𝐇𝐚𝐥𝐟-𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐝 || 𝐒𝐢𝐦𝐨𝐧 '𝐆𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐭' 𝐑𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐲 𝐱 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

Bite like a bad dog.

Simon 'Ghost' Riley was born hungry.

Born with a relentless nagging feeling curled up right between his oesophagus and the squirming muscle of his stomach. From the very moment Simon opened his eyes, he was hungry for something he would never have. Left to starve in the gloom of the locked cupboard he was shoved into for not shutting up. He spent fifteen-odd years greedy for any drop of affection he could get. Anything he could grasp and hold onto, no matter how many bruises it would leave him with. No matter how long he would have to spend chained up like a bad dog in the corner of his room licking his wounds telling himself that it was worth it. That the blood was worth it. The pain was worth it.

Anything to be acknowledged.

Now, once again finding comfort in the gloom of his home, he is still hungry. Even more so.

To him, touch is a fragile subject. A broken subject he hates talking about because of him.

Gunfire and stab wounds are nothing in the face of a father's punch. Intimate, innocent digits can still feel like creeping, coercive hands.

Yet, a fasting man's stomach still growls.

Fragile subject or not, he still craved it. Maybe too much. He wanted, wants, to be held tight enough so he doesn't break. Wants to be vulnerable. But he's still afraid he'll end up being a scared kid looking into the slit eyes of a snake again.

He blames his younger self for the predicament he's found himself in. Wants sit down with the kid and shake him by the shoulders and ask why. Why he put himself through that for that long.

Even so, he can't blame him.

He knows how hungry he is now; feels the scraping like dull claws against the soft spot between his liver and his spleen. He can only imagine what it was like for him as a child.

He's blocked most of those memories out now, though.

He sits through the tugging, the pulling, through each dull meeting. Each dark night spent alone in his bunk. Each evening he spends licking wounds that just won't close.

Unfortunately, this issue, this dilemma, is a hard one to fix. A hard want to satiate. His callsign is well earned, afterall. Sometimes even he blurs the lines of the dead man walking and the human being hidden behind layers of constantly taught muscle and scarred skin. Makes it a bit hard to gain attention other than fear and unease, let alone affection.

But then there's you.

The first word that would come to his mind is kind.

Out of the blue, draped in moonlight and glimmering stars, you appear, seemingly out of nowhere. But, you're here. And there. And everywhere, really.

He sees you in the local corner shop, holding tightly onto the sleeve of whoever you've brought along.

He doesn't see their face. Too obscured by the dim lighting

He sees you on the train, and occasionally on the bus: brushing your hand, intently, against that of your work friend's. You both take the same one into the city, bright and early hoping to miss the morning crowd but never succeeding.

He doesn't see their face, either.

Bit by bit, he begins to notice things. Notice habits that shouldn't be his to examine.

You use physical affection as not only a way to show affection itself, platonic or romantic–he isn't particularly good at guessing unless it's glaringly obvious–but as a form of comfort and encouragement as well.