i’ve been out of ideas lately so if you like my writing style and have any suggestions on what you’d like to see in the simon/reader or soap/reader tags just let me know. i can try to write for other MW characters but i can’t promise as good of a characterization as i can get for my main boys. anything, literally >anything< but nsfw (can be mildly spicy don’t worry) is on the range of what i’d consider doable to write if im insterested in the subject matter so… dump your ideas on my asks if you’d like. id love to hear them!
I want to kill certain people who really deserve to die. But, being cowards, they're waiting for me. That's why I'd like to sneak up on them unnoticed.
-Daniil Dankovsky in the Changeling Route from Pathologic Classic HD
i wanna be your dog *insert here ron asheton’s crazy guitar game*
i don’t think you girlies are going to be much into this but i don’t think simon would want a puppy, a little girl, a kitten tucked safely into the curve of his palm even. this man wants a dog, a bitch that bites back and chews on the misery of her own domestication. an uncivilized cunt that is always opposing him, always being a problem, a nuisance, creating friction physical or not.
because obedience is so easy and so unfathombly boring to him.
simon strikes me as the kind of man who would spend half his life surrounded by people who fall in line the second he raises his voice. men who listen. men who nod. men who know better than to push.
and then there’s you.
and god help him, he likes that fight, likes the way you thrash when you’re caught, the way you keep trying even after it becomes obvious you’re not getting free.
there’s something deeply wrong with the fact that he’d probably stare at a bruise blooming across your cheekbone and think you look prettier for it.
he wants to watch you dirty with your clothes ripped and tough skin beaten up and rabidly biting his forearm away from headlock he’s kept you in and get so hard from that the man even considers confessing his sins for once. wants to grab you by the leather of your collar when you try to run away from him and wants to muzzle you with his stupidly big hands that cover half of your skull.
because simon is a man who spent most of his life surviving things that should have killed him. he understands ugly instincts. understands teeth. understands the urge to claw your way free even when all it does is leave blood on the floor.
and it all makes him want to make you so much worse
but sometimes he wants you to be his lap dog too. wants to bathe you with gentleness and affection, wants to brush your pretty fur and trim your nails, wants to give you all the pats and nap time you deserve.
wants to find you half asleep on the couch with your head tipped awkwardly against the armrest and your shoes still on because you were too stubborn to admit you needed rest. wants to stand there for a minute just looking at you, all that fight packed away somewhere beneath your ribs for once, before dragging a blanket over your shoulders with hands that have spent most of their life learning how to destroy things instead of care for them.
because for all his fondness for your teeth, simon likes the moments when you stop showing them. the moments nobody else gets; when you lean; when you trust; when you’re too tired to be difficult.
he wants to wash the blood and dirt and exhaustion off you after you’ve spent days running yourself into the ground. wants to sit you on the edge of the bathtub and listen to you complain the entire time while he ignores every word. wants shampoo in your hair and steam curling around both of you and that look of offended betrayal when he starts untangling knots you would’ve happily left there for another month.
he wants to fuss, which is so very humiliating for everyone involved because god knows he’s terrible at it.
all rough hands and awkward movements and the absolute certainty that you’re capable of taking care of yourself followed immediately by the overwhelming urge to do it for you anyway.
there’s a mission in 007 first light that has SAS in it and i just can’t stop thinking about bond slash double 0 slash 007 slash MI6!reader/simon maybe i should get to writing that…
I just read the third part of your tattoo artist au and it’s just as good as the two earlier parts!! I love the way you write so much, I can’t wait to read whatever else you post in the future <3
wkdmmekemend all your sweet messages brighten up my day so much thank you so so so much 😭 💕
cranes in the sky — part three of my tattoo artist! simon riley / apprentice! reader.
simon had never intended to learn so much about you.
most of it arrived accidentally, collected over months the same way dust settled onto forgotten shelves. bits of conversation overheard while opening the studio in the mornings. observations made during long afternoons between clients. details mentioned once and then abandoned, only for him to remember them weeks later for reasons he couldn’t explain.
he knew you took your coffee with barely any milk and just enough sugar to soften the bitterness because he had watched you make it almost every day. he knew you liked ending difficult weeks with a can of rosé wine because you once complained about the price of your favourite brand while balancing inventory sheets on the front counter. he knew your cigarettes changed constantly, not because you preferred one over another but because you got bored easily and liked having something new to complain about.
none of it seemed important on its own.
together, though, the details began forming something recognisable.
he knew your favourite desserts were strawberry tarts because one afternoon you spent nearly twenty minutes arguing with a customer about which bakery sold the best ones in north london. he knew you rarely spoke to your parents because sometimes they called while you were working and your entire mood shifted afterward, quieter for an hour or two before returning to normal. yet whenever you mentioned them there was always affection hidden somewhere beneath the frustration. distance had not diminished love. if anything, it seemed to make it more complicated.
the tattoos helped too.
most people wore their stories openly if you looked closely enough.
your skin carried almost no lettering, no dates, no grand declarations. instead there were ornaments winding around your arms, flowers scattered across your body, birds caught permanently in flight. they looked less like individual tattoos and more like pieces of the same landscape growing over time. naturally, they mirrored the work you enjoyed creating yourself. whenever clients gave you complete freedom over a design, you always drifted toward plants and birds eventually, as though your hand knew where it wanted to go before your brain caught up.
the cranes were his favourite.
he had noticed them early on, long black necks stretching elegantly across your forearm. they appeared often enough in your sketches that eventually he asked about them. you told him about a city near the sea where you had spent much of your childhood, where cranes gathered in such numbers that seeing them became ordinary. they nested in your memory anyway. years later they had resurfaced in your drawings. then one of those drawings became a tattoo. then another. now they followed you everywhere.
for reasons he never fully examined, the story reminded him of johnny.
soap used to fill entire notebooks with birds whenever boredom struck. margins crowded with rough sketches and unfinished studies. sometimes gulls. sometimes cranes. whatever had caught his attention that week. simon still remembered flipping through those pages years ago while soap talked endlessly about things nobody else cared about. seeing the cranes on your skin always brought the memory back unexpectedly.
maybe that was part of why being around you felt familiar.
you and johnny were nothing alike on paper. different personalities. different lives. different ways of moving through the world. yet both of you possessed the same frustrating habit of caring too much. the same tendency to leave pieces of yourselves everywhere you went. people naturally gravitated toward you for it. sunlight seemed to gravitate toward you too.
it reminded him of soap often enough that he occasionally caught himself looking for the similarities.
not the obvious ones. you were different people in almost every meaningful sense. johnny had been louder, rougher around the edges, incapable of shutting up for more than five consecutive minutes when he got excited about something. you carried your kindness differently. softer. more deliberate. where soap crashed headfirst into people’s lives, you seemed to settle into them gradually until one day it became impossible to remember what the room felt like before you entered it.
still, the comparison happened.
sometimes it was the cranes.
sometimes it was the way you spoke to strangers like they were already friends. the way you remembered insignificant details about people and brought them up weeks later. the way you filled silences without seeming afraid of them. there were moments when a gesture, a laugh, a particular expression crossed your face and something old inside him stirred before he could stop it.
for a long time, simon hated himself for that.
it felt unfair somehow. reducing you to fragments of someone else. turning you into a vessel for memories that belonged to a dead man. every time he caught himself making the connection, guilt followed immediately after. you deserved better than being measured against a ghost.
but grief was rarely that simple.
people talked about moving on as though it happened cleanly, like crossing a border and never looking back. that had never been simon’s experience. grief lingered. it attached itself to ordinary things. songs on the radio. half-remembered jokes. cigarette brands. a particular kind of weather. sometimes it appeared in people too. not because they replaced what was lost, but because they illuminated the shape of it.
there were years after johnny died when simon actively avoided that feeling. avoided anything that reminded him too much of what he no longer had. it was easier to lock the memories away than sit with them. easier to let the wound scar over badly than risk opening it again.
you had complicated that.
being around you brought those memories back with an ease that should have bothered him more than it did. instead, he found himself thinking about johnny more often. not the way he died. not the blood or the hospital or the unbearable silence afterward. the smaller things. the notebook full of birds. the terrible jokes. the endless talking. the person beneath the loss.
and somewhere along the way, that stopped hurting quite as much.
maybe because grief became easier to carry when it wasn’t being carried alone. maybe because remembering someone was different from losing them. maybe because you never asked him to forget.
eventually he realized the truth of it.
maybe simon loved you like he loved johnny too.
he came to the realization on an ordinary tuesday evening behind the shop, the kind of evening that should not have carried revelations of any kind.
your first client had left less than half an hour ago. a university student with nervous hands and a brave face who had spent nearly two months on your waiting list after hearing through word of mouth that simon was finally letting his apprentice tattoo actual people. she had walked out grinning, one hand pressed protectively against the fresh wrap covering her chest.
the tattoo had come out beautiful.
two swallows in flight, their bodies angled toward one another as if caught mid-turn, framed by delicate ornamental details that softened the composition without overwhelming it. it looked like your work in a way simon’s never could. there was a gentleness to your linework, an elegance. even after months of teaching you, he still found himself occasionally surprised by how different your artistic instincts were from his own.
his tattoos had always been heavier, bolder, large black shapes. gothic influences. thick lines designed to age aggressively and survive decades. in the contrary yours seemed to breathe, they invited people closer.
and watching your client leave, smiling so hard she nearly forgot her aftercare sheet on the counter, simon had felt something dangerously close to pride.
now the two of you stood behind the shop near the fire exit, sharing a cigarette in the cooling evening air.
the alley smelled faintly of rain and old brick. somewhere nearby traffic drifted through the streets in a distant, constant hum. you leaned back against the wall beside him, cigarette balanced loosely between your fingers while the adrenaline from the appointment still lingered visibly beneath your skin.
