“I held it, Simon.” you murmured, voice dropping to an honest whisper as you whispered a half-inch closer into his space. “Held my lane, because I knew you were on the other side.”
Simon stared at you for a long, breathless moment, jaw setting as he processed the words. His eyes closed when your palms found the sides of his face, cradling it, whilst he exhaled a breath so deep he must’ve been holding it for decades.
“I’m always going to be on the other side.”
[5k] HOLY SHIT ! mission chapter, trapped/separated, tearing down walls (literally and emotionally), first-aid/caretaking, FACE REVEAL?? simon riley is devastatingly beautiful and samuel roukin is my face claim because. would. heavy eye contact, mutual trust, allat allat this is sweet!!
The 0600 briefing had been brief, clinical, and entirely too early in the morning for anybody’s liking.
Price had laid out the schematics on the digital screen, harsh blue light illuminating the subterranean veins of an abandoned border town. Operation: Deep Water. Intel had pinned down an underground subway network being used by a hostile cell to smuggle chemicals. The team’s directive was to descend into the flooded transit line, locate the crates, neutralize the cell, and get the hell out of there.
As you sat at the edge of the long mess hall table, staring down at your untouched plate of plain eggs and toast —which you sprinkled whatever spice you could find on top, so not entirely sure how plain it’d taste— the details of the briefing kept looping in your head.
Subterranean. Close-quarters combat in pitch-black conditions. Water up to your knees.
A proper fucking nightmare, in short.
Your mind instinctively mapped out the horrors. Subway stations meant endless blind spots, tiled corridors what would make every splash of water and footstep echo like a damn gunshot, narrow, flooded tunnels with absolutely zero room for error. A tactical meat grinder ready to make a whole burger out of you. Yeah.
A few years back, the mere thought of being trapped in a dark, windowless underground labyrinth would have made the walls of the room close in on your chest, making your hands shake before you even touched a mag.
But today, your hands were perfectly steady. Perks of the task force.
Heavy scuffs of a boot broke your train of thought. You didn’t have to look up to know who it was, his gait was a perfect tell, and lately, one person over anybody else kept seeking you out. The sheer physical gravity of his presence always seemed to reach you a second before he did, too.
Simon slid onto the low wooden bench next to yours, his choice of sitting beside you rather than across noted down somewhere in your head, his massive frame instantly blocking out the noise of the waking mess hall. You loved how he kept creating a quiet, private pocket of space just for the two of you whenever he was near. He was stripped down to a simple black shirt, scarred forearms bare against the edge of the table. He hadn’t brought a tray. Just a fresh mug of steaming black coffee.
Without so much as a word, he rolled the bottom of his balaclava up past his chin, exposing the sharp line of his jaw and the pale, soft skin —save for a few days’ stubble— framing his mouth. He didn’t turn away to take his first sip, like he did for many months before. He just sat there, completely unbothered, letting you take a small look at one fraction of a man behind the Ghost because he knew you wouldn’t hold a shred of pity in your gaze.
If anything, you were staring right at his lips, and you could only break that trance when you noticed them curling into a smirk.
“You’re tearing that toast to pieces,” he murmured, his deep rasp incredibly low, meant strictly for your ears.
You blinked, looking down to realize your fingers had mindlessly shredded the piece of bread into a pile of crumbs on your plate. A small, faint ghost of a smirk tugged at your mouth as you dusted your hands off. “Jus’ mapping out the subway lines, Simon.” on the clock, technically, but you couldn’t possibly think of insubordination whilst half his face was in your view.
“Mm. Quiet tunnels,” he spoke casually, taking another slow sip of his coffee. He leaned his weight back against the edge of the table. “No wind, leaves rustlin’ or such. Just you, the sightline, and whatever’s in front of your muzzle.”
“And freezing shit water up to our knees.” you reminded him, turning your head slightly to meet his icy blue eyes.
“Good thing I patched the seals on your tactical boots last night, then,” he said, his tone entirely deadpan, though the faint smile on his lips told you what you needed to know.
Your heart did a sudden, sharp flutter behind your ribs. He hadn’t told you he’d done that. While you were asleep, he must’ve quietly gone into the locker room, taken your gear, and ensured you wouldn’t be freezing in the dark. Carrying his side of the weight of the life that you shared.
“Thank you,” you said softly.
Simon didn’t answer with much, settling for a single, firm nod, rolling the balaclava back down to cover his jaw after draining the last of his mug. The small talk was over. Off the clock comfort faded slightly, making way for the cold, lethal synch of the 141.
“Finishing your breakfast?” he asked, rising to his full, towering height.
“Done,” you said, standing up with him, knees tracking right beside his as you left the mess hall behind.
The armory cage was dead quiet compared to the rest of the base, the metallic tang of solvent and gun oil filling the air— a smell that no longer made you feel sick. You and Simon worked at the main steel workbench side by side, with no words between you. When you reached your left hand, Simon placed a heavy-duty tactical flashlight into your palm. When he leaned back to adjust the tension on his heavy plate carrier, you stepped into his space without asking, fingers moving efficiently to tighten the heavy nylon straps over his shoulders, pulling until the vest sat perfectly flush against his massive chest.
He didn’t stiffen like he used to. Now, he’d only stand perfectly still, like he was used to the proximity already.
You picked your rifle up, sliding the bolt carrier group back with a sharp clack. You checked the alignment of your red-dot optic, hands entirely steady as you locked a fresh magazine into the mag well. Simon watched you from beneath the shadow of his skull plate, eyes tracking every functional movement of your fingers. He reached into his drop-leg rig, pulled out an extra breaching charge, and silently slid it into the side pouch of your vest. Blink, and you’d miss the way his gloved knuckles lingered for a fraction of a second against your chest plate.
“Ready?” his deep voice rumbled through the cage, Simon letting the Lieutenant, the Ghost, man, myth, whatever, take the reins.
You slid the small earpiece into your ear, tucking it there until it was solid. “Born ready, LT.”
“Good,” Ghost muttered, picking up his own weapon and slinging it across his chest with an easy grace. He caught your eye one last time before heading toward the exit. “Tarmac in ten. Let’s go turn the lights out on ‘em.”
The roar of the transport plane’s engines was a deafening, vibrating wall of sound that rattled straight through the soles of your boots and into your teeth.
The interior of the fuselage was bathed in a dim, tactical red glow, which casted long and eerie shadows across the metal ribs of the aircraft. Outside the small windows, a thunderstorm was tearing through the night sky, throwing the massive plane around like a toy. Every few seconds, the aircraft would drop into a pocket of turbulence, forcing your harness to bite hard into your collarbones.
You sat on the netting seat, knees almost brushing against the heavy crates of equipment strapped down in the center aisle. Across from you sat the rest of the 141. Gaz was methodically checking the seals on his waterproof kit, Soap was tapping a rhythmic beat against his thigh, and Price was chewing on an unlit cigar, his eyes fixed on a digital tablet displaying the maps of the sunken metro.
And right beside you was Simon. Or rather, the Ghost.
Even in the cramped, shaking belly of the plane, his frame was an unyielding anchor. He sat perfectly still, rifle resting flat across heavy thighs, large hands resting over the handguard. The printed balaclava and the skull plate were back in place, blocking out the humanity you’d seen in the mess hall hours ago. He was the Ghost now. Cold. Unshakeable. Lethal. But as the plane took a violent lurch to the left, his heavy shoulder firmly pressed against yours— as deliberately as it could be without being too obvious. You didn’t look at him, he didn’t look at you, but the familiar heat of just having him near you instantly cleared the baseline anxiety rising in your chest.
Price tapped the screen of his tablet, blue light reflecting off his rugged features as he looked up at the team.
“Listen up,” the Captain’s voice barked through the internal comms loop, cutting through the engines. “We’re five minutes out from the drop zone. The storm is knocking out the local power grid above ground, which means the subways are going to be pitch-black and flooded, up to the knees if we’re lucky. Hostile cell is dug in deep near the central maintenance junction.”
You reached up, tapping the small button on your headset to dial into the frequency, adjusting the microphone close to your lips. “Comms check. How’s my read, Captain?”
“Loud and clear, kid,” Price replied, giving you a sharp nod.
“Got ya loud and clear down here, sunshine,” Soap chimed in, cutting his eyes toward you with a quick, subtle wink that told you he was glad to see how high your head was held. How you sat with more confidence than ever. You flashed a grin at him.
“Solid on my end,” Gaz added, adjusting his night-vision goggles down over his eyes.
“Ghost, status?” Price asked.
Simon reached up, gloved fingers tapping his headset with a slow click. His deep rasp flooded the comms loop. “Green across the board. Comms are secure.” he turned his head a fraction towards you. “Weapon’s hot. Ready to turn the lights out.”
Price nodded, sliding the tablet into his vest pocket and gripping the overhead ceiling rail as the plane took another bounce. “Alright. I want us moving in tight, two-man elements to clear the sectors before we converge on the chemical crates.”
Price pointed his gloved finger toward Gaz. “Gaz, you’re on point for the western maintenance stairs, I’m pairing you with—” then, his gaze found you.
“Negative.”
The word cut through the comms like a snapped wire. It wasn’t loud, no, but the authoritative gravity of Simon’s voice made the entire cabin go dead quiet, even with the loud engines.
Gaz stopped mid-motion, his hand pausing on his visor. Soap’s jaw was practically dropped, eyes darting instantly from Simon to you, a massive, knowing grin completely taking over his face. Price slowly lowered his hand, eyebrows shooting up beneath the brim of his boonie hat as he stared at his Lieutenant.
“Excuse me, Ghost?” Price asked, his tone dropping into a dangerous, questioning rumble. You don’t negative your Captain’s orders five minutes out from the drop zone. You just don’t.
“She’s with me,” Simon rumbled back, completely unbothered by the sudden spike of tension in the cabin. He didn’t even shift an inch, nor did he offer a polite explanation or a standard request. He was just staring dead-ahead at Price. “We’ve dialed in the synchronization on the breaches back at base. She knows how to sweep without crossing me. Gaz can take MacTavish.”
“Hey! Who said I wanted to be paired with the guy who can’t even clear a room ahead of schedule?” Soap protested loudly, though the sheer mischief in his voice proved he was entirely enjoying the shitshow.
