Fun Date Idea: You Come Over And We Watch A Video Essay About Saltburn And I Pause It Every 5 Seconds

Raspberry Girl Previous + masterlist + AO3 Simon Riley/female reader CW: 18+ daddy kink

You’re trying. 

Your body language betrays you. The effort and the turbulence beneath, your eyes flicking rapidly through the parking lot, the ramrod straight line of your spine, your quadricep tensing and relaxing under his palm as he works his fingers from your knee up, back and forth. 

“What’s wrong?” You sigh. Slump. Turn to face him with an anxious pout. 

“I just… I don’t love the restaurant store.” He gives you a chance, and then prompts, pushes just slightly.

“What’s the rule?” 

“Tell you when I’m scared, or anxious. Or overwhelmed.” He squeezes approval, and you continue. “It’s chaos, especially on a Sunday, and… it’s like a warehouse so the sound bounces…  all of it is really loud.” You latch onto his forearm, hard intake of breath sharp before softening, your fingers applying firm pressure. He doesn’t mind. You’re anchoring yourself to him, with him. It’s all he could ask for. 

“It’s okay baby, we’ll get it done and then go home. I’ll be with you.” Your head bobs repeatedly with a nod, but you make no effort to unbuckle your seatbelt or get out of the car. You need a little comfort, a little encouragement, things that are his job to provide, so he’s out of the truck on his side to open the passenger door, reaching over to unbuckle your seatbelt. “Close your eyes and open your mouth.” He works his thumb behind your teeth and rests it on your tongue, a pleased flush rushing through him when you immediately pull and suck on him. “Good girl.” You calm almost immediately, strained muscles and back turning plush, tight corners of your eyes smoothing away. When you lean in, looking for more contact, he decides to test the limits. Your limits. “Breathe through your nose,” he murmurs encouragingly as he presses deeper into your mouth, “there we go.” You try, but when his knuckles meet your lips and his thumb brushes your throat, the back of your tongue, you seize up, trying to swallow, trying to find air, and jerk away, gagging. He follows the movement, width of his hand against your neck with a finger against your pulse, keeping you steady and still through the swift rise and then decline of panic. It crashes like a wave, receding just as quick and leaving something in its place.

You blink rapidly, gears turning, so obviously trying to reconcile something you’re feeling, something he can so easily read. Worry. Shame. Spiral.

“Stop.” He brushes a kiss across your forehead. “Don’t go there. When it’s time, I’ll take care of you. Do you understand?” Your chest loosens. 

“Yes daddy.” Music to his ears.

“Does your throat hurt?” 

“It’s okay.” He cups the back of your head, guides you into his arms, and place your ear over his heart. You’ve started to tap your fingers with the rhythm, against your skin or his, self soothing, and it makes him whole. It’s not just a sexual dynamic with you, it’s everything, an entire soul under his shelter, a whole human using his heartbeat to ground themselves, and nothing is more fulfilling. “Ready to go?” You tug on him instinctively, hopping from the truck, keeping your grip locked in his. 

“Yeah.” He smiles at your resolve, the confidence. 

“Brave girl. C’mon.” 

It doesn’t bother him that you lock up again, the store is a madhouse. It’s overcrowded, and loud, the metal roof of the warehouse doing nothing to dull the senses, bright lights and too many boxes, bags, things being tossed around. 

You’re wide eyed, rooted to the floor, still clutching his arm in a stranglehold and he herds you towards a corner. 

“Tell me.” You don’t start immediately, scrounging around for words, and he encourages with a gentle reminder. “Remember your rules baby.” It doesn’t take anymore coaxing after that. 

“I’m overwhelmed.” You blurt, wincing, but just as he predicted, hoped, you visibly relax, and he takes your face in his hands. Holds his whole world. 

“Proud of you sweetheart.” Tears shine in your eyes, dew drops in the corners, and when one falls he wipes it away. “Do you need me to finish your list?” 

“Please, if it’s…” He doesn’t waste time, just moves you to the cart, stations you at the helm so you can steer and he can manage the rest. 

“You’ll push the cart, and stay in the middle of the aisles. I’ll get the things you need.” You blow out a breath. 

“Okay.” 

“When?” 

“Dunno. Sometime next week, I think. Wasn’t real clear.” Simon groans, rubs his nose into his palm and then pauses, listening for footfalls in the hall or the adjacent bedroom.

“Well, if they’re goin’ we are too. I’ll see what’s going on, let you know later.” Gaz grunts an affirmative and hangs up. He’s been restless, itchy, just like the others, but Simon’s in no rush. 

Not now. 

Not when he has you, here in house, with your things in his bedroom, his bathroom, with your toothbrush next to the sink. The slow migration of your stuff has begun and is in full swing, two fuzzy blankets, your switch, your kindle, even that weird pillow you have that you call Pusheen. It’s a stuffed cat of some kind, he thinks, and you use it as a pillow half the time, which means it’s little eyes are sometimes staring at him in bed. 

But you love it, and you don’t know yet, but he loves you. 

Every sweet piece, even the weird stuffed cat. 

Which is why he’s dreading the next mission, the next time he loads onto an airplane and drops into an undisclosed location, the next time he has to turn his mind dark, shutter his heart, forget about anything that could interfere with completing an objective. 

For the first time in his life, he doesn’t want it. 

And he doesn’t want to dwell on it right now either, so he shoves back from the desk and closes his laptop, opting to find you instead. 

You’re in the kitchen. There’s a beater in your hands, something else that’s new to him, and the rich scent of chocolate in the air. 

“What’s this?” He tugs you close, holds you against him with your back to his chest, kisses your ear. 

“Whipped cream.” You shiver, goosebumps raising the hair on your arms. “It’s for…. I made hot chocolate?” 

“Is that a question?” He nips your skin. it’s getting harder to control the instinct, the urge to mark you in every way possible. 

