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bitterrfruit · 1 month ago

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houndtooth [20]

[masterlist]

ghost x f! reader. 10.2k words cw: sexual assault. heavy violence. heavy gore. 18+ mdni

the jaws close.

The shrapnel of your blood-thinning scream strikes Ghost through the head with the force of a bullet.

It lodges in his brain, festering and swelling until a tumour forms around it, and it’s the only thing he can hear — not an echo, but a broken record, repeating and repeating until his vision turns red and the tendons of his hands nearly snap in the strain of his grip.

His eyes are wide with it as he turns the corner and wrenches the trigger of his rifle, lighting up the dark room with a strobe of yellow fire and shooting down two Konni soldiers in a fusillade of bullets. Even persisting in firing at their lead-riddled corpses once they collapse to the floor beneath them. Stupid, because he’s onto his second-last magazine, but he isn’t lending much thought to practical concerns.

He feels a writhing in his stomach, bubbling like cyanide, dissolving him from the inside out.

He failed you.

He lied to you.

You told him from the fucking start. You knew what would happen.

He didn’t believe you, and now you’re trapped with the very psychopath he promised you’d never have to see again. The fucking animal. At liberty to get his claws in you, his teeth in you, unmuzzled by an audience or the threat of retribution.

The veins in his temples thump hard when he pictures it, as he yells a command at his Sergeant to breach the room on his right. Sees the smug grin pulling in the pig’s paper-cut lips. Hears his frothy laughter among the shrieks you cry out in the hope Ghost can hear them and come to your aid like he promised he would.

Fills him with magmatic rage, viscous and molten in his blood, that makes his heart thud like a sledgehammer against his sternum. Makes his jaw grind to the point of ache, as he stomps his full weight into the head of the terrorist he had just gunned down. Just to see his skull pop. Wanted to feel bone and flesh crushing beneath the sole of his boot, imagining it as belonging to the man ensnaring you.

Six men have been killed in the trap he fell for.

Half of Delta team and two of his own. Their blood amalgamates with that of the enemy combatants he has killed, staining his clothes, dripping from the end of his gun, sticky on his cheeks.

“LT!” The Sergeant yells through a door on his right. “In ‘ere!”

“What?” Ghost roars, busy sweeping the bend in the hallway ahead.

“Just — you need to see this.”

Ghost growls in frustration as he turns to storm towards him. “Stop fucking around, Johnny, we need to get the fuck out of here! ”

There isn’t enough time to waste investigating what little bullshit might be littered around the dead-end factory, with the exfil helicopters a few clicks out, and your fragile life on the line.

“Look,” Soap barks urgently, standing in a cavernous storage room, where fluorescent bars hang on chains from the ceiling, tall rolling doors along one wall. Johnny shines the torch of his rifle on to a stacked palette, wrapped in packing film, concern etched in his pinching eyes. “Y’were right.”

“What is it,” Ghost grunts, coming to a hasty stop beside him, where Johnny tears away a layer of the plastic. Beneath sit four steel drums, lacquered in glossy navy enamel.

Johnny points imperatively at the label on one of the containers. A big yellow sticker, bedizened in a skull and crossbones, all of the warnings in Russian — danger, highly toxic, corrosive.

“Fuck’s sake, Soap, what am I looking at?”

“Phosphorus trichloride,” he blurts, “a shit-tonne of it.”

“And? English!” Ghost roars, impatience boiling within him so vigorously he can feel the steam rising up his throat.

“We were fuckin’ right the first time!” Johnny shouts, jutting a furious pointer finger at the drums. “They were making nerve agents. Our early intel was right. We’ve been following fuckin’ bait they tossed to throw us off the scent.”

If it were possible for Ghost to get any more furious, any more despondent, he might have broken his gun in half. Helps that the Sergeant is consistently cleverer than he gives him credit for — must have paid keen attention in his CBRN defence courses, such that he remembered even a precursor chemical to the production of nerve agents.

Certainty is a powerful weapon, though — and there isn’t a second left to waste pissing into the wind. He pulls his sat phone out of a pocket on his tacvest and dials up the Captain.

Picks up on the second ring — luckily — he was about to crush the plastic phone in his grip.

“Lieutenant — what’s the story.”

“There are no missiles,” Ghost barks, immediately, before the Captain is able to finish his dry greeting. “It’s fuckin’ nerve agents. Not missiles.”

“What? That doesn’t make any sense. If they’ve been taken somewhere else, we need to—”

“Listen, Makarov fuckin’ baited us. It was a trap, a lie!”

“Have you checked—”

“Captain, are you fucking hearing me?” Ghost bellows, “there are. No. Missiles!”

There’s a pause of only a second, long enough to make a capillary burst in his sclera, before the Captain speaks again.

“Zakhaev’s bloody widow, eh?” He seethes, “I told you not to trust that lying bitch.”

The tendons of his neck crack in the strain of his fury. “Jesus — this isn’t her fault. Makarov gave her false intel so that we’d look in the wrong place.”

“So that you’d look in the wrong place. You followed your cock right into a trap. Fuck’s sake, of all people, I never thought you’d fall for—”

“We’re here because you believed the Americans’ intel, not because of her!” Ghost thunders, so ragged with rage that a mist of blood might have sprayed out with his broken voice. “You sent us hunting for missiles that never fucking existed — she is the one that figured that out, and now she’s being fucking tortured for it!”

“Careful, Lieutenant—”

“Pull your fucking head out of your ass, Captain. Makarov never left Kastovia, he’s at Zakhaev’s estate. They’ve got a launch code with hundreds of locations. They’ll already have a network of bombs just waiting for the push of a button, ready to go, no thanks to the fucking months we spent chasing our god-damned tails!”

There’s another venomous pause as the Captain must be in thought — rubbing his jowls, no doubt, white-knuckled and exasperated. If he were standing in front of Ghost in that moment he would have been met with a fist to the gut.

“Fucking hell,” he croaks. “Alright, okay. Fine. Nerve agents, then — how are they dispersing them? When? Have you got that far?”

“Today, Captain. They’re setting them off today.”

“How do you know?”

“Mia,” Ghost grits. “Mia found the drive containing the code.”

“And you believe her?” The Captain spits incredulously, “Sergeant Garrick and I are on route to Russia on her word — the same word that drove you into an ambush — and you still believe her?”

“Yes, Captain, I fucking believe her,” he rages. “I’m taking my team and what’s left of Delta back to the estate. I suggest you turn around, because there’ll be an army waiting for you when you land. Only telling you that because I like Gaz alive.”

Price’s sigh cuts through the line like a ripsaw.

“Alright, Simon,” he grumbles. “Garrick and I will circle back. Get the drive, if it exists — that’s the priority. Not Makarov, not the UNs, and not Zakhaev’s fucking wife. Understood?”

The phone screen cracks in his grasp. “Copy.”

There’s a point where terror loses its meaning.

Dulls to a blunt edge like an overused blade. Doesn’t cut as clean, doesn’t draw blood as quickly, but hacks away at flesh all the same.

Still drives you to kick, to scream, to buck and twist like a wrangled cat, to claw and bay and cry until your throat goes splinter-dry and it hurts to inhale; even if your senses are fraught to the point of fog, blurriness where your vision had been clear, a ringing in your ears that deadens your hearing.

It only makes him chuckle, like a dry joke, as he holds a stony arm around your neck, pit of his elbow pressing into your throat. Hauls you down the corridor of your mansion like dead game, towards an open door you’ve never seen before — tucked under the stairs, panelled in the same wainscotting as the rest of the wall. Hidden in plain sight for as long as you had lived there.

“Stay up here, both of you,” he demands, in Russian, to the armed soldiers that followed closely behind him, there to catch you in the unlikely circumstance of your escape.

It fills your belly with dread.

Briney. Corrosive. No audience to spectate him, that might question or criticise him, that he might feel the need to appease.

He wants you alone with him.

He has wanted that from the day you met him, plain as the murky death in the pits of his eyes. In the yellowing where his teeth meet his gums when he grins. In the ownership forboded by his touch.

The certainty of this inevitable outcome, seeded in his mind from the moment your husband had reclaimed the seat of power that would otherwise have fallen to him.

How better to avenge such an injustice than to steal everything he once owned? The throne, the money, the estates, the credit for their terrorist plot — and last of all, you.

You can hear it in his breathing, ragged and approving. Feel it in how he presses his nose into your hair as he drags you down a flight of exposed concrete steps, breathing in your fear like perfume. Fragrance bespoke for him. The raw musk of dread and corporeal anticipation of the agony he is yet to inflict on you.

You don’t bother begging. Your pleas turn to blood at the back of your throat. Wasted breath, because to hear you pray for mercy would only please him.

The crying is instinctive, though. Screams that rip from your chest and rend your diaphragm, sobs that you choke and gulp on and that drool from your mouth. There’s no swallowing that, no matter how hard you try to maintain some dignity, how hard you attempt to compose yourself in an effort to avoid arousing him.

Because you know that it does.

You know every tear that drips from your chin and lands on his forearm pulls vindictive blood into the cock you can feel against your spine. Every scream makes his smile wider. Every splutter makes his grip tighter.

Beyond purely sexual sadism, because you can smell his spite in the vapour of his breath. Rancour as putrid and sanguinary as raw meat. Hatred that has been stewing and rankling in the noxious pits of him for so long that it leaks from his skin and smears against yours.

He wants to hurt you because he loathes you almost as much as he loathed your husband. He delights in conquering you because you’re the trophy he has stolen from the only person that has ever been more powerful than himself.

He relishes in your screaming because to him it sings like victory.

“Here we are,” he croons, as he pulls you into a cement cave — a plainly square room, walls of raw concrete, with a lightbulb behind a cage bolted to the ceiling.

Nothing in here but a metal door in the corner, that ventures to somewhere unknown — and a small terminal fixed to the same wall, with a display the size of a postcard. A keyboard juts out from beneath it, atop a steel cabinet, where thick rope of corded multi-coloured wires creeps out and along the floor. Your eyes follow them to where they travel up to the top of the wall, through a small square hole and into the space behind it.

“Haven’t been down here before, eh?” He asks richly, entrapping you at the base of the stairs, with his cheek against yours.

You only whimper, refusing to ingratiate yourself with words, even if indulging him might help you.

“Keeping secrets was one thing Vic was good at, I’ll give him that,” he says smugly. “You were even better, though, weren’t you?”

You swallow the bile that pushes up your gullet as he nudges you in the direction of the terminal.

“Loyal girl,” he says into your skin. “Never told him about you and I, did you? Kept our secret from him until the day he died.”

He describes it like an affair, like you cuckolded your husband because you wanted to, like you had a choice in the matter.

“You must have known this is where you were headed. Straight back to me.”

You know he isn’t stupid enough to think that. He’s only mocking you. Tormenting you for something he knows you could not prevent.

“Mustn’t have told your Englishmen, either,” he drawls. “I’m sure they wouldn’t have sent you here if they had known how you spread your legs for me. If they had known who you are truly loyal to.”

You choke on a sob, as he shifts his suffocating arm from your throat, and both of his hands land on your shoulders. Fingers burrow into the tender meat just to make you squeak.

“It disappointed me that you did them favours so willingly, I admit,” he grumbles, into the hair at the crown of your head. “But, that’s why I let you send them to Mialstor. I knew you’d share that secret, at least.”

A single hand releases you, and he reaches around you — with the same USB drive you had discovered earlier pinched between his fingers, you watch as he plunges it into the plug at the base of the keyboard, and the little screen lights up. A black window, command prompt, with lines of white text at the top;

> 𝚎𝚌𝚑𝚘 𝚍𝚛𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚍𝚎𝚝𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚍

> 𝚎𝚌𝚑𝚘 𝚏𝚒𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚜𝚏𝚎𝚛𝚛𝚎𝚍

> 𝚎𝚌𝚑𝚘 𝚍𝚛𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚌𝚕𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚎𝚍

> патриот@𝚕𝚘𝚌𝚊𝚕𝚑𝚘𝚜𝚝: ~$ _

You feel your beating heart in your teeth, and his lips on the shell of your ear.

“But not our secret, eh, girl?” You feel him smile, his cold teeth on the thin layer of red skin over the cartilage. “Are you embarrassed? Or did you just want to avoid upsetting me?”

You cry, wrenching your eyes shut, and you taste your tears on your tongue.

“Hm?” He pesters, tightening his fingers around your trapezius. “Answer me.”

Every organ in your body resents the words you form with your tongue, but they spill from your mouth, because you do not want to know what he’ll do if you fail to obey a direct demand.

“I was embarrassed,” you sob, refusing to answer him in Russian, the frail syllables barely eking out of your throat. Chose the option you hope might even slightly bruise his ego.

But he only chuckles, synthetic sympathy in his breath.

“Oh, Mia,” he coos, his second hand sliding away from you, “no need to be embarrassed. You have far worse things to be embarrassed about.”

Your wet eyes follow as his restraining hand joins the other on the keyboard, arms enveloping you, the gritty skin of his clean-shaven jaw chafing against your ear.

He types a short line of command into the terminal;

> патриот@𝚕𝚘𝚌𝚊𝚕𝚑𝚘𝚜𝚝: ~$ 𝟷𝟷𝟶𝟷.𝚜𝚑 &

“Like fucking the man that murdered your husband,” he remarks, amusement in his tone. “Are you embarrassed about that?”

You whimper, and he laughs.

How could he know that? It makes you sick to think — had he planted listening devices throughout the whole house? Cameras you couldn’t see, or never thought to look for?

Had they been there since the funeral? Or ever since Victor bought the mansion for you, more than five years ago?

Your sight goes hazy at the thought that he had been observing you the entire time. At the thought that you never had a secret, never had a moment of privacy, never had a break from ravenous eyes — not once, not even in what you thought was your only place of respite.

That he had watched you shower, watched you masturbate, watched you fuck your husband, watched you scheme with the spec op that executed him, and watched you fuck that same man on the kitchen counter. Watched you bathe with him, touch him tenderly, sit on his cock in the bathwater. Watched you cry in remorse for it. Watched him cradle you. Watched you open yourself innocently to what you thought was a moment belonging to only two people; Simon and yourself.

But it was never just the two of you. It was never only you.

You’ve been a source of entertainment, of stolen pleasure, of inhumane gratification for every waking moment of your life. Raped by eyes you didn’t even know were defiling you. Followed unremittingly by sniffing dogs at every bend.

“Are you?”

“No,” you croak, because it’s true.

He lets out a chuff of laughter.

“Good,” he muses, “I’m glad, Mia. Because it just as likely could have been me. Shame he beat me to it!”

“What do you mean,” you whine, as his clammy palm slides down your arm, taking your hand in his, pinching you by the pointer finger.

You are past the point of being able or willing to resist him. Hopelessness sits heavy in your abdomen like a new organ, black and meaty. The venom of futility beats through you in place of your blood, it makes your skin turn grey, and your tongue chalk-dry.

You watch vacantly as he pushes the tip of your finger into the enter key. As a line pops up beneath the one he typed.

> 𝚎𝚌𝚑𝚘 𝚛𝚞𝚗𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐

“Victor was supposed to die here,” he explains gleefully, keeping your hand dead still, and your finger pressed deep into the key he had forced you to press.

You feel a weight in you that is unexplainable, elusive, incomprehensible. A black hole where your guts should be. Something Eldritchian, like gravity, that makes your head feel heavy and nebulous, and your feet sink into the floor.

“Don’t move your finger,” he instructs, stern and unforgiving. He means it.

“I don’t understand,” you cry, obeying as he releases your hand, and he pinches a thin green wire that pokes out from the side of the keyboard.

“I designed this all for him, you see—” he says, gliding his fingers down the wire, to where it enters the steel cabinet beneath the terminal. “He wanted to be the one to set everything in motion, fucking egotist that he was.”

He twists the small metal handle to open the door, and it squeals as it reveals its contents — you can’t quite see until he gives you room to look downward.

You’re not sure what you’re looking at, at first. Blocks of ivory clay, wrapped in plastic, webbed with wires and kept together with straps of black tape.

It dawns on you, though, as your eyes trail back up the little green wire, to where it connects to the keyboard, right beside the enter key.

You let out a whine like a kicked puppy. “Is it — is it going to explode?”

“Only if you lift your finger,” he hums, the pride of victory so concentrated in his voice that you can taste the salt of it in his breath.

You would cry more keenly if you weren’t suddenly petrified of moving — because you understand, now, that you are as good as a warm corpse. A dead man’s switch he had orchestrated for your husband to trigger. He couldn’t run the code himself, having designed it to kill whoever did.

No, he just used the same body he has never had any qualms about using, only this time for an additional purpose.

He has made you his weapon as much as his toy.

“What is it d-doing,” you sob, but you can guess the answer.

“You read the script, didn’t you?” He asks, hot breath seeping through the hair at the back of your head, as one of his hands settles on the side of your thigh. His palm is cold and sticky as it slides up to your hip. It makes your skin bristle and your heart drop.

“I didn’t — I didn’t know what it meant,” you moan, tongue slippery and stuttering on every syllable.

“You’re a clever girl, Mia,” he lauds deeply. “What do you think it’s doing?”

The repulsive softness of his touch makes you shudder, cold abhorrence dribbling down your spine — because he doesn’t need to be aggressive, nor forceful, nor violent, now that he has you where he wants you. Because he knows that you will not and cannot attempt to fight him off. Because he can fuck with your head, like he has always been predisposed to — putting the onus on you to refuse him, knowing that you wouldn’t. Then whose fault is it but your own?

This time, even crueller; he can handle you how he pleases, because he knows you want to live.

“Are there—” you ask in a whimper. “Are there bombs at the coordinates?”

His other hand fixes to your opposite hip, the hem of your long t-shirt draping over his wrists. He’ll have realised by now that you’re not wearing any underwear, because you are still wearing what you slept in. You can hear it in his breathing, it turns frayed as his hard fingertips brush your bare hips.

“Close,” he chuckles, head sinking to your neck.

You break out in sobs, hoarse and shattered, arm quivering where you can’t rest your weight into the chest-height keyboard, nor drop it to relax the slowly aching muscles.

You can hardly utter the words that stammer between your teeth. “Are p-people dying?”

“Guess.”

“Yes,” you whisper.

He smiles. “See?” He murmurs. “You’ve always known.”

The cement floor feels warm under the soles of your feet, and you wonder if the maws of hell are about to open up beneath you and swallow you whole. You hope it does, and you hope it digests you slowly. Hope it eats away at your sin and failures with brimstone and stomach acid, layer by layer, until there’s nothing left of you but the seeds of what once could have been a whole person. Seeds that might have germinated but were never planted, never nurtured. Wasted in the barren soil of a whore like you.

Your eyes cleave to the blinking underscore on the command prompt — running, it says, and it doesn’t change — and you think for a moment you might be able to hear the cries of death over the horizon. The brontide of murder by the thousands, every second. One for every breath you take.

You’re met only with beating silence, and the ragged breathing of the beast behind you.

“If I take my finger off, w-will it stop?”

You quietly hope that he might have overestimated your selfishness. Might have orchestrated some ploy that would force you to decide between your life or the lives of thousands of innocent people. Might tell you that releasing the key would put a stop to the suffering, both yours and theirs.

But you know he is smarter than that.

“No, girl,” he says dryly. “There’s no stopping it now. It’s already been done.”

You choke on a cry as he lifts your t-shirt to your waist, and you hear him chortle under his breath.

Seems he has staked his life on your desire to survive. Confident you won’t release the key and kill the both of you, because you want to live. Because you think you have somebody coming to save you. Because you think your life matters enough to preserve.

He nudges your legs apart with his knee, and your finger feels light on the key.

The air in the belly of the NH90 is resinous and heavy. Scarce. Hard to breathe and even harder to keep in his chest.

The weight of death and failure hangs thick in it, a smog, one that keeps the remaining soldiers penitently and bitterly silent. Seething, mourning the men they lost; whose bodies they had to abandon, left to bloat and rot in the ambush they were caught in like mice in an unmonitored trap.

There’s a rage shared, though. Swelling and shuddering in the steel bowel of the helicopter, as he and his men listen to the incoming reports from Laswell, and all they can do is sit and wait for the bird to approach its destination.

“…Istanbul, Hamburg — fuck. Zurich. Dublin. Two in Paris, so far,” her voice is weak, grim, compulsively relaying every attack as if it might fuel their hunger to stop it. “We’ve sent out an emergency alert to instruct civilians to stay indoors. Until you find that drive, that’s all we can do.”

“How frequent, Laswell,” Johnny grumbles into his headset.

“Roughly — one every thirty seconds.”

The Sergeant presses his fingertips into his eyes, head bowed, all but keeled over in his seat. Mumbles fuckin’ hell mournfully under his breath. Weighed down by that heroic grief, the poignant lamentation of his failure to save the lives he had set out to, the collapse of three years worth of efforts to prevent this very outcome.

“They’ve targeted business districts, street corners, office buildings. Public transport. Subways.”

Ghost checks his watch; just after half-past nine in the morning. One or two hours behind in the more western regions of Europe. Peak commuting hours in central cities.

Failure . It rumbles deep in Ghost’s ears as he stares into the dark clouds through the small window across from him.

It putrefies. It festers. Fury that turns black and sticky, thick in his veins — but not slow moving. It beats through him hard, and fast, it makes his vessels distend and his skin burn. Pellets of acidic sweat form on his skin and do little to cool him. His hands are rigid. Searing. Tendons taut and close to snapping. Knuckles white-hot.

His eyes are red with it. Wide and bloodshot and twitching in the corners. Jaw grinding so ferociously into his skull his molars threaten to shatter under the pressure.

He can hear you, indistinctly, somewhere in the hollows between his ear canals and the back of his throat.

Not only your indelible scream, the one ringing in his ears louder than his tinnitus — but your voice. The gentle terror in your throat every time you warned him of exactly this.

You know what will happen.

Riddles him with guilt that manifests as crude oil. Incendiary fuel for the rage that thunders within him, that needs only a single spark to ignite. But he contains it, for now. Chews on it like tobacco, lets the inebriant anger seep through his gums and bleed into his brain where it simmers behind his forehead.

His Captain told him that you aren’t his priority.

But you are.

Now, he knows it, as certain as gravity — there is no denying it anymore, no dancing around the inexorable fact, that you have been from the start.

You were his priority when he stole you. His priority when he interrogated you. His priority when he dragged you back to your estate. His priority when he let you loose among the mongrels.

He just hadn’t accepted it yet.

He had repudiated it with every fibre of his being, every synapse of his brain. Didn’t let himself make the calls he knew, deep in his gut, were the right calls to make — the call to spare you, the call to exonerate you, the call to send you home unharmed.

You are stuck where you are because he was too much of a coward to confront his own humanity.

He won’t abide his cowardice anymore. Any residual shame for his concern for you has sloughed from him like irradiated skin, been trampled beneath the rugged soles of his boots, shot to pieces the moment he heard your broken scream over the radio signal.

