sterifels-blog

[sterifels-blog]

MY SHAYLAAAAAA I LOVE YOU SO MUCH ❤️❤️❤️ I'm currently reading Chiaroscuro on QuoteV and losing my mind waiting for new parts to come out! Please update it soon!

my shayla 😭 much love ❤️

i will definitely update the soonest that i can!! (absolutely not insinuating a months absence.)

[sterifels-blog]

Chiaroscuro

part one of eyeless jack x f!reader

🔗 masterlist

quotev: more chapters posted! always updated first

chiaroscuro - a technique that uses strong contrasts between light and dark to create a sense of drama and intensity

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There is a man on your porch.

You don’t realize it at first. Not fully. The moment is slow to reach you, like a radio signal threading its way through static—present, but distant. You are washing dishes, half-lost in the mindless repetition of warm water and ivory suds, when the porch light hums awake. It flickers against the windowpane, casting dull reflections across the sink. You don’t look up immediately. The sensor has always been sensitive. A possum, a stray cat, the wind. But then the light doesn’t turn off. It lingers, buzzing faintly against the stillness of the night, and something in your chest twists—small, instinctive, just enough to break the rhythm of your movements.

You glance up.

You stop. Doe, doe, doe. Freeze.

The kitchen clock ticks— slow, steady, unbothered—as the world around you shrinks. Outside, beneath the humming light, there is a shape. A figure. Slumped against the wooden railing, body half-turned away from the door, unmoving but present in a way that makes your breath stutter. The porch is old, the wood split and faded from years of sun, brittle where the rain has sunk in deep enough to rot it from the inside. You have always been able to hear the groan of it under the weight of a body, the slight shift of nails tugging against their sockets. But there is no sound. No movement. Only stillness, thick and weighted, stretching out between you in the cool press of autumn air.

Your fingers tighten around the ceramic dish in your hands. You hadn’t dried them. The water clings, sliding in cold trails along your wrists, settling into the fine grooves of your skin. The dish soap smells like artificial citrus, too bright, too clean, too sharp against the scent of damp earth curling in through the open kitchen window. The night is heavy with petrichor, the remnants of earlier rain pooling in the cracks of the driveway.

And then—copper.

It is subtle at first, something that only registers when you inhale too deeply, the scent weaving itself between breath and bone. It does not belong to the air, to the damp leaves, to the quiet hum of crickets hidden in the grass. It belongs to something raw. Something wet. Something alive— or, at least still is trying to be.

A prickle runs down the length of your spine, slow and methodical, an animal’s reaction to a threat it cannot yet see. You could almost hear the warning signs of your mother. Tail flagging, stomping, blowing. You're a fawn that should duck– tall grass as kitchen cabinets; but your gaze shifts, following the dull shine of porch light against fabric. His hoodie is dark, though not from the night alone— the cotton clings, stiffened in places, torn at the sleeve where the sickness of his arm is exposed. The flesh there is not whole. It is broken, slick with something that should not be outside of a body, the wound deep enough that even from here you can see the edges struggling to knit themselves back together.

He’s hurt.

The thought lands softly, but it does not settle. Instead, it presses at the edges of something deeper, something far more difficult to place. You should be afraid, a stranger at your portal. You should move— reach for your phone, make yourself smaller, step away from the glass. But you don’t.

Instead, you stare, bystander to your own gossamer heart. Not at the wound, not at the sluggish way he breathes, but at him.

The mask is strange—smooth, impersonal, a void where a face should be. It swallows the light without reflecting it, as if the space where his eyes belong is nothing but absence. You cannot tell if he is watching you, cannot feel the weight of a gaze, but there is something in the way he holds himself—silent, waiting. Not quite expectant- but present. 

And then, as if sensing your hesitation, he shifts.

It is slight—nothing more than the slow tilt of his head, a minute adjustment of posture—but it sends something cold curling through your stomach. The movement feels deliberate, calculated, a message that does not need words to be understood.

He knows you see him — he, if its the only thing that could be assumed by the stature of his wilting frame. 

Something heavy settles behind your ribs, pressing against the delicate space between thought and reaction. The weight of it is unfamiliar, a new shape cut from an old instinct, carved from the marrow of something deeply human.

He does not speak. Neither do you. Because the wood and sand are nature's natural hermetic against sound.

The silence stretches between you, thick and unbroken, until the night itself begins to breathe. The wind shifts through the trees, sending brittle leaves skittering across the pavement. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barks, sharp and startled before quieting again. The house settles, wood stretching in the cool air, the refrigerator humming in the background, indifferent to the moment unfolding before it.

And still, he waits.

You do not remember when your hand moved to the door. You do not recall crossing the space between the sink and the threshold, do not register the cool press of the brass knob beneath your fingers until it is already there. The motion is instinctive, thoughtless, something that happens to you rather than because of you.

You turn the lock.

The softest of sounds, but it cuts through the silence like a thread pulled tight. The porch light flickers, washing his mask in brief, golden light before it fades again, the night stretching long and undisturbed beyond him. The door groans softly on its hinges as you pull it open. The air shifts, cool and damp against your skin, carrying the scent of blood, of rain-soaked leaves and something deeper, something raw. He does not move, does not rise or push forward, does not make any effort to meet you halfway. He only waits.

The moment stretches.

Your fingers tighten slightly against the edge of the door, searching for something solid, something familiar, but when you speak, your voice is neither firm nor distant. It is quiet, soft in the way of things meant to soothe.

"Oh, Sir.., come. Come inside," you murmur, barely above a breath. "You’re hurt—"

His mask tilts. Not much—just the smallest adjustment, as if he is studying you, parsing out the shape of your voice, the meaning behind your words. The wind moves again, slipping through the open space between you, and something fragile lingers there, not in his deck of cards, but in yours.

You step back, leaving the door open. An invitation. It is cold, the air— numbing the the tips of your fingers in dull tickles. 

For a long moment, nothing happens, and you think, just perhaps, a mortician will be taking the stranger off your hands at any moment. Or maybe he just does not speak your language—. Then, slowly, stiffly, he moves. Not with force, not with confidence, but with the careful weight of something testing its own limits. His breath is measured, his steps deliberate, and when he crosses the threshold, there is no sound but the whisper of fabric, the chalkboard grinding of boots shuffling against worn wooden floors.

