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The most captivating aspect of soulmates is that everybody asks the same question over and over again, and nobody has a satisfying answer. The question is: why?
Why do we even have soulmates? Why is the connection shown on our bodies? Why scars in particular? And most importantly: why are your soulmate’s scars in colour?
These questions brought only more and more questions with roughly the same results.
Let’s talk about some facts then.
There are many theories about why we have soulmates. We aren’t the only species who have them, but only humankind developed such a complicated system around the connection between partners. Soul scars are hardly ever causing any pain to the receiver – they simply appear on the body, but in a different colour than usual keloid tissue tends to have. Colours seemed to be assigned by random, however, many cultures established various interpretations and stances on them. In East Asia it is commonly believed that the strongest soulmates have their colours very similar. In Europe primary colours were favoured and for many years, until the French Revolution, it was believed that it is cursed to have black soul scars.
Nevertheless, none of the cultural stances explained why these colours and not the others. Recent studies show that even though over 80% of soulmates don’t particularly care about the colours, they are still able to make their own theories.
Maybe this is the reason. To find beauty in your soulmate’s vices even before you’re able to know them.
— Marianna Turner, Soulmates: Introduction
Simon Riley never cared about soulmates.
How could he when his father beat it out of him by the time he had been twelve? When his mother never wore low cut blouses because she had a long, pink scar through her sternum, one that wasn’t her own, and no other scars? When his father had only his own scars and never had any sort of surgery that would require cutting his ribcage open?
Soulmates were useless in real life, his father said. They were good only for girls and fairytales.
(Then he hit Simon in the face so hard, the skin over his lips broke and bled. It left a small scar.)
Sure, Simon saw scars on his body that weren’t actually his own. He was a good observer, quiet and unassuming, and most importantly, he wasn’t stupid. He knew what it meant when a small scar on his knee appeared when he was ten, and one right on his hairline when he was thirteen, and even one on the heel of his hand when he was eighteen. They were small and insignificant and so easy to forget. Because that’s what Simon Riley was trying to do: forget that he had a soulmate. He tried so hard not to think about them and that they were somewhere out there doing something that left a permanent sign on their body.
(Simon didn’t want to think about them being hurt and him not being there to help. It left him nauseous and anxious, so he stopped himself from thinking about it. He put it in the glass box in the back of his mind and left it there. Nobody had a use for soulmates, after all.)
His brother also had soul scars, but he somehow held to this childlike naivety that soulmates are good and needed. He held to it and didn’t let go and then met her when he was sixteen.
Simon didn’t dare to hope he would find his soulmate. His father beat it out of him and then Simon left Manchester forever. If they were there, he would leave them for good, because he wasn’t planning on coming back. He joined the military and therefore there was a higher possibility that he’d die and break his soulmate’s heart even before they met than of him meeting them any time in this life.
He just knew it, felt it in his bones. He would break them.
Because apparently he was good at this. Breaking people, preferably with bullets, but knives worked for him as well. He was patient and steady and hit every target set in front of him.
Simon was safe here. After all, who found their soulmate with a gun in their hand?
John MacTavish wasn’t a romantic per se, but it was hard not to believe in a divine match when everyone in his family found his match sooner or later.
Johnny had always believed in soulmates, even as a wee bairn. He thought about them quite often: what they looked like, what food they liked, what their favourite football team was (God, he hoped it wasn’t Manchester City or heaven forbid, Rangers – Johnny would probably cry if that was the case) or what was their favourite game (he loved playing tag, he was the best at it).
He also thought about them a lot, because he knew his ma and da were worrying. He often caught them whispering frantically in the kitchen and looking at him, not even bothering to hide their concern. They thought that Johnny was oblivious, because he was often loud and excited about things that interested him, but he noticed a lot. He knew how to be quiet when needed and how to focus on the conversation his parents were having while looking disinterested in anything other than his Hot Wheels.
