Parents Evening with Simon Riley
summary: simon riley finds out even abstinence can't prevent from becoming a dad
warnings: parental bereavement, depression, mention of not sleeping/not eating, BULLYING
reader is a teenager, about 16
Simon Riley isn't a father. He never had the honour to sire any child, he barely even had the ability to charm a woman into his bed. After he joined the army, after his face was marred and after his trauma and hesitancies were brought forward, he'd been celibate. He'd never minded this, particularly. The more people you let in, the more leave. He was a pessimist, sure. You ask him what the leading cause of divorce was, he'd answer marriage. So he avoided human contact and he was content with that.
On top of that, any previous human sympathies had been cut off. That meant his brother as well. It was only through pure luck he head about his sister-in-law's death because of the birth of his niece. And despite himself, he'd watched the little girl from afar. His brother held the same trauma as him and now he had no-one to hold his hand? Poor girl.
You did not have an easy life. Born early, born small, born to cause her mother's death, born to a man sickened by grief and hardened by his own childhood. Truly, you had no chance. Somewhere in Ghost's cold cavity, he found it within himself to seek this girl out.
All he found was a sad little list:
You were a quiet girl, an echo of Simon at your age, the sadness behind your eyes was nothing less than permanent. You worked hard, perhaps too hard, you did well but you had no friends, barely spoke. Exemplary grades, polite to a fault, sweet but completely friendless.
Simon didn't meet you until your father died.
The funeral was a formal affair; a church sat deep in the Yorkshire Dales where the wind whipped and the fog settled over the heather. The eulogy was prewritten and impersonal, delivered by a priest with a long face and sour eyes.
Simon hated funerals. He only attended because Price had forced a day off for him and it felt hollow to deny himself the last goodbye to the cruel man who he had once shared his everyday with. He sat alone, no mask on his face for once. He did not get up, he did not deliver a speech, he did not even bring flowers.
It was only the little girl that seemed to notice him. He recognised you immediately. Her dress was respectful and black, her hair was down and curly, untouched by the foster parents behind her. She tilted her head and Simon and smiled.
He turned his head and checked she was not smiling at anyone else and when there was not, he waved back. She darted away from the two women meant to be supervising her grief after the coffin had been buried and the ceremony was over. She pulled at his sleeve and when her fingers brushed with his skin she pulled her hand back, rubbing it on the velvet panel over her chest.
He nodded solemnly. "Sorry 'bout ya dad, kid."
You didn't answer, instead stared up at him and blinked. Simon bristled under the stare and nodded again.
"Are you here to take me home with you?" You said, quietly.
Simon nearly choked. "What?"
You nodded and gestured behind you to the woman who had been holding your shoulder. You noticed Simon and walked over.
You held out your hand. "Mr Riley, is it? God, the family resemblance is strong, isn't it?" You laughed. "I'm Martha. Your niece's caseworker. We've been trying to contact you for a few weeks now. But she's been left in your care after the death of her father. The good news is, because it was in his will, there's not much that needs to be done! You just need to sign this form and you can take her home today."
Simon didn't know what was going on as he scrawled over a piece of paper. But by simply attending his brother's funeral, he had become a young girl's emergency contact, father figure and mentor.
Simon hated funerals.
Despite his impromptu step up, he soon became Dad. You never called him that, it was always 'Simon' to his face. But he was gentle with you, he helped train Riley, the German Shepherd, with you. He took you shopping and taught you how to defend herself against men triple your size. He built you a bookshelf, a desk and rearranged your room whenever you got bored of it. He had helped you wallpaper and paint her room with minimal complaint. He enrolled you into therapy with no shame. He taught her how to shoot a gun and survive the recoil. He could not teach you how to make friends but he became your best one.
In short, your father may have died when you were seven but it was that crash that meant you met your Dad.
You were quiet that first night. The fog swept up into a light drizzle and into heavy thunder. The first stop had been a supermarket for some pyjamas (there was a limit to the oversized fashion, Simon assumed). You rejected his bribery through sweets and instead crouched in the international aisle, knees parallel to your ears as you stared at the pot noodles.
Simon didn't even notice you weren't beside him until he heard your high pitched scream and he sprinted through the shop, calling your name. He found you, head still tilted towards the noodles but eyes scrunched shut as a woman crouched beside you. She looked up and her face paled at the sight of Simon: black suit, black balaclava, unit of a man.
