seen from United States
seen from Japan
seen from Japan
seen from United States
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Japan
seen from China
seen from China
seen from South Korea
seen from Brazil
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Yemen
seen from Taiwan
seen from Japan
seen from United States
seen from Sri Lanka
seen from China
† VOW †
You x König x Simon Riley
A sequel to Vice. MDNI ta x
- Flux
- Crocodile Tears
- Apparitions
- Eyes Closed
- Bad Liar
- Traitor
- Perseverance
- Dawn
- Seaglass
- Dynasty
- Hate Me
- Take Any Form
- Atonement
- Graveyard
- Adore You
- I’ll Leave the Light On
- Watching Over Me
- Reverie
- Gorecki
- Ancient History
- Both Sides Now
The vibe
The playlist
Beautiful artwork by @nrdmssgs
I memed. And I’m making it your problem 🫶 LY
konig watching simon hit it
† VOW †
Chapter 1 | Flux
I have no idea where to start! I didn’t expect to finish VICE and dive headlong into this, but sometimes when the writing ghouls won’t quit that’s what happens. This is a heavy series, with heavy themes. Grief, angst, PTSD, Simon and Reader trying to repair their relationship, while a certain blue eyed menace lingers in the background. Sigh. Oh to have two men so vehemently in love with you. Big thank you to @theorist-fox who has spent hours talking with me about this. Honestly I am so grateful.
“It’s nice, peaceful.”
You run a hand over the polished marble of the counter tops, gazing out at the sunshine flooding into the garden through huge glass doors. You can open them right up, blend the outside with the kitchen. It will be beautiful in the summertime, you’re sure of that, the baby running in and out constantly when it learns to walk.
Now in mid March, the plants are just getting their colour back, buds on a cherry blossom tree popping into vibrant pink flowers, petals falling on the lawn like confetti. You watch the sparrows play in the branches of it, plucking stray twigs to make their nests in pairs.
“Thought you’d like it. More space than the other place.” Simon stops speaking abruptly and you know he’s thinking about the house you left in Germany.
He dealt with all of it, arranged the move with John’s help. After you turned up at the door of his hotel room, the only thing he asked was that you accompany him back to England. He wanted the baby to be born on home soil he said, knowing without a doubt that you couldn’t return to the house on that base, the one that was never a home. It was a symbol of loneliness, longing, packed full of memories neither of you feel ready to acknowledge yet.
In some ways, you wish you’d had the strength to help him with packing it up, putting the ghosts of your mistakes in neat cardboard boxes, taping over the gaping cracks in your relationship and putting them to bed. Except there is no container big enough to hold all of the trauma, bridge the void between you and your husband, a chasm in your marriage you’re both politely dancing around. He hasn’t even asked you to put your wedding ring back on.
You cover the awkward pause by smiling at him, hands automatically moving to touch the dog tags that used to hang around your neck. It felt so faithless, to have a reminder of your affair dangling in front of Simon’s gaze, swinging like a pendulum next to your heart. So instead you keep them in the pocket of your maternity jeans.
A compromise, the absolute least you can do in trying to repair this mess. One you caused, guilt hanging over you constantly like a beloved companion. You welcome it now, because it reminds you what you have lost, the cost of your decisions for others to pay in blood and final words.
Your eyes are starting to mist over. This beautiful house he’s bought for you both, like that could make it better, bring together the pieces shattered around your feet as you stand within it. Still you’re not entirely here, lost in the middle of nowhere on a military base filled with jeering voices.
“Stupid bitch, look what you have done.”
“She’s a whore Ghost, you’d do better putting a bullet in her than your cock.”
“Is he really dead?! You better call up to HQ. What a fucking mess.”
Simon bleeding out at your elbow. Johnny frantically calling for back up, as unrecognisable faces swam before you, snarling jackals feeling for Kö’s non existent pulse. All you could do was sob, put your hands to Simon’s side and press hard into the wound while he groaned, beg him to stay with you. Not to leave you like the other man beside you. Helicopter blades spinning. John’s deep, calming voice in your ear as he wrenched you upwards.
It makes you feel sick, creeps over you in waves until you shake your head several times, finally forcing your mouth to open and reply.
“Thank you Simon, for everything.”
He shrugs, still watching you carefully with his obsidian stare flat and unreadable. Can he see it? The crimson under your nails, the leach of burgundy under each footstep? Smell death on you like a perfume, even as life grows in your belly.
“Always wanted to settle somewhere, got a room upstairs for the kid. Y’wanna have a look?”
The kid. That’s what he refers to your bump as. Or baby. Either way the uncertainty of it is uncomfortable.
“Yes, I’d love to.”
You feel like he’s an estate agent, giving you a tour of a new rental property. There’s minimal excitement when he shows you the little room off the master bedroom, points out where he’s planning to build the crib. It’s understood without needing to vocalise it, that he’s trying his best. Simon has always been a fighter, has fought for you and nearly paid with his life for that. What he expected when you returned, you’re not sure. You’d put money on it not being the listless apathy you currently inhabit however, the liminal space between life and decay you’re holding a tenuous grip on.
Polite, so polite. Treading around the landmine that is König’s name, his lingering presence, the dog tags you hold tight in your fist when you fall asleep.
“Thought we could go shoppin. Get some bits before your appointment later. How’s that?”
“Mm?” You look up from your position at the window. The sparrows are still nest building, you can see them fluttering up to the gutters above and darting back down to the cherry tree. “That sounds nice, thank you Simon.”
One blonde brow quirks, mouth drawing into a line. You blink, wondering where you’ve misstepped, what you said that missed the routine of niceties you’ve both adopted.
“Kay. Ready?”
You nod, following him blindly out towards the staircase.
