20K words, Simon’s hair has grown out, reader wears glasses, Simon doesn’t know how to dance, smut, the fluffiest fluff, angst, size kink, Simon is huge, pee mentioned, Simon is filthy but we all knew that. Tell me if I missed any tags.
He was four years old when he stole your crayons.
Not all of them. Just the good ones. The red one. The yellow one. The bright, sunflower-gold one that you'd been saving to colour the sun in the corner of your drawing, the way all four-year-olds drew the sun — a circle in the corner, rays shooting out like a child's idea of joy.
You looked at him across the low art table in that bright little preschool room that smelled of poster paint and digestive biscuits.
He was stocky even then.
Chubby-cheeked and heavy-set. A thick, sturdy little boy who sat with his legs wide and his fat fists curled around your crayons like he'd earned them.
He wasn't even looking at you.
He was colouring something — a car, maybe, or a blob that might have been a dog — and the yellow crayon moved in big, purposeful strokes across his paper.
You did not cry.
You considered it.
Then you leaned across the table and took them back.
He looked up.
Brown eyes. Even at four, they were startling — dark and serious and far too watchful for a boy his age.
He stared at you.
You stared back.
Then he slid the gold crayon back across the table to you, said nothing, and went back to his drawing.
His name was Simon.
You would not learn that until the register was called the following morning. But you remembered his eyes before you remembered his name.
— ✦ —
He broke your glasses in Year Two.
Not on purpose — or so you believed, for most of your life, until you were old enough to accept that
Simon Riley did very few things without purpose.
He knocked into you in the corridor outside the dining hall, your plastic NHS frames hitting the linoleum floor, one arm snapping clean off at the hinge.
You stood there, the world going soft and blurry at the edges the way it always did without them, and you felt the particular, humiliating sting of being unable to see properly — the vulnerability of it, the indignity.
Simon picked up the frames. Looked at them. Looked at you.
He didn't say sorry straight away. He examined the break with the seriousness of a boy who was already, at seven, very careful about what he said and when he said it. Then, "I'll carry your bag till they're fixed."
"You broke my glasses," you told him like he didn’t know.
"I know." He nodded.
"That's not the same as fixing them."
"No," he agreed. "But it's what I've got."
He carried your bag for three days. And when your mum brought the repaired frames in on the fourth morning, he handed the bag back without ceremony, turned, and went to join his mates by the football cage. No further apology. No acknowledgement that anything had occurred between you at all.
That afternoon, you kicked over his sandcastle in the playground.
He watched you do it. Didn't say a word.
You felt better.
And somehow, after that, you were friends.
— ✦ —
He couldn't read very well. You figured this out in Year Three, during the round-robin reading in class — when the teacher went along the rows and each child read a sentence aloud.
You noticed the way Simon's jaw set and his hands went flat on the desk the closer it got to his turn. The way his eyes moved across the page, laboured and slow, tracking words like they were things to be wrestled rather than known.
He got through his sentence. Barely. His face was blank when he sat back, the particular blankness he'd already learned to wear — that carefully constructed nothing that meant everything was fine when everything was not fine at all.
You didn't say anything about it. Not then. You were eight years old, not stupid.
What you did was start reading with him at break time. You presented it as something you needed — you told him you were practising for a reading competition and needed an audience.
Simon was not fooled. He was never fooled, not really.
But he sat down with you on the bench by the library door and listened while you read, and then slowly, carefully, you handed the book to him and asked what he thought happened next, and he had to read ahead to find out.
It took most of the school year. But by the summer he was reading chapter books. He never thanked you. He did start saving you a seat on the library bench every break time, and that was the same thing.
— ✦ —
He played football and rugby.
You read on the grass bank above the field.
It became a kind of institution — the ritual of your shared proximity without shared activity. Simon on the pitch, broad and determined and already bigger than the other boys by Year Five, already moving with that particular physicality that seemed less like playing and more like declaration.
And you on the bank above, your book open, your reading glasses (a better pair now, tortoiseshell) perched on your nose, half-reading and half watching without ever quite admitting to the watching.
He always knew you were there. He didn't do anything about it. But sometimes, when he scored, he'd look up at the bank first before he looked anywhere else.
You told yourself you were only there because the grass was nice and the light was good.
You were not a good liar, even then.
— ✦ —
The boy's name was Daniel Holt and he pushed you over in the playground in Year Five because you'd refused to give him the answers to the maths homework.
You'd said no three times and the third time he pushed you and you went down hard on your palms and your knees, the concrete was unforgiving.
You were crying before you'd fully registered what had happened. Not dramatically — small, shocked, indignant tears, the kind that arrive before the pain does.
Simon was there before a teacher was. You didn't even see where he came from. One moment the playground was its ordinary mid-morning noise, and the next Daniel Holt had a split lip and Simon Riley was standing over him with blood on his knuckles and a look on his face that was completely, utterly calm.
The calm was the frightening part. Even at ten.
He got three days at home for it. He spent the first afternoon sitting on your front step, eating crisps, because he knew you'd be furious with him and wanted to face it head-on.
You were furious. You told him he was an idiot. He told you Daniel Holt had it coming. You told him violence wasn't the answer. He told you Daniel Holt wasn't going to touch you again.
He was right. Daniel Holt never came near you again.
You didn't thank him either. You went inside and made him a sandwich, and that was the same thing.
— ✦ —
Secondary school arrived like a change in weather — everything slightly larger, slightly louder, the corridors longer and noisier, the stakes somehow higher and more ambiguous all at once. You arrived with a bag so heavy your shoulder ached within the first hour: your textbooks, yes, but also the extracurricular books you carried everywhere, the extra notepad you used for non-school thoughts, the six different highlighters you colour-coded by subject.
Simon took the bag from you on the third day without asking.
"I can carry it," you told him.
"I know," he said.
He slung it over his shoulder like it weighed nothing, which for him it probably didn't. He'd grown over the summer — not just taller, though he was that, but broader, thicker through the shoulders in a way that made him look like a man playing a boy, trying the shape of it on. He wore it well, even at eleven. He wore everything like he'd already decided what he was and was simply waiting for the world to catch up.
He carried your bag when it was heavy, and it was frequently heavy. He did it without comment and without making you feel small for needing it. That was the thing about Simon — he never made you feel small. He made other people feel small, sometimes, when they deserved it. But not you. Never you.
— ✦ —
The bruises were never from rugby.
You knew by the second year of secondary.
You were not naive — you had read enough, observed enough, understood enough about the world to recognise the shape of what was happening in Simon Riley's house even though he never said a word about it.
The bruises were in the wrong places for rugby. They appeared in the wrong season. They were around his ribs and his arms and once, memorably, along his jaw, and he came to school the Monday after the jaw bruise with that face — that blank, carefully constructed nothing face — and you sat next to him at lunch and said nothing at all.
You said nothing because there was nothing you could do. You were twelve. You were a girl with a book bag and highlighter pens and absolutely no power over the man who was hurting your best friend, and knowing that — the impotence of it, the helpless, hollow ache of caring about someone you could not protect — was the first truly adult pain you ever felt.
What you could do was this: you could make sure he had somewhere to go.
Your mother, who was perceptive in the quiet way that some mothers are, never asked questions when Simon turned up at the back door on a Sunday evening or a Wednesday after school.
She just set another plate.
Your house became a refuge without anyone naming it as such. Simon did his homework at your kitchen table, ate your mother's cooking, watched telly with your family, and slept on your sofa sometimes when the option was presented naturally enough that it didn't feel like charity.
— ✦ —
You got your period for the first time on a Tuesday in November, in Year Nine. In the school toilets, third period, when you were thirteen years old and the day had been entirely ordinary right up until it wasn't.
The particular cocktail of shock and pain and embarrassment and the specific existential bewilderment of being a person whose body was doing something enormous without prior adequate notice left you sitting on the closed toilet lid crying in a way you hadn't cried in years.
You got out your Nokia. That familiar brick of a phone, the keypad worn smooth at the number five. You typed Simon's number and pressed call before you'd properly decided to.
He picked up on the second ring. "Yeah."
"Simon." Your voice came out wrong. Too thin.
A beat. When he spoke again his voice had changed — quieter, more careful. "Where are you?"
"Girls' toilets. Near the science block."
"Right," he said. "Stay there."
He appeared outside the girls' toilets seven minutes later — you could hear him through the door, his voice low and flat, telling a Year Eight girl to go use the other ones — and then he was there, right there on the other side of the door, talking to you through it in that steady, even way he had when he wanted to be calm on your behalf.
"You're alright," he said. “Do you need me to go to the office?"
"No," you managed. "I need — I don't know what I need."
"I'll get you something from the vending machine," he said, that Manchester accent of his low and unhurried. "And I'll text your mum."
When you came out of the toilets twenty minutes later, looking wrung-out and clutching what the school nurse had provided, Simon was leaning against the wall. He looked at you for a moment — took you in, the way he always did, that comprehensive, assessing look — and then he stepped forward and kissed your cheek. Quick. Certain. His mouth warm and deliberate against your cheekbone.
"You're alright," he said again. He said it like a fact. Like he was making it true by saying it.
You cried a bit more, for different reasons, and he pretended not to notice.
— ✦ —
He was captain of the rugby team by Year Ten. It suited him — the leadership, the sense of purpose, the structure of it.
You went to his matches sometimes, wrapped in a scarf on the touchline, and watched him move across the pitch with that same quality you'd noticed on the primary school field: less like playing, more like declaration.
He was ferocious and focused and occasionally frightening, and the other boys deferred to him not just because he was bigger than them but because he had the kind of authority that doesn't need to be announced.
Afterwards he'd find you on the touchline, still carrying that quality — coiled, alert — and it would take him a few minutes to come back to himself. To come back to you.
"Good game," you'd say.
"Yeah," he'd say.
And then slowly, the set of his shoulders would ease, and he'd become Simon again. Your Simon. The one who stole your crayons and carried your bag and ate your mother's shepherd's pie like it was sacred.
— ✦ —
He could make you laugh. This was not a small thing.
Simon Riley was not, by general consensus, a funny person. He was serious and quiet and his face in repose looked like a man carrying a private weather system. But he had a dry, deadpan wit that he deployed rarely and precisely, and it landed, every time, like a key in a lock made specifically for it.
He knew how to make you laugh because he'd spent years learning you. The specific frequency of your humour. The things that made you dissolve into giggles rather than just smile. He deployed his wit with the same precision he deployed everything else, and the result was that when Simon Riley made you laugh — really laugh, the helpless, breathless kind — it felt like being given something he didn't give to anyone else.
Which, you would eventually understand, was accurate.
— ✦ —
His name was Ryan Marsh and he was your first kiss, in the park on a Friday evening in Year Ten, and it was fine. It was nice, even. Ryan was sweet and nervous and smelled of his older brother's aftershave and the kiss lasted approximately forty seconds.
Ryan Marsh had a broken nose the following Monday.
Simon maintained, with total conviction, that Ryan had walked into a door. Ryan, to his credit, corroborated this story completely.
You did not push the matter, partly because you had no concrete evidence and partly because some part of you — the part that read on the grass bank and watched the pitch and noticed when Simon looked up at the bank before he looked anywhere else — felt something that was not entirely uncomplicated about it.
You and Ryan Marsh did not have a second kiss. You told yourself it was because the chemistry hadn't been right.
You were getting a bit better at lying to yourself, by fourteen. But only a bit.
— ✦ —
GCSEs arrived the way all important things arrived — with more weight than you'd expected and less warning than you'd have liked.
Year Ten and Eleven were the years you restructured Simon's entire approach to studying, methodically and patiently, the same way you'd helped him learn to read, finding the approach that worked for how his mind moved.
Simon was not unintelligent.
He was, in fact, formidably sharp in ways that didn't translate easily to an exam paper: quick to read people, quick to understand systems, possessed of a spatial and strategic intelligence that you recognised and admired even as you taught him how to write it down in ways that the mark scheme would accept.
He sat with you at your kitchen table night after night — your mother quietly replenishing the tea,— and you explained things in the language that made sense to his brain rather than the language of the textbook.
He sat with you at lunch during school hours and glared at anyone who called you a nerd. The glaring was extremely effective. Simon Riley's face, by fifteen, was a significant deterrent.
His GCSE results, when they arrived, were good. Better than anyone who knew his circumstances might have expected from a boy who'd had so much working against him.
He rang you on the house phone when he opened the results envelope. He didn't say much. His voice, when he spoke, was different — something in it unguarded, the Manchester in it softer somehow, without the armour it usually carried.
"Couldn't have done it without you," he said.
"You did it," you told him firmly. "I just held the torch."
"Still needed the torch."
You smiled so hard your face ached. "Go celebrate, Simon."
"Yeah," he said. And then, quieter, "Thanks, sunshine."
— ✦ —
He was an apprentice at the butcher's on Renshaw Street after school — learning the trade with the same focused, physical competence he brought to everything else, solid and unhurried, his big hands learning new kinds of precision. You had a job at the bookshop two streets over.
On his lunch breaks you would walk over with a sandwich and a packet of crisps, and you'd sit on the low wall around the side of the shop while he ate and you talked about nothing in particular and everything in general.
He had sawdust on his boots and you'd have ink on your fingers from pricing stickers, and you'd sit in the thin afternoon light talking about books and people and where things might go from here, and it was the most ordinary, irreplaceable thing in the world.
You didn't know, then, that you were storing it up. You didn't know you were in the middle of something finite.
You were seventeen and you thought you had time.
— ✦ —
It was the eleventh of September, 2001.
You were at work when it happened — the bookshop had a small television in the back room, and you watched the footage with your hand pressed over your mouth and the world rearranging itself into a new shape around you.
Simon came to you that evening. He didn't knock — he had a spare key, had done for years — and you heard him come in and go into the kitchen and fill the kettle, the sound of him so familiar and domestic and real that something in your chest loosened a fraction.
He brought you tea. He sat on the sofa beside you and you watched the news together in silence, and at some point your head found his shoulder without either of you deciding it had.
"I'm going to join up," he said. Not asking. Telling.
You lifted your head from his shoulder. Frowned at him. "Join up what?"
"The military."
The word landed in the room and stayed there. You looked at his face — that flat, certain expression he wore when he'd already decided something — and you felt the ground shift slightly under you.
"Simon. You're seventeen."
"You can join at sixteen with parental consent," he said. Straightforward, as though he'd already looked into it. Which of course he had. "Seventeen without."
"That's—" You stopped. Started again. "You've thought about this before today."
"Yeah."
Of course he had. You could see it now, the shape of it — this was not a reaction to the footage on the television, not a hot, impulsive thing. This was something Simon had been building toward without telling you. The structure of it. The purpose. The particular kind of belonging that came from being part of something larger than yourself. You'd always known he'd go toward something like this. You'd just hoped, without ever quite admitting to the hoping, that it might be further away.
"You're not going to try to talk me out of it." Not a question.
"Would it work?"
He held your gaze. "No."
"Then no," you said. Your voice was very steady. You were proud of it. "I'm not."
He was quiet for a long moment. The television continued its awful repetition. Then his arm came around your shoulders, heavy and warm, and he pulled you in closer against his side.
You stayed like that until the tea went cold.
— ✦ —
The train station was grey and noisy with other leavings, other arrivals, other people in the middle of things.
Simon stood in front of you on the platform with his kit bag and his big, careful hands and the face he'd spent seventeen years learning to keep blank, and it occurred to you, not for the first time and not for the last, that you loved him.
That you had loved him in different quantities and different registers for most of your life. That you did not know how to say it and were not sure it would do either of you any good if you did.
So you didn't say it.
You went up on your toes and you hugged him — truly hugged him, arms around his neck, your face pressed against his jaw — and he held you back with both arms, the kit bag dropping to the platform, and he was so solid and warm and real that you memorised it.
"Don't be an idiot," you told him, muffled.
He made a sound that was almost a laugh. Almost. "Best I can do is try." The Manchester in his voice, low and warm and his.
"Simon."
"I know," he said quietly, against your temple. "I know, sunshine."
You stepped back. You held it together. He picked up his bag and he walked toward the platform and at the door of the train he turned, and looked at you standing there with your glasses and your coat and your hands pressed together in front of you, and for a second you saw something in his face that wasn't blank at all.
Then he was gone.
You cried on the way home. Proper, ugly crying, in the front seat of your mother's car, while she drove and said nothing and passed you a tissue.
You cried because you thought you might never see him again. Because the world had cracked open on a Tuesday in September and people were going toward the fracture and Simon Riley was one of them.
You cried because you never told him.
— ✦ —
He sent a birthday card every year.
They arrived with no return address and postmarks from places you'd never heard of, and sometimes they were late and sometimes they were so early you suspected he'd sent them weeks in advance in case he couldn't later.
They were always plain — Simon Riley was not a man who browsed the sentimental section — white or cream envelopes, the kind of card that was almost generic, and inside: his handwriting, which had improved vastly from the boy who'd struggled across the page in Year Three, and always the same thing. Your name at the top. Happy Birthday, sunshine. And then: S.
Just S.
Like he was still close enough that you'd know exactly who that meant. Like the initial was sufficient.
It was.
You sent his birthday gifts to a P.O. box he'd given you, wrapped carefully, the tag always: From your best friend. You didn't know if he received them all. You sent them anyway. It felt important to keep sending them — to maintain the thread, even when you couldn't see both ends of it.
— ✦ —
Thirty-four years old now.
You have no husband. You had come close, once — a man named Patrick who had been perfectly acceptable in every measurable way and who had wanted to marry you and had probably deserved someone who could give him more of herself than you could manage.
You had not been fair to Patrick. You knew that. You had been in love with someone else for most of your adult life, and even with the someone else absent and silent and possibly dead, there wasn't room for anyone else.
You have no children, though you wanted them. The timeline on that was becoming its own quiet ache, the kind you didn't prod too often.
You have a job that pays the bills and not much else — admin in an office building that smells of carpet cleaner and recycled air, the kind of work that requires enough of your brain to stop it from wandering but not enough to satisfy it.
You have an apartment that is functional and yours and that you have tried to make cozy, with books on every surface and plants that are mostly surviving and a kitchen you actually cook in.
It is not the house. It is not the house you told Simon about when you were sixteen and lying in his back garden on a summer evening, staring up at the sky.
No birthday card for five years now.
Five years of the particular, specific silence that was different from all the silences before, because the silences before had been interrupted. Annually, reliably, he had broken them.
Five years of nothing had the texture of conclusion. Of a chapter closing. And you had reached the point — slowly, painfully, with the kind of acceptance that doesn't feel like acceptance but feels like exhaustion — where you were fairly certain Simon Riley was dead.
Your heart ached for your best friend in the low, constant way of grief that has become so familiar it's almost structural.
You carried it the way you carried other things, quietly, with your spine straight.
Which is why you are sitting across from a man named — it didn't matter, it really didn't matter what his name was — on what your colleague Debbie had described as 'a perfectly nice date with a perfectly nice man' and trying to remember what it felt like to be interested in your own life.
The man sitting across from you was the complete opposite of Simon Riley.
He was trim and well-dressed and had the kind of face that was handsome in a way that required no effort to appreciate and inspired no particular feeling from you.
He had been talking for, by your reckoning, forty-seven minutes. In that time he had covered: his career (impressive, in his telling), his car (expensive, in his telling), his last holiday (exotic, in his telling), and his general philosophy on modern dating (nuanced, in his telling).
He had not asked about your job. He had not asked about your books or the one peeking out of your handbag; the one he'd glanced at and not commented on. He had not asked if your pasta was nice, which it was, actually, genuinely nice, and you'd have told him so if he'd asked. He had not asked you almost anything, come to think of it.
Simon Riley, who spoke perhaps a tenth as many words as this man, had always asked.
Simon Riley had always wanted to know. Not because it was polite. Because he actually, genuinely, in the particular way of people who care about very few things very deeply — wanted to know.
You excused yourself to use the bathroom and stood at the sink running cold water over your wrists and looking at your own reflection, and you thought: this is fine.
This is a perfectly nice evening with a perfectly nice man. This is what moving forward looks like. This is what being a person in the world, a person with a life and a future and reasonable expectations of company, looks like.
You dried your hands. You went back to the table. He had ordered himself another drink without asking if you wanted anything.
You finished your pasta and smiled at appropriate intervals and thought about Simon Riley and felt, as you so often felt, quietly furious at him for being gone.
— ✦ —
The birthday card arrived on a Thursday morning.
You almost missed it entirely — it was tucked between a pizza delivery leaflet and something from your energy supplier, the cream envelope almost camouflaged by the mundane. You shuffled through the post on autopilot and then stopped.
Your name, in handwriting you would have recognised anywhere, would have recognised in your sleep, had recognised in your bones for thirty years.
You sat down on the bottom stair. Your legs suddenly uneasy.
Your hands were not steady.
The envelope opened. The card was white. Plain. Almost generic.
Inside:
Happy Birthday, sunshine.
I'm sorry it's been so long.
I'll explain everything.
Come, if you want to.
If you can stand the sight of me.
Below that, an address. Three towns over. A postcode you didn't recognise.
And then, at the bottom, the way it had always been at the bottom: S.
You sat on the bottom stair for a very long time.
Then you got up, went to your room, and started thinking about what to wear.
— ✦ —
You plucked up the nerve to go on a Saturday.
The drive took forty minutes and you spent most of it trying to manage yourself — talking yourself through reasonable expectations (he is alive, that is enough, start there), warning yourself against things you could not control (the five years, the silence, the way your hands were doing that unsteady thing again), cataloguing everything practical (the address, the map).
The street was quiet. Semi-rural, the kind of neighbourhood that sits between things — between town and country, between the ordinary and the aspirational. The houses were spread out, set back from the road, each with its own front garden and its own character.
You parked. You looked at the address. You looked up.
And you stopped breathing.
It was a beautiful house.
Large, substantial and solid, the kind of house that had been built to last. White painted render, clean and bright in the afternoon light. A white picket fence surrounding the front garden, which was full of flowers. Roses climbing the gatepost. Lavender edging the path. Foxgloves and dahlias and great loose clusters of something purple you couldn't name from here. The kind of garden that had been planted with intention, tended with care, left to be a little wild in the best way.
A porch. And a porch swing, painted white, with a yellow cushion on it.
And flying from the corner of the roof, bright against the blue afternoon sky: the Union flag.
You sat very still in the driver's seat.
You were sixteen years old. It was a summer evening and you were lying in Simon's back garden on an old sleeping bag, looking up at the sky. He was beside you in the way he was always beside you — solid, quiet, taking up exactly the right amount of space. You'd been talking about the future the way teenagers do, in great floating hypotheticals that feel more like weather than plans.
"What kind of house?" he'd asked. He asked follow-up questions always, quietly, wanting the specifics. It was one of the things about him you loved.
And you'd described it. A big house, not ostentatious but real — space for books and for people and for a garden that did what it wanted within reason. A white fence, because you'd always liked them. A porch with somewhere to sit. A flag, because you were — despite everything — proud of where you were from.
Simon had been quiet for a long moment.
"Okay," he'd said. Just: okay.
You had thought he was humouring you.
You had not thought — you had not let yourself think — what it might mean, that he was going to do anything about it.
