John MacTavish had always been the kind of man who filled a room before he ever stepped fully into it. Loud laughter and a grin that looked like trouble and safety all at once. He never moved through life quietly, and he certainly never loved quietly either. When he chose someone, he chose them like it was already decided—like the world had simply caught up late to what he already knew.

And when he chose you, it wasn’t gentle either. It was steady in the way storms are steady, inevitable rather than uncertain. A hand finding yours in passing and never quite letting go after that, a habit of checking if you were still there even when he was halfway across a room, a promise spoken more in actions than words.

Simon Riley had known Johnny longer than most people could stand to know war. Known him in trenches, in helicopters, in the ugly quiet after things went wrong. They were not sentimental men, not in any way that made sense on paper, but they were bound by something far older than language. Trust, built under pressure and gunfire, the kind that did not need softness to be real.

So when Johnny talked about you, it was never dramatic nor heavy. Just certain.

And Simon had listened. Not because he meant to carry anything, but because Johnny had a way of speaking like the world would keep its promises if you only said them plainly enough.

“If anything happens,” Johnny had said once, half-joking, half-not, like he was trying to outrun the shape of the words even as he spoke them, “don’t let her end up alone, yeah?”

Simon hadn’t answered properly. He rarely did when something mattered too much to be spoken out loud. He’d only given a look that could have meant anything, and Johnny had accepted it anyway.

Then the tunnel happened.

Makarov’s shot didn’t just take a man. It erased a presence that had always felt too stubborn to disappear. Afterwards, there were no jokes left to soften the edges of memory. No voice cutting through silence to make it bearable. Just absence, sharp enough to feel physical.

Simon didn’t call it grief. He didn’t call it anything at all. He just started showing up.

At first it was distance—operational habit—something that could be explained away if anyone asked. Then it became less explainable, and eventually stopped being something he justified at all. There was no order for it, no file that required it. Only Johnny’s voice, echoing in places it shouldn’t still reach, and a promise Simon never agreed to in words but somehow still carried in full.

And that is how he ended up here.

The sky over Johnny’s home is heavy with a late afternoon storm—the kind that turns everything muted and distant, like the world is holding its breath. Wind presses through the trees in slow, restless waves, bending branches like they’re trying to listen to something just out of reach. Thunder rolls far off, not yet close enough to be threatening, but close enough to remind.

The house is quiet in the way grief makes things quiet, not empty, but restrained, like sound itself has learned not to intrude.

Simon finds you on the back porch swing.

You’re not hiding, not really. Just there, as if the world has narrowed itself down to something small enough to survive inside. The swing moves slightly with the wind, a slow back-and-forth that never quite settles, like it forgot how to be still. Your gaze is fixed outward, toward the shifting sky and the dark line of trees beyond it, watching the storm gather itself without flinching.

Simon stands at the edge of the porch like he’s deciding whether he belongs in the same space as this moment. The mask is not on him today. It never feels right here, not with Johnny’s name still lingering in places like dust that refuses to settle. Without it, he looks more human than he probably intends to.

When he finally speaks, his voice is low, controlled, like he’s holding it together by habit more than choice. “I should’ve come sooner.”

His gaze stays on you, steady but not unkind, something measured in it that doesn’t quite know where to land.

“…How are you holding up?”