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dutiful-wildcraft · 10 months ago

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Pack 141 - Fae!Soap Headcanons

Tags: monster au, Fae!Soap, poly 141, sfw, fluff, general lore, Soap's mom? for a minute at least, fae lore I roughly researched.

-Soap's mother was a stubborn and superstitious woman. When her baby boy was born with a caul over his face, her heart seized with dread. She had been told stories, how it was lucky to have a child able to see beyond the veil. How the caul signified a great power, coveted by the people of the forest. Her only babe, marked as Fae.

-They would come for her child, steal him in the night and replace him with another. And it would be a cold day in hell before Jill Mactavish let anything touch her son.

-She slept with the bundle clutched tightly in her arms, refusing to sleep until she left the hospital. Left him wrapped snugly to her front as she hammered iron railroad spikes into the corners of her property; hung horseshoes above her doors, sprinkled fine lines of salt around every doorway and window of her home.

-She thought it had worked. At least for a while. But the Fae are persistent if nothing else. Jill began to notice strange flowers pop up around the foundation of her home, odd tapping rhythms heard in the night. Would she know? Would she know if the lamb in her arms was replaced with another?

-She was so exhausted, worn thin from paranoia. Yet Jill Mactavish was no quitter. Under the light of a pale full moon she marched to the edge of her property. Her blue eyed bundle cooing and gumming happily at his fingers as he wriggled against her chest. With a final look to the boy she faced the forest with a stern resolve, “You won't take him! But I'll share him! Leave us be or help me raise him right!”

-The winds rustled, branches creaking ominously. Leaves gathered and spun into a tornado of color in the chill autumn air. Jill would freeze in place as the leaves fell away, revealing an ethereally beautiful creature before her. All high cheekbones and sharp eyes surrounded by inky black sclera.

-Ordinarily the Fae would swap out changelings, snag the babe once it was the right size and replace it with one of their own. Considering the wee one was already Touched….perhaps a swap would be unnecessary. Human mother's were coveted. The milk of human kindness and all that, and the babe was truly beautiful, destined to be strong. The fae had looked Jill up and down with a calculating look. Yes. A deal could be struck. They would raise the baby together.

-And thus Soap spent his time in equal parts amongst the Fae and humans, learning to socialize with both, though he didn't completely fitting in with either. Soap was hell on wheels. Rambunctious and equally curious, constantly nosing or getting into things he ought not have. Not that he was ostracized by either group he was just..*odd.* Unable to find his footing or close friends.

-You could say that Soap has many siblings, though this term is used liberally. By human technicalities Soap is an only child (his mum's baby boy). His mother, through the nature of her bargain, was brought into the fold with young John. Helping to raise and nurse her own gaggle of fae children of differing bloods. Other children Soap would call family.

-Fae don't have strict family dynamics, it's certainly a community effort to rear little ones. Fae children can be produced in a myriad of ways, with no one way being seen above another, p in v? that works. Born from a flower? Sure why not. Throw some herbs and intent together until a wailing babe sounds from the cauldron? That works too.

-Soap naturally inquired about this, as any kid would. “Ma? Did I come from a flower?” “You came from my belly wee one” Soap had squinted at her, eyeing her belly incredulously, "but how?”

-It took several conversations to get the toddler to understand that the other children in his human primary school were not in fact his brothers and sisters.

-As humans are fascinated with the Fae, the Fae are equally as fascinated by humans. As John grew into a young man he would see the differences. The Fae courts had long fallen into a peaceful rhythm. The humans? Hardly. With a powerful knack for chaos, among other abilities. Soap threw himself into the army. Keen to help as many as he could, and perhaps even find his own way.

-Soap is a marked child. He is more resilient on average than most Fae, and shows no obvious limitations in what disciplines he can learn. However, as marked he does have particular dispositions toward the following.

-Tongues, the ability to speak any language at will. Sometimes without thinking about it. For Soap this isn't automatic, but after a few days of listening or studying he's fluent. (Albeit with the accent). This gives Soap a peculiar edge when working with varying communities, elements, and other critters/creatures.

-Glamour, a sophisticated illusion, these may allow for invisibility or changes to appearance for a brief time (upwards to an hour but possibly longer depending on the severity of the change). Living amongst the Fae made permanent changes to his body. The sclera of his eyes had shifted inky black. His teeth and nails razor sharp. There is an ethereal beauty to all Fae as well. Naturally Soap uses this ability to cover some of the obvious issues.

-Soap knows he's distracting. He's a proud thing, and rarely bothers shifting that. He's damn good at what he does and looks damn good doing it. Hshows off his muscles/skills/looks without shame.

-Shapeshifting, self explanatory, but only works proportionally give or take a few inches. He may take on the appearance of another person or creature, briefly. But once again, only appearance. Mimicking voices is another skill.

-Sight or Clairvoyance, this ability's range depends on the court or bloodline. In Soap's case, his visions will occasionally come to him in dreams, these being more sophisticated visions or events far in the future. These visions are generally more detailed. He is typically privy to smaller prophecies, glimpses of events happening minutes before him. These are typically vague, but have consistently been enough to save his and his teammates asses numerous times in the field. The Infamous Mactavish Intuition ;)

-Soap is one hell of an alchemist, and can make due with most natural items at his disposal. Poisons, potions, explosives, you name it, Soap can make it. He excelled remarkably in the maths and sciences in school, and it’s why he was also quickly assigned to demolitions so long ago.

-Soap has a very noticeable smell. One that isn't exclusively detected by other supernatural beings. Any human standing beside him would notice it. Lemon and shortbread, with a warm curl of rose. Clean, green and vaguely sweet. People wonder if his callsign was from this fact rather than his prowess on the field.

-Nudity has no taboo with the Fae. Raised as such, the man has literally no shame. Soap Mactavish has been naked since he was a child in the woods, and will continue to proudly do so. Does not understand why everyone else is so uptight about it. Will bust in on someone in the shower without a second thought. “Stop screamin’ it’s just me”

-Fae are very partial to music, and Soap is no exception. He is so easily captivated by the sound, swaying slightly, almost as if hypnotized. Soap isn’t as in tune with artists and genres as Gaz is, but he keeps a hoard of songs on his phone. Gaz is his main contributor, keeps him well fed with playlists he makes. Playing new records for Soap as they bop around the kitchen together, playfully dancing or headbanging together. Soap was once pretty proficient with piano and guitar at his mam’s encouragement. His singing however, nearly got him killed in basic.

-Many animals are the watchdogs of the Fae. Soap has been seen having conversations with himself, unknowing to onlookers that a little frog or squirrel was sitting beside him. Someone swears they saw a mouse crawl out of his tac vest once. He whistles with the birds, scoops up bugs and plops them back into the weeds. He unfortunately doesn’t know the language of the shower spider. He doesn't bother to learn, he thinks he prefers the silence in this instance.

-Soap can be attracted with a myriad of things just like any other fae. Music as mentioned above is one. He is also partial to pretty chimes and bells, running water, shiny and/or colorful displays, as well as anything sweet, candies or sweet creams/milks/liquors.

- Too much contact with iron on his bare skin will poison him. Fortunately most weaponry constructed now is made of more synthetic material. It can be noticed that Soap is very particular about his gloves, and is rarely seen without them on. Iron on properties or above doors won’t exactly stop him, but it is incredibly uncomfortable and will lead to sickness if he is trapped within such a ward for too long.

-Fae, like crows, are enamored with jewels and other shiny objects, less of a weakness really and more of a distraction. Soap, prior to his enlistment had several piercings, such as his ears, and brow…among other things. He was very fond of the adornments, and easily captivated by the shiny displays on others. (This also extends to his intense love of blowing shit up and watching the sparks fly, big ole hearts in his eyes as the colors dance) In the event the team goes out for something special Soap will throw on a few pieces for fun~

-Soap can not lie, at least not directly, however Soap is a very sharp lad, and has learned to cleverly navigate around this by either not telling the whole truth, letting others assume, or simply not correcting misconceptions. He is a Fae afterall, being clever is his specialty.

-Customs of love and marriage vary among the Fae. Many Fae interpret strong love as variations of servitude, especially towards human mates. Soap has gotten himself tangled between both of these versions of love. For Soap love is servitude. Not something to be expected of his lovers, but from him. Soap gives himself to his lovers willingly, He wants to be good, give them anything they want and let them take what they need. Love is worship, and Soap is a very devoted man.

-Soap and Gaz had bro’d up as soon as they spotted each other. Having seen through each other's glamours, they became fast friends. Two oddballs fighting side by side. Which would turn into playful banter, and kips on the helo leaning against one another. Then to wandering hands and desperate kisses, having found comfort and fondness in each other after years of hiding themselves among humans. Soap and Gaz are the most cuddly. Johnny likes to lay sprawled in his Sphinx’s nest, his arms curled around his middle, face buried against Gaz's stomach. Both of them absolutely hate to sleep alone.

