Latest Posts by spacecola7 - Page 5

reposting this old soapghost doodle bc i still love it

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.

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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!!

fear of god

There's someone outside the spacecraft. You don't remember them being part of the crew. Part 12 masterlist

-

A false moon dictates the coming of night. 

You set up a cot in the medical unit again, going to your quarters to grab a spare set of sheets before returning, Gaz shadowing you the way there and back. His presence scratches at the back of your head, reminding you that he’s there at your back. You don’t ask him why he insists on keeping up this charade of monitoring your behaviour—his motives are as unclear to you as ever.  

“This isn’t necessary,” you finally manage to get out on the walk back to the medbay, the door within sight. 

“I know,” Gaz says simply. 

The door slides open and you enter with him still at your back. “Then why are you following me?”

“Those were Graves’ orders, weren’t they?”

“And you what? Follow his orders now?”

It’s difficult to determine who you actually feel betrayed by. Gaz owes you no debt—it wasn’t you that let him into the ship. The focus of your anger should be on Graves and the rest of the crew, but yet—

Your chest twinges when the door slides shut and Gaz leans against it, no different than a guard posted at the door. 

He shrugs, unbothered by the reproach in your voice. “He’s the commander.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s right.”

“Maybe not.”

“I had nothing to do with Hadir getting sick.”

“I know that.” Your chest deflates when you can’t detect any insincerity behind his words. “But Graves is in charge of the ship and unless you think you could get the others to agree with you, isn’t it better to toe the line for now?”

It would upset you if it were any less true. The hierarchical arrangement of personnel on board has always been clear, and it’s not lost on you that you’ve always hovered near the bottom, falling further from grace with every passing day. Who apart from Gaz and Hadir have been sympathetic towards you in recent weeks anyway? Nikolai’s friendship is an extension of his disposition, an affection easily given and easily taken away. Farah barely even regards you as trustworthy these days, convinced that you’re teetering on the edge of losing your mind.

She might not be wrong. 

Gaz watches you make the bed, settling into your office chair, a mite more comfortable than the stool by the counter. 

“Do you want me to set up a cot for you?” you ask begrudgingly. 

He shakes his head. “Don’t need one.”

“You can sleep comfortably sitting up like that?” 

His smile verges on patronizing. “I don’t need to sleep, love.”

Your skin crawls. You hate when he does that—when he lets you in on your shared secret, the knowledge that he isn’t as human as he appears. Whatever he is still eludes you. Alien or divine. There’s no point in asking though. That knowledge sits beyond your purview. 

You ignore him to the best of your abilities and finish setting up your cot, his words still ringing in your ears. 

Things take a turn for the worse when Hadir stops responding altogether. 

Though his verbal responses have become less and less frequent over the last couple days, the dropoff is significant. As your only patient though, you’ve been monitoring him closely since he was admitted, and you pick up on the change quickly. It’s like an itch under your skin, a sixth sense from working with sick patients for the better part of your adult years. 

Gaz picks up on the change in your mood, sitting up straighter. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” you respond through stiff lips. “Something changed.”

The base of your spine tingles when the vital signs monitor suddenly beeps, alerting you to a change in Hadir’s condition.

You flip a switch and press a button on the keyboard, speaking directly to the Ship’s AI. “Ship, what’s the patient’s status?” 

Patient's temperature is unusually elevated

Recommendation to increase fluids and decrease external temperature 

You lift his eyelids and find his pupils irregular, one larger than the other, and they don’t respond properly when you shine a light on them. 

“What can I do?” Gaz asks, as serious as you’ve ever seen him.

“We need to cool him down. His fever is spiking. I’ll get the cooling blanket—there are ice packs in the freezer over there—” You point to a refrigerator on the other side of the room. “—get the ice packs and start packing them around his armpits and groin. We need to get his temperature down while I figure out what the fuck is happening.”

Gaz moves quickly, retrieving the ice packs from the freezer and packing them up against Hadir’s pits and in between his legs under the medical gown. Hadir’s lips flutter reflexively at the cold but that’s as much responsiveness as you get out of him. 

You press the button to speak to the AI again. “Ship, is his temperature coming down?”

Negative

Patient temperature currently: 104°

Even his breathing has changed, his breaths similarly irregular and increasingly shallower. You put in the orders for another CT scan, moving quicker and typing faster than you ever have before. The breathing tube gets put in next to secure his airway and you don’t like the way his gag reflex doesn’t kick in when the tube is shoved down his throat. It signals something dangerous. 

The situation before you doesn’t bode well. Dread clings to the wall in the far corner of the room but you ignore its presence to focus on your work, throwing everything at the walls to see what sticks. 

His labs are all over the place. High fever, low platelets, high D-dimer, high FDPs. An hour passes in a blink with you running test after test to no avail—none of his results that come back make any sense—all while his temperature continues to rise. 

Patient temperature currently: 105°

Plastic backliners flutter to the floor when you rip them off the electrodes, pasting the small metal discs around Hadir’s scalp for the EEG, working as quickly and efficiently as possible. 

“Has his temperature come down yet?” you bark, too preoccupied with your work to chance a glance up at the monitor.

“No,” Gaz says curtly. “Still 105°.”

It’s all happening so quickly that you can’t seem to get your bearings. If it were anyone else on the table, you’d at least have Hadir to assist you; you’re on your own now though, Gaz barely any help to you without any real medical knowledge. 

Your heart pounds against your chest when you notice blood coming up Hadir’s ET tube. A few droplets at first, and then a trickle. 

A horrible, prophetic knowledge falls over you, threatening to collapse you. 

“What’s wrong with him?” Gaz asks.

“I don’t know—” Then his nose starts to bleed and your heart stops. The stain on the front of his gown and what you find underneath it when you lift it up confirms your worst suspicions. “He’s going into DIC—”

“DIC?”

“His blood—”

The AI takes that moment to interject, speaking over you: Patient body has used up all of its clotting factors and will begin to bleed out

Sepsis—a severe infection—an autoimmune response—trauma—cancer—so many different possible answers to explain why Hadir would spontaneously go into disseminated intravascular coagulation, but his labs tell you shit. Nothing makes sense. You can’t explain why he might be hemorrhaging because there isn’t anything in his scans or labs to indicate anything wrong with him.

More blood leaks from his face and nethers, staining the light blue of the bed a dark red. Logical objections halt in the face of the tangible, and blood is tangible. Blood is all you see. 

The final moments are harried, frenzied. You bark orders at Gaz, which he follows militarily, and struggle in vain to keep Hadir’s condition from further deteriorating, but it’s nearly impossible without being able to address the root cause. Transfusions of platelets, fresh frozen plasma, and cryoprecipitate only go so far. 

When his brain activity goes flat on the monitor, your mind goes blank. Static noise fills your head. You slump against the wall, staring at Hadir’s bleeding body on the exam table, still leaking blood from all of his orifices, the sound of the monitor blaring like a siren in your ears. 

“He’s dead,” Gaz says blandly, staring at the body nonplussed. 

“Yeah,” you rasp. Your voice is thick in your throat, devastated. 

There’s blood all over the bed, more in one place than you’ve seen in a long time—not since working in trauma units back on Earth. Every inch of your body aches as the adrenaline recedes, having reached its peak in the throes of Hadir’s final moments, jaw so tight you almost can’t unclench it.

“What happened?” he asks, almost quizzically. 

The curious lack of emotion in his voice doesn’t penetrate through the brain fog. “I don’t know—he just…” 

The weight of all that just happened comes over you swiftly. An hour ago, Hadir was fine for all intents and purposes. Stable. Now, blood stains his chin, the underside of his nose, the front of his gown, and the bed underneath him, the sweat caked on his forehead cooling as the life leaches out of his body. 

Your hands shake by your sides, a violent tremble rolling through you. 

“I don’t get it,” you whisper. 

You should’ve quarantined Hadir from the start, from the very second he was admitted into your care. You should’ve ignored the fact that his labs came back fine that first day and just assumed that the nature of his illness was more severe than it appeared. Shame and dread plunge like a dagger through your midsection.

Protocol should’ve dictated that you initiate a quarantine, but since you didn’t—

You stare at the body on the table, the ET tube streaked with blood.

—your duty now is to ensure that no one else gets sick too. 

You’ll need to seal off the medbay until every surface has been properly decontaminated and then quarantine yourself until you’re sure that you aren’t infected as well. Your eyes flick towards Gaz momentarily before you shoot down the thought of testing him as well. 

Mitigate the transmission. That thought sticks out amongst the rest. The body lying on the bed in the middle of the room is no longer a patient that needs tending to but rather hazardous material that needs to be disposed of lest whatever infected it is transmitted to everyone else on board the ship. 

It’s waste. Filth. And it will contaminate everything on board if you don’t remove it. 

Your body moves on autopilot. You wheel the bed to the ejection chute at the back of the medbay. It takes a series of codes in order to open the door to the chute and you key them in quickly and efficiently. When the door slides open, you raise the bed until it’s slightly higher than the chute, tipping the bed forward in order for the body to slide into it. 

Ejection chute engaged

Hadir’s body disappears into the chute, the reinforced metal and glass sliding shut when the sensors register that the chute door is empty. There’s a thunk from behind the wall as his body is shuttled through the pneumatic tubes towards the back of the ship, and it won’t be more than a minute before the body is projected from the ship entirely. 

Your heart skips a beat when the AI pings awake again.

Object ejected 

“I wouldn't have done that if I were you,” Gaz says, and you flinch at the sound of his voice, momentarily forgetting that someone else is in the room with you. 

Your eyes drift over to him, the room murky for a moment, the air hazy like water, like you’re looking through a film and only just starting to settle back down into your body after watching from overhead. He seems bigger somehow.

“We have to quarantine ourselves,” you say, frantically towards one of the cupboards and ripping it open, pulling out rolls of plastic to plaster over the door. “We didn’t put on any PPE, so we might’ve been exposed to whatever Hadir had.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that.”

His lips are turned up at the corners when you look over, frowning, but noise in the hallway keeps you from following up on his remark. 

The announcement over the intercom must have alerted the others, and you hear footsteps from down the hall seconds before they arrive, boots clanking against the metal flooring. When the door slides open and you see Farah standing there with Alex at her back, her face hauntingly vulnerable in a way you’ve never seen before, words fail you. 

“What happened?” Farah asks. 

“I don’t know. He was fine just a second ago and then—”

“Where is he?” she demands, scanning the room for him. “Where’s Hadir?”

“I—” The words get tangled up in your throat, terror and shame making it hard enough to breathe, never mind speak. 

Graves barrels in a second later, flushed and out of breath. He must have been in the cockpit when the intercom alerted him to the ejection chute being utilized. Nikolai is fast on his heels, less winded but just as concerned. 

You realize that from the direction Nikolai came, he must’ve been at the back of the spacecraft, and you morbidly wonder if he heard the sound of Hadir’s body ferrying through the pneumatic tube system.

“Doctor, what did you just throw out of the chute?” Graves asks, his tone hard and uncompromising, softened only by the breathless note in his voice from running halfway across the ship. 

You don’t answer.

His eyes lift to the space over your shoulder, where the patient bed is flush to the wall, the head level with the chute leading out of the ship. Blood still saturates the mattress. 

You watch as the knowledge of what you’ve done dawns on them, realization morphing into distress and horror. From behind Farah, Alex goes ashen, a hand clamping down on her shoulder to hold her in place before she realizes what you’ve done and the inevitable happens. You see it play out in your head like a movie. 

“Farah—” he starts, but any effort to steer her out of the room is thwarted by how quickly she comes to the same conclusion. 

“Where’s my brother?” Farah screams, and you wince, your head aching like there’s something else in there listening to her scream too. 

Alex has to hold her back from lunging at you, fighting to keep her in his arms, her body thrashing wildly. You’ve never seen her like this before. Grief and rage strip her of stoicism, and when her screams turn to tears, it rips a hole right through you. 

“You ejected Hadir from the ship?” Graves breathes, stunned. 

Nikolai just stares, at a loss for words. You’ve never seen any of them so obviously affected, so contrary to the image of them that you’ve carried with you in your mind for months. 

“I had to!” you shout, vocal cords tearing under the strain. “We couldn’t keep his body on board! What if it was some hemorrhagic fever—like ebola? Or worse?”

“You don’t even know what killed—” Graves roars before stopping abruptly, squeezing his eyes shut. He presses his fist to his mouth, the skin around his knuckles bone white. 

“We need to quarantine.” Your fingers tremble when you press them to your temples, flinching when you realize that your gloves are still covered in blood. “I was going to seal off the room to keep it from spreading, but now that you’re all here, we’re probably all been infected—”

“Infected by what?” 

“I don’t know.” 

A shade is falling over you. Everything feels raw, livid—a wound being prodded. The light hurts your eyes when you lift them from the floor to meet Graves’ gaze. Even the air feels caustic against your skin. 

Even your impulses don’t feel like your own, like there is some

insidious rot

fruiting under your skin.

“Are you going to say anything to them?” you finally snap at Gaz, desperation loosening your tongue. “You were here—you saw what happened. Why aren’t you telling them what happened?”

The others turn to look at him, orienting like sunflowers towards the sun. It’s the only comparison that comes to mind. And at the centre of them, Gaz stares back at you, an ersatz approximation of confusion. 

He gives a slow blink, eyes glinting with something unknown. “Tell them what? That you tossed Hadir out into space?” 

You should’ve expected that you’d be left hanging, but the reality of it is unbearable. Humiliating. 

You know what you look like to them: dangerous, erratic. Your paranoia on full display. Even Nikolai’s mouth is set in a grim line.

You can hear the accusations flying through their minds—that you caused this somehow. Overdosed him on anti-clotting medication and let him bleed out, then disposed of the body before a proper autopsy could be performed. That maybe you prolonged his illness, knowing it would lead to this.  

It happens swiftly and without word, as if planned ahead of time. Nikolai and Graves lunge towards you suddenly, grabbing you by the undersides of your arms and nearly lifting you off your feet when they haul you forcibly out of the room. Alex still has Farah trapped in his arms in the corner of the room when they drag you past her. 

“Farah, I’m sorry—I’m sorry—” 

You’re not strong enough to break free of Graves’ and Nikolai’s hold though, so you’re carried off before Farah can say anything. There’s only a split second for your eyes to lock and for you to see something broken beyond recognition there, and then the door cuts you off from her.

“You’re all fucking insane—let me go—” you scream, spittle flying from your mouth. The scream that tears out of you is so animalistic and loud that your throat squeezes up in protest, a cough forcing its way out. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”

Down the hall and towards the back of the ship. Boots echo against the metal floors, the two men on either side of you in sync with each other. Neither says a word nor responds to your screams. Their patience with your increasingly unhinged behaviour has finally crossed a threshold once thought impossible, your reputation alone no longer enough to save you. 

They all but throw you into the brig, the metal door clanging shut behind you when you’re dropped to your hands and knees, peering over your shoulder to find Nikolai punching in the key to lock and arm the door, a rueful, pained look on his face.

“Nikolai, please—” you beg, crawling to the door and curling your hands around the bar. “It wasn’t my fault—I didn’t kill Hadir. I’m sorry! He could’ve made everyone on board sick if we’d kept the body! Please, Nikolai, please—”

Your pleas fall on deaf ears. The last sound you hear is the brig door slamming shut and then their footsteps gradually recede into the distance.

a bit judge-y there simon.

early access + nsfw on patreon prints

Bartender!Ghost x Waitress!Reader Masterlist

Ghost Masterlist

Summary: You need some extra cash for rent, and you're sick of sitting at home, staring at a computer all day. You hear pub a few blocks away from your flat is looking for a server. Can't be hard, right? Well... the serving part isn't hard. But the brooding bartender that suddenly enters your life is - in more ways than one.

Warnings: cursing, misogynistic/degrading behavior towards reader (not from tf141), NSFW, humiliation, pining, masturbation, jealousy, slow burn

Check out this amazing art by blobbysblog!!!

Storyline:

pilot

interview

day one

simon's jealousy starts

hurricane shot

customer yells at you

simon gets hit on

you meet BarOwner!Price

you ask simon to take the mean customers

mitch says something he shouldn't

simon makes you cry

you both apologize after you avoid him for two days

you suggest a promotional drink for Halloween

price gets you a stepstool

price makes simon work for what he wants

you spill drinks on your shirt

simon lets some stress out

simon finds you crying in the walk-in

you and simon kiss in the stairwell

Headcannons:

the vision

pub dynamics

flirting pt 1

"DOOR!!"

flirting pt 2

when customers leave you their numbers

kyle and johnny

plans for the au

replacing simon's tools with pink ones

Bakery/coffee shop au where you have a specific policy of not serving people what they ask for, bht rather what you think they need. p1

The bell chimed, and you glanced up from the counter, offering your usual warm greeting- only to falter for just a second when you saw who had stepped inside.

The man was massive. Easily the tallest person to ever enter your little bakery. He had to duck slightly as he stepped through the door, his broad frame momentarily blocking out the sunlight streaming in from outside. He wore a hood over his head, the fabric casting most of his face in shadow, but his eyes flickered warily across the room, scanning every corner like he was expecting a threat.

He reminded you of the four men who had visited before, so he might be a soldier as well- but right now, standing awkwardly in the middle of your cozy little shop, he just looked… unsure.

Nonetheless, you leaned against the counter and offered a friendly smile. “Welcome in. First time here?”

He hesitated before nodding. “Ja.”

You gestured toward the display case filled with pastries and cakes. “Looking for something sweet? Or just a drink?”

Not like I’ll give you whatever you ask for, anyways.

He shifted slightly, glancing at the menu on the chalkboard behind you. “…Black coffee.”

Always black coffee at the scene of the crime.

You hummed, tilting your head as you studied him. His posture was tense- shoulders squared, back straight, as if he wasn’t quite sure how to relax. The way his fingers twitched slightly at his sides told you he was holding onto more nerves than he was letting on.

“No.” You declared, not bothering to lie.

His eyes snapped back to you. “What?”

You smiled, already turning toward the espresso machine. “You don’t need black coffee.”

There was a beat of silence.

Then, cautiously, he asked, “…What do I need?”

“You’ll see!”

He didn’t argue, though you could feel his gaze on you the entire time you worked.

A few minutes later, you set a honey lavender latte and an apple strudel- after some careful consideration and a good, fair bit of squinting at him in thought- in front of him with a very bright smile. “Here you go, sir!”

He blinked at it, and then you. “…This is not coffee.”

“Nope,” you agreed easily, wiping your hands on your apron. “But I think you need something warm. Something sweet.” You shrugged. “Something that’ll make you feel a little more at home here. I have a unique policy, anyways, and I stick by it.”

He stared at the cup for a long moment. Then, slowly, he reached out and took it, his gloved fingers dwarfing the delicate handle. He lifted it to his lips, taking a small, careful sip.

For a second, there was no reaction.

Then, almost imperceptibly, his shoulders relaxed.

You didn’t comment on it. Instead, you just smiled, stepping back behind the counter. “Welcome to my bakery, sir.”

“…Call me König.”

Me: tbh I love Soap fluff fics so much.

My daydreams: Soap is a manwhore slut bastard that thinks you're perfect wife material, only he's not ready to get married yet. Tells you he won't commit to an exclusive relationship before the first time you fuck, and it's such a good fuck that you go back to him whenever he calls.

He uses you to calm down after rough days/missions, cuddling you in the warmth of your home, head buried in your bosom as you gently scratch his scalp. LOVES your cooking and often stops by just to see what you made for dinner (you always make enough to share with him) or to raid your fridge for leftovers.

All while he's fucking other women too. Sure on his drunkest nights, he leaves them and barges into your home just so he can cuddle with you, but you know where he's been. He smells of their perfume, has their lipstick staining his skin, has their teeth and nails claiming what should be yours.

He knows you're in love with him. He knows that you're waiting for him, that you'll wait for him for forever. He knows that just because he's sleeping around doesn't mean that you are. You barely even look at other men.

It really is the best of both worlds for him. He gets to taste every pretty thing he sets his eyes on, then turn around and live the (fake) domestic life with you. It's perfect.

Until he gets too confident, too assured in your not quite a relationship with him. He invites you out with the lads, usually a night like that ends with him in your bed, so you happily meet them at the pub. You dress up pretty, do your make up how you know he likes (he likes when you wear mascara on your bottom lashes, likes to watch it run during the night). But when you get there, he's already wrapped around a pretty woman, arms caging her against a pool table as he teaches her how to shoot, as her ass presses right up against his crotch.

You sigh as you sit at the bar instead of meeting the group. This isn't the first time this has happened, him picking up other women right in front of you. You know this night will end with another piece of your heart breaking. His friends will look at you with pity, and you're not sure you want to face that right now.

So when a stranger slides up to the bar next to you and offers to buy you a drink, you think, fuck it, why not?

You face him, to offer a polite smile and thanks, only to be met with a startling mask. The only part of this man's face you can see are his eyes, beautiful pools of blue slightly down turned. He introduces himself, "König," and while his voice isn't as deep as his stature would suggest, it's pleasant and dripping with an attractive accent.

He pays attention to everything you say, tells you that you can do better than that little man across the pub, then changes the subject when he sees you get a little sad when you glance at Johnny. Most of all, he makes you feel like the only woman in the world. (Maybe you just have a thing for pretty blue eyes, cute accents, and big muscles).

THAT'S when Johnny finally notices you, with his arm still keeping the other tucked to his side, he's about to wave you over to the group ("just a friend" he tells her) when you stand up and leave with König, your arm wrapped around his massive bicep.

Gaz let's out a low whistle, "she did look pretty. No wonder that PMC bloke made a move."

"Lucky him." And "Good for her." Are said somewhere beside him, but Soap doesn't hear it over the ringing in his ears.

How could he pay attention to them when he just watched HIS woman walk away with another man?

This is one of my ALL time favorite writers on here! Check her out :)

Commissions are OPEN!

Hello all, I'm trying to fund money to pay for loans and keep me afloat while I look for work, and all to hopefully save up for a car. So I'm opening up writing commissions to hopefully pay for all that.

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A story or writing piece of your choice starting at $12 for 1k words, with a discount of $100 for 10k words

Two free rounds of edits for your story so it matches exactly what you envisioned

A personal exclusive copy of fiction just for you

What I will write:

Original fiction and fandom inspired stories*

Angst, whump, fluff, or a genre of your choice

Smut, NSFW, kinks, and noncon

Original characters (subject to a +$10 fee so I can familiarize myself with any relevant materials you send me)

What I will NOT write:

Underage, incest, scat/gore, self harm, or suicide

(Fandom inspired stories: Due to legal restrictions and avoiding copyright, I am hesitant to directly cite existing media, but I will more than happily take inspiration from media of your choice as part of your commission contract)

I do not use ChatGPT or AI in any form for any of my works. By commissioning me you also agree to not use your commission for AI feeding purposes.

