rory

hi all who venture this far! i am a college student, so do not expect regular updates.

i only plan on writing for COD and ghost/simon as of now, but perhaps i will dabble into others in time.

i love fluff as much as a next person, but dark fics will probably be most of what i post, so general tws for suicide, depression, anxiety, self-harm (not graphic), rape, etc etc.

When you were a wee little thing, the creek behind your shack was the only thing that didn’t hurt to touch. It wound through the dirt like a vein, weak and murky, carrying with it the smell of rain and rot. You’d sit on its edge, dipping your toes in, pretending the water could wash you clean—wash away the things your father’s voice left behind. The air was always thick with gunpowder and tobacco inside, but down there, under the trees and beneath the moss, it almost felt like peace.

One summer day, the water bit back. A snapping turtle clamped down on the arch of your foot as you waded between rocks. Sharp as a trap, teeth masticating into the soft place between skin and bone. You remember the shriek that tore out of you—shrill, grotesque—and how the sound agitated even the birds from the trees. Before you could stop yourself, you were gulping down piquant creek water in hopes of finding air. Your father didn’t run to you. He came slow, cursing, his Remmington 700 still in hand. By the time he jerked you out, you were garbling up salty creek water, the grass imbruing into a vicious vermillion around your foot. He ripped the turtle off, tossed it into the mud, slapped his hand on your back, and trekked back to the woods with a vexed huff.

After that, you never touched the creek’s soupy water again, just slumped on rocks nearby. But sometimes—when your chest pinches taut, when your pulse batters so loud you can’t hear—you feel it pooling inside of your lungs no matter how far you’ve gotten from that creek. The brine, the burn, the weight of something trying to drag you under. And you remember that no matter how far you run from that place—that home, that feeling—the water always finds its way back to you.

“Blue.” Simon’s voice snaps you from your daze. “Hey—look at me.”

Tilting your head, just barely, your eyes settle at his sternum and the blond flicks of hair that swirl over the hem of his shirt. His scent hits you at this moment, the smoke and vetiver —and it’s all over you. And you’re all over him, hands on his belly and hips against his. He’s bleeding into you through your jeans—his warmth, his smell. The feeling blooming behind your ribs should be warm and fuzzy—dreamlike—and in a way, it is warm. But only for a second before the fire begins, and only a few more until he seeps in far enough in to feel the burn himself.

His fuscouseyes flick to the farrago behind you, past the curling paint and chipping wood of your front porch. “Jesus Christ…” he mutters through chapped lips, flaky and pink. A heavy boot is about to past the threshold until you stop him, fingers burning holes in his jacket like you forgot how to let go.

“Don’t,” you whisper. “Don’t go in there.”

His eyes are slivers now, glaring. “What d’ya mean, don’t go in ther’? Someone broke into your fuckin’ house.”

You shake your head. Trembling fingers still holding him in place, but only because he lets you. “You can’t be here.”

He’s looking at you with wild eyes now, darting all over your face as a predator would do before it’s about to catch its prey. “What’re you talkin’ about?”

“You need to leave.” The words feel like screws coming up, scraping your throat so raw you can almost taste the copper. “Please, Simon. Just—go home.”

You’re whining, childlike and annoying. Some part of you expects Simon to hit you for acting like this—like a baby. Your father surely would. You can feel the static prickling on your cheek for what should come, but it never does. Simon just stares at you like you’ve lost your mind. “Ya think I’m walkin’ out on you like this?” He should be angry, wild and thrashing. It’s confusing, really, why he’s not wild and thrashing, because that’s all you know. “Not a chance.”

You tug weakly at his sleeve. “I—I can’t explain r-right now, but if you stay—” Your voice breaks; the foundation is cracking. “It’ll just make it worse.”

His eyebrows are pinched, jaw tight. “Worse for who?”

You can’t say it. You can barely breathe, gulping up air like a fish out of water.

