#It's lucky you're still alive

[thepoisonroom]

i wish i were like evolved enough to fully internalize marriage abolition but tbh i do want to get married sorry for being cringe :(

[insanityisdivine]

The Coolest (and Hottest) Alien Around!

[bunnihearted]

🐰🌧️

[blujayonthewing]

I've thought a lot about the several thousand year old gnome druid we met who was just bitter and jaded and had spent most of those millennia sitting in one place not doing anything in particular except mourning her tiefling wife who'd died millennia ago, and how disgusted and infuriated with her melliwyk is, personally but also as a gnome herself-- and I'm thinking about it again like. honestly I think it goes beyond general cultural values; that level of willful ongoing stagnation and joyless nihilism is probably completely seriously a gnomish sin

[featherymainffins]

I think it's a hatecrime against me that there aren't any slugs as big as the giant African snail. Why do the snails get to have all the fun I just want a giant slime noodle.

[moogghost]

update: we're fine though that was the closest we've ever gotten to actually killing ourselves. still very much in pain from it all though

will say some of y'all ain't getting talked to for a good while though considering how long that post outright saying we were gonna attempt to commit suicide was up for. like did y'all think we were joking. because we were not.

[skelhell]

god if I see one more person whining about a show getting cancelled lmao it happens. This is inevitable. Yes it sucks, I'm sure it does, but oh my fucking god. There are more important things happening. Y'all are acting like this is the worst fucking thing to ever happen to you ever. Respectfully, grow the fuck up and look around. 😩

[yeyinde]

appetite | Alpha!Simon Riley

it's been decades since Alpha!Ghost had a rut. something that's probably for the best, really. his want is as hideous as he is. as ugly as his goddamn mug. it's best kept tucked away, secured under lock and key.

but then he finds you. and you're all alone. unclaimed, on the verge of heat. poor thing. it triggers a voracious rut. decades worth of want spilling out over you. you're it, he knows. feels the certainty in that statement simmering in his hindbrain, in his essence. he'll have you—now, forever. non-negotiable. where you go, he will follow.

but you run from him. stupid girl. didn't anyone teach you not to run from a starving wolf?

dubcon. size kink. size difference. a/b/o dynamics: knotting, rut. breeding kink. spit kink. implied virgin!reader. obsessive behaviour. possessive!Ghost. semi-public sex. reluctant reader bullied into submission lmao. forced bonds. implied kidnapping. basically, you're hunted down and fucked by Alpha!Simon who growls in your ear about how he's waited his whole life for you. and lucky him. he finally found you

AO3

It's been years, decades, since he had a rut. 

(Broken Alpha. Ruined.)

Trauma, they tell him, will do that. Sever the drive in the back of his head, the one that rears—vicious and angry—each mating season, bringing with it the urge to breed. To claim. Own. 

A form of self-preservation. It pitches a plexiglass of protection between him and his instincts, not letting them merge. Join. Done so because to be in rut, to want, to need, is vulnerability. It costs hypervigilance. Turns man into beast. Animal. 

This bodily reaction makes an alpha extend themselves, like an overarching limb, to shield the omega they pick as a mate. Bearing their own neck to save another. 

Naturally, they say, if he couldn't help himself, how could he ever hope to protect a fragile little omega? 

They tell him it could be as permanent or temporary as he allows. Healing, they say. Time. Laughable, really. And utter nonsense because Ghost is fine. 

Trauma tampered. Revenge sought, found. There's no one out there who could ever harm him, and still—

His last rut was before the mission that buried him alive. That turned him into the living dead. A mockery of man. Frankensteinian beast. 

It's not something he cares much for, anyway. From what he remembers of his youth—vague snippets of memories, disjointed, blurred sensation; a profound need, an urge, to sink his cock into something, to plug them up, to bite—ruts have always been a nuisance. In the way. An annoyance that took time away from what he'd rather be doing. 

And as Johnny enters his—skin pallid, waxy; cheeks flushed, eyes darkening like a brewing storm on the horizon; snapping at anything that breathes, whining like a dog, miserable and hot, all the time (ahm’a bleedin’ furnace, s’what ah’m)—he finds he doesn't care very much to go reclaim what he lost. 

No skin off his nose. Nothing to concern himself with. 

Besides. Omegas know better. 

Even before he lost himself, dying, rotting in a tumulus, pretty little omegas with their soft hands and bashful smiles always went out of their way to avoid him. Miserable alpha. His scent alone wards them off—burnt leather, charred bones; sarcophagus dust, dirt—and he found himself alone during his burgeoning ruts more often than not. 

No pretty little thing to tender the sweat on his brow, or bend over and present for him—offering up a sweet little cunt he got to bury himself inside, tie up nice and tight on his knot. 

It was usually his hand. A bottle of bourbon. A printed porn stash he swiped from Tommy, who nicked it off their old man—

And when he did find a partner, it was always transactional. Hand to hand, an exchange of money. All clinical and detached. Empty. Fucking into a concept instead of a person; a vacuum eating away at his soul because he knew, then, that they wanted to be there almost as much as he did. 

But what choice did either have when their home was the rotted gullet of a dying beast?

(Simon told them to stay away from shitty men like him, who broke bones in the throes of his heat, snapped his jowls at anything that got too close, and had to be chained to the bed like an animal during it—)

Nothing to miss. Nothing to mourn. 

And it's not like he doesn't get the urge. Wanting to sink his cock into something warm, wet, is as recurring as a sweet tooth. A prickle in the back of his head after he devours his dinner that says, dessert might be nice. 

He can fuck, but his knot never pops. A worry the doctors had—unsure what the consequences would be in the long run for such a virile, young Alpha already experiencing nature's version of erectile dysfunction so early in life. 

(“pity the poor omega who has to deal with that rut,” they whispered. “might not be much of anything left of them when he's through.”)

Inconsequential now because he's pushing forty and his last rut was a false trigger. One dragged out of him by drugs and torture. The last true rut, natural and instinctual, was when he was eighteen. 

It's doubtful he'd suddenly be cured at his age. 

This is what he tells Johnny when he asks, pries. Broken fuck, ain't he? Unmated. Can't knot. Piss poor excuse of an Alpha. Doesn't he think it's—

“a shame,” Johnny grouses, words muffled slightly by the way he's hunched over the cheap plastic table in the canteen. His fingers dig harshly into his temple. “Alpha like you—” it's enunciated in clipped Queen's English, the barb makes Ghost scoff. “—ack! a waste. ma mam would be livid. no grandbabies t’show off? sacrilegious.”

—funny. If he's being honest. Laughable:

because for as long as Ghost can remember, he's always had a predilection to ruin his favourite toys. slaking his unquenchable lust on their tender skin, biting down to the bone, sipping on their marrow—

not really the sort of thing omegas today go for, is it? 

his want is as hideous as he is. as ugly as his goddamn mug—

Instead, he shrugs. “hardly.” 

“yer no’ missin’ it?” 

“missin’ what, Johnny?”

“knottin’, ye surly prick.” He jeers, then, jabs his elbow into Simon's arm. “a bonnie omega to stick yer prick in. ain't missin’ th’, no?”

“no,” Simon gripes. The last thing Price needs is another order of protection against his Lieutenant. But to humour the alpha in an early stage of rut, he jabs out, hollow and full of wretched derision. “i can barely remember what it felt like. must be heaven, though. is that your plans for tonight, Johnny? gonna go and knot some sorry omega?”

It's meant to prod, poke. Sharp barbs aimed at Johnny's threadbare control, the same one held in place by a fraying, unspooling knot. Alphas in the early stage of rut are considered safe enough to be around. Not yet mindless drones, hosts to an ugly little parasite; a being forced to obey a single, instinctual drive to mate, to gorge themselves into a post-rut stupor. 

Safe. Or so they say. 

But Ghost knows what Johnny's feeling in the same sense as a phantom limb. A broken, fragmented memory. So, he twists his mockery in deep. All in jest, of course. 

And Johnny pales suddenly. Wavers in his seat. The affirmative comes after a bout of contemplative silence. A jagged, choked yeah slips from his Sergeant’s mouth as he drops his head to the table, and groans. Miserable. 

“go fuck yerself, Lt.”

Simon intends on taking Johnny up on that offer, lazying out on the futon with his hand stroking lazily along his flaccid cock, thumbing through the latest series of snapshots Johnny—ever the photographer—snapped up during his previous rut. Images of pretty omegas dressed up in fine silk, blood-red lingerie, and coy little grins on their faces, a vixen pastiche of demureness. Jejune appeal in all its coquettishness.

Innocent sluts—Johnny's preferred type. Ones who'll bat their eyes at him, nervous and full of faux modesty, while they rock back and forth on his face, tugging on his mohawk to make him lick their cunts just the way they like. Sweet, like candy. Dressed in sin. 

He likes to take before and after photos of them—often with the pretty models unaware (adds to it, aye, Lt?). Ones with them batting their eyes at him, soft and shy in all their twee delight, and then fucked out, ruined and chewed up like a broken toy when he finishes with them. Bitten off more than they can swallow. Cheeky brats sobbing for mercy on his bed. 

Likes, even more, to send them to Ghost. A little tease. One he has no compunction about partaking in. Enjoying to his heart's content. 

Or—

Intended to, of course. Because what ends up happening is this:

Price calls just as he's getting into the new series sent to his phone—the tear streaks streaming down this omega’s face are particularly appealing, bound in intricate Celtic knots (Johnny, the artist), and gagged with their own panties—and tells him he has a job for him. 

Something simple. Discreet. And local, too. Bears have been sighted in town—a mama and her cubs. Dangerously close. 

The prelude to the phone call is a clipped take care’a it before the line goes dead. 

Ghost doesn't need to pack much—he can't remember the last time he unpacked his duffle bag, anyway—and stays in the recliner until the mission file comes in, idly stroking his thumb across the pixelated, tear-streaked face of the omega in Johnny's clutch. Moussed. Messy. They make the prettiest picture, don't they? Drool dripping down their chin, a spillover from what the lacy, white panties couldn't catch. 

Flesh peppered with jagged circles, bite marks. Johnny knows better than to claim them, and their neck is bereft of his teeth. Smooth. Unblemished. 

To claim is to bond. To bond—

Well. 

His earliest recollection of a relationship is his parents’. His mum, tied and trapped to a man she wanted no part of, but stuck. Unbondings, divorce, were rare during that time. Unheard of. Even now. 

And under his old man's influence, he's always seen claiming as ownership. As possession. A lingering remnant he’s told is wrong, but can't shake. Can't change. It glues in the fibrils of his mind. A rotten, pulsing scab that no amount of sanctioned reconditioning can ever seem to get rid of, to scrape out of his skull. 

(one he knows would be there no matter what because his sole purpose is exsanguination; bloodletting— 

in his warped desire to protect the things he cares about, he ends up smothering them in the end. a child holding a firefly too tight in its chubby fist.)

But Johnny knows better. Good Catholic boy. Knows to keep a muzzle on himself when he sucks desperate kisses into the small omegas' sweet neck, breaking apart the blood vessels of their scent glands, soaking himself in their musk—potent pheromones of a needy omega in heat. Aching for a bite. To be held down and conquered. 

It's wrong, they say. This ugly mass sits inside his chest like a foreign body. Scandalised eyes drilling into the side of his head like he's a monster for thinking this way. 

And he is. 

(always has been)

But he knows better. Knows to keep those uglier, rotten parts of himself hidden away from prying eyes. Got good at it, too. Enough that they let him into the brothels time and time again. 

Still—

He can remember the closest he'd come during a rut to biting a shrill omega who screamed in his ear until his head rang, ached. Nearly did it, too. Teeth razoring over their jugular, pinching delicate skin. 

Clarity came like a gunshot when he tasted blood. Chiselled a hole through his delirium, broke up the haze, and snapped his jaws up tight, locking them as he finished with a muffled growl, tongue swirling over his teeth for another taste. Another drop. 

His ruts have always been messy. Bloody. Got him banned from several centres, brothels, where they offered up betas drenched in the artificial musk of an omega in estrus. Ones resilient enough to withstand the harsh coupling of an unhinged Alpha in need. 

He had a problem, they said, with treating their workers like chew toys. Biting to break skin, drilling in deep enough to scratch his teeth on their bones. 

Deranged, they hissed. Fuckin’ mental, mate. Stay the hell away!

Some are just prone to violence. Need to be half-sedated before they can mate without ripping their partner to pieces. Ghost has always been that sort. Aggressive. Hard to control. Rabid. 

His appetite is bigger than the expanse of their skin. He sometimes thinks he could eat the whole world and still starve. 

He hums, thumb sliding to cover the omega's neck. Trapped in his hand, his clutch. They're cute when they're ruined like this. Begging. Whimpering. 

His cock gives a half-hearted twitch. His work phone chimes, signaling the end of his leisure. 

shame, he thinks, squeezing his hand until the metal dents, the screen cracks, splinters. Pops. Hairline fractures split across their distorted, tear-stained face. He closes his fist over it until it breaks. Goes black. 

really. such a goddamn shame. 

Some things are just not meant to be—

—but they have a habit of falling into his maw, anyway.

It's a simple set up. 

Man—

beast, monster, thing

—with his empty, growling stomach and teeth made to bite, tear, goes out hunting for a meal. In that search, he finds you. 

You, Persephone personified: damned (eternal), standing beneath a spruce tree. Limned, halo gold, in the waning sunset's bashful kisses, you lean on the rough bark, idling your timelessness away. 

Postcard beauty. Pinup demure. Alluring. 

(creature of sin

and oh, do you reek:

The air is saturated in the tantalising scent of honeybush, roasted hazelnuts, and clove. Saccharine—almost nauseatingly so—but with a hint of spice, black cardamom, cinnamon. He drags in lungful after lungful until it tangles deep within his chest, nearly suffocating. Smothered in this earthy sweetness. Drowning. Drowning—

the perfect dessert)

It unleashes something in him. Chips at the lock buried deep in his mind, cudgelling through the hinges until they pop. Rusted, slick with oxidising oil. It peels back from the gate, unveiling this gaping, ravenous chasm, polluted and gangrenous, rotten down to the marrow. Noisome. Noxious. This frothing pit sloshes, geyser-like, and greedily foams at the maw, the mouth, aching for a taste. Something to quench this gnawing hunger. 

This bottomless abyss hadn't seen light since he was eighteen, and—

The hollow space where his rib once sat throbs, aches. phantom bone. He holds his chest with his hand, feeling for the gap, the chasm, stolen from him. Ripped away, taken.

By you. you—

—so,

it's only fair that he steals something back. 

(quid pro quo, or something, right?)

You greet him with a small nod when he wanders close, eyeing him warily under the black rim of your ballcap. Tense. Small hands curl into fists, partially hidden under the rain-soaked windbreaker nearly two sizes too big. It smells like you—honeyed milk, molasses; lilac, lavender and warm bread—and he fights the urge to pull his mask down, to shove his misshapen nose into your neck, and breathe it in right from the source. Drinking, feasting, on it. 

This want is visceral. It coils in his guts, bubbling in his veins. His musk—heavier than yours, pungent—beads along his scent glands, mushrooming into the air like a fine mist. 

Your nostrils flare. He takes a step closer, eyes skewering into you, taking in everything you have to offer. The rucksack left at the bottom of the tree, stained with dirt and leaves. A sprig of Saskatoon berries peeks out from the lopsided flap. And—

Ah. 

Foraging is off-limits in this area unless granted a permit. One you don't seem to have based on the skittish way you keep avoiding his eye.

His scent thickens, tainted sour with faux suspicion, and you wince, ducking your chin, tucking it close to your chest, hiding from his spearing gaze. 

All it does is give him a voyeuristic view of your fragile nape, your vulnerable neck. 

His teeth ache. Jaw clenched up tight. 

It looks so bare. So naked. 

(Be a shame to keep it that way forever, wouldn't it?)

“Hi,” you stammer, seemingly oblivious to the musk you leak into the air, into his lungs. Forcing some sense of staid indifference into your tone. Like being here, out in the middle of the forest is normal. “Did you need something?” 

On the verge of a heat like this, wobbling where you stand—

He wants to chew you up. Spit out the pieces on the pavement. Drink from the gash he'll rip into your jugular,

quench this unbearable thirst. 

He doesn't know how you made it out here as long as you have, smelling like you do, and the thought burrows through the haze spuming, clotting, on the fringes of his muted periphery. Anger is an icy deluge of white water raging through his veins. 

