Alex Riley

Because after years, Shepherd was dead.

and what should've been a victory celebration had turned into a rare night of drinks, laughter, and stories that other members probably would not have shared in other circumstances.

On the dock, night settled over everyone like a familiar companion, bathing every face in washes of silver beneath the moon's quiet glow.

The sea lapped lazily against the pier, carrying away the echoes of gunfire and bloodshed, if only for a little while.

Above them, the moon stood watch, as though bearing silent witness to the victory of the lads below, the glasses clinked together, laughter drifted across the water, Soap was halfway through yet another wildly exaggerated retelling of the mission, and even this time Price was letting himself loose.

Ghost, however, was only half listening, because his mind had long since wandered somewhere far from the dock.

The whiskey had left a pleasant warmth blooming in his chest, but it didn't take long for that warmth to twist into something suspiciously close to longing.

He was just tipsy enough for the edges of the world to blur, yet nowhere near drunk enough to quiet his thoughts of you, honestly it was always like this.

No matter what he did or where the mission took him, you found your way back into his mind, and your memory chased him like an ouroboros—an endless cycle of yearning that devoured him from the inside out, with no beginning, no end, and no escape.

Oh fuck, how he missed your pretty little arse. how he wished he could be celebrating this with you, by being inches deep inside you, by having you ride him hard.

God, he should've been home with you, fucking you, holding you close, instead he was halfway across the world celebrating another mission that had cost too much.

With a sigh full of longing, he pulled his wallet out and reached into it, his fingers instinctively finding the photograph tucked behind a stack of cards.

Honestly it had become a habit over the years for him — whenever he was away from you, whenever the nights grew too long, he'd steal a glance at your smiling face and everything he had been carrying the tension would disappear before his eyes.

And soon the moment he tried to pull the photograph free, it slipped from beneath his thumb and forefinger.

It fluttered to the dock and Ghost reacted instantly, bending to snatch it up, but Soap was faster. Before Simon's gloved fingers could reach it, Soap had already plucked it from the ground, pinching it neatly between two fingers.

Bloody hell.

Thank the Christ no one else had noticed.

Not that Simon was ashamed of you— quite the opposite. If anything, he was fiercely protective of you, he was proud that he could call himself yours. and the thought of the others passing your photograph around, making comments on you, or saying, no, he wasn't entirely sure what he'd do if someone crossed that line... only that it wouldn't end well for them.

Ghost straightened slowly, fixing Soap with a hard, expectant stare, that said, Give it back.

Soap met the look without the slightest hint of surrender. Instead, his eyes gleamed with unmistakable mischief, 'Oh, aye? Not a chance.'

"Well, well..." Soap mused, turning the photograph toward the moonlight. A slow, knowing grin spread across his face as he looked at the woman smiling back at him. "And what's this we've got here, then?"

"Give it fuckin' back." The words came out as a low snarl, and Ghost shook his head once in disbelief, "Don't push me, MacTavish."

Soap barely had a second to relish the look in Ghost's eyes -- the subtle darkening of those brown irises, the unmistakable warning behind them before Gaz wandered over, curiosity getting the better of him. "What're you two—" His words faltered the moment his gaze landed on the photograph, soon a low whistle slipped past his lips. "Bloody hell..."

He looked from the picture to Ghost, an amused grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Didn't know you had a bird this pretty."

"Told ya, not to fucking test me."

The moment the words "pretty bird" left Gaz's mouth, something inside Simon snapped, and heat flared through his veins — hot, and primal.

Fuck, he'd never felt anger rise so fast, so violently, and one second he was: beside Soap. The next—

He was in front of Gaz, and soon Ghost pushed Gaz with furious force, and his back crashed into the nearest support beam with a solid thud, Ghost's forearm pinning him there deep onto his throat, before anyone else had even registered he'd moved.

The dock fell silent instantly, laughter dying on everyone's lips as Simon's grip tightened on gaz and he choked a little, while Ghost's breathing remained slow and measured despite the fury simmering beneath the surface.

Most times Ghost's eyes, usually so unreadable behind the skull mask, burned with something dangerously cold, and his voice turned into something raspy, as alcohol, "Say that again."

Gaz's breath hitched against the pressure on his throat.

"I dare you, Gaz."

For one long, suffocating moment, neither of them moved. The laughter had been already died ; and now everything felt far too eerily silent.

Soap was the first to reach them, stepping up beside Ghost, but he made no move to pry Simon off, because he'd served with the man long enough to know this wasn't one of Ghost's usual scare tactics. Simon never lost control — not unless someone had truly crossed a line, and right now he knew Gaz did.

Across the dock, Price slowly lowered his glass and rubbed a tired hand over his face, already sensing the inevitable paperwork this would bring. "Simon," he said evenly, his voice carrying just enough authority to cut through the tension.

Ghost didn't even glance at him.

Instead his stare never left Gaz. He didn't so much as acknowledge Soap at his side or Price's warning. And if anyone else was foolish enough to step in and pull him away, they were more than welcome to try because they'd only be signing their own death warrant.

His forearm pressed just a fraction harder against Gaz's throat that made him cough and choke violently as his voice dropped into a low, deadly calm. "One more word about her, Gaz..." he let his warning seep in Gaz eyes, "and you'll regret it."

Price and Soap, eventually meddled and pried Ghost away with a sharp, "That's enough."

Simon stepped back, rolling his shoulders as though nothing had happened, though the warning lingered in the air like cordite. "Next time, dont expect me to stop."

Gaz coughs, rubbing his, throat, then Ghost continues, sending knives through his stare to Gaz, and lets his warning hangs heavy in the air, "No comments," he said flatly, looking from Gaz to Soap. "Not another one."

No one argued, then Soap was the first to break the silence. With an exaggerated sigh, he stepped forward and held out the photograph, its face turned downward. "There," he muttered. "Happy?"

Ghost didn't answer, instead he simply snatched it from Soap's fingers with a low, warning growl before quickly checking that the picture hadn't been bent, seeing it didnt, Ghost was satisfied, soon he slipped it deep into the pocket of his tactical jeans, patting it once as if to make sure it was secure.

...

Minutes later, Simon slipped away from the dock, the cool night air washing over him.

He walked until the celebration faded behind him, then he pulled out his phone. Your face stared back at him from the screen — his thumb hovered, then pressed.

Two rings : that's all it took before you picked up the phone.

"Hi," you murmured, your voice was thick with sleep.

The tension drained from his shoulders instantly. "Hi, love."

"You sound tired." You said sluggishly.

"Long day." Ghost sighed.

"You okay?"

"M'fine now." He leaned against the railing, staring at the moonlit water. "Say my name."

A soft laugh, filters on your end, as you hear his odd request, "Simon."

"Again."

"Simon Riley."

"Did you wake me up just to hear me say your name?" you teased, a sleepy laugh escaping your lips as the sheets rustled beneath you.

You pushed yourself upright, brushing a few loose strands of hair from your face while settling against the headboard, the phone tucked between your ear and shoulder.

"Mhm", he hummed then he closed his eyes, letting your voice anchor him. "Say you're mine."

There is a pause at your end, and you breathe heavily, quietly: "I'm yours."

