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He suspects he should stay away.
As soon as he began to crave the sight of you. Ignoring the fact he’s heard This Year's Love by David Gray three times already—and he has only been here an hour. The condensation beads from his glass pools on the picked-at-bar mat, drenching his fingers and wrist.
Not that he cares.
Ghost—
Simon knows it’s all part of the charm.
It has been since the day he turned eighteen and his boss at the butchers took him for his first pint.
The place hasn’t changed since. Everything from the same ten to twelve songs which crackle through the worn and tired speakers. The smokey air, and discoloured, yellowing wallpaper.
Things don’t get replaced either, the chipped glass ashtrays are the same as the ones he remembers. The same chipped mahogany tables with the ill-matching chairs and stools that are wobbly.
The scent in the place is familiar, a mix between festering ale and Mr Sheen, working men and cheap perfume, fust and smoke—both from the crackling winter fire and cigarettes—even if one hasn’t been smoked inside of it for years.
The place, to outsiders, would look like any stone-walled pub on the corner of two streets they’ll never remember. Then they’ll step in, their eyes glancing over the peeling wallpaper, moth-eaten curtains (that never close) and the once-white nets in the windows, before questioning what they’ve walked into. That’s before they’ve noticed the white ball on the pool table is in fact another black ball and that the dart board triple 20 has been chipped out after Bald-Andy lost his rag.
The pub has been a real gem to those who know what real diamonds are for as long as Simon can remember. None of the regulars care that the bar stools have burns from cigarettes being stubbed out, they don’t care that the musty smell doesn’t vanish even with Febreze and sheer will. It’s expected, just like how the bar is always sticky and the energy always feels right.
Here, he can relax.
When he’s home, he feels purposeless. A man with a map but no direction. But, he can unfurl his shoulders from his ears, even let his hood slide to the back of his neck.
Because in this place, strangers aren’t welcome. It’s a local pub, for local folk. Those who wander in, thinking the pub on the corner of quaint and quintessential will provide them with a typical British evening, normally leaving before Freddie Mercury has reached the bridge of whatever song is on rotation.
But, Simon isn’t just here for the bourbon or the ale, he’s not here because the wooden fire licks every wall of the place. He’s not here because it feels more like home than his actual home.
He’s here because there’s one thing that has changed, and it’s you.
You with a rosy, sweet laugh that usually accompanies a smile which makes his heart gallop. It calms whatever storm rages inside of him when you look at him—when you bore your pretty, fucking eyes into him before you lean over, hand on the beer pump as you call him Simon.
Simon.
His name has never sounded more serene than when it falls from your lips. The way you say it makes it seem less than ordinary, almost unique. Humour sways in your eyes, a glint he knows there’s more too—and wants nothing more than to explore.
You’re a vibrant surprise in the middle of my mundane, and it took him all of five minutes to discern you’re both difficult and charming all rolled into one.
And then you begin calling him Riley.
It’s more flirtatious—more meaningful.
Simon is when you’re soft, thanking him, when others are close and can hear you. Riley is when you’re leaning over the bar, staring into his soul and smirking so deviously it takes a lot to not kiss it off your lips.
Women haven’t tended to last here—except Tracy. Tracy, who like the urinal cakes, has been here since Simon’s first pint. Her lines had deepened in her skin over time, but her hair has remained that putrid blonde she tries to claim is natural.
You, on the other hand, are far younger—kind, soft, unless someone gets lairy and then there’s a ferociousness to you that’s packed into something so small. He suspects you know what the men at the bar look at when your eyes aren’t looking, and it’s not the way you command the small space stuffed with offerings and glasses.
He’d paid no mind initially. Tried not to, anyway. He’d decided it would be for the best. Then you’d bite back at Dave that you may be too young to remember a song, but you could still get down on her knees without them creaking.
He had smirked at that.
Deciding his new seat at the bar, on the rickety bar stool was his new favourite seat.
To this day, you always smell floral, but the accompanying scent with it changes. Sometimes you’re sultry, sometimes you’re just sweet. Each time he is able to return ‘home’ he’s never sure which one he’ll get—but it burns a place in his nose all the same.
Hard to shift, difficult to smother, not that he wishes to do either.
Their first exchanges were simple. Contractual. Another? Yes. Your usual? Yes. Then you had placed a deck of cards in front of him, a teasing smile on your face in the quietness of a Wednesday evening.
Keep me company.
It was difficult for him to grasp how soft your eyes were, how it made his mind blank and his heart both hammer and stutter all at once.
