Eisy @hirunoka - Tumblr Blog

The Ultimate Punk Move

Words: 8,134

(Ao3 link in reblog)

Characters: Simon (Dinner in America 2020), Patty (Dinner in America 2020), Kevin , Connie, Norm, Original Female Character(s)

Additional Tags: Established Relationship, Domestic Fluff, Hurt/Comfort , Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Found Family, Confessions, Patty is an amazing girlfriend, Connie has a soft spot for Simon, They all do actually

Summary: "Protecting your skull is the ultimate punk move." Patty was right, as usual. The helmet holds, the leg doesn't.

What comes after is something Simon's never had before: people who show up, and keep showing up, for no reason except that he's theirs. He's never been fussed over like this. Not once, not by anyone who was supposed to.

Notes:

For @incidentale

@incidentale, so, I actually started this one a loooong time ago (11 April 2024, remember Emergency Contact?) when we talked about Patty's family and I kept coming back to it, wanting to get it right before handing it over, so it's been sitting in a folder longer than I'd like to admit. Hope this makes you feel as loved reading it as I felt writing it for you. And I hope it was worth the wait. HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I love you so much and I'm so lucky to have you in my life 🧡🌻 (AGAIN: Thank you for dating Adam, Sauli 😂 )

It had started as a beautiful, lovely day: waking up with Patty sleeping peacefully in his arms. But then again, every day with Patty was a lovely day for Simon.

The confused and focused expression on her face made him wonder what she was dreaming about this time. She looked absolutely adorable like this. The last time she had her I’m-Having-Another-Weird Dream™ expression like this one, she had seen that they were living on Mars together and giving a concert to Mark Watney who wasn’t feeling jolly about it because apparently he thought his potatoes didn’t like punk rock music and it affected their taste so he yelled them to get the fuck out of Mars and leave him alone— which ended up with Simon throwing a potato at his head before burning the whole planet down with Patty. They hadn’t even watched or read "The Martian" recently what the fuck, he loved the way her brain worked. Absolutely loved it.

He kissed the tip of her nose and smiled down at her as he watched her sleep.

"Simon..? What happened to your ears?" Patty mumbled moments later when she woke up and slightly opened her eyes to look at her boyfriend.

"What the hell are you talkin’ about? Are you still asleep?" he chuckled as his hand went to his right ear, wondering what she meant. Nothing felt wrong with his ears.

"Yes… No. Maybe?" She mumbled again, half-asleep as she rubbed her eyes, trying to make sleepiness go away.

"Well, babe, you’ll have to pick one of them."

"I had a dream that you were an elf,” she explained. That was what it was about, then. "Some guys from a company were trying to steal your guitar—"

"Corporations, fuck ‘em. Of course they were trying to steal it, nothing surprising here. Damn pigs."

"…which was also the key of a parallel universe and you were trying to protect it. Some gingerbread men, they were good but you thought they were evil, came out of nowhere to help you but you tried to eat them. Well, not just tried actually. You managed to eat their leader. Therefore they decided to join the dark side. You were about to eat another one when you woke me up."

"Is this your way of telling me that you’re craving cookies or something? And hey, where were you while all of this shit was happening? I feel so betrayed right now," he feigned hurt by dramatically placing a hand over his heart while Patty snorted at his reaction. “Hearing that Dream Simon had to fight these assholes all alone breaks my heart. Not that he couldn’t, mind you, but I’m sure he would want you by his side. Every Dream Simon would want you by his side. We could eat them together."

"But baby, you’re not listening," Patty complained, "the gingerbread men were actually good!"

"Still. If my beautiful girlfriend is craving cookies I don’t give a damn if they have good hearts or not. I only care if they taste delicious." He shrugged his shoulder and brushed a strand of her hair behind her ear.

He had helped her to dye some parts of it to red yesterday and it suited her so well. Patty loved red and it has turned out it was something she wanted to do but never felt brave enough to try before. The way she smiled when she saw her reflection in the mirror was priceless.

That was one of the things he adored about her: how easy it was to make her happy.

In a world where "more" seemed to be the anthem… Simon found solace in the simplicity of his girlfriend’s happiness. He knew there were many who chased after grand gestures and always waited, hoped and aimed for the next big thing.

He thought about all the restless souls he’d encountered before— those always seeking more and more.

Don’t get him wrong, it was only natural to seek for something when you practically had nothing and thought this world owned something to you. It was completely something else.

He was talking about the ones whose happiness always seemed fleeting, always depended on having the next shiny object or the next shiny accomplishment like they were greedy crows. And yet, despite their pursuits, they found themselves trapped in a cycle of dissatisfaction, forever grasping for something just out of reach.

He questioned if that’s how he used to be before meeting her and decided that his situation used to be a mixture of both: because he knew he had to seek for something more and that this world owed it to him.

If he hadn’t done that, he would be still trapped in the bottom of the pitch black pit in his brain.

Simon had to admit that he didn’t always seek for something more in the right places— or in the right people, for that matter. Before Patty, he was one of these guys who would just have random hookups after concerts just to feel something. And even before that, he would experiment with whomever because it would piss off his mother at least.