Your mind raced with a thousand different emotions as unease settled deep in your chest. Something had happened — you were certain of it. Simon rarely acted like this. He wasn't the type to ask for reassurance, let alone call in the middle of the night just to hear you say you were his -- not that you were complaining that he did.

The tenderness in his tone, the way he lingered over your name... it wasn't like him -- or maybe nothing like this ever happened for him to act like this... but either way if he did call like this everyday, you had happily reassure him.

The words settled deep in his chest, warming something that had gone cold hours ago.

"Did something, happen?"

"Everything's good," Simon lied, then he opened his eyes and slowly pulled the skull mask from his face, letting the cool night air brush against skin that rarely saw it. For a moment, he simply stared at the mask in his hands before drawing it close against his chest. "I just..." He exhaled quietly, a tired smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "I miss you." It was the closest thing to the truth he could give you.

"I miss you too." You admitted.

"Shepherd's gone. It's over." He sighed, taking in the air inside his chest, until his lungs expanded with freshness of it.

Relief colored your voice, and a small smile slipped into your tone. "Thank God."

"Two days," he said. "I'll be home in two days."

"Two days," you repeated.

"Mm." His voice dropped, taking on that teasing edge you knew too well. "So when I get back..."

"Yeah?"

"You'd better be ready."

A laugh escaped you. "Ready for what?"

"For me." He smiled beneath the mask. "Every minute. Every hour. The days I spent without you, I'm taking them all, and I will bury myself inside you until there is no beginning of me, or end of yours until my soul is tangled in yours."

Your breath caught on the line. "Simon..."

"Two days," he said it like a vow.

"I'll be waiting."

"I know you will." He glanced back at the others, who were pretending not to watch. "I should let you sleep."

"I don't think I'll be able to sleep anymore," you breathed, your voice gone rough.

"Is that so, love?"

"Ugh, damn you, Simon Riley. You better make it up to me when you come back."

"Trust me," he murmured, dark and promising. "I will. And more. I'm going to tease you until you're begging, love."

You laughed, breathless. "Sounds like a promise. Come home safe."

"It is and always."

Then you ended the call.

...

Later, whilst he still stood behind the railings: you sent him your pictures — or maybe if you were telling the truth then you had say they were your nudes: which was enough to keep him worked up, thinking of you, as his phone buzzed in his hands, and he glanced down, expecting nothing.

Then he opened the lock and saw your notifications, so naturally he opened your chat thread.

The first image loaded slowly your bare skin against dark sheets, your legs spread, your folds wet and glistening, a hint of where his mouth would be in -- when he gets back to you.

The second image came faster, this time you had your fingers inside your hole, while your body showed the flush he knew too well.

His cock jerked against his zipper, sudden and insistent, and he lets out a low guttural growl.

Fuckin' hell.

Thank to god he was alone right now. Then he groaned your name low in his throat like a prayer, the sound itself getting lost to the waves.

He was fully hard now, almost achingly so— thinking of you awake and needy, touching yourself while he stood here half a world away, useless and desperate.

Another buzz, pulls him out of his thoughts.

You sent a video this time, and it was barely twenty seconds — and your fingers circles your clit slowly as your breath hitches his name, and your lips part, swiftly, and you push your two fingers inside -- then it ends there.

"Christ," he muttered, adjusting himself roughly through his trousers, and now forty-eight hours of torture, of remembering exactly how you taste, how you clench around him, how you scream, fuck, he has to jerk himself off with nothing but your videos.

Darn you. He laughs shaking his head, all the anger that previously simmered in his veins was now converted into something else completely.

Naturally, he watched the video again. Then once more— still arrested by those expressions he knew by heart, the ones that lived in his memory already, yet here they were, captured and replayable, while he remained anchored to this dock for hours, while your body remained out of reach.

His mates were waiting, and he could feel their eyes already on him, curiously.

With a final glance at the screen he typed "you will pay for this love" then he sent the text. It remained on delivered for now —

then he took a last glance at your photo, spread and waiting for him, soon he locked the screen and slipped the phone into his pocket, while his free hand palmed his length through the fabric once, to relieve the edge of it, as if saying 'soon', and then he turned back toward the dock, wearing his mask, while hiding his real face beneath.

Still his blood thundered, thrumming hot and heavy through his cock, but he shook his head foolishly — as if the motion alone could banish the ache, but not-surprisingly it didnt. So he thought only thing that would calm himself.

Two days. he thought.

Then he'd be home, and he'd ruin you properly for this.

...

A snowstorm hit overnight and Simon was up early as usual, not by choice but rather out of habit. The sun was barely up and the snow had stopped, but there was a blanket over the neighborhood now. It almost seemed to glow a pale shade of blue from what little light there was outside. The path to his door was covered, so was his car... And looking over to the left, he could see the same was the case for you.

Knowing that you wouldn't be up for some time, Simon decided to help you out. He bundled up in a thick parka, a snow balaclava, and a pair of his best gloves. Once his boots were on, he headed outside and got right to work, starting with the path to your door.

About an hour later, your car was dug out from the snow and he just finished with his own side of the semi-detached house. He paused for a moment to catch his breath, looking skyward as a few flakes started to fall again... That's when he heard a familiar voice.

"Oi, Simon!" It was you, clad in your thick winter pajamas and a pair of fluffy slippers, waving at him. "You didn't have to...!"

"I wanted to," he called back as he leaned the snow shovel against the house. "I could come over and shovel it all back into place if it's that much of an issue, though."

You snorted softly and shook your head, and Simon didn't miss the smile that you tried to repress.

"Well, thank you, Si... Come here, I'll start us a pot of coffee," you offered, opening your door wider. "Hurry, I don't want a draft to come in."

Simon, knowing there was no point in saying no, made his way around the hedge that divided your doors and headed into your place.

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"Fuck me...!" Your muffled voice caught Simon's attention. He was just walking back from a trip to the store when he noticed you sitting in your car.

The problem became evident when he saw you try to start it... Only for it to not start after it sputtered pathetically a few times. He already knew your car had some issues, and he also knew that you kept putting off bringing it to the shop. After putting his shopping bags inside, he came back out with a jump starter and went to your car.

You were still out there, trying (and failing) to start the car. Your head rested against the steering wheel in defeat, and you didn't even notice Simon pulling his car around.

"Hey neighbor," Simon said when you seemed to have given up. "Need a jump?"

He got out of the car with the jump starter and finally got a good look at you. A cute blue dress that stopped just below the knee, black boots, and your hair and makeup were done up in a way he never saw before. You were wearing a gold chain with a small heart dangling from it, and his eyes lingered on it for a moment. You looked ready to go out and have fun, and yet you were stuck in your driveway. All dolled up with somewhere to go, but unable to actually go… It’s a tragedy of epic proportions.

"God, yes...Thank you." You sighed heavily and watched as Simon hooked your car up.

"You've gotta look into a jump starter," he said gruffly. "Better yet, actually make a bloody appointment for your car."

"Sorry, but with what money?" You asked half-jokingly. "You've seen the prices, what am I supposed to do if my car needs a little more than some light maintenance? Hell, even 'light maintenance' could get expensive..."

"I could pay." He suggested after your car finally started.

"Thank you... And no, Simon." You relaxed a bit and pulled out of your parking spot. "I couldn't ask you to do that."