I currently have 5 slots open for commissions. If you are interested in commissioning me, please contact me at contentviasprout@gmail.com

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animal, sick as they come

summary: Ghost has been starving his whole life. Never enough food to fill his stomach, never enough blood to cover his hands, always leaving him hungry and ready to snap. You’re the supposed solution to his problem, willing or not. (or: the kidnapped home chef au)

wc: 14.2k

cw: GRAPHIC NONCONSENSUAL SEX, kidnapping but you’re lowkey chill about it, rough sex, pain play, dirty talk & light degradation, non-consensual spanking, rough/painful anal sex, gratuitous description of cooking/food written by someone who once lit a pot of boiling water on fire and is really just trying her best

read on ao3 - see the pinterest board

You may have never been kidnapped before, but you can’t imagine this is how it’s supposed to go.

The masked man looms in the doorway to the kitchen, shoulders so wide that he can’t stand in the opening properly because he wouldn’t even fit, the very top of his head hidden by the worn frame. He’s a beast of a man, hulking in every sense of the word, and you can’t help but wonder how he managed to sneak up on you in the first place. Surely you’re not that unaware of your surroundings? He’s easily 6’4, probably no less than three hundred pounds.

Not much time had passed since you’d woken in a dark room with a thudding pain between your temples, mouth dry and throat swollen. You were sure you’d been blindfolded at first, eyes dry and heavy, until ice-cold water splashed onto your face and your eyes flew open on instinct.

He’d just… been there. One minute you were walking home, trying to avoid large puddles and squinting through pouring rain, and the next you were shivering and scared, your captor towering over your crumpled and bound form.

You’d lost control of your bladder the moment the sight of him registered. He’d looked down, snorted, and lumbered away to find a hose. 

You’d been inconsolable when he told you to strip, shaking with your sobs and keeping your arms wrapped tight around your chest. Even when he’d grunted ‘m not gonna fuck you when you reek of fuckin’ piss, you hadn’t been able to calm enough to follow his demands. It was only when he’d reached up to run a hand over his face and his shirt lifted just enough for you to get a glimpse of the piece on his hip that you’d been snapped away from your panic.

You can see the shape of it now, tucked in its holster. You’re fucking terrified that at any moment he could pull it out and end your life, like that. It would take hardly any effort at all. Just a twitch of the finger and bam, you go from captive to corpse.

“How long’ll it be?” The man grunts, massive arms crossed over his chest, breaking you out of your fearful stupor. 

You blink at him, wide-eyed and silent. He’d given you clothes – clothes that fit, to your comfort and horror – so you’ve been spared the further indignity of forced nudity, but the extra layer doesn’t make you feel much safer. 

He dips his chin when you don’t answer, dark eyes boring into yours. That only makes you clam up more, joints stiff.

He huffs. “Dinner. When’re you gonna fuckin’ feed me, bird?”

You stare at him, baffled. “What?” It’s the first word you’ve said to him without sobbing, and your voice trembles, shrill and weak.

He steps forward, angling his shoulders to fit into the room, fuck, and you skitter back, pressing yourself to the wooden cabinets. They’re tall, taller than the countertops in any house you’ve ever lived in, and the lip presses into the middle of your back.

“There’s food in the fridge,” he grunts. “Get to work.”

You’re not sure you could move even if you wanted to, your fight-or-flight instinct having settled firmly on freeze. 

He rumbles low in his chest and plants one hand on the island in the center of the kitchen, leaning over it. He’s so tall that his head nearly reaches the other side of the counter, hardly a foot away from yours. The counters are the perfect height for him. 

“What’s not clicking, girl?”

You pinch yourself, a quick twist of skin to make sure that this is all real and you’re not just trapped in the world’s most confusing nightmare.

“I-I don’t… you want me t-to cook? For you?” You manage, voice strangled.

He looks spectacularly unimpressed with your lack of understanding, and a distant part of you recognizes that you should probably be worried about making your captor displeased so quickly. However, the far larger part of you hasn’t had a rational thought since he hosed you down with freezing water and is still almost entirely useless.

He turns to the side to open his fridge, hand dwarfing the handle, and drops a chunk of frozen meat on the counter. It’s wrapped in brown parchment paper, a little string holding it closed. The fridge rattles with how harshly he closes the door and you can’t help but flinch. 

If he weren’t closer to the exit than he is to you, you’d have bolted away the second he turned his back. But he’s close enough that he could reach out and grab you with one hand if you got to the doorway, and you can’t even bring yourself to think about what he might do if you were caught. 

“Cook it.” He nods at the meat, voice bored like this is simple. Like it’s obvious, and your lack of understanding is an inconvenience that he’s rapidly losing patience with.

You listen, because it is obvious. He’s the captor, you’re the captive. At any moment, at the slightest whim, he could shoot you, strangle you, beat you, or a dozen worse things you can’t imagine for fear of ruining his dinner with your bile. 

He has every advantage and you don’t have anything but the shapeless hoodie and sweatpants he gave you. Here, you are nothing and he is everything.

So with shaking hands and tears streaming down your face nearly the entire time, you listen. 

You find a pan – he doesn’t help you and it’s incredibly awkward to try and dig around in unfamiliar cabinets without turning your back to him, but you manage it – and get the burner turned on. He steps out of the doorway again, still watching you from the hallway, and that gives you just enough bravery to inch towards the fridge, snatching the butter from it like he might lurch forward at any minute. 

It’s a good cut of meat. A ribeye, think and with not much fat on it. You’ve worked in the resturaunt business for a long time and it’s obvious to you that this is cut by a local butcher, not some packing plant. This is fresh. 

You have to stand with your back to the counter beside the stove to keep him in your eyeline. He doesn’t seem to mind, though the black balaclava covering him from scalp to neckline keeps almost all of his expressions a mystery to you. 

“How do you want it?” You manage to ask, after what must be five minutes of psyching yourself up internally and darting your eyes between him and the meat. 

“Rare,” he says, and you find that you’re not exactly surprised by his answer.

Basting the meat is the hardest part, but you manage. You’ve watched your father do this since you were born, spent countless nights in the corner of your parent’s restaurant watching line cooks and chefs and dishwashers and paying them all far more attention than you ever did your homework, nodding off in class the next day because the restaurant was open until eleven and your parents never once left early.

You could cook this meat in your sleep. Even with his minimal ingredients (he just shakes his head when you ask where the garlic is, and you quickly realize the only seasonings you have to work with are salt and pepper), you’re confident that the meat has come out tender and juicy, if flavorless. 

There are no sides. No drinks. No dessert. If you’d made this meal for either one of your parents, they’d lecture you for so long that the steak would go stone cold. 

You don’t have a plate to serve it on. When you ask tentatively about the dishes, voice hardly audible to even you, the man doesn’t answer. 

He instead begins to stride towards you, sending you careening around the island to try and keep as far from him as possible, hips crashing into the sharp edges of the counter and socks slipping across the tile. He ignores you completely as he leans over the over, sniffing loudly. 

You’ve thrown yourself, completely unintentionally, to the side of the counter with a large and well-stocked knife block. Before you even really think about it, you’re gripping a carving knife with both hands and holding it straight out in front of you, like you’re hoping he runs into you and impales himself. It’s probably your best bet, considering your knees are nearly knocking and barely holding you up.

He is entirely unconcerned by you. He grabs an oven mitt that was either always black or has been scorched so badly that it’s been darkened, the back of it split with its thin lining peeking out, and grabs the cast-iron by its handle, turning back to the rest of the kitchen. 

He snorts when he sees you, the sound distinctly amused and unafraid. “You think you could hurt me? With that thing?”

You may be shaking in fear, the knife quivering in front of you even with your knuckles clenched so tight they nearly spasm, but you still manage to find yourself almost offended.

“I’ll stab you,” you threaten, voice quiet but the steadiest it’s been since you woke up in that damp basement. “I’ll do it.”

The cheeks of the balaclava pull up, the imprint of his lips clear throught the fabric as he smiles, an indent where his teeth must be. “Don’t think you’ll like what happens if you try, pet.”

He steps around the island again, striding for the door and completely dismissing you. At least, that’s what you think until he calls, “Follow,” over his shoulder, like you’re an animal being called to heel.

The dining room is visible from the kitchen, a section of one wall carved out so you can see into each room from the other. You only lose sight of him for a second before he reappears on the other side of the wall, heading to sit at the table. 

The room has a horrible dark red carpet, the walls the same old-fashioned panneling as the hallway he’d dragged you down hardly an hour earlier. He seats himself at the head of a small rectangular table. It’s the only chair in the room despite the fact that five more could easily fit at the table, one leg shorter than the other. There’s nothing on the walls, no decor anywhere, just one table and one chair for one man.

You linger in the doorway, shifty and nervous, halfway to rushing back to the kitchen if only for some deluded sense of familiarity you’ve already built. 

“Don’t make me chase you,” he warns, eyes narrowing into a brief glare before he drops the pan in front of himself, silverware already set at his place, cast iron still smoking. “Neither of us’ll like it if you ruin my meal, bird.”

Then, he digs in. 

You’ve seen a lot of people eat. More people than you can count, in fact. You’ve seen them eat good food, bad food, life-changingly good and life-changingly bad food. As a child you’d been fascinated by the expressions on customers’ faces when they tried something new for the first time.

A woman with her eyes squeezed shut and eyebrows raised high as she bites into a new chocolate cake recipe your mother spent weeks making you taste test, moaning so loudly her husband had blushed. A man nearly collapsing over his bowl of soup on a cold winter day, just barely keeping his tie from falling into it as he desperately shoveled another bite into his mouth. You’ve seen people cry over your father’s wagyu, pepper your mother’s face with kisses after tasting her dacquoise.

This man eats like none you’ve ever seen before.

He’s like an animal. It takes him just a second to push his mask up to his nose, revealing pale skin decorated with atrophic and keloid scars both, then he’s pulling the pan as close to his chest as he can and hunching over it like a predator guarding its kill. 

He seems entirely unworried about burning his wrists on the edges of the pan, instead focused on tearing his steak into barely bite sized pieces with his fork and messily rubbing it in the extra butter still pooling in the bottom of the pan. 

He doesn’t even pick the first piece up with his fork. He pinches it between two fingers and pushes it between thin, scarred lips, ignoring what must be a burn on his fingertips. He chews twice, then swallows. His digits shine under the low light of his dining room, juice from the meat dripping down his fingers to cover his hand, nails choppy and with a little piece of fat stuck under one until he digs it out with his tooth.

You gape as he does it again and again, pushing two, then three pieces into his mouth at once as he works through the meat. 

It was a massive steak. It took more than half an hour to cook, if the clock on his stove is right. It’s gone in less than five minutes.

He moans as he eats, nearly pornographic in a way that makes you shift in discomfort. The steak is rare enough that the juice dripping from it is pink, the meat itself a brighter color than the man’s thin lips. Juice sluices down his chin as he chews with his mouth open, bits of the meat caught between crooked teeth. 

When he gets to the last piece of the cut, half of it submerged in butter, he holds it in front of himself for just a moment. Then, he turns to you for the first time since he left the kitchen.

His lips are flat, expressionless, as he holds the piece of steak up in front of himself. His elbow is planted firmly on the table to keep his hand in his eyeline, and he looks at you expectantly, silent. 

Your stomach growls, loud enough for him to hear. His lips twitch up in a smirk before he smothers it. You glare. You have no idea how long the drugs knocked you out for, how many days it’s been since your breakfast omlette. Standing over the oven, smelling the steak as it cooked, has made you hungry. 

The two of you are silent as you inch forward, hardly daring to lift your feet from the carpet. It doesn’t take you very long to reach the table, not when the room is as small as it is.

You shift the knife to just your dominant hand, your now free hand reaching forward slowly as you keep your eyes trained on his. The steak is still so hot that steam is still curling from the pink center of it, right between his eyes. He’s still as a statue.

Then, the second your fingertips brush the meat, he snatches it back, slipping it between his lips. 

You flinch back as your mouth drops open, offended and startled by his sudden movement. Your fist tightens around the knife, no longer so limp at your side. 

He chews with his mouth open, smiling meanly at you. His teeth are stained pink from the juices, and you think for a moment that it almost looks like his gums are melting. 

“Forget your manners, pet?’ He asks, only swallowing once he’s finished talking.

You wince at the lack of manners, your p’s and q’s brow beaten into you with a stiff wooden spoon to the back of your hand when you were young, shocked to see someone ignore what you’ve always seen as instinctual and then ask you about manners. “What?”

He leans forward in his seat, greasy hand set on his jean-clad knee. “You didn’t say please.”

You blink at him, caught in some sort of trance that you have no idea how to pull yourself out from. “Oh.”

He sits, still and silent, for several long moments, belly rising and falling beneath his folded fingers, before speaking again. “You’ll call me Ghost while you’re here.”

Your brows furrow a bit but you nod, fingers trembling where they rest limp against your thighs, knife almost entirely forgotten in this almost-hypnosis he’s dragged you into. You can’t quite make your lips move enough to give him a verbal answer, but he seems to accept the nod. 

He snorts, eyes narrowed as he looks at you. He doesn’t even have to tilt his head up even though he’s the one sitting. The realization makes you sweat, something hot igniting low in your belly. 

Before you even register that Ghost is moving, he’s snatched the knife from your now-slackened grip. He drops it into the pan immediately, the handle and blade both becoming drenched in the butter. 

You’d nearly forgotten you even had the knife but the lack of it now drags the fear back up your throat, makes your heartbeat louder and your fingertips colder. 

“Don’t need that,” he grunts, leaning back and folding his hands over his belly, fingers sliding against the fabric and already staining. This close, you can see that it hangs over the hem of his pants just enough to cover the button. You swallow thickly. 

“‘S good,” Ghost says, looking you up and down. Just like in the kitchen, the chair and table here are taller than what you used to, like they were tailor made for your captor instead of bought from a store. You’re only barely taller than him even as he sits, but he somehow still manages to make you feel like he’s looking down on you. 

There’s something in you that keeps you from backing away, even though being hardly a foot away from him makes the backs of your eyes sting with tears. It’s like your feet have sunk through the floor, like you’re up to your knees in shag carpeting and you can’t even try to get yourself out until the behemoth before you looks away.

“Congratulations, girl,” he rumbles, lips quirked up into a mean smile. “You just bought yourself a life, right here with me.”

You can’t stop the tears from falling, shaking hands clapped to your mouth in a fruitless attempt to muffle your sob. 

Ghost leans forward, smile growing when you stumble back until the small of your back meets the half-wall. “What’re you cryin’ about, doll?” He lowers his voice, like he’s sharing a joke with you. “Think I won’t treat my new pet well?”

Your heart feels like it’s going to beat so hard it gives out, its galloping thump felt even in your teeth, gums numbing. Your tears blur your vision, but you can see enough to know when he stands from his set, the chair creaking as he scuffs towards you.

He comes into focus when he crouches in front of you, his knees hovering just above your naked feet, toes curling into the carpet in a futile attempt to get as far from him as you can. 

“I won’t,” he says lowly, hot breath gusting over your face and lighting your nerves on fire. “Not until you earn it. Y’hear me?”

Whimpers eek through your fingers at his words. There’s something in his eyes that still looks hungry, little drops of grease dripping from Ghost’s fingers to your toes, and it makes you feel like prey just inches away from the predator’s jaw. 

His hand darts out, smacking your clothed thigh and making you yelp. 

“Don’t fuckin’ ignore me,” he snarls, sharp and sudden anger upon him like a wave, your thigh stinging from his hit. 

You nod as soon as the chain of words connects in your brain to mean something, head bobbing up and down quickly in desperation to avoid any more physical contact.

His eyes narrow, unimpressed. “Repeat it, then.”

“I have to–” you cut yourself off, breath suddering out of you almost painfully. “I have to earn it.”

“Earn what?”

Exasperation mixes with terror, eyelids straining to stay widened, unwilling to miss another twitch from him.

Think I won’t treat my new pet well? He’d said. You have to earn it.

You can’t think of a way to distill that down into a singular answer, not quick enough for him, at least. 

“I don’t– I don’t know,” you sob.

His movement is slow this time, but it’s no more possible for you to avoid his touch than it was when you hadn’t seen anything coming. His hand drags into your hair, nails catching on scalp, and he tugs your head back, slamming it into the wall. 

“Everything,” he hisses, the fabric covering his nose brushing against yours, snot sliding down your fingers. “You earn everything here. You work for it all. Get it?”

You can hardly nod this time, his fingers tightening around the strands of your hair and pulling at your scalp, but thankfully it’s enough for him.

“Good,” he spits, leaning back and standing, dragging you with him. 

Once you’re standing, half crouched to try your best to ease the pain rippling from your head but pushed up on your toes so his hand isn’t practically lifting you, Ghost grabs you by the elbow instead and drags you out of the room before you can even fully realize what’s happening.

He grabs you in the exact spot he had when he’d dragged you to the kitchen in the first place, each finger laid precisely where there were already bruises emerging. His grip so tight you can’t even think of trying to rip away – you imagine your arm would come off your body before Ghost’s hand came off of you. 

He drags you from the dining room and down a small hallway. From what you’ve seen of the house, and what you can remember that isn’t clouded over by a haze of panic, the floor-plan is closed off, more claustrophobic than anything else. 

Every room seems connected by a new hallway and they're each thin enough that you couldn’t walk by the man’s side – the two of you might not even be able to walk chest to chest without somehow getting wedged between the wood-panneling, considering the bulk of him. 

Your toes drag, catching on the warped wood floor as he pulls you behind him. Your hands are wrapped around his wrist in a wasted but desperate attempt to keep everything below his grip from going numb, leaving your choking whines and sobs and pleas to rush out of you, voice bouncing off the panneled walls. 

Ghost ignores you entirely, doesn’t even seem to notice when you dig your nails into his skin and you try your best to yank. 

You start to grasp at the walls, trying to slow his stride in whatever way you can. You have no idea where he’s taking you, no idea what you’d do even if you did somehow manage to break free from him, but you try nonetheless. 

He doesn’t react, no matter how much you scream and hiss, no matter how much you claw and kick and make your body dead weight, nearly breaking your wrist from the way you yank and twist. 

It’s only when your fingers catch on the edge of something thin that you’re given a tangible thing to wrap your hope around.

You only realize it’s a picture frame once you’ve already yanked it from the wall, the photo itself a complete mystery to you.

It’s the adrenaline that makes you pull back and slam the frame glass-first into the side of his head, reaching up as high as you can to make contact. There’s a horrible crack when glass meets fabric, a screech when you drag it down the side of his face, glass catching on mask and skin and more glass.

Ghost doesn’t let you go but he does stumble into the wall, grunting like a bull and batting your opportune weapon like it’s hardly more than an annoying mosquito, sending it crashing to the ground despite your death grip. 

He falls back into the wall, tugs you with him with enough force to nearly knock you off your feet, your head a mix of fear and victory and adrenaline and pain and more fear, coherent thoughts a far-off dream.

“Little fuckin’ cunt,” you hear him spit, heavy boot smashing fallen glass into further pieces as he turns to press you against the wall with his body, heavy and hot against you.

His eyes are raging, scarred lips curled to bare his teeth and little pieces of glass sticking from his skin and balaclava. 

You only have about four drops of blood to speak of for your desperate attack, and with your kidnapper furious and holding you down all you can manage to think is why the fuck did I do that? What was I thinking? 

There’s no room for anything but shame when you’re staring down the barrel of God only knows what he’ll deicde to do to you. 

“Off to a bad fuckin’ start,” he hisses, spittle landing across your cheeks. “Thought I’d be nice to you. Send you off to sleep with hardly a damn scratch.”

Ghost snarls, shakes his head like a beast shaking off fleas. Glass goes flying around his head. You can hardly breathe.

“Tha’s not good enough for you, is it?” He says, hand coming up to lock around your throat. You’d cry out if he left you enough air, but he’s squeezing so tight you can barely get enough breath to stay conscious. 

“You need a heavy hand, ‘s that it, pet? Need someone to show you what happens when you fuckin’ misbehave?” He pulls your head a few inches away from the wall on the last word, slamming you back enough to rattle your brain in your skull, eyes unfocused and hardly seeing and unable to groan with his hand squeezing your airway shut. 

You try to shake your head, can’t manage to do anything more than shift with the grip on your throat. You think, briefly, about how he could snap your neck with one hand. His palm rests over your vocal chords, fingertips pressing against the nape of your neck. A flick of his wrist and you’d be dead. You think your heart may give out, overwhelmed and unable to keep up with everything Ghost is drawing from you, spitting at you.

Capture myopathy, a friend told you once, sitting beside you in a required biology class only one of you was interested in. When a rabbit is so scared that their heart gives out on them and they die. Just like that. Snap. Easy dinner for a fox. Isn’t that sick?

Sick. She’d said. This, you think, is sicker than anything a fox could do to a rabbit. 

“You’re lucky your meat was good,” he says, tone calming into something less rageful and more frustrated, hand loosening enough to let you breathe more easily but still keeping you from speaking. “Don’t mind trainin’ you up knowin’ you’ll be an investment. Just need some work, huh?”

You try your best to nod, eager to pick training over certain death any day. 

He hums, thumb stroking the crease of your skin between neck and shoulder and you can’t stop your shiver.

“Don’t worry, bird.” His teeth gleam when he flashes them, finally leaving your space. He practically throws you in front of him with the hand on your neck, letting it shift to wrap around your nape so he can guide you forward. “I’ve had pets before. All those tears tell me you’ll at least be easier to break in than the boy was.”

You only have a brief moment to wonder who the fuck the boy is, if he’s in this house, and what that could possible mean for you, before Ghost is nudging open a rickety door and nudging you down the stairs. 

He lets you go once you’re firmly on the narrow staircase and taking slow, tentative steps out of fear you’ll miss one in the dark. Ghost takes his hand from you, looming as you make your leaden-footed way down.

You can’t stop your sniffles or your tears, terrified of the nightmares that must be waiting at the bottom of the staircase and back in the basement you’d woken up in. You know some of what waits for you, what the room will look like and what will be in it – Ghost had been with you since he dragged you to the kitchen, there would’ve been no time for him to change anything – but you’ve got no idea what training means or what Ghost will do to you when your feet hit concrete. 

You don’t move any further into the room when you reach the bottom, Ghost easily stepping around you and choosing to ignore you in favor of looking for whatever he’s decided he needs. The sight of a small carabiner with keys latched to one of his belt loops makes your idea of running back up to the door leave as quick as it comes.

“Over here,” Ghost calls, back turned to you as he crouches down and fiddles with something at the wall.

You don’t move, feet anchored to the floor.

He huffs when he doesn’t hear you following him, shifting one knee to rest on the ground so he can turn over his shoulder and level you with an unimpressed look.

“You really want to make me come get you?” He rumbles, and the threat is enough to get you rushing forward then pulling to just as sudden as stop just out of his arm’s reach. 

It doesn’t matter much, you can’t really do anything to stop him when Ghost’s arm darts back to grab you by the knee, his torso leaning back to get a hand on you and tugging you forward. 

You can’t keep yourself from falling to your knees right at his side, nothing around for you to grab onto other than him and even looking at a face-full of concrete you know not to make any unnecessary contact with Ghost, not if you can help it. 

