kicks once, hard enough to steal his breath.
Soap is moving under his own power, but barely. He keeps his arms pulled tight to his chest, elbows in, shoulders hunched. Gaz hovers close, ready to catch him if he stumbles.
Ghost breaks into a run.
“What happened?” He snaps, reaching forward to grab Soap by the tac vest and haul him close. “Johnny—where are you hurt?”
Soap doesn’t answer. Doesn’t even look at him. His eyes are wide and glassy, and he’s breathing way too fast. Those blown pupils aren’t tracking him. They aren’t tracking anything. Wherever he is in his head right now, it’s not here. He’s seen this before. In hostages. In rookies. In men who survived things they shouldn’t have. But he’s never seen it in Soap.
Ghost makes a noise in the back of his throat and tilts Soap’s head to the side, checking for wounds, pulling aside his gear—anything to explain the sheer amount of blood.
Gaz steps in, bracing a hand under Soap’s elbow. “It’s not all his,” he says quickly. “There were dogs—two of them. They got his arms pretty good before I could get to him—”
Ghost doesn’t hear the rest. He’s already checking Soap himself, hands moving with quiet urgency. He pushes back the torn sleeve at Soap’s left arm and sees the bite marks—deep punctures, half-moon tears. Bruising is already coming up, ugly and dark. Blood oozes sluggishly from the worst ones.
Soap doesn’t flinch.
Ghost tilts his chin up with two fingers. “Johnny. Look at me.”
For a moment, Soap doesn’t. His gaze skitters somewhere over Ghost’s shoulder, unfocused. Then—slowly—he obeys.
Ghost feels something in his chest unclench and tighten all at once. The helo touches down with a roar, rotors cutting through the night. Price calls his name from the ramp, needing Ghost’s help to help secure the HVA and coordinate the hand-off.
He doesn’t want to let go.
But he has to.
He gives Gaz a sharp look. “Get him on the bird.”
Gaz nods and guides Soap toward the ramp. Ghost follows Price, shoving the HVA into a jump seat and cuffing him down. The bastard is still mouthing off, but Ghost’s focus keeps drifting over Price’s shoulder to where Soap is. Price finally looks over his own shoulder, sees what Ghost sees, and something old and tired shifts in his face.
“Riley,” he says. “Go check on him.”
Ghost doesn’t need to be told twice.
He goes back to where Soap is sitting next to Gaz in a jump seat. Soap is just staring, unseeing, so still and quiet that it terrifies Ghost. He’s never seen Soap like this. Gaz looks up, relief plain on his face.
He gets up and herds Ghost off to the side. “I think it was the dogs,” he says quietly. “I know he’s not fond of them, but…I’ve never seen him lock up like that. He just froze. Purely defensive. He didn’t even reach for his knife. If I hadn’t gotten there in time…”
He breaks off, scrubbing a hand over his mouth. “I just…I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help him.”
And Gaz just looks so worried for Soap that Ghost actually feels a surge of affection towards the sergeant. In an uncharacteristic display, he grips Gaz’s shoulder, squeezing.
“I’ve got him.”
A faint smile, and Gaz grips the hand on his shoulder. “Thanks, LT.”
Then he moves to the front of the helo with Price, giving Ghost and Soap some space.
Ghost slips into the seat beside Soap. Their legs touch. Their shoulders. He angles his body toward him, lowering his voice to something that barely carries over the engine roar.
“Johnny,” he says gently. “Can you look at me again?”
Soap does. Slow. Uncertain. Blood streaks across his cheekbone, his skin too pale beneath it.
“Where are you at right now, Johnny?” he asks, softer. “Where’d you go?”
Soap lets out a shuddering breath, but his eyes focus and he’s tracking Ghost now. “Aye. I…I’m here.”
“Good. Stay with me.” Ghost reaches carefully for his forearms. “Let me see your hands, Johnny.”
Soap lets him. No resistance at all.
Ghost gently peels off Soap’s gloves, slow and mindful. His jaw tightens as he sees the damage. Punctures. Deep bruising. Swelling starting along the wrists and hands. It must be very painful, but Soap doesn’t react at all.
That scares Ghost more than the blood.
“Don’t worry, Johnny,” Ghost murmurs, thumb brushing gently along the uninjured part of Soap’s wrist. “We’ll get you to medical. Get everything sorted.”
Soap nods. Barely. A noncommittal grunt, followed by a small, tired shrug. He still seems really out of it.
Ghost shifts closer, their shoulders touching fully now, trying to ground Soap with quiet, certain presence, but for the first time, Soap doesn’t lean in. Doesn’t seek out Ghost’s comfort, doesn’t seem to register it at all. He just sits there, staring straight ahead, unconsciously bouncing his leg, a nervous habit Ghost has only ever seen in tiny flickers. Ghost doesn’t know what’s going on or how to fix this, the frightening stillness so out of character he feels a slow well of panic open up in his chest.
“I’ve got you, Johnny,” he murmurs, fighting the urge to grab him and not let go. “Stay with me. Please.”
Boots thunder down the hallway as Ghost eats up the distance in long, purposeful strides, and anyone possessing an ounce of self-preservation quickly gives way to the six-foot-three human bulldozer wearing a tac vest and skull mask. Price had needed him longer than expected—interrogation protocols, the handoff, Laswell calling in live, the HVA playing games with half-truths—but Ghost wasn’t listening to any of it. Not really. Every minute spent in that cramped little office felt like pressure building behind his ribs, a slow, steady vise turning. Ghost has been moving for hours, but it feels like he hasn’t taken a full breath since the courtyard.