The ETA from the pilot crackles through his headset; “Five minutes out. Get ready to drop.”

He shoves the magazine he had been flipping between his knuckles into his rifle and it clicks as he seats it. Tugs back the charging handle to chamber a fresh round. Taps the spare clips he had preemptively stuffed into the pockets of his tacvest, the backup that the helo had brought along with it. A blessing, because he does not plan on being frugal with his bullets.

Igneous anticipation surges through him like a current, as he pushes himself to stand, gripping the handles on the ceiling of the aircraft to maintain his balance. Rolls open the sliding door early and peers out into the stormy sky — beneath the helicopter he sees the rampart of cedar hedges that encircle your summer estate, and he’s so close he can smell you.

Soon your mansion comes into view, and he hopes you can hear the blades of his helicopter thundering across the sky. He hopes the walls of the building shake with it. He hopes Makarov can fucking feel it in the air, the fate so soon to befall him once he is caught between Ghost’s teeth.

The Sergeant comes to stand beside him, clutching the ceiling and leaning out into the air to glare down at their destination.

“Reckon Makarov is still in there?” Johnny asks through gritted teeth, acrimony thick in his voice.

Ghost responds with a stiff nod. “He’ll be taking his fuckin’ time.”

“Plenty of time to catch him, then.”

Whatever tell he failed to conceal seems to alert Soap to the machinations of his mind, and the Sergeant lands a firm pat on his shoulder.

“She’s a tough girl,” he assures him. “Don’t lose your head, eh?”

Ghost bites on nothing, and a ragged breath rips from his lungs. “Too late.”

It’s a fast few minutes before the helicopter begins its descent behind the treeline, far enough from the mansion that they’ve avoided fire from the woefully unprepared mercenaries that litter the estate.

Ghost turns to address the men in the bird with him, and those that had been sent as reinforcement — the Captain had finally pulled his fucking head in, once the proof was drilled unremittingly into his ear, and he could suddenly justify returning to the estate with significant forces in tow. The next two aircrafts are not far behind.

So as he roars his orders into his headset, he addresses all of them.

“Right, the lot of you — we’re cleaning fucking house. Not a Konni soul left breathing. I want the fucking floor wiped with them! Copy?”

Follows the uproar of yes sirs and copies as the rest of the soldiers up and ready themselves, rearing and ripe with a hunger to avenge the men they have already lost and the lives still being taken every minute. Exactly the furore he needs from them — he needs them driven, and vigilant, and angry, so that he can focus on his own objective.

You.

He leans out of the open door, unblinking in the gale of the blades, glaring down into the waving sea of grass beneath him. Just about close enough to jump out without breaking his legs on landing.

“Alright!�� Comes the inciting yell from the pilot, “move! Move! Move!”

Ghost had leapt to the ground at the first syllable.

He sprints with the fury of a hunting wolf, legs pumping with adrenaline and tumescent rage, and his boots singe the grass underfoot. His massive assault rifle is light in his grip, an extension of his hands, raised and ready, itching to unload on a hair-trigger.

He shoots down the first Konni soldier he sees through the trees before he had consciously acknowledged his presence there. The ear-splitting cracks of his gunfire reverberate through the steppe, likely alerting everyone in the vicinity to his incursion, if the helicopter hadn’t already.

Good.

He wants you to hear him coming for you. He wants those that entrap you scared and scrambling.

Stalks like an android. A terminator. Unrelenting and indomitable. Fires cannonades of red-hot bullets at every combatant that crosses his sights — precise, deadly, unhesitant. Splitting skulls with five-five-six calibre. Trampling over their corpses as he bulldozes towards the back door to your estate.

His vision narrows to an aperture. Turns black at the edges. Pulsing. Bloodthirsty. The sight that’s left is clear and sharp — a reticule, crosshairs bright red, infrared vision hunting for the heatmap of one creature.

Moves like he did when he first invaded your manor, back in the arctic mountains of your husband’s motherland. Just as hungry. Just as targeted. Killing every man in his sight without thought or vacillation — it happens instinctively, on autopilot, pre-programmed to clear targets as if they were still made of paper. His rage then was near as blinding, but rooted in an entirely different source.

His primary objective remains unchanged.

Finding you.

He fires a few rounds into the lofty glass of your sliding back door, and it shatters into shards of snow, sprinkling over his back as he storms in unhampered.

“Mia!” He roars into the hollow of your mansion, hoping only that you’ll hear him, that you’ll know he’s coming for you — he expects no response, but he is still fraught not to hear one.

Two soldiers in the sitting room. He shoots one through the forehead, but the other slips behind the stone pillar of the fireplace, out of sight.

No matter, Ghost advances without reluctance. The man looks surprised to see him when he appears beside him, likely having expected some ducking-for-cover shootout — doesn’t have long to regret it, though, before Ghost fires three rounds through his neck, and his carmine blood sprays in a mist over the cobbled stone behind him.

A chorus of gunfire wracks through the villa from every direction — up the stairs, through the corridor, out the front of the house. Stormed from every angle, now that the reinforcements had shown up, and his manpower matches that of the vermin that infest every corner of the property.

Their extinction is inevitable.

Now, he can focus on what he came here for.

He knows, wherever you are, that you can’t respond to him. So he calls for your captor instead.

“Makarov!” He bellows, steaming through the kitchen, dining room, lounge — “I fucking know you’re in here, you piece of shit.”

Continues up the stairs, shoots down another Konni that crosses his path.

“Wanna know what I’m gonna do when I fucking find you?”

Sweeps the second floor — your bedroom, your cunt husband’s office, the ensuite he can still smell you in. Leaves bloody boot prints in the plush carpet and the sulphur of gunpowder in the stagnant air.

“Might start with your tongue, you disgusting cunt. Gonna cut it out and make you fucking swallow it.”

The hatred starts to ulcerate within him when he doesn’t find you. Can’t even hear you. Feels the blisters of fury distending in every organ, threatening to burst, and he’s apoplectic with it.

“Where the fuck are you!”

He thunders down the stairs, still inexplicably certain you’re somewhere, somewhere in the bowels of the palace. Not sure what it is that fortifies his confidence — magnetoreception, perhaps, sensing you nearby like your presence disrupts a radio signal. Maybe the lingering fragrance of your perfume and your sweat that dances in the air, leading him toward you like a string through a maze.

But as there’s a fluke pause in the chaotic din of gunfire — in that fraction of a second—

He hears you.

What he thinks is you, anyway.

A cry that cuts through the ephemeral silence like a knife, the pitch of your voice just high enough to pass through walls, through foundations, as he tracks it to the wall beneath the floating staircase.

He notices immediately the gap in the edges of the panelling.

Doesn’t waste a heartbeat looking for how to open it, whatever convoluted mechanism there might be in place to keep it locked — he steps back, hurling his boot into the centre of the panel with an explosive thud , and the echo behind it sounds hollow.

He kicks it again, and again, and again, until a split forms in the lacquered wood — unceasing, even as he begins to feel splints in his shin — his boot slams into the panel unrelentingly until it erupts through the crater he deepened with every blow. His hands do the rest, tearing at the splintering wood like it’s made of cardboard, until the fissure is large enough for him to reach through and feel for a handle on the other side.

He finds it quickly. Pulls it down and opens the door. It creaks as it swings.

So encumbered by wrath that it weighs him down, his boots thud loudly with every step down the concrete stairs. Huffing like a bull. Steaming.

Hears the pig before he sees him.

“Unfortunate timing, Riley.”

Met with the back of him, sinewy fucking ghoul — panting as though short of breath, clad in a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Only as his hand lowers does Ghost catch a glimpse of the Pernach pistol wrenched in his grip — he wipes the long barrel on the leg of his trousers, and in the dim white light of the bulb in the ceiling, Ghost sees a smear of wetness left behind in the fabric.

The thought that crosses his mind is so putrid it makes his stomach rend itself in revulsion, and all he can do is hope that his assumption is erroneous.

“Interrupted the fun part.”

Ghost keeps the mouth of his rifle high, aligned with the back of his head. The only thing preventing him from pulling the trigger is his indecision on how slowly he wants him to die — and, more crucially, the risk that you are right behind him; that close-range bullets would tear straight through him and embed in you.

And he’s endlessly thankful he curbed the impulse, because he hears your whimper eke out from obscurity.

“Simon—”

You’re alive.

Relief as dizzying as liquor rushes through him in a torrent, a flash flood of napalm, and the embers of his worry reignite into an inferno of inveterate hatred, and his eyes glow red.

Makarov turns his head over his shoulder as he shifts, just slightly — and there, he sees you, hunched over but upright, between your anathema and the wall. Shaking. Knees locked but close to buckling.

There’s nothing else he needs to see. No greater confirmation.

The stifled fury sweltering within him tumefies to the point that the pressure threatens to crack his skull. He all but shudders with it, as he flips his rifle in his grip so that he holds it by the barrel like a baseball bat.

The fucking egomaniac must have expected time to monologue, turning to aim his glistening gun at Ghost far too late — hardly has time to blink before Ghost swings the butt of his rifle into his armed hand, weapons colliding with a crack and the deafening eruption of a too-slow bullet fired as a last resort. The pistol is catapulted from Makarov’s grip, clacking loudly as it slams into the cement wall and bounces off the floor.

Makarov snarls like a rabid cur, cursing through teeth; “Cукин сын.” Son of a bitch.

Greasy spite of besmears itself across his face. Eyes like beads in his gaunt skull. His belt is undone. Zipper down.

Ghost carelessly tosses his rifle aside, and it skids across the concrete into the corner of the room.

He was never going to proffer the pig the mercy of a bullet.

There was only ever one means of execution befitting him.

Frothing at the jaws as he abruptly thunders toward him, and despite the futile throw of a retaliatory fist, Ghost swiftly has him by the throat. Growls like a bear as he tackles him to the floor, in a furious blur, as the Russian contorts to pull an out-the-front switchblade from his sock.

Only notices when the blade slices through his cheek, sharp as a scalpel, steel knicking the bone — but nothing at this point can hurt him. Everything in him, every nerve, every muscle, every cell — so focussed, so honed in on his victim that anything else is so utterly insignificant it disperses into smoke.

The knife is gone before Makarov can muster a second attempt, riven from his grip and tossed to oblivion, and before he can swallow a breath, Ghost hurls his iron-hard knuckles square into the centre of his face, shattering his nose with a crunch , and the back of his head ricochets off the cement underneath with a teeth-chattering crack that makes the room go silent.

The pig blinks, still breathing — so Ghost throws another, so violent that his nose caves in, and the blood splatters over the taut skin of his fist.

Not enough. He throws another. Beats a crater into his forehead. Skull splits along the crest like ceramic wrapped together by skin.

He throws another. Wrapping splits in the fissure and the blood spills like milk.

Only sees red. Teeth bared. Eyes glass over.

Throws another, carmine fountain splashes out from the impact—

—another, eyeballs birthed from between purple eyelids, burst like blisters—

—another, jaw breaks at the hinges from the rest of his skull—

—another, tongue severed and jutting out through shattered teeth—

—another, grey parasite of gelatinous brain spills out onto the concrete—

—another, and thuds turn to squelches.

—another, a fracture in his own knuckle.

—another, his vision blurs.

…another, and his fist is hitting concrete.

Another. There’s nothing left.

“S-Simon—”

Your weak voice cuts through the red fog like a beacon.

His humanity gradually returns to him when he hears it. Comes back with a gulping breath, as he glares down at the body he bestrides. At the caldera of flesh and bone where his victim’s head used to be.

Chest hounding, jaw loose, he can taste the iron of blood in his teeth. It drips from his beaten knuckles, speckles the cement like spilt paint. It sprays up his forearm like a glove. It glitters across his cheeks like freckles.

You speak, again, and he finally breaks the surface.

“Simon, what do I do?”

He pushes himself to stand with a grunt, breathless, and attempts to wipe the blood spattered on his face with the back of his hand — smears the red leaking from his own wound in so doing, he forgot it was there.

Turns to you, where you still stand facing the wall, and he grimaces — are you chained to it?

“He m-made me—” You stammer out in broken sobs, and he grits his teeth as he girds himself to hear whatever horrific crime you were made victim to. “He made me press it. I c-can’t stop it — Simon, how do I make it stop?”

His brows knot in worried confusion as he rushes towards you, fighting the urge to immediately take you by the arm and haul you into an embrace; such an act would be for his own comfort more than yours.

But as though sensing his approach, you shriek—

“Don’t touch me!”

He stops behind you, but your agitation simmers quickly.

“You c-can’t — I can’t move,” you whine, shattered. “You can’t t-touch me.”

“Mia…” He mumbles, finally registering what you’re looking at as he moves beside you — eyes pinned to a terminal interface, finger pressed into a keyboard below it.

“It’s still going,” you weep. “It’s k-killing them… I can’t stop it. I’m killing them and I c-can’t stop it.”

The tunnel vision that had focused solely on you widens just enough for him to absorb what you are talking about. The terminal, the keyboard — and as he looks at it, the drive. Jutting out of the plug at the base.

The mission returns to him like a kick to the teeth. Laswell’s voice in his ear. Reminding him of every chemical bomb triggered, every thirty seconds, for the last forty minutes.

His eyes catch the wire snaking out from under the key you press. Where it enters the open cabinet beneath the keyboard. Can see past your knees the blocks of C4 stacked from base to top, wired up tidily by experienced fingers.

The realisation douses him like cold water.

“What do I do,” you cry, as he reaches a careful arm around you.

You flinch, and the guilt for startling you falls heavy in his stomach, but he can’t back away. Not now that he understands the predicament you’re caught in.

Settles a thick finger next to yours, pressing into the enter key beneath it.

“I need you to move your finger,” he murmurs gently.

You shake your head vigorously, desperately, shaking like a leaf but inadvertently leaning some of your weight against him. “I can’t.”

There isn’t a choice. He coils an arm around your waist, gripping tight, and he feels you deflate as he lifts you upward.

“ No, nonono, no…” you wail, but you don’t fight him; he twists you, reeling you away from the keyboard, until your finger is free and your hand drops to your side.

You collapse into him once you’re no longer holding the dead man’s trigger — head rocks against his shoulder, weary hands clutching onto his forearm as though you’d plummet off a cliff if you let go.

“I’m sorry,” you lament, voice frail and so fraught with grief it hurts him just to hear it. “I’m sorry — I let him — it’s my fault. I pressed it — I…”

To hear you apologise makes his ribs close in. That you could ever be sorry for anything, that you could shoulder even an ounce of guilt — an injustice he cannot abide, and he presses his lips into your hair.

“It’s not your fault, sweetheart,” he urges. “None of this is your fault. Hear me? It’s mine.”

You sob, and he wants nothing more than to wrap both of his arms around you; to embrace you in earnest, to apologise unremittingly into your skin so that even the blood that pumps under it believes him when he says it. It’s not your fault.

But he can’t. Your life is more important. “Now I need you to step back.”

He lets go of you as you manage to stand on your own feet, balancing you with a hand on your back when you stumble, but you do as you are told — stepping back slowly, trembling, not yet willing to run.

“Get out of the basement,” he orders firmly.

“No,” you refuse, shaking your head, still within arms reach — you gasp when the back of your heel collides with the corpse on the floor, and your head swivels to look down at it.

He sees you gawk at it. Lips parting in horror. Eyes bulging with it. Can barely muster a sound. “...Simon…”

“Look at me,” he insists, and sweet girl, you do. Rheumy-eyed and quivering. “Mia — go upstairs.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” you whimper, swallowing a breath. “Not without you.”

His chest tightens up, and it’s quickly clear to him you won’t leave unless compelled to — brave girl, your lack of self-preservation makes his teeth scrape together.

He needs you out of the room before he attempts to interrupt the script. He can enter the command without lifting his finger from the enter key — but he needs to release it in order to press it.

With his free hand, he speaks into his radio. “Johnny — how copy.”

“Solid, LT,” he returns immediately. “Fucken’ bloodbath out here.”

“I found the terminal. Entry under the stairs. Get here. Now.”

Not even a minute before he hears the heavy boots, bounding down the stairs, but the Sergeant screeches to a halt when met by the carnage on the floor.

“Jes— Jesus fucking Christ , Simon.”

Not often the boy uses his Lieutenants name; says it meekly, like it’s a greater sin than using the Lord’s name in vain.

“Is that…”

“Makarov,” Ghost spits his name out.

“Where’s the girl?” He asks sombrely, as though already anticipating bad news — the state of Makarov’s carcass likely evidence. Ghost only gives him a nod in your direction, and he turns his head over his shoulder; you shrivel up when the Sergeant looks at you.

“Listen to me,” Ghost barks, and Soap marches over hastily, ever obedient. “I need you to take her.”

“Now?” Johnny balks.

“Now.”

“What about the terminal?”

Ghost huffs through his teeth. “I’ve got it,” he grits. “Now get her on a fucking helo.”

“No — no,” you suddenly yelp, inching closer to him, as if he might be the one to protect you from the Sergeant he has ordered to take you. “I said I’m not going anywhere.”

His eyes wrench shut. Bites out a pained sigh. “Mia — go with him. Please.”

“No!” You yell, fragile voice breaking in the strain, “I’m staying, I’m not letting you disappear again—”

“Soap,” he grunts rigidly.

“Copy.”

Needn’t restate the order. The Sergeant understands well enough, and he marches toward you unrepentantly.

That ever-present guilt burns in his throat as he watches you cower away from him, shaking your head and gulping on sobs — but Johnny scoops you up like you weigh nothing, an arm firmly buckled around your waist, back riveted to his side. He wastes no time, stepping over the corpse on the floor and carrying you towards the stairs.

“Put me down!” You squeal — bucking, kicking, you even try to get an elbow in — “I’m not going! No! Simon! Simon!”

His eyes are warm. He cannot listen to it. Agonising as a ruptured eardrum to hear you cry for him — right there, where he could answer you — but he is cruelly unable to.

“Johnny — you get her that fucking passport if it’s the last thing you do,” he roars. “You hear me?”

“You got it, LT.”

The man carting you up the stairs is far stronger than the one who dragged you down them, and no amount of kicking or twisting or scratching loosens his grip.

All you can do is cry, and scream, and pray that Simon changes his mind, and comes bounding up the stairs, having performed a miracle — that he frees you from the restraint of his subordinate, that he promises never to leave you alone again, that he gets on the helicopter with you.

But you are carted down the hallway, toes dipping in the blood that puddles on the slate, and he does not come.

"Put me down you son of a bitch!” You wail, voice shredded to husks and squeaks after the labour of interminable screaming. “Simon!”

The Scotsman — Johnny — is steadfast. Unshakeable. Any moment you feel like you might come close to slithering out of his grip, he readjusts, reorients, subdues.

“I’m only following orders, hen,” he grumbles, and you can hear the unease in his voice, coating his throat. Perturbed, perhaps. Guilty. “Not trying to hurt ye.”

You are not afraid of him. There is nowhere worse he could take you than where you have already been, and you trust Simon not to have left you in the arms of somebody that could hurt you.

No, there’s something else that terrifies you.

That Simon will die at your hand, along with the thousands of others you have already killed.

Your fault, because you sent him to that factory, where there was never anything to be found. Your fault, because you let Vladimir command you like a puppet, too frightened to pull back on his strings. Your fault, because you let Simon ever think you could be useful for anything but your inbuilt purpose.

“I f-fucking hate you!” you sob, though once you utter it you’re not sure who the sentiment is for. Yourself, maybe. Johnny. Vladimir. Everyone you have ever met.

“Ah know,” he says stiffly, giving you a pat where his arm coils around your back. “But he wants you alive.”

He moves quickly despite your wriggling, keeping you as low as he can without letting your feet touch the floor — gunfire rings out in the distance, cracks that echo from within the house and outside.

Soon he has you over his shoulder, just to free a hand, and you hear him talking to somebody over the radio.

“Gaz, Gaz!” He belts, “how copy?”

You can’t hear whoever responds, assuming the conversation is being had within the man’s helmet.

“You near the birds? Reckon you could start one up for me?”

“Got the princess. Lieutenant wants her out of here. Yeah — she’s not happy about it.”

“Does it sound like I give a fuck what the Captain said?”

“Good man. Be there in two. Out.”

He lets out a sharp and beleaguered breath, lowering you from his shoulder, where he must have assumed you might have been uncomfortable — or, less charitably, worried you’d slip out of his grip.

Shards of glass crunch under his boots as he carries you through the shattered back door, out into the hammering rain, where the gunshots are close enough to make you cower into his chest as if he might shield you from them.

“Almost there, hen—”

Boom.

Assurance punctuated by deafening thunder that quakes the ground beneath him. Shatters all remaining glass on the first floor. Twinkles as the slivers fall to the patio behind you.

Your diaphragm seizes. Heart stops dead. Hearing goes dull. Tongue goes dry. Eyes go gauzy.

There’s a beat where you all but lose consciousness. Disappear within yourself like you’ve fallen down a well.

You resurface when your escort begins to run.

“NO!”

You shriek viciously enough to make your vocal cords bleed, entire body contorting and writhing until you finally break free from him, and you land in the grass with a thud.

He fails to grab you in time, you scurry in the mud, fingers clawing at handfuls of grass until you’re able to scramble to your feet — you break into a full sprint, bounding like a hare, sucking the wet air so deep into your lungs it makes you dizzy.

“Mia!” Johnny roars after you, quick in his chase, but you endure.

You run bare-footed over the shards, utterly ignorant to how many slivers might get embedded in your soles — the interior of the house is cloudy with dust and smoke, creaking and crumbling, moaning in dispute of its destruction.

“Simon!” You wail, scrambling down the hallway, towards the staircase — even more glass carpeting the floor where the balustrade had been blown to smithers, and rained down on the slate underneath it.

Charcoal-black smoke billows out from the open door to the basement, entirely obfuscating, beating and waving like a creature in itself.

You venture into it unhampered.

“S—” a shout bitten off by a cough as you leap down the stairs, “Simon! Please—”

You choke on your plea as you trip over something heavy at full speed, toppling into the smokey abyss and landing on sticky concrete.

You cry, it hurts, every part of you — your eyes burn, and your lungs singe with every breath, and your knee stings — but you hastily turn to feel for what you had tripped over, and your hands find warm fabric.

Simon. He made it to the stairs. Find his neck and you feel him breathing — hardly, he wheezes with every pitiful inhale.

And his skin feels wet. Gritty. Peeling.

“No, nononono,” you wail, clambering up and over him, attempting to situate yourself while utterly blind.

You feel desperately for his shoulders, scooping your hands through his underarms until you have him hooked by your elbows.

“Please, Simon—” You beg, coughing, spluttering, as you engage every fibre of muscle in your body to lift him from the stairs.

“Mia — are you in there?” Johnny calls from the basement door, voice dampened by the density of the smoke.

“He’s alive!” You try to roar, voice abraded to near-mute, and you’re not sure if the Scotsman could even hear you.

