#Riley is the oldest

[justashamwithwastedpotential]

Fishing with Grandpa (kinda)

This gif of Lance playing with his daughter was so cute, I wanted to make some art of some of my farmer’s kids. Then I decided against it because I’m lazy and ended up making this silly little gif of Luna and Kent instead. 

Luna always seems so excited to go fishing with her granddad. Kent thinks it’s weird they never seem to catch anything though...

[slumbergoblin]

I've been wanting to redo Oscar's siblings for a while now^^;;

[arsonistman]

Oh I figured out why I get so annoyed over a lot of Logan centric fics; he gets babied and infantilised to absolute hell and back

[writersdrug]

Johnny "Soap" Mactavish is the kind of dad who throws your kids around for fun, tossing them into the air and catching them just to hear their infectious laughter, ignoring the worrisome protests that you call out from the kitchen when they get a little too high.

Captain John Price is the kind of dad who convinces your children to ask you for pizza for dinner, acting all surprised when you tell him to call the local pizza place, eyebrows rising with "What's the occasion?" despite the obvious grin that his plan worked. You aren't fooled.

Kyle "Gaz" Garrick is the kind of dad who chases your kids around with a nerf gun, relentlessly pelting them with styrofoam bullets and ganging up on your oldest son with your youngest daughter. Waits behind the front door for your son to get home from school and immediately fires on him.

Simon "Ghost" Riley is the kind of dad who holds your toddlers like footballs, your daughter tucked sideways under his arm and dangling your son by his ankle. "Found these mice sniffin' 'round the cookie tin." He says with a deadpan expression, but you don't miss the way his mouth twitches when they giggle and shriek.

[ghostsangel]

he might not be your man, but he is the right man

simon “ghost” riley x married!reader (based off this reblog comment i got on my last oneshot)

tags/warnings: mdni, unprotected sex, breeding kink, spitting, infidelity (your marriage sucks), overstimulation, reader is plus-size

Your marriage isn’t the best.

You’ve fallen out of love with your husband—and he is a good man. As good as he can be, anyway. You’re not sure when the neglect from him started, but he hardly touches you anymore. A kiss and a cuddle here and there, but nothing more. It’s been about a year and a half since the two of you have slept together.

To say you are touch deprived is an understatement.

Maybe he didn’t like your body anymore—after three kids, you don’t look the same as you did when you got married. Stretch marks cover your apron belly, a scar on the skin from the c-section when you had your second child. Instead of a sharp jawline, your face is round and soft, the double chin a prominent reminder that you’ll never look how you did six years ago. Your thick thighs hold stretch marks and jiggle when you walk, and your ass—let’s just say it’s a handful.

Despite the weight gain, you like your body. Love is a strong word, but you like it. It housed your three kids for nine months, your kids that you adore with your entire heart.

But something is missing.

Simon is an old friend. Your oldest friend, actually. The two of you have been friends since high school when you skipped classes together to smoke joints in his car. For a while, you had a massive crush on the tall, gruffly Englishman, but it faded when he left for military service right out of school and you met your husband.

Still, the two of you wrote letters when he was away and saw each other every time he came back from deployment. He grew from a lanky kid to a strong adult and all the while never stopped being your friend.

Of course, you invite him to everything. The kids’ birthday parties, New Year’s parties, Halloween, Christmas. Simon doesn’t have a family, so in truth, you became his surrogate family. The kids think of him as an uncle and go into a frenzy every time they see him—“Uncle Simon’s here! D’you think he’d give me a piggyback ride?”

He watches you from afar—not that you notice. He sees the unhappiness in your posture when he’s with you and your husband, the lifeless sort of emptiness hollowed out behind your gaze, but he says nothing. He knows you’ll talk to him about it when you’re ready, as much as it pains him to see his best friend hurting.

However, Simon can’t help but feel like whisking you away from your dumbass husband and showing you what being wanted really feels like. He may not be who you’re with now, but he’s the right guy—the guy you should’ve married instead of your husband.

Tonight, you sat in his living room, the two of you meeting up for a weekly friend’s night. He got back from deployment a few days ago, and this is a ritual the two of you have every time he returned.

You sip on a glass of wine—your drink of choice, dressed in a pair of shorts and a top. When you’re with Simon, you don’t feel as hesitant at showing your body—thick thighs and arms, fabric clinging to your belly. He’s known you for too long to care.

“How’s the husband?” Simon asks, eyes flicking to your face. He never wears the mask around you—and you can see his scars that run along his skin, etched into his features forever.

You shrug, sighing, hesitating. “He’s fine.”

Simon tilts his head to the side, taking a swig of his beer. His eyes scan over your expression before trailing down your body. He shifts on the couch, one hand resting on his thick thigh, legs spread.

“You okay? We’ve been friends for fuckin’ ages, doll. I can tell when you’re hidin’ somethin’.”

Your eyes flick to his, trying to ignore the warm feeling in the bottom of your tummy. It’s stupid—a subtle hint of concern from another human being makes your stomach flip.

“My marriage is sort of…crumbling,” you murmur, one of your thick thighs hitting his as you adjust on the couch.

His brows pull together and he sets his beer down on the coffee table. “Elaborate.” He doesn’t need you to—he knows what you’re going to say.

You drain your wine and grip the stem of the glass. “He just doesn’t…love me anymore, I don’t think. Doesn’t touch me or have sex with me. It’s been almost two years, Simon. I’m going insane.”

“Have you thought of leaving him?” He probes, resisting the urge to reach over and squeeze your plushy thighs and stomach.

“Yeah, but…it’s complicated with the kids.”

“Kids deserve to be raised in a home where there’s love,” Simon simply states.

His words make you look into his eyes, and you can see an underlying emotion there that you’ve never seen before from him. His fingers twitch, and for a moment, you’re certain he’s going to touch you. The thought makes heat flare between your thighs, setting your neglected cunt on fire.

You set the glass down and look back at him, shaking your head. “Pretty sure he’s fucking someone else. Probably that young girl from his work—she’s thin and pretty and—”

Simon’s hand reaches over to grip your thigh, cutting off your sentence. Your breath hitches in your throat and your eyes meet his again. His nostrils are flared, and he grips the fat of your thighs like you’re gonna vanish.

“You’re beautiful, doll. Always have been. A little more meat on your bones doesn’t mean you can’t get someone’s cock hard.”

His words stun you. You don’t think you’ve heard anyone call you beautiful in years—and it makes tears well in your eyes as you look at Simon. His eyes flick to your lips, and then his hand is on the back of your neck, tugging you to him.

Your lips meet his in a hungry kiss, lips moving together and tongues running along one another. He grips your waist and moves you like you weigh nothing, settling you on his wide lap. A fervent moan slips past your lips when his hard cock presses against your aching cunt, already soaked.

His big hand moves from the back of your neck to your ass, squeezing the flesh so hard, you’re sure it’ll bruise. His other hand runs down your side to slip under the hem of your shirt. His fingertips graze your stomach until they get to your chest, furiously working to tug the cups of your bra down.

“Get this off,” he mumbles against your lips, tugging your shirt over your head, his fingertips working at the clasp of your bra as soon as the shirt leaves his grip.

Your face flushes when he tosses the bra away, eyes drinking you in hungrily. His hands squeeze the flesh of your ass, a sharp slap echoing in the otherwise silent room when he spanks you. You whimper, and he chuckles before taking a nipple into his mouth and working it with his tongue.

Your back arches, a moan ripping past your lips as his tongue swirls over the neglected bud. Electricity jolts straight to your pussy, and it’s embarrassing to you that you’re already practically dripping for him and he’s barely touched you.

Your nails dig into his neck and he lets out a groan against your nipple before switching to the other side, tongue flicking quickly against the hardening peak. You hear a ripping sound and realize he’s ripped your shorts and panties clean off of you, and Simon grins against your skin as he tosses them to the floor.

His big hands spread your cheeks apart, one hand drifting between your legs to the apex of your thighs. He releases your nipple with a pop as his fingertips run through your soaked folds, the touch making you weak in the knees.

“So fuckin’ wet for me, love. Bet that shithead of a husband couldn’t get you as wet as me,” he murmurs against your skin, teeth nipping and biting up your chest as he speaks. “Don’t worry, doll. I’ll show you how a real man should make you feel.”

His sentence is accentuated by a harsh suck on the skin of your neck, and your eyes roll back as you grind down on his hard cock. You want him so bad, it’s embarrassing, and you can’t help the whine when his tongue runs over the mark he just made and up your neck.

Simon pushes your back to the couch, his hips slotted between your legs as he kisses you again, hungry and needy. He’s dreamt of this for years—and he’s not going to waste his time now that he’s gotten it. The kiss is full of spit and tongues, him swallowing your moans as his fingers work at your clit.

Your legs jolt as he rubs in slow circles, back arching when he presses down a little harder. He smirks down at you, taking in your hooded eyes and open mouth, and he can’t help but use his other hand to grip your jaw. He holds your mouth open, letting his spit drip into your mouth before closing it for you.

Your eyes glaze over at the action, whining as you swallow and open your mouth again, almost like you’re ready for more. The sight alone makes his cock throb, and he slips two fingers into your neglected pussy.

The stretch is intense, but you welcome it as he fingers you, thumb rubbing your clit. His fingers curl and he grins as he feels you clench tightly around him.

“Gonna come already, love? That’s okay, go on. Got some making up to do, don’t I?”

The squelch of your pussy is lewd as he finger fucks you, the coil inside your tummy tightens as he stares into your eyes. His fingertips hold your head in place, making you look at him as he brings you to the edge.

Your back arches when you come, juices gushing from your throbbing cunt and onto Simon’s fingers. You whine nonsense, legs trembling as pleasure runs through you. Before you know what’s happening, your legs are over his shoulders and his fingers are replaced with his tongue.

Your hips jolt and you groan, trying to back away from him, but his large hands hold you in place. “Don’t fuckin’ run, sweetheart. You can take it.”

Your fingers tangle in his hair as his tongue swirls over your throbbing clit, your eyes fluttering shut as the painful pleasure he’s bringing you. He ruts his hips against the couch as he eats you out, one hand on your belly, the other on your hip.

“Simon,” you gasp out as his tongue flicks quick strokes across your clit, legs still trembling as you feel your second orgasm build quickly. “Ple…I can’t…”

“You can,” he mumbles against your clit before diving back in, sucking and licking like a man starved.

He doesn’t stop when you cry out and come the second time, or the third. After the fourth, he kisses up your body, tongue trailing over your sweaty skin. He leaves open-mouthed kisses on your neck before kissing you, gripping your waist and moving you to straddle him again.

His fingers work the zipper on his pants and he pulls his cock free, running his leaky tip along your wet, swollen folds. He breaks the kiss, staring into your eyes as he lines himself up with your pussy.

You slowly sink into his cock and you lean your head forward onto his shoulder, whimpering as he stretches and fills you up. His breathing is already ragged, soft moans filling your ears as you sit on him.

“Fuckin’ hell, love. This cunt was made for me, wasn’t it?” He murmurs against your ear, nipping at your earlobe as he grips your hips.

You don’t have to do any work—he knows you’re tired. All you have to do is lean against him while he fucks into you from below, his thick cock stretching your walls and his tip hitting the spongy spot inside you that makes your toes curl.

His hands spread your asscheeks apart as he ruts into you, the room filled with your moans and his breathy gasps. You never knew sex could feel this fucking good—it’s a new sensation to you.

“God, wanna fuck this pussy everyday,” Simon growls in your ear, one hand moving to your hair to tilt your head back. “Wanna fuck you in every position possible and fill you up till you’re pregnant with our baby.”

The thought makes your head spin, and you feel your breath stutter as your cunt clamps down around him. He grins against your ear, using the grip on your hair to tug your head back and look into your eyes.

“Yeah, you want that? Want me to fuck a baby into you so you can leave that pathetic man and be with me?” He asks, and you can feel his cock twitch inside of you.

You nod, nails digging into his shoulders. “Yes, Simon, f-fuck—”

His smile widens and he thrusts up into you faster, the slap of skin on skin growing louder. “I can do that, doll. Be a good little slut and take it for me, yeah?”

The look in his eyes—feral, protective, hungry—it’s enough to send you over the edge. Your pussy throbs around him and your vision goes white as your body shakes, screaming out Simon’s name as he continues to pound you through your orgasm.

“That’s it, fuck yeah, baby. Feels like heaven when you’re squeezin’ my cock like that,” he grunts out, thrusts becoming sloppier as he nears his orgasm. “Gonna fill this greedy cunt up.”

You gaze into his eyes, your own hooded and fucked out as you nod, whimpering out a “please” at his words. His lips crash into yours as he grunts and moans, hips stilling as he buries his thick cock inside you, throbbing as he spills ropes of cum inside your womb.

Simon pants in your ear, his fingers running up and down your back as he tries to collect himself. He grips your hips, cock still inside you, and you feel him smile.

“Gonna do that till your belly’s swollen with my baby, sweetheart.”

—————————————

see this oneshot’s companion here!

[moralesispunk]

simon riley who ends up back in manchester

simon riley who falls in love with you and raises your kids in his hometown

simon riley whose kid ends up going to the same primary school as he went to

simon riley who shows up at the gates with you and your oldest on their first day, palms sweating because not only is he sending his little girl off for her first day at school but he can also see his old teacher

simon riley who stands straighter when his old teacher approaches

simon riley who blushes when she comes up and pinches his cheeks, turning to you and your little girl and saying he was the best of his class, always listening and paying attention

simon riley whose heart warms because he remembers how she always gave him a little extra of the snack because she knew how things were at home

simon riley who bends down and kisses his daughters head, telling her to be good and use her listening ears as she sets up at her little desk

simon riley who is crouched down as low as he can get when she sits at the tiny table, hands nervously fiddling as you unpack her pencil case and tell her how great she's going to do, how her lunchbox is packed with sandwiches and snacks, and how you and dad will be there to pick her up at the end of the day

simon riley who never really felt like he had a full circle moment until now, standing with you tucked into his side, waving your daughter into her first day, and knowing he will never be like his father when it comes to you or the kids

[thelaisydazy]

Firefighter!Simon Riley x Reader - Locked Out Pt. 2

Johnny drags you inside the station, ignoring the confused looks he gets from the other men inside. He walks you over to the oldest of them, a man with a beard sporting a hat, and introduces you. 

“This is oor captain, Price,” Johnny says, his arm still over your shoulder. “Cap, bonnie ‘ere lost their keys doon th’ drain. Can we gi’ them a hand?”

“I’m sure Gary could get to them,” Price says, offering a warm smile and his hand to shake, which you do. “You rest here mux.” He turned to the couch where a man with dark, curly hair sat. “Kyle, keep our guest company, we’ll be back.” He pats Johnny on the shoulder and the two leave to find Gary and retrieve your keys. 

Kyle stands from the couch and walks over. He’s handsome, pretty you think. He definitely knows it too as he catches you staring, giving you a smile. “Hungry?” he asks.

---

Simon emerged from the showers, wearing only a pair of sweatpants, his damp towel slung over his broad shoulders as his blond hair was still dripping wet. The station house was quiet. Johnny must still be out walking Riley. 

A quiet laugh broke that silence though. One that made his stony heart skip a beat. Simon made his way towards the common area, finding the one thing he never expected. You. 

Kyle was sitting with one arm on the couch behind you, the other on his leg. You hadn’t noticed Simon yet, too engrossed in Kyle’s story about the time Riley climbed into the open window of a cop car to get into a bag of treats the officer had hidden under his seat.

“So Riley was hanging halfway out this cop’s car, an’ Johnny’s trying to get him out before the cop gets back,” Kyle said. “Turns out, the cop had a bag of treats in the car. Found out when Simon called Riley over. Rascal had the bag hanging out his mouth.” 

The sound of your laugh makes Simon’s heart race and he finds himself jealous of the way your fingers gently scratched behind Riley’s ear as the dog’s head lays in your lap. 

Simon can’t help but stare. He’d always known how pretty you were, but seeing you here in the station.. He only wished he was the one you were sitting with. That he was the one making you laugh so easily. 

“Bonnie! We got yer keys!” Johnny calls, coming up behind Simon. 

Your head whips around, catching a glimpse of Simon as he turns on his heels and retreats deeper into the station. 

---

In his room, Simon’s heart pounds in his chest. He runs a large hand through his blond hair, his mind racing. All he’d wanted these past few months was to know you better, though he’d never been able to bring himself to speak more than a few words to you. Never had he thought he’d see you in the firehouse, much less cozied up on their couch. What were you even doing here? 

A knock on his door brought his answer. Simon quickly pulled on his privacy mask, some part of him hoping it was you. Instead he saw Johnny. 

“Aye, Si, did ye see we git a guest?” Johnny asked with that cheeky grin of his. Ah. That was it. Johnny brought you here. 

“I saw..” Simon said, keeping his voice measured despite his urge to to tear Johnny in half for getting up the nerve to talk to you before he could. 

“Ye never told me tha’ wee thing wis so cuit,” Johnny pressed. “S’already git Kyle wrapped ‘round their wee finger.”

Simon’s dark eyes sharpened. Johnny always knew just how to get under his thick skin. 

“Am sure they’d lek t’ see ye,” Johnny continued. “Looked a might fash when ye stormed off.”

“Didn’t ‘ave m’ mask,” Simon muttered. “Wasn’t expecting them..”

“Aye, ha t’ git Gary t’ rescue their keys,” Johnny explained. His blue eyes briefly looked Simon up and down. “Y’should say ‘ello. Am sure they’d lek t’ see ye.”

Johnny was dense but he wasn’t stupid. He knew Simon could get anyone he wanted, he had the looks to make just about anyone, including Johnny himself, melt. If only Simon had the confidence to actually talk to anyone. 

When Simon didn’t budge, Johnny decided to push further. “Aye wis think’n, LT,” he started. “I might ask ‘em oot fer coffee.” Johnny shrugged as he watched Simon tense. 

Simon shoved past Johnny, making his way to the common area again. Leaving Johnny grinning at his door.

---

“Coffee.”

Simon’s gruff voice startles you. You hadn’t seen him enter the room, much less hear him walk up behind where you were sitting on the couch. 

You blink those pretty eyes up at him. “What?”

“With me.” He doesn’t seem to be asking by his tone, but his eyes are almost pleading. 

“Uh.. sure,” you say, unable to keep the smile from your lips. 

The tension in Simon’s shoulders melted away. If he had a tail, it would be wagging.

[halcyone-of-the-sea]

PREY

PAIRING: Hunter!Simon 'Ghost' Riley x F!Werewolf!Reader

SYNOPSIS: There’s blood on your hands again.

WORDCOUNT: 16.8k

WARNINGS: Intense gore, body horror, death, mutilation, weapons, firearms, knives, intended harm, violence, blood, descriptions of wounds, angst, fluff, protective!Simon, religious mentions, period time standards for men/women (1700s), etc.

A/N: The first of my reverse AUs is finally here! Enjoy!

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

The tale of the Werewolf extends back to around 2100 BC. It was written in The Epic of Gilgamesh, scored into a clay tablet by hands long buried—a corpse forever still in the earth so deep, the bones have yet to be found by greedy eyes. Perhaps the oldest surviving story in human history, and there is still a passage that bleeds into stories hundreds of thousands of years later.

In such, Gilgamesh, a man on the search for immortality, rejects a woman for the reason of turning her previous husband into a wolf. 

“You have loved the shepherd of the flock; he made meal-cake for you day after day, he killed kids for your sake. You struck and turned him into a wolf, now his own herd-boys chase him away, his own hounds worry his flanks…”

And then, the tales spread, changed, through history and through spoken words of caution. Like water trickling from a well, down the shape of the wooden bucket delving deeper and deeper into a pit of age—of caution. 

“The Beast of Gévaudan. Man-eater.” Through France

“He has a wolf-head, you know? Tall thing—short brown hair all over him.” Through Scotland

“Beware the man that changes shape under the full moon.” England.

Now, in the late seventeenth century, it all comes to a head. Even the people in 2100 BC knew that someone who changes into a wolf, or some bastard-like imitation of one, was very much real; it is very much an affliction that overtakes sense and reason. A curse. 

Transferable down to the saliva of one entering your bloodstream.

You must never get within the beast’s sights. 

—

There’s blood on your hands again. 

Hunched over, your body quivers, and the bareness of your flesh in the moonlight is of little concern to you—trapped in a fetal position while the chilled wind howls.

Howls.

Howls.

“Get out of my head.” Your fingers grasp at your scalp, pulling; ripping. A sob jaggedly slashes your throat open. “Please,” you rattle in a fast breath, the grass snapping as you writhe. “Get out of my head.”

It had happened once more, and you can’t remember any of it. 

The forest is deathly still. No birds sing their songs—no breeze moves the long grass, patches trampled down around you as if a beast had staggered into the small clearing you’re lying in. Maybe it had. There are shadows that listen to your quiet panic, the low whines and gasping quivers of your throat; from behind the trees that speak in the way that only they could. The deep night creeps into you, and the moonlight bathing your flesh doesn’t push back the terror in your bloodstream. 

Your body burns like you’ve broken every bone twice over, and judging by the blood stuck in between every line and dip of your skin, to anyone walking past, the analogy could be very real. Fingers flexing and bending, you try to force out the venom inside of your head with desperation befitting a dying dog, spine visible out of the skin of your back as you sob all the harder. 