The weight around your neck is sudden and unexpected, his quick movements around your head even moreso. You don’t even have enough time to decide if it would be worth it to try and fight him off before there’s a resolute click, and he’s pulling back with something thick wrapped around his knuckles.

It’s a chain. Silver, hardly a hint of rust on it, thick and well-kept, and leading right back up to your neck.

You don’t put it together until shaky hands come up to press around the- the collar. Thick leather, two or three inches wide, just tight enough that you can feel it on every exhale. 

A collar. A collar with a chain leash, heavy enough that you can feel the hint of pressure pulling you towards Ghost, the length of the chain that’s not tight in his fist resting in loops by his boot. 

You can’t do anything but stare up at him, wide eyed and trembling, can’t begin to think of what to do before he’s standing and tugging you with him.

“Here now,” he grunts, not bothering to give you any time to get to your feet. You sort of stumble after him, knee scraping the ground as your head is jerked along. You can’t let yourself lag at all, not unless you want to get dragged along by your neck.

You feel like you’re moving through quicksand, every move only making things worse for you. Every forced step forward is another step closer to him, every jerk of your head pulls at the hair stuck in the back of the collar that he hadn’t bothered to move before locking it onto you, every panicked breath only serves to keep your breathing short and hitched.

Ghost drops himself onto the small cot pressed against the wall, it’s metal legs creaking under his weight. You can’t straighten fully with how short he keeps the chain, which leves you in a terribly vulnerable hunched position, eye-level with his stomach and bent at the waist, knee throbbing.

“Over my knee,” he rumbles, voice quiet. “Get this over with.”

You stare up at him with wide eyes, panting open-mouthed, drooling. A panicked animal with its leg caught in a trap, unable to do anything but stare up at the jaws closing around its body.

“Please,” you beg, voice hardly a whisper. “Don’t hurt me.”

His eyes are hard behind the mask, mouth a firm line as he looks down at you. You can feel your heartbeat in your throat beneath the thick leather. 

Ghost doesn’t give you another chance to obey. One quick jerk of his hand and you’re toppeling forward, choking on spit and holding your hands out to catch yourself. 

He manhandles you quickly – one hand on the chain yanking it further down, head forced lower than his knee while his other hand grabs you by the hips and hefts you on top of him, elbow jamming itself between your thighs while blood rushes to your head. 

You yelp, legs kicking out as you push at the bed with one hand, the rough ground with the other, throwing your head back and forth as much as you can with the leash giving you almost no room to move.

“Settle,” Ghost hisses. You don’t listen, can’t listen with the way panic alone rules your mind, and in response he lands a harsh smack on the center of your ass, enough to push you forward a few inches.

Your pleas come to a sudden stop, breath stuck in your throat as you absorb the pain, a noticeable sting even through the sweatpants.

“You’re gettin’ fifty,” he grunts when you’ve gone silent, tucking two fingers in the back of your pants and tugging them down, lifting up one knee to lift your torso so he can yank them to your waist. “Take ‘em, then we’re done.”

“No, no, please, God,” you choke, one hand flying to your mouth and pressing against it. Tears stream down your face, cheeks blazing with heat, a horrible mix of terrified and humiliated that leaves you all but limp over his legs.

Ghost snorts above you and you jump when you feel his cold hand make a pass over the fat of your ass. “Won’t be thinkin’ that much longer.”

You only have a brief moment to think hysterically is he making a joke right now? before there’s a horrible pain on your ass, the smack loud in the otherwise silent room.

It takes a second for the pain to hit you, but when it does you yowl. You push up on his thigh with both hands as another smack rains down, pulling as hard as you can against the chain.

“Stop, stop, stop it!” You screech, toes sliding uselessly against the cement as you writhe, all of your struggles doing absolutely nothing to stop his hand from falling again, this time right on the center of both cheeks. 

“Y-You can’t- you can’t d-do this!” You wail, throat filled with tears and snot as you realize you can’t even get close to standing, not with his grip on the chain as immovable as it is. “Stop!”

His next smack is his hardest, his grip around the chain loosening at just the right time to allow you to be sent sprawling over his lap, sobbing at the pain that lights up your backside. It hurts, and now your forehead is nearly pressed to the floor, leaving you completely off balance.

Ghost grunts as he shifts one of his legs, tucking your flailing limbs between his thighs and forcing you to be bent over just the one thigh, knees hovering inches off the ground.

“Stop your fuckin’ wailin’, Christ,” he hisses, peppering you with more spanks, each of them as hard as the last and forcing all the air out of your lungs. “Damn lucky this is all you’re gettin’. I should make you count ‘em, start over every time you get one wrong.”

You cry out at that, wriggling desperately and only serving to push your ass further into the air, trapped on both ends.

“We’d be here all damn night,” Ghost mutters to himself, hardly audible over your fit. “One picture ain’t worth bruisin’ my hand over.”

Your feet just barely brush against his thighs when you manage to kick up, but you’re embarrassed to find that you don’t have the strength to do much more than hang limply in his hold, one hand reluctantly wrapped around his calf to keep yourself from falling to the floor. 

Your tears and sobs don’t stop as he continues his assault on your ass, but there’s a part of you that almost… settles. Not into the pain, not when he’s smacking you hard enough to jolt your body forward and make you wail at every new touch, but into the steadiness of his smacks.

He doesn’t wait more than a second between hits, each spank no heavier or lighter than the last. It hurts, hurts worse than anytime you’ve burned or cut yourself in the kitchen, but after the first minute or so your body comes to expect what’s coming.

That doesn’t make it any easier to handle. You couldn’t stop your crying if you tried, like his hand is resting on your tearducts instead of your ass, squeezing every bit of moisture out of your eyes. 

He stops at some point, hand resting on your cheeks. He squeezes, nails digging in deep, and pulls your cheeks apart. You sniffle at the indignity, free hand covering your eyes as your face crumples.

“Half way through now,” Ghost says, ignoring the way you cry out. You can’t imagine taking one more hit, let alone twenty five. 

He shifts back on the cot and for a moment you have absolutely no idea what’s happening. It’s not until he not-so-gently readjusts your legs, his own laid out flat in front of him with his feet hanging off the cot, your body readjusted so you’re lying properly over his thighs.

It’s more comfortable, certainly, but you’re not sure you want comfortable right now. It feels impossible to imagine the brute above you as thinking of your comfort, completely analogous to his actions and leaving you a confused and weak mess. 

Ghost shifts his hand along with the rest of him, dropping the chain entirely in favor of resting a heavy palm on the back of your neck, equally as effective at keeping you still. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t comment on your heaving breaths or shaking thighs, just lets you breathe with your hands curled beneath your chest and your forehead pressed to the thin sheet covering the cot.

The next spank catches you completely off guard, your body having gone limp and leaving you unprepared for the sudden pain. It reignites your sobbing, your throat on fire from all the screaming you’ve done. You can hear your voice crack as you absorb the pain, shoulder shaking.

“Christ,” Ghost sighs, hand briefly leaving your ass. 

He’s lifting you by your hair a moment later, thick fingers laced through the tresses as he pulls your head back and stuffs something in your mouth. You whimer at the feeling, tongue working at the frankly disgusting taste, brows furrowed.

“Keep that there,” he orders, and you just barely get a glance of the side of his head before he’s shoving you back down, face-first. You realize, blinking slowly, that he’s shoved his mask in your mouth. “Can’t be bothered to teach you to shut the hell up, gonna hafta work on that once you learn how to behave.”

He spanks you again and this time your sob is muffled as you bite down on the fabric and grind it between your teeth. 

His pace is slower now, hand more thudding than stinging. It feels like he’s putting his weight behind every smack, each one delivered with what you’re sure is bruising force. Though truly you can’t tell much of a difference, not with your whole ass already feeling like it’s on fire. 

It gets harder and harder to differentiate between new and old pain as he lays brutal spanks over spots that are already hot and throbbing, varying the strength of each smack this time. You sink into the pain, limp and unable to do anything but take it.

“Better,” Ghost says, the rough pads of his fingers rubbing your scalp when you jerk at the sound of his voice. His next hit lands on the crease between your thigh and your ass, but your whine is almost silent. “Can hear myself think now, for one.”

Another smack, and your body doesn’t even jerk this time. You’re not even fully present in yourself, mind floating. You don’t quite feel like an outside observer, more like you’re just a few inches removed from the situation. All your sensations feel dulled, and you bear the pain as best you can. 

“Can enjoy the sight too,” you hear him say, and suddenly there are pauses between each smack, a little break Ghost takes to rub your glowing ass and thighs as much as he wants before laying another handprint across your soft skin. 

“‘S too bad I don’t fuck where I eat,” he muses, and you groan into the mask at a particularly rough hit. “You don’t take much fightin’. I like that in a girl. Go down real easy with a firm hand, don’t you?”

You shake your head as best as you can, which really isn’t much at all. He snorts at your effort, tightens his fingers to keep your head still.

You’re sapped of all energy, unable to move even as his punishing spanks linger lower on your ass, and even when he bullies a hand between your thighs and spreads your legs.

“Look at that,” he says, voice low. You can feel it through his stomach, goosebumps racing from your ribs to the rest of you. “Dirty girl, are you?”

You’ve got enough wherewithal to try and squeeze your legs shut when his fingers prod at your center, yanked back into your body at the sharp turn from painful to… something else.

He strokes two fingers over your slit, and you groan at just how much slick you can feel him spreading. You have no idea when it happened, have no idea why it happened, but you’re drenched between your thighs. Your cunt feels as hot as your ass, and the realization yanks a horrible little whine from you.

“Guess that wasn’t much of a punishment,” Ghost muses, spreading your lips and letting cool air ghost over you. You feel him blow a breath across you and struggle more than you have since he’d laid you flat across him, knees coming to tuck up under yourself.

“No,” he says simply, landing a horrible, smarting slap to your pussy. It sends you flat to your tummy again, squirming against him and wailing through the pain. It hurts. “Down, girl. No strugglin’ now.”

He only continues to stroke you, now pushing the steadily dripping wetness from your clit to your asshole, making you tense and writhe where you’re pinned, his order ignored.

“Think I’ll do the last few here,” he says, landing another harsh smack to your center, this time focused on your clit. “Make sure you remember your lesson.”

He doesn’t wait any longer, just begins to lay quick, harsh slaps all across your cunt – your spread lips, your hole itself, your clit. Once, even, on your bottom hole, digging his nails into your stinging cheeks to spread you wide for him.

It hurts more than any of the smacks to your ass did, undeniably, but you’re sapped of all energy and find yourself hardly able to cry, let alone struggle. You’re too busy being swept away in a maelstrom of pain-pleasure you’ve never experienced before to even try defending yourself.

Your only option is to lie still and wait for him to finish with you. So that’s all you do.

It feels like it’s been an eternity when he finally stops. 

The hand near your ass gropes you firmly, pinching what you can already feel are tiny little raised spots from where his palm landed the hardest. 

You don’t have the energy to even think of struggling when he finally moves you off him, letting you flop uselessly to the cot as he moves out from under you. There’s the sound of metal clinking, the tension from the collar finally eased as he lets it go completely.

He doesn’t bother to pull your pants up, but he does nudge your legs closed. It’s a bit of decency you didn’t expect from him. 

You can’t do much more than blink wearily at him as Ghost reaches to tug his mask from your mouth, lip curling in disgust at the drops of saliva that fall from it. Good, you think. That’s just the start of what you deserve, bastard.

He crouches in front of you a moment later, bringing his face into full focus in front of you.

He’s… not traditionally attractive, that’s for sure. Even your defeated and exhausted mind can recognize that you would’ve avoided this man had you seen him on the street. Probably would’ve even risked being seen as rude and crossed to another sidewalk before he walked past you. Seeing as this is where you’ve ended up, your instincts wouldn’t have been wrong about him.

He’s got a square head and blond hair buzzed close to the scalp. The scars you’d seen across his cheeks and jaw extend further up his face, something textured across his temple that you can’t guess the cause of, eyebrows patchy and only half-grown in from burns, little bumps decorating his scalp.

But there’s something captivating about him. In his eyes, maybe, such a dark blue that you can only tell they’re not brown because he’s hardly a foot from you. There’s something about him that says look at me. Don’t forget where I am.

Though maybe, you think deliriously, you’re only thinking that because he’s the captor who just spanked your ass raw and dragged his fingers through your cunt.

“Rule one,” Ghost rumbles quietly, breath gusting over your lips. “You hurt me, I hurt you. Heard?”

It takes all the energy you have left to nod, eyes falling shut even as the little prey voice in the back of your head screams at the danger so near, never mind that you haven’t been able to do anything to keep him from you. You’re too loud to listen to the voice anyways, only a very distant part of you acknowledging it as you slip into a sort of half-sleep.

You don’t hear him leave.

From there you settle, bizarrely, into a routine. 

Every day begins with you waking up in the basement. Always before Ghost comes to get you, some primal instinct buried deep knowing that you need enough time every morning to brace yourself for seeing him.

He locks the chain, the leash, to a hook on the wall a couple feet above your cot every night, the key to the padlock always left on him. The chain is long enough to give you plenty of room to roll and shift in bed at night but it’s too short for you to reach the small bathroom across the basement. There’s no clock for you to keep track of time with but you spend what must be half an hour every morning just sitting on the cot, waiting for Ghost to come get you.

He’s always nearly stumbling when he comes down the basement stairs to fetch you, sleep keeping his bones heavy. It’s only in the mornings when you see him with his shoulders hunched, movements weighted down, any other time he’s perfectly alert. 

You think, at first, that your best shot at trying to hurt him would be in those early mornings when he’s groggy and slow moving, but Ghost never lets you off the chain when he’s like that. It’s always after he’s stiffened up, shoulders rolling back and permanent-scowl firmly back in place.

He’ll unhook the chain from the wall first, rarely saying a word as he half-drags-half-leads you over to the bathroom, doesn’t let you close the door while you do your business and shower.

(There’s a way he looks at you in the morning, when he’s at his rawest. Something animal and hungry in a way you don’t see even when you serve him his meals, pupils blown and lingering on your curves, unabashedly staring at your ass when you glance over your shoulder at him.

It had been terrible, at first, to get naked in front of him. He’d just stare, and most days you could see his hardness tenting his pants. Hell, some days he came down the stairs with his cock making itself plenty known, not a speck of shame in him.

You’d once listened to him jack himself off while you were in the shower. You’d had to step over the puddle of cum on the tile when he’d tugged you out of the room, nearly slipped into it when he’d pulled you just a little more harshly than usual.)

The chain stays in the basement, always unlatched from your throat along with the collar before he shepherds you up the creaky stairs, never much more than a foot or two away from you. 

Then, breakfast. 

It had taken a while for you to really believe him after he’d said you were only there to cook. What kind of person kidnaps a woman just to keep her as a private chef? But days went by where he never once touched you any more than necessary to get the collar on and off, his only reaction to your body a seemingly unintentional erection and usually ignored when you were naked. 

Days, weeks pass where all you do is cook. Three meals a day, snacks when he’s hungry (which seems to be always). 

Ghost’s cabinets were bare the first week of your captivity. He had enough meat in his freezer to last him months, but little else. There was a loaf of bread on the counter, a few condiments in the fridge with crusted lids and misshaped bottles, and some cans of soup in the pantry. Nothing else. He’d drop a cut of meat on the counter and expect you to work with it and seemed plenty content when you served him the blandest roast chicken of your life.

It took you three days until you worked up the nerve to ask him to go grocery shopping. It was the first thing you said to him that wasn’t a plea for your freedom. 

You’d been terrified that you’d end up face down ass up over his thighs again, your ass still bruised from his first punishment and his subsequent much quicker corrections. But he’d hardly reacted, had just given you a piece of paper and a short pencil with bite-marks on the eraser, told you to write what you thought you needed.

He locked you in the basement for hours (you tracked the sun through the sole window as best you could, left behind fear and anger for boredom around what you guessed was the three hour mark) when he left. Briefly, you’d regretted asking in the first place. If the bastard wanted to eat nothing but protein and die of a nutrient deficiency, who were you to stop him? It would serve him right.

But you have nightmares, sometimes, of being stuck in the basement. Your captor dead in his bed, fallen to the bathroom floor with his head cracked open, bleeding out in the forest one of the times he goes off hunting. And you, stuck here, chained to a wall. No key, no way out, no one to find you.

A part of you had breathed a sigh of relief when he came home, letting you up to the kitchen and supervising while you dug through the plastic bags and put everything where you wanted it.

He doesn’t… do much during the days, is the thing.

He goes hunting, sometimes. You find that that seems to be his most consistent outing. He’ll spend hours out there at a time, sometimes coming back with nothing and other times coming back with a twelve-point buck you watch him drain through the kitchen window. He also has to keep his weapons – his many, many weapons – in shape, and you find that it’s not rare to spend an afternoon watching him clean guns or sharpen knives.

You enjoy his hunting moods most. He’ll disappear for hours on end to even find his kill, then spend days skinning and preparing the meat, then doing whatever it is he does in his shed with the bits of the body he doesn’t bring you to cook. Those days spent in the forest or the shed for him guarantee you hours of time alone, which isn’t nearly so miserable when he doesn’t keep you in the basement. 

Sometimes he goes out after dinner. You’ll hear the front door slam shut after he locks you up in the basement, his truck’s old engine loud enough to be obvious when he revs it. You’re never sure where he goes, who he might even go with since he never takes calls, but you also have little interest in asking.

But most nights he watches TV. Almost exclusively old VHS recordings of The Price is Right, Wheel of Fortune, Password, and shows so out-of-date you’re sure you could count the pixels on the screen. He’ll roll himself a blunt and relax into an old recliner with cracked leather, eyes half-lidded and hazy.

(You watched him rest a hand in his pants, once. He hadn’t even been focusing on the TV, eyes far away and breathing heavy as he stroked himself slowly beneath his jeans. You don’t even think he finished, he was just… relaxing. You’d decided to just be glad he wasn’t coming after you for that job.)

Sometimes he’ll watch the same Manchester United games every night for a week straight, grunt approvingly or shout at the TV at the same points no matter how many times you’ve seen him watch it. By the end of your first month in his captivity, you could guess who scored every goal in the team’s 2012 championship game. You have absolutely no idea why he doesn’t just turn on the newest games.

You learn quickly that Ghost mounted a hook to nearly every wall in the house, and that he’s not shy about chaining you in the same place for hours at a time and leaving you to your own non-existent devices while he lumbers off. You spend the most time in the kitchen, undoubtedly, but you find that the horrible plush carpet in his living room isn’t too uncomfortable to sit on either.

It doesn’t take many days for your fear to turn to boredom, is the thing. Absolute, complete, mind-numbing boredom. There’s simply nothing to do but watch Ghost, and for a kidnapper he’s turned out to be spectacularly uninteresting. 

He’d laid out the rules in the first few days. You hurt him, he hurts you. Listen to his orders, don’t make him repeat himself. Don’t try to escape, you won’t find anyone to help anyway and he doesn’t want to chase you down. Don’t try to fuck with the food you make him, he expects good meals consistently.

It had been the third you’d struggled most with, though you could hardly blame yourself. You’d thought he was going to make you bleed when he caught you trying to throw yourself out of a recently-broken window.

He’d taken you over his lap a few more times for smaller infractions too. To make sure the lessons stick, he’d said. They did. Ghost hits hard, and even after just his first punishment you’d been plenty cowed. You don’t give him many reasons to punish you again.

The bright spots in your life are, as they have always seemed to be, food orientated.

There’s a part of you that hates how much time you think of ways to quite literally serve him, but you have nothing else to do. He may enjoy his shows, but after about two weeks you think you may go insane if you have to focus on much more Tom Kennedy in an other-wise silent house. 

You spend long hours staring out his windows at the foggy forest surrounding the cabin, running through the recipes you’d wanted to try before you’d been taken, notes for your parents’ dishes that were never listened to, plans on what you could make for Ghost himself with what he would provide.

And he does. Provide, that is. He provides plenty.

The fifth day of your captivity, he drops a chicken carcass on the wood island. Whole, unplucked, the blood from its neck still drying.

“I can’t…” You start, hesitating at the doorway to the kitchen as he moves further in. “I’m not a butcher. I can’t cook it like that.”

Ghost looks over at you, mask covering his expression. You find that it’s a fifty-fifty chance he doesn’t pull it on in the morning, dependent on some factor you’re not allowed to know.

“I’ll cut it up,” he grunts, turning his back to you and tugging a drawer open, digging around noisily. “Don’t need you to do anythin’ but cook it.”

You shift from foot to foot as he turns back to the bird, empty trash bag at his side and carving knife in his hand. 

For a man who you’ve always assumed to be inept in the kitchen, he handles the bird like a professional. He has it plucked in less than a minute, his mess minimal.

His butchering is less impressive, though no less effective. He’s a bit of a slob with his cuts, reckless with his knife in a way that has you craning your neck to see just how much breast is left on the bone. 

Ghost is slow-moving, careful in a way you’ve never seen him when he pops the thigh from the leg joint. It must’ve been a well-fed bird during its life, there’s plenty of meat for his thumb to dig into as he carefully rotates and pulls, not too much strength but not too little. A balance he seems to struggle to find before the thigh finally pops away from the body easily, and he moves on.

It’s… intimate is the wrong word, but it’s not far off. His hands – damp from being washed, something you’d been glad to see him do without you needing to draw his attention back to you – are shiny with the bird’s juices covering them, his thick fingers brutalizing the delicate, pale meat. The job is done quickly and cleanly enough to leave you plenty of meat.

He doesn’t butcher it completely for you. He leaves the wing connected to the breast, the breast and the tenderloin one large piece of meat when he lays his carving knife on the counter. His most precise cuts are around the oysters, each of them dug out and set to the side quickly. 

It’s not a quiet process, his knife cutting through bone and joint. But it feels particularly loud with the only other sound the soft humming of the fridge, the call of a bird outside the window. 

You feel squirmy for reasons you can’t quite place when he’s finished, bird butchered and glistening under the dim kitchen light. The look he gives you, heavy and stifling, doesn’t help. 

You make him get mason jars next time he goes to the store, mourning all the stock that goes to waste because you’ve got no way to store it. He praises the tenderloins you make for dinner that night, voice rough in a way that makes your cheeks heat.

Most of the food he buys for you to work with is store-bought, but the meat continues to be fresh. He enjoys the food most when he kills it himself – he moans when he bites into a piece of duck in a way that you feel no shame in calling pornographic – but you learn that he’ll settle for anything fresh.

There’s a calendar on the inside of the pantry. 

It’s an old military one, each of the pictures a dramatic shot of a soldier, covered in filth more often than not and staring across some sort of beautiful landscape. It’s from 2014, each of the pages worn and ripped where fingers have pinched and flipped. Each of the days is already marked off with an X in the box, some of them even with little notes written in different colors from over the years.

G birthday in Lancaster

S appointment - needs ride

L retirement on base

You know when he flips it to read June that you’ve been with him a month. You’re not happy, far from it, but you don’t spend everyday shaking in fear. 