You heave , pulling Simon’s enormous body up a single step with all of your might — dizzyingly heavy, and yet somehow lighter than you would have expected. You cry in your strain as you pull him again, stepping backward onto the next step up, hauling him agonising inch by agonising inch.

Only as the smoke begins to settle, and you make it up another stair, do you see the blood. Coating you like paint.

The side of his head is singed where it wasn’t covered by his helmet. Thick fabric of his uniform shredded by the explosion, exposing the blackened skin within, where it blisters and peels to reveal the yellow fascia beneath it.

Your eyes land, then, on the strands of crimson flesh where his shin used to be.

“Oh, god,” you wretch, cough, and turn your head to spill tar-black vomit onto the cement wall beside you. “Fuck — S-Simon…”

You feel a hand on your arm, then, and it grabs you, picking you up and dragging you out of the smoke.

“No!” You sob, “no — please, he’s alive, you have to—”

Johnny plants you in front of him, firm hands on either side of your shoulders, and he glares into you with such piercing eyes you have no choice but to meet them.

“We’ll get him help, okay?” He pledges, firm, unyielding. “But he’ll never forgive either of us if you die here today, understood?”

You wheeze, lungs glutted with smoke and charcoal, tears so wet on your cheeks that your skin itches, and you’re not able to form a single word.

“C’mon, hen,” he says gently, scooping an arm under your knees and hoisting you deftly off the ground, carrying you tightly to his chest. “Let’s get you out of here.”

There’s no fight left in you. No wrath, no terror, no spite. Only a hollow pit in the core of you, sucking anything else into its void, and leaving you bitterly empty.

Johnny totes you back out into the pounding rain, and you feel it rinsing the coal and blood from your calloused skin as he sprints across the expansive lawn.

You hear the beating of the helicopter gradually grow louder as he gets closer to the treeline.

“They stopped!”

An unfamiliar shout over the roaring aircraft, but you don’t turn to look. You keep your stinging eyes held shut so that you can feel the grit of the smoke wearing down their film.

“Cannae hear ye, Gaz!” Johnny yells back, voice vibrating right through you.

“The bombs! They’ve fuckin’ stopped!”

You realise then that what you had thought was a shout, was a cheer.

“Hear that, hen?” Johnny says pridefully, lowering his head closer to yours so that you can hear him. “He did it.”

You have no words to utter, but you feel your heart twist up behind your sternum.

He did it.

Soon the helicopter’s engine is deafening, and Johnny unfurls you, raising you up by hands under your arms and sitting you down in the open door of the aircraft. Another hand encircles you, then, to prevent your limp body from falling back out.

“Jesus—” blurts the man beside you — the Sergeant. Gaz, you suppose. “She okay?”

“No,” Johnny barks, giving him a pat on the knee. “Y’take care of ‘er, yeah?”

“Course,” Gaz confirms solemnly, with a rigid nod.

The Scotsman addresses you, then.

“You enjoy that new life of yours, eh?” He says loudly, an indeterminate expression of certainty tight in his features. “You’ve earned it.”

With a nod, he’s away, unslinging his rifle from his back and barreling back off into battle. You watch vacantly as he disappears behind the oak trees.

The man in the helicopter with you gives you a nudge to get your attention — doesn’t grab you, or pull you, just waits patiently for you to turn your head and acknowledge him.

“Mia,” he says, as gently as he can while still audible over the helicopter blades. You finally turn to look at him. “C’mere, let’s buckle you in.”

He looks at you sincerely, sick worry in the back of his eyes, reflecting the dim light of the grey sky. You nod weakly, and he helps you stand, leading you to a seat and holding you as you slump into it. He tightens the straps over your chest, buckling them and giving them a jostle to make sure they’re secure.

He fixes a pair of earmuffs over your head, adjusting them over your ears, and you’re suddenly swimming in a deep and thumping silence. Puts a pair on himself.

“There we go,” he says into his microphone, and you can hear his voice clearly. He leans into the cockpit and taps the pilot on the shoulder. “Cleared hot.”

With that, the helicopter begins its ascent. Wobbling on its way up, as the Sergeant settles into the seat opposite you.

“Where are you going to take me now,” you ask dejectedly, hardly a squeak, voice excoriated beyond repair.

You expect him to say something vague, something obscurely menacing. To the compound. To an airbase. To a camp down south.

He gives you a weak smile.

“Home,” he says.

#call of duty fanfic #cod fanfic #simon riley x reader #ghost x reader #cod smut #cod mw2 #simon ghost riley x reader #ghost x female reader #ghost cod #bella-writes

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ablobwhowrites · 5 months ago

Note

So I was reading your poppy playtime new home sweet home post and I saw the one that told of the robber(s) breaking into y/n house and getting killed and I was maybe wondering if you could make that into a full story with all the toys ganging up on the robbers and they do this all as y/n sleeps peacefully in the next room over

Please and thank you

(I got you. Hopefully I cooked with this fic also for this fic, this happened before the doctor came to live at the house. Also cause in game that catnap can transform his appearance then he can totally turn into his small for and I like to think all the smiling critters can do that but mostly are in their big form like how dogday is when we met him but yeah.)

The night was quiet, everyone slept peacefully in the house as the moon stood high in the sky with the stars. Y/n curled up in their bed as yarnaby somehow was able to fit on the bed with y/n as the smiling critters slept in the living room multiple blankets and pillows on the ground to make it more comfortable with sleeping bags as they all pilled with each other in craftycorn's and hoppy hopscotch's pillow fort. The other toys sleeping in bedrooms that y/n helped them settle into for a actual good night rest but one was up and about, quietly walking around the house in their smaller plush form to be more quiet, that was catnap, slowly creeping through the second floor making one last night patrol before joining the other smiling critters in the pillowfort for the night.

His ear suddenly shifts hearing noise down stairs, he silently descended down the stairs to the main floor. The sound of something picking, small clicking and quiet jiggling of something metal until he found the source of the sound. The front door opened quietly as the quiet creaking of the door, catnap went to hide and see who will was coming in. Two people in black clothes and masks can in as they looked around "alright let's just take as much as we can. Next time don't drop a fucking vase, that's what almost got us caught." One of the masked men said to the second one slightly annoyed.

Catnap thinks of ways to kill to dispose of these people, he quickly race up stairs as the two men where in the kitchen trying to find any valuables. He stopped suddenly as a door upstairs opened as mommy long legs woke up groggy from the noise from down stairs woke her up. Being in the silence factory has made her a very light sleeper especially when it's this quiet in the house. "Catnap?...what are you doing up so late?" She yawned as then hearing the a slight aloud clank of something metal coming from down stairs, mommy long legs goes quiet as she quietly walked to the stairs and stretched her neck to be able to see what could be making that noise.

One of the robbers quietly cussed under their breath as they look around to make sure no one heard the sound, not noticing mommy long legs head in the shadows watching them with their every move. She retracted her head back and sighed "the one night i try to get some sleep. Catnap may you please go fetch huggy wuggy and yarnaby for me? I'll make sure they stay where they are in the mean time" she said slightly annoyed and tired but trying to keep a sweet demeanor as catnap went to get the two toys. The robber looking in basement for anything valuable and a good escape route but hearing the door of the basement close as they sighed annoyed "Clyde! Come on man, I told you I'll be checking here, why aren't you checking the living room?" The masked person said thinking it's their partner until the light turns on. "Dude! Turn off that light! Do you wanna wake up the house?" They whisper shouted to their partner.

Creaking of the stairs descending down to the basement floor had the robber a bit worried. "Clyde? Why are you just being quiet? What are you mad at what I said?" But no response, until the light from the one light bulb in goes out and a growl rumbled against the walls, The masked person tried to grab their flashlight to see what was down here with them. "Come on work you stupid flashlight" they said panicked, shaking and lightly hitting the flashlight until it finally flickered on into the face of yarnaby. Slowly opening his mouth as the light shined into the yarnaby's mouth, then he lunged and snapped on the robbers arm and thrashing the person violently as the screams of pain echoed through the walls. Ripping the person's arm off and eating it up as pinning the robber down to the ground as only one will being walking out of this basement alive.

The other robber, Clyde walked into the kitchen as he tried to look for his friend. "Francis? Come out, we gotta go. We got plenty of stuff, this place is giving me the creeps for some reason" Clyde whispered slightly loudly as no response and he sighed. "Great he's probably on the attic or something" Clyde said as he looked at his watch that said 12:50 PM until it shuts off as he forgot to charge it and he sighed annoyed even more now. The sound of something walking closer to Clyde from behind as he quietly groaned "Are we finally done? What took you so lo-..." He froze as seeing huggy wuggy blue fur from the shadows coming uncomfortably close to Clyde "Francis is this some stupid prank then I'm not falling for it, I know your behind this huggy wuggy plushy" Clyde slightly pushed huggy to the side and saw no one behind huggy. "Wait...then how are you moving?" Clyde said in fear as he tried to run but huggy grabbed him as Clyde was about to scream as then huggy opened his mouth, rows and rows of teeth latched onto Clyde head as huggy then bit off the man's head the muffled screams stopped as huggy let go of the man's body and let it drop to the ground with a muffled thud from the carpeted floor.

Mommy long legs checked in y/n's room to see if they where asleep and luckily they slept through the ordeal. It's just the clean up to deal with now. The basement was a mess, the robber who was named Francis was torn apart by yarnaby, and it was easy to clean up because of the concrete and not having to scrub a rug until the red finally comes out and before having to deal with the body's of the robbers and mommy had the other toys help with the clean up as well. Yarnaby ended up getting to them first and much to mommy long legs dismay it does deal with at least deposing the evidence. But yarnaby was then forced to get a bath to clean off the blood, which was a struggle and had dog day wash yarnabys face and mommy long legs to wash yarnabys fur (can the yarn on him be counting as fur?) but y/n woke up early and their alarm rang as it was 8:00 AM. The toys panic and Doey, Bobby bear hug and bunzo tried to stall y/n as long as possible but huggy still had blood on him luckily only from his mouth but still was messy but y/n was able to get down stairs still.

Y/n stopped in their tracks as they looked at huggy "oh huggy what happened?!" That made the rest of the toys hearts drop and they all rushed over to maybe explain but stopped as huggy had bit open into a jug of cranberry juice and held it to him and disguised the blood. "Don't worry I'll clean it up later, let me run you a bath. Hopefully it doesn't stain." Y/n said as they yawned still a bit groggy from waking up. Mommy long legs sighed in relief, "We take this to the grave." mommy said as the other toys agreed.

(hopefully this was a good fic, I'm trying to get back into fics and hopefully I cooked with this one! And if you want more please don't feel shy and request any ideas or anything. But for now please stay safe and drink water!)

#yandere x male reader #x male reader #yandere x you #yandere x reader #yandere x gn reader #x gn reader #yandere male x male reader #male reader #yandere x darling #poppy playtime x male reader #yandere poppy playtime #poppy playtime horror game #poppy playtime x reader #poppy playtime #x gn y/n #poppy playtime x gn reader #new home sweet home au

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gotta-winwin · 3 months ago

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i (almost) do | s.c

⭐ starring: choi seungcheol 💌 genre: angst | wc: 1.5k 💬 preview: at 12 years old on the playground, you traded plastic wedding rings with Choi Seungcheol, the boy who sat in front of you in class. he slid the ring onto your ring finger, a teasing smile on his face. 15 years later, you watch as he slides a real wedding band on her finger.

cw/tw: angst, marriage, being the other woman (kinda?), seungcheol being an impatient lil fucker, childhood lovers to strangers, multiple proposals.

🪽fic rating: pg ☁️ masterlist & a/n: here’s the promised fic from our svt x what could’ve been poll! couprangs, you guys are insane (mwah ily) this idea was first born in the depth of my chats with @gyubakeries and @studioeisa…this is for you, choi seungcheol, and your immensely sufferable face :3 (and the biggest thanks to ally @lovetaroandtaemin for the banner!)

now playing: i (almost) do by taylor swift

this is a special from the svt x what could’ve been event -> click here to read svt x what was (@studioeisa) and svt x what is (@gyubakeries) :)

Choi Seungcheol’s fiance looked suspiciously similar to you.

Perhaps it was just your delusion talking, but the similarities were simply too difficult to ignore.

The way she always sat with her right leg propped up on her left. The way her lips curled into a smile, hiding the insecurity of her teeth she had carried with her since childhood. Even her hair fell the same over her shoulders, the strap of her bra never sitting properly on the crook. She ran her hands across Seungcheol’s arms in a beat that matched how yours once did.

“It’s uncanny.” Joshua murmured into your ear at the wedding rehearsal. “It’s like he ordered her from the y/n factory because he knew he couldn’t have you.”

You fake a smile. You feel bad for her. After all, if everyone could see the resemblance she could too. Yet you couldn’t help but resent her anyway. Because even if you had been here first, it was still her at the altar. Her in his sweatshirt. Her in his bed. Her as the mother of his children.

She looks and acts exactly like you. The only difference is the wedding band that sits nicely on her ring finger and the aching void that is on yours.

”Choi Seungcheol!”

He runs past you towards the open field, a soccer ball in his arms. The smile he looks back at you with is full of warmth and open admiration.

You forget how long you sit on the wet grass to watch him play.

His sweaty arms envelope you in a hug. You are both far too young to understand love, yet it surrounds the two of you anyways. The teachers see it and they smile with understanding. Your classmates see it even if they don’t know what it is yet.

“Let’s get slurpees from the gas station after school.” Seungcheol walks you back to class. “My mom gave me ten bucks today.”

You nod. You know you’re staring at him with the sappiest look on your face. You can feel the awkward stares of others in the hallway. But love doesn’t feel embarrassing when you’re being loved by Seungcheol.

”You’re embarrassing me!” His fiance chides him through laughter.

He has his hands on her waist, spinning her across the dance floor.

You look at his face and watches as his eyes fucking glow. They glow in a way that never happened when he looked at you. It stings. Joshua brings you another drink and you swallow it down.

The wedding photos are sent to your group chat a week after the actual event. You open them first thing in the morning and nearly choke on your own spit. Without your glasses on, the image is blurry and she looks just like you.

You hate it.

If Seungcheol had married a girl the complete opposite of you, you could’ve chalked it up to the fact that you just weren’t his type. But the fact that she was you— the only acceptable conclusion was that Seungcheol loved you, he did. He just didn’t want to choose you. Not in any way that actually counted.

You stare at your ring finger and pretend you don’t feel the urge to chop that shit off.

He proposes for the first time in the middle of July at six years old.

“Let’s get married when we’re 30.”

You frown, because the age 30 seems eons away. “Why 30?”

”My parents got married at 30.” He pauses. “I think?”

“30 is old.” You counter, swinging your legs in boredom. “Why can’t we get married now?”

”Well, you need to be much taller to get married. I think. All married people are much taller.” Seungcheol had always been much smarter than you.

“How tall do you need to be?” You think about how tall your parents are and your frown grows. “What if you’re old and not tall enough?”

The question stumps Seungcheol. “I don’t know.”

You stand up and press your back against the wall of your bedroom. “Measure me. How tall do I have to be?”

He presses his hand against the wall, on top of your head. “Much taller.” Picking up a piece of chalk, he climbs onto your bed and draws a straight line a couple feet above you. “This tall.”

You stare at the line on the wall of your childhood bedroom, now faded and barely visible. You let out a wet laugh because Seungcheol had drawn the line impossibly tall and you were still nowhere near the line.

“Y/N.”

The way he says your name is familiar, easy. A tongue that had spent years perfecting a few syllables that made up a cherished noun.

“Seungcheol.”

The way you say his name is hesitant, as if your brain had short circuited trying to pronounce it. You pretend not to see the flinch at his own name coming from your lips.

“You know I hate when people use my government name.”

It’s true. His friends call him S.Coups. His parents call him son. “It’s your name isn’t it?” You say. “What else am I supposed to call you?”

”You used to call me Cheol.”

“Your fiance calls you that.”

He winces and you let out a quiet, defeated sigh.

The both of you had learned in fourth grade that names had power. It was in some stupid English novel your teacher had forced you to read in class— entirely boring and useless, yet the sentiment had always stayed.

“Goodbye, Seungcheol.”

He watches as you leave.

You take the power he holds over you away. You revoke his claim on your heart. You refuse to call him anything other than his government name ever again.

He proposes the second time over winter break at 15 years old.

“Our parents think we’re going to get married when we’re older.”

You laugh because you’ve heard it from your parents multiple times over the course of the last six years. ”I know.”

”Do you think we will?” Seungcheol no longer looked like the little boy you had grown up with since kindergarten. He looks different and so do you.

“If you don’t make me mad before we’re 30, yes.”

He looks offended. “I would never.”

Seungcheol could never imagine making you mad or being the reason for your tears.

“I want one of those fancy weddings.” He comments, picturing the scene. “With all our friends— somewhere in the middle of August. Right after my birthday.”

“Me too.” You lay next to him, looking up at the ceiling of his room. His ceilings are still decorated with the solar system from his youth. “With a big cake, big decorations, a DJ, and I want my veil to reach the floor.”

You can see the wedding day so perfectly in your mind, and when you turn to look at him looking at you— you know he can see it so clearly too.

Seungcheol gets married on a farm at 27 because his fiance wanted to. There were no elaborate cakes, big decorations or a DJ. Her veil was modest and fell neatly on her shoulders. It lacked most of his high school friends. It was in February.

You return to your empty apartment after a long day of work and you can almost see the visible trails of energy Seungcheol had left behind.

Perhaps you were slowly going insane from the loneliness, but your apartment carried wisps of gold, flowing through the air and gathering dust on your couch.

You feel the sudden urge to run to him. You almost do.

Instead, you pour yourself a cup of warm tea and curl up on your one seater couch. You welcome the loneliness in and invite it to stay for a while.

Joshua tells you Seungcheol and his fiance had just moved into their marital home. You imagine it’s homey and illuminated with a thousand warm lights. You imagine she cooks for him in their giant kitchen and he hugs her coming home from work. You imagine they sleep on the same side of the bed.

You fight each wave of yearning towards him, each urge to knock on his door begging for answers. For another chance. For him to leave the carbon copy of you. You want to run to him. You almost do, but you don’t.

He proposes for the last time in the middle of a snowstorm at 25.

“Let’s get married.” It’s less of a proposal and more of a beg. “Fuck the idea of 30. I want you to be my wife now.”

Yet you know you’re not ready. Deep down he knows it too. “I can’t.”

“Why not?” He’s angry, frustrated. You can tell. You always do.

You look away. “I want to finish my degree before I get married, Cheol. You know this. You know what they say about women who get married and still try to pursue law.”

You look back and he’s on his knees. “Marry me.” He says again. “You can do both.”

“You know I can’t. We said 30, Cheol. Please.” It’s your turn to beg, as you sink down to meet him at his level, your knees scraping the wooden floor of your shared apartment. “Wait for me. Please.” You hold his face in the palms of your hands.

He nods, but you can tell from the way he gets up silently that you’ve betrayed him. That somehow putting you first had burned him.

So Cheol gets married at 27 with you in the audience. He doesn’t wait for you. You get your degree a year later.

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formulafanfics13 · 4 days ago

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Off Limits - MV1 🔥

Masterlist

She wasn't supposed to be there. But that was half the fun.

Max caught sight of her the second he walked past the security desk. White crop top. Low-rise jeans. Hair in a slick ponytail. Chewing gum like she was bored of the entire planet.

"Seriously?" he muttered. Because there she was. Slouched in one of the Red Bull waiting chairs. Scandalously underdressed. And unmistakably Christian Horner's daughter.

He'd seen her at two races. Once in Monaco. Once in Austin. She rarely came to the factory. Rarely visited HQ. And yet here she was, legs crossed, scrolling Instagram like she owned the place.

He hesitated. Then approached. "Can I help you?" he asked, voice flat.

She looked up slowly. Blew a bubble. Popped it. "Depends," she said.

"On?"

She smiled, all sugar and venom. "Whether you're planning on telling my dad I'm here."

Max exhaled. "I don't give a shit about Christian."

"Good. Me neither."

She stood up slowly. Like she wanted him to look. And he did. Because of course he did.

"You know you're not allowed past this point," he said. "It's secure access."

She stepped closer. "That mean you're gonna punish me?"

His jaw clenched. She was too close now. He could smell her perfume, vanilla and arrogance. See the faint shimmer on her collarbones. The tattoo behind her ear.

"Why are you here?" he asked.

She leaned in, lips brushing his ear. "I was bored."

And then, just like that, she walked away. Not toward the exit. But deeper into the factory. Toward the sim room.

Max didn't think. He followed. The door clicked shut behind him. Low lights. Silent machines. No cameras in this room. Not today.

She was already in the sim chair, one leg draped over the side, fingers trailing across the edge of the steering wheel. "Didn't think it'd be this small," she murmured.

Max crossed the room. Stood in front of her. "You need to leave."

She tilted her head. "Make me."

His patience snapped. He stepped between her legs, grabbed her jaw, and kissed her so hard her gum dropped to the floor. She moaned into it. Clawed at his shirt. Pulled him down. Her thighs wrapped around his waist.

"I knew you'd do it," she gasped against his mouth. "I saw you staring in Monaco."

"You're trouble," he growled.

She grinned. "You like trouble."

He yanked her top up, no bra. Just perfect, bare skin. His hands were rough. His mouth was rougher. She arched under him, hips grinding against his hard-on like it was her goddamn right.

"Max-fuck-"

"You want this?"

"Obviously."

"I'm not going to be gentle."

"Then stop wasting time."

He undid his belt with one hand. The other was already in her jeans, dragging them down, tearing her panties with a single tug. The chair creaked beneath them. He lined up.

She gasped. "Wait-are you-"

But he was already inside. One thrust. Deep. Full. Raw.

She screamed. Max covered her mouth with his hand. "Shhh," he hissed. "You want the whole factory to hear?"

Her eyes rolled back. He fucked her like she wasn't Christian Horner's daughter. Like she wasn't forbidden. Like he was allowed. Every thrust slammed her deeper into the sim chair. Her nails dug into his arms. Her cries were stifled, broken, needy.

"You wanted this," he growled. "You wanted to be used."

She nodded. Desperate.

"Say it."

"I wanted it," she gasped. "I I wanted you-"

He kissed her again. Bit her lip. Pulled out just to shove back in harder. The chair rocked with every thrust.

"Who do you belong to?" he demanded.

"Y-you-"

"Say it again."

"You-Max-fuck-"

He grabbed her throat. "You're not just Christian's daughter now," he said, voice low and dark. "You're mine."

And she came like he'd punched it out of her. Screaming. Trembling. Eyes squeezed shut.

Max followed, spilling inside her with a moan that sounded like a curse.

They didn't move for a minute. Just breathed.

She finally broke the silence. "...So does this count as sim testing?"

Max laughed. "Shut up."