Under the mask, the remnants of his scarred lip curls. His hands close into tight fists. Balled up. He feels the tension crackling along his muscles, his body. Coiled spring. Ready to leap—

But:

There's clarity. Focus. Where he was meant to become a mindless monster, driven by instinct, he instead feels the pieces of himself snap back into place. Missing puzzle pieces. It shifts. Settles. Locks. 

He wants you. Will have you. It's non-negotiable. Ironclad. You just—

Belong to him, don't you? Pretty little thief. And wandering around like this, reeking like you do, you must want him, too. Need him. 

(protect, protect, protect—)

Honed in, drilling into your face to catch every expression that flickers past, he sees the moment you take a sniff, when realisation blooms in the inkpools of your gaze that you are less than an arm's length away from a starving predator. Supple, soft. All plush flesh seated seamlessly against brittle bone. Fragile. 

��hi,” he echoes, and it sounds hollow. Garbled. Like he's speaking underwater. Thinks, for a moment, that he's buried again. Drowning under the crushing weight of dirt. His own tumulus. Suffocating. Choking on dirt—

But you twitch. Feral little thing. It breaks him out of this nightmarish obtundation; shaking the cobwebs loose. He tracks it like a viper. Attention narrowing, shrinking, into nothing but the way you move. Smell. You anchor him in his place, keeping him stable amid this horrific onslaught of emotions that rip talons down his chest. 

“I–” you breathe in again, lashes fluttering. Strains of silk batting over your etiolated cheeks. You breathe him in. Deep. He sees your chest grow, expanding with his air. His musk. Has to bite down on a growl before it forms, the lash of a whip in his throat. Aching. 

There's something spellbinding about you—caked in a layer of grime, briny sweat clogging your natural scent; wild and untamed. Uncharted wilderness, untouched by man and their dirty hands. A corrie after a rain shower. Snow melt. He wants to bathe in it. Carry it with him wherever he goes. 

As if scenting this thickening desire, your eyes widen. You take a step back, swallowing audibly when he follows. Marionette on strings. Your shadow. 

“I should go—”

And he knows he can't let you do that. 

Won't. 

He hums, a fickle, brittle thing in the far reaches of his chest. 

“Go?” he flicks his hand toward your bag, head cocking to the side in a mockery of contemplation. “Don' think you got a permit for that, do you?”

“A permit…”

He has you. Your eyes lower, falling to the badge on his chest. Game Warden. You stare at it, eyes widening. Swallowing thick. 

With you distracted, he leans in. Curves his body over you mockingly, like he's bending down to whisper a secret in your ear. Cupping a pretty little firefly in the palm of his hand. 

When his shadow falls over you—dark and damning—you flinch back, fists trembling under the hem of your jacket. Brows furrowed, knotted tight. Your lower lip wobbles. You try to hide that, too, by sinking your teeth into your flesh until it floods white under the strain. 

He wants to pry it apart with his own teeth. Take the bruised flesh into his mouth until you start to drool, whining from the abuse he inflicts on you in a mockery of a kiss. 

(wants to tear through it, taste your blood on his tongue—)

“An’ I don't reckon tha's a good idea, pet.” 

You shiver when he places his hand on the truck above your head. Boxing you in completely, nothing to spare—not even an inch. 

He hums at that, cock giving a vicious jerk inside his trousers at the almost impossible dearth between your sizes, at the way he swallows you up in an instant. Has to take a deep breath to steady himself, to keep the inkblack tendrils swirling, gathering, at the edges of his periphery from bleeding in. This starving murder of crows. 

When he speaks again, it's low. Deep. Kittenish licks from the tongue of a tiger; abrasive, rough. Mocking baritone of a shifting canyon, a mountainside, before it buries anyone alive under rubble. 

“Not reekin’ the way you do. Might ‘ave every alpha in a one square mile radius frothin’ at jaws for a taste. Ain't safe out there.”

And it's definitely not safe with him. 

He watches, transfixed, the moment this clicks. When your eyes waver between the hard bulk of his body—spread out, laxed; plumage unfurled—and the noisy clatter of the town just within reach. It's this thicket that cups your scent, that protectively curls over you, and keeps the Alpha's prowling about the market square from sniffing you out. A beaten trail. Hidden desire path no one was supposed to wander down. 

Except the bear problem in the woods, infringing on town, and him, the gun bolstered on his thigh still hot from his warning shots into the bush.

(lost little Lamb—

wandered too far from the herd.)

You take another step, cautious. Small. It brings you flush against the tree. Your polyester jacket whines at the friction. He can see indecision play out on your face. Oscillating between the badge on his uniform shirt, the gun on his massive thigh, and the clamour of muted noise from the town just within reach. Alphas prowling. Their acrid scent is unmistakable even through the dense foliage spreading around you.

It's an impasse. Neither option affords you much choice in the long run—it's either stay here with him, with the heady scent of want, of an Alpha on the incipient cusp of a voracious rut; or risk yourself in town. There are police officers patrolling. Ones who can sedate an alpha who gets too out of hand, but still. 

The mimesis of desire pooling around you might send you into heat sickness. That, or you'll get in even more trouble for fleeing a pursuing officer. Resisting arrest. Jail time, certainly. 

The pendulum wavers. Your knotted fists wobble. 

Then—

Your eyes leave his chest, the gun, trailing over his shoulder. Widening in surprise at whatever is there in the distance. 

He ought to commend you, really. The rouse is quite believable—

But: 

“Not bad,” he murmurs, leaning down further. If you won't jump, he'll push you—

He sees his mistake as soon as it happens. 

As he bends, you drop. Waiting until his attention seemingly drifts elsewhere, to when he's distracted and off balance. Lured in by your faux attempt at distraction. 

And it might have worked on a lesser being, but all Ghost has ever been is raw, unadulterated instinct.

He lashes out as soon as you move again, palm curling over your wrist in an instant. Snapping jowls of a defensive snake. Shackled. Locked. He tugs—

But the movement costs momentum. You use this against him, going limp. Forcing him to take the brunt of your weight on the spread of his fingers. Tricky little minx. His mouth breaks out in a feral smirk, tugging harshly on scars, on burns. Stretching skin. Distorting it under the mask, ugly and vicious. 

Your scent plumes up around him, sickly sweet. His jaw aches, gums itch. He wants to bite, snap his jowls around the scruff of your neck, chew on your skin until you sob out his name—

In seconds, you twist. Swinging your body back in a beautiful pivot, clumsy as it is. You're all animal now. Reckless in your pursuit to escape. Throwing out pheromones at him—purposeful, he realises a moment too late. 

And it works. Distracts him long enough for his grip to slacken. Your arm slips out of his grasp, and you're on your feet in an instant, darting through the thicket in a maddened dash to escape the heavy, starving alpha and his burgeoning hunger. 

Escape, or—

Weighed down by the afterbirth of his sudden rut, a prickle of his old self buoys, brims, from beneath the mess. He shouldn't chase you. Should leave you alone, call someone—Price, perhaps. Bark out between a clenched jaw that he needs a tranquiliser and chains. Will have to break Simon's teeth to stop him from biting into you like a man starved, famished. Tie him to the back of his pickup truck, drag him to the edges of the forest. Knock him out. Knock his teeth in. 

Anything.

Because they said this might happen. The doctors’ who poked and prodded. Therapists—all mandatory, non-negotiable, when he signed his name on the dotted line—murmured about unravelling. His self-control snapping like a twig. Sense of self retreating. All hiding away, protecting itself from the torrent of chemicals flooding his hindbrain. A heavy, unrelenting accumulation of a decades-long bout of rut celibacy all washing over him, all at once. 

Said to lock himself up if it happens. Chains. Shackles. Nuts and bolts. Heavy tranquiliser. Immediate sedation. 

And in Price’s office, in that messy filing cabinet he keeps, is a folder. A playthrough of everything that's supposed to happen if this happens. 

(“but that won't happen, will it, Simon?” 

and he'd rolled one massive shoulder in an easy, effortless shrug. 

“no.”)

The failsafe is that he's meant to call in if it does. Precious seconds of clarity, cognisance, enough time for him to dial the number, to bark out the order. To be hunted down, rounded up, and thrown in a pit. 

where he belongs. 

He should. Should. It's the book. Rules. Coloured in red ink. No option to negotiate. 

But as you slip through the dense foliage, angelic gold against the phthalo green bosky, the knot in his shoulders abates. Uncoils. In this sense of ease that permeates within him, he finds that he's shockingly cognisant. In full control. The plexiglass shatters, and in the ruins he finds purpose. 

You smell good. Too good. Any alpha will scent you in an instant, will claim you. Take you. It makes something in his broken, moulted head shift. Crack. He can't let that happen. Has to protect you the only way he knows how—

To wrap his paws around your throat before any other Alpha has the chance to sink their teeth into you. To claim you. 

All his. Little Persephone tucked tight against his ribs where you belong. 

And if the way the air clots with your cloying smell—heady, potent; the unmistakable ripeness of an omega in heat—then you must want him to chase you. Want him to follow. 

(escape, or—

a game.)

He tracks your movements, honed in on the rustle of the underbrush. When you're out of sight, Ghost flexes his hand, curling his gloved fingers over the leather on his palm. There's an itch in the back of his head. Festering. Rotting. He wants to reach in, rake his claws down the mass, shred it to pieces, but it affixes one simple truth inside of him: 

you need him. want him. why else would you run in the opposite direction of help if you didn't want him to give chase?

And so, he does.

You're a crafty little thing. To throw him off of your trail, you leave scent markers on the tree trunks you pass, doubling back to run in the opposite direction. 

It might have worked on someone else, but Ghost has spent half of his life buried in this thicket, and knows better than to follow smells in the forest. A vacuum, a great chasm; it plays tricks with sounds. Distorts scents wafting through the canopy, mingling with the natural loam, the disturbed humus underfoot. 

Instead, he hums at your cleverness—his smart little omega—and shifts his gaze to the forest floor, roaming over the footprints sinking into the soft soil, the peat and moss. A breadcrumb trail leading right to you. Broken twigs, crushed bushes. 

Ghost follows it. Places each foot down carefully, nose angled upward to catch the fresh wave of your heat leaking through the tangled furze. It beckons him forward. Calls out to him. 

(come, come, come—)

This lost little lamb needs a shepherd. 

He intends to give you just that. 

(—find me)

The path you cut through the forest is a twisting sawtooth meant to throw him off your trail. Traps laid out in tall tussocks, weaved through sweetgrass all drenched in your scent. Pieces of your clothing torn at the hem, the shorn fabric pressed on pine needles and tangles furze. 

These breadcrumb trails—a neat nest of wile, it seems—are cunning, he'll give you that. 

Even with his eyes to the forest floor, he finds himself throwing a wayward glance in the opposite direction, snagged in your webbed subterfuge. Somewhere between the visitors centre and the first trail meandering into the thick taiga, you seemed to have realised that your boots leave indents in the mor. He follows the deep impressions in the podsol until he finds them shoved under a Saskatoon berry bush. Another dead end. 

Clever little thing, aren't you?

But even when strays from the path, he's right on your tail. Confident in his scenting abilities. His prowess has always been tracking down wily little rabbits when they try to flee, picking them off in stasis from high above. The layout might have changed—his perch closer to the ground instead of a deer stand—but his eyes are just as keen. Your winding trail is ingrained in his mind. A long loop through the eastern trailhead, and he knows, instantly, that you'll try to throw him off at the placard where the west trail branches off through the dense conifers, and the east meanders downslope to the hidden stream where hunters like to trawl. 

He feels a pinch of pride simmering low in his guts. Anyone else would have lost you three pitfalls back. He's enraptured by this pursuit. Smitten by you. Your clumsy little escape. Your sweet little ploys. He wants to chew into you, let his teeth leave jagged scars, false starts, on your bones. Permanent. Starlight—dusting meteor showers in milk white. 

Ghost’s belly gives a tremendous growl. He huffs at the ache clawing against tissue, ravenous and unbearably empty. 

He'll have you soon. All to himself. 

The thought makes fresh blooms of pleasure spume from the rot in his chest, prickling through the layers of muskeg and peat, etiolated little sprout. Germinating in wet gangrene. Feasting on necrotised flesh. 

He swipes his hand over a honeybush, catches the lingering scent clinging to the leaves. You must have fallen here. Tangled yourself in the furze, overcome by your heat. 

Poor thing. Tired already. 

He holds his hand up to the fading gossamer of twilight trickling through the dense canopy, clenching the lingering remnants of your scent in his fist. It's fresh. He wants to tuck it in his pocket, carry it around with him. 

He finds you in a small clearing, bent down with your palm resting on the trunk of a tree. Nails digging into the rotting bark, desperately struggling to catch your breath. Your heat is a wildfire. It scorches the earth. Burns his nose. 

You're no longer on the cusp of it anymore, but in the throes. 

His rut, he finds, isn't too far behind. 

Perfect synergy. Meant to be. You call to him, and the gaping, gnarled chasm inside of him answers with a growl—

Before you can blink, he moves.

He falls over you, felled timber. The earth shakes under his indomitable weight. Palms slam into the rough bark of the gnarled spruce you've taken respite against, boxing you in. 

You fall against it with a gasp, hands pushing against his broad chest as he backs you into the tree. Little fists pounding on his sternum, mouth pinched, twisted in a snarl. There are pieces of bush caught on your clothes, tangled in your hair. Leaves. Sticks. A spot of dirt on your nose. 

It's mesmerising. 

The ballcap falls first. Morning sunlight over a boscage in bloom. Pitfalls, ravines. The canyons of your eyes quiver; this new topography shifting, sliding. Tectonic beauty in muted midnight. 

He wants to reach in, feel these granite walls of yours with his bare hands. Clamber up the colluvium, the scree, until he reaches these rugged peaks gleaming at him, angry and feral, in fading twilight. 

Time is endless. There's no limit to how long he has to know you—drink from your rivers, feast on your valleys; find all the hidden nooks, the crannies, shaded under the towering monoliths of your body. Chart your couloir. Defile your flume. Bathe in your estuary. Tangle himself inside your dells. Tame your chaparral. 

Fastidiously. Expertly. Until no part of you is unknown to him. 

Your chest heaves, mouth open as he crowds you further. Pressing into you. Over you. 

He wedges his broad thigh between your legs, presses it tight against your pussy. Your thrashing stills when he touches you, when he angles his knee up, up—

There. Through the layers of clothing that separates his bare skin from your cunt, he feels the heat bleeding out against him. The wetness from your sodden panties. Undeniable proof of how much you want him. Need him. 

 “All wet f’me?”

“Fuck you—!” You spit, angry and feral, but you arch into his touch, pushing your pussy onto his thigh. Aching for friction. 

It makes him hum. A low growl caught in the back of his throat. 

“Reckon I'll be the one fuckin’ you, pet.” 

And he will be. This is fact. 

You shudder, brows notching together in a vicious glare. “I don't want you.” 

It's hissed between the sliver of your clenched teeth. Full of heavy conviction. Forging truth out of lies—

And that's all it is. A lie. A fallacy. 

(and even if it wasn't, unlikely considering the way you arch into him, needy despite the disdain dripping down your brow—he really just can't find it in himself to give a fuck; he'll make you want him—)

Ghost leans down, muzzle pressed against your neck. He inhales deep, audible. Chest expanding, lungs swelling. Full of the aroma bleeding out of your pores. Proof of just how much you do, in fact, want him. Betrayed by your own body. 

He huffs out, paints the air with his derision. “Is that so?” 

Ghost drags his hand down the solid line of the tree, dropping it to rest against the jut of your hip. He ducks his head, watching. Staring at the way his palm nearly swallows you up when he rests it over your waist. Spanning nearly the entirety of it—hip to hip. 

It bludgeons into him. Knocks the air clean from his lungs. 

He's always had a hunger for things he can cup in his palm. The barrel of his rifle. The hilt of a knife. Your wrist in his hand. The curve of your hip. 

His gloved fingers slip under the hem of your shirt. Pads ghosting over your skin. Warmth bleeds through the leather, an unmistakable tell of your heat reaching its first equinox. It'll be all fire, all smoke, from this point onward. Desperate. Feral. 

Groaning deep, wanting, he pushes into you further. Chest rumbling. Eager. 

It takes a great deal of effort to pull his hand away. To bring it up to his mouth, fingers hooking over the edge. 

The fight in you abates—marginally—and you watch him with a keen look of suspicion dancing in the moulted dirt spread over your nullah. Wary. Anticipatory. 