You tried to stop it—you had; you always do. But, just like every month when the full moon mocks you with its silver-hued face, it never works. 

It never works.

Your eyes stare at nothing as you lay here, in this place of grass, blood, and bile, of corruption as deep as a vile sin of flesh. It came over you like a wave, fingers trapping your throat and bearing it to the caress of fangs. There were different names for it here, miles from your village and the terrified eyes that search the tree line; names coming from the hunters and their black deeds. 

Shapeshifter.

Demon spawn.

Werewolf.

“I can’t take it anymore,” you shove the side of your head into the ground, pushing the torn earth away from the cuts of long claws. Tears flood the dirt until it’s wet and muddy, pushing the crimson stains on your skin away in long streaks. “It hurts, God, please, it hurts.”

The sound of your hysterics rises and falls in the stillness—the inactivity of fearful birds and beasts wondering if your fangs would rip from your gums and your claws would tear from your fingertips. Fur along your body the color of which leads to stories of their own spreading far and wide. 

The White Wolf. The Specter of St. Francis’ Village. A hound from Hell. 

More pale than snow, and sharper seen than a knife or blade through the black trees. Even if the memories of your shifts were fuzzy at best, there were flashes of those who’d seen your gargantuan form from the confines of their stone-cut homes. Those wide eyes. Yelling—screaming; sprays of blood as heads were separated from bodies—

“Stop!” You scream, your legs kicking out as your toes scrape the grass. “It’s not me! It’s not!” 

There’s a call of alarm from deep within the woods, the flash of torches and bellow of hunting dogs. They’re running you down, you’d forgotten that in the depths of your breaking mind and body, and by the time your elongated limbs had set themselves back into a more human-like appearance, your spine cracking at every vertebrae, it had slipped your thoughts entirely. It always took you a long time to understand what had happened after…everything. 

But even now, the shouts of the hunt are pointless to the visceral breaking of your consciousness, stuck between leaving bloodlust and knowledge of horror. There’s flesh in your teeth, and you wail before your fingers drag down your face, cupping over your ears. In the back of your skull, the panting of dogged breath echoes; running, blood, blood, blood. It’s a dance of fangs, of pale fur, staining every inch and flooding the back of your mouth. Drinking it down like water.

Flesh—lovely, disgusting, flesh rent and torn to the bone with smacking gums belonging to a square snout. 

Who had you killed this time?

By the time the dogs had tracked your scent to your curled body, it was already too late. 

“Here!” Male voices shift in and out on the backs of crows, hard and cruel. “It’s here!”

“Get the dogs on it!” 

“It’s not me,” you mutter incessantly, not truly understanding what you’re saying as hounds burst through the bushes, all snapping teeth and slobbering tongues your eyes widen in an instant. Panting, your jaw clenches; long whines move your throat. 

“What…?” Blinking quickly, the dogs surround you—having to be at least ten of them on their nimble legs and thin tails. Everything is distant to you; separated. A knife could be driven through your heart, and you wouldn’t even realize it until minutes later, bleeding out on the grass. 

The hounds are afraid of you. 

They dart forward and balk back, your scent driving them up a wall until rabid slobber drips from their maws. Torchlight pulls through the trees—quicker now, running. Fangs nick your shoulder and you yell, shoving up to your backside as the world swirls, shuffling away as the dogs snarl. Their eyes are red-huen. Drunk off fear and order. 

Your head darts and shifts, blood dripping off your chin to travel down the flesh of your stomach and navel—so much crimson that the whites of your eyes are violent under the moon. Hands slipping over the wet grass, your face pulls and slackens in delirious confusion as you try to stand but fail. You cry out in sharp pain, and the dogs go wild in their kill circle, nearly attacking one another in anticipation. 

You glance down and see the black crossbow bolt sticking out of your thigh. 

The scent of wolfsbane in the air only then becomes clear to you, and the realization is slow. Wolfsbane—you’d been told about it by the village priest. It makes beasts of the night dumb and weak; minds unclear. 

In a moment of clarity, the reason behind your incurable hysteria becomes clear.

Lungs heaving and eyes far-off, the hunting party bursts through to where you stay, and you look up in animalistic fear. Figures dip and slip into one another, faces becoming demons as the visages melt into twos and threes. You yell out, sniffling and sobbing, trying to back up until the hounds grapple onto your shoulder and rip a chuck out of your arm. Screaming, your hand moves back, shoving at its snout before hands staple themselves to your wrist. 

“No!” You wail, injured leg dragging as you’re forced back into a heavy chest. Hot breath fans against your neck as multiple grips pull and touch you—shackling you down with rope and chains. Your throat screams itself raw, kicking and struggling futility. “Let go!”

You’re too weak—too drugged off wolfsbane and blood loss. Rotting teeth move across the canvas of a smeared painting, you can’t focus beyond the riot of your heart inside of your ribs.  

Grubby hands snap under your chin, digging into your flesh as you cry, not able to move as the restraints are tightened. A silver muzzle is slapped over your jaw. Dark eyes shimmer as you rage—aggravating the bolt wound until fresh blood forms a puddle on the ground, which the dogs lick their lips at. 

“Look at that,” a low, lust-filled voice eases out, and hands around your body tightening as you squirm, head spinning. Silver and wolfsbane. Your eyes snap to fight the sudden flood of fuzzy heaviness in your body.  “Pretty little Hell-Beast, eh? Almost seems a bit strange to have the Spector be her. Think that hunter shot the right bitch?”

“Course,” another grunt, a hand grabs the top of your head, jerking it up as your head lulls along with the force. You can barely focus on the words being said. “He isn’t a fuckin’ twat. Killed a werewolf in the next village over, too. Heard he skinned the fucker and took its head for his mantlepiece—just like the vampire skull he wears.” A pause. The dogs are still barking—echoing out in the trees. You can’t feel your legs. “Isn’t that right, Hunter?!”

A shout is sent into trees as your panic breeds with the drug, eyelids drooping as your head is snapped and moved by your hair. Your buggy eyes don’t focus on the man until he steps into the torchlight, the crowd parting for him as the metal of your chains drags and clinks together. 

It’s as if the very blackness of night takes human form. 

The man, the Hunter, is tall—very tall. He looms like an aloof animal over most of the others here with his dark boots and his black hood, and yet, under the fabric, there is no whisper of his face. 

Only the upper visage of a pure white skull, and two long, needle-pointed teeth where canines should be. 

“Ghost,” one of the men laughs, groping at your bleeding thigh before you shriek, muffled from behind the muzzle, and weakly kicked out. “Good shot, Mate. Right in the meat of the thing. Gave a good trail for the hounds.” 

Ghost blinks slowly, grunting under his breath as the large crossbow in his hands is shifted. He stays silent as your visible pulse hurries on as if you were a rabbit and not a wolf, watching from under the cover of his hood. The darkness of his clothes is blue in the moon—silver buttons down the length of a loose shirt and pants stuffed into boots. The hood is attached to a jacket, which itself extends down to his knees and sways lightly with every shift. The silent resting of weapons and tools is not lost to anyone. 

Belt of filled vials and large knives; a firearm over his back, and two pistols hidden on either thigh. That crossbow was still in his hands.

Brown eyes openly dig into your soul, dead as a corpse, and your voice whines as your thigh is finally released with a laugh. Your vision blacks and comes back a moment later as you try to breathe from behind the muzzle, gasping. That skull on his face…you don’t like it. It scares you. 

And the Hunter only continues to watch numbly as his wide shoulders stay stationary.

“Get the cage!” Someone roars, and you flinch, shrinking until a dog with short fur comes and nips at your ankles, the man holding you grinning sharply as you sob and shake.

“C’mon—expected more of a fight from you, Spector. Getting bullied by dogs, now? Ain’t that a twist of fate, then. Bet this devil’s whore can’t even walk with all that wolfsbane in ‘er, eh?”

A grumble of chuckles as the rattle of metal is in the distance. You grow more fearful, mind flashing to a burning stake and the trials you’d seen in village after village. No—no they can’t put you in a cage; they can’t put you on trial.

They’re going to make it hurt.

“Say we try it out.” A shadow comes closer and grabs you by the arm, ruthlessly shoving you to the ground. You cry out as your spine meets the earth, arms and legs kept under chains that tangle and screech in their metallic way. The rope that holds the muzzle pulls against your neck until you can’t breathe except in ragged wheezes. 

“Go on,” they taunt, some holding back the rampaging dogs just to watch you flail and shimmy. Your face grows hot as you struggle to sit up—shaking so violently you can’t focus on anything but the quiver. “Put on a show for us, Beasty!” 

Death would be better than this.

Tears hit the ground as the cage is finally brought into view, the men all groaning and annoyed that you hadn’t even attempted a forced shift or a desperate run into the trees. 

Ghost’s fingers, you notice from the side of your blurring eye, tighten minutely around the body of his weapon. You do not doubt that he’s wondering if it would be easier to just put a bolt through your eye right now. 

“Get it loaded up,” the Hunter’s voice is accented and gravel-like. As if rotting wood is being peeled back and scraped along gravel, he stares at you for a long moment and then glances at the dogs. “And get those fucking mutts under control.”

“Which one?” Is the low-blow joke, and the ruckus of loud amusement that follows makes you want to die. 

It’s not your fault, how do you tell them that? It’s not your fault.

Your throat bobs in an attempt to speak, but you can’t move your jaw from behind the restraint of your face—held tight to you as the men come back over and grapple for you again. The priest was right, wolfsbane makes werewolves sluggish.

You can do nothing as you’re ruthlessly dropped into a silver cage, borrowed, no doubt, from the Vatican itself, and christened with holy water. But it was a funny thing, really, and the dark humor wasn’t lost to you even like this. There was nothing godly about this contraption.

Locked in, you shove yourself immediately into a corner and hunch over, grasping at your thigh as the bolt still leaks fluid in a long trail over the ground. The pain is so great in your head, that the physical agony is little—a bullet wound to a sliver. 

Your temple slams into the metal, smacking into it as your eyes shove themselves closed. 

Head hurts—hurts. I can’t think. Can’t think. It’s humming, my skull is breaking open.

Bile pools in the back of your throat, but the muzzle keeps it in, leaving you gagging as the cage is lifted with a grunt and carried by long poles; back to St. Francis' Village, no doubt, but you can’t…focus.

“Think you might ‘ave given her too much, then, Hunter,” one calls, slapping Ghost on the shoulder as the crowd follows after the panicking quarry. The large man only gives him a look from the side of his eye and the villager pulls away immediately, awkwardly chuckling before hurrying off after the others.

Brown eyes watch your bare body hunch and spasm, pupils wide as you’re carted off. 

He’d been generous with the wolfsbane, truth be told. He’d expected you to be…Ghost’s dark brows pull in from behind his grim mask…he’d expected you to be different.

Humming under his breath, the Hunter watches the torches disappear into the trees and lets his gaze linger on you. 

There was something…off.

Blinking, he turns, eyes studying the place where they’d found you with sharp attention that misses nothing—not even the birds that come back to settle into the trees again. Large boots shift through the grass, and as he’s re-settling the crossbow in his hands, his eyes find something glinting. 

Watching, Ghost takes another step and brings his body to the item in the grass, hidden, before he kneels. Digging with large digits, the Hunter’s hands loop through the chain of a necklace, dragging it through the torn earth until he can gaze at it fully under the light of the moon.

Blinking in slight surprise, Ghost finds the body of a silver bullet hanging from the confines of a leather strap. Brown eyes shifting to look over his shoulder, the man listens to the cheers and merriment of the hunting party mutely. A simmering understanding brews in his gut. It’s only one that you could know from years of experience doing just as he had—hunting and being hunted in turn with a knowledge of all things dark and unholy.

It could never be easy, could it?

A low grunt later, the man sighs out a deep, “Fucking hell,” and moves to slowly stand, slinking back into the darkness. 

—

They kept you in the cage and set it on display in the middle of town for days.

Shivering now from the cold more than the wolfsbane, you stay collapsed into yourself as people come past to poke and prod at you—even sticking knives into the slits of the cage and digging them into you like an animal until your flesh was marked and brutalized. 

You don’t remember what it’s like to not be bloody.

The bolt wound was festering; infected. You dare not touch it, because the pain only makes you want to vomit, and if you do, you’ll most likely suffocate on your own bile before the trial ever happens. 

Yet, on the fourth night of this, as your eyelids flutter and your body grows weaker, a shadow comes to visit. 

“You weren’t born one.” It isn’t a question, but the sudden voice makes you startle. 

Eyes locking onto Ghosts’, your mind flies with fear—thinking that perhaps there’s more abuse that you’ll be put through. But no…the man has no weapons on him tonight. Only a long knife at his belt. The mask stays. 

You stare, unable to speak as your fingers twitch.

Grunting, Ghost’s head tilts, gaze moving up and down as you curl in tighter around yourself. A cold breeze rips through the square, and your eyes clench closed with breaking will. When you open them again, the Hunter is kneeling by the cage, and holding up something in his hand loosely. 

“You going to behave if I take that muzzle off?” You nearly gasped at the hanging image of your necklace—a silver bullet on a leather strap; that dark and heavy thing usually kept around your neck. A reminder.

After a moment of wide-eyed staring, you nod quickly to his question, a desperate, pleading thing without the need to utter words. Please, you want to scream at him, take it off.

Ghost’s eyes are as dark as a mound of dirt, sharply intelligent and filled with an unflinching reality. He doesn’t care what you are, and he won’t until you speak to him and let him judge your character far before any courtroom can. The man knows what a lie is better than any priest. 

“Good,” he says curtly, accent far more deep as he thinks, re-capturing the bullet in his palm and standing before he shuffles it into his pocket. 

You can’t help the anxiety as Ghost moves forward, loping to the side of the cage with the side of his eyes on you incessantly. It’s obvious how his other hand lays limp on the hilt of his blade that, with only one wrong move, you’d feel the chill of the edge with no time at all. 

But the temptation of getting this muzzle off was too good to ruin, and so, you stay as still as you’re able as crows call in the distance and the deadness of the town leaks into your blood. 

Ghost moves his free hand and orders, blankly, “Closer.” 

You hesitate, body tight before you drag your face closer to the bars, angling it parallel with the metal so the tight bind on the back can be taken up. The fear can be smelt the second your eyes have to break contact with his with the turn of your head—neither of you trusts the other. 

Ghost hums under his breath at the sight of your broken body coming farther into the open light of the moon, the whites of your eyes all the more visible from under the slathering of blood and tears. He hadn’t been absent to witness the abuse you’d been put through, even if the coin from his successful hunt was feeding him at the inn, a small window allowed the tight view of your torment at the hands of the people you’d once lived around. 

But the reality was that you’d killed people—scores of them—and yet the worst part of it was that he wasn’t sure if you even knew that.

It took four nights for him to break his only rule: never get involved after the job’s done.

But the hunch he had was too important to ignore. 

Large fingers latch onto the knot at the base of your skull through the cage itself, Ghost grunting at the sight ahead of him. The rope had been gradually chafing over your flesh, peeling back hair and skin until only the bloody meat was left—Simon had to wonder if the people of this village even wanted you alive for the trial or not at this rate. You’d be dead by tomorrow if that infected bolt at your thigh wasn’t taken care of.

Despite himself, a part of his chest tightens at the sight of the thing sticking out of your leg, dripping a yellowish puss. It had been a good shot, and he had overcoated the bolt in wolfsbane. 

Ghost hadn’t expected you to be so susceptible to it—most werewolves only got slower, but you…you seemed to have a stronger reaction. He files that fact away and tilts his masked face to the side. 

Grasping at his blade, the sound of a knife being slipped out of a sheath makes you startle, jerking your head back and shoving away even as your muffed whine of pain falls out. Ghost momentarily readies himself for an attack, but the way you force your mangled body to the opposite corner has him grumbling out a hard, “Easy.” 

The Hunter raises the blade, watching you with unblinking eyes. Your body shakes; panting. It was like calming a feral dog.

“You want the thing off or not? Have to cut it.” Once more, the man rises and walks over, boots almost silent over the small raised platform the cage had been set on like a trophy, you inside are comparable to the golden coins that greedy eyes touch and run their dirty hands over. 

Your mind is a troubled thing as you watch this Hunter and his crude knife come closer, kneeling again, and motioning with two fingers to shift your head. 

“Out ‘ere,” Ghost says, brown eyes not letting you guess anything about his true motives. “Don’t have time to fuck around. Guards’ll make a round soon and I’d rather not get caught wide-eyed.” 

Your brows pull in, hands clenching and unclenching in your lap as goosebumps travel the length of every limb. You were tired—hungry and thirsty; there were open wounds that burned with infection and ones that were crusted over with dirt and grime. You can’t feel your toes, and the tips of your fingers have long since gone numb. 

The thought of getting this muzzle off was like the promise of heaven being dangled in front of your nose. Your hesitation this time is far longer than the first, moonlight glinting off the visible blade in Ghost’s hand as he stares. That mask holds death. 

The hood is gone from him—only that pale bone left and sewn into dark, dark, fabric. The sharpness of the teeth leaves your throat bobbing in a nervous swallow as your head carefully shifts to rest on the bars. Bending, you present the knot once more and try not to focus on the way Ghost’s attention is fully on your expanding lungs; the pulse that is seen through the meat of your neck. 

But he says nothing before his fingers once more grasp the rope and the tip of the knife slips up. You don’t even feel it before the sudden slackening of the muzzle, and then the thing slips from your face before it slaps the bottom of the cage with a dull thump. 

The first thing you do is vomit. 

Spine pulling in, your body jerks as the bile that had been in the back of your throat rockets out, restrained hands slapping the ground as the acidic concoction leaks from between your torn lips. Face on fire, you choke and retch for what seems like minutes before you can finally breathe in the damp air—the innate shame and disgust rolling through as you cough raggedly. 

It’s only after you’d forgotten the man kneeling outside that he seems to remind you of his presence with a grumble. 

“Breathe. It’s no use if you can’t speak to me.”

A weak, quivering glare comes across your eyes, saliva dripping off your chin as your tongue moves to lick at your lips. But the brown gaze is as immovable as stone. Finding it pointless, your hands come up and delicately touch the base of your skull, only making you flinch when the fresh blood pools down and over your neck, licking at your shoulders. Tiny droplets fall to hit the metal one at a time. 

Ghost’s fingers twitch as he puts the knife away. 

“Who bit you?” You stare at him, hands falling before your wrists rub at the aggravated skin of your jaw. He shifts his head, voice slow but heavy. “Speak.”

“...I’m not a dog,” your voice is scratchy, hoarse. You send a small glance his way, mouth open and nostrils flaring in an attempt to bring in the oxygen you’d been lacking. 

“Really?” A hidden eyebrow is slowly raised. “Hell, coulda fooled me.” 

“Damn you,” you whisper, not meeting his gaze as you shuffle back. The crossbow bolt catches on one of the cage’s bars and you bite on your lip to stop the shrill yell that threatens to exit. Head moving, you lightly slam your skull into the wall in pain. 

Breath hitched, you clench your trembling jaw tight. 

“Speak or don’t,” Ghost grunts, and he makes a move to stand. “Your funeral.” 

A spark of fear stabs you as he begins to shift, and you can’t explain why. Perhaps it was because it was the first conversation you can remember having lately that wasn’t one-sided or on the edge of a blade.

“W-wait,” you stutter, blinking through the blood. The Hunter doesn’t slow, and then he’s on his feet and fixing the gloves over his fingers, flexing his hands before his foot begins to pivot— 

“Please, don’t go,” your voice is thin and pleading, echoing through the street. “I’ll answer your questions, any of them you want,” the sentence cracks through a dry throat, tears welling. “Please, don’t leave me here alone.” 

Ghost had half of his body turned away before it went rigid; the side of his dead eyes flash to you, swirling with specs of moonlit silver. A hunter and a werewolf lock gazes, great beasts respectively brought together in seconds that seep into slow minutes of delicate need.

Knowledge and company. Understanding and a horrible fellowship. 

The Hunter’s eyes twitch in their ever-narrow resting place, glancing away before he mutely moves back to where he was before. 

He wastes no time.

“Who bloody bit you?” 

You stifle a pathetic sigh of great relief, taking company with a man who had shot you not days before. Yet the ability to speak and be heard was a commodity that was dimming each and every day.

“It was already fully turned,” you speak quickly, tongue tripping. “A big wolf—a gray one with eyes like the sky.” 

Ghost glares to the side. Gray? There were no contracts for gray werewolves with blue eyes in the area. Only you—only Specter. The next question is just as stiff. 

“When?”

“Three years ago,” your lips move. “Only three years, I promise.” Brown eyes narrow slowly, fingers tapping the fabric of his pants once before he makes a noise in the back of his throat. Ghost’s jaw clenches, mind working through the hoops that need to be jumped. 

To you, the questions might seem pointless, but to a hunter, they were important—very important. Werewolves who are born afflicted with this moon-drunkenness are different from those turned by a bite. Not only are shifts from turned werewolves more violent, more deadly, but they rarely know their own actions from that of the frenzy under their skin; those that are born as such are rarely out of control, unlike your faction. 

The only question now was if Ghost could condemn you to death when it was obvious your human form was entirely different and you had no semblance of an idea of what was going on. Was it even his problem to care about? Even looking at you now, the man blinked away from cuts and inflicted injuries—the muzzle on the ground. 

The blood and the bolt.

