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Cigarettes

Simon "Ghost" Riley × Fem!Reader

AU-gust 2025 — Prompt 1: Soulmates (shared scars)

Wordcount: 10K (approx.)

CW: Implied/Referenced Suicidal Ideation, Graphic Depictions of Injury, Anxiety Attacks

Read on AO3.

Thank you to @cybxrdxze for helping out with the Scots lingo lmao, ily ya big cunt Not beta read—been staring at this doc for MONTHS i'm setting it free RIGHT NOW

Divider by @gildui-archived / @friarslantern

Simon watches as his last cigarette plummets to the pavement below. He'd meant to pluck it from his mouth after the first drag, but the filter had stuck to his chapped lips. His fingers had slipped and brushed the ember, burning himself in the process. He'd let go of it—and the drag—in his surprise, and now watches from his perch on his third-storey balcony as the small shape of it slowly shifts from white to gray, as the paper soaks up the water of the puddle it’d landed in.

For a few moments, he stands immobile, staring down at the wasted cig—he’d barely had it for ten seconds, and now, its absence leaves him idle. Three days into his leave, he's run out of things to do. He's already watered his cacti—Soap thinks he's funny, getting him a new one each birthday—and those last a while before they need his attention again. He's already cleaned his flat from top to bottom, ran all his towels through the washing machine, even gotten around to swapping the faulty brake line on his bike.

Even during those moments, Simon has never stopped feeling the needle of stagnation threading through his flesh, pulling his skin taut onto his body, compressing his ribcage and only letting him draw a fraction of a breath every time he's too still, too quiet. It makes itself known every time he crosses the threshold when he comes back from deployment. Muted, like the murmur of a breeze as it flies by his ears—present, but tolerable.

Right now, however, without smoke to invade his lungs and tamper his crispness, he is no longer extant—he exists again.

With a sigh, he turns to walk back into his living room, sliding the glass door shut behind him.

Existing outside of the battlefield carries implications. Tapes of memories he'd rather not rewind again—even if he feels like his fingers curl around the pencil nonetheless.

Running his hand down his face, Simon walks into his bedroom. Spartan—simple bed, unsaturated brown duvet over white sheets; IKEA bedside table, low and compact, tan plywood not quite matching the finish of the bed’s wooden frame; blackout curtains, weave thick and heavy, that he draws over the sheer ones when the light of the neighbourhood ventures into his room at night—even if they don't make sleeping any easier.

Walking in front of the mirror, he lifts his shirt by the hem—cotton fabric threadbare, original white an off shade from the many wash cycles it’s been through—to change into something he can go outside in, but catches sight of the scars on his side, and he pauses. Shirt half-shrugged off, his eyes trace the silvery paths and marks in his reflection.

Many blades and bullets have burrowed under his skin in his years of service, leaving a myriad of healed cuts and marks to call his skin home. He pulls the shirt fully off and turns to face the mirror. Absently, his left hand goes to trace the edges of the scar left by the hook, right below the left side of his ribcage. He raises it to his chest, where two shots had just missed his left lung two years ago. They’d hit the very edge of the ballistic plate, and some of it had broken off and embedded in his skin next to the entry wounds. He pulls the skin softly, watching how the give of it makes the scar tissue shift—it almost shines in the diffuse light filtering into the room.

The back of his fingers glide over the healed cut over his right collarbone, where a hostile had got him with a machete, hit hard enough to embed the blade into the bone, but not enough to shatter it, before Ghost had had the chance to sink his own blade into the man’s neck. He’d had to leave it on until the medic got to their position—Soap had, at first, tried to yank it off in his panic, before a slap to the back of the head and a stern “leave it on, you twat!” from Price had set him straight.

His thumb and middle finger sweep down his cheeks following the shape of his Glasgow smile, left by some cunt who’d gotten the drop on him many years ago. That one had taken more surgery and PT than he’d ever wanted to go through to palliate. To this day he still tends to avoid mashed potatoes or porridge when he can.

Simon has to tell himself to disengage twice. And as he walks away from the mirror to grab a clean shirt from his closet, he does his best to pretend that the goosebumps crawling up the skin of his arms are due to the chill in the air.

Five minutes later, he's about to walk out the door.

Before he fully steps out of his flat, he gives it one last once-over—the crisply folded blanket draped over the back of his sofa. The plate, fork, and knife on the drying rack. Simon is acutely aware of where each and every one of them are. They're present at the edge of his field of vision, almost humming, as if unwilling to be ignored. It's so quiet he can even hear the faint ticking of his clock, mounted on the kitchen wall.

It’s the silence in his flat—it lets him hear his own breath, his own heartbeat. The noise his thoughts make as they start to stir in his head. The race against them has begun.

He forces himself to not linger. He latches onto the rattle of his keys as he gives the four turns the old mortise lock on his door demands. They still seem to echo in the hallway as he makes his way down the stairwell—too loud every single time, but they tell him the comings and goings in the rest of the building as well.

When he reaches the ground floor, he stops by the mirror on the lobby wall. He checks himself—hood, drawn; surgical mask, covering his scars; sunglasses, hiding his eyes. Black hoodie, black sweats, black mask, black glasses. With a sigh, checks his pocket for his ID—wouldn’t be the first time he gets ogled by a constable in this getup. Just hopes he doesn’t get pulled aside—again—for a trip that’s supposed to take ten minutes.

He pulls the heavy door inward and makes to cross the threshold, but an odd shift of the light in the corner of his eye catches his attention. He looks to the wall where the letterboxes are mounted, as the door slowly comes to rest against his back, and sees the new dent decorating the tinplate of his own. He shuffles a step back inside, holding the door open with his thigh, and leans in to inspect the damage. Deep, but not enough to puncture the metal. With a sigh, Simon makes a note to fix it when he returns. He straightens and pushes the door back with his body to fit through.

The air outside retains some of the winter chill, London not having fully morphed into its version of spring just yet—it clings to the city from within the puddles on the pavement and the sheen on the asphalt. The crosswalks still glisten, pedestrians beware, and the warm tube air still curls, languid and unhurried, as it drifts out of the street-level vents.