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littlejoyss · 2 months ago

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𝓯𝓪𝓽𝓮 𝓹𝓪𝓻𝓽 2

“One single thread of gold tied me to you.”

Stray Kids - Felix x Reader

Red (golden) string of fate trope

Word count: 23k

𝓹𝓻𝓮𝓿𝓲𝓸𝓾𝓼 𝓹𝓪𝓻𝓽 ← 𝓬𝓾𝓻𝓻𝓮𝓷𝓽 𝓹𝓪𝓻𝓽 → 𝓷𝓮𝔁𝓽 𝓹𝓪𝓻𝓽

Today you were going to vist the venue and your prep studio. It felt more real now, less like a dream clinging to the fog of jetlag and more like something solid. Tangible. Your designs were here. Your collection. Your name printed on the schedule of Seoul Fashion Week.

You stood outside your hotel that morning, double-checking the address Bora had sent you. Your blazer was crisp, your boots steady on the pavement, and your tablet hugged tight to your side like a lifeline.

The thread around your pinky remained still. Dormant, like yesterday. You ignored it.

The taxi ride was short. Bora had messaged she’d meet you directly at the venue.

It was a converted industrial building in Gangnam, once a textile factory, now transformed into a sleek, modern event space with steel beams and floor-to-ceiling windows. Posters from past fashion shows were framed along the walls inside, each one etched with legacy and grandeur.

You stepped forward slowly, your boots clicking softly against the polished concrete floor. It was still early, too early for the chaos of models and stylists, but the space already pulsed with motion. Tech crews moved with practiced ease, climbing ladders and testing rigging cables.

You turned in a slow circle, taking it in. The hush of the early setup, the skeletal hush of potential. This was the same space you’d seen in pictures, in magazines, in livestreams you watched during college with wide eyes and a notebook balanced on your knees. Now you were here. Standing on the floor where your designs would soon walk.

The main runway extended nearly forty feet, raised just high enough to cast long, graceful shadows beneath it. To the right, black curtains marked off the backstage quick-change zone. A few designers and assistants were already ducking in and out with measuring tape, fabric swatches, and the kind of controlled panic that came from realizing how little time a month really was.

You reached out, trailing your fingers along the edge of the platform as you passed. It was smooth. Cold. Solid.

Your tablet pinged softly with a notification, but you didn’t check it yet. Instead, you wandered toward the end of the runway and stood there a moment longer, looking out like your models would. The wall ahead was a clean white backdrop now, but soon it would be washed in color and music and flashes of light. Soon, it would become the first impression of your name.

“Not bad for your first real runway,” a voice said behind you, amused and familiar.

You turned, already smiling. Bora stood there in a tailored coat and heels that somehow didn’t make a sound on the concrete. Her dark hair was pulled back, sharp and sleek like the rest of her, and she had a badge around her neck that marked her as someone who belonged here.

“Intimidated yet?” she asked.

“Beyond,” you admitted.

“Good. If you weren’t, I’d worry.” She started walking without waiting, and you fell into step beside her as she motioned toward the backstage curtain. “Come on. You need to see what you’re working with.”

The moment you stepped behind the curtain, the energy shifted. It was louder here. Narrower. Organized chaos, humming like a beehive.

“This is the designer backstage,” Bora said. “Each designer gets a prep studio, yours is over here.” She wove through garment racks and folding tables like she’d done it a thousand times. “You’ll share this half of the space with Shin Jiwoo’s team. Be civil, even if they’re not. Jiwoo’s team tends to be… territorial.”

You caught a glimpse of someone adjusting a mannequin in the neighboring zone, eyes already narrowed in your direction. You looked away.

Bora stopped in front of your section, a long metal rack, a few temporary dress forms, an empty table, and a space just wide enough for you and a couple assistants to function.

“It’s small,” she said before you could. “But so is everyone’s. The real magic happens out there.” She pointed toward the runway. “Back here is just stitching, swearing, and sweat.”

You laughed under your breath, the sound slipping out easier than expected.

“There’ll be mirrors installed here next week,” she continued. “And better lighting. You’ll get your fittings schedule by tomorrow. Once your pieces arrive here, we’ll organize and tag each look. Stick to your order of presentation, no last-minute reshuffling, unless you want to give the stage director a panic attack.”

“I won’t change anything,” you promised, already imagining your garments filling the empty rack. They felt like ghosts right now. Half-remembered sketches. But soon…

Bora gave you a side glance, her expression unreadable for a moment. “You look like you belong here.”

You blinked. “I feel like I’m pretending.”

“Fake it until your first model steps onto the runway. Then you won’t have to fake anything.”

You nodded slowly. The nerves were still there, but now they tangled with something sharper. Determination. Purpose.

Bora smiled at your expression chane. “C’mon, have you had coffee this morning?”

You shook your head, a wry smile forming. “Not unless you count the two sips I had before nearly missing my taxi.”

Bora clicked her tongue in disapproval and gestured toward the exit. “Unacceptable. Come on. There’s a place two blocks down that doesn’t burn their beans.”

You followed her out of the building, the blast of cool morning air hitting your face as the door swung shut behind you. The noise of the venue gave way to the quieter hum of city traffic, early commuters, and the distant call of a street vendor setting up. It grounded you in a different way, like Seoul itself was trying to steady you.

You matched Bora’s pace, letting her confident strides set the rhythm. The thread around your pinky was still quiet, tucked neatly beneath your sleeve, your focus entirely on the day ahead, until it wasn’t.

You didn’t notice the first shift. Not right away.

It began as a warmth, a sudden flicker beneath your skin, like the first moment a flame catches a wick. You paused, mid-step, looking down.

And there it was.

Your thread glowed.

Not gently, not in that soft, idle pulse it sometimes offered at dawn.

No, this was bright. Vivid. Alive.

And then… It pulled.

You stumbled.

Not just a tug. A jerk. Like something on the other end had just realized you were here, really here, and had grabbed the cord like a lifeline. The force nearly spun you off the sidewalk, and you caught yourself with a hand to a nearby lamppost.

“Whoa,” Bora said, already reaching for you. “You okay?”

Your breath caught. “The thread-” you looked down at your hand. It shimmered gold, a radiant thread of light so bright you could see it even in the sunlight.

And it was tight. Pulled taut like it was straining to be followed.

Bora followed your gaze. “Shit,” she muttered. “Now?”

You nodded mutely, still braced against the lamppost.

“Direction?” she asked, voice clipped, professional.

You turned slowly, following the thread as it stretched left, down the street you weren’t even planning to walk down, disappearing around a corner like a beckoning whisper.

Your heart pounded. It had never done this before. Not like this.

Bora exhaled as she looked where you were looking. “We can reroute. Coffee’s that way anyway.”

You looked at her, stunned. “You’re not going to stop me?”

She gave you a dry look. “Please. Like I could. I can’t see your thread, obviously, but it looks like it’s ready to drag you down the street by the throat.”

You hesitated only a moment longer, then nodded.

You followed it. Past a convenience store with sun-faded signs. Past an alley that smelled of engine oil and garlic. Past a florist where bursts of peonies and baby’s breath spilled out into the street. The thread remained taut, glowing faintly even in the morning light, unwavering.

Bora kept pace beside you, silent now, eyes flicking between you and the path ahead.

You turned another corner, and stopped.

A crowd had gathered on the sidewalk ahead. Not tourists. Not locals. Paparazzi.

You recognized them instantly, cameras slung over shoulders, long-lens lenses pointed forward like rifles. A wall of flashing bulbs went off in waves, punctuated by the hiss of shutters and the sharp bark of names.

Bora swore under her breath. “Idols.”

The thread pulsed against your skin.

You stood on your toes, trying to see. Bora pulled you gently toward the edge of the sidewalk, out of sight for now. You craned your neck.

Eight men were walking toward a black van idling at the curb. Security flanked them, carving a path through the crowd.

You looked around, “One of these cameramen must be my soulmate!”

Bora gave you a look, half deadpan, half amused. “Really?” she said. “That’s your theory?”

You shrugged, trying to make light of it, trying to calm the sharp flutter in your chest. “Well, the thread’s pulling and they’re the only ones not moving. Maybe I’m destined to fall for someone who lives in a press vest and yells ‘over here’ for a living.”

Bora arched an eyebrow. “You think it’s a guy shouting for attention, not one of the eight men everyone is shouting about?”

“Pft. What are the odds of my soulmate being an idol?”

“In this city? Honestly? Higher than you'd think.”

You opened your mouth to toss back another joke, something about fate having a twisted sense of humor, but the words caught.

Because he turned.

Not all eight. Just one. Just him.

He turned toward the crowd with the casual sort of glance you’d seen a thousand times in fan cams and magazines, that half-second check of the scene before ducking into the van. But his eyes passed over the cameras, over the shouting fans, and landed, stopped, on you.

And he gasped. You saw it. The way his whole face changed in an instant. His expression cracked open like he’d been struck.

And then your thread stung. Not warm, not glowing. It burned. Like a sudden bolt of electricity through your hand, up your arm, through your ribs.

You flinched, breath catching as you clutched your pinky.

He stumbled. Not visibly, not enough for the cameras to catch it, but you saw it. That half-step falter, the way his hand instinctively reached toward his own pinky, hidden beneath the sleeve of a designer jacket.

He felt it too.

For the briefest of moments, you locked eyes. Neither of you moved. Neither of you could.

And then security surged.

One of the bodyguards stepped between you without even noticing you were there. Another hand on the idol’s shoulder, guiding, firm.

“No- wait-” he said, but it was too soft, too late.

They bundled him toward the van like a current sweeping him away, his body turning, his eyes still on you, wide and wild with disbelief.

You opened your mouth. You don’t know what you meant to say. Don’t go?

But the door slammed shut and the van pulled away. The thread tugged hard, like it hated being stretched. And then the pain dulled. Still tight. Still real. But no longer searing.

Bora, who had gone silent beside you, let out a slow breath. “Okay. That,” she said, “was not one of the cameramen.”

You could barely nod.

You stared after the van’s trail down the road, heart still hammering. “What do I do now?”

Bora tilted her head. “You go get coffee.”

You turned, incredulous.

“And then,” she said, “we figure out which member of one of the biggest K-pop groups in the world just imprinted on you like a drama protagonist. Cool?”

You blinked. “Cool.”

But the thread still pulsed against your skin. He was out there. And he’d felt it too.

︶⊹︶︶୨୧︶︶⊹︶

“So,” Bora opened her laptop at the coffee shop. “There aren’t a lot of eight member boy groups that are popular enough to have that much paparazzi. This should relatively easy to figure out. What did he look like?”

You sipped your coffee trying to calm your nerves. “Uh…he had blonde hair. And…freckles. That’s all I remember. I only saw him for a few seconds.”

Bora practically gasped.“Freckles?” she hissed, already typing fast. “Blonde hair and freckles? Are you joking?”

You blinked, startled. “No, why?”

She spun the laptop toward you, screen angled so the sun glare didn’t hit. “Because that narrows it down to, like… one person.”

You leaned in, heart thudding.

A video was paused mid-frame, clearly a fan-taken clip from the crowd during an event. But the one in the middle, slightly behind the others, head tilted as if searching the crowd, was unmistakable.

Blonde hair, catching the light. Soft jawline. A smattering of freckles over the bridge of his nose, visible even through the slightly pixelated footage.

You gasped. “That’s him.”

“Holy shit! Your soulmate is the Lee Felix!” Bora then covered her mouth and looked around, making sure no one heard her.

She exhales like she’s been holding her breath since the sidewalk. “All right, listen up, rookie. Idol soul‑links are messy. We need a plan before this blows up.”

You manage a shaky laugh. “A plan? I still haven’t processed that my soulmate is-”

“-one‑eighth of a stadium‑filling phenomenon, yes.” She snaps the laptop shut, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Which means everything from now on is important. You’re an incoming Fashion Week headliner; he’s global press bait. One wrong move, the tabloids eat both of you alive.”

You blink, heart pounding. “So what do we do?”

“First,” she says, ticking points off on perfectly manicured fingers, “you focus on your collection. Seoul Fashion Week is in four weeks, and Felix’s schedule is a black‑out wall of rehearsals, music shows, and live streams. Fate can’t trump deadlines.”

The thread under your sleeve gives a gentle throb, like it disagrees.

“Second,” Bora continues, “we gather intel the professional way, quietly. Stray Kids have a showcase taping tomorrow night at SBS Prism Tower. Industry passes are…get‑able.” Her smirk says she already knows a guy.

“Alright. Focus on the show, but also try to see him again. I understand.”

tag list (comment to be added!): @hwangjoanna

#stray kids #skz #kpop #fanfic #kpop fanfic #skz fanfic #felix x female reader #stray kids felix #lee felix #felix x reader #skz felix #felix #stray kids fanfiction #stray kids fanfic #skz fanfiction #felix x you #felix x y/n

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briefinquiries · 4 months ago

Text

Under the Blood Moon | Peaky Blinders | Chapter 5

Tommy Shelby x Reader : Chapter 5

Fic Summary: You came to Birmingham for a fresh start, to bury the past and keep your head down. As a former nurse in the war, you’ve seen enough blood and death to last a lifetime. But fate (and the Shelby’s) have other plans. After stitching Tommy Shelby back together, you find yourself drawn further into their world, a world of violence, loyalty, and power. When Tommy offers you a job, it comes with more than just good pay, it comes with expectations and lines you never planned to cross.

Chapter summary: You begin your first day at the Garrison, where the hard-edged world of rough patrons and strict, unspoken codes quickly challenge you. Amid smoky conversations and tense moments under the watchful eye of the enigmatic Tommy Shelby, you discover that every shift holds unexpected lessons about loyalty and survival.

Word count: 6.5k

Warnings: Violence, injury, mentions of blood, gore, and open wounds, brief PTSD and war flashbacks, alcohol use, and mild language.

–

The midday sun barely cut through the thick Birmingham haze as you approached the Garrison for your first day. The streets were quieter at this hour, the usual hum of factory workers and vendors replaced by the occasional passerby, the distant sound of hooves clattering over cobblestones.

You pulled your coat tighter around yourself as you reached for the door, pushing it open.

Inside, the pub was nearly empty this time. The air carried the lingering scent of whiskey and smoke, the remnants of the night before. The wooden floors creaked underfoot as you stepped inside, your eyes scanning the room.

Only two figures occupied the space– Tommy, seated at a table near the back, cigarette between his fingers, and the bartender, wiping down the counter with a slow, practiced motion.

Tommy glanced up at you as the door shut behind you. “You’re early.”

"You sound surprised," you said, tucking your gloves into your coat pocket.

Tommy hummed, watching you for a beat longer before flicking his cigarette into the tray beside him. He gestured toward the man behind the bar.

"This is Harry," he said, his tone clipped, businesslike. "He’ll show you the ropes."

Harry glanced up from wiping the counter. You recognized him as the bartender from the night before. His face was lined with the wear of time, but his eyes were sharp and kind as he offered you a nod.

Tommy didn’t linger. He adjusted his coat, already moving toward the door. "Right," he said over his shoulder. "I’ll leave you to it."

“You’re leaving?” you asked, caught off guard by your own surprise.

Tommy paused just short of the door, glancing back at you. “Aye. Got a business to run, don’t I?”

With that, he pushed the door open and stepped outside, the faint chill of the afternoon slipping in before it clicked shut behind him.

You exhaled, surprised at how easily he had left you here, but before you could dwell on it, Harry chuckled from behind the bar.

“You’ll get used to that,” he said, shaking his head as he grabbed a fresh rag. “Tommy’s got a habit of throwing people into the deep end. Thinks it builds character.”

When you didn’t reply right away the man chuckled. “Right then," he said, leaning against the bar. "First rule of the Garrison, if a man’s had one too many, don’t argue with him. Just pour him a glass of water and let the rest sort itself out."

You arched a brow, slipping onto one of the barstools. “Does that happen often?”

Harry let out a short laugh. “Only every bloody night.” He grabbed a bottle from the shelf, setting it down with a dull thud. “ Best thing to do is keep ‘em from making a mess of themselves– or the pub.”

You hummed, glancing around. “What time do people typically roll in?”

Harry caught your wandering gaze and smirked. “Not ‘til around nightfall. Enjoy the quiet while it lasts. Before you know it, you’ll be pouring drinks faster than you can count.”

You exhaled, rolling your shoulders. “Guess I better learn fast, then.”

He nodded approvingly, already pulling out a row of glasses. “Good attitude. Second rule is to know your whiskey. Tommy’s lot, they take their drinks seriously.”

You reached for the nearest bottle, running your fingers over the label. “Got it.”

Harry began filling a glass with amber liquid. “Start by learning the difference between good whiskey and the shit we serve when we don’t like someone.” He slid the glass toward you. “Go on, try it.”

You hesitated for only a second before picking it up. The scent burned sharp in your nose, but when you took a careful sip, the warmth settled smooth in your throat. Strong, but not unpleasant.

Harry watched you with a knowing grin. “That’s the good stuff. Don’t waste it on anyone who doesn't deserve it.”

You set the glass down, licking the lingering taste from your lips. “And the bad stuff?”

Harry grinned wider and reached for another bottle, this one with a label peeling at the edges. He poured a second glass, but this time, the scent hit your nose like turpentine.

You wrinkled your nose. “God, what is that?”

He laughed. “That, love, is what we give to men who think they own the place.”

You shook your head, pushing the glass away. “Noted.”

Harry leaned on the bar, watching you with mild amusement. “You ever done this before?”

You could lie. It might be beneficial to have Harry thinking you weren’t a complete idiot. It would be easy– just a nod, a half-hearted quip before steering the conversation elsewhere. That was how things worked here.

But Harry didn’t seem quite like the rest of them. He seemed simple, with steady hands, easy grins, a man who poured drinks and listened without expectation. So, against your better judgment, you told the truth.

“No, I’ve never been a barmaid before. I trained as a nurse, actually.”

Harry’s eyes widened. “A nurse? What the bloody hell are ya doin’ slummin’ it around here then, love?”

You gave a tight-lipped smile, fingers idly tracing the rim of the glass. “Change of scenery.”

Harry let out a short chuckle, shaking his head. “Bit of a downgrade, don’t you think? Bar full of drunken bastards?”

“As opposed to a hospital full of dying bastards?” you quipped. “Men are men, whether they’re drunk or bleeding out.”

That seemed to amuse him, though there was a flicker of something thoughtful in his eyes. He wiped a stray drop of whiskey from the counter with a rag, considering you for a moment. “Well, you’ll fit right in then. Just a different kind of battlefield, I suppose.”

He gestured toward the bottles behind him. “Alright then, nurse-turned-barmaid, let’s see what you know.”

You smirked and rolled up your sleeves. “How hard can it be?”

As it turned out, it was harder than it looked. The first few attempts were disastrous– too much foam, the glass slipping slightly in your grip, a misjudged angle that had beer splashing onto the counter. Harry laughed through all of it, shaking his head as he corrected your form, guiding your hands to tilt the glass just right.

“Not bad,” he finally conceded after your fourth attempt, when the liquid settled into the glass with just the right amount of frothy top. “You might not be completely hopeless after all.”

You smirked.

…

The week passed in a steady rhythm. You picked up the job faster than you expected, poured drinks, cleaned up spills, kept an eye on the ones who needed cutting off before they got too belligerent. The hardest part had been exactly what Harry had warned you about: dealing with drunk men who didn’t understand boundaries.

Most nights, it was nothing more than a lingering stare or some slurred words that you brushed off. Other times, it was hands that lingered too long when passing coins across the bar or a man leaning in too close, breath thick with whiskey. But you learned quickly how to handle them. A sharp look, a quick wit, and if all else failed, a quiet word to Harry.

Harry wasn’t the sort to puff his chest or throw his weight around, but he had a way of handling things that left no room for argument. A firm hand on a man’s shoulder, a pointed look, a low, steady voice that made it clear there’d be no trouble– not here, not with you. He never made a show of it, never made you feel like a burden for needing backup. Just a quiet, steady presence behind the bar, making sure you never had to face it alone.

It wasn’t the kind of protection that loomed or demanded gratitude. It was just kindness, plain and simple. And in a place where most men took what they wanted without a second thought, that meant something to you.

The days stretched on, and with each shift behind the bar, you learned more than just how to pour a proper pint. You learned the silent language of the Garrison– how to read the men before they even opened their mouths. A well-dressed man with polished boots and a watch that gleamed under the low lights? You reached for the good whiskey, the kind reserved for those who mattered. Someone rough around the edges, eyes darting like they were expecting trouble? You gave them something decent enough to keep them satisfied but not enough to make them feel important. And when a man came in puffed up, full of himself, throwing money around like he owned the place– you poured from the bottle with the peeling label, the stuff that burned going down and reminded them exactly where they stood.

You were learning the rhythm of things, settling into the role Tommy had given you. But as the days passed, a nagging thought settled in, something that tugged at the edges of your mind more than the occasional drunk who couldn’t take a hint.

You hadn’t seen Tommy since the day he left you with Harry.

Not once.

Maybe it was the silence that unsettled you– the absence of his presence, the lack of watchful blue eyes assessing whether or not you were worth keeping around. Maybe it was just curiosity, the lingering question of why he’d hired you in the first place only to disappear. You weren’t sure.

But the thought stuck with you, hanging in the back of your mind as you wiped down the counter late one evening, the pub still alive with conversation and the clink of glasses.

Then, the door swung open, letting in the cool night air along with the unmistakable presence of Arthur Shelby.

You barely had time to register his entrance before he was striding toward the bar, his usual swagger amplified by whatever he’d been drinking before he got here. John followed just behind him, grinning and laughing with a few men you didn’t recognize. The energy in the room shifted– more charged, more unpredictable.

Arthur grinned as soon as he spotted you, his eyes gleaming with mischief. “There she is!” He stepped behind the bar without a care, throwing a heavy arm around your shoulders. “Tommy told me you took the job. I didn’t quite believe him! Boys, meet our newest barmaid– and the only one in here with a bit of bloody sense!”

You let out a breath, amused but already bracing yourself. “Arthur,” you greeted.

He waved a hand toward the men who had followed him in. “This here is Danny.” He gestured vaguely at one of them, Then he pointed at another man, this one leaner, with sharp eyes that flicked over you with mild interest. “And this is Tommy’s latest headache.”

“Isiah,” the man corrected.

Arthur chuckled, unconcerned. “Yeah, yeah.” He waved a hand dismissively before reaching for a bottle without asking. “Right then, let’s have a proper welcome, shall we?”

Isiah smirked, watching as Arthur poured himself a generous measure of whiskey. “Since when did Tommy go around hirin’ barmaids?”

Arthur scoffed. “Oh, he doesn’t.” He gestured vaguely with his glass. “But he’s taken an interest in this one.”

Isiah raised an eyebrow, glancing at you with newfound curiosity. “That so?”

You didn’t look up, keeping your expression neutral as you wiped the same spot on the counter a second too long. Arthur, oblivious or simply uninterested in the weight of his own words, knocked back his whiskey with a satisfied sigh.