"Sorry, ma'am. She's ma niece." When the woman smiled and seemed to batter her eyelashes, Simon panicked and blurted, "'Er dad's dead. Really dead, y'know?"
She turned even paler and scurried off.
He knelt down next to you and poked at your cheek with a fat finger.
You started and stared at him, snot dribbling onto your lip, cheeks wet, red and swollen. You sucked your bottom lip in and blinked with wide eyes.
"Y'want tha'?" he pointed and you nodded. "Alrigh'. Come on."
He clasped your hand in his; Goliath gently guiding David through Tesco.
He took you home and set you up in what would become your bedroom and was currently a disused spare room full of boxes, a treadmill and a lumpy single bed.
That first night seemed to set the benchmark for the rest of your life with your uncle: a man truly trying his best and delivering.
Surprisingly, you grew up to be a reasonably well-rounded teenager. Admittedly, you were maybe socially stunted, chronically lonely, on antidepressants but you were witty, incredibly intelligent, excelling at the academic side of school, kind, beautiful and the apple of Simon's eye.
Ridiculously clever, you landed yourself a scholarship at the country's leading grammar school, which luckily meant Simon now had a perfect place to keep you safe while he was on deployment for months on end—a school with security designed for Ladies and Princesses? That was perfect for Simon's little girl.
So, you wore the pinafore dresses, the minimal makeup, bent the rules to pierce your cartilage a few (many) times, you endured the dorms and hid in the bathrooms at lunch time. You never told Simon you hated it because you knew it would break his heart and how could he handle that?
You didn't tell him about the rumours or the cruel names only teenage girls could conjure or the instagram accounts and the messages. As far as Simon knew, you had depression, yeah, but you were okay. You had friends, even had a boyfriend, maybe, life was good.
Which was why you had been dreading parents evening for months. You had tried to avoid it, even going as far to stalk and email Laswell's wife to try and get him deployed the week of. When that had failed, you resorted to convincing Johnny to come and mediate to avoid a full blown tantrum.
The phone call had been decently long winded, whispered through the school's phone after hours. You stood outside Matron's office, praying she would not wake up and take pity on you while you stood in your pyjamas.
"Pretty please, Johnny, you need to be here."
"Y' pleased are pretty now, aye? See if they were uglae, Idda said nah," he scoffed.
"Oh, my God, shhh!" You hissed. "But please. You actually need to be here. I don't care if they think you're fucking gay."
Johnny laughed and you winced at the sound coming through the ancient plastic, eyes darting to the door where Matron's snores paused then continued. "Why are ya so bothered, lassie? You fail in' Latin or some shite? Come on, donnae be ridiculous. He gonn' be proud as punch no matter because you're fuckin' insane, Riley. Ya both are."
"That's what I'm saying! He's insane and he's not gonna like it! Just think, Soap! It's a school full of prissy teenage girls and prissy teachers and prissy parents. He's volatile when the tube goes through Chelsea, let alone this."
Eventually, he relented and decided he wanted to noah at your posh school and posh friends.
You did not correct that you had no friends.
The day came and you had already thrown up thrice that day, eventually resorting to dry heaving into the art block bathrooms. You met them at the gates, Johnny had worn his most casual civilian clothes, jeans and some faded t-shirt and obviously wrangled Simon into something less... Ghost. A cap, dark jeans and a hoodie. He had even forgone the mask for your benefit, though his hoodie was pulled up high on his face and his cap low.
You tried to smile when Johnny went to ruffle your hair and make a joke. Simon smiled slightly and nodded.
"Y'alright, kid? You look pale?"
"You sent me to boarding school in rural Scotland, we don't see the sun for months. Come on."
Both men exchanged looks. They knew you. They knew you were nervous, they didn't know why. They knew this would probably not go as smoothly as anticipated.
The first few subjects went perfectly, you had perfect grades, perfect attendance, perfect manners. Your teachers loved you. But Simon and Johnny were trained to watch their surroundings and read people for hostility and anger. That distaste leaked off these girls when they looked at you. It boiled Simon's blood.
When your form tutor, Mrs Grace, finally caught up to you and thwarted your attempts to hide from her, your stomach dropped and you felt nauseous once again.
