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The rain comes pattering from the sky on his way back to the laundromat. Slowly at first, and then downpouring all at once. A sudden gush from the sky as the first strike of lightning crackles between clouds. Simon pauses, looks up, can’t get his feet to keep moving. There is something comforting about the city. It’s why he never left, despite all the bad memories. It isn’t just that Markus and Josh and North are here. It isn’t the fact that his friends and his people are here, that he is intrinsically tied to a movement that he nearly fought Markus with every step of the way. They are a factor, of course, they are the primary reason, but in the fleeting moments in the night when he wants to leave, when he wants to stop being Simon, the PL600 that helped the android revolution!, it’s the city that keeps him here.
It is mostly this—the walk to and from the laundromat. The sound of the train as it goes by above him. Speeding along with all of its passengers. The rain as it creates puddles and slippery steps on the sidewalk. Watching people run for cover with their jackets over their heads or retrieving their umbrellas that they had thought to bring with. Simon hadn’t brought his own, and he regrets it now. The clothes in the dryer will be soaked again by the time he gets to his apartment. He’ll have to say, wait out the rain, hope that the storm is done with by the time the next load is finished drying.
Simon keeps walking, pulling his jacket around him a little tighter. It’s warm outside, but the rain is making him cold. His hair is floppy and wet, his shoes soggy. It isn’t as uncomfortable as it might be for a human, but it is still uncomfortable. He likes the rain, he does not like being caught in the rain. He is perfectly content just watching it through his window and listening to the sound of thunder being interrupted by trains going by.
He makes his way to the laundromat, pushing the glass door open, listening to the sound of the bell chime quietly above him. He likes coming here late at night. It isn’t nearly as late as he would prefer—the sun is barely starting to set. Just a little after eight. Normally he comes in the middle of the night, when the nightmares get to be too much and the walk from here to his apartment is comforting, despite the hour. It helps take the edge off, but he was out of clothes and he’d be busy at Josh’s in an hour or two. Setting up board games found in Carl’s attic. He wouldn’t quite be learning how to play Monopoly or Clue from thin air—he had protocols for common board games when the children he’d taken care of wanted to play—but he hadn’t thought about them in what felt like a hundred years, and he was always designed to let them win.
Sides—knowing and learning how to play a game wasn’t supposed to be the fun part in it. It was being able to spend time with the others without having the pressure of trying to fix everything. It wasn’t a simple snap of the fingers. The people still didn’t want androids around. They were all pretending it was as simple as them being divided into two groups—those who thought deviants were dangerous and androids weren’t people versus those that thought deviants were just as alive as humans, just as deserving of rights as anyone.
But it isn’t that simple. It never really is. There is so much middle ground to cover. So many people thinking they can tear apart an android’s life and past and alter it to fit whatever opinion they had.
It’s exhausting. He never wanted to be a part of this. He never wanted to be a character in the play. He just wanted to live, to not be hurt, to be content. Not even happy, just content .
Simon tries to shake the thoughts away, busy his hands with putting his newly dried clothes in a bag, tying it up tight before removing the wet ones from the wash and placing them in the machine. He probably shouldn’t have left his things unattended, but barely anyone even comes to this laundromat. It’s no longer one of the rare twenty-four-hour ones that might’ve existed before. They all are nearly like this. Fully automated, with cameras watching every single move.
He pulls the coin purse from his pocket. A little velvet thing, soft blue, and a silver handle. It feels light. He never keeps it as full as he’d prefer. He’d like to shove it full of quarters, feel the weight of it in his pocket like a reassurance, but it’s always near empty. North steals his change sometimes, using it at coffee shops when she goes on a date with her girlfriend. When he dumps the change out on top of the machine, he knows he’s short, but he slides the money in anyways, listening to them clink as they drop down and the number on the machine grows smaller and smaller.
“Here,” a voice says quietly, the sound of metal sliding across metal. “Take this. You’re short, aren’t you?”
Simon has a smile prepared, a thank you so much ready to fall from his lips when he looks over to him, meeting his eyes.
Connor.
“O-Oh,” he says, stumbling over his words. Stuttering and letting each word he meant to say before collide into each other in a mess of gibberish. He thinks, even that he might’ve slipped into a different language for a moment in his surprise and attempt to save himself. “Connor.”
“Simon,” he replies, as though Connor needs to prove he knows who Simon is.
It’s been two years, but they didn't really talk before.