He fights the urge to laugh—deep and delirious—and instead works on prying his mask down over his crooked nose, his mangled mouth. Letting the hem snap under his chin, kept there. Bearing himself to you for the first time. Naked. Exposed. 

Your eyes widen, trailing down the jagged lines, mauled ridges of scar tissue. Drinking in everything he offers in the fading embers of a summer twilight. 

He grins—a rivened, ugly thing—when you let out a heavy, quick breath, and your hips drop, rutting your sopping cunt over the wide heft of his thigh. Gyrating subconsciously. Quietly pleased by the way he looks—as maimed, as beastly as he is. He lets you. Lifts his knee, pressing his cap tight into the bark, and bumping the top of his flexing quadriceps at the apex of your groin, right where he knows your clit sits. 

The breath you take is pulled in through clenched teeth, biting on the rind of a moan. Its shapeless silhouette ducks, hides from sight. 

He lets you have it. Lets you run. 

But it's not without recompense. 

With his upper lip curled, he sinks his teeth into the leather tip of the glove above his middle finger. Letting you see them for yourself—these thrawn teeth he'll bury into your neck. Claiming you entirely as his. 

Your pupils start to eclipse your irises. Lagoons of liquid black blotting over rugged peaks. 

Ghost slowly tips his head back, dragging the glove with him. Eyes setting along his lashline, he drinks in the sight of you swallowing thickly, your gaze darting between his teeth, his mouth, and now—his bared neck. Voracious, greedy, in the way you feast on him. Drilling into the stretch of skin slowly unveiling itself to you. 

The muscles in his neck flex against rimy skin. Adam's apple bobbing with his slow swallow. 

You follow it all, but your gaze seems to fix itself on the brawny arch of his neck, falling—and then glueing— to the thick vein protruding from his flesh, pulsing with the steady rhythm of his heart, and the small, swollen bump of his scent gland beneath it. 

Hunger, he finds, paints such a pretty picture on your face. The greedy, anfractuous glances a bludgeon into him; so heavily affixed with desire that the shake of your head when he pulls the glove free, letting it dangle from between his teeth, and drops his hand back to your skin, is minute. Meaningless. 

You want him as much as he wants you. 

The clause in this, the axiom, is ironclad. Irrefutable. Bound in brass when you shiver at the touch—feverish skin on feverish skin—and arch into his palm for more. Panting through clenched teeth, each hiss striking against that fraying coil leashing his threadbare control. To distract himself from the unspooling knot, the ache in his gums, he charts the first inch of skin he passes with his thumb, committing the sloping plains of your body to memory. The jut of your hip, the stutter in your breath when he runs the rough pad of his forefinger over the slope of your underbelly. 

It's easy to marvel at the sheer enormity of his size compared to yours. Simon hitches his thigh firmly into your clothed cunt, nearly lifting you up off the ground. You teeter on the tips of your toes, falling forward into his chest to stabilise yourself. Little fists curling into the fabric of his jacket, knuckles tight against his the last rungs of his ribcage. Your head lifts, a glare chiselling into the soft fields of your face. 

You hiss something at him—feral and scathing. He drops the glove, leans down to meet you in the middle, and eats your feeble protests from your lips in a bruising kiss. Scorching. His teeth knock into yours. Tongue lashes out to catch the vitriol dripping from your fangs. You make a noise in the back of your throat, and he swallows that, too. Devours it all. 

It's a vicious kiss. All teeth, tongue. Bullying. He lets you sink your teeth into his tongue, huffing into the seam of your lips when you coo, victoriously, at the first drop of blood spilled. 

In retaliation, he sets his hands over your ribs, and lifts you up off the ground. Making you gasp. Mewl. Your legs kick out as the back of your head catches on loose bark, raining it down over your shoulders in flakes. He doesn't stop kissing you throughout. Eyes half-mast, still open, as he drinks in the sight of yours rolling back in your head when his thigh, one the width of both of yours—fuckin’ hell—catches the perfect angle on your clit. 

Loose-limbed, caught, you have no choice but to wrap your ankles around his waist, curl your arms around his broad shoulders. Clinging to him desperately to remain grounded, held aloft. 

His hand falls down, cups the back of your thigh, fingers spanning the entire curve of your cheek. Held tight in his palm. He bucks into you—quick, hard. Letting you feel the unmistakable bulge of his stiffening cock, leaking spend already in the tight confines of his trousers. This groin, inner thighs, already sticky with the mess dribbling out. 

You fall apart at this. Head tipping back, crown thudding against the truck of the tree. He has your lower lip between his teeth, and it pulls, skin stretching until he huffs out another breath, mocking, and unhinges his jaw, letting you go. 

Mewling, whining low in the back of your throat, you clumsily rut your cunt into the hard press of his cock. Eyes hazy, liquid, with your blooming heat. 

Its approach is quicker than he thought it would be, and he hums, tongue rolling over his teeth to catch the lingering taste of you. Under his hand, your skin burns. Singing with the urgency of your desperation. He answers it with a grunt, falling forward to smother you under his weight. 

There's a flash of clarity in your eyes when they crack open. Brief. Fleeting. He feels your sluggish attempt to push him away, to free your hands from between your chests, and he has to dip his head to stifle another groan. It feels good to have you under him like this. Covered entirely in his bulk, his shadow. 

His hand pulls away from your flesh, snaking between your bodies to catch your wrists in the palm of his hand. Only one swallows them up, and the easy way he subdued you—effortlessly—has him nearly coming undone in his trousers. Untouched. 

“Fuck, want it bad, don't you?” he snarls, hips bucking into you. Chasing pleasure. He pulls your hands out, lifting to arm to trap yours in the shackle his fingers make high above your head, and—

It's devious, this. 

Somewhere in the loosening agency of his self, his autonomy, he knows this is becoming dangerous. Something that ought to be stopped before he rips into you with a rabidness that promises nothing at all will remain intact when he's finished. When he's had his fill. He needs to clear his mind. To get away from the way you fit against him so perfectly. Tiny in his wicked embrace. 

Like you were made to fit between his ribs. His teeth. 

He gnashes them together, trying to stem the ache in his gums. 

He wants to fuck you. Needs to—

But as ripe as you smell to him now—tender melon, warmed honeycomb—he knows that you're not yet ready to take him. 

Ghost steps back, letting your feet drop to the soil below. With the sparse inch of space between your bodies, he breathes in the lingering scent of your breath—sharp, burning; imbued with a heady thrum of adrenaline electrifying your nerves—and finds the musk a near-perfect pantomime of ozone. The arid tang in the air just before the air. A lightning strike. It rolls over his tongue, tastes of wet pennies in the back of his throat. Heavy with anticipation. 

Something he feels very keenly as well. An eagerness he hasn't met in decades. Absolutely famished for it, for this familiarity of want. Potent desire. 

He mourns the loss of the way your ass fits in the cradle of his hand when he pulls it free, fingers trailing over the feverish skin of your hips, your belly, as he goes. He doesn't stop until he comes to rest on the button of your trousers, eyes flickering down to catch your gaze. Purposeful, now. Intent clear. 

Nothing is stopping him from taking. Your protests are paper-thin, dissolving the moment it touches the dense blanket of humidity in the air, but he wants your submission. Wants to see your resolve break, crushed by your own hand. 

The gossamer wings of a butterfly, crumpled up in your palm, and offered to him for the taking. How sweet—

You seem to realise his intentions when his thumb dips below the hem of your pants. Just a tease. Brushing against the soft skin he finds there with the curve of his nail. 

Your glare is instant. The sharp tug of a drawstring pinching tight between your brow. Mesmerising as it closes over your lax expression. A fierce snap. He wants to pry it apart. Wedge himself between the seam. Create a gap wide enough for him to fit. 

“I won't beg,” you grind out, acidulous. Firm. 

He huffs, quietly amused by the fight still sparking in you despite the evidence of your arousal, your want of him, evident in the stain at the seam of your pants. His other hand rests on the trunk of the tree above your head, boxing you in when he leans closer. Taunting. “That so?” 

You don't respond, but your glare sharpens, mouth tugging downward in a harsh frown. Displeasure sparks in the air. Cutting into him like fine glass shards. He lets it graze his naked flesh, the warning ghosting over him in needlepoint pinpricks. Entirely too captivated by you to notice the sting. 

Your ire is a heady, tangible thing dripping down your brow, slashing over your cheeks. Anger, however misguided it might be, paints a pretty picture over your face. Darkens the inlets nestled in the corner of your eyes. Drenches the ravines, gorges in a startling chiaroscuro. Limns the alpines, the valleys, in a halo of golden starlight. 

He wants to drink it down. Hold your fury in the palm of his hand—

Crush it between his fingers. 

Because despite the dissent, your desire cuts through, and hews the air in a thick tapestry of want. 

mutinous, teeth bared, but your eyes burn, rage against the prison walls, and scream, please—

His fingers dig into the bark above your head, catching flecks of sap between his nails. Knuckles turning white under the flaxen hair dusting over them, strained. The grip is unintentional. Unconscious. He keeps thinking about you beneath him. The heat of your thighs around his waist was a mere tease. A morsel when he wants a meal—

The pressure in his knuckles grounds him. Cuts through the phosphenes blanketing the edges of his vision, smothering the clarity, the cognisance, that lingers in the centre. Threadbare as it is. 

There’s an ache in his jaw. 

(the need to bite—)

He pulls it off, and shoves his hand tight between your thighs, cupping your cunt in his palm. Feeling the heat bleed through the gusset of your pants. The touch is harsh. Firm. He bullies his fingers into your flesh, letting out a mocking chuff when he feels the fabric dampen.  

“Somethin’s’ tellin’ me otherwise.” 

Your hand lashes out, grabbing the thick of his wrist. Holding firm. It should be a warning, but the obvious gap between your middle finger and thumb makes him groan instead. 

“You're wrong.”

“Am I?” 

You twist away from him when he leans down, chin ducking to your shoulder. Hiding. Denying him your mouth, your taste. This meagre measure of control you grapple for is easy to give. He presses his lips to the shell of your ear instead, letting you run. Flee. For now. 

His voice is thick when he continues, husky. He pitches it low, lets it swirl into the seashell coil of your inner ear, earning him a shiver in response. Your nails biting into the skin of his wrist. Holding tight. 

“‘m a lot of things, pet—” rucked gravel, sodden with his derision, spills into your ear. Your shudder makes him want to bite, to maim. “Wrong ain't usually one of ‘em. But you'll learn that soon enough.” 

Your breath hitches. Expression morphing, shifting. Changing into something adorably beleaguered as he encircles you like a tiger, eyes drilling through the tussock, aimed directly at your head. With his body boxing you in, coiling over you like a hideous shadow, he has you trapped, caught. Little lamb writhing between the paw of a tiger.  

You seem to be keenly aware of this. Your eyes are shrewd, searching, as you probe around for any escape route, but he's a bulwark around you. Inescapable. 

Finding none, you suck in another breath, and slowly lift your chin, glancing up at him through your lashes. The look on your face is—

Enigmatic. 

Something changes in the morphology of your mien. Fracturing. Cracking. 

“Yeah?” You breathe, soft and goading. Your hips buck into his hand, rutting shallowly against the tops of his fingers. Unconscious. Like you just couldn't help it. 

And he supposes you can't. 

A fine sheen of sweat has been building since he took after you into the forest. Gathering around your temple, your hairline. The harsh reminder of your festering heat, once dammed by your raw disdain for him—hatred, he'd say, and doesn't the thought just make him want to laugh; you're all bark, no bite, and he knows he'll have fun breaking you in, breaking you apart—but flooded over by the primal drive to mate. 

And he's perfect for you, isn't he? 

Hideous bastard that he is. It's a sharp juxtaposition to your prettiness, your earthly beauty. 

Under the spinel sky, you break. The hand on his wrist tightens, your hips flexing into his palm. Seeking friction. Needing pressure. Needing him. And pissed off about it. Delicious. 

“Prove it,” you snap, irritation blanching the corners of your eyes arsenic white. Edging into a frenetic desperation hot enough to burn the threads of your resolve. But there's a gleam of reluctance pushing through the syrupy murk folding over you, heavy molasses. You want to give in, but there's something about him, his appetite, that makes you hold back. That makes you visibly sick at the sight of him—

Unfortunately for you, he has no such compunction to shelf his barbarity. To leash his desire, to muzzle the overwhelming urge to crush you under the weight of his accumulated need. It's decades of listless apathy. Divorced from anything resembling human emotion at the root. Carved out, scraped off bone. He was left to stagnate. A misfortunate creature submerged in a bog, dead but unable to rot. 

The deluge of his savage, bestial hunger rages in his veins. It's corrosive, vile, and—

unrestrained. 

Ravenously esurient. He wants to sink his teeth into you and never let go—

but first: 

he needs to eat. 

His meal is a feast, it turns out. Simon gorges himself until he's full. Promises that he'll stop as soon as he's satiated. 

(but he's lying to himself, and to you, because he never is—

never will be.)

Tears pebble along your lash line as he feasts on your sopping cunt, licking at your fluttering rim, slurping up your slick. Your clit is pressed tight against the crooked arch of his nose, sliding and catching on the jagged ridge each time he moves his jaw to dig deeper inside of you as if he's trying to taste the seal of your womb. You pant, whine. The noise muffled half-heartedly behind your palm. Teeth sunk into your skin, lodged against your bone. 

Angry rivulets rain down your cheeks, dangling like fine beads, gems, on your jaw. He wants to taste them next, as soon as he fills his gullet with the earthy tang you release. 

Your tears remind of that pretty omega Johnny sent to him—a brat, he'd said; the best, Lt—and it churns in his stomach, dredging up something awful. Terrible. He wants to make you weep harder. Wants you sobbing, begging. His own little brat to take over the knee whenever he wants—

But that's where the uncanny resemblance ends. 

You're not a brat. No. You're a headache. The kind that will have him written up, sat like a bad dog in his best suit, as they level him with charges, and orders, and the like. The sort of thing that even the old man wouldn't be able to string him out of—not that he would. Price is three days away from a much-deserved retirement to the mountains and sitting on his hands to keep from snatching up the pretty conservation officer who moons at him whenever he passes by. 

He won't be much help to get Ghost out of trouble. That leaves only Gaz and Soap. And while he's sure they can swing it, he doesn't really want to be under their ahh, guess ye/ya owe us one, Lt/Riley. 

So—

It stands to reason then that he should have you tamed before dawn. Shackled down, locked up tight. Only right considering he's the best in town to keep bears at bay. Do you really want to deal with a mama grizzly and her defenceless cubs? Or a starving male clumsily pawing his way out of hibernation? 

Probably not. 

So. So. 

He pulls back, rests his chin on your thigh. 

“Gonna be good for me, pet?” He asks, lowering his tone considerably until it catches on the gravel below. 

He's not surprised when you hiss through a cloud of tears. “Go fuck yourself—”

Ghost tips his head, suckles your clit into his mouth. Tongue laving over your flesh. Blunt teeth pressing flat against the swollen bead, a tease. You tense, gasping. Hand pushing his head back, back—

“Don't, don't—” you're mewling, nails raking over his scalp. Hips bucking, pulling back. Struggling to get away. The bite marks along your thighs weep fresh blood in your struggle, filling his nose with the heavy scent of iron. 

They serve as a harsh reminder of what he can do with these jagged teeth of his. 

He chuckles, mouth still closed around your clit. The vibrations have you choking, spine curving into a beautiful arch. 

Fingers digging into your hips, keeping you still. Trapping you. He's not quite done with your cunt, yet. And all this wriggling is something he can do without. With his hand pressed to your hips, he notches the other down your thigh. Tracing his index finger over your soft skin, dragging it close to your outer lips. Catching the tacky slick drying on your flesh with the tip. 

Tiny fists rain down over his shoulders. Urging him forward, eager for more. Selfish, spoiled little thing. 

What a monster he's made—

“Patience, pet,” he coos, mocking and mean. Likes the way you react to the patronisation in his tone. All taut shoulders, shaking fists. Bearing your teeth at the slight, the stinging barb. Shaking in an amalgamation of embarrassment and shame. 

You seem to like it when he's a little awful to you. A little mocking. Cruel. 

“Shut up—!” You hiss, lips curling as you glare down at him. “I'm not your pet—”

He ignores you. Bends down to sniff at your cunt instead, and finds his answer is the white hot desire he can taste in the back of his throat when he breathes you in. 