You got out of the car. Your legs were not entirely reliable. You held the gate and walked up the path — lavender brushing your hand where it grew close, the scent of it too perfect, almost staged — and you stopped at the foot of the porch steps.
The door opened.
He had to duck.
That was the first thing you noticed. The physical fact of him, the sheer size of him, his shoulders nearly touching the doorframe on both sides simultaneously, the automatic dip of his head as he stepped through onto the porch.
He straightened.
The afternoon light landed on him and you had to spend a moment recalibrating, because the last time you'd seen Simon Riley he had been seventeen years old with sawdust on his boots and a train ticket in his hand, and this man —
This man.
The white button-down shirt was simple, the sleeves rolled to the elbow, and from his left wrist to well past the roll of the sleeve his forearm was dark with ink — a sleeve of tattoos, intricate and considered. A whole geography of imagery that you couldn't read from here but would, you thought, take time to learn.
His right wrist carried a watch. His black slacks were fitted close enough that you could see the muscle of his thighs pulling the fabric with every shift of his weight, and his shoes — loafers, black with gold buckles, completely unexpected and somehow exactly right — were precise.
His hair. A dark sandy blonde, longer than military specification presumably allowed and slicked back from his face, which meant you could see all of it, his whole face; the angles that had sharpened from boy to man, the jaw, the set of his brow, and those eyes. Those brown eyes that had been watching you since you were four years old and had never, not once, looked at you with anything less than complete attention.
He was raking those eyes over you now. Slowly. With the same quality he'd always had — that comprehensive, unhurried assessment that somehow never felt like being measured — and his hands were in his pockets and he was standing there like that, on the porch he'd built or bought or arranged specifically around a description you'd given him at sixteen.
He looked like something out of a magazine and like Simon all at once.
You were going to murder him.
"Hi, sunshine."
His voice. Lower than you remembered, rougher, carrying all the years he'd lived since you last heard it. That Manchester accent — still there, unmistakably, that warm northern flatness underneath everything, the vowels shaped by a city, by a street, by a particular kind of upbringing that no amount of training had entirely smoothed out.
That nickname, in that voice, in that low, deliberate way he'd always said it: like you were his.
Like it was a prayer.
You opened your mouth. And you closed it. And you looked at him — this enormous, tattooed, stupidly handsome man who had stood on your mother's doorstep at twelve years old with bruises he didn't mention, who had kissed your cheek at thirteen and broken Ryan Marsh's nose at fourteen and waved goodbye from a train platform at seventeen and then sent you birthday cards from the edges of the world for a decade and then stopped for five years —
"Five years," you said. Your voice was very quiet.
Something moved in his face.
"I-,"
"I thought you were dead." You snapped cutting him off.
"I figured you would’ve."
"Simon."
"I know, sunshine." He said it the same way he'd always said things he couldn't argue with — not deflecting, not dismissing, just absorbing. The Manchester vowels in his voice like a hand on your shoulder. "I'll explain everything. I promise. All of it. Whatever you want to know."
You looked at him.
He looked at you.
The afternoon settled around the house, around the garden that was your garden in your own sixteen-year-old description, around the flag and the porch swing and the lavender and all of it, and the distance between you on the path and him on the porch steps was perhaps four feet and thirty years and five years of silence and a whole life of choosing not to say the one true thing.
"You built me the house?" you asked, whispering it. Like you were afraid to say it.
He was quiet for a moment. Then, "Bought it. Had the garden done the way you said."
"Simon." Your heart ached.
"You said lavender at the edges," he said. His voice was completely level. "You said a porch with somewhere to sit. You said you wanted to see the flag from the garden."
You pressed your hand to your mouth.
The rage was still there — it was not going anywhere quickly. The five years of it, the grief of it — but underneath it, something else. Something that had been there since you were four years old at a preschool art table, larger and quieter and more permanent than anything else you'd ever felt.
"You were sixteen," he said. As though this explained it. "You told me what you wanted. I just..." He stopped. Started again. "I wanted to be enough first. I wanted to have what you needed."
There was a long silence. A bee moved through the lavender. Somewhere a few streets away, a lawnmower hummed.
"Come inside," Simon said. "I'll make you tea. And I'll tell you everything."
You looked at him on the porch of the house he'd built you from a word, and you thought: you absolute idiot. You wonderful, impossible, infuriating man. You thought I'd stopped. You thought thirty years of this was something you could be enough for eventually, like it was a bar to clear, like there was a version of you I was waiting on instead of just —
Instead of just you. Always just you.
The lavender brushed your hand again. You walked up the steps and he looked down at you with those brown eyes that had never once left you.
"Hi, Simon," you said.
Something happened in his face. Something opened.
"Hi, sunshine," he said, his hand coming to the small of your back to guide you inside.
He made the tea.
You stood in the kitchen of a house that smelled of fresh paint and cedar and something faintly floral from the garden drifting through the open window over the sink, and you watched Simon Riley move around it like he'd always lived here — filling the kettle, finding the mugs without opening the wrong cupboard, knowing where the teabags were — and you thought: how long. How long has he been here, in this house he bought for you, learning where everything lives, waiting.
You sat at the kitchen table. It was a good table, heavy oak, the kind built to last and you ran your thumb along the grain of it and tried to arrange your feelings into some kind of order and failed.
Simon set the mug in front of you. Milk in last, the way you'd always taken it, which he knew because he'd made you approximately four thousand cups of tea over the course of your lives. He sat down across from you, his own mug between his big hands, and looked at you.
You looked back.
The kitchen light was warm and it caught the angles of his face. The jaw, the brow, the slight crook in his nose that was new, or newer, the result of something you didn't know about and weren't sure you wanted to.
He was watching you with that particular quality of attention he'd always had. Complete. Patient. Like you were the only thing in the room worth looking at.
"You're not wearing your glasses," he said.
You blinked. Of all the things. "No."
"Contacts?"
"For about ten years now, yes."
He was quiet for a moment, studying your face with that same unhurried attention, "I missed them."
"You missed my glasses?" You say with the deadpan tone you'd perfected over the years.
"Tortoiseshell ones," he said. "Used to push them up your nose when you were concentrating." He took a gulp of his tea, Adam's apple bobbing when he swallowed.
You stared at him. Eighteen years. Eighteen years of distance and war and God knows what else, and he missed your glasses. "Simon."
"Just saying."
"You are unbelievable." You scoff.
"The contacts suit you," he said, and the corner of his mouth moved — barely, almost nothing, but you'd spent your whole life reading that face and you caught it. "Everything suits you. But I liked the glasses."
"Stop it." You snap.
"Stop what?"
"Whatever that is," you said, and you pointed at his face, at the not-there-almost-smile, at the quality of his voice when he said everything suits you, at all of it. "You don't get to do that. You've been — Simon, you've been gone. You've been gone for eighteen years and for five of them, I thought you were dead." Your voice stayed steady, which surprised you. You'd expected it to crack on that. "So you don't get to walk out onto your porch looking like — like that — and tell me you missed my glasses and flirt at me like no time has passed."
He listened without interrupting. He always had — it was one of the things about him, the way he gave you the whole space of what you were saying before he entered it.
"You're right," he nodded.
"I know I'm right." Your spine straightened.
"I owe you an explanation."
"You owe me considerably more than that, Simon Riley, but yes. An explanation would be a start."
He wrapped both hands around his mug again and looked at you across the table and there was something in his face that was not the blank-nothing face, was not the armour he'd worn since he was twelve years old but something that was quieter and more exposed and a great deal more frightening because of it.
"Not here," he said.
You frowned. "What?"
"I don't want to do it like this. Sat in a kitchen." He glanced around the room briefly, as though orienting himself. "Come to dinner with me tomorrow night."
"What I—"
"The Grill on Merton Street."
You went very still.
The Grill on Merton Street. You hadn't been in years — not since you'd moved away from the area, not since things had shifted and the rituals of your old life had quietly been replaced by other things.
But you knew it. You knew every table in it. The way the light came through the front windows on a Sunday, the smell of it — roasted meat and old wood and the particular warmth of a place that had been feeding families for decades.
Your mother had loved it. Your father used to order the same thing every time and be pleased about it every time, and you and Simon had sat across from each other in the corner booth with the sticky laminated menus and kicked each other under the table and laughed.
"That's still open?" you managed.
"Had a look earlier this week," he said. "Still there. New owners but the same building. Same corner booth."
You looked at him. He looked at you. Outside, through the open window, a late bird was making itself known in the lavender.
"Fine," you said. "Dinner. Tomorrow. And you're going to tell me everything." you struck at him with a serious face.
"Everything," he agreed.
"I mean it, Simon. All of it."
"I know you do."
You drank your tea. It was exactly right. The temperature, the strength, the milk ratio and you hated him a little bit for that. For the fact that he still knew, that across seventeen years and God knows how many miles he still knew exactly how you took your tea, and he'd made it correctly on the first attempt without asking, and you were absolutely not going to cry about that.
You were not.
— ✦ —
You dressed carefully.
Not because you were trying to impress him.
You told yourself this firmly, standing in front of your wardrobe in the room you'd taken in the local B&B — you'd booked a night, not knowing how long this might take, not knowing what state you'd be in for the drive home afterwards — and you told yourself that you were simply dressing appropriately for a dinner at a decent restaurant.
That was all.
That was the entirety of it.
The dress was deep green. Fitted through the waist, falling to just below the knee, with a neckline that was elegant rather than dramatic.
You'd bought it for a work event two years ago and it had lived in your wardrobe since, waiting for an occasion that felt worth it. You put your hair up — not elaborately, just neatly, the kind of arrangement that looked effortless and had taken twenty minutes — and you wore the small gold earrings that had been your grandmother's. Low heels. The good handbag. A slick of red on your mouth that you almost wiped off twice before deciding to leave it.
You were not trying to impress him.
You were absolutely trying to impress him.
He was waiting outside The Grill when your taxi pulled up, standing on the pavement with his hands in his pockets. The air around him relaxed and easy. An anchored stillness, like a man who'd learned to wait and had made peace with it. He has the same dark slacks as yesterday, same loafers with the gold buckles, but the shirt tonight was black.
A deep, clean black that made his shoulders look approximately the width of a doorway, which was in fact an accurate assessment — and he'd left the top button undone. His hair was the same: pushed back, dark sandy blonde curling at the nape of his neck and catching the amber of the streetlights.
He saw you get out of the taxi.
He went very still. Completely, suddenly, entirely present in a way that landed on you like a hand against your sternum. Under your heartbeat.
You crossed the pavement toward him and his eyes moved over you — slowly, comprehensively, that same rake of attention he'd given you yesterday on the porch steps, only this time there was nothing restrained about what it did to your pulse.
He eyed you the same way he used to look at the extra cuts of slow roasted beef your mother added to his plate every time he joined you for a Sunday roast after church.
"Hi," you said.
"Hi, sunshine." His voice was low. The rough Manchester sending tingles down your spine.
He opened the door for you.
The Grill smelled exactly the same.
Roasted meat and warmed bread and old wood and something faintly of candle wax. It hit you the moment you stepped through the door and you had to stand still for just a second, just one second, to absorb the weight of it.
Your father's coat on the hook by the door. Your mother's reading glasses going into her bag as the menus arrived. Simon across from you, fourteen and fifteen and sixteen, his big hands wrapped around a Coke glass, his eyes on you under that careful brow.
The layout had shifted slightly — new owners, as Simon had said — but the bones of it were the same. The dark wood panelling. The low warm lighting. The tables set with proper linen and actual candles in glass holders. And in the back left corner was the booth.
Simon's hand was at the small of your back as the host led you through. A light touch, barely there, the kind of thing that could be merely courteous and was absolutely not merely courteous.
You said nothing about it.
You were almost at the booth when a voice said, "Well. I don't believe it."
You turned.
Margaret and Gerald Howarth.
Margaret had been your mother's friend since before you were born — a small, bright-eyed woman who had somehow barely aged in two decades. Her silver hair cut the same way it had always been, her husband a large, genial man beside her with a napkin already tucked into his collar. They'd been eating here since before you were born too, you suspected. Some people were simply woven into the furniture of a place.
"Margaret," you said, and you felt a genuine, warm rush of it. Of being seen by someone who had known you as a child, who had watched you grow up, who carried that particular knowledge of you that only people of a certain generation can hold. She was already rising halfway from her seat, her hand extended, and you took it and she covered it with her other one, the way she always had.
"We heard you were back in the area," she said — which was interesting, since you'd only arrived yesterday, but news apparently still moved at its old speed around here. Her bright eyes moved to Simon, and something in them softened with recognition and surprise in equal measure. "And Simon Riley. My goodness."
"Mrs Howarth." Simon's voice was respectful, quieter than usual, and you noticed — because you noticed everything about him — that he straightened fractionally. Not stiffly. Just the particular adjustment of a man in the presence of someone he'd known when he was young and unguarded.
"Look at the size of you," Gerald said, not unkindly, staring up at Simon with the frank appreciation of one large man for another. "What are they feeding you?"
"Gerald," Margaret scolded mildly.
"It's a compliment." He shrugged.
Simon almost smiled. "Good to see you, Mr Howarth."
Margaret was looking between the two of you with the expression of a woman who had been quietly observing people her entire life and drawing accurate conclusions from very little evidence. "Are you together?" she asked, with the particular directness that came with age and with having known you since you were in a pushchair.
"We're having dinner," you said carefully.
Margaret's expression said, quite clearly, that she had heard this and had also heard everything it was not saying. "Well," she said, patting your hand once more before releasing it, "it's lovely to see you both. You always did belong together, the pair of you. I said that to your mother once, do you know. I said those two—"
"It was lovely seeing you, Margaret," you said, with great warmth and only mild desperation.
She laughed, a bright, pleased sound and settled back into her seat.
As you turned to follow the host the rest of the way to the booth, you were almost certain you heard Gerald say, to his wife, "told you" in a tone of quiet marital satisfaction.
Simon was very carefully not reacting to any of this. You were very carefully not looking at him.
You saw two others you knew before you reached the booth.
Kim Ashworth, who had been in your form in Year Ten and who looked essentially the same as she had in school except that she had a baby on her hip and a husband trailing behind her with a changing bag.
She stopped mid-step when she saw you, did a small, delighted double take, said oh my God twice, and then looked at Simon in a way that was extremely uncomplicated in its appreciation before remembering the husband with the changing bag. There were promises exchanged to catch up properly, phone numbers that would probably not be used, genuine warmth on both sides.
And then at the bar, perched on a stool with a whisky, Dave Pearce — who had played alongside Simon on the secondary school rugby team and who greeted him with the particular vocabulary of men who knew each other at fifteen and have not changed as much as they think.
There was a brief, loud exchange that involved at least one shoulder-clap that could have knocked a smaller man sideways, and then Dave shook your hand too and told Simon he was punching. Which Simon received without expression and you tried your hardest not to laugh, biting your lip.
Finally the corner booth. You slid in. Simon folded himself into the seat across from you, the table scaled to ordinary human beings and therefore slightly absurd against the size of him, his knees bracketing it, his shoulders blocking the view of the room behind him entirely.
The menus came.
They were not laminated anymore — proper printed card, changed seasonally, the kind that meant the new owners had ambitions. But the roast was still on. The proper Sunday roast, the one your father used to order when you could afford to.
"Same corner," Simon said quietly.
"Same corner," you agreed.
He was looking at you across the table the way he used to look at you across this table, except that now his face was older and larger and had been to places that had clearly asked things of it. The look was different in its texture. Deeper, maybe. Older in the same way he was older. Like it had more weight behind it from all the years of being carried.
"You said everything," you reminded him. "All of it."
"I know."
"So." You gestured for him to start.
He set his menu down. Looked at you. And then he started talking.
He told it the way he told everything — without embellishment, without drama, in the flat, precise language of a man who had learned to communicate facts and trusted the facts to carry the weight without decoration.
He'd gone in at seventeen and he'd been good at it. Not surprising. He was built for the structure of it, for the clarity of having a purpose and a unit and a chain of things that made sense.
He'd moved up fast — faster than he let on in the cards he'd sent you, which had been careful, he explained, deliberately careful, because the more you knew the more you might worry. Which, you pointed out, had not been his decision to make. He didn't argue with that.
Task Force 141 came later. Years later, after deployments that he summarised in a sentence each and you understood enough from his face to know that each sentence was doing the work of much longer things.
He was a lieutenant now. He said it the way he said most things about himself, flatly, without vanity, presented as information. He had certain freedoms now that he hadn't had before, certain ability to make choices about where he went and when and what he did with the things the years had given him.
You both ordered your food.
"And the five years?" you asked, sipping your cocktail the waitress had brought over.
He was quiet for a moment, he stared at his San Miguel pint, the condensation sliding down the glass. Your food had arrived at some point during the waiting, while Simon collected his thoughts.
He picked up his fork and then set it down again.
"There was a man," Simon said.
Something about the way he said it made you put your fork down too.
"He ran drugs. Major operation, international — I won't go into all of it." He said this without flinching, looking at you steadily, not softening it. You'd always appreciated that about him — the way he treated your intelligence as a given. "After I escaped him, he decided to make it personal. He went after the people I—" He stopped. Chose the word carefully. "The people I was connected to."
The candle in the glass holder between you threw warm, unsteady light across his face.
"He killed them," Simon said. "My brother. Tommy's family." A pause that cost him something; you could see it cost him. "My Mother."
The restaurant continued around you — the murmur of other tables, the clink of cutlery, someone laughing softly near the bar — and you sat very still.
"Oh Simon," you whispered, you could feel the way your face formed the sympathy.
"I'm alright." He said it the way he'd always said it, the Manchester flat and absolute. The way that meant; don't make it bigger than I can hold right now. You knew that voice. You honoured it.
"He knew about you," Simon said and you froze. "That was the other thing. He'd done his research." His jaw shifted slightly. "As long as he was alive, you weren't safe. If I'd contacted you, properly contacted you, kept the thread going the way I wanted to, it would have given him a cleaner line. A more reliable way to reach me."
You understood the logic of it. You understood it clearly and immediately in the part of your brain that processed information. The other part — the part that had sat on the bottom stair with a birthday card after five years of silence, the part that had thought past tense — that part was going to take considerably longer.
"So you cut me off," you said. Not as an accusation. As a fact, laid down. You were starting to understand the shape of it.
"To keep you safe. Yes."
"Without telling me why." You sighed but you knew you were being unreasonable, but you hoped he would let you for a little longer.
"If I'd told you why, you'd have known there was a threat. And you'd have—" He stopped. The corner of his mouth moved, something that was not quite a smile and not quite not one. "You'd have done something about it. Gone looking. Made noise."
"I would not have—" You stopped, because you would have. You absolutely would have. You'd spent thirty years being completely unable to sit on the sidelines where Simon Riley was concerned, and the knowledge that someone was threatening him would have made you entirely unreasonable. "That's—" you huffed.
"Yeah," he said.
"You could have found a way—"
"There wasn't one. Not one that was safe." His voice was very level. "I went through every option, love. I promise you. Every one."
The word arrived quietly, without ceremony.
Love.
He'd never called you that — not in thirty years, not in all the time and all the familiarity of what you were to each other. He said it the way he said everything that mattered: without preamble, without dressing it up, laid down like the fact it was.
"And now?" you asked. Your voice was quite steady. Steadier than you felt.
"He's dead." No elaboration. None needed. The flat Manchester vowels carrying the weight of it cleanly, without mess. "And you're safe. And I—" He looked at you across the table, across the candle and the white linen. "I bought the house," he said. "I've spent a while making it what it is. Making if perfect. I saved up for years. The 141 pays well when you get to a certain level and I wasn't spending it on anything else."
"For years," you repeated, feeling a shiver rack up your spine and your toes go numb.
"Since I was about twenty." He said this without apparent embarrassment, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to spend fifteen years saving money to buy a woman a house from a description she'd given you at sixteen years old. "Took a while to find the right one that wasn’t too far from your parents. The lavender took three growing seasons to look like it did when you pulled up."
Three growing seasons.
He had planted the lavender three years ago. He had stood in a garden three towns from where you lived and planted lavender along a path because a sixteen-year-old girl had mentioned it lying on her back in his garden thirty years ago, and he had tended it for three years, and he had waited.
"Simon Riley," you said.
"It's got room for your books Sunshine, built the shelves myself." His lips quirked up at the corners at your flabbergasted expression.
"You are the most—" You stopped. Started again. "Do you have any idea what the past five years have felt like? Do you have any idea what I—" Your voice did the thing you'd been preventing it from doing, cracked at the edge of the sentence like a plate under too much weight. You stopped. Pressed your lips together. "I grieved you. I sat in my flat and I genuinely, actually grieved you and decided you were dead. I had — Simon, I had a plan for getting through it. I was managing it."
"I know."
"Don't say I know." you snapped sounding more like a bratty child than angry.
"I'm sorry." And this was different. This was not the automatic I know, the absorbing of your anger. This was something he said the way he said very few things — carefully, with full weight behind it. His eyes on yours across the table. "I'm sorry for the five years. I'm sorry I couldn't find another way. I'm sorry you were on your own with it." A pause. "I'm sorry it took me this long to have something worth coming back with."
"The house is not—" You stopped. "You didn't need to buy me a house, Simon. I didn't need—"
"I needed to," he said. Simply. "I needed to know I was coming back with something real. Something that wasn't just me turning up with nothing after all that time, asking you to — to accept—" He moved his hand across the table, and his fingers stopped just short of yours. Not touching. Close. "Asking you to take me as I was. I needed it to be enough. I needed there to be something I could give you that was—"
"Simon." Your voice was very quiet.
"I know it's not—"
"Simon." You turned your hand over on the table. Just that. The small, deliberate movement of turning your palm up.
He looked at it. Then he looked at you. Then, slowly, he put his hand in yours — his enormous, careful, tattooed hand. Not quite the one that had carried your bag through every corridor of secondary school and pulled you up off the pavement after Daniel Holt and held you on the platform at the train station, but this one now and his fingers closed around yours and he held on.
"I only ever wanted you," you said softly.
"Sunshine-"
"You were always worth it," you cut him off. And then, because it was time — because it had been time for approximately thirty years and you were done waiting for the right moment when the right moment had repeatedly failed to arrive — "You were always enough. You were always the thing I was — Simon, you have always been the only one I wanted. Exactly as you are."
He was very still.
"I didn't tell you on the platform," you said. "I should have. I've thought about it every day since."
"So have I," he said.
The candle between you flickered in some movement of air from the kitchen, and in the warm unsteady light his face was open in a way you had waited thirty years to see. His hand was warm and sure around yours, and from the other side of the restaurant you were almost certain you heard Margaret Howarth say something to Gerald in a satisfied undertone.
"You planted the lavender," you grinned.
"Three years ago." He finally smiles back at you, it was crooked and uneven and you loved it.
"You are," you said carefully, "the most ridiculous man I have ever known." You shook your head still grinning.
"Missed you too, sunshine," he smirked.
Dinner ended the way the best dinners end — not with a definitive conclusion but with a gradual, reluctant unwinding, the kind where both people keep finding one more thing to say, one more thread to pull, because the alternative is standing up and the evening becoming past tense.
You ordered dessert.
