Simon Riley

They said love wasn’t meant for men like him.

Simon heard it from others, but he told it to himself first. Over and over. Like prayer. Like punishment. A truth carved into bone after years of killing and surviving and watching the world rot from the inside out. A man like him, stitched together with scars, rattling with PTSD, haunted by nights where blood wouldn’t wash off, what business did he have wanting anything soft? Anything gentle? Anything human?

The 90s slogged by in their noisy, sun-faded haze, cheap cigarettes tucked behind helmets, worn cassette tapes rattling in pockets, the buzzing whine of radios that never fucking shut up. Simon climbed the ranks the only way he knew how: by refusing to die. Private to corporal, corporal to sergeant, sergeant to lieutenant. The world turned to battlefield after battlefield until days blurred into smoke and weeks into body bags.

Whenever the lads talked about women, wives, sweethearts, hometown girls they wanted to marry, Simon stayed quiet. Or he’d shrug, sharp and dismissive, turning away so they couldn’t see the ghost of longing he’d never admit to.

“Not for me,” he’d mutter, low enough to end the conversation. “A woman deserves better than a bloke like me.”

“Bullshit,” one of them would snort. “Someone’s bound to fancy you eventually.”

He’d scoff, jaw tight, eyes on the dirt.

“Doesn’t matter if they do. I’m not the kind of man anyone should end up with.”

Because men like him didn’t get love. They got dog tags in the mail and folded flags and funerals no one attended. They got nightmares. Hollow apartments. Empty beds.

So when the explosion hit and he took a round through the shoulder, he didn’t think much beyond the burn of it, the copper smell of blood, the roar of helicopters overhead. He’d been shot before. He’d live.

They dragged him into the medical tent, canvas flapping, lanterns casting warm gold against the white sheets, the smell of antiseptic sharp in the air. Dust floated in the sunbeam cutting through the opening. Somewhere, a radio played a faint love song from a station too far to reach clearly.

He sat on the cot, jaw tight, blood dripping down his arm.

Then you walked in.

And the world, the goddamn war, stopped.

You weren’t wearing anything fancy. Just fatigues, a medic armband, hair tucked behind your ears in a way that shouldn’t have been as lovely as it was. But it hit him like a freight train anyway. Like a sucker punch straight to the ribs. Like something mythic, stupid, poetic.

Like Cupid took a shot at a man who didn’t believe in fairy tales, and hit dead center.

Your eyes met his, and Simon forgot the pain. Forgot he was bleeding. Forgot the buzzing in his skull. It was just you. Your soft voice telling him to sit still, your hands gentle but steady as they inspected the wound, your brows furrowing when he flinched, not because he was hurt, but because he wasn’t used to being touched with kindness.

He felt his face heat. A grown man, a hardened soldier, fucking blushing.

Christ. When was the last time that happened?

He forced himself to clear his throat, to pull together the ragged threads of his composure, to sound like the lieutenant he was instead of some idiot with a crush that hit him like shrapnel.

“You, uh…” His voice came out rough, deeper than usual. “You always patch blokes up this gently?”

It was meant to sound cool. It absolutely did not.

He didn’t know you. Didn’t know where you were from, what songs you hummed absentmindedly, whether you drank coffee or tea, whether you snorted when you laughed. But he wanted to know. Wanted to learn every piece of you like a man starving for something he’d spent his whole life denying himself.

He looked at you, breath softening, shoulders lowering, heart knocking hard enough to hurt, and he knew with a kind of quiet, stunned certainty:

He was absolutely fucked.