“I…I just want to kiss you first. More than anything, I think.”
This earns him an amused huff. “Sweet Johnny…”
John’s cheeks grow warm. “I’m serious.”
“I know you are,” Simon replies, his voice soft.
----
Technically fanart for my fic "Accept Invite" - a "What if they met while playing Call of Duty?" AU. If you like uhhh *checks tags* gay chicken, bisexual awakenings, phone sex, long distance pining, and cozy domestic slice of life, then I humbly present this as an offering ✨
Also, Simon has a service dog. Her name is Sadie. She is best girl.
As an older queer, allow me to say: the walls of the closet are load-bearing. It is our job as a community to stand in front of that door and tell everyone who wants to peek inside to fuck off.
There are so many reasons a person may choose not to come out and there is no reason a person would owe the public or a stranger that information. Certainly it's not owed simply because someone is famous.
We have fought for decades to make it safer for people to be open and authentic about themselves, but we are not yet there. And even if we were, the closet would still be something we need to maintain for those who are not ready to reveal that part of themselves.
He doesn’t mean to cry. Honest. In fact he hates crying. Especially in front of you. Especially over all of the small, simple things you do for him.
But when he walks through the door, mind still half somewhere he’ll never talk about, and he sees you in the kitchen, humming, with your sleeves rolled up, he can hardly help the pang in his chest.
The table’s full. A roast, potatoes, and something with butter and garlic that fills his nose and warms him up and goes straight to his gut.
You turn with that terrifically happy smile, "Simon! You're home!" and in that moment he believes it. Finally home.
Then it all hits him at once. The smell, the warmth, the plates set for two, and ultimately, the sight of someone who thought about him while he's been gone for weeks with hardly a word.
He blinks once and then it’s all blurred through his tears. Then he’s standing there in the doorway like a terribly in love idiot.
You’re at his side in a heartbeat. “Si? What’s wrong?”
And he can only manage the small shake of his head because there’s no way to explain it.
How do you tell someone that you’ve spent a lifetime coming home to nothing?
So he just folds into you, hides his face against your shoulder, and you let him. You hold him until the tears slow, until his breath steadies, until he lifts you up if only to hear you giggle as he settles you into your chair.
He scoots his around the table so that he can sit next you. And he eats slow, enjoying every single bite of the door you made to share with him. Listening to the recap of the week you've had.
Later, when you're both finally settled in bed, you’ll tease him for apologizing, and for thanking you like it’s the first time anyone’s ever done it.
You won't question it, and he'll appreciate that more than you know.
But for now, you just let him have the simple, devastating miracle of being fed and loved and alive.
Can we get more of reader self harming? Maybe some hurt/comfort? Love the way u write it :>
Check tags yall <3
The urge never really leaves you.
You wouldn't call it a desire, more of a backup. There's always that reassurance that no matter how bad it gets you can always work the blade deeper. Even years since you "recovered" and joined the military, you keep a blade close.
So is it really a surprise when things start getting bad again? Somewhere between the gunfire and the bodies of a family on the side of the road. Whatever life you had slipped out from you and into the flood drain with a comrade's grey matter.
It's pathetic. You know.
Having to turn to the blade just to keep yourself tethered to your body. As if in the act of being fully healed, your mind would finally decide to leave. Leave you, drifting, going through the motions. It's a terrifying thought.
The cuts keep you present. Small, at first, nothing more than a nick. But it grows, that urge that follows you doggedly through battlefield and linoleum landscape alike. It clouds your mind, clouds your vision to the point you are blind to others.
Blind to the concerned looks Kyle and Johnny share when you stare off into nothing for half of breakfast. Blind to the way Simon carefully watches your expression when your shift, clothes snagging on half-healed gashes. Blind to the quiet acceptance price wears when you are alone with him.
Soon, the corpses you pass by start to change under the veil of a dream. Warp into you. Body crushed, organs spilling out and covered in flies. Rot seeping out and limbs bloated.
It starts to feel...appealing.
A corpse. Dead, decayed. You would be no Hector of Troy. There would be no one to reverse your desecration. Just another smear of gore in the journal of war.
And it would be so easy. You stand atop a building, rifle packed away after another clean op. Clean, but not without death. Casualties under a certain number, deemed acceptable. Corpses another statistic to quantify the cost of war. They have no names once they die. How would that feel? The ledge is right there. Would your chest burst open like a cantaloupe on the sidewalk? The ledge is under your feet.
Would you feel in control again? The ledge–
A hand curls tight and sharp around your forearm, yanks you back so hard your back slams into gravel. Ghost is looking down at you with wide eyes, hand placed firmly on your shoulder like he expects you to fight. "What the fuck, kid?! What the hell was tha'?!"