Neither of you particularly wanted it but you both ordered it, and you both knew why, and neither of you said so. The chocolate brownie was very good. Simon ate his methodically, the way he ate everything, and at one point looked up and caught you watching him and said nothing.
The candle between you had burned down to a stub by the time the bill came.
He paid. You protested on principle. He gave you a look that had not changed at all since he was fourteen years old — flat, certain, faintly amused — and handed the card to the waiter without further discussion.
"That's not—" you started.
"Next time," he said.
Next time. You let it sit there between you, warm and presumptuous and everything you wanted.
Outside, the evening had cooled.
The last of the summer still holding in the air, the kind of September evening that felt like a concession, like the year wasn't ready to be done.
The street was quiet for a Saturday, just a few couples moving between the restaurants and a group of lads outside the pub further down having a smoke. The amber of the streetlights made everything look like something worth remembering.
Simon stood beside you on the pavement, close enough that his arm brushed yours when he turned to look down the street, and you were very aware of the warmth of him and the black shirt and the lavender you couldn't smell from here but could somehow still feel in your hands.
"Walk with me a bit," he said. Not a question, not quite. He'd always done that — phrased invitations as though the outcome were already agreed, as though he simply assumed you'd say yes because you almost always did.
"Alright."
He fell into step beside you, and for a little while you just walked — past the wine bar with its fairy lights, past the old library that had become a gin distillery at some point in the last decade, past the post office that had been there since before either of you were born. You talked about small things. Easy things. The kind of conversation that runs alongside the real one underneath.
Then he stopped.
You stopped too.
Simon looked down at you. His hands were in his pockets. That brown gaze of his moved over your face in the way it had been moving over your face all evening — like he was cataloguing it, like he was making up for lost time in the looking.
"Dance with me," he said.
You blinked. "What?"
He tilted his head, "Come dancing with me."
You stared at him.
Simon Riley, who had sat against the wall at every school disco you'd ever attended, arms folded, watching everyone else with the expression of a man conducting a private risk assessment.
Simon Riley, who you had never, in thirty years of knowing him, seen voluntarily approach a dance floor.
"You don't dance," you said.
"No," he agreed. "But you do."
The simplicity of it landed somewhere very central.
You do.
As though that were reason enough. As though your enjoyment of a thing were sufficient justification for him to walk into it without hesitation.
Which, you supposed, when it came to Simon, it always had been.
"Alright," you said, for the second time in ten minutes.
His hand found the small of your back again, that same light, deliberate touch from inside the restaurant and he guided you down the street.
Simon said you weren't far, when you heard it.
The particular sound of a Domino's box. The slight crinkle of a carrier bag. And then your mother's voice, carrying across the quiet street in the way it always had — warm and clear and entirely without volume control.
"Oh honey! We thought - oh!"
"Oh fuck," you cursed.
You said it very quietly. Not quietly enough. Simon chuckled under his breath.
Your parents were coming along the pavement from the direction of the only car park around here — your father in his weekend coat, your mother in the blue one she'd had for fifteen years. A Domino's pizza box balanced in her arms and a carrier bag hanging from your father's hand.
Movie night. Of course. They still did it every other Saturday, had done since you were small, and of course they would do it tonight of all the Saturday nights in the entire calendar.
Your mother's face when she saw you was pure, unguarded delight — the face she always made when she encountered you unexpectedly, as though each time were still a pleasant surprise. Then her gaze moved, naturally and automatically, to the man standing beside you with his hand at the small of your back.
The delight didn't disappear. It did something more complicated.
"Oh honey," she said again, but differently this time. Softer. Her voice going somewhere else entirely. "Simon?"
The Domino's box dipped. Your father caught it with the reflexes of a man who had been catching things your mother nearly dropped for forty years.
Simon had gone still beside you. Not that controlled, present stillness he had, the one that wasn't tension but something adjacent to it. He was looking at your mother with an expression you couldn't fully read from the side, but you could see the line of his jaw, and it was careful.
"Mrs—" he started.
"Don't you Mrs me," your mother said. Her voice was not angry. That was the thing — you'd prepared yourself, in the split second between seeing them and now, for anger, or for the brisk, self-protective coolness she used sometimes when she'd been frightened. But it wasn't that. It was something that had tears in it, which was considerably worse to witness.
She handed the pizza box to your father without looking at him — he took it with the silent competence of long practice — and she crossed the pavement in four short steps and she put her arms around Simon Riley.
He was so much larger than her. He had always been larger than her, even at fifteen when he'd eaten her shepherd's pie at the kitchen table and been careful to seem like it was casual and not like he was starving. Even when she gave him seconds and he looked like he would beg for thirds.
But now it was almost absurd, the smallness of her against the width of him, and he stood there for just a fraction of a second — that fraction where you could see him recalibrating, receiving something he hadn't prepared for — and then his arms came around her and he held on.
Your mother was crying. Small, quiet sounds, the kind she made when she was trying not to. Her face was pressed against his chest and her hands gripped the back of his black shirt and she said, muffled and with great feeling, "You absolute boy."
Simon said nothing. His eyes, over the top of your mother's head, found yours.
You had to look away. The street was very interesting. The lamppost in particular.
You bit into your lip.
Your father appeared at your shoulder.
He was a quiet man, always had been. The kind of steady, observant presence that took things in without making a production of the taking in. He stood beside you with the pizza box over one arm and the carrier bag in the other hand and watched his wife hold the boy who had eaten at their table for a decade, and he said, very quietly, to you,
"Well. He's not dead then."
"No Dad," you managed. "He's not dead."
"Good," your father said.
As though this settled it. As though the entirety of the past five years of your grief and his, because he had grieved Simon too in his quiet way, in the way of a man who doesn't say things aloud but feels them thoroughly. He looked at Simon over the top of your mother's head and gave him a single, deliberate nod. The kind that meant; we'll talk. The kind that meant; I have things to say to you. The kind that also, underneath both of those, meant; I'm so glad son.
Simon received the nod with equal gravity, which was exactly right.
Your mother finally pulled back. She held Simon by the arms — or tried to, her hands not quite making it around the circumference of them — and looked up at him with red eyes and the particular expression of a woman who has a great deal to say and is choosing, for now, not to say most of it.
"You'll come for dinner," she said. Not a question. The same tone she'd used on him at fifteen and apparently intended to continue using indefinitely. "Sunday. Proper dinner. Not a restaurant. Mine."
"Yes," Simon said. Immediately. Without hesitation.
"Good." She released his arms and reached up and patted his cheek once, firmly, the way you might with someone who had done something frustrating and beloved in equal measure.
Then she turned to you, and her expression did something complicated and warm and knowing, and she didn't say any of the things she was clearly thinking, which you appreciated deeply.
What she said instead was: "Don't stay out too late. You're thirty-five, not seventeen."
"Mum." You scolded.
"I'm just saying." She shrugged.
"We're going dancing," you told her, with the energy of someone redirecting a conversation through sheer momentum.
Your mother looked at Simon. Simon looked at your mother. Something passed between them that was private and thirty years old and not yours to have.
"Of course you are," she said.
Your father passed the Domino's box back to your mother, and said, "Right then. We'll leave you to it." He looked at Simon one more time. "Sunday," he confirmed.
"Sunday," Simon said.
Your parents moved off down the pavement.
Your mother looked back once — just once — and her face when she did was the face you'd seen her wear at your primary school nativity and at your GCSE results and on the morning you'd gone to university; the particular face of a woman watching her child be happy and feeling the full, complicated, loving weight of it.
Then she turned back to your father and said something you couldn't hear, and his hand found her shoulder as they walked, and they rounded the corner and were gone.
You stood on the pavement in the September evening and breathed.
Beside you, Simon was also very carefully just standing there.
"She cried on me," he said, after a moment.
"Yes."
"Didn't expect that."
You turned to look at him. He was looking at the corner your parents had turned, and his face had the quality it sometimes had when something had reached him — not visibly, not dramatically, just in that particular stillness that meant something had got through.
"She cried about you," you told him. "When you stopped writing. Three years ago — there were several times, actually, but three years ago was the worst. She held me in her kitchen and we both—" You stopped. Managed the next part carefully. "She loves you too, Simon. She always did. You were at our table every other night for years."
He was quiet for a moment. Something moved in his jaw. "I know," he said. And this time the I know was different from all the other times he'd said it tonight — heavier, and private.
"You agreed to Sunday dinner," you giggled.
"Of course I agreed to Sunday dinner," he said knowing full well he would have been stupid not to and gotten an earful from your mother.
Simon offered you his hand.
Not at the small of your back this time. His hand, palm up, in the space between you. Old-fashioned and deliberate.
You put yours in it.
"Come on then," he said. "Let's go dancing."
There was, as it turned out, only one place to go dancing in this town on a Saturday night if you meant actual dancing — the kind with a proper floor and music with a real structure to it.
It was not a club.
It was not a bar with a cleared space near the speaker.
It was the old church hall on Callow Street, which had been hosting the Saturday Evening Social Dance since before either of you were born, and which Simon seemed to know about with the specificity of a man who had done his research.
"A dance hall," you said, standing outside it. Through the tall, thin windows the warm light was visible, and the sound — strings, a proper band, something with a waltz rhythm that made the windows hum faintly. "You're taking me to a dance hall."
"Only place with a floor."
"Simon, this is a — there will be pensioners in there." you said quietly.
"There'll be a dance floor," he looked down at you. "And you said yes." he shrugged but looked smug.
He pushed the door open and held it, and because you had in fact said yes, and because the music through the door sounded genuinely lovely, and because you were still holding his hand from the pavement, you went in.
The church hall smelled of floor polish and tea. Fairy lights were strung along the rafters — someone's addition, not the original fixtures, and they made the whole space amber and soft.
Round tables lined the edges, most of them occupied by couples in their sixties and seventies and eighties, a few younger faces dotted among them, everyone dressed with the particular care of people who still believed an evening out was worth dressing for.
On the small stage at the far end, a four-piece band was working through something in three-four time with the ease of musicians who had played together for years.
And at the edge of the floor, clipboard in hand, wearing the same expression of organised authority she'd worn every PE lesson for fifteen years was Mrs Valerie Croft.
She was smaller than you remembered. Or perhaps you were simply larger.
She'd retired at some point — the hair was fully silver now rather than streaked — but the posture was identical: spine straight, chin up, the bearing of a woman who had spent decades telling teenagers to stand properly and had eventually simply become the embodiment of the instruction.
She looked up from her clipboard as you approached and her eyes moved from you to Simon, and to her credit, she didn't miss a step.
"Well," she tilted her chin up to meet his eyes, "Riley."
"Miss," Simon said. Which was technically incorrect given that she had a ring on her finger and had for as long as you'd known her, but you suspected it was because he'd called her Miss in secondary school the way you had. "Mrs Croft. Sorry. We were passing and— " He paused, which was unlike him. "Is there any chance we could crash it?"
Mrs Croft looked at him. She looked at you. She looked at your joined hands with the expression of a woman who had supervised enough teenagers to recognise a development when she saw one.
"Can you behave yourselves?" she asked.
"Yes," you said nodding.
Simon said nothing.
Mrs Croft made a sound that was not quite a laugh but was adjacent to one. "Floor's open," she said. "Don't knock anyone over." And she turned back to her clipboard.
The first dance was not elegant.
Simon was, as he had always been and had openly admitted, not a dancer.
He was a man built for other kinds of movement — purposeful, directed, the kind that had somewhere to go. Dancing required a different relationship with your body, a willingness to be present in it without agenda, and that was not naturally his.
But he was trying. And Simon Riley trying at something he wasn't good at with complete, unhesitating commitment was one of your favourite things in the world.
He held you correctly — one hand at your waist, the other holding yours at the right height — because he had clearly looked this up at some point, which you were choosing not to think about too hard. His footwork was careful. Deliberate. Slightly behind the beat in the way of someone counting silently.
"You're counting," you told him trying your hardest not to laugh.
"Shut up."
"Simon, I can see your lips moving." you snorted.
"I said shut up."
You were laughing now. Properly, helplessly, the kind that came up from somewhere real — and he looked down at you with that face, that flat, long-suffering, completely fond face, and something in his eyes that was warm in a way that had nothing to do with patience and everything to do with the fact that your laugh had always been, apparently, one of his favourite sounds.
"You're doing fine," you told him, once you'd recovered.
"I'm doing terribly," he answered. "Keep going."
By the second dance, he was better.
By the third, he had found something. Some adjustment in the way he held you, the way his hand settled more fully at your waist, drawing you closer so the movement between you became less about individual steps and more about one shared thing. He was a quick study. He always had been, once he'd decided something was worth doing.
You became aware, gradually, of the room watching.
Not intrusively. Not all at once. But in the soft, peripheral way of a room full of people who have been in love for decades and recognise the particular weather of it when it walks through the door.
An older couple near the stage — she in pale blue, he in a suit that had been good once and was still cared for — had stopped talking to watch you.
A woman at one of the corner tables had her chin in her hand.
Mrs Croft, by the door, was very deliberately looking at her clipboard and failing to look only at her clipboard.
You didn't mind. You were too busy watching Simon watch you.
The band changed tempo at half past nine.
The waltz gave way to something with a different shape entirely — something that moved from the hips rather than the feet, a rhythm that was slower in its pulse and considerably less innocent in its intention.
A rumba.
You looked up at Simon.
He looked down at you.
"I don't know this one," he said.
"I'll show you." you breathed.
You took his hand and placed it lower at your waist, right above the curve of your ass. Deliberately watching his face when you did it, watching the shift in his expression, the way something in his eyes went very still and very focused. "Hip to hip," you told him. "Slower than you think. Let the music pull you."
He followed your lead with an attention that was frankly overwhelming in its completeness.
Simon Riley giving you his full, undivided, physical focus was not a small thing. He was so large and so present and he moved with you rather than against you, adjusting with every shift of your weight, and somewhere in the second minute of the song the counting stopped and something else replaced it.
He drew you closer. His hand at your hip pulled you in until there was no space left between you, until you could feel the warmth of him through the green of your dress and you were very aware of every point of contact, of the music and of the room full of people who had gone very quiet.
Then he turned you.
It was not technically correct. It was not what the dance required. But he turned you in a single, smooth movement that his body had decided on and yours simply followed, because that was what it did with him.
And then he dipped you.
The room tilted. His arm was across your back, solid and immovable, and you were suspended in the amber light with the music around you and your hand at his shoulder.
He lowered you — slowly, with complete control, no hesitation in the hold and then his face was close, very close, and his nose grazed the line of your throat making your breath hitch.
A slow, deliberate graze. The warmth of his breath against your pulse point. You felt it in places that had nothing to do with dancing, between your legs throbbing.
His hand — the one at your hip — slid down, just slightly, just enough, finding the outside of your thigh where the fabric of your dress lay, and he hooked your leg, slowly, around his hip. His fingers at the back of your thigh. Holding you there. His nose still at your throat.
The music resolved. Somewhere behind you, someone started clapping.
He brought you upright. Smoothly, slowly, until you were standing again and his hand was still at the back of your thigh. Your leg still around his hip and your faces were very close. Your heart was conducting itself in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with exertion.
You were panting. Slightly. Just slightly.
He was not panting. He was looking down at you with the almost-smile, the one that had always been rarer than gold and twice as valuable — and his eyes were warm and very dark and entirely, completely satisfied with themselves.
"You looked that up as well," you managed.
"No," he said.
"Simon—"
"That one," he said, "I just wanted to do."
From the table by the stage, the woman in pale blue was applauding with great enthusiasm. Her husband had two fingers in his mouth and was whistling.
Mrs Croft had given up entirely on the clipboard.
The taxi back was not a long ride.
It felt longer than it was, and shorter than you wanted.
You sat beside him in the back seat with his thigh against yours and the city moving past the windows and neither of you speaking. The silence had a texture to it that was thick and warm and anticipatory in a way that made the air feel heavy in your lungs.
His hand was on your knee. Just resting there, heavy and warm, the way he did everything — with complete, unapologetic certainty.
You did not move it.
The house appeared at the end of the lane with its white fence and its dark windows and the lavender silver in the moonlight.
You were out of the taxi before it had fully stopped and you were aware how eager this appeared and you didn't care.
Simon paid the driver and caught up with you in three strides because his legs were considerably longer than yours and always had been.
He got to the door first. Key in hand.
The door opened.
And you did not wait for him to step through it.
You took him by the front of his shirt, that black shirt, warm from his body, the fabric bunching in your fists and you lips were suddenly on his.
You walked him backwards through the doorway and you felt the moment his back met the wall just inside and you were already kissing him before he'd fully registered the sequence of events.
Your mouth on his. Your hands in the front of his shirt. Thirty years of it finding its way out all at once, without ceremony, without preamble, without any of the careful management you had been applying to yourself since you were four years old at a preschool art table.
He kissed you back.
He kissed you back the way he did everything — thoroughly, completely, with his full attention and no apparent interest in doing anything else ever again.
His hands came to your face, big and careful, tilting your jaw, and for a moment you were simply inside the realness of him and the warmth of him and the fact that he was here and alive and kissing you in the hallway of the house he'd bought for you.
He pulled back.
"Easy, sunshine," he said against your lips. Low. A little breathless, which you would be privately triumphant about later. The corner of his mouth pulled up in that crooked smile.
You became aware, in the slightly dazed way of someone returning from somewhere, that your hands were still in his shirt and his hands were still on your face and you were standing approximately two inches apart in his hallway.
You also became aware, in the refocusing of your vision, of his mouth.
Of the scar on his upper lip.
You didn't know how you hadn't noticed it before — through dinner, through the dancing, through all of it.
Perhaps you had simply not been this close before. Or perhaps you had been looking at so many things that you hadn't been looking at everything.
It was small, a thin pale line bisecting the left side of his upper lip, old enough to have faded to silver, the kind of scar that had been there for years and had been lived with so thoroughly that the face had absorbed it.
You lifted your thumb and touched it, gently. "How'd you get this?"
He went very still, alert and present and reading you.
You kissed it. Softly. Just that.
Something moved in his throat.
His hands shifted from your face to your waist, warm and settled, and he began to move you gently — backwards, one steady step at a time — turning you both away from the wall and deeper into the hallway. His foot found the door behind him and pushed it closed with a quiet, final click.
"If I tell you about that one," he said, his voice low and even above your head as he guided you past the entrance and toward the stairs, "I'll have to tell you about the rest."
He looked down at you as he said it, that look, the one that said you were the most interesting thing he had ever encountered. The one that made you feel simultaneously seen and slightly undone — and his expression had in it something that was fond and amused and entirely, devastatingly warm.
You kicked your heels off at the bottom of the stairs. They went somewhere behind you. You didn't look.
Your bag went next, dropped against the banister.
"The rest?" you repeated. Your voice came out slightly smaller than you intended. Your eyes, entirely without your permission, moved down the front of him — the black shirt, the breadth of his shoulders, his torso, his thick thighs, all of him — and back up again. Slowly.
He watched you do it. He said nothing.
You swallowed. "Tell me then."
His hand at your waist steered you up the first step, and then the second, and the stairs curved slightly toward the landing above, and at the top of the stairs he pushed open the door to a bedroom.
The room was large and furnished.
A bed, properly large, the kind that accommodated a man his size without complaint. Low lamps on either side casting the same amber warmth as the hall below. Dark wood floors, a window looking out toward the garden, the curtain shifting slightly in a crack of night air.
He kissed you, just inside the door you kissed him back and his hands were at your hips.
Then he pulled back with a groan. Both of you breathing slightly harder than was strictly accounted for by climbing one flight of stairs.
"I want to, sunshine," he said. His voice was very low. Restrained. His hands still on your body, holding you there, his thumbs moving in a small slow motion against the fabric of your dress that was doing nothing to help you think clearly. "I do. But I need to hear it from you first. Your permission. Clear words. I don't want to misunderstand you."
You opened your mouth.
And then your eyes moved, over his shoulder, to the dresser.
A skull mask looked back at you.
You closed your mouth. You looked at it. The mask, white and stark and precise but somehow both alien and completely, recognisably his. The balaclava beside it, folded neatly. And tactical gloves — enormous, black, reinforced, approximately the size of your head.
"That yours?" you asked.
Simon turned his head, following your gaze. He looked at the dresser, then back at you. "Yeah."
"What is it?"
"What I wear on missions."
"Oh," you said.
And then your brain did something entirely beyond your authority. It constructed, with great speed and considerable detail, an image: Simon, broad and enormous, in black tactical gear. Gloved hands. That mask. Hovering over you.
You swallowed.
The image did not leave. It simply settled in, warm and vivid and decidedly unhelpful.
"Sunshine."
His hand came to your face — his big, warm, ungloved hand, his actual hand, the one you knew — his thumb sweeping gently under your eye, bringing you back into the room and the amber lamplight and the present moment.
"Hmm?" you managed meeting his gaze.
His eyes moved over your face with the same comprehensive attention he always gave you.
"Your permission, love," he said. Quiet. Certain.
"Oh." You blinked. "Yes. Yes, you have it. Always."
The almost-smile. "Not for everything I want to do to you." His thumb was still moving, very gently, under your eye. "I'll ask. Multiple times."
You stared at him. "Multiple—"
"Times," he confirmed. His voice was entirely level. His eyes were not.
You pushed his shoulder and your cheeks burned.
He caught your hand as you pushed it and laughed, a low, real, full sound, the kind that you had spent most of your life engineering because it was so rare and so completely, unreasonably good.
You laughed too, properly, the helpless kind, and his forehead came down to rest against yours and you were both laughing in the amber light of his bedroom with the skull mask on the dresser and the lavender outside the window and thirty years behind you and everything in front.
The laughing settled.
Not all at once — it unwound gradually, the way laughter does when it's the real kind, leaving something warm and loose in its place.
His forehead was still against yours. His hands had moved from your face to your waist, both of them now, holding you the way he'd held you on the dance floor — with that complete, unhurried certainty, like you were something he'd been waiting to hold properly for a very long time and intended to do it right.
The amber light of the lamps lay across everything. Through the gap in the curtain, you could see the edge of the garden — the pale shapes of flowers, the dark of the lawn.
"Tell me about the rest," you said quietly.
He pulled back just enough to look at you. "The scars?"
"You said if you told me about the one on your lip you'd have to tell me about the rest." You reached up and touched the scar again — that thin, silver line — with the pad of your thumb. "So tell me about the rest."
He looked at you for a long moment. Then he reached up and began, without ceremony, to unbutton his shirt.
You were very still.
He did it the way he did everything — without drama, without performance, button by button from the collar down, and when he shrugged it from his shoulders and set it aside you understood, in a way you hadn't before, what eighteen years of that life had written on him.
He was enormous.
You'd known that in the abstract — had known it from the doorframe and the dance floor and the way rooms seemed to reorganise themselves around him — but this was different.
This was the specific, undeniable reality of his shoulders, the breadth of his chest, the muscle of his arms that carried the tattoo sleeve on the left, the ink wrapping from wrist to shoulder in dark, intricate patterns that in this light you still couldn't fully read but wanted to.
And the scars.
There were more than you'd expected.
