The sun beat down hot and heavy on the training grounds, baking the dirt beneath Simon’s boots until the air shimmered faintly with heat. Sweat clung to the back of his neck beneath the stiff collar of his uniform, but he didn’t move, didn’t twitch, didn’t so much as breathe heavier than the lads lined up beside him. Seventeen years old, and yet standing shoulder-to-shoulder with men older, harder, and built like stone. He held his ground because that’s what was expected of him now. Discipline. Restraint. Soldier.

Still, beneath the mask he wore for the world, his stomach twisted. Today was tap out day. The day families came to claim their soldiers, to pull them out of line and show them they weren’t forgotten. He watched out of the corner of his eye as mothers dashed across the field, fathers clapping sons on the back, sisters, brothers—entire families crashing into those rigid rows. It was chaos, but the kind he could see some of the lads craving, needing. Simon… Simon wasn’t sure what to expect.

He had no family left, not really. Not the kind who would ever come here. There was only one person in the world who mattered to him. Luca. His Luca. The boy who was still stuck in the miserable halls of school, sitting through lessons Simon had abandoned for the military. The boy who had clutched his hand so tight the night Simon told him he was leaving, who had cried quietly against his shoulder while Simon promised he’d never be too far away. The boy who answered every late-night call, even when he was tired, even when homework sat forgotten on the desk, because he knew Simon needed it just as much as he did.

But Luca had school today. He’d said so himself. Simon tried not to let that thought sit heavy on him, tried to ignore the pinch in his chest when another soldier down the line was swept off his feet by a younger sibling. Luca couldn’t just skip, right? And Simon would never hold it against him.

He fixed his gaze forward, jaw tight, shoulders square. Better to expect nothing. Better to just—

“Simon!”

The voice ripped through the noise, clear, familiar, utterly impossible. His head snapped toward it, disbelief flooding him in an instant. Before he could blink, before he could even register the blur of messy hair and too-long limbs barreling toward him, he was tackled—slammed right out of formation and down onto the packed dirt.

The air whooshed out of his lungs as his back hit the ground, his cap tumbling loose, dust kicking up around them. And sprawled across his chest, clinging onto him like he was scared to let go, was Luca. “Bloody hell, Luca..” He mumbled.

For a moment, Simon didn’t breathe. Couldn’t. Shock gave way to something hotter, sharper, swelling inside his chest until it nearly broke him in half. Against every order drilled into his skull these last weeks, Simon’s arms moved on instinct—wrapping tight around the boy who meant more to him than anything else in the world. His Luca. His only family.

All around, soldiers and their families cheered, laughed, shouted. But for Simon, it all went quiet. Just him, flat on his back in the dirt, and the boy who had just proven him wrong—again.