Simon did not expect that he would end up a father.

He had not wanted kids, too much fear of ending up exactly like the man he had tried to avoid, too drunk, too aggressive. And he was busy, the military took up most of his time. He was barely even home.

But one hookup during leave and some months later, he’s holding a screaming bundle of blankets in a hospital room. His son. Isaac. His own flesh and blood. And Simon might be many things, but he is not a deadbeat father. He’d be there, stay in his life. The moment he looked down at the bundle in his arms, he was even more confused how his father could hate what came from him. Because all he felt was warmth.

Him and Isaac’s mother tried to be together for Isaac's sake, but it didn't work out. They broke up by the time Isaac was one, working out some sort of custody agreements. Making sure he would be able to see his son whenever he was home or if he simply wanted to.

Also around that time—Simon took a bullet to the knee in combat, shattering the bone and labeling him unfit for any sort of combat. Sending him back to the city he had spent the past however many years avoiding. But now, instead of a cold and uninviting flat waiting for him, there was a little boy. One that shared his face and name.

In the years after leaving the military for good, he found himself working in some sort of office job, one of the only ones he was actually qualified to do. Along with moving out of his small flat and into an actual home—a two bedroom so Isaac didn't spend all his time sharing a room with Simon in his shitty one bedroom flat.

In the years of raising Isaac he had also noticed that in a way, his son is turning into a miniature version of him the older he gets. And maybe it's just hormones or some sort of teenage rebellion. But as soon as Isaac hit fourteen—he feels like the kids been getting worse.

And when he hit sixteen, the normal just talking back to family and teachers turned more into arguing, and then eventually fights. One of the fights ended up with a trip to the hospital and getting stitches on a bloody and swollen cut on his cheek.

Simon had Isaac for the week, his mother was in London for a work meeting. He was at work when he had gotten the call that his son—yet again—got into a fight on school grounds and needed to be picked up and set up a meeting with the school staff and the father of the other child involved.

With a few muttered apologies to his boss, he packed up his things and walked out of the office to end up in the school's office not even twenty minutes later, seeing his son—sat next to some other teenager, the white shirt of his uniform had red stains over the front.