“N-no it’s… I made it. You can make whipped cream! I don’t know why anyone buys whipped cream in a can. I mean, I know. It’s because they don’t realize how easy it is. It’s really so simple and so much better. Obviously, people don’t have time to make it by hand, I know that, I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad, but…” 

“But?” He squeezes your hip. 

“But… it’s so good this way.” The stainless steel bowl glints under the kitchen’s pendant light. “Do you want some?” 

“Of course.” You bounce a bit on your toes, the smile he dreams about lighting up your face. “I don’t think I’ve ever had hot chocolate.” You give him a shocked look.

“Wha… what?” He shakes his head and sips. It’s silky and smooth, but not something that would rot your teeth. There’s a hint of decadent bitterness to it, well balanced, a roasted coffee taste of some kind.

“Didn’t get a lot of sweet stuff, ’til you.” Whipped cream dots your upper lip and he tries to tamp down the rushing blood in his veins. 

“That’s um… that’s…” He puts the mug down, already half empty. 

“It’s what, sweetheart?” 

“It’s nice.” You whisper, drifting closer, and he slides his hands up under your hoodie. 

“Hmm,” You’re so soft, everything about you, head to toe, and you tremble under his touch, the circles he scrawls into your skin as you try to regulate your breathing. He can’t help himself. “You were such a good girl for me today, weren’t you?” 

“Yes daddy, I tried.”

“You were. So good, and so sweet,” he taps your phone and sighs at the glowing numbers on the screen. Tomorrow. “It’s late, and you should be asleep already, go on.” He urges you away from the kitchen with a pat on your ass, even as you try to protest. “Bed, little berry girl.” 

“I can clean up-” 

“Bed,” he pauses, cocks his head and reaches for the bowl of whipped cream. “Will this still be good in the morning?”  Maybe he’ll wake you up with his mouth on your nipples, tongue working circles through cream as he drags his teeth across them, pinching them so he can hear your surprised little squeak. He’d paint you with his own if you were ready, decorate your body with his cum, drag it down to your pussy and then smear it over your clit, working back and forth until you were making your own mess on his hand. 

“Um… yes? If it’s left in the fridge.”

Maybe… 

“Perfect.” 

I’m fine, girl……

Simon makes love to you

Drabble to get me out of the block

Word Count: 1.6k

18+

CW: fluff, smut, contains themes of depression

Simon fucks you hard.

It's an unsaid promise, a sort of bargain. 

You need someone to fuck your head empty, he needs someone who'll let him unload whatever's mess is brewing inside of him. 

You like it hard.

He needs it hard.

Mutual agreement. Everything had clicked so easily you two had never even bothered setting ground rules or whatnot. They flowed naturally, as if you knew, and he did as well.

Whenever you wanted, you just knocked. If he was up for it, you'd spend the night in his bed until your throat would go raw and your limbs would turn floppy.

The same happened when he was on the other side of the door.

Independently on who asked, the outcomes rarely changed. If ever.

Yet Simon now finds himself in front of a crossroads, when you knock on his door with bloodshot eyes and a tiredness so horrible that, for a moment, he feels afraid.

That lasts a swift second, though, because the next thing he registers is complete discomfort. Helplessness.

He doesn't think he can fuck that out of you. Not when your eyes are so chock full of tears yet so hollow.

Your lips look cracked and swollen, like you've spent a while nibbling at the flakes of dry skin. He's sure they'd taste of iron if he were to kiss them.

As he takes in your state, he narrowly misses your sniffle, the tremble of your hands. Or the way your voice, so feeble and strained, as if exhausted from the words themselves, whispers:

"Can you make love to me tonight?"

Simon barely reacts as it reaches his ears. On the outside, he's impassive as ever—inside, on the other hand, he's rattled to the bone.

Because he doesn't know how to do that. 

What he does know, is that he could tell you no, and you wouldn't so much as bat an eye. You're not one to push, and neither is he. It's always been such a balanced thing. 

And yet he'd rather gouge his eyes out than watch you tremble any more than you already are.

Which is why he doesn't answer verbally—doesn't trust himself to do that, to sound as kind as you need him to be. He simply curls his hand at the nape of your neck and pulls you in, lips to lips.

And exactly as he thought, taste of iron they do.

Simon's kiss is not devouring. It's hesitant because he's new to it, soft because you asked. There's no tongue yet, simply lips smacking and a gentle hand on your hips. The white lights of the building's hallway flicker overhead—some old place in which neighbours don't ask much about what's happening in the other flats, which is exactly what he needs.

Gently, he guides you inside, closing the door behind you with the flat of his hand. Feels the salt of your tears on his own lips, like he's cried them as well. 

Your hands cradle his neck, fingers dreadfully cold and rough—callouses you've bitten in anxious habit, perhaps to cause pain so the one inside would quell. 

Simon guides your back against his door, as his hand blindly reaches for the lock. It twists smoothly in his fingers. Clicks. You unravel there, like the sound's given you permission to do so.

Simon is used to drinking up your moans, never your sobs. He tries as you hiccup in his mouth, holding you gently yet firmly, grounding you to where it matters.

Careful as ever, his fingers tug at the zipper of your coat, and then helps you out of it. Similarly, your own lift his shirt up and off his head. And then it's a dance he knows by heart, hands tracing the shape of you the more it gets exposed.

Loose clothes on the floor. Your cold hands holding onto him for dear life. His own guiding you to the bed, steering your body where he needs it—where you do.

But differently from previous times, there's so much softness in his fingers that they tremble almost as much as yours, like he's afraid he'd bruise you when he bloody well knows he's held you far more harshly and you never complained once.

And then you're on his bed, on your back with his own body as an anchor to reality. A big arm snakes in the sliver of space between your bodies to reach your sex.

He kisses your cheeks first, as his fingers draw soft circles at your clit to get you wet. Your chest stutters with hiccups to catch your breath, tired hands threaded through his hair—perhaps to keep him closer, perhaps to ground yourself.

