Simon was good with numbers, people he could be good with but adding things up that were pretty obvious to most people just didn't always click with him. Especially when it was things that had gone against everything he had pretty much every considered for himself. Raphael, men were never an idea that popped into his head. There was no experimental period for him through his first year in college. The thought that it could be something he'd dig just never happened. So piecing it together for him was just a lot harder.
Listening to Raphael now, the grin on his face was something he almost wasn't used to seeing. It was a good thing though, he wanted it to be there more often, and it made him grin for a brief moment before those words became more serious.
"You knew...and you didn't think to maybe fill me in? Drop a hint or anything? I mean....it's not like I've ever really considered something like this before...I mean until...well yeah." He nodded more to himself than to Raphael about all the things still going through his head now. This was just completely new territory to him. He was flying blind.
Listening to Raphael talk about how it had been a very long time, he wondered if the other had any sort of experience with men. But the fact that he'd gone some time without caring for anyone, and he'd managed to matter? It made Simon feel pretty special, yeah but also he felt stronger for the man with that statement alone. How lonely and cold it must have been for him, for however long to just be alone. To just completely wrap himself into the clan and have that and only that. Simon suddenly wanted to show him that yes he was an amazing leader, but that there was more. Even without being alive, there was life...in a sense.
"Jacket? I think I was working on three of them....which eventually I intent to make up for. Also, so you know."
Nodding his head, he waited till Raphael was finished. "Is it wrong to be glad that you decided to put up with me?" He snickered a little and looked down. "I said so many horrible things to you, when I first changed. I didn't understand anything, and I still barely do but I'm trying. I realized though without you, even back home I would have been lost. I would have been just as bad as those ancients you had talked about. Running around just killing people. Losing myself, and my humanity."
He chewed on his inner cheek for a brief moment. "You've stuck by me, no matter how annoying I was. No matter how much you wanted to just tell me to go away, not come back...I'd have been lost. I wouldn't have survived, I wouldn't have continued...living." He knew he wouldn't have either, he would have eventually given up and just walked out into the daylight.
"This is just...this is...new...very new, and strange but not in a ...bad way. I just. I dunno. It felt...right though. It feels right."