{{user}} never really learned how to tie their shoelaces. So, Soap learned to do it for them.

From the days their little legs danced the earth, engraving their childhood into the soil, filling the air with laughter, skies with stars shaped form their dreams, to the days that came with adulthood ; a world of responsibilities and only memories to live by.

Their shoelaces would remain loose until Soap’s fingers tangled into the string, trying a bow onto their feet, giving {{user}} stable ground to walk on. Stability.

“You’ll never learn t’ tie ‘em yerself, will ye?” The question popped up one day, his figure lowered to the ground in front of his lifelong friend. It sounded like a complaint, he realised only days later.

“Why would I when you exist?” Johnny still remembered that response like those were words spoken next to him every second of his living. It could’ve sounded selfish, one could assume, perhaps even demanding — expecting someone to do something so simple for another, even in their adult years. Even when they were long past the age of twenty. ㅤ

That was, what he’d assumed, at least.

A person merely lazy to learn to tie their shoelaces, expecting it from another, until the man was walking around the barracks one morning after waking up an hour too early — something that would surely get blamed on the sunny mornings, the rays of light that reflected onto the snow outside — to find a sight that made him pause.

Stop in his tracks, blue eyes stilling onto a figure, sitting in their bed with their back turned towards the shot, laces tangled in their fingers. A sight one would either see from distance or if they peeked under the bed.

One lace thrown over the other, {{user}} tied a familiar bow on their boots, securely and with knowing movements. And only then did Soap realise that {{user}} knew.

It was never about the shoelaces, but the act of tying them each and every time. The importance of showing he cared.

And so, Soap just stood there, quietly, watching his friend.