You know what to expect from Ghost, he knows what he expects from you, and you’ve settled into an almost-peaceful cohabitation. 

He takes to ordering you prettier clothes about halfway through your second week. Sweatpants get traded in for sundresses and uncomfortably tiny shorts, sweatshirts exchanged for cardigans and low-back tank-tops. 

Some days, watching him feed the chickens through the window in your daisy-print sundress and flour-covered apron, you feel almost like a homesteader’s wife.

If not for the chains hanging from the walls, of course. 

You’re wearing one of those dresses when Ghost comes to visit you in the kitchen, nearly six weeks after he’d taken you.

He’d been letting you wander the house off-leash more and more, in small doses. Whether confident in his ability to catch you or your inability to get far from the cabin, you’re not sure, but you’re thankful nonetheless. You’re still a little sore from your last escape attempt, ass smarting from his belt, and haven’t quite gotten into your head to try again yet.

You’re leaning over the counter, tasting a fresh brownie from the middle of the pan while he smokes with his Wheel of Fortune on, having sent you off with a pat on the ass and a I want somethin’ sweet, doll. 

You’ve never been nearly as good at baking as you have cooking, and you’re not sure you’ve perfected your brownie recipe yet. But you’ve always had a bit of a sweet tooth, and Ghost keeps his house cold. Biting into a still-steaming gooey brownie, the top just enough of a crust to give the bite texture, the chocolate melting into your tongue, is one of the best things you’ve done since you first woke up in that basement. 

You don’t realize you’ve made a noise until there’s an echo behind you, Ghost’s groan so quiet it’s nearly drowned out by the TV in the other room.

You jerk back from the counter, hands braced on the rounded corner as you look over your shoulder, sure that there’s a pipe groaning in the wall.

Instead you see your kidnapper, already hardly a step away and boxing you into the counter, hulking body smothering you with ease.

Your spine goes ramrod straight, brownie abandoned in its pan as he presses himself into you, hard chest pushing against your softer back. You’re silent, stiff, too surprised and scared to do more than wait. 

“‘S got you moanin’ in here?” Ghost rumbles, heavy against you. “Thought I said I wanted a treat.”

“I–” You gasp, arching when he presses his hips into you. His sweatpants don’t do anything to disguise his length and you can feel every inch of him against your back. “I–I made brownies.”

“Hm…” One hand comes to rest on your hip, his head lowering enough that you can see his profile in your peripheral. “Let’s have it then.”

You don’t move at first, fingertips tingling and lips pressed tightly together.

He huffs, smacks your ass once. He pushes the fabric of your dress up just enough to clip your skin, simple granny panties doing little to soften the blow. You gasp and jerk forward, soft stomach pressing into the counter.

“Give me one,” he says, hand rubbing where he’d just spanked, fingertips just dipping under the edge of your underwear. “C’mon, bird, I want a bite.”

Your fingers quiver as you lift the brownie in your hand to his lips, holding it just over his shoulder as he feels you up with both hands, roughly kneading the cheeks of your ass as you try to stay as still as possible.

Ghost gives you more of his weight and bites the brownie, the sharp edges of his teeth scraping your knuckles. You jump at the feeling, unwittingly grinding yourself against him. 

“Fuck, pet,” he moans, face dropping to rest his forehead against your temple. You can do nothing but stare at the cabinet. “That’s fuckin’ delicious. I need another bite.”

You’re reaching towards the pan to cut him another piece when you realize he’s shifting to his knees behind you.

“Ghost,” you whine when he takes your hips in his hands, hefting you up so you’re fully resting on the island with your toes unable to even skim the tile. Your eyes are wide as you stare at the backsplash, unable to quite believe what’s happening.

“Hush,” he scolds, and you get a smack to the thigh for your trouble. “I want my sweet thing.”

Ghost eats your cunt the same way he eats your food: voraciously, messily, and shamelessly.

He gives you no warm up, no time to prepare for something he’s only hinted at wanting to do before. There’s one broad swipe of his tongue across your sex, then his lips wrapping around your clit and your eyes rolling back into your skull.

You’re not sure that he cares about your pleasure, but he’s certainly giving you plenty. He licks from cunt to clit again and again, tongue quick and stiff against where you’re sensitive and drawing breathy moans from you, nails scratching uslessly at the counter.

He focuses mostly on your hole, licking up your slick like it’s the best thing his tongue has ever touched and leaving you pushing back for more unconsciously, wanting more than just the tip of his tongue inside you. 

“Greedy,” he huffs when you nearly slip off the counter. He slips two fingers into your leaking hole and you squeal at the stretch, noticeable even with his mouth working you over. “This is for me, not you, pet. Settle down and let me eat.”

You cry out when he laps at your clit, quick, broad licks over the bud and just enough pressure to make your mouth hang open. He gives you almost too much suction, your brain rattling around between your ears when he crooks his fingers and tugs.

He uses just one hand on your thigh and two fingers in your cunt to shove you up the counter, giving him more space to have you practically sitting on his face. He laps around his own fingers, fucking with you just enough to coax more slick for him to drink, your knees knocking against the cabinet.

Eventually, what feels like it must be hours later, you come. The combination of Ghost’s fingers pressing at just the right spot, the suction on your clit and the sound of his mouth against you making you feel insane and finally pushing you over the edge.

It’s heaven, to have him lick and suck you through your orgasm. Your limbs feel tingly, bright white starbusts flying behind your eyes as you go limp across the counter, head pressing against the backsplash.

It isn’t until he doesn’t pull out his fingers, doesn’t pull his tongue away, that you start to feel truly gone, a puppet dancing to his tune, a piece of fruit squeezing whatever juice he wants into his mouth for as long as he wants.

“Not done with you yet,” you hear him murmur, the rumble of his voice against your cunt making you moan from overstimulation. “Gonna drain you dry, pretty thing. Shouldn’t have made yourself so sweet if you didn’t want me taking it all.”

You want to growl that you can’t make yourself taste like anything, but he slips a third finger into your hold, curls his fingers and rubs his knuckles against your g-spot, and you’re coming too hard to even attempt a protest.

By the time he pulls your dress back down and pets your ass, taking a brownie from the pan without even bothering to use the knife to cut himself a piece, there’s nearly as much drool dripping from your mouth as there is your cunt.

From there, your life centers around two things: food and sex. Both of them exist only because of and with Ghost, him your constant companion as you unwillingly grow more and more comfortable in his house. 

You cook him a stew made from cow leg he’d dropped on your counter that morning. Small russet potatoes float in the broth, popped into his mouth whole and swallowed almost as completely, pieces of carrots he chews to mush and celery he avoids, wine soaked meat leaving grease stains down his shirt. 

Ghost puts you on your knees beneath the table, feeds you his cock while he feeds himself your food. You suck him as well as you can, trace your tongue over the thick vein up the side of his cock, ignore the throbbing in your jaw and try to push his foreskin back to suckle on his head.  He wraps his fingers around the base of his cock, doesn’t let himself come until he’s finished with his meal. You can’t tell if his groaning is for your work on the stew or your work beneath the table.

Fuckin’ heaven, that mouth. Want me to send you off with a full belly, huh? Bet you like your meal as much as I like mine.

Half a dozen eggs, scrambled, served with enough bacon to make you feel sick from the smell alone and half-soaked in maple syrup. 

You, needy and desperate, grinding your cunt across his thigh. You lean back as far as you can with your hands carefully resting on the table at your back, desperate to avoid his syrup-sticky fingers, and end up with a view of his cock lancing you. He scoops your slick up with his clean fingers, picks up another piece of bacon and rips it in half, offers you the bit he doesn’t take.

Please, please, Ghost, I need it so bad, it hurts and it’s supposed to, love, I said I wanted a show with my breakfast, didn’t I?

A rack of lamb, sliding off the bone, bites of it shared between Ghost and you as three of his fingers work slowly in and out of your ass, leisurely and for his viewing pleasure more than your own orgasm. Red juices smeared across your lips and face, dripping down his chin and staining his fingers. A thumb on your clit, meat shoved between your teeth as you come. 

Gonna fuck you here too. Gonna make it hurt, listen to you cry a little when I eat. Oh, hush, you’ll be fine, don’t get yourself worked up. Not yet, at least. My cock’ll spread you out at least twice this much, save your tears for when you’ll need ‘em, pet.

Sticky fruit laid across your stomach, cantaloupe and watermelon and kiwi and banana. His fingers picking them off you piece by piece, savoring them as he fucks you hard. You laid flat to the table, legs spread why and throat sore from your cries, the stark difference between the way he relishes the food and the way he fucks you like an animal making you feel wanted in a way that threatens to drown you.

You need it bad, don’t you? Slut. Pretty, tasty, perfect little slut. Fuckin’ squeezin’ my dick off, goddamm, honey. Gonna fuck you full, gonna fill you up and feed you plenty. 

Stir fry you make with hog maw, a recipe you’d never tried before given to you by a girl in cooking school who was set to inherit her parent’s restaurant. His face moving between your cunt and his meal, your whines about a UTI and cross-contamination go ignored, and he holds his bowl beneath your cunt while he strokes your g-spot with two calloused fingers. 

Tightest fuckin’ cunt in the world. Pretty little thing and her pretty little meals, just made for me, huh? ‘S that right, pet? You’re made just for me and my mouth and my cock, hm? Gonna give me a nice little dressing for my food?

A night spent in his bed, after you make him angel-food cake from scratch. Waking up to a cock pressed against your ass, chain leash and collar heavy around your throat and locked around the headboard but the sheets soft under your skin, pillows thick and his own body warm in a way the basement never gets. 

Ghost isn’t awake yet. He’s snoring like a freight train, completely unaware of the way you stare at him in the blue-dark of the early dawn hours. 

The chain is heavy in your hand, cold against your soft palms. You feel almost like you’re in a trance, the world still hazy around its edges as you shift to kneel over him. 

You don’t know how much strength it takes to strangle a person, but evidentially you don’t use enough. 

You wrap the chain tight around either knuckle, press your hands hard into the mattress on either side of his head, and hold your own breath. His snores quiet, his breathing shudders. He coughs once, twice, you feel his hips and legs begin to shift beneath you and you really put your body weight behind your hold. He goes still.

Then, his eyes fly open. 

There’s hardly time for you to think fuck before he’s flipping you onto your stomach, harsh hand shoving you into the mattress while another rips the chain from your hands and pulls.

You wail a breath as your head is pulled back, scalp nearly touching your spine as Ghost forces your back into a steep arch, ass pushed into the air.

“Fuckin’ hell,” he hisses. You can’t tell if the heat in his words is rage or hunger or some sick mix of both, have even less of an idea which one you should be hoping it is. “You tryin’ to fuckin’ kill me?”

You can barely breathe through the anticipation, the fear that’s been gone for so many days suddenly wrapped around you as tight as the collar, but you find enough breath to shout when he lands a horribly heavy hit across your ass. 

“Ghost!” You shout when he only follows it with several more, eyes squeezed shut as he overwhelms you in pain and discomfort.

“What?” He snarls, fingers clipping your cunt and making your squeal. “What, now you don’t like pain? I watched you cream my cock without a single finger in your cunt last night, girl, but this?” Another spank, harder than you’ve ever taken and burning. “This too much for you?”

You huff, squirming as much as you can in your strained position. 

“You wake me up with a goddamn chain around my neck and bitch when I beat your ass for it?” His voice is nearing a shout now, thick with what you’re sure is anger. “You’re gonna try and kill me in my own fuckin’ bed and pitch a fit when I make you sorry?”

You can’t find it in you to do anything but cry, chest tight and eyes squeezed tighter while he doles out punishment, bruising slaps landing anywhere from your cheeks to your cunt to your thighs to your hole, his hand spreading you wide for him.

“Spread,” he grunts eventually, a harsh hand shoving your knees wide. “Need to get to that hole.”

You don’t get to listen, he makes you do what he wants without giving you a chance to, and then lays a dozen terrible, painful smacks to your asshole.

You’re nearly screaming through them all, feet slamming into the bed as the pain rushes through you. He yanks the chain hard when you try to pull forward and bury your face in the pillow, forcing you to keep the tortuous pose he’s holding you to.

You feel the bed rocking with the force of his hits, spit and tears dripping down your face as you can do nothing but lay there and take it. 

“Naughty, naughty fuckin’ thing,” he spits, two rough fingers pushing into your cunt with little care for your cry. “My own little chef tryin’ to strangle me, I can’t fuckin’ believe it. I bring you here to feed me, give you a load in your stomach anytime you need it, and you wrap your leash ‘round my throat?”

“I’m– I’m sorry!” You wail, inconsolable as he roughly rubs a palm over your clit, your cunt quickly getting slick. You’re still damp from the way he’d bent you over earlier, a mix of his and your cum wet between your thighs.

“Not good enough,” Ghost hisses. He quickly fucks his fingers back inside you, once twice, then pulls them out again.

You go taut as a board when those slick fingers move up, towards your far, far tighter hole.

“No,” you gasp, struggling even pinned as you are, a sense of panic shrouding your mind. “No, no, nonono, you can’t, oh God, please, Ghost, don’t–”

Ghost drops the chain in favor of grabbing you by the throat, tearing you back so violently that you’re staring at his sneer upside down. 

“Shut the fuck up.” His spit is tacky when it lands on your cheek, mixing with your tears, and his smile looks evil as he glares down at you. “Gonna make sure you don’t even think of that shit again. Gotta make it hurt if you’re gonna learn a lesson.”

You sob as he lets you go, head finally falling limp to the bed as you turn your face to the side so you can still breathe. You watch as he reaches for a half-full bottle of lube on his bedside table, the label peeling and stained. 

“Gonna cry for me some more?” He coos, laughing when you jump at the cold feel of the lube on your ass, thighs tense with nerves. “You know I like it when you make yourself look silly, pet. Go on, cry all you want. Still gonna fuck you.”

One finger pushes the lube into your ass, then two, then three. He gives you no time to adjust, only one thrust from each digit before he forces you to stretch further, lands slaps across your ass seemingly whenever he feels like it.

“Ghost, pl-ease,” you cry when you feel the hot head of him press against you, sure that it’ll be excruciating. 

He threads a hand into your hair, pulls you up enough that he can bend to speak into your ear.

“You’ll call me Simon while I fuck your ass,” he says, voice low. “I wanna hear you scream it when I hurt you, pet.”

You listen to him against your will, the scream he wanted tearing from you and echoing the sheer pain of being fucked by someone as massive as Ghost with such little prep.

Your hole feels like it’s on fire, the pain racing through the rest of your body and leaving you limp and panting, only able to close your eyes and endure as he mercilessly pushes forward, uncaring of your pained hiccups and cries.

“Simon,” you whine when he bottoms out, warm balls settling against your neglected cunt. “Hurts…”

His laugh is mean, nasty in your ear. “Good, fuck, say it again, girl. Tell me how much it hurts.”

“So bad…” is all you manage, even just those words warbling off into nothing as he pulls out, fucking himself back in with a harsh thrust that nearly chokes you. 

“Can’t believe you tried it,” he huffs, bracing himself over you as he sets a ruthless pace, no consideration for your comfort. You can see the chain in his right hand, feel the way it just barely tugs at your neck with how viciously you’re moving along the bed. “Been waitin’ for you to give me a chance to do this to you, to fuck you up.”

Your fists clench in the sheets as you do your best to breathe through the pain, the slide of the lube only making his thrusts marginally easier to endure.

“Been waitin’ to get my cock in this hole. Wanted to watch you cry and make you put your tears in the food, gape your little hole and make you ride me while I smoke, shit. Tightest ass I’ve ever felt, love, goddamn. ‘S that feel good?” A slap to the side of your face, rousing you. “You feel good with my cock drilling your little ass?”

“No,” you moan, miserable.

“Good,” he hisses, thrusts quickly becoming uncoordinated as he stares down at your ruined face, his eyes gleaming. “You’re so much sweeter when you’re hurtin’, girl. Wanna keep you like this all the time.”

You sob at the idea, already unable to imagine how excruciating it’ll be to sit tomorrow with your ass covered in welts.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Ghost pants, staring at you ravenously. “Cry a little more for me, attagirl…”

You feel his cum shoot deep inside you before his thrusts slow, the heat spreading as he fucked you through his orgasm, face twisted in pleasure. Your tears haven’t slowed, even as the pain lessened and lessened throughout your fucking.

“Fuck, fuck, that feels good,” he breathes, grinding himself against you as he empties the last of himself inside you.

You feel nearly catatonic as he pulls out, only able to whine when he slips free from your hole and then again when he rearranges you on the bed, limbs sore and neck stiff as he continues to hold you by the leash.

“Took it well,” he grunts, shifting to lay on his back again and tossing the lube to the table beside him. “You gonna pull that shit again?”

You sniffle shaking your head no, only verbally answering when he cocks an eyebrow. “No, Simon.”

He smirks. “I’d love if you did,” he whispers, like it’s a secret. “Would love if you gave me another chance to ruin you. Just go ahead, love. I’ll tear into you whenever you want.” He tilts his head, considering for a moment. “Whenever I want too. ‘Cause you’re mine to do whatever I want with, aren’t you?”

You nod, hands tucked beneath your chin as he tugs you closer by the hip, fingers pressing into rapidly developing bruises and making you whimper.

“Yeah, gonna fuck you ‘til you cry as often as I want. And you’ll gimme those tears every time, won’t you?”

All you can do is nod, a part of you calmed and feeling safer as you watch the predator’s teeth pull away from the prey’s neck when he nods.

The plate you balance is larger than your face and still nearly overflowing with food.

It’s filled to the edges with steak, mashed potatoes, glazed carrots, and rolls. You have a bottle of wine tucked under one arm, a corkscrew held between your lips and one glass in your hand as you saunter towards Simon.

“Smells good,” he grunts. You’ve learned that his compliments are concise but rare, and you greedily take in the praise from him. “Enough for us both?”

You snort. There’s enough food on your plate to feed five people, easily. But Ghost’s stomach is never-ending, and you’d made sure that there would be no way he’d go to bed hungry.

He spreads his thighs as you approach, pats one of them like you’re not already lowering yourself to him. He takes the glasses while you lay the plate, setting his silverware to the side as he opens the bottle and fills the glass nearly to the brim.

You hum as you take in a breath of the food, that familiar sense of pride from a meal well-made settling in your chest.

Ghost cuts the food while you lean back on his chest, watching his thick fingers work. 

He lifts one of the little pieces of steak to your mouth once he’s cut it, swiping it through the potatoes and guiding you to look at him with a finger on your jaw.

He presses the tender, rare meat between your lips and you take it greedily, letting your eyes slip shut as you savor the taste. He kisses you almost immediately after, passes his tongue over the food before you can even swallow, but lets you keep it.

You giggle when he pulls back, swiping a thumb over the potato on your lip. He picks himself up another bite, pinches a bit of carrot with his steak and swallows without chewing, a moan slipping from his lips. You feel yourself dampening against his thigh, breath hitching.

“Happy Valentine’s day,” you say, voice quiet and held just between the two of you.

He snorts, ever unromantic. “Eat up, doll. Wanna have you for dessert after a meal this good.”

You smile softly at him, opening your mouth willingly when he lifts a bite of food to your lips.

Hey. Your brain needs to de-frag. Literally it needs you to sit there and space out.

If you want your memory or executive function to improve, stare out a window at the skyline or sidewalk or trees or birds on the electrical wires for like 20+ minutes per day. (With no other stimulation like a podcast or TV if you can manage but hey baby steps innit). If you're fortunate enough to have safe outside with any bits of nature, go stare closely at a 1 meter square of grass and trip out on the bugs and shapes of grasses and stuff.

Literally this will make you smarter. Our brains HAVE TO HAVE this zone out time to do important stuff behind the scenes. This does not happen during sleep, it's something else.

That weird pressurized feeling you get sometimes might be your brain on no defrag.

Give your brain a Daily Dose Of De-Frag.

Others can't understand the connection

Drew this long time ago, trying to depict the subtle atmosphere between you and Konig

happy qixi festival

Music

TEMPOREX - Around You

seeing straight men be disgusted by booktok smut recommenders has actually radicalized me to the side of booktok smut recommenders. girls your taste may be atrocious but i will never disparage you for exposing mainstream discourse to the concept of soaking through your underwear. spent my whole life listening to men talk about penises it’s about time they get jumpscared by women talking about pussy in crude detail on social media. go forth and goon my warriors

Your hair is gorgeous mister

Getting into a verbal spat with a nearby stranger (Soap) over something inconsequential when you’re forced to overhear the loud, very confident, and horrifically wrong point he’s trying to make to his buddy.

He seems quite annoyed to be interrupted at first, but then he actually gets a good look at you, and suddenly he’s more than happy to engage with your criticism—you’re tenacious. The topic far too stupid to deem either of you the clear winner beyond personal preferences, so it ends up being a fight to see who can outlast the other, and neither of you are willing to let up.

You’re jamming your finger into his puffed out chest, missing the dangerous glint in his eyes that he gets as the digit makes contact with his shirt when an uninvolved party jeers at the two of you to get a room.

Your eyebrows nearly fly off your face when your Irritating opponent snaps back with a frustrated “-ah’m tryin’!”

Every time a “came back wrong” post about Soap is written, an angel gets its wings. God I love that deranged man.

peristalsis - v

selkie!soap x reader. depression. strangers to "lovers." shower sex. cunnilingus. smut. manipulative soap. oysters as an aphrodisiac. unstable narrator. . Running away from life to the Scottish Hebrides, you meet a man who won't leave you alone. . Masterlist. Ao3.

previous

You watch him over an open book.

It’s an old romance, something from the eighties. Classic bodice ripper, billowing sleeves, tight corsets, mullets and heaving bosoms and all. Naturally, it’s set on a pirate ship, the heroine as the unlucky spoils of a merchant ship raid and the hero a lusty captain able to pierce her virgin’s desire for sexual depravity.

It could only have been more pointed at you if it had been set in the North Atlantic—it isn’t—but you glare at Soap’s back anyway.

He must be able to feel it, because he stands straight at the wheel, shoulders thrown back, occasionally flexing.

The freak.

You’d realized the joke he’d been making, once your heartbeat had slowed. Hiding the pelt somewhere obvious enough for you to see it. You live in the age of the internet—you know what it’s supposed to mean.

And you kind of hate him for it. Now, post-coitus, you can’t shove it away into a box—he is the most attractive man you’ve ever encountered. Rugged and handsome, competent at everything you’ve seen him do, seemingly at home wherever he finds himself. Everything makes him smile. Nothing seems to disconcert him.

And a nice big cock he actually knows how to use. Certainly the best lay you’ve ever had.

What every woman traveling solo, you think, longs to encounter on a solo trip across the world, but will never acknowledge looking for. An answer to an unaddressed desire; proof that satisfaction is out there to find, if it’s searched for.

A lover with no conditions. Someone willing to strip your inhibitions away, knowing your protests are only token.