The first scar they noticed was the one over his lip. Johnny was barely five. It was probably why this was more noticeable – he smeared chocolate cake all over his face, because that’s how you were supposed to eat your birthday cake. His mother’s eyes became wide with surprise and then something very sad and very heavy hung all over her face. She told his da right away. That was when the whispering started.
(Johnny wasn’t supposed to listen to how they theorise about the nature of this soul scar. His ma thought someone might have hit his soulmate, his da tried to find some other explanations: maybe they just tripped? Lord knows that John did that a lot, running wildly as he was. Johnny didn't cry, he just hoped that his soulmate had someone to kiss it better, just like his ma always did it for him.)
As Johnny grew, he had been finding his soul scars all by himself. They were usually quite hard to find anyway, since he tended to tan easily in a pretty shade, shared with his ma and her family. But he kept track of it, quite meticulously. There was a thin line under his collarbone, one he liked to trace when he was lost in thoughts, one shaped quite funnily that was on his thigh and a lot of them on his back.
Then one on his jawline appeared when Johnny was seventeen and his da whispered to ma when he thought that John was doing homework (or rather doodling in his maths notebook, because it was so easy, it was boring), in the living room, that maybe John’s soulmate was a bit older and had joined the military. That would certainly explain weird soul scars shapes and placements.
(Everyone ignored the implications that it would mean that Johnny’s soulmate was male. Johnny himself didn’t care about that anyway.)
Johnny wasn’t supposed to hear any of it, but once he did, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. In his brain it made perfect sense and suddenly, a clear path laid in front of him.
If his soulmate had a lot of scars that only kept on coming, he clearly needed someone to watch his back. And Johnny could be that someone, he knew he could. That was what soulmates were for: to care and protect and support. Johnny could do all of that. And maybe the military was a place to start looking for them.
It wasn’t as if he had a better plan for himself. He was smart, but everyone was underestimating him, because he was loud and easygoing and getting in trouble (fights) quite a lot. Mrs Shipley would probably think that the army would make the man out of him, a proper citizen that wasn’t yelling gaelic curses at his classmates.
Johnny couldn’t keep them safe now, but he would climb to the top and become the best that ever was for them. After all, maybe a gun was what he needed to chase his soulmate’s problems away?
Ghost was an extraordinarily observant man. It was one of the assets that made him invaluable in the eyes of the military.
And yet, Ghost hadn’t seen that coming in the slightest.
By saying that he meant the one and only Sergeant John MacTavish.
Ghost heard Gaz telling Price that the Scot was like a ray of sunshine amongst them, but Ghost, after spending some time with the man couldn’t disagree more. Because Johnny wasn’t a beam of light that came from the sun, no. He was a laser beam. Bright, focused and deadly.
Yes, maybe the first impression Ghost had upon meeting the man wasn’t exactly favourable (who was this excited for a mission anyway? Soap apparently), but MacTavish proved himself to be capable, determined and most importantly, not scared by Ghost at all. He met him with an easy grin and a light punch to the shoulder. Nobody ever did that, mostly because Ghost’s reputation preceded him by kilometres.
“Let’s get ourselves a win, yeah, Lt.?” Un-fucking-believable.
He thought Soap wouldn’t be able to keep up with him. Most men didn’t. But MacTavish did and he had something of an initiative, and was quick on the uptake when Ghost had a better plan. He followed it quickly and without questions, and Ghost had a feeling that it wasn’t only because he had been a superior officer giving an order. He knew what Ghost was thinking.
That should be scary, but at that time Ghost was just relieved that they moved quickly and effectively.
(But later Ghost thought often about it – how he would turn and find Soap already in place. How having him by his side felt comfortable and natural. How he couldn’t imagine him not having his back, no matter how often they put him on a solo mission. With every enemy soldier taken down before Ghost realised they tried to make a move on him, with every I got you, Lt., trust between them was building, paper thin, but steady. Eventually, it would become impossible to tear it apart.)
