There had been a hundred opportunities to tell you.

Simon thinks about that now because it’s somehow easier than thinking about the sounds coming from the other side of the wall.

The first opportunity had come years ago, though neither of you would have recognized it for what it was at the time. Somewhere between late-night debriefs and conversations that stretched long past the point either of you should have gone to sleep. Somewhere between shared cigarettes outside safehouses and the quiet comfort of finding each other in crowded rooms without ever having to look. The line had blurred so gradually that neither of you seemed to notice it until you were already standing on the wrong side of it.

Then came the stolen moments. Lingering touches that lasted a second too long. The way you’d sit shoulder-to-shoulder during transport flights, neither of you acknowledging the contact while simultaneously refusing to move away. The nights that started with a drink after a mission and ended with tangled sheets, whispered conversations, and Simon’s name falling from your lips so softly it almost sounded like a secret.

He remembers one night after a mission gone sideways. You’d fallen asleep with your head on his chest, one hand curled loosely around his shirt. Simon hadn’t slept at all. He’d spent hours staring at the ceiling, listening to your breathing and wondering when exactly you had become the most dangerous thing in his life.

And every single time, he left.

Not because he wanted to, but because staying meant admitting that somewhere along the way, you had become more than someone he occasionally found himself in bed with. Staying meant acknowledging how much he cared. It meant risking everything the moment he spoke it out loud.

So he would pull his boots on in the dark and leave before morning could force either of you to ask for something he wasn’t sure he knew how to give.

The memory is ripped away by the sound of your voice.

For one brief, desperate moment, relief crashes through him hard enough to make his chest ache. You’re alive.

After the ambush, after the gunfire, after losing sight of you in the smoke, you’re alive. The relief dies almost immediately. Simon knows your voice.

He knows the sound of your laugh when something catches you off guard. He knows the sleepy rasp that settles into your words after a long mission. He knows how softly you’d say his name when the rest of the world was asleep and it was just the two of you existing in that fragile space neither of you ever dared define.

This voice is different. It’s strained. Unsteady. Afraid.

The room around him ceases to matter. The restraints cutting into his wrists, the concrete beneath his boots, the men guarding the door—none of it compares to the sound of someone questioning you on the other side of that wall.

He can’t make out the words, but he hears your answer. Then he hears you cry out. The sound tears through him.

Not because it’s loud, but because it isn’t. Because it’s real. Because he knows you well enough to recognize the effort behind it, the way you’re trying to contain the pain and failing despite yourself.

The restraints groan as his hands tighten involuntarily. Metal bites into his skin, but he barely feels it.

Another question.

Another answer.

Another cry.

His eyes close. He can picture you too clearly—the stubborn set of your jaw, the determination in your eyes, the refusal to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing you break. Even now, you’re still fighting.

And all he can do is listen.

He spent years convincing himself there would always be more time. Another mission. Another deployment. Another night spent tangled in sheets pretending neither of you wanted more than this. Another chance to stay when the sun came up instead of walking away.

Now, for the first time, Simon isn’t sure there will be.

And as your voice breaks again somewhere beyond that wall, he realizes the thing terrifying him most isn’t the possibility of dying here.

It’s the possibility that you’ll never know he loved you at all.