His pace is brisk as he walks. There’s a Tesco just down the street that should be fairly empty at this time of day—might as well grab half a dozen eggs so he has no excuse not to fix himself dinner today, while he’s at it.

The neighbourhood hasn’t changed much since the last time Simon was on leave—same shops, same banners on the side of the bus stops—though there is something new. Tucked into a side-street, just by the corner, little more than a hole in the wall, there’s a new place—an office for one of the many agencies that promise to find people their match. He’s heard the name before, one of the big ones, operating internationally.

ScarMatch® — Find your match. Complete your story.™ Join the world’s largest scar-matching registry. · Confidential scanning & record entry¹ · Lifetime updates and active monitoring² · Optional ID etching: make sure you're found (removal services available upon request³) 50% discount for new clients for the first 6 months ⁴ ⁵. Walk-ins welcome! ¹ Our registry operates independently and does not share or cross-reference data with external databases or agencies. ² Updates and monitoring provided for the duration of the client’s subscription. Conditions apply. Full terms available at front desk. ³ Eligible for half-price removal after 12 months with no confirmed match for clients. Conditions apply. Full terms available at front desk. Removal services for non-clients are provided free of cost and with full anonymity. ⁴ Promotion available until 31/12. ⁵ Discount valid for the first 6 consecutive months of enrolment. Standard subscription rates apply thereafter. Conditions apply. Full terms available at front desk.

He hears the soft swish of the automatic glass door opening to his right.

“Good morning, sir. Is there anything we may be able to help you with?”

Simon finds himself standing opposite the glass window of the office, right where the sign hangs. He doesn’t turn to address the young woman who’s poked her head outside—all anthracite blazer and pencil skirt combo, ID badge clipped to the lapel—likely hoping to add one more client to her list.

“I’m good, thanks.”

“Ah, I see,” she says, and he doesn’t miss the way her tone falls a bit flat, no doubt having had her hopes dashed. Still, she tries again: “Ah, but you seem quite interested, sir! Are you sure? We love walk-ins, and we’d be glad to provide you with the full info at no obligation to—”

“They’re dead,” he says, deadpan, his eyes zeroing in on hers through his sunglasses. He watches as her face falls, her skin pales a little. “I know your supervisor is up your arse about quota, but I’m not interested.”

Simon shoves his hands in the front pocket of his hoodie as he turns, walking out of the side-street and back onto the main, leaving the young woman floundering right by the door. As he resumes his path to the store, he drifts. His right thumb finds the shape of the scar on the underside of his left little finger—a short, thin mark, going from the pad of his finger straight down to the base of the digit. He’s always assumed it to be a cat scratch, ever since it’d appeared on his skin.

The only mark he’s ever received from the person that’s supposedly his other half. Every other mar, he knows the origin of, but this one showed up when he was six—a very different time ago. It was the first and last scar he’d ever gotten from them. By the time he’d turned fifteen, he’d had very little certainty that they were still alive.

It all reminds him of the look on Tommy’s face as he’d introduced mum and him to Beth—contrite, rueful. How he’d cursed every single needle he’d shot up with, how he hadn’t cared about the scarred blisters on his arms until he’d seen them on hers. Simon still thinks himself cruel, for having secretly felt glad that he’d waited to join SAS, back then. He’d have stuck to being a butcher if he’d had even an inkling that his soulmate were still around.

As his eyes drift down to the sliver of his tattoo, peeking from underneath his left sleeve, the sight relieves him. He’d waited to get it, too—while most of it had healed flat, he could trace the barbed wire and feel the slight bump that followed the design. Wouldn't have dared impose that on their skin.

For every mistake he’d made, at least he hadn’t ruined whoever might’ve been linked to him by giving them any of his scars. Even if it had been mum and Tommy and Beth and Joseph that he’d come back home to that night—when he’d discovered what the true price of him coming back to life had been—at least he hadn’t pulled anyone else down with him.

He’s standing by the doors to Tesco after not too long. With an inhale, he takes the step that opens up the automatic doors for him, and walks inside. The air curtain flattens the top of the hood against his head—obnoxiously strong. Magazines on a nearby rack flutter to its breeze, as does the sheet of paper tapped to the nearby window by its corners—something about removing anyone who appears to be inebriated from the store immediately, a result of one too many altercations within the shop, no doubt.

As Simon sets off to find the eggs—and, he’s thinking, perhaps an Old Hen, too—he’s relieved to find the shop mostly empty, only a couple other people milling about, and clearly focused on their own groceries. He knows the layout of this location fairly well, so he’s only half-aware as he navigates the aisles. His mind drifts back to the dent on his letterbox. It wasn’t there last he’d seen it, two days ago—he hadn’t heard anyone hauling in furniture or the like. He could request the lobby CCTV footage, but it’d likely be more trouble than it was worth—especially since he assumes it to have been an accident, and nothing a folded rag and a rubber mallet can’t fix. Somewhat.

As he walks past the dairy section on his way to the frozen produce—might as well eat something other than just protein—he spots a brand of yoghurt he tried while deployed in continental Europe a while ago—urban sting, trafficking op. High protein content, no added sugars, 0% fat. He picks up a pot, and thinks he should've taken a basket while he’d had the chance. He thinks it again as he sorts through the bags in the freezer, one-handed, in the next aisle.

Within the next minute, he stands at the queue—only two people ahead of him, though there’s nobody at the register right now. The woman at the head of the queue leans in over the counter. “Hello?”

“Yes! I’m sorry, I’ll be out in just a second!” A woman’s voice, muffled, coming from the other side of the door on the wall behind the till, off to the side.

Simon inhales and shifts slightly. Eggs in hand, beer tucked under his armpit. Yoghurt pot in his other hand, bag of frozen vegetables pinched against it with his thumb. He’s been in worse positions in far more disadvantageous conditions before—but the bag is starting to sweat after a minute outside of the freezer, in the heated space of the store, slowly beginning to slip.

The ringing in his ears that he wants to up chalk to tinnitus slides in slowly, too.

The door opens and out rushes the woman he’d heard before, frazzle clinging to her even as she gets behind the counter, betrayed by how she grabs the edge of it to stop her hurried momentum, the way her chest expands with each hastened breath—that she tries, and fails, to fully disguise—and then dips to make room for more.