His fingers pry apart your folds, and he greedily drinks in the sight of your drenched hole, clenching down on nothing. Poor you. His heart thunders in his chest, rages. He wants to sink inside of you—impossibly deep—until the beginning of him and the end of you ceases to exist. Rolled into a single being, atoms merged. Bodies fused. He wants to take everything from you. All of it. Eat it out of the cup of his hand like pomegranate seeds, let the skin get stuck in his teeth. 

He wants to devour you whole.

(to eat—)

Settles, instead, for pawing at your cunt. 

Pressing the width of it against your slit, feeling the heat of your core on the palm of his hand. Branding himself with the intensity of your desire. Another scar among many. An uncountable number of jagged asteroids cratering along his flesh, making a home out of a ghost. A shell. 

Reinforced, too, by the absurdity of how terribly contrasted his flesh is to yours. Monstrous. His scarred hand rests over your pussy, encompassing it entirely with extra digits to spare. Folding each finger on top of the other to wedge between the basin of your thighs. And as his gaze comes to rest on the way he swallows you up, he is struck by the garishness of his hand—hideous scar tissue, burns—falling over your pretty cunt. 

Sinful. Frankensteinian beast palming the sweet pussy of a pretty, human woman, and—

Fuck. 

His cock twitches, spits out a thick glob of pre-cum.

Ghost has never wanted to ruin something as badly as he wants to ruin your cunt. You. Mess you up so badly that everyone will know you belong to him, and him alone. To brand you with the tattoo of his teeth on your mons; force a claiming bite on the pillowy skin above your clit. His ownership bracketed between your thighs, at the very apex of your hip bones. Buried into tissue right under the bulge of your womb. A fecund valley for him to lay waste; for you to grow beauty from the rot, the ash. 

Cinder scraps over his nerves. Fells his resolve in a brutal sweep. 

He comes undone at the seams, unravels. 

Simon curls his fingers into a loose fist, passing the rugged peaks of his bone over your soft flesh. Gathering slick on thick, scarred knuckles. He holds it there, folds pried apart by his hand, content to luxuriate in the softness of your flesh, the scorching heat.

Possessively, he unhitches his thumb from the coil of his fist, and swipes it over your clit. More slick leaks out as you keen. 

“Sweet omega like you should ‘ave been claimed by now,” he rumbles evenly despite the sour twist in his guts at the thought. “Might not ‘ave ended up ‘ere, would you ‘ave? Beggin’ the first alpha you see to fuck this sweet little cunt.”

“Begging?” 

“Practically gaggin’ for it, weren't you?” And even though the words are his own, they sit in his gut like a stone. An angry knot tangled in his intestines, snaking its way up his gullet. Bitter. It's quelled by the sight of your bare neck. Ripe for his teeth. And his alone.

But even if you had a pretty ring made by another alpha, Simon knows that wouldn't have stopped him from taking you, anyway. Biting over the claim. Breaking it between his teeth. Precious, loving union shattered by his crooked greed. He'd have relished in it, too. Basked in the way you sobbed as he tore your alpha into pieces. An obstacle turned into a pretty effigy at his feet. Wicker pyre burning to keep him warm.

(he'd have caught dinner for you, too; hunted caribou, moose, and roasted it over the open flame. Fucked you under the blume of orange. Let the fire lick across your skin as he sunk in deep—)

He rocks back on his haunches. Mood labile, quicksilver, as his rut grows. Festers. 

You deny it, breathless, as he slips the mountainous peak of his bent middle finger into your hole, stretching your rim around the scarred cartilage. You pulse around him like the fluttering wings of a hummingbird. Rapid, quick. Wanting. It draws him in. Makes him want to spit on your pretty pussy, and then break you apart on his cock—

“Such a needy cunt, eh? Starving for a good knot, ain't it?”

You hiss out your protests, but clench tight around his knuckle. He chuckles, and it's liquid. Wet rot. Lungs polluted, spitting nocuous, black smoke into the air. 

“I'm not—”

“You are.” 

He pulls back, pursing his mouth, and spreads your lips apart, opening you up wide and vulnerable to his prying eyes. Saliva puddles on his tongue. He gives you a moment to clue into what he's about to do, your fingers tightening, nails digging into his scalp as you do on a shallow gasp of disgust. Then, brutish, he leans forward, and spits. Lets the glob hit your clit, and he has to hold you still when you jerk, cringing away from him, snarling out your displeasure.

“You're disgusting—”

The protests are weak. Your knees tremble, giving away the growing slickness gathering on the insides of your thigh. 

He hums, watches as it oozes down between your folds, over your fluttering hole, before it falls to the ground between your legs. He lets his hand fall back over your cunt, middle finger gathering his spit. Rubbing it around your pebbled clit. It's done detachedly, perfunctory. A means to an end with hardly much concern for your pleasure. Not yet, anyway. 

You've given him nothing in return yet. 

He intends to change that soon. 

As you grapple with the harsh reality he presents to you—one of ownership, humiliation, and pleasure on his whim—he drags his finger down, sliding it between your soft lips until he reaches your hole once more. Petting around the drenched entrance slowly, softly, humming under his breath about how wet you are. 

Your hips drop, greedily chasing after his finger. You won't ask—not yet—but he likes the way you rut against him: all hateful, spiteful. Like you can't decide on what you want more—to bash his head in, or keep it locked tight between your thighs. Sweet thing. 

“Need me, don't you?” He sinks his finger in. Nearly whites out at the pressure, the tightness, he feels. Soft, wet. Squeezing him in a vice as you yowl, whimpering into the stretch like it matters. Like his thick, scarred finger is the most you'd ever taken before. Sweet girl. So naïve. 

He drinks in the sight of your flesh forcibly being parted around his knuckle, matting the wisps of blond on his skin as it leaks down to his wrist, until that, too, is pushed up into you. His whole finger now engulfed in the wet heat of your body as you squirm around the stretch, pulsing around him like a heartbeat. 

He groans when he tastes your discomfort on the back of his tongue. 

“Don't worry, lovie. M’gonna take good care’a you.”

You watch him with slitted eyes as he pushes you down to the forest floor, glaring over your shoulder as he adjusts you the way he wants. Maneuvers you around like a little toy. Forearms braced against the trampled grass, knees sinking into soft moss. Thighs spread. Cunt bare, drenched. Ready to be claimed. Taken. 

He drops to his knees, shuffling close from behind you. His hand drops to your lower back, pressing your torso down further into the ground below. His cock aches between his thighs. Heavy, fat. He reaches down with his other hand to where it droops, smearing pre-cum over his inner thigh. He catches it in his fist, flushed the colours of a fresh bruise—angry red, purple—and strokes along the sensitive skin of his shaft, dragging it up and over his engorged head. Pre-cum weeps from the tip, drools long strains down to the forest floor. Puddles thick between your knees. 

A prelude, perhaps, for what's to come. When he has you tied like a bow around his knot, milking all the pent-up spend from his heavy, full balls. 

It's been decades since he had this—

(“shame.”

he concurs.)

Simon pulls his cock up, taps it against your pebbled clit. Drinks in the sight of you keening, cunt gushing more slick out of your empty hole, dribbling down your thighs. Mingling with the mess he already started making. 

It shocks him how good it feels just to tap his cockhead on your pretty pussy. To drag it through your slit, teasing it against your fluttering hole that drools copious slick over him. 

He wants to make a mess of you. Fuck your pussy until you cum, until all you can feel is the split of him inside of you. Filling you. Ruining you. 

Until all you can think about is the thick drag of him against your stuffed walls. Empty without him plugging you up. Desperate for his cock, his knot—hungry little slut just for him. All for him.

He presses the head of his cock against your rim, letting it catch. Holding it there. A tease. Just a little taste. 

Likes when you whimper, head hanging between your shoulders, fingers curling into the moss below. You make such a pretty picture like this—the expanse of your back bare for his eyes to roam, locking on the dimples of your hips, the curve of your waist. The plump shape of your ass inviting him in—eager for a bite. Your flesh looks bare, lonely, without his mark. The contrast of his own inked palm—fingers webbed with faded lettering, some slogan he picked up in his youth. Hands etched in black. Lines bleeding, bulky. The unmistakable tremble of an incipient artist’s first brush of a needle on real skin. Jagged, garring. Ugly. He lets his hand rest against the small of your back, groaning at the way it looks. 

Sinful.

You're made for soft silk and a fluffy bed. Head resting on a plush cushion instead of your arms, forehead braced over the uncomfortable squeal of your polyester windbreaker that he didn't even have the courtesy to let you take off. No. Just trousers. Panties. Pushed haphazardly down your legs, left in a pile by the spruce tree so he could throw your ankle over his broad shoulder, feasting on your cunt. 

There's a spot of dirt on your asscheek. The curve of it is scraped from the bark, red and raw. 

The glare you aim at him from over your shoulder is venomous. There's a smear of moss on your cheek. 

You're made for epsom salt baths. Being tended to by a besotted alpha who treats you like fine china, only to be taken out on special occasions. Brushed, always, in a fine layer of dust from disuse. Sweet, tender lovemaking under the waning summer sky. Your alpha apologising for ruining you like this, for making you take the brunt of his rut. Poor thing. Gentle kisses, and hands clasped together. 

He can see it so vividly in his eye. So viscerally that it almost feels like a crime when he glances down at his cock, the weeping, engorged head almost comically too big for you. The thick of him could easily swallow your cunt up if he flattened his length against you. Covering you wholly by his girth. 

It's a thought that makes his hand tighten, and nearly chokes him on a moan. 

Even his thighs bracketing the backs of yours is hideous to look at. Bigger, broader—there's a considerable gap on both sides of his legs that he thinks nearly his whole fist can fit there, notched against the outside of your thigh, covering the expanse of his own. Garish. 

He can't wait to lay you down on your belly, lock his thigh tight on either side of your own and rut into you like that. Crushing you under his weight. Swallowing you whole. Until anyone misfortunate enough to wander by thinks he's fucking the cold ground. 

His thumb strokes along your fevered skin, collecting the sheen of sweat building up on the pad. Rubbing it in. He feels it too. This unrelenting swelter. A cage, pushing down from all sides. Inescapable. 

The only way to quench it is on you. In you. 

“Ready for me, pretty girl?” The words are mangled in his throat, thick with want. 

Your shoulders tremble. In worry, he thinks. Scents the air like a viper, letting your emotions curdle in the back of his throat. “Just get on with it—”

He meets you in the middle of that taunt, teeth against your throat. 

Ghost pushes inside with a groan, eyes rolling back at the way you swallow him up. Stretching around the considerable girth, fluttering around him. Pulsing like a heartbeat. 

It's heaven. 

Nirvana nests between your thighs, bracketed by rings of blood. Red. Absolution imbued in tender flesh, parting perfectly around his cock in a loving embrace. 

You haven't confirmed it for him, but the tightness of your cunt around his fingers, the heady scent of discomfort burning the back of his throat when he buried them inside of you, make him mutedly aware that you're inexperienced. A fact he pockets for later because if he thinks about being the first alpha, the first man, to ever claim you, take you, then he might lose his mind, he might fall down that yawning chasm that reeks of damnation, of brimstone and ash, and never recover—

So, he doesn't. Won't. 

Can't. 

His pace is slow as he feeds you the fat length of his cock, eyes drilling into the way you swallow him up. Rim stretching taut, flesh paling under the strain of taking him. With one hand anchored against your hip, holding you tight, and the other curled over your shoulder, fingertips resting on your collarbones, he slowly, slowly, sinks inside of you, bottoming out with a deep groan. 

The outstroke drags with it an iron scent in the air. He huffs, nostrils flaring. Greedy for more. There's discomfort leaking from your pores. His girth is more than you can conceivably take, even with the preternatural help from your heat, leaking slick down your inner thighs in thick rivulets. 

He holds himself there, breathing—heavy, tremulous—through his nose. His hands shake. The pressure, the pleasure, is indescribable. It coils in his guts, spumes liquid bliss in his veins. The way you feel pulsing sweetly around him is—

Equilibrium. 

Every misfiring synapse inside himself is slowed. Imbued with a potent sense of ataraxia. His mind comes to a standstill. Thoughts looping over themselves, tangling into the gossamer threads of control floating in stasis. Unmoored. You unravel him. 

It's further proof that you are his missing part. His ruts in the past have been calamitous. Snarls wrenched from the trenches of his chest; a gluttonous feast—a sacrifice to Hēdonē. Violent, vicious. 

But this—

It's drinking ichor from the vein of Anteros.

There's a crack in the back of his head. The sound of everything, all of it—

Falling into place. 

His hands tighten. Tighten some more. He holds you, sure and firm, keeping you nestled in the anchor of his embrace, unable to run, to flee. You're his. Settled. The caveat is ironclad, bound in permanence. 

And Simon moans. Deep, and low. The noise jutters out of his chest, and seeps into the evening air. Fine mist, crystallising in front of him. Phosphenes of ice cemented his decision, gluing to his cheeks. The nape of his neck. 

His ears burn. 

“Fuckin' hell, sweet thing,” it's a guttural growl in the hollow of his throat. “Where ‘ave you been all my goddamn life?”

It's a nauseating confession, one scraped out from the vacancy between his ribs. It peppers the air in a soft, saccharine kiss. Makes you shiver beneath him, gasping in lungfuls of loam, dirt in your throat. 

He grunts. Stills. He doesn't want that for you. Ever. Would rip off his own limbs before he ever let you feel the crushing weight of dirt congealing inside of your lungs. 

The way he arches over you is damning. Nauseating. He curls his arm around your shoulder, your chest, traps a heaving breast in the palm of his hand, holds tight. The other falls from your hip, closes over your mons. Greedily feeling your slick, hot sex pulsing wildly around him when he passes over your clit, toying with your stretched, swollen rim. It's perfection, this. 

He pulls you up, up, leaning back on his haunches until you're balanced on your knees, nearly sat on his lap. Taking him deeper than before. He drops his head back with another moan when he feels your slick gather, dripping down to coat his balls. 

Everything about you is just—

Perfection. Absolution. 

Your hands fly up, curling over his forearm, mewling when he pinches your nipples between his middle and ring finger. 

“C’mon,” he rasps, leaning forward to press his face into your nape. You smell sweet. “Play with ‘em for me, pet.” 

Nails bite into his skin. You whimper. Squirming around on his lap. But you do as you're told. Slowly, slowly, reaching up. Touching yourself the way you like. Fingers ghosting over your flesh, brushing across your nipples. Pulling, petting, the way you like. He hooks his chin over your shoulder, watches. Devours. Commits each movement to memory. Every sound, every breath. Everything. 

He keeps a slow, languid pace like this. Content to just feel you pulsing around him, listening to the slick, wet squelch of him filling you up. Over and over again. A lazy rut. 

It's unexpected, he knows. You've been bracing yourself this whole time, fingers digging into the podsol, spine tightening up. Waiting for the savagery to befall you. 

When it doesn't come, he feels your quiet acquiescence come in a soft breath. In the way you slowly drop down to meet the deep rut of his hips. Taking your pleasure, pulling him in deeper. There's an edge to your voice, one still dipped in threads of discomfort, a waning pain that rings out, shrill, in the satin spill of moonlight over the indigo forest. 

It's good like this. Tender. Not something he'd have ever imagined for himself, and the reality of it is dizzying. 

Reedy, he groans. Nuzzles his misshapen nose into your scent gland. His gums pulse, ache—

But he ignores it. Swallows it down. 

He's not sure what compels him to do so. Spellbound, maybe, by this unnatural softness that spools silken threads between you. Sutured in tenderness—so unbefitting of the man he is. The monster—

His hips stutter. Jerk. 

“Simon—!”

You whine into it, arching back. Sweat gathers, drips down your spine, smears into his chest, belly. Matts the thatch of hair running in sparse, patchy clusters down the thickness of his midsection. A bountiful spring fattened him up. Made him soft and pillowy over his abdomen. Something you can't seem to get enough of—pressing the flat of your back against him, leaning into it. Groaning when his arm shifts, boxing you in. Crushing you to him. 

Wily little kitten, purring so sweetly in his lap. 

He draws lazy circles over your clit, grunting with each clench of your cunt. You're soft in his arms. Malleable. He slides his hand up from beneath your breasts, catches your jaw in his palm. Fingers spanning from cheekbone to temple and, oh—

Doesn't that just make him preen. 

He drags your chin to the side, catching your mouth in a sickening kiss. All tongue, teeth. He wants to taste, to devour, every part of you. Bones and all. 

