professional simp

She chuckled softly, her hand sliding across his chest, fingertips grazing the place where his heart beat fiercely beneath his shirt. “Of course I’m here," she said sleepily. “Where else would I be?”

Simon's hand moved to cradle the back of her neck, guiding her back to his chest. “Don’t ever leave,” he said, as he kissed the top of her head, then pressed his lips there a second time.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she promised, the sleepiness fading slightly as she settled into him.

And for a moment, as they lay there together, the outside world didn’t exist—just the two of them in their little bubble, wrapped up in their version of love. Simon couldn’t stop looking at her, still unable to fully believe this was his reality. That she was his. That she hadn’t walked away, that she was here, and he could hold her forever if he wanted to.

For once, he felt nothing but peace. And as long as she stayed there, in his arms, the rest of the world could wait for a bit.

A few hours later, the kitchen smelled of coffee, sizzling bacon, and something sweet—maybe pancakes, maybe waffles. But all that really mattered to her was the sight of Simon, standing at the stove in nothing but some gray sweatpants. The way his broad shoulders moved as he flipped the bacon, the way his brow furrowed in concentration as he added just the right amount of batter to the pan—it was domestic in a way that still caught her off guard.

She leaned against the doorway, watching him, arms crossed over her chest, a soft smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

She knew what he was like now. She’d seen the cracks in him, the parts of him that still bled even after he tried to heal them. Simon’s love was never going to be gentle; it would never be neat, wrapped in clean little bows with easy promises.

He had fought, broken, and rebuilt himself piece by piece, and in that wreckage, he had found a love that wasn’t pure, but real. His love was possessive and obsessive, a deep craving that would burn through anything standing between him and what he desired.

But even in his darkness, in the parts that still unsettled her—she saw how desperately he needed her, how much he cared in ways that words could never explain.

It was a love she hadn’t expected to survive—hell, sometimes she didn’t think she could survive it. But when she looked at him now, doing something as simple as cooking breakfast like it was just another day, she knew that she had made the right decision.

He looked over at her, catching her watching him as he set the bacon on a paper towel to drain. His lips curled softly, his eyes twinkling. “You gonna stand there all morning, or are you going to come get some?”

Her eyes flicked to his, noticing how that small smirk lit up his entire face. She didn’t respond right away. Instead, she took a step closer, biting the inside of her cheek as she watched him.

Her arms shifted, slowly uncrossing, just a little more open, and in a heartbeat, she found herself leaning into him. Her fingertips brushed the side of his arm as she passed, the warmth of his skin heating her own.

When she got close enough, Simon reached out, a firm hand capturing her waist and pulling her in until their bodies were close enough that there was no denying the tension between them.

The scent of bacon was still thick in the air, but all she could focus on was Simon. The heat of him, the way his thumb gently traced along her skin, as though he had to touch her constantly. His fingers curled to the back of her neck, tugging her closer until their breath mingled.

“You can’t help yourself, can you?” she murmured, her voice hushed, teasing him the way he so often teased her. Her hands slid up his chest, lingering there like she could memorize the way he felt with every inch she touched.

He chuckled, low and rough. “Not when it comes to you.”

He moved his hand, cupping her chin and tilting her face upward just enough for him to lean in, his lips hovered an inch away.

"You were staring," he murmured, his lips brushing lightly against hers with each word, so close, so close that it sent a flicker of heat sparking through her body. "You want me that bad, huh?"

A spark of challenge ignited inside her as she lifted one hand, brushing the edge of his lips before sliding it lower, slowly, tracing the edge of his jaw. “Just as much as you want me,” she replied.

His lips caught hers then, in a kiss so deep and consuming that she forgot about the warmth of the stove and the plate of breakfast still waiting for them. His body was tight against hers, and the kiss was hungry and insistent. His hands roamed, greedy, pulling her in like he couldn’t keep away from her. His touch was like fire—his palm on the small of her back, the other sliding through the hair at her neck, keeping her locked to him.

She didn’t pull back. Not even when his breath hitched against her cheek, when his lips trailed down her neck, desperate, marking. Her hands wrapped around his neck, pulling him closer until she felt his heart beating rapidly, just as out of control as hers.

“You’re trouble,” she muttered, her hand slipping into his hair.

A grin tugged at his lips. “And you love it.”

She pulled him back to her lips again, everything else fading out entirely. What mattered now were the hands that always seemed to find their way back to each other, the burning pull of their connection, and the way Simon always found a way to make her crave him more.

-

Simon’s boots thudded heavily against the floor as he made his way back toward his office, his thoughts preoccupied with the mission ahead. He needed to focus, to get into the right headspace. But when he rounded the corner, his eyes automatically locked on her. She was standing in the hallway, talking with one of the younger soldiers, a man Simon didn’t recognize.

At first, Simon just watched from a distance, waiting. But then the guy's laugh carried across the hallway. And that was it.

The soldier—probably some rookie, trying to make himself look good in front of her—was clearly making an attempt to flirt, leaning in just a little too close for Simon’s liking. It wasn’t the usual professional interaction Simon was used to seeing. No, this was different. This guy was pushing the limits.

“I don’t know, you’re a pretty cool girl. We should grab a drink sometime, just the two of us. What do you think?” The soldier grinned, his hand casually brushing along her arm. He was way too touchy, and it sent a violent surge of possessiveness through Simon’s veins.

He was already heading toward them, but when he saw the soldier reach out to touch her arm—his fucking hand on her—his heart raced. Every instinct in him screamed to act. To remind this guy exactly where his place was.

By the time he was near enough, Simon’s expression was cold. “You want to do what?”

The soldier whipped around, startled by Simon’s low voice. His face turned pale the moment he recognized Simon—the imposing figure of his lieutenant, fury practically emanating from his every movement.

"Uh, sir, I—" the soldier stammered, clearly caught off guard. He stood rigid, but Simon didn’t care. His eyes bore into the man, the unspoken warning clear: Leave. Now.

The soldier managed a nervous laugh. "I didn't realize—"

Simon stepped forward, towering over him in an instant, his fist clenched at his side, his glare more threatening than anything the soldier had ever seen. “Touch her again, and I’ll make sure you regret it,” Simon growled. His voice was like a snarl, a sound that promised nothing but pain. The soldier instantly stiffened and, without another word, backed away, his face pale as he turned and fled in the opposite direction.

Simon didn’t spare him another glance. His focus was solely on her now.

She stood still, her lips slightly parted, watching him with wide eyes. She wasn’t scared—no, that wasn’t it. There was amusement dancing in her gaze, maybe even a little surprise, but Simon didn't care about any of that. His possessive need surged again, filling him to the brim.

Without any words, he strode over to her, grabbed her wrist with his, and pulled her toward him. “We’re done here. Come with me.”

She didn't resist—she never did. Instead, she only gave him a teasing smile. “You really scared him off that easily, huh?”

He didn’t respond at first, just kept pulling her toward his office. But as soon as they reached the door, he spun her around, pushing it open with his shoulder, and slammed it shut behind them. His pulse was pounding, his body rock hard with need, and it only grew when he saw the way she raised an eyebrow, clearly amused by the whole thing.

“You,” Simon gritted out, his voice low, barely controlled, “are mine. No one’s gonna touch you but me. Ever. You don’t let anyone think they can come close.”

Her smile softened, almost teasing. She stepped closer, her breath hitching as he backed her up toward the desk. She didn’t argue, didn’t even say a word. Simon could see it in her eyes—she loved the fire, the way he wanted her, needed her in a way that no one else ever could. And honestly, neither of them had a problem with that.

He pressed his body into hers, his breath hot against her ear, one hand snaking around to grip her waist possessively.

“Are you mad?” she murmured, unable to hide her amused smile.

“Mad?” He leaned in to whisper against her neck, his lips brushing against her skin. His voice was rough. “You think I’m mad?” His fingers tightened on her waist, lifting her effortlessly. “No. I’m fucking pissed. At him. And you...” His lips pulled away just enough to look into her eyes. “You know what you do to me.”

She gasped, her back arching as he walked the rest of the way toward his desk with her in his arms, both of them already too tangled up in each other to care about anything but the moment. As he sat on the desk, pulling her between his legs, the world around them vanished.

“No one’s taking what’s mine.”

Her body pressed even closer to him, and she chuckled breathlessly. “And what is yours, Simon? Everything?”

“You’re fucking right it is.” His mouth was on her neck again, his hands moving urgently to unbutton her shirt, his fingers grazing along her skin as he pulled it open. “Don’t even think about trying to pull away. I’m not done with you yet.”

With her hands still on his shoulders, she smirked, her fingers brushing his neck with a soft touch. “I think I’m beginning to like this possessive side of you.”

Simon grinned fiercely, his eyes dark with need. “Good. You don’t have another choice.”

In an instant, their clothes were scattered haphazardly on the floor as their bodies became tangled in desperate need. Simon’s hands were everywhere—gripping, pulling, urging her closer, hungry for the feel of her skin beneath his. Every inch of her seemed to ignite under his touch, and she shivered, caught in the overwhelming intensity of him.

With one powerful motion, Simon shifted their position, lifting her effortlessly onto the edge of the table. His eyes darkened as he stood between her legs, his hands tracing the lines of her body as though committing her to memory as if there was no possible way he could ever get enough. His lips found the curve of her neck first, hot and needy, his mouth trailing over the sensitive skin there, kissing his way down to her collarbone. Each kiss was slow, savoring every inch of her.

She moaned softly, tilting her head back to allow him better access, her breath hitching as he continued his slow journey. His lips moved lower, brushing over her breast, teasing the sensitive skin with hot, open-mouthed kisses that had her body trembling with anticipation. His fingers grazed over her side, gently tugging her closer, his lips curling into a smile against her skin when she gasped at the sensation.

Simon’s hands drifted further, cupping the curve of her waist before he kissed lower, pressing his lips against her stomach, the heat of his breath making her stomach tighten. His kisses were like fire, licking at her skin, worshipping her in a way that left her breathless.

“God, I need you,” he murmured against her skin, his voice rough. His hands gently pried her thighs apart, his gaze dark and filled with need, devouring every inch of her as though she was all he could see.

He went lower still, his mouth trailing along the top of her thigh, the slow, sensual path towards what he craved. His lips brushed against her skin like a promise of what was to come. She gasped at the touch, feeling every part of her body tighten in anticipation, her fingers gripping the edge of the table for something to hold onto as Simon’s movements became more urgent, more possessive.

Everything about the way he kissed her—every stroke of his tongue, every teasing nip—was a declaration. The depth of his need for her came in waves, and she wanted nothing more than to surrender to him completely.

He leaned in, his lips teasing along her most sensitive spot, his tongue slowly drawing circles against her, savoring the feel of her trembling beneath him.

Every movement was purposeful, dragging out her moans as he focused on the area that made her arch toward him.

"Simon, please…" Her breath was shallow and desperate, and her words made him lose control, feeding into the hunger he couldn't suppress.

His hands gripped her hips tighter as he deepened his attention, coaxing her closer to the edge.

She whimpered, her body unable to hold back, and as the overwhelming sensation crashed over her, she tried to muffle her scream of his name, clenching the table beneath her. He didn’t stop, not until she was trembling in his grasp, completely undone.

He stood up, kissing her with such intensity that it stole her breath away.

"I’ve got you," Simon muttered between kisses, his forehead resting against hers. “I’ll always have you.”

Every kiss was a promise. Every touch was a statement that there was no turning back from this. Not for either of them.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer, needing more. And he gave her all of it until the whole world seemed to disappear outside of that office. Just the feel of his skin against hers, the thundering rhythm of their heartbeats tangled together, a symphony of emotions they couldn’t untangle.

Simon lifted his head, his fingers brushing against her skin, watching the way she responded to him, eyes darker than usual, pupils blown with desire. “You have no idea how much I want you," he whispered, each word dripping with emotion.

“Then show me,” she said, pulling him back into the kiss, her voice soft.

And this time, Simon didn’t hold back. In one swift motion, he filled her up, making her gasp and grab onto his arms for support.

“Fuck, baby.” He whispered, eyes closed for a moment before he quickly opened them again. He didn't want to miss even a tiny bit of an expression on her face.

Ever since their first time together, he had been utterly captivated by the sight of her face in those intimate moments—every subtle change in her expression, every soft breath escaping her lips, the way her eyes fluttered closed as pleasure overtook her.

It was as if he couldn’t get enough, drinking in every detail with a hunger that felt almost possessive. And now, in this moment, nothing had changed. She was still his greatest obsession, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her, his heart racing in sync with each soft gasp she gave.

He moved slowly, savoring each delicate expression that flickered across her face as his hands gently roamed over her. Every moan, every breathless whisper of his name made him feel like he was losing himself in her, as though she was a world he could never fully possess, yet desperately needed.

His eyes never left hers, his gaze growing darker as he took in every detail, studying her body as though trying to memorize it, to make it his in a way words never could.

His hands slid beneath her, gripping her in an intoxicating way. She didn’t know if she was still on the desk or if she’d been lifted into the air—Simon’s touch was enough to make everything feel weightless, his fingers finding her, teasing and stroking until she was helpless to do anything but arch into him, chasing the release he promised with every shift of his body.

“Si—” Her voice barely formed, as if she couldn’t piece together coherent words.

He kissed her roughly, a taste of urgency seeping through him as he stole her breath, his body pressed into hers, too much, everything spinning. His lips moved to her ear, voice a guttural growl. “You’re mine,” he murmured, his voice almost cruel in the way it twisted something inside her. “Every inch of you is mine.”

Her fingers clutched at his hair, trying to ground herself, but it was no use—Simon was making sure she didn’t have an ounce of composure left. He was in a frenzy, and so was she. Her thoughts were slipping further, spiraling down into a dizzying haze where all that mattered was his hands, his mouth, his scent invading every space of her mind.

She could barely hear herself, too consumed by the ache between her legs, by the way his fingertips drew magic across her skin. “God, Simon, please...”

He grinned against her skin, drawing back slightly to look her in the eyes—dark and intent on her. “You want more of me, baby?” His hand gripped her even harder.

Her mind couldn’t keep up, couldn’t think past him as he took what he needed from her.

They were both close and it took only a few more deep thrusts from Simon to get them over that beautiful edge. He groaned as her eyes rolled back, screaming his name one last time.

Simon’s grip tightened around her as they held each other, their breath ragged, but the connection between them unbreakable. She held his gaze, eyes locked with his, unable to look away as they both hung in that moment of shared release.

He pulled her even closer, his large hand gently cradling the back of her head, his fingers threading through her hair. She smiled softly, a satisfied curve of her lips that made him feel like he had all the world’s treasures right there in his arms. He kissed the top of her head, pressing his lips against her hair as if sealing their moment with a promise.

“Mine, always,” he whispered into the soft strands, his words barely audible.

She smiled again, more radiant now, her head leaning into his touch, the last remnants of their shared passion still buzzing between them. “I’m yours,” she murmured, her voice sweet, the words weaving into the air between them like a gentle melody. “Only yours.”

He tightened his arms around her, breathing in deeply as if grounding himself in the warmth of her skin. Every inch of her felt perfect, every part of this moment carved into him. “Good,” he muttered, “because I’m not letting go.”

She was content and happy in the most beautiful way. As she nestled against his chest, feeling his heart slow and steady beneath her ear, her smile lingered, a feeling of home settling over her.

In his arms, she knew she was exactly where she was meant to be.

----------------------------------------

He stepped into the house—the house you once shared, now heavy with memories. "Please, love, let me explain." He closed the door gently behind him, leaning back against it with flowers still in his hands.

You stood there, arms wrapped around yourself, your body stiff with tension. His presence felt suffocating, filling the small space between you, just like the memories of all the times you had waited for him to walk through that same door. But not like this. Never like this.

“Explain?” You scoffed, unable to hide the bitterness in your voice. “How can you explain this, Simon? How do you explain any of this?”

He opened his mouth to speak, but you cut him off before he could say a word. “You ruined our marriage, Simon! You left me here, alone in this house. You didn’t fight for us! You didn’t fight for me.” Your voice cracked, but you forced yourself to stay steady.

Tears threatened to spill, but you blinked them away, refusing to show weakness now. “And now, after you’ve already broken everything, you come back as my stalker?” You could barely breathe through the rage, your head spinning with disbelief. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Simon?”

Simon stared at you for a long moment, his eyes searching yours, before he slowly set the flowers down on the table beside him. Then, he removed the mask from his face, revealing the features you once knew so well—the face you had caressed countless times in the past. Damn it. He was still as handsome as you remembered.

Not now, brain! Focus. His looks couldn’t save him this time, not after everything he had done. Not after all the damage he had caused.

He took a step toward you, but when you instinctively backed away, Simon froze. He let out a heavy sigh and stopped in his tracks. "Please let me explain, and then I promise I will leave you alone."

“You have five minutes,” you said, your voice firm, “and then I want you out.” You turned on your heel and walked toward the living room, Simon following closely behind.

Simon sat down across from you, his expression a mix of desperation and regret. He took a deep breath before he started talking. “I need you to understand something,” he began, his voice steady but strained. “When I left, I was on a dangerous mission, one that I couldn’t discuss with you. I was cut off from communication, and forced into secrecy. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to contact you; it was because I couldn’t.”

He paused, looking down at his hands before meeting your gaze again. “During that mission, someone discovered that I had you. They found out about us and used that information against me. They threatened me, they said that they would kill you, and I had no choice but to stay away. I thought if I kept my distance, they wouldn’t have any way to find your exact location. Instead, I sent a few people here to look after you, and eliminate any possible threat."

Your heart ached as you listened, but you remained silent, letting him continue.

Simon continued, his voice breaking slightly. “I had to deal with those men before I could even think about coming back.”

He swallowed hard, clearly pained. “When you sent the divorce papers, it felt like the final blow. I knew you deserved better—better than the life I was dragging you into. I signed the papers because I thought it was what you wanted. I thought you’d be safer without me.”

Simon’s eyes were filled with sorrow. “I should have fought harder, but I was afraid of making things worse for you. I thought you didn’t want to see me, so I stayed away, even when it was killin' me inside. I started keepin' an eye on you from a distance, trying to make sure you were okay.”

He leaned forward, his eyes pleading. “I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I know I’ve caused you so much pain. But I swear, I never meant for any of this to happen. I’m here now because I need to fix this, to make sure you’re safe and that you know the truth.”

The emotions poured inside you—betrayal, fear, love, and a desperate need to understand how everything had spiraled so out of control.

"Why now?" You asked, voice surprisingly calm. "Why didn't you show up earlier?"

“I got tired of dealing with the guys who tried to hit on you,” Simon said, his voice tinged with frustration.

You were left even more confused than before. You knew he could be jealous, but you hadn’t realized how far his possessiveness could reach. “I went on a date, you know?” you said, trying to prove some point at the moment, like he couldn't keep all of the suitors away.

“I know,” Simon growled, his voice tight with frustration. “Your friends were sneaky about setting you up with that fucker, I’ll give them that. I had to sit there for three hours, watching you smile at him, before I could do anythin'.”

"Should I even ask?"

"No." Simple as that. "Fuck, I know my wife is fuckin' perfect, but dealin' with all of them was more exhausting than I ever imagined.” I small smile appeared on his face, and you didn't know what to say. This was all messed up.

Simon slowly approached where you sat and lowered himself to his knees. He took your hands in his, pressing his lips to each knuckle. When his gaze settled on your ring finger, it was empty of course, you had removed the ring the moment he signed the divorce papers. He lingered there, his expression full of regret.

As Simon stared at your bare ring finger, the weight of his actions seemed to hit him all at once. His shoulders slumped, and he looked up at you with eyes full of sorrow.

“Seein' you without the ring,” he murmured, his voice barely above a whisper, “it’s like a reminder of everythin' I’ve lost. I didn’t realize how much I’d hurt you until now.”

Simon's grip on your hands tightened, his fingers gently tracing the veins on your wrists. “I'm beggin' you, love,” he pleaded, his eyes searching your face. “Please give me another chance. Let me prove to you that I can be the man you deserve.”

"Simon....I don't know."

"You're mine," he hissed, "You belong to me."

His grip tightened as he pulled you even closer, his body pressed against yours. "And I'm not lettin' go of what belongs to me," he growled in your ear.

Simon could see the mixture of emotions playing out on your face. His grip on your arms loosened, but his eyes remained intense, staring deeply into yours.

"I know I've hurt you," he continued when you didn't say anything, his voice a mixture of frustration and pleading. "I know I've made a mess of things. But I've never stopped loving you, not for a single moment."

“Simon, I understand that you’re trying to explain yourself, and I can see that you’re hurting, but your actions have caused a lot of pain, I don't know if I can trust you anymore." You said as the tears filled your eyes.

"I know," he said, his voice wavering. "And I don't expect you to trust me right away. I hurt you, and I'll spend the rest of my life making it up to you if you give me the chance."

He gently wiped the tears from your cheeks with his thumbs, his touch soft and tender. "Please, love," his own eyes welling up, "just give me a chance to prove it to you."

You sighed as Simon moved closer, placing a tender kiss on your cheek. When you didn’t pull away, he continued with gentle kisses down your neck, each kiss light. His lips traveled slowly up to your own, pausing just before they made contact. He lingered there, his breath mingling with yours, as he gazed intently into your eyes, his lips hovering near yours as if waiting for permission.

Your breath hitched as he paused, his lips hovering a hair's breadth away from yours. His eyes were filled with a mix of tenderness and raw desire. He waited for a moment, the anticipation hanging in the air. Then, finally, he closed the distance, his lips claiming yours in a kiss that was equal parts gentle and desperate.

But the kiss lasted for a moment only, he pulled back, and leaned his forehead on yours, before whispering "You are mine."

You trembled slightly as he tangled his fingers in your hair, pulling gently in that familiar way he used to do. With his lips brushing against yours, he whispered, “No matter what, you will always be my girl, fucking mine. No one can take you away from me, and I'll grovel at your feet for eternity if it means you’d forgive me.”

The possessiveness in his voice sent a shiver down your spine. His fingers in your hair, his breath on your lips, and his words leaving you overwhelmed.

"Simon..." you breathed, feeling the mix of emotions swirling inside you. "It's not that simple. You hurt me. You broke my trust."

His grip tightened in your hair, pulling your head back slightly, and his lips pressed against the exposed flesh of your throat. He nipped at your skin, his breath hot on your skin.

“I know,” he murmured, his voice rough with emotion as he nuzzled against your neck. “I can’t undo what I’ve done or make up for the pain I caused, but I want you to know that I’m committed to doing whatever it takes to rebuild your trust. I’m willing to wait, to earn your forgiveness, and to prove that I’ve changed. Just please, don’t shut me out completely. I need a chance to make things right.”

Your heart ached at his words, the pain and the love battling within you. The familiar feeling of his body pressed against yours added another layer of confusion to your conflicting emotions.

You reached up and gently ran a hand through his hair, feeling the soft strands between your fingers. A shiver ran down your spine as his breath tickled your skin, a small part of you surrendering to this need for him.

The feel of your hand in his hair and your body close to his sent a shot of desire through his body. He groaned deeply, his hands gripping your hips as he pulled you even closer, his body molding to yours.

His lips moved up your neck, his tongue tracing a fiery path up to your ear. "I need you," he whispered, voice thick with need. "I need to touch you, to feel you, to know that you're still mine."

"You know where the bedroom is."

To start off, Simon’s recovery is starting off well. Sure, he’s not used to being off of his feet (from what you’ve heard, he’s something of a workaholic), and, sure, it’s only been a couple of days that you’ve spent with him, but at least he listens when you tell him to sit down and rest. Not without a couple of complaints, obviously.

You don't share a room. Yeah, it's a bummer, but you two hardly know each other, so you came up with an agreement that until you know each other better, and get more comfortable with one another, you wouldn’t force yourselves to share a bed.

You’ve been spending most of your time with him. It's not like you really know anyone on base, though occasionally you do talk with John from time to time -- Price, as the others call him, or “Captain” from the recruits. Most of your conversations are check-ins or are used to work out specifics about what's going to happen from now on. What that means isn’t currently entirely fleshed out, but you’re working on it. Your conversations with Simon, however, range quite a bit. You haven’t touched upon sensitive information just yet -- it isn’t hard to tell that he’s got quite a lot of trauma he's been holding to himself all of these years -- but there's been improvements. You two have been over small details -- your favorite things, family members, those basic first date kind of questions. Sometimes, you just sit in silence together. It gives the both of you a moment of rest from the expectation of conversations.

The problem is that you don't know where his boundaries lie. He hasn’t gotten visibly uncomfortable when you prod a little for more personal information, but he always manages to switch the topic around or change it entirely. Pushing him too hard isn't a good idea in case you lose the building trust, but you also don't want to be stepping on eggshells around him. It doesn't help that he's one of -- if not the most -- emotionally constipated people you’ve ever met, so getting him to open up on his own is going to take quite a while.

A quiet breath leaves you as you exit your room and head to the barrack’s kitchen. Unsurprisingly, it was empty. Most of the soldiers preferred eating at the mess hall, where the food was bearable enough to not complain about. There were too many people and it was a bit too much noise, so you tend to stick to the communal kitchen, which is usually stocked enough to make something simple.

