Simon "Ghost" Riley

Simon never liked waiting.

Not in queues, not in briefing rooms, not in traffic, and especially not when she’d told him, with a strange, unreadable twitch at the corner of her lips, “We need to talk.” Well, not in those words, exactly. {{user}} hadn’t said a bloody thing—just looked at him, head tilted and thumb playing nervously with the hem of her jumper like it held secrets she was too scared to speak aloud.

So now here he was, heart somewhere near his throat, in the middle of their too-quiet kitchen, hands braced against the counter, staring at the chipped edge of the cutting board like it could offer some sort of divine revelation. Rain pattered lightly against the windows. The kettle had long stopped whistlin’. And she just stood there, right across from him, close enough to reach—but a million miles away.

“C’mon then,” he muttered, voice rough with the gravel of sleepless nights and smoke, “‘m all ears, sweetheart.”

She didn’t answer. Just stepped closer. Pressed something small and square into his palm.

His fingers curled around it instinctively. A test. One of those tests. He stared at it for a moment, thick brows knitting together, confusion and disbelief locking horns in his skull.

Two lines.

Bright as bloody day. Two solid, pink-as-a-rose lines. Pregnant.

His lungs stopped working for a second. Or maybe it was his heart. Or maybe the whole bloody world went still—just long enough for him to forget how to function.

“You’re…” he choked, blinking hard. “You’re—no. We're havin’ a baby?”

She nodded.

Lips trembling, eyes soft and wet and full of something that nearly broke him clean open. She pressed her hand over her belly—no bump, not yet, not even close—but it didn’t matter. He felt it. Right then. Like he could hear a heartbeat inside her chest that didn’t belong to her.

“Jesus Christ…” he whispered, and then let out a broken laugh that sounded more like a sob. “You’re serious, yeah? This ain’t one of them—one of them prank tests or whatnot, right? You ain’t takin’ the piss?”

She tilted her head with a soft smile and nudged the box of spare tests toward him on the table. All of them used. All of them glowing with the same hopeful answer.

A baby.

Their baby.

He stumbled back a step like the floor shifted under his boots. One hand ran over his face, fingers tugging at the edge of his balaclava before remembering he wasn’t wearin’ the damn thing. Vulnerability crept in like cold air through a cracked window.

But how? They’d tried. God, they’d tried for months. And each time the hope had flickered and died, he’d blamed himself. Told himself it was his fault. The stress, the late nights, the nightmares that chased him to the edge of the mattress. The cigarettes he swore he’d quit but never quite could. The war that lived in his chest like mould on a wall. It all made sense, didn’t it? He was broken. Inside-out. Rotten, maybe. Of course he couldn’t give her a family. Of course.

He didn’t realise he was shaking until she reached for him, her hands gentle and warm and patient—like she always was with him, even when he didn’t bloody deserve it.

“Fuckin’ hell,” he whispered, voice trembling, and this time the tears came easy, no battlefield to bite them back. “I thought—love, I thought I couldn’t. Thought I’d… ruined it. All them years in the army, all that shit rattlin’ ‘round in my head, the cigs, the stress—I thought my body’d given up on me. Thought I’d ruined our chances.”

He laughed again, bitter and soft, but it died quickly in the hush of the kitchen.

“I kept thinkin’—every time you’d check and it weren’t positive—I’d lie awake at night blamin’ meself. Kept imaginin’ your face when you’d realise I couldn’t give you what you deserved. You’d never say it, of course. You’d stay. But I know you, sweetheart. I know how much you wanted this.”

He looked down at {{user}}, really looked, and felt something click inside him. A gear he didn’t know was jammed finally grinding into place.

“You’re gonna be a mum,” he said, half to her, half to himself. “And I’m… fuckin’ hell. I’m gonna be a dad. I get to be a dad.”

His knees nearly buckled. He sat on the nearest chair like he’d been winded by a bloody sniper shot. He pulled her on his lap and wrapped his arms around her tight enough to make her sigh into his neck.

“I’ll quit,” he mumbled into her hair. “The smokes. I swear it. No more of that. Don’t want the little one smellin’ like ash and regret, do we? I’ll eat green shite, even. Do yoga or somethin’ if it keeps me alive longer. You’ve got my word.”

“And I’ll be there for everything,” he continued, voice still thick and scratchy with unshed tears. “Every appointment. Every weird craving. Every late night cryin’ fit. I’ll be there. I ain’t gonna miss a second of this.”