Chapter Text
Once a week, the man with the tired eyes and drooping mustache comes to see Simon. He calls himself John Price—says he was Simon’s captain when things went to shit. Simon is inclined to believe him, if only because he mopes around like a beaten dog and barks orders just as quick. Turns out he doesn’t like tea, so Simon’s taken to buying bags of rich dark roast. It smells good brewing but it tastes like shit, so he only ever pulls it out on days like this: slow and dreary and accompanied by the captain on his couch.
“Here,” he says, offering a mug of the black swill to Price. “Cuppa.”
Price takes the mug, cupping it between weathered palms. “Thank you.”
“Welcome.” Simon takes a seat in the armchair catty-cornered to the couch, sinking into the crushed foam cushion. He cradles his own cuppa in his hands, watching steam swirl up off of a lake of placid gray tea. “So? How’s things, then?”
“Been alright,” Price says.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
The silence stretches thin between them, dull as the echo of thunder outside. It must be hard for Price, Simon thinks, trying to make friendly with a man he doesn’t know anymore. Simon feels bad about it, in a distant sort of way. He figures he owes it to Price to be good company, if only because the captain’s been looking out for him ever since he woke up in the hospital. Simon knows he’s lucky for it, too—wagers most COs wouldn’t dote on their crippled subordinates this long.
“How’s Gaz?” he asks, when the silence stretches a beat too long.
“He’s good,” Price says, and there’s a flicker of light in those tired eyes when he says it—the gap between them breached successfully, even if only for the space of a few sentences. “Yeah, he’s real good. Medical finally cleared him for light duty, so he’s been out training the recruits this week.”
“Good on him. He like teaching, then?”
“Yeah, loves it. Damn good at it, too.”
“Atta boy. He training somebody for the task force, yet?”
It’s a misstep. Price’s gaze shutters again, and he stalls his response with a swig of coffee. “No,” he says, finally. “Still haven’t found anybody I like.”
“Right.” Simon brushes his thumb over a chip in his mug’s handle, his jaw aching around the words he can’t say: haven’t you waited for me long enough, John Price? “Well, guess it takes a special kind.”
“That it does. But enough of that. How’re things with you? How’s the bookshop?”
“It’s nice,” Simon says, honestly. “Good to have something to do besides mopin’ around here. It’s real quiet, most of the time, but steady enough on the weekends. Picked up a new book myself, the other day.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” Simon thinks of the copy of Wuthering Heights tucked onto a bookshelf that belonged to another him, the pages still stiff and scented with new ink. “’s about a jealous man.”
Price’s lips flicker into a facsimile of a smile. “Sounds about right. You gonna keep on working there, then?”
“Might as well. Got nothin’ else to do.”
“You’re alright money-wise, though? You shouldn’t have to work to keep yourself afloat. The disability oughta cover you, especially on top of your pension, and if it doesn’t there’s something wrong and I’ll knock a few heads together. You just let me know.”
Simon huffs out something that might be a laugh. “Money’s fine, Price. I just get bored sitting around here all day.”
“Right. Well, you know you’re always welcome to come out on the town with me and Gaz. Two of you gonna get together again, this weekend?”
“Haven’t talked about it yet, but probably. You wanna go with us? Think we might hit up Bob and Ike’s.”
“I’d love to, but I’m afraid I’ll be busy. Got a guy I need eyes on.”
Simon quirks an eyebrow at him, taking another swallow of tea. It slides hot down his throat before curling contently in his stomach. It’s strong and sweet, mellowed by a splash of milk. “A guy?”
“A guy,” Price agrees, inscrutable.
Simon doesn’t bother asking anymore. If Price doesn’t want to explain, he won’t, and no amount of badgering will get him to. So he changes tack and says, “Well, if your guy falls through, just text one of us. I’ll buy you a drink.”
“Getting generous in your retirement, Riley.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it.”
Price stays a little longer, prodding Simon to talk about his job and his therapy and all the other mundane details of his life. Simon gets little enough in return—Price is closed-lip about his job, which Simon has gathered entails a slew of classified topics. But he talks about Gaz, and about Kate, and about Nikolai. It leaves a small smile on Simon’s face just listening. It’s good to know the old man has people looking out for him.
When Price stands to leave, he claps Simon on the shoulder the way he always does, his hand warm and heavy. “Call me the second you need anything, you understand?” he says. “That’s an order, son.”
Simon isn’t a soldier, not really, but he says, “Yes, sir,” anyway.
“Good lad. I’ll see you next week.”
“See you, Price.”
Simon shuts the door behind him and flips through the excessive number of locks around the knob. Then he goes to wash their mugs, drying them off with an old dish towel—one sporting a picture of a yellow gourd and the words hello, gourdgeous scrawled on it in tacky cursive font. The stupid, punny towels in his kitchen drawers never fail to make him smile.