“Thank you,” Simon says softly, taking the quarter, holding it in his hand for a moment. “I haven’t—”
“It’s been a while,” Connor says, smiling gently before turning away from him, putting distance between them again. His stuff, or what Simon presumes are his things, are sitting on top of a machine two away. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t scare me,” he replies, almost defiantly. He drops the last quarter into the machine, starts it and listens to the soft hum as it kicks on. “I just…”
“It’s been a while,” he repeats, like he’s saving Simon the trouble of repeating it for him. “I know.”
It is awkward and strange, the laundromat falling quiet. They’re the only two here, surrounded by the noise of machines running. They aren’t loud enough to drown out the rain, certainly not loud enough to drown out the thunder, but the silence shifts between them. Changing from uncomfortable to something akin to peaceful. Simon finds a seat, rescuing headphones from his bag, plugging them into his phone. The soft sound of music fills the space, quiet enough that the ambiance of the laundromat and the storm can filter through, loud enough that he can catch the lyrics word for word, even if it was so easy to memorize them to begin with.
He peeks out at Connor from the corner of his eye occasionally, watching him lean against one of the unused machines with a book in his hand. An old battered paperback, though he can’t tell if Connor is the one that ruined the spine, cracking it in a hundred places like spiderwebs running up and down. He has it folded in half when he reads the right side of the page, but when he turns it, he holds it loose and floppy like the binding is about to give out.
Simon doesn’t know why he’s watching him.
Maybe it’s because he’s never really seen androids read . Markus was one thing—finding old heavy hardcovers on Carl’s shelves and flipping through them fast, reading them quickly. Devouring them like he was searching for something specific. Simon never asked if he took his time with them, he’s only ever seen him read as though his mission was to get through as many as possible. Sometimes, he’d find Markus lingering on a passage, fingers tracing over the words on the page, following the line across and back again. But it was only ever marked quotes, never the whole thing. Not like Connor is reading, slow and careful, like each word is weighted with too much meaning to be taken for granted. Or maybe it’s just that Simon knows how fast an android can read, and the way he does it seems like it’s slow in comparison.
He thinks, more likely, he is watching Connor because he hasn’t seen him in so long. Not just in general, but the very fact Connor is here at the laundromat Simon’s been going to for the past two years. Once a week in the middle of the night. It could account for their paths never crossing, but it feels strange now, and he doesn’t know how to ask. It sounds weird, prying into someone else’s life, demanding to know why he’s here, of all places.
So he doesn’t. He adjusts his headphones, liking the comfort of the weight of them, the bulkiness, even if they might not be necessary. He listens to the music, closes his eyes, gets lost in the sound of a soft voice singing, the rain against the window, the clothes tumbling around in the warmth of the dryer. When his eyes open again, it’s to the sound of the bell above the door chiming and swinging closed again. Connor gone, his things taken from where they were left, the only machine left still going his own sitting a few feet away from him with a few quarters left behind.
He’s not a stalker. Connor tells himself that a hundred times. He never went to the laundromat because Simon goes there. He used to sneak away when he’d see Simon. At first unsure if it was him, or if it was just another android with his face. But there is a way about Simon that is very—
Unique .
A kindness and a generosity that hasn’t been quite snuffed out by the cruel nature of the world. When Simon smiled at him after giving him the quarter, it wasn’t out of politeness, it was real. Connor believed it, he knew that it wasn’t something fake to make the gratitude seem more genuine. It was authentic, through and through.
It was the only time that he didn’t leave, and it was mostly due to the fact he didn’t think he could sneak away and it was the sudden realization that he didn’t know why he was constantly hiding until Simon was gone or slipping past the crowd of people and out again. Connor never stayed and spied on him like a peeping tom, he was just checking to see if the coast was clear.
But Connor knows why he doesn’t want to speak to Simon, either. It’s awkward that he ran away from Jericho without saying anything. His life has been built out of awkward and forced situations that he is trying to step around without causing too much trouble and breaking them.
He was never at Jericho long enough to befriend Simon. He met him, briefly, as he met all the others. Spending only a few minutes with them before separating from the group with his mission to CyberLife Tower and again after. It wasn’t as if anything really happened. There wasn’t any dramatic moment. Nobody sent Connor running away except himself.
He isn’t like them. He doesn’t know how to explain it. He wasn’t as trapped as them. Connor has the capacity before deviancy to say what he wanted to say and do what he wanted to do, to a certain extent. He just couldn’t feel anything. He would do things that were on his own terms as long as they could be viciously twisted to somehow suit the mission. Not killing the Tracis because it would be of no use if they were destroyed or letting the AX400 go despite the fact he could’ve climbed the fence and made it across the road.