Simon parts his gaze from her, instead turning his attention to the shelves to his right, eyes purposefully following the branding on the bars of chocolate and gum packets—one of the Lindt bars is back-to-front and upside down. He tries to focus on making out the percentage of cocoa butter. Adds the two more people that have entered the store to his mental count against his will.

“Sorry! Sorry…” She clears her throat. “Good morning, ma’am! Please, let me scan those for you. Do you need any bags?”

Ingredients: sugar, cocoa butter, MILK powder, cocoa mass, LACTOSE, skimmed MILK powder, emulsifier (SOYA lecithin), BARLEY malt extract, flavouring.

The till begins to beep as the cashier scans the items in quick succession, as if trying to make up for her delay.

Cocoa Solids %: Cocoa: 30% minimum. Milk solids: 20% minimum.

“That comes to £23.47, and with your clubcard…” She trails off, and there’s another beep as she scans the barcode. “...It comes down to £18.95—you’ve saved £4.52 today!”

55 grams of sugar. Simon frowns—that can’t be right.

“All set! Thank you—have a good day!”

As the man ahead of him shuffles forward, Simon picks up the bar of chocolate. Turns it to face the right way up, and checks again, trying to drone out the din growing in the shade of the inane.

Nutritional Information Per 100g: Energy (kJ) — 2276 Energy (Kcal) — 545 Fat (g) — 32 - of which saturates (g) — 19 Carbohydrate (g) — 56 - of which sugars (g) — 55> Protein (g) — 7 Salt (g) — 0.25

Christ, half of it is just sugar.

“Thank you—have a good day, bye bye! Next in line, please!”

Simon puts the bar back on the shelf, and steps up to the till, eyes fixed on the surface of the counter.

“Add in a packet of cigs, too. Cheapest you got,” he says, as he sets down his items on the counter.

“Of course,” she says, and she turns to open the sliding panel on the wall, where the tobacco is kept.

Simon reaches into his back pocket for his wallet to take out the couple of notes he intends to pay with—avoids card whenever he can, let alone contactless. Only after setting them on the counter next to his groceries does he look up.

He watches, as the woman stands on her tiptoes, left arm outstretched to reach the box. The sleeve of her store logo-embroidered shirt rides up, and he catches sight of a mark running up her arm for a moment, barely. It wraps around the limb in a spiral, sneaking under the fabric. It’s so faint he almost thinks it a trick of the light. Little more than a curiosity.

So why are his hackles rising?

The cashier finally gets a hold of the packet, and lowers to rest fully on her feet once again. She closes and locks the sliding panel, and turns to face him.

His blood turns solid in his veins when he sees your face.

“Here you go,” you tell him, beaming with a smile that pulls at the scars marring your skin—mockery, almost. His eyes instinctively seek your collarbone, where your shirt has exposed the mark going across the bone after you’d reached up for his cigarettes. His breath dies in his lungs as you adjust it, pulling the sleeve back down to the wrist, and begin scanning his items, the thin line on your arm being nothing else other than the bump that follows the barbed wire of his own tattoo.

Beep.

He stands still, dread seeping into his system like water through cracks in the rock, splitting his synapses as it freezes. Cognizant of the keloid that gnarls the left side of your chest and right below your ribs, even if he can’t see them.

Beep.

Of every single wound he’s had to forgo treatment for, amidst the lethal hail of gunfire, deep in the guts of hostile-held facilities or amidst the green haze of night-blanketed battlefields. Bullets he's had to dig out himself, cuts he's had to stitch with cheap vodka and sewing needles.

Beep.

Of every single time he’d torn the crude stitches on his side, back in Coahuila, with every punch thrown at Roba’s men—he’d drawn his share of blood from those cunts every chance he’d gotten—worsening the subsequent scarring in the process.

Beep.

Of every time he’s seen the slit of his blackout curtains etch itself on the barrel of his gun, sunlight-ink tally marks keeping track of how many nights he’s spent sat at the foot of his bed, with only the memory of what sixteen litres of spilled blood smell like to keep him company.

Beep.

Some part of his collapsing brain wonders, idly, what that might’ve done to you. What scar is left in the wake of an indelible wound?

“Your total is… £21.10. Oh, we have an offer for these—two for £4.50, if you’d like to grab another one?” you say, tapping a finger on the yogurt pot.

You look up at him with wide, earnest eyes—were you able to see his through his sunglasses, you’d see his pupils blown wide by the adrenaline that floods him—so familiar from the battlefield that his hand goes to the imaginary holster on his chest before he even notices.

Your head tilts to the side in the face of his silence. “Sir? Is everything alright? If you need to go back to grab something else, I can hold these for you.”

Simon hears the words, knows what they are, knows that you wait for a response—but his blood rushes in his inner ear, demanding his attention. The only thing he can recognise under it is the sound of his own frantic breaths as they resonate through his body, his heart keeping pace as they both speed up. He can barely make out your face in the tunnel of his vision.

Through the blur, he watches as you walk out from behind the counter and approach him, concern etched onto your features, almost as if he wasn’t the one responsible for what sullies you. You don’t know, of course—he’d expect vitriol to bubble through your lips, were that the case.

He takes a step back as you approach, but his retreat is soon halted by the shelf behind him. He can only watch as you take another, chest drawing tighter and tighter, as if the mere inches it gains him in between you were all that keeps him from collapse.

“Sir…?” You say, and your voice wobbles now—dread that something might be truly wrong sinking into your bones. Simon watches as time slogs, thick and suffocating like pitch, as you begin to extend your hand, intending to lay in on his arm—there it is, the scar on the underside of your left little finger. The only one you ever gave him.

Fair trade, isn’t it?

He can feel the warmth of you searing his skin even before your hand makes contact, but Simon doesn't wait around—no, he tucks his covered face into his shoulder and turns towards the exit, empty-handed yet wallet lighter than when he came in.

The weight in his mind, however, one that only grows with each of the ‘waits’ and sirs’ and ‘you left your money behinds’ you yell after him, sinks deep down into his spine, fathoms upon fathoms of dark waters that blur as you stir up a layer of silt he’d thought long settled.

