finding an apartment on this side of town was no easy feat, considering rent was through the roof and your wallet wasn’t exactly padded with cash. it wasn’t long before you’d run out of options and decided to go with plan b – find a roommate. not exactly what you’d wanted, you couldn’t exactly afford to be picky.
you start your search immediately, scouring the personal ads in the newspaper and roommate finding websites before you find one that catches your eye. it’s the location, really, the ad doesn’t give much information other than a phone number and a notice to ‘ask for simon’. if it hadn’t been so close to your job, you probably would have skipped over it.
when you call the number a gruff voice rumbles over the other end of the line. you explain your interest and agree to meet later on in the day to talk things over. anxieties start to swarm your mind as you hang up the phone. living with a stranger was definitely not on your bingo card, but then again, nothing that you’d been through in the last few years had been either. by 5 o’clock you’re knocking on a dark paneled door, nervously rocking on your heels. first impressions have never been your strong suit. don’t be too friendly, you don’t want to be overbearing. what if he thinks you look like a slob? oh god, what if this is the wrong apartment –
the door swings open and you almost feel like you shrink in front of the man in front of you. he’s tall, muscled, and looks utterly bored. shit. he’s perfect.
“um…I’m looking for simon?”
“you found him.” he blinks down at your hand when you stick it out for him to shake, hesitating for a moment before wrapping his hand around yours. you try your best to ignore the way it fits just so, sending warmth up your wrist. simon leads you through the apartment and shows you the spare bedroom, which is right across from his. it’s spacious and bright, and you can’t help but imagine decorating the space to your own liking. don’t get ahead of yourself.
when simon tells you how much he’s asking for, your jaw drops. the price is good enough that you can pay him and still have a good chunk of your paycheck left over. what’s the catch?
“there's a catch.” and there it is.
turns out, this ‘catch’ is more of a pleasant twist. simon is in the military and goes on leave every so often. sometimes for weeks, sometimes for months, he says. it’ll be up to you to manage the upkeep of the apartment. he seems surprised when you assure him that it won’t be a problem, you like to keep busy anyway. and so your partnership begins.
the two of you fall in step with each other almost immediately. simon is a man of few words, but the conversations you have are amusing and leave you smiling. he’s armed to the teeth with bad jokes and sarcastic comments that leave you simultaneously rolling your eyes and laughing. he leaves for base early in the morning and by the time you return from your own job, he’s sitting on the couch with a cup of tea. within a few weeks, he even starts making you one too. your routine evolves to include him, spending your evenings with simon instead of out or in your own room. one evening you come home and he’s on the phone, staring out the window as he hums in agreement with whoever is on the other end of the line. he ends the call with a “see you then, sir” before turning to face you. you know the words that are on the tip of his tongue before he even speaks them.
“you're being deployed.” simon nods. “I leave in the morning,” he replies, and you’re a little bit alarmed by the way your stomach drops. you knew this was coming at some point, you shouldn’t be so surprised. and you really shouldn’t be feeling like a spiderweb of cracks just appeared on your heart. you muster up a smile and even though you know it looks forced, you need to be supportive of him now. god knows where he’s going and what he’ll be walking into. “I would ask for how long, but that’s probably a stupid question, huh?”
simon chuckles, nodding. “yeah it is. won’t stop me from asking tomorrow though.” he shoves his hands in his pockets. “are you gonna be alright here?” by yourself is the unsaid addition to his words.
“I’ll be fine. so will you,” the latter you speak aloud not only for him, but a little bit for yourself. if you keep saying it maybe it will come true. simon changes the subject, obviously wanting to enjoy his last few hours as a civilian before he has to turn that side of him off for a while. you share takeout from his favorite restaurant and talk over the sound of the television in the background. there’s something deeper about this interaction, something you can’t seem to put your finger on. you watch simon as he cleans up the kitchen, sweeping takeout boxes into the garbage and putting the silverware in the dishwasher.
take a good look now. he’ll be gone soon.
the thought sobers you and you quickly look away when he turns away from the sink to fully face you. he studies you back, almost as if he is memorizing every detail of your face just as you had done to him only moments before. when you lift your gaze to meet his, there’s a look in his eyes you’re wholly unfamiliar with. longing, it feels like. he blinks it away before you have a chance to say anything. “I’m gonna turn in. I have to be out of here by 4 o’clock to make it in time for our flight.” you wince. 4 o’clock in the morning? its almost 11 o’clock now. as if sensing your horror, he waves a hand dismissively. “don’t worry love. I’ve shipped off with less sleep in my system and survived.”
love. it was a nickname he’d only recently started using but it sent a flutter of butterflies loose in your stomach every time. a common term of endearment, you remind yourself, especially for a british man. he probably calls the nice lady down at the coffeeshop love too. the thought irks you more than it should. “hold down the fort for me, yeah? I’ll be back before you know it.”
“be safe, please.” the words come out before you get a chance to mask the desperation behind them. simon nods. a man of few words.
“goodnight,” you whisper as he moves down the hall toward his room. your heart tightens with every step he takes until you hear the ever familiar click of his door being shut. the sound snaps you back to the reality of the situation.
he's leaving. you’ll be on your own for a while. what if it’s forever?
a shiver passes through you as you will yourself to get up from your chair, making your way down the hallway to your door. you pause as you open your door, staring at the one across from you. it’s quiet, you can’t hear him moving around, although you never really could in the first place. the man moves with the silence of owl’s feathers. this is the closest he’ll be for a long time.
pulling yourself into the room and into bed feels like a chore. sleep does not come easily. your conversation with simon plays repeatedly over and over in your mind. a chorus of emotions start to flow through you – anger, concern, fear. anger for whoever had started the conflict that required his deployment, concern for his wellbeing during said deployment, and fear – fear for what this overwhelming urge to be with simon meant. he was a door away, just as he always was. but tomorrow, he would be shipped away, sent to fight with his team in some unknown place against some unknown enemy. the thought makes you sick.
sleep finally comes, but only in waves. you're thrown between consciousness and the space just between sleep, leaving you groggy and miserable. even so, the only thing on your mind is the storm cloud of a man just across the hallway and the intensity of your feelings toward him. he appears in snapshots as dreams come and go. simon smiling, simon cooking, simon laughing. he hadn’t done it much at first, but once you’d heard it you ached to hear it again. the thought hits you like a brick wall.
