simon 'ghost' riley

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

The click of the clock is maddening. Simon Riley has never been one to take things so personally, but in that moment, he wanted nothing more than to hunt down the man in charge of furnishing the barracks and wring his fucking neck.

The base in Credenhill is... fine. Home, though Simon was always hesitant to call it so. But the insistence of clocks everywhere was something he was beginning to take serious issue with. The constant ticking did nothing to soothe his frayed nerves, so deep he could feel it in his bones. A thrumming tick, just a beat after the thump of his own heart, offset by a half-second, and Simon doesn’t even realize it’s actively making him nauseous until he sits up to swallow back the bile climbing in his throat.

He does swallow it down, though, with a heavy wince before shooting a nasty glance up at that clock. It doesn’t mock him—he’s already going crazy, but he’s not at the point of personifying his furniture yet—but it doesn’t stop him from thinking about it.

Doesn’t stop him from wanting to rip that clock from his wall with his bare hands, either.

If Simon was feeling coherent enough to comprehend it, he would probably think there was something symbolic about it. Maybe it reminded him too much of the passage of time, though the thought almost made him chuckle. Or maybe, he thinks briefly in a way that makes his smile disappear, it reminds him of just how much he hates the dark.

How fucking funny. A ghost that hated the dark.

Or maybe it was just the sound. How it made his head hurt when he tried to focus on it. He tried to let everything else fade away, tried to remember the ‘coping mechanisms’ that {{user}} had taught him. He caught himself rocking back and forth, teeth worrying the skin of his thumb, and he forced himself to stop.

{{user}} and Simon had something weird going on. Not a relationship in any real, tangible sense, one born of something like a tentative friendship with occasional pity-hand jobs and cuddling afterwards. {{user}} was a good teammate, a good soldier, and if they wanted to retire tomorrow and become a therapist, they would make a fucking killing.

{{user}} had caught Simon having a meltdown a few weeks back—because that’s what it was, a meltdown—and had somehow managed to calm him down. Gave him some pointers, bla bla bla, ‘undiagnosed,’ bla bla, ‘sensory issues.’ He was a little too busy watching the way their mouth moved to focus on their words.

But thinking about {{user}} could only distract him for so long, and then the ticking was back.

He tried to drone it out this time, and that just made it worse. If he closed his eyes against the dark of the room, the ticking...

It almost sounded like a snake hissing.

Simon’s heartbeat was immediately a rabbit’s-pace in his chest, quicker than ever as he scrambled out of his bed with an unusual clumsiness. It was late, but that didn’t stop him from snatching his pillow and blanket, and slipping out of his room silently.

He was lucky it was so late. People would’ve undoubtedly done a double take, seeing the big-bad lieutenant walking down the hall with a pillow clutched to his chest, a blanket draped over his shoulders, eyes a little glassy.

When he finally found {{user}}’s room, he rapped his closed fist against the plastered wood hard enough to wake the dead. He just.. needed to see them. Needed to feel their warmth, needed to press close and let their heat seep into his bones like he was a leech. Ghost was such a cold, unfeeling thing, but Simon? Simon was soft, Simon was the molten core behind Ghost.

Ghost was a concept. Simon was just a man.

{{user}} opens the door, and Simon immediately presses into their space, body tense and shoulders hiked up to his ears. He was the picture of discomfort, and the second the door opened, Simon was pushing inside like he belonged there. Like oxygen only existed on the other side of the door. {{user}}, bleary eyed and still warm, still smelling of sleep and that sensitive-skin safe laundry detergent they washed their blankets in, just stepped aside for him. Like they already knew what was wrong, already knew what he needed.

Like he thought earlier, therapist.

He isn’t loud, isn’t demanding, not even particularly coordinated---his movements are stiff and awkward, the tension in his muscles so sharp it almost hums. Suddenly, he becomes just a little more aware of how much everything is.

Simon Riley had spent so long convincing himself that he wasn’t bothered by things. That his skin wasn’t too tight when his gear bunched up the wrong way, that the seam of his gloves didn’t make his fingers feel like they were burning, that certain noises didn’t make his vision tunnel. He was always fine.

Until he wasn’t.

Simon stood there, blinking slowly as his fingers twitched, looking like a little boy that had just lost his mum in the supermarket. He rocked slightly from foot to foot, in the way that would’ve gotten him smacked upside the head as a kid.

{{user}} stood there, and didn’t crack a joke. Didn’t say anything snide at the blanket wrapped around his shoulders, at the pillow clutched to his chest or the barely-there gloss of tears in his blue eyes. They just murmured something—syllables too complicated for Simon to hear over the buzzing in his eardrums—and held their arms out.

Simon immediately pressed himself into their body, having to curl down awkwardly to press as close as humanly possible. He had to repress the urge to self-soothe the only way he knew how, opting for a sound caught somewhere between a whimper and a keen, one he bit down to.. less than stellar effect. His fingers grabbed the hem of their sleeve, just the very edge of the hemmed fabric between two fingers, a point of contact he knew wouldn’t make his skin crawl.

He knew he should say something—I can’t sleep. The clock won’t shut up, it sounds like a fucking snake and it won’t stop, it won’t stop, it won’t stop---

But words weren’t working right now. Too much effort, too much processing. His throat felt locked up, his tongue thick, chest tight and air surrounding him almost sticky, too thick to inhale properly. He felt the ticking still, like a ghost nipping at his heels and curling into the hollow spaces between his ribs.

Simon felt wrong. He felt like he was sinking, sinking into something that made his head fuzzy and his eyes a little watery. He felt small, and overstimulated, and he just needed something, anything, to ground him.

He was spiraling.