Whatever the reason, he lets you. Feels your breath—thick, heavy, wet—brush his skin. Your lips reciprocate his kisses, landing damp and swollen on his shoulder, on his neck.

That night, Simon fucks you softly.

He doesn't thrust into you until you can't breathe but keeps his hips flush to yours instead. He rolls idle circles that sheath him fully inside and cradles your head to keep you still—to keep you comfortable, to give you what you asked.

Can you make love to me tonight?

Simon is not sure he can, doesn't think he has what it takes.

But still, his hands hold you gently, instead of marking you blue. His mouth draws in your breath, like he's trying to even it out when you can't. 

"That's it," he whispers when he feels the stutters in your chest settle down. "That's it—deep breaths. Good girl, y're doing so good." 

Your hands come to hold him like he is you, and then you cum around him breathing hard and burying your face in his neck instead of moaning and clawing at his skin.

"There it is," he tells you quietly when your pussy clenches around him. His voice chokes on itself because you're not the only one affected by this—not by a long shot. "There it is, swee'heart. Jus' like that."

He keeps his focus on you as you come down from it, satisfied when he notices that the trickles down your temples are of sweat and not tears anymore. 

But there's something in your eyes, he thinks. Something that has been torn to shreds so many times you gave up even trying to fix it. A loneliness so fierce it’s burning you to ashes, an exhaustion so deeply engraved you carry it within your bones.

How a man as attentive as him has never noticed is beyond him, but now he finds himself wanting to see it, to try and help you mend it until you're whole again.

"Fuck, you're lovely, yeah?" He murmurs when your hands come to cradle his cheeks and his do the same. "Sight f'sore eyes."

You smile for the first time since you knocked on his door. 

Can you make love to me tonight?

Simon is not sure he can, but he'll be damned if he doesn't try—if it means you smile like that again.

Your hips start moving to meet him, ankles locked at his tailbone. Simon cums inside of you for the first time since you two started seeing each other, rocking his hips as you caress the back of his head.

He’s always tried his damned hardest to avoid leaving strands of any kind that could tie you to him. He's a dangerous man, one you shouldn't be tangled with. 

But if you look so safe in his arms, enough to seek him at your lowest, enough to smile even when your world seems torn asunder, then there's little he can do to fight it. 

To fight you.

He collapses, chest to chest, knocking the breath out of your lungs—a sound so soft it tickles his ear enough to raise goosebumps.

Simon holds onto you something fierce, arms tucked under the hollow of your spine—inked skin, rough and thickened by a harsh life, against the velvet of yours.

Usually, you’d spare a few moments for the two of you to catch a breath, and then you’d leave, or he would, and life would roll on by. Tonight, he senses your hesitation in the tremble of your arms, and how they’re still holding on tight, wrapped like a silk ribbon around his neck.

Simon finds himself at a crossroads again, but this time it’s so much easier to make a choice.

Can you make love to me tonight?

As he nuzzles your skin, Simon realizes he never even had to try.

“Stay,” he whispers into your neck. 

It’s then that you suck in a deep breath, one that bullies its way into his own lungs too. The curve of your cheek presses into his temple, as if you might be smiling. There, something fills him just right.

He wants to look up and see if he’s fixed a few of those shreds, if he’s managed to at least squeeze a thread in there, within the broken seams. 

Perhaps he has, because your voice quivers less, and there’s that golden touch of hope in it, refreshing and bright—somehow louder than the sobs he’s been striving to take from you all night.

“Okay,” you breathe. “O-okay, I’ll stay.”

Thing is, you never leave. 

If not once or twice, with Simon in tow, carrying a few boxes in his hands with your initials scribbled on one side.

Until your books are on his shelves, your toothbrush on his sink, and your name on the doorbell, right next to his own.

it’s sad when Gaz is excluded in MW content and to defend him most people just bring up how cute he is, which isn’t wrong. but also we should acknowledge he is just a good character overall.

it’s disappointing that so many fans exclude interesting and well developed characters due to their looks or just them not being men. many characters in cod who are not conventionally attractive or are women are often not brought up by fans.

characters should not be disregarded because of design, gender, etc. let’s not make this a trend in the community.

peristalsis - vi

selkie!soap x reader. depression. strangers to "lovers." somnophila. dubcon. smut. manipulative soap. unreliable narrator. terrible food. social isolation. suicidal ideation. suicidal resolve. . Running away from life to the Scottish Hebrides, you meet a man who won't leave you alone. . Masterlist. Ao3.

previous

A hand pets between your legs sometime in the early morning, fingers searching for tender flesh. The other slips up the front of your naked body, cradling one breast, thumb flicking gently across the nipple.

The covers over you are warm with yours and Johnny’s shared body heat, the both of you having gone to sleep naked. His body curves around you, the hair of his chest and thighs tickling your bare skin. Water laps at the outer hull in quiet breaths.

You’d dreamed. You don’t remember exactly what of. Only impressions are left behind—the rocking of the trawler following you into sleep. Darkness. A sense of displacement. Your throat closing and opening.

When you crack open your eyes you feel it in the pit of your stomach. A storm to match the one that blew across the night.

If you give into it—it will hurt. You recognize it in your bones.

Johnny groans behind you when his callused fingers find your cunt warm and soft for him. His cock is a column of heat against your low back, morning-stiff. He circles your clit, mouthing the back of your neck and nudging his knee between yours, hooking your leg over his thigh to spread you open.

Fresh arousal wells up to coat his fingers. You hear him huff behind you, amused; he reaches down between the two of you to palm himself, cupping his shaft up between your folds and thrusting shallowly between them. Catching the flow along the length of his cock.

You don’t move, other than to breathe.

He toys with the breast in his hand as he tracks humid kisses up behind your ear. When he angles the head at your entrance, he slides in with minimal resistance—seats himself to the root.

