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The bedroom is low lit and quiet, rain tick-ticking on the window; the bedside lamp throws a warm light over gauze, tape, saline, and a wrapped roll of cling. Simon sits on the edge of the mattress in sweats and an old t-shirt you cut up the side so it won’t drag over the bandage. His skin is damp from a shower, bruises fading to the watercolor stage along his ribs.
“Ready?” you ask, palms held up for a last check. Clean. Warm.
He nods. “Go on, then.” Voice rough, tired around the edges in the way it only is for you.
You peel the tape in slow, careful inches. He doesn’t make a sound, but his shoulders tighten. Lateral flank, deep graze stitched neat, the surrounding skin still angry but clean. You flood the pad with saline, tip your head, blot with gauze and patience. He watches your hands, not the wound.
“Does it sting?”
“Nah.” Beat. “A bit.”
You smile. “Nearly done. This looks like it hurt.”
Ghost huffs, aims for light and misses. “Add it to the collection,” he mutters. “Another disgusting mark for a bloke who looks like a patchwork dog.”
You freeze, new gauze halfway to skin. The words are offhand, too practiced to be a joke. Your eyes find his; he flicks a glance away, jaw set, as if waiting for you to agree with him by staying quiet.
You set the gauze down.
“Simon.”
“Mm.”
“Look at me.”
He does. Careful. Defensive without meaning to be. You kneel on the rug between his knees so he has to look down at you, so your hands can touch without reaching.
“There is not a square inch of you that is disgusting to me,” you say, plain and sure. “Not one.”
He swallows. “Yeah, well.”
“Not one.” You flatten your palm over the new dressing and hold it there, gentle pressure steadying his breath. Then you slide your hand away and bend to press your mouth to the uninjured skin just above the bandage; one slow kiss, then another. He goes still.
“What’re you doing, love?”
“Course correction.” You kiss the far edge of the bruise curving his ribs. “Cataloguing.”
He huffs a laugh, small and startled. “Cataloguin’, huh?”
“Mhm.” You shift closer and start to work: mouth and hands like patient notes, slow as rain. You kiss along the seam where scar gives way to ordinary skin and back again, tongue learning each raised line, each slick, each dip. Your hands warm his sides, then his stomach; your thumbs sweep his hipbones the way you’d smooth creases from a sheet. He’s breathing different now; deeper, more careful.
“Hands,” you say, and take one. It’s big and battered, calluses like coins under your lips. “These carry me.” You kiss each knuckle. “These put food on the table.” You kiss the heel of his palm; he flinches, surprised that it makes a noise in his throat. “These are not disgusting; they are proof.”
“Proof of what?”
“Of the life I get because you’re in it.”
Silence. Then, very quietly: “Christ.”
You kiss the long vein that runs his forearm; he stares like you’re performing a trick he can’t work out. Up to his bicep and your mouth finds the hard swell there, teeth scrape just enough to make his breath catch. “This is mine,” you tell the muscle, shameless.
He snorts. “Bold claim.”
“Try and take it away from me.” You move to his shoulder, the cap tight with tension he pretends isn’t there. You thumb the knot, lean in until your breath warms his skin. “This holds the world up when I can’t.” A kiss. “Thank you.”
He doesn’t say you’re daft this time. The corners of his mouth go soft, like the words land somewhere you were aiming for.
“May I?” You touch the hem of the shredded shirt.
He lifts his arms without thinking. The shirt pools behind him on the bed. Chest bare; scars mapped like a constellation some god got bored with halfway through; hair dark with clean water. He starts to look down. You lay your palm on his sternum, a gentle press that says stay with me.
“Your chest,” you murmur, tracing the long, mean slash that crosses his ribs, “is the warmest place I know.” You kiss beside it. “There.” Another a finger width away. “And here.” You swim your mouth slowly through all the old hurt like you’re teaching it a better story. The scar twitches under your lips; he breathes out a tiny, shocked laugh that sounds like relief.
You move lower, to the soft skin above his waistband, tender, human, the place he gives himself the hardest time on bad days. You kiss it like an apology he never deserved to ask for. “This is where I rest my head every early morning,” you say. “Not an ugly thing about it.”
“Stop,” he says on reflex, but his hand goes to the back of your neck and holds you there. Not pushing. Not keeping. Just staying.
“I won’t,” you answer, gentle, and kiss the inside of his hip where the muscle feathers out into something you only get to see with the door closed. He makes a sound you feel more than hear.
When you look up, his eyes are glassy. “You’re killin’ me,” he says.
“Then die happy.” You push his knees wider with your hands at the inside seam of his sweats. He goes, pliant, watching you like you might vanish if he blinks.
“Mask?” you ask.
He hesitates, muscle twitch in his cheek, old habits riffling cards, and then hooks a thumb, drags it up to his nose. Mouth bare. Vulnerable and obscene in the same breath. You kiss him for it; slow, wet, grateful. He opens with a groan like the first time, every time.