He does not speak.

You only watch as he straightens, as the mask shifts slightly in your direction, as if to gauge you one last time. His presence fills the space, dark and unfamiliar, the scent of blood curling through the air between you. Still, you do not step back.

Instead, with a touch as light as moth wings, you press the door closed behind him.

[sterifels-blog]

BARK BARK BARK BARK I LOVE YOU AND YOUR WRITING!!!!!!!!! CRAZY!! THIS IS CRAZY!!!!! WILD, EVEN!!!!! ASTOUNDINGLY GOOD!!

😭😭 you guys are insane. off to the pound you go, love 🗣

[sterifels-blog]

Mend.

The light filters through the slats of the blinds in thin, slanted beams, diffused in the heady warmth of late morning. It gilds the room in a sickly, golden sheen, turning the dust motes into floating embers, a slow-drifting ghost of disuse. The air is thick, sluggish, swollen with humidity and the scent of lived-in exhaustion—old wood and linen steeped in weeks of restless sleep, the metallic tang of gun oil still clinging to the walls, stubborn and ingrained, as if the battlefield itself refuses to leave him. Seeped into the creases of neuralgia.

Beneath it all, there’s him—smoke-scorched and salt-edged, warm skin steeped in the remnants of sweat and antiseptic, a body that has learned to endure. A body that still hasn't quite remembered how to live.

Soap sits slouched in the chair, broad frame slackened by something not quite sleep, not quite consciousness. His legs stretch long, boot-heel scuffing the warped wood of the floor, while his arms drape over the chair’s sides, hands curled empty, idle, as if waiting to remember the familiar grip of steel. He’s heavier now, not in muscle, but in something deeper—something woven into the marrow of him. The weight of survival, of memory turned phantom-limbed. His shoulders carry it, rolling forward, thick cords of muscle that should make him look powerful, but instead, they make him look tired.

He looks lost.

Your hands find their place against his jaw, cradling the sharp cut of bone beneath the unruly thicket of his beard. The hair is dense, coarse beneath your fingertips, wiry and unchecked, a far cry from the once-precise angles of his mohawk, now grown out into an uneven, wild mess. He looks different like this—unkempt, threadbare at the edges. Softer, in ways that wound you.

His breath stutters at the touch. Not from pain. Not from fear. Just surprise. His lashes, gold-burnished and thick, lift half-mast, the unfocused slate of his eyes pulling you into their depths. They are heavy with something ancient, something carved in the weeks spent on the precipice between living and not. The depth of him is darker now, water muddied by things he won’t name.

You're not sure if he sees you or just another ghost.

"Yer lookin’ at me like I’m a corpse," he murmurs, voice wrecked raw, the grit of his brogue thickened by exhaustion. His words slur at the edges, caught in the muddled disconnect between brain and mouth, a recovery still unfinished. It breaks something in you.

You shake your head, fingers threading through the overgrown tufts of his hair, nails grazing against his scalp. He sighs, something deep and shuddering, his body yielding to your touch like a felled tree, heavy and unmoving.

"No," you whisper, brushing a thumb over his temple. "Just lookin' at you."

Because you may as well have been.

The corner of his mouth twitches, but the smirk is a half-birthed thing, barely there before it withers.

You lift the straight razor from the table, the blade catching a sliver of light, gleaming silver and thin as regret. He watches as you dip it into the ceramic bowl, the water rippling outward in slow, molten rings, the surface kissed pink from the shallow fissures in his skin. Old scars. Fragile wounds, the ghosts of a bullet that should have killed him but somehow didn’t.

“Gonna clean you up,” you murmur, and he grunts, a low sound of acquiescence.

The blade glides, slow and precise, through the unruly scruff. Each stroke is careful, carving back the weeks of neglect, revealing the firm line of his jaw, the weathered plane of his cheekbones. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away. Just sits, breathing you in, letting you have him in a way that feels monumental. Your hands, gentle and deliberate, belong to someone who worships, who adores. His body, slack and trusting, belongs to someone who is willing to be adored, if only for this moment.

"Ya' look worried, hen" he murmurs, voice lilting, dipping in and out of coherence.

Your throat tightens. "..'M not."

His brow lifts, a ghost of skepticism.

The water in the bowl darkens. The last remnants of his overgrown beard swirl like dissipating smoke, vanishing into nothing. You take a cloth, damp and cool, and wipe his skin clean, pressing the barest kiss to his temple. The fine tremor in his hands stops when he lifts one, slow and hesitant, wrapping his fingers around your wrist. The calloused warmth of his palm cups your hand against his cheek, and he holds it there. Holds you there. As if to say, I’m still here. I’m still yours.

"You’re still my Johnny," you whisper.

For a long, long moment, he says nothing. Just breathes. Just exists in the weight of this quiet moment.

Then, in a voice softer than you’ve ever heard it: "Aye."

[sterifels-blog]

Knuckle Silk 🔞

Simon Ghost Riley x Reader Flash-fiction

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The bedroom is awash in blushed hues of crushed strawberry and old-rose, tangled soft through lamplight, catching in the candle-wax drip of dusk leaking through the window. Perfume lingers, thick as golden honey, cardamom-slick and lilting, winding over the glossy chaos of vanity trays, perfume bottles, champagne-copper lipstick tubes discarded like bullet casings. The scent of you, floral and deep, nests in the air like a silken snare.

Simon leans against the doorway, arms crossed, spectating. Boots planted, heavy, an anchor in a sea of fluttering lace and silk. There’s a small wrinkle between his brows, his mouth a line of bemused silence, but there’s something indulgent in the way his eyes move—slow, weighted, feasting. Like a lion reclining, watching his doe fuss over her reflection.

You fiddle with the clasp of your necklace—an intricate little gold chain, fine as a spider’s thread, delicate between your fingers, slipping just as you try to hook it in place. Frustration hums in your throat like a kettle near boiling.

"Si, help me," you sigh, twisting to look at him, arms lifted, neck craned to expose the expanse of bare skin between collarbone and nape. The necklace catches the dim light, molten and twinkling as Simon pushes off the doorframe and moves behind you, slow and deliberate.

