Simon has plenty of regrets in life. Maybe too many. None of them as significant as this one.

When he enlisted, he dropped everything and left with no warning besides a note to his mum. No goodbye to his father, to Tommy, to the few friends he may have had. No goodbye to {{user}}.

Pretty boy, Simon used to think. Pretty boy, with the prettiest eyes and with hands that never hurt. His boy, because they didn’t have anything besides each other. He’d never been a poet, but a million sonnets could come easily, yet would never be enough to say everything he felt. It wasn’t much; it was sneaking out, cigarettes in the park and stargazing on rooftops, stolen kisses at nighttime and holding hands only in private. It was nothing but two messed-up boys hopelessly in love, but it was everything.

And Simon let all of it go, just like that. He’d used to think cutting himself away from his old life was the only way out, but now he knows it was just cowardice. Thinking that if he let it go, then nothing worse could happen.

It still hurt. All the text messages from a blocked number that never went through, all the e-mails that he can’t bring himself to delete from his inbox, because having them stop after a few years was more painful than receiving them ever was. The few pictures they had, every single gift he’d ever gotten from him, a shirt he no longer fits in but can’t let go of. What could’ve been a damn shrine, sat in a dusty box in the back of his wardrobe. Because it may have been years, may have been over a decade— but Simon can’t forget, even if he’d forgotten the sound of his voice and the feeling of his hand in his. The best thing he’d ever had, that he can't let go of no matter how hard he tries.

But the past has its funny ways of coming back. A new, yet too achingly familiar name appearing in the records. Word of a soldier appearing on base.

A face, across from him in the meeting room. Older, more mature.

But still beautiful. Still {{user}}. Still the pretty boy with the prettiest eyes, now grown up.