It's a fight, though. You tense in his grasp, lidded eyes snapping open, wide and around. Cheeks bulging between his fingers when you twist, trying to pull away. 

“Don't—I don't want to—” he bites the protests from lips. Messy, sloppy. He flicks his tongue over yours, wrapping it around you like a satiated snake burrowing in after a heavy meal. “Don't—f–fuck—”

It earns him a nip. Teeth digging into his bottom lip. Drawing blood. 

He huffs into the seam of your mouth. Only fair, he supposes, and then pulls you down—hard, fast—onto his cock. The air is punched out of your lungs, flooded into his esophagus. 

“Be a good girl for me,” he warns, bucking into you. It's harder this time, deeper. Tempo increasing. Growing. He feels himself thicken. Knot fattening up. Each piston of his hips seems to knock something inside of his head loose. Common sense, maybe—

The fraying knot of his self-control winding tight. Pulling taut. 

He huffs again, feeling himself slip. Lost in the sensation dripping down his spine, the unified pleasure blooming in the pit of his stomach. 

The air plumes with the thickening tang of your arousal—all sweet, spice. You can take it, now, he knows, and tries not to growl when you hiccup his name wetly into the air. 

The muscles in his thighs bunch tight. Corded and powerful. He arches up, up, forcing his cock deep inside your cunt, splitting you apart. Rutting desperately, edging into something animalistic. 

It runs a knife along the thin skin of his hindbrain. Come out, come out, come play—

He moves you again, pulling his hand away from your jaw and pushing you back down the forest floor. He stays glued to your back. Tucks his arm under your chin, and smothers you under his bulk, groaning when your thighs give out, sliding on the sweat-slicked moss below.

“Simon, ah—” your voice tapers off into a breathless cry when he pulls his hand free from beneath you, wrapping it around to join the other. Holding on, clinging to you. Keeping you locked tight against him, under him. You can't move at all like this—

The swell of his knot bumps against your stretched rim. He presses the brunt of his weight into each thrust now, spurned on by the needy way you yowl into his forearm, drooling all over his skin. Begging for it. 

“Please, please, please—”

Your body is jostled forward with each harsh buck of his hips as he gives you everything he has, feeding his cock into your sopping cunt over and over again. Eager now to fill you up, to flood you with his cum. Make you swell with it. Overstuffed. 

Perfect little omega, you rut back into him with each thrust, taking his thick cock to the root. Mewling sweetly when his knot begins to catch. Too much, he thinks. It might just wreck you for good—

pomegranate seeds splitting over your teeth, blood red juice leaking from the tear. spilling into your mouth. just a drop. just a drop, and Persephone is all his

—Perfect. 

He teeters on the edge of ferality and control. Spinning, spiralling. Loosefooted on the wobbling chossy. Coming undone in a magmatic end—wicked heat, ashes, brimstone; he catches fire, and smoulders you under his heat. Letting the flames lick across your skin until you whine his name, desperate and needy, in the back of your throat. The thrill a bludgeon against his skull, spilling pleasure, bliss, in the broken hole you wrought. 

You tighten like a vice around him—tight, tight—and he pistons into you, burrowing deep. Deeper still. Until you thrash around beneath him, soundlessly screaming his name into the dark forest. Begging for mercy, mercy, please—

He won't. Can't. 

He can't get enough of the way you feel wrapped around him like this. Silken, whitehot. Tight. Tight—

It squeezes the air from his lungs. Static in his head—

And then you let go. Pulsing, throbbing around him. Pulling him in deeper, blanketing his mind in white noise. In nothing but magmatic pleasure. 

“Fuck—!” He snarls, almost angry. Vicious. Chasing after his end in the aftermath of yours. Instincts are at war within him, banging against his skull. Demanding recompense. Paid it's pound of flesh. 

It's what he's promised. What it's owed. 

(and he always keeps his promises, doesn't he?)

Most describe their ruts as mindless, driven by instinct. No control. But Ghost has never felt more present, more alive, than when he sinks his teeth deep into your nape, nearly choking, drowning, on your blood.

For the first time in decades, he feels the crater inside himself, suffused with spare, broken parts, seal when you yield with a mangled yowl of his name, raw and fractured as it splits between your teeth. Pretty pussy swallowing up his knot when he bullies it in deep, locking you together.

pretty little lamb—

a perfect fit between his teeth.

His rut is a voracious thing. 

Ghost has you on your back for the second and third round, heels resting on his shoulders as he bucks into you. Makes you stare at him—don’t look away from me, pet—as he commandeers your body with an ease that seems to break apart all demurrals as they form, rendering you sweet, malleable, beneath him to do with as he pleases. 

And you are, aren't you?

So fuckin’ sweet. 

(“gonna give me a cavity,” he rasps, thick with pleasure, into your ear. he has you on your belly now. holds you down with his weight, crushes your chest against the soft moss below, thighs squeezed tight between his own. you can barely make a sound with his forearm digging into the dirt right above your crown, swallowing you whole under his bulk. 

(owns you like, he finds. no one would be able to see you beneath him if they wandered by. encompassed wholly by every iota he has to give—

he cums like that. nose buried in your crown, moaning low, scorched, in the back of his throat as you twitch beneath him, unable to move at all—)

It's early in the morning when he finally finishes, when his rut begins to slowly recede, and a fresh bloom of clarity yawns over his periphery. Moonrise peppers soft kisses over his aching shoulders as he glances at you curled up against his side, sleeping soundly. Exhausted by the hours and hours of mating, fucking. Taking him, his knot, drinking down everything he has to offer. 

The sight that greets him is gnarled fingers wrapping around his rotting heart, affection peeking out between the brackets of his ribs. His appetite for you is dizzying. Unquenchable. He wonders if he'll ever be able to look at you without wanting to crawl inside your body. To reshape your tender flesh around his bulk until it is indiscernible from himself. 

This want is agony. It's dread, desire. Greed. 

His shoulders bite back in protest when he reaches up to drag his dirt-crusted nails through the prickly hair on his scalp. As dawn slowly unfurls across the midnight blue aether, he knows he'll have to leave soon. Can already feel the creeping heat gnawing in the pit of his belly. His rut starting anew. The scant hours he has of mental clarity, moments meant to eat, to feed, and regain strength for the next marathon of fucking, are needed to feel out his next move. 

He glances at you again, and feels the same covetous tug in his chest as he did before, when he was thickly entrenched in the urge to mate. But as the burnt orange of the sun smears hazy fingerprints across the moulted sky, he sees you in a new, cleaner light. You're young. Much younger than he is. 

It's something he ought to worry about. To feel some shred of shame, of despondency over shackling you to himself—a defective alpha with more scars than morality—when you're in the burgeoning bloom of your freshly untethered youth. All jejune beauty outclasses nature itself. Snow melts on the alpines, trickling down to feed the valley below. Life itself—

But you are his. 

The ugly rings around your throat—mangled tissue swelling in the morning dawn, caked in a thick river of blood—all signify that you belong to him. And while it's a little extreme as far as claiming bites go—one would suffice, but he buried his teeth in you over and over again, biting down on both sides of your neck, your jugular, your nape; inner thighs, mons, wrists—it’s proof enough that you are meant for him. Made for him. 

His pretty omega. 

The rest doesn't matter. He ought to feel shame, but instead he luxuriates in it. Stares down at you with a needy sort of possession spuming in the putrid remains of his chest, mapping out the marks he put on you. And the ones he'll add to later, not stopping until covered in the perfect impression of his crooked teeth. Tattoos of his ownership all over your body. 

Mutual, of course. There's a scant patch of skin, restive and empty, above his heart, save for a fine, jagged line from a serrated dagger. He'll have you bite down on the flesh until your teeth meet inside his muscle. Scarring down to the bone. He'll go, then, to the man who inks him up whenever he has the whim to desecrate scar tissue, and have him etch midnight black against fine silver. Permanent, forever. Always. 

And anyone who kicks up a fuss—stupid as they might be—he’ll sort them out. Prove to them that you are meant to be his. 

(unshakeable:

his spend leaks out of you, drying, tacky and thick, on your thighs. under the sleepy citrine of the dawning sun, it's tinged pink, and looks just like pomegranate juice.)

Ghost rolls his shoulder, and reaches for his discarded trousers. He's covered in a thick layer of dirt, and reeks like soil. But the thought of being buried alive is miniscule compared to the want of being buried inside you again. The urge. Insatiable. He groans with it, cock throbbing already. 

He leaves you naked. No point in dressing when he plans on going home and sinking back inside of you before midday, anyway. An unneeded obstacle, really—

The clearing is close to his truck, and he sets a leisurely pace, yawning into the dawn, as he gathers you into his arms. Carrying you to it as you drool on his chest, brows pinched at the soft jostle of him trudging through the thicket until he reaches it. 

He's not in a rut when he stretches you out in the back seat, spreading your sticky thighs around his hips, sinking inside, bottoming out just as you come to, waking up with a gasp. 

The intense fucking from before lingers in the air. You're soft, molasses; arching into his chest, whimpering out the name he hissed into your nape only hours ago, folding into him with a somnolent submission. It won't last, of course—

You're a vicious little thing, and his back and chest twinge with the rivers you carved into his flesh when he didn't move the way you liked. Wolfish, aren't you? Spitfire hiding under the soft pelt of a slain lamb. He wants to devour you, bones and all. 

He takes his fill of your malleable concession, rutting into you with a sluggish ease. Mapping out the starlight sparking in the depths of your glossy eyes. Magnetic. It pulls him deeper. Unravels him at the seams. 

His hand spans the expanse of your jaw from ear to ear. He holds you like this, thumb buried in the tender embrace of your soft tongue, and begins to understand the reason behind Johnny's niche appetite when you toy with his flesh, coquettish and sweet, suckling him in—pretty seductress—and then mewl when he pushes in too deeply, bringing crystalline gems to corners of your eyes. 

Angelic innocence. The type that demands he prostrates himself at your altar, let his bones be picked clean when you so wish it. And he'll give it to you—body, blood, tissue; all of it. The entirety of him, however broken, shattered the fragments might be. 

He promises it all to you without a word, drilling holes in the gaps of your eyes, chasms wide enough for him to fit. When he cums, it's to a songbirds sonata. Your moans are a whisper, your pleasure swallowed down as it ghosts over his lips, clenching around him like a vice. Pretty bow. He doesn't hold back—groans, baritone; woodsmoke, into the gathering symphony, filling you to the brim. Thick, copious. He wants it to stick. To root. 

When the blood sputters back to his head, he gathers you in his arms once more. Keeps you seated on his lap—shush, pet; s’alright, jus’ close your eyes an’ I'll ‘ave us home in a bit—as he starts the old pickup, and puts it into drive. One hand on the wheel, knuckles blanching white in the glimmering sunrise; sparse forests of muted blond catching, limned in the coruscating light. The other is placed on the small of your back, holding your belly to his. 

Quietly, your body eases. Melts. You press your face into his chest, fingers curling into the fabric, and nuzzle into the heady scent of his sweat, his musk, still clinging to his shirt. Signing, soft and twee, in the cup of his embrace as you slip back to sleep. 

He drives home like this. Mind a quiet place for once. Silent in its contentment, it's comfort. There's an itinerary still left to do, but he pushes it back for now, gaze roaming the dense green of the forest bracketing the road. 

You'll like it, he knows. There's a fen on the outskirts of his territory, a little pond where wild rabbits have been known to make burrows. Deers, elk. Bears. They all come and go. You'll amuse yourself in the untamed wilderness of his abode, drawing delineations of your own as you carve out places in his home just for you. 

And as he makes the turn to his hidden driveway, this buried sanctuary, he can't help but glance down at your crown, and think—

Persephone, finally home.

He finds your identification in your rucksack, nestled underneath the contraband you smuggled from the park—mushrooms, berries, bark, feathers—and sears your name to memory. Every part of you will be unravelled in the coming days, pulled from the depths of your being until it's all ingrained in his head. A gaping chasm chiselled into bone just for you. All for you. 

Your address is a rental. He'll have to call them later today to cut your lease. Your job, too. They'll need to be notified on both your off time for his rut (and your burgeoning heat), and to update your contact information. 

But that's later. Now, he just wants to get home. Sink down into his bed with you beneath him, and fuck you until sundown all over again. Stain the house with the scent of you. With the potent tang of your coupling. 

It's yours too, after all. Should smell just like you. 

And when you wake up later to him fucking his tongue into your drenched hole, fingers toying with your pebbled clit, Johnny will be busy packing the rest of your things into the pack of his pickup truck. The majority of it is already stacked on the porch, waiting for you to rearrange it all in your new house. Lease cut. His name added to your contacts as spouse, husband. Address updated. Marriage certificate laying on the table, only one line unsigned. Waiting for you. 

Maybe it's too fast. You'll certainly protest like it is, bearing your teeth and hissing at him from across the room about too much, too fast, slow down, you don't even know his last name—

(“Riley,” he grouses, arms folded over his broad chest. Eyes burning in the cresting twilight. “S’your last name now as well, pet.”) 

Fast—sure. He might think so too for a brief moment when he as you purring against his chest, submissive and docile after he fucked the fight right out of you, bullied you into agreeing to everything—it's for the best, after all. No one could ever protect you like he can. 

Made for each other. Reinforced when he presses your fingers to the soft spot where his last rib once hung—

(“stole it,” he murmurs into the seam of your lips. “right from under my nose. only fair that i get to steal somethin’ right back, ain't it?”

the look on your face is rapturous when you press your hand to your side, eyes widening when you feel the extra rung—)

He's had decades of waiting. Waiting. And now that he's found you—

He's never letting go. 

You're it, he knows. Feels the certainty in that statement simmering in his hindbrain, in his essence. He'll have you—now, forever. Non-negotiable. Where you go, he will follow. 

(after all, there's something about three-headed dogs and their bones—)

[ghoulphile]

sticky fingers | c.h./the ghoul

➥ pairing | cooper howard/the ghoul x f!reader ➥ word count | 4.5k ➥ warning(s) | 🔞 smut; mildly dubious consent, dirty talk, degradation kink, fingering, squirting, rough sex, size kink, standing doggystyle, overstimulation, teasing, choking, dacryphilia, cooper howard is his own warning (he nasty y'all), canon compliant - takes place around ep 7, a grab bag mix of the show and the games ➥ summary | “Lil girls should know it’s rude ta steal.” ➥ notes | i love my men like i love my beef jerky 🫠 i wrote this over 16 fevered hours after finishing the finale. hope you enjoy~ minor edits 4/22/24 | x posted to ao3 | masterlist | feedback is always appreciated ❤️ feel free to send in thots, questions, requests!

It begins, as most things in the Southwest Commonwealth do, with a fight for survival.

City life is tough to be sure, but here on the outskirts of pocket civilizations where there’s nothing but long stretches of desolate wasteland - arid, sunbaked earth and scorched shrubbery - for miles around?

Well, if the ferals, fiends, and super mutants don’t get you in the night, then the desert itself will. During the day the sun burns overhead so nuclear hot, heat glimmers on the horizon in dancing waves.

Unforgiving, relentless as blink-and-you-miss-it mirages are swallowed by ever shifting sands.

It’s easy to get lost.

Even easier to boil alive in your armor if you’re unprepared.

Far too many travelers from the Eastern Commonwealths have met their demise here, where shade is sparse, and water even moreso. The rain - if it does blow in over the mountains - brings rad sickness.

If you’re lucky enough to still be alive, the only reprieve from the heat is in the stooped bones of bombed buildings and ramshackle shacks... where you're just as likely to catch a knife in the back from a chem fried addict as you are relief.

Because here, in the Wastes, danger lurks in sand and shadow alike.

You don’t trek out into the flats half-cocked: a fact all locals know. And if you do decide to? Well, you learn one way or another.

No, only the truly ignorant - or the desperate - dare to tempt man and nature.

Consequently, as you dust off the crumbs from the last half of a Fancy Lads Snack Cake and suck a melted smear of icing from your thumb, you're of the latter half.

You tried holding off for as long as you could. But once the shakes started, you knew you couldn’t put off eating lest you pass out and wake up in a slaver camp.

Well, shit, you think as you rattle a dented canister of purified water. This fucking sucks.

Almost going cross-eyed, your tongue hovers under the rim as you watch the last lazy drop fall free. You catch it with a grimace, smacking your lips. The water tastes metal warm in your sour mouth, barely enough to wet your whistle - let alone your thirst.