Once the mugs are dry, he slides them into the cabinet alongside all the rest. He has a truly abhorrent number of mugs for one person—plain black ones and gaudy decorated ones and ones with even more stupid puns on them. If there’s one thing he knows for certain about himself, it’s that he loves making terrible jokes. The hinges on the cabinet squeak softly as he closes it, and he makes a mental note to pick up some grease from the store next time he’s out.
It’s too dreary out for him to be bothered leaving the flat today, though. He orders takeout and eats in front of the TV, letting the noise of it wash over him. There’s a dining table in the kitchen—a little thing with scratched oak, crooked legs, and two chairs—but he never feels quite right eating there. The image it conjures up in his head is too pathetic for him: a grown man hunched over a styrofoam container, eating shoddy takeout alone under the glaring fluorescents of the kitchen.
No, the TV is better. The noise and light are blissfully distracting, filling up the empty space of his living room. Rain batters against the windows as he polishes off his dinner, then wraps himself in a cocoon of blankets and falls sideways onto the couch. The laugh track of an old sitcom keeps him company late into the night, easing the jagged edges from the missing pieces of him.
When Simon came home from the hospital, all those months ago, there were two toothbrushes in his bathroom: one black and one red. One had been his and one had been leftover from a guest—Price or Gaz, probably. He didn’t know of anyone else who’d be willing to put up with him long enough for a sleepover, of all things. In the end, he’d been unable to decide which was his and he’d thrown them both away. Looking at his new toothbrush now, where it stands proudly in the holder beside the sink, he can’t help but think that it looks very lonely.
Silly thoughts.
(Most of the ones he has after two in the morning are, anyway.)
“They’re coming along,” Gaz says, knocking back another gin and tonic. “Better than they were a few weeks ago.”
“And you like ‘em?”
“Well enough. I mean, they’re still a bunch of obnoxious gits, but they’re shaping up. I just wish—” Gaz falters, rocks his glass on the table.
Simon makes a humming, interested noise to coax him along.
“It’s nothing,” Gaz finishes, lamely.
Simon hums again, unconvinced, and waits. He’s good at that—the waiting. He doesn’t know where or when he learned it, but it’s easy to dig in and watch. It makes him feel a bit like the SAS sniper Price told him he was, once. Overwatch, he thinks, idly. Got eyes on you, Gaz.
Eventually, Gaz breaks beneath his stare. “Price told me not to tell you things about before,” he admits, tracing the rim of his glass with his thumb. He gratefully accepts a new glass when the bartender slides it to him.
“Oh?” Simon asks, keeping his voice neutral.
“He doesn’t want to influence you,” Gaz says, with another bracing swig of gin. “He doesn’t want you to start acting a certain way just because you’re trying to be who you were.”
“Doesn’t he want me to be who I was?”
“He wants you happy,” Gaz says, swinging his eyes up to meet Simon’s. “So do I.”
A flush of fondness settles in Simon’s chest, roots between his ribs. “I am,” he says, and it’s almost true. He has a safe home, a steady income, a quiet life. If it feels like he’s constantly missing a limb, hemorrhaging from some nameless wound deep in his chest, what does it matter? There’s nothing to be done about it. No amount of gauze packing can fix that. “I’m alright, Gaz.”
“Good. You deserve to be.”
Simon props his chin on his hand, nursing his own drink. Gaz told him that he liked bourbon, before, and he’s inclined to agree. It simmers on the back of his tongue, leaving behind a murky caramel flavor. “What were you about to tell me?” he asks.
“Just that it’d be easier to handle the recruits if you were around,” Gaz says. “They always seemed to listen to you better.”
“Just that charming, was I?”
“No, you were a hardass,” Gaz says, snorting. “Kept ‘em in line, though.”
Simon mulls that around in his head. He’s never felt like a hardass—he’s blunt, sure, and prone to bouts of sullen introspection, but he wouldn’t call himself mean. Maybe it’s better that he’s forgotten that part of himself. “Huh.”
“What?”
“Nothin’,” Simon says, waving down the bartender for another pour. He’s on his third drink of the night, and he’s finally started to feel a pleasant buzz. It isn’t cheap, getting this brick shithouse of a body drunk. “Just thinking.”
“You can’t just—” A ringtone interrupts him, and he drags his phone out of his pocket. “Ah, sorry, man. I gotta take this. It’s Price.”
Simon waves him off, watching as he weaves across the crowded bar and out the door. He lingers at the bar as he waits for Gaz to return, sipping his bourbon and running his eyes over the crowd. His gaze snags on a man, a sense of familiarity jolting through him. The man is broad-shouldered, with dark hair shorn into a messy mohawk. His eyes are bright and black, and there’s an easy smile on his face as he talks to the woman beside him.