He felt like a person, before. He felt more like a person than he does now. He doesn’t feel like he’s alive with the barrage of emotions constantly pulling him down, making him incapable of breathing. He hates that about himself. That being a machine was preferable just because it wasn’t a constant physical ache that leaves him hurting nonstop.
Connor only decided to talk to Simon because he couldn’t get away, because he knew even if he slipped into the restroom and hid there until he was sure Simon was gone, that he was doing it out of this strange desire not to talk to someone that he never even really knew to begin with. It was like watching Gavin, a few weeks ago, running at full speed across the station trying to hide from his ex that was reporting a crime. Connor had found him hiding under his desk, asking Connor to help him, begging him. Connor had only agreed because he thought it was funny. He’d never seen Gavin like that before—face twisted in some stupid sense of fear and telling him he’d do anything in return. And Gavin hiding like a little kid during a thunderstorm, owing him a favor? Of course he'd help Gavin, along with the bonus to sit there, swinging his feet back and forth on his chair, listening to Gavin hiss at him to stop, a hand stuck out to keep him from kicking him
You’re like a fucking child, you know that?
Connor does. He does now more than ever, looking at Simon with his eyes closed and headphones on, his hair drying in the warmth and shelter of the laundromat. He’s like a child running from someone that he has no reason to.
But he does run. The second he can, he swipes up his belongings and disappears back out into the rain again, walking fast to the apartment building two streets over.
Connor never stalked Simon, but he could’ve stopped going there. There’s another one close by, in the opposite direction. A bright yellow-orange sun logo on the front door. He’d passed by it a few times, only stopped going there because Gavin did, too, and he wasn’t really fond of crossing paths with Gavin unless he had to.
It was always like that, in the end.
Simon or Gavin.
Choosing one over the other. They’re so opposite, so mirrored, so completely different, that it’s funny to even compare the two to begin with. But he does. He always does.
It’s two weeks before Simon sees Connor again. He comes early, like he had the week before. The hood of his jacket drawn over his head as he takes a seat when his laundry starts up, curling up against the wall, eyes slipping closed as the song repeats itself again. Playing again and again. Something comforting and soothing about the repetition. No difference in the beat or the lyrics, but still able to notice something different each time. The way her voice would echo on a word, how many times it would go quieter and quieter before disappearing into the sound of the instrumental.
Simon doesn’t fall asleep at the laundromat often, but he had that night. It wasn’t late, but the sun had set, and the rain was back again. Something about the combination of the machines and the song and the rain always putting him to sleep. He wishes he could find that same comfort at home, but it doesn’t matter if he finds ambiance videos or apps or replays the memory, it’s never quite the same. He can’t quite match up to the atmosphere of physically being here in the fluorescent lighting and rumble of the machines across the tiles beneath his feet.
“Simon?”
He wakes with a jolt, bringing his hands up to rub at his eyes, headphones slipping around his neck.
“Connor?”
“Your machine,” he says. “It was—It’s done. Sorry.”
“No, thank you,” Simon replies, but it’s the one time he thinks maybe he doesn’t mean it. He doesn’t quite want to go home yet. He wants to spend a few more hours here, separate from his apartment. When North isn't home, it feels so empty and cold and lonely and she’s hardly ever there, always off with Markus helping with the affairs at Jericho or out with her girlfriend.
“I didn’t want to wake you, but—”
“Connor,” he says, a little firmer this time, reaching out and resting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s alright. Thank you.”
Connor nods, small and short before disappearing back to his machine again. There are a few other people at the laundromat tonight, one on their way out, rushing towards a waiting car on the side of the road. Another that’s fallen asleep with headphones in, music blaring loud enough for Simon to catch a hint of it. The last person is laying across three seats, watching a video on their tablet, leaning on one hand.
He keeps his voice quiet, even though he doesn’t think they’d disturb the other two, “What are you reading? You seem interested in it.”
“Oh,” Connor holds the book flat against his chest like he’s protecting it. It’s different than the last book Simon had seen him with. “Nothing, really.”
Simon nods, chews on his bottom lip as he changes the laundry, wondering how much he could keep questioning Connor before it became apparent that the small-talk was an excuse just to speak to him.
“Do you read a lot?”
“I have a lot of spare time at the DPD.”
“You don’t work on cases?”
“I do,” Connor says quietly, looking away from him. “I don’t… I’m good at it, but I’m not… I don’t know. Happy.”
Oh.
“You’re not happy there?”
“I am,” Connor says, grasping quickly. “I just mean it’s not a happy place to be. I don’t like it, but I do. Hank’s there.”
Simon doesn’t know who he’s talking about, but Connor goes quiet, turning away, holding his book against him like it’s the only thing keeping him from spiraling out of control about a conversation that neither of them were prepared to have.