You turn towards the cabinets and look through them, though you’re interrupted not long after by the sound of footsteps approaching.

“Aye, so y’r the bonnie thing tied tae the Lt’s pinky?”

Looking over your shoulder, you’re greeted with the sight of one of the soldiers who had been there when you first saw Simon. Your head dips down to stare at the mentioned string. It was looking better nowadays, still a little frayed but not worryingly so, and was taut, still trying to pull you to Simon.

You look back up at the soldier, turning so your body faced him.

“I am.” You peek behind at the cabinets again. Making yourself something to eat will have to wait, you suppose. “You’re… Johnny, right?”

He nods.

“Y’can call me Soap. Whatever's easier.” He shrugs, a subtle movement. It's quiet between the two of you for a moment. You grab a glass and fill it with water, taking a small sip as Johnny speaks up again.

“Does he keep the mask on during sex?”

You try not to choke on the water.

Carefully, you set it down on the counter before giving the soldier a harsh glare. He holds his hands up in mock surrender.

“Cannae a man get curious?” There’s a teasing lilt to his voice, a small smirk making the corner of his mouth lift. All he gets in response is a sigh, so he asks, “How’s it been, anyways? Ah’ve hardly seen him.”

You fidget with the string tied around your pinky, trying to figure out how to phrase what you want to say.

“It's been… slow. It's hard for either of us to open up, really.” A small, awkward laugh follows your remark.

Johnny nods. From what you know, he's the closest one to Simon on base, if not altogether. The two have shared a lot of tense moments together and have that sort of brotherly bond so frequently described between soldiers.

“Y’gotta give him some time. He dinnae ken how tae be vulnerable, ‘specially not with someone he just met.” A pause, then he tacks on a quick, “No offense.”

You take another sip of water, thinking it over. A small silence follows as you wonder what to say.

“Do you know of anything that could help? Or anything that can help him at least get a bit more comfortable?” He thinks about it for a moment.

“Taking y’r time. He may not be patient but he needs someone patient. Cannae find a lot of that ‘round here, ‘specially not with the recruits he has tae train.” A cheeky smile makes its way onto Johnny’s face, though he quickly gets serious again. “Don't let him push you away. He might try but y’gotta be persistent. Persistent and patient.”

You think about his words for a moment longer, before responding with a “thank you,” and a slight smile.

“‘Course. Wouldnae want you tae deal with him all alone. He’s a wee bit bad at emotions.”

“Just a bit?” The quick remark gets a small laugh in response. There’s a twinkle in his eye and a smirk on his face.

“Send him mah regards, and tell him I cannae handle the recruits alone anymore.” With a curt nod, he passes me and leaves the kitchen, heading to somewhere else on base. You stand there alone for a moment longer, staring at where he stood.

‘Persistent and patient.’

You could try.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You head to Simon’s room a little while later, a freshly brewed cup of earl grey tea in one hand, using the other to support it so it doesn't splash around as you walk. You stop in front of his door, raising your free hand to knock, but the door opens before you do.

Simon stands behind the doorway, his eyes immediately meeting yours.

“I made some tea.” His eyes drift to the subtle movement of you bringing the cup closer to him.

He shuffles so the doorway is no longer blocked, silently giving you permission to step inside. As you walk in and place the cup on the nightstand, Simon shuts the door and sits down on the edge of the bed, grunting quietly once the pain radiating in his body alleviates slightly. He adjusts himself to sit comfortably, making sure to face you where you were standing. 

“It’s still a little hot, so wait a bit for it to cool down.” Simon nods, reaching up to take off his mask.

He’s been making an effort to try and keep the mask off while the two of you were spending time together. He confessed that it's not solely an issue with showing his face that makes him uncomfortable, but it's about having the balaclava off. He wears it so often that taking it off makes him feel uncomfortable on an entirely different level.

Simon holds the mask in his hands, looking down at it with slightly furrowed brows. He sighs, lifting his head again to look back at you.

“Love, I… appreciate y’bein’ here f’r me.” He speaks up, causing your focus to go from the mask to him. It was rare for him to initiate conversation, and even more so to start one with this tone.

“If m’being honest, never thought I’d get… this.” He motions between the two of you. “Didn’t believe there was someone in this world tha’ I was meant to be with, not growin’ up ‘nd ‘specially not now.”

You frown, walking over to sit on the edge of the bed with him. It dips slightly under your weight as you lean back on one hand, the other just subtly extended towards Simon.

“You don't deserve not being loved just because of what you’ve gone through.” You start quietly, your gaze drifting down to his hands fidgeting with a couple of frayed ends of the balaclava. “If anything, I think you deserve it more.”

After a moment of silence, Simon puts the mask down and reaches for your hand, taking it in one of his. Slowly, like he was waiting for you to pull away, he brings your hand to his cheek, his eyes drifting shut. His head leans softly into your palm, his hand tentatively holding it in place. He lets out a deep breath and his body relaxes, shoulders falling forward similar to how they did when you first talked to him.

The string tying you two together fixes itself a little bit more once again. Not only was Simon physically healing, albeit slowly, but he was emotionally healing bit by bit as well, only helping to strengthen the bond.

“Dunno wha’ I would do without y’here. You’ve been near me s’much recently, don’t think I can handle you leavin’ to go back home.” He mumbles, opening up his eyes again to look at you through his blond lashes.

“I didn’t really prepare to stay here for much longer than a week, Simon. I’m gonna have to leave sooner or later and I'm not sure when I’m going to be able to come back.” He pouts a little at that, looking almost like a kicked puppy at the news that you can’t stay with him forever. He’s quiet for a moment before speaking up again.

“Wha’ if you moved here? Doesn’t have t’be with me, but I can find a flat nearby or somethin’ f’you.”

“What about my job, and my home? Even then, there’s so much paperwork to do that it’ll be a while before I can move regardless-”

“I can pull a few strings, jus’… please.” Simon cuts you off with a small plea, sitting up again, wincing when the movement causes his bandages to pull on his injuries. He holds your hand in both of his now, a certain sincerity in his deep brown eyes.

“I’ll still need to get my stuff from home, y’know…” A smile replaces the frown from earlier as you watch Simon breathe out a dramatic sigh.

“It’s like y’wanna kill me.” He groans, rolling his eyes playfully. 

But the playful mood drops when he lets go of your hand, getting serious once more.

“M’not kidding about you moving here, ’ve got a flat not too far from here if you’re comfortable with tha’.” The look in his eyes silently begs you to agree and move in with him. Considering he hasn’t gotten tired of you yet, and also the fact that you’re literally his soulmate, it’s clear that he’s thought this out and wants this more than anything else.

“If moving in with you means that you’ll finally take a proper break, then yes, Simon, I would love to.” The smile on his face heals a part of you that you didn’t know needed healing.

“‘M taking a break righ’ now, aye?”

“When the doctor said get some rest, they meant at home, not still on base.” You turn in your spot, reaching behind you to the nightstand for the tea you had brought in earlier. You turn back and hand it to Simon, who takes it carefully from your grasp.

“Thank you, love.” He takes a sip before bringing the cup down, leaning forward to knock his forehead gently against yours. 

The two of you sit together like that for a little while longer later, soaking in each other's presence.

It started (obviously) when I turned 18. It was just a red string, nothing more to it, from what I could tell. It led east, and it always seemed to be slack -- slack enough to give the impression that my soulmate was much farther away than I thought they would be. That's fine. Just more motivation to explore the world, right?

I was always told to never lose hope, and that no matter what, I would reach my soulmate eventually. I just had to let “nature take its course” first. Yeah, I don't know about everyone else, but I started losing hope the more years that passed without the string getting any more taut. Sure, I could’ve taken initiative, but I was a broke 20-something year old fresh out of college. I hardly had the money for rent or any other basic necessities, much less a plane ticket or gas money to see where in the world my soulmate was.

That got pushed out of the way the moment the string started to fray.

It wasn't a normal phenomenon. The only times I ever heard about the string starting to break was when your soulmate was dying. It broke fully when they died. 

My string? It looked about one tug away from snapping apart.

I doubted I looked much better at the moment. The old lady I was sitting next to on the plane gave me a sympathetic look at my frazzled appearance, though I hardly noticed it since I was looking at the string every other second, watching for any more tearing. I bought the cheapest tickets on the earliest plane to Europe, hoping it wasn’t a waste to go across an entire ocean. I would start in Britain and go from there. The string was moving around a lot recently, pointing southwest for the first time and shifting around a bit, but it's finally returned to pointing east, and has stayed there, so I can only trust that my soulmate isn't moving anytime soon.

I did anything I could do to distract myself from the situation at hand. I tried watching movies, reading a book, even staring at the cabin wall to bore myself to sleep. I was desperate for a distraction. There wasn’t even any screaming and kicking children to keep me awake, but I just couldn’t sleep. I had too much nervous energy. My soulmate is dying and I don't even know who they are.

Finally, the plane touched down and everyone was let out. I was trying hard not to push people around, but I did bump into a couple people on my scramble to get out since I was looking at my string. It wasn’t looking any better, but it wasn’t as slack. That was a good start.

I tried not to get anxious as I got my luggage and headed out of the airport, but it was hard. Even if Britain was considerably smaller than the United States, it was still huge, and there's still so many people here. It was like I was trying to look for a needle in a haystack, but I had a terrible lighter to burn away parts of the hay -- the lighter being my string.

I throw my stuff into the first taxi I can find and wait as the driver brings me to the nearest motel. Like I said, I'm a broke 20-something year old. There conveniently was a car rental nearby, so I got over there as fast as I could. I didn’t have a lot of time to waste, especially considering how the string was looking.

It was facing north eastern now, just a slight change, and it wasn’t any more taut than it had been at the airport. It still looked close to breaking, enough for that anxiety to grow and grow. As I drove down the -- thankfully -- empty highway, in between flicking my eyes from the road to my string, all I could think about was what to say. Clearly, whoever was on the end of this thing wasn’t in good shape. They’d still be alive, sure, but what’s guaranteeing that they’re even awake right now, or that they’d even want to see me? I haven’t exactly tried to reach out, but neither have they.

Those thoughts are put on the back burner for the moment as a building comes up on the horizon. I slowed down, realizing I had been speeding up slowly the longer I was trapped in my head. The building was a hospital. The closer I got, the more I noticed. There were 2 trucks parked in the front and a group of men standing by the one closest to the road. The men seemed to be military, if their stature and general appearance was anything to go off of, but I couldn’t focus on any of that.

All I could focus on was the string leading directly to the middle of the group, leading directly to the tallest of the group, who was leaning against two others.

My breath hitches and I quickly park the car, not even bothering to shut it off as I throw open the door. I’m rooted in place, unable to move as the two soldiers lead the third to the truck. The third had his head tilted slightly down, looking like he was barely managing to put one foot in front of the other.

He must’ve noticed the way the string was, taut and insistent, as his head picks up and he turns as best as he can, eyes now staring directly at mine. Neither of us look away as he’s pushed into the truck. I take a step forward, but the truck starts and I can just barely make out the narrowing of his eyes as the truck drives further away, pulling him further away.

I should’ve taken the car and chased after them. Should’ve taken that tiny rental car and pulled over an entire army truck. I didn’t. Instead, I step inside the hospital entrance, trying to not sound like I’m insane as I stand before the front desk.

“Ma’am, I’m really sorry to bother you, but is there any chance you know of a patient that just left? He’s really tall, built like a brick wall, left just a moment ago with two others.” The words tumble out of my mouth as my hands grip the edge of the desk. The secretary’s brows furrow, looking up from her computer to take in my awkward grin and frazzled demeanor.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t give you that information.” Her voice is firm, but sympathetic.

“Please, I- I don’t know who he is but he’s my soulmate and my string is frayed--” My pleas are interrupted by a gruff cough, a clearing of the throat for attention. My shoulders tense as both mine and the secretary’s gaze lands on the man standing just a couple of steps away. He looked to be a soldier as well, though maybe a bit older than the others I saw outside earlier.

The man wasn’t looking at the secretary, rather his gaze landed on me, softening slightly at my obvious distress.

“I migh’ be able to help you with tha’.”

The man introduced himself as John. He said he was the captain of the men I saw earlier -- Johnny, Kyle, and Simon.

Simon. My soulmate’s name is Simon.

It’s funny how quickly things change. Just yesterday, I was worrying over what to eat over dinner, and now, I’m worrying about my soulmate’s possibility of dying and first impressions. John warned me that he was a bit reclusive -- which explained why he hadn’t attempted to reach out to me either -- and had just gotten back from a near death experience. He was going to be jumpy, to say the least, and probably a bit too cautious.

The ride there to their base was quiet. I was stuck in my thoughts again, staring at my string, and John didn’t try to push for a conversation. The truck eventually rumbles past a pair of gates and parks, prompting me to step out. I follow behind John as he walks ahead, making sure not to stray too far behind so people know I'm with him and not just some random civilian who snuck inside. 

He leads me through the winding corridors, occasionally looking back with that firm, but slightly softened look. We come up to what looks like a common room, where the two soldiers I saw earlier were sitting.

“Where’s the third muppet?” John asks, giving a subtle nod towards me. The eyes of the pair were a bit unnerving, but I tried not to think about it. The string around my pinky was taut once more, attempting to tug me towards where my soulmate was.

“He’s in his room, sir.” The one with the hat -- Kyle, I suppose -- remarks. His eyes were on the captain, but his attention was divided between the two of us. “Dunno if he’s accepting visitors.”

“He’ll make an exception.” With that, John places a hand on my back and guides me to the hallway attached, giving another nod to prompt me to go. He stays back with the other two, probably to explain the situation.

Walking down the hallways leading to his room was nerve racking. I kept my head down and focused on the string, letting it guide me. There weren’t many people walking around, thankfully, but the few that were only gave me odd looks before continuing on. Eventually, I came to a stop in front of an unassuming door where my string was pulled under it. I breathe out a sigh and raise my hand to knock, the sound seemingly echoing in the rather empty hallways.

There's a grumble from behind the door, and some shuffling, but it opens inwards regardless. My soulmate stands before me, just as silent as I was. He stood tall, though with a bit of limp, likely due to whatever injury he faced that caused the fraying in the first place. His good shoulder leaned against the doorframe, supporting his weight when he couldn’t. The two of us stared at each other for a moment, still in silence. I snap out of it soon enough, my eyes meeting his, the same dark eyes that caught mine earlier.

“Hi.” The awkward smile was back, this time a little softer and less panicked. I could only hope that he still wanted me after all these years with no attempt to find him.

His expression was unreadable, making me unable to get a grasp on how he might react.

“Look, I know that we’ve never met, but I… I don't want to lose you before I even know who you are.” He continues to stand there, causing me to keep talking, if only to fill the awkward silence. “I couldn’t just sit and wait while our string looks like--”

Just like earlier, my rambling is interrupted. He moves closer, as if in a daze, and slumps against me, his body going limp in my arms. I go still, staring straight ahead, but I move only when Simon’s arms wrap softly around my waist. One of my hands cusps the back of his head and the other rests on his upper back, right between his shoulder blades, rubbing softly up and down while remaining mindful of any injuries in the area.

“... Hi.” He mumbles back, voice muffled by how his face was buried in my shirt. His voice was raspy, like how one might sound after shouting for hours on end, but it was comforting, though I doubt that was intended.

A warmth bloomed between the two of us and if I had looked down at our string, I would’ve seen the strands slowly coming together. Not fully, but it was starting to be a little more stable.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck."

His voice groaned in the back of your mind, the huskiness sending a shiver down your spine. You still didn't know if he was aware that you could hear him or not, considering his thoughts flooded your mind a few days ago, and vice versa. Even if he did, there was a lot of doubt that he would even care. He groaned again, the guttural sound clawing at your brain so viciously that you couldn't help but slide a hand down to your cunny.

One finger, two fingers, the tips curling every now and then as you slid them in and out. You tried to keep your breathing in tune with his groans, but faltered when your own pleasure began to flood your senses. A string of moans fell from your lips, hips bucking up against your hand as you chased that euphoric feeling.

"Fuck me." It was a small slip up, really. Something that should've fallen from your lips rather than echo softly in your mind. The realization of what occurred only hit you when his delicious sounds ceased, and you began to panic.

One minute, two, it was silent on his end before hearing a gruff, "Fuckin' 'ell, bird." He heard you plain as day. "Again," he breathed out. His voice was raspy, a telltale sign he came and wanted another wank. You hadn't even crossed the line on your end, but you couldn't deny his wish.

You were cheeky with it, letting your mind conjure up a plethora of things for him to listen to in his own head. From whiny moans to full on begging, and letting it slip with certain positions for when the two of you would finally meet. Your fingers sank into your slick cunt one last time as you let out a shaky cry, with gummy walls clenching tightly around your digits.

He knew you came, and he fucking loved it. Simon wondered what it would be like when finally meeting. If you would talk like that with him, make all those pretty sounds, how your mouth would feel around his cock, how your pussy--.

"Fuck," he groaned for a final time, hand gripping his thick length tightly as his spend coated parts of his hand, abdomen, and thighs, again.

It was unsettling, to be sat among cushions and piles of blankets, soft white light from the lamp he’d flicked on for you hours ago. Outside, the sun was beginning to rise, a spill of dusky, deep purple lightening the horizon, like someone had overturned a paint can.  

His hands were curled into fists; his mask lay abandoned on the arm of your sofa. There was a basket of knitting to his left, a sweater sleeve unfurled over the side. Books lined several shelves, plants were gathered in the same terracotta pots as the ones in your office, in a neat fist beneath the window that overlooked the street. 

It looked and felt like a home. 

Simon couldn’t remember the last time he felt truly at home somewhere. He stayed on base when he could; his flat was little more than a bed and a kettle. 

He was watching the front door and listening to the domestic sounds of you puttering around the kitchen one room over. 

“Please,” you had said when he started to stand to follow you, fingers careful against his jaw, cradling his face as though he were something that deserved to be cradled. “You’re exhausted. Just stay here.” 

So he did. So he was. 

Patiently waiting for you to return, replaying the last few hours. Unwilling to admit it was with anxiety. 

Your presence was a tug behind his navel, an urging to relocate closer to you, a glowing point of light he needed to seek out, swallow. 

Simon wished things had gone differently. His own fucking fault for leaving things as they were, for thinking he could remain close to you, deal with the ancient pain in his chest because it was just another ache to add to the collection, with you never the wiser. 

It wasn’t fair to you. 

He had never particularly cared about fair before.

He wondered what it felt like to you. 

He couldn’t imagine you felt warmth. 

Ghost was a lot of things. Warm was not one of them. 

But he had spent the last several hours with you in his arms, your lips against his, tracing scar for scar, memorizing each of the marks you had given him somewhere in the chaos of his own.

Simon might not remember where every scar on his body originated, but he was going to know all of yours. He wanted to know where you laid on his skin, every mark he’d ever overlooked. He would have a perfect catalogue of knowledge. 

It was odd to be touched, and not exactly comfortable, not after so many years of covering his skin, insulating himself from any touch. 

Touch meant harm. 

It was a fact he’d learned very young, a lesson learned again and again, only compounded by life in the military where even friendly touch was tinged with roughness out of necessity. 

Your hands on his skin felt like being peeled apart, unzipped, insides poked at. He didn’t mind. 

Nothing could have made him pull away from you. 

Your fingers had traced the back of his neck, the soft, vulnerable space behind his ear. The touch was tentative. If he shifted even a little, you had retracted your hand. 

A floorboard creaked, he glanced up as you appeared in the doorway. 

“Simon?” 

You held out a hand. 

He stood and took it before his brain could catch up, all instinct. 

He had meant it, when he said you deserved better. But it was a commitment, a promise, too, when he said he was all you got. 

.

.

.

Captain John Price was standing in your office. 

You halted in the doorway with a cup of coffee, hot ceramic searing into your fingers. “Captain Price,” you said. “Good morning, sir.” 

“G’morning,” he answered with a nod. 

“Is there something I can help you with?” You asked, crossing the room to deposit your cup at the edge of your desk. “Would you like a cup of tea? Coffee?” 

He shook his head, “Thank you. Take a seat.” 

It felt wrong to sit behind your desk, so you dropped into Simon’s usual seat, tugging the black and blue blanket you’d knitted for him months ago into your lap. Price took the opposite chair. It had so often gone unused, aside from the odd analyst debriefing a too long meeting, until Kyle and Johnny began frequenting your office too. 

Price didn’t say anything for a moment, brows lowered, mouth a considering line. You fidgeted beneath his piercing stare. 

“Ghost told you,” you guessed after a few beats of painful, weighted silence. 

He nodded after another long moment. “We knew,” he admitted, eyes finally flicking away as he adjusted in the chair. 

“I guessed as much.”

“But,” he continued, sitting forward. “Now you know.”

You felt, suddenly, as though you were about to receive a lecture or a reprimand. You swallowed thickly, and nodded, chewing your lower lip. “It’s not ideal,” you acknowledged. “I know how bad it is.” 

He was quiet again, watching you. You shifted, uncomfortable under his scrutiny, not sure what you were being evaluated for or how to pass muster. “He had to tell you,” Price said eventually, not unkindly, “It was only a matter of time.” 

The words had to landed perhaps harder than Price meant them to. It had only been a few days since you saw Simon’s face, since you bonded, and you still felt wrong about how it had happened. You weren’t sure if you ever wouldn’t feel wrong about how it happened. You shouldn’t have kissed him; you should have been able to let him go. 

The knowledge hung like an invisible weight around your neck, that you were not something Simon wanted, but an unwelcome inevitability. 

The memory of his touch, his extended presence in your apartment that weekend, made you feel a little ill on reflection. You should not have touched him, shouldn’t have kissed him, probably should not have seen his face at all. It all felt like a choice he wasn’t allowed to make. 

You weren’t quite sure where you and Simon stood now. Inextricably linked but to what end? What were you to him but something to manage?

I didn’t want to tell you. I never wanted you to know. 

Your belly clenched at the memory of the words, the heavy weight of the admission in his mouth. 

Maybe that was all soulmates ever were, an inescapable obligation and nothing more. Maybe the whole thing had been romanticized to the point of becoming something amorphous and unrecognizable. 

But when you thought of what he was to you—

Mine, you thought immediately and unhelpfully, possessively.

It stung like salt in a wound.  

He was anything but. 

The warm glow of the newly stitched bond in your chest was accompanied by a different ache, a more mundane one. A bleak cloud of heartache.  

The cruelty of it, the unfairness, smarted. You’d always assumed that discovery would mean an end to the lonely isolation you’d felt your whole life, not an evolution of it. There was still nowhere for you to go, no safe place for you to settle, no person that wanted and accepted you. 

You thought of the torment of the untethered bond. It had been excruciatingly painful, and you had only bore it for a few hours. And Simon had hidden it from you for months. His dedication to keeping you out, at a distance, spoke louder than any words could. 

It was akin to sitting next to a muzzled dog. He was chained to you. On a leash he could never escape. 

But you’d gladly keep your loneliness, if it meant he wasn’t in pain. You just wished you didn’t have to; you wished you belonged. 

Maybe he’d left the bond too long and it had corroded, shorn down into a jagged point. It could never cause anything but agony between you. 

You pinched your palm. “Yeah,” you agreed. “He had to.”

Price cleared his throat, sighed. “It’s not just Simon,” he said, “that has to worry about you now. You’re a vulnerability to all of us, to my team.” 

“I know,” you said again, because it had already occurred to you. That you now knew exceedingly dangerous information, how easy it would be for someone to make the leap of logic that you were important. 

“Better, for now, that it stays between us.” His eyes met yours, intense, serious and steady. 

Though you knew he was right, though you’d already had a similar conversation with Simon, it still hurt somehow, still felt like what you imagined having a knife stuck through your ribs must feel like. 

The discovery of a soulmate was supposed to be something that was celebrated. Announced to family and friends, parties thrown, congratulations given. 

It was also, by nature of the rarity, something to fixate on. It had led to pairs being featured in the news, followed by throngs of people convinced that their proximity to a bonded pair alone would aid their chances of finding their own. 

You did not want that, but it would be nice to tell your cross hall neighbor that had become a friend, or your sister. It would be nice to be able to tell anyone. The pride you should feel was replaced instead with something closer to shame. 

You would only ever be a liability. Something to manage, something to hide. Not just for Simon, but for his team as well. 

You were holding something so rare, something most people searched for their whole lives, and instead of letting it lie in the palm of your hand like the extraordinary sun soaked pearl it was, you had to close your fingers around it, relegate it to the dark cave of your fist. 

“I understand, sir. I haven’t told anyone. I won’t tell anyone.” 

Price relaxed a little then, leaning back in his chair. “Good.”

You fiddled with the blanket in your lap, calmer for the scent that lingered in the fibers and sloughed off it in waves from all the time it spent behind Simon’s shoulders, tea and tobacco, the faintest hint of summer grass lingering between. All those times you’d laid on it in the sun, inhaling his scent blooming in the air around you, soothed, flashed through your mind. 

