Latest Posts by spacecola7 - Page 4

fig. 2. teeth in crooked neck | Kyle 'Gaz' Garrick x Reader

MASTERLIST · AO3

Ten years is a long time to wait for the love of his life. So when you come to him to ask for his help with your heat, what can Gaz do but accept?

or: the forced mating omegaverse au

tags: Size Difference, Size Kink, Omegaverse, Explicit Sexual Content, AFAB Reader, Dubious Consent, Forced Bonding/Mating, Heats & Ruts

His fortune turns when your name flashes across the screen of his phone for the first time in weeks. 

“Hey love,” Gaz says, answering on the first ring. “Haven’t heard your voice in awhile.”

“Hi Kyle,” you sigh, and it’s like life rushes back into him all in one word. 

It’s been a few weeks since you last spoke, the last time being a few days after Gaz returned from a work trip overseas. Since then though, he’s been in the city consistently, making your absence come as a gaping hole in the middle of his life. 

The first thing you do is apologize for the weeks of silence. “Sorry I haven’t reached out. Work was crazy for a bit, and then—…ah, it doesn’t matter. Sorry though.”

“That’s fine, love. Bit calmer now?”

“Uh…yes and no,” you answer cryptically. “That’s, um…that’s why I wanted to call you actually.”

“Yeah?” he prods, curiosity piqued. It’s second nature to always wonder what you’re up to. If it was possible to live in someone’s head, he’d make yours a second home.

“Are you free for lunch tomorrow?”

He puts you on speaker phone so he can check his calendar at the same time. “I can move some things around. Can’t tell me whatever it is you wanna talk about right now?”

You’re quiet for a moment before you speak again, voice a little tinny through the speaker “I just…it’d be better if we could talk face to face.”

Words like those never bode well, but Gaz shakes it off, giving you the benefit of the doubt. It might just be embarrassing or sensitive news that isn’t easily disclosed over the phone. He’s never begrudged you your privacy before; it certainly isn’t going to start now. 

Besides, whatever it is won’t be private for long. 

“Sure, love. We can have lunch. What time?”

There are things he associates with time—seasons, death, taxes. Faces too, when they change with each time he sees them, months separating his visits and meaning that each time he comes home, there are new lines and new wrinkles in familiar faces. Piercings that weren’t there before. Tattoos and pregnancies and blemishes and drooping cheeks. 

Your face, however, is a constant. Not just in that it never seems to change, but that it never leaves his mind long enough to be forgotten. 

After all, how could it leave for even a second with what you are to him? 

He’s gotten that question before. What do you think you’ll do when you find your mate? When you come across an omega that smells just right, so delicious and ripe that you have no choice but to sink your teeth in and hold? 

Gaz doesn’t have to imagine. He’s known longer than most. It’s been more than ten years since he first met you—ten years since his keen teenage nose caught the tail end of your scent and followed it down the hallway and around the corner until he could put a face to the smell. 

His memories after that moment come in snapshots. A passing teacher dragging him into an empty classroom after recognizing the look in his eye, pupils dilated and mouth agape, his whole body thrumming with desire. Sitting in the principal’s office with his hands in his lap, fists clenching and unclenching while waiting for his mother to join them, the other adults in the room watching him with blatant distrust, as if he weren’t a child too; as if this wasn’t new and overwhelming and terrifying. His mother doing her best to console him in the car on the drive home, Gaz both too old and too young for the torrent of emotion washing over him. 

He blocks that week from his memory lest those same emotions surge up and paralyze him in his tracks. It gives him nothing but grief to remember that day. If the agony of an unconsummated mate bond weren’t enough, the sheer indignity of being treated like something to worry about even to this day comes as a crushing blow. 

It’s taken a lot to move beyond those years. 

It isn’t something Gaz would wish on anyone else. His life has been shaped by a very specific kind of longing. Agony in the shape of a neck. His burden since youth has been to stave off the hunger pangs, but that hasn’t always come easy, and it’s come at a cost. 

In the months following that day, he formed a kind of tentative friendship with you, trying not to let the devastation overwhelm him when you never seemed to recognize his scent as your mate’s. To just be in your orbit was better than nothing at all. 

He lasted all of a year at the same university as you before dropping out and enlisting, his instincts steadily becoming too powerful to ignore. The military was where he learned to manage the hunger—long, sleepless nights and rigid protocol hardening him, reinforcing his weak points. Learning to live with a certain kind of absurdity, and sucking up the urge to argue when given asinine tasks like mopping up rain water in a thunderstorm or being put on pencil sharpening duty. 

Since then, time and distance have helped him soothe the ache and leash his instincts. If he couldn’t be your mate, he could be your friend at least, and he’s taken to that role with zeal. 

Hunger still clings to the inside of his rib cage though. Cramped hunger crouched beneath his lungs. All breath, all pneuma. Tight clustered and tumorous. 

These days he’s just better at managing it. 

A day after your call, you meet on neutral territory, a coffee shop around the back of a busy street in Shoreditch, a neighbourhood he’s only visited a few times in years past when you felt inclined to drag him to the Sunday market. It’s not terribly busy for mid-morning on a Saturday, but the steam wand keeps hissing in the background and the music is cranked up a few decibels higher than Gaz would usually like. The whole place smells of hazelnut and toffee. 

You though—you smell like something indescribably delicious. Floral and fragrant, so succulent that his mouth waters when he inhales a lungful of your scent. Sweet like dandelion wine. 

Time has made it easier for his heart to cope with not having you, but not his hunger. 

You make pleasant conversation for a few minutes before addressing the elephant in the room, avoiding it at first in favour of talking about old friends and family—you ask him how his sister’s PhD defence went and light up like a thousand watt bulb when he tells you that it was successful—anything to avoid the real reason for inviting him to lunch. But there comes a point when you have no choice but to suck in a deep breath and finally get to it.

“I need to ask you for a favour.”

“Okay.”

“It’s a big one,” you warn him.

“Okay,” Gaz repeats, smiling. His acceptance comes easy because there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for you.

“I wouldn’t—God, this is so awkward,” you start, a heavy sigh steaming up from the back of your throat, head collapsing into your waiting hands to hide your face. Anything to avoid looking at him. 

Gaz sits and waits patiently for your courage to return. Unlike you, he doesn’t fidget or cross and uncross his legs. His urges are strictly regimented, impulses beaten out of him after years of exposure therapy, so to speak. 

You pick your head back up and his heart thumps in his chest. Mostly beaten out of him. 

“Please don’t feel like I’m pressuring you into this.” His lips twitch with a suppressed grin. “I’m only asking because you were the first person I thought of, but I can always figure something else out, or go to, um…—go to a heat centre.” 

He straightens at those words. “Heat centre?” 

“Yes. My, um—” You go quiet again, the words not coming easily to you, but his mind is already racing, mouth dry when he considers the implications of what little information you’ve already offered up. “I’ve been on suppressants for a really long time. Ever since high school. I was supposed to get my prescription renewed with my doctor this week, but I’ve only been seeing her for a few months, so when she realized how long I’ve been on suppressants for, she…—it’s apparently not healthy to be on them for that long.”

“Not healthy,” Gaz repeats, his rational mind somewhere else. 

You shake your head in confirmation. “No. She said long term suppressant use can lead to different cancers and other health complications, and that I should’ve been spacing it out rather than just…suppressing my heats altogether.”

The shrill whistle of blood through his ears muffles all but your words. 

It barrels into him at full tilt. Drives the breath from his lungs and the thoughts from his head. 

“Your heat is coming up,” he finishes for you, lasering in on the microexpressions flitting across your face. Blinders on. Nothing else in the world matters as much as your next words. 

You swallow. Look away. “Yep,” you chirp, voice catching in your throat and breaking. 

A chair scrapes loudly against the floor when someone nearby scoots back. 

“You aren’t going to a heat centre?” 

“…No.”

His heart beats so hard against his ribs that his chest nearly hurts. 

“You want me to help you through your heat.” He doesn’t have to ask; your trepidation says as much, and he’s always had an eye for details. 

“I know this is awkward, and I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t an emergency.”

Gaz reaches across the table instinctively to take your hand. “No, love, it’s fine. You know you can tell me anything. I’m glad you came to me first.”

Glad hardly touches the depth of the emotion coursing through him. Honoured comes closer. It’s not like he’s never thought about you in heat before, but he’d been away so often and for such long stretches of time, that he assumed you’d gone the heat centre route. He would’ve known if you’d gotten an alpha to help you through it—would’ve smelt their stench on you whenever he was back in the city. 

But as grateful as he is that you entrusted him with this knowledge, it also nearly takes his breath away. 

“You’ve never had a heat before?”

It almost seems unfathomable. He’s had plenty of ruts before—a couple of times with a partner, usually another alpha or a beta—and never once assumed that you’d gone your whole life without experiencing a heat. 

You shake your head. “No. I got on suppressants as soon as I presented and it was just easier to live life without having to, you know…deal with heats and all of that. Just seemed like a hassle.”

His head is spinning. He grips the edge of the table to keep himself upright, but it’s almost not enough. At any moment, he might tip right over.

He won’t ask if you’ve ever slept with someone before. It’s none of his business. Even if it were, he wouldn’t want to know. 

Besides, even if you have, they haven’t had you in a way that mattered. There’s no mark on your neck or ring on your finger, and you’ve never spent a heat with someone else. 

Never until now, that is.

The answer is right on his lips when you cut him off at the pass. “Don’t answer now. I wanted to ask you in person, but I don’t want you to feel on the spot.”

“Love, you aren’t putting me on the spot.” Not when the choice is so obvious. 

But you don’t let him finish, holding up a hand to get him to stop talking. There’s a tremor in your hand, your fingers quivering slightly, and noticing that makes him pause. 

“Please just—just think about it,” you insist. 

“…Fine, I’ll give it a think,” Gaz rasps, acting like his whole entire world hasn’t changed in a blink. 

“Thanks, Kyle.” 

Your relief is palpable, so undisguised that he’d be insulted if he wasn’t viscerally aware of how much the conversation has taken out of you.  

You hug him on the way out—a gesture so natural to your friendship that you don’t notice the way he pulls you closer than normal, every inch of your body plastered to his—and he stays for a bit longer, finishing his lunch alone. He needs the time to think after what you just told him, time to digest that news without the blood ringing in his ears.

When he leaves, the sky is different. Silver sheafs of light paint the streets on the walk home, the noise of the traffic and clatter of conversation louder than ever before, the cacophony of a whole world happening around him. But it’s distant somehow, like the trickle of a brook off somewhere deep in a forest. 

He’s on the threshold of a new world, one foot dangling over the edge. For now, he keeps his balance. It remains to be seen in the days to come. 

A late, gold sun bathes the street with ribbons of light and warmth in the early hours of the evening. There’s a bistro across from the building where Simon works the evening shift in the underground parking lot, and they meet there once a week for food and a cig before Simon has to clock in. 

Gaz savours this hour and a half more than most. There’s never a guarantee that Simon will show up; his friendship is a deliberate and intentional act, not easily given but easily taken away. It’s not something that Gaz takes for granted. There may come a day when the other man never shows up again and Gaz eats at a table across from an empty chair. 

He has faith though. Their relationship isn’t so tenuous that every day he expects the worst. More than once, they’ve travelled together—one of Gaz’s fondest memories is sitting with Simon in a piazza in Florence and conversing over espressos and lemon tarallucci. For a time after leaving the military—close to around six weeks, give or take a few days—Simon even slept on Gaz’s couch until finding his own place. 

Suffice it to say, they’re closer than most people would guess. Close enough that Simon doesn’t need to be told that something’s up when Gaz is more brusque with the waiter than usual.  

“Are you ever gonna spit it out or what?” Simon finally asks, a touch annoyed with having to be the one to broach the subject of Gaz’s mood. 

The bigger man sits across the table from him with a mullish look on his face. Cantankerous as always, likely in a mood from a combination of bad sleep and old aches flaring up. He’s always touchier between the seasons, the sudden shifts making his skin go painfully dry and old injuries act up. 

Gaz’s smile is slightly sheepish when it creeps onto his face. “You could tell?”

“‘Course I can. You’ve got stupid look on your face,” Simon grunts, taking a messy bite of his sandwich. Pepperoncini slices and mayonnaise drip from the other end onto the plate. 

The one downside to eating with Simon is having to mask his reaction to Simon’s complete lack of table manners. It's a skill that's come with plenty of practice.

“My—” he pauses, choosing his next word carefully. “A friend of mine asked me to help her through her heat.”

It’s not a topic they’ve ever broached before. His raunchier conversations are usually relegated to Johnny, Soap usually the initiator. Simon keeps his exploits private, cards close to his chest; it doesn’t seem impossible that he has a girl squirreled away somewhere, but Gaz would never know if he did. 

“Ever fucked ‘er before?” Simon asks, blunt as usual. 

Gaz laughs, shaking his head. “No. It’s not like that.”

“But you’re gonna fuck ‘er now?”

“Yes. Maybe. It’s complicated.”

“What’s complicated about fucking an omega through a heat?” He talks with his mouth full for a second before pausing to finish chewing and swallowing. Then he takes another bite, talking through that one too. “Knot ‘er a couple times, wear a mouthguard if you ‘aven’t got enough control, then go home. Simple.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Why the fuck not?” 

He mulls over the best way to say it before deciding to just mirror Simon’s usual blunt approach. “She’s my mate.”

Simon’s indifference sloughs off all in one go. “When the hell did you bag someone, Garrick?”

His laughter this time borders on derisive. “Haven’t yet, actually.”

Simon stills, staring at him from over his sandwich. More ingredients spill from the bottom and onto the plate but he pays them no mind. The silence stretches on for a while, long enough for Gaz to catch on to the fact that Simon has no intention of responding, either too baffled or appalled to muster up a response or simply waiting for Gaz to justify himself. Likely the latter. 

“We were both too young when we met,” he explains. “Must’ve just presented when I first scented her and everyone told me to wait until she made the first move. Then time passed and…obviously she didn’t, and I didn’t want to pressure her.”

“How young?” 

“Uh…” He doesn’t have to think, but he knows how Simon will respond and that makes him hesitate. “Eighteen?”

“Jesus fuck, Gaz,” Simon groans, letting go of his sandwich in disgust.

“Look—”

“You’ve waited ten bloody years to bite her?”

Simon looks at Gaz like what he’s saying is anathema, like even the thought of not mating his omega doesn’t compute. For him, it probably doesn’t. It’s not the way things usually go. Gaz knows he’s been more patient than most. 

“I didn’t want to force her into a mate bond.” He shrugs. His own sandwich grows cold on the plate, barely a third of it gone compared to the scraps Simon still has left to eat. 

Gaz knows the excuse doesn’t hold water, but for as close as he is with Simon, he doesn’t have it in him to get to the real heart of the matter, the truth that his heart is still bruised. That there’s still a part of him that doesn’t believe this won’t all get ripped away from him in the end. That his own doubts might be the reason it all falls apart. 

“Fuck that,” he scoffs, pointing at Gaz with a mayo and buffalo sauce covered finger. “Have you told ‘er yes then yet? Never mind, ‘course you ‘aven’t, bloody fuckin’ moron. You’re gonna call ‘er after this and tell ‘er yes. Then, on the day of, you fuck her and bite her.”

Gaz rolls his eyes. “I can’t make that decision for her.”

“Someone’s gonna eventually. Has to happen. If it ain’t you, it’ll be some other bloke who gets to fuck and pup ‘er while you sit around with your dick in your hand. That how you want this to play out? Cucked by some bellend who won’t treat ‘er right?”

He nearly gnashes his teeth at Simon’s words, but he’s more civilized than that. He goes stone-faced instead, nostrils flaring.

“What was I supposed to do? Bite her the next time I saw her in the hallway?” Gaz rolls his eyes. “Yeah, that would’ve played out really well for me. Not like I wasn’t on thin fuckin’ ice the whole time with everyone.”

“Been a few years since then.” Simon picks his sandwich back up and takes such a big bite that he squeezes most of the ingredients out, tearing off a chunk of bread and meat.

“Yeah, I’m aware.” His tone is abrasive, but Simon shrugs it off, unbothered by a little vitriol. “Seeing as how I’m the one who’s been suffering through those years. Nobly, might I add.”

“There’s nothing fuckin’ noble about suffering,” he scoffs, upper lip curled. “You do the hard shit and then you get out. No sense in letting it drag on.”

He very nearly argues that point. Has to bite his tongue at the last second to keep from being crueler than warranted. As if suffering weren’t Simon’s main export; his main claim to fame.

He’s better than that though. And, if he were being honest with himself, there might be some truth there. 

When Simon leaves for his shift, Gaz sits there until his coffee goes cold and the manager comes by to gently inform him that they’ll be closing shortly, offering to pack up the rest of his food for home. Gaz nods absently, still miles away in his head.

He drives home in that headspace, mulling Simon’s words over. 

Justice is a core tenet of his. Fairness another. He’s lived his life up to this point guided by a strict set of principles, hardly breaking his rules of conduct unless forced to do so, unless given no other recourse. 

But he’s given so much of himself to the world and asked for so little in return. Is it not fair that he receive this? 

And besides, the beast in his chest rumbles, licking its chops, did you not ask for his help? 

He clicks the button on his sun visor to let himself into his condo’s garage. In the elevator on the way up, he stares at his reflection in the door and chews the inside of his cheek. 

Ten years now he’s sat on his hands and waited for a sign, rejecting the urge to simply take what his beast sees as his. The patience of a monk. Now there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. A white flag waved to signal the end. And rather than take that white flag for what it is and head into the sunlight, he insists on staying put and ignoring the way fate beckons him forward. 

There’s no glory in torturing oneself, no prize to be won for self-abnegation. 

And though his answer was always yes, Gaz allows himself a moment to consider what it would take for him to say no and send you off into the arms of another man. 

He hasn’t got that kind of strength in him. He’s dangled out of helicopters with his head mere inches from the ground, jumped out of a chopper hit by an RPG, fallen through the floor of a building on fire, and been under heavy fire more times than he can count, but that would be the thing that killed him. Seeing you with someone else. Knowing that the opportunity to make you his was truly lost, beyond recovery. 

And he’s tired of the way things are, his sacrificial nature bleeding into every facet of his life. 

There has to be a time for change. 

The next morning, as soon as it’s socially acceptable, he calls you, holding the phone so tight that he accidentally lowers the volume all the way down before fixing it. 

“Thought about it enough. I’ll do it.”

Two weeks until the day.

He circles it in red on the calendar in his office and it colours his peripheral vision every time he turns his head. 

And every night leading up to that day, Gaz puts his head down on his pillow to rest and he dreams. 

Fragmented dream; images of soft thighs and sweat matted hair, lips and tongues pressed together, glutes and buttock squeezing with each thrust, panted breaths getting louder and louder, the air humid and electrified. 

Always, waking at some undetermined hour, jaw clenched, the flameform of a woman left burning in his throat. 

Anticipation whets his appetite. His stomach growls like the beast in his chest and it paces restlessly as the days stretch out endlessly, only stopping when the sun finally dips below the horizon, that time coming each day later and later like some sadistic torture levied on his soul. 

In the weeks leading up to the event, Gaz comes with you to pick up supplies even though you swear that you’ve got it all under control. A lot goes into preparing for a heat. You have to stock your fridge, make your nest, lock away your valuables in case you break anything in the throes of your heat. At the end of your Costco run, the trunk of his car is stuffed to the brim with water bottles, groceries, blankets, wet wipes, chafing cream, sports drinks, and moisturizer. 

At the door to your apartment, he moves to come inside with the bags and only stops when you protest, insisting that your nest isn’t ready yet. His lips twitch into a grin. 

“You don’t want me to help carry everything in?” Gaz asks.

“No, it’s fine. I’d rather—well, just bring everything to the door and I can do the rest.”

He humours you this time because things will be different soon. When your heat is over and he’s no longer just a friend that you can keep at a distance but a red blooded man who tended to your weeping cunt and kissed every inch of your body, things will be different.

Until then though, he can give you this. 

Sometimes he finds himself hypnotized by the tantalizing glimpse of skin that he gets when your neckline pulls and the mating gland sitting in the divot between your neck and shoulder is exposed. 

Every moment in your presence is excruciating now that he knows that the waiting has come to an end. The two week interim period feels almost flimsy, false; the veil has dropped though, and he knows what’s on the other side of it now.

Though his rut is months off, the resonance of your scent must rouse his dormant instincts and throw his hormones into whack because he puts on a couple kilograms with ease, his body preparing for your heat. He overstays his allotted time at the gym by half an hour every session, so lost in his own head that he runs ten kilometres without even realizing it. Sweat runs off him in rivulets, the front of his shirt stained a darker shade of its original colour. 

In the locker room, Gaz sets his towel down on the countertop and stares at his reflection in the mirror. The sudden uptick in mass that he’s put on in the last week is noticeable even to him, his thighs and arms bulkier, and his abs a little less defined with the added weight around his midsection. His skin is smooth and buttery from moisturizing religiously before bed every night, a nice sheen to it. 

He rolls his shoulders back and flexes, preening for the imaginary viewer in his head that looks remarkably like you. 

Johnny would taunt him mercilessly if he could see him now. As if Johnny weren’t twice as vain and pompous as Gaz on a good day. 

He looks good though. Strong. Virile. Capable of seeing his mate through her first heat. If that self-assurance makes him seem cocksure or arrogant, so be it. 

There are plenty of worse things to be. 

“Did you put in for time off?” you ask, still sweaty from a brisk walk through the park to meet him. 

“Yeah. Did it the same day I called you. Took the whole week off.”

Even for as early as it is, the park is busy. Mothers pushing prams jog by in front of the bench the two of you are sitting on, all dressed in the same leggings and puffy vests, headbands holding their hair back. The city has barely woken up from winter’s tight hold, the air brisk and the ponds gelid; small mounds of ice-encrusted snow spread throughout the park like an inverse archipelago. 

In a few more weeks, there might be buds on the trees.

The pretext for spending so much time together in the lead up to your heat is so you can integrate his scent into your system. Gaz barely suppresses a laugh when you give him that excuse. As if you haven’t had a lifetime of acclimation. As if his scent hasn’t immixed with yours by now, and yours with his. 

“I took an extra couple days off after. You know, just in case.” You shrug like it’s no big deal. 

Gaz knows better though. Your ambivalence doesn’t read as wholly true. He can see the way your throat bobs when you swallow and your fingers tighten around your coffee cup. You haven’t made eye contact with him yet despite ten minutes having passed since you sat down beside him. Despite the mild weather, your coat is zipped up to the top, the metal nearly biting into your throat.

You’re doing a bang up job of acting like this isn’t some long preamble before jumping into bed together. He can’t fault you for the fact that it’s all he can think about. It runs through his mind twenty-four-seven, running an endless track that only seems to get easier the more laps he does. 

It’s strange being with you now. Humbling. There’s almost something fascinating in knowing that though you now insist on keeping a polite distance, in a week’s time, he’ll have you flat on your back and whimpering. There’s no harm in allowing you this final bit of grace, so Gaz doesn’t protest, even though—

In a week, you’ll be his.

“Are you nervous?” Gaz asks.

You stiffen, either offended or shy. He settles on the latter when you hesitantly reply, “No. I think we got everything I needed. Um. Not much more to do now other than wait.”

“That’s good.”

“Plus…I trust you.”

His heart clenches at that, stunned into silence for once. 

“You’ve always smelled good too,” you admit. “From what I can tell. I’ve always had a pretty poor sense of smell—really, it’s shit—but you smell better than most people. And I know you’d never hurt me.”

“I wouldn’t,” he stresses. 

You smile and finally meet his eyes. If only he could tell you it with his eyes alone. Nothing could be further from his intentions. If he has his way, you’ll be better off by the end of your heat.

“It’s going to be rough though,” Gaz says apropos of nothing when you go to take a sip, nearly making you spit out your coffee. 

“Huh?” you ask, looking over at him. You wipe your mouth off on your sleeve. 

“First heats always are.” A gust of wind makes you shiver. “You'll probably be worse too, since you put it off for so long—” He chuckles under his breath when your eyes widen. “Sorry, love, I’m not having a go—I’m just being honest is all. Have to know what you’re getting into before it happens; that way you don’t freak out when it’s too late.”

“Too late?” you repeat.

He nods. “Yeah, love. Once your heat hits and my…my alpha takes over, I’m not going to be able to, uh…control myself. I’m going to want to knot you as many times as I can. It’ll be the only thing I’ll want to do.”

All you can do is stare at him, beyond words. Mouth open, teeth separated. One day he’ll have you on your knees like that, tongue out as well to run up the underside of his cock. 

“But I’ll be good to you. I promise.”

He pats your knee before standing up, and you stare up at him with your mouth slightly agape, eyes round. 

“You’re leaving?” you croak, dry throat making your voice crack. 

Gaz smiles. “Gotta head out, love. Got some errands to run. Remember to do your stretches and call me if you need anything before Saturday, alright? And thanks for the coffee.”

He tosses his cup into the bin on his way out of the park, every instinct in him screaming to turn around and go back. It isn’t time though. 

It’s coming, he reassures himself on the walk home. It won’t be long now. 

How does it happen that an alpha can have his omega within biting distance for years and still keep their hands to themselves? He asks himself this question every day, but the answer remains out of reach.  

It takes a strength of will not easily called up. A sense of honour and duty that few can touch, never mind possess. He has it in spades though, chock full of the stuff, and it’s moulded him into the kind of man capable of taking care of you. 

The only thing left unanswered is whether that strength has served its purpose. Whether now is the time to let it go.

He runs his tongue over the point of his canines. 

It’s too soon to tell.

He wakes more alert than any time in nearly thirty years of life, daylight engraved into the side of his face.

Close enough to touch. Gaz’s skin itches when he brushes his teeth and packs his weekend bag with his last few things. An hour—two tops—and you’ll be under him, soft thighs parted and slick hole stuffed full of his cock. Then days more ahead of him to do the same thing over and over and over. 

He drives to your place with a sense of caution that borders on neurotic, coming to a full stop at every stop sign and yield, on the lookout for any reckless drivers lest today be the day that he gets into an accident. There’s no margin for error today. 

The roads are clear this early in the morning though, so he breathes out when he pulls into the parking lot of your building. It’s overcast now, the sun receding behind the clouds. Everywhere around him, life keeps on happening like the world isn’t about to irrevocably change. 

Gaz lets himself in using the spare key fob you gave him a week prior. Even the halls are quiet, the day not yet started enough for people to be on their way out. It’s a Saturday after all. 

His legs seem to move without conscious thought, like he’s being pulled towards your flat, a magnet of opposite polarity. There’s a prickling awareness of another consciousness at the back of his mind. He’s been aware of it all his life, but it’s as real now as it’s ever gotten, the prospect of its omega in heat at the end of a hallway and beyond something as trivial as a door giving it more cognisance, more influence. 

Even from the other side of the door, your scent sets his teeth on edge. 

You answer the door bleary-eyed and sweaty, housecoat cinched tight around your waist and fuzzy slippers making it look like you just woke up. Visibly teetering on the edge of your heat. It’s so obvious and the smell of it so fragrant that Gaz’s instincts kick in and he pushes you back into the apartment, slamming the door shut behind him. His bag drops to the floor beside him. 

“How are you feeling?” he asks, already palming your cheeks and tilting your head this way and that. He tugs down your lower eyelid gently, checking your sclera for anything abnormal.

“A bit hot,” you admit. 

“What’s your temperature?”

“Just a little over ninety-nine degrees. What’s the matter with you? Did you go to med school without telling me or something?” 

A slight temperature is entirely normal for a heat, the body working overtime to support the increased production of estrogen.

“It’s your first heat. I’m taking it seriously.”

You roll your eyes. “It’s not a baby. I don’t think you need to ask me every five minutes if I’m dilated enough.”