“Don’t let it go to your head, love,” he added, tapping the rim of his empty glass against the counter. “Tommy’s interest is a dangerous thing.”

Your fingers tightened slightly around the rag, but you forced yourself to keep your movements steady, casual.

John reached for the bottle Arthur had snagged, pouring himself a drink while joining in. “Don’t think this one scares easy, Arthur.”

You kept your face carefully neutral, but the words settled somewhere uncomfortable beneath your ribs. There was a current to this conversation, something unspoken beneath their teasing. A reminder, perhaps, that you were playing a game where the rules weren’t always clear, and the man who made them wasn’t one to be underestimated.

Arthur seemed to tire of the topic, slapping the counter with enough force to make a few empty glasses jump. “Right then! Let’s have another.” He motioned toward you, all grins again. “Pour us a round, eh? Might as well earn that wage of yours.”

You exhaled slowly before reaching for the bottle.

The conversation shifted after that, swept away by the usual drunken camaraderie, but the tension in your chest didn’t ease. Arthur might’ve been half-cut already, but there was truth buried in his words.

Tommy had taken an interest in you.

And whether that was a good thing or not remained to be seen.

You weren’t naive– you knew how things worked in places like this, knew that a woman working behind the bar of a place like the Garrison would always draw attention, wanted or not. But this was different. This was Tommy Shelby. And you had a feeling that Tommy Shelby didn’t take an interest in anyone without a reason.

Arthur and the other men eventually gravitated towards a corner table. They kept drinking, their voices growing louder with each round you poured. You stayed busy behind the bar, dodging wandering hands with sharp looks and sidestepping drunken attempts at conversation with easy, practiced movements.

Eventually, John drifted back towards the bar, leaning against it with an easy slouch, whiskey glass dangling loosely between his fingers. His eyes were sharp despite the alcohol. “Can I have another, love?” he asked.

You grabbed the bottle and poured, the amber liquid catching the dim light as it splashed into his glass. John hummed in approval, lifting it slightly in a wordless thanks before taking a slow sip.

He didn’t leave right away, lingering against the bar.

You watched him carefully, weighing your next words. Maybe the whiskey would loosen his tongue, make him just careless enough to give you something real– something more than the usual half-truths and vague reassurances.

You hesitated, then leaned in slightly, trying to sound casual while keeping your voice low. “Have you seen Tommy?”

John lifted a brow, tilting his head like he hadn’t quite heard you. “What’s that?”

You shot him a flat look. “You heard me.”

John let out a quiet chuckle, shaking his head before taking a slow sip of his drink. “He’s busy.”

You fought the urge to roll your eyes. “Doing what?”

“Dunno,” he said. “Probably catching up with things after bein’ laid up as long as he was.”

“Catching up with what?” you pushed.

John smirked, a mixture between playfulness and warning. “You ask a lot of questions.”

You exhaled through your nose, wiping down the counter with more force than necessary.

John tapped his fingers against his glass, watching you for a beat before leaning in slightly. “Don’t worry,” he murmured, voice quieter now. “Tommy always comes back,” he said before pushing off from the bar and joining everyone back at the table.

But the way John said it, like it was an undeniable fact, sent something uneasy curling in your stomach.

As the night wound down and the men grew drunker, you took the opportunity to slip away, leaving Harry to handle the last of them.

But even as you walked home, the weight of Tommy’s absence settled heavy on your mind.

…

The rest of the week passed much the same way.

And so did the days after that. Until suddenly, two whole weeks passed since you’d last seen Tommy Shelby.

The Garrison carried on, business as usual, or at least, that’s what it felt like. You worked behind the bar, learned the rhythms of the place, the way the night moved in waves. The regulars, the troublemakers, the men who needed cutting off before their tempers got the best of them. You got used to the thick scent of whiskey and tobacco, the weight of a damp rag always within reach, the way Harry barely raised an eyebrow when a fight broke out.

But one thing didn’t change. Tommy Shelby was nowhere to be seen.

You told yourself you didn’t care. You weren’t looking for him. He had given you a job, and that was all that mattered. But that didn’t stop you from wondering, from noticing his absence like a gap in the room that no one acknowledged.

Arthur and John didn’t mention him either, but you could see it in the way they carried themselves, shoulders tenser, voices quieter when they thought no one was listening.

Something was happening.

And whatever it was, you weren’t meant to know.

After two weeks of working at the Garrison, Harry left you to close alone. It was late. The Garrison was empty, save for you and the lingering scent of stale smoke and whiskey. You had locked the doors an hour ago, sending the last of the stragglers stumbling into the night.

You were alone now, wiping down the bar, enjoying the rare moment of silence.

You stacked the last of the glasses, the faint clink echoing in the empty pub. The scent of whiskey and smoke still lingered in the air, soaked into the wood, impossible to erase no matter how many times you wiped the counters. The quiet felt unfamiliar, almost unnatural after hours of steady conversation, laughter, and the occasional scuffle breaking out among the regulars.

You moved through the motions that were gradually becoming familiar– wiping down the bar, stacking chairs, sweeping the floor. The rhythm of it kept your mind from wandering too far, the way it so often could at this hour.

Things almost felt peaceful…

Until the knock came.

Sharp and urgent, followed by a shout. “Open up!”

Your head snapped up, heart thudding. It was late– too late for someone to be knocking like that.

You hesitated. Then, slowly, you moved toward the door.

Another knock. Louder this time.

Taking a breath, you unlocked it just enough to peer through the crack.

Tommy Shelby stood on the other side. But he wasn’t alone.

Behind him, John, breathless and tense. And between them, a man, unconscious, limp, dead weight in their grasp.

Tommy had him by the arms, his coat slightly askew from the effort. His usual composure was fraying at the edges, jaw clenched, eyes dark with something unreadable. The muscles in his arms strained as he adjusted his grip.

“I need you to come with me,” Tommy said simply. “Now.”

You stepped back, pulling the door open wider as they dragged the man inside.

You barely had time to process before they moved past you, hauling the injured man between them. The moment the door shut behind them, Tommy jerked his chin toward the back.

“In here.” His voice was steady, but there was an edge to it, a tension running just beneath the surface.

You didn’t argue. You followed.

The back room was small, barely more than a storage space with crates stacked along the walls. The air was thick with the scent of whiskey and dust, but now it was tainted with something else– coppery, sharp.

Blood.

“What happened?” you asked.

But John and Tommy were too busy hoisting the man onto the heavy wooden table at the center of the room to answer you. The impact made him groan low in his throat. He was in bad shape– his shirt torn and soaked through. His breath came in shallow, uneven pulls, and when you moved closer, you could see the worst of it.

A gunshot wound. Low on his side, just below the ribs. You pressed two fingers to his throat. His pulse was weak but steady. His skin was cold, clammy. He was losing too much blood.

“I need clean water,” you said, your hands moving on instinct. “And something to sterilize. Whiskey, if that’s all you’ve got. And my medical bag– it’s under the bar.”

John cursed under his breath but hurried to grab what you needed. Tommy, however, hadn’t moved. You looked up at him. He was watching the man on the table, unreadable, the sharp planes of his face unreadable in the dim lantern light.

You exhaled sharply. “Mr. Shelby,” you snapped, drawing his attention. “How long ago was he shot?”

A pause. Then, finally, “Less than an hour.”

John returned, setting your bag, a bottle of whiskey, and a bowl of clean water on the crate beside you.

“Alright, here we go,” you murmured, reaching for the bottle.

“Is he gonna make it?” John asked, his voice quieter now, less cocky than usual.

You poured the whiskey over the wound, the man jerking violently even in his unconscious state. “I don’t know.”

John stepped back, dragging a hand through his hair, muttering something under his breath. You ignored him, focusing on your hands.

You had done this before. More times than you cared to count. You had knelt in the mud, in trenches, in dark alleys where the air was thick with rot and gunpowder, pressing your hands over wounds just like this, trying to keep men from slipping away.

This was no different.

At least, that’s what you told yourself.

You set the whiskey aside and reached for the forceps, your fingers steady despite the weight of what you were about to do.

“The bullet’s still in there,” you murmured, more to yourself than to them. You could feel it, lodged deep in the muscle, pressing against something that made the man groan even in unconsciousness.

John shifted beside you. “Shit,” he muttered under his breath.

You ignored him, taking a deep breath as you positioned the forceps. “I need you to hold him down.”

John blinked, startled. “What?”

You gave him a sharp look. “When I start digging around his insides, he’s going to wake up. And when he does, he’s going to thrash. I need him to stay still.”

Tommy moved first. He stepped forward without hesitation, pressing one forearm firmly against the man’s shoulder, using his weight to pin him in place. John followed suit, gripping the man’s other arm with both hands.

You tightened your grip around the forceps, bracing yourself as you carefully pushed the metal deeper into the wound.

The man jolted violently, a strangled cry ripping from his throat. His body bucked against the table, legs kicking out as pain dragged him back to consciousness.

John cursed, nearly losing his grip. “Fuckin’ hell–”

“Hold him,” you snapped, gritting your teeth as the forceps met resistance.

Tommy didn’t say a word. He only pressed harder, jaw clenched, his grip ironclad as the man beneath him thrashed like a wounded animal.

You exhaled sharply through your nose, focusing on the task in front of you. You twisted the forceps slightly, feeling the edge of the bullet scrape against metal. Almost there.

The man let out another strangled cry, his breath ragged, desperate.

“You’re alright,” you murmured, voice low, steady. You weren’t sure if it was for him or for yourself.

Then finally, the forceps closed around the bullet.

You sucked in a breath and pulled.

The man howled, his body jerking violently, his entire frame going taut as pain ripped through him. Blood surged from the wound, hot and slick between your fingers.

John flinched at the sound. “Jesus–”

“Got it,” you said, holding up the bullet between the forceps, still dripping crimson.

Tommy exhaled sharply through his nose. His grip on the man loosened just slightly, but he didn’t move away.

You tossed the bullet. Then, without pausing, you reached for the whiskey and poured it directly into the wound.

The man gasped, his body trembling, his breaths coming in short, desperate pulls. Then, his body went limp– head lulling to the side, muscles relaxing.

“Is he–” John said. “Is he dead?”

“Just passed out,” you murmured, already threading the needle. “I’m almost done.”

Tommy stepped back slightly, watching as you set to work stitching the wound closed, your hands moving with practiced efficiency.

John let out a shaky breath, running a hand through his hair. “Well,” he muttered, looking between you and Tommy, “that was a fuckin’ close one.”

You didn’t respond. You just kept stitching.

Tommy exhaled slowly, rubbing a hand over his jaw. His gaze flicked to John. "Go make sure everything’s locked up outside. I don’t want any surprises tonight."

John hesitated, glancing between the two of you. "You sure? I can–"

"Now, John." Tommy’s voice was firm, leaving no room for argument.

John pushed off the wall with a muttered, "Right, right. I’m going."

The door clicked shut behind him, leaving the room quieter, heavier. The only sounds left were the ragged breaths of the wounded man and the steady scrape of the needle pulling through skin.

You finished the last stitch and tied it off, snipping the thread with practiced ease. Only then did you glance up at Tommy. His face was unreadable, sharp eyes still fixed on the man bleeding out on the table.

You swallowed, shifting slightly. "What happened?" Your voice was quiet but steady.

Tommy’s gaze flicked to you then, searching, weighing. For a moment, he didn’t answer. Just stood there, hands buried in his pocket. Then, finally, he exhaled, scuffing his shoe against the wooden floor.

"Business went a little south," he said simply.

"Business?" You scoffed, staring at the half-dead man on the table.

Tommy didn’t flinch. Didn’t so much as blink.

You turned towards him, searching his face for something, regret, anger, anything– but all you found was that same calculated calm. Like this was just another part of his day. Like he had already moved past it.

You exhaled sharply, pressing your palm against the edge of the table, feeling the worn wood dig into your skin. Your fingers twitched slightly before you clenched them into a fist, steadying yourself.

"What’s his name?" you asked, your voice quieter now, but no less firm.

Tommy, who had been watching you carefully, lit a cigarette. He shook out the match before answering. "Why?"

Your frustration flared, and before you could think better of it, the words snapped from your lips. "So that when he wakes up, I can actually comfort him while he bleeds out on this damn table."

Tommy’s gaze didn’t waver, but something flickered in his expression. Something quiet. Almost unreadable. For a moment, you thought he wouldn’t answer. That he’d just give you another clipped, dismissive response and move on.

But then, finally, he spoke. "James."

Your jaw tightened, but you nodded, shifting your focus back to the man in front of you.

Tommy didn’t say anything else, just stood there, watching as you adjusted the bandages, your hands moving a little steadier now.

The silence stretched between you, thick with something unspoken.

Tommy took another slow drag from his cigarette, the ember glowing faintly in the dim light. Then, with an exhale, he muttered, “This is what you signed up for. Remember?”

You hesitated for half a second before nodding. “I remember.” The words were quiet, measured.

He didn’t respond. Didn’t smirk, didn’t gloat, didn’t push. Instead, he exhaled one last curl of smoke, flicked the cigarette into the ashtray, and turned on his heel, leaving the room.

As soon as the door clicked shut behind him, the breath you’d been holding slipped from your lips. Your fingers trembled slightly as you finished securing the last of the bandages, and before you could stop them, tears burned behind your eyes. You swallowed hard, willing them away, telling yourself it was just exhaustion. Just the weight of the night pressing in all at once.

One fell, wetness dragging down your cheek.

Then, the door creaked open again. You blinked quickly, wiping your hands on your apron, hoping the dim light masked the glassiness in your eyes. When you looked up, Tommy had returned, this time with a fresh bottle of whiskey in one hand and two glasses in the other.

You stiffened slightly, willing yourself to look composed, but he didn’t comment. Didn’t acknowledge whatever had flickered across your face.

Instead, he set the glasses down with a quiet thud, twisted the cap off the bottle, and poured two fingers into each. He slid one across the table toward you, his movements deliberate, smooth. Then, without a word, he pulled up a chair and sat down, his movements unhurried, calm. He rested his forearms on the table, fingers tapping lightly against the wood as he watched James with a gaze you couldn’t quite place.

“He’s a good man,” Tommy said quietly. “Got a wife and a son back at home.”

You swallowed, glancing at James, at the shallow rise and fall of his chest.

“Then why is he bleeding out on this table instead of at home with them?” you asked, your voice quieter than before.

Tommy didn’t look at you. Just took a slow sip from his whiskey before sighing. “Because he works for me.”

You clenched your jaw, fingers tightening around the edge of the table, ignoring the glass he’d poured for you.

Tommy exhaled, slow and steady, tapping ash into the tray beside him. “He knew what he was signing up for, too.”

You looked back at James, at the fresh bandages wrapped tightly around his wounds. He was stable, for now. But you knew better than most that "stable" didn’t always mean safe.

“Does his family know?” you asked after a moment.

Tommy finally turned to you then, his blue eyes sharp, unreadable. “No.”

You exhaled through your nose, shaking your head slightly. “They’re going to wonder where he is– why he hasn’t come home.”

Tommy hummed. “And when he wakes up, he can tell them whatever he likes.”

You let out a quiet scoff, looking back down at James. “So that’s it then?” You gestured vaguely to the blood-stained table, to the mess of gauze and whiskey and half-spilled water.

Tommy tilted his head slightly, studying you. “That’s how this works.”

You sat back, folding your arms over your chest. “No, that’s how you work.”

Something flickered behind his eyes at that, something unreadable. He didn’t deny it. Didn’t argue. Just took another slow sip of whiskey before setting the glass down with a quiet thud.

The silence stretched between you, thick and heavy. You watched him, the dim light casting sharp shadows across his face, making it harder to read whatever was lurking behind those blue eyes. Tommy Shelby was always composed, always in control, but you’d been around him long enough to know that didn’t mean he was unaffected.

Your fingers drummed absently against the table before you finally spoke, “You’ve been gone.”

Tommy didn’t react right away and his expression gave nothing away. The quiet hum of the Garrison beyond the walls felt distant, like the two of you were caught in some separate space, removed from the rest of the world.

“I have.”

“Where were you?” you asked.

After a beat, he exhaled. “I’ve been busy.”

You huffed softly, shaking your head. “You disappear for two weeks, then show up at this hour with a man nearly dead, and I’m meant to pretend that’s normal?”

Tommy tilted his head, studying you like he was trying to work out exactly how much you’d figured out already.

You let out a sharp breath. “Because this is just business.”

His lips twitched slightly, barely there. “Now you’re catching on.”

You stared at him for a long moment. The worst part was, you weren’t sure why you cared. You weren’t sure why it bothered you that he had vanished, or why it nagged at you that he was here now, acting like nothing had changed.

You swallowed, shifting your gaze back to James, letting the silence stretch between you. You had questions, too many, but you knew you weren’t getting any answers.

Tommy exhaled, rolling his shoulders slightly before standing. “You can go if you want.”

You didn’t move. You just tightened the bandage around James’s wound, making sure the pressure was firm but not too tight. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Tommy arched his brow.

You glanced up at him, your expression flat. “He’s got a fever. The wound’s deep. If infection sets in, he won’t make it through the night. Someone needs to be here to watch him.”

Tommy studied you for a beat, his gaze unreadable. “And you think that someone has to be you?”

“I know it does.” You straightened, wiping your hands on a clean rag. “Unless you’ve suddenly developed a talent for treating wounds. That’s why you hired me, right? So that I can patch up all the good men you send into battle?”

Tommy exhaled slowly, tapping ash onto the floor. “I can have someone else watch him.”

You scoffed. “Who? You’ve got other barmaids who double as nurses hangin’ around?”

His lips twitched slightly. “No. I certainly don’t.”

You folded your arms over your chest. “Then I’m staying. You can go.”

Tommy didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Just held your gaze, the tension thick between you. Finally, he sat back down, resting his forearms against the table.

Neither of you moved. Neither of you spoke. The room was quiet except for the slow, uneven breathing of the unconscious man between you.

The night stretched on, slow and heavy. The room was thick with the scent of blood and whiskey, the lantern casting flickering shadows along the walls. You stayed seated, eyes fixed on James’s chest as it rose and fell in uneven intervals. Each breath, shallow but steady, was a small reassurance that he was still with you.

Tommy sat opposite you, silent, his fingers idly tapping against the table. Neither of you spoke.

Your body was exhausted, the weight of the day pulling at you. The adrenaline that had kept you sharp was fading, and the fatigue crept in. You rubbed at your eyes, blinking hard to keep them from closing, rolling your shoulders to push away the stiffness settling in.

After a long stretch of silence, Tommy’s voice broke through the silence.

“I hired you because I knew you’d fight for them.”

Your fingers, which had been idly tracing the grain of the wooden table, stilled. You glanced up at him, tired but sharp, watching his expression carefully. But Tommy wasn’t looking at you. He was watching James, his cigarette burning low between his fingers, the glow illuminating the hard set of his jaw, the flicker of something distant in his eyes.

He leaned back, rubbing his thumb along his cigarette before tapping ash into the tray. “I’ve seen a lot of doctors– medics. Men who treat wounds like they’re just another task to be done. Like it doesn't matter if the men they’re working on live or die.” He gestured vaguely toward James. “You don’t work like that.”

Your throat tightened, an unexpected knot forming at the base of it. You weren’t sure what to say to that, so you said nothing.

After a moment, he spoke again, his voice quieter this time, more distant. “I remember how you were in France.”

The word landed between you like a hammer. Your stomach twisted.

His gaze darkened slightly, unreadable as he studied you. “I remember how hard you fought. How you didn’t stop. Not even when the ones you were fighting for had already given up.” He tapped his cigarette against the tray, his voice steady, even. “I watched you keep men alive when any sane person would’ve called it a lost cause.”

Your pulse pounded in your ears, a slow, thudding ache. You had no idea he had been watching. You had no idea he had even remembered you from back then.

“I thought my men deserved someone to fight for them like that.”

Something in your chest ached at the certainty in his tone. But there was no smugness in his expression, no teasing, no trace of the sharp-edged wit he usually wielded so effortlessly. Just quiet certainty.

For a brief, fleeting moment, something softened in your chest.

The low lantern light cast shadows across his face, accentuating the sharp lines of his jaw, the bruises still lingering beneath his skin. He looked tired, really tired, in a way that went deeper than lack of sleep. It was the kind of exhaustion that settled in your bones, that time didn’t fix. You recognized it because you carried it, too.

Tommy took another slow drag of his cigarette, exhaling a thin stream of smoke before speaking again, his voice quieter now. “James would be dead right now if it weren’t for you.”

Your fingers curled slightly against the table.

Tommy wasn’t looking at you, still watching James, his breathing still shallow but steady. “His wife would be a widow. His kids would have grown up without a father.” He tapped his cigarette against the tray, the embers falling like dust. “If you hadn’t taken the job, that’s what would’ve happened.”

He finally looked at you then, his sharp blue eyes locking onto yours, unreadable in the flickering lantern light. A slow, heavy beat passed between you.

Then, you leaned forward slightly, searching his face. “How many more men are going to end up on this table?”

His jaw tightened, just barely. But he didn’t lie to you. He didn’t try to reassure you with false promises or empty words. Instead, he held your gaze and said, “As many as it takes.”

There was something about him like this, unguarded, stripped of the control he always wielded so carefully, that made something shift inside you. It was unsettling, the way your chest tightened, the way your throat felt a little too tight. It was just exhaustion, you told yourself. Just the weight of the night.

Your fingers curled against your lap as you looked away.

“You’ve put a lot of faith in me,” you murmured finally, voice quieter than you intended. “I’m not a miracle worker.”

Tommy exhaled slowly, watching you carefully. “No,” he agreed. “You’re not.”

A beat passed.

“But you’re the closest thing I’ve got.”

You hesitated for half a second before finally picking up the glass of whiskey Tommy had previously poured for you. You took a long sip, the burn settling deep in your chest, something unspoken hanging between you.

Tommy watched as you swallowed the whiskey, his gaze sharp, considering. Then, with a slight tilt of his head, he muttered, “I thought you normally didn’t drink on the job.”

You let the warmth of the liquor settle in your chest before meeting his eyes, arching a brow. “I don’t. But this isn’t exactly a normal job, is it, Mr. Shelby?”

The corner of his mouth twitched, just barely– not quite a smirk, but close. He lifted his own glass, taking a slow sip before setting it back down with a quiet thud against the wood.

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#peaky blinders x reader #tommy shelby x reader #peaky blinders fanfic #peaky blinders imagine #thomas shelby fanfic #tommy shelby x reader fanfic #tommy shelby fanfic #tommy shelby x y/n #peaky blinders #tommy shelby

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slvtrlv · 1 month ago

Text

~ ULTRAVIOLENCE ~

part 1. Cruel world

Summary: "…I did what I had to do. I found another, anyhow..." Y/N leaves home behind with nothing but a suitcase and her mother's rosary. Birmingham is cruel, grey, and teeming with danger. But Tommy Shelby notices her. He always notices the broken things.