You release the airy moan it draws from you. Snug—he’s snug inside you, cockhead sitting against your cervix. When he rolls his hips, he barely pulls out, just far enough that you feel where his cock begins to widen, thickest in the middle, before pushing back in again.

He rocks against you, playing with your clit. His other hand moves to your leg, drawing it outward a little farther. You stay limp in his hold, eyes closed.

He can do what he wants with you. Anything. If it keeps what’s happening in your belly contained—anything.

It doesn’t take long—you’re not awake enough to brace against it. He winds you higher and higher until your spine goes-arrow straight, your climax spilling through you, drawing you tight around him, and Johnny pistons into you with a few rapid thrusts before groaning, long and satisfied, as liquid heat fills you once again.

“Mm,’” he murmurs, “mornin,’ bonnie.” Angling himself to kiss the corner of your mouth. “Gonna get us goin,’ hm?”

You’re not entirely sure what he means until he pulls away from you. He stands up from the bed and tugs the sheets back up over your naked shoulders, humming some tune you don’t recognize—it sounds vaguely like a hymn—as he dresses and disappears up the stairs.

You feel the trawler rock and shift as he takes it away from the pier, back into the open water. Gray morning light shafts in through the small window triptych above the head of the bed.

You turn onto your back. Johnny’s spend seeps out of you slowly as you shuffle into the heat his body left behind on the sheets. You look inward.

It’s still there. Quelled—for now. If you think too hard about it, you might summon it up.

But Johnny is just upstairs, and the last thing you want is for him to hear you, to hear the poor, crazed animal you can become. There is only so much of you that you are willing to inflict upon him. There is only so much you would ask him to tolerate.

Although it strikes you, as you stretch under the covers, that you don’t believe he would resent you for it.

Probably, he would just wrap his arms around you, and coo at you in that smarmy way of his. No big deal. You can have a breakdown, bonnie, and he’ll make you something for breakfast after. And do you want him to eat your pussy again? Bet you’ll feel better after that.

You almost give in then and there just thinking about it. Wind shear pressing against the inside of your tear ducts.

That would make it worse—if he were to comfort you. You don’t think you would make it out to the other side.

So you swallow hard. Swim your legs through the tangled sheets and find the floor with your bare feet. Your carry-on still sits up in the bridge, so you drag a blanket around your shoulders and climb the stairs to retrieve it.

“There she is!” Johnny exclaims as you surface. He looks over his shoulder at you, one hand on the wheel, the other holding a cup of coffee. He grins at you. “Hell’s bells, don’ you look beautiful.”

You sneer at him, knowing your hair is a rat’s nest and the bags beneath your eyes have had no chance to deflate. Another drop of his cum falls down your thigh; you grab up your bag and retreat back into the bedroom.

When you return to the bridge dressed and brushed, face washed and moisturized, Johnny brings you a second steaming mug, white ceramic, with “Hers” in black cursive printed on the side.

“Stupid,” you say, when you see it.

Johnny kisses the side of your head. “I’ll make eggs.”

“Shouldn’t you be driving?” you ask, as he sets a pan down on the stove. You eye the trawler wheel nervously, waiting for it to spin.

“Is no’ a car, bonnie,” Johnny snorts. “Dinnae have to watch for traffic.”

You eat the breakfast he makes you in disgruntled silence. Overhead, clouds pass, intermittent gaps allowing yellow sunlight to peek through, though never for more than a moment. You might’ve expected the day to be clear again, after the storm.

Six hours is six hours. You return to the novel you began yesterday, perched on the booth couch, though every time the hour changes your stomach draws tighter, as if winched.

At the end of the trip awaits more of the solitude you’ve been seeking. Johnny will deposit you onto the cove, and traipse off to his boy’s night. Possibly his old squad mates—team members—whatever they are, will be staying for more than one day.

You know. You know how it goes.

It’s better this way, you remind yourself. It’s what you wanted.

You pass the crags you saw on yesterday’s journey, and today they are vacant of their pinniped occupants. The island wildlife overall seems to be absent, perhaps hidden away in whatever sanctuary they found during the storm. A few seabirds circle above the dune grass, or trail after the trawler, but other than that, sky, sea, and land are vacant.

You reach the naval battle, and discover what the author spent the most time researching. She describes in exhausting detail how long it takes to load cannons, the role of current and wind speed in the maneuvering of ships, the bailing-out process of a breached hull.

It’s dull, and completely incongruous with the romantic melodrama of the previous chapter. You can see exactly why a former soldier would enjoy it.

You do not tell Johnny you’ve reached it.

Finally, sometime after noon, the cove comes into view. Johnny brings the trawler as close to shore as he can get it, and then drops anchor.

You sling your bag over one shoulder as you stand, lungs shaking in your chest.

“Well,” you say, “have a good time with your friends.”

He pauses, and then looks at you. The expression on his face is completely nonplussed, lips pursed, brows raised.

“What?”

“Your guys’ night.”

“What about it?”

You frown. “Aren’t you taking me to shore?”

“Why would I do that?”

Apprehension trickles down into your belly.

No. Oh, no.

“So you could go meet them?” you say, with growing trepidation.

Realization opens up his expression. Brows lift over blue eyes blooming. “Aw, bonnie, s’that why you’ve been cranky? You think I’m gonna abandon you?”

No—oh, no.

He comes over to you and gently nudges the strap of your bag off your shoulder, smiling.

“Course you’re invited, hen, what kind of bastard would I be if I left you all alone?”

Something breaks.

“No,” you say.

“Yeah,” he croons, bringing his hand to your jaw. Caressing the curve of it with his thumb. “Want you to meet my mates—”

You slap his hand away.

Panic, fully formed, climbs up your trachea.

It’s one thing to be left behind for better friends. It’s quite another to be subjected to them.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” you snap. Fury boiling. “What the actual fuck is wrong with you?”

Johnny blinks. You wrench yourself away from him, shoving against the pull of his gravity—smacking him in the chest with both of your hands.