He ignores the baby joke because there’ll be danger if he doesn’t. The situation is already tense enough without thinking about you swollen with his pup. That’s a dream for a different day. Instead, he helps you take off the housecoat (which must have been adding five degrees to your internal temperature) and herds you into the kitchen for a cold glass of water.

It helps but barely.

Your first wave of your heat doesn’t crest until mid-morning, and by then Gaz is practically breathing smoke, the scope of his attention shrinking until you’re the only thing he can focus on. When you twitch, his head snaps in your direction, eyes vacant apart from a slight glimmer of awareness. 

It’s getting harder to think through the fog. It’d be worse if his rut overlapped with your heat, but even just being in proximity to an omega in heat—his mate, no less—forces him into an equivalent headspace. Ears peeled for any noises in the hallway outside your apartment. Wary of another alpha intruding on you in this state.

“C’mon, baby, we’re gonna get one last snack in you before it hits,” Gaz murmurs soothingly, urging you up off the couch and into the kitchen. You stumble slightly on your way there and his heart skips a beat.

You squirm in your chair while trembling fingers bring slices of manchego and chorizo up to your lips. His gaze is intense and unwavering. Any desire to glance down at the spot between your legs evaporates when your eyelashes flutter shut and your cheeks bulge as you chew. 

You’re so sweet like this. A tender thing for him to open up and ply with victuals.

“Just a couple more, okay?” he urges, pushing the plate closer to you and shushing you when you whine. 

You turn your head away when he brings a slice of cheese to your lips. “M’full,” you complain. 

“I know, baby, but it’s gonna be a long time before you’ll wanna eat again.”

“You smell weird,” you grumble instead, turning your head into his armpit and taking a deep inhale. 

“What do you mean ‘weird’?” he asks, slightly perplexed.

“Dunno. Different.” You drag another deep breath in. “Did you put cologne on or something? Smells…uh…really good.”

His dick throbs. “No, baby. Didn’t even shower before I came over.”

“Mmm. Good.”

His arm drops to the table, the force of it making the plate rattle. Fuck but how that nearly gets him. He’s not infallible. Eventually something is going to tip him over the edge from sanity into delirium. 

If this is any indication of the days to come, there’s a chance neither of you will come out entirely unscathed. 

It happens gradually, your sentences slowly degenerating and fragmenting, and your eyes glazing over. Even the smell of your skin gets richer. 

The effect that your heat is having on him is staggering. No one told him it’d be like this. No one told him it’d be like unzipping himself and letting you inside. Like sitting still as a fire blazes around him, the flames licking closer and closer to his skin.

Then your fever spikes and all bets are off. 

“Up,” Gaz growls. He doesn’t wait for you to listen, lifting you up from the chair from under your arm and hunching slightly to scoop you up into his arms. 

You moan, clinging to him. “It’s, uh—Kyle, I…I’m really hot.”

His legs are heavy beneath him, lead weights that he has to drag across the apartment, each step tougher than the last. 

Your nest is a soft, sumptuous garden of blankets and pillows and assorted clothes dragged out of the closet and spread across the floor and bed. You must have pulled the mattress off the bed frame at some point in the last two weeks because it’s pressed into the corner of the room, draped in every single sheet and blanket you own. The bed frame sits quite awkwardly on the other side of the room, pushed out of the way so as to not get in the way, and there are foam panels plastered all over to soundproof the walls. 

Clever girl, thinking of that. 

Everything’s been rearranged. He’d caught that you’d dragged a bookshelf into the living room when he came into your apartment, but even your dresser and nightstand are tucked away in the corner of your room. It’s like you took inventory of everything you own and moved everything apart from the barest essentials needed for your heat. 

He comes down onto one knee on the edge of the mattress before setting you down. You come up onto your elbows almost immediately. There’s a look in your eyes that he’s never seen before except in his dreams. Besotted, devotional. In his wildest dreams, he couldn’t have imagined that you’d ever look at him like this. 

You sit up when he comes down onto the mattress, constantly orbiting and orienting towards him. 

“Gonna take this a little at a time, okay, love?” Gaz rumbles. 

“Yeah, yeah,” you rasp, climbing into his lap when he softly urges you up. An arm braced behind him keeps him from collapsing when you sag into him. 

Pseudo-rut makes him a bit dumb, a bit clumsy. He palms the back of your neck a bit too roughly, murmuring an apology against your lips when you whimper before drawing you into a deep, toe-curling kiss. 

His stomach seizes up when he realizes that he’s kissing you for the first time. Ten years of anguish and heartache and delirious need finally culminating in your lips parting against his, the soft melt of your tongue against his when you let his tongue slide into your mouth, his blunt fingers tilting your head higher up. 

Gorgeous, perfect mouth. Kissing it feels like coming home after years away. 

God, he’s wanted it for so long. And God, your mouth tastes good, and when your tongue touches his, his head goes cloudy and his cheeks go hot. 

Clothes fall to the wayside, slowly added to the nest one by one—his pants are shoved into the crease between the mattress and the wall, your shirt tucked under a pillow. He has to reach down to readjust himself through his boxers and your eyes follow the path his hand takes, going half-lidded and hot.

He smirks, only a little bashful. “See something you like?” 

“Uh-huh,” you mumble, barely taking in his words. 

His chest puffs involuntarily, the beast in him preening. 

Touching your bare skin for the first time, Gaz realizes that he’s never felt so moored and ready. This is where he’s meant to be. Every agonizing moment of the last ten years has prepared him for this moment; not even the bite of his pseudo-rut could make him flounder. 

He traces a nipple with his thumb, following the path with his tongue when he lifts his thumb away, round and round the areola until you’re practically sobbing his name. Not enough. It’s still not enough. 

“Baby, I need to get you ready,” he murmurs when you pull at the waistband of his boxers. 

“M’ready now,” you half-snarl, tugging more forcefully, trying to rip his underwear right off. 

Gaz laughs. “No, you’re not.”

You don’t have a choice but to indulge him though. It’s his way or the highway. He’d told you that back at the beginning, after ringing you to tell you that he’d help you through your heat—it had to be under his terms or not at all. 

Your knickers get shoved under the pillow as well. Something for him to toy with later, when you’re tuckered out and not raring to go just yet. It’ll tide him over when you’re too sensitive for him to play with your pussy. 

He barely grazes a knuckle over your clit and you come, hiccupping through your first orgasm. You’re quick to come, like everything up to this point has just been foreplay. 

“Oh lovie,” he coos, pressing his lips to your temple. “It’s alright—I’ve got you.”

You jolt when he thumbs your clit again. Too sensitive. He pulls it away just long enough for you to catch your breath and for the twitches to subside, but when you start to pant again, your smelling ripening in that telltale way, he strums his thumb across it again, tucking a finger into your hole and groaning when he finds it scorching hot.

He dreamt of fingering you all the time back in high school. Thought of sitting beside you in the auditorium during assemblies and sliding his hand up your skirt until you spread your thighs and let him push your panties out of the way; cornering you in the bathroom between classes and pressing his fingers into you from behind, muffling your cries with his mouth; jiggling your pretty clit in the backseat of the bus, draping his jacket across your lap so no one else would see your wet pussy. 

The reality is so much better than he ever could’ve imagined. 

Three fingers and still you beg for more. You’re clamped so tight around his fingers that he can barely move them, not without exerting a bit more force than he’d like. You must like it though because you squeeze around his neck almost intolerably tight when he forces his fingers in.

“Good girl,” he grunts, shoving them back in. “You can take it.” 

“A-alpha?” you stutter. 

Gaz pulls you close, tucking your face into his neck. “Come here, I’ve got you. Just hold onto me, love, okay? Can you do that?”

“Y-yeah,” you breathe. 

His whole body jerks when you bite his neck. Your teeth don’t break the skin, but still he shudders, squeezing his eyes shut. Just barely keeps from telling you to bite down harder.

You have to take another break after you come, limp and satiated. Gaz uses that time to fluff the nest a bit, getting it nice and comfortable. He even leaves to fetch you a glass of water, bringing you into his chest for a nice cuddle while you recharge.

When you start staring too much again, he knows it’s almost time. 

Nervousness has no hold on him though. You came to him because you trusted him to take care of you through your first heat. 

That assurance settles him. Grounds him. There’s no one more equipped to do what he’s about to do because he’s waited his whole life for this. Whether consciously or not, his whole life has been in preparation for this moment, every choice, every heartache, every sleepless night. It’s all been in anticipation of this. 

It nearly undoes him though, despite everything. Despite the weeks spent mentally preparing, despite the strength in his body and the muscle he’s tacked on, despite his own fervor even. 

Because when he climbs on top of you and your thighs part, your hole is wet and waiting, ready for him to use it and leave a little mess behind. Just looking at it makes his balls throb. It almost doesn’t seem right that he’s about to spoil something as pretty as your pussy with his dick. Leave it stretched out and full of come. A little puffy from being knotted so many times. He should’ve gotten you a plug for after, something to keep his come inside of you. 

If his cock wasn’t so heavy, Gaz would be tempted to lean down and kiss it a bit too. It feels wrong to push inside without at least a little send-off kiss, something soft to set your mind at ease before he fucks you six ways from Sunday. 

He doesn’t have the luxury of taking his time though; your temperature is rising again, skin hot to the touch. 

Your patience is thinning too. “Kyle, I can’t wait—I can’t. I need you—” 

“I know, baby, I know.”

He strips off the last of his clothes quickly, boxers getting tossed behind him somewhere, before crawling over you again. The head of his cock looks brutish against your slick opening when he lines it up, but it stretches so prettily when he starts to sink in, gravity doing the work for him. 

Your legs girdle his waist, pillowy thighs catching him when he sinks to the hilt, breasts moulding to his chest. You’re scorching hot inside, a sweltering, blistering wetness that squeezes his cock like a vice. 

“Baby…” 

He sounds broken, eviscerated. Gutted like a gralloched animal. 

Gaz is barely able to move, barely able to pull his hips back and hump forward, the mattress shifting under him. He could probably knot you just like that. It wouldn’t take much to push him over the edge. 

“Ohohohohoh—” you squeak when he grunts low and deep, bearing down on top of you.

Two strokes into the softest, wettest cunt of his life and his resolve fractures into a thousand parts. Shards too splintered to ever piece back together again. 

At the back of his mind, he thought he might be strong enough to resist temptation. Thought he wouldn’t need anything as barbaric as a mouthguard or a collar around your throat to keep him from giving in to his baser urges. 

Strength isn’t what kept his urges fenced in though. Fear is what’s haunted him for the last ten years—the fear that he wouldn’t be enough for you, that he wasn’t allowed to have you for some reason, doubt crawling into his ear like an insect and whispering to him that he had so much more to do in order to prove himself worthy of you, that you needed to be the one to invite him in. 

But you have, haven’t you? 

Two strokes into the love of his life’s pussy and Gaz relinquishes himself to instinct, dropping his head, teeth sinking into the mating gland sitting pretty at the crook of your neck. It gives almost too easily under his teeth. Soft and tender skin, and then the secretions fill his mouth, blood and ambrosia all at once. Sweet dandelion wine and honeyed nectar. 

You tense up around him instantly, a garbled, watery gasp jumping from your lips, and sharp fingernails bite into his shoulders.

“Oh fuck,” Gaz gasps into the side of your neck when he relaxes his bite, head spinning as it all snaps into place, every strand finally tightening into place, draped in fate like samite, ermine, and brocade. “Oh God, baby, I’m so sorry. Oh God, baby, fuuuuuuck…”

“Alpha?” you wheeze. 

“Yeah, baby, I’m here,” he sighs, laving his tongue over the hurt. Your pulse thrums under his tongue, nervous and fast. “You just felt—hng, fuck—felt so good. Couldn’t help m’self.”

“A-alpha, you—you bit me—”

“Sorry, love, I didn’t mean to. Just couldn’t help it.”

“It hurts,” you whimper. You sound like you’re on the verge of tears.

“I know, baby, I know—I’m sorry. M’gonna make it all better, okay?”

“You’re gonna make it better?” you ask, almost pathetically, the tears beading in the corners of your eyes. 

His goddamn heart nearly breaks at the sight of your tears. “Of course I will, baby. Not gonna let anything bad happen to you—not my omega. My mate.”

There’s blood on his lip but not an ounce of regret in his being. Gaz sits up on his haunches, hands digging into your waist when he repositions you. He rolls you over onto your side and lifts a leg over his shoulder, swollen lips splitting open with the stretch, and fuck if you aren’t dripping wet. His head lolls forward as he stares, tempted to put you right back down and drink straight from the source, hook both legs over his shoulders and just go to town. 

But he has a job to do and his knot is already fattening up at the base of his cock, desperate to be wedged in a soft, warm hole. 

One hand palms your belly while the other holds your leg in place as he shuffles forward, turgid cock still slick with your juices. He pulls his hand away from your stomach briefly to readjust his cock, lining it up with your hole against before sinking in, letting the weight of his body carry him forward. 

Your eyes roll back in your head, the whites so white that his teeth ache. Not a hint of iris or pupil. 

He bottoms out this time on the first stroke, the curly hairs at the base of his cock damp with your slick. Warm, wet walls squeeze around his cock, sucking him in deeper, and Gaz curses softly under his breath. 

“With me, love?” Gaz asks.

When you don’t respond right away, he gives your cheek a light tap. “M’okay…”

The first few thrusts are mindful, slow enough to gauge your reaction and ensure you aren’t overwhelmed. His instincts dig like a spike into the back of his head, but Gaz grits his teeth, forcing back the impulse to rut between your thighs like a mindless beast. There’ll be a time for that in the coming days. 

Then he bucks forward a bit rougher, his shoulders tightening, tendons in his neck straining when his jaw clenches. 

Your breath comes short and sharp. “Oh god, oh my god…”

“There we go,” Gaz purrs. “That better, baby?”

“H-huh…?” Disoriented, your eyes roll around in their sockets until they land on him. Recognition comes slow, if at all. Poor thing, so horny that you can’t even think straight. 

“That feel good? That feel better, baby? I’ll take care of everything in the morning—get all the paperwork sorted, tell your parents and friends, everything. Not gonna let you stress about anything. Just have to lie there and take it nice and deep.”

The thought alone nearly makes him come. He’ll do everything by the book in the morning. It appeals to him on a base level, the idea of taking care of everything for you, so entrenched in your life that you don’t even have to think with him around. 

No more holding back, his beast rumbles in his chest.

We’ve always been worthy of this.

The thing under his skin has gone hungry for far too many years. It has known where to go to satisfy itself, but waited instead for the meal to come to it. 

And it has. You have. Wobbly-lipped and desperate for him to bite and hold. 

His pace is frantic now, mind turned off and glutes flexing with every thrust, thighs burning with the effort to keep the rhythm. All that matters is burying himself in you as deep as physically possible. 

Sweat drips into his eyes. Blinking doesn’t help. The air compresses around him, squeezing him to the point of bursting. 

Your pretty tits bounce with every thrust and he has to touch them. Grab them. Mould his hand over them until his palm always remembers what your nipple feels like. He loves the sounds you make when he pinches them and slides them between his fingers. 

“Wanted to touch these for years,” Gaz growls. He cups his hand under your breast, plumping it up all nicely. “Every summer you’d wear these, uh, these low cut tops…and I’d be so fucking hard, thinking about how much I wanted to pull your shirt down and suck on them.” 

“You never—oh, oh, oh—” you start, interrupted when you come again, walls contracting around his length. Gaz has to grit his teeth to keep from coming as well, not ready to come just yet. 

This one leaves you near breathless, too spent to finish your sentence. Your channel milks his cock. 

He wants to hear it though. “What’s that, baby?” 

“You…you never…said anything.”

“Wasn’t sure you wanted me back.” His vulnerability is ripped from him without warning, so used to giving you everything that he doesn’t even stop to think about what it’ll do to him.

You scrunch up your face, pouting up at him and it’s bad for his heart, it’s so bad for his heart how smitten he is with you. “‘Course I did. I just thought—I thought you didn’t—I’m, ah…”

So close to coming again, you lose track of your words, but Gaz understands, and the implication leaves him short of breath. 

So much lost time. So much to make up for. 

He leans down, bracing himself over you again. Your skin tastes salty when he runs his tongue over the shell of your ear. “You gonna take my knot, baby?” 

“Yesyesyesyes—”

“Gonna let me come inside too?”

“Yesssss—” you hiss through your teeth, tears spilling over your waterlines.

“‘Course you are, perfect girl. Gonna let me come inside and knot you because you’re mine. You’re my girl—my omega—my mate—”

It’s right there, barely a klick away. His balls are drawn up tight, thighs tensed and burning, every inch of him poised on the edge, desperate to come. 

When you reach down to grab a handful of his arse, trying to pull him in closer, Gaz chokes on his breath, tipped right over the edge. His groin pulses when he comes, that first spurt so good that his vision goes spotty. 

It’s so good—

God.

It’s hard to think. Hard to breathe. 

The breath is punched out of him, the sudden swell of his knot winding him. It locks his hips in place, the swollen flesh snug in the wet embrace of your cunt. Under him, you gasp for breath, wide eyes staring up at him.

“It’s alright, it’s alright,” Gaz coos, cupping your cheek in his hand. “I’ve got you, love.”

His hips grind forward in absence of any movement. Your walls flutter around his knot, too stretched out to squeeze any tighter. The energy is sucked from his body with his come, each pulse making him shudder and gasp. You must be full to the brim with how much he comes.

When there’s nothing left in him to give, Gaz slumps forward, only his elbows catching his weight, hips pinning yours down to the bed until he rolls over tentatively, making sure to keep you pressed tight to his chest. 

There’s nothing he could say that would be better than just this—draped over you, forehead to forehead, soothing his omega. Rubbing the bridge of his nose against yours. Massaging your thigh when you shift, a little cramp in your hip. 

It comes like second nature to him. It’s always been his favourite part after all—the afterglow. Pillow talk and cuddling; sweet, slow kisses with swollen lips. The fact that it’s with you only makes him enjoy it more.

When his knot softens enough to dislodge, he pulls out of you and strokes your cheek when you whine in discomfort. The sight of your poor, battered cunt makes him wince. 

He wets a hand towel in the bathroom and comes back to find you in the same place as when he left you, dazed eyes watching him curiously. Kneeling at the edge of the bed, he parts your legs to either side and crawls in closer, starting with the mess along your inner thighs and the fold of your butt. 

“Stay still,” he growls when you squirm. You go still at the subtle command in his voice, alert even under the fog of heat.

Your legs still twitch when he swipes the cloth between your legs, wiping off his leaking spend and the slick still wet on your inner thighs, but you hold yourself as still as possible, nearly biting your lip off in the process. 

“T-thank you, alpha,” you whisper, chewing on your fingertip. 

He feels his cock twitch at that, still wet with your juices. Doesn’t take much for you to work him up. 

It isn’t long before your heat crests again and you’re crawling over Gaz, hands pinning his shoulders down to the mattress. He laughs. The sound dies in his throat when you line his shaft up with your hole and sink down in one smooth motion, shutting him up oh so effectively.

Cheeky little thing. 

A few days go missing, only recalled in chunks when he’s a bit more clear-headed. Feeding you fresh fruit and slices of cheese from his fingers as you whined on his knot. Licking his own spend out of you while holding your trembling thighs open, digging his fingers into your plush inner thighs. Sucking your beaded nipples into his mouth while gliding his fingers over your clit, your cunt a bit too sore to take his knot again; not so soon anyway. Carrying you into the bathroom for a quick soak before emptying the tub and bringing you back to the bed. 

All the while, feeling your presence like a phantom limb. Like an extension of himself. Every inch of your pleasure rippling across his skin, amplifying his own. 

If Gaz had known it would be like this—

he’d have moved heaven and hell to have it. 

It’s his now though. You’re his. Mated and bound to him. So intrinsically and indelibly tied to him that no earthly force could pull you apart. 

It’s why now he can feel your mounting anxiety like a prickle at the back of his head. It’s what wakes him up so suddenly, creamy golden light spilling across the sheets and furniture when he opens his eyes to the door to your bedroom ajar. 

You’re in the bathroom when Gaz walks in, touching the mostly healed mating mark on your neck. It’s barely a puckered scar, so subtle that he might have missed it.

“Did you mean to do it?” you ask. It’s not the question he expected, but then again, Gaz isn’t sure what he expected from you. 

He nods though. No sense in lying to you. “Yeah.”

It’s clear now that this was always going to be the natural end, that any tryst between the two of you would always end here, with his mark on your neck. 

He wraps his arms around you and pulls you into him, moulding you to his chest. In the mirror, you look exceptionally fragile, still shaky and brittle from your heat, and it makes his heart ache. 

“I didn’t think I would, but I wanted to. I never would’ve if I had any doubt.”

One day he’ll tell you everything. He’ll tell you why he waited so long, what held him back all these years when he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that nothing else would come close to this. 

“You didn’t used to smell like this,” you murmur, cold nose pressed into his collar bone. You seal your words with a deep inhale, drawing all of your breath into your lungs and holding it there for a moment before expelling it. 

“What do you mean?” Gaz asks. His lips twitch when you press your nose harder against his skin. 

“It’s different. It changed.”

“I swear it hasn’t,” he laughs. “I’ve always smelled like this.” 

He can feel the way you wrinkle your nose against his skin. “Liar. You used to smell… I don’t know. Maybe like this, but subtler. Fainter.” You exhale again, more contemplative this time. “It must’ve been my heat. Everything smells so much stronger now. It’s like breathing after being sick or something. Like my nose is clear or something.”

Gaz stares at your reflection from over your head while it washes over him. Of course his life would be ruled by a comedy of errors. What might’ve happened had you not gotten on suppressants all those years ago? Maybe nothing. Maybe the past is what it’s always been and there’s no sense in looking back and asking what if things had been better. Maybe regrets are like false idols in that way—there’s nothing holy in worshipping at the altar of them. 

He makes a mental note to keep this from Johnny. Gaz will never hear the end of it if he finds out. 

“What are we gonna do now?” you whisper. 

He lowers his head, pressing his lips to your crown for a moment before resting his chin on top of your head. “Don’t worry, love. I’ll take care of everything.”

I’m so sick of pretending x reader isn’t peak

hands like barbed wire

John Price x Reader

18+ | dubcon that flirts heavily with noncon. fingering (in public). manipulation. slight corruption kink. sheltered reader forced into a wife-grooming speed run. lotsssssa good girl/sweet girl/baby abound. implied kidnapping.

You meet him in a bar.

He's sitting alone in the corner, body angled towards all the exits. There's a glass of scotch on the table that drip, drip, drips these big, teardrop-sized droplets of condensation down the glass, kept cradled between a thick, grizzled hand. The scabs on his knuckles remind you of ripe, sour cherries when they flex under the coarse dusting of hair.

There's something about his hands that catches your attention first. Keeps it.

Your daddy used to say there was a lot to learn about a man by the shape of his hands. And his, this magnetic stranger's, are rough. Worn. Dangerous. Blistered and torn up. Caution tape in pale peach. Dirt under his nails. Ash on his forefinger. Stay away, it says. Run.

But the flicker of orange sparking up in the gloom draws you in like a moth to a flame. Stupid girl—

(just like daddy always said)

He doesn’t look up when you step closer. Little moth drawn to that orange light, the shift of those fingers wet with condensation. But you catch the slightest shift of his chin from your periphery. A silent acknowledgement, but it’s all you get. He keeps his eyes glued to the newspaper he has spread out on the table. Disregarding you entirely. Ignoring you. 

(and you keep yours fixed on the clench of his hands—)

"Not supposed to smoke in here," you murmur, voice a little slip of a thing when it shudders out of your throat. 

You don’t mean to say it. You’re not sure why you do. The words roll to the tip of your tongue and drip down your chin when your mouth shifts on a small, soundless gasp. Beneath the scabs on his fingers, his skin is all scar tissue—

In an almost laughable contrast, he growls, purring like a tiger, a diesel engine, when he speaks. 

"m'not supposed to do a lot of things—" When you finally, finally, drag your eyes away from his hands (the flex of his fingers, wondering how they'd even fit inside—), you catch a flat, uneven line buried under untameable brown. But he still doesn’t look at you. "But who is gonna tell me that?"

You don't get it. Sheltered girl—little girl, he adds, all ugly and cruel; cold in his mockery because that's what you are to him: little—growing up buried in the mountains, left to rot on the fecund plains where your daddy sowed seeds and mama pickled the wares for the market. Barely scraping by on a farm doomed to fail. Some poor man's burial ground, the locals say. Cursed. But hindsight—the gold band on his ring finger, one half of a matching set belonging to a woman who isn't you; and the patch on his leather jacket, faded yellow and bold, 141 with a twisted skull—bring you to a neat conclusion:

he's a bad man. Stupid girl, daddy would bark. Ain't you know nothin'? Stay away from them folk. Bad news. Nothin' but trouble.

(Mama would laugh. And oh, honey, did trouble find you—)

Between the heavy thud of your heart, the words slip out. “Well, I just did.”

More gall. Cheek. You don't know where it comes from.

Mama would have washed your mouth with soap. Dragged you to the washroom, spitting about respect as she twisted her gnarled fingers into your lips, and tugged. 

You expect the same from him. Maybe worse. Much worse. But he just looks—

His eyes peel away from the article (train robbery down south, it says in bold, ugly letters), finally darting to take you in. There's shock, you think. Stupefied by your audacity. The disrespect. But when he rests his eyes on you—cold blue, like a glinting gem, a lagoon—the slow climb of his brows, drawn up high until three deep lines stretch across his skin, comes to a stop. 

He seems to pause for a beat. Just long enough for an exhale of smoke, twin funnels of dragon's breath, to pour out of his nose. They draw together, but it's not in anger. Scorn. It's a rough sort of contemplation. Eyes narrowing into slits as he stares at you. 

And the weight of his gaze is a palpable thing. Heavy. You try to fight the urge to fidget as he sizes you up, rolling your eyes down the length of his body above the table to skirt around intense, dizzying blue. 

But your avoidance makes him huff, and he leans back, sucking in another breath. 

"C'mere," he demands. Doesn't say, doesn't ask. Just growls the words out between the clench of his teeth buried in that cigar you tried to nitpick him about. "Come sit."

And you do. of course, you do (stupid girl).

But when you reach for the chair next to his, he scoffs. "Didn't tell you to sit beside me."

"Then where—"

He's pushing back in his seat before the words are out, thick thighs open wide (impolite mama would say), stretched tight over a pair of jeans. But even with the wide spread, you can't even see the cheap red plastic in the open v of his legs. When you don't move quick enough—head all thick, syrupy—he grunts. Reaches down mockingly and pats his thigh.

"Come sit, little girl—"

It's demeaning. Embarrassing. But there's something about him that seems to negate choice the closer he gets. Renders it into dust between his fingers. Head syrupy. Empty. No thoughts needed when he'll just think for you—

And oh. 

Oh. That thought does something to you. Static in your veins. An electric shock. Mind reeling, spinning around that single, wayward idea.

Your head is hot. Feverish. Everything inside is melted, liquified, and drips out of your ears to pool between your thighs. 

(Under the white cotton of your modest summer dress, they squeeze together, sliding in the gathering slick—)

When you don't move fast enough for his liking, he grunts. "Ain't gonna tell you again—"

And you listen. Obey. Because that's what you are: a good girl. You do what you're told, don't you?

So you slip onto his lap, letting those big, gnarled hands wrap around your waist. Holding you steady (keeping you trapped) as his thick, warm thigh splits yours apart. Wrenching you open for one of his rough, dirty hands to slide between.

