Compass

Compass

Simon 'Ghost' Riley x Reader

Crossposted on AO3

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Word count: 5.2k

Summary: where Simon finally gets it.

18+

CW: angst, hurt/comfort, canon typical violence, fluff

Masterlist 🦊 | In The Walls Masterlist 🦊

Staring straight at the screen won’t make that form fill in, yet it’s all you’ve been doing. 

The office is cold. Freezing. Your fingers are stiff when you punch the keys, rough skin tight at each knuckle. 

Price has asked you to do it. He’s tired and needs to lean on you for a moment. You know how hard it must’ve been for such a proud man to ask for help, so you don’t have the heart to refuse him. Even if you’re just as exhausted, just as worried, because the op went tits up so quickly and suddenly that you’re still recovering from it.

Faulty intel. Ambush. Tactically placed C4 blew the place up into smithereens. Mayhem ensued—you all lost sight of each other and then met again. 

The ringing in your ear still sounds fresh. A new cut on your brow your new shiny scar, the crescent of speckled mauves under your eye yet another reason for the brass to come and shower you with meaningless praise so you’d keep up with this unforgiving job without rest.

Chest candy as a prize. As if you care.

Your eyes burn. They squint at the unforgivingly bright screen; bloodshot sclera and a healing bruise, cheekbone swollen and tender.

Casualties And Damage Assessment. 

The cursor on the document blinks right next to it. 

Write above the dotted line. Do it. It’s there. It’s not hard, it’s just a name—a name among thousands. You could be typing John Doe, and it should feel the same.

So do it, love.

Type it in.

Type “Simon Riley”.

You feel your eyes sting wet. 

Johnny is still out there, searching for his whereabouts. Kyle’s with him, probably trying to be the voice of reason—the only one with a head still on his shoulders. The one who grabbed you and handed you to Price so he could slam you in the helo for takeoff. It left without Gaz and Soap in it.

Without Simon.

Crystal clear is the memory of Price’s finger pointed at your face as you huddled your knees to your chest—glossy, bloodshot eyes seemingly lost as they looked back at him, trying to find a compass to guide you through this dreadful darkness, through ice cold fear.

Instead, you found a scowl that struggled to mask a quiet threat beneath it, something you knew he’d been almost impatient to tell you.

Something you knew he knew.

You should’ve known better than to bring feelings into the job. I trusted you and your judgment and you failed me. You failed us.

But now all that feels so unimportant. Price’s disappointment is only another notch to your belt of failures, and you know it’s gonna get even thicker and tangled if you don’t type that name into that form.

If you don't prove to him and everyone else, yourself included, that you’re still somewhat sane. That you didn't lose your marbles on that day, only a chunk of your heart.

Nails tap nervously on your desk. The clock ticks out of beat. Your eye twitches restlessly, but you punch the keys. 

Simon Riley — MIA

A weary breath escapes you. 

Good girl. 

And the leftovers of your heart crack something vicious, a perpetual hairline fracture that will not go away. Your molars grind until your head hurts. Your eyes water, because it’s all happened so rapidly, that you don’t think you’ve had the time to metabolize it.

S’alright. S’alright. You did right.

You sniffle. Wet your lips. Your face screws up to keep it all inside because you can’t have him see you like this—he’s not here, and yet he might as well be, with how clear his voice is echoing in your head. 

Why shouldn’t it be? Your last talk was barely a week ago. Your last kiss not even ten days prior. 

Softer than the ones he’d given you before. Wet lips stealing your breath, big hands holding you tight by the waist.

The slow, purposeful drag of his cock inside of you as he flattened his chest to yours. The wordless whispers tumbling out of his mouth—uncontrolled, reverent of you. 

His lips on your skin, both selfish and selfless: descending to your throat, where the taste of you intoxicated him—and where you shivered, moaned, sunk your fingernails into his back, painting it red.

Your brows pull tight, but you can’t stand it a moment more, as that name typed black on white looks at you expectantly, like you could pull it out of there and bring it in your arms.

Don’t, sergeant. Need you sharp.

You cry, because logic is knocked back into you, and there is no Simon Riley if not the memories rushing in your head.

If not the weariness with which he’d invited to his flat for the first time. Burnt the eggs he cooked for you the next morning, as you slept soundly in his bed. Asked you to stay, even if you were as cautious as can be—a gazelle in the lion’s den. 