Each one a different shape and age and story, written into the topography of him in pale and silver lines. A long one along his left ribs. Something older, fainter, across the top of his right shoulder. A circular scar below his collarbone on the left side that your medical knowledge was sufficient to identify and that made your chest constrict briefly and completely before you put that particular knowledge away for now.
He was watching your face as you looked. Careful. Giving you the time of it.
You stepped forward. You placed your hand flat against his sternum — his heart under your palm, steady and real — and you felt him exhale.
"The lip," you said.
"Kandahar. 2004. Caught the stock of a rifle." He said it the same way he'd told you everything tonight — flat, factual, trusting the fact to carry the weight. "Bit through my lip. Wasn't pretty for a while."
You moved your hand from his sternum to his ribs. Found the long scar there, traced it gently with your fingertips.
"That one."
"Knife. 2009. I moved the wrong way and the other man moved the right way." The shadow of something in his face that was not quite humour and not quite not. "Lesson learned."
Your hand moved to his shoulder. The older, fainter scar.
"Before the military," he said, before you asked. His voice changed, just fractionally. Flatter. Doing more work to stay level. "Not a mission."
You understood. You didn't ask further. You pressed your lips to it instead — gently, just that, your mouth against the old pale mark — and you felt the breath go out of him in a way that was different from all the others. Slower. Deeper.
"Sunshine," he said. Very quietly.
"The one below your collarbone," you said.
A pause. "That one's not a story for tonight."
You tilted your head back to look up at him. "Is it a story for eventually?"
His eyes on yours. Something in them that was considering, assessing, "Yeah," he said. "Eventually."
"Alright," you said. You meant it. You had waited thirty years; you could wait for the story of one scar.
His hand moved to your face. That same gesture from the hallway — his thumb at your cheek, slow and deliberate and he tilted your chin up and kissed you. Not urgently this time. Slowly. Deeply.
His hands found the zip at the side of your dress — careful, unhurried — and he looked at you, a clear question in it, and you nodded, and his hands were very steady and very gentle. Your dress went the way of your heels and your bag, somewhere behind you, unmissed.
He looked at you the way he had looked at you on the porch yesterday, and outside The Grill tonight, and across the restaurant table, and on the dance floor — with that complete, comprehensive attention.
Only now there was nothing restrained about what was in it. It was simply there, open and certain, and it was thirty years of something finally being allowed to be exactly what it was.
"Hi," you said. Which was absurd. Which made him laugh again, low and real.
"Hi, sunshine," he said. His hands at your waist. His forehead dropping to yours.
“Si I need to-“ you breathed in deep, “I um,” he pulled his head away from yours, looking into your eyes with those brilliant brown ones of his.
“What is it Sunshine?” He asked, his finger under your chin tilting your head up.
“I’m, I’ve never-“ you sigh, “I’ve told you so many things, I can’t believe I can’t even say this to you.”
“Do we need to slow down?” He asked, his voice softening.
“No. It’s not that. I mean I’m not a virgin if that’s what you’re thinking I just, no guy has ever-“ you sigh again, your eyes dropping from his.
Simon is quiet. He waits, the way he always waits — giving you the whole space of it, not rushing you toward the end of the sentence.
“Made it good,” you finally say, to his chest. “For me. It’s always just, fine. Maybe sometimes I get close but then it’s over. Not that there’s been loads of guys, maybe three.”
A beat.
You make yourself look up at him.
Something changes in his face.
You see the flare of it.
Anger.
Not toward you — you feel that immediately, the anger isn't at you, it moves through him and settles somewhere else entirely. His jaw shifts. His eyes, for just a moment, go somewhere dark and quiet.
"Every one of them," he says. Low. More to himself than to you.
"Simon—"
"Had you," he says. "And didn't—" He stops. The jaw again. His eyes squeeze shut. "Didn't pay attention."
"It's not—"
"It is." His eyes open. He looks at you, his hands moving to your hips, both of them, settling there with a weight that feels like anchoring, like he needs the contact as much as you do. The darkness has settled now, controlled, underneath everything else.
"And I wasn't here." Something moves through his expression — not guilt exactly, but something adjacent to it, something private and old. "Should've been your first, sunshine. Should've been there to—"
He stops himself. His forehead drops to yours.
"I've waited years for this," he says quietly. "I'm not rushing it. And I'm going to pay attention."
“Pay attention?” You ask breathless.
“To every sigh,” he kissed your cheek, “whimper and moan.” His lips moved down to your jaw. “To the way your hips move, the way your back arches, the way you’ll writhe under me, how I’ve imaged it every time I’ve gotten off for the last two decades.” He whispered the last bit into your ear, teeth tugging on your earlobe.
You gasp, “Simon.” Your cheeks burn.
“Oh don’t tell me you never thought about it.” He grins pulling back to look down at you.
You look at the floor sheepishly cause of course you have. Of course you’ve cum the hardest you ever have in your life only when thinking about Simon fucking you.
"Oh you have." He smirked titling his head.
“Shut up.” You push his shoulder and he laughs.
His hands leave your hips and then you're moving, his arms around you, and the edge of the bed meets the back of your knees.
Then his massive paws are in your hair and his lips are on your neck as your back meets the sheets. His weight heavy and solid on you. You could tell he was holding himself up so he didn’t squish you.
He leaned back on his heels, kneeling between your legs. You sighed in satisfaction when his fingers ran over your bare skin. His blunt nails scratching softly where your pelvic bone sits.
"So beautiful Sunshine," He grabs your hips and squeezes, "Fill my hands with you finally." Simon groans. A noise you've been picturing in your head. This and everything else that happens this evening, you truly believe, will be one of those times when reality is better than anything you have imagined.
Simon's brown eyes have always been intense, but right now the way he's looking down at you it's like he is someone else entirely. His eyes almost black with how much they have darkened.
"Simon." You tangle your fingers with his.
"Can I?" He asks. His hand, the one not in yours, trailing down your thigh and stopping on your mound. You clench around nothing when he pushes down, just a little bit of pressure that you feel in your clit and makes your hips buck.
You don't miss the way his lips do the almost smile thing. You nod furiously but he shakes his head.
"Need your words love." He raises a brow.
"Yes, yes Simon touch me." You breathe out, your chest feeling tight when he nods, moving his hand down to cup your cunt over your underwear.
And maybe its because you haven't had sex in three years, maybe its because you are touch starved or maybe its simply because its Simon, but your back arches and your moan is down right pornographic with a simple touch over your underwear.
"So responsive." He mumbles, his thumb rubbing circles over your clit through the fabric. "Get your tits out for me Sunshine, wanna see em." he grunts feeling your underwear getting wet.
Shakily you reach behind your back and unclip your bra. "Been thinking about them for years. What they look like, how they'll bounce when I fuck you." He groans as you pull the straps down your arms and fling the bra on the floor.
His eyes are on your chest, he doesn't blink. Then as if his system has rebooted, he blows air out of his cheeks and whistles low. "Fuck lovie, so pretty. You're a dream." Simon leans forward and wraps his lips around your breast, his tongue swirling around the nipple as his thumb continues circling your clit.
You moan, fingers tugging at his hair.
He comes off your breast with a pop making you whine and push at his shoulder. He grins pressing his thumb firmer against you, while sliding his other hand over your leg, index finger tracing over the small scar on you leg from when you fell off your bike after Simon broke your training wheels.
There was something comforting about this. Simon wasn't someone you had to explain yourself to, he already knew every version of you, he was simply adding this one to his list. This version, open and honest and begging the man you'd known for thirty years to make you cum on his fingers.
This didn't feel like a hook up, not like other guys have, but it felt like two people who have been each other's home for years and they're finally admitting it.
"Kiss me Simon." You're not even sure if what you said made sense with how much you were panting. But he leaned down to graze his lips along yours. Teasing and soft, despite the fast past he'd started to set with his thumb.
"Stop teasing." You huffed.
"Its my favourite pastime." He grinned hooking his fingers in your underwear, pulling them down and moving with them to settle between your legs.
You gasp, when his tongue slides from your asshole to your clit. "Simon!" His dark eyes are locked on yours as he swirls the tip of his his tongue around your entrance. Your toes curl, your head falling back onto the soft bed sheets.
A few occasions, you could count on one hand, had a guy you were with eaten you out and it was good but fuck, it didn't feel like this.
You felt like you were burning all over with each swipe of his tongue, each dip inside your entrance, each pattern he begins to circle over your clit.
He was learning you.
Simon groans against you, his breath hot, it made you dizzy. You feel everything, its too much to quick and your hips start to buck against his mouth.
Simon clearly had no intention of slowing down or stopping as he slides his arms around your thighs and splays his hands over the tops of them locking you in place.
It feels like fire, like molten lava pooling low in your abdomen the harder his tongue presses against you.
You don’t even recognise the sounds coming out of you, it’s as if every movement pulls a new one from you.
His thumb replaces his tongue and he rubs the bump in small circles until you can barely breathe. “Sound so pretty,” he murmurs just as your back arches and you moan loudly into the night air.
He is still speaking but you can’t hear anything he is saying, it’s all blurring together the way your vision is blurring. His thumb slides from your clit down until it’s pushing its way inside you. Your hips jerk away but his other hand is quick to hold you in place.
“No running.” Simon growls.
You cry out when his tongue comes back to torture you, lapping at you like he’s never had a drink and you're fresh water. Soon enough the rhythm he’s built has your hips rolling forward seeking more of whatever he has to give you.
Your hand reaches for his arm and squeezes hard the exact moment your vision turns white and your body shakes, dissolving into pleasure. It's like lightning pulsing through you. He works your through your orgasm, wringing every last wave of pleasure from you before he moves to your lips, kissing you.
“Did so good Sunshine. I’ve got you.” His arms wrap around you, your nipples grazing against the hair on his chest, that alone has you whimpering.
"Need more, want you inside me Simon. Please." You look into his eyes, your shyness gone with your orgasm.
"Okay Sunshine." Simon chuckles, the sound vibrating against you.
He pulls back and gets off the bed before he starts to unbuckle his belt. He pushes his black slacks down along with his underwear, his large, and he was so fucking big, cock already hard.
"Always wondered what you'd be like in bed," He tilts his head with a smirk, "If you'd like being in control. Or if you'd prefer me to lead," He knelt on the bed again, and oh my god Simon Riley, your best friend of thirty years and the love of your life was crawling up the bed towards you until his cock was flush with your entrance. "If you'd be needy and beg. Or if you'd bark orders at me." He slapped the head of his cock against your clit. "If you'd be loud or quiet."
"If you'd let me do whatever I wanted to you," his head titled back, eyes shut, "Fuck Sunshine, the things I've imagined doing to you," He looks down at you with the most intense gaze, pining you there on the bed, "Would you let me lovie? Do whatever I want to you?" He asks, pearly whites peaking out to sink into his bottom lip.
"Like what?" Your breath is so unsteady, so hitched and uneven you feel your cheeks heat even more than they have done at his words.
He grins, "Like what?" He chuckles pushing the head of his cock against your entrance, not in, but resting against it, "Wanna fuck you so hard you can't walk. Make love to you slow and so deep you'll feel me everywhere. Bend you over every surface in this house and make you cry on my cock-"
"Simon!" You gasp.
"Can I Sunshine?" He groans pushing in a little more and your eyes sting with tears at the stretch.
"Yes! Please yes!" He pushes in slowly. One of his hands coming next to you on the bed and the other gripping your hip. He keeps sliding in further, so slowly until its sheathed inside you.
Simon does not move. You can see the restraint within the way his teeth are gritted, his brows furrowed, sweat forming on his forehead.
“Fuck you feel amazing wrapped around me, so tight.” He groans.
You don’t have any words and even if you did, you doubt you would be able to say them. You have never felt so…full. So filled to the brim and unable to get a reprieve from it.
“M’gonna move, gotta move Sunshine,” Simon growls and the fullness disappears for a second before he’s pushing himself back in.
“Fuck you feel so good Si.” You shudder and stars appear in your vision when he moves forward and takes your legs with him folding you in half.
Simon Riley has you in fucking mating press and didn't even break the slow rhythm he's building. He continues this push and pull movement until it begins to flow, each movement begins where the other ends. The pattern making you sob, “Don’t stop!”
You can't function and its only now that you understand the phrase 'being fucked dumb', rocking your hips, trying desperately to keep up with each thrust, back arched so beautifully.
Simon lets his hand slip and curve around your jaw without thinking about it, "Taking me so well Sunshine." The feral look in his eyes sends a shiver up your spine.
"Too big." You sobbed, your hands grabbing at his large biceps as he thrusts harder. He could feel every ridge and curve of your sopping cunt.
"You can take it." He encouraged you, biting at your neck leaving marks in his wake and looking so damn happy whilst doing it.
You continued to moan and whimper, tears of pleasure falling down your face while Simon's huge body hovered over you. Protecting you from the outside world, in here, it was just you and him.
"Si..oh!" you cried out feeling him hit that rough spot inside your weeping, swollen cunt.
"There it is." He didn't mean to grin like a obsessed man in such an intimate moment but he couldn't help himself. He never can with you. Each thrust hits the one place no man ever seems to be able to find but Simon seemingly found with ease. A spot that makes a tightening begin like a coil, being wound with every drive of his hips.
Your sinful noises morph into higher pitched breathy little screams.
"I know lovie, I know." He cooed, holding you closer. His sweat glazed skin meeting yours as his large veiny hand slips under your head, his other arm curling around your waist.
You move your hips and he groans vulgar into the air, his hand gripping your hair and pulling your head back, a little to the side before he attacks your neck all messy. Smearing his lips across your throat, you don’t even recognise the sound that leaves your mouth.
He pulls away, his dark eyes flit to your squelching pussy, the noise attracting his attention pupils dilating, honing in on the way your cunt sucks his cock back in. He couldn’t pull away even if he wanted to and fuck he doesn’t, he wants nothing more than to stay in your pretty pussy forever.
“Simonfuckyespleaserighttheredontstop!” All the words and moans blend together until your mumbling nonsense trying your hardest to keep conscious, it’s difficult with the way he’s fucking into you so deliciously it’s making you delirious in the best way.
His big body towering over yours, big hands gripping you almost bruisingly. His thick muscular hairy thighs press against your skin compellingly, the sight before you, it's irresistible. All you have to do is look down to see his massive cock sliding in and out of you, a ring of white collecting at the base.
It's too much seeing him like this, feeling the sweet pleasure burn through you and yet Simon moves one of his hands off your head and presses a thumb to your swollen, aching clit.
You're done for.
You sob, so fucking loud you swear everyone in the world can hear it, hot tears flow down your cheeks staining them.
"That's it." The words wash over you with your orgasm, it swirls around you, clings to you, and pushes you down down down the rabbit hole of pleasure. Oversensitivity sets in making you whine at his touch, but you can't stop yourself from wanting more.
Your hips buck into his touch eliciting a dirty chuckle from him.
As Simon picks up his thrusts, he comes to the conclusion that he loves you like this, wants to see it everyday. You're so drunk, so delirious and he loves it. Loves the far away look in your eyes right before they roll back into your skull.
He shoves his face into your neck groaning, "Gonna cum Sunshine, need to. Where?" his thrusts pick up again, as if that were even possible.
"Cum inside me Simon, fill me up." You cry out.
Simon must have been right there as he cums the second you finish your sentence. Hot thick robes of cum pushing deep inside you. He rubs your clit faster and another smaller orgasm zips through you leaving you whimpering.
He stays in you, holding you until he goes soft. He moves your legs so they don't cramp. "Did so well for me Sunshine. I love you so much." He looks into your eyes as more tears spill down your cheeks.
"I love you Simon." you bring your fingers into his hair, pulling him closer to kiss you. The contrast between the way he just destroyed your guts and is now kissing you so softly, is astounding.
He is careful when he picks you up and walks into the ensuite bathroom to the right, flicking the light on and placing you on the toilet. "Gotta pee sunshine, don't want you getting you a uti." He says and you're so tired you don't even have the energy to be embarrassed.
Your eyes as still closed as you pee. Your hand moves to find the toilet paper but a warm flannel is being pressed against you, Simon's other hand on your knee to keep them open. You whine and push his hand away, "Simon that's icky." You frown at him opening your eyes to see him looking at you with a frown of his own.
"Nothing about you is icky Sunshine. I'm clearing up my mess, now move your hand." You do as told and it occurs to you, through your tired haze, while Simon gently wipes you clean that he must be used to clearing up mess with the job he does.
"All done. Want a shower or straight to sleep?" He asks.
"Sleep." You yawn making him smile at you.
He carries you back to the bed, lifting the duvet and settling you both underneath it.
The particular quality of afterwards settles in the room.
The warmth of it, the specific silence, the way the world outside the window continues to exist and you become aware of it again in layers. The sound of the garden. The distant sound of a car somewhere. The sound of him breathing.
You were lying with your head on his chest. His arm around you, heavy and warm. His heartbeat under your ear, steady and unhurried, the same heart that had been beating beside you in one form or another for thirty years.
His hand moved. Slowly, idly, up and down your back.
You watched the lamplight glow on the beside table. You thought about the lavender. You thought about the train station in 2001, and the birthday cards, and the bottom stair with the cream envelope, and Margaret Howarth saying you always did belong together with the satisfied certainty of someone who had known it before either of you did.
"Simon," you said.
"Yeah."
"You planted lavender for three years."
"You mentioned that already."
"I'm still processing it."
A low sound in his chest that was the rumble of a laugh contained. "Take your time Sunshine."
You propped yourself up and looked at him. His face in the lamplight — older, marked, those brown eyes that had been watching you since you were four years old, now watching you from a pillow in the house he'd bought you.
His expression was open in the way it had been open on the porch and at the restaurant table and in the dance hall, the way it had been open perhaps three times in thirty years before tonight and was now, apparently, simply his face when he looked at you.
You loved him so much.
You had loved him in different quantities and different registers for most of your life and now you loved him in this one too, this new one, and it was the same love and completely different and you thought you would be discovering its dimensions for a considerable amount of time.
"You should have told me," you said. "Years ago. Before the train."
"Yeah," he said. No argument.
"I would have said it back then too."
Something moved in his face. "I know," he said. And then, quieter, "I wasn't ready then. Wasn't enough yet."
"Simon—"
"I know what you're going to say."
"You were always—"
"I know," he said. "I believe you. Now." His hand came up to your face, tucking a strand of hair back, his thumb at your cheekbone. "Took me a while to get there. But I'm here."
"You're here," you agreed smiling.
"And you're here." his hand tangled itself in your hair.
"I'm here." you giggled.
He looked at you for a long moment. Then, "Stay with me."
Not a question, not quite — more like a hope said aloud. The rarest thing from him. He had carried so much silently for so long, and this one small thing cost him something, and you could see it, and you loved him for it.
"It's my house," you said cheeky and bright.
He blinked. Then that laugh again — the real one, the rare one — and your heart did what it always did when you earned it, that particular, irreplaceable lurch.
"Yeah Sunshine," he said. "It is."
You lay back down against his chest. His arm came around you. His heartbeat under your ear.
Outside, the lavender moved. The Union flag was still on the roof. The porch swing sat in the dark with its yellow cushion, waiting for morning.
"Sunshine," he said. Into your hair.
"Hmm."
"I love you."
You pressed your lips to his chest, above his heart.
"I love you too," you said. "I've loved you since you were that chubby four-year-old who stole my crayons."
A long pause.
"Chubby," he repeated.
"Stocky," you amended, grinning into his chest. "You were very stocky."
"I was four."
"You were a very solid four year old."
His arm tightened around you — not painfully, just firmly, the way of a man making a point through the medium of holding — and you laughed again, helplessly, into the warmth of him.
He made that sound, that low rumbling laugh that lived in his chest, and the lamp burned warm and low and outside the lavender moved in the dark.
Simon Riley.
Who stole your crayons at four and broke your glasses at seven and learned to read because of you and carried your bag through every corridor of secondary school and punched a boy for pushing you over and kissed your cheek in a toilet corridor and sat beside you through every lunch and glared at anyone who called you a nerd and came round to your kitchen table for years and went to war at seventeen and sent you cards from the edges of the world and planted lavender for three years and bought you the house you described at sixteen and came home.
Synopsis: After leaving the military, Simon 'Ghost' Riley becomes a nurse in a mental hospital trying to heal by helping others. When he meets a deeply traumatized patient who mirrors his own past demons, he's forced to learn to become gentler and soon finds himself caring more than he should.
cw: a lot of mental health talks (a lot about sh, depression and ptsd), displays of mental illnesses, takes place in a psych ward, reader dates men, SUICIDE ATTEMPT, reader struggles with sh and it is mentioned, abandonment issues, reader being strangled briefly, reader is lonely (no friends or family)
wc: 4,8k
˚₊‧⁺⋆♱ see the end for author's notes ˚₊‧⁺⋆♱
The reassessment sticks.
Enhanced observation again which once more means more checks, fewer privileges and tighter structure.
Simon tells himself that structure is good, that it's necessary, but over the next few days he starts noticing the shift in himself before he notices it in you.
He checks your chart first, volunteers to do your vitals, finds reasons to be the one walking past your door during fifteen-minute checks, lingers half a second too long during handover when your name comes up.
He tells himself it's vigilance after an incident, that consistency matters, but consistency doesn't explain why his chest tightens when another nurse laughs softly at something you say during art therapy.
Or why he feels relief, relief, when you look for him in a room and not someone else.
It's subtle, insidious and it feels familiar in a way he doesn't like—this hyperfocus, this over-responsibility, the old pattern of choosing one person to anchor to.
By Friday, you're quieter again, subdued almost with no other incidents.
He kneels beside your chair during a supervised evening activity, keeping his tone low.
"Eating better?"
You nod.
"Sleeping?"
"Mostly."
He studies you longer than necessary.
"You can talk, you know."
"I know."
But you're looking at him the way you were in the corridor that noon—like he's something solid in a room that keeps shifting and he feels himself lean into it.
The following day he come in shortly after lights out for his night shift, the ward already settled into its dim and humming quiet.
Enhanced observation means more walking, more checking, more proximity.
At 01:15, he's the one assigned to your corridor.
You're awake, sitting up in bed and your door cracked open per protocol.
When he passes, your eyes flick up immediately.
"You're still here." you whisper to not disturb anyone else and to not sound loud in the silence over the otherwise quiet institute.
"For now." Simon replies.
You relax back against your pillow like that answer was enough.
It shouldn't feel like something, but it does.
By 03:40, after two more rounds, he finds Mara at the nurses station with a mug of stale coffee and unfinished notes.
"You're hovering." she says without looking up.
"I'm doing checks."
"On one door."
He exhales through his nose.
Silence stretches.
"I'm screwing this up."
That gets her attention and she sets her pen down, looks at Simon.
"Explain."
He doesn't sit—stays standing, arms folded tight across his chest like he's bracing against cold.
"I backed off, did what I was supposed to. Now I'm right back in it." his jaw flexes.
"In what?" Mara questions.
He hesitates, then says it plainly.
"I care about them."
Mara studies him carefully, doesn't quiet need to hear your name.
"You care about all of them."
"Not like this." Simon says before he scrubs a hand down his face, perhaps in frustration.
"I feel it when they're not in the room, I look for them first, I-" he stops, recalibrates.