There’s warmth before he even touches you—the sheer gravitational pull of him, all war-weathered muscle, heat like the smolder of a dying bonfire at midnight. The quiet rasp of fabric, the clink of his belt shifting, the sound of Simon Ghost Riley taking his time.

He takes the necklace from your waiting hands, thick fingers trying to maneuver the minuscule clasp. You can feel his breath at the back of your head, a huff of quiet irritation as his hands work, broad fingers clumsy against something so damn small.

A minute passes. Two. His brows knit tighter.

You catch his reflection in the mirror, his head dipped, concentration wrinkling the tattooed skin of his forearms. His hands—designed for destruction, not dainty things like this—struggle in the most endearing way possible.

A smirk, a chance.

"Not much more useful than me, are ya?" you tease, words light as powdered sugar, melting on your tongue. A ridiculous joke, a silly little thing.

Simon grunts, low and unimpressed, but there’s a flicker of something beneath his irritation. Something sharper. Amused.

And you know before you even giggle—before the sound has even properly left your lips— that you’re going to eat those words.

Simon abandons the necklace altogether, dropping it onto the vanity with a quiet clink. And before you can protest, thick hands—those same fingers you had the audacity to mock—grip your hips and pull.

A gasp leaves you, soft and startled, as your back meets his chest, the sheer weight of him pressing, enveloping, owning.

"You wanna run that by me again, Dove?" His voice is a warm scrape against your ear, rough and teasing, a bullet casing against velvet. One hand curls around your waist, the other— oh.

Oh.

You know exactly what he’s about to do before he does it.

A hand, sliding down, broad palm gliding over the soft silk of your dress, down the curve of your stomach. There’s no hesitation in him now, no struggle, no clumsiness. Only deliberate movement, slow and torturous, thick fingers slipping beneath the hem, inching up the warmth of your thigh.

Your breath catches, a hiccup of something greedy and sweet, and Simon chuckles against your hair, low and knowing. "Not much more useful, huh?"

The first circle of his fingers—hot and insistent—has you gripping his wrist, not to stop him, but just to hold on.

He’s merciless. Slow. Rubbing pleasure into you in the way that he'd watched you brush blush onto the swell of your cheekbones earlier. Coaxing heat, coaxing breath, every little noise he swallows with a smirk against your temple.

"Si—"

"Yeah, sweetheart?" His tone is syrup-slow, wicked, entirely too smug. "Somethin' wrong, love?"

You can’t even respond, not with the way he moves, not with the way your whole body shakes beneath him.

And somewhere, in the haze of it all, you make a mental note:

Never tease Simon Ghost Riley about his fingers again.

[sterifels-blog]

Ornithomancy

part 2 of sheriff!john price x widowed!reader (fem)

🔗 masterlist

ornithomancy – the practice of interpreting the actions of birds to predict the future

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The sound of hooves scrapes against the earth, slow and deliberate, an omen dressed in the patient cadence of a coming storm. The rhythm is dull, a percussive thud against the hollowed ribs of the land, each impingement like the second hand of some great and terrible clock ticking down. You don’t look up. Not yet.

Your hands are elbow-deep in the grain barrel, cold kernels rolling against your skin like loose teeth in an open mouth. The hens have gone still at the contravention. A moment ago, they were frantic, greedy things, scrabbling at the dirt with their sharp, scythe-claw toes, but now they linger near your skirts, eyes turned toward the road, bodies stiff with the scent of something unfamiliar.

They know before you do. The little ladies.

Your stomach knots, an ugly, instinctive thing, not quite fear—no, not yet. Just a premonition, a whisper in the quintessence, something pulling its nails down the length of your spine. A slow, measured unease curling like an asp beneath your ribs, waiting to sink its fangs in.

The air is thick. Fat with the scent of damp wood and the copper-tanged breath of dying leaves. The land is waiting, holding itself in the quiet suspension of something unspoken.

The wind shifts. And it is only then that you feel him. A presence. Not emphatic, not looming, but something heavier than flesh, something that takes up space without ever needing to move. A disturbance in the quiet, an oil-slick ripple against the surface of the world— stone, crashing into water only to beat on the bottom.

A shape against the low, grey sky, taller than the brush, dark against the bone-white horizon. The crows rise in a slow exodus behind him, great oil-feathered beasts, their bodies dragging the weight of the clouds with them, their black silhouettes written against the sky like crude scripture. The horse exhales a cloud of mist into the cold morning air, its bridle jingling with the movement, though it does not fidget.

The animal is still. The man atop it is still.

Stillness like a blade resting against the pulse of the world’s throat. And yet, you don’t move.

You wipe your hands against your apron, slow, deliberate, grinding the dust of cornmeal into the creases of your palms until your fingers look bleached, brittle, like sun-worn bone left too long in the field. Your breath is measured, pressed behind the cage of your ribs like a bird too stubborn to flee.

Only then do you turn.

He is carved from something older than time, something that has been left in the sun and the wind to be sculpted by the elements, shaped by the brunt of a world that does not grant softness to men like him. His horse stands as steady as he does, hooves buried in the cold earth, a statue of sinew and patience, exhaling mist from its nostrils in slow, rhythmic bursts. Sheriff.

The word does not fit him. It sits in your mind like a jagged rock in the belly of a beast, foreign, unnatural. There is nothing clean about him, nothing white-hat, nothing orderly. He does not wear the badge so much as suffer it, tolerate it, let it exist upon his chest like a bullet lodged too deep to dig out.

He does not reach for his reins, does not shift in the saddle. He watches you from beneath the brim of his hat, gaze unreadable, cast in the shadow of the early morning light. The hollows of his face are sharp in the cold, mouth set in something neither soft nor cruel, just patient. And you?

You meet his gaze without flinching.

You have seen men like John before. Men with patience worn into their bones like the grooves of a well-handled revolver. Men with iron in their spines and dust in their lungs. Men who do not ask questions because they already know the answers.

The silence stretches.

The wind has the good sense to hold its breath. His mouth parts slightly, a slow inhale, the kind that speaks to deliberation, to thought, to the weight of something that doesn’t want to be said- but must be.

