#feeling sentimental

okay this is entirely inspired from a recent anon ask but it completely derailed from the ask so I'm posting.

cw: insufferably soft ghoap. eating habits related to scarcity and being in the military briefly mentioned. mostly just Simon being in love with Johnny and getting to feed him.

The mug was Johnny's. It was covered in scribbly little sunflowers.

So was the throw blanket on the sofa, the small cactus on the windowsill, and the collection of mismatched magnets slowly overtaking the fridge. The good knife block was Simon's. The spice rack was now, apparently shared territory, because Johnny had arrived one weekend with a paper bag and simply started filling in the gaps.

Simon had not stopped him. In fact, at one point Simon might have thought: please, please don't stop bringing things with you.

He wasn't sure when exactly the flat had stopped being his and started being theirs. It had happened gradually, then all at once, and by the time Simon noticed he couldn't go back.

He was standing at the stove turning breakfast over in a pan when he heard Johnny's feet on the kitchen tiles.

He knew the sound of Johnny moving through a space by now, the particular rhythm, unhurried when he was comfortable, which in this flat he always was.

"Smells good."

"Almost ready."

He heard Johnny lean into the doorframe. Then he heard him push off it and pad closer, and Simon stirred the pan and waited.

Johnny appeared at his peripheral, and Simon glanced over, which was a mistake in the same way looking directly at something bright was a mistake. Not painful, but a lot filling his senses.

No shirt. Johnny ran warm and had no apparent concept of being cold, which Simon had long since accepted. His hair was still sleep-soft, sticking up at the back, and he was squinting slightly at the pan with the focused interest he applied to most things that smelled good.

Simon had seen him shirtless. He was not a stranger to the geography of Johnny's torso in the context of closer things. The bedroom. The aftermath of field work. Shared showers that had never been discussed and simply continued to happen.

But this was different.

This was Johnny in his kitchen at half past nine on a Saturday with sleep-creased skin, just existing in Simon's space.

Simon looked back at the pan.

"Com'ere," he said.

"I am here."

"Closer."

He heard rather than saw Johnny's small smile, that little exhale that meant he was pleased. Then Johnny stepped in, and Simon reached without looking and found his hip and pulled him flush into his side.

Johnny came willingly, the way he always did.

"Open," Simon said, picking up the spoon.

"I'm not a child, Simon—"

"I didn't say you were. Open."

Johnny opened his mouth, and Simon tipped the spoon carefully, and watched from the corner of his eye as Johnny's expression moved from sceptical to interested.

"That's good."

"I know."

"No, that's actually—" Johnny turned his head go Simon. "What's in it?"

"Things."

"Things."

"Ingredients. You'll find out when it's finished."

Johnny made the noise, offended and fond, and settled against him, shoulder to arm, warm and easy.

Simon stirred the pan. His other hand stayed at Johnny's hip, and he let his thumb move, slowly tracing the line of him. He felt the ridge of the marks there and noted them under his thumb, warm texture, strips at his hip bone.

He thought about the version of Johnny that had existed before this flat, before these Saturdays. The one that had been built lean by scarcity and then kept that way by years of the military's particular indifference to what a body might actually need.

He thought about the first time he'd understood what he was looking at. Johnny's body, recording in its own way that it had finally been somewhere safe enough to change.

Simon's grip tightened slightly. A squeeze. The soft give of Johnny's hip under his hand.

His Johnny. Here. Warm.

He turned his head and pressed his lips to Johnny's forehead, and felt Johnny go still in that particular way, surprised, even now, by softness. Even now, after all of it. Simon let the small pang in his chest roll through him.

He held it for a moment. Then he moved down and pressed his mouth to Johnny's shoulder. The curve of it, the slope toward his arm, the small pale marks there that Johnny had once caught himself rubbing self-consciously and stopped when he'd noticed Simon watching.

Simon kissed those too.

Johnny's breath came out slow, like the sigh of a resting animal. Simon pulled his head up and rested his chin on Johnny's tucked head.

"Simon."

"Still cooking," Simon said into his shoulder.

Johnny laughed and turned his face in toward Simon's neck. "You're impossible."

"You keep saying that."

"Because it's true."

Simon looked back to the pan and pressed his thumb into the soft warmth at Johnny's hip again—a proper squeeze this time—and felt Johnny settle further into him in response.

And Simon thought: I get to feed him. The certain simplicity of it. I get to hold him. I get to know what his shoulder feels like under my mouth and what sounds he makes when I squeeze his hip and what his hair looks like on a Saturday morning when there's nothing to do.

This is what I get.

He stirred the pan.

"Smells sweet," Johnny said eventually, muffled against his neck.

"Good nose."

"Is it almost done?"

"Nearly."

Johnny hummed.

This, Simon thought, with the certainty of a man who had been cold for a very long time and now knew exactly what warmth felt like.

Whaaahhh🥺🥺 ty <333

Isn't it strange how much they've changed?