“Not fuckin’ it up, this time,” he’d told you. 

And even in your caution, you could recognize that silent pleading—that almost a year without you has taught him the pains he would endure to not go through it again.

It didn’t soothe your worries, but it did smooth down the line carved between your brows. 

You slump back on the chair and think of the times he’s told you there were no strings attached between you two, and how those strings inevitably formed.

How he’s annealed them, as time passed, going against everything he’s ever vouched for.

How he watched you snoop around his bedroom, allowing you to study his home and his habits—voluntarily and without an ounce of reluctance in him.

Sobs wreck you as you recall that night: you hadn’t even bothered wearing something, just tiptoed around naked the way you left the bed. 

You tinkered with the few framed photos he had on the shelves, recognizing the people in them: the team, your face squinting at the sun while wearing khakis, and the family he told you about as the muscles of his jaw jumped with tension.

How you scoured through his books, giddy when you double-tapped those you’d read too. 

Or how you smiled when you found the wrinkly receipt of that drive-through, dated on that day, being used as a bookmark in the novel you’d recommended him ages ago. 

You glanced his way every once in a while, just to make sure he was still asleep. Instead, you found a man bathed in moonlight and lazily wrapped in wrinkled sheets—a knowing smirk on his lips, one that made warmth bloom on your chest, all the way to your cheeks. 

He’d patted the spot next to him on the bed, inviting you back beside him. 

That was the first night you held each other for no other reason than the pleasure of being close.

In the days that came after, there were countless nights just like it.

And now, drowning in your own tears and snot, you don’t know if there will be more.

If you’d feel his thumb run along your jaw again, his fingers brushing down your spine—or pinching your cheeks to make you take a breath when you rambled on. 

If you’d feel his lips on yours, tasting you and your voice, with the veiled excuse to make you quiet. 

Wondering if he’ll ever smear greasepaint on your brow, if he’ll ever fix the straps of your vest.

Each tear that falls now is chock full of memories, old and lost. The ones you could’ve had but you’re not sure they’ll ever be. You cry, as you hold yourself together—arms around your chest, nails digging into your biceps, painful enough to anchor you back to earth.

You cry until your throat burns, until your eyes yield, and you fall asleep; the document blank on the screen, only his name as the blatant proof of your failures.

A hand rests on your shoulder. 

It’s soft at first, a thumb brushing against your collarbone. When you only shift, the grip gently tightens in a brief shake.

“Sergeant,” you hear.

Your eyes blink open, then, struggle against the crust formed between your lashes. They focus on an equally as tired pair of blues, a mouth that breathes some relief in your weary bones.

“John,” you croak, stretching your limbs behind your head until you hear a sequence of pops in your spine. 

You look around to assess where you are. The sunlight, dimming behind the windowpane, tells you that you’ve slept on your chair for half of the day.

Your neck tingles as it wakes, aching from the awkward position in which you fell asleep.

Blinking away the drowsiness, your eyes land on the document plastered on the screen. 

Your stomach turns into a boulder once again.

“What is it?” You say, returning your focus to Price standing next to your chair. You press your thumb between your brows to dispel a migraine sure to fall upon you. “Almost done with the report, gimme a few more ho—”

“He’s back, darling.” 

Your body deflates pitifully. Dread clogs your throat with ice, because Simon being back doesn’t necessarily mean he’s back alive. 

Your hands tremble as they land limp on your thighs, and you don’t care if you’re giving too much away; John already knows, after all, doesn’t he?

And he senses it: the gnawing fear, the supplication in your eyes.

“He’s in the med bay, overall lookin’ fine.”

You stand up so quickly that the chair is knocked back. 

Your vision gets spotty, and suddenly the poor nutrition of the past days rears its ugly head in the form of low blood sugar.

John senses it and places a hand on your bicep when you wobble on your feet.

“Bit dehydrated, few scraps here and there, but eh—" A tired smile stretches his lips as he squeezes your shoulder. “We both know it takes a lot more to bring down tha’ bastard.”

John can’t even finish his sentence that you’re curled on your laptop, typing something he can’t see. You stand upright, and with a rush of thank yous that barely make sense, you bolt out of the door.

The captain huffs and rubs his face in exhaustion, before his eyes swivel to the screen.

Casualties And Damage Assessment. 