Since Soap’s eyes went far away, retreating to a place Ghost couldn’t follow.
He knows how to handle bullets, bombs, blades. He knows how to prepare for an ambush, how to read an enemy, how to take a hit and get back up.
He has no fucking idea what to do with a silence like the one Soap gave him.
Ghost knows how to fight something head on, but he doesn’t know how to prepare for something he can’t even see—this is all such uncharted territory for him. Soap is always an open book. So easy to read. Wears his heart on his sleeve, forthcoming about his thoughts and feelings in a way that is so incredibly brave to Ghost, but seeing him withdrawn like this, dissociating in the back of a helo while Ghost is spinning his wheels not knowing the reason…it terrifies him.
He spots Dr. Bedi in the hallway outside medical, and relief hits him fast and hard—she’s competent, calm, no-nonsense—and she’s the only person he trusts right now with anything involving Soap.
“Dr. Bedi.”
She looks up, brightening. “Lieutenant Riley. If you’re looking for Sergeant MacTavish, he’s not here.”
The tension in his shoulders loosens by half an inch. If Soap’s injuries were really severe, they never would’ve released him. “How is he?”
“Bite trauma to both forearms and hands,” she says. “Moderate swelling. Deep bruising. Several punctures and two lacerations I had to suture. His right wrist is badly sprained, but nothing broken. He’ll be sore for a while, but he’ll heal. Light duty for at least a week.”
Ghost nods once, slow. Not good, but not catastrophic. Not life-threatening. Not what his mind had conjured, over and over, during the hours stuck with Price and Laswell.
She continues, voice gentler. “He refused pain medication. I advised against it, but…” A sigh. “You know how he can be.”
He does. Too well.
“When’d he leave?” Ghost asks.
“About thirty minutes ago. He didn’t say where he was going, but he seemed a bit off. At the time, I chalked it up to his injuries, but you might want to have a talk with him.”
Ghost’s jaw works beneath the mask. “Thank you.”
He checks the mess hall first. No Soap.
Soap’s barracks room. Empty.
He tries his own next, some gut instinct pulling him down the row of identical doors, and finds the duffel on his bed unzipped. One of the inner pockets gapes open, and a pack of cigarettes sits on the nightstand. An unopened pack when Ghost saw it last.
His stomach drops. Soap doesn’t smoke. Not anymore—at least that’s what he said when they’d shared that cigarette in Scotland, sitting side by side under the stars as they laughed and drank cheap bourbon.
Soap wouldn’t be smoking now. Not unless he’s hanging by a thread and scrabbling for something, anything, to hold on to.
Ghost pivots and heads straight for the smoking area behind the barracks.
The night is cold, the wind sharp enough to bite through his jacket, but there’s Soap, hunched in on himself against the cold. Both arms are wrapped from the elbows to the knuckles in clean white bandages, and his right wrist is in a soft brace. He’s got a cigarette pinched awkwardly between two fingers, trying to manipulate a lighter beneath it.
Ghost feels relief first—pure, overwhelming relief at seeing Soap upright and acting somewhat normal.
Then lighter slips. Soap’s hands are shaking. He tries again, and again, the flame sputtering out before it catches.
He drops the lighter.
It skids over the pavement and comes to rest a few feet away. Soap stares at it for a moment, then he chucks the cigarette as hard as he can.
“FUCK!”
Soap bows his head, breath sawing through clenched teeth.
Ghost’s heart punches hard against his ribs. He’s never seen Soap’s temper snap like that. Not once. The fury in it is sharp, brittle, and barely held together. And Ghost realizes, with a slow, sick drop in his stomach, that whatever happened back in that courtyard didn’t end when Gaz killed those dogs.
It followed Soap home.
Ghost takes one slow step forward, letting himself be heard. “Johnny?”
Soap flinches like he’s been shot, but he doesn’t lift his head. Ghost moves past him. He picks up the lighter from the ground, pulls the pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and lights one, taking a long drag before passing it over. Soap holds up a bandaged hand to take it, curses, then leans in to let Ghost put the cigarette directly between his lips.
“Thanks,” he sighs.
Ghost lets him take a drag, then he takes it back. “You want to tell me what’s goin’ on, Johnny?”
“What—are ye here for a head check then, LT? Dr. Bedi already tried that.”
“I’m not Dr. Bedi. And you know better than to bullshit me, Johnny. You lost your head today with those dogs. Gaz saw it. I saw it. Something is wrong, but I don’t know what, and I’m worried about you.”
Soap mutters under his breath but says nothing.
“Oi.” Careful of his bandaged arms, Ghost turns Soap to face him. “What was it you said, sitting by my hospital bed not three weeks ago? ‘We can’t keep going on like this, you and me. We’ve got to let each other care.’ You shutting me out isn’t in the script anymore. Talk to me.”
Soap shifts his weight uneasily. “I don’t like tae…it’s hard tae explain.”
“Then make me understand. I want to understand. It’s just you an’ me here, now. Just Johnny and Simon.” When Johnny doesn’t respond, he holds up the cigarette. “You’re not getting this back until you do.”