He couldn’t say it was very fulfilling, though, after a while.

So he had started looking for something more than a random hookup.

He had thought he has found it once, actually. There was this one girl he thought was special and he tried his best to make her happy, but it seemed like he wasn't just enough to make her happy. And he never would be.

It didn't end any good between them. What he had with Emma was short but an… intense relationship, to say the least.

Thinking about his ex made him appreciate Patty even more.

"You’re crazy. And evil," Patty said, breaking Simon from his thoughts.

"Yeah, crazy about you."

"I could tell from the way you’ve been staring at me with heart eyes for four minutes straight, angel."

"Four minutes? Fuck off, babe. I’ve been staring at you with heart eyes the minute saw you in that alley with your smock on."

"Liar liar pants on fire. You were looking at me with crazy horror movie puppet eyes back then. Or an owl. A puppet owl maybe?"

"You always say the nicest things to me," Simon laughed. Just as he spoke, Chomby, their pit bull stirred from his spot at the foot of the bed, his thick tail thumping against the blankets as he woke up.

They had rescued him six months ago from a backyard breeder wannabe asshole.

***

Originally, they had gone there to buy a busted bass amp someone—that asshole’s neighbor— was selling online. He didn’t expect to walk away with a grown pit bull and a sudden surge of anger flooding his chest, making him see red.

But well, he saw the sad looking rusty cage set up in the dirt of his junkyard excuse for a backyard, with a broken lawn chair and half-chewed tire nearby. Then he saw him— skin too tight over his ribs, looking at him like he’d already given up trying to be loved and sitting in silence like he’d learned a long time ago that making noise didn’t get you anything but trouble.

He didn’t even think it through. Just told the asshole his truck was getting towed—which was a lucky guess because he wasn’t sure that truck belonged to him but he shot his shot and luckily, it worked. While the guy ran off cursing about parking enforcement he opened the cage and picked the dog up—all muscle and nerves—and bolted like hell, yelling Patty to start the car meanwhile. He hopped the fence with the dog in his arms like a "punk rocker firefighter", Patty’s words, not his.

Patty also had said that he was insane, kissed him and called him her angel again.

"Guess we’re parents now, huh?"

"Seems like it, what do you think, Chomby?" Patty asked, glancing in the rearview mirror at the dog, who was laying on the back seat with his head tilted slightly as he looked between them.

He thought of the time she had asked if her pretend dog’s name could be Chomby and chuckled. “Of course you’d name him Chomby already.”

The dog gave a small bark, as if agreeing with the name.

"See? He likes it." Patty smiled, glancing at Simon briefly as she kept her eyes on the road.

Simon grinned and leaned back in his seat, trying to get comfortable in the now cramped space. "I won’t be surprised if you name your firstborn Chomby as well."

Patty shot him a playful, side-eye glance. "Don’t tempt me. Oh God, I can’t believe you just stole a dog."

"Let’s say I reassigned him instead," he shrugged, caressing Chomby’s head. It wasn’t the first time he’d "reassigned" a dog, anyway. He still stood by the time he gave his ex-girlfriend’s poodle to a kid on their block who’d wanted a dog more than anything. It wasn’t his fault because c’mon, he was sure she would abandon the poor dog sooner or later anyway! She wasn’t a keeper, that one. And the last time he checked Snoopy was doing pretty good. So no one could criticize him.

"Won’t you defend your dad, Chomby?” Simon asked as Chomby yawned loudly and launched himself at Simon’s side, licking his face. “Okay okay, gross, but love you too, buddy. Mother says your dad looks like that crazy puppet from Dead Silence. What do you think about that, hm?" he teased, scratching the dog behind the ears.

"Don’t twist my words, you liar. And apparently he currently just thinks you’re very lickable. Can’t say I disagree." Patty smirked as she ruffled the dog’s fur.

***

"Want me to drop you off by the way?" Simon offered, wiping dog drool off his face.

"Laura will pick me up, we're gonna go hit the thrift store before our practice."

"Cool. Speaking of Laura—"

Laura was the drummer of Patty’s band. Simon liked her bandmates, they were solid ones. He was pretty skeptical about them at first when Patty told him about them, talked about how great and cool they were.

"Oh damn you already found a replacement? Didn't think you would forget me so soon," he had teased her. And had warned her about not to fully trust them and leaving the door of doubt ajar in case they weren’t who they appeared to be.

He had been burned and stabbed in the back by his former bandmates, after all. Besides for Donnie who’d stuck around even when things got ugly. He didn't want the same to happen to his girlfriend. But after months of hearing about the band, he felt like maybe he had been worried for nothing.

While he was in jail, they were always there for her—something he couldn't say for his former bandmates, again, besides for Donnie— in ways he couldn’t be.

Especially Laura. And that counted for something. Surprisingly, there were so little arguments between them.

He still couldn’t say he fully trusted them, though, because the only person he 100% trusted was Patty, but hey, he could say that he was at %65 with them, while with Laura, he was closer to 85%. And even that was pretty high in his standards. That was practically sainthood, even. No one could blame him for having trust issues after what had happened to him.

