#ghosties blurbs

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Small delivery.

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You had been terrified your entire pregnancy. Not of being a mother. Not of König. No— you were terrified of the size of the baby.

Because your husband was a mountain of a man.

Nearly seven feet tall, broad enough to block the entire doorway, hands so huge they made coffee mugs look childish. König looked like the kind of man built to father massive babies with bowling-ball heads and shoulders wide enough to ruin your life on delivery day.

The closer you got to your due date, the more emotional you became about it.

“König..” you whispered one night, staring at his chest while he held you against him, “what if your baby comes out built like a full-grown toddler?”

He nearly choked trying not to laugh.

“Our baby is not coming out with a beard, Schatz.”

“That’s not funny.”

“It is a little funny.”

You’d smacked his chest weakly while he kissed your forehead, though the poor man did try comforting you afterward. He promised he’d stay beside you the whole time, promised your body was made for this, promised doctors existed for a reason.

Still, you expected pain.

Expected terror.

Expected to hear nurses gasp in horror at the giant infant you’d somehow created with this massive Austrian soldier.

Instead—

Your baby arrived…..tiny.

Absolutely, unbelievably tiny.

A little thing wrapped in hospital blankets, blinking up at the world with huge blue shiny eyes and the faintest dusting of strawberry-blonde hair across their soft head.

The nurse placed the baby into König’s arms and the sight almost made you cry harder than labor itself.

Because König looked gigantic.

His enormous scarred hands cradled the baby so carefully, so delicately, like he was terrified even breathing too hard would hurt it. His shoulders shook beneath quiet laughter, stunned and disbelieving.

“So small..” he whispered.

Your baby’s hand curled around one of his fingers— and couldn’t even hold all of it. König stared like his heart had been ripped straight from his chest. Meanwhile you were still emotional for an entirely different reason.

“That’s it?” you croaked from the hospital bed. “That’s what I was scared of?!”

König outright laughed then, deep and breathless behind his mask before he leaned down to kiss your forehead repeatedly.

“You were very brave for surviving our terrifyingly tiny child.”

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I imagine Simon being..INCREDIBLY socially awkward.

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Simon Riley who was trained to read battlefields, not people. He catches the shift of a rifle barrel before anyone else notices, can hear danger in the quietest room— but put him in an ordinary conversation and suddenly he’s operating without a map.

He misses all the hints, someone flirting? They’re just being polite. Someone going quiet because they’re upset? He just simply thinks they want space. Someone trying to politely end conversations through body language? He keeps talking because he’s focused on the topic.

Simon who takes sarcasm literally, answers questions too bluntly, and never realizes when someone wants comfort instead of solutions.

It isn’t cruelty..it’s just that social rules feel like a language everyone else learned naturally while he had other things to survive. Around people he trusts, the cracks show most— long silences, awkward attempts at reassurance.. he’s trying his best to connect, he just doesn’t know how.

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a/n: I love this socially awkward and emotionally unavailable man.

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….I’ve been thinking about teen Simon today.

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Simon who learned young how to tell what kind of night it would be by the sound of his father’s footsteps. Heavy meant drunk. Fast meant angry. Quiet was the worst of all. Quiet meant pain…torture. Quiet meant things no child should’ve had to go through.

Simon who kept himself small after those nights especially—shoulders tucked in, voice swallowed down, bruises hidden beneath long sleeves and hoodies even in the summer. teachers called him a “quiet young man who’s well behaved.” But Simon had simply mastered the art of surviving without being noticed.

Simon who now—at the age of 38—late at night lies awake staring at the ceiling wondering what kind of man he could’ve been if home had ever been safe.

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a/n: I want to cry thinking about how scared he had to be the first time his father hit him…..