Relationship: Tommy Shelby x Female Reader.

Warning: diary style, smut, 18+, smoking, alcohol, slow-burn, drama, angst, fluff, age-gap, power dynamics, obsession, protection, forbidden love, feminine rage & surrender, based on album "ultraviolence" by lana del rey.

Words: 1264

A/N: comments and reblogs are appreciated

_ _ _

“…Share my body and my life with you. That's way over now. There's not anymore I can do…” — Y/N’s diary, 1923

The Garrison was half-asleep when I walked in, a lull between violence. The kind of silence that comes after blood has dried and before it spills again.

I stepped inside slowly, like I was slipping into something forbidden. My coat was too thin for the storm behind me, the hem soaked through, dragging the wet weight of the streets along the floor. Water dripped from my cuffs, trailing ghostly fingerprints on the wood. My hair clung to my face, damp and curling slightly at the ends like ivy reaching for warmth.

Then a voice cut through the dim. Low. Measured. Too clean for this place, too sharp to be drunk.

— You look like you’re running from something - it came from the shadows, smooth and sure. The kind of voice you don’t argue with because it already knows the end of the story.

I didn’t flinch.

I turned my head slowly toward the sound, lashes heavy with rain. My eyes were darker than they should’ve been, like something had been left behind in them. Something bruised. Something watching.

— Aren’t we all? - my voice was calm, disinterested, the kind of calm only someone very tired or very dangerous could fake.

The warmth of the room pressed against me like a body. Firelight crackled from behind the bar, catching the edge of every bottle like the glint of a blade. Men spoke in low tones, hands wrapped around half-full glasses and half-empty threats. But I didn’t see them.

I only see him. Thomas Shelby. Lit by a single amber lamp and the orange flicker of his cigarette. Smoke curled upward, soft and slow, like it had nowhere better to be.

— Not me - he said, exhaling smoke through his nose like a man who'd already made peace with the devil — I don’t run.

I stepped farther inside, the door clicking shut behind me. It felt like a lock. Like a choice. My boots left damp prints on the floorboards, small and shapeless like a girl trying to forget where she came from.

— Then what do you do, Mr. Not-Running? - I asked with a half-smile, the kind that doesn’t reach the all honey and knives eyes. A challenge in a teacup voice. He didn’t blink.

— I handle things - he replied, tapping ash into the tray with precision — Problems. People. Threats.

The words didn’t sound like a boast. They sounded like facts. Like bullets counted after a job. I tilted my head, letting the pause linger just a second longer than polite.

— Sounds exhausting.

He smiled, if you could call it that. Just a twitch of the mouth, not warmth. Recognition, maybe. Or restraint.

He’d been flirted with before. He’d been wanted. But this wasn’t that. This was something different. I wasn’t a girl in love with danger: I was danger, still raw, still bleeding at the edges.

— You’re not from here - he said then, voice quieter now, almost curious.

I looked around: the stained-glass windows dulled with smoke, the worn-down bar polished by generations of elbows, the rust-red wallpaper clinging to the walls like secrets.

— What gave me away?

— Your coat - he said simply — Stitched by hand. Not Birmingham work. Boots too fine for a factory girl. And you smell like lilies.

That last part made my chest tighten. Not because he noticed - but because he noticed everything.

— You make a habit of smelling girls who walk through your door? - he tapped the end of his cigarette, eyes steady.

— No. Just the dangerous ones - I narrowed my gaze, amused and wary all at once.

— I’m not dangerous - he looked at me for a long, measured moment.

— Not yet - he gestured toward the seat across from him. I sat without hesitation, without breaking eye contact. I didn’t ask his name. I didn’t need to.

Thomas Shelby. The name wrapped itself around Birmingham like a noose. Sweet. Lethal. Impossible to forget.

He poured a drink without asking.

— Whiskey?

— If I say no, will it matter?

— Not really - the glass was heavy, warm from his hand. The first sip hit my throat like a warning. I didn’t flinch. But he noticed anyway.

— You don’t drink much.

— I don’t do anything much - I replied, watching him over the rim of my glass — But that doesn’t mean I won’t start.

He studied me then, like a soldier studies a map. Like he was calculating how far I'd already come and how far I had left before I’d break.

— How old are you? - his tone had shifted, quieter, more dangerous for it. Like he was deciding how deep he’d let himself go.

— Twenty - I said it without blinking. I said it like someone who had been twenty for years.

He didn’t reply. Just inhaled, smoke curling like a question.

— That’s young.

— Maybe.

Another silence stretched, this one more intimate. The kind that breathes between two people who don’t know each other’s names, but know each other’s damage.

He didn’t ask why I was in Birmingham. And I didn’t offer it. But he could read it in my posture: the way I sat like I didn’t expect to be allowed to stay. In the bruise under my collarbone, blooming purple just above the edge of my dress. In the calluses on my hands, earned from more than just work.

— You shouldn’t be here - he said finally. Not as a threat. More like an apology he didn’t believe in.

— And yet I am - I replied, my eyes meeting his, really meeting them — Why does that bother you?

His mouth didn’t move, but something behind his eyes did.

— Because girls like you get eaten alive here - I tilted my chin slightly, like I was daring him to be right.

— Then maybe I’m hungry too - that stopped him. Not startled, he didn’t rattle. But something went still. Like a dog hearing the soft click of a rifle.

— I’m not going to save you - his voice was the barest breath of a threat. Or a promise. Or both.

— I didn’t ask you to - I smiled. This time sadder. This time real.

Then I stood. Just like that. One motion. The coat shifted around my shoulders, rain still clinging to the edges. I left without goodbye, without even touching the drink he poured me.

Outside, the air had turned sharp: all metal and wet stone. The rain had softened to a mist, gentle and cold against my cheeks. I didn’t look back. But I knew he was watching me until I disappeared.

Inside, Thomas Shelby reached for the glass I left behind. The lipstick stain still fresh. The heat from my body still ghosting the leather of the seat.

He ran a thumb across the rim of my glass.

And he already knew: I was going to be a problem. And he was already deciding if he cared.

DIARY, 1924 He saw me. Not with hunger, not with hands. With knowing. He looked at me like I was a question he’d already answered. Thomas Shelby. His name tastes like smoke and sin. A prayer and a punishment in the same breath. He told me he wouldn’t save me. I believe him. But he didn’t say don’t fall in love with me. And maybe that’s the cruelest thing of all. — Y/N.

#cillian murphy #cillian x fem!reader #cillian x reader #cillian fanfic #cillian murphy x reader smut #cillian murphy x reader #peaky blinder oc #peaky blinder headcanon #peaky blinder fanfic #peaky blinder imagine #tommy shelby x reader #tommy shelby #thomas shelby x reader #thomas shelby

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frostgears · 3 months ago

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nose goes

you rubbed the scar on the underside of your columella for the hundredth time that evening and the millionth time in the last three weeks. fucker still itched. some tiny splinter of a dissolvable suture slowly working its way out of your nose, and you'd know no peace until it was ejected. though afterward wasn't looking great either.

---

"hey, newbie," Emerald had said. "we have pretty good health care. get your nose unfucked. i'm tired of looking at it."

"oh," you'd said, dumbfounded, "i can get that fixed? regimental medics said not to bother." it had been bent since you bashed it against the inside of a miniframe with a bad jump booster. they'd said there was a line for operationally necessary care and your nose wasn't messed up enough to even get in it.

the director's raptor of an assistant had cocked her head to the side. you were still learning the specialized biology vocabulary you weren't sure if you'd live long enough to need, but "raptor" seemed right: skinny, sharp features, unclear if she blinked, probably ate lizards.

"military healthcare is shit. don't exceed three gees while healing, don't shove anything up there, don't miss work," she'd said, and flicked a net address to your handheld. a civilian medical appointment.

you should have known that it had been too easy. you'd woken up in a room that hadn't been the one you'd gone to sleep in. more blinking lights and display screens than a frame maintenance bay. and your boss was there. sharp suit, curly hair, looked like she was in a hurry.

"good news, everything went well," she said. "and volunteering saved me a bit of time, so thanks for that. here."

you were still incredibly out of it, but you accepted the vase of mixed flowers. the smell almost put you under again. you'd never smelled anything like this. or maybe you had, but you were suddenly smelling a hundred things on top of it. an incredibly rich roiling blend of scent. grassy, floral, faintly acrid, notes of emergency sealant, hangar moonshine, the smell of the taste of the filler in shipping containers…

"bwuh?" you managed. she'd put something up your damn nose. had to be.

"olfactory and recall augment. it'll adapt with you, to some extent, but it's also pre-biased with hundreds of thousands of Terran and CEZ biochemical presets. one of these flowers doesn't belong. show me."

you'd taken a big sniff, which was stupid and hurt. then you took a few smaller, more careful sniffs. one of the yellow-orange ones was off. not bad. off. like you'd tasted a dozen red Nebula Chews in a row and the last one was supposed to be purple but the factory fucked up the dye.

you plucked the flower from the vase and showed it to her.

"you're probably right," she said. "one of the marigolds is infected with a hybrid xenopathogen. doesn't have a name. something that evolved on one of the CEZ DNA worlds after Terran life was introduced, and that doesn't really get along with our soil bacteria — the CEZ nearly lost that planet. its metabolism produces a volatile compound that'd be useful for detection, except that i can't smell it, nobody else on staff can smell it, and more importantly, our current generation of mass-production biochips can't either. but now you can."

she turned to go, heels clicking on the floor. then she looked back over her shoulder.

"you look a little spooked. you shouldn't be. it's a knockout, can't reproduce without an excess of a dextral amino acid that nothing outside of our labs makes," she said. "keep the flowers."

---

"stop rubbing your fucking nose, newbie," Emerald said from across your restaurant table.

"i have a name," you groused, putting your hands back in your lap, where you could fidget with the edge of the expensive-looking tablecloth instead of decking the barely field-competent backup posing as your dinner date.

"i don't care. people are looking. or they might. so quit it. you find anything yet?"

"not yet." you'd noticed a few unusual scents on the air, but so far they'd all been strictly known compounds and the most noticeable one at this table wasn't exactly mission-related.

the waiter turned up, finally, and presented the next course. you lifted a spoon to your lips. rice. you'd had that plenty of times. several different mushrooms. a rare treat, but just because you couldn't really afford them. and an accent of… cassia, cheap shampoo, hot paint? your new nose wasn't sure what to make of it. but you'd smelled it before.

there was a sample terrarium running Celeq Corporation's proprietary synthetic biology in one of the library labs. Celeq, the Director had said, like many synthetic biologies, was fine. perfectly stable. if your planet didn't have seasons. or weather. or humans. worked fine on her parents' homeworld, because they could never leave the domes.

"i think we're going to want to talk to the chef," you said.

"damn. can i at least finish dinner first?"

"probably. but you can have my risotto. smells like Celeq."

she shrugged and reached over the table to pull your plate over to her side. "not toxic, then, just unsustainably high maintenance. and better you than me with that augment. i already have my nose the way i like it."

"thanks for volunteering me, by the way. all these wonderful things i can never unsmell." you paused, smirked. "you ever read the specs? you know the breadth of the Terran biochem recall?"

"do you have a point."

"yeah. you can relax with the bitch act. i can smell how hot you are for me."

she dropped the fork.

"as if!"

you scratched your nose again. "doesn't lie."

"fuck you," she said. "i'm not hungry any more. let's do this." she stood up and pulled a badge from her slacks, screamed at the waiter: "Directorate of Planetary Ecology! take me to your chef!"

you pulled your pistol. wasn't a frame, but the enzyme pellets were a lot safer inside a hab. "god. you really are out of practice. gun first, threats second…" □

#microfiction #mech pilot #DPE #mechposting

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lsunstreakerl · 1 month ago

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darkbull! carlos POV, 1.5k words. there's no smut here, but I'll still rank it mature because GP kind of sort of vaguely tries to kill him. again, darkbull verse, this is a follow up to the carlos/max breath play ficlet (the one where he dunks max in the pool)

"Sainz."

GP falls into step next to him in the factory hallway, tone polite. Carlos is slightly surprised— he and GP don't really have much, if anything, to talk about, so he isn't sure what the older man might need from him.

"GP."

He gets a tight lipped smile as GP veers them off course in a different direction, hands tucked into his pockets. Carlos follows, because he's beginning to understand that GP is higher in the Red Bull hierarchy than a race engineer should be.

"A few days ago, out at the hotel,"

GP's tone is still polite and neutral, so Carlos isn't entirely sure why he's getting a sinking pit in his stomach.

"You and Max went up to the pool, correct?"

Carlos remembers that very well. He'd been thinking of it last night in the shower, the way Max had jerked against him, ass frantically pressing into his hips, the desperate gasps of air when Carlos had brought him back above water. It reminds him of watching a dog play with a kitten— poor Max hadn't stood much of a chance.

"Yes."

GP hums, and they're making their way into the training facility, where the gyms are. Carlos has gone down to play tennis with Max a few times, and there's a service elevator tucked away that goes directly up to Max's floor.

"What'd you think of it?"

Carlos feels his nerves getting worse. Somehow, this is a trap.

"It was nice. We maybe roughhoused a bit too harshly, but..."

He trails off as they walk into one of the private pools. He has a bad feeling about this, and it's not getting any better.

The feeling of cool metal against the back of his head freezes him in place. GP isn't next to him anymore— he's behind him, and there's a gun pressed to his head.

"Strip."

His fingers are shaking as he follows the order. He knows better than to argue, even if his blood is cold on his veins.

"Get in the water."

It's freezing. His teeth are chattering the moment he dips a toe in, and he hesitates before a broad palm shoves between his shoulders.

"Shit—!"

It's a complete shock to his system, and he doesn't get a good mouthful of air before he goes under, lungs already burning as he tries to kick to the surface.

Fingers grip into his hair and shove him back down.

A frantic stream of bubbles escapes him as he tries again, but GP's hand on the top of his head doesn't let him get back above water, and his vision is starting to blur. His chest hurts.

GP yanks his head above water, the bright lights in the ceiling stabbing into his brain as he sucks in greedy lungfuls of air, and he's mid inhale when he's dunked again, choking as he thrashes, fingers curling around GP's wrist.

That gets him a reaction— he's hauled back above water, face pressed into the concrete as he feels the cold barrel of the gun dig into the side of his temple.

"Let me make myself,"

GP's voice is still level. He sounds exactly as polite as always.

"Crystal clear for you."

Carlos hears the safety click off, fear lancing through him as he gags, hacking up water the best he can.

"Max is irreplaceable. There is an entire department dedicated to keeping him happy and naive. You, Sainz, are so replaceable it might make me laugh."

Carlos is dazed, spit bubbling past his lips. He's afraid to move.

"Max likes you, and that gives you some protection, but trust me— I have no issues being there for him while he works through your tragic,"

The barrel of the gun digs deeper as he lets out a pained wheeze.

"Untimely death. The same way I was when we got rid of his cunt father."

GP sighs, sliding the gun from the side of his temple around to his forehead.

"You're lucky Christian thinks you're good for Max. If it was up to me, I would have dumped your body by now. But you,"

He sounds disgusted, neutral mask cracking.

"Get a second chance to prove yourself."

Carlos is trembling, eyes squeezed shut as the gun disappears, before he's violently dunked back underwater. The rush of water into his mouth and nose has him gargling, panicked. GP might really kill him here, might pass it off as an unfortunate accident—

When he's hauled out of the water again, GP drags him entirely back up onto the concrete. He's crouched near Carlos' head, gun hanging casually from his fingers are Carlos coughs and gags, nausea crawling up his throat.

Water splatters onto the concrete from his nose and brows, and he's shivering. He feels distant from himself, mind floating away from his body.

GP runs his hand gently through Carlos' soaked hair, thumb brushing deceptively soft across his forehead.

"You will never do that to Max again. You're here because he likes you, which means you do whatever he wants, not whatever you want. Red Bull doesn't appreciate damage to their things, and I promise you that I appreciate it even less. If I find so much as a bruise on him again..."

GP leaves the threat unfinished as Carlos struggles to get his breathing back under control.

"Sorry, I'm—"

He pauses to gag, spit and water dripping onto the concrete as his stomach revolts.

"It won't happen again, I won't— I'll never do it again."

GP hums, standing from his crouch.

"That's right. You'll be nice and sweet, because that's the only thing Max wants from you. He's gentle like that. He deserves it."

Carlos dry heaves as GP turns on his heel. Surely he's not going to leave him here, not like this—

"And Carlos? I have no issues getting you replaced, so try and at least earn your position here."

The truth of it settles hard into his gut. GP is right, that Red Bull could get rid of him. Just because Max is fond of him— Max was fond of his father as well, misguided as it was. Red Bull has no problems overriding what Max claims to want if they think it's in his best interest.

Carlos needs to get with the program.

Another violent shiver passes through him, and he squeezes his eyes shut as tears drip across his waterline. He needs to be better, to do better. No bruises, no harm— if Max wants to roughhouse it has to be the mildest puppy play, and Carlos needs to always be thinking about him.

Which means he needs to clean up and look presentable before he goes to see Max again.

------

They're in Max's factory flat when Carlos hears the door beep pleasantly, a sign that someone had badged into the entryway. Max is passed out on his chest, and he doesn't think it's entirely natural sleep, but it's not his place to think about that. Soft breaths puff against the side of his neck, and their ankles are tangled together at the end of the couch.

There's golf playing on the TV, because Carlos isn't going to move Max, which means he's stuck here until he wakes back up.

GP steps into the living room, and Carlos shrinks under his gaze, arms curling around Max's waist protectively. He's doing better, they can't take him away, not now—

"Relax, Carlos. You'll wake him up."

Carlos doubts that, but he relaxes his grip anyways, because GP is the ultimate authority when it comes to Max.

He eyes the older man warily, unsure why he's here, but GP crosses the room quietly, gently threading his fingers in Max's hair.

GP's expression softens, and Carlos is again struck with the assurance that he really does love Max, the way the whole team loves Max, in a way that's slightly tilted and unsettling. The way that Carlos is learning to love Max.

He'll take it to his grave, but it's easier to find his place when he thinks of Max like a thing. Red Bull's prized thing that they let Carlos carry around and spend time with, and it's his job to make sure the thing is shiny and happy and never has any dents or blemishes.

Max isn't a person— he's Red Bull's. Carlos is lucky enough to be part of Red Bull, which means Max also belongs to him, and he certainly wouldn't want anything happening to one of his things.

GP speaks, voice soft.

"You've been doing much better, Carlos."

It's a weight off of his shoulders. He's been sleeping rough, woken up in the night in a cold sweat, convinced he's drowning. Having Max in the bed helps— he's perfectly content to sleepily straddle Carlos' thigh and settle on top of him, like a weighted blanket.

"Thank you."

GP flashes him a quick grin as his thumb brushes at the edge of Max's jaw before pulling away, straightening up.

"Keep at it."

Carlos nods, relieved as GP leaves the flat.

Keeping at it is the only option he has.

#ficlet #darkbull verse #gp's revenge #carlos is terrified of that man

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oddlydescriptive · 2 months ago

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Reset, Chapter Sixteen

Series Masterlist

════════════════════ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══════════════════

It’s not even a busy morning.

No press. No track time. No simulation schedule hanging over your head. Just a quiet kind of factory day- the kind that almost tricks you into thinking this job is normal.

You pull your door closed behind you with a soft click, the second-floor dorm hallway half-lit in the way Milton Keynes always is this early. Gray light through narrow windows. The hush of coffee brewing somewhere in the distance.

You glance down at the clipboard in your hand- notes, updates, nothing urgent- and step toward the terrace that lines the upstairs dorms. You’re barely awake. Hair not exactly styled, just swept up in a claw. Wide leg jeans that suit your age more than your role. A team polo you pulled out of the designated not-clean-but-not-dirty chair in your room.

Just a normal morning.

And then you see him.

Danny Ricciardo.

Right below you, in the open stairwell where the lobby meets the meeting rooms. Standing there like he’s always belonged. Like he hasn’t just changed the chemical makeup of your morning by existing in your field of vision.

You freeze.

Not because you’re nervous. Not because you’re panicking. Not exactly.

It hits you like a silent echo- how close it was. How this whole thing almost unraveled without warning. Like realizing your rearview is filled with the aftermath of a crash you somehow missed by inches while you were doing your makeup in the mirror.

You’d known the names floating around- of course you had. You’d studied the landscape like a battlefield. Watched the rumor mills spin up smoke and shadow.

Because you knew, of course. Everyone knew. The whispers were loud in the hallway: that big names were still unsigned. That teams were taking meetings in side rooms and sending polite feelers to anyone with a name and a pulse. That the paddock doesn’t sleep- and monogamy isn’t owed to drivers. Especially not to drivers like you.

That’s why you wrote your contract like a war plan. The minimum salary. The forfeited sponsorships. That humiliating seven-million threshold handed over like a blood tithe just to guarantee your place on the starting grid. Every line item cut with one thought in mind- make yourself the obvious choice. Make yourself cheaper than the next best name.

And now, that name is standing ten feet away. Laughing.

You grip the rail. Just for a second. Because your heart’s doing that weird thing it does when adrenaline hits late. After the danger’s passed. When it’s just you, standing in the wreckage that didn’t happen.

Reserve contract. Has to be. It’s all that’s left. You suddenly feel every inch of the reality you’re standing in. Your contract had felt brilliant at the time. Ruthless. Efficient. And now, with Danny here- smiling like the sun- it feels like maybe it was just barely enough. Like if you’d hesitated. Blinked. Taken one extra breath. He’d be in the seat. And you wouldn’t. And you don’t know what about that hits first. The pressure or the shame.

He’s here. In the building. On the books. And if you’re right, his name now sits directly behind yours on the team hierarchy. Not just metaphorically. Literally. And that means the pressure to stay ahead- the pressure to deserve being ahead- just turned lethal.

Pressure, because now there’s a man with wins under his belt and charm for days seated just behind you on the roster. And shame, because- fuck- you like Danny. You’ve liked him since the days you had less than 500 instagram followers. As a driver. As a presence. As someone who made the sport seem lighter, once. And now you like him as a person. What little you know of him, anyway.

And you’re not proud of this, but a part of you wonders if he resents you. If he was eyeing the seat you now occupy. If he was waiting for the call you got. He must’ve been, right?

Because you know how this game works.

You’ve spent your entire adult life studying it like a second religion. No one just… sits out. Not someone like Danny Ricciardo. Not someone with the record, the name, the fans. He didn’t come back into the Red Bull ecosystem just for photo ops and test laps. He was waiting. Watching. Poised in the wings for someone to blink.

And for one horrifying moment, you think- what if he wasn’t waiting for someone. What if he was waiting for you specifically. To fail. To flinch. To fall just short. What if your seat was his backup plan?

