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The shopping centre is packed almost like a sardine can, but he isn’t exactly surprised about it. It's summer and everyone is either on a holiday in the French Rivera or (if they are poor) shopping their problems away as victims of capitalism and consumerism.
He supposes that most of the population was the second type and that was why the shopping center was full.
He sighed. He knew for sure that it could be worse. And with that, he means that anything could happen in a crowded shopping centre full of children, people in shorts, and employees promoting things they didn’t believe in.
He didn’t want to say it out loud, but he had become more paranoid and anxious since the defeat of Makarov. It has taken a lot of lives to stop him, and he has seen things he can’t even avoid in sleep. He is just very worried about his surroundings and in part is because he had been trained to untrust everything that wasn’t himself, but well, a public place was a public place, and he knew how terrorists thought.
He was just praying very deep in his subconscious that no one decided to do something as stupid as that while he was there, with you and your niece.
He didn’t care what happened to him at his rate, he never really did, but he did care about the two of you. You were innocent, a librarian trying to survive, and the niece you had to take care of since you won the trial for her custody against your sibling.
Hadn’t been easy for you, he knows, and he hates he hadn’t been there to support you, but he has learned that he can’t change the past so the only thing he could do was protect you and worry about the future and the present.
That’s what unofficial boyfriends did anyway, right?
“Oh, let's stop here for a second”, you suddenly say, making him look back at you, stopping slightly in the middle of the crowded hallway.
His snickers squeaked a little and his knuckles turned white for a second because he gripped the handler of Hope’s stroller too tight. When his brown eyes found you, you were looking at a certain clothing shop on your right.
You turned to look at him and smiled.
He blinked.
He didn't had a good feeling about this.
“Let check this shop real quick. Can you watch Hope for a second?”
You don’t wait for his answer, you just turn around and rush to the shop like a child rushing to a toy store in Christmas season.
He sighed again, almost defeated until Hope called you and he sobered up.
“Shush, they’re coming back soon”, and then he proceeded to look for the nearest bench.
Most of them were full, but there was a significant space between two elderly men he could take advantage of. Even if he was big and wide himself.
He rushed to them, thankful that he still could see the entrance of the shop you entered. Hope kept mumbling in complain and he almost rolled his eyes, before he took a seat between the two elderly men.
One was reading the newspaper and the other had bags around him and was on his phone, like he was waiting for someone.
Simon sat down and then moved the stroller, so it was facing him.
Your niece stopped complaining as soon as she saw him. You have told him a thousand times that he somehow was her favorite person on Earth, but he has never believed you. Not when he was always coming and going and she liked to bully, pinch, and give him heart attacks whenever hebabysitted.
He looked at her, at the same eyes you had and the messy blonde braid. He didn’t know from whom she got almost his same color of hair, but he wasn’t going to ask, especially after the familiar dispute that the trial for her custody caused. All he knew was that she was capable of making a fuss anywhere anytime.
She hated the stroller, and he didn’t blame her, but she couldn’t be loose and even less in a place like this. She was on her terrible two and, if she had been a menace by herself in the past, she was a hurricane now.
He was not going to tempt fate, so all he did was look at her and slightly rock her stroller while appearing as calm as possible.
Children will always be calm if the adults around them are also calm.
He could do this.
Easy peasy.
He has caught the most dangerous terrorist on Earth, got buried alive once, has been betrayed a thousand times in his military career, has seen his family get killed, and has endured so much more that it will be enough nightmare fuel material. So yes, he could take care of a toddler and survive.
But then again, she started screaming bloody murder and struggling against the seatbelt of the stroller and he knew.
Nothing is easy whenit toddler is involved.
He sighed.
“Shhhh, yar fine and safe, Hope”, he said, and she looked at him with teary eyes and a terrible pout that almost made her your twin. “Why you scream, ah? Aren’t I yar favorite person?”
“I on’t wan to be ere”, she answered, and if hehdidn't had experience with a drunk Soap, he wouldn’t have understood her.
“Ya don’t want to be on the stroller?”
She nodded, crossing her arms over her chest, after kicking her legs off.
“Ya know why I can’t get ya out, do ya?”
She shakes her head in a no, and he raises his eyebrows.
She was lying. She did know. You had explained to her so in the car. She had promised to behave until she ran off in the car park and almost gave you a heart attack.
You grounded her to the stroller, and he agreed because he didn’t have an opinion on the matter, especially when the one who ended up pushing the stroller was him. (You hadn’t mentioned anything about co-parenting (nor about a relationship) but he was not stupid even if he feared feelings and commitments. He did not fear this one, though...for reasons he still didn't learn).