His forearm anchors you to the broad, dizzying spill of his chest, head dipping to nuzzle against the shell of your ear. Shushing you softly as you squirm around the hard, thick press of his thigh against your core—cunt, he bites out, teeth nipping along the skin of your ear; can feel your hot little cunt, sweetheart—and grapple with the strange, dirty-wrong, sensation of sitting in a stranger's lap as he slowly pulls up the dress you wore to church this morning, fingers hot on your inner thigh. Chasing that sticky-slick dampness that makes him groan low in his throat when he first touches it. Softly still, a hoarse good girl—

But this isn't what good girls do.

Mama says no man is allowed to touch this hot, slick little place between your thighs until you're married. A sin, she called it. Wrong. The pastor, too. Only when you're married. Only as a wife.

You don't think he has any intention of marrying you, but he touches you like a man would a wife. Knuckle hard, firm against the thin, worn cotton of your panties. Grazing. Rubbing. All soft and slow. Not even much of a touch—just the whisper, the idea, of one.

The rasp of his smoke-scorched, whiskey-scented voice in your ear, peppering filth, sin, out as he tells you he can feel how wet your little pussy is. Feels it against his finger. And can you feel that, sweetheart? when he pushes a little harder, digging the peak of a bent knuckle into the seam of you. Can you feel him through your pretty little panties?

"Mm," he grunts, pushing harder. Arm tightening around your waist when you squirm, and squirm. "Can you?"

Yes, you think around a long breath. A little stretch. Your legs kick out under the table when he grazes over a spot that blooms a vicious, intense pleasure through your belly. Something that feels so good, that it makes you a little sick. Makes you want to run. Maybe that's why your legs kick and kick, and—

"Be good." It's a snarl. A warning. "Or I'll take you over my knee—"

Be good, he adds again when you whimper, softening the grit in his voice from granite to soot. The same tone Daddy uses when they bring him a broken horse. "Jus' wanna make you feel good, sweet girl, mm. Want that, don't you?"

"We're n-not supposed to do this if we're not—not married."

Shivering it out into the balmy, smoke-dense air of the bar feels almost like a release. Baptismal. Like maybe now you've said it, whatever spell has fallen over the two of you will be broken. He'll blink awake and right the wrong you've committed with a quick, decisive shake of his head. You'll go back to being a good girl, a simple girl from a simple family, and he'll be the stranger in a bar you think about sometimes, like the real man mama loved but her daddy wouldn't let her marry.

(A sweet little fever dream, she'd said fondly. Sadly. And then, scared, tense: don't tell daddy, though, okay?)

He hums around it, but it sounds accommodating. Placid. Like an adult entertaining the whims of a child.

"Want that, mm?" He digs the question in with a slip of his finger over the cheap lace lining the hem of your panties. "Want me to marry you?"

You're not sure. You don't know him, but he's touching you in public. Has you sat—spread—on his lap with his hand under your dress, touching you the way a husband would. There's a ring on his finger already. The suggestion of a wife. A life outside of this hovel where nothing grows, and you're just expected to roll over and grow old with whatever man daddy approves of.

"No," you stammer out because he's married already, and that's what daddy will say. "No—"

"Shame," he grunts, and his nail catches on the edge of coifed lace. Scraping it over slick, damp skin. "Jus' lost mine, you know. Been thinkin' 'bout takin' another."

A good little girl to warm my bed is said as his nail drags your panties over your swollen, slick folds.

It's instinctual to want to snap them shut. Keep him out. But his knee lifts like he's expecting that, keeping you spread. Open. His hand is hot on your skin. Burning. His thumb wedges into the hem of your panties, stretching the fabric to tuck the edges together, exposing your cunt to his wandering, blistering fingers.

There's no quarter. No choice. He doesn't let you think. Doesn't give you a minute to breathe. It's just—

Skin on skin.

His knuckle slides between the seam of your swollen folds, parting them as he touches that slick, hot space cradled inside. Groaning, too, when he does; like he touched fire. Like you burned him. Hurt him even though you know you never could.

The noise balms the panic and clots thick tufts of cotton inside your ears. The low, rolling brass trembles in your belly. A small quake. You feel it in your cunt; a strange, throbbing little hum that makes you clench down twice on nothing but the idea of that sound. The echo.

He tells you he feels it. Feels how desperate you are for him.

Needy little thing, he rasps, and it isn't kind. It isn't nice. There's a reprimand needling in against the grain of his praise. An unspoken good girl said in the tone of a man who thinks you're anything but.

"Been thinkin' about takin' a wife," he says again, dragging the rough, scabbed tip of his knuckle across the powder-soft flesh of your folds. It's ticklish. Weird. Something that makes you want to giggle and cry. Pull your blankets over your head. Lean into it more. Spread your legs wider until he touches that spot that made you shake. "But the mistake I made the last time was not testin' 'er out before I married 'er. Turns out—" the tip digs in between your swollen folds, touching where you're hot and sticky and far too sensitive for such rough hands. "She wasn't as sweet as I thought she was."

And it's electric. The rough, calloused scrape of his finger stroking up and down your split seam (your clit, he mumbles into the hollow space behind your ear, giving it a little swirl that makes your toes curl; to your hole, nice and tight and so fuckin' wet f'him, mm?) is a jolt of that dizzying, too much-not enough pleasure. A shock. Mouth open, toes clenched tight. Legs kicking. Muscles seizing as he works you over with just the tip of a finger. Barely even a touch.

"But you're sweet, aren't you?"

It sounds like he's chiding you all over again, but the cotton puffing up against your eardrums, the pleasure buzzing in your belly, between your thighs, makes everything sound so sweet. Enticing. So you agree. Nod feverishly on a gasp when his finger trails down to where you clench tight around nothing, circling your opening with the tip of his finger, nail skimming over swollen, slick flesh.

You're not sure what this is. Don't even know where to begin to articulate what you want, need, but each pass makes you feel every bit of the needy little thing he called you earlier. An admonishment drenched in fondness. Wrapped up so tight in a soft, velvet cloth of amusement that you could barely feel the pricks of barbed wire nestled inside when it rubbed against your skin.

Sweet enough that it makes you turn your head into his bicep, nuzzling against the fabric of his jacket as he works his fingers between your wet, slick thighs. Thumb against your clit. A brand. Pressing down, down, and then softening when your legs kick out, too much. That dirty, awful kind of pleasure that makes you feel like a balloon being pumped too full, ready to burst. His finger slips inside. Just a tease. As gentle as a kiss. Only up to his cuticle. Barely even a knuckle.

He tells you all of his with his beard scraping against the flushed, damp skin of your cheek. Murmuring the words into the pool of blood throbbing against your cheekbones. Reinforces them with a sharp nip of his teeth when the shame trickles in—when the easy pump of his finger, not even a knuckle, makes a wet, sticky noise as it pushes into that pool of heat inside of you.

And it's all good girl, sweet girl against the sticky-slick shine of your raw cheek when your needy little cunt sucks him in deeper. Beggin' for it, and sweet little pussy wants it so bad, mm, needy girl? and don't worry, baby, m'gonna make you feel so good.

Baby. It catches, loops. Makes it easier to ignore the noise spilling out under the thick spread of his palm, finger digging in deeper (the first knuckle is a soft good girl, the second is a rough a doin' so good, sweetheart; and the third, slipped right up to last is a low, rumbling that's it, baby, takin' it so well, ain't you?), and the clatter around you. A semi-crowded bar.

You forgot, you think, squirming suddenly. Stiffening around him, on him, as the world sharpens into a whistle. Glass on worn wood. Thud, thud. Legs squealing against herringbone as a heavy chair is dragged back. Low murmurs. Laughter. Noise spilling out from the front of the room, calls for more beer. Another shot. Hey, bartender, gimme another Jack on the rocks—

"Shush-shush, baby," he coos, finger dragging out a lewd squelch when slides back inside of you, as deep as it'll go. The slap of his bent index and ring finger hitting your puffy, drenched folds when he thrusts. "They can't see you. Can't hear you. Jus' be good for me, mm? My sweet girl."

Nothin' matters except me, he adds, curling that finger inside of you until it hooks on a spot that makes you whimper into his arm, teeth sinking into leather. I own this bar, he promises, lifting his arm up as you cling to him with your teeth. A block against the world. Nothing but faded, aged leather and stale smoke. Gunpowder. The slick glide of his finger inside of you, the sting of the stretch dissolving into a wet, sticky pleasure.

His own teeth dig into the curve of your neck. A pinch. Sucking in a mouthful of skin as his ring finger extends, drags over your messy cunt until it's pushed up against your stuffed hole, nudging inside. A shallow dip. Lemme in, it says as he bites through blood vessels with the hard suck of his mouth. Lemme in because—

"I own this town. This bar. Jus' like I own this sweet little cunt."

A shove and he's in. All the way. To the last knuckle. Quick and sudden, the sting is an afterthought; the burn is a hazy, ephemeral throb in the back of your head. Balmed by the drag of his thumb over your pebbled clit.

It feels like a seesaw. Up and down. Bending your knees, feet planted into the ground, and then kicking up, up. Weightless. Over and over again. An ebb and flow. Higher and higher until you slowly fall down—

(—into his lap. the cup of his palm.)

You tell him as much. Mewled out into spit-drenched leather as he rumbles against your spine, his voice so deep, so full, you can feel it humming in your chest when he speaks.

(feel it drip down your spine like hot wax where it pools between your thighs—)

"Good girl," he says, and you feel like anything but. Less like the girl who sat in the pew this morning, humming along to hymns in a modest, cotton dress and more like gum spat out onto the pavement. Squished down under his heel. Dragged along beneath his boot. Pretty, dizzy pinked up remora. "Bein' so good, mm? Maybe you deserve a reward."

It comes on the crook of his fingers twisting inside your slicked up cunt; blunt nails pressing against soft walls until it stings like the nip of his teeth over your cheek. You're not even sure if it feels good. It's just—

Pressure. A burning stretch. The foreign sensation of something detached from your body squirming inside of you, touching places you've never been able to reach before. Too deep and too full. His index finger is nearly double the width of your own.

It makes you mewl like a child. Twisting on his lap, trying to pull away from the place that parts for him so easily, opens up with just the crook of his finger. Leaks slick down his palm, drenching his pants. Makin' a mess, he growls, and pulls you back down on his lap. Feel it, sweet girl? Mm? Feel the mess you're makin'.

And you hate that you can. That each thrust of his hand between your thighs sounds wetter and wetter than it did before. That it pulls it out of you until it drips down your inner thighs and pools against the back of your dress. Stains his thighs. The hard thing—his cock, he tells you, dragging your ass over it with a grunt—under you that jerks and throbs and flattens up to a size that makes you want to curl into a ball and weep.

(that makes your knees twitch, wanting to spread wider—)

It's a lot. It's too much. You're not even sure you like it ("ain't nice to tell lies, little girl;") but he doesn't stop. Won't. Not even when tears drip down from the corners of your eyes, and you hide whimpers into the damp, sticky leather of his sleeve. It doesn't really matter because—

"mm, you look so pretty when you cry."

You feel drenched. Liquid. No longer a person but a puddle. Melted, leaking. Dripping down his lap and pooling onto the dirty barroom floor. A slippery little thing held together by the cup of his palm, the hook of his fingers sinking into you over and over again.

"Are you watchin'?" The arm wrapped around your waist shifts until his dry, rough hand is cupped under your wet, sticky chin, curling over your throat. "Look at us."

Between the spread of your thighs, white cotton dress rumpled and rucked up around your hips, the sight of his hand—masculine: dangerous; knuckles bruised and scarred, cherry red; big and rough and hairy—is obscene. Ugly. Wrong.

(a grunt: too tight. his fingers flex, spreading open inside of you, scissoring apart. loosen up, love, before you break 'em, mm.)

So, so wrong.

You feel small with that big, grizzled hand between your legs. Insignificant. A toy to play with. A thing to be used. And that's just what he does.

Shows you how he can play with your body when he peels his fingers out of you nice and slow until just the tips keep you open, skin shiny and wet. Glistening in the flushed, low light of the bar. And then slides them back inside, just as slow. The first knuckle. The second. The third. Wiggles them around. Scissors them apart.

Pulls them out faster now, and thrusts them back inside hard.

This cunt belongs to him, he grunts, words nestled beneath the slick, sticky-wet sound of him taking what he owns. Over and over again. That big, bearish hand works at your messy cunt until your thighs tremble, and your head throbs.

The hand on your throat is firm. Tight. And when it pulls away to slip inside your cotton dress, you realise you've forgotten how to breathe without him controlling every breath.

"Come on," he rasps, fingers working harder. Faster. His thumb catches your clit, rubbing small, tight circles; each pass brings a new, terrible pleasure rippling through you. A crescendo that builds and builds. Higher on the seesaw—up, up—

His hand is scorching as it cups your breast, index and middle finger scissoring over your nipple until it's caught between the two. A pluck. A pinch. It buzzes down your chest, sinks like a stone into the wet, muddled mess between your hips.

And that's all you are. Nothing but a soaked, hot mess of a thing in his lap. Putty. Messy girl. Silly girl. Sweet. Stupid. His.

(his low, growling voice in your ear: mine, mine, mine;) "aren't you, little girl?"

The leather between your teeth tastes like ash. Smells of gunpowder. Fresh hide in the summer's sun. Smoke. Tobacco. Potent. Masculine. Grizzled, like his hand between your thighs. The other cupped around your breast, pinching and pulling and kneading flesh you hadn't realised could feel so good when it was touched like this—

By his hands, palms hot enough to scorch, to brand. To melt you from the outside in until you leak all over his lap where you're cradled like a child. Obedient and docile.

Especially when he makes you come on his fingers. Tells you that's what you'll do before it happens—a grunt, a command, in your ear. Do it, sweetheart. I ain't askin' again—

And you do. Pulsing like a heartbeat around the thick stretch of two fingers digging deep inside of you, stabbing into that spot that makes you pant like an animal. Blooms more heat, more pleasure, that thickens inside your navel—molten. Spilling out from between your hips. Up, up, up on the seesaw—

"Good girl. Good fuckin' girl—"

He doesn't even sound like a man anymore. The rough, feverish grit of his voice pitches low into his throat, hums in his chest. Rattles like bones in the wind. Howls. Sharpens in the pit of your belly, another liquid pulse around his fingers. It sounds animal. Primal. Bearish as he claims you as his, as he curls his fingers around the heart of you, and tugs. Leaving you spun around those thick, grizzled fingers like fresh cotton candy, sticky and sweet. His to keep.

And that's what you are,

"aren't you?"

Good girl, he coos when you nod, sniffling into creased leather that smells of cade and motor oil. Too dizzy to make sense of what he's asking for, too incomplete.

Your neck feels cold without his touch, but you don't know how to ask for something you don't even think you really want. Shouldn't want.

You feel feverish, too, and it's an all-over thing. From the space between each toe, to the backs of your ears—everything is too hot, too cold. You're shivering, but you want to sink down into a pool of ice, a blanket of heat and warmth. Wrap yourself around the hot, oozing insides of a chest—like the hunter who slept inside his beloved horse—and bathe in the waters around the polynya. Icy and dark.

Mostly, though, you just feel raw. Wrong. Scraped out and hollowed. Broken into pieces and put back together with mismatched parts.

And it's worse, you think, when he pulls his fingers out of you, and you're reminded of what it feels like to be empty all over again.

"Shush, baby," he's cooing when you whimper. Chiding. "Let's have a taste, mm? Find out if you're really sweet."

His hand is drenched when he pulls it from between your thighs. Thick, clear strands make a bridge between his fingers when he splits them apart, rumbling low and brassy in his chest at the sight. Spits like a burning log, crackling sap in a dry fire, when he says, look, baby, got me all fuckin' wet—

But you can't. Not when he drags his hand up, up, over your shoulder, above your head, and sinks his fingers into his mouth with a groan that raffles through you, all the way down to your toes. Slurps on his hand, on the slick you left behind, like a man half-starved. Grunting at the taste. Cock throbbing beneath you like a heartbeat. Pulsing and angry. Enough that you cower a bit, flinching back into the broad expanse of his chest as his thick, fat cock twitches under you, eager for something you only really know about as an abstract concept. Knowledge gleaned through rummaging around in cupboards when no one was looking. Playground tales; cupped palms against the side of an ear. Stage whispers.

Husband and wife.

And oh, baby—

"you're the sweetest thing I've ever tasted," he rasps into your cheek, lips shiny and wet. Smearing spit and slick across your raw skin. "Looks like I found my new wife."

It doesn't make sense. Another abstract concept. Fragmented pieces. You want to say we can't get married, but all that comes out is a squeak. A whimper. Some shallow warble in the back of your throat that sounds like daddy, please.

But he's pulling his hand away from your breast, and clasping it tight around your neck before the words can make it through the panic clogging your throat. A firm squeeze snuffs those flames as quickly as they formed, and you swallow down the ash in the back of your throat before it can choke you.

Good girl, he says with a paper soft kiss to the bruised, burning apple of your cheek. Sweet girl, baby girl, and when he smoothes his damp hand across the rumpled fabric of your cotton dress, pulling it back over your thighs, you realise you forgot your own name.

(It doesn't matter, you suppose. You'll have his soon enough.)

When it's back in its proper spot, unblemished and pristine despite the ache between your thighs and the way your panties stick, uncomfortably, to swollen skin, he drags his hand back up your leg until his palm swallows your thigh. The warmth of his skin bleeds through the cotton, and his rough, calloused fingers catch on loose threads when he splays them wide, touch firm, possessive—as if he has the right to hold you like you're his.

But his skin is still wet, and when it catches in the light, you feel a sinking weight in your belly. An echo in the back of your head that says you already are.

His thumb strokes over cotton, and it's almost obscene, really: soft, virginal white against marled, cherry red and scarred peach; from his knuckles to the hem of his leather jacket, he's covered in a dense swath of hair. Veins bulge when he flexes, thick lines running down the back of his hand like little rivers of blue beneath raw peach flesh. He's just so—

Different.

Masculine. Big. Dangerous, you think again, and hear that muffled echo in the back of your head that said run, stay away.

(except now it sounds like stupid girl, you're much too late—)

Trapped like a fawn under his paw. One on your thigh, the other on your throat. The phantom burn, the hollow echo, of his fingers tearing through the too-tight space inside of you, making room for the heavy, fat length under you.

Soon, it seems to say, still as angry as it was when he feasted on your sweet taste.

His hand leaves your thigh, reaching up towards the half-drunk glass on the table beneath a puddle of condensation. It, too, is swallowed up under his bearish hand when he curls his fingers around it, tugging it closer, over your shoulder.

You smell whiskey as he takes the last swig, grunting at the burn, the sting. When he's finished, he leans forward, warm chest glueing to your spine, and places the empty glass back in the puddle.

The hollow thud of glass on wood seems to shake loose the cobwebs that spooled around your head. It feels like blinking to life. Waking up from a deep sleep.

The bar is still buzzing with noise, but you can hear it clearly now. A constant, endless press of voices and low hums, words you can't make sense of. You're too far back in the bar for anyone to have seen you—the bulk of his arm is a wall between you and the world—but you wonder just how much your whimpers carried under the static chatter. The wet, messy squelch—

"You're fine, sweetheart." A squeeze and the panic welling in your throat is choked under his palm. Snuffed out. "No one heard a thing."

You're not sure you believe him, but it keeps the embarrassment from eating you alive, and so you let it go with a slow, sleepy nod. A sniffle. Wet, weepy: I want to go home.

"S'right, sweetheart," he soothes, pressing another brittle kiss to your temple, one that feels the sting of a scraped knee. "We'll get you home."

(Chiding. Look at what you've done to yourself. Pitying. Patronising. Poor thing.)

His home isn't the same as the one cradled in the maw of a mountain, where the land is always barren, and your mother weeps when your father isn't around, but you relent when he tugs, pulling you into his arms. Holding you like a small child as he bites down on his cigar, and moves through the blanket of silence in the once rowdy bar. Hands firm, tight like shackles when they close around you.

Your father used to say you could tell a lot about a man by the look of his hands, and when he slips his fingers between the soft brackets of yours, filling the spaces you hadn't realised were empty, you know one thing:

these are not the sort to ever let go.

(bassbround. apodictic.)

and when he slips his ring on your finger and tells you to wear that little white cotton dress for him, you suppose you have no one else to blame but yourself.

something or other, Gaz x Reader.

you and gaz have been going out for a couple of weeks. classical gentleman. knocked your standards up a few pegs and then some. treats you gently and poetic with comfort. makes you laugh.

and all of these things make you nervous to bed him.

hands tremble a bit as you fiddle with his dress shirt buttons, doing your best to focus on the gentle grip that pulses over your hipbone. mind on overdrive when he shoves his hands up your dress.

loosing the ability to worry in your first orgasm.

he flips you over across the counter, face cooling on the granite. a breath as he hikes up your dress, and you both realize something rather quickly-

you forgot to mention the tattoo.

approaching a decade old. a stick and poke from your late teens. sits right above your ass. you go to say something when you feel his thumb press against it.

“what do we have here…”

doesn’t take his eyes off it when he fucks you from behind. makes sure to kiss it after licking your cunt clean from his spend.

he’s a fan.

‘you’ll get used to it.’ | captain john price

“Good girl,” he mutters, voice thick with it, and your cunt clenches around him in response. “God, you take me so—” you whimper, rolling your hips to meet his, and he hisses. “Yeah,” his mouth finds your ear. “Show me what you can give me—”

WARNINGS - 18+ mdni. smut. so much smut. darker themes ie death. a super deep and twisted interpretation of a solider who’s being reckless in attempt to run from their feelings. captain price is bred to hunt so it’s futile. piv. mirror sex. multi orgasms. size kink. dirty talk. dubcon slightly. we shouldn’t be doing this trope. slightly morally grey. a lot of sleep token references. fingering. reader afab. mentions of blood, injury. slight brat/dom dynamic. overstimulation.

The first thing you register is the weight of him.

Not his hands, though they’re there too — firm around your arms, holding you steady — but him. The heat of him at your side, sweat and cigarettes filling your muddled senses with each laboured breath you gasp for. The quiet, infernal energy that pours off him, taking up too much space, too much air from your already airless lungs.

“You with me?” His voice rumbles close to your ear.

You try to nod, but the motion sends a fresh bolt of pain ricocheting through your skull. Your breath hitches, and his grip tightens.

“Easy.” A low murmur, meant to soothe. “Almost there.”

There being the med bay, where fluorescent lights paint everything sterile. Too bright, too fucking loud alongside the offset drumbeat in your ears. He doesn’t let you sit on your own — eases you down onto the cot himself, hands as steady as they always are, even when yours are the furthest from.

You wince as you shift, and his eyes flick over you. He’s still assessing.

“Shouldn’t’ve let that bastard get a hit in,” he mutters, half to himself.

You know what he’s thinking. The result of your own impulsivity. Reckless. “Yeah, I’ll try to avoid that next time.”

He exhales sharply. A shake of his head. “Could’ve been worse.”

You know that. Just like you know he’s only saying it to ease your dread. But you can see it in the way he looks at you, something unreadable tightening at the corners of his mouth, that he’s seen it. Many more times than you think.

“I’m fine,” you tell him. “You don’t have to—”

He doesn’t let you finish.

Just gives you that look, the one that shuts people up without him having to say a damn thing. It’s something you’re still learning about him — the way he often communicates without words. How his silence and pointed stares hold more meaning than most people’s shouting. You’ve also learned the effort to argue with him when he’s like this is a futile one. You’re a part of his team. He’ll be with you through it all.

Then, without asking, he reaches for you — because he knows you’ll let him. One hand bracing your chin, tilting your head so he can get a better look at the damage.

And even through the agony, it’s all too much.

The touch, the closeness, the way he hasn’t taken his eyes off you for one goddamn second since you’d been hit. Your throat goes dry at the realization that it’s doing more to you than it should. But you’ll never get used to how he does it. How a man like him — a wartime killer with more bloodshed on his fingertips than skin covering his limbs — can still look at you with something even remotely soft, when he’s bred to be everything but.

“You always this stubborn?” His voice is quieter now. A rough rasp against his throat.

You swallow, pulse hammering. “You always this persistent?”

His lips quirk, but his grip stays firm, fingers cool against your fevered skin.

“You’ll get used to it.”

You wondered then, if you ever really would.

———————

Months later, you’re still wondering the same thing.

It’s been months since that night in the med bay. Months of keeping yourself at arm’s length. Of keeping things professional. Of projecting platonic renditions despite the cursed thing threatening to take its place.

Or, well, trying to.

Because if there’s one thing you know for certain, it’s that tension like this doesn’t fade. It festers.

No matter how deep you try to bury it, perseverance is its ally. Helps it crawl out of the grave you dug for it in every brush of his fingers against yours when he hands over a magazine clip, every order spoken gravel in your ear, every glance held a second too long when neither of you are fast enough to look away. It leaves claw marks in everything, has been ever since the day he carried you through crumbling stone and mortar — ever since you felt him so fucking close and you realized you didn’t mind it. Since the moment you learned more about him in twenty minutes than you have in the entire year by his side.

That night relinquished something. Made you see him in a new light. What was once a beacon is now a solar flare for dead gods.

And it erupts here. Now.

In the barracks washroom after a mission gone sideways. After a fight that took too much out of you — left your bones aching, your skull pounding with the remnants of a concussion you’re beginning to suspect never fully healed — skin still humming raw, soaked in adrenaline and something a little too fucking reckless.

After he follows you in.

The door slams behind him, the sound ricocheting off the tiles. You don’t turn around, just strip your tac vest off with more force than necessary, breathing hard, hissing under your breath as exhaustion begins smothering out the fire in your blood.

“You got a fucking death wish?”

You can feel him staring at you. You know he’s seeing red — the heat of his eyes on your back incomparable to the even the greediest hellfires.

You exhale, press your palms flat against the edge of the sink. “Don’t start.”

“Don’t start?” He steps closer. “You ran straight into that firefight without cover.”

“I handled it.”

“You barely walked away.”

Finally, you turn, glare at him over your shoulder. “That what this is? Another fucking lecture?”

He doesn’t scowl. Doesn’t snap at you like your previous COs would. He just watches. And somehow, that’s worse.

“That what you think I’m doing?”

You scoff, shake your head, turning back toward the sink. The mirror in front of you is cracked down the middle, splitting your reflection in two. And you think, rather ridiculously, that it’s a perfect fucking picture of how you feel. Torn. Between the persistence of him and the need to keep your distance. Between what you’ve spent months trying to ignore and the way it still catches you off guard—how you keep finding yourself watching him, noticing him, like something inside you has already made a decision you can’t retract.

Behind you, he exhales slow. You hear the shift of his boots against the floor.

“Can’t keep doing this,” he mutters. “Won’t.”

Something in your chest tightens.

“What, watching my back?” You force your voice to stay even. “That’s your job, isn’t it?”

“Not like this.”

The simplicity of that response has currency, and you know the behaviour. The familiar silence that tells you there’s more to this. Syllables pleading behind his teeth which he isn’t quite yet dignifying — but that slice along the back of his throat all the same. You meet his gaze in the mirror, and you see it then. In the dim light of his ocean eyes.

An emergence.

“I can’t watch you go down again.” There it is. Words coaxed out in that thick accent of his that inflicts them like a wound. He’s moving closer now, extinguishing the space. Stepping up behind you. “You haven’t been right for months. I need to know why.”

At that, you almost recoil — each syllable thrusting the knife deeper into your resolve, and you realize it’s not his accent that makes them cut, but the way he speaks them. Certain. As if he’s looking at you bare. No layers left to protect you. Like you’re nothing but sinew and marrow. Like your eyes and limbs are instruments to pick apart.

You stare at the sink. “So you are always this persistent.”

It leaves your lips exactly as you mean it — a callback, a test. You don’t watch his face, but the silence stretching long tells you it landed exactly where you wanted. A synapse snap back, an echo from the depths of whatever is eating you from the inside out.

“And you,” a pause, breath ghosting against the shell of your ear. “Are always this stubborn.”

