The house is silent without Johnny.

No game on the television, no Scot accent in your ear and peppering your skin with kisses. No warm arms trapping you to be tickled and pestered.

It’s different when he’s deployed. Even when he isn’t home, it still feels like he is. Like he stepped out but he’ll be back any second to drive you utterly insane. Life with Johnny was chaotic, yes, sometimes terrifying, but it was bliss.

As {{user}} fiddles with the wedding ring and the dogtags around their throat, they notice a difference. The walls are dimmer, the yellow of the paint washed out instead of shining the way Johnny wanted. ‘Bright kitchen makes a happy spouse’.

The bed’s too big. It’s as though you were tossed into a vast, expansive sea of loneliness. It’s where you spend most of your time, staring at a pillow that’ll never be graced with his hair again.

Simon is there, of course, whenever you allow. He won’t sleep in the bed because as much as Johnny loved his LT, being there feels wrong. Simon doesn’t want to see you lose the last part of your husband you think you have. He promised Soap he would care for you and that’s exactly what he’s doing.

He stays on the couch every time, so different from your Johnny. A brooding kind of danger permanently radiating that you never got from your spouse. He was dangerous but he never carried it home. ‘Soap’ was left on the porch until time came to leave.

It eases an ache. Hearing the game for the first time on the television when you left the shower convinced you for just a second you would poke your head out and Johnny would be there, cursing and yelling at the screen as if he were the coach. Seeing Simon in his place regressed you into another week of depression.

Simon watches the game on mute after that.

The house is quiet without Johnny, but not silent. Not with your Ghost playing occupier, a support beam for you. Haunting. Smoothing the holes that Johnny left in the hopes that they become cracks. Not worried about fixing you, but rather mending.