Price ignored Soap, sharp eyes cutting a hard path between you and Simon. He took a good look at you. Your posture. Steady hands. Then at the rigid, protective stance of the Ghost sitting right at your shoulder. A silent communication passed between the Captain and his Lieutenant— one born of decades of warfare.
Price let out a low huff, a quiet, knowing chuckle escaping as he shook his head, pulling his cigar to the side of his mouth. “Alright,” he muttered, reaching to grab the heavy red handle of the jump door as the warning siren suddenly began to wail through the cabin. The back ramp slowly started to lower, revealing the pitch-black abyss of the rain-soaked night outside. “Rosters stand as amended. Ghost, you and the kid take the eastern tunnels. Hold the line, cover each other’s six, and don’t get sloppy.”
Simon closed his gloved fingers tightly around the handguard of the rifle, shoulder giving yours one last bump before he stood up into the roaring wind. “Roger that, Captain,” he murmured, then, his voice dropped an octave and became that rough, honest whisper meant for you. “Let’s get to work.”
You unclipped your harness, standing up in unison with Simon. The plane took a dip as it hit a thermal pocket, but your feet stayed planted. You adjusted your goggles down, the world shifting into a grainier, high-contrast green. Simon stepped up to the edge of the ramp first, and checked his primary weapon, tapped his chest plate, and stepped off into the abyss.
You didn’t hesitate either. You followed him right down the throat of the storm.
The drop was short. Rain hammered against your visor like gravel, the wind tearing at your gear until the static line snapped your chute open. A minute of suffocating, blind navigation through the clouds later, your boots hit the muddy, waterlogged tarmac of the border town with a heavy thud. You cut the riser straps instantly, dropping the canopy into the muck, and raised your rifle, sweeping the perimeter.
Through the green tint of your optics, you spotted him three meters ahead. He was already up, a knee in the mud, rifle locked into his shoulder as he covered your sector.
“Ghost to Bravo-Six,” after a click on the comms. “We’re on the ground. Moving up to eastern transit entrance now.”
“Copy that, Ghost,” Price’s voice crackled through the static. “We’re hitting the western stairs. See you at the junction.”
Simon rose, giving you a quick, sharp motion with his hand. You fell into stride right behind him, moving like a shadow just like him through the derelict streets. The town was a graveyard of some sort— no lights, no civilian movement, nothing at all. Just the relentless downpour pooling in the gutters.
He led the way to a crumbling concrete structure jutting out of the pavement, the entrance to the transit system. The iron gate had been blown off its hinges, hanging loosely from a single rusted bolt. Below it, the stairwell descended into an absolute, pitch-black vacuum. From the depths, the heavy, hollow echo of water flow could be heard.
Simon paused at the threshold, frame blocking the entrance for a brief second. He turned his head just enough to catch your eye through the visor. “Tight angles,” he murmured over the direct comms. “Watch your step. Water’s moving fast down there.”
“Roger,” you whispered back, heart rate elevated but steady. Your breathing was a calm cycle. Perfect control.
You descended together.
The air turned thick instantly, stagnant, and freezing cold, smelling heavily of rusted iron and stagnant river silt. By the time you hit the bottom platform, the water was already sloshing violently against your shins, the current pulling at your trousers. The white beams of your tactical lights reflected off the slick subway tiles and casted distorted shadows down the length of the tunnel.
It was an echo chamber. Every splash of your boots felt too loud to be safe, but you matched his cadence perfectly, stepping when he stepped, neutralizing the noise as much as you possibly could.
The tunnel stretched out ahead. Ten meters in, the first structural obstacle appeared, a massive, rusted steel doorframe leading into a secondary maintenance corridor. Simon slowed his pace, shoulders dropping slightly as he approached to the left side of the frame. You smoothly transitioned into his right, kept your muzzle low, sweeping the blind spot behind the heavy iron door while Simon took the high angle, his barrel tracking the corridor. The room was clear. No targets.
Simon lowered his rifle just an inch, jaw shifting beneath the skull print as he looked at you. “Thought you’d drop your stance,” he rumbled softly into the comms, throwing the kitchen critique back into the mix.
“Told you, Simon,” you murmured back, a faint smirk tugging at your lips behind your mask as you kept your weapon raised. “I’m adjusting for the space.”
“Good,” Ghost muttered, the Lieutenant returning in a flash as a distant, metallic clink echoed from the far end of the flooded rail line. The hostiles were close. He raised his rifle. “Room’s about to get loud.”
About ten minutes later, the central maintenance junction looked like a subterranean slaughterhouse.
The initial ambush had turned the corridors into a localized hell. Muzzle flashes detonated in the dark while the deafening roar of automatic gunfire bounced off the concrete ceiling. You and Simon managed to move like a single terrifying entity— but then a desperate enemy combatant had blind-fired a heavy grenade launcher into the structural pillars.
The explosion had been a blinding flash of orange head, followed by the low-frequency groan of collapsing reinforced concrete. The ceiling had caved in with a thunderous roar, dropping tons of debris, steel rebar and dust into the rushing water, completely severing your line of sight from Price and Soap and rendering the main comms loop into a wall of static.
Worse, the shockwave had triggered the emergency lockdown protocols of the facility. A heavy, industrial iron security grate had slammed down from the ceiling with a violent clang, locking securely into the concrete floor.
You were trapped on the other side. Alone. In the dark. With the echo of approaching hostile footsteps splashing through the water toward your position.
Where is she, where the hell is she?
Inside Simon’s skull, the cold Lieutenant had managed to turn to ash. The moment that iron grate had slammed down, cutting off his view of your tactical light, the hollow vacuum behind his ribs had ruptured into a frantic heat. He couldn’t hear you over the static. He couldn’t feel your shoulder against his.
He didn’t care about chemical crates at that moment, Price’s orders were reduced to mere afterthoughts. The Ghost persona buckled under the primitive terror of worrying about you. He was losing his mind, the ticking clock in his head deafening him as he heard the distant clack of an enemy rifle chambering a round on your side of the wall.
You, however, refrained from panic. Backing up against the slick tiles, you felt the extra branching charge Simon had tucked into your vest back at the base. You ripped the plastic explosive from your pouch, slapped it against a secondary drywall partition that led into the hostiles’ blind flank, and blew it.
The drywall shattered. You stepped directly through the smoke, weapon hot, and caught the incoming hostile fireteam completely off-guard, systematically clearing the room all by yourself.
On the other side of the iron gate, Simon didn’t have a breaching charge left.
With a raw, animalistic growl that tore right through his throat and into the dead air of the tunnel, he threw his rifle to the side and slammed his massive, gloved hands into the horizontal gaps of the iron security grate. His boots dug into the rushing water, heavy muscles straining until the fabric of his black combat shirt underneath threatened to rip across his shoulders. He didn’t have time to think about all that, then. He just thought about the ice in your eyes that he’d spent so much time trying to melt, and he refused to let the dark take it back.
With a screeching groan of protesting metal, Simon pulled.
The hydraulic gears inside the ceiling shrieked, sparks flying from the housing unit as he manually overrode the locking mechanism with brute physical force. The iron teeth of the gate ground against the concrete, bending and bucking out of their tracks until the mechanism finally snapped with a loud pop, as Simon heaved the grate forward, showing it into the ceiling frame until it jammed open.
He lunged through the opening, splashing loudly into the water, hand already reaching for the sidearm, ready to tear the room apart.
He froze, instead.
The room was already quiet. You were standing in the center of the flooded space, your boots planted firmly in the rushing water, your rifle raised and covering the far door. Three hostiles lay neutralized around you. Simon stood there, his chest rising and falling in violent, ragged gasps under his vest. He stared at you through the green tint of his optics. He looked like a man who had just dragged himself out of a grave.
Alive. Breathing.
The relief hit Simon so hard it made his knees feel weak beneath his weight—a sensation he hadn't felt since he was a boy. The frantic, screaming noise in his head died down into a thrumming hum, leaving him entirely exposed to the gravity of how much he cared. He didn't have the words to describe it, and he didn't have the manual answer to hide it anymore. He just knew that if that gate hadn't opened, there wouldn't have been anything left of the Ghost to salvage.
Slowly, Simon walked through the water until he was standing inches away from you, towering silhouette blocking out the smoke. He reached out, his gloved hand coming up to rest flat against the side of your neck— exactly like he had in the armory, calloused and utterly unyielding. His thumb gave a heavy twitch against your jaw, his eyes searching yours behind the skull plate, demanding that you look at him.
I’m here, his eyes meant to say. You did fucking well but I’m here now.
Before you could whisper his name, the heavy crunch of boots and the splash of water signaled Price and Soap finally breaking through the rubble from the western stairs.
"Ghost! Kid! Report!" Price’s voice barked as he stepped into the light, his rifle raised.
Soap and Gaz followed right behind him, their eyes immediately darting from the buckled, ruined iron gate to the way Simon was standing right in your space, his hand still at the back of your neck. Johnny stopped mid-stride, the usual joke jamming in his throat. For once in his life, Johnny MacTavish wisely chose to keep his mouth shut, a soft, serious smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he lowered his weapon.
Simon gave your neck one last, firm squeeze, forcing the reality of the present into your bones, before he slowly turned his head toward the Captain. "Sector is clear, Price," Simon rumbled, "Chemical crates are secured. Let's get the hell out of the dark."
The base was entirely dead by the time the post-mission debriefing finally wrapped at 0300.
The rest of the team had scattered to their quarters, desperate to wash the stench of stagnant transit water and cordite out of their skin. You’d done the same, scrubbing the mud from your hair under a scalding shower until your skin was raw, changing into a clean, oversized black t-shirt and grey sweatpants. Despite the bone-deep exhaustion, your mind wouldn’t shut off.
Every time you closed your eyes, you heard the screech of hydraulic gears bending out of their tracks. You saw Simon lunging through the smoke, looking like a monster dragged out of a grave, chest heaving with a terror he never should have felt.
You knew he hadn’t gone to the med-bay. He’d given Price a flat, clipped “I’m fine” when the Captain noticed him favoring his right side on the exfil chopper.
You grabbed a small ice pack from the mess hall freezer, wrapped it in a clean dish towel, and walked straight down the silent corridor toward the back of the armory cage.
The lights were off, save for the single, low-wattage desk lamp illuminating the workbench in the very back.