“Your door’s busted open, your whole place looks like a goddamn crime scene—why would I leave you ‘ere?”

Because he’ll come back. Because if he sees you, he’ll think I told. Because he’ll kill us both.

You swallow the thought until it hurts. “Please,” you whisper. “Just trust me and go.”

Simon exhales roughly through his nose, dragging a hand down his face. “You’re not makin’ any fuckin’ sense.”

You twist awkwardly beneath his grip to face the monstrosity, almost like he won’t let you see the damage that’s been done. The room’s wrecked: drawers gutted, contents spilled like open mouths. Receipts, a broken plate, the cheap watch from your mother’s jewelry box split clean down the middle.

“Blue.” His voice dips, gravelly and thick as molasses—like it was honeyed on his tongue. He keeps saying your name like he can’t get it out of his mouth, stuck to the roof of his mouth and crammed in his molars. You peer up, only to be pinned on the spot. His eyes tying you down, weighed down by his golden lashes. He doesn’t reach for you this time—he doesn’t have to.

“I’m sorry,” you rasped, turning away from him only because if he keeps looking at you like that, you’re going to fall apart. The uncomfortable feeling rolls around in your stomach, and you almost want to hurl at its unfamiliarity. Foreign in the way he makes you want to spill everything, tear your insides out and hand them to him. But he won’t. So, you swallow it down like a handful of pills without water.

“Don’t be.” His eyes sweep the room, then settle back on you, and you sort of hope this would never end. Not with the way hes looking at you, or how his calloused hand lies between your shoulder blades. Maybe if he keeps it there long enough he could brand you with his warmth. Claiming. Protecting. “You’re not stayin’ here tonight.”

“I have to clean,” you mumble, a coverup so transparent even you can see through its haze . “I-I can’t just—leave it like this.”

He shakes his head. “Nah. Grab wha’ you need, you’re comin’ with me.”

“No—” “Yes.” His tone leaves no room for air. Demanding. “Olive and Price’d skin me alive if I left ya here.”

“They don’t have to know.”

He scoffs; something caught between a laugh and a prayer. “I already know, and that’s enough.”

You shake your head, tears streaking your face. “You don’t understand, Simon.”

His honeyed, tired eyes drag over your face—over your red-ringed eyes and clumping lashes, pinched brows and rose cheeks. “Then jus’ tell me what’s goin’ on, Blue.”

But you can’t. You can’t tell him your father was here, or that his smell still hangs in the air so thick you can almost taste it. Or that if he sees either one of you, there’ll be blood—his or yours. The truth sits heavy in your throat, balled up and tense. When you push it down, you almost choke, and pray that this is purely a hyper-realistic dream. Squeezing your eyes shut until flashes of static burst behind them, only to find Simon staring right back at you.

Something in his face relaxes, like the fight drains out of him all at once. He exhales through his nose, slow and tired. The kind of sound men make when they’re giving in to something they shouldn’t. “Fine. Don’t tell me. But you’re not sleepin’ here tonight.”

For some reason you bite, cornered like a scared dog. Tail between your legs and teeth bared. Nervous. Mean. “Why do you even care?”

He huffs a laugh under his breath—bitter, almost disbelieving. “Don’ start with tha’ bullshit. I just fuckin’ do, alrigh’? Ya not staying ‘ere, so get what you need.”

“I don’t need anything. Don’ need this, don’ need you.” You bite at him without meaning to—sharp, defensive, all teeth. For the smallest second, something in his face tightens: his brow, the corner of his mouth, the smallest pinch like a bruise forming. It’s gone almost as soon as it appears, but it’s enough to make your stomach drop, enough to make your throat burn with guilt. That flicker—barely there—hits you harder than if he’d shouted. He’s been carefully picking his steps around you like you’re made of cracked porcelain, trying not to press where it hurts, and you’re still splintering under the weight of it. You can feel yourself fracturing, pieces shifting where he’s trying so carefully not to break you.