you looked quite happy.
simon watched a ribbon of smoke leave your mouth as you smiled to yourself, staring somewhere out into the alley as though replaying the entire appointment again in your head. every few seconds another smile threatened to appear. then disappeared. then returned.
you were trying to act normal about it and failing completely. for some reason the sight lodged itself somewhere deep inside his chest. probably because he remembered another person who used to do that.
johnny had always been incapable of hiding his excitement too. every success, no matter how small, became something worth celebrating. he wore pride openly. shared it. dragged everyone else into it whether they wanted to come or not.
for years after his death, simon had avoided those comparisons whenever they surfaced.
he hated them.
hated what they implied.
hated the possibility that he was trying to replace something irreplaceable.
but standing there beside you, watching you fail miserably at pretending your first successful tattoo had not made your entire week, the thought arrived again and this time he didn’t push it away. instead he let himself sit with it. to be honest the similarities had never been about personality, not really. you weren’t johnny and he had known that from the beginning.
the thing that connected the two of you lived somewhere deeper than mannerisms or habits. it was the way both of you occupied space in other people’s lives. the way people naturally gravitated toward you. the way your happiness somehow became everyone else’s problem because it was impossible not to feel affected by it.
simon took another drag from his cigarette and across from him, you were still smiling, still talking about the client, still completely unbothered by the fact he was watching you.
and suddenly a realization settled over him with a certainty that felt strangely uncomfortable.
if johnny had been alive, he would have loved you.
not in the abstract way people claim they would have gotten along. simon could see it clearly. johnny would have attached himself to you within minutes. he would have laughed at every story, asked a hundred questions, dragged you into conversations that lasted hours longer than they were supposed to. he would have admired your artwork. teased you relentlessly. remembered small things you mentioned once and brought them up months later. you possessed all the qualities johnny gravitated toward naturally; warmth, curiosity, an inability to stop caring about people once they entered your life.
the thought lingered longer than it should have. simon found himself imagining it with an almost painful clarity, the three of you standing outside the shop together, johnny talking far too much while you encouraged him instead of telling him to shut up. the image felt so natural it unsettled him. because it wasn’t just that he thought the two of you would have liked each other. it was that he wished you had met. wished you existed somewhere inside those memories he still carried around. wished that two people he loved could have occupied the same room, if only for a little while.
the image appeared so clearly in simon’s mind that for a second it felt almost real, then another thought followed close behind.
he wished you two had met.
and it tore him apart to realize wishing you two had met meant wishing you had existed in those memories too. wishing you belonged somewhere in that part of his life. wishing the people he loved could have known each other.
and people did not think that way about someone who was merely important, they thought that way about family.
about home.
about people whose absence would permanently alter the shape of their lives.
for a long moment simon stared down at the cigarette between his fingers.
the ember glowed quietly in the dusk.
beside him, you laughed at something you had just remembered and for the first time, he allowed himself to acknowledge what had been growing there for months.
he loved you.
not because you reminded him of johnny and not because grief had twisted itself into something else. he loved you entirely on your own terms. it was only that loving you felt strangely familiar.
like finding a room in a house he thought had burned down years ago.
Your tattoo artist Simon and apprentice reader is absolutely incredible. I haven’t read anything that has captured my interest like that in forever. It’s so so good!! :3
that is such a kind thing to say😭 thank you so much i’ll be sure to keep it up!! i have so many thoughts and ideas for them/abt them
tattooed heart — part two of my tattoo artist! simon riley / apprentice! reader
there was something wrong with you.
simon had noticed it almost two weeks ago, though he could not pinpoint exactly when the change started. one day you were your usual self, talking too much to nervous clients because silence made them worse, humming under your breath while setting up stations, filling empty space with whatever thought happened to cross your mind. then, gradually, all of it seemed to drain away. not dramatically. not enough for anyone else to stop and ask questions. just enough for someone who spent ten hours a day in the same room as you to notice.
you looked tired. properly tired. the sort of exhaustion that sleep did not seem capable of fixing. he would arrive in the morning to find you already there unlocking the front door, coffee cooling beside the register untouched. some days you forgot to turn the music on. other days you left sketches unfinished halfway through, pencils abandoned beside them while your attention drifted somewhere else entirely. clients still liked you. you still smiled when spoken to. but the smiles never stayed. they vanished the second people looked away, slipping off your face so quickly it made him wonder whether they had been real to begin with.
the strange part was how often he caught himself watching for it. noticing it. you moved slower around the studio now. stared at things longer than necessary. stood in front of shelves looking for supplies that were directly in front of you. once he watched you make a cup of tea and completely forget it existed until it had gone cold. another time you spent nearly five minutes searching for your phone while using its flashlight to look. every little mistake was harmless on its own, but together they formed the shape of something that bothered him more than he cared to admit. because whatever was weighing on you, you were carrying it alone. and for somebody who usually filled every silence she entered, the quiet settling around you lately felt wrong enough that he found himself listening for your voice whenever the studio got too still.
and it got worse, as all things tend to when left alone long enough.
at first it was only a few bad days scattered between normal ones. then the bad days stopped leaving. you started calling out occasionally, always apologetic, always insisting it was nothing serious. a migraine. feeling under the weather. no sleep. some excuse delivered over the phone in a voice that sounded distant and exhausted. simon never pressed for details. it was none of his business. if you wanted him to know, you would tell him.
except when you did come in, you looked worse than when you stayed home.
there was a permanent tension settled beneath your skin now, a constant anticipation of something unpleasant just around the corner. he saw it in the way your shoulders never fully relaxed anymore, in how often he caught you staring blankly at nothing before abruptly forcing yourself back into whatever task sat in front of you. some mornings you arrived looking nauseous, your face pale beneath the studio lights, nursing the same cup of coffee for hours without drinking more than a few sips. other days you seemed distracted by something only you could see, your attention drifting away in the middle of conversations before snapping back with visible embarrassment.
it was not sadness anymore. sadness he understood.
this looked more like dread.
he spent three days convincing himself it was none of his business before finally showing up at your building anyway.
the decision irritated him the entire drive over.
you were an adult. if something was wrong, you could handle it. if you wanted help, you would ask for it. that was how normal people behaved. simon repeated that logic to himself several times while climbing the narrow staircase of your building, but it failed to explain why he had memorized your address months ago from emergency contact paperwork or why he knew exactly which floor your flat sat on without checking.
the building looked older than some countries.
the entrance smelled faintly of dust, old wood, and somebody’s cooking several floors below. worn carpet lined the stairs in a faded pattern that might once have been red decades ago. the handrails leaned slightly where generations of tenants had worn them smooth. everything creaked. everything looked one particularly strong gust of wind away from collapsing.
it suited the area.
it suited you, somehow.
by the time he reached your floor, he was already considering leaving.
the idea lasted exactly long enough for him to raise his hand and knock.
for a moment there was nothing.
then movement.
something bumped loudly against furniture inside the flat. a muffled curse followed. hurried footsteps crossed the apartment.
your voice carried faintly through the door.
a moment later the lock clicked.
the door swung open.
you stood there blinking up at him in pink striped pyjamas that looked thoroughly slept in, one sleeve hanging slightly lower than the other. your hair appeared to have lost a fight with a pillow several hours earlier and never fully recovered. half of it stuck out in different directions while you attempted to flatten it with one hand, clearly realizing only after opening the door what state you were currently presenting to the world.
for a second neither of you moved.
you looked surprised.
simon felt something unpleasant loosen in his chest.
because despite the dark circles beneath your eyes and despite the exhaustion that still lingered around you, this was the first time in weeks he had seen you look remotely like yourself.
not the tired apprentice moving through the studio on autopilot.
just you.
standing barefoot in your doorway, disheveled and confused and very obviously not expecting visitors.
“si? what the hell are you doing here?”
the surprise on your face was immediate and entirely genuine.
one hand remained buried somewhere in the tangled mess of your hair while the other held the door open. your pink striped pyjamas looked thoroughly lived in, wrinkled from sleep and wear, and there was a faint crease pressed into one side of your cheek from a pillow. you looked as though you had only been awake for a few minutes.
“fuck, excuse me. it’s nice to see you, but still…” your eyebrows pulled together. “did something happen?”
before he could answer, you stepped aside automatically to let him through.
simon ducked his head slightly as he entered the flat.
it was warm inside. warmer than the hallway had been. the sort of warmth that came from somebody spending entire days indoors with the heating turned up too high. books occupied nearly every available surface. blankets were draped over furniture without much concern for appearance. a half-finished mug sat abandoned on a nearby table beside what looked suspiciously like three different notebooks stacked on top of one another. the place looked lived in. comfortable.
it looked like you.
the door clicked shut behind him.
“no,” he said after a moment. “nothing happened.”
The answer sounded inadequate even as it left his mouth. You continued staring at him from the doorway, clearly waiting for the part that would explain why Simon Riley had appeared unannounced at your flat on a random afternoon. The silence stretched just long enough to become uncomfortable. He shifted his weight, jaw tightening slightly as he searched for something less ridiculous to say, then gave up entirely and lifted the small paper bag he had been carrying the whole time, holding it out almost defensively. It was a pathetic explanation for showing up at someone’s apartment, and judging by the look on your face, you knew it too.
“i brought you tea.”
the words hung between you.
he immediately felt stupid.
of all the possible explanations available to him, somehow he had arrived at your apartment on his day off carrying tea like somebody’s concerned aunt.
your gaze dropped to the bag.
“tea?”