Those summer months seemed a lifetime ago. A different you. A different Ghost. 

You glanced out the window. 

The world beyond the glass was gray with autumn drizzle; the bright red and orange fan of changing leaves raked at low hanging clouds. The air was chilly, and already threatening a cutting, winter iciness. With luck, you wouldn’t be stationed in England for much longer, and then none of you would have to worry about your inconvenient bond. 

“If the lads haven’t said yet,” Price began as he stood, one broad hand landing on your shoulder heavily, “Congratulations. Glad Simon finally pulled his head out of his arse. I was beginning to worry.” 

You glanced up in surprise, lips parted. The small smile on Price’s face faded. “Simon. . .” he started, then stopped. He contemplated his next words carefully before he continued. “Simon is more sensitive than he appears. You’ll take care of him.” 

The notion of Simon needing anyone for anything, should have been a laughable one, but coming from Price, it felt like the world tilting onto your shoulders. The 141 were a strange little family in their own right, one you were now an unfortunate interloper of. 

They looked out for each other, now you were being tasked with the same. 

Price wasn’t asking a question. 

You answered anyway. 

“Of course I will.” 

He squeezed your shoulder once and let his hand fall away. 

Ten minutes later, your coffee cold and abandoned at the corner of your desk, you were still sitting in Simon’s chair, picking at the blanket and anxiously worrying at your bottom lip.  

It had just started to bleed, the tang of copper dripping onto your tongue, when Johnny and Kyle appeared at your door, Simon looming large and imposing behind them with Price in tow. 

You stood, wondering if you’d been that lost in your thoughts that you hadn’t noticed the hall outside lurching into motion around an op, when you noticed the cake box in Johnny’s hands. 

You frowned, glancing from the sergeants’ open faces to the box in Soap’s hands.

“What’s going on?” 

“Think we wouldn’t congratulate the pair of ye, lass?” Johnny said. 

He slid the box onto your desk and opened his arms which you found yourself readily stepping into. 

Your throat closed, a heavy knot choking you suddenly. You didn’t look at Ghost over Johnny’s shoulder, couldn’t. “Oh, well—that’s not—you didn’t have to—” 

“It’s not nearly enough,” Kyle interrupted, “But it’s the best we can do. Considering.” 

You had to blink back tears as Soap released you and guided you forward to flip open the lid. The cake was lavender, like your headphones and blanket. Words were scrawled with dark icing, along with misshapen blobs you supposed were meant to be flowers. The words were an illegible heap but it didn’t matter what it said; it mattered they’d gotten it, even if it was bittersweet. 

Perhaps you were being afforded a little celebration after all. 

“Had to do the writin’ ourselves, yeah? It—”

“It’s perfect.” 

You felt small, safe. 

It was not a bad feeling, even if it was a false one.  

You still didn’t look at Simon, afraid to know how he felt about it as he stepped into the room after Price.

“Their idea,” he would tell you later, softly, when half the cake was gone and all but Simon had departed your office.  

You could only nod, and wonder if that meant he hadn’t wanted it acknowledged at all. 

You didn’t ask, the answer would probably shatter your feeble feelings. 

Soulmates, ultimately, were supposed to be the thing their pair needed most, be it romantic, platonic, familial, even adversarial, in rare instances. There was no guidebook on figuring out which, or what came after, or what you were supposed to be. 

For so long, you had held onto hope. A romantic, dramatic hope that you would find your soulmate and be granted that. Understanding. Feeling like there was one place you actually belonged. Someone who could see past the scars that kept everyone else at an arm’s length, that made them believe they could never fit into your life. 

Not even, really, you thought, were you hoping to find that feeling with your soulmate. You hadn’t been delusional enough to think you would ever really find them. 

You had just—wanted someone who saw you, looked past the scars and decided you could be home, anyway. The many failed dates you went on were proof enough of that, proof of your hope and longing. 

But maybe this was why fate had stuck you and Simon together—your ability to understand that what he needed most was to be left alone. And you were already so good at being alone. 

You could give him the security of someone who needed nothing from him, of letting the bond lie dormant and cold, maintain his anonymity and the walls he’d built so carefully around himself.  

A sentinel fate, a sword of his name. 

You could give him that peace. 

Your fate, it seemed, was as you’d once guessed. 

You were meant to be alone.  

.

.

.

Simon adjusted your hips with a sharp jerk and then pushed his palm between your shoulderblades until you tilted them into an angle he was satisfied with. 

“Eyes forward,” he grunted. 

But you were giggling again, glancing over your shoulder with bright eyes and a genuine smile. A rare sight recently.

Had been since—

“Am I holding it right?” 

He glanced at your grip on the blade in your hand, and nodded. You turned back toward the target—a thick plastic training dummy littered with stab wounds. You had made steady progress over the last few months. 

Simon liked training you, it settled some latent anxiety he’d never admit to, to know that you could hold your own, at least temporarily. Just long enough, as he always stressed to you, to escape danger, not face it. 

But you were proving yourself to be surprisingly adept at sparring. 

You were fast, and seemed to enjoy running. Cardio didn’t seem to burn you out. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen anyone do as many jumping jacks in a row as he’d seen you do, seemingly just to do it. 

You took quickly to instruction, minor adjustments in form. 

You could wriggle out of ropes and zip ties. You could effectively parry, knew where the major arteries were and how to sever them. 

And, after a few failed attempts earlier in the week, you’d learned to compensate for the weight and balance of the blade, and seemed to be comfortable with throwing knives too. 

“Won’t have this much time to aim, bird,” he reprimanded when you only stood there, unmoving, your eyes sweeping over his face, brows knitted and serious. 

Your skin shimmered faintly with the dew of sweat. A faint gossamer sheen. He wanted to slide his fingers over the pulse in your throat, just to feel it kick. Maybe his teeth, too, to carve it out, hold the thread of your vein in his mouth. 

The soft murmur of your lips against his skin, babbling nonsense. 

The space between your shoulder blades was bare, the delicate lacing of a tattoo scrawled there. You didn’t share tattoos, that pain must not count as scars in the cosmic bind of the universe. 

The memory of that weekend together haunted him. How easily you’d fallen into each other, just to have it wiped away as soon as it was done. You bare legs in the kitchen, making tea, leaning against him as though it were natural, where you belonged. You stripped down to almost nothing, letting look at your scars as you carefully wiped the eyeblack from his skin, hands cradling his face. 

He was perhaps plagued by those moments when he wasn’t with you, the soft give of your body beneath his on your bed for two blissful nights, beneath him on the sparring mat, something of a distraction, something to sink his teeth into when sleep invariably would not find him. The memory of your safe touch. 

He still wasn’t used to being looked at so openly, directly, didn’t understand what you got out of it anyway. He couldn’t imagine what you saw, when you stared like you were trying desperately to preserve something as vital to you as air. He was right there, within reach and not moving away for once in his life. Not going anywhere. Never. 

This, bound to you, was where he belonged. 

But you seemed to keep skirting away. Pulling away from his hands, from him. 

He wasn’t built for this, relationships and emotions, for things that required a gentle touch and not the cold metal of a gun. 

Wasn’t good at it. He didn’t know if he had done something wrong, crossed some invisible line, and didn’t know how to ask either. 

Was this another thing he had to figure out how to earn? Was this just another thing he was destined to lose, had already?

The stiff concentration melted from your face, replaced with a smile, amusement he missed seeing the last few weeks sweeping over your face, softening your features. “But I have time now,” you said, before you suddenly pivoted and flung the knife, all in one fluid motion. Just as he’d taught you. 

The blade buried itself deep into the throat of the target. 

He raised a brow. “What were you aimin’ for, sweet’eart?” 

“The head,” you admitted, sounding surprised yourself. 

“Not bad, that.” 

“Thank you, LT,” you said sweetly. “Maybe one day I’ll be able to take you on.”  

He grunted, pressed another throwing knife into your hand and lifted your arm into position, cupped your elbow and drew it down a little. 

You were liquid gold in his arms, warm and trusting, allowing him to adjust the angles of your body without complaint. He could feel you breathing; not just the physical rise and fall of your lungs, though he could feel that too. Ghost could feel the tight, corded line of your soul stitched to his, the warm voracity of it like a glowing line of light, a thin strip of aurora borealis. This close to you, he could feel the softness of your breath, the delicate beat of your heart through it. 

He would probably never admit it to you, but Ghost missed the pain. He missed the watery, drowning ache in his lungs that meant you were on the other side of the glass, alive, waiting. The pain had been a constant reminder of your continued life. Being alive hurt, it only made sense, then, that the bond ached with your life. 

The warm glow it had transformed into was nice, but it was placating, an illusion that things would always be all right. The comfort and safety of it itched, made his fingers curl with the urge to peel up his skin, pinch the pain alive again with his own bloodied fingers just so he was sure you were there. 

You leaned back into his chest, the length of your spine laid against the bow of his body. Simon folded his fingers around yours, adjusted your grip on the handle, angled your wrist down a fraction. 

Your hand was small in his, the fragile bones of your wrist like a bird's hollow wing. He thumbed at your pulse, wished he had taken his gloves off. 

His nose brushed the shell of your ear, inhaling the sweet scent of your skin lavender and oak moss threaded with the animal salt of your skin. 

You shivered. 

“Not in this life or the next.” 

You laughed, a breathless catch in your throat. The vibrations of it again his chest like a half remembered song stuffed between his ribs. You turned your head and pushed your forehead against his jaw gently. He felt the shush of your breath against his throat. He wondered, not for the first time, why it couldn’t always be like this. Why had things felt like one stumbling block after another since you saw his face?

Wasn't it supposed to be easy? Wasn’t that the one thing soulmates were promised?  

He’s not particularly good at wanting things. Wanting meant asking for something he could lose, and he’d lost too much. 

But now he had you, he wouldn’t let go. 

The half completed residency paperwork in his, until now, underutilized office, was proof enough of that. It had been almost a year. You and Laswell had promised a year. A contingency, a plan for you to stay. 

You would stay. 

He wasn’t sure you would stay. 

Probably, he should talk to you about it. 

Simon wasn’t good at this.  

How hard could it be to ask his bloody soulmate to stay in the same country as him? 

Very, apparently. 

He’d rather almost anything else. 

He’d rather present you with the residence permit like a cat with a dead mouse, wordless and hopeful.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of red tape that required him and you to go through, not limited to slicing his skin open in a court to prove his scars showed up on you.  

All the fucking ones he’d already given you, wouldn’t count. 

Just because you were bonded, he was all too aware, didn't mean you would stay together. You could leave, die. Simon was the one to endure, he knew which of you would remain. 

The closer he got, the further you seemed to drift away, something tender and self actualizing in your gaze. But he’d had a year to come to terms with it. 

Maybe you just needed time to adjust to the idea of your soulmate being him. He wasn’t the kind of person anyone hoped for. 

“You wouldn’t let me win?” 

Simon didn’t want to imagine a world where you were on the opposing side of anything, where winning mattered. 

“Together this time, yeah?” He said instead, squeezing your wrist. 

“Not like I’ve got much of a choice.” 

“Want me to let go?” 

“No,” you answered quickly. “No.”  

“Aimin’ for the head again?” 

“The eye,” you clarified. 

He raised a brow. “Ambitious, that.” 

You nudged your temple against his cheek again, the flicker of your lashes through his balaclava like the delicate, furred wings of a moth. “I’m trying to be the best.” 

“Average might be a more achievable goal,” he said wryly. 

Your laugh echoed inside him again. “Affirmative,” you grumbled in a poor imitation of his accent. 

He squeezed your hip in slight reprimand. 

“But I think I can do it,” you continued in your own voice, leaning into his hand. “I just need practice.” 

“Mm.” He rubbed your wrist again, felt the steady flutter of your pulse against his fingers. “Just aim at something you can hit if you ever have to, yeah?”

Something you’d been over plenty, he still felt the need to repeat it. What do you imagine is going to happen to me? You’d asked once. A question with far too many answers. Bad things happened to people he cared for. 

“Promise,” you said easily. “I know where all the important arteries are, after all,” you murmur, teasing. 

He grunted, unimpressed. “Lot of good that’ll do if you’re aimin’ at the eyes.” 

You rolled your eyes and settled back into him, but you were laughing, reciting the names of said arteries under your breath. “All right, enough of tha’,” he muttered as he moved your arm through the motion once, before you swung hard and released the knife on the second pass. 

This time it was at the right height, but off center. It hurtled by the target’s ear and clattered to the floor. 

“You’ll be turning enemy combatants into regular Van Goghs,” he said. 

“Very funny,” you nipped, digging an elbow into his ribs, but you were giggling again. “It was close.” 

“Was. Nice work.” 

You made a soft, self-satisfied noise, something near a purr in your throat. “Thank you, Ghost.” 

He nodded as he released you and stepped away to retrieve the fallen blade. Cold seeped in as he did, a bone deep chill where you had been touching him. A thready, pulsing warning to stay near. 

Moving away from you was no longer painful, but not exactly comfortable either. It was nice to be within the warm bubble your soulmate provided. 

He felt it now, the retraction of that pulsing sweetness, like the petals of a flower furling closed. The bond was dynamic now, malleable and yielding, nothing like the taut, fragile, painful thing it had been for so long.  

Simon felt it stretch, loop slippery coils around him as the tension popped like stiff joints. 

When he turned, you were across the room, sitting on a weight bench as you pulled on a hoodie and kicked off your trainers. Not his hoodie, though he’d left one at your flat, thinking, maybe, you might want something of his, the way you had given him the blanket. 

Done for the evening, then. The tightening in his chest he felt now had nothing to do with the bond; he could admit that. 

You were no longer smiling, and the permanent stitch that had sown itself between your brows shortly after you bonded, had appeared yet again.  

He collected the knives, approached you slowly, out of your sight line, watching the slant of your scarred cheek, the downward tilt of your mouth. You had been worrying at your lower lip with your teeth recently, and the crease in the middle of the plush bottom curve of broken skin was wet with the tiniest well of blood. 

Simon remembered what it had felt like to touch that soft flesh, kiss you, lick into your mouth. It had felt like—he couldn’t say what it had felt like. He didn’t have the vocabulary, the understanding of the tangled mess of emotions in his chest, snarled and guarded as a nest of snakes. Unraveling it seemed unwise, a fool’s errand. 

All he knew was that it hadn’t happened, that he had been safe with you, whether he could name the emotions or not. He also knew that it had not happened again, and didn’t know why. 

And wanted it to happen again—for you to stick your hands beneath the edge of his mask or shirt or anywhere at all and ask can I? 

He wanted you, he thought numbly, stupidly, to hold his fucking hand. 

It was sort of like being a lovesick teenager, only Simon wasn’t sure he’d ever been that. It was all new.  

If he could feel the weight of your proximity, you were able to feel the heft of his. But you didn’t turn as he approached, head bowed over the laces of your shoes as you coiled them around your fingers and tucked them under the tongue. 

The space beneath your eyes was swollen, discolored with sleeplessness. There was a bruise beneath the edge of your hoodie collar, more on your forearms and the sides of your knees. Defensive marks, sparring marks. 

To see them brought him a kind of fucked up satisfaction. 

Simon pulled off his gloves, slipped his hand into place on the back of your neck. 

You flinched just a little, and then settled. 

The memory of you lying in the grass behind the barracks in the summer sun surfaces quickly. How badly he had wanted to reach down and touch you then, touch his own faint, paper thin scars on your skin, the side of your throat, the hook of your collarbone, all those shining little reminders.

Now he could, he did, and you still felt far away, like there would always be something holding you at a distance. As though you were behind unbreachable glass, seen, but not heard, not touched. 

What had Johnny called all that pain? 

Bond corrosion. Erosion. 

Maybe he’d let it go on for too long, really had damaged something vital, by denying it for so long. Maybe Ghost had inadvertently taken the one thing that was supposed to be a solace to you, and twisted it beyond repair. Maybe there was no comfort on your side, just a rusted lock that could never be pried opened again. 

You tilted into his palm. 

He hoped it was voluntary. 

“Ghost,” you said softly. 

“Bird,” he answered, drawing the word out lazily, letting his hand slide away. 

Your mouth twitched into a half smile. “Hey,” you caught his hand and tucked it instead between your palms. 

He sat next to you, pushed his shoulder against yours. You fell against his side slowly, almost reluctantly. You laced your fingers with his.  

Maybe you were just disappointed. Once the shock of finding your soulmate faded, once that restless, prodding first night together was over—he wondered if you felt cheated, let down. Maybe the distance was protective. 

Maybe he should just ask. 

You sat together quietly, fingers threaded. He waited, hoping that if he waited long enough you would look up and smile and talk to him. 

But the well of your incessant chatter over the last year seemed to have finally run dry. 

Not only were you quiet, it was like you were lost, unsteady. “All right?” 

When you met his eyes, your features softened. “You’re not a bad teacher.” 

“Reckon that’s a compliment, yeah?” 

You smiled, settled more firmly against his side. Yours was a warm, welcome weight. He’d not relished the thought of anyone’s touch in a very long time, maybe hadn’t ever. Kind touch was never something in high supply. But if you never let go, it’d probably be all right, that. 

“Yes,” you agreed. “Very generous with compliments.” 

Ghost wasn’t sure those words, in that order or otherwise, had ever been applied to him before. 

He palmed your cheek, tilted your face toward his, peering into your eyes like he was examining you for injury. “You hit your head?” 

“Like you wouldn’t have noticed.” 

“Mm.” 

“Simon,” you said, his name careful and curling in your mouth, safe there. Your fingers were at the edge of his sleeve, the soft pads of your fingers against his bare wrist, sliding over the scars on his palms, defensive wounds that his mind refused to remember earning. 

He nodded and you pushed his sleeve up. 

“I think I found another,” you said. “Can I show you?” 

Simon didn’t remember how he got every scar on his body, but he was trying to become familiar with all of yours. You’d had trouble, though, deciding which actually belonged to you. Some of your scars were buried beneath his own, others were scoured so deeply on Ghost, that they appeared as though they could be yours on your skin. 

It was odd to be touched, and not exactly comfortable, not yet, but he held still and let you have your fill, because he wanted you to. His body wasn’t his in these moments, but belonging to you was all right.

Your fingers traced his forearm, sending skittering sparks of warmth along his skin, curled like shaved gold into his stomach. It was horrifying, really, the way you made him feel. Not like himself, too much like himself, or someone he should have been. 

The touch was curious, and cautious. 

“Here,” you pushed a finger into the middle of his forearm. The scar was barely visible on his skin, and buried beneath the black of tattoo ink. “I think I burned myself taking something out of the oven. It probably wouldn’t have scarred but I kept picking at it.” You held your arm alongside his. The mark on your arm was deeper, puckered where his was flat. But they matched. 

Your fingers wriggled inside his rolled sleeve and you traced a particularly deep gouge along the side of his bicep. 

Shrapnel, he thought, but you didn’t ask. 

He waited for you to ask. 

You both sat there cloaked in silence. 

He watched the side of your face, the way your mouth twisted to the side, the downward sweep of your lashes fluttering against your scarred cheek. 

“Anymore?” 

You shook your head and slid your hand up his chest instead, to the base of his throat. “Can—?”

The word hasn’t even left your mouth yet. Pathetic, he thinks, as he yanks the fabric over his head. He smelled of desperation, a deep need to be kept. 

You smiled, touched his cheek, his ear. Your fingers scraped over the close cropped sides of his head into the longer hair at the top. 

When your face tilted up, lashes fluttering closed, he met you halfway, tasted blood on your mouth. It was like coming home. Simon could feel his scar on your mouth, like you were echoes of each other, calling across something vast, receiving an answer anyway. 

His tongue slipped into your mouth as your hands fisted in his hoodie. You groaned quietly when he threaded an arm behind your back, pulled you into his chest. 

“Simon,” you mumbled, mouth traveling from his down his jaw and back, nails digging into his bicep. He’d never get tired of his name, known and coveted, in your voice. You made it sound real, almost sweet. 

He touched your jaw, your soft skin so different to his, the small of your back beneath your shirt. 

The knot in his chest seemed to unravel, flatten out like a dog showing its belly, deeply satisfied, asking to be picked—

You pulled back suddenly and sucked in a sharp, awful breath. “Jesus, I’m sorry,” you said. “I—“ 

Simon shook his head, cupped the back of your skull to bring your forehead to him. You breathed, eyes closed, for a long time. 

Eventually you blinked and met his eyes, searched until you found something that made your gaze close. A door shut in his face. 

“Well,” you said, retracting your touch slowly, fingertips drawing down his jaw. He told himself it was reluctance, even if he knew better. “It’s late. I should probably get going.” 

He wanted to hold you gently, but was afraid he might crush you instead. His unwieldy hands were not suited for this kind of work. 

“Mm. Walk you to your car.” 

Your smile flickered a little. “What if I said no?” 

Then he would follow you anyway. He would make sure you got there safely, anyway. He might not be built for care, but he was built for that. For teaching you violence, for making sure you were safe. 

“Then you go alone.” 

“Liar,” you said with a huff as you stood, bracing your hand on his shoulder. “I know your shadow now, Simon.” 

He just stood and held out a hand for your bag, tugging the mask back on with the other. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that declaration.  

You needed time, that was all, he thought again, for the disappointment to abate, for him to make himself useful to you. 

Eventually, he would see your flat again. He’d stand in your kitchen with a cup of tea and your smile would be real.  

Simon should know better, by now, than to hope for anything at all. 

.

.

.

The orders arrived one innocuous morning in November, passed to you by an administrative assistant on your way to your office, who smiled like the envelope was not essentially a live bomb. She was new to the base, her eyes bright and watchful. She had been in your office a fair few times, to pick your brain, she said. She wanted to work in intelligence some day, too, in more than a strictly secretarial role. 

You took it from her with great trepidation. 

“You alright?”

“Fine,” you smiled tightly as your stomach clenched. 

Her smile turned sympathetic. “Don’t want to leave?”

“I don’t know,” you answered honestly, flipping the envelope over in your hands. 

“Come now, I’d wager Ghost will be none too happy.” 

You furrowed your brows and glanced back up at her. 

Ghost was Ghost. You hadn’t realized any of the others noticed him in your office. They were a nosy, gossipy bunch, such were the ways of intel, and you were sure one of them would have mentioned it, even passively, at some point.  

“Don’t know what you mean.” 

She smiled and rolled her eyes as she turned back to her desk. “Sure.” 

You walked back to your office slowly, distracted, telling yourself it was something—anything—else. 

You were not being stationed elsewhere; you were not being sent home. 

You closed the door behind you and stood staring down at the all too familiar seal stamped next to your name. It didn’t feel like your name, like your hands curling around the edges of the paper, claws that were already starting to dig in, so you couldn’t be dragged howling away. 

For a long time, you could only stand there, vision tunneling, mind sluggishly trying to catch up to what your heart already knew. 

Eventually, you realized you were not drawing breath, and choked as you inhaled, the air thick with the scent of tobacco and black tea. Ghost, when you glanced around, was not there, but he had been. A cup of coffee was at the edge of your desk, steaming, still hot.

Because you still preferred coffee in the morning, despite having developed a taste for tea, and he knew that. He seemed to know everything about you.

It made you want to cry, but you crossed your office to your desk instead and sat. 

Delicately you slit the letter open along its seam, and read what you’d already known would be within. 

Home. 

Only the shape of home had long ago shifted.

Home was here. 

Home was the base and your softly lit office; it was your flat that you’d worked hard to make your own; it was tea with your coworkers and baking with your neighbor. 

Home was—

Home was—

It would be better for everyone if you went home, but the notion of leaving behind the little life you created so painstakingly over the last year tied your stomach in knots. You liked your apartment and the base and your neighbors. You liked your coworkers and hot cups of tea on rainy afternoons in chilly offices. You liked Soap and Kyle and Price. 

And Simon—

You liked having him in your life, in whatever way he let himself be. You liked when he visited you. You liked being close to someone, even if it wasn’t exactly in the way you wanted. You liked the quiet surety of your routine with him, even if it was unfair to both of you for you to be comforted by it. 

Your chest ached; your throat closed.  

It would be better for you to go. 

You did not want to go. 

You carefully pushed the letter back inside the envelope and thrust it into a desk drawer. 

It felt more like an execution notice. 

.

.

.

You managed to keep the information to yourself for two days. 

The tender bruise it left on you only seemed to deepen, that well in your chest that was meant to bring you comfort only serving to pinch. 

You wondered, again and again, if something had gone wrong. If you were not properly bonded, if Ghost had frayed the bond beyond repair like a dog chewing through its leash, if, perhaps, you had done something wrong. Maybe your disbelief has sown rot into your soul, an infected tether that poisoned both of you. 

It was raining again, a chill passing beneath the frame of your window, the lights dim and low. The last of your coworkers had long gone home and night had long ago fallen. 

You were curled in your office chair, your blanket and Simon’s tucked around your shoulders, when a gentle knock caught your attention. 

When you glanced up and found Ghost in your office doorway, you smiled, you forgot for a moment about that letter in your desk and everything it meant. 