That gets a brief flicker of a smile. “Now that’s just cruel.”
“I’m a right bastard when I want to be.”
Johnny huffs a thin, humorless laugh, but it fades almost instantly. The cigarette burns low between Simon’s fingers, and Johnny stares at it like he’s trying to work out whether talking hurts worse than keeping his silence.
“It’s stupid,” he says finally. “It’s fuckin’ stupid, Si.”
Simon’s voice softens. “I doubt that.”
Johnny swallows hard. His jaw works. Simon can see the moment something in him gives, some inner hinge loosening with a quiet, exhausted sigh.
“It’s like ye said. I lost it. Blew my top. Checked out. I just saw those dogs and…”
Then Johnny’s gone again, his voice fading away to nothing and staring at something only he can see. Simon crowds him a bit, ducking down so he can see Johnny’s eyes.
“I knew you didn’t care for dogs—”
“I fucking hate dogs,” Johnny snaps, and Simon has never heard the word hate said with that much venom before. “I hate ‘em, Si. But I thought I had it locked down. I thought I was over this. I thought I was…”
He mutters something else under his breath, something that suspiciously sounds like man enough to Simon’s ears. He’s about to ask Johnny to repeat himself when the younger man taps his own chin with bandaged fingers, on the long scar that branches across the length of it. A scar Simon has always wondered about but never thought to ask.
“Ye ken how I got this scar, Si?”
He shakes his head.
Johnny hums, staring at the pavement. “I was seven. Neighbor had a few sheepdogs, I used to play with ‘em sometimes ‘cause me mum’s allergic so we couldnae have one. Well, one day there was a new dog in the field with the rest, so I went up tae him like a damn fool, not mindin’ what my da had told me about approaching strange dogs. The thing went for my throat. Got my chin instead.” He touches the edge of his chin scar with a thumb, almost unconsciously. “Thought it was gonnae kill me.”
Simon goes very, very still.
Johnny swallows. “Week after, I was out wi’ my da. A lady was walkin’ her dog on a leash. It came over to sniff at me and I—” His voice cracks. “I panicked. Tried to run, but he grabbed me and made me stop. I couldnae stop cryin’. And Da…he didn’t like that.”
Simon’s fingers tighten around the cigarette. You were seven years old, Johnny. A child.
Johnny’s breath clouds in the air as he blows it out shakily. “That afternoon, Da takes me outside. He says I need tae toughen up. That a man’s got tae face his fears. Then I see he’s got the neighbor’s dog tied up in the garden. Da shuts the gate behind us, tells me tae stop bein’ soft.”
A hollow laugh. “I tried, Si. I really did. But the dog comes over and I—I panicked again. Started cryin’. Didn’t mean tae. Just…happened.”
Simon already knows he won’t like what comes next.
He’s right.
“So he drags me inside,” Johnny says, staring at the pavement again. “, an’ shoves me into the cupboard under the stairs. It was so dark in there. Small. And then he locked the dog in there with me.”
Simon’s lungs stop working for a moment.
“Dog had me trapped in the corner. Growlin’. Snappin’. Every time I moved, it lunged. Couldnae scream ‘cause it’d make it worse. Couldnae breathe right. Couldnae do anythin’ but sit there and shake.”
Simon’s hands clench into fists.
“He kept me in there for four hours,” Johnny says quietly. “I sat there for four fuckin’ hours, waitin’ for that thing tae tear me open. He said I had tae learn not tae be weak. I think I’d still be in there today if Mam hadn’t come home from her errands.”
He swipes at his cheek with his sleeve, lets out a shuddering breath, then shrugs. “Anyway, it’s just another lesson I failed to learn, and look where it got me. Freezing like a fuckin’ wean in the middle of an op. Could barely scrape me wits together in time to blow that damn gate. Fuckin’ pathetic.”
Simon feels something hot and murderous coil under his ribs. “He did what?”
Johnny finally looks up.
And freezes at the expression on Simon’s exposed face. Not pity. Not even surprise anymore. Just fury—cold, clean, surgical fury. The kind of anger a man gets when something precious of his has been harmed.
Johnny laughs, quick and shaky. “I mean—it wasnae that bad. Don’t look at me like that, Si. I’m probably tellin’ it wrong. Da was just strict. That’s all. He just…he wanted me tae grow up right, ye ken?”
Simon takes a deep breath and prays for patience. “No, Johnny. I don’t ken. Locking a terrified child in a cupboard with an aggressive dog that already attacked once is not strict. It’s—”
“Ye dinnae understand. I was a handful. Loud. Always in getting’ intae trouble, and he—"
“None of that was your fault. You were seven years old.” Simon steps closer. “Christ, Johnny. That wasn’t strictness o-or a teachable moment. That was abuse.”
Johnny flinches.
Simon sees it, now. The fracture line that’s always been there. He sees it, and he presses anyway.
“What else did he do to you?” he demands. “Did he…did he put his hands on you? Did he—”
Johnny’s head snaps up, wounded alertness flashing through his eyes. “Don’t. Don’t talk about him like that.”
“Like what?” Simon demands. “Like the monster he clearly was?”
“He wasnae a monster!” Johnny snaps. “He—he provided for us. He worked hard. He cared for my sisters—”
“But not you.”