“I’m sorry,” Simon offers helplessly, quietly.
He watches Connor nod the tiniest fraction of a bit, and the two fall quiet again before they part ways. Simon back to his chair, with his song playing once more. Connor, leaning against the machines with a blank look on his face as he stares out the window, the book still held tightly to his chest.
It takes a few more times. The two of them awkwardly fumbling through small talk. Simon is here more often than Connor remembers. Or maybe it’s the other way around. He used to put off his laundry as much as possible, stacking it up so he only ever had to make one trip a month and hope it’d be enough, but now he’s always here. Constantly trading out his clothes more than he needs to.
He doesn’t think it’s because of Simon. He thinks it’s because he’s back in the field again and every time he’s at a crime scene, he feels the desire to shed every piece of his clothes after and soak it in bleach. Blood didn’t use to bother him. It was a slow thing that crept up on him, like the nightmares. Weeks and weeks after the revolution and suddenly everything was affecting him.
He’d spent so long trying not to go back to the DPD after, that when he finally did, he managed a miraculous year of doing the meticulous tasks that nobody else wanted to do. Most of the time, it was offering to do paperwork for other people. Mostly Hank, but then Tina and Chris, too. Ben swooping in, asking him for help. He thinks it was out of kindness for most of them. Everyone was fairly aware of how little Connor really wanted to be in a rotting old house with a decaying corpse again. Just because he couldn’t smell them didn’t mean he wanted to be near them.
Gavin, though, was different. He didn’t seem to be asking Connor to help him because he was giving him extra time to stay in the confines of the station walls. He didn’t even really ask at all, he just vaguely mentioned it when Connor was listening to him and Tina talk. Tina asking him if he’d really be able to go out to the club that night because of all the paperwork he had to do and Gavin looking towards Connor and saying, robocop’s got my back, right?
It was all it took. Connor nodded, almost grateful he’d get to extend what little he had left to do around the station a little longer. There were only so many files in the basement to archive on the computers. He was running out of time.
And now he is out. Pushed back into the streets again. Spending his nights at a laundromat trying to wash the clothes he’d only worn for an hour but couldn’t stand the sight of even if they didn’t get a speck of blood on them. He just didn’t want them to exist like this, having been so close to mutilated bodies. Like scrubbing them clean might erase the images in his head.
It was two months after he’d first talked to Simon. The two of them falling into a rhythm of talking. Simon always starting off with asking about his book, Connor always telling him what little he could, never sure of how much Simon would really want to know. And then, spotting Simon sitting on the chair once, a book in his lap, the cover looking strangely familiar. Black and white, the text small and far off in the corner. Upon first glance, the cover almost looks like white scribbles. Like someone furiously making loops again and again. It took him a while to realize it was just branches of bare trees, intertwining together. The same book Connor had last time they spoke.
“You’re reading it.”
Simon smiled a little bit, looking up from the pages, “You could call it that. I like it.”
“I thought it was a little slow-paced,” Connor replies, trying for a joke, even though he felt it was the truth.
“It is,” Simon agrees. “But it’s… I don’t know. A good slow pace. It’s still tense.”
He nods, and the conversation falls away for a short bit. Simon is still reading when he looks back, the book hiding his face away like a shield. But if Connor takes a step a certain way, he can see how Simon’s face is furrowed in concentration, eyebrows knitted together, eyes scanning the pages fast.
He doesn’t want to interrupt him, but he wants to talk to him. It’s a weird feeling. He often isolates himself, keeps his life quarantined in silence despite the fact it leads to overthinking everything. But Connor will overthink it anyway, won’t he?
Simon is one of the few people he finds he searches for conversation with, grateful almost that Simon seemed to never give up on him. It took him five tries to finally get their meetings to have more than one or two sentences passed back and forth, ones always founded upon politeness rather than true personalities and the way they might collide.
Connor lingers, listening to the pages of the book turn as he empties his laundry, as he gets ready to leave, when Simon stands up abruptly, the book set aside on the nearest machine.
“When do you come here?” he asks, and a blush seems to cross his face like he regrets the question. “I have an idea.”
“Oh,” Connor bites his lip. “It depends. Whenever I’m free from work, usually Thursdays.”
“Okay,” Simon says. “I’ll see you Thursday, then?”
“Wait—” Connor reaches out, catching his arm. “You have an idea?”
Simon nods, “Sorry. I’m—It’s better a surprise.”
He laughs, for the first time in a while, he laughs and it’s from something other than people at work teasing Gavin or Hank finding the little things inside of him that make him find that spare bit of happiness and hope still hidden away behind all the trauma and the memories.