The retail park is packed with people, heaving with weekend trippers looking for exciting purchases. Knowing crowds make Simon uncomfortable, you glance at him. But he just squares his body and takes you gently by the hand. You choose several tiny pairs of baby socks, while Simon holds the basket, one paw concealed in his jeans pocket. A little stuffed toy and a breast pump gets added after Simon sees you looking at them.
“Gonna look at furniture love. Take ya time, I’ll be back yeah?”
“Okay, see you in a minute.”
He hesitates, then stoops to kiss your cheek briefly. It’s so tender that it stops you entirely in your tracks, wide eyed as you search for the correct response. You want to throw yourself on him, at his feet. Beg Simon to hold you close, the way he used to. It always felt so safe there, in his arms. You’re tainted now though, the fabric of your lives before is marred with fingerprints that don’t belong there. Ones you welcomed all the same, let skirt along your flesh between tangled sheets and webs of lies.
Simon’s broad back is already down the aisle by the time you return to the land of the living. You watch it go, feeling a little lost without him by your side.
The months of torturous loneliness living in Vienna, days of imagining running into König on the streets. Eyes like summertime and the smell of clipped cedar proving that it was all a nightmare, he’s not gone, remaining still in your reality, one he reshaped so entirely with his presence.
Lost in thought, you walk along the shelves, unwilling to pick anything else up without Simon’s help. It’s like you’ve regressed, gone back to being as weak and feeble as a small child. You look to him constantly for reassurance, though the repair you both desperately need can’t be rushed. It will take time. You hope he wants that still as much as you do.
Simon spends a vast amount of money on furniture, your contribution consists of a candle grabbed off a shelf at random and some photograph frames. There are a few to go through from the old house, but in your heart there’s a place for new ones to accompany them. Fresh recollections, future smiles though your stomach twists slightly at that. How can you be looking forward to a future, you have no stake in deserving.
“Ready? Got your records?”
Parked outside the front of the hospital, Simon switches off the ignition.
“Do you…do you want to come?”
“Do you need me there?”
He doesn’t mean it to, but that stings, smarts like a slap to the face verbalised. You can’t imagine the struggle raging inside him, the need to claim and yet keep his distance, the very obvious consequences of your turbulent marriage. Not knowing the outcome, Simon does the only thing he knows how to, reserves judgement until the situation is realised.
“No, I don’t need you to come.”
At the scan, the midwife asks if you’d like a picture to take home to Mr Riley. You say yes.
The move is uneventful, before you know it you’re unpacking, sorting through the upheaval of the last few years. Simon disappears to the nursery for hours, painting each wall sunshine yellow, putting together furniture furiously. It’s a distraction, you recognise that. One that means he doesn’t have to deal with your bag on the floor of the spare room, his hopefully unpacked in the master suite, a silent invitation.
Truly you’d love nothing more than to crawl into bed beside him. The consequences of that though, you can’t face just yet. He’ll know then, about the nightmares that haunt you, how you wake screaming and crying regularly. Calling his name then König’s in an endless succession. You don’t want him to blame himself in anyway for them, or for him to hear worse than that.
Far greater than the terrors of KorTac, are other dreams, ones that make you clutch the sheets in potent agony and ecstasy. You dread them more, fight to escape those tumultuous images, the feelings that come with them.
You still can’t find the picture of you from Rome, the one Simon took on your honeymoon in the sunshine, lost somewhere along the way here. It was his favourite, he insisted you frame it, had a copy of it in his office on base with the 141. Before he gave that up for you. Before he came home to an empty bed and a deserted house.
Instead you frame the scan image, placing it on your bedside table.
“Goodnight Simon. Thank you for today.”
He glances up from his laptop, blue screen illuminating his scars and bleaching them violet.
“Don’t have to keep saying thank you. Would do anything for ya, think tha’s clear ain’t it?”
You gulp and nod, words lost in your throat. Before you turn he goes to speak, then closes his mouth.
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
Inwardly Simon wants to ask you to call him ‘Si’ again. But now is not the time. You’re not ready and he’ll never try and force you into anything again. He can’t mould you, shape you into something that’s out of reach, only hope that you come back to him in spirit as you have done physically.
Upstairs in your sad single bed, you open the candle you bought. Instantly the scent of cedar and lemon balm cloys your senses. You screw the lid on so tightly you twist your wrist in the process.
His dog tags in your palm, you close your aching eyes, while the kid summersaults against your rib cage.
“This is not goodbye Maus…tell me you know this?”
Baby blue orbs blink at you through the darkness, replaced by seething narrowed ones you don’t know the owner of.
“Look what you have done.”
“Fucking bitch.”
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Masterlist
On AO3
If you would like to be taken off the tag list just let me know ❤️ I won’t be offended!
@cutiecusp @misshugs @pxssygxblin @vvvlamb @pinkslaystation @chinaza444 @dreamygirli3 @heliumshorns
† VOW †
Chapter 3 | Apparitions
This chapter is again very angsty. PTSD dreams, grief, depression. Simon gets a little POV
Anything in italics is a dream / flashback- whatever you would like to imagine it is. ❤️
In so many ways, it’s everything you ever dreamed of. Even in your wildest fantasies, you couldn’t have made it more perfect than it is.
Seamless heaven seeing Simon with a baby in his arms, perched on his hip while she starts to babble at him, grasp at things with her head a little unsteady like a sweet bud on a slim stem.
But alongside heaven, sits finely balanced hell.
Matilda starts to sleep more regularly and with that so do you. Or at least you try, barely managing more than a few hours a night before you wake covered in cold, drenching sweat, a hand pressed tight to your mouth, trying to stifle the screams that never want to end. Pulled from a place deep within, you want to hide from, run like a small child into the arms of a protector. Except there is nowhere to go, no place that’s safe for you anymore.