And you already know what it is.

"I heard." — Heard what?

That your husband was buried in the summer earth with nothing but a whisper of a funeral, that your hands were clean of tears, that you have been surviving in the hollow carcass of your home with nothing but the animals and the wind for company? That you walk alone. That you do not speak. That you carry the absence of something that should have been grief, but instead feels like breath after nearly drowning.

That they are coming back. That they never left.

Your jaw tightens. Your fingers curl in the fabric at your waist, knuckles paling, breath still pressed firm behind your ribs.

“I don’t need help.”

Your voice is flint against stone, sparking dry in the cold. A thing too sharp, too brittle. It does not waver. It does not fold. It is a declaration carved into the bones of the land, spat out between clenched molars— pearly whites shading at the innards with the beginning of bitter plaque.

A long, slow exhale.

His head tilts. Not much. Just a fraction. Just enough that his hat shifts, just enough that the light catches the sharp line of his jaw, the dull weight of something knowing in his expression. Price is the kind of man who does not move unless he intends to. He carries himself like a landslide, slow and inevitable, a force that does not rush but always, always arrives. His presence is the kind that does not demand attention— it claims it, rests its hands on it, curls its fingers around it like a thing already owned.

His thumb grazes the saddle horn. Not a fidget. Just a movement. Just the slow shift of a man who is neither impatient nor hurried, who has all the time in the world. He does not look away from you.

“I know,” he says, voice low, unhurried. A word spoken with the weight of something that has already been decided.

And then, after a beat— “They don’t care.”

The words settle like a stone in a still pond, rippling out, pressing against the inside of your skull with explosive shrapnel behind your eyes. Your pulse stirs, something tight and slow in your throat. He does not press the silence. He does not speak again.

He only moves once—only enough to tip his hat back with the flat of his fingers, just enough to let you see the full weight of him, the shape of his gaze, the quiet patience in the set of his mouth, the lambchops that frame his face, and the sluggishly trimmed beard that was too scuffed to seem tamed, but was somehow cleaner than any man's you'd seen in years. Intentional, like the notches in his eyebrows. In his revolver.

And you wish he hadn’t. Because there is no pity in him. No sympathy. Just understanding.

Understanding in the way a man does not have to ask why a house stands empty, why a woman does not go to market anymore — why the edges of the world have been worn smooth around her like a sentinel eroded soft.

Because this is not the first time he has seen this.

Not the first time a woman has stood in the yard of a house gone to ruin, staring at the road like it might still offer her freedom.

Not the first time she has been wrong.

A long moment passes. The wind shifts. Somewhere, a crow caws. He exhales– a slow, steady roll of breath, low in his chest.

And then, finally, he speaks again, voice rough and familiar as storm-worn stone. “Gotta fix that fence,” he murmurs, gaze flicking toward the perimeter of your land. “Wind’s got it leanin'.”

You say nothing. Your fingers curl against your chalkboard palms. John doesn’t wait for permission. He nudges his horse forward, slow, that same unhurried grace, moving toward the house with the staunchness of a man who already knows.

And you stand there, pulse thrumming, a bitter taste thick on your tongue— Because you already know, too. He’s not leaving.

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Price is a presence.

That’s the only way to describe him— less a man, more a thing that exists; weighty and unmoving, fixed in the framework of the world like a load-bearing beam. You don’t remember the hour he truly arrived, only that he's been here. His saddle is slung over the railing of the porch, his horse tied at the barn, and the cut of his shadow cast is long against the dirt.

You don’t ask him to leave. You don’t have to. You have already seen what happens when a man like him makes up his mind. And it’s not like you can stop him.

He starts with the fence.

It had leaned for years, slouched under the weight of time and weather, the posts sagging in their graves of soft, wet earth. You had meant to fix it—meant to learn how, meant to take a hammer in your own hands and make something of this place. But meaning doesn’t drive nails. Meaning doesn’t pull the splinters from your fingers when the boards crack under the weight of failure.

John doesn’t ask for tools.

Doesn’t ask where you keep the nails, where the woodpile is, where the rope is stored. He just finds them. Lifts them. Uses them. The work moves slow, not because he struggles, but because he doesn’t.

He is not hurried. He does not rush.

The muscle of him coils and flexes beneath the strain, arms bared to the elbow, sleeves pushed up with the lazy, absentminded ease of a man too used to labor to bother with ceremony. The grip of his hands is certain—calloused and solid, pressing wood to wood, twisting iron into place, driving steel deep into the stubborn earth— into the limbs of dismembered trees.

He fixes things the way a wolf might strip meat from the bone—patient, practiced, thorough.

The hens hate him.

They squawk and flap every time he gets near, their small, button eyes darting from his boots to his hands, quick, jittery, full of accusation. You’ve never seen them turn on a man before, never seen their distrust run so deep, so instinctive, as if they sense what he is. Not a predator, not quite— but something close.

Price is indifferent to their discontent. He moves around them, through them, not sparing them more than a glance or a chuckle, brushing the loose dust from his knuckles before taking another nail between his teeth. And you? You watch.

From the porch, from the window, from the steps, quiet as the breeze slipping through the brittle grass. You watch the way he is, the way he exists in the space you had carved out as your own, the way he seems to fold himself into it as if he had always belonged here.

There hasn’t been a man in your home for two years. Not since they put your husband in the dirt.

And yet now there is him—this man who does not belong to you, who does not belong to this place, yet moves through it as if it has been waiting for him. It unsettles something inside of you. Not fear. Not unease. Something deeper. Something you do not have a name for.

By the time the sun begins to die, the fence stands tall again. Straight. Solid. Secure.

It is finished; not just patched, not just held together the way you had done, binding it with twine and scraps and whispered prayers to things that had long since stopped listening.

You don’t thank him. Not because you aren’t grateful. Because you know he didn’t do it for you.

You make dinner. It’s not much.

Scraps of whatever harvest you managed to pull from the stubborn belly of the land, thick broth, the last of the bird you had killed days ago. You had gutted it yourself, split it open with careful hands, read its entrails in the cold light of morning, searching for signs of something you didn’t even know how to name.

Ornithomancy.