Simon was there, sitting on a metal stool. He had stripped off his tactical vest and combat shirt, wearing only a sleeveless black undershirt that left his chest and shoulders bare. The skull balaclava was rolled up to sit snugly around his forehead like a makeshift sweatband, exposing his entire face under the low light— the sharp, tense line of his jaw, the rough stubble, and the heavy shadows beneath his eyes. The absolute beauty in all of them.
He was holding a tube of muscle ointment in his left hand, trying clumsily to reach over his own back to rub it into his right shoulder blade. His right arm was tucked tightly against his ribs, jaw clenched into a hard, rigid line as his muscles protested the movement.
The short scuff of your sneakers made him freeze, and turn his head away. “It’s three in the morning,” he spoke, seemingly knowing who you’d be without even looking. “Go to sleep.”
“You skipped med-bay,” you said simply, walking right past the threshold of the cage and stepping into the low circle of amber light.
“I’m fine,” he muttered, his shoulder giving an involuntary twitch that made the tendons in his neck tighten with pain. "Just a tight muscle. Pack it in."
You walked straight up to the workbench instead, set the wrapped ice pack down on the steel, and picked up the tube of muscle ointment. You were standing behind him when you clicked the cap open, squeezed a generous amount into your palms, and rubbed your hands together to warm it up.
Simon’s breathing was deep and measured. For a second, his weight shifted as if he was going to stand up and walk out in typical Ghost fashion. “Sit still, Simon,” you murmured softly. A low, defeated sigh hissed through his teeth. He let his head drop forward slightly, broad shoulders relaxing just a fraction of an inch as you laid your hands flat against his freckled skin.
You kept your touch firm, using the heels of your palms to dig into the tight, knotted muscle. A low groan vibrated deep through Simon’s chest as you hit the center of the strain.
“You’re lucky you didn’t tear a tendon,” you said quietly, thumbs smoothing out a hard knot near his neck. “What you did out there… it was completely against the manual, Lieutenant.”
“For the last time,” he rumbled, voice slightly muffled as he stared down at the floor. “Off the clock, it’s Simon.”
“You shouldn’t have done it. I had the breaching charge. I was handling it.”
For a long, heavy beat, the only sound in the armory was the low hum of the desk lamp. Then, slowly, Simon turned his massive frame around on the stool, forcing your hands to drop from his back. He reached up, his large fingers wrapping firmly around your wrist, stopping you from stepping away as he pulled you a step closer in between his legs. He looked up at you, his face completely exposed in the dim light, intensity of his gaze pinning you right to the floor.
"I couldn't hear you breathing," he whispered.
The words were rough, scraped raw from the back of his throat, carrying a confession so heavy it made your breath hitch. Or rather, it knocked the breath out of you.
The beauty. Oh, how pretty a thing, that he was hiding.
For a moment, I forgot what I had expected to find under the mask. Scars, maybe. Something brutal. Something that matched the name Ghost.
But Simon’s face was not monstrous. It was stark and pale and devastatingly human and oh, so, so pretty. Sharp cheekbones, a strong nose, a mouth set like he had spent his whole life holding back words he never trusted anyone enough to say. His hair was fair and mussed from the mask, skin marked by old violence and its scars, but none of it made him ugly.
God help you, he was beautiful.
Not in an easy way, though. Not in the way men in pictures were beautiful. Simon was beautiful like a blade was beautiful— cold at first glance, dangerous, finely made. And then his eyes met yours, blue and bare and uncertain, and all the danger seemed to fall away.
You saw him then. Not Ghost. Just Simon.
And he looked almost afraid of being seen.
"The comms went to static, the gate went down, and all I could think about was the dark in that room," Simon continued, his thumb giving a slow rub against the inside of your wrist, feeling your pulse there. “I would tear that bloody wall down brick by brick if it meant getting you out.”
You looked down at the hand on your wrist, then back up to his icy blues, realizing the weight of what Johnny had told you in the hangar. Being human again is a bloody terrifying thing for him.
“I held it, Simon.” you murmured, voice dropping to an honest whisper as you whispered a half-inch closer into his space. “Held my lane, because I knew you were on the other side.”
Simon stared at you for a long, breathless moment, jaw setting as he processed the words. His eyes closed when your palms found the sides of his face, cradling it, whilst he exhaled a breath so deep he must’ve been holding it for decades.
“I’m always going to be on the other side.”
hiiiiiiiiii!! please lmk what you feel. i love you.
Cw/tw-- mentions of pregnancy and talk of not wanting to live (if u squint)
He left a few weeks ago. Your school announced the kids who went off to basic training, and his name rang in your ears, weighing your soul down like lead. It wasn't fair. He wasn't fair. Fuck, what did you expect anyways? That someone could truly want all of you?
Your friends pitied you. They warned you at first, but you can only lead a horse to water, unable to force it to drink. You promised them you'd change him, you'd fix whatever what was wrong with him. And for a moment in time, it seemed.. Real. Like you would've fixed him if you had a little longer—
Or maybe you wouldn't have. The irony, really, creating a hole of your own doing. You dug it deep enough that you could be buried alive, with his hands holding the shovel. But self loathing only lasted so long, until the world kept moving and you had to sink into the floor or pick yourself up anyways.
You went back to your old routine, packing for college and planning on rewriting what your future looked like. That day, when no noise was able to cover the racing thoughts in your mind, it hit you. When was your last period?
It was like this often—a late period here or there, almost a month in a half irregularties that plagued you. It usually was blamed on your diet, you've never been too kind on yourself. But this realization came with more dread than usual, a pit settling low in your stomach. There were tests hidden deep in your counters, for times like this. It wasn't your first scare, but it felt like a deafening last.
~
The test sat flipped on the counter as you finished cleaning your room, using anything to avoid going to check it. The beginning of the end was sitting on the sink, waiting to tear down any hope of a future. You always used protection, why was this happening now? Why after he was gone?
He would've ran, anyhow.
When wiping the same window several times began to tire you, you steeled yourself. You were fine, overreacting, much to the agreement of Simon if he were here. You stalked to the sink, hand shaky as you flipped it over—
And your world tilted in an ugly, rearing way, the test dropping into the sink from an unstable grip.
Positive +
You felt the walls close around you, the air thin and useless. It can't be. You have to be hallucinating, you're not pregnant, you're not.. You can't be pregnant.
But more tests agree with the first. It made you sick, nauseas, just thinking about it. This was life ending information, something you'd have to stomach alone because if your parents found out, they'd have you on the streets faster than Simon had left. Any chance at a new future crumbled around you, leaving your mind in a state of tunnel vision, only able to focus in the fact you had a life inside of you. One you didn't want to think about. One that would permanently attach you to Simon, no matter how much he wanted to get away from you.
Tears blurred your vision, and you sunk slowly to the ground. You couldn't go to.. To anyone about this. Not even your friends, God knows who they'd tell.
Ugly, hiccuping sobs left you, your soul trying to communicate to the world how unfair this was. How horrible this path you were now forced down is. But, then again, when had life ever really been meant for you?
~
After two months passed, you just.. Bore it. What else could you do? There was no.. Definite path for after the baby would be born. You couldn't keep it, God no. But, you didn't want it to end up with a life like Simon's. Both ideas haunted you into night terrors, only finding comfort in the pillow beneath you at night.
Nothing felt right anymore. You were unsure if it ever would, again. You aren't even sure if Simon would ever find out, the number you attempted to text bounced back with a message stating the number was no longer in use. Life began to take a faded hue, the illusion of care for it wasn't really the forefront for you.
You had a life nobody wanted. How can you care for that?
uh idk maybe there more maybe I'll deactivate everything and rot lmao. Bai luv u ❤️🩹
saw the mw4 trailer and it got me thinking about being the partner John Price left behind…
content: angst, rogue Price, military inaccuracies oops
“I told you, Simon,” you repeat for what feels like the hundredth time today, your voice weary, “I don’t know where John is.”
Simon watches you from across the table. The interrogation table. You can hardly believe you’re here, being treated like some war criminal all because your husband abandoned you for revenge. They keep telling you you’re not in trouble and that you’ll only be here for a few hours, but you’re losing hope. Especially when Simon looks at you like that.
“I don’t believe you,” he states flatly, his fingers drumming against the table. He’s desperate. “Price must have told you something. Anything. We just need a lead, love.” A lead, like it’s that simple.
You shake your head, looking up at the ceiling. “He’d never put me in danger like that,” you whisper, feeling the emotion build up inside you. “You know he wouldn’t. I know he’s fucked up, but you and I both know he’s doing this for the right reasons.” You level your gaze with Simon, your eyes raw and honest. “Let me go home. Please. This hasn’t been easy for me, or the family.”
You see a tiny flicker in his eyes, sympathy maybe. Perhaps guilt, even. He leans back with a sigh, slowly nodding before getting to his feet. “I’ll drive you back,” he says, resting his hand on your lower back as he guides you out of the room.
You say goodbye on your doorstep, with a hug and a promise to phone him if you hear anything from your husband. Then you’re alone in the house you that, up until a few days ago, you shared with John.
It feels too quiet, too empty without him. The smell of him - the combination of bourbon, cigars and gun smoke - is already fading away. You do everything you would do on a normal day, but the absence of John feels like a physical in your chest. Nothing about this is normal.
By the time evening rolls around, you double check that the front door is locked before closing all the curtains in the house. You make sure that the whole house is secure and safe, even though you can see the unmarked car parked across the street. Watching you and your house for any sign of John.
With a sigh, you retreat to your bedroom. The bed feels too big without John sharing it, his clothes still hanging in the wardrobe. You perch on the edge of the bed, watching as the clock on the sideboard ticks towards 9pm. Your fingers play with the necklace you’re wearing as you wait, a gift from John on your first wedding anniversary.
Then, as soon as the hour ticks over, the phone rings. Right on time.
Not the landline. Not your mobile.
You drag the suitcase from under the bed, digging under the clothes to pull out the black brick of a phone. Untraceable and unidentifiable. Your hand is steady as you press it to your ear, a slight smile tugging at your lips as the familiar voice of your husband fills your ear.
“Hello, darling,” John murmurs into the phone, his voice crackling thanks to wherever he currently is. “Miss me?”
a/n: thinking about expanding this into a full fic?? maybe??