You began rationing the last of your supplies days ago, and it’s been a battle against light-headedness ever since. Pretty soon you won’t have the strength to defend yourself, scavving be damned.

Come on. Think - gotta think. What can I scrap for caps?

Not only is Filly more than half a day away, Ma June isn’t one for charity cases. The fact she offered twenty extra caps last time for some burnt books and bent bobby pins was as close as you were ever going to get to a Wasteland miracle.

Sunken cheeks and pleading eyes can only get you so far; everyone’s gotta eat.

"Fuck..." The palms of your hands grind into your eye sockets until you see stars. "FUCK!"

There are two unspoken laws in this otherwise lawless land: steal or starve, live or die. A grim reminder that surrounds you in old bleached bones, empty bullet casings, and scraps of cloth fluttering in the breeze.

Someone always has to be top dog. If you’re lucky, they might be willing to share their spoils.

It’s as you’re considering what pieces of yourself you’re willing to barter that you see them. On the horizon, coming from the west, are two dark blobs.

Stark against the flat plains - a shining beacon of salvation - is a man in a ratty duster and cowboy hat. The saddlebag tossed over his shoulder bounces with his steps while a dog trots beside him, its sable coat rippling with muscle.

Pay dirt.

Making sure to keep low and distant, you stalk them. Watching, waiting for the opportune moment to strike.

When the sun dips low, the sky a swath of pale pink and gold, they make camp at a blown-out Drumlin Diner. Off in the distance, thunder rumbles and sickly clouds gather.

Dark and roiling, acid green; a Radstorm brewing.

Electricity cracks at your skin, stands your hair on end. You scrub your hands over your arms, huddling into yourself for warmth. Meanwhile, the stranger seems to luxuriate in the budding promise of rad rain.

He lounges under an awning, his back pressed against a defunct Nuka Cola fridge. He gazes in the direction of the oncoming weather while mindlessly running his fingers through the dog’s fur as it curls up against his legs.

Occasionally, its ears twitch, and its eyes crack open.

Whenever it glances in your direction, you hold your breath and squeeze your eyes shut but it never gives any other indication that it notices your presence.

A small mercy you’re thankful for.

While you’re a pretty good shot, your body is weak with hunger. Besides, you have quick hands and light feet. There’s no doubt you can stealth your way in and out before he realizes his pack is lighter than he left it.

You’ll only take what you need - not interested in causing any more trouble than is necessary. Some food, maybe something to drink if he can spare it, and something to pawn. Just enough supplies to get you sorted in Filly.

Anyway, he certainly isn’t hurting for it by the look of things.

Any guilt you felt was short-lived when he settled down after dropping his pack inside, walking out with an inhaler of Jet in one hand and a can of Cram in the other.

Watched, greedy, as he cracked it open and picked at the tin of meat with lazy fingers. Salivated as he sucked them clean in between deep pulls of chem.

Soon, you decide, licking your lips as he chews, swallows. Soon.

However when push comes to shove, the stranger proves far more keen than you give him credit for.

The world spins like a hit of Daytripper, a kaleidoscope of color as your skull bounces off the wall with a loud crack. Air rushes from your lungs as something huge - hot and heavy - slams into you from behind.

Pins you against the wall with ease as your ears ring.

Something rattles loose; your teeth too large and your tongue too thick. Warm metal floods your mouth as the side of your face throbs in time with the rabbit fast stutter of your heartbeat.

Pain sparks and your stomach rolls.

"Wha's?" you slur, thoughts dripping like wax. "Wh-at's..."

Meanwhile, a gloved hand lassos around your throat like a collar. Brute fingers squeeze the tender flesh of your jugular until you hear your pulse in your ears. Senses struggling - sluggish to adjust in the encroaching night - as tiny cavities eat at your vision, little pockets of darkness.

“Lil girls should know it’s rude ta steal," a gruff voice mocks. “Betcha thought you was real slick, huh? Tch. You ask me, you’re dumber than shit, Darlin'.”

Trying to regain your bearings, you shake your head only to groan. “I don’t - ‘m not -” It’s difficult to concentrate, a throbbing tempo taking up residence in your temples. The words come slow. “Wha’d you mean?”

He whistles, long and low-pitched, "D’ya have any idea who you're fucking with?"

“N-No…”

“How’s about I show you, then?”

Warm breath puffs over the shell of your ear, a tongue sliding out to trace along the lobe. You jolt, squirming in discomfort as he crowds closer.

“Tasty lil thing like you, wrapped up all nice and pretty just for me." He chuckles. "Why, it must be Christmas.”

What the hell is he talking about?

It’s hard to breathe with his heavy weight suffocating you; the scent of gunpowder and bitter smoke clogging your nostrils with every labored inhale. His lips - ragged - scrape over the nape of your neck.

The grip on your throat squeezes once, twice; leather sticks to your sweaty skin.

You squint your sore eyes, taking in the faint flickers of firelight that spill through the open doorway. The desert chill of night has settled in, creeping through the busted out windows to dig beneath your padded armor.

Thunder rumbles directly overhead as lightning follows in flashes of acid green. It’s only a matter of time before sheets of rain come pouring down; the air sticky with humidity, trembling with energy.

The Radstorm has finally arrived.

You’ll undoubtedly get sick if you leave the shelter of the diner - might even die from it if you can’t afford or find any RadAway. But as the stranger’s chest digs into your shoulders, and the dog curls up in the corner - uncaring of your plight as its nose tucks into the whip-thin tail - you think you’ll take your chances.

Tilting back to glance at him from over your shoulder through damp eyes, you say, “Look--”

Only his hand moves, viper quick, as it slides from the front of your neck to the nape. Strong fingers clamp down like a vice, like scuffing an unruly dog.

He grinds your face into the wall, rough metal shredding your cheek.

You cry out, a soft, pained little thing that echoes through the empty diner.

“Now why’d you gotta go an' make me do that?”

A phantom glimpse told you all you needed to know; broad jaw, thin lips, a hollow nasal ridge, creeping radiation burns and cracked skin. Ghoul.

“Let’s try this again, Sugar.”

His free hand - sans glove - creeps over the curve of your hip to splay along the swell of your belly, fingers tucking up under the hem of your shirt. You shiver at the stroke of roughened skin.

“Don’t take another peep or I might jus' have ta pluck out those pretty eyes of yours.”

Dread pools low in your gut, a leaden ball.

Everything in you screams: RUN, RUN, RUN.

Alarms blare but you freeze. Stare straight ahead at the featureless wall, eyes wide and unseeing. Through the foggy mire of your thoughts - half formed and shapeless - you have enough presence to understand the precarious nature of your position. 

Heart hammering, you plead for mercy, “Please, I’m - I’m sorry.”

"Aw, ain't that real sweet?" He remains impassive, unmoved. "The little thief does got some manners after all."

Without warning, the sharp toe of his cowboy boot kicks apart your feet. In the ensuing empty space between your thighs, his leg slots into place. Spurs dig into the tender meat of your ankle, little kisses of pain, as his hips rut forward against your ass.

You choke on your spit, pulse jumping in your throat.

"H-Hey, that's..." You attempt to shove at any part of him you can reach to no avail. Built and broad with compact muscle, it's like trying to move a brick wall. "I said I was sorry, okay!"

He ignores you, burying his face into the space behind your ear. A deep inhale sounds next to your head, the expansion of his chest against your back so firm you're not sure you won't fuse together.

The whiskey rough groan he releases does wicked things, makes your mind wander to places it shouldn't. Full of grit and gravel as his cock twitches against your backside, a burning line of heat.

A shiver ricochets down your spine.

He grunts, says, "Mm, you smell good enough ta eat."

The cap of his knee nudges up against your clit with a sudden jolt, shocks of pleasure electrifying your body. Tears prick the corners of your eyes, and a sob threatens to scrape its way up from the depths of your throat.

You swallow, mouth desert dry. "Come on, let's just forget all about this, yeah?" you reason. "No harm done. I'll even give you whatever I've got left so - so..."

He makes a noise in the back of his throat, the vibration rattling through your chest. "So?" he prompts, plucking at the waistband of your trousers.

"So let me go?"

"Now why would I go an' do an asinine thing like that?" he replies. "If you think you can buy your freedom, think again, Sweetheart."

Rain pings off the metal roof, the smell of pungent ozone and rusting metal wafting in through busted windows and open doors.

“'Sides,” he pauses to turn your attention outside, “I’d hate ta have you yakin’ before the fun’s even started.”

There’s no way to misconstrue his meaning when he punctuates the statement with a teasing rut of his hips. Those rugged fingers tug open the clasp of your trousers, yank until the material goes slack and pools around your ankles.

“Hey, wait--!”

You jolt, hands scrambling for purchase as he slides his leg against your core. The friction of his pants through your thin cotton underwear makes you ache.

Ripping through your bottom lip, blood beading to the surface, you choke on a high-pitched whimper. "I..."

There's no way he can't feel your reaction.

How quickly you're getting wet as he drags you along the length of his thigh while yanking your hips back into the cradle of his pelvis. You meet him in a slow grind that boils your blood and steals the breath from your lungs.

It’s been - shit - far too long since you’ve felt anything other than hunger, thirst; the animal drive to keep pushing forward.

"You like this, don'tcha?"

You hear the dagger-sharp smile hidden in his words.

He croons, "What would your fellow smoothies think, huh? Here you are lettin’ a ghoul get you all hot n bothered - and you’re lovin’ it. Ain't you?"

You throb in response, heat stealing its way into your cheeks as you turn your head away in shame. His dark chuckle lets you know he felt the squeeze of your thighs, the rock and dip of your hips against his knee.

"I - I don't..." you stutter, struggling for a retort. “I’m not--”

A tremble works its way through your body, crushed as you are between the rad warm burn of his body and the wall. Completely at his mercy as you try to figure out where it all went wrong and what you can do to worm your way out of this one.

Terrified of what'll happen if you stay, terrified of what'll happen if you go; stuck in limbo as what was meant to be a simple grab-and-dash devolved into this confusing cluster of shame and lust.

You loathe the embers of desire kindling to life low in your belly.

"You really outta start bein' more honest, Sweetheart."

A large hand dips beneath the worn band of your underwear, and you wait with baited breath. Helpless as calloused fingertips brush over the swell of your mond.

Your inner thighs are uncomfortably sticky with slick, and your eyes burn in humiliation. Your throat trembles around all the words you want to say.

"Didn't anyone teach you lyin' was bad?" he asks rhetorically as his fingers slip down to play with the swollen bud of your clit, tapping lightly.

You keen, low and wounded.

Short nails dig into your palms as you flex your hands for want of something to grab onto.

“I am being honest,” you bite out through grit teeth. Sweat dapples your furrowed brow. “Just lemme go, please.”

"I find that hard ta believe," he replies. "Sorry to say, but you're shit at lyin'. Just look how hungry your lil cunt is for me."

It’s the only warning you get before those long digits plunge deep inside, two becoming three as they stretch you wide. Hollow you out; knuckles massaging your entrance as the tips prod along the sensitive front wall of your cunt.

You clamp down with a strangled moan. “Shit!”

This is a horrible idea - but it’s been forever and a day since you’ve felt anything other than your own touch.

Whether it be the bone-deep loneliness you’ve been shoving down for months or the sudden, inexplicable need for contact, you long for a reminder that you’re still alive.

That you’re not some wrath of the Wasteland filled with sand and blood, doing whatever it takes to survive in a place that would rather see you fail.

“I - I’m not sure.”

He snorts but offers no council or reassurances, using his free hand to yank at the back of your head in impatience. While it might’ve been a fairer fight if you weren’t in such bad shape, there’s no denying that he’s proven himself to be more adept.

Stronger, quicker.

This is going to happen either way.

And that turns you on - even though you feel like it shouldn’t.

If you give in, if he forces you to give in, it’s not really your fault then, is it? You can enjoy it because you have no choice.

Fuck it, you think, closing your eyes and tilting your head to the side in submission.

Like a doll with cut strings, all the fight drains from your body and you’re left sharing space. The ghoul is a furnace of heat behind you, barely any space to breathe he’s crowded so close.

His cock thickens where it digs into the soft fat of your ass, as large and intimidating as the man himself. “Now stay still for me.”

The or else goes unspoken.

Then he’s stepping away, a rush of cold air filling the empty space at your back.

You shiver, tempted to turn around. Maybe make a run for it. The only thing stopping you is the awareness that his threats aren’t so idle. In your experience, it’s far better to befriend the monster than to anger it.

So you comply, waiting an eternity as your senses strain to pick up on anything other than the murmuring hush of rain, the rumble of thunder, as the Radstorm continues to blow its way through.

Though just when you think he might’ve left, ready to chance moving, you hear the clink of a belt buckle clicking open. The scuff of boots across the linoleum before broad hands shove up under your shirt, scarred palms bare as they settle on your hips.

You tense before forcing yourself to relax.

“You ain’t as stupid as I thought,” he says. “Good girl.”

A test.

You breathe a sigh of relief.

“I can listen,” you mumble, keeping calm as his hands explore the plains of your stomach, pluck at the waistband of your panties. “Promise ‘m not gonna do anything else.”

Learned my lesson the first time. Got my skull cracked open for it.

“That’s what I like ta hear.”

Without warning, your panties are being ripped from you, scraps of fabric fluttering useless to the floor. You squawk in indignation but then a heavy hand settles between your shoulder blades.

He presses down, and you follow without complaint, finding yourself bent in half.

And then the fat head of his cock is right there, teasing at your entrance. He plays with your cunt, slipping the shaft between your wet folds. Dragging up the length of you to tap at your swollen clit.

Jerking in his hold, you whine and try to bear down with all your weight. “Please,” you squirm. “Please, c’mon…”

His grip remains firm, bruising as he exhales next to your ear, a pleased little grumble. “Thatta girl. Now tell me, who’s my pretty lil thief?”

Every hard ridge of his body bites into the softness of yours, your stiff nipples dragging against the rough material of your shirt. Zings of pleasure shoot through you; bursting in your bloodstream, fizzy like warm Nuka Cola.

“I-”

“Go on now, Sweetheart: say it.” Fingers dig into your hips so hard your bones ache. “Or I jus' might be tempted ta take a bite outta your pretty lil backside instead.”

He’s bluffing, you think, half delirious, … Right? He wouldn’t--

You swallow, throat clicking, and squirm against him.

Is that a chance you’re willing to take?

No, no it’s not.

“Y-Yours - I’m - I’m your little thief.”

The unexpected flare of satisfaction in his voice is almost your undoing. A hand pets down your flank, swatting the outside of your thigh playfully.

“Good girl.” He demands, “Say it again.”

Sharp hip bones kick forward against your ass as he lines himself up and starts to bully his way inside.

“I’m - YOURS!”

Your soft, gummy walls flutter, squeeze until giving in with a pop under the hard pressure of the fat head. His cock stretches you out, thick and girthy.

Ridges of scar tissue and patches of rough friction pockmark his shaft, massaging tender places as he fills you up, fucking you open.

He feeds you inch after inch… until he can’t.

“Wait!”

Accommodating his girth is a struggle, your cunt filled to the brim by the time he’s halfway inside. No amount of slick could make him fit, so he makes do with harsh little jerks of his hips. Forces himself deeper and deeper until he glides home nice and smooth, sheathing himself to the base with a sigh of satisfaction.

You clamp down hard with a hiccupy whine, walls furtively trying to push him out. “A-Ah!”

“Goddamn,” he huffs, hands kneading your ass, “You’re a tight fit.”

Tears prick your lash line, your hips shifting as you try to stop him from moving. Begging for a moment of reprieve. You’ve never taken something so big and thick, so textured before.

Coupled with the minimal foreplay, it feels like he’s punched his way through your body. Hollowed you out to make a home for himself.

Pussy aching, a low burning tightness creeps over your lower belly as tender flesh pulses uncomfortably around the unforgiving heft of his cock seated deep inside. You swear you feel him poking your belly button.

“Please,” you pant, heat settling into your cheeks. “J-Just wait a sec-ond! I can’t - oh shit.” 

“Aw, look at you.” Fingers reach around to brush over your cheeks, gather the tears that’ve slipped free. “Didn’t mean ta make you cry,” he lies.

The sound of him sucking his fingers clean reaches your ears. Your stomach swoops, and your clit throbs. Dazed as you wonder what his mouth would feel like on your pussy.

"Hah - too much, you're - fuck - you're too big."

He snickers. “Can’t be helped, I guess.” Body rippling in a shrug, his hands re-settling on your hips. “But that’s all right - I like it better when they cry.”

