Summary: There's something ugly in him. He's always known it.
Warnings:
Depictions of violence, threat, Simon being Unhinged.
Prompt:
F is for FIST.
A/N: I really badly want to kiss this man's neck but I'll settle for his knuckles.

Like my work? Tip me!
Want a tailored fic? Pay me to do it!


You feel him coming before you see him. The air in the thin hallway suddenly feels like it's on fire, and an ugly aura glares to your immediate left. By the time he stalks around the corner and enters your line of sight, you're already on high alert.

"Simon…?"

His eyes snap to yours, wild with fury, and you feel yourself shrinking in the wake of his thunderous gait. Suddenly, the corridor feels like one never-ending stretch of concrete. It tries to tempt you into running, running until you exhaust yourself and wind up with the wolf's jaws clamped tight around your throat.

But this is Simon you're talking about.

Simon wouldn't hurt you.

Right?

He walks by without a word, and the wind that tails him feels like the bite of Winter. He's never ignored you before, and though you suspect there's a reason for it, it still stings. For a moment, you're torn between leaving him be and pursuing him. Your senses are screaming at you to leave this alone, to let him cool off in his own time, but you've never seen him so furious before. He'd seemed apoplectic.

This time, the rabbit chases the wolf.

A story told in reverse if ever you'd heard one.

You follow what seems to be his natural path in earnest, though his heavy footfalls are long gone. In spite of the distance he has on you, where he's wound up is incredibly limited; you're essentially meandering through hotel hallways, most of the available doorways being rooms that belong to people. Unless he's set up temporary shop in another Savior's room without anybody knowing about it, it's illogical to think he's entered any of them.

Your heart beats like a jackhammer in your chest as you hear clattering in the near distance. Of course, you think, knowing very well what lies ahead. The infirmary.

Slowly, you peek your head around the doorway, watching as Simon rifles through drawers and cupboards at such high speed that you wonder if he's seeing anything he picks up. Boxes of aspirin are scattered haphazardly around the room as he curses and seethes.

"... Si," you croak, your voice quivering with worry, your fingers holding on tight to the doorway as he tears through the room with the force of a hurricane.

His shirt is drenched. At first, you figure it's sweat. Spending all day at the mercy of a late-Summer heatwave just isn't practical, but he braves that instead of braving Lucille's unquenchable thirst.

Then the smell hits you, metallic and coppery.

"O-Oh my God," you stammer, making your way over to him. Your hands settle on his back, and he shrugs you off with such ferocity that your wrist clicks. Your fingers come away damp and red. "What happened? What did– who did this to you?"

"You ever read a room, [Y/N]?" Simon snaps as he whips around to face you, the words squeezed through his teeth as if he's doing his best not to scream. That's when you catch sight of his hand.

It's as if his knuckles have burst open, a fountain of blood running down his tightly clenched fingers. Your heart feels like it's being squeezed, terror unfurling in your chest like a blooming rose, eyes pinpricked and wide. Without thinking, you reach blindly for him, locking your fingers around his wrist and refusing to let go- even when he begins to struggle hard.

"[Y/N]-"

"Simon, please let me help, I can help, I can–"

He throws you backwards with excessive force, and you let out a sharp cry as you stumble back into the wall. For the first time since you were initiated into the Sanctuary, you're scared of him. He looks different when swaddled in hate, like a rabid dog that's desperate to sink its teeth into flesh, and you find yourself shuffling along the wall and towards the exit.

His fist meets the space beside your head.

Gently.

It's clenched tight, knuckles a chalky white, but its impact is non-existent. Somehow, that scares you even more. His temperamental behaviour when he's angry leaves you stranded in a deep pit of confusion, and the uncertainty is worse than knowing he's about to hit you.

"Are you listening now?" His voice is quiet but not soft; he's seething, words bubbling and fizzing like acid in a glass.

"I was– I was listening– I was, Si." Your breaths come out shallow, quick, and the fear that's currently drenching your tongue tastes as bitter as cold coffee. It's hard to think with him leaning in like that, his face mere inches from yours. It's pathetic, you know, but you can feel tears threatening to prick at the corners of your eyes; you're so frightened your vision is blurring. "I just– your hand–" You sniffle, trying to force yourself to keep it together. You didn't get this far by blubbering like an idiot. "You're hurt–"

"You should see the other guy!" It's said jovially, as if you're having a normal conversation, and his white smile sears itself into your brain as he leans closer still. "There was a rat poking around these parts, [Y/N]. A heretic."

You can see it now, faint and yet so obvious you want to kick yourself for not noticing it: the defensiveness. A deranged version of it, oh absolutely, but defensiveness nonetheless. Negan's regime had been threatened in some way; somebody had torn themselves free of the current, denounced his name and tried to pave their own way; Simon had cut their time dreadfully short. The gravity of Negan's namesake is something you understand, to survive, but its cult-like significance within the Sanctuary sends chills up the length of your spine. Breathing his name is akin to chanting a Satanic curse around these parts. Speak of the Devil and he shall appear.

"... he hurt you."

