ghost’s reaction when you tease him for being intimidating
┆♡︎ ⌗ note ◞ tumbrl isn't letting me upload any pictures so no pictures on this post 😞 (it finally let me !!!)
divider credits @enchanthings
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simon riley
it starts harmless.
a comment tossed out with a smile. a quiet laugh under your breath when someone gives him a wide berth. maybe you bump his arm and murmur, “you know you scare people, right?” like it’s an inside joke.
simon freezes.
not stiff — just still. the kind of stillness that makes you wonder if you crossed a line. his head tilts slightly, mask angled toward you, unreadable. for half a second, he says nothing. you can almost hear the gears turning behind his eyes, assessing whether you’re mocking him… or just being you.
“Intimidatin’, yeah?” he repeats finally, voice low, rough around the edges. not offended. not amused. just processing the word like it doesn’t belong to him.
you tease him again. lighter this time. softer. tell him how people straighten when he walks in, how rooms quiet, how even you sometimes forget how big he is until he looms without trying.
that’s when he exhales.
a slow breath through his nose. his shoulders drop a fraction — barely noticeable unless you know him well. his body turns toward you more fully, blocking out the rest of the world by habit.
“not on purpose,” he mutters.
that’s the thing about simon — he never wears intimidation like a badge. it’s not something he enjoys or cultivates. it’s just… what’s left of him after years of surviving. posture learned in warzones. silence learned in loss. eyes that have seen too much to soften easily.
you grin and poke his chest anyway. “you do it without trying.”
his hand comes up immediately — not rough, not sharp — catching your wrist mid-motion. instinctive. controlled. he looks down at where he’s holding you like he’s suddenly aware of his own strength.
he lets go at once.
“sorry,” he says, quicker than you expect.
you laugh, tell him it’s fine, tease him again — say something about how terrifying he must look to strangers.
that’s when his gaze sharpens.
not angry. not cold. focused.
“to strangers,” he says quietly, leaning in just enough that only you hear, “that’s the point.”
his voice drops lower, softer after that.
“wasn’t meant for you.”
there’s something vulnerable in the way he says it — like he’s drawing a line between the man the world sees and the one he allows you to know. like he’s afraid you might only see the mask if you keep joking about it.
if you tell him you’re not scared — that you never have been — he doesn’t respond right away. his eyes search your face, looking for any sign of doubt. any crack. any lie.
then he nods once.
“good,” he murmurs.
later, when it’s just the two of you, you tease him again — gentler now. say you kind of like it. the way he makes you feel safe just by standing near you.
that’s when he finally reacts.
he huffs out a quiet sound that might almost be a laugh. almost. his hand comes to your hip, heavy and warm, grounding both of you.
“reckon that’s the first decent thing anyone’s said about it,” he admits.
you joke that he’s a big scary guard dog.
he scoffs softly.
“more like a fence,” he corrects. “keeps people out.”
then, after a pause:
“keeps you in.”
it’s not possessive. not threatening. it’s instinct. protection wired too deep to untangle.
if you push it — grin and say “oh? am i trapped?” — he leans down until his forehead brushes yours. the mask nearly touching your nose. his voice drops to that quiet, dangerous calm that makes your stomach flip.
“only if you wanna be.”
but when you laugh, when you touch his arm without fear, when you look at him like he’s more than the shadow he casts?
that’s when simon relaxes fully.
because you teasing him for being intimidating doesn’t make him feel mocked.
it makes him feel seen.
and the fact that you’re not afraid — that you joke, poke, smile, stay close — means more to him than he’ll ever say out loud.
the 2 second moment of ghost stabbing a guy in full body armor and flipping the corpse one handed into a dumpster has been stuck in my head like a song for days
The first time you see Simon kill someone is the first time he kisses you.
The stranger appears like an avatar of the slow, starving extinction of the wastes, a swaying conglomeration of bones and rags. Beady, sunken eyes look out from frostbitten flesh. You freeze when you notice the apparition staring at you with those dead fish eyes.
He is not menacing, not in the way you can see Simon being. His back is bowed over sharp ribs, bloated belly, and protruding joints, his breath wheezes from blackened, ash-clogged lungs. But he is desperate and desperation has made an animal of him.
