Disclaimer: I don't own Netflix's "The Rain" or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.

Authors Note #1: I just fell face first into "The Rain" and I'm really digging the Simone x Martin pairing. This is just a little character-driven drabble about Martin thinking about Simone.

Warnings: spoilers up to 1x06, drama, romance, angst, ptsd, emotional baggage, post apocalyptic setting.

Lagom

The truth was, Simone had been inevitable. Like gravity. Like prophecy. Like something that'd never needed to be written down, because she'd always been there. Patiently waiting for him to arrive.

Simone had been a logical certainty.

An active force attracting everyone and everything towards a messy, catastrophic center. Towards blue eyes, blonde hair and painfully stupid naivety. Towards that feeling that niggled in the back of his brain like an itch. The one that whispered maybe hope wasn't so hopeless, as long as they had her.

She was an culmination of time, space and a slew of mathematical equations that were all unique to her own history. A curvature of small bones and everything he'd never dared to hope for.

He should have known as much since that first moment in the bunker. Where she'd looked at him through the glass with dark, challenging eyes and smashed the tablet. Telling him with her expression what his next move was going to be - whether he liked it or not.

Let us out, or we all die.

Sometimes he felt like he'd survived the rain and everything that'd come after just to get a chance to meet her. They were the type of thoughts that gave him fodder to chew on for hours, stewing in it. The idea that there had to be reason. Some days, god knows he needed one. A reason he was meant to get this far, at least.

Because Simone had changed everything, just by being her.

She'd caught them all in the sweet smelling backwash if her breath and tugged at the best parts of them. Teasing them out and encouraging them to grow without ignoring the bad. Recognizing they were all a little wounded, but expecting the best from them all the same.

Expecting the best from him.

He didn't know he still had that much left.

God.

So, of course he'd stepped into the rain. Kissing the echoes of her ghost as he stood where she had and tipped back his head. Accepting it. Embracing it. Finding a part of himself he thought he'd lost long ago as the fat beads rolled down his skin in questing rivers. Ribs aching as he opened his mouth and let it in. Relearning how to breathe for the first time in five years.

What else was he supposed to do, after all?

Fight gravity?

A/N: Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think.

Reference:

- lagom: swedish for 'just the right amount.'