You’ll never escape, the rising tide is swallowing you whole. It’s all you can do to cling to the driftwood that is Simon’s dark, amber flecked gaze, the kind touches he lets linger sometimes as you move like wraiths around the house. Neither of you wanting to confront the other, expose the putrid core of it all. Unravelling thread, if you pull one string, will the rest of it unfurl until only shreds of your marriage remain?
Maybe there are just tatters left in any event. Simon devotes himself to being a father, throwing himself in head long, the aura of a man who needs distraction, the endless routine of changing Matilda, soothing her, feeding her. The only time you recognise sparks of joy in his eyes, is when Simon is watching her grow, little splinters of her personality beginning to blossom as she leaves the helpless newborn phase.
It gives you hope that, then simultaneously drowns it in wretched sorrow, plumbed from memories that hang in the background. Vivid portraits you never want to let your eyes linger on, showing them your back until they howl and scream. Until they visit you in nightmares instead.
You know he hears you. For his part Simon feels out of his depth entirely. PTSD is not unfamiliar to him, nor is grief. What comfort can he bring you though? When his own hands were the ones that caused those aching sobs to leave your chest, made your eyes pink and circled with unshed tears when morning comes and you’re curled up beside Matilda’s crib.
Instead he rolls over and stares at the ceiling. Goes to comfort the baby, while you hyperventilate against the sheets. He’s as haunted as you are, yet he never acknowledges it. False positivity pulled so tight across his features, he thinks his face might crack like sun-dried clay under the strain of it.
There has to be some way back to you, some remedy to it. Though it remains just out of reach to him, so the love unable to be lavished on his wife, gets funnelled into Matilda, or Mattie as he calls her. The nickname stuck, in the same way the little girl has to Simon’s heart. For she is blameless, an innocent spoil of a war she shared no part in, that bastard’s eyes transformed into an angel Simon cannot ignore or escape from. He loves her utterly and at times, he hates himself for that.
You though, you are sinking without a trace. He doesn’t know what to do about it, there’s no strength left in you to fight the riptide and Simon is too far away to drag you from under the waves by the scruff, kicking and flailing.
“Maus…Maus look at me…”
It’s cold, so unbearably freezing as the wind of that day howls in your ears. You don’t want to look, don’t want to see what you know you will with horrible familiarity.
“Maus…please…”
Your inner gaze is magnetically drawn to it, unable to resist even though your stomach churns at the sight. Gaunt, sunken cheeked in death, he towers over you, terrible and beautiful in equal measure. Paler than freshly fallen snow, with those livid bruises under both azure coloured eyes. They alight on you, soften at the edges while his brows crease with adoration, he goes to speak again but only blood leaves his lips, bubbling up his throat. He staggers and you raise your hands to catch him, icy fingers close on your forearms so tightly you can smell his scent tinged with iron and heartbreak.
“I love you…please Kö! Please stay with me!”
You’re covered in crimson, unnatural amounts of viscous, dark red fluid flooding into every pore. He looks on, horrified as your mouth opens in a gasp while you try and wipe it away, cupping his face as he holds you. More seeping in fat burgundy droplets, unstoppable, inescapable — ”
Simon’s eyes open groggily, trying to adjust to the velvet night of the bedroom around him. You’re crying, he can hear you attempting to muffle it through the walls, face probably buried deep in the sheets. It’s so visceral, the noise, even concealed, he feels genuine pain at the sound of it.
Sitting up he waits for it to subside, half torn between wanting to go to you and being unsure whether that will make things worse. Gradually the pure silence returns, pressing in against his eardrums. Punching his pillow into a more comfortable position, he leans backwards again, staring into nothingness.
Kö you called him that day, even though König wasn’t his real name. It was a façade, a mask in the shape of a snipers hood just like the skull was for Simon. A rival still in death, a competitor even though Simon punched a blade between his ribs.
You can’t erase the memories and neither can he. There has to be a reason this happened, but Simon doesn’t understand all that. His logic for the moments in life that torment vanished when his family was butchered all those years ago. There wasn’t any purpose to anything until he met you, until your lips parted and sunshine danced across your face so brightly, he felt blinded by it.
“Simon?” You sob in the dimness, his name echoing through the still house as you linger at the door to the master bedroom. “Si?”
He’s on his feet instantly, your hesitation the invitation he’s been waiting months for, reading between the silent unspoken things in your voice. He always could tell what you needed and it’s like a balm to know he still has that gift.
Simon’s arms encircle you, broad and so reassuringly warm it makes the feeling return to your numb limbs. He pulls you into bed, gratefully you settle across his barrel chest, the muscles living and breathing, no death tinged rattle under your head. Taking your hand in his you lie together, listening to his heartbeat thundering within him.
It reminds you so palpably of the first night he held you, a lifetime ago now, far down the meandering road your feet have taken you on. That night his pulse raced too, as did yours in turn. Your soul always replies to his calling it, even if your mouth doesn’t want to vocalise that.
“I never told you how sorry I am Simon. For all of it. For doing that to you.” You’re making his skin damp with tears, ones that seem never to dry, replaced by fresh moisture though you try and wipe them away. “I’m so sorry.”
“Know that, knew it all along.”
In the same way he does with Mattie, he rubs circles on your back, inhaling the scent of your shampoo. That’s all he can think to reply, inwardly he curses his emotional stagnation, the inability he has to put what he feels into coherent speech.
“I would do anything to take it back. Anything.”
That lingers in the air for a moment, while Simon lets the feeling of your body next to his regulate, a choke at the back of his throat. By the time he’s swallowed the lump, you’re fast asleep.
“So would I love.”