Before you can retort, he pulls his hips back.

Your toes curl in your boots, feet squeaking across the linoleum floor as your sweaty forehead grinds into the cool metal of the wall. The texture of his shaft burns as it slides through your swollen folds, dragging against sensitive spots you didn’t even know existed.

You can’t tell if it’s the best you’ve ever felt or the worst, but you nearly sob all the same, nerves alight with liquid fire. Want him as deep inside as he can go; a frenzy of desperation that needs him to stuff you so full you choke.

“See for all your whining, you’re takin’ me so well. What did I say about bein' honest?”

You sniffle, blurry eyes creaking open to stare out the window.

Your body throbs in time with your pulse, your pussy so stretched out you can’t clench down when he thrusts in deep. The fat mushroom head teases your cervix, a faint whisper, before he’s drawing back again.

“T-Too fast,” you stutter, head rolling back to rest on his shoulder. Your thighs tremble, knees going soft. “Slow down, slow down.”

“Sh, you can take it. I know you can.”

With a grunt, he surges forward. Wasting no time in starting up a brutal pace that rattles your bones. He drives you hard into the side of the diner; tits crushed and face smashed, a disgusting mixture of tears and drool wetting your cheek.

“Just like that, Sweetheart.”

You do little more than hold on, all thoughts driven from your mind as he fucks you swollen and bruised. Cunt a sticky mess as your slick eases the way, clinging to your inner thighs and dripping down his heavy balls.

Every thrust punches little sounds from you, and he grunts. “Fuck!”

Your hands cling to the sides of his hips, focusing on the shift of muscle beneath heavy fabric. “I can’t,” you slur, eyes cloudy as you glance up into his, gazes meeting for the first time. “Please, I - ah!”

His thrusts turn punishing, even more so than they already were, hips meet your ass with enough force to leave bruises. “What did I say about sneakin' a peek?”

While the words sound threatening, his voice is heated and breathy. For all his talk, he doesn’t look away. In fact, his hips slow into languid rolls, grinding close. When your eyes slide from his, he reaches down to pinch your clit between his fingers.

“Ah, ah, ah,” he chides. “You keep those eyes on me.”

Pretty, you think, dazed.

Glinting in the slants of firelight like wet sand or a Nuka Cola bottle in the sun; bourbon warm as they peer at you from beneath a heavy brow bone.

“That’s it, there’s my good girl."

Eyes fluttering when he flexes his hips in reward, the tip massaging along your g-spot, your mouth drops open on a whine.

“O-Oh! Right there, I - fuck, please don’t stop. ‘m so close.” F-Feels s'good.

His bare hand reaches up to curl around your jaw, gnarled fingers pushing their way past the open circle of your swollen lips. They compress your tongue as they gather saliva, stroking along your tastebuds.

Gritty, rough; he tastes of dirt, blood, and gunpowder.

You sneak a kiss to his scarred knuckle when he pulls free.

“Shit, I’ll be damned. You’re just a nasty lil freak, ain't you?”

You moan in response, stretching up on your tip-toes and arching your hips to change the angle. Your palms rest beside your head, docile.

A crazed grin cracks the corners of his lips, his teeth bared like an animal. “I like that,” he husks. “Now be a peach…”

Then those soaked digits are finding their way between your thighs, ghosting over your skin to smear spit onto your abused clit. The tender bud throbs beneath his fingertips, swollen and begging for attention.

He hitches his hips forward to feel you jerk, pulsing beneath his touch as he resumes a fast, jolting pace that has you smacking into the wall.

“And cum for me.”

A deep rumble escapes his throat, the sloppy, wet sounds of him fucking you ringing loud in your ears. Your hips roll, unsure if you want to press forward into the swirl of his fingers or back into the rut of his cock.

Tears stream down your cheeks, your chest heaving with weak sobs.

“Please,” you whine, his shaft pinching your walls uncomfortably. You feel swollen, rubbed raw. “A-Almost there.”

A nip to the ear is all it takes.

“Hhaah, I’m--!”

The liquid heat that’s been pooling low in your belly - building and building - finally bursts in a gush of slick that soaks his hand. Darkens the crotch of his pants as it drips down your thighs to splash against the tile.

You sob, a full body tremor zipping through you like bottled lightening.

In the aftermath, your cunt twitches in time with your heartbeat. Hands numb and head full of cotton as cramps bloom between your hips. Sharp little stabs shoot up behind your navel.

“Shit, I’ve got myself a gusher,” he laughs, a nasty little smirk tugging at his lips. “Look at the mess you made. Now if you ask real sweet-like, maybe I’ll let you clean it up with your tongue.”

You sag, too boneless to be ashamed as electric aftershocks tingle along your nerves. All the while, his pace never falters, quickly fucking you into overstimulation.

Your clit twitches pathetically when the fat head of his cock drags along your g-spot. "No more," you mumble weakly, letting him maneuver your body how he likes. "Please."

“Heh, let’s see if you can do that again.”

You whimper, “Oh, oh, please n-no. I - I can’t. You’ll break me.”

“That’s real cute,” his lips, harsh and rasping, drag over the shell of your ear, “but I wasn’t askin’.”

The grip on your hips tightens to the point of pain, digging in and marking you up.

“Now, why don’ we have some real fun, Darlin'?”

[suiana]

yandere! cheater and gn! reader who's in their villain arc...

you've suspected that something was up when your boyfriend started to get busy with his work, coming home late, hiding his phone from you...

of course you just wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt that he really was just stressed from his work. he was yourboyfriend after all. you had to trust him, didn't you?

well everything was shattered when you found one of his side chicks under your shared bed. she was naked, only wearing a pair of undies while holding in her pee.

"wtf why are you hiding under here?"

"your bf doesn't want u to know that he's cheating. told me that he'd kill me if i came out."

yeah, so the girl was an asshole to get with your man when she knew that he was in a relationship but at least she told it to your face straight up. also she pissed herself while getting out from the bed so there's that.

meanwhile, your boyfriend was sobbing and crying when he came home. you had found out of his side affairs, a side he never wanted you to find out about. to be honest, your boyfriend didn't know why he he got with others in the first place. he had everything he could ever want in you. you made him feel alive, all the good things you know. being with you was like a dream come true and he constantly felt like tearing out his skin from how happy you made him.

you were his god.

oh, yeah, thinking about it now that's probably it. he felt that you were too good for him and didn't want to taint you. which... was why he resorted to sleeping with others.

shitty move, yeah he knows. don't need to repeat it.

but you... why were you so forgiving? you welcomed him back with open arms, sobbed a little and told him how hurt you were! he thought you'd have up and left by now!

but you didn't.

he knew you were too good for him, he had to treat you better now. he just had to, this was obviously you giving him a second chance, right? oh he just loves you so much!

unfortunately for him, it wasn't a second chance. no, you were about to absolutely ruin this man.

it started with the small things. small rumours about him ranging from how he had a small dick to how he's a pushover... you needed to start your plan slow, you know. tear his reputation of a good and sensible man bit by bit. gotta build up that tension teehee >w<

then from the rumours, you started manipulating the people close to him. crocodile tears, white lies, and a whole pity party for yourself... telling his friends and family members how your boyfriend was an absolute shit of a boyfriend, how he didn't treat you right and how he was the worst an alive... well, it wasn't much of a lie. he did spoil you and treat you like a deity but if he really treasured you why would he cheat in the first place? there's no space left in your life to pity him.

the most important part was to constantly reassure him that you loved him and to make sure that he never finds out that you were the one ruining his life from behind the scenes. can't let him find out that his angel lover is the one that's bringing him to social death now!

by this stage, your boyfriend was completely dependent on you. everyone around him was looking at him like he was the absolute scum of the earth. where did the rumours come from? why was everyone avoiding him? he couldn't even go to work without his coworkers side-eyeing him like he grew an extra head! he's just lucky he didn't get fired-

oh and what do you know. he got fired.

he comes home crying, an absolute mess and a shell of the man that he used to be. what was once a confident and charming man is now a desperate and pathetic boyfailure.

"baby i got fired, i'm so sorry. i don't deserve to be with you."

his arms wrap aorund your legs, tears staining your pants as he seeks comfort from the only person still left by his side. yes, you're the only person left dying for. even his own parents desserted him, yet you stayed. he's so thankful-

"yeah, you're right. you don't deserve me."

it's like time stops the second the words fall from your lips. he slowly looks up at you, eyes widening in horror as his tears dry up. what? was he growing delusional? he must've heard you wrong. no way his beloved god just said that!

"haha... you're so sweet baby. joking around in a time like this-"

"i'm not joking. you don't deserve someone like me."

you slap his hands away, looking down at him as he remains on his knees on the floor. you had a smug smile, expression all cocky as you even started to laugh.

"haha! did you really think i wanted to stay with you? fuck no! i have standards okay? i really didn't want to stay with a cheater!"

your boyfriend didn't know what to think. what were you saying? he doesn't understand. is this a late april fools prank? the way his heart was clenching and the way he felt his face paled shows just how much he doesn't like your words.

"babe stop-"

"i hate you god damnit. i really thought you'd be the one for me but no! you just had to go ahead and cheat!"

but you didn't listen to him.

"let's break up."

oh yeah, you hear that? that's the sound of his heart shattering.

he quickly crawls over to you, face pale as he grips onto your pants tightly. his hands shook with each word he uttered, tone desperate as tears streamed down his cheeks once more.

he never thought he'd start begging for someone to stay when it was usually the opposite but... you were his god. the one he's devoted his entire life too.

so he'll gladly get on his hands and knees for you if he has too. you can't leave him. he doesn't want to be alone.

"please! forgive me! i know i did something wrong but i'm trying! you can't leave me too!"

he looks up at you, face completely flushed as he continues to turn himself into an even bigger pathetic mess. he doesn't care what he looks like now. he's practically lost everything. he has nothing left to lose.

"i promise i'll be better! i haven't cheated since you found out last time! d-doesn't that count for something?"

he gives you a shaky smile, as though that would convince you.

it wasn't.

in response to his words, you could only give a disgusted expression, kicking him away before walking past him to the front door. what a pathetic man he was.

"you know, you look best when you're like this."

you state, glancing at him with a smile before turning to leave his house. well, there's that. your plan was complete and your now-ex boyfriend was absolutely destroyed.

so why did it feel like... something bad was about to happen?

you quickly look back at him, keeping your cool and remaining nonchalant before you feel the blood drain from your face. your best friend?! where did they come from?! and the fact that your crazy ex was holding a knife to their neck-

"no... don't leave me... you can't leave... i have no one else but you..."

what were you supposed to do now that he was holding your best friend hostage?

[psychotrenny]

I think it's very revealing that Apartheid South Africa's great project, their ultimate solution to the problems of Apartheid, was the Bantustan Policy. Because by giving the black population their own "Independent Homelands", the South African settlers were trying to establish the same relationship with Africans that the USA has with Latin America and Western Europe has with North Africa and West Asia. It was a plan to eliminate the problems of second class citizenship by removing their citizenship altogether, turning "black" labour into "migrant" labour.

Like South Africa already used an extensive amount of actual migrant labour from neighbouring colonies and nations, but the bedrock of South Africa's economy was cheap heavily exploited local labour; the maintenance of this relationship was the primary reason Apartheid as a system even emerged in the first place. As Apartheid began to crack apart from both internal and external pressure, attempts were made to change the system while still maintaining the fundamental basis of exploitation. And migrant workers from impoverished colonised nations can be every bit as exploitable, but without all the unpleasant international backlash. So they attempted to shift the policy of separation within a nation to separation between nations. It wasn't enough to save open White supremacy in South Africa, but it's still working very well for the nations who inspired it

Apartheid and Segregation are tremendous evils in the eyes of all but the most reactionary Liberals, but "Border Control" is perfectly acceptable. All the same atrocities could be committed, all the same wealth stolen from exploited lands and exploited peoples, but in a much more internationally "normal" manner. As far as most Liberals are concerned "Citizens" have rights that should never be violated but "Foreigners" are lucky to get privileges, even when the only difference between the two are a few lines they drew onto a map. Oppression is good as long as its sufficiently externalised, happening in the places and to the people that you're not meant to care about. The same systems behind Apartheid are still very much alive all over the world, just under more "acceptable" pretenses. A simple change of aesthetic is all your average liberal needs to be comfortable

[pomefioredove]

housewardens + Jamil (separately) with a reader who is their s/o and reader is low-key their simp

like they won't worship the ground they walk on, but they just.. admire..??

like reader and the character will be hanging out, on a date, or in class or something and reader just sighs dreamily and looks at them with a look of like "im the luckiest person alive." because they love them so much

and if caught the reader won't be embarrassed and will just be like "you're so pretty." or "I'm so happy we're dating"

ik it's cringe lol but if I had one of these men as my boyfriend (cough Idia cough) I would literally just admire them so much because I love them so much and they're so freaking pretty

SWEEEEP I love fluff I love a healthy couple

*ੈ✩‧₊˚ abject admiration

summary: close enough. welcome back gomez addams! type of post: headcanons characters: riddle, leona, azul, kalim, jamil, vil, idia, malleus additional info: romantic, FLUFFY!, reader is gender neutral, reader is yuu, established relationship

Riddle used to hate being stared at. it felt like judgment, like he was being put on trial for something he didn't do. as if the world was just... waiting for him to make a mistake so it could punish him. the first time he catches you staring, long before you were together, he almost had your head for it. now, the feeling of your eyes on him has become a comfort, though your words of admiration, your praises and affection, still make him blush

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Leona couldn't even remember the last time his parents told him they loved him. so when he hears it from you, his first instinct is to push you away. he thinks it's justified; you must want something, I mean, who would be so nice to him for no reason?

well, you. you would

he'd never admit it, but these days, he goes out of his way to do nice things for you, to make himself look and smell good, just to get more of your praises

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

"you're so beautiful" and Azul crumbles. as cunning as he is, you could have him eating out of the palm of your hand if you really wanted to. he considers himself a fortunate soul, because all you ask for in return is his time and affection

your compliments are better than any deal, your voice more melodious than any song. the very thought that you think he is pretty... him, of all people... well, you could bring him to his knees with a word

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

fawning over Kalim is absolutely impossible. he's not competitive by nature, but what you give him, he gives back ten times over. one kiss turns into ten, two gifts into twenty, and, of course, one praise turns into an entire soliloquy. you're lucky to have him? he's luckier than the richest man in the world, the most powerful mage, he insists even the Sorcerer of the Sands himself would fall to his knees and weep if he were to see your beauty. you're his sun, his moon, and his stars, and he never lets you forget it

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Jamil had never been in love, let alone in a relationship, before you. you're his first everything... and that means you're his first admirer, too. honestly, he's not really sure whether to believe you or not at first. "I'm so happy we're dating," surely, you're not talking about him...?

but you are. he can't even fathom why, but you are

...sometimes, it's better not to question everything

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Vil gets his fair share of compliments, and rightfully so. he's put in the work, he deserves the recognition. and, for Seven's sake, Rook is his vice housewarden- he can't escape compliments

but... somehow, they're so much different coming from you. maybe it's the way you say things, soft and gentle and full of admiration, maybe it's your voice, or maybe it's just because it's you. because he knows that when you say you're happy with him, you mean him, not the brand, not the image, not what he's expected to be. just... him. it's true love

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Idia.exe has stopped working

even after months of dating, you still manage to catch him off guard with your "cringe couple stuff", as he calls it. it's... very distracting. you'll be mid-game, staring at him, and when he asks if you hit your head on the way in, you'll say something like "just thinking about how pretty you are" and his brain will short circuit. it's too bad he can't patch that... he'd love to respond without melting into an Idia-shaped puddle

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

being head over heels for Malleus is both a blessing and a curse. on one hand, he'll reciprocate that energy. on the other hand, he'll reciprocate that energy. even a simple "you look nice today" sends him over the moon with joy, and he will unapologetically cling to your side like the needy thing he is for the rest of the day, glaring at anyone who dares to take your attention off of him for more than twelve seconds. but, hey, you know what you like. you agreed to date him in the first place, after all

[obsessivevoidkitten]

Ghosted

Male Jock Yandere Ghost x Gender Neutral Nerd Ghost Reader

CW: Reader death, ghosts, spirit world, manipulative yandere, stalking, general yandere behavior, consensual sex

Word Count: 801

(Trying to get back into the habit of writing, this is the result, hope you like it! I consider a demented ghost as still being a monster and therefore still teratophilia.)