- Soap had a knack for getting into trouble. Disregarding orders to do what needed to be done. Had nearly been kicked out had his skills not saved his skin (and countless others). It was Price who sniffed him out, offered to take the man on loan for a bit. Soap's former CO was happy to be rid of him and hopeful that the notoriously stern Captain would knock some sense into him. Price, however had no such plans, he cut Soap loose, full authority, and watched the man bloom. Price did not anger at Soap’s decisions, didn’t flinch at his savagery in the field. In fact, Price had looked upon him with fondness (and a fair amount of exasperation). He kept Soap warm with lovely praises and a regular morning coffee, plus a heavy splash of sweet cream, for good measure.

-Simon had been more difficult, adamant on giving the Fae a hard time. Having seemingly been put off by Soap ever since he bounded off the truck and fist-bumped his arm on the tarmac. But Soap was determined, chatting and teasing, unphased by the lieutenants' icey behavior. They fell together in no time. Soap nestled to his chest, lips brushing over Simon's slow beating heart. Soap would never admit it. Never admit that he knew it would be like this all along. That Soap had seen him in his dreams.

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yeyinde · 1 year ago

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WILLOW TREE MARCH

John Price x Reader | Fae!AU

"They'll give you gifts," your gran says, shaking her head. "Things from their realm. Little trinkets and gems—" geodes, sapphires and diamonds, raw gold and coral; "—and you must never accept them," a whittled deer made of sequoia under your pillow; crow bones buried in the garden."Because if you do, if you do, they'll never let you go." "Why?" You asked, blinking at her. "Because it's a courting ritual, and to accept means… well," her mouth twists in wry disdain. "Just don't."

—WARNINGS: 18+ | SMUT fae shenanigans, mythological nonsense; unsafe sex, smut in random places, slight exhibition kink if you squint; Dom-ish Price, soft Price, pining Price; fae trickery (dubious consent on account of the trickery but not really); unreliable narrator; ahhhhhh, body horror (??????????) —TAGS: Fluff, AU, mythology —WORD COUNT: 8,5k —Based on this ask

There's a thick forest at the edge of your town. It curves along the coastline, breaching the yawning maw of the inlet—the last safe haven before the open ocean—and can be found almost nowhere else in the entire world. A unique ecosystem comprising vaguely familiar flora and fauna. Brown and Black bears. Wolves. Sitka-black-tailed deer. Ravens. The waters that crest through the forest are full of salmon, steelhead, and river otters. On the coast of the inlet, you can find whales, sea lions, seals, orcas, and porpoises swimming offshore.

It's protected, in large part, by its sheer vastitude. Spanning a massive chunk of your home, it stretches far north with curling fingers cutting through the granite of the crumbling coast, and as deep south as its knobby knees can reach.

From above, it looks like a child curled on its side, knees tucked to its chest. It's this pose alone that makes others revere it as some sacred being, slumbering mindlessly until the day it cracks open its eyes, and awakens to the new world. A child god made of conifers, red cedar, spruce, fir, pine, birch, and hemlock. Mossy caves of granite and limestone. Thick colonies of moss, liverworts, plume moss, and common haircap.

The forest is linked to your town only by a small strip of land that juts out from a raging ravine with currents too dangerous, too deadly, to try and traverse. An archipelago all on its own, untouched by greedy, human, hands because of its placement.

It's insulated by the vast ocean on its front, and a series of insidious looking mountains ready to swallow wandering mountaineers whole if they get too close to the sleeping child. Protected and safe by anyone who might try to harm it.

You used to dream about the forest. A nightmare dredged up about whispers and calls. Lured close to the edge of the river where a man would hand you his heart—sap-stained, and charred; a brittle piece of Bristlecone pine that felt fragile and worn—and told you to come back for him. To wait for him.

You'd wake in a cold sweat each time, heart pounding so fast that it almost felt like you were dying.

(Maybe you were. Maybe you did.)

You don't know if you believe the stories told about people wandering into the gaping chasm of the forest and never coming out. It's not uncommon for people to get lost, after all. But it feels distinct and archaic. Old. Something about the way the wind howls sounds different from the other woodlands scattered around your home.

It sounds like a beckoning call. A mother calling their child home for dinner. Come to me, the Chinook bellows. Come home now, dear.

You never venture too close. You know all too well what happens to children who do.

His name is—was now, you suppose—Kyle, but no one called him that. To everyone in town, he was simply known as Gaz.

Newcomers to the isolated archipelago are a rarity—so much so that news of the new family's arrival sent waves through the community, making Gaz an instant star overnight, all without him even setting foot on the shores.

None of that mattered, though. He fit in with an ease that seems almost preternatural when you think about it, as if he was meant to be there. And maybe he was. Maybe the soft rolling valleys were destined to be his home where flowers bloomed in the spring, and Arctic tern trilled from the branches.

Gaz was unique, different.

He picked dandelions with the same intensity that picked fights with the bullies in the neighbouring town, the ones who tried to pick on the smaller kids in the community.

With his fists always covered in dandelion oil and bruises, face caught between a grimace and a grin, like he was never sure if he wanted to spit at their feet or tell a joke, he stood against the onslaught with an anger that seemed to crackle in the air like fireworks. Ready for battle. Thirsty for blood.

His anger never waned even when he turned back to the group, eyes cresting in satisfaction, and body trembling with adrenaline, and you could scent the rage in his smile, hear it in the soft words he muttered to the kids, telling them everything would be alright.

Gaz was everyone's friend. The person you told your deepest secrets to, the one you planned adventures with. He was a rock—always armed with snappy jokes to make you smile, and advice when you needed it.

He was everyone's friend—yours especially—but you can't remember if anyone was his best friend. He was polite. Distant.

It started in the summer. His hands were always cold, and he kept them shoved deep in his pockets, clenched tight around the latchkey his parents gave him.

He started to seem almost liquid then. Temporal. You'd reach for him, brushing your hands against his arms or shoulders just to assure yourself that he was really there.

You noticed that his eyes would list sideways, head tilted, slanting toward the forest. It looked to you as if he was listening to something. To some unheard noise or call that only he could hear.

When you asked about it, he'd always blink, surprised, as if you'd woken him up from a dream quite suddenly. Then, he'd smile, and shake his head.

"Don't worry about it," he'd say, shrugging. "Just the wind."

He'd bend down and pick a dandelion for you, holding it out between pudgy fingers with a grin that seemed to mimic the cresting moon.

"For you."

He picked them for three springs before he, too, became another victim of the endless forest. Another empty tomb in the overcrowded graveyard.

Missing, they said, but not forgotten.

You think about him often.

(Even more so when you, too, begin to hear your name echoing through the forest.)

Beware the woods, your grandma says. Especially when it calls your name.

(You never understood why something that sounds so comforting, so sweet, could ever be dangerous. It sounds like an old friend calling you over to play.

"Never go," she snaps, her hands lashing out to grip your arms tight. You feel her knobby fingers digging into your bones. "Never listen, and stay away—"

"You're hurting me, gran—"

Her rheumy eyes burn into yours. "Stay away—!"

(You wisely never speak about the whispers in your head, keeping them to yourself. A secret just for you.)

You leave town when you're old enough, when the hisses in your head grow too loud to ignore, and it feels as though they're scratching at your skull.

(Clawing at the walls.)

"Crazy weather, eh?" The first mate mutters nervously, eyes tilted upward as the sky darkens into an angry grey. "Came outta nowhere."

You leave, and you don't look back.

(But oh, how the forest screams.)

She calls you back several years later with a phone call. Your gran has passed.

You think you should mourn, but it's been so long since you thought of home, that you don't remember what she looks like anymore. The sound of her voice is a whisper in your head—the cadence gone, the tone flat.

But you don't cry, and you don't grieve—she's been dead for a long time now, after all. Ever since your mum went missing all those years ago, she's always seemed more of a ghost than a person. Living as if her body hadn't realised her heart was long dead.

You go back only because you think your mum would have wanted you to.

(And pretend it isn't because the silence in your head is suffocating. Without the whispers, it feels as if you're missing something. A part of yourself forever lost in the forest.

You wonder if anyone has found it by now.)

Nothing has changed since you turned your back on the town that raised you, the forest that stole from you.

It's the same buildings. The same market. The same roads. The same houses.

The people, too, seem largely unchanged by the years that have passed.

The friends from your childhood who stayed meet you at the graveyard, eyes filled with sympathy as they ask how you're doing.