There’s something cold pressed against his skin, refusing to warm there. Those dog tags weigh heavily on you both still. Simon isn’t sure how it’s possible, but he despises the man more in death than he did in life. Claws sunk so deep into your subconscious, there’s no removing them without losing you again in the process.
He should have let you walk away. If he had been a better husband, acknowledged that his behaviour was integral to the landscape of it all, perhaps he would have done. Simon just couldn’t do it though, every interaction without you in his life felt hollow, meaningless. He searched for you in each person Johnny tried to set him up with in the decay of the months you were apart. Went home in shell shock alone because there was something so wrong about anyone else touching him. It’s your hands he wants pressed against his chest, traitorous though they may be, one palm still searching for the grip of another man.
Any ounce of closeness you give him, he’ll lap up. A starving stray cast into the wilderness from a loving home, Simon is aware his perspective is skewed. It doesn’t matter though, he’ll bank his last chips on the fact that you’re meant to be by his side, that was what gave him the strength to fight that day against a formidable and frankly underestimated opponent. To save his girl from the enemy, save his heart from being torn from his rib cage.
Simon gave you that beating, dark shrouded chest ornament a long time ago, really when you smiled at him on your first day on base during orientation. You saw through the bullshit of Ghost to the frightened man beneath and that was it, the beginning of the end for his pretence.
You start to shake again in your dreams, so Simon holds you tighter, hoping he can squeeze the sadness out of you, wring it from your body like bitter water and set you somewhere to heal.
Gradually, you settle at his touch and Simon lets that hearten him entirely.
The last time, Simon didn’t see the signs until it was too late. He may have won one battle but he hasn’t triumphed. König is still present, but this time there’s nothing Simon can do to banish him. You’re slipping through his hands like water again, not into someone else’s bed, but into the depths of something dark and unknown.
You wake early, Simon’s getting ready for work, trying not to disturb you. Quietly you watch his broad back as he searches for a T-shirt through drowsy eyes, muscles rippling as he tugs it on over his tousled blonde hair. It’s still dark outside, birds chirping brightly in a dawn chorus. Simon hesitates, glancing over at the bed, catching your silent gazing. For a second, he dithers on the spot uncharacteristically, almost as if he’s thinking about something difficult. Then he gives you a small smile, before disappearing to search for his car keys.
The pillow underneath your head still smells like him and you press your face into it. What did you expect? That one night in his arms would cure the poison you planted within your marriage? It doesn’t work like that, but you’re unsure where to begin to fix it. Badly you want to be close to him, for his grounding presence to resonate within your life, though each step forward you take feels like the deepest betrayal.
You’re torn in two, heart split down the middle yet not cleaved cleanly. Instead the wound is ragged, chaotic, small parts discarded and scattered to despair, others clinging to the fragile lifeline Simon gifted you last night.
Matilda starts to stir on the monitor, grumbling softly. Yet still you lie inhaling Simon’s smell, trying to pretend this is natural, that you never met König, that Simon kissed you on your cheek goodbye with seamless affection, instead of questioning whether that was allowed.
Some days you wish Kö had remained oblivious to you, continuing carefree and happy, fighting and watching god awful horror films in some dingy cinema. He would be alive then, none the worse for having known you, no heartbreak etched in those heavy azure eyes, his blood not staining the dust beneath you both. His precious life spilt for one so unworthy of it.
He once said that you fixed him, but it was entirely the opposite. Your love tore him apart, ripped every seam in his world and yours along with it. Now he’s gone and you have no idea how to fix the damage, each stitch made by way of repair is clumsy, woven with shaking fingers numb to the bone.
The missing of him sustains you and equally makes your soul sick to it’s core.
Mattie starts to make her feelings known more vocally, wailing for you through the house as the monitor crackles. Filled with listlessness, your body is dragged from Simon’s bed to soothe her and make up a feed.
When Simon gets home, you’re attempting to make dinner. It’s the least that can be offered in response to you disturbing him last night, a piecemeal portion of spaghetti because food has lost it’s former lustre. In the main, it all tastes the same, you could be eating one congealed mass of sludge for the interest you have in it. But Simon always eats whatever you manage to create without any hesitation.
Most nights you dine separately, Simon working late and you often forgetting to have anything at all, napping on the sofa with the baby or next to her crib. But tonight you made sure Mattie’s routine was done, forced your itching eyes to stay alert and useful.
You nudge a noodle onto your spoon, checking to see whether it’s cooked through yet. Simon leans over your shoulder hopefully, sniffing probably more enthusiastically then the food deserves.
“Hi.” He stoops, presses a soft kiss to your mouth, ash coloured stubble rasping a little against your flesh. It makes you temporarily shy. Utterly bizarre to feel coy around your husband, when you’ve shared so many things more intimate.
“I thought we could have dinner? If you fancy it?”
“Course I do.” He replies gruffly. “I missed bedtime again?”
“Don’t worry about it Si, if you’re not working this weekend, we can do it together?”
Together, it sounds foreign on your tongue. But Simon smiles a little at the words and you let yourself be bolstered by that.
The meal is passable, small talk made across the table between mouthfuls. Quietly you clear up, pleased it was as easy as that, already planning something more exciting to make him tomorrow. For the first time in a while you feel warmed by his company, instead of anxious about treading on a land mine.
A moment of awkwardness ensues at the top of the stairs, your turn to step hesitantly when Simon heads into his bedroom. On the threshold he glances back at you, charcoal eyes silently pleading.
“I don’t want to wake you up again.” You tell him quietly.
“Don’t care about that.” He rasps. “Wan’ my wife in my arms.”
Fuck a full nights rest, it can be damned as long as Simon gets to wake up next to you again.
