If your passions called, Simon would answer. Boxes arrived while he was gone, filled with fresh journals for your poems, new pens for your writing, and all kinds of baking supplies to spark your creativity. He wanted you to always feel his presence, even if he was half a world away, each package a testament to his unwavering affection. When he returned, you would often slip him small, handwritten notesβyour own words of love and encouragementβfolded neatly, and heβd keep them close to his heart, tucked in a pocket as if they were a part of him. The others joked about him looking like a:
βproper husbandβ
for always stopping to read your handwriting, touching every letter as if every word you wrote was a treasure on its own.
There were nights, long ones, when youβd catch him sitting at the kitchen table, leafing through a scrapbook youβd made during his deployment. Pictures of the two of you, your annotations in the margins, your thoughts and memories, capturing moments he hadnβt even noticed you were holding onto. Heβd touch each page, almost reverently, lingering on the edges like he was afraid his touch might ruin the paper. And when youβd join him, sliding into his lap with your arms wrapped around his neck, heβd tuck his face into your shoulder, silent, holding you close as if you were the only thing grounding him to this world.
Simon never argued with you; never needed to. He believed in βhappy wife, happy lifeβ with a fervency others might never understand. If you didnβt like something, heβd change it without hesitation. If you felt uncomfortable going out he would take you back home in his arms, helping you out of your dress with gentle hands, making your favorite tea in the kitchen, casting you warm, lingering glances as you sipped your cup by his side with the prettiest smile he swears he has never seen before in his life.
There were times youβd tease him, testing the boundaries of his devotion with light-hearted remarks about your whims. But no matter what you said, he never wavered. If anything, his dedication seemed to intensify, his love quiet but resolute, unwavering in the face of your every wish. You could see it in his eyes, the way they softened whenever he looked at you, as though you were the only person in the world he wanted, needed. To Simon, you were perfection, and nothing you did could ever change that.
When it came to intimacy, Simon was utterly faithful. At night, his hands would roam your form reverently, memorizing every curve, every detail heβd missed in his months away. When you traced the veins on his neck, his breaths came out heavy, the weight of his love pressing down on him. Your touch left him trembling, his normally steady hands shaking as he held himself over you, eyes dark with an almost sacred devotion as he rocked into you with slow, deep movements that left him weak.
When youβd murmur his name, kiss his scarred knuckles, and hold him close, Simon felt himself unraveling in your arms, reduced to nothing but his love for you. His broad, muscular form sank against you, a sturdy weight softened by your warmth, and heβd surrender completely, letting you hold him, a silent confession of his trust and vulnerability.
In the stillness of those moments, he would remember a time when he hadnβt believed in softness when life had taught him only to take and endure. But now, in your arms, Simon Riley found a new truth: that he could give, could cherish, and, most of all, could love without fear. And as he drifted to sleep, wrapped in your love, he knew that he had finally found his purposeβnot in battle, nor vengeance, but in this quiet, steadfast devotion to the woman who had taught him that he was worthy of peace.