Simon Riley — MIA & found

He sits there, hunched on the gurney like he’s too big to fit on it. His uniform has taken a lighter hue because of sunlight and dust from the unforgiving desert. A nurse is fumbling with a tube on his arm, a needle already inserted in the crook of his elbow for rapid hydration. There are two crumpled bottles of water on the shelf right next to the gurney, and even though Simon's still hiding under the mask, you're sure he's just finished chugging on both.

Johnny stands by his side, arms crossed and a lazy smile on his face. Sunburnt cheeks and a dusting of freckles on his nose. 

Kyle talks to a doctor, fiddling with his cap in hand—you catch words like “bruised ribs” and “sunstroke” and something about his ankle but you’re not sure. They get lost in the chatter surrounding you when Simon lifts his head and clocks you at the door.

You stare at each other for what feels like centuries, his eyes always sharp as those of a hawk—yet a little more tired, this time. A little more rough.

When the nurse moves away to tinker with the IV bag, Simon’s hand on his thigh twitches, and he subtly beckons two fingers at you. 

It’s all you need.

You beeline your way through passing doctors and nurses alike, until you come to stand in front of him, long legs dangling off the gurney. He’s subtly parted them for you, but Johnny has noticed it and he’s sporting a smarmy grin because of it.

You decide he can have it for today. 

Jaw clenched, you swallow before you speak. “Gave us a scare, yeah?” 

He doesn’t answer, because his eyes are locked to the thin white bandages taped to your brow. His focus shifts to your cheekbone, then, and the mauve shade it’s taken after the bombs went off out of the blue.

“Quite the shiner you got.” He drawls.

His voice is raspier from disuse, almost a croak. It makes your heart soar and your spine shiver, because it feels like years since he’s gone radio silent. 

You gesture vaguely at it, a slight shrug of your shoulder as you try to hide how tight your throat has gone at the realization that he’s alive and kicking, and not an unnamed corpse under some rubble.

“Yeah,” you reply, “Shrapnels—uh, something hit me when those things went off. Just a bruise.”

A sentence he’s heard more times than he cares to count, but he seems unfazed by it this time around. Maybe the relief of being safe has finally set his priorities straight.

You smile wearily, uncharacteristically quiet even as you try to make light of it. “Reckon purple’s my colour, eh?”

He nudges an admonishing foot to your knee. You lose your balance for a moment and blink back at him with a frown.

“Reckon it ain’t.” He grunts with a pointed look, as if you said something unbelievably stupid. But then his voice softens. “But it’s hard for things to look bad on ya, eh?” 

His eyes are crinkled at the corners. Simon smiles through them at you. “Still, tha’ bruise ain't it, if ya ask me.”

You huff.

“Flatterer.”

“Thought we’d established flattery worked jus’ fine with ya, mh?” 

You choke on a laugh, running the back of your fingers to your lips.

“Yeah, yeah.” You clear your throat, trying to dissipate the warmth in your cheeks. "Got it."

If you two weren’t so lost in this conversation, you wouldn’t have missed the baffled look Johnny was giving you both, talking like he wasn’t there to witness it all. 

But now Simon looks at you with such an intensity that Johnny’s behavior falls into the background.

There is no discovering Simon Riley, today; he’s taken the toll of discovering you, because while you’ve always cared and he’s always known, your eyes are telling him that there’s something he’s yet to find.

Or perhaps he’s found it already, ages back, when you called his name in his sheets, when you bit a promise on his fingers, when he coloured your skin with his own—kisses and sweat and grease.

When you left, and he inevitably drifted—a demagnetized compass that couldn’t find its north again, and you were just as adrift.

Good luck, you’d said. And fucking hell he’s needed plenty of it—found it too, it seems, since he’s back where he’s safe. Where he’s home.

“You alrigh’, yeah?” You ask, causing his mind to flounder back to earth.

His throat bobs.

Simon nods stiffly but doesn’t speak. 

Johnny sighs heavily and takes the burden from his shoulder instead. 

“Aye, he’s a big lad, hen.” He rumbles from your side, and you turn your body to him to give him your attention—wide-eyed like you’d forgotten he was there at all. 

Johnny snorts.

He starts to ramble on, and you listen intently to how they found Simon crawling blindly towards them, as he and Kyle ran in his direction.

Simon’s eyes, however, are on you. 

And so are his fingers. 

Leaning forward, he rests his elbows on his knees and starts tracing subtle patterns on the back of your thigh. 