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Masterlist
@cutiecusp @pxssygxblin @vvvlamb @pinkslaystation @chinaza444 @dreamygirli3 @theorist-fox @unknowgirlboredbyherlife
† VOW †
Chapter 4 | Eyes Closed
Don’t read this in the dark alone is my advice tbh. Because I freaked myself out. A hint of smut, a big hint of something that refuses to rest in peace. Make of it what you will. I’d love to hear your thoughts as always.
Anything in italics is a dream / flashback- whatever you would like to imagine it is. ❤️
Masterlist | Previous Part | VICE
Sometimes you watch her for hours. While she’s sleeping and when she’s awake. Starting to show interest in things, big baby blues following you around, chuckling loudly with her chubby cheeks scrunched.
A whole six months old, she looks so like him already. Does Simon see it too? Or are you alone in your recollections. Stood on an echoing cliff top watching shades of Kö ripple in the now still water beneath you.
You try and find joy in the small things. Part of him lives on in Mattie, he isn’t truly gone as long as she grows and thrives. Simon spending hours helping her to learn to sit upright, lying on his stomach on the floor, long legs taking up most of the space there.
They’re attached at the hip whenever he’s home, always side by side. Mattie babbles at him energetically, while Simon holds her, dark eyes so soft and tender, utter love pooled within the depths of them.
You don’t mind, actually you live to see their bond flourishing. It keeps you sane, possibly the only thing to do so.
She cries whenever he leaves her, trying to grab any part of him she can when he heads out to work. There are times when you would like to do that too.
You spend hours missing him, then become frustrated with yourself in his presence because things still aren’t any part of normal you recognise. There’s a longing to touch Simon, beg him to touch you in return.
Then the guilt begins in an endless cycle, azure orbs swirling through your mind and carved resolutely on the back of your eyelids.
Kö died for you, gave everything to keep you. Yet here your deceitful cunt is, looking for pleasure in any small brush Simon lets linger at your waist. Spitefully you deny yourself, squash the flickering of arousal when Simon’s gaze becomes intense before bed, black voids searching for a response in turn from yours.
You press your thumb into your wounds with sick pleasure, refusing to let them heal, damaging the delicate tissue until it bleeds fresh again.
Though there are some things you can’t resist. Carefully, you moved your things into Simon’s bedroom. One day, he opened the cupboard door to find your clothes hanging next to his and wore a grin all afternoon. With each passing moment his smiles become more natural, less taut and fragile looking.
The nightmares still come. You’re better at hiding your screams now. Worse than them though are the silent memories that hit you with force in the darkest parts of the early hours. Ones that make quiet agony well inside your chest as you grapple with them beside Simon’s sleeping body.
Often you lay awake for hours trying to escape the past, or maybe you’re clinging to it, either way it leaves shadows under your gaze and a distinct brand of sadness you’ve come to recognise as familiar now.
Lying in the bathtub one Sunday afternoon, you watch the water slowly seeping into the overflow, lapping at the tops of your toes, warm and humid air spiralling around you.
Simon’s taken Mattie to the beach nearby, giving you a few hours free to enjoy. When he left Si squeezed your hand, told you to look after yourself. Admittedly you haven’t tried to be pretty for months, it’s too much effort in the wake of the riptide you’re struggling against.
It’s calm in here, peaceful and warm.
“Are you awake?”
The mattress sighs as he climbs into it beside you, skin hot from a fresh shower, dirt and dust washed down the drain. He always looks too big for it, you’ve teased him more than once that his elbows were poking out, before König dragged you under the flow of water fully clothed. Utterly intent on ravishing you even though the tiny cubicle barely fit his hulking body.
You mumble incoherently, rolling over and burying your face in his slightly damp chest. He holds you, two arms tight around your body. The sound of explosions and gunfire still ringing in his ears post mission, yet this is the only thing he thought about during it.
You. In his bed on base like a mirage after months of work, heartbreak and sleep. It is you, only and always you.
Your lips pepper kisses across his flesh, tongue teasing his nipple lightly until he grunts with rapture.
“Are you wet for me little maus…? Was it me you dreamt of?”
Humming softly in response, your teeth rasp against the solid heat of his peck, while his big fingers impatiently tug at your underwear, digging into the fat of your hips, seeking the soft plushness and solace only sex can provide you both with.
Because he knows you still see someone else in your sleep. Another has made you whine with need before him.
And that man is proving difficult to exorcise.
Your eyes snap open, water in your throat as you choke, the surface of the bath broken and churning. Shame curls in the pit of your stomach, nauseating and hateful as it rises there like foul smoke. Gasping, you glance around over your shoulder, as if you expect to see his hulking shape approaching.
It doesn’t end, the expecting him, though it’s been well over a year since you last saw him walk towards you. Daydreaming so often converts to waking torment, his eyes bruised and hands bloody, yours stained with it too.
An overwhelming feeling of pain washes across your soul, the shadow of Kö departing in the low afternoon sunlight reflecting off the tiles. At times, you wonder if the punishment fits the hours spent in his arms. Though you know with all certainty, you wouldn’t change it. Magnets seeking each other, drawn in by indelible love, despite the repelling force already at your side.
Simon.
He can’t know the agony of it. You’ll never tell him. It’s safer buried deep in quiet moments when you’re alone, the fallout from it nearly ended him too. It’s far too much to expect him to understand the grief.
Your husband. The stalwart of your existence along with the cherished baby girl you’re raising.
While you’re slathering moisturiser on your desperately dry elbows, you hear the key turn in the latch. By the time you make it down to the kitchen, Mattie is in her high chair, squeaking at Simon because he’s holding a bag of cheese puffs in one large paw.
“I know, very exciting innit.” He tells her with amusement. “You an I are gonna watch match of the day until mums had a rest yeah?”
Softly you pad into the kitchen. Savouring the vision of her and him together. The warmth in his voice when he speaks, the doting hum that fills you is so comforting.