And maybe it was because they met in the middle of the mission that lasted half a night, they were wearing a fuckton of equipment and had a problem in the size of American missiles, but Ghost didn’t notice soul scars on the Sergeant. Not that he cared about those, but Ghost’s livelihood is based on noticing things.
Ghost simply hadn’t seen that coming.
Light in Alejandro’s safehouse was dimmed and soft, but it was enough for Johnny to realise who had been standing in front of him when Ghost took off his mask and showed them his face.
You see, Johnny knew his body fairly well. He catalogued his soul scars every week just to be sure that there weren’t any new ones – if there were, it meant one more tally on Johnny’s list of ‘times he should have had his soulmate’s back, but didn’t’. He was particularly familiar with those on his face, for various reasons.
Johnny was twenty when gold lines in the shape of Glasgow scars appeared on his face. He was in the middle of SAS training and he was good, but when the soul scars happened, he was painfully reminded that being good wasn’t simply good enough. He had to push himself harder so he could be better.
He was pretty sure that he gave his soulmate some soul scars in return.
Frankly speaking, he had been scared shitless during that time. So many marks appeared on his body during mere months that Johnny began to worry which mark would be the last. But then he found the next gold line and the next one, and one more. Each mark made him want to weep, because his soulmate was in pain and still alive. It was an universally known fact that scars were never made on a dead body. His bunkmate, Jim, watched him with worried eyes when he absentmindedly tracked marks on his forearms in the evenings.
“You know that means they’re probably tortured?” Jim asked quietly, his cockney accent making his words softer. Johnny wanted to break, but knew he couldn’t. He nodded.
“That’s why I’m here.” Johnny replied.
“To save them?” The shadow of pity entered Jim’s voice. Johnny couldn’t even blame him, he knew how it sounded.
“No. To make sure it won’t happen again. And if it does, then for them to know someone will come for them.”
When marks on his face had finally stopped coming out, he started to grow a beard. Soul scars weren’t real tissue, so he had no problem with that. Johnny wasn’t ashamed of them, he could never be ashamed of his soulmate and things they’ve gone through, but he felt an unexplainable need to hide them from prying eyes. They were private. Intimate. Only for him (and his soulmate, of course) to see.
He wondered if it was an Echo. It was an incredibly rare thing, to feel the echo of your soulmate’s feelings and experiences, but Johnny could swear it happened before. With Glasgow scars and one that was clearly from having been stabbed in the back and one on his upper right thigh.
(He would spare them any pain if he could. He would be gentle. He would show them how he cared.)
Anyway, the point was that Johnny knew his scars and soul marks. And even though changing the balaclava couldn’t last more than a minute, Johnny wouldn’t tear his eyes away from Ghost’s face.
Because he knew these scars. They were as familiar as his own. And if that wasn’t proof enough, Ghost had a small mark, cutting right through his pale eyebrow, right where Johnny took a face full of shrapnel when he was twenty-five.
Mission accomplished, MacTavish. You found them, now you have to have his back.
Considering what they just went through, Johnny had a feeling that he would manage that just fine.
John MacTavish was, to say it in a few words, fucking persistent. And Ghost, surprisingly, found himself liking him a lot.
He shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t, all previous evidence stated it clearly. He shouldn’t care, because he didn’t do team work, not in a long term manner. But then Soap got shot in the shoulder and Ghost acted as a handler, and even though they were in a life or death kind of situation, conversations over radio were so easy. Johnny’s gruff Scottish lilt and irritation were somewhat soothing. The Sergeant was angry and his anger shimmered under the surface, but he used it to tear his way through Shadows to get to Ghost, joking about lost knives and mumbling Scottish phrases.
That wasn’t weird at all. Ghost knew that hardships bound people together, especially in the field. What was weird was that Johnny didn’t stop afterwards. After that mission was the next one and the next one, and Johnny circled around him like a comet, not quite close enough to touch, but still burning brightly. He gently dared him to do some friendly sniping competition (that become somewhat of a monthly occurrence in the 141), he joined him during meals (understanding that Ghost needed five minutes to himself in the mornings to get his bearings or at least to inhale a cup of tea – and wasn’t it weird that for such a talkative person, silence didn’t bother him much?), and found Ghost in the evenings to spar or just sit while doing gun maintenance.