It still isn’t, weeks later.

Bullets whiz past his ear, too close for comfort if he were anyone but himself. He’s slowly cooking alive in his desert gear, cape and mask saving him from the worst of the high UV index but not sparing him a single iota of the heat, both in the air, and produced by his own body.

It does tempt him, sometimes. He’s gotten used to always breathing in warm air and having his exhales rebound off the fabric and onto his skin; the odd textile fiber or two on his tongue; the moisture that gathers within the weave at mouth level; the chafing of the skull plate, or the sweat that gathers behind the print of his balaclava. Ghost doesn’t flinch when liquefied eyeblack gets into his eyes, not after years and years of it, but sometimes he does wish he could get just five minutes of clean, fresh air, even if it would carry the grit of the desert with it.

But Simon knows that, were he to do that, the now-constant sting of his scars would worsen—not due to the sun, but because he’d be making an admission for everyone to see.

I’ve done this, says his body, his face. I’ve done this to you.

There’s a lull in between shots, and he doesn’t even have to rationalise that the hostile is reloading—he’s already vaulting over cover and lining up the shot that will draw the curtain on his deployment, until the next time Price reaches out to him to pluck him out of forced normality and into the maws of gunfire and violence. He knows they'll welcome him with open arms, longtime lovers familiar with the shape of his body and the corners of his mind.

The sting of the bullet graze he’s taken to his left arm does not leave the forefront of his mind, not even for a second, during the journey back to London.

Simon feels the heat of the ember stalk his fingers. It’s been a while since he took a drag, and the cigarette has burned down on its own, until it’s almost at the filter. He flicks it out into the suburban London night, and the immediate barrage of thoughts that floods his brain compels him to pick up another.

He’d have burned himself if he hadn’t snapped out of it. Another mark.

Two flicks of the lighter—he usually swears by BIC, but this one has accumulated too much grit and sand to be reliable. Might have to break out the Zippo, but then he remembers he stored it last time the wick ran out. The flame finally takes on the third, and he brings it to his mouth almost immediately, as awkward as it is—Simon’s taken to smoking with his balaclava on, now, even while off-duty.

After a few drags, the nicotine begins to rush into his brain once more, bringing with it a relief that's only skin-deep. The lighter only barely works, though—he does need a new one. There has to be a spare or two cheapos somewhere in the flat, he’ll just have to look for them.

But the mere idea of going to Tesco makes the healing graze sting even more. It has yet to stop.

It’s not a particularly grievous injury—while the bullet did strip him off some skin and ink, it only brushed the muscle. Even then, he knows how to take care good care of it.

But as soon as his own scar tissue begins to form, so will yours. Tattoo bump, collarbone mark, Glasgow smile. That one, specifically. He’s sure it’s not made your life any easier. Is that why you work at Tesco? Because you couldn’t find work elsewhere?

The only thing that brings him solace—and even then, just the barest modicum—is the fact that you’ve felt none of the pain yourself, that the most you’ve had to endure has been the tightening of your skin as keloid forms over a non-existing wound.

Small mercies, he supposes. It rings hollow in the cavernous depths of his mind.

He finishes the second cigarette, but his mind still whirls. Why haven’t you gotten them lasered off, at least the ones on your face? He cannot fathom a single reason why you’d wear them willingly, so is it that you cannot? It’s not a stretch—his own healing was not easy, and the resulting scar tissue had spread beyond the original wound. He still cannot fully articulate some vowels on a bad enough day. Even if Simon has never cared about it before—had no reason to until now—he could comfortably afford removal.

You, Tesco cashier, likely don’t have that privilege.

He’d actually made the calls, earlier today. Spent hours trying to find a single clinic that would tell him that, yes, when one partner gets their scar removed, it also fades from the other.

But he’s here, smoking cigarette after cigarette on his balcony, come nighttime. Simon has to stop himself from going for a third, and forces himself to turn around and go back inside his flat, instead. Still looks the same as last time—watered cacti, plate and fork by the sink, clock on the wall.

Simon makes a beeline for the guest-room-turned-home-gym, intending to blow off some steam—even if it's not too long until midnight. He already gave up on sleeping the moment he stepped out onto the balcony, so might as well get some lifts in.

The thoughts don't quieten, however.

No matter how much he focuses on the movement, on the shift of his biceps and the tension in his sinews and the burn in his shoulders, they sneak up his bloodstream in the wake of the fading nicotine, enter his brain, unassuming. Hounds in pursuit of blood, no different from Ghost himself. He grows hot in the temperate night—from exertion and something else he can’t name—and so, decides to shuck his shirt. Simon lays back down immediately, picks the bar up again as fast as he can. Keeps running.

They begin to turn into static, and for a second, Simon thinks he’s won. That he’s gotten out of whatever entrapment he’d been pulled into.

But then the exposed keloid begins to sting again.

Every cigarette burn.

Every cut.

Every bullet wound.

The bump following the outline of the barbed wire on his sleeve travels up his arm, circles his neck, seeks to deprive him of breath. The cut in his collarbone slits open and begins to rip down like a tear on fabric, seeking to flay his own skin, to expose him further; the scars on his face widen, stretch, rip open until the loose flaps of his cheeks slough down to reveal the inside of his mouth, the twin puckered bullet-hole marks begin to burrow into his skin, and lower still into his veins, closer and closer to his heart with each pump and the hook scar under his ribs opens like a maw as it devours its way to his stomach, liver, pancreas, spills digestive juices into his own chest cavity so they can consume him from the inside out until there’s nothing left of him to harm or hurt or poison like he has you with each and every one of his mistakes and suddenly they're not his but yours and he watches keloid and hypertrophy grow on your skin and swallow you whole until you're silver and pink and raw all over your face and eyes and mouth as they drown under layers and layers of traitorous scar tissue and—

He sets the bar down onto the rack—barely—and sits up on the bench. There are no wounds for his cold sweat to sink into, nowhere for the salt to seep in and demand attention, and, while part of him latches onto that as a last fastening to reality, it is compulsion that moves him to stand, to walk up to the kitchen sink instead of the bathroom where there’s a mirror that’d show him his own face, mouth twisted into a permanent grin that reminds him how it feels to be buried alive every time he sees it.