“Gotta get you a Manchester shirt. Might take my girls on a little holiday, watcha make of that chick?”
She gurgles in response, utterly preoccupied by the snacks he’s opening.
You can’t help yourself, wrapping your arms around Simon’s waist, tucking your chin into the warmth of his back. He smells like salt and glorious seaside calm.
“Hi you two.” You sniff against the jacket he’s wearing still, while his fingers lace over yours. “Good day out?”
“Fuckin windy, but yeah it was alright. You okay love?” Simon’s deep voice rumbles inside his chest and against your ear.
“I’m fine. Want me to take over?”
“Come and sit with us? I’ll cook tonight, bought us some dinner special. Got a new bourbon too if you fancy it?”
The hesitation in Simon’s voice makes your stomach knot with guilt. Before König, so many nights were spent together as man and wife. He would never ask you beforehand, it was natural for you both to gravitate to each other. To want to spend as much time as possible together when he was home. You’d drink bourbon, get tipsy and fuck on the couch until your knees felt like they didn’t want to come back together.
It was bliss and is blissful still. A tiny glimpse of normality shines like a beacon before you, a familiar routine you recognise, thought was lost in the chaos you inflicted.
“That sounds wonderful Si. Of course I fancy it.”
His midriff gets a small squeeze, to match the rough thumb pad caressing the inside of your wrist.
Simon cooks steak and chips for tea once Mattie is put to bed, exhausted from a day of adventures. It’s so utterly delicious watching him potter around the kitchen, every small detail placed into creating his vision. You wash up side by side, the radio a low hymn to your work.
By the time you both settle on the sofa, his arm is draped lazily across your shoulders, while you move into his embrace.
It’s comfortable. How it always should have remained. A glass of amber bourbon in his hand, yours a little emptier. The fuzz of alcohol is welcome, it makes you bolder, things seem less complicated in its haze. Natural silences while you both absorb the atmosphere.
“Not bad is it?”
“The bourbon?”
Simon chinks his tumblr against yours, sighing contentedly.
“Well, that and this life we’ve got. Never thought I’d end up here you know.” He rests his cheek tentatively on your head, stubble prickling as the familiar scent of his body sinks into your pores. “Married to you with our girl asleep upstairs.”
You take his hand softly.
“I love you Simon. I never stopped, you know that. Don’t you?”
“Know that.”
For a moment you gaze up into his eyes, heavy dark irises crystallised in their happiness, sun soaked smokey quartz. Calmly he sets his glass down, then collects yours too.
“I love you too.” Simon cups your cheek tenderly, searching for permission he doesn’t need to ask for from you. Your lashes flutter, trying to answer him, beg him to take that step you’ve been longing for. Be braver than you are.
He kisses you gently at first, but you respond so unflinchingly it quickly gathers pace. Avalanche-like, you’re both consumed by it rapidly, storming down to a place of carnal joy.
Swiftly, Simon pulls you onto his lap, hands at the nape of your neck, tugging you harder into his mouth as the feel of him becomes urgent and firm. You’re crushed against his lips, nipping in turn, tasting him gloriously until your head spins. It’s divine in every way, the thickness of his thighs making your own stretch wide, the way he plunders your jaw with kisses when you break apart for air.
Your fingers rake his scalp, urging him closer still, nowhere to hide as his teeth pinch the fat of your lower lip. Frantically your hips jerk, seeking friction, a pooling in your belly you’re finally acknowledging, an itch that’s needed to be scratched for so long by Simon alone.
His tongue flicks in tune to yours, grip now firm against the meat of your hips. Torturously he grinds you, pushes the sensitive bud of flesh between your legs closer to stimulation. When you trap the thin skin of his earlobe in your mouth he groans, ash blonde hair tousled, your handiwork.
Flipping you onto your back, he comes to rest between your legs, the pair of you holding each other, entwined as one perfect fusion of steamy touches and longing kisses.
Slower now, your fumbling hands move to his belt, trying to work the leather free of the loops clumsily.
“Just a minute love.” Simon breathes, steadying your hands and taking over.
Just one my little maus.
Something in a callous and hidden place begins to speak.
Your head jerks, dread rolling through you suddenly.
Just one and I will never ask for another.
You do your best to ignore it, focus on Simon’s harsh pants, the feeling of his stubble grating on your neck. How warm he is, how good it feels having him close. His rough hands making short work of undoing his jeans.
But a voice is calling to you. It won’t leave you be. An unwelcome observer on a vision you had been happily inhabiting, unguarded because moments with Simon are sacred, cherished.
I feel like I am dying my Liebe.
A noise leaves you, half a sob, half a moan of frustration. Every cell in your body is attempting to shut it down, but the voice won’t leave, calling for you again and again until you clench your eyes shut, hands still clasped against the waistband of Simon’s jeans.
You start to tremble violently, causing Simon to hold your face close to his, concern etched along every scar and line.
“Darlin? S’okay. You’re safe, you’re with me.”
Every time I think about him laying a hand on your body it fucking rips me apart!
Tears in your eyes, you hang onto him for dear life, trying to keep the peace now slipping through your hands like water, until -
A crash so loud, it shakes the window panes in their frames sounds from somewhere.
Simon’s head jerks up, quickly he’s on his feet, buttoning his jeans with one hand and moving towards the gun you know he keeps inside the safe above the mantelpiece. It glints in his hand, shiny, black metal lethal there, while you struggle to pull yourself together on the settee.
“Lock tha’ door behind me. Go upstairs and stay with Mattie. I’ll be back.”
Then he’s gone.
Dutifully you turn the key like he asked, shaking more than a leaf during a hurricane, avoiding all windows just as Simon told you to if something happened. The darkness outside feels visceral, one merged blob of uncertainty you can’t make head or tail of.