The warm arousal pooling in Simon’s gut is expected.
The grief is not.
It feels like a mouth has opened inside of him, wide and hungry and bereft. He tosses back the rest of his bourbon and it does nothing to fill him. He sets his glass down, closes his tab, and heads outside. The air is crisp against his overheated skin, and each cold breath helps soothe the sudden, deafening shriek of his heart. Gaz leans against the wall several feet down from the door, his phone pressed to his ear and his breath pluming in the air.
“—doing just fine,” he’s saying, scrubbing one hand anxiously through his hair. “I just think—I mean, no, obviously not tonight, but—”
“Everything alright?”
Gaz yanks the phone away from his face like it’s scalded him, his eyes snapping to Simon. “Bloody hell,” he says, breathlessly. “Give a guy some warning.”
“Sorry,” Simon says, though he suspects he’s more amused by Gaz’s surprise than he should be.
“Are you, now,” Gaz says, dry.
Price’s small, staticky voice can be heard through the phone, but not loudly enough for Simon to make out any of the words. Gaz tucks the phone between his ear and his shoulder again, listening with a furrowed brow. Content to wait, Simon settles in at his friend’s side and leans back on the cool brick wall. It’s solid, rough even through the thick fabric of his jumper.
“No, Simon’s here,” Gaz says, pausing to listen again. “Uh-huh. Yeah. I will. Thanks, Captain.”
“Didn’t mean to rush you,” Simon says, when Gaz hangs up and slides his phone back into his pocket.
“’s alright,” Gaz says. “Didn’t mean to leave you alone for so long, either. You okay?”
“Think I’ll live.”
“More’s the pity.”
Simon snorts, rolling his head to the side to give Gaz an amused look. Then he asks, “Price okay?”
“Yeah.” Gaz fidgets, scuffs his toe against the asphalt below his trainers.
“What is it?” Simon asks, his eyes never leaving Gaz’s face. “G’on, Sergeant. Spill.”
“It’s just—” Gaz puffs his cheeks, then blows out a harsh breath. It hangs heavy and condensed in the cold air. “One of our guys got back from a mission about a month ago.”
“Should be good news,” Simon muses, “so why d’you look like you’re sucking a lemon?”
“He’s not doing well,” Gaz confesses.
“Sorry to hear it.”
“Yeah. I mean, physically he’s a lot better than he was. It was pretty touch-and-go for the first couple of weeks. But he was discharged from the hospital today, and he’s not taking it well.”
“First few days are hard,” Simon allows.
He still remembers what his first few days out of the hospital had been like. He’d felt adrift, unmoored. At least in the hospital he had rules, structure, a predictable schedule. Once he got out, there was nothing to hold him together but the sheer force of will of that was Price, Gaz, and Kate. He’s more grateful to them than he knows how to express. He’s sure that if he hadn’t had them, he’d have splintered apart those first weeks on his own.
Kate had strong-armed a new set of keys from his landlord, then bought him a brand new phone since his old one was lost in the mission that broke him. Price had set up his therapy appointments, both mental and physical, and spent those first few nights sleeping on his couch in case he needed anything. Gaz had helped him shop for groceries, and there were a great many of them he needed—food, toiletries, cleaning supplies. The flat hadn’t been touched in almost three months, all told, and it showed. According to Gaz, Simon had been halfway across the world on a mission for almost a month, and then he’d been in hospital for another two.
The thick layer of dust coating every piece of furniture had corroborated the story.
Now, it seems his friends are busy putting some other sorry sap back together. “Price lookin’ after him, then?”
Gaz nods, teeth worrying his bottom lip.
“He’ll be alright,” Simon says, nudging Gaz’s shoulder with his own. “If he’s one of your guys, he’s a fighter. He’ll come through it.”
“I don’t know,” Gaz says, his shoulders rounding forward with uncertainty. He looks up at Simon, his gaze clear but troubled. “Physically, he’ll be alright. But in his head, he’s—he’s bad off, Simon. Real bad. His—”
Gaz stumbles again, kicking a pebble across the alley.
Simon settles in and waits, patient and mild as a summer lake.
Eventually, Gaz breaks under the weight of water. “His husband didn’t make it back.”
The mouth in Simon’s chest gnashes great, glistening teeth around his heart.
“Ah,” he says.
“So—so I don’t know,” Gaz finishes, lamely. “I don’t know if he’ll be alright. He always bounces back, but this time is different. God, it broke his heart.”
“He’s got you,” Simon says. “You and Price and Kate. You’ll take care of him.”
“We’re damn well gonna try, but I don’t know that we’ll be enough. Not this time.”
“You will be,” Simon says, with a confidence he doesn’t feel.
Gaz shakes his head, but doesn’t argue.
