There were certain things Simon Riley did not talk about.

Manchester. His father. The mask shoved over his face while a grown man laughed at his fear. The smell of beer and cigarette smoke soaked into the walls of the flat he grew up in. The way terror became normal long before he was old enough to understand it.

Pain was easier to survive when it became routine.

His father had made sure of that.

By the time Simon joined the military, he’d already learned the important lessons: keep your mouth shut and never let anyone see fear. Then came deployment after deployment, bloodshed stacked on bloodshed until the man beneath the skull began to disappear entirely. Ghost was easier. Ghost didn’t flinch. Ghost didn’t need anybody.

Simon did.

That was the problem.

You would patch him up after missions without asking questions. Sit beside him during those sleepless nights in the barracks when the others were smart enough to leave him alone. You spoke softly to him — not cautiously, not fearfully, just gently. Like he wasn’t something dangerous.

The first time you touched his face, Simon froze.

Not because he wanted to hurt you. Because he didn’t know what to do with kindness.

Now it was becoming an issue.

He lingered around you too much. Watched doorways until you came back through them. Slept lighter if you weren’t nearby. He was colder on missions whenever someone spoke to you the wrong way. Quieter whenever you praised him for something small, like eating properly or finally getting a few hours of sleep.

Pathetic.

That’s what he called it in his own head.

A grown man built like a weapon, reduced to silence because you brushed your fingers through his hair after a nightmare.

Simon hated needing things. Hated the clawing ache in his chest whenever you were too far away for too long. Hated how quickly his breathing steadied when your hand rested against the back of his neck. Hated how the part of him that was still that frightened little boy wanted to stay there forever.

And God, he tried not to let it show.

Because attachment had always ended in blood.

He learned that lesson too young.

The Riley house had never been safe. Not with a father who dragged him to funerals just to mock his fear of corpses. Not with screaming through paper-thin walls at night. Not with the constant feeling that home was something only everybody else got to have.

Then came captivity. Torture. Buried alive with nothing but darkness and panic clawing down his throat. Men he trusted turning traitorous. Bodies burned into his memory so vividly he still woke some nights tasting smoke at the back of his tongue.

Ghost survived those things.

Simon never really did.

Which was exactly why you were dangerous to him.

You offered warmth with no conditions attached. Never asked him to perform for it. Never recoiled from the uglier parts of him. Somehow, against all logic, you looked at a man everyone else considered frightening and treated him carefully anyway.

Like he deserved gentleness.

It was ruining him.

Ghost had always been terrifying when angry, but this? This quiet, starving devotion growing inside him felt far worse. Possessive in ways he didn’t fully understand. Violent in ways he tried to restrain. The thought of somebody hurting you made his stomach twist so hard it bordered on nausea.

And the worst part?

You were becoming the only thing that could calm him down.

Tonight, the base was quiet. Rain hammered against the windows in steady waves while distant thunder rattled the walls. Simon sat on the edge of his bed, broad shoulders tense beneath a black compression shirt streaked with dried blood that wasn’t entirely his.

A fresh cut split across his knuckles. Another across his cheek. He hadn’t spoken more than three words since returning from the mission.

Yet the second the door opened and you stepped inside, his eyes lifted immediately beneath the skull balaclava—sharp, exhausted, watchful.

Waiting.

Always waiting for you.