And he always saved him a seat.
Ghost found himself shedding layers of clothing around Johnny. Not all of them and certainly not his balaclava, but he wasn’t bothered much anymore when he showed up in the gym late at night only in a black t-shirt, exposing his tattoos and various scars. And Johnny looked at them curiously, but there wasn’t any judgement in his eyes or pity. He saw black ink and silvery scars and pale blue marks that Ghost was trying to ignore for twenty years, and took them as they were. Welcoming him with a warm smile and a witty quip. And Ghost met him halfway, with a fond eyeroll and a bit of army humour.
In the end, Ghost had been learning things about Johnny, as much as Johnny was slowly discovering Ghost’s idiosyncrasies. Johnny took his coffee black and strong and didn’t like to eat breakfast right after waking up, so he got up earlier and sat in the mess longer. That’s how they came to sit together – they both preferred when the mess wasn’t crowded and loud. He was rubbing his left shoulder, from the collarbone to the joint when was lost in thoughts (Ghost wondered if it was a shot wound from Las Almas that had been still bothering him) and always slept on his side, hand laying some point on his ribs, as if the pressure was soothing and reminding him that he was still alive and ready to see another day. Ready to give their enemies hell.
(If Ghost only saw it coming – but he didn’t – he would remember that he had been stabbed there once. It was probably the closest he had been to death, if it wasn’t for Garrick. Johnny knew wounds and knew if the knife would enter Ghost’s body any higher, he wouldn’t be there today. Because Johnny was never afraid for himself, but always for his soulmate.)
Johnny was moving a lot, full of untameable, boundless energy, but he was always quiet. It fascinated Ghost, he could admit it freely, because he saw it for his own eyes that there were at least three separate times when he startled someone who really should know better (and yes, that included Price; Ghost suspected that the Captain would yell at Soap if he wasn’t so bloody impressed that he managed to sneak up on him). He moved his hands constantly, fiddling with things all the time – knives, electronics, detonators disintegrated halfway through and then put together again with seemingly nothing more than some tape and a lot of willpower. He usually had one or two bandaids on his fingers and not all of them were their usual stuff from the medical. Sometimes, like right now, he had a silly snowman wrapped around his forefinger. At Ghost’s questioning look (and how the hell did he manage to get so good at recognising what Ghost was trying to convey even with his mask still on him?) he snorted and wiggled his eyebrows playfully.
“I ken, it’s not exactly compliant with regulations, aye? But my sister’s children send them to me, so I wear them when we have more time on the base. This way they don’t have to run to the medical every time I cut myself and the bairns are happy that they could help.”
(Ghost wondered if Tommy’s little one would do the same for him if given the chance.)
“You should wear gloves.” Ghost grumbled in reply, but the words didn’t have any heat behind them and he knew Johnny could hear that.
“Like you, Lt.?”
Ghost just rolled his eyes.
“Just don’t get an infection and die somewhere in a ditch.”
Johnny gave him a heavy, indecipherable stare in return.
“Dinnae fash, Ghost. Maybe I just like my scars.”
He left Ghost behind with a head full of thoughts.
You see, Ghost hated his scars. Hated them because they were ugly and messy, and painful when the weather changed rapidly. Hated them, because his soulmate didn’t deserve to suffer for his life choices and because he couldn’t imagine a world in which they wouldn’t despise him in return for saddling them with such marks. They were probably red as blood (fresh one, bright and intense, as if coming from a cut artery; or perhaps, contrarily, it was dark, slowly pooling under the body, rotting already), because Ghost honestly couldn’t imagine himself as any different colour. It must have been something haunting, disgusting, vile.