"Simon."

He raised both hands in mock surrender. "What? I’m just saying. Laura is a goddamn beast on the drums. You lucked out." He grinned at the thought of their past gigs. When Donnie was out of town, she had stepped and he learned his set like it was nothing, filled in like she’d been part of his band from day one. No drama, no ego, just super steady and clean rhythm and a quick nod before they hit the first note. Played like the pro she was, never missed a beat.

"True but she’s still mine. It’s not tits that you’re trying to steal my drummer."

"Stop with the accusations, I’m not tryin’ to steal anyone,” he said just as his phone rang. He glanced at the screen. “Oh, speak of the devil."

"Is that Laura?"

"Yep," he answered. "Hey."

Laura’s voice came through, full of background noise. "Hey, tell Patty she needs to charge her phone. I tried calling her earlier, but it went straight to voicemail. And just checking— does Patty want coffee or should I surprise her with something cursed again?"

Simon grinned at that, "Go cursed. That’s how she learns."

"I heard that!" Patty shouted, taking the phone. "Ignore him, I’ll take a cursed drink and a normal one just in case."

"Will do. And Simon?"

"Yeah?"

"You’re not booking me for another one of your sad gigs unless there’s pizza involved this time. And not the shitty ones you dare to call pizza here, either. I want some great quality provola, sausage and mushrooms pizza."

"Sad gigs? Rude. And also fair. It’s a deal then."

"The hell it is. I also want that Flyers ticket I was promised moooonths ago."

"Want me to kidnap Konecny for you as well?"

"Nah, wouldn’t want you to traumatize our goalie. He’s traumatized enough. Although, there’s a high change you would get along. Who knows? I’ll get a cursed drink for you as well, okay, bye!"

The call ended with a beep.

"She likes you."

"She likes pizza."

"She can like both."

"I’m just saying, when you get famous and leave her behind for some unfathomable reason—"

"Simonnnn!"

"I’ll give her a good home."

"Shut up, she’s not a puppy, you demon."

"I thought I was an angel?"

"Not when you’re up to something sinister like trying to stealing my drummer. Any plans for the afternoon by the way?"

"Think I'll just stay home and hang out with my inspiration fairy— wait, I can't. You won't be around during the day."

Patty raised an eyebrow, clearly not buying it. “You are always welcome to come watch us practice, but what you gotta do is get those audition brochures printed out and put them up around town. You’ve been postponing that for a while now. You know you can’t keep finding temporary musicians you don’t know to play your songs for the gig. They lack the spirit of it most of the time.”

Sometimes, Simon would perform with Patty's band, and it was always lovely—sometimes Patty would join him and sing with him ever since he was out of jail, but he knew she was right. He needed his own, new bandmates.

"Laura sure doesn’t lack any spirit, but well, someone doesn’t want to keep sharing,” Simon groaned. “Ugh, fine. I’ll do it later. I’ll be so productive."

"Baby, not everyone is the same. You had some bad luck, yeah, but that doesn’t mean the same thing will happen again. Besides, they’ll have to face me if they ever cross you," Patty said with a reassuring smile, her voice soft but firm.

Chomby barked like he was saying "they would have to face me as well," in his own way.

"Right right, they’ll have to face me and your boy. And probably Laura. She has a killer right hook. Which you’ll find out yourself if you don’t keep your promise to her."

"That girl is nuts about hockey I swear, I don’t see the appeal but I support her enthusiasm. I’ll pick you up after your rehearsal then? We can swing by your parents’ place after. You know, since it’s Norm’s birthday."

Patty blinked, "You remembered?"

"'course I did."

She just kissed him in answer. Because sometimes, words just weren’t enough.

"Any help with gift ideas?" Simon asked.

"Nope. You’re on your own."

"Cruel woman."

"You spend so much time with him that I’m sure you already have some ideas anyway."

"I’ll just buy him a shirt. Old men love their shirts."

"You won’t buy him a shirt. I know you. It would be the easiest thing to get and you are not exactly fan of easy."

"Damn. You really do know me too well."

What Simon didn’t tell her was that, he had already bought a gift for Norm. Also for Connie and Kevin as well, because why the hell not?

***

Simon didn't know how it happened.

One second he was driving his motorcycle through the pouring rain, and the next he was crashing to the ground, the sickening crunch of metal against bone echoing in his ears. The impact threw him from his bike, sending him skidding across the wet asphalt.

For a few seconds there was only static: rain hissing against the road, his bike screaming somewhere off to the side before the engine finally choked and died, and underneath all of it, a high, thin ringing that seemed to come from inside his skull rather than outside it.

For a long second, he couldn't breathe. The pain arrived all at once; a burning scrape ran along his right arm where his jacket had torn, his ribs screamed every time he tried to inhale. His left leg felt wrong. Definitely wrong. He tried to push himself up, pure, stupid instinct, get up, move, and the moment he shifted his weight, agony exploded through his lower leg.

"Oh—for fuck’s sake—"

He collapsed back onto the pavement with a strangled groan and he understood that his left leg didn’t only feel wrong, but looked wrong, too. It wasn’t supposed to look like that. Wasn’t supposed to bend like that. Obviously.