“He tried,” Johnny insists, desperation bleeding through the anger. “He just…he didn’t know what tae do with me. And I made things harder. I-I disappointed him all the time. I was never what he wanted, never good enough but that was me, Simon, that was on me, not him—”
“Johnny.” Simon’s voice is a growl. “Did he beat you?”
There is a shift to Johnny’s eyes, and Simon knows the next sentence out of his mouth is going to be a lie.
“He only used the belt when I deserved it—”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“Why are you acting like this?”
“Because he abused you,” Simon snarls, trembling with barely contained rage. “He put his hands on you. He locked you in closets with vicious dogs. He terrorized you. And you’re seriously standing here defending him?”
He hears his own voice rising and recognizes it—he’s shouting at Johnny’s father by proxy, not at Johnny—but he can’t seem to stop.
Johnny looks stricken. “You’re twisting it—”
“I’m not twisting anything,” Simon says. “I’m recognizing it for what it is. What it’s always been. And what I cannot understand is why you can’t see it. Or won’t.”
“Stop.” Johnny backs up a step. “Ye didn’t know him. Ye don’t know what our house was like—”
“I know what he did to you.”
“No,” Johnny snaps, “ye don’t!”
“I understand more than you think, Johnny.”
“It’s not the same thing!”
“Then tell me, Johnny.” Simon’s eyes flash. “Tell me how it was.”
“I am tellin’ ye!” Johnny shouts, his voice breaking. “And ye’re not listenin’! Aye, things were rough, but that was just how he was. He was tough. He wanted me tae be tough too. He wanted me tae be a man.”
“And beating a child is how he thought men are made? Does that sound like a man to you?” Simon spits. “Christ, Johnny, you know better than that. You’re so close to this you can’t even see it.”
“See WHAT?!”
“That none of this was your fault! Not then, not now. Not what happened today. There is only one person at fault here, and it’s the useless cunt who had the nerve to call himself your father.”
Silence detonates between them.
Johnny looks…wrecked. Wide-eyed. Red in the face. Breathing way too fast.
And Simon realizes, too late, that even though his anger is aimed squarely at Johnny’s father, Johnny’s the one catching all the shrapnel.
“I don’t—” Johnny’s voice collapses in on itself. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“Johnny—”
“No.” He takes a step away from Simon, shoulders rigid, hands uselessly curling in their bandages. “This…this was a mistake. I never should’ve told ye.”
“Johnny, please. I’m sorry.” Simon holds up his hands, wanting to go to Johnny, to pull him into his arms and make everything okay again but Johnny is refusing to meet his eyes, edging further and further away. “I was just caught off guard and really, really angry, hearing what he did to you. I didn’t mean to insult you or your family or anything like that, but I understand about this more than you realize—”
“I said I don’t want tae talk about it, Ghost, leave me alone!”
Simon flinches back.
Johnny’s shoulders fall. “I didnae mean it like that. I just need some space, okay? It’s been a long day.”
It feels like ripping his own heart out, but Simon makes himself answer. “Okay, Johnny.”
His hand twitches like it wants to reach out and pull him back, but he forces it to stay at his side and he stands there, cigarette burning down to ash in his fingers, as Johnny turns and goes back inside without looking back once.
Johnny closes his barracks room door with his heel because he can’t really use his hands. The latch clicks shut and the sound goes straight through him, sharp and final. His room is dimly lit by the bedside lamp he left on, the yellow glow throwing soft shapes across the mattress, the crumpled blue faux fur blanket, and the indent in the pillows where Simon slept last night.
His arms are throbbing. Deep, bone-level pulses of pain that fire up through his hands and wrists and into his elbows. Dr. Bedi said swelling would get worse overnight. She wasn’t wrong. He sits on the edge of the bed and breathes through the tightness in his chest, fumbling with the bottles of anti-inflammatory meds and antibiotics she gave him. Swallows both pills dry, but the moment they hit his gut he feels the familiar churn start, nausea curling up and clenching his stomach like a fist.
Brilliant. Just brilliant.
Johnny tries to peel off his jacket. The fabric catches on the bandages. He swears under his breath, tries again, teeth clenched against the pain sparking through his wrist. He manages it after a minute or two of fumbling but the effort leaves a sheen of sweat across his temples. He’d bypassed the mess hall completely—couldn’t get his fingers around the utensils well enough to eat—and now he’s too queasy to even think about food.
He stretches out on his side, gingerly arranging his arms so they don’t brush anything. Every movement hurts. His muscles ache from tension, from the pain, from everything.
He stares at the wall.
He should sleep, probably.
But he knows that’s not going to happen.
Not long after, someone knocks lightly on the door. “Tav? You awake, mate?”
Gaz. Johnny squeezes his eyes shut. “Aye. What d’ye need, Garrick?”
A heavy pause. Then Gaz pushes open the door, and Johnny is suddenly glad it’s too dim for him to make out how miserable he must look.
“I wanted to see how you were feeling. That was pretty brutal, today.”
“Yeah,” Johnny huffs a laugh. “I was there.”
“You doing all right?”
“Just tired.”
“You eat?”
Johnny closes his eyes and lets out a breath. Gaz means well. “I’m too knackered tae eat anythin’ right now. I will later.”
Another pause. The kind of pause that means I know that’s bullshit but I’m respecting it anyway.
“A’right,” Gaz says quietly. “If you need anything… just shout, yeah?”