You look at ghost. His eyeblack is smudged with sweat. He grabs his comms, shouts something into it without ever looking away from you. When he lets go, his other hand comes up to snap in front of your eyes.
You feel...distant. disappointed. This wasn't supposed to happen.
"Kid? Kid! What the hell were you planning to do?" He sounds frantic, his hand feeling over your body and undoing the straps for your holster before you can respond.
"Suicide, innit? Thought I'd give it a go." You shrug, turn your head to press your cheek into the gravel. It's warm, soaked in the sunlight. Your body would have been warm. Warm and hot long after you died, so long as the sun shone on it.
Ghost pauses, takes a shuddering breath. He takes your knives next, palms patting over your gear. He's surprisingly gentle with your arms and thighs.
When he speaks, its with a watery voice "shit. Okay. Lets uh- lets go kid. We need to rendezvous, and then uh‐ debrief with price, yeah? Cmon, get up, lets go."
His grip is tight around your forearm, and he takes the long way to avoid the ledge. You would have been warm.
"A corpse. Dead, decayed. You would be no Hector of Troy. There would be no one to reverse your desecration. Just another smear of gore in the journal of war. "
I just know when Johnny gets a partner, Simon is the constant third wheel.
And you aren't too keen on the idea at first. You didn't sign up for a brooding and antisocial third, but you eventually accept that they're a packaged deal. You even start to feel bad for Simon, he's got this intense connection to Johnny, and you soon realize it's because he's the only one whose ever gave him the time of day.
It was never a competition for Johnny either, the man just seemed to like to be involved. He was never jealousy of the attention Johnny gave you.
Everything becomes threes after that. Dinner reservations, movie tickets, matching pajamas you buy for the holidays that sparks concerned conversation from all your friends and family when you send out Christmas cards with a menacing man next to you and Johnny that they've never met.
He sleeps on the couch most nights. At first, it was after a night out at the pub, and he was too drunk to drive home. Then, it turned into every weekend. Which evolved into a third toothbrush at your bathroom sink, three pairs of shoes at your door, and a designated mug he drank his tea out of every morning.
You woke up to him in your kitchen more times than you didn't. He just became this constant presence in both of your lives that the two of you even forgot what it felt like for him not to be there.
And the two of you realize it might have gotten too far when you're looking to move out and only look at houses that come with a second room for him. The man is appalled when you ask him if he wants to have his own room, he wants to sleep in the same bed with you and Johnny.
mdni, 18+, cw graphic descriptions of self harm, mental health issues, brief mention of suicide
I cannot emphasise the self harm bit enough, so please scroll away if this topic is triggering, and take care of yourself.
I am in no means endorsing any form of self harm, just writing my experience with it. This is just a self indulgent fic for me bc my demons are screaming again, and I want fictional characters to comfort me
I do not claim to be any sort of mental health expert or an advocate for how you should deal with issues. I am just a humble writer writing vent things.
Please reach out for help if you need, remember that you are not alone in this ❤️
-
In hindsight, maybe you should have seen it coming. The first warning sign should have been the way you started picking at your cuticles again. But this has always been a nervous habit of yours that has been hard to break, so you had categorised it under… a necessary evil. A strategy for self soothing that isn’t too harmful.
Because even if your fingers start to bleed from the bits of skin you’ve pulled it, it’s an easy fix. You don’t even need a plaster, you can just improvise with a tissue tied around your finger, and go about your day.
Sure, sometimes you found yourself using the rubber band method, but that’s also classified under harm reduction, right? A better alternative. Even if your skin started to form welts from the rhythmic smacking of rubber against skin. Even if your skin started to blacken and bruise. Even if oh shit, those bruises look like they’re the kind to take a couple of days to fade. That’s fine, right? Because all the blood is still contained inside of you.
So you don’t tell Simon, you don’t want to bother him about any of these. He was dealing with much more trauma from the horrors of war and his damn awful childhood that your own problems seem trivial in comparison.
(Sometimes, when you lie awake in the dark of the night with bruises littering your skin, you can’t help but be grateful Simon is gone for weeks or months at a time, because it means you can plan your… harm reduction sessions to ensure everything is spotless once he returns. It’ll be fine.)
At most, he will look at your pitiful stubs you call nails and gruffly ask, “Rough day?” And you will nod, and he will not push, because god knows he doesn’t want anyone pushing when shit starts to get real. He will make you a mug of tea, and pull you a little closer.
And he will not see any bruises, because they would have faded away a few days ago.
It’s a balancing act, one you have perfected over years and years of careful juggling.
Sometimes, the sting of slapping a rubber band against your wrist isn’t enough to soothe the itch crawling under your skin. Sometimes you find yourself wondering what’s the fucking point?
