Chapter Text
Ghost remembered the night before with such clarity he could nearly brush his fingers along the cushions on the couch, he could nearly turn in the memory to look around his surroundings and he swore he could if he thought about it hard enough – to reach across the couch and let his fingers rest on Johnny’s neck. Feel the living pulse underneath his skin, the warmth and the movement of life underneath his fingertips.
He always got stuck on the memory, not a day goes by where he doesn’t linger right there, on the other end of the couch. A football game on the TV, Gaz on FaceTime on the coffee table, the beers clinking against the ugly IKEA glass table that came with the house that neither of them had bothered to switch out yet.
Yet, it hurt to think about it, it burned and stung against Ghost’s mind whenever the word crawled from the depths of his vocabulary. Back then it was still a yet, not now, never now.
Ghost stopped the pencil in his hand, a jumbled line following the graphite tip where he had started to go off track in his mind, again that night came back – like so many other times before. He sighed and leaned back, twirling the pencil like a knife in his fingers – Johnny always liked when he did tricks, said he looked more human whenever he did them.
The images came back, the fabric of the couch, the pillows with those stupid large buttons digging into his side, the chatter between Gaz and Johnny whenever the football players did something very nice or something awful on screen. All phantom feelings as his mind slipped into the memory, always analysing and looking for clues, because there had to be some – for Ghost’s own sanity, it needed to have some clues hidden along the fuzzy yet clear memories.
He closed his eyes only to see Johnny, hair recently shaved and cropped, beard trimmed too, wearing mostly Ghost’s clothes. He saw their living room, dimly lit and clean – neat and tidy like their military apartments had been when they lived on base. Cosy with pictures and paintings hanging on the walls, soft lights in odd corners and shelves filled with trinkets and books.
“Ah shite, another loss,” John whined and put the glass bottle of his beer back on the glass top of their rickety table, Gaz cursed too mumbling something about foul play or whatever, “next week Gaz, we’ll win for sure!” John beamed down at the iPad next to the empty beer bottle where the FaceTime feed of Gaz were. He too had loungewear on, soft joggers and a oversized sweatshirt in mismatched colours, his own beer in his hands and a single lamp on illuminating the side of his face.
“Sure, next week Soap!” Gaz saluted and chugged down the last drops of his canned beer, making Johnny laugh and grab the iPad to bring Gaz closer, “I’ll see if I can swing by up to you two, long time since I’ve crashed on your couch now.”
“Aye, it’s been too long,” they continued to chat, banter and joke, sometimes bringing Ghost into the whole debacle as he sat there on his end of the couch with his feet tucked underneath Johnny’s thigh. He had tried to write that report for their last mission – computer on his lap with the secure zone on and the unfilled report staring back at him – he had forgone to write it while they still were on base, an excuse to sit in medical to wait on Johnny’s discharge papers for the wound on his leg from a graze.
The memory shifted around him, speeding up and changing behind his eyelids as the call ended and Johnny had cleaned up, the TV off making the memory bask in a orange glow. This was the part Ghost remembered the most, where his mind replayed it thousand times just to see if there was something different this time.
Johnny had gone silent from his end, fingers spinning the golden band around his ring finger that Ghost had placed there himself – shiny from disuse, but not the lack of wanting to wear it. He felt his mind slide up from the empty report on his screen, words unreadable by now like his mind had just erased the whole thing in favour to remember everything else with better clarity, “Something wrong Johnny?” He found himself saying for the thousandth time within the walls of his mind.
“Would you continue even if I weren’t here?” He asked, eyes locked onto the spinning ring around his finger.
They had talked about it a million times, all in a desperate attempt to comfort themselves of the possibility of one of their untimely deaths – unforeseen outcomes, different possibilities. Ghost tended to lie, say yes and play along to the fantasy of living in a world where his Johnny was buried underneath an engraved stone. Johnny would give him this look at the end of his play, tilt his head to the side with sad eyes, “ye dinnae mean it do ye?” And Ghost would shake his head and grip whatever part of John’s body he could reach, mind often reeling at the possibility of Johnny being ripped away from him – like all the other people he had ever cared for before him.
“Where does this come from?” He answered instead, tongue feeling numb and swollen within his real mouth like he was currently having that conversation again in real time.
“Just answer Si,” and then Ghost’s mind would give him those haunting images of John’s eyes, glassy and sad like he knew what was gonna happen in the future. Like he knew.