Johnny nods without turning. “Thanks.”
Gaz leaves. His footsteps retreat down the corridor. Silence settles again, heavier now. Too heavy. Johnny rolls onto his back and immediately regrets it as his wrist pulses sharply. He bites down on a groan.
He shouldn’t’ve told Simon anything. He shouldn’t’ve let the words spill out like that, shouldn’t’ve stood there in the cold with his hands shaking and his stupid heart wide open and said things he’d never said out loud, not even to himself.
And Simon—
Johnny feels the heat of anger rise again, hot behind his eyes.
Why did Simon have to react like that?
Why did he have to look at Johnny like he was some pitiful broken thing? Why did he have to act like he knew better than Johnny did? Like Johnny hadn’t spent his whole life living it every day, just trying to make sense of it all?
Simon doesn’t understand. How could he? Johnny knows he’s been through some shit, knows he has his own trauma, but how could someone like Simon—solid, calm, untouchable Simon—possibly understand the world Johnny grew up in? The pressure. The judgement. Everyone constantly watching you. How could he understand what it was like trying to be the kind of son who didn’t disappoint everyone?
Johnny rolls onto his side again as his wrists throb in time with his heartbeat, curling a little around the ache in his stomach. He thinks he might throw up later.
What he wants is Simon’s comfort right now. He wants Simon’s voice in that low careful tone he uses only with Johnny. Wants the steadiness of him, the warmth. How everything just seems better when he’s in Simon’s arms…
Instead he’s alone and miserable, and he’s only got himself to blame.
Never should’ve opened yer fuckin’ gob, MacTavish.
Did ye see the look on his face when you told him? The fuckin’ pity?
His stomach churns again. The room is too warm. His skin feels tight. He wants Simon. Christ, he wants him. Wants the solid weight of him curled behind his spine, the warmth of his chest at his back, protecting, the way he always tucks a hand over Johnny’s heart like he’s holding it steady.
But the thought of going to him right now…
He feels trapped like he’s seven years old again. Like he’s sitting in the dark with a dog’s breath hot on his face and knowing if he makes a sound, he’ll get hurt. Trapped with no way out. Small. Pathetic. Weak. Exactly the things he thought he’d buried years ago. Embarrassment. Shame. Fury at himself for letting it get this far.
He turns his face into the pillow and breathes unsteadily.
He can’t go to Simon. Not like this. Not when his chest is tight and his thoughts are a mess and he’s so angry he can’t trust his own voice. So he stays where he is instead, curled up and alone.
He doesn’t sleep well. Every time he drifts, he jolts awake to echoes of snarling teeth and Simon’s raised voice tangling together in the dark. He tells himself he’ll deal with it in the morning.
But the truth is simpler, and far crueler:
He’s still back in that cupboard. He never left.
And he doesn’t know how to get out.
Simon shuts his barracks door softly. Not because he’s trying to be quiet, but because anything louder feels like it will splinter the thin shell holding him together. The room is dark, but he doesn’t turn on the light. He can’t stand to see anything clearly right now.
He strips out of his tac vest mechanically, like muscle memory is the only thing still functioning in him. His hands are shaking. He doesn’t notice until he misses the hook on the wall and the vest hits the floor with a dull thud.
Simon stands there for a long time, chest rising and falling heavily, hands flexing, trying to remember how to breathe.
Johnny walked away from him.
And he deserved it.
He drags both palms down his face beneath the mask, presses hard into his eyes until he sees sparks.
Christ. He fucked this up.
Not the argument—arguments happen. Not even Johnny yelling. He can take that. He’s seen him angry before, but this was different. This was Johnny pulling away from him like Simon was the one snapping at his heels. Like he was the dog in that cupboard.
And Simon put that look there.
He sits heavily on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.
He shouldn’t have pushed. He knew—he knew—as soon as Johnny tensed that he’d crossed a line. But hearing what happened, the cupboard, the dog, the fucking horror show of it all—something inside him just detonated. A hot, savage anger he couldn’t get hold of, one he hasn’t felt since Mexico.
Not anger at Johnny. Never at Johnny. Anger at the man who hurt him. The man who deserves to be in the ground for what he did.
But Johnny didn’t see that. All he saw was Simon’s fury and judgement. Two things he didn’t deserve. He should’ve handled it gentler. Carefully. Softly. The way Johnny needed.
Instead he’d scared him.
And maybe that’s the worst part. Simon knows exactly what it feels like to be small and terrified in a dark room with no way out.
He knows. And he still made Johnny feel that way. Because he was upset.
“Fucking hell,” he mutters into his palms. “What have I done?”
His ribs feel too tight. His throat burns. A tremor runs through his shoulders, sudden and unwelcome. He needs to go to Johnny. Needs to check on him, needs to tell him he’s sorry, that he didn’t mean to lose his temper, that Johnny did nothing wrong, that none of this is his fault…
…but he can’t.
Not when Johnny asked him to leave him alone. He asked Simon to give him space. And right now…his presence might actually make it worse.
Simon leans back against the wall, head thudding softly against it, staring up into the darkness.
He wants to hold him. He wants to wrap himself around Johnny, keep him warm, keep him safe, keep the whole fucking world from ever touching him again. Wants to tuck Johnny’s bandaged hands against his chest and kiss his hair and whisper I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you—
But that’s the problem, isn’t it? He doesn’t have him.