A tickle that would normally make your knees jerk, but you push through and stay still—because what if he stops, then. What if he believes you don’t want him to touch you, after almost a week with no clue about his well-being.

God forbid he pulls away. 

God forbid he thinks you don’t want his hands all over once again, and from this day on.

As Johnny tries to fit some light in the dusk of your eyes, Simon discretely hooks one of his fingers in the pocket of your fatigues and doesn’t let go—holding onto you as much as you are to him. In fact, one of your hands lands on his knuckles, thumb rubbing soothing circles on the inside of his wrist.

“Doc said you can go rest in your room for tonight,” Kyle’s voice pitches in. “Just come back tomorrow for a checkup.”

Johnny beams at that. The world weighing on your shoulders suddenly lifts an inch, and you manage to take a breath. 

“No injuries, then?” You ask, turning between Simon’s parted legs. 

His forefinger stays hooked at the hem of your pocket even when you do.

“Nope.” Kyle smiles. “A concussion, maybe, since he’s not being chatty—oh, wait.”

Simon grunts. “Piss off.”

It’s only when he's done with the IV bag that you’re finally helping him carry his things to his quarters. 

Johnny and Kyle don’t bat an eye when you offer to take the lead, and you stop wondering whether they’re aware of your and Simon’s thing the moment Johnny gives you a glaringly obvious wink.

Simon tries to hide a limp as you walk through the hallway, and you’d love to keep his stupid pride intact for his sake, but yours has gone and drowned in the shitter the moment you broke down into sobs in front of Price. 

So, you don’t see why his can’t be a little bruised too, tonight.

You hook your arm around his waist, mindful of those eventual bruised ribs you heard the doctor talk about with Kyle. Simon only looks down at you but doesn’t put up a fight—instead, he leans into you and unexpectedly accepts your help.

When he hands you his key, you try to fit it in the keyhole and fail a few times, until you force your hand to stop shaking and the lock clicks. You two stumble inside, as the heavy door closes with a loud thud. 

His backpack is dropped carelessly, key on the floor next to it.

“Easy, there.” You whisper, noticing how he almost tumbles onto the mattress. 

A deep, drawn-out sigh escapes him as his whole body deflates now that he’s sitting somewhere comfortable.

You crouch in front of him. 

No words are exchanged as your fingers work with the straps of his vest on each side. Simon carefully lifts his arms to help you help him, and it’s the first time in years of camaraderie in which he’s actually cooperating. 

Vest on the floor. Gloves off. His tac belt is carelessly tossed behind you, as you unlace his boots with his eyes burning holes down at you.

“You need a shower,” you mumble as you slide one boot off his foot. “And then I’ll check those bruises myself, see if I can help somehow.”

Simon is deadly silent. 

Or maybe it’s you who can’t quite catch any sound, as the blood rushes in your ears, your heart a violent drum.

“Gonna take a look at your leg too.” You go on, relentless, as your voice cracks unbidden. “It’s probably just a sprained ankle, but it’s better to ma—”

His hand cups your jaw, then, stopping your endless ramble. 

You stain the cracked skin of his palm with tears you didn’t know were falling. Simon holds your face until you find it in yourself to look up at him. 

He peers down at you through the eyehole of the balaclava, ripped and singed in various spots as a testament to his survival.

He presses a thumb against the corner of your mouth, forcing it into a plastic smile. But those teardrops are still regrettably streaking your cheeks, your lips still trembling in a fruitless attempt to keep quiet.

His other hand comes to grab your bicep to help you up. 

You’re on shaky legs, probably worse than the stagger he had when walking down the hallways. You come to a stand right between his thighs nonetheless, pressing your palms on his shoulders for balance.

Simon doesn’t speak as he looks up at you—doesn’t have the strength to do it, nor does he know what to say when you look so vulnerably lost. 

He uses actions, instead. 

Languidly, he slides the balaclava off his head, showing the cuts on his skin that match the rips on his mask. His forehead is ruddy and chapped, flaky skin peels off the bridge of his nose right where it gets redder and inflamed. His lips look thinner and pale, like he hasn’t had a good gulp of water in a while.

Your brows pinch and you instinctively lean forward until your noses brush. 

Simon takes a generous look at you, taking note of all the things left unsaid that are so clearly etched into the fine lines of your face. 

He nods softly, like he knows you need him to give you the green light.

