Chapter Text
Johnny and Kyle park in the dark lot across the street from their destination as the bass from the bar reaches their rental. Locking the car up, they walk across the street and through the door to begin their Friday night leisure. It’s been a few weeks since they’ve gone out, too wrapped up in the influx of missions, not unlike how it’s been the past year with the 141 currently down a member. Johnny remembers that last detail with an irritated huff willing himself not to dwell on that train of thought too long. He’s here to have fun for once, maybe pick up a bloke or two’s number. Lord knows he hasn’t gotten any action in…well…a year.
Johnny snags a high-top table while Kyle heads to the bar to get them a couple pints. There’s a nice crowd here for a Friday; not too claustrophobic but plenty of people here to have fun with a football championship going on being streamed on the televisions hung around the room. He just knows Price is keeping up with the score stuck in his office working on the back-log of paperwork he’s accrued. Kyle returns passing him his first round. They clink glasses as Johnny eyeballs around the bar. He locks eyes with a Staff Sergeant seated at the bar they’ve been working with the last couple months who gives him a grin and nod. Johnny raises his glass and smiles back. Staff Sergeant Hicks, or Logan as he has insisted Johnny call him, hasn’t kept his interest in the sergeant a secret, all but openly flirting with him over comms during missions. Johnny hasn’t been openly keen on entertaining it in the moment with memories flooding in of the same actions with another person from the past. Tonight, though, tonight he deserves more.
Kyle looks over his shoulder and sees where Johnny’s eyes have been focused on. Kyle chuckles turning back sipping his beer.
“He’s getting desperate, isn’t he?”
“Ach,” Johnny sips his beer setting it down watching a drop of condensation roll down the glass, “Can’t be too easy, now can I? Gotta make him work for it.”
Kyle grins looking up at the television above Johnny’s head before looking back down to his friend.
“John…can I say something without you tearing my head off?”
Johnny’s smile falters slightly as anxiety fills his stomach like a tidal wave. He thinks he knows where this is going.
“Can’t make any promises.”
Kyle sighs and leans back in his chair crossing his arms, “Would you ACTUALLY be interested in Hicks if he didn’t look like a certain someone we both know?”
“Lay off it, Kyle,” Johnny quickly snaps, an edge to his voice, taking a big swig of his beer not making eye contact. He’s not going to have this conversation. He’s allowed to do whatever the fuck he wants, it’s not like he did anything wrong in the first place.
Kyle sighs and leans on the table with his forearms.
“It’s just…it’s been fucking shit seeing you pick yourself back up this past year. I don’t want you to backslide because you’re looking for a distraction instead of continuing to move on.”
Johnny slams his glass down on the table top harder than he means to.
“Thanks for yer concern, but last time I checked, I’m a grown fuckin’ man and know what I can and can’t handle,” he finally locks eyes with Kyle with his eye brows furrowed in anger.
“I’m going to ignore your fucking attitude because your best friend is looking out for you. I’ll drop it. Just…,” Kyle sighs, “Take care of your heart. It deserves to be taken care of.”
Johnny swallows at that and feels some of his defensiveness leave his blood. He’s still just so angry. Angry at it all. This past year he’s gone from anger to sadness to anger in a vicious cycle, never feeling like he can heal, and Kyle has been there every breakdown to help him scrape himself back together.
It’s been a year since Simon broke his heart. Not just broke, more like shattered with a baseball bat like a damn piñata and tap-danced on the remaining fragments until nothing was left but dust. After Las Almas, they finally collided, giving into their pent-up frustrations and lust becoming each other’s crutch when they needed a good intense fuck out of their systems. For Johnny though, it wasn’t just lust, but he didn’t make that known at first, too enthralled in what they had become to chance ruining it. And ruin it he did. Months after their hooking up began, tangled in Simon’s sheets, Johnny’s ankles locked behind Simon’s lower back, fingers twisted in Simon’s blonde curls, mouths connected as they simultaneously reached their peaks, Johnny HAD to slip up and breathe out a brutally honest “I love you.”
Simon locked up and simply stared down at the man below him, cheeks flushed and mohawk sweaty, frozen in fear of what came out of his mouth. In an incredibly uncomfortable clean up afterwards, Simon simply pulled his clothes on without another word and left Johnny in the Lieutenant’s room alone. After the most anxious and lonely night of his life, Johnny found himself in Price’s office with Kyle at his side being informed Ghost volunteered for an officer training position in the States for the foreseeable future. Cue the baseball bat swing to the heart-shaped piñata. Johnny left Price’s office without a word and walked the perimeter of the base for the next four hours with tears streaming down his face. Simon hadn’t said anything. Hadn’t called, texted, anything. He left. Like a fucking coward. After about 20 enraged texts and twice as many calls went unanswered that day, Johnny snapped. He blocked Simon’s number, erased their text history, tried his best to clean the Lieutenant from his mind. If he wanted to leave so badly, if he was so appalled by Johnny’s confession of having emotions under their arrangement, then fine. Fucking leave. Leave their team, their family they’ve created. Fucking asshole prick coward dickhead: Johnny’s mantra every time he spiraled back into his ruined feelings.