You had not been searching. You’d given up searching.

And now he mocks you—with every satisfied glance he throws over his shoulder.

“Good book?” he asks, all casual and pleased. “S’ one a’my favorites. Tell me when you get to the naval battle.”

You frown. “You haven’t read this.”

He gives a little huff of amusement. “Read all of ‘em, bonnie.”

No, this is where you draw the line. A good cook, a good fuck, and a romance reader? No. No, you absolutely will not take this.

“Sure you have, Johnny,” you grouse, “you read every single stupid book on that shelf. Sure. Hell, you’ve read books that aren’t on that shelf. You’ve read every new release from the last six months, even. Why not.”

He looks at you again over his shoulder, mouth curled. “Aye. Needed ideas, once a’knew you were comin.’”

He says it matter-of-factly, with only a little bit of pride. As if it was a natural step in the process of getting ready for your arrival—renovate the croft. Stock the fridge and pantry. Plan some island excursions.

Study the erotic mind of the average woman to divine how best to seduce her.

Your frown deepens, and you lift the book higher, making it a barrier between you and him. Loser. Couldn’t he just go to the mainland for a few days if he wanted pussy? Not like it would be hard to find, for him.

You resolve to ignore him for the rest of the trip. A petty endeavor, maybe, but it’s the only one you can make.

But six hours is six hours, and you can’t read the whole time. Periodically you have to get up to stretch your legs, and the windows wrapping around the bridge draw your attention to the sea outside.

Johnny drives the trawler at a remove along the coastline, keeping close enough to the islands for easy viewing. The denizens of the Hebrides are out en masse, enjoying the clear weather, joyfully populating the land- and seascape in the absence of human interlopers.

Porpoises, so much smaller than you might have expected, periodically catch the wake of the boat, swimming alongside, playful and curious. Gulls loop in the air above the dunes, fronds of grass fluttering in the breeze. Gannets, stark white, arrow down into the waves, wings folded back pin-straight as they spear their quarry—silvery fish that boil the surface of the water in their frenzy.

Some removed part of you enjoys their pleasure secondhand. The normally-grey ocean is vibrant in the sunlight, crystalline and sparkling and as blue as Johnny’s eyes.

He seems to be in a good mood, too, although that could just be because you let him fuck you. You feel his eyes on you even as you refuse to look at him, dancing along the curves of your body the same way his fingertips might.

At one point—“Bonnie, I know you’re sulking an’ all, but c’mere.”

He gestures you over to the cockpit, and—embarrassed at being called out—you join him. He brings a hand to the small of your back, stepping behind you and pointing over your shoulder.

A gray wall of passing cliffs, and crags of rock jutting up from the churn at their base. You see ten or twelve grey-and-white seals lounging across every available flat surface, some cuddled in groups of three or four, apparently unbothered by the periodic spray of breaking waves.

“No’ where I’d choose to have a kip, personally,” Johnny says, sounding amused.

You turn your head to look at him, hard. His eyes soften when they meet yours, and he tilts his head to kiss you, undeterred even when you flinch away from it.

His hand tightens across your back, fingers digging in. He sucks your bottom lip between his and caresses it with his tongue, as he edges beneath the hem of your shirt to spread his hand across the warming skin of your back.

“I’m mad for ya,” he murmurs when he pulls away, blush high on his cheeks.

“It’s been two days,” you deadpan.

He presses up behind you, open hand sliding around to press into the low part of your belly, right at the sensitive crest of your mons; you can’t help your gasp when, at the same time, his erection nestles into the cleft of your ass.

“No’ to this,” he purrs in your ear. “Feels like it’s been forever, for this.”

When his fingers start making their way beneath the waistband of your pants, you grab his hand and wrench it away, scoffing.

“You’re just a fucking horndog,” you sneer, betrayed by the heat spilling through your core.

“Aw, you break my heart, bonnie,” Johnny simpers, but there’s a mocking edge to it. As if he knows exactly what you’re hiding.

You step away from him, folding your arms across your chest and staring out at the basking seals instead. Then—

“There’s one in the water,” you say.

A few meters away from the rocks, a round head pokes up from the surface, bobbing with the rise and fall of the waves. Its eyes are slitted closed, nostrils dilating.

“Aw, he’s bottling,” Johnny says affectionately, when he comes over to look. “Look at his wee face.”

You remember suddenly your encounter of the previous day—another lone seal, resting apart from its fellows.

“I saw one on the beach,” you say, “yesterday, after you dropped me off. A big one. You didn’t say they might show up.”

“Male?” he asks, and you nod. “Peripheral male, then. I’m no’ surprised.”

You sigh. “And that is…”

As if magnetized, his hands find you again, this time settling on your waist. It seems that Johnny’s touch is something impossible to escape, in his vicinity. He drags them down over your hips and back up almost idly, as if he’s not even thinking about doing it.

“There’s dominant males, and then there’s the rest of ‘em. Only the dominant ones get to breed at the rookeries, see? And the rest of ‘em have to wait around for the females to leave to have their chance.”

He leans into you from behind, nose in your hair, and you hear him inhale as his hands tighten.

“Once a peripheral male finds a female alone, separated from the colony, ready to go back out to sea—well, that’s his chance to pounce.”

You frown, mostly to yourself. “No matter how the female feels about it.”

“We’ve been over this,” he chides.

He brings his lips to the curve of one ear, then the soft spot behind it. His nose finds the juncture of your neck and shoulder, where the capillaries that he broke with his teeth still throb whenever you press your fingers to them. He inhales again, deeply.

“Why do you do that?” you grouse, unwilling to give him the win.

“Like how you smell,” he says, doing it again.

His tongue caresses the bruise before he closes his mouth over it—but he goes no further than to kiss your neck twice more before returning to the wheel. It leaves you reeling, half-dizzy with arousal, and when you stomp back to your seat with a frustrated growl, he only glances over at you, smirking, and laughs.

He finds a berth in the early evening to park the trawler, and at that point you’re thankful for any kind of solid ground to set your feet on, as well as enough open air to disperse whatever pheromones have saturated the enclosed space of the bridge.

You’ve been half-tempted the whole time to make him drop anchor and drag him belowdeck toward the nearest flat surface big enough for the two of you to share; as it is, you’ve simply stewed in your own juices instead, hot with angry arousal and ignoring the slick pooling in the gusset of your underwear.

Johnny steps out into the cooling air in his usual kilt and sweater, and you once again huddle in his jacket, aromatic with his musk, as he leads you onward. This time, unlike the last excursion, he insists upon holding your hand the whole way, callused fingers worming their way between yours, the captured air hot and humid between your palms.

Callanish turns out to be a henge of standing stones.

Meters-tall megaliths, squarish and narrow like broken teeth, surrounding a burial site and extending in two directions as if lining a road. Inevitably evocative of its cousin Stonehenge, with the notable exception that you are allowed to go up and touch the stones with your bare hands.

“They used ‘em for that TV show,” Johnny informs you as the two of you circuit the main ring. “Well, no’ these, they probably had styrofoam for that, but they got the idea from these.”

You lay your free hand on the nearest stone; it’s cold, and rough to the touch, a day’s worth of sunlight evidently not sufficient to warm it. Tiny spots of moss and lichen cling to the old stone, green and eggshell white.

“Why are we allowed to touch them?” you say. You think of bronze statues, rubbed to a golden gleam by millions of tourist hands.

“That’s Lewisian gneiss, bonnie,” says Johnny, laying his hand, much larger, next to yours. His thumb teases the side of your pinky. “Doubt you could make much of a mark on it. This rock here? Three billion years old.”

You look at him, seeing his profile. The expression on his face is soft—not unlike the way he looked at you earlier, on the way here. He spreads his fingers over the stone, tendons furrowing down the back of his sun-weathered hand.

“No’ just older than us,” he continues. “Older than what we used to be, a’fore we were us. Was there when we first made fire. Was there when we came down th’ trees. Was there all the way back when we left the ocean for the first time—”

He looks at you, then. The setting sun catches in the dips of his irises, setting jewel blue aflame.

“An’ it’ll be there, bonnie, when we go back.”

The wind curls around the stones with the chill of the oncoming night. Even despite the jacket, despite the walk up to the site—you feel it penetrate beneath your skin, deep into your bones.

You choose derision, to reject the shiver.

“And you have this all memorized,” you say.

Johnny doesn’t respond. He continues to stare at you, mouth in a relaxed, but inscrutable line.

You suddenly remember that you do not know this man; though he’s told you enough about himself to fill out his background—you don’t know him. You don’t know how he feels about most things, what’s important to him, why he may find one thing or another meaningful. Not the way you’d have to, in order to understand why the gaze he fixes on you feels so significant.

Whatever you’re supposed to understand in the way he looks at you now, you don’t have the ability to discern. The only thing that occurs to you is that, perhaps, you’ve finally managed to offend him.

It does not satisfy you as much as you might have imagined—

In fact, the thought drops through your belly like a rock.

Again. You did it again.

In the one place you thought you’d never have to face this—you did it again. Here is someone who seems to like even the worst of you, and you somehow found an even uglier side of yourself to show him, a squirming thing that cannot help but sling itself around with no heed for the damage it can cause.

But when you open your mouth to say something reparatory, something that certainly won’t fix what you’ve broken no matter what he might say, his expression softens into something thoughtful.

“Visited when I first came here,” he says. Completely unbothered. “After the discharge an’ all.”

You blink. Sharp heat and the numbness of cold, warring across your face.

“Why?” you ask.

“Dunno.” He shrugs, and lifts his hand from the stone, smiling ruefully. “I was a bastard back then. Didnae wan’ anything’ to do with anyone anymore. Mad at the world, a’was.”

Shucked like an oyster; scaled like a fish. Heat wins out, even in the growing chill. Tender skin scalding itself.

“And what,” you say, reflexively nasty, panic whirring up behind your breastbone, “you thought—you’d get some sort of, magical insight here?”

Johnny laughs. “Naw, a’was just pissing my money away, bonnie. Thought I’d come up here an’ try t’ knock one over.”

Tight chest. Can’t breathe. You step away from him, far away, hide it like you’re looking at another of the standing stones, but a stabbing pain spears upward through your diaphragm.

In—count—hold—out—

“Could you?” you ask, wringing something like a normal tone out of your voice.

“Nope. Paid for it later, though.”

He says it casually. He hasn’t noticed. You reach out to the new stone, drag your fingers overtop of the rough surface, imagine every little bump flipping the friction ridges of each print like pages of a book. Cold—the rock is cold. The wind is cold, and sharp with the smell of rain. The jacket is heavy on your shoulders.

The jacket smells like Johnny.

“I’m sure the park wardens weren’t happy,” you say, feeling your heart slow in your chest.

“No,” he says, and—with the silence of a lightning strike—“I drowned, afterwords, first time I went to sea.”

You look back at him. The wind picks up, ruffling the ends of his mohawk; on the horizon, a rind of darkness splits the clouds from the earth.

“You drowned?” you repeat.

The hem of his kilt flutters and dances. His gaze is intense—the angle of his brow unreadable.

“Aye, bonnie. I did.”

Your ears begin ringing—as you stare at him, you get the sense of dreaming. There’s a distinction to Johnny that contrasts the landscape framing him, a sharpness so focused that everything else lenses around him.

“Why—why are you here?” you find yourself asking, though you’re not entirely sure why. The question leaves you as if surfacing on its own power.

The corners of his mouth quirk—although for once, he doesn’t smirk at you, the way he always does.

“You tell me,” he murmurs.

He holds you in the tilt of his head; in the depths of his eyes, currents pulling you downward. You inhale, and expect, for some reason, water to pour into your lungs.

Then a gust of wind buffets the two of you. Johnny turns, surveying the sky. Breaking the spell, he says, “Come on, let’s get back. I don’ like the look a’that storm.”

Halfway back down the path, the front overtakes you; rain begins sheeting down, ice cold, needle-precise into your hair and down your collar. Johnny grabs your hand again even as you start worrying about slipping, and though the torrent veils the way, the both of you make it back to the trawler in one piece.

Back on the bridge, a red light blinks on the panel by the wheel. While Johnny attends to it, flipping a switch and bringing a microphone on a curly wire to his mouth, you squeeze your hair out over the sink nearby.

“This is Soap on the vessel Sea Ghost,” he says, and waits for a response.

“Soap. Drop anchor somewhere. Looks like a storm’s coming in,” a gruff voice comes in.

“Yeah, Cap, we noticed,” Johnny says with a laugh, turning and smiling at you. “We’re moored, dinna fash.”

“Good. Looks like it’s just for the night. Clear enough in the morning.”

“Barry. You got everything? Shops’ closed tomorrow.”

“Never will understand why. But yes.”

“It’s a holy day, Captain,” Johnny says pleasantly.

Price grumbles something about damn Catholics and their damn rules, which just makes Johnny laugh.

Then, “Gaz is here. Made it in after you left.”

Johnny’s posture shifts. Similar to a dog hearing the turning of a doorknob; amorphous attention coalescing, finding a target to point at. Anticipatory. Tail twitching, winding up to wag.

It’s a new reaction, to you—you’ve never seen it before.

Johnny lifts the transmitter to his mouth. He holds it there for a silent moment, before saying, “And Simon?”

No response from the other end of the line, pulled taut, as if snagged. Then Price responds “Haven’t heard yet.”

Something passes over Johnny’s face. Some flex of the muscle in his jaw. An expression held in check.

That’s—

That’s familiar.

“Alright. Back tomorrow then.”

“See you.”

He replaces the mic on its hook.

Thunder claps somewhere over the distant, open ocean. The trawler creaks and groans as the wind swirls around it. Yellow lamps illuminate the warm, wooden space, but are unable to penetrate the lowering blackness outside.

Tension—you can feel it drawing tight, see his shoulder blades shifting closer together. It aches in the muscles of your own back. He faces away from you, like you’re not there—

He turns to look at you. He’s smiling, but it doesn’t look quite real. As if he’s forcing the expression on his face.

“Poor bonnie,” he croons, looking you up and down. The tenor of his voice is saccharin-sweet and thick. “How’s a hot shower sound to warm up, hmm?”

Your belly pinches. “Sure.”

He leads you down a steep flight of stairs into the stomach of the boat, showing you into a single bedroom. The space is cramped, wedge-shaped—barely enough room for the double bed shoved into the middle of it, sheets and blankets gathered in rumples across the top. The unique musk of its occupant wars with the smell of lacquer; the walls are lined with orangey planks, evoking the sailing ships of old.

Directly to the left of the entrance, an open door leads into a small bathroom, into which Johnny guides you, hands on your hips.

“Go’ plenty a’ drinking water stored upstairs so take all the time you like,” he says. “Here, lemme show you how the taps work.”

You half-expect him, after the instruction, to stand there and watch, waiting until you undress. And he does hesitate for a moment, hovering in the threshold, before giving you a practiced grin, telling you to enjoy yourself, a closing the door behind him.

You stand in the middle of the tiny room for an uncertain heartbeat. Assumptions lurching. Almost—hoping.

His heavy footsteps climb back up the stairs.

So, you peel off your damp clothes and drop them into a pile on the floor, stepping naked into the shower. It’s far less mildewed than you might have worried of a single man living alone. Hot water chases cold out of your hair, streaming with pressure far superior to the cottage’s installment.

You realize your toiletries are still above deck, in your bag, beneath the two paperbacks Johnny packed that you haven’t gotten to just yet. You could step out after him—

You don’t do that anymore. You promised yourself.

The floor sways as the shifting sea rocks the trawler in its berth. You reach for the bar on the wall to steady yourself.

One version of yourself is sometimes able to fool the other. The truth is, you could have told him to stop at any time. Put your foot down, hard. Just because he owns the house you’re staying in doesn’t mean he gets to decide what your entire vacation is going to look like.

You scoff at yourself, without any humor. Vacation. Like you’d ever believed this was anything more than self-imposed exile.

The truth is, water takes the shape of the container it fills.

There’s a chill still present in your hair follicles. Impossible for you to identify until now; live with an ache long enough and it stops registering, until it’s balmed with a moment of relief. This is where the addicts begin; experiencing, for the first time, a complete absence of pain, as if it had never been there in the first place, and, once that pain is restored, the ruthless pursuit of its elimination.

Cold rain outside, warm rain within. You stand in the flow, listless. Steam rapidly clouds the empty spaces around you, gathering in droplets on the wall, drizzling down again.

That’s where the mistake is. Pain is never defeated—only deferred. Its panacea provides only diminishing returns, until it’s useless. Until you might as well be swallowing sugar pills or drinking seawater to assuage your thirst.

But you keep doing it. You remember too well how it felt. You chase it down because now you know how it feels.

At some point you have to understand that it always ends poorly.

The bathroom door opens again, and then the shower door, spilling yellow light into the shadowed recess—

Johnny.

The expression on his face is inscrutable; mysterious, as his gaze moves down your body, following the streaming water. Your arms curl around your chest in a perfunctory attempt to conceal yourself, even despite the futility of the effort.

He’s naked, and half-hard, a refrain on the previous night. One hand holds the travel-size soaps and gels that he must have dug out from your bag. He steps in behind you—enclosing the two of you in together.

“Sorry, bonnie,” he murmurs soothingly in your ear. “Had t’make sure we were tied up for the storm.”

The space is not even suggestive of being big enough for two people. You hear the squeak of the shower wall against his shifting back, hot skin slipping against yours as his hands draw you back against him by the hips.

“Dinnae want you t’slip an’ hit your head,” he murmurs, massaging the fat of your pelvis, as if there’s any reason to make excuses for what he’s doing.

Half-raised hackles petted down too easily. You relax into his touch, even as you disdain it. Your heart tremors in your chest.

“What’s going on tomorrow?” you finally ask. “Who’s Simon?”

Pathetic. A jealous lover, after less than forty-eight hours.

“Old task force,” he answers, kissing the back of your head. “Little reunion, food an’ beer, mostly.”

You half-expect him to go immediately for your breasts, or maybe your pussy. His cock is stiffening against the small of your back. But instead, he opens one of your bottles, squirts some pearly body wash into the palm of his hand. Rubbing a little to lather it, he puts his hands back on your hips, and begins massaging it into your skin.

Inward, up your stomach. Pressing into the soft parts of it, with the water slicking his way. His mouth touches the back of your neck—softly. Tenderly. With all of the languor you rejected the previous night, and not enough space for you to slap it away again.

His lips press inward, looking for the bite he left, which he lays his tongue on as if in contrition, licking it like a dog with a wound. The comfortable warmth of the shower swelters with his added body heat; the steam pulses in time with the heavy beats of your heart.

One hand slides up your body, fording your thoracic arch, the wedge of his hand ascending the length of your breastbone. He cups your jaw, bubbles between his fingers, one of your breasts nestling between his bicep and forearm.

He tilts your head to the side as he cranes his head further into your neck, lipping at the space behind your ear, kissing delicate, sensitive skin, as his other hand drags soap around your ribs, beneath and over both breasts, up into your pits and back down again.

A doll in his hands, bent along the shape of his will. He shifts his hips, frotting his erection against you.

“Johnny,” you breathe. “Johnny, this isn’t anything. This doesn’t mean anything.”

“Aye, bonnie,” he hums. “Whatever you say.”

He licks a hollow in your throat.

His other hand dips lower, sweeping down into the crease of one thigh to round the lower swell of your hip; then back up again, fingers spreading.

The stall compresses your arms close against you; the only space you have available to lay your useless hands is on his arms. The dark hair you find with your fingertips is coarse, wiry, plastered to hot skin with water. The spray seeps between the both of you, streams in the runnels of flesh pressed together.

Between your legs, your clitoris heats, awakening even though untouched. You give a small whine, and Johnny huffs a little chuckle in your ear, suckling your neck as his fingers make the descent back, rinsed in the falling water, teasing your pubic hair before nudging your folds apart.

He finds you slick and aching. He only dips lower briefly to wet his fingers, and then, as he settles a light touch over where you’re most desperate for it, relief razes through your nerves in a sudden wash.

You search for the back of his head, slotting your fingers into the ends of his mohawk at the nape of his neck. He hums against you, hand dropping down from your jaw to cup one breast in his palm, weighing it, thumb flicking around the pert nipple in the same tight circle he draws around your clitoris.

Orgasm, usually so obvious on approach, sneaks up on you, quick and quiet, but when it takes you it floods you, rather than knocking you down. You tremble all over, the follicles on your scalp standing on end, the nerves down your back and sides bending like dune grass to a wind.

Your long, breathy cry reverberates against the shower walls, and you lean heavily back against Johnny’s body, grip tightening where you have your hands on him.

He twitches against your back, but he makes no move to chase his own climax. He only turns you carefully, when you recover, and lays his hot, open mouth on yours, tugging your hips close enough to trap his cock against your belly. This time, the wall is cool at your back, the crown of your head moving against it as Johnny angles himself deeper, sliding his tongue between your lips.

“C’mon,” he says, when he finally pulls away. His pupils are huge, black dilation swallowing the blue. The spray fills the empty spaces between the strands of his mohawk, fluffing the hair a little as it courses down the shaved sides of his scalp. “Need to get my mouth on you again, bonnie.”

This time, when he eats you out, he does it at his leisure. Licking honey off a spoon. So lightly that you whine at him, find the energy to bitch at him to do it like he means it, but tonight he does not indulge you.

No—he mouths at you, eyes closed, curly lashes against his cheek as you lay belly-up on the rumpled sheets of his bed. The heat of his tongue in your cleft is the only source of warmth you have as the rain lashes at the outside of the trawler, but the hot shower still lingers in your skin—

Humid. Sticky. Sweat gathering beneath Johnny’s palms where he holds your thighs to his ears, as if mimicking the way your sex will clutch around him when he enters you. Slick and tight and viscous.

When he crawls up your body—nosing at your belly, your breasts, inhaling as if your musk is something he’s trying to get drunk on—he fucks you slow and deep. You stop being able to tell if it’s the storm rocking the boat, or the weight of his hips rolling against yours, one of his hands on the headboard for leverage and the other on your mons, pressing down with the heel of his hand to feel the head of his cock moving in you.

Tacky skin catching on the grind; heart speeding up as he grins at you from above, thumb tapping your clitoris. Enough to wind you up. You reach for his hips with your clawed hands, digging your nails into the meat of his ass—firm, muscle tensed, twitching every time he bottoms out.

“Johnny,” you finally beg, on the edge of a sob, “please, Johnny, please—”

Breath leaves him like a steam valve turned, pressure carrying an uninhibited moan. He ignores your plea, hips rolling slow, forcing you to feel every inch of him in and out of you, every ridge—every vein pulsing on the surface of his cock.

His eyes are closed still; when the widest part of him catches the rim of you around him again, his mouth drops open, lips pink and bitten.

Lost—he’s lost in pleasure, in the feeling of you around him, pulling him in. You watch his chest as it heaves, the flex of his stomach as it tightens—the twitch in the muscles of his arms as the impact of each thrust ripples up his body.

Look at me, you want to say. Look at me. I’m right here. Look at me.