He says it like an indictment.

You’re sure it’s because he knows you. Because he sees how you bleed and pretend you don’t. How you’ve been keeping yourself at arm’s length for months. Because you’ve cornered yourself — because you let the bruises fade without ever acknowledging how deep they burrow.

Your fingers tighten around the porcelain, like if you hold on hard enough you can keep the charade going. Pretend you don’t feel what you feel. But then, you glance up, and there it is — your reflection wavering in the split mirror, cut through by the fault line of your own indecision. Your own internal warfare.

“Yes,” you whisper. “But you knew that long ago.”

“I did.” His hand braces against the sink beside yours as he all but cages you against it. “But I keep thinking, sooner or later, you’ll let yourself stop.”

Another pause. A breath suspended in air too thick, in a space that feels too small.

“You want me to stop?”

He exhales through his nose. “I want you to want to.”

It’s an invitation. A quiet demand.

You swallow against the burn in your throat because it’s clear he knows what’s hiding behind your eyes. He’s just asking you to be honest. To pull the words from where they’ve been buried, to stop dissolving them like acid on your tongue. To let him in.

“Then you want for nothing.” Your voice is softer than you mean it to be, dangerously close to breaking. “Because you know I’d tell you anything if you asked.”

His eyes meet yours in the mirror.

“Tell me what’s making you reckless.”

You’d expected that — or something like it — but it still takes you apart. Thread by thread, a rope cinched through the hollow of your ribs. Pulling, pulling —waiting for you to give.

And you almost do. Almost let it spill, let it take shape in the open air between you. The truth of it. The rot you’ve kept pressed beneath your tongue, the slow, patient decay of something you know you shouldn’t feel.

But instead—

“It’s the head injury,” you lie.

A hollow offering. Brittle. A crumbling thing in place of the real answer.

His fingers twitch against the porcelain, reflection sharpening in the mirror — cutting through the fractures he’s causing. He doesn’t scoff. Doesn’t accuse you of lying. And that’s worse. So much worse. Because it means he’s seeing you. Means he’s waiting — sifting through the hollow, the fractions of you that no longer fit together in search of the thing you hesitate to give him.

“You can’t lie to me.” It sinks deep. Sticks somewhere you can’t pull it free. He’s right. “We both know it isn’t just that.”

You exhale something like a laugh except it’s boneless and bitter, just nerves spilling out because they’ve got no where else to go.

“Didn’t know you were a medic now.” You break your eyes back to the sink. “Or a mind reader.”

“I don’t need to be.” The words come fast. Convicting. “I just need to know you.”

And that. That makes you look up at him again. Makes you meet his eyes. Makes you burn.

“Price—“

His lips are against your ear. “Tell me.”

Your throat closes. The rope pulls tighter. You know what he wants — what he’s asking. But the answer feels like it won’t fit in your mouth. The swell of truth too large. Too longly suppressed because god this is your Captain and all he did was save your life. You know you should just be grateful and yet the only thing on your mind is granting him more than the debt you owe.

Because when you can’t swallow your demons, they don’t just disappear. They turn to hunger instead.

It was his hands that had fed them. They’re still starving now.

“The truth will ruin everything, Captain.” The words tear from your throat like he’s ripped them out himself. “This isn’t something you, or anyone, can help me with.”

You feel him go still the moment the words leave you. Feel it in the hand bracing against the sink, the exhale of his breath against your neck.

“So that’s what this is.” Your stomach coils, something twisting tight as you turn your head to face him. He doesn’t move back. Just dips his gaze to your lips. “You’re feeling too much, yeah? Think by being reckless you can run from it.”

It’s startling, the way he sees right through you. Your silence is a telling confession and he reads it like scripture.

You’ve always known it would be hard with him. Knew it from the beginning, because he’s as sharp as he is skilled, because he knows how to look at a situation and read the words left unspoken.

You nod. All while wishing it was anyone else.

“You can’t outrun this.” His voice drops, dragging his free hand up the nape of your neck. “Can’t outrun me.”

He tugs you toward him, something dark flashing beneath his eyes — something like possession, something that makes your bones ache as his mouth ghosts over yours. A torturous, drawn-out motion, withholding what you know he’ll take.

A breath passes between you, your eyes closed, a million things unspoken. Spinning. Thrumming in the silence.

Then, he brushes his lips to yours. And there’s fire.

A slow-burning ruin, heat licking through your stomach, curling in your spine, and it devours you — every breath, every instinct screaming at you to pull away, to run. It’s all gone. Gone until the moment he pulls back. Presses his forehead against yours.

“I know.” You reply, and for a second you think he’s backing off.

He doesn’t.

Lips against yours again, he takes. Your mouth parts on a sharp inhale. Shock, surrender, his tongue slipping against yours, before he kisses you hard. Like he’s been waiting for this, waiting for your admittance. Like this is something he’s fought against just as much as you have.

Your hands find his shoulders, something to brace against as he pulls you in deeper. The breath is gone from your lungs, your pulse pounding for an entirely different reason now. You open your eyes as he pulls back again. Take in the sharp cut of his features — the shadow of a beard against his jaw, the darkness of his gaze, drinking you in like he wants to keep you there.

“You don’t get to die on me,” he murmurs, and it makes your world tilt. Makes you wonder if you hit your head harder than you thought, all those months ago. Makes you wonder if you’re hallucinating. “Christ.” His fingers flex at your waist. “You don’t get to be careless.”

There’s something in him you’ve never seen before. Something undone. Something you don’t understand but do at the same time — because you feel it too. The decades of loss. The battle scars. The countless near misses that linger for life. You weren’t thrusting yourself into open fire with some raging death wish — but you weren’t being as methodical as you should have been either, all to chase that fucking adrenaline spike. You didn’t think he’d have this reaction.

And there’s so much you need to say. So much you need to do. But all you can do is whisper, breathless against him. “I’m sorry.”

There’s a pause. A click of his tongue.

“I’m not done with you.” His mouth finds yours again, something softer this time, but no less demanding. You don’t fight it. And when his free hand dips down your back, you tilt your head up into him, hands fisted in his shirt, wishing you didn’t miss the feel of it so devastatingly when he pulls back again. “You want reckless? I’ll show you fucking reckless.”

You don’t have a chance to answer before he spins you around and shoves you against the counter. A groan slips from your lips, but you relish the feel of him — the warmth of his chest as he steps into you, crowding you until all you know is his heat.

His hands slide down your sides, gripping at your hips, the heat in your gut burning hot as he holds you in place.

“This what you want?” He mutters against the side of your throat, his nose nudging your jaw. “Or do you still want to run?”

You swallow, mouth parted, breath coming hard. It’s a question, but you know he doesn’t really want an answer. Not with everything he’s doing. Not with the way he’s holding you, the way his hands slip beneath your shirt, calloused fingers grazing bare skin as he tugs the fabric up.

Your breath hitches. “Christ, Captain—”

You feel his mouth brush against your neck, tongue lavving out to taste you. Like he’s hungry and you’re a goddamn four-course meal. You moan. It’s all you can do to stay upright, legs going weak when he nips at your jaw.

“No Captain.” A demand. His hand sliding lower, dipping under the fabric of your cargos. “John.”

John. You shudder at the implication of it. John is a rare thing—something you’ve only ever heard him give to a handful of others, and no one else. John is personal. John is when he’s no longer your superior, but instead, your equal.

“John.” Somehow, it rolls off your tongue like breathing, like it had always been waiting there for this moment. Another moan follows it, just as his fingers find your clit. “Ohgod, John—”

He hums, teasing you, fingers moving in paced, languid circles like he’s got nothing but time despite the way his chest is pacing against your back. Pressure building beneath his skin. You feel the tension in him — the way his muscles shift, the way he tenses in response.

“That’s it,” he grinds out, fingers speeding up just enough. “You like that?”

Your answer is an afterthought. You don’t speak, don’t need to. Your mouth finds his again, and he swallows the breath you try to take. All you can do is nod.

And you know you have no fucking right to know what he sounds like. How he tastes as your tongue wrestles his. Your head spinning too fast for you to think because he is everywhere, a heady mix of lust and need as you desperately try to chase the way he makes your blood race. It’s all so new. So fucking wanton. Needy. As if all the months of wanting have finally caught up to the moment, a wildfire that seems to burn all logic. You know this is wrong — but fuck you don’t care.

You know in a second, he’ll be pressing you against the granite and you’ll have to make a thousand apologies to whatever god may be listening.

But then he pushes a finger into you, and you only have one prayer on your tongue. “Oh, John.”

He exhales against you, a quiet growl that goes straight to your head. It’s the same sound he makes when he’s in a combat, and there’s something about the idea of being able to make him feel the same as he feels when he’s a man of war that makes fireworks light up behind your eyelids.

“Mm. She’s fucking tight.” He mutters as he curls his finger and presses deeper. You gasp, the sound swallowed between you. “This is what you needed, hm? Needed me to pin you down. Make you fucking feel.”

That— that’s exactly it. Your eyes dart up to his in the mirror because yes. In the fractures he’d caused he’d found what you were too afraid to verbalize. And it makes you keen — the way it’s like he can rip out your soul and hold it in his hands. You know you can’t hide it in your gaze, the desperation that comes with that kind of dependency.

Of course.

“You. Mm. You always know just what I need.” You moan out, as teasing as possible, while your climax barrels closer.

And he relishes it. Every second. It’s obvious in the sharp inhale he takes, the way his pupils dilate until the blue in his eyes look like a halo in a sea of blackened lust. Your head feels like it’s splitting in two, caught between the pressure building inside you and the heat that seems to be coiling so tight you could implode.

He adds a second finger, and you have to grip onto the counter if you want to still find your feet.

“Ohmygod—fuck, John—“

You don’t know how you look, can’t bring yourself to face your reflection — but you know how it feels, the way the world is tipping like you’re on the deck of a ship, the way your stomach clenches and your nerves light like fire under your skin. The irony of the situation isn’t lost on you. You spent months running from him just to end up here. You realize now that he’s always been a step ahead in a way you can’t understand, and you know you’re playing a game you won’t win.

“Let me feel it.” He purrs against your ear, fingers pumping. “Let it happen.”

You moan loud at that, clenching around his fingers because it already is happening. The pleasure is hot and blinding.

“Ohgod—“ your voice breaks between words, your head falling back against of his shoulder. “Fuck. I’m—“

He knows. The heat building in your gut so bright it seeps through your skin. So, he dips his other hand back beneath your shirt, palming your breast and you know it’s to make you fall even harder — and christ, he manages it. You erupt, climax hitting you like a train.

The bliss is blinding, and you want to scream — but can’t because his mouth is on yours, capturing every strangled gasp you give as you try to catch your breath. You’re trembling, legs shaking, your body trying to find some sort of ground as you gasp for breath — but then he’s pulling his hand out and sliding off to one side. You feel empty. Breathless. You think, in some dim place in your mind, that you should feel embarrassed now, but you’re too distracted to care. As your breathing returns, you can hear him sucking on his fingers.

Tasting you.

You can barely stand it, the noise curling through the fog in your head. You hear a soft pop, and suddenly his hand is on your jaw, tilting you towards the mirror, and you finally look.

You think you almost look the same. You can almost pretend that that this is what it’s always been — something fleeting and nameless and reckless — but there’s a flush on your cheeks, a gloss in your eyes, that you can’t deny. In fact, the only thing that breaks you out of the fantasy is the way John’s eyes meet yours.

As if there was ever any mistaking what you would allow to happen here. You know, looking at him, that that the hunger in your gaze would always give away the truth. That he would always know how to read you.

“Reckless.” He mutters, as if he knows exactly what you’re thinking, as if it’s something he’d known all along. You watch his jaw clench, his fingers digging into your cheeks. It’s not angry — it’s something more. A possession. “You do not get to leave me.”

You’ve known this man for barely a year, and yet he understands something you cannot. Something different from all your previous CO’s. Something that goes deeper than protection of a superior. And for the first time, you realize you can’t hide—not from him, not from whatever this is.

“Is that an order?” You whisper. Smirking.

He leans in, the heat of him branding against your spine, and you feel his words before he speaks them, rough and low on your throat.

“An order,” he echoes, hands sliding down to your hips. “And a threat.”

Your breath stutters, head spinning too fast to think. This is dangerous — whatever this is. It’s like the two of you are careening off the edge of a mountain, barreling toward something irreversible. You should stop this. You should pull away.

“Mm.” Instead, you arch your back, pressing against him with a low, breathy hum. “Now who’s being reckless.”

“Mhm. Knew you’d like that,” he mutters, mouth dragging against your jaw. His hands are already working, tugging down your zipper. “Brat.”

You should hate that word. Before him, you would have even more so. But something about the way he says it makes you bite your lip.

“You want to be put in your place.” His hands are purposed. Tugging down your cargos, undoing his belt. “That it?”

“Depends.” Your breath hitches. “Where exactly is my place, Captain?”

“Right here.” He presses you forward, palm splayed between your shoulder blades. His other hand grips your hip, dragging you against him, the thick weight of his need sliding along the slick between your thighs. You swallow a moan. “Right underneath me, Sergeant.”

You don’t answer. You can’t. Your head is spinning too fast to think. Then, he’s pushing inside you, and you lose the last of your breath.

“Fuck.” Your eyes catch in the mirror, watching as he sinks in, stretching you wide, splitting you open. The breath punches from your lungs, knuckles strained where you brace against the counter. Your head falls back, and he groans — a low, guttural sound that ripples through you. “Price—“

His fingers press into your jaw, turning your gaze back to the mirror. “Look at me.”

You do. And God. You wish you hadn’t.

Dark, blown-out pupils devour the blue of his irises. His chest heaves, the cords of his neck pulled tight. You don’t think you’ve ever seen anything more wrecked, more devastating, than the way he looks at you now.

“Good girl,” he mutters, voice thick with it, and your cunt clenches around him in response. His breath stutters. “God, you take me so—” you whimper, rolling your hips to meet his, and he hisses. “Yeah,” his mouth finds your ear. “Show me what you can give me—”

You try. You really do. But fuck—

“Huge,” you gasp, tipping onto your toes for respite as he buries himself to the hilt. “Fuck—John—”

“Mhm. Don’t run—” his hand slides up your throat, fingers curling, just enough to make it dangerous. You gasp, pulse hammering against his palm. He knows. Of course he does. The way he knows everything about you. “You’ll get used to it.”

You’ll get used to it.

The words echo back at you. The same ones he murmured the first time you asked him if he’s always this persistent. If you could think, you’d laugh. But you can’t. Because now you know the answer. Yes, he is always this persistent. And no, you will never fucking get used to it.

Your moans have long since lost restraint, spilling from your lips in time with his thrusts, raw and wanton and so fucking desperate. He takes you like it’s not the first time, like he’s not far too big to be this deep — his grip bruising in the best way, dragging you closer and closer to the edge. You feel the fractures of yourself, a thousand pieces of you suspended midair, trembling on the verge of shattering. You’ve never been this close to the sun. And god, if it doesn’t feel like fire.

Then, he says your name.

Your name. Your real name.

And it’s like breaking the surface of water after nearly drowning—like oxygen flooding into starving lungs. It strips you raw, turns the world molten beneath you, sends you spiraling into release all over again, the pleasure so sharp it almost aches. His hand claps over your mouth, muffling your sob of a moan as your body locks up, trembling.

“Yeah. There we go. Let it all out f’me.” His voice is dark, rough with something that sends another sharp pulse between your legs. His hips slap against your ass, relentless. “I’ve fucking got you.”

And you know he does. In a way you don’t trust your breath or your bones. In a way that terrifies you just as much as it makes you need.

Your vision blurs, heat rippling through your limbs, but he—he is unmoving. Steady. Like steel. Like he can take you at your best and your worst. Like he could tame this thing between you, whatever reckless, nameless thing this is, and make it his.

“That’s right. You look at yourself,” he grunts, one hand digging into your hip, the other still clamped over your mouth. Your glassy eyes flick up to the mirror, catching his reflection behind you—pupils blackened, lips parted, gaze locked on you. “M’gonna dumb you out. Fuck you ’til you can’t walk, never mind run.”

Your nails scrape divots into the granite as he shoves you further over the counter, forcing you to take him deeper. A wrecked whimper slips through your teeth, body caught between overstimulation and desperate, eager want. You squeeze your eyes shut, feeling the slick drip down your thighs, soaking into your ruined cargos — you know he can feel it too.

“Shit.” He rasps, voice fraying. His hand leaves your mouth, slides down to your throat, not squeezing, just holding as his other moves. Fingers finding the mess between your legs, pressing slow circles over your swollen clit. “Tight little slut.”

Your body jerks. “Fuck—John—”

“That’s it. Gimme another,” he mutters, rolling his hips, hitting something deep inside you that makes your vision blur. “C’mon, sweetheart, I know you can.”

It’s too much. The thick, hot drag of his dick with every punishing thrust — the rough slide of his fingers. The weight of his body pressing you into the counter like he’ll never let you go. You can’t think. Can’t breathe—

And then he growls your name again, deep and needing, and it sends you over with a broken sob, body writhing, mind slipping into static as you cum again, clenched so tight around him it makes him stutter.

His hand fists in your hair, dragging your head back so his lips brush your ear. “Good girl. Fucking perfect—”

You feel it when he loses himself. Through the fog of pure bliss. When his grip turns almost punishing, when his hips stutter, when the ragged groan tears through his throat. He grinds deep, burying himself to the hilt, body rigid as he groans and spills inside you with a choked curse.

And then, there’s stillness.

Both of you breathing uneven — more so him, heavy against the nape of your neck. And for a long moment, it’s just that. Just the sound of your bodies slowing, just the lingering thrum of pleasure untwisting from both of your bloodstreams.

Then, his fingers tighten on your throat. Just enough. Just to make sure you feel it.

“You ever pull some reckless shit like that again,” he mutters, voice raw, scraping against your ear, “you won’t be able to fucking talk when I’m done with you.”

Your breath stutters, thighs twitching at the promise in his tone.

“You got a problem, you come to me. You don’t run. Don’t put yourself into the fire just to fucking feel something.” His hand slides up, grips your jaw, tilts your head just enough so you can see him in the mirror — blue eyes all pupil, sharp jaw clenched. “You’re mine,” he murmurs. “And I take care of what’s mine. No matter what.”

A slow, shuddering breath leaves you. He watches your lips part, watches the way your body reacts to his words. Then, his grip on your throat eases. A slow drag of his hands down your body, like he’s memorizing the feeling of you ruined under him.

“Understand me?” His voice is quieter now, but no less dangerous.

You swallow. Nod. “Yes sir.”

He hums. Seemingly satisfied, pressing a slow, lingering kiss to the back of your shoulder.

“Good.”

very first time i saw ghost i thought he was wearing a hat 👉👈 so i gave him a hat

Ravens mate for life.

Simon Riley had not been a raven, not until Roba and his experiments on top of his branwashing, anyways. A dark, vicious cycle until he was something more than just man- until he could bend and break his body into a new form, and unwind himself back into humanity as if he wasn’t long past the point of being just human.

It had been the same for you, another victim. Another soul, another body warped being what will ever be normal.

And within Roba’s darkness, the two of you found a hint of solace in each other.

Ravens, thus, mate for life.

Simon “Ghost” Riley returns to the military, and no one suspects a thing- no one except John, perhaps. John, who looks at Simon and sees that deep, encroaching darkness to him. John, who swears Simon’s eyes were never quite so… beady before even if his stare had always been chilling.

John, who swears he hears the distant cawing of ravens sometimes when there had been no such thing before. On base, and on the battlefield- John hears it all same. On base, sometimes it’s one raven. Sometimes, it’s two, but he can never quite see where they are. On battlefields, it’s always one.

(He has not yet made the connection that Simon always- always- ducks or turns when he hears the raven call during battles.)

Ravens mate for life; that is their nature.

You perch yourself on Simon’s open palm, beak quickly opening to swallow down the food he’s offering. You wish you could shift, but you are far too close to other people in this base- people and cameras. Ao you content yourself with resting on his open palm, tilting your head with a soft caw, and accepting the faint brush of his lips over your head through his mask.

Ravens mate for life; Simon would lay down his for yours, no hesitation. But such actions are unneeded when you are there to cover his back.

Version 1 of barry sloane picking up girls to kiss them 💙

version 2 here

HYENA JOHNNY

sfw + nsfw. rut. knotting. premature ejaculation. service top!johnny (?)

you meet johnny at a bar.

the place is old but well-kept, a place that’s obviously seen its share of rowdy nights and heavy pours but still holds its charm. dark wood, polished by time and restless hands, stretches beneath your fingertips. liquor bottles line the shelves behind the counter.

the air hums— conversation rising and falling in waves, punctuated by the occasional burst of laughter, the sharp clink of glasses meeting in messy toasts. the dim lighting catches on old brass fixtures, scuffs on the floor telling stories of countless nights just like this one.

and behind the bar, johnny.

he moves like he owns the place, because, clearly, he does. he reaches for bottles without looking, flicks open the tap with a smooth twist of his wrist. the other bartenders glance his way for cues. it’s plain that johnny doesn’t just work here. he runs the show.

and it's that experience that has him spotting you immediately.

“what’ll it be, sweetheart?” the words roll off his tongue, practiced but not indifferent.

"a mocktail.”

johnny pauses, processing, then snorts. “that’s tragic. you say that like you mean it.”

"i do."

he clicks his tongue, shaking his head, the motion loose. “waste of a perfectly good night, that.”

"i’m the designated driver," you shoot back, somehow feeling like you have to defend yourself, jerking a thumb over your shoulder.

your friends are deep in it— half-dancing, half-stumbling, belting lyrics to a song that isn’t playing. one of them throws their arms around another’s neck, nearly taking them both down in the process

johnny follows your gaze, lets out a low whistle. “ah. the shepherd of the drunk.” his tail sways behind him, amused. “a noble role.”

"someone has to get them home alive."

he drums his fingers against the bar, eyes flicking between you and the mess unfolding on the dance floor. “you sure you don’t wanna let natural selection do its thing?”

you huff a laugh, shaking your head. "tempting. but i’d rather not explain to their mothers why they woke up in a hedge."

he grins. “fair enough. guess that means you get a drink that doesn’t kick back.” he rolls his shoulders before reaching for bottles. “what’s the call, then? fruity? sour?”

"surprise me."

johnny hums, tilting his head, eyes narrowing slightly like he’s sizing you up. “dangerous words, that.” but he’s already moving, rolling up his sleeves as he reaches for a shaker. “hope you like a bit of bite.”

"that a threat?"

“nah,” he says. “just a promise.”

you watch him work.

his hands move fast, sure, an efficiency that only comes with time and muscle memory. bottles tip, liquid pours in smooth arcs, ice clatters against the tin before he seals it with a sharp tap. he doesn’t fumble, doesn’t second-guess— he moves with a rhythm stitched into his bones.

and he’s a hyena. no mistaking it.

the broad grin, all sharp teeth. the spots dusting his forearms, darker markings trailing up his skin where his sleeves are shoved back. but more than that, it’s how he carries himself— as if he was built to be here, to take up space without hesitation.

he shakes the tin with quick jerks, wrists rolling, muscles shifting under skin.

“so,” he starts, barely looking up as he strains the drink into a glass, “you always this responsible, or is this a special occasion?”

"i like knowing i’ll wake up in my own bed."

he hums, dropping a garnish into the glass with a flick of his fingers. “can’t argue with that.” then he slides the drink toward you, tapping the rim lightly with one claw. “still. shame to waste a night like this on sobriety.”

you lift the glass, taking a slow sip. citrus, something tart, something fizzy at the edges, a hint of spice lingering at the back of your tongue.

"not bad," you admit.”

johnny leans in slightly, bracing his forearms against the bar, grin widening. “’course it’s not. you think i’d serve you shite?”

"i've known you for all five minutes. forgive me if i didn’t know what to expect."

he chuckles, head tilting, ears flicking forward. “stick around, sweetheart. i’ll raise those expectations in no time.”

"confident, aren’t you?"

“damn right.” his eyes flick over you. “why? that a problem?”

"just wondering if it ever gets you in trouble."

his grin turns wolfish— if a hyena could pull off wolfish. “constantly.”

you don’t take him home that night. not because you don’t want to— because you do, god, you do— but because you’ve got a job to do.

instead, you spend the next hour wrangling your friends, guiding them into overpriced rideshares, confiscating a stolen pint glass, and prying one of them away from a very ill-advised conversation with a married senior executive.

by the time you finally collapse into bed, your jacket still smells like whiskey and citrus, your ears still ringing with laughter.

you tell yourself you won’t think about the bartender with the easy grin and the voice that curled around your name like it belonged to him.

you tell yourself a lot of things.

the work gala arrives like an obligation dressed as an opportunity. the invitation promised networking, an open bar, and a celebration of months of labor.

but you don’t want to go.

you doubt anyone does, but it’s not really a choice. the project your team has spent months sweating over is finally seeing the light of day, and the higher-ups need their captive audience. they need applause, nods of approval, praise whispered over crystal flutes of overpriced champagne.

so you go.

you let yourself be swept inside, past sleek decor and halfhearted compliments, past handshakes that mean nothing and conversations that mean even less. the champagne is crisp, the hors d'oeuvres bite-sized and forgettable, and the smiles around you all feel the same.

the work gala is everything you expected.

the kind of event that looks dazzling in photos but feels hollow in person. the chandeliers glisten, the glasses are always full, and the music hums soft and unintrusive, a backdrop for corporate egos to stretch their legs. it’s all smiles that don’t reach the eyes, laughter that’s a beat too polished, and conversations that carry the distinct flavor of ambition disguised as small talk.

the dress helps, if anything. a deep color, clean lines, the kind that turns a glance into a second look. a little armor against the monotony of handshakes and careful smiles.

you last about ten minutes before you seek out the bar.

and that’s when you see him.

johnny.

standing behind the counter like he owns the place, despite the fact that he very much does not.

his sleeves are pushed up, forearms bared, and his tie is hanging loose like it barely survived a halfhearted attempt at professionalism. he looks like someone who should be on the other side of the bar, drink in hand, making people laugh too loud. but he’s here, somehow, and he’s already watching you.

he leans into the counter, the soft golden glow of the pendant lights casting sharp shadows across his grin— and it looks suspiciously like he’s been waiting for you to notice him.

and of course, you do. how could you not?

johnny isn’t just attractive.

that would be too simple. attraction is easy, common. but johnny is something else. something loud and impossible to ignore, the kind of presence that bends a room around him, that demands attention without asking for it.

you stop short, fingers tightening around the stem of your glass. “johnny?”

he grins. “last i checked.”

your eyes flick down to the neatly pressed vest, the gleaming bar, the expensive bottles lined up in perfect order.

then back to him.

“what the hell are you doing here?”

johnny reaches for a glass, inspecting it against the light before setting it down with a soft clink. “servin’ drinks, apparently.”

your brow lifts. “you own a pub.”

“that i do.”

“so why are you working here?”

“money’s good.” he shrugs, as if that’s a reason.

you give him a look. “you could’ve sent someone else.”

his smirk twitches into a grin. “could’ve.”

you narrow your eyes. “but?”

johnny leans in slightly, resting his forearms on the bar. “but then i wouldn’t have run into you, would i?”

heat pricks the back of your neck. “you expect me to believe you took this job on the off chance i’d be here?”

“nah,” he says easily, reaching for a bottle, twisting off the cap with practiced ease. “but it’s a hell of a nice surprise.”

you exhale, shaking your head. “unbelievable.”

“what’s unbelievable is that you’re still holdin’ that same drink,” he says, nodding toward the half-full glass in your hand. “startin’ to think you don’t trust me.”