“Great,” he sighs, “Les’ go then.”

When he takes your arm, you don’t fight him. You let him guide you out the door, where the air outside nips at your cheeks, sharp as glass. And down the creaking stairs, where the snow crunches underfoot like something breaking. He doesn’t speak as he walks you to the truck. Just keeps a hand near you—not touching, but close enough that you feel the weight of it.

He opens the door, and it groans as he stands there with his hand in his jeans pocket and the other on the handle. Waiting. You shuffle in on your hands and knees, numb and trembling, snow flaking off your shoes and into the cab where they dissolve on the floor. The cab smells faintly of smoke and rain-soaked leather. When he starts the engine, the noise fills the space between you, a low hum that sounds too alive for how worn out you feel.

“Thank you,” you mumble, breath fogging up in the icy air.

He doesn’t answer right away, just taps his bruised knuckles against the steering wheel in restless rhythm. “You don’t gotta thank me,” he says finally before sliding the gear into drive.

The drive stretches out in silence, long and merciless. Flurries streaks across the windshield like static. You stare out at the snow, watching your reflection flicker in the glass—eyes hollowed out, mouth trembling. You don’t even realize you’re crying again until your turtleneck collar is damp. The tears come fast, unthinking, unstoppable. At first, you were a dripping faucet, but now you’re a burst pipe.

When the truck slows to a stop in a small alley way further in town, Simon kills the engine. The growl fades, leaving only the faint hum of the snowstorm outside. The world feels muted, too small to breathe in. Fifteen minutes of silence collapse into stillness—the kind that presses on your throat, feeling for a pulse and asking if you’re still alive underneath it all.

He exhales, the sound so rough around the edges. His jacket rustles as he turns toward you. His eyes find your trembling hands, the wet shine across your cheeks. You’re nothing but frayed edges—skin stitched together with borrowed thread. .

“Blue, I—”

But his voice—hoarse, almost breaking—is the undoing. The stitching gives out.

“I’m sorry,” you gasp, each word clawing its way out. “I’m s-sorry, I didn’t m-mean for you t-to have to deal with—this—with me.” The apology folds in on itself, useless. You press your palms into your eyes until color bursts behind them, until pain is all that’s left. You’re shaking, gasping at air like it’s water and you’re already drowning.

“Ya not botherin’ me, kid,” he says. The words are low, gruff, steady. Like he’s holding them together for both your sakes.

You glance at him—hesitant and raw. His face is worn. Rough and scarred in places you’ve never seen softness. But his eyes—his eyes aren’t. They are warm and welcoming, don’t pry too deep. They trace your face like he’s memorizing it, counting every sloppy stitch holding you together, every tremor. When your tic hits—eyes squeezing shut, jaw flicking—he doesn’t flinch, not even at the gross sound pulled from your throat. Doesn’t look away. Just watches, patient. Something strange and heavy blooms behind your ribs, hot and uncomfortable. Something that hurts more than it should.

Neither of you speak when he steps out and circles the truck. The cold rushes in as he opens your door, hinges moaning like they’ve already seen too much winter. His hand finds your elbow—not pushing, not pulling. Just there. Just enough to guide you out and keep you balanced as you sink into the snow.

You move through the alley in silence, mimicking his movements like a shadow, feet falling into the prints of his shoes as you trail behind him. The snow falls in soft sheets, catching the orange glow of the streetlights, making everything look falsely peaceful. Your shoes crunch through slush; his are heavier, slower. The air bites and burns. Up the concrete stairs, the railing slick beneath your palm, the day so still it feels staged.

He slides the key into the lock until it clicks, then steps aside to let you in.

Simon’s apartment feels like a memory you’re not supposed to touch. The brown leather couch slumps against the wall, tired and cracked. A muddy doormat bears the weight of two pairs of work boots, both caked with dried earth. They look like your father’s—the same kind of worn leather, the same ghosts of labor. Except your fathers mud never stopped at the mat. He dragged the dirt all the way through.