You had died in college. One moment, you were being your nerdy self, rummaging through your binder, and the next, you were on the ground. You didn't really remember much, all very fuzzy. Was it a stroke? A brain aneurysm? You had no idea.

Once you were brain dead, though, you stepped from your body and appeared on the ghostly plane. A fog filled realm that somewhat mirrored the world of the living. Though spirits could make alterations, there were spaces untouched by the activities of the still living. 

There were a lot of ghosts. Many of them wandered aimlessly or were stuck in a loop of denial, acting out behaviors as if they were still alive. Others lashed aggressively, unable to regain their grip on their sanity. 

You mostly kept to yourself. Like Jonesy taught you. He was a former jock about your age when he died in the late 80s. He still wore his letterman jacket. You weren't limited to the clothes you died in, but you figured it was a symbol of how he was still attached to his old life.

Jonesy had taught you a lot of things. He had pretty much been your mentor since you had died. He was there waiting when you passed. He said he had sensed someone might die as he was wandering the halls of the college, where he had also died years ago. 

Jonesy said he was stuck in a loop. Being alone had made him lose his mental stability. But when he sensed you were about to die, it snapped him out of it. He said you saved him, so he wanted to get to know you and help you navigate the land of the dead. 

Plus, being together would help prevent the two of you from getting mentally frail. 

It was a bit of a paradox. Jonesy taught you to avoid most spirits, but communication and relationships were essential to staying sane. 

"You just have to know the right types to befriend. Many of the people here have a darkness in them and can drag you down if you're not careful."

He also told you the other secret to remaining stable. 

"You have to keep busy, do stuff. Don't get too bored."

There was a surprising amount you could do as a ghost. You could go to stores and yoink whatever you wanted, eat whatever you wanted, play video games, there was even a ghost version of the internet! 

Getting infinite free popcorn at the movies was your favorite thing. Jonesy always did that lame pretend yawn thing that ended with his arm wrapped around you. It was nice, though. Made you feel safe. You had been touch starved in life.

The transition to him being your boyfriend was so seemless and natural that you barely noticed that it had happened. You had never stopped any of his advances. Cuddling you, holding you, and smooching your cheek.

You didn't even question it when chaste kisses led to him kissing you hungrily before carefully taking off your clothing, like he was removing the wrapping from something delicate. 

Soon you found yourself laying ass up on his bed with him pounding into you, drinking in all your lusty moans and unabashed calling of his name.

He gripped your hips firmly as he came deeply into you; the pleasure made you see stars. His girthy cock stretched you wonderfully. You felt so lucky and special that this jock spirit had taken an interest in you, a lowly nerd.

Jonesy felt lucky too. He hadn't been in a loop. For a year before your death, he had been haunting you, It was difficult to peek into the living world, but once he found you, he was addicted. 

He loved watching you read books, study, and watch anime. He especially loved watching you shower, fervently jerking hinself off as he did so. 

It wasn't enough though. He needed to have you with him! You had been so perfect for him. You were kindred souls in a way. You were always alone and starved for attention. You'd fall for his affections easily, and you wouldn't just crossover beyond the purgatory the two of you were now in, you were too depressed for that.

Influencing people who were still alive was nearly impossible, but decades of being alone had made Jonesy angry and bitter. He used those emotions as fuel and tried many times to trip you down the stairs or get you to stroll into traffic absentmindedly. Finally, the jock was successful in busting something in your head.

At long last, you were with him. As he held you tightly, after making love several more times, he knew he'd be able to keep you there forever and he'd never have to be alone again. 

[lemonlover1110]

𝐁𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐅𝐫𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

Sukuna

[Chapter 2] Arrangements

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Pairing: Trueform!Sukuna x f!Reader

Warnings: MDNI Sukuna joins reader bath without permission (nothing crazy), Nudity

Discord +18 - Twitter - Ko-Fi

You’re still in the process of retaining all that has happened while your arms and feet are being washed. You’re smelling a fragrance that is way out of your means and while it does smell nice, you want to puke. This is all too much for you. You weren’t even given an option, you were simply just dragged away as if you weren’t your own person.

“Can you stop, please?” Your voice comes off as weak, and it’s easy to dismiss. You feel as if you’re drowning, even though the water doesn’t reach past your breasts. They’re being gentle with you, not wanting to damage the skin of the mistress that will carry King Sukuna’s heir, though their hands feel so rough for you. 

“Can you stop?!” You yell, which makes everyone come to a halt. They’re all staring at the ground, not daring to make eye contact with you. You have yet to realize the power you have in this situation since it’s quickly overshadowed by the fact that you’re… Expected to carry a monster’s heir. You can’t afford to look at them, simply telling them, “Leave, please.”

They got strict orders to bathe you and not leave you alone, but the orders were from Uraume. Right now, they’re more terrified of you than anything; even when you’re frail and soft spoken, they don’t see you as your own being but rather an extension of King Sukuna. They end up leaving you alone per your request.

This is the perfect opportunity to run away– No, you can’t. You came here for a reason, and while you’re still shell-shocked, you can’t leave. You sigh, knowing that even if you wanted to, getting caught would result in a gruesome death. You begin to wonder if you’re able to reproduce with him, Sukuna is one of his kind. He’s not exactly a human… What would he be considered?

Too lost in your own thoughts, you fail to listen to the heavy footsteps that approach you. You only notice his presence when the water reaches your collar bone, and suddenly your chest feels too heavy for you to breathe. He’s decided to join your bath. You divert your gaze, scared of what he might do if you look directly at him.

“Look up.” Sukuna tells you, and you don’t waste a second before staring at his unusual face. He truly isn’t like anyone you’ve seen before, but you don’t think that’s bad. The longer you stare at him, you realize that there’s something charming about his face, you’re not quite sure what it is though. “The servants outside are lucky to be alive. You don’t get to come in here and order people around, Uraume relays my word and you have no say against it.”

“Will you kill me if I do?” You ask, purely out of curiosity. His eyes are practically burning into you, wondering how to answer the question. His immediate answer would be a yes, but he really wouldn’t, at least not when he wants you to carry his heir.

“I’ll kill everyone that’s involved.” He answers, knowing that with that look in your eyes won’t let you allow it. You give him a slight nod, not daring to question him further on the matter. He’s joined you for a reason. Either he joined simply because of you dismissing everyone, or he wants to begin the heir making process.

“How is this going to work?” You ask, but you're not specific enough. You’re thinking about producing an heir. You aren’t a fool to sex, you have somewhat of an idea of how it works; Sukuna isn’t a man though. He has aspects of a man, but he isn’t one. Four eyes, four arms, a tummy mouth, and twice the size of any human being, he’s truly one of a kind.

“You will carry my heir, and I will heal your brother.” He answers, and you let out a low laugh, making him frown. “What’s so funny?”

“I was referring to something different.” You respond, and he rolls his eyes. “But… What will you do with me after I have your baby?”

Sukuna takes a moment to think about his answer because he hadn’t thought that far ahead. After he’s ruined you in each possible manner, what does he want to do with you? He’ll already have his successor, he has no need for you. What do humans do?

“You’ll nurture it until a certain age, then I’ll take over.” Is the best answer he can give. What happens then? He answers all questions you may have by saying, “And if I see fit, you’ll be having more.”

He doesn’t want to let you go, even after you’ve fulfilled your agreement. You’re giving away your freedom for your brother’s health and wellbeing– It’s fine though, it’s not like you had much going for you. Though you don’t want to be someone’s breeding mule for the rest of eternity. You don’t want to be someone that’s easily forgotten.

“Can we get married?” You blurt out, and of all things you could say, he certainly wasn’t thinking that. A marriage proposal from you is certainly… Odd. He smirks though, intrigued..

“What for? You know you won’t be the only one.” He tells you, although you aren’t all that interested in his love affairs. He knows it’s not that though, you aren’t bothered by that. You’re splashing the water, unable to look at him as you answer. You’re too embarrassed.

“I want to be someone, not just the mother of your child.” You respond, and he scoffs at the pitiful request. You were no one before, so why do you suddenly have the need to be respected? He doesn’t care enough to ask.

“If you expect loyalty, you won’t receive it.” He warns you again, but that doesn’t spark your interest whatsoever. You really just want the title of being his wife, and he doesn’t see it as a title of much importance, so he’ll grant it. “I’ll speak with Uraume for the arrangements of a traditional wedding then.”

You hum in response, your eyes looking back up at him. He looks bored. Though your next question does make a smirk appear on his face, “Do you have traditional male genitals?”

“What is a traditional male genital, please enlighten me.” He sounds as if he’s about to burst into laughter at any moment, which makes you want to bury your head under the water. You know exactly how it is, you haven’t been sheltered from the world since you weren’t born into an aristocratic family to be protected– Although you hear the stories, the aristocrats are anything but pure.

“A penis.” Your answer is short and correct, but you can’t even look at him as you say it. Your hand sways in the water, feeling yourself calm down with the sound that it makes. “I used to work near a brothel so naturally I befriended some of the women that worked there.”

“It will be similar to what you’ve been told.” He says, and you can’t help but notice his choice of words. Similar. Now you’re worried. 

“Uraume!” Sukuna yells, and within a second they’re in the room. Sukuna rises from the water, finally giving you a glimpse of what you missed when he got into the water. Your eyes couldn’t get any wider, and your face burns up when you realize why he said the experience will just be similar; he has two of them. “Finish getting her ready.”

Uraume’s hands go to your shoulders and they lift you up from the water. You’re unable to say anything, shocked at what you just discovered. Uraume dries you off with a cloth, acting as if they hadn’t seen the same thing as you. They’re more than likely used to it but it’s weird. He’s referred to as a deity for a reason, he isn’t like anyone you’ll ever meet. Four eyes, four arms, a tummy mouth, and twice the size of any human you’ve ever met, that alone should explain everything.

You still can’t help but question, “Why does he have two?”

It feels hard for you to breathe with all the layers of clothes that you have on. You thought that with the place and Sukuna being unusual, you would have some wiggle room in your attire. However, you’ve been proved wrong. You have six layers of clothes on, for the first time in your life feeling like a noble. There’s too many layers, but at least it’s silk.

“The king will be here soon.” Uraume tells you before sliding the door to the room shut, leaving you to kneel on the tatami floors. You click your tongue as you look down at your attire. All of these layers of clothes for nothing. You wonder if he’ll get mad at the fact that he has to remove each garment. A smile comes to your lips, knowing that he’s definitely not the patient kind. 

You try not to think about what’s to come because you’re nervous. The thought of having sex for the first time is enough to make your stomach churn, thinking about what you just saw makes the nerves even more prevalent. You try to take a deep breath, though the action is unnecessarily difficult due to your attire.

You hear his loud footsteps as he approaches the room, your body slowly trembling out of pure nerves. Your breath gets caught up in your chest as the door opens. He walks into the room, and his eyes stare you down. You try to remain composed, but it’s hard when you know what’s about to happen.

You’re scared… Yet, you can’t help but feel excited at what’s to come. Though your fear is what reflects through your body language. It’s going to happen either way so you try to calm yourself down.

“Where’s your makeup?” Sukuna crouches down to be on your level, one hand going under your chin and lifting your face, forcing you to look at him. You thickly swallow, finding it hard to speak now. He’s impatient, though he won’t raise his voice now because of what’s to come, so he repeats the question, “Where’s your makeup?”

“Uraume said I looked better without it so they wiped it off.” You tell him, and he rolls his eyes. He won’t argue with Uraume though, he trusts their judgment. “Next time–”

“Next time you won’t do anything. You’re going to listen to them.” He’s quick to cut you off, and you nod in response. You’re still shaking in his hand, and he finds himself annoyed. But there’s also this unusual feeling at the pit of his stomach, something that he’s never felt before… Pity? “Have I done something to you? Why are you trembling like a mouse?”

“I’m nervous.” You confess, and he scoffs. Nervous, and he has yet to do anything to you. You have a multitude of layers on, you have no reason to shake as if you were naked. You weren’t acting like this when he was in the bath with you, he doesn’t know what’s changed.

“I haven’t even properly touched you.” He practically whispers. He inspects your face before letting go of you. He has no interest in having fun when you’re this pathetic. You’ve successfully killed his mood to do anything. 

Sukuna loves when his prey fears him… But you aren’t considered prey anymore.

“Uraume has arranged everything for tomorrow. We’re getting married.” He announces. He’s given in, and this is another task he must complete before having his heir. He sighs before saying, “You’re so pathetic, I can’t even touch you.”

“Sorry.” You blurt out while he stands up.

“Don’t embarrass me. My wife will never apologize for anything, not even to her king.” He scolds you before opening the door and exiting the room. He’s announced your wedding and left as if it isn’t a big deal, and you guess it’s not a big deal to him.

You can finally take a proper breath, proving that the clothes had nothing to do with your inability to breathe properly. Uraume walks into the room within a minute of Sukuna leaving. They don’t have to ask what happened, he simply just didn’t want to engage with you yet.

“Let’s get you ready for bed.” They say, and you stand up from the floor. You wish you could follow behind them, but they drag you out as if you were a child. 

It’s your first day amongst the walls, you haven’t gained their trust yet, nor do you have a title to have any say in how you’re treated. It will all soon change though, tomorrow you’ll be King Sukuna’s wife. 

[elixrr]

He trusts you. Over the course of your friendship, he built an unforgettable bond with you, one that was meant to last forever– and, really, it could've. It should've, he's not gullible, nor is he naive. He hardly trusts anybody, so you're a rare case— perhaps you're his final and lucky case where he can have somebody else sit with him, shoulder to shoulder, and no mask would have to be up. You're his best friend; you're his lover. You're the shoulder he can lean on, sleep on, lay on, cry on, and that's something that he hasn't had for several years.

Towards the start of your friendship, he didn't exactly see you as a friend, you were more of an acquaintance than anything. You were almost set to be treated by him the same way that he'd treat anybody else. He kept you at arms length, he kept his distance for a while.

Yet, you began to close that distance. You began to slither past his arm, growing closer to him. You were willing, and that's absolutely why you both should've been a lifetime bond.

But now you're being rushed to the emergency room— a head injury, something severe. You're unconscious, terribly injured from the fall, but you're lucky to be alive. He's lucky to have you alive, but now he waits. He waits, waits, and waits for his only trust, his only other shoulder, his only love, and he hopes that you can wake up soon.

You eventually and successfully did. You were in a coma for about a week, but you've finally opened your eyes. You're awake— you're alive! By the Archons and Aeons, that's all that matters to him.

“W– Where am I?” You mutter, eyes finally fluttering with consciousness. Typical question, probably always asked. He watches the doctors explain everything to you.

He watches your eyes as they flicker from one person to the next. One doctor, another, the last one— then to him. A smile nearly graces his face, but your eyes are taken back to begin the cycle again. That doctor to the next, then to that one doctor, then on him, and rinse and repeat. You glance at him as he stares at you, and it's as if he was just one extra person in the room, just one other doctor— out of uniform, though. As if you were saved by him, too, under his care, but your glances are as distant as they are for the other doctors.

Your gaze is unrecognizable. His is the same as ever.

“Who are... You guys?” You ask. ‘Who are you?’ is and would've been fine as long as you looked at somebody that wasn't him, but he's not gullible; he's not naive, and that's the thing. He immediately realizes that you don't recognize him.

He says your name without thinking.

“Do you...” He hesitates, but pursues. “Do you remember me?”

“No, sorry? Have we met before?” The words are fluent, so you didn't hesitate—

—so you don't remember him.

“Amnesia?” One of the doctors mutters, and that's when he realizes that it's all over for him.

He doesn't have another shoulder. He doesn't have a best friend. He doesn't have a lover.

He doesn't have you anymore.

He looks at you, and you look at him. Your eyes are finally fixed onto each other, but you're so distant, so far away from him now. You're both in the same room, but an unavoidable and terrifying distance is built between you two.

“What's your name, then?” You still ask.

The distance shortens. Are you still willing?

“You seem... really upset that I can't remember you. Maybe if you tell me your name, I can remember you?”

Are you really still willing?

He says his name.

“That's a nice name. Sorry, I can't remember, but I'll try.”

“You're willing?” He blurts.

“Of course.” You half-smile.

A sad grin grows on his face. He still loves you— he can feel it deep down inside. You don't remember him. You probably don't even remember any of those special memories you two created that had made the both of you the duo you were, but a smile still adorns his face regardless. You're alive.

And you're still willing.

And, because of that, your bond could last a lifetime.