She'll be missed, they lie sweetly to you. Everyone loved her.

She was a hermit, you want to scream. A woman driven mad by ghosts and fairytales and terror.

You nod, instead, and let them lead you around the town on a grand tour as if anything about this beautiful, haunting place had changed since you ran away.

It gets easier to force a smile when they ask if you're okay.

"Fine," you murmur and wonder if your voice even carries over the whispers. "Just—yeah. Fine."

North of the town is where the river separating the lonely forest carves a path, not at all dissimilar to an idyllic trough, through bedrock and sand, and flows into the sea.

The estuary is dangerous in high tide when the rapid ascent of water on the sandy shores hides the rip current that is known to form when the two bodies of water meet.

It's a dangerous place to get caught in.

This beach was impressed upon you as deadly from a young age, almost in equal—if not greater—measure than the rapacious forest across the river. You know the dangers of standing on the slippery bedrock.

But as the sun glows a burnt orange in the distance, and the endless ocean before you darkens into an almost unfathomable black, you can't help but find the view from the cliff's edge to be the most mesmerising thing you've ever seen.

It looks like a painting. A brush stroke of tigers eye in the centre of the cresting sun that gradually fades out into xanthous, and rings of hazy peach; the light of diminishing star smears coruscating rings of persimmons into the indigo water. The gradual fade into gradients as the waves lap closer to the shore is reminiscent of liquid sapphire and smelting amethyst.

The picturesque view is more befitting of a pastel postcard, an ethereal pastiche of the Ninth Wave—a moment of life imitating art, or—perhaps—the same view Ivan Aivazovsky stumbled upon when he set out to render the haunting beauty of the ocean in oil.

The cresting waves arch into curled petals of white before setting upon the sloping beach with frenzy. It's the roar of those hungry waves that seem to, if only for a moment, drown out everything in your head.

There are no whispers. No songs. No screams. Vengeful hissing can't climb to a higher decibel than the frothing waters slamming against jagged bedrock.

All is quiet—except the sea.

You lean into it. The closer you get to that precipice, the quieter everything in your head goes. Sounded sucked into the vacuum of the ocean. The endless song of the sea.

Another step. Another.

For a moment, you're free.

The forest doesn't scream for you. Your grandmother doesn't dig her teeth into your gyri, hands clawing at the space behind your eyes. You don't think of her, or your mother, or Gaz, or anyone else unfortunate enough to get consumed by this damnable place where fairy tales split the seams apart, and merge with reality.

It's peaceful.

You take another step—

A hand curls over your shoulder, tugging you back.

Anger pools, thick and acidic, on your tongue, but the flash of your ire, your vexation, is dashed by the sound the waves make when it slams into the spot you were just standing.

It slashes across the concrete as the stranger pulls you into his broad chest, heat nearly liquifying your spine.

He sucks in a breath. You feel his chest expand with it. When he breathes out, you taste gunpowder on your tongue.

"Gotta be more careful n'that, love."

You've had near-misses before. Flirted with the reaper. Ripped yourself from the jowls of death himself.

This isn't anything new.

And yet—

Your eyes drag up, meeting flat black boring down at you. His hood is pulled over his forehead, casting shadows down to his jaw.

"You—"

Your teeth sink into your tongue. Emotions lash through you like the flick of a bullwhip, shredding your skin until it's raw and oozing. The tail pulls away whenever you try to wrap your fingers around one of them—relief: you're not dead; embarrassment: how could you be so stupid; shame: saved by a stranger; and—

Visceral terror. Panic.

It bludgeons its fist down your throat, barbed knuckles clawing at the soft tissue of your esophagus until you taste blood on your tongue.

Panic tastes of ozone and leaks, thick and warm like molasse, down your throat.

"Hey," he murmurs, and the sound of his voice, his low timbre, is porous, calcined. The rough scratch scours through the haze of fear threading through your sternum. "C'mon on, now. Gotta breathe, yeah?"

It's his hands on your shoulder—hotter than grenade fire—and the thick scent of musk, of stale smoke and kerosene sweat, that break through the gossamer of your acrid panic. He spins you around to face him, eyes fixed on your face.

"That's it," he says, soft, soothing. "Keep breathin'. You ain't dead yet."

You come to yourself in pieces. The world bleeds with startling clarity around the blurred edges. Home, you think. Maybe.

Once upon a time.

You blink. Blink again.

The hand still on you—heavier, you find, than an anvil—lifts, his thumb brushing over the curve of your jaw, swiping over the sweat-stained skin.

You can't see his eyes through the shadows cast over his face. A stranger. You've never seen him before.

They didn't say anyone new moved to town.

"Who are you—?"

"You don't know?"

And then his hand is gone, taking all the heat in your body with him.

It lifts to his vest, thick fingers, gloved in yellow, curling over the butt of his cigar.

You must make a face. A grimace. A whisper of bemusement. Whatever it is, it makes his lips twitch under the shorn burnt umber of his beard.

"I'd share," he mutters, teething sinking into the hilt as he pats himself down for a lighter. "But I ain't got the time."

"Shouldn't be smoking in a provincial park, anyway."

The words are dragged out of you. Numbed, gritty.

It makes him snort. "Maybe—;" he cups his hand around the end, thumb striking the ignition of the lighter. He inhales, and the red circle at the tip illuminates the cerulean blue tucked away into the folds of his hood. The plume of smoke curls over him like a shroud. "But I doubt a cigar is gonna bring the whole forest down, mm? 'sides, we all have our vices, don't we?"

With that, he leaves you standing in the tendrils of smoke that billow out from his caustic mouth. No goodbye. No name. Nothing except the hum of his touch buzzing through your veins.

Your head is numb. Thoughts congealing into hardened clay.

Yeah, you think sluggishly, eyes dropping to the drenched pavement where the ocean narrowly missed you. Swallowed you whole. We do.

(Yours is bad decisions that reek of napalm.

Men who scour your hands raw when you touch their coarse surface.)

You find him again in some desolate pub on the fringes of town a few days later. It looks like it's one strong gust of wind away from blowing down. Dilapidated. Rusted from the harsh salt of the ocean to the north.

He lifts his head when you slide into the empty chair on the left, but says nothing about your unexpected company.

Instead, his lips curl over the cigar sawed between his teeth. A grin, you think.

You wonder if he was expecting you.

(Wonder, then, with a touch of something warm gnarling in your belly, if you surprised him.)

The barkeep wanders past, brows lifting at you in question.

"Um, a vodka soda—"

The man, Price you learned from the locals with a great of digging, snorts.

"Ain't got none of that here, love. Two scotches. Neat." He leans over, thick fingers grasping the middle of the cigar, an inch away from the bristles on his upper lip, and pulls it away, ashing it in the tray in front of him. "And a bottle of spring water."

"Scotch?" You echo, leaning your elbow on the sticky counter. He reeks of smoke. Sweat. Blood. Gunpowder. You veer closer, soaking in the astringent tang of him. Everyone on this island smells of daffodils and cotton; clean and neat and innocent. He reeks of danger. Everything inside of you screams to stay away. "I don't drink scotch."

The cigar burns in the tray. He pulls back, shifting in the chair. His elbow rests on the counter, the other arm is slung over the back of his seat. The picture of appeasement, of a satiated tiger eying a little mouse sniffing past it. There's no immediate danger, and his posture is relaxed. Open. But his eyes—

Price turns to you, then. His legs are spread, knees notched apart, taking up more space than you offer him. A looming presence. Dominating. Confident. He's not doing it on purpose, you don't think, he's just—

Big.

His legs are too long. Thighs are too thick.

Something gnarls behind your ribs when you take in his bare face. It's different, smaller, without the bulky black hood thrown low on his brow. His hands bare, leaving him in only casual clothes that stretch taut around his broad body.

The beanie on his head, pulled low on his forehead, makes him look roguish, rough. The picturesque presentation of a bad boy down to the pelt-brown leather Levi jacket stretched taut around his broad shoulders.

He looks older, somehow, without the tenebrous of night shading him in dark indigo. Aged like a fine whisky. All burnt umber and ivory.

The charcoal colouring brightens the heavy blue of his eyes—crushed bluebonnets and powdered graphite; a black hole centre—and the frame of his brown lashes dusting over his clean cheeks makes something pool in your lower belly.

(You wonder if he'd taste of whisky sour.)

"Well," he murmurs, brow lifting. It makes the skin on his forehead crinkle. He has laugh lines cresting around the corners of his eyes. They stand out to you, now. Void of the shadows you're used to. "You do when I'm paying."

The scotch, the cigar, the dingy pub that reeks of stale cigarettes and is perfumed in a dusting of nicotine that films every surface coalesces into incipient vice.