Now, it’s normal.
He’s used to it, fucking welcomes the way they land on him. He thinks about them on the plane ride home, how Alan—the chef who’ll serve anything off-menu for a packet of fags—makes a mean all-day breakfast sandwich. But mostly, it’s you.
“You back for long, Riley?”
“No.”
“Never are.”
“You sound disappointed, sweetheart.”
You always smile the same when he calls you that. Always half-roll your eyes before shaking your head, as though flirting with you is oh so wrong.
Especially when you start it first.
“What would you do if I was?”
That’s new.
His fingers pick up a crisp, watching you lean on the pump in front of you. The star earrings hanging from your ears, catch the bar spotlights, making it seem as though you’re literally glowing.
But then, you are—to him at least.
Someone calls for you, pint raised in hand—saving him from answering. You wink, and mumble you’ll be right back, the words lingering in the space you once stood.
You’re too good for him.
Too normal. Too unscarred and untouched. He suspects a bad thing has never happened to you. You’ve not plunged a knife into someone’s throat, not shot a moving target with a precision that most try to replicate on their controllers and headsets.
For that reason, and that reason alone, he knows he should stay on this side of the bar. Even when it takes all of his self-restraint to do so.
It’s hard though.
More so when you give him that look—that one which makes his cock twitch and his thoughts turn feral.
Because the nice girl from the pub may have a sweet, soft voice, but fuck he knows you’re anything but.
You’re all red lips and righteousness, a siren and enchantress who chooses floral perfume to try and disguise the way your eyes undress him.
Not that he complains.
He’s done the same.
Fucked his own fist to the thought of the noises you’d make and how you’d feel enveloped around his cock.
Tonight he’d likely do the same.
Winter is in full effect when he next returns.
Snow was thick on the streets, the roads a horrid mix of ice, slush and asphalt.
You’re behind the bar, Bald-Andy and his wife in the corner near the fire, and the crackling, gruff voice of Oasis is playing. You look up, lips smirking, eyes glistening.
“The usual?”
He considers it. Sweet, caramel and vanilla notes hit his tongue in memory. But he shakes his head, pulling out a stool, and sitting opposite you as your perfume greets him.
“Surprise me, sweetheart.”
You stand fully, hair falling around your face, making his heart lurch and his stomach burn.
“Living dangerously, I see,” you say, turning your back to him as you pull at spirit bottles.
If only you knew.
He suspects something sweet when you place the glass in front of him. The sound of it meeting the worn wood so loud, not that the other two patrons look over. As though it’s just the two of you. No one else. His eyes lift, hooking themselves into yours—unwilling to let you tear them from him as he tries to bury the aches of war and fighting.
It’s caramel coloured, darker at the bottom of the glass than the top. Ice. So much ice.
“Go on, try it, Simon.”
And he does.
It’s sweet, and zingy. It’s mellow but spicy, and he tastes the hints of ginger and rum as the cold hits his teeth.
“What y’made me?”
“You like it?”
Yes.
The tip of your tongue swiping across your bottom lip, watching you lean smugly. “Dark and stormy… the epitome of you.”
A groan leaving his lips, your laugh tasting of sunshine and happier days.
A long moment stretches between the two of you, one that makes the air thrum and him having to shift his jeans. A continuous voice in his head, telling him no, telling him to put a stop to this now.
He drinks it. He even orders it again.
Time ticks fast—too fast. He wants it to slow. Ever since their first flirtation, if you’ve finished when he’s there—he walks you to your car.
You drive something small, your entire backseat is always covered in coats, shoes and books. Something normal, and so typically you.
He does the same tonight, hands in his jacket pockets, periodically scanning the area as you lock the big wooden doors of the pub. You shake them, ensuring you have, pocketing the keys before turning to nudge him.
Simple. Soft. Each gesture in the short walk is always seemingly effortless. You don’t worry he’ll take offence, that he’ll shatter or snap.
Not that he would.
His arm lifting, letting your small hand slide around it for stability as the snow falls thick and fast. It paints the streets in a blanket that crunches under their boots. And there’s something about the snow landing in your hair, on the tip of your nose, even on your lower lip.
He wants to brush it from your mouth, and trace the bow of your upper lip with his thumb.
Because it’s all a contradiction. Snow makes you look innocent, something close to a character from a movie or a Disney film. And, you’re not any of those things.
You’re snarky, huffed whispers and quick retorts when drunkards try to hit on you; you’re witty, funny and boldly brilliant.