“Again,” he groans, choked, restrained, hands gripping your hips. “Say it again, bonnie—”

“Please—” you whine, on the edge of a sob, “please, please, please—”

Thumb metronoming at a quick tempo where you need it—you seize, back arching, tightening around him so narrowly you could force him out—

He snarls, sharp and hard, thrusting into the resistance, hands falling to fist in the mattress. Breath coming rough and fast, sweat dripping from his forehead into the cups of your collarbones and down between your breasts. Hard and fast now, pushing in as far as your body will let him, and a final, long moan tears from his parted lips, liquid heat flooding you as Johnny goes rigid with a climax following only moments after your own.

Pelvis flush with your thighs. He doesn’t let a drop escape, pushing against you, lifting your hips from the bed.

“Tha’s right,” he slurs, eyes hazy when they open. “Tha’s right, that’s where it belongs.”

He collapses on top of you, almost crushing you with his weight, as he seeks your mouth out with his. He moves his hips against yours with shallow thrusts, whining in his throat.

“Didn’t you—” you pull your lips away, too hot, too cold, buzzing and exhausted, “didn’t you just finish?”

He tongues at your cheek instead, and then down your neck. “Doesnae matter, is no’ enough. C’mon, bonnie, wrap your legs aroun’ me, please…”

After he is finally spent—long after you’ve had enough energy to do more than lay beneath him and let him use you as he pleases—Johnny diverts briefly to the galley, bringing back with him a plate of oysters and a pry knife. It’s his bed, so you don’t complain about shell fragments, but you resolve to make him change the sheets anyway, shifting uncomfortably to find a spot that isn’t soaked.

“Was on this boat,” Johnny says, as if picking up the thread of a conversation only recently dropped. He picks up one of the oysters and shucks it open. “When I drowned.”

The way he says it, you’d think it was a casual thing, something he barely thought about anymore, but the line of his brow is low and serious.

He hands you one half; you bring the shell to your lips and tip it upward. Brine slides across your tongue, flesh smooth and buttery. Johnny watches you with soft eyes before having his own.

“Price was with me. I told him to fuck off, but he said he wasnae gonna let me take it out alone the first time ever. I was a bastard back then, I told ya. We went out in a storm, like this one, even though any eedjit could take a look outside and know it’d kill him.”

You flick at the edge of the shell with your fingernail, looking down at your hands. “Why’d you do it?”

“Dunno. Had somethin’ to prove, I guess.”

“That you could still do stuff like that?”

He doesn’t respond, so you look back up at him. He angles his gaze toward the mess of your hair—the new hickies he’s left on your neck—the bead of your nipples in the cold. The hard angles of his face soften.

“All my life,” he says, measuredly, “all I wanted to be was a soldier. An’ I couldnae anymore. Even though I was better. Hell, I was better than better. But I couldnae go back. That was it. It all wen’ on withou’ me.”

He breaks open more oysters as he talks, hands steady and deft around shells and knife. When he finishes, he slides the plate into your lap, and reclines to face you on his side, propping his head up with his hand.

“We wen’ out when the waves were as tall as a man, an’ us hangin’ onto the railing for dear fuckin’ life,” he continues. There’s a faraway quality to the tone of his voice. “Only life wasnae so fuckin’ dear, was it? I could’ve held on tighter, I think. I fell off.”

“And Price pulled you out?”

That feeling again, meeting his gaze; caught in the arms of a whirlpool, being dragged down. A vial in a centrifuge, constituent parts separating.

“No,” he says, “he didnae.”

“Then…”

“Eat, bonnie.”

There’s a stillness to him that feels unnatural. Johnny is a man who should be constantly in motion, gesturing with his hands, bouncing on the balls of his feet, tapping any available surface with rolling fingertips. Instead, here in front of you, he’s still as a statue. Chest softly rising and falling, but otherwise completely placid.

He gazes steadily at you, down at the plate, and then back up. You sigh, and pick up another shell.

“I don’t remember exactly what happened. I remember getting pushed down deep, real deep, then getting forced up again, on a current or something. Not far enough to get any air, mind. I thought, I’m gonna die out here, an’ I didnae want to.”

He shifts then, a little forward toward you.

“That seemed important, you know? I didnae want to die. Dinna think the sea would’ve given me up f’ I did. It knows. Sometimes it doesnae care. But I guess that time, it did, ‘cause after I blacked out, next thing I know I’m wakin’ up on the shore.”

Something hard shifts in your belly.

“Cap found me a bit later, bringin’ the boat in. Gave him a real scare. Think it turned some of his hair gray overnight. After that…a’was no’ the same. How could y’be, after that?”

You—you don’t want to know any of this. You don’t care. You didn’t ask. His story drops expectation on your shoulders, heavy, custom-tailored, laden with understanding that sands your abraded nerves.

All of this is too much. The damp sheets beneath you, the food, the sex. The fact that you picked the last place in the world thought you could ever meet anyone, let alone someone who—

“And now you have a seal fetish,” you sneer.

Who understands.

Indulgent. This is indulgent, reckless, idiotic in the extreme.

Soap reaches out, and wraps a large, sun-brown hand around your wrist, the one still holding the oyster. Pulling it towards him, he opens his mouth and then tips the flesh from the shell. He slurps it down, noisily, mimicking the sound of his mouth and tongue on your pussy.

“Something like that,” he says, with a sharp, cocky grin.

He changes the sheets. Dims the lights. Plasters himself around you as the storm blows itself out, arm heavy over your waist, thigh and knee nested inside yours.

He’s warm at your back, musky with the mingling aroma of dried sex and sweat.

Sturdy. More real than anything that’s ever put its hands on you.

Johnny, who the sea loved so much it spat him back out. So treasured by the world that a bullet to the brain couldn’t even take him away from it.

Who, by the sound of it, means so much to the people in his life that they would follow him to the middle of nowhere just to keep an eye on him.

Bile churns in your stomach.

next chapter early access

a/n: two chapters left!

TICKET TO PLAY | john price

Sheriff Price has a habit of pulling you over, and you have a habit of seeing how far you can push him. It’s a game you've been playing for years—a harmless one, until he gives you exactly what you’ve been asking for.

⤿ based on this | [ AO3 ]

18+ AU, fem!reader, small town vibes, porn with minimal plot, smut, oral (m receiving), dom!john (back and forth between hard and soft), bratty—sort of pathetic reader, fingering, squirting, public sex, smidge of voyeurism, size kink if you really read the fine print, implied slight age gap [ 6.6k words ]

You weren’t going that fast.

Maybe nudging 35 in a 25, but the road was empty—just you and the soft, golden light of a July evening slipping into dusk. The cicadas hummed their lazy symphony, crickets chirping in harmony, while the air carried the scent of fresh-cut grass and summer warmth. It was the kind of night that wrapped around you like a blanket, slow and sweet, the kind that made you want to roll the windows down and let the world drift by.

But then the sirens sliced through the calm, sharp and jarring, shattering the stillness. Red and blue lights flashed in your rearview, splashing the road ahead in a chaotic swirl of color. Your hands tightened on the wheel, that familiar knot twisting in your gut. You didn’t even need to check the mirror to know who it was.

Sheriff John Price.

The small-town Sheriff (asshole) that had a sixth sense for catching you when you weren’t even doing anything wrong. The guy who’d written you up for a rolling stop at an empty intersection, or a right on red at 2 a.m. when the streets were dead silent. Sure, maybe you were five over on a straight stretch of road, but come on—did he really have nothing better to do than hassle you over that? It was starting to feel like he was just looking for excuses to pull you over.

At this point, you figured you were practically on a first-name basis. Hell, you were probably the most frequent flyer on his ticket roster. But that was the trade-off for living in a town where the sheriff knew everyone’s business—and apparently, yours most of all.

You eased the rickety old Nissan Skyline to a crawl, tires screeching softly as you pulled onto the shoulder and shifted into park. Your fingers moved on autopilot, fishing the registration out of the center console before he even asked. If John Price had one talent, it was knowing where you were before you did—and you’d learned the hard way to keep things within arm’s reach.

The music blared for a second longer before you killed the volume, the sudden silence pressing down on the summer night like a weight. You rolled down the window, letting the warm, sticky air flood the cabin, thick with the scent of grass and distant rain. Leaning back in your seat, one hand resting lazily on the wheel, you waited. Same old song and dance.

First came the slam of his cruiser door, sharp and final, like he was already annoyed at the prospect of dealing with you. Then the crunch of his boots on the asphalt—slow, deliberate, each step dragging out the inevitable. It was almost comical, the way he took his time, like he wasn’t the one who’d flipped on the lights and sirens.

The window hissed as it rolled down, the sound jarring in the quiet, and before you could stop yourself, a smirk tugged at the corner of your mouth. You didn’t bother hiding it this time. If you were walking away thirty dollars lighter, you might as well make it entertaining.

"Evenin’, John," you drawl, letting the words hang in the air with a playful edge that makes his jaw tighten.

He leans in, his arms braced against the window frame like he owns the whole damn road. His face is all sharp lines and shadows in the fading light, the faint scent of cigarettes and worn leather wrapping around you, mingling with the heavy, humid air of the summer night.

“Don’t call me John,” he grumbles, his voice rougher than usual, like gravel under tires.

You raise an eyebrow, your lips curling into a grin. “Why not?” you tease, letting your fingers trail lazily along the steering wheel. “Thought we were friends, John.” You bat your lashes, adding a pout for good measure, laying it on thick just to see how far you can push him this time

He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t even blink. His eyes narrow, the muscles in his jaw twitching as he leans in closer, his presence crowding you. “We aren’t ‘friends,’” he says, his voice low, almost a growl. “You know why I pulled you over?”

It’s not really a question—it’s a challenge, and you can’t help but rise to it. You tilt your head, letting your gaze linger on him, your smirk widening. “Hmm… maybe ‘cause you’re a sucker for a pretty car?” you suggest, your tone dripping with sarcasm, sweet enough to sting.

John’s lips press into a thin line, but the subtle shift in his posture tells you everything you need to know. His gaze is unrelenting, sharp enough to cut through the cool facade you’re trying so hard to maintain. Internally, he’s fighting not to laugh—you can see it in the way his shoulders tense, like he’s holding back a cackle.

“If this—” he steps back, his eyes sweeping over the exterior of your car with deliberate slowness before landing back on you, “—is your idea of a ‘pretty car,’ I might have to issue you a ticket for driving without glasses.”

You lean back in your seat, arms crossing over your chest, your mouth hanging open in mock offense. Just because Fergie was old didn’t mean she was ugly. “Has anyone ever told you you’re an ass?”

He stands there for a moment, just watching you, his expression unreadable. It’s like he’s weighing how much more of this he’s willing to put up with. Finally, he tilts his head, his voice dry as dust. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a brat?”

“Touché.”

You two had been here before. Over and over again. Ever since you’d come back home from college, he’d been hot on your trail—always showing up at the worst possible moments, right when you thought you might’ve gotten away with it.

This was your town. You’d grown up here, knew every road, every corner, every face. It was small, sure, but it was yours. And then John Price showed up. Sparkling, brand new hot-shot sheriff, fresh off the Mayflower. Sworn in by all the touch-starved wives and swooned over by every teenage girl in a fifty-mile radius. Ever since he’d arrived, it was like Elvis all over again

You figured he didn’t have the right to boss the locals around like he owned the place. No shiny badge or gun on his hip was going to earn him any respect from you. This wasn’t some big city where the badge meant everything. Out here? You could be just as stubborn as he was.

Still, he had a knack for showing up when you least expected it, always lurking in the background, keeping an eye on you for reasons you couldn’t quite figure out. No one could explain it, but there he was, always hovering like you were some kind of problem. But you never did anything wrong. Not really.

“I bet you 50 bucks there’s about five disgruntled teens smoking pot under the high school bleachers as we speak,” you say, leaning back in your seat with a grin tugging at your lips. “Surely, they deserve your devotion and attention more than little ol’ me.”

He pauses, clearly weighing your words, and you can see the flicker of recognition in his eyes. “I don’t want your money,” he mutters, his tone dry but with a hint of amusement—and something else you can’t quite place. “Besides, I doubt you’ve got 50 dollars to spare, considering how often you’re in the precinct paying off tickets.” He leans in just a little, his gaze sharp, like he’s daring you to argue.

You shrug, playing the part, even though you know he’s right. “Hey, I’m just saying. You’re wasting your time with me. I’m practically a model citizen. Those kids under the bleachers, though? They could be causing all kinds of trouble.”

You give him a sidelong glance, letting the playful challenge hang in the air between you. “I’m just trying to help you out here, Sheriff.”

Your tone is sweet—too sweet—and you can almost see the gears turning in his head as he tries to figure out whether you’re messing with him or just being your usual self.

He takes a slow breath, clearly trying to keep his composure. His hand pinches the bridge of his nose before he exhales, the sound heavy with exasperation. “Oh, I’m sure you are,” he says, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Big help, givin’ me that advice.”

You raise an eyebrow, leaning forward just enough to close the distance between you, your voice dripping with mock sincerity. “What can I say, Sheriff? Someone’s gotta make your job worthwhile.”

For a moment, the world seems to narrow to just the two of you. The air grows heavy, charged with something you can’t quite name, and the silence stretches taut between you. But then the faint hum of a car engine cuts through the stillness, tires rolling past on the asphalt—a sharp reminder that you’re not alone out here.

“Step out of the car.” His voice is calm, steady, but there’s a flicker of something darker beneath the surface, a low undercurrent that sends a shiver down your spine.

Your jaw tightens, anger flaring hot and sudden in your chest. He’s never asked you to step out of the car before, and the demand catches you off guard. You can’t afford to be arrested—not with a shift at the diner at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning, not with the way your life is already balanced on a knife’s edge. The thought of cuffs, of being hauled into the precinct, makes your stomach churn.

But you don’t move. Not yet. Instead, you meet his gaze, your own sharp and defiant, and for a heartbeat, the two of you are locked in a silent standoff.

You don’t say a word, just reach down to unclick your seatbelt with an indignant sigh, movements slow—like dragging out the inevitable might change the outcome. The latch pops, the sound too loud in the quiet, and you open the door, letting the evening air rush in, cool against the heat prickling at your skin.

You step out, tugging your shorts down where they’ve ridden up, keeping your gaze on the ground, on the cracks in the pavement, anywhere but at him. You try to keep your breathing steady, try to act like this is just another bullshit stop, just another way for him to waste your time and break your wallet. But your heart’s already racing, faster than you want it to.

Then his hand is on your hip.

Firm. Unmoving. Not quite guiding, not quite restraining. Just there. A weight that lingers, like a silent reminder that he’s the one in control here, no matter how much you want to believe otherwise.

For a second, you freeze.

He doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, just watches you. The silence stretches, thick and heavy, charged with something you don’t want to name.

You swallow, still refusing to look at him. “Gonna write me a bullshit ticket, John?” Your voice is casual, flippant—too much so. You know it, and so does he.

He doesn’t answer right away, and that makes it worse.

Because the truth is, you’d rather he just do it. Write the damn ticket, hand you the fine, and send you on your merry way. That would be easy. It’d be normal.

But nothing about him has ever been easy. And this? Whatever this is? It sure as hell isn’t normal.

His fingers tighten—just slightly—but it’s enough. Enough for you to catch it, that flicker of something dark and barely restrained. His jaw tightens, his nostrils flare, and you realize he’s at his limit.

Like he’s weighing his options. Like he’s wondering if he should just give you the damn ticket and walk away. 

You tilt your chin up, finally meeting his gaze, like a challenge. Would he?

His voice is tight when he finally speaks, low and strained, every word biting through the air.

"You think this is a game?"

You pause, letting the question linger as you ponder. Is it a game? Is that what this has always been? This back-and-forth, this constant chase—where you go about your life, minding your business, and he shows up, lurking, watching, like he’s got nothing better to do than make you his personal problem.

Would he really arrest you? Pin you against his cruiser and throw you in the back? Take you downtown like you’re some criminal? The thought sends a slow, involuntary shiver down your spine, but the more you think about it, the more ridiculous it sounds. If he was going to do it, it would’ve happened already.

He’s just a big softie. A stubborn, gruff, self-righteous pain in the ass who acts like he’s got the whole town in a chokehold but has spent too many years shadowing you for it to be a coincidence.

And deep down, you reckon he must have some sick, weird crush if the only way he can muster up the courage to see you is by stuffing a white slip of paper under your windshield wiper, like he can’t even be bothered to have a conversation without the safety of bureaucracy to hide behind.

You don’t even have to think about it anymore. 

This is a game.

You keep your gaze steady, watching him. Watching the way he’s fighting to maintain that authority, to keep control. And through the harsh headlights from his car, it’s almost cute—the way his jaw tightens, the way his nostrils flare ever so slightly, the way his fingers twitch against your hip like he’s waging a war with himself. Like he thinks he can win.

But he can’t.

Not really.

His grip on you tightens, fingers pressing deeper, slipping beneath soft flesh to squeeze the bone. Like he’s trying to ground himself. Like he thinks if he just holds on tight enough, he can remind himself who’s in charge here.

But you see it—the shift in his expression, the cracks forming right in front of you. His eyes are darker now, narrowed with something he’s still pretending isn’t there, and his teeth grit like it physically pains him to keep standing here.

You just can’t resist.

You lean in just enough, close enough that your breath tickles his cheek, and with a slow, knowing smirk, you whisper, “You’ve been dying to get your hands on me, haven’t you, John?”

The words hang between you, sharp and saccharine, and for a moment, it’s like the world holds its breath.

His eyes go dark, that flicker of anger flashing through them like a warning. But it’s not just anger anymore. It’s something else, something raw. For a split second, you’re certain he’s off the deep end.

Before you can even blink, his hand moves. It’s fast, and suddenly, he’s grabbing you by the arm, yanking you toward him with a force that steals the breath from your lungs.

“Get over here,” he growls.

The words are rough, guttural, scraping against his throat like he’s been holding them back for too long.

The next thing you know, he’s dragging you to the hood of his cruiser, his grip tight and bruising as his fingers wrap around your wrist, effortlessly dwarfing it. The cold metal of the hood bites against your skin as he shoves you down, bending you over the car.

And then he’s on you.

His chest is solid heat against your back, his weight pressing you into the hood like he’s making sure you stay there. Your breath catches, chest rising and falling in sharp, uneven movements as you try to process just how quickly the shift between you has turned into this.

“Talk so fuckin’ much,” he mutters through clenched teeth, his voice a growl of frustration and something deeper, something rougher. His breath fans against your ear, hot and unsteady, sending a shiver down your spine.

One hand clamps over your wrists, holding them firm against the small of your back, while the other tangles in your hair, yanking your head back just enough to expose the vulnerable line of your throat.

The grip is possessive. Unforgiving, like he’s staking a claim.

“You think you can just keep pushing me? Keep fuckin’ with me like this, hmm?”

A soft whimper tumbles from your lips, and you bite down hard on your bottom lip, the rest of the sound dying in your throat. His hand pulls on your hair, making your neck arch back, and the sharp tug sends a jolt straight to your cunt. You try to choke back the reaction, but it’s impossible—the way he’s holding you, the way he’s pressing into you with every word, every move.

His body presses into yours, the intensity of it all making your pulse race. Despite everything, despite the situation, a shiver runs down your spine. You can tell he’s holding back by the way his teeth grit, the sharpness in his voice. 

You smirk, tilting your head slightly to meet his gaze from the side. “By the way John Jr’s more sprung than a rainy day in April, I’d say you like it,” he groans and you chuckle, “You do like it, don’t you, John?”

The words slip from your lips, taunting him, and you can feel the shift in his posture before he even moves. His grip on your hair tightens, pulling you back further, forcing you to arch your neck more as he leans in, his breath hot and heavy against your skin, each exhale brushing over you like a warning.

“Think you’ve got me figured out?” he growls, teeth grazing the curve of your ear, his words a promise and a threat all at once. “Since you’re so fuckin’ knowledgeable, tell me something…”

Your pulse quickens, the anticipation like the loaded gun in his waistband. “Tell you what?” you ask, your voice quiet, almost breathless, but your eyes never leave his.

“Tell me what I do t’dumb girls that don’t know how t’speak only when spoken to,” he murmurs, his grip shifting, pulling you in closer, his body pressing against yours in a way that makes it impossible to ignore the growing bulge in his pants. 

You can feel his cock twitch with interest in his jeans, and instinctively, you roll your hips back into his. The firm bulge presses against your pulsating cunt, offering just the smallest bit of reprieve from the ache in your clit and you can’t help but whimper. “You give them a ticket and send them on their way?”

“Nice try, love,” he says, the words dripping with disappointment, like he’s genuinely let down by your guess.

Before you can even react, his hand leaves your hair, and you hear the cold click of the cuffs snapping around your wrists.

You jerk against the restraint, but it’s useless. You turn to look up at him, but the look on his face—hands on his hips, blue eyes locked on you—makes you stop.

No smirk, no joke. Just intensity.

“Get on your knees,” he says, voice low, rough, without hesitation.

You bite your lip, the urge to snap back hitting you. But instead, you swallow it down and push yourself up, kneeling before him on the pavement. The roughness of it bites into your skin, the cuffs digging into your wrists, each pull reminding you of just how much control he has in this situation.

His boot taps lightly against your thigh, the sound sharp in the quiet air, a silent demand for your attention. You glance up, meeting his gaze, and the intensity in his eyes makes your breath catch. It’s a look that makes your pulse quicken, as if he can see right through you, into everything you’re trying to shovel deep..

“Sit,” he commands, the word simple, authoritative.

It takes you a second to realize what he means, but when his boot nudges against your clothed cunt, you get it. 

You lift your hips slow, like you’re not sure but can’t help it, settling atop his boot. The sensation makes a shiver run up your spine. His fingers find your hair again, firm, enough to tilt your head back and make you look up at him.

“This’s been a long time coming, hasn’t it, dove?” His voice is quiet, almost a whisper, like he’s savoring the sight of you—knees to the ground, wrists bound, eyes wide as you stare up at him. He can’t help but palm himself at the sight.

Your heart pounds against your ribs, heat simmering in your cheeks with anticipation. “I’m not gonna beg,” you sneer, defiant like your cunt isn’t already drooling for him. The lie sits thick on your tongue, heavy enough to choke on.

He smirks—slow like he’s amused, but there’s something else there, like he’s already decided how he’ll play with you.

“That’s cute,” his fingers tighten in your hair, tilting your head back just a little further. Your lips part on instinct, a quiet, pained mewl slipping out before you can stop it.

“but you will,” he hums with a smile so saccharine, it makes you want to smack it off his face. His free hand reaches for his belt, fumbling with the leather as he pulls it out of the buckle. You can feel your body buzzing with anticipation, the tension building in every nerve of your body. Everything in your mind is screaming at you, telling you how wrong this is, how this can’t happen. But deep down, you know he’s right. This has been a long time coming.

But fuck, he’s a literal cop, the Sheriff. This has to fall under some public indecency law.