You had heard the word before. Had read it somewhere, once. The divination of birds. The reading of wings, of bones, of the way a creature moved against the sky.

It had been a cruel thing to do, perhaps. To kill and then to ask—to carve into its flesh and demand to know if this was your last winter, if the earth would take you too, if the winds would change.

You had found no answers in its hollow body. Only meat. And now, you put that meat into the pot, hands moving without thought, without effort, without care, because it is something to do. Because it is yours to do.

The sheriff does not ask what you are making. Does not ask if you are making it for him. He simply waits.

Leaning against the porch railing— arm slung over the wood, boots pressed solid into the dirt. John's hat is gone, tossed aside near his saddle, and for the first time, you see him clearly—his hair streaked with the first ghosts of silver, his mouth set in something firm but not unkind.

He is a hawk.

Not in the way men like to fashion themselves, not in the way your husband used to say, slurring over whiskey, laughing about how he 'could spot a liar from a mile away, darlin’, sharp as a blade, keen as a bird o’ prey—' No. Not like that.

Price is a hawk in the way they wait. The way they watch. The way they do not speak unless they must. The way they know.

His eyes flick toward the stew when you bring it out, nothing more than a glance, nothing more than a slight shift of his head. And for the second time since he set foot on your land, you speak first.

“It's not much,” you murmur, setting the bowls down between you. He doesn’t correct you. Doesn’t tell you it’s enough. But he eats. Slow. Deliberate. Silent. And you do, too. Careful bites, unwilling to feast on more than you can bear.

You can feel the bones. Sharp, jagged between your teeth. Tiny toothpicks of cartilage, featless against the press of your back teeth. They aren't there, but you can feel them. Ground meat.

It is a disturbing thought; and maybe it is punishment for your demand of the future as he sets the empty bowl aside. His gaze shifts to you, dark, steady, something unreadable buried deep beneath the surface. His fingers press lightly against the rim of the bowl, thoughtful, before he exhales through his nose, slow, almost amused.

“Should eat more yourself,” he mutters, not looking at you, but the words are heavy in the air between you.

You stiffen. It’s not a suggestion. It’s not a kindness. It’s an observation.

His hand settles against his knee, rough fingers flexing against the worn fabric. Then, low and absent, like it’s nothing at all— “Good stew, hen.” You blink.

The hens in their coop rustle, uneasy, as if the name itself has unsettled them. You can hear them shift, feathers flaring, claws scratching against the wood.

You stare at him. Price doesn’t take it back. Doesn’t explain himself. He just leans back against the railing again, boots scraping against the dirt, posture loose, comfortable, as if he has already decided— not just on the fence, not just on the work, but on you.

And suddenly, you understand something. The hens might not like him.

They might ruffle and scatter every time he moves too close, might watch him with their dark, skittish eyes, might flap their pathetically useless wings and make themselves look bigger than they are.

But they still move when he moves. They still hide when the hawk is in the sky.

[sterifels-blog]

Ornithomancy

part 1 of sheriff!john price x widowed!reader (fem)

🔗 masterlist

ornithomancy – the practice of interpreting the actions of birds to predict the future

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There is a bird carcass by the well.

It is fresh, dewed with the evening’s breath, a mosaic of snapped bones and feathered ruin, the head twisted backwards as though it had tried to watch itself die. Its beak gapes, a tiny thing, glossy as obsidian, open in a silent note that will never finish.

You kneel.

The hem of your dress dampens in the dust, dark and silt-heavy, the scent of clay thick in the cold air. Two fingers press against the fragile chest, and you feel it—hollow, brittle. A thing no heavier than a secret. The ants are already at it, threading into the sockets, dismantling it piece by piece with an artisan’s patience. They know.

Everything here is meant to be devoured.

The chickens are restless. Claws scratch against the dirt, rhythmic, a slow percussion to a hymn only they understand. Their eyes, dark pinpricks of ink, stare from behind the slats of the coop, unblinking. Their small heads twitch, angular, wary. They know, too.

You lift the bird, curling it into the nest of your palms.

It weighs less than the ring you pawned last summer, the one that left a ghost of gold around your knuckle, the one that kept slipping loose from your fingers. You had never been thin enough for it. Or maybe you were never meant to wear it.

It had belonged to him, after all. Him.

The house behind you is an echo. A hollowed-out gourd, carved into something that only mimics a home, its walls flaking like old scabs under the weight of wind and time. The wood swells and shrinks with the seasons, like the lungs of something dying slow. The house breathes. Creaks. Expands under the strain of emptiness. No man inside. No voice to fill it.

Just you.

Just the birds.

You scatter seed as the dawn bruises the sky a bitter purple. The chickens rush forward, a tide of hunger on spindle-legs, wings flaring as beaks dart, sharp and eager. A robin lands nearby, its chest a furious red wound, its small feet flexing in the loose dirt. It watches you, wary, its head canting to the side in that erratic, clipped way—tiny heart hammering, all instinct, all hunger.

You can still hear his voice in the grain of the wood. The walls have been pickled in it, his laughter soaked into the floors, his anger pressed into the beams. You hear it when you scrape a knife across the cutting board, when the wind slithers through the cracks in the windowpane. You hear it in the rustle of his old coat hanging by the door, in the scuff marks his boots left against the threshold.

Two years.

Two years, and he is still here, in the most subtle of ways. In the rot of the wood. In the rust of the nails. In the hinge that groans when you push the door open, in the bite of the cold against your empty hand.

You had loved him once.

Had pressed your ear to his chest and listened to the slow, steady thrum of his heart, convinced it was a thing strong enough to last forever.

But you know better now.

Forever is nothing but bones in the dirt.

The well groans when you haul the bucket up, the old rope peeling in your hands, fiber by fiber, until it’s no longer rope but the suggestion of it—faint, unraveling, on the verge of forgetting itself. The water sloshes, heavy, thick with the scent of iron and stone. You dip the dead bird into it. Hold it under until the dust floats away, until the feathers slick back, revealing the small, pale frame beneath.

A burial, of sorts. Not one he would have bothered with.

Your husband never cared much for birds.

They were things to be shot from the sky, to be plucked and gutted, to be eaten and discarded, their hollow bones tossed into the fire, curling in the heat until they crumbled to nothing.