“earl grey.”
because he knew you liked earl grey.
because after months of watching you make it nearly every morning at the studio, he knew exactly how long you let it steep and exactly how much milk you preferred. which was information he absolutely should not have volunteered out loud.
fortunately he didn’t.
you continued looking at him.
simon could practically feel the silence stretching.
“I was just around,” he muttered.
a lie.
you both knew it was a lie.
your apartment was nowhere near anything he would be doing on his day off.
his jaw tightened slightly.
“and…” he paused, visibly annoyed by the admission before forcing it out anyway. “worried.”
that finally seemed to land and some of the confusion left your face.
for a moment neither of you spoke, then your expression softened in a way that made him instantly regret showing up and simultaneously feel relieved that he had. because the truth was embarrassingly simple: the studio had felt too different without you in it.
and after weeks of watching you look progressively more exhausted every day, after seeing you call out sick again and again while insisting everything was fine, eventually concern had become difficult to ignore.
your kitchen sat at the back of the flat, separated from the rest of it by tall paneled doorways and ceilings high enough to make every sound linger a little longer than it should. afternoon light spilled through the enormous window above the sink, washing the room in pale gold and turning the worn wooden floors amber where the sun touched them. everything looked slightly old-fashioned without seeming deliberate about it. cabinets painted a soft cream. brass handles polished unevenly through years of use. a narrow stretch of countertop crowded with tea tins, mismatched mugs, and the sort of clutter that accumulated naturally when someone actually lived in a place rather than curated it.
simon followed you inside, suddenly feeling far too large for the room.
you immediately busied yourself with the kettle, grateful for something practical to do with your hands. the paper bag he had brought sat on the counter beside you while you moved around the kitchen with practiced familiarity, filling water, reaching for mugs, brushing your hair back every few seconds only for it to fall right back into your face. simon leaned against the edge of the counter opposite you, arms folded loosely across his chest, watching in silence while sunlight caught the loose threads of your pyjama sleeve.
for a while neither of you spoke. the kettle hummed softly on the counter while thin ribbons of steam drifted upward and fogged the lower corners of the window. outside, the city moved somewhere beyond the glass, distant and muted beneath the afternoon light. simon stood across from you with his tea cooling untouched in his hands, watching as you stared into your own mug. it was only after several minutes that he really looked at you and noticed how worn down you seemed. your movements carried a strange heaviness, your attention drifting in and out of the room even during silence. there was a weariness settled around you that reminded him of people who had spent too long carrying something alone and had forgotten what it felt like to set it down.
you handed him a mug once the tea had finished steeping. his fingers brushed yours when he took it, a brief accidental contact that should have meant nothing at all. yet somehow neither of you pulled away immediately. the space between you had narrowed without either of you noticing. close enough now that simon could see the faint shadows beneath your eyes. close enough that you could count the pale scars scattered across his knuckles.
your gaze dropped to the steam curling from your cup.
“i just haven’t really felt like myself lately.”
the confession came out softer than you probably intended, almost swallowed by the steam rising from your tea. there wasn’t much self-pity in it, nor any dramatic unraveling. if anything, it felt refreshing to hear such plain honesty from someone who had been carrying the weight of it alone for so long. simon stayed silent for a moment, studying your face as though searching for something hidden between the words, his expression unreadable but attentive in that particular way he had when he was actually listening.
you remained focused on your tea, shoulders slightly rounded inward, as though embarrassed by the admission now that it had escaped.
he understood that feeling.
understood it far too well.
without really thinking about it, he reached out and rested a hand against your shoulder.
warm. solid.
the gesture made you glance up.
his thumb pressed lightly against the fabric of your sleeve before he gave your shoulder a small squeeze and moved his hand upward into your hair, ruffling it absentmindedly the same way he always did whenever he caught you overthinking yourself.
the reaction was immediate. your nose wrinkled in mild annoyance as you swatted half-heartedly at his wrist, trying to smooth your hair back into place despite the fact it had already been a disaster before he touched it. but there was a smile threatening at the corners of your mouth now, small and reluctant and undeniably real. it softened something in your face that had been absent for weeks, replacing a fraction of that constant strain with something warmer, something that looked a little more like you.
like a tattoo — tattoo artist!simon riley / apprentice reader for @sukunasleftdih
two months into apprenticing under simon and you still cannot decide whether he is an extraordinarily and unbelievably unbothered man or simply too profoundly sick and tired of everything to be openly irritated most of the time.
the studio itself sits miserably tucked between a locksmith and a failing off-license at the end of a narrow street that always smells faintly of rainwater, cigarettes, and hot pavement. the front windows are crowded with old flash sheets curling at the corners from years of sunlight exposure, traditional swallows and roses faded pale beneath handwritten booking notices. inside, everything is black metal, disinfectant, and a pale yellow lighting. there is always music playing somewhere low in the background, usually something slow and bass-heavy that simon never bothers changing unless a client asks. by now you know the place almost as intimately as your own flat. you know which floorboards creak near the bathroom door, which drawers stick when opened too quickly, how the air grows thick and metallic after a full day of tattooing.
you also know simon rarely speaks unless he has something useful to say.
he moves through the studio with the sort of efficiency that makes everybody else feel clumsy by comparison. machines wrapped in sticky saran wrap cleanly. needles lined in exact rows. gloves snapped on with practiced ease. watching him work can be deeply irritating sometimes because he never appears to struggle through any part of it. tattooing seems to live somewhere instinctive in him, buried directly into the muscle memory of his hands. even difficult placements become steady beneath his grip. he hardly pauses. hardly second-guesses himself. meanwhile you still overthink line weight enough to give yourself headaches.
most days your responsibilities lean less toward artistry and more toward making sure the shop continues functioning around him. you answer phone calls while simon pointedly ignores them from across the room. you schedule appointments, print consent forms, prepare stations, sweep floors, sterilize tubes, unwrap equipment, remake coffee nobody finishes drinking, and spend embarrassing amounts of time reassuring nervous clients while simon lurks somewhere nearby looking visibly uncomfortable with human interaction.
and to be honest he is not unfriendly, exactly.
just difficult to approach in the way stray dogs that look a bit rabid are difficult to approach.
conversation between you mostly happens in scraps. little pieces exchanged during opening hours while flipping the studio sign from closed to open. remarks muttered over the sound of running sinks while cleaning ink caps at the end of the night. occasionally he comments on your sketches if he passes close enough to glance down at them, always brief and strangely specific.
“spacing’s off there.”
“good shading.”
once, after watching you redraw the same peony three times in growing frustration, he quietly took the pencil from your hand, fixed the curve of one petal in under ten seconds, then handed it back without another word.
that had frustrated you for nearly a week.
today the studio is unusually quiet. rain taps softly against the windows while one of simon’s regulars sleeps half-slumped in the tattoo chair near the front under the low hum of an old rock playlist. you are stationed at the worktable in the back corner with a sheet of fake skin stretched beneath your hands, trying to focus despite the constant mechanical buzzing rattling through your fingers.
the design is yours this time.
not copied flash. not practice lettering. uniquely yours. with the scratchiness and obvious graphic design background that is just so you.
a bouquet drawn in an bold style, yet soft and ornamental without looking overly delicate. large lilies opening beside clusters of hydrangeas heavy with layered petals, tall hollyhocks weaving through the arrangement in long elegant stems. you had spent days sketching and resketching the composition in your notebook before finally working up the nerve to tattoo it properly. now the fake skin lies pinned flat beneath your wrist while thin stencil lines disappear one by one under black ink.
you are being careful. maybe too careful.
that is certainly the problem.
every line comes out technically fine, but hesitant in a way you hate looking at afterward. there is always some tiny falter halfway through a curve where your hand loses confidence and unconsciously lightens pressure. you can see it happening while you work and still fail to stop yourself from doing it.
the machine’s buzzing has long since become unbearable.
after enough hours the sound stops resembling noise and starts feeling physical, like a dentist drill pressed somewhere directly against your nervous system. to make it tolerable you keep one earbud tucked in beneath your hair, low music bleeding softly through while you work. some old song you stopped consciously listening to twenty minutes ago.
you are humming under your breath when it happens.
a hand reaches over your shoulder and plucks the earbud neatly from your ear.
you jolt hard enough the machine skips.
before you can even twist around properly, another hand closes over yours.
simon.
his grip is firm and so terribly warm without being rough, broad palm swallowing your hand almost entirely as he steadies your wrist above the fake skin before lowering it again with deliberate pressure.
“too light,” he says.
his voice lands close enough to your ear that you feel it more than hear it.
for a second you forget entirely what he is talking about.
he is standing directly behind you, chest near your shoulder blades, one forearm braced beside your elbow while the other guides your hand. up close you can smell the familiar mixture clinging to him constantly; green soap, cigarette smoke buried deep into fabric, something clean underneath it all that never quite manages to overpower the nicotine.
the machine continues buzzing in your grip.
“look,” he murmurs.
his thumb shifts against the side of your hand, pressing your fingers lower.
“there.”
you follow the movement of the needle as he guides the line through the curve of a hydrangea petal. immediately the difference becomes obvious. the ink settles darker. smoother. no faint patchiness where your hand instinctively pulled away halfway through.
“you keep lifting off it,” he says. “need to commit more.”
heat crawls unpleasantly up the back of your neck.
“i thought i was chewing the skin up,” you mutter.
“fake skin’s tougher than real skin.”
his hand tightens slightly around yours again, steadying.
“you can push harder.”
you try very hard to focus on the tattoo instead of the fact simon riley is holding your hand with the kind of calm familiarity that makes your heartbeat feel embarrassing. his hands are rougher than you expected. warm too. calluses scrape faintly against your knuckles every time he adjusts your grip.
carefully, he guides your hand through another line.
then another.
the bouquet immediately starts looking better beneath the needle, cleaner and more decisive, the petals finally carrying the weight you had been trying to give them all afternoon.