Not tonight. Not after the way he handled things.
A sour, helpless frustration coils in his gut. He’s trained to solve problems with precision. Identify, isolate, neutralize. But this? Johnny’s hurt? Johnny’s shame? Johnny’s entire childhood collapsing under Simon’s scrutiny?
He can’t shoot it. Can’t choke it. Can’t bleed it out.
And he sure as hell can’t ask Price what he should do. Or Dr. Bedi. This is Johnny’s secret. Johnny’s trauma. His to share or not share. Simon doesn’t have the right to give it voice. But the fury—at Johnny’s father, at himself—has nowhere to go. It’s burning a hole through him.
He thinks of Johnny’s journal. He thinks of writing it down, scrawling thoughts out like Johnny does when his head’s too full. Purging this poison from him. But Simon stares at his hands and knows it’s pointless. He can’t write for shit, always a disconnect between his brain and the pen, his thoughts knotting and tangling before they even make it to the page.
He rubs his thumb over the smooth stone in his pocket, the one Johnny had given him in Scotland. His thinking stone, he likes to call it. Fuckin’ mental is what that is. But then his fingers brush against his phone case and an idea blooms in his mind.
He pulls it out and unlocks it. Hesitates. Then he finds the dictation app he sometimes uses for op prep.
His thumb hovers over the record button. Hesitates again.
Then he presses the button.
“Hey, Johnny…”
The silence after the words is heavy. He swallows. This feels stupid, but he makes himself go on, pretending that it’s Johnny in the room he’s talking to.
“It’s um…it’s Simon. You probably already figured that out. We had a fight today and you asked me for space so I’m…I’m recording this because I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know what I’m doing, I just—"
His voice breaks. He lets it.
“I’m sorry I hurt you.”
He closes his eyes, feeling the weight of everything he’s never said in his life gathering behind his ribs.
And he keeps talking.
Got Your Six Series Masterlist
Sorry :( I know you all are anxious for them to figure things out and KISS already, but there is a LOT of trauma to wade through between these two, and I'm trying to make this as realistic as possible, at least to my brain and with my headcannons as I'm writing them. And I may be doing a *slight* bit of projecting of my own experiences with some of these traumas and this has actually been pretty therapeudic for me. But things will get better, I promise. The next fic will be Simon's recording for Johnny, followed by an angsty but ultimately tooth-rotting fluffy Christmas fic with the whole 141 and Simon and Johnny finally resolving a few things (but still quite a ways to go before they're "together"). Hooray for trauma processing. Anyways, thank you for all your feral screeching in the comments, I cannot tell you how much they make me smile...actually, grin like an idiot lol. And it really does give me motivation, this is an extreemly long form series and probably is going to be like 500K words by the time I'm done, if my fics keep up the same length. So enjoy, I hope you all have a safe, relaxing weekend! <3
If All My Days Are Numbered, Why Do I Keep Counting? - Chapter 1
Whumptober Day 6 Prompt: Medical Restraints | Whumptober AltPrompt: Viral
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Fandom: COD MW (Reboot)
Relationship: Simon "Ghost" Riley & John "Soap" MacTavish
Words: 2100
Triggers: Blood/Injury, Whump, Medical Procedures, PTSD
Ghost moves toward the far wall and his stomach turns cold. There’s a cryogenic storage vault with reinforced glass. Inside, rows of cylindrical vials filled with blue liquid sit suspended in cooling racks. Except…
“There’s some missing,” Soap says softly beside him. He jerks his head at the canisters on the floor. “Dewar flasks. Insulated with dry ice tae keep viral samples at -80 C. They must’ve used these tae move ‘em.
Ghost keys his mic. “Watcher-1, be advised. We’ve found a bio containment vault. Several vials unaccounted for.”
Laswell’s tone tightens. “Copy, Ghost. Stand by—”
Soap steps around him to get a better look at the cooling rack. He crouches down, frowning. Ghost turns slightly, waiting for Laswell’s update.
“Ghost—get down!”
Soap tackles him from the side, knocking Ghost clear off his feet as the room explodes.
-or-Ghost and Soap are exposed to an unknown bioweapon.
The warehouse is deathly quiet.
Ghost steps through the shattered loading bay door with his rifle raised, boots crunching on broken glass. The stench hits first—chemicals, diesel, and something faintly metallic baked into the concrete. It smells like a place that’s been used hard and abandoned fast.
Price moves ahead with calm precision, one hand lifted in silent signals. Gaz takes the right flank, sweeping doorways and corridors with watchful eyes. Soap is at Ghost’s shoulder, covering their six. A half step behind, but close enough Ghost can feel the shape of him, the heat of him, the slight change in his breathing when something catches his attention.
“Watcher-1,” Price murmurs into his mic as they enter the dark mouth of the warehouse. “No contact yet. Lots of signs someone packed up quick.”
Laswell’s voice crackles back. “Copy, Actual. We have reports that Konni has been operating a lab out of that warehouse tied to the recent terrorist attacks, but the lead’s gone cold.”
Price came to a tee and halted the group. “I wasn’t aware Konni claimed responsibility of those attacks, yet.”
“Not officially,” Laswell responded. “But there were trace elements on the bomb casings that matched previous attacks. Our team was able to trace the supplier’s origin back to that warehouse, and their readings showed similar signatures.”
