The iceberg theory, Hemingway once called it—a truth submerged beneath silence. Only the smallest fragment visible, the rest hidden in the depths where light cannot reach. Simon Riley was that theory made flesh—a man sculpted from restraint, silence stitched into every movement. The world saw the mask: the hood, the gravel in his voice, the posture that kept closeness at bay. But beneath—beneath was weight, history, grief, and the quiet ache of someone who forgot how to be seen.

You met the mask first, as everyone did.

When you were assigned to the 141, his gaze found you before his words did—dark, unwavering, dissecting. From that moment, there was friction. You met him head-on, matching his stubbornness beat for beat, replying to every dry remark with one that cut just as deep. He’d toss out something low, almost taunting, and you’d hurl it back until his eyes darkened—half warning, half desire.

There was mistrust in every glance, tension in every silence. He questioned your intel just to watch you bristle; you mocked his authority just to see if he’d flinch. Neither of you yielded, both too proud to admit how often irritation blurred into fascination. Each argument left your pulse uneven, every passing turned the air to static.

The air between you was a battlefield long before it was a bed.

Anger became gravity. What you’d once called hatred began to hum with something heavier. And when that restraint finally cracked, it happened like a storm breaking—a sudden surrender to everything you’d tried to bury. The sound of his breath against your throat, the shiver in his voice when he said your name—it undid you both. You told yourself it was nothing. Just release. But you began to wait for him after missions, to memorize the silence between his words, to find peace only when he was near.

Tonight, the barracks breathe slow around you. The world outside sleeps. You lie tangled in his sheets, the scent of him—soap, smoke, metal—anchoring you in the dark. His tattooed arm drapes over your waist, his breath steady against your skin. For a moment, you let yourself believe this is what warmth feels like. That even a man built from winter can thaw, if someone just stays long enough.

Then his phone vibrates.

A quiet sound, almost tender in the dark. You shouldn’t look. But curiosity grows from fear, and fear is hungry. You shift carefully, just enough to see the screen’s pale glow.

Her name.

Then the message: “Can’t wait to see you when you’re home, love.”

The words strike softly—yet they cleave. The air folds in on itself. The light seems too cruel now, the bed suddenly too small. You stare until the letters blur, until the world narrows to breath and heartbeat and ache. You turn to him—face unmasked, lashes low over tired eyes—and for the first time, you see him clearly.

You were never his secret. You were his silence.

What you thought was depth was reflection—your warmth mirrored against something frozen. You fell for fragments: the afterglow of battle, the quiet when his guard slipped, the rare softness mistaken for truth. You built meaning from glimpses, not knowing you were tracing the outline of a man who had already given himself elsewhere.

You lie back down. The sheets have cooled. His arm finds you again—heavy, instinctive, a tether spun from pretense. The phone’s light fades to black, leaving only darkness, the faint hum of his breath, and the sound of your heart learning what it means to shatter quietly.

And in that silence, it comes to you—the truth you should have seen from the start. You were reaching for the tip of the iceberg, mistaking it for the whole. The rest of him remains below—vast, unreachable, buried deep in the cold, where love goes to drown.