He didn’t like looking at his body. Kept it covered most of the time for various reasons, but it was one of the strongest. Even when he wore short sleeved shirts to work out and sparring, he tried not to look at his own scars – and he tried to ignore the constellations of pale blue marks on his right forearm or a gash on his bicep in the same colour. He avoided mirrors, particularly ones that hang over sinks. He washed his face in the shower, because even though he could learn to ignore the scars on his body, he certainly couldn’t ignore those on his face.
He didn’t want to ever look in the face of a person and see the reflection of them on their body, the realisation and the contempt.
Maybe Soap wasn’t a comet.
Maybe he was a star – well, in a way Price talk about Johnny’s soaring career in SAS, you might as well think that he really was one – one with a gravitational pull of a fucking sun. And Ghost was a rock that was in its orbit. A planet or something. Pluto, perhaps. Exiled and too far away to be truly considered important, yet still drawn to the sun like sunflowers in summer.
Ghost didn’t consider himself a sentimental person, but these thoughts just kept on coming.
They were in Las Almas again, enjoying downtime between missions. Or rather waiting for the transport to enjoy said downtime. They were asked to help in a long term chain of linked tasks and since Price and Laswell thought it would be beneficial to their own cause, since they were set on eliminating some of alleged Makarov suppliers in Mexico and Latin America. Rudy and Alejandro certainly didn’t mind that – in the end, it only meant one enemy less on this Earth.
And Ghost couldn’t stop watching Johnny.
He was standing nearby, listening to something Alejandro had been explaining to him, if Alejandro’s hand movements were any clue. Johnny’s own hands were holding the straps of his vest, as he usually did when he wasn’t holding a gun. He was nodding in the right parts, focused completely on the Colonel and the rays of the setting sun illuminated his face and body in warm light. Ghost was surprised to see golden threads in his hair and beard – both were longer than usual, due to the few hectic days they had. The light accented even scars on his arms and those just peeking from under the collar of his shirt. Ghost was surprised he hadn’t noticed them before and yet, he couldn’t tear his eyes apart from the shimmering golden hue, especially on his cheekbones.
It was beautiful. Ghost wanted to keep this moment in his mind forever. Never stray too far away from Johnny’s orbit.
(There was a glass box at the back of his mind that held his heart safe and sound. It was rattling and begging for attention. Ghost didn’t think it was a good moment, but wondered briefly what it could mean. What was in his heart that so desperately wanted to get outside at the sight of this chaotic Scottish man?)
Steps behind them informed Ghost that Rudy must’ve finished getting the transport ready.
“ETA three minutes,” He said, standing next to Ghost. He looked at the pair of soldiers, but Ghost was sure he focused on Alejandro instead of Johnny. He smirked a little, glad that his balaclava hid it from Rudy. “Hm. Isn’t it funny like one would think that soulmarks would be actually helpful in our profession and yet, it’s completely opposite?”
Ghost scowled.
“What do you mean?”
Rudy waved his hand gently in the direction of Johnny and Alejandro.
“I was stabbed right in front of Alejandro, he patched me up himself and it still took him almost half a year to realise that he has a mark matching it. And he really should have noticed it earlier, his marks are green,” Rudy snorted and started to move. “I’ll go get them, otherwise we’ll have to leave them.”
“Mmm, shame.” Ghost murmured, mostly to himself. Johnny’s thumb was rubbing a familiar path on the collarbone, not letting go of his vest.
Funny. Ghost could swear he was cut there once. Or maybe it was the other collarbone.
Who would remember such things anyway?
It was a shit mission with shit intel and Johnny wanted to fucking rest finally.
He had a concussion, he had been hit in the very same place on his eyebrow where he already had a scar, because half the building came down on him, and most importantly, Ghost was gone.
Not gone. Taken. But they weren’t sure if he had been still alive. Laswell and Price were doing what they could, especially Laswell (Johnny wasn’t sure he saw her leaving her office for more than a quick bathroom break for the last eight hours).
It’s been over seventy two hours. Johnny spent at least forty of them unconscious.
They were slowly losing hope to find a lead in time.
Johnny was fucking livid. It was the very thing he swore to stop from happening.