Your hands shake as your carefully pry a blade free from its plastic casing. The adrenaline is flooding your system, making you dizzy. It’s been so long, just this once, then you’ll stop…
The rush of endorphins make you high. You feel like a magician, summoning splotches of red with your silver wand.
But you’re out of practice, and your head is spinning too hard to think twice. A sleight of hand, the blinding white of stage lights, and an outpouring of bloody applause.
Shit. For a moment, you have a sick thought of congratulating yourself. But it’s quickly displaced by a oh my god how am I going to hide this? You stare for just a second, and then you switch to autopilot. Even as you’re watching red water go down the drain, even as you’re pulling edges closed with steri-strips, there’s a small, petulant part of you protesting that you weren’t done, there’s still more to be done. More more more. You grit your teeth, trying instead to focus on the sting of antiseptic against open skin, and the horrified expression on Simon’s face when he finds out. If he finds out. God damn it, you can’t remember the last time you had to stress about hiding this from someone else.
But that’s okay. You’ve done it before, you can do it again. Just… you’ve never done it with a seasoned SAS operator before.
You curl up into yourself, trying to breathe through the panic. For one wild moment, you contemplate running - breaking up with him over text with no explanation. But you quickly push that thought away, because that wouldn’t be fair to him. You can do this. You can. It’ll be fine. Hopefully it’ll at least scab over enough for there to be no risk of the wound reopening by the time he returns.
-
You conclude that you must have done something truly horrible in your past life, because he comes home early. He’s never home early. But it seems like the universe is conspiring against you. (Or conspiring with you, with the part of you that knows you need help, that knows you shouldn’t carry it alone, but you quickly shut that part out.) Maybe it’s shame, maybe it’s out of some twisted sense of moral duty to shield him from your sins, from how fucked up you can be. You don’t want to be seen as needy. You’re afraid he’ll leave if he thinks you can’t handle yourself, if he sees that you’re so broken you resort to doing such childish things.
So you hide from him. At least one of your brain cells were working that night, because you only touched the parts of you that could be easily covered with clothing.
He doesn’t say a word when you shy away from his touch with a small shake of your head and a quiet apology. He doesn’t react to your tensing up when he reaches out to hold your hip. He just nods, understanding, so fucking understanding that you want to rip your hair out. He won’t push, won’t touch you if you don’t want him to, and you want to claw scratches into your face like an animal with its leg caught in a trap.
The guilt chips at you, day by day, but you don’t budge. You want nothing more than to get on your knees and confess your crimes to him. You want him to try you for your wrongdoings and hang you at the stake for it.
You want him to… to…
You want him to hold you and tell you it’s alright. You want him to see your hurt and make it better. You want him to help you feel less alone.
You press your head against the shower tiles, trying to get the feeling of being overwhelmed and stretched thin to stop. You want to cry, but the tears don’t come.
You just turn the water to as hot as you can manage it, and scrub until your skin resembles that of a lobster. He says nothing about your too flushed cheeks and the way you’re red all over. Instead, he just flips the blanket open, a quiet invitation for you to curl up beside him.
You do. For a few moments, it’s silent, save for the steady thumping of his heartbeat. You press closer to his chest, absorbing the vibrations, inexplicable evidence that he’s alive, and so are you.
He presses a kiss to your head and lingers there, his chin resting above your head.
“You got something on your mind, luvie?” he murmurs. For a moment, you think about saying something, but the words get caught in your throat. So you shake your head, wordless.
Simon shifts slightly, his head reaching down to tilt your chin up, forcing you to meet his gaze. It’s steadfast, sure, and full of quiet concern. “Talk to me,” he says, thumb brushing against your cheek. “Let me in, yeah?”
Finally, you break. You can’t stop the waterfall of tears rolling down your cheeks. He doesn’t make you, doesn’t try to stop them either. He just holds you through it, a bulwark against the storm.
You’re gasping out apologies and endless sorry’s, and he’s running his hand over the rapid pulse point of your neck. “None of that, you hear?” he says, holding you close. “Don’t want any of that sorry bullshit. Not with me.”
“I fucked up, Si,” you say eventually, once the worst of it has passed. “I fucked up real bad. I’m sorry.”
“What do you mean by that, love?” he asks, with the patience of a man who knows he always gets what he wants in interrogations. And just for this once, you’re grateful. You can hide behind that fact, tell yourself that you stood no chance against him. The truth is, you’re tired of fighting it and hiding your pain from the world.
You don’t know how to tell him with words. Instead, you gently push him back and move a little away from him. He goes easily, no resistance at all. And then, with shaking hands, you reach for the waistband of your sweatpants and slowly tug down.
For a moment, there’s dead silence. You can hardly dare to breathe. And then, a muttered curse escapes his breath. Your heart rate spikes again, flooded by shame.
He grabs your wrist, his eyes blazing when they meet yours.