Simon takes the balaclava off, sweat-soaked hair sticking up, as haphazard as his movements, and opens the faucet. His hands, trembling still, cup to hold water and splash it on his face, once, twice, three times. It runs down his neck, his chest, mixing with the perspiration that clings to him. It will become tacky when it dries, but he’s past caring right now. He looks down into the sink—no pink. The water going down the drain is frothy from pressure, but clean.

He shuts the flow, and just hangs there for a minute, forearms leant on the edge of the sink, head hung low under the spigot, letting the feeling of the last drops of water, stragglers clinging to the metallic mesh, ground him slowly as they hit the back of his head, soft, constant, their trickle slowing down in rhythm with his thoughts. They are present, like the weight of his cigarettes in his pocket, the ticking of the wall clock, the humming of the fridge. Simon lets his eyes slip shut—wants to preserve the fragile momentum pulling him back into reason until his breathing can slow down to match, too fragile to withstand the overhead lights. He’s not sure when he’d switched them on.

It’s been a long while since the last time. He’d stopped seeing skulls painted over hostile faces long ago—though they’d still show up, sometimes. Graves. Shepherd.

This, however—

Something pulls him fully out of his thoughts, breaks him off the thin tendrils of them that still cling to his psyche. He’s not sure what it is, at first, until it comes again—a soft, but insistent, knock on his door.

He checks the clock—00:23.

Simon scoffs to himself. He has no intention of opening that door, not right now, at almost half past midnight. The knock comes again, removed from his train of thoughts.

“It’s past midnight. I’m not getting the bloody door,” he says, voice reverberating on the walls of the sink.

But there it is, one more time. Urgent, frantic, insistent.

Simon knows, distantly, that he’s not entirely thinking as he straightens up and begins to stomp his way to the front door, maskless. Looking back, he will admit that the idea of opening the door with his face bare, scars exposed, to scare whoever is on the other side into never bothering him again, is a very questionable one, for a variety of reasons.

The first of which becomes apparent as soon as he turns the keys and yanks it open.

“I’m so sorry to bother you this late,” you begin, “I’ve just moved a few doors down to be closer to work, and I’ve been trying to find the water valve but the landlord isn’t answering my texts, I've been digging under every cabinet—thought it’d be near the boiler but it’s not, and I’ve got no water left to drink, and all the shops around here are closed already and I saw your lights on from the balcony and…”

You trail off then, though Simon hasn’t been paying close attention to what you’ve been saying. His eyes are fixed on your face, body frozen in a state between fight or flight in a way that he rarely finds himself in. Kidnapped, buried, hunted. But always forward.

Now, transfixed as he is, he doesn’t realise the way you’ve fallen silent yourself, the way you stare, mouth open, eyes wide. They flicker, from his face to his collarbone to his shoulder to his ribs, taking stock of the marks you know so, so well, presented on a canvas flipped.

But then your gaze returns to his, and you take a breath—tiny, small, like it’s all you can manage under the pressure of the moment, and Simon snaps out of it. He takes a step back into his apartment, makes to slam the door closed, hummingbird pulse and iron grip, until he feels the impact of you throwing yourself bodily into it, in an attempt to stop him. Simon doesn’t force it, of course he doesn’t force it.

“Please, wait,” you murmur. He knows your eyes seek his through the small gap between door and frame, as much as he anchors his on the floor—because it burns his skin where it alights. His scars sting again. “Please, I just—Can we…talk?”

There’s a long moment of silence between the two of you. Pregnant, heavy with every excuse he wants to spout to get you to leave, with every reproach he imagines you could hurl at him, with every empty apology he could give you, with every hateful word you could brand him with.

Instead, you only plead again.

“Plea—”

“Said you can’t find the valve, yeah?” he says, voice hoarse and barely there, and when he dares raise his eyes, he sees that it's thrown you back into shock. Do you recognise him? It’s been some time, but he guesses that an interaction like you had would stick around in your mind for a while, at least.

“You’re—” “I’ll…” This is a bad idea. “I’ll go take a look. Unit’s been empty for a while. Valve will be tight.”

You don’t respond, not immediately, and Simon kicks himself mentally. Of course you don’t want to let him into your house. Soulmate or not, you don’t know anything about him other than the fact that he gets injured often—hardly normal, his injuries, at that—and that he’s not fully right in the head, going by the stint at the shop. Maybe he should’ve just told you where the bloody thing was even if it is a pain to find so you could’ve—

“Okay… Okay.”

A word, soft-spoken and quiet, almost as if you feared he’d vanish if you pushed too hard. Simon has to resist the impulse to curl further into himself. He’s not acquiesced to your request to talk, and you’ve not pressed it further. He can go in, help you open the valve—which will indeed be tight—and then go back to his apartment and keep on living while pretending you don’t live a few doors down from him. Cruel to you, he knows. But it’s for the best.

But, a few minutes later—after giving you a soft ’wait here’ before closing his own door to change clothes, putting on a surgical mask because the skull balaclava might be too much right now, making his way to your apartment following silently behind you, making a beeline for the cabinet in which he knows the pipe emerges from the wall, and opening the valve for you—Simon finds himself doing…

He doesn’t know what he’s doing.

He’s standing in the middle of your kitchen, eyes drifting as he refuses to let them sit on you. Blue plastic still on the dishwasher door. Clean extractor filter panels propped up against the lip of the stove, resting on the tile wall. Two boxes of what he guesses are cutlery, dishes, glasses, pans and pots, on the floor next to an unopened box from IKEA—a new kitchen table.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing as he clears his throat to speak.

“Landlord give you a good price?”

You try to hide the start you give at the sudden break in the silence, but can’t quite, and Simon adds it to the tally of the day’s failures. You, gracious enough to spare him of any comments, rise to your feet from where you’d been sitting on the floor in front of a large duffle bag. You clear your own throat as well, and don’t exactly look at him as you fold the blanket you’ve taken out against your legs. You set it down on top of a stack of boxes before you respond.