Just a few suggestions. You shouldn’t have to compromise your writing style and voice with any of these, and some situations and scenes might demand some stiff or jerky writing to better convey emotion and immersion. I am not the first to come up with these, just circulating them again.
1. Vary sentence structure.
This is an example paragraph. You might see this generated from AI. I can’t help but read this in a robotic voice. It’s very flat and undynamic. No matter what the words are, it will be boring. It’s boring because you don’t think in stiff sentences. Comedians don’t tell jokes in stiff sentences. We don’t tell campfire stories in stiff sentences. These often lack flow between points, too.
So funnily enough, I had to sit through 87k words of a “romance” written just like this. It was stiff, janky, and very unpoetic. Which is fine, the author didn’t tell me it was erotica. It just felt like an old lady narrator, like Old Rose from Titanic telling the audience decades after the fact instead of living it right in the moment. It was in first person pov, too, which just made it worse. To be able to write something so explicit and yet so un-titillating was a talent. Like, beginner fanfic smut writers at least do it with enthusiasm.
2. Vary dialogue tag placement
You got three options, pre-, mid-, and post-tags.
Leader said, “this is a pre-dialogue tag.”
“This,” Lancer said, “is a mid-dialogue tag.”
“This is a post-dialogue tag,” Heart said.
Pre and Post have about the same effect but mid-tags do a lot of heavy lifting.
They help break up long paragraphs of dialogue that are jank to look at
They give you pauses for ~dramatic effect~
They prompt you to provide some other action, introspection, or scene descriptor with the tag.
*don't forget that if you're continuing the sentence as if the tag wasn't there, not to capitalize the first word after the tag. Capitalize if the tag breaks up two complete sentences, not if it interrupts a single sentence.
It also looks better along the lefthand margin when you don’t start every paragraph with either the same character name, the same pronouns, or the same “ as it reads more natural and organic.
3. When the scene demands, get dynamic
General rule of thumb is that action scenes demand quick exchanges, short paragraphs, and very lean descriptors. Action scenes are where you put your juicy verbs to use and cut as many adverbs as you can. But regardless of if you’re in first person, second person, or third person limited, you can let the mood of the narrator bleed out into their narration.
Like, in horror, you can use a lot of onomatopoeia.
Drip
Drip
Drip
Or let the narration become jerky and unfocused and less strict in punctuation and maybe even a couple run-on sentences as your character struggles to think or catch their breath and is getting very overwhelmed.
You can toss out some grammar rules, too and get more poetic.
Warm breath tickles the back of her neck. It rattles, a quiet, soggy, rasp.
She shivers. If she doesn’t look, it’s not there. If she doesn’t look, it’s not there. Sweat beads at her temple. Her heart thunders in her chest. Ba-bump-ba-bump-ba-bump-ba-
It moves on, leaving a void of cold behind.
She uncurls her fists, fingers achy and palms stinging from her nails.
It’s gone.
4. Remember to balance dialogue, monologue, introspection, action, and descriptors.
The amount of times I have been faced with giant blocks of dialogue with zero tags, zero emotions, just speech on a page like they’re notecards to be read on a stage is higher than I expected. Don’t forget that though you may know exactly how your dialogue sounds in your head, your readers don’t. They need dialogue tags to pick up on things like tone, specifically for sarcasm and sincerity, whether a character is joking or hurt or happy.
If you’ve written a block of text (usually exposition or backstory stuff) that’s longer than 50 words, figure out a way to trim it. No matter what, break it up into multiple sections and fill in those breaks with important narrative that reflects the narrator’s feelings on what they’re saying and whoever they’re speaking to’s reaction to the words being said. Otherwise it’s meaningless.
—
Hope this helps anyone struggling! Now get writing.
“You’re thinking too much,” he muttered, fabric of his balaclava shifting slightly as his jaw set. “Can hear it from here. The ticking clock in your head. The bottle or the blade you’ll use to quiet the noise when all that tips over.”
[1.5k] angst? guilt, ptsd, all that, mental breakdown, lieutenant riley saves the day by literally just being there, self deprecating themes, hurt and comfort i think, i don't know, i haven't written anything in like 4 years, this was the hardest thing ive done
reblog and/or like for a kiss, feedback much appreciated! not proofread.
The customary smell of gun oil and metallic solvent usually cleared your head. You’d rub and polish rhythmically, often to the point where any curious eye would worry you’d manage to scrub the finish right off the receiver with a microfiber cloth whilst in that trance. Tonight, though, it just made you sick.
The armory was dead quiet, save for the hum of a flickering fluorescent bulb three rows over. You were hunched on a low wooden bench in the furthest, dim corner, the shadows cutting you off from the rest of the world, the rest of the team. Hands shaking so persistently that the cleaning rod clattered loudly against the receiver of your rifle, the harsh ring of metal on metal echoing in the empty room. Clack, clack, clack.
You choked back a sob, gripping the cold steel tighter. Even with a blurry vision, you could do this thousand times over. In a pitch black room. With your eyes closed. But now it felt like every time you closed your eyes, you were in that windowless room once again. Breathing in the same heavy, suffocating weight of holding the line. Doing what needs to be done. Playing the part. The unshakeable, cold-blooded soldier. The war criminal.
Now that the adrenaline had crashed, the mask was shattering, and the phantom echoes of the interrogation room were ringing in your ears so loud that you couldn’t hear it when the rusty metal door creaked open, and closed again. Stubborn tears wet the days-old dust off your cheeks in a straight south line, and you didn’t have it in you to blink them away. You could do this with your eyes closed.
With your chest tight, your breaths came in shallow, jagged gasps. You were drowning. You could swim up to surface with all your limbs tied. But now, you were drowning. Terrified of someone coming to get you. Realizing you didn’t belong. Not one bit. The unshakeable, cold-blooded soldier. So affected, so battered by war. So lost, so broken.
A massive shadow fell over the bench.
You flinched, heart managing to hammer against your ribs despite how constricted it was a brief moment ago, and looked up. LT stood there. Ghost. Simon. Whoever was behind the balaclava, with his eyes — heavy, shadowed, and intensely focused — pinning you to your spot.
You tried to swallow the lump in your throat to no avail, blinking rapidly to clear the tears away to make way for the sight that your Lieutenant was. Big, burly machine. A force of nature. You often thought that if you were by the opposite side of the muzzle of his gun, you’d proper shit yourself. You scrambled to assemble the rifle still, desperate to look one bit functional. “Lieutenant. I’m just— the carbon buildup—“
Simon didn’t say a word. He didn’t offer a hollow phrase like you did good out there, nor did he tell you to suck it up. You appreciated that in him. He was efficient, both out in the field and back in one on ones like this. He stepped closer and sank down onto the bench right next to yours, the feeble wood creaking and stretching a fraction under the weight. You felt his shoulder rub against yours for a moment. He was a solid, towering wall of heat and mass, and the sheer physical presence of him immediately anchored the spinning room. Anchored you. The shake of your hands, jump of your thigh.
Without asking, his large, scarred hands reached out. His fingers were steady as they gently but firmly covered your trembling ones, and he didn’t pull away until your grip finally relaxed, letting him take the solvent-soaked cloth and the disassembled pieces of the rifle from your hands. Now with your hands empty, you didn’t know what to do with them. What to do with yourself. Your arms found solace back against your chest, as you suddenly felt small under the weight of his shadow.
You braced yourself for the lecture still. For the disappointment. For the inevitable confirmation that you were too soft for the 141, that you were exactly what you feared you’d turn out to be: broken. No military shrink could fix you up. No point in trying, either— they could just recruit somebody better. Unfit for duty. Discharged. You’d sit and wallow in an empty apartment save for a shit mattress until there’s nothing left of you. You’d do stupid things to feel something. Because that’s what you were, no? A stupid, useless—
“Won’t tell you it gets easier,” he murmured, gaze fixed on the rhythmic, grating scrape of wire brush cleaning the bolt carrier group. A metronome for your ragged breathing. He moved with a practical, easy grace born of a man who had cleaned a thousand rifles in a thousand dark rooms just like this one. A man who knew the anatomy of a weapon better than his own reflection. “Gets louder. But you’re out of the room now. Let go.”
He didn’t look at you. Didn’t force you to meet his eyes, granting you the dignity of your breakdown as you made yourself even smaller in your seat. Let go. Just open your palm and watch it drop. It’s gonna feel weightless. It would make you unshakeable again. It would make your blood run cold.
You knew Simon would recognize this exact brand of panic. He lived with it every single day, wore it like a second skin beneath the gear. With his shoulder pressed firmly against yours — a massive, grounding bulkhead which kept your feet planted down on earth at least — he finished reassembling the weapon. The sharp, clean clack of the upper receiver locking back into place broke the longing gaze between you and the floor. You looked up. At him. At the door closing on the afternoon’s horrors. Complete.
He laid the rifle across his heavy thighs, large hands resting flat against the handguard. Finally, he spoke again, his voice a low rumble that vibrated right through the thick air and into the depths of your bones.
“Look at me.”
It wasn’t a command meant to break you, though the sheer gravitational pull of his voice could easily crush lesser soldiers. It was a heavy anchor, dropped straight into the center of your chest, pulling and pulling until you had no space to escape back to.
Slowly, your chin lifted. The dust on your cheeks felt tight against your skin, tracks of salt and sorrow mapping out the exact anatomy of your much anticipated collapse. You met his gaze. Up close, without the skull plate blocking out the humanity he fought so damn hard to bury, his eyes were a storm of icy blues and lines behind the balaclava. You couldn’t find pity in them, no matter how hard you looked. God, if they held pity, you’d have shattered right then and there once again into a million pieces. But the knowing in them didn’t help much, either.
“You’re thinking too much,” he muttered, fabric of his balaclava shifting slightly as his jaw set. “Can hear it from here. The ticking clock in your head. The bottle or the blade you’ll use to quiet the noise when all that tips over.”
Your breath hitched. Read your damn mind like a standard issue manual. A small, pathetic sound caught in the back of your throat.
“I’m not gonna let it tip over,” Simon said, his hand moving from the rifle to wrap around the back of your neck. His palm felt massive, calloused, and utterly unyielding there, squeezing just enough to force the scattered thoughts out of your skull and bring you back to the cold reality of the present. The room. The scent of him— tobacco, stale sweat. The weight of your gear. The cold on your fingertips. “But the cost of the uniform isn’t that you get to stop feeling. Either you learn to carry the weight, or it breaks your spine. Choice is yours.”