"I'm offering, love." He said, and you could tell that he meant it. This man was more than ready to shell out whatever amount you needed, he had the paycheck to do it.

He muttered something about you being stubborn as you drove off.

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Seemingly out of the blue, the worst heatwave your area had seen in years hit. Simon couldn't handle the heat well, but when he saw how almost all of your flowers withered up as a result of the heat... Well, that just made the heatwave even more unbearable. Not only was it an eyesore to see in your shared backyard, but your reaction to the devastation was worse.

"I spent all spring planting these!" You had complained to him, gesturing to the wilted flora. "All spring, hours of planting… For nothing!"

The flowers certainly looked dead, but some research told Simon that they could probably be saved. After a trip to the nearest garden center, he took to the backyard and busied himself in fixing what the heat ruined.

You found him back there, kneeling in the dirt without a shirt on. His pale, scarred skin was starting to take on a pinkish hue in the brutal summer sun. Sweat beaded on his brow and clung to his short, pale blonde hair. And for a while, you just stood there on the back porch... Watching as Simon worked tirelessly in the garden. He set up something to shield the flowers from the sun, and now he was carefully watering the dry soil. 

When Simon finished up, you came outside with a glass of lemonade for him, condensation already formed on the glass. Your eyes were on every part of him but his face, but he ignored it as he drank the contents glass in one go. To be fair, the short sundress that you were wearing was just as distracting and his eyes felt like wandering a bit.

"Thank you, Simon... Really, you–"

"I didn't 'ave to, I know," he said before you could finish. "I got bored, and I wanted to."

"Fine, okay... Now come inside, you're gonna burn up out here." You insisted, waving him inside. "I made too much lemonade, you could help me finish it."

You ended up adding some vodka to the remainder of the lemonade and had a drunken movie marathon with Simon, cackling and pointing out the terrible acting until the wee hours of the morning. You sent him off to his side of the house with a kiss on the cheek.

₊˚ ✧ ━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━ ✧ ₊˚

After a particularly annoying deployment and a mission that had him screaming orders until his voice was gone, Simon came home to find you bringing some groceries inside... A lot of groceries. You must've gone out and done enough shopping for the next two weeks, your back seats were down and your car was filled from front to back with bags and boxes.

After he decided that his muscles could stand to lift a bit more, Simon lumbered over and started unloading while you were inside. When you came back out, you yelped in surprise before realizing who was taking your stuff out. The masked man was not a thief, just your hulking six-foot-whatever neighbor being helpful again.

"Oh goddammit, Riley! You scared the shit out of me!" You said, a laugh escaping you. "Jesus, that mask... Did you seriously drive home in it?" You rarely saw him in the skull mask, he only showed it to you after he mentioned it offhandedly during one of your movie nights.

"One of my mates drove me back," he explained, taking two armfuls of groceries. "But yeah... Wore this the whole drive."

"I don't think I'd be able to focus if my passenger looked like the grim reaper... But that's just me," you joked as you followed him inside with a few more bags. "And your voice sounds... Pony."

Simon gave you a withering side-eye, but he was absolutely grinning under the balaclava. "... Pony?"

"Mmhm... You know... A little hoarse...?" You grinned at your own stupid joke, gently bumping your hip against Simon's as you passed him. "Sorry, I spent too much time with the couple down the road... Goddamn dad jokes. Speaking of which, some shit went down between them and the new neighbors while you were gone."

"Oh? Fill me in," Simon muttered as he helped put some things away. “I gotta hear this shite.”

"I will... But only if you help me with this soup recipe I've been dying to try."

Well... Soup is good for a sore throat... How could Simon say no?

₊˚ ✧ ━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━ ✧ ₊˚

Flu season was a bitch, but thankfully Simon's immune system is stronger than anything that could attack it. You, on the other hand... You were suffering. You were holed up on your side of the semi-detached house, not coming outside for anything or anyone.

Simon only found out after texting you one night, having not seen you for two whole days... And the intense coughing fits that he could hear through the wall weren't comforting him.

si: You alive over there?

Not even a minute later, you texted back:

🖤: im fine, just running a fever... turns out that it wasn't allergies, just gotta wait it out and stay inside for a few days 💪

si: Did the doc give you a prescription?

🖤: yeah, but I don't think I need it, looked it up and it said I could probably heal naturally... tea with honey and lemon and some painkillers for the headaches are enough, i'll survive lol

si: Pick your prescription up.

You responded with some stupid gif that just said "nuh-uh" and Simon could hear you cackle through the wall... Which was followed by another coughing fit and a pathetic wheeze/whine.

She deserved that one, he thought as he put on his hoodie and gloves.

Simon didn't dignify you with another response. Instead, he drove to the pharmacy for your prescription and picked it up himself. Then, he stopped by your favorite deli to grab a quart of your favorite soup, some orange juice, and cough drops for your poor throat.

He banged on your door a couple of times when he got back and left the bags on the porch before going back over to his door. When you came out seconds later, a plush throw blanket draped around you like a cape, he waved his gloved fingers at you.

"Special delivery for a stubborn woman," he called over the hedge. "I don't know how you survived this long if this is how you handle being sick."

"Hey... I told you I have tea and painkillers," you protested, your voice raspier than usual. "But thanks, Si... Really, thank you."

"You can thank me by getting better soon... Got a deployment coming up, and we still have to finish watching that stupid baking show together."

"We could just watch it at the same time and stay on call–"

"No, it's not the same," Simon insisted impatiently before waving you off. "Now go on, get in there and get better. Take your fucking meds."

Miraculously, you did end up getting better a couple of days before he had to go. Together, you watched the last few episodes on his couch.

₊˚ ✧ ━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━ ✧ ₊˚

Simon looked out for you however he could. At first, it was just because you were a woman living alone, or just the woman he shared a wall with. Maybe it's because he's a little old-fashioned, or maybe it's because he mentally swore to protect any woman after he couldn't protect his own mother.

But after a while, he genuinely did want to help you because it’s you. You’re funny, too stubborn for your own good, quick as a whip, independent as hell... He had to back off a few times when you were truly adamant on doing something on your own. You never asked him for help, even if you needed it, and he took any opportunity to help you when you'd allow it. Truthfully, you were the one person outside of his job that he grew attached to like this... And probably the only person he felt anything deeper for.

Simon went for daily runs when the weather allowed, and sometimes you'd go for a run a little later in the morning. You'd be waiting at the semi with something light for him to eat and a cup of coffee when he got back, and he did the same for you when you returned. Normally, he got back at 7:30 am or so. You would always come back closer to noon.

So when it was going on 2 pm and you still hadn't returned, Simon was getting antsy. He texted you, but realized you rarely looked at your phone when you were on a run. Tired of peeking out of the window every few minutes, he took to pacing to and from his front door like a caged lion. The only other time you were late was when your mom was in town and you warned Simon beforehand. Hell, if you stopped to see someone you would've shot him a text or called. This was abnormal.

Simon started to consider phoning Price or Gaz to see if either was in the area, give them a description of you so they could keep their eyes peeled. Hell, he’d find a way to get Johnny in on it if he wasn’t in fucking Scotland. But then, your voice rang out from down the sidewalk.

"Babe...! Hey, babe!" You yelled out to him, waving a hand. "I'm back!"