So much so, he’s never sure why you work there. He knows you’re studying, knows you’re trying to better yourself. You’ve told him as much over a Pepsi Max in your hand and something stronger in his.
He knows it’s odd to keep staring at you. Your eyes staring up, making your eyes seem wider and bigger than they actually are—pretty sure the flurries of snow, stars and moon are shining in them. But it’s his treat—his reward. The thing he thinks about when he’s knee-deep in mud or covered in blood, sweat and bruises.
Your feet stop at your car, unlocking it—the beep and flash of your headlights casting light across the car park.
“You back for long?”
“No.”
Smiling, you lean against the rear window. “Never are.”
It’s a pattern, a habit. An exchange that has become the norm for the two of you as much as hello and goodbye.
Then, you sigh.
Something you rarely do, not to him—not with him. His brows knitting, tightening, heart thundering in his throat as you drag your eyes up his chest, and neck and land on his face.
“Do you know how perfect it would be, if you grew a pair and kissed me in the snow, Riley?”
Your hand slides into the handle, opening it as your smirk turns into a grin. One which is brighter than your headlights, the moon—hell, the fucking sun.
“Guess I’ll have to wait for a shooting star, instead.”
And, you laugh, leaning your back against the car—expression blended with vulnerability and searing heat that should melt the settling ice on your face.
“Y’seem like the sorta woman to make me work for it.”
“Oh yes, because eighteen months of will-they-won’t-they hasn’t been tedious enough.”
He grabs your elbow, roughly pulling but finds you fall into him with far too much ease. The snow continues to fall, leaving soft cold kisses on his face, but he doesn’t feel cold.
How could he? You’re staring up at him with the searing heat of the sun.
“Y’want me to kiss you, Sweetheart?”
“More than I want to go home and sleep, Riley.”
His hand cups your cheek, warm meeting cold as he pulls your lips to his. Cold, soft lips slide against his, and he tastes the orange from your cordial swirling with his bourbon-covered tongue. Your car groans when he presses you against it, your hand clutching him with the same desperation as he’s flush with your body.
Your cheeks are warm against his hands, eyelashes fluttering open as the two of you break apart.
“You… you want to come back to mine?”
Yes. Fuck yes.
But—
“Next time.”
“Yeah?”
His fingers brush down your cheek, and he nods.
He got your number.
For convenience. You tell him he didn’t need to come in and drink one of your piss-poor beer pulls just to get in your knickers.
So he doesn’t.
He doesn’t text when he first lands. He gives himself a day—a moment to shed the Ghost and become Simon. When you do you don’t reply with anything witty, just straight-laced—just like he likes it.
A time. An address.
He expects you to size him up at your front door, even bracing for a changed mind. You don’t do either. You let the door open, standing two steps inwards dressed in something lace and rippable.
Fuckin’ fuck.
It’s the only thought he has before he slams your door behind him, striding towards you and practically throwing you over his shoulder.
You don’t taste like what he expects—it’s better.
His tongue flattens against you, two fingers inside your warm cunt as you whimper. You reluctantly still clutching to the promise you’d made earlier. The one where you informed him it’ll take more than a few fingers and a skilled tongue to make you scream.
So he sucks. Bites. Nips.
He finds that squishy part, stroking it as your thighs twitch by his ears.
It’s then he grants himself the chance to look at you, finding your lipstick spread in a way which seems deliberately chaotic—even if he knows it isn’t. Your lashes wet, eyes clamped shut as you try and try not to give in.
So fuckin’ stubborn.
Your hands, all smooth and soft, clutching your breasts, the pink of a nipple poking out between your index and thumb as your chest rises and falls as you fight calling out his name.
He likes that you have convictions—it gives him something to break.
His tongue swirling, knowing already what he needs to do to undo you.
And then—
Simon—fuc-k, Simon.
It’s better than classical, better than whatever is number one on the fuckin’ charts. The sound of you coming hard, and fast, trying to bury it in a whisper than the scream you actually want to release. All of it is a better sound than his knife plunging into some unsuspecting op—because he will make you scream.
He laps up every ounce you give him, your pleading whimpers and nails in his hair making him groan against your cunt until you almost snap his neck—or try to.
“Take them off. Now.”
He doesn’t like orders.
He fucking detests them. He gives them. Normally loud and booming. But your voice, all sweet and high-pitched, trying to give stern eyes when your lashes are coated in tears he’s caused…
Your eyes widen when he stands naked. And he knows he’s big.
