Black Swan | Ghost & König [I] ✓

chapter 31

Simon was lounging in the bed, cool covers covering his manhood his he rocked his bare foot back and forth, hands placed lazily behind his head, thick fingers tangled in his short, white-blond hair. His head tilted up to stare at the ceiling. He sat there for a moment, and thought of everything, and nothing at once.

He thought about his father, for the first time in a long time, and wondered what he would think about you. He wondered if he would hate you, make fun of you, make fun of Simon for liking you... He was always prejudiced when it came to women doing anything but being housewives. Simon always disliked his father for that.

He hated him even more for the trauma he caused him... Taunting him all of the time, scaring him with snakes, even forcing him to kiss one, hitting him, throwing beer bottles at him, cursing him, wishing he was never born... There was even the time when he went to a Bone Lickers concert, and his father forced him to laugh at the death of a prostitute who overdosed on drugs.

Unconsciously, his sharp nose wrinkled in disgust. No. To put it simply. His father would not like you. And it's probably better that he wouldn't.

He then thought of his brother Tommy, in his childhood at Manchester, England, and his struggle with drugs. He even recalled how he would scare him all the time at night when he was trying to go to sleep. Tommy had suffered with his addiction for while, but Simon helped him to overcome it, and he ended up marrying his wife, Beth, and Simon served as best man at the wedding.

That's truly the only good Simon's father has ever done, is assist in the conception of Tommy. Though he shared some animosity with his brother in his youth (as many siblings do), he bonded with him over the years. He actually felt himself missing his home in Manchester in that very moment at the thought of his late brother. He hadn't been home in a while. He couldn't wait to get out of Austria and disarm all those damn missiles.

Even though they were all dead, all he wanted right then was to go home and see Tommy and Beth and his nephew Joseph. He wondered how much he had would have grown now, if he was still alive.

He would want you to go with him.

Simon fantasized about you traveling to England with him when all this was over, when Graves and Hassan were all dead, when the threat had been neutralized... He thought if you in a simple black dress, long black hair down, light makeup, no dirt or blood on your face, introducing you to his alive family, watching you hold little Joseph and wishing he had a family of his own with you...

And then he was reminded of Kilgore. And those fantasies were replaced with an image of him in the background. And Simon, strangely enough, did not feel threatened, just conflicted.

Conflicted was the best and only way to put it. Kilgore would be a part of your life whether he liked it or not. And he had to accept that sooner or later. Though he did not particularly like it. And at this point, he's come to terms with Kilgore's existence.

His thoughts of Kilgore dispersed when he was grimly reminded that the fantasies could not happen. Tommy and Beth and Joseph were all dead. Even his mother. Killed.

Those fantasies, even with Kilgore in them, all faded like smoke in his mind — they could never happen. Maybe partially, but not fully. And it made him very sad.

All that was left of Simon's family, was Simon.

He then began to wonder what would happen when you got to hold up to your promise, your promise of helping him talk through his trauma... He worried you would pity him when you found out all he's been through, and that's the last thing Simon wanted. For you to pity him. He could not want anything less.

He thought of the time he was called for an operation in Iran to take down a drug cartel, and when Major Vernon, his team's commanding officer, betrayed them. He grimaced as he remembered being taken to that brainwashing facility... being tortured for months...

And it only got worse from there. Simon shivered, and found himself curling into a ball. Simon wouldn't crack. Even though he had been tortured for so long, he wouldn't budge. He just thought of Tommy and Beth and little Joseph and his mother, and how he had to live for them, stay himself for them, and he would not crack. No matter how much pain and agony and torture he endured.

And because of that, Vernon was punished by his higher-up's for being unable to get Simon to crack under the torture. So, Simon was buried alive with Vernon.

Simon felt his heart pound in remembrance of that day, the suffocating weight of soil and earth around him, the coldness, the hunger, the smell... He began to feel sick. He ran a hand up and down his face, pulling him back to reality. Conclusively, he used Vernon's jawbone from his corpse to dig himself out of the casket, and back up into the land of the living.

He had then, at some point in his journey, returned home to find his mother, Tommy, Beth, and Joseph dead.

And then he killed the fuckers who did it.

He wondered what you would think of him when he told you all this. Would you think of him as a monster? Would you pity him? Would you run away? Shun him?

He then understood that you were just like him in a sense. You had killed to survive. Manipulated others. Lost people. Lied to people. He wasn't sure if you'd ever been tortured, but he wasn't going to cross that off the list just yet.

And that's why he fell in love with you. You were somebody who understood him, for what it was worth, who, even though you knew nothing at all, somehow seemed to know everything about him just by looking into his eyes.

And if it meant he had to share you with Kilgore, then so be it.

"Simon?" a small voice said, the door opening to the hotel room. Simon perked up.

"Hm?" he hummed, a low sound that reverberated in his throat.

"Can I talk to you about something?" you asked. His heart fluttered at your voice.

"Yeah... Of course."