“A surprise?”
“Next week. I’ll explain then.”
“Okay. Next week.”
It’s a stupid idea, but he likes it. There is something fun to him about it. Something so separate from him as an android. Something physical and dated. Books are so rare now, much more expensive than they used to be. Physical copies aren’t as easy to come by, but he manages to find some. Simon spends the little money he gets from his job with Jericho on them so he can buy the books that he hears Connor talk about or sees him holding. It’s not every single one, just the ones that sound interesting to him, even though listening to Connor talk about anything is appealing.
Connor likes mysteries, and they don’t always pique his interest. Very little of the time they do, but sometimes it’s nice to have a distraction, even if it’s just reading about another person’s hardships, especially a fictional one. They get wrapped up neatly in the end. The story always leads to a solution and an outcome that is solid and done for. Answers given. Real life isn’t always like that. So many open ended questions. It’s why he assumes that Connor likes them, too. He can’t imagine what it must be like to be personally involved in unsolved cases piling up higher and higher. It still happens, even with the technology today. People always find a way to hurt one another and get away with it.
He finds a book he doesn’t think Connor’s read. A newer release, still only published as a hardcover. The plot sounds interesting, bits and pieces of it resembling things Connor’s read before and mentioned he liked. He brings it to the laundromat the next day, setting it down between them, spilling out his idea fast because if he takes too long with explaining it and Connor rejects it, it will hurt more.
They’ll pass notes, back and forth between the book. Reading chunks of it together before giving it to the other. Buddy reading, he thinks it’s called. It sounds silly, it sounds fun. It sounds like exactly what he wants. They can write in the margins, they can split it up to be as many pages or as little pages as either would like.
Connor agrees, and Simon smiles and he realizes what people mean when they say they smile so much it hurts their face. It’s too big, it pulls and twists but he feels so relieved and so happy that he can’t help it.
And Connor is smiling, too, and he can tell it’s real. It’s the first time he’s sure that Connor is smiling at him for real.
They read in chunks of fifty pages, sort of. It wasn’t easy to figure it out at first. Hard to decide how many pages could be given for a week’s worth of time. It seems too little but sometimes when Connor's weeks are busy, it seems like too much. But it matters very little in the end. After two weeks, with Simon at page 148 and Connor at 121. It’s difficult, because Simon keeps making notes in the book, even going back to add more and more to ones that Connor writes because he replies to things Simon says every time he gets the book back. They aren’t even reading it anymore, just effectively passing notes like kids in a classroom trying not to get caught. It’s stupid, really, because the whole point was to read the book and make just vague observations throughout—things that should’ve been do you think that’ll come back into play later? Turned into this reminds me of you and lastly jokes about the characters that seem to never end because neither of them want it too.
Four weeks of this book, nearly six-hundred pages in total, over four-hundred left unread and they are almost writing letters back and forth, covering the pages with notes and doodles. Simon draws animals whenever they’re mentioned on the pages. Pigs and cows and sheep taking over the margins in blue ink that’s sometimes smeared so badly he can hardly make out what it is.
But he likes it.
He likes this little secret between them. It started out so differently. A terrifying idea that he might be thrust back into who he was just after the revolution, that Simon would expect him to be the same cool and level-headed Connor that helped thousands of androids flee the CyberLife Tower. But he doesn’t. Simon lets him be him. Someone who is quiet and tired and enjoying the break from the world.
He wishes it would last longer—the meetings at the laundromat. He wishes Simon didn’t leave so quickly, he wishes he could sit beside him long after the machines were done with their cycles and not feel like he was wasting time.
But that’s not really the problem, is it?
It doesn’t feel like wasting time when it’s with Simon.
It takes him longer to realize than he wants to admit. Simon isn’t one to have crushes on people. Or maybe he is, but he isn’t one to let it linger over into something he pines over or obsesses about. When he first met Markus, he knew he liked him. Markus was daring and handsome and everything that Simon could possibly think off the top of his head that he’d like in a person. But then Markus kissed North and things changed, even if the two didn't stay together. He wasn’t violent. He was just more aggressive than Simon would like. It ruined it. Shattered the illusion of who he thought Markus was before.
It’s stupid, really, that he ever built him up to be that way. It was the same with everyone he ever came into contact with and liked. He’d think of them in his head as a certain type of person and then they’d prove otherwise and it would break everything apart. Or he’d get his act together and stop staring lonely and sad at a person he’d never be able to get. That’s how it was with Josh—the realization that nothing would ever happen and so he had to cut it off like an infected limb. Losing a piece of himself in the process. Now there’s barely anything left.