He’s very fucking aware of it. He’s seen plenty of evidence to support the fact in the wild, surprised eyes of those who he’s dropped his trousers for.
You now being one of them.
But fuck, he fits in you perfectly. So much so, he wants to mould your insides to match him, to ruin you for every other person who thinks they stand a chance with you.
Because they don’t.
But then neither does he.
Not that he’ll squander a moment to fuck with heaven—to hear the cadence shift when he hooks your leg over his hip as he drives his cock into you all the way to the hilt.
He coaxes another out of you, your tight cunt like a vice around him as your manicured nails leave scratches on his back. His tongue swipes across your jaw, before haphazardly capturing your mouth.
You taste like mint polos and sex—a taste he is already sure he’ll crave.
And he wonders to himself if you know how fucking perfect you are. If you have any idea of how stunning you truly are.
Especially like this. Your body shimmering with sweat, each thrust making your breasts bounce as your fingers tease his hair at the nape of his neck.
And then he wonders about something else.
Something far from coating your walls in his come.
Would you fit in his life?
Would you fit as well in it, as he does inside your cunt?
And then you’re clenching, hips lazily trying to meet his as you whimper, moan—
And then you scream.
Not Riley.
But Simon.
Mission accomplished.
It has become a habit.
You have become a habit.
He lands. He waits a day. He fucks you until you are raw, sore and breathless. His lips are on yours, hands still on your hips as he hears how hoarse your voice is.
“You back for long?”
“No.”
But this no is different.
It’s tinged with half a teaspoon of regret and sadness.
You hide your face when he answers now. Sometimes by slinging your arm to shield him from your eyes or by turning from him. It’s like you know he likes them. Likes being able to see each infliction of emotion in them—shimmering, dancing, storming across in front of him.
Somehow, you’ve fit into his life too well—cutting yourself a hole, forcing your way in, and making it seem as though you were always there.
Simon lets you be, too.
You have one of his t-shirts, baggy, black and covered in your perfume. He finds he has one of your hair ties around his wrist, not even realising until he slides on a pair of gloves. Flicking it against his wrist as he thinks of you, something he only allows himself to do briefly.
Things have changed. Shifted.
But the Earth hasn’t fallen off its axis and he’s not fucked up a mission. So he counts his blessings. He doesn’t know if he believes good things can happen to him, but he could be persuaded that he can have nice things. A belief he even starts to accept. A reality he begins to wish for, rather than keep at arm's length.
You’ve left the pub. You hadn’t been working every night for a while. Your studies had ended—receiving a photo of a cap and gown without your face when he was in the middle of a desert.
Now you’re working a better job, one you deserve more—it’s creative, more you. You make the world brighter, and better while he’s getting dirty and riding the world of darkness. You text him once, the day you got paid, that you bought him something nice.
Something he ripped with his teeth when he landed—much to your annoyance.
You’re no longer the girl in the pub. You’re perfectly applied make-up he fucks off your face. You’re high heels and pencil skirts—and sometimes fitted trousers that hug your arse so beautifully, he’s almost a bit jealous. You’re the pink sky at night, laughter that warms his chest, and a smile he thinks about as he falls asleep.
“What would my alias be?”
Your hand slides over a plate to him. Cheese on toast. Nothing big, nothing major, but he stares at it all the same. Because you’ve made him something.
You’ve been doing it for a while, and each time is as perplexing as the last. His brain is unable to figure out how, why and what he’s done to deserve it. Even if it’s toast, a sandwich, or a fucking meal.
Because it’s something outside of sex. It’s outside of holding the back of your head as he fucks your throat; outside of him pinning you against the dark alleyway of the pub he first saw you in, making you both cold and warm all at once.
Even if he knows—constantly turns it over and over in his mind—that this isn’t just sex. He’s not entirely sure what this is. Except…nice?
You take a bite of your own, the crunch filling the air, crumbs littering your top—his top. “My call sign.”
Simon isn’t sure why he told you about what he did. You were in his arms, warm, smelling of sex, flowers and something sharp. And, it fell out of him. Still drunk off your cunt, lost in the tenderness of your fingers on his chest, playing it a pattern with your nails.
Not everything. Fuck, he couldn’t tell you everything—wouldn’t. But you know enough.
Enough for him to know you’re not running, that you still want him knocking on your door whenever he lands—whether it's morning, noon or night.
Now, you’re making him food. Legs long, his black t-shirt skimming your thighs—all his. Looking ever so inviting, making it hard not to push you up on the counter and give your neighbours something to talk about.