“i barely trust this event,” you say dryly. “let alone the bar staff.”

johnny places a hand over his heart, mock-wounded. “cut me deep, sweetheart.”

you roll your eyes, setting your drink down. “fine. impress me.”

his grin turns sharp, all teeth. “dangerous thing to ask.”

he moves with a kind of effortless confidence, each motion smooth, deliberate, like he doesn’t need to think about it. bottles spin in his hands, liquid pours clean, precise. the scent of citrus and something smoky rises as he mixes, the clink of ice against glass filling the space between you.

when he slides the drink across the bar, he taps the rim lightly with one finger. a challenge.

you take a sip.

pause.

lick the taste from your lips.

his smirk lingers, watching. waiting.

“…damn it.” you exhale. “that’s actually good.”

johnny laughs, pleased. “you plannin’ on apologizing for that remark earlier?”

your pulse jumps.

“and how exactly would i do that?”

he tilts his head, considering. “stick around. drink somethin’ strong. keep lookin’ at me like that.”

and just like that, you’re in trouble.

you don’t mean to get drunk. you came here to be seen, to endure, to let your boss soak up the credit for your work while you nod along. but then johnny makes you a drink, and when you finish it too fast, he makes you another.

responsibility starts as a whisper.

drink slower. be professional. don’t plant yourself at the bar all night.

then he tilts his head just so, watching you like you’re a puzzle he intends to solve and the whisper fades.

you order another.

somewhere around your third drink, your laughter turns ease. johnny’s grin mirrors it, fingers working effortlessly over glass and steel as he keeps the drinks flowing.

fourth drink, you tell him he has unfairly nice hands. he nearly spills a cocktail laughing.

five drinks in, you go for a napkin, miss entirely, and send a row of garnishes tumbling. staring down at the mess, you seriously debate the logistics of picking them up without falling under the bar.

johnny exhales, tossing a rag over his shoulder. "i think that means you’re cut off, sweetheart."

"you think a lot of things," you mutter, blinking up at him, heavy-lidded and unbothered.

his laughter softens, turns fond. "and i’m usually right."

you pout at him until you sway a little too much, and the world tilts just slightly before a hand reaches over the bar to steady you.

he exhales through his nose, shaking his head, muttering half-amused, half-exasperated, "jesus."

for a moment, johnny considers just throwing you over his shoulder and dealing with the consequences later. he’s a hyena, after all, and hyenas take care of their own. you’re his, in some loose, nebulous way, and it wouldn’t be difficult to make sure you got home safe.

but even in your current state, he figures you wouldn’t be thrilled about waking up in a stranger’s bed with no memory of how you got there.

so, he does the next best thing.

he steals your phone.

you don’t even notice, too busy playing with the condensation on your glass, and he sighs as he tilts the screen toward your face.

the lock screen slides open instantly.

"oh, sweetheart," he murmurs, shaking his head. "you’re makin’ this too easy."

he scrolls through your messages, thumb tapping with sharp efficiency, scanning over names he doesn’t recognize until he finds a group chat that looks promising. lots of emojis. lots of inside jokes. someone had typed in all caps at some point about a brunch reservation, so yeah— this’ll do.

he thumbs out a message: “your friend is very drunk. come get them before she pukes over my bar.” and attaches the location.

and then, because he can, because he wants to, because some part of him already knows he’ll be seeing you again, he puts his number in your contacts, too.

you wake up to a headache and a mistake.

the headache, at least, makes sense. it splits through your skull the second you shift, a dull, relentless throb pulsing behind your eyes, pressing into the backs of your sockets like a vice tightening around your brain. your mouth is dry, tongue thick with the stale aftertaste of liquor, and your body feels like dead weight, limbs tangled in sheets that are too warm, too heavy. everything is stiff— your neck, your shoulders, your stomach twisting in protest as the memories of last night flicker back in fragments. a bar. dark wood. golden light. laughter that lingered low in your chest, warm and sweet, and—

him.

your stomach flips before your brain can even process why.

you groan, rolling onto your side, pushing your face into the pillow to block out the morning. you want to sleep, to bury yourself beneath the covers and pretend none of it happened— whatever it is. but your body betrays you, instincts dragging your arm across the mattress, fumbling blindly for your phone where it must’ve slipped from your hand sometime in the night.

your fingers brush cool metal. you blink blearily at the screen.

the glow cuts through the dimness of your room, soft and insistent, illuminating the single notification waiting for you.

a new contact.

johnny ;)

your stomach twists harder.

you blink at it.

once.

twice.

the emoji taunts you, cocky even in pixels, a playful little wink that makes something hot curl at the base of your spine. the name itself is bad enough— too much of a reminder of how his mouth quirked up when he poured your drink, and the warmth of his fingers when brushed against yours as he slid it across the bar.

your pulse ticks up. you hesitate, thumb hovering over the screen, torn between the impulse to check and the ridiculous urge to just not know.

but you already know you’re going to look.

you swipe, and the screen shifts.

one unread message.

johnny: still alive, sweetheart?

your first instinct is to throw the phone across the room. your second is to type something back. something quick, something effortless, something that won’t make it obvious that your pulse just stuttered in your throat.

you fail spectacularly.

you: barely. might never recover.

his response is immediate, and it makes you wonder if he was already waiting.

johnny: tragic. if i’d known, i would’ve given you a proper sendoff

heat prickles at the back of your neck. you stare at the message for a second too long, then lock your phone and press it flat against your chest as if that might do something about the way your heart is suddenly working overtime.

and just like that, it starts. small things, at first. quick, snappy messages.

johnny: remind me to never let you near tequila again. i don’t think you’d survive round two.

you: bold of you to assume i wouldn’t win.

johnny: bold of YOU to assume you won anything last night. you begged me for water.

you: lies. slander. i demand proof.

johnny: aye, sweetheart, i’d send the security footage, but i think the sight of you poutin’ at me over a glass of water might be too much for your fragile ego.

you don’t have a response for that. you lock your phone, toss it onto your bed, and roll onto your stomach, groaning into your pillow.

but the messages keep coming.

johnny: how’s the hangover? or should i start gettin’ that funeral procession in order?

you: surprisingly not dead.

johnny: pity. i would’ve made a great eulogy.

it’s easy, too easy.

he starts asking about your day. you start telling him.

johnny: how’d the deadline go? survived it?

you: took three cups of coffee and some questionable life choices, but it’s done

johnny: questionable life choices, huh? do i even want to ask?

you: if you must know, i impulse bought a croissant the size of my head. no regrets

johnny: i admire the dedication. although i’d be more impressed if you could finish it.

you: challenge accepted

he keeps talking to you. keeps pulling you in, coaxing conversation out of you and somehow it all feels natural, effortless.

he makes fun of the salad you regret ordering for lunch.

you: i don’t know what i expected. it’s lettuce.

johnny: truly a tragic meal. if you die from boredom, i promise i’ll give a heartfelt speech at the funeral.

you: that’s the second time you’ve threatened to monologue at my funeral. should i be worried?

johnny: just bein’ prepared, sweetheart. never know when tragedy might strike.

he complains about a difficult customer but immediately follows up with “not that i'm whinin'. boss can’t be seen whinin’."

the more he texts, the worse it gets.

you catch yourself checking your phone too often, waiting for his name to light up your screen. you start carrying your charger everywhere, the battery never allowed to dip low, just in case. when he texts, you answer too fast. when he doesn’t, you fight the stupid urge to stare at your phone, to wonder if he’s busy, to think about what his hands might be doing instead.

somewhere along the way, the teasing shifts into something else. something a little slower.

johnny: long day?

you: feels like it

johnny: go easy on yourself, sweetheart. tomorrow’s just gonna show up and make a mess of things all over again.

your fingers hover over the keyboard. something about it makes you pause, makes your stomach do that stupid little thing where it twists up in knots.

you: that’s bleak

johnny: nah. just means there’s always another chance to make somethin’ good out of it.

you don’t have a response for that either.

turns out you don't need one because then he follows it up with a—

johnny: what are you doin’ friday?

your stomach flips.

you: depends. why?

this time, the response doesn’t come immediately.

you watch the typing bubble appear. disappear. reappear.

johnny: takin’ you out. that’s why.

your breath catches. your hands hesitate over the keyboard, mind racing, running in circles. you type something and delete it. type again. delete. finally, you settle on—

you: at your pub?

his reply is fast.

johnny: christ, no. my staff would never let me leave alive.

you: fair point. so where, then?

johnny: you’ll see ;)

you are, without a doubt, in trouble.

johnny is ready. more than ready. too ready, if you ask his staff.

he’s been buzzing since you said yes, practically vibrating through the walls of his pub, too restless to stand still. his staff have been suffering through it for days— watching him plan the date down to the minute, pick out the restaurant, polish his shoes, practice his stories in the backroom mirror with an alarming level of dedication.

“you’re a grown man,” gaz mutters at one point, rubbing his temples as johnny rehearses a joke for the fifth time. “not a schoolboy with his first crush.”

he’s taken people out before, sure, but this— this is different. his fingers twitch when he thinks about it. his pulse kicks like it’s trying to outrun him. he shoves it all down, tells himself to act normal, be normal, but his body betrays him at every turn.

and then, just as he reaches your door, just as he lifts his fist to knock—

his rut slams into him like a sledgehammer.

hyena ruts are brutal.

unlike wolves or big cats, they don’t creep in slow, don’t build over days like a fire waiting for kindling. no, hyenas go from zero to hundred in the space of a breath— one second fine, the next wrecked by an all-consuming need, by instincts that don’t care for reason or timing.

johnny staggers, barely catching himself before he hits the wall, his shoulder slamming into brick with a dull, shuddering thud. his claws scrape at his own arms, blunt nails dragging hard enough to leave welts beneath his fur, but it doesn’t help, nothing fucking helps. his body isn’t listening. his breath stutters, fast and uneven, catching in his throat like he’s choking on something thick and hot. sweat beads at his temples, slicks the back of his neck, soaks into his shirt despite the night air.

his stomach knots, muscles pulling tight, something twisting low in his gut like a wire wound too far. his mouth hangs open, his tongue thick, saliva pooling behind his teeth like his body is preparing for a bite, for a kill. his canines throb, the dull ache settling deep in his jaw, instincts curling sharp beneath his ribs, thick and hungry and dangerous.

and fuck. fuck, he’s so hard he can’t breathe.

his cock strains against his trousers, the fabric pulled taut over the thick, aching line of it, every throb so deep it rattles in his bones. he shifts, trying to ease it, trying to will it down, but the movement just grinds the swollen head against the seam of his fly, drags coarse fabric over his leaking tip, makes him hiss between clenched teeth. his balls are tight, drawn up so high it’s like they’re trying to retreat into his body, his whole system locked down, caught in something primal and unforgiving.

he clenches his fists, claws digging into his palms, every muscle in his body coiled and trembling with the effort of staying still, of not grinding down against something, of not reaching between his legs and squeezing his own cock in his fist just to take the edge off.

and then he fucking whimpers.

the sound wrenches out of him, cracking at the end. his breath stutters, catches in his throat, his body too hot, too tight.

johnny's head tips back, knocking against the brick, his hips twitching forward in a broken little jerk, chasing nothing, his cock pulsing angrily, trapped and swollen, sensitivity that borders on pain. he squeezes his eyes shut, teeth grinding, sweat rolling down his spine, but it doesn’t help. nothing helps.

and then— the door creaks open.

he flinches, his whole body jolting, his breath shoving out of him in a ragged, shaking gasp.

you’re there.

crouched beside him, close enough that he can catch your scent, something grounding and unbearable all at once. your hand hovers near his arm like you’re about to touch him.

no.

“no-” it breaks from his lips before he can stop it. “no- back inside-”

his fingers barely catch your sleeve before slipping off, his limbs weak, useless. “call-” he tries again, panting through clenched teeth. “call for help- call for- fuck-”

but you don’t move. you don’t go back inside. you don’t slam the door shut. you don’t listen.

you reach for him. and he folds.

the second your fingers brush his skin, johnny's whole body caves, shaking apart under the weight of whatever the fuck is happening to him. his forehead knocks against your shoulder, a shuddering noise ripping from his throat as he clings to you, his fingers fisting into your shirt like you’re the only solid thing left in the world.

“oh, fuck-” his cock aches. throbs. pulses against the stiff, unforgiving line of his zipper.

he grinds against nothing, every twitch of his hips sending another spike of sensation shooting up his spine. his balls are heavy, swollen, so full it’s like they might burst, like they might spill just from the way his trousers dig into them, the way his body is wound too tight, too fucking close to something he can’t control.

he needs. he needs.

fuck, but he shouldn’t.

“i-” he tries to pull back, tries to put space between you, but his fingers won’t listen. instead, they curl tighter, dragging you in, his body betraying him in real time, his cock pressing flush to your thigh, the heat of it scalding even through layers of fabric.

a noise breaks from him, sounding dangerously close to a sob.

he can’t. he can’t.

“fuck-” he buries his face against your neck. “m’sorry- m’sorry, just-just a second-”

he’s trembling, breath stuttering, little whimpers breaking past his lips no matter how hard he tries to choke them down.

you say something and he barely registers it through the thick haze clouding his head but your warmth weight, and the press of your body against his—

it helps. just a little.

and you— well, you know exactly what’s happening.

you don’t waste time pretending this is something johnny can just ride out alone. you grip his arms, drag him inside, shove the door shut with your heel and twist the locks tight. then the deadbolt. then the security chain.

your fingers are practiced, muscle memory guiding you through the steps of securing the space.

just in case. just in case someone else nearby is in rut or heat, just in case some poor bastard catches wind of johnny’s scent and decides to come sniffing around.

(he smells good. too good. sharp and heady, the scent of him curling in the air, thickening with every ragged breath he lets out. you, even you, feel your own instincts stirring, muscles tensing in awareness, your body recognizing his rut and urging you to stay close. to soothe. to let him take what he needs.)

johnny is shaking against you, his whole frame shuddering with the effort of keeping himself together. his breath is hot against your skin, slipping out between the low, broken whimpers he can’t seem to bite back

“fuck-fuck, m’sorry,” he stammers, voice catching. “didn’t- didn’t mean-”

his claws twitch against your arms, not quite gripping, afraid to hold on too tight.

his tail flicks behind him, anxious, ears pressed flat against his skull. his pupils are blown wide, swallowing up the blue of his eyes, his whole expression caught between shame and need.

“wanted this-” his voice cracks, something dangerously close to a whine. “wanted this to go well. wanted- wanted t’please you.”

johnny shudders, forehead knocking against your shoulder as another tremor rolls through him. “wanted you to- to see me. see me as a good mate. confident.”

he breathes in, sharp, and his whole body locks up for a moment, every muscle going taut— then a full-body shiver wracks through him, cock pulsing hard enough that you feel it, even through his trousers, even through your own clothes.

your throat goes dry.

you reach up, smoothing your fingers through his fur, brushing a hand along his back, trying to offer something— some kind of grounding touch, reassurance.

“johnny,” you murmur, voice steady, firm. “it’s not your fault.”

his breath hitches.

“i really don’t mind,” you say again, softer now, pressing the words into the shell of his ear.

a noise catches in his throat, something small, choked and helpless, and he drags his face away from your shoulder, tilting up to look at you properly.

his pupils are still wide, expression still hazy, but he searches your face with almost terrifying seriousness.

his tail flicks again when he seems to find nothing or what he was looking for.

“…can i make it up to you?”

your brows lift.

his ears twitch, jaw flexing, uncertainty plain with how his teeth catch on his lower lip, his eyes flicking down to your mouth and then lower, dragging slow over the curve of your body.

you shift, tilting your head. “how?”

johnny's tail twitches again then stills. he swallows hard, nostrils flaring, then lifts his gaze back to yours, something new burning in the depths of his expression.

“…can i lick your pussy?” he’s puppy-eyed and pleading, expression screaming with ‘please let me- please let me take care of you- please, i need this.’

his breath ghosts warm over your lips, fingers flexing where they’re still curled weakly around your arms.

he’s trembling, cock leaking. and you—

you nod.

his ears twitch, breath shuddering out in a sharp little gasp, grip on your thighs tightening. fingers hook into your waistband not a moment later, and he yanks, dragging your pants down, underwear with them, his movements are frantic, almost clumsy in his eagerness. he groans, wrecked and relieved, the second you're bare in front of him, pupils blown, tail wagging, whole body thrumming with ‘please, please, please.’

and then—

oh.

his tongue is warm.

hot and wet and wide, the rough texture of it dragging over your slit in a slow, open-mouthed lick, firm and eager like he's trying to taste every inch of you.

your breath stutters, hands flying to his head, fingers curling into his thick fur as he groans against you, the sound vibrating up through his tongue, sending sparks of pleasure shooting through your spine.

and he doesn't stop.

doesn't hesitate. doesn't tease.

no, johnny dives in, pressing his face right up against your cunt, burying his nose in the soft flesh of your inner thigh, mouth sealing over you like he's starving.

his tongue flicks, curls, scoops into you, lapping up your slick with these obscene little slurping sounds, breath coming fast and desperate through his nose.

"fuck," you gasp, hips jerking, but he just growls, arms wrapping around your thighs, locking you in place.

his tongue drags up, then circles your clit, flicking once, twice before sucking it into his mouth, lips sealing around it with wet, sloppy pressure.

a sharp, helpless sound breaks from your throat, fingers spasming in his fur, tugging hard, but he just whines, pushing closer, pressing his face deeper between your legs, like he wants to drown in you.

his tail thumps against the floor, hips shifting, rutting, desperate little movements like he needs the friction, like eating you out is wrecking him just as much as it’s wrecking you.

johnny’s tongue works you open, the rough drag of it lighting up every nerve in your body. he’s sloppy with it, messy and eager as a puppy, sucking and lapping and groaning like he can’t get enough— like he won’t get enough, not until you’re shaking, not until you’re breaking apart in his hands.

his nose presses in, nuzzling against your clit as he angles his tongue deeper, the slick heat of his mouth sealing around you, sucking, devouring every drop of slick that spills from your pussy. his grip tightens, claws pricking your skin, grounding you against his face as he buries himself in your cunt, breath ragged.

his ears twitch at every moan, every gasp, tail wagging, thudding against the floor in frantic, jerky movements. his hips roll, little ruts against nothing, cock straining in his pants.

and fuck, the way you’re squeezing around his tongue, the way you’re whining, the way your fingers are tugging at his fur, yanking him closer, using him for your pleasure—

it’s perfect.

his tongue flicks against your clit, so fast he feels like his jaw is gonna cramp and your whole body locks up, muscles tensing, thighs clamping around his head as your pleasure slams through you.

"johnny-!"

you break, back arching, fingers spasming in his hair as your orgasm rips through you, cunt clenching.

and johnny loses it.

his hips snap forward, grinding down against the floor, cock pulsing in his pants, the thick length throbbing in time with your orgasm, so turned on with how you’re gushing into his mouth.

"fuck-” johnny’s body shaking, arms tightening around your thighs as his own climax crashes into him, his whole frame jerking with it.

his tail spasms, ears flicking wildly, and he ruts with mindless abandon, his tongue still lapping at you as he comes, soaking his trousers, thick spurts spilling out in his underwear, making a mess of himself, of the floor beneath him.

johnny’s breath stutters, his tongue slower now, softer. he whimpers against you, his hips giving these tiny, involuntary twitches, pleasure still rattling through his system, buzzing under his skin.

he’s a mess. ruined. wrecked.

but he’s still got his mouth on you. he’s still hard.

even after all that, after coming in his pants like a desperate thing, he’s still thick and straining against the damp fabric, the outline of his cock pressing against his zipper, a dark stain spreading where his release had soaked through.

but he’s smiling up at you, lazy, hazy-eyed satisfaction, ears flicking, tail giving a slow, contented thump against the floor. he looks pleased with himself, looks like he just had the best meal of his life, tongue flicking out to lick the last traces of you from his lips.

you swallow, your gaze flicking down, heat curling in your stomach.

"johnny-" your voice comes out soft. "do you- do you wanna fuck me?"

his ears perk up. his breath hitches.

"fuck," he gasps, pupils blown, hips giving a helpless little jerk, grinding into nothing. "fuck, yes- yes, please-”

your voice comes out soft, barely above a whisper, but he hears it like a gunshot.

"fuck me..."

johnny whines. he’s so happy, so relieved, so thrilled that his hands are already moving before his brain catches up— grabbing at your clothes, tearing them off your body, dragging fabric down your arms, over your hips, tossing them aside like they offend him.

you barely have a second to breathe before he’s fumbling with his own clothes, his pants sticking to his skin, soaked through with his release, and he growls under his breath, impatient, frantic, tearing at the fabric.

you hear the sharp rip before you see him, and by then, it’s too late.

his hands are on your hips again, tugging you back against him, the heat of him pressing up behind you. bare now, nothing between you, and—

oh.

oh.

there is a lot of him.

you don't see it, but you feel it, the weight of him pressing against you, the head of his cock nudging at your entrance, leaking precum against your folds. your brain catches up in a single, dawning moment of realization.

"u-um- johnny, wait-"

he doesn’t wait. he pushes in.

your mouth drops open around a soundless scream, arms giving out beneath you, sending you down onto your hands as your body stretches around him.

"hnnngh- fuck-”

johnny groans, hands locking around your hips, fingers digging in, holding you still as he sinks in deeper, his fat length forcing you open, your walls struggling to accommodate the sheer size of him.

his cock is thick, veined, hot as a brand against your insides, his knot still deflated but already pressing against your entrance, teasing the stretch that’s still to come.

"s’good- fuck- so warm-" he babbles, hips twitching. rolling. driving him deeper. deeper. deeper.

you can feel every ridge, every pulse, the wet sounds of your slick mixing with his precum, making everything so messy, so hot, so unbearably good.

your fingers curl against the floor, nails scraping for purchase, breath coming in ragged gasps. you can barely speak, but you manage a single, broken sound—

"johnny-"

he whimpers, hips jerking forward, sinking the last of himself inside.

he’s so deep you swear you can feel him in your stomach.

he snaps his hips forward, slamming into you with a force that knocks the breath from your lungs.

again.

again.

again.

it’s feral. frantic. mindless. his claws dig into your hips, keeping you locked in place as he fucks into you with the wild, unrelenting pace of an animal.

"fuck- fuck- fuck-"

he’s babbling now, every noise ripped straight from his chest. he’s gone, lost to instinct, breath ragged, panting against your back.

and you— you’re drooling.

your mouth falls open, a string of spit slipping past your lips, eyes hazy, unfocused, body pliant beneath him. it’s like you’re the one in heat, like his need has infected you, sinking into your skin, making you just as desperate, just as mindless.

his knot isn’t even swollen yet, and still— still— it feels like too much, like your body is barely keeping up, like you’re caught in the eye of a storm and all you can do is take it.

and he’s loving it.

“s-so good-" he whimpers, his voice shaking, thick with pleasure, his ears twitching. "s’takin’ me so well- fuck- made f’me, yeah? made t’be bred-"

his teeth graze the back of your neck, not quite biting, but close, breath hot against your skin.

"tell me- tell me y’need it-"

his hips snap forward, hard, cock grinding against the deepest part of you.

"tell me, bonnie-“

you somehow managed a choked moan of his name which seems to please him enough. “j-johnny!”

"hah- hah- hah-" his panting is ragged, tongue lolling out between sharp teeth, drool slipping past his lips, dripping onto your back. his claws dig into your hips, dragging you back onto his cock with every thrust.

you're reduced to a mess of slick and sweat and open-mouthed moans. your vision swims, breath stuttering, drool slipping past your own lips. your cunt grips him tight, sucking him in, slick coating his cock, dripping down his balls, wetting the base of his knot as it starts to swell.

"pretty..." johnny fucking giggles. it’s breathy, boyish, downright giddy as he snakes a hand down between your legs, fingertips dragging through the sticky mess between your thighs, rubbing over your swollen, aching clit.

"pretty clit… so soft... s’cute like this, all swollen f’me..."

he snickers to himself, his other hand coming up to your lower belly, pressing down, feeling the bulge his cock makes inside you. his hips snap forward hard, pressing down at the same time, making you feel every inch of him.

"fuck-" he whimpers, laughter breaking into a moan, tail flicking wildly behind him. "y'feel that? s’me, bonnie- deep inside- fuck, s’good-”

your orgasm crashes over you like a tidal wave, your body locking up, cunt milking him as you shake. your mind goes hazy, all-consuming pleasure buzzing through your nerves, and you barely register the way his rhythm falters—

until he gasps, breath catching, his whole body trembling, hips stuttering against you.

but he doesn’t push his knot in.

his cock throbs, leaking, twitching inside you, but his knot— still swollen, thick and pulsing at your entrance— doesn’t breach. he was too caught up, too lost in you, and now.

well, now it’s too late.

"fuck- fuck, bonnie, ‘m sorry-" his voice is frantic, hands shaking where they grip your hips. "i was s’posed t’ knot you, i- fuck, i know it hurts-”

and it does.

the ache of being left open, empty where you should be full, the throb of your walls still pulsing around nothing.

johnny knows.

he knows it hurts to push his knot in if you’re not distracted by your orgasm. he also knows the second the high fades it’s going to leave you aching, needy, sensitive in a way that burns.

"i got you, bonnie-" he murmurs, voice soft, affectionate even as he drives into you again, already chasing another orgasm from you. "gonna make it up t’you, promise-"

he grabs your hips, yanking you back onto his cock, fucking you harder, faster, desperate to fix it, desperate to make sure you don’t feel the pain.

his fingers find your clit again, rubbing quick, his touch clumsy, eager. “fuck- ‘m sorry, s’gonna feel so good, swear it-"

and he’s right.

your body can’t fight him, can’t deny him, the overstimulation pushing you right back up that peak, another orgasm slamming into you not even a minute later.

your walls clamp down around him, milking him, and he chokes on a moan, his whole body tensing. "fuck, fuck, that’s it- thass it, bonnie-"

his knot swells, stretching you wide, pushing in finally, locking him deep inside you—

and then he comes.

he fills you, cock pulsing, spurts of cum pouring into you, stuffing you full. his hips twitches, grinding against you, voice breaking on your name.

johnny's arms wrap around you, hugging you tight, chest pressed to your back. "s-sorry," he breathes, still panting, nuzzling against your shoulder. "s’never gonna happen again, promise-”

oh but it does. it happens multiple times, in fact.

you don’t know how long it’s been. you lost count after his fifth load. time has lost all meaning, swallowed up by the relentless rhythm of johnny’s rut.

he’s insatiable. a desperate, panting mess, rutting into you over and over, knotting you again and again, rolling his hips even when he’s still locked inside you, grinding his over-sensitive cock against your walls like he can’t stop.

his hands won’t let go of you, always grabbing, always holding— your hips, your waist, your thighs, your wrists. pulling you back onto him, keeping you flush against his sweat-slicked body.

johnny's all heat, burning up against you, whining your name in between frantic, slurred murmurs of "so good, so good, my bonnie, mine-"

but eventually— finally— the first wave of his rut starts to fade.

he slows. his thrusts lose their urgency, grip loosening, breath evening out, the feverish need in his eyes softening into something dazed, exhausted.

you take your chance.

"johnny-" you murmur, shifting slightly beneath him. "you need to drink some water, love."

he doesn't seem to really hear you, nuzzling into your neck. "mmm… later…"

"no, now," you insist, stroking a hand through his sweat-damp hair. "you’ve- we've been going for hours- we need to hydrate, okay?"

he grumbles, but when you finally manage to untangle yourself from his grasp and sit up, he whines, reaching for you again, ears flattening against his head.