He’d known it had been a foolish play to bring all of those townsfolk with him on this hunt but he needed their knowledge of the terrain; he hadn’t passed through St. Francis’ before. At the time, Ghost hadn’t been averse to assistance as long as he got the job done in his own fashion: capture or kill, the contract had stated. Rarely was he known for capture.

Maybe, deep down, he’d known something was already wrong about this.

“Show me it,” the Hunter grunts, staring you down, a deep anticipation growing in his bones. He had to make sure you weren’t lying.

You lick your lips, face pulling with every twitch and sway of your form. The black at the edges of your vision was coming back, and you blinked quickly, chains dragging before you shifted your back with a quivering breath. The punctures were difficult to see through all of the gore, but Ghost made do as he grabbed at the waterskin at his waist and the rag hanging from his belt. 

Flooding the fabric in the lukewarm water, he hums out a firm, “Don’t move. Cleanin’ it,” before you feel the press of the rag to your back. 

Gasping lightly, you almost jerk away before the sensation becomes a nearly welcomed one—the drag and slight scrape of rough material. Your averted eyes dip lower, staring at nothing as your heart momentarily slows to a normal pace. Ghost cleans the areas where the swell of scar tissue is the most obvious, and, one by one, the violent groves spread out like a slash of paint over canvas. Along the left side of your waist, the blood gives way to a dented ‘v’ shape of healed punctures. Deep, dragging; a point to where your side was almost ripped away before it broke off swiftly. 

Ghost’s dark eyes fight the need to widen, and that hidden blankness stays. 

A great gray wolf with blue eyes…

His mask tilts, head shifting as his gaze moves slowly. Gloved fingers twitch to touch them, moving in an almost examining way that befits a surgeon and not a decapitator. Your breath is held in the back of your throat, but you sag nearly entirely into the bars of the cage, growing more unsteady by the second. 

The scent of infection is so strong it makes your head burn, and you’re overtaken by it as Ghost’s presence suddenly disappears. 

You don’t know if it’s minutes or hours before you understand that you’re alone again, but when your limp neck finally turns to wonder where your silent captor is, you are greeted with nothing but moonlight. Blinking through the sludge behind your eyes, the sinking in your gut was stark and sudden—like a knife dragging itself from gullet to navel. 

But all you offer is a light whine as more blood moves to cover the places where Ghost’s rag had just cleaned. You were scared of him, no doubt. A hunter through and through down to the vampiric skull on his face and the shroud of death at every inch of his form. 

He’d shot you and drugged you with wolfsbane. Found your necklace. 

So why had he talked to you?

Your head is too muddled for this, too delicate. Like the crimson under your nails, it dries and flakes off of your brain as the lack of distraction breeds stored agony. There wasn’t anything left to focus on besides the upcoming trial, your death, and the pain that doesn’t let you sleep except for now, on the brink of not rest but unconsciousness. 

And at the sound of a key being slotted into the silver of your cage’s door, only then does your body slump with the weight of doom. 

You don’t even feel the hand that grasps at your ankle.

—

The sway of the horse makes your teeth clatter with every clop of hooves. 

Your conscience mostly comes and goes, only staying in thin seconds where you feel the press of clean bandages on your afflicted flesh and the tipping of warm broth into your mouth. Grass under your head. 

Blankets being shuffled over your clothed body when you shiver. 

When you’re finally able to speak, when the horse is moving along and hands keep your back stuck to a strong chest, it’s a low, garbled, “Ow.”

Ghost barely blinks down to your head as it slumps to the gait of his horse, glancing before his attention returns to the thin forest trail ahead of him. You’d made noises in your sleep often enough—this was no different except for the fact he felt your shoulders flex.

Slowing the horse with a pull on the reins, the dappled mare settles to a walk. 

“You up, then?” Ghost hums, his hand around your waist tightening as you groan under your breath. “Good. Thought I was dragging a corpse—would have wasted my bandages.” 

Your eyes shudder as they open into the light, having to focus on moving them before the sting of the sun makes them water. But you do, and then the confusion outweighs the numb stinging of tended wounds. 

Head shifting, you look behind you slowly with wide eyes as the horse under both of you snorts.

Brown eyes watch you before a dark brow twitches upward. “What is it?” 

You just blink, mouth slightly open. 

“Where…am I?” 

“Forest.” Ghost states matter-of-factly. 

If you had the energy to glare, you would have. Seeing that nothing will get the man into a proper conversation—he was a brick wall even now—you look down at yourself and land on the scarred forearm that keeps you secure on the saddle. Ghost’s gloves were still on, but the sleeve of his dark shirt had ridden back to his upper forearm, and in the wake of pale skin, you find the black ink of all manner of warfare. 

Werewolf skulls; vampire fangs and fire. The slash of inkish chains with skeletons. 

Your lips thin, your senses slowly becoming your friend again as you stare at the snarling face of a needle-hewn wolf. Eyes tightening as the horse moves to the left, your body follows the reactive action before Ghost’s pressure tightens once more, visibly veins behind the pale flesh. You move on, seeing the thin tunic and pants over your body—feeling under that, the bind of wrappings with the scents of mashed yarrow leaves in the fabric. 

They’d been re-applied recently, too. 

“Stay still unless you want to re-open them,” Ghost utters, eyes scanning the trees for unseen threats. It was midday by now, the sun high above the trees watching the both of you on your trek to seemingly nowhere. “We’re far enough away, but I want more distance before I take the time to close them fully.”  

“The trial,” your arm moves up, fingers grazing the side of your nose before it falls back down. Ghost can feel the air heat with unease. “The…the cage?”

“Trial was two days ago,” he draws, thighs shifting over the saddle. “Give or take.” 

The confession isn’t as shocking now that you have woken up here, but the lack of remembrance on your part of that time startles you. It’s a blank slate—just like the aftermath of your shifts. You don’t like not knowing. 

The next question comes out with a haggard cough, sweat dripping off your nose. “Why?”

“You’re going to tell me ‘bout the werewolf that made you,” the Hunter grunts. “And you can’t speak if you’re lit up like a pig on a spit. Took you the night we met in the square.” 

Through it all, Ghost barely looks at you—always his attention keeps to the trees and the shadows that linger; seeming to listen. He knows more than anyone that they do. 

The horse continues on, your pain surfaces again, and with a shuddering breath, you fall into a fitful sleep once more. The arm around your body tightens, and the warmth it lends is accented when Ghost’s shifting gaze glances at the top of your head. He wears an expression he can’t name yet.

When the throws of fever pull their curtains back for the last time, it shows you the slats of the attic above your head, wood polished and clean as the heat of fire moves over your body. Pulling a large inhalation of air into your lungs, you blink softly as if clearing away cobwebs with a broom—willing sense to return in the few seconds it had flown away. 

The furs are warm. 

In the village, you weren’t anyone of standing. A simple woman—unwed, and, thus, unimportant due to the era the world sees itself in. It wasn’t all bad…namely, it hid your affliction far longer than you could have hoped it did. You had a small piece of family land passed down to you on the edge of the village, and that was where you stayed. Nothing fancy; a hearth, a large, single-room property with a garden and a well. You were known to keep sheep, a fact that had caused perhaps a few hysterical chuckling fits when, every full moon, one or two went missing, but it gave you the ability to accumulate money and, more importantly, an alibi. 

Who would suspect a werewolf to own sheep?

But this home already had a more detached feel to it—something removed. The air was sterile, somehow. Groaning, your face tightens before you rise to the palms of your hands, muscles quivering to keep the strength your stubbornness gives to them. Half-vertical, you turn and study the area. 

Square, the four walls are stone with mortar and clay to keep the rounded blobs together. You’re on the ground floor, a staircase to the far right while the bed is stuck into the left corner; a nightstand sitting void of all except a single chamber-wick holding an unused candle. A sturdy table with one wooden chair, a stone fireplace set into the same wall the headboard is level with, and a large oak door.

There are runes written on it. 

You can’t make sense of what they mean, but when you see them, your tiny-pupiled eyes slip to the rest, all placed at windows or near some point of entry—unassuming things until you realize why they were red in color.

Your shoulders tighten, and whatever bit of magic moves through your skin lets your nose pull to the scent of human blood. 

You clear your throat and look away, licking your lips with a dry tongue. Moving your toes under the two bear furs that rest at your abdomen, you notice the lack of earth-shattering pain that accompanies it, and, shifting a hesitant hand, you grab the edge and push it back a bit farther. 

Bandages with perfect ties meet you, void of any crimson staining. 

Truth be told, you expected more of a Hunter’s home—skulls; trophies. The town always spoke of burnt bodies strung up on crosses that mark the property of those in this profession, a ward and a sign of grim hope. Vampires mostly, wasting away in the brutal sun. Others as well. Werewolf fur and witch bones shoved in blessed boxes. 

This place is almost normal, you think, thighs shifting over the dip of the bed as your finger runs the white wrappings where the bolt should be. Your mind dares not go to how he got the thing out of you, and at the stretch of sutures, you take your curious grip off of it entirely. 

Looking around once more, your brows furrowed tightly. 

Where was the man? The hunter responsible for your current predicament? Ghost. With his vampire skull mask and his black attire—a hellhound with dark ink and intentions. More importantly…

Why were you still alive?

Your memories come back slowly as you stand, bare feet moving to the floor as the tunic over your upper half falls to your knees at the verticality of your spine. They creak a bit, the bones, at the ability to stand fully upwards and not be impaired by bars of silver. A strength seeps through you slowly. 

In the deafening silence, you clear your throat tinily and lightly itch at the clean flesh at the back of your neck where the muzzle sat; rubbed raw now scabbed and healing with the spread of natural oil balms. Taking in a slow breath, you step forward with a heavy limp and watch the door, glancing at locked trunks and cupboards, eyes blinking. Your muscles ached, but the sting only served as a way to remind you that you were still here—living. Few in your position were granted second chances. 

You’re about to study the runes at the door when you’re called to with the creak of the stairs in your left ear. 

“Wouldn’t recommend it.” Your head snaps over, blinking quickly. 

Ghost carries the leather holders of his twin pistols in one hand, the bodies of the weapons in them hanging as he comes to ground level one step at a time. Brown eyes glance over through the confines of his skeletal face-covering as he walks to the table, placing down the items. 

“Keeps the spirits out—smudge ‘em and the house gets haunted,” he grunts. “Rather not bleed myself again to get the runes copied.” 

You stare in mild shock, sound sparking from the back of your throat. “...Right.” 

Side-eyeing the markings, you shiver and step back from the door, silent as Ghost seems to focus on his task at hand—looking over his weapons.

Large hands running the metal and wood, the pistols in his grip shift as the drying light of the day streams in through the curtains of the windows. He touches them intimately, knowing every grove and dip until he tilts one and rubs away a slash of dirt from the barrel with his bare thumb. 

You quickly turn awkward, looking down at yourself and the bareness of your lower legs. It wasn’t lost to you that the man was the reason you were in this situation in the first place. 

“You shot me,” you grumble—not unlike someone who had a knife to their throat. 

“Affirmative,” Ghost says nonchalantly. You get a slow, blank glance and nothing more. 

“Have you drugged me?” You ask, heart speeding up. There wasn’t anywhere to go—not without an escape plan and with Ghost in front of you.

“Wolfsbane?” The Hunter shifts his thighs, boots moving over the hardwood. “Negative. Not yet.” 

“Yet?” An attitude seeps in, lips thinning. 

Ghost sighs under his breath, slipping the pistols back into their holsters. “Forgetting about how we met, Love?” 

“No,” you huff. “Not really.”

“Perfect.” Eyelids pull down slightly. “Don’t.” Ghost nods his head to the table's chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “Sit.” 

“I told you I’m not a—” A sharp, numb look makes your snappy reply stall itself, and you stand there for more than a minute before you find the pointlessness of this.

You limp forward and sit in the chair.

Looping your arms around your waist, you glare to the side as your skin crawls at the unblinking eyes that stare. Ghost rolls his shoulders, tilting his head. 

“What do you know about the werewolf that bit you beyond appearance?” 

“Nothing,” you chuckle hopelessly, moving a finger in confusion. “I…I don’t know why you’re asking me about it—it’s not like I had a conversation with him.”

The Hunter blinks at your sudden confidence, unable to separate your form now from the one in the cage; blubbering ceaselessly in a grassy clearing. But lesser pains always bring out someone's true colors. As long as you told him what he needed to know.

Ghost explains with a sheen of dull annoyance. “Every turned werewolf holds a connection to the one that bit them. It’s pack mentality.” At your blank look, his brows pull in, the mask shifting. “You telling me you’ve never come back into contact?”

“...No?” Your lips dip. “For three years I’ve been by myself with this.” 

Brown digs into your face, a small sheen of confusion slipping in to tighten them, around his biceps, Ghost’s fingers twitch. 

You lick your lips, speaking up in the impending silence. “I don’t remember anything after I turn. Is that normal?”

“For you?” He mutters, still not taking his eyes off of you. “Yes.” 

“I’m not going to pretend like I know what’s going to happen,” you shrug. “But at the very least I want to try and understand why I’m like this.” You open and close your mouth for a moment. “Before you kill me, anyways.” 

“If I wanted you dead,” Ghost grunts through a half-amused tilt of his head. He doesn’t beat around the bush. “...You would be.” 

“‘Capture or kill,’” you huff. You’d seen the flyers; heard from word of mouth. “Right.” You sigh. “They’ll track you down, you know. They’re not going to just let you take me.”

“They won’t make it through the forest. Bastards would get lost on the trail.” The Hunter moves until he can grasp the waterskin from the counter, dragging it over with his hand. He tosses it to the main table in your direction after he comes back over, and you hesitantly reach forward and pull the top off. Ghost changes the subject back to his studies of your condition closely. Dark eyes slip down your front as your lips part to take up the liquid. “Before your shift, tell me what you see.”

Your throat bobs as you drink the water, thirsty as it soothes your dry mouth. You hum, but the inquiry makes your hair rise. Your arm wipes at your mouth as you lower the waterskin, a small thankfulness in your heart. “It’s less of what I see and more of what I hear and smell—blood; metal. River water. I…” Your chest tightens. “I feel my bones breaking and I hear howling mixing with whispers.”

“Whispers?” Ghost leans, eyes alighting with dim interest. “What’re they saying?”

“I try to block it out,” you whisper, not exactly answering. “Makes it go faster.” 

A long nothingness ensues. 

The impending night grows deeper, and then Ghost finally speaks again after you begin to shift with unease. He nods firmly, tilting his head as if it’s already been decided. 

“Next full moon, you’re going to listen to them.” 

Your horrified face snaps up. It’s a moment of stuttering before you force out a heavy, “What? No!”

He’s already turned, moving back over to the stairs and placing one foot on the steps. 

“Ghost!” You yell, face devoid of blood.

He side-eyes you. “Go back to bed. You’re dead on your feet.” 

And then the same man who shot you in the thigh with little remorse disappears into the attic.  

—

The Hunter was a strange beast.

The days the two of you spent together were mostly silent—left with tight stares and tense shoulders. Clipped sentences. 

Ghost, for what it was worth, gave you space in this small house; as much as you could get. He kept himself up above while you stayed on ground level keeping yourself occupied. You’d gotten spare trousers and socks, a jacket, and the bed was practically yours with how your scent rolled off of it now. Yet, you had never been permitted to go outside. 

You’d seen the land from the windows—careful of the runes, of course, and it wasn’t anything… ghastly. A vegetable garden, a single-stall stable with a dappled mare, and a beaten-down trail out the front. 

No livestock.

No bodies. 

It was only when you had become ever more curious about your lupine curse that you braved the stairs to the attic—one week into the impromptu stay. It’s funny due to the fact that Ghost had never said that you couldn’t go up there sooner.

You stand now in the flat room with a sloping roof and find the man making bullets. It’s a long table, parallel to the walls in the center of the room; dark and covered in all manner of books and tomes. Grimoires tied up and locked. Racks of weapons with markings and blessings tied to sheets of ribbon…it was something you’d never seen before. 

Studying it now, the contents were a dark fascination. 

Ghost fiddles with his silver shell, mixing in gunpowder into the hollowness. He doesn’t speak until you do, but he knows you’re there.

“Tell me more about werewolves,” you speak through the air, and he waits before answering. “The ones who are born with it.”

“Rare,” Ghost comments, and you’re stuck by how willing he is to tell you about this. He puts down his bullet and picks up another. “Harder to find, even harder to kill. Unlike you, they know what goes on when they’re running ‘round. Fuckin’ nightmare to pick up the pieces—bloodbath.” You thin your lips. “Not all of ‘em are murderous, but they’re unpredictable. Can’t help but make packs.”

“Instinct,” you murmur, coming a bit closer. Ghost pauses, looking at you before huffing in the form of a gruff ‘yes.’ Your wondering continues. “But why am I alone then?”

“That’s the question,” the hunter says slowly. “Need to figure out why.” Brown eyes slowly move to you. “‘Fore more people end up dead. Or turned.”

“Can I,” you stop at the table, standing opposite the man. “Can I turn people, too?”

“No,” is all you’re given. Ghost’s eyes glint. “And I’d rather you didn’t bite on me to try.”

Your face heats.

Your attention focuses for a while on how he works—prepares for something unseen. He’d said he’d kept you alive to help him find the one who bit you, but he’d also cleaned your infected injuries, bandaged you, and fed you. Kept you warm. Safe. It was far more than could be said about your village.

However, it was strange how Ghost’s stark muteness was something that you found in the darker hours, a small comfort. When the moon was coming in from the windows, and you hid from its rays as if being stalked down, he once found you sleeping under the bed on the floor because of it.

He never said anything, just offered you a silent hand and helped you back out with a slow blink and a tilt of his head.

There was a distrust, obviously, but there was also an unspoken nearness. No one would make any sense of it—you couldn’t either. It was like a wolf and a raven; something built on hesitence but necessity. You didn’t like Ghost’s mask or his brutalist profession of shooting his wolfsbane-coated bolts, and he didn’t like that once a month you turned into a rampaging werewolf. 

Comparable things, really. 

But even here, in this workshop in his attic, you saw the need for this—for hunters. If you couldn’t stop yourself, there came a time when you had to be stopped. Truth be told, you expected it to be a quick and final end. Maybe that was just a foolish hope. 

A silver bullet would have always been your final song, you believed. Perhaps the very one that had once swung from around your neck; the one you’d never taken off until now. 

But then, perhaps that would have been your own brutalist profession.

“Thank you,” you nod. Ghost pauses, fingers stained with gunpowder. He blinks at the bullet in his hand as you continue. “I know you don’t care about anything beyond your work, but if you hadn’t gotten me out of that cage they would have burned me alive. Skinned me.” Your tongue pokes out of the side of your mouth. “I don’t know, but it wouldn’t have been kind. Job or not…thank you for getting me out of there.” 

“I shot you,” he utters, voice gravel. Ghost seemed confused.

Your lips flick. “I never said I forgave you for that part.”

A smooth chuckle wafts out over the attic and your own softly mirrors. Your head tilts somewhat quizzically. “But, about that…did you mean to put so much wolfsbane on it?”

Ghost shakes his head, grumbling. A small sense of honesty leaks out. “...Expected you to be bigger.”

You blink, and then, a few seconds later, a loud snort echoes like a ringing bell. 

The Hunter's unimpressed look only leads you to find him all the more enjoyable. “Shut it. Fuckin’ hell.”

A hand is waved from your party, dismissing the harsh snap. “Sorry, sorry.” You puff out amused air. “Spector not up to your expectations?”

Ghost nearly rolls his eyes, trying to focus on the task at hand. He didn’t mind your company, at the very least he knew he needed to keep an eye on you for any potentially forced shifts or hostile attitude. What he hadn’t expected was to find you so…different from your muzzled counterpart, your shared physical inhabitant. 

He could almost call you endearing if he wasn’t so numb to the sight and scent of reality. 

“Sightings were far between,” Ghost grunts. “Here-say. I took an educated guess—better to put something like you out of commission than drag my way out of a forest without legs.”

“No apology?” You try, tilting your head.

“None,��� is the drawn response. “I don’t have regrets. You’re alive.” 

Your fingers touch the outside of one of his journals, tracing the bumps and grooves of age and wear. You hum, but don’t reply. Most of your pains have been pushed back now, even if you still weren’t up to full strength. Food and rest helped, but the anxiety that perpetuated only lengthened the healing process. 

When you can’t trust even yourself under the drunkenness of the moon, it only makes your fear of the sun worse. Everything made you afraid—most of all your mind; most of all, the future. 

“Why do you want to find the werewolf that turned me?” You have to speak this, have to push. Your curiosity demands it.

Ghost puts the bullet down and grabs a rag from his belt, mask turning to look your way as he brushes off his hands. He pauses, looming with that gargantuan height—natural intimidation in the span of his chest and the trunk that makes up his front. You find yourself in his shadow as he rubs at his fingers with the rag, taking it away and slotting it back into his belt a moment later. 

The man’s heat leaks into your body as he blinks over, glancing your form up and down in a single look; keeping a respectful distance but still making his attentions known. 

He stares. “If it keeps biting people, there won’t be any villages left to take up contracts from.”

“Money?” You frown.

“Principle,” Ghost counters, chest rising and falling steadily. “There needs to be a middle ground. Too many feral werewolves, too few people. Cut off the head.”

“Ominous,” your form turns to his, itching at the back of your head again—the scabbing skin. “If what you said was true, how do you know the thing isn’t already dead? If it hasn’t tried to get to me, what was the point of making me?”

