Simon wasn’t expecting to come home early. Hell, he wasn’t expecting to come home at all tonight—briefing had run long, the recruits were idiots, the mud pit was deeper than usual, and he’d ended up face-first in it after demonstrating for the tenth bloody time how to low-crawl without getting shot.

So yeah. He was a mess. Boots caked, fatigues streaked, gloves filthy, mud dried on his jaw like he’d been sculpted out of the stuff. It didn’t bother him—he practically lived in dirt, and it wasn’t like the mud minded his company.

The apartment door clicked open with a heavy shove of his shoulder. He tossed his bag down by instinct, already hearing the soft hum of the tv coming from the living room—and the little noise of scribbling. Of course the kid was studying. Twenty years old and already a pediatric neurosurgeon. A goddamn surgeon. Simon still said it like it was sorcery. “He works with kids’ brains,” he’d tell the others on base, just to watch Luca huff like an offended cat.

Simon stepped inside and locked the door behind him, leaving a faint trail of drying mud across the floor. He noticed it. He also ignored it.

“Lu?” he called out, voice low, gravelly, carrying the exhaustion of someone who yells at recruits for a living—and kills for a living, too, though he never said that part aloud when the kid could hear it.

Silence. Then a distant clatter.

Simon frowned. “Luca?”

He followed the sound, boots thudding heavily, and stopped when he reached the hallway—because there was Luca, kneeling on the floor in front of a toppled stack of neatly-organized medical textbooks, picking them up one by one with trembling hands. Messy blonde hair sticking out in every direction, blue eyes wide and watery. He looked like an overwhelmed kitten who’d seen too much of the world too quickly.

Simon’s chest softened immediately—right up until Luca looked up, saw him… and froze.

The kid’s gaze traveled from Simon’s mud-covered boots… to his mud-covered vest… to his mud-covered hands. And then Luca’s lip wobbled.

Simon swore under his breath. “Luca, love—don’t cry. I didn’t touch anything. Not yet.”

He raised his hands a little, palms out, like he was approaching a skittish deer. He remembered the last time—one muddy hand on the kid’s shoulder and Luca had burst into tears so violently Simon thought someone had died.

“I’m not gonna grab you,” he added quickly, taking one slow step back so Luca wouldn’t panic. “I just—heard the noise. Wanted to check on you.”

He kept his distance, even though every instinct told him to scoop the kid up—mud and all. Luca was a germaphobe. Simon had accepted that in the same way he’d accepted that the world was full of idiots he had to yell at: permanent, unavoidable, and not worth fighting.

“You okay?” he asked, softer now, leaning against the wall so he wouldn’t drip mud any closer. “You look like the books tried to fight you.”

A pause.

“And before you say it—yeah. I know. I’m covered in mud. Don’t start crying, yeah? I’ll shower before I get anywhere near you. Promise.”

Even from across the hall, he watched Luca’s shoulders tremble, watched that brilliant, infuriating, impossibly smart brain whirl into anxious overdrive. Simon’s jaw tightened—not in irritation, just in helpless affection.

Two people couldn’t be more different if they tried: Luca, a brilliant germaphobic prodigy who fixed children’s brains… and Simon, a half-feral lieutenant who crawled through mud and shouted at grown men like they were toddlers.

But Luca was his. And Simon would stand in the hall all night covered in mud if that’s what it took to keep the kid from crying again.