“Ghost,” you greeted, unfolding your legs, blankets sloughing off your shoulders and into your lap. “Hey.” 

“Bird.” 

“It’s late.” 

“Is,” he agreed with a nod. 

He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him and the knowledge that you would be leaving this—him—soon clamped around you, seized something in your chest and squeezed. Fear and loss welled like twin heartaches, pooled in that hollow beneath your ribs that should only know warmth. 

He paused for only a moment before he rounded your desk, cupped your face between his ungloved palms and tilted your head up. He didn’t say anything, gaze trailing slowly over your features. 

Your chest tightened with the examination—bright, painful hope. To be the focus of your soulmate’s attention was like being buoyed, like sitting in the sun. It made you feel deeply settled. It was nectar sweet and confusing. You wanted to kiss him and felt as though you should ask for nothing and receive even less. 

And guilt. 

You felt guilty for not telling him as soon as the papers were handed to you. 

You expected the contact to be brief, but when he pushed his forehead against yours, he left it there for a long moment. 

He didn’t usually and it gave you pause. His eyes were closed when you opened yours again. You felt as though he were asking for something but you couldn’t understand the question. Exhaustion curled off him in waves. 

“Are you okay?” His eyes flickered open, confusion swirling in when he found you already looking at him. 

He tilted back and didn’t answer.

“You look tired,” you said carefully. “More tired than usual, anyway.” 

“What are you still doin’ ‘ere?” 

“Waiting for you to come make us a tea.” 

He made a soft huffing sound that you took to be a laugh. “Aye?”

“Mm.”  

He made a discontent noise and pulled away entirely. “Shite liar for someone who works in the shadows.” 

You smiled. “You just know me too well.” 

“Alright?” 

A heavy hand closed around your throat and you glanced away. “Yeah.” 

When he dropped into his usual chair, he tilted his head. You could read the words in his eyes before he said them. “Want to try that again?”

“I would actually like a cup of tea,” you said. 

“I’ll make you a cuppa if you tell me.”

You smiled, “Negotiating now?” 

“Always seem to be.”  

You frowned, not sure what he meant by that as you let your head fall back, wondering if you could put off telling him awhile longer. But Ghost’s suspicion was raised now. He looked relaxed, arms crossed over his chest, legs spread wide. His chin was tipped down, brows knitted together. You knew he was ready to go home, by the simple mask he was wearing and the dark hoodie he was swaddled in.

You thought of pushing the hood back, tugging the mask off, raking your nails through his hair as you had that day in the guy, and banished the image with a shake of your head. 

You fidgeted, plucked at the edge of your sweater with nervous fingers. He wouldn’t care, you thought, and you weren’t sure what would be worse: apathy or relief.

Simon said your name slowly, a dangerous warning hidden somewhere in the back of his throat. 

The sound seemed to take up space in your chest. 

He watched you, waiting for you to spit it out, shoulders stiffening, brows an unyielding, lowered line. 

You took a deep breath, bravely plucked the letter from its place in your desk drawer, and slid it across the tabletop toward him. 

Simon went very still, staring at the unassuming little envelope. You waited and watched him, watched his eyes and the slope of his unmoving shoulders.

Tension bled into the air so thickly you felt as though you might choke on it. You clenched your jaw so tight that pain lanced down your neck and into the top of your spine.  

Minutes passed and he didn’t so much as twitch. You weren’t sure he was breathing.

“Simon?” You said quietly, gently, as you could. “You okay?” 

He blinked, seemed to come back into himself, gaze locking onto yours as he reached for the letter with large, ungloved hands. His eyes only slid away from yours again when he pulled the letter out of its sleeve and glanced down to read it. 

“That’s all right,” he said after a moment, his voice even. 

Your belly lurched. So apathy it was, unmoved by the prospect of you leaving. 

“I know,” you said quietly. Your voice cracked under the pressure in your throat, as you willed yourself not to cry. “Nothing to make a big deal about. Just thought you should know—”

He shook his head and abruptly stood. “Ghost—?” 

He crossed your office in two strides and wrenched open the door before he disappeared through it.  

You frowned, wondering if you were meant to follow him, knowing that you never were. You settled back in your chair, tucking your legs in again, staring at the frost slowly creeping across the window glass, obscuring the fat yellow moon peeking from between parted winter clouds. 

Simon returned, to your surprise, a few minutes later, with a file folder. 

You felt a sense of dread as he dropped it on your desk. 

“What is this, Simon?” 

“I’ve already started it.” 

That did not answer your question. 

You sat forward and pulled it toward you, flipped it open and found a half completed residency application. Your fingers froze before you thumbed through the myriad pages. Forms filled in in chunky block handwriting. 

“What is this?” You asked again, attempting to quell the rising panic in your chest. “What did you do?” 

“The bond has to be officially recognized first,” he said, still not exactly answering your question. 

You swallowed. You’d heard about formal bond recognition and frowned at the last several instructional pages. Required photographic proof of bond pairing, and, an in person demonstration of proof of said bond—

You imagined it for a moment, the two of you before some faceless judge, Simon carving out another part of himself for the sake of you being able to remain when he didn’t even want you. Didn’t want you around, never wanted you to know who he was. And yet he was willing to shackle himself to you, toss the key away. 

Nausea welled, a heavy hand closing around your throat. A date was scratched in red at the bottom of the page for mid-April next year. Distantly, you realized it meant he had been working on this, thinking about it, for much longer than you had. It was. . .sweet. 

It should be sweet. 

You were suddenly aware of how much you did not know about him as you read through the pages. His birthday. His last name. If asked to fill out his half of the forms, you would not be able to. But it was all there in his own hand writing, information freely given for you when he had only given up his name by accident. He was giving up everything he kept close to the chest, that he kept from everyone. 

But your horror and revulsion won out when you turned the next page and found a scan of his military ID. His naked face stared blankly, uncomfortably out at you. 

What it all meant crashed down on you with the force of a toppled building. You saw yourself demonstrating the bond again. Simon unmasked, a wolf without its teeth, because you knew he would never let you be the one to prove the bond. He would stand there and carve himself up, wrench out a bone and lie it down as proof. 

Years of wishing you could protect the soulmate you didn’t know from further harm curled fingers through the bars of your ribs, prying loose that desperation. 

Now you could. 

His name, his face, his privacy, his sense of safety. 

You slammed the folder closed and shoved it away. “No,” you said, horrified. “No. Absolutely not.” 

His brows softened when you glanced up at him. His voice was maybe the gentlest you have ever heard. “I would do it, love—”

You made an involuntary, distressed sound. “Jesus Christ, Ghost. No.” 

All this effort was not his choice, and you couldn’t take anymore from him. It was pity and harm rolled into one. It was self flagellation; it was locking a weight around his ankle and jumping into a deep lake. 

You couldn’t keep burdening the people around you, anyway. Simon with the bond he had no interest in and was plagued and bound by, the rest of the 141 being vulnerable for it. 

Price had asked you to take care of him and you could. 

Ghost’s gaze was hard when you met his eyes. “Why not?” 

There was a dangerous edge in his voice, a fissure that said tread carefully. 

“Why would I ever want you to do this?” You fired back. 

Your voice was panicked and louder than you meant it to be. 

He shrunk away, at the same time that his shoulders seemed to widen a few centimeters. 

“I can’t do that to you,” you said, pushing the file back toward him. “I won’t do that to you.” 

“You aren’t going to try to stay.” His voice was flat and far away. 

Something lurched behind your breastbone. You rubbed at the spot but the pain didn’t fade. “I will not let you scar yourself for nothing!” You snapped. 

He was so still, his body a coiled spring. “Nothing.” His voice was hollow.   

You swallowed. “It’s easier this way, Simon,” you said after a long beat of silence. “It’s safer, if I just go.”  

He sat back, like you’d punched him and was struggling for breath. 

You watched the wall come down in his eyes, protective distance, that blank, far away, unreachable look he always used to wear when he first started visiting your office. 

“That’s what you want, yeah?”

You closed your eyes for a moment, and when you opened them again, he was gone, as though he’d never entered your life at all. 

The room seemed to reverberate with the loss of him. A warning in the still, cold air, a tragedy leaching into your lungs. 

You fucked something up, but you weren’t sure what or how. You paced circles around your office until you felt ill. You knew he wouldn’t come back, that you might have broken the fragile peace that existed between you. 

Maybe it was for the best. 

The pain didn’t recede. 

.

.

.

You used to have nightmares. 

Each night you would lie down, close your eyes, and drown for a few hours. Long, looping gray halls, faint outlines of fists knuckled into drywall. You would search, thread your way up and down staircases without end, flinging open doors that led to the same bruised walls.

You could trace the trajectory of Simon’s life through your scars. The child abuse he’d clearly endured, the abrupt way the regular tracery of pain vanished, and then slowly appeared again. In starts and fits, enough for you to know that he had endured and finally escaped, and perhaps had a dangerous job, or lifestyle. You imagined a boxer, an MMA fighter. You imagined a construction worker, a welder, a fire fighter, a soldier.  

For awhile, you were content, the dreams receded like nothing more than a bad memory. Mostly, he seemed to be safe, and that was enough. A new mark would occasionally be added to your skin, but it always seemed incidental, an accident or mishap. That you could handle. 

Then those awful months had come, where each morning there were fresh marks. Your fear was like a fist in your throat. You rarely slept, afraid of what your mind would conjure, afraid of all the ways you could never help. Your soulmate was being tortured, of that you were sure, and you could only watch. 

You would wake up—a plethora of new scars seared into your flesh, and a sense of pain, the impression of pain you should feel, lingering around you like a malignant cloud—and plead with anything, anyone that might be listening to help where you couldn’t. Your throat, chest, and back saw the most damage then. No more defensive scars on your palms, but thin circlets had formed around your wrists. No more bite marks but that awful corded scar had roped its way around your throat. 

The nightmares returned with vengeance clutched in their fists. Bloodier, more violent. 

Now, dreams of perpetual, unending silence. A life lived alone. Those same looping, gray halls filled with doors that you could hear other people behind, just out of reach, all locked. Most times, though, the dreams were more violent than that, blood on concrete, endless replays of dreams past, torture past. 

It filled you with a type of horror you thought long past you, that you thought couldn’t be felt anymore. 

But it was worse, now, knowing it was Simon that had inspired those dreams. It had been bad enough knowing only that it was the abstract concept of someone meant for you on the receiving end. 

You’re sure your dreams were only a whisper of what he experienced. 

The dreams seemed to be arbiters, harbingers of some tragedy, rewritten lines of a play long acted out. 

You missed him. 

Didn’t know how to check on him. 

How to apologize for ever having shown up in his life. 

It made you wish you’d turned down that transfer last year, that you had never gotten the one thing you always wanted. 

Soap, when he appeared in front of you, assessed your sleeplessness with an astute, bluntness you only felt numb to.  

“Ye look like shite.” 

“Thank you for that, John MacTavish,” you said, swerving around him and down the hall toward your office. “Is there something you need?” 

He followed you, situated himself as comfortably as he always did, firmly in Ghost’s chair. 

“You okay, lassie?” 

You clutched at the files as you hovered in the doorway and took a wincing breath. The pain hadn’t gone away. “Yes. Just tired.” 

“Ghost has been tired, too.” 

“It’s a good thing you aren’t a spy, Soap.” 

“Aye, but am not tryin’ to be.” 

You huffed, tightened your hold on the files and tablet. The pressure against your chest helped. “I’m getting transferred home.” You smiled but it felt awkward and false. “Good news.”

He tilted his head. “For who?”

“Simon,” you said easily. “And all of you. I’m a burden the rest of you have to bear,” you attempted to joke. 

Neither of you laughed. 

Johnny was uncharacteristically quiet, the silence like a shroud. 

“And you talked to the Ghost?” He asked after a long moment. 

“Yeah.”

Johnny frowned. “And he’s alrigh’ with tha’?”

You frowned back at him, fidgeted, plucked at the edge of your sweater with nervous fingers. “I can’t ignore orders,” you said simply, though you both knew there was a solution. The one Ghost had already thought of. 

Soap was still watching you, his head tilted to the side. “What d’ye want?” 

A strange choking feel raked up your chest, bound itself over your heart. If you could, you’d slip into Simon’s bloodstream. To be carried there, to belong. You wanted so badly to be wanted, to have somewhere safe. 

You shook your head. “I don’t think it matters what I want.” 

It was unfair, though, that it didn’t. 

That you have never mattered. 

A sudden, intense burst of anger welled up in the back of your throat. “I’m starting to think the whole fucking thing is fool’s gold.” You ground your teeth together, “I think it’s all bullshit meant to give you hope. And nothing else. It never meant anything at all.”

Johnny looked pained. “Ach, bird—”

“No,” you interrupted. “No. I’m sorry. That’s not fair of me. I think I am uniquely fucked up.” 

A burst of warmth made you whirl toward the hall but no one was there. 

.

.

.

Once, Simon, without preamble, before you knew what he was to you, had abruptly asked one afternoon if you’d ever gone through RTI training. 

“Yes. I might not do field work, but I still know too much,” you’d answered and tilted your head curiously to the side. “Why?”

He had not answered, but looked marginally more at ease. 

“Were you?” 

“What?” 

“Tortured?” 

His eyes had flicked over you. “Think you know the answer.” 

You had nodded.

“They say to compartmentalize,” you said, curious. “That you buy time instead of trying to avoid talking. But I was never good with pain. What did you think of?”

In an odd bout of truth sharing he had said, “Dead now, what I thought of.” He settled into his chair more firmly. “Don’t think of anything you care to lose.” 

And that had been that. 

.

.

.

Simon didn’t say goodbye.

You weren’t exactly speaking, anyway. 

Silence had unspooled between you and him, thick and cloying, a rope that wrapped tighter around his throat with each coil. 

Ghost still checked on you, watched from the shadows as you began moving through preparations to leave your post. Cases handed off to other intel officers, your office slowly depleted of the things that made it yours. 

The potted plants in their terracotta shells disappeared and reappeared in other offices—in the break room, on a filing cabinet in the hall. The bug lamp vanished and so did your blanket and the lavender headphones, the stack of books in the corner. Your scent faded, that oakmoss and lavender that permeated the air seemed to falter more with each passing day. 

When he peered into your office, a wraith at the edge of your life once again, you worked in total silent stillness in the cold room. You had not touched his blanket, slung over the back of the chair as it always was. 

Things were moving too fast, and he was wasting time. You would be gone by the end of the year; it was already the middle of December. He knew, when he looked in on you before they left, that it would be the last time. He would return to the base and your office would be empty, bereft. 

Soap was staring at him from across the transport plane, his brows drawn down, fists curled loosely around the straps of his vest. His sergeant looked angry. 

The air was cold. 

Simon’s skin ached. That bloody pain was under his ribs again.  

He couldn’t stop thinking of your blanket. Why would you remove it first when you needed it? You were always cold, always sun seeking. Your blanket abandoned, his hoodie you wouldn’t wear. It was like you were abandoning comfort. 

“The lass seemed—”

“That’ll do, Sergeant,” Ghost cut Soap off quietly, a warning in his voice. If Gaz and Price were listening, they didn’t show it, huddled over a tablet together at the far end of the hull. 

Soap glanced away. “Was cryin’ before we left.” 

Ghost jerked his gaze back up. 

“Enough,” he snarled, and then felt exhaustion tug his anger back down. 

He closed his eyes and leaned back, letting the heaviness of his gear fall against his body, crushing even as his spine loosened.

It was enough. 

He didn’t need to be reminded of your misery, or your rejection. 

Domestic conflict didn’t suit him. He was afraid of it, had only ever watched it end with a bruised cheek, tears, a voice like knives. He already swore that he would never be that kind of man, that he wouldn’t become his father. 

Conflict that couldn’t be swiftly ended with a gun or a blade was out of his bloody purview. 

You deserved better, and that truth had never been more apparent or that you knew it too. 

Why would I ever want you to do this?

Fair enough question.

Mapping his own fear wasn't easy. It didn’t come naturally. 

He wanted nothing more than to scoop it out with a rusty spoon, put it on offer to you. 

But you didn’t want that, and he’d known that all along. 

The plane hummed and shook like it was in the fist of a giant, shuttling them through the sky, an overgrown child with a toy. 

“Aye,” Soap said, an unusual snap in his voice. “Maybe you were right, LT.”

Ghost opened his eyes. 

It was bait. 

They both knew it. 

Ghost asked anyway, his voice low and dark. “Usually am. Care to tell me what about this time?” 

“Maybe she deserves better.” 

.

.

.

Task Force 141 was deployed on an emergency op. They left three days ago, chasing some nightmare that they had dealt with before. Intel that you had pooled and passed off to Laswell without too much thought about it, turned out to be something they’d long been searching for. 

Price checked in with you. Kyle and Soap said goodbye. 

Ghost disappeared without a word. 

You caught a glimpse of his shadow disappearing down the administration wing’s hall before they had gone, warmth fading around you, and knew he had been outside your office. His involuntary monitoring only served to make your chest ache.

You knew that you weren’t likely to see any of them again. Your apartment was a sea of boxes; your office was bereft. It was unclear how long the op would last. 

You weren’t likely to see Ghost again, anyway, who had become as good as his namesake over the past few weeks. It was terrible, the way you waited and hoped that he would come back to you, just so you could say goodbye. He was impossible to hunt down when he did not want to be found. 

As it stood, you were alone, your office was empty for all but the equipment you were given on your first day and Simon’s blanket. You weren’t sure what to do with it. It wasn’t yours but leaving it behind to be tossed in with the trash or thrown in storage somewhere to rot, festering alone, eaten by moths, seemed wrong.  

Still, you had left it over the back of his chair. Maybe he would see it when he returned and finally take it with him. 

You did, however, keep the hoodie he had left in your apartment. No one had to know that you slept in it, felt comforted just by touching something that was his. 

Were you especially pathetic, or was that something all bonded soulmates felt? You couldn’t imagine Simon feeling that way about something of yours. It was hard to imagine him being comforted by anything besides a gun, a knife, his own violent hands.  

Maybe if you weren’t so upset, maybe if things had gone differently, you would have noticed you were being followed long before it was too late to do anything about it. 

You were walking from your car to your apartment, gym and work bags slung over your shoulder, sweat still drying between your shoulder blades when the unease settled around you. You felt watched, not in the way that you had become accustomed to. 

The back of your neck prickled, some long buried sense warning you that danger was near. When you glanced over your shoulder, the street was empty and blue in the waning winter light, the barest fanning of snow shimmering, fans of yellow puddled down the sidewalk behind you. 

But you could hear footsteps.

You didn’t change your pace, slipping your hand into the front pocket of Simon's hoodie instead, feeling the comforting weight of the switchblade gifted to you all those months ago. Cold, solid metal. 

It felt a bit like safety, wrapped in Ghost's fading scent, the knife he'd given you in your palm.

All those nights you stayed late on the base, Simon waiting patiently for you to leave, eyes closed, arms crossed before he walked you to your car flicked through your mind. 

The irony struck you now, of all those careful wanderings to your car, no one had ever been there along this route. The path from your car to your front door was barren, the moment of your day that you were most alone. 

When you glanced behind you again, still no one was there.  

You told yourself it was nothing, though every instinct was telling you that wasn’t true. Cold bled between your shoulders, snaked down your spine in a warning drip. 

The footsteps faded but the watched feeling didn’t. 

Once inside you locked the door behind you and made a beeline for your bed side table drawer where you’d stored Simon’s half completed residency application. You started to shred it with your hands before you realized that would not be enough. 

A thud on the landing outside made you jump, confirmed your worst thoughts. You were on your way out, all the case files and hard drives you had been trusted with handed back over to Laswell, debriefed a million and one times. There was only one thing someone could be looking for. 

You calmly carried the documents to your kitchen and threw them in the largest pot you had. It only took a moment for it all to go up in flame after you dropped a lit match in, suffocating his name and yours, the edges of the copy of his military ID going at the corners and then swallowing his face. 

You wanted to dig your hands into it, scoop the ash into your mouth, just to keep it all safe. 

For half a moment, as smoke curled around your kitchen, you felt stupid. It was probably nothing and you’d just erased the only memory of your soulmate’s face you had been allowed. 

Then, the front door exploded inward.

You were slammed into the counter, scattered remnants of the meager combat training you had received flicking through your head. 

But your body was faster than your brain, you wriggled loose and stabbed upward with the blade suddenly in your hand. 

You both seemed surprised when you made contact, slicing a long stripe along his cheek up to the corner of his eye. The point of your knife sunk into his eye, and when you ripped it back, blood sprayed across your ceiling. 

You had been drilled not to linger though, yanking back when he released your elbow, screaming and clutching his face. 

You dodged two more men whose fingers grazed you but didn’t catch. They seemed more surprised than you were that you avoided it, that maybe Ghost had been telling the truth when he said you were unreasonably fast. 

You flung your knife at the one in the foyer, and watched it sink to the hilt into his throat. 

You didn’t pause, flew down the steps to the road and wrenched down a black street and then a tiny alley that you hoped you could lose them in, that you could get lost in. The irritated crash of voices followed you as you zigzagged through the streets of the town that had become your home, and now had turned into a maze. 

Distantly, you realized they were speaking in Russian, footsteps pounding against the pavement behind you. The wind was bitterly cold, snow burning down around you. 

Ghost’s words fanned across your mind, you just had to be fast enough to run away, to hide, that was all. You held onto his voice, the memory of him guiding you.

All you had to do was run away. 

But you turned down another street and found the narrow close ended in a brick wall that you were not tall enough to scale. 

This time when you were pushed forward, your temple connected with brick, stars bloomed across your vision. Your arms were pinned immediately to your sides. 

You threw your head back, skull connecting with a crack against someone’s nose. 

“You fucking bitch—” 

Thick fingers against the back of your neck, slamming you forward into the brick again. This time nausea crawled into your throat along with pain and a thin trickle of blood, stars blooming across your vision. 

“Easy, easy! Nothing that will scar. Not yet.” 

You were shoved harder against the wall, an uncomfortable, heavy weight bowing your spine, but your captor was careful not to let your face rasp against the brick again. 

Blood licked warmly into the corner of your mouth, dripping lovingly into your mouth. A nerve throbbed behind your eye. You grunted, air squeezed out of your lungs when the man behind you leaned harder on you. “Careful, little rabbit,” he said. 

Footsteps sounded behind the pair holding you captive, slow and measured, a brutal, unhurried pace that eventually stopped to your left. 

“I don’t have to wonder what you were burning, but I think I can guess,” he said by way of introduction. “Let’s see her face.” 

The hand on the back of your neck cupped your jaw instead, yanked your face around so violently you felt it in your neck. 

A man’s face swims into your peripheral vision. Dark, sharply intelligent eyes met yours. Predatory, like looking into the teeth of a fox. You had seen his face before. And if he was here, the op the 141 was currently on was a decoy.  

Fear swam into your gut, adrenaline sweeping down your spine. 

“Ah,” he said, reaching out to stroke the back of his pointer finger down your cheek. “You must belong to Ghost,” he said. He drew a blade slowly from his trouser pocket. It sung as he flipped it open and held it to your throat, drawing it shallowly over your flesh. “No one else has so many scars.” 

You shivered and the blade bit deeper into your skin.

You felt blood pool warmly in the hollow at the base of your neck. “Yes, I think if I had Simon Riley here, you’d match, wouldn’t you?” His eyes flicked over you, watching you closely. 

You didn’t blink, despite how irked you were that he knew Simon’s name. Didn’t acknowledge the implication of your scars. “He won’t come,” you said, voice hoarse. “If that’s what this is.”  

“He will,” he said, withdrawing the knife, wiping it clean on a handkerchief he pulled from his pocket, swiping it neatly clean. “Simon Riley,” he said again, drawing out the syllables of a name you wanted to rip out of the air, stuff in your own mouth. “He tends to have this kind of bad luck with things he cares for. Don’t you agree?” 

You didn’t move, didn’t breathe. The lancing pain in your head was growing and thinking was a failing battle. The pressure on your spine was intense, your lungs crushed beneath the weight of the man holding you in place, a mouse beneath a paw. 

You closed your eyes. “He doesn’t care about me.” 

“That is not how soulmates work.” 

You laughed, a choked horrible sound to your own ears. 

The world tasted like blood. 

Like the copper tang of a penny pressed beneath your tongue. 

You could taste it on your teeth.

“Then you don’t know Ghost very well.” You said. “He doesn’t want me.” If anyone could overcome that instinct, that taboo, it was Ghost. He would not come for you, of that you were sure. It would be easier. “He won’t come. It’s the tactical choice.” 

“I suppose we will see, will we not? We will have fun together, you and I, in the meantime.” 

He disappeared from your view, footsteps disappearing back down the close.

Panic settled hard and fast in your stomach, what you were about to endure whether they killed you eventually or not.

You squirmed as the weight eased off your back, kicked backward desperately. Your sneaker connected with a shin before you were jerked around and slapped. You lunged forward, not sure what you were about to do when a sharp pain bloomed in the side of your throat and the world went dark. 