“Egg.”
You snort, sharp and light. “Egg?! You’re fuckin’ rude, Riley. Egg? No, that’s shit, give me a better one.”
“But, true. You’d shatter, you’re more yolk than shell, you.”
“C’mon, be serious.”
He gives you a look, finding the one you’re giving him sultry, teasing—demanding.
“Snow.”
You stare for several seconds before you hum, crunching the corner of your food with your teeth. “Lemme guess because I’m oh-so-delicate?”
No—
It’s because you’re fucking perfect.
Because you’re his favourite season and favourite moment.
On some deeper level, he suspects it’s because you’re pure. That you’re unruined. Untainted. Your body has no scars—except the one from chicken pox and one on your hand from a glass bottle shattering. But, that’s it. He’s kissed every inch of you to know, to be 100% sure.
You’re Snow because each time he sees it, he thinks of you. Those red lips, all that fucking audacity and the way you kissed him, tasting as warm as bourbon and as sweet as sugar.
“Yeh, ‘cause you’re all pure and innocent, Sweetheart.”
You laugh, richly. Head thrown back, perfect thin neck exposed to the air—to him.
And he wants to kiss you.
He wants to taste your laugh and smile, let his hands run around the back of your thighs and feel you against every inch of him.
That’s when your eyes land on him again—all full of questions and spice. Your tongue drags across your plush bottom lip, wiping up the grease from the cheese as he swallows.
His throat suddenly dry.
Because the girl he met in the pub—the one standing before him—is standing in his t-shirt. Looking every bit delicious, good enough to eat and never come up for air.
And he thinks—
Realises, he actually, might—probably—miss you when he goes back to Price.
It’s stretched on for months. A year.
He lands, uses the key you gave him and stamps the snow from his boots, half smiling to himself as he does. Whenever he gets here, he doesn’t wait, he finds his way to whatever room you’re in.
Sometimes he doesn’t get far, your body colliding with his. All curves in his hands and arms around his neck, and he’s not sure what the fuck this is, but he likes it.
Loves it.
It’s something like a song about falling in love and a peaceful Sunday morning; it’s those moments you see in movies that make your eyes swell with tears as he stares at you, wondering how on earth you’re so goddamn amazing.
It’s familiar, and yet he has no idea what is happening next or why.
Mostly, though, Simon knows it’s something because he said your name to Johnny.
Not because he was dying, not because he was hurt. But in the middle of a normal conversation, one exchanged on some dark rooftop, stars twinkling, and eyes fixated on a building down a scope.
Normally, he wouldn’t have answered. Would have ignored him.
If y’could be anywhere, right now, Lt. Where’d y’pick?
He didn’t need to think.
He didn’t say home. Because home wasn’t his place, the pub or even the fuckin’ city he’s always ever known. It’s wherever you are. It’s where your heart beats and your bed is placed; it’s where your annoying, shitty music taste is blaring and that sleepy smile is when he wakes up next to you.
So, Simon said your name.
Simple. Easy.
Except it wasn’t simple or fucking easy. It was messy, and complicated. Because Johnny tilted his head, in that obnoxious way he does, demanding more information than he is ever prepared to ever share.
‘Fuck off, Johnny, before I punt y’off the rooftop and tell Price you’d been a cunt.’
Because you are locked away when he’s here. You are chained inside his chest, the deepest fucking secret—one no one will ever fucking take no matter how much they dig, how much they push him too.
You are his.
Something only he gets to enjoy—gets to see, hear and taste.
He’s done all of that for the last hour. Getting some sick satisfaction from edging you until you’re pleading with him, begging him with every breath you have to let you come as you wriggle and wiggle, urging him to lift your legs—just like he likes it, how you like it, and make you see fucking stars.
Now, you’re barefoot.
A different t-shirt of his hiding the welts he’s left, the growing bruises from the way he’d needed to hold you in place. Watching, observing—admiring—the oddness to your steps as you flick on the kettle. He’s always close—looming in the sun’s shadows across the kitchen he knows better than his own.
He has to be. Wants to be.
You’ve not just carved a place in your life, but in his chest—his heart. You’ve seeped into his skin, into his soul, merging and bringing to life something he thought had wilted and died. He doesn’t care that he’s vulnerable, that he’s not jagged edges and sharp stares.
“You wanna go out with me? Tonight?”
You pause, tea bag in hand, looking over your shoulder at him as if he’d asked you to slaughter a pig, a child, a whole bloody family.