But despite everything, despite all the warnings your mind throws at you, the pull is stronger, too real to ignore. And you can’t stop yourself from leaning into it.

He peels down the zipper of his blue slacks and the sound echoes in your ears. You’re on your knees on the shoulder of a road, the last vestiges of daylight fading, and God help you, your mouth waters when you see the outline of his solid cock through his boxers.

He doesn't break eye contact, his other hand still tight in your hair, daring you to even try to look away. The recklessness, the sheer audacity of him whipping out his cock in the middle of a traffic stop. It’s all so palpable, like a stack of weights on your chest. He tugs down his boxers in one fluid movement, his cock springing free, and you can’t help but try to back away at the sight. 

He's massive in every sense of the word. Dark curls trail from his navel to the base of him, thick but neatly kept. His cock hangs low and heavy between his legs, thick and long with a few veins and just the softest blush of pink at his tip. There’s no way you can take him all, let alone in your mouth. 

He could see the shift in your eyes, the sudden apprehension in your demeanor, and the hand in your hair loosened. He trailed his fingers from your scalp to your cheek, his thumb wandering to the plump flesh of your parted lips.

“You can say no, dove. I won’t hold it against you,” he says softly, giving you an out. His blue eyes soften as they meet yours, and you know he wouldn’t force you. But the way the hard leather of his boot presses through your shorts, firm against your clit, has you fighting the urge to grind against him. You want—No, need him. Badly.

You bow your head to meet his cock, tongue darting out, hungrily swiping up the drop of precum dangling from his tip. He automatically groans and his hands find their way back to your scalp, feeding his cock into your mouth. Your lips tighten around him immediately, suckling as he presses in and stretches you out. 

“Fuck— that’s it, love, so fuckin’ tight,” he babbles as he watches his length disappear in your mouth over and over. His eyes flutter shut as he tips his head back—he knew if he looked at you any longer he’d blow his load too soon. Your tongue is just so hot. He hadn’t expected it to be ice, but God you were sweltering. He nestled himself in the back of your throat so nicely, tickling and toying with your gag reflex each time you bobbed your head. You coat his length with slick spit, the sounds of your gags subconsciously making him push your head down even further. 

You focus on steady breaths through your nose as his grip tightens. Your hands strain against the cuffs, aching to touch, to feel, to at least stroke where your mouth can’t reach. So pretty like this, he thinks. The way you look up at him, defiant yet desperate. The way your breath catches and your throat flutters around his mushroomed tip.

It drives him crazy—how much he wants to break that control, to make you lose it completely. His groans only spur you on further, your tongue moving with purpose, tracing the prominent vein along his underside.

Your hips jerk against his boot as spit gathers at the corners of your mouth, knees grinding into the asphalt, but you barely notice the sting. All you can think about is the way it makes heat pool in your cunt—sends sparks up your spine. 

You can’t help it—your hips keep moving, grinding against his boot, the rough leather driving you wild, and you’re sure you’re leaving a wet spot. The friction is delicious, and you’re so lost in it that you almost miss when he speaks.

 “Look at you,” he says, smirking despite how badly he needs to cum. “Can’t even help yourself, can you? Just a needy little mutt, humpin’ my boot.”

His hand tugs your strands, not rough but firm, just enough to make you gasp. “Just need your pretty pussy touched, that right?” he tuts softly, pulling you off him, a thin strand of saliva connecting your glistening lips to the tip of his cock.  “On your feet, come on.” He guides you up, your legs shaky and chest heaving but his grip steadies you. “There you go, sweetheart.”

The sky’s a deep blue now, the sun long gone, the cruiser’s headlights casting faint shadows. He shoves you back against the hood, the metal cool against the backs of your thighs. His hands are on you immediately, rough and demanding, squeezing your thighs, your tits, like he’s marking his territory. 

You bite your lip, trying to steady your breathing, but it’s useless. His fingers dig into your flesh, and your hips jerk instinctively, craving more. “So quiet now, hm?” he hums, his face centimeters from yours. “What happened to that smart little mouth of yours?”

The way he switches from caring to being so dominant, it makes your head spin. You glare at him, but he doesn’t care. His hand slides under the waistband of your shorts, fingers dancing over your soaked panties, and you can’t stop the way your hips roll into his hand, desperate for any touch he’ll give. “All this for me, sweet girl?” he mutters, middle finger slowly circling your sensitive clit, “All wound up, yeah? Need me to set you straight?”

“Fuck—,” you whine, your hips bucking into his hand, you can feel his breath against your lips as he chuckles. He deftly pulls your panties to the side, groaning when his fingers slide through your folds. His lips find your neck and he mouths at the sensitive patch of skin above your pulse, sucking a dark, red splotch into your skin as if you’re his. 

You instinctively toss your head back, letting him lick hot, wet stripes from your clavicle to your jaw. He slips a single finger into you and your cunt squelches embarrassingly. 

“Feels so good, John—,” you whine into the evening breeze as he pumps his finger in you, curling to hit your g-spot with precision you’ve never experienced. He smiles against your skin before enveloping your lips with his.

It’s hungry, messy, and desperate. His tongue crowds your mouth trying to drink you whole, like he’s been parched, waiting for you to quench his thirst since he first met you. He swallows your whines and pleas for more as he works you open, grinning when he slips in his ring finger alongside the middle and you gasp.

It’s a pathetic attempt, really, to kiss him back—to try to match his fervor. He has you at his mercy and you’re near collapsing into him as he finger fucks you, low heat pooling in your belly as the coil tightens, as you claw at the hood of the car, wishing the cuffs weren’t there—wishing you could claw at him instead.

“Feel you gettin’ all tight ‘round me, dove. Gonna cum? Gonna soak my fingers, doll?” He questions against your lips. Your walls are squeezing him so tight, sucking him in and keeping them there. So greedy, he thinks.

You nod vehemently, biting your lip so you don’t scream—or sob, you aren’t sure how to feel—into the air. He grinds the heel of his palm against your clit, and that’s all you need to finally break. You near black out when you cum, sparks shooting up your spine and making your vision go black for a moment, his fingers lazily working you through your orgasm as your legs shake and your walls damn near break his fingers. 

“That’s my girl, knew you could do it,” he hums against your temple, wiping away tears you hadn’t known fallen. 

You hadn’t cum that hard in your life. Not by yourself, and most certainly not by any of the lame frat boys you fucked in your college days.

But John isn’t in a frat.

And he certainly isn’t just a boy.

He gently slips  his hand out of your pants, bringing his fingers up to his lips before popping them into his mouth. The way his eyes flutter shut, eyebrows pulling together softly as he groans at the taste of you on his tongue, it’s all fucking sinful. You watch him, mesmerized as he pulls the glistening digits out of his mouth with a pop. 

He dips his head to yours, kissing you again, but much softer this time, less hungry, more savoring. You can taste the subtle tang of your own juices on his tongue, and you’d be a liar if you said it didn’t turn you on further. 

John subtly tugs your shorts and panties down, the fabric whispering against your skin. He fishes for a small key in his pocket, before using them on the cuffs. They open, releasing your raw wrists with a near-silent snick. You feel the moment the cuffs fall away, and your hands move as if drawn by an invisible force, reaching for him, clutching at his jaw, pulling him closer with urgency. Your fingers roam his shoulders, his neck, tracing the hard lines of his body as he spreads your legs, tossing your discarded shorts aside. He settles between them, lazily pumping his cock with his free hand. 

“You want this, love?” he whispers against your lips.

You nod almost imperceptibly before crashing your lips back to his, like you just can’t get enough. 

He kisses you back like a magnet, but just as quickly, he pulls away again.

“Words,” he says sternly.

You huff, ever the impatient brat. “Put your fucking cock in me or I swear to God, I'll get in my car and drive right out of here.”

“That right?” he scoffs, "You gonna drive off?" He brings his angry red tip to your sodden folds, teasing your sensitive clit with each brush, making you jolt, “You want t’act like a brat,” he whispers, his breath warm against your ear. “Then we can do this the hard way.” He leans in, his lips brushing against yours. “Unless,” he murmurs, ghosting the head of his cock into your hole, “you'd like to ask nicely.”

You bite your lip as you watch him tease you, fighting a groan at the way your cunt squelches and stretches around just his tip. 

“She’s so greedy, already tryin’ to suck me in,” he coos, “don’t want to deprive her, now do we?”

You whine as he notches just the head in. He pauses, waiting for you to speak before he moves any further. ​You open your mouth and your voice just breaks as you leak and drip around him and onto the hood of the car. 

“Please, John, Please, I need you—Please, I’ll be so good,” You break and claw at his shoulders and back, desperate to pull him closer to you, to have you flush against him, chest to chest and full of his cock.

“See how gorgeous you sound when you’re nice? See where that gets you, love?” He coos as he inches his cock into you. Your walls are already fluttering, still all worked up from your last orgasm. He has to fight the urge to cum right then and there, gritting his teeth as his grip tightens on your thighs, fingers dimpling the fat as he spears you open. 

You’re slack jawed, eyes glassy as he bottoms out. You’ve never been so full and stretched in your life. You can feel him in every orifice of your body, you feel him in the pits of your stomach, in the hollows of your lungs, in the cavern of your throat. His tip nudges against your cervix and all you can manage is a strangled sob. 

“Oh none of that, lovie, none of that,” he hums, pecking your lips and wiping the tears from your eyes with the pads of his thumbs.

 “Gonna fuck you real nice,” the thumb he used to wipe your tears away travels south, finding your clit and drawing soft, slow circles that have you gushing and relaxing around him, “Just be a good pet and take it.”

You nod as he cradles your head in his hand. He gently moves his hips, inching his cock out of your cunt before sliding back in, squeezing the air out of you like a fucking balloon. 

Gasps fall from your lips with each stroke, not entirely from discomfort, but from the sheer intensity of the feeling. He repeats the motion, a slow, deliberate push and pull that sends shivers down your spine. He keeps his thumb on your clit steady, making your legs shake, a burning heat already blossoming low in your belly. You grip his shoulders, your nails digging into his clothed frame as you try to anchor yourself against the rising tide of sensation.

He continues, his movements becoming more insistent, more demanding. Each thrust is deeper, faster, steady plaps from where his hips repeatedly meet yours. He knocks the breath out of you, each stroke forcing a soft mewl from your lips, your body trembling with anticipation. The world narrows, focusing on the rhythmic movements of his hips, the feel of his skin against yours, the sound of your ragged breaths mingling with his.

He leans, his lips brushing against your own. “That's it, doll,” he murmurs, his voice low and husky. “Take it all.”

His words ignite a fire within you, a raw, primal need that surges through your veins. You arch your back, meeting his thrusts with a ferocity that surprises even yourself. His pace quickens, his movements becoming more urgent, more erratic, and you know he’s getting close. The burning in your abdomen intensifies, spreading outwards, and throughout your body.

His name falls from your lips in a litany—John, John, John, john—a prayer, both a plea and a demand as his cock plows into you with staggering precision. Your cunt clenches around him, milking every ounce of pleasure from each stroke. He groans, cursing as his grip tightens on your hips, until you wail, toes curling and clawing at his back, your voice hoarse as you squirt all over him. He continues to move, his rhythm relentless, until he too reaches his peak, groaning as his body shudders, as he spurts hot ropes of cum deep inside your cunt.

You’re breathless, spent, your limbs heavy and relaxed. The dampness of sweat cooled on your skin, a pleasant contrast to the lingering heat between your legs. The world slowly comes back into focus and a soft smile plays on your lips as you trace the line of his jaw with your fingertips.

“That was…” you murmur, your voice still rough.

He nuzzles your neck, his breath warm against your skin. “A lot,” he finishes for you, his voice low.

You hum in agreement, tightening your grip on his jaw just slightly. You don't need to say more. The silence that settles between you is comfortable. He shifts slightly, and it reminds you he's still there, sheathed inside you.

You close your eyes, savoring the warmth of his body against yours, a comforting heat that seeps into your skin. Every nerve ending still fires, buzzing with aftershocks.

Slowly, he inches out of you. It feels weird to not be full of him, a sudden emptiness that makes you instinctively clench. He's out, and the cool air against your skin is a stark reminder of the reality of the situation. Of the fact that you’re literally on the side of the road. John reaches for your discarded clothes, picking them up with a casualness that borders on audacious. 

He starts with your panties, briefly bending down in front of you as you step into them. He pulls them up your legs, snapping the elastic against your hip. “Sheriff’s discretion,” he murmurs, his eyes glinting with amusement as he fastens your shorts too. “Wouldn't want you getting a ticket for indecent exposure.” Fucking knew it.

You raise an eyebrow, a smirk playing on your lips. “You were just as indecent as I was, if I recall.”

He shrugs as he tugs up his own pants, a picture of nonchalant authority. “Evidence suggests otherwise, doll,” he counters, his gaze dropping to your lips. “Besides,” he adds, his voice dropping to a low rumble, “I'm the one writing the tickets.” He finishes buttoning your shorts, his fingers lingering against your skin. 

The world sways for a moment, your legs still a little shaky. He steadies you, his arm around your waist. He walks you back to your car, the silence between you comfortable, filled with unspoken understanding. He stops just short of the driver's side door, his hand resting comfortably on your back.

“Drive safe,” he says, his voice softer than you've ever heard it.

You nod, your eyes meeting his. You stand on your tip toes and kiss him, a soft, lingering peck on his lips that’s got him feeling like a teenager again.. He responds in kind, other hand moving to cup your cheek. Judging by how he holds you close, he’s reluctant to pull away.

But he does, and he turns and walks back to his cruiser. Eventually, You watch his car fade away, a strange mix of emotions swirling within you. Then, with a deep breath, you turn and get into your car. The door shuts and you just exhale, replaying everything that just happened. 

You reach to crank the keys sitting in the ignition and your eyes fall on a small white rectangle tucked under the windshield wiper. You get back out of the car and pull it free. 

It's a ticket. For speeding.

Asshole. 

Simon Riley is the sort of man to only speak through intimacy. And I’m not talking sex; this man wouldn’t even take his shirt off around you until you begged. Not that he was shy or uncomfortable, but simply because his love language is intimacy of a non physical sort. He’d learn to cook your mother’s favorite recipe. Clip a bouquet of wild flowers at the correct angle so they stay fresher for longer. For you. Research your favorite book genres and authors so he could speak with you about them and give you new recommendations. Watch you so closely that he could tell from a flicker in the corner of your mouth and a specific movement of your eyes that you wanted out of a social situation. His devotion would be endless and complete. Get home from deployment and wait around the house like a dog until you got home. Braid your hair when you’re sick and oil your scalp late at night before you showered. Avoid letting himself sleep until the rise and fall of your chest against his arms settled into the pattern of your rest he had meticulously memorized. This man gives everything and then some without asking for a single thing back.

ch13 something borrowed something blue (mafia!price x simon's sister!reader)

tw: allusions to torture. reader has some ptsd. SMUT.

also i did not edit this srry

masterlist | next

“Again.”

Johnny sighs to his right, but Simon ignores it, too concerned with the man in the chair in front of him. “Say it again.” The man in the chair (Richard, 34, nephew of a Price uncle, twice-removed or some bullshit) spits out a glob of blood on the floor before clearing his throat. “The night the weapons were stolen I was at home with my wife. We watched a new episode of one of those trashy American shows, The Bachelor, that dropped that night. I was off-shift. Came in at 6am because of the Mrs. Price emergency.” Simon’s eyebrow twitches under his mask. Three days after getting his sister back and this is what sniffs out the rat? An American show Johnny loves to pirate? He wants to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Johnny catches his eye and he can’t fault the man for the grin on his face. When Simon turns back to Richard, red in the face, he’s pretty sure the man’s figured it out. “The Bachelor drops Mondays.”

Richard sputters, twitching. “We were catchin’ up from the week before.” Simon shakes his head, glancing at the papers on the table to his left. “You had off every other night that week and only got to it by Sunday? Tellin’ me the wife keeps up with the drop schedule but waited six days?” He walks closer to Richard, gloved hands gripping the man’s jaw tightly. He presses his fingers into the bruise near his mouth, pressing hard until he breaks.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m in debt, man, 50,000 Euros. No one knows so when I lost to the guy at that shithole of a bar and he offered me a job, I couldn’t say no! He said it was just a few documents, wouldn’t hurt anyone…” Stupid, stupid, stupid. Before Simon can grab a tool from the wall, Johnny clears his throat. “Let me, sir. Gaz called. You’re needed at base.” That could only mean one thing. Simon nods, swallowing thickly as he leaves the room to the sound of screams. 

It’s a half hour drive back to the Castle, but it feels like eons. Simon changes his gloves and mask with the limo partition up, even swapping his sweatshirt out for your benefit. The smell of blood fades when the fabric is removed, bundled into a trash bag he leaves in the car. When Simon double checks his phone, his hands are shaking. Another oddity of the week, too miniscule to dwell on.

It’s been three days since he last saw you, cuddled up in Price’s arms like an injured stray. For all Simon has tried to protect you from, the insults of childhood and your shared shitty father, it worries him to think you got hurt despite his greatest efforts. There’s no doubt that you’re a strong woman, but he’s not sure what Shepherd did to you and no matter what, there’s only so much a person can take. The guilt that’s been following him since the marriage is heavy like a chain, weighing down his every motion. Did he marry you off too early? Was Price the wrong pick? Thoughts swirl like a snowstorm in his head, only stopping when the car pulls up to the Castle.

It’s the perfect home he would have picked for you, given the chance. Sophisticated wealth, nothing flashy or too pretentious. Gaz mentioned that you redecorated, and he can see parts of you in the artwork, in the new chairs meant for casual conversation instead of just functionality. You’ve turned the base into a home and the guilt creeps up again thinking of how you might have never returned to it.

“Mr. Riley.” The door guards nod at Simon as he walks through. He feels out of place in his hoodie, used to his lax uniform in Manchester. Price styles himself more as a businessman than Simon ever has. He hides the scars with gloves and a mask but he doesn’t delude himself into thinking of himself as a professional. He’s more like the head of a wolf pack, barking and snarling at anyone who gets too close. Nothing like Price and he’s glad for it. You deserve someone who can give you a semblance of a normal life, pretending like he’s going to work at an office instead of meeting illicit weapons dealers on the edge of town.

Gaz is waiting for him in the foyer, immaculate in a deep blue button-up. It’s the first time he’s seen the man shaved, a testament to the bonds that you forged with Price men that were tested in the past week. “Ghost.” Gaz nods, leading him through the Castle. “How is she?” Gaz walks slower than usual, seeming to need more time before bringing Simon upstairs. “She’s…recovering. Been talking with a trauma therapist the Captain trusts.” Simon nods. He can’t imagine what they put you through, why John ordered him to find a new set of clothes when they found you. Everything he learns is a strike against Phil, whenever Simon finds him. John promised him retribution.

“How is she physically? They hurt her?” Gaz stops in front of the stairs, scratching the back of his head awkwardly. “She’s skittish. Can’t approach ‘er from behind, got t’ give ‘er plenty of warnin’. I only saw her last night when she came down for some food, ‘s the first time she’s been out of the room. The Captain’s given me a temporary title while he’s taking care of ‘er.” It’s not temporary. Simon can sense it, leadership senses setting off alarms. Loyalty, initiative, intelligence - Gaz has it all. A fine replacement if he’s ever seen one. Too bad Johnny hates him. 

Simon nods, ready to see his sister. Before he can step up the stairs, Gaz clears his throat. “If you can, sir, convince her to drink some water? Last night, all she could do was look at the glass.” Christ. What did they do to you?

When Simon climbs up the stairs, you’re lounging in the sitting room, swathed in clothes too big for you. The couch you’re on is out of place, tugged from its original spot so the back is now against the wall. Tactical. He ensures his steps are loud so you sit up with a smile instead of a shudder. “Si!” You grin and his heart stops at the fact you still have the ability to. They didn’t take everything. “Hey, love. Can I hug ya?” You nod, setting your book down with your arms reaching up. “I missed you.” You murmur as he hugs you. The angle is awkward as he towers over you but he doesn’t particularly care, sitting down next to you while keeping you in his arms.

“How ya doin’, kid?” He asks when you release him. Simon slips off his medical mask into his pocket. On closer look, you’re wearing John’s clothes, the name of some obscure London footie team emboldened on the chest. He can hear the man’s voice come from behind the closed bedroom door, likely on a phone call. “I’m okay. John got me a therapist and she’s really helping. She specializes in kidnapping victims and immediate solutions and…yeah. Isn’t that a bit weird, saying I’ve been kidnapped?” On second look, you don’t look your best. There’s circles on your eyes and faded bruises on your jaw, like someone grabbed it and forced it open. Instead of answering, Simon brushes the soft skin of your neck until he can find your pulse. You don’t jolt like he expected you to, instead curling into the feeling of his familiar touch. 

“I knew somethin’ was wrong ‘fore Gaz called. Had this dream of you screamin’ my name, askin’ for my help from somewhere far. When I woke, I just knew. Ready to tear the world apart f’ you, kiddo. You’re still my little sister to protect.” A tear escapes your eye. He brushes it away, then squeezes your cheek like a grandmother would before pulling back. “I’m still lookin’ f’r others who were involved. They’ll get what’s coming for ‘em.” You nod, catching his hand before he pulls back completely. “Thank you for that, Si, but also, I just- just need you here, you know? I think your presence here will do a lot more for me than being an avenging angel.” He gets it, he does, but he didn’t get to kill Shepherd. He was John’s but Phil is Simon’s and no matter what, he will be found. “Think there’s a way f’r us to split it?” It. His time. Your wants, his needs. 

You squeeze his hand and nod. “I think so.” You croak out. Simon can sense the need for levity, so he starts telling you about how Johnny almost got himself blown up a few weeks ago when dealing with a Chinese chemical supplier. Simon’s not usually the joker between you two but he channels the infectious energy of his husband, in pursuit of making you laugh. You finally giggle when he mimics the windblown look on Johnny’s face, even putting in the effort to mimic his mohawk with his hands. It’s goofy and reminiscent of your childhood, the ghost of Tommy making a rare appearance in the corner of the room. Your kidnapping has sent Simon off the edge and out of character, desperate to do anything to repair what has been broken.

The bedroom door creaks open and John’s heavy footsteps follow. “Hi, sweetheart.” John approaches the couch head on, kissing your forehead before nodding at Simon. “Simon.” He nods back, not feeling the need to put his mask back on. “John.” “What is this?” Your eyes flick between the two of them, brows furrowed. Simon looks at John, who shrugs. “What’re ya talkin about?” You frown at Simon’s words, crossing your arms in front of your chest. “Since when is there a bromance? What did I miss?” John sighs, dragging a hand down his face. Simon reaches out to ruffle your hairdo, smiling when you screech and bat his hand away. “‘S called mutual respect, sweetheart. Not sure what a bromance is.” You mock John’s sigh, rolling your eyes. “You’ll be wearing friendship bracelets by the end of this year if you keep going on this trajectory.” The men lock eyes with twin glances of horror.