“Doing okay, Soap?” Price asked him quietly. Johnny was standing in a conference room, where all the materials they gathered had been shown. It wasn’t a lot, but there must be something, anything.
“I’ll do better when we get him home.” Johnny grumbled.
“Soap…” Price’s voice was uncharacteristically soft and Johnny hated it.
“No. Deh dae that, sir. He’s alive,” Johnny was aware that his accent was getting stronger when he was upset or exhausted and right now he was both, but he knew Price would understand him anyway. He swallowed heavily. “I ken he is.”
Price observed him in silence. Johnny sighed and his shoulders dropped. He moved his hand to pull up his soft, olive green t-shirt. He pointed at a golden line, a few inches below his ribs.
“You can’t have soul marks from a dead body. And I dinnae have this mark yesterday.”
Price’s eyes widened when he put two and two together. He nodded and turned slightly to look at the intel with Johnny.
“Does he know?”
Johnny exhaled heavily. He needed coffee. And to pull himself together. And for Ghost to be back.
“Dinnae ken, Captain. But I doubt that.”
“You haven’t told him?”
He laughed, but it was a sad, hollow thing, bordering on sobbing.
(How could Johnny ever tell him outright? When Simon’s trust was so hard to gain and even harder to keep? When Simon’s heart was a delicate, tired thing with protective layers born out of unimaginable hardships and heartbreaks? How could Johnny ever tell him this and so many other things. That he learnt how to brew tea the way he liked not because he was his soulmate, but because he was Simon and he deserved to have people around him who would care about these insignificant, meaningless things that were more valuable than gold? Johnny wouldn’t tell him, but he would stand by him, because actions meant more than words ever did. And Johnny wouldn’t let him go until he’d see his dead body with his own eyes. Not a second earlier.)
“I was waiting for him to come to me,” Johnny gave Price a look and he responded with a small sound that meant ‘yeah, good luck with that’. Johnny understood it well. “I dinnae want to push him or anything like that.”
Price hummed.
“I think you should tell him when we get him back.”
When we get him back. They will get him back. Johnny cleared his throat and pulled himself up into more appropriate for a soldier position. No dilly-dallying, MacTavish. Get back to work.
“I don’t think they would take him far away, sir,” Johnny mused. “Our backup was already inside and they had mere minutes to act.”
“You think we missed something?”
“We must have. Captain, what are the chances that we had the wrong floor schematics along with other shitty intel?”
Price was already moving.
“I’ll talk to Laswell. Go get some rest, son.”
“Aye, sir.” Johnny murmured to an empty room. He could get himself a coffee before any briefing would be called and maybe one for Gaz as well.
They would get him back.
It was unusually quiet when Ghost woke up. He could hear the steady sounds of machines and smell the disinfectant. He didn’t feel any pain.
The lights in the room were bright, but it helped, because the first thing he saw was Johnny’s sleeping figure, curled in what looked like a very uncomfortable position in a hospital chair. His head was tilted from Ghost, supported by Johnny’s right hand – it exposed the pale column of his throat. And he was shaved. It gave Ghost a pause, because he never saw Soap without his usual three day stubble on his face. Whether it was a combination of a cold light of fluorescent lamps or exhaustion mixed with blood loss (because Ghost could see the bangadges, at least the one on his forehead and he knew Johnny), he looked pale.
And Ghost could see his soul scars.
He stared dumbly at them, partially blaming painkillers for the static in his head, buzzing like angry bees and his own injuries, because he surely must be imagining things, right? These golden lines, that Ghost once thought were simply rays of the sun highlighting him, couldn’t be shaped in a painfully familiar pattern.
Ghost remembered the scar on his jawline and almost faded one on his cheekbone and the glasgow scars as well. He looked down to look at his own arm, where a pale blue mark rested.
It matched Johnny’s scar.
He must have made some sound, because when he looked up to Johnny’s face again, he met pale blue eyes staring right at him, somewhat unbelieving, partially in wonder.