Babe...? You had a lot of nicknames for each other, but 'babe' wasn't one of them. Simon looked at you, and there was a look on your face that he never saw before... And he decided that he never wanted to see it again. It was distress, and the reason for that look could be seen just over your shoulder.

A man who Simon had never seen before was following you, and it looked like he was about to say something but stopped when he saw Simon. When you sped the rest of the way over to Simon, he held his arms out to catch you. His eyes never left the man, even as you clung to him... He could feel you shaking like a leaf, heard the fear in your voice as you whispered to him... And he fucking hated it. Hated that you felt unsafe, hated the man that made you feel this way. 

I should tear this bastard a new fucking asshole… If looks could kill, the creep would be vaporized on the spot.

"Si... I've been trying to lose him this whole time... He won't stop," you whispered into his ear before pulling back to look at him. You didn't ask him, not outright, but your eyes begged for help.

Simon gave the man one last glower before he smiled and gently pressed a kiss to your forehead. "Hey, love... I was wondering where you were," he said, loud enough that the creep could hear. "How was the run?"

Your tight smile relaxed a bit as you looked up at him, a shaky exhale leaving you. Instead of answering right away, you tilted your head up to peck Simon on the lips. The simple gesture made his heart leap in his chest and his eyes fluttered shut for a moment... It's not like he hadn't thought of it before, and he wished it was under better circumstances.

"It was fine, but I'm kinda tired now..." You glanced back and saw that the man decided to cross to the other sidewalk. Simon could feel your muscles relax as you turned back to kiss him again, whispering against his lips, "Fuck... Thank you, Si."

"D'you need me to follow him? Report him? Did he–" His words were disrupted yet another kiss, and he almost kissed back but held off, convinced it was just because you thought the guy was still there. "Hey, he's gone..." Simon's face felt like it was on fire... A man like him, reduced to blushing like a schoolboy.

"S-shit, sorry... Uh, we could file a report, sure," you murmured as you leaned back a bit. "And sorry about... That..."

"It's alright. I didn't mind," he reassured you as he gently guided you to his door. "Hell, I think you should've gone harder with the kiss... Really sell it to that fucking weirdo."

A surprised chuckle bubbled out of you and Simon felt a stab of pride to be the one to comfort you. He felt pretty proud of you too, because even though you didn't ask for help verbally... You, the self-reliant woman that you were, still came to him for help.

"You think so?" You asked once you were both inside. "That might be the last I see of that guy, but just in case I have to deal with another... I don’t know, it’s been a while since I really kissed someone, so maybe you could help me…" You trailed off, and Simon pulled you against him again as soon as the door closed.

"Help you...? What're you asking me, love?"

That hurts in ways you do not have the energy to fully name yet.

You know why. Of course you do. You are not stupid. The bakery is compromised. The house might be watched. The entire point of what happened was that somebody mapped the shape of your life and folded themselves into it cleanly enough to lift you out.

Still.

When the SUV finally stops and the door opens and Price says, "Inside," some exhausted animal part of you wants to argue until your throat gives out.

You want your own bed.

Your own shower.

Your own mug.

You want Percy in the kitchen window and the stupid scratch on the third stair and your apron on its hook and the smell of your own laundry soap on your own towels.

Instead you get a safe house.

It is not awful.

That almost makes it worse.

A rented place somewhere anonymous enough that even you do not know exactly where you are. Two storeys. Neutral furniture. Too clean. Too little history in the walls. A kitchen stocked by someone who thinks safety looks like bottled water and neatly stacked tins.

Laswell talks you through logistics like she is trying to be kind by keeping her voice level.

Medical checks first.

Hydration.

A doctor who looks at your pupils and your throat and the bruises at your wrists and the puncture mark at your neck and asks questions you answer as best you can through the fog.

Shock, they call some of it.

Dehydration. Muscle strain. Minor chemical aftereffects. Sleep disruption.

Minor.

You want to laugh every time they use that word.

The bruises along your hip and shoulder are not minor to you. The way you wake up with your heart racing because the room is too quiet is not minor. The fact that your body still flinches when a door opens without warning is not minor.

But you say nothing because the doctor is not the person you are actually angry with.

He gives you tablets for sleep you do not take the first night.

You tell yourself it is because you do not want to be groggy if something happens.

The truth is simpler.

You do not trust sleep anymore.

The first night in the safe house, everyone expects relief to do something magical.

The room is warm. The sheets are clean. Simon is here. Price and Gaz and Johnny moved through hell and got you out. Makarov did not win the whole thing. The bad room is behind you. The door locks from your side now.

That should be enough to make your body understand you are safe.

It is not.

You wake twice in the first three hours anyway, choking on air and grabbing for a wall that is not there.

The third time you wake, Simon is not in the bed.

The lamp by the door is on low.

His shape is in the armchair by the window.

Fully dressed.

Gun in his hand.

Your stomach drops.

For one horrible second you think someone came in. That something happened and you missed it.

Then he turns his head at the sound you make and you see his face in the dim light.

Tired. Watchful. Awake in the wrong way.

Not emergency.

Just... there.

"What are you doing," you whisper.

He glances down at the weapon like he forgot it was in his hand.

"Couldn't sleep."

That is all.

No apology. No explanation.

You sit up, blanket pooled in your lap.

"You could've woken me."

He looks at you for a second, something unreadable moving behind his eyes.

"You needed rest."

You do not know what to say to that.

So you lie back down.

And stare at his outline in the chair until your body gives in to exhaustion a second time.

The days after blur together in little ugly pieces.

Water bottles on the bedside table.

Medical questions.

Price on the phone in the kitchen, voice low and clipped while he coordinates things you are not allowed to hear in full.

Laswell arriving with files and leaving with more lines around her mouth than before.

Johnny bringing food and trying very hard not to treat you like glass.

Gaz checking windows, locks, entry points, then checking them again as if he can build peace out of repetition.

Theo and Maya both send messages that make you cry because they are too normal. Just small things. We miss you.

The bakery is closed.

That fact lives like a stone in your chest.

Not permanently, they say.

Just for now.

Assessments. Security sweep. Ongoing threat review. All the language of bureaucracy laid over the simple truth that somebody stole you from your own counter and now your whole life has yellow tape around it in everyone's head whether there is actual tape or not.

You do not go near it.

You do not bake.

That is the part that surprises you most.

No one forbids it. No one says you cannot walk into the safe house kitchen and make something if it would help.

You simply... cannot.

The thought of flour under your hands makes your throat close.

The thought of butter tarts makes you feel physically ill.

So you do not.

You drink water.

You take the offered toast.

You shower and stare at the drain and do not look at your body too closely because the bruises tell stories you are not ready to hear out loud.

The reunion does not fix anything.

That is the truth no one wants to say in the first week.

You are back.

Simon is back.

You are breathing the same air again.

It still feels like there is glass somewhere between you.

At first it is subtle enough that you almost tell yourself you imagined it.

He is there.

Always there in the technical sense.

In the safe house. In the next room. On the stair. On the porch with Price. In the kitchen at three in the morning drinking coffee that has gone cold because he forgot it in his hand.

But he is not with you the way you expect him to be.

Not after that rescue.

Not after the transport and the way he held your face like he could not remember his own name.

He becomes careful.

That is the first word for it.

Painfully, exquisitely careful.