“see?” he says after a moment.
you nod once because your throat suddenly feels too tight for actual speech.
neither of you moves immediately afterward.
the machine buzzes steadily between your fingers while unfinished flowers spread across the practice skin beneath your hands. simon’s grip remains patient, almost absentminded now that the correction is done, like he has not fully realized he is still very much strongly holding onto you.
then he seems to notice all at once.
his hand pulls away abruptly.
the loss of warmth feels immediate enough to be annoying.
simon steps back, clearing his throat once as he reaches for your discarded earbud still dangling loosely between his fingers. he sets it carefully beside your sketchbook instead of handing it directly to you.
“flowers look good,” he mutters, already turning back toward the front station before you can properly answer. “hydrangeas are a pain in the arse, though.”
simon is a sad, sad man. that is the first thing you think when your eyes meet for the first time across the stale little church meeting hall in north camden. not dangerous, not intimidating, not handsome, though he is all those things in some distant, obvious way. sad. profoundly and incurably sad in the sort of manner that settles into a person’s posture permanently, until even silence itself seems exhausted around them.
you are sitting awkwardly in one of those cold metal folding chairs when he walks in nearly thirty minutes late to the first AA meeting in london of the year. the interruption earns him a few tired glances from around the circle, though nobody says anything. people here rarely do. you watch him mumble a brief apology before taking the empty seat directly across from you, broad shoulders slightly hunched as though trying to make himself smaller despite the fact a man his size could never disappear into a room even if he wanted to. part of you feels sorry for him immediately. another part, uglier and more honest, feels jealous. late arrivals still possess the luxury of choice. they can still pretend they almost did not come at all.
he is a hulking, brooding thing, the kind of man cheap romance novels describe with embarrassing sincerity as tall, dark, and handsome. except there is nothing polished about him. no cinematic mystery. he looks wrecked in a painfully human way, like life has spent years dragging him face-first across concrete. his dirty blond hair sits unevenly beneath a grown-out military cut, dry and shaggy at the edges, and the deep hollows beneath his eyes make him appear perpetually exhausted, as though sleep has not reached him properly in years. there is something strangely charming about seeing someone so visibly ruined in a room filled with people who otherwise look assembled back together perfectly.
that is what surprises you most about the group, really. none of them resemble what you once imagined addicts would look like. there are dedicated mothers with pearl earrings and carefully folded coats resting in their laps. businessmen who smell faintly of expensive cologne and fresh laundry. women with perfect manicures discussing relapse between school pickups and office meetings. they all look painfully functional, the sort of people strangers trust instinctively. and yet every single one of them is here for the same reason: trying desperately to outrun themselves before self-destruction catches up for good.
and then there is simon, sitting across from you like a wounded animal that wandered into the wrong shelter by mistake.
it fascinates you immediately. not because he is frightening, though he easily could be, but because he looks profoundly misplaced. he has the build of a man made for violence, all broad shoulders and heavy hands and tired stillness, yet he sits there with the guarded caution of prey rather than predator. his eyes rarely settle fully on anyone when they speak, drifting instead toward the floor or the cheap coffee table in the center of the room. watching him feels almost invasive, like observing some large injured creature trying very hard not to bleed openly. naturally, it makes you want to know more. curiosity blooms quickly inside you, sharp enough to resemble hunger.
when your turn comes, second to last as usual, you fall into the same practiced rhythm you always do. you speak with that casually fervent honesty people in recovery learn to manufacture after enough meetings, discussing the miserable little rises and falls of your life since the previous meeting. the smoking is still bad. the drinking cravings worse at night. the nicotine patches itch horribly and leave your skin red. meditation, humiliatingly enough, actually helps when your anxiety begins chewing through your ribs from the inside out. a few people nod sympathetically at the familiar parts. someone laughs softly when you joke about nearly throwing the patches away after two days. by now you know exactly how to perform vulnerability in measured doses, enough to sound truthful without letting yourself split open entirely. still, when you finish speaking, there is that familiar rush beneath your skin again, warm and addictive in its own right. progress. recognition. proof that you are at least trying. it reminds you why you keep coming back.
then simon begins speaking.
his voice is lower than you expected, rough around the edges without sounding intentionally intimidating. he still does not fully look at anyone while he talks, though his stare drifts vaguely in your direction often enough to make you aware of it. he talks about his brother first, and through his brother he talks about drugs, dependency, bad decisions, funerals that seem too complicated to summarize neatly in public. then he talks about his mother for a while. about hospitals. about exhaustion. about responsibility. the details arrive fragmented, careful, almost clinically stripped down. and as you listen, something analytical begins turning in the back of your mind.
he never speaks directly about himself.
even while describing the damage addiction caused in his life, simon keeps positioning himself beside the wreckage instead of inside it. he talks endlessly about consequences, about the people harmed, about bruises and grief and collateral damage, but never about the actual impact point itself. never the precise thing he did. never the ugliest parts. it is always the aftermath, never the action. he circles around the truth so deliberately it starts driving you insane almost immediately.
because of course you are curious.
who would not be?
after that first meeting, simon became one of those strange constants in your life that settled in gradually enough to avoid notice at first. he was simply there. across the circle every thursday evening, broad shoulders folded inward like he regretted taking up space at all, hands clasped together between his knees while other people spoke about divorces and relapses and broken promises. sometimes he contributed. most times he did not. but eventually you started measuring meetings by his attendance without meaning to.
it happened subtly. one week he failed to show up and you found yourself distracted the entire session, staring at the empty chair across from you whenever conversation lulled for too long. you hated realizing you had memorized his habits already. the way he always arrived late enough to avoid introductions but early enough to still hear most of the meeting. the way he drank the bitter church coffee despite looking vaguely disgusted by it every single time. the way he rolled the sleeves of his sweater up whenever discussions became too personal, exposing scarred forearms and rough hands before pulling the fabric back down again the moment he noticed anyone looking too closely.
AA had a strange way of turning strangers into landmarks. after enough meetings, you knew who cried while speaking and who joked too much to avoid sincerity altogether. you knew which members relapsed every winter and which ones always volunteered to stack chairs afterward because going home too quickly frightened them. somewhere along the way, simon became woven into that architecture too. familiar enough that his silences gained texture. familiar enough that you could tell when he was having a bad night before he even spoke.
some evenings he looked almost normal, or at least as close to normal as a man like him could manage. other nights he arrived with exhaustion hanging off him so heavily it seemed physical, shadows bruised deep beneath his eyes, jaw rough with uneven stubble as though shaving had become an unnecessary effort somewhere along the line. those nights he spoke even less. he would sit there staring at the floor while other people confessed things far uglier than you suspected he ever would publicly, his expression tightening almost imperceptibly whenever someone mentioned family.
you wondered about him constantly.
not in the romantic way films liked to dramatize, but with the sharp, restless curiosity of someone trying to solve a puzzle missing half its pieces. you wondered what his laugh sounded like when it was genuine. wondered if he slept at all. wondered what kind of life could carve a man down into something that looked simultaneously dangerous and deeply tired. mostly, though, you wondered why his sadness felt so recognizable to you.
it was late february when he finally spoke to you.
the meeting itself had been particularly miserable that evening, one of those emotionally suffocating sessions where everybody seemed two inches from relapse and painfully aware of it. by the end of it your skin felt too tight over your body, anxiety crawling hot and electric beneath your ribs. you barely stayed long enough to help stack your chair before slipping outside into the freezing church courtyard for a cigarette you technically were not supposed to be smoking anymore.
north camden at night carried a damp kind of cold that settled directly into the lungs. you stood near the cracked stone steps fumbling with your lighter, hands trembling badly enough the flame kept dying before the cigarette could properly catch. your heartbeat had already started climbing into something ugly by then, too fast and too hard, every breath shallower than the last.
panic attacks always arrived embarrassingly mundane for you. no dramatic collapse. no cinematic hyperventilating. just the horrible gradual certainty that your body had suddenly forgotten how to function correctly.
you crouched down against the church wall before your knees could give out entirely, cigarette abandoned somewhere beside your shoe while you pressed clammy hands against your sternum like physical pressure alone could slow your heart. the world narrowed unpleasantly around the edges. breathing became mechanical. humiliating. every inhale too thin to feel useful.
then someone sat beside you.
not close enough to touch. not far enough to ignore.
simon leaned back against the brick wall with a tired grunt, large forearms resting loosely over his knees while he lit a cigarette of his own. he did not look at you immediately. did not ask if you were alright in that frantic tone people used when they wanted panic to resolve itself quickly for their own comfort. he simply sat there smoking beside you like this was the most natural thing in the world.
the silence stretched comfortably.
“breathe too fast and y’make it worse,” he said eventually, voice rough from disuse and cigarettes. “learned that the hard way.”
you laughed weakly despite yourself, though it came out sounding closer to a cough.
simon glanced at you then for the first time that night. his expression remained unreadable, but there was something oddly gentle in the steadiness of it. he tapped ash onto the pavement before speaking again.
“match mine.”
you frowned slightly.
he inhaled slowly from his cigarette. exhaled just as slow.
for a moment you simply stared at him, still dizzy with adrenaline and embarrassment, before reluctantly forcing your breathing to follow the same rhythm. in through your nose. out through your mouth. again. again. slow enough to hurt at first.
and strangely enough, it worked.
neither of you spoke much after that. eventually your heartbeat settled back into something survivable and the shaking in your hands eased enough to become manageable instead of frightening. simon finished his cigarette beside you in silence, crushing it beneath the heel of his boot once the ember reached the filter.
