he finds you on the porch. the cuppa he’d made you a few hours ago now ice-cold between your fingertips. (simon riley/reader, mature themes!)
you’re rocking back and forth, back and forth, a distant look in your eyes that says your mind is somewhere else. it’s always somewhere else these days.
the screen door creaks as he slides it open, but you don’t rustle, don’t even blink, just keep pushing the tip of your slippers against wet wood, back and forth, back and forth.
dusk is sliding carefully over a hilled horizon, sending warm rays of light cascading over familiar cheeks, tendrils of it reaching toward the back of your head but never quite illuminating. it feels like a metaphor really. like the sun is a representation of how he feels lately. as though there’s a dark spot in the back of your mind, and no matter what he does he can’t reach it, can’t make it brighter. you’re glued into a sorrow he can’t understand.
“hey baby,” you stir with a simple flutter of eyelashes, a sharp inhale hollowing out the sides of your nose. he sees your chest stutter, and the output of it all is a tight smile, something close-lipped and chained.
even your voice seems weighted.
he steps forward, orange beams meeting wool socks, making him feel so domestic, so alive.
there’s another rocking chair, his, carved out of old cherry wood, a stark contrast to the pale oak you’d decided on for yours. calloused hands meet the smooth finish, and he sits, grunts out the aches and pains that plague his knees.
for a moment he’s quiet. waiting for your cue, a sign that you’re ready. willing. but it never comes. you just sniffle, scratch at the chipped ceramic of your mug and begin the rocking motions again. back and forth. back and forth.
“been out ‘ere for quite a while now.”
you nod, more like a flicker of your neck. “i know.”
this is what it’s been like. you give him nothing and he has to turn the short words gifted over and over again, get beneath every crevice to decipher what they mean. all by the sound of your voice.
he sucks his teeth, picks through the files in his brain. “it’s gettin’ cold”
“mm,” you shrug, the movement micro and buried beneath grey cotton. “i don’t mind it.”
he opens his mouth to poke fun at you, to try and carve out that sweet smile he’s spent years thawing out, but somewhere across the way, over rolling, green fields, is an echo of a child’s laughter.
it’s warm, shrill, and then it multiplies. turns into a group of shrieking cries, playful and free.
weightless. like gravity is not a thing of this world.
they fly over the yard across the street, sticks made into swords and little striped shirts all stained with mud and the bright red of day old juice.
street lights flicker, and he turns to look at you, to gauge the joy this has no doubt created.
but you look solemn, unusually so. and something sparks inside, something similar to the lightbulbs that fritz inside the old lamps highlighting outdated asphalt.
like it’s sputtering to life, figuring out what it’s supposed to call home, but it just can’t quite wrap its fingers around it.
it all comes to a head when your voice fills cicada silence.
“they’ve been at it for hours.” oh. “some zombie game i think, sometimes it’s tag. hard to keep up with cause every time they dissapear it’s a new story.” you laugh, but it’s distant. “earlier they had um, they had this little wooden gun, hand-carved i think, anyway, they were playing ‘army’ and i just- it’s so fascinating watching the way their brains work.” you shake your head, readjusting your grip on the mug but never letting go. “i mean, they really believe all that being in the military means is saving people. it’s so pure, and i just, i wonder what happened to that.”
he could chalk all of this up to melancholy. boil it down to being hurt over the state of the world, that the very simple yet not so simple fact that our earth is deteriorating is what has you twisted up and frayed.
“is that what you’ve been doin’, watchin’?”
the rocking motions stop, your foot finally going flat. he picks it back up for you, sending himself back and forth, hoping maybe the motion will make him feel whatever pain ricochets through your veins.
it doesn’t, but he keeps trying anyway.
“not at first, but, they came out a little after dinner and i just, didn’t not watch.”
he hums, laughs when one of the boys shoves the other down, two little fists knocking into each other and sending giggles floating through the evening air.
“mmhm,” your throat sounds closed up, and the tears prick in your eyes immediately, making his chest squeeze.
it’s starting to come together he thinks, in fragmented, bloody pieces.
“you gonna tell me what’s wrong, or do i ‘ave to watch the little soldiers fight until mum calls ‘em ‘ome and then pry it outta ya?”
you shake your head, and he can see the side of your cheek indent where he knows your teeth have the flesh caught tight, chewing off whatever they can grind down. a nasty habit he’s tried to get you to break. thought he had until tonight.
