cw: field medicine on self and others. blood. Ghoap. little whumpy. angsty.
Simon has always done his own field dressing.
Before the mask, after the mask, during every ugly stretch of years. He didn't work many solo missions before Ghost but he still made do on his own, gritted his teeth, cleaned the wound, held himself together with whatever he had on hand. And then he put himself back together from something close to death, long enough to come home.
And then the solo missions picked up.
Getting wounded in the field was a liability. He avoided it at all costs. But when it happened he never made a sound. Just handled it. He is familiar with the warmth of his own blood on his hands, the particular intimacy of stitching your own skin closed in dim torch light. It doesn't bother him. He does not feel it.
But this. This he cannot get used to.
This he never wants to get used to.
Soap's blood is coating his palms, his knees, soaking into the floor faster than Simon can stop it, and it's drowning him. And Soap's eyes, blue, glassy, still so unbearably alive, are looking up at him with that stupid, stubborn hope. Like he'll say the next word and he actually thinks Simon will believe it.
Simon knows what a scratch looks like. He has had them. And this is the kind of wound that Simon himself has barely walked away from, and he had been alone, and he had not had anyone kneeling over him with shaking hands, and he had survived it through nothing but sheer bloody-mindedness and the particular cruelty of his own constitution.
Johnny does not have to survive it that way. And Simon will not let him.
These hands have put himself together like Frankenstein's monster more times than he can count, crude, graceless, and functional. They know what they're doing even when the rest of him has felt the pain of it.
He presses down hard on the wound and feels Soap's whole body seize beneath him and he does not stop. He reaches for what little they have. He does not stop.
The cracked and high sound Johnny makes drives straight through him like a blade.
Simon has heard men scream before. He has been in rooms where men screamed and felt nothing, done what needed doing, walked away just wiping red on his pants. He has never once in his life had to talk himself through it.
He is talking himself through it now.
"Simon—" Hearing his own name coming his mouth, fractured and wet, tears through him. "Simon, stop. It's fine, it's just a—"
He throws the wall up. He can't hear that right now. He can't hear Soap try to make this smaller. Try to stop what Ghost has to do, because Simon would listen. Simon would save Johnny the the ache.
He reaches for the needle and feels Johnny's hand find his arm again, his grip weak and trembling, and Simon has to close his eyes for a moment before he opens them again.
"I can't stop, Johnny." It's the most he can offer. Then he pulls the thread through.
The noise Soap makes, the strangled, desperate noise, trying so hard to swallow it down, is worse than a scream would be. Simon can feel him shaking. Can feel him fighting it, that stupid stubborn pride, trying to be small about something that is enormous and terrible and happening to him whether he wants it to or not.
Simon pulls his glove from his pocket. He folds it and presses it to Soap's mouth, and Johnny's eyes go wide and then something in them breaks open a little, some last wall coming down, and he takes it and bites down hard.
Simon pulls the thread through again.
The sound Johnny makes this time is muffled. And his whole body arches and Simon puts one hand flat on his chest and holds him down. Then keeps going because he cannot stop, he will not stop, he would rather Soap hate him for this than—than—
He can feel every tremor that moves through Johnny's body. Can feel every swallowed sob in the way his ribs stutter under Simon's palm. His face is soaked, jaw clenched tight on the glove, and he's looking up at Simon with his eyes glassy and dark and Simon looks back. If Johnny has to be here for this then Simon can be here too. He can give him that much.
Just stay, Simon thinks. Just keep making noise. Keep crying. Keep being furious with me. Do whatever you have to do but stay.
He ties off the last stitch with hands he forces steady.
For a long moment the only sound is Soap breathing, ragged and wet around the glove, and Simon stays exactly where he is. One hand still on his chest, feeling it rise and fall.
Johnny spits the glove out eventually.
Simon presses fresh bandaging to the wound and thinks about how he has always done this alone, always put himself back together in silence, always preferred it that way.
He thinks about how he will never prefer it that way again. He thinks about how Johnny's heartbeat feels under his palm, something breakable and irreplaceable, something he will die for before he lets go of.