“you should probably quit those,” he muttered, nodding vaguely toward your abandoned pack.
you stared at him incredulously. “that’s your advice?”
a pause.
then, unexpectedly:
“s’alright. mine too.”
a few weeks after the panic attack, speaking to simon started becoming strangely normal.
not easy, exactly. conversations with him still carried the awkwardness of trying to coax something wounded out from beneath a floorboard, but there was less resistance now. sometimes the two of you smoked together outside after meetings despite repeatedly promising yourselves you would quit. sometimes he walked you halfway to the station in long stretches of comfortable silence broken by the occasional dry observation muttered beneath his breath. there was something oddly relieving about how little performance he required from you. simon never pushed for optimism the way some people in recovery did, never spoke in polished motivational slogans or forced silver linings. misery, with him, was allowed to exist plainly.
that evening, the two of you lingered behind after most people had already left the church hall. someone had abandoned a stack of aa pamphlets near the coffee urn and simon stood idly flipping through one while you scraped nicotine gum residue from your teeth with visible disgust.
his large fingers turned the paper carefully despite how rough his hands looked. eventually he frowned faintly at the page.
“you ever had one of these?” he asked.
you glanced over. sponsorship: your questions answered stared back at you from the front of the pamphlet in cheerful blue lettering so painfully optimistic it almost irritated you on sight.
“a sponsor?” you snorted softly. “no.”
simon looked up then, expression unreadable beneath the harsh fluorescent church lighting.
“why not?”
you shrugged, leaning back against the edge of the folding table behind you.
“never found someone, i guess.” your voice came out lighter than the subject actually felt. “hard to walk up to a stranger and go, hello, would you like to become personally emotionally somewhat responsible for all the worst parts of my brain? and i don’t think i’ve ever held a real good conversation with anyone from here anyways.”
the corner of his mouth twitched faintly at that.
“besides, the whole thing kind of requires blind faith in people, doesn’t it?” you continued. “and i’m not particularly good at that.”
for a moment simon said nothing. he stared back down at the pamphlet in his hands, thumb rubbing absently against the folded paper.
“yeah,” he muttered eventually. “suppose it does.”
something about the agreement in his voice made you smile slightly.
“figured you’d relate.”
that earned you a short breath of something almost resembling a laugh.
the silence afterward settled naturally between you both, interrupted only by the distant clatter of chairs being stacked somewhere deeper inside the church hall. simon kept staring at the pamphlet far longer than necessary, jaw tightening subtly like he was turning something over in his mind and disliked whatever conclusion he kept reaching.
then, very suddenly, he spoke.
“you’d probably be good at it.”
you blinked. “at what?”
“sponsoring.”
the answer came so bluntly it caught you off guard.
“that so?”
he shrugged once, awkward and stiff. “you listen.”
it was such a painfully sincere observation that for a second you did not know what to do with it. simon avoided vulnerability with military precision most days, treating sincerity like something physically dangerous to handle directly. hearing him say something honest without burying it beneath sarcasm or deflection felt strangely intimate.
before you could respond, he spoke again, rougher this time.
“would you…”
he stopped.
you watched reluctance pass across his face, like the words themselves were fighting him on the way out.
“would you maybe be mine?”
for a moment you simply stared at him.
the question sounded almost absurd coming from someone like simon. this enormous, exhausted man standing under flickering church lights looking vaguely annoyed at himself for asking anything at all. there was no confidence in it, no expectation. if anything he looked braced for rejection already.
you realized then that asking had probably cost him an embarrassing amount of pride.
slowly, your expression softened.
“yeah,” you answered.
simon blinked once like he had not entirely expected the conversation to get this far.
“yeah?”
“yeah.”
another silence followed, though this one felt different somehow. less defensive.
then simon cleared his throat awkwardly and folded the pamphlet in half with unnecessary force before shoving it into the pocket of his jacket.
“right,” he muttered. “suppose that makes this official then.”
if simon had to make a list of the greatest regrets of his life, breaking up with you would probably sit at number one on that bleak, embarrassingly short list of things he is not entirely convinced he regrets at all. that was the problem with him. simon carried his decisions the way he carried everything; with persistence. he believed in standing by what he had done even when it hollowed him out afterward, believed that second-guessing yourself was weakness and weakness got people killed. pride was part of it, certainly, but there was also that strange moral code living in his head, built from years of loneliness and survival, rigid enough to keep him standing but cruel enough to leave no room for softness. every choice in his life cost something eventually. he just never imagined the price of that particular one would be you.
the breakup itself had been painfully simple, which somehow made it worse in hindsight. no screaming match dramatic enough to justify the years afterward, no shattered glass or slammed doors, no desperate final attempt to stay. just exhaustion. you had looked at him with this tired sort of anger that frightened him more than rage ever could and told him he was selfish, impossible to understand, so emotionally shut off it felt less like loving a man and more like speaking to a concrete wall that occasionally answered back. simon remembered standing there while you spoke, large hands motionless at his sides, jaw locked so tightly it hurt. he had wanted to say something then, something useful, something that would make you stay, but language had always failed him at the exact moments it mattered most. so instead he said nothing at all. you left. the door closed behind you. and for reasons he still could not explain, he let it stay closed.
after the war, life became unbearably quiet in ways combat never was. silence overseas had always meant danger, meant anticipating the next gunshot or explosion, but civilian silence was different. it stretched. it lingered. it gave a man too much room to think. simon found himself reduced to watching you pass through life from a distance like someone staring through the wrong side of binoculars, close enough to see but never enough to reach. you moved with that same bright, effortless vigor you always carried, sunlight following you in a way that felt almost offensive compared to the grey stillness of his own existence. every glimpse, fictional creation of his mind or picture in a tweet or instagram post, of you laughing with friends or hurrying through the city with purpose made him wonder whether perhaps the problem had never truly been himself at all. maybe you had simply outgrown him the way healthy things eventually outgrow ruined places. the thought unsettled him more than blame ever could.
ever since leaving him, your life seemed to unfold upward with terrifying ease. you graduated college with honors, smiling in photographs he stared at far too long after finding them online through mutual acquaintances. simon studied those pictures a lot, eyes tracing the shape of your smile, the confidence in your posture, the polished certainty of someone becoming exactly who they were meant to be. it hit him then, suddenly and humiliatingly, that he did not even know what you had studied. years together and he could recall the way you took your tea, the exact rhythm of your footsteps approaching his flat, the little crease between your eyebrows when annoyed, but not the subject you dedicated years of your life to.
and that was one of many.
he was sure you were not particularly keen on avoiding smoking around him. as you both knew, he could not care less about that, which was also a depressing thought to have, as you were far from a healthy person and the minimum he could have done as your boyfriend was worry about that. but you stopped. you stopped smoking to help with your anxiety about five months after the breakup and you looked as radiant as ever. the gaps of malnourishment and weakness filled with life and the grace of a properly functioning body. you looked lively. happy.
it was hard to avoid getting angry at the thought of someone else reveling in the softness of your laughter and the sweet warmth of your skin when properly fed and cared for, but he knew he did not deserve it. he did not put in the work to help you get there. there is no point in wanting the fruit without growing the tree. you cannot have your cake and eat it too, they say. but god did he wish he could be selfish one more time, wished he could hold you near him again and feel the sickly love you gave him even if he did not deserve it.
simon had loved you deeply, desperately even, but sometimes he had loved you so selfishly he forgot to fully know you at all. sometimes he thinks you are better off without him.
(stranded by choice in the middle of the desert simon and you cross the multiple boundaries that come with being, in the past and in the present, bound to someone.) so much sexual tension they could explode, angst (?), making out in a car, fem!reader (somewhat), cheating (but not on you), inspired by park chan wook’s movie of the same name, can you tell the size kink? 3546 words.
something in the entrails of your body told you that you would never solve the equation that results in the hulking, insurmountable, and overarching situation that simon riley is. he was like a puzzle missing a piece you don’t even know which one is, so you spend the rest of your time around him trying to figure out where and what is even missing to begin with which is, to say the least, tiring.
tiring is the best word to describe the man in general, with his insistences, his pettiness, his absolutely insufferable silence. he can’t help but exhaust every milligram of energy from you, phisically in his extensive training or mentally with that personality of his. you might beat this dead horse until the day you die, but you just can’t get over his pettyness about the driving thing.
and what is the driving thing? well, simon doesn’t really like acknowledging his absolutely precarious skills on the wheel. you could go on and on about the multiple, resource and time consuming times he has fucked up that part of missions. which is a surprise to you when it first happens, or at least when you first witness it, given how methodical and thought out he is with his every action. then it becomes old news.
though, good for lucky you, this time the man had a leg too soaked in the crimson thickness of blood pouring from his open stab wound in the left thigh to be able to drive you two away from that little afghan town mid sistan desert you two had just finished almost meeting the cold touch of death’s hand inside. so the drivers seat was all yours.
you two were in complete awkward silence since the ride started, you wanted to nudge at him to just get over with picking a cd from the glove compartment already but he seemed so entertained being in that position the first time you just couldn’t help but let it go. you watch his hand rover an orange tinted cd and realized that was probably the only thing the man knew about you too, you liked sade, you always put it on when you were his place in the passenger seat.
your eyes shifted back to the bare, rocky soil road before you and soon enough mark knopfler’s conversational baritone filled your ears. you hum to the strained delicate rhythm of the guitar and from the corner of your eye you can see those cold blue eyes turn back to look at you.