Those have to be the most words he’s ever uttered to you, you thought. A long, shuddering exhale left you, your forehead automatically sinking forward until it bumped against the heavy tactical nylon covering his shoulder. He didn’t shift away, to your surprise. Didn’t even stiffen, like he was expecting you to do just that. Simon, through all his own fears, held the back of your neck like a solid pillar against the dark.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
“That’s Simon for you tonight,” he murmured against your hair, his voice dropping an octave, becoming something almost resembling gentle. Soft. Like it’s not a sin to be soft. To not be an unshakeable, cold-blooded soldier. “We go back out tomorrow. Rifle’s clean, door’s locked. Rest.”
“Roger,” you let out one last, shaky breath, closing your eyes against the rough fabric of his shoulder. “See you at zero-six-hundred.”
my last actual writing is from like 2022 apparently? (crazy!) i had to physically force myself to do this because lately i've been just thinking about how good it feels to put something out there. bit of a different fandom than what i used to go for but eh, give a girl a break, she's been in a slump for what felt like a decade lol. i hope you enjoy. let me know if anything doesn't sit right. let me know if anything does. just let me know. i love hearing from you people, i love talking about stuff. please bully me into a part 2 and 3 and 4 and-
Chronically online reader x Simon "Quite The Opposite" Riley
I feel like that would be fun for your galaxy brain to tinker with! Love your work btw, mwah 🤭🖤
- Biscuits 🌺
Okay this ask is like.. genuinely 45 million years old but it just inspired me...? so uh.. better late than never..
ChronicallyOnlineReader x HasAFlipPhoneSimon hah
cw/tw-fluff?
~
Surprisingly, you had managed to keep up with every corner of the internet while having a job. Tiktok has become a scroll away from consuming the edges of your mind, but hey, you know about Tyler Catastrophe to the Pattie Gonia vs Patagonia lawsuit. Comes in handy during nights with your friends, or when you need to have a good laugh about how you aren't getting canceled on the internet.
Yet, your dense boyfriend doesn't catch a lick of what you manage to info dump to him over coffee. He gives you a quizzical look as you fiddle with your phone, tossing it in your hand over and over.
"--And honestly, his necklaces aren't even made that well. I mean, a ribbon is tacky-"
"Love?" He manages to catch you in a breath, and you smile sweetly at him.
"Yeah? What, don't tell me you of all people like his work." You mutter, laughing as you set your phone down for a drink. Simon had come home a day earlier, and you decided you needed to catch him up. He stifled a laugh, shaking his head.
"No, love, 'm just not.. Sure who this 'Tyler' fella is. Did he move in next door, or..?" He leaves the question open to you.
You blink, he's gotta be fucking with me right? Tyler, as in Tyler Ca--
Oh. Oh. He genuinely had no clue what the hell you were ranting about. You hide your warm cheeks behind your phone before biting your tongue.
"...He's... On tiktok?" You bashfully smiled, before setting your phone down. "I forgot, you're like a grandpa."
He frowns, before you cup his face, cooing, "The best grandpa. Promise."
He shakes his head, eyes on yours.
"No, it's fine, y'just got me worried. First morning home and ya talking about another man." He laughed quietly, moving to hold your hand. You giggle, shaking your head.
So you start from the beginning instead. From the first viral tiktok. It's gonna be a long morning.
~
eek sorry is this showing my own screen time since finals have been done. i cry. ok love u bye!!
Your head was heavy against his shoulder, eyes puffy and red from the tears that have stained your cheeks. Your hands lay palm up on your lap, the strain of feeling exhausted you to your core. Simon had kept quiet, eyes ahead at the wall for the past hour, letting you cry since he told you he was leaving the next month. He'd mentioned the military before, but you thought he'd never be serious enough to commit to it. He'd never been serious enough to commit to you.
"Fuck, Simon." Your voice croaked, your head lifting enough to meet his eyes. He swallowed, blinking slowly at you. He didn't have the words for you, he never had the words. He didn't think you'd.. Be like this.
"I.. I just.. I thought I'd tell you. You, uh, you took it harder than I expected." He mumbled, eyes squinting softly. The words twisted your gut, as you pushed off him. You managed to shakily stand, sniffling as you wiped your nose with the back of your hand.
"Took it harder? What does that means? We've—I've been—Haven't we been-?" You gestured between the two of you, confusion slowly creeping on his face.
"... Been what?" He softly glanced at the furrow between your brows.
You felt your chest tighten, a soft burn behind your eyes, "Well, I-I just thought.. Together?"
He blinked back a little shock, and to you it felt like a blow to your heart, the beginning of a shatter. You two have hooked up but, it wasn't ever specified.
You should've asked.
"Love, I.. This isn't—wasn't anything," he paused, standing when you took a couple hesitant steps closer to the door. "You knew that, right?" His voice came out unsure, waiting for the confirmation he knew he wouldn't get. You felt the tears boil under your vision, and you hiccupped, clutching your chest. You swore those nights meant something. They had to have.
In the back of your mind, it made sense then. How it was so easy to leave, then, for him. He had no strings to you, yet you'd knotted all of yours to him. You stood taller, swallowing the spit in your mouth.
"You knew it meant something." It came out sharper than you had intended. He furrowed his brows.
"You knew it didn't," He took a step forward, his own expression.. Angry, directed at something in the confinement of his mind.
"Simon, we talked about it. About agreeing to eye contact, to being less sexual and more snuggly, I-I gave you everything Simon. It's not funny, this is a joke, you're a joke, you—"
"I didn't ask for it!" He spat out, the crack in his own composure showing. He bit his tounge, squaring off his shoulders. "I didn't ask for it. For you to be like this, I-I agreed to a stress relief."
You stared at him, a small piece of hair falling in front of your nose. He didn't ask for all of you. He wasn't.. Wasn't wrong.
There was no regret in his face as he turned back to his couch. He started to fix the blanket you had messed up, fixing the cushions as you stared a hole into his back. Who ever really wanted all of you? Not when.. Not when your body had become enough?
You did it to yourself, really.
"You're mean." You hiccupped, angrily wiping a stray tear off yout cheek.
"And your obsessive! God, really, I-I can't do anything without pissing you off. It's why I don't date, a-and why I would've never even dated you!" He left in a hurry, over explaining himself of why he just could never be more for you because he didn't want more of you.
It had been a while since someone did, anyways.
- part two
hi I'm back 😘 sorry I feel no joy so nobody gets to feel joy. Unedited Bai love u
𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲; getting shot at apparently has its benefits, one of them being that you get to meet your future husband.
𝐜𝐰; hospital setting, descriptions of gunshot wounds, post surgery pain, swearing, military inaccuracies, reader and ghost are sarcastic asf, hurt/comfort, fluff, it’s 6k words long.
𝐚/𝐧: so many of you loved my lieutenant!reader drabble and it motivated me to write the couple’s first meet. A thank you for reaching 1.5k followers<3
Everything the doctor says reaches you through a thick, cottony haze. His voice drifts in and out like a radio station struggling through static, words slurring together into meaningless fragments of medical jargon you neither have the energy nor the patience to decipher. The anesthesia still clings to your veins, heavy and nauseating, making your thoughts sluggish and your temper dangerously short.
The room smells sharply of antiseptic, sterile enough to sting the inside of your nose. Somewhere nearby, a monitor beeps in a slow, rhythmic pattern. Footsteps echo faintly beyond the door. Metal clinks against metal. Every sound feels amplified, scraping against the inside of your skull.
Then the pain starts settling in.
At first it's distant, muted beneath the fading anesthesia. But slowly, steadily, it crawls up your thigh like fire spreading beneath your skin. Deep. Throbbing. Relentless. It coils around the muscle and bone until even breathing feels difficult. You suck in a sharp breath through clenched teeth, your fingers twitching weakly against the stiff hospital sheets.
“We managed to save your leg and restore blood flow to the severed artery. That tourniquet saved your life, Lieutenant.”
You can finally make out enough of the doctor's words to understand him, though opening your eyes feels like dragging sandpaper across your skull. When you manage it anyway, the harsh fluorescent lights overhead stab into your vision so violently you immediately regret it. White. Endless white. It burns behind your eyes.
“You’ll be off active duty for several months,” the doctor continues, voice calm and practiced. “You’ll need physiotherapy. We can discuss the details of your recovery before discharge.”
His voice sounds farther away now, as though he’s standing at the end of a tunnel instead of beside your bed.
“Okay,” you rasp out, "thank you."
Even speaking hurts.
You try shifting your weight, desperate to find a position that doesn’t feel like someone is driving nails through your leg, but the slightest movement sends a violent flare of pain through your thigh. Your entire body tenses instinctively. A strained groan escapes your throat before you can stop it.
The doctor offers you a sympathetic look, scribbles something onto the clipboard tucked beneath his arm, then finally leaves you alone.
Silence settles over the room or something close to silence. Machines continue humming softly around you. Somewhere outside, muffled voices drift down the hallway alongside the squeak of rubber soles against polished floors. The IV taped to your arm pulls unpleasantly every time you move your arm and your mouth tastes stale and metallic.
You should probably sleep, let the anesthetic finish wearing off, but even lifting a hand to rub at your burning eyes feels exhausting.
With a frustrated exhale, you give up trying to get comfortable. Nothing helps. The pain isn't worth the effort. Instead, you slowly roll your head from side to side against the pillow, trying to ease the stiffness lodged in your neck.
That’s when you notice the figure in the bed several meters away.
At first, your blurry vision struggles to make sense of him. Just a shape beneath dim hospital blankets. Broad shoulders. Dark clothes folded over the chair beside the bed. Then your focus sharpens enough to realize, the figure belongs to a man. Your brows knit together immediately—you could’ve sworn the men’s and women’s recovery rooms were separated.
As if sensing your stare, the man slowly turns his head toward you.
The movement is sluggish, clearly painful. His face comes into view little by little, littered with scars, rough around the edges and pale beneath the hospital lighting. There’s faint surprise in his eyes when he realizes you’re awake, quickly followed by visible confusion at the expression you’re giving him, like he's the reason you're stuck in that hospital bed.