“Was it getting shot?” you snarl, pickaxing your temple with two fingers. “Was it drowning? Because something made you fucking delusional, and I don’t know what it was, but I’m fucking sick of it. I don’t fucking like you.”

Johnny’s expression flattens. The gleam dulls in his eyes as he gazes at you.

“I don’t give a shit about you,” you tremble on. “You’re nothing to me. You’re a hookup. You’re good dick and that’s it. You don’t mean anything to me. Nothing.”

He takes a step toward you. You step back.

“And you don’t give a shit about me either! You’re such a fucking asshole, you know that? You don’t have to act like this is anything but you do anyway, and you make fun of me the whole time, because you know I’m easy, because I’ll still let you fuck me, because I don’t have—because I’m just convenient pussy to you.”

He advances. You retreat. The cocky, confident Johnny that has been your unwelcome companion these past three days now is gone, as if a mask tossed away.

The line of his mouth is sharp and straight. His nostrils flare. A severe crease cracks the space between his drawn-together brows.

You’re not seeing the thing you saw on the beach, that first day. You’re not seeing the carefree bar cook or the island enthusiast.

You’re seeing the special forces soldier. Advancing on a target.

And you can’t stop yourself, even as terror runs a live wire up your spine.

“Like what do you think this was, Soap? I don’t care about you. I don’t care about your friends. I don’t care about your life. You’re wasting your fucking time. I don’t give a shit about you, and I never have, and I never will, and you’re too fucking stupid to notice—”

You run out of room to retreat. The backs of your knees run into the booth seat, but Johnny keeps coming. He invades every inch of your personal space, getting right up into your face, staring down at you with a hard jaw and sharp, spear point eyes.

“Stop it,” you flounder, “just stop it, just leave me alone, just—”

He closes thumb and forefinger around your chin and presses his warm mouth against yours.

You fight him. You clench your fists and beat their heels against his chest, but he wraps his other hand around the back of your head and sweeps his tongue between your lips. You screech into his mouth, but he hums back, the subvocal tones of calming an animal before it hurts itself. You sink your teeth into his bottom lip, seeking to draw blood, but it only eggs him on, makes him slant his head to kiss you deeper.

Even as you wear yourself out against him, his grip doesn’t loosen. He holds you in place as you struggle. Frighteningly strong—utterly indomitable; he overwhelms you with seemingly no effort on his part at all.

There’s bitter, black coffee on his tongue. Acidic. He presses it into yours, circling inward, making space for himself where you would give him none—

Insisting on it.

You gasp hard. Whimper futilely against his mouth. A few sharp tears escape the clench of your eyes, cutting down your cheeks.

Your fists land on him one final time, and then remain where they are. Your entire body slackens, submitting. Your lips find the curves in his where they fit the closest, and stay there. Bokeh spots dance across your closed eyes as your alveoli demand oxygen.

When you pull your mouth away from his to breathe, he lets you. Johnny rests his forehead against yours, hands coming around to cup your cheeks.

“Feel better?” he murmurs lowly, caressing the corners of your mouth with his thumbs. “Now that you got that all out?”

You take a shuddering breath. “You’re an asshole,” you repeat miserably.

Johnny kisses you softly again, first on the mouth, then the tip of your nose, then between your brows.

“Don’ be scared,” he says, mouth still on your forehead. “It’s gonna be alright.”

You sniff. “I hate you.”

He huffs—a small laugh, one that lacks his usual good humor. His hands slide down your shoulders to wrap his arms around you, and he tucks you beneath his chin, against his body. Even after so little time, the bulk of his frame is familiar, aligning with the shape of your body.

You don’t hug him back. You let your arms hang at your sides. If you nuzzle your face in between the soft slopes of his pectorals—you will take the truth of it to your grave.

John Price shows up in a motorboat, bringing along with him several grocery bags and a young man close to Johnny in age.

The two grin at each other and embrace, slapping backs in the masculine fashion and making loud, friendly noises as Price sidesteps them to bring his goods to the kitchen, where you’re hiding.

When he catches sight of you, his step falters.

“I don’t know why I’m here either,” you say, preempting him. You’re cloistered on the booth couch.

His mustache tilts at an angle. As with every other expression you’ve seen him make, you have no idea what it means, and it makes your stomach clutch.

Price is saved from having to respond as Johnny drags the other young man in behind him, beefy arm around his neck in a headlock. They’re laughing together, smiles wide as Price sets his bags on the counter.

The three of them populate the tiny space with the ease of years spent sharing little room between them, and you’d be shrinking back into the couch if Johnny’s friend hadn’t already caught sight of you. The surprise on his face is evident, even as he greets you with a polite, “Oh, hey!”

You make yourself stand up, pasting on a smile that feels more like a grimace. “Hi,” you say.

Johnny gestures at you with a proud, open hand, saying your name as fondly as if he’d just had it in a chokehold. “Stayin’ at the croft, the one I told you about? Just got back from Lewis today, we did, showed her the stones and everythin.’”

He winks at you. You fight not to scowl at him.

“Nice to meet you,” the young man says, disentangling himself from Johnny and extending a hand. “I’m Kyle, but everyone calls me Gaz.”

You shake. “Sorry to interrupt your, uh, your reunion.”

You can’t tell how sincere the smile is that Gaz gives you. Are the corners of his mouth too tight? The polite look in his eyes too saccharine? “The more the merrier, aye?”

“That’s what m’saying!” Johnny enthuses.

“Soap been behaving?” Gaz asks.

“Uh,” you say.

“Soap, you got a griddle on this dinghy?” Price calls, setting out packages of meat and buns. He bends down to root around in the under-cabinet, stored cookware clanging as he digs.

“Cap, tell me you didn’t get the patties,” Johnny complains, picking one up. Ground beef pre-molded into burger pucks, shrink-wrapped in their own thin red juice.

“What’s wrong with patties?” Price asks, still half-submerged. “Easy, innit?”