His hand moves from where it's loosely curled around his glass, and rests, heavy and warm, on your thigh.

When he leans in, you taste calcine on his breath.

The acrid tang is a balm to the blisters in your raw esophagus. You meet him in the middle, smaller hands curling over the wool lapels of his jacket, tugging him into you.

"Never thanked you for saving me," you murmur, his beard grazing your lips. A tickle. A brush.

Price sucks in a deep breath, eyes liquifying into an intense azure. "No need to thank me, love. As much as I love the ocean, you don't belong there, do you? No," he adds, decisively. Sure. "You belong on land. The earth. You're wild, like the forest, aren't you?"

It's an out. An escape. An option to flee from the cosm that folds around you like a nebulous cloud.

You could take it. Back up, away. Walk out of this dingy pub on the wrong side of town, and forget the man who reeks of nicotine, smoke; who leaves ashes behind on your skin when he touches you.

The only one who stares at you from the unfathomable black of his eyes, lashes shrouded in tenebrous, and makes you falter. Makes your heart lurch, jumping to sit at the bottom of your throat.

You should pull away. Stay away from the man who leaks ethanol and nitroglycerine. From the man who smells of acrid smoke. Gunfire.

You should.

But your fingers tighten in the lapels of his jacket, pulling him closer. Closer.

The bridge of his nose is warm when it presses against your own.

His eyes spark, wildfires. A blazing forest.

"You said something about vices." His chest rumbles in response to your hushed words.

"So I did."

Smoke singes your nose when you brush your lips over his. Warm. Chapped. Dry. You taste ash. Humus. The bitter tang of dandelion oil.

"Got some time tonight?"

"Thought you said I shouldn't be smoking."

"We're not in a park, near flammable trees," your hand falls to his chest. His heart thuds beneath your palm. Thick, full. Your eyes lift to his, lidded and heavy. You gaze at him from under your lashes, coy. Demure. You wonder if he can see how eager you are beneath the sly cut of your lids. "Are we, Price?"

The use of his name makes his lips quirk. A small, secretive thing that you can't read.

"No, we're not." His hand slides down, curling over your knee. "Don't know what you're gettin' into, love."

"Oh, no?" You taunt, breathless. Even through all your layers, you still feel his searing heat on your skin. His eyes drop when your tongue lashes out, wetting your lower lip. "And what's that?"

A frisson shudders over his face. Lashes fluttering. He leans forward, resting the rim of his beanie on your forehead.

When his eyes slide open, all you see is arsenic white pooled around Prussian blue. "More than you could ever dream of."

Your trembling fingers curl into the lapels of his jacket. For leverage, maybe; or to hide the quiver in your joints from his widening eyes.

And so, you kiss him.

A messy punch to the mouth with your sun-blistered lips.

His mouth parts, wry curls flutter when he inhales sharply. And then—

He devours you.

It's messy. More sealed lips glueing together than it ever could be considered a proper kiss, but it feels more like a homecoming than stepping off the boat, and you tuck that inside your pounding chest.

(The whispers in your head seem to sing when his lips touch yours.)

You taste bark on your tongue when it slips over his. Loam. Moss. Something earthy and rich. His beard scratches your chin, your lips, but you pull him closer, hungry for more—for the taste of wilderness on his tongue, for the respite from the whispers, the screams. Like the ocean, he, too, is a vacuum, swallowing everything whole until just you remain, stripped down to nothing but sensation and want. Bare, raw.

Your teeth ache when you pull away, fingers curling into the coarse hair along his chin. The whips of his wry curls scratch your palm.

You never want to let go.

Price's eyes are noctilucent clouds; a storm over a rainforest. He'll ruin you. Devour. Destroy. Take, and take, and take until there is nothing left.

Your lips tremble when you speak, words tremulous with your desire, your eagerness, when they slip past your bruised mouth.

"I can think of a few that are better than smoking."

Price shudders.

"Where did you go?" Your friend asks, eyes swinging from the cards spread out in front of him—the Idiot, Solitaire—to you. They burn into the side of your face, the same place Price touched with bare knuckles, and said you belong to the forest, don't you? "Missed dinner."

You ate Doro Wat in a small shop after Price fucked you stupid in the dingy bathroom of the pub, face scraping against the waterlogged wallpaper that chipped with each brutal thrust of his hips.

Like that, hmm? Can barely take me, love, but you're so fuckin' greedy for it, ain't you?

You're sure the barkeep heard your moans as they bounced off the jaundiced walls.

(You still hear him hissing in your ear. Still feel him splitting you apart.)

You try not to shiver.

"Ate already," you shrug, bundling your sleep clothes tight in your trembling hands. When you stand, his eyes follow you. "So. Um—"

"You okay?"

"Yeah," you say, shifting on the balls of your feet. "I've—" You think of his eyes, gyre white, and wonder if this is what it feels like to get swallowed by the sea. "I've never been better."

"Good," he says, smiling. "I worry about you, you know?"

You nod. "Yeah," you say. "Me, too."

You break apart in the shower, falling into pieces as you make yourself finish, thinking about nothing but the phantom stretch of his cock seated deep inside of you, the taste of his come pooling on your tongue.

It balms the residual burn in your esophagus, and you know, then, when you throb, still wanting his touch on your skin, that you've always been terrible at telling yourself no.

It can't happen. It can't.

There's a strange magnetism about him—an uncanny sense of mystery and familiarity sutured together.

It feels a little bit like staring at the looming maw, the event horizon, of a black hole. Unfathomable black. No way out.

There's something that feels a bit like forewarning inside your chest when he brushes against you, and presses his lips on the skin behind your ear—a secret place only he knows, where only his fingerprints have ever been. You feel his touch even when he's gone. Haunted by the memory of his rough hands and rasping tenor.

Running would make sense, you think, watching the ferries come and go. You have enough money for a ticket, and you've yet to even unpack your bag.

You don't know who he is, but you've given him everything. All of it. There's nothing left inside of you to hand over, but he keeps looking at you as if he's waiting for more.

"Waiting for a ride?"

You glance back at the operator with a divot between your brow and cotton inside your ears.

You want to say yes, but you shake your head instead.

"No." I can't leave. "Just enjoying the view."

You find birch branches stripped of leaves, juniper berries, maple leaves, spindles of dogwood, bushels of fir, and bouquets of bog rosemary, northern bluebell, fireweed, and wintergreen on your doorstep each morning, laid gently against the old welcome mat.

You should toss them out, and throw them away. How does he know where you live, anyway? It would make the most sense; be the wisest decision.

Instead, you tuck them inside your notebook, pressing them against the pages where they'll be safe.

(You try not to think too much about why they never die.)

It happens again. And again. Again—

It becomes a ritual for the few months you're back in town. The leaves, twigs, petals, pines, and seeds all show up at your door each morning and come nightfall, you're drawn to him like a moth to a flame.

He finds the nastiest looking pub in the city, and you find him there after dark.

He sits, smokes a cigar. Orders two scotches, and a bottle of spring water. Teaches you how to drink it properly—none of that sugary cocktail shite; just pure whisky, love, as it should be—and lets you puff on the damp end of his cigar, eyes gleaming in the soft yellow light above as he takes in the way your lips curl over the wet tip.

He stares at you like he's indulging you.

Like he knows.

And maybe, he does.

Maybe he sees the way your jaw works, tongue lashing over the tip just to chase his taste. The heat in your cheeks, your eyes, as you gaze at him, open and raw and wanting. The way you list toward him. Eager for it. For him. His touch, his smell.

He must, you think, but he's a right bastard.

He doesn't give it until the end of the evening, when everyone has gone home. When it's just you and him and the barkeep that glowers at you something ugly when you stand on shaky legs, and whisper you're going to the washroom.

Your fingers curl over the chipped porcelain, back arched as you stare at the face in the mirror.

You can't remember if it's you.

Whisky has polluted your synapses. The thick scent of smoke, the tobacco from the cigar, has congealed into resin over that little bundle of axons and nerves that control your impulse, logic.

Stupid.

You stare at the thing in the mirror, and wonder if the basal want on your face was so apparent to him as it is to you. If he saw the dark gleam of hunger, greed, impatience, swimming in your ink-smudged depths.

The door rattles. Clicks.

The squeak of the hinges is the only warning you get before Price is there, liquified in the doorway and clouded in smoke.

His hand curls over the worn, peeling frame. Eyes dance with the same hunger, same want, as the ones that flicker across the surface of the mirror.

"Couldn't wait for me, eh, love?" He breathes, his chest expands with his exhale. Scenting you, you think. You wonder if he can smell the slick pooling in your panties. The desperation brimming in your veins. "Wanted it that bad, huh?"