Kö’s voice has vanished. You’re alone in the night, just you and Mattie.
It feels like hours pass. You see flashes of light in the garden beyond the window, but not a single sound permeates the air. No gunfight then. You’d know those pops anywhere.
Then he returns. You hear him climbing the stairs. Voices below you in the kitchen. The rumble of Price speaking to someone else as the kettle is switched on.
Cowering in a corner, only half from the situation unfolding outside, Simon crouches before you, while Mattie stirs fitfully.
“What is it Si? You whisper.
“No one out there sweetheart. Just a bird hit a window we think. John’s gonna stay in tha spare room.”
You nod, but uneasiness rests so heavily upon your shoulders.
And when you wake it lingers there still.
@cutiecusp @pxssygxblin @vvvlamb @pinkslaystation @chinaza444 @dreamygirli3 @theorist-fox @unknowgirlboredbyherlife @cmbghost
† VOW †
Chapter 2 | Crocodile Tears
This is a heavy chapter, references to birth, depression and suicidal thoughts. Take care my friends.
Anything in italics is a dream / flashback / whatever you would like to imagine it is. ❤️
She was born on a Tuesday.
Tuesdays child is full of grace. You wish she could lend you some, gift you a piece or two. Anything to get you through the moments that follow, when her piercing cries fill the room and the question hangs in the air like thunder clouds, loaded and heavy.
The atmosphere is oppressive when the smiling midwife puts her to your chest, skin to soft skin. Her eyes are tight shut, but you can barely stand to look at them. Simon runs a big hand over the fuzzy hair across the crown of her tiny head, something inscrutable in his gaze. Slowly she nuzzles closer, trying to latch onto the flesh of your collarbone.
“So small ain’t she, never seen nothing so fragile lookin.”
Simon’s voice is so gentle, you’ve rarely heard him talk like that before, as if every word will resonate with her for life. He stayed by your side the whole time, letting you crush his hand as the labour dragged it’s feet, just like you to make a meal out of things, your body not to cooperate until it’s far too late.
Her dark lashes fan out, lids opening just enough to see sleepy baby blue orbs hiding between them. Simon’s posture hardens, shoulders going rigid. For the smallest second the blackness of his stare becomes misted, you can read the emotions swelling in them while your heart beats like a drum at the sight of his anguish.
“Simon…I…”
“Just gimme a minute.” He turns his back to you, staring out of the windows and into the darkness beyond. She arrived in the middle of the night, a delayed shockwave in the devastation of your lives. Exhausted, you try and sit up without disturbing her, but Simon moves away, far beyond your reach in that moment. The door to the room closes with a snap and you’re left alone with her.
This little thing, a gift from him to transcend death. Life and light in the dead of winter. The frost bitten reality in which you carry your guilt always, a shroud so heavy you can barely set one foot in front of the other. Internally, you make a promise to protect her from it, the weight of your past, you’ll bear whatever load it takes for her never to have to feel the way you do.
“Do not laugh maus! You promise?!”
König’s fingers sweep over your arm, while he lies curled at your side, eyes gazing at you from his side of the bed. You smile, biting your lip and crossing your fingers.
“I promise! Now tell me your favourite film for gods sake!”
He sits up on one elbow, propping his head above yours.
“It is Matilda.”
You snort and he buries his face in the pillow, cheeks flushing and eyes hidden from your view.
“I’m sorry!” Giggling, you try and prize his face to yours, but he won’t budge, groaning with mortification. “It just took me by surprise!”
“You said you would not laugh at me! Now my feelings are hurt, what will you do huh? To make me feel better?!”
Eventually you succeed in uncovering his reddened features, eyes crinkled happily at the corners. You plant a kiss on his forehead, one he returns until he starts claiming your mouth in earnest, sighing softly as he drags you closer into his warm embrace.
“Sorry baby.” You hum, tracing the line of his cupids bow with a nail, while he blinks lazily. “I did have my fingers crossed though.”
“You should tell me something embarrassing I think… to make it even!”
You ponder on that one, trying to locate something suitable in the recesses of your memories. Each of your happiest and silliest recollections are so tightly intertwined with Simon, your gaze rapidly loses it’s lustre, thoughts of him falling through the cracks in your mind. You’re sure König sees it, he strokes your jawline cautiously, watching the storm gathering pace behind your formerly mischievous expression.
“Maus?”
You feel cold, hollow to the core, his arms a seething pit of deception you’ve willingly fallen into without any means of escape.
“I don’t have any that aren’t his too.”
Silent tears fall onto the peach fuzz of her downy hair, your arms cradling her, rocking you both together in soothing motions as she starts to stir.
“Do you have a name for her? You and your husband?” The midwife beams at you, gazing around for Simon who is nowhere to be seen. She spots your damp eyes and pats your shoulder. “Don’t worry! It’s natural to cry! Tiredness and lots of hormones!”
That makes you sob louder, until your daughter starts to wriggle uncomfortably, little nails clawing at your flesh.
“Matilda. I want to call her Matilda.”
Simon comes back in halfway through the midwife showing you how to feed her. It isn’t easy, she won’t suckle properly, stopping in fits and gasps, turning her head this way and that. Tiredness itches at the seams of your body, eyes almost lost in the back of your skull.
You don’t hear him approach, until he’s perched on the edge of your bed, big hands resting on his thighs. His red rimmed orbs watch her mouthing at your nipple, grumbling high pitched squeaks when the milk won’t flow.
“You can leave Simon. I won’t hold it against you if you can’t do it. I could never blame you, no one would.” Your words slur slightly, throat burning as the emotion constricts it.
“Ain’t going nowhere.” He sighs, the weight of the world in his voice. “Told you it didn’t matter n’ I meant tha’. Will love her regardless and you the same.”