He asks what you need in that low, calm voice he uses when he is working very hard not to startle anything. He brings you tea. He checks your meds. He answers every practical question you ask.

He does not climb into bed with you.

The first two nights he stays in the chair by the window or on the floor by the door. The third night, you wake and he is gone entirely. Price tells you in the morning, too casually, that Simon took the second room for a few hours because Johnny was snoring and someone had to save the walls.

You know that's bullshit.

You also know Price is lying for him.

By the fifth day, Simon is sleeping downstairs on the couch with a gun on the table beside him and one eye half open every time the house settles.

You stand at the top of the stairs one night in borrowed socks and one of his old shirts and watch him from the landing.

He is not asleep. You can tell from the set of him.

"Simon."

He looks up immediately.

Not annoyed. Not startled. Just... braced.

"What are you doing down here," you ask softly.

His gaze flicks to the hall behind you as if checking your footing. "Could ask you the same."

You grip the banister harder.

"Come to bed."

The words hang there.

For one terrible heartbeat, you think he might actually say yes.

Then his face changes. Not much. Just enough.

"I'm alright here."

Your chest tightens.

"Why?"

He looks away first.

"Need to keep watch."

"There are three other men surveying this house," you say. "One of them is literally Price."

His mouth twitches faintly, but there is no warmth in it.

"Aye."

"That means you don't need to sit on the couch all night like some Victorian ghost."

He scrubs a hand over his jaw.

"Go back upstairs."

It is not an answer.

That is the first crack.

Not the distance itself. The fact that when you push at it, he does not meet you halfway. He redirects. He smooths. He sends you gently back toward silence.

You go because you are tired and sore and more fragile than you want to admit.

In bed, alone, you lie awake and stare at the door and think this is not what rescue was supposed to feel like.

The move back home happens a week later.

Laswell says the house has been cleared. The street watched. Routes monitored. Temporary systems in place. The language changes, but the feeling does not. Safety is still something everybody talks around instead of handing you cleanly.

You walk into your own living room and burst into tears over a stupid mug on the sideboard.

Not because it is sentimental.

Because it is yours. Because Percy is somehow still alive. Because the rug is exactly where you left it and the couch has the same stupid throw folded over one arm and for one moment you can almost believe this is return rather than aftermath.

Simon is there.

Again. In the practical sense.

He carries your bag in. Checks the windows. Checks the locks. Walks every room once before he sets anything down.

You watch him do it.

The old you might have teased.

Now you just let him.

He does not come upstairs that first night.

He says he is doing one last perimeter check and then you find him on the couch at one in the morning with his head tipped back and the lamp still on and the gun on the table again.

The couch.

Always the couch.

Or his room at base.

Or, when you wake and he is not in the house at all, Johnny's spare room, apparently, though you only learn that from Gaz when he lets it slip in the kitchen and immediately looks like he wants to swallow the sentence back down.

"Johnny's what?"

Gaz glances toward the window. "He was there last night."

"Why?"

He says nothing for a second too long.

Then, "Didn't want to be alone."

That should comfort you.

It does not.

Because he also does not want to be with you.

That is what it starts to feel like.

Your husband is orbiting your life from the wrong distance. Too far to touch. Too close to forget.

When he is home, he is polite.

That is the worst part.

If he were angry, you could fight anger.

If he shouted, you could shout back.

If he cried, maybe you could hold him and something would break open between you cleanly.

Instead he is formal in a way that makes your skin hurt.

You ask if he is eating and he says, "I grabbed something."

You ask if he will be back before midnight and he says, "Don't wait up."

You ask if he wants company while he checks the back lock for the sixth time and he says, "No, you get some rest."

No, you get some rest.

No, I'm alright.

No, don't fuss.

No, not tonight.

He does not touch you unless there is a reason. A hand at your elbow on the stairs. Fingers brushing your shoulder if you go too still during a conversation. The lightest possible kiss to your forehead when he leaves sometimes, the kind you might give a feverish cousin.

It is not enough.

It is unbearable.

The second week home, he stops staying in the house every night.

Not openly. Not announced.

He just... is not there sometimes.

His boots gone from the mat. His hoodie missing from the hook. The side of the bed cold and untouched because he never came near it in the first place.

You ask Price once, in the kitchen while he is pretending to make tea and very clearly giving you the chance to corner him.

"Where is he?"

Price does not lie well when he is choosing not to. That is the strange blessing of him.

"Base some nights," he says.

"Some?"

"Some."

You stare at the kettle.

"He hasn't slept in our bed once since we got back."

Price is silent.

That tells you more than any answer would have.

You swallow.

"Is he upset with me?"

Price's head comes up so fast it is almost shocking.

"No."

The certainty in it makes your throat ache.

"Then what?"

He looks like he hates being the person in the room without enough clearance to say the thing and with too much decency to pretend there is no thing.

"He thinks he's protecting you," Price says finally.

The words land strange.

"From what?"

Price's mouth goes flat.

"That," he says quietly, "is the wrong question."

Then he takes the kettle off the hob and hands you a mug as if the conversation has to end there because it does.

You hate him a little for it.

Not because he is wrong.

Because he is right and you still do not understand enough.

Simon does not say any of it himself.

That is what turns confusion into pain.

You can survive hard truths. You are not made of spun sugar. You have lived through enough ugly things to know that naming them is usually kinder than silence.

But he does not name this.

He leaves you to fill in the blanks.

And every blank your hurt can reach for fills itself with the same poisonous thought.

Maybe he cannot look at you without seeing what happened.

Maybe you came back wrong.

Maybe rescue changed the shape of you into something fragile or contaminated or too complicated to bring back into a marriage bed.

Maybe you are the problem now.

You know, rationally, that trauma lies.

You also know that when the house is dark and your husband is on some other couch in some other room with his phone on silent, rationality is not always the loudest thing in the room.

After the first week back, he stops coming to see you at all on some days.

Not because he vanishes entirely.

Because he is always somewhere adjacent.

Base. Briefing. Patrol. Safe contact meeting. Price. Laswell. Whatever new shape this all has taken in the aftermath.

You try to call once in the middle of the afternoon because the plumber is asking a question about the downstairs tap and you cannot remember whether Simon said yes to replacing the whole fixture or just the washer.

It goes to voicemail.

You text instead.

You coming home tonight.

The dots do not appear for a long time.

When they do, it is one line.

Don't think that'd be good.

You stare at it until the screen dims.

Then you type and erase five different replies before settling on the one that feels least like begging.

Okay.

You send it.

Then you sit on the edge of the bed in the house that is supposedly yours and his and feel more alone than you did in the room without windows.

Because there, at least, the absence had a shape.

This does not.

This is your husband choosing distance and not explaining enough for you to hate him cleanly.

Maya comes by that evening with Chinese food and one look at your face makes her put the bags down without even taking her coat off.

"What happened?"

You laugh once because apparently that is your body's chosen sound for devastation now.

"Nothing dramatic," you say. "Which is the problem."

She sits beside you on the bed and waits.

You hand her your phone.

She reads the message. Her whole expression hardens in a way that is not aimed at you.

"Oh, I'll kill him," she says softly.

You shake your head immediately. "Don't."

"I know he's traumatised," she says. "I know he thinks he's doing something noble and tortured and male. But this is cruel."