There’s a coat rack by the door with two jackets—both rugged, both used. One nicer leather one hangs untouched, except for the creased pack of Marlboros peeking from the pocket.

He kicks off his boots by the door. You do the same without thinking. He glances at you, brow raised. “What?” you ask, voice small and stupid.

“Don’ needa be takin’ off ya shoes if ya don’ wan’ to,” he mutters. “Ya clean. I’m not.”

Still, you leave them there. You pad quietly behind him in your socks, the ivory ones that look too soft for this place. The air inside feels different—lukewarm, stale, with the faint bite of cigarettes and vetiver. The smell is ghostly familiar. It lingers in your lungs the way icy air does—sharp, burning, and impossible to forget.

“Sorry ’bout the mess,” he sighs, rubbing a hand down his scarred face. “Don’t really got time to clean.” He steps back, letting you wander a little, though not too far. Beer cans sit on his living room cocktail table, surrounded by bills and pens. Knuckle wrap lays unraveled along the warped wood.

“Ya need somethin’ to drink?” he asks after a beat, nodding toward the fridge. “Water’s from the tap, but it’ll do ya.”

You nod, words stuck somewhere behind your teeth, sticky on your tongue. He doesn’t wait for more, just heads into the kitchen. You follow, slow, socks slipping against the cold floorboards. The kitchen smells faintly of smoke, sweat, and something metallic—iron maybe, or rust. It is a quiet disaster. Cabinets hang slightly crooked, counter’s chipped and streaked. Dishes piled high, half-dried, half-forgotten. A can of something you don’t recognize teeters on the edge of the sink. And yet—it’s domestic. Not perfect, but lived in. Safe, in a way that almost makes your chest ache with want.

“Glasses are in the cupboard,” he says over his shoulder. You reach up, trembling slightly, knocking a mug that wobbles before settling back into place. He grunts, not angry, just aware. “Careful.”

You fill it at the tap, the cold water running and dripping into your hands. You take a sip, letting it slide down your throat, letting it remind you you’re alive. Simon leans against the counter, watching you with heavy eyes, silent. There’s something unspoken in the way he studies you—like he’s waiting, calculating how much to push, how much to hold back.

After a long pause, he finally mutters, “Can shower if ya want it. Don’t gotta. Just thought—might help.”

You swallow, nodding faintly. Everything in his apartment is tainted by his smell—smoke and leather, faintly sharp and alive—and for a moment, you think maybe it’s safer here than anywhere else.

He gestures vaguely toward the bathroom. “Towels on the hook. Soap’s…whatever’s left. Don’t think I got fancy stuff.”

You move toward the small, grimy bathroom, water already hissing in the pipes somewhere behind the wall, like it’s been waiting for you. The tiles are cracked, the grout darkened with time and neglect, but the heat of the apartment bleeds through. The shower gurgles, warning you, beckoning you, and your hand hesitates on the knob.

The shower hisses to life, sputtering and spitting. The white tile walls close in around you, and for a moment, it almost feels like a padded room—if not for the veins of dirt streaking the grout and the brownish almost-blood-looking rust licking up from the drain. The water only knows two temperatures: burning hot or icy cold. You choose the burn—you always do. It hurts, naturally, but the sting feels clean, almost holy in its cruelty; washing you of your sins. You scrub yourself raw in silence, his bar of unscented soap melting against the washcloth, his half-used bottle of two-in-one barely foaming. Your mind drifts toward the razor on the shelf, the metal glinting like it knows your name and the exact way you would hold the blade. Taunting you. You reach toward it for just a second—just to feel the pull of temptation—then let your hand fall away, watching the steam swallow it whole.

When it’s over, the bathroom is a haze of heat and ghosts. You step onto the cold, chipped tile, water dripping from your knees, pooling around your feet. His towel hangs on the hook—rough, stiff, faded burgundy stains freckling its edges. The color turns your stomach, but you pull it around you anyway. It smells like soap and something older, something metallic and saccharine.