“They explained it to ya in the car. If ya hadn’t run off in a place full of cars, you wouldn’t be here. Choices have consequences, lass”.
She wrinkles her nose and tears up a little bit more. He smirks under the face mask he is wearing. Genetics were so cool, that even if she was your niece, an indirect descendant, she looked just like you. He knows because he has been on the other side of that scowl a lot of times.
“Not fair”, he almost chuckled then, but he held himself in time.
“Ya have liked to use that phrase a lot lately. Do ya even know what it means?”
She stays still for a moment or two like she is thinking about it. In the end, she gives up and leans back in the stroller.
He approaches his long and big fingers to her face then, to dry away her tears. She lets him, even if she is still pouting.
“Ya shouldn’t use words ya don’t know the meaning of”, his voice is softer than normal like it always goes when he talks to her. She makes him softer, like you like to point out to annoy him. He denied it at the beginning but now he doesn’t care.
She is good his responsibility now, a shared responsibility he will gladly take.
“Oi don’t get sad”.
“Ya on’t et me out of the strooller”, he sighed to not roll his eyes.
How a two-year-old toddler can be so manipulative?
Did he lose his touch or children are eviler as time passes?
“I already told ya why ya aren’t getting out of it”.
She moves to be on her side, but the seatbelt barely allows it. She is trying to give him her back, a clear sign of anger, but she isn’t very successful.
“Ya bad”.
The elderly man to his left chuckles. He suddenly remembers that he is not alone on the bench.
“I’m not bad, I’m protecting you”.
She scoffs and stays mad at him.
He sighs and rocks the stroller slightly.
He decides to give up on that and move his sight to the shop you entered. He searched for you through the shop window and almost sighed relieved when he found you checking some clothes.
He frowned when he realized that you weren’t looking for clothes your size. Then he saw you stop, look out for your phone, search through something in it, and then put it against your ear.
While you hold your phone between your ear and shoulder, he feels something vibrating in his back pocket.
He grabs it without disturbing the elderly man to his right, who is still reading the newspaper.
When he saw the caller ID, it had your name and a silly photo of you three on it.
Why were you calling him?
He answers the call and puts the phone against his ear.
“What size are you again?”, you asked, without a greeting or anything similar.
He watches you for a second before answering. You are still searching on a rack of dark shirts too big for you.
“Why are you asking?”
“Is this your size?”, and then you turned to face him, and he saw a black button up shirt full of little cute skulls in front of you.
He almost laughed but contained it inside pretty well.
“Too big”, you hum and put the shirt back into the rack before grabbing another one, this time slightly smaller.
“How about this one?”
“I think it will fit me”.
“You think?”, you asked, surprised and judging. “Do you even know your size, Riley?”
“In my defense, I’m a man”.
You make a face but after staring at each other for more time than the socially acceptable, you roll your eyes.
“How’s Hope?”
His brown eyes moves to her and his sneakers slightly move the stroller back and forth.
“She mad at me”.
You chuckle and it makes his stomach churn in a very pleasant way.
He could get used to that.
“It will pass”.
He scoffed and then looked at you and how you were moving somewhere outside of his view.
“So, why are you asking my size?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m buying my boyfriend clothes”.
His foot almost pushes the stroller too hard, and his heart almost gets out through his mouth.
Oh, so he was your boyfriend now?
Well, he wasn’t complaining.
He liked the sound of it.
How you said it.
How it made him feel.
Like his stomach had a beehive inside or like his chest was free of something heavy and dark.
A part of him is doing a party, thinking that finally he was being allowed the privilege of your absolute love after so much pinning and a very fucking long friendship, but the other part of him was thinking you were mad for liking him because he was bad news all over and you deserved so much better than a traumatized 1.91 soldier with terrible self-esteem and a big emotional baggage.
It wasn’t even worth it in his opinion.
But this time the light part won.
And he was going to do everything in his power to not fuck it up.
“Ah, I’m your boyfriend now?”
“Yes”, you said, still out of view. “If you want to get out of it, I’m afraid there is no way out”.
He chuckles lightly.
“How so sure?”
“I won’t let you, you’re in for life, Riley”.
“Sounds like a wedding”.
“We’ll get there, eventually”.
And he tries to hold his smile in but is useless.
He ends up grinning like a stupid lovesick idiot under the face mask at the same time he sees you appear again.
You give him a smirk before showing him a very small black shirt with cute skulls on it that looked very much like the one you had shown him a few moments ago.
“Do you think Hope will like this?”
“The only way to find out is by getting it into her”.