Mrs Grace took you into an empty classroom, thirty oak desks, chalkboard, high windows and an old projector.
Johnny whistled and laughed. "S'like fuckin' Hogwar's, innae Lt?"
You stayed quiet, blinking rapidly as you stared at one of the desks where you sat down. Mrs Grace watched you while she perched herself on the teacher's desk. "My apologies we've never met, Mr Riley."
Johnny grinned and winked. "I ain' Mr Riley. MacTavish. M'love 'ere refuses t'put a ring on it, y'know how they are."
Mrs Grace smiled awkwardly and nodded. "Well, Mr MacTavish and Mr Riley. I apologise I've been unable to introduce myself. I'm your daughter's form tutor. That means I help her with her classes and.. and certain social difficulties that can come with boarding."
Simon blinked and scowled at you, watching you closely, carefully. He said your name gruffly and you did not look at him.
Mrs Grace continued. "You may be aware that Miss Riley has been struggling to adjust. Many students struggle, it is not unheard of. But it's becoming a concern."
The entire conversation was a humiliation ritual. You had never felt so horribly lit up in all of your life. Mrs Grace bluntly laid out the nightmare that had been your life since you started. The cruel names, the slut shaming, the virgin shaming, the drawings, the videos, the instagram posts, everything.
It eventually ended up with the consensus that not much could really be done (for these girls fathers likely ran the government) though Johnny made a snide comment about using some nicely borrowed explosives to become the twenty first century Guy Fawkes. Mrs Grace looked stricken. But you were now enrolled into therapy, your own dorm room and would be separated from the bullies at any opportunity.
Simon took you to a shitty 24 hour cafe in the centre of town for a hot chocolate as a treat. They sat opposite you with matching "intervention expressions". Both ordered black coffee while you scarfed down a cream bun.
"Y'moving schools," Simon said gruffly. "That place is a breeding ground for bullying and—"
"Lesbianism?" you cut in. "Come on. It's inevitable in any boarding school you send me to. Either I'll be sobbing because I'm being fingered or because someone's being mean to me."
Simon scowled at you. "Don't be crude to change the subject, little miss. We've discussed this."
You rolled your eyes and sighed. "This is why I didn't fucking tell you. Because you'd get all self righteous and send me to the hole you went to."
"My school was not a hole."
"You once told me that your toilets didn't have doors because you lot would be doing cocaine in first year," you deadpanned.
Simon huffed and shrugged slightly. "I never said it was a place of academic success."
"Or hygiene codes, apparently."
"I think we're gettin' away from thae point here," Johnny cut in. "Simon's right, Lassie. Y'cant stay there. You're miserable. That gorgeous—"
You gagged. "—ew, Soap."
"That aesthetically pleasing but intelligent woman said you were barely eating, barely sleeping. She said one of the girls tried to poison you."
"She put strawberries in my water. She was trying to improve the taste—"
"Y'allergic to strawberries."
You scoffed, cheeks burning. "It's not a common allergy, is it?"
Both men huffed and stared at you. They were back to their 'intervention expressions' and exchanging glances that were probably born of long operations that required almost psychic abilities between the team.
Eventually, you sighed. "I didn't tell you because I knew you'd get anal about it and worry."
"I'm s'possed to worry, lovie, tha's my job," Simon said, surprisingly soft.
"I thought that after a while, it would die down and I'd find someone who liked me," you whispered. "I just feel so... alone."
Simon let out and exhale of breath as tears rolled down your cheeks. You tucked your knees up onto the sofa and suddenly you were back in that supermarket, completely alone in the world, sobbing and praying that someone would find you until he poked at your cheek and reminded you.
Your dad Simon would always be in your corner.
"We'll sort this out, okay?"
simon being forced into a position of care and entrusted with someone who needs/deserves love and affection. then having to accept that talking and therapy is good, FORCED to seek that help himself otherwise he's a hypocrite
simon, my love :(
my favourite tragic character, i'm gonna have so much fun "torturing" this man with his hypothetical, not real niece. ahhh......
this is kinda bad. i didn't know how to end it and it was kinda rushed but wtv i don't care atp. i also think i contradict myself ab six times in like really bad ways: if you see this, please let me know
this is not proofread or even reread bc i cringe too much when i reread my stuff
MWAH, love ya, have a WONDERFUL day/night 😘