"When they almost went down in that corridor, I didn't think about protocol. I just-"
"Caught them." Mara finishes for him.
"Yes."
"And you think no one else would have?"
He doesn't answer and his silence speaks volumes.
Mara leans back in her chair.
"Are they attaching to you?"
He thinks about the way you scan for him, the way your shoulders relax when he speaks, the way you swallow disappointment when he redirects you.
"Yes."
"Are you encouraging it?"
Simons silence is shorter this time.
"...I don't shut it down fast enough."
Mara nods slowly.
"You can't be their only safe person."
"I know."
"And you can't be the person they're trying to get better for."
His throat tightens, he hadn't said that part out loud—hadn't quiet considered it could be.
Mara's voice softens but not by much.
"You need to consider reassignment."
The word lands heavy again even though it's the second time he's been suggested it.
Reassignment.
Another nurse taking over primary contact, different corridor coverage, reduced direct interaction.
His stomach drops slightly.
He had talked with Dr. Adams about it but had thought he could manage it, realizing now that he may not be able to makes reassigning a real option.
"That'll feel like abandonment to them."
"It might." Mara agrees.
"Or it might model something healthy." she adds.
He looks away toward the dark hallway.
"I already pulled back once."
"And you survived it."
"They looked at me like I'd taken something from them."
Mara's gaze sharpens.
"That's the point, Simon."
Silence again, longer this time.
"You can't withdraw as easily now." she says quietly and it's not a question.
"No."
The first time he created distance it felt sharp but manageable, now it feels like peeling something off skin.
"I don't trust myself to stay neutral." he admits.
Mara nods again in acknowledgment.
"Then you escalate it before it escalates you."
"You're telling me to tap out." Simon huffs humorless.
"I'm telling you to protect both of you."
That hits harder than anything else because this isn't about him feeling something inconvenient, it's about the risk of becoming essential—of being the pillar that collapses.
He thinks about your voice at 01:15, about the way you'd sagged against him in the corridor, about how quickly he stepped forward—too quickly.
"Temporary reassignment is an option too. Rotate primary, let them build trust with the rest of the team." Mara says.
"And if they spiral?"
"They might." Mara says honestly "Or They might learn they don't have to."
He leans back against the counter, looks down the dimly lit corridor where your door is cracked open.
Simon feels it again, that pull—protective, personal and he hates that last one especially.
"I don't want to disappear on them." he says finally.
"Then don't disappear, just don't be the center." Mara replies.
He closes his eyes briefly.
Reassignment means stepping out of night checks on your corridor, letting someone else respond first, letting someone else steady you if you sway.
The thought makes his chest ache which tells him Mara is right.
At 04:00, he does the next round, stops at your door.
Fifteen-minute check.
You're asleep, peaceful for once.
He stands there a second too long then forces himself to move on because if he doesn't choose the boundary now, it will be chosen for him later.
***
The next morning, after shift handover, he doesn't put in the request and hovers over the staffing board instead.
Primary assignments for the week are written in dry erase marker, his name still next to yours.
It would take less than a minute to change it, less than that to speak to the charge nurse or request another nurse to exchange shifts and therefore primary assignments.
He tells himself he'll decide after sleep, after clarity—after he doesn't feel like he's made of raw wire and even rawer nerves.
But clarity doesn't come with rest.
It comes with watching you sit at breakfast and deliberately choose the chair with a sightline to the nurses' station the next morning.
It comes with noticing that when someone else answers your question, you nod but when he answers you actually listen.
It comes with the small crease between your brows when he redirects you to 'bring that to your one-on-one'.
And instead of softening, something in him tightens.
He becomes sharper, clipped—frustrated by his own inability to do the right thing.
On Monday, a different patient refuses medication and Simon's patience runs thin far faster than it should.
"You know the protocol, arguing won't change it." he presses out through clenched teeth.
The patient flinches.
Later, during group, someone starts spiraling into repetitive negative self-talk and he interrupts too quickly.
"Challenge it." he says, tone edging toward command instead of guidance.
The room shifts and he feels it—too forceful.
He tells himself it's exhaustion but exhaustion doesn't explain why his gaze keeps snapping back to you to check your reaction.
You're watching him, not afraid, just...confused.
By midweek, the distance he's trying to manufacture starts coming out sideways.
You approach him after lunch, slower than usual.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Yes." his tone is neutral but there's steel under it.
You hesitate, blink at him a few times.
"Never mind." you breathe out quietly after a few moments.
He should leave it there—he doesn't.
"What is it?"
You swallow, gather your courage.
"Did I...do something wrong?" you ask almost hesitantly.
The question lands like a weight dropped from height—hard, heavy and loud.
"No." he frowns.
"You're different." you observe.
"I'm consistent."
"That's not the same thing." you argue softly.
Simons jaw tightens.
"This isn't about me." he says gruff, a little too low and a little too fast.
"I know. Sorry." you nod quickly, backing off with two steps before you even speak.
Sorry.
The word needles under his skin—it pricks, burns and stings.
You apologize too easily when you think someone's pulling away, he knows that from your file—from your sessions and from watching you too.
He hates that he's the one triggering it now.
That evening, a patient down the hall has a panic attack.
Simon responds automatically, efficiently.
Grounding techniques, getting the patient away from the trigger, steady voice, controlled breathing.
But when the patient clutches at his sleeve in distress, he feels irritation flash before empathy.
He detaches their hand firmly.
"I'm right here. You don't need to grab."
Technically it's appropriate, but the edge that isn't supposed to be there isn't.
Mara catches his eye from across the corridor with a look of assessment, not judgement.
You see it too.
He notices you watching from your doorway during your allowed out-of-room hours—you look worried, for him and not the patient in distress which unsettles him more than anything.
Now it's not just that you're attaching, you're tracking him.
By Thursday, the internal debate turns vicious.
Temporary reassignment means modeling boundaries.
Complete reassignment means cutting the cord entirely.
Temporary might ease you into broader trust, complete might protect both of you faster.
Temporary might keep him close enough to monitor.
Complete would mean not being the one you look for at 01:15 in the morning.
He runs through outcomes like tactical scenarios—risk assessment, emotional fallout, stability probability.
But this isn't a battlefield, it's a psych ward and he's not neutral.
During handover that night, when your name comes up, he forces himself not to ask the follow-up question he wants to.
Mara answers it anyway.
"They ate. No ideation reported. Engaged in afternoon group."
Professional, stable—not his.
He feels the thought as soon as it forms and despises it.
Not his, you were never his and that's the problem.
Near the end of his shift, he passes your room during checks.
You're awake again.
"Hey." you say quietly, most of the ward having started to settle into their rooms for the evening.
He nods once in acknowledgment, then speaks.
"How was group earlier?" he asks, sticking to structure.
"Okay." you say, pause for a moment.
"You seemed mad today."
"I wasn't." Simon says immediately.
"You were." you push, still quiet and soft, and his patience frays.
"I'm not the focus here."
You go quiet immediately.
He sees it, the retreat—the way your shoulders curl in.
And suddenly, he recognizes the pattern.
He's not pulling away cleanly, he's swinging.
Close, cold, sharp and gentle—that unpredictability is worse than distance.
He steps back from your doorway.
"Get some sleep." he says, softer but still restrained.
You nod but you don't relax the way you used to when he said that.
At his shift end, alone at the nurses' station while the night nurse makes his first round, he stares at the staffing board again.
He thinks about Dr. Adams asking him who this is really for.
He thinks about Mara saying 'protect both of you'.
He thinks about the way he snapped at a patient who needed steadiness, not command.
His feelings aren't just contained inside him anymore, they're leaking into the ward—that's the line.
Not the ache, not the jealousy, not even the attachment—it's the impact.
He picks up the marker and holds it there but doesn't write, not yet.
The question shifts.
It's no longer whether reassignment will hurt, it's whether staying will hurt more.
He doesn't erase his name, not that evening and not the next one either.
Instead, Friday night finds him in a bar at the start of a weeklong vacation he'd agreed to months ago—before your re-admission, before scissors on linoleum floors, before staffing boards felt like moral battlegrounds and before his feeling for you even developed.
The bar is engolfed in low lights, loud laughter and the sharp scent of beer and cigarette smoke.
Across the table sit the only three men who knew him before he learned how to speak in therapeutic tones, who accepted him even before it.
John Price leans back in his chair, sleeves rolled, eyes still assessing even in civilian clothes and life.
Johnny 'Soap' MacTavish is halfway through a story, hands animated while grinning easily.
Kyle 'Gaz' Garrick listens more than he talks, gaze sharp and steady.
They meet like this every so often.
No ranks, no orders, just history and some exchanged stories of their current lives after the military.
Simon thought the noise would quiet his head, but it doesn't.
"You're miles away, L.T." Soap says finally, nudging his glass toward him "Either the beer's rubbish or you are."
"Work." Simon huffs in response.
"That so." Price states more than he questions, lifting a brow.
Simon debates brushing it off but ultimately doesn't—he's too torn, he needs more opinions.
"There's a patient." he says flatly and the men react.
Soap's grin fades immediately, Gaz sits up a fraction and Price doesn't move at all.
"And?" Gaz prompts.
"I'm too involved."
"Mate, you're a psych nurse. Involvement's in the job description." Soap snorts lightly.
"Not like this." Simon murmurs and his words land.
"How bad?" Price asks, setting his glass down with deliberate quiet in the loud bar.
"I'm thinking about reassigning myself." Simon says, staring at the condensation on his bottle.
"And you haven't." Price observes.
"No."
"Why?"
Because when they look for me, I feel necessary.
Because when they steady against me, I don't want to let go.
Because stepping back feels like abandoning someone who already expects people to leave.
He doesn't say any of that.
"I don't know if it's better to stay consistent or cut it clean."
Soap leans forward, elbows on the table.
"Are you crossing lines?" the scot asks.
"No."
"Thinking about it?"
Simon's jaw tightens.
"Yes."
Silence, but not judgmental—measured.
Gaz speaks up first after that.
"Is it affecting the rest of your patients?"
There it is, the same question Mara never asked directly but implied.
"Yes."
"How?"
"Shorter temper, less patience. They're tracking me, the patient I mean. Watching for me." he exhales.
"And you like that." Soap says, tilting his head in a way that would usually suggest a question even though this isn't one—it isn't accusing, it's clarity.
Simon doesn't answer so Price does it for him.
"Course he does."
That makes him looks up sharply but Price's expression is calm, almost tired.
"You spent years being the one everyone relied on, the one who caught them before they hit the ground. Hard habit to break." the former captain says, holding Simon's gaze.
"That's not what this is."
No one argues.
"Is this about them or about you not wanting to feel like you've walked away?" Gaz asks, barely loud enough to be heard over the turmoil of the bar.
The question is cleaner than any advice he's gotten all week.
Soap drains his glass before he speaks.
"If you were still in and you were too close to someone on your team, too reactive and too personal, what would Price do?" he asks, tone lighter but eyes serious.
"Pull me." Simon answers without hesitation.
"Why?" the scot presses.
"Compromised judgment."
"There you go." Soap shrugs.
"It's not the same." Simon snaps before he can stop himself.
Price's gaze sharpens slightly at the edge in his tone.
"No." Price agrees calmly "It's not war, but it is responsibility nonetheless."
Simon leans back, running a hand over his mouth.
"They already struggle with abandonment and if I get myself reassigned to a different institute or a different ward or patient that would only confirm that." he says finally.
Gaz shakes his head, his fingers toying mindlessly with the label on his beer bottle.
"Or it shows them that care doesn't disappear when one person steps back." he argues.
"You don't have to quit the job or leave entirely, you just have to shift roles." Soap nods in agreement to Gaz.
Price studies Simon in that infuriatingly quiet way, scrutinizing the younger man for a few long moments.
"You want someone to tell you to stay." he says.
Simon's eyes flick up, because...yes.
He's heard 'reassign' from Mara, from his therapist, from his own instincts at 03:00 in the morning when the fear of nightmares wouldn't let him sleep.
He came here wanting one of them to say 'You can handle it', 'You've handled worse', 'Stay'—Price doesn't give him that.
"What's the mission?" Price asks instead.
Simon exhales slowly, needs to collect himself.
"Stabilize them, build resilience, broaden support network." he murmurs.
"And where do you fit in that?" Price continues.
"...As part of the team."
"Not the center." Gaz says quietly.
The same words as Mara, it's almost irritating.
Soap nudges him again, softer this time.
"Mate. If you're snapping at other patients, you're already past the line."
Simon doesn't argue because he knows it's true.
Price finishes his drink and sets it down.
"You don't get to be the hero in this one, you get to be the professional." he says evenly.
The words sting, but Simon sits with it.
The noise of the bar swells around them—laughter, clinking glasses, music bleeding from bad speakers.
He thinks about the way you apologized when he pulled back, about the way his temper flared at someone who didn't deserve it.
If this were tactical, the answer would already be made—reduce risk, redistribute responsibility and preserve operational integrity.
He exhales again.
"I hate that it feels like quitting."
"It's not quitting, it's containment." Gaz says.
Price stands, claps a firm hand on Simon's shoulder.
"Make the call before someone else makes it for you."
"And if you don't, we'll come down there and write it on your whiteboard ourselves." Soap grins which almost makes Simon chuckle in response.
Almost.
But when they leave the bar and the cold air hits his face, the noise gone, the decision feels heavier—clearer but not easier.
He pulls his phone out, opens the staff scheduling app and stares at his upcoming shifts.
Primary assignment: you.
His finger hoovers over your name for a moment, considering to change it or delete it so your slot is empty and free for someone else to take...but he doesn't—he can't.
His former military buddies help him from spiraling the rest of his weeklong off-work time, from going off the deep end due to being unable to decide if he should go or stay.
Simon knows that the right thing to do is get distance from you, give the rest of the staff the chance to be the support you need and give you the chance to take it.
But it isn't that simple, of course it couldn't be.
You're a walking wound, scars layered on scars, a broken bird with wings too torn to fly and he's a man with his own share of scars and demons.
Buried deeply in Simon's subconscious, the two of you are broken pieces of the same shattered and jagged edges glass—he'd be dammed to let you become like him.
He'd be dammed to let you have sleepless nights because your thoughts are running themselves raw, to let the rest you get be unsatisfying and never enough due to nightmares.
Simon Riley would be dammed to allow you to think that you have to offer to be loved.
The rest of the week passed agonizingly slow for Simon.
It's was nice having Price, Gaz and Soap around, but to know he'll get to see you again was the only thing truly making him push through.
He had shown the guys around town, they even drove past the institute where Simon had half a mind to storm inside just to see you but luckily decided against it, and the consistent thoughts of reassigning or not kept torturing him.
When he enters the ward again once the guys drove back home and his vacation ended, he goes through the same motions as always—swiping his badge to gain access to the building along with his keys, write himself in and exchange a few words with his coworkers while checking charts.
Breakfast and morning meds have already passed, so Simon takes it upon himself to do checks.
The door of your room is opened a crack and when Simon pushes it open it's...empty.
Not only are you not there, none of your belongings are.
Your bedding is gone, the closet is open and empty and there's nothing on the desk or nightstand either.
He frowns deeply, turns back around with a pounding heart of panic.
Did you do it again? Did you try once more?
When he reaches the nurses station, frown still on his face, he asks for you.
"Reassigned." the other day nurse, Olivia, tells him flatly.
He stares at her for a few moments, unable to process it.
"What?" he asks sharply, his brows furrowing even more and resembling more of a scowl.
Olivia blinks at him, taken aback by his tone.
"Yeah...the patient requested reassignment last Friday rather urgently and it was granted a day later. They left on Wednesday." she informs him.
Wednesday? You're already gone since Wednesday?
You weren't even here when he drove past with Gaz, Soap and Price.
"Why wasn't I informed?" he almost barks at the other nurse, anger and hurt mixing hot and bursting under his skin.
Before he knows it, he finds himself in Dr. Patel's office—your now old therapist.
Dr. Patel looks up when Simon steps in, he doesn't look surprised and instead looks...almost prepared.
"Close the door, please." he says and Simon does, perhaps a little harder than necessary.
"They've been reassigned?" he asks with a tight and clipped voice that has nothing to do with professionalism.
"Yes." the therapist answers calmly, gesturing to the empty chair—Simon doesn't sit down.
"Since Wednesday?" he continues instead, shifting his weight from one foot to the other restlessly.
"Yes." the doctor confirms again.
He feels it then.
Not the clean detachment he's been trying to practice, something much much sharper.
"You could've informed primary staff." Simon grunts.
"You were on leave." Dr. Patel says, studying him carefully.
"That's not the point."
"It is partially the point." the man shoots back immediately, making Simon's jaw flex in anger.
"They requested it after a long session on Friday." Dr. Patel continues evenly.
Friday—the same night he was sitting in a bar discussing whether he should pull back.
"They initiated it?" Simon asks.
"Yes."
That knocks something sideways in his chest.
"They noticed their attachment to you specifically and they were concerned it was interfering with their treatment." Dr. Patel explains calmly.
Simon says nothing.
"They were very clear." the therapist adds "They don't blame you. They weren't angry. They were...aware."
Aware—the word burns.
"We discussed options. They concluded that distance would help them focus on healing rather than on managing feelings."
Simon swallows hard to try and rid himself of the lump in his throat—it doesn't work.
"And you agreed." he states more than he asks since he saw your absence.
"Yes."
Silence thickens in the office.
"The only reason I'm telling you this is because they asked me to. They wanted you to know it wasn't impulsive and they didn't want you to think they've been discharged." Dr. Patel continues after a few moments.
"Where?" Simon asks, staring at the bookshelf behind Dr. Patel instead of looking at him.
"I won't disclose that."
"I'm not asking for contact." Simon frowns—a lie, maybe.
"I didn't say you were." Dr. Patel says gently "But location is part of confidentiality, they were clear about that boundary."
Boundary.
Of course you would do it properly, of course you would think it through.
"They didn't want to leave without a word, but they felt saying goodbye would complicate it." the other man adds.
Anger flares hot and fast again.
"That wasn't their decision to make alone." Simon snaps, Dr. Patel doesn't rise to it.
"They are allowed to make decisions about their treatment."
Simon exhales sharply through his nose.
You left without letting him see you, without letting him respond, without giving him the chance to-
To what?
Convince you to stay?
Promise to step back?
Make it harder?
"They were proud of themselves. It took insight to recognize the pattern and act on it." Dr. Patel says quietly.
Pride—that's what cuts deepest.
Because under the anger, under the sting of being left out...he is proud.
You saw it, you named it and you chose your healing over proximity.
It's exactly what he'd wanted you to learn, just not like this.
"So that's it." he says finally.
"For now." Dr. Patel confirms with a single, slow nod.
Simon nods once in response—controlled, professional.
"If they progress we'll receive a summary report eventually if they agree, but they won't be returning here."
The finality lands heavy.
He doesn't trust himself to speak again, so he leaves.
The corridor feels different without you in it—too quiet, too neutral.
Your old room is already reassigned by the end of the week to one new patient and one who requested a room switch.
New bedding, new names on the chart of the room that was once yours.
The chair at breakfast is taken by someone else who doesn't care about sightlines to the nurses' station.
Simon doesn't erase his name from the staffing board, it's erased for him and somehow that feels worse.
For a few days, he's angry—at you, at himself, at Dr. Patel, at the timing.
You left while he was debating whether to step back, you made the call he couldn't without consultation and without goodbye.
He replays your last conversation at your doorway.
'You seemed mad today.' - 'I'm not the focus here.'
He wonders if that was the moment you decided, if he pushed you into proving you could leave first.
The hurt comes quieter and in flashes—when he turns a corner and expects to see you sitting cross-legged on the floor, when he hears a laugh that sounds almost like yours and looks up before he can stop himself, when 01:15 rolls around on night shift and no one is sitting up waiting for him to pass.
And beneath all of it is pride.
You chose yourself, you did what he couldn't and you protected both of you.
He should feel relieved but instead, he feels hollow.
So he does what he's always done when something inside him starts to splinter; he works.
He picks up extra shifts when someone calls in sick, volunteers for doubles, covers weekends and nights and holidays.
If he's on the ward, he doesn't necessarily have to think about the room down the corridor.
If he's exhausted, he doesn't have to sit with the ache.
Mara notices first.
"You're burning yourself out." she says one evening when he agrees to stay four hours past shift end.
"I'm fine." he murmurs.
"You're not." she disagrees but he doesn't engage.
Because if he slows down, if he has an empty evening with nothing but his own thoughts, he might ask himself whether you waited for him to choose distance and when he didn't when you chose it yourself.
He tells himself this is what professionals do, that they respect decisions and don't chase nor interfere—he will not interfere.
He will not try to find out where you went, he will not ask Dr. Patel for updates, he will not look you up in transfer reports and he will not make your hard choice harder.
So he buries it.
Under twelve-hour shifts, under charting, under de-escalations and medication rounds and safety plans.
He becomes efficient again—calm, controlled and comfortably firm.
No sharp edges in group, no clipped tones, no hovering at one specific door.
Balanced, neutral, professional.
The ward stabilizes around him.
Patients respond, Mara stops watching him quite so closely.
On the surface, he looks steady.
But at 01:15 when he passes down a corridor that no longer holds your cracked-open door, he still feels it—that absence.
Sharp, quiet and earned.
The deck of old and worn uno cards stay untouched in the pockets of his scrubs and his jacket when he's not working, reserved for the day he might see you again.
my masterlist
a/n: god, now I want to write another part so bad but I also like open endings UGH
Synopsis: After leaving the military, Simon 'Ghost' Riley becomes a nurse in a mental hospital trying to heal by helping others. When he meets a deeply traumatized patient who mirrors his own past demons, he's forced to learn to become gentler and soon finds himself caring more than he should.
cw: a lot of mental health talks (a lot about sh, depression and ptsd), displays of mental illnesses, takes place in a psych ward, reader dates men, SUICIDE ATTEMPT, reader struggles with sh and it is mentioned, abandonment issues, reader being strangled briefly, reader is lonely (no friends or family)
wc: 4,1k
˚₊‧⁺⋆♱ see the end for author's notes ˚₊‧⁺⋆♱
The office smells faintly of tea and old books, muted colors and soft lamp lights adorning the waiting room.
Simon sits in the same chair he's been sitting in for the last three years—second from the window, back to the wall, clear line of sight to the door.
Some habits simply don't go away, especially not if they do not harm—Dr. Adams doesn't comment on it anymore.
"It's been about six months." she says gently after he's allowed in her office.
"Maintenance check-in?" she asks as she settles into her chair across from him.
"Something like that." Simon grunts in response, hands clasped loosely between his knees—neutral posture, controlled breathing.
He doesn't come in crisis anymore, he comes to prevent one.
"How have you been?" Dr. Adams asks.
"Stable." he answers automatically.
"That's the clinical answer." she shoots back, a small smile curving at the corner of her mouth.
He exhales faintly through his nose.
"I'm fine. Work's steady, sleep manageable." he corrects with a small shrug.
"Nightmares?"
"Occasional."
She nods, makes a note.
"And emotionally?"
There's a pause there.
He stares at the bookshelf over her shoulder for a moment before answering.
"That's why I'm here."
Her pen stills slightly.