Before he can tell you off for it, you speak first.
“Why are you here?”
Your voice comes out rough and hoarse, stripped of its usual sharp authority.
“Too many casualties,” he says after a moment, his tone low and gravelly. “Hospital’s full. Had to stick you in a spare room.”
You blink slowly, processing his words through the lingering fog in your head, followed by a soft nod.
“Okay.”
And just like that, silence returns.
─☆*:・
You can’t sleep, not even close.
The pain keeps gnawing at your leg, the mattress feels too stiff, the IV needle in your arm is irritating enough to make you want to rip it out entirely, the smell of disinfectant hangs thick in the air and the fluorescent lights buzz faintly overhead. Every distant sound from the hallway drills into your skull.
But worse than all of it is the realization sitting heavy in your chest: You can’t walk—not yet, at least.
A lieutenant reduced to lying helplessly in a hospital bed. Useless. The thought sours your mood almost instantly.
Eventually, the boredom outweighs your irritation.
You glance toward the man again. “What happened to you?”
He doesn’t look at you this time.
“Got shot,” his answer is short, straight forward and his tone awfully flat. “Upper abdomen,” he adds a second later, followed by a quiet groan as he carefully shifts against the bed.
“Oh, fuck,” you mutter weakly.
“Yeah,” despite his—still flat—tone, there’s dry humor buried underneath it. “Didn’t hit anything vital, though.”
“Lucky, I guess.”
“Still feels like shit.”
A breathy laugh escapes you before you can stop it, and to your surprise, the corner of his mouth twitches upward into something resembling half a smile. The room feels a slightly less unbearable after that.
“What’s your rank?” you ask once the silence stretches too long again.
“Lieutenant.”
That catches your attention immediately. You study him more carefully now, eyes tracing over the sharp lines of his profile. The broad frame, the military posture even while half-drugged and injured, the roughness in his voice.
“SAS?” you ask cautiously and he gives a small grunt of confirmation.
Weird. You know the faces of almost every lieutenant attached to the force. At the very least, you know their names, but his face doesn’t ring any bells at all.
It takes a few moments before the realization clicks into place, making your eyes narrow slightly.
“You’re Simon Riley?”
That finally gets a proper reaction out of him. His head turns toward you again, slower this time, and you catch the unmistakable flicker of surprise crossing his features. A tad of confusion and suspicion too.
How the hell did you figure that out?
“I’m pretty sure it’s you,” you continue, voice quieter now. “Only lieutenant whose face I’ve never seen.”
For a moment, he just stares at you. “Yes. It’s me.”
Your brows lift in amusement despite the pain pulsing through your leg.
Well.
That’s one hell of a roommate assignment.
─☆*:・
The Simon 'Ghost' Riley is lying three beds away from you in hospital issued clothes that looked one size too small.
The name alone carried enough reputation to make most recruits stand straighter. Half the stories about him sounded fabricated, stitched together from barracks gossip and post-mission exaggerations. Cold as winter steel. Mean enough to scare grown men into silence. Efficient enough to make enemies disappear before they realized they were being hunted.
“You’re staring,” he says flatly.
You blink, realizing you absolutely are. “Just making sure you’re real.”
His visible eye narrows slightly. “Disappointed?”
“A little,” you admit. “Thought you’d be uglier.” A rough chuckle leaves him, it's low and brief, like the sound surprised even him.
“You always this chatty?” he asks eventually.
His voice is rough with exhaustion, scraped raw around the edges like gravel dragged across concrete. The words come slower now, dulled by painkillers and fatigue, but there’s still something dryly amused underneath them.
You shift slightly against the stiff hospital pillow, immediately regretting it when your thigh throbs in protest beneath the layers of bandages. The pain has gone from sharp to heavy now, deep and pulsing, like someone lodged molten metal into the bone and left it there to cool.
“Just heavily medicated, don't get used to it,” you mumble and he just grunts in response.
The fluorescent lights overhead buzz faintly above you, one of them flickering every few seconds in a way that’s starting to feel personal. The air conditioner hums somewhere near the ceiling, pushing cold recycled air through the room that smells faintly of antiseptic, old coffee, and hospital linens washed a thousand times too many.
You slowly turn your head toward him, narrowing your eyes. He looks terrible. Not in an insulting way—he got shot, and he looks like it, which is absolutely normal. His skin’s paler than before beneath the harsh lighting, shadows sitting dark beneath his eyes. The bandaging visible above the collar of his shirt disappears beneath the fabric wrapping around his torso. One arm rests across his abdomen instinctively in a protective manner.
Somehow he still manages to look intimidating lying half-dead in a hospital bed. Honestly impressive. You can't imagine how much more intimidating he gets when he's on duty. You have to admit: the mask really matches his demeanor.
"You're staring. Again."
"I've got the Ghost laying a few meters away, I'd say it's understandable"
"I'd say it's rude."
“You're the man people describe like some kind of cryptid in tactical gear talking to me. It is understandable.”
Simon’s brow furrows almost immediately.
“You're dramatic.”
"Oh bollocks," you momentarily let you head drop to the side, your entire face visible to him, “you've got quite the reputation.”
His lips crack into a faint smirk, "the mask helps."
"Definitely," you agree with him, “probably terrorize recruits with it.”
"Efficiently so," that earns him a low chuckle from you.
You sink lower into the pillow with a tired exhale, letting your head rest fully against the mattress for the first time since waking up. The pain killers are finally settling in properly now, smoothing the jagged corners off everything around you. The pain’s still there, buried beneath your skin and stitched into your leg, but it feels farther away. Manageable enough not to grit your teeth through every breath.
Your limbs feel strangely heavy, oddly warm, like gravity suddenly doubled. It's probably the medication making you groggy.
Ghost watches you from across the room for a moment before speaking again.
“You look less murderous now.”
You crack one eye open toward him. “Don’t worry,” you mumble sleepily. “Still judging your face.”
"Scars 're a turn off?" he raises his eyebrows.
"Quite the opposite" you respond, the words escaping your lips before your brain could process them.
"What if I told you my back's filled with 'em?"
"Don't tease me like that, lieutenant."
Then air leaves his nose sharply in something dangerously close to a laugh—not a full one, though. He probably hasn’t laughed properly since birth, but it’s there enough to count and you look absurdly pleased with yourself.
─☆*:・
Morning arrives without permission, not gently either.
Your eyes crack open reluctantly, every inch of your body still wrapped in that strange post-surgery heaviness where even existing feels physically expensive. Pale morning light bleeds weakly through the narrow hospital window, washing the room in cold blue-grey instead of the aggressive fluorescent white from yesterday, since the overhead lights are off.
The world feels quieter, softer around the edges. You're not used to this. Staying in bed after waking up, taking in the silence of the early morning. It feels odd. You try to enjoy the calmness of it all, until you do the mistake of moving your legs to get comfortable. Pain immediately shoots through your veins in your entire body, tensing up, a low groan escaping your lips, "fuck me."
"Mornin' to you too." the gruff voice of your roommate slices through the quiet morning.
His shirt hangs crooked across broad shoulders, his buzzcut already slightly overgrown from being stuck in bed for the last five days. The morning light catches against the rough edges of his scars, softening some and sharpening others. He looks less intimidating half-awake like this.
“Go back to sleep,” you groan, eyes shut tightly, waiting patiently for the pain to subside.
“Tempting,” he mumbles, "should I call a nurse?"
"No. I'm fine."
"Doesn't look like it."
"Shut up."
The agonizing pain finally dies down and you feel like you can breath again.
"I hate this."
"Everyone does."
The room falls into a quieter silence afterward—not awkward this time. Outside the window, rain taps softly against the glass in uneven rhythms. Somewhere farther down the hall, a nurse laughs at something muffled beyond your hearing.
“First time being benched?” he leans back carefully against the pillows, studying you for a moment with that same unreadable expression he seems to wear instead of normal human emotions. You don't glance toward him, it feels wrong—being this vulnerable, exposed. Instead you stare straight ahead at the ceiling tiling, "that obvious?”
“A bit.”
You exhale slowly through your nose. “I don’t know how to sit still,” the honesty comes easier than expected. Maybe because neither of you has enough energy left to pretend much right now. "Feels wrong," you admit quietly.
Simon gives a faint hum of understanding. It's not out of pity for you, he knows exactly what you're feeling.
“Yeah,” he says after a moment. “Gets ugly in your head when you stop moving.”
The words settle heavily between you.
You look at him more carefully, past all the scars, the sharp edges of his features. You stare at the exhaustion carved into his eyes, the stiffness in every movement he makes, the instinctive way his hand still guards his side even while resting, like his brain refuses to believe he's safe. Now, Ghost feels less like a myth and more like a man held together by scar tissue and stubbornness.
"Any advice?" you ask, returning to lazily staring at the ceiling.
"Try not to kill yourself."
"Oh, okay," you exhale deeply, "you've got more pessimistic shit to say?"
"It's true."
"Who on this bloody earth gives that as a piece of advice?"
"I'm no motivational speaker." he defends himself.
"Could've fooled me," that makes him huff out another breath through his nose.
Hours pass strangely after that. Slow and syrup-thick beneath pain medication and rainstorms and terrible television neither of you actually watches, but the noise is a good enough distraction from your thoughts. Nurses drift in and out checking vitals. Time moves a lot differently when you're stuck in a hospital bed.
—☆*:・
By the third day, you learn two things about Simon Riley.
Firstly, he wakes up violently alert, not like a soldier ready to fight the enemy, but more like a man trying to fight his life's demons away.
One second asleep, the next fully conscious like somebody flipped a switch inside him. Eyes sharp, his breathing steady and his hand already halfway toward the knife that isn’t there before reality catches up.
The first time you witness it, a nurse accidentally drops a clipboard outside the door. The crack echoes down the hallway. It has Simon jolting upright instantly with a sharp inhale, every muscle in his body locking tight enough to snap steel cables, eyes darting wildly around the room for half a second before settling, before he realizes he's at the hospital and the tension drains in visible increments, even though his jaw remains tight.
You pretend not to notice. Mostly because the brief glimpse of genuine panic beneath all that control feels strangely private.
Secondly, he hates asking for help with almost pathological dedication.
You discover this around noon when he decides, for reasons known only to himself and whatever ancient curse fuels male stubbornness, that he can absolutely reach the cabinet across the room without assistance.