He moves. A mountain of a man now filling up the entirety of your gaze until all you see is him.

You used to want to climb mountains. In training, they always warned of summit fever. Of that little part of your head that just wanted it to be over, to reach the very top of the precipice. Impatient, it couldn't wait. It made you spring up, and climb higher and higher before you were ready, prepared.

You think of it now when your hands lift, curling over his broad shoulders.

("Summit fever will get you killed," they say.)

"Just shut up and fuck me, Price."

His eyes flash. "Greedy little thing, aren't you?"

You are. Painfully so.

It etches in your ribs like a sickness, festering in your mouldering bones. Rotting you from the inside out.

A crutch in the searing heat of skin, sweat, and sin. The feeling of him taking you apart, breaking you down into atoms and molecules that bubble in the lining of your head becomes so commonplace, so often forget who you are when you're pushed up against a wall, being filled to the brim by him.

He leaves madness behind when he goes, and the world that divides fantasy from reality begins to crack, to splinter.

You hear his voice in your head late at night when the wind blows through the window, carrying the scent of the forest.

"Come home," he rasps in your ear.

The scratch of his beard seems to scrape against the little thread keeping you tied down to reality. It's frayed and worn by his hands. You wonder when he'll sink his teeth in the silk, and snap the line. Untethering you from your binds.

Come home to me. Come back to where you belong—

Price takes you out to dinner three months after this—whatever it is—starts. After your house becomes more of a garden, writ with the wild remnants of the forest, after each passing day. Full of bushes, and branches. Twigs and precious gems. He gives you raw gold, and open geodes full of amethyst, and sapphire. Canopy leaves, and bark from the trees.

He leaves a whittled deer made from the red wood of a giant sequoia, and the likeness of the little fawn makes you believe that one day, it'll come to life in your living room.

(You leave a dish of water near the doorway—just in case—and wonder if you're becoming just as mad as your gran.)

He shows up at your doorstep, the bleached antlers of a great pronghorn in his hands. It's decorated with vines and moss weaved over the ivory in intricate braids and knots that you can't even begin to unravel. You marvel at the gift as he tells you he's taking you out for dinner.

There is no discussion. He doesn't ask, he just—

Does.

"Found a spot," he says, arms crossed over his broad chest. The cable-knit sweater pulls, stretched taut over his bulk. "Think you'd like it."

You don't know what to say. The antlers feel heavier in your hands, and warm to the touch. You try not to shiver when you set it down beside the little fawn.

"Oh," you say, but know you've never turned him down yet. It's all—

So much.

Your home is slowly becoming one with nature, with vines growing on the walls in great blooms of wisteria and lilac; the old floor boards under your feet shudder and creak as little saplings sprout through the cracks. You wake up at night and taste earth in your throat, feel the grass beneath your fingers. The breeze in your hair. The call of an arctic tern.

You dream of running through the forest. Of being chased. You breathe and feel the little seeds inside of your lungs start to take root. Soon you'll bloom with dandelions.

"Okay," you say, and wonder if the madness rummaging around your head will turn into a beautiful sequoia in the end. "Let's go."

The tavern is busy on a weeknight, crowded with a swell of mainlanders who'd ventured out for a camping trip over the long weekend.

You sit with your back straight, and listen to him talk about a hike he wants to take with you in the morning. Through the woods, he says, and you don't ask which one. You know. You know.

(It's time. It's time.)

There are alarm bells ringing in your head, but they're drowned out by the crooning whispers.

But the line is only frayed and worn, and despite the lure in his voice, the itch in your head to say yes, you hesitate. Falter.

The woods are dangerous.

You don't want to go.

He seems to sense it. His brows knot together.

"You want to, don't you?"

You fiddle with your napkin and try not to meet his arsenic stare. "It's… dangerous."

"I'll keep you safe."

"It's probably time for me to leave, anyway."

The air in the room turns frigid all at once. You think you can see white plumes of condensation when you shakily breathe out, teeth chattering.

"Price—"

"Didn't wanna do this, love," he says, voice hushed. Barely a whisper. His eyes are lavascapes. "But you ain't givin' me much of a choice, are you?"

"What—?"

The words die on your tongue when movement flashes in the corner of your eye. A man weaves, liquid, through the mindless crowd, cutting a path like the parting red sea.

His eyes are honeycombs. In his hand, he holds a limp dandelion.

It takes you a moment to make out the strange man who looms in the background. A splash of colour among sfumato.

It's Gaz.

The childish swell of his cheeks has sunken into angled, sharp bone. Slender fingers twirl the flower around, around, around—

It's hypnotic. You stare, horrified and awed—a strange amalgam of emotions that slip down your spine: worry, elation, panic, comfort—as his pink lips part into an easy, familiar grin. The cresting sun breaching the horizon. Eyes slanting in playful derision.

He looks like he's torn between telling a joke and spitting vitriol. Making you laugh, and then making you cry.

It buzzes in the air, electrified fingers dancing down your spine, and then just as quickly as the boy who disappeared reemerges into the land of the living, into this bastardised reality, he gives one last sharp, fanged grin, a mordant wink, and then he's gone.

He slips through the door, and without hesitating, you give chase.

Price says nothing when you go. Or maybe he does, but you can't hear anything except the rustling of leaves in your head.

Gaz, it whispers. Gaz, Gaz, Gaz.

(It's time for the lost little boy to come home.)

The rocks sit in a zigzag pattern through the frothing waters, a deceptive bridge that connects the valley to the coast. You feel the tremulous rattle of the water slicing against the hollow cavern beneath your feet. A ledge chiselled from the blunt erosion of the rapid currents below. One day, they say, the granite shelf will give and a massive hole filled with howling water will fill it.

Try not to be the idiot standing on the ledge.

You feel the power of the currents even on the peat-covered edge.

The water in front of you is deceptive. A calm, rolling surface at the shoreline almost seems to beckon you inside. Come take a dip in the cool waters. Grow fins and gills and chase the river otters through the currents. Feast on the wily salmon, and see if your feet can touch the sandy streambed.

But the river's fatality is nearly assured. No one has survived a dip in these waters that act as a serrated knife, carving chasms and channels through the granite below. The currents will rip into you, pulling you until your body is crushed against the wall, or into an unsearchable cave.

One slip, you think. Just one.

But—

The man in the bar flickers through your mind. His honeycomb eyes, fanged grin. Ethereal in his beauty like a painting of a god in oil and raw canvas. Carved likeness of a Stygian prince.

It was Kyle. It was Gaz. You know it. Know it deep within your bones, your marrow.

Taking the first step to the jutting slate that peaks just a few precious inches from the raging waters is easier, then, when you think of the boy who plucked a dandelion from the earth, and tucked it behind your ear. It makes the risk less daunting when it's for him.

For his parents who sunk into themselves, into the crater his absence left behind. A deep depression into the earth that swallowed them whole.

They moved last year after laying down a bouquet of flowers at the mouth of the forest.

You toe your shoes off, leaving them at the embankment, and then you leap. The perch is slick with waterlogged moss, slimy. It wobbles under you, but you catch yourself, stabilising. Steady. You huff. One down, four more to go.

Up close, they look so far apart. A chasm between each rock. An endless abyss that will rip you into pieces.

Still. Still. You have to find him. Have to.

You step, toes sliding in the algae. The rock beneath is stained green. It wobbles again when you bring your other foot down on top of it. The loud clack of rock scraping against rock is heard, unmuffled by the roaring water that tugs on the stone. You feel the push against your feet.

Two more. Two more.

You take another step, and then—

You fall—

The world drips into focus, a steady trickle of cognisance that paints the world in shades of greens and browns. An eagle soars above the canopy, their shadow swooping through the thick tangle of conifers reaching to the heavens.

The bed of moss beneath you is damp—lush with dew and softer than your mattress at home. You sink into the ground when you breathe, caught in an embrace. The vines curl over your wrists, your ankles, as if refusing to let go.

It should scare you—and maybe it does—but there's something against your head, fingers digging into your temples, and you feel nothing except a warm serenity leaking in. Thought spool into liquid gold, threads that weave together in a knotted clump. Indistinguishable from each other, and unreachable when they slip deeper into the honeyed-thick fog that curls around your mind. A temper from logic, from fear. Anything that isn't pure, artificial comfort is filtered through and cast aside.

You don't know why you're here.

One moment, you felt the coils of the raging currents sinking its claws into your flesh, pulling you under the deep waters, and then—

Heat on your face. The sun's desperate attempt to filter through the corded canopy and touch the forest floor. The shrill call of an eagle on the prowl. The tender caress of the moss below cushions your body.

You should be underwater. Pressed tight against the side of the rocks until you were swept downstream and spat out in the inlet, waterlogged and dead.