You pop open his mirror, expecting toothpaste and Advil. But instead—it’s a gallery of wounds. Rolls of gauze stacked in neat towers. Bottles of rubbing alcohol. Tubes of antibiotic cream and ointments you cannot pronounce. A small at-home stitching kit, still threaded with a loop of dark string, like it has just been used. This isn’t a construction worker’s medicine cabinet. No—it’s something messier. Something bloodier.

You should be unsettled, tummy tight and twisted, and maybe you are. But the burn on your chest is throbbing like it’s begging for mercy, and curiosity blends to practicality. You seize the opportunity, cleaning the angry wound with trembling hands, layering gauze over it until it’s wrapped tight and white beneath your collarbone. By the time you’re done, your chest is swollen beneath the sweatshirt—an armor of gauze, stiff and fluffy, but yours all the same.

You dress in the clothes he left out on the toilet seat—a hoodie that swallows you whole and sweatpants that drag like tired ghosts along the floor. You could disappear inside them if you wanted. Maybe you already have.

When the mirror clears, it catches you off guard. Your reflection looks unfamiliar—eyes sunken, mouth slack, a puppet wearing your skin and forgetting the pull the strings. And then you see it. The bruise.

A purple-green handprint circling your throat, blooming rot beneath the skin. You lift your fingers, trace the marks with the lightest touch, afraid they might bite back. You don’t feel anything—no anger, no sorrow, not even shame. Just a slow dread rising in your stomach at the thought of Simon seeing it. At the thought of his questions. At the thought of how much you don’t want to answer them.

The moment the door clicks shut, his head snaps up. He’s on the phone, voice low has he hunched over the counter, but the second he sees you—damp hoodie, pink-rimmed eyes, the faint wince you try to swallow—his whole expression changes into something unfamiliar—at least from him. Something cold. Something lethal.

“Yeah—gotta go,” he mutters, ending the call without waiting for a reply.

He turns fully, eyes dragging over you. Then he sees your neck, The air leaves his lungs in a violent, gutted sound. He steps closer but not too close—like he’s fighting himself. “Wha’ the fuck happened to your neck?” You freeze. You don’t even breathe. The bruise throbs beneath your jugular and carotid, beneath his burning stare—your pulse inside it like a warning bell.

“Allergic reaction,” you croak. The words scrape out, thin and pathetic. “From my sweater. From the wool.”

He stares at you. Long. Slow. Deadly quiet. His jaw flexes once, twice, thrice—like he’s grinding down your words until they are believable enough to swallow.

“That ain’t no allergy,” he says, voice dropping to something rougher. “Looks like fingers.” His nostrils flare. “Looks like some asshole’s fingers.” Your stomach sinks, and you think for a moment you may just be sick. Your short stack sloshing out of your stomach and onto his grimy tile. You swallow down the acid before it can burn its way out.

He takes a breath, shoulders rising with tension he can’t hide. “Blue.” He says your name like it hurts to say. And then something shifts. A thought. An ugly one. “This happen at work?” he asks, head tilting and voice low. Too low. You flinch before you can stop yourself, and his jaw tightens. That’s all it takes. Just that tiny flicker. “Ya boss, mhm? Ronny.” It’s not even a question, not even an accusation. A deduction. Something dark solidifying behind his eyes. “Olive said he was rough wit’ you. Didn’t know she meant like tha’.””

Everything in your body goes numb. You don’t answer. That’s answer enough. He looks away, jaw working so hard you hear the grind of his teeth. His fists clench—then unclench—then clench again. He is seconds from violence, and you’re reminded of the little sanctuary behind his mirror. With gauze and santispetic, rinses him clean of his anger. His sins.