There was one thing you were certain of, though, as your consciousness faded and your body was hauled through the dark, the thickening snow. 

Makarov was wrong.  

Simon was not coming. 

And you, as always, were alone. 

.

.

.

Ghost couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. 

The base felt eerily silent as he tracked through it, hauling his kit, beelining for your office, the failed op like a warning bell in the back of his mind that he couldn’t ignore.  

It was your intel, Laswell said, that led them there.  

Your office was empty, dark. 

The only personal item left in the room was the blanket you had knitted for him all those months ago, left across the back of the chair he always sat in. 

He pressed gloved fingers against it and a chill curled in his gut. Your office, for so long a comfort, a warmth, a haven, felt barren, vacant. It smelled of dust, and he knew you hadn’t been there in a few days. The scent of your perfume no longer lingered in the air, your presence as faded as if you’d never been there at all. 

It did not help the feeling that something wasn’t right. 

An indescribable, irrational fear gripped him. Like talons hooked around his lungs, pulling them slowly from between his ribs. The pain had returned, settled as neatly behind his breastbone as if it had never left. 

Nausea wound tight in his throat. He pressed a hand against his chest but it didn’t ease. It lingered, seemed to pulse worse than it ever had before. He had heard you and Johnny, once, talking about the pain. There were cases where it had returned, when soulmates were separated against their will, or, if one was in danger, dying, hurt. 

Usually it meant the pair was dying, it was a warning, an easing into the snap of the bond being severed forever. 

Simon dropped his kit, kicked the door shut and yanked up his sleeves, the hem of his shirt, searching fruitlessly for a needle in a fucking haystack. 

It was faint, at first, because it was yours and not his, buried beneath pain and thick scarring and years of not taking care of those scars. 

He watched, for the first time, as a scar that wasn’t his bled into his flesh. 

A deep one, puckering the meat of his forearm in a new and disturbing way. It was not an accident. A message was being writ in your skin for him to see. 

It didn’t hurt, and that was the worst part. The ghost of pain seemed to linger in the air above it, pain he should feel and didn’t, the suggestion of torment like an electric current he desperately wanted to stick his fingers into, wrap around his wrists and yank away from you. 

An involuntary, nearly inaudible sound wrenched out of him.

It wasn’t just one. The more he stared, the more faint, flicking lines he saw, across his arms, his stomach. 

He knew what it meant. 

He didn’t know how to process what he was seeing, or the feeling that accompanied it. 

The uncertainty and fear you’d once described to him, of knowing that his soulmate was hurt but not how, of being helpless to watch, washed over him in a violent wave. 

He took a deep breath. 

Then another. 

Simon was gone. 

Price, he knew, would still be in his office. 

The big ones, the important ones, sure. He remembered them all too well, even through the haze of pain and fatigue that often hung thickly around their reception. 

But there were too many to account for. To remember the particulars of each slash and burn and gunshot wound was a losing battle. He’d long since given up on keeping track of them. Little lines on the sides of his fingers, stretchmarks on the backs of his biceps, winged fans of a burn on the side of his thigh, a pale line along the point of his elbow that he might as well have been born with.

There were ones from further back, too. Scars that time and pain had eroded the precision of the memory, but not the feeling. Cigarette burns on his forearms, a necklace of animal teeth on his side, a craggy line across his hip, accompanied by the shadowy memory of hand reaching for him, and not being quick enough to duck out of the way. 

They all meshed together into the hard patchwork of scar and muscle his body had wrought itself into.

Almost none of them could be helped, out of his control, out of his hands.

They were a catalogue of his life, a story traced on his skin.

Stamped, more like. Branded. 

Survived. 

And soulmates shared scars. 

Their hurt was his; his hurt was theirs. Literally or metaphorically, he wasn’t quite sure. Simon had so many, spent so much time in pain, it was impossible to know if any of them didn’t belong to him originally.  

He didn’t like the thought of someone sharing his scars, having felt what he did. Possessive of them and the pain in a strange way. 

It’s ironic, then, that he should be able to find his soulmate more easily than the average unmarred person, and wanted to do nothing of the sort. Simon dismissed the whole thing as drivel a long time ago, anyway. If they did exist, if they weren’t just incredibly rare instances of luck, Simon was sure that he hadn’t been afforded one. 

There was guilt, too, settled somewhere deep inside him, that someone had to endure it alongside him. It was easier to believe he’d been left out of the whole thing. 

Better he was alone. 

The likelihood of finding that person was slim. It almost never happened. Eight or so billion people swanning around the planet would do that. A one in eight billion chance. 

A grand, cosmic joke. The unfairness of it drove some people crazy, drove them to do insane things to increase a probability that couldn’t be altered—to know that person probably existed somewhere and yet know that they would probably never run across them.

A trend of self harm cropped up online every few years, healed over self inflected wounds posted in forums of people seeking their other, fated, half. The presumption being that they were being desperately searched for in turn.  

Idiotic. Determined. Fallibly human.

And taboo. Most saw it as circumventing fate. 

Violently frantic for the thing Ghost had been unwillingly given. A way to find them, or, at least, easily identify them. And he never would. 

But, sometimes, he wondered. 

He tried to picture the imprint of a person somewhere out in the world wearing his wounds, suffering his losses. The thought would circle his brainstem in an unrelenting loop, a bright fish whispering around the perimeter of its bowl before it dissipated in lieu of something more pressing. 

It was always there, though, waiting to be grappled with again. 

He always came up blank. Nothing but a shadow in his mind where a person should be. Fitting, typical.  

It was a cruelty he couldn’t imagine, somehow. Someone being fatefully, inescapably afflicted with him. 

Simon didn’t want a soulmate anyway, and he was sure, if they existed, that they didn’t want him either. 

If there was someone out there, someone wandering around with his scars on their skin, he was certain they hated him already. 

He didn’t particularly believe in fate; life had taught him not to. He believed in himself, his capabilities, planning and contingencies. And Simon didn’t relish the thought of something he couldn’t control, someone holding the other end of his corded, deformed soul, like a leash they could tighten and use to yank him to his knees. Compromised, vulnerable. 

It wouldn’t happen; the margin for discovery was so small it was practically nonexistent. 

He blamed Soap, then, for tempting fate.

Ghost listened to Johnny yammer on, the sound of his voice louder than usual in the rattling dark belly of the transport plane home. The glow of green light, the roar of engines, the jangle of gear. 

It was an irritating, and sometimes endearing, quirk of Johnny’s that he couldn’t stop talking in the post-op cortisol and adrenaline drop, his words a smeared haze of jumbled thoughts spoken aloud for hours afterward.

The notion of a soulmate was at the front of Soap’s mind, not for the first time. He’d always seemed to enjoy the idea of it, and find some comfort in it, particularly after a close call. There was someone waiting for him, somewhere, after all, it couldn’t all come to nothing yet.   

Simon glanced out the window, watched the sea below morph into land. 

A yellow network of light winked below, a sea of reverse stars swimming in the black.

“Lucky that way, Lt,” Johnny declared with finality, finally winding down, sounding exhausted. “Findin’ ‘em will be easier.” 

Ghost glanced over, the first time in nearly an hour that he’d acknowledged the conversation beyond a hum and a nod. “What do you mean?” 

Soap gestured to his scarred chin, then his temple. “Know ‘em straight away, wouldn’t I?”  

Simon’s own thoughts spoken out loud; his hopes to never see his own scars reflected back at him turned on its head. 

Johnny made it sound like a good thing, instead of the nightmare it was. 

No, he thought for the nth time in his life, not that, not for him. 

But he’d always had an extraordinary knack for beating the odds. 

.

.

.

The base was a constant flurry of activity, a relentlessly buzzing hive of people. There were very few places that skirted away from the general chaos of life on a military base, but Simon had catalogued them all—the field behind the barracks when drills were not being run, the concrete service walkways beneath the base, crowded with spiderwebs and dust, the cool, sterile medical wing, and, the orderly administration offices. 

Each place had caveats. 

The service walkways were the most reliably quiet, but Simon hated being underground, hated the claustrophobia of it, like some part of him would always be clawing at black earth, and so usually avoided it. 

Soap had found him smoking behind the barracks once and now regularly joined Simon there. 

The medical wing could be crowded and frenzied, depending on the day. 

The administration offices were practically serene in comparison. Neat file folders, tidy desks, windows that let in the watery, gray English sun. Square offices with their doors propped open, conference rooms bathed in the light of glowing intel reports, data convergences, and map overlays, uniform gray walls and floors. 

The admin wing only occasionally spasmed into restless activity if an emergency op was underway or about to be, and if that happened, Ghost was usually already swept up in it himself, probably already long gone. 

A spare office stuffed away at the end of the hall with the name plate removed technically belonged to him. A mostly unused space he sometimes finished reports in but, more often than not, sat empty. 

He preferred to haunt the corridors, observe the more peaceful, inner workings of the military, breathing in the quiet air for five minutes at a time. It gave his perpetually over taxed nervous system, his forever-in-fight-or-flight-mode body, to relax, if even it was only an increment or two. The lightning was softer, the constant bark of orders and drills, the snap of gunfire, the general loudness of the rest of the place, was muted and far away.

Simon knew of all of the staff and their precuilarities—names, ages, birthdates, minor feuds among each other, immediate family members, previous posts, favorite foods, habits, complaints about the building’s irregular temperatures and the pervasive scent of diesel. It wasn’t information he necessarily collected on purpose. Gleaned over years of half heard conversations, glimpses of photos on desks. They, like the medical staff, didn’t often change, not like the revolving door of soldiers and operators. 

It was a regular, routine, quiet place. 

So it would be difficult for even the most oblivious person not to notice when the familiar order of the place was interrupted. 

Soft, dandelion light flooded the hall from a doorway that had always before been shut tight.

The scent of an unfamiliar perfume lingered in the hall in a feathery streak, oakmoss and lavender. It settled hard in his lungs, made his footsteps slow slightly, caution prickling at the back of his neck. 

The click of ceramic being sat on wood, the soft shuffle of files, tapping of computer keys emanated from within the now open office. The faintest notes of bubblegum pop floated by, at odds with the chill, still air. 

Inside, you were hidden behind two massive computer monitors, the very top of a pair of lilac headphones just visible over the rim. Plants in colorful painted terracotta pots lined the window to your left absorbing what they could of pale winter light, a thick blanket was thrown over the back of a chair in the corner, a jumble of bright, hand crocheted squares. A brass floor lamp with a circular shade sat behind your desk and drooped forward like the antenna of a giant radio, or a bug, casting a delicate halo of light around you like a protective ward. 

There was something. . .lambent that emanated around the room, that had nothing to do with the ridiculous lamp. 

Simon hovered in the doorway, in the shadow of the dim hall, just to get a glimpse of your face. Start a mental file on you, begin his careful catalog. Something to match the color and light to. 

It was a surprise to you both, then, when you glanced up and caught him at it. 

You stood hastily, headphones sliding down your neck when the cord jerked taut, the tinny sound of pop echoing loudly from them until you slammed your fingers down onto the keyboard and silence descended abruptly. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t see you there. Can I help you with something?” 

Simon could only stare at you, a curl of dread snaking its way between his ribs. 

Johnny was right, then, he would know his own scars anywhere. 

He would know his own face anywhere. 

He would, apparently, know you anywhere. 

Your face was a faded mapping of his own, the same scarring traced with a lighter hand. The same crack over your lips, a line drawn across your cheek, a faded check through your brow, the bridge of your nose bisected, the outline of webbed burn scars crosshatched at the edge of your jaw and shoulder. A jagged, thick line crossed your throat. 

Despite his legacy marring your face, you were pretty. Beautiful, even, with curious, cautious eyes, one side of your mouth pulled up into a half grin that tugged at the line across your cheek and somehow didn’t ruin the brightness of it. 

You were watching him watch you with a tentative gaze, brows drawing slowly together the longer he stood there staring at you, breathing around the newly minted cavern under his lungs. 

His eyes met yours again, and as soon as the realization settled in, something clicked violently into place inside his chest, like a missing rib bone had suddenly slotted into the cage around his heart. 

Pain bloomed hot and tight across his chest, so acute he covered his side, expecting to find a knife inexplicably lodged there. He grunted mutely. The discomfort receded as quickly as it had come, leaving behind a vast hollow just beneath his breast bone. Cavernous, lurching, undone. 

The hollow hardened into a solid brick of pain. 

Nausea swept into the back of his throat. 

“Are you okay?” 

He was frozen in the direct line of fire. Your eyes swept over him, fingers curling around a folder on the edge of your desk which you thumbed nervously. You began to lift your other hand, an aborted half movement toward your face that you dropped at the last second. But you didn’t avert your gaze. You looked past the mask, past him, and into his eyes. 

You saw him. 

Simon was not to be seen.

Ghost didn’t get caught, didn’t freeze. 

Didn’t feel like an animal trapped in a cage, pinned and weak and panicked. 

Not anymore. 

He was a ghost, a shadow, a silent—

The silence unspooled, thin and fragile as unraveling lace. 

Your smile widened, a slow, confident thing that stretched across your face crookedly, pulled at your scarred skin as you tilted your head. It was, maybe, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. 

“Sir?”

Amusement threaded your voice; a laugh curled like a sleeping animal in your throat. 

Instead of answering, he faded back into the hall.

As he retreated an uncertain realization prodded at the back of his mind. One wonderful contingency. 

You had not felt the shift, the world turning horribly on its axis, the pain that radiated hot as a wildfire. 

You hadn’t recognized what he was. 

And he was going to keep it that way. 

.

.

.

It felt like there was a hook in his chest, slipped right between his ribs, a constant painful tearing that landed him again and again outside your office door. Like he was a fish on a line, and you held the reel in your fist, totally oblivious to it. 

He didn’t love you, that’s not how the soulmate bond worked. You were tied together, for some reason, though that reason remained to be seen. Resentment was all he felt, a burning desire to chew his leg out of this trap, to grip the line that bound you and run a knife through it. 

Better yet, through you. 

Sever the tie as cleanly as a blade through an artery. 

One sure way to free himself was your death. 

It was unusual, but it happened—headlines of a soulmate killing their pair because they couldn’t tolerate the connection. It was taboo, considering how rare the bond was. The link suffocated them, instead of comforting them. 

Simon understood the urge.

He thought of your office, the way your back was angled half toward the door, how easily he could slip in and slice your throat open. He had seen and done worse, but the thought of you lying in a pool of blood, let alone at his hands, was so abhorrent and wrong that he doubled over as an acute, sharp pain pinched between his ribs, like someone wriggling their fingers between the bars to claw at his insides. 

Which irritated him. Things like that didn’t bother him, not anymore. At the very least, he was better at handling discomfort than this. 

It did start him thinking about someone else doing it, though. Slipping quietly into your office and nudging a knife between your ribs, pressing a silenced pistol against your temple, Ghost left to find your cold corpse. 

It was wrong. 

He could feel your life wrapped around his fingers, tangled in little ribbons around his wrists. A pulsing, glowing, bright thing.  

The resentment doubled because he should not care. He didn’t know you, trust you; your death should mean nothing. You should mean nothing.  

Still, he found himself walking the administration wing again the following day, even though the sun was out and it’d be nice to sit behind the barracks and smoke and listen to Johnny rattle on about something or the other when he inevitably showed up. 

Your door was open again, gold light spilling into the corridor, the low flutter of too loud music in your headphones accompanying it. 

Simon would never admit it to himself, but he also needed to know that he could remain hidden from you. The shock of your eyes finding his still hadn’t left him. It had never happened before—not on an op, not about the base, not out among civilians. He blended in, he remained invisible, but you saw him, sensed him, and he needed to know if that was something he had to adjust to. Planning was survival, and you were an unknown factor he needed a method for handling.  

Simon stepped close to your door, out of the beam of light. 

Your office was bathed in soft, cream light but not from your antenna bug lamp. 

Your back was fully turned toward the door, face tilted into the scarce winter sun streaming in the window as you leaned back in your chair. Your eyes were closed, headphones over your ears as he suspected they were. 

Fuuucking hell. 

Couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, back toward the entry point of the room. 

Your life hung there, trusting, fragile as spun crystal. 

He waited, but you didn’t turn, didn’t seem to know he was there. Something in his shoulders uncoiled, tension slowly replaced with an odd sense of calm. The pain in his chest eased for the first time in twenty-four hours, fading to a tender ache. 

Your lunch, half eaten, laid abandoned on your desk. The blanket that had been on the chair in the corner was swaddled around your shoulders. 

You yawned, eyes still closed. 

He waited for you to sense him, glance up, but you seemed unaware of him. He wouldn’t admit it then, but he half hoped you would. 

Ghost backed away, left you to your peace. 

The weight in his chest intensified again.

He hated you for it. 

He went back the next day. 

And the day after that.

.

.

.

Anchor might be a better descriptor. 

Hook was too violent.

Simon knew what it felt like to have a hook between his ribs, and this feeling was not that. 

He was satisfied, after weeks of observation as late winter turned to a wet spring, that you did not have a preternatural sense of his presence. In the process, he learned other things. 

You hated the cold, and your office always seemed to be chillier than you would prefer, blanket perpetually tucked around your shoulders. He watched you fiddle with the radiator one morning, bottom lip caught between your teeth, sigh, and resign yourself to it. He waited for you to complain to your coworkers like everyone else did, to call maintenance to fix it, but you didn’t. 

You liked to sit in the sun, however you could, squinting against the glare of it against your computer screens just to have it on your skin. 

You hunched over your desk, and clearly had pain in your neck and back because of it. 

You often stayed later on base than many of the staff and walked out of the building alone late at night. 

You didn’t drink tea, but politely accepted the tea several different coworkers made for you with the very good intention of showing you a proper cup. You drank every drop as you chatted with them, even though you clearly detested it. It didn’t show, but Simon could tell. He didn’t like that he could, that it was instinctual and nothing else. 

They were also plying you with shit tea, of course you weren’t going to like it. He watched as one bloke let it steep for a full fifteen minutes and then presented you with what must have been the bitterest lukewarm tea to ever pass through the base. An older secretary took the opposite approach and handed you a cup of barely brewed tea with approximately four tablespoons of sugar in. 

Absolutely bloody foul. 

Horrific crimes committed in your name, and you swallowed them with a smile. 

And you smiled a lot. From the tiniest twitch of your lips when you were alone, to a grin so big he could see all your teeth, that your eyes squinched closed. 

You nearly always had headphones on—wired earbuds dangling from the collar of your shirt as you walked down the hall, or over ear headphones looped around your neck at your desk, usually pop, occasionally 70s rock or alternative spitting from the speakers. 

You talked a lot, and your voice carried. One of those truisms about Americans, you could be heard long before you were seen even if you weren’t being particularly loud. He didn’t need to be close to hear you, and he found himself thinking one afternoon good. It would be easier to keep track of you. 

He liked your voice, anyway, liked your laugh, liked to hear you say English phrases in that accent of yours that made them sound ridiculous. 

You could likely give Soap a run for a world record of useless chatter. Anyone who walked into your office was subject to your stream of consciousness if they lingered long enough. 

Lonely, he might have called it. But you were new, to the base, and to the country. Your only connections were those you were attempting to craft with stuffy intelligence officers who sometimes seemed to regard you as below them. 

He found his thoughts drifting to the sound of your voice once he’d left you for the day, replaying things he’d heard you say in the period of observation he allowed himself, like the tune of a lullaby. It calmed him. 

The resentment in his chest festered like a badly healed wound. You were nothing but a distraction, a thorn stabbed into his side, stealing his focus from nearly everything that was more important. 

That used to be more important. 

Now his every thought was asterisked by you. 

Distracted. 

He didn’t do well with it. 

He didn’t like that he could feel the newly rended hole in his chest corroding and throbbing when he wasn’t near you, suffocating him. He’d felt worse in his life, so he could mostly ignore it. 

Simon decided that the nature of the bond was at least neutral. You were not a threat.  

He was tired, anyway, of constantly thinking about your back to the door, your headphones playing too loudly. 

After you left one evening in mid spring, he moved your desk. 

Simon sat in your dark office for longer than he should have, letting the pain ease out of his chest. 

It was enough to be where you had once been. 

That was as close as he cared to be. 

He fixed the radiator before he closed the door again. 

.

.

. 

He went by Ghost, you learned eventually. 

His was a redacted, blacked out name in the files on your computer, so Ghost seemed less a name than a description. You briefly scanned the ops he had been on. It was a horrifyingly long list, most of them totally classified or excised beyond comprehensibility. And those were only the missions you could see, likely his involvement in many ops had been scrubbed entirely. 

It was clear that he was good at his job, though it left you to wonder what he had been doing in the administration wing of the base, let alone peering into your office like a silent wraith. 

It should have been terrifying to find him looming in your doorway. His massive frame had blotted out the corridor behind him. Mostly in black, a skull mask covering his face. You hadn’t been able to see his eyes in the low lighting. But you had only felt curiosity, apprehension, a delicate wrenching in your gut. 

Something that a different person might liken to butterflies. Absolutely absurd, but nonetheless true. 

Fear, afterward, of course, that you’d missed some kind of order or request. 

It had also been a while since someone stared so openly at you, since you’d felt the urge to duck your head, obscure the scars littered across your skin. You never had before, and you wouldn’t have started then. You wore them proudly. Most bore their soulmate’s scars better than their own, and you were no exception. 

It had become a rarity, really, in recent years that anyone spared you more than a glance. Being surrounded by military personnel who had seen worse, might have had worse on their own skin, meant you didn’t stand out.

When you mentioned the incident to Laswell, worried that some kind of disciplinary report, during your first month at this post no less, was headed your way, she had only shook her head. “That’s just Ghost. He probably didn’t say anything. You get used to it.” 

The base, especially among the operators, was filled with odd personalities with even odder quirks, so you decided not to question it. You had only nodded, and said, “Okay.” 

Laswell had smiled. “You’ll do well here.” 

You suspected you were being watched in the weeks following the incident, though you couldn’t say why at first. The suspicion was confirmed when you arrived one blissfully sunny spring morning to find your office warm and your desk moved. Your other furniture was rearranged neatly around it. You rounded it, dropping your bag as you went, half expecting to find a note. 

There was nothing, and you started to rotate it back, a bit irritated, when you paused and sat. The new angle gave you a clear view of the door and window. The sun hit your face without causing a glare on your screens. The monitors had been lowered ever so slightly so you could easily see over them.

You left your desk in its new position. It was better that way. 

Ghost appeared in your office that afternoon as suddenly as he had left it. 

You sensed that he’d been there for a long time when you finally noticed him in the doorway, that you were only seeing him because he wanted you to.

You smiled and turned away from a report. A welcome reprieve for your strained eyes and hunched back. 

“Hi. Something I can help you with, Lieutenant?” 

This time, he stepped into your office, grasped your offer with both hands. 

The room seemed to shrink and adjust to his size. He was more massive than you remembered, in height and breadth. His eyes didn’t leave yours, a deep blackened honey brown half hidden by skull. Neither of you looked away.

“Have I passed?” 

His head tilted ever so slightly. When he spoke his voice was like an iron rod shoved down your spine. Deep and jagged and rough, it settled between your ribs, in the pit of your stomach. “Passed?” 

“Your test?” 

“Think I’m testin’ you?” 

“You moved my desk.” 

He didn’t answer for a long moment, still not dropping your gaze. The silence lasted so long you began to think he wouldn’t answer at all. “Practically had your back to the door,” he said eventually, as though that explained it. 

It conjured the image of Ghost creeping around the base in the dead of night to adjust offices into more tactical configurations and you had to bite the inside of your cheek to keep the giggle in your throat from bubbling out.   

You nodded and then shrugged instead. “I guess I don’t think about things like that.” 

“Should.”

“Maybe.” 

“Especially in the field.” 

“I don’t do field work.” 

He nodded slowly and finally took his eyes off yours, glancing around the room again. When his lashes caught the light, you saw that they were a light blond. 

“Welcome to sit,” you offered, taking up a pen and a pad of yellow paper. “Ghost.”  

He didn’t sit, but he didn't leave either. When he remained mute and motionless, you looked back at your report and continued working, resigned to the new addition to your office. 

Minutes passed in silence, with only the scratch of your pencil over paper, the tapping of computer keys, for company. 

All at once, the room sighed, and when you looked up, he was gone. 

Ghost was strange, slightly off putting. 

You liked him.

Maybe, you thought, he’d come back. 

.

.

.

Ghost visited regularly after that. 

Sometimes he simply stood at the door and watched you work. 

His boots were so silent that you often didn’t know he was there until he was leaving again. It felt as though he often melted into nothing but shadow, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable feeling. 

You didn’t feel watched, so much as observed, minded.

But the lengthy silences began to wear thin, so you started talking to him.  

Talked at him, more like, about anything that came to mind. 

The shit weather and how cold you always were. Recounted phone calls with your sister and noted things you’d seen on your commute. You told him of your slightly creepy neighbor who would follow you occasionally down high street when you did your weekly shopping trip, but that was probably harmless.

