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Simon does not like to be touched.
He likes his space, swathes of it, folded around him, everything placed at a remove, a distance.
That is fine by you, you don’t like to be touched either.
You are fine with the distance, the subtle closeness of sitting shoulder to shoulder but no nearer; his gloved fingers occasionally tapping the inside of your wrist, the back of your hand, palm cradling the point of your elbow to guide you in public. Your hand at the small of his back to pass him in the kitchen, pressed to his forearm to get his attention.
Most would say it’s an odd relationship, a backward, awkward one. But they aren’t in it, so you don’t care.
It’s not backward or awkward. It’s safe, secure. It’s nice to know you’re understood, your self made boundaries respected.
Something tender writhes in your chest for him, but he would not appreciate the sentiment and so you leave it unsaid. You speak affection in a different language, and it works.
So, it’s a surprise the first time you see his face, feel his weight against yours, and find it does not sting.
Simon is delivered bodily to your front door on evening, wretchedly drunk, tottering between two men you vaguely recognize from a faded photograph.
He crashes into you with all the grace of a felled oak tree, and you tip into the wall beside the door, crushed between his body and the plaster. Heat and discomfort lurches in your stomach but you hold onto him anyway, because you and the wall are the only thing keeping him upright.
The lads, his teammates you can only surmise, disappear back down the garden path, weaving into the night with arms around each other, one of them sing-shouting a song you can’t place.
It feels nice, his weight and warmth against you, but you don’t want him to wake the next morning and feel you’ve slipped beneath his trust, betrayed him in some way.
“Si,” you murmur, “C’mon, let’s get you to bed.”
You manage to get him to lean more on the wall than on you, so you can close the door and lock it.
To your surprise, his hand fists in the back of your shirt, like he’s reluctant to lose contact with you. Your skin burns, itchy and tight and not used to it. Dull panic skitters like sparks beneath your skin.
It’s always been like this, the soft press of anyone’s touch is like being delicately, deliberately bruised. You crave it and fear it in equal measure. You’ve been without it for so long, that any touch is overwhelming, confusing, likely undeserved.
Simon reaches past you, under your arm, to rattle the door knob, checking your work, physically reassuring himself it’s locked.
His fingers brush your ribs as he does, like it's the most natural thing in the world, that you are always this close.
You freeze, feeling overwhelmed, maybe a little ambushed and not sure how to navigate this, if Simon will resent you for letting it happen when he’s decidedly more sober.
Satisfied the door is locked, he braces his palm against it and pushes himself upright, and you’re reminded very suddenly that he cares for you, that you trust him.
He still doesn’t release you, staring down at where you’re jammed uncomfortably tight between him and the door. There’s something tender in his dark eyes.
“You alright?” You ask, trying to gently work yourself out of his grasp to help him to bed. “Let's get you to bed..”
His brows furrow and his fist unclenches, the flat of his palm sliding down your back instead. “Come ‘ere.”
You blink. “I’m here.”
Simon nudges you toward the couch, and you have to wedge your arm beneath his shoulder to support him part of the way. You can’t imagine how much he must have imbibed to be this drunk at his size.
His breath leaves him in a huff as he drops down onto the sofa and drags you down with him.
This is different too, but the initial unfamiliar discomfort of it is fading. When he twists with you in his arms and you find yourself crowded between the back of the sofa and his bulk, you don’t mind. One massive arm threads behind your back.
Propped up on his elbow he looks down at you, something calculating and unreadable in his eyes before it calcifies into something firm.
In one swift movement, he reaches up with the opposite hand and tugs the black surgical mask off of his face.
You are left staring at each other for the first time, bodies crushed together into a heap for the first time. Your chest feels tight, something fragile behind your ribs fluttering softly. “Oh,” you murmur, drinking in his face. “Hey.”
His expression is guarded, eyes flat dark pools regarding you with a sudden wariness. Scarring treads across his face like footprints left in the snow, across his lips and chin, a jagged, raised line over his cheek.
You’ve never seen anyone more beautiful. True, but also just because it’s his face.
You lift your hand tentatively, unsure. Your carefully maintained boundaries have been upset and you aren’t sure where the line is anymore. It hangs in the air between you, suspended animation.
Simon is still regarding you cautiously, as though waiting for the other shoe to drop. For you to add to the collection.
The vulnerability of it shocks you. Not just that he has trusted you to know his face, but everything underneath. There is no Ghost in the room to protect him. It’s you and Simon and all the fleshy, unarmored parts of him.
“Regretting it?” Giving him a chance to walk it back, no harm no foul.
“Yet to be seen,” he answers, sounding distinctly more sober than before. He glances at your still hovering hand. “Go on.”
“Will you hate me in the morning?”
“No hatin’ you, love.”