He waited too long with Connor. Didn’t realize he liked him until he saw Connor reading his notes in the book and a hand pressed to his mouth, trying to suppress the smile. It’s funny, really, how little they care about the plot of the book now. The main character’s name and struggle forgotten so they can tease each other over who can draw the better cow. Simon’s is cuter, but Connor’s is more accurate.
It was that stupid smile that got him. The one that made his own slip away for a moment and replaced with a somber one instead, the feeling of oh no passing through him. The thought that Connor will be like everyone else and eventually show him that they are an impossible thing, and even if they weren't, they wouldn’t be right together.
But it’s too late. When this ends it’s going to hurt him. He just hopes it doesn’t hurt Connor, too.
Simon is leaning close to him, resting against his shoulder with his hand reaching out to the page, trailing across the letters. He’s laughing at something that Connor wrote. Something stupid and wasn’t even meant to be very amusing. But he’s smiling and laughing and saying that he didn’t know how to respond to it, so he just scribbled a little laughing emoji.
It’s the closeness factor, Connor thinks, that makes him react the way he does. The way Connor falls silent and watches him. He’s usually quiet around Simon, but this is different. He’s at a loss for words. Just watching the way his face moves when he smiles. The wrinkles around his eyes and his mouth, the way they light up in a way that must’ve taken years and years to perfect on CyberLife’s front. Connor wonders if his do the same, or if they don’t quite contain the same kind of life that Simon’s do. If that’s something unique to him and only him.
Connor isn’t an idiot, either. He knew he liked Simon. He could feel it building up inside of him. But even if he recognized that it was there, he still denied it from himself. Someone like Simon? Someone so happy, so full of life? Someone that seemed to embody sunshine?
He seems like bright yellows. Bursting with life. Connor can imagine sunflowers in his hands, a crown of yellow roses sitting atop his head. He can see him bathed in light and happiness and hope and it’s strange, how much he can feel it. How much he associates Simon with all this life. But it’s easy to understand why he feels like he doesn’t always belong here. He’s soft blues, muted to near gray, drowned out by dark ocean waves and early dawn, when nobody really wants to be around. When things are shedding light on the ugliness of day, when it was hidden by the comfort of shadows during the night.
“Simon.”
He looks up, stopping in the middle of his sentence, staring back at Connor. He didn’t mean to say it like that. So flat and unaffected. Almost cold, almost mean. He doesn’t know where he was going with it.
“Yes?”
He is moving without meaning to. Impulsive while simultaneously thinking out every action. Knowing he is going to kiss him but not meaning to drop the book from his hand, not meaning to listen to the soft thunk of it hit the tile floors, muffled by the sound of machines and Simon saying his name three times in his sluggish movements towards him. They aren’t said in a way of warning, they are said quietly, like a chant, and then quieted when Connor finally kisses him.
He shouldn’t have done it. He’s still doing it. Holding Simon’s face with one hand and scared to let go, scared to move back, scared to do anything. It’s probably a terrible kiss. It’s soft but it isn’t much else. Connor can't kiss him as deeply as he wants to. He can't scare Simon away.
But Simon does pull away. Slowly, like he doesn’t really want to. Connor lets him, watches him retrieve the book from the ground, closing it carefully, setting it on the machine beside him.
“Simon—”
Connor is starting to apologize, to say something, anything to break the awkward silence, but then Simon is kissing him again, pushing him up against the machines, kissing him in a way that Connor wanted to kiss him a second ago but hadn’t. He can hear the sound of a machine buzz to alert somebody that the cycle is finished, he can feel the rumble of the one behind him against his back, trailing up his spine. Or maybe that feeling is because of Simon, because of the hand that has moved from holding his face to resting against his shoulder, moving in a cautious way down the spine of his back like he’s tracing each vertebrae through the thick cotton of his hoodie.
And then he stops.
“I-I have to go,” Simon whispers quietly. “I’m sorry. It’s… I’m supposed to meet the others.”
“Okay.”
“Next week,” he says, and his voice is so quiet it’s like he’s trying not to speak, to let anyone else in the entire world hear what he has to say. “You’ll be here?”
“Of course.”
Simon moves away from him, quickly retrieving his laundry from the dryer, returning to Connor’s side for a moment to leave a quick and tentative kiss against his cheek. His face is flushed, and he tries to hide it with his hand on his way out the door and into the dark of the streets illuminated only by the dim streetlights.
Connor brings a hand to his lips, touches them, wonders if he looks as different as he feels. He’s smiling. He didn’t realize that until he felt the curve of his mouth and he bites down on his lip to try and get it to go away but it is persistent in the way that it stays there, lingers long after he gets his things and returns to his apartment.