"Okay." she nods.
"There's a patient..." he starts and even that feels like stepping onto thin ice.
"Go on." Dr. Adams presses when Simon pauses for too long.
"They've been under my care for a few months. PTSD, depression, history of self-harm." he continues finally, keeps it clinical for now.
"And?"
"And I'm...invested."
She doesn't react outwardly but the acknowledging nod she gives is slow.
"Invested how?"
"More than I should be." Simon admits, shifting in his chair.
Silence stretches—not heavy, just open.
"In what way do you feel it exceeds professional concern?" she asks.
He rubs his thumb once across his knuckles, a grounding motion.
"I think about them outside of work." he mutters.
"Wonder how they're doing on my days off. I notice when they don't sit in their usual spots. I..." he hesitates, then goes on "I was angry when they went on a date."
"Angry at them?" Dr. Adams asks, expression staying neutral and he confirms with a nod of his head.
"Why?" she probes.
"Because I didn't trust the man." Simon responds after a beat, jaw tightening slightly.
"That sounds protective."
"It wasn't just that." he goes on, looking down at his hands.
"I didn't like that someone else got to have parts of them I don't."
There it is—ugly, honest, aching.
Dr. Adams lets that sit for a few moments.
"And what does that mean to you?" she asks softly.
"It means I crossed a line in my head."
"Have you crossed one in your behavior?"
"No." Simon denies immediately, firmly.
He holds boundaries like they're law—or is, at least, doing his best to.
"I haven't said anything inappropriate, haven't acted on it...but it's there."
"Attachment isn't unusual in caregiving professions." Dr. Adams nods slowly, assuring.
"This isn't standard rapport." he sighs in response, shoulders drooping.
"No, it doesn't sound like it." she agrees calmly, her eyes narrowing for just a moment as she absorbs the words and reaction.
Simon exhales heavily, tension creeping back into his shoulders.
"They attempted last week..." he starts, voice lower now.
"After a breakup. I found out when I came on shift. I was angry at them for not telling me."
"And when you saw them?"
The image flashes uninvited—hospital bed, gauze, tears, your vulnerable form locked under a blanket in a too sterile and colorless environment.
He sometimes sees the scene flash in his nightmares between botched missions, mangled bodies of comrades, imagined gunfire and explosions.
"The anger was gone." Simon murmurs once he's able to find his voice again after letting the image settle.
"What replaced it?"
He doesn't answer immediately, has to think.
"Relieve, fear." he admits.
"Fear of what?" Dr. Adams prompts gently.
"That they wouldn't be there."
A pause.
"And that scared you because...?"
He looks up at her then, something rawer in his expression than he usually allows.
"Because I care about them."
There's no humor in it, no deflection, just a fact he normally wouldn't admit to out loud in this level.
"Caring isn't the problem, it is if it compromises judgment." she says, pausing.
"Has it?" she then asks.
He thinks about that.
He'd searched for reasons to deny the date, looked for policy loopholes, felt jealousy.
"I was tempted to but didn't." he says quietly.
"That's important." the therapist nods.
Simon leans back slightly, tension still coiled tight in his frame.
"I don't know where the line is anymore, between empathy and...something else." he says, the admission feeling strange on his tongue—fuzzy, heavy, shameful.
"Do you want something from them?"
The question is direct but Simon doesn't flinch from it.
"Yes."
The room feels smaller.
"And can you ethically have it?"
"No."
"Then your work is not about eliminating the feeling, it's about managing it responsibly." Dr. Adam says, folding her hands in her lap.
"That sounds dangerously close to permission." Simon frowns.
"It's not permission to act, it's permission to acknowledge reality. Suppression tends to make things stronger." she explains calmly.
He absorbs that, knows the truth in the statement.
"You relate to them." she continues.
"Shared diagnoses, shared trauma. That can intensify attachment."
"I know." Simon agrees.
'Trauma bonding'—he read about it in textbooks, saw it in patients under his care in the facility.
"It can also create a savior dynamic." Dr. Adams adds and Simons jaw tightens once more.
"I don't see them as helpless." he counters almost defensively.
"That's good. But do you see them as uniquely yours to protect?"
He thinks, doesn't answer fast enough.
Dr. Adams' gaze softens slightly.
"You left the military to stop being a weapon. Be careful you're not becoming a shield instead." she says quietly.
That hits hot and heavy, making Simon stare at the floor for a long moment.
"I don't want to hurt them." he says.
"Then you maintain boundaries."
"I am."
"Good. Then the next step is asking yourself what this attachment represents."
He looks back up.
"Meaning?"
"Are you drawn to them or the version of yourself you see in them?" she asks carefully.
The question lands deeper than he expected, making him speechless momentarily.
He thinks about the way you sit near exits, the way you go quiet when something hurts and when you're not sure how exactly you feel, the way you try not to be 'too much' and stay by yourself when you think you can't help.
He thinks about himself at that age—before, during and after his service.
"I don't know." he says finally says, honestly.
"That's something to explore." Dr. Adams says almost immediately as if she expected him to say that.
"You're not a bad person for feeling this." she adds.
"Feels like it." Simon huffs quietly in response
"It would concern me if you didn't examine it."
He nods at that, acknowledges it.
"I've thought about telling them, just so it's not...sitting there." Simon admits, voice steady but tight.
Dr. Adams doesn't answer immediately, doesn't look shocked when he says it.
"Tell them what?" she asks.
"That I care about them. That it's more than clinical."
Her expression remains calm, but something in it sharpens—not judgment, clarity.
"And who would that disclosure serve?" she questions.
Simon frowns faintly again.
"I wouldn't do it for me."
"Wouldn't you?"
Silence, then he adverts his gaze further.
"It would explain things." he says, shrugging slightly.
"Why I'm stricter sometimes. Why I...why I react." he adds with a heavy exhale like the words hurt.
"It might explain it to you, but what would it do to them?" she asks gently.
Simon doesn't answer so she continues.
"They are recovering from a suicide attempt." Dr. Adams says carefully.
"They struggle with abandonment wounds and you are a consistent authority figure in their life right now."
He shifts in his seat, uncomfortable by the thought he might not be anything but a nurse for you.
"If you tell them you have feelings, what are their options?" she goes on.
"They could say no." Simon says like it's obvious because it technically is—just not in this scenario.
"Could they? Without worrying it affects their care? Their privileges? How you document their progress?" Dr. Adams questions, putting weight into it.
"That's not how I operate." he objects firmly, almost offended his own therapist would suggest it.
"I know that, Simon, but power doesn't require intent to exist." she says, using his name which she rarely does—only when she says something she really needs him to understand.
He goes still and Dr. Adams leans forward slightly.
"You hold power in that relationship whether you want to or not. Disclosure shifts the burden onto them. They would have to manage your feelings while navigating their own."
That aches again and he rubs a hand over his mouth.
"So I just...sit on it?" he asks.
"No." the therapist shakes her head gently.
"You process it here, or in supervision with colleagues and your superior if need be. You examine what it means and you protect the patient from it."
"Protect them how?" he looks up at her, meeting her gaze again after several minutes of avoidance.
"Boundaries, consistency, shared staffing, no special treatment and no emotional exclusivity." she says simply.
Simon doesn't like the last phrase.
"You are not the only safe person in their world and it's important you don't become that." she continues.
"I don't want to hurt them." he exhales slowly, like that might soothe the ache.
"Then don't make them responsible for your internal conflict. If your feelings intensify, the ethical step is reassignment."
The word lands like a dull blade, making Simon stiffens.
"You'd rather step back than risk blurring the line further and stepping over it." Dr. Adams says gently.
"I hate the idea of leaving them." he says, staring at the floor again.
"What if...I waited..?" he adds quietly, uncertain.
"For what?"
"Until they're discharged. No longer under my care."
Dr. Adams studies him carefully.
"That's still complicated." she says.
"Timing alone doesn't erase power dynamics, but it becomes less immediately unethical once the care relationship is formally and fully ended—with clear time and distance."
He nods once, absorbs that.
"But right now?"
He already knows the answer.
"Right now it would be about me." he finishes.
"Yes."
He leans back, shoulders heavy.
"I thought honesty was supposed to be healthy."
"It is." the therapist agrees "With appropriate boundaries. Radical honesty without regard for impact can be selfish."
"So I don't confess." he says finally.
"No, you shouldn't." she replies.
"And if they sense it?"
"Then you redirect to their treatment goals."
Another pause.
"You care about them, that's not wrong. Acting on it in this context would be." Dr. Adams says.
He nods slowly.
"And if you truly believe this is something deeper, then the ethical path is distance and not disclosure." she adds.
Simon lets out a quiet breath.
"I'm still afraid I'll blur the line." Simon confesses.
"You came here, that suggests you won't." she reminds him and Simon sighs.
"I can manage it." he says, more grounded this time.
"I believe you can."
He stands a few minutes later, session ending the way they usually do—grounded, not fixed but steadier.
The feeling is still there, but now it has a container.
And he understands something clearly; if he confesses now, it wouldn't be brave—it would be selfish.
At the door, he hesitates.
"I won't act on it." he says, almost to himself.
"Make sure you also don't punish yourself for feeling it." Dr. Adams voice is calm behind him.
He doesn't respond to that, leaves with an acknowledging nod.
He can carry the feeling, he just can't let it carry him.
***
When Simon goes to work after that session, something about him is different.
Not colder, not intentionally, but sharper and contained.
He greets the team, reviews handover notes, asks the necessary questions.
When your name comes up, he doesn't let his jaw tighten and doesn't ask extra questions—he just listens.
Post-attempt protocol is in place, level one observation which means constant supervision.
For fourty-eight hours minimum, a staff member is assigned to you at all times—line of sight, including bathroom checks with modified privacy procedures and shower watch.
Your room has been stripped of anything non-essential.
No pens or paper, no personal chargers or electronic, no unsupervised phone access.
Meals are monitored now, medication administered and observed closely.
The common room couch you used to curl into is now off-limits unless staff are seated within arm's reach and your leave privileges are revoked indefinitely.
The first time he sees you after you're released from the medical wing a few days later, the same day he went to see his own therapist before work because that's the only time slot she was able to squeeze him in, you're sitting at the small table near the nurses' station—a healthcare assistant sits two feet away working on some papers while keeping an eye on you.
You look smaller.
Not physically but in the way you hold yourself—shoulders rounded, movements careful, like you're afraid to take up space.
There's a faint hospital bracelet bruise still visible on your wrist where your sleeve isn't sitting right.
Simon feels the pull immediately, reins it in just as quickly.
Boundaries, consistency, shared staffing.
He doesn't go straight to you.
He finishes reviewing medication logs, signs off on incident documentation, talks with Mara about group assignments.
Only after that does he approach.
"Afternoon." he says evenly.
You look up.
There's relief there, quick and unguarded, but it's followed immediately by shame.
"Hi."
He doesn't sit too close, doesn't soften too much.
"How are you feeling today?" he asks in the same tone he'd use with any other patient.
"Okay." you shrug slightly.
"Any urges since this morning?" he asks after nodding.
You hesitate, think, then shake your head no.
"Any intrusive thoughts?"
"Less."
He acknowledges that with another small nod and makes a brief note on his clipboard—clinical, structured, steady.
Inside he wants to ask if you slept, if you're still replaying the breakup, if you're eating enough.
He doesn't.
"You'll remain on constant observation through tomorrow." he says instead "We'll reassess after."
"I know." you say quietly, brows furrowing and gaze adverting.
It's not anger, it's embarrassment.
"I'm...not a child." you add, still quiet.
"I know. This isn't punishment." he says calmly.
"It feels like it." you mumble, still staring down at the table.
He absorbs that without immediately correcting you.
"It's stabilization, short term." he says after a moment.
You nod but you don't look convinced.
The healthcare assistant shifts slightly in her chair, a reminder that Simon isn't alone with you.
He doesn't dismiss her, doesn't create privacy that isn't part of the protocol—no emotional exclusivity.
Later, during group therapy, he makes sure Mara facilitates instead of him.
He stays in the back, observes, documents.
When you speak quietly and carefully about 'feeling like a burden', he doesn't lock onto you the way he wants to and lets the group respond, lets someone else tell you that heartbreak isn't proof of worthlessness.
It costs him something to stay silent, but he does.
Over the next few days, your world shrinks.
No off-grounds privileges, no unsupervised showers, sharp objects locked tighter.
Night checks every fifteen minutes once you're downgraded from constant line-of-sight to enhanced observation.
Your room door stays partially open and you comply with it all, that's what makes it harder.
You take your meds without argument, attend sessions, sit where you're told, speak when prompted...but you don't laugh anymore.
Simon notices, makes sure he's not the only one who does.
He rotates check-ins with other nurses.
Encourages you, gently, to process the breakup with your psychiatrist instead of circling back to him after rounds.
When you drift toward him in the hallway one evening, hovering like you're about to ask something, he keeps his tone steady.
"Is this about your safety plan?" he asks.
You hesitate.
"...No."
"Then let's bring that to your one-on-one tomorrow." he says like a suggestion even if it's not and you know it isn't so you study him for a moment.
There's confusion in your expression.
He used to linger longer, he used to lean in.
Now he stands straight, professional, measured.
"You're being distant." you say quietly, not accusing and instead just softly stating.
The words hit but Simon doesn't flinch.
"I'm being consistent." he replies.
Your brow furrows slightly.
It would be so easy to step closer, to reassure you in a way that feels personal instead of procedural but he doesn't act on it—can't.
"You have a whole team, not just me." he says instead.
Something shifts in your expression at that.
Not rejection, understanding—small and fragile.
"Oh." you murmur.
He nods once.
"I'm still here, just not alone." he adds—but it's grounded, not possessive.
By the fourth day, supervision is downgraded once again.
You're allowed slightly more space, monitored but not shadowed anymore.
You seem exhausted by the scrutiny, quieter but steadier.
Simon remains careful.
No private jokes, no extended eye contact, no staying past shift to 'just check once more' no matter how much he wants to.
He documents objectively, asks the same safety questions he asks everyone, leaves on time without withdrawing care.
When you complete a full day without intrusive ideation, he acknowledges it.
"Good work." he says simply.
Your eyes search his face like you're looking for something extra he doesn't give.
Not because he doesn't feel it but because he fully understands now that if he becomes your safest place, he becomes something you might lose again and that you don't need another person who feels irreplaceable.
You need stability, consistency, a team.
He can carry his feelings, won't let them carry him and certainly won't let you carry them either.
***
It happens on a Tuesday evening during shift change, too many moving parts at once.
One patient escalates in the common room—shouting, throwing a chair while another starts crying.
Alarms go off, staff move fast, voices layered over one another.
In the middle of it, someone forgets to relock the art supply cabinet after occupational therapy.
No one notices immediately, not until Mara does a headcount.
"Where's-?"
She says your name and Simon's head lifts instantly before he already moves, the rest of the unoccupied nurses and healthcare assistants as well as wards doing the same.
You're not in the common room, not in your room and the bathroom is empty too.
His pulse kicks hard once in his throat.
"Check the time-out room." he orders over his shoulder, already moving further down the corridor.
The ward shifts into quiet emergency mode—controlled, fast, contained.
They find you in the far end of the corridor near the old storage alcove.
Not actively harming yourself but sitting on the floor, back against the wall and a pair of blunt craft scissors in your hand.
You're not using them, you're just...holding them while staring at nothing.
The healthcare assistant who spots you freezes in the doorway.
"Simon." he calls out and the ex-soldier steps in immediately.
Everything narrows.
He doesn't bark, doesn't rush.
"Hey." he says evenly, stepping into your line of sight with clearly visible hands.
"Put those down." he adds, pointing vaguely at the blunt craft scissors.
Your eyes move to him slowly, like it takes effort.
You look exhausted as you stare at him.
Not defiant, not volatile or violent, just worn thin.
"I wasn't going to." you say quietly.
He believes you, but that doesn't matter.
"Put them down anyway."
A long pause, then you lower your hand and set them on the floor as far away from you as your arm can comfortably reach.
He steps forward carefully and nudges them out of reach with his foot before bending to pick them up.
Your fingers are trembling.
"So much for progress." you murmur, voice hollow and thin.
Simons jaw tightens.
"This is a lapse in supervision, not yours." he says, controlled, reassuring.
"I didn't even do anything and I still wanted to." you chuckle breathlessly like you're disappointed in yourself.
And there it is, the admission.
He kneels down in front of you before he can stop himself, not trying to loom but level instead.
"You told someone?" he asks.
"Why?" you ask, shake your head.
Your gaze flickers up to his face and for a split second the answer is naked there—because you didn't want to disappoint him, because you didn't want more restrictions, because you didn't want to be 'too much'.
His chest tightens.
"You should have told staff." he says carefully.
"I know."
Silence settles, heavy but not explosive—no outburst bubbling under the surface.
Over his shoulder, he knows there are eyes watching—cameras, colleagues, policy.
He should stand up, should immediately call for reassessment, should reassign himself to avoid emotional entanglement—but you sway slightly before he can walk away.
Simon notices before anyone else does and as soon as it happens.
"Hey-!" he says sharply, reaching forward as your shoulders tip.
You didn't eat much since your supervision level was lowered which was over a week ago—he remembers.
Your blood pressure drops fast when you're overwhelmed, you go lightheaded.
Your body folds forward before you can brace, Simon catches you—arms around you automatically, instinct overriding distance.
You're lighter than you should be.
Your forehead presses briefly against his chest as he steadies you.
For a fraction of a second, you cling—not romantically, not intentionally, just instinctively.
Your fingers fist in the fabric of his scrubs and his entire body goes still.
Every boundary he so carefully constructed presses down on him at once, heart feeling constricted and hot as it aches.
"Easy." he murmurs, voice lower now—not distant, not clinical anymore.
Your breathing is shallow, thin and uneven.
"I'm okay." you whisper but your grip doesn't loosen and your words aren't entirely convincing.
He can feel your pulse against his wrist, fast and fragile.
He should pass you off, call Mara, step back but instead he shifts his hold—one arm firm around your back as he guides you carefully upright.
"Let's get you checked." he says.
"Please don't downgrade me again." you plead, shaking your head.
The plea lands straight in his chest.
He doesn't promise, can't—but he also doesn't immediately signal for level one reinstatement.
He helps you stand fully, keeping one hand steady at your elbow longer than necessary.
You look up at him.
Eyes glassy, vulnerable, raw from days of compliance and swallowed shame.
"I didn't want to do it." you say quietly "I just...didn't trust myself not to."
That honesty cracks something open in him because it isn't manipulation, it's fear.
He swallows hard.
"Thank you for putting them down." he says instead of everything else he wants to say.
Your hand is still loosely wrapped in his sleeve, he gently frees it and holds onto your fingers with a small squeeze just a second too long—the heat of your skin lingering on his.
"We're going to reassess your observation level. It's not punishment, it's support." he says, voice steady again.
You nod but your eyes don't leave his.
And for the first time since his therapy session, he feels it spike—sharp and undeniable.
Not just protectiveness, not just attachment but the undeniable reaction of having almost lost you again.
Not to action, to possibility.
He stands and helps you back toward the nurses' station himself.
He doesn't delegate, doesn't rotate out.
He conducts the vitals check personally because protocol now requires it after a near-incident involving restricted items.
He stays within arm's reach while you sit.
You're quiet, shaken, compliant.
When Mara approaches to take over documentation, Simon doesn't step away immediately.
He knows he should already have stepped away earlier but you glance at him once more before looking down at your hands and something in that look of fear, trust and exhaustion tangles together tightens around his ribs.
Dr. Adams' words echo in his head—'Don't become the only safe person.'
But right now, in this moment, he is the one who caught you.
The one who steadied you, the one whose chest you almost collapsed against.
Eventually, Simon forces himself to step back.
"Enhanced observation, reevaluate in the morning." he tells Mara evenly—professional, contained.
But as he walks away to complete the incident report, his hands are not as steady as he would like.
Because proximity like that, unexpected, physical and charged with vulnerability doesn't quiet feelings—it amplifies them.
And this time, he can't pretend it's abstract anymore.
my masterlist
a/n: I hope you all enjoy the long just Simon scene<3 I'm trying to write more dialogues (bcs I know I suck at it) and the urged of constantly writing '... says' were HORRENDOUS
Synopsis: After leaving the military, Simon 'Ghost' Riley becomes a nurse in a mental hospital trying to heal by helping others. When he meets a deeply traumatized patient who mirrors his own past demons, he's forced to learn to become gentler and soon finds himself caring more than he should.
cw: a lot of mental health talks (a lot about sh, depression and ptsd), displays of mental illnesses, takes place in a psych ward, reader dates men, SUICIDE ATTEMPT, reader struggles with sh and it is mentioned, abandonment issues, reader being strangled briefly, reader is lonely (no friends or family)
wc: 4,2k
˚₊‧⁺⋆♱ see the end for author's notes ˚₊‧⁺⋆♱
Simon is confused when you're all happy and bubbly a week later, basically spinning around staff babbling on and on.
He is even more confused when he isn't spared either, has you jumping and spinning around him as you almost giggle all happily while he tries to make his check up rounds.
"And what's gotten you so happy today?" he asks, forcing his tone softer halfway through when he realizes he might sound too gruff.
"I'm going on a date tomorrow!" you almost sing-song with a bright smile Simon has never seen on you before.
He doesn't know why, but the first feeling crossing him isn't empathetic joy—it's an ache stinging right in his heart.
"A date?" he repeats "With who?"
"With my boyfriend." you smile like it's obvious.
Boyfriend.
The word lands harder than it should.
Simon keeps his face neutral through sheer discipline, years of training make that part easy but the rest of him is less cooperative.
"I didn't know you were seeing someone." he says evenly.
"It's kind of new. Well, not new-new. We've known each other a while." you shrug, still smiling—almost a little embarrassed perhaps.
His brain is already rearranging timelines.
No visitors, no calls at the desk asking for you, no name listed under frequent contacts.
"You've been cleared for off-grounds?" he asks.
"Yeah." you practically beam.
"Dr. Patel approved it this morning. I've been here nine weeks, followed the rules, no incidents, take my meds, go to therapy and haven't-" you stop yourself, but the implication hangs there.
"I haven't done anything I'm not supposed to." you smile when you finish the sentence.
Self-harm.
You don't say it, don't have to.
He nods once in acknowledgment.
"What time are you expected back?"
"Eleven p.m."
"That's late." Simon frowns lightly.
"It's a Saturday and it's in the city, we're just getting dinner." you counter gently.
The city means crowds and noise—triggers.
His jaw tightens slightly at that thought but he relaxes it quickly again before you can notice.
"Who's accompanying you?" he asks for now.
"It's unsupervised leave." you say proudly.
"I'm allowed, I earned it." you add, beaming even more.
He knows that, he signed off on part of the behavioral progress notes himself, spoke positively of your behavior during shift switch but still...
"How long have you been dating him?" he asks.
"A few months." you finally say after hesitating for half a second, as if you're rethinking your over joy about seeing your boyfriend again for just a moment.
"A few?" he repeats, eyebrows raised slightly—clearly unsatisfied with the vague time frame.
"He stuck around when I got re-admitted, we've been talking. He wants to take things slow." you explain.