You draw humid air into your lungs until it swells against your ribcage. The steady thud of your heart tells you that somehow, somehow, you're alive. An empty brag—thud, thud; thud, thud—that seems to call out to the birds in the emergent layer, the ones nestled in their branches as they watch your feeble attempt to reconcile how you survived.

It's strange, you think, but the soporific warmth coursing through your veins does not let you panic.

You are—

"Foolish."

The warmth turns molten. You try to sit up, but the vines tighten around your limbs. If you weren't so vulnerable, you think it would almost feel like a hug.

The soft crunch of the moss tells you the voice—the man—is moving forward, toward you. You want to scream, but your tongue is thick, and your mouth is numb.

"What you did there was stupid," he says, and the forest around you seems to come alive in his anger. Pulsing. The branches sway and the leaves rattle without any wind. The trees bend down, coming inward. You hear the scream of a fox in the distance. The chuff of an agitated brown bear.

Primordial signs tell you to run.

But you're trapped.

Price steps closer, falling to his knees beside you. You can see him now, and suddenly you wish you'd been swallowed by the waves.

His face is writ with anger, brows tightening together in displeasure.

He seems imbued with the forest. One with the lush green that swells around you. Burnt umber and icy blue. Ethereal, unnatural. Something in your hindbrain tells you to run from that man that looks as if he could swallow you whole.

"Tryin' t'die on me, hmm?"

His hand lifts, and you feel his warm knuckles graze your temple. Soft, gentle, despite the ire in his eyes, and the irritation clenched in his jaw.

"Gonna hav'ta try harder than that, love."

You weren't trying very hard at all, you think, dazed, dizzy. You weren't trying at all.

"You're mine," his eyes flash, and you feel the press of gravity against your skin, pulling you down to the soft earth. Your fingers twitch. The fog inside your head clears.

Blinking up at him, you catch the scattering supernovae echoing in the corners of his eyes; galaxies of pine and cedar, humus and tussock. They bloom from the black hole in the centre, surrounded by sapphire blue. He's not human, you think, but it doesn't surprise you because you already knew. Have known, really—ever since you asked around for his name and watched the same strange fog seep into their eyes as they struggled to remember a man they claimed to know.

Ever since you found bushels of figs on your doorstep.

A crown of pine needles and crow feathers.

Price leans over you, brows knotted together like the gnarled, weaving trunk of a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine.

There's a forest fire in his eyes. "You're mine, aren't you?"

You think about the trinkets left on your doorstep. The whispers, the screams.

"Did you ever give me a choice?"

The tension in his brow snaps taut. Agony frissons through the spaced canyons; whet from ire and slick from sorrow. He bends down, and shakes his head.

"I've always given you a choice," his words are smouldering logs, crackling with his pain. "I've always told you to go, but you couldn't stay away, could you?"

Price takes you on the mossy forest floor, fingers digging into the peat as you sink, down, down, down—

His hand under your head, cradling the back of your skull, keeps you from getting swallowed by the grass knoll that breathes and trill against your spine.

Fire licks in the crevasses of his eyes, molten desperation you can't ignore. He rages above you, quivering in the fading glow of the sunset struggling to slip through the canopy. No longer a man but a myth. He hangs over you with his canines bared, and flashes of anger and sorrow scorch the path his teeth leave behind on your skin.

You're becoming unmoored. Each touch, and brush; each sweep of his tongue soothing the indents of his razor-sharp teeth all seem to loosen the ties that thread through your soul, anchoring you to the world that stands in full bloom before you.

The forest shudders with his frantic pace; each piston of his hips leaks his fervent anguish and makes the trees croon, and creak as they bow their foliage in sorrow. His pain lashes through their roots, and rent the air in two. A fox mourns his loss in the distance. A wolf yowls in agony. His brethren lifting their muzzle to the sleepy moon, and howling out the melody of their despair.

It's too much, too much, and you fall into pieces in his hands, shivering beneath him as the woods around you tremble and quake. It's a mesmerising dance.

He finishes with a grunt that makes the world shudder anew, spending himself as deep inside of you as he can, as if he could overwrite your empty spaces with himself. Fill you to the brim until you are bursting with him, with life. Tulips for your eyes. Furze for veins. Moss for hair. Peat soil for blood.

When he speaks, the world falls silent.

"You don't know it yet, but you will. You've always been mine. Always belonged to the forest, to the earth. To me."

Despite his words, he lets you go.

And you run, run, run—

Your toes dig into the wet soil near the stream. The desperate catapult across the ravine halted at the very last moment, leaving you winded and shaking. Hands clenched into tight balls by your side. Quivering with fear, with the adrenaline rush still roaring in your veins.

You don't know what you're doing.

The whispers in your head go silent.

The absence of sound makes you mourn, and you think about his agony. The pain when he took you, the resignation when he let you go.

You think of him, and you know.

I've always told you to go, but you couldn't stay away, could you?

You scent napalm in the air, cloying despite the acrid burn that scalds your lungs when you breathe in deep, holding it there.

You think of the chest inside your closet. The pieces of yourself you left behind. The way he fits you like a puzzle, like he was made for you. Designed with your rough edges in mind. Softening your hard lines; scouring your gritty surface it was smooth and shiny like fire Opal and precious gems.

Ever since you felt his hand on your shoulder, you haven't been able to let go.

(You don't even think you ever really tried.)

Come to me, the forest says, honey in your ears. It sounds like the rapid beat of a million birds' wings, ready to take flight. Pulsing and alive and full of wonder, childish glee.

The earth blooms in your chest. You feel the soft, tender caress of the leaves against your skin, the moss sinking between your toes. Clinging to your flesh, desperate to get inside, and take refuge in your heart. Come home to us.

Your grandmother warned you to stay out of the forest, that it was dangerous. Deadly. Wrong. But how can it ever harm you when it touches you so sweetly?

The branches curl around your ankles as you walk, leading you, guiding you, to the place where you belong. The forest opens around you, spreads apart and makes room for you to pass, touching you as you go, taking little pieces of you. Strands of your hair, the salt from your tears. Pieces of clothes. Parts of your soul.

You pluck your heart out of your chest, and leave it beneath a gnarled sequoia. She will protect it forever.

Moss grows inside of the empty space. A tern makes a nest inside of it, filling it with a bed of pine needles, and twigs from the junipers. You feel a mouse make a home in your rib cage, burrowing between your bones. You place your hand over your side, and feel her nuzzle against your palm.

"You're safe now," you say. "We're almost home."

It's Gaz who greets you with a crown made of sugi. When he cups your face, you feel raging rivers and streams in his palms, and now that you are home.

"Missed you, dandelion," he breathes, and his voice turns into a Chinook that crests over the mountains. "But there's someone who wants to see you."

His hands slide down to your wrists, and you feel the sun grazing your skin when he spins you around, around, around—

"Now," he leans down, pressing his lips to the shell of your ear. You hear the Falcons nesting in his chest, and smell pine in his breath. "He's been an impatient bastard, you know? Just moping about ever since you left—"

A scoff. You lift your head and feel the swell of the earth beneath your feet. Dizzying. Wanting.

He waits for you in the thicket, eyes made of sapphire and stone. When he breathes, the forest swells with his breath, and you taste loam when you swallow.

"A sorry sap, thinkin' you were runnin' away, and all. But you won't, will you?" Gaz pushes you forward, and his laughter rings in your ears. "Not anymore."

Price meets you in the middle, his eyes sparkling embers. A baptism in fire. You feel the heat on your skin, and shiver.

You used to be afraid of forest fires, but you know, now, that sometimes trees need to burn before they can truly grow.

Lodgepole roots bud under his skin, rippling veins across a ravine. He rests his hand against your cheek, thumb brushing the dawn redwood needles that bloom under your skin.

"Welcome home."

"Why?" You asked, blinking at her.

"Because it's a courting ritual, and to accept means… well," her mouth twists in wry disdain. "Just don't."

You don't tell her that you already have. You don't mention the sticks and precious stones that always ended up on your windowsill. The whispers of the forest calling your name.

You nod sagely instead, fingers tightening around the sap stained heart chiselled from Bristlecone Pine. The charred ends are warm in your palm. You feel it pulse.

Will you accept this? My heart? Will you keep it safe for me?

"I will."

This was meant to be light and fluffy and smutty but now it's. This. And um. Oops. I hope you enjoyed it!