You were sure he wasn’t actually listening, his eyes focused somewhere in the middle distance as he stood statuesque in the middle of your office.  

The visits were occasionally broken up by operations that could last days or weeks, once up to a month. Time passed either way, but you found it passed more easily when you could reliably count on a visit from Ghost. Hearing his voice in staticky communications wasn’t the same. A blinking green dot on a map that you tracked just a little more closely than the others. 

Ghost sat down for the first time toward the middle of a particularly miserable and cold spring afternoon. He sighed as he did, the only sign of any feeling. Almost a resignation in the soft cut of it. 

You didn’t comment on it, just chatted as you usually did, buoyed in a way that you could not explain. 

He started to bring you coffee, done up to your preference, always when you were hitting the midday lag. 

In exchange, you left offerings at the edge of your desk. Baked goods, protein bars, chips, sweets— which disappeared when you looked away from him. You noted what went first so you could invest in it. Chocolate went more frequently. 

But Ghost, whether he was listening or not, made you feel less alone. The ache of loneliness in your heart eased, and maybe that said more about you than him. 

If he was around, he usually slipped in while you ate lunch. He didn’t eat with you, the mask never moved, but you began cooking extra in the evenings, leaving tupperware containers at the edge of your desk in addition to brownies wrapped in waxpaper, chocolate chip cookies sprinkled with sea salt. “Don’t have to,” he always said. 

“Want to,” you answered, and then received the empty, clean container from the day before as though it were an offering.

Your office always smelled like tobacco and tea for hours after he left, a comforting combination that you began to wish you could bottle. 

He didn’t appear one day at his usual allotted, precise time. You figured something came up or he finally got tired of you, but he turned up instead late in the afternoon.  

“Sorry,” he said as he sat, without explanation, a paper cup of coffee steaming at the edge of your desk like it appeared there by his will alone.  

“Oh,” you answered. “You didn’t have to—“

“Did,” he said simply. “‘ave you eaten?”

“Yep. Got something for you, too.” 

He settled back. “Neighbor still botherin’ you?” 

You blinked in surprise, the slightly creepy neighbor had not spoken to you in a few days. “Oh. . .I—You were listening.”

He tilted his head. “‘Course I was, bird.” He leveled you with a look. “So?”

“Not recently. Not in a couple days.”

“Good. Let us know if he does, yeah?”

Then he sat back and waited, shoulders relaxed as though attending a sermon, but content with silence anyway. 

When you glanced up from a report a while later, for clarification on a mission detail that he happened to be on, his eyes were closed. 

It felt akin to having a wolf willingly curl up in your lap, blood wet maw dripping peacefully onto the floor.

.

.

.

When you turned from watering your plants one innocuous spring day, you found Ghost entering your office with a different mask on. A soft black balaclava. You could see his eyes and brows, the bridge of his nose and the thin, bruised skin beneath his eyes.

You froze and then smiled at him, tried hard not to stare. His eyes were always pretty but now you felt you could actually see him. Blond brows and lashes, his irises were lighter, amber honey in the yellow light of your bug lamp, as Ghost had called it one afternoon without a shred of humor. 

It was raining, and the dim light made the small space cozier than usual. The patchwork blanket was around your shoulders, a ward against the chill bleeding beneath the window. 

In his usual chair, you’d laid a gift. 

He pointed to the blanket you had carefully folded there earlier. 

“It’s for you. I knitted it.” 

He froze, hand half extended toward it. You swept past him around your desk again, inundated with the scent of black tea and cigarettes as you went. His was alternating black and dark blue squares to your brightly colored purple and teal. “Just in case you were cold. You’re always so buttoned up after all,” you joked. “And you fixed my radiator this winter. So it’s a thank you, too.”

Ghost only moved it to the back of the chair. You hadn’t expected him to take it, really, but his gloved fingers lingered on it for a moment, rubbing the fabric gently. “How d’you know it was me that fixed it?” 

“Who else would have?” 

He grunted. “You knit?” 

“When I can’t sleep,” you answered. “Keeps my hands and brain busy.”

His brows furrowed, and seeing even that small movement felt like seeing him naked, like seeing something he didn’t want you to. You averted your eyes, heat crawling up your neck. 

“Can’t sleep?” His fingers slid off the blanket and he sat.

You shrugged. “Must seem silly to you. You see it with your own eyes. But some of the reports. . . stick with me.” 

Ghost considered this for a long moment. “It’s not.” 

“What?” 

“Silly.” 

The way he grunted the word made you laugh. 

“Could I ask you something, Ghost?”

“Reckon you just did.” 

You rolled your eyes. “Am I allotted only one question?” 

“Just two.” 

It was. . . funny. You giggled and shrugged. “Guess I’m shit out of luck.” 

“And out of questions.”

You laughed again. 

He surprised you by laughing too. If a low, graveled grunt counted as a laugh. You certainly counted it, a cache of swollen pride bubbling in your stomach. “Go on, then.” 

“Where are you from?” 

The levity vanished. His brows lowered. “Why?” 

You shrugged. “Just curious. I’m not good with all the accents yet. Just can’t place you.” 

He relaxed back into the chair again, but didn't answer. 

The pinch of his brows, the tense line of his jaw, remained, his expression considering as he tilted his head back. 

“Why do you come here?” You asked instead. 

This question he answered readily. “It’s quiet.” 

“That’s one way to tell me to shut up.” 

He blinked and lowered his chin to meet your eyes. “Not the kind of noise I mean.” 

You decided not to take offense at being called noise. 

You snorted and reached beneath your desk, taking some pride in the fact that Ghost did not tense anymore than usual when you did, withdrawing your lunch. 

“Hungry?” You asked.  

“Tryin’ to see my face?” 

You smiled. “Never,” you answered, “Not sure I want to see what you’re hiding under there.” 

The rain tapped against the window as you popped the thermal lid off.  

“Why are you here?” He asked as you folded your legs beneath you on the chair and tucked the blanket around them. Ghost rose without asking and twisted the knob of the radiator beneath the window a bit higher.

You waved your fork, indicating the office. “Fairly positive I work here. But perhaps base security is more lax than I thought.” 

He sighed, a long suffering sound. “England, smartarse.” 

You smile and dig your fork into last night’s spaghetti bolognese. The steam caressed your face in a warm puff as you lifted a bite. “I’m on loan to Laswell.” 

“On loan?” He asked as he settled back into the chair, broad shoulders pressed to the wall behind him, against the blanket. It slid over his elbow a little, curled over his forearm. He didn’t move it. 

When you lifted your gaze to his, his stare was piercing, brows lowered, furrowed. You imagined he must be frowning.  

“Temporary replacement for whoever used to be in this office,” you explained. “She needed someone quickly, who she could trust.” 

Ghost folded his arms across his chest, something more tense than usual in the movement. “How long are you on loan for, then?” 

You shrugged, twisted your fork into the noodles. “It’s unclear. So, for now, indefinitely.” You smiled, “Hopefully not through another winter, though, I don’t think I’m cut out for the rain and cold.”

His shoulders eased, but only marginally. If it weren’t for all the hours he’d passed in your office, you weren’t sure you would have caught it at all. 

“From somewhere warm?”

“Warmer than here. Especially in the winter.” 

“Must be nice, that.” 

“Has its perks. But the summer is its own kind of hell.” 

“One you enjoy.” 

“But of course. I like feeling like I’m baking alive.” 

He snorted again.

You ate in silence for a bit. The quiet had become comfortable between you somewhere along the way, silken and gentle. 

When you were scraping the last bit of sauce from the bottom of the container, Ghost said, “Manchester.” 

“Hm?”

“Where I’m from.”

His voice was low; he wasn’t looking at you, eyes trained on the door instead. 

“Manchester,” you repeated, trying to place it on the map of the UK in your mind. “And do you all sound sort of like—“

You were about to say like you have gravel in your mouth but he makes an affected noise, that stiff grunt again. “Are you laughing at me?”

“It’s your fucking accent.”

“My accent?” You asked incredulously. “Have you heard yourself?” 

“Got a thick one, bird.” He imitated your voice. “Manchester.” The sharp rhotic r sound was like a gunshot in his mouth, each letter enunciated to the point of being butchered. 

You scoffed, not bothering to fight your smile. “Takes one to know one, I guess.” 

“Suppose it does.” 

“Fucking Brits,” you said, without any venom. “I can’t do anything right according to you all.” 

He tilted his head, something predatory in it. It made your heart flutter a little. “Who’s tellin’ you you can’t do something?” 

You sighed, long suffering. “My coworkers. Can’t make tea, apparently. I don’t care for it and everyone keeps insisting I just make it wrong.”

“They make it wrong too.” 

You groaned. “Not you too.” 

Ghost rose to take his leave as you snapped the lid back onto the now empty container. 

“I’ll show you how to make a proper cup sometime.” 

You paused, a warm surprise sweeping into your chest, and decided not to linger on this solitary acknowledgement that Ghost would return to your office. “Big fan?” 

“I love tea.” 

It made you laugh. “Of course, English afterall.” 

He nodded, just once, and started toward the door. “Ghost?” You called. 

Ghost turned and you slid another tupperware container across your desk. “For you.” 

He stared at it, for a moment too long, as he always did, like he was telling himself to leave it. “Didn’t have to.” 

“I know.” You nodded at it again and then then ducked behind your computer screens. “I always want to.” 

Ghost moved so silently that you didn’t hear or see him take it, but when you looked up again he and the container at the edge of your desk were gone. 

.

.

.

It should be a good thing. 

You would be gone soon enough, none the wiser of who Ghost was. Of what you were to each other. 

But it didn’t sit well. It was a new thing to nag at the back of his mind, finding your office empty, you becoming a ghost in your own right. He hated the ache in his chest, the thought of you so far away. He could only assume you’d be stationed back in the US.

The thought festered, burrowed. 

“Laswell.”

She jumped, hand going beneath her desk before she spotted Ghost in the corner of  her office. She sighed and closed her eyes, fingertips rubbing her eyes instead. 

“Ghost,” she sighed, “Don’t do that.” 

Simon said your name, and Laswell lowered her hands to look at him. “How long has she got?” 

“What do you mean?”

“Said she’s on loan. I want to know how long.”

Laswell considered him; Ghost waited. He wouldn’t explain himself, and Laswell knew that. 

“Maybe as long as a year.” She tilted back in her chair and asked anyway. “Why?” 

Ghost didn’t answer, slipping back out of her office and down the hall. 

You were still in your office, hunched over the desk, lavender headphones pulled down around your neck. He watched you for a long moment, eyes tracing over scars that belonged to him. It was jarring each time to see pain he experienced threaded over your skin. It made him feel exposed by proxy.

As he watched, you lifted a hand and rubbed your neck with a wince, fingers lingering on the long scar slashed at the base of your throat. The grimace faded from your face and your expression receded into the impassive, blank, focused slate it always settled into as you continued working. 

When he sat down in your office, you just shot him a tired smile and continued working. 

He walked you to your car around midnight. 

“Tell us if you’re here this late again,” he said, not looking at you. 

“Ghost,” you said. “It’s almost enough to make me think you like me.” 

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he answered. 

You just laughed. 

.

.

.

“Tea?” 

You jumped, just as Laswell had, only your hand didn’t go beneath the desk. Nothing there to reach for, he knew, your vulnerability like a beacon, or a stain. 

It would need remedied. 

But first, this. 

It was the sixth time in two weeks that you were at your desk well past when everyone else had gone home.  

“Jesus Christ.” 

“Unfortunately not.” 

You laughed; his shoulders eased. “Ghost,” you said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” You tilted your head. “I’m starting to think you’re spying on me.” 

“What’re you still doing ‘ere?” 

“What are you doing wandering around our wing after hours?” 

Not a line of questioning he was keen on following. That just being near a place you had been earlier in the day was enough to loosen that fucking tether in his chest. That he was worried incessantly about you being alone at night.

“Offerin’ to make you a tea,” he answered. “Obviously.”  

“Obviously,” you echoed. “Of course.” 

“You’re supposed to tell me when you’re stayin’ late.” 

“Ghost,” you said seriously, lifting your brows, “I’m here late again today.” 

“Hilarious, you are.” 

You giggled again. “Are you really offering to make me tea?” 

He nodded. “C’mon then.”

You smiled and shrugged the blanket off your shoulders. He waited while you locked your computer and stood.

Simon allowed you to lead toward the breakroom where he’d observed the many cups of tea you’d politely swallowed from well meaning coworkers, who left it to steep for too long or too short, added too much sugar and milk, or left it totally plain. 

The overhead lights were too bright, a blue-white glare that made you frown and squint. Your nose scrunched up in distaste. There were circles beneath your eyes, exhausted loops that matched his own.  

“So,” you prompted, leaning against the counter, “How does one make a proper cuppa?”

“Not bad,” he said of your accent, lifting the electric kettle from the hook to fill with water. “Little posh.” 

“I’ve been practicing.”

He grunted, and put the kettle on, before rooting through the cabinet above the sink for tea bags. A grim selection awaited him, but he’d make due with what was available.

“Ah, so you boil the water. I was under the impression you could just stick it all in the microwave.” 

He involuntarily made a pained sound. “Fucking hell,” he muttered, “That your usual method?” 

You bit the inside of your cheek, poorly concealing a laugh. “I scandalized a data analyst with that joke.” You cup your chin in your hand, peer up at him from beneath a thick fringe of lashes. “I do know how to boil water, I’ll have you know.”

“Got a head start then.” 

You laughed again, shoulders shaking. Simon watched the corner of your mouth curl, and it eased something in his chest. You were painfully close, the woodsy, floral scent of your perfume curled in the air. Your elbow brushed his. He didn’t know how you could be unaware of the bond at that moment, when being that close to you felt like being lit on fire. He wanted to reach for you so badly that he had to clench his fist closed to avoid it. 

If someone were to ask him to move away from you right then, it would end badly. Bloody. 

The thin, needle sharp connection ached, begged. 

Simon ignored it.  

When you glanced up, he looked away. He could feel your eyes on his face, and didn’t mind the scrutiny in it. He didn’t mind you watching him, and wondered what you saw. 

“I like being able to see your eyes,” you said, just as the kettle clicked off. 

He met your gaze, disarmed by the declaration. Your features had softened, melted into a dangerous fondness. “Why?” 

“You have pretty eyes,” you shrugged. “And it’s hard to see you with the other mask.” You shifted, watching him lift the kettle, pour the hot water into a mug and over the teabag he’d dropped into it. 

“You can tell me to fuck off, if you want,” you began carefully, fingertips drumming nervously against the counter. “Why do you wear it?” 

Simon watched the teabag bob on the surface of the water, thin amber trails unfurling, coloring the water slowly brown. “Five minutes,” he nodded at the tea. “Don’t touch it. None of that dunking shite.” 

“Yes, sir,” you agreed. “Five minutes, no touching.” 

He huffed, and your smile widened. You bumped your shoulder against his. The contact only lasted a second or two, but the relief it provided was so intense that he nearly choked on it. 

The pain, softened by your proximity, returned immediately, crept down into the soft ligaments between his bones. He felt the loss in the roots of his teeth, the middle of his chest; it was like losing his breath in a different way, being suckerpunched in the solar plexus, knocked on his ass.

“To hide my face.” 

“Your identity, you mean.” 

“My identity,” he agreed.

“Why?” 

He released a long, slow breath, and thought about telling you to piss off, maybe even just to see how you’d take it. Were you as good as your word? Would you let the subject drop? 

Instead, he said, “There are a lot of bad people in the world, bird.” 

You pursed your lips, fingers toying with the teabag string, flicking the tab at the end with your nail. There was another question swimming in your eyes, but you let it go unasked, dropping your eyes from his instead. 

“You’ve seen more of them than most,” you said. “I would guess.” 

“Part of the job.” 

Your mouth curled a little, lashes fluttering against your cheek. “Hm. But y’know something? I think I’d know you anywhere,” you said, without a hint of shame or irony. “It’s all in your eyes.” 

Before Simon could respond, you hid a yawn in your sleeve and rubbed your hand over your face, exhaustion layered in thick rings beneath your eyes. “Even if this is gross,” you indicate the tea, “At least it will keep me awake.” 

“I take offense to that.” 

You laughed again. “Hm. Sorry, Lieutenant.” You leaned in, “It smells so nice, so why does it taste like shit?” 

He rolled his eyes. “I’ll make you a coffee if it’s shit.” 

“You’re kind.” This time when you leaned your shoulder against his, you left it there. The empty soreness like a bruise inside his ribs loosened again. For the first time in a while, he was left with the absence of pain.  

When the tea was done steeping, he did yours with a bit of honey. There was no way you’d take it plain and like it, but he drew the line at milk. Especially the blasphemy that was the military issued powdered milk in a canister that sat on the counter. Abso-fucking-lutely not. 

“There you are,” he said, “Cup of tea.” 

“A proper cuppa,” you tried again. It was a little less posh this time. 

He huffed. “Better all the time.” 

“And I have you to thank.” 

Your face creased as you took the cup between your palms, an unreadable expression flitting across your features. Then your mouth twisted to the side, a sure sign you were attempting to keep some emotion or thought in check. 

Your shoulder was still pressed heavily against his. 

“Thanks, Ghost.” 

“”S just tea.” 

You shook your head and lifted the cup, blowing gently on the surface before you took a tiny sip. He watched your face, watched your throat move as you swallowed, the flickering web of your lashes. A step up, at least, from all the shit tea from your coworkers that make your brows tense in an effort to conceal a grimace. “One good thing has come of this,” you said after a moment of contemplation. 

“What’s tha’?” 

“I know how to make tea for you now.” 

“Like it?” 

“I love it.” 

You briefly tilted your head onto his shoulder, then pulled away entirely. The flood of discomfort was worse than before. His muscles spasmed around it in a violent convulsion. “I mean that really.” 

He breathed out, through it. “I don’t take honey.” 

You studied the contents of the cup, tilting it one way and then the other, like something important laid at the bottom of the porcelain well. 

“Noted.” 

Sure enough, the next day, a hot cup was waiting for him, which he drank as you chatted from behind your computer, decidedly, pointedly, giving him the privacy to do so. 

.

.

.

Things settled into a pleasant rhythm. 

A regimented, regular existence that you had long ago learned to embrace. The base became home more than the tiny apartment you rented and spent only enough time to sleep, bathe, and cook in. 

You timed your days to the ebb and flow of the base, to visits to your office, debriefings and conference rooms, the restless energy of so many people in one place moving. You breathed around absences, the pockets of emptiness that sometimes cropped up. The loneliness that felt like an unfillable pit in your stomach. 

People often saw your scars and thought not to bother. Why would fate have marked you so heavily if you weren’t meant to find your pair? The scars meant nothing, really. They were no more significant than anyone else’s. Your chances of running into your soulmate was no higher than someone who had accrued no scars from their bond. 

You were a stopping off point, a bit of fun, but not someone to invest time and effort into, not when the reminder that someone else might come along and render it all moot was so visible, so literally in their face. To look at you was to be reminded of that bond waiting in the wings, for them and for you, and that you could only ever be temporary. 

It made friendships hard too. Some were jealous, others thought there couldn’t be room for anyone else in your life. You were important to no one.

It had been proven to you time and again, and you weren’t sure what kept you hopeful that someone would one day see past it. So when Sergeant Davies stuck his head in your office one Friday afternoon long after Ghost had departed your office for the day, and asked you out, you found yourself saying yes. 

“Would you like to go out sometime?” He asked, hand rubbing the back of his neck. “Just round the pub for drinks?” 

“Oh,” you said. “I—” 

It had been a long time since anyone took interest in you. You’d only talked to him a few times before, but Davies was handsome in a boyish way and sweet and you liked him well enough, you found yourself hesitating for half a second. To your horror, your mind flashed to Ghost, stomach lurching painfully, a knot of tension fisting itself in your chest. 

You looked at his usual chair, empty now, seeing his large frame sprawled there anyway, thighs spread wide, arms crossed over his chest, eyes steady and focused, locked onto you with an intensity and constancy you still weren’t used to.

Heat bloomed in your lungs, crept up your neck. You glanced away, back at Davies waiting at the door. 

“Yeah,” you answered firmly. “Sure.” 

“Brilliant,” he grinned. “How about tonight?” 

Your belly gave another sour squirm that you ignored; it had just been a long time, that was all. “I’m free.” 

“Brilliant,” he said again. “I’ll text you.” 

“Okay.” 

His grin was crooked and self satisfied as he exited your office. 

So you found yourself walking off the base with Davies later that evening. You found yourself laughing and hopeful in a local pub that you hadn’t gotten the chance to explore yet, busy as you were, the base a tide that tugged you back again and again. Like a magnet, you wanted to be there. 

And all of it came to nothing, the moment Davies saw the extent of the scarring when you took him home. It wasn’t just your face, it was your hands and arms and chest and belly. Your whole body was marked, dogeared for someone else. He looked down at you in your bed, his head framed by your ceiling fan and you saw the moment it clicked. The moment it wouldn’t work. 

“Someone out there is really looking for you,” he said. “You’re lucky.” 

“No more than anyone else,” you countered. “You know that’s not how it works.” 

“I know,” he said, pulling on his shirt. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” you said before he kissed your cheek and retreated. 

Still, you didn’t sleep, just laid on your side, half undressed, staring out at a sky that slowly lightened, stars fading, wondering if perhaps your truest fate was to be lonely for your whole life. 

You didn’t hate your scars, or your soulmate. But sometimes you thought it would be easier if you didn’t have one at all. 

.

.

.

Monday. 

There was a knife in Simon’s pocket. 

Not unusual in and of itself, he carried several at all times, slipped into his sleeves and belt and boot. 

The one in his pocket, though, was for you.

A gift, a contingency, and an offer all wrapped in one. 

The knowledge that it was yours was an uncomfortable weight in his chest. It meant admitting he cared enough to procure it, test it, hand it over. 

It wasn’t quite your typical lunch hour, but Ghost was headed to your office anyway. It was sunny, for once, and he expected to find you taking an early break anyway, leaning back in your chair with your headphones on, absorbing the rare rays. 

And, he wanted to be done with it, to stop tapping his pocket repeatedly, checking the blade was still there, like it might have run away. 

Soap had noticed his fidgeting as they all sat through a briefing on intelligence reports with Laswell that morning. Ghost had forced his hand still, exuded a forced calm, but Johnny’s eyes hadn’t turned away. 

When he arrived at your office, deliberately rustling against the doorjamb so as not to startle you, you glanced up and smiled tightly and his plan vanished. 

Something was wrong. The blinds were closed, your office an unusual sea of gray air. Your shoulders were caved inward protectively, your expression wan and closed. Your smile didn’t reach your eyes, your voice was rough when you said, “Hey, Ghost.”  

Simon took his usual seat, watching you type something, decidedly not looking at him. He watched you, the set of your mouth and eyes. He waited for your chatter to begin but it didn't. 

“All right?” 

“Hm?”

“You’re quiet.” 

“Oh, only one of us is allowed to be quiet?” You joked, but it came out a bit brittle, and worn.

There were, he noticed as he looked at you, circles beneath your eyes. “What ‘appened?” 

You looked up again, and shook your head. “I’m just tired.” 

“Try again.” 

Frustration crept into your features. “Who said I want to tell you?” With that, you ducked behind your monitors.

Simon waited, but you did not reemerge. 

He stood, and rounded your desk. You glanced up then, leaning back when you found him so close. “Jesus, Ghost—” 

“Nice weather.” 

“I can see that.” 

“And you aren’t out there sunnin’ yourself? Something horrible must have happened.” 

Your mouth twisted to the side and you glanced away. “I. . .I’m just being dramatic.”

“C’mon, then.” 

You blinked up at him. “Where are we going?” 

He didn’t answer, but you rose anyway when he tilted his head toward the door. Simon snagged the blanket you’d knitted for him months ago from its place along the back of his chair, finally with a proper purpose, and carried it over his arm. 

“Lunch.” 

You grabbed it and followed him down the hall. Simon shouldered open an external door and held it open for you, the scent of your skin, the warm brush of your body so close to his as you ducked under his arm like a beacon, a light he wanted to follow. 

Carefully, you nudged your shoulder against his as you walked. The familiar sharp, sweet pang whenever you brushed too close together settled in his chest. He wondered if you felt it too, if you felt that sickly flutter in your chest, or if his suspicion that he was holding one end of an untethered bond in his hand was right. 

Just his luck. 

Didn’t matter though. 

He ticked his elbow out a little, and after a moment, you pushed your hand against the inside of his arm. His shoulders loosened; his jaw unclenched. The pain in his chest settled. 

The absence of the ache was intense; he was so used to being in near constant pain. 

“So, what are we doing?” 

“Walking.” 

“I can see that.” 

“Why’re you askin’, then, bird?” 

You huffed but didn’t ask anymore questions as he led you down one concrete pathway. 

The sky was a flawless robin’s egg blue, only a wispy, thin line of cloud on the very distant horizon. The distant shouts of drill instructors snapped in the warm summer air. Your shoulders drooped as you walked, eyes fluttering closed for a few seconds at a time as you tilted your face to the sun, inhaling deeply. 