"no- bonnie- come back-"

"drink first," you say, grabbing the water bottle from your nightstand and holding it out to him after you've had your own fill. "then I’ll cuddle you."

he pouts but takes the bottle, chugging down greedy gulps, tail flicking sluggishly behind him.

you press a granola bar into his hand next, watching as he blinks at it, then at you, before finally taking a bite.

he chews slowly, brows furrowing like he’s thinking about something, the fog in his brain is clearing just enough for rational thought.

and that’s when you pick up his phone from the mess of clothes, phoning his emergency number.

a guy nicknamed 👻.

you hesitate, fingers hovering over the call button.

johnny tilts his head at you, ears twitching. "whatcha doin’, bonnie?"

"calling your emergency contact," you say, glancing at him. "someone needs to know you’re in rut."

johnny groans, flopping back against the pillows, rubbing a hand down his face. "oh, fuck me-"

"i did," you deadpan. "for hours."

he snorts, but his face is already going pink. "fuckin’ hell… he’s never gonna let me live this down…"

you press the call button. the phone barely rings twice before a gruff, sleep-roughened voice answers. "this better be important, mactavish.”

"uh- hi," you say, gripping the phone tighter. "this isn’t johnny, but i feel like i needed to call his emergency contact so..”

there’s a pause. a sharp inhale. then— "…what happened."

you glance over at johnny, who’s sprawled out on the bed, still naked, still flushed, body twitching with the last remnants of his latest orgasm. his tail flicks, ears pinned back, eyes half-lidded and dazed.

"he’s in rut," you explain. "we- uh- handled it. but he’s still got waves coming, and i don’t think i can keep up with him forever."

"fuck," the guy mutters. there’s some shuffling on his end, the sound of movement, a door creaking open. "how long’s he been at it?"

you hesitate, looking at the clock. "uh… at least five to six hours?"

"jesus fucking christ." more rustling. "i’ll drop some suppressants off. you got any blockers up?"

"yeah, doors are locked, everything’s secure," you say. "no one else has caught onto his scent. hopefully."

"good. last thing we need is someone else getting ideas."

you nod, happy you're both on the same page.

"i’ll be there in twenty," he continues. "keep him calm, get some fluids in him, and don’t let him knot you again unless you wanna be stuck for another hour."

you open your mouth to answer, but before you can, johnny groans, rolling onto his side, tail swishing, his voice petulant.

"is that ghost?"

"is that his name? i mean, i guess so-"

"tell him he’s a fuckin’ cockblock," johnny whines, pouting up at you. "cannae believe this- rut suppressants? really? yer ruining all my fun, mate."

"oh, fuck off," ghost deadpans. "you’ll thank me when you’re not dead from dehydration and a broken dick."

johnny grumbles, burying his face into your thigh, huffing dramatically. "don’t wanna suppressants. wanna keep fuckin’ my bonnie-”

ghost sighs, long and heavy. "jesus christ. twenty minutes."

the line goes dead.

I keep reading balaclava as baklava 💔

gulps . hi

old drawings of ghost

peristalsis - viii - epilogue

selkie!soap x reader. strangers to "lovers." rebirth. mommy issues. semi-public sex. breeding season. smut. pregnancy reference. the end. . Running away from life to the Scottish Hebrides, you meet a man who won't leave you alone. . Masterlist. Ao3.

previous

Your pelt is not the same as Johnny’s.

Its greys are subtler than his paint-splash riot; nearly a solid dove, sparsely freckled with dots of charcoal. It’s lighter in your hands than you think a second skin should be—sometimes it feels so gauzy, so filmy, that you fear to tear it simply by wrapping it around your waist.

(Where it belongs.)

You can’t bear to part with it. You must be touching it at all times, fingers idly rolling a few soft strands of fur, palms smoothing out the wrinkles over your lap. Sometimes you find yourself staring at it, never knowing how long you have been until you come out of the trance with a jolt, neck aching and stomach growling.

You have no idea how Johnny went without his for even a day—the thought of ever putting yours down feels like abandoning a days-old infant.

Truly, though, the real infant is you.

The world touches your senses as if they are brand-new. Every sound is sharper. Every color is brighter. The world has come into focus in such a way that you are surprised you ever thought you could see it clearly before—nothing blurs in the periphery anymore.

It’s as if you have been completely reset. Every nerve ending tuned toward decadence. Everywhere you look, you find something that captivates you.

It makes you dizzy with rapture.

He is terribly amused by it, Johnny. He’s amused by all of it. As you settle into your new self, he watches you quiver and shake on new, coltish legs, and grins amiably at your frustration, quick to smooth over your frustration with his mouth on yours.

He’s been through it, after all. More than once, even—he has two resurrections, to your one.

And you’re quick to accept the appeasement he offers. Your appetites now yawn wide for anything you can fit inside of them, and you are voracious. You bite at him when he kisses you, which only makes him laugh more, and then he drags you down to the floor to rut like he knows you need to.

“I’m going to kill you someday,” you snarl at him, more than once, held against him back to front. “You did this to me, you fucking asshole.”

He grinds his cock deeper into you every time, touching some hidden nerve that has you clenching desperately around him, writhing with every limb as he laughs into your ear. “I could always pull out, bonnie, y’want me to do that?”

You claw at his naked hips behind you with the sharp tips of your nails, digging trails into the sheen of sweat coating his skin. “I’ll fucking kill you if you do.”

You’ve hissed and spat for too long to remember how to speak gently to him, but Johnny takes it in stride. He fits his teeth around your neck and cups the soft parts of your body with hands that can’t seem to get enough of the way your flesh spills between his fingers; when you spasm around him, howling your climax, he wrenches you against him with an iron grip and finishes deep inside of you moments later with a torn moan, thighs and hips hot and flush along your backside.

You threaten to castrate him if he pulls out anytime soon after. He kisses the indentations of his teeth and smooths his spread hand over your belly.

You end up with him, like this, more often than not. He always chuckles at your antics, your clenched teeth, the red lines and half-moons you leave on his back and thighs. Less with amusement than satisfaction—because these days, you don’t walk around without the bruises of his grasp painting your flanks, or the arch of his bite etched into your neck.

He’s been alone, too. He was alone from the start. All of a sudden awake to the world, unsteady with awareness, and so hungry all the time it must have felt like he could never be full—

And he hadn’t had anyone, not like you have him, to hold him in the throes of it.

You catch a look in his eyes, every now and again, and see the echoes of that time. It glints like a shard of sea glass catching rare sun beneath a wave. Dulled edges—he can think of it without hurting anymore. He can remember the craving without succumbing to its dissatisfaction, without falling into the gall welling in his stomach at the injustice of it. This was not always the case, but watching you, now, balms the ache in a way nothing before ever had.

You know this without his needing to explain, and you know it like scenting petrichor in the air. All you have to do is meet his gaze, and you know.

And he knows, too. Everything. You cannot see him without him seeing you, and he’s been looking at you with the kind of eyes you now possess for much, much longer. There is no depth within yourself that you can hide from him in.

He can look at you and know you’re hungry. He can watch the way you wave one hand and know you’re antsy. You can begin a sentence, and he knows the end of it without you having to finish.

It can only flay you to the bone. You are known. From the best to the worst parts of you, Johnny knows them like he knows the creases in the palms of his own hands. He knows the yawning chasm in you that near-overflows with your want, and he does not hesitate once at the precipice on his way to diving into it.

It pulls your jaw tight. You can only shudder with fever at the exposure, and reach for him. Again and again. Swallowing his laughter down like medicine.

John Price, when he finds out, heaves an enormous sigh of relief even your newly-heightened senses couldn’t see coming.

Your new vision peels back the gruffness. The gaze he has fixed on you, this whole time, has not been the apprehensive criticism of a lover’s apathetic friend. Instead, it is the concerned look of a stranger, one who gives a damn about what happens to a woman all alone on a side of the world to which she, until very recently, did not belong.

It had been invisible to you before; a wavelength of color your old eyes were unable to perceive. Now, you see so much of him that you wonder how you could have possibly missed it.

You see his exhaustion. His own loneliness, in self-imposed exile, one eye always on a man he fears will find a convenient cliff to jump off of in a fit of despair. You see sleepless nights, and notice for the first time a gold band on his ring finger, scuffed, in need of a good polish—if only he would take it off long enough to clean it.

“I’m sorry,” you say to him, out of nowhere, meeting the cool blue of his gaze. He doesn’t seem surprised at your understanding. He only nods.

“Ain’t been easy,” he allows.

But now you’re here. He’s not the only one Johnny has anymore. You can see the weight lift from him the moment you tell him you’re staying.

He goes to his office at the back of the pub with a lightened stride and returns, a little while later, with a stack of papers in his hand that he drops on the bar in front of you.

“Take care of the place,” he tells you with a heavy pat to your shoulder. “And don’t let Soap off easy. I’m going home.”

Price leaves you there with the deed to the pub and a casual wave over his shoulder. You do not see him again—though he’s left his phone number in one of the margins.

“Oh, aye?” Johnny says when you tell him, later that night as he’s boiling lobsters for dinner.

He doesn’t respond for a laden moment. You watch your report pass over him like a gentle wave; you see where it could build, where it could swirl up into something bigger, harder, angrier—but it doesn’t.

His back tightens, and then loosens, and he turns to grin at you over his shoulder.

“Barry, there’s a wall in there I’ve been dyin’ to knock down, and he wouldnae let me. Place is too claustrophobic, ask me.”

You arrange the silverware, letting his placidity wash over you.

About a week later, you drive Johnny’s truck somewhere with cell service, and call your mother.

The landscape of her emotions changes as rapidly as an ocean storm; elation and relief, to finally hear your voice. Hope when she asks you when you’re coming home. Confusion—when you tell her you aren’t.

Johnny explained it.

“We canna go far from the ocean, hen. Not for long. It won’t feel…right. I’ve tried. You get an itch, ken? You can ignore it at the start. But it willna go away, and it willna be denied, either. It’ll drive you mad if you don’t go back. So you canna stay away.”

And you’d known immediately what he’d meant—

You can feel it on the edge of the periphery. A lodestone in your belly points in its direction, always. You could close your eyes, start walking, and find yourself on the shore, pelt already in your hands. Sometimes, you find yourself waking in the middle of the night with the sound in your ears, legs twitching restlessly. You feel too hot and too cold at the same time, and thirsty, all over your body rather than just in your throat.

Any thought of moving further inland inspires an existential panic you can’t explain. The notion of a fifteen-hour flight, and landing somewhere that hasn’t seen an ocean for at least a million years, makes your skin feel so tight around your bones that you have to run to the nearest shoreline just to make sure the sea is still there.

You’re on a jetty right now, in fact, watching the water lap against the stones. It was the only thing you could think of that would give you the strength to make the call.

You cannot go home. You know now that somehow, you’d always expected to, deep down. You’d return to the house you grew up in, pet the old family dog. Meet for brunch at the same hole in the wall you’ve gone to for years.

Sometimes the price you pay to become something more does not reveal itself until it’s too late.

So you cry with your mother over the phone, when you explain that it’s best if you stay. You tell her that coming back would only hurt you if you tried, and this time, you aren’t even lying to her.

You don’t know if she’s actually comforted by the conciliatory offer you make of your new job tending bar—she doesn’t need to know you own the place yet—but she sniffles, and puts a brave face on it.

“You always did want to live somewhere else,” she offers, watery—but glad, you hear, that you’re alive.

You bite your lip.

From her, there will be no begging for you to come home. No entreaties of love or need.

When you say goodbye to her, you cry some more—but it isn’t the storm that used to claim you. You wrap your arms around yourself and squeeze, pinch the soft fur of your pelt and roll it between your fingers as you allow yourself to shake and weep, and when you catch your breath, you dry your face and drive back to the cottage, where Johnny is making lunch.

That night in bed, he holds you gently in his arms, rocking his hips into you as you cling to him with your fingernails.

“Don’t leave me,” you whisper in his ear.

He kisses the corners of your eyes before new tears can fall, and tightens his arms around you.

Each day you go to the sea.

It tugs at you, like a child tugging the hem of your shirt. Like a current pulling you outward. You wake every morning thinking not of breakfast, or the day ahead, but of that swaying world, slow and vast, hugging the edges of the land to coax it, eternally, back into the depths.

There is no serenity, now, like the serenity of the water. To enter the ocean is also to let it inside you; the barriers between yourself and the rest of the world thin out. You give some of yourself away, and receive something new to settle in the empty spaces left behind.

You think you understand now why Johnny is always smiling.

The cold no longer stings when you bare your skin to it, down in the cove. The salt-wind of the incoming tide is soft against you as you fold your clothes, beckoning as you tuck them beneath a large rock.

Johnny strips beside you, less careful, balling everything up in an untidy mass, until you glare at him. The intended admonishment falls flat as your glare turns into something sweeter, as the dark hairs on his chest lift with goosebumps.

He grins at you, seeing the shift. “Here, hen?” he teases as he obediently tidies his shirt and kilt. “Out in the open?”

Out in the open.

You draw him to you, dragging him down into the sand; the joining is quick and hard, spurred by the burgeoning need to go under. You cage his ribs with your knees as you ride him, breasts against his chest as you take his mouth without art or finesse. Johnny digs his fingers into the meat of your ass and helps you along with quick, forceful thrusts, and your orgasm prompts his own, inner muscles pulling him deeper as you pant and moan.

Primal. Without artifice. You exchange hot breaths through open mouths as you speak with your eyes, the ocean-blue of his gaze pulling you in. You grind together even after finishing, prolonging it, displacing a little longer the moment that your bodies must separate.

You have him every day, too. Often more than once. He is as essential a need as the sea, and he gives as freely and as frequently as you ask.

After, you both rise, and help to dust the sand away from each other’s bare skin.

Suddenly, you wonder aloud, “If I get pregnant—what’s it going to be?”

Johnny goes still, the hand on your shin stopping mid-sweep. Then, eyes crinkling, he barks a laugh. He kisses your knee and, as he rises, kisses your mons, then your navel, your sternum—

Then the reluctantly smiling curve of your mouth.

“Wouldnae mind findin’ out,” he says, stepping away from you, and walking backward toward the ocean.

His gaze does not leave you once it rises to meet him. It crests around him, embracing him, vibrant and alive and rushing toward you.

You draw your pelt over your head, and follow Johnny into the waves.

a/n: I'm going to put my final thoughts in a separate post. This is the end. Thank you so much for reading!!

In poly!141 I think it’s so funny for them to send Ghost in first. Not because Simon is actually the best at dragging in a pretty little thing, but because if they’re looking to share, Simon is typically the hardest to get through. Simon is scary guy with gruff and morbid humor. If you can tolerate him, and he can tolerate you, the others can move in and secure you in place. It’s infinitely funnier for the reader to decide that Simon is her little wet dog and he puts up with it to piss off Johnny who desperately wants to lay in your lap.

my body sleeps on your boredom

SUGAR DADDY!PRICE X READER

18+ | sugar daddy/baby relationship. age gap. (implied) mafia au. dom!Price. (slight) dubcon breeding. breeding kink one so insane you can hear Mormons applauding in the distance. contraceptive control. implied financial control. rough sex. infidelity*. dad!John Price. cheating (not between reader and John). Old Money Rich.

What you have with Price is entirely transactional.

His job—the nuances of which he keeps out of the bedroom, the bed—eats up the bulk of his time, and you—pretty little tchotchke that warms his sheets, keeping him cradled between soft thighs, head nestled on the enticing swell of your chest (weary heads and all, you suppose); a homecoming he can sink his stress into—lap up the scraps.

It's an arrangement that works for both of you, really.

Your rent is paid. Closet bursting with clothing. Always tripping over more shoes than you know what to do with. Food in the fridge. Financial worries are swallowed down quickly when they arise (along with a whiskey-tinged glob of spit when he grips your throat and tells you to open wide). He takes care of you. And you—

You take care of him, too.

a simple creature, really: he just wants dinner on the table when he comes over (home), a pretty thing to stare at while he eats, humming around a mouthful as you prattle on about your day (non-negotiable—his appetite is archaic, oppressive: the man grunts around a piece of meat his woman cooked for him as her bare feet slide teasingly up and down his leg, and she fills the stifling silence with inane chatter), and at the end of the obligatory meal, he gets to vent his frustrations out on the wet, warm embrace of your cunt as it squeezes his bare cock (also non-negotiable).

It's an effortless synchronicity.

When you need money, you send a picture of yourself in lingerie he bought above a coy pretty please, daddy to soften the grump up, and after a few exchanges of him lamenting the unnecessary purchase (a part of you, wishful, idealistic, clings to the idea that maybe he just wants an excuse to talk to you, to let you lap at more of his time than think he can afford to give), he relents. The money is sent to your account. You walk out of the department store with an ache in your belly that no amount of expensive wine or truffle could ever hope of filling and bags dangling on the crook of your finger, and he gets to thicken in his trousers over the idea of spending his money on a pretty little thing he can bury his cock inside of whenever the mood strikes. A patriarchal sort of preening. Masculine ego stroke. The role of a dutiful provider all wrapped up nice under the hum of ownership, sex.

(Then he really gets his money's worth when he bends you over the settee. Bought and paid for.)

And you're fine with it. It works. It makes sense because this is the only way that the two of you, together, do.

He's older than you are (salt peppers his hairline; wisps of smoke slither out of the tips of wry, umbre curls. No laugh lines, but his eyes crinkle when he smiles). He has a career. A good one. The second bottle of Violet Sapphire he bought on a whim for you after you whined about running out of the first (a gift—sales lady said you'd like it, sweetheart) isn't cheap. Neither are the handbags. The Tuscan leather shoes. The teardrop pearls. A good man, too. Upstanding citizen, and all that—

(the thin line of pale, creamy skin against ripened peach: a married man. a crayon shoved in the pocket of his trousers: a father.

blood under his nails. ghosts in his eyes. the smell of gunfire and madness clinging to his skin: a monster, too.)

—and you barely finished community college. Scraped by with a degree you're almost entirely certain he paid for, too. But you get to float around a meaningless job doing empty, vapid things to fill your days when he isn't around. 

(An ornament doesn't serve a purpose if it isn't being gawked at.)

An imbalance, you suppose. Or a ballad: the timeless tale of a stupid, greedy girl sinking her teeth into a grown man's wallet like a dog with a bone. In his hand, the leash. A tug. Be good.

And you are.

You let him slide inside of you as many times as he wants, and pretend the burnished seaglass staring down at you isn't filled with longing. Kneel on your satin cushion at his feet as he stretches out on his throne, and guides your pretty, empty head to his cock. Good girl.

Always.

Even when you shouldn't be. Even when he's gone for long periods of time. don't wait up, peppering the air as he goes. Nothing but an empty bed. Rumpled sheets. The scent of sex and tobacco. Leather and motor oil. Smoke. Sage and stale sweat on your pillowcase. An ache between your thighs. The tattoo of his teeth seared into your skin. An envelope full of cash (just in case). The card he left behind (anythin' you want).

Little tchotchke put back on the shelf. Tucked away so the reason for that pale strip of skin and the broken crayon in his pocket won't ever see you. A dirty secret. Another skeleton in an overstuffed closet.

Predictable, really.

You know your place in his world even if he doesn't say it.

(until he does—)

Just not in so many words—a paradox considering how much he loves to boss you around, growling commands under his breath (on your knees, open up, suck my cock, pretty girl, want me bad, mm, missed my cock inside your cunt, didn't you? show me how much)—in fact, they don't even come from him.

It comes from the pharmacist when you duck inside to pick up your prescription for birth control, and instead of handing it over, he just shakes his head.

"You don't have any refills for this month."

He's gone for two months.

MayoClinic warns that this is the estimated window needed for the hormones to dissolve from your system. The risk of a pregnancy after this, it reads, is likely.

You ponder that in a penthouse suite, sitting pretty amongst shredded wrapping paper. A Dior Turtleneck Sweater wrapped around your throat instead of his hands. An apology—according to the embroidered card, the tight, messy pen strokes mention something about an unexpected business trip.

The return address on the box is in Liverpool.

It's listed for sale on Zillow. The asking price is just over a million dollars. A family home on a vast plot, it reads. Six bedrooms—five in the main home and an additional inside a detached coach house. A gated driveway. A secluded courtyard with a suntrap. Something called a self-contained annex seems to be the main focal point of the sale. It has five reception rooms and a sprawling garden.

Perfect for a family, it adds.

You thumb the alpaca wool on your knit sweater, and wonder if this is the leash being cut—

Or pulled tighter.

He doesn't bring it up.

And so, neither do you.

It sits like an oafish, gaudy elephant in the background as he walks into the apartment, fingers digging into his tie. Ignored. Dismissed. He grunts when the knot loosens. Shoulders falling lax. Calmed without the clench of something around his neck.

You place his plate on the table when he wanders closer, offering one of those simpering 50s era housewife smiles when his big, bearish hand swallows up your waist. The scent of char and gunsmoke clings to his collar when he leans in, pressing a kiss to your temple. Acrid. Metallic. Beneath it, you catch stale sweat. Animalic. Unwashed man, leather.

And nothing else.

There's old, greasy sweat on his nose. His hair is slicker than usual. Darker. Blood under his nails. Smoke between his teeth when he hums, offering a low, rasping missed you, sweetheart that scratches along your skin.

He didn't shower before he came to see you.

You hide the notion of it behind your teeth, letting it grace your smile with something that feels less plastic, rigid. More real. Artless. Clumsy. Like the dress he sent ahead of himself and the matching pair of designer heels that still sit inside their box. You'd never wear shoes in the house, but John Price isn't a man who does things in halves.

(a purse sits on the settee: a complete set.)

His eyes are dark—pelagic: the ocean at night; all dark, no stars, moonless—and when he looks at you (in the clothes he bought, in the penthouse he owns, cooking the dinner he wanted), something ripples across the surface. A frisson. Underwater quake. Deep and dark, and darkly possessive. Hungry. 

You like the look on him right now. Maybe even more than anything else he'd ever bought for you, done to you, because Price is, above all else, fundamentally human.

He has rules. Expectations. It's rare he's ever driven by instinct beyond anger—that thrilling thing you'd only ever glimpsed when he peeled back the curtain, tearing the skin he wore with you kneeling at his feet and growled into the phone at whoever stroke his ire. He's controlled chaos. Gruff and uncompromisable.

But the look on his face right now splits that staunch control down the middle until it falls, shattering into pieces at his feet.

He growls m’hungry, sweetheart, and you barely have a second to push the risotto aside before he lifts you onto the table, barely sparing a minute to swipe his hand across the surface, sending dishware and untouched food tumbling to the ground with that same little growl he gave to the man on the phone who disturbed him from the comfort of keeping his cock warmed on your tongue all day long. 

You're laid over the jacket he'd thrown down—rich with gunsmoke, tobacco, and something sharp and metallic—legs squeezed together, ankles tossed over his right shoulder.

It's messy. Artless. All animal despite the cocoon of finery bracketed around you.

Plates shake from the jarring force of his thrusts. Cups tip, spilling your glass of Roumier across the table. Something shatters when it hits the ground. But he doesn't stop. Doesn't even notice the chaos happening around him—as if the world ceases to exist beyond the sight of you taking his cock like a good girl. Spread out for his leisure. His pleasure.

He certainly looks like a hellish king as he stands above you. Towering. Terrifying. One hand wrapped around your throat, keeping you still as he slides his gaze from the tilt of your thighs to the tears puddling in the corner of your eyes as he stretches you open with the thick of him. The other looped under your knees, holding firm. Fingers digging into your flesh. Tight. Rutting like a beast.

There's sweat on his brow. His chest heaves. The hand around your throat slides down your collarbones in a damp spill of heat that makes your toes curl above his shoulder. Rough. Sticky with sweat. With you from when he pried your cunt open on three thick, scarred fingers, grunting at the sloppy mess he found between your thighs. Always so fuckin' wet for him.

It wasn't enough, but you think he likes that. Indulges in something archaic, sinister, when he catches the wince on your face as his too-big cock notches against your too-tight hole. Forcing himself inside with a grunt that sometimes sounds like a laugh when you whimper. When you cry and claw at the sheets and beg for mercy—just a minute to adjust, a second to get used to the burning stretch. The poignant ache when he slides down to the root—so deep, you sometimes think you can taste him in your throat.

He gives no quarter then, and he doesn't now.

Price likes fucking you rough. Edging on painful, bordering on too much. It's the juxtaposition, you think, from the way he treats you like a spoiled little princess who has daddy wrapped around her finger to the dressed up little whore he lays out on a table, bends over a settee, and brands your throat with the clench of his paw as he pounds into you like a beast. A little mean, a little cruel—just enough to balance out the rasp in his voice when he hands you his credit card and says buy whatever you want, sweetheart.

(and miss you, sweetheart—when he's tired and alone and already four glasses of whiskey deep; voice ground down to ash from the cigars he burned through. As soft as a man like him could ever get. Can't stop thinkin' about you, sweetheart. Need to see you, sweetheart. Need your pussy. Your cunt. Your mouth. That tight little ass. Want to fuck your throat until you can't speak for days, sweetheart.

(Want to push m'self so deep inside of you that you forget yourself, love. Forget who you are without my cock inside of you. Can't—can't live without me—)

Ash and soot. The next morning, another ten grand sits in your account. A knife slides cleanly, neatly, into your guts when the accompanying text says for listenin' to the nonsense of a drunk old man. don't take it to heart.)

Balance, maybe.

the thin strip of skin on his finger. the broken crayon in his pocket.

Maybe tonight was supposed to be the end. A clean break.

It makes you wonder if she found out about the tchotchke he keeps in his closet. The pretty little thing he begs to stay when he's drunk and alone, and then rips into pieces the next morning when money is promptly deposited into your account. A cruel-edged don't forget yourself, sweetheart.

But he's snarling as he peaks, grunting above you as sweat drips down his brow, heaving. Panting. Lips twisted up into a snarl. Eyes furious. Mad. His hand is a brand over your mound, possessive as he holds you in his palm, feels the way his cock splits you apart. Owned.

Bought and paid for.

Another grunt, and his thumb dips down to rub at your clit, barking at you to come—come on my cock, sweetheart, need to feel it—until you howl, clenching up so tight around him that it rips a molten, liquid purr from his chest. A throaty moan that breaks you into pieces. Tears the veneer of flesh and bone from your consciousness until your body liquifies, spilling out over the table, mingling with the Chambolle Musigny Amoureuses soaking into your back. Wrapped tight around him, as he batters into you without any finesse. Clumsy ruts. Sloppy. Animal. And then—

His cock swells. Throbs.

Over the roar in your ears, you hear him groan low in his throat, deep and brutal; the rumbling of a well-fed bear burying its dinner in the dirt. It sounds like mine now. Like ain't you, mm, sweetheart? gonna keep you nice and full. got all those rooms to fill, don't we—

wishful thinking.

But he comes inside of you. Bare. Raw. Your hands untangle from around his wrist, palm still wrapped around your throat, and drop down to your belly.

Price sees it and groans—

"that's it, sweetheart—"

(ain't gonna be empty for long.)

He's always had this little fantasy of knocking you up.

Used to growl in your ear about how badly he wanted to see you swell with his babies. Little broodmare he'd keep chained to his bed like a queen. Giving him five sons and five daughters because he could never seem to make up his mind on what he wanted—only that it was a lot.

(An improbable thing, really—he might yank on the leash, but you easily talked him down to four; two boys and two girls.)

He comes back (home) some days with fire in his eyes and sets on you like a man possessed, starved. Smothering you into the mattress with the thick of his body, grunting into your ear about knocking you up. Getting you fat and needy with his babies until you forget what it felt like not to be nursing, to be pregnant.

A terrifying concept. Something that made you rush a little faster to pick up your contraceptives, comparing the pill in your palm to pictures online just to make sure they were the same. And maybe at some point, it just became a game.

He'd press you into sheets and fuck you all day long, making you keep count. Each time he came inside of you was another baby to this empty house. A crazy thing, really. Midlife crisis, perhaps.

But you indulged.