"I killed him," he hisses, animosity dripping from every word. His brown eyes are all but black with fury as he squints. In that moment, he looks as if he detests you. "I beat the shit out of him until he stopped moving." His bloody thumb curls against your cheek, leaving a red smear behind. "That scare you? Since you wanna be such a fucking princess about a bloody hand–"

Frustration overtakes you, and in an act of defiance, you slap his hand away. You may be so scared that you feel faint, but you can't stand it when Simon is mean. He's had yet to show it to you personally, but you've seen it regardless. You've seen it on runs when confronting strangers and you've seen it with men that refuse to fall in line. Hell, you've heard the ferocity with which he butts heads with Negan sometimes, two floors above the rest of you. He's nasty. He damn well knows it, too.

"You're letting me help you. I'm going to clean your wound and bandage your hand, and you can't stop me."

"Is that right?"

"That's right." Tears prick at the corners of your eyes, and you angrily swipe your arm across your face to get rid of them. You won't give him the pleasure of seeing you cry, not when he's this bent on destruction. "Stop being an asshole and sit."

Your legs are shaking, and you half expect to hear him fling open the door and leave in spite of what you said. You may be able to speak sternly, but you're hardly physically capable of stopping a man that's over six feet tall from doing as he pleases. You still can't quite believe that you left that scene completely unscathed (perhaps because you're still in it, your demons whisper with a laugh), and it shows in the tremble of your fingers as you crouch and retrieve bandages and rubbing alcohol. With a clear head, they're easy to locate, but Simon currently has anything but.

The sound of leather squeaking has the hairs on the back of your neck rising.

Simon is sitting, as per your request demand, an eerie silence surrounding him as he watches you busy yourself. Fear radiates from you like heat, and he feels himself being drawn to it. He's hungry in ways he's seldom distracted enough to recognise.

Rabbit, he thinks, his dark eyes tracing your every move. There's something twisting in his gut like a knife, serrated and ugly. Maybe hate. Maybe guilt. Your resilience shouldn't surprise him, not in a world this cold, but it does. Why didn't the bunny hop away?

He's torn from his thoughts by a harsh sting, a hiss escaping through clenched teeth as he looks down at the alcohol-infused cotton that you've pressed to his open wounds. It's already turning crimson, the blood serving as dye that's just a little too permanent for something so white.

"Fuck," he mutters, thick digits flexing before he falls dutifully still once more. There are worse things he could endure, has endured, but there will always be something distinctly unpleasant about cleaning up wounds. Being the kind of man he is, he much prefers to let them bleed.

You're happy it hurts– at least a little bit, for just one selfish moment. It's the least he deserves for being such a ruthless idiot back there, but you're wise enough not to say it. You may feel self-righteous at the moment, but you're still trembling like a leaf - and he is still in a foul mood, his face stony as he watches you clean him up without a word. He's breathing in deep through his nose, and out softly through his mouth, his sodden shirt sticking to him with every movement.

"You should still see the doctor," you whisper. With his hand now mostly clean, you can see the ugly gashes for what they are; one of them is angrier than the rest, wider and more resilient in wake of the violence. Your medical knowledge is limited– he'll require a visit to the actual doctor after you've had your way with him– but you know enough to wrap his hand up serviceably. "... he came for you?"

Simon nods once, the motion curt. "He stole my knife. Had no other options."

Your hands are small in comparison to his; both of yours cupping his injured one as you slowly bind it in gauze. By the time you're done, he seems calmer. Not yet absolved of his fizzling temper, but more like himself. Sane, at least.

"You scared the hell out of me," you admit as you tie the bandage up, heart rate beginning to settle as you catch his eye. They're brown again, though that tic in his jaw is still present. Irate, like he wants to teethe on your hand for fun.

"You should've turned me away," he says flatly, his eyes searching yours. Gradually, his brow furrows. "... why didn't you?"

He can't understand you. He wants so desperately to wash his hands of someone like you, and in any other case he would have. There's something alluring about your innocence– something so disarmingly fragile and pure that he can't bear to tarnish it. He used to think it was tied to your physicality, to some perverted desire to corrupt you, to drag you down into that same all-encompassing darkness that smothers him so that he won't be alone in it, but it isn't. It truly is akin to holding a small animal in his hands and being unable to crush it to death. Sometimes he loves that part of himself. It proves that he's still human beneath it all. Other times, he wants to sink his nails in and rip it out manually.

You shake your head. "... I couldn't. If I can help, I should try. Trying is what makes you part of the living."

Simon blinks, his anger traded for confusion. He isn't a meek man– on the contrary, he's a hardened pragmatist through and through– but something in you reaches out to him, makes him lower his guard. It's this that makes him realise that you're the opposite of weak. Not only do you choose to persevere, you can make people reconsider the way they persevere too. Life isn't sunshine and rainbows, especially not now, but making things worse is a choice too.

An empty scoff leaves him, his head shaking slightly as he moves to stand up. "... I'll see the doc."

"Shouldn't you wait until he comes here?"

"I'll find him," he assures. His hand feels cold without yours wrapped around it, and that's part of the reason he wants to leave in the first place. He knows what it means to get close to somebody in the world now: it means leverage. It means loss. It means agony. "I should find out why he left his post to begin with."

You nod, giving him a weak smile. "Just don't kill him."

"Eh." A sliver of the Simon you knows peeks through, with his silly smile and the light behind his eyes. "We'll see how good his reason is."