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The painting was hung up in his living room, positioned in such a way that it was the first thing he saw when he stumbled out of his bedroom in the false morning. A reminder of your care for him. A reminder that he was seen, that he was wanted, even when you couldn't physically be there with him.
Not that it was common that you weren't present, even more so after that day. You always seemed to be nearby, waiting for him to awaken, constantly at his side, lurking and watching over his shoulder. Sometimes pointing to ask for clarification on what something was.
Simon didn't hate it. Quite the opposite, as embarassing at that admission was. Before you, the last time he'd felt touch had been during his medical exam before he was welded into that fucking submarine and sent to his death. After he'd unravelled and sobbed into your arms--like a child, how humiliating--some of the boundaries had lifted.
You had never been entirely... reserved with your touch. You often leaned into his space and would occasionally reach over to brush against and touch him, usually when he was in distress, often not with the hands he could see.
However that worked. You'd tried explaining it to him once.
"This vessel is a form I take for you. A visual, for you to see, it is not my true body, though it is a part of it. A... portion taken and moulded to appear as human as I am capable of. This entire realm is... by all technicalities, my body."
He didn't entirely understand, but he was starting to expect that with you. There was a lot about how you worked that he'd never understand, because he was human. His brain just wasn't designed to understand, not without going insane. So, he tried not to think too hard when phantom limbs he couldn't see reached out to steady him or brush through his hair.
It was still you, and that was all his deprived body needed to know in order to melt. He'd fought it, at first, but after that day... well, you were already seemingly comfortable being in his space, so maybe he could...
He felt ridiculous any time he carefully inched closer, until his arm brushed against yours. Whenever he sat down close enough that the lengths of your legs would press together, or while you were in the kitchen helping him prepare food, he would reach over and carefully guide your hands. Yet, every touch made something in him melt and beg for more. Even these brief touches weren't enough.
He was greedy. He was starved. His chest ached with the desire to fall into you again, to allow you to wrap your human vessel and true form entirely around him. To drown him in sweet, gentle oblivion as long as it meant he would never part from you.
And the fact that you never once denied him wasn't helping. You accepted any touch with a faint smile and a gentle twinkle in your eyes. It began to feel like you never left his side, unless he was using the bathroom or sleeping, and still... he longed for even more walls to fall down. To keep crossing lines drawn in the sand. Or to erase them entirely.
He was refusing sleep.
Sleep meant nightmares. Sleep meant not feeling your touch. He'd much rather stay right where he was, body curled into the soft cushions of his couch, legs tangled with yours. Watching your lips move as you spoke gentle, star-kissed words. You were telling him stories again, tales of far-off planets you had seen in your previous wanders. Of the inhabitants. Your voice curling around his subconscious and lulling him into a state of blissful calm, yet still--stubbornly--he fought the desire to sleep.
He hesitated for just a moment, then cautiously reached out. Scarred hand finding one of yours and gathering it. His calloused fingers traced the length of your palm, breath stuttering in his chest when you allowed him to do so without reservation. Your skin was smooth, unnaturally so, and he could feel something humming behind false flesh. Energy, maybe. Your very essence, most likely.
His eyelids drooped as he carefully dragged a pointer finger down yours. Eyes only lifted when you spoke. "Little one," You cooed, so sweetly it made his stomach flip, "you are tired."
"M'fine," He murmured, tone exhausted, "keep talkin'."
"Simon." He shuddered at how lovely you made his name sound. "Humans require sleep. Why do you deny your body that?" Your head tilted. Shame gurgled and bubbled in his stomach. He couldn't bring himself to hold your gaze, so his eyes dropped to stare at your hand, still loosely tangled with his. Your fingers flexed and carefully, you interlocked your fingers with his and squeezed. "Is it the nightmares?"
He stilled. Swallowed thickly. "You... you know about them?"
"I do. I can feel your distress when they visit you. I did not want to... overstep, however," You admitted, thumb brushing along the side of his palm. "They unsettle you. Are they..." You trailed off, hesitating uncharactistically. "May I ask what they entail?"
Simon took a deep, steadying breath and blinked. "Yeah... yeah, yeah you can. Uh..." He swallowed, trying to get rid of the lump in his throat. It didn't work.
"Is it Her?"
"No. Well, yeah, but... not always. I did some... some pretty bad things." He wanted to look at you. He couldn't bear to. He wanted you to keep touching him. He felt like he was going to burn, like he was Icarus soaring too close to the sun on wax wings. "Before, I was... I lived on Eden before. It was... it was good. For a while. But I did- I did some really bad things," He admitted, voice cracking, head ducking.
Your hand squeezed his, then carefully pulled away. Panic curled in his stomach, his head whipped up, but you didn't recoil or disappear. You just watched him and reached forward, your hand carefully cupping his cheek, thumb brushing the skin just under his eye. Simon was powerless to do anything but lean into your touch, reaching up to press your hand deeper into him.
"If you wish to speak. I will listen," You reassured, "but sleep is still needed. If you would like, I will join you tonight and ensure the nightmares do not find you."
Simon shuddered, exhaustion sinking deeper into his bones as his eyes slid shut. For a moment, he didn't say anything. He just wanted to bask in your touch. Finally, after several long seconds, he gave a small nod. "Yeah. I would like that, please."
You were not used to such... sensations.
You are not human. You are a concept. An idea, a belief, made sentient and given shape because the universe deemed it should be so. You were not born, you coalesced; bound in oblivion and stardust. You are not flesh and blood; you are shadow and light; you are constellations and absolution; you are the quiet that falls between the notes and the shifting of cosmic energy.
You were not made for such things.