“For kids’ birthday parties, maybe,” Johnny protests.

“When’d you get so fussed about food?” asks Gaz, sipping from his can. “Not like this is London, mate, you get what you get.”

“Some of us have time to eat like human beings,” Johnny snipes. “You might have to choke on MREs, not like the rest of have to as well.”

“Soap,” Price says, “griddle.”

“Oh, nowhere near there.”

“You fucking muppet…”

Gaz and Johnny cackle. Price straightens, frowning gruffly, in a way that suggests he has regularly endured this hazing from the two younger men and no longer has the patience even to scold them for it.

Walking paths made together, now retread. Old stone, formed when the earth was young.

You step backward. Find the edge of the couch with your calves. None of the three men look at you as you settle back down into your seat. Your book lays half-open on bent pages.

“No Simon still?” asks Johnny as he cracks a beer off the pack.

“Still no word,” says Price. “Said he’d try, last we chatted, but wasn’t sure.”

“Hm,” says Johnny, sipping his beer.

His gaze slips over to you. You feel it like a rasp over your bare skin.

He cracks another can off and brings it over, sitting down to sling a heavy arm over your shoulders. You take the beer and open it, but do not drink.

“Not the same out there without you, mate,” says Gaz, folding his arms comfortably over his chest. “Neither of you, really, Cap.”

“Ah, you’re doin’ just fine, I bet,” replies Johnny. “You and Ghost? Dream team, right there.”

“Never gonna be you, Soap,” says Gaz.

Johnny’s replying smile is—contented. Satisfied. As if he’s hearing news he expected, but is pleased to hear nonetheless.

His arm hangs loosely over your shoulders as it continues like that. Johnny and the other two men punt the conversational shuttle back and forth, voices weaving with the cadence of an old scarf unraveling; the yarn thread frozen by time and tension into a shape that can wrap back around its fellows as easily as it came undone.

Unfamiliarity with their rhythm transforms the bridge—which has been, if not a safe space, at the very least something of a sanctuary to you for the past twenty-four hours. Someplace you could be your worst self without much worry of offending.

But Johnny’s old team members are not Johnny. You can’t speak to them the way you have spoken to him. They do not share his knack for inclusion—

At least, they don’t seem to, until, without you expecting it, the shuttle passes to you.

“What made you come out here?” asks Gaz, startling you.

You look up from the can of beer you have been staring at the whole time, warming between your palms, to find Gaz, Price, and Johnny all looking at you expectantly.

“Um,” you say, flushing with embarrassment. Completely unprepared to be treated like a conversational prospect.

“The quiet, didnae you say?” Johnny supplies, laying his hand along your upper arm, rubbing up and down.

He might as well have shoved that hand down your shirt instead—you catch the other two men seeing it. Noting it. Reevaluating who you are, who you might be, and why you’re intruding on their day together.

And Johnny mustrecognize it too, because he squeezes the soft part above your elbow.

Warmth like a candle flame in your chest.

“Yeah,” you say, lamely. “Just—tired, of the city, I guess…”

“I like the quiet too,” Gaz says diplomatically. “Bet it’s good surfing here too, in the summer.”

“No’ much,” says Johnny. “The wildlife’s the point here, innit, bonnie? Great seal watching, out here.”

You meet his gaze. Edges of sapphire blue are soft in your direction, mouth corners curled.

No obfuscation. No derision.

“Yeah,” you find yourself saying—and meaning. “The seals—the seals are cool.”

“Birds, too,” Price says, unpeeling patties after finally locating the electric griddle.

“How can you tolerate mucking around with two old codgers like this?” Gaz laughs.

Something effervescent infuses your bloodstream. Light and bubbly.

“As if Johnny has let me hang out with anyone but him,” you say, as if it has been a desire of yours in the first place.

You hear Price snort at the griddle. Gaz quirks a brow at Johnny without making any effort to hide it, and then clinks the belly of his can against yours before drinking.

You finally have a sip. It’s nice—hoppy, lightly sweet, fizzing on your tongue. Still cool enough to enjoy.

“Might take ya diving tomorrow,” Soap begins, fingertips twirling up your shoulder—

But then a distant voice cuts through the afternoon.

“Oy! Johnny!”

The three of you look around. Soap pulls away from you, warmth retreating with him, as he goes stick his head out of the door.

And then he dashes toward Price’s motorboat.

The engine revs as you, Gaz, and Price follow him out, watching as he speeds toward the shore. On the beach, a large man in dark colors, half his face covered by a black surgical mask, angles toward him, hands on his hips.

Johnny stops just shy of beaching the boat before he leaps out into the water, wades up the sand, and launches himself at the man.

They embrace like tectonic plates colliding. Even at a distance, you can hear the sound of hands slapping backs, feel the way their bodies meet and sway—so resonant with shared affection that you can feel the shocks of it across the water.

Glacial ice pushes through your veins.

“There he is,” Price says fondly. “Knew he wouldn’t miss this.”

“Ghost’s always gotta make an entrance,” Gaz agrees.

Ghost.

Or, as it must be—Simon.

Simon turns the snugness of four bodies into an overcrowd of five. In the bridge, there is little room to maneuver around him, massive as he is, and he seems disinclined not to claim as much space as there is available.

“Bonnie!” Johnny exclaims. “Want you to meet my old partner, Ghost.”

His eyes are dark, the color of a full whiskey bottle. They gaze at you without interest, even as he proffers his huge hand.

“You’re Johnny’s tourist,” he says, in a flat, brassy tenor. The sound of a metal grate closing.

Johnny.

Johnny.

“Yes,” you say, in a voice as irrelevant as a minnow’s.

He shakes your hand with a perfunctory grip, and says absolutely nothing more to you. He turns, and leans his bulk against the counter in the kitchen—galley, Johnny informs, as he explains the ship, and its story, to Ghost in rapid fire.

Had he been as excited to introduce it to you?