He stopped trying to move it.

Through the haze of agony, he tried to make sense of what had just happened. The driver who had struck him hadn’t stop; they just left him there, broken and bleeding, as they fled into the night like Reverse-Flash. Or Punisher. Yeah, Punisher was a more accurute example.

Gosh he was hanging so much with Kevin.

Rain hammered against his visor.

Somewhere close, brakes shrieked. A car door opened. Footsteps splashing toward him, fast and frightened.

"Oh my god, oh my god, are you okay? I saw you go down, I already called 911, they're coming, okay? Just— don't move, please don't move— Are you okay?"

Simon opened his mouth to answer, maybe to yell “Do I look like I’m okay, you dumbass?” but nothing came out except a shaky breath.

The voice kept going, dissolving into rain and ringing, a dispatcher's voice bleeding out of a phone speaker somewhere above him, the man replying: “no he’s not unconscious” and Simon registered all of it the way you register a TV left on in another room. Present. Not for him. A stupid show playing on it or whatsoever. Just noise.

His ears rang.

Everything felt... slower than it should.

His hand aumatically moved, slow and shaking, up to his head.

Helmet still on. Of course. His gloved fingers rested against its scratched shell. Cracked along one side, he could feel the jagged seam of it under his fingers where it had taken whatever he'd hit head-first, but stil on. Intact enough. He'd know if it wasn't. He'd have felt it for sure.

Thank god he didn’t have to feel it.

…Well, more like, thank Goddess.

His Patty.

He let his hand fall back to the wet asphalt, and for one long, suspended moment—more than the pain, more than the stranger's voice cracking above him, more than the rain working its way down the collar of his jacket—all he could think about was Patty's face, not exactly long ago, tight and upset in that quiet, precise way of hers, in their kitchen.

***

"You are unbelievable," she'd said. Arms crossed, watching him toss his keys on the counter, that same beat-up half-shell helmet swinging from one hand like more decoration than protection at this point. "You know what happened to my cousin, Simon? Her ER doctor told her a helmet doesn't stop you from crashing. No. It just decides whether you get to complain about it after."

"Baby, I've been riding since I was—"

"I don’t care if you left your mother’s womb riding a bike screaming ‘fuck yeah’, Simon.”

That made Simon chuckle as he shook his head. Then, defense mode on again.

"I'm just sayin', I know how to handle a bike. Like I know how to handle you in—"

His girlfriend didn't let him finish as she smoothly stopped his attempt to hug her from behind, which he hoped would calm her down and maybe even seduce her as a sweet bonus.

"And I'm just saying, I've watched you do donuts in a parking lot with your hand out the side like some B-movie extra, so forgive me if your track record isn't exactly reassuring. Yeah it looks badass, gotta admit it, but still."

She hadn't been smiling. That was the part that got him.

Patty, who found something funny in absolutely everything, in gingerbread men and stolen dogs and cursed coffee orders, standing there with her jaw tight and her eyes too bright, not laughing at all.

He hadn't had a comeback. Hadn't tried, even. Just stood there while she looked at him like she was quietly doing math on a future that might not have him in it, and something in his chest had gone very still and very cold.

She hadn't brought it up again for almost a week. He'd almost thought that was the end of it — a fight finally metabolized and moved past. The way most of their fights ended, with pizza and bad rom-coms Patty liked and her cold feet against his legs.

Then she'd come home from Laura’s, smelling like spray paint and looking entirely too pleased with herself, and set a helmet down on the table between them like she was presenting evidence at a trial.

It had been plain white once, one of the spares Laura kept around for anyone dumb enough to need one. Now it was somewhere between matte black and gunmetal, hand-painted, a little uneven in the way that told him she'd done it herself instead of paying someone who knew what they were doing—Laura would be that someone who knew what they were doing, as someone who designed their stage costumes—with a jagged streak of red tearing across one side like a lightning bolt. The same red he'd help putting in her hair a few weeks back, he realized. Deliberately matching. Band stickers layered along the back. His initials scratched crooked near the chin strap, like a kid's desk carving.

A couple of safety pins driven through for no reason except that they looked cool. Patches of checkerboard.

A pineapple sticker which made him think of their favourite hawaiian sandwhich they still loved having, even though Simon was skeptical at first, and which, naturally, made him think of their first kiss. It was his favourite detail.

"I'm not saying you have to wear it," she said, which was, of course, exactly what she was saying without saying it. "I'm just saying if you're gonna keep doing something this stupid and dangerous and,not gonna lie, hot as hell, you could at least do it looking like you didn't buy your safety gear at a gas station."

Yeah, he did actually buy his safety gear at a gas station. After threating the worker there for a discount.

"...Did you paint my actual helmet, or is this a new one? Looks like a new one."

"Because it’s a new one. Yours had a crack in the visor. I checked, Simon. I checked, and then I wanted to throw up, and then I went to Laura's."

That got him more than the yelling ever could have. Her checking. Finding the crack and not saying a word. Just quietly, privately panicking, and then doing something about it instead.