I’m in love with simon riley.
you sit up in bed, grabbing for your phone in the dark blindly. it hits the floor and you curse as you reach down, feeling for the shape of it. as soon as your fingers touch it you snatch it up, squinting as the brightness glares in your sleepy eyes. 3:54 AM.
you all but fall out of the bed, stumbling over to the bedroom door to yank it open. simon’s door is still closed as it was when you went to bed last night, and when you wrench it open your heart sinks. empty. spinning on your heel, you rush down the hallway, trying not to slip in your fuzzy socks as you turn the corner to the front door. you’re met with the sight of simon’s duffel bag, and for a moment you feel like you can breathe again. find him, your brain chants. you turn to head back down the hallway you came from, ready to call out simon’s name when you smack face first into the man himself.
“what are you doing up?” he pulls you back the shoulders, studying your face with a concerned wrinkle between his eyebrows. “is everything okay?”
“I don’t want you to go.”
simon’s eyes soften but he holds his ground. in all honesty, he looks a bit surprised. “I don’t exactly have a choice, love. I – “
“that’s not what I meant.” you stare up at him, taking in the beauty of the man before you. dark eyes staring down at you, the traces of scars trailing across his skin. the stories of battles won painted across his skin. “I want you here. I know this is your duty, but god – if there was anything I could do to make it possible for you to stay I’d do it. I don’t want to lose you simon, I just can’t,” by the end of your sentence you can feel the sting of tears and you cover your face with your hands. sure he’d seen you cry, but putting this on him, right before he was about to leave, didn’t seem fair. the words seemed to come out of their own volition as you chew your bottom lip. you hadn’t thought this far. realizing your own feelings? check. but even hinting at them to simon was a decision you hadn’t even had time to think about. you’d just confessed you couldn’t stand to lose him, and now you might lose him to that very same decision. you should’ve just –
“I’ll always come back to you.” his words are spoken softly but you can’t ignore the seriousness behind his steely tone. warm hands leave your shoulders and simon’s fingers wrap around your wrists loosely. he pulls them away from your face and grips your chin lightly, angling your face up to his. the air leaves your lungs as his breath fans across your lips.
“I would ask you to promise me, but I don’t want to hold you to that.”
“you could hold me to anything you’d like love. just like I’ll be holding you to it that you’ll still be here when I get back.” he tilts his head and you can swear his eyes flicker between yours and your mouth. images of a different reality start to play in your mind, one where he wasn’t moments away from leaving and had the time to push you against the wall and pour every ounce of emotion into a heart stopping kiss. as if stuck in his orbit you shift forward slightly. you don’t miss the way his eyes darken before he pulls away. he doesn’t miss the whine that slips from your lips.
“if I didn’t have to leave within the next 3 minutes I’d give you everything you want, love. everything i want.” simon’s voice is gravelly and has a dangerous tinge to it. the air shifts between you two as he leans forward to press a chaste kiss to your forehead, your eyelids fluttering closed at the sensation. objectively, simon was not a soft man. he’d only given you a glimpse of his life before you and even less of his life before the military, but you could tell that he’d been hardened by something much deeper than the world of a soldier. but this – this was a gentleness that you’d never expected from him. it made your heart hammer in your chest.
simon steps back, a pained look in his eyes as he leans down to collect his bag. you can still feel his lips on your forehead, his fingers on your jaw. you have a feeling you’ll be replaying this memory until it’s worn thin just waiting for him to come home. if he does – you stop that thought right in its tracks.
“please be safe.” simon nods at you as he adjusts the bag higher on his shoulder. his phone buzzes and he snaps an “I’ll be down in a moment” to who must be the cab driver waiting outside. you swear you can hear your heart crack just a bit. he’s leaving.
simon steps towards the door, his fingertips landing on the knob but not gripping it. you take the opportunity to speak. “I’ll be waiting right here,” you choke out, trying your best to sound as composed as possible. he offers you a weak smile, one that can’t mask the pain behind it.
“you better be. you’re all mine when I get back.” with that, simon tugs the door open and slips through it silently. the click of the door behind him wrenches a sob from your throat. you quickly wipe away the tears as if he were still there to see you cry. simon would let you cry. after indulging in your tears for a few moments, you sniffle and straighten yourself. you’ll have plenty of time to cry later. for now, you have to either sleep or make yourself busy. you have a feeling that ‘making yourself busy’ will become your new hobby over the next few weeks.
the silence that haunts your apartment becomes too loud. so you pick up crocheting, start reading again and learn how to make your favorite takeout meals. simon’s too. days turn into weeks and before you know it a month has passed. then two. there’s no word from him, but he’d mentioned that calling or texting wouldn’t really be an option when he was away. you’re left with nothing but more anxieties than you’d like to consider and the memory of simon riley one moment away from kissing you.
you spend your evenings busying your hands and thinking about a certain pair of brown eyes hovering over you. you feel as if you're willing him back to you, his words replaying in your head. you’re all mine when I get back.
you wish you’d told him you were all his then too.
you get a second chance when you hear click of your front door unlocking.