Ghost swigs from his beer, mask hooked under his chin. “What the fuck you even do on this thing, anyway?”

“Fish from it,” Johnny says. He’s standing close to Ghost, second can in one hand as he gestures with the other. “Got crab and lobster traps all over the place, that’s where the money is.”

“Always did like fishin,’” says Ghost, as warm to Johnny as he had been uninterested in you.

You cloister back in your place on the booth couch.

You can’t blame him. You can’t blame either of them. You can’t. You can’t. You are extraneous in this situation and always would have been.

“This isnae really fishin’ though, see?” Johnny goes on. “I mean, I use the dragnet time t’time, but rich tits on the mainland, they can get cod anywhere.”

“Become a real foodie, he has,” Gaz chuckles.

“Knob,” Ghost agrees.

Johnny grins. It’s a soft thing, an expression of sinking into warm bath water in a familiar tub. Ghost grins back at him, more with his eyes than his mouth.

If what’s between Johnny, Gaz, and Price is an unraveled scarf, easily knit back together, then what’s between Johnny and Ghost must be the tight-woven threads of fine, raw silk. It’s visible to the naked eye; if you reach out, you think you could brush against it with your bare fingertips.

Impenetrable. Gleaming.

You, a loose, dropped thread.

Price announces that the burgers are ready, and the men crowd the counter before he snaps at them to back off. You hook one heel around the other, twisting your fingers in your lap. An invisible wall between you and them.

The men bring the food over, setting down plates of sliced onion, limp lettuce, squishy tomato. Everything has been sitting out too long. Price sets down a platter of patties, cookie-cutter uniform, some blanketed with yellow, processed cheese.

Your empty stomach cringes in on itself. You don’t want to eat. Johnny slides in beside you, trapping you in, and his friends drag chairs over. Ghost claims the head of the table. They dig into the food with gusto.

“This is awful, Price,” says Johnny. “Told you, shoulda had seafood.”

“I’m sick of fish,” Price grunts.

Something about fresh oysters is at the tip of your tongue, but it’s trapped behind the bars of your teeth. And anyway, Gaz beats you to speaking.

“So you decided to kill the lot of us?” he asks. “Forgot we never let you cook in the field.”

“Nah, that was Johnny’s job,” Ghost says. “Where’s a meathead Scot learn to cook anyway?”

“Quite disrespectin’ my mum,” says Johnny.

They all chuckle at that. It loops around them, that ripple of laughter, and they go on to bandy stories about their captain’s culinary misdemeanors on deployment.

You shrink.

You look at Johnny. His face is animated; vibrant. The lines at the corners of his eyes have not smoothed once, with how much he’s been smiling. It’s as if sunlight is radiating from his chest, warming the room.

It visibly brightens his friends, sitting around him. Price’s gruff demeanor has softened. Gaz leans inward, elbows on the table, as if magnetically drawn. And Ghost—

You catch them exchanging a look. Speaking without words.

You don’t belong here.

The few bites you’ve managed to take of a burger surge against the walls of your stomach. Your trachea quivers against your spinal column.

“I need to use the bathroom,” you say. “Excuse me.”

It halts the flow of conversation. The four men look at you as if suddenly remembering you’re there, expressions paused in whatever shape they’d been in before your interruption.

No one says anything at all.

And why would they?

Johnny stands to let you out of the booth. You extricate yourself, and hold your gaze on the stairwell, refusing to look twice at them.

The belly of the ship swallows you with a whirlpool’s vacuum; you veer into the bathroom and lock the door behind you. Overhead, the conversation resumes, as if you left no empty space within it to compensate for.

Heat leeching up your face. Heart beating against your sternum, so hard it must be about the split the bone.

You don’t belong here.

You start heaving. Big, hard breaths, truncated, refusing both to be drawn in or released without a fight. You stagger to the sink and grip it with both hands, shaking so hard you can barely stand.

You don’t belong here. You don’t belong with anyone. You don’t deserve—

Your stomach shoves upward. You tip your face over the basin, throat convulsing, but nothing comes up.

Your vision swirls. You feel Johnny’s hand on your back, but it’s only a ghost of his touch. He’s still upstairs, with his friends.

You hear a sunburst of laughter above you, hearty and deep and shared by four voices.

Tears start streaming from your eyes, though you can barely feel them. You vibrate. It builds and builds inside you, a scream, a hurricane, gale forces whipping around and beating the inside of your skin. The quiver of your skull sends a high-pitched squeal up through the canals of your ears.

You sink to your knees.

“No,” you whimper, in the midnight zone of your voice, so that no one can hear you. “No, no, no, not again, no…”

The bath mat touches your forehead. Your shuddering mouth hangs open. You dig into the soft skin of your forearm with the nails of one hand, seeking blood.

You are a wound in the world that refuses to close. A cyst. Something here that should not be. Wherever you go is a mistake.

Heartbeat like a drum in your ears. Entire body drawing up, higher, tighter, trembling, seams pulling, self receding, bones exposed, so far out you will never make your way back.

You’re going to burst. You’re going to make a mess, right there on the floor, and they’re all going to come down and see it. It’s building in your throat. It’s at the dam of your teeth.

You wrap your arms around yourself, gripping tight.

You don’t belong here. You don’t belong here. You don’t belong here—

You don’t belong anywhere.

Suddenly, you go still.

Flying debris settles. Your airways open.

Stillness. Quiet. The next breath you take is slow and smooth.

You hear the far-away slosh of the ocean moving beneath the hull of the trawler.

Yes, of course.

You clamber upward, using the counter as leverage. As you rise, you catch yourself in the mirror.

Your face glistens. Your eyes are swollen, bags heavy beneath. It does not reflect what’s behind it—

Tranquility.

It isn’t about resolve, after all.

The truth of it settles gently in your chest. Of course. It’s about certainty. It’s about knowing, in your bones, what should and shouldn’t be. What is and what isn’t.

The way things will be, and the way they won’t.

Simple. Natural.