He had been like that. Always eating, always consuming, his hunger a cavernous thing that nothing could quite fill. Money, drink, the warmth of your body beside him in the night—none of it had ever been enough. A famine in the shape of a man, gnawing on whatever he could steal. Whatever he could gamble.

You wonder, sometimes, if the earth felt the same when it swallowed him.

The sun is rising now. The world stirs, stretching its limbs. The chickens are quiet, their bellies full. The robin is gone. Only the sky remains, an open maw of crystalline blue, swallowing the last of the night. The wind moves through the brittle grass, a slow sigh, the whisper of something distant, something inevitable.

You let the bird sink.

And the water closes over it, black and endless.

───────────────────

The house is hungry.

You feel it in the walls, in the way they exhale cold breath into your palms when you press against them. The wind seeps in, shivering between the splintered beams, licking at your ankles where the floorboards gape open like missing teeth on fleshy gums. It groans, soft and tired, settling in the night’s embrace. A carcass picked clean, nothing left but frame and sinew, waiting to be swallowed by time.

You don’t light a lamp.

The dark is kinder, in its way. It doesn’t show the dust creeping like moss across the furniture, doesn’t carve out the jagged edges of a home long since abandoned by warmth. Shadows soften the ruin, allow you to pretend—for just a moment—that nothing has changed. That he might still walk through the door, shaking off the cold, muttering about the damn horses again.

But ghosts don’t open doors.

And if he’s haunting anything, it isn’t this house. Men like him don’t linger. They rot.

The chair by the hearth still holds his imprint, worn smooth by the weight of him. You don’t sit in it. Can’t. It feels like trespassing. Like pressing your hand into wet cement and realizing it’ll never wash off.

Instead, you stand by the table, fingers brushing the lip of an empty cup.

He used to leave coffee rings on the wood, dark crescents where the heat bled into the grain, branding the surface. You hated it. Would scrub at them with vinegar, with salt, with the raw scrape of your nails—anything to make them disappear. But the stains remain.

Some things never wash out.

You remember the last time he sat there. Back curved, arms braced against the table, head in his hands. A man crumpled, worn at the edges, a candle burning too hot at the wick.

“I just need time,” he’d said.

You had watched him, waiting for something—anything—that would make you believe him.

“Just a little more time.”

He was always borrowing time. Hoarding it. Spending it in rooms where men made gods of luck, pressing his fingers into the green felt of a poker table like it might forgive him for the sins he carried under his nails.

You should have known, then, that he was speaking of time the same way a dying man speaks of air. Not as something he had, but something he was running out of.

And when it ran out—

You breathe.

The stove is cold. You haven’t cooked in days. The hens have gone to roost, their soft murmurs drifting through the cracks in the coop. Outside, something moves through the grass, a slow rustle, a whisper of life in the stillness.

A fox, maybe. Or something else. You don’t look.

Instead, you reach for the kettle, pour water into the metal basin by the window. The pump’s been temperamental lately, giving nothing but a cough of rust some mornings. You’ll need to fix it. One more thing to do. One more thing to mend.

You scrub your hands, nails digging into the beds of your fingers, scraping away the dirt, the cold, the ache. It doesn’t help. Doesn’t unmake the quiet that’s settled into your bones, curled against your ribs like a waiting thing.

A woman alone is a carcass waiting to be stripped clean. You dry your hands on the apron hanging from the peg.

Outside, the wind shifts. A change in the air. The night pressing in.

And the house—

The house is still empty.

[sterifels-blog]

it is crazy for me to think that, even though i have been writing whatever i wish to for the past couple of years; it has taken this long for my spark to come back. writing used to be everything to me, and, it still is— but academic pressure is the world's #1 creativity killer.

funny to think that all it took was a tea.

[sterifels-blog]

The First Time He Lets You Touch Him

Brian's skin is an old sheet of vellum, cracked where it folds, oil-seeped where his body burns against it. Beneath, he is as hollow as a pipe organ, ribs lined in dust and copper patina, lungs straining like bellows in a chapel long since abandoned. His breath rattles in his throat—moth wings, brittle and unsteady. He does not move as your fingers creep toward him, like spider legs, like the slow, creeping tendrils of mold over water-swollen wood.

When you touch him, it is nothing. It is everything.

Your fingers press into the waxy skin of his wrist, and the pulse there is distant, faint, a drumbeat in the belly of some drowned cathedral. There is a softness to him, an absence of something that should be there—fat, warmth, proof of existence. The bones shift under your touch, articulated as if wired together for dissection.

Brian exhales.

The sound is closer to a leak in a gas line, a breath long trapped in a body that has forgotten how to house it. You feel the tremor run from his forearm to his shoulder, the ghost of resistance curling like smoke through his muscles, a reflex bred from years of flinching before contact ever came. He has been a graveyard for a long, long time.

There is something ruined in his stillness, something aching in the way he lets you take his hand and unfold it like wet, crumpled parchment. His fingers do not curl around yours; they rest, limp and foreign, bird bones bound in thin flesh. You trace the blue riverbeds running beneath his skin, and he watches, unreadable, his pupils blown so wide they look bottomless.

The world slows. It stills. The walls flicker in dying light, old yellow paint curling like burnt paper, shadows stretching from their corners like fingers dragging their nails through dust. The air is thick, syrupy, a film over your teeth, your tongue. You think of decay, of rot that smells sweet before it sours, of the strange intimacy of something slowly decomposing in your palm.

When he finally speaks, it is barely a whisper, a sound that catches in his throat like a bird ensnared in barbed wire.

“Do it again.”

You do.

[sterifels-blog]

[sterifels-blog]

oh, you know you cooked with this 🍳

Forgot to post on Tumblr again oopsie-

⚠️ the screen flashes black at the end briefly, idk why it did that I tried to cut it out. Could be eye straining

The amount of layers was insane, it's my first time making a vid like this.

Found the audio on tik tok and thought it would fit him lmao

[sterifels-blog]

All the Pretty Little Things

John is a man of quiet convictions. His truths settle deep in his bones, tucked between sinew and marrow, built from years of ironclad certainty. He believes in hard work. He believes in duty. He believes in you.