"Patty—"

"Protecting your skull is the ultimate punk move," she said, cutting him off, and pushed it into his hands before he could argue his way out of it like he did with most things usually. "You wanna know why? Because imagine, really imagine it, you crack that stupid, gorgeous, beautiful head of yours open on the pavement, and your brain turns into mush, and you can't even form the word ‘punk’ anymore. You just go bwuuuh at people for the rest of your life. Would that be punk? I don't think so. I think that would be extremely, deeply un-punk, and everyone would agree with me.” She shoved it another inch toward his chest. "Helmet on, angel. C’mon."

He'd turned it over in his hands, throat doing something complicated and unfamiliar, and hadn't been able to find a single smartass thing to say.

Wouldn’t be a first ever since he met Patty.

Underneath the paint and the pins and the furious, ridiculous tenderness of the whole thing, it was just this: she was scared of losing him, of him getting hurt. And instead of asking him to stop being himself, she'd found a way to let him keep being exactly that.

Just a little safer.

"See," she added, quieter now, and pulled a second helmet out from behind her back— smaller, white, the same jagged red slash across it, the same crooked hand-painted lines, made for the times she rode behind him with her arms locked around his waist and her chin hooked over his shoulder. "We've got matching helmets. Nobody gets to be an idiot alone anymore."

He hadn't turned her down. Couldn't have, not after that. He'd pulled it on right there in the kitchen, still in his socks, and let her adjust the strap under his chin with the deep, ridiculous focus of someone defusing a bomb.

When she'd finally stepped back to admire her work, she'd looked so unbearably proud of herself that he'd kissed her instead of saying thank you— because thank you didn't feel like enough, and he didn't trust himself to say anything bigger without it coming out stupid.

He'd never loved a gift more.

Well, besides for all the songs she has written for him but that went without saying.

***

"—sir? Sir, can you hear me? Ambulance is on its way, they said eight minutes. Can you tell me your name?"

The voice pulled him back under the rain, back to the asphalt and the ringing and the wrongness of his leg.

Eight minutes.

He heard it, filed it away somewhere distant, and made his hand move again— toward his jacket pocket this time, fumbling, fingers gone thick and stupid with cold and adrenaline. It took three tries to work the zipper. His phone screen was already spiderwebbed with cracks he didn't remember happening, slick with rain under his thumb, but it lit up when he pressed it, and that was all he needed.

He didn't think about calling anyone else. Didn't really think at all— his thumb just knew where to go, the same way his hand had known to reach for her instead of an argument.

It rang. Once. Twice. Three times. Then—

"Hey, angel, please tell me you're calling to say you actually did the flyer thing and didn't just ride around town for two hours pretending you did," Patty said, and he could hear band noise behind her, a stray drum roll, Laura laughing at something. Ordinary. Warm. The day he'd been having twenty minutes ago. "Because I love you, but I know you, and—"

"Patty." His voice came out wrong. Thin, scraped raw. He swallowed.

He heard her stop mid-sentence, heard the noise behind her go muffled like she'd turned away, pressed a hand over her other ear.

"Simon?" Different now. Sharp. "Simon, what's wrong? What happened?"

"'M okay," he said, which was a lie, and they both knew it was a lie, because his voice was shaking too hard to sell it. "Just— had a bit of a— the bike—"

"The bike, what about the— Simon, are you hurt? Where are you? Simon!"

"Some guy's callin' an ambulance," he managed, teeth starting to chatter now that the shock was wearing thin at the edges and the cold was properly catching up to him, rain still coming down steady and merciless. "Should be here in a few. 'M fine. Leg's— leg's not great, actually. Not gonna lie to you 'bout that part."

Something crashed on her end, a chair maybe, knocked over in her hurry. "Where. Simon, where are you, tell me right now—"

"Hey — hey, m'right here, not goin' anywhere," he said, and even now, even with his leg screaming and the rain soaking through everything and a stranger's hands hovering uselessly somewhere near his shoulder, some old, stupid instinct in him reached for a joke, because it was the only currency he had left to offer her. The only way he knew to say I'm still me, don't be scared. "Y'know. On account of the leg thing."

"Simon, this isn't funny."

"Little bit funny."

"It is not—" Her voice cracked clean in half, and that undid him faster than the pain had. "Please tell me you had your helmet on. Please, please tell me—"

He closed his eyes. Rain on his face, the ringing in his ears finally starting to thin out under the sound of her, and underneath the pain, unbelievably, something that felt almost like a laugh.

"Turned out," he said, slow, every word costing him something, "protectin' my skull was the ultimate... punk move, indeed."

One full second of silence. Then, thin and wet and furious with love: "Where are you Simon? I'm coming, don't you dare hang up on me, don't you dare—"

"Wouldn't dream of it."

"I mean it, Simon."

"I know." He did know. That was the whole point, he thought, hazy, watching the rain fall through the cracked ring of his vision — the reason his thumb had gone to her name before anything else even registered. "I know, babe. Not goin' anywhere. I’m not gonna die on you and leave you in a cold, cruel, Simon-less world.”