The tears come too fast to stop when she says it out loud.

Not because you want her to be right.

Because some traitorous, exhausted part of you is relieved that someone else can see it too.

Cruel.

Not intentionally, maybe. Not maliciously.

Still cruel.

"I don't know what I did," you whisper.

Maya turns so sharply her knee bangs yours.

"You didn't do anything."

"Then why won't he come home?"

She looks at you for a long second.

"Because he's an idiot," she says. "A dangerous, loyal, traumatised, deeply in love idiot who has decided the answer to almost losing you is to make you lose him first so the bad men can't take what he already threw away."

You laugh and cry at once.

"That's such a terrible plan."

"It is the worst plan any man has ever had and I include war in that."

You lean into her shoulder and let yourself shake for a minute.

The thing that hurts most is not that Simon is gone.

It is that he is choosing this while you are still trying to remember how to sleep through the night. That he is stepping back from the wreckage as if your survival made you strong enough not to need him in the aftermath.

As if rescue was the finish line.

As if being alive is the same as being okay.

It is not.

And some part of him knows it is not, because if he truly thought you were fine he would not be checking locks from a distance and sleeping with a gun and haunting your life like a bodyguard with a broken heart.

Both things are true.

He thinks he is protecting you.

You hear it as rejection.

And each day he lets the silence hold that shape, the wound deepens.

The third week home, you stand in the kitchen alone with your phone in your hand and stare at the dark backyard through the glass.

You can see his reflection in the window only because your mind wants him there.

Broad shoulders. Watchful face. The line of a man you know better than your own.

There is no one behind you.

The room is just a room.

The house just a house.

The bed upstairs still too big for one.

You lock the back door. Check it twice. Turn the hall light on. Leave the television murmuring low in the living room because quiet has become the wrong kind of company.

When you finally go upstairs, you do not bother with your side of the bed.

You curl up in the middle like a child taking too much space on purpose.

Your phone lights once on the nightstand.

Not him.

Johnny, of all people.

You up?

You almost do not answer.

Then you type:

unfortunately.

The dots appear instantly.

Simon’s at ours. Wifes about to tell him he's a moron. Thought you should know.

Your breath catches.

You stare at the screen.

Then backspace through the first three replies that come to you because all of them are too naked.

Finally you send:

don't tell me how that goes.

Johnny replies:

Too late. I already plan to.

It should make you smile.

It almost does.

Instead you put the phone face down and lie there in the middle of the bed with your arms wrapped around yourself and think about your husband sleeping in another house because he has convinced himself that loving you from up close is what got you taken.

You do not know yet how much worse that logic can get if no one stops him.

You only know that he is not gone because he does not care.

He is stepping back because he cares too much and in the worst possible way.

It is still abandonment.

It still hurts.

And somewhere out there, while everyone who loves him sees this for the horrible idea it is, Simon is actively trying to become less reachable to you in the name of keeping you alive.

💀🖤🍰💀🖤🍰💀🖤🍰💀🖤🍰💀🖤🍰

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Most peoples eyes did something when they saw the mask, a flinch, a flicker of perfeormed indifference that was its own kind of tell. Yours didnt do anything. You just filed it away, the same way youd file away a terrain feature or a sightline and moved on. Simon decided this meant nothing. He decided a lot of things meant nothing that year.

He made your life difficult, in the specific surgical way he knew how. He didnt yell. Yelling was for men who needed an audience. He just went quiet and precise, the kind of quiet that made junior operators sweat through their base layers. He corrected your stance during breach drills with two words. He let silences sit in debriefs a beat too long after you spoke, just to see if you'd fill them.

You never did.

You'd wait him out, jaw tight and then repeat exactly what you'd said the first time. undiluted.

By the third month he'd stopped expecting the transfer request that never came.

By the sixth, he'd caught himself, twice, checking where you were in a stack before he checked where Gaz was, and told himself it was tactical instinct. That was all.

There wasnt a scene where the ice broke. If you'd asked either of you to point to a single moment, You'd have struggled. It was more like weather than an event, a slow pressure change neither of you registered until you were ready until you were already standing in the rain. But if he was pressed , if someone put a knife to it, Simon would have said Al-Mazrah.

The hospital had been cleared three days earlier, or so the intel said. The intel, as it turned out, was written by someone who had never been within four hundred miles of Al-Mazrah and they would very much like to keep it that way.

By the time Taskforce 141 worked out that they'd walked into a live position, Price and Soap were pinned on the ground floor and you and simon were cut off two flights up, in a pedriatric ward with half the ceiling on the floor and the other half threatening to join it.

There is a particular smell to old concrete dust mixed with cordite that never fully leaves you. Simon had it in his sinuses for a week afterward. He remembers being annoyed about that, in the stupid sideways way your brain gets annoyed about small physical discomforts when it cant process the actual danger you're in.

He was behind an overturned desk, hands moving through a mag change on pure muscle memory, when he clocked the stain spreading across your shoulder. It didnt announce itself. You hadn't gasped or gone pale or done any of the things people did in the films. You'd just kept firing, controlled three round bursts, your breathing maybe half a beat off from where it should have been, which was the only tell that gave you away to someone who'd spent a decade learning to read exactly that kind of thing.

"You're hit."

"Through and through. Missed the artery." You didn't even glance over. "Worry about the stairwell"

He hauled you back by the strap of your plate carrier anyway, Because there are orders you follow and orders you don't and bleed out quietly while i focus on the door was never going to be the one he followed.

You swore at him. Properly, inventively, in a way that under different circumstances he might have found funny, and let him drag you behind the pillar without actually fighting him on it, which told him more than the swearing did.

The QuikClot went in hard, and you hissed through your teeth and grabed his forearm and that was when it happened. Not the shooting, Not the dust. The name.

"I've had worse paper cuts, Riley" you said, and then, a beat later, softer, involuntary: "simon,"

He'd been called Riley for years. Lieutenant, sometimes, when someone was being formal, or Ghost, when they wanted the mask instead of the man. Nobody used his first name anymore; he'd made sure of that, the way you make sure of anything you're trying to bury.

Hearing it now. stripped of rank, said by someone with her hand fisted white, knuckled in his sleeve, it did something he didnt have the tactical term for. He filled the feeling away with everything else he wasn't ready to look at directly and finished the dressing.

You fought your way out back to back. It wasn't cinematic. It was ugly and loud and mostly consisted of Simon shouting ammo counts and you correcting his angles, and somewhere in the middle of it he noticed he'd stopped watching you to critique you and started watching you becausehe trusted you without reservation, to cover the six inches of his blind spot that had gotten better men than himself killed.

That was as far as it went for a year. Trust, unspoken, load bearing. He told himself that was the whole of it and mostly belived himself.

Vondel broke something loose that trust alone hadn't.

Forty eight hours in flooded sewer tunnels chasing a target who kept one step ahead of the two of you the entire time does something to a person's nervous system that doesn't switch off just because the op is technically over.

Simon sat alone in the safe house kitchen at two in the morning with a bottle of whiskey that tatsed like it had been distilled specifically to punish him, still wearing the balaclava rolled up over his nose, staring at wallpaper that had probably been ugly even before it started peeling.

