Heaven Help a Fool Who Falls in Love
Pairing: Simon "Ghost" Riley x f!reader
Warnings: angst, fluff, mutual pining, Simon being in love but not saying anything
Synopsis: Months apart makes Simon realize how much he truly wants you...
Simon tries not to wake you when he comes home this early in the morning. He makes sure to open the door as quietly as he can despite the creak in it, and always takes his shoes off before stepping inside to minimize the sound of his footsteps. He would argue that he was pretty good at stealth, it was a big part of his job and he rarely ever got caught, yet when he was trying to sneak around you, you always seemed to hear him.
It didn’t matter if he came into the apartment without making a single sound, the light in your room would always turn on minutes after his arrival.
You stepped out of your room still in pajamas, your eyes blurry from sleep as you made your way into the living room to greet your roommate. You yawned and rubbed the sleep from your eyes as you turned the corner, a small smile pulling on your face when you saw him looking as if he’d been caught doing something bad.
“Morning.” Your voice was still heavy with sleep.
“Go back to bed.” Simon’s voice was soft yet there was almost a demanding undertone to it as he set his bag and shoes down on the floor.
“And miss ‘Welcome Back Breakfast’? No.”
It was a tradition you had set up a little while after you roommed with Simon. A meal cooked by you whenever he got home, a small celebration that he was back after being gone for months and an excuse to catch up on everything he missed. It also forced him to eat something when you knew that he wouldn’t otherwise.
He never outwardly expressed his love for the meals but you always knew he appreciated them when he ended up eating seconds and thirds of the food you made. However, he didn’t particularly like the breakfast meals mainly because when you were cooking him breakfast, it was between the late hours of the night and the early hours of the morning.
Simon didn’t like when you lost sleep because of him.
“Class doesn’t start until nine.” He argued but you dismissed him with a wave.
“So? I’ll be fine.” You didn’t give him the chance to argue anymore as you walked into the kitchen. “If you take a shower now, I'll be done when you’re finished.”
You listened to him walk towards the bathroom with a small smile, finally feeling at ease as the silence in the apartment disappeared after months of being alone. It was like a heavy weight had been taken out of the air or like the sun had finally parted the clouds after weeks of cloudy skies. Everything in you felt better when you heard the shower turn on as you began to cook breakfast.
It was a strange situation you were in. A college student who started way after she finished high school staying with a guy who disappeared for months on end for an unknown job living with each other in a small apartment.
A normal person would be thrilled that their stranger of a roommate was never there, especially when that stranger sometimes came back with fresh wounds, but Simon Riley was no stranger to you anymore.
It took almost a year and half before either of you got to the point where conversations flow freely, where you can talk his ear off about what you’ve been doing while he’s gone and something stupid that’s been going on in your classes without having to worry if you’re overstepping. You ask him about how he is and how he feels, he’ll answer. He’ll talk to you as much as he can and answer any questions, but there is one thing completely off limits.
You gathered he was a private man when you first moved in and he kept most of his belongings to himself. He never let you into his room and he had been shy about showing you his face until you expressed you were a little worried he might be a felon.
You tried to ask once, but he shut it down immediately.
“Someone like you doesn’t need to know about that.”
The response confused you then and still confused you to this day. You weren’t sure what he meant by ‘someone like you’, but you never questioned it, not when he gave you an almost glare, a warning for you to never ask again so you never did.
Not when he came home with wounds and not when you noticed the various weapons in his bag that he brought home. You turned a blind eye to the gun he kept in his nightstand and the knife he had hidden underneath his pillow in favor of keeping your friendship alive without pressuring him to give up his secrets.
You wouldn’t trade the relationship you had with him for any information. Especially not when he made you feel a certain way.
You finished cooking when Simon joined you in the kitchen with damp hair, smelling fresh and like home. You were about to plate food for you both before he gently pushed his knuckles into your shoulder.
“Sit.” He told you as he took the plates from your hands.
“You’re bossy this morning.” You teased but did as he said and sat down at the table, watching him make both of your plates. “Everything okay?”
Simon set your plate in front of you before he sat across from you as if he hadn’t been gone for months and began to eat. You saw his shoulders go less tense the moment the food was in his mouth and it was hard for you to keep a proud smile off your face as you began to eat as well. You both were quiet for a moment, just enjoying the food and the company of each other after so long.
“So I have an exam in three weeks,” you began and though he didn’t look up from his plate you knew he was listening. “In that one class.”
“Have you started studying?” He wondered and when he looked up at you, you averted your gaze from him quickly. “Am I going to have to help?”
“I’m not going through your crazy study bootcamp again.”
“You passed because of me.”
The conversations began to flow between you both. You talked about how one of your recent classes had been giving you mindless work to do for minimal points and how your other friends were doing, not that he particularly cared about what was going on with them but it was something to talk about.