“Fair enough”, and then you walked away from view again. “I’ll pay now, keep watching over the damsel”.
“More like the dragon”, and your chuckle is the last thing he hears before you hang up the call.
He puts the phone away and turns his sight to Hope again.
She isn’t crying anymore but is still trying to give him her back, acting angry.
“Oi Hope”, he called.
She side-eyed him.
“How about we make a deal?”
At that, she slowly turned to face him again and slowly sat down straight in the stroller. Her was a mess and he was tempted to push her loose curls away but he hold himself.
“Wha type of deal?”, she asked, almost like she was trying to sound like she was just slightly interested.
“How about you behave well for the rest of our shopping, and I promise to buy you ice cream?”
At the mention of ice cream, her eyes went wide and her whole face changed.
“Ice creeam?”
“Yes, but only if ya promise to be a good lass and do everything we tell you”.
She makes a show of thinking about it. A show that reminds him a lot of you.
“Okay”, she said at the end. “Bu it has to be strawbeerry ice creeam”.
“Deal”.
And then he put his fist in front of her. He didn’t need to explain. She knew this gesture pretty well. So well, that she closed her hand in a fist and was quick to bump it with his when she saw it.
He had taught her that. It was their thing. They saluted each other with it, they exchanged one when they completed something as well as when they agree to keep a secret from you. Usually ones that involved ice cream after dinner.
“Cam I get out of the stroooller?”
“Remember the deal”, he warned.
“Yesh”.
“Okay”.
And then he proceeded to get the seatbelt off and she jumped off the stroller with too much speed and accuracy.
To his surprise, she didn’t run off like he thought she would, instead, she stayed in the little space between the stroller and him. She did turn to see where you were, though.
“Wher are they?”
“Inside the shop ahead”, he answered, pointing with his finger.
She stayed looking in that direction then and he made a little bit of space between his legs so she could stand more comfortably. She even leaned on his knee.
Well, this was going better than he thought.
He could pat himself on the back.
“You have a lovely family”, a voice said to his right and his heart almost gave a skip.
The elderly man reading the newspaper wasn’t reading it anymore and was now looking at him from behind his glasses.
He was giving him a kind smile, before looking at Hope, and then looking at him again.
“I know, thank you”, and for some reason, his words had never been truer.
His chest is almost inflated as it tends to do when he accomplishes something he is proud of.
Is a bizarre feeling the one that invades him in that moment. He never thought he would have a family of his own, not after growing up in a dysfunctional one, not after what happened to it, so someone telling him that and he accepting it like it was as easy as breathing…it made him proud and, he will dare say, happy.
He didn’t even know what happiness felt like, but he was sure that it was what invaded him at that moment.
“Sim”, a little voice called, and he was fast to turn his head in her direction. Honestly, she was the only one who called her that, and the only one who was allowed to.
If Soap knew, he would never hear the end of it.
“What’s up, lass?”
“Cam ya make my brid again?”, she asks, offering him her hair tie.
“‘Course”, and she turned around again and he got to work.
He was almost finishing it when you got out of the shop. Her face lit up and she tried to run to you, but he stopped her just in time reminding her of the ice cream and that he hadn’t finished.
She stayed still but almost made the whole shopping centre know she was glad to see you.
“Oh, I see they let you off”, you said, with a disapproving face.
You looked at him and he looked at you with a bright smile under his face mask. He was just playing innocent before you scolded him in front of the elderly man who just praised him for being a family man.
“Sim promised ice creeem if I was good”.
“Ice cream? Interesting”.
Hope grinned then.
“Braid’s done”, he announced, almost as if he was talking about the weather.
You pulled the stroller away and Hope moved closer to you. You watched her cautiously, in case she ran off, but she didn’t. She stayed put beside you while Simon stood up.
There was a tense moment of silence, in which the three of you looked at each other like you were waiting for something to happen.
“Is Sim in trouble now?”, Hope asked, and he saw you relax your facial expression a little bit.
Your eyes met his for a moment before you threw your shopping bag into the stroller.
“Only if you don’t behave”.
“I’ll be goood, promise”, she said, and he saw that spark of mischief in your eyes.
Oh, the two of you were family, there was no doubt about it.
“That’s enough for me, then. Chop chop, we still need to visit other stores”.
And Hope grinned again, she took your hand and Simon was left with the stroller and the shopping bag.
“Lovely family indeed”, he turned to see the other elderly man, the one who was still waiting with his shopping bags.
He smiled at him, and Simon smiled back, even if the man couldn’t see it.
“The best”, he answered, before he took the stroller’s handle and rushed to follow the two of you.
The best thing was that it was his family.