"Knew that letting you and Kevin play Resident Evil 3 Remake was a mistake.” Patty teased, huffing out a wet laugh. “C’mon angel you’re more original than that."

"Patty… Just… stay on the phone, yeah? Don't you hang up either."

His vision blurred around the edges.

The last thing he heard before everything dissolved into distant sirens was Patty's voice frantically repeating his name through the phone speaker.

***

Simon surfaced slowly, the way you come up through deep water when you've stayed under too long. First the pressure, then the light, then a beat of pure disorientation before the world sorted itself into pieces he recognized.

Fluorescent light. A steady, patient beeping somewhere to his left. The dry, chemical taste of anesthesia clinging to the back of his throat. Ew. Tasted terrible, honestly. Worse than a recipe he has tried three weeks ago for Patty and failed miserably, even. Something heavy and unfamiliar weighing down his right leg from calf to knee.

He blinked at the ceiling for a while. Then—

"Hey." Patty's voice, close, careful, like she was testing whether the word alone might hurt him. "Hey, look who's back."

He turned his head—slow, everything slow, like moving through mud—and found her curled into the chair someone had dragged right up against the bed rail, hair a disaster, mascara still smudged faint under her eyes, hand already reaching for his the second he looked at her.

"...Hi," he managed. His voice came out like gravel dragged through sand.

"Hi," she said back, and her whole face did something complicated —relief and fury and love all trying to happen at once—before she pressed his knuckles to her lips and just breathed there for a second, like she needed proof.

"How long was I—"

"Out? A few hours, after the surgery. It's Thursday now. Well— Thursday night. Or Curseday, like you call it." She said it lightly, but he caught the way her hand tightened. "You had us waiting a long damn time, angel."

"Surgery," he repeated, the word taking its time to land. He glanced down at the leg, elevated, wrapped, some kind of brace holding it rigid under the blanket.

"Plate and some screws. Tib-fib fracture, they said, which sounds made up but apparently isn't." She spoke too fast, words sounding too practiced, the way someone talks when they've had to explain something to too many people already and the words have already worn smooth from repetition. "Concussion too, but mild. The doctor actually said—" her voice cracked, just slightly, "she said the helmet probably kept it from being a lot worse. Skull could've cracked. So."

He thought, distantly, that he should say something about that.

Something that acknowledged the months of quiet, furious care that had gone into a can of spray paint and a strip of red across black fiberglass.

He didn't have the words yet, not fully awake, not with his mouth still tasting like a cheap chemistry set. He settled for tightening his fingers around hers instead, and that seemed to say enough, because her eyes went glassy and she had to look away for a second.

"They only let one of us back at a time. Recovery rules. One visitor while you were still under observation." Patty said, which made Simon raise an eyebrow.

"And by 'one of us' you mean..?"

A small, watery laugh. "You should've seen it. Mom wanted to argue with the nurse. Actually argue. Laura had to physically sit her down."

"They’re— They’re all here? Where's everybody now?"

"Waiting room. All of them. Have been since I called— don't think anyone even went home to change." She smoothed his hair off his forehead with a gentleness that made his throat go tight. "They're moving you to a regular room in a bit. Once you're settled, everyone can come back. Doctor's saying three to four days, maybe five if the swelling doesn't cooperate. Fair warning. My mother's gonna cry on you. I don’t think there's anything either of us can do about it."

To Simon’s surprise, again, she hadn't been exaggerating.

Once he was resettled—new room, blinds cracked to let in the last grey light of evening, monitor beeping its steady rhythm behind him—the door opened and it was like a small, devoted storm rolling in.

Connie got there first, and she did, in fact, cry on him, both hands cupping his face like she was checking he was really there, murmuring things half in relief and half in scolding—you scared us so bad, don't you ever, I made three different casseroles I was so nervous, they're all in your kitchen now, someone needs to eat them, Patty doesn’t like them—before she carefully, carefully hugged him, mindful of the leg, mindful of the IV line, like he was something precious that had already proven it could break.

Kevin hovered just behind her, hands jammed in his jacket pockets, practically vibrating. "Did you know," he said, the second there was a gap in the conversation, "that tibia fractures account for like twenty percent of all long bone fractures in the U.S.? I looked it up. In the waiting room. On my phone." He said it like an offering, which, Simon understood, in Kevin's particular language, it was.

"'preciate the stats, man."

"I also brought you this," Kevin said, and produced, with great solemnity, a comic book that had clearly been re-read at least four times, its spine soft and white with creases. "It's not a big deal. I just thought— hospitals are boring. This one's actually really good, though. I'll want it back eventually. Not, like, soon. Whenever."

Simon looked at the comic, and then at Kevin's face, open and earnest and worried in that specific, unfiltered way of his, and felt something shift and settle in his chest that he didn't have a name for yet.

"Thanks, Kev."

Norm came in last, hanging back near the foot of the bed with his cap in his hands, turning it over and over. He didn't say much—wasn't really a man built for always saying much, Simon had learned, across a handful of Sunday dinners—but he looked at the leg, and the cracked, discarded helmet Patty had insisted on bringing along in a plastic bag like evidence, still sitting on the windowsill, and something moved behind his eyes.