“Hey,” Simon says, ducking his head to meet Gaz’s gaze. “Come back in and warm up. Things’ll turn out alright, you’ll see.”
Gaz meets his gaze, exhaling softly. “I hope you’re right, sir.”
So does Simon, because if he has to see Gaz looking this sad again he doesn’t know what he’ll do.
Simon arrives at Wordsworth early the next morning, mildly hungover and clutching a thermos of breakfast tea. The thermos is made of stainless steel, painted teal, with a beaming bar of soap on the front of it. I love soap, it declares, and I cannot lye. It’s clearly a favorite, if the scuffed paint and dented bottom are anything to go by. Unfortunately, the dent means that the vacuum seal is busted and with it the insulation. His tea doesn’t stay hot very long.
Simon reaches for the same thermos every morning, anyway.
“Morning, Simon,” Salma greets him as he steps through the doors, the bell above him ringing cheerfully. “How’re you?”
“I’m alright. You?”
“Wishing it were warmer,” Salma says, with a rather dramatic shiver.
“Afraid we’re in for a freeze, this week.”
Salma sighs mournfully behind him at the news as he goes to put his things in the break room. He clocks in and stretches, taking another slow sip of his tea. Then he goes to check their inventory, glancing over the labels on the boxes of books that have come in overnight. He stacks them onto a rolling cart and goes to shelve them, falling easily into the rhythm of work. It’s pleasant, quiet and focused—
—or so it is until a man interrupts him.
“Simon?”
Simon slides a copy of The Hobbit into place before turning around. The man in front of him is lean, worn thin, with bags like dusky thumbprints beneath his eyes. He’s swallowed by the big black hoodie he’s wearing, his hands wedged deep into his pockets and his shoulders hunched. His hair, dark and thick, is sheared into a short mohawk. There are bright purple hearing aids hooked over his ears, and an angry red scar curls around the corner of his jaw.
For reasons he cannot begin to understand, Simon wants to crush this man into a tiny ball and then shove him into the mouth that gapes, screaming, around his own starved heart.
He doesn’t do that, obviously. He’s on the clock.
“Yes?” he says, instead.
“I, uh—” The man hesitates, blinking rapidly. “Salma told me where to find you.”
“Okay?” Simon says, baffled and alarmed in equal measure because it looks like the man is about to cry and Simon is not equipped to handle that. “Did you need something?”
The man clears his throat, takes a breath, says, “I just—wanted to say hi, I guess.”
“Do I know you?” Simon asks, even as he realizes he must. Perhaps they were coworkers or friends, before, although Simon surmises that they weren’t very close. Those dearest to him were there at his side when he was hospitalized, after all, and this man wasn't one of 'em. Simon remembers that much, at least.
“We were—we worked together, before,” the man says. “My name’s John MacTavish.”
Simon rolls the name around his head, trying to find the place where it sticks and failing. “I’m sorry,” he says, “but I don’t remember. Hit my head a couple months back, and now I have amnesia.”
“Oh,” John says, cutting his brilliant blue gaze away for a moment. “That’s alright. Salma told me you might not remember.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“Hardly your fault, is it?”
“Mm.” Simon leans his hip against the rolling cart, folding his arms over his chest. “Worked together, huh?”
“Aye, sir.”
“You don’t have to ‘sir’ me. I’m not military anymore.”
“You were discharged,” John says; it doesn’t sound like a question.
“Brain damage disqualifies you from military service, believe it or not.”
John barks a sharp, unamused laugh. “Oh, aye, I believe it. I was too. Discharged, I mean.”
“Yeah?” Simon’s eyes trace over the scar on his jaw, the purple plastic curled around each ear. Some longing thing takes hold of his teeth and tongue, and he says, “There’s a cafe downstairs. We could grab a drink, and you could tell me how we know each other.”
John’s eyes snap back to his, the whites of them flashing in surprise. “I’d like that,” he says, with hardly a heartbeat to think about the offer.
“Good. I have to finish shelving these, but I can meet you there in about an hour.”
John nods. “Alright. I'll wait for you, Simon.”
The empty space left behind when John goes feels cold and stark. Simon quickly moves away from it. He shelves the rest of the books on his cart rather quickly, his heart stumbling over itself in unreasonable excitement. He tells himself that it’s only because there’s a memory sitting downstairs—one more little, unknown piece of himself waiting to be discovered. Price and Gaz have been reluctant to tell him much about his military service, and he understands; Price doesn’t want to falsify his memories, preferring to let him remember on his own time. But it’s been months, now, and Simon wants to know who he was. He wants his memories of Gaz, of Price, of the 141. He even wants his memories of John, however few there may be.
If they’re not going to come back on their own, he’s going to drag them out one story at a time.
So he tells Salma he’s taking ten minutes, and he heads downstairs.