The evolutionary processes of your body simply hadn’t caught up. The genetic predisposition toward persistence, the silly, reactionary aversion to pain, to danger, the biological imperative of a time before now.

Now—

Turning the cold tap, you wet your fingers and dab at the puffy skin. You pull some toilet paper from the roll and pat at your face. You breathe easily through your nose, and on steadied feet, you leave the bathroom.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” you hear Gaz saying as you climb the stairs.

“Aw, gimme some credit,” Johnny protests.

You stop.

“No,” Ghost says, and it’s odd to hear contemplation in the knife’s edge of his voice. “Somethin’s changed.”

“What’s that?” Johnny asks.

“You’re…calmer,” says Ghost. You hear Price hum. “Never seen you sit this still, not long as I’ve known you.”

You hear Johnny huff a little laugh. “Guess this place’ll do that to you.”

“Hey, Johnny?” you say, surfacing.

The conversation pauses again. He looks up at you. Blinks beautiful, blue eyes.

The rueful smile you give him is easy.

“I don’t feel very well. I’m sorry. Can you take me back to shore?”

Some tiny muscle at the edge of his expression shifts.

You don’t know what, exactly, it could mean, but it doesn’t matter.

“Sure, bonnie,” he says slowly, setting down his half-eaten burger.

“It was nice meeting you all,” you say to the three other men.

They echo something back—insincere. Obligatory, you know. They’ll forget about you the moment you leave their view.

That doesn’t matter either. Nothing does.

You don’t think about it at all as Johnny helps you down into the kayak, taking your overnight bag first and then your hand. It’s cloudy overhead, cool without being cold. The wind is gentle.

He stares at you the whole time he rows. You don’t meet his gaze. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see his eyes narrowed, the line of his mouth tight again.

“Thank you,” you say, when the kayak reaches the beach. “Have fun with your friends, Johnny.”

“Sure, bonnie,” he says.

You indulge yourself—you look him up and down.

He really is an attractive man. Beautiful. Like the crash of a wave. You get that sense again—that he’s more real than anything surrounding him. More real than the ground beneath your feet. Than the ocean behind him.

More real than you.

“See you later,” you say, and turn away from him.

You walk the trail back, thinking about the anonymous feet that carved it into the grass. Years, generations walking the same way, down to the beach and back up. People you’ll never know. A part of something you never will be.

When you crest the rise, you see the cobbled siding of the cottage. You’d never looked at the back of it before—never thought to. It was unimportant in the face of everything else, irrelevant.

Maybe that’s why you look now. The finiteness making room for it.

At the cobbled wall’s base is a little mound of piled sand.

You go to your knees in front of it. The soil is cool to the touch, loose. Easily disturbed.

Somehow, you know what you’re going to find, even as you dig. Your fingers brush against it even before you uncover it fully, and it doesn’t surprise you at all.

Folded tightly, in a divot in the ground, is the paint-splash riot of Johnny’s pelt.

next chapter early access

a/n: had to add one more chapter because otherwise this would have been 9k words long lol

forreal this time—two chapters left!!

you knock on my door and hear loud barking and scrambling noises and me yelling "no!! down boy!! down!!!" and then when i open the door there is a single crab on the floor

I made a new sticker collection of these cute little Pridesaurs!!

They are currently available on my esty page, we got the whole gang!

ACE-kylosaurus (Ankylosaurus)

ALLY-oramus (Alioramus)

ARO-margasaurus (Amargasaurus)

BI-rachisaurus (Brachiosaurus)

Me-GAY-losaurus (Megalosaurus)

LESB-beosaurus (Lambeosaurus)

THEY-rizinosaurus (Therizinosaurus)

PAN-oplosaurus (Panoplosaurus...yeah its juts literally its name...)

QUEER-mesaurus (Quilmesaurus)

TRANS-ceratops (Triceratops)

If you are interested in owning one of these pretty pretty dinos, please consider supporting my silly art and visit my shop through the following link

I CURRENTLY RUN A 20% PRIDE MONTH SALE (May till end of June):

Etsy

ShatterHeadShop - Etsy

Shop ShatterHeadShop by ShatterHeadShop. Smooth shipping! Has a history of shipping on time with tracking. Speedy replies! Has a history of

Link to the stickers:

“Charles is the level headed one.” MY Charles. The one who threw a chair in a random direction as soon as the bar fight started? My dude who didn’t hesitate to shoot a poacher and was pissed if you didn’t kill the other one? Mr. stomped a bounty hunter to get him to talk? THE CHARLES THAT THREW MICAH LIKE A RAG DOLL?! My guy, Charles is just quiet. Sure he’s not the one to just fight random people, but he sure as hell is ready to throw hands when the situation arises. His full name is Charles “catch these hands” Smith and we respect it here.

Hi! I hope this does not come off strange, but I am a huge supporter of yours and I have read all of your writings. Are there longer fics you are reading right now that you like? Books or audiobooks? I want to expand my reading and I thought I would ask my favorite for recommendations.

Ooh, not strange at all!

Not going to lie I have been heavily slacking in reading lately due to a mix of things, but some fanfics I've been reading/finished lately have been:

meet your match (price x reader) by @syoddeye let loss reveal it (price x reader) also by sy (I need to catch up) cygnet, plucked (price x reader) also by sy this abo universe by @ceilidho (so far soap and kyle are out and kyle's made me go insane actually) THIS by @bi-writes Raspberry Girl by @peachesofteal and through me the flood also by peach This western Ghost fic by @yeyinde and this mafia ghost au also by lev

uuuuuh there's probably more but i just worked a jank ass shift and my mind is shot. also sorry a lot of these aren't super long, and are mostly fanfic, BUT i did just finish reading "Tender is the Flesh" by Agustina Bazterrica and i highly highly recommend it. i bought and read it after an anon on my old account said that As Your Skin Gives reminded them of that work, so if you're able to stomach splatterpunk then it's super good!!