And yet... you find yourself strangely craving this human's touch. Even as you merely sit on the edge of his bed, waiting for him to wash up and join you, it feels as if he is too far away. That too, is a strange sensation. You were used to wandering, and yet even knowing that you are never truly away from him, leaving in any capacity feels... uncomfortable. Like there's a part of you longing to remain wrapped around him entirely.
Every time Simon's fingers brush the shell of your vessel, you feel the energy inside you swell and bubble, as if threatening to tear this human appearance apart. It is not a reaction you are used to.
For so long--too long to remember really--you were content to merely drift. A silent witness. A watcher, observing whatever crossed your path, moving with no real purpose. Invisible and unseen. You had danced across a cosmic sea, coiled around dying stars and slithered into the very crevices of the universe just because you could.
Now, you moved clumsily on human feet, and you... wanted. Yes, you wanted. You wanted to remain by Simon's side, you wanted to continue talking to him, you wanted to feel his mortal flesh press against the frame of your vessel. You wanted to shed your vessel entirely, entangle him in your weave and bathe him in starlight. Not to assimilate him as She would have, not to consume and possess, but to worship. To treasure.
It is all so strange and unusual.
You were so lost in your thoughts that you didn't notice Simon approaching until he sat down on the other side of the bed and called your name--the one he had gifted you unnecersarily, yet so sweetly nevertheless. Your gaze shifted towards him, answering the call with an instinctive sound that rolled in your throat. You could stop trilling at him when he called your name, but that would mean you also stopped seeing the little smile it brought to his lips every time.
And you did not want that.
He looked... vulnerable. Dressed in his soft sleep clothes, face still slightly damp, smelling of mint, black waves hanging loose now that they were pulled free from their partial up-do he wore most days. His dark brown eyes were nervous, but also weighed down with exhaustion and something else you could not entirely understand. No surprise there, you were still learning after all.
"Hello," You greeted, smiling as your head tilted.
His mouth twitched, smile brightening, your core sang at the sight. "Hi," He replied, crawling further up onto his bed before he hesitated. "You'll uh... will you-..." He trailed off, his lips pressing into a thin line. Your head tilted and you felt his want ripple through the air between you.
"I will lay with you," You murmured, "if it is what you desire, little one."
The tension melted from him immediately, and Simon made a sound like a sigh, then nodded slowly. You watched as he pulled back the blankets and crawled under them, getting comfortable on his side. Then, you drifted closer, curiously lifting the cover yourself and sliding under with an intrigued hum. It was soft, comfortable. If you required sleep, you would climb into such a cozy spot every night too.
The air rippled again. Your head tilted, gaze finding his. He still wanted, but was too anxious to speak his desires. So, you reached out again, beckoning him closer. "It is alright," You said, "if you desire touch, I will not reject you." Simon's body, rather unusually, shuddered. Before you could ask what had inspired such a response, he drew closer.
His warmth met your vessel, and immediately, your core buzzed and sang in response to the sensation. You made a sound, something low and chittering, and curled an arm around him, drawing him closer until he lay partially sprawled over top of you, face buried in your chest, his arm curling around your waist. Curiously, you began stroking your fingers through his hair and Simon shuddered, then pressed closer with a sound that was almost pained. It was enough to make you pause. "Have I hurt you?" You asked, a frown beginning to curl at your lips.
His reaction was immediate. A firm shake of his head. "No, no. Please-... don't stop." Soft, pleading, and slightly scared. When he asked like that, how could you refuse?
"Very well." Your fingers began moving again, idly curling strands of black around them, trailing along his scalp. Your other hand began memorising the notches of his spine, and the way the muscles of his back moved under his shirt. Simon, in return, buried his face further into your chest.
And, gently, he began speaking again.
He told you a truly tragic tale. Of being a boy, raised on Eden. Of being unaware, of not knowing any different, until The Quiet Rapture happened. Resources dwindled, they became desperate, and the C.O.I began to pressure Eden to join them. Eden refused. War broke out, as it often did with humans. He told you, between shaky breaths, while clinging to you as if he was afraid that you would vanish once he admitted it, that he'd killed in the name of Eden.
He'd taken lives. So many lives. Too many to keep track of. You felt moisture seep through the false fabrics your vessel wore as covering.
"I did something... really bad. I didn't want to. I wanted to stop, but they wouldn't listen and-"
Your hands pressed him deeper into you. When that wasn't enough, you coiled more of your being around him. "Simon," You whispered, because his name was a beautiful thing. He sobbed, a broken sound that made your core twitch in discomfort to hear. "Little one," You cooed, because he seemed to like that term you had taken to calling him. "You did the best you could in the circumstances you found yourself in. You acted with the knowledge you had, and in the end... You attempted to do what you felt was right. Perhaps, you did do bad things, but that does not make you inherently bad."
He gasped against you, body trembling harder. "Really?"
"Really," You assured, "you are good, Simon."
He wept harder, and you drew him impossibly closer. Practically melding him into the essence of your being, human vessel unravelling so you could coil more of your form around him. Shadows twisting and snaking their way around his limbs and his torso. He stilled, and then you felt his head move before he gasped, a breathless little, "Oh," leaving his lips.
You had bloomed, unfurled like a flower, a universe that cradled him like the precious thing he was. Twisting shadows and twinkling starlight. "Rest, little one," You whispered through non-existent lips. The words sinking into his atoms and curling protectively around his heart. "Tonight, I will keep you safe. Worry no longer. I have you now." And with that, you began to hum. Ancient melodies made of constellations and forgotten notes. Simon melted further into your oblivion, and you smiled when you felt him begin to drift off to sleep.
You kept him there, and admired how he looked with celestial light and abyssal shadows shielding him from harm; like a being deserving of worship.