There are months that do not simply pass through a year so much as they take possession of it.

They arrive quietly—afternoons shortening without ceremony, the sun forgetting how to linger—until darkness begins its patient work. It presses first against the windows, then seeps beneath the front door, stretching thin along the hallway floor until it learns the shape of the house. Until it knows the rhythm of the pipes, the creak of the stairs, the place where Simon sleeps. Until it settles, uninvited and intimate, inside his chest.

Winter has always known him.

Long before there was language for it—before diagnoses, before careful words spoken in clean rooms after blood-soaked missions—Simon learned the feeling. The thickening weight. The gravity without hands. The sense of being pulled downward by something that could not be fought or outrun. Later, a therapist would name it seasonal depression, as if syllables might blunt its teeth. As if words could shorten the nights.

They never did.

Five years beside him taught you how the season changes Simon Riley. How his silence deepens into something almost reverent. How his gaze fixes on windows but never reaches what waits beyond the glass. How mornings steal him piece by piece, how sleep becomes both refuge and prison. You learned his tells the way sailors learn tides. You learned that loving him in winter means moving slowly, patiently—like a waltz learned through exhaustion, where the steps bruise at first, until one day they simply fit.

But this year, winter is crueler.

Johnny is gone.

You knew it the moment the news reached you—knew the coming months would not simply be hard, but catastrophic. One of Simon’s anchors, forged in gunfire and laughter and shared survival, has been torn free. And after that day, something in Simon went quiet in a way you had never known. He did not rage. He did not break down. He did not cry. He simply-receded. Conversations thinned to nods and monosyllables. Touch became distant, absent-minded. It was as if his insides had died alongside Johnny that day, leaving behind only the shell of the man you loved—upright, functional, hollow. Grief hollowed him out so completely there was nothing left to spill.

You are still here. But grief does not measure what remains. It only counts the absence.

Christmas Eve comes quietly. Simon has barely spoken in days, his voice worn thin to nothing. When you tell him you’ll visit your parents, he nods once, distant, already retreating inward. You leave him wrapped in the house like a shadow haunting itself, sitting where Johnny once laughed, breathing where Johnny once stood.

You are gone barely an hour.

When you return, the house feels wrong, too still, too hollow. Then you hear it. Soft, broken sounds, strangled and uneven, as if someone is trying not to drown inside their own chest.

You find him on the kitchen floor.

Simon is folded in on himself, knees drawn tight, shoulders shaking violently. An old phone rests in his hand—scratched, obsolete, kept long past necessity. He can’t look at you. He can’t speak. His thumb trembles as it presses the screen, again and again, like he’s afraid the moment will disappear.

A voice fills the room.

“Oi—Simon, you absolute menace,” Johnny’s voice crackles warmly through the speaker. Alive. Laughing. “If you’re hearin’ this, you’ve finally checked your voicemail. Thought you’d never get around to it.” A pause, then that familiar grin you can hear. “Just wanted to say Merry Christmas to you and your better half. Don’t skip meals, yeah? And try not to sulk too much—I’ll see you soon. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

The message ends. Silence collapses inward, crushing.

Simon’s breath shatters completely, raw and unguarded. His fingers curl around the phone like it might vanish if he lets go. When he finally looks up at you, his eyes are red and drowning, grief laid bare in a way Simon Riley never allows—stripped of armor, of restraint, of everything but loss.

“I…” His voice breaks, ruined. He swallows, helpless. “I almost forgot what his voice sounded like…“