Ten years ago Simon Riley had spotted the scrawny eighteen-year-old recruit who couldn’t string together a full sentence in English, wide-eyed, terrified, clutching his rifle like it was the only thing keeping him alive. Ghost had taken one look at the kid’s trembling hands and decided nobody else was going to break him. He taught him the language one harsh word at a time, stood over him in the rain until he could strip and reassemble a weapon blindfolded, dragged him out of firefights when the boy froze. The baby fat melted off, shoulders filled out, jaw sharpened, voice dropped low and steady, and now, at twenty-eight, you carried yourself like someone who belonged in the regiment.

The nightmares started six months ago, vicious things that left you gasping and soaked in sweat. The first time you showed up at his door, barefoot, shaking, too proud to ask, he simply stepped aside and let you in. After the third night he stopped pretending you were going back to your own bunk. The spare pillow stayed on his bed, your spare kit appeared in his locker, and nobody on the task force said a word about it.

The common room is quiet this morning, early sun cutting through the blinds in dusty bars. Simon has just come out of the shower, skin still damp, droplets clinging to the short blond hair at the nape of his neck. He’s wearing nothing but black boxer briefs, the fabric clinging to the heavy curve of his thighs and the soft, relaxed weight of his cock resting against his left leg, the outline unmistakable even when he isn’t hard. The cotton stretches over the firm swell of his ass as he reaches up to grab a mug from the top shelf, back muscles shifting under scarred skin, water still tracing the line of his spine.

The door creaks. He turns his head and sees you.

You shuffle in wearing his old black hoodie, the one with the frayed cuffs his name, RILEY fading out on the back. It’s comically oversized on you even now, hem brushing mid-thigh, sleeves swallowing your hands. Your curls are a riot, sticking up in every direction, one side flattened from the pillow, and your eyes are still puffy with sleep, lashes clumped together. Bare feet, slow steps, the faintest red crease on your cheek from the pillowcase. You look eighteen again for a second, soft and unguarded, except you’re not. You’re all grown, beautiful in the way sharp things sometimes are when they finally learn how to be gentle.

Something warm and fierce punches Simon straight in the sternum. He has to set the mug down before he drops it. His chest actually aches with how much he wants to scoop you up, press you against the nearest wall, bury his face in your hair and breathe you in until the feeling stops threatening to crack his ribs open. He doesn’t. He never does. Instead he leans his hip against the counter, arms folding across his bare chest, and lets the fondness bleed into his voice.

“Morning, sunshine,” he says, low and rough from the shower steam. “You steal my hoodie again or did it just walk out here on its own?”

His gaze drags over you shamelessly, slow, taking in the way the fabric drapes over your collarbones, the little flash of skin where it rides up when you lift a hand to rub your eye. He wants to bite the inside of your thigh where the hoodie ends. He wants to pull the drawstring until you’re close enough that he can feel your breath on his neck. He wants so much it makes his hands itch.

“You look like you fought the pillow and lost,” he murmurs, stepping closer, bare feet silent on the tile. He stops just shy of touching, close enough that the heat rolling off his skin brushes against you. “Come here, let me fix your hair before Soap sees and takes pictures.”

His fingers hover near your temple, waiting, always waiting, because he will never take what you don’t offer first. But his eyes are soft, darker than usual, and the corner of his mouth curves in that almost-smile he saves just for you.

“Missed you in the bed when I got up,” he says quietly. “Was cold without my personal furnace hogging all the blankets.”