You’re doing house chores when you feel your phone buzz in your pocket. You pull out your phone and unlock it, reading the text from Simon. ’Late night tonight. Don’t worry about dinner, I’ll pick some up.’ You send him a quick response before putting your phone back in your pocket.

You don’t really like it when Simon works late at the shop at all. For one, you can’t see him until way later, and two, he usually comes back tired and angry. Simon was discharged from the military over a knee injury shortly after you two started seeing each other, so he moved in with you and got a job as an auto mechanic. He sees the doctor about his knee, which is completely messed up due to his time in service.

But his bad knee isn’t the only he came back with after being in the military. He’s been diagnosed with PTSD and moderate depression. He’s been taking medication for his depression and seeing a therapist about his PTSD, but that still doesn’t completely stop his nightmares.

Sometimes he’ll wake up in the middle of the night screaming, and when you try to help him out of the episode he’ll almost get aggressive. Likewise he’ll be in a bad mood for a lot of the day after he has a nightmare, which causes him to snap at you. Sometimes any little thing can send him over the edge.

You hope work goes well for him tonight, cause you don’t know if you want to deal with the tension when he comes home; sometimes it’s thick enough to cut with a knife. So far he seems okay, since he offered to pick up dinner, so maybe that’s a sign that it’ll be alright.