“Be right back, watch my beer,” Johnny mumbles standing from his chair to walk to the bar. He comes up beside Logan with their shoulders brushing as he waves down the bartender. Logan glances over and smiles.
“Was wondering if you were gonna come over,” Logan grins down at Johnny. Logan is a handsome man, an American Marine with a battalion on deployment to the 141’s base for the time being. Johnny forces himself to admire his features, forces himself not to notice how his blonde hair isn’t curly enough, how his skin isn’t pale enough, how he doesn’t have enough scars, how his eyes are a polite green and not the color of a rich cup of coffee. No, Johnny doesn’t think about those details at all.
“Gotta keep you on yer toes is all,” Johnny grins as he orders a glass of scotch. For a moment the hairs on his nape raise. An uneasy feeling crawls down his spine like he’s being watched. With a roll of his shoulders he focuses attention back to the American beside him.
“You do plenty of that, John, I can promise you that,” he says with a smug grin.
“When are you gonna let me get your number? I think I’ve been patient enough.”
Johnny huffs a laugh as he sips his glass feeling that uneasiness again, somehow with more intensity over his skin. He tries to ignore it. Johnny pulls his phone out and slides it across the wooden bar top to Logan beside him.
“Be my guest,” he says with a sly grin.
The second Logan picks up his phone, the phone that has the residue of a scratched off cartoon ghost sticker on its case, Johnny’s head snaps up as he looks around, the feeling of being watched too much to ignore. He sees Kyle who is heavily focused on the game on the television along with half the bar. He doesn’t see anybody staring, doesn’t see anybody he knows. He has this feeling in the back of his skull, the voice in his head about to whisper a realization when he’s snapped back to the presence beside him handing his phone back.
“Put in my contact, feel free to text whenever you’d like. I’ll cover your drink,” Logan adds with a wink. Johnny smiles brushing his shoulder against Logan’s again before returning to his seat. He feels uneasy the rest of their time in the bar. He feels like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t have and he doesn’t fucking know why.
Johnny didn’t text Logan last night. He told himself it’s because he’s enjoying playing hard to get, no other reason why. He walks down the CO hallway to Price’s office where him and Kyle were summoned last minute after breakfast. He walks in and sits in his usual chair beside his friend as Price smiles.
“Have a fun time last night, boys?” Price asks sipping his coffee.
“Wasn’t too bad. Place was damn near packed from the game,” Kyle responds as he lounges in his seat.
Price hums in response.
“Sorry I didn’t join, was busy catching up on paperwork. That’s why I called you lot in. I have some news you’ll like.” He shuffles the stack of papers on his desk around as he glances over them.
“We are earning a few American spec-ops for the time being for cross-training with the SAS and 141. We are also being reunited with a familiar face,” he adds with a grin.
No.
Johnny’s hair on his nape raise in alarm. Ice fills his veins. Price’s door behind him opens. He doesn’t turn around. He can’t turn around. Even after a year of thinking of every scenario, every reaction he would have, every way he could handle seeing the one person who has truly hurt him, Johnny feels absolutely unprepared. He feels like he’s going to drown. His knuckles turn white from gripping the arm rests of his chair. The door behind him closes back and footsteps pass behind his chair. Johnny looks up slowly seeing the darkly-dressed man leaning against the wall beside the desk looking at Price from behind his skull-painted balaclava. Johnny feels every emotion under the sun at seeing his Si-…at seeing Ghost again.
“Welcome back, Simon,” Price says with a smile.
“Glad to be back, sir,” he replies with an even tone. Johnny can feel how tense Kyle is beside him. Price stands from his chair, Kyle following suit about tripping over his foot, as Price leads them out of the office to go meet the Americans. Johnny doesn’t move from his chair. When Price and Kyle are out of the room leaving them two inside for a few tense moments, Johnny stares Simon down. Deep breath in, shaky breath out. Simon finally looks down to lock eyes with Johnny. His world stops spinning. For a brief moment, he forgets the last year. Forgets the pain, the sadness, the anger. He only remembers how it feels to be the center of those brown eyes’ attention. He feels like himself again.
Right when Johnny goes to open his mouth to say something, anything, Simon pushes off the wall and walks out of the office. Johnny’s mouth opening goes to staying dropped open in shock with his head whipping around past his shoulder at the man fucking leaving without a word like the last year didn’t fucking happen. Is he fucking serious? Did he just dismiss Johnny?
Renewed and re-invigorated anger fuels his aching heart. Fucking asshole prick coward dickhead.