So that's why there were no calls through reception—personal mobile access during approved hours, he remembers the policy.
"And he knows where you are?" Simon asks.
"Yes." you smile.
"And he's fine with it?"
Your smile dims slightly.
"Why wouldn't he be?" you ask in return, seemingly a little perplexed by the question.
He doesn't answer that.
Because some people don't handle this well, because institutions scare people, because mental health diagnoses come with stigma, because you deserve someone steady and he doesn't trust easily.
"He treats you well?" the question comes out lower than intended from him.
"Yeah." you blink.
A beat passes.
"He's...patient." you add, having looked for the right word—and it hits.
Patient.
Simon forces a nod.
"That's good."
It should be enough—it isn't.
He runs through protocols in his head, searching for something procedural, any reason to delay, to require another week, another evaluation, a risk assessment but he can't find anything reasonable enough to justify an intervention.
"You've had one physical altercation in the ward." he says carefully.
"I didn't start it." you say almost defensive.
"I know." Simon soothes immediately.
"And I didn't escalate." you add softly.
That's true too—he remembers you lying there, still as stone.
"You've been stable for four weeks..." he continues, almost to himself.
"Yes."
"Any recent urges?" he asks quietly.
You meet his eyes fully now.
"No." you say, shake your head.
It's steady, honest.
He studies you for a long moment, searching for cracks though there aren't any he can see and that should make him proud but instead something ugly twists low in his chest because the thought that keeps surfacing isn't clinical—it's personal.
No one visits you, no one calls the front desk but somehow there's a boyfriend waiting in the city.
Someone who gets to see you outside these walls, without observation checks, without fluorescent lights or wrecked after therapy sessions.
He doesn't like how that feels.
"I'll need the address and his full name." he says finally, straightening slightly.
Your smile fades another notch.
"Why?" you ask, brows furrowing and head tilting ever so slightly.
"Standard safety procedure." he justifies and it's not entirely a lie.
"Okay." you nod slowly, understanding, and give him the information that he jots down in his notepad.
He repeats the name once in his head, committing it to memory as he stuffs the notepad and pen pack into the small chest pocket of his uniform.
"And your phone will stay on." he adds.
"It has to, it's part of the agreement. I have to call in every thirty minutes." you say and he exhales slowly at that—satisfied.
You shift your weight, studying him now the way you sometimes do when you're trying to read his mood.
"You don't seem happy for me." you say quietly after a moment.
The accusation is soft, not sharp which almost makes it worse.
"I am." he answers automatically with an assuring nod.
Your head tilts once more.
"You look...tense."
He forces his shoulders to loosen, hadn't noticed they'd drawn up.
"I just want you safe." he shrugs, makes it seem like he worries the same way the rest of the staff does.
"I will be."
Another pause.
"You don't get to decide I'm not ready. I worked really hard for this." you add carefully, almost reluctant.
That hits clean because he knows you did and hates to feel like you don't think he does.
Nine weeks with no rule-breaking, no incidents.
You've been compliant, participating, putting in effort, making progress—everything he's been hoping for.
So why does it feel like losing ground?
"I know you did." he says finally, voice lower now and less rigid "And I'm not trying to take it from you."
You watch him for a second longer.
Then your smile returns—smaller but real.
"It's just dinner, I may be back before eleven. You'll barely notice I'm gone." you say lightly.
He doesn't answer that because he knows he'll notice.
He notices when you skip the common room, notices when you sit closer to the exit, notices when you're too quiet so of course he'll notice when you're gone.
You step back, rocking slightly on your heels.
"I should go tell Mara too, she'll be excited." you grin—of course she will.
Simon nods.
"Be ready fifteen minutes before you leave tomorrow, I'll run you through the check-out protocol. My shift ends at eleven, so especially I'll know if you're back late." he says, defaulting back to structure because it's safer.
You grin impossibly more.
"Yes, sir." you almost giggle and it's teasing, light, but something about it sends heat up the back of his neck.
You turn and hurry down the corridor, practically glowing.
Simon stays where he is, hands clasped behind his back and jaw tight.
He tells himself this is risk assessment, standard concern for a vulnerable patient re-entering an uncontrolled environment.
He tells himself that's all it is.
But when he realizes he's already thinking about the man's name you gave him—measuring it, weighing it, wondering if he's good enough—Simon feels something dangerously close to disappointment in himself.
Because this isn't just concern anymore, it's jealousy and that crosses a line he has no business even approaching.
***
The next evening, Simon keeps everything clinical, structured and professional.
You're ready fifteen minutes early like instructed, dressed in civilian clothes instead of your usual comfy sweats and the difference is jarring.
You look younger, lighter, happier and nervous in a way that has nothing to do with the nervousness you sometimes display before therapy sessions.
He runs through the check-out protocol with practiced neutrality.
"Phone charged?"
"Yes."
"Emergency numbers saved?"
"Yes."
"Good. Call the station every thirty minutes. If you feel overwhelmed, you remove yourself and contact us immediately."
You nod through each instruction, patient but clearly vibrating with anticipation.
He checks your bag himself.
Wallet, phone—no prohibited items.
When he finishes, he steps aside to let you pass through the final security door.
"Have a good time." he says and it almost sounds natural.
You smile at him—open, hopeful.
"I will."
He follows at a distance to the outer gate under the guise of completing the sign-out log.
A car pulls up at the curb—clean, well-kept.
The driver steps out and Simon studies him automatically—height, build, posture.
Civilian, average.
No immediate threat markers—casual clothes, hands visible.
You light up the moment you see him and it makes Simon's chest ache a little.
The way you move toward him without hesitation, the way he opens the passenger door for you—the easy familiarity when he brushes his hand against your back.
Simon memorizes his face without meaning to, then the car pulls away and the space you leave behind feels louder than it should.
He keeps busy.
Medication rounds, documentation, de-escalating a minor dispute in the common room, checking on another patient who refuses dinner—professional, focused.
But every time the station phone rings his head lifts before he can stop himself.
Mara answers the call, her expression softening slightly.
"Hi. Yes, you're right on time."
Simon pretends to review a file, listens anyway.
"Yes. That sounds nice. Okay. Call again at seven-thirty."
She hangs up and writes the time in the off-grounds log.
"All good?" Simon asks, tone deliberately casual.
"They're fine." Mara says, giving him a look he doesn't appreciate.
"Restaurant's busy but manageable." she adds and he nods once then goes back to his paperwork.
Seven-thirty, eight, eight-thirty.
Every call comes in on time.
Mara logs each one neatly—mood stable, voice calm, no distress noted.
Simon finds reasons to glance at the sheet.
"Just making sure the times are correct." he mutters once when Mara catches him scanning the notes.
"Of course you are." she replies mildly, suppressing a grin.
By ten-thirty, the ward is settling into its nighttime rhythm and Simon checks the clock more often than he should.
At 10:42, the outer door buzzes—he's already halfway down the corridor before he realizes it.
You step inside alone.
No bright smile this time, no spinning.
Your posture is tighter, shoulders slightly hunched, expression flat in a way that feels practiced.
"You're back early." Simon notes, brows furrowed slightly—feeling like somethings just too off.
"Yeah." you nod, give a half smile that vanishes before it can fully settle on your lips.
Mara conducts the re-entry protocol.
Bag on the table, phone surrendered temporarily again until approved hours, a quick pat-down to check for contraband or sharp objects—you comply with all of it without protest.
"Everything alright?" Mara asks gently as she straightens again after patting you down from head to toe.
"Yeah, it was okay." you say with another small, half-formed smile and a halfhearted shrug.
Just okay? That's not how you described it yesterday.
You collect your things once cleared and head straight down the corridor without lingering—no recounting the evening, no excitement.
Your door closes softly behind you and Simon realizes the shift like a pressure drop.
He waits ten minutes before knocking.
Professional reason is post-leave check-in, personal reason is that he needs to see your face.
"Yes?" you call softly from inside and he steps in.
You're laying on your side in your bed with your back turned to him, already changed back into your sweats—the civilian version of you packed away again.
"How was it?" he asks, leaning against the doorframe.
"Good." you say, the small shrug of your shoulders visible only due to the hallway light flooding in past Simon's frame.
A beat passes before you continue—quiet, almost uninterested.
"We got dinner, walked a bit, talked."
"That's it?" he presses gently.
You shrug again, still not turning around to him or sitting up or doing anything than just laying there.
"It just wasn't...what I expected." you admit.
"In what way?"
You go quiet.
Not the overwhelmed quiet he's learned to recognize, not the spiraling one either—this one is deliberate.
After a moment, you shift slightly under the blanket.
"It was fine, alright."
He doesn't move from the doorway.
"You don't seem fine."
"I'm just tired." your tone isn't sharp, it's closed off like a door gently but firmly shutting right in his face.
He studies the line of your back, the tension in your shoulders.
"Did something happen?"
"No."
Too quick.
He exhales slowly, forces himself not to step further into the room.
"You came back early." he continues, pressing again.
"I wanted to." is all you say, another dead end.
He tries again, even softer this time.
"You were excited."
Silence for a long moment, so long in fact that Simon is convinced you won't reply anymore—then you do.
"Yeah."
Nothing else.
He pushes off the doorframe and takes a few steps inside, careful, slow, measured.
"If he did something to you-"
"He didn't." you interrupt, calm and almost empty like this conversation isn't about you.
You finally turn slightly, not fully facing him but enough that he can see your profile in the dim light.
"Please don't do that." you add quietly, brows slightly furrowed and turned downward.
"Do what?"
"Interrogate."
The word lands heavier than Simon expects, his brown eyes blink a few times at the small ache in his chest and the surprise.
"I'm not-" he starts but you interrupt again, firmer this time while keeping your voice soft—reflex, possible damage control like you're expecting a blow because you're speaking your mind.
"You are. You don't have to fix it."
He stills, wishes there was accusation in your tone but there isn't—just facts.
"I'm not trying to fix anything." he says eventually.
Your eyes meet his briefly, tired but steady.
"Then let it be, okay?" you ask so quietly it might as well be a whisper.
Another wall, Simon doesn't like walls and especially not yours but he's starting to understand he can't force his way through.
A long pause stretches between you.
He doesn't nod, doesn't shake his head no.
"It was just...different, that's all." you say finally, a bit louder than the almost whisper again but still guarded.
"Different how?" he asks before he can stop himself.
Your expression closes again.
"I don't really want to get into it." you say with a small shake of your head as you turn to lay fully on your side again staring at the wall and there it is again—the clear, direct boundary you set with soft tones instead of firmness.
Simon hates how your behavior indicates you consider a boundary for yourself as a privilege, not a right.
"Alright." he nods with a tightening jaw.
"Thanks for checking on me." you murmur, already retreating.
He stands there a second longer than he should, wants to ask more.
Wants to know if your boyfriend said something careless, if he looked at you differently outside the ward, if he made you feel small and worthless, wants to know if you cried in the car on the way back.
"You call if you need anything." he says instead.
If you don't want him to press, or interrogate, he won't—trampling down your boundaries and loose the trust he's built with you over the past two months is the last thing he wants to do.
"I won't." you say and your lighter tone suggests is a joke.
Almost.
He glances at the clock on your wall.
10:57.
His shift ends at eleven.
"I'm off now." he says after clearing his throat softly to get back into focus, doesn't know why he tells you that.
You hum softly like it doesn't matter and maybe it shouldn't which doesn't mean it doesn't sting at all.
He moves back toward the door.
"Goodnight." he says softly.
"Night." you reply, no smile this time.
Simon pulls the door close behind him, shuts the hallway light out.
At the station, he gives the day's behavior records to the nightshift nurse and signs out mechanically.
Mara watches him but doesn't comment as she goes through the same motions.
Outside, the air is cool and sharp against his skin.
He stands there for a moment, staring at the dark parking lot.
He doesn't know what happened on that date, doesn't know if your boyfriend disappointed you or if reality simply didn't match the fantasy you'd built while confined behind locked doors.
What he does know is that you came back dimmer and that he hates the thought of someone else being the reason.
His shift is over but he leaves with the uneasy feeling that whatever happened out there in the city followed you back inside—and he has no right to ask about it.
***
When Simon clocks in at noon the next day, he feels it before anyone says a word.
The ward is too quiet.
Not calm, literally quiet.
Patients linger in corners instead of the common room, a television plays to no one and even the staff speak in lowered voices with their movements clipped and tense.
His eyes scan automatically.
Your usual chair by the window is empty, the far end of the hallway where you sometimes sit with a book also empty.
You're not in the common room, don't linger anywhere it seems and it makes his chest tighten.
"Where's-" he stops himself from saying your name too sharply "Where are they?"
The daytime nurse at the station looks up, hesitates just long enough to confirm his dread.
"They attempted during the night." she says gently.
"Around three in the morning. They're stable now and in the hospital wing." she finishes and for a second, Simon doesn't process the words.
Attempted, stable, hospital wing.
His jaw locks.
"What happened?" his voice is already harder than it should be, anger bubbling under his skin.
"Cut themselves. They were found quickly, intervention was fast. They're under observation." the nurse replies.
'Found quickly' echoes in his head a few times.
You said you were fine, said you didn't want to get into it even though you came back dimmer.
Anger flares hot and immediate—sharp enough to make him dizzy.
Why didn't you say something, brushed him off, shut him out?
He turns before the nurse can finish speaking, already moving down the corridor.
"Simon-!" she calls after him because he's abandoning his tasks, his duty towards the other patients right now, but he doesn't slow.
His boots hit the floor too hard as he heads toward the med wing, anger fueling his stride.
You should have told him.
He asked, he gave you openings, he would've-
The thoughts loop.
You know better, you know the warning signs, you've been in therapy for weeks, it's not your first time, you've made progress.
He's angry at you.
Angry that you scared everyone, that you didn't trust him—angry at himself that he didn't see it.
He almost crashes through the double doors of the med wing but freezes as the anger dissolves instantly.
You look so vulnerable and innocent in the hospital bed.
Smaller somehow, swallowed by white sheets and sterile light.
There's gauze wrapped around your forearm, wrist and part of your hand while a IV line is taped to your inner elbow—your skin looks too pale and too ashy.
Your eyes are open but unfocused, empty in a way he's never seen before—not spiraling, not anxious, just...hollow.
All the heat drains out of him, replaced by something cold and heavy.
He steps closer slowly, like he's approaching a frightened animal or sneaking closer to an enemy.
It takes a second for you to register him, and then your face crumples.
Tears spill instantly, violently, like you've been holding them back for hours or days or maybe even an eternity.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." you choke out, voice breaking—too high, wobbly.
The words hit him harder than any accusation could have.
Simon stops at the side of your bed, heart pounding, eyes widened slightly and brows turned downward.
"You don't-" his voice is rough and he clears it, tries again—softer.
"You don't apologize for this."
"I didn't mean to...! I didn't mean to make it worse, I just...I just...!" you sob, breath hitching and it sends painful stabs into Simon's heart—like a knife lodging in the organ, twisting and turning.
Your shoulders shake as he pulls a chair closer without thinking and sits.
"You were fine. You said you were fine." he says before he can stop himself, the frustration bleeding through.
"I know." you agree, face twisting even more.
That hurts more—to know and see the pain you're in without being able to take it from you.
Simon drags a hand over his jaw as he fights the urge to snap and to demand an explanation because one of that matters now.
You're here, you're breathing, you're alive—that's what matters.
"I didn't want you to be disappointed." you whisper through tears and the confession knocks the air out of him.
"Disappointed?" he repeats, stunned.
"You looked at me like I was doing so well." you say, voice cracking.
"Like I was getting better and I thought I was too. It just-" you swallow hard, need a moment before you can continue.
"He broke up with me after dinner." you say, the words small and fragile with a still too thin voice.
"He said he thought he could handle it but he can't, that it's 'too much.' " you add, voice cracking around the last two words.
Simon feels something cold settle in his gut—too much.
"That's why I came back early. I didn't want to cry in front of him or in front of you."
Simon's jaw tightens as his heart constricts even further.
"You asked and I just...I couldn't say it out loud. If I did, it would have made it even realer." you say, tears still falling.
Simon exhales slowly through his nose, trying to keep himself steady while his hands curl into fists in his lap.
None of this was ever in any protocol, in no textbook or class—he doesn't know what to do with himself, with you.
Tears keep sliding down your temples into your hair.
"I didn't want you to see that I'm still like this." you admit quietly and the words make Simon lean forward, forearms on his knees.
"You think I don't know what 'still like this' feels like?" he asks low and surprisingly gentle.
Your eyes flick up to his—red, swollen, terrified.
"I was angry when I heard what...happened." he admits carefully, heavy but honest.
"I'm sorry." you repeat, your face starting to crumble again.
"No, not at you." he quickly says, exhaling through his nose because he should've known you'd think he was mad at you.
"I was angry I didn't see it." he continues, correcting his earlier mistake.
"Angry I let you walk out of here thinking you had to handle it alone."
You stare at him like you don't quite believe that.
"I didn't want to be a problem again." you whisper, adverting your gaze as you start to fidget with the edge of the blanket.
"You are not a problem." Simon intervenes immediately, the words come out firm and almost fierce.
The monitor keeps beeping.
His gaze drops briefly to the bandage around your arm.
Nine weeks, nine weeks of progress and yet...
Healing isn't linear, he knows that—he's lived that and still is.
He just sits there while you cry and he tries to figure out how to get you to stop, not because you're holding back but because you're feeling less miserable.
Simon reaches into the pocket of his uniform, pulls out the deck of worn uno cards he's only ever been using with you since he started working here.
"You up for a round?" he asks, holding the colorful cards up so you can see them.
The tears linger in your eyes as your expression drops again and for a moment he thinks he's made it worse, but then you smile.
"Yeah." you agree with a small nod, eyes still glistening with tears that aren't pushed out by more of their kind anymore as the smile keeps your lips stretched.
Hours pass in which you and Simon play, occasionally talk as the sterile hospital light keeps buzzing overhead and by the time he's forced to go back to the ward to not loose his job he realizes with a clarity that unsettles him, that whatever line he was trying to hold before?
It's already blurred beyond recognition.
my masterlist
a/n: had to change it from 3 parts to 4 so it will fit. this is originally a one shot and now available on ao3 as well! check out my masterlist for the ao3 and wattpad version, or if you want to see more of my work <3
Synopsis: After leaving the military, Simon 'Ghost' Riley becomes a nurse in a mental hospital trying to heal by helping others. When he meets a deeply traumatized patient who mirrors his own past demons, he's forced to learn to become gentler and soon finds himself caring more than he should.
cw: a lot of mental health talks (a lot about sh, depression and ptsd), displays of mental illnesses, takes place in a psych ward, reader dates men, SUICIDE ATTEMPT, reader struggles with sh and it is mentioned, abandonment issues, reader being strangled briefly, reader is lonely (no friends or family)
wc: 5,7k
˚₊‧⁺⋆♱ see the end for author's notes ˚₊‧⁺⋆♱
Simon Riley learned quickly that silence was louder outside the military than it had ever been in it.
No gunfire, no shouted orders, o distant thud of artillery rolling across a horizon—just the hum of a refrigerator in a too-small flat and the ticking of a clock he didn't remember buying.
Civilian life wasn't peaceful, it was hollow and the quiet left too much room for memory.
He lasted three months before the nightmares started coming every night instead of every few.
Three months before he caught himself scanning rooftops from the grocery store car park, before he realized he hadn't spoken to another person or in general for days.
Therapy had been suggested by Price, strongly.
He went the first time out of obligation, the second out of irritation and the third because something inside him had cracked enough to admit he couldn't white-knuckle it forever.
He didn't talk much at first, sat stiff in the chair with his arms crossed.
Taking mask off was still making him feel uneasy, the habit of hiding still gnawing whenever eyes lingered too long, but he had decided that in order to try to get better he had to try to leave the mask and hiding behind.
He'd have to bare himself.
The therapist waited him out, asked careful questions and let the silences stretch.
Eventually, words came.
Not all of them, not the worst of them but enough to feel...lighter.
The sessions didn't fix him, didn't erase the ghosts that followed him into sleep but they gave him something else—language.
Names for the weight in his chest, explanations for the sharp edge in his temper, for the way he defaulted to control when he felt anything at all.
"You're not broken." the therapist told him once after he confessed that he felt like always staying this way.
Simon didn't believe that but he kept going anyway.
The idea to become a nurse came unexpectedly.
He'd been sitting in the waiting room after a session, watching a psychiatric nurse kneel in front of a trembling patient—no force, no raised voice but steady eye contact and quiet reassurance.
It looked harder than combat, braver, purposeful.
He signed up for training before he could talk himself out of it.
School was different from anything he'd known.
Structured, yes, but not built on dominance or survival.
He struggled with empathy, patience, de-escalation—causing his instructors to pull him aside more than once.
"You don't have to be stone-faced all the time, Riley."
"You have to speak quieter, softer."
"You can't instruct people to get better, Riley. You can only give them the tools and support they need for it."
But despite all of it, he passed.
He had studied harder than he ever had before, memorized protocols, learned how to read body language that wasn't telegraphing a fight.
Simon had learned that sometimes the most important thing you could do was lower your voice instead of raising it.
By the time he stepped into the mental hospital as a newly qualified nurse, his shoulders still carried tension like body armor but he stood a little differently—less like a weapon, more like a wall someone could lean against.
Support, not tank.
He told himself that was enough, doing alright.
Perhaps not perfect nor healed but functioning—working, sleeping more often than not and sometimes even through the night.
The nightmares still came but they no longer dragged him under every time.
He could handle this.
He could handle this job.
He learned, studied, memorized—he could do it and perhaps he really can become better.
***
The ward has its own rhythm.
Locked doors that click shut with finality, fluorescent lights that never quite dim and constantly buzz faintly, the low murmur of televisions in the common room.
Nurses move in steady patterns, charts and files tucked their under arms, voices pitched carefully between calm and authority.
There's quiet days, chaotic days, days in the ward where it almost feels like the world might end.
But Simon adapts the way he always does; by observing first, speaking second and taking things into his own hands third.
He kept his instructions clear, simple and direct—impossible to ignore, hard not to follow.
"Time for meds." - "Group starts in ten." - "Sit down." - "Look at me."
Most patients respond well enough, some test him, a few shout and one once tried to attack him during an episode but Simon had handled it cleanly—firm hands, controlled voice, no escalation which made the senior staff nod in approval.
"You're steady and firm, the need that." one of the psychiatrists at the ward told him.
Steady and he could do, better than quiet and soft anyway.
It had been a few months when your name appeared on the admissions board.
Re-admit, previous stay had lasted almost a year and you were discharged three months ago—a little before Simon started working here.
Simon pauses in front of the chart longer than necessary.
"You worked with them before?" he asks and glances toward one of the day-shift nurses, Mara.
"Yeah, multiple admissions over the years. Comes in bad, leaves better but it doesn't always stick." she sighs softly.
He only hums in acknowledgment.
He wants to get to know the person, not the file so he doesn't ask for a diagnosis.
When you arrived, it not dramatic like he's seen with other patients.
No shouting, no thrashing, bo police escort—just you.
Your shoulders curved inward, eyes unfocused and hurrying all over the place, your movements small like you're trying not to take up any space at all—a already controlled bag clutched too tightly in your hand.
