#hmmmmmm.

He hasn’t opened his fist since he left the morgue.

His knuckles ache from the tension, but he keeps them locked tight, as if even some small creature in the night air might try to take it from him. The faint edge presses into his palm, it bites in, huts just enough to keep him here.

They’d cleaned Johnny too well.

Brushed and flattened his mohawk, folded his hands all neatly, even smoothed out the crease between his brows as if he were only resting. They had made him look at rest, presentable for anyone who came to view him on his final day whole.

But dead bodies aren’t sleeping bodies.

Simon had known that the moment he touched him.

The pale skin and relaxed muscles weren't temporary. The lack of movement wasn't calm and at rest. It was absence. Final and utter nothingness.

He’d traced the line of Johnny’s waist beneath the sheet. Memorized the slope of his shoulders. The stupid, stubborn mouth that had never stopped talking. The hands that had always been in motion, gripping, tugging, holding.

Now they’re still.

Tomorrow they’ll burn him.

Turn him into ash. Into something smaller than he is. Into something tidy and acceptable.

All for the sake of some thing Johnny had said in his will, "just spread me to those highland winds. Somewhere I can hear the sea."

Simon’s jaw tightens. Sentimental bastard.

But the wind won't get all of him.

His fist presses slowly to his sternum, right over his own ribs. He breathes in through his nose, slow and measured. It should fill his lungs, but there’s a hollow in it.

A yawning space where Johnny used to live, loud and bright and relentless. Fury that filled rooms. Heat that soaked into sheets. A heartbeat that had thudded steady against Simon’s chest in the dark.

He can still remember the rhythm of it, for now, for as long as he can manage.

“You’re not gone,” he says quietly.

His fingers tighten instinctively. The bone in his palm digs sharper now, and he welcomes the sting. Proof he's there, Johnny's there. He has Johnny.

He knows what he’s done. He knows it was selfish. He nows if anyone ever found out, they’d call it wrong. Hell, they'd probably send him to a shrink and he'd never see the base again.

He doesn't need some shrink.

Not a single person here would understand that the alternative, letting Johnny slip entirely into smoke and memory, was worse.

Simon thinks, for a moment far too long, of going back inside. Finishing the job. Taking Johnny with him. He could do it, find a swappable body, get it cleaned in time. Be on the water in the sea before Price could figure out it was him.

A faint, broken ghost of a smile drifts to his mouth.

“Mad bastard,” Johnny would’ve said.

Simon exhales.

“Maybe,” he murmurs into the cold. “Yours though.”

The word settles between him and the moon. Clouds drifting in, fuzzing the light again.

He stays there long after the frost creeps through denim. He'll have to find a place to keep Johnny safe. Clean out the bone properly. Keep it white and clean.

The thought crosses his mind again: There's still time.