“If you ask, I will,” he would do anything, have done everything Johnny could ask of him. He would kill for him, go down onto his knees and worship the ground John stood on, go to the ends of the world should he just ask for it.
Ghost felt the phantom feeling of Johnny’s hand around his neck, fingers digging into the skin in the nape of his neck, brushing against the buzzed blond hair. Could feel the heavy gaze of his blue eyes on him, flickering over his face like he was mentally mapping it as if he was never gonna see it again, “I ask now,” he had whispered in the tense moment between them.
“Why?” Why Johnny? Why did you ask me then? Why, why, why…
“Just a precaution,” bullshit, Johnny smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes, didn’t even crinkle them properly like it always did. “Will you look for me?”
It had been a joke, now a sentimental inside joke between them from when Ghost had gotten flung out of a window on a mission once, where Johnny had been so panicked that he had been killed. Laughed in relief against his shoulder when they hugged afterwards and mumbled, “thought I had to look for ye in the Halloween store for a second.” It was stupid, a little reminder of their mortality, that Johnny had only the mask left of him should he die. But it had garnered a conversation afterwards, in the dark of the night underneath a light polluted sky, “I wouldn’t look for ye in a Halloween store by the way, I would have looked in the shadows instead or maybe in the stars. Or the ocean on a stormy day, or the dark part of the forest where it smells earthy and is peaceful.” And Ghost had looked at Johnny, with a masked smile and said he would have looked for him in the midsts of an explosion, in the sunsets where the whole sky got coloured in yellows and oranges resembling a bang put on pause, look for him in the sunflowers growing in his mothers garden or the highlands where his grandparents lived – the farm that Johnny loved spending time on.
“Always,” Ghost answered, frustrated that he hadn’t said more, gripping the armrests and cracking the pencil at his lack of words. Memory flickering and mingling with reality.
“I know, but I need you to promise me you will,” Johnny had smiled a bit wider, reaching out with his other hand, curling them both around Ghost’s neck and bringing them closer. And Ghost swore he could feel it, fingers curling underneath the balaclava – the weight on his neck.
“I…” Ghost mumbled, mind jumbling whenever John got so close, his touch was a drug he was addicted to – never to be satisfied with the fix he got, finding himself always needing more, craving more. “Okay, but why?” Why? What did you know?
“Come to bed with me?” Johnny had asked instead inching closer to Ghost’s lips, clambering into his lap and unfortunately making Ghost put the conversation on hold so he could meet John in the middle. Reach for his warm skin and eager kisses – they always had the time to discuss things later, keyword had. Johnny had always had a grip on him, tightly held reigns that steered Ghost wherever John directed. And how much their enemies should fear Johnny, fear that deathly control he had over what essentially was the military’s most lethal soldier – though Ghost would personally give that title to Johnny.
The memory fuzzed out from then, lingering touches that Ghost still swore he could feel against his skin, his lips, his fingertips… How his ears still heard the soft breaths and moans, the uttered breathy praises that tumbled off Johnny’s tongue. Ghost could barely remember how it felt to fall asleep like that now, tangled sweaty limbs, deep peacefulsatisfied breaths against his neck a heavy weight just above his heart where Johnny’s left hand splayed out feeling the slow heavy thumps of Ghost’s heartbeat singing within his breast.
They had gotten the call the morning after, 05.32 on the dot.
It ripped him out of the memory as he clamped his eyes further shut pressing the palms of his hands against his eyes in a pathetic attempt to stop the onslaught of what could only be called a nightmare from then on. Not a memory, a brutal grotesque living nightmare that was never ending.
He tried to focus on the dancing blobs swimming in his blacked out vision, instead of the replaying image of the red smoke from the flares, how his own hoarse yelling echoed in his mind “Soap, fuck! Johnny! Get out of there! Run for fucks sake!”
He could never run away from it, the last time their gazes locked within the red smoke, no last words or smiles as the shot rung out. Ghost saw the pained look and his body reacted, dragging himself back up onto his aching legs. Shooting wildly back at the enemy who had dared, gun clicking hollowly when the magazine emptied. How he had collapsed onto his knees where Johnny gasped and clutched at his abdomen, blue eyes bloodshot and swallowed by their pupils. The training had kicked in, compression, stop the bleeding, secure the situation, get somewhere safe. He rattled out something on the comms, he yelled at Johnny to keep his eyes open, keep talking, please keep talking.