“you’re too young to know this.”
you don’t know if it’s a joke or it’s simply a statement yet you cough out a laugh anyway.
well now your know a second non work related fact about him, he’s at least a bit into dire straits. fits the man you suppose. and what is the first you ask? the man, surprisingly, has a wife. you guessed they don’t see each other much, as he’s in the base almost 24 hours 7 days a week and you only found out because of soap’s loose lips. which means, to your surprise, the man has a heart even if it’s not used much.
you wonder how they even met. probably before the military got to him, you can’t even imagine meeting someone from the outside in your current position and you can’t imagine the situation is much different for him. and you wonder what she does for a living, what’s even his taste in women anyways. does he likes the delicate, feminine ones? you don’t think so. you think he likes a challenge. likes someone that doesn’t go against wherever his rivers flow but can do so if necessary, if wished.
you can’t really see him dating a housewife, someone that waits for him to catch up to civilian life, that doesn’t vivisect the ups and turns of his brain to push them in directions they haven’t run through before. but you can imagine him with someone he fucks and let’s go, a bird to trap and let fly away when necessary, not meant for enjoyment but for the upkeeping of a healthy sex life or whatever the doctors tell you. like a stress ball, but woman shaped.
which makes you think about if the lieutenant is even worth it. of course you’ve never seen him behind the mask but you have to be honest to yourself that he checks the vast majority of the boxes you’ve set up for the men your life. he wasn’t a potential suitor not even in a million years of course he’s your superior and close to 20 years older than you but for the sake of this reverie you allowed yourself another peak at him.
christ, sometimes you wonder if he’s really that big or if you’re mysteriously getting shorter.
simon riley occupied space in a way that felt almost territorial, like the world naturally bent around the sheer inconvenience of his existence. even bleeding through layers of black tactical fabric and leaning back with that lazy sort of exhaustion only he could make look intimidating, he still seemed too large for the truck itself. broad shoulders crowded against the door, one thick arm resting near the window while the other stayed lazily draped over the wound on his thigh like he could manually keep himself from bleeding out through sheer stubbornness alone.
everything about him was heavy. heavy hands, heavy footsteps, heavy silence. the kind of man that looked like he had been carved out of wet concrete and left to dry somewhere cold. even the mask added to it, stretched over the sharp structure of his face, turning him into less of an human and more like an urban legend soldiers whispered about.
and his eyes didn’t help.
those pale blue eyes carried the unpleasant stillness of a wolf sizing up whether something was worth killing or not. sometimes you caught them lingering on you for a second too long and it sent uneasiness crawling beneath your skin, not fear exactly, but awareness. the same awareness prey animals probably felt when those bigger stepped into the clearing.
you hated how much it worked for him and hated how it made you think about him.
god you need a fucking break.
the truck came to a rough stop against the uneven dirt road, tires crunching over loose stone as the engine continued its low animal growl beneath your feet. for a moment neither of you said anything. the desert stretched around the vehicle in endless bruised shades of orange and brown, the horizon wavering beneath the late heat like the entire world was melting slowly into itself.
you leaned forward with a tired sigh and reached across him toward the glove compartment. simon’s eyes followed the movement automatically, slow and sharp beneath the skull mask. your forearm brushed against the hard plane of his vest for barely a second and even through layers of fabric he felt warm, solid, irritatingly present.
the compartment opened with a weak click. cds shifted and clattered against each other before your fingers finally found the sky blue cigarette box shoved beneath the pile. you shook it once. the sound that came out was light. too light.
“christ.”
you flipped it open with your thumb. one cigarette.
of course.
rolling the window down, you barely noticed the hot wind immediately rushing into the cabin until it threw strands of your hair across your face. somewhere beside you simon shifted slightly, attention still fixed on you with that same unbearable intensity he seemed to look at everything with. like he was trying to memorize weak points.
the lighter sparked twice before catching.
for a brief second the flame illuminated the curve of your mouth, the slope of your nose, gold light dancing across tired eyes before the wind distorted it again. you brought the cigarette to your lips and inhaled deeply, shoulders finally loosening as smoke filled your lungs like medicine.
simon watched the exhale curl out of your mouth into the desert air.
and kept watching.
you looked softer smoking. that was the first thing his mind supplied against his will. softer in the way people did when they forgot themselves for a moment. the constant sharpness you carried around the base dulled at the edges every time nicotine hit your bloodstream, posture melting loose against the seat as exhaustion quietly reclaimed your body inch by inch.
pretty, too.
not in the polished way magazines or soldiers back home liked to talk about women, not delicate enough for that. yours was the sort of face that became dangerous the longer someone looked at it. young but not innocent, delicate around the eyes and mouth yet cut through with a thing almost boyish in demeanor. boyish in the way you sat, the way you spoke, the way you carried yourself.
it confused him.
simon had spent years reducing people into readable things. intentions, habits, weaknesses. most people unfolded eventually beneath enough silence. but you remained frustratingly out of reach, always shifting shape before he could fully pin you down into anything comprehensible.
his gaze lingered on your profile while smoke drifted past your face in pale ribbons. wind pushed your hair around carelessly and you kept squinting against it, one hand lazily tapping ash out the window into hot dirt.
you looked exhausted.
human.
and for reasons he didn’t particularly enjoy entertaining, simon found himself unable to look away.
“is he RAF too?”
the question leaves simon’s mouth before he can properly kill it. low, rough, almost blending into the sound of the engine itself.
and immediately he regrets it.
not because he cares particularly much about appearing interested, that ship had already started taking water somewhere around the moment he caught himself memorizing the shape of your mouth around cigarette smoke, but because the question itself feels strangely invasive coming from him. too personal. too curious.
he doesn’t even know where the fuck it came from.
he knew, vaguely, that there had been a husband at some point. soap had mentioned it carelessly once, words spilled over drinks and bad jokes and the kind of conversations people forgot simon was standing close enough to hear. simon had never asked further. never cared to. or at least that’s what he told himself whenever the thought crossed his mind unexpectedly at three in the morning.
but who the fuck wants to do what they should?
you laugh softly beside him, cigarette still balanced between your fingers as smoke drifted lazily out the open window. the sound catches him off guard more than the question itself did. there’s something tired inside it, amused in that worn-down way people become after too many sleepless nights and too many things buried alive inside their chest.
“what the fuck even prompted this, lieutenant?”
simon’s eyes stay fixed ahead through the windshield. the desert road stretched endlessly before the truck, swallowed in darkening orange dusk.
he doesn’t answer.
partially because he doesn’t have one. mostly because he can already feel the embarrassment crawling ugly and unfamiliar beneath his skin, and he hates that you might somehow sense it through the mask alone.
you study him for a second too long from the corner of your eye before huffing another quiet laugh.
shyness, you think suddenly.
the realization almost makes you smile.
jesus christ. simon riley getting shy over asking about another man. maybe hell really was freezing over somewhere behind the dunes.
“used to,” you answer finally, voice quieter now.
simon’s gaze shifts toward you briefly.
“retired?”
there’s genuine curiosity beneath the question this time, quiet and reluctant. the kind that slips out only when exhaustion lowers defenses enough for honesty to crawl through the cracks.
your fingers pause briefly against the cigarette.
“dead.”
the word lands heavily between you.
the truck suddenly feels too small around the silence that follows. thick with heat, cigarette smoke, and pain neither of you particularly wants to touch. outside, the desert continues endlessly onward, indifferent and vast beneath the dying sunlight.
simon feels his stomach twist unpleasantly.
he’s seen death in every shape imaginable. seen men blown apart beside him, seen bodies rot in streets for weeks under foreign suns, seen children zipped into black bags too small for them. death itself stopped meaning much years ago.
but this feels different somehow.
because now he’s forced to imagine you grieving.
you, with that sharp mouth and smartass attitude and constant restless movement, standing beside a grave somewhere trying to survive the unbearable fact that somebody once loved enough to marry you had disappeared from the earth entirely.
and for reasons he hates examining too closely, the image bothers him more than it should.
you flick ash out the window.
“he was army actually,” you say after a while, voice quieter now. “met him before i enlisted.”
simon nods once. slow.
the movement feels insufficient compared to the strange ache settling beneath his ribs.
“you loved him?”
this time the question surprises both of you.
your eyes cut toward him immediately, cigarette halfway to your mouth. simon almost looks annoyed at himself for speaking at all, shoulders tense beneath black gear like he physically cannot believe he keeps digging himself deeper into this conversation.
for a moment you don’t answer.
the wind blows harder through the open windows, carrying sand and heat through the truck cabin while dire straits continues humming softly somewhere beneath the silence.
then you smile.
small. tired.
“yeah,” you whisper. “i think i did.”
“and her, do you love her?”
the question leaves your mouth lazily, carried out alongside a thin stream of smoke disappearing into the desert air. but there’s sharpness hidden beneath the casualness of it, probing. you don’t even know why you ask it. maybe because he asked first. maybe because part of you wants to prove that beneath all that black fabric and intimidation and silence there’s still anything painfully human left inside simon riley.
he says nothing.
of course he doesn’t.
the only response you get is the slight tightening of his jaw beneath the mask and the distant look settling into those pale eyes, cold and unreadable as winter seawater.
you let out a quiet laugh through your nose and shake your head.
“you men…”
it comes out more exhausted than mocking.
your fingers hold the cigarette out toward him without really thinking about it and for a second simon simply stares at it between your fingers. then his hand closes around your wrist instead. large. warm even through the gloves.
slowly he pulls the mask up just enough to uncover his mouth and the lower half of his face disappears from shadow for the first time since you’ve met him. scarred skin. stubble darkening his jaw. a mouth harsher than you imagined somehow, worn into permanent restraint.
he takes a long drag.
the cigarette ember burns bright between his fingers while he inhales deeply, eyes never leaving your face for even a second.
and christ.
something about it feels unbearably intimate. watching simon riley smoke your cigarette with his mask pushed halfway up like he’s showing you the forbidden. a thing no one else gets.
the smoke leaves his mouth slowly.
he can taste your lipstick faintly on the filter. taste the elegant smoothness of the tobacco too, dark and woody and expensive in a way that suits you annoyingly well. not harsh enough to burn, not sweet enough to become cloying. refined. controlled.
like everything else about you.