“Are you sure? You’re drunk.”
“No’ that drunk,” he counters. “I’ve been thinking about it. Wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t sure.”
Your mouth twitches, amused, and you nod. “You’re sure about me, huh?”
He makes a grunt that functions as a warning and an agreement.
“You’re beautiful,” you say, just to say it, just so he knows.
“I’ve been told,” he says, dry as ever, something cocky and surefooted just beneath.
“Oh, and humble as well. Have I ever said?”
You press the tips of your fingers against his scarred cheek before he can retort, thumbing against the raised line of keloid scarring, then the corner of his mouth, the rough edge of his jaw and chin.
It’s easy, you realize, to touch him. To be touched by him.
He’s lying on you and you don’t feel the usual pulse of anxiety and trepidation.
The buzz under your skin has faded to a muted hum, soothed by his weight against yours instead of trapped by it.
Maybe because the foundation of trust has already been laid, maybe because it doesn’t feel as though he’s taking something from you but giving instead.
His body shudders, relaxes slowly against yours. You feel the hard planes of his body loosen in increments, soften like melted butter.
It’s mesmerizing.
You brush his skin, not aiming to touch any particular part of him, but not avoiding anything either. You thumb at his lips, the cracked edge of his mouth, trace the bridge of his nose and the webbed scarring at the edge of his jaw.
Tentatively, he releases your wrist, lowers his palm to your hip, watching you intently, thumb skating along your side in a little arc.
“I’m not good at this,” you murmur.
“Seems like you’re doing okay.”
You shake your head. “I get so scared.” You feel his expression change against your hands before you feel his body lock up again, guarded again. “No, not like—It just feels as though I’m not meant for this,” you hasten to continue.
“For what?” His voice is hard, the sharp edge of Ghost looming. Cautious, testing. A spiderweb crack in very thin ice.
“Something this easy,” you admit in a revealing, reverent whisper. “This. . . safe.”
He uncoils again, with that admission. “You’re safe,” he says, an agreement. A statement of fact.
It goes unsaid but you hear it anyway. You’re safe with him.
Here, squeezes beneath him, you’re safe, in all the ways you can be.
The scarring trails down his throat, his pretty skin pink there, and though you’d like to explore that part of him too, you keep your hands on his face, tracing the thick shadows beneath his perpetually sleepless eyes.
You’re both pushing the envelope of comfortable, and you don’t want it to burst, to crumble in your hands.
“But it feels nice,” you continue, still staring at him, cataloguing his features, just in case the regret did come sweeping in with the light of day and without the burn of alcohol. The slightly crooked list of his nose, the shape of his mouth, the particular way his jaw ticks. “Right?”
Slowly, haltingly, consideringly, he nods.
His hand strokes your side again, then, as if in confirmation and askance. Is it nice the other way around, too?
The path his hand traces leaves a warm trail in its wake, and you nod.
Yes. God, yes, it’s fucking wonderful.
He could ask to stick his hand between your ribs, fold his fingers around your lungs just to feel you breathe and you’d say yes.
When you touch his cheek again, he leans into it, turns his face into your hand like he intended to leave a roadmap of it there, an imprint as a keepsake.
He grunts, a sound been in his chest, like a pained purr.
Simon’s eyes flutter shut, blond eyelashes shutter closed over honey dark eyes. The picture of peace. Or, well, possibly just the closest someone like Simon might ever come to it.
It’s hard to breathe beneath him, even with him holding some of his weight off of you but you don’t mind. He tips his head forward gently, carefully, against your sternum, and you scratch your nails through his hair instead, feeling very much like he is an overgrown cat in your lap.
Your heart is somewhere in your throat when his carefully treading hand wanders up your spine, across your waist, over your arm and collarbone and eventually your face.
You feel as though you’re burning, your skin screaming, but not in the usual way.
In a way that makes you ache, makes you believe you’ve been living underwater and finally come up for air.
His skin is hot and calloused against yours, you can feel the divots of worn scar tissue on his palm.
Simon tilts your face up, large hand splayed over your jaw, thumb stroking your cheek. The kiss is clumsy, a clack of teeth that makes you giggle and inhale sharply. You feel his cheek twitch into an approximation of a smile in response.
He pulls back, tongue darting out pink against his lips. “Don’t stop,” you say.
He tastes like beer, tobacco, hand sliding down your body again, anchoring on your waist, squeezing, spreading over the width of your thigh and the hinge of your knee that he tugs into place against his hip.
You open your mouth against his, cup his face in your hands like a precious jewel. His tongue slides against yours, something electric sizzling down your spine in a white arc.
Maybe it won’t always be this easy. You suspect something like this between you will function on a never ending sliding scale.
But it’s enough.
It’s everything.