“What’re we lookin’ at? Chemical, biological?”
“The traces were biological, but since it’s Konni, I wouldn’t rule anything out. Proceed with caution, Actual. We have a full decon and containment team standing by if you need it.”
Beside him, Soap blew out a breath. “Containment team. That makes me feel so much better.”
“You ever gone through a full decon, Cap’n?” Gaz asks?
“No,” Price grunts, “and I don’t aim to start now. Let’s move out.”
They proceed left down the corridor, which opens into a large loading dock.
Soap sweeps left, shining his light on a stack of discarded crates.. “Looks like they evac’d on short notice. Didn’t take fuck all with them.”
Ghost crouches by a dropped clipboard, pages scattered and footprints tracking across them. Cyrillic. Definitely Konni.
He doesn’t like the feel of it.
Price stops at what looks like a stack of shipping pallets pushed haphazardly aside. Except beneath them, barely visible, there’s a seam.
“Door here.” Price says, stepping back. “Gaz?”
“On it.” Gaz wedges his shoulder in, shoves the pallet aside with a grunt. Dust billows upward, revealing a recessed metal hatch with a biometric pad beside it.
But the hatch isn’t sealed.
It’s ajar.
Ghost’s stomach drops.
They left in a hurry. And they didn’t care about locking what was underneath.
Soap whistles low behind him. “Oh brilliant. Secret underground lairs. This is some real Resident Evil shite, LT.”
Ghost gives him a flat look. “Keep your head on.”
Soap’s grin fades. “Aye.”
Price pulls the hatch open with a metallic groan. A stale draft of cold air spills out, carrying the sterile bite of antiseptic and something that makes the hair on Ghost’s arms rise.
Below them, a metal stairwell sinks into the dark.
“Watcher-1,” Price murmurs. “Looks like we found the entrance to the lab.”
“You’re cleared to enter. I’m accessing local schematics and cross-referencing ground sonar readings, it looks like there are multiple levels. First sublevel appears to be living quarters and manufacturing. Second level… looks like medical.”
Price splits the team without hesitation. “Gaz, you’re with me. Level one. Ghost, Soap—level two. Clear it and report.”
Ghost feels Soap glancing at him when he hesitates. Medical. Of course.
Not Price’s fault, though, is it? He doesn’t know, because you’re too much of a coward to tell ‘im everything they did in Mexico.
Ghost nods once. “Copy.”
They descend.
The stairwell hums under their boots, metal vibrating with each footfall. The deeper they go, the colder the air gets. Lights flicker on motion sensors, weak, struggling fluorescents that buzz like dying insects.
Level one breaks open into a hallway, and Price and Gaz peel off. Ghost and Soap continue down. Level two is wrong the moment they step through the reinforced door. The ventilation is off, making the air stuffy, and the lights haven’t been maintained properly—half of them flicker, and the shadows they cast move unnervingly across the walls.
Ghost’s boots echo on the tile. Soap’s footsteps fall in just half a beat behind.
They clear the first room. Living quarters. Sparse. Cots unmade, clothes left behind. Half-eaten ration bars. Someone fled mid-meal.
The next room is a medical suite.
Ghost’s pulse ticks faster. Stainless steel tables on casters, straps still hanging loose. Cabinets of supplies left open, contents spilled. A long drain in the floor.
He has to blink hard to drive back the overlaid memories from Mexico.
Soap’s light flicks over a row of empty IV stands, then to a glass cabinet with racks of syringes still in their plastic.
“Jesus,” he mutters quietly. “This place gives me the creeps.”
Ghost doesn’t disagree.
They keep moving.
Next is an observation cell, reinforced glass cracked into a spiderweb as if something shoved against it with all its strength. Dried blood is pooled in the corner, and for a second, Ghost just stares at it.
Something very bad happened here.
“Ghost?” Soap comes up beside him. “Si—you okay?”
“Solid.” Ghost forces himself to turn away. “All clear. Move on.”
They push through the medical suite and down the rest of the corridor, where it dead-ends at a set of double doors.
The only locked doors they’ve seen.
Soap’s whole posture sharpens. He kneels and pulls a snake cam from his pack. Ghost watches his hands move with deft precision—steady, practiced, patient. Soap feeds the camera under the door and bends over the ocular display.
“It’s the lab,” Soap murmurs. “Looks like it’s intact, but it’s a mess. Can’t see any movement. No tripwires on this side, door’s clear.”
Ghost kneels beside him, connecting a bypass cable to the wall panel. “Let’s not blow ourselves up opening it.”
“Be a shite way tae go,” Soap says under his breath. “Killed by a bloody door.”
Ghost cuts him a sharp look.
Soap clears his throat, lips quirking into a smirk. “Right. Quiet time.”
Ghost splices two lines, loops the circuit, and overrides the magnetic lock with a soft hiss. The doors slide open.
Papers lie scattered across the floor. Lab coats discarded. A coffee mug overturned beside a centrifuge. Equipment half-packed into crates.
Soap steps forward slowly, the muzzle of his rifle sweeping the corners. “Christ. They left in a rush.”
Ghost moves toward the far wall and his stomach turns cold. There’s a cryogenic storage vault with reinforced glass. Inside, rows of cylindrical vials filled with blue liquid sit suspended in cooling racks. Except…
“There’s some missing,” Soap says softly beside him. He jerks his head at the canisters on the floor. “Dewar flasks. Insulated with dry ice tae keep viral samples at -80 C. They must’ve used these tae move ‘em.