“Because you hadn’t left St. Francis’ by the time I put a bolt in you.” Ghost grumbles, rubbing a hand on his bicep, itching above the fabric of his tunic. He stretches with a grunt—and you see his shirt ride up and the pale skin underneath. You gawk for a moment at the length of scars and brutal muscle.

“Charming,” you dryly utter, stuttering in a brief second of pulling back your senses, but the Hunter continues on, ignoring you.

“That was where you were turned—your territory. You stayed because your leader is still close by waiting.” Legs shift, and all of a sudden, a body is over you, hands are on the base of your skull, pushing your own away as brown eyes dig into the injury you pick at. 

Your breath hitches, tensing for a second as your spine straightens. You watch widely from the corner of your eye as Ghost runs a careful hand over the flesh. He puffs a breath, chest moving in a grunt that is both commonplace and expected, yet the brush of his chest to your shoulder is not. 

You restrain a shiver, nostrils moving to the overwhelming swell of leather and gunpowder. Bone fragments; the tang of whiskey. 

His skin as he runs a thumb over the edge of your wound.

“It’ll start cracking.” Ghost utters, and through his fabric, you feel the brush of speech. “Have to apply more balm. Stop messing with it unless you want stitches soon.” 

It takes a moment more of his surgical study and a small clearing of your throat before you can speak. Your mind changes the subject for you.

“So…if my bite can’t turn anyone,” you breathe, nearly sagging as Ghost’s fingers catch in your hair, shifting it under his attention to get a better look. He listens, you know. He wasn’t good at talking, but he always listened. “Why did they muzzle me?”

For a brief instance, you think you feel the Hunter’s fingers jerk a tiny amount—some reactionary muscle twitch that leads your body to still. 

Ghost can’t say why he did that, though perhaps it was the sudden flash of the injuries that he’d wrapped on the road back to his property that went over his eyelids. Or the cage—your pleading face aching for whatever small sliver of brutish company you can get. 

The silver bullet that he still had in his pocket, attached to that leather cord. He knew the purpose; the intent. Just as he knew the scrape of scabbing under his fingertips. 

“Control,” he grumbles, and it’s all he’ll say. 

Your burning face is somewhat down-turned, letting him do as he must, study what he can. He hadn’t made any moves to endanger you, and besides the upcoming full moon, there was nothing here that screamed imminent danger. Danger as a general, yes, of course. You were a werewolf in a hunter’s home—it would always be…your eyes flutter when his fingertips drag over your scalp…it would always be danger….dangerous.

Ghost doesn’t think you notice it, but your eyes are drooping. 

He watches after the slight shock wears off, a tiny smirk flickering the hidden skin of his lips after he realizes the reason. If you had a tail, he’d assume it would be moving in a soft arch by now. 

The man was mildly amused at that, and before he moved away fully, he had to stop himself from uttering a sarcastic, ‘like that, then?’ 

He had to remind himself not to get attached to whatever…this was. He was using you as bait, as some key to his problem. Not a companion. The distance here had to be firm and heavy-handed. 

“The balm is down in my packs,” he grunts, leaving just as his name implied before you had the chance to gather your bearings and the lack of caressing heat. You startle back to the attic room, eyes wide and face loose before Ghost’s retreating footsteps echo on the stairs. “Don’t bloody use it all, then.”

The front door opens and closes with a pull of weighted wood.

—

“I can’t do this,” you mutter, pacing alone in the middle of the night down in the living room 

The full moon was tomorrow. 

“I can’t do it,” you itch at the back of your head, peeling at the nearly healed flesh harshly. Your nails dig into the soft tissue, drilling like a knife. A bead of blood slips around your fingers, but it doesn't stop you.

It’s late—late enough to know that Ghost should be asleep by now. For days, the paranoia, just like always, builds until you are nearly as mute as your Hunter. No more curiously searching his attic; no more questions about his job or how he got into this business. Brown eyes had been lingering more as the days went by, this strange companionship growing. You knew, in his own way, he was…worried.

So silent, even he had been getting noticeably uneasy. Shifting legs and quick glances. Nights where you hid under the bed from the moon until lunch came around, Ghost speaking as easily as he could to try and coax you out to no avail. You, a feral dog with white-rimmed eyes. 

At supper, only hours before this panicked pacing, you had told something to Ghost that made him double-take. 

“If I can’t stop it…I need you to shoot me. In the head.”

He’d never answered, but his eyes seemed to get ever-sharper as the hours continued on. More tense. Ansty.

But…that was his job, wasn’t it? 

“Can’t do it,” you murmur. Blood slips down your wrist. “It isn’t right—”

“Spector?” Ghost’s voice had become so familiar to you that the only thing that made your heart skyrocket was the sudden call of it. Your gasp is sharp from behind a panted breath, hand flinching away from the crater you were steadily digging in your skull. A long string of blood trails into the air as your fingers jerk away, and it’s only then that you notice the deep pangs of pain.

Your eyes shudder for a second as Ghost’s form makes it to ground level. He comes over slowly, attention staying on the way the moonlight makes the crimson stains glint from the dripping line seeping into the sleeve of your tunic. He blinks, and you both stand.

The man’s skeletal adornment was missing, though the fabric under remained. A loose sleep shirt and pants, stained by the rays of night. 

“Let me see,” he sighs under his breath, a tiny rasp telling of the sleep he’d been awoken from.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” you utter. He doesn’t seem to care, grabbing your wrist and pulling the limb away as his body takes up presence behind you. 

“Was already awake,” Ghost grunts, eyes narrowing in hidden worry. You calm down a bit at that, one less problem to worry yourself about. 

The Hunter, quietly, leaves for a second and grabs his pouch near the door. With a muffled command, he nods to the bed until you’re backing up and hitting the back of your knees off of it, sitting. 

Ghost lights the candle on the nightstand and opens his belongings with stiff glances your way. He noticeably doesn’t ask why you’ve harmed yourself like this.

“I can’t,” you say it like a plea for help. “Ghost, I can’t do it again.” 

Hands fiddle with clean bandages and take out his waterskin. The man douses a rag with the liquid and comes over, shifting onto the bed and lightly turning you so your back is to him—legs half hanging off. 

The hard press of cold water makes your breath hitch, and you bite your lip.

“It hurts,” you push out. Ghost knows you’re not talking about the newly opened wound. 

“Breathe,” he says to you, seeing the way your sides expand with heavy lungs. Brown eyes flutter from the push of his large hand to the warmth of your shaking flesh. “Tell me about your home, yeah? Heard you lived in your own place.”

The question makes you double-take.

He’s asking me that? Here? Now? Hours away from perhaps another catastrophe?

Yet, you can’t help the slippage of your tongue as Ghost’s fingers rub into your scalp. The rag is lessened, and, soon, the material is rubbed gently over the sore itch of weeping skin. You fight a whimper and reply with an addled mind. 

“It…it’s quiet. Calm. I always keep the candles going because I don’t like the dark.” Ghost works quietly and quickly. 

“There,” he grunts, glancing at the flickering light of the candle he lit. He’d have to remember that. “And?”

“I kept sheep.”

He pauses, and, without meaning to, a soft scoff bounces off the confines of his chest. It catches your attention far better than a bullet could. Ghost shifts a needle and thread out of his gathering of items, taking away his limbs only for the short while it takes him to loop the two together. 

“How many?” The masked man asks, amusement gone just as quickly as it had come. 

“Only a handful,” you whisper. Your mouth opens and closes, glancing over your shoulder as the candle-light spills out over the room; casting shadows over Ghost’s face, catching on his long eyelashes. Those browns of his glint like tree trunks covered in dew.

“Please,” your words are muffled. Eyes wide and fearful, there isn’t anything that can console you on this. “You need to kill me.”

There was a dichotomy to you—a violent thing. You didn’t want to die, no, you feared it heavily, more than the moon, but the truth was that you couldn’t keep going through this. The unknowing. The breaking bones, the blinding pain. The understanding that nothing that you do can stop it. 

“It hurts, Ghost,” your breath stutters. “More than taking off a limb, more than slicing yourself open and ripping out your intestines—it burns more than the light of the moon.”

The Hunter listens through all of it. He sits, he stares, and he hides the brimming sense of concern behind his dead eyes.

With a pulling of his eyebrows, Ghost’s free hand moves upwards and grabs your chin. Freezing, you study this phenomenon from over your shoulder, face on fire with eyes wide to the pale skin visible to your view. You hadn’t realized until now, but this was the most you’d seen of the man’s face. 

You could make out the point of his crooked nose—the strength of his jaw under the form-fitting fabric. Cheekbones and the heaviness of his brows. Wisps of hair. He had eyes like a cat, you had to admit; something sly about them despite the numbness that seemed to extend bone-deep. 

But his hands had been kind to you. 

Firmly, Ghost’s fingers run your flesh, and he blinks softly before a low sound echoes in his throat. He pushes carefully on your jaw and shifts your head back forward so he can help you. When he lets go, your heart quivers in your breast

“I’m ‘ere,” he mutters, and you feel the first stitch enter the thin flesh of your head. You take down deep breaths, focusing on the scrape of his fingertips and not the point of the needle. Ghost can understand the fear of it—of pain. It’s instinct. He tilts his head and pushes out, “I can only ask for one full moon from you, yeah? No more. I just need one.” 

“And if I can’t find the werewolf?” Your voice vibrates with emotion, staring down at your hands as Ghost’s chest brushes your spine. The scent of him was addling your brain; the rub and slide of his hands.

The Hunter’s jaw clenches softly. “...Then I let you go.”

It wasn’t what you were expecting, but anything from the time you’d gotten a bolt through the thigh was unknown territory, and, like a dog without a leash, you’d run into it. Your brows furrow, blood oozing down your neck before Ghost’s grip shifts to place the rag back again, swiping away firmly. 

“Go?” He nods, but you can’t see it. “But what about the hunt?”

“I can manage.” The stitching pauses. The air is broken up nearly a full minute later. “You’re not evil.” Before they start up again as if nothing was uttered aloud. 

The confession makes the sting in the back of your eyes start up again—a strong thing of confusion and vulnerability. Ghost continues his task, pulling together your skin one suture at a time until the injury is fully closed; clean. 

“Chin,” he lowly states, and you allow him to tap your jaw, shifting it up so the wrappings can loop above your ear and over your forehead—securing them. 

Even far after the blood has seeped through, the two of you stay.

—

Come morning, you already feel wrong.

Your body stays in bed, shaking—sweating. A large pain flairs in your chest over and over like a pulsing well in the earth, skin twitching with the spread of blood. Ghost sits beside the bed all the while, having dragged over his chair. He leans back into it, one arm over the side, hanging with the thing ever so often moving to rub at the back of his neck. 

You don’t think he’s moved since he brought it over last night; since he got another candle to stick into the holder—push back the dark. To watch, to study, or just to stave off your rising anxiety is another question. 

It’s only after the fourth time you try to rip at the stitches at the base of your skull that he finally grabs your hand and holds it silently. Now, his thumb moves over your knuckles—his gloves back on. 

At noon, he tries to suggest eating.

“Hungry?” Ghost asks. 

“No,” you say instantly, sweat dripping over your temple, your body partially buried under blankets. “No, I’ll just throw it up.” 

Brown eyes glint. “Just one bite?” 

Your mouth is already salivating—thoughts of wet flesh and blood in the forefront until you whine and shove your face into the pillow; panting heavily. 

Whispers dance in the shell of your ears. 

I’m here.

I’m here.

I’m here.

“Go away,” you whisper quickly to them. 

Ghost pauses, hesitating. After a moment, his thighs tense with the action of movement, thinking you’re speaking to him. Something swirls in his chest, but he starts to stand nonetheless.

Your eyes widen.

“No!” Both of your hands latch onto the Hunter’s wrist, fear a needle stuck in your gaze. “No, not you. Stay, please.”

A silver cage covered in blood slides across Ghost’s slightly shocked look, but he only licks at the corner of his mouth and slowly leans back once more. 

“Not going anywhere,” he says, accent dipping. “Tell me what you’re hearing, yeah?”

His hand slips back into yours, and he presses into your pulse softly, counting. The sun continues across the sky.

“I don’t like how it sounds,” you say, shaking your head. “It’s wrong.”

“Focus,” Ghost breathes, looming closer. His grip squeezes once. “It can’t hurt you.” 

You shiver, eyes tightly closed as tears burn the back of your nose. “It’s howling.”

A suddenly gloveless hand spreads up your cheek, resting there and pushing back the sweat that pools. It’s calloused—scarred. You whine, head spinning.

I’m waiting. 

Find me.

Find me.

“I don’t want to,” you utter under your breath, words an amalgamation of slurring gasps. 

“Spector,” Ghost calls, head moving closer. “Eh.”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” your hurried panic is similar to a mind overdosing on wolfsbane. “Gotta go away—gotta get out—”

“Spec!” The Hunter’s quick bark makes your eyes pop open, and you lock instantly with brown orbs. 

They’re tight, unblinking just as always. They offer just a few moments of clarity. 

Ghost holds your head still while the rest of you shivers with cold sweats, you can hear the blood inside of his veins; his heart pumping. The scent of his skin was addicting to the point of memorization on the airwaves. You watch, gulping down breaths as your throat bobs. 

Eyes dart you up and down, fingers spreading out to offer what little comfort he can. The man wonders if he’s completely in over his head. 

Ghost pulls his face-covering up to his nose, and your heart skips beats at the sight of ravaged skin and stubble, scars spreading out like your own. Long ones, short ones, burn marks, and hyperpigmentation. He wasn’t pretty, but he was real. 

Oh, he was real. 

His grip on you strengthens until all you can focus on is him. 

Ghost blinks, and you see his lips move. The gravel of his voice was never more clear. “Fucking hell, keep that head on, okay? Nothing’s going to happen as long as I’m here. I’ve got you.” He sighs out a low breath, thumb running your undereye as the small dribbles of tears begin to sneak out. Ghost murmurs. “I’ve bloody got you, alright? Let it happen—we can figure it out.”

He’d grown fond of you over the course of a month. You were curious; not pushingly so. Honest. Good. You’d been dealt a bitter hand, and damn him if his stone heart wasn’t stretched thin at the raw fear on your face. This wasn’t your fault, but he needed to find who turned you and stop them before it got any more out of control than it already was. If more unstable werewolves went running through the woods, there wouldn’t be anyone left in the territory alive.

“When you turn,” Ghost says as clearly as he’s able. “Go. Don’t fight it. I’ll find you.”

“Promise?” You ask, a weak flicker coming to your lips—eyes vulnerable. 

Ghost nods once, and it’s all you need. “I’ll find you,” he repeats. “Doubt me?”

“No,” you ease, clearing your throat. “But…one more thing?”

“Anything,” the Hunter instantly says. 

“Just don’t shoot me in the thigh again.”

When the claws start protruding from your nailbeds hours later, you’re bolting to the door with only one last glance at the Hunter and his half-pulled-up mask. Booted feet hitting the wood as he stands, he lets you go even as his thighs tense in a need to run after you. Patience was his beast to tame, but it seemed to have left him in the form of a woman disappearing into the tree line. 

There is companionship in broken things.

Your body slips into the forest just as the creak of your bones begins to shift and bend. You fall into a heap, hearing the gargling of marrow under your skin like a call to sea. An urge grows to infect you; a feral need to run and hide. Biting back a shrill scream, a hoarse yell escapes instead—flesh rippling as your mouth opens, fangs breaking the supple mushiness of your gums as blood floods like a river. 

Find me. 

Find me.

Find me.

“Ghost,” you whisper, hands snapping to your head. “Ghost, please.” 

Your bullet, you want your silver bullet.

A rabid scream rips from your throat, and back in the house, Ghost’s hands tighten into fists as he glares at the open door. He growls under his breath, eyes tightening in a certain type of anger that brews in his gut. The nights your shuffling woke his light slumber were more common than when you hadn’t, and every utterance was clearly heard to his ears. It had become a curse to him—how you’d met.

A regret was seeping in, a care, and now, as he forces himself to back up and head into the attic, Ghost clenches his jaw tightly. So unaffected by the horror of monsters, he was now at a loss of sense for this growth of feelings. 

He wasn’t dull, he knew that some of the contracts he took marked him as a tool and not a person of stable mind. He’d done things he wasn’t proud of, and he would continue to do them for no other reason than they were the orders he was given.

But you had broken a piece of that off of him, somehow, someway, your face had seared itself into his retinas—speared him at the brutality that your community had treated you with. The muzzle. It was cruel, and while Ghost was precisely that, there was a limit. 

He did his job, and that was that. Anything after wasn’t his problem. 

You became his job, and the one who turned you was an add-on. Maybe if he justified it to himself, he could understand his actions better. 

But he was already sprinting to grab his gear when the first howl shattered the night.

—

A white beast prowls the forest. 

It stands on two legs, but it isn’t human—isn’t natural. It’s taller than a grown man is; snout pulled back in a soundless snarl that puts dogs to shame with rows of teeth so sharp, they look like pale knives. Its feet—large, splayed—soundlessly skate the ground until clawed fingers slam to the earth. 

A nose inhales the scent above the dirt, tongue lulling as a shaggy tail lays limp behind a curved spine. In between the erect ears, under the thick skull of the werewolf, the rolling bumps of a brain spark. A pull.

Find me.

Your eyes are tiny black dots—and they blink once before you rise once more. A great growl moves inside of your chest, the large collection of hair around your neck standing on end.

I’m waiting.

But there’s something that keeps you here—standing in the grass as the moon shines atop your head, your fur nearly glowing even with the stain of bloody injuries. The remains of clothes are about a meter away; only strips of what was. 

Your gaze looks over your shoulder, and your gargantuan frame lumbers backward until you can stoop to them—nose once more sniffing with your arms reaching.

Your fingers twitch, blackened claws digging through the ground as a near purr echoes in your throat. The scythe-like additions card across the strips.

Gunpowder. 

Leather.

Whiskey.

Something you can’t quite name, but feel drawn to despite the tightening noose at your throat. There was something there you can’t focus on…something that you need. 

Your drooling jaws snap, saliva coating the fangs until they drip off one at a time to stain the grass. Body shifting, your head lowers until your wolf-ish visage rubs against the fabric, licking at the sides of your gums as delicate grumbles slip out of your mouth. 

A far-off howl leaves your frame freezing.

Eyes slipping back into the feral-inhumanity of a wild animal, your body jolts up, gaze to the forest trees and the rustling of bushes. The swell of rain on the clouds is in the back of your nose, and the previous attraction to the ripped clothes is lost as simply as it had come. 

You were being summoned. 

Ears twitching, the entirety of your body refuses to move to the sound; tensed and ready to spring on anything that moves if only to let off the spike of anger at the lack of control. The pull grows stronger, and it feels like something is trying to drag you away into the wilds.

This was the sensation you were always trying to fight—the one that led to the aggression; the hunt. You knew that if you followed that howl, whatever was left of your human sense would be gone entirely before you could stop it. 

Yet, this time, there’s a nagging need to find the owner, and you can’t remember why.

Your large head tilts, feet spaced as the curve of your spine grows more aggressive—hunching forward as you snarl at nothing, claws shaking as your fur is more bristly than sleek. 

Like pure white spikes. 

In the back of your head, a thin sliver of a memory slips in. Fingers on the back of your head, caressing calluses and dark, dark, eyes. Clean bandages and gentle touches.

I’ll find you.

If the side of your vision picked up the shadow shifting from far off into the trees, your curled lip never turned that way. If your nose twitched to the heavy weight of a man’s sweat, it never shifted to point as a mutt would to the rustling bush.

Your body bolts after the resounding echo of a wolf’s howl, and it’s no later that Ghost slips after your clawed prints to follow.

—

Crossbow in hand, the hunter’s mask gleams in the darkness, his pale eyes twinkling. Bending down, he glazes at the long pushing tracks of your form—seeing the spray of dirt to the side and the broken branches. Ghost blinks, shoulders tense before he swiftly stands and continues on. The firearms at his thighs lightly rattle, and the bolts in his crossbow are already laced with wolfsbane; silver tips smelt a week ago. 

He passes a river with only a single glance at the tossed rocks from the bed, sloshing through the water as the bottoms of his pants get weighed down. Ghost’s mind is on one thing only: make sure this plan won’t get you killed. 

The bolts aren’t for you—the silver bullets aren’t for you. 

He grunts under his breath, the dark woods casting phantoms over the ground. The Hunter’s legs shift through tall grass, and he carries himself with the ingrained confidence a man of his station requires. If he were anything less than a monster himself, he would have died ages ago. Ghost shoots and lets others come up with the questions, but he could never be called dumb. 

Seeing what fast glimpse he had of your shifted form after the last time, he was struck by how erratic it acted. Snapping head, twitching ears, and roving eyes. If he didn’t know any better, Ghost would have called it rabid. 

Yet, your actions with his borrowed shirt were…body-stilling, to say the least about it. It had made his gut swirl.

“Give me a trail,” Ghost utters to himself, brown eyes still picking up the dash you’d taken. His agile feet splash through a puddle, the beginnings of raindrops hitting his head. 

The man grabs at his hood and pulls it up stiffly, frowning under his mask.

Rain would wash away the tracks.

“C’mon, Love,” he grinds out, body hunched. “Leavin’ me to do the dirty work, eh?” 

It’s too quiet—even a collection of minutes later of hard hiking, the trees barely move. There aren’t any birds; no animals beyond the black bodies of crows in the far-up branches, waiting, watching with obsidian eyes that don’t blink. 