“Look for me,” john had gasped out, blood slipping past his lips meaning the bullet had gone through the lung, and God how much blood there was on his hands. He pressed harder, felt his breath catch in his throat as he squeezed the armrests, yelling in his mind – maybe even out loud too – for help, for something, for anything. The image was burnt into his retina, a constant flash of blood, those unseeing eyes that looked past him, the hands that had yanked Ghost away from the scene – bullets that’s rained over them, an explosion form air support that had finally arrived. He trashed against the harsh hold, terror gripping his chest as he got dragged away from the body laying on the dirt.
Ghost gasped and shot up from the chair making it clatter against the floor when the image got too real. He fled like a coward, stomping out of his suffocating office and down the hall, clipping the corners and stumbling until he got fresh air against his masked face, rain seeping into the fabric to calm his panicked breath.
He dragged the mask off eventually, needing its suffocation off and away from his face. Feeling the rain drops fall onto his heated skin, pattering quickly and grounding him to the bleak reality. There was no one else here, thankfully, only the few soldiers on watch at the checkpoint and the watchtower but Ghost didn’t care – they were too far away.
He took some steadying breaths, naming things around him like the shrink had told him to do whenever he got like this. Counted backwards and let the memory recede back into his mind. It was just that, a memory, as foul as it is it was just that.
The door behind him opened up and he had half a mind to put on the mask again, only to hear the familiar footsteps of Gaz, he felt the hand on his shoulder, the gentle pressure that got Ghost to move with it.
They rounded a corner to a more secluded part where Gaz eased them both down onto a more hidden bench, rubbing soothing circles into the meatier parts of his shoulder. It calmed Ghost, it always did, Gaz knew him too well at this point to stop it. So, Ghost leaned into the comforting touch, let himself sigh and embrace the vulnerability.
“There big guy,” Gaz said, stretching out his legs after a while, the wetness from the bench soaked through ghost’s pants and it felt ice cold against his skin. The nickname making the corners of his mouth quirk upwards, “you broken?”
“The same shit,” Ghost grumbled and fiddled with the mask in his hands, the same one from Las Almas, a distinct smell to it that he never managed to get out despite washing it repeatedly – so familiar and comforting at this point he never truly wanted the smell out of it. The print long faded and the fabric rough from years of use.
“Wanna talk about it?”
“No,” Ghost leaned back against the bench, the rain continued, it was cold and bitter out but they stayed, “I still cant believe it’s going to be a year…” he nearly whispered, too afraid to say it too loud, like he spoke it into existence.
“Fuck, it is isn’t it?” Gaz sighed, tone filled with that sad twinge whenever the topic got brought up, “you got plans for the day?” It was easier to talk about now, easier to let the panic fade without addressing it, calm the frayed nerves and smooth out the sharp edges of Ghost’s mind.
“Gonna go back to Scotland and visit the grave,” the words stung, and he pressed his eyes closed again to alleviate the pressure behind his eyes, “maybe go back to the house for a couple of days, mum wanted to have me over for dinner.” It stung even more, the house had once been his home, something he longed to return to whenever missions got miserable – now it was dusty and unused, the same exact way it was a year ago, nothing out of place. Except of the sheets he switched out repeatedly or his own clothes that didn’t smell of John in his part of the closet.
“You want company?” Gaz offered, he always did when Ghost went back to the house, and as always Ghost shook his head. “Figured, give Mrs MacTavish a hug from me then.”
“You could call her,” Ghost finally looked towards Gaz, saw the sad expression, the barely contained emotions breaking through said expression, “she talks fondly of you whenever the topic comes up.”
“Maybe I should,” Gaz hummed, reaching into his pockets for his phone to check the time, “shit, come on we got a briefing to get to.” Gaz got up on his feet, brushed off imaginary dust from his pants and reached out a hand.
Ghost didn’t need it, but took the offered hand and hauled himself back onto his feet, bringing the now damp mask over his face, breathing in the wet air before they both walked back in. Ghost felt calmer, his chest still ached, his breathing was a bit too fast but he felt calmer and more in control as he ducked in through the door. Picking his way through the hallways with wet clothes that chafed uncomfortably against his skin, nodding to Price when they eventually got to the meeting room, and sharing a look with Laswell – who always had a knack for looking guilty nowadays, like it was her fault things went to shit back then.
—
The grave was filled with flowers, looking clean and nearly new despite being in the brutal weather for a year now. Ghost nipped some of the wilting flowers, pruned back wild leaves threatening to spill over the edge. Spreading the small bottle of mixed sand and dirt collected from missions since last time he was here in the gaps of the flowers – something he knew Johnny would appreciate the kleptomaniac he was.