"Good helmet," he said finally, gruff, nodding once at it like that settled something important. Then, quieter, not quite meeting Simon's eyes: "Glad you're still here to argue with me about it."

It was, Simon understood, about as close to I was terrified as Norm was ever going to get out loud, and it hit harder than if he'd said the whole sentence.

Laura showed up twenty minutes later, alone, with a family-sized bag of gas station gummy bears in one hand. Gummy bears she knew Simon liked even though he denied it. Her eyes suspiciously red-rimmed in a way she clearly hoped nobody would bring up.

She didn't go to Simon first. She went straight to Patty, wrapped her up tight enough that Patty made a small, startled sound into her shoulder, and just held on, one hand cupped protectively around the back of Patty's head, murmuring something too low for Simon to catch.

Whatever it was, Patty's breath went shaky, and she nodded into it like she'd been waiting two days for someone to let her stop being the strong one for a second.

Only then did Laura turn to the bed, and even her once-over of him—quick, thorough, leg to face—had a kind of fierceness to it, like she was personally auditing the damage.

"Hi," she said, setting the gummy bears down by his hand like an offering before pulling the last chair close enough to rest a hand on his arm, light, like she was checking his pulse without making a whole thing of it. "You scared the hell out of all of us, you know that? Patty especially. I like having you around, man."

"Careful. That's almost a nice thing to say to me."

"Don't get used to it." She was smiling when she said it, though, and didn't move her hand. "This does not get you out of the pizza, by the way. Real provola. And I'm still taking that Flyers ticket."

"Wouldn't dream of denying you either one."

"Damn right you wouldn't." She reached over and tucked the blanket back up over his good leg where it had slipped, a small, automatic bit of caretaking that seemed to catch even her off guard. Then, like she'd remembered herself, she flicked a gummy bear at his forehead— which he was too doped up on painkillers to dodge, and which bounced off harmlessly while Patty laughed, really laughed, for the first time in what looked, from the sudden helpless way her shoulders dropped, like days.

Simon was grateful for it.

“That’s for scaring us,” Laura said “don’t you dare doing it again.”

***

They stayed for hours. Nobody seemed inclined to leave, despite visiting hours technically ending, despite a nurse coming by twice with gentle but increasingly pointed looks.

Connie held court in the corner, alternating between fussing over the thinness of hospital blankets and interrogating a nurse about discharge timelines, while Kevin read Simon panels from the comic he'd refused to actually hand over, doing all the voices badly and with total commitment.

Norm eventually settled into a stiff-backed chair by the window and didn't leave it, arms crossed, present in the specific, wordless way of a man standing guard.

By the time they finally filed out—Connie last, kissing his forehead, promising to be back with actual breakfast because hospital food is a crime—Simon lay there in the blue dark of the room, Patty curled illegally into the narrow bed beside him because no nurse currently on shift had the heart to make her leave, and thought that he had never, in his entire life, been fussed over like that.

Not once.

Not by anyone who was supposed to.

It should have felt suffocating. Instead it felt like something he hadn't known he'd been starving for.

***

Two days later, most of the noise had died down into a gentler routine—Connie in the mornings with real food, Kevin after school with the comic and increasingly specific medical trivia, Norm in the evenings, quiet in his chair, Patty there always, curled somewhere near him like she'd taken up permanent residence.

Patty had gone by his apartment the evening before to grab him a change of clothes and his charger, and come back a little quiet, like she was chewing on something. "Found some stuff in your nightstand while I was looking for the charger," she'd said, careful, almost like she was confessing to something instead of just reporting it. "Wrapped and everything. There's a medium one with my dad's name on it. One's got Kevin's. Other one's got— " she'd paused, half a beat, "my mom's." A small, helpless laugh had escaped her, like she'd caught herself out just saying it. "Didn't touch them, obviously. Left them right where they were." Simon had just mumbled something about seeing them on sale a while back, no big deal, and Patty hadn't pushed— but she'd looked at him afterward with an expression that was somewhere between fond and thoroughly undone.

It was during one of the quieter stretches the next morning,

Connie alone with him while Patty ran to the cafeteria and the others hadn't arrived yet, that it finally came apart.

She was refolding a blanket that didn't need refolding, the way she did when her hands needed something to do. "I keep meaning to ask," she said, not looking up, "have you managed to call your parents? I know Tanzania's a nightmare time difference, but I'm sure they're worried sick, all the way over there. If you don't have a good number for the mission house, I could try to track one down—"

"Connie." His voice came out strange. Smaller than he meant it to. "There's somethin' I gotta tell you. About my parents. About— about all of it, actually."

She looked up then, blanket forgotten in her hands.

"They're not missionaries." The words came out of him in a rush, like something that had been pressing against a door too long. "They're not in Tanzania. I made it up. All of it— the church, the mission house, the— the host family thing, that first dinner. There was no host family. There wasn't anywhere else for me to go, and I didn't think you'd let a total stranger sleep on your couch if I told you the truth, so I gave you a story instead. I don’t see my family anymore, well… besides for my little brother Danny.”