Ghost isn’t off-put, but the length of his strides gets far tinier, carefully stepping over twigs and rocks like a soldier at war. Then again, he was at war. And if he was caught unawares, there wouldn’t be a bullet to pull out of his side, but, instead, a chunk missing. 

His ears were almost ringing from how hard he was focusing. 

Brown eyes shift from one area to another, and then, suddenly as if a deer, he freezes. 

Ghost’s body winds up, fingers twitching from the stark trigger discipline of his crossbow downward instantaneously. No one but him can explain what just happened, but he knows when he has to listen instead of act. Stuck in a clearing not unlike the place he’s first met you, his feet rest shoulder width apart and his eyes stare blankly into the trees ahead.

Your tracks end here.

From behind him, just as the large raindrops slap the side of his bone-ed visage, the small crack of a twig makes his ears twitch.

A low snarl sets his hair on end. 

Looking over his shoulder, Ghost is met with the same color that he’d become so accustomed to in a full month completely blacked out. Void. Lifeless to anything besides rage and bloodlust. 

Your white fur was infected with dirt, blood, and leaves—a mosaic of ferality ingrained into your body; pale fangs snapping. The beast slips through the treeline, slapping a veined hand into the soggy earth. 

Ghost only watches, eyes a mystery. 

His finger shifts over the trigger, and for the first time in his life, he hesitates. 

The man looks into your glinting orbs, the dripping saliva on your lulling tongue as your esophagus pants for breath. One hesitation, he always knew, would mean death. One mess-up. 

You’d asked him to end it, he shouldn’t feel remorse, guilt, perhaps—he was still human, despite his appearance, but remorse was deeper. It left wounds that were harder to lick clean again. 

…So why isn’t he sending a bolt into your forehead?

Ghost remembers the times he’d found you under the bed, your shaking, and the way you hadn’t allowed him to change your bandages the first few weeks you’d stayed with him; didn’t want him to touch you. The nightmares and the small smile you’d gain when he’d spew his dark, sarcastic words as if this was a joke. How you’d always thank him under your breath for the food he’d give you, hunted by his own hand. 

A silver cage. Crimson blood. The sight of your pleading eyes when you’d told him to shoot you.

Maybe the two of you were far more alike than he’d dare to admit. And he currently won’t, not even on his deathbed. Not even now.

Ghost watches, and he waits. 

He can’t do it.

Your body slinks closer, stalking with the sound of anger, nearly rib-shaking in its volume. Ghost’s jaw clenches, and his body shifts to face yours head-on. At the sight of the crossbow, your snarl turns into an air-biting rage, saliva flying through the rain.

“Spector,” he keeps his voice low, even. The sight he’d seen as you smelled his clothes had to mean something. Ghost tilts his head, moving out a hand from the side of his weapon in an appeasement gesture. “I’m not going to shoot you. We have a job to complete…get those fangs away.”

He wonders if ordering you around will even work. You had told him before—you’re not a mutt. Ghost agrees. No mutt was the size of a fucking boulder.

The werewolf’s claws drag—goring the mud as if a pig to tear apart. 

“Spector,” the Hunter tries again. But something’s different about his tone; he drops it, letting it pull on a softer string. “I’m here to end this. We’re here to end this.” He blinks and lowers the crossbow completely. “Breathe. The night can’t last forever.” A breeze whips the trees. “I made you a promise.”

There’s a second, he thinks, where he can see something shift in your gaze, pupils slightly widening above the deluge that wets down your fur into a sopping mess that hangs off muscle.

“That’s a girl,” Ghost grunts, taking a small step closer. “Never told you,” he utters, eyes locked with yours. He sees your nose twitch minutely. “But if we get this right, Spec, there’ll be no more painful shifts, hear me?”

Your dog-ish mouth is closed, hanging off every word as Ghost comes even closer.

“I kill this bastard,” the hunter breathes, gloved hand still outstretched, nearing closer to the near-silver of your form. “The moon’ll have no claim on you. She’ll let you off the leash, Little Wolf. You get to decide when it happens.” 

He thinks he has you now, back to some state of recognition in the addled brain that tries to see him as prey; as competition. Ghost’s fingers are close enough to almost touch you, but just before he can brush his gloves over your wet fur, your mouth opens in a display of untamed challenge. Your growl is enough to make the man unconsciously reach for his pistol, and in the time it takes him to realize the fault of it, you’ve already rampaged forward with an unhinged jaw.

Ghost’s eyes widen, taking a quick step back. 

Your legs push off, and you shove the hunter out of the way just before the fangs of an immense beast can clamp down on him, your own finding the shoulder of gray, thick fur.

Fighting as wolves do, Ghost only needs a moment to recover and get to his feet, though the sight in front of him can rival any that he’d seen before. His crossbow clatters a few feet away, sending the bolt off into the trees with a metallic ‘twang’.

The two werewolves roll around the pouring clearing, snapping teeth and rending claws drawing blood that’s deep enough to swim in to the green grass. White and gray meld together—blue eyes like a knife to Ghost’s chest when he takes it in from between the sound of tearing fur. 

“Bloody fucking…” the man trails, staggering as his palms slap to the pistols at his side. He blinks, shouting in more of a bark than even a dog could imitate. “Spector!” 

The wolves pull and rip the other to shreds, flesh torn and limbs grasping for purchase. Bodies are slammed to the ground before getting tossed to the side, fangs flashing in the moonlight. Ghost watches crimson stain your fur a pinkish-red.

He can’t get a good shot.

The werewolf that turned you sinks its claws into your sides, dragging them downwards as you yowl, eyes tiny with aggression before your jaws connect with its snout, biting down with more force than a horse’s hooves. The monster screams—a garbed thing of fangs and saliva. 

Just as easily as it called you here to it, as it stalked your Hunter, it bashes your body back into the earth and takes you by the scruff of your neck. Eyes wide in that lupine way, you lock on Ghost’s profile before your body is lifted, and tossed away violently. 

Spine slamming into a tree, you hear the cracking and bending of your bones in your ears just after you hear the sharp shout from the man in the clearing, body dropping to a heap into the grass and mud. Angled head flopping back and forth, black infests the edges of your vision, coughing up blood that seeps from between your gums and slips down the back of your esophagus. Fur and flesh are stuck at the base of your throat. 

Whining, your limbs drag and pull futility, eyes flooded over with crimson and fogged by rain. A great roar worries the air, sending long shivers over your spine as you try to rise to your limbs, a five-fingered hand slamming you back down. 

Just before the fangs can clamp your throat, two great booms burst through the forest. 

The wolf atop you reels back, great bellow escaping its throat when you can finally drag your head to look over. This beast was clawing at its chest, shaking its large head in an arch to try and dispel the shock of having two silver bullets entering its back—the gray head snapped around to Ghost, who held his twin pistols aloft with eyes burning with anger from behind his mask. An avatar of vengeance; a bringer of death. 

The orbs inside of your sockets widened, nose twitching wildly as you bleat a quick warning bark. 

Blue-Eyes rises, body far larger than yours would ever grow to be—on two feet more powerful looking than a bricklayer many years into his craft; tall enough to reach to the sides of black-shingled homes and pull itself up. Ghost takes one look and growls under his breath, knowing there would be no time to reload the weapons in his hands. 

So he drops them and pulls slowly at the cruel blade in his belt until the gleam winks in the low light like a curved smile. Setting it in his hands, the small flicker of a sharp smirk on his lips is lost to you. 

Yet, there isn’t a chance for some brawl between two beasts—there’s only the flash of pale fur and the final crunch of a body hitting the ground. 

You bury your fangs into the wolf’s neck; the one responsible for all of your pain and torment spanning years of isolation. You feel the body seize as it drops, the last remnants of a dying brain trying to fight the inevitable nothingness that ensues, and, you only hold on the harder, the bloodlust seeping back in with every drop of life pooling into your locked jaw.

Your throat releases tiny growls of pleasure, biting a bit to make sure there wasn’t a sliver of a chance that something living was walking away from this scene. 

Ghost pauses, and in the back of his head, he knows he should stop you. Brown eyes see the animalistic sheen of enjoyment at a fresh kill, the way you pull at the flesh until chucks peel away from a gurgling wolf. Even when the thing is long dead and the rain still slaps the earth, you barely let go until you get a hold of the meat and tear with a backward jerk of your snout.

“Love,” the Hunter sheathes his knife, taking a step forward. The blood was pooling under your body. How many of those were treatable? He had to know. “Let me see what’s—”

The eyes that lock on him are not yours. 

Up to your ears, the entirety of your face was awash with the stain of life, dripping off the whiskers at your cheeks; your chin. 

Before he can utter another word, he finds himself on his back with a snapping snout right in front of his face, two dead eyes staring deeply into his own. Ghost sucks down a quick breath, hand snapping to the large wrist shoving down on his chest.

He pants out, gravel accent far more deep than it was before. 

“Easy, Spector. Easy. Eh—focus on me.” Your tongue licks at your fangs, body shaking. Ghost pushes out, “That’s it, then. It’s over, yeah? You did it; let's pack it up and head back home.” He grunts. “Recon even dogs get cold in weather like this—the bed’s waiting. Get a nice fire going.”

Ghost sees your face move closer, and his hand minutely shifts to the vial of wolfsbane on his belt. It wouldn’t kill you, but it could put you out of commission until your body shifted back into its proper form. He could carry you back—that wouldn’t be a problem at all. 

But he was worried about your injuries. Even now the droplets of blood roll off of you faster than the water can. 

Too much.

Brown eyes crease, darting a look down. 

“Fuck,” he growls, seeing the carnage and the open meat. “Sweetheart, we need to get you checked out—you need to listen to me. Can you do that?”

He can see the conflict; the internal fight. 

Your mouth moves with fast pants, claws stuttering over his gear futilely. You blink rapidly, shaking your large head in fast increments with small snarls. 

“C’mon,” Ghost says slowly, fingers looping the vial. “Keep listening. Know my voice is utter shite, but only you can tell me it.” 

Your head drops to his chest just as the wolfsbane is popped open, and, for whatever reason, Ghost pauses. He waits. 

You take a long inhale of his gear—of the leather and the gunpowder, and just before the Hunter can dump the vial over your skin, the long blackish claw on your finger loops the bottom portion of the fabric under his bone attachment. 

The man’s breath hitches as you let it rest along his nose bridge…holding it there as you drag your head upwards as if it were an impossible chore. Your mouth dribbles out gore to his cheeks, but the Hunter stares upwards into your eyes as they soften in a lupine way. 

Inexplicably, you let out a bone-rattling sigh and slump into oblivion. 

—

Come morning, you sleep under the spread of large fur blankets—clean bandages over your bare frame as the man has tended to you for hours. He mutters for you to slip your arms into a spare shirt after he finds your eyes open, not uncomfortable by your nakedness, though he wants you yourself to be at ease. 

His brown eyes are creased, and you can’t remember what you’ve done. 

You comply with small grunts and moans; more sore and cut up than you can recall ever feeling as a large tunic is slipped over your head by scarred hands. 

Gunpowder. 

“What did I—?”

“You finished the job,” he says, sparing you a glance as he shifts back with his eyes averting themselves from your visible legs. The sun seeps in through the windows. “It’s morning.”

You blink slowly, and the man eases you back down into the furs. 

“I’m tired,” your voice yawns out—weak and brittle like the hope you’d had that this plan of his would work. Eyes half-closed, they blink at the hunter with a soft kind of care that you can’t remember showing before. Whatever pain medicine he’d given you, it was working. The underlying itch was still as strong as ever, though. 

“Tired is good,” Ghost nods slowly, standing still until he crosses his arms and sets his feet. He’s in a fresh shirt and pants. There’s blood under his fingernails; traces smeared over his flesh. “Means you accomplished something.”

“Don’t think that’s entirely true,” you breathe. A pause. “...Why is your mask like that?”

It was half pulled up—showing off his lower jaw and the stubble. The scars that you already have memorized. Ghost shrugs, blinking those dead eyes of his. 

“Ah,” he grumbles. “Forgot. Here.”

He reaches up and slips the thing off in one motion. Your loose brain takes a moment to realize the entire face you’re staring into, but the second it does, the image is engraved into your mind forever. You make a noise in the back of your throat. 

“Better, Little Wolf?” 

“W—” Your lips stutter, new sutures pulling tight. “Why would you…?”

“Hungry?” Ghost asks, quickly changing the subject. “Know you like that venison that I caught.”

“No,” you breathe. “No, I’m not…I’m tired, Ghost. My head hurts.”

A hand sweeps over your forehead, staying as you sag into it with a hum and a fluttering of your eyes. 

“Bloodloss,” the Hunter murmurs. “Normal. Go back to sleep; take however long you need. I’ll be here.” 

The bond between the two of you has strengthened to that of a silver rope.

“Stay,” you plead under your breath, already slipping back into nothingness with no promise to wake up again soon. “Hold me, Ghost?”

“Simon,” he grunts to only himself, knowing that the words are lost to you. Perhaps that makes him all the more eager to share it with you when you’re better. “Stay still.”

It wasn’t like you could protest.

The broad man slips in, shifting the furs until you’re covered back up and your forehead is to his chest—keeping himself closest to the door where the runes still sit in their bloody glory. If he listened hard enough, he could even hear them humming him a tune.

No song was better to him than the one of your breath at this very moment. Alive. Moving. There were many times in the night that he thought...hm.

“Better, then?” The dry tease slips out. 

A kiss to the side of his mouth is what he gets in answer, and he doesn't say a peep more until he knows you’re back in the clutches of a dream—a good one, he knows, because he watches your expressions like a loyal guard dog would.

Ghost, Simon, rests his lips on the top of your head, and in a delicate murmur, eases, “You did good, Love.” 

There was much to do, but for now, all he had to do was hold you a little bit tighter and let his stone heart beat a little bit faster.

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[babygirl-riley]

His Girls

Simon had to go into work throughout the craziness of the Riley household he lost his plastic skull mask. Only to find his youngest chewing on it.

Warnings: PURE fluff, seriously dad!simon, swearing

A/N: I am OBESSESSED with dad!Simon and to FEED my addiction @ave661 just keep coming in clutch! Go subscribe their pateron! Just a small drabble for you all ❤️

simon x reader guide

simon x reader family edition

Simon was running around throwing on small amount of gear, only going to the base. He put his mask on and realized he missed placed his skull that was suppose to be with it. “Daddy,” His five year old cried. “I don’t wanna have you go.” She held his leg.

“Daddy has to,” You said as your pre teen followed you. She was rambling on how she wanted to go to the mall with her friends but couldn’t. “Millie enough.” You said behind you to his oldest.

“Dad.” Millie looked at him and he shook his head.

“Do what ya mum says.” He looked down at Allison and kneeled down. Millie scoffed and walked off. “I’m not gonna be long promise. We will go get ice cream.”

Allison pouted. “Okay.” She walked out before Simon turned to you.

“I can’t find my fucking mask,” He cursed ripping through everything. “I had it ‘ere now it’s gone.”

You nodded. “Have you checked between the drawers?”

Simon nodded walking out. “Dad! I promised Jackie that I would be there, now what do I do?”

Simon loved his kids he did but damn he didn’t expect having all girls would make his head spin. You even joked about how soon Millie will start her womanhood and then they were fucked. Simon jogged down the stairs looking in the kitchen. “Millie, your mum said no, you think I’m going to say yes after? Ya know not to make promises that you don’t know if you gonna keep.” He explained not looking at her.

Millie groaned. “Listen though everyone goes out with their friends to the malls at this time. Not later. Plus they all can’t go.”

Simon snapped his head up looking on the counter. “I thought it was just Jackie.” You said having his baby youngest in your arms. She was wrapped in her blanket as she set her down in the living room that we connected to the kitchen.

Tessa giggled as she looked up at the tv. Playing with something in her hands. Simon sighed irritated, time was running short, he was running behind, and his patience running thin. Millie and you were arguing back and forth, as Allison came running down the stairs to watch tv. Simon inhaled deeply looking around again. “Your father agrees with me. I am done talking about this. You are not going, we have to be at Nana’s today.” You said putting your foot down.

Simon looked up and waited for Millie to respond. She just rolled her eyes and stomped off, you pressed fingers against your temples. “Alright Simon I am going to look in Allison’s room maybe she was playing with it.”

Simon nodded as he kept looking through and stood for a moment thinking where it could be. Trying to think where the fuck he put it. Nerves were high. He was getting anxious of being late. His thought started to swirl making his anger higher. Until he heard a small giggle.

Simon looked down to see Tessa on her back gnawing on something. Larger than her for sure. His eyes softened when they made eye contact, the blanket moving over to the side to see his mask. He inhaled with relief as he knelt down. “You bugger.” He whispered ripping his balaclava off.

Tessa giggled, he always loves the sound of his girls laughing giggling. It made him miss and think of Millie when she was this young. Innocent. Naive. Hell Tessa even had the same outfit that Millie wore. When both of you kept having kids and they were girls, he couldn’t or wouldn’t let you get rid of this outfit. It was his favorite.

Simon sat Tessa up and turned her towards him. She stopped chewing on it but held onto it. Her way of rebelling of him leaving for the day. Simon chuckled and grabbed the top of it. “Daddy will be back sweet girl.”

Tessa just had her large brown eyes set on him. Simon looked at the features, seeing Tommy and his mom in them. Making him think of his nephew Joseph and how Millie and him could have been close. How you could have a friend with Tommy’s wife. He often thought about it when looking at his girls. Millie definitely was a slit image of you though, personality to features.

Allison would just attach whenever she wanted to, independent like him. Tessa though was definitely daddy’s girl, anytime he would walk into a room she would know. Hell when you were pregnant with her she would move when hearing his voice. When he forgot to take the mask off she giggled and reach for it. Anytime he came home she was thrilled, screeching and giving sign to pick her up.

Tessa giggled as she reached for his thumb grabbing it. These moments he loved, the small gestures. The smiles. Giggles. It made him have that stir inside, the one that wants him to have another baby. His girls were his angels, so why not have more? More of these innocent kids that he made. His pride and joys. He didn’t want to go, he rather be here, with his girls. Go get ice cream now. Simon sighed as he looked up the stairs to make sure Millie wasn’t standing there so he could go say a proper goodbye for the day.

Allison came next to Simon as she hugged his thigh and looked at Tessa. “Daddy said we can get ice cream Tess! Sooner he leaves the sooner we get ice cream!”

Simon smiled down at her, he thought how smart she was becoming. Her sentences making more sense. Allison was like him, truly. Short tempered. Emotional ball. At the same time though she was thick skinned, she could take a hit until she can’t take it. She was caring, always sharing even if she didn’t want to. Would try to make everything more lighter when things got tense. At 5 years old.

“Exactly,” He felt his plastic mask loosen up and he softly took it away. “I love you baby girls.” He said kissing both of their foreheads. “I’m gonna say bye to ya sister, watch Tess yeah?”

“Yes sir daddy!” Allison chimed as she started to gather Tess’s attention.

He looked down at the stairs watching Tessa giggle and squeal at her sister. Simon walked towards Millie’s room, hearing her soft rock play behind the door. He knocked softly as he heard the music turn down. “Who is it?” She said snarky.

“Dad.” He said softly, he heard the knob unlock, having him note of that being a potential problem. She walked to her desk, sitting in her chair looking away from him. “I just wanted to say goodbye.”

“Bye.”

Like him, distant once he was angry. “Have fun at Nana’s.” He softly said walking to her to place a kiss on her head.

“Love you.” She mumbled looking over at him.

“Love ya too dovie. I’ll see ya after work.”

She nodded to his comment as he walked out to face you. You sighed smirking. “Of course daddy comes to save the day.”

Simon smirked as he walked up to you placing his hands on your hips. “She’ll come ‘round,” He whispers kissing your neck. “Want baby 4?”

You pushed him off, giggling. Your stomach swirling with excitement. “Oh no Tessa have you the swirl,” He kissed your neck again, mumbling a yes. “Oh stop it, you’re gonna be late. Get going.” You giggled pushing him gently off before kissing his cheek.

When you turned he slapped your ass. His favorite thing to look, touch, grab. You scoffed, shaking your head while chuckling. Heading down the stairs to the other two girls. Simon smiled as you watched the two play, his girls. His angels. And the thing was…He would never change a thing.

[sim0nril3y]

Handy Man

Pairing: Simon 'Ghost' Riley x Civilian!Reader Scenario: Simon begins to notice that some things around your flat are a little worse for wear, so he makes it his job to fix them. Warnings: No mask Simon (It's my personal headcanon in his regular life he probably wouldn't wear it), established relationship, smut, p in v, very little foreplay, dirty talk, praise, cumplay, creampie, canon-typical swearing.

The sound of sizzling frying in the pan seemed to become background noise around your idle chatter, using a spatula to move and flip it around the pan whilst you spoke. “… and she was telling me…” Even your incessant talking became background noise instead all that Simon could focus on was that sound of the drip, drip, drip of the tap. His eyes focusing on it like it was a target he needed to eliminate. Drip, drip, drip it mocked him again and his fingers tightened on the mug in his grip.