That last one— God, that last one— sits in his chest heavier than anything else.

You, his Little Lady. His Dove. The sweetest thing the military has ever pressed into his hands, so soft and golden-lit that sometimes he wonders if he ought to feel guilty for keeping you. You, with your gentle hands and even gentler voice, tending to his men like they were yours, murmuring sweet nothings as you pressed careful fingers into aching muscles and rubbed circles into scarred skin. You, laughing— soft and bell-bright— when they pouted through the pain, shaking your head like you weren’t indulging them, when you so obviously were.

He knew, from the moment he met you, that you were good. Too good. One of those rare, untouchable things that men like him weren’t supposed to have. And yet, somehow—miraculously— you were his. Had been for years now, steady at his side, all soft smiles and sweetness, something sacred in the way you looked at him.

That much hadn’t changed.

What had changed, was the way he looked at you.

Not in love—no, no, he’s loved you since the first time you kissed his bruised knuckles, tutted at him for not taking care of himself. Loved you since you let him press his forehead against yours in the quiet of your office, the scent of antiseptic giving way to the perfume on your skin. No, that part is the same. What’s different is how the idea of you is shifting—growing. Solidifying.

And it’s all your fault.

You’re too damn soft with babies. That’s the problem.

It started small, at first. A brush of fingertips against a stroller when you passed one on the street- you and the mum sharing wide grins at the little bundle of life. A coo under your breath at some little cherub-faced thing in a shopping cart, pink cheeked and drooling, big baby eyes locked on you like they knew how much you adored them. You never stopped. Not once. Always lingering—hands clasped, eyes bright, lips parted with something breathless and wistful.

And John… John noticed.

He noticed when you stopped in front of the boutique in town, the one with the pale blue awning, the little silver bell that jingled when you passed. He noticed the way your gaze caught on the baby clothes in the window display—tiny knits and soft cotton, lace trim and pastels. Your fingers curled against the glass, like you were holding yourself back. You didn’t say anything, just let out a dreamy little sigh before walking on, but— fuck.

John hadn’t thought about kids in years. Not properly, at least. It wasn’t something a man like him was supposed to have, not with the kind of life he led. The idea of coming home to something small, something fragile and pink with life, was too far removed from what he knew.

But you—you—were ruining him.

It was getting worse.

The universe loathed him, dangled the idea in front of his face, and dared him not to bite.

His mate had a kid recently— a baby girl, fat-cheeked and sweet, cooing up at the world with dark lashes fluttering against rosebud skin. And God, if John thought you were bad before, watching you with her was something else entirely.

You held her close, arms cradled like she was something precious, something made just for you. And she— the little thing— she knew. Giggled up at you like she’d been waiting to see you her whole life, tiny fingers flexing against the air until you let her wrap them around one of yours.

“You’re so beautiful, little love,” you whispered, brushing a featherlight kiss against her forehead, voice full of something deep and aching.

John had to excuse himself.

Had to sit on the edge of the bathroom sink and breathe through the way his chest felt tight, his stomach hot, his slacks suddenly far too restrictive.

He could barely look at you the rest of the night.

Because the thought—the one he hadn’t let himself have before— had finally settled in, took root.

You’d look good carrying his baby. Fuck.

You, all soft curves and flushed skin, with his child tucked safe in your belly, growing under his touch. You, walking into his office one day, belly round and full, glowing from head to toe, pressing his hand to the curve of you like it belonged there. You, giving him something his, something yours.

His stomach clenched. His jaw tightened.

And that was when it started.

The taunting.

Baby advertisements showing up in his emails. Algorithm somehow deciding he needed to see prams, cribs, bassinets. He scoffed, rolled his eyes, but couldn’t stop himself from clicking. Thought about the nursery. Thought about putting it together himself, hands deep in sandpaper and wood glue, smoothing varnish into something he made for you.

He tried not to let it sink in. Tried.

But then he caught you in the mirror one morning—fresh from the shower, towel slung low on your hips, rubbing lotion over your stomach with slow, absentminded strokes.

And John—John was gone.

Something deep inside him cracked, fissured open, let something dark and desperate spill through.

He wanted it.

Wanted you—soft and round, belly full with something his. Wanted to press his palm against the stretch of you and murmur, 'hello, little one', and watch you melt into him like you always did. Wanted to carry you to bed and take you slow, so slow, hands firm on your hips as he pressed the idea into you, again and again, until it wasn’t just a thought.

And you—God, you. You must’ve known.

Because when he finally looked at you���when he finally let himself—you smiled, soft and sweet; but secretive.

“Something on your mind, Captain?”

And John— John just groaned, pulled you into him, and let himself sink.

[sterifels-blog]

[sterifels-blog]

Thinking about…

How Mace, your big, brutish, gunsmoke-and-shadows boyfriend, would let you do anything to him if it meant you got to dote.

How this mountain of a man— built of bullets, battle, and buried violence— sits heavy in your living room, broad back melting into the couch like he’s finally found the one battlefield he doesn’t have to fight on. Shadow Company’s storm-eyed enforcer, letting you lather him up in lavender and honey like a knight laid bare before his princess.

He smells like the world outside— gun oil and cedar, sweat from the morning’s workout, something vaguely metallic in the crooks of his arms. But you don’t mind. You never mind. Not when you get to fix it, soften it, prune away the war that sticks to him like second skin.

You straddle his thick thighs, perched like a queen on her throne, dipping your fingers into a glistening, whipped concoction of shea butter and rosehip. Your nails— pristine, pink-tipped, glossy as glass - drag against his jawline, finding those delicious little rivulets on his skin. The crocodile scars. They’re old, deep, twisting like rivers over his the sides of his neck, the hinge of his jaw where your thumbs press gentle, coaxing a sigh from deep in his chest. You swear you hear it rattle his ribs.

“Ma,” he murmurs, and it’s reverence, it’s devotion, it’s a growl from the back of his throat that turns molten when you lean in, dabbing a cooling mask against his sunworn skin.

A little chirp of laughter bubbles from your throat at the absurdity of it all— your hard-edged soldier, eyes lidded, letting you slather him in serums and creams, his skin glowing with hydration like you’ve personally resurrected him from the grave of masculinity.