“Who the fuck did this?” he demands, a cold intensity to his demeanour. You shake your head, tears starting to form. “Tell me,” he insists again, and that’s when you notice the tinge of desperation creeping into his voice. Like he’s hoping that it’s something else, a person he can fight to make it go away.
But it’s not. There’s no deadlier opponent than the one living under your skin. It’s a battle he can’t fight for you.
“You’re not stupid, Si. Please don’t make me say it,” you say quietly.
He lets out a heavy breath. Inhales. Exhales. When he speaks again, his voice is forced to neutrality. “What the hell were you thinking?”
You deflate. “I’m sorry.”
“No don’t be sorry, fuck. Shit. I just…” he rubs his hand over his face. “Let’s just… get you cleaned up, yeah? Let me have a look.”
His face is nothing but focused as he examines you, asking you about what you’ve been using to prevent infections and how long it’s been. “These will scar,” he murmurs.
“Guess we’ll be matching,” you joke, trying to lighten the mood. His gaze snaps back to yours, and you shrink back at the cold fury in them. At that, he tries to soften, although there’s still an unhappy tick in his jaw.
“Rather saw my leg off than let you go through what I did. Jesus fuck luv, this is the kind of thing they do to torture people, and you’ve been doing this kind of shit on yourself? You –” he cuts himself off again. Inhales. Exhales. “I just don’t understand why you would do this to yourself.”
For a moment, you think about defecting, about running and hiding and forgetting all about it. But there’s genuine hurt and confusion in his eyes. And behind it all, love for you.
You look away again, not wanting to see his reaction to your justifications. “You’ve smoked before, right? Lit a joint for a moment of calm, even though it’s killing your lungs?” He grunts in response, waiting for you to finish that thought.
“It’s a bit like that, I guess. When I was little, I… didn’t really know how else to cope. It felt good, y’know? Hurting. I guess the adrenaline and all plays a huge part, but also… just… sometimes I always feel like I’m doing something wrong. And this is my way of repenting for it.” You shrug, fingers picking at the seams of your shirt. “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, and all that.” He opens his mouth to speak again, but you quickly cut him off. “You don’t need to understand it. Just that it’s something that has worked for me. And I know it’s not healthy, but it just seems like the lesser of two evils.”
“You’re damn right it’s not healthy,” he murmurs, but it’s clear he’s making an effort to keep his voice non-accusatory. “If I did shite like that, Price will have me seeing a shrink.”
“I do… see a shrink,” you say slowly. “Just… haven’t been there in a while.”
“Huh,” he says. “The shrink do you good?” You nod slowly, and he mimics it. It would look almost comical if the situation didn’t feel so heavy.
He sighs again, and reaches out to take your hand in his. For a moment, he holds it there, looking distant. Eventually, he presses a kiss to it, and looks at you with a focused gaze once more. “Right. Here’s what we’re gonna do, luv. Tomorrow, we’ll call up that shrink of yours and get you booked for an appointment. Tonight, you and I are not gonna do anything else but just stay here. Sound alright to you?”
You manage to speak an affirmative past the lump in your throat. “Come here then,” he says, and you obey, resting your head against his chest.
You’re still tense, feeling suffocated by the silence. You wonder what he’s thinking of you now. If he thinks you’re pathetic for seeking attention like this —
Your spiral is broken by his voice. “Used to wonder what would happen if I was KIA. It’s not like I ran into gunfire blindfolded or anything, that’d be bloody stupid and would put my men’s lives at risk.” You look up to face him, and he meets your gaze with a wry smile. “But I used to think a bullet to the head won’t be so bad. Clean. Plus at least I’d have done something. Not like I had anything else back then, y’know?”
Your finger resumes its tracing of a circular path on his chest. You don’t know what to say to that, how to begin to unravel the threads of hurt and pain he’s been through.
But you know, perhaps better than anyone, that you can’t fight his battles for him. Just like he can’t fight the thoughts that live inside you. What you can do instead, is become that quiet support, the devoted partner on the sidelines, holding a candle while you wait for him to come home. “I’m glad you’re alive, Si.”
He snorts. “Glad I lived long enough to find someone fucked up like me.”
It’s horrible, that brand of terrible dark humour that’s uniquely him. You laugh anyways, and feel some of that tension ease up. He shifts his weight and turns to look back at you. “I’m glad you’re alive too, luv.”
Privately, you correct him that it’s non-suicidal self injury. There’s a difference. But you understand the sentiment, and you allow it to warm your chest.
Tomorrow, you will call your therapist. For now, this is enough.
What do you mean “chat” is now referring to ChatGPT and not twitch chat? What? What? What the fuck? No?
When I address chat I am speaking to a presumed Greek chorus of real human people shitposting on their lunch break, not a machine that devours lakes to covert electricity into slop.