Did you not hear that? Did it not drive you fucking insane? Simon’s eyes flickered over to where you stood with your back to him, continuing to natter mindlessly. “… I was thinking that she had to be joking…” Then you laughed whilst drip, drip, drip consumed his attention again. “… there was no bloody way…” It didn’t faze you at all. No, you simply kept your attention on the bacon in the pan that was swiftly becoming burned. “… Oh, and then-”

“Love.” His voice was tight and stern as you glanced over your shoulder at him, eyes bright and inviting, reminding him that you didn’t think like he did, you didn’t obsess over the tiny details and that was something he loved about you. “You, uh… you got any tools 'round here?” He asked, standing in a moment to approach the offending tap, observing it, moving it, turning it on and off a couple times. “Tools?” You quizzed before frowning heavily, moving the bacon aside and switching off the hob. “Oh.” The opening a stiff looking drawer to produce the oldest looking screwdriver he’d ever seen. “I have this…” Announcing like some accomplishment.

Under his breath he muttered. “Fuckin’ hell.” Holding the tool in hand, gripping the handle hard before throwing it aside uselessly. “Stop fussing.” Your voice announced then, placing down a plate that held freshly made bacon sandwich where he had originally been sitting. “Whatever you’re obsessing about…” You took a hearty bite of your own sandwich. “It can wait…” Another bite. “Until you’ve eaten…” Then licking your fingers as you grabbed the condiments from the fridge and held it out to him. “Red or brown?”

Simon’s shower had been everything but relaxing. The water had been cold for far longer than he had appreciated and directly above him the light flickered so horrendously that for a moment Simon could have convinced himself he was at a rave. “Light is flickering in your bathroom.” Simon announced, towel wrapped around his waist as he stepped into the lounge to find you. “What’s that?” You quizzed from where you stood observing a canvas, then turning to him. “The light. In the bathroom. It’s flickering.” He reiterated in a low voice whilst your eyes were lingering on his broad chest, watching the water trickle down his skin. “Oi. Pay attention.” Simon bit out playfully.

Snapping you from your trance a low hum came from your throat. “The… light…” Then out made a small noise of recognition. “It’s actually always done that.” The statement followed a careless shrug as you turned your back to him to regain focus on your painting. “You told your landlord?” He asked with concern. “Uh, yeah…” The response was quick and Simon knew you too well. “Think I’ve mentioned it before. Said he tried to fix it but it was some bigger wiring problem, or something…” Another shrugged and it bothered Simon significantly.

He had a problem with you living in a place like this. It wasn’t a good area to begin to live in. Outside teenagers screamed and caused mayhem all night, idiots drove cars around too fast and noisy at night and others got up to shady things away from prying eyes. Too many times Simon had left your flat to find never seen before dents in his car or a bunch of teenagers loitering around it. It didn't scare him but he didn’t like the thought of them playing the same tricks on you.

Besides all that, the flat just wasn’t up to standard for you. It was tiny and cluttered and half of it didn’t work or was in the process of falling apart, all that on top of knowing that you rent was way too high for what you were getting. Simon knew he needed to fix this.

That evening a frown pressed to his lips as he walked into the bedroom with a couple glasses of water. Placing one down beside you he pressed a kiss to your hairline. Then moving to the other side of the bed Simon stopped by the radiator. His hand reaching out to touch it as he frowned. The heating was on full blast everywhere else, so why wasn’t this one hot at all? He removed his hand and touched a different part and his frown intensified. “This rad isn’t working…” He mentioned as you glanced up from where you were rubbing a sweet smelling moisturiser into your legs, as if you could be anymore soft and supple, Simon lamented internally. “Isn’t it?” “You didn’t know? Babe, it’s stone bloody cold.” Then pressing his hand to it again, as if he might have gotten it wrong, but it remained completely unchanged beneath his fingers. “I know that must bother you ‘cause you’re constantly putting your cold feet on me.”

A delicate laugh fell from your lips. “Well, what’s the point of having a warm, strong body beside me if I don’t utilise it?” You jested causing Simon to scowl. “Wind your neck in.” He muttered, before trying to fight the smirk that pulled onto his face. Once again, his eyes focused on the radiator, as if his new targed. Simon mentioned. “Probably needs to be bled. S’not hard. It’s something you should learn to do…”

You simply nodded, continuing your night-time routine that he actually enjoyed watching, by the end you smelt absolutely delicious and he was more than happy to eat you. “Y’know, there isn’t much that works in this flat, babe.” He said then, moving to lay down on the bed beside you, leaning on his side in your direction. “That oven is dodgy. Every tap leaks. Lights flicker. Rads aren’t working….” Then he frowned again, reaching out to rub your knee. “These are things your landlord should be sorting…” For a moment you were quiet and then looked at him with a genuine smile. “I really hadn’t noticed, Si. I think I’ve just gotten used to it.”

It may have been something that you’ve gotten used to, but it certainly wasn’t something that Simon was going to allow. By the time that you woke up the next morning to your dismay Simon was gone from your side. Instead of worrying yourself too much you started your day and decided to put some more work into the canvas that you were obsessing over. Maybe some green? Or… maybe some blue… that would be a nice bit of contrast… what story were you trying to tell with this piece?

A knock interrupted you, placing down your brush and then wandering to open the door and smiling as Simon stood there, toolbox in hand. Your eyes trailed over his frame, looking as handsome as ever and very handy too. “Oh, you here to check my pipes?” You cooed flirtatiously causing Simon to chuckle as he stepped inside, kissing your forehead and muttering. “I think you mean clean your pipes, love…” He corrected you. “I’ll do that later if you’re a good girl and let me work.”

You allowed him as much time to work as you could manage, but as you found him working under your sink, tight dark coloured shirt riding up to reveal the trail of short hair leading down it seemed impossible to resist. “My-my…” You whimpered, your voice quaint and lewd as you sauntered a little further into the kitchen. “That is an awful big hammer you have there~” You purred in a breathy tone. “Maybe I could hold it for you~” “Fuckin’ hell…” Even without seeing him you could hear the smile on his face. “You’re bloody insatiable, love.” Sliding out from the cupboard to look at you standing there, shifting from one foot to the other as if waiting for his command. “Fuck, c’mon then…” He mentioned, lifting his hips off the worn tiled floors and shifting his jeans and underwear down to his upper thighs, cock springing free and slapping against his stomach. “Hurry up.”

Hastily you moved to straddle his thighs, rubbing your clit in tight circles and humming as you warmed yourself up, stroking his cock languidly with your free hand. His eyes rolled back for a second, lower lip gripped between his teeth. “C’mon, baby…” Large hand spanked your hear and a moment later you were lowering yourself onto his hard member, gasping at the way it intruded and stretched your slightly underprepared walls, pressing your hands hard to the wide expanse of his chest as you happily bounced your hips. “Good girl. Good fuckin’ girl. Quicker now.”

The look on your face was completely enchanted with lust and love, unable to form even the most basic of sentence. All you could manage was huffing and puffing, bouncing yourself with an unsteady rhythm. “C’mon, sweetheart. You can do better than that.” Simon grit his teeth, plating his feet on the ground and resisting the urge to begin to fuck up into your relentlessly, if you wanted this then you were gonna work for every fucking second of it. “Go on. Ruin that perfect little cunt on me…” His hands cupping and caressing your hips, feeling the way they faltered and sort his guidance.

In your defence, it was difficult to concentrate on keeping a rhymth with the way your thighs were burning, Simon had a way of keeping you his pillow princess, so times when he made you work for it felt extra hard. Not to mention, the way his cock split you open was mind-numbing, each time you sunk down his cock would press firmly against your special spots before bumping firmly against your cervix, kissing it before sliding back and promising to meet it again mere seconds later.

“S-Simon~” You cried softly, feeling your thighs cramping and pressing your hands firmly into his chest before your desperate eyes found his own. “Simon, please~” The sound was nothing more than a whimper, but it was enough for him to take mercy on your poor worn body. Beginning to thrust up firmly into your tight cunt, locking you into place with a firm hold on your hips. This produced loud gasps and moans beginning to tumble from between your lips, instead of planting your hands into his chest, now your desperately curled his shirt between your fingers. “Ohfuck. Ohfuck.” You cried helplessly.

“C’mon pretty girl.” He muttered coolly, fucking up into you without stopping or pausing, finding lasting stamina that were thankful that he had. “C’mon, get yourself there. You know how. Show me.” He pressed, watching the way your fingers slipped down and began to rub your clit in tight circles, whimpering, leaning forward, panting and then finally. “Simon~” That beautiful noise. Oh, he if he could play it on repeat in his head he fucking would. It was like a fucking lullaby that would coax him into a peaceful sleep everynight.

The way your body convulsed and locked up above his own, Simon observed with adoration, taking in the way your eyes rolled just slightly before sealing closed, mouth popping open, tongue sometimes bit between your teeth, nose scrunching, chest thrumming. It was fucking beautiful. Every second. He wanted to enjoy it over and over, but the way that you tight walls strangled his cock caused him to splutter out a low noise and then begin to shoot his thick load inside whilst your walls milked him for every pump.

There you leant into his body, breathing hard and both completely spent. It was bliss. All his worries had disappeared, the sound of that dripping sink was gone and instead replaced with your adorable whines as you slowly regained composure, smiling down at him so sweetly and carefully sliding from his length and sitting beside him.

For a moment he lay there, his body almost numb and then reaching over to pull your thigh aside and watching the way his cum seeped from your spent walls, convulsing weakly as it dribbled to the floor. “Beautiful.” He commented, closing his eyes for another second and committing that image to memory. “That’ll be me through the rest of this…” Simon mentioned, reopening his eyes and gazing at your cunt one final then and then tucking himself away. “Go on. Off you go. I got work to do.” Climbing back under the sink and resuming his handy work as if he hadn’t just destroyed your sweet cunt.

“Yes, sir~” You cooed, carefully climbing back to your feet and lingering in the doorway. Still sensing your presence Simon spoke without looking. “Thought I told you to bugger off.” Listening to you giggle in response. “Just give me a minute, I’m trying to think of another porny handy man line to use on you…”

Masterlist | Ask | 16-11-2023

[sweet-as-an-angel]

Vampire Simon “Ghost” Riley Headcanons

Warnings: Implications of Smut, Implications of Degrading, Aftercare, Feeding, Jealous Simon, Possessive Simon, Fluff, Mentions of Blood, Petnames, Self-Conscious Simon, No Pronouns used for Reader except ‘You’.

Ghost is one of the oldest vampires to inhabit the planet, and as a result, has tremendous self-control when it comes to feeding.

He’ll only feed from you if you let him, and he won’t feed from anyone or anything else.

The thought of tasting another person’s blood repulses him. Makes him feel dirty.

After all, you’re the only one for him, so why would he enact such an intimate encounter with someone else ?

He’ll get extremely jealous if you let someone else feed from you, btw.

Even if it’s a dire situation and it’s someone he knows well – Soap, for instance – he’ll struggle to not let his mind wander, to contemplate whether you enjoy having Johnny attached to your throat like a leech.

Sulky vampire boyfriend hours !!!

You’ll have to reassure him that he’s still your favourite (and only !) “Big teddy boy~”.

He secretly (shamefully) loves feeding from you.

And I don’t mean in just a romantic sense; I’m talking full-on primal instinct.

Whenever he has you pinned under him and is taking you, he can smell how close you are to your end by the scent of your blood.

And he waits, calling you every whorish synonym under the sun, smoothing over your tears with promises of love that you already know until your body gives out and you wail, back arching into Simon’s chest as his fangs sharpen and plunge into the juncture of your neck.

Your blood is a fine delicacy, but in this moment, during the pinnacle of mortal euphoria, it is exquisite.

He doesn't drain you; just takes what he knows your body can take.

And despite how rough he can be with you, when there’s blood – your blood –involved, he’s nothing but gentle.

His favourite part of the evening is when he pulls you into his arms and a trickle of blood runs down your chest and he gets to run his tongue along it; a red mercy.

Simon’s big on aftercare btw.

He’s not letting you get out of bed for at least a full day afterwards; not until you’re fully healed.

The longer a vampire goes without feeding, the more of their true form appears.

It takes energy to keep his human skin intact, so if Ghost hasn’t been drinking, his features become gradually more monstrous as the days go by.

He’ll wear his mask when this starts to happen.

He loves you, trusts you with every ounce of his existence. But he doesn’t want you seeing him. The real him.

It doesn’t matter how many times you tell him that you love him “Regardless of what’s underneath your pretty boy face !” – he’s not letting you see it.

Often, your reassurances turn into quick ‘self-love’ sessions in the nearest, most convenient spot, ending with Simon gasping and whining beneath your touch.

He knows his vampire form isn’t easy to look at. A man’s heart once gave out the second he caught sight of Simon without his human face on.

And he doesn’t want that for you.

He just loves you too much.

Speaking of; he’s always hinting towards turning you into a vampire.

Like, constantly.

He brings it up at some of the most inopportune moments – like when you’re cooking dinner or trying to 

Once, to shut him up, you told him (jokingly) that he’d have to “Marry me before I let you turn me !”

And that put a dangerous little idea in Simon’s head.

Now, he’s always trying to find the perfect opportunity to propose to you – to turn you.

He’s not stupid, he knows that tone in your voice meant you weren’t being entirely serious.

But it gave him hope. A rare commodity in the world of an undead.

He has about ten engagement rings hidden in your shared home, each having been tweaked and perfected to be as timeless as possible.

You’re the most wonderful human there is, in Simon’s eyes, so you deserve the best.

So be on the lookout for that faraway look in his eye as he peers into a future he doesn’t think can come soon enough; one where your love will outlive all those that have come before and after.

A life where, for the first and last time, Simon has a constant in his life.

You.

Domestic Vampire Boyfriend !!!

He’ll cook for you whenever you ask him to, no questions asked.

Though, he won’t be handling any garlic.

Or be going near you when you’ve eaten it.

Soap constantly tries to bring up embarrassing stuff Simon’s done.

Which is why he’s always at your side whenever the 141 come over.

He can’t risk johnny jeopardising the slick, suave, sophisticated image of a loving boyfriend (and stone-cold killer) he’s cultivated for himself. Well, for you, mainly.

“Ey, did’ya know that once when Si and I were just wee vampires, that he almost set a whole town on fire because he forgot he burns up in the sun–”

“That’ll do, Johnny.”

“Aww, it’s okay, Sim-Sim,” you say. “You’re still my favourite little leechie in the whole world !”

He is going to get bullied by his associates after that, but if it’s to hear your sweet praises, he’ll gladly tolerate it.

Reblog for more content like this! It helps creators like myself tremendously and it is greatly appreciated :-)

Masterlist Masterlist [Continued] Masterpost Modern Warfare AI Masterlist

AO3 Wattpad

[thexsilentxwordsmith]

A comprehensive list of all my fics in order from most recent to oldest with summary descriptions for each.

18+

Closing Time

Summary: A military lieutenant closing in on retirement, a younger, beautiful bartender, when you and Lt. Riley meet there is an instant chemistry, though it doesn't really go anywhere as he thinks himself a little too mature for you... until one night he stays at the bar later than he ever has and gets caught in a storm. What will happen after closing time?

A Lesson Well Learned

Summary: Tired of your antics regarding how cavalier you take your sexual relationship, your lieutenant cuts you off and that has you immediately plotting. You know you can get him to break and all it'll take is one purchase. How can he keep his resolve when he sees what you've bought? And how will he act when he catches you?

Smoke Break

Summary: Lt. Riley sure has been taking a lot of smoke breaks lately. Strange that you always seem to disappear at the same time too.

Meetings and Temptations

Summary: A new relationship means excitement, an uncontrollable craving for each other. When an early morning romp is interrupted with a scheduled weekly meeting, will you be able to keep your hands to yourself when Price begins to drone on? And if you can't, what will your lieutenant lover do once the meeting is over after you've tempted him for far too long?

A Risk Worth Taking

Summary: You and Simon can't keep your hands off one another as you come home one night, but a slight problem has you in a pickle: your birth control has just run out and you are all out of condoms. Not to worry, Simon assures you that he will pull out. But as you ride him you begin to question if you really want him to. Will he stick to his promise or will he give in to your need?

Can't Let You Go

Summary: Two personalities that clash, you and your lieutenant rarely get along, but when it comes to light that Lt. Riley has been messing with things behind the scenes of your life, what will happen when you confront him? Is it really hate that makes you stay in the argument the ensues...or is the tension a little too heavy to ignore?

A Ride You'll Never Forget

Summary: Seeing Simon on his motorcycle is something that awakens a new yearning inside you, but when you get your own bike and start riding alongside him, the way he gets you hot and bothered makes it worse. You need him to fuck you on his bike and you hope your plan will make it happen.

A New Form of Pleasure

Summary: Simon is struggling, he can't get off and he doesn't know what to do. As his sergeant you are one of the closest to him and can see something is up. An impromptu visit late one night might just be what he needs... And the way you are suddenly making him bow to your authority and turning his brain off might actually make him come.

Breakfast in Bed

Summary: Only a few more days are left of his short leave and Simon is determined to make every last second count with you. What better way to start the day than buried in between your thighs, helping you wake up by the feeling of his tongue alone and then overstimming you.

Truth or Dare

Summary: During a game of Truth or Dare, your lieutenant is dared into giving you a kiss, but something about the way he has been acting lately may mean this is going to be more than a quick ordeal. And the way you have been feeling towards him won't be helping.

Truth or Dare 2: Dare To Tell the Truth

Summary: After a game of Truth or Dare leaves you and your lieutenant breathless and yearning for more, will you both be able to leave things alone or will one of you not be able to hold out? And what happens when you meet again?

Truth or Dare 3: How Truly Do You Need Me

Summary: After being so rudely interrupted in the middle of you and your lieutenant's tryst, but he made a promise. "This isn't over." You hope that he plans to keep it, but when? Things might have to wait as you are assigned to a mission with him. But when being close proves to much, will both of you be able to hold off on your lust or will you succumb to all that tension?

Truth or Dare 4: Dare to Take It Further

Summary: Something has changed; no, actually everything has changed as you and Simon forget the world a moment finally let that passion run its course. The thought was that once you both had each other it would make things calm, but now you're not so sure. Maybe he is willing to risk more and maybe you are too. Having to sneak around isn't so bad, right? Maybe it could all work out... At least you hope so. But things don't always go according to plan.

Truth or Dare 5: No More Games

Summary: Things are getting complicated, truths are being revealed, and a decisions are going to have to be made regarding the future. So much hangs in the balance and emotions are high as reality makes this about no more games.

A Special Dinner for Two

Summary: Such a good little wife you are to your military husband, ready to welcome him back home after he returns from deployment. This time you've even prepared a meal of all his favorites, but when Simon gets back early than expected and catches you flitting about the kitchen in nothing but his t-shirt, it isn't food that he wants.

I'll Crawl Home To Her

Summary: Simon is away on a mission and you are on his mind. Having to extend his stay, he is going to miss Valentine's day, but coming across a recent trend on TikTok, he may have a way to say just how much you mean to him.

Don't Touch What He's Claimed

Summary: A night out at your favorite local hangout is what he promised you after being away on deployment for so long, but one small incident throws him over the edge into full on possessive episode. Something about the way he is pulling off to the side of the road might mean he can't make it home before reclaiming his prize.

Simon Riley: Girl Dad Extraordinaire

Summary: From a request about Simon being more hands on with his 3 m.o. daughter.

You Are Beautiful

Summary: When a movie night has you questioning your bodies worth, Simon catches you in the shower to show you that your body is perfect just the way that it is.

Simon fingering you under the table during a night out at the bar with the Taskforce

Summary: With the drink flowing and the atmosphere right, Simon cannot seem to keep his hands off of you. There is a need, a need to touch and to play.

Let Me Talk You Through It

Summary: While on deployment far away, Simon takes a little time one night to video call you and talk you through you touching yourself to the sound of his voice.

Simon needing to hold you after a bad day

Summary: After a day where nothing goes right, Simon only wants to come home to the one person he trusts- you.

Cockwarming Simon as you two make out in his office

Summary: From a request for Simon getting so worked up during a cockwarming session that he ends up having to pull out because he is going to come.

Drunk on You

Summary: Simon comes home from deployment, hungry to have his pretty girl all to himself. Things get heated quick and before long you are both drunk off the feeling of the other.

Bringing in the New Year with Simon

Summary: Short one-shot about how it would be spending NYE with Simon at the stroke of midnight.

Simon waking up in the middle of the night horny and unable to get back to sleep. There's only one thing he wants to fix it.

Summary: A little sleepy cuddle-fucking to get Simon back to sleep.

Wanna Make You Mine

Summary: Simon is out at a stag party for Prices upcoming wedding when he comes how early with something important on his mind that he needs to see you to say. Is he just drunk or is it something more?

Simon making it clear that you are the only one he wants

Summary: An incident with a new recruit has you questioning things, but not to worry as Simon is here to show you that you are the only one he could ever want.

Simon is so worked up all day that he rushes home, telling you to meet him at the door because he cannot wait to have you

Summary: He has been needing you all day and as soon as he gets home he wants you waiting ready for him so that he can fix that ache that has been driving him insane.

I'll Take You Filthy

Summary: Being the leader of your platoon and fucking you at the same time isn't something Simon wants paraded around, for both of your benefit as trouble could come from such a relationship. But keeping it a secret has become a problem as you've been out on a mission for a couple months with no physical contact to be had. The moment you return Simon has to have you...even though you are both filthy as fuck.

His Heart, His Light, His World- Dad!Simon

Summary: The birth of his first child changes everything for the rough around the edges military man. A small glimpse into his life now as a father.