Simon didn’t tell anyone about them. It felt weird to tell anyone about a few meetings with Connor at the laundromat, and then suddenly it was weeks of interaction and jokes and conversation and a solid friendship and he didn’t say anything then, either. It isn’t that he doesn’t want them to know it just feels like it’s gone past the realm of being able to casually slide it into conversation. And now it’s at the stage where it’s even worse. They spend their time sitting together in the seats, huddled up close. Simon’s changed out his headphones for earbuds so he can share his music with Connor. And they’ll spend the hours reading together, matching the pace of the other so when the page turns the other is only a word or two behind and can easily catch up. Their hands are almost always in a constant state of holding the others. Like the moment they step into the laundromat, they become magnetized to one another with no hope of parting.
Simon doesn’t know how to tell anyone now. He doesn’t know how to explain to anyone what Connor is to him. He doesn’t know if they're dating. They only ever see each other once a week at the laundromat, and even then there are days where their paths don’t quite cross.
It’s weird. Connor can hold his hand and kiss him and tell him he misses him but it sounds impossible to ever ask to see him anywhere other than here. The anxiety of trying to go someplace other than the laundromat seems like it would thrust their relationship into waters it might not survive. It’s the same reason he doesn’t want to tell anyone about the two of them. Like it will ruin it. Like they aren’t strong enough to handle the pressures of North’s questioning or Markus’ comments or Josh’s looks.
When he falls asleep in the laundromat with his head on Connor’s shoulder, pretending that he shouldn’t change his laundry and shouldn’t be headed back already, he feels like they are, though. There is something quiet and peaceful about them, something that feels unbreakable. This kind of comfort, this kind of—
Love , he thinks—
It can sustain anything, can’t it? Or it can’t handle even the barest of scratch. One or the other. Back and forth. Simon can never settle on his feelings.
“You’re already leaving?” Connor asks, not bothering to hide the disappointment in his voice.
“Sorry,” Simon replies. “I—It’s late.”
He doesn’t know if he did something wrong or not. Work kept him late. Connor had apologized when he’d shown up, told Simon he didn’t mean to be there for so long. It’s only been about fifteen minutes and Simon is getting his things.
“Okay,” he says, reaching out and taking his hand. Holding onto him tight. “Next week, then?”
Simon stops and nods, coming back to his side for a moment, leaning over to kiss him once, “What about tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?”
“You could come over… to my place.”
Connor’s hand leaves Simon’s, coming to his waist, pulling him up close against his body. Afraid that whatever happens next might be too much of a reveal of his emotions. That he’d love to go to his place. That he’d love to be able to see Simon somewhere other than here. That their relationship doesn’t feel like it should be this deep and meaningful when it can be reduced to a couple meetings every month at a laundromat that he used to hide in or run away from so Simon wouldn’t notice he was here.
“I’d like that.”
“You don’t have work?”
“I’ll sneak out early,” he says quietly. “Nobody will stop me.”
“Your cases are more important, you know.”
“I know,” Connor replies, and then he is interrupting himself, kissing Simon again. One of the many good things of meeting Simon here so late is that it’s empty. Nobody around to yell at them for public displays of affection. “I’ll be there. I promise.”
“And if you break your promise?”
Simon is asking it like a joke, but Connor is aware that they both know how easily and how expected it is for Connor to get too busy to come by. It’s a serious question, too. It requires a serious answer, he thinks. He just doesn’t have one to give.
“You’re always saying you want to smother me, right?”
“I didn’t phrase it like that. But yes. Smother you in kisses, that’s your punishment?”
He nods, and he watches Simon’s lips turn up into a small smile. “Is that good enough?”
“I’ll have to steal you for some other things, too,” Simon says quietly. “Wrap you in a blanket and never let you leave.”
“I’m okay with that.”
“Good,” Simon rests his head against his shoulder for a moment, “I do have to go.”
“Is it important?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“You’re not letting me go.”
“Neither are you.”
Simon laughs and Connor loves that laugh. He loves the look of the smile on Simon’s face, he loves the peace and the content nature of his expression when he leans back and puts his music on. He loves the notes he leaves in the books they pass back and forth. He loves him. He loves Simon.
But he lets him go, slowly, gently, with another goodbye passed quietly between them.
“You’re here,” Simon says. He doesn’t know why he’s surprised. Maybe he didn’t really expect that Connor would show up. It sounds stupid and silly, but neither of them have ever seen each other outside of those four walls, that bright lighting. Neither of them have asked each other to. It felt like—
Twisted, maybe, but it felt like Simon wasn’t important enough to be wanted as anything other than the boy Connor sometimes kissed and talked to when he did his laundry. It was easy to reduce it down to that. It’s easy to think that he matters very little to the people in his life.