They matched Simon’s soul scars.
“Hey. You’re awake.” Johnny said softly, his usual lilt a bit stronger, but he didn’t mind it.
“Johnny.” It came out broken, but that’s how Simon felt at that moment. Broken and mismatched and a little bit fragile. He didn’t even have the energy to blame it on morphine.
“Hey, what’s wrong? Is the pain too much?” Johnny pulled himself up and moved his body in Simon’s direction.
Simon shook his head and reached out to him. He could see his gloveless hand littered with tiny blue dots and marks. Johnny was never careful with his hands, but they were always so steady. Steady when making a bomb from scratch, when pulling the trigger to cover Simon’s six and when taking his hand without any hesitation.
“I’m sorry.” Simon told the first thing he could think about. Johnny’s brows furrowed.
“Whatever for? Everything’s alright, we’re all good, we got you home.”
He shook his head again.
“No,” He rasped and Johnny moved to help him drink some water. Simon knew the drill. “For the scars.”
Johnny caught up immediately. He gave him an impossibly fond look. Nobody should look this soft while looking at Ghost.
But Johnny had always been different, hadn’t he?
“Oh, you have nothing to apologise for, mo ghràdh.”
“But…”
“No. And if you want to be sorry then I am too.”
Simon gave him an incredulous look.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get to you earlier.”
“You couldn’t have saved me.” There was a trace of a cold tone in his voice, but he couldn’t stop himself. They were soldiers and his past was his own. He couldn’t change it, nobody could. Not even Johnny.
“I know. But I’ll always get you back, Simon. Never doubt that.”
Simon probably would. For a while. Until it truly sinks. And even then, he probably could use a reminder.
“When did you know?” He deflected, the weight of emotion in Johnny’s voice was getting unbearable.
“When you took your mask off in Alejandro’s safe house.”
Oh. Well, it made sense. His face had some extremely unusual features (and reasons for hiding it).
“It was your eyebrow, actually.” Johnny added as if he had been reading Simon’s mind.
“What?”
Johnny smiled smugly and leaned back in his chair. He still held Simon’s hand, though.
“Shrapnel hit my eyebrow a couple of years ago. I don’t know if you noticed, but you have a blue soul mark on yours. It’s distinctive, with your pale hair, although I don’t know if anyone caught up on it. Well, maybe Rudy did.”
Simon recalled his conversation with him and sighed.
“Yeah, he definitely did.”
Johnny snorted. Neither of them was surprised, smart men, their friends were. Rudy probably even moreso.
“I never suspected that the marks would be gold.” Simon whispered after a moment of comfortable silence. Johnny seemed content to be just holding Simon’s hand and tracing patterns only he seemed to see.
“I never thought they could be anything else.” Johnny retorted easily, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. And it really wasn’t, not to Simon at least.
So Simon looked at him, uncomprehending, in hope of some explanation. Although, knowing Johnny would tell him something… Scottish. Meaning, he would tell things that theoretically should be understandable to anyone who had ears, but were, in fact, just a pure gibberish to him.
“You’re a bonnie lad, Simon. And my marks match you. I don't know how it could be any other way.”
See? Gibberish.
Johnny sighed and leaned forward, so he would focus all of his attention on Simon.
“I rarely see you without your mask, but when you let me stay in your room that one night, I woke up early. It was a sunset and maybe a room with windows to the east isn’t so bad when I get to see your hair looking like that. Golden. Beautiful.”
If Simon wasn’t on painkillers he would be embarrassed to say that he actually blushed. But morphine was working its magic and he didn’t even care. Not if Johnny was looking at him like that forever. Softly. In love. Because Simon loved him too.
Oh.
Simon loved Johnny.
Suddenly it was as easy as that.
Simon Riley loved John MacTavish. And they were soulmates.
He didn’t know what complicated things his face had been doing, but Johnny kissed the hand he had been holding still. And Simon knew that Johnny knew. He could read his mind like that.
And Simon never felt safer than when Johnny’s hand held his.