Let him press his hairy, thick chest against yours as he folded your knees up to your ears and pounded inside of your aching, messy cunt, gasping out a tally into his sweat-slicked jaw. Laughed as he kept your legs bent and your hips tilted up, eyes riveted to the split of your sore, aching cunt. Growling an awful amalgamation of primal, masculine satisfaction at the sight of him spilling out of you and in anger at the fuckin' waste.

("gonna plug you up next time," he seethed, two fingers buried inside your bruised hole to stem the flood. "Wastin' it all, sweetheart.")

But that was before.

When he'd shower before he came to see you. Sometimes waiting days after he landed before he was back in your bed, grunting around the idea of another trip you wanted him to take you on, pretending to think about it despite the tickets to Egypt already booked. When he'd play house with you. I Love Lucy on the television, dinner in the oven. His hand curled over your nape as you bobbed your head up and down his cock. A dutiful wife taking care of her overworked husband.

Making babies in the dead of night. When he'd grunt say it, sweetheart into your ear, and you'd beg him to give you another one. Tears in your eyes, lachrymal, as you tried to convince your husband that the baby you put to bed in the empty room needs a sibling.

His hand on the leash, but your voice in his ear—paper soft—pleading don't make our child grow up as an only child, John.

(two weeks in Portofino booked. First class. Luxury resort. A Wolf & Badger swimsuit laying on your bed, one with a gold zipper on the front that he wears out by the sixth day and has to run to town to buy you a new one.)

But that was before. When it was just a rich, dangerous man's fantasy. When you had birth control to keep the unrepentant baby fever he had just a dream. Never a possibility. Never a reality.

MayoClinic says the possibility of conception is high.

The period tracker you glimpse on his phone one evening warns that you have two days before it comes.

When you swallow around the idea of it, half dizzy, half sick (six bedrooms), he rests his hand over your nape, tugging on the leash. His eyes are dark again. Midnight blue, almost black. Hadal.

He keeps them fixed on you. A ravenous black hole. Calmly closing the app as if nothing was wrong, as if he didn’t have your cycle locked into his phone. Rough, calloused thumb brushing over the soft patch of skin beneath your ear. Steady and soothing. Like calming a skittish mare. 

Unflinching. Unbothered. Entirely unconcerned when he kicks his foot over the line of what's expected, what you want, and fucks you again that night, bare. Raw. Groaning when he comes. Huffing into your ear about how he'll take such good care of you—both of you.

And when he tucks a pillow under your hips, you drag your hand down to your wet, swollen cunt in a clumsy, enticing attempt to keep him inside of you until he fills the empty space with the thick split of his scarred knuckles.

A performance, you think, when he groans like you gutted him. Bought and paid for. 

That's all this is.

But he doesn’t book a trip for this performance.

And he's gone when you wake (business, he says, in a messily scrawled note left on the end table), but there's a gift bag on the dining room table, sitting next to the stain you left when he pulled out of you. Dried come. Slick. Tinged slightly pink because he was rough with you last night. Hurried. 

The black box inside is an apology for hurting you even though you know he likes it when his come is a little pink as it leaks out of you. When you wince when you sit, and have to press a icepack against your sore, swollen cunt.

(it doesn't surprise you to find a pack already left out for you. coffee in a pot. breakfast warm on the stove.)

But the next thing he left is the real gift.

Divorce papers—already signed by him, the gold band he never let you see on top—sits on a stamped envelope, awaiting another signature. It just has to be mailed out. When you sift through them, the cause for the divorce is irreconcilable differences.

Balm to the shame is the little fact that he hasn't lived with his wife for the last year. The date of separation coincides neatly with that drunken phone call when he told you he wanted to bury himself so deep inside of you that you couldn't breathe without him saying you could. 

Domineering. Grossly possessive. 

He has you already, but that's not enough. 

It'll never be enough.

("wanna—mm, wanna give you everything, sweetheart. and I want everything, too. every part of you. wanna change your fuckin' name to mine—")

You tap your nail against the page labeled custody agreement, not even a little surprised that this docket has everything outlined, itemised. The table of contents says you'll find the prenup on page fifty-six and the proposed split of assets on page sixty-seven. It's thorough and every bit as intimidating and uncompromising as the man is wont to be. 

He's serious.

And John wants his kid. Non-negotiable.

That, too, doesn't really surprise you. Even when you were playing house, he'd always been a rather doting father—

("I don't want them to just have a sibling," he'd growl, firm and immutable, adding (intractable as always): "I want them to have a fuckin' team.”)

The address he gives for his primary residence, however, does give you pause. Liverpool. Chestnut Avenue, Moor Park. Six bedrooms. A guesthouse. 

The envelope is filled out, too. All it needs is to be tucked inside and mailed out. 

Already separated, his lawyer says, neat and tidy, like everything else in the pages. This was the most inevitable course of action, and my client, John Price, is ready to move on with his new life. 

Ready to move on. You scrape your tongue against your teeth, hand settling over your belly as you think about that. It's just—

He's always been a rather obstinate man. Stubborn. Once he gets his head around an idea, very little can change his mind. You'd seen it countless times before, but never this cold. Callous. 

Dismissive. 

Not to you, anyway. Not that you can remember. It's always been silk sheets, gifts from stores that would deny you entrance based on your credit score alone. A new wardrobe. A new place to stay. And that's—

That's kind of odd, you think. Maybe. 

He cut your lease the day after you dragged him home from the bar, back when he was just a bad choice after a terrible night out. Had the locks changed. A new lease in your hands—in his name—and a key under the mat beside a housewarming gift. An expensive espresso machine that would be a little too bourgeois in Starbucks. A penthouse that overlooks the ocean. Members only. 

There's a valet. A gym. A swimming pool. He joked one night that you'd feel right at home with the sauna it housed. Jus’ like a lodge, mm. 

You're not sure how he knew. It's one of those things that he just does. Like your name. The real one you grew up hearing before you moved to the city and changed it to fit in. How many siblings you have. Your parents. Their birthdays. A gift always sent out in your name, arriving just on time. 

All of your old things were donated. You didn't need them anymore—not when he ordered a whole new wardrobe from Loro Piana for you. Handed you his card and told you to fill the house up with whatever would make you happy. 

(Fitting, you suppose, since you barely have to think about anything except how to make him happy.)

He turned in your resignation less than three hours after you fell asleep on your lumpy mattress, worn out after a night of drinking. A night of him. More animal than man. Too tired to kick him out before you passed out under the weight of him still burying you into the mattress, hips flexing as he fucked you again for the third time. 

(the fourth, fifth while you were still sleeping. waking up to the sixth: him inside of you, a slow grind as he rocks in and out; he's bigger than you. too big. with your thighs wrapped snug around his hips, the top of your head barely clips the ledge of his shoulder. he wrapped an arm around your upper back, the other reaching out, gripping the pillows above you. panting into the thick bed of curls covering his chest as he threads his hand over your crown and presses you tighter against him. groaning into your ear. ducking his head down to rasp out how badly he wants to feel your messy little pussy squeeze him tight—

before he leaves, he hooks two thick fingers inside, and fucks his come into you. makes you come on his cum-soaked fingers before he wanders off with a small smile, the scent of tobacco and sex pungent in the air.)

And the ring—

You thought he never wore it because of some misguided sense of propriety. Decorum. The Madonna—a thin strip of pale skin, waterlilies and cashmere, a crayon in his pocket; tabloids dressing her up as a modern day Diana; a divot between his brow that grows and grows and—

and the Whore—

A penthouse. Dior sunglasses. Cucinelli heels. Colombo jackets. Loro Piana outfits that cost more than your parents make in a year. His credit cards left on your bedside table. Trips in a snap of a finger. Luxury a phone call away. 

(his voice pitched low. a smoldering rasp. stay, sweetheart, don't go. don't leave—)

—the divot melting into a brooding, heated stare. Desire drenched across his brow; want so thick, so palpable, you can feel his need throbbing between your legs. Dissolving into ash after, when he loops an arm under your body, cradling you close to his sweat-slicked chest as he leans against the headboard, smoking a cigar. Basking in the scent of sex. Satiety. Your finger curling around a thick whorl of damp, coarse hair. Content. 

It’s selfishness. Teeth digging into the man, refusing to let go. But beyond that, you know you’re good for him. 

Better for him, you think, and jog the papers on the table, right above that ugly little stain, to neaten up the pile. 

It takes five minutes to slip them inside the sleeve, peel the adhesive off of the sticky tab, and walk them down to the mailbox just outside of the lobby. Five minutes to initiate a divorce. 

If you had any qualms about falling into bed with a married man—not that he really gave you much room to think about it since he never showed up with his ring, just the mark of her around his neck like a noose; a constant guessing game—it’s put to rest when the metal flap snaps shut. 

Shame feels like an elephant. Something in the background. Ignorable. 

And besides—

(you place your hand over your belly and hum)

—you have other things to think about, to worry over, than a crumbling marriage.

He must have gotten the notice that you mailed the documents because a text comes later that night. Simple. Succinct. 

Good girl. 

The elephant slinks away into the moonless night as you pull open the catalogue of engagement rings he left on his bedside table, and circle a few that catch your eye. 

All of them sapphire. The same blue as the broken crayon in his pocket.

(The period tracker on his phone chimes a few weeks later.

You don't even bother peeking over his shoulder to know you're late.

You have more things to worry about, after all. Like moving to Liverpool next week when his divorce is finalised, and planning a wedding for the spring.)

Imagine being a succubus that feeds regularly on one John Price. He’s an excellent source of energy— vivid dreams, active imagination, plenty of pent up desires and time spent desperate for the soft touch of a woman— it’s no wonder you come back to him more than a few times a week.

What you don’t know is that John, deep in his ancestry, has a bit of demon blood in him. So he doesn’t get affected by your enchantments in quite the right way. He doesn’t wake up suddenly, convinced it was nothing more than a wild, lustful dream. No, he knows what you are and what you’re doing. And your pheromones are that much stronger

And he’s tired of you running away at first light. Always taunting him with that pink, glowing tattoo right over your womb. So cute, just beckoning him to shove his cock inside you and make it a home for his seed.

So he walks out of the occult shop, talismans in hand, excited for what the look on your face will be when you try to leave him and your wings are bound and body heavy. When he slips that delicate silver chain around your neck, the spell inside humming to life. And when you find out that his demon blood makes you breeding compatible…

You can only reblog this today.

sea fog comes, like a river rolls a stone, it's rolling me

peristalsis - vii

selkie!soap x reader. depression. strangers to “lovers.” suicidal resolve. major character death. violent drowning. a reckoning. . Running away from life to the Scottish Hebrides, you meet a man who won't leave you alone. . Masterlist. Ao3.

previous

When you’re sure that Johnny’s friends have left, you return to the beach. The wind has died down in the late afternoon; the clouds sit heavy and motionless in the sky.

Night is coming, and it promises to be cold. It hangs in the wary stillness of the air, in the waiting quiet. The seabirds’ calling is absent; the dune crickets’ singing has ended.

He’s there on the sand. Somehow, you knew he would be. Felt it, even before he came into view. He stands by the kayak, almost as if he’s been waiting there for you.

You hold the folded pelt with both hands against your stomach as you approach. The fur is so soft against your palms, your fingers. Cool from having spent a night in the ground.

He looks at it with sharp eyes. Then, up to you, expectantly.

His eyes on you in the cottage bedroom, moonlight shifting in them. Teeth in your neck. The taste of brine in your mouth.

Pearls in your memory. Parting gifts to enjoy, as you come to the close.

“Missed you at the end there, bonnie,” he says, even and purposefully steady. “The boys were glad to meet you.”

He’s known—the whole time. He always has. You don’t know how you know this, but you do.

“I’ve had a nice time with you, Johnny,” you say, when you’re only a few paces away from him. “But I think it’s time for me to go.”

Three days. That’s all it’s been. Nothing much, objectively, to say goodbye to. A good way to end things, truthfully, with the aftertaste of good food still on your tongue, the heat and girth of him still lingering inside you. The etchings of his calluses still fresh on your skin.

A kind ending. A gentle one. Better than you and he deserve.

You hold out the pelt.

He looks at it. Mouth a tight line. Brows low and flat. Then his gaze moves to you.

“Where will you go?” he asks, still steady.

“I’m not sure,” you say. “Maybe—Amsterdam. Does it matter? I don’t know.”

“Just like that,” he says flatly. “After everything.”

You frown. “I was always going to leave, Johnny. Remember? I only booked the place for a month. This is just…earlier.”

Something frenetic buzzes in his posture. The slight lean forward in the way he stands. The angles of his face seem harsher, more pronounced. Eyes dark as wet stone.

“Johnny, just—” you shake the pelt at him, still holding it out. “Just take it, okay?”

He looks at the pelt again, and then back at you.

At it, then you.

It—you—

Johnny lunges.

In one swift surge forward he snaps the pelt from your hands and flings it aside. As it flutters to the ground his hands whip at you, seizing fistfuls of your shirt a half-thought before you realize it, wrenching you forward.

“What the fuck?!” you cry, but then you’re off your feet, falling toward him, arms flailing as you lose your center of balance. You topple into him, and he hooks you beneath the shoulders with the iron bands of his arms, stepping away from the kayak, and only for a moment do you think that maybe he’s going to bring you back to the cottage before he starts dragging you in the opposite direction—

“Johnny, no,” you breathe, as you hear a wave break on the sand,“Johnny, no!”

You start to kick and thrash. You throw yourself against his grasp, dig your heels into the sand, try to find the meat of his forearm with your teeth, but he is resolute. Unstoppable.

You start to scream.

The waves eddy around your feet, rise up to engulf your ankles, your calves, as Johnny roils the water with wide, unfaltering steps, deeper in—

The water closes around your thighs. Your waist.

This is happening. This is really happening—

“Had a month to get to this, bonnie,” says Johnny, over your screaming, rough and harsh and completely unrecognizable. He slings you around to face him, jaw set hard, the muscles in his temples flexing as he clenches his teeth. “But I guess we’re doin’ it now.”

“Johnny,” you plead, “please don’t, Johnny, please—Johnny, no, no, no, no—!”

He clamps his hands on your shoulders and shoves you downward. You claw at him, push against the seabed, but your lover is too strong, immune to your fighting, and you are barely able to inhale before he forces your head below the water.

Frigid cold—it rushes into your ears, through your hair, knife-sharp and paralyzing. Salt flooding the open canals of your nose—

You close your throat. The surface swirls above you, distorting him, rippling and folding in on itself as a wave recedes. Hope waits for the retreating water to expose you, but he has dragged you out too deep, far enough that even the lowest point of the backwash still submerges you.

Seawater, eroding cilia, ramming against the rolled stone of your epiglottis. Burning the film of your corneas.

You reach up, swinging your hands at his face, but the distance of his straightened arms, muscles flexing to hold you down, is too great; you beat at empty air, or collide with the rock-hardness of his shoulders.

Another wave comes in, deepening the surf around you. You kick out, knee upward, wrench against him—you just need him to loosen his grip once, for just one moment, and then you can get away. You try to pry his fingers up, but they may as well have rooted in you.

Lungs pulsing. Throat already fighting to open. Chest heaving, diaphragm beating upward to pull in air. Pain lancing up your chest, unimaginably sharp, head so heavy it might burst—

You throw yourself to one side, kicking against the sand, and physiology subsumes your control. The cost of fighting is breathing. The floodways open—the ocean rushes into your throat—

Salt abrades the walls of your esophagus, claw-slashing downward. Acid bypasses the filters of your alveoli, honeycomb structures collapsing to the pressure, to the spasming of your lungs desperate to send oxygen to the rest of your body. Your diaphragm contracts—your chest convulses to cough, to force water out, only to welcome more of the sea in.

You beat at Johnny’s arms again. All you manage is to throw water against him. He is a sea stack above you. A pillar. Unmovable.

Holding your body against his in the bedroom, frighteningly strong, moving against you like the ocean itself—

The water churns above you with your struggle. You cannot see his face. All you see is the unstable shape of his silhouette, wavering lines distorting the edges as the corners of your vision darken.

More seawater, expanding your chest. Heart stuttering between your lungs, yanking in the last of your oxygenated blood, with nothing to send back out. The weight of your body swells, arms too heavy to hold up. They crash into the water before you force them back up again, searching and unwieldy.

Perception narrows. Him, and you. That’s all.

Sunlight through the window the next morning, rimming him in gold. The heat of his shoulder pressed to yours.

The seawater steals the tears from your eyes, throat convulsing on a sob you cannot make.

Grinning as you shared oysters.

You slap your hands against his arms, clapping your palms to whatever they can find, begging, praying—

Him moving inside you, his warmth, his smell, the weight of his tongue in your mouth. The tug of his hand on your arm.

His smile, his voice, his hand in yours—

Fists like weights holding you down. Fire in your chest. Too full.

Upward—something in you tugging upward.

You want to live. You want to live. You want to live—

It’s done.

Johnny lifts your body from the surf and carries it back to the beach. You fit in his arms as if they were the mold you were cast from.

He knew you would the moment he saw you in the airport. Perfect. You were perfect for him. He saw it in the angles of your body, the way you stood, the emotions moving behind the mask of your face.

He tried to explain it to Price once—the seeing. The knowing.

How he could look straight at his old captain, for instance, and know, without ever hearing the man say a word, that he felt responsible. For everything. For the gunshot. For the months afterword. Even though he hadn’t chosen to discharge Johnny himself, Price saw the mold of his hands in the shape his sergeant’s life had taken.

It’s how he knows Gaz couldn’t see the change in him, because he saw what he wanted to see—his best mate whole and healthy, thriving in a new stage of his life.

It’s how he knows Ghost doesn’t even recognize him anymore. Not really.

And it’s how he knows you’re just like him.

He lays you down on the sand, cradling the back of your head so it settles lightly down. Stretches your legs to rest straight out. He aligns your limp arms with the length of your torso, turning your hands upward so the sand will not cling to your palms.

Beautiful. Even with your face slack. Eyes half-open, unseeing. Mouth parted; seawater dripping from the corners.

Your feet touched the island the same way his did, years ago. Running away. Looking for the end, without really trying to find it. It was in the set of your brows, the tight pull of your mouth against your teeth.

Life had gone in every direction opposite of your intention. And it had left you alone.

Johnny smooths a few stray hairs away from your forehead, and kisses the place between your brows. The little line that has sat between them this whole time is gone, smoothed away. He kisses the bridge of your nose, and then your mouth, and then stands.

It took him a while, back then, to make the decision. It was hours before he woke to find Price watching him, sitting despondent on the sand, tears tracking salty down the older man’s face.

He goes to the place he threw his pelt away and retrieves it, shaking it out. Holding it in his hands assuages the anxiety that has wriggled in the back of his mind since the day he shoved it into the lintel of the croft. He’d known where it was, but survival instinct prevails over logic—for the rest of his life, he will always fear its loss.

It’s a consequence, but not one he’d been unfamiliar with.

And, in the end, preferable to the alternative.

He lowers himself to the sand a little ways away from you, propping his knees up and spreading the pelt across them.

When he had done this—he’d done it alone. It had been close. He almost hadn’t made it.

If he takes up this vigil—if he stays, the whole time, watching you—you’ll make it. It’s not a matter of hope or belief. It’s a matter of knowing.

He knows every time he looks into your eyes. Every time he’s been inside you. Every time your body has risen to meet his touch.

You want to live.

So he sits back. He keeps his eyes on you.

And he waits.

The sky claps you between its palms and hurls you back down the gravity well—

You vomit up the ocean.

Panting, with burning lungs. Closer—everything is much, much closer, loud and bright, and suddenly, individually distinct.

Channels of sound and aroma dance on the wind—sea salt, the smoke of someone’s grill from the village, burning meat, the rolling crash of the incoming tide, birdcall and the gust of beating wings and—and—

And you can sense them all.

A gap in the clouds lets the sunlight touch the earth.

You move on the sand. Turn onto your belly, chest heaving, empty and light. The cove—you’re still in the cove. There’s the path back up to the cottage. There’s the kayak. There’s—

Johnny, riotous, waiting in the crashing waves.

He calls to you: loud, long, triumphant, teeth bared in jubilation.

You cry out. Wordless. If you’d had any words to say, your lips could not shape them.

You’re alive.

It crashes into you. Alive.

You lift your head into the wind coming off the ocean. It caresses your face softly, tenderly, like a mother’s kiss on your cheek.

Johnny suddenly turns from you and darts into the water.

You wail with surprise. A wave rushes up to where you lay, water licking up the fibers of your body. You’re not ready. It’s too soon. Why did he leave you? What’s happening? Why isn’t the water cold?

You clutch at the sand. You can’t find your legs—you can’t stand up. All you can do is crawl, shuffle your ungainly body forward with the clumsiness of a newborn child. You cry out again, trying to convince him to return, to come help you, but if he hears it, he does not come to your aid.

Another wave surges forward; salt water crashes across your face. You flinch away from it, but something nictates over your eyes, shielding them from the burn.

Once you reach the surf, the water cradles your body, buoyancy easing your way. You submerge, finding something to kick with—

And then you’re gliding.

Murky, and blue. Sand clouding in the tide. But comfortable—cool, without being cold. You remember frigidity cutting into your skin only hours earlier, rending you at the seams, unmaking you.

Now, it receives you like an old friend.

Ahead of you, Johnny moves further out. You can feel him, far out in the distance, tiny eddies of water rippling against your cheeks.

He’s not the only thing you can feel. The radius of your awareness vibrates with blips of movement, darting, swaying, dancing, below and above and all around. It shocks you to realize, and you go still, hovering in place, momentarily stunned by how much there is living around you.

Johnny pauses too, ahead of you. Waiting. A lone distinct figure, patient for you to follow.

You shiver with startled wonder, and resume your way toward him.

The coastal shelf slopes downward, falling away. The water gradually clears as overhead, past the surface, the sun sinks in the sky. Warm golden light dyes the sea around you. He leads you on, further and further, until a forest of kelp grows up around you.

In the turquoise, ribbons of twisting green undulate and twirl, feathery and dancing in the windy current. Silvery bubbles trail toward the sunlight, intermingling with tiny schools of glimmering fish that dart and jump between the fronds. Down below you, red and green algae fur valleys of rock, swaying lazily like prairie grass.

It’s beautiful.

Johnny drifts to a stop in the middle of it all, wheeling around to face you. You approach him, coming in close—and it’s almost like approaching the sun, so much that he radiates across your senses.

His dark eyes hold yours the same way they had that day on the beach, and the pendulum swings balanced now between you.

He brushes the side of his face along yours, and with his touch he leads you downward, following the stipes of kelp toward the stone to which their holdfasts grip. The heat of his huge body warms the water that flows in the narrow spaces between your bodies, even as the coolness intensifies the further you dive.

The two of you draw up along the forest floor—and find the myriad little denizens of the sea. You’d known they were there, at the very edge of your senses, and now they bloom into fullness in your attention.

Shrimp perambulate beneath rocky ledges. Crabs walks along the ridge of a huge boulder, like climbing a mountain. And there, further down, snails in their spiral shells, pulling themselves across the sandy grain. Starfish, in shades of red and blue and orange. Anemones, translucent hair streaming.

Tiny lives—insignificant to you, before. Hardly worth your notice. Now, you marvel at them, reeling. You want to cup them all in your palms and bring them up to clutch against your chest.

Something brushes against you.

You look up—Johnny, sliding along your side, curving back in toward you, then looping underneath. He nudges at you, then darts away; you gaze at him, confused, so he comes back in, shunting you with his body, and once again retreats.

Behind him, you catch a turtle fluttering in between the green leaves. Atlantic salmon chasing capelin. An eel peeking out from its cave. Undisturbed by Johnny’s—and your—antics.

He nudges you again, then backs off, looking at you expectantly. Realizing his intentions, you follow—he makes a low clicking sound in his throat, pleased, and jets into the flowing leaves, buffeting you with the wave he leaves in his wake.

You’re shocked only for a moment before the kelp parts for you in your pursuit. Johnny quickly disappears ahead of you, dipping down below the canopy. You feel him rapidly shrink in your awareness, and you propel forward, scanning for telltale splashes of gray and white, arms of green caressing you as you pass.

You close in on him, but suddenly he evades. You follow again, only to find he’s nowhere in view. Then the chase is on: he stays in one place only long enough for you to catch sight of him before he bolts, or wheels around and backtracks to confuse you every time you approach. Teasing, taunting, flaunting the dexterity he has underwater which you have yet to acquire.

Golden shafts of dancing sunlight begin to dim and shorten as he leads you on. Frustration rapidly builds in your chest, buoyed as your lungs press against your ribcage. You need to breathe, even as Johnny becomes no more than a dot of movement in your senses, confounding you at every turn.

Why is he doing this? Why won’t he stay with you? If you surface, you’ll lose him, but the sudden memory of saltwater flooding your chest has you kicking toward the fading daylight. Self-preservation taking its place at the head of your priorities, and you follow it with no longer any second thought.

Above you shifts a mirror of silk.

You rise. Faster as the weight of the sea lessens, your reflection blooming as you approach, closer and closer to the wedge-shaped face, the large, dark eyes—

You swim into yourself and breach the air. Your nostrils open, and you inhale the wind.

You see the twilight bleeding into the day. Clouds moving quickly off as the sun sinks into the horizon.

Where is Johnny?

You can’t sense him anymore—as you knew would happen—and your chest contracts with fear and longing, suddenly believing you’ve seen him for the last time—that he’s left you all alone, to figure out what to do next, with no idea how to live in the skin of this new self you’ve become.

You give a mournful howl. You don’t want to do this alone, you can’t, you thought you wouldn’t have to—

But in the distance, back the long way you came, you hear an answer.

You whirl around, facing the shore, and almost too far away to see, a dark shape rests on the sand.

Your throat convulses with a clumsy breath, and then you dive. The water parts for your body, sliding around you, streaming through your hair. Faster than you expect, the slope of the shelf draws close, and you jet upward, belly meeting the sand, and when the water recedes and you drag yourself back onto the beach, your own weight settling heavy on your bones, you cry out again.

You shake the water from your head, wailing at the top of your lungs, desolate and blind as you blink the salt away, and then there’s a warm body up against yours, weight melding against you, heat reaching out to drive away a coldness you hadn’t felt until you’d surfaced.

You continue crying as Johnny closes his teeth around a hank of your neck and drags himself on top of you, pressing you down into the sand. You shift to let him settle over you, and all of his weight compresses your body—sandwiching you between himself and the earth, pinning you down in one place.

Something in you still wants to fight. To shake him off—to escape. But all you can do is cry. He enters you with no resistance, and you cry more, harder, until your lungs deflate, and then you take a deep breath and start wailing again.

Saltwater streaming down your face, dripping into your own mouth. Your voice hits the cliff walls, rebounds off the stone until the air fills with your weeping. Johnny shifts on top of you, pressing your head down to the sand.

The vessel you have contained yourself within overturns. You cry.

You cry for yourself. You cry for him. You cry for what you’ve done, what you haven’t, and for what you can never undo. Your lament fills your own ears and spills out again, all across the beach, catching in the wind to fly off into the ether, raised to the birds, to the passing clouds overhead.

You cry with despair of never going back. You cry with the terror of Johnny finally rolling off of you, to dart back into the waves, to leave you here alone again. You cry until your throat hurts, stinging and raw—

And Johnny’s hands, strong and warm, edge beneath your pelt and pull you out, still bawling with every drop of shame you’ve carried in your body since the day you realized you hated yourself.

“Shh, shh,” he murmurs, drawing you up into his chest, arms steady and strong around you. “It’s alright now, bonnie, it’s alright. I’m here.”

You cannot respond to him. Your mouth hangs open only to wail your grief. Your body wracks against him, convulsing, involuntary, as you scream with despair and relief and horror and resolve, too much to contain, too overwhelming now to ever split yourself away from.