“Yeah.” Then, after a beat of silence, “Family friend. He, uh—I had to leave the place I was sharing. Roommate troubles,” you tell him, and there’s a hit of a nervous chuckle at the end, there. Simon has to bite his tongue not to ask about it.

“Well. Water’s on,” he says, instead. The steps he takes to your door are hurried. “I know you’re busy, and I don’t want to bo—”

He’s almost at the door when he feels your hands—soft, delicate, and so, so small—curl around his forearm. You don’t yank him backwards, but he stops nonetheless. He could free himself from your grasp without much effort, but the idea of hurting you even more sears in his throat.

“...Will you…please, tell me about them?”

His hand clenches, and Simon knows you feel it in the way his muscles tense under your grip. He can feel your grasp loosening, can almost pinpoint the moment your mouth begins to form the word—the ‘sorry’ he of all people doesn’t deserve.

“Yeah… Yeah.”

“0-7, make entry.”

Price’s order, coated in the noise and grit of comms, is the thread that ensnares Simon. In a split second, it coils tight around him, pinning his arms to his torso, restricting his breath. It cocoons over him, depriving him of vision and sense—blind to anything beyond the calls in his ears and the schematics on the whiteboard.

It molds to a different shape, fusing into his skin and growing into bone where it touches, until he molts as spectre.

He flips the halligan and wedges the claw between door and frame, then leverages. The door gives, and he holsters. Soap, then Gaz, file in, and Ghost joins the stack. They push silently down the corridor, and then, it begins.

He is still buried under chitin when it ends.

It’s raining.

Suburban London begins to sleep. The few stragglers that keep their lights on until late evening have been slowly dwindling, windows going dark one by one. Overhead lights sneaking/bleeding around blackout curtains and bedside lamps seeping through sheer ones, switching off as the hour darkens. Simon’s been on his balcony for a while, but hasn’t smoked as much as he could have. The tackiness of the day-old eyeblack he still wears pulls on his skin like a magnet on iron shavings.

He sees your own living room go dark from the corner of his eye. You’ve waited up for him, even though your shift starts early tomorrow. He’s thought about it—about locking his flat down and going over to yours, like he eventually will, but it’s only the first day of leave. Like every time he comes back, he’s gone straight to his own apartment.

Simon always stays there for a day or two, sometimes three if he’s too raw.

He’s known you for a while now, but Ghost has never set foot into your space.

Simon takes in a breath. The air has crispened as August begins to die off, Autumn creeping into the recesses of summer, the sun’s path sinking lower into the horizon with each day. Swifts are nowhere to be seen in the current rain, though they’ll fly southbound through London skies again as soon as the weather gentles.

Somewhere on his floor, he hears a lock turn. Once, twice. Then, again, as whoever just got home closes the door. Didn’t hear the noisy old door to the street fall shut, so they must’ve driven here and gotten in from the underground car park.

Simon reaches into his pocket, fingers carelessly grasping the already-crumpled, nearly-empty pack of cigarettes. It saw some action in his latest sortie, forcing him to discard a good deal of them—better off for it, he remembers thinking you might’ve said, once he was on his way back to FOB.

The way it is now, however, he still needs them to stave off the itch in his limbs and fuel the slow apoptosis of rebirth.

He hears his own lock turn as he takes the first drag. He knows it’s you—can’t be anyone but you—by the way the keys jingle as you reset your hand to give the next turn, but his body compresses all the same—he’s not wearing the hard mask, but he can feel the imprint of its edges on his skin.

By the time you’ve given the other three turns, Ghost’s bristles have softened enough for his first words to you not to be a dismissal or an order to leave, but his voice still abrases from his throat, as he calls out over his shoulder, not turning to face you as you walk in.

“You should be sleeping.”

You don’t respond immediately, not before you close the door behind you and let the sliding bolt latch. You give one turn of the lower lock, leaving the key in the cylinder, keyrings clinking faintly as they swing in contrapunto to your steps, as you walk towards the open door to the balcony, in the back of the living room. Simon takes his second drag as you stop, just shy of the exterior proper. You’ve set your hand on the aluminium frame of the sliding door—he hears the faint rasp of your fingerprints as they brush against it.

“Come to the flat with me?”

There’s a lilt at the end, like you know he will refuse—has so when you’ve asked him to before. Every time it’s been too soon after coming back, too fast for the pace at which his skin sheds.

He doesn’t, not right away. He sags, instead, under the weight of your request. His shoulders fall and his back slouches, minimally, but he knows you see.

He wants to. He wants to listen to you and go back to your flat, with you, your things, your food that you prepare two servings of as soon as he comes back, even if you know half will become leftovers.

You always wait there for a day or two, sometimes three if he’s too raw and feeling like letting you see Ghost for the mask that he is would be akin to telling you that he wasn’t human when he left those marks on you, that it wasn't the flesh underneath that rendered but yours as you took up his mistakes like mycelia drink from the soil, that you’re nothing more than a casualty in the theatre of a war or many that bleed far removed from you yet embroider into your skin all the same with him as needle, thread, and knot.

Your hand drafts sound from the frame again as it lets go.

Too raw and feeling like maybe this is the worst idea he’s ever had because the only thing stopping what happened before from happening again is the calcified trauma he wears for a mask to hide his face, the very same that his team has seen only once save for Price, because Simon has never stopped mistrusting, has never stopped coiling to prepare for betrayal, has never stopped thinking it might as well have been him that broke in that night to kill his brother's son before his own eyes.

He hears you take the single step that clears the rail on the floor.

Too raw and feeling like it'll get to you, too—more than it already has.

Then, Simon feels the press of your body against his, the way your face buries into his back, how you mold yourself to his angles, the path of your hands as you wrap your arms around his waist.

“Please.”

Your voice in the fabric of his hoodie is muffled, like a distant lighthouse, but Simon is still adrift.

“I’m still not…”

The words die off, traveling up from his throat and bunching up in his mouth, vaporous and volatile amidst the rainfall.

“That’s fine.”

But it isn’t. Not really. Simon knows you believe it wholeheartedly—but it isn’t.