You came in wearing sweatpants and looking like you hadn't slept in a week, because you hadn't. You didn't ask for permission. You sat, took the bottle and drank from it like it owed nyou money and set it back down.

"Cant sleep." you said.

"Close your eyes and pretend."

"Every time i close mine i can still smell the canal water." You looked at him. Really looked, the unguarded kind of look people only give you when they are too tired to keep the usual defences up. "How do you turn it off, simon?"

"I don't." he admitted, and the whiskey was doing exactly what whiskey does to the part of the brain that's supposed to stop you saying true things out loud. "I just find a smaller box to put it in."

He should have known where the converstation was headed and left the room. He'd been trained to recognise incoming threats from further away than this. Instead he sat there and let it happen, because for three years he'd been cold on purpose and he was tired, bone tired, the kind of tired that makes bad decisions look like small mercies.

What followed wasn't romantic and neither of you pretended it was. it was two exhausted people who'd been circling something for a year finally admitting, wordlessly, that neither of you wanted to be alone with the inside of your own head that particular night.

Simon set the rules before his boots had even properly landed back on the floor afterward, because setting rules was the only way he knew how to survive wanting something.

This means nothing. This stays between us. This is stress relief and nothing more.

You'd looked at him, not hurt, or not visibly, though later he'd wonder how much of that was performance on your part too, and given him the same flat nod you gave him on a battlefield.

"Loud and clear, Lieutenant."

For a year you kept to it with the same discipline you brought to everything else. Supply closets, the backs of transport vehicles, hotel rooms on either side of an op with a wall between them that felt thinner than it was. He was good at compartmentalizing; it was, after all, the only skill that had kept him alive this long. He told himself the arrangement was working. He told himself a lot of things.

Las Almas didn't ask his permission before it took the compartments apart.

When Shepherd's betrayal split the Task Force and Shadow Company started hunting them through streets that had gone from merely dangerous to actively hostile.

Simon lost contact with three quarters of his team inside the first ten minutes. He got Soap on comms, wounded but alive, and guided him through back alleys with the kind of cold, procedural calm that had made him useful to Price for a decade. But the channel that should have carried Price's voice, or Gaz's, or yours, stayed dead. Forty-eight hours of dead air is a long time to sit with the assumption that someone is gone.

He didn't fall apart the way people fall apart in films, with shaking hands and raised voices. It was quieter and worse than that. He simply stopped being able to access any part of himself that wasn't focused on getting to a rendezvous point, because if he let anything else in, grief, mostly, arriving early and uninvited.

He wasn't sure he'd be able to keep moving. He killed efficiently and without much feeling, because feeling had briefly become a liability he couldn't afford, and somewhere in that stretch of silence he understood, with the flat clarity of a man finally being handed a bill he'd been avoiding for years, that he had lied to himself for three years running.

It had never meant nothing. He'd just needed it to.

When he walked into the safehouse and found you sitting on a crate with your arm in a sling, dirt-streaked, alive, something in his chest did a thing he genuinely did not have language for. He crossed the room without registering Price, without registering Gaz, and pulled the balaclava off with one hand, letting his actual face be seen by a room full of people for the first time in longer than he could remember, because it didn't occur to him to care.

"Simon?"

He pressed his forehead to yours and just breathed for a second, badly, the breath catching in a way that was uncomfortably close to something he wasn't going to name in front of Price.

"I thought Graves—" His voice wasn't steady. He let it not be steady, which was its own kind of surrender. "I thought I'd lost you."

"Takes more than Shadow Company," you said, quiet, just for him, your hands coming up over his where they cradled your face, feeling the tremor he couldn't hide. "I'm right here."

Price, to his enormous credit, found something urgent to study on the tactical map and gave you both the thirty seconds of privacy the moment required.

It wasn't a clean turn after that. Simon didn't become a different man overnight because he'd had one bad forty eight hours and one good reunion, people don't work that way, whatever the films suggest.

He still went quiet for stretches. He still flinched, once, when you reached for his face too fast during a debrief and he hadn't seen it coming. But something had shifted permanently out of alignment with where it used to sit, and he stopped trying to force it back.

He told you that you were staying in the transport during the assault on Graves' position, and when you pushed back because of course you pushed back, he'd have thought less of you if you hadn't his voice dropped into a register that had nothing of the Lieutenant left in it.

"Please," he said, and the word cost him something visible. "I can't do what tonight needs if I'm wondering whether you're bleeding out somewhere I can't reach you. Let me know you're safe. That's all I'm asking."

You studied him for a long moment long enough that he wondered if you were going to make him say more, which he wasn't sure he had in him and then you nodded.

"I'll take comms. Go get our base back."

Weeks later, after Graves had gone up in a burning tank and Hassan had gone out a window in Chicago and the debrief paperwork had finally, mercifully, ground to a halt, you and Simon ended up on the same sofa in a London office that smelled like instant coffee and carpet cleaner.

Laswell was two rooms over, still filing something. The building had that specific, hollowed out quiet that settles in after everyone's adrenaline has nowhere left to go.

Your knee bumped his. You didn't move it away, and he didn't either.

"So," you said, not looking at him, turning your coffee cup slowly in your hands. "Is the arrangement over?"

He thought about it properly this time, instead of reaching for the easiest defensible answer. He thought about the nightmares that weren't going anywhere, about a job that would keep handing them exactly the kind of situations that got people killed, about the very real chance that one day the toll he'd spent his whole life fearing would come due after all. None of that had changed. He wasn't cured of it. He didn't think he ever would be.

But he thought, too, about forty-eight hours of dead air, and what he'd have given, in that stretch, to un-know how it felt to think you were gone. Whatever price loving you carried, it was smaller than that.

He took the cup out of your hands and set it down, along with his own, and reached for your fingers instead.

"I was a coward," he said. Not dramatically. Just honestly, which was harder. "Thought if I never said it, the universe wouldn't notice and wouldn't come collect. Turns out that's not really how it works."

"And now?"

"Now I don't much care if it notices." He looked at you properly, mask and all, nothing else left to put between you. "I loved you in that hospital. I loved you in that kitchen, though God knows I did everything I could to make sure you never found out. I loved you every hour I thought you were dead in Mexico. I can't offer you a quiet life. I don't know how to be anything other than what the job made me. But I'm not going to keep pretending I don't want to try."

You were quiet for a second, and when you finally leaned in and pressed your mouth to the scarred edge of his jaw, just below where the mask ended, he felt the single point of contact more than he'd felt entire firefights.

"You're not ruined," you said against his skin. "You're just haunted. I've been managing ghosts for four years running. I'm not planning to stop now."

He pulled you against him, careful of your shoulder out of a habit that would probably never leave him, and let himself, for the length of one exhale, just be a man sitting on an ugly office sofa with someone he loved, instead of a weapon waiting for its next assignment.