JOHN PRICE MASTERLIST | NAVIGATION PART THREE OF COD X MYTHOLOGY ⁞ SOAP ● DRAGON PRICE

#captain john price #captain john price x reader #john price #john price x you #john price x reader #captain price x reader #captain price x you #fae price #cod x mythology #bhhhhhhhh #ive been in halifax for the last week and it's been kinda rainy and weird and this was born

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rivalriotrenegade · 1 year ago

Text

Simon 'Ghost' Riley x Reader

About this fic: This is technically supposed to be a Monster Simon x reader but can also be read as just human Simon. The monster type isn't specified so you can read it with whatever monster you have in mind! This is also inspired by @ghouljams Fae!Ghost AU. So if you like this I HIGHLY recommend checking out some of their stuff. Its amazing!

Word count: 719

Warnings: GN reader, small references to kinks and slight NSFW so if you ain't 18 this ain't for you :) Sorry not sorry. I also can't figure out the :readmore: so that's my bad guys.

You sit on Simon’s lap quietly reading as his face rests between your shoulder and neck, completely unaware of the inner turmoil that he’s currently going through. The longer you sit there, the more the edges of his mind begin to fray as he takes in your scent.

It calls to him. Reawakens parts of himself he thought he had long since buried. A forgotten instinct that he had tucked away deep within the darkest corners of his mind. Slowly, he feels it coming back to life, the darker, more possessive parts of himself.

The parts that make him want to snarl and snap at anyone who gets too close, at anyone who would dare take you away. Friend or foe, it doesn’t matter. He wants to stay like this forever, everyone else be damned.

He toys with the thought of sinking his fangs into you, of permanently marking you as his. His mouth waters at the thought. Simon Riley was never one to make a show of things, but the idea of everyone knowing who you belong to fills his head with plenty of dark fantasies.

His instincts scream at him to do it. “Now! Before someone else comes and takes them away!” They cry. If he was thinking logically he’d know that you would never leave him for anyone else, but he’s not thinking logically. All he knows is that you’re his and he needs everyone else to know it too. “Mine. Mine. MINE!”

Unconsciously he digs his fingers into you, pulling your body impossibly closer to him, determined to keep you there. Your flesh fills his hands perfectly, so soft and supple and all his.

The things he’d do for you, the things he’d do to keep you safe are outweighed only by the things he wants to do to you. All the nasty, horrible things. Things that’d make you scream and cry and beg for mercy… or maybe you’d beg for more? He doesn’t know which sounds better.

He wants you under him, filled to the brim with everything he has to offer! He wants to bring you to the brink of sanity and push you over it again and again. It doesn’t really matter how, though he might have some preferences.

Tied up and blindfolded or lost and hunted? Either would do. Humans are always so scared of the unknown, but he’d make sure you had nothing to fear. Nothing but him, that is. Pain and pleasure can be interchangeable or are they one in the same?

He doesn’t know anymore. Blame the war or the torture he’s endured or even his fucked up childhood. All he knows is that whatever it is it feels good. He’s never cared for anyone else’s pleasure but his own, but he wants, no he needs for you to feel good too.

But you're so different from him. Would you be able to handle all the vile things he’d do to you? Could you handle being held down and marked up? Could you handle being manhandled, bent to his every whim and desire as he slammed into you? Could you even take his—

“Are you okay? You’re breathing kind of heavy.” You ask him sweetly and just like that he snaps out of it. Carefully he shakes his head dismissing the intrusive thoughts. “I’m fine love, just go back to reading, yeah?” You look at him, tilting your head inquisitively. “Are you sure?” You ask. His heart hammers inside his chest, like a caged animal trying to break free. “Yeah lovie, I’m sure.”

Your eyes soften and you smile at him in a way that gets his blood racing. “I love you.” You say, so gently that it’s hard to even fathom that you’re talking to him. A man so messed up and broken. He swallows thickly. He can hardly believe that someone like you, so kind and caring, gentle to a fault, would choose to love a monster like him. If you knew what really went on inside his head, would you still love him?

He has to remind himself that you don’t know what goes on inside his head. You're so far away from the monster that he knows himself to be. So for now he’ll keep on indulging in you. “I love you too.”

That's all guys! I hope you enjoyed it and I also really hope it wasn't too cringe. If you have thoughts on it please let me know. Constructive criticism is ALWAYS appreciated. Have a lovely day!

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ethereal-night-fairy · 10 months ago

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Forgotten Sorrows

Fae!Soap x Female Reader (Rún)

This story was completely inspired by @ghouljams Fae!Au of COD MW.

I'm rewriting this series. I don't know when it'll be back

When worlds collide

Remnants of the past

Old habits - New beginnings

Thorns and Kisses

Muse's Lament

Relief after Rain

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cranberrytea451 · 4 months ago

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Fae Hydie

It was the wide teeth of death that brushed against her lips.

Inspired by @antlered-prince and @owl-bones faeu

#my art #faeu #hydie #my oc #fae hydie #her hair glows #I liked the winter court fae bugs more than the spring ones #so she’s a firefly #Spotify #she did kiss a skeleton #but there are prices for such things #she didn’t know death would have such beautiful wings

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seasidefae · 1 month ago

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"Power did not lie in the tip of a pen. Power did not work against its own interests. Power could only be brought to heel by acts of defiance it could not ignore. With brute, unflinching force. With violence." Babel, or the Necessity of Violence by R.F. Kuang

#babel by rf kaung #robin swift #ramiz rafi mirza #victoire desgraves #letitia price #moodboard #babel or the necessity of violence: an arcane history of oxford translators' revolution is an insane title btw #thank you for this masterpiece ms kuang #it will forever haunt me #as fancasts go this is the one i stuck to the most #i think will's a bit taller than robin but i honestly couldn't picture robin as anybody else #babel rf kuang #fae makes

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mausinly · 10 months ago

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1fae1 au and oc belong to @ghouljams sorry for haunting your inbox btw

Price runs cold, it comes with being in the court of winter. He isn't corpse freezing, though he definitely can be if he so pleases. Rather, he feels cool. Cool like a gust of wind or soft rain under the power of the unforgiving sun, cool like a shower after a long day of work, washing away the tension in your muscles and the worry of your brow.

Like the bastard that he is, it never fails to amuse him when his cold hands make his little witch yelp and swat at him. He doesn't pull away. Instead, he drags his fingers over her skin, delighting in the goosebumps that are left in their wake. His hands slip under the fabric of whatever pretty dress she has on that day, and he chuckles low and deep when she shivers but makes no effort to push him away.

His witch runs hot. Everything she touches is warm, like a long embrace. Every potion she crafts goes down like the thickest liquor, every charm like a freshly dried blanket over your shoulders.

Everything except for him.

A chill sweeps through her little cottage when he breaks through the threshold, despite the warm lamps and candles and the fire raging under her cauldron that make her home feel like a furnace. She can always feel him coming. Like seeing dark clouds in the distance yet neglecting to find shelter before the storm comes.

He knows exactly why his witch burns like the sun, blood running with all the warmth of a summer fae. Even so, he marvels at how human she feels under his palms. Her every curve and dip so smooth and lush. She hums so sweetly when he drags his thumbs over her cheeks, dousing the blazing skin.

He can nearly feel the steam billowing into the air when his lips meet hers. Their bodies lay entangled in the thick sheets and covers of her bed, and he can feel the warmth buzzing just above his skin. He watches her, taking in the serenity of her expression. The tension in her muscles and the worry of her brow have long since washed away. He watches her and startles himself with the suffocating feeling in his chest. Like a dam breaking, her searing touch sinks into his bones and he takes a breath like his head has been under water for centuries.

For the first time, the devil's heart aches.

#maus writes #this is shorter than i wanted it to be but idk blurb style works for me #and i have like 3 full oneshots in my wips so womp womp #1fae1 #john price x oc #john price x reader #fae!price #uhhhh idk what else to tag #cod #call of duty #?#anyway live laugh love witch

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chemanalystdata · 4 months ago

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#FAE Price #FAE Prices #FAE Pricing #Fatty alcohol ethoxylates #Fatty alcohol ethoxylates Price #Fatty alcohol ethoxylates Prices

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mi-i-zori · 10 months ago

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From In-Between the Lines - Sneak Peek N°1

CoD Fae!AU - Fae!Price x The Writer (Fem!Reader) - Part 1

WARNING : This is the very beginning of a Fae!Au, so Price’s thoughts are still in « predator »/« hunting » mode.

Author’s Note : Okay. I finally came around writing this first part after procrastinating for months because I had no idea of how to tackle it, and I think I need to show you guys a little part I’m quite proud of. I hope it’ll make you want to read it once it’s finished.

I do not give anyone permission to re-publish and/or translate my work, be it here or on any other platform, including AI.