A Bit of Fun At the World's End

Summary: Being on the run from the undead doesn't leave much time for more intimate things, but once things start to settle a little an ache begins to form that you haven't felt in a long time. What will you do when the only other person you are with is your former lover turned zombie.

Joining the 141 had one hard rule: no relationships of any kind between members, but that is something proving to be too much the closer you and Simon get

Summary: Simon cannot help but break the rules when it comes to you.

Body worship with Simon

Summary: Simon taking the time to make sure you feel like the goddess he thinks you are.

Simon desperately eating you out after a rough day

Summary: It has been a terrible, no good, rotten ass day. There is only one cure for it and that is for that hulking military man to find his way between your legs to eat you out until he can't breathe.

Getting so worked up during a celebration for Price's birthday that Simon has to take you in the bathroom of the bar

Summary: You just couldn't wait until you both got back, could you? No, not when you and Simon are screwing like bunnies every chance you get. So what's Simon to do? That's easy, take you in the bathroom and fix the problem of course.

Think of Me When You Cum Later (Part 1)

Summary: Simon is missing you like crazy while being away on a mission, but he has a clever plan to make sure you miss him too. So, perhaps a little video of him stroking himself will do the trick.

Something to Make it Worse (Part 2)

Summary: You get Simon's video and it leaves you wanting him something bad. Well, two can play at this game, so why not send him back a video of your own?

Something to Break the Tension (Part 3)

Summary: All the buildup, all the teasing, finally leads to this: Simon is back and ready to act on all those filthy things you two had been teasing each other with. Will you make it home before you both explode? Or will the car have to do to break the tension?

Late Night Texts (Part 1)

Summary: Nothing good ever comes from a text after dark... or does it? Guess it depends on who it is and what they need. If it's a certain Lieutenant, then it's bound to be something worth your while.

Mid-day Texts (Part 2)

Summary: Simon is getting more and more obsessed with his little friend who constantly finds herself in his bed. But when you are off on a quick mission for a few weeks, Simon begins to grow restless and this no strings attached messing around finds itself being turned on its head. What happens when you get a text from him the day you get back, in the middle of the day?

Life Changing Texts (Part 3)

Summary: After your explosive homecoming where everything seemed to fall right into place, Simon begins to get cold feet about his feelings and what they could mean for the both of you. All seems bleak until a text about someone harassing you while you're on a night out makes him come to your aid and solidifies a decision he has already made.

Spending the night at Simon's for the first time and him waking up to you in nothing but his oversized shirt

Summary: From a request about Simon seeing reader in his shirt for the first time.

Simon and you screwing in the shower

Summary: What's better than sex with Simon? Add some steam, some hot water, and some solitude and you have the recipe for a very good time.

Having Simon pick out lingerie for you

Summary: Coming up with the idea to take Simon out so that he can pick out a couple pieces of lingerie he wants to see you in, his choices really surprise you.

Simon has a favorite item of clothing you wear and you wear it since he's having a bad day

Summary: Simon has one favorite piece of clothing you wear and of course when he's having a rough day, you just have to wear it for him.

Simon fucking you brainless and then rubbing your head as you pass out beside him

Summary: Simon is not shy when it comes to sex, it's the more intimate things that he has a problem with. But after a round of rigorous screwing, he wants to show you a bit of extra care.

Desperate Times Call for Filthy Fantasies (Part 1)

Summary: As a new recruit, you should not have the gall to talk back to your superior officer like you do. He's tried it all, trying to work the insubordination out of you, but to no avail. Your antics have really gotten under his skin lately, but is it really because you won't listen and follow orders...or is there something more to it that he can't admit? The way his cock throbs might indicate the latter and what he thinks about as he touches himself might just speak to that as well.

The Brat and Her Beast (Part 2)

Summary: After a certain Lieutenant allowed his fantasies to run wild, there was only one thing left to do: make them a reality. Opportunity presents itself one day as your brattiness has reached new highs and he follows you into the communal bathroom and locks the door behind you both. You're all alone and now what? Seems you've bitten off more than you can chew, but you both know now that was your plan all along.

Silence on the Line

Summary: You and Ghost have always gotten through missions by keeping in constant radio contact when possible. On one fateful mission, he sends out the call but there is no reply. Only silence. As time goes on his greatest fear is realized and all that he knew is now turned on it's head. What happens when reality hits all at once? And what does it do to the once stoic man who is no stranger to death?

The Lieutenant's Whore (Part 1)

Summary: When a one time sexual encounter leaves you wanting more, but the rules were set the moment he entered you and now he does his best to avoid you, what is a girl to do to get what she wants? That's right, make him jealous. And if it works a little too well maybe he will give you the night of your life. Good thing you have a flirty Scotsman to mess with, perhaps if you can't get your way, you can still have fun. Only time and a bit of effort on your part will tell what goes down.

What's Mine You'll Never Have (Part 2)

Summary: Hearing what he shouldn't have, Johnny is rightfully angry and what does he let that anger lead to? A bad attitude that leads to even worse decisions. As you confront him about this sudden change in demeanor, things start to heat up. What happens when Simon finds out? Actions have consequences and Johnny is about to learn that you will only ever belong to the man behind the mask.

[lundenloves]

@bringinsexybackk69: can i please request dad simon with a boy? like yeah he has all his girls and then there's either the youngest or the oldest and it's his only son? i can just picture like the girls are jealous cause he gets new clothes not hand-me-downs, he gets to do his own sports with out his siblings, he gets to go shooting with the 141- just like totally sibling rivalry and fighting over who is dads favorite?!

youngest.

simon is over the fucking moon when he finds out it's a boy - he's one of them dads in american gender reveals who says “i think you're a girl but i need you to be a boy" 💀

instant attention all goes to this kid, because A) he actually knows how to do it now and B that's his boy. that's his fuckin lad.

the kid looks like you. boys look like their mums, girls look like their dads n all that but christ does he have simon's quietness.

a complete observer like his dad. will be in silence while the girls argue, quietly exchanging glances with simon who internally feels like fucking high-fiving himself for creating a kid who finally understands him.

however the clothes are admittedly down to you, you love buying shit. any excuse. and having a son instead of another girl gave you great reason. though you did go too far sometimes. credit card bills rocketed.

he gets his own room too. straight off the bat, fresh into this fucking world and he's got it all. or that's how your daughters seen it.

“how does he get everything."

“give him a fucking chance." mumbling something about how he's only a week old. the dad sigh strikes again.

him and simon fuck off together a lot. they'll be away camping somewhere, simon teaching this (probably half uninterested) kid how to do all the survival stuff since his girls were never interested.

and when he gets older, maybe around seventeen to eighteen he's so game for that stuff. realistically, was probably in the school cadets n all 💀

when he's able enough, he'll maybe tag along on a run with 141 or summat. this is an incredibly humbling experience to say the least, though uncle soap is there to make everything a laugh n slow the run. "boys, boys, give the lad a chance eh?"

gets into his dads routine of the gym in mornings too, simon watching his workout from a distance before giving him pointers - hands on hips before stepping back to see if he's doing it right or not.

although, simon does not let him apply to the army. all fun n games till it wants to happen isn't it padre?

probably applies behind simon's back ngl. resulting in a huge fuck off argument once a letter comes in stamped under british army branding under the kids name instead of his own. yikes.

classic son x father shouting match.

i’m probably going to get asked to write that now aren’t i? happily, gladly, don’t get me wrong. sorry i haven’t been writing much but i do enjoy talking to you lot in the inbox.

simon 'ghost' riley taglist: @vamppxncess @crowbird @tallrock35 @fluffmonster @islanderr @blueoorchid @lea3773 @coldflapjack @rayhawk05 @han11dh @liishook @melovetitties @fallonx @rvjaa @fuckmelifesucks @bhayatsara @takeomisbitch @local-spidey @konigsblog @penutjuice @babychoi03 @sheluvzeren @sparklingtragedy @maviee @wiserebelpartypie @daddylorianisastateofmind @bhayatsara @mistydeyes @writingmysanity @johfaam0 @idkbbyx3 @gressseyy @fwibblefwobble @shibble @maladaptivedaydreamingbum @airghostlyfox @hotgirlsshareaccounts @simpxinnie @cliosunshine @bloobewy @lazybutsmexy @maki-z @yyiikes @tieflingteatime @cosmoscoffee @lilvampirina @cinnabeanz @bubbyblob @spencerreidisbae123 @ellies-girll @paperbag-prncs @cookiecutta @sluttyforsimon

[loveindefinitely]

༊*·˚ FOREVER WINTER (IF YOU GO) — task force 141 x reader

13 — THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS BAD THOUGHTS, ONLY YOUR ACTIONS TALK

featuring. simon 'ghost' riley + johnny 'soap' mactavish + kyle 'gaz' garrick + john 'bravo six' price + (non-endgame phillip graves)

warnings. nsfw, fem!reader, fmmmm, enemies to lovers, slow burn, polyamory, ghostsoap, pricegaz, alerudy, heavy angst, requited unrequited love, graphic violence

series masterlist. read on ao3. read on wattpad. fanfic playlist.

<- previous part | next part ->

You’d, somehow, forgotten just how… vibrant two of your oldest friends were.

With the blades of the helicopter still spinning, the deafening sound of aircrafts around you, and a steady mist of rain, your body collides with another.

“Oi, watch it!” You exclaim, a beaming smile stretched over your features as the bulky, oblivious man squeezes his arms around your torso and buries his head into your neck. “You smell like gunpowder. And your fiancée.”

His voice comes out muffled against your skin. “And you smell like cheap body wash.”

He squeezes you once more before finally letting you go, his dimples deep and hair soggy with rain. You study his features, the sharpness of his jaw and the dusting of brunette against it. Him. One of your oldest friends in the military.

He looses a breath, eyes meeting yours and his hands falling to your shoulders, a comforting weight. You don’t have any words, can’t find them, so all that leaves your lips is a single name.

“Alex,” you whisper, voice breaking in the middle, heart a sore throb in your chest.

The storm clouds above paint the world around you in harsh greys and physical manifestations of sadness – but in it all, your light has arrived. 

And how powerful it is.

“Moonflower!” A deeply familiar, feminine voice shouts, and you spread your arms wide and accept the body that crashes against your own. Your laugh is startled and pure, but relief and serotonin floods your system as warm as the embrace you’re surrounded in.

You’d found solace and even a home in your solitude, your loneliness, but now? 

Now, with the only two people in your life that have remained by your side, no matter the distance, holding you in their embrace?

It feels like family, even if you know there isn’t a space between the two of them for you to fit in – no crevice large enough for you to ever comfortably merge.

A foster family, maybe. Or a found one, however tenuous and distant.

“I missed you both so much,” you murmur, voice cracking slightly. You clear your throat, inhaling a trembling breath as you squeeze your eyes shut and rest your face in the crook of her neck. She smells of an odd mixture of her usual perfume, and Alex’s cologne.

You wonder if you’ll still have enough limbs attached to get to their wedding, by the time everything has been dealt with.

If you’ll even have a head attached.

It’s a small eternity (or maybe a few seconds, or maybe a few years) until she pulls away, a glint in her eyes that seems a concoction of pity and strength.

“You look stunning, Farah,” you grin, and your cheeks burn with the odd sensation of joy.

She crinkles her nose, dark stray hairs flying across her face from the continuing wind of both winter and the helicopter. Her skin glows with health – and you realise, then, how even with the stress of reconstructing a nation, she’s happy. Honest and unrepentant and golden. A survivor of war, but a survivor nonetheless.

Raising a brow, she returns, “You look like shit.”

A chuckle leaves your throat, the familiarity that is Farah’s honesty akin to a hot chocolate and a blanket wrapped around a freezing frame.

“You look like you’ve been injured,” Alex adds, a small wince gracing his features. He’s miraculously found himself once more at Farah’s side, not unlike a loyal guard dog. 

A guard dog guarding a lion, maybe, but a guard dog nonetheless.

“Unlike you two,” you chastise, folding your arms and burying your cold hands in the space between your bicep and breasts, “I’m at war.”

“With the guy we warned you about,” Farah raises her brow, voice acidic and biting. “The guy we told you was going to ruin your life?”

“There’s a difference between ruining my life, and quite literally ruining my life,” you counter, watching a cloud of breath hang in the air, chilled by the evening cold, before dissipating into the breeze.

“He can continue ruining your life inside,” Alex cuts in, a hand falling against the dip of Farah’s spine, and the other moving to rest between your shoulder blades. He applies just enough pressure to be convincing, but not demanding.

It may as well be a demand, however, with how weak your mindscape seems to be in the face of comfort and familiarity. 

The base seems small, even with the short distance, a reminder of how self-contained and cataclysmic your life has become (has always been). It’s well past eight, now, and with the winter hours it’s almost pitch black already. A few stars decorate the black landscape, this far out from most light pollution. Your eyes stray to the glistening balls of flame, and you wonder if someday soon you’ll find yourself amongst them.

Two duffel bags hang off of Alex’s shoulder, and it sparks your interest. 

“How long are you two planning to stay?” You ask, as if they’re merely old friends staying for a weekend, catching up over bottles of wine and damaged decks of cards. 

They both shrug, almost in sync. Your heart thunders in your chest at the small display of how attuned they are with each other – how in love. It’s Farah who answers, simply, “However long it will take.”

When you look down to your boots, ripples of water against sleek concrete cascading beneath each footfall, it’s merely to hide the stretch of a smile that braces your chapped lips. Your voice is small, uncharacteristically vulnerable, when you mutter to the ground, “Thank you.”

“We owe you, hell, we owe you more than a dozen lifetimes for what you’ve done for us,” Alex scoffs, the gratitude rolling off of him unlike the rain soaking his long-sleeved v-neck. 

“Let’s just call this even, then,” you retort, lifting your head once more, allowing them both to see the softened curve of your mouth, the gentle slope of your brows.

The rain has paused its pouring, but a whole other kind of thunderstorm awaits the three of you in the entry of the base.

When you’d called Farah and Alex – just two nights ago, mere minutes after finishing your meal with Ghost and Soap – you hadn’t spared many details about Graves. You’d told them of your betrayal, of your thoughts, of the adrenaline rush that was that last fight with him.

What you hadn’t disclosed was your increasingly peculiar arrangement with the 141. Or your tryst with Gaz. Or your mess of feelings, as a whole.

So, really, you hadn’t told them much in the realm of everything.

Now, seeing the outline of four starkly familiar profiles, waiting underneath the small awning above the entrance to the base, you regret leaving such vital pieces of information out of your hours-long call.

“This is the one first impression you don’t want to fuck up,” is all you manage to grate out to the two beside you, before you fall into hearing distance of the very imposing image the 141 has managed to portray. Sometimes, you forget how genuinely daunting the four men are, with the different lights you’ve seen them in.

This is not one of those times.

As soon as the light sitting at the door shines against the three of you, Soap startles forward, clad in only a tight-fitting grey shirt, with a hefty leather jacket in his grip. When he reaches you, not even glancing at the newcomers, he pulls the jacket over your shoulders, warm and gun-rough hands brushing the soft skin of your neck as he does so.

“Impatient, lass, runnin’ off into the rain without any feckin’ layers,” he reprimands, without any bite at all.

You’re stumped, for a moment, before shaking your head lightly and stepping away from the utterly confusing man. With a dramatic flourish of a hand gesture, you motion towards your left. 

Thankfully, Soap hadn’t met you too far out, so it only takes a few steps before you’re standing before the other three. A healthy dose of scepticism and tension fills the air between you all, and while you could certainly do without it, it still stings.

Just as you’re about to introduce everyone, despite Soap’s oddly rude behaviour, Price interrupts.

“Bloody hell, small world, ain’t it?” He chuckles, throaty and pleased, muscle-corded arms folded over his chest. His smile is like a beam in the dark of night.

“Thought it’d be a nice surprise, old man,” Farah returns, bringing out her hand for him to shake with a firm grip, both comfortable and at ease in each other’s presence. When Farah goes to pull away, however, Price stops her from doing so with wide eyes, laser-focused on her ring-adorned finger.

“Well I’ll be damned, Alex, how’d you convince her to deal with your arse for eternity?” Price teases, and while you expect the younger man to hit back, he simply beams.

The three seem to be in their own little world, with you, Soap, Gaz and Ghost being left with raised brows. 

“Oh, sorry, guys,” Alex raises a hand, having the decency to look sheepish. His eyes trail along the 141 warily, before meeting your own eyes, relaxing slightly under your gaze. He seems reluctant to break the contact, but does so nonetheless, words directed at the 141 as he says, “Price is an old friend.”

Farah and Price break their quiet conversation, directing their attention back to the group at large. It’s quiet, for a moment, which is a blessing considering the large personalities at hand.

You’re the one to break it.

“Well,” you start, a sudden burst of anxiety sparking in your stomach – you hadn’t considered the merging of your two lives, of past and present, the clashing of…

Oh. God.

Oh God. Oh God, you had almost forgotten that, but if you had, maybe they did, too? Yes. Definitely. It’ll be fine.

(It won’t be fine, you’re more certain, but a little lie to yourself can’t hurt. Much.)

You continue, not a breath out of place despite your internal thoughts, “Farah, Alex, meet the 141.”

Gesturing to the four men, meeting all of their eyes, you then gesture to the other two. “Guys, meet Farah and Alex.”

Silence fills the space between you all for a mere moment – just past a second, really – but it’s damning and heavy all the same. It has your chest tightening and your throat constricting, not unlike a thread of rope being pulled taut around the curve of your neck. 

“Thank you for taking care of her,” Farah says, voice steady and calculated. Defensive, really.

Gaz’s eyes narrow, his voice perfectly even and sickly sweet as he responds, “I can promise you, the last thing Sweetheart needs is to be taken care of.”

It’s… tense.

You’d, of course, expected that it would take some time for Farah and Alex to become anything close to friendly with the 141, but this feels different. A kind of static alights the air, a live wire sensitive to any spark that will instantly set it aflame.

“It’s good to see you again too, mate,” Alex smiles, but a sharp edge lines the curve of his lips. His eyes meet Gaz’s, and they don’t stray.

With a tight smile, Gaz responds, “Likewise.”

Ghost stands farthest from the group, a haunting spectre, shrouded in shadows with his arms folded over his chest and his hip resting against the wall. It’s impossible to see where, exactly, his eyes are trained – but you know they rest on you nonetheless.

Soap’s jacket remains a comforting weight on your shoulders, and although you’re loath to admit it even to yourself, it is miles better than the thin top you’d braved. He’s standing closest to you, on your right, posture straightened and imposing. He exudes a kind of energy you haven’t felt from him before, the closest being when you’d been separated from him post-surgery, maybe.

“Let’s have some tea, maybe, in the common room?” You ask, but it’s not really a request. Your tone is thick with insistence and command, and no one is in a place to deny you.

By the time you all make it to the common room – Alex and Farah comfortably speaking with Price, and you walking silently with Gaz, Ghost and Soap. The latter, especially, remaining a close presence at your side.

A few candles are lit against the windowsill, and a singular lamp sat against the large couch has been lit. No need for the blinding white light of the ceiling – just comfort and familiarity.

It feels at odds with the terse energy at hand, but simultaneously, a blessing.

Alex immediately takes a seat on the far right of the couch, at ease with himself and his surroundings. Gaz sits on the far left, leaving two spots between them. Without a word, Soap’s hand finds your lower back, and he virtually pulls you with him to sit between the two men. 

You find yourself stuck between Alex and Soap, with Ghost, Price and Farah more than happy to stand. Even if there was space, you doubt they’d choose to take a seat.

“We need to find out what Shepherd’s up to,” you speak, breaking the small talk between Price and Farah, as well as between Gaz and Soap. The room falls silent immediately. “And we need to find out what actually happened to my mother.”

The silence continues, and you find yourself pulling the leather jacket tighter around your frame – finding solace in the heat of the two men at either side of you. Your past and your present, both there, both helping.

It’s, surprisingly, Ghost who answers the sentiment first. 

“We’re at your disposal,” he simply says, as if it’s ever that simple. Maybe it can be, maybe it will be, with the powerhouse of a group that’s surrounding you now, with all of your history and feelings and sentiments. 

You can feel the seeds of hope in your chest begin to blossom, begin to shine underneath the rays of sunlight that are Ghost’s words.

“Are,” you roll your tongue in your mouth, feeling the words out before you speak them, “Are you all ready and willing to do this? Because if you’re not, I’m going to get the job done myself.”

It’s true, suicide mission or not. 

“Yer outta yer feckin’ mind if ya think we’re leavin’ ya behind now,” Soap scoffs, relaxing further into the couch as he throws his arm up and around the back of the couch, hand skimming your left shoulder. His thigh presses against your right one.

“You’re stuck with us now, Sweetheart,” Price shrugs, hands in his pockets.

Murmurings of agreement and similar sentiments echo around the group, and you find yourself exhaling such a deep breath that you’re sure it expels some decade-old air that had been stuck in the crevices of your lungs. 

“Hold on,” Farah raises her hand, brows furrowing as her other fist rests at her bucked hip. “What’s this whole Sweetheart thing about?”

Soap’s hand finds the nape of your neck, brushing away your hair to rest a firm grip around the warmed skin. Your heart skips a beat in your chest, and another when he responds, “Simple, aye? She’s a Sweetheart.”

You roll your eyes, but it’s impossible to quell the growing grin that’s creeping onto your face. “This idiot,” you nod towards the Scot at your side, “Was bleeding out. Gave him some sweetheart lollies to help with the blood loss, and, well, here we are.”