“what do you even want with me, lieutenant?”
your voice cuts through the quiet without warning.
simon’s eyes flick back toward yours immediately.
you’re already looking at him now, fully turned in your seat despite the awkward angle. wind pushes strands of hair across your face and you look tired again, cigarette-less fingers twitching faintly against your knee.
“hm?”
“you treated me like dirt on your boot for the last five months,” you murmur, quieter this time. “now you’re curious about my widowhood so what the hell do you want with me, riley?”
the question hangs there.
heavy.
dangerous.
simon feels something ugly twist low in his stomach because the worst part is he doesn’t actually know the answer.
he doesn’t know why he watches you so much. why your voice keeps lingering in his head long after conversations end. why seeing another man’s ghost attached to you fills him with this irrational bitterness he has absolutely no right to feel.
want was a dangerous thing for men like him.
want made people reckless.
he looks at your mouth for one second too long.
then the cigarette is crushed out against the ashtray with a quiet hiss.
your brows barely have time to furrow before his hand suddenly grips your arm and pulls. hard.
the world lurches violently sideways as simon drags you across the center console with startling ease, your breath catching sharply in your throat before his mouth crashes against yours.
it isn’t gentle.
it’s months of restrained irritation and staring and swallowed curiosity condensed into roughness and desperation. his hand buries itself against your jaw while the other steadies your waist hard enough to bruise, keeping you close as though the moment he loosens his grip you’ll disappear entirely.
and christ, he kisses like he exists angry at the world.
all heat and restraint snapping apart at once. the taste of smoke still clings to his mouth, and the realization that this is the first real piece of simon riley you’ve ever touched sends something dizzying through your chest.
for one stunned second neither of you breathes.
then suddenly the entire truck feels far too small for the both of you.
his hand leaves your waist only to slide upward along your spine, broad palm spreading between your shoulder blades before pressing you closer against him with a firmness that makes your breath hitch sharply in your throat. the angle across the center console is awkward, almost painful, but neither of you seems capable of caring about that anymore. not when the kiss keeps deepening into recklessness that feels like it has been festering beneath months of silence and irritation and glances held for just a second too long.
your chest brushes his and suddenly you understand how unfairly large he really is up close. the sheer heat of him, the solidity. every inhale you take feels stolen directly from his mouth, every movement answered immediately by another from him like he’s incapable of letting you retreat even an inch now that he finally has you here.
your hips shift involuntarily against the cramped space between the seats and the friction drags your groins closer together. the reaction it pulls out of simon is immediate. a low sound leaves him before he can stop it, rough and strained somewhere deep in his chest, more felt against your mouth than heard.
the noise goes straight through you.
your breathing turns uneven almost embarrassingly fast and simon notices immediately because of course he does. he notices everything about you. the way your hands tighten instinctively in the front of his shirt, the shaky exhale caught between kisses, the way your body seems to melt and tense at the same time every time he pulls you closer.
and god, he pulls you closer constantly.
like he can’t help himself.
one hand remains spread against your spine while the other travels upward, fingers curling briefly against the side of your neck before settling against your jaw. the touch contrasts horribly with the way he kisses you — his hands careful, almost restrained, while his mouth feels starved. every kiss grows heavier than the last, slower but somehow more intense, until it becomes difficult to tell where one breath ends and another begins.
the desert wind keeps rushing through the open windows, hot air tangling your hair around both your faces while the truck creaks softly beneath shifting weight. somewhere in the background mark knopfler is still singing quietly through blown out speakers, absurdly gentle compared to the violence of the moment unfolding in the front seat.
you kiss him back harder.
not because you mean to escalate it, not because this is smart or reasonable or even remotely acceptable, but because simon riley kisses like a man who spent years denying himself every human thing imaginable and suddenly lost the ability to stop. it drags something equally ugly out of you. months of tension snapping apart all at once until your pulse feels unbearable beneath your skin.
his thumb presses briefly against your cheekbone.
the gesture is so strangely tender amid everything else that it almost unsettles you more than the kiss itself.
simon’s forehead bumps against yours for half a second when he finally breaks away just enough to breathe. the mask still hangs pushed up over the bridge of his nose, leaving only the lower half of his face exposed, and the sight of him like this feels almost intimate enough to become frightening. his lips are slightly parted, breathing rougher now, pale eyes fixed on yours with an intensity that borders on unbearable.
you can physically feel how hard he’s trying to hold himself back.
and somehow that only makes it worse.
authors note:
+ dividers by @chrisssiren
+ proof reading by my beautiful girlfriend @nexiliter
+ if you haven’t watched park’s 2022 decision to leave yet go watch it it’s the sexiest movie ever made.
as an neurodivergent person the number one thing about being neurodivergent to me is that nine times out of ten you will not be a big fan of most other neurodivergent people so when you and simon’s undiagnosed asses simply click with each other I think he starts believing that this soulmate thing is actually possible after all.
it probably starts with the very root of every relationship: communication. you don’t even have to be necessarily an introvert or keep to yourself. you can be as loud and excited as you want or as quiet and invisible as humanly possible. What really brings you two together is that he doesn’t have to tell you things; you just know.
you know that you first have to rover your hands over him before actually touching. you know you have to wait until he shows you were he’s wounded instead of searching for it or simply going for the obvious bloody bullet graze or fucked up limb. you pick up when he tenses at the contact between your plastic gloves and his bare skin. you know when to look at his eyes and when not to. you say so little. you ask what’s essential. you are clean and straightforward and so so incredibly easy.
and he knows not to touch your shoulders but only lay his hand above your elbow when he wants to talk to you. knows not to fidget with his zipper when you’re around to hear the sound. knows he can stare at your feet and your hands and your pretty lips but knows he won’t get anything from you if he stares at your eyes. He understands why you’re always with your headphones on. he understands why you have bandages on your fingers without any wounds to justify them.
you two work so well together. so it’s only natural you two are almost attached at the hip. dancing in the same tune, at the same pace, and when the melody drifts away you two always manage to bring each other back to the rhythm without even needing to start the song again. it’s twin telepathy according to soap. you’re his sub-lieutenant. he’s your lieutenant. fraternal twins.
it’s like you’ve been waiting your whole lives for the moment you two could waltz together. you both are so painfully different yet so much like each other. pieces of a puzzle. dogs of the same den.
and you two are stubborn. because of course you are. so love bleeds slowly, so painfully slowly. like stitches tearing apart. a needle drifting of a record player. it takes so fucking long for you two to admit that you want more
you want so much more than just fitting into each other, you want to test it out. you want to feel the warmth of his chest against and your back, how your neck muscles feel over his shoulder, how the broad of his hand feels pressing into your stomach as you sink into him. how his cheek feels as you press your nose into it. the warm musk of skin. the pulse beneath the carved and cuts of flesh. you fit right into him. like puzzle pieces. weightless. seamless. quality manufacture.
simon likes to bury himself in you too. to hide from himself in your sternum as your hands cup the sides of head. your voice a cold, rolling breath of air on his ears. like waves. cold blue waves. The music of nature. grounding. maternal as in not so perfect, like an attempt at it. lone and evergreen. you’re his sister in arms. his twin. his polaris. it’s hard to not get freudian about it
you normally hate to stare. you hate having people look into your eyes and you hate looking into theirs. but god doesn’t it feel like heaven to drown in those crystalline cesspools of faded blues? you hate when he says his eyes aren’t “all that” because oh how they are. you could spend hours fixated looking into them. you want to be the chlorine that cleans those pools so that teary shine can sparkle in the sky like stars saying goodbye at dawn.
god, you know you can’t live without this, without him, anymore. can you?
( you promised simon a call, one that he didn’t get. so he pays you a little visit while you experience the not so fun consequences of spending ten days outside of planet earth. ) childhood best friends, angst/comfort, past relationship, astronaut!reader, friends to lovers, 2506 words.
you are exactly where you started. shivering under the cool touch of clean hotel sheets as cotton drapes itself over the exposed length of your legs. it is idyllic to the point of cruelty, a softness so pristine it feels sharpened at the edges. it is eating you alive.
his breath is so warm on your neck.
steady, relentless, inhaling and exhaling hot air onto your skin as if his lungs had been working overtime to remind you he was alive, that blood still moved through his veins, that his heart had not resigned its post. you feel all of it. every system, every muscle, every bone, even though the only contact between you is the lazy grip of his arm around your waist. he holds you as if you’d flicker out of his grasp like a startled butterfly if he loosened his fist, yet if he tightened it even slightly he might crush you into dust like a moth that drifted too close to flame.
there is no other weight on the mattress but your own, yet the emotion burning behind your eyes is enough to warp your senses. they flutter open and it feels as if your skin is being peeled away from the nerves beneath it.
you can’t say you were thinking when your fingers dialed the number, or when your breathing thickened into something heavy and unwieldy. your head turned toward your phone and suddenly your damp hair wasn’t shielding your ears from the violent burst of ambient noise.
you are perfectly still, yet the entire earth seems to cant sideways beneath you. you cannot keep yourself together. it feels as if the very weight of sound is pulling you down, as if the low hum of the ac and the distant rumble of cargo flights are somehow pushing and dragging you in opposite directions.
you really should have done the cardio rehab properly. jesus, you’re 35. too old to pretend your body won’t retaliate.
the mere thought of being surrounded by that many people, the memory of too many hands brushing your skin, churns your stomach. you need to puke. you need to get up, now, and you need to puke.
your phone starts ringing in the background. the instant you pull yourself upright your body lurches forward, fingers clawing at the corner of the nightstand. for a moment you cannot see anything. the world collapses into pitch black. then your irises pull themselves together and the concept of light returns in thin, miserable strands.
marimba explodes in your ears, muffled but unmistakable even from a room away, a tinny jingle cutting through the sound of you emptying your stomach into the toilet.
for a breathless second the world goes silent. utterly, beautifully silent. you might even call it peace.
and for that fleeting moment you think you might survive this. shifting your weight, pressing your calves into the cold floor with your full weight resting on them, you convince yourself you are on the verge of steadiness. you’ll tell your flight surgeon this was just a lapse in judgment, you’ll do the rehab, you’ll get back to work and to every damned interview still lined up. it’s only the seventh of april. this is not the end of the world. you will be fine.
then your phone starts ringing again and for a moment you would rather slam your skull into the porcelain and be done with it before returning to mission control.
one hundred and twenty seconds of nonstop ringing later, your phone is in your hand and laura’s pragmatic, steady voice is exhaling your name through the speakers. she’s the chief of your office, the astronaut office. in a way you belong to her, administratively speaking. of course she would call after your silent little french exit. mental health break your ass.
it is embarrassing, being scrutinized for something you absolutely deserve scrutiny for, even when it comes wrapped in laura’s unnervingly calm silence.