So he says nothing, and takes his third drag. The breeze ebbs, and rain falls no longer slanted but in a vertical plummet to the street. A lone biker drives down the road nearby, the sound of the engine travelling up in the air towards the two of you. A black cat spooks out from under a parked car—it dashes out to cross to the other side, prompting the driver to brake suddenly. The vehicle stops with a shushing sound, tyres sliding on the wet asphalt for a brief moment, as the cat darts down the street and towards new cover.

Almost as if he’d forgotten it in his lungs, Simon lets go of the smoke quietly. A thin plume rises straight up from the ember—some of it bleeding through the cigarette filter and onto his fingers, skin soaking up the smell. The breeze shifts again, and now it turns, gentle, towards the building. He feels tiny drops land on his knuckles.

It also blows the smoke towards you.

He feels the way you try to stifle the small cough that you give, the way your abdomen spasms quietly against his lower back. He hesitates before taking a fourth.

“You’re going to smell like tobacco,” he murmurs, and he himself isn’t sure why. Maybe he’s giving you an out.

You don’t respond, but you do shift—letting go of him, perhaps. To go back to your own flat and leave him to deal with this on his own, just him, Ghost, and his cigarettes. That’s what he wants. Maybe that way you can get some rest, worry about things worth worrying about.

But you just resettle, arms wound even tighter around him, body pressing even further into his like you could soak him up like sunlight and warmth. It makes his breath leave his lungs in a silent gasp.

“I want to be here,” you whisper, and he can feel the plush of your cheek shift as you speak, where it touches his back.

He reels at everything that implies. Sometimes, he still thinks it was just fever-induced delirium that lit your eyes from within, that time he extended his leave to take care of you when you were sick, and that it shifted your whole perspective of him as if through a kaleidoscope. He does try—but he doesn’t always believe he succeeds. And yet, whenever he lets a morsel of softness shine through the mud, you give him that look—like he’s hung the moon. And something corroded inside of him shifts, shaking off flakes of rust little by little, every time.

But tonight, you’ve gone into his flat with the keys that he gave you—hoping you’d never have to use them to get to the handgun he keeps under a false bottom on the first bedside drawer—betraying the unspoken treaty by which he’d always recover from war on his own and reunite with you once his edges have filed down enough to not hurt you.

Tonight, you’ve pushed for the first time. And where he’d expected to feel constriction, there is nothing but air.

So Simon, weightless in freefall, does nothing but flick his half cigarette out, and almost as if the last of his strength had left him with it, he leans back into you. Minute, small, but he lets his eyes slip shut as he does.

He feels you breathe him in, then out, then in again, like the tide. The sound almost gets lost amongst the dwindling rain and his own heartbeat.

Distantly, he wants to have the talk with you again, go over each and every reason why it’d be better for you to not be involved with him, tell you how unreliable he is with the kind of job he has, how bad things happen to those that get close to him.

He knows you would hear him out, but ultimately refuse to acquiesce, like you have before.

But he doesn’t say—because you feel like home against him.

So, every so slowly, his hands leave the handrail where they’d settled, and find yours clasped at his abdomen. His lips curl into a rueful smile when he hears the tiny, happy gasp you can’t rein in on time. He can practically see the way your cheeks bunch up and your lips pull up with that smile of yours. It’s a bit childish, but it never fails to steal his breath.

He stays like that for a while, basking in your presence, quiet and steady, before he speaks again.

“I got injured.”

“I know,” you respond, immediately. You sneak your right hand out of his hold and let it glide over his ribs, until it comes to rest on his chest, careful, over the wound. “It's begun to scar, just a little.”

The shame that prickles him every time you talk about a new wound he's given you feels like sugar in warm water, now. And Simon, distracted as he is with debating whether or not that's a good thing, doesn't register the way you rise on your toes, and land the softest kiss he's ever felt from you, on the nape of his neck, until you do.

You, your lips, linger. The spot where they touch his skin sears, and he swears he can feel it sinking into him, his flesh, seeping into muscle. Like standing next to a hearth.

His next breath trembles on its way in, and Simon can tell that his words are breaking the moment his mouth makes their shape.

“You shouldn't have to deal w—”

“I'll decide that, Simon,” you speak into his skin, soft and quiet. You lower to rest back on the soles of your shoes, but your hand remains over his wound.

He doesn't speak. He isn't sure if has the right—not in the face of your patience. So, no matter how much he wants you to come to your senses, he lets you hold him. The two of you stay like that long enough for the rain to turn into petrichor and fat drops that cling to the tiles of the balcony above. They fall onto the metallic railing in uneven rhythm, measuring time in a signature Simon's never learnt to follow.

But as he lets his thumb brush your wrist, over and over, he finds that the pulse there is steady.

“Come inside. It's chilly out here,” you whisper.

Even.

“I’ll take a look at it—no, don’t shake your head at me, Simon. Please, let me take care of it, alright?”

Measured.

“I'll bring some food over.”

Constant.

Something long stalled shifts when he nods wordlessly. And when your fingers thread through his and you pull, he lets himself be led.

The sun is low on the horizon by the time Simon walks out through the side door. The eyeblack around his eyes takes some of the glare, but the brunt of it still blinds him momentarily. He raises his hand to cover the sun with his bike helmet and blinks a few times, before a whistle a ways to his right steals his attention.

He turns to find the source, and his brow unfurrows under his balaclava when he spots Soap, leant against the outside wall of the building, cigarette in the corner of his mouth and open packet of Luckies extended towards him in offering.

Settling the helmet against his hip, Simon makes his way towards the Scot, and reaches out to fish a cigarette from the packet. Soap tucks it back into his back pocket, and holds out his lighter for him to take. Simon does with the same hand that holds the cigarette, then pulls his balaclava up and sets the filter between his lips. It takes five strikes before it produces a diminute flame, and Simon holds it to the cigarette before it can go out. He lets go of the first drag as he hands the lighter back, and turns to lean against the wall next to Soap.

“Ever gonna refill that?”

“Aye, I keep forgettin’.”

They smoke in silence for a few more drags, Soap working through the half that remains of his cigarette with a speed spurned on by the aftermath of their last mission. Simon remains measured with his own.