The moment is tender, almost fragile.
It trembles under the weight of his question and the silence of your thoughts.
Then it stills—
“You don’t… you don’t have to do that…”
“What?”
Dashing the tea bag into the cup, you turn. Hips leaning against the counter, sigh falling from your swollen, pink lips as your arms fold. The air scented with that familiar smell your home always has—jasmine and pineapple, the sun kissing your toes and legs as your face shows thunder and rain.
The air shifts, changing. It’s speckled in ice with a cold breeze punctuated by you suddenly not able to meet his eyes.
“Date me. Change… this. I know that you… I know you don’t have time for that.”
Except he doesn’t hear that, he hears me.
He suspects you don’t say it to hurt him.
But it does.
It wounds—
It fucking burns. It’s on par with a bullet or a rusty knife, twisting and twisting until it’s hitting nerves and making muscles quake.
It worsens when the kettle clicks, ready—waiting. It blows steam under your cupboards, billowing out around the edges before it rushes to the ceiling. Twisting, turning, desperate to escape the uncomfortable space between the two of you.
But, he just wants to pull you close—impossibly close. He wants to cradle and fucking hug you, even if he never hugs anyone. Simon wants to tell you that he hasn’t been doing this with anyone else. That it’s been over a year of this, and even he knows it’s something.
Admittedly, yeah, he didn’t think he’d have fucking time for someone, and then you came in and blew that all to shit. But, on some level inside of him, he knows they aren’t the words he should be saying. So silence fills the space instead.
Doubling. Tripling. Expanding like foam and smoothing over crevices as you shift your weight from one foot to the other.
And he knows he should just ask again.
Softer. Maybe with a bit more emotion. Counting in his head. One. Two, fucking Three.
Your body turning, holding out a mug you got him—big, black with tiny ghosts on it. Because you’d pestered and pestered to know what he was called. What his alias is when he shoots people. The mug made you grin when you handed it to him last time—tired of him taking your favourite. The one with a quote from a television show you keep promising to show him. Sarcastic. Almost makes his teeth show when he smiles. He almost does the same when he takes the mug, and you turn away from him.
Now when he takes it, your eyes drop to the floor. To the space between the two of you.
The one which feels vast, and far larger than the bar ever felt.
All Simon wonders is why there’s a pit opening inside of him—why it is filling him with a feeling he wants to cut out of himself. It’s not light or nice, it’s dark and twisty.
Because he’s the same person who goes on stupid solo missions where the percentage of survival is low, and still fucking comes back to base with whatever was asked of him. He’s Ghost—a man who many fear. Who is often coated in more of other people’s blood than he is dirt.
And yet this—
You.
Terrify the living fuck out of him. Not that he’s showing that. He knows he’s stood with a stiff back, and a face devoid of any emotions.
“You said it when we first… Just… I know your job is important. I know you can’t commit and I respect—”
“Sweetheart.”
Your eyes meet his. Teeth biting your lip, arms crossing over your chest.
And shit, he hopes to never see this face ever again. This nervous, unsure face that he’s put there. One which complicates everything and pulls on every string inside of him.
You are an enigma, and he’s not even sure you know it.
You’re something he never deserves, something he never thought he’d have, get, or keep.
Yet, here you are.
Someone who has seen every inch of him. Knows what he does. Where he goes. You even know brief moments of his past, the parts of him that he’d rather take to the grave.
You are important. You matter.
He’s falling—free-falling, in fact—and has been for a while, he didn’t even acknowledge it. Pushing it down, letting it sit with all the other things he doesn’t want to deal with.
“Do’ya wanna go out with me tonight?”
Each word hits you, strokes you. He watches as each syllable lands, your eyes reading him.
“You back for long, Simon?”
His lips twitch. “Little bit.”
And then you smile. All devious and cunning, lips twisting as you unfold your arms and adjust your stance. “I think I’d prefer a takeaway. Keep you to myself, while I 'ave you.”
Standing, crossing the small space of your kitchen as he cages you in. Your hand clutching his cheek, soft, gentle, and more than he fucking deserves.
His head lowers, lips close to your ear as you curl your body into him as he whispers, all gruff and quiet so only you—and not a fly or spirit could hear—says, “I’ve always been just yours, sweetheart.”
Simon doesn't expect a response. More a kiss. Maybe even a roll of your hips.
It's why he doesn't expect the words, "I'd hoped so", or the way they make him feel like he's walking on air.