CoD AUs - Masterlist

Main Masterlist

From In-Between the Lines - Masterlist - I

#cod x reader #x reader #call of duty x reader #fem!reader #cod au #cod mw2 #cod x oc #captain john price x reader #john price x reader #john price mw2 #captain price x reader #price x reader #captain price cod #captain john price #john price #fae!price #fae!au #price x female reader #cod mw3

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ghouljams · 10 days ago

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In your tags with the "not moose" breaking the Witch's wards you said you had to nerf her. Now all I can think about how insanely strong Witch is. Since it's a long generation of witches in her family- I guess she's well known in the magic community. Maybe they even invite her to be apart of some witches coven 👀. But she always refuses because she likes doing her own thing. But imagine she has to go to like certain meetings and what not and Price sees her in some formal witchy garb 👀👀👀

I haven't talked much about other witches in this au! I keep meaning to. Yes, Witch has been invited to multiple covens, but she prefers her privacy. Witch's family is well known as old magic, and older covens often invite her because they know she's got that strong ancestral tie to her magic. New covens of young witches often invite her because they think she's a novice witch. She does a lot of "makeshift" magic because she knows it so well, and where old witches would see her as somewhat of a prodigy, new age witches see her as inexperienced and unprepared.

As you might imagine that does not fly with Witch. So she only goes to coven meetings for 1 of 2 reasons: for a sounding board on a problem(old witches), or to be petty(new witches). Here's Witch interacting with a very condescending witch, and Price seeing her in her formal witchy clothes.

You snap a card down on the coffee shop table, the crisp sound of the cardstock against lacquered wood is music to your ears. You study the card, the mice, and jot down a few notes in your nearby journal. A cup of tea is set down in front of you, you're quick to swipe your cards out of the way.

"Are you reading tarot?" The girl, you think she's the owner, asks.

"Uh," You look at your Lenormand deck, "Yeah, I am." It's usually easier to lie to people when you don't want to explain what it is you're doing. You don't always want to have a conversation with a stranger about magic and how they have a friend that's really into "that sort of thing."

The girl sort of... scoffs, and rolls her eyes. Rude. "You know it's not all tarot right? That's an oracle deck," She tells you(it's not), sitting down across from you. You don't remember inviting her company, but it's fine. You close your notebook and gather your cards back into their deck. You're not really a fan of being tested like this.

"You read cards?" You try to smile, and look friendly. You wonder if you could make all her hair fall out. She gestures at the store generally. You look around at the, sigh, occult artwork and gothic vibes. Sort of overplayed if you're being honest. You can spy a few "Wicca-pedia" books on the overstuffed shelves. There's a table of crystals for sale, that explains why you're so itchy.

"I'm a witch," She says returning your smile.

"Neat," You already want to text your sister, or Rún, about this. "What do you practice?" New witches always want to talk about their practice, and it gives you time to shuffle your cards.

"Right hand path mostly, but recently?" She leans forward, whispers conspiratorially, "I've been dealing a lot with the fae." You pause your shuffle, your stomach clenching unpleasantly.

"Really?" You ask, "I thought you were supposed to stay away from them."

"Oh, yeah, you should definitely stay away from them," She nods, "They're dangerous for beginners, but once you know how to deal with them you can get them to do all sorts of stuff for you." You snap a card down on the table, a nervous habit from your mother.

The Mice again.

That's not your card.

You glance around the shop, the people milling about. You don't need to see them to know what they are, you can feel it. The mice in the storehouse, waiting for the lights to go out before they gorge themselves.

"So how long have you been practicing?" The dumbass asks.

"Not long," You mumble, still scanning the shop for anyone you might recognize. It's not technically a lie, in the grand scheme of things you really haven't been a witch long. You know witches far longer lived and far longer practiced. You shuffle your card back into the deck and set it on your notepad.

"I've been at it for about five years now," She powers through you ignoring her, "Do you have a coven or anyone you're learning from?" You glance at her, barely paying attention, as you pull a coin from your pocket and a pin from your skirt.

"No, I'm-"

"You should really be learning from someone," She cuts you off "magic can be dangerous for beginners." You ignore her harder, jabbing the pin into your thumb and smearing the blood on the silver coin. "Uh, sweetie?" You reach to tug a sugar packet free of its container on the table and break it open over the coin, what else, what else? Payment, threat, bait- you pull a lighter from your pocket and melt the plastic pin head to stick it to the coin. Assurance, good, done. "What are you doing?" The girl sounds annoyed, like you're making a mess for no reason.

"Making a fae ward," You tell her, she scoffs. Rude, again.

"You need a little more than some random trash to do a spell," She shakes her head, waves a hand. You take the opportunity to flick the coin off the table with practiced fingers as she tells you how badly you need a mentor and how you can't believe everything you see about magic on the internet. The coin goes flying, and pings neatly against the leg of a chair before starting to pinball around the cafe floor. "-you should really come to a coven meeting, see what real magic looks like."

You can feel your magic tracing its web through the store, you're not sure how much more real you can get with it. Not when you can see the fae customers trying not to jump away from your spell. Still, an insult is an insult. You fold your hands on the table and level your uninvited guest with what you hope is a neutral expression.

"When do you meet?"

You're remembering why you hate covens as you get ready. First of all you've been drawing wards on yourself all day, and snuck in a ritual bath, then you had to find your great-grandmother's old chatelaine since your ritual robes don't have any pockets. Most importantly you forgot how fucking cold it is when you're just in the gauzy ritual fabric your aunt made for you.

You check the clock, you're running a little behind so you don't have time to put on anything else. That's just great. Maybe you'll skip it. But then that stupid- Ugh. You take a breath to steady your emotions, no sense in getting worked up when you're so thoroughly doused in magic. You grab a length of Mal's lace from your closet and pin it in place to veil yourself. No way are you letting these little dumbasses stick anything on you.

Another quick check of the clock as you lace your heels, then you're out the back door. You stop yourself at the fence, stare out at the snowy winter landscape. You can already feel the frostbite setting in.

"lace looks good on you," Price whispers, his fingers feel so rough where they brush your back. You hum, and turn to face him. His eyes drop immediately to your chest. You wait for him to decide to meet your gaze again, and find yourself feeling a tad self conscious. You've never been self conscious about going to a ritual sky-clad before. Witches had a long history of dancing naked in the moonlight after all.

"Since when do you cross the fence unannounced?" You ask, trying to bring his attention back where it's meant to be.

"Since when do you leave the house with so much skin showing?" He fires back, stalking around you to check the back like a shark. You lift your veil for him, let him trace his fingers down your spine. They stop short of the draped fabric covering your ass, and you suppress the shiver it draws from you. You let your veil drop back over his hand, obscuring his view.

"I'm going to a ritual."

"Any reason they're getting the works?"

"I'm trying to prove a point." You sigh. "I may have gotten a little-"

"Petty?" Price fills in, you're glad you don't have to say it. His hand smooths over your shoulder, sliding under the lace to cup your neck. "Anything I should be worried about?" You tip your head, feeling the curl of his fingers against your throat, the lingering warmth of his cigar still on his fingertips. You wonder if it'll leave a mark.

"No." It feels too plain an answer, but you doubt there's anything he could do even if he was worried. You're perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, especially when other witches are involved.

Price hums, and you find the sound resonant as he tips your head back to rest against his shoulder. His body presses flush to your back, and you let it. You want nothing more than to sink into him, to let yourself relax into the dangerous hold he has over you, but you know your own ego. If there's one thing you can't stand it's a witch that thinks she's untouchable. You'd hate to see fresh talent eaten before it'd had a chance to blossom.

"You could escort me," You say, the idea striking you suddenly. What better way to show a new witch the dangers that hide behind fae kindness than to bring Price as your plus one? You're sure he's eaten more witches than he's comfortable divulging, but more importantly the wild listens to him. If he can take you through the forest you won't have to be cold so long.

"And what do I get, for this service?" He asks.

"What do you want?"

His hands go to cup your breasts almost as soon as the words leave your mouth, the thin fabric of your ritual robe doing little to hide his callused grip as he squeezes the soft flesh.

"Ten minutes," He breathes.

"You know you can have more than that," You smile.

"Not with you like this," His hands slip down, cup the softness of your stomach, hover over the pleat of fabric covering your legs.

"Alright," You agree, "ten minutes-" you can feel the ripple the goes through him, a deal of temptation being made, "-but only after, and you can't rip anything."

"Of course not," He agrees, "I want to see my witch dressed up again after all."

Inspiration images for the witch's ritual wear

#you ever make a character and go “if I knew you in real life I would hate you”#captain price #captain johnathan price #captain john price #captain john price x reader #captain price cod #captain price mw2 #captain price x reader #john price #john price cod #john price mw2 #john price x reader #price cod #price mw2 #price x reader #f!reader #oc: witch #fae!price #1fae1

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