When he finally looks at you again, he’s steering you by your shoulders into the living room, into better light to dissect you. He tilts your chin carefully with his thumb and forefinger, breathing deep and angry. His voice cracks down the middle when he speaks. “My father used to do the same to my mum.” A swallow, scratching the stubble on his neck with angry fingers. “I know a handprint when I see it. Don’ know why you keep lyin’ to me.” The words hit you like punches hit straight to your chest. Heavy and accusing. Guilt rushes up your throat until you taste metal. You think about Ronny’s hands. Think about Simon finding out. Think about what Simon would become if he knew.

You imagine blood. Blame. You imagine you holding the match to a fuse he’d burn himself on, adding fuel to his fire. Your knees threaten to give. “It’s nothing,” you whisper, because it’s the only thing you can offer that won’t start something—start whatever he has going on behind that mirror.

He stares at you—really stares—until something in him softens enough not to break you. “Tell me when you’re ready,” he murmurs. “’Cause that asshole layin’ a hand on you again.” He turns away—just slightly, just enough to breathe.

“I got work in a bit,” he adds, voice returning to that low, steady rumble. “Won’t be back till late.”

“D-do you want me to go home?” you ask, voice paper-thin.

He snorts, eyes falling shut as he sinks into the couch. “Dunno where else you’d run off to in weather like this. Couch is yours. And if ya want the bed, take it. Don’ matter, sweethart.”

You stand there in his hoodie, dripping water into his carpet, feeling small and misplaced and dumb.

He doesn’t open his eyes. But he hears every sound you make. He feels every tremor in the silence.

“Ain’t gotta tiptoe ‘round me, Blue,” he murmurs. “Ain’t gonna bite.”

You’re not so sure. Not of him. Of yourself—of what you’d do if he ever touched you gently again. Because every time he says your name like that, low and tired and almost gentle, something inside you aches in a way that feels dangerous—tempting. You stir on Simon’s couch for the next few hours before he leaves, folding into the leather like your pretending to be a pillow. A pillow he won’t notice. But he does. He asks you simple things. If you’re hungry, if you want anything before he leaves, if you want his phone number. “Just in case,” he grumbled, sticking a Post-It with his number scribbled on it in front of you.

When the front door clicks shut behind him, the silence settles thick and heavy, dust in an empty church. You turn the small neon-yellow Post-it over in your hand, thumb tracing the uneven strokes of his handwriting—the slanted digits of his number, the hurried better safe than sorry scrawled beneath it. You can still picture him hunched over the kitchen counter as he wrote it, Carhartt stretched tight across his shoulders, the posture of a man carved from storms and old scars.

He looked like someone you should never trust. Someone who belongs in shadows, in warnings whispered at the edge of town. A man you shouldn’t spend a night alone with—let alone curl up in his bed.

But the moment you burrow into his scarlet cotton sheets, something in your chest softens. It’s strange, the way safety sneaks up on you—quiet as a ghost, settling into your bones before you realize it’s there. His nightstand tells the story he never will: cigarette butts crowding a thick glass ashtray, a wrinkled newspaper folded like it’s been read a hundred times, and two empty tubes of Neosporin squeezed within an inch of their lives. All the little remnants of someone who patchworks himself together and keeps moving.

And you sit there, clutching the Post-it like it’s a relic, feeling safer in the bed of a man you can’t quite understand than you ever did in the house you came from. Beneath his popcorn ceiling, watching the fan that never turns, you wonder if this is what a real home is supposed to feel like—quiet, solid, a place where the walls don’t whisper secrets when you’re gone. For a foolish second, you let yourself pretend. Pretend that Simon is yours, that you belong here, that this room is something you’re allowed to want.

But the fantasy collapses as quickly as it forms, crumbling under the weight of its own impossibility. Heat rushes to your face and you roll onto your stomach, burying yourself in the scent of him before you can think better of it. It clings to everything—woven into the sheets, threaded into the seams of his pillow, soaked deep into the mattress. You breathe him in anyway, greedy and ashamed, because this—this borrowed bed, this lingering smell—is the closest you’ll ever be to something gentle. To him. And you tell yourself he’d never want someone as wrecked as you, so you close your eyes and force sleep to take you, curled in the ghost of a man who will never be yours.