Days turn into weeks, then those fade imperceptibly into months. Time holds little meaning with a newborn, rushing in great leaps until you’re utterly lost, no idea what date it is, who you were before the endless waking nights and rounds of missed sleep.
You’re depressed, aware of that fact as certainly as you know Matilda is König’s daughter. The clinic nurse keeps trying to offer you medication, like that will stem the flow of oozing blood that drips from your heart day by day, a wound that never heals, is omnipresent and draining.
Matilda seems to fuss more than the other babies you see at classes and in the supermarket. Perhaps you passed tears onto her, some inherited gift she soaked up through your veins. She had enough of them while you were pregnant, it must have stuck with her, that brand of grief you can’t give a name to.
You keep waiting for her eyes to change colour, that onyx black to peek through one day, something to give back to Simon, when you don’t seem to be able to do anything else right. They just get bluer still as her features begin to shift, heavily lidded and drowsy. Summertime encapsulated into two small, round circles in her pudgy face.
Her eyes are a deadly reminder, part terrible loss and flickering love held captive there.
Simon performs every duty asked of him without complaint, often called into the desk job Price arranged for him at strange hours, but always picking up shifts with Matilda whenever he sets foot in the door. He never gets frustrated, unlike you. More than once you’ve contemplated placing her in the crib and throwing yourself from the second story window. Maybe you would fly like the sparrows do for a second, before the ground came rising perfectly to meet you.
She’d be better off with Simon. But how can you leave him with a tiny child? Selfish and immoral, it gnaws at the surface of your fraying mental health like a parasite. How unworthy you are of her, of the man resolutely standing firm at your side.
Your bedrooms are still separate, the night shift suits you well. Entire hours to stare vacantly into space while Matilda feeds or you pump for her. Crevasses of time to get lost in your memories, you let yourself dwell on the sound of his dying breaths, how his eyes slid out of focus, his soul disappearing into nothingness under your hands. An endless loop of being unable to save him, prevent him from slipping through your fingers like water stained with vibrant red.
The worst comes when Matilda is two months old, screaming fit to burst, cheeks puffed while you try and soothe her. Kneeling on the floor you lie her on her back, her chubby legs kicking violently as she throws an almighty tantrum. At a loss for what to do next, having tried to feed and change her, you lie next to her on the carpet. Endlessly you tell her you love her, rub her warm tummy with a palm, but it makes no difference. She cries on, so you begin to cry too.
Simon’s key turns in the latch but you barely hear it, crumpled in a heap. He scoops you up bodily and carries you, strong arms unfazed by your heaving torso, wracked with breathless whimpers and wheezes. He tucks you into bed, even as you protest, Matilda still screeching in the next room.
“Sleep.” Simon rests his forehead against yours. “Don’t argue, just shut your eyes.”
It claims you quickly, soporific and heavy. You pass out under the covers, brain so unable to function even dreams don’t come. Maybe König’s memory has taken pity too, seen you about to crack into a million shards and decided to leave you alone for the night.
When you wake, it’s dark outside. So pitch black it’s obvious you’ve been out for a while. The house is quiet apart from the low rumble of the tv and Matilda is no longer shrieking. Part of you wishes you could close your eyes again, go back to that blissful nothingness where you could be anywhere. But Simon has been out all day. You don’t want him to have to chase that with a night of disrupted rest. It’s not a pleasant cocktail as you know from bitter experience.
Slowly, like treading through treacle, you move onto the landing, down the steps and out into the hallway. Part ghost these days, you’re almost as quiet as Simon is now. He always moved with such casual grace, König did too. Something about close combat training instilled that in them, in spite of their size.
You can’t think about him padding silently around that hotel room in London, climbing into bed after a long day of training on the KorTac base. It hurts, worse than the memory of that day. The day he left you.
With a shake of the head you peek around the living room door. Simon is resting on the sofa, quietly rubbing Matilda’s back as the tv sends shifting colours across his face in the gloom.
“There now eh. Tha’s better.” One broad palm makes a circle and plays with the sparse hairs on the nape of her neck. “All them shouts, jus’ crocodile tears weren’t they?”
Soothingly he comforts her, fast asleep on his chest, one small hand curled into the collar of his T-shirt.
“Got to be a good girl for mum and me yeah?” Sloping and scarred knuckles gently make a circuit over her onesie. “Had enough grief this year, but you’re gonna be the glue tha’ helps put us back together, ain’t ya Mattie?”
You stare and stare. Gaze until your eyes water, until the pain of not blinking outweighs the reluctance to look away from the sight in front of you. Only when it feels as if your retina will burst, do you break the spell, carefully moving into the room and sitting next to him on the sofa. Without thinking, through pure force of habit, you rest your fingers against his forearm, black and grey tattoos sun damaged with freckles hidden beneath the ink.
“Thank you Si.” You whisper, feeling the black in his orbs solidify next to you. It’s been so long since you touched him like this, touched anyone in the quiet moments between twilight and morning. His breath seems to still and fleetingly you wonder if the contact on his flesh burns, if he doesn’t want you to do something so familiar.
“Sorry…” Your hand goes to move.
“Don’t stop.” He rasps, voiced low, trying not to wake the baby.
So you lace your palm with his, sitting close together until dawn starts to peek through the curtains.
————————————————————————
Masterlist
On AO3
@cutiecusp @pxssygxblin @vvvlamb @pinkslaystation @chinaza444 @dreamygirli3
This chapter was inspired by:
Devotion, devotion
I'm a slave unto the mercy of your love
For so long, I've been so wrong
I could never live without you
Konig tryna get a taste of reader's pussy once again:
Readers pussy really be reviving men left and right
Pure evil. Pure brilliance. You’ve fuckin done it again 💀💀💀