And you know that shouldn’t matter. But it does. Because he’s Danny fucking Ricciardo. And you’re the girl who got signed onto what you’re pretty certain was the cheapest contract of the year.

You swallow hard. Try to bury the thought. But it’s like trying to swallow glass. The pressure builds in your chest- slow and mean and impossible to name. A compound emotion. Embarrassment and fear and defiance all braided together so tight they could strangle you.

You shift your weight. Adjust the sleeve of your jacket. The smile is already sliding into place before he even notices you. Not a real one. Not reight now. More like a brace. Something to soften whatever comes next. To protect against the possibility that when he does see you, the first thing in his eyes is regret. Or worse- disappointment.

Because that’s the sickest thought of all, the one you don’t dare say out loud: What if he thinks you don’t deserve it? What if he’s right?

And then-

Danny glances up. Catches you.And the entire moment shatters. He lights up like it’s a goddamn Pixar movie. Bright, unfiltered, delighted. Like someone’s plugged him into a socket. “There she is!” he shouts, like this is a reunion and not the second time you’ve spoken in your life.

You blink. Half-smile. “Morning.”

Danny cups a hand around his mouth. “You gonna come say hi, or do I need to find a ladder?”

You exhale. You don’t want to laugh. But you do, just a little. You make your way down the stairs, heartbeat still slightly off-tempo, half-expecting the awkward twist that usually comes with this kind of moment- something territorial or weird or backhanded.

But Danny? Danny grins like the sight of you just made his day. “Didn’t think I’d see you here this early,” he says, slouching comfortably against the wall like this is all casual. “Fuck me, I didn’t even think I’d see me here this early.”

You don’t tell him 8:30 a.m. is typically about the time you pause your real job and start fucking around with the development team. Just… play it cool. “Factory day,” you say. “You?”

He shrugs, all loose limbs and mischief. “Same. Bit of onboarding. Bit of PR nonsense. Got to sign my name under the rules they only made because of me. You know. Legacy stuff.” He’s wearing Red Bull gear, but it looks lived-in on him already. Like the team doesn’t weigh him down. Like he fits here in a way you’re still learning to.

That pulls a quiet laugh from you. “Did you get your own PowerPoint slide?”

“Oh yeah. Slide three. Big photo. Caption said ‘Don’t.’”

You huff once. “That probably tracks.” Danny smiles at that- wide and uncomplicated. Like he’s actually glad to be talking to you. You’re still trying to find the edges of that. Of him.

“How’s it going?” he asks. “Since the big news?”

You shrug. “Busy.”

“Good busy?”

You pause. “Overwhelming busy.” He hums in understanding, doesn’t push. Just sips his coffee. For a beat, neither of you speak. You could leave. Say you’ve got sim. But you don’t. Not yet. “You’re- what, reserve and media?” you ask.

“Yeah. Chief Vibes Officer.” He grins, teeth flashing, and tilts his head. “You’re not doing press?”

You shake your head. “Not until after lunch. Thought I’d sit in on some development meetings.”

Danny makes a face like he’s genuinely impressed. “God, I don’t miss those.”

You huff a quiet laugh. “Yeah, well, I don’t mind. They’re interesting. Besides, I’m still in my earn your keep phase.”

“You say that like it ends.” You glance sideways, a little surprised by the honesty in it. But it’s not bitter. Just... real. From someone who knows. His voice isn’t heavy, not exactly. But there’s something buried under the words- fatigue, maybe. Or memory. A flicker of something unspoken.

And then, like he’s shaking it off, he claps his hands together once- sharp enough to break whatever thread had started to pull taut between you. “Hey, at least Italy has the better food between the factories.”

You snort. “Fuck, I hope so. I already miss the food in Brazil. Seasoned.”

Danny groans like it’s physically painful. “Right? I really need to stop signing for all these British teams. I would consider defecting for some good fucking food.”

You lift a brow. “You defecting to Ferrari?”

“I said defecting, not self-sabotaging.”

You laugh, and the last of the tension melts off your spine. Whatever pressure you'd built in your chest- about him, about the seat, about what you thought he might think of you- starts to loosen, piece by piece.

And Danny? He just smiles again, a little more quietly this time. "Trust me," he says, tone gentler now, like it's meant to land somewhere between reassurance and promise. "You're gonna be just fine."

He stretches, arms overhead with a theatrical groan like he’s been standing for hours instead of minutes. “Well,” he says, checking the time on his watch like it has anywhere to be, “I should probably go pretend I care about lighting angles and camera placement.”

There’s something a little boyish about the way he moves- light on his feet, like he’s just breezing through life. You wonder what it’s like to carry a career like his and still manage to smile like that. To be adored, displaced, recalled, and still show up to the factory like the air doesn’t feel different now.

You step toward the other hallway, toward the quieter, secure wing where the development offices live, but pause when he calls out again.

“Hey,” he says, a little more offhand this time. “You staying in for lunch, or…?”

You blink. “Probably? Why?”

He shrugs. “Dunno. If we’re both stuck here, maybe we could- ” He hesitates, not quite finishing the thought, then picks it back up like it wasn’t supposed to matter. “Grab food. Or hang out after. Whatever works.”

There’s a pause. Not long, but enough for something warm to bloom in your chest. Confused. Cautious. Curious.

Your heart doesn’t exactly leap. It just shifts. A small flicker, like the hallway lights adjusting overhead- brightening half a stop without explanation. Something about the offer lands in you sideways. Not with suspicion. Just… disbelief.

You’ve been scraping by for so long- focused, feral, alone in the way ambition often is- that it takes a beat too long to recognize the shape of it. Human interest. Social warmth. An invitation that doesn’t come with a contract or a press schedule or a steering wheel. Just... Danny. With a coffee in one hand and a casual offer in the other. You realize, with something like awe, that this might be the first time a fellow driver- someone with history, with wins, with fans and sponsors and goddamn lore- has looked at you and offered company without calculation.

You nod before you’ve really thought about it. “Yeah. Sure. If timing works.”

Your voice sounds normal, you think. Hopefully. It doesn’t betray the small chaos behind your ribs. Because what the hell do you even say to that? Is this what people do? Just… ask? There’s a theory somewhere in your head about how to make friends on the grid. Something about shared flights and coffee orders and long-haul bonding. But theory and practice don’t always match.

Still. You’re not an idiot.

You know what it feels like when someone doesn’t want you around. Max made a fucking science of it. So whatever this is- whatever Danny is offering- it feels… like the opposite. And that’s almost too much to process at once.

Danny flashes that easy grin again, quick and blinding. “Cool. I’ll find ya. See ya round, gr-” He stops in the middle of his sentence, looks like he’s thinking for a half a beat- if you didn’t know better, you’d think he’d forgotten your name.

You just look at him back. “What?”

Danny shrugs and steps back a smidge. “Nothin’. Just gonna have to find something to call ya. Grid barbie doesn’t quite fit. Sounds a bit sexist, no? Don’t you worry, it’ll come to me. Anyways-” And just like that, he’s gone- walking backward for a few steps like he’s trying to make you laugh again, then turning down the hall with a lazy wave, whistling something you don’t recognize. You’re left standing in the same spot, clipboard tucked under your arm, pulse just slightly irregular in a way that doesn’t feel like stress. Not really. Just… disorientation.

Because what even was that?

He wasn’t flirting. That wasn’t flirting. You’ve had flirting. You’ve had sponsorship flirting and juvenile flirting and grown-up flirting and transactional, barbed wire flirting from someone who used to wrap your braid around his fist in bed. That wasn’t this.

This was-

God, was that him trying to be friends?

You stare at the space he left behind for a second longer than necessary. You feel- God, it’s so stupid- but you feel almost giddy. Not like a crush. Not really. More like someone cracked open a window in a house that’s been closed for months. The air smells different now. Better. Freer. Hopeful, in a way that doesn’t have teeth.

You shake your head once, trying to collect yourself, and turn toward the dev wing. You breathe out. Light. Uneven. Not quite a laugh, but close. It doesn’t mean anything. Not really. Just lunch. Just company. Just a man who seems pathologically incapable of treating the world like it’s sharp.

════════════════════ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══════════════════

The dev meeting wraps twenty minutes early- an honest-to-God miracle in a room full of engineers who usually treat meeting end times like polite suggestions. You shake a few hands, nod through a couple of quick debriefs, and find yourself drifting.

You don’t head straight back to your dorm. Don’t even head toward the sim bays like muscle memory usually dictates. Instead, your feet angle toward the media wing- just to see. Just to wander. You’re curious, so what? Who wouldn’t be?

The door’s open when you get there, spilling light and laughter into the hallway like someone left a window cracked. You pause in the entryway, half-shadowed behind a corner, and watch.

Danny Ricciardo is on camera- mid-segment, clearly- and putting on an absolute fucking masterclass in media control. He’s sitting on a high stool in the center of the frame, arms folded in mock-serious concentration, brows furrowed in exaggerated focus.

The screen behind him flashes:

“DANIEL RICCIARDO: AUTOCOMPLETE INTERVIEW” We let Google finish the question… he has to answer it.

The current prompt glows across the screen: “Does Daniel Ricciardo…”

He clicks the next reveal.

“…actually own a winery?”

Danny gasps, hands over his heart like he’s just been outed on national television. “Who told you,” he deadpans. “Was it Max? I knew he couldn’t keep a secret.”

Off-screen, the crew laughs. Danny leans forward, palms braced on his knees now, like he’s letting everyone in on the joke. “Okay, sort of. Vineyard, no. Label, yes. By which I mean I drank an entire bottle of red once and said, ‘I could totally do this.’ Then I found someone a lot better at making wine than me. So here we are.”

The room crackles with laughter.

And God- he’s good at this. So good. Like the camera isn’t even there. Like being adored is just his default state. The energy he radiates isn’t smug, it’s symphonic- timed, practiced, pitch-perfect. Confident without taking up all the oxygen. Self-deprecating without selling himself short. You’ve seen so many people, drivers or otherwise, try to thread that needle and end up strangling their entire personality in the process. But not Danny.

Danny makes it look easy. Like the whole press junket is a party he’s hosting, and the rest of you are just lucky to be invited.

You lean against the doorway, out of sight, arms crossed, biting back a grin.

Another question pops up on the screen behind him. “Is Daniel Ricciardo…”

He smirks. “Dangerous.”

“…driving for McLaren 2023?”

Danny gasps again, mock betrayal in his voice. “Wow. Google really doesn’t keep up, huh?” He shakes his head. “Nope. I ghosted them. Swiped left. Got back together with my ex. You know how it is.”

He says it with such lightness, like the thing that nearly derailed his career is just a punchline now. Like he’s taken the weight of it and cracked it open to let everyone see it’s hollow. You wonder how much practice that took. You wonder if it ever hurts.

And then-

He sees you.

Danny’s whole face lights up, brighter than it already was- which should be impossible, and yet. “Hey! Look who it is!” He gestures, voice still warm, still very much on. “Come here!”

You blink, startled. Point to yourself like me? But he’s already nodding, waving you into frame. “C’mon, c’mon,” he says. “You gotta help me out. I need backup.”

It’s still filming. You know that. You feel the familiar click of the PR instinct sliding into place- shoulders back, smile calibrated, voice dialed to somewhere between approachable and sharp. You step into the light, ponytail bobbing, eyes wide and charming.

“Morning,” you say, like you haven’t been standing off-camera for three minutes analyzing his social strategy like it’s your second job. “Is this a self-roast session or an interview?”

Danny mock-gasps. “Both. Welcome to Red Bull. Sit down. Suffer with me.”

The crew laughs again, and someone rolls a second stool into frame. You take it, legs crossed, posture clean. The screen refreshes.

“Daniel Ricciardo how many…”

Danny holds out his hands. “Please let it be ‘race wins.’”

“…tattoos?”

You huff a quiet laugh. “You’ve got a few, huh?”

“Oh, this one is fun.” He starts holding his fingers up, mouthing the numbers out to himself like even he’s lost track. He tugs his shirt collar down just enough to flash a small one on the tawny stretch across the top of his pec, like he’s checking that yep, still there.

You fake a scandalized expression. “This is family programming, Ricciardo.”

Danny shrugs, drops his shirt. “I ran out of fingers. They can Google it. It’s what got us here.”

The next card loads.

“Does Daniel Ricciardo like…”

He reads the first word, then glances sideways at you. “Oh no. I’m scared.”

“…pineapple on pizza?”

You snort before he even answers.

Danny places both hands over his heart. “God, this question is a trap. I did such a good job of not actually answering this last time.”

You lean into him, into the camera. “There’s a right answer here. Remember, you’re technically half-owned by an Italian team next season. Tread lightly.”

“I knew this was a test.” Danny shifts, eyebrows raised. “Okay. Fine. Yes. On occasion. But- hear me out- it should have a little pizzazz. Like a chili oil drizzle or gorgonzola instead of regular cheese.”

You nod slowly, solemnly. “Acceptable.”

And just like that, the rhythm clicks. You can feel it. The give-and-take, the volley. You’ve done media before. You’ve done it well. But it’s rare- so rare- to be in the room with someone who matches the pitch without overpowering it. Someone who knows how to throw the spotlight and share it.

You’re still half-analyzing the mechanics of it when the crew resets the card deck. The energy in the room has shifted. Brighter. Looser. Like the two of you cracked something open without even trying.

Danny glances your way, a touch more real this time. Less of the act. Just him. “You’re pretty good at this.”

You flash a grin. “I’ve had practice.”

He leans back, clearly pleased. “Remind me to drag you into all my media slots. This is way more fun with a co-conspirator.” You don’t say anything. Just laugh. But something about the word co-conspirator sticks in your chest longer than it should.

The cameras cut. Someone says, “Good energy, that was perfect,” and you smile, shake a few hands, make your thank-yous sound casual, your drop-in sound planned. But the minute you step off the raised platform and out of the light, Danny’s at your side again- just as bright, but realer now, a little more dialed down.

“So,” he says, like it’s been an open question all morning. “You still up for lunch?”

You blink, mildly surprised he remembered. Or that he meant it. “Yeah. Sure.”

“Cool,” he says, like that’s that. “C’mon. I’ve got a spot.”

You fall into step beside him, back through the factory’s front doors and out into the frigid slap of November in Milton Keynes. The wind’s cutting today- blunt and rude- and you shove your hands in your jacket pockets before your fingers go numb.

Danny seems unfazed. Practically bounces as he walks, hood up but otherwise loose-limbed and grinning like he knows something good’s ahead. He keeps getting about two steps ahead before he pauses, realizes you’re behind, and circles back like a dog on a lead.

You squint sideways. “You’ve got a spot?”

“Yeah.” He nods, steps landing in rhythm against the damp pavement. “Used to go all the time when I worked here. Haven’t been back since like… 2018? Been a minute.”

Your mind races. A spot. What the hell does that mean in Danny Ricciardo terms?

Because sure, he started out normal. You know the story. Western Sydney. Grit, hustle, charm. But that was a decade ago. Since then, it’s been yachts and private jets and red carpet appearances and wine labels. And sure, he acts down to earth- seems like someone you could talk shit with at a gas station- but it’s easy for people to act like whoever they want if they haven’t touched their own bank account in six years.

And now you’re just walking, cold air clawing at your cheeks, and you realize you’re spiraling over lunch. Over lunch. Because you have no idea where this man is taking you. And more importantly, how much it’s going to cost.

You’re not like… broke-broke. Not totally, anymore, at least. But your contract’s so backloaded it may as well be theoretical. You still owe more to your parents for Indy than an entire year’s salary of development work. And after rent, groceries, and trying to look remotely camera-ready without being on a Red Bull-grade salary? You’re not exactly in blow fifty on lunch without heart palpitations territory. Much less a hundred.

You could just ask. But somehow, what’s the price range on your lunch spot doesn’t quite feel like the vibe. Like you might ruin it all by not seeming cool enough.

You follow him around the corner, past the long block of factory units and into the side street you didn’t even know existed- where the pavement dips and the air smells faintly of diesel and something fried.

And then you see it.

A kebab cart. With an old blue canopy, a propane tank bungeed to the frame, and a handwritten sign taped to the side that says Cash Only.

You blink. Danny lights up like Christmas. “Yes!” he shouts, half-jogging the last few steps. “He’s still here!” The guy behind the cart looks up and blinks like he’s seeing a ghost. Then breaks into a grin.

“Ricciardo?” the man says, voice tinged with a thick Midlands accent.

Danny throws his arms wide. “Back from the dead, mate.”

They clasp hands over the steaming grill like it’s a reunion episode. You hang back for a second, stunned. Not at the food- you love a good cart- but at how happy he looks. Like this is the best part of his day.

He turns to you mid-laugh. “You good with lamb?”

“Uh- yeah, totally.”

“Two lamb wraps!” Danny calls, slapping the cart like it’s sacred.

You go to pull your card out of your pocket, but he waves you off. “Don’t even think about it.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I owe you for the pineapple-on-pizza solidarity. Risky take where you’re going,” he says, deadpan. You try to argue, but the vendor’s already handing over two warm foil bundles and Danny’s already crumpling a few bills into the guys hand. He grabs two Cokes from the little cooler and nods toward a tiny table with mismatched plastic chairs shoved into the sidewalk.

You sit.

And it’s… warm. Not the air- God, no, it’s freezing- but the vibe. The foil-wrapped kebab is glorious, greasy perfection, and Danny immediately has sauce on his cheek. He doesn’t notice. You don’t tell him.

“Okay,” he says, through a mouthful, “but be honest. You thought I was taking you somewhere fancy.”

You pause, chewing. “I considered it.”

He laughs. “I knew it. You were spiraling.”

“I was preparing,” you correct, trying not to grin. “Like a rational adult with a questionable salary-to-lifestyle ratio.”

He snorts. “Hollywood, you really thought I was gonna drag you to some overpriced bistro for lunch?”

You stop mid-bite. “What?”

Danny wipes his hands on a napkin, leans back, smug. “Hollywood,” he says again, like it’s a fact. A label. A discovery. “That’s what I’m calling you.”

You narrow your eyes at him. “…Why?”

He ticks off fingers as he goes. “You’re American. You’re beautiful. You’re great on camera. You’ve got that whole flair-for-the-dramatic thing. And- ”

You cut in, immediate. “Hold on- dramatic?”

He blinks, caught mid-thought. “What?”

“You said I’ve got flair for the dramatic,” you say, pointing at him with a slightly greasy finger and barrel past the rest like you didn’t hear it- like the word beautiful didn’t just casually detonate in Danny Ricciardo's mouth like it was no big deal. “Define that. Because that’s a loaded fucking phrase, Ricciardo.”

Danny blinks at you, amused. “Oh, you know. The whole vibe.”

“No,” you say flatly. “Spell it out. What vibe.”

He grins. “Theatrical. Cinematic. Bit of a main character thing going on.”

You tilt your head. “And that’s dramatic?”

He laughs, surprised and delighted. “That right there. See? That tone? Case in point.”

You sit back, arms crossed. “Calling me dramatic is dramatic.”

Danny just grins harder and stampedes ahead in the conversation, completely unbothered. Like he’s got something he just can’t wait to say. “...And…Christian told me you walked up to Helmut with a contract. In the middle of a party. In a cowboy hat.”

You freeze for half a second, because, fuck, that is exactly what you did. Then exhale sharply through your nose and roll your eyes so hard you physically tip your head back like a teenage girl. “Jesus Christ. He told you that?”

He laughs. “You did, didn’t you?”

You lift your head slowly, eyes half-lidded. “It wasn’t- ” You stop, think better of it, and shake your head. “You know what? Doesn’t matter.”

Danny leans in, practically beaming. “That’s a yes.”

You jab a finger toward him. “I am not confirming anything.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he says. “You’re stuck with it. The hat, the entrance, the eyes. Hollywood.”

You lift your head, squinting at him. “You know nicknames are supposed to be collaborative, right?”

Danny grins. “Nope. Not taking suggestions.”

You shake your head, but it’s helpless. He’s already taken the name and run with it, and somehow it doesn’t feel mocking. It feels… affectionate. Light. Like being given something instead of having something taken.

And as you both dig back into your food, sitting there in the brittle, biting cold with your Cokes sweating on the plastic table, you feel it again- that giddy, unfamiliar warmth.

A friend. Yeah. You and Danny Ric are friends.

════════════════════ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══════════════════

Series Masterlist

A/N: GUYS GUYS GUYS I have the next chapter ready for tmmrw and we are GOING places. Remember allllll those chpaters ago how this story started? WE ARE ALMOST THERE.

Also sorry for the single chapter last week, a little overwhelmed with all the details I had to coordinate and just life in general, but I am generally doing well. Shameless pandering warning: I cannot stress this enough, but the comments, asks, messages etc are what keep me going. Don't get me wrong I love to see others liking and interacting with the story silently, but people giving enough of a shit to write something about what they think is the highest compliment I can receive. And it's free. I give you hours and days and weeks (and months and years) of my time, and I really, really appreciate when you give me just a few minutes of yours.

#f1 #max verstappen #max verstappen x reader #f1 x reader #formula one #f1 fanfic #max verstappen x y/n #max verstappen x you #mv1 fic #mv1 x reader #mv33 #mv1 #max verstappen x female oc #max vertsappen fic #formula 1 x you #formula 1 x reader #formula 1

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eyelambspider · 9 months ago

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𝟎𝟐. 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐩𝐲𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐚 || 𝐊ö𝐧𝐢𝐠

Day Two of Kink/Creeptober! Here is a list of my prompts & event terms!

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 : könig x gn!reader 𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲 : The two of you were sent in the dead of night to check up on a supposedly vacated enemy facility. Strange reports and sightings of men had worried KorTac, they couldn't afford to have someone occupy the space. Turns out, the scary Colonel hates 'supernatural' stuff. 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 : 2.4 k 𝐚/𝐧 : shane & ryan duo ifykyk 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 : fluff? funny/comedy?, horror, mentions of guns, swearing, reader is sarcastic, cryptid (mothman appearance :)

𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐒𝐎𝐎 𝐁𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆.

You groaned softly. An exaggerated sound that made the Colonel hit your shoulder with the butt of his gun.

"Keep quiet, there may be enemies," he scolded you quietly, having to glance down at you with those disapproving eyes of his. The two of you had just barely touched the door and you were already complaining.

"This fucking sucks and you know it," you whispered back harshly. The two of you chose a respective side of the metal door to stand against. Lowering your guns only for a moment to finally lower the night vision goggles onto your faces.

König only grumbled again, muttering curses and German under his breath like he liked to do when you pissed him off. A sound that made you huff in response to him.

He acted like you were the irrational one. But the fact was: Every thermal scan of the facility reported nothing. And the old building was monitored day and night since local reports came in of 'shadows in the window'. No one on watch duty reported seeing anyone or anything come in or out of the doors. Any of them.

This was bullshit. It just sounded like a squatter to you, but the Austrian Colonel—who you had been paired with to double check the situation personally—was all protocol.