When you were a wee little thing, the creek behind your shack was the only thing that didn’t hurt to touch. It wound through the dirt like a vein, weak and murky, carrying with it the smell of rain and rot. You’d sit on its edge, dipping your toes in, pretending the water could wash you clean—wash away the things your father’s voice left behind. The air was always thick with gunpowder and tobacco inside, but down there, under the trees and beneath the moss, it almost felt like peace.

One summer day, the water bit back. A snapping turtle clamped down on the arch of your foot as you waded between rocks. Sharp as a trap, teeth masticating into the soft place between skin and bone. You remember the shriek that tore out of you—shrill, grotesque—and how the sound agitated even the birds from the trees. Before you could stop yourself, you were gulping down piquant creek water in hopes of finding air. Your father didn’t run to you. He came slow, cursing, his Remmington 700 still in hand. By the time he jerked you out, you were garbling up salty creek water, the grass imbruing into a vicious vermillion around your foot. He ripped the turtle off, tossed it into the mud, slapped his hand on your back, and trekked back to the woods with a vexed huff.

After that, you never touched the creek’s soupy water again, just slumped on rocks nearby. But sometimes—when your chest pinches taut, when your pulse batters so loud you can’t hear—you feel it pooling inside of your lungs no matter how far you’ve gotten from that creek. The brine, the burn, the weight of something trying to drag you under. And you remember that no matter how far you run from that place—that home, that feeling—the water always finds its way back to you.

“Blue.” Simon’s voice snaps you from your daze. “Hey—look at me.”

Tilting your head, just barely, your eyes settle at his sternum and the blond flicks of hair that swirl over the hem of his shirt. His scent hits you at this moment, the smoke and vetiver —and it’s all over you. And you’re all over him, hands on his belly and hips against his. He’s bleeding into you through your jeans—his warmth, his smell. The feeling blooming behind your ribs should be warm and fuzzy—dreamlike—and in a way, it is warm. But only for a second before the fire begins, and only a few more until he seeps in far enough in to feel the burn himself.

His fuscous eyes flick to the farrago behind you, past the curling paint and chipping wood of your front porch. “Jesus Christ…” he mutters through chapped lips, flaky and pink. A heavy boot is about to past the threshold until you stop him, fingers burning holes in his jacket like you forgot how to let go.

“Don’t,” you whisper. “Don’t go in there.”

His eyes are slivers now, glaring. “What d’ya mean, don’t go in ther’? Someone broke into your fuckin’ house.”

You shake your head. Trembling fingers still holding him in place, but only because he lets you. “You can’t be here.” He’s looking at you with wild eyes now, darting all over your face as a predator would do before it’s about to catch its prey. “What’re you talkin’ about?”

“You need to leave.” The words feel like screws coming up, scraping your throat so raw you can almost taste the copper. “Please, Simon. Just—go home.”

You’re whining, childlike and annoying. Some part of you expects Simon to hit you for acting like this—like a baby. Your father surely would. You can feel the static prickling on your cheek for what should come, but it never does. Simon just stares at you like you’ve lost your mind. “Ya think I’m walkin’ out on you like this?” He should be angry, wild and thrashing. It’s confusing, really, why he’s not wild and thrashing, because that’s all you know. “Not a chance.”

You tug weakly at his sleeve. “I—I can’t explain r-right now, but if you stay—” Your voice breaks; the foundation is cracking. “It’ll just make it worse.”

His eyebrows are pinched, jaw tight. “Worse for who?”

You can’t say it. You can barely breathe, gulping up air like a fish out of water.

“Your door’s busted open, your whole place looks like a goddamn crime scene—why would I leave you ‘ere?”