He led you around the last building in a long line of barracks and brought you to a halt. The only thing beyond was a chainlink fence that marked the edge of the base. A faint breeze coated him in the smell of your skin, settled deep in the well of his lungs. He took a breath, watched your lashes flutter. 

Your thumb stroked a pattern against the inside of his arm, lazy and slow. “You’ve got a soft spot for me, Ghost.” 

He didn’t deny it. 

“What are we doing back here?” 

Ghost pulled away from you with some effort and spread the blanket over the grass. He sat on the concrete steps that led to the back door of the unused barracks.

You sat on the blanket, started to open your lunch and then flopped back in the sun instead. “A usual haunt?” 

“Sometimes.” 

“Secret’s safe with me.” 

“Mind if I smoke?” 

“No.” Then, “I won’t look.”  

He grunted in acknowledgement, rolled the bottom of his mask up, carton of cigarettes and lighter pulled from the depths of a trouser pocket. Simon watched the rise and fall of your chest, tracing the latticework of scars over your face. They looked better on you, he decided. Not as noticeable as his own, faded and light, pencil through wax paper instead of the thick groves of his own. 

They glinted a little in the sun, like the scales of an iridescent fish. 

Your eyes remained peacefully closed, soaking up the sun like a long deprived plant. Sweat beaded along your forehead, and when you pushed up your sleeves, Ghost was reminded that all of you matched all of him.

He recognized a burn mark on your forearm that belonged to him, a cut that wrapped halfway around your wrist. He was pretty sure the burn mark was from a mishandled flare, the wrist scar from a rope that had gotten tangled and burned him. 

Simon wanted to reach down and cup the side of your throat, feel the soft, sun warmed skin beneath his fingers. He wondered if your scars felt the same as his own, rough and grooved. 

Probably not, they were imitations, ungenerous sketchings of his own. 

He’d like to map them all against his own, find out if he bore any of yours. He wouldn’t have noticed something small that you might have collected yourself. A childhood fall, a careless burn while cooking. 

He watched the delicate flex of muscle in your forearms. Your shirt was a little askew, more faded marks left like a tracery of veins on your chest and collarbone and shoulder. It was fucking awful, a wrenching feeling in his chest, to know all that had been inflicted on him, had fallen on you too. 

He wondered about the pain again, imagined you writhing with terror and agony and confusion, every gunshot wound and burn and slash he received an echo inside you. Cigarette burns dotting your arms and wrists when you were just a child, months of pain without end when he was captured and tortured and his life was irrevocably changed. 

Simon wanted to ask, needed to know just how much damage he’d inflicted. But the words stuck in his throat. A fear of knowing, if he asked about the pain, maybe he’d hear other things too, how much you must hate him and didn’t know it was the man in front of you your hate should be directed at.

When he stubbed out his cigarette on the heel of his boot and rolled his mask back down, you blinked into the sun and exhaled, long and slow, and then sat up, leaning back on your palms. 

“What ‘appened?” He asked.

Your mouth twitched into your usual, if a bit more sheepish, smile. “You’re like a dog with a bone, you know that?” 

“Affirmative,” he said. 

You rolled your eyes and set up straight, brushing your palms together before reaching for your lunch. “I brought something for you.” 

“Stalling.” 

“Pushy,” you countered, giggling, rummaging around in your bag. Your smile faded as you pulled free one of the usual containers, what looked like lasagne within. He watched the edge of your mouth curl, the scar slitted along one side pulling at your expression. “I went on a date this weekend.” 

Ice slid down his spine, curled in a viscous circle in his gut. “Bad date?” 

“No,” you said, shaking your head adamantly, staring down at the container in your lap. “No, it went really well.” You glanced up at him and then dug in your bag again, passing another one to him along with a fork. “Until he saw my—” You fidgeted with your sleeve and then yanked it down. The other followed suit. “My marks. My scars.” 

“He’s a prick.” 

“No, he wasn’t,” you shook your head. “It’s happened before. They see the extent of it, and it’s like something biological clicks. I’m off limits.” You sat your food to the side and wrapped your arms around your knees. “Even though I’m no more likely to find mine than anyone else.” 

You looked very small, and alone at that moment. 

“I know it’s not my soulmate’s fault,” you said quietly. “I know that. I know that. And I don’t blame them for it. But sometimes I get so lonely I just—I wish—I wish I didn’t have one. Sometimes I wish I could hate them.”

The chill spreads outward.  

It was confirmation enough. If you knew, you would hate him. All that repressed, sentimentalized resentment would come bubbling up the moment you were actually faced with the person who so fundamentally changed the course of your life. 

He looked at his scars winking in the sun on your skin and felt a self hatred so intense it nearly made him flinch. He wished he could crawl out of that grave and kill them all over again, slower, just for this. 

You glanced up and smiled tightly. “But I’m a hopeless romantic, and dramatic. It was just disappointing. I always have hope someone will see past it.” You ran your hand over the blanket and unfolded yourself to finally begin eating. “This helped, though,” you said. “Thank you, Ghost.” You nodded at the food in his hands, averted your gaze again. 

And even though you could easily glance at him, Simon pushed up his mask and popped open the lid of the lasagne still warm between his hands. 

You ate together for the first time, in silence in the sun. You closed your eyes, kept your face pointed up and away, a cool breeze ruffling your shirt sleeves. 

“Have you found yours?” 

Simon looked at you, the edge of your jaw, the soft shadows your lashes cast over your ruined cheek. “Don’t think someone like me is meant for one.” 

You nodded. “Me either.”

.

.

.

He walked you back to your office. 

You felt better, settled, but he sort of just had that affect on you, you were coming to find. 

Ghost smelled like sun and freshly mowed grass and cigarette smoke. His shoulder kept touching yours, something in your chest lurching each time, like a rib bone had come loose and was knocking against your heart and lungs. 

Ghost carried the blanket back, folded it and set it carefully along the back of what had become his chair. 

You sat and turned, expecting to find him already silently gone as was his way. 

Instead, he was very close and depositing something on your desk. 

Matte black, compact, deadly, cold to the touch. 

A folded pocket knife sat at the edge of your desk. Ghost loomed over you, his shadow curling around your edges. 

He slid it toward you, watched you fold your fingers around it. For a long moment, each of you was holding it. “What’s this?” You asked when he released it, gloved fingers sliding across your desk, back to his side.  

“A knife.” 

“Oh, really? I've never seen one before.” 

He rolled his eyes. “It’s for you. I’ll teach you how to use it.” 

“Why?” 

“In case you need to.”

“Is this about me staying late?” 

“No.” He did not elaborate. 

“You know I received firearm training. I can shoot a gun. Isn’t a knife a little—” 

“But you don’t carry a gun.” 

“No,” you agreed. “I don’t.”  

He nodded as though that explained it. “Right.” 

You considered it, flipped it open. Deadly, shiny blade newly sharpened and oiled and well cared for. It was odd to be given a weapon, and yet unsurprising where Ghost was concerned. You glanced up, watched his dark, intense eyes flick over your face. You weren’t sure what he was looking for, but his brows knitted the longer you stared at each other. Concern, weariness.

“Okay.”

His shoulders loosened. “Tomorrow.” 

“Tomorrow,” you agreed. 

.

.

.

If you thought you would receive one lesson in knifework and be done with it, you didn’t know Ghost very well. 

You only ran drills first, as though Ghost were making sure the physical fitness exam you had to pass once a year was up to scratch. You proved again and again that you could run without getting too winded, disassemble, load, and fire a service weapon. When he was satisfied with that, the real training began. 

You practiced with a rubber blade that bruised when stuck into your ribs. He did not go easy on you. You left the gym battered and bruised, sweaty and just a little bit resentful. But you could break a wrist lock hold, grapple and use your body and size to your advantage. The goal he repeatedly told you, was not to turn you into a fighter or a soldier, but give you an opportunity to get away, to run away.  

What kind of danger he imagined you getting into between the base and your apartment you couldn’t begin to imagine. But you enjoyed spending time with him, enjoyed being in the gym. You found yourself laughing when you were repeatedly slammed into the mat, knife wrested from your fingers. It was fun. And, it was good for you, you decided, even if you thought his intense insistence was a tad dramatic. 

Ghost was a bit dramatic about certain things, you were coming to learn.

This was one of them. You were, you thought with warmth, one of the things he was a bit dramatic about. For whatever reason, you’ve been tucked under his wing, into his shadow. 

On the third week of relentlessly brutal training, you arrived at the base gym, empty as it always was, to find him holding a length of rope. 

You eyed it warily and shifted from foot to foot, amused despite the discomfort. “What do you imagine is going to happen to me?” 

Ghost didn’t answer as you set your bag down and pulled off your sweatshirt. The room was warm, close and humid, the scent of left over dregs of soldiers clogging the room for most of the day. The scent of plastic, lemon disinfectant, and sweat is thick on the air, but when you stepped toward Ghost, his familiar comforting smell of tea and cigarettes washed over you in a vacuous, orbital cloud. 

You looked up just as his eyes slid away from you, blond lashes catching the light, skin pink around his eyes. You’d swear it was a blush if you didn’t know better. “Ghost?” 

“Better to be prepared, yeah?” 

“For what?” All the same, you turned with a sigh. 

After a painfully long moment he stepped close and pressed the dark material around your wrists. His body was warm behind yours for that brief moment even without touching you, like the glow of a heat lamp that made the rest of the room feel cold by comparison. 

His gloved fingers were carefully delicate against your skin. It sent sparks skittering up your arms. What would his bare skin feel like against yours? 

Rough, warm. Safe.  

It’s a thought that had curled its roots into your mind the first time you fell to the mat together and you felt his weight against yours, brief and heavy, but comforting somehow. It wasn’t supposed to be, he was playing predator, it should have been panic inducing. 

Stupid, silly. 

If your most recently failed date had shown you anything, it was that feeling anything for anyone that had seen your scars was a failing venture. And Ghost had seen more of them now, than most. Maybe you should start wearing a mask. 

“What’s the goal today?” You asked, feeling a little like you couldn’t breathe. His warmth and scent and the weight of his presence was overwhelming in a way that made you want to curl into him, gladly suffocate. 

“Same as always,” he answered drolly. “To get away.”

“Hm. I keep thinking you’ll challenge me,” you teased.  

“Not a game, bird.” 

“But what am I meant to do? I can’t fight.” 

“Get out of the bindings. Get to the door.” 

“Is that it?” 

You would swear he’s smirking. “Simple enough, aye.” 

It wasn’t easy. 

For the third time in a row, you landed hard on your back. 

Ghost’s weight was heavy against you, before it lifted away. Your sweaty skin stuck to his hoodie.

Your breath comes in hard, deep pants. Your wrists ached and panic had begun to set in. 

“On your feet.” 

Clumsy as a newborn deer, you stumble to your feet. You had to be faster than him, incapacitate him. “You won’t be getting away from me,” he’d said once, “so you’d have a chance.” It was a compliment; one that said you were doing good. 

It didn’t feel like you were doing good now. 

By the sixth time, you felt raw and helpless, wrists caught at an odd angle beneath you. It wasn’t fun; it wasn’t sparring. You couldn’t manage to wriggle out of the bindings and you were useless at anything he’d taught you without your hands. 

“You’re hurting me,” you gasped. 

He released you immediately and the pressure in your wrists eased. It hadn’t been pain, not really, just panic, just exhaustion. 

But you knew instantly that you’d made a mistake, that he would not take it that way. 

“Shit.” 

.

.

.

The window was open and you were not in your office. 

Simon paused in the doorway, noted your bag on the chair in the corner, the patchwork quilt trailing over the arm of your desk chair and spilling onto the floor. His was gone from the chair. You’d been wandering off without him recently. 

He turned and marched back down the hall. An administrative assistant pointed toward the external door. “Getting sun, she said,” he said. “Sir.” 

Ghost nodded and shouldered the door open. He found you behind the barracks, lying on his blanket, staring up at a patchy sky, slices of blue peaking from between low hanging gray clouds. 

When his shadow fell over you, you opened your eyes and squinted up at him. “Ghost, you’re blocking my sun.” 

“Not much sun to speak of.” You grimace and frown at the sky. “You weren’t in your office.” 

“Sorry, should have left a note.” You patted the blanket next to you. “Sit.” 

Simon sat on the concrete steps. “Where’s your lunch?”

“Forgot it.” 

Worry sprouted, blossomed along his veins, ubiquitous as the pain that accompanies it. 

“Canteen,” he said. “Let’s go.” 

“It’s okay—“

“Wasn’t a suggestion.” 

“You’re bossy,” you said but didn’t move, chin tilted up, eyes flitting shut again. “I’ll have a big dinner.” 

He sighed and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, content enough to wait you out and smoke. The clouds continued to gather, putting your beloved sun to rest for the moment. The air grew steadily thicker with humidity. 

“Gonna rain,” he commented. 

You ignored him, eyes squinching closed harder, like you could will the sun to return. He watched you, made himself look at the bruises on your wrists and forearms, he knew there were matching ones on your ribs. They were harmless, just the usual consequence of sparring, but the ones around your wrists—that’s a mistake he won’t soon forget. 

When a fat raindrop landed on your arm, you sat up with a grumble. “Ready now?” He asked, pulling down his mask again. 

“I can see you won’t leave it alone.” 

“Affirmative,” he said. 

You rolled your eyes and started to get to your feet, pausing when he held out a hand to you. You stared for a beat too long before gripping his hand in yours. 

Even through his gloves, it was like being electrocuted. 

You released his hand as soon as you could, eyes skirting his. “Your lead,” you said. “I haven’t had the privilege.” 

He grunted, followed you closely back inside. 

As Simon’s misfortune would have it, Johnny was still in the canteen. 

He lasered in on the pair of you immediately, a grin growing across his face as he approached. “Ach so this is where you’ve been off to LT.”

Ghost herded you into line, a raucous group of new recruits halting their conversation to ogle you before their eyes flicked to his and away, conversation continued at a more subdued level. He shifted closer, between you and them, though you didn’t seem to notice.

“Haven’t been off anywhere,” he grumbled. 

“Who’s this then?” 

You smiled and offered your hand and name. “It’s nice to see that Ghost has bad manners with everyone.” 

“John MacTavish,” Soap said, all charm as he practically bowed. “Call me Soap.”

“Soap,” you giggled. “I’ve seen you in my reports.” 

Soap’s gaze flicked over your face, sharp eyes making the quick calculations that had made Simon hope he wouldn’t be in the canteen. “Are they yours?” 

“Sergeant—,” Ghost said sharply, a warning in his voice. 

But you only laughed and touched your cheek with obvious pride as the line moved up. “No. None of them belong to me. They’re nice though, right?” 

Simon went very still, swore his heart rate slowed. You held out your arm, showed off a sliver flash.

“Very becoming, lass.” 

You smiled again and gestured to your own chin, the side of your head. “Yours?” 

“Aye, all mine.”

“Ah, luck.” 

“Lucky indeed.”

Johnny’s eyes shifted to Simon’s, brows raised, with a look that said he knew. Simon glanced away, gritting his jaw so hard it ached.

 “Am I going to get food poisoning from this?” You asked as a tray was handed over, eying warily what was ostensibly mash, peas and carrots, mystery meat. 

“Probably not,” Johnny answered cheerfully. “Been mostly fine.” 

“Yes, but I think you military people might have tolerance to low levels of poison.” 

“That’s for sure, bonnie.” 

“Bonnie,” you said, giggling. “Are you calling me pretty?” 

Soap covered his heart, balancing his tray with one hand. “You wound me. Simon only keeps us good looking bastards around.”

“Simon,” you said softly, glancing up at him. “I didn’t think anyone knew your name.” 

Ghost didn’t answer for a moment, glaring daggers into the side of Johnny’s head, ignoring the way his heart was clenched so tight it felt like it was in a vise. Simon, his name on your tongue—  

“It’s need to know,” he snapped. 

Your expression folded and you glanced away. “Right, of course. Sorry.”

Simon clenched his jaw so hard it clicked as Johnny shot him a look. “This way, lass,” he said, leading you toward a spot in the corner of the mess. 

“Oh,” you said weakly, “That’s all right. You don’t have to—”

Ghost couldn’t help but notice the anxious look you threw him, the thin line your voice had transformed into. 

Soap wasn’t listening, already talking your ear off, pulling out a chair for you. You smiled and sat and Simon was left to silently watch it unfold. 

.

.

.

“Fuckin’ hell,” Soap muttered when they’d safely returned you to your office where a contingent of lesser analysts awaited you. The corridor leading away from the now closed door seemed impossibly long. “D’ya know how many people would kill to meet their soulmate? You’ve got yours right under your fuckin’ nose and haven’t even told her yer name!” 

“She doesn’t need to know.” 

“Yer name?” 

Ghost leveled Soap with a stare. 

Soap gaped at him. “Steamin’ Jesus. You aren’t plannin’ to tell the lass at all?” 

“Stay out of it, MacTavish.” 

Johnny followed him down the hall, outside into a bleak, gray drizzle. “You know it can kill you?” Simon kept walking. “Simon.” 

He stopped, glanced at Soap with a warning in his eyes. “Do ya?”

“It won’t.”

Johnny continues anyway, urgently. “There’s a pain, they say, under the ribs when—“

“Stay out of it, Sergeant,” Ghost growled, that very pain growing as it always did as he moved further and further away from you. “It’s nothing.” 

“It‘ll corrode,” Johnny said to his retreating back. “She’ll feel it eventually.”

Simon ignored him. 

But he wondered as he walked away, if he died, if you’d feel the corded snap of his life floating away from yours.  

Somehow, being that sort of ghost, didn’t sit well with him. 

.

.

.

Johnny, predictably, did not stay out of it. 

He regularly and reliably began to show up in your office. More than once, he looped Garrick into accompanying him. Ghost had watched as the same realization Soap had snapped into place on Gaz’s face, and knew it was only a matter of time before Price knew too. 

Luckily, they were the only three on the entire base that could make the connection, that had seen his face, so at least it was done with. None of them said anything to him about it, but there were a lot of worried glances being exchanged. 

Ghost felt the edge of his sanity begin to wear thin the longer it went on, not that there was much left of it in the first place.

The disruption, the infiltration, the distraction grated until his insides felt raw with irritation. He hadn’t wanted anyone else to know, not because he was ashamed, but because you were his, and you didn’t deserve to be burdened by that. He would shoulder that horrible belonging for both of you. 

But the way you’d tenderly touched your cheek remains burned into his memory. The soft look in your eye. The gentle way you and Soap always spoke of soulmates whenever they came up, reverent and tender. 

You enjoyed their company, Johnny and Kyle, and seemed all the better for it. It was clear immediately how much you liked both of them. How much you desperately needed friends. 

Ghost was loath to admit there was a seed of jealousy wriggling in his belly. The easy way you got on with them proof enough that a wire had gotten crossed somewhere, that you were more cursed by him than anchored by.

Then, the gifts left at the edge of your desk began to extend to the lads and not just himself, and it felt vaguely as though he were losing a vital piece of himself to it. 

Then, you stopped coming to the gym. You were gone, office dark, before he could walk you to your car. You went on another date. 

He didn’t know what to do with any of it.

One Tuesday at the end of July you were in your office, but Soap was there before him, tearing into a packet of crisps, lounging in Simon’s chair, patchwork quilt flattened beneath him in a heap. It was hot, and humid, a fan in the corner working overtime, window propped open.

You were happily listening to Johnny explain the ins and outs of football. A match was playing on your computer screen which you’d turned back so both of you could see. 

Your eyes found Simon’s when he paused in the doorway, and you waved him inside, an unsure smile twitching at the corners of your mouth. “Hi, Ghost. Do you keep up with soccer, too?” 

A groan from Soap. “Bloody Americans.” 

“Sorry, sorry. You keep up with footie too, mate?” 

“Horrendous,” Ghost said flatly.

Your smile faltered then brightened again. It didn’t quite reach your eyes. “You should hear my Scottish accent. Soap said I offended every one of his ancestors.” 

“Aye and you did lass,” he said solemnly. “Yeh—” 

“Sergeant,” Ghost interrupted loudly. “Aren’t you due for PT?”  

“Ach, right,” he muttered, getting to his feet, “Thanks for the reminder, LT.” 

“Oh, Soap,” you said, “Hold on.” You rummaged beneath your desk for a long moment, then passed him a brown paper bag full of cookies. “Your favorite, as requested.” 

“You sweet on me or something, bon?”

You rolled your eyes and said, “Out of my office.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

Ghost took Soap’s vacated seat, watched you avoid looking at him as you moved things needlessly around your desk, twisted your monitor back around and muted the match. 

The silence was suffocating. 

“All right?” 

You froze, then shuffled the papers together and slid them to a corner of your desk. “I wanted to apologize.” Your voice hitched a little. 

He blinked, taken aback. He didn’t like that you could surprise him. “For what?” 

You bit your lip, fidgeted again. “Your name, I guess. You didn’t want me to know.” Your mouth twisted to the side. “And your team bothering you here—” 

“You’re apologizing for Soap?” 

Your brow furrowed. “Well I encourage it—”

“No.” 

“No?” You shook your head, “and that day in the gym—” You opened and closed your hands anxiously. “I think I upset you.” 

He stared across the room, toward your big, sunny window, all those little potted plants that have flourished through the summer months. Your bug lamp seemed to droop in the heat, sad and watchful. He’d hurt you, and you’d taken the blame. Something horrible lurched in his belly, heavy and unforgiving. “Didn’t. I should have been more careful.” 

“Right,” you said carefully. “So if it’s not that, why are you—” 

He shrugged, watched one of the emerald leaves sway in the warm breeze. “I like you to myself,” he admitted. “Not the best at sharing.”  

“Oh,” you said, voice tender. “Oh.” 

“Mm.” 

“I’ll make space.” 

He didn’t quite understand what you meant by that, but he liked the way it sounded. Space for him. 

“You’ll come to the gym later, yeah?” 

“Yes.” 

“Good.” He stood, deposited your knife, which he’d snagged early in the morning to clean and sharpen, back onto your desk, along with the new box of tea because he noticed you were out the night before. “And don’t tell bloody Soap.” 

“Aye, LT.” 

He chuckled. “Take care of that.” 

“Teach me how?” 

He nodded. 

“Thanks for the tea. I used the last bag yesterday afternoon.” 

“I know.” 

Your smile was soft, your fingers touched his. He breathed a little easier. 

“‘Course you do.” 

.

.

.

Simon couldn’t stop thinking about pain. 

His body functioned at a constant low level of pain, had for years. Maybe it had his whole life, so he tended not to notice it. But the ache you caused had only seemed to grow over time, tendrils spreading to the furthest reaches of his body, the tips of his fingers, the backs of his knees, places he didn’t think could hold pain. 

The intensity increased too, until he could no longer ignore it. It was like a whine, like a child begging to be seen to. 

He kept thinking of your voice, too, dreaming of it. You’re hurting me. Panic ridden, laced with fear.

You said he didn’t, after,  but he didn’t relish the thought of the possibility. Accidentally hurting you, hurting you on purpose. He thought of his mother, doing her best with a brutal man. He was afraid of unknowingly stepping into a cycle, to find himself standing above you one day, drunk, mean, angry. 

You’re hurting me.  

It echoed like a heartbeat. Inevitable. 

You might collect his scars, but he would not add to them with his own hands. He’d rather die; he’d rather be burned alive; he’d rather crawl out of a grave a hundred times over. 

He was afraid of it. Afraid that every terrible aspect of this bond between you could only bring you pain. 

His father loomed in the recesses of his mind, all the violent men he’d ever known, every bloody fist. Simon’s scalp ached, the memories swam behind his eyes. Long nights, wild animals, dead girls. 

There was one person who had a preoccupation with soulmates who was likely to know, who badgered him regularly about eroding the bond, about bond tears and pain. Simon could know, once and for all, if he was the cause of the indirect pain, at least. His own imposed on you, pushed into your skin like a punishment. He could cross that off his long list of sins. 

Johnny, when Simon finally tracked him down, was sat in the armory cleaning a rifle. He watched over his Sergeant's shoulder for a long moment. The methodical movement soothed him, brought his heartrate down a little. 

“Johnny.” 

Soap jumped and glanced around. “Spooky fucker. Should put a bell on ye—” 

“Does she feel it?”

“What—”

He exhaled long and slow. “My pain. If I’m shot tomorrow, would she feel it?”

Soap glanced around, brows raised. “Ye don’t know?” 

“Say I don’t.” 

“No, the lass doesn’t feel it.” Soap turned his wrist, pointed to a scar that was lighter than some of the others, a pale tracery that slipped from the inside of his elbow to mid forearm. “Not mine. Watched it fade in one mornin’. Didn’t feel a thing.” 

Ghost looks at the scar, and Soap lets him. “Tha’ why you haven’t—”

“No.” 

“Why?” 

“Deserves better.” 

Johnny nodded, continued cleaning the rifle. “Thing is, LT. She doesn’t. That’s the point.” 

Well, at least he only had to worry about becoming his father. 

Fucking perfect. 

.

.

.

