#gravesoap

Soap doesn't mind, though, he gets it, he was the same way the first time he ever kissed another man. He knows how to comfort Graves, he knows how to help him wrap his head around it and he refuses to let Graves push himself too far too fast in an attempt to save face in front of Soap.

Because the differences in their ages gets to Graves a bit too. Johnny's young, he's happy, he's confident in himself and his relationships and sexuality, and Graves is just past 40, but somehow he is the one stumbling through and messing everything up like he's thirteen and just kissed a girl behind the chapel for the first time after skipping Sunday school. Graves hates feeling so out of his depth. It should be the other way round! He's the older one of the two of them, he should be the one who knows what he's doing, the one with experience guiding Johnny through it... But he isnt.

Johnny's already unpacked his religious trauma and guilt while Graves just let it sit and simmer.

Johnny never makes him feel stupid, though. He never judges the stupid questions Graves asks, never makes fun of him for trying something and having it just not work out the way he thought it would.

Johnny makes him feel well and truly loved and appreciated.

Graves almost forgets why they got into a relationship in the first place, until he gets the order that they're going to be moving forwards with the mission, setting the next phase in motion within the month.

It feels like the floor got ripped out from under him. Graves spends the first day after getting the news in shock as he realises what he's going to have to do, then he spends the second day trying desperately to figure out a way to get around this. A way to make sure Soap doesn't get hurt. A way to make sure Soap doesn't realise Graves has been silently betraying him and the 141 from the start.

A way to make sure he doesn't lose Soap in any sense of the word.

He knows it's not possible to keep the 141 from finding out, and it's not possible to make sure Soap doesn't get hurt unless he can get Soap to switch sides.

So he starts planting the seeds, trying to subtly influence Soaps feelings, his loyalties, so that when the time comes he can hold his hand out and ask Soap to come with him, and he will.

He gets to that time, though, he holds his hand out, and Soap refuses.