It wasn't a happy ending, exactly. Neither of you was naive enough to call it that. But it was, for the first time in a very long time, a beginning he didn't feel the need to brace against.

the messages overlay the porn playing on your phone screen one by one.

you don't pause the video right away - let yourself stay in the little bubble of horny you're trying to build. the bathwater is going lukewarm around you, but your skin feels warmer now from the small spark of anticipation that's beginning to grow in your stomach.

you can't help but feel a small twinge of grief that six months ago this same activity would have had you throwing yourself at simon - that six months ago you didn't even need to prepare to have sex with your husband. that it felt like the most natural thing in the world, not something you had to manufacture.

but then you remember his words "yer smilin' more. s'nice." and the grief fades, replaced with a pang of fondness so strong it almost hurts.

you let your eyes focus on the video again, letting the sounds of soft moans and the wet noise of skin on skin filter through your headphones; try and remember that the joy you see on the amateur couple's can be yours too.

you pause the video, typing back a quick message.

just getting out. haven't changed my mind. x

you dry off quickly, clean your teeth, slip into one of simon's old t-shirts; the black colour long faded to grey, band logo once printed on it lost to the passage of time. there's a hole in the hem and it's stretched out around the collar.

but it makes you feel safe, and that's what you need right now. not lace bodysuits and stockings. by the time you've padded into the bedroom you can hear the shower running - see that today's clothes didn't even make it to the washing basket in the bedroom, instead left in the one downstairs.

you wrinkle your nose - you know that means you're probably going to need to get the stain remover out later. but you appreciate that simon hasn't brought the smell of whatever it is up into your room. you light a few candles as you hear the shower switch off, pull the curtains and turn off the big light; leaving the room in a soft glow of the candles and bedside lamp.

little things you've learned make you feel more relaxed.

you're just settling on the edge of the bed as the en suite door opens - knees tucked up under your chin, heart beating a little faster than normal. simon appears, towel slung low on his hips, water still dripping down from his blonde hair and onto the scarred plain of his chest. his eyes find yours immediately, soft in the way they only ever are when he's looking at you.

"hi." you say softly, lips pricking up at the corners as you look at him.

fuck. it really does help the situation that he looks like that.

he crosses the room in two strides, one hand reaching to cup the back of your head as he leans down to kiss you - soft, slow; the kind of kiss that's a hello and isn't an expectation. his hand strokes up your bare thigh slowly; fingers pausing at the hem of your - his - t-shirt, stopping short of pushing it any higher. "hey dove," he replies softly. "missed this smile."

your smile. that's what he missed about this situation. that specific, soft, wanting smile that you only ever give him when you're about to get him in bed.

and it's that that has you pulling him down on top of you.

your t-shirt gets pulled off with careful hands; his towel lost somewhere to the floor. he ends up hovering over you, pressing kisses down your jaw, your throat, takes his time. his thumbs stroke an almost soothing pattern across your ribs as his lips trail lower - but when he reaches your stomach he pauses.

"tell me somethin'." he murmurs, "what were you watchin' in the bath?"

your face heats immediately, throat drying out as you stare down at him with an expression of absolute horror.

he just hooks your legs over his shoulders, presses a kiss to the inside of your thigh, looks up at you expectantly.

"just… soft stuff." you manage to murmur back. "couple in their bed. they… they looked like they were enjoying it. not… faking it."

he presses a kiss higher up your thigh, then another, before his breath is ghosting over your core. his tongue traces a slow line from slit to clit; gentle, soft, curling through soft heat like he's not in any kind of rush.

your hips twitch.

simon hums against you, an almost approving noise; like he's proud you actually answered. "yeah? what were they doin'?" he flicks his tongue against you again - more targeted this time. you gasp slightly as he settles in, one arm slung across your hips, fingers tracing over skin. every motion he makes is purposeful - circling your clit, dropping down down to dip inside you, tracing every inch of you with his tongue in lazy strokes.

your fingers thread through his still damp hair, nails scratching over his scalp in the way you know he likes. "they were taking it slow." you breathe. "she was on her back like this. he kept… talking to her. telling her how good she felt."

"slow." simon repeats, "like this?" his lips wrap around your clit, sucking gently before soothing it with broader strokes. your fingers tighten in his hair enough that he groans - all enjoyment and no pain. "you liked hearin' how much he wanted 'er?"

"yes-" the word breaks into a low moan as he slides two fingers inside of you, curling them perfectly against the spot he knows so well; mouth still focussed on your clit. "fuck, si…"

he doesn't speed up. just keeps a steady, slow rhythm - eyes flicking up to watch your face. he pulls away enough to murmur gently, "i want you dove - all the fuckin' time. everything you do is so fuckin' sexy i feel like i'm goin' insane." a soft kiss to your clit, "'m sorry if i stopped tellin' you." another kiss, "jus'… don't want you to ever feel like you 'ave to jus' cause i'd live inside you if i could."

your eyes burn, hands dropping to brush your thumbs over his cheekbones. "i know si. i promise."

he nods once, satisfied that you're not lying to make him feel better by the wet shine in your eyes. he drags the flat of his tongue over your clit again. "was she makin' the same little sounds you make? the ones that make me fuckin' melt?"

you nod, hips rolling under his mouth; the combination of his mouth and hands and the gentle questioning pulling you under. the porn in the bath feels distant now - a distant second to the real thing: simon riley between your legs, focused solely on you, coaxing your body to the edge with nothing but patience.

when you come its with a soft, shuddering cry - the same noise he loves so much - pleasure rolling through you in warm waves as simon works you through it. he waits until your fingers are limp in his hair before pulling back entirely, then kisses his way beck up your body until he's braced over you again, propped on one elbow so he doesn't squish you under his bulk.

"still good?" he murmurs. his cock is hot and hard against your thigh; twitching against you as he presses a kiss against your neck - but he doesn't push forward, doesn't press. just rests his forehead against yours.

“yeah,” you whisper, reaching between you to stroke him gently. “i want you, si. want this.”

he kisses you again, tasting like you, and lines himself up. he presses in -slow, perfect - eyes locked on yours the whole time. your fingers trace the scars on his jaw, eyes widening as he bottoms out; filling you in a way that's so achingly familiar now. he pulls back, pushes in again; soft, shallow rolls of his hips.

you brush your nose against his. "you don't have to be so careful with me, si."

"i want to." he replies simply. "been thinkin' about this since you brought it up. about makin' you feel good."

you, not him.

you thighs slide to wrap around his waist on the next thrust, taking hip deeper just by the nature of the position and he groans - a wrecked noise that carves itself into your memory.

"this alrigh'?" he murmurs against your neck, hips snapping just a little harder; thumb sliding into the space between your bodies to rub gentle patterns against your clit.

you nod, jaw going slack as you feel heat flood your stomach again. "yeah. s'perfect." you manage to murmur back.

he presses a kiss against the corner of your mouth, keeping up that same steady rhythm. "i love you. i love you when you're happy, an' i love you when you're sad. i love you when you're horny and climbin' me like a tree an' when all you want t' do is watch greys anatomy on repeat an' eat little moons. nothin', fuckin nothin', matters to me as much as you do."

you bury your face in his neck, cheeks hot, eyes burning, "i love you too."

your second orgasm is like sinking into warm water; nerves lighting up hot one by one, teeth sinking into the curve of his his shoulder with a whimper of his name. he follows immediately after, the pulse of your cunt around him dragging him over the edge, face buried in your hair as he breathes you in.

he doesn't pull out right away - just holds you, fingers stroking over sweat damp skin, pressing lazy kisses to your temple.

"still smilin' down there?" he murmurs softly.

you huff out a soft laugh, body and brain soft with satisfaction. "yeah, si. still smilin'."

"good." he kisses the top of your head. "that's all i need, dove."