He listened and made comments, engaging in the conversation as he helped himself to the rest of the breakfast, feeling a lot better than he had since he stepped on the plane to come back to you.
Simon watched you talk with soft eyes that bounced across your face unbeknownst to you. He took in everything about you, the small things that changed over the time that he was gone that wouldn’t have made a difference to anyone but he noticed them almost immediately. They didn’t make you any less beautiful or any less than who you were and yet it made him shift uncomfortably in his seat as he felt a small pit form in his stomach.
Maybe he wouldn’t have noticed the changes so much if he had been here, if he wasn’t away from you for so long. Maybe the changes had happened because he had been gone.
He wasn’t stupid. He could see the way you lit up like the fourth of july when he came home, how you would look a lot less tired when you saw him coming through the door like there had been a weight stuck on your chest. It did things to him that he swore would never happen the moment you moved into his flat as his roommate.
He leaned forward against the table as he watched you talk about your recent outing with your friends and his eyes flicked down to your lips.
Every time he walked through that door and you were there it took everything in him to not pull you into his chest, to touch you to make sure that he was actually still alive and that he got to see you again. That you were still here, that you still liked seeing him even though he neglected you for months because of his job, you still like him enough to make him food when you could easily just make him do it. He wished he could show you how much he actually missed you when he was gone.
You had no reason to be that way with him. You weren’t together and neither of you had ever made the move to take the relationship a step further. You didn’t owe him your time, you could easily find a different place to live and yet you stayed with him for some reason.
Part of him waited for the other shoe to drop. He waited for you to come to your senses and realize that the friendship you shared was too strange, was too taxing on your health for it to be something that you truly wanted.
Selfishly he wished you never did.
He wanted you to stay. He wanted you in his life even when it could be dangerous. The only thing keeping you with him were the secrets he kept from you.
“Anyway, I was thinking we could go to the store later this evening.” You said and he scowled.
“Why?” He grumbled as he took both of your plates to the sink before you could get up from your chair.
“We need groceries to eat.”
He sent you a look, one that signaled he didn’t appreciate your sarcasm but you just gave him a smug smirk that made him roll his eyes. He went back to washing the dishes and heard you get up, following your movement from the corner of his eyes as you came up to him and leaned on the counter.
“And because of tomorrow.” You smiled, a twinkle in your eyes that made him look at you with confusion.
“What’s tomorrow?” He asked and watched as your face fell slightly.
Simon looked at the calendar that was pinned to the fridge and saw that his birthday was indeed tomorrow, but he was completely indifferent towards the day. He didn’t celebrate ever, it had been years since he had celebrated any kind of holiday or his birthday until you came along. The only reason why you even knew was because you asked him and he found it extremely hard to tell you no when you asked him certain questions.
He put the dishes on the drying rack without another word.
“That’s it? Come on, get a little excited.” You nudged his shoulder, feeling slightly sad about his reaction. “You’re here for your birthday which means we get to do something fun!”
“Something fun would be not doing anything.” He retorted but felt a little bit of regret when you gave him a disappointed look.
“You don’t mean that…not entirely anyway.”
Simon dried his hands on a hand towel and stared at you. He watched as you stared back, your eyes still bright despite the disappointment and it made him falter. He couldn’t quite think of what to say so he ended up staring at you for a lot longer than what would normally be acceptable and subconsciously stepped into your space.
You knew he had a staring problem and it didn’t bother you after you figured out that if he was staring at you because something was off about the way you looked, he would tell you.
You raised your eyebrows in question but he didn’t say anything. A small smile crept onto your face and you poked his chest a few times, enjoying the warmth that you could feel off of him.
“What do you want to do?” You wondered softly because as much as you wanted him to have a great time for his birthday, it was still his day.
Spend time with you. The words nearly slipped out of him before he realized how close he was to you. He took a step back and finally looked away from you, his shoulders tensing up slightly as he moved on to clean the kitchen utensils you used to make breakfast.
Those words seemed innocent enough but he knew that it would reveal way too much about how he truly felt about you which you evidently put you on the spot. As much as he wanted to tell you how much he wanted you and show you the extent of how he felt for you, that could potentially drive you away. He wasn’t going to mess something like this up, not until he was absolutely sure you would return his feelings.
“We still have whiskey?” He asked and you nodded.
“You know I don’t drink your whiskey unless you let me.” You reminded him and the corner of his lip twitched up. “So movie night while drinking?”
You smiled and it was like he had won the lottery. You grabbed a piece of paper and a pen, scribbling down a few items on it to get at the grocery store before you handed it to him. You couldn't help the excitement that bubbled in you as you thought about having a movie night with him again for the first time in a while.
“You’re also getting a cake.” You stated and walked back to your room to get ready for classes.
Simon listened to you close your door before he looked down at the list in his hands. He read over the items you write down, noting that they were ingredients for a dinner he liked, and he felt his chest warm. It was almost too much, your sweetness but selfishly he couldn’t deny it, not when you so willingly give it to him without any conditions.