"Don't," he warned, turning his head towards you and pointing a gloved finger His night vision goggles already peering back at you through the darkness. You didn't even need to say it for him to know what you were thinking.

So you didn't, waving your hands up in sarcastic surrendering gesture, strapping your own goggles to your head with a huff. Waiting for him to take the lead then.

So he did, opening the metal door quietly. An actual wonder for how rusted the hinges were. You had to give it to him at least- König was a good fucking soldier. Just... this whole mission felt like a damned excessive ghost chase. Yes, there could be enemy presence back in the facility... but there was a better chance of seeing a rat scurrying around.

König led the way through the darkness, your eyes on the green light casted from his back. The night vision working perfectly. Watching his back and peering around for any sign of life.

The facility was some sort of old textile factory, or you supposed, was one back in the industrial era.

The roof was beginning to cave in, water dripping over concrete and metal railings, rusting everything in its path. Long ivy's crawling up the walls. Only remnants of dust and the occasional scrap of fabric had been left since KorTac had cleared it out over a year ago. It was a wonder you didn't see some sort of zombie wandering around making little clicking noises.

An amused sound slipped from your lips and König stopped dead in his tracks in front of you. Standing up straight, merely glancing over his shoulder in warning. The green glint of his goggles giving you a look that said 'Keep quiet.'

Yeah, yeah. You waved his concern off. There was a job to do despite protests.

The two of you continued on quietly, stalking through the darkness, sweeping the first floor with little to no problems. Guns held close, strapped to your vests and held tightly. The green ghoulish glow of your visor reflecting everything back to you in an eerie way. But nothing seemed out of place. No activity, not even a sound besides the crystal clear clink of water dripping from somewhere overhead.

König reached a hand up to his right ear, speaking quietly into his ear piece. "First floor clear." His voice, echoed softly into your own comm link.

"Continue to secure the building," a tired voice spoke back from the base. Operators watching the small sweep from the cameras on the left side of both of your helmets. Seeing what you both saw, hearing nothing except the staticky feedback through their screens.

Protocol.

With the first floor cleared, the second one seemed like it would go without a hitch too. There was no sound except the soft huffs of your breathing and the rustling of military uniforms as you both continued down the decrepit hallways. Up the rickety metal stairs, the two of you cringing as it groaned and tapped under the weight. Boots on metal, guns clutched a bit closer now that the two of you were making noise. Just a little bit more alert than a few seconds prior.

It was like the air had suddenly changed. No shift that the operators back at base could see, but König could feel it on his skin. Goosebumps prickling up his pale neck as he finally reached the crest of the staircase.

When he stopped, you waited patiently for the Colonel to move. Through the visor, all you could see was him standing there, clutching his gun and looking acute around as if something was wrong. Nothing you could tell though, no matter how much you tried to follow his eyes.

Left to right, there was only the pitch black hallways filled with faded paperwork and offices. It was so quiet in fact, you could probably hear a pin drop from down the hall.

"Colonel," you whispered almost imperceptibly, waiting for his move.

He seemed to tense as soon as the sound left your mouth, but he stayed firm. Only able to see his back and the hand he lifted up, finally signaling you to keep following him with a curt wave.

You got out of the stairwell, the pair of you moving more cautiously. The air swarming with uncertainty as König stopped at the corner, peaking around just to tense up at what he saw. The sound of his gun clinking in his hands as he squeezed it.

It made you tense too, readying your gun and holding the sight close to your eye.

König didn't say anything, just stood frozen with his back against the wall. His chest rising and falling a bit more obviously than it had been a moment ago.

"Colonel! What is it?" you whispered, almost frustrated. Never in all your years of working with him, had he ever frozen.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" you whispered again, a bit more loudly before he grabbed your bicep to stop you. Squeezing so hard it made you grit your teeth.

If he wasn't going to move, then you were.

You shuffled quickly around him, your side brushing his front as he stood there. And despite him still trying to stop you, you peaked around the corner, gun at the ready.

"What the-?"

There were little flecks of fine... dust? floating around the end of the hallway. Glittering and reflecting back into your visor, green and a bit... odd.

You stepped out from around the corner and began walking curiously towards it. Only a step out before König tried to stop you again. "Halt um Gottes Willen!" he whispered, trying to grasp at you before he stopped, as if the corner had an invisible barrier he would not cross.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" You whispered back, turning to glance over your shoulder at him.

When he had nothing to say, you sighed and continued on without him.

He tried to call out your name to stop you, watching as your form began to go deeper and deeper towards the swirling flecks.

You lowered your gun curiously as the little cloud of dust enveloped you, swirling around from the disturbance. There, on the wall was a dark smear, as if someone had wiped the finest ash over it. You reached a gloved hand out, only to stop when König scolded you again from down the hall.

"Bist du verdammt dumm? Don't you dare touch that!" he ordered, but the quiver in his voice betrayed him.

"Come over here and stop me," you called back, finding yourself smirking at that. "We have a fucking mission," you reminded him. The two of you quietly shouting in the hall now. "Its protocol to sweep the area. Now get your ass over here!" you waved, trying to coax him out.

He couldn't argue and you both knew it. The building had to be checked, and despite his gut telling him otherwise, he rounded the corner and made his way towards you slowly. So tense he seemed to be moving mechanically.

You took your glove off finally and tucked it into your vest, running your fingers through the inky smear. You gasped quietly, rubbing the fine dust between your fingers. It was the softest thing you'd ever felt. And the strange material flaked off your skin, becoming a part of the little cloud that surrounded you.

What the hell was it? Just dust?

König finally came up next to you, watching over your shoulder with the same bad feeling in his stomach.

That's when the soft sound of scuttling startled the both of you.

Your gun shot up and König nearly jumped out of his skin. The two of your looking up in comical sync just in time to watch a shadowy figure crawl along the ceiling and disappear down the corridor in an instant.

"Was zum Teufel!" König yelped, a cold shudder running through his body like lightning.

You kept your aim forward, gun trained now towards the ceiling. The sight only enticing you to take a step further and investigate whatever the fuck that was.

"Stop! What the fuck do you think you're doing?" König was now visibly shaking, not even clutching his rifle anymore, instead reaching out to stop you. There was no doubt he could just throw you over his shoulder and get the two of you out in less than a minute.

"I'm going to clear the area," you said in confidence, like it was the most obvious answer you'd ever given.

The more you moved towards the darkness, the more König tried to stop you, his hands clamping down on your shoulder to swing you around the other way.

"Stop! I said stop! Halt! You damned lunatic!"

"Colonel!" You hissed, stepping towards him before he even had a chance to grab you. "This is a fucking mission, pull yourself together," you reminded him. Yet, he still looked like a damned deer in the headlights, trembling, and too afraid to move in the darkness. Glancing at you with a nervous uncertainty.

Then, he watched as a smirk slowly began to spread over your lips. The green-glow of the night vision making you look more like the imp he envisioned you to be in the moment.

"Colonel? Are you... scared?"

He didn't like your tone, and his grip tightened into a white knuckle grip on his rifle.

He was fucking terrified.

"Come on," you huffed, relaxing as you led the way down the hall, following after the shadowy form. And fuck if König was going to be left alone with that thing roaming around the building.

With you leading the way, the two of you stalked through the next hall. König's breathing was coming out in short puffs, and although it felt like his legs struggled to bend, he followed anxiously. The small flecks in the air getting denser, more frequent the further you went into the building.

The roof was still leaking, but the tip of your gun traced a particular drop. More viscous and stringy than water, dripping down from the ceiling in a long gossamer strand, forming a bubbly puddle on the floor. It-It looked like spit.

Another deep fluttering sound emanated deep from the last room in the hallway. Something clattering to the ground with a resounding boom. Your gun instinctively pointed towards the noise.

"Gott im Himmel erbarme dich..."

The muttered sounds of German had you quickly glancing over your shoulder. König was dead frozen, his gun rattling in his hands, unable to move further, only shaking his head back and forth as if he couldn't believe it.

"Are you... Are you praying?!" You asked quietly, mind torn between disbelief that the man who dominated in warfare was fucking cowering behind you and the animal that was in the room.

You turned to König, putting a hand on his shoulder, your eyes still pointed cautiously towards the door.

"König, you're almost seven foot tall and have the biggest gun I've ever seen in your hands," you began quietly, trying to smack some soft words to reassurance into his head. "You'll be fine."

Even though he nodded, his legs still had that tremor in them.

This was reality, you told yourself, nothing but a fucking raccoon or stupid flock of pigeons fumbling around in the dark. The boogeyman didn't exist.

You lifted a hand to your ear, pressing the piece to speak quietly, relaying back to base. "Going in, hold."

"Copy Bravo."

König couldn't even protest, the words, nothing but German-English gibberish tumbling out of his mouth. Watching in sheer horror as you continued on, his feet moving on their own accord to stand behind you. To afraid to be left behind, too afraid to leave you behind.

Once you made it to the withering doorframe, König held his breath, feeling like icy had shot through his veins as you rounded the corner sharply.

In an instant of horror, your eyes landed on it, shuffling in the corner of the dark office. Fuzzy like a blot of ink, writing against the breeze that hushed through the broken window and picked up the tattered curtains.

Soft kissy sounds came from it, and the thing wrung its neck to glance at you. Green orbs, as big as your head peered back through the night vision goggles locked onto your eyes. Its massive wings, like sails, fluttered like a military drone. Goosebumps lurched down both of your bodies as it dropped from the ceiling and stood up so tall that it hunched to fit the room.

Before you could see anymore, you turned on your heel and ran, grabbing König's arm to get his ass moving. "FUCK THAT!"

Only screams filled the quiet room back at base, the operators watching in collective confusion as the pair of you ran for your lives in a blur of sheer hysteria.

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dreamwritesimagines · 1 year ago

Text

The Eye of the Hurricane [9] - Engagement

A.N: Here’s the new chapter my loves! ❤️ Thank you so much for your wonderful feedback, you made my day! ❤️I hope you’ll like this chapter as well and please don’t forget to tell me what you think! ❤️

Summary: A marriage decision leads to an honest conversation about expectations.

Word Count: 2700

Pairing: MobBoss!Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: Violence, death, guns, crime, blood, explicit language, drinking. This is an AU, friendly reminder that I don’t condone any of the actions depicted on this story and please read with care.

Series Masterlist

For a couple of seconds, he gawked at you in complete silence before he managed to pull himself together.

“You—you’re saying yes?”

“I’m saying yes.”

“Seriously?”

“Please don’t ask me again because I have this feeling that I’ll change my mind if I think about it longer than a second,” you stated and he nodded fervently.

“Right,” he said. “Sure, I…wow. Okay, we’re—we’re getting married then.”

“Don’t say that either, I am not ready to hear it out loud,” you said with a sigh but before he could answer, a soft voice reached you both.

“Bucky?”

He closed his eyes shut for a moment as he scrunched up his face and you turned your head to look at the top of the stairs where a pretty girl in an oversized shirt –his shirt, if you had to guess— was leaning to the steel handrail.

“Hi,” she said. “Um, who are you?”

“His fiancée,” you stated, trying your hardest to ignore the pang of jealousy in your stomach and her eyes widened.

“Oh I didn’t—I didn’t know—”

“Neither did I when I woke up today,” you said with a click of your tongue. “Can you leave us please?”

“Sure!” she said as she rushed back to what you could only assume was the bedroom and Bucky shot you an apologetic look.

“Charm I’m sorry, if I knew…”

You walked past him, looking around the huge living room. Even you had to admit it looked incredibly beautiful and sleek, and the clear view of the city that you could see from the floor-to-ceiling windows was absolutely breathtaking. It was exactly what you would come up with if someone asked you what Bucky's apartment would look like; luxurious yet dark.

It didn’t mean you would tell him that though.

“I’m not moving in here by the way, this place is a dump,” you forced yourself to say, “If I wanted industrial interior, I’d buy myself a factory.”

“Right, sure—”

“That could be a fun project though,” you muttered more to yourself as the girl appeared at the top of the stairs again, and rushed downstairs, grabbing her coat off the rack.

“Sorry again,” she said without looking you in the eye and walked out of the apartment, and you heaved a deep sigh.

“None of this will be happening from now on by the way,” Bucky said in a haste and you rolled your eyes, then turned around to look at him.

“I don’t care about you enough to have that conversation with you,” you said. “I don’t give a fuck who you fuck, but you’re not going to make me look like an idiot in front of other people so when it inevitably happens, you’ll keep it a secret.”

“You don’t have to worry about that at all,” he said, his voice firm and you crossed your arms.

“So then,” you said. “I feel like we should both talk about the conditions before taking it to the families and the lawyers and everything.”

“I’m good with your conditions,” he said and you shot him a glare.

“You don’t even know my conditions.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

You kept your eyes on him, a slight frown pulling your brows together before you took a deep breath and took off your coat to throw it over the couch.

“Either way, I think we should talk about it,” you insisted and leaned on your hip. “So do you have actual booze in here or are you going to pull out a homemade barrel or something?”

He smiled slightly.

“Take a seat sweetheart,” he said. “I’ll bring the wine.”

“And put a shirt on!” you said as you made your way to the table, ignoring the way your heart skipped a beat. “This is a business deal, honestly. There has to be a dress code.”

When Bucky came to the table, he did in fact have his shirt on and he was carrying a bottle of wine with two glasses. He filled one and handed it to you, then filled his own and sat down. You took a sip, pleasantly surprised at the taste and lowered your glass, leaning back.

“Alright,” he said. “Tell me your conditions.”

You swirled the wine in your glass, deep in thought.

“Well first of all, we need to have a time table,” you said. “I don’t want to stay married to you for the rest of my life, and I’m pretty sure you share the sentiment.”

A small smile twitched the corners of his lips but he didn’t comment on it.

“But we can’t get a divorce as soon as I take over because that will lead to a lot of questions and I won’t have the time for distractions, the taking over process is chaotic enough,” you said. “I can’t be making any mistakes, especially considering I already have a rival.”

“Calling Ian a rival makes him sound more important than he actually is,” Bucky commented. “But I agree. We already know some of the families can disagree with this idea.”

“Stark?” you asked and he nodded.

“At least,” he said. “We have Steve and Sam’s support, my family and your family of course, but the rest…”

“You think Romanoff would disagree?”

Bucky thought for a moment.

“Probably, but I can talk to Nat I think,” he said. “She’d hear me out.”

“Barton?”

“Barton is not going to do anything Nat disagrees with,” he said. “If we have Nat, we have Clint.”

“So that leaves us Stark,” you said, pursing your lips. “Who talks to him, you or me?”

He shot you an apologetic look.

“I mean we may try to sell it as love but at the end of the day, everyone will think about the business side of things,” he said. “It could be better if your father talked to him actually. He already dislikes me enough, and we’re changing the power balance in the city by doing this.”

“Alright,” you said. “My dad could do that.”

“Next?”

“I want your word that I will be included in everything,” you said. “None of the bullshit the earlier generation pulled. I will be in every meeting and I will be included in every single decision.”

He nodded. “Yeah, figured as much.”

“I mean it Bucky,” you said, looking him in the eye. “We will be equals completely.”

“We will be,” he assured you. “I swear on my honor.”

“And I’m not changing my surname.”

He threw his head back. “Charm…”

“Out of question.”

“Charm if I’m going to get you into those meetings, you need to have my surname,” he insisted. “You know the rules. We need to give them an actual reason if you can’t be there as an heir.”

You thought for a moment and cleared your throat.

“Hyphenated it is,” you said. “I’ll keep mine and add yours.”

“It’d be better if—”

“I can’t take over my father’s territory if my last name is Barnes,” you pointed out. “I’ll use both, it’s fine.”

Bucky thought for a moment, then licked his lips and shrugged his shoulders.

“Fine,” he grumbled even though his tone signaled it was anything but fine. You sipped your wine, leaning back.

“Goes without saying that we won’t have any children in the meantime so should we even talk about it?”

“I think we should,” Bucky said, a small smile curling his lips. “Just in case.”

“Just in case?” you repeated and he rolled his eyes.

“It’ll be on the prenup just like everything else,” he reminded you. “And our families will see those prenups, so it’d be better if we covered it beforehand.”

You huffed out and waved a dismissive hand.

“Fine,” you said. “The usual, right? The first born is the heir…”

“The second born is the spare, yeah,” Bucky said. “Although, if you’re keeping your surname…”

“Our children would as well,” you finished his sentence for him and let out a dry laugh. “So then, is the firstborn yours or mine?”

“Maybe it’ll be twins,” he joked and you shook your head.

“We’ll say that the firstborn rules both until the second born is ready, and then divide my territory and yours accordingly,” you said and Bucky raised his brows.

“But until then, both territories?” he asked. “That’s a lot of pressure to put on one person.”

“That person doesn’t exist and will not exist,” you reminded him. “It’s just gonna be a hypothetical article in the prenup, that’s it.”

“And if we want a divorce—”

“When we have a divorce,” you corrected him and Bucky hummed.

“Any specific reque—”

“The weekend house,” you cut him off and he let out a small laugh.

“How long have you had your eye on it?”

“Oh, so long,” you said with a grin. “It’s really pretty.”

Bucky held up his hands, gesturing surrender. “It’s yours then."

“I mean I know I can’t just get it without giving something in return so how about you? What do you want in the divorce?”

“Nothing.”

You blinked a couple of times, gawking at him.

“You want nothing?” you asked him. “Bullshit. Say your price.”

“I don’t need anything.”

“You’re going to get me in the business and help me take over and you want nothing?” you insisted. “No fucking way. What is your game here?”

“I don’t have any.”

“Why are you doing this then?” you asked with a frown. “Seriously. What’s in it for you?”

“My reasons are my own.”

“Bucky…”

“But I do have one request now that you mention it,” he said and you nodded your head.

“Yeah tell me. What is it?”

“Throughout the time we stay married,” he said, taking a sip of his wine. “No sleeping with other people.”

“…I’m not going to sleep with you,” you managed to say after a pause and he shrugged his shoulders.

“We’re going into war with an outsider while pushing you to the top,” he said. “Any kind of issue in our marriage, including a whisper of a rumor could work against that. We need to present a united front to all the other families and our people. Can’t fight a war on that many fronts, you know that.”

As much as you hated to admit, as it turned out, Bucky was actually smart when it came to how things worked in business. You nibbled on your lip, trying to put your thoughts in order before sticking your nose in the air.

“That’s a two-way street,” you told him. “If I’m behaving like the perfect wife, you’re going to behave like the perfect husband.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Bucky, I’m serious,” you said, looking him in the eye. “Don’t go behind my back and make me kill your mistresses.”

“Don’t go behind my back and make me kill your boyfriends,” he replied and you took a deep breath, then downed your wine and stretched out your hand.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” you said and he chuckled, then reached out to take your hand into his, sending a pleasant warmth from your hand to your whole body.

“Likewise,” he said, his voice soft. “Let’s make you the queen, princess.”

You and Bucky decided to tell your family about your decision that weekend at their favorite restaurant. It would at least give you some time to get your story straight and you figured it would play into the lie; that you and Bucky had something for each other all along and once you got together you didn’t want to lose any time to get married.

Of course your closest friends were going to know about it, it would be impossible to keep it from Becca, Sarah, Steve and Sam because they’d had the first row to every single fight whenever you were within each other’s sight not to mention heard about how much you two disliked each other for years now.

But as far as anyone else was concerned, it was the happy ending to a decade long crush on both parts.

That night, you decided to stay in a hotel until the weekend. Not only did you not want to talk to Ian or your father, but it would also work in your favor; it was Bucky’s favorite hotel, it was in his territory and he would make sure to stay with you in the honeymoon suit every night until the weekend so you were pretty sure the rumors would reach your families way before you told them.

Your bodyguards were still on your father’s payroll after all.

You sipped your champagne, your feet propped up on the small coffee table across from the couch you were sitting on, the fluffy bathrobe wrapped tight around your body as you changed the channel on the TV but the knock on the door made you turn your head. Heaving a sigh, you pushed yourself off the bed and went to the door, then put a bright smile on your face and swung open the door.

“Finally!” you exclaimed, then gasped at the huge bouquet of roses Bucky was holding. “Oh my God!”

“Hi beautiful,” Bucky said with a smirk and you stole a look at both your father’s and Bucky’s men in the hallway, then turned to him.

“You shouldn’t have!” you giggled as you grabbed his arm to pull him into the suit, and closed the door behind him.

“Flowers are a nice touch,” you commented, the lovesick smile disappearing from your lips even if your heart did a happy flip and Bucky winked at you.

“I’m glad you like them,” he said as you took them from him, then walked to the open kitchen to pour water into the empty wine decanter before putting the flowers into it.

He leaned back to the kitchen island. “Did you talk to Becca yet?”

“Tomorrow,” you said. “I slept the whole day away today, barely did anything. Must be the stress after yesterday.”

“Is she serious with that girl by the way?” Bucky asked you. “Leila?”

“I’m not going to tell you anything about Becca.”

He tilted his head. “You and I are going to get married—”

“And she’s my best friend so she’s still above you on my loyalty list,” you pointed out. “Marriage is one thing, friendship is another.”

“Should I at least threaten the girl so that she doesn’t break her heart?” Bucky asked and you rolled your eyes.

“No, Leila is a sweetheart,” you said as you walked past him, then threw yourself on the couch to grab the remote. He followed you and rested his hands on the back of the couch you were sitting on, the closeness of his body making your stomach do a pleasant flip for some reason.

“So what are we watching?”

“We are not watching anything,” you said, trying to focus on the screen. “I’m watching The Bachelor.”

He let out a groan. “Seriously?”

“There’s another TV upstairs, go watch whatever you want to watch there,” you said, grabbing your champagne glass again and tilted your head back so that you could look at him, and Bucky shot you a mischievous grin.

“Marriage requires quality time together, Charm.”

“Who told you that lie?” you asked, turning your glances to the TV and he chuckled.

“Steve sent me an article about it today when I told him the news.”

“Not Sam?”

“No, Sam sent me the address of a great psychiatrist,” he said. “For couples therapy and marriage counseling.”

“That’s much more useful than an article,” you pointed out and he squeezed at your shoulder making your heart skip a beat.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he said as he walked to the hanging stairs and someone knocked on the door, making you frown and look at Bucky over your shoulder.

“Room service,” Bucky answered before you could ask. “I already know your favorite so I ordered for both of us.”

“How do you know my favorite?”

“I pay attention,” he said as he started climbing the stairs, unbuttoning his shirt. “Don’t open the door yet though, will you? Wouldn’t want my men to think I last five minutes.”

“I’m sure that would be an improvement for you,” you said with a scoff and he tsk tsked.

“If you want to see just how wrong you are, all you gotta do is ask nicely princess.”

“That will never happen!” you called out and slipped a little on the couch when you heard him close the bathroom door, then heaved a sigh.

“Great,” you muttered to yourself as the water started running. “My honeymoon should be so much fun.”

Chapter 10

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