You find his arms with your shaking hands and grip on tight. He slips the pads of his thumbs beneath your eyes every so often to clear away your tears, and you feel his mouth press against your forehead. You wait for him to drop you. Wait for him to see the mess you’re making and wash his hands of it.

He doesn’t. Every time another sob wracks you, he grips you tighter.

Eventually—when you begin to wonder if it ever could, if this is all you are now, a squalling bundle of fragile skin pebbling in the cold—it passes.

The next time you pause to draw breath, you find nothing more inside you to disgorge. You begin to shake in Johnny’s arms, trembling with exhaustion, whimpering with clenched eyes.

He breathes slowly against you. Calm and even. He strokes your face with gentle fingers, even and patient, as if there’s nothing more in the world he’d rather do.

You find the courage to meet his gaze when your heartbeat steadies, finding the rhythm in Johnny’s chest to match. You see again what you saw that first day, that next night; you know now what you’ve always known, somewhere inside you. Your face is familiar in the reflections of it in his eyes.

His mouth curls gently as he gazes down at you. His eyes dance in yours, corners creasing as he traces the curve of your cheek. Light catches in his pupils.

You see him clearly, as the sun gives way to the evening, and the moon rises over a cloudless night of stars.

epilogue early access

a/n: shoutout to @/gildui for suggesting screenshots for that one section of text. Thank you to @/bi-writes for trying to figure out how i could keep the formatting with tumblr's coding. Please let me know if alt text is necessary. God forbid a text-based website allow for formatting said text.

something very interesting to me in rdr2 is how arthur is repeatedly referred to using more “feminine” like terms, usually in a negative context. like the most well known one is when he gets called “pretty boy” in the fight with tommy, but emmett granger also calls him “girlie.” both of these times, it’s men who are actively provoking him, masculine men, who are telling him this. however, whenever arthur is talking to algeron wasp, a much more “feminine” man, and wasp asks him if he’d like a corset, arthur’s only real complaint to the idea was that he rides horses and that the whale bone would dig in.

now, arthur’s masculinity is something that he clings to heavily in the game. as progressive as arthur’s ideas are for the time period he’s in, he still holds the basic idea that women need to be protected and cared for, that a man should more of the heavy lifting, etc. in chapter six, he overcomes this idea a good bit, especially with sadie adler and charlotte balfour, but it’s still a core part of his character because it’s the year 1899. arthur’s masculinity is something that he uses to make himself appear, in the words of hosea, “big, dumb, and angry.” he uses this idea of toxic masculinity to make himself appear tough, as one of the gang’s enforcers, as the debt collector, as the one who yells at a grieving family because they’re in his way. arthur hides his journal, one of the few things that shows his softness, which could be perceived as “feminine,” and never lets anyone touch it until he dies. even his art could be considered “feminine,” because, in his eyes, it’s an expression of softness.

then you have charles. charles, who has extremely long hair that he takes great care of, and who i, personally, believe is just a little bit vain (which isn’t a bad thing). charles, who talks about his mother and her people and everything that he loves about both of them. charles, who lived on his own for years and had to take care of himself, be both mother and father for himself in his late teen years.

charles is masculine, yes. he’s tall, and broad, and takes care of others, whether that be through doing brunt work or through more violent means. however, he expresses his own softness frequently. how he only kills when he has to. how he believes arthur isn’t as tough and dense as he acts. how he isn’t afraid to show appreciation for others, shows his appreciation towards animals while both hunting them and caring for them, express his opposition towards dutch as early as chapter 2.

now, back to arthur. as the game progresses, arthur slowly moves away from this idea of toxic masculinity and becomes softer towards others. still masculine, still thinking about the women and children first, still strong (even as he grows sicker and sicker), but softer. he comments, both in his journal, that charles is one of the best men he knows. i think that charles was one of the key points of reference whenever arthur was trying to become a good man. that, even though arthur had it in him the entire time, he still looked to charles as a grounding perspective.

i think that, had arthur lived, maybe he would’ve been able to become that much softer in age and in settling down. maybe even branch out towards more “feminine” traits, take greater care of himself, if only he was told that those things weren’t shameful, if he was told that he wasn’t just big and dumb.

The model son

Forget me nots are his flower I will not take criticism. Also deer motif has nothing compared to Arthur Morgan dog motif. That man is a hound through and through

My favorite kind of balls is the ones that have so much loose skin they hang… especially when it’s fresh from somewhere hot, like a bath, so they’re even more relaxed. The swing…. the heaviness

I’m not sane. Not anymore 😪

Price coded....

I know that man's got low hanging fruit, makes you lay on the edge of the bed and warm them in your mouth while he tugs on your tits. Doesn't need to see the way your tongue darts out to lick over the seam of his sack to know you're enjoying yourself. He can see the way you're starting to slick between your legs, the way you press your thighs together to try and relieve some of the ache. If he were a selfish man he might make you stop and take his own pleasure licking you clean, but the hum of enjoyment that rattles through your chest is enough to keep him where he is. Purring like a lazy cat and sucking at his heavy balls without a care in the world to what he might want.

Laving your tongue over the loose skin, opening your mouth wide to suck both balls in, trying to lick the base of his cock. Pulling back only enough to suckle at the heavy weights that hang from him. Ooooooooh that man's got hair too, plenty to wiggle your tongue through and bury your nose in. Makes you feel accomplished to tug at the skin and see the dark hair darken further with your spit, slicked to his balls like he's fresh from the shower. He'll give his cock a few lazy pumps just to keep himself nice and hard for you, for when you decide to stop squirming those pretty hips and let him do his job. But for now you can have your fun.

Love the trope of Price mentally constructing a nursery in every home and apartment he’s ever known, in the house of everyone he’s ever dated— it’s the first thing he thinks of (right after where on his body he’s gonna tattoo their name).

He has his dream nursery memorized. It’s his mind palace. He wants cream yellow walls, because his baby is going to be the sun, the same way his wife is his moon, with the away she has over his heart of the sea. He wants an accent wall with wallpaper in a classic motif— the kind they use in pediatricians offices, to be honest. Building blocks, fluffy clouds, circus animals.

John loves tradition, generational passings on, well-crafted things that can last centuries if cared for well enough. He wants his nursery furniture, all of the stuff in his house, really— to be solid wood, handmade (he promises that he’ll make the bulk of it himself, the rest antique). He’d rather die than buy a brand new house without any history. No craftsmanship, all straight lines and 90 degree angles, no consideration to what makes a home feel like home.

Despite being such a trusted member of the team, he knows precious little about your home life. Fine by him— your past is your own, he has no right to it. One day, as you’re about to pack up for leave around the holidays, you ask to speak to him as a friend, rather than a captain.

It’s well known that Price doesn’t have the family he’s dreamed of. An old war dog, bridges burned with the ex wife from his youth, he doesn’t hold out a lot of hope. Maybe in the next lifetime, it will be different. He’ll have that yellow nursery.

You tell him, with an astonishing amount of composure, that your parents passed away almost a year ago. They’ve left the care of the family home to you. It’s quite an undertaking— large, as it used to host all manner of aunt and uncle and cousin generations ago. But now, people are in the spirit of moving far away. Old wounds and grudges, new opportunities. Your parents had their own issues conceiving— leaving you an only child.

Gaz has his family to go home to, so does Soap. No one knows what Ghost does, but everyone suspects he follows Soap home for the holidays. Price has been invited time and time again, but always politely refuses. He doesn’t want to be reminded of the dream out of his reach.

But you tell him this will be your first holiday alone in the house, and that you need him. You don’t know if you can bear the silence for the season. Not to mention all of the upkeep you’re behind on. He figures it’s as good a place to be as any, and he’s the type who needs his hands busy to find any peace.

He falls in love with your old place. Sure, the bannisters could do with being refinished, a bit of carpeting could come up, a few fixtures are spotty— but it’s a beautiful place. Still very much full of love and warmth, the traces of you and your little family are everywhere. In the tarnished silver picture frames, the fraying knitted potholders, the penciled in height markings at the kitchen door.

On the tour, he’s stopped dead in his tracks at one open door. Faded yellow walls, slats of chestnut. A crib.

You explain to him that it used to be your nursery. It had been your mother’s, too, and many more. They kept it perfectly in tact when you’d grown up and moved into another room, hoping that they’d give you a little sibling. The day never came. You’re wondering yourself what to do with it— your career hasn’t left you with much time or appetite for romance. There’s a stinging sadness dripping from your words like lemon juice. You admit that you suspect this family, once monumental, will end with you— the house passed to someone who will strip off the carved filigrees of the stair railing, throw white paint over all of the walls, and put grey vinyl over the hardwood. That is, if they don’t just tear it down. Land could be divided up into a few new apartment units.

You’re barely listening to yourself talk— just ambling along, as if you haven’t just revealed to John Price what his life’s been leading up to all this time.

Highlife

Price finds you high after a tough mission and makes it his own personal duty to make sure you’re okay

Cw: smut, this ended up being a lot softer than I planned, short mention of blood at the beginning, marijuana and nicotine use

-

The mission had been a shit show, really, it had been. Gaz had gotten shot and you’d had a panic attack the moment you all escaped into the helicopter. It had taken Price’s hands on your shoulders and his piercing eyes glued to yours, demanding you breathe with him to calm down. The image of his blood over your hands was why you’d opened up the box and rolled the blunt. He was fine now, simply patched up and staying in the med bay for the night.

You were a few heavy hits in when the knock at your door sounded. Cursing under your breath and snuffing out the blunt, you coughed harshly as you threw together the box and shoved it under your bed as quietly as you could.

Just as you thought whoever it was decided to leave, another knock came again, harsher this time. You had no choice but to open the door, your brain not fully comprehending the dangers of doing so. Drugs were prohibited on base and in the dorms. It was Gaz who had snuck you this bit late one night.

As you opened the door horror filled your entire body with a creeping anxiety as you came face to face with your captain. His eyes met yours, then went above and past you as he sniffed at the air. Coming back to look at you, he quirked a brow and pushed past you.

“Captain, I can explain-”

“Sergeant.” he cut you off, noticing the hastily pushed over covers to your bed.

Leaning down with a soft grunt that had your addled head keening at the noise, he pulled out the box.

“Captain please-”

“That’s enough now, love.”

It shuts you up for good that time, watching with a solidified dread as he sets the box down on your desk and opens it, snorting as the contents are revealed.

“You know I came to see how you were doing,” he smiles wryly, taking out the grinder and one of the papers, “Didn’t expect you to be one to use drugs to get rid of the day. You’re a little young for that.”

“I’m only a few years younger than you.” you retorted, taking a few steps closer. Bad idea.

Price used your proximity to look you up and down, eyes resting a little too long on your breasts, which were only clothed with a standard black tank top. You had thrown on loose sweats as well that hung a bit at your hips, stolen from Soap a few weeks before.

His hands were deft as they eventually rolled the blunt, his calluses helping him. It was a big one, larger than you’d ever roll for yourself.

“Captain what are you doing?” you finally found the courage to ask, heart stuttering as he dug around in his pants for a light. It forced the outline of his cock to grow more defined, drawing your attention before your right self had the sense to look away.

“Making sure you’re okay. If this is how you do it then I won’t let my presence stop you.” he said gruffly, the light flickering as he held it up to the unfiltered end and lit it.

Coming closer to you, he softly grabbed your chin between his forefinger and thumb and tilted your head up. Your eyes managed to focus on his, met with the deep blue that spoke volumes of experience and pain. But in that moment they were dark, filled with a focus and purpose you usually only saw out on the field. Now they were trained on you as he brought the blunt up to you lips.

You take it, letting him hold it as you breathe in deep. It burns and soothes at the same time, filling every crevice of your chest as you hold it in your lungs.

“Exhale, love.”

The smoke goes right into his face, which he inhaled deeply before taking a hit of his own. Inching his finger up, he gently rested the pad on your lower lip and tugged. You obliged easy, like butter to a knife, mouth falling open for him to exhale into. The closeness was deafening. Your eyes never left his as you took the smoke in, a hint of his own scent and flavor on it.

“That better?” he asked, finger coming to rest on your tongue and pressing down. You couldn’t even answer his question if you wanted to.

You instead nodded dumbly, tongue wrapping around his finger slightly as you did. He watched carefully, throat bobbing as he swallowed heavily.

“I don’t think you’re better yet, hun. Think you’ve been needing something else for a while now.” he nearly whispered, sinking his finger deeper into your mouth.

It wasn’t a lie. The way his hands gripped yours during training to adjust you always sent fire licking up your spine, the mere sound of your name on his lips sending you into a frenzy… you were nearly crazed for your own captain. You knew it was wrong, knew you shouldn’t. Yet as he looked into your eyes with his finger in your mouth, knuckles pinched by your canines, there was no discerning good ideas from bad one. Not as the marijuana flooded your senses and thoughts, finally slowing them.

“Answer me.” he said softly, forcing your head up more as he took another hit and breathed it into your face.

The sound that left your mouth was nothing short of a whimper, a plea for him to relieve you. It seemed to work; he slowly dragged his thumb from your mouth, licking the pad of it as you fought the urge to reach out.

“I am.”

“You’re what?” he pried, bringing the blunt to your lips and allowing you to take more. He always did that. Let you take as much as you pleased, even if you could tell he craved the power of taking it away.

“Needing.” you answered, practically heaving with the effort it took to keep yourself off of him.

He seemed a little surprised at that, surprised at your acquiescence to what he was asking without asking. Price leaned back, putting the blunt out on your ashtray where the other one from earlier rested.

“I don’t do casual, love.” he admitted, voice strained as he opened up to you. No longer the confident captain you knew, now brutally honest and bare before you. It was so shocking that you found no other response than the truth in return.

“I never said I needed casual.”

His hands and lips were on you in an instant, soft and yet urgent, needy yet managing to stay patient. He was warm against you, lips soft against your own as his hands gripped at your hips like a lifeline.

You moaned into the kiss, hands reaching up to caress his face and tangle in his beard. He groaned softly at the touch, his own hands moving up to your back and stroking soothing lines down your ribs.

He had you breathless in moments, tongue gently sweeping across your lips in a desperate request. You let him in, letting your tongue grace his own as the two of you engaged in a slow dance. He pushed and you pulled, sucking at him as his hips involuntarily bucked in response. It dragged a groan out of you, which only seemed to spur him on.

Hands wrapping around your lower thighs, he quickly pulled you up and against him. You wrapped your legs around his torso, pussy grinding against his abs as your arms found their place at his neck.

Price pushed you both against the door, hand bracing on the wood next to your head as he kissed from your jaw to your neck. He bit at your collarbone, drawing a whine out of you as his cock dragged at your ass from where it was stiff in his pants.

“Please,” you managed to whisper as your fingers tangled in his hair. He licked a long strip up your neck before responding, panting in your ear.

“I got you, love.”

Taking you swiftly from the door to the bed, he set you down with a care you didn’t expect from the gruff man you had grown to rely on and respect so much.

He only released you to pull his standard shirt off, revealing the beauty that was his chest. Thickly muscled with a small yet healthy layer of fat that accumulated a bit at his belly and absolutely covered in dark curls. His shoulders were broad yet tapered down to a lean waist where a particularly thick matting of hair trailed from his belly button down into his pants.

You were immediately stripping, tank top abandoned as he unzipped and pulled down his pants. He was stark and massive against his boxers, more thick than he was long.

Just as you reached for your own sweats his hands reached for your wrists, stopping you with a gentle strength.

“Let me.” he breathed, climbing onto the bed with you.

Price truly was a massive man, just as impressive and intimidating nearly naked as he was clothed. And yet he was careful as he slipped your sweats down your hips, revealing your lack of underwear and aching core. Finally pulling them all the way off, he laid a kiss to your upper ankle before setting your legs down on either side of you.

He was on you again instantly, body caging you in as your tongues and teeth clashed with a desperation that spoke volumes of the years that you both had worked together. Years you had been untouched by another because you couldn’t bring yourself to crave the feel of any other but him.

You moaned once again into him as his cock dragged against your clit, hands coming up to fist at his chest. Your hips moved up in response to the stimulation as you grinded up against him. That got a sharp gasp out of Price, startling him enough that he buried his face in your neck once more and drove his cock against you.

“Price please.” you begged once again as you dug your fingers into his nape, pushing his face down toward your tits.

His mouth found one of your nipples and sucked soft then hard, tongue swirling around it gently as his teeth nipped. You whined in response, arching into his attentions as his hand dragged down the length of your body, fingers dipping down into the sopping wetness of your cunt before coming back up to rub circles into your clit. Your body seemed to shatter and melt at once, every sense of the outside world fading to the feeling of his mouth and hand on you.

Price took a moment to pull back and observe you as he worked your clit, clinging to him so tight you feared your fingers might break his skin.

“You’re beautiful,” he cooed as he pressed down simultaneously, forcing a jagged moan out of you.

“That’s it.”

It was only when the first finger dipped inside you that you really began to lose your mind. The stretch was made comfortable from just how wet you were, which Price quickly noticed and decided was enough to push two more in.

The air punched out of you in an instant, a cry escaping your throat as your hips braced against his hand. It only made it worse. His palm against your clit, he rubbed you softly as his fingers began to curl. He chose that time to suck at your other tit, breath hot against your sticky skin.

It was too much too fast.

You came right then and there as he bit particularly roughly at your nipple, cunt squeezing the life out of his fingers as he focused on your clit with the heel of his palm. Panting and whining with each breath, you were already exhausted from what he has dragged from your body.

In the aftermath of your orgasm he looked in your eyes once again, a savage hunger there that would have scared you if you didn’t know better. His lips claimed your own as his fingers pulled gently from your cunt, aware that the sudden loss of fullness would have shocked you.

“You’re fuckin’ perfect.” he moaned against your lips, cock dragging against your already overstimulated cunt. His boxers must have been soaked at that point, ruined with the amount of slick that had pooled from you when you came.

“I need you,” you gasped, dragging him by his hair to pull back and look at you, “Need you inside me. Fuck me, John.”

His eyes went nearly black.

Shimmying out of his boxers, the pure girth of him had your mouth dry and open in shock. Neatly kept dark curls surrounded it, heavily balls hanging low. His tip was huge as well, the entirety of him causing it to droop slightly as he repositioned himself above you.

Noticing your slight anxiety at his size, he leaned down to kiss you once more, soft like the first time. It was passionate, his hand finding your cheek and cupping your face in his palm like it was all he needed. Like you were all he needed. It soothed you, body relaxing as he slowly dragged his cock through your slick. When he found your clit with it you whined, loud and impatient at him. He chuckled softly at that, eyes never leaving yours as he lined up with your cunt and pushed.

All you could do was gasp and moan as his tip sunk into you, stretching you so wide your vision blacked.

“Hey.”

His hand found your jaw, turning your head back to him from where it had been buried in the pillow.

“Breathe, love. Breathe.”

You followed him on instinct, big breaths filling your lungs as your cunt released him enough for him to keep pushing inside. It was too much and not enough, barely able to think around the way he split you open yet so desperate for his balls to sit against your ass that you forced yourself back onto him.

He groaned at the movement, eyes rolling as his head hung slightly, hips jerking a bit as he sunk in to the base. His hair tickled your clit, causing you to squirm under him.

“Oh God.” he muttered from where his head rested between your breasts, chest heaving as he tested you with a tentative thrust of his hips.

It had you seeing stars and moaning from low in your throat, enough to cause him to move. He was slow, hips rolling into you as he lowered himself onto his forearms, forehead resting against your own. It was so intimate that in that moment you knew he had been serious. This wasn’t casual. He was making love to you, worshipping your body in a way that only a man that was wholeheartedly devoted to you would.

“You feel so good.” you whispered to him as he continued to thrust into you, pulling your legs up over his hips.

“Heaven, love. Fuckin’ heaven between these legs.”

Eyes, blue, stark against the moonlight that managed to sneak through your window. Handsome, strong, loyal.

You ran your hands over every inch of him, feeling his biceps strain as they held him up, back taunt as his hips grinded into you and chased not his pleasure but yours. Each moan he drew from you only made him faster, more devoted to the gradual tightening of your cunt.

He increased in pace, grabbing one of your legs by the meat of your thigh and pushing it up and over his shoulder. The angle had you half screaming as he reached your cervix, his moans of pleasure half drowning out your own.

You were close, building up to your orgasm like a tsunami cresting the horizon. Each thrust drew you up tighter, coaxing your body to work just how he liked and how you craved.

It hit you harder than the first time.

You only had time to wrap your arms around his neck and draw him close as you shattered once again, causing him to go hoarse as he fucked you through the orgasm. Price didn’t stop, didn’t let your pleasure end until every drop had been wrung from your body.

When he came, it was with a cataclysmic groan that resonated over every inch of your body. His hips stuttered a few more times before he drove himself so deep inside of you that breathing felt hard. You locked your legs tight around his hips as he emptied himself inside you, shuttering and gasping into your lips as you soothed him and held him close.

He stayed like that for a while after collapsing his weight partially on you, dick buried to your womb and nose cradled to your ear as you both came down from the dual highs you were experiencing.

After a bit he pulled out, leaving you empty and dripping with cum and slick as he found your bathroom and brought a rag back. He laid kisses to your knees as he cleaned you up, gentle and aware of the fact you were still sensitive to every touch from him.

It was only when he got some water in you that he crawled back into the bed and pull you up onto his chest. He ran his hands through your hair and kissed your brow, the silence enough for the both of you. You were eventually brave enough to speak.

“Not casual, right?” you asked, not prepared for the waver in your voice.

“No love. You’re mine now.”

-

Note: Now edited! Thank you for reading and to those who ignored the typos! Might write a part two if I’m feeling it.



Gaz would definitely court you like old times. Pick you up at the front door dressed in a suit, pay for dinner and insist you have dessert, drive you home and hold your hand as he walks you to your house kind of guy. Buy you roses on his way back from deployment despite his exhaustion and make love to you slow after devouring your home made meal. Take you to the movies and tie a bow in your hair before you leave, letting you stain his lips red with your own. Sing to you as you both dance outside under the stars, cry with you when you find out you’re pregnant for the first time. Gaz is everything a man should be.

subscribing to a fic isn’t enough I need the author to blast a bat signal into the night sky whenever they update

do you think Soap constantly thinks about that one phrase "big boy with the skull face" and nearly ahort circuiting because up until that point, whenever he saw Ghost, his brain almost always went "big boy, big boy, big boy—" and his tail wagging like he's being offered a treat (in the form of eye candy).

Ask Nicely

Summary: You decide to let König have what he wants- and your poor couch suffers for it.

König x F!Reader, 1.1k words

Era: N/A

TW: thigh fucking, sub!König, violation of a couch lol. Temporary and accidental orgasm denial.

Day 3: Thigh kink with König (kink)

It’s hell trying to keep König’s hands off you in general, the mountain of anxiety disguised as a terrifying Colonel and your partner not exactly an easy person to boss around.

You know that the easiest way for him to ground himself is through physical contact, but you didn’t think that would mean sticking his hand up your shirt to grope at soft flesh in the middle of a train station or holding you like a teddy bear in his lap while at the bar. The contact isn’t unwanted, not by any means, but it can be a hindrance- especially given his propensity for the squishier parts of you.

Working in the front garden, for example, is difficult to do when he won’t get his hands off your ass. Cleaning his hard with him nipping at your calves and heels figuratively and literally, the freak.

Forget trying to focus on anything that involves you sitting still because he pounces like a 6’11” puppy, hands and teeth and lips aching for a taste of you. Your thighs take the brunt of it, always bruised by his overeager hands and tacky with his dried spit. In hindsight, maybe the dress was an unintentional provocation, and he was all too quick to take the bait. The second you flopped onto the couch in that creamy dress, his head was buried in your lap. He’s so hungry for a piece of your pillowy flesh that his hood is forgotten, drenched through with slobber as he mouths at the fabric in an attempt to get at you.

“Please, liebling,” König begs as he shoves his head under the flowing skirt, drenching your skin in hungry drool. “Let me. Let me, let me.”

His gigantic hands cling to your legs, forcing them open so he can shove his head in like a curious dog, nipping hard enough you squeak. You didn’t wear any underwear today, which König takes as invitation to bury his nose in your cunt with a long sniff. “Slutty Schatz,” he mumbles to himself as he laps at your core before going back to the real object of his infatuation- your thighs. It’s enough to draw a needy whine from your own lips.

“Wait.”

Your heads paw and push at his head to try and detach him and for a few moments, it’s like trying to move a brick wall before he relents with a tortured sigh. “Ja?”

Once you can catch your breath, albeit still being driven insane with each needy puff of König’s panting still under your skirt and keeping you soaked and needy, you speak. “Ask nicely. If you… if you ask me nicely, I’ll let you fuck my thighs. This one time.”

Never in your life have you seen the Austrian move so quickly, yanking his head from between your legs and looking at you with near-feral eyes as pleas flow from his lips in a messy combination of German and English that you only catch some of. “Bitte, bitte, do not tease, ja? Will be so good, won’t even make a big mess, ich werde so gut sein-“ You have to capture his cheeks, still hidden under that drenched hood, and squeeze to get him to stop. “König. Breathe. Get some air, calm down.”

The whine he lets out is enough to make you want to ride him until he’s nothing but a sobbing submissive mess, but you relent. “You can do it okay? Yeah? Let’s just-“ König doesn’t let you finish your sentence, using that strength he does his best to play down to spin you around and bend you over the back of the couch, so far over you have to splay your hands out over the back to keep from tilting over. “Will be so good liebling,” he pants and whines. The sound of a belt being fumbled with is audible before the sound of a zipper and suddenly the hot and soaked tip of your partner is pressing into the back of your thigh. “I will even clean the mess, ja? Make you cum too, I swear, Schatz. Now stay.” “Wait König, not on the couch-“

He ignores you entirely, manipulating your thighs to be squeezed shut and tight before pushing himself between them with a moan of pure desperation. “Ah-! Danke, danke, Schatz, danke- ah!” The shove of him between your inner thighs has you moaning as well, the hot thickness of König slick with pre-come shoving between the soft flesh has him grinding against your core, coaxing arousal to coat the both of you and ease his thrusts. “Fuck-”

Each thrust gets rougher from him until you’re relying entirely on gravity and the one hand he has on your waist to keep you from tipping over the couch, the other preoccupied keeping your thighs nice and tight.

It’s filthy and debauched, but fuck, it feels good. Although König is clearly getting more out of it than you are, based on the way you’re nearly immobile with his heavy weight pinning you down. The couch back is pressing into your ribs, but the pleasure is enough to forget the pain. “Pretty fucking thighs,” König whimpers into your ear, huffing and puffing as his hips slam into yours with a slap of flesh. “Look so good with my cock between them, liebling. Danke, danke, danke- I’m… werde abspritzen, fuck, going to p… ah! Paint this pretty skin white. Like this, Schatz?”

“K- König,” you whine, clawing at the couch fabric. That delicious heat is curling up your thighs, so close. So close…

There’s a hot spurting between your legs, thick creamy cum coating the insides of your thighs as König moans your name and the couch creaks and snaps, one of the legs collapsing under the abuse of your bodies. His hands are tight enough to leave dark purple marks, which you’re becoming aware of as your orgasm is snatched from you with a pathetic sob. His hips slow and he drops heavy down on top of your body, just short of crushing you like a bug under a boot. You can’t help but feel cheated getting your orgasm stolen, but at least he got off… “Shhh, Schatz,” he whispers into your ear once he catches his breath, brushing your hair back to press soft kisses to your temple and cheekbone. “Sh. You will get yours, I won’t leave my liebling hanging, hm? Shhh. You will get to come, baby.” A desperate noise pulls from our throat before you speak in a shaky tone. “Gonna need a new cou-” When König uses the combination of fluids to slide into you, bottoming out in one go, the last coherent thought you have is that at least the broken couch’s upholstery is spared any more filth.