You are not a person and neither is he. You and all you have are means of survival and he is the starved animal that will take until there is nothing left.
He is faster than you anticipate. He lunges with a renewed vitality at the life you hold like a spluttering flame. Ragged, sharp nails rip into you, through the bulky layers of your clothes. Hands grasping, wrenching, slamming you into the ground. He is a fury of madness, his fetid fear spilling from him as rotten blood from a putrid knife wound.
Simon appears so fast that the sudden presence of his mass makes your ears feel like they need to pop, his gravity encompassing you like a collapsed star.
His event horizon passes over you, colliding into the man instead. Ash plumes from the ground where Simon slams the man down under his weight.
His violence is a brutal, efficient thing. Silent and final. The stranger doesn't even manage a gasp before it's taken from him. Gloved hands separate vertebrae as if that was the first thing they ever learned to do before discovering the tenderness they're capable of when holding you. There is no second glancing at the body on the ground, no compartmentalization. It was a threat and now it is nothing. Death as transformation.
When Simon turns his eyes to you, you feel time stretch between the space separating you. Two black wells, pulling you into their dark infinity with a swooping vertigo. In them is the darkness at the end of all things. You feel its phantom weight wrap around you like the depth of it all is too vast to be confined by just the borders of him.
His hands, clean of blood but still soaked to the bone with it, rise to your face, fingertips grazing your cheeks. The skull of his mask touches your skin when he lowers his forehead to yours. This close you can't see his mask, can't see death. All you see is Simon.
Palms drag across your cheeks, over your ears. Fingers lace together at the back of your head, cradling you, further securing you into his gravitational orbit.
Simon says nothing, skin still crawling from the sight of you in the ash. A Ghost howls in his blood, baying for the world's to be spilled.
Simon smothers the Ghost, focuses on the weight of you in his hands. A flame still burns.
His mask leaves your skin as he angles your head down. You lose sight of his face, vision instead taken up with the fortress of his chest and shoulders.
In one moment you feel nothing but the biting cold on your skin and in the next you feel warm, uncovered lips pressing to your forehead. The heat of them scalds you. The texture of their scars sink into your skin like a brand.
He moves down, laying a kiss on each of your closed eyes like coins for a burial. They remain closed as his lips travel to each of your cheeks, face upturned to the warmth of his attentions. That warmth drags further down like the last sunset the world had ever seen.
Simon pauses. A man made into a ghost made into a man again. His hands, which were born into the language of violence long before the world ended, which know the feeling of broken bone and steaming blood better than the weight of something alive have remained steady through every reaping of every soul they severed.
Never once have they faltered. Immovable through the war and death of every known thing, the remains of which continue to fall like snow years later.
But when he presses one final, soft kiss to the Eden of your mouth, when he feels his pulse beat in concert with yours, they tremble.
are we getting anymore rugby simon anytime soon? 🫣
you can count on rugby simon being an ongoing thing, i honestly don't see an end to it lmao. but it all really depends on whether or not my brain and muse aligns enough for me to write anything hfsjakhfdk
HOLY SHIT I AM IN LOVE WITH YOUR WRITING!!!! i literally js went through all of your writings. like girl (gender neutral) thank you so much youre doing a HUGE favor to humanity. the apocalypse au AKLASJLDKFKLFLKDSKJFK TOO GOOD. the medic fics GRRRRRR. i ate them ALL up. you've quite literally made my day. ive been so depressed as of late, its been a tough week and even tougher week awaits sigh and ive been so so tired, like literally losing the will to live. anyways my point is that youve literally given me the energy to go on with my day (idk if it makes sense but in my mind it does). thank you so so much, please keep on with the awesome work and i hope you have the most fabulous awesomesauce month ahead :))))))))))))
thank you so much 🖤 and look, i'm right there with you. i hate that you're going through a rough time and i hope you're hanging in there alright. it's never wrong to ask for help if you need it, even if it it's just a hotline number you can call to chat to someone for a few minutes. take it from me, i was a huge skeptic about that shit but it can help a bit, even if it's just to distract you from further spiraling. sometimes you just gotta take it day by day, hour by hour but i'm rooting for you anon 🗣️🖤🖤🖤!!! and i hope YOU have the greatest most fabulous month :p
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