“On that note, you good if I pop in downstairs, sweetheart? Gaz needed help on something.” A look of understanding passes between you two, a look Simon has felt time and time again with his husband. It’s like a punch to the gut in the softest way possible. “All good, I’ll be here with Simon.” John nods, kissing your forehead before taking a few steps back towards the staircase. Before he can leave, Simon clears his throat. “John, you have any condos or safehouses in the area you aren’t usin’?” John’s eyes flicker with a different kind of understanding. “Enough space for two, I gather?” Simon nods, ignoring how you’re kicking his shin. “For a month or two, at least.” You kick him harder and he shoves your foot away in a playful push. “I’ll see what I can do.” John responds, nodding before heading down the stairs. 

“You’re stayin’?” When he turns to look at you, your lip is quivering. He sighs in faux exhaustion before tugging your legs on top of his. “‘Course I’m stayin’. Can’t let my baby sister fight alone.” You shyly wipe your eyes before meeting his own. “What about the business in Manchester?” He shrugs, acting like he didn’t spend hours on the phone with his best men last night. “It’s what I’ve got men for. Plus, you can show me ‘round.” Instead of squealing or jumping him, you give him a small smile. It feels older and mellow, something he hates. “Thanks, Si.” He squeezes your foot. He wants to bring up the water drinking, but you seem a little fragile right now. He’s got time now, something he won’t miscount. “‘S what I’m here for. Now tell me the rest ‘f y’r redecoratin’ plans. That entryway could use some work.” You grin and he’s reminded of the toothy five-year old, playing hide and seek in the Riley house of horrors. A survivor, through and through.

-

Every day passes faster than the last. You find out your therapist, Marie, is actually Dr. Marie Laswell, Kate’s wife. She promises you that despite their marriage, everything you share is confidential and stays between you. It’s hard work, recounting everything that happened in your daily meetings. John is there, kissing your forehead and cuddling you after nightmares, like the perfect gentleman. As the adrenaline drains and you find yourself living again, you crave more than that.

You want to go back to your last fight. You know it could be self-sabotage, but in the confines of the Castle, it’s like nothing can harm you. John only has guards you know working. Terrance stops by once or twice, telling you he got promoted. Simon visits whenever he can. Your reunion with Johnny is heartfelt and strong. Gaz feels like a son now, protective and firm about your security. All of these facts coalesce into a suit of armor, knowing that as long as you don’t leave the building, you are safe.

Marie tells you it’s not the healthiest mindset. You remind her progress is progress. She sighs in a way that reminds you of her wife.

The one-month anniversary of your kidnapping creeps up on you, haunting the corners of your mind. There’s an ache deep in your heart to return to normal, no matter what he said about finding a new one. You want so badly to change without looking over your shoulder. On rainy days, there’s a phantom ache in the side of your arm that Phil sunk a syringe into. He’s still in the wind, a fact that agitates Simon more and more. Small wins happen too. There are days you don’t need John at home, content with phone calls throughout the day and a long dinner at night. You’ve gone on two (2!) walks by yourself, passing through the park across from the Castle as guards trail behind you and at the corners of the park. You’ve progressed to Gatorade and flavored carbonated water but still jump at unknown touches. Except, of course, John’s.

Every night runs like clockwork. You shower, John standing outside the door like a protective hound. Then you slip on a robe and let him in, brushing your teeth and finishing your routine together. He leaves to ‘check something’ and always returns with a new non-water liquid he wants you to try, like a new Gatorade or flavor of tea. In the time he’s gone, you change. You’ve graduated from speed-changing to taking your time, rubbing lotion on your body before slipping on pajamas. When John comes back, you cuddle and talk, and then lights out.

The same damn routine. Every. Night. You feel like a nun.

The anniversary passes without little fanfare. John takes the day off, unusual but part of the new normal. Gaz is left in charge again, a fact he’s getting more used to. When you wake in the morning, something else new happens.

Morning light warms your eyelids. John’s arm is a comfortable weight around your waist, his forearm hair rubbing the patch of your stomach exposed by your raised shirt. Something pulses low in your belly. When he turns to pull you closer into him, your stomach flutters. His face tucked into your neck, the weight of him searing as his body is half-slung over yours. It’s a welcome change from how you usually find yourself on top of him, like he’s pinning you to reality. A body scan reveals wetness between your thighs and a keenness between your lips.

When you cant your hips slightly, chasing that fluttering feeling, his cock twitches in his sweats where it’s against the outside of your thigh. You tilt them higher, fighting against the weight of him, and smile when his cock twitches again. “Go t’sleep.” He groans, rough and sleepy into your ear. Instead of listening, you push your thigh outwards to the heavy weight of him.

“Watch what y’r doin’, pet.” Pet is new. Unlocking a new nickname sends a thrill down your spine. You ignore the connotations behind it. “John…” You whisper, injecting an extra breath of air into your speech. He pulls his head up, hair mussed and eyes blurry. He’s beautiful.

He props himself up on his forearm, giving your own arm freedom to move. You do so, sliding it from his neck to his torso, snaking down to follow his happy trail. “What d’ya think y’r doin’?” You run your fingers through his trimmed body hair, only dipping slightly into the elastic of his boxers. “I want to feel you.” You blink at him with wide eyes. He pulls his core backwards, letting your hand drop on the mattress. “Y’r not ready.” You frown, scooting back into your pillows so you can properly meet his eyes. “I think I get to decide that, John.” He closes his eyes, sighing. “I was readin’ an article and-” You huff, pulling back further until you’re sitting on the opposite side of the bed. 

“This is the problem we have, John. You trust external sources more than me.” If he was a weaker man, he’d look whiplashed. Unfortunately, you got a husband prepared for anything, a man who can argue at the drop of a hat. “I’m jus’ sayin’, sweetheart, maybe we wait. I don’t want t’ hurt ya.” You scoff, pulling your knees to your chest. “Can you trust when I say you won’t hurt me? That I can handle myself and know my limits?” He’s silent for a second too long.

You launch yourself out of the bed, heading for the bathroom. He’s faster than you, weak from weeks of lethargy, beating you to the punch to stand in front of the door instead of tugging you back into him. “Stop.” You place a hand on his chest, intent to push him away, but all he does is cover it with his own. “Can you jus’ wait for a second?” That’s when you take a second look at your husband. How he’s panting like he’s out of breath, even if you know he goes for runs every day. His pupils are blown and feral, a predator in the wild. You stand for a bit, letting your palm track how his breaths go in and out of his chest.

“Deep breaths for me, baby.” How nostalgic it feels, the roles reversed as this time it’s you talking him off a ledge. His breathing calms after a minute, eyes going tame as he squeezes the life out of your hand. When he’s calmed, he speaks. “The last time you ran from me after an argument, you were taken from me.” Your heart breaks a little at the weakness he lets you see. Your hand slides up into his beard, brushing over the rough strands as you look in his eyes. “I wasn’t running, John. I just needed some space.” He shakes his head in disagreement. “Ya don’t know what it felt like, seein’ you step into tha’ car an’ gettin’ a call hours later that you were gone.” You nod, biting your lip.

“You’re right, John. I don’t know. And you don’t know how my brain works. You don’t know how harsh grips trigger me but yours never have.” Understanding brews in his eyes, cloudy like a cup of coffee. He pulls you in closer by the waist, lining you up until your pelvises meet. “I get it, sweetheart. I trust you.” You exhale a breath at his words.

“I didn’t take ya on tha’ trip months ago because I was meetin’ a new supplier an’ I didn’t trust him. You know firsthand now how dangerous my world is. I know you’ve lived this life, but London is more cutthroat than Manchester could ever be. ‘M not sorry f’r smotherin’ ya, because at least y’r safe. ‘S my number one concern in this world.” It’s terrible, how you don’t care that he’s admitted that he smothers you. How all you care about is how he knew what you were referencing, even if it was from months ago.

“How do I know you want me for me?” Another concern of yours from your fight before the kidnapping. He shrugs, giving you a wry smile. “Guess you’ll have to trust me.”

You drag him into the bathroom, jumping onto the counter and pulling him between your legs. You practically maul his face, kissing him with unrestrained want. His admission flipped a switch in you, a longing that’s been asleep for a while. It wakes up when he pulls you closer to his pelvis, your clothed cunt rubbing against the outline of his cock. You’re still wet from earlier, your folds sticking to airy fabric. 

“Didn’t want it like this.” He breathes behind your ear. John sucks a soft patch of skin there, licking at the sweat from your sleep before trailing down your neck. “Wanted t’ eat ya out f’r an hour ‘fore even pullin’ my cock out.” You run a hand down his rigid back muscles, pulling at the fabric until he lets you tug it off. John laves his tongue at your neck, alternating between sucking and nipping at your sensitive skin. His hands grip your hard, thumbs inching closer and closer to your core. You’re wearing shorts without underwear, a perfect combination that he soon discovers. “What else?” You moan, leaning your head back until it hits the mirror behind you. It’s perfect, knowing there’s nothing but a wall behind your back. It calms the worried part of your brain, letting you fully focus on the moment.

“Then I’d let ya suck my cock, get it nice an’ warm in tha’ mouth of yours. Let you rub y’r cunt against me.” You whine at the image, nails digging into his back as he continues making out with your neck. Finally, he tugs your sleep shirt off, trailing downwards to suck at your tits. He squeezes one while sucking the other, pulling hard enough to make it hurt. There’s no part of him you can reach, the angle of it awkward and wrong. The solution is to trail your free hand up your thigh, passing his hands to push the fabric of your shorts aside and thumb at your clit. “Wha’s this, hm?” He murmurs, switching to your other tit. “Wanna be ready f’ you, John.” The wetness seeping from your cunt makes it easy to slip a finger in, stretching yourself in preparation for your husband. He’s letting you set the rhythm in a way he usually doesn’t, and you love him for it, something you don’t think too hard about.

“Let me?” He asks and you nod immediately. He replaces your hand with his own, sliding two thick fingers into your hole. You clench immediately at the intrusion, more out of tension than fear. John stops, glancing up at you from where he’s leaning down. “Need me to stop?” You shake your head, moving your hips forward so his fingers slide in deeper. “It’s just been a while.” John is still stopped, searching your face for something. “I trust you, John. I need you to say it back or this won’t work.” His eyes don’t leave your face, nodding slowly. “I trust you with my life, baby. An’ I trust ya with yours. You gonna let me stretch you out?” Instead of answering, you start to grind slowly, fucking yourself on his fingers. His gaze drops down, watching your cunt squeeze him tight. 

“How’d I get so lucky, hm? Perfect wife, dropped right into my lap.” John makes you work for it, angling his thumb so your clit hits it with every grind. It’s the most work your body has done in months and you love it, love the burn in your muscles as you command them to work. “This is goin’ t’ be a lot shorter than I wanted it t’ be, pet. Can’t focus when y’r mewlin’ f’r my cock like this.” You whine at his words. John pulls his fingers out, a string of slick trailing after them. He rubs them against your chest, pointed nipples scraping against your own wetness. The friction makes you delirious and needy in his arms. “John, I need you.” He hums, that same hand pushing down his sweats to reveal his cock, thick and heavy in his hand. He gives it a pump and you watch him spread your slick around it, mixing with his precum to make it even smoother.

“Last chance, baby.” John lines his cock up with your cunt. He rubs it up and down, catching on your clit every other time. “Shut the fuck up and fuck me, John.” His name on your lips is punctuated with a gasp as he pushes into you. You let out a string of curses at the intrusion. No matter how many times John has given you his fingers, the blunt width of his cock is so much more. It’s been over a year since you’ve fucked someone, and it’s never been like this. It’s never been dark blue eyes filled with trust and care, flicking down every so often to watch his cock go in and out. It’s never been dangling over the precipice of an orgasm so fast, the speed of it hitting you like a lightning strike. He fucks you through it, his hand on the back of your neck, forcing you to look down at where you’re joined. You watch your tits and stomach bounce at his movements and you watch as he hungers for it.

John’s a talker. This you’ve known, but it’s never been like this. 

“Look at you, taking my cock so well. Fuckin’ made f’r it.”

“Y’r cunny’s so tight, baby. This all for me?”“So desperate for it, pet.”

“Such a good girl for daddy. C’mon, say it.”

It makes you clench and mewl and claw at his back. He tries to kiss you but all you can do is let your mouth fall open and pant against him. Your first orgasm left you weak-willed, eager to follow his instructions. You nod your assent to every word, sweat dripping into your eyes. The second orgasm builds slow in your core. It burns with every thrust, every brush of your clit that John’s thumb makes. You lean your head back so it hits the mirror, suddenly realizing that your actions echo each other in the mirror behind John.

Your mouth is open. Sweat makes your skin glisten. You settle your weight on your hands and arch your back, a glimpse of your tits visible in the glass. It means you look almost whorish but it doesn’t matter because it’s for your husband, whose muscled back ripples with every thrust. That’s the image that sends you over the edge, whining John’s name as you fall off the edge. 

“Where, baby?” John meets your eyes with a burning question. You look down at the creamy ring around his cock, the slight of it sending another hazy spark to your core. “Inside.” This time John’s the one cursing, dropping his forehead to your collarbone as he watches himself come inside his wife. Finally, with his soft cock still inside you, John slows to a stuttering stop.

“Oh fuck.” John looks up at your panicked words with a matching expression. “Somethin’ hurt?” Your mouth opens, then closes. “What? No. I just remembered I stopped taking my birth control because of what happened. I haven’t been on it in over a month. And Plan-B’s really mess up my cycle.” John laughs. Your husband laughs, with his forehead on your collarbone and his cock inside you, pushing his cum in further. “This is not funny, John!” He shakes his head before meeting your eyes. “I got a vasectomy.” You blink. “What do you mean, you got a vasectomy?” He drags a hand down his face. Instead of answering, John eases out of the tight hold of your cunt. He fishes for a washcloth somewhere near, running warm water over it before swiping at your inner thighs. “When we had tha’ conversation about Gaz. Didn’t want it to happen after tha’ an’ not be prepared.” You squint in confusion. “I timed it with your period.” You bark out a laugh of disbelief.

“You’re fucking crazy.” He looks up at you with worry etched into his face, like he’s done something wrong. All you do is smile and pull him in, kissing his nose like he’s adorable. “I hate you.” You say, laughing. “You love me.” He murmurs against your skin. You don’t refute it, shutting him up with a kiss.

-

Phil watches and waits.

Her husband keeps leaving her alone. Phil’s camera screens flicker, shots of her through windows and from the park. The brother is closing in but it doesn’t matter, not when he’s so close to completing his mission. He must watch and wait.

-

one. chapter. left.

i barely edited this so if you see any mistakes no you didn't

-

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“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.

Masterlist

Simon Ghost Riley:

Mean Simon

Oral King

Coffee AU

Cowboy Simon

The Years

Intimacy

Omega Simon

John Price:

Highlife

Kidnapper Price

Fated Mates

Kyle Gaz Garrick:

Also An Oral King

Old Times

Johnny Soap MacTavish:

Soap’s Missus

In Sickness

Dealing With Depression

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.

The Years - Ghost x Reader

Ghost who met you well into your military career, an expert strategist and even better with guns, Price had added you to the team after a year of working on various missions with you.

You weren’t simple though. After joining the military to help pay for med school, you had found out that you were better at killing people than you were saving them. They’d offered to transfer you and just have you work as a medic, but you continued on and eventually found your place in the American special forces.

Price had seen your cunning, your tactical brilliance, and your speed in the field and claimed you for the 141. For the past four years you had worked with them, never not by their sides unless you were on leave.

It was in these time periods, away from you, that Ghost sat in his flat and did nothing but think of you. The way you keep your hair braided and the breath you take before firing your rifle. The fact you hate the color yellow and love Chinese takeout. Think about when a year into your time with them, right before Price had asked you to join, that your husband had cheated on you.

You had told him this story in the dark confines of a bar as Gaz, Soap, and Price had a vicious game of billiards. He hadn’t spoke the whole time, watching you with a focus not on your face but on the rage he had to keep in check

They had finished a mission early and were allowed to go on leave for the holidays, or until you were needed again. The car in your driveway had been the first sign. Upon opening the door, the moans trailing down the hallway and the clothes strewn on the floor told the story. You hadn’t bothered to go in crying, simply grabbed your handgun and kicked open the door. The bitch looked just like you.

“Did you kill ‘em?” was all Simon asked as you had trailed off, fist clenched around a heavily nursed glass of bourbon.

“No. I think back and I wish I had, but no. I could have got away with that back in Texas, but here, you brits don’t have justified murder.”

So you had joined the team, growing reckless in the field. It took a bullet to the thigh and a knife wound to the abdomen, along with four ripped stitches, for Ghost to wrestle you to the ground and demand. Demand for you to care enough about yourself to not die. To not leave him.

You came back from that final leave of absence stronger. Smiling even, as Gaz had pulled you into a hug so tight it made Ghost twitch thinking about the jagged wound in your stomach.

For those next years you had grown closer to your team, learning to rely on them and they you. Things become simple. But you aren’t simple. And so things get complicated when Soap mentions bringing in some girls after a particularly successful mission.

You tolerate the strippers for all of thirty minutes before you storm out, the sight of one of them eyeing Ghost like he’s not Simon Riley but instead a way to get an extra fat tip.

The boys are too drunk to notice him immediately follow, except Price, whole smiles to himself before turning back to the girl prettily sitting on his lap. It takes Ghost a few moments to catch up to you as you walk out of the barracks.

“Ghost leave me alone.” you shout before he can speak.

“Why did you leave?” he calls out after you, grabbing you by the shoulder and turning you to face him.

“Because I’m not in the mood to watch you all oogle women in four inch heels and minimal clothing all night.”

He curses below his breath.

“You’ve never ‘ad a problem until now. So what the hell is wrong with you tonight?”

You can feel the way he searches your face, mask doing little to conceal the desperation in his eyes. His hand on your shoulder tightens imperceptibly, every inch of his body wired to the way your expression shifts.

“Ghost.”

He chases the centimeter you back away from him, sensing the way you recoil from the honesty he’s asking of you.

“Tell me.”

You sigh.

“That girl wanted to fuck you.”

“She did.”

Your lip curls and you turn once again and stalk to your room, fully intending on slamming the door in his face. Except he doesn’t grant you that pleasure and shoves himself through after you.

“Ghost what the hell do you want from me?” you practically snarl at him.

“I didn’t want to fuck her.”

“I don’t give a shit.”

“You do.”

This makes you pause, looking him up and down. Standing in your room, chest heaving from chasing after you and eyes practically blazing. He breaks the silence first, taking a step forward as his hands clenched at his sides.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what.” you ask, more confused than before.

“For not being good at this. Not…not good at any of this. I didn’t think it was worth trying to learn. I didn’t know.”

“Know what?” you cry, closing the distance between you two.

“You feel the same.”

He says it as a question, not a statement the way it should be. The way he intends it. He’s not brave enough to say that like he knows what’s right and wrong. Not after he’d spent years in love with you and hadn’t said a damn thing.

“I do.” you let the anger out in your response to hide the tears in your eyes.

Ghost pulls you into his arms. The tears fall. Your body trembles in his grip. He hushes against the hair of your scalp.

“I’m sorry, love.”

Your arms lift to wrap around him, burrowing your face into his chest and breathing him in to calm the shaking that racks your body. When you finally calm, he lifts you gently and places you softly on the bed. It takes a few seconds to get comfortable, but he soon has you curled into him as he strokes long lines down your back.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.” he whispers.

“Me too, Simon.”

Blah blah blah Gaz eats pussy unlike any other man you’ve ever been with. It’s not to get it over with, not to make you orgasm, not to taste you, or even to say he does it.

Gaz gets off on it.

He comes back from deployment and eats your home cooked meal, lets you settle him into the bath and wash the small amount of hair he has. But the second he’s out his one track mind takes over.

Pushing you down on the bed and lapping at you through your panties, depraved and sniffing at you like an animal. He’s got class, we all know this, but when eating you out his control slips.

Rutting against the bed as gets absolutely lost in you, panting and groaning like it’s him receiving the mind-numbing pleasure. He takes his time too. Sometimes he goes for hours, unable to satiate his need for you.

Happy Valentine’s Day you freaks!

Jane Grealy 1. Puppy with Stick, 2021 2. Legs, 2021

“for you, i’d steal the stars.”

Cw: depression

Soap comes home one day expecting his wife to greet him at the door with his favorite meal and a kiss on the cheek. He hadn’t been gone long, only a few weeks, and you knew when he was coming home.

The house is dark when he opens the door despite it being evening. It smells faintly of unwashed clothing. Shades drawn tightly over the windows, the residing plants wilted and dying. Not dead yet, he notes.

“Honey?”

Johnny hates the way his voice cracks slightly when he calls out to you.

Making his way through the house, he eventually reaches your room. He knows then, from the clothing all over the floor and the pile of books on the bed where you are. He knows from the forgotten glasses of water on the dresser and the empty wrappers of miniature candy where you’ve been. In your head.

He finds you in the bathroom, sleeping in the bathroom tub. You wake when he lifts you, silently leaning into him. Despite his exhaustion and his hunger, he strips you of your clothes and runs the water warm. Kisses upon your shoulders as you remain silent, dark imprints under your eyes showing your own fatigue. It’s only when he has you lathered in bubbles and running his hands through your hair to make sure it gets clean that he dares to ask what happened.

“It got bad again, Johnny.”

His hands don’t pause their work through your hair, simply moving down to massage the muscles in your neck.

“I got you now.”

Cowboy!Simon who rides a big old Belgian Draft horse with a palomino coat. He knows a smaller horse couldn’t handle his weight and all of his hunting gear, so the sweet gelding he found tied up and abandoned to a tree was perfect for him.

Cowboy!Simon who has no interest in a wife or the word of God, only the small cabin he built for himself in the woods and the pitiful garden in his backyard.

Cowboy!Simon who comes home from a several day long hunting trip to find a small thing like yourself cursing silently under your breath as you rip at weeds and meticulously pick mites off leaves. Behind you, a small red Appaloosa eyes him warily as you fail to notice him on his massive horse.

Cowboy!Simon who decides at that very moment that he doesn’t need a wife or the word of God, just you to angrily tend to his garden. He’ll cook you dinner too; he killed a massive buck while he was gone.

Anyway

Simon Riley who is finally back from deployment after 8 months out in God only knows where. Fresh blood still under his nails when he arrived at the shitty flat he called home. It was made incredibly worse when he realized there wasn’t any food in his fridge and his pantry laid bare. The two cans of beans did not count. So he dragged himself to the closest grocery store and picked out necessities, half dazed as people gave him second glances. Finally headed toward the exit and passing by the coffee shop inside the store, he was stopped by a rowdy laugh.

Simon couldn’t remember the last time he heard a laugh like that.

Upon turning he saw you.

It took every bit of his willpower to remember how to even speak when he trudged up to the counter, grocery bags heavy in his hands. He didn’t register the soft greeting you gave him. What he did notice was the way you looked him up and down. Disgust or interest, it didn’t matter. You were his now, and he would do anything to hear that laugh again.