And so, you kiss him right then, not wasting a moment longer. You both don’t bother to pretend to build up the tension when the rubber band has obviously already snapped. He parts his mouth for you and tilts his head until you can only breathe him in.

You taste the salt of your own tears, and his acetone breath of days spent without having a bite. You reckon yours isn’t much different—fear and hunger your only companions in his absence. Similar desperation in his hands running up your spine, in the panting of his breath, clogging your lungs already filled with a cocktail of dread and relief—poisonous, yet so comforting.

His arms are sore, muscles taut, but he uses them anyway to wrap around your thighs, bringing you in. 

But it’s then that you stop: when your knees dig into the mattress on each side of his hips—your hands softly pressed to his chest to push him away. 

His eyes land on your lips, already swollen and glossy after he’s kissed them to bits. He watches them move when you speak, entranced, as tears trail into the corners of your mouth.

You think he’s a bit lost in that moment, possibly not entirely listening to what you’re saying, yet that doesn’t stop you from rambling like time is running out.

“You have to shower and rest; we can’t be doing this now.” You’re stumbling over your words. “What if you got a broken rib that might puncture your lung, I gotta be careful.”

He blinks, snapping out of his head. Brows tight in a frown, he lifts his arm and grabs the nape of your neck, pulling you in.

“No, you gotta come 'ere.”

Your lips crash onto his. 

The salt of your tears stings your tongues, dancing together just because your mouth is already open, busy mumbling something under your breath.

“Simon,” you’re saying, but not in the way he likes. “Listen—”

He stops. Sighs like the world has been dropped on his shoulders, breath heavy in your mouth.

His eyes shut close, lips to lips ready to ravage yet both stand still and anticipating. His fingers flex at the back of your neck, others dimple the fat of your thigh through your trousers. 

Anxiety has your stomach in a clutch, and you fear he knows because he can read you like a book, easy as anything, like he’s taken notes through your pages firsthand.

When Simon gazes back at you, his eyes are close enough for you to distinguish the bloodshot whites, the enlarged pupils eating at the chestnut irises. You don’t look at his lips, but you feel with yours how he tentatively opens his mouth a few times, as if he wants to say something but thinks back on it every time.

Until he speaks.

“Please.” 

You want to give in. Have him show you he’s still alive in the only way he knows: with the touch of his hands, the flawless glide of his body with yours.

But you’re relentless, and you mimic him—if not even more desperately. “Please.”

He sighs, completely disarmed.

Both his hands come to cradle your jaw, then. He starts tracing a path with his lips—kisses so tender you can barely feel them, landing blindly on your cheeks.

“Just a few days out there, just—” he murmurs, voice low and breathy. “Fuckin’ sweltered all day, then soon as the sun fucked off—cold as a witch’s tit.”

He breathes a hoarse chuckle, such a weak one that instead of stealing a smile it pulls and knots at your heartstrings.

You gulp. It’s fruitless, there’s something lodged in your throat so thick you abandon any effort to identify it. Fear peaks, however. Cold as the harshest of winters.

You stay silent. You listen. No questions asked, no interjections of any kind. A dance you’ve learned over time, from past mistakes you promised to never make again.

“Been through worse, y’know?” he mutters to your skin, words interrupted only by his own kisses on your cheeks. “Much bloody worse—an' this? This was nothin’. Part an' parcel of the job, love, bound to happen sooner or later.”

He pulls back, his gaze meeting yours as though he could show you what he’s endured, like snapshots unfolding in a reel of film.

Your fingers lace through his hair, and specks of sand and grime settle under your fingernails as you scratch his scalp. Slowly, you lean in, and press a kiss to his forehead.

Simon imperceptibly softens against you, like his body wants to but his head won’t allow him. The muscles in his shoulder are taut but the ones in his neck are loose and flaccid, head bowed to your lips.

“But fuck—” he breathes. “Never been so bloody scared.”

When he takes his hands away from your face to wrap his arms around your waist, you know better than to move—as if the ghost of his fingers still lingers at your jaw. 

He holds you closer. Fists your shirt between his fingers until it’s pulled tight around your middle. 

Seconds pass, in which you do nothing but wait with bated breath for him to elaborate further.

“But not f’ me.” He sighs. “Don’t care if I live or die, yeah?”

It’s not a surprising statement. It doesn’t leave you as floored as it should’ve. 