“c’mon, we’ve been married for a long while now swee’eart, i know your tells. talk t’ me.”
you turn your head, fix your gaze on a white-picket fence and a herd of sheep. a mother and her lamb, running side by side.
“are you ever-do you ever-fuck,”
“are you ever angry at me? for not wanting this.”
he wishes he was lost. wishes he had to furrow his brows and think. but the words pierce right through him, and it all makes sense. a puzzle painted black and white, making it next to impossible to piece together but once finished- easy to understand.
“never thought to be upset at ya luv,”
“right but, do you ever wish that i wanted it different, do you ever want it different?”
he rocks. back and forth. back and forth.
“what’re ya on? perfectly ‘appy right where i’m at. we got a house, a dog, full bellies, i’ve got nothin’ to want for.”
“no simon, i-you know what i mean. don’t play stupid, not with me.”
you’re agitated, bristling up like a cat by a stream of water. not at him though. though that might be where it’s directed, the fear comes from a place much further away than that.
somewhere set inside your bones.
he finally stops, finding courage to pry the mug from your fingers and placing it against this little antique table between the two of you.
something you thrifted. fragile and weary. just like the pretty little thing sitting beside him.
both wrinkled and worn. tired.
“say what you need, whatever that might be, but you look at me when you insult my intelligence,”
and you do. with narrowed eyes and a fire that burns out so quickly he sees the sparks land on the ground by his feet. your chin trembles, bottom lip wobbling in defeat.
his fingers are grasping your wrist, thumb rubbing an erratic pulse point that soothes his nervous insides. even if it beats too quickly, even if it’s afraid, it’s still there. and that’s enough.
you look at him so sadly now. blink away unwanted tears.
“i wish i wanted more.” you whisper it like it’s a sin. a confession of evil desires.
even though he’s the furthest thing from a priest, even though nothing inside of him can refrain from tainting you, you’re still cautious of a purity that doesn’t exist in his blood.
“it’s not a bad thing you don’t.” the reminder shakes the very ground you walk on, and suddenly you’re crying, warm tears meeting the palm of his hand.
“i wanted to make that decision for me. but i-im so terrified of becoming another version of my mother that i can’t do it. and im so angry that she took that from me.”
“yeah luv,” he sighs, squeezes your cheek. “i know.”
you croak, wet and weighted. he just reaches across the space between rocking chairs, grabs your face with both hands.
the feeling of his skin against your own has you closing your eyes, puffing out little staticky breaths before dropping an anvil that smacks him so hard in the face that he has to count all the little stars he sees just to find reality again.
“did i take that decision from you too?”
if your voice hadn’t cracked he would’ve accepted a failure of his very own in which he’d ever made you feel that way in the first place.
this was where you had gone the past few weeks. and it makes him sick that he’s had to find you so far down in the sinking sand.
for a while, he contemplates.
how can he say the right thing, how can he take away guilt, frustrations, sadness, how can he grant mercy on a situation he finds no reason to need it?
but this is you at your most raw. this is you ripping open your soul and baring it to him as intimately as a foggy september evening will allow you to do.
he has to collect those pieces, stitch them back together so that when they crack they only leave little fragments behind and never the entire thing.
“i think for a long time, i wondered. and i think for a long time i wanted. but at some point it became more about provin’ a dead man wrong than formin’ a life, and that seemed unfair. so no, no decision has ever been made for me that i did not want someone to make. i chose to follow you because you are what i desire. you are family enough for me. i don’t need tiny hands to prove it.”
“i don’t want to share you.”
his ribs crack open and disintegrate. “i couldn’t.”
your eyes flutter open. they’re exhausted, but he sees relief blossom through your pupils.
this is a sin in of itself to want each other so badly that creating new life would create a risk so vivid for resentment that it makes a heart cry out in agony.
but he’s never been wanted so badly before. never had another soul desire him in such a way that it was painful trying to imagine him belonging to somebody else that was a part of his dna.
and he likes it. even as the blood in his veins runs a little darker because of it.
“i don’t want children simon. for me. i don’t want children for me.”
he smiles, satisfaction curling in sickening circles around his organs.
you blink at him like you know the word means carving a promise into the flesh of his heart.
and he blinks back like he knows the knife is dripping dark red iron between your fingertips.