He wrote down a couple of things on the list as well before he glanced up at the clock hung in the kitchen. He frowned when he realized that you would have to leave soon. He hadn’t even realized the two of them had sat at the table catching up for that long.
A pit formed in his stomach and he looked around the room, his eyes narrowed as it suddenly felt too unfamiliar to him.
It wasn’t that he hated his flat but it oddly felt less like home when you were gone and he wasn’t. He was too used to your presence when he was home, too used to hearing you piddle around in your room or sit beside him on the couch and he especially was too used to you being around him the first day he was back. Without you around him, he felt like he didn’t belong.
“I just remembered that there’s a festival in town next week.” You came out of your room dressed for the day and with your bookbag. “We should go.”
“What’s it for?” He wondered as he watched you pack your bag.
“I’m not sure but there’ll be food so that’s enough to make me go.”
Simon hummed in thought. He wasn’t one to go to festivals not when there were so many people with overpriced food but the more he looked at you the more he realized that he would at least have some kind of fun if you went together.
You finished packing and he felt sadness slip into him. He wanted to make you stay just a little longer but he couldn’t, not when he wanted what was best for you, for you to do what you wanted to because you deserved it.
Instead he followed you to the front door, looming behind you as if he were your shadow. He gave a quick tug on the back of your shirt to stop you as you grabbed the doorknob to leave.
You immediately understood what he wanted and a smile stretched across your face as you turned around and pulled him into a hug. This wasn’t the first time he had asked for a hug in this way and you hoped that he would never stop doing as you enjoyed the way his warmth encompassed you.
He stiffened in your arms before he slowly wrapped his around you, pulling you into his chest as he rested his chin on top of your head. A long sigh left him almost like you had pulled out a lot of the tension left in his body from being on the field and his eyes fluttered shut so he could just enjoy finally feeling you against him.
“Can you survive without me?” You teased in a soft voice and gave him a comforting squeeze.
No. God no. Just the thought made the pit in his stomach deepen and he was ready to try to convince you to skip class this one time. He could manage the few hours you’d be gone but for longer than that? Before it was hard enough leaving his home for months but knowing that he was leaving you along with it made it so much harder for him to be without you.
“I’ll be fine.” He stepped away from you and stared at you with those tired eyes of his.
You stared back up at him, getting a good look at the scars that littered his face and the small parts of his skin you could see under shirt. You looked for any new ones and relief washed over you when you couldn’t notice any. You hoped that there weren’t any under his shirt but there was no way to know unless you asked him to strip.
You opened the door but didn’t step outside as you faced him.
“You sure everything’s okay?” You asked one more time because you could.
You were no stranger to the effects his job had on him even if you didn’t know what that job was. You had seen him lock himself in his room for days, not even to come out to eat or to speak to you. Sometimes it started the moment he walked in the door, barely giving you enough time to say hi before he disappeared but other times he seemed fine and then he would immediately crash into a depressive episode. It was impossible for you to tell if it would happen.
“‘M fine.” He assured you and you gave him a smile that lightened the pit in his stomach.
“Be back in a few hours.” You told him and he nodded.
You shut the door behind you and Simon stood frozen where he stood, his eyes trained on the door as a dreadful silence fell over the apartment. His hands curled into fists by his sides and his eyes hardened almost as if he were waiting for someone to burst through the door and attack him.
The silence was only broken by the tinnitus in his ears as he stared down the door, counting the seconds that went by as if it would make time go faster. It felt like a shadow was slowly looming over him, a presence that would drag him down to the darkest depths of his mind just to torment him since he wasn’t distracting himself on the field. He was too antsy to watch a show, too willing to fall back into his mind to read a book.
There was nothing to do. No one to talk to. You weren’t here to remind him that he wasn’t alone, that everything he loved wasn’t gone and that he hadn’t truly died that day.
For a moment, he thought about putting on his mask just to feel the comfort of it on his face. He wanted to get rid of these feelings and the mask could do that perfectly. It would let him push everything down, beat his thoughts into submission because Ghost was so much stronger than Simon was. He could hide from himself with the mask on and just ignore everything until he went on leave again.
He stepped towards his bag but stopped when he felt guilt creep up in his chest.
You didn’t deserve that. You didn’t deserve to be ignored, to be forgotten by him as he tried to forget himself, especially after how happy you’d been this morning.
Ghost didn’t belong here. As much as he wanted to become Ghost again so he could become numb to the loneliness and the sense of dread wracking his body, he couldn’t.
Not when he wanted you, when he wanted to see you again after so long.
Simon relaxed his hands and stretched out the tension in them. He huffed and sat down on the couch rather uncomfortably with his hands on either side of him, his eyes going back to the door.
It was just a few hours but Simon would wait for you to come back.
A/N: This is short but I felt like if I continued it would've dragged on. Anyway, hope you liked. Might become a series idk
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