“Here we are,” he echoes, his eyes trained on your profile. When you meet his eyes, for a mere second, it feels like an electric shock.

Alex, on your other side, glances at you through the corner of his eyes with a hint of conspiracy. He leans in, mouth just a hair away from your ear, when he asks, “Which one of them are you fucking? Or have they all tumbled into your bed?”

Your elbow to his side is more a knee-jerk reaction to his words than anything, but you’re at least decent enough to wince at his groan of pain. He clutches his side like he’s been shot on the field, head falling to rest against your chest with dramatic flourish. Both Gaz and Soap start, as if about to physically restrain the man, and your unamused gaze immediately finds the Sergeants.

What the actual fuck is up with everyone?

“Not a jealous woman, are you, Farah?” Ghost chimes, voice guttural where he stands just to your left, by the arm of the couch. You can’t say you’d forgotten his presence – even with his silence, it’s a tangible, physical weight on your shoulders – but it still startles you when he speaks.

Farah’s easy smile turns into a cryptic smirk instantaneously, and, fuck.

Maybe, very possibly, most likely definitely: they remembered. Or, at least, Farah did.

Fuck.

You suppose it’s not really a thing you forget, unless your mind’s an overfilled storage room of memories and current events and problems. Which yours most definitely is, and of which theirs is likely not.

“Can’t say I am. Not the first time they’ve gotten handsy,” she shrugs, as if it’s an obvious statement.

As if the room hasn’t instantly dropped approximately ten degrees, and your heart stops where it should be thrumming in your chest.

It’s almost funny, how you instantly train your attention to Gaz. How your mind immediately fears his expression, his reaction to such a thinly veiled sentiment.

What you see is the instant rising of walls, the shuttering of his eyes, and the stiffening of his frame.

You wonder how many missed heartbeats it takes to constitute a heart attack.

“Old fling, were they?” Price asks, because, really, of course he does. When you look to him, he deliberately keeps his gaze on Farah, not giving you a single glance. It’s not jealousy, you know, because it’s Price, and he, in no capacity, holds any such feelings towards you. But it’s something damning nonetheless.

Alex, oblivious idiot that he is, finally pulls his head back up with a sharp laugh. If you didn’t know him, you’d think it was malicious. “Nah. Just thought some experimentation with an extra partner would be fun, and, hey, she is pretty damn hot.”

“You’re a dickhead,” you chastise, suddenly aware of all the points that you and Alex touch – all the points that you and Soap touch. 

“Didn’t realise ye were into that,” Soap bites, abruptly, tone sharp and acrid. You barely suppress a shiver at the shift in the man’s attitude, in comparison to his usually jovial and good-natured attitude. 

“Didn’t realise you were into kink-shaming, either,” you retort, almost startling at your own defensiveness.

Ghost’s hum feels like a reprimand, akin to an owner using a dog whistle on their trusted border collie, or a dominatrix snapping her whip. 

“I don’t think threesomes are a kink?” Alex’s statement ends in a question, a confused look settling over his features. “Like, polyamory definitely isn’t, but what about one-offs? Babe, do you know?”

Farah doesn’t answer, not for a long while. Entirely too aware of the tension filling the room, of the dangerous game she’s about to partake in. The one Alex started, likely unknowingly, but started nonetheless.

“No. It’s not kink. But some of what we did was.”

For, well, not the first time in your life (or even the last week, really), but pretty darn close to it, you consider storming into the weapon supplies and shooting yourself.

“Well!” You exclaim, nervous laughter following the statement, palms clammy where you wipe them against your pants, “Farah, Alex, you probably need some rest, y’know, after your flight. I certainly need it.”

Standing before you even realise you are, you move to get the hell out of there, when Soap’s hand wraps around your wrist, and tugs you back down to sit even closer against him. When Alex’s hand finds your shoulder, you realise distantly that this must be a kind of tug of war. Or piggy in the middle.

Potato, patata. You’re the bait either way.

“The night’s still young,” Price cuts in, and everyone around you seems to nod. “Unless you’re uncomfortable, Sweetheart,” he adds, and the genuinity beneath his words turns into a threat of your pride in your head.

“I’m fine,” you straighten your shoulders, set your nerves. “Just looking out for my friends.”

It’s a lie. You know it, Ghost most likely does, too, and you can only hope that everyone else is ignorant to that small fact.

Subconsciously, you find your attention drifting to Gaz once more.

He hasn’t spoken, you realise, not since Alex had said that. When he catches you watching his profile, lit by the lamp, the candles – he meets your eyes. Not for longer than a second, or half of one, you’re sure, but it hits you like a bullet. When he instantly looks away, you can’t help the sudden anger that stokes the flames in your stomach.

It’s not as if you were openly flirting with either Alex or Farah, and even then, who was he to be mad? You’d been together once, for God’s sake – not for a single moment since. Long days of work and stress and training made the comfort of his bed simply that.

And even then, even then, you were in no way official. Not in any semblance of the word, not with the stakes of the mission at hand, the risk that came with such relationships.

His response gives you half a mind to play up your past on purpose. You won’t, but the urge is definitely there.

It’s not silent, thank god. Alex, Price and Farah have continued a previous conversation, Ghost is silent and brooding, and…

“Didnae pick ye as promiscuous,” Soap states, fiercely meeting your eyes with a swirling of emotions visible within his own. He says the words like they’re poison on his tongue, and, fuck, you’re close to breaking point.

Your responding smile is nothing short of mocking. “Calling me a slut is less wordy, don’t you think?”

“Dinnae put words into my bloody mouth,” Soap seethes, leaning in further to your space, the scent of his cologne invading your senses. You hate how confused it all makes you feel, how unsure of your emotions and goddamn attachments.

“Oh, sorry, does the big bad military man want to tell me what such a big word means? If I don’t have the mental capacity to choose how I have sex, I surely can’t understand your wide vocabulary, can I?” You hiss, bending your neck slightly and not backing away from his posturing for even a moment.

“Soap, stop threatening her,” Price barks, and you distantly remember the people around you, the setting, the image the two of you must make.

You remember, and you can’t seem to find a single fuck to give.

“I can fight my own damn battles!” You yell, not sending a single glance Price’s way – eyes completely remaining on darkened blue instead.

“And that’s why ye still got bloody feckin’ bandages, damn bruises –”

“Do not go there with me right now, Johnny, or I swear to fucking god.”

Both of your chests heave, and you’ve forgotten what even sparked this sudden argument, this spiteful back and forth. You haven’t a clue in this moment, and you relish in it.

“She’s a better damn fighter than the lot of you,” Alex interrupts, “Injuries don’t mean shit, ‘specially not when you don’t know what the fuck she’s gone through.”

Soap directs his ire toward the man at your side, voice thick with anger and his accent when he counters, “And ye know ‘er so much better, jus’ cause ye got in ‘er pants? Aye?”

“Because he isn’t acting like a goddamn meathead!” You find yourself fisting your hand into his shirt, pulling him closer to you, faces inches apart.

“‘Nd kissin’ ‘n tellin’ is fine ‘nd dandy,” Soap laughs, without a hint of humour, “Thought ye had standards.”

A lot of things happen in the preceding moment.

You’d like to say you can’t be blamed for any of the actions that occur, but you also know that accountability is a virtue. And you mean to uphold it.

It goes something like this.

The fist that had been wrapped in his shirt pulls back, and instead, collides with his jaw. 

Arms wrap around your chest, caging your arms to your side. Arms, too, wrap around Soap, pulling him away from you. You’re both yelling obscenities, none of which you can name, and you both fight against your restraints. 

You don’t need to have a full frame of mind to know that it’s Alex and Price holding you back, and through the haze of it all, you’re sure it’s Ghost and Farah keeping Soap away.

“Calm the hell down!” Price commands, voice a beam of light in a storm. It brings you back to yourself, but not enough to stem the bleeding of your anger, just enough for you to recognise it.

“Bloody idiot, Johnny, get it together!” Ghost is saying to Soap, standing in front of him and shaking his shoulders as Farah’s arms remain wrapped around his torso, keeping his fists below his waist.

Gaz is nowhere to be seen.

“Don’t fucking speak to be, Johnny, I don’t want to see your face,” you shout, eyes glassy, before you finally ease into Price and Alex’s grips, their own going lax. You shoulder off their arms, before without a word, storming down the corridor.

Your name’s called out after you, ‘Sweetheart’, ‘Moonflower’ – none of it matters. Not past the roaring in your ears, the spite burning in your veins. The pent up energy of an unfinished fight.

Shoving open the door to your – Gaz’s – room, you startle when you see the man himself, standing in the middle of the room, shirt in hand. The only light comes from the window, the full moon high in the sky more than enough light to serve as a lamp. His sweats hang loose on his hips, his muscles bulging but still lithe, more like a gymnast’s build than a wrestler’s.

He’s never looked better.

Whether that’s the adrenaline speaking, or the anger, you don’t know. Don’t care. Not past the need to have his mouth against your own.

It takes all of two seconds before the door slams shut behind you, and you’re shoving Gaz onto the bed, his own groan answer enough. His brown eyes glisten with the moonlight, and his throat dips when he swallows, focus trained on where you tug off that damn leather jacket. your shirt following.

“I don’t want to hear a word from you,” you demand, “Unless it’s yes, no, or please.”

He nods, shaky, voice breaking when he responds, “Yes.”

Kicking off your pants, leaving you standing in only your panties and bra, you move to straddle him. He dutifully remains laid onto the bed, chest heaving in harsh sweeps, mouth slightly open in a mixture of shock and lust.

“Where do you get off,” you breathe, voice heavy with threat as you drag your pointer finger along the length of his throat, before following the line of his collarbone, “Being all moody about who I’ve fucked? What gives you the right?”

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, the weakest he’s ever sounded, “Not – I’m not mad, I just. I want you.”

Your hand finds his neck, forming a light grip around it. You haven’t applied any pressure, but his breath hitches at the weight of it, the promise. 

“That sounded like more than one syllable,” you frown, mockingly patronising. You squeeze his neck, not anywhere hard enough to choke, but enough to have him squeezing his eyes shut. “We can talk later.”

He nods, harsh, quick jerks of his head, and the slightly unhinged smile returns to your face.

You hadn’t gotten the fight you’d yearned for, not with Soap, but this is a good enough replacement for that need.

Dragging your hand down his bare chest, you pause when you see scars. Not healed like those from battle, and ones you recognise. Before you can process what it means, Gaz lets out a sharp gasp, and when you look to him, his eyes are wide and.

And scared.

“No, hey, you can speak,” you ramble, and you can feel the flame of rage dim to sparking charcoal. It should be scary, how quickly you find yourself worried for the man, but it’s not. “It’s okay.”

“I should’ve told you,” he immediately breathes, squeezing his eyes shut once more. His head falls back to the bed once more. “I’m.”

He swallows, and you find your hand gravitating to his throat once more – this time, in a soft, soothing caress.

“I’m trans,” he finishes, saying it like one would whisper a secret in a confessional. Your heart stutters in your chest, and it aches, the idea that he’s had lovers who’ve made him feel so awful about his identity.

Your hand moves from his neck to his cheek, thumb brushing underneath his eyes, and they finally flutter open once more.

They soften when they see your smile.

“Thank you for telling me,” you say, voice low and cautious. “If you wanna stop, it’s fine, but,” you shrug, “You’re hot. I still wanna fuck. You might have to show me what feels best, but that’s kinda hot, too.”

“You’re okay with it?” His voice is fragile, shaky, and fuck he’s pretty.

“I’m okay with it,” you echo, sentiment genuine and kind. “Tell me what you want, Kyle.”

His arms remain laid out on the bed at either side of him, his skin still heated with want and need and wanton lust. His voice strengthens when he answers.

“I want you to use me – take it out on me,” he says. “Please.”

And who are you to deny such a request?

author's note. i was veryveryvery close to orphaning or marking as complete. i'm not really in or interested in the COD fandom at all anymore, but, i realised that i also want to see where this story goes? excluding the characters, the actual story and world i've created for sweetheart has me wanting to see it to its end.

that, along with the fans. you guys and your genuine interest and comments have made this project worth it. i can't express enough how much you all mean to me, especially those that comment on every chapter and have been there every step of the way. thank you, thank you, thank you.

i can't promise as efficient and regular updates, but i CAN promise that i plan to finish this story in its entirety.

thank you to those who have stuck around, and thank you for those that continue to do so. you mean the world to me, and the very writing of this fic is owed to you.

(also, if anyone has any feedback on my trans rep and dealing with a trans character, PLEASE lmk. i am in no way perfect, and if i've made a mistake, please tell me so i can fix it and grow as a writer!)

taglist. @lilpothoscuttings @jng-yuan @iruzias @insatiablekittie @1wh4re1nova @kaoyamamegami @supernaturalstilinski @inthemiddle0feverywhere @msecho19 @nogood-boyo @alfa-jor @lalashhyl @letmeapologise @honeybeeznutz @1mawh0re @lalashhyl @someonepleasedateme @letmeapologise @uhhellnogetoffpleasenowty @inarabee @simp-sentral @littlecellist @clear-your-mind-and-dream @browtfyoudoing @oreo-cream @fanngirl19 @infpt-zylith @marispunk @emotion-no-hot-yes-hotel-trivago @xvintageghostx @thigh-o-saur @thriving-n-jiving @callsign-pyro @mmmangel @aisawa-reo @just-pure-trash @silly-norman @annoyingstrawberryballoon @chop-zulyzulyyy

[thefirsthogokage]

I really need help on this one, especially because I created it so I'm going to have to be his biggest advocate.

Hi, I'm Riley, I'm from the US, and I'm creating this fundraiser for Mohammed Seyam - who is in Belgium - to help his brother, Dr. Ahmed Seyam, and Ahmed's family. This message is from Ahmed with some minor edits for clarity.

"Hello Dear,

I'm Dr. Ahmed and am a surgeon working in gaza. I'm married and I have 3 children, the oldest 7 years old and the youngest 2 years old.

Now, in this barbaric war, I leave my family several days in bad condition and bad sanitation in small tents in Rafah at south of Gaza Strip during my duty as a surgeon, but the situation become critical and the health status for my children become worse due to bad hygiene and the shortage of water.

Also my flat in the north of Gaza damaged badly.

There is nothing left for me in this place. I want to flee with my family and find a safe country for them.

Help me. To leave, I need $30000 to do travel coordination.

This is my family:

And this is me doing my work:

The food actually ran out, and signs of fatigue and exhaustion appeared on our faces.

Weight loss has become evident on our bodies. Grains, flour, rice, fodder, and even animal feed ran out. There was nothing left.

Poverty, siege, killing, starvation, destruction, and cold. This is part of what we live in the southern of Gaza Strip. Children died, the milk of nursing mothers dried up, and we fell into a state of danger.

We issue the final warning: between life and death there are limited steps and hours."

Paying to get out through the Rafah gate costs from $7,000-$8,000 for adults and $2,000-$3,000 for children, and Ahmed is looking to evacuate his family of five. He will also need money for travel expenses.

Please help Dr. Ahmed and his family. Every donation - no matter how small - helps and can give hope.

[blingblong55]

Bigger than the whole sky- Simon "Ghost" Riley

Photo credits: @ave661

Based on a request:

HI SO I READ YOUR RECENT NO JUDGEMENT AND ITS AWESOME AND INCREDIBLY WHOLESOME BTW BUT PLEASE CAN YOU MAKE IT ANGST??!?!?????? LIKE LIKE HEAR ME OUT. YOU GOT PREGGO WITH ANOTHER BEBE AND A MISCARRIAGE HAPPENS, YOU THINK ITS ALL YOUR FAULT AND IDK FALLS INTO SLIGHT DEPRESSION AND STUFF LIKE THAT IDK I JUST WANT ANGST <333333333 ---- F!Reader, pregnant!reader, husband!simon, TW! Mentions of miscarriage, dad!ghost ---- A/N: I love this idea and major TW!

It was a dream all over again, the excitement to have yet another little one in the place Simon and you call home. You are around three months along. Your soon-to-be oldest child kisses your soft belly. Simon chuckles, "I think we know who the favourite relative will be." A smile appears on you. This is all too perfect.

"Alright lovie, we'll let you go and decorate. You need us, we'll be playing outside," he kisses your forehead. The puppy, kid and Simon all race to the backyard. Giggles and barks follow along and you make your merry way to the nursery.

As Simon is running around the backyard with the kid and the puppy, you feel cramps. The pain is more intense and it's of concern.

As you rush to the bathroom, you feel it. Warm, thick liquid runs down your thighs and to the ground. In a hurry, you call out for Simon, who in a rush, carries your child with him to the room. "Lovie?!" His voice filled with panic and once he saw the blood, his heart nearly stopped. Tears run down your face.

"Oh god lovie," he says with a frown. With strength, he picks you up with his free arm, your child in the other and he rushes to the car.

The way to the emergency room was filled with tears, panic and a lot of reassurance.

Nurses wheel you in, Simon and your child fight to stay with you but the doctors don't let them. A nurse stays with him. She begins to try and get their minds off you for a second and as hard as it seems, it is the only thing she can do.

While this worked with his kid, it didn't for him. "Just, be careful with her, she's pregnant and we need her in our lives." He says between silent tears. "I can reassure you the doctors are doing all they can to help your wife."

Nearly an hour into being under the care of doctors and staff, they let Simon and your kid in.

The room is thick in silence and fear.

"Lovie, what's wrong?"

"I'm sorry," you cry. There is shame in you. Guilt and utter disgust for yourself fills you.

"Sorry for what?" He says almost unaware of the situation.

"Mummy?"

"I'm so sorry, Tommy," you cry. How can one tell their son the baby died? How can one accept this piece of their life?

There are things one can't say, things one can't feel and some things will never be.

"Lovie, tell me, what's the matter?"

"…The baby-fetus…i…I miscarried," you confess between mumbles that cover your mouth as tears fall like a waterfall. Your hand goes to the now empty belly. The fetus that would never grow now sits elsewhere as you grieve its death.

At home, the sun sets. Curtains stay open since no one is home. The nursery loses its colour with the sun. All is silent. No one is home, no one will be home for a while more.

In the pale grey room, Simon holds his son in his arms. The small child is asleep in the comfort of his father's arms. Meanwhile, Simon's stare is on you. A frown is now temporary on him. The sight in front of him is of you.

Distraught by the news, you've denied food.

Two nurses come into the room, and in their hands, a teddy named Angel. You look up. "We are so sorry for your loss, we wanted to gift you, your very own angel," the main nurse says. She hands it to you, the weight of it is comforting, you look up and give them a knowing look.

In the darkness of the night, Simon stays awake. You hold the teddy as you sleep.

"I will always love you," he whispers to the teddy and then to his son who still sleeps in his arms. "I love you more," Simon whispers once more as he kisses your forehead.

Light comes back in, the only giggle is of your son who plays with the teddy. You haven't been able to stop the tears.

What would have been? Two little kids running around, the mindless babble. The beautiful sound of a baby giggling is something you won't experience.

You and Simon haven't said much since you told him the news but he never left your side. His hand has been glued to yours for this time and as you look at him, you have this stare that begs for forgiveness. You cup his face and he nods, "I love you too," he says the words he understands you too wanted to say.

Days pass, and you lay in bed. Simon has been home, and not once has he touched his phone. He lives his days giving you all the care and love you need. His son sees him more, the car rides to school are filled with some tune and as he drives back, you find yourself back in the nursery.

The blood was now gone from the floor, all that stayed in the room was the crib and the teddy.

The walk to the room is painful, the sight of the kitchen makes you frown. All the food you craved now disgusts you. The clothes you wore to hide the bump are hidden.

Now, as you lay in bed, you believe this is some sort of punishment. The day is beautiful outside, if only that angel would be here to listen to you as you describe it.

You want to take it all back. The annoyance when your son left his toys everywhere when he was learning how to walk to different places. You want to clean the crayon marks on the wall again, you want the sleepless nights, and the silly little babbles and Simon just nodding and pretending words were said.

"I would've met you in five months…" you say to the wall. You needed something, just a second with that baby. One smile, or even for it to hear you say you love them beyond the world.

You'd give anything to have done anything right. The once colourful room now feels like it's covered in blue.

As you lay in bed, that's when you wish you'd just di- "Lovie?" Simon was back from dropping Tommy off at school. When he doesn't hear your response, he walks to you, wrapping his arms around you and then picking you up, bringing you to his lap as he lays back, your head on his chest. "Let it out, it's okay, I'm here," he whispers.

Sobs escape your lips. You cry, and in between the tears, you keep asking why.

You're not enough, are you? Losing this feels like it.

"Simon-" "Don't go there, it isn't your fault, you did everything right and maybe it just wasn't time for us to have another one but don't you dare speak about yourself like that." His voice is soft but there is some commanding tone behind it all.

Some time passes, and Simon has been home this whole time. He grieves with you, and you with him.

You finally come to terms with this and on some beautiful day, your son organises a picnic in the backyard. A blanket laid upon the grass, tea, snacks, lots of laughter and much talk greets you. For the first time since the miscarriage, you feel it, that funny feeling when all is well and your heart slowly heals.

"I love you," Your son happily says. "To the moon and back," Simon and you say back at the same time.

A/N: Tagged all those on the list...so sorry for not making a "comment to be tagged"...surprise comeback????

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