It’s one you’ve internalized so long ago, even before you two engaged with this nonsense of a thing that only ended up hurting you both.

When you first got to know him, it fell upon you not slowly like a setting sun, but more so like a comet crossing the sky—quick and sharp. Burnt itself into your bones, in the crevices of your heart: that in front of you was a man who didn’t care for his life. A ticking time bomb bound to blow up.

And this knowledge properly slapped you when he went MIA. 

A handful of days of nausea and shaking limbs.

Days in which you bit your nails until they bled, refusing to mourn a dead body you couldn’t see.  

“You listenin’?” He asks hoarsely.

Gingerly, you nod. Your lips brush his forehead. They’re wet. Tears are falling again, salt as needles puncturing the cracks of your lips. 

“You get it, yeah?” He murmurs, and this time it’s him who guides your eyes back to his. They’re dark and heavy with sorrow and, for once, not chained shut.

Days in which you didn’t know where he was—if he was at all. 

His eyes search for yours. Palms to your cheeks like you’re made of glass and might shatter if he holds you too tight.

“You get it?” He asks again, low and breathless.

Days in which he didn’t know where you were—if you were at all, too.

“I do,” you croak.

There's a sense of grounding, then—tectonic plaques settling back after the earthquake. The needle of your compass locks back into place, finally pointing North—no longer caught in an erratic spin.

And it’s so quiet after that. 

Two words that hang in the air and cut the tension in half, until it finally dissipates when he brushes the hair off your forehead.

Simon holds your eyes for a moment more before he brings your lips to his own. 

He kisses you slowly like he doesn’t know the way you like it, like he’s doing it for the first time. 

And maybe, he is.

That night, Simon doesn’t fuck you. 

He’s naked, just out of the shower you helped him take. He sits at the edge of the bed, fists curled around the blanket haphazardly thrown over it, towel crumpled at his feet. 

His skin is damp, glistening under the low lights—gentle highlight of scars you’ve traced, and newer ones. The knotted lines and the inflamed cuts. The pale stretches of skin interrupted by speckled purples, greens, yellows—entire galaxies blooming on his shoulder, on his ribs, on his abdomen and on his thighs.

If that isn’t enough to make your knees buckle, enough to make your heart crack, it’s his request that does it.

“Stay,” he croaks.

That’s just how he says it, blunt as ever—gritted through his teeth, still coarse in the attempt at tenderness. Trying to fit in a role he’s never thought he’d get the chance to play; where he's not a killer, only a man.

That night, Simon doesn’t fuck you, no.

Simon holds you to his side, deaf to your protests when he guides you to lean your cheek to his heart—all the be careful’s stumbling out of your lips tossed out the window by the very man they were meant for.

Still, he brushes your hair, fingers gently lacing through it. His hand faintly trembles—discomfort in the unfamiliar, you think. 

However, even in their uncertainty, the gesture’s enough to make you fall asleep, lulled by the warmth of his body tucked under the duvet with you. Pine needles of his body wash, vestiges of tobacco, antiseptic you smeared on his cuts—the strange familiarity of it, the comfort you hope he's found too.

And maybe you’re dreaming. Maybe it’s the delirium — the adrenaline crash, the hunger, the sleepless nights. Or maybe it’s just the overwhelming relief of having him here, real and warm, alive with blood that still runs.

You feel it rumble in his chest first, before it properly travels to your ears.

A curse. Drawn out, rouged with tender resignation, with honeyed surrender. A beautifully dreadful feeling, conveniently compacted into a single, wretched word. 

Wet lips touch your forehead. They brush left and right but never press in a proper kiss.

“You get it, uh?”

A sigh, then. Or a hoarse chuckle, maybe—you’re not sure. Warm breath grazes your forehead, tickles your scalp until shivers tiptoe gently down your spine and you unconsciously huddle closer.

Simon only holds you more thoroughly.

“Can't fuckin' believe it,” he whispers. 

There's something feather-light in his voice that betrays a hint of careful awe—jarring, misplaced, especially after days scraping by on the very edge of life.

Something akin to hope.

A lot from a man who insists he doesn't care if he lives or dies.

Still, Simon doesn’t bother to conceal it—perhaps because he thinks you're long asleep, perhaps because he doesn't care about hiding at all, not anymore. It curls into his vowels, bleeds golden into his tongue clicking at each t.

“Yeah,” he breathes. Kisses your forehead. “Now I get it too.”