He stepped forward, nods at the warden as a sign that he got you and the warden nods back before he leaves.
Simon keeps his posture straight, voice even.
"Simon Riley. I'll be overseeing your intake."
Your gaze flickers up at his height, 6'4ft, his broad shoulders and the scars barely visible on the top half of his face since he's resorted to wearing a medical face-mask for the past few years.
Simon notices how your gaze drops almost immediately again, how you avoid him with your eyes.
"Look at me when I'm speaking to you." he say automatically, not quiet harsh but definitely firm and commanding.
Your fingers tightened around the strap of your bag.
Mara, standing slightly behind him, shifts her weight and watches the scene play out with caution.
"We'll get your vitals, go over your medication history and then I'll show you to your room. Routine's the same as before." Simon continues, already slipping back into quick and firm efficiency because he knows it works here.
At the word 'before' something in your expression changes, barely there but he catches it—a quick flinch.
Simon mistakes it for defiance.
"You understand?" he presses, deep voice even lower now.
A pause, a long one that almost makes Simon click his tongue in annoyance but you respond before he can.
"...Yes." you murmur, quiet and thin.
He marks it down as noncompliance in progress on his clipboard.
He takes you to the medical office where vitals and weight are taken every week, knocks on the door and the on-duty doctor opens.
During vitals, you startled when the doctor reached for your wrist—not violently, just a sharp intake of breath, shoulders jerking before you force yourself still.
"Relax. Doc's not gonna hurt you." Simon murmurs low.
The words are meant to reassure but they land like a threat.
Your pulse is recorded as fast by the machine, blood pressure a little too high for someone of your age.
Across the room, the doctor clears their throat softly as they jot down your vitals.
Simon doesn't see it yet, how he makes you feel by being him.
He only sees the tension, the avoidance, the way you seem perpetually braced and to him it looks like resistance.
He doesn't know that pressure makes you fold inward instead of standing your ground, that commanding tones scrape against old wounds, that every sharp edge in his voice feels like something about to strike.
By the time your checked and your intake finished, Simon leads you down the corridor—having already decided you were going to be a difficult case.
He doesn't realize yet that he is the one making it harder.
The room you'll be sharing is at the end of the corridor with the same layout as the others—two single beds bolted to the floor, two narrow wardrobe, two bolted down desks with rounded edges, a window that only opens a fraction with metal bars outside.
The room is safe, contained and just comfortable enough to sleep in without making one want to stay.
Simon steps inside first, a quick sweep out of habit more than necessity because old instincts die hard.
Your roommates not in the room, leaving the two of you alone in it.
"You'll be on standard observation for now," he says, turning to face you "Checks every thirty minutes until the psychiatrist reviews your case."
You don't nod to that, don't acknowledge it aside from a slight lift of your shoulders.
Simon notices the way you hover near the doorway, like crossing fully into the room means something final you can't turn back from.
"You can unpack. Dinner's at six, group therapy tomorrow morning. Attendance is mandatory unless you're medically exempt." he adds.
Your fingers slightly twitch at the word 'mandatory', he keeps going.
"If there's an issue, you speak up. Don't shut down. We can't help you if you don't communicate."
That makes your jaw tighten with a small nod.
"Good."
He mistakes the clench of your jaw for attitude.
A beat of silence stretches between you, the fluorescent light humming faintly overhead.
Somewhere down the hall, a patient laughs too loudly at something on television and another starts arguing with a fellow nurse about meds.
"Get settled." Simon says, gesturing to the empty bed.
You step fully into the room at last and he notes how you move—careful and quiet as if sudden motions might trigger something unseen.
When he finally turns to leave, he adds one last instruction.
"When staff address you, I expect eye contact. It shows you're present."
Your breath stutters, hitches for just a moment—startled and surprised.
"...Okay."
He nods in satisfaction once then steps back into the corridor, shutting the door with a heavy click behind him.
Mara is waiting a few feet away.
"You went in a bit...strong." she says carefully.
"I was clear." he frowns.
"They don't do well with that tone."
"They need structure." Simon shoots back immediately, harsher than intended.
"They need safety, not a drill sergeant." Mara corrects gently.
His jaw tightens at that, memories flooding back.
Yells, harsh tones, orders that had to be obeyed.
"I'm not a drill sergeant."
The other nurse recognizes the tone, the expression, and softens her voice.
"I know, but they're not defiant, Simon. When they avoid eye contact? That's fear. When they go quiet? They're overwhelmed, not challenging you."
"I wasn't harsh." Simon exhales through his nose, slightly irritated.
"No." Mara agrees without missing a beat "But you were firm and for some people, firm feels like danger."
That doesn't sit right with him.
Firm is stable, predictable and controlled—chaos is danger, loudness is.
And still, as he glances back at the closed door to your room something unsettles in his chest.
It's not quiet guilt, not yet, just...awareness and a pinch of recognition he won't admit.
Inside the room, you've slowly and quietly started to unpack—sorting clothes into the wardrobe, emptying the bag you brought.
Thirty minute checks, mandatory attendance, 'look at me when I'm speaking to you'.
Your pulse hasn't fully settled yet and for the first time, out in the corridor just past the room door, Simon Riley has mistaken fear for defiance and walks away thinking he handled it well.
***
Simon can't quiet get the hang of you, can't understand how you think and move.
Somedays you're quieter and he barely sees you and somedays you're more lively, conversing with staff and fellow patients.
Sometimes those days mix into one, sometimes your personality switches within seconds with no real reason—usually for the worse.
On the days where you stay in your room he checks on you every now and then but the times he tries to talk with you and get real answers on how you're doing, your responses are short and quiet and just one word.
Even on days you're more social, there's always an air of tension around you.
You're always quiet, closed off and for some reason it pisses Simon off—though he appreciated that you take your medication, go to your sessions and eat without protest.
He's so used to battling with new patients about eating and medication that he was genuinely taken aback when you did it all without question or resistance.
It's been three weeks since you were re-admitted and the week has been relatively quiet for a psych ward for now.
Simon is just about to return to the common room after walking down the corridor after his break, his badge and keys safely tucked to his body, when he hears it—noise coming from your room.
It's just a muffled thud, so quiet it almost drown out in the normal ward noises, but he hears it anyway.
Unease spreads in Simon's chest, his instincts telling him that something is wrong even though a thud is usually nothing of concern.
He glances down the corridor into the common room where nothing seems out of the ordinary, no one else seems as alarmed and concerned how he is.
For a moment he considers just continuing down the corridor, to return to the tasks he knows are ahead of him but he figures that in a psych ward it's better to be safe than sorry.
His footsteps are silent as he turns back around and closes the small distance to the door of the room you share.
He stops briefly in front of it, then knocks before entering a moment later.
The scene in front of him is so bizzare and unexpectedly hostile that it freezes Simon for just a moment.
You're lying there on the floor next to your bed, arms outstretched away from you and staring up at your roommate who's straddling your torso—their thumbs pressing into your windpipe as the rest of the fingers squeeze the sides of your throat.
Your roommates brows are furrowed, face distorted into anger and they don't even look up when the door opens.
And you? You just take it.
Simon is forced out of his momentary stupor at the realization and years of combat and military training kick in, react automatically to the violence.
"Hey!" he yells, alerting wardens and nurses nearby, before already stepping forward.
Perhaps, later on, he might admit to himself that his own display of violence was too much but for now it seems appropriate.
He grabs your roommate by the shoulders, wedges his leg below their elbows and moves it up to forcefully loosen their hands from your throat—he slams them onto the ground the second their hold is released.
From the corner of his eye, Simon can faintly see you scurrying under your bed before two wardens already burst in as well while another day nurse stands by at the door.
Short and clipped Simon tells the wardens what he saw happen as they take the thrashing and screaming patient from his hold into theirs, nodding in acknowledgment as they drag them out into the corridor—the nurse hot on their heels as she follows them to the confinement room down the hall.
Once the screams echo down the corridor, Simon straightens with a deep sigh.
He steps closer to your bed where you're hiding under, rolls his shoulders and neck to get rid of some of the tension in them before he speaks.
"Everything's alright now, you can come out." he say's gruffly, adrenaline still flowing and slowly subsiding in his veins.
Simon waits for a response or any kind of acknowledgment but none comes.
The only sound coming from you is your breathing that's a bit too fast and a tad too shallow for his liking.
Simon crouches slowly beside the bed, the metal frame cool against his knuckles.
He can't see much, just the outline of you curled tight against the wall and half-shadowed—slightly shaking, hugging yourself tightly.
"You're safe, they're gone." he says to try and coax you out from under the bed, his voice still rough around the edges.
Silence.
His jaw tightens, not in anger just out of habit.
He knows you're startled by the situation, hell you had been strangled just a few moments ago, but he needs confirmation that you're physically fine.
"You need to come out so I can check you. I need to take your vitals and get a look on your neck to make sure you're okay." he presses gently.
There's a pause until your voice sounds from under the bed, quiet as a whisper and scratchy.
"...I'm fine."
He exhales through his nose—you are not fine, even he probably wouldn't be after a situation like that.
He lowers himself further, one knee touching the floor so he's not towering even from this angle.
"I need to assess you." he repeats trying to moderate his tone, to sound patient and calm despite your behavior grating on it.
He knows you're probably overwhelmed, scared, but he needs you to see reason and let him check on you and doesn't understand why you just won't let him.
Simon inhales again, calms his nerves.
"Did you lose consciousness?" he asks and he can faintly see the shadow of your head under the bed shake no.
He lowers down further, extends a scarred hand under your bed to help you out but you flinch so violently that his hand freezes midair.
There it is again.
Not defiance, fear—of him.
Something unsettlingly sharp finds its place in his chest.
"Okay." he say's low, slowly retreating his hand again so you can watch the movement happen.
"I'm not going to grab you." he adds quickly, and for the first time since he started working here his voice isn't firm—it's careful, soft, gentle.
"You can move when you're ready, okay?" he assures before slowly sitting down on the floor next to the nightstand—keeping distance while still being close.
Right now, you're in an emotional state of emergency and even if you told him to he probably wouldn't leave.
He had learned that in such situations, a patient should not be left alone—so he stays.
For a few minutes, he just sits there.
Silently he let's the earlier incident replay in his head over and over again, taking a scrutinizing look at his own reaction to look for mistakes but he finds that there are none.
He reacted right, appropriately to the situation.
He pushed the patient off, freed you from the grasp, restrained the patient to stop them from doing further harm and now all that is left to do is make sure you're alright—physically and mentally, at least as much as the situation allows.
But you're silent, unmoving and he needs to find a way to get you out from under the bed without startling you again.
Slowly, Simon reaches into the pocket of his scrubs and pulls out a deck of cards.
It's...well loved, bend and dirty from extensive use—Soap had gifted it to him once, way before they left the SAS and missions were devoid of action and movement.
He always keeps it with him, toys with the cards or just stares at them when his nights get too lonely and his breaks at the ward too quiet.
"You know how to play uno?" Simon asks as he starts shuffling the deck—no response.
He doesn't try to look under the bed when you don't respond, keeps his eyes on the cards instead while keeping his movements slow and deliberate so the sound is soft—paper against paper, building a steady rhythm.
"I'm terrible at it." he continues after a few second.
"Break half the rules, drives the others mad." he adds, which is a total lie.
He's meticulous with rules, follows them without much question when they make sense but right now this isn't about winning or rules—it's about giving you the comfort and normalcy you seem to be needing.
Silence stretches as he keeps shuffling the cards to randomize them before he sets two cards face down on the floor between himself and the edge of the bed.
He leaves the space on purpose, doesn't push them closer.
"You don't have to talk, we can just play." he says quietly, then waits.
Another minute passes before you move, your arm extending hesitantly from under the bed before your fingers curl around one of the card decks and retreating again.
He doesn't look at you, doesn't comment and just grabs the other deck before flipping the first card onto the floor.
"Red seven." he murmurs, not quiet sure if you can see the card clearly from your position.
There's another long pause before your hand emerges again.
It's tentative, hovering first with a card between your fingers like you expect him to grab it.
When he doesn't move, you reach out farther and place down a red colored card in response.
Simon feels something unclench in his chest.
"Alright, my turn." he murmurs.
He keeps playing and so do you.
At first you stay hidden, then emerge a little more with your torso still beneath the bed, only your arm visible as you slide cards out.
He keeps his posture relaxed, back against the wall, legs stretched out, body angled away just enough that he's not looming over the opening.
No sudden movements, no sharp tones, no reprimands for you to come out—just a silent game of cards sliding over the polished linoleum floor.
After a few rounds, you shift again.
Slowly, you slide fully out from under the bed and sit cross-legged on the floor opposite him.
He pretends not to notice the victory in that.
Your throat is marked, faint bruising blooming under the fluorescent lights.
He keeps his gaze level with your hands instead of your neck.
"You can call UNO, you know." he says when you're down to one card and clearly hesitating to speak.
"I know." you say quietly, your voice is still scratchy but definitely steadier and Simon nods in acknowledgment to your words.
You win that round and he acts mildly offended about it, huffing under his breath as he reshuffles.
The tension in your shoulders lowers by degrees—not yet gone but less coiled.
After the fifth game, you're sitting closer to the wall than the bed and no longer halfway hidden or relying on the bed as a measure for a quick retreat.
The silence between you feels different now.
It's not tense or strained anymore, instead it's just a acceptable quiet.
Eventually, Simon clears his throat softly.
"Does your neck hurt?" he asks, just curious enough to show your response matters while keeping it soft enough to not make you feel pressured.
"A little." you admit quietly after seemingly considering the question for a moment.
"I'll get ice after this." he suggests more than states in response and you nod.
Another round starts and halfway through, you stop fidgeting with your sleeve and just...sit.
He risks a glance at your face.
You're watching his hands shuffle.
You'r not avoiding him but not quite meeting his eyes either though neither are you shrinking.
He chooses his words carefully this time, the question having pressed at him for a good few minutes now.
"When I came in earlier..." he starts, tone even but low "you weren't scared of them."
It's not a question.
You pause mid-movement, card hovering over the pile—you don't respond, but you react.
"You were scared of me." he finishes and the statement lands heavy.
Your fingers tighten around the card an for a second he thinks you'll shut down again, that you'll retreat maybe even all the way back under the bed, but you don't.
You set the card down gently.
"I wasn't scared of what they were doing." you say quietly, avoiding his eyes and Simon can practically hear the words you're not saying—you've had worse.
The admission is so matter-of-fact it makes something inside him go still.
"But when you yelled..." you continue, eyes fixed on the cards "...and when you threw them like that-"
You pause, shoulders drawing in slightly again.
"You looked like you were going to kill them." you finally press out and Simon hates that they lack accusation, that they're just honest.
He doesn't defend himself, doesn't justify it.
He replays the moment again; the force, the slam, the instinct to dominate the threat completely.
"I know." you answer softly, eyes moving upward as second as if you might meet his gaze but you decide against it before the eye contact can happen.
"But you looked like it." you add, looking away slightly as if ashamed of your observation.
That's worse because you believe him and were still afraid.
He nods once, slow.
"Thank you for telling me."
Your gaze flickers up at that again—brief and searching.
Most people argue, dismiss and correct but he doesn't.
"I reacted, but I don't want to be someone you're afraid of." he says carefully.
The confession feels strange on his tongue, too vulnerable.
You study him for a second, longer than usual.
"You don't have to yell, I listen better without it..." you say quietly.
He huffs a faint, almost humorless breath.
"Yeah, I noticed."
A beat.
"I'm trying." he adds not defensive, just factual.
Your fingers tap the edge of the well worn deck of cards in the floor.
"I can tell." you nod so quietly that it might as well be a whisper.
It's small but it's the first time you've offered him anything that isn't compliance or quiet endurance—it's acknowledgment.
He deals the next hand slower.
"Next time I'll keep my voice down." he says, voice steady but softer than it's ever been with you.
You nod.
***
A few more weeks pass and Simon can't help but notice that, despite getting visitor clearance, there's no one coming to visit you.
You're still quiet most of the time but on the occasions you talk and share things about yourself, you never mention anyone outside of the ward—no family, no friends.
You keep going to group therapy, your sessions with your assigned psychiatrist and keep taking your prescribed meds which definitely improved your overall mood and social behavior.
Simon thinks that's a good sign, a really good one—perhaps you won't be re-admitted this time once you're released.
But the longer you stay, the more he notices the gaps.
Visitor hours come and go.
Other patients wait by the doors on Saturdays, fidgeting with nervous anticipation—some leave disappointed, some leave with tear-streaked faces and some leave smiling.
You never even wait, just sit in the common room with a book you rarely turn the pages of or you help another patient with a puzzle, sit with the patients with eating disorders to accompany then during their mandatory snack times or you simply watch the clock like the hours don't mean anything at all.
No one asks for you at reception, no one calls.
At first Simon tells himself it's none of his business but by the seventh week since you were admitted, it starts to feel like it is.
He finds Mara in the staff room one evening, both of them halfway through lukewarm tea.
The ward is calm for once—no shouting, no alarms.
"They hadn't had a single visitor." he says, casual tone forced as he stares into the murky liquid.
Mara looks up at him over the rim of her mug, knows who he means without him having to say a name.
"No." she confirms.
"Is that normal?"
"For them? Yeah." she says with a small shrug.
Simon's jaw shifts a little at that.
"No family?" he asks.
"Estranged."
"Friends?"
"Drifted."
The answers are short, clinical and he doesn't like them.
Mara studies him for a moment longer, scrutinizing him under her gaze from just over the rim of her mug.
"You've taken an interest."
"They're my patient." Simon shrugs.
"They're one of your patients." she corrects immediately as if expecting that kind of answer.
He doesn't respond to that and Mara sets her mug down with a small sigh after a few moments.
"You want to know the full chart?" she asks.
Simon hesitates.
He doesn't like reading patient files or being force-fed their diagnoses, he thinks there's more to people than what they struggle with and he can usually guess what people are struggling with—but you stay a mystery.
So, after a hesitating, he nods.
Mara reaches for the file on the table beside her.
"PTSD. Long-term. Not combat." she says while giving Simon a pointed glance, subtle but there.
"Chronic depression. Recurrent self-harm since adolescence. Hospitalizations started mid-teens."
Simon goes still.
Self-harm.
He thinks of the way you always wear long sleeves, even when the ward gets too warm.
"Triggers?" he asks, voice quieter now.
"Authority figures, raised voices, physical restraint, violence..." Mara pauses for a moment "...feeling trapped."
That lands heavier in Simon's chest than the rest.
She continues.
"They-" she corrects herself and uses your name instead, softer "-don't escalate outward. They implode. That's why they're compliant. It's not stability, it's survival."
Survival.
He knows that word intimately.
"They mirror a lot of you." Mara adds gently.
Simon's head snaps up.
"I don't self-harm."
"That's not what I meant." she eases immediately.
Silence stretches between them for a few moments, then tea growing colder.
"You both default to control, though you externalize it while they internalize it." Mara says carefully.
He doesn't like how accurate that sounds.
"They think they're a burden, thinks people are better without them around." Mara continues and this time the words mane Simon's stomach tighten.
He thinks about the way you never ask for anything extra, never linger after conversations, never assume space—how you thank staff for the smallest accommodations like you're apologizing for existing.
"They improving?" he asks because that's safer ground than continuing to ask more about what you're struggling with.
"Yes." Mara says firmly "The meds are helping, therapy too."
A beat as she hesitates, tapping the nail of her index finger against her mug once, twice and a third time before continuing—careful, soft.
"But...progress doesn't mean cured."
He nods slowly and Mara tilts her head.
"You need to be careful." she says and Simons gaze hardens slightly.
"I am." he says firm, almost irritated.
"No, you need to be careful with yourself." she says gently.
That makes him frown.
"You sit with them longer than your rounds require, you bring that card deck every shift now." Mara points out and Simon has to admit to himself that he didn't realize he was doing it until she said it.
"You watch them during group like you're waiting for something to happen." she continues.
He does because he is waiting for something to happen, knows how quickly a bad night can undo a good week.
"They're fragile and you don't...do well with fragile." Mara adds softly and Simon involuntarily has to think of you under that bed—of you curled up in the darkness, of your quiet voice saying 'I'll listen'.
"I can handle it." he mutters.
"That's not what I'm worried about."
The implication hangs there—attachment, projection, crossing lines that exist for a reason.
Later that night, Simon does his final round.
You're sitting on your bed, knees drawn up, a book open in your lap—your roommate had been reassigned to a single room due to their violent outburst, leaving you alone in the double room since there haven't been new patients.
You look up when he knocks.
"Evening." he says and you nod in acknowledgment—at first it bugged him that you wouldn't return the word, now he's gotten used to it.
Simon steps inside, checks the window latch, the bathroom and going over the usual protocol but his attention keeps drifting back to you.
To the way the fluorescent light catches faint, old scars along your wrist where your sleeve has ridden up, to the tiredness in your eyes that he recognizes too well.
"You sleep alright last night?" he asks.
"Better." you say quietly along with a small nod.
You open your mouth, clearly hesitate, then speak again.
"You?"
The question catches him off guard.
"I manage." he answers with a small shrug and you nod like it makes sense.
He lingers a second too long by the window before slowly taking a few steps back towards the middle of the room and subsequently the door.
"You know...if you ever need to talk outside of sessions-" he starts carefully but stops himself because that right there is a like he was about to cross.
But you just tilt your head slightly.
"I know."
And that somehow feels like you're reassuring him.
When he leaves your room, closing the door softly behind him, something uncomfortable settles in his chest.
It's not just professional concern, it's not just duty—it's the sharp, protective pull he felt in combat when someone on his team was exposed to gunfire or danger except you're not his responsibility in that way.
You're a patient and he is starting to care in a way that feels dangerously close to something else.
Back in the corridor Simon presses a hand briefly against the cool wall and exhales.
He tells himself it's empathy, shared experience, understanding and not attachment—not the kind of care that blurs lines and makes men like him reckless.
But when visitor hours come again that weekend and you don't even glance toward the doors, he feels the absence like it's his own which is when he realizes this is no longer just about doing his job well—it's about you and that's a problem.
my masterlist
a/n: I based this on my own experiences in psych wards so I won't really take criticism for it since experiences differ depending on institute, illness, country and so on. Feel free to share your own experiences though, I always find it fascinating how others found their stay in psych wards though I of course hope none of you ever had the need to go to one/be forcefully admitted.
Also, I've been switching between 2 different keyboards and my phone writing this+got sick halfway through so half of this may not make sense so I will proofread and edit this once I'm feeling better<3
happy ⠀black history month ⠀to all the black americans , the afro-caribbeans , the afro-latinx afro-natives , and other black diasporas. we’re strong and this was always about us <3
"PRETTY PRETTY PLEASE I DON'T WANT TO BE A MAGICAL GIRL" EPISODE 2 🌟
"I Want to be a Normal Girl"
SATURDAY, JANUARY 31ST @ 11AM PST!!!!!!!!!!!!
New episode animatic dropping! Planning on doing a stream right before to watch the pilot/episode 1 together and do a small QnA~ There will also be a lil announcement after the credits 👀
WE'RE SO BACK!!!
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