He didn’t cry, he rarely did, it had been weeded out of him when he was still young by his father’s hands – he sometimes got the well known pressure of welling tears behind his eyes, whenever his feelings got too big for his own head to contain, but he never got the relief of tears. He had sobbed during the funeral, big fat tears streaking down his cheeks, starting when the casket was carried out of the church, increasing tenfold when the empty casket got lowered into the ground – guilt overflowing for leaving his Johnny back there in the dirt, despite knowing it was futile to recover him. He kept thinking of what happened to him, if their enemies burned the bodies or just left them to rot under the sun.
The casket was full of his clothes and dress uniform, a picture and an odd assortment of knickknacks that reminded family, friends and colleagues of Johnny. Flowers and cards, letters and whatever else people felt the need to bury in the ground.
Ghost had not put anything in it, well except for a withered photocopy of an old picture of them, one of the few they actually took. The original was always – even if it was withered and crumbled, barely an image on the face – carried right over his heart in his vest or uniform, along with the dogtags some poor soldier had managed to risk yanking off in the fray of the battle. Ghost wished he had the ring too, had tried to look for it throughout the house afterwards, looked all the usual places Johnny left it when they got called out. But it was lost, just like his life a year ago.
The cemetery was empty save for his lonesome figure, the sun waning and teasing the edge of the horizon, yellow and orange light illuminating the golden script of John’s name and dates.
He was silent, used to the silence of tending to a grave, empty in the head save for some stray thoughts that didn’t matter. The grave, it seemed, overflowing with bouquets and cards amongst the planted flowers seemed well loved. Just like the man that didn’t rest underneath Ghost’s feet was.
“I miss you,” he eventually mumbled, breaking through the chattering birds and distant cars, the need to say something feeling overwhelming and raw, “I don’t want to continue missing you but you asked so I stay here.”
He was met with silence, of course, a grave can’t speak. A dead man will never answer. But it felt easier to talk, “I look for you every day, you’re here, in the beginning sunset, I see you Johnny.”
He let his eyes stray away from the flowers, towards the sun and the warm colours. The warmth feeling so achingly similar to the one surrounding Johnny, so Ghost basked in the few moments he had left before the timer would go off on his phone. Another tip from the shrink, you couldn’t quite time grief, but it was going to be easier to leave before one got stuck in the loop of memories. At least, that was the tip Ghost got when the shrink had been called up to the cemetery when Ghost had slept next to the headstone in a desperate attempt to fend of the nightmares he got when he slept alone. Price hadn’t been too fond of Ghost returning to full service a couple of days after that.
Grief was finicky like that, Ghost had always been haunted by grief, a never ending cycle of devastation and acceptance. Time luring him in a sense of relief, making him think he finally had managed to crawl out of the dark pit that grief makes underneath ones feet. But then the smallest of trinket could plunge him back, feet first into a open grave he had clawed himself out of alive before.
As he says his goodbyes to the silent grave, grief makes its presence as he gets into Johnny’s car – that now stands in his own name. Drives the familiar roads back to the empty house he once called home.
Grief, in all sense of the feeling, makes a person weird, odd, whatever quirky word to describe it. In Ghost’s case he didn’t dare to touch the things in the house, a shell of a life he once used to live. He never turned on the orange tinted lights and only used the greenish-yellow bulbed overhead lamps that John hated with a passion, never dared to move the things Johnny had touched those last few days they both shared that night. The empty beer bottles – as nasty as it was – still stood on the counter next to the sink, rinsed out by Johnny’s hands and left to dry so he could throw it in the glass bin.
The books on the coffee tables along with some stray bills Johnny had put there still sat there untouched and unmoved, like Ghost tried to preserve the feeling of living with someone else. That he wasn’t alone. The house was dusty, not dirty because johnny hated to have guests in a dirty house – every Sunday they scrubbed down the floors and counters, a habit Ghost had yet to kick. But Ghost didn’t dare to dust down the odd trinkets Johnny had collected, a deep fear that he would move it and it would look wrong.
The house, once home, felt hollow despite being filled with good memories. Ghost pushed his shoes into their usual spot by the door, hung up his jacket next to Johnny’s untouched one, padded over the floor towards the kitchen where Johnny’s house key still laid on the edge of the counter – a ring made of dust around it from the many times Ghost had wiped down the counter around the keys.
He didn’t bother with dinner, didn’t bother to think about it as he opened the fridge to grab a beer. His own golden band clinking against the glass, looking more worn now than it did a year ago – never taken off despite breaking regs and being a safety hazard on his finger. His eyes stared down on it, gold blinking back at him taunting him for losing its twin somewhere in the house.