“your friend came around.”
what?
you don’t have friends, at least not outside campus. you don’t know anyone back in clear lake you don’t work with. you barely managed to move into webster properly. the only possible person would be simon. but simon wouldn’t. he wouldn’t cross an ocean. not for you. this is ridiculous.
your thoughts snap in half when laura calls your name again, sharper this time.
“oh. uh. who?”
“sam? si… simon? yes. simon. that guy you asked me to…”
that was not in your plans.
“christ. no.” no no no no. “what did you tell him? did he talk to anybody else? god, did he talk to eleanor? when did he…”
“about twenty minutes ago. he’s still outside my office.” the rattle of plastic blinds cuts through the receiver. “very weirdly staring down at his phone. i told him i’d call you. he said something about it being too early or something. ok, now he’s typing. oh, now he’s looking at me. shit.” another clatter. “honey, after you handle whatever this is with this guy, imma need explanations about why you’re involved with some british SAS mountain. thought you weren’t into military men. seems i was wrong and you’re just like the rest of us because of course you are.”
SAS?
“laura, i…”
“please just call him already, ok? i told him you were fine and that you left early and he still looked like he was about to jump on me.”
the world tightens around you like a shrinking lung. it’s tight when you say goodbye to laura. it’s tighter when you sink to the floor, leaning against the mattress to keep your spine upright. by the time you send him your location and the number of your miserable hotel room, it feels like the air itself is contracting against your skin.
and you feel everything. every inch of fabric scraping your nerves raw. you regret the wool top. you regret existing in it. you hate the weight of your clothing and the forty interminable minutes in which you fold further into yourself until the knock at your door finally reaches you.
he is right there.
steps away.
you remember the morning after that night. you remember how filthy you felt, how unbearably loved it made you feel too. how for one brief, impossible moment you felt the bliss of belonging in his arms for the first time in years. you were so young. you had barely lived. yet life already sat on your shoulders like a centuries-old burden. you never expected to last much beyond your twenties. you never imagined a life waiting for you on the other side of the world.
and then he came and gave you something to believe in. handed you the entire horizon and disappeared into it.
he might have been the first but he wasn’t the last person you’ve been with yet you just can’t seem to fucking move on. maybe it’s best if you pretend you don’t even know you had this thought. it gives you second hand embarrassment and it’s literally your own feelings for a man you haven’t seen in two whole decades.
and once again, your hand is on the door handle, in the trigger of the gun with the barrel against your head, before you can really process what you’re doing.
⟡
you have barely changed in his eyes.
of course you are a grown woman now, far removed from the girl carved into his memory, yet you are still unmistakably her. the soft, bewildered look in your pupils is the same, and so is that sharp, dangerous glint you get when you are trying not to flinch. you’re doing the thing with your cheekbones, drawing them taut the way you always did whenever tension pulled your face into something cold and contemptuous. he does not know what he expected to find here, but certainly not something that could fold so neatly over his memories. for so many years simon had forced himself to believe you had changed beyond recognition. that you were one woman and he was another man entirely. the lie settled in easily after a while. he is ashamed of how simple it was to convince himself you were unreachable, that nostalgia was pointless, that there was no version of his life where the two of you would ever stand close again.
yet now he is a single step from you and two decade yawn between your bodies. twenty years of loss. twenty years of life.
you look painfully beautiful under that dim flickering hallway light. your eyes are as deep and bright as the last time he saw them. it was never about color. it was something in the way he could look into them, through them. he once spent entire evenings watching you develop reels and reels of film in back were you worked at after school, but not a single frame, in color or in black and white, ever matched what he saw when you lifted your gaze to him. it was like staring into a black hole. like seeing past the dark reflections of screens and sodium lights straight into the machinery of your heart. it was the most devastatingly beautiful thing he had ever witnessed.
if anyone had ever asked him, he would have said that was what he searched for his whole life. if he searched for anything at all. if he ever had ambitions that stayed. it was that.
how was it possible, out of every permutation his life could have taken, that you happened? clever little you. sharp-tongued, stubborn you. simon is so grateful he did not spend the last years sanctifying you in his mind. grateful he did not turn you into a eulogy or a fantasy of innocence to soothe his own lack of emotional aptitude. he is grateful he never made you into some mother mary of what-could-have-been if only he had not come from a cramped, loveless house he was so desperate to survive.
you never lived next door and you were never some soft dream he clung to. you were the whole bloody universe. you were the conqueror in the history book. julius caesar if you fancied it. veni, vidi, vici or whatever would fall from your mouth. you were never a ghost of his past and never limited to collyhurst or anywhere else in suburban manchester. you were a nomad. you always were. you never belonged anywhere that chained you. and he had no right to imagine your wrists zipped tight inside his fists, trapping you in a life with a man you were never sure would be alive in the next week.
he’s grateful it took this long. it hurt. he knows he hurt you too. but there was no other way. journeys worth anything are long. he’s lived thirty seven years and change, and all of them somehow led to this small, quiet peace.
he watches your chest rise and fall in a long, trembling inhale. you open the door wider and let him in.
the room is almost untouched, everything pristine except the messy bed and a chair with a sand-colored poncho thrown over it. neither of you move from the narrow space that forces you face to face.
you look exhausted, yet you are every inch a texas spring. you used to style your hair constantly; now it seems you’ve surrendered to what your genes dictate. it’s the longest he has ever seen it, curling around your face like a gilt romantic frame. in all the years simon knew you he never saw you anything but pale and carved at the edges, but here the faint flush of sun over your nose almost convinces him you are doing alright. he would like to kiss that faint pink until it meant something.
later. definitely later. not while you are shivering with sweat gathering at your temple.
“where were you goin’?” his palm is already pressed to your neck before you register the question, and then the back of his hand finds your forehead as your eyes track toward your backpack. you were absolutely planning on doing the stupid thing. slipping off the map. disappearing from the agency because your body and mind won’t stay in one piece.
“albuquerque, i guess.”
“your mum there?”
“no. uh. cassidy lives there.” his hand stays on your head a beat too long, debating between politeness and instinct. “she’s my father’s ex-wife. i lived with her after college in san francisco. she’s in new mexico now.” he hears it—the old shift in your voice when you think you’re oversharing. the same mellow, melodic cadence he hasn’t heard in so many years it feels like a song resurfacing from a dream.
“why?” he wants to say more but cannot. he wants to tell you he looked it up. that he knows you’re expected at JSC tomorrow for the therapy that makes you properly terrestrial again. he wants to tell you without sounding like a creep. he wants to say he cares. and that you look ill. and that you shouldn’t be doing this alone. he wants to be a hypocrite and remind you that the military medical system he too barely follows exists for a reason.
he stays silent. he watches you scramble for words, your expression a dazed little half-smile.
“i feel like… frankenstein i guess. i just can’t be there. i really can’t, si.” god, you should not call him that. or he’ll do anything you ask, just like he did years ago.
he didn’t change much either. the moment tears start pooling in your bloodshot eyes he doesn’t even think before pulling you forward, folding you into him with all the force and certainty he has. he murmurs that you need sleep. you do not move until he physically guides you toward the bed.
“and… what– what are you even doing here anyways?”
“you didn’t call”
he can see in your face you forgot about that. he can see you’ve probably been forgetting a lot of stuff lately.
“so you flew continents to have a damn conversation–“
“yeah I don’t like being left in the dark either. now sleep.”
you roll your eyes and he knows you’re well aware he’s right. you haven’t slept since pretty much the night before yesterday’s.
“none of this means you don’t still have a lot to explain, riley. i mean it.” he huffs out a low laugh and you melt under it because of course you do.
“you’ll get your answers if you sleep.”
and you obey. you fall into a dense, heavy sleep you haven’t reached in years because of course you do. because eight hours beside him is the closest you’ve been to gravity behaving like a kindness instead of a burden. like being back in the orbit of the place that made you. like all you needed was someone to tilt you toward the right trajectory again.
for the first time in so long, you drift with the current instead of drowning under it.
author’s notes:
+ the reader truly went through hell on this one 😭 even got her a mitski song to match the existential dread
+ not sure how I feel about this, so any feedback is appreciated really. hope it met everybody’s expectations! I really love this sweet innocence of their relationship. they have a lot of darkness in them yet it’s all very delicate and volatile. a hard man with an even harder woman yet they’re like putty to each other. babygirls really. can’t wait until they hit the texan road
+ the divider used above was made by the talented @uzmacchiato