The room went very quiet.

Norm, who'd just come through the door in time to catch the tail end of it, stopped where he stood. His jaw tightened, something hurt and closed moving across his face. "You lied to us," he said, low. "Sat at my table. Ate my wife's cooking. Let my kids—" He stopped himself, jaw working.

"Dad." Kevin, right behind him, backpack still on, dropped it without ceremony and stepped half in front of Simon like he needed defending from something physical. "He didn't lie about anything that actually matters. He's still Simon. He still remembered your birthday when your own brother forgot. He still let me talk his ear off about tibias for forty-five minutes without once telling me to shut up. That's not nothing, Dad. That's… basically everything."

"Kevin—"

"I mean it." Kevin's voice cracked a little, thin with feeling he clearly wasn't used to voicing this directly. "Before him, we argued a lot. And Patty didn't— she didn't laugh like that. I didn't have anyone to show my stats to. I was—“ He didn’t finish his sentence. Then let out a sigh. “You can be mad about the lie. But don't act like the rest of it wasn't real, because it was. It's still real."

Simon, throat tight, made himself keep going before he lost the nerve. "I've felt like garbage about it for months. Worse, after all this." His hand moved, small and helpless, toward the leg, the room, the whole overwhelming week of casseroles and comic books and Norm sitting in that chair. "Y'all didn't have to do any of this. Weren't obligated to. And here I am, lyin' to your faces about who I even am, and you're still—" His voice gave out.

Connie set the blanket down. Crossed the small distance between the door and the bed, and did what she'd done the first night, cupping his face in both hands, thumb brushing careful along his cheekbone.

"Oh, my child," she said, and it undid him more than anything else in the whole terrible week had. "I already know who you are. You prove it every single day, with every smile you put on my daughter's and son’s face. You've shown us things about ourselves we needed shown— mistakes we made, with both of our kids, a long time before you ever walked through our door. I'd like to think we've gotten better at it since. Because of you." Her thumb kept moving, steady. "Maybe you lied about a mission house and some parents in Tanzania. But you've been brutally honest about everything that's mattered since. So it's alright. You're forgiven."

"Why do you—" His voice broke clean in half. "Why do you all care about me this much?"

"You're family, Simon." She said it simply, like it was the easiest fact in the world, like it required no further explanation than the weather. "Of course we care. That's what family do."

Family.

Simon swallowed the tight lump in his throat and repeated the world quietly without even realizing he was doing it.

Behind her, Norm let out a long breath through his nose—not quite a sigh, not quite forgiveness yet, but close to it—and came the rest of the way into the room. He didn't say anything else. Just put a hand, briefly, heavy and warm, on Simon's shoulder, and left it there a moment before he sat back down in his chair by the window like he'd never left it.

Kevin picked his backpack back up off the floor, sniffed hard once, and said, with the particular bluntness that made him Kevin, "You still have to tell me the real story sometime. The actual one. I want details."

"Deal," Simon said, voice wrecked, and found that for the first time since the ambulance doors had closed on him in the rain, he could breathe all the way down.

Later, once Kevin had wandered off in search of vending machine snacks and Connie had stepped into the hall to call her sister with the update, Norm lingered by the window a moment longer than he strictly needed to, turning his cap over in his hands the way he did when he was building up to something.

"Cake's still in the fridge," he said finally, gruff, not quite looking over. "Connie's not gonna throw it out. Woman's got principles about wasted cake."

"Norm—"

"What I'm saying is." He cleared his throat, tried again. "When they let you outta here, whenever that is, however long it takes… We're doing it properly. My birthday, your leg, all of it, one night. Don't see much sense in two separate parties when we can just get it over with in one." He said it like a practical matter, logistics and nothing more, in the same flat register he used for everything that actually mattered to him. "Kevin will want to make some kind of banner. Connie will cook enough for twenty people. You'll sit there with your leg propped up like the guest of honor you've apparently become, and I'll finally get my damn cake."

Simon looked at him a long moment, throat working. "...Yeah?"

"Yeah." Norm nodded once, like that settled it, and headed for the door. "Don't make it weird."

The second he was gone, Patty—who'd slipped back in just in time to catch the tail end of it —dropped onto the edge of the bed, delighted. "Did my father just plan you a party?"

"Think he did."

"He hates parties. He complained about his friend’s retirement dinner for a month straight." She was grinning so wide it looked like it hurt. "He likes you. Officially. That's, like, tier-one Norm behavior."

"Guess I'll live, then."

"You'd better," she said, and kissed him, careful of everything that still hurt, like she had all the time in the world to make sure he knew it.

Notes:

To my dear friend: Funny how something that brought us together in the first place is still the thing I keep coming back to when I want to make you something. Happy birthday again. I hope this year brings you people who show up for you the way the Patty's family show up for Simon. I hope that life brings you everything your heart and soul sing for. You deserve them all. Sending many hugs 🫂🧡🌻 And to everyone reading this: Thank you for reading this all the way through, everyone. Penny for your thoughts? 🌻

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