Two months deployment.  

The pain in Simon’s chest was agonizing, a constant fire. He couldn’t sleep, pain meds did nothing for it. 

He could only wait it out, wait until he was back on base and hope you were in your office, that the solace of your presence in that warm yellow light would be waiting for him. The pain would recede. He needed a plan, though. Clearly it wasn’t fucking viable to just let it go on. It was too distracting and only getting worse. It was no longer something he could ignore. 

Maybe, he didn’t really want to.

Maybe, Johnny was right. 

He half convinced himself that the lancing ache was so bad because you’d been posted somewhere else the last two months and you were further away than ever. Your office would be empty. This was just an agony he would have to learn to live with. 

Finally, though, they were going home. Intel secure. One last building to sweep. Empty. A loaded silence that made the back of his neck prickle. 

Not as empty as they thought. 

Soap steps quickly into the last room ahead of him, gaze sweeping from one side to another before he lowered his weapon and stepped forward. 

Ghost followed quickly, lowered his gun when he saw what Johnny had. Civilians. One curled around the other, sobbing so hard she made no noise. 

When she lifted her face, Simon sucked in a startled breath. She looked like you, only without his scars. There was a mark slowly bleeding into place on her temple, one that matched the gunshot wound of the woman beneath her. 

The wail that suddenly pierced the air was distraught, horrible, a lurch and a bang. 

Soap was there, kneeling, looking for wounds that Ghost knew didn’t exist. Horror froze him for the second time in his life, your face swimming behind his eyes. 

“I thought you said they couldn’t feel it,” he barked. 

“What?” 

“Soulmates.” 

Soap looked at the pair with fresh eyes. 

“They can’t, LT,” Soap said without glancing at him. “It’s no’ that. It’s just—” 

Grief. The unbearable snapping of a fated cord. The tether in his own chest pulsed, ached. He thought of it breaking cleanly in two, as though it never existed, your light snuffed out, leaving him in total darkness again. 

It wasn’t pain she was feeling, it was the absence. 

“Ghost,” Johnny said sharply and Simon finally snapped out of it, went to his side. 

It wasn't worth it, he thought. None of this could be fucking worth it. He was left with the sinking sense that all he could ever do was hurt you. 

All the same, he felt an urgency to go home. To return to your side. To feel your pulse under his fingers. 

Just to be sure. 

It took them a long time to get her to leave the body. 

.

.

.

Task Force 141 was deployed for nearly two months. 

September and October passed slowly, in starts and fits that seemed to drag. 

You developed a pain in your side, a stitch from taking it too hard in the gym you assumed. But nothing seemed to help it. The pang became a prick became a small misery that the base medical staff couldn’t pinpoint the origins of. 

You missed Ghost, and Kyle and Johnny, tolerated the terrible tea your coworkers made for you, went on another series of failed dates, and finally became friends with your cross-hall apartment neighbor. Months of baked goods and hellos finally coming to fruition. Pieces of a life were falling together. 

Finally, they were coming home. You left your offer that night with the assurance that they were uninjured, that Ghost, and likely Soap, would be in your office by noon the next day. 

But Simon still managed to reappear as he always did, silently and without warning. A shadow crossed your back as you were locking your office near midnight, a hand grazed your back. You followed the series of steps you’d been taught months ago. Foot back, elbow out, knife in hand, open, turn—

Your wrist was caught by the flat of his palm, fingers of the opposite hand yanking it from your grip.  

You blinked and breathed out heavily, relieved. The tight tenderness in your side leveled off for the first time in a month. “Ghost,” you murmured, lowering your now empty hand, “You aren’t supposed to be back until tomorrow morning.” 

“That disappointed to see me?” 

No. Never. But he was still in full tactical gear. The skin around his eyes was still layered with eyeblack, exhaustion and an acid tension rolling off him in a thick wave. His gaze was heavy, but steady, assessing you in turn. He smelled like diesel and cigarettes and gun powder. You lifted your chin. “Surprised to see you. Glad to see you.” 

He only flipped the knife around and held it out to you. “Nice work.” 

You smiled as you took the blade and stored it again. “You’re making me paranoid, I think.” 

“Good. Paranoid keeps you alive.” 

His eyes flicked over you, looking long and hard, though for what you couldn’t be sure. He stepped closer, until you were forced back against the door. He towered over you, corralled you back against the cool wood. Soft, dark eyes like wells of ink in the shadow of the hood pulled over his head, searched long enough that you began to worry something was wrong. 

You reached out and rested your hand on his forearm. His body was so taut you could feel the tremble of exhausted, overwrought muscle. “Ghost,” you said gently, carefully. “Are you okay?” 

He inhaled deeply, so hard and fast it sounded pained. 

He looked at you again, eyes sliding over you slowly, like he was orienting himself, finding steady ground on which to stand. 

“Why don’t you cover ‘em?”

Your belly clenched. “Cover what?” you queried, silently begging him not to ask that question. 

“Scars.” 

You went still, looking down at your skin. You had rolled up your sleeves earlier in the evening when furious typing had required it. They glinted silver in the low light of the hall. Pretty and delicate as dragon scales. 

It wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before. 

Still, you fought the urge to cross your arms. You hated when he stared at them. 

“Why would I?” You rubbed your wrist. “I don’t want to. They belong to my soulmate.”

He glanced away from you, his jaw tight beneath the mask. “You actually believe in that shite?” His voice was harsh, aggressive in a way he had never spoken to you before. “It’s a bloody children’s tale.”  

You bristled, felt something hard and mean well behind your breastbone in a tight knot. The pain that had been kicking you in the ribs lately reared again, made you wince and cover your side. “Well,” you snapped, gesturing to yourself with your free hand, “these aren’t mine, so I guess I have to.”  

He scoffed and you felt your heart lurch, hurt settling in your gut, twisting an invisible knife that much deeper. You tried to side step him but he didn’t move, a terrible, solid wall of muscle and—anger? Irritation? You couldn’t tell. “What the fuck do you care? Maybe you’re ashamed of yours,” you said roughly, “But not all of us are.” 

His brows furrowed and he shook his head again. “Oh, come off it.” 

“What?” 

“You’re tellin’ me that if you came face to face with the bastard that did this to you, you wouldn’t hate him?” 

Indignation burned a righteous path up your throat. “You don’t get to do that,” you said lowly. 

“You didn’t deny it,” he said. “You would.” 

“No,” you interrupted vehemently, swallowing around the word like gravel in your throat. “No, of course I wouldn’t. It wasn’t done to me, it—” 

But Simon was determined, his mind set. 

“He hurt you, changed the course of your bloody life, whether you want to admit it or not. You’ll hate him for it, love.” 

“For something he went through?” You asked incredulously, defensively. “Do you know how scared I was?” 

Ghost’s eyes went blank, his stare suddenly flat and far away. His gaze drifted from yours, the weight of flinty amber lifted. “Of him,” he said viciously, like something terrible he’d always known had been confirmed. 

“No,” you snarled again, not sure why Ghost was fighting you, not sure why he cared about your scars suddenly. “You aren’t listening. For him.” Your ribs ached, your breath came in short bursts. He was too close, the clashing sensations of safety and agitation calcifying the tension between you into a solid, immutable wall. 

You inhaled shakily through the sudden distress. Your lungs hitched and spasmed before you could suck in a proper breath, feeling faint, glad for the wall behind you. 

He blinked, looked down at you again. “Hey—” 

“I was so scared I would lose him before I ever got to meet him. Ever since I was a kid I’ve had scars. Cigarette burns and scratches, bite marks. I used to hope he was older than me, so it wouldn’t have meant that he—so that he wouldn’t have been—” Agitation rises like a tide, all the nights you’d sat awake watching scars bleed into your skin. Your parents had been unable to look at you in the morning, wondering what the future held for you. What kind of person that child would grow up to be. 

The same fear Simon seemed to be holding onto so tightly. 

You stumbled over his concern, something prickling at the base of your neck. 

“Once,” you continued shakily, “they just kept showing up, day after day, for months. I didn’t know what was happening and there was nothing I could do. I thought he was going to die and I couldn’t help him. I was so worried and all I could do was watch.” 

You met his eyes, saw something so raw and wretched there that you flinched back, closed your eyes, breath caught. 

You aren’t sure when you transitioned to using he instead of they. 

It suddenly didn’t feel like you were talking about someone you hadn’t met yet. 

You thought of how strangely intense he was about you. How you had felt so strongly about him immediately. How the only bit of his skin you’ve ever seen has been around his eyes; the delicate veins at his wrists.

You thought of him making you tea and teaching you to defend yourself. You thought of him walking you to your car and pulling you into sunny days. You thought of all the cups of coffee and boxes of tea, the gentle way he handled the blanket you made him from cheap cotton like it was spun gold. 

You thought of Johnny asking after your scars the first time you met him. How not long after you’d been personally introduced to the rest of the 141 for no discernable reason. How they checked on you. How they were probably the only people that knew what Ghost’s face looked like. 

“No,” you whispered, pieces of a terrible puzzle sliding together in your mind. 

You opened your eyes.  

“Ghost?” you asked softly, tentatively lifting your hand. 

He jerked back. “Don’t do that,” he warned.  

You stepped closer, knowing you were playing with fire, that he might burn you, lash out like a dog with its leg in a trap. 

But if he was yours—

If he was yours, you would not be the one to inflict more hurt on him. 

He did not want this, he did not want you, that much was clear. 

You closed your hand and let it fall, pushed your fist against your heart instead. “I see you,” you said gently. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” 

“You don’t understand,” he rasped.  

“You survived.” You backed away. “That’s enough. To know you’re okay.” 

The empty spot in your chest ached, seemed to grow tendrils that wrapped around your heart. A bond so close and not latched. Because you haven’t seen him. He has to let you in.

“When you’re ready. If you’re ever ready. I'm here.”

He finally returned his gaze to yours. 

“Did it hurt?” 

“Did what hurt?” You tilted your head but he didn’t answer, just stared at you with big, moon dark eyes, brows pinched inward, eyeblack creating a tiny white line there. “Oh, you wouldn’t know, I guess.” You shook your head, “No I was just scared. Just worried. It didn’t hurt. You’ve never hurt me.” 

He moved so quickly and silently that you jumped when his hand curled around your wrist. Light enough that you could pull away if you wanted.  

“You don’t have to. You never have to. I don’t want to take anything else from you.” 

Ghost hesitated, his chest rising and falling quickly. “Do I have any of yours?” The question was quiet, almost reverent.  

You nodded, “‘Course you do. I fell out of a tree when I was a kid. Gave me a nasty scar on the back of my elbow. I landed on a rock.” 

His eyes flicked away, like he was trying to imagine it. You twisted your arm, showed him the thick line of scar there, totally different than the lighter version of his on your skin. “See? You’ll have that one in the same spot but lighter. Maybe not even visible, since you’re so pale.” 

Your breath caught when he stepped closer, the pain in your chest was so intense it made breathing difficult.

“It’s not fair to you.” 

“What isn’t?” 

“To bloody leave it. Hurts, yeah?” 

You didn’t admit to the spasming in your chest; it wouldn’t help anything. “When have you ever cared about fair?” 

He made a pained sound. “Don’t.” 

“I’m okay. I don’t need anything from you. I don’t want anything from you.”

“You’re supposed to need things from me.”  

He peeled his gloves off, tucked them into his back pocket. The hall was still and silent aside from your combined ragged breathing. It sounded like you’d been running a marathon. “Ghost—” 

“Simon,” he said. “Please, call me Simon.” 

You closed your eyes, felt his hands graze your collarbone, your throat, before anchoring on your jaw, tilting your face up. “Look at me, sweet’eart.” 

“I can’t.” Your voice trembled, tears clogging your throat. 

“Can.” 

Very gently, he leaned down and pushed his forehead against yours. 

You shuddered and swallowed and stepped closer. Simon curled his arms around you, pulled you into his chest. He was so broad and tall, you felt swaddled against him, warm and secure. His scent wrapped around you like ribbons holding you together. “No point dragging it on, yeah? No point you being in pain.” 

“How long?” 

“The whole time,” he admitted after a moment. His voice rumbled against your cheek. It felt like home. “First time I saw you.” 

“You have had this pain for almost a whole year—” 

“Not your fault,” he interrupted, one massive hand sliding down your spine. “Not your fault.” 

You huffed, hooked your fingers beneath his tac vest. “I’m sorry anyway.” You pulled back, felt his arms tighten around you for a moment. He didn’t want to let you go. “Is there anything you need to take care of? Reports or debriefing or something?” 

“No.” 

“Would. . . would you want to come to mine—” 

He reached under your arm and plucked your keys out of the lock before you could finish, guiding you down the hall, his hand never leaving your skin. 

You had never seen Simon outside the base, you realized suddenly, and everything felt vastly more fragile. It also felt as though that hollow pulse in your chest would tear if you were asked to walk away at that moment, something real and physical would tear and drop out of you, an irreparable part of your soul. 

You weren’t sure how you drove home, Ghost huge in your passenger seat, your hands shaking each time he shifted his grip on you. 

In your apartment, you hesitated, not sure where you belonged in your own space anymore. Simon looked strange in your tiny living room, among soft blankets and years of collected books and knicknacks. An all consuming shadow. You wondered if this would end like all those dates, just another failure, another loss. 

When you started to step toward the lamp, Simon’s fingers curled around your wrist to keep you by his side. “No.” 

“Just turning on the lamp.” 

He released you.

As you stepped away, a hollow pulse in your chest retched with pain that made you gasp and clutch the edge of the sofa. It felt real, like something was breaking, jagged edges clawing at the inside of your skin. You wondered what Ghost’s self imposed distance might have done to the bond. There were stories, albeit few, of corrosion. The bond literally rusting out, slowly poisoning the soulmate and their pair. 

“Come ‘ere,” he muttered. “Sit down.”

When his palm cupped your elbow, the world became softer. Like purr instead of a shriek. He guided you onto the sofa. 

Your hands shook when he released you, making quick work of the lamp. The room flooded with soft yellow light. He glanced around. Art on the walls, forest green rug over hardwood floor, molding you had painted a delicate gold. You felt embarrassed of it all suddenly. 

“God,” you muttered. He didn’t seem to feel the pain at all, which made your chest ache in a different way and guilt pool heavily between your bones for it. You didn’t want him to be in pain, but you felt as though you were breathing water, choking on your own lungs. “How have you dealt with this?” 

“Worse now,” he said, though you felt it was his version of a kind untruth. 

He sat next to you, reached for you, then faltered, unsure. You closed the space, folded your fingers between his. The scars made a fucked up little mirror when you looked down at your hands. They matched exactly. “I’m sorry.” 

Simon didn’t answer, but stayed close to you, letting you hold his hand. Even the smallest amount of space between you seemed to burn, a brazier that flared hot and demanded attention. But it was better; just having his bare hand in yours helped. 

“Nothin’ t’be sorry for.” He said after a few minutes of uneven breathing, eyes trained on your hands, thumb running over the back of your fingers. 

“You don’t want me.” 

It wasn’t a question. 

He glanced up, something razor sharp in his eyes. You flinched a little, but his hand tightened on yours. 

“You don’t have to—We don’t have to bond,” you tripped over the last word. “It’s okay.” 

“Obviously it’s not, bird.” 

Your heart sunk and you glanced away. A one in eight billion chance was sitting under your nose for months, and he wanted nothing to do with you. He was being forced into it.

“I’m sorry,” you murmured again. “Ghost, I’m—”

“Simon,” he corrected.  

“Simon,” you echoed. 

He curled his hands around your wrists, lifted your palms to the bottom of his mask. He let your hands settle at the base of his throat, eyes never leaving yours. “I didn’t want you,” he said plainly. “I never wanted you to know.” 

You swallowed and nodded. “I’m s—” 

“No.”

You closed your mouth with a click of your jaw. You don’t expect a speech and he doesn’t give you one. “You deserve better,” he said. “But I’m all you get.” 

His knee touched yours. Your faces were tilted together, so close that the only thing you could see were the soft depths of his eyes reflecting the gold light.

It didn’t feel close enough. 

You wished it were all different. 

That he didn’t feel forced, that you were what he wanted. 

“I deserve you. Isn’t that the point?” 

He watched you for a long moment, an unreadable expression on his face, then nodded. 

“Go on, then.” 

Your throat felt tight as you tugged the mask upwards, heart lurching when you recognized the same scar on your throat on his. You pushed the fabric over his chin and mouth, up until you could pull it over his head. 

You looked at him, the same scar over his mouth, along his cheek, the bridge of his nose was nicked, the outline of burn scarring crossed the edge of his jaw and neck. When you looked past that, you saw him. Crooked nose, thick, furrowed brows, dark eyes you’d loved for a long time cast darker by the black around them, light eyelashes and hair, longer on top and curling. 

Something seemed to. . .snap then. A warmth broke between you, filled that awful, dark, pained well in your chest. It hurt, but the pain was brief, like stitches done by a seasoned medic. 

Breathing was easier. You could feel the pulse of him without the threat of imminent pain. It was a warm, comforting, safe thing in your lungs. You inhaled, attempted to stand, to give him a bit of space. “Should be able to separate now. Shall we test it—” 

You didn’t get a chance to move away, tugged suddenly from your seat and into his lap. You fell heavily against his chest, wrapped tightly in his arms, foreheads slanted together. 

“No,” he said, sounding, for the first time since you’ve known him, breathless. “No.” 

“I don’t want to.” 

“Good.” 

“Can I touch you?” 

“Can do anything you like to me, bird.” 

You stroked the side of his throat, felt him shiver. “Well, I won’t. Not anything.” 

He made a content noise of agreement. 

You touched his jaw, his cheek, the tail of his brow, the faded check through it that you’d never noticed matched your own. His arms tightened around you in increments until the pressure forced you to take shallow breaths. “You’re beautiful.” 

“Lookin’ in a mirror, are you?” 

“Sort of,” you answered. “A little.” 

His hands shifted, anchored on your hips, and pushed you back a little. 

Disappointment that it was over so soon pinched at your throat but you backed off, attempting to slide from his lap. His hand caught at your hip. “Stop trying to bloody move.” 

“What—” 

He was only taking off the vest, which probably should have been left at the base. It dropped heavily to the floor as he pulled you against his chest. It was warmer, softer like that, thick muscle coiled beneath your cheek when you rested it against his shoulder, heartbeat hard against yours.  

“No more pain?” 

“None.” 

“Good.” 

You pushed your face against his throat, felt him tense and then uncoil. One large hand cupped the back of your neck, holding you there. You brushed your lips against his pulse point, felt a scarred flutter against your mouth, a muted grunt.

“You’re all I want,” you admitted quietly. “I think I knew. I think everyone knew. I’m sorry,” you finally said, “that I’m not who you need.”  

His hand squeezes your neck and then he’s pushing you down against the cushions, pressing one massive thigh between your legs, hauling you closer like it could never be close enough. The space between your bodies would always be too large, because you couldn’t climb into his chest, nest among his veins. 

It would have to do then, his hand tilting your jaw up, his eyes searching yours as you part your lips. 

“You are, sweet’eart,” he said simply, mouth brushing yours before he kissed you properly. 

He tasted of black tea; his eyeblack rubs off on your temples. 

Already, he was leaving pieces of himself behind with you to mark safe.

“Simon,” you murmured against his mouth. Just to say it, just to be rewarded with a shudder.

The kiss slipped into something more desperate, your hands felt the skin of his back, your own scar on his elbow, and you thought, maybe, you could become what he needed.  

---

When you come back to the bedroom, you’re greeted by König still soundly sleeping and cuddling the pillow you gave him. You study König’s sleeping figure. His long eyelashes lightly rest on his cheeks as he’s in deep sleep.  His face is even cutely smooshed against his pillow while he drools a little. Even in his sleep, he looks strong. The muscles on his arms and back occasionally flex while he shifts in his sleep. You’re grateful he often sleeps shirtless for a view like this. Your gaze wanders further down his body, but the blanket gets in the way. Even still, you wonder how you were able to have such a wonderful man as König as your boyfriend. You’re almost tempted to take a picture to forever capture the moment, but you get distracted when you notice his hood neatly placed on his nightstand. It’s rare for you to see his hood anywhere but on him. You’ve wondered what it’s like to wear the hood.  Both how it feels and what the world looks like in it.  Of course, you’ve felt it draped over your head while you kiss, or against you while König hugs or cuddles you, but beyond that, the hood is a mystery. You brush your fingers along the soft fabric, looking over to König as if just thinking about wearing his hood would pull him out of his dreams. However, he stays in his deep sleep. You quietly grab his hood and head out to the living room to avoid disturbing him any more.  You sit on the couch and hold the hood open. You notice a familiar tag on the inside of the hood. It matches a t-shirt you thought had gone missing months ago. Later, you’ll have to ask him about it. It was one of your favorite shirts, after all. The more you think about it, the more endearing it is that he decided to bring a piece of you around with him every day. 

Without hesitating, you make sure the eye holes are facing forward and put the hood on. The first thing that greets you is darkness. You had to shift the hood around a bit to make the holes line up with your eyes. Even then, it wasn’t a perfect fit. You know everything about König is bigger, but sometimes it’s not immediately apparent to you, or it just shows itself in unexpected ways like this. After adjusting it a bit, you find that his hood is wonderful. It doesn’t interfere with your vision anywhere near as much. The hood is pleasantly warm, keeping the morning chill off your face. It also smells like König, both his soap and of something that was deeply and uniquely him. It’s like wearing one of his worn oversized shirts or hoodies, but much more intense. You smell him with every breath and practically feel his presence right beside you. Just to make sure he’s not actually looming behind you, you check over your shoulder only to find no one there.

After seeing it was past 9 am, you figure that König will be awake pretty soon and start making him breakfast. He normally won’t go out of his way to make anything beyond quick meals for himself, so you make up for it by treating him to a nice breakfast. You start making pancakes, bacon, and eggs with some coffee. 

---

König wakes up, greeted by the smell of coffee and bacon. Almost instinctually, he moves to wrap himself tightly against you and whispers a husky good morning. After not getting a response, he fights the lingering sleep and opens his eyes, only to find you have been replaced by a pillow! He’s stunned and grumbling German curses under his breath. How dare you wake up without him and leave an imposter in your place! König quickly starts getting out of bed in order to find you and give you your morning hug. Before he heads to the kitchen, he feels for his hood on the nightstand. No hood. Confused, he sits up and looks on the floor in case he knocked it off in his sleep. Still no hood. The rustling in the kitchen pulls him out of his search. He decides to look for his hood later after finding you. 

Another one of König’s habits from the military is moving silently. Remaining undetected was a matter of life and death. It’s come to the point that it’s easier for him to move silently than it is to walk “normally.” He’s come to enjoy this quirk, though. Being able to watch you in your own world is a treat. 

He feels his heart swell a bit when he sees you in the kitchen wearing his hood. It does something he can’t quite explain. After clearing his head a little, he starts making his way to you. 

---

By the time the coffee finished brewing, you’re busy flipping the last of the pancakes and cooking bacon. You’re startled by König’s sleepy greeting as he wraps his arms around your waist.

“Good morning, liebling. You didn’t have to do all this for me.” König’s voice was still rough with sleep, but calming as ever.  For being a massive man, König sure is light on his feet and able to sneak up on you. “Also, do you know how sad I was when I woke up holding a stupid pillow instead of you? It hurts my heart.” You could hear the playful pout in his voice as he complains about your absence.

“Good morning, baby. I figured I’d treat you to a nice breakfast since you were asleep.” You mock his playful pout a little. “How could I make you breakfast if I was in bed with you? Looks like someone was really sleepy today.”

“Looks like someone is stealing my things, Mäuschen,” König said playfully. 

You blush a bit, realizing the situation. It was so comfortable, you forgot you were even wearing his hood in the first place. You’re grateful for the hood covering your blush.  Taking out the last of the pancakes and bacon, you turn off the stove and face König, taking a little to admire his features before responding to his teasing remark. 

“I just wanted to know what it felt like to wear your hood when I saw it on your nightstand. I can see why you wear it all the time! It’s so soft, warm, and smells like you!” You blush even more after accidentally letting it slip that you liked more than just the hood itself. 

König plays with the edge of his hood and lets out a low chuckle. “I’m glad you like it so much, but I’d like to wear it now.” He pulls up the edge of the hood and places a gentle kiss on your lips. “Maybe I should make you a hood of your own so we can match.”

While your brain short circuited from the kiss, he took his hood the rest of the way off of you and put it on with a smirk. After years of being together, you could tell his expression by his eyes and how they wrinkle. 

“Only if I get to use one of your old shirts too.” It was König’s turn to blush now, his secret being found out. Luckily he had his hood in place to hide his blush. But knowing you liked the thought of bringing a piece of him around with you all day almost made him forget his embarrassment. Perhaps there is more he didn’t know about you than he thought. 

König’s stomach grumbled, pulling both of your attentions back to the hot breakfast waiting for the both of you. You ate breakfast in peace together, enjoying eachother’s company and the lazy morning. 

The thought of having your own hood soon makes you smile absentmindedly.