He smells better now, all sugar and bergamot and the ghost of your perfume clinging to the dips of his collarbone where you kissed him earlier. There’s still work to do, though, still scruff to be shaven, so you nudge his chin upward with two fingers, commanding, pampering, utterly in control of the moment.

When the razor glides over his jaw, Mace hums— low, pleased, letting you take care of him, trusting you with the blade in a way that makes your heart flip, your hands pause just a moment over his Adam’s apple. Because he knows you won’t hurt him. Because no one else in the world gets this.

And when you finish, smoothing a balm over his freshly bared skin, he surges forward, drags you into his lap with the kind of effortless strength that still makes your breath catch. His lips— still gruff, still battle-worn press against yours, soft and yielding - drinking you in.

You taste like strawberries from the lip mask you made him try. You giggle into his mouth.

Mace groans, deep in his chest, kissing you again, and again, and again, because he loves you. To the moon and back, to the stars and beyond, to wherever he’s been and wherever he’s going.

And if letting you dote on him, prettify him, make him yours in a way no battlefield ever could— if that’s all it takes to be loved by you, he’ll sit here forever, let you paint him in sugar and silk until he forgets he was ever anything else.

[sterifels-blog]

lil bro thinks he is that man. (he is)

he doesn’t have one mission where he needs to be doing all this

[sterifels-blog]

hello! i recently discovered your account, and i love the diversity of fandoms and characters you write for! i was wondering if you could please write creepypasta celebrating their s/o’s birthday? :) if not, that’s alright! have a great day!

this will be coming up angel‼️ just clearing my brain (+ old drafts) of its many ideas! ❤️ thank you for the request

[sterifels-blog]

The bar hummed.

Not with the dissonance of an overworked Friday night crowd, but with a rhythm— a syncopated lull of laughter, clinking glasses, and the occasional burst of boisterous cheering when someone’s dart hit the bullseye. It was warm, sticky almost, like honey had been dripped down every surface, trapping in the smell of spilled beer and aged whiskey. The air carried the distant tang of cigarette smoke, though none lingered inside. It made your stomach twist in an odd, pleasant way, a little drunken from the atmosphere alone.

The team had claimed their usual corner—far back, beneath the buzzing amber light of a burnt-out neon beer sign. Soap was sprawled out like a prince, one leg hooked over the other with his foot tapping to some unheard tune. Gaz and Price sat across from him, the former grinning as he recounted a story of some poor rookie who’d locked himself in an armory closet. Simon loomed behind them like a sentry, nursing his drink and watching the room with those hawk-like eyes that saw too much and said too little.

Johnny, though?

Johnny was... three sheets to the wind.

“Ma, ma,” he slurred in a sing-song tone, leaning impossibly close to your side as he threw an arm around you. His brogue was thick, dripping like molasses and positively singeing with fondness. “You’ve not touched yer drink, aye? Yer gonna make me look soft.”

You laughed, elbowing him lightly. “I think you’re doing that just fine on your own, Johnny.”

That earned you a cheeky grin, teeth bright and dangerous, a wolf hiding in the skin of a man. His hair was a mess, brown tufts sticking out in every direction from his mohawk like he’d wrestled the devil himself and come out victorious. The scent of him was heady— sharp cologne softened by the musk of sweat and something more personal, like pine needles crushed underfoot. His arm stayed firm around your shoulders, fingers tapping absently against the sleeve of your jacket.

It was nice. Until it wasn’t.

The man appeared out of nowhere, too close, too fast, his breath already warm on your cheek before you even registered him. He was tall, broad in a way that suggested he thought himself larger than he really was. His smile was wrong, too sharp, and it twisted his face into something almost predatory.

“Hey there,” he drawled, voice slick with an oil-slick confidence. “Didn’t mean to interrupt, but I couldn’t help noticing you from across the room.”

Johnny stiffened at your side, his arm tightening until it was less casual and more territorial. Like a line in the sand. Like the man had stepped too far into his space—into your space.

“Dinnae bother,” Johnny said, voice low and dangerous despite the slur softening his edges. “She’s wi’ me.”

The man laughed, an awful sound that made your skin crawl. “Is she, now? Doesn’t look like she’s yours.”

Before you could even process what was happening, Johnny had shifted. His other arm snaked around your waist, fingers gripping the denim of your jeans like it was the only thing anchoring him. He pulled you flush against him, chest puffed out as he fixed the man with a glare that could have sent a lesser person running.

“Listen, pal,” he began, the words dripping with sarcasm and venom all at once. “Ahm gonnae make this real simple fer ye. Ye see this bonnie lass? This one right here?” He gestured toward you, fingers flexing against your hip. “She’s mine. No’ yers. So why dinnae ye take yer wee, pathetic excuse of a chat-up line an’ bugger off, aye?”

The man faltered, his confidence visibly wavering under Johnny’s intensity. But he wasn’t smart enough to quit while he was ahead. “Didn’t realize she needed a babysitter,” he sneered.

“Oh, ye didnae?” Johnny barked out a laugh, wild and sharp-edged. “Well, now ye know. An’ if ye dinnae get yer arse outta here in the next five seconds, I’ll be yer feckin’ babysitter, too.”

The man hesitated, eyes darting between the two of you. Then, finally, he raised his hands in mock surrender- a scoff rumbling in his throat, and slunk off into the crowd.

Johnny exhaled sharply, his grip on you loosening just enough to let you breathe. But he didn’t let go.

“You alright, ma?” he asked, voice softer now, though his words were still thick with drunken affection.

“I’m fine, Johnny,” you murmured, looking up at him. “You didn’t have to—”

“Aye, I did,” he interrupted, eyes boring into yours with a sincerity that made your breath hitch. “Nobody messes wi’ you. Nobody.”

And just like that, the tension broke. He grinned again, that wolfish, mischievous smile that made your heart do flips.

“Now, where’s yer drink?” he asked, dragging you back toward the table. “Can’t have ye lookin’ sober while I’m out here makin’ a damn fool of meself.”

Price raised an eyebrow as the two of you returned, but he didn’t say a word. Simon, however, smirked behind his mask, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like, “About time.”