There was a lot of things Ghost hadn’t touched since Johnny died, but there was one place he couldn’t begin to think about. His legs took him to the bedroom, mindless as he sat down on the edge of the bed on the wrong side, where the duvet was always neat and cold. The beer got gently placed down by his feet and he hesitated when his eyes settled on the cluttered nightstand.
That morning had been so hazy, a rush to grab their things and run out of the door for transport, he could barely remember how they had gotten dressed. The panicked voice of Price on the phone, words seared into Ghost’s mind. The name that would always haunt Ghost wherever he went, especially since after the missile debacle in that dingy bar.
He shuddered and sighed, hand stopping just above the light switch of John’s nightstand, he couldn’t do it, no matter how much the gold around his finger taunted him. The ring was most likely there, within the clutter. The reading glasses that still had fingerprints on them, the odd assortments of painkillers that surely had gone bad by now, the iPad and the Apple Pencil now long dead from not being charged. And, of course, the leather bound journal – bound by Johnny’s own skilled hands when he fixated on book binding. How many times had Ghost sat right here, indenting the perfectly made bed to stare at the journal. It was scuffed and bent, a pencil shoved in between the pages, thrown over the edge of the reading glasses and the iPad.
It would be easy to just lift it up, to just peek underneath it to either confirm or deny his suspicion. But again, if he put the journal back down, it would not look right, wouldn’t feel right. It would break the play of pretend Ghost had acted out for the past year.
The light flickered once he clicked on the light switch, something to praise himself for when he had to return to the shrink, a baby step in what everyone thought was the right direction but felt inherently wrong in Ghost’s own head.
Again the gold band glinted in the light, and again the frustration of not being able to move on built up in Ghost’s chest, anger flared and he frowned. It felt so stupid to lack this control, to just reach out, grab the stupid book and just look under it.
Just reach out, just reach out, just….
The leather felt dry in his grip, the pages crinkled and moved with his hand as he yanked it away from the nightstand. Staring at the empty spot where the journal had rested for a year now. Nothing, no golden wedding band, just the wood making up the nightstand.
“Fuckin’ hell,” Ghost felt surreal and out of his own body, the journal still clutched in his left hand like a vice and regret started to rush through his system. He had broken the curse, more guilt washed over him, the blame he held on his shoulders felt tonnes more heavy.
He dropped the journal like it burned, like the leather could sting and punish him for moving it. He sighed and tipped his head back as the pressure behind his eyes built but didn’t get released. He wasn’t a lucky man, never had been, he took some shaky breaths. Started counting backwards until the pressure washed away, until his nose didn’t feel clogged and his throat opened back up again for air to pass down into his lunges.
It was stupid, and he cursed himself as he reached for his beer. There, just by his feet, a few centimetres from the now upturned journal that had clattered down onto the ground – a piece of paper.
He couldn’t think too hard about it as he grabbed the paper instead, that familiar scrawl of Johnny’s handwriting greeting him.
There wasn’t much, a few hastily written sentences, but it all started with his name. Simon, and Ghost read it over and over, could hear Johnny’s voice say it in his mind. From their wedding day or crackling through the comms. Simon.
Simon,
I know this will be tough for you, but you are strong – stronger than you think you are.
I need to ask you for a favour, something that will feel impossible when you read this. And I know you will do it because I ask. There is a safe house, I need you to go there, take public transport, be untraceable and don’t tell anyone where you’re going. Take the journal with you.
In the nike shoe box in the closet there is a burner phone with a number, call it when you reach the safe house, it will all be explained soon. Trust me.
I love you so much, never doubt that,
Your Johnny.
“What?” voice hoarse as Ghost glanced sideways towards the closet, confused and hurt he set the paper aside and walked slowly over to the closet. He pushed the sliding door to the right, revealing Johnny’s clothes that hadn’t seen the light for months, his eyes scanned the shelves tilting his head upwards to look at the hidden shelf up near the ceiling. There, in a blaring red colour, a nike shoe box hanging over the lip of the shelf, begging to be grabbed.
The dust was thick on top of it, a layer that spoke volumes of how little Ghost spent dusting the house. The box was easy to open, flipping the lid over making him sneeze with the dust catching in his nose. And just like the paper said, a cheap burner phone was inside it, along with another piece of paper with scrawled coordinates on it. A simple phrase written underneath them.
Look for me.