“Let me take care of you,” you breathe into his mouth.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “Alright.”
You work his joggers down; he lifts hips to help. He’s already getting hard just from being looked at like this, heavy, flushed, vulnerable in a way that makes your chest ache. You rest your cheek on his thigh for a second, just breathing him in. He swears softly, fingers sliding into your hair.
You kiss the tip of his cock soft and affectionate, and his head tips back; the line of his throat works. You mouth that line, too, when you rise; one kiss under the jaw, a bite at the angle that makes him grunt.
“Bed,” you say, standing long enough to guide him back onto the pillows. He lets you arrange him like a giant, surly doll, pillow under the injured side to keep pressure off, sheet tugged under his back, his hand caught in yours and set on your hip like a tether. He’s flushed to his ears.
You climb over his lap, one knee to either side of his hips, and sit slow, just weight to start. His pupils flicker; his hands hover like he’s asking without asking.
“Touch,” you tell him, and his palms come to your waist, reverent and heavy. “Let me do the work.”
“I like it when you do the work,” he admits, wrecked.
You laugh, breathless. You take him in your hand and guide him, sink down in a long, careful press until your bodies fit like they were always meant to. The stretch makes you gasp; his eyes go wild for a second and then soft again.
You move slowly, rolling your hips in small circles that keep you full and keep the pillow from shifting under his side. He meets you with the gentlest lift, a tiny help, a yes please. You lean forward and lay both hands on his chest, palms mapping heat and hair and the slow thud of his heart.
“Tell me what you like,” you ask, because you want to hear him say it.
“Like you on me,” he says at once, like he’s been storing the words. “Like your hands- fuck- on my chest. Like you lookin’ at me like you’re seein’ something good.”
“I am.” You grind a little harder, shiver when his thumb strokes over the notch of your hipbone, steadying you, encouraging you. “So good.”
“Say my name,” he asks, barely a voice.
“Simon,” you whisper. Then, harder: “Simon.”
He breaks something open on that one. His hands spread, grip you like you’re evidence he can’t afford to lose; his eyes go hot and bright and a little wet. “Love,” he says, rough. “My girl. Jesus.”
You put your mouth back where his shame tried to live. “Strong,” you murmur, licking a salt line under his collarbone. “So strong.” You rock down and take all of him; he swears so quietly it’s almost a thank you. “Beautiful.” Kiss. “Beautiful.” Kiss. “Beautiful.”
He shudders. “You’ll make me- ”
“Let me.” Your hand slips between your bodies, fingers finding yourself, working with the same patience you used on his scars, rubbing small and sure. He’s thick inside you; the combination makes your knees go weak. You breathe his name. He tightens his grip on your waist like he’s anchoring you to shore.
“Look,” you say, voice shaking. You take his hand from your hip and flatten it over your stomach where he’s deep. “Feel what you do to me.”
His face crumples into something almost boyish. He presses his palm there like he can hold you both together. “Fuck,” he whispers. “I’ve got you.”
You come first, quiet and drowning, the kind that pulls tears you didn’t plan on. He says good, that’s it, I’ve got you in a voice that makes your bones tender. He chases you a handful of strokes later, hips stuttering, a low sound breaking loose as he spills and goes still.
For a long moment there’s only breath. Rain. Warmth.
You fold down over him slowly so nothing pulls where it shouldn’t. He gathers you up even slower. You stay like that, hearts in the same county, his cheek in your hair, your hands spread like you’re trying to memorize his width.
“Change the dressing after?” he mumbles, voice gone soft.
“Already did.” You smile into his chest. “We got detoured.”
He huffs a laugh that shakes his ribs under your mouth. “Yeah.”
You roll off to one side so he can breathe easier and handle cleanup without twisting with the grumpy efficiency of a man who’s done field medicine with a belt and a prayer, then tucks you back in with both hands like you’re precious cargo.
“Hey,” you say when he starts to look away again, that old habit sniffing a chance. You catch his face in your hand and bring him back. “You’re not disgusting. You’re mine.”
Something in his shoulders unclenches. He nods once, soldier-quick, and meets your eyes. “Yours,” he says, like an oath. “Right.”
You kiss his scar one more time on purpose. He makes that small, helpless noise you love.
“Protein shake?” you tease, because it’s how you know the moment’s safe again.
“In a minute.” He hooks a thigh over yours to keep you still, as if you were going somewhere. “Gonna lie here and be… catalogued.”
“Please.” You grin into his throat. “I’ve got pages to fill.”
He laughs properly then- warm, low, unguarded- and tilts his head so you can get to his neck. You set your mouth to the work, slow and patient, rain stitching the evening together beyond the glass while you rewrite every inch of him into something he can stand to live inside.