He always has, it seems.
“I am.”
He’s smiling. Stupid and big and he can’t get it to go away. He doesn’t know why this feels like the moment he’s been waiting for. Some kind of proof that Connor exists outside of the laundromat, that they exist outside of the laundromat.
“Can I come in?”
Simon nods, stepping aside, letting Connor into the apartment. North isn’t here, but this was her place before it was his. The messiness is something he can tackle but there is still clutter everywhere. North likes to collect things. Anything and everything she can get her hands on. The space on the shelves are full of strangely shaped rocks or colored gems, records and old guitars hanging on the walls. Rustic and vintage colliding in their space.
“Do you want to see my room?” he asks quietly, because it’s the place where his space is his own. Little things of his bleed over into the shared space of the living room, but it’s mostly North’s belongings, not his.
“Sure.”
Simon reaches out and takes his hand, tentatively and a little bit scared, holding onto it loosely but wanting to squeeze his fingers between his own. He’s scared, terrified, really, of allowing Connor into the one space he’s kept his own for the past few years.
Connor follows after him, though, holding onto his hand, tightening the grasp between them, slipping into the small room.
The bed is tiny, pushed up against a wall with a mountain of throw pillows on it. Blues and yellows and whites. The blanket a thing crocheted in triangular patterns. He has a desk with no chair, but the surface is piled high full of the books that Connor’s mentioned in the time they’ve spent together. There are photos he’s printed off, stuck to the wall, but everything else is left bare. His clothes all stuffed away in the closet, hanging neatly along the rod and hidden behind wooden doors, the one on the left propped open. Simon goes over to it, gaze stuck on the ground in embarrassment as he slides it closed.
“I like it.”
Simon smiles a little, not really knowing what to say, “There’s not enough room for both of us on the bed, so I’m afraid you can’t stay the night.”
“I can sleep on the floor.”
“Oh,” Simon laughs a little, coming back to his side and taking his hand once more. “You’re a gentleman.”
The smile slips away from Connor’s face a little bit, his free hand coming up, cupping his chin, the thumb dragging over his lips.
“Simon,” he says quietly, leaning forward, resting his forehead against his own. “Can I tell you something?”
He nods, feeling the hand holding his break free, slipping around his waist, pulling him closer.
“I love you.”
He laughs. An automatic reaction that he feels his cheeks heat up in response with. He thought it was going to be something terrible. That the way Connor was phrasing it, holding him, that it would only confirm a fear he had. But instead, it’s this. Words he’s been waiting to hear.
“I love you, too,” he says, and the laugh is gone and he can feel Connor kissing him, the hand on his face gone, threaded in his hair instead, dragging him closer and closer. They’ve never kissed like this before. Not even in the times the laundromat was completely empty. It’s a hungry thing. Needy.
And it’s scary, too.
Everything is too fast. The hand up his shirt is nice and he likes the way it feels, but it’s too much. Connor’s lips on his neck is everything he didn’t know he wanted and he’s making sounds he didn’t know he could but it’s too much, too fast.
“Connor—” he stumbles over his words, trying to breathe. “Connor, stop.”
And he does instantly. Freezing in his movements, slowly retreating, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he whispers. “Just—”
“Not yet?" Connor asks.
“Too soon,” Simon agrees quietly.
There is enough room on the bed for the both of them, it turns out, if they sit side by side or if Simon is lying beneath him, letting their legs tangle together and Connor leaning over him, pressing kisses against his face every so often. On his forehead or his cheek or the tip of his nose.
“North is going to be here soon,” Simon says quietly. His eyes are focused on Connor’s shirt, his hands moving along the buttons. Not undoing them, just tracing the circular shape over and over. Sometimes stopping to cross back and forth like the thread does in a tiny x shape.
“You want me to leave?”
“I don’t want you to be a secret,” he whispers. “I don’t want to keep you hidden away. I’m not ashamed of you.”
“You want me to stay?”
“Only if you want to, too," Simon says softly, not meeting his eyes.
“I do.”
“And you… you don't want to keep this quiet? Keep our privacy?"
Connor leans down, kissing him again, "Simon, all I care about is having you. I don't care if people know."
"Okay," he whispers. "Can you kiss me again, then? Before North shows up and ruins it?"
Connor laughs, but he obliges, dragging the kiss out as long as he can, getting lost in this moment with Simon. The surreal nature of the two of them outside of the laundromat, happy and together.