Ghost keys his mic. “Watcher-1, be advised. We’ve found a bio containment vault. Several vials unaccounted for.”
Laswell’s tone tightens. “Copy, Ghost. Stand by—”
Soap steps around him to get a better look at the cooling rack. He crouches down, frowning. Ghost turns slightly, waiting for Laswell’s update.
“Ghost—get down!”
Soap tackles him from the side, knocking Ghost clear off his feet as the room explodes.
Ghost comes to on his back. His ears are ringing so loudly he can’t hear anything but a shrill metallic ringing that makes his skull throb. Fluorescent lights overhead flicker in and out, strobes of white cutting through the heavy drifting dust. He tastes concrete and copper, grit thick on his tongue.
Bomb.
There must’ve been a device wired to the door, maybe the…maybe the lock pad. He’s not sure. It’s hard to think. Soap must’ve seen it. Soap knocked him out of the way—
Soap.
Where’s Soap.
Ghost rolls over and blinks, trying to clear his head. Shapes drift in and out as his vision struggles to adjust. The lab is half-collapsed, ceiling panels ripped down, glass glittering across the floor like spilled diamonds. The cryogenic vault at the far wall has a massive spiderweb fracture across its reinforced glass.
And there, half buried in the debris, on his side, body twisted awkwardly away from him…
Soap.
He’s not moving. Ghost isn’t sure he’s even breathing.
His heart drops to his stomach.
“Soap,” he coughs, crawling forward. “Johnny.”
He drags himself forward immediately, boots scraping on rubble and glass and something wet. His hands leave streaks of blood on the floor, but it barely registers. He reaches him just as Soap groans and rolls onto his back, coughing violently. Relief hits like a punch to the gut, so strong he almost wants to vomit.
Soap blinks up at the ceiling, eyes unfocused, coughing harder as he drags in a lungful of dusty air. Ghost manages to raise himself to his hands and knees and crawls the rest of the way to him, grabbing Soap’s hand and pulling him close enough so he can see his face.
“Si?” Soap rasps, coughing again, clutching the back of his head as he sits up, curling his fingers around Ghost’s.
“I’m here. You hurt?”
Soap squeezes his eyes shut, shakes his head once, then again, trying to clear the fog. He looks dazed. Slow. His pupils are blown wide.
“No,” he manages, breath hitching. “You?”
Ghost checks himself. Nothing broken, nothing bleeding too badly…then he looks at the floor they’re lying on.
Broken glass. Blue liquid.
And his own blood.
He glances down. His sleeves are shredded, glass embedded in his arms.
His stomach turns.
Slowly, painfully, he looks over at Soap.
Blood’s dripping down the side of his face from tiny lacerations peppering his cheek, forehead, and jawline. His forearms are bleeding, too.
Ghost’s chest goes cold. He grabs Soap’s wrist and forces his arm up between them, inspecting it. Sure enough, he’s peppered with the same glass.
Together, they both look at the destroyed cryogenic storage vault.
Blood roars in his ears. “Fuck.”
“The vials—”
“I know.”
“There was a microcharge in the cooling chamber, must’ve been rigged to the door lock on a timer. I didnae see it until the last minute—”
“And we’d be dead if you hadn’t.”
“Ghost—”
“Just let me think—”
“Si, the vials. They’re gone. Smashed when the bomb went.”
Ghost is trying to compartmentalize. He’s already arrived at the point Soap is trying to make and he’s trying to hold it all together and come up with a plan of action, but the bleak tone in Soap’s voice has him look up to meet his eyes.
The blood drains from Soap’s face. He pulls his arms towards his chest protectively, staring at Ghost’s own bloody arms. “Whatever it was in those vials...”
“I know,” he says softly.
Soap nods, eyes dropping to the broken vials around them. Wipes his hand on his thigh, but Ghost sees it shaking ever so slightly.
He keys his mic. “Watcher-1, this is Bravo 0-7. We’ve been compromised. Exposure to unknown bio-agent, second floor lab. We’re gonna need that decon ASAP.”
Static crackles over the line, the Laswell’s voice, grim and clipped. “Copy, 0-7. You’re your position, we’ll call it in. All teams, quarantine protocols are live.”
Ghost and Soap haul themselves to their feet and retreat from the lab, closing the doors being them. It won’t do them any bloody good at this point, but the less possible exposure to the decon team, the better.
Soap slides down the wall until he’s sitting on the floor, and Ghost joins him. He can see Soap’s pulse beating wildly in his throat.
“Ye ever gone through an active quarantine, LT?”
“No,” he answers truthfully. “Just during training.”
It’s a bald-faced lie, and they both know it. But Soap looks like he’s barely holding it together, the look of stark terror on the younger man’s face gutting him to the very core. Ghost has always had a devil may care attitude towards his own mortality, but even he’s feeling a bit of panic at the thought of whatever it was in those vials coursing through their bloodstream. Not a good way to go out.
And there is not a single thing either one of them can do about it. They don’t even know what was in the vials.
So Ghost does the only thing he can do. He takes Soap’s hand in his, squeezing twice. Soap squeezes back, and they both sit and wait for the decon team in silence.