The Scot takes his last drag—almost to the filter—before he drops it to the ground and stomps on it. He then turns to Simon, running a hand through his hair with a sigh.

“Followin’ up on that intel is goin’ tae suck arse.”

Simon takes another drag, lets it sit in his lungs for a second before exhaling.

“Sitting this one out,” he says, looking out onto the car park.

“You injured?”

“Nah. On leave.”

Soap arches an eyebrow at that. “You don’t take leave until Price makes you.”

Another drag. “ ‘m moving,” Simon says, smoke in his lungs dampening his voice.

“Where tae?”

Simon makes a gesture with the cigarette, letting the drag out before speaking. “Still London.”

“Don’t like your place?”

“I like it just fine.”

“Then?”

Simon only shrugs.

Both men stay silent as Simon smokes the remainder of his cigarette. He flicks it into the car park when he’s done, and reaches back to land a heavy pat on Soap’s shoulder, still looking ahead.

“See you in the next shithole,” he says, humorous lilt trailing off his words, and begins walking towards his bike.

“What—not even a pint, mate?”

“Got three hours of road ahead of me,” Simon calls over his shoulder.

“Whit's got yer arse aun fire, nashin aff like tha’?”

Simon says nothing for a moment. He swings his leg over the bike and kicks the stand back. Only then does he meet Soap’s eye, and speaks. Not what he knows the Scot expects—some remark about sticking to English.

“She says she misses me while I’m at work,” he says as he settles onto the seat. His balaclava is still pushed up, his smirk visible.

It widens into a grin as he watches Soap’s expression morph from mild confusion to utter surprise.

“Simon, did you find your—”

He starts the bike right then, revving it up a few, irreverent times, smiling with lips and scars, before pulling the fabric of his mask down and shucking his helmet on.

“Simon Riley!”

Simon pauses, unlit cigarette midway to his lips, and turns to face you from where he stands on his balcony. It's an unusually sunny winter morning, where the light and warmth of the sun, unobstructed, reach down to give Londoners a brief respite from the seasonal drab. It drapes over Simon like a blanket, and while it doesn’t quite reach you inside his living room, the cold does little to hamper the way you move, or the way you hum to yourself when you think he isn’t listening, or the way he watches you, something close to mesmerised.

You set down the tape and unfolded cardboard box you were assembling—he won’t need more than two—and set your hands on your hips with a gentle huff , elbows flared. Simon can’t help the quiet chuckle that leaves his lips, and he knows you hear by the way you turn your head slightly, giving him the side-eye.

“I thought you were quitting.”

“ ‘s the last one, love,” he says, leaning back against the railing.

You don’t let up. “You said that five cigs ago.”

Your cheeks puff up, and the tip of your nose scrunches in your annoyance. Your lips almost purse into a pout, and he bites the tip of his tongue to avoid grinning at the sight.

“Would be a waste not to finish the pack, with the bloody price of the things these days.”

You sigh, soft and mellow, and you walk out onto the balcony. The sunlight finally touches you, saturating you with colour and life. Shimmering highlights bloom in your hair, a myriad of variations that steal his attention as they shift in the soft breeze. Your skin soaks it up, lets him see how your blood tints your cheeks and the tips of your ears where it flows close to the surface. Your eyes—he can see every single strand of muscle in your irises as your pupils constrict in the sun, the way they seem to go on deeper and deeper, how each layer refracts the light. The way that your—

“Simon. Please, give me the pack,” you say. He blinks, but his eyes stay fixed on yours, watching as your pupils expand as they get used to the light outdoors. Simon doesn’t hesitate. He digs into his pocket, tucks the cigarette back into the pack, and hands it over. You say “thank you”, but he doesn’t hear—you still wear that almost-pout, and as he keeps his gaze on yours, his hand comes to cup your face. You lean into his palm, not minding his callouses, and Simon, already full of awe, feels himself brim.

“Sorry," you say, “I didn’t mean to snap—you said you wanted to quit, but…”

Your words trail off as his thumb comes to rest on the corner of your lips, then follows the shape of the scar on your cheek.

“That’s how I like to see you,” he says, almost a whisper. You lean in, breath held, waiting for him to continue. There’s a glint to his eye when he speaks again. “Smiling.”

You gasp, but the way your eyes squint as you struggle to suppress your smile gives you away, and he chuckles as you give a playful shove at his chest.

“Simon!” you say, but your indignation wavers, like your voice does, as you try to suppress your own laughter. “That’s not funn—”

His lips are on yours, a bit dry, a bit chapped, but they move soft and slow. You tilt your head a fraction to the side and wrap your arms around his neck, still holding the cardstock box. His free hand finds the small of your back, pulling you into him. You give a little hmm , and he drinks it in—you, your patience, your kindness, your love. You. Despite the thoughts that circle his brain—that you’ll always wear his scars, that you’ll always be a target because of what he does, that you’ll always worry when he’s gone—you always calm the hunger in his bones that had never ached until you’d come knocking on his door at 00:23, quieten the noise of his thoughts that stir the moment he takes a step out of Hereford.

The two of you part, still so close his nose brushes up against yours. Your eyes open slowly, eyelids heavy, a dreamy look to you as if you’d just woken up from a dream, and he lets himself sink into your gaze again. He feels no vertigo.

“That better?” he says, words smooth and casual undermined by the rasp in his voice.

You don’t respond for a few seconds, and when you do, it’s by standing on your toes as you kiss him again. He obliges, and it’s soft, tender. Your skin is warm in his palm.

You part again, and this time your cheeks hold colour from the winter chill in the air.

“I’m keeping the lighter,” he tells you, voice hushed. “It’s useful on the field.”

“Mm. You’ve already got some in your equipment,” you answer, just as quiet.

Another kiss, soft and chaste. “Useful at home, then.”

You yank gently on his earlobe. “Is it, now?”

His nose brushes against your own, again. “Stove’s gas.” “It is.” You give one last, quick peck before you take a step back. “But I still think you’re full of shit.”

He only chuckles as he follows you back into his living room—soon to be up for rent—and into calm seas. As he slips the lighter in his inner jacket pocket, his fingers brush up against the small velvet box there, and he thinks himself a lucky man.

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