Despite being four days post-op with a bullet wound on his chest and the shit ton of painkillers.
You wake up from a light nap to find him standing. Debatable if that's even considered standing.
One hand grips the IV pole while the other braces hard against the wall, his shoulders tense. His face has gone concerningly pale with effort.
You stare at him for a long moment.
“Riley.”
“I got it.”
You shift slightly, as much as your wound will allow you, "Simon."
"Said I got it."
“You look like one inconvenience away from meeting God.”
“'M fine.”
“I'll smash the IV poll on your head. Go sit down.”
His visible eye narrows immediately.
“Thought ya leg didn’t work.”
“Temporarily,” you shoot back. “Unlike your brain apparently.”
A dangerous silence follows.
Then, somehow, he takes another step.
Pain flashes across his face so quickly most people probably wouldn’t catch it, but you do. His breathing shallows almost immediately afterward.
You sigh heavily.
“Congratulations,” you mutter sarcastically, "you're a fuckin' idiot."
“I was getting water.”
“There is literally a button beside your bed to ask for help.”
“I can do it on my own.”
You blink at him.
"No, you can't. You got shot, for fuck's sake.” you say flatly. “You’re allowed to ask for help, just—go sit down.”
His mouth twitches faintly at that. You’re strangely caring with him. Part of him likes it more than he wants to admit. Likes that his name, and whatever ugly reputation dragged itself all the way to your team, didn’t make you flinch. Likes, embarrassingly enough, the way you called him a fucking idiot like it was the easiest thing in the world.
But there’s another part of him that hates this. Hates that the first time he meets someone as pretty as you, he’s a complete bloody wreck who can barely stand on his own two feet. You got shot and still somehow look gorgeous. He got shot and looks half-dead.
Doesn’t feel fair.
─☆*:・
The next morning is quiet, wrapped in rain and pale grey light.
The hospital room looks softer this early, less clinical—sort off. The harsh fluorescent lights overhead remain switched off, leaving only the dim glow of dawn filtering through the wide window across the room. Rainwater slides slowly down the glass in uneven trails, blurring the city skyline into streaks of silver and charcoal. Somewhere far below, traffic hums faintly through wet streets. Tires hiss against pavement. A siren wails in the distance before fading back into the rain.
You wake slowly at first, trapped somewhere between sleep and consciousness while pain medication drags heavily through your veins. Everything feels warm and sluggish beneath the blankets. Your thoughts drift lazily in disconnected fragments. The scent of antiseptic lingers thick in the air, tangled with stale coffee from the nurses’ station and the faint metallic smell of rain pressing against the cracked window seal.
Then the pain hits—one brutal pulse tears through your thigh hard enough to wrench a broken sound from your throat before your eyes are even fully open.
Breath vanishes from your lungs instantly.
Your body locks around the agony, muscles seizing beneath the blankets while another pulse crashes through your leg like a live wire buried beneath skin and bone. Heat spreads viciously through the injury, deep and swollen and unbearable, pressure building inside the muscle until it feels like the stitches themselves might split apart.
Your eyes snap open.
The ceiling above you blurs immediately.
“Oh, fuck—”
The words barely make it out.
Your fingers twist violently into the sheets as instinct takes over, your body curling inward around the pain despite knowing movement only makes it worse. The bandages around your thigh suddenly feel too tight. Too hot. Every heartbeat sends another sickening throb through the damaged muscle, radiating upward into your hip and lower spine until even breathing becomes difficult.
Cold sweat prickles along the back of your neck.
Your stomach twists sharply.
Another pulse hits.
White flashes behind your eyes.
For one terrifying second you genuinely think you might pass out.
Across the room, you hear movement, it's fast, sharp.
Simon wakes instantly. The mattress creaks beneath sudden weight, sheets rustle violently. There’s the sound of bare feet against polished floor before his voice cuts through the haze surrounding your thoughts.
“What happened?” still rough with sleep, lower than usual, but alert immediately after.
You try answering him—you really do, but the pain swells again before words can form properly and all that leaves you instead is a strained gasp that sounds humiliatingly fragile in the quiet room.
You hate this—how helpless it feels. You hate how one moment later your breathing is ragged and labored.
You’ve spent years training your body into something dependable, useful, strong enough to survive things other people wouldn’t. And now you can barely breathe through pain without feeling like you’re falling apart at the seams.
The realization sits ugly and heavy in your chest.
Simon reaches your bedside, his hand clutching his abdomen—he had his stitches removed yesterday so it doesn't hurt the same when he's walking anymore, makes it easier to get to you.
Tears are already burning unexpectedly behind your eyes, you turn your face sharply toward the wall before he can see them, but it's too late.
The mattress dips slightly beneath his weight as he braces one hand carefully against the bed rail. You can feel his presence before you properly look at him. Warmth cutting through the cold recycled hospital air. The faint scent of soap and antiseptic clinging to his skin. The uneven rhythm of his breathing, slightly tighter now from moving too quickly.
“Hey,” he says quietly, the word lands softer than expected.
You squeeze your eyes shut harder. Another wave of pain tears through your thigh and suddenly your breathing stutters apart completely. A broken noise slips from your throat before you can swallow it down, your entire body tightening instinctively around the pain.
Then his hand settles against your shoulder, instinctively you grab it and squeeze—hard, maybe too hard.
The contact startles him, you feel it immediately in the way he stills afterward, like reaching for you happened before he consciously decided to do it, but the pain is too much to care right now.
His palm feels warm, solid, steady. The weight of it anchors you enough that your breathing slows by the smallest fraction.
Still, embarrassment crashes over you almost immediately after.
“Don’t,” you mutter weakly, voice rough around the edges.
Simon’s brows knit slightly.
“Whot?”
“Don't look at me like this,” the words come quieter than intended, raw enough that you instantly regret saying them out loud.
For a moment the room falls silent except for rain tapping softly against the window and the low mechanical hum of hospital equipment surrounding you both. Simon doesn’t answer immediately. His hand remains where it is, holding yours tightly, grounding you.
“How’m I looking at you?”
You don’t answer, mostly because you don’t know how to explain it. He is looking at you like you’re something fragile and your pain matters, like seeing you hurt bothers him more than he expected it to.
Another pulse of pain rolls through your leg and your composure cracks completely this time. Your breathing shudders sharply. Tears blur your vision despite every effort to stop them.
Humiliation burns hot beneath your skin.
You lift a trembling hand to cover your face instinctively.
The movement is weak.
Exhausted.
Simon goes very still beside you, before you feel his hand slide slowly from your palm until his fingers close carefully around your other wrist instead. Not restraining, just holding on.
Your pulse jumps strangely beneath his fingertips.
“You need a nurse,” he says quietly.
“No.”
The refusal comes too fast, you hear it yourself immediately, it's not stubborn this time, but something else, something weaker, more fragile.
Outside the window, rainwater races down the glass in silver streams while distant thunder rolls softly somewhere across the city. The room feels dim and close around both of you now, wrapped in early morning shadows and the quiet rhythm of your uneven breathing.
Simon studies your face for a long moment. There’s exhaustion carved into every line of your expression this morning. Shadows are darker beneath your eyes. Healing bruises fading yellow along the edge of your jaw. Your shirt sticks to your sweaty skin, the shorts you're wearing visible since your thrashing pulled the thin blanket to the very end of your feet. Your bandages around the gunshot are clean, that's good, you didn't bust a stitch and you're not bleeding out. But that doesn't mean you're not tired, you look exhausted. Despite all the sharp edges he usually keeps wrapped tightly around himself, there’s something openly unsettled in his eyes right now that wasn’t there before. Because of you, of your exhaustion, your pain.
Another wave of pain rolls through your leg, though weaker now, dulled slightly by whatever medication still lingers in your bloodstream. You suck in a shaky breath through your teeth.
Simon’s grip tightens instinctively around your wrist. Not enough to hurt. Just enough to steady, to let you know he is here.
Your eyes lift toward his without meaning to, your free hand searching for something to hold onto. He immediately notices and your fingers interlock with your grip so tight you obscure normal blood flow to his fingers. His attention moves over you carefully, tracking every flicker of pain that crosses your expression like he’s trying to memorize how to soften it. It unravels something within you more than the pain does.
Nobody’s ever looked at you that way before. It has your chest tightening strangely.
His jaw shifts slightly, gaze flicking away toward the rain-streaked window, but his hand never leaves yours.
The silence stretches. It's not awkward or comfortable either, just full—heavy with things neither of you knows how to say.
Eventually, when your breathing returns to a steady rhythm, he exhales quietly through his nose, the sound roughened by exhaustion.
“Scared me for a moment,” the confession comes so softly you almost think you imagined it it has your breath catching unexpectedly.
He doesn’t look at you after saying it. His eyes stay fixed somewhere toward the floor instead, expression unreadable again except for the faint tension pulling at the corners of his mouth. Like he regrets letting the words slip out at all, but they settle warm and aching beneath your ribs anyway.
You stare at him, "me too." Without thinking, your fingers shift slightly against his hand, squeezing it, not like before, it's soft now and he goes completely still beneath the slight movement of your fingers.
Most people wouldn’t even notice it, but you do. You feel it in the way the muscles in his hand tighten faintly before relaxing again, careful and controlled like every instinct inside him is suddenly being held back by force. His thumb shifts once against your skin, absentminded almost, brushing lightly over your the back of your hand.
The contact sends something warm and disorienting through you.
Outside, rain continues slipping down the windows in silver trails, turning the early morning skyline into a blur of pale concrete and distant lights. Thunder rolls low across the city again, softer now, like the storm is beginning to drift farther away. The room smells faintly of rainwater sneaking through old window seals, tangled with antiseptic and the bitter scent of stale coffee lingering from somewhere down the hall.
The silence settles around you slowly, thick without becoming uncomfortable. It feels oddly fragile now, as though one wrong word might crack whatever this strange new thing between you has quietly become overnight.
Your breathing finally begins to steady beneath the pain.
Your leg still throbs viciously beneath the bandages, deep enough to make your stomach twist every few seconds, but the sharpest edge of it has dulled into something survivable again. The agony no longer owns your entire body, exhaustion starts creeping in behind it instead, heavy and slow and impossible to fight.
That doesn't go unnoticed by Simon.
His gaze flicks briefly toward your face again, studying you with that same quiet intensity that’s become strangely familiar over the last few days. You’re beginning to realize Simon Riley pays attention to everything when he cares enough to—tiny shifts in expression, changes in breathing, the way your fingers tense before pain hits harder.
It should feel invasive.
Instead it makes something low in your chest ache softly.
“You should sleep,” he says eventually, voice roughened by exhaustion and something gentler buried beneath it.
The words settle into the dim room quietly.
You glance toward him properly for the first time since he crossed the room.
Up close like this, he looks exhausted in ways that go deeper than lack of sleep. The pale morning light softens the harsher angles of his face, catches silver against old scars and tired shadows beneath his eyes. His overgrown hair sits messily flattened from sleep, the collar of his shirt hangs unevenly near one shoulder, exposing the edge of white bandaging wrapped around his torso beneath.
He looks worn down. Human in a way Ghost never sounds in stories.
And suddenly you become sharply aware of the fact he’s still standing despite the pain he must be in himself. Your gaze drops instinctively toward the hand pressed unconsciously against his abdomen.
"You just got your stitches off. Go sit down," your tone is less demanding and more caring, it has Simon’s eyes flicking back toward you, one corner of his mouth twitching faintly upward. There it is, that tone he has grown quite fond of.
“'M fine.”
“Go lay down,” your tone is strict, matching at the slightest the one you use to bark orders.
"Said I’m fine," he repeats dryly, before walking towards the room's far corner where a chair is discarded for visitors.
The scraping of the chair's legs against the floor stops you from asking what he's planning on doing. A moment later he is finally lowering himself carefully into the chair he dragged beside your bed instead of returning across the room. The movement is slow and controlled, tension tightening visibly across his shoulders as he settles back with obvious effort, a quiet breath slips through his nose afterward.
"Go lay down," you repeat, voice softer than before, the adrenaline from earlier completely wearing off by now.
"Negative."
"You're insufferable."
“Hm.”
“You’re injured.” you debate a second later.
“So’re you.”
“Yes, but I’m clearly the more emotionally compelling patient.”
That finally earns you the smallest exhale of laughter. You hadn’t realized how tense the air felt until that sound loosened it.
The rain outside begins falling harder again, tapping steadily against the windows now in soft rhythmic waves. Somewhere farther down the hallway, a nurse laughs quietly at something muffled beyond the walls before the sound disappears again beneath the hum of hospital machinery.
Your eyelids begin growing heavier.
Pain medication and exhaustion drag at you relentlessly now that the worst of the agony has passed. Still, you fight sleep instinctively. Partly because you’re afraid the pain will spike again the second you let your guard down. Mostly because Simon is still sitting beside you, and some selfish, odd part of you doesn’t want him to leave yet.
Your fingers remain loosely tangled with his, but neither of you mentions it.
“You don’t have to stay over here,” you murmur eventually, voice quieter now from exhaustion.
Simon glances toward you.
“I know,” the answer comes immediately, but he chooses to stay, he wants to stay.
You stare at the rain for a long moment, watching droplets race one another down the glass while silence settles softly around the room again.
Your thoughts feel slow, heavy, dangerously honest around the edges. "I fucking hate this," you say quietly.
"You'll get used to it"
"That's what I'm afraid of," the confession hangs in the air.
"Everything about the job is scary."
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
"You took a bullet. You're still here tryin' to recover to get back out there. That's something to be fucking proud of."
"I can't even walk."
"You got shot on the damn leg, give yourself some time."
"Still sucks."
After a long moment, his voice breaks the quiet.
“I know.”
Just two words, but they land heavily.
Because suddenly you realize he truly does, not in a hypothetical or sympathetic way. He knows exactly what it feels like to wake up for the first time changed by pain and wonder if the person left afterward still fits inside their own skin.
Your eyes drift toward him again without meaning to. He’s already looking at you, his gaze quietly present in the dim morning light while rain shadows move softly across the room around him.
And for one suspended moment the hospital, the pain, the machines humming softly around you both—all of it disappears beneath the simple realization that neither of you feels quite as alone as you did a week ago.
Simon’s gaze drops briefly toward your joined hands then returns to your face.
Something unreadable flickers across his expression. It vanishes almost immediately beneath the familiar rough edges he wears like armor, but not before you catch it. That brief glimpse affects you far more than it should.
Simon shifts slightly in the chair beside you, exhaustion finally beginning to weigh visibly against him. His head tips back briefly against the wall behind him, eyes closing for just a second too long before reopening again.
You study him quietly.
The tension still lingering around his mouth. The faint lines exhaustion carved beneath his eyes. The stubborn effort it clearly takes for him to stay awake despite his own injuries.
A strange tenderness catches you off guard.
“Go sleep,” you murmur softly.
One corner of his mouth twitches faintly again.
“Bossy.”
“You like it.”
─☆*:・
Night settles slowly around the hospital room, quiet and blue at the edges.
The overhead lights are turned off, leaving only the soft amber glow from the hallway slipping through the cracked door and the far away muted city lights beyond the rain-streaked windows. Somewhere outside, water still drips steadily from rooftops and fire escapes after the storm, the sound faint beneath the distant hum of traffic moving through wet streets.
Everything feels softer after dark. The hospital itself seems to exhale. Voices lower into murmurs beyond the walls. Footsteps grow less frequent. Machines continue their endless quiet beeping around you both, but even that begins blending into the atmosphere after a while, becoming less noise and more heartbeat.
At some point after the nurses finish their evening rounds and repeatedly tell him to return to his bed—advice that he doesn't follow, he shifts his chair closer to your bed, close enough that he can rest his arm on the mattress, you let him. You like it.
Instead he sits beside you now, fingers occasionally brushing lightly against your forearm whenever either of you moves.
Tiny accidents that neither of you acknowledge.
Your leg still aches relentlessly beneath the bandages, but the pain medication has dulled it into something distant enough to tolerate. Warm heaviness settles through your body instead, leaving your thoughts slow and dangerously unguarded around the edges.
Simon sits close enough now that you can feel the warmth radiating from him, that you notice details you probably shouldn’t: The rough scar disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt, the faint shadow of stubble darkening his jaw by the end of the day, the way his hands flex unconsciously whenever pain pulls through his healing abdomen—fingers curling slightly against his knee before relaxing again.
The strong hands, scarred knuckles, they're careful too, he is a sniper after all.
“You’re staring again,” he murmurs quietly beside you, voice roughened by exhaustion.
You glance toward his face and immediately regret it because he’s already watching you, head tipped slightly back against the wall. The dim lighting softens the harsher planes of his face, shadows settling deep beneath tired eyes. He looks unfairly good like this, worn down enough to seem real. Dangerous enough to still make your pulse trip every time he looks directly at you.
“You make it difficult not to,” you answer before thinking better of it.
The words settle into the quiet room between you.
His gaze lingers on your face a moment too long before shifting downward briefly. Your mouth. Your throat. Then back up again.
A subtle movement.
Still enough to make warmth spread slowly through your chest.
“Should I be concerned ya flirt with the entire force like tha'?” he asks eventually.
There’s dry amusement in the question.
You study him for a second before answering.
“No,” the honesty slips out easier than expected.
Simon’s expression changes almost imperceptibly afterward.
Not surprise exactly.
Just awareness.
The room feels smaller suddenly, neither of you looks away.
Your pulse feels loud in your own ears. You both let the silence settle, it doesn't feel awkward, or comfortable. Just something you've grown used to.
Several minutes pass before Simon glances toward you again, his gaze dropping briefly toward your leg before returning to your face.
“How bad is it?”
“Better now.” You answer without looking at him.
Something flickers behind his eye at that—relief. It's real enough to affect you immediately.
No one should look that relieved over your comfort. No one should stay awake watching your breathing like it matters. But he does.
You look down briefly at your own hands twisted loosely in the blankets.
“You stayed all day," the observation comes quieter than intended.
Simon leans his head back slightly against the wall again, “Didn’t have anywhere else to be.”
He could have asked to have you transferred once a bed cleared. He could've left this room whenever he wanted. He could have disappeared back behind all those carefully built walls and sharp edges and distance, hide his face like he does with everyone. But he wanted you to see him like this, to stay next to you.
“You know,” you murmur softly, “you’re not nearly as cold as everyone says.”
Simon’s eyes drift toward you slowly, one corner of his mouth lifts faintly "Meds are doing their job."
"Oh?" you raise your brows, acting offended, "and here I thought I was special."
He rolls his eyes in response, still smirking faintly.
You let the silence linger again, it's somewhat comforting at this point. Charged with things you don't think you'll ever share with each other.
His eye drifts shut briefly before reopening again a second later, like he caught himself slipping. “You should sleep,” you whisper.
Simon turns his head just enough to look at you properly. “Eventually.”
You roll your eyes softly. “You’re impossible.”
“I’ve been told.”
There’s a quiet ease to it now, the kind that sneaks up on you without permission. Minutes pass by and you allow the quiet of the room to swallow you whole. Your gazes are fixed on anything but each other. Your eyes dart around the room, searching for something more interesting than the hospital ceiling, you’ve been staring at for the past three days while Simon’s stare blankly on the floor, lips slightly pursed into a thin line, deep in thought.
The sound of the rain from outside and of your breathing fills the lack of words.
“We should go out once we’re discharged.”
His words are so casual it takes your brain a full second to process them. “Are you asking me out?”
One corner of his mouth lifts slightly. “Thought I was being obvious.”
A soft laugh escapes you before you can stop it, warm and sleepy and a little disbelieving.
“You know you'll have to put up with my limp, right?” you question a second later, looking at him with a raised eyebrow.
Matching your expression he also raises a brow at you, entirely unimpressed, “not a problem.”
You smirk satisfied with his response, tilting you head softly at him, “Date sounds fun."
No matter how much you beg and cry for him, he won't stay. You could give him all of your body, your soul, your mind, and he won't stay. You could tell him you love him and he won't stay.
There's just some dark, broken, leaking part of your heart that doesn't, no—
refuses to understand that all of this giving, giving, giving is just damaging the only good thing you have left in your body. He could leave you cold, hurt you, yell